| Time: 12:00 midnight, Friday, June 17, 1904 Scene: the Brothel, Mrs. Cohen's establishment at 82 Tyrone Street Lower in the Dublin red--light district. Joyce call- ed the district "nighttown"; Dubliners called it "Monto," after Montgomery (now Foley) Street, one of its central streets. The district lay just north of the Liffey and west of the Amiens Street railroad station. Organ: locomotor apparatus Art: magic Colors: none Symbol: whore Technique: hallucination Correspondences: Circe--Bella Background: In Book 10 of The Odyssey, Odysseus recounts his ad- ventures with Aeolus and with the Lestrygonians and then describes his landing on Circe's island. Odysseus and his men are in a state of profound depression, "sick at heart, tasting our grief", as a result of the tantalizing view of Ithaca achieved with Aeolus's help and of the disastrous encounter with the Lestrygonians. They rest " cloaked in desolation I upon the waste sea beach", and Odysseus kills "a stag with noble antlers" on which they feast. Eventually Odysseus divides his crew into two platoons, one under his leadership, one led by Eurylochus. The leaders draw lots and the fate of exploring the island falls to Eurylochus. Eurylochus and his men discover Circe's hall, where all save Eury- lochus are transformed into hogs by Circe's "foul ma- gic."Eurylochus escapes to warn Odysseus, who then approaches Circe's hall alone. He is met by Hermes and accepts a magic herb, moly, to protect him from Circe's magic; Hermes also tells Odysseus that he must make Circe swear to release his men and to perform "no witches' tricks" lest he, too, be "unmanned" by her. O- dysseus confronts Circe, whose magic fails, no match for his moly. Odysseus threatens her, and she swears that she will not harm him and that she will release his men. Not only does she keep her oath, but she also roy- ally entertains Odysseus and his crew "until a year grew fat". Finally Odysseus's men urge him to "shake off this trance". He does, and Circe advises him to visit the un- derworld (Hades) to consult Tiresias. When Odysseus returns with Tiresias's prophecy, Circe helps him further with advice about the Sirens and Scylla and Charybdis. |
*(The Mabbot street entrance of Nighttown, before which stretches
an uncobbled tramsiding set with skeleton tracks, red and green
will-o'-the- wisps and danger signals. Rows of grimy houses with
gaping doors. Rare lamps with faint rainbow fins. Round
Rabaiotti's halted ice gondola stunted men and women squabble.
They grab wafers between which are wedged lumps of coral and
copper snow. Sucking, they scatter slowly, children. The swancomb
of the gondola, highreared, forges on through the murk, white and
blue under a lighthouse. Whistles call and answer.)
THE CALLS:
Wait, my love, and I'll be with you.
THE ANSWER:
Round behind the stable.
(A deafmute idiot with goggle eyes, his shapeless mouth dribbling,
jerks past, shaken in Saint Vitus' dance. A chain of children's hands
imprisons him.)
THE CHILDREN:
Kithogue! Salute!
THE IDIOT:
(lifts a palsied left arm and gurgles) Grhahute!
THE CHILDREN:
Where's the great light?
THE IDIOT:
(gobbing) Ghaghahest.
(They release him. He jerks on. A pigmy woman swings on a rope
slung between two railings, counting. A form sprawled against a
dustbin and muffled by its arm and hat snores, groans, grinding
growling teeth, and snores again. On a step a gnome totting among
a rubbishtip crouches to shoulder a sack of rags and bones. A crone
standing by with a smoky oillamp rams her last bottle in the maw of
his sack. He heaves his booty, tugs askew his peaked cap and
hobbles off mutely. The crone makes back for her lair, swaying her
lamp. A bandy child, asquat on the doorstep with a paper
shuttlecock, crawls sidling after her in spurts, clutches her skirt,
scrambles up. A drunken navvy grips with both hands the railings
of an area, lurching heavily. At a corner two night watch in
shouldercapes, their hands upon their staffholsters, loom tall. A
plate crashes: a woman screams: a child wails. Oaths of a man
roar, mutter, cease. Figures wander, lurk, peer from warrens. In a
room lit by a candle stuck in a bottleneck a slut combs out the tatts
from the hair of a scrofulous child. Cissy caffrey's voice, still
young, sings shrill from a lane.)
CISSY CAFFREY:
I gave it to Molly
Because she was jolly,
The Leg of the Duck,
The Leg of the Duck.
(Private Carr and Private Compton, swaggersticks tight in their
oxters, as they march unsteadily rightaboutface and burst together
from their mouths a volleyed fart. Laughter of men from the lane. A
hoarse virago retorts.)
THE VIRAGO:
Signs on you, hairy arse. More power the Cavan girl.
CISSY CAFFREY:
More luck to me. Cavan, Cootehill and Belturbet. (she sings)
I gave it to Nelly
To stick in her belly,
The Leg of the Duck,
The Leg of the Duck.
(Private Carr and Private Compton turn and counterretort, their
tunics bloodbright in a lampglow, black sockets of caps on their
blond cropped polls. Stephen Dedalus and Lynch pass through the
crowd close to the redcoats.)
PRIVATE COMPTON:
(jerks his finger) Way for the parson.
PRIVATE CARR:
(turns and calls) What ho, parson!
CISSY CAFFREY:
(her voice soaring higher)
She has it, she got it,
Wherever she put it,
The Leg of the Duck.
(Stephen, flourishing the ashplant in his left hand, chants with joy
the introit for Paschal time. Lynch, his jockeycap low on his brow,
attends him, a sneer of discontent wrinkling his face.)
STEPHEN:
Vidi aquam egredientem de templo a latere dextro. Alleluia.
(The famished snaggletusks of an elderly bawd protrude from a
doorway.)
THE BAWD
(her voice whispering huskily) Sst! Come here till I tell you. Maidenhead
inside. Sst!
STEPHEN:
(altius aliquantulum) Et omnes ad quos pervenit aqua ista.
THE BAWD
(spits in their trail her jet of venom) Trinity medicals. Fallopian tube. All
prick and no pence.
(Edy Boardman, sniffling, crouched with Bertha Supple, draws her
shawl across her nostrils.)
EDY BOARDMAN:
(bickering) And says the one: I seen you up Faithful place with your
squarepusher, the greaser off the railway, in his cometobed hat. Did you,
says I. That's not for you to say, says I. You never seen me in the mantrap
with a married highlander, says I. The likes of her! Stag that one is!
Stubborn as a mule! And her walking with two fellows the one time,
Kilbride, the enginedriver, and lancecorporal Oliphant.
STEPHEN:
(triumphaliter) Salvi facti sunt.
(He flourishes his ashplant, shivering the lamp image, shattering
light over the world. A liver and white spaniel on the prowl slinks
after him, growling. Lynch scares it with a kick.)
LYNCH:
So that?
STEPHEN:
(looks behind) So that gesture, not music not odour, would be a universal
language, the gift of tongues rendering visible not the lay sense but the
first entelechy, the structural rhythm.
LYNCH:
Pornosophical philotheology. Metaphysics in Mecklenburgh street!
STEPHEN:
We have shrewridden Shakespeare and henpecked Socrates. Even the allwisest
Stagyrite was bitted, bridled and mounted by a light of love.
LYNCH:
Ba!
STEPHEN:
Anyway, who wants two gestures to illustrate a loaf and a jug? This
movement illustrates the loaf and jug of bread or wine in Omar. Hold my
stick.
LYNCH:
Damn your yellow stick. Where are we going?
STEPHEN:
Lecherous lynx, to la belle dame sans merci, Georgina Johnson, ad deam qui
laetificat iuventutem meam.
(Stephen thrusts the ashplant on him and slowly holds out his hands, his
head going back till both hands are a span from his breast, down turned,
in planes intersecting, the fingers about to part, the left being high-
er.)
LYNCH:
Which is the jug of bread? It skills not. That or the customhouse. Illustrate
thou. Here take your crutch and walk.
(They pass. Tommy Caffrey scrambles to a gaslamp and, clasping,
climbs in spasms. From the top spur he slides down. Jacky Caffrey
clasps to climb. The navvy lurches against the lamp. The twins
scuttle off in the dark. The navvy, swaying, presses a forefinger
against a wing of his nose and ejects from the farther nostril a long
liquid jet of snot. Shouldering the lamp he staggers away through
the crowd with his flaring cresset.
Snakes of river fog creep slowly. From drains, clefts, cesspools,
middens arise on all sides stagnant fumes. A glow leaps in the south
beyond the seaward reaches of the river. The navvy, staggering
forward, cleaves the crowd and lurches towards the tramsiding on
the farther side under the railway bridge bloom appears, flushed,
panting, cramming bread and chocolate into a sidepocket. From
gillen's hairdresser's window a composite portrait shows him
gallant nelson's image. A concave mirror at the side presents to him
lovelorn longlost lugubru booloohoom. Grave Gladstone sees him
level, bloom for bloom. He passes, struck by the stare of truculent
Wellington, but in the convex mirror grin unstruck the bonham eyes
and fatchuck cheekchops of jollypoldy the rixdix doldy.
At Antonio Pabaiotti's door Bloom halts, sweated under the bright
arclamp. He disappears. In a moment he reappears and hurries
on.)
BLOOM:
Fish and taters. N. g. Ah!
(He disappears into Olhausen's, the porkbutcher's, under the
downcoming rollshutter. A few moments later he emerges from
under the shutter, puffing Poldy, blowing bloohoom. In each hand
he holds a parcel, one containing a lukewarm pig's crubeen, the
other a cold sheep's trotter, sprinkled with wholepepper. He gasps,
standing upright. Then bending to one side he presses a parcel
against his ribs and groans.)
BLOOM:
Stitch in my side. Why did I run?
(He takes breath with care and goes forward slowly towards the lampset
siding. The glow leaps again.)
BLOOM:
What is that? A flasher? Searchlight.
(He stands at Cormack's corner, watching)
BLOOM:
Aurora borealis or a steel foundry? Ah, the brigade, of course. South side
anyhow. Big blaze. Might be his house. Beggar's bush. We're safe. (he
hums cheerfully) London's burning, London's burning! On fire, on fire!
(He catches sight of the navvy lurching through the crowd at the farther
side of Talbot street) I'll miss him. Run. Quick. Better cross here.
(He darts to cross the road. Urchins shout.)
The urchins:
Mind out, mister! (two cyclists, with lighted paper lanterns aswing, swim
by him, grazing him, their bells rattling)
The bells:
Haltyaltyaltyall.
BLOOM:
(Halts erect, stung by a spasm) Ow!
(He looks round, darts forward suddenly. Through rising fog a
dragon sandstrewer, travelling at caution, slews heavily down upon
him, its huge red headlight winking, its trolley hissing on the wire.
The motorman bangs his footgong.)
THE GONG:
Bang Bang Bla Bak Blud Bugg Bloo.
(The brake cracks violently. Bloom, raising a policeman's
whitegloved hand, blunders stifflegged out of the track. The
motorman, thrown forward, pugnosed, on the guidewheel, Yells as
he slides past over chains and keys.)
THE MOTORMAN:
Hey, shitbreeches, are you doing the hat trick?
(Bloom trickleaps to the curbstone and halts again. He brushes a
mudflake from his cheek with a parcelled hand.)
BLOOM:
No thoroughfare. Close shave that but cured the stitch. Must take up
Sandow's exercises again. On the hands down. Insure against street
accident too. The Providential. (He feels his trouser pocket) Poor
mamma's panacea. Heel easily catch in track or bootlace in a cog. Day the
wheel of the black Maria peeled off my shoe at Leonard's corner. Third
time is the charm. Shoe trick. Insolent driver. I ought to report him.
Tension makes them nervous. Might be the fellow balked me this morning
with that horsey woman. Same style of beauty. Quick of him all the same.
The stiff walk. True word spoken in jest. That awful cramp in Lad lane.
Something poisonous I ate. Emblem of luck. Why? Probably lost cattle.
Mark of the beast. (He closes his eyes an instant) Bit light in the head.
Monthly or effect of the other. Brainfogfag. That tired feeling. Too much
for me now. Ow!
(A sinister figure leans on plaited legs against O'Beirne's wall, a
visage unknown, injected with dark mercury. From under a wideleaved
sombrero the figure regards him with evil eye.)
BLOOM:
Buenas noches, senorita blanca. Que calle es esta?
THE FIGURE:
(Impassive, raises a signal arm) Password. Sraid mabbot.
BLOOM:
Haha. Merci. Esperanto. Slan leath. (He mutters) Gaelic league spy, sent
by that fireeater.
(He steps forward. A sackshouldered ragman bars his path. He steps
left,
ragsackman left.)
BLOOM:
I beg.
(He leaps right, sackragman right..)
BLOOM:
I beg.
(He swerves, sidles, stepaside, slips past and on.)
BLOOM:
Keep to the right, right, right. If there is a signpost planted by the Tour-
ing Club at Stepaside who procured that public boon? I who lost my way and
contributed to the columns of the Irish Cyclist the letter headed In darkest
Stepaside. Keep, keep, keep to the right. Rags and bones at midnight. A
fence more likely. First place murderer makes for. Wash off his sins of the
world.
(Jacky Caffrey, hunted by Tommy Caffrey, runs full tilt against Bloom.)
BLOOM:
O
(Shocked, on weak hams, he halts. Tommy and Jacky vanish there, there.
Bloom pats with parcelled hands watchfob, bookpocket, pursepoket, sweets
of sin, potatosoap.)
BLOOM:
Beware of pickpockets. Old thieves' dodge. Collide. Then snatch your
purse.
(The retriever approaches sniffing, nose to the ground. A sprawled form
sneezes. A stooped bearded figure appears garbed in the long caftan
of
an Elder in Zion and a smokingcap with magenta tassels. Horned spectacles
hang down at the wings of the nose. Yellow poison streaks are on the
drawn
face.)
RUDOLPH:
Second halfcrown waste money today. I told you not go with drunken goy ever.
So you catch no money.
BLOOM:
(Hides the crubeen and trotter behind his back and, crestfallen, feels warm
and cold feetmeat) Ja, ich weiss, Papachi.
RUDOLPH:
What you making down this place? Have you no soul? (With feeble vulture
talons he feels the silent face of Bloom) Are you not my son Leopold, the
grandson of Leopold? Are you not my dear son Leopold who left the house
of his father and left the god of his fathers Abraham and Jacob?
BLOOM:
(with precaution) I suppose so, father. Mosenthal. All that's left of him.
RUDOLPH:
(severely) One night they bring you home drunk as dog after spend your good
money. What you call them running chaps?
BLOOM:
(In youth's smart blue oxford suit with white vestslips, narrowshouldered,
in Brown alpine hat, wearing Gent's sterling silver waterbury keyless watch
and double curb albert with seal attached, One side of him coated with
stiffening mud) Harriers, father. Only that once.
RUDOLPH:
Once! Mud head to foot. Cut your hand open. Lockjaw. They make you kaputt,
Leopoldleben. You watch them chaps.
BLOOM:
(weakly) They challenged me to a sprint. It was muddy. I slipped.
RUDOLPH:
(with contempt) Goim nachez! Nice spectacles for your poor mother!
BLOOM:
Mamma!
ELLEN BLOOM:
(In pantomime dame's stringed mobcap, widow twankey's crinoline and bustle,
blouse with muttonleg sleeves buttoned behind, grey mittens and cameo brooch,
her plaited hair in a crispine net, appears over the staircase banisters,
a
slanted candlestick in her hand, and cries out in shrill alarm) O blessed
Redeemer, what have they done to him! My smelling salts! (She hauls up a
reef of skirt and ransacks the pouch of her striped blay petticoat. A Phial,
an Agnus dei, a shrivelled potato and a celluloid doll fall out) Sacred Heart
of Mary, where were you at all at all?
(Bloom, mumbling, his eyes downcast, begins to bestow his parcels in his
filled pockets but desists, muttering.)
A voice:
(sharply) Poldy!
BLOOM:
Who? (he ducks and wards off a blow clumsily) At your service.
(He looks up. Beside her mirage of datepalms a handsome woman
in Turkish costume stands before him. Opulent curves fill out her
scarlet trousers and jacket, slashed with gold. A wide yellow
cummerbund girdles her. A white yashmak, violet in the night,
covers her face, leaving free only her large dark eyes and raven
hair.)
BLOOM:
Molly!
MARION:
Welly? Mrs Marion from this out, my dear man, when you speak to me.
(satirically) Has poor little hubby cold feet waiting so long?
BLOOM:
(shifts from foot to foot) No, no. Not the least little bit.
(He breathes in deep agitation, swallowing gulps of air, questions,
hopes, crubeens for her supper, things to tell her, excuse, desire,
spellbound. A coin gleams on her forehead. On her feet are jewelled
toerings. Her ankles are linked by a slender fetterchain. Beside her
a camel, hooded with a turreting turban, waits. A silk ladder of
innumerable rungs climbs to his bobbing howdah. He ambles near with
disgruntled hindquarters. Fiercely she slaps his haunch, her goldcurb
wristbangles angriling, scolding him in Moorish.)
MARION:
Nebrakada! Femininum!
(The camel, lifting a foreleg, plucks from a tree a large mango fruit,
offers it to his Mistress, blinking, in his cloven hoof, then droops his
head and, grunting, with uplifted neck, fumbles to kneel. Bloom stoops
his back for leapfrog.)
BLOOM:
I can give you . . . I mean as your business menagerer . . . Mrs Marion
. . . if you . . .
MARION:
So you notice some change? (her hands passing slowly over her trinketed
stomacher, a slow friendly mockery in her eyes) O Poldy, Poldy, you are
a poor old stick in the mud! Go and see life. See the wide world.
BLOOM:
I was just going back for that lotion whitewax, orangeflower water. Shop
closes early on Thursday. But the first thing in the morning. (He pats
divers pockets) This moving kidney. Ah!
(He points to the south, then to the east. A cake of new clean lemon soap
arises, diffusing light and perfume.)
THE SOAP:
We're a capital couple are Bloom and I.
He brightens the earth. I polish the sky.
(The freckled face of Sweny, the druggist, appears in the disc of the
soapsun.)
SWENY:
Three and a penny, please.
BLOOM:
Yes. For my wife. Mrs Marion. Special recipe.
MARION:
(softly) Poldy!
BLOOM:
Yes, ma'am?
MARION:
Ti trema un poco il cuore?
(In disdain she saunters away, humming the duet from Don Giovanni,
plump
as a pampered pouter pigeon.)
BLOOM:
Are you sure about that Voglio? I mean the pronunciati . . .
(He follows, followed by the sniffing terrier. The elderly bawd seizes
his sleeve, the bristles of her chinmole glittering.)
THE BAWD:
Ten shillings a maidenhead. Fresh thing was never touched. Fifteen. There's
no-one in it only her old father that's dead drunk.
(She points. In the gap of her dark den furtive, rainbedraggled, Bridie
Kelly stands.)
BRIDLE:
Hatch street. Any good in your mind?
(With a squeak she flaps her bat shawl and runs. A burly rough
pursues with booted strides. He stumbles on the Steps, recovers,
plunges into gloom. Weak squeaks of laughter are heard, weaker.)
THE BAWD:
(her wolfeyes shining) He's getting his pleasure. You won't get a virgin in
the flash houses. Ten shillings. Don't be all night before the polis in plain
clothes sees us. Sixtyseven is a bitch.
(leering, Gerty Macdowell limps forward. She draws from behind, ogling,
and
shows coyly her bloodied clout.)
GERTY:
With all my worldly goods I thee and thou. (she murmurs) You did that. I
hate you.
BLOOM:
I? When? You're dreaming. I never saw you.
The bawd:
Leave the gentleman alone, you cheat. Writing the gentleman false letters.
Streetwalking and soliciting. Better for your mother take the strap to you
at the bedpost, hussy like you.
GERTY:
(to Bloom) When you saw all the secrets of my bottom drawer. (she paws his
sleeve, slobbering) Dirty married man! I love you for doing that to me.
(she glides away crookedly. Mrs Breen in man's frieze overcoat with loose
bellows Pockets, stands in the causeway, Her roguish eyes wideopen, smiling
in all her herbivorous buckteeth.)
MRS BREEN:
Mr . . .
BLOOM:
(coughs gravely) Madam, when we last had this pleasure by letter dated the
sixteenth instant . . .
MRS BREEN:
Mr Bloom! You down here in the haunts of sin! I caught you nicely!
Scamp!
BLOOM:
(hurriedly) Not so loud my name. Whatever do you think of me? Don't
give me away. Walls have ears. How do you do? It's ages since I. You're
looking splendid. Absolutely it. Seasonable weather we are having this time
of year. Black refracts heat. Short cut home here. Interesting quarter.
Rescue of fallen women. Magdalen asylum. I am the secretary . . .
MRS BREEN:
(holds up a finger) Now, don't tell a big fib! I know somebody won't like
that. O just wait till I see Molly! (slily) Account for yourself this very
sminute or woe betide you!
BLOOM:
(looks behind) She often said she'd like to visit. Slumming. The exotic, you
see. Negro servants in livery too if she had money. Othello black brute.
Eugene Stratton. Even the bones and cornerman at the Livermore christies.
Bohee brothers. Sweep for that matter.
(Tom and Sam Bohee, coloured coons in white duck suits, scarlet socks,
upstarched sambo Chokers and large scarlet asters in their buttonholes,
leap out. Each has his banjo slung. Their paler smaller Negroid hands
jingle the twingtwang wires. Flashing white kaffir eyes and tusks they
rattle through a Breakdown in clumsy clogs, twinging, Singing, back
to
back, toe heel, heel toe, with smackfatclacking nigger
lips.)
TOM AND SAM:
There's someone in the house with Dina
There's someone in the house, I know,
There's someone in the house with Dina
Playing on the old banjo.
(They whisk black masks from raw babby faces: then, chuckling,
chortling, trumming, Twanging, they diddle diddle cakewalk dance
away.)
BLOOM:
(with a sour tenderish smile) A little frivol, shall we, if you are so inclined?
Would you like me perhaps to embrace you just for a fraction of a second?
MRS BREEN:
(screams gaily) O, you ruck! You ought to see yourself!
BLOOM:
For old sake' sake. I only meant a square party, a mixed marriage mingling
of our different little conjugials. You know I had a soft corner for you.
(gloomily) 'Twas I sent you that valentine of the dear gazelle.
MRS BREEN:
Glory Alice, you do look a holy show! Killing simply. (she puts out her
hand inquisitively) What are you hiding behind your back? Tell us, there's
a dear.
BLOOM:
(seizes her wrist with his free hand) Josie Powell that was, prettiest deb in
Dublin. How time flies by! Do you remember, harking back in a retrospective
arrangement, Old Christmas night, Georgina Simpson's housewarming while
they were playing the Irving Bishop game, finding the pin blindfold and
thoughtreading? Subject, what is in this snuffbox?
MRS BREEN:
You were the lion of the night with your seriocomic recitation and you looked
the part. You were always a favourite with the ladies.
BLOOM:
(squire of dames, in dinner jacket with wateredsilk facings, blue masonic
badge In his buttonhole, black bow And mother-of-pearl studs, a prismatic
champagne glass tilted in his hand) Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Ireland,
home and beauty.
MRS BREEN:
The dear dead days beyond recall. Love's old sweet song.
BLOOM:
(meaningfully dropping his voice) I confess I'm teapot with curiosity to find
out whether some person's something is a little teapot at present.
MRS BREEN:
(gushingly) Tremendously teapot! London's teapot and I'm simply teapot all
over me! (she rubs sides with him) After the parlour mystery games and the
crackers from the tree we sat on the staircase ottoman. Under the mistletoe.
Two is company.
BLOOM:
(wearing a purple napoleon hat with an amber halfmoon, his fingers and
thumb passing slowly down to her soft moist meaty palm which she surren-
ders gently) The witching hour of night. I took the splinter out of this
hand, carefully, slowly. (tenderly, as he slips on her Finger a ruby ring)
La ci darem la mano.
MRS BREEN:
(in a onepiece evening frock executed in moonlight blue, a tinsel sylph's
diadem on her brow with her dancecard fallen beside her moonblue satin
slipper, curves her palm softly, breathing quickly) Voglio e non... You're
hot! You're scalding! The left hand nearest the heart.
BLOOM:
When you made your present choice they said it was beauty and the beast. I
can never forgive you for that. (his clenched fist at his brow) Think what it
means. All you meant to me then. (hoarsely) Woman, it's breaking me!
(Denis breen, whitetallhatted, with Wisdom Hely's sandwich-boards,
shuffles past them in carpet slippers, his dull beard thrust out,
muttering to right and left. Little Alf Bergan, cloaked in the pall
of The ace of spades, dogs him to Left and right, doubled in
laughter.)
ALF BERGAN:
(points jeering at the sandwichboards) U. p: Up.
MRS BREEN:
(to Bloom) High jinks below stairs. (she gives him the glad eye) Why didn't
you kiss the spot to make it well? You wanted to.
BLOOM:
(shocked) Molly's best friend! Could you?
MRS BREEN:
(her pulpy tongue between her lips, offers a pigeon kiss) Hnhn.
The answer is a lemon. Have you a little present for me there?
BLOOM:
(offhandedly) Kosher. A snack for supper. The home without potted meat
is incomplete. I was at Leah. Mrs Bandmann Palmer. Trenchant exponent of
Shakespeare. Unfortunately threw away the programme. Rattling good place
round there for pigs' feet. Feel.
(Richie Goulding, three ladies' hats pinned on his head, appears
weighted to one side by the black legal bag of Collis and Ward on
which a skull and crossbones are painted in white limewash. He
opens it and shows it full of polonies, kippered herrings, findon
haddies and tightpacked pills.)
RICHIE:
Best value in Dub.
(Bald pat, bothered beetle, stands on the curbstone, folding his napkin,
waiting to wait.)
PAT:
(advances with a tilted dish of spillspilling gravy) Steak and kidney. Bottle
of lager. Hee hee hee. Wait till I wait.
RICHIE:
Goodgod. Inev erate inall . . .
(With hanging head he marches doggedly forward. The navvy, lurching
by, gores
him with His flaming pronghorn.)
RICHIE:
(with a cry of pain, his hand to his back) Ah! Bright's! Lights!
BLOOM:
(points to the navvy) A spy. Don't attract attention. I hate stupid crowds. I
am not on pleasure bent. I am in a grave predicament.
MRS BREEN:
Humbugging and deluthering as per usual with your cock and bull story.
BLOOM:
I want to tell you a little secret about how I came to be here. But you must
never tell. Not even Molly. I have a most particular reason.
MRS BREEN:
(all agog) O, not for worlds.
BLOOM:
Let's walk on. Shall us?
MRS BREEN:
Let's.
(The bawd makes an unheeded sign. Bloom walks on with Mrs Breen. The terrier
follows, whining piteously, wagging his tail.)
THE BAWD:
Jewman's melt!
BLOOM:
(in an oatmeal sporting suit, a sprig of woodbine in the lapel, tony buff
shirt, shepherd's plaid saint Andrew's cross scarftie, white spats, fawn
dustcoat on his arm, tawny red brogues, fieldglasses in bandolier and a grey
billycock hat) Do you remember a long long time, years and years ago, just
after Milly, marionette we called her, was weaned when we all went together
to fairyhouse races, was it?
MRS BREEN:
(in smart saxe tailormade, white velours hat and spider veil) Leopards-
town.
BLOOM:
I mean, Leopardstown. And Molly won seven shillings on a three year old
named Nevertell and coming home along by Foxrock in that old fiveseater
shanderadan of a waggonette you were in your heyday then and you had
on that new hat of white velours with a surround of molefur that Mrs
Hayes advised you to buy because it was marked down to nineteen and
eleven, a bit of wire and an old rag of velveteen, and I'll lay you
what you like she did it on purpose . . .
MRS BREEN:
She did, of course, the cat! Don't tell me! Nice adviser!
BLOOM:
Because it didn't suit you one quarter as well as the other ducky little
tammy toque with the bird of paradise wing in it that I admired on you and
you honestly looked just too fetching in it though it was a pity to kill
it, you cruel naughty creature, little mite of a thing with a heart the
size of a fullstop.
MRS BREEN:
(squeezes his arm, simpers) Naughty cruel I was!
BLOOM:
(low, secretly, ever more rapidly) And Molly was eating a sandwich of
spiced beef out of Mrs Joe Gallaher's lunch basket. Frankly, though she
had her advisers or admirers, I never cared much for her style. She was . . .
MRS BREEN:
Too . . .
BLOOM:
Yes. And Molly was laughing because Rogers and Maggot O'Reilly were
mimicking a cock as we passed a farmhouse and Marcus Tertius Moses, the
tea merchant, drove past us in a gig with his daughter, Dancer Moses was
her name, and the poodle in her lap bridled up and you asked me if I ever
heard or read or knew or came across . . .
MRS BREEN:
(eagerly) Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
(She fades from his side. Followed by the whining dog he walks on
towards Hellsgates. In an archway a standing woman, bent forward,
her feet apart, pisses cowily. Outside a shuttered pub a bunch of
loiterers listen to a tale which their brokensnouted gaffer rasps
out with raucous humour. An armless pair of them flop wrestling,
growling, in maimed sodden playfight.)
THE GAFFER:
(Crouches, his voice twisted in his snout) And when Cairns came down
from the scaffolding in Beaver street what was he after doing it into
only into the bucket of porter that was there waiting on the shavings
for Derwan's plasterers.
THE LOITERERS:
(guffaw with cleft palates) O jays!
(Their paintspeckled hats wag. Spattered with size and lime of their lodges
they frisk limblessly about him.)
