# Ulysses (1922)/Chapter 15

The Calls
Wait, my love, and I'll be with you.
The Answers
Round behind the stable.
The Children
Kithogue! Salute!
The Idiot
(Lifts a palsied left arm and gurgles.) Grhahute!
The Children
Where's the great light?
The Idiot
(Gobbling.) Ghaghahest.
Cissy Caffrey
I gave it to Molly Because she was jolly, The leg of the duck The leg of the duck.
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 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
Vidi aquam egredientem de templo a latere dextro. Alleluia.
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
(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, Kildbride the enginedriver, and lancecorporal Oliphant.
Stephen
(Triumphaliter.) Salvi facti i sunt.
Lynch
So that?
Stephen
(Looks behind.) So that gesture, not music not odours, 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 Mecklenburg 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 and 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 juventutem meam.
Lynch
Which is the jug of bread? It skills not. That or the customhouse. Illustrate thou. Here take your crutch and walk.
Bloom
Fish and taters. N. g. Ah!
Bloom
Stitch in my side. Why did I run?
Bloom
What is that? A flasher? Searchlight.
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.
The Urchins
Mind out, mister!
The Bells
Haltyaltyaltyall.
Bloom
(Halts erect stung by a spasm.) Ow.
The Gong
Bang Bang Bla Bak Blud Bugg Bloo.
The Motorman
Hey, shitbreeches, are you doing the hattrick?
Bloom
No thoroughfare. Close shave that but cured the stitch. Must take up Sandow’s exerciser 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 tracks 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 he 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!
Bloom
Bueñas noches, señorita 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.
Bloom
I beg.
Bloom
Keep to the right, right, right. If there is a fingerpost planted by the Touring 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 darkset 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.
Bloom
O.
Bloom
Beware of pickpockets. Old thieves dodge. Collide. Then snatch your purse.
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 grand son 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 kaput, 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, crinoline and bustle, widow Twankey’s blouse with muttonleg sleeves buttoned behind, grey mittens and cameo brooch, her hair plaited 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?
a voice
(Sharply.) Poldy!
bloom
Who? (He ducks and wards off a blow clumsily.) At your service.
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.
marion
Nebrakada! Feminimum!
bloom
I can give you… I mean as your business menagerer… Mrs Marion… if you…
marion
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!
the soap
We're a capital couple are Bloom and I He brightens the earth, I polish the sky.
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?
bloom
Are you sure about that Voglio? I mean the pronunciati…
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.
bridie
Hatch street. Any good in your mind?
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.
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.
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 me? Don’t give me away. Walls have hears. 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 too in livery 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
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.
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 watered silkfacings, blue masonic badge in his buttonhole, black bow and mother-of-pear 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 surrenders 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.) Là 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!
alf bergan
(Points jeering at the sandwich boards.) 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 Bandman Palmer. Trenchant exponent of Shakespeare. Unfortunately threw away the programme. Rattling good place round there for pig's feet. Feel.
richie
Best value in Dub.
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…
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
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.) Leopardstown.
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 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.
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!
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.
the whores
Are you going far, queer fellow? How's your middle leg? Got a match on you? Eh, come her till I stiffen it for you.
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.
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 mangongwheeltracktrolleyglarejuggernaut 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.
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 sicksewet 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 eight pence 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 polecat. Chacun son goût. He might be mad. Fido. Uncertain in his movements. 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.
the watch
Bloom. Of Bloom. For Bloom. Bloom.
first watch
Caught in the act. Commit no nuisance.
bloom
(Stammers.) I am doing good to others.
the gulls
Kaw kave kankury kake.
bloom
The friend of man. Trained by kindness.
bob doran
Towser. Give us the paw. Give the paw.
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
(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 pully 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 Bloom Pasha. Umpteen millions. Donnerwetter! Owns half Austria. Egypt. Cousin.
first watch
Proof.
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 besetting.
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.
