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| In real life James Joyce lived at 17 Richmond Street, North in Dublin That would be next to where the woman on the right side of this photograph is standing. ARABYBy James Joyce |
Editor’s Note: This work from the public domain is the third of a series of short stories published as “The Dubliners.”
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.
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| James Joyce |
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. It 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 left 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 she couldn’t wait any longer,
but it was after eight o’clock and she did not like to be out late as the night
air was bad for her. When she had gone I began to walk up and down the room,
clenching my fists. My aunt said:
“I’m afraid you may put off your bazaar for this night of
Our Lord.”
At nine o’clock I heard my uncle’s latchkey in the halldoor.
I heard him talking to himself and heard the hallstand rocking when it had
received the weight of his overcoat. I could interpret these signs. When he was
midway through his dinner I asked him to give me the money to go to the bazaar.
He had forgotten.
“The people are in bed and after their first sleep now,” he
said.
I did not smile. My aunt said to him energetically:
“Can’t you give him the money and let him go? You’ve kept
him late enough as it is.”
My uncle said he was very sorry he had forgotten. He said he
believed in the old saying: “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” He
asked me where I was going and, when I had told him a second time he asked me
did I know The Arab’s Farewell to his Steed. When I left the kitchen he was
about to recite the opening lines of the piece to my aunt.
I held a florin tightly in my hand as I strode down
Buckingham Street towards the station. The sight of the streets thronged with
buyers and glaring with gas recalled to me the purpose of my journey. I took my
seat in a third-class carriage of a deserted train. After an intolerable delay
the train moved out of the station slowly. It crept onward among ruinous houses
and over the twinkling river.
At Westland Row Station a crowd of people pressed to the
carriage doors; but the porters moved them back, saying that it was a special
train for the bazaar. I remained alone in the bare carriage. In a few minutes
the train drew up beside an improvised wooden platform. I passed out on to the
road and saw by the lighted dial of a clock that it was ten minutes to ten. In
front of me was a large building which displayed the magical name.
I could not find any sixpenny entrance and, fearing that the
bazaar would be closed, I passed in quickly through a turnstile, handing a
shilling to a weary-looking man. I found myself in a big hall girdled at half
its height by a gallery. Nearly all the stalls were closed and the greater part
of the hall was in darkness. I recognised a silence like that which pervades a
church after a service. I walked into the centre of the bazaar timidly. A few
people were gathered about the stalls which were still open. Before a curtain,
over which the words Café Chantant were written in coloured lamps, two men were
counting money on a salver. I listened to the fall of the coins.
Remembering with difficulty why I had come I went over to
one of the stalls and examined porcelain vases and flowered tea-sets. At the
door of the stall a young lady was talking and laughing with two young
gentlemen. I remarked their English accents and listened vaguely to their
conversation.
“O, I never said such a thing!”
“O, but you did!”
“O, but I didn’t!”
“Didn’t she say that?”
“Yes. I heard her.”
“O, there’s a ... fib!”
Observing me the young lady came over and asked me did I
wish to buy anything. The tone of her voice was not encouraging; she seemed to
have spoken to me out of a sense of duty. I looked humbly at the great jars
that stood like eastern guards at either side of the dark entrance to the stall
and murmured:
“No, thank you.”
The young lady changed the position of one of the vases and
went back to the two young men. They began to talk of the same subject. Once or
twice the young lady glanced at me over her shoulder.
I lingered before her stall, though I knew my stay was
useless, to make my interest in her wares seem the more real. Then I turned
away slowly and walked down the middle of the bazaar. I allowed the two pennies
to fall against the sixpence in my pocket. I heard a voice call from one end of
the gallery that the light was out. The upper part of the hall was now
completely dark.
Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature
driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.
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| Dublin in James Joyce's Day |
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| Richmond Street North, 2014 |
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