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[ Aetat. 38 ] J O Y C E 493We all then sat down. But only for a moment.Joyce lay back in the stiff chair he had taken from behind him, crossedhis leg, the lifted leg laid out horizontally upon the one in support like anartificial limb, an arm flung back over the summit of the sumptuous chair.He dangled negligently his straw hat, a regulation 'boater.' We were oneither side of the table, the visitors and ourselves, upon which stood theenigmatical parcel.Eliot now rose to his feet. He approached the table, and with one eyebrowdrawn up, and a finger pointing, announced to James Joyce that thiswas that parcel, to which he had referred in his wire, and which had beengiven into his care, and he formally delivered it, thus acquitting himselfof his commission.'Ah! Is this the parcel you mentioned in your note?' enquired Joyce,overcoming the elegant reluctance of a certain undisguised fatigue in hisperson. And Eliot admitted that it was, and resumed his seat. . . .James Joyce was by now attempting to untie the crafty housewifely knotsof the cunning old Ezra. After a little he asked his son crossly in Italianfor a penknife. Still more crossly his son informed him that he had nopenknife. But Eliot got up, saying 'You want a knife? I have not got aknife, I think!' We were able, ultimately, to provide a pair of nail scissors.At last the strings were cut. A little gingerly Joyce unrolled the slovenlyswaddlings of damp British brown paper in which the good-hearted Americanhad packed up what he had put inside. Thereupon, along with somenondescript garments for the trunk—there were no trousers I believe—afairly presentable pair of old brown shoes stood revealed, in the centre ofthe bourgeois French table. . . .*James Joyce, exclaiming very faintly 'Oh!' looked up, and we all gazedat the old shoes for a moment. 'Oh!' I echoed and laughed, and Joyce leftthe shoes where they were, disclosed as the matrix of the disturbed leavesof the parcel. He turned away and sat down again, placing his left ankleupon his right knee, and squeezing, and then releasing, the horizontallimb.With a smile even slower in materializing than his still-trailing Bostonianvoice (a handsome young United States President, to give you an idea—adding a Gioconda smile to the other charms of this office) Eliot asked ourvisitor if he would have dinner with us. Joyce turned to his son, and speakingvery rapidly in Italian, the language always employed by him, so itseemed, in his family circle, he told him to go home: he would informhis mother that his father would not be home to dinner after all. Yes, hisfather had accepted an invitation to dinner, and would not be back afterall, for the evening meal! Did he understand? To tell his mother that hisfather—. But the son very hotly answered his father back, at this, after buta moment's hesitation on account of the company: evidently he did not byany means relish being entrusted with messages. It was, however, withgreater hotness, in yet more resonant Italian, that the son expressed his* Pound in fact sent a suit. 'It fits well except for the shoulders which are rather tight,'Joyce wrote to him. 'I shall be glad of it in the winter as it seems to be wool. I hate thecold.' 45