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! 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 past of Ephraim.) Shitbroleeth.
second watch
(Tears in his eyes, to Bloom.) You ought to be thoroughly well ashamed of yourself.
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 Britain’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
(His cock’s wattles wagging.) Hello, seventyseven eightfour. Hello. Freeman’s Urinal and Weekly Arsewiper here. Paralyse Europe. You which? Bluebags? Who writes? Is it Bloom?
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 promptings of a gentleman would stoop to such particularly loathsome conduct. One of those, my lord. A plagiarist. A soapy sneak masquerading as a literateur. It's perfectly obvious that with the most inherent baseness he has cribbed some of my bestselling books, really gorgeous stuff, a perfect gem, the love passages in which are beneath suspicion. The Beaufoy books of love and great possessions with which your lordship is doubtless familiar, are a household word throughout the kingdom.
bloom
(Murmurs with hangdog meekness.) 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 university.
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 arch conspirator 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!
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 oylsters!
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!
georges fottrell
(Clerk of the crown and peace, resonantly.) Order in court! The accused will now make a bogus statement.
longhand and shorthand
(Without looking up from their notebooks.) Loosen his boots.
professor machugh
Cough it up, man. Get it out in bits.
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 aberration of heredity, brought on by hallucination, such familiarities as the alleged 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 cobbler’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...
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.
dlugacz
(Hoarsely.) Bleibtreustrasse, Berlin, W, 13.
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 bosom 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 brick quilted 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 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!
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 ffeecy 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 couped 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 Phœnix 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 señorita, 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 garrison. 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.
the honourable mrs mervyn talboys
(Stamps her jingling spurs in a sudden paroxysm of sudden 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 yeluerton 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. Pig dog 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
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 timepiece
Cuckoo. Cuckoo. Cuckoo.
the quoits
Jigjag, Jigajiga. Jigjag.
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...
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.)
long john fanning
Scowls and calls with rich rolling utterance.) Who’ll hang Judas Iscariot?
rumbold
(To the recorder with sinister familiarity.) Hanging Harry, your Majesty, the Mersey terror. Five guineas a jugular. Neck or nothing.
the bells
Heigho! Heigho!
bloom
(Desperately.) Wait. Stop. Gulls. Good heart. I saw. Innocence. Girl in the monkeyhouse. Zoo. Lewd chimpanzees. (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!
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.
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.
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, 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
Pray for the repose of his soul.
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 Carlow.
the kisses
(Warbling.) Leo! (Twittering.) Icky licky micky sticky for Leo! (Cooing.) Coo coocoo! Yummyumm Womwom! (Warbling.) Big comebig! Pirouette! Leopopold! (Twittering.) Leeolee! (Warbling.) O Leo!
bloom
A man’s touch. Sad music. Church music. Perhaps here.
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?
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.
bloom
A talisman. Heirloom.
zoe
For Zoe? For keeps? For being so nice, eh?
zoe
You’ll know me the next time.
bloom
(Forlornly.) I never loved a dear gazelle but it was sure to...
zoe
Schorach ani wenowach, benoith Hierushaloim.
bloom
(Fascinated.) I thought you were of good stock by your accent.
zoe
And you know what thought did?
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 Raleigh 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!
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 torchbearers
Hooray!
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...
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!
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.
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!
the peers
I do become your liege man of life and limb to earthly worship.
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.
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.
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 thier 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.
the sightseers
(Dying.) Morituri te salutant. (They die.)
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!
the women
Little father! Little father
the babes and sucklings
Clap clap hands till Poldy comes home, Cakes in his pocket for Leo alone.
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 playes pussy fourcorners with ragged boys and girls.) Peep! Bopeep! (He wheels twins in a perambulator.) Ticktacktwo wouldyousetashoe? (He performs juggler’s tricks, draws red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet silk haudherchiefs from his mouth.) Roygbiv. 32 feet per second. (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 fat 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, journalist.) 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!
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.
