--To cheer a fellow up, Martin Cunningham said. It's pure goodheartedness:
damn the thing else.

Mr Bloom admired the caretaker's prosperous bulk. All want to be on
good terms with him. Decent fellow, John O'Connell, real good sort. Keys:
like Keyes's ad: no fear of anyone getting out. No passout checks. HABEAS
CORPUS. I must see about that ad after the funeral. Did I write
Ballsbridge on the envelope I took to cover when she disturbed me writing
to Martha? Hope it's not chucked in the dead letter office. Be the better
of a shave. Grey sprouting beard. That's the first sign when the hairs
come out grey. And temper getting cross. Silver threads among the grey.
Fancy being his wife. Wonder he had the gumption to propose to any girl.
Come out and live in the graveyard. Dangle that before her. It might
thrill her first. Courting death ... Shades of night hovering here with
all the dead stretched about. The shadows of the tombs when churchyards
yawn and Daniel O'Connell must be a descendant I suppose who is this used
to say he was a queer breedy man great catholic all the same like a big
giant in the dark. Will o' the wisp. Gas of graves. Want to keep her mind
off it to conceive at all. Women especially are so touchy. Tell her a
ghost story in bed to make her sleep. Have you ever seen a ghost? Well, I
have. It was a pitchdark night. The clock was on the stroke of twelve.
Still they'd kiss all right if properly keyed up. Whores in Turkish
graveyards. Learn anything if taken young. You might pick up a young
widow here. Men like that. Love among the tombstones. Romeo. Spice of
pleasure. In the midst of death we are in life. Both ends meet.
Tantalising for the poor dead. Smell of grilled beefsteaks to the
starving. Gnawing their vitals. Desire to grig people. Molly wanting to
do it at the window. Eight children he has anyway.

He has seen a fair share go under in his time, lying around him field
after field. Holy fields. More room if they buried them standing. Sitting
or kneeling you couldn't. Standing? His head might come up some day above
ground in a landslip with his hand pointing. All honeycombed the ground
must be: oblong cells. And very neat he keeps it too: trim grass and
edgings. His garden Major Gamble calls Mount Jerome. Well, so it is.
Ought to be flowers of sleep. Chinese cemeteries with giant poppies
growing produce the best opium Mastiansky told me. The Botanic Gardens
are just over there. It's the blood sinking in the earth gives new life.
Same idea those jews they said killed the christian boy. Every man
his price. Well preserved fat corpse, gentleman, epicure, invaluable
for fruit garden. A bargain. By carcass of William Wilkinson, auditor
and accountant, lately deceased, three pounds thirteen and six.
With thanks.

I daresay the soil would be quite fat with corpsemanure, bones, flesh,
nails. Charnelhouses. Dreadful. Turning green and pink decomposing. Rot
quick in damp earth. The lean old ones tougher. Then a kind of a tallowy
kind of a cheesy. Then begin to get black, black treacle oozing out of
them. Then dried up. Deathmoths. Of course the cells or whatever they are
go on living. Changing about. Live for ever practically. Nothing to feed
on feed on themselves.

But they must breed a devil of a lot of maggots. Soil must be simply
swirling with them. Your head it simply swurls. Those pretty little
seaside gurls. He looks cheerful enough over it. Gives him a sense of
power seeing all the others go under first. Wonder how he looks at life.
Cracking his jokes too: warms the cockles of his heart. The one about the
bulletin. Spurgeon went to heaven 4 a.m. this morning. 11 p.m.
(closing time). Not arrived yet. Peter. The dead themselves the men
anyhow would like to hear an odd joke or the women to know what's in
fashion. A juicy pear or ladies' punch, hot, strong and sweet. Keep out
the damp. You must laugh sometimes so better do it that way. Gravediggers
in HAMLET. Shows the profound knowledge of the human heart. Daren't joke
about the dead for two years at least. DE MORTUIS NIL NISI PRIUS. Go out
of mourning first. Hard to imagine his funeral. Seems a sort of a joke.
Read your own obituary notice they say you live longer. Gives you second
wind. New lease of life.

--How many have-you for tomorrow? the caretaker asked.

--Two, Corny Kelleher said. Half ten and eleven.

The caretaker put the papers in his pocket. The barrow had ceased to
trundle. The mourners split and moved to each side of the hole, stepping
with care round the graves. The gravediggers bore the coffin and set its
nose on the brink, looping the bands round it.

Burying him. We come to bury Caesar. His ides of March or June.
He doesn't know who is here nor care.
Now who is that lankylooking galoot over there in the macintosh?
Now who is he I'd like to know? Now I'd give a trifle to know who he is.
Always someone turns up you never dreamt of. A fellow could live on his
lonesome all his life. Yes, he could. Still he'd have to get someone to
sod him after he died though he could dig his own grave. We all do. Only
man buries. No, ants too. First thing strikes anybody. Bury the dead. Say
Robinson Crusoe was true to life. Well then Friday buried him. Every
Friday buries a Thursday if you come to look at it.


O, POOR ROBINSON CRUSOE!
HOW COULD YOU POSSIBLY DO SO?


Poor Dignam! His last lie on the earth in his box. When you think of
them all it does seem a waste of wood. All gnawed through. They could
invent a handsome bier with a kind of panel sliding, let it down that way.
Ay but they might object to be buried out of another fellow's. They're so
particular. Lay me in my native earth. Bit of clay from the holy land.
Only a mother and deadborn child ever buried in the one coffin. I see what
it means. I see. To protect him as long as possible even in the earth. The


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