Trieste
JANUARY AND FEBRUARY 1908
JIM’S SISTER POPPIE WRITES FROM DUBLIN. THEIR FATHER IS upset, despite the money both boys sent him for Christmas, affording him and the family a nice feed of turkey, ham, goose, bacon, plum pudding, and punch—so much more than we had. We couldn’t even have New Year’s Eve lentils, which, according to tradition here, bring wealth and luck for the year ahead. Two things we could certainly do with.
Today I go to our Jacob’s biscuit tin—our money box—and it’s empty, though I left enough there to pay the bootmaker, for I can’t pass his shop without him throwing his fist in the air, and I want to pay him now before he comes out and thumps me. Jim is sleeping off his wine, so I take money from his pocket and leave him in his sore-headed heap.
When I get back, there’s uproar. Jim and Stannie are chest to chest, hands to each other’s shoulders as if they mean to tear the flesh from each other. Lucia sits shivering in her pram, snotty and red. Georgie’s hands are over his ears and he’s telling everyone to shut up.
“What on God’s earth is going on?” I ask.
Stannie doesn’t move his eyes from Jim. “This blackguard,” he says, “is accusing me of taking money from his coat pocket, when the fish in the sea know that he pissed every last centesimo down some alley last night.”
“Money that I need,” Jim roars.
“As if we don’t all need it.” I turn to Stanislaus. “Was it your money, Stannie?” I ask, guilt nipping at me. The boys employ a messy back and over system of credit, exchange, and borrowing, that I don’t always understand.
“It is, Nora.”
I look at them, ready to bite the throats out of each other. “I took it,” I say, a pop of fear in my throat.
Their arms drop and they swivel like puppets toward me. “You?” Jim says.
I proud my chest, for hadn’t Jim taken my money from the tin? “That bootmaker was going to run across the piazza and wallop me one of these days and Giorgio’s boots need patching. I had to pay him.”
“The bloody cobbler.” Stannie’s face is creased with annoyance and he groans. “Nora, I wish you’d waited, at least until Friday. Jim’s owed sixty crowns then and we would’ve been right as raindrops.”
“Well, excuse me, Stannie, but most of the time I don’t know who owns what coins or who owes who, or whose to be paid what, or when it’s likely to happen. I’m the last to know any bloody thing!”
Lucia hiccups and begins to wail and Georgie goes to her and pats her head, his small hand moving down her back in brotherly comfort.
Jim, calm now, grabs his jacket and fixes his tie before the small square of mirror. “It can’t be helped.”
“You’re going out? I haven’t a penny for food.”
Jim turns to look at us all, his voice cold. “Nora, you might have considered that before raiding my pockets. You will have to see if the landlady can provide something today for you and the children. Stannie, you’re on your own.”
I flump into a chair, gravely disappointed that at this moment Jim chooses to walk out the door and leaves me to beg from the woman we pay our rent to. I muster my lowest, sternest voice.
“It’s time, I think, for me to write to my mother and tell her I’m living with a man who can’t give us so much as a crust.”
“Do that, if you wish,” he says lightly. “I’m sure old Ma Barnacle would love to hear what’s become of you. Meanwhile, I will go and get credit somewhere. For all of us.”
I jump up, startling Lucia into a round of bawls. “Go! Go! I know the only place that will give you credit, the only kind you want. Go now and get drunk. That’s all you’re good for. Your old friend Vincent Cosgrave told me you were mad. He wondered what was I doing with you at all when I could have a nice young man who’d marry me and see me right.” I begin to snatch up the morning’s dishes and dash the crumbs off them onto the tablecloth. I toss the dishes onto the bed and shake the tablecloth out the window in big, violent waves. “Tomorrow I’m taking the children to the priest to be baptized. Faith, I tell you, those children will not grow up to be like you, James Joyce. They’ll be good citizens. Proper people. They won’t let other people starve!”