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 1 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. mix. vom, 5 minims Extr. taraxel. lig. 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. 11.
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 eight day 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 brotherhood. No more patriotism of barspongers and dropsical impostors. Free money, 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?
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 person!
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.)
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 dissolute 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 hisnostrils. 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!
bloom
(Excitedly.) This is midsummer madness, some ghastly joke again. By heaven, 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, sgenl inn ban 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 discovered among his ascendants. There are marked symptoms of chronic exhibitionism. 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.
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 winter and summer and scourges himself every Saturday. 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.
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.
a voice
Bloom, are you the Messiah ben Joseph or ben David?
bloom
(Darkly.) You have said it.
brother buzz
Then perform a miracle.
bantam lyons
Prophesy who will win the Saint Leger
brini, papal nuncio
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 Maimun begat Dusty Rhodes and Dusty Rhodes begat Benamor and Benamor begat Jones-Smith and Jones-Smith begat Savorgnanovich and Savorgnanovich 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 Kilbarrack?
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 falling from his left eye.) Spare my past.
the irish evicted tenants
(In bodycoats, kneebreeches, with Donnybrook fair shillelaghs.) Sjambok him!
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.
mastiansky and citron
Belial! Laemlein of Istria! the false Messiah! Abulafia!
mesias
To alteration one pair trousers eleven shillings.
bloom
(Rubs his hands cheerfully.) Just like old times. Poor Bloom!
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, sayping.) Forgive him his trespasses.
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.
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.
zoe
Talk away till you’re black in the face.
bloom
(In caubeen with clay pipe stuck in the band, dsuty 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, music, 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.
zoe
(In sudden sulks.) I hate a rotter that’s insincere. Give a bleeding whore a chance.
bloom
(Repentantly.) I am very disagreable. 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.
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
(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.
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 the 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.
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.
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 Cœla 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 alrightiness 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 elipse. Consistent with. The ultimate return. The octave. Which.
The Cap
Which?
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 preconditioned 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.
florry
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.
the newsboys
Stop press edition. Result of the rockinghorse races. Sea serpent in the royal canal. Safe arrival of Antichrist.
stephen
A time, times and half a time.
all
What?
the hobgoblin
(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 primigène! (He whirls round and round with dervish 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 n’va plus. (The planets, buoyant balloons, sail swollen up and away. He springs off into vacuum.)
florry
(Sinking into torpor, crosses herself secretly.) The end of the world!
the gramophone
Jerusalem! Open your gates and sing Hosanna...
the end of the world
(With a Scotch accent.) Wha’ll dance the keel row, the keel row, the keel row?
elijah
No yapping, if you please, in this booth. Jake Crane, Creole Sue, Dave 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 cosmic 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 lifebrightener, 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 restores. It vibrates. I know and I am some vibrator. Joking apart and getting 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
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 ain’t saying nothing.
kitty-kate
I forgot myself. In a weak moment I erred and did what I did on ​Constitution hill. I was confirmed by the bishop. 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 stars. 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
(Incoherently.) Beer beef battledog buybull businum barnum buggerum bishop.
lyster
(In quakergrey kneebreeches and broadbrimmed hat, says discreetly.) He is our friend. I need not mention names. Seek thou the light.
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 beautifying 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.
mhananann mac lir
(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! Dark hidden 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.
the gasjet
Pooah! Pfuiiiiii!
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 beauty spot 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?
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 particular 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 walking 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 wilh 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 mlld, medium and strong. Pay your money, take your choice. How happy caould you be with either…
bloom
With?…
virag
(His tongue upcurling.) Lyum! Look. Her beam is broad. Sbe 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 Ichthyosaurus. 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 è santa. Tara. Tara. (Aside.) He will surely remember.
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 parchment roll 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 1882 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
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 tomorrow as now was be past yester.
virag
(Prompts into his ear 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 verve 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 barrels of first choice malt vinegar. Bear’s buzz bothers bees. But of this apart. 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 appropriate sun. Nightbird nightsun nighttown. Chase me, Charley! 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 gabbles 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 unsurpassed 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.
