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By Root 2085 0

of Jews. There were the Jews like Sussman, him and his goddam motorcycle, who would rather be Gentiles and therefore smiled queasily and sucked the ass of every Gentile who would drop his pants. And there were the Jews like his old man and his mother, them and their goddam unsalted butter and Kosher meat the Rabbi had to bless before they could eat it, who would rather be Jews than anything else in the world and who never let anybody forget they would rather be Jews than anything else in the world because Jews were God’s Chosen People and always between God’s Chosen People and the Infidel was the Wall that no Gentile ever could climb over. Those were the only two kinds of Jews there were. Take it or leave it. It was a fine choice to present to a man who wanted only to be accepted as a man, according to his individual virtues and vices, but who could never be that, as long as this open advertisement of a nose hung dangling out from his face.

Bloom felt it gingerly with his fingers, still looking at the rifle, wincing a little because it was still a little sore where Prewitt the Aryan had broken it and made it maybe not quite as much a Jewish nose as before, but still leaving it plainly a Jewish nose.

You cant get away from the Bloom nose, Isaac Nathan. You are the locomotive and here is your cowcatcher which precedes you down the dwindling rails of life. You want to be accepted? you want to be respected? you want to be admired? you want to be just plain liked?—tell it to the Bloom nose, Isaac Nathan.

In all the world Bloom could not think of a single person who liked him for himself, for his own personality.

Checking to make sure the safety was still on, he put the muzzle of the rifle in his mouth. He had to put the muzzle far back at the roof of his mouth for the sight cover to get in behind his teeth. It tasted very oily. He reached for the trigger with his thumb, knowing the safety was still on. His thumb would not reach even to the trigger guard. He tried with his index finger, but the tip of it barely reached inside the guard. He strained with his shoulder and arm trying to reach it, just curious was all, but all he could do was just touch the tip of his finger to the concave surface of the trigger.

Thats what I thought, Bloom thought.

He took the muzzle out of his mouth and laid the rifle across his lap and sat and looked at the long sleek deadly thing lying innocently across his knees with the safety catch still on. It was almost unbelievable it could do that.

Bloom leaned down and unlaced his right shoe deliberately, feeling tough and positive. Then he stuck the muzzle against the roof of his mouth again and put his big toe inside the guard. There was no give in the trigger under the pressure of his toe.

He laid the piece across his knees again. The barracks was suddenly tomblike in its emptiness. Bloom wished somebody would come in.

If they did come in, they would only laugh him out of the barracks for a showoff. All his life it seemed he had been laughed out of someplace or other for a showoff who didn’t have the guts to back it up. All his life he had tried to act, to do, to be strong and forceful enough to be able to point to something just once and say I did this, to just once commit one irrevocable act through his own willful motivation. And always, in the end, it was outside influences that governed him and he was blown by chance, by pure happenstance, coincidence, one way or the other, without having anything to say about it.

He still wished somebody would come in, and break up this silence. He pictured in his mind how they would look if they were to come in too late. He stood off to one side and watched them as they felt a great pity and sorrow that was too late now to help the poor dead thing there. We could have done so much, their tragic faces said, we could have made it so much easier. They would be sorry for the Jewboy, when it was too late. They would not think he was yellow then. Or a queer.

A war was coming, it was already here in Europe. Fighting and death and blood and hate. It was taught