Waste Land to a Scream: A Gay Science

Novel 005

5. “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.” Nietzsche

Zürich ​die Schweiz, March 15 1914

The un-facts, should we possess them, are far too few to base a judgment on. James looked out over Zürich with the broad lake with neat rows of buildings, all alike new with different colored roofs. There was a long bridge with pylons spanning the waterway. There were trolleys clicking back and forth along it to emphasize that this was a business talent and between the hours of 0800 and 1800 all was in punctilious order.

Dominus vobiscum in the name of Marx, Smith, and Marshal.

Lake Zürich lapped up between the southern end of the city that he did know was that he did not have any place to sleep that night and that was the first order of his business. He had wandered away from the train station to give himself a view of the prison where he would be interred for the rest of the war. The key was that he was an Irish person with an English passport and he left Trieste on his solemn word of honor that would do nothing to aid the Entente powers. Not that this would occur to him in any event because wars were for the powerful to get unpowerful to fight as if a cock fight with far more powerful weapons.

This did not appeal to him in the least.

So he went forth to the tram and went a bit deeper into the town so he could find a somewhat cheaper version. After all, once your eyes were closed, any room would do so long as it did not smell of that odor dauber. He stopped and waited for the next tram which did not take very long at all because everything ran here on Swiss time: the machinations of the clock were embedded in the very essence of time.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

It was an entirely different sense of the way things ran from the Irish: where there was simply no, and later, there was an agreement between the gentleman or blokes that ran the establishment. Time was unhinged from the clock. Zürich was not anything like the grandeur that is Rome. Even in a distant voice from the mountains that enclosed the city, if it could be called a city at all. But perhaps that is why they had money, to primp up their pretensions.

And then the Tramway stopped at his exact place and he boarded and then immediately realized that he was out of place: everyone here was pristine and with their jackets crisply folded while he was disheveled from top to bottom. Even his hat was crumbled and beriven. If he had been a citizen of the United Kingdom would have been a shame, but since he was only adopted this did not occur to him at all.

You looked at the faces with surgical precision because he was a writer and the first trick that any writer learns is to detail the basis and stances to get a sense of the person who lied beneath. Way limit at an old man and saw a covering of his right hand, which said to him that the old man was retired and could no longer bench the money which he clearly was in the business of doing: a banker or a lender as the case may be.

He did this with the other people who were seated in the seats. The one thing they had in common was a pristine premise: he deduced that this was the widening of the clock that most people had if they were Helvetica. Then he looked out to see a small hotel which could probably afford to go it would be tight because had left almost all of his longings behind him. He should have listened to Pound who had warned him to leave several months ago.

But that was not the way that Joyce’s mind worked: he was concerned with the people and not with the time on the clock.

And finally, he saw just what was looking for: a hotel that was dilapidated but not ruined beyond any possible redemption. The hoarse Dublin United Tramway Company’s timekeeper had not been here.

He stepped out and onto the street grabbed his luggage and began to read the building as he read faces: it was like a face glowering in the early darkness. It was not unfriendly but it was certainly not friendly. In no point of view would be called anything other than a companion with its Grossbooted stance firmly in the street.

But then he went in and a surprise glistened to his eyes: the man behind the desk was not fastidious but rather slovenly. The man behind the desk looked at him and said in perfect British English: “You have come an awfully long way to get to a place where they speak English.” He brushed away comments from James Joyce. “A great many people have come through those rotating doors before you and with the same request: ‘No questions asked.’ and that is what we get here the silence that is only one step closer than the grave.”

It was at this moment that the surprises for James Joyce were only beginning.