Leopold Bloom at the museum

Inside the National Museum, cool marble halls yawning wide, Leopold Bloom paused, hands clasped behind his back, neck craned upward. Towering before him, ancient bones assembled like a grand puzzle, stretching from tail to terrible head. Brontosaurus, said the brass plate. Thunder lizard. What thunder did it make, padding through primordial swamps? Heavy footfalls in prehistoric mud, now turned to stone. Like the bones themselves, calcified memories of a world before men.

Spectacles sliding down his nose, he circled the display. Other visitors, mostly schoolchildren with their minders, fluttering about like sparrows, their whispers echoing off high ceilings. Young minds soaking up ancient history, fresh wonder at old bones. What would they make of him, another fossil examining fossils?

Ribs curved like flying buttresses, vertebrae stacked like Irish round towers reaching for heaven. Some poor devil’s job to dust it all, probably. Imagine the ladder needed. Would they use feather dusters or modern contraptions? Molly would know—always particular about her dusting methods. Never let him near her ornaments with a cloth.

£4.10 admission. Worth it to commune with the terrible lizards? Knowledge has its price, like everything else. These bones, priceless now. Time making treasures of trinkets, centuries turning remains to relics. Even the dung of ancient kings turns to gold eventually, he mused, patting his belly absently.

A guard’s shoes squeaked on polished floor. Time to move along then, let the next batch of wonderers wonder. Outside, Dublin carried on its daily business, horses and trams and motorcars, each leaving their own fossils for future museums. Perhaps in another million years, some new creature would stand puzzling over their remains, piecing together the mystery of Leopold Bloom and his contemporary fauna.