BLOOM:
Coincidence too. They think it funny. Anything but that. Broad daylight.
Trying to walk. Lucky no woman.
THE LOITERERS:
Jays, that's a good one. Glauber salts. O jays, into the men's porter.
(Bloom passes. Cheap whores, singly, coupled, shawled, dishevelled, call
from lanes, doors, corners.)
THE WHORES:
Are you going far, queer fellow?
How's your middle leg?
Got a match on you?
Eh, come here till I stiffen it for you.
(He plodges through their sump towards the lighted street beyond.
From a bulge of window curtains a gramophone rears a battered
brazen trunk. In the shadow a shebeenkeeper haggles with the
navvy and the two redcoats.)
THE NAVVY:
(belching) Where's the bloody house?
THE SHEBEENKEEPER:
Purdon street. Shilling a bottle of stout. Respectable woman.
THE NAVVY:
(gripping the two redcoats, staggers forward with them) Come on, you
British army!
PRIVATE CARR:
(behind his back) He aint half balmy.
PRIVATE COMPTON:
(laughs) What ho!
PRIVATE CARR:
(to the navvy) Portobello barracks canteen. You ask for Carr. Just Carr.
THE NAVVY:
(shouts)
We are the boys. Of Wexford.
PRIVATE COMPTON:
Say! What price the sergeantmajor?
PRIVATE CARR:
Bennett? He's my pal. I love old Bennett.
THE NAVVY:
(shouts)
The galling chain.
And free our native land.
(He staggers forward, dragging them with him. Bloom stops, at fault.
The dog Approaches, his tongue outlolling, panting)
BLOOM:
Wildgoose chase this. Disorderly houses. Lord knows where they are gone.
Drunks cover distance double quick. Nice mixup. Scene at Westland row.
Then jump in first class with third ticket. Then too far. Train with engine
behind. Might have taken me to Malahide or a siding for the night or
collision. Second drink does it. Once is a dose. What am I following him
for? Still, he's the best of that lot. If I hadn't heard about Mrs Beaufoy
Purefoy I wouldn't have gone and wouldn't have met. Kismet. He'll lose
that cash. Relieving office here. Good biz for cheapjacks, organs. What do
ye lack? Soon got, soon gone. Might have lost my life too with that man-
gongwheeltracktrolleyglarejuggernaut only for presence of mind. Can't
always save you, though. If I had passed Truelock's window that day two
minutes later would have been shot. Absence of body. Still if bullet only
went through my coat get damages for shock, five hundred pounds. What was
he? Kildare street club toff. God help his gamekeeper.
(He gazes ahead, reading on the wall a scrawled chalk legend Wet Dream
and a phallic design.) Odd! Molly drawing on the frosted carriagepane at
Kingstown. What's that like? (Gaudy dollwomen loll in the lighted
doorways, in window embrasures, smoking birdseye cigarettes. The odour
of the sicksweet weed floats towards him in slow round ovalling wreaths.)
THE WREATHS:
Sweet are the sweets. Sweets of sin.
BLOOM:
My spine's a bit limp. Go or turn? And this food? Eat it and get all
pigsticky. Absurd I am. Waste of money. One and eightpence too much.
(The retriever drives a cold snivelling muzzle against His hand, wagging
his tail.) Strange how they take to me. Even that brute today. Better
speak to him first. Like women they like rencontres. Stinks like a pole-
cat. Chacun son gout. He might be mad. Dogdays. Uncertain in his movements.
Good fellow! Fido! Good fellow! Garryowen! (The wolfdog sprawls on his back,
wriggling obscenely with begging paws, his long black tongue lolling out.)
Influence of his surroundings. Give and have done with it. Provided nobody.
(Calling encouraging words he shambles back with a furtive poacher's tread,
dogged by the setter into a dark stalestunk corner. He unrolls one parcel
and goes to dump the crubeen softly but holds back and feels the trotter.)
Sizeable for threepence. But then I have it in my left hand. Calls for
more effort. Why? Smaller from want of use. O, let it slide. Two and
six.
(With regret he lets the unrolled crubeen and trotter slide. The
mastiff mauls the bundle clumsily and gluts himself with growling
greed, crunching the bones. Two raincaped watch approach, silent,
vigilant. They murmur together.)
THE WATCH:
Of Bloom. For Bloom. Bloom.
(Each lays hand on bloom's shoulder.)
FIRST WATCH:
Caught in the act. Commit no nuisance.
BLOOM:
(Stammers) I am doing good to others.
(A covey of gulls, storm petrels, rises hungrily from Liffey slime with
Banbury cakes in their beaks.)
The gulls:
Kaw kave kankury kake.
BLOOM:
The friend of man. Trained by kindness.
(He points. Bob Doran, toppling from a high barstool, sways over the
munching
spaniel.)
Bob Doran:
Towser. Give us the paw. Give the paw.
(The bulldog growls, his scruff standing, a gobbet of pig's knuckle
between his molars through which rabid scumspittle dribbles. Bob
Doran falls silently into an area.)
Second watch:
Prevention of cruelty to animals.
BLOOM:
(enthusiastically) A noble work! I scolded that tramdriver on Harold's
Cross bridge for illusing the poor horse with his harness scab. Bad French
I got for my pains. Of course it was frosty and the last tram. All tales
of circus life are highly demoralising.
(Signor Maffei, passionpale, in liontamer's costume with diamond
studs in his shirtfront, steps forward, holding a circus paperhoop,
a curling carriagewhip and a revolver with which he covers the
gorging boarhound.)
Signor Maffei:
(with a sinister smile) Ladies and gentlemen, my educated greyhound. It
was I broke in the bucking broncho Ajax with my patent spiked saddle for
carnivores. Lash under the belly with a knotted thong. Block tackle and a
strangling pulley will bring your lion to heel, no matter how fractious,
even Leo ferox there, the Libyan maneater. A redhot crowbar and some
liniment rubbing on the burning part produced Fritz of Amsterdam, the
thinking hyena. (he glares) I possess the Indian sign. The glint of my
eye does it with these breastsparklers. (with a bewitching smile) I now
introduce Mademoiselle Ruby, the pride of the ring.
FIRST WATCH:
Come. Name and address.
BLOOM:
I have forgotten for the moment. Ah, yes! (he takes off his high grade hat,
saluting) Dr Bloom, Leopold, dental surgeon. You have heard of von Blum
Pasha. Umpteen millions. Donnerwetter! Owns half Austria. Egypt. Cous-
in.
FIRST WATCH:
Proof.
(A card falls from inside the leather headband of bloom's hat.)
BLOOM:
(in red fez, cadi's dress coat with broad green sash, wearing a false badge
of the Legion of Honour, picks up the card hastily and offers it) Allow me.
My club is the Junior Army and Navy. Solicitors: Messrs John Henry Menton,
27 Bachelor's Walk.
FIRST WATCH:
(reads) Henry Flower. No fixed abode. Unlawfully watching and beset-
ting.
Second watch:
An alibi. You are cautioned.
BLOOM:
(produces from his heartpocket a crumpled yellow flower) This is the flower
in question. It was given me by a man I don't know his name. (plausibly)
You know that old joke, rose of Castile. Bloom. The change of name. Virag.
(he murmurs privately and confidentially) We are engaged you see, sergeant.
Lady in the case. Love entanglement. (he shoulders the second watch gently)
Dash it all. It's a way we gallants have in the navy. uniform that does
it. (he turns gravely to the first watch) Still, of course, you do get
your Waterloo sometimes. Drop in some evening and have a glass of old
Burgundy. (to the second watch gaily) I'll introduce you, inspector.
She's game. Do it in the shake of a lamb's tail.
(A dark mercurialised face appears, leading a veiled figure.)
The Dark Mercury:
The Castle is looking for him. He was drummed out of the army.
Martha:
(thickveiled, a crimson halter round her neck, a copy of the Irish Times
in
her hand, in tone of reproach, pointing) Henry! Leopold! Lionel, thou lost
one! Clear my name.
FIRST WATCH:
(sternly) Come to the station.
BLOOM:
(scared, hats himself, steps back, then, plucking at his heart and lifting
his
right forearm on the square, he gives the sign and dueguard of fellowcraft)
No, no, worshipful master, light of love. Mistaken identity. The Lyons mail.
Lesurques and Dubosc. You remember the Childs fratricide case. We medical
men. By striking him dead with a hatchet. I am wrongfully accused. Better
one guilty escape than ninetynine wrongfully condemned.
Martha:
(sobbing behind her veil) Breach of promise. My real name is Peggy Griffin.
He wrote to me that he was miserable. I'll tell my brother, the Bective
rugger fullback, on you, heartless flirt.
BLOOM:
(behind his hand) She's drunk. The woman is inebriated. (he murmurs vaguely the
pass of ephraim) Shitbroleeth.
Second watch:
(tears in his eyes, to Bloom) You ought to be thoroughly well ashamed of your-
self.
BLOOM:
Gentlemen of the jury, let me explain. A pure mare's nest. I am a man
misunderstood. I am being made a scapegoat of. I am a respectable married
man, without a stain on my character. I live in Eccles street. My wife,
I am the daughter of a most distinguished commander, a gallant upstanding
gentleman, what do you call him, Majorgeneral Brian Tweedy, one of Bri-
tain's fighting men who helped to win our battles. Got his majority for
the heroic defence of Rorke's Drift.
FIRST WATCH:
Regiment.
BLOOM:
(turns to the gallery) The royal Dublins, boys, the salt of the earth, known
the world over. I think I see some old comrades in arms up there among you.
The R. D. F., with our own Metropolitan police, guardians of our homes, the
pluckiest lads and the finest body of men, as physique, in the service of
our sovereign.
A voice:
Turncoat! Up the Boers! Who booed Joe Chamberlain?
BLOOM:
(his hand on the shoulder of the first watch) My old dad too was a J. P.
I'm as staunch a Britisher as you are, sir. I fought with the colours for
king and country in the absentminded war under general Gough in the park
and was disabled at Spion Kop and Bloemfontein, was mentioned in dispatches.
I did all a white man could. (with quiet feeling) Jim Bludso. Hold her nozzle
again the bank.
FIRST WATCH:
Profession or trade.
BLOOM:
Well, I follow a literary occupation, author-journalist. In fact we are just
bringing out a collection of prize stories of which I am the inventor,
something that is an entirely new departure. I am connected with the British
and Irish press. If you ring up . . .
(Myles Crawford strides out jerkily, a quill between his teeth. His
scarlet beak blazes within the aureole of his straw hat. He dangles
a
hank of spanish onions in one hand and holds with the other hand a
telephone receiver nozzle to His ear.)
MYLES CRAWFORD:
(his cock's wattles wagging) Hello, seventyseven eightfour. Hello.
Freeman's Urinal and Weekly Arsewipe here. Paralyse Europe. You which?
Bluebags? Who writes? Is it Bloom?
(Mr Philip Beaufoy, palefaced, stands in the witnessbox, in accurate
morning dress, outbreast pocket with peak of handkerchief showing,
creased lavender trousers and patent boots. He carries a large port-
folio labelled Matcham's Masterstrokes.)
Beaufoy:
(drawls) No, you aren't. Not by a long shot if I know it. I don't see it
that's all. No born gentleman, no-one with the most rudimentary prompt-
ings of a gentleman would stoop to such particularly loathsome conduct.
One of those, my lord. A plagiarist. A soapy sneak masquerading as a lit-
terateur. It's perfectly obvious that with the most inherent baseness
he has cribbed some of my bestselling copy, really gorgeous stuff, a per-
fect gem, the love passages in which are beneath suspicion. The Beaufoy
books of love and great possessions, with which your lordship is doubt-
less familiar, are a household word throughout the kingdom.
BLOOM:
(murmurs with hangdog meekness glum) That bit about the laughing witch hand
in hand I take exception to, if I may . . .
Beaufoy:
(his lip upcurled, smiles superciliously on the court) You funny ass, you!
You're too beastly awfully weird for words! I don't think you need over
excessively disincommodate yourself in that regard. My literary agent Mr
J. B. Pinker is in attendance. I presume, my lord, we shall receive the usual
witnesses' fees, shan't we? We are considerably out of pocket over this bally
pressman johnny, this jackdaw of Rheims, who has not even been to a universi-
ty.
BLOOM:
(indistinctly) University of life. Bad art.
Beaufoy:
(shouts) It's a damnably foul lie, showing the moral rottenness of the man!
(he extends his portfolio) We have here damning evidence, the corpus delicti,
my lord, a specimen of my maturer work disfigured by the hallmark of the
beast.
A voice from the gallery:
Moses, Moses, king of the jews,
Wiped his arse in the Daily News.
BLOOM:
(bravely) Overdrawn.
Beaufoy:
You low cad! You ought to be ducked in the horsepond, you rotter! (to the
court) Why, look at the man's private life! Leading a quadruple existence!
Street angel and house devil. Not fit to be mentioned in mixed society!
The archconspirator of the age!
BLOOM:
(to the court) And he, a bachelor, how . . .
FIRST WATCH:
The King versus Bloom. Call the woman Driscoll.
The crier:
Mary Driscoll, scullerymaid!
(Mary Driscoll, a slipshod servant girl, approaches. She has a bucket
on the
crook of Her arm and a scouringbrush in Her hand.)
Second watch:
Another! Are you of the unfortunate class?
Mary Driscoll:
(indignantly) I'm not a bad one. I bear a respectable character and was
four months in my last place. I was in a situation, six pounds a year and
my chances with Fridays out and I had to leave owing to his carryings on.
FIRST WATCH:
What do you tax him with?
Mary Driscoll:
He made a certain suggestion but I thought more of myself as poor as I am.
BLOOM:
(in housejacket of ripplecloth, flannel trousers, heelless slippers, unshaven,
His hair rumpled: softly) I treated you white. I gave you mementos, smart
emerald garters far above your station. Incautiously I took your part when
you were accused of pilfering. There's a medium in all things. Play cricket.
Mary Driscoll:
(excitedly) As God is looking down on me this night if ever I laid a hand to
them oysters!
FIRST WATCH:
The offence complained of? Did something happen?
Mary Driscoll:
He surprised me in the rere of the premises, Your honour, when the missus
was out shopping one morning with a request for a safety pin. He held me
and I was discoloured in four places as a result. And he interfered twict
with my clothing.
BLOOM:
She counterassaulted.
Mary Driscoll:
(scornfully) I had more respect for the scouringbrush, so I had. I remonstrated
with him, Your lord, and he remarked: keep it quiet.
(General laughter.)
George Fottrell:
(clerk of the crown and peace, resonantly) Order in court! The accused will now
make a bogus statement.
(Bloom, pleading not guilty and holding a fullblown waterlily,
begins a long unintelligible speech. They would hear What counsel
had to say in his stirring address to the grand jury. He was down
and out but, though branded as a black sheep, if he might say so,
he meant to reform, to retrieve the memory of the past in a purely
sisterly way and return to nature as a purely domestic animal. A
sevenmonths' child, he had been carefully brought up and nurtured
by an aged bedridden parent. There might have been lapses of an
erring father but he wanted to turn over a new leaf and now, when
at long last in sight of the whipping post, to lead a homely life
in the evening of his days, permeated by the affectionate surround-
ings of the heaving bosom of the family. An acclimatised Britisher,
he had seen that summer eve from the footplate of an engine cab of
the Loop Line railway company while the rain refrained from falling
glimpses, as it were, through the windows of loveful households in
Dublin city and urban district of scenes truly rural of happiness
of the better land with Dockrell's wallpaper at one and ninepence
a dozen, innocent Britishborn bairns lisping prayers to the Sacred
Infant, youthful scholars grappling with their pensums or model
young ladies playing on the pianoforte or anon all with fervour
reciting the family rosary round the crackling Yulelog while in the
boreens and green lanes the colleens with their swains strolled what
times the strains of the organtoned melodeon Britanniametalbound
with four acting stops and twelvefold bellows, a sacrifice, greatest
bargain ever . . . )
(Renewed laughter. He mumbles incoherently. Reporters complain that
they cannot hear.)
Longhand and Shorthand:
(without looking up from their notebooks) Loosen his boots.
Professor Machugh:
(from the presstable, coughs and calls) Cough it up, man. Get it out in bits.
(The crossexamination proceeds re Bloom and the bucket. A large
bucket. Bloom himself. Bowel trouble. In Beaver Street gripe, yes.
Quite bad. A plasterer's bucket. By walking stifflegged. Suffered
untold misery. Deadly agony. About noon. Love or burgundy. Yes,
some spinach. Crucial moment. He did not look in the bucket
nobody. Rather a mess. Not completely. A Titbits back number.)
Uproar and catcalls. Bloom in a torn frockcoat stained with
whitewash, dinged silk hat sideways on his head, a Strip of
stickingplaster across his nose, talks inaudibly.)
J. J. O'Molloy:
(in barrister's grey wig and stuffgown, speaking with a voice of pained
protest) This is no place for indecent levity at the expense of an erring
mortal disguised in liquor. We are not in a beargarden nor at an Oxford rag
nor is this a travesty of justice. My client is an infant, a poor foreign
immigrant who started scratch as a stowaway and is now trying to turn an
honest penny. The trumped up misdemeanour was due to a momentary aber-
ration of heredity, brought on by hallucination, such familiarities as the alleg-
ed guilty occurrence being quite permitted in my client's native place,
the
land of the Pharaoh. Prima facie, I put it to you that there was no attempt
at carnally knowing. Intimacy did not occur and the offence complained of
by Driscoll, that her virtue was solicited, was not repeated. I would
deal in especial with atavism. There have been cases of shipwreck and
somnambulism in my client's family. If the accused could speak he could
a tale unfold -- one of the strangest that have ever been narrated between
the covers of a book. He himself, my lord, is a physical wreck from cob-
bler's weak chest. His submission is that he is of Mongolian extraction
and irresponsible for his actions. Not all there, in fact.
BLOOM:
(Barefoot, pigeonbreasted, in lascar's vest and trousers, apologetic toes
turned in, opens his tiny mole's eyes and looks about him dazedly, passing a
slow hand across his forehead. Then he Hitches his belt sailor fashion and
With a shrug of oriental obeisance salutes the court, pointing one thumb
Heavenward.) Him makee velly muchee fine night. (He begins to lilt simply)
Li li poo lil chile
Blingee pigfoot evly night
Payee two shilly . . .
(He is howled down.)
J. J. O'Molloy:
(hotly to the populace) This is a lonehand fight. By Hades, I will not have
any client of mine gagged and badgered in this fashion by a pack of curs
and laughing hyenas. The Mosaic code has superseded the law of the jungle.
I say it and I say it emphatically, without wishing for one moment to
defeat the ends of justice, accused was not accessory before the act and
prosecutrix has not been tampered with. The young person was treated by
defendant as if she were his very own daughter. (Bloom takes J. J.
O'Molloy's hand and raises it to his lips.) I shall call rebutting evidence to
prove up to the hilt that the hidden hand is again at its old game. When in
doubt persecute Bloom. My client, an innately bashful man, would be the
last man in the world to do anything ungentlemanly which injured modesty
could object to or cast a stone at a girl who took the wrong turning when
some dastard, responsible for her condition, had worked his own sweet will
on her. He wants to go straight. I regard him as the whitest man I know.
He is down on his luck at present owing to the mortgaging of his extensive
property at Agendath Netaim in faraway Asia Minor, slides of which will
now be shown. (To bloom) I suggest that you will do the handsome thing.
BLOOM:
A penny in the pound.
(The image of the lake of Kinnereth with blurred cattle cropping in
silver haze is projected on the wall. Moses Dlugacz, ferreteyed
albino, in blue dungarees, stands up in the gallery, holding in each
Hand an orange citron and a pork kidney.)
Dlugacz:
(hoarsely) Bleibtreustrasse, Berlin, W.13.
(J. J. O'Molloy steps on to a low plinth and holds the lapel of his
coat with solemnity. His face lengthens, grows pale and bearded,
with sunken eyes, the blotches of phthisis and hectic cheekbones of
John F. Taylor. He applies his handkerchief to his mouth and
scrutinises the galloping tide of Rosepink blood.)
J. J. O'Molloy:
(almost voicelessly) Excuse me. I am suffering from a severe chill, have
recently come from a sickbed. A few wellchosen words. (He assumes the
avine head, foxy moustache and proboscidal eloquence of Seymour Bushe.)
When the angel's book comes to be opened if aught that the pensive bo-
som has inaugurated of soultransfigured and of soultransfiguring deserves
to live I say accord the prisoner at the bar the sacred benefit of the
doubt.
(A paper with something written on it is handed into court.)
BLOOM:
(in court dress) Can give best references. Messrs Callan, Coleman.
Mr Wisdom Hely J. P. My old chief Joe Cuffe. Mr V. B. Dillon, ex lord mayor
of Dublin. I have moved in the charmed circle of the highest . . . Queens of
Dublin society. (Carelessly) I was just chatting this afternoon at the
viceregal lodge to my old pals, sir Robert and lady Ball, astronomer royal
at the levee. Sir Bob, I said . . .
MRS. YELVERTON BARRY:
(in lowcorsaged opal balldress and elbowlength ivory gloves, Wearing a
sabletrimmed Brickquilted dolman, a comb of brilliants and panache of
osprey in her hair) Arrest him, constable. He wrote me an anonymous
letter in prentice backhand when my husband was in the North Riding of
Tipperary on the Munster circuit, signed James Lovebirch. He said that he
had seen from the gods my peerless globes as I sat in a box of the Theatre
Royal at a command performance of La Cigale. I deeply inflamed him, he
said. He made improper overtures to me to misconduct myself at half past
four p.m. on the following Thursday, Dunsink time. He offered to send me
through the post a work of fiction by Monsieur Paul de Kock, entitled The
Girl with the Three Pairs of Stays.
MRS. BELLINGHAM:
(in cap and seal coney mantle, wrapped up to the nose, steps out of her
Brougham and scans through Tortoiseshell quizzing-glasses which she takes
from inside her huge opossum muff) Also to me. Yes, I believe it is the
same objectionable person. Because he closed my carriage door outside
sir Thornley Stoker's one sleety day during the cold snap of February
ninetythree when even the grid of the wastepipe and the ballstop in my
bath cistern were frozen. Subsequently he enclosed a bloom of edelweiss
culled on the heights, as he said, in my honour. I had it examined by a
botanical expert and elicited the information that it was a blossom of
the
homegrown potato plant purloined from a forcingcase of the model farm.
MRS. YELVERTON BARRY:
Shame on him!
(A crowd of sluts and ragamuffins surges forward)
The sluts and ragamuffins:
(screaming) Stop thief! Hurrah there, Bluebeard! Three cheers for Ikey
Mo!
SECOND WATCH:
(produces handcuffs) Here are the darbies.
MRS. BELLINGHAM:
He addressed me in several handwritings with fulsome compliments as
a Venus in furs and alleged profound pity for my frostbound coachman
Palmer while in the same breath he expressed himself as envious of his
earflaps and fleecy sheepskins and of his fortunate proximity to my
person, when standing behind my chair wearing my livery and the armorial
bearings of the Bellingham escutcheon garnished sable, a buck's head coup-
ed or. He lauded almost extravagantly my nether extremities, my swelling
calves in silk hose drawn up to the limit, and eulogised glowingly my
other hidden treasures in priceless lace which, he said, he could conjure
up. He urged me (stating that he felt it his mission in life to urge me)
to defile the marriage bed, to commit adultery at the earliest possible
opportunity.
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS:
(in amazon costume, hard hat, jackboots cockspurred, Vermilion waistcoat,
fawn Musketeer gauntlets with braided drums, long train held up and
hunting crop with which She strikes her welt constantly) Also me. Because
he saw me on the polo ground of the Phoenix park at the match All Ireland
versus the Rest of Ireland. My eyes, I know, shone divinely as I watched
Captain Slogger Dennehy of the Inniskillings win the final chukkar on his
darling cob Centaur. This plebeian Don Juan observed me from behind a
hackney car and sent me in double envelopes an obscene photograph, such
as are sold after dark on Paris boulevards, insulting to any lady. I have
it still. It represents a partially nude senorita, frail and lovely (his
wife, as he solemnly assured me, taken by him from nature), practising
illicit intercourse with a muscular torero, evidently a blackguard. He
urged me to do likewise, to misbehave, to sin with officers of the gar-
rison. He implored me to soil his letter in an unspeakable manner, to
chastise him as he richly deserves, to bestride and ride him, to give
him a most vicious horsewhipping.
MRS. BELLINGHAM:
Me too.
MRS. YELVERTON BARRY:
Me too.
(Several highly respectable Dublin ladies hold up improper letters
received from Bloom.)
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS:
(Stamps her jingling spurs in a sudden paroxysm of fury) I will, by the
God above me. I'll scourge the pigeonlivered cur as long as I can stand
over him. I'll flay him alive.
BLOOM:
(his eyes closing, quails expectantly) Here? (he squirms) Again! (he pants
cringing) I love the danger.
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS:
Very much so! I'll make it hot for you. I'll make you dance Jack Latten for
that.
MRS. BELLINGHAM:
Tan his breech well, the upstart! Write the stars and stripes on it!
MRS. YELVERTON BARRY:
Disgraceful! There's no excuse for him! A married man!
BLOOM:
All these people. I meant only the spanking idea. A warm tingling glow
without effusion. Refined birching to stimulate the circulation.
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS:
(laughs derisively) O, did you, my fine fellow? Well, by the living God,
you'll get the surprise of your life now, believe me, the most unmerciful
hiding a man ever bargained for. You have lashed the dormant tigress in
my nature into fury.
MRS. BELLINGHAM:
(shakes her muff and quizzing-glasses vindictively) Make him smart,
Hanna dear. Give him ginger. Thrash the mongrel within an inch of his
life. The cat-o'-nine-tails. Geld him. Vivisect him.
BLOOM:
(shuddering, shrinking, joins his hands: with hangdog mien) O cold! O
shivery! It was your ambrosial beauty. Forget, forgive. Kismet. Let me
off this once. (he offers the other cheek)
MRS. YELVERTON BARRY:
(severely) Don't do so on any account, Mrs Talboys! He should be soundly
trounced!
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS:
(unbuttoning her gauntlet violently) I'll do no such thing. Pigdog and
always was ever since he was pupped! To dare address me! I'll flog him
black and blue in the public streets. I'll dig my spurs in him up to the
rowel. He is a wellknown cuckold. (she swishes her huntingcrop savagely
in the air) Take down his trousers without loss of time. Come here, sir!
Quick! Ready?
BLOOM:
(trembling, beginning to obey) The weather has been so warm.
(Davy Stephens, ringletted, passes with a bevy of barefoot newsboys.)
DAVY STEPHENS:
Messenger of the Sacred Heart and Evening Telegraph with Saint Patrick's
Day supplement. Containing the new addresses of all the cuckolds in
Dublin.
(The very Reverend Canon O'Hanlon in cloth of gold cope elevates
and exposes a marble timepiece. Before him father Conroy and the
Reverend John Hughes S.J. bend low.)
The timepiece:
(Unportalling)
Cuckoo.
Cuckoo.
Cuckoo.
(The brass quoits of a bed are heard to jingle.)
THE QUOITS:
Jigjag. Jigajiga. Jigjag.
(A Panel of fog rolls back rapidly, revealing rapidly in the jurybox
the faces of martin Cunningham, foreman, Silkhatted, jack power,
Simon Dedalus, Tom Kernan, Ned Lambert, John Henry Menton Myles
Crawford, Lenehan, Paddy Leonard, Nosey Flynn, M'coy and the
featureless face of a Nameless One.)
THE NAMELESS ONE:
Bareback riding. Weight for age. Gob, he organised her.
THE JURORS:
(all their heads turned to his voice) Really?
THE NAMELESS ONE:
(snarls) Arse over tip. Hundred shillings to five.
THE JURORS:
(all their heads lowered in assent) Most of us thought as much.
FIRST WATCH:
He is a marked man. Another girl's plait cut. Wanted: Jack the Ripper.
A thousand pounds reward.
SECOND WATCH:
(awed, whispers) And in black. A mormon. Anarchist.
THE CRIER:
(loudly) Whereas Leopold Bloom of no fixed abode is a wellknown
dynamitard, forger, bigamist, bawd and cuckold and a public nuisance
to the citizens of Dublin and whereas at this commission of assizes
the most honourable . . .
(His Honour, Sir Frederick Falkiner, recorder of Dublin, in judicial
garb of grey stone rises from the bench, stonebearded. He bears in
his arms an umbrella sceptre. From his forehead arise starkly the
mosaic ramshorns.)
THE RECORDER:
I will put an end to this white slave traffic and rid Dublin of this odious
pest. Scandalous! (he dons The black cap) Let him be taken, Mr Subsheriff,
from the dock where he now stands and detained in custody in Mountjoy
prison during His Majesty's pleasure and there be hanged by the neck until
he is dead and therein fail not at your peril or may the Lord have mercy on
your soul. Remove him.
(A black skullcap descends upon his head. The subsheriff Long John Fanning
appears, smoking a pungent Henry Clay.)
LONG JOHN FANNING:
(scowls and calls with rich rolling utterance) Who'll hang Judas Iscariot?
(H. Rumbold, master barber, in a bloodcoloured jerkin and
tanner's apron, a rope coiled over his shoulder, mounts the block.
A life preserver and a nailstudded bludgeon are stuck in his belt.
He rubs grimly his grappling hands, knobbed with knuckledusters.)
Rumbold:
(to the recorder with sinister familiarity) Hanging Harry, your Majesty,
the Mersey terror. Five guineas a jugular. Neck or nothing.