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 contradict. 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 known…
bloom
I am going to scream. I beg your pardon. Ah? So. (He repeats.) Spontaneously 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 Ger Ger? Who’s dear Gerald? O, I much fear he shall be most badly burned. Will some pleashe pershon not now impediment so catastrophics mit agitation of firstclass tablenumpkin? (He mews.) Luss puss puss puss! (He sighs, draws back and stares sideways down with dropping underjaw.) Well, well. He doth rest anon.
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.
henry
(In a low dulcet voice, touching the strings of his guitar.) There is a flowerthat bloometh.
stephen
(To himself.) Play with your eyes shut. Imitate pa. Filling my belly withhusks 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.
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.
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 his name? (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. Outof 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. Flipperty 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 scraggyneck 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 Iacchias, a Lybian 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. Apocalypse.
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’était le sacré pigeon, Philippe.
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
(Agueschaken, profuse yellow spawn foaming over his bony epileptic lips.) She sold lovephiltres, whitewax, orange flower. 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 dollard
(Nakkering castanet bones in his huge padded paws, yodels jovially in base barreltone.) When love absorbs my ardent soul.
the virgins
(Gushingly.) Big Ben! Ben Mac 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 pluks 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 parchment ​ roll.) After having said which I took my departure. Farewell. Fare thee well. Dreck!
the flybill
K. 11. post no bills. Strictly confidential. Dr Hy Franks.
henry
All is lost now.
virag’s head
Quack!
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 are a spoiled priest. Or a monk.
lynch
He is. A cardinal’s son.
stephen
Cardinal sin. Monks of the screw.
the cardinal
Conservio lies captured He lies in the lowest dungeon With manacles and chains around his limbs Weighing upwards of three tons.
O, the poor little fellow Hi-hi-hi-hi-his 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.
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.
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 doorhandle
Theeee.
zoe
The devil is in that door.
zoe
(Sniffs his hair briskly.) Hum. 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.
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.
bloom
(Solemnly.) Thanks.
zoe
Do as you’re bid. Here.
bloom
(Takes the chocolate.) Aphrodisiac? But I thought 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.
bella
My word! I’m all of a mucksweat.
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 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?
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 unposted 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!
richie 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 sea rocks, 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 observed.
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!
bloom
(Murmurs lovingly.) To be a shoefitter in Mansfield’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 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. Nook in wrong tache of her… person you mentioned. That night she me… Now!
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.) Magnificence!
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.) Truffles!
bello
(With bobbed hair, purple gills, fat moustache rings ronnd 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.) 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.
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.
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 ottomansaddleback every morning after my thumping good breakfast of Matterson’s fat ham rashers 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.
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.
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 chairman of the Richmond Asylum and bytheby Guinness’s preference shares are at sixteen three quarters. Curse me for a fool that I 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, 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 quarters.
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 vicelike corsets of soft dove coutille, with whalebone busk, to the diamond trimmed 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 lace male hands and nose, leering mouth.) I tried her things on only once, a small prank, in Holles street. When we were hardup 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 trunk leg 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, Henry Fleury of Gordon Bennett fame, Sheridan, the quadroon Crœsus, 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 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.
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!
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 different 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!
a voice
One and eightpence too much.
the lacquey
Barang!
charles 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 shis 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 blasé man about town. Learn the smooth mincing walk on four inch Louis XV heels, the Grecian bend with provoking croup, the thighs fluescent, knees modestly kissing. Bring all your power 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 belly, 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.
sleepy hollow
Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!
bloom
(In tattered mocassins with a rusty fowlingpiece, tiptoing, 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…
bella
(Laughs mockingly.) That’s your daughter, you owl, with a Mullingar student.
milly
My! It’s Papli! But, O Papli, how old you’ve grown!
bello
Changed, eh? Our whatnot, our writing table 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, say? Following them up dark streets, flatfoot, exciting 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!
