Читать книгу Modern Swedish Masterpieces: Short Stories онлайн

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A steam sloop came sputtering up under the bridge on its way to the city and lay to at the nearest landing. For a moment Bloom was tempted to go with it, but came back directly to his first idea: the restaurant on Brenchurch Street, beefsteak, onions and beer, so he said good-bye to the guard and went ahead on the Langholm Road. He felt himself from of old most at home in the section of South Stockholm between Skinnarviksberg, Lilyholm Bridge and Langholm.

When Bloom emerged, full-fed and contented, from his restaurant, his first impulse was to buy a new black felt hat, for the old one inclined too much to yellow-brown, and he had heard sometime or other that the hat makes the gentleman. After that he went to the nearest barber shop on Horn Street and had them remove the stubble from his chin, together with part of that on his cheeks; retaining, however—besides his mustaches, of course—a couple of small mutton-chop whiskers next the ears. After that he went slantwise across the street to a general outfitter’s, whence he came out attired in a clean white collar, a blue-edged dickey, and a brilliant light-blue necktie. A few steps further up the street he stopped before a photographer’s show-case and looked at himself in the glass. He was greatly moved at the transformation he had undergone. A ribbon-like strip of paper was picturesquely wound among portraits of serving-maids, dressmakers, Salvation Army soldiers, recruits, and a parson with a parson’s collar; and when he read on this that he could have half-a-dozen card-sized pictures made for two and a half crowns, he felt an irresistible temptation to go up and be photographed. It was partly that the day was significant for him, so that the likeness he had taken now would be a memento for the rest of his life; partly, too, that he had a dark foreboding, which he tried to put by, that it might be long before he would again be in a condition equally worthy to be immortalized in a picture. Furthermore, he had had himself photographed at various times previously, and he remembered with satisfaction the agreeable feeling he had experienced in seeing his ego in an, as it were, glorified aspect, without spots on his coat or damaging inequalities in his complexion, handsomely shaved and with a dignified and engaging expression. He went up to the photographer, combed his hair solicitously before a mirror, and sat down motionless before the camera with his hands on his knees.