The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce’s Ulysses by Kevin Birmingham Read Free Book Online Page A

didn’t respond, he wrote another letter imploring her to write back quickly. He had
thirteen
letters from her.
    —
    JOYCE WAS EVICTED at the end of August, which forced him to venture out to Oliver Gogarty’s watchtower by the sea. Gogarty was living in one of the many Martello towers that had been built along Ireland’s eastern coastline to repel a Napoleonic invasion. In 1900, the British War Office had decommissioned the towers, removed the howitzers and swivel guns, emptied the gunpowder magazines and abandoned them. Gogarty rented the granite tower on Sandycove, nine miles south of Dublin, for eight pounds a year.
    For Joyce, the shoreside tower was a last resort. For Gogarty, it was a boyhood bohemia by the sand grass. Their conversations swerved from steep philosophy to sacrilegious japes. Gogarty would close his eyes and summon all of his medico-spiritual powers to make sure he got all of Jesus’ platelets and white corpuscles into the wine at consecration, and Joyce matched it with his venereal version of the prayer at the end of the Mass.
    Blessed Michael, the ass
    angel, propel us in the hour of contact; be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the Syph Fiend; May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do Thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, thrust Syphilis down to Hell and with him all the wicked spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of tools. Amen.
    Joyce did not remain in the tower for long. A dispute, which Gogarty said involved his playfully firing a pistol above Joyce’s head, gave Joyce the impetus to do what he had been planning for months: he walked the nine miles back to Dublin in the middle of the night to leave Ireland forever. Joyce waited for Nora in Merrion Square the following evening with the hope that she would give up everything to be with him. He didn’t ask her directly if she would go. He asked, “Is there one who understands me?”
    —
    WHEN NORA BARNACLE LEFT GALWAY, she did it alone in the middle of the night. She didn’t say good-bye to her mother or Mary O’Holleran. When she wanted only brief escapes from home, she would tell her mother and Uncle Tommy she was going to church in the evening with Mary. The two friends would walk to the Abbey Church near Eyre Square, and when Nora said enough prayers not to raise suspicions, she would slip away to meet Willy Mulvagh, the only Protestant on Mary Street, while her friend waited in the pew. Nora and Willy went places where Uncle Tommy wouldn’t find them, and she would return to the church hours later with details and a box of cream sweets.
    But Uncle Tommy couldn’t be fooled forever. When he forbade her to see him, she saw him even more. She wasn’t in love with Willy, but she enjoyed the freedom and thrill of their time alone, and she was happy. But one night as she walked home, Nora heard the tapping stick and “My love, my pearl, my own dear girl.” She didn’t even need to turn around. Uncle Tommy followed her home.
    When he entered the house after her, Uncle Tommy ordered Nora’s mother out of the room and began beating his insolent bitch of a niece with his blackthorn stick. Nora fell down screaming and clutched his knees while her mother listened through the door. The sharp blows fell on her back and ribs as she curled up on the floor and trembled like an angry fist.
    The next day Nora began her secret plans—the inquiries about jobs, the furtive packing, the one-way ticket for Dublin—and by the end of the week she was gone. Nora Barnacle gave up everything she knew to go to a city she had never seen and start a new life where she knew no one. She was nineteen years old, and her life was finally her own.
    So when Joyce asked Nora, “Is there one who understands me?” Nora said yes.
    3.
    THE VORTEX
    Ezra Pound pushed the furniture to the edges of the study in Sussex so that he would have enough room to teach William Butler Yeats how to fence. Pound would lunge and retreat across the room