Trieste
OCTOBER 1905
STANNIE AGREED TO COME AT LAST AND, THROUGH JIM, HAS secured a job at the Berlitz, but when he arrives, he finds us undone. He came yesterday, tired and a little silent after his long journey. At the train sation, the first thing Jim says is, “Do you have any money?” He can be an awful thoughtless yoke when he wants to be. I pucked him in the side but, of course, he paid no mind. I only kept my tongue because I didn’t want a public row.
“You’re so very welcome, Stanislaus,” I said and gave him an awkward hug. He dipped his head into the pram to admire Georgie.
“A bonny fellow, Nora,” he said, smiling up at me with a brotherly pride.
We took Stannie directly to the Caffè Pirona, but still he didn’t talk much and Jim ended up with a puss on him feeling, no doubt, that his brother should be lauding him for setting up this new life for us and for bringing Stannie over to share it. To me, his brother seemed wary. He looked from one to the other of us when we spoke Italian, as if we’d lost our minds. Jim says the only way for me to learn the language is to speak it, so I try very hard to do just that. But I suppose it’s rude in front of Stanislaus who doesn’t yet have a syllable.
They’re out now, gone to the Berlitz already to introduce Stannie to Artifoni and to get his teaching schedule. He’ll earn almost as much as Jim, which both pleases and displeases the same fella.
“Why should a single chap make as much as a married man with a child?” Jim complained to me. But, of course, he means for Stannie to hand over most of what he earns “for the good of the family.” Us.
Signora Canarutto cleared out a small parlor that she doesn’t use for Stannie to have as a bedroom and he will be comfortable, if cramped, in there. At least he’ll have a bit of privacy, which is more than I have. Sometimes I crave a little time alone to just let my thoughts scatter.
I sit in my chair and nurse Georgie, watching the lovely slide of milk from his mouth when he stops suckling a moment to smile up at me. He fixes his blue eyes on mine and I sing to him, “Is it the laughing eye, Eileen aroon?” Georgie latches on, then lets go my nipple and smiles again; he lifts his darling head toward me as if asking for more songs. I sing a verse and tickle his fat belly and he squeals in delight, his funny little kitten noise.
“How your mamma loves you, wee Georgie. How your papà does too, your lovely babbo. And now Uncle Stannie’s come to join us. Isn’t it marvelous altogether?”
Things, of course, are not as marvelous as all that, but I daren’t let the baby know. Jim and I are taking lumps out of each other. Every time he turns up, after going missing at night, I bawl and screech at him like a banshee. He fights back telling me of his artistic temperament, while flopping around drunk, drooling over the baby, and waking him out of good sleeps that give me rest.
“Artistic temperament, my rear end,” is my usual roar back.
I sometimes wonder where’s the Jim gone who accosted me on Nassau Street in Dublin, June more than twelve months ago. He was a confident, carefree fellow to be sure, but the man I’m with now is cranky and careworn. Of course he has more worries and concerns—we both have—but it’s as if we left our best selves beyond in Ireland. We came here and slowly lost our spirit.
Jim had no idea, I suppose, how little he would relish the teaching. But he doesn’t think of my anxieties or irritations. It’s easier for him to ignore that I scrape the muck and pee off the undergarments of strange Austrians while trying to care for Georgie since he’s never home to see it. I thought that Stannie’s arrival would lighten Jim, but he had a face like thunder this morning when they left and there was no need for it. His poor brother may already be regretting his move to Trieste.
Some days, to rile Jim, I sit and write letters home to my mother. As I fashion the words, I say them aloud.
“Dear Mammy, I have no life here at all, I miss Galway. I would like my son to be an Irishman. Please may he and I come and live with you. We will have him baptized in Saint Augustine’s and you can stand for him, Mammy, and Uncle Michael too . . .”
Then I seal the pages in envelopes, neatly addressed to Mammy’s house in Bowling Green, and missing only a stamp. I prop them between the ashtray and the teapot and leave them there. But I never post them. Jim pretends to ignore the letters, but I see his eyes linger on them from time to time.