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…?
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 married, 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 will power! Memory! I have sinned! I have suff…
bello
(Sneers.) Crybabby! Crocodile tears!
the circumcised
(In a 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.
the yews
(Their leaves whispering.) Sister. Our sister. Ssh.
the nymph
(Softly.) Mortal! (Kindly.) Nay, dost not weepest!
bloom
(Crawls jellily forward under the bought, 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, high kickers, coster picnic makers, pugilists, popular generals, immoral panto boys in flesh tights 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, adsf or 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. Corsets 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 my 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 hand.) 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 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
(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 school cap with badge.) I was in my tens, 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, instincts 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.
the halcyon days
Mackerel! Live us again. Hurray! (They cheer.)
bloom
(Hobbledehoy, warmgloved, mammamufflered, stunned 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 fauns. I sacrificed to the god of the forest. The flowers that bloom in the spring. It was pairing time. Capillary attraction is a natural phenomenon. Lotty Clarke, flaxenhaired, I saw at her night toilette trough 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
Me. Me see.
bloom
Simply satisfying a need. (With pathos.) No girl would when I went girling. Too ugly. They wouldn't play…
the nannygoat
(Bleats.) Megegaggegg! Nannannanny!
bloom
(Hatless, flushed, covered with burrs of thistledown and gorsepine.) 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 printer’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
Bbbbblllllbbbbblblobschbg!
councillor nannetti
(Alone on deck, in dark alpaca, yellow kitefaced, 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
(Pacing 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 tablespoonful 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...?
the voice of kitty
(In the thicket.) Show us one of them cushions.
the voice of florry
Here.
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 huge winged wimple, softly, with remote ​eyes.) Tranquilla convent. Sister Agatha. Mount Carmel, the apparitions of Knock and Lourdes. No more desire. (She reclines her head, sighing.) Only the ethereal. Where dreamy creamy gull waves o’er the waters dull.
the button
Bip!
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
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 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 of nine lives! Fair play, madam. No pruning knife. The fox and the grapes, is it? What do we 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 men dancers 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 to morrow, eh? Fool someone else, not me. (He sniffs.) But, Onions. Stale. Sulphur. Grease.
bella
You’ll know me the next time.
bloom
(Composed, regards her.) Passée. Mutton dressed as lamb. Lone in the tooth and superfluous hairs. 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 glass eyes of your stuffed fox. They have the dimensions of your other features, that’s all. I’m not a triple screw propeller.
bella
(Contemptuously.) You’re not game, in fact. (Her sowcunt barks.) Fohracht!
bloom
(Contemptuously.) Clean your nailless middle finger first, the cold spunk o your bully is dripping from your cockscomb. Take a handful of hay and wipe yourself.
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.
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?
stephen
(With exagerated 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 où tenons nostre état.
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 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.
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!
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 pound note.) Three times ten. We’re square.
bella
(Admiringly.) You’re such a slyboots, old cocky. I could kiss you.
zoe
(Points.) Hum? 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? Le distrait or absentminded beggar. (He fumbles again in his pocket and draws out a handful of coins. An object falls.) 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 cigarette 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 nearer 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.
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 the Dusk of the Gods.)
Hangende Hunger, Fragende Frau, Macht uns alle kaput.
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. Pandy bat.
father dolan
Any boy want flogging? Broke his glasses? Lazy idle little schemer. See it in your eye.
don john connee
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
Gara. Klook. Klook. Klook.
Bloom
(Points to his hand.) That weal there is an accident. Fell and cut it twenty two years age. I was sixteen.
Zoe
I see, says the blind man. Tell us news.
Stephen
See? Moves to one great goal. I am twentytwo too. Sixteen years ago I twentytwo tumbled, twentytwo years ago he sixteen fell off his hobbyhorse. (He winces.) Hurt my hand somewhere. Must see a dentist. Money?
Florry
What?