(The bells of george's church toll slowly, loud dark iron.)
THE BELLS:
Heigho! Heigho!
BLOOM:
(desperately) Wait. Stop. Gulls. Good heart. I saw. Innocence. Girl in
the monkeyhouse. Zoo. Lewd chimpanzee. (breathlessly) Pelvic basin. Her
artless blush unmanned me. (overcome with emotion) I left the precincts.
(he turns to a figure in the crowd, appealing) Hynes, may I speak to you?
You know me. That three shillings you can keep. If you want a little
more . . .
Hynes:
(coldly) You are a perfect stranger.
SECOND WATCH:
(points to the corner) The bomb is here.
FIRST WATCH:
Infernal machine with a time fuse.
BLOOM:
No, no. Pig's feet. I was at a funeral.
FIRST WATCH:
(draws his truncheon) Liar!
(The beagle lifts his snout, showing the grey scorbutic face of
Paddy Dignam. He has Gnawed all. He exhales a putrid carcasefed
breath. He grows to human size and shape. His dachshund coat
becomes a brown mortuary habit. His green eye flashes bloodshot.
Half of one ear, all the nose and both thumbs are ghouleaten.)
PADDY DIGNAM:
(in a hollow voice) It is true. It was my funeral. Doctor Finucane
pronounced life extinct when I succumbed to the disease from natural
causes.
(He lifts his mutilated ashen face moonwards and bays
lugubriously.)
BLOOM:
(in triumph) You hear?
PADDY DIGNAM:
Bloom, I am Paddy Dignam's spirit. List, list, O list!
BLOOM:
The voice is the voice of Esau.
SECOND WATCH:
(blesses himself) How is that possible?
FIRST WATCH:
It is not in the penny catechism.
PADDY DIGNAM:
By metempsychosis. Spooks.
A VOICE:
O rocks.
PADDY DIGNAM:
(earnestly) Once I was in the employ of Mr J. H. Menton, solicitor,
commissioner for oaths and affidavits, of 27 Bachelor's Walk. Now I am
defunct, the wall of the heart hypertrophied. Hard lines. The poor wife
was awfully cut up. How is she bearing it? Keep her off that bottle of
sherry. (he looks round him) A lamp. I must satisfy an animal need. That
buttermilk didn't agree with me.
(The portly figure of John O'Connell, caretaker, stands forth,
holding a bunch of keys tied with crape. Beside him stands Father
Coffey, chaplain, toadbellied, wrynecked, in a surplice and
bandanna nightcap, holding sleepily a staff of twisted poppies.)
FATHER COFFEY:
(yawns, then chants with a hoarse croak) Namine. Jacobs. Vobiscuits.
Amen.
JOHN O'CONNELL:
(foghorns stormily through his megaphone) Dignam, Patrick T, deceased.
PADDY DIGNAM:
(with pricked up ears, winces) Overtones. (he wriggles forward and
places an ear to the ground) My master's voice!
JOHN O'CONNELL:
Burial docket letter number U. P. eightyfive thousand. Field seventeen.
House of Keys. Plot, one hundred and one.
(Paddy Dignam listens with visible effort, thinking, his tail
stiffpointed, his ears cocked.)
PADDY DIGNAM:
Pray for the repose of his soul.
(He worms down through a coalhole, his brown habit trailing its
tether over rattling pebbles. After him toddles an obese grandfather
rat on fungus turtle paws under a grey carapace. Dignam's voice,
muffled, is heard baying under ground: Dignam's dead and gone
below. Tom Rochford, robinredbreasted, in cap and breeches,
jumps from his twocolumned machine.)
TOM ROCHFORD:
(a hand to his breastbone, bows) Reuben J. A Florin I find him. (he fixes
the manhole with a resolute stare) My turn now on. Follow me up to Car-
low.
(He executes a daredevil salmon leap in the air and is engulfed
in the coalhole. Two discs on the columns wobble, eyes of nought.
All recedes. Bloom plodges forward again through the sump. Kisses
chirp amid the rifts of fog. A piano sounds. He stands before a
lighted house, listening. The kisses, winging from their bowers
fly about him, twittering, warbling, cooing.)
THE KISSES:
(warbling) Leo! (twittering) Icky licky micky sticky for Leo! (cooing)
Coo coocoo! Yummyyum, Womwom! (Warbling) Big comebig! Pirouette!
Leopopold! (Twittering) Leeolee! (Warbling) O Leo!
(They rustle, flutter upon his garments, alight, bright giddy
flecks, silvery sequins.)
BLOOM:
A man's touch. Sad music. Church music. Perhaps here.
(Zoe higgins, a young whore in a sapphire slip, closed with three
bronze buckles, a slim black velvet fillet round her throat, nods,
trips down the steps and accosts him.)
ZOE:
Are you looking for someone? He's inside with his friend.
BLOOM:
Is this Mrs Mack's?
ZOE:
No, eightyone. Mrs Cohen's. You might go farther and fare worse. Mother
Slipperslapper. (familiarly) She's on the job herself tonight with the vet
her tipster that gives her all the winners and pays for her son in Oxford.
Working overtime but her luck's turned today. (suspiciously) You're not
his father, are you?
BLOOM:
Not I!
ZOE:
You both in black. Has little mousey any tickles tonight?
(His skin, alert, feels her fingertips approach. A Hand glides over
his left thigh.)
ZOE:
How's the nuts?
BLOOM:
Off side. Curiously they are on the right. Heavier, I suppose. One in a
million my tailor, Mesias, says.
ZOE:
(in sudden alarm) You've a hard chancre.
BLOOM:
Not likely.
ZOE:
I feel it.
(Her hand slides into his left trouser pocket and brings out a hard
black shrivelled potato. She regards it and Bloom with dumb moist
lips.)
BLOOM:
A talisman. Heirloom.
ZOE:
For Zoe? For keeps? For being so nice, eh?
(She puts the potato greedily into a pocket then links his arm,
cuddling him with supple warmth. He smiles uneasily. Slowly, note
by note, oriental music is played. He gazes in the tawny crystal of
her eyes, ringed with kohol. His smile softens.)
ZOE:
You'll know me the next time.
BLOOM:
(forlornly) I never loved a dear gazelle but it was sure to . . .
(Gazelles are leaping, feeding on the mountains. Near are lakes.
Round their shores file shadows black of cedargroves. Aroma rises,
a strong hairgrowth of resin. It burns, the orient, a sky of sapphire,
cleft by the bronze flight of eagles. Under it lies the womancity
nude, white, still, cool, in luxury. A Fountain murmurs among damask
roses. Mammoth roses murmur of scarlet winegrapes. A wine of shame,
lust, blood exudes, strangely murmuring.)
ZOE:
(Murmuring singsong with the music, her odalisk lips lusciously smeared
with salve of swinefat and rosewater) Schorach ani wenowach, benoith
hierushaloim.
BLOOM:
(fascinated) I thought you were of good stock by your accent.
ZOE:
And you know what thought did?
(she bites his ear gently with little goldstopped teeth, sending on
him a cloying breath of stale garlic. The roses draw apart, disclose
a sepulchre of the gold of kings and their mouldering bones.)
BLOOM:
(draws back, mechanically caressing her right bub with a flat
awkward hand) Are you a Dublin girl?
ZOE:
(catches a stray hair deftly and twists it to her coil) No bloody fear.
I'm English. Have you a swaggerroot?
BLOOM:
(as before) Rarely smoke, dear. Cigar now and then. Childish device.
(lewdly) The mouth can be better engaged than with a cylinder of
rank weed.
ZOE:
Go on. Make a stump speech out of it.
BLOOM:
(in workman's corduroy overalls, black gansy with red floating tie and
apache cap) Mankind is incorrigible. Sir Walter Ralegh brought from the
new world that potato and that weed, the one a killer of pestilence by
absorption, the other a poisoner of the ear, eye, heart, memory, will
understanding, all. That is to say he brought the poison a hundred years
before another person whose name I forget brought the food. Suicide.
Lies. All our habits. Why, look at our public life!
(Midnight chimes from distant steeples.)
THE CHIMES:
Turn again, Leopold! Lord mayor of Dublin!
BLOOM:
(in alderman's gown and chain) Electors of Arran Quay, Inns Quay,
Rotunda, Mountjoy and North Dock, better run a tramline, I say, from
the cattlemarket to the river. That's the music of the future. That's
my programme. Cui bono? But our bucaneering Vanderdeckens in their
phantom ship of finance . . .
AN ELECTOR:
Three times three for our future chief magistrate!
(The aurora borealis of the torchlight procession leaps.)
THE TORCHBEARERS:
Hooray!
(Several wellknown burgesses, city magnates and freemen of the
city shake hands with Bloom And congratulate him. Timothy har-
rington, late thrice lord mayor of dublin, imposing in mayoral
scarlet, gold Chain and white silk tie, Confers with councillor
lorcan sherlock, locum tenens. They nod vigorously in Agreement.)
LATE LORD MAYOR HARRINGTON:
(in scarlet robe with mace, gold mayoral chain and large White silk scarf)
That alderman sir Leo Bloom's speech be printed at the expense of the
ratepayers. That the house in which he was born be ornamented with a
commemorative tablet and that the thoroughfare hitherto known as Cow
Parlour off Cork street be henceforth designated Boulevard Bloom.
Councillor Lorcan Sherlock:
Carried unanimously.
BLOOM:
(impassionedly) These flying Dutchmen or lying Dutchmen as they recline
in their upholstered poop, casting dice, what reck they? Machines is their
cry, their chimera, their panacea. Laboursaving apparatuses, supplanters,
bugbears, manufactured monsters for mutual murder, hideous hobgoblins
produced by a horde of capitalistic lusts upon our prostituted labour.
The poor man starves while they are grassing their royal mountain stags
or shooting peasants and phartridges in their purblind pomp of pelf and
power. But their reign is rover for rever and ever and ev . . .
(Prolonged applause. Venetian masts, maypoles and festal arches
spring up. A streamer bearing the legends Cead Mile Failte and
Mah Ttob Melek Israel spans the street. All the windows are
thronged with sightseers, chiefly ladies. Along the route the
regiments of the royal Dublin fusiliers, the king's own Scottish
borderers, the Cameron Highlanders and the Welsh Fusiliers
standing to attention, keep back the crowd. Boys from high school
are perched on the lampposts, Telegraph poles, windowsills, cor-
nices, gutters, chimneypots, railings, rainspouts, whistling and
cheering the pillar of the cloud appears. A Fife and drum band is
heard in the distance playing the kol nidre. The beaters approach
with Imperial eagles hoisted, trailing banners and waving oriental
palms. The chryselephantine papal standard rises high, surrounded
by pennons of the civic flag. The van of the procession appears
headed by John Howard Parnell, city marshal, in a chessboard ta-
bard, the athlone poursuivant and Ulster king of arms. They are
followed by the right honourable joseph Hutchinson, lord mayor
of Dublin, his lordship the lord mayor of Cork, their worships
the mayors of Limerick, Galway, Sligo and Waterford, twentyeight
Irish representative peers, sirdars, grandees and maharajahs
bearing the cloth of estate, the Dublin metropolitan fire bri-
gade, the chapter of the saints of finance in their plutocratic
order of precedence, the Bishop of Down and Connor, his eminence
Michael Cardinal Logue, Archbishop of Armagh, Primate of all Ire-
land, his Grace, the most reverend Dr William Alexander, Archbishop
of Armagh, Primate of all Ireland, the Chief Rabbi, the Presbyter-
ian moderator, the heads of the Baptist, Anabaptist, Methodist and
Moravian Chapels and the honorary secretary of the Society of Friends.
After them march the guilds and trades and trainbands with flying
colours: Coopers, bird fanciers, millwrights, newspaper canvassers,
law scriveners, masseurs, vintners, trussmakers, chimneysweeps,
lard refiners, tabinet and poplin weavers, farriers, italian ware-
housemen, church decorators, bootjack manufacturers, undertakers,
silk mercers, lapidaries, salesmasters, corkcutters, assessors of
fire losses, dyers and cleaners, export bottlers, fellmongers, tic-
ketwriters, heraldic seal engravers, horse repository hands, bull-
ion brokers, cricket and archery outfitters, riddlemakers, egg and
potato factors, hosiers and glovers, plumbing contractors. After
them march gentlemen of the bedchamber, black rod, deputy garter,
gold stick, the master of horse, The Lord Great Chamberlain, the
Earl Marshal, the High Constable carrying the sword of state, Saint
Stephen's iron crown, the chalice and bible. Four buglers on foot
blow a sennet. Beefeaters reply, winding Clarions of welcome. Under
an arch of triumph Bloom appears, bareheaded, in a crimson velvet
mantle trimmed with Ermine, bearing saint edward's staff the orb
and sceptre with the dove, the curtana. He is seated on a milkwhite
Horse with long flowing crimson tail, richly caparisoned, with gold-
en headstall. Wild excitement. The ladies from their balconies throw
down rosepetals. The air is perfumed with essences. The men cheer.
Bloom's boys run amid the bystanders with branches of hawthorn and
wrenbushes.)
BLOOM'S BOYS:
The wren, the wren,
The king of all birds,
Saint Stephen's his day
Was caught in the furze.
A Blacksmith:
(murmurs) For the honour of God! And is that Bloom? He scarcely looks
thirtyone.
A Pavior and flagger:
That's the famous Bloom now, the world's greatest reformer. Hats off!
(All uncover their heads. Women whisper eagerly.)
A Millionairess:
(richly) Isn't he simply wonderful?
A Noblewoman:
(nobly) All that man has seen!
A Feminist:
(masculinely) And done!
A Bellhanger:
A classic face! He has the forehead of a thinker.
(Bloom's weather. A sunburst appears in the northwest.)
The Bishop of Down and Connor:
I here present your undoubted emperor- president and king-chairman, the
most serene and potent and very puissant ruler of this realm. God save
Leopold the First!
ALL:
God save Leopold the First!
BLOOM:
(in dalmatic and purple mantle, to the bishop of Down and Connor, with
dignity) Thanks, somewhat eminent sir.
William, Archbishop of Armagh:
(in purple stock and shovel hat) Will you to your power cause law and
mercy to be executed in all your judgments in Ireland and territories
thereunto belonging?
BLOOM:
(placing his right hand on his testicles, swears) So may the Creator deal
with me. All this I promise to do.
Michael, Archbishop of Armagh:
(pours a cruse of hairoil over Bloom's head) Gaudium magnum annuntio
vobis. Habemus Carneficem. Leopold, Patrick, Andrew, David, George, be
thou anointed!
(Bloom assumes a mantle of cloth of gold and puts on a ruby ring.
He ascends and stands on the stone of destiny. The Representative
peers put on at the same time their twentyeight crowns. Joybells
ring in Christ Church, Saint Patrick's, George's and Gay Malahide.
Mirus bazaar fireworks go up from all sides with symbolical
phallopyrotechnic designs. The Peers do homage, one by one,
approaching and genuflecting.)
The peers:
I do become your liege man of life and limb to earthly worship.
(Bloom holds up his right hand on which sparkles the koh-i-noor
diamond. His palfrey Neighs. Immediate silence. Wireless
intercontinental and interplanetary transmitters are set for
reception of Message.)
BLOOM:
My subjects! We hereby nominate our faithful charger Copula Felix
hereditary Grand Vizier and announce that we have this day repudiated
our former spouse and have bestowed our royal hand upon the princess
Selene, the splendour of night.
(The former morganatic spouse of Bloom is hastily removed in the
black maria. The Princess Selene, in moonblue Robes, a silver
crescent on her head, descends from a sedan chair, borne by two
giants. An outburst of cheering.)
JOHN HOWARD PARNELL:
(raises the royal standard) Illustrious Bloom! Successor to my famous
brother!
BLOOM:
(embraces John Howard Parnell) We thank you from our heart, John, for
this right royal welcome to green Erin, the promised land of our common
ancestors.
(The freedom of the city is presented to him embodied in a charter.
The keys of dublin, Crossed on a crimson Cushion, are given to him.
He shows all that he is wearing green socks.)
TOM KERNAN:
You deserve it, your honour.
BLOOM:
On this day twenty years ago we overcame the hereditary enemy at
Ladysmith. Our howitzers and camel swivel guns played on his lines with
telling effect. Half a league onward! They charge! All is lost now! Do
we yield? No! We drive them headlong! Lo! We charge! Deploying to the
left our light horse swept across the heights of Plevna and, uttering
their warcry Bonafide sabaoth, sabred the Saracen gunners to a man.
The Chapel of Freeman Typesetters:
Hear! Hear!
John Wyse Nolan:
There's the man that got away James Stephens.
A Bluecoat schoolboy:
Bravo!
An old resident:
You're a credit to your country, sir, that's what you are.
An applewoman:
He's a man like Ireland wants.
BLOOM:
My beloved subjects, a new era is about to dawn. I, Bloom, tell you verily it
is even now at hand. Yea, on the word of a Bloom, ye shall ere long enter
into the golden city which is to be, the new Bloomusalem in the Nova Hibernia
of the future.
(Thirtytwo workmen, wearing rosettes, from all the counties of
Ireland, under the guidance of Derwan the builder, construct the
new Bloomusalem. It is a colossal edifice with crystal roof, built
in the shape of a huge pork kidney, containing forty thousand rooms.
In the course of its extension several buildings and monuments are
demolished. Government offices are temporarily transferred to rail-
way sheds. Numerous houses are razed to the ground. The inhabitants
are lodged in barrels and boxes, all marked in red with the letters:
L. B. Several paupers fall from a ladder. A part of the walls of
Dublin, crowded with loyal sightseers, collapses.)
The sightseers:
(dying) Morituri te salutant.(they die)
(A Man in a brown macintosh springs up through a trapdoor. He
points an elongated finger at Bloom.)
The man in the macintosh:
Don't you believe a word he says. That man is Leopold M'Intosh, the
notorious fireraiser. His real name is Higgins.
BLOOM:
Shoot him! Dog of a christian! So much for M'Intosh!
(A cannonshot. The man in the macintosh disappears. Bloom with
his sceptre strikes down poppies. The instantaneous deaths of
many powerful enemies, graziers, members of Parliament, members
of standing committees, are reported. Bloom's bodyguard distri-
bute Maundy money, commemoration medals, loaves and fishes,
temperance badges, expensive Henry Clay cigars, free cowbones for
soup, rubber preservatives in sealed envelopes tied with gold
thread, butter scotch, pineapple rock, billets doux in the form
of cocked hats, readymade suits, porringers of toad in the hole,
bottles of jeyes' fluid, purchase stamps, 40 days' indulgences,
spurious coins, dairyfed pork sausages, theatre passes, season
tickets available for all tramlines, coupons of the royal and
privileged Hungarian lottery, penny dinner counters, cheap re-
prints of the world's twelve worst books: froggy and fritz (pol-
itic), care of the baby (infantilic), 50 meals for 7/6 (culinic),
Was Jesus a Sun Myth? (historic), Expel That Pain (medic), In-
fant's Compendium of the Universe (cosmic), Let's All Chortle
(hilaric), Canvasser's Vade Mecum (journalic), Loveletters of
Mother Assistant (erotic), Who's Who in Space (astric), Songs
that Reached Our Heart (melodic), Pennywise's Way to Wealth (par-
simonic). A general rush and scramble. Women press forward to
touch the hem of Bloom's robe. The lady Gwendolen Dubedat bursts
through the throng, leaps on his horse and kisses him on both
cheeks amid great acclamation. A magnesium flashlight photograph
is taken. Babes and sucklings are held up.)
The women:
Little father! Little father!
The babes and sucklings:
Clap clap hands till Poldy comes home,
Cakes in his pocket for Leo alone.
(Bloom, bending down, pokes Baby Boardman gently in the sto-
mach.)
Baby boardman:
(Hiccups, curdled milk flowing from his mouth) Hajajaja.
BLOOM:
(shaking hands with a blind stripling) My more than Brother! (placing
his arms round the shoulders of an old couple) Dear old friends! (he
plays pussy fourcorners with ragged boys and girls) Peep! Bopeep! (he
wheels twins in a perambulator) Ticktacktwo wouldyousetashoe? (he per-
forms juggler's tricks, draws red, orange, yellow, green, blue, Indigo
and violet silk handkerchiefs from his mouth) Roygbiv. 32 feet per se-
cond. (he consoles a widow) Absence makes the heart grow younger. (he
dances the highland fling with grotesque antics) Leg it, ye devils! (he
kisses the bedsores of a palsied veteran) Honourable wounds! (he trips
up a fit policeman) U. P: up. U. P: up. (he whispers in the ear of a
blushing waitress and laughs kindly) Ah, naughty, naughty! (he eats a
raw turnip offered him by Maurice Butterly, farmer) Fine! Splendid! (he
refuses to accept three shillings offered him by Joseph Hynes, journal-
ist) My dear fellow, not at all! (he gives his coat to a beggar) Please
accept. (he takes part in a stomach race with elderly male and Female
cripples) Come on, boys! Wriggle it, girls!
The citizen:
(choked with emotion, brushes aside a tear in his emerald muffler) May the
good God bless him!
(The rams' horns sound for silence. The standard of zion is hoist-
ed.)
BLOOM:
(uncloaks impressively, revealing obesity, unrolls a paper and reads
solemnly) Aleph Beth Ghimel Daleth Hagadah Tephilim Kosher Yom Kippur
Hanukah Roschaschana Beni Brith Bar Mitzvah Mazzoth Askenazim Meshuggah
Talith.
(An official translation is read by jimmy henry, assistant town
clerk.)
Jimmy HENRY:
The Court of Conscience is now open. His Most Catholic Majesty will now
administer open air justice. Free medical and legal advice, solution of
doubles and other problems. All cordially invited. Given at this our loyal
city of Dublin in the year I of the Paradisiacal Era.
PADDY LEONARD:
What am I to do about my rates and taxes?
BLOOM:
Pay them, my friend.
PADDY LEONARD:
Thank you.
NOSEY FLYNN:
Can I raise a mortgage on my fire insurance?
BLOOM:
(obdurately) Sirs, take notice that by the law of torts you are bound over
in your own recognisances for six months in the sum of five pounds.
J. J. O'Molloy:
a Daniel did I say? Nay! A Peter O'Brien!
NOSEY FLYNN:
Where do I draw the five pounds?
Pisser Burke:
For bladder trouble?
BLOOM:
Acid. Nit. Hydrochlor. Dil., 20 minims
Tinct. Nux vom., 5 minims
Extr. Taraxel. Iiq., 30 minims.
Aq. Dis. Ter in die.
CHRIS CALLINAN:
What is the parallax of the subsolar ecliptic of Aldebaran?
BLOOM:
Pleased to hear from you, Chris. K. II.
Joe Hynes: Why aren't you in uniform?
BLOOM:
When my progenitor of sainted memory wore the uniform of the Austrian
despot in a dank prison where was yours?
BEN DOLLARD:
Pansies?
BLOOM:
Embellish (beautify) suburban gardens.
BEN DOLLARD:
When twins arrive?
BLOOM:
Father (pater, dad) starts thinking.
LARRY O'ROURKE
An eightday licence for my new premises. You remember me, sir Leo, when
you were in number seven. I'm sending around a dozen of stout for the
missus.
BLOOM:
(coldly) You have the advantage of me. Lady Bloom accepts no presents.
Crofton:
This is indeed a festivity.
BLOOM:
(solemnly) You call it a festivity. I call it a sacrament.
Alexander Keyes:
When will we have our own house of keys?
BLOOM:
I stand for the reform of municipal morals and the plain ten
commandments. New worlds for old. Union of all, jew, moslem and gentile.
Three acres and a cow for all children of nature. Saloon motor hearses.
Compulsory manual labour for all. All parks open to the public day and
night. Electric dishscrubbers. Tuberculosis, lunacy, war and mendicancy
must now cease. General amnesty, weekly carnival with masked licence,
bonuses for all, esperanto the universal language with universal broth-
erhood. No more patriotism of barspongers and dropsical impostors. Free
money, free rent, free love and a free lay church in a free lay state.
O'Madden burke:
Free fox in a free henroost.
Davy Byrne:
(yawning) Iiiiiiiiiaaaaaaach!
BLOOM:
Mixed races and mixed marriage.
LENEHAN:
What about mixed bathing?
(Bloom explains to those near him his schemes for social regener-
ation. All agree with him. The keeper of the kildare Street mu-
seum appears, dragging a lorry on which are the shaking statues
of several naked goddesses, Venus Callipyge, Venus Pandemos, Venus
Metempsychosis, and plaster figures, also naked, representing
the new nine muses, Commerce, Operatic music, Amor, Publicity,
Manufacture, Liberty of speech, Plural voting, Gastronomy,
Private hygiene, Seaside concert entertainments, Painless
obstetrics and Astronomy for the People.)
Father Farley:
He is an episcopalian, an agnostic, an anythingarian seeking to overthrow
our holy faith.
Mrs Riordan:
(tears up her will) I'm disappointed in you! You bad man!
MOTHER GROGAN:
(removes her boot to throw it at Bloom) You beast! You abominable per-
son!
NOSEY FLYNN:
Give us a tune, Bloom. One of the old sweet songs.
BLOOM:
(with rollicking humour)
I vowed that I never would leave her,
She turned out a cruel deceiver.
With my tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom.
Hoppy Holohan:
Good old Bloom! There's nobody like him after all.
PADDY LEONARD:
Stage Irishman!
BLOOM:
What railway opera is like a tramline in Gibraltar? The Rows of Casteele.
(Laughter.)
LENEHAN:
Plagiarist! Down with Bloom!
The veiled sibyl:
(enthusiastically) I'm a Bloomite and I glory in it. I believe in him in spite
of all. I'd give my life for him, the funniest man on earth.
BLOOM:
(winks at the bystanders) I bet she's a bonny lassie.
Theodore Purefoy:
(in fishingcap and oilskin jacket) He employs a mechanical device to frustrate
the sacred ends of nature.
The veiled sibyl:
(stabs herself) My hero god! (she dies)
(Many most attractive and enthusiastic women also commit suicide
by stabbing, drowning, drinking prussic acid, aconite, arsenic,
opening their veins, refusing food, casting themselves under steam-
rollers, from the top of nelson's pillar, into the great vat of
Guinness's brewery, asphyxiating themselves by placing their heads
in gasovens, hanging themselves in stylish garters, leaping from
windows of different storeys.)
ALEXANDER J. DOWIE:
(violently) Fellowchristians and antiBloomites, the man called Bloom is
from the roots of hell, a disgrace to christian men. A fiendish libertine
from his earliest years this stinking goat of Mendes gave precocious signs
of infantile debauchery, recalling the cities of the plain, with a disso-
lute granddam. This vile hypocrite, bronzed with infamy, is the white bull
mentioned in the Apocalypse. A worshipper of the scarlet woman, intrigue
is the very breath of his nostrils. The stake faggots and the caldron of
boiling oil are for him. Caliban!
The mob:
Lynch him! Roast him! He's as bad as Parnell was. Mr Fox!
(Mother Grogan throws her boot at Bloom. Several shopkeepers
from upper and lower Dorset street throw objects of little or
no commercial value, hambones, condensed milk tins, unsaleable
cabbage, stale bread, sheep's tails, odd pieces of fat.)
BLOOM:
(excitedly) This is midsummer madness, some ghastly joke again. By hea-
ven, I am guiltless as the unsunned snow! It was my brother Henry. He
is my double. He lives in number 2 Dolphin's Barn. Slander, the viper,
has wrongfully accused me. Fellowcountrymen, sgeul i mbarr bata coisde
gan capall. I call on my old friend, Dr Malachi Mulligan, sex specialist,
to give medical testimony on my behalf.
Dr Mulligan:
(in motor jerkin, green motorgoggles on his brow) Dr Bloom is bisexually
abnormal. He has recently escaped from Dr Eustace's private asylum for
demented gentlemen. Born out of bedlock hereditary epilepsy is present,
the consequence of unbridled lust. Traces of elephantiasis have been dis-
covered among his ascendants. There are marked symptoms of chronic ex-
hibitionism. Ambidexterity is also latent. He is prematurely bald from
selfabuse, perversely idealistic in consequence, a reformed rake, and has
metal teeth. In consequence of a family complex he has temporarily lost
his memory and I believe him to be more sinned against than sinning. I
have made a pervaginal examination and, after application of the acid
test to 5427 anal, axillary, pectoral and pubic hairs, I declare him to
be virgo intacta.
(Bloom holds his high grade hat over his genital organs.)
Dr Madden:
Hypsospadia is also marked. In the interest of coming generations I suggest
that the parts affected should be preserved in spirits of wine in the national
teratological museum.
Dr Crotthers:
I have examined the patient's urine. It is albuminoid. Salivation is
insufficient, the patellar reflex intermittent.
DR PUNCH COSTELLO:
The fetor judaicus is most perceptible.
Dr Dixon:
(reads a bill of health) Professor Bloom is a finished example of the new
womanly man. His moral nature is simple and lovable. Many have found
him a dear man, a dear person. He is a rather quaint fellow on the whole,
coy though not feebleminded in the medical sense. He has written a really
beautiful letter, a poem in itself, to the court missionary of the Reformed
Priests' Protection Society which clears up everything. He is practically a
total abstainer and I can affirm that he sleeps on a straw litter and eats
the most Spartan food, cold dried grocer's peas. He wears a hairshirt of
pure Irish manufacture winter and summer and scourges himself every Sat-
urday. He was, I understand, at one time a firstclass misdemeanant in
Glencree reformatory. Another report states that he was a very posthumous
child. I appeal for clemency in the name of the most sacred word our vocal
organs have ever been called upon to speak. He is about to have a baby.
