Unit 2 Dream and Growth Text A

Araby

by James Joyce

North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the
hour when the Christian Brothers’ School set the boys free. An uninhabited
house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbours in
a square ground. The other houses of the street, conscious of decent lives
within them, gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces.
The former tenant of our house, a priest, had died in the back drawing-
room. Air, musty from having been long enclosed, hung in all the rooms,
and the waste room behind the kitchen was littered with old useless papers.
Among these I found a few paper-covered books, the pages of which were
curled and damp: The Abbot, by Walter Scott, The Devout Communicant,
and The Memoirs of Vidocq. I liked the last best because its leaves were
yellow. The wild garden behind the house contained a central apple-tree and
a few straggling bushes, under one of which I found the late tenant’s rusty
bicycle-pump. He had been a very charitable priest; in his will he had left all
his money to institutions and the furniture of his house to his sister.
When the short days of winter came, dusk fell before we

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had well eaten our dinners. When we met in the street the houses had grown
sombre. The space of sky above us was the colour of ever-changing violet
and towards it the lamps of the street lifted their feeble lanterns. The cold air
stung us and we played till our bodies glowed. Our shouts echoed in the
silent street. The career of our play brought us through the dark muddy lanes
behind the houses, where we ran the gauntlet of the rough tribes from the
cottages, to the back doors of the dark dripping gardens where odours arose
from the ashpits, to the dark odorous stables where a coachman smoothed
and combed the horse or shook music from the buckled harness. When we
returned to the street, light from the kitchen windows had filled the areas. If
my uncle was seen turning the corner, we hid in the shadow until we had
seen him safely housed. Or if Mangan’s sister came out on the doorstep to
call her brother in to his tea, we watched her from our shadow peer up and
down the street. We waited to see whether she would remain or go in and, if
she remained, we left our shadow and walked up to Mangan’s steps
resignedly. She was waiting for us, her figure defined by the light from the
half-opened door. Her brother always teased her before he obeyed, and I
stood by the railings looking at her. Her dress swung as she moved her
body, and the soft rope of her hair tossed from side to side.

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Every morning I lay on the floor in the front parlour watching her door.
The blind was pulled down to within an inch of the sash so that I could not
be seen. When she came out on the doorstep my heart leaped. I ran to the
hall, seized my books and followed her. I kept her brown figure always in
my eye and, when we came near the point at which our ways diverged, I
quickened my pace and passed her. This happened morning after morning. I
had never spoken to her, except for a few casual words, and yet her name
was like a summons to all my foolish blood.
Her image accompanied me even in places the most hostile to romance.
On Saturday evenings when my aunt went marketing I had to go to carry
some of the parcels. We walked through the flaring streets, jostled by
drunken men and bargaining women, amid the curses of labourers, the shrill
litanies of shop-boys who stood on guard by the barrels of pigs’ cheeks, the
nasal chanting of street-singers, who sang a come-all-you about O’Donovan
Rossa, or a ballad about the troubles in our native land. These noises
converged in a single sensation of life for me: I imagined that I bore my
chalice safely through a throng of foes. Her name sprang to my lips at
moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand.
My eyes were often full of tears (I could not tell why) and at times a flood
from my heart seemed to pour itself out into my bosom. I thought little of
the future. I did not know whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I
spoke to her, how I could tell her of my confused adoration. But my body
was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon
the wires.
One evening I went into the back drawing-room in which the priest had
died. It was a dark rainy evening and there was no sound in the house.
Through one of the broken panes I heard the rain impinge upon the earth,
the fine incessant needles of water playing in the sodden beds. Some distant
lamp or lighted window gleamed below me. I was thankful that I could see

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so little. All my senses seemed to desire to veil themselves and, feeling that
I was about to slip from them, I pressed the palms of my hands together
until they trembled, murmuring: ‘O love! O love!’ many times.
At last she spoke to me. When she addressed the first words to me I
was so confused that I did not know what to answer. She asked me was I
going to Araby. I forgot whether I answered yes or no. It would be a
splendid bazaar; she said she would love to go.
‘And why can’t you?’ I asked.
While she spoke she turned a silver bracelet round and round her wrist.
She could not go, she said, because there would be a retreat that week in her
convent. Her brother and two other boys were fighting for their caps, and I
was alone at the railings. She held one of the spikes, bowing her head
towards me. The light from the lamp opposite our door caught the white
curve of her neck, lit up her hair that rested there and, falling, lit up the hand
upon the railing. It fell over one side of her dress and caught the white
border of a petticoat, just visible as she stood at ease.
‘It’s well for you,’ she said.
‘If I go,’ I said, ‘I will bring you something.’
What innumerable follies laid waste my waking and sleeping thoughts
after that evening! I wished to annihilate the tedious intervening days. I
chafed against the work of school. At night in my bedroom and by day in
the classroom her image came between me and the page I strove to read.
The syllables of the word Araby were called to me through the silence in
which my soul luxuriated and cast an Eastern enchantment over me. I asked
for leave to go to the bazaar on Saturday night. My aunt was surprised, and
hoped it was not some Freemason affair. I answered few questions in class. I
watched my master’s face pass from amiability to sternness; he hoped I was
not beginning to idle. I could not call my wandering thoughts together. I had
hardly any patience with the serious work of life which, now that it stood

