I finished it on the train, the last of Molly Bloom’s soliloquy, the carriage rocking over the track between Fruitvale and Glen Eden. When the train shook, I lost my place, then had to find somewhere to start again, some foothold, like a rock in a stream. The covers showed the length of my odyssey, the corners bent, the spine creased and wrinkled, like the face of a man that had aged a decade in a few weeks. I held the book in my hand, weighed it, read the title, and the name, James Joyce. It clicks off the tongue, like it’s supposed to be spoken aloud. James Joyce. James Joyce. James Joyce.
You hear about black holes, regions of spacetime from which nothing can escape, not even light. When a body is crushed into a smaller and smaller volume, its gravity increases. The centre of a black hole is a singularity, the coalescence of space and time, a mass of infinite density. As the gravity of a black hole increases it reaches out beyond time, to pull back escaping light that thought it had got away. That’s all of us, black holes, sucking the universe towards us. It all comes tumbling in, Christ on the cross, the souls of all the black babies from India and Africa, all the suns and stars, Krishna and the goat girls, sailors lost at sea, the seven seas themselves, the unused dreams of poets, the burnt flesh of the children of Hiroshima, the promises of prophets.
I’d been to the pub that night, a converted library where I’d been drinking with a white-bearded writer, another of the diaspora who’d left his country long ago, and the church long before that. We talked about the craft of fiction, and the soul of fiction. There was music from a juke box. Someone was playing Pink Floyd.
All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be.
Outside, the sinking sun painted dark shapes on the walls and across the road. The sky deepened; there was a pause as the shadows merged into a gentle cloak. I’d had an early start, and after two beers the dusk soaked through my skin, and I began to dissolve into a night of my own. I held my breath. The sky flared into violent purples and golds, then paled into ice and died.
‘Your round,’ said my companion. ‘Same again for me.’
He pushed his glass towards me.
‘Same again,’ I said to the barmaid, unable to recall what we’d been drinking.
She filled the glasses and I returned to the table.
A life in a single day, the universe on the head of a pin. Same again. If you want your life again everyone else has to have their’s again too.
When I left the pub I checked my bag. Ulysses was still there, the bookmark sticking out showing just a few pages left. It’s a short walk down Mt Eden Road, then you come to a bridge over the tracks. There’s a wire fence with hamburger wrappers and pages of newspaper blown against it. You turn off the footpath and walk along a wooden footbridge, weathered timber piles, loose boards coated in tarseal. The footbridge winds down to the platform, where there’s a tin shelter with no sides. You read the tags and graffiti on the backs of the factories; random words, the names of artistes, initials, acronyms, twisted letters. On the other side of the track people in the apartments are bringing in their washing, or leaning on their balcony railings, lives piled on lives. Before the train arrives you see the track under the bridge turn yellow, then you hear the rattle of wheels, then the night fills with diesel and light and steel.
‘All fares from Mt Eden,’ says the guard, and you hand over your ticket. You watch as the guard punches it, then you study the shape of the hole. Today it’s a square with one corner bitten out, and through it you see bits of the guard, square bits of trouser with a missing corner, bits of the floor, of your own shoe. Everything is square and bitten until you tuck the ticket into your wallet and snap the dome.
I reach into my bag and take out Ulysses. There’s eight stops to Glen Eden, and eight pages to go.
Where did you buy your copy of Ulysses?
At a book shop in Bridge Road, Melbourne, on the sixth of October 2001.
How much did you pay?
Fifteen dollars and ninety five cents, Australian currency. The receipt is sandwiched between pages 812 and 813.
Which edition was it?
The 1960 Bodley Head edition, reset and published by Penguin in 1968, again in 1992, reprinted as a Penguin Classic in 2000, with a 79 page introduction by Declan Kiebard.
Why did it take so long to read?
I made one false start in 2001, and another in 2002. On both occasions I narrowly escaped its gravitational field as it drew the entire corpus of twentieth century literature to its core. In 2003 I made wide orbit around the top shelf of my bookcase but was finally compelled, ineluctably, to open the book again in 2004. After reading page one I saw that while my reading Ulysses was comically inconsequential, nevertheless I had to read it.
What day did you finish it?
June 16 2004.
Where were you when you finished reading it?
On the 8.15 western train from Britomart. I boarded at Mt Eden station at 8.27 and read the last page in between Fruitvale and Glen Eden.
What fare did you pay?
Three dollars and ten cents by way of a ten stage concession ticket (10% discount) with a further ten percent discount obtained by buying at the Auckland City Hospital PostShop. The ticket bears a round stamp, containing with the words ‘Auckland Hospital Postshop’, and the serial number 185425.
Who arranged the discounts?
The first was provided by Tranz Metro, the second by Dan McIvor, mental health nurse, of Auckland, as an incentive for Auckland Hospital staff to avoid using private motor vehicles for transport to work.
Which other works by Joyce have you read?
Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist, The Works of James Joyce (poetry), but not Finnegan’s Wake.
Describe the influence of Ulysses on your understanding of literature, and of life?
The novel is not a single form. The author does not speak with a single voice. A single day in the life of one man contains more than can be understood. The motive force that causes, impels and destroys the world is love.
Anything else?
Newspaper death notices should not be followed by advertisements for potted meat.
And hes sitting in that chair again reading that book by that Irishman the one they made the film of when it came to Dunedin in 1967 they had to go women with women men with men because the things he said made it too embarrassing to go with your husband if that was now I could go with him and see what all the fuss was about but then things have changed and you get to see all sorts of things you couldnt see then even pornography its the men that like it mainly but women do too even if all the girls are young with slender bodies mine used to be like that all firm and curves hidden under an oilskin parka but it was just the same really even after I had the babies I was in pretty good shape he still says that but then he would wouldnt he they all say that but they look at the young ones ive seen him doing it I read the part about Molly Bloom you think of the Victorians as prudish but she wasnt like that no she talked about where he put it and how she sucked it and the stains on the sheet and the man that kissed her at the theatre that was a hundred years ago seems funny were all the same really we don’t like to talk about it wanting to kiss and fuck we don’t want to spoil the fun by being too eager and there was the time we had a party when that Maori Irishman came round the one with the beard that we saw in Godot and he brought all his mates from the pub and a bottle of whisky we all got drunk and the babies sleeping through it that was years ago they’ve all gone now but were still here.
Titirangi, June 16, 2004
About the author:
I have published stories in the Western Leader, Takahe and Glottis, and the online journals Carve, Summerset Review, Mississipi Review, Espresso Fiction, and Fiction Warehouse. Another story is forthcoming in Conversely. I live in Auckland, New Zealand, with my wife, Joan.
© 2009 Word Riot
