and Lord Lytton. I pretended that I had read every book he mentioned, so that in the
end he said:
`Ah, I can see you are a bookworm like myself. Now,' he added, pointing to Mahony,
who was regarding us with open eyes, `he is different; he goes in for games.'
He said he had all Sir Walter Scott's works and all Lord Lytton's works at home and
never tired of reading them. `Of course,' he said, `there were some of Lord Lytton's
works which boys couldn't read.' Mahony asked why couldn't boys read them - a
question which agitated and pained me because I was afraid the man would think I
was as stupid as Mahony. The man, however, only smiled. I saw that he had great
gaps in his mouth between his yellow teeth. Then he asked us which of us had the
most sweethearts. Mahony mentioned lightly that he had three totties. The man asked
me how many I had. I answered that I had none. He did not believe me and said he
was sure I must have one. I was silent.
`Tell us,' said Mahony pertly to the man, `how many have you yourself?'
The man smiled as before and said that when he was our age he had lots of
sweethearts.
`Every boy,' he said, `has a little sweetheart.'
His attitude on this point struck me as strangely liberal in a man of his age. In my
heart I thought that what he said about boys and sweethearts was reasonable. But I
disliked the words in his mouth, and I wondered why he shivered once or twice as if
he feared something or felt a sudden chill. As he proceeded I noticed that his accent
was good. He began to speak to us about girls, saying what nice soft hair they had and
how soft their hands were and how all girls were not so good as they seemed to be if
one only knew. There was nothing he liked, he said, so much as looking at a nice
young girl, at her nice white hands and her beautiful soft hair. He gave me the
impression that he was repeating something which he had learned by heart or that,
magnetized by some words of his own speech, his mind was slowly circling round
and round in the same orbit. At times he spoke as if he were simply alluding to some
fact that everybody knew, and at times he lowered his voice and spoke mysteriously,
as if he were telling us something secret which he did not wish others to overhear. He
repeated his phrases over and over again, varying them and surrounding them with his
monotonous voice. I continued to gaze towards the foot of the slope, listening to him.
After a long while his monologue paused. He stood up slowly, saying that he had to
leave us for a minute or so, a few minutes, and, without changing the direction of my
gaze, I saw him walking slowly away from us towards the near end of the field. We
remained silent when he had gone. After a silence of a few minutes I heard Mahony
exclaim:
`I say! Look what he's doing!'
As I neither answered nor raised my eyes, Mahony exclaimed again:
`I say... He's a queer old josser!'
`In case he asks us for our names,' I said, `let you be Murphy and I'll be Smith.'
We said nothing further to each other. I was still considering whether I would go
away or not when the man came back and sat down beside us again. Hardly had he sat
down when Mahony, catching sight of the cat which had escaped him, sprang up and
pursued her across the field. The man and I watched the chase. The cat escaped once
more and Mahony began to throw stones at the wall she had escaladed. Desisting
from this, he began to wander about the far end of the field, aimlessly.
After an interval the man spoke to me. He said that my friend was a very rough boy,
and asked did he get whipped often at school. I was going to reply indignantly that we
were not National School boys to be whipped, as he called it; but I remained silent.
He began to speak on the subject of chastising boys. His mind, as if magnetized again
by his speech, seemed to circle slowly round and round its new centre. He said that
when boys were that kind they ought to be whipped and well whipped. When a boy
was rough and unruly there was nothing would do him any good but a good sound
whipping. A slap on the hand or a box on the ear was no good: what he wanted was to
get a nice warm whipping. I was surprised at this sentiment and involuntarily glanced
at his face. As I did so I met the gaze of a pair of bottle-green eyes peering at me from
under a twitching forehead. I turned my eyes away again.
The man continued his monologue. He seemed to have forgotten his recent liberalism.
He said that if ever he found a boy talking to girls or having a girl for a sweetheart he
would whip him and whip him; and that would teach him not to be talking to girls.
And if a boy had a girl for a sweetheart and told lies about it, then he would give him
such a whipping as no boy ever got in this world. He said that there was nothing in
this world he would like so well as that. He described to me how he would whip such
a boy, as if he were unfolding some elaborate mystery. He would love that, he said,
better than anything in this world; and his voice, as he led me monotonously through
the mystery, grew almost affectionate and seemed to plead with me that I should
understand him.
I waited till his monologue paused again Then I stood up abruptly. Lest I should
betray my agitation I delayed a few moments, pretending to fix my shoe properly, and
then, saying that I was obliged to go, I bade him good-day. I went up the slope calmly
but my heart was beating quickly with fear that he would seize me by the ankles.
When I reached the top of the slope I turned round and, without looking at him, called
loudly across the field:
`Murphy!'
My voice had an accent of forced bravery in it, and I was ashamed of my paltry
stratagem. I had to call the name again before Mahony saw me and hallooed in
answer. How my heart beat as he came running across the field to me! He ran as if to
bring me aid. And I was penitent; for in my heart I had always despised him a little.
Araby
North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the
Christian Brothers' School set the boys free. An uninhabited house of two storeys
stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbours in a square ground. The other
houses of the street, conscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one another with
brown imperturbable faces.
The former tenant of our house, a priest, had died in the back drawing-room. Air,
musty from having been long enclosed, hung in all the rooms, and the waste room
behind the kitchen was littered with old useless papers. Among these I found a few
paper-covered books, the pages of which were curled and damp: The Abbot, by
Walter Scott, The Devout Communicant, and The Memoirs of Vidocq. I liked the last
best because its leaves were yellow. The wild garden behind the house contained a
central apple-tree and a few straggling bushes, under one of which I found the late
tenant's rusty bicycle-pump. He had been a very charitable priest; in his will he had
left all his money to institutions and the furniture of his house to his sister.
