The Dublin Diary of Stanislaus Joyce

urn:iso:std:iso:639:ed-3:eng

75

text excerpt

There is sickness in the house. I am the sick one. I am in bed in my own room alone in the evening. Eileen, my white-faced, thoughtless sister is playing the 'Rakes of Mallow' on the piano downstairs. I loathe the air. It is a mechanical repetition of the same two or three notes in the same succession, with a turn at the end of each phrase in it to the beginning, like the turn of a handle. She is playing it quickly and badly, stumbling every ten or fifteen seconds, stopping and beginning again. A long string of faces pass slantwise up before my eyes, so quickly that I can hardly distinguish them, but they are grotesque, unhuman, like the faces you see in the hucksters' windows painted in cheap yellow paint on cardboard and they are hitched one under the other. I cannot prevent myself seeing them as they fly up noiselessly with interminable length, before my eyes. My palate is quite hard and stiff; everything I touch is stiff and rough. My head is swimming. 'Oh for the Rakes of Mal-low town. Oh for the- O for the Rakes of Mallow town. Oh for the-' Oh for the Rakes of Mal-of Mallow town, the Rakes of Mal-low tow-own.' Damn them, does no one hear me whistling? They won't answer me. I can't whistle whatever-. I wish to Christ someone would stop her - the imbecile! This is intolerable!

excerpt from 'The Dublin Diary of Stanislaus Joyce' pp. 75 (242 words)

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