The Boots
(Jogging, mocks them with thumb and wriggling wormfingers.) Haw, haw, have you the horn?
Zoe
(To Florry.) Whisper.
lenehan
Ho! What do I here behold? Were you brushing the cobwebs off a few quims?
boylan
(Seated, 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 up yet?
bloom
(In a flunkey’s plum 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 autlered 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?
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.
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 an ointment jar.) Vaseline, sir? Orangeflower?… Lukewarm water?…
kitty
(From the sofa.) Tell us, Florry. Tell us. What.
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 cock horse. 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! Gooblazeqruk brukarchkrasht!
marion’s voice
(Hoarsely, sweetly rising to her throat.) O! Weeshwashtkissimapooisthnapoohuck!
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.
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 Thursdaymomun. Iagogogo!
bloom
(Smiles yellowly at the 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 near the skin after his death…
freddy
Ah, ma, you’re dragging me along!
susy
Mamma, the beeftea is fizzing over!
shakespeare
(With paralytic rage.) Weda seca whokilla farst.
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 confessionbox. 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.
lynch
(Pommelling on the sofa.) Rmm Rmm Rmm Rrrrrrmmmmm.
stephen
(Gobbles, with marionette jerks.) Thousand places of entertainment to expenses your evenings with lovely ladies saling gloves and other things perhaps her 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 religion’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
(Grimacing with head back, laughs loudly, clapping himself.) Great success of laughing. Angels much prostitutes like and holy apostles big damn ruffians. Demimondaines nicely handsome sparkling of diamonds very amiable costumed. Or do you are fond better what belongs they moderns pleasure turpitude of old mans? (He points about him with grotesque gestures which Lynch and the whores reply to.) Caoutchouc statue woman reversible or lifesize tompeeptoms virgins nudities very lesbic the kiss five ten times. Enter gentlemen to see in mirrors every positions trapezes all that machine there besides also if desire act awfully bestial butcher’s boy pollutes in warm veal liver or omlette on the belly pièce 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 go by contraries.
stephen
(Extending 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
That’s all right. (He swoops uncertainly through the air, wheeling, uttering cries of heartening, on strong ponderous buzzard wings.) Ho, boy! Are you going towin? 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! hai hoop! (He makes the beagle’s call giving tongue.) Bulbul! Burblblbrurblbl! Hai, boy!
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!
the orange lodges
(Jeering.) Get down and push, mister. Last lap! You’ll be home the night!
ganett deary
the green lodges
Soft day, sir John! Soft day, your honour!
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.
zoe
(Twirls around herself, heeltapping.) Dance. Anybody here for there? Who’ll dance?
maginni
The poetry of motion, art of callisthenics. No connection with Madam Legget Byrne’s or Levinstone’s. Fancy dress balls arranged. Deportment. The Katty Lanner steps. So. Watch me! My terpsichorean abilities. (He minuets forward three paces on tripping bee’s feet.) Tout le monde an avant! Reverence! Tout le monde en place!
the pianola
Two young fellows were talking about their girls, girls, girls, Sweethearts they’d left behind…
maginni
(Clipclaps glovesilent hands.) Carré! Avant deux! Breathe evenly! Balance!
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.
maginni
Avant! huit! Traversé! Salut! Cours de mains! Croisé!
the bracelets
Heigho! Heigho!
zoe
(Twisting, her hand to her brow.) O!
maginni
Les tiroirs! Chaîne de dames! La corbeille! Dos à dos!
zoe
I’m giddy.
maginni
Boulangère! Les ronds! Les ponts! Chevaux de bois! Escargots!
maginni
Dansez avec vos dames! Changez de dames! Donnez le petit bouquet à votre dame! Remerciez!
the pianola
Best, best of all, Baraabum!
kitty
(Jumps up.) O, they played that on the hobbyhorses at the Mirus bazaar!
the pianola
My girl’s a Yorkshire girl.
zoe
Yorkshire through and through.