(General commotion and compassion. Women faint. A wealthy
American makes a street collection for Bloom. Gold and silver
coins, blank cheques, banknotes, jewels, treasury bonds, maturing
bills of exchange, I.O.U'S, wedding rings, watchchains, lockets,
necklaces and bracelets are rapidly collected.)
BLOOM:
O, I so want to be a mother.
Mrs Thornton:
(in nursetender's gown) Embrace me tight, dear. You'll be soon over it.
Tight, dear.
(Bloom embraces her tightly and bears eight male yellow and white
children. They appear on a redcarpeted staircase adorned with
expensive plants. All the octuplets are handsome, with valuable
metallic faces, wellmade, respectably dressed and wellconducted,
speaking five modern languages fluently and interested in various
arts and sciences. Each has his name printed in legible letters
on his shirtfront: Nasodoro, Goldfinger, Chrysostomos, Maindoree,
Silversmile, Silberselber, Vifargent, Panargyros. They are immed-
iately appointed to positions of high public trust in several dif-
ferent countries as managing directors of banks, traffic managers
of railways, chairmen of limited liability companies, vicechairmen
of hotel syndicates.)
A VOICE:
Bloom, are you the Messiah ben Joseph or ben David?
BLOOM:
(darkly) You have said it.
Brother Buzz:
Then perform a miracle like Father Charles.
BANTAM LYONS:
Prophesy who will win the Saint Leger.
(Bloom walks on a net, covers his left eye with his left ear, pass-
es through several walls, climbs Nelson's pillar, hangs from the
top ledge by his eyelids, eats twelve dozen oysters (shells inclu-
ded), heals several sufferers from King's evil, contracts his face
so as to resemble many historical personages, Lord Beaconsfield,
Lord Byron, Wat Tyler, Moses of Egypt, Moses Maimonides, Moses
Mendelssohn, Henry Irving, Rip Van Winkle, Kossuth, Jean Jacques
Rousseau, Baron Leopold Rothschild, Robinson Crusoe, Sherlock
Holmes, Pasteur, turns each foot simultaneously in different dir-
ections, bids the tide turn back, eclipses the sun by extending his
little finger.)
Brini, Papal Nuncio:
(in papal zouave's uniform, steel cuirasses as breastplate, Armplates,
thighplates, legplates, Large profane moustaches and brown paper mitre)
Leopoldi autem Generatio. Moses begat Noah and Noah begat Eunuch and
Eunuch begat O'Halloran and O'Halloran begat Guggenheim and Guggenheim
begat Agendath and Agendath begat Netaim and Netaim begat Le Hirsch
and Le Hirsch begat Jesurum and Jesurum begat MacKay and MacKay begat
Ostrolopsky and Ostrolopsky begat Smerdoz and Smerdoz begat Weiss
and Weiss begat Schwarz and Schwarz begat Adrianopoli and Adrianopoli
begat Aranjuez and Aranjuez begat Lewy Lawson and Lewy Lawson begat
Ichabudonosor and Ichabudonosor begat O'Donnell Magnus and O'Donnell
Magnus begat Christbaum and Christbaum begat ben Maimun and ben Mai-
mun begat Dusty Rhodes and Dusty Rhodes begat Benamor and Benamor
begat Jones-Smith and Jones-Smith begat Savorgnanovich and Savor-
gnanovich begat Jasperstone and Jasperstone begat Vingtetunieme and
Vingtetunieme begat Szombathely and Szombathely begat Virag and
Virag begat Bloom et vocabitur nomen eius emmanuel.
A Deadhand:
(writes on the wall) Bloom is a cod.
Crab:
(in bushranger's kit) What did you do in the cattlecreep behind Kilbar-
rack?
A Female infant:
(shakes a rattle) And under Ballybough bridge?
A Hollybush:
And in the devil's glen?
BLOOM:
(blushes furiously all over from frons to nates, three tears filling from
his left eye) Spare my past.
The Irish evicted tenants:
(in bodycoats, kneebreeches, with donnybrook fair shillelaghs) Sjambok
him!
(Bloom with asses' ears seats himself in the pillory with crossed
arms, his feet protruding. He whistles Don Giovanni, a cenar teco.
Artane orphans, joining hands, caper round him. Girls of the prison
gate mission, joining hands, caper round in the opposite direction.)
The artane orphans:
You hig, you hog, you dirty dog!
You think the ladies love you!
The prison gate girls:
If you see Kay
Tell him he may
See you in tea
Tell him from me.
Hornblower:
(in ephod and huntingcap, announces) And he shall carry the sins of the
people to Azazel, the spirit which is in the wilderness, and to Lilith, the
nighthag. And they shall stone him and defile him, yea, all from Agendath
Netaim and from Mizraim, the land of Ham.
(All the people cast soft pantomime stones at Bloom. Many bonafide
travellers and ownerless dogs come near him and defile him. Masti-
ansky and citron approach in gaberdines, wearing long Earlocks.
They wag their beards at Bloom.)
MASTIANSKY AND CITRON:
Belial! Laemlein of Istria, the false Messiah! Abulafia! Recant!
(George R Mesias, Bloom's tailor, appears, a tailor's goose under
his arm, presenting a Bill)
Mesias:
To alteration one pair trousers eleven shillings.
BLOOM:
(rubs his hands cheerfully) Just like old times. Poor Bloom!
(Reuben J Dodd, blackbearded Iscariot, bad shepherd, bearing on
his shoulders the drowned corpse of his son, approaches the
pillory.)
Reuben J:
(whispers hoarsely) The squeak is out. A split is gone for the flatties. Nip
the first rattler.
The Fire Brigade:
Pflaap!
Brother Buzz:
(Invests Bloom in a yellow habit with embroidery of painted flames and
high pointed hat. He places a bag of gunpowder round his neck and hands
him over to the civil power, saying) Forgive him his trespasses.
(Lieutenant Myers of the Dublin Fire Brigade by general request
sets fire to Bloom. Lamentations.)
The citizen:
Thank heaven!
BLOOM:
(in a seamless garment marked I. H. S. Stands upright amid phoenix
flames) Weep not for me, O daughters of Erin. (he exhibits to Dublin
reporters traces of burning.)
(The daughters of Erin, in black garments, with large prayerbooks
and long lighted candles in their hands, kneel down and pray.)
The Daughters of Erin:
Kidney of Bloom, pray for us
Flower of the Bath, pray for us
Mentor of Menton, pray for us
Canvasser for the Freeman, pray for us
Charitable Mason, pray for us
Wandering Soap, pray for us
Sweets of Sin, pray for us
Music without Words, pray for us
Reprover of the Citizen, pray for us
Friend of all Frillies, pray for us
Midwife Most Merciful, pray for us
Potato Preservative against Plague and Pestilence, pray for us.
(A Choir of six hundred voices, conducted by Vincent O'brien,
sings the chorus from Handel's Messiah alleluia for the Lord God
Omnipotent reigneth, accompanied on the organ by Joseph Glynn.
Bloom becomes mute, shrunken, carbonised.)
ZOE:
Talk away till you're black in the face.
BLOOM:
(in caubeen with clay pipe stuck in the band, dusty brogues, an emigrant's
red handkerchief bundle in his Hand, leading a black bogoak pig by a sugaun,
with a smile in his eye) Let me be going now, woman of the house, for by all
the goats in Connemara I'm after having the father and mother of a bating.
(with a tear in his eye) All insanity. Patriotism, sorrow for the dead, mu-
sic, future of the race. To be or not to be. Life's dream is o'er. End it
peacefully. They can live on. (he gazes far away mournfully) I am ruined. A
few pastilles of aconite. The blinds drawn. A letter. Then lie back to rest.
(he breathes softly) No more. I have lived. Fare. Farewell.
ZOE:
(stiffly, her finger in her neckfillet) Honest? Till the next time. (she sneers)
Suppose you got up the wrong side of the bed or came too quick with your best
girl. O, I can read your thoughts!
BLOOM:
(bitterly) Man and woman, love, what is it? A cork and bottle. I'm sick of it.
Let everything rip.
ZOE:
(in sudden sulks) I hate a rotter that's insincere. Give a bleeding whore a
chance.
BLOOM:
(repentantly) I am very disagreeable. You are a necessary evil. Where are you
from? London?
ZOE:
(glibly) Hog's Norton where the pigs plays the organs. I'm Yorkshire
born. (she holds his hand which is feeling for her nipple) I say, Tommy
Tittlemouse. Stop that and begin worse. Have you cash for a short time?
Ten shillings?
BLOOM:
(smiles, nods slowly) More, houri, more.
ZOE:
And more's mother? (she pats him offhandedly with velvet paws) Are you coming
into the musicroom to see our new pianola? Come and I'll peel off.
BLOOM:
(feeling his occiput dubiously with the unparalleled embarrassment of
a harassed Pedlar gauging the symmetry Of her peeled pears) Somebody
would be dreadfully jealous if she knew. The greeneyed monster.
(earnestly) You know how difficult it is. I needn't tell you.
ZOE:
(flattered) What the eye can't see the heart can't grieve for. (she pats
him) Come.
BLOOM:
Laughing witch! The hand that rocks the cradle.
ZOE:
Babby!
BLOOM:
(in babylinen and pelisse, bigheaded, with a caul of dark hair, fixes big eyes
On her fluid slip and counts Its bronze buckles with a chubby finger, his moist
tongue lolling and lisping) One two tlee: tlee tlwo tlone.
The buckles:
Love me. Love me not. Love me.
ZOE:
Silent means consent. (with little parted talons she captures his hand, her
Forefinger giving to his palm the Passtouch of secret monitor, luring him
to doom.) Hot hands cold gizzard.
(He hesitates amid scents, music, temptations. She leads him
towards the steps, drawing Him by the odour of her Armpits, the vice
of her painted eyes, the rustle of her slip in whose sinuous folds
lurks The lion reek of all the male brutes that have possessed her.)
The male brutes:
(exhaling sulphur of rut and dung and ramping in their loosebox, faintly
roaring, their drugged Heads swaying to and fro) Good!
(Zoe and Bloom reach the doorway where two sister whores are
seated. They examine him Curiously from under their pencilled
brows and smile to his hasty bow. He trips awkwardly.)
ZOE:
(her lucky hand instantly saving him) Hoopsa! Don't fall upstairs.
BLOOM:
The just man falls seven times. (he stands aside at the threshold) After you
is good manners.
ZOE:
Ladies first, gentlemen after.
(She crosses the threshold. He hesitates. She turns and, holding
out her hands, draws him over. He hops. On the antlered rack of
the hall hang a man's hat and waterproof. Bloom uncovers himself
but, seeing them, frowns, then smiles, preoccupied. A door on the
return landing is flung open. A man in purple shirt and grey trou-
sers, brownsocked, passes with an ape's gait, his bald head and goa-
tee beard upheld, hugging a full waterjugjar, his twotailed black
braces dangling at heels. Averting his face quickly Bloom bends to
examine on the halltable the spaniel eyes of a running fox: then,
his lifted head sniffing, follows Zoe into the musicroom. A shade
of mauve tissuepaper dims the light of the chandelier. Round and
round a moth flies, colliding, escaping. The floor is covered with
an oilcloth mosaic of jade and azure and cinnabar rhomboids. foot-
marks are stamped over it in all senses, heel to heel, heel to hollow,
toe to toe, feet locked, a morris of shuffling feet without body
phantoms, all in a scrimmage higgledypiggledy. The walls are tape-
stried with a paper of yewfronds and clear glades. In the grate is
spread a screen of peacock feathers. Lynch squats crosslegged on the
hearthrug of matted hair, his cap back to the front. With a wand he
beats time slowly. Kitty Ricketts, a bony pallid whore in navy costume,
doeskin gloves rolled back from a coral wristlet, a chain purse in
her
hand, sits perched on the edge of the table swinging her leg and glan-
cing at herself in the gilt mirror over the mantelpiece. A tag of
her corsetlace hangs slightly below her jacket. Lynch indicates
mockingly the couple at the piano.)
KITTY:
(coughs behind her hand) She's a bit imbecillic. (she signs with a waggling
forefinger) Blemblem. (Lynch lifts up her skirt and white petticoat with his
wand She settles them down quickly.) Respect yourself. (she hiccups, then
bends quickly her sailor hat under which her hair glows, red with henna)
O, excuse!
ZOE:
More limelight, Charley. (she goes to the chandelier and turns the gas full
cock)
KITTY:
(peers at the gasjet) What ails it tonight?
LYNCH:
(deeply) Enter a ghost and hobgoblins.
ZOE:
Clap on the back for Zoe.
(The wand in lynch's hand flashes: a brass poker. Stephen stands
at the pianola on Which sprawl his hat and Ashplant. With two
fingers he repeats once more the series of empty fifths. Florry
Talbot, a blond feeble goosefat whore in a tatterdemalion gown of
mildewed strawberry, lolls spreadeagle in the sofacorner, her limp
forearm pendent over the bolster, listening. A heavy stye droops
over her sleepy eyelid.)
KITTY:
(hiccups again with a kick of her horsed foot) O, excuse!
ZOE:
(promptly) Your boy's thinking of you. Tie a knot on your shift.
(Kitty ricketts bends her head. Her boa uncoils, slides, glides over
her shoulder, back, arm, chair to the ground. Lynch lifts the curled
caterpillar on his wand. She snakes her neck, nestling. Stephen
glances behind at the squatted fgure with its cap back to the front.)
STEPHEN:
As a matter of fact it is of no importance whether Benedetto Marcello found
it or made it. The rite is the poet's rest. It may be an old hymn to Demeter
or also illustrate Coela enarrant gloriam domini. It is susceptible of nodes
or modes as far apart as hyperphrygian and mixolydian and of texts so
divergent as priests haihooping round David's that is Circe's or what am I
saying Ceres' altar and David's tip from the stable to his chief bassoonist
about the alrightness of his almightiness. Mais nom de nom, that is another
pair of trousers. Jetez la gourme. Faut que jeunesse se passe. (he stops,
points at Lynch's cap, smiles, laughs) Which side is your knowledge bump?
THE CAP:
(with saturnine spleen) Bah! It is because it is. Woman's reason. Jewgreek
is greekjew. Extremes meet. Death is the highest form of life. Bah!
STEPHEN:
You remember fairly accurately all my errors, boasts, mistakes. How long shall
I continue to close my eyes to disloyalty? Whetstone!
THE CAP:
Bah!
STEPHEN:
Here's another for you. (he frowns) The reason is because the
fundamental and the dominant are separated by the greatest possible
interval which . . .
THE CAP:
Which? Finish. You can't.
STEPHEN:
(with an effort) Interval which. Is the greatest possible ellipse. Consistent
with. The ultimate return. The octave. Which.
THE CAP:
Which?
(Outside the gramophone begins to blare The Holy City.)
STEPHEN:
(abruptly) What went forth to the ends of the world to traverse not itself,
God, the sun, Shakespeare, a commercial traveller, having itself traversed in
reality itself becomes that self. Wait a moment. Wait a second. Damn that
fellow's noise in the street. Self which it itself was ineluctably precon-
ditioned to become. Ecco!
LYNCH:
(with a mocking whinny of laughter grins at Bloom and Zoe higgins) What a
learned speech, eh?
ZOE:
(briskly) God help your head, he knows more than you have forgotten.
(with obese stupidity Florry Talbot regards Stephen.)
FLURRY:
They say the last day is coming this summer.
KITTY:
No!
ZOE:
(explodes in laughter) Great unjust God!
FLORRY:
(offended) Well, it was in the papers about Antichrist. O, my foot's
tickling.
(Ragged barefoot newsboys, jogging a wagtail kite, patter past, yelling.)
The newsboys:
Stop press edition. Result of the rockinghorse races. Sea serpent in the royal
canal. Safe arrival of Antichrist.
(Stephen turns and sees Bloom.)
STEPHEN:
A time, times and half a time.
(Reuben J. Antichrist, wandering jew, a clutching hand open on his
spine, stumps forward. Across his loins is slung a Pilgrim's wallet
from which protrude promissory notes and dishonoured bills. Aloft
over his shoulder he bears a long boatpole from the hook of which
the sodden huddled mass of His only son, saved from Liffey waters,
hangs from the slack of its breeches. A hobgoblin in the image of
Punch Costello, hipshot, crookbacked, hydrocephalic, prognathic
with receding forehead and ally sloper nose, tumbles in somersaults
through the gathering darkness.)
ALL:
What?
THE HOBGOBLINS:
(his jaws chattering, capers to and fro, goggling his eyes, squeaking,
Kangaroohopping with outstretched clutching arms, then all at once thrusts
his lipless face through the fork of his thighs) Il vient! c'est moi!
L'homme qui rit! L'homme primigene! (he whirls round and round with der-
vish howls) Sieurs et dames, faites vos jeux! (he crouches juggling. Tiny
roulette planets fly from his hands.) Les jeux sont faits! (The planets
rush together, uttering crepitant cracks) Rien va plus! (The planets, bu-
oyant balloons, sail swollen up and away. He springs off into vacuum.)
FLORRY:
(sinking into torpor, crossing herself secretly) The end of the world!
(A female tepid effluvium leaks out from her. Nebulous obscurity
occupies space. Through the drifting fog without the gramophone
blares over coughs and feetshuffling.)
The gramophone:
Jerusalem!
Open your gates and sing
Hosanna . . .
(A rocket rushes up the sky and bursts. A White star fills from it,
proclaiming the consummation of all things and Second coming of E-
lijah. Along an infinite invisible tightrope taut from zenith to nadir
the end of the world, a twoheaded octopus in Gillie's kilts, busby
and tartan filibegs, whirls through the murk, head over heels, in the
form of the Three Legs of Man.)
THE END OF THE WORLD:
(with a scotch accent) Wha'll dance the keel row, the keel row, the keel
row?
(Over the possing drift and choking breathcoughs, elijah's voice,
harsh as a corncrake's, Jars on high. Perspiring In a loose lawn
surplice with funnel sleeves he is seen, vergerfaced, above a rostrum
About which the banner of old glory is draped. He thumps the para-
pet.)
ELIJAH:
No yapping, if you please, in this booth. Jake Crane, Creole Sue, Dove
Campbell, Abe Kirschner, do your coughing with your mouths shut. Say, I
am operating all this trunk line. Boys, do it now. God's time is 12.25.
Tell mother you'll be there. Rush your order and you play a slick ace.
Join on right here. Book through to eternity junction, the nonstop run.
Just one word more. Are you a god or a doggone clod? If the second advent
came to Coney Island are we ready? Florry Christ, Stephen Christ, Zoe Christ,
Bloom Christ, Kitty Christ, Lynch Christ, it's up to you to sense that cos-
mic force. Have we cold feet about the cosmos? No. Be on the side of the
angels. Be a prism. You have that something within, the higher self. You
can rub shoulders with a Jesus, a Gautama, an Ingersoll. Are you all in
this vibration? I say you are. You once nobble that, congregation, and a
buck joyride to heaven becomes a back number. You got me? It's a lifebright-
ener, sure. The hottest stuff ever was. It's the whole pie with jam in. It's
just the cutest snappiest line out. It is immense, supersumptuous. It re-
stores. It vibrates. I know and I am some vibrator. Joking apart and, get-
ting down to bedrock, A. J. Christ Dowie and the harmonial philosophy, have
you got that? O. K. Seventyseven west sixtyninth street. Got me? That's it.
You call me up by sunphone any old time. Bumboosers, save your stamps. (he
shouts) Now then our glory song. All join heartily in the singing. Encore!
(he sings) Jeru . . .
The gramophone:
(drowning his voice) Whorusalaminyourhighhohhhh . . . (the disc rasps
gratingly against the needle)
The three whores:
(covering their ears, squawk) Ahhkkk!
ELIJAH:
(in rolledup shirtsleeves, black in the face, shouts at the top of his
voice, his arms uplifted) Big Brother up there, Mr President, you hear what
I done just been saying to you. Certainly, I sort of believe strong in you,
Mr President. I certainly am thinking now Miss Higgins and Miss Ricketts got
religion way inside them. Certainly seems to me I don't never see no wusser
scared female than the way you been, Miss Florry, just now as I done seed
you. Mr President, you come long and help me save our sisters dear. (he
winks at his audience) Our Mr President, he twig the whole lot and he aint
saying nothing.
Kitty-Kate:
I forgot myself. In a weak moment I erred and did what I did on Con-
stitution hill. I was confirmed by the bishop and enrolled in the brown
scapular. My mother's sister married a Montmorency. It was a working
plumber was my ruination when I was pure.
Zoe-Fanny:
I let him larrup it into me for the fun of it.
Florry-Teresa:
It was in consequence of a portwine beverage on top of Hennessy's three
star. I was guilty with Whelan when he slipped into the bed.
STEPHEN:
In the beginning was the word, in the end the world without end. Blessed be
the eight beatitudes.
(The beatitudes, Dixon, Madden, Crotthers, Costello, Lenehan,
Bannon, Mulligan and Lynch in white surgical students' gowns,
four abreast, goosestepping, tramp fast past in noisy marching)
The beatitudes:
(incoherently) Beer beef battledog buybull businum barnum buggerum bish-
op.
LYSTER:
(in quakergrey kneebreeches and broadbrimmed hat, says discreetly) He is
our friend. I need not mention names. Seek thou the light.
(He corantos by. Best enters in hairdresser's attire, shinily
laundered, his locks in curlpapers. He leads John Eglinton who
wears a mandarin's kimono of nankeen yellow, lizardlettered,
and a high pagoda hat.)
BEST:
(smiling, lifts the hat and displays a shaven poll from the crown of which
bristles a pigtail toupee tied with an orange topknot) I was just beautif-
ying him, don't you know. A thing of beauty, don't you know, Yeats says,
or I mean, Keats says.
JOHN EGLINTON:
(produces a greencapped dark lantern and flashes it towards a corner: With
carping accent) Esthetics and cosmetics are for the boudoir. I am out for
truth. Plain truth for a plain man. Tanderagee wants the facts and means to
get them.
(in the cone of the searchlight behind the coalscuttle, ollave,
holyeyed, the bearded figure of Mananaun Maclir broods, chin on
knees. He rises slowly. A cold seawind blows from his druid mouth.
About his head writhe eels and elvers. He is encrusted with weeds
and shells. His right hand holds a bicycle pump. His left hand
grasps a huge crayfish by its two talons.)
Mananaun Maclir:
(with a voice of waves) Aum! Hek! Wal! Ak! Lub! Mor! Ma! White yoghin
of the gods. Occult pimander of Hermes Trismegistos. (with a voice
of whistling seawind) Punarjanam patsypunjaub! I won't have my leg
pulled. It has been said by one: beware the left, the cult of Shakti.
(with a cry of stormbirds) Shakti Shiva, darkhidden Father! (he smites
with his bicycle pump the crayfish in his left hand. On its cooperative
dial glow the twelve signs of the Zodiac. He wails with the vehemence
of the ocean.) Aum! Baum! Pyjaum! I am the light of the homestead! I
am the dreamery creamery butter.
(A skeleton judashand strangles the light. The green light wanes to mauve.
The gasjet wails whistling.)
The gasjet:
Pooah! Pfuiiiiiii!
(Zoe runs to the chandelier and, crooking her leg, adjusts the
mantle.)
ZOE:
Who has a fag as I'm here?
LYNCH:
(tossing a cigarette on to the table) Here.
ZOE:
(her head perched aside in mock pride) Is that the way to hand the pot to
a lady? (she stretches up to light the cigarette over the flame, twirling it
slowly, showing the brown tufts of her armpits. Lynch with his poker lifts
boldly a side of her slip. Bare from her garters up her flesh appears under
the sapphire a nixie's green. She puffs calmly at her cigarette.) Can you see
the beautyspot of my behind?
LYNCH:
I'm not looking
ZOE:
(makes sheep's eyes) No? You wouldn't do a less thing. Would you suck a
lemon?
(Squinting in mock shame she glances with sidelong meaning at
Bloom, then twists round towards him, pulling her slip free of the
poker. Blue fluid again flows over her flesh. Bloom stands, smil-
ing desirously, twirling his thumbs. Kitty Ricketts licks her mid-
dle finger with her spittle and, gazing in the mirror, smooths
both eyebrows. Lipoti Virag, basilicogrammate, chutes rapidly down
through the chimneyflue and struts two steps to the left on gawky
pink stilts. He is sausaged into several overcoats and wears a brown
macintosh under which he holds a roll of parchment. In his left eye
flashes the monocle of Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall
Farrell. On his head is perched an Egyptian pshent. Two quills
project over his ears.)
VIRAG:
(heels together, bows) My name is Virag Lipoti, of Szombathely. (he
coughs thoughtfully, drily) Promiscuous nakedness is much in evidence
hereabouts, eh? Inadvertently her backview revealed the fact that she
is not wearing those rather intimate garments of which you are a partic-
ular devotee. The injection mark on the thigh I hope you perceived? Good.
BLOOM:
Granpapachi. But . . .
VIRAG:
Number two on the other hand, she of the cherry rouge and coiffeuse white,
whose hair owes not a little to our tribal elixir of gopherwood, is in walk-
ing costume and tightly staysed by her sit, I should opine. Backbone in front,
so to say. Correct me but I always understood that the act so performed by
skittish humans with glimpses of lingerie appealed to you in virtue of its
exhibitionististicicity. In a word. Hippogriff. Am I right?
BLOOM:
She is rather lean.
VIRAG:
(not unpleasantly) Absolutely! Well observed and those pannier pockets of
the skirt and slightly pegtop effect are devised to suggest bunchiness of
hip. A new purchase at some monster sale for which a gull has been mulcted.
Meretricious finery to deceive the eye. Observe the attention to details of
dustspecks. Never put on you tomorrow what you can wear today. Parallax!
(with a nervous twitch of his head) Did you hear my brain go snap?
Pollysyllabax!
BLOOM:
(an elbow resting in a hand, a forefinger against his cheek) She seems sad.
VIRAG:
(cynically, his weasel teeth bared yellow, draws down his left eye
with a finger And barks hoarsely) Hoax! Beware of the flapper and bogus
mournful. Lily of the alley. All possess bachelor's button discovered by
Rualdus Columbus. Tumble her. Columble her. Chameleon. (more genially)
Well then, permit me to draw your attention to item number three. There
is plenty of her visible to the naked eye. Observe the mass of oxygenated
vegetable matter on her skull. What ho, she bumps! The ugly duckling of
the party, longcasted and deep in keel.
BLOOM:
(regretfully) When you come out without your gun.
VIRAG:
We can do you all brands, mild, medium and strong. Pay your money, take your
choice. How happy could you be with either . . .
BLOOM:
With . . .?
VIRAG:
(his tongue upcurling) Lyum! Look. Her beam is broad. She is coated with
quite a considerable layer of fat. Obviously mammal in weight of bosom
you remark that she has in front well to the fore two protuberances of very
respectable dimensions, inclined to fall in the noonday soupplate, while on
her rere lower down are two additional protuberances, suggestive of potent
rectum and tumescent for palpation, which leave nothing to be desired save
compactness. Such fleshy parts are the product of careful nurture. When
coopfattened their livers reach an elephantine size. Pellets of new bread
with fennygreek and gumbenjamin swamped down by potions of green tea
endow them during their brief existence with natural pincushions of quite
colossal blubber. That suits your book, eh? Fleshhotpots of Egypt to
hanker after. Wallow in it. Lycopodium. (his throat twitches) Slapbang!
There he goes again.
BLOOM:
The stye I dislike.
VIRAG:
(arches his eyebrows) Contact with a goldring, they say. Argumentum ad
feminam, as we said in old Rome and ancient Greece in the consulship of
Diplodocus and Ichthyosauros. For the rest Eve's sovereign remedy. Not
for sale. Hire only. Huguenot. (he twitches) It is a funny sound. (he
coughs encouragingly) But possibly it is only a wart. I presume you shall
have remembered what I will have taught you on that head? Wheatenmeal
with honey and nutmeg.
BLOOM:
(reflecting) Wheatenmeal with lycopodium and syllabax. This searching
ordeal. It has been an unusually fatiguing day, a chapter of accidents.
Wait. I mean, wartsblood spreads warts, you said . . .
VIRAG:
(severely, his nose hardhumped, his side eye winking) Stop twirling your
thumbs and have a good old thunk. See, you have forgotten. Exercise your
mnemotechnic. La causa e santa. Tara. Tara. (Aside) He will surely remem-
ber.
BLOOM:
Rosemary also did I understand you to say or willpower over parasitic
tissues. Then nay no I have an inkling. The touch of a deadhand cures.
Mnemo?
VIRAG:
(excitedly) I say so. I say so. E'en so. Technic. (he taps his parchmentroll
energetically) This book tells you how to act with all descriptive
particulars. Consult index for agitated fear of aconite, melancholy of
muriatic, priapic pulsatilla. Virag is going to talk about amputation. Our
old friend caustic. They must be starved. Snip off with horsehair under the
denned neck. But, to change the venue to the Bulgar and the Basque, have
you made up your mind whether you like or dislike women in male
habiliments? (with a dry snigger) You intended to devote an entire year to
the study of the religious problem and the summer months of 1886 to
square the circle and win that million. Pomegranate! From the sublime to
the ridiculous is but a step. Pyjamas, let us say? Or stockingette gussetted
knickers, closed? Or, put we the case, those complicated combinations,
camiknickers? (he crows derisively) Keekeereekee!
(Bloom surveys uncertainly the three whores then gazes at the
veiled mauve light, hearing The everflying moth.)
