Page 124 - a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man

softly parting lips. They pressed upon his brain as upon
his lips as though they were the vehicle of a vague speech;
and between them he felt an unknown and timid pressure,
darker than the swoon of sin, softer than sound or odour.
Chapter 3
The swift December dusk had come tumbling clownishly
after its dull day and, as he stared through the dull square
of the window of the schoolroom, he felt his belly crave for
its food. He hoped there would be stew for dinner, turnips
and carrots and bruised potatoes and fat mutton pieces to
be ladled out in thick peppered flour-fattened sauce. Stuff it
into you, his belly counselled him.
It would be a gloomy secret night. After early nightfall
the yellow lamps would light up, here and there, the squalid
quarter of the brothels. He would follow a devious course up
and down the streets, circling always nearer and nearer in a
tremor of fear and joy, until his feet led him suddenly round
a dark corner. The whores would be just coming out of their
houses making ready for the night, yawning lazily after
their sleep and settling the hairpins in their clusters of hair.
He would pass by them calmly waiting for a sudden move-
ment of his own will or a sudden call to his sin-loving soul
from their soft perfumed flesh. Yet as he prowled in quest of
that call, his senses, stultified only by his desire, would note
keenly all that wounded or shamed them; his eyes, a ring of
porter froth on a clothless table or a photograph of two sol-
diers standing to attention or a gaudy playbill; his ears, the
drawling jargon of greeting:
—Hello, Bertie, any good in your mind?

124 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man