STANNIE VERY KINDLY BROUGHT ME A BOX OF INDIAN TEA—THE Russian stuff you get here is a rare kind of pisswater. As I make tea, Granny Healy floats across my vision like a revenant. She was particular about tea-making, as she was about most things. I wonder if she hadn’t died when I was so young, and I hadn’t gone to work in the convent, and if I hadn’t ended up sparring with Uncle Tommy, would I have stayed in Galway and not run away to Dublin and then to here? Ah, I suppose there’s no profit in that style of thinking whatsoever.
I let the tea draw then carry Georgie back to the room and prop him between pillows; I dash back to the kitchen to fetch my tray. The baby babbles to himself and I sit at the table by the window and dunk biscotti and enjoy the soggy sugariness on my tongue; I sip and savor the gunpowder heat of my drink. Georgie dozes and, though there’s laundry to be seen to, I climb onto the bed beside him and close my eyes. A rapping sound wakens me and I’m surprised to find the room dark. I go, groggy, to open the door and find Stanislaus there.
“Where’s Jim?” I ask, peering past him, a nip of irritation biting me.
“I don’t know, Nora, is the God’s honest truth.”
I tut. “Didn’t you both leave here together, Stanislaus?”
“We did, but Jim is as greasy as lard.”
“Well, that’s true.” I gesture. “Come in, Stannie.” We sit opposite each other. “Tell me.”
“We were in a caffè and I told him it was time to go home. He spied a friend through the window, he said, and wanted to step outside to talk to him. When I looked out the caffè door, he was gone.”
“Jim was moldy drunk, I suppose.”
“He had a drop taken, all right.”
“The dirty blackguard; he promised me this wouldn’t go on. I thought it would be different with you here.”
“Was I brought to Trieste to be his keeper?” The bitterness of this hovers in the air between us.
“Ah, Stannie,” I say, after a moment, but we both know there’s truth in what he said.
“It’s all right, Nora.” He pushes his hand through his hair and sighs. Stannie is stocky and muscular, smaller than Jim, and altogether more somber, but there’s a steadiness to him that comforts me. He doesn’t take a drink and, though he’s three years Jim’s junior, he has more of the man about him somehow. I watch his hand ruffle his hair and reach out to grab it.
“What’s this?” I say; his knuckles are purple and bloodied.
He pulls away. “It’s nothing.”
“Don’t, Stanislaus. It’s bad enough that Jim lies to me, I won’t take it from you, too.” He looks at me, steady as a statue. “Now, tell me what really happened.”
“When I went out of the caffè after him, I spotted him streeling off down the street in the distance and followed him, all through the Old Town.” He glances at me. “I knew Jim was trying to give me the slip and I was annoyed. I’m not here a wet day and already he wants to be rid of me.”
“That’s not it at all. He gets maudlin when he’s drunk—he probably wanted to sing songs with the sailors in one of the harbor tavernas.”
Stannie snorts. “Are you making excuses for him, Nora?”
I sit on the bed. “I’m not. I suppose I just know the pattern and I’m weary of it.”
“Anyway, he slithered down a laneway and I almost lost him, but he was, ah, he was, relieving himself so . . .”
“We all piss, Stannie, don’t be saving my presence.”
He grimaces. “I called out to Jim and he told me to go home.
“‘Home?’ I said to him. ‘What home have I now after coming here to help you?’ Jim screamed, ‘You’re my brother. It’s only right that you lend a hand. Didn’t I get you a job? A place to live?’ He continued to piss and then he shouted ‘Pup!’ at me. ‘Ungrateful pup!’ I got angry, Nora. I went up to him and told him he was just like our father, the seed and breed of him, and that he’d end up like him, too, old and sad and a drunken nuisance. Jim grabbed my collar and yanked me sideways.” Stannie stops and looks straight at me. “I confess, Nora, that I punched him in the jaw.”
“Oh, Stannie.” Though Jim’s antics when he drinks are a plague to me, my stomach contracts in pity for him—his poor jaw! But I feel for Stanislaus, too—he surely didn’t know this is what lay ahead of him when he left his home.