BLOOM:
I wanted then to have now concluded. Nightdress was never. Hence this.
But tomorrow is a new day will be. Past was is today. What now is will
then morrow as now was be past yester.
VIRAG:
(prompts in a pig's whisper) Insects of the day spend their brief existence
in reiterated coition, lured by the smell of the inferiorly pulchritudinous
fumale possessing extendified pudendal nerve in dorsal region. Pretty Poll!
(his yellow parrotbeak gabbles nasally) They had a proverb in the Carpathians
in or about the year five thousand five hundred and fifty of our era. One
tablespoonful of honey will attract friend Bruin more than half a dozen bar-
rels of first choice malt vinegar. Bear's buzz bothers bees. But of this a-
part. At another time we may resume. We were very pleased, we others. (he
coughs and, bending his brow, rubs his nose thoughtfully with a scooping
hand) You shall find that these night insects follow the light. An illusion
for remember their complex unadjustable eye. For all these knotty points
see the seventeenth book of my Fundamentals of Sexology or the Love Passion
which Doctor L.B. says is the book sensation of the year. Some, to example,
there are again whose movements are automatic. Perceive. That is his appro-
priate sun. Nightbird nightsun nighttown. Chase me, Charley! (he blows into
Bloom's ear) Buzz!
BLOOM:
Bee or bluebottle too other day butting shadow on wall dazed self then me
wandered dazed down shirt good job I . . .
VIRAG:
(his face impassive, laughs in a rich feminine key) Splendid! Spanish
fly in his fly or mustard plaster on his dibble. (he gobbles gluttonously
with turkey wattles) Bubbly jock! Bubbly jock! Where are we? Open Sesame!
Cometh forth! (he unrolls his parchment rapidly and reads, his glowworm's
nose running backwards over the letters which he claws) Stay, good friend
I bring thee thy answer. Redbank oysters will shortly be upon us. I'm the
best o'cook. Those succulent bivalves may help us and the truffles of
Perigord, tubers dislodged through mister omnivorous porker, were un-
surpassed in cases of nervous debility or viragitis. Though they stink
yet they sting. (he wags his head with cackling raillery) Jocular. With
my eyeglass in my ocular. (he sneezes) Amen!
BLOOM:
(absently) Ocularly woman's bivalve case is worse. Always open sesame.
The cloven sex. Why they fear vermin, creeping things. Yet Eve and the
serpent contradicts. Not a historical fact. Obvious analogy to my idea.
Serpents too are gluttons for woman's milk. Wind their way through miles
of omnivorous forest to sucksucculent her breast dry. Like those
bubblyjocular Roman matrons one reads of in Elephantuliasis.
VIRAG:
(his mouth projected in hard wrinkles, eyes stonily forlornly closed, psalms
in outlandish monotone) That the cows with their those distended udders that
they have been the the known . . .
BLOOM:
I am going to scream. I beg your pardon. Ah? So. (he repeats) Spontan-
eously to seek out the saurian's lair in order to entrust their teats
to his avid suction. Ant milks aphis. (profoundly) Instinct rules the
world. In life. In death.
VIRAG:
(head askew, arches his back and hunched wingshoulders, peers at the
moth out of blear bulged eyes, points a horning claw and cries) Who's
moth moth? Who's dear Gerald? Dear Ger, that you? O dear, he is Gerald.
O, I much fear he shall be most badly burned. Will some pleashe pershon
not now impediment so catastrophics mit agitation of firstclass table-
numpkin? (he mews) Puss puss puss puss! (he sighs, draws back and
stares sideways down with dropping underjaw) Well, well. He doth rest
anon. (he snaps his jaws suddenly on the air)
THE MOTH:
I'm a tiny tiny thing
Ever flying in the spring
Round and round a ringaring.
Long ago I was a king
Now I do this kind of thing
On the wing, on the wing!
Bing!
(he rushes against the mauve shade, flapping noisily)
Pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty petticoats.
(From left upper entrance with two gliding steps Henry Flower
comes forward to left front centre. He wears a dark mantle and
drooping plumed sombrero. He carries a silverstringed inlaid
dulcimer and a longstemmed bamboo Jacob's pipe, Its clay bowl
fashioned as a female head. He wears dark velvet hose and
silverbuckled pumps. He has the romantic Saviour's face with
flowing locks, thin beard and moustache. His spindlelegs and
sparrow feet are those of the tenor Mario, prince of Candia. He
settles down his goffered ruffs and moistens his lips with a
passage of his amorous tongue.)
HENRY:
(in a low dulcet voice, touching the strings of his guitar) There is a flower
that Bloometh.
(Virag truculent, his jowl set, stares at the lamp. Grave Bloom
regards Zoe's neck. Henry gallant turns with pendant dewlap to the
piano.)
STEPHEN:
(to himself) Play with your eyes shut. Imitate pa. Filling my belly with
husks of swine. Too much of this. I will arise and go to my. Expect this
is the. Steve, thou art in a parlous way. Must visit old Deasy or telegraph.
Our interview of this morning has left on me a deep impression. Though our
ages. Will write fully tomorrow. I'm partially drunk, by the way. (he touches
the keys again) Minor chord comes now. Yes. Not much however.
(Almidano Artifoni holds out a batonroll of music with vigorous
moustachework.)
ARTIFONI:
Ci rifletta. Lei rovina tutto.
FLORRY:
Sing us something. Love's old sweet song.
STEPHEN:
No voice. I am a most finished artist. Lynch, did I show you the letter about
the lute?
FLORRY:
(smirking) The bird that can sing and won't sing.
(The siamese twins, Philip Drunk and Philip Sober, two Oxford
dons with lawnmowers, appear In the window embrasure. Both are
masked with Matthew Arnold's face.)
PHILIP SOBER:
Take a fool's advice. All is not well. Work it out with the buttend of a
pencil, like a good young idiot. Three pounds twelve you got, two notes,
one sovereign, two crowns, if youth but knew. Mooney's en ville, Mooney's
sur mer, the Moira, Larchet's, Holles street hospital, Burke's. Eh? I am
watching you.
PHILIP DRUNK:
(impatiently) Ah, bosh, man. Go to hell! I paid my way. If I could only
find out about octaves. Reduplication of personality. Who was it told me
hisname? (his lawnmower begins to purr) Aha, yes. Zoe mou sas agapo. Have
a notion I was here before. When was it not Atkinson his card I have
somewhere. Mac Somebody. Unmack I have it. He told me about, hold on,
Swinburne, was it, no?
FLORRY:
And the song?
STEPHEN:
Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.
FLORRY:
Are you out of Maynooth? You're like someone I knew once.
STEPHEN:
Out of it now. (to himself) Clever.
PHILIP DRUNK and PHILIP SOBER:
(their lawnmowers purring with a rigadoon of grasshalms) Clever ever.
Out of it out of it. By the bye have you the book, the thing, the ashplant?
Yes, there it, yes. Cleverever outofitnow. Keep in condition. Do like us.
ZOE:
There was a priest down here two nights ago to do his bit of business with
his coat buttoned up. You needn't try to hide, I says to him. I know you've
a Roman collar.
VIRAG:
Perfectly logical from his standpoint. Fall of man. (harshly, his pupils
waxing ) To hell with the pope! Nothing new under the sun. I am the Virag
who disclosed the Sex Secrets of Monks and Maidens. Why I left the church
of Rome. Read the Priest, the Woman and the Confessional. Penrose. Flip-
perty Jippert. (he wriggles) Woman, undoing with sweet pudor her belt
of rushrope, offers her allmoist yoni to man's lingam. Short time after man
presents woman with pieces of jungle meat. Woman shows joy and covers
herself with featherskins. Man loves her yoni fiercely with big lingam,
the stiff one. (he cries) Coactus volui. Then giddy woman will run about.
Strong man grapses woman's wrist. Woman squeals, bites, spucks. Man,
now fierce angry, strikes woman's fat yadgana. (he chases His tail)
Piffpaff! Popo! (he stops, sneezes) Pchp! (he worries his butt) Prrrrrht!
LYNCH:
I hope you gave the good father a penance. Nine glorias for shooting a
bishop.
ZOE:
(spouts walrus smoke through her nostrils) He couldn't get a connection.
Only, you know, sensation. A dry rush.
BLOOM:
Poor man!
ZOE:
(lightly) Only for what happened him.
BLOOM:
How?
VIRAG:
(A diabolic rictus of black luminosity contracting his visage, cranes his
scraggy neck forward. He lifts a mooncalf nozzle and howls.) Verfluchte
Goim! He had a father, forty fathers. He never existed. Pig God! He had
two left feet. He was Judas Iacchia, a Libyan eunuch, the pope's bastard.
(he leans out on tortured forepaws, elbows bent rigid, His eye agonising in
his flat skullneck and yelps over the mute world) A son of a whore. Apoca-
lypse.
KITTY:
And Mary Shortall that was in the lock with the pox she got from Jimmy
Pidgeon in the blue caps had a child off him that couldn't swallow and was
smothered with the convulsions in the mattress and we all subscribed for
the funeral.
PHILIP DRUNK:
(gravely) Qui vous a mis dans cette fichue position, philippe?
PHILIP SOBER:
(gaily) C'etait le sacre pigeon, philippe.
(Kitty unpins her hat and sets it down calmly, patting her henna
hair. And a prettier, a daintier head of winsome curls was never seen
on a whore's shoulders. Lynch puts on her hat. She whips it off.)
LYNCH:
(laughs) And to such delights has Metchnikoff inoculated anthropoid apes.
FLORRY:
(nods) Locomotor ataxy.
ZOE:
(gaily) O, my dictionary.
LYNCH:
Three wise virgins.
VIRAG:
(agueshaken, profuse yellow spawn foaming over his bony epileptic lips)
She sold lovephiltres, whitewax, orangeflower. Panther, the Roman
centurion, polluted her with his genitories. (he sticks out a flickering
phosphorescent scorpion tongue, his hand on his fork) Messiah! He burst
her tympanum. (with gibbering baboon's cries he Jerks his hips in the
cynical spasm) Hik! Hek! Hak! Hok! Huk! Kok! Kuk!
(Ben Jumbo Dollard, rubicund, musclebound, hairynostrilled,
hugebearded, cabbageeared, shaggychested, shockmaned, fat-
papped, stands forth, his loins and genitals tightened into
a pair of black bathing bagslops.)
BEN DOLLARD:
(nakkering castanet bones in his huge padded paws, yodels jovially in base
barreltone) When love absorbs my ardent soul.
(The virgins nurse callan and nurse quigley burst through the
ringkeepers and the ropes and Mob him with open arms.)
The virgins:
(gushingly) Big Ben! Ben my Chree!
A VOICE:
Hold that fellow with the bad breeches.
BEN DOLLARD:
(smites his thigh in abundant laughter) Hold him now.
HENRY:
(caressing on his breast a severed female head, murmurs) Thine heart,
mine love. (he plucks his lutestrings) When first I saw . . .
VIRAG:
(sloughing his skins, his multitudinous plumage moulting) Rats! (he
yawns, showing a coalblack throat, and closes his jaws by an upward
push of his parchmentroll) After having said which I took my depar-
ture. Farewell. Fare thee well. Dreck!
(Henry Flower combs his moustache and beard rapidly with a pocket-
comb and gives a cow's lick to his hair. Steered by his rapier, he
glides to the door, his wild harp slung behind him. Virag reaches
the door in two ungainly stilthops, his tail cocked, and deftly claps
sideways on the wall a pusyellow flybill, butting it with his head.)
The flybill:
K. II. Post No Bills. Strictly confidential. Dr Hy Franks.
HENRY:
All is lost now.
(Virag unscrews his head in a trice and holds it under his arm.)
Virag's head:
Quack!
(Exeunt severally.)
STEPHEN:
(over his shoulder to Zoe) You would have preferred the fighting parson
who founded the protestant error. But beware Antisthenes, the dog sage,
and the last end of Arius Heresiarchus. The agony in the closet.
LYNCH:
All one and the same God to her.
STEPHEN:
(devoutly) And sovereign Lord of all things.
FLORRY:
(to Stephen) I'm sure you're a spoiled priest. Or a monk.
LYNCH:
He is. A cardinal's son.
STEPHEN:
Cardinal sin. Monks of the screw.
(His Eminence Simon Stephen cardinal Dedalus, primate of all
Ireland, appears in the doorway, dressed in red soutane, sandals
and socks. Seven dwarf simian acolytes, also in red, cardinal sins,
uphold his train, peeping under it. He wears a battered silk hat
sideways on his head. His thumbs are stuck in His armpits and his
palms outspread. Round his neck hangs a rosary of corks ending on
his breast in a corkscrew cross. Releasing his thumbs, he invokes
grace from on high with large wave gestures and proclaims with
bloated pomp:)
The Cardinal:
Conservio lies captured
He lies in the lowest dungeon
With manacles and chains around his limbs
Weighing upwards of three tons.
(He looks at all for a moment, his right eye closed tight, his left
cheek puffed out. Then, unable to repress his merriment, he rocks to
and fro, arms akimbo, and sings with broad rollicking humour:)
O, the poor little fellow
Hihihihihis legs they were yellow
He was plump, fat and heavy and brisk as a snake
But some bloody savage
To graize his white cabbage
He murdered Nell Flaherty's duckloving drake.
(A multitude of midges swarms white over his robe. He scratches
himself with crossed arms at his ribs, grimacing, And exclaims:)
I'm suffering the agony of the damned. By the hoky fiddle, thanks be to
Jesus those funny little chaps are not unanimous. If they were they'd walk
me off the face of the bloody globe.
(His head aslant he blesses curtly with fore and middle fingers,
imparts the easter kiss and doubleshuffles off comically, swaying
his hat from side to side, shrinking quickly to the size of his
trainbearers. The dwarf acolytes, giggling, peeping, nudging, ogling,
easterkissing, zigzag behind him. His voice is heard mellow from
afar, merciful male, melodious:)
Shall carry my heart to thee,
Shall carry my heart to thee,
And the breath of the balmy night
Shall carry my heart to thee!
(The trick doorhandle turns.)
The doorhandle:
Theeee!
ZOE:
The devil is in that door.
(A male form passes down the creaking staircase and is heard
taking the waterproof and hat from the rack. Bloom starts forward
involuntarily and, half closing the door as he passes, takes the
chocolate from his pocket and offers it nervously to Zoe.)
ZOE:
(sniffs his hair briskly) Hmmm! Thank your mother for the rabbits. I'm
very fond of what I like.
BLOOM:
(hearing a male voice in talk with the whores on the doorstep, pricks his
ears) If it were he? After? Or because not? Or the double event?
ZOE:
(tears open the silverfoil) Fingers was made before forks. (she breaks
off and nibbles a piece gives a piece to Kitty Ricketts and then turns
kittenishly to Lynch) No objection to French lozenges? (he nods. She
taunts him.) Have it now or wait till you get it? (he opens his mouth,
his head cocked. She whirls the prize in Left circle. His head Follows.
She whirls it back in right circle. He eyes her.) Catch!
(she tosses a piece. With an adroit snap he catches it and bites it
through with a crack.)
KITTY:
(chewing) The engineer I was with at the bazaar does have lovely ones.
Full of the best liqueurs. And the viceroy was there with his lady. The
gas we had on the Toft's hobbyhorses. I'm giddy still.
BLOOM:
(In Svengali's fur overcoat, with folded arms and Napoleonic forelock,
frowns in ventriloquial exorcism with piercing eagle glance towards the
door. Then rigid with left foot advanced he makes a swift pass with
impelling fingers And gives the sign of past master, drawing his right
arm downwards from His left shoulder.) Go, go, go, I conjure you, whoever
you are!
(A Male cough and tread are heard passing through the mist
outside. Bloom's features relax. He places a hand in his waistcoat,
posing calmly. Zoe offers him chocolate.)
BLOOM:
(solemnly) Thanks.
ZOE:
Do as you're bid. Here!
(A firm heelclacking tread is heard on the stairs.)
BLOOM:
(takes the chocolate) Aphrodisiac? Tansy and pennyroyal. But I bought it.
Vanilla calms or? Mnemo. Confused light confuses memory. Red influences
lupus. Colours affect women's characters, any they have. This black makes
me sad. Eat and be merry for tomorrow. (he eats) Influence taste too,
mauve. But it is so long since I. Seems new. Aphro. That priest. Must
come. Better late than never. Try truffles at Andrews.
(The door opens. Bella Cohen, a massive whoremistress, enters. She
is dressed in a threequarter ivory gown, fringed round the hem with
tasselled selvedge, and cools herself flirting a black horn fan
like Minnie Hauck in Carmen. On her left hand are wedding and
keeper rings. Her eyes are deeply carboned. She has a sprouting
moustache. Her olive face is heavy, slightly sweated and fullnosed
with orangetainted nostrils. She has large pendant beryl eardrops.)
BELLA:
My word! I'm all of a mucksweat.
(she glances round her at the couples. Then her eyes rest on Bloom
with hard insistence. Her large fan winnows wind towards her heated
faceneck and embonpoint. Her falcon eyes glitter.)
THE FAN:
(flirting quickly, then slowly) Married, I see.
BLOOM:
Yes. Partly, I have mislaid . . .
THE FAN:
(half opening, then closing) And the missus is master. Petticoat
government.
BLOOM:
(looks down with a sheepish grin) That is so.
THE FAN:
(folding together, rests against her left eardrop) Have you forgotten me?
BLOOM:
Nes. Yo.
THE FAN:
(folded akimbo against her waist) Is me her was you dreamed before? Was
then she him you us since knew? Am all them and the same now we?
(Bella approaches, gently tapping with the fan.)
BLOOM:
(wincing) Powerful being. In my eyes read that slumber which women
love.
THE FAN:
(tapping) We have met. You are mine. It is fate.
BLOOM:
(cowed) Exuberant female. Enormously I desiderate your domination. I am
exhausted, abandoned, no more young. I stand, so to speak, with an un-
posted letter bearing the extra regulation fee before the too late box of
the general postoffice of human life. The door and window open at a right
angle cause a draught of thirtytwo feet per second according to the law of
falling bodies. I have felt this instant a twinge of sciatica in my left
glutear muscle. It runs in our family. Poor dear papa, a widower, was a
regular barometer from it. He believed in animal heat. A skin of tabby
lined his winter waistcoat. Near the end, remembering king David and the
Sunamite, he shared his bed with Athos, faithful after death. A dog's
spittle as you probably . . . (he winces) Ah!
RICHARD GOULDING:
(bagweighted, passes the door) Mocking is catch. Best value in Dub. Fit for
a prince's. Liver and kidney.
THE FAN:
(tapping) All things end. Be mine. Now,
BLOOM:
(undecided) All now? I should not have parted with my talisman. Rain,
exposure at dewfall on the searocks, a peccadillo at my time of life.
Every phenomenon has a natural cause.
THE FAN:
(points downwards slowly) You may.
BLOOM:
(looks downwards and perceives her unfastened bootlace) We are observ-
ed.
THE FAN:
(points downwards quickly) You must.
BLOOM:
(with desire, with reluctance) I can make a true black knot. Learned when
I served my time and worked the mail order line for Kellett's. Experienced
hand. Every knot says a lot. Let me. In courtesy. I knelt once before today.
Ah!
(Bella raises her gown slightly and, steadying her pose, lifts to the
edge of a chair a plump buskined hoof and a full pastern, silksocked.
Bloom, stifflegged, aging, bends over her hoof and with gentle fingers
draws out and in her laces.)
BLOOM:
(murmurs lovingly) To be a shoefitter in Manfield's was my love's young
dream, the darling joys of sweet buttonhooking, to lace up crisscrossed to
kneelength the dressy kid footwear satinlined, so incredibly impossibly
small, of Clyde Road ladies. Even their wax model Raymonde I visited daily
to admire her cobweb hose and stick of rhubarb toe, as worn in Paris.
THE HOOF:
Smell my hot goathide. Feel my royal weight.
BLOOM:
(crosslacing) Too tight?
THE HOOF:
If you bungle, Handy Andy, I'll kick your football for you.
BLOOM:
Not to lace the wrong eyelet as I did the night of the bazaar dance. Bad
luck. Hook in wrong tache of her . . . person you mentioned. That night she
met . . . Now!
(He knots the lace. Bella places her foot on the floor. Bloom raises
his head. Her heavy face, her eyes strike him in midbrow. His eyes
grow dull, darker and pouched, his nose thickens.)
BLOOM:
(mumbles) Awaiting your further orders we remain, gentlemen, . . .
BELLO:
(with a hard basilisk stare, in a baritone voice) Hound of dishonour!
BLOOM:
(infatuated) Empress!
BELLO:
(his heavy cheekchops sagging) Adorer of the adulterous rump!
BLOOM:
(plaintively) Hugeness!
BELLO:
Dungdevourer!
BLOOM:
(with sinews semiflexed) Magmagnificence!
BELLO:
Down! (he taps her on the shoulder with his fan) Incline feet forward!
Slide left foot one pace back! You will fall. You are falling. On the
hands down!
BLOOM:
(her eyes upturned in the sign of admiration, closing, yaps) Truffles!
(with a piercing epileptic cry she sinks on all fours, grunting,
snuffling, rooting at his feet: then lies, shamming dead, with eyes
shut tight, trembling eyelids, bowed upon the ground in the attitude
of most excellent master.)
BELLO:
(with bobbed hair, purple gills, fat moustache rings round his shaven
mouth, in mountaineer's puttees, green silverbuttoned coat, sport skirt
and alpine hat with moorcock's feather, his hands stuck deep in his breeches
pockets, places his heel on her neck and grinds it in) Footstool! Feel my
entire weight. Bow, bondslave, before the throne of your despot's glorious
heels so glistening in their proud erectness.
BLOOM:
(enthralled, bleats) I promise never to disobey.
BELLO:
(laughs loudly) Holy smoke! You little know what's in store for you. I'm
the Tartar to settle your little lot and break you in! I'll bet Kentucky
cocktails all round I shame it out of you, old son. Cheek me, I dare you.
If you do tremble in anticipation of heel discipline to be inflicted in
gym costume.
(Bloom creeps under the sofa and peers out through the fringe.)
ZOE:
(widening her slip to screen her) She's not here.
BLOOM:
(Closing her eyes) She's not here.
FLORRY:
(Hiding her with her gown) She didn't mean it, Mr Bello. She'll be good, sir.
KITTY:
Don't be too hard on her, Mr Bello. Sure you won't, ma'amsir.
BLOOM:
(closing her eyes) She's not here.
FLORRY:
(hiding her with her gown) She didn't mean it, Mr Bello. She'll be good,
sir.
KITTY:
Don't be too hard on her, Mr Bello. Sure you won't, ma'amsir.
BELLO:
(coaxingly) Come, ducky dear, I want a word with you, darling, just to
administer correction. Just a little heart to heart talk, sweety. (Bloom
puts out her timid head) There's a good girly now. (Bello grabs her hair
violently and drags her forward) I only want to correct you for your own
good on a soft safe spot. How's that tender behind? O, ever so gently, pet.
Begin to get ready.
BLOOM:
(fainting) Don't tear my . . .
BELLO:
(savagely) The nosering, the pliers, the bastinado, the hanging hook, the
knout I'll make you kiss while the flutes play like the Nubian slave of
old. You're in for it this time! I'll make you remember me for the balance
of your natural life. (his forehead veins swollen, his face congested) I
shall sit on your ottoman saddleback every morning after my thumping good
breakfast of Matterson's fat hamrashers and a bottle of Guinness's porter.
(he belches) And suck my thumping good Stock Exchange cigar while I
read the Licensed Victualler's Gazette. Very possibly I shall have you
slaughtered and skewered in my stables and enjoy a slice of you with crisp
crackling from the baking tin basted and baked like sucking pig with rice
and lemon or currant sauce. It will hurt you. (he twists her arm. Bloom
squeals, turning turtle.)
BLOOM:
Don't be cruel, nurse! Don't!
BELLO:
(twisting) Another!
BLOOM:
(screams) O, it's hell itself! Every nerve in my body aches like mad!
BELLO:
(shouts) Good, by the rumping jumping general! That's the best bit of
news I heard these six weeks. Here, don't keep me waiting, damn you! (he
slaps her face)
BLOOM:
(whimpers) You're after hitting me. I'll tell . . .
BELLO:
Hold him down, girls, till I squat on him.
ZOE:
Yes. Walk on him! I will.
FLORRY:
I will. Don't be greedy.
KITTY:
No, me. Lend him to me.
(The brothel cook, Mrs Keogh, wrinkled, greybearded, in a greasy
bib, men's grey and green socks and brogues, floursmeared, a
rollingpin stuck with raw pastry in her bare red arm and hand,
appears at the door.)
MRS KEOGH:
(ferociously) Can I help?
(They hold and pinion Bloom.)
BELLO:
(squats with a grunt on Bloom's upturned face, puffing cigarsmoke,
nursing a fat leg) I see Keating Clay is elected vicechairman of the
Richmond asylum and by the by Guinness's preference shares are at six-
teen three quaffers. Curse me for a fool that didn't buy that lot Craig
and Gardner told me about. Just my infernal luck, curse it. And that
Goddamned outsider Throwaway at twenty to one. (he quenches his cigar
angrily on Bloom's ear) Where's that Goddamned cursed ashtray?
BLOOM:
(goaded, buttocksmothered) O! O! Monsters! Cruel one!
BELLO:
Ask for that every ten minutes. Beg. Pray for it as you never prayed
before. (he thrusts out a figged fist and foul cigar) Here, kiss that.
Both. Kiss. (he throws a leg astride and, pressing with horseman's knees,
calls in a hard voice) Gee up! A cockhorse to Banbury cross. I'll ride
him for the Eclipse stakes. (he bends sideways and squeezes his mount's
testicles roughly, shouting) Ho! Off we pop! I'll nurse you in proper
fashion. (he horserides cockhorse, leaping in the saddle) The lady goes
a pace a pace and the coachman goes a trot a trot and the gentleman goes
a gallop a gallop a gallop a gallop.
FLORRY:
(pulls at Bello) Let me on him now. You had enough. I asked before you.
ZOE:
(pulling at Florry) Me. Me. Are you not finished with him yet, suckeress?
BLOOM:
(stifling) Can't.
BELLO:
Well, I'm not. Wait. (he holds in his breath) Curse it. Here. This bung's
about burst. (he uncorks himself behind: then, contorting his features, farts
loudly) Take that! (he recorks himself) Yes, by jingo, sixteen three quart-
ers.
BLOOM:
(a sweat breaking out over him) Not man. (he sniffs) Woman.
BELLO:
(stands up) No more blow hot and cold. What you longed for has come to
pass. Henceforth you are unmanned and mine in earnest, a thing under the
yoke. Now for your punishment frock. You will shed your male garments,
you understand, Ruby Cohen? And don the shot silk luxuriously rustling
over head and shoulders. And quickly too!
BLOOM:
(shrinks) Silk, mistress said! O crinkly! scrapy! Must I tiptouch it with my
nails?
BELLO:
(points to his whores) As they are now so will you be, wigged, singed,
perfumesprayed, ricepowdered, with smoothshaven armpits. Tape measurements
will be taken next your skin. You will be laced with cruel force into vice-
like corsets of soft dove coutille with whalebone busk to the diamondtrimmed
pelvis, the absolute outside edge, while your figure, plumper than when at
large, will be restrained in nettight frocks, pretty two ounce petticoats
and fringes and things stamped, of course, with my houseflag, creations of
lovely lingerie for Alice and nice scent for Alice. Alice will feel the
pullpull. Martha and Mary will be a little chilly at first in such delicate
thighcasing but the frilly flimsiness of lace round your bare knees will
remind you . . .
BLOOM:
(a charming soubrette with dauby cheeks, mustard hair and large male
hands and nose, leering mouth) I tried her things on only twice, a small
prank, in Holles street. When we were hard up I washed them to save the
laundry bill. My own shirts I turned. It was the purest thrift.
BELLO:
(jeers) Little jobs that make mother pleased, eh? And showed off
coquettishly in your domino at the mirror behind closedrawn blinds your
unskirted thighs and hegoat's udders in various poses of surrender, eh?
Ho! ho! I have to laugh! That secondhand black operatop shift and short
trunkleg naughties all split up the stitches at her last rape that Mrs
Miriam Dandrade sold you from the Shelbourne hotel, eh?
BLOOM:
Miriam. Black. Demimondaine.
BELLO:
(guffaws) Christ Almighty it's too tickling, this! You were a nicelooking
Miriam when you clipped off your backgate hairs and lay swooning in the
thing across the bed as Mrs Dandrade about to be violated by lieutenant
Smythe-Smythe, Mr Philip Augustus Blockwell M. P., signor Laci Daremo,
the robust tenor, blueeyed Bert, the liftboy, Henri Fleury of Gordon
Bennett fame, Sheridan, the quadroon Croesus, the varsity wetbob eight
from old Trinity, Ponto, her splendid Newfoundland and Bobs, dowager
duchess of Manorhamilton. (he guffaws again) Christ, wouldn't it make a
Siamese cat laugh?
BLOOM:
(her hands and features working) It was Gerald converted me to be a true
corsetlover when I was female impersonator in the High School play Vice
versa. It was dear Gerald. He got that kink, fascinated by sister's stays.
Now dearest Gerald uses pinky greasepaint and gilds his eyelids. Cult of
the beautiful.
BELLO:
(with wicked glee) Beautiful! Give us a breather! When you took your seat
with womanish care, lifting your billowy flounces, on the smoothworn
throne.
BLOOM:
Science. To compare the various joys we each enjoy. (earnestly) And really
it's better the position . . . because often I used to wet . . .
