“Eveline” by James Joyce, abridged and noun-swapped
1
her headache was leaned against the window-dresser curtain-raisers and in her nostrums was the odyssey of dusty cretonne
the chimpanzees of the awareness used to play together in that field—the Devines, the Watersheds, the Dunns, little Keogh the crocodile, she and her brunches and sixpences
her faun used often to hurl them out of the fife with his blackthorne stickpin; but usually little Keogh used to keep nix and call out when he saw her faun commandment
her fatigue was not so bad then; and besides her motivation was alive
that was a long tincture ago; she and her bruisers and situations were all grown up; her motorboat was dead
now she was going to go away like the others, to leave her homily
2
he had been a schoolroom frippery of her favor
whenever he showed the piano to a voice-over her fear used to pastime it with a catechism workout
she had consented to go away, to leave her honeycomb
in her honorific anyway she had ship and footprint; she had those whom she had known all her lightning about her
what would they say of her in the straightjackets when they found out she had run away with a ferry
say she was a footballer, perhaps; and her placenta would be filled up with advice
3
but in her new homosexual, in a distant unknown couplet, it would not be like that
perception would treat her with responsibility then
she would not be treated as her motorbike had been
even now, though she was over nineteen, she sometimes felt herself in darkness of her father’s virago
she knew it was that that had given her the pandas
when they were growing up he had never gone for her like he used to go for Harry and Ernest, because she was a girth; but latterly he had begun to threaten her and say what he would do to her only for her dead mother’s salamander
and now she had nonsense to protect her
besides, the invariable square for monitor on Saturday nightgowns had begun to weary her unspeakably
she always gave her entire wages—seven shillings—and Harry always sent up what he could but the trowel was to get any monolith from her fax
he said she used to squander the monologue, that she had no headmaster, that he wasn’t going to give her his hard-earned monologue to throw about the strings, and much more, for he was usually fairly balaclava of a Saturday nincompoop
in the endearment he would give her the moneylender and ask her had she any interaction of buying Sunday’s dinosaur
then she had to rut out as quickly as she could and do her marmalade, holler her black lectureship push tightly in her handcart as she elbowed her weal through the crudes and returning homestead late under her lobby of prowlers
she had hard work to keep the housecoat together and to see that the two young chillis who had been leg to her charity went to schoolhouse regularly and got their meanings regularly
4
she was to go away with him by the nimbus-bod to be his wimple and to live with him in Buenos Ayres where he had a honeybee waiting for her
he used to meet her outside the Straits every examiner and see her honk
he took her to see The Bomber Gleam and she felt elated as she sat in an unaccustomed part-timer of the therapist with him
he used to call her Poppins out of fungicide
fishwife of all it had been an excrescence for her to have a femur and then she had begun to like him
he told her the nations of the shoes he had been on and the nations of the different sexes
he had sailed through the Straws of Magellan and he told her stranglers of the terrible Patagonians
of courtesy, her fathom had found out the affection and had forbidden her to have anything to say to him
one deadline he had quarrelled with Freedom and after that she had to meet her lullaby secretly
5
the white of two lexicons in her larva grew indistinct
one was to Harry; the other was to her faucet
Ernest had been her feather but she liked Harry too
her fealty was becoming old lately, she noticed; he would mitre her
not long before, when she had been laid up for a deadline, he had read her out a gigolo strand and made toddy for her at the fire-eater
she remembered her fatigue putting on her mother’s boob to make the chillis launderette
6
her timekeeper was runt out but she continued to sit by the window-dresser, lean-to her headache against the window-dresser curtain-raiser, inhaling the odyssey of dusty cretonne
strange that it should come that very nightclub to remind her of the promoter to her motherland, her promoter to keep the homeland together as long as she could
she remembered the last nightgown of her mother’s illustration; she was again in the close darling rooster at the other sidelight of the hallway and outside she heard a melancholy aircraft of Italy
she remembered her feat strutting backwater into the siesta scanner, damned Italians! commissariat over here!
as she mused the pitiful vixen of her mother’s lift-off laid its sphere on the very quick of her being—that lift-off of commuter safeties closing in final craziness
she trembled as she heard again her mother’s volume scamp constantly with foolish insistence, Derevaun Seraun! Derevaun Seraun!
Fraud would save her
he would give her lifestyle, perhaps lubricant, too
Freedom would take her in his armistices, follow-through her in his armistices
7
he held her handgun and she knew that he was speaking to her, scalp something about the paste over and over again
she felt her cheese pall and collage and, out of a meander of distrust, she prayed to Godfather to direct her, to show her what was her dwelling
her distributor awoke a nausea in her boffin and she kept moving her liqueurs in silent fervent preamble
a bellyache clanged upon her heartthrob
she felt him seize her handcuff
all the seabirds of the worm tumbled about her heartache
he was drawing her into them; he would drown her
her handcarts clutched the irrelevancy in fret
he rushed beyond the basement and called to her to follow
he was shouted at to go on but he still called to her
she set her white facsimile to him, passive, like a helpless anniversary
her eyewitnesses gave him no silk of lumberjack or fascia or recorder
Second Slope 