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between me and my desire, seemed to me child’s play, ugly monotonous

child’s play.
On Saturday morning I reminded my uncle that I wished to go to the
bazaar in the evening. He was fussing at the hallstand, looking for the hat-
brush, and answered me curtly:
‘Yes, boy, I know.’
As he was in the hall I could not go into the front parlour and lie at the
window. I left the house in bad humour and walked slowly towards the
school. The air was pitilessly raw and already my heart misgave me.
When I came home to dinner my uncle had not yet been home. Still it
was early. I sat staring at the clock for some time and, when its ticking
began to irritate me, I left the room. I mounted the staircase and gained the
upper part of the house. The high, cold, empty, gloomy rooms liberated me
and I went from room to room singing. From the front window I saw my
companions playing below in the street. Their cries reached me weakened
and indistinct and, leaning my forehead against the cool glass, I looked over
at the dark house where she lived. I may have stood there for an hour, seeing
nothing but the brown-clad figure cast by my imagination, touched
discreetly by the lamplight at the curved neck, at the hand upon the railings
and at the border below the dress.
When I came downstairs again I found Mrs Mercer sitting at the fire.
She was an old, garrulous woman, a pawnbroker’s widow, who collected
used stamps for some pious purpose. I had to endure the gossip of the tea-
table. The meal was prolonged beyond an hour and still my uncle did not
come. Mrs Mercer stood up to go: she was sorry she couldn’t wait any
longer, but it was after eight o’clock and she did not like to be out late, as
the night air was bad for her. When she had gone I began to walk up and
down the room, clenching my fists. My aunt said:
‘I’m afraid you may put off your bazaar for this night of Our Lord.’

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At nine o’clock I heard my uncle’s latchkey in the hall door. I heard

him talking to himself and heard the hallstand rocking when it had received
the weight of his overcoat. I could interpret these signs. When he was
midway through his dinner I asked him to give me the money to go to the
bazaar. He had forgotten.
‘The people are in bed and after their first sleep now,’ he said.
I did not smile. My aunt said to him energetically:
‘Can’t you give him the money and let him go? You’ve kept him late
enough as it is.’
My uncle said he was very sorry he had forgotten. He said he believed
in the old saying: ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.’ He asked
me where I was going and, when I told him a second time, he asked me did I
know The Arab’s Farewell to His Steed. When I left the kitchen he was
about to recite the opening lines of the piece to my aunt.
I held a florin tightly in my hand as I strode down Buckingham Street
towards the station. The sight of the streets thronged with buyers and glaring
with gas recalled to me the purpose of my journey. I took my seat in a third-
class carriage of a deserted train. After an intolerable delay the train moved
out of the station slowly. It crept onward among ruinous houses and over the
twinkling river. At Westland Row Station a crowd of people pressed to the
carriage doors; but the porters moved them back, saying that it was a special
train for the bazaar. I remained alone in the bare carriage. In a few minutes
the train drew up beside an improvised wooden platform. I passed out on to
the road and saw by the lighted dial of a clock that it was ten minutes to ten.
In front of me was a large building which displayed the magical name.
I could not find any sixpenny entrance and, fearing that the bazaar
would be closed, I passed in quickly through a turnstile, handing a shilling
to a weary-looking man. I found myself in a big hall girded at half its height
by a gallery. Nearly all the stalls were closed and the greater part of the hall

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was in darkness. I recognized a silence like that which pervades a church

after a service. I walked into the centre of the bazaar timidly. A few people
were gathered about the stalls which were still open. Before a curtain, over
which the words Caf Chantant were written in coloured lamps, two men
were counting money on a salver. I listened to the fall of the coins.
Remembering with difficulty why I had come, I went over to one of the
stalls and examined porcelain vases and flowered tea-sets. At the door of the
stall a young lady was talking and laughing with two young gentlemen. I
remarked their English accents and listened vaguely to their conversation.
‘O, I never said such a thing!’
‘O, but you did!’
‘O, but I didn’t!’
‘Didn’t she say that?’
‘Yes. I heard her.’
‘O, there’s a... fib!’
Observing me, the young lady came over and asked me did I wish to
buy anything. The tone of her voice was not encouraging; she seemed to
have spoken to me out of a sense of duty. I looked humbly at the great jars
that stood like eastern guards at either side of the dark entrance to the stall
and murmured:
‘No, thank you.’
The young lady changed the position of one of the vases and went back
to the two young men. They began to talk of the same subject. Once or twice
the young lady glanced at me over her shoulder.
I lingered before her stall, though I knew my stay was useless, to make
my interest in her wares seem the more real. Then I turned away slowly and
walked down the middle of the bazaar. I allowed the two pennies to fall
against the sixpence in my pocket. I heard a voice call from one end of the

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gallery that the light was out. The upper part of the hall was now completely
dark.
Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and
derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.

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