BELLO:
(sternly) No insubordination! The sawdust is there in the corner for you. I
gave you strict instructions, didn't I? Do it standing, sir! I'll teach you to
behave like a jinkleman! If I catch a trace on your swaddles. Aha! By the ass
of the Dorans you'll find I'm a martinet. The sins of your past are rising
against you. Many. Hundreds.
THE SINS OF THE PAST:
(in a medley of voices) He went through a form of clandestine marriage
with at least one woman in the shadow of the Black church. Unspeakable
messages he telephoned mentally to Miss Dunn at an address in D'Olier
street while he presented himself indecently to the instrument in the
callbox. By word and deed he frankly encouraged a nocturnal strumpet to
deposit fecal and other matter in an unsanitary outhouse attached to empty
premises. In five public conveniences he wrote pencilled messages offering
his nuptial partner to all strongmembered males. And by the offensively
smelling vitriol works did he not pass night after night by loving courting
couples to see if and what and how much he could see? Did he not lie in
bed, the gross boar, gloating over a nauseous fragment of wellused toilet
paper presented to him by a nasty harlot, stimulated by gingerbread and a
postal order?
BELLO:
(whistles loudly) Say! What was the most revolting piece of obscenity in all
your career of crime? Go the whole hog. Puke it out! Be candid for once.
(Mute inhuman faces throng forward, leering, vanishing, gibbering,
booloohoom. Poldy Kock, bootlaces a penny Cassidy's hag, blind
stripling, larry rhinoceros, the girl, the woman, the whore, the other,
the . . . )
BLOOM:
Don't ask me! Our mutual faith. Pleasants street. I only thought the half of
the . . . I swear on my sacred oath . . .
BELLO:
(peremptorily) Answer. Repugnant wretch! I insist on knowing. Tell me
something to amuse me, smut or a bloody good ghoststory or a line of
poetry, quick, quick, quick! Where? How? What time? With how many? I
give you just three seconds. One! Two! Thr . . .
BLOOM:
(docile, gurgles) I rererepugnosed in rerererepugnant
BELLO:
(imperiously) O, get out, you skunk! Hold your tongue! Speak when you're
spoken to.
BLOOM:
(bows) Master! Mistress! Mantamer!
(He lifts his arms. His bangle bracelets fill.)
BELLO:
(satirically) By day you will souse and bat our smelling underclothes also
when we ladies are unwell, and swab out our latrines with dress pinned up
and a dishclout tied to your tail. Won't that be nice? (he places a ruby
ring on her finger) And there now! With this ring I thee own. Say, thank
you, mistress.
BLOOM:
Thank you, mistress.
BELLO:
You will make the beds, get my tub ready, empty the pisspots in the dif-
ferent rooms, including old Mrs Keogh's the cook's, a sandy one. Ay, and
rinse the seven of them well, mind, or lap it up like champagne. Drink me
piping hot. Hop! You will dance attendance or I'll lecture you on your
misdeeds, Miss Ruby, and spank your bare bot right well, miss, with the
hairbrush. You'll be taught the error of your ways. At night your wellcreamed
braceletted hands will wear fortythreebutton gloves newpowdered with talc
and having delicately scented fingertips. For such favours knights of old
laid down their lives. (he chuckles) My boys will be no end charmed to see
you so ladylike, the colonel, above all, when they come here the night before
the wedding to fondle my new attraction in gilded heels. First I'll have
a go at you myself. A man I know on the turf named Charles Alberta Marsh
(I was in bed with him just now and another gentleman out of the Hanaper
and Petty Bag office) is on the lookout for a maid of all work at a short
knock. Swell the bust. Smile. Droop shoulders. What offers? (he points)
For that lot. Trained by owner to fetch and carry, basket in mouth. (he
bares his arm and plunges it elbowdeep in Bloom's vulva) There's fine
depth for you! What, boys? That give you a hardon? (he shoves his arm in
a bidder's face) Here wet the deck and wipe it round!
A BIDDER:
A florin.
(Dillon's lacquey rings his handbell.)
THE LACQUEY:
Barang!
A VOICE:
One and eightpence too much.
CHARLSE ALBERTA MARSH:
Must be virgin. Good breath. Clean.
BELLO:
(gives a rap with his gavel) Two bar. Rockbottom figure and cheap at the
price. Fourteen hands high. Touch and examine his points. Handle hrim. This
downy skin, these soft muscles, this tender flesh. If I had only my gold
piercer here! And quite easy to milk. Three newlaid gallons a day. A pure
stockgetter, due to lay within the hour. His sire's milk record was a
thousand gallons of whole milk in forty weeks. Whoa my jewel! Beg up!
Whoa! (he brands his initial c on Bloom's croup) So! Warranted Cohen!
What advance on two bob, gentlemen?
A Darkvisaged man:
(in disguised accent) Hoondert punt sterlink.
VOICES:
(subdued) For the Caliph. Haroun Al Raschid.
BELLO:
(gaily) Right. Let them all come. The scanty, daringly short skirt, riding up
at the knee to show a peep of white pantalette, is a potent weapon and
transparent stockings, emeraldgartered, with the long straight seam trailing
up beyond the knee, appeal to the better instincts of the blase man about
town. Learn the smooth mincing walk on four inch Louis Quinze heels, the
Grecian bend with provoking croup, the thighs fluescent, knees modestly
kissing. Bring all your powers of fascination to bear on them. Pander to
their Gomorrahan vices.
BLOOM:
(bends his blushing face into his armpit and simpers with forefinger in
mouth) O, I know what you're hinting at now!
BELLO:
What else are you good for, an impotent thing like you? (he stoops and,
peering, pokes with his fan rudely under the fat suet folds of Bloom's
haunches) Up! Up! Manx cat! What have we here? Where's your curly teapot
gone to or who docked it on you, cockyolly? Sing, birdy, sing. It's as
limp as a boy of six's doing his pooly behind a cart. Buy a bucket or
sell your pump. (loudly) Can you do a man's job?
BLOOM:
Eccles street . . .
BELLO:
(sarcastically) I wouldn't hurt your feelings for the world but there's
a man of brawn in possession there. The tables are turned, my gay young
fellow! He is something like a fullgrown outdoor man. Well for you, you
muff, if you had that weapon with knobs and lumps and warts all over it.
He shot his bolt, I can tell you! Foot to foot, knee to knee, belly to bel-
ly, bubs to breast! He's no eunuch. A shock of red hair he has sticking out
of him behind like a furzebush! Wait for nine months, my lad! Holy ginger,
it's kicking and coughing up and down in her guts already! That makes
you wild, don't it? Touches the spot? (he spits in contempt) Spittoon!
BLOOM:
I was indecently treated, I . . . Inform the police. Hundred pounds.
Unmentionable. I . . .
BELLO:
Would if you could, lame duck. A downpour we want not your drizzle.
BLOOM:
To drive me mad! Moll! I forgot! Forgive! Moll . . . We . . . Still . . .
BELLO:
(ruthlessly) No, Leopold Bloom, all is changed by woman's will since you
slept horizontal in Sleepy Hollow your night of twenty years. Return and
see.
(Old sleepy hollow calls over the wold.)
SLEEPY HOLLOW:
Rip van Wink! Rip van Winkle!
BLOOM:
(in tattered mocassins with a rusty fowlingpiece, tiptoeing, fingertipping,
his Haggard bony bearded face Peering through the diamond panes, cries
out)
I see her! It's she! The first night at Mat Dillon's! But that dress, the
green! And her hair is dyed gold and he . . .
BELLO:
(laughs mockingly) That's your daughter, you owl, with a Mullingar student.
(Milly Bloom, fairhaired, greenvested, slimsandalled, her blue scarf
in the seawind simply swirling, breaks from the arms of her lover
and calls, her young eyes wonderwide.)
Milly: My! It's Papli! But, O Papli, how old you've grown!
BELLO:
Changed, eh? Our whatnot, our writingtable where we never wrote, aunt
Hegarty's armchair, our classic reprints of old masters. A man and his
menfriends are living there in clover. The Cuckoos' Rest! Why not? How
many women had you, eh, following them up dark streets, flatfoot, excit-
ing them by your smothered grunts, what, you male prostitute? Blameless
dames with parcels of groceries. Turn about. Sauce for the goose, my
gander O.
BLOOM:
They . . . I . . .
BELLO:
(cuttingly) Their heelmarks will stamp the Brusselette carpet you bought at
Wren's auction. In their horseplay with Moll the romp to find the buck
flea
in her breeches they will deface the little statue you carried home in the
rain for art for art' sake. They will violate the secrets of your bottom
drawer. Pages will be torn from your handbook of astronomy to make them
pipespills. And they will spit in your ten shilling brass fender from
Hampton Leedom's.
BLOOM:
Ten and six. The act of low scoundrels. Let me go. I will return. I will
prove . . .
A VOICE:
Swear!
(Bloom clenches his fists and crawls forward, a bowieknife between
his teeth.)
BELLO:
As a paying guest or a kept man? Too late. You have made your secondbest
bed and others must lie in it. Your epitaph is written. You are down and
out and don't you forget it, old bean.
BLOOM:
Justice! All Ireland versus one! Has nobody . . .? (he bites his thumb)
BELLO:
Die and be damned to you if you have any sense of decency or grace about
you. I can give you a rare old wine that'll send you skipping to hell and
back. Sign a will and leave us any coin you have! If you have none see you
damn well get it, steal it, rob it! We'll bury you in our shrubbery jakes
where you'll be dead and dirty with old Cuck Cohen, my stepnephew I marr-
ied, the bloody old gouty procurator and sodomite with a crick in his neck,
and my other ten or eleven husbands, whatever the buggers' names were,
suffocated in the one cesspool. (he explodes in a loud phlegmy laugh)
We'll manure you, Mr Flower! (he pipes scoffingly) Byby, Poldy! Byby,
Papli!
BLOOM:
(clasps his head) My willpower! Memory! I have sinned! I have suff . . .
(he weeps tearlessly)
BELLO:
(sneers) Crybabby! Crocodile tears!
(Bloom, broken, closely veiled for the sacrifice, sobs, his face
to the earth. The passing bell is heard. Darkshawled figures of
the circumcised, in sackcloth and ashes, stand by the wailing
wall. M. Shulomowitz, Joseph Goldwater, Moses Herzog, Harris
Rosenberg, M. Moisel, J. Citron, Minnie Watchman, P. Mastiansky,
the Reverend Leopold Abramovitz, Chazen. With swaying arms they
wail in pneuma over the recreant Bloom.)
THE CIRCUMSIZED:
(in dark guttural chant as they cast dead sea fruit upon him, no
flowers) Shema Israel Adonai Elohenu Adonai Echad.
VOICES:
(sighing) So he's gone. Ah yes. Yes, indeed. Bloom? Never heard of him.
No? Queer kind of chap. There's the widow. That so? Ah, yes.
(From the suttee pyre the flame of gum camphire ascends. The pall
of incense smoke screens and disperses. Out of her oakframe a nymph
with hair unbound, lightly clad in teabrown artcolours, descends
From her grotto and passing under interlacing yews stands over
Bloom.)
THE YEWS:
(their leaves whispering) Sister. Our sister. Ssh!
THE NYMPH:
(softly) Mortal! (kindly) Nay, dost not weepest!
BLOOM:
(crawls jellily forward under the boughs, streaked by sunlight, with
dignity) This position. I felt it was expected of me. Force of habit.
THE NYMPH:
Mortal! You found me in evil company, highkickers, coster picnicmakers,
pugilists, popular generals, immoral panto boys in fleshtights and the
nifty
shimmy dancers, La Aurora and Karini, musical act, the hit of the century.
I was hidden in cheap pink paper that smelt of rock oil. I was surrounded
by the stale smut of clubmen, stories to disturb callow youth, ads for
transparencies, truedup dice and bustpads, proprietary articles and why
wear a truss with testimonial from ruptured gentleman. Useful hints to the
married.
BLOOM:
(lifts a turtle head towards her lap) We have met before. On another star.
THE NYMPH:
(sadly) Rubber goods. Neverrip brand as supplied to the aristocracy. Cor-
sets for men. I cure fits or money refunded. Unsolicited testimonials for
Professor Waldmann's wonderful chest exuber. My bust developed four inches
in three weeks, reports Mrs Gus Rublin with photo.
BLOOM:
You mean Photo bits?
THE NYMPH:
I do. You bore me away, framed me in oak and tinsel, set me above your
marriage couch. Unseen, one summer eve, you kissed me in four places.
And with loving pencil you shaded my eyes, my bosom and my shame.
BLOOM:
(humbly kisses her long hair) Your classic curves, beautiful immortal, I
was glad to look on you, to praise you, a thing of beauty, almost to pray.
THE NYMPH:
During dark nights I heard your praise.
BLOOM:
(quickly) Yes, yes. You mean that I . . . Sleep reveals the worst side of
everyone, children perhaps excepted. I know I fell out of bed or rather was
pushed. Steel wine is said to cure snoring. For the rest there is that English
invention, pamphlet of which I received some days ago, incorrectly addressed.
It claims to afford a noiseless, inoffensive vent. (he sighs) 'Twas ever thus.
Frailty, thy name is marriage.
THE NYMPH:
(her fingers in her ears) And words. They are not in my dictionary.
BLOOM:
You understood them?
THE YEWS:
Ssh!
THE NYMPH:
(covers her face with her hands) What have I not seen in that chamber?
What must my eyes look down on?
BLOOM:
(apologetically) I know. Soiled personal linen, wrong side up with care.
The quoits are loose. From Gibraltar by long sea long ago.
THE NYMPH:
(bends her head) Worse, worse!
BLOOM:
(reflects precautiously) That antiquated commode. It wasn't her weight.
She scaled just eleven stone nine. She put on nine pounds after weaning.
It was a crack and want of glue. Eh? And that absurd orangekeyed utensil
which has only one handle.
(The sound of a waterfall is heard in bright cascade.)
The waterfALL:
Poulaphouca Poulaphouca
Poulaphouca Poulaphouca.
THE YEWS:
(mingling their boughs) Listen. Whisper. She is right, our sister. We grew
by Poulaphouca waterfall. We gave shade on languorous summer days.
JOHN WYSE NOLAN:
(in the background, in Irish National Forester's uniform, doffs his plumed
hat) Prosper! Give shade on languorous days, trees of Ireland!
THE YEWS:
(murmuring) Who came to Poulaphouca with the High School excursion? Who
left his nutquesting classmates to seek our shade?
BLOOM:
(scared) High School of Poula? Mnemo? Not in full possession of faculties.
Concussion. Run over by tram.
The echo:
Sham!
BLOOM:
(pigeonbreasted, bottleshouldered, padded, in nondescript juvenile grey
and Black striped suit, too small for Him, white tennis shoes, bordered
stockings with turnover tops and a red Schoolcap with badge) I was in my
teens, a growing boy. A little then sufficed, a jolting car, the mingling
odours of the ladies' cloakroom and lavatory, the throng penned tight on
the old Royal stairs (for they love crushes, instinct of the herd, and the
dark sexsmelling theatre unbridles vice), even a pricelist of their hosiery.
And then the heat. There were sunspots that summer. End of school. And
tipsycake. Halcyon days.
(Halcyon days, high school boys in blue and white football
jerseys and shorts, Master Donald Turnbull, Master Abraham
Chatterton, Master Owen Goldberg, Master Jack Meredith, Master
Percy Apjohn, stand in a clearing of the trees and shout to Master
Leopold Bloom.)
The halcyon days:
Mackerel! Live us again. Hurray! (they cheer)
BLOOM:
(hobbledehoy, warmgloved, mammamufflered, starred with spent snowballs,
Struggles to rise) Again! I feel sixteen! What a lark! Let's ring all
the bells in Montague street. (he cheers feebly) Hurray for the High
School!
The echo:
Fool!
THE YEWS:
(rustling) She is right, our sister. Whisper. (whispered kisses are heard
in all the wood. Faces of Hamadryads peep out from the boles and among the
Leaves and break, blossoming into Bloom.) Who profaned our silent shade?
THE NYMPH:
(coyly, through parting fingers) There? In the open air?
THE YEWS:
(sweeping downward) Sister, yes. And on our virgin sward.
The waterfALL:
Poulaphouca Poulaphouca
Phoucaphouca Phoucaphouca.
THE NYMPH:
(with wide fingers) O, infamy!
BLOOM:
I was precocious. Youth. The fauna. I sacrificed to the god of the forest.
The flowers that bloom in the spring. It was pairing time. Capillary attrac-
tion is a natural phenomenon. Lotty Clarke, flaxenhaired, I saw at her
night
toilette through illclosed curtains with poor papa's operaglasses: The
wanton ate grass wildly. She rolled downhill at Rialto bridge to tempt
me
with her flow of animal spirits. She climbed their crooked tree and I .
. .
A saint couldn't resist it. The demon possessed me. Besides, who saw?
(Staggering Bob, a whitepolled calf, thrusts a ruminating head with
humid nostrils through the foliage.)
Staggering Bob:
(large teardrops rolling from his prominent eyes, snivels) Me. Me see.
BLOOM:
Simply satisfying a need I . . . (with pathos) No girl would when I went
girling. Too ugly. They wouldn't play . . .
(High on Ben Howth through rhododendrons a nannygoat passes,
plumpuddered, buttytailed, dropping currants.)
The nannygoat:
(bleats) Megeggaggegg! Nannannanny!
BLOOM:
(hatless, flushed, covered with burrs of thistledown and gorsespine)
Regularly engaged. Circumstances alter cases. (he gazes intently
downwards on the water) Thirtytwo head over heels per second. Press
nightmare. Giddy Elijah. Fall from cliff. Sad end of government prin-
ter's clerk.
(Through silversilent summer air the dummy of Bloom, rolled in a
mummy, rolls roteatingly from the lion's head cliff into the purple
waiting waters.)
The dummymummy:
Bbbbblllllblblblblobschbg!
(Far out in the bay between Bailey and Kish lights the Erin's King
sails, sending a broadening plume of coalsmoke from her funnel
towards the land.)
COUNCILLOR NANNETII:
(alone on deck, in dark alpaca, yellowkitefaced, his hand in his waistcoat
opening, declaims) When my country takes her place among the nations of
the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written. I have . . .
BLOOM:
Done. Prff!
THE NYMPH:
(loftily) We immortals, as you saw today, have not such a place and no hair
there either. We are stonecold and pure. We eat electric light. (she arches
her body in lascivious crispation, placing her forefinger in her mouth) Spoke
to me. Heard from behind. How then could you . . .?
BLOOM:
(pawing the heather abjectly) O, I have been a perfect pig. Enemas too I
have administered. One third of a pint of quassia to which add a table-
spoonful of rocksalt. Up the fundament. With Hamilton Long's syringe,
the ladies' friend.
THE NYMPH:
In my presence. The powderpuff. (she blushes and makes a knee) And the
rest!
BLOOM:
(dejected) Yes. Peccavi! I have paid homage on that living altar where the
back changes name. (with sudden fervour) For why should the dainty scented
jewelled hand, the hand that rules . . .?
(Figures wind serpenting in slow woodland pattern around the
treestems, Cooeeing)
THE VOICE OF KITTY:
(in the thicket) Show us one of them cushions.
The voice of FLORRY:
Here.
(A grouse wings clumsily through the underwood.)
The voice of LYNCH:
(in the thicket) Whew! Piping hot!
The voice of ZOE:
(from the thicket) Came from a hot place.
The voice of VIRAG:
(a birdchief, bluestreaked and feathered in war panoply with his assegai,
striding through a crackling canebrake over beechmast and acorns) Hot!
Hot! Ware Sitting Bull!
BLOOM:
It overpowers me. The warm impress of her warm form. Even to sit where a
woman has sat, especially with divaricated thighs, as though to grant the
last favours, most especially with previously well uplifted white sateen
coatpans. So womanly, full. It fills me full.
The waterfALL:
Phillaphulla Poulaphouca
Poulaphouca Poulaphouca.
THE YEWS:
Ssh! Sister, speak!
THE NYMPH:
(eyeless, in nun's white habit, coif and hugewinged wimple, softly, with
remote eyes) Tranquilla convent. Sister Agatha. Mount Carmel. The appari-
tions of Knock and Lourdes. No more desire. (she reclines her head, sigh-
ing) Only the ethereal. Where dreamy creamy gull waves o'er the waters
dull.
(Bloom half rises. His back trouserbutton snaps.)
The button:
Bip!
(Two sluts of the coombe dance rainily by, shawled, yelling flatly.)
THE SLUTS:
O, Leopold lost the pin of his drawers
He didn't know what to do,
To keep it up,
To keep it up.
BLOOM:
(coldly) You have broken the spell. The last straw. If there were only
ethereal where would you all be, postulants and novices? Shy but willing
like an ass pissing.
THE YEWS:
(their silverfoil of leaves precipitating, their skinny arms aging and
swaying) Deciduously!
THE NYMPH:
(her features hardening, gropes in the folds of her habit) Sacrilege! To
attempt my virtue! (a large moist stain appears on her robe) Sully my
innocence! You are not fit to touch the garment of a pure woman. (she
clutches again in her robe) Wait. Satan, you'll sing no more lovesongs.
Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. (she draws a poniard and, clad in the sheathmail
of an elected knight of nine, strikes at his loins) Nekum!
BLOOM:
(starts up, seizes her hand) Hoy! Nebrakada! Cat o' nine lives! Fair play,
madam. No pruningknife. The fox and the grapes, is it? What do you lack
with your barbed wire? Crucifix not thick enough? (he clutches her veil) A
holy abbot you want or Brophy, the lame gardener, or the spoutless statue
of the watercarrier, or good mother Alphonsus, eh Reynard?
THE NYMPH:
(with a cry flees from him unveiled, her plaster cast cracking, a cloud of
stench escaping from the cracks) Poli . . .!
BLOOM:
(calls after her) As if you didn't get it on the double yourselves. No jerks
and multiple mucosities all over you. I tried it. Your strength our weakness.
What's our studfee? What will you pay on the nail? You fee mendancers on the
Riviera, I read. (the fleeing nymph raises a keen) Eh? I have sixteen years
of black slave labour behind me. And would a jury give me five shillings
alimony tomorrow, eh? Fool someone else, not me. (he sniffs) Rut. Onions.
Stale. Sulphur. Grease.
(The figure of Bella Cohen stands before him.)
BELLA:
You'll know me the next time.
BLOOM:
(composed, regards her) Passee. Mutton dressed as lamb. Long in the tooth
and superfluous hair. A raw onion the last thing at night would benefit your
complexion. And take some double chin drill. Your eyes are as vapid as the
glasseyes of your stuffed fox. They have the dimensions of your other fea-
tures, that's all. I'm not a triple screw propeller.
BELLA:
(contemptuously) You're not game, in fact. (her sowcunt barks) Fbhracht!
BLOOM:
(contemptuously) Clean your nailless middle finger first, your bully's cold
spunk is dripping from your cockscomb. Take a handful of hay and wipe your-
self.
BELLA:
I know you, canvasser! Dead cod!
BLOOM:
I saw him, kipkeeper! Pox and gleet vendor!
BELLA:
(turns to the piano) Which of you was playing the dead march from Saul?
ZOE:
Me. Mind your cornflowers. (she darts to the piano and bangs chords on it
with crossed arms) The cat's ramble through the slag. (she glances back)
Eh? Who's making love to my sweeties? (she darts back to the table) What's
yours is mine and what's mine is my own.
(Kitty, disconcerted, coats her teeth with the silver paper. Bloom
approaches Zoe.)
BLOOM:
(gently) Give me back that potato, will you?
ZOE:
Forfeits, a fine thing and a superfine thing.
BLOOM:
(with feeling) It is nothing, but still, a relic of poor mamma.
ZOE:
Give a thing and take it back
God'll ask you where is that
You'll say you don't know
God'll send you down below.
BLOOM:
There is a memory attached to it. I should like to have it.
STEPHEN:
To have or not to have that is the question.
ZOE:
Here. (she hauls up a reef of her slip, revealing her bare thigh, and unrolls
the potato from the top of her stocking) Those that hides knows where to
find.
BELLA:
(frowns) Here. This isn't a musical peepshow. And don't you smash that piano.
Who's paying here?
(She goes to the pianola. Stephen fumbles in his pocket and, taking
out a banknote by Its corner, hands it to her.)
STEPHEN:
(with exaggerated politeness) This silken purse I made out of the sow's ear
of the public. Madam, excuse me. If you allow me. (he indicates vaguely
Lynch and Bloom) We are all in the same sweepstake, Kinch and Lynch.
Dans ce bordel ou tenons nostre etat.
LYNCH:
(calls from the hearth) Dedalus! Give her your blessing for me.
STEPHEN:
(hands bella a coin) Gold. She has it.
BELLA:
(looks at the money, then at Stephen, then at Zoe, Florry and Kitty) Do
you want three girls? It's ten shillings here.
STEPHEN:
(delightedly) A hundred thousand apologies. (he fumbles again and takes
out and hands her two crowns) Permit, brevi manu, my sight is somewhat
troubled.
(Bella goes to the table to count the money while Stephen talks to
himself in monosyllables. Zoe bends over the table. Kitty leans over
Zoe's neck. Lynch gets up, rights his cap and, clasping Kitty's waist,
adds his head to the group.)
FLORRY:
(strives heavily to rise) Ow! My foot's asleep. (she limps over to the
table. Bloom approaches.)
Bella, Zoe, Kitty, Lynch, BLOOM:
(chattering and squabbling) The gentleman . . . ten shillings . . . paying for
the three . . . allow me a moment . . . this gentleman pays separate . . . who's
touching it? . . . ow! . . . mind who you're pinching . . . are you staying the
night or a short time? . . . who did? . . . you're a liar, excuse me . . . the
gentleman paid down like a gentleman . . . drink . . . it's long after eleven.
STEPHEN:
(at the pianola, making a gesture of abhorrence) No bottles! What, eleven?
A riddle!
ZOE:
(lifting up her pettigown and folding a half sovereign into the top of her
stocking) Hard earned on the flat of my back.
LYNCH:
(lifting Kitty from the table) Come!
KITTY:
Wait. (she clutches the two crowns)
FLORRY:
And me?
LYNCH:
Hoopla! (he lifts her, carries her and bumps her down on the sofa.)
STEPHEN:
The fox crew, the cocks flew,
The bells in heaven
Were striking eleven.
'Tis time for her poor soul
To get out of heaven.
BLOOM:
(quietly lays a half sovereign on the table between bella and florry) So.
Allow me. (he takes up the Poundnote) Three times ten. We're square.
BELLA:
(admiringly) You're such a slyboots, old cocky. I could kiss you.
ZOE:
(points) Him? Deep as a drawwell.
(Lynch bends Kitty Back over the sofa and kisses her. Bloom goes
with the poundnote to Stephen.)
BLOOM:
This is yours.
STEPHEN:
How is that? The distrait or absentminded beggar. (he fumbles again in
his pocket and draws out a handful of coins. An object fills.) That fell.
BLOOM:
(stooping, picks up and hands a box of matches) This.
STEPHEN:
Lucifer. Thanks.
BLOOM:
(quietly) You had better hand over that cash to me to take care of. Why
pay more?
STEPHEN:
(hands him all his coins) Be just before you are generous.
BLOOM:
I will but is it wise? (he counts) One, seven, eleven, and five. Six. Eleven. I
don't answer for what you may have lost.
STEPHEN:
Why striking eleven? Proparoxyton. Moment before the next Lessing says.
Thirsty fox. (he laughs loudly) Burying his grandmother. Probably he
killed her.
BLOOM:
That is one pound six and eleven. One pound seven, say.
STEPHEN:
Doesn't matter a rambling damn.
BLOOM:
No, but . . .
STEPHEN:
(comes to the table) Cigarette, please. (Lynch tosses a cigarette from the
sofa to the table) And so Georgina Johnson is dead and married. (a cigar-
ette appears on the table. Stephen looks at it) Wonder. Parlour magic.
Married. Hm. (he strikes a match and proceeds to light the cigarette
with enigmatic melancholy)
LYNCH:
(watching him) You would have a better chance of lighting it if you held
the match nearer.
STEPHEN:
(brings the match near his eye) Lynx eye. Must get glasses. Broke them
yesterday. Sixteen years ago. Distance. The eye sees all flat. (he draws the
match away. It goes out.) Brain thinks. Near: far. Ineluctable modality of
the visible. (he frowns mysteriously) Hm. Sphinx. The beast that has two
backs at midnight. Married.
ZOE:
It was a commercial traveller married her and took her away with him.
FLORRY:
(nods) Mr Lambe from London.
STEPHEN:
Lamb of London, who takest away the sins of our world.
LYNCH:
(embracing Kitty on the sofa, chants deeply) Dona nobis pacem.
(The cigarette slips from Stephen ‘s fingers. Bloom picks it up and
throws it in the grate.)
BLOOM:
Don't smoke. You ought to eat. Cursed dog I met. (to Zoe) You have
nothing?
ZOE:
Is he hungry?
STEPHEN:
(extends his hand to her smiling and chants to the air of the bloodoath
in Te Dusk of the Gods)
Hangende Hunger,
Fragende Frau,
Macht uns alle kaputt.
ZOE:
(tragically) Hamlet, I am thy father's gimlet! (she takes his hand) Blue
eyes beauty I'll read your hand. (she points to his forehead) No wit, no
wrinkles. (she counts) Two, three, Mars, that's courage. (Stephen shakes
his head) No kid.
LYNCH:
Sheet lightning courage. The youth who could not shiver and shake.