“It gets worse, though, Nora. He reeled away and fell into the stream he’d left on the cobbles. But I just turned and walked off. I’d had my fill of him by then.” He looks at me, wary. “My thoughts were this: I picked him up once too often back in Dublin; I didn’t come here for that.”
I hold out my hand and take his. “I’m sorry, Stanislaus.” I close my eyes and shake my head. “I suppose he never told you in his letters that he’s out every night of the week, slugging back absinthe like it’s water.”
“He shouldn’t be spending his money like that. Your money.” He pets my hand tenderly.
“Sure, don’t I know it? My heart is in pieces with him. I have the care of Georgie and this place. And the laundry I take in, besides.” Stannie pulls his hand away and pockets it. “I’m sure Jim has told you that the teaching makes him wretched.”
“It’s a living, isn’t it?” he says.
“It is. Until one of the books gets published.”
Stannie snorts. “Then you’ll be wealthy, I suppose?” His tone is scornful.
“Maybe.”
“I’ll give Jim one thing—he has never, ever had a lack of self-belief. It’s a scarce and profitable thing for an Irishman.”
I nod. “Jim believes himself a true artist and, because of that, he believes teaching is well below him.”
“He has a family now. A fine writer he may be, but you need to eat. It’s a rare author who earns money, though, Nora, you must realize that.”
“If that’s so, Jim has convinced himself he’s one of those rare men.” I get up. “I’ll make us some tea, Stannie.”
“Don’t go to any bother on my account, Nora.”
“What bother is it to make my brother-in-law a sup of tea, when he’s been so kind as to bring me the good stuff? Watch Georgie there a minute.”
The kitchen is empty and, while I wait for the water to boil, I go and quietly open the door to Stannie’s room, as if it might tell me more about him. He has few possessions—a bundle of books by the bed and a clean shirt hung on a hook, a clothes brush and one for his hair; the bed is neat as a monk’s. A room that reflects him well, Stannie is not a man for chaos. I close the door, make the tea, and return to him.
“Now, here we are.” I pour our tea and take some biscotti from the tin and put them on a plate.
“It’s not easy being related to someone like Jim. He’s cleverer than us all and he knows it. He can outtalk anyone and do the worst of everything, but still he comes out all right.” Stannie sighs. “I get no credit for anything.”
“I appreciate you, Stannie. You’ll be a great comfort to me, especially if he continues his gallivanting.”
He nods. “Are you happy here, Nora?”
“If Jim would stop his trick-acting, things would be easier, I suppose.”
We both hear a scuffle and then the screech of “Viva San Giusto! Viva. Viva.”
“Here he comes,” Stannie says, “ready for his audience.”
Jim bursts through the door; I can see a purple blossoming on his jaw where Stannie hit him. “John Stanislaus Joyce, where in the name of Jaysus did you skite off to?” He flaps a hand in our direction, then holds it aloft. “Curtain rises. A homely scene. Two Irish emigrants take tea in an Austrian . . .” he looks around “. . . hovel.”
“Shut up, Jim, you’ll wake Georgie.”
He waddles over to where the baby lies asleep on the bed. “Is he not a fine, long, fat boy, Stannie? A rare specimen of Erin, being a son of Connacht and Leinster, too?” Jim belches loudly and giggles; he loses his footing for a moment, stumbles, and holds on to the footboard.
Stannie pushes back his chair and rises. “Good night, Nora.”
“Ah, stay and finish your tea,” I say.
“Go, go, John Stanislaus, my boy. Yes, go now to your virtuous bed.”
Stannie stands for a moment and stares at Jim, looking as if he has a century’s worth of words he would like to spill, a hundred years of grievances, but he says naught. He nods to me and takes his leave.
“You’re a thundering disgrace, James Joyce,” I say. Pushing past him, I climb under the covers and pull them to my chin. He stands dabbing at his jaw with one finger, his sottish sway making my bile burn. “I’m supposed to feel sorry for you, I suppose, because your face is sore? May it be a lesson to you.” I turn to the wall. I feel Jim flop onto the bed beside Georgie; he knows better than to reach for me.