When the short days of winter came, dusk fell before we had well eaten our dinners.
When we met in the street the houses had grown sombre. The space of sky above us
was the colour of ever-changing violet and towards it the lamps of the street lifted
their feeble lanterns. The cold air stung us and we played till our bodies glowed. Our
shouts echoed in the silent street. The career of our play brought us through the dark
muddy lanes behind the houses, where we ran the gauntlet of the rough tribes from
the cottages, to the back doors of the dark dripping gardens where odours arose from
the ashpits, to the dark odorous stables where a coachman smoothed and combed the
horse or shook music from the buckled harness. When we returned to the street, light
from the kitchen windows had filled the areas. If my uncle was seen turning the
corner, we hid in the shadow until we had seen him safely housed. Or if Mangan's
sister came out on the doorstep to call her brother in to his tea, we watched her from
our shadow peer up and down the street. We waited to see whether she would remain
or go in and, if she remained, we left our shadow and walked up to Mangan's steps
resignedly. She was waiting for us, her figure defined by the light from the half-
opened door. Her brother always teased her before he obeyed, and I stood by the
railings looking at her. Her dress swung as she moved her body, and the soft rope of
her hair tossed from side to side.
Every morning I lay on the floor in the front parlour watching her door. The blind was
pulled down to within an inch of the sash so that I could not be seen. When she came
out on the doorstep my heart leaped. I ran to the hall, seized my books and followed
her. I kept her brown figure always in my eye and, when we came near the point at
which our ways diverged, I quickened my pace and passed her. This happened
morning after morning. I had never spoken to her, except for a few casual words, and
yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.
Her image accompanied me even in places the most hostile to romance. On Saturday
evenings when my aunt went marketing I had to go to carry some of the parcels. We
walked through the flaring streets, jostled by drunken men and bargaining women,
amid the curses of labourers, the shrill litanies of shop-boys who stood on guard by
the barrels of pigs' cheeks, the nasal chanting of street-singers, who sang a come-all-
you about O'Donovan Rossa, or a ballad about the troubles in our native land. These
noises converged in a single sensation of life for me: I imagined that I bore my
chalice safely through a throng of foes. Her name sprang to my lips at moments in
strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand. My eyes were often
full of tears (I could not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour
itself out into my bosom. I thought little of the future. I did not know whether I would
ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I could tell her of my confused
adoration. But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers
running upon the wires.
One evening I went into the back drawing-room in which the priest had died. It was a
dark rainy evening and there was no sound in the house. Through one of the broken
panes I heard the rain impinge upon the earth, the fine incessant needles of water
playing in the sodden beds. Some distant lamp or lighted window gleamed below me.
I was thankful that I could see so little. All my senses seemed to desire to veil
themselves and, feeling that I was about to slip from them, I pressed the palms of my
hands together until they trembled, murmuring: `O love! O love!' many times.
At last she spoke to me. When she addressed the first words to me I was so confused
that I did not know what to answer. She asked me was I going to Araby. I forgot
whether I answered yes or no. It would be a splendid bazaar; she said she would love
to go.
`And why can't you?' I asked.
While she spoke she turned a silver bracelet round and round her wrist. She could not
go, she said, because there would be a retreat that week in her convent. Her brother
and two other boys were fighting for their caps, and I was alone at the railings. She
held one of the spikes, bowing her head towards me. The light from the lamp opposite
our door caught the white curve of her neck, lit up her hair that rested there and,
falling, lit up the hand upon the railing. At fell over one side of her dress and caught
the white border of a petticoat, just visible as she stood at ease.
`It's well for you,' she said.
`If I go,' I said, `I will bring you something.'
What innumerable follies laid waste my waking and sleeping thoughts after that
evening! I wished to annihilate the tedious intervening days. I chafed against the work
of school. At night in my bedroom and by day in the classroom her image came
between me and the page I strove to read. The syllables of the word Araby were called
to me through the silence in which my soul luxuriated and cast an Eastern
enchantment over me. I asked for leave to go to the bazaar on Saturday night. My
aunt was surprised, and hoped it was not some Freemason affair. I answered few
questions in class. I watched my master's face pass from amiability to sternness; he
hoped I was not beginning to idle. I could not call my wandering thoughts together. I
had hardly any patience with the serious work of life which, now that it stood between
me and my desire, seemed to me child's play, ugly monotonous child's play.
On Saturday morning I reminded my uncle that I wished to go to the bazaar in the
evening. He was fussing at the hallstand, looking for the hat-brush, and answered me
curtly:
`Yes, boy, I know.'
As he was in the hall I could not go into the front parlour and lie at the window. I felt
the house in bad humour and walked slowly towards the school. The air was pitilessly
raw and already my heart misgave me.
When I came home to dinner my uncle had not yet been home. Still it was early. I sat
staring at the clock for some time and, when its ticking began to irritate me, I left the
room. I mounted the staircase and gained the upper part of the house. The high, cold,
empty, gloomy rooms liberated me and I went from room to room singing. From the
front window I saw my companions playing below in the street. Their cries reached
me weakened and indistinct and, leaning my forehead against the cool glass, I looked
over at the dark house where she lived. I may have stood there for an hour, seeing
nothing but the brown-clad figure cast by my imagination, touched discreetly by the
lamplight at the curved neck, at the hand upon the railings and at the border below the
dress.
When I came downstairs again I found Mrs Mercer sitting at the fire. She was an old,
garrulous woman, a pawnbroker's widow, who collected used stamps for some pious
purpose. I had to endure the gossip of the tea-table. The meal was prolonged beyond
an hour and still my uncle did not come. Mrs Mercer stood up to go: she was sorry