(to Zoe) Who taught you palmistry?
ZOE:
(turns) Ask my ballocks that I haven't got. (to Stephen) I see it in your
face. The eye, like that. (she frowns with lowered head)
LYNCH:
(laughing, slaps Kitty behind twice) Like that. Pandybat.
(Twice loudly a pandybat cracks, the coffin of the pianola flies open,
the bald little round Jack-in-the-box head of Father Dolan springs
up.)
Father Dolan:
Any boy want flogging? Broke his glasses? Lazy idle little schemer.
See it in your eye.
(Mild, benign, rectorial, reproving, the head of Don John Conmee rises
from the pianola coffin.)
Don John Conmee:
Now, Father Dolan! Now. I'm sure that Stephen is a very good little boy!
ZOE:
(examining Stephen's palm) Woman's hand.
STEPHEN:
(murmurs) Continue. Lie. Hold me. Caress. I never could read His
handwriting except his criminal thumbprint on the haddock.
ZOE:
What day were you born?
STEPHEN:
Thursday. Today.
ZOE:
Thursday's child has far to go. (she traces lines on his hand)
Line of fate. Influential friends.
FLORRY:
(pointing) Imagination.
ZOE:
Mount of the moon. You'll meet with a . . . (she peers at his hands
abruptly) I won't tell you what's not good for you. Or do you want
to know?
BLOOM:
(detaches her fingers and offers his palm) More harm than good. Here.
Read mine.
BELLA:
Show. (she turns up Bloom's hand) I thought so. Knobby knuckles
for the women.
ZOE:
(peering at Bloom's palm) Gridiron. Travels beyond the sea and marry
money.
BLOOM:
Wrong.
ZOE:
(quickly) O, I see. Short little finger. Henpecked husband. That wrong?
(Black Liz, a huge rooster hatching in a chalked circle, rises,
stretches her wings and clucks.)
BLACK LIZ:
Gara. Klook. Klook. Klook.
(she sidles from her newlaid egg and waddles off)
BLOOM:
(points to his hand) That weal there is an accident. Fell and cut it
twentytwo years ago. I was sixteen.
ZOE:
I see, says the blind man. Tell us news.
STEPHEN:
See? Moves to one great goal. I am twentytwo. Sixteen years ago he was
twentytwo too. Sixteen years ago I twentytwo tumbled. Twentytwo years
ago he sixteen fell off his hobbyhorse. (he winces) Hurt my hand some-
where. Must see a dentist. Money?
(Zoe whispers to Florry. They giggle. Bloom releases his hand and
writes idly on the table in backhand, pencilling slow curves.)
FLORRY:
What?
(A hackneycar, number three hundred and twentyfour, with a
gallantbuttocked mare, driven by James Barton, Harmony avenue,
Donnybrook, trots past. Blazes Boylan and Lenehan sprawl sway-
ing on the sideseats. The Ormond Boots crouches behind on the
axle. Sadly over the crossblind Lydia Douce and Mina Kennedy
gaze.)
The boots: (jogging, mocks them with thumb and wriggling
wormfingers) Haw haw have you the horn?
(Bronze by gold they whisper.)
ZOE:
(to Florry) Whisper. (she whispers again)
(Over the well of the car Blazes Boylan leans, his boater straw set
sideways, a red flower in his mouth. Lenehan in yachtsman's cap and
white shoes officiously detaches a long hair from Blazes Boylan's
coat shoulder.)
LENEHAN:
Ho! What do I here behold? Were you brushing the cobwebs off a few
quims?
BOYLAN:
(sated, smiles) Plucking a turkey.
LENEHAN:
A good night's work.
BOYLAN:
(holding up four thick bluntungulated fingers, winks) Blazes Kate! Up
to sample or your money back. (he holds out a forefinger) Smell that.
LENEHAN:
(smells gleefully) Ah! Lobster and mayonnaise. Ah!
ZOE and FLORRY:
(laugh together) Ha ha ha ha.
BOYLAN:
(jumps surely from the car and calls loudly for all to hear) Hello,
Bloom! Mrs Bloom dressed yet?
BLOOM:
(in flunkey's prune plush coat and kneebreeches, buff stockings and
powdered wig) I'm afraid not, sir. The last articles . . .
BOYLAN:
(tosses him sixpence) Here, to buy yourself a gin and splash. (he hangs his
hat smartly on a peg of Bloom's antlered head) Show me in. I have a little
private business with your wife, you understand?
BLOOM:
Thank you, sir. Yes, sir. Madam Tweedy is in her bath, sir.
Marion:
He ought to feel himself highly honoured. (she plops splashing out of the
water) Raoul darling, come and dry me. I'm in my pelt. Only my new hat
and a carriage sponge.
BOYLAN:
(a merry twinkle in his eye) Topping!
BELLA:
What? What is it?
(Zoe whispers to her.)
Marion:
Let him look, the pishogue! Pimp! And scourge himself! I'll write to a
powerful prostitute or Bartholomona, the bearded woman, to raise weals
out on him an inch thick and make him bring me back a signed and stamped
receipt.
BOYLAN:
(clasps himself) Here, I can't hold this little lot much longer. (he
strides off on stiff cavalry legs)
BELLA:
(laughing) Ho ho ho ho.
BOYLAN:
(to Bloom, over his shoulder) You can apply your eye to the keyhole and
play with yourself while I just go through her a few times.
BLOOM:
Thank you, sir. I will, sir. May I bring two men chums to witness the
deed and take a snapshot? (he holds out An ointment jar) Vaseline, sir?
Orangeflower . . .? Lukewarm water . . .?
KITTY:
(from the sofa) Tell us, Florry. Tell us. What.
(Florry whispers to her. Whispering lovewords murmur, liplapping
loudly, poppysmic plopslop.)
Mina Kennedy:
(her eyes upturned) O, it must be like the scent of geraniums and lovely
peaches! O, he simply idolises every bit of her! Stuck together! Covered
with kisses!
Lydia Douce:
(her mouth opening) Yumyum. O, he's carrying her round the room doing
it! Ride a cockhorse. You could hear them in Paris and New York. Like
mouthfuls of strawberries and cream.
KITTY:
(laughing) Hee hee hee.
Boylan's voice:
(sweetly, hoarsely, in the pit of his stomach) Ah! Gooblazqruk
brukarchkrasht!
Marion's voice:
(hoarsely, sweetly, rising to her throat) O! Weeshwashtkissinapoo-
isthnapoohuck?
BLOOM:
(his eyes wildly dilated, clasps himself) Show! Hide! Show! Plough
her! More! Shoot!
BELLA, ZOE, FLORRY, KITTY:
Ho ho! Ha ha! Hee hee!
LYNCH:
(points) The mirror up to nature. (he laughs) Hu hu hu hu hu!
(Stephen and Bloom gaze in the mirror. The face of William
Shakespeare, beardless, appears there, rigid in facial paralysis,
crowned by the reflection of the reindeer antlered hatrack in
the hall.)
Shakespeare:
(in dignified ventriloquy) 'Tis the loud laugh bespeaks the vacant mind. (to
Bloom) Thou thoughtest as how thou wastest invisible. Gaze. (he crows with
a black capon's laugh) Iagogo! How my Oldfellow chokit his Thursdaymornun.
Iagogogo!
BLOOM:
(smiles yellowly at the three whores) When will I hear the joke?
ZOE:
Before you're twice married and once a widower.
BLOOM:
Lapses are condoned. Even the great Napoleon when measurements were taken
next the skin after his death . . .
(Mrs Dignam, widow woman, her snubnose and cheeks flushed
with deathtalk, tears and Tunney's Tawny sherry, hurries by in her
weeds, her bonnet awry, rouging and powdering her cheeks, lips
and nose, a pen chivvying her brood of cygnets. Beneath her skirt
appear her late husband's everyday trousers and turnedup boots,
large eights. She holds a Scottish widows' insurance policy and a
large marquee umbrella under which her brood run with her, Patsy
hopping on one shod foot, his collar loose, a hank of porksteaks
dangling, Freddy whimpering, Susy with a crying cod's mouth,
Alice struggling with the baby. She cuffs them on, her streamers
flaunting aloft.)
Freddy:
Ah, ma, you're dragging me along!
Susy:
Mamma, the beeftea is fizzing over!
Shakespeare:
(with paralytic rage) Weda seca whokilla farst.
(The face of Martin Cunningham, bearded, refeatures Shake-
speare's beardless face. The marquee umbrella sways drunkenly,
the children run aside. Under the umbrella appears Mrs Cun-
ningham in Merry Widow hat and kimono gown. She glides
sidling and bowing, twirling japanesily.)
Mrs Cunningham:
(sings)
And they call me the jewel of Asia!
MARTIN CUNNINGHAM:
(gazes on her, impassive) Immense! Most bloody awful demirep!
STEPHEN:
Et exaltabuntur cornua iusti. Queens lay with prize bulls. Remember
Pasiphae for whose lust my grandoldgrossfather made the first con-
fessionbox. Forget not Madam Grissel Steevens nor the suine scions of
the house of Lambert. And Noah was drunk with wine. And his ark was
open.
BELLA:
None of that here. Come to the wrong shop.
LYNCH:
Let him alone. He's back from Paris.
ZOE:
(runs to Stephen and links him) O go on! Give us some parleyvoo.
(Stephen claps hat on head and leaps over to the fireplace where he
stands with shrugged shoulders, finny hands outspread, a painted
smile on his face.)
LYNCH:
(pommelling on the sofa) Rmm Rmm Rmm Rrrrrrmmmm.
STEPHEN:
(gabbles with marionette jerks) Thousand places of entertainment to
expense your evenings with lovely ladies saling gloves and other things
perhaps hers heart beerchops perfect fashionable house very eccentric
where lots cocottes beautiful dressed much about princesses like are
dancing cancan and walking there parisian clowneries extra foolish for
bachelors foreigns the same if talking a poor english how much smart they
are on things love and sensations voluptuous. Misters very selects for is
pleasure must to visit heaven and hell show with mortuary candles and they
tears silver which occur every night. Perfectly shocking terrific of reli-
gion's things mockery seen in universal world. All chic womans which arrive
full of modesty then disrobe and squeal loud to see vampire man debauch nun
very fresh young with dessous troublants. (he clacks his tongue loudly) Ho,
la la! Ce pif qu'il a!
LYNCH:
Vive le vampire!
The whores:
Bravo! Parleyvoo!
STEPHEN:
(with head back, laughs loudly, clapping himself grimacing) Great success
of laughing. Angels much prostitutes like and holy apostles big damn
ruffians. Demimondaines nicely handsome sparkling of diamonds very ami-
able costumed. Or do you are fond better what belongs they moderns plea-
sure turpitude of old mans? (he points about him with grotesque gestures
which lynch and the whores Reply to) Caoutchouc statue woman reversible
or lifesize tompeeptom of virgins nudities very lesbic the kiss five ten
times. Enter, gentleman, to see in mirror every positions trapezes all
that machine there besides also if desire act awfully bestial butcher's
boy pollutes in warm veal liver or omlet on the belly piece de Shakespeare.
BELLA:
(clapping her belly sinks back on the sofa, with a shout of laughter) An
omelette on the . . . Ho! ho! ho! ho! . . . omelette on the . . .
STEPHEN:
(mincingly) I love you, sir darling. Speak you englishman tongue for
double entente cordiale. O yes, mon loup. How much cost? Waterloo.
Watercloset. (he ceases suddenly and holds up a forefinger)
BELLA:
(laughing) Omelette . . .
The whores: (laughing) Encore! Encore!
STEPHEN:
Mark me. I dreamt of a watermelon.
ZOE:
Go abroad and love a foreign lady.
LYNCH:
Across the world for a wife.
FLORRY:
Dreams goes by contraries.
STEPHEN:
(extends his arms) It was here. Street of harlots. In Serpentine avenue
Beelzebub showed me her, a fubsy widow. Where's the red carpet spread?
BLOOM:
(approaching Stephen) Look . . .
STEPHEN:
No, I flew. My foes beneath me. And ever shall be. World without end. (he
cries) Pater! Free!
BLOOM:
I say, look . . .
STEPHEN:
Break my spirit, will he? O Merde alors! (he cries, his vulture talons
sharpened) Hola! Hillyho!
(Simon dedalus' voice hilloes in answer, somewhat sleepy but
ready.)
SIMON:
That's all right. (he swoops uncertainly through the air, wheeling, utter-
ing cries of heartening, on strong ponderous buzzard wings) Ho, boy! Are
you going to win? Hoop! Pschatt! Stable with those halfcastes. Wouldn't let
them within the bawl of an ass. Head up! Keep our flag flying! An eagle
gules volant in a field argent displayed. Ulster king at arms! Haihoop! (he
makes the beagle's call, giving tongue) Bulbul! Burblblburblbl! Hai, boy!
(The fronds and spaces of the wallpaper file rapidly crosscountry.
A stout fox, drawn from covert, brush pointed, having buried his
grandmother, runs swift for the open, brighteyed, seeking badger
earth, under the leaves. The pack of staghounds follows, nose to the
ground, sniffing their quarry, beaglebaying, burblbrbling to be
blooded. Ward union Huntsmen and huntswomen live with them,
hot for a kill. From six mile point, flathouse, nine mile stone
follow the footpeople with knotty sticks, hayforks, salmongaffs,
lassos, flockmasters with stockwhips, bearbaiters with tomtoms,
toreadors with bullswords, greynegroes waving torches. The crowd
bawls of dicers, crown and anchor players, thimbleriggers,
Broadsmen. Crows and touts, hoarse bookies in high wizard hats
clamour deafeningly.)
The crowd:
Card of the races. Racing card!
Ten to one the field!
Tommy on the clay here! Tommy on the clay!
Ten to one bar one! Ten to one bar one!
Try your luck on Spinning Jenny!
Ten to one bar one!
Sell the monkey, boys! Sell the monkey!
I'll give ten to one!
Ten to one bar one!
(A dark horse, riderless, bolts like a phantom past the winningpost,
his mane moonfoaming, his eyeballs stars. The field follows, a bunch
of bucking mounts. Skeleton horses, sceptre, maximum the second, Zin-
fandel, the duke of Westminster's shotover, repulse, the duke of beau-
fort's ceylon, prix de paris. Dwarfs ride them, rustyarmoured, leaping,
leaping in their, in their saddles. Last in a drizzle of rain on a
brokenwinded isabelle nag, cock of the North, the favourite, honey
cap, green jacket, orange sleeves, Garrett Deasy Up, gripping the
reins, a hockeystick at the ready. His nag on spavined whitegaitered
feet jogs along the rocky road.)
The orange lodges:
(jeering) Get down and push, mister. Last lap! You'll be home the night!
Garrett Deasy:
(bolt upright, his nailscraped face plastered with postagestamps, brandishes
his hockeystick, his blue eyes flashing in the prism of the chandelier as his
mount lopes by at schooling gallop) Per vias rectas!
(A yoke of buckets leopards all over him and his rearing nag a
torrent of mutton broth with dancing coins of carrots, barley,
onions, turnips, potatoes.)
The green lodges:
Soft day, sir John! Soft day, your honour!
(Private Carr, Private Compton and Cissy Caffrey pass beneath the windows,
singing in discord.)
STEPHEN:
Hark! Our friend noise in the street.
ZOE:
(holds up her hand) Stop!
Private Carr, Private Compton and CISSY CAFFREY:
Yet I've a sort a
Yorkshire relish for . . .
ZOE:
That's me. (she claps her hands) Dance! Dance! (she runs to the pianola)
Who has twopence?
BLOOM:
Who'll . . .?
LYNCH:
(handing her coins) Here.
STEPHEN:
(cracking his fingers impatiently) Quick! Quick! Where's my augur's rod?
(he runs to the piano and takes his ashplant, beating his foot in tripudium)
ZOE:
(turns the drumhandle) There.
(She drops two pennies in the slot. Gold, pink and violet lights start
forth. The drum turns purring in low hesitation waltz. Professor Goodwin,
in a bowknotted periwig, in court dress, wearing a stained Inverness
cape, bent in two from incredible age, totters across the room, his
hands
fluttering. He sits tinily on the pianostool and lifts and beats hand-
less sticks of arms on the keyboard, nodding with damsel's grace, his
bowknot bobbing)
ZOE:
(twirls round herself, heeltapping) Dance. Anybody here for there? Who'll
dance? Clear the table.
(The pianola with changing lights plays in waltz time the prelude
of My Girl's a Yorkshire Girl. Stephen throws his ashplant on the
table and seizes Zoe round the waist. Florry and Bella push the
table towards the fireplace. Stephen, arming Zoe with exaggerated
grace, begins to waltz her round the room. Bloom stands aside. Her
sleeve falling from gracing arms reveals a white fleshflower of
vaccination. Between the curtains Professor Maginni inserts a leg
on the toepoint of which spins a silk hat. With a deft kick he sends
it spinning to his crown and jauntyhatted skates in. He wears a slate
frockcoat with claret silk lapels, a gorget of cream tulle, a green
lowcut waistcoat, stock collar with white kerchief, tight lavender
trousers, patent pumps and canary gloves. In his buttonhole is an
immense dahlia. He twirls in reversed directions a clouded cane,
then wedges it tight in his oxter. He places a hand lightly on his
breastbone, bows, and fondles his flower and buttons.)
Maginni:
The poetry of motion, art of calisthenics. No connection with Madam
Legget Byrne's or Levenston's. Fancy dress balls arranged. Deportment.
The Katty Lanner step. So. Watch me! My terpsichorean abilities. (he
minuets forward three paces on tripping bee's feet) Tout le monde en
avant! Reverence! Tout le monde en place!
(The prelude ceases. Professor Goodwin, beating vague arms
shrivels, sinks, his live cape falling about the stool. The air
in firmer waltz time sounds. Stephen and Zoe circle freely. The
lights change, glow, fade gold rosy violet.)
THE PIANOLA:
Two young fellows were talking about their girls, girls, girls,
Sweethearts they'd left behind . . .
(From a corner the morning hours run out, goldhaired, slimsandalled,
in girlish blue, waspwaisted, with innocent hands. Nimbly they dance,
twirling their skipping ropes. The hours of noon follow in amber gold.
Laughing, linked, high haircombs flashing, they catch the sun in mock-
ing mirrors, lifting their arms.)
Maginni:
(clipclaps glovesilent hands) Carre! Avant deux! Breathe evenly! Balance!
(The morning and noon hours waltz in their places, turning,
advancing to each other, shaping their curves, bowing visavis.
cavaliers behind them arch and suspend their arms, with hands
descending to, touching, rising from their shoulders.)
Hours:
You may touch my.
CAVALIERS:
May I touch your?
Hours:
O, but lightly!
CAVALIERS:
O, so lightly!
THE PIANOLA:
My little shy little lass has a waist.
(Zoe and Stephen turn boldly with looser swing. The twilight hours
advance from long landshadows, dispersed, lagging, languideyed,
their cheeks delicate with cipria and false faint bloom. They are
in grey gauze with dark bat sleeves that flutter in the land breeze.)
Maginni:
Avant huit! traverse! salut! cours de mains! croise!
(The night hours, one by one, steal to the last place. Morning, noon
and twilight hours retreat before them. They are masked, with dag-
gered hair and bracelets of dull bells. Weary they curchycurchy
under veils.)
The bracelets:
Heigho! Heigho!
ZOE:
(twirling, her hand to her brow) O!
Maginni:
Les tiroirs! chaine de dames! la corbeille! dos a dos!
(Arabesquing wearily they weave a pattern on the floor, weaving,
unweaving, curtseying, twirling, simply swirling.)
ZOE:
I'm giddy!
(She frees herself, droops on a chair. Stephen seizes Florry and
turns with her.)
Maginni:
Boulangere! Les ronds! les ponts! chevaux de bois! escargots!
(Twining, receding, with interchanging hands the night hours link
each each with arching arms in a mosaic of movements. Stephen and
Florry turn cumbrously.)
Maginni:
Dansez avec vos dames! Changez de dames! donnez le petit bouquet a votre
dame! remerciez!
THE PIANOLA:
Best, best of all,
Baraabum!
KITTY:
(jumps up) O, they played that on the hobbyhorses at the Mirus bazaar!
(She runs to Stephen. He leaves Florry brusquely and seizes
Kitty. A screaming bittern's harsh high whistle shrieks.
groangrousegurgling toft's cumbersome whirligig turns slowly
the room right roundabout the room.)
THE PIANOLA:
My girl's a Yorkshire girl.
ZOE:
Yorkshire through and through.
Come on all!
(She seizes Florry and waltzes her.)
STEPHEN:
Pas seul!
(He wheels Kitty into Lynch's arms, snatches up his ashplant from
the table and takes the floor. All wheel whirl waltz twirl. Bloombella
Kittylynch FlorryZoe jujuby women. Stephen with hat ashplant
frogsplits in middle highkicks with skykicking mouth shut hand clasp
part under thigh. With clang tinkle boomhammer tallyho hornblower
blue green yellow flashes toft's cumbersome turns with hobbyhorse
riders from gilded snakes dangled, bowels fandango leaping spurn
soil foot and fall again.)
THE PIANOLA:
Though she's a factory lass
And wears no fancy clothes.
(Closeclutched swift swifter with glareblareflare scudding they
scootlootshoot lumbering by. Baraabum!)
Tutti:
Encore! Bis! Bravo! Encore!
SIMON:
Think of your mother's people!
STEPHEN:
Dance of death.
(Bang fresh barang bang of lacquey's bell, horse, nag, steer,
piglings, conmee on christass, Lame crutch and leg sailor in
cockboat armfolded ropepulling hitching stamp hornpipe through
and through. Baraabum! On nags hogs bellhorses Gadarene swine
Corny in coffin steel shark stone onehandled nelson two trickies
Frauenzimmer plumstained from pram filling bawling gum he's a
champion. Fuseblue peer from barrel rev. evensong Love on
hackney jaunt blazes blind coddoubled bicyclers dilly with snow-
cake no fancy clothes. Then in last Switchback lumbering up
and down bump mashtub Sort of viceroy and reine relish for
tublumber bumpshire rose. Baraabum!
The couples fall aside. Stephen whirls giddily. Room whirls back.
Eyes closed he Totters. Red rails fly spacewards. Stars all around
suns turn roundabout. Bright midges dance on walls. He stops
dead.)
STEPHEN:
Ho!
(Stephen's mother, emaciated, rises stark through the floor, in leper
grey with a wreath of Faded orangeblossoms and A Torn bridal veil,
her face worn and noseless, green with gravemould. Her hair is
scant and lank. She fixes her bluecircled hollow eyesockets on
Stephen and opens her toothless mouth uttering a silent word. A
choir of virgins and Confessors sing voicelessly.)
The choir:
Liliata rutilantium te confessorum . . .
Iubilantium te virginum . . .
(From the top of a tower Buck Mulligan, in particoloured jester's
dress of puce and yellow And clown's cap with curling bell, stands
gaping at her, a smoking buttered split scone in his hand.)
BUCK MULLIGAN:
She's beastly dead. The pity of it! Mulligan meets the afflicted mother. (he
upturns his eyes) Mercurial Malachi!
THE MOTHER:
(with the subtle smile of death's madness) I was once the beautiful May
Goulding. I am dead.
STEPHEN:
(horrorstruck) Lemur, who are you? No. What bogeyman's trick is this?
BUCK MULLIGAN:
(shakes his curling capbell) The mockery of it! Kinch dogsbody killed her
bitchbody. She kicked the bucket. (tears of molten butter fall from his
eyes
on to the scone) Our great sweet mother! Epi oinopa ponton.
THE MOTHER:
(comes nearer, breathing upon him softly her breath of wetted ashes)
All must go through it, Stephen. More women than men in the world. You too. Time
will come.
STEPHEN:
(choking with fright, remorse and horror) They say I killed you, mother.
He offended your memory. Cancer did it, not I. Destiny.
THE MOTHER:
(a green rill of bile trickling from a side of her mouth) You sang that song to
me. Love's bitter mystery.
STEPHEN:
(eagerly) Tell me the word, mother, if you know now. The word known to all
men.
THE MOTHER:
Who saved you the night you jumped into the train at Dalkey with Paddy
Lee?
Who had pity for you when you were sad among the strangers? Prayer is allpowerful.
Prayer for the suffering souls in the Ursuline manual and forty days' indulgence.
Repent, Stephen.
STEPHEN:
The ghoul! Hyena!
THE MOTHER:
I pray for you in my other world. Get Dilly to make you that boiled rice
every night after your brainwork. Years and years I loved you, O, my son,
my firstborn, when you lay in my womb.
ZOE:
(fanning herself with the grate fan) I'm melting!
FLORRY:
(points to Stephen) Look! He's white.
BLOOM:
(goes to the window to open it more) Giddy.
THE MOTHER:
(with smouldering eyes) Repent! O, the fire of hell!
STEPHEN:
(panting) His noncorrosive sublimate! The corpsechewer! Raw head and bloody
bones.
THE MOTHER:
(her face drawing near and nearer, sending out an ashen breath) Beware!
(she raises her blackened withered right arm slowly towards Stephen's
breast with outstretched finger) Beware God's hand!
(A green crab with malignant red eyes sticks deep its grinning claws
in Stephen's heart.)
STEPHEN:
(strangled with rage) Shite! (his features grow drawn grey and old)
BLOOM:
(at the window) What?
STEPHEN:
Ah non, par exemple! The intellectual imagination! With me all or not at all.
Non serviam!
FLORRY:
Give him some cold water. Wait. (she rushes out)
THE MOTHER:
(wrings her hands slowly, moaning desperately) O Sacred Heart of Jesus,
have mercy on him! Save him from hell, O Divine Sacred Heart!
STEPHEN:
No! No! No! Break my spirit, all of you, if you can! I'll bring you all to
heel!
THE MOTHER:
(in the agony of her deathrattle) Have mercy on Stephen, Lord, for my
sake! Inexpressible was my anguish when expiring with love, grief and
agony on Mount Calvary.
STEPHEN:
Nothung!
(He lifts his ashplant high with both hands and smashes the
chandelier. Time's livid final flame leaps and, in the following
darkness, ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry.)
The gasjet:
Pwfungg!
BLOOM:
Stop!
LYNCH:
(rushes forward and seizes Stephen's hand) Here! Hold on! Don't run
amok!
BELLA:
Police!
(Stephen, abandoning his ashplant, his head and arms thrown back
stark, beats the ground and flies from the room, Past the whores
at the door.)
BELLA:
(screams) After him!
(The two whores rush to the halldoor. Lynch and Kitty and Zoe
stampede from the room. They talk excitedly. Bloom follows,
returns.)
The whores:
(jammed in the doorway, pointing) Down there.
ZOE:
(pointing) There. There's something up.
BELLA:
Who pays for the lamp? (she seizes Bloom's coattail) Here, you were with
him. The lamp's broken.
BLOOM:
(rushes to the hall, rushes back) What lamp, woman?
A whore:
He tore his coat.
BELLA:
(her eyes hard with anger and cupidity, points) Who's to pay for that? Ten
shillings. You're a witness.
BLOOM:
(snatches up Stephen's ashplant) Me? Ten shillings? Haven't you lifted
enough off him? Didn't he . . .?
BELLA:
(loudly) Here, none of your tall talk. This isn't a brothel. A ten shilling
house.
BLOOM:
(His head under the lamp, pulls the chain. Puling, the gasjet lights up a
crushed mauve purple shade. He raises the ashplant.) Only the chimney's
broken. Here is all he . . .
BELLA:
(shrinks back and screams) Jesus! Don't!
BLOOM:
(warding off a blow) To show you how he hit the paper. There's not
sixpenceworth of damage done. Ten shillings!
FLORRY:
(with a glass of water, enters) Where is he?
BELLA:
Do you want me to call the police?
BLOOM:
O, I know. Bulldog on the premises. But he's a Trinity student. Patrons
of your establishment. Gentlemen that pay the rent. (he makes a masonic
sign) Know what I mean? Nephew of the vice-chancellor. You don't want a
scandal.
BELLA:
(angrily) Trinity. Coming down here ragging after the boatraces and
paying nothing. Are you my commander here or? Where is he? I'll charge
him! Disgrace him, I will! (she shouts) Zoe! Zoe!
BLOOM:
(urgently) And if it were your own son in Oxford? (warningly) I know.
BELLA:
(almost speechless) Who are. Incog!
ZOE:
(in the doorway) There's a row on.
BLOOM:
What? Where? (he throws a shilling on the table and starts) That's for the
chimney. Where? I need mountain air.
(He hurries out through the hall. The whores point. Florry follows,
spilling water from her tilted tumbler. On the doorstep all the
whores clustered talk volubly, pointing to the right where the fog
has cleared off. From the left arrives a jingling hackney car. It
slows to in front of the house. Bloom at the halldoor perceives
Corny Kelleher who is about to dismount from the car with two si-
lent lechers. He averts his face. Bella from within the hall urges
on her whores. They blow ickylickysticky yumyum kisses. Corny Kelleher
replies with a ghastly lewd smile. The silent lechers turn to pay the
jarvey. Zoe and Kitty still point right. Bloom, parting them swiftly,
draws his caliph's hood and poncho and hurries down the steps with
sideways face. Incog Haroun al Raschid he flits behind the silent
lechers and hastens on by the railings with fleet step of a pard
strewing the drag behind him, torn envelopes drenched in aniseed.
The ashplant marks his stride. A pack of bloodhounds, led by Horn-
blower of Trinity brandishing a dogwhip in tallyho cap and an old
pair of grey trousers, follow from fir, picking up the scent,
nearer, baying, panting, at fault, breaking away, throwing their
tongues, biting his heels, leaping at his tail. He walks, runs,
zigzags, gallops, lugs laid back. He is pelted with gravel, cab-
bagestumps, biscuitboxes, eggs, potatoes, dead codfish, woman's
slipperslappers. After him freshfound the hue and cry zigzag gal-
lops in hot pursuit of follow my leader: 65 c, 66 c, night watch,
John Henry Menton, wisdom Hely, V. B. Dillon, councillor Nannetti,
Alexander Keyes, Larry O'Rourke, Joe Cuffe Mrs O'Dowd, pisser
Burke, the Nameless One, Mrs Riordan, the citizen, Garryowen,
whodoyoucallhim, strangeface, fellowthatsolike, sawhimbefore,
chapwithawen, Chris Callinan, Sir Charles Cameron, Benjamin
Dollard, Lenehan, Bartell D'Arcy, Joe Hynes, Red Murray, editor
Brayden, T. M. Healy, Mr Justice Fitzgibbon, John Howard Par-
nell, the Reverend Tinned Salmon, Professor Joly, Mrs Breen,
Denis Breen, Theodore Purefoy, Mina Purefoy, the Westland Row
postmistress, C. P. M'Coy, friend of Lyons, Hoppy Holohan,
maninthestreet, othermaninthestreet, footballboots, pugnosed
driver, rich protestant lady, Davy Byrne, Mrs Ellen M'Guinness,
Mrs Joe Gallaher, George Lidwell, Jimmy Henry on corns, Super-
intendent Laracy, Father Cowley, Crofton out of the Collector-
General's, Dan Dawson, dental surgeon Bloom with tweezers, Mrs
Bob Doran, Mrs Kennefick, Mrs Wyse Nolan, John Wyse Nolan,
handsomemarriedwomanrubbedagainstwidebehindinclonskeatram, the
bookseller of sweets of sin, Miss dubedatandshedidbedad, Mes-
dames Gerald and Stanislaus Moran of Roebuck, the managing clerk
of Drimmie's, Wetherup, Colonel Hayes, Mastiansky, Citron, Pen-
rose, Aaron Figatner, Moses Herzog, Michael E Geraghty, Inspector
Troy, Mrs Galbraith, the constable off Eccles street corner, old
Doctor Brady with stethoscope, the mystery man on the beach, a
retriever, Mrs Miriam Dandrade and all her lovers.)
THE HUE AND CRY:
(helterskelterpelterwelter) He's Bloom! Stop Bloom! StopaBloom!
Stopperrobber! Hi! Hi! Stophim on the corner!
(At the corner of Beaver Street beneath the scaffolding Bloom
panting stops on the fringe of the noisy quarrelling knot, a lot
not knowing a jot what hi! Hi! Row and wrangle round the whowhat
brawlaltogether.)
STEPHEN:
(with elaborate gestures, breathing deeply and slowly) You are my guests.
Uninvited. By virtue of the fifth of George and seventh of Edward. His-
tory to blame. Fabled by mothers of memory.
PRIVATE CARR:
(to Cissy Caffrey) Was he insulting you?
STEPHEN:
Addressed her in vocative feminine. Probably neuter. Ungenitive.
VOICES:
No, he didn't. I seen him. The girl there. He was in Mrs Cohen's. What's
up? Soldier and civilian.
CISSY CAFFREY:
I was in company with the soldiers and they left me to do -- you know, and
the young man run up behind me. But I'm faithful to the man that's treating
me though I'm only a shilling whore.
STEPHEN:
(catches sight of Lynch's and Kitty's heads) Hail, Sisyphus. (he points to
himself and the others) Poetic. Uropoetic.
VOICES:
Shes faithfultheman.
CISSY CAFFREY:
Yes, to go with him. And me with a soldier friend.
PRIVATE COMPTON:
He doesn't half want a thick ear, the blighter. Biff him one, Harry.
PRIVATE CARR:
(to Cissy) Was he insulting you while me and him was having a piss?
LORD TENNYSON:
(gentleman poet in Union Jack blazer and cricket flannels, bareheaded,
flowingbearded) Theirs not to reason why.
PRIVATE COMPTON:
Biff him, Harry.
STEPHEN:
(to Private Compton) I don't know your name but you are quite right.
Doctor Swift says one man in armour will beat ten men in their shirts.
Shirt is synechdoche. Part for the whole.
CISSY CAFFREY:
(to the crowd) No, I was with the privates.
STEPHEN:
(amiably) Why not? The bold soldier boy. In my opinion every lady for
example . . .
PRIVATE CARR:
(his cap awry, advances to Stephen) Say, how would it be, governor, if I was
to bash in your jaw?
STEPHEN:
(looks up to the sky) How? Very unpleasant. Noble art of selfpretence.
Personally, I detest action. (he waves his hand) Hand hurts me slightly.
Enfin ce sont vos oignons. (to Cissy Caffrey) Some trouble is on here.
What is it precisely?
DOLLY GRAY:
(from her balcony waves her handkerchief, giving the sign of the heroine of
Jericho) Rahab. Cook's son, goodbye. Safe home to Dolly. Dream of the girl
you left behind and she will dream of you.
(the soldiers turn their swimming eyes.)
BLOOM:
(elbowing through the crowd, plucks Stephen's sleeve vigorously) Come now,
professor, that carman is waiting.
STEPHEN:
(turns) Eh? (he disengages himself) Why should I not speak to him or to
any human being who walks upright upon this oblate orange? (he points
his finger) I'm not afraid of what I can talk to if I see his eye. Retai-
ning the perpendicular. (he staggers a pace back)
BLOOM:
(propping him) Retain your own.
STEPHEN:
(laughs emptily) My centre of gravity is displaced. I have forgotten the
trick. Let us sit down somewhere and discuss. Struggle for life is the law
of existence but but human philirenists, notably the tsar and the king of
England, have invented arbitration. (he taps his brow) But in here it is I
must kill the priest and the king.
BIDDY THE CLAP:
Did you hear what the professor said? He's a professor out of the college.
CUNTY KATE:
I did. I heard that.
BIDDY THE CLAP:
He expresses himself with such marked refinement of phraseology.
Cunty Kate:
Indeed, yes. And at the same time with such apposite trenchancy.
PRIVATE CARR:
(pulls himself free and comes forward) What's that you're saying about my
king?
(Edward the Seventh appears in an archway. He wars a white
jersey on which an image of the Sacred Heart is stitched with
the insignia of garter and thistle, golden fleece, elephant of
Denmark, Skinner's and Probyn's horse, Lincoln's Inn bencher
and ancient and honourable artillery company of Massachusetts.
He sucks a red jujube. He is robed as a Grand Elect perfect and
sublime mason with trowel and apron, marked made in Germany. In
his left hand he holds a plasterer's bucket on which is printed
Defense d'uriner. A roar of welcome greets him.)
EDWARD THE SEVENTH:
(slowly, solemnly but indistinctly) Peace, perfect peace. For identification,
bucket in my hand. Cheerio, boys. (he turns to his subjects) We have come
here to witness a clean straight fight and we heartily wish both men the best
of good luck. Mahak makar a bak. (he shakes hands with Private Carr, Private
Compton, Stephen, Bloom and lynch.)
(General applause. Edward the Seventh lifts his bucket graciously in
acknowledgment.)
PRIVATE CARR:
(to Stephen) Say it again.
STEPHEN:
(nervous, friendly, pulls himself up) I understand your point of view
though I have no king myself for the moment. This is the age of patent
medicines. A discussion is difficult down here. But this is the point. You
die for your country. Suppose. (he places his arm on Private Carr's sleeve)
Not that I wish it for you. But I say: Let my country die for me. Up to the
present it has done so. I didn't want it to die. Damn death. Long live life!
EDWARD THE SEVENTH:
(levitates over heaps of slain, in the garb and with the halo of joking
Jesus,
a white jujube in his phosphorescent face)
My methods are new and are causing surprise.
To make the blind see I throw dust in their eyes.
STEPHEN:
Kings and unicorns! (he fills back a pace) Come somewhere and we'll . . .
What was that girl saying? . . .
PRIVATE COMPTON:
Eh, Harry, give him a kick in the knackers. Stick one into Jerry.
BLOOM:
(to the Privates, softly) He doesn't know what he's saying. Taken a little
more than is good for him. Absinthe. Greeneyed monster. I know him. He's a
gentleman, a poet. It's all right.
STEPHEN:
(nods, smiling and laughing) Gentleman, patriot, scholar and judge of impost-
ors.
PRIVATE CARR:
I don't give a bugger who he is.
PRIVATE COMPTON:
We don't give a bugger who he is.
STEPHEN:
I seem to annoy them. Green rag to a bull.
(Kevin Egan of Paris in black Spanish tasselled shirt and
peep-o'-day boy's hat signs to Stephen.)
KEVIN EGAN:
H'lo! Bonjour! The vieille ogresse with the dents jaunes.
(Patrice Egan peeps from behind, his rabbitface nibbling a quince
leaf.)
PATRICE:
Socialiste!
Don Emile Patrizio Franz Rupert Pope Hennessy:
(in medieval hauberk, two wild geese Volant on his helm, with noble
indignation points a mailed hand against the privates) Werf those eykes
to footboden, big grand porcos of johnyellows todos covered of gravy!
BLOOM:
(to Stephen) Come home. You'll get into trouble.
STEPHEN:
(swaying) I don't avoid it. He provokes my intelligence.
BIDDY THE CLAP:
One immediately observes that he is of patrician lineage.
THE VIRAGO:
Green above the red, says he. Wolfe Tone.
THE BAWD:
The red's as good as the green. And better. Up the soldiers! Up King
Edward!
A ROUGH:
(laughs) Ay! Hands up to De Wet.
THE CITIZEN:
(with a huge emerald muffler and shillelagh, calls)
May the God above
Send down a dove
With teeth as sharp as razors
To slit the throats
Of the English dogs
That hanged our Irish leaders.
THE CROPPY BOY:
(the ropenoose round his neck, gripes in his issuing bowels with both
hands)
I bear no hate to a living thing,
But I love my country beyond the king.
RUMBOLD, DEMON BARBER:
(accompanied by two blackmasked assistants, advances with Gladstone bag
which he opens) Ladies and gents, cleaver purchased by Mrs Pearcy to slay
Mogg. Knife with which Voisin dismembered the wife of a compatriot and hid
remains in a sheet in the cellar, the unfortunate female's throat being
cut from ear to ear. Phial containing arsenic retrieved from body of Miss
Barron which sent Seddon to the gallows.
(He jerks the rope. The assistants leap at the victim's legs and
drag him downward, grunting the croppy boy's tongue protrudes vio-
lently.)
THE CROPPY BOY:
Horhot ho hray hor hother's hest.
(He gives up the ghost. A violent erection of the hanged sends
gouts of sperm spouting through his deathclothes on to the cob-
blestones. Mrs Bellingham, Mrs Yelverton Barry and the Honourable
Mrs Mervyn Talboys rush forward with their Handkerchiefs to sop
it up.)
RUMBOLD:
I'm near it myself. (he undoes the noose) Rope which hanged the awful
rebel. Ten shillings a time. As applied to Her Royal Highness. (he plunges
his head into the gaping belly of the hanged and draws out his head again
clotted with coiled and smoking entrails) My painful duty has now been
done. God save the king!
Edward the Seventh:
(dances slowly, solemnly, rattling his bucket, and sings with soft content-
ment)
On coronation day, on coronation day,
O, won't we have a merry time,
Drinking whisky, beer and wine!
PRIVATE CARR:
Here. What are you saying about my king?
STEPHEN:
(throws up his hands) O, this is too monotonous! Nothing. He wants my
money and my life, though want must be his master, for some brutish
empire of his. Money I haven't. (he searches his pockets vaguely) Gave
it to someone.
PRIVATE CARR:
Who wants your bleeding money?
STEPHEN:
(tries to move off) Will someone tell me where I am least likely to meet
these necessary evils? Ca se voit aussi a Paris. Not that I . . . But, by
Saint Patrick . . .!
(The women's heads coalesce. Old Gummy Granny in sugarloaf
hat appears seated on a toadstool, the deathflower of the
potato blight on her breast.)
STEPHEN:
Aha! I know you, gammer! Hamlet, revenge! The old sow that eats her far-
row!
OLD GUMMY GRANNY:
(rocking to and fro) Ireland's sweetheart, the king of Spain's daughter,
alanna. Strangers in my house, bad manners to them! (she keens with
banshee woe) Ochone! Ochone! Silk of the kine! (she wails) You met with
poor old Ireland and how does she stand?
STEPHEN:
How do I stand you? The hat trick! Where's the third person of the Blessed
Trinity? Soggarth Aroon? The reverend Carrion Crow.
CISSY CAFFREY:
(shrill) Stop them from fighting!
A ROUGH:
Our men retreated.
PRIVATE CARR:
(tugging at his belt) I'll wring the neck of any fucker says a word against
my fucking king.
BLOOM:
(terrified) He said nothing. Not a word. A pure misunderstanding.
PRIVATE COMPTON:
Go it, Harry. Do him one in the eye. He's a proBoer.
STEPHEN:
Did I? When?
BLOOM:
(to the Redcoats) We fought for you in South Africa, Irish missile troops.
Isn't that history? Royal Dublin Fusiliers. Honoured by our monarch.
THE NAVVY:
(staggering past) O, yes! O God, yes! O, make the kwawr a krowawr! O! Bo!
(Casqued halberdiers in armour thrust forward a pentice of gutted
spearpoints. Major Tweedy, moustached like turko the terrible, in
bearskin cap with hackleplume and accoutrements, with epaulettes,
gilt chevrons and sabretaches, his breast bright with medals, toes
the line. He gives the pilgrim warrior's sign of the knights temp-
lars.)
MAJOR TWEEDY:
(growls gruffly) Rorke's Drift! Up, guards, and at them! Mahar shalal
hashbaz.
THE CITIZEN
Erin go bragh!
(Major Tweedy and the citizen exhibit to each other medals,
decorations, trophies of war, wounds. Both salute with fierce
hostility.)
PRIVATE CARR:
I'll do him in.
PRIVATE COMPTON:
(moves the crowd back) Fair play, here. Make a bleeding butcher's shop of
the bugger.
(Massed bands blare Garryowen and God save the King.)
CISSY CAFFREY:
They're going to fight. For me!
CUNTY KATE:
The brave and the fair.
BIDDY THE CLAP:
Methinks yon sable knight will joust it with the best.
CUNTY KATE:
(blushing deeply) Nay, madam. The gules doublet and merry saint George
for me!
STEPHEN:
The harlot's cry from street to street
Shall weave Old Ireland's windingsheet.
PRIVATE CARR:
(loosening his belt, shouts) I'll wring the neck of any fucking bastard says
a word against my bleeding fucking king.
BLOOM:
(shakes Cissy Caffrey's shoulders) Speak, you! Are you struck dumb? You
are the link between nations and generations. Speak, woman, sacred life-
giver!
CISSY CAFFREY:
(alarmed, seizes Private Carr's sleeve) Amn't I with you? Amn't I your
girl? Cissy's your girl. (she cries) Police!
STEPHEN:
(ecstatically, to Cissy Caffrey)
White thy fambles, red thy gan
And thy quarrons dainty is.
VOICES:
Police!
DISTANT VOICES:
Dublin's burning! Dublin's burning! On fire, on fire!
(Brimstone fires spring up. Dense clouds roll past. Heavy Gat-
ling guns boom. Pandemonium. Troops deploy. Gallop of hoofs.
Artillery. Hoarse commands. Bells clang. Backers shout. Drunkards
bawl. Whores screech. Foghorns hoot. Cries of valour. Shrieks of
dying. Pikes clash on cuirasses. Thieves rob the slain. Birds of
prey, winging from the sea, rising from marshlands, swooping from
eyries, hover screaming, gannets, cormorants, vultures, goshawks,
climbing woodcocks, peregrines, merlins, blackgrouse, sea eagles,
gulls, albatrosses, barnacle geese. The midnight sun is darkened.
The Earth trembles. The dead of Dublin from Prospect and Mount
Jerome in white sheepskin overcoats and black goatfell cloaks a-
rise and appear to many. A chasm opens with a noiseless yawn. Tom
Rochford, winner, in athlete's singlet and breeches, arrives at the
head of the national hurdle handicap and leaps into the void. He
is followed by a race of runners and leapers. In wild attitudes
they spring from the brink. Their bodies plunge. Factory lasses
with fancy clothes toss redhot Yorkshire baraabombs. Society ladies
lift their skirts above their heads to protect themselves. Laughing
witches in red cutty sarks ride through the air on broomsticks. Qua-
kerlyster plasters blisters. It rains dragons' teeth. Armed heroes
spring up from furrows. They exchange in amity the pass of knights
of the Red Cross and fight duels with cavalry sabres: Wolfe Tone
against Henry Grattan, Smith O'Brien against Daniel O'Connell,
Michael Davitt against Isaac Butt, Justin M'Carthy against Par-
nell, Arthur Griffith against John Redmond, John O'Leary against
Lear O'Johnny, Lord Edward Fitzgerald against Lord Gerald Fitz-
edward, the O'Donoghue of the glens against the glens of the O'
Donoghue. On an eminence, the centre of the earth, rises the
fieldaltar of Saint Barbara. Black candles rise from its gospel
and epistle horns. From the high barbacans of the tower two shafts
of light fall on the smokepalled altarstone. On the altarstone Mrs
Mina Purefoy, goddess of unreason, lies, naked, fettered, a chalice
resting on her swollen belly. Father Malachi O'Flynn in a lace pet-
ticoat and reversed chasuble, his two left feet back to the front,
celebrates camp mass. The reverend Mr Hugh C Haines Love M. A. in
a plain cassock and mortarboard, his head and collar back to the
front, holds over the celebrant's head an open umbrella.)
FATHER MALACHI O'FLYNN:
Introibo ad altare diaboli.
THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE:
To the devil which hath made glad my young days.
FATHER MALACHI O'FLYNN:
(takes from the chalice and elevates a blooddripping host) Corpus meum.
THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE:
(raises high behind the celebrant's petticoat, revealing his grey bare
hairy buttocks between which a carrot is stuck) My body.
THE VOICE OF ALL THE DAMNED:
Htengier Tnetopinmo Dog Drol eht rof, Aiulella!
(From on high the voice of Adonai calls.)
ADONAI:
Dooooooooooog!
The voice of all the blessed:
Alleluia, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth!
(From on high the voice of adonai calls.)
ADONAI:
Goooooooooood!
(In strident discord peasants and townsmen of Orange and Green
factions sing Kick the Pope and Daily, daily sing to Mary.)
PRIVATE CARR:
(with ferocious articulation) I'll do him in, so help me fucking Christ! I'll
wring the bastard fucker's bleeding blasted fucking windpipe!
(The retriever, nosing on the fringe of the crowd, barks noisily.)
BLOOM:
(runs to lynch) Can't you get him away?
LYNCH:
He likes dialectic, the universal language. Kitty! (to Bloom) Get him away,
you. He won't listen to me.
(He drags Kitty away.)
STEPHEN:
(points) Exit judas. Et laqueo se suspendit.
BLOOM:
(runs to Stephen) Come along with me now before worse happens. Here's
your stick.
STEPHEN:
Stick, no. Reason. This feast of pure reason.
OLD GUMMY GRANNY:
(thrusts a dagger towards Stephen's hand) Remove him, acushla. At
8.35 a.m. you will be in heaven and Ireland will be free. (she prays)
O good God, take him!
CISSY CAFFREY:
(pulling Private Carr) Come on, you're boosed. He insulted me but I forgive
him. (shouting in his ear) I forgive him for insulting me.
BLOOM:
(over Stephen's shoulder) Yes, go. You see he's incapable.
PRIVATE CARR:
(breaks loose) I'll insult him.
(He rushes towards Stephen, fist outstretched, and strikes him in the
face. Stephen totters, collapses, falls, stunned. he lies prone, his
face to the sky, his hat rolling to the wall. Bloom follows and picks
it up.)
MAJOR TWEEDY:
(loudly) Carbine in bucket! Cease fire! Salute!
THE RETRIEVER:
(barking furiously) Ute ute ute ute ute ute ute ute.
THE CROWD:
Let him up! Don't strike him when he's down! Air! Who? The soldier hit
him. He's a professor. Is he hurted? Don't manhandle him! He's fainted!
A HAG:
What call had the redcoat to strike the gentleman and he under the
influence. Let them go and fight the Boers!
THE BAWD:
Listen to who's talking! Hasn't the soldier a right to go with his girl? He
gave him the coward's blow.
(They grab at each other's hair, claw at each other and spit)
THE RETRIEVER:
(barking) Wow wow wow.
BLOOM:
(shoves them back, loudly) Get back, stand back!
PRIVATE COMPTON:
(tugging his comrade) Here. Bugger off, Harry. Here's the cops!
(Two raincaped watch, tall, stand in the group.)
FIRST WATCH:
What's wrong here?
PRIVATE COMPTON:
We were with this lady. And he insulted us. And assaulted my chum. (the
retriever barks) Who owns the bleeding tyke?
CISSY CAFFREY:
(with expectation) Is he bleeding!
A man:
(rising from his knees) No. Gone off. He'll come to all right.
BLOOM:
(glances sharply at the man) Leave him to me. I can easily . . .
SECOND WATCH:
Who are you? Do you know him?
PRIVATE CARR:
(lurches towards the watch) He insulted my lady friend.
BLOOM:
(angrily) You hit him without provocation. I'm a witness. Constable, take
his regimental number.
SECOND WATCH:
I don't want your instructions in the discharge of my duty.
PRIVATE COMPTON:
(pulling his comrade) Here, bugger off Harry. Or Bennett'll shove you in
the lockup.
PRIVATE CARR:
(staggering as he is pulled away) God fuck old Bennett. He's a whitearsed
bugger. I don't give a shit for him.
FIRST WATCH:
(takes out his notebook) What's his name?
BLOOM:
(peering over the crowd) I just see a car there. If you give me a hand a
second, sergeant . . .
FIRST WATCH:
Name and address.
(Corny Kelleker, weepers round his hat, a death wreath in his hand,
appears among the bystanders.)
BLOOM:
(quickly) O, the very man! (he whispers) Simon Dedalus' son. A bit sprung.
Get those policemen to move those loafers back.
SECOND WATCH:
Night, Mr Kelleher.
CORNY KELLEHER:
(to the watch, with drawling eye) That's all right. I know him. Won a bit
on the races. Gold cup. Throwaway. (he laughs) Twenty to one. Do you fol-
low me?
FIRST WATCH:
(turns to the crowd) Here, what are you all gaping at? Move on out of
that.
(The crowd disperses slowly, muttering, down the lane.)
CORNY KELLEHER:
Leave it to me, sergeant. That'll be all right. (he laughs, shaking his head)
We were often as bad ourselves, ay or worse. What? Eh, what?
FIRST WATCH:
(laughs) I suppose so.
CORNY KELLEHER:
(nudges the second watch) Come and wipe your name off the slate. (he
lilts, wagging his head) With my tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom.
What, eh, do you follow me?
SECOND WATCH:
(genially) Ah, sure we were too.
CORNY KELLEHER:
(winking) Boys will be boys. I've a car round there.
SECOND WATCH:
All right, Mr Kelleher. Good night.
CORNY KELLEHER:
I'll see to that.
BLOOM:
(shakes hands with both of the watch in turn) Thank you very much,
gentlemen. Thank you. (he mumbles confidentially) We don't want any
scandal, you understand. Father is a wellknown highly respected cit-
izen. Just a little wild oats, you understand.
FIRST WATCH:
O. I understand, sir.
SECOND WATCH:
That's all right, sir.
FIRST WATCH:
It was only in case of corporal injuries I'd have to report it at the station.
BLOOM:
(nods rapidly) Naturally. Quite right. Only your bounden duty.
SECOND WATCH:
It's our duty.
CORNY KELLEHER:
Good night, men.
The watch:
(saluting together) Night, gentlemen.
(They move off with slow heavy tread)
BLOOM:
(blows) Providential you came on the scene. You have a car? . . .
CORNY KELLEHER:
(laughs, pointing his thumb over his right shoulder to the car brought up
against the scaffolding) Two commercials that were standing fizz in Jammet's.
Like princes, faith. One of them lost two quid on the race. Drowning his
grief. And were on for a go with the jolly girls. So I landed them up on
Behan's car and down to nighttown.
BLOOM:
I was just going home by Gardiner street when I happened to . . .
CORNY KELLEHER:
(laughs) Sure they wanted me to join in with the mots. No, by God, says I.
Not for old stagers like myself and yourself. (he laughs again and leers
with lacklustre eye) Thanks be to God we have it in the house, what, eh,
do you follow me? Hah, hah, hah!
BLOOM:
(tries to laugh) He, he, he! Yes. Matter of fact I was just visiting an old
friend of mine there, Virag, you don't know him (poor fellow, he's laid up
for the past week) and we had a liquor together and I was just making my
way home . . .
(The horse neighs.)
THE HORSE:
Hohohohohohoh! Hohohohome!
CORNY KELLEHER:
Sure it was Behan our jarvey there that told me after we left the two
commercials in Mrs Cohen's and I told him to pull up and got off to see.
(he laughs) Sober hearsedrivers a speciality. Will I give him a lift home?
Where does he hang out? Somewhere in Cabra, what?
BLOOM:
No, in Sandycove, I believe, from what he let drop.
(Stephen, prone, breathes to the stars. Corny kelleher, asquint,
drawls at the horse. Bloom, in gloom, looms down.)
CORNY KELLEHER:
(scratches his nape) Sandycove! (he bends down and calls to Stephen)
Eh! (he calls again) Eh! He's covered with shavings anyhow. Take care
they didn't lift anything off him.
BLOOM:
No, no, no. I have his money and his hat here and stick.
CORNY KELLEHER:
Ah, well, he'll get over it. No bones broken. Well, I'll shove along. (he
laughs) I've a rendezvous in the morning. Burying the dead. Safe home!
THE HORSE:
(neighs) Hohohohohome.
BLOOM:
Good night. I'll just wait and take him along in a few . . .
(Corny Kelleher returns to the outside car and mounts it. The
horseharness jingles.)
CORNY KELLEHER:
(from the car, standing) Night.
BLOOM:
Night.
(The jarvey chucks the reins and raises his whip encouragingly.
The car and horse back slowly, awkwardly, and turn. Corny Kell-
eher on the sideseat sways his head to and fro in sign of mirth
at Bloom's plight. The jarvey joins in the mute pantomimic mer-
riment nodding from the farther seat. Bloom shakes his head in
mute mirthful reply. With thumb and palm Corny Kelleher reas-
sures that the two bobbies will allow the sleep to continue for
what else is to be done. With a slow nod Bloom conveys his grat-
itude as that is exactly what Stephen needs. The car jingles
tooraloom round the corner of the tooraloom lane. Corny Kelleher
again reassuralooms with his hand. Bloom with his hand assura-
looms Corny Kelleher that he is reassuraloomtay. The tinkling
hoofs and jingling harness grow fainter with their tooralooloo
looloo lay. Bloom, holding in his hand Stephen's hat, festooned
with shavings, and ashplant, stands irresolute. then he bends to
him and shakes him by the shoulder.)
BLOOM:
Eh! Ho! (there is no answer; he bends again) Mr Dedalus! (there is no
answer) The name if you call. Somnambulist. (he bends again and hesita-
ting, brings his mouth near the face of the prostrate form) Stephen!
(there is No answer. He calls again.) Stephen!
STEPHEN:
(frowns) Who? Black panther. Vampire. (he sighs and stretches himself,
then murmurs thickly with prolonged vowels)
Who . . . drive . . . Fergus now
And pierce . . . wood's woven shade? . . .
(He turns on his left side, sighing, doubling himself together.)
BLOOM:
Poetry. Well educated. Pity. (he bends again and undoes the buttons of
Stephen's waistcoat) To breathe. (he brushes the woodshavings from Ste-
phen's clothes with light hand and fingers) One pound seven. Not hurt
anyhow. (he listens) What?
STEPHEN:
(murmurs)
. . . shadows . . . the woods
. . . white breast . . . dim sea.
(He stretches out his arms, sighs again and curls his body. Bloom,
holding the hat and Ashplant, stands erect. A dog barks in the
distance. Bloom tightens and loosens his grip on the ashplant. He
looks down on Stephen's face and form.)
BLOOM:
(communes with the night) Face reminds me of his poor mother. In the
shady wood. The deep white breast. Ferguson, I think I caught. A girl.
Some girl. Best thing could happen him. (he murmurs) . . . swear that I
will always hail, ever conceal, never reveal, any part or parts, art or
arts . . . (he murmurs) . . . in the rough sands of the sea . . . a cable-
tow's length from the shore . . . where the tide ebbs . . . and flows . . .
(Silent, thoughtful, alert he stands on guard, his fingers at his lips
in the attitude of secret master. Against the dark wall a figure appears
slowly, a fairy boy of eleven, a changeling, kidnapped, dressed in
an
Eton suit with glass shoes and a little bronze helmet, holding a book
in his hand. He reads from right to left inaudibly, smiling, kissing
the page.)
BLOOM:
(wonderstruck, calls inaudibly) Rudy!
RUDY:
(gazes, unseeing, into Bloom's eyes and goes on reading, kissing, smiling.
He has a delicate mauve face. On his suit he has diamond and ruby buttons.
In his free left hand he holds a slim ivory cane with a violet bowknot.
A white lambkin peeps out of his waistcoat pocket.)