Come on all!
stephen
Pas seul!
the pianola
Though she’s a factory lass And wears no fancy clothes.
tutti
Encore! Bis! Bravo! Encore!
simon
Think of your mother’s people!
stephen
Dance of death.
(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 wall. He stops dead.)
stephen
Ho!
the choir
Liliata rutilantium te confessorum… Jubilantium te virginum…
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? What bogey man’s trick is this?
buck mulligan
(Shakes his curling capbell.) The mockery of it! Kinch killed her dogsbody ​bitchbody. She kicked the bucket. (Tears of molten butter fall from his eyes into 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 said 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 all powerful. 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 brain work. 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.) 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 fingers.) 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 and 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!
the gasjet
Pwfungg!
bloom
Stop!
lynch
(Rushes forward and seizes Stephen’s hand.) Here! Hold on! Don’t run amok!
bella
Police!
bella
(Screams.) After him!
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.) There. 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 hand under the lamp, pulls the chain. Pulling, 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 a 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 vicechancellor. You don’t want a scandal.
bella
(Angrily.) Trinity! Coming down here ragging after the boat races and paying nothing. Are you my commander here? 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 you incog?
zoe
(In the doorway.) There’s a row on.
bloom
What? Where? (He throws a shilling on the table and shouts.) That’s for the chimney. Where? I need mountain air.
the hue and cry
(Helterskelterpelterwelter.) He’s Bloom! Stop Bloom! Stopabloom! Stopperrobber! Hi! Hi! Stop him on the corner!
stephen
(With elaborate gestures, breathing deeply and slowly.) You are my guests. ​The uninvited. By virtue of the fifth of George and seventh of Edward. History 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. The girl’s telling lies. He was in Mrs Cohen’s. What’s up? Soldiers and civilians.
cissy caffrey
I was in company with the soldiers and they left me to do—you know and the young man ran 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 Kitty’s and Lynch’s heads.) Hail, Sisyphus. (He points to himself and the others.) Poetic. Neopoetic.
voices
She’s 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
(In Union Jack blazer and cricket flannels, bareheaded, flowingbearded.) Their’s 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 private.
stephen
(Amiably.) Why not? The bold soldier boy. In my opinion every lady for example…
private carr
(His cap awry, advancing to Stephen.) Say, how would it be, governor, if I was to bash in your jaw?
stephen
(Looks up in 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.
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. Retaining the perpendicular.
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 modern 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 much 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
(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 back.
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 medicine. 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 don’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 falls 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. Taking a little more than is good for him. Absinthe, the 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 impostors.
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
H’lo. Bonjour! The vieille ogresse with the dents jaunes.
patrice
Socialiste!
don emile patrizio franz rupert pope hennessy
(In medieval hauberk, two wild geese valant 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
May the God above Send down a dove With teeth as sharp as razors To slit the throat Of the English dogs That hanged our Irish leaders.
the croppy boy
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 a 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 the body of Miss Barron which sent Seddon to the gallows.
the croppy boy
Horhot ho hray ho rhother’s hest
rumbold
I’m near it myself. (He undoes the noose.) Rope which hanged the awful ​rebel. Ten shillings a time as applied to His 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
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 some one tell me where I am least likely to meet these necessary evils? Ça se voit aussi à Paris. Not that I… But by Saint Patrick!…
stephen
Aha! I know you, gammer! Hamlet, revenge! The old sow that eats her farrow!
old gummy granny
(Rocking to and fro.) Ireland’s sweetheart, the king of Spain’s daughter, alanna. Strangers im 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 bugger says a word against my fucking king.
bloom
(Terrified.) He said nothing. Not a word. A pure misunderstanding.
the citizen
Erin go hragh!
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!
major tweedy
(Growls gruffly.) Rorke’s Drift! Up, guards, and at them! Mahal shalal hashbaz.
private carr
I’ll do him in.
private compton
(Waves the crowd back.) Fair play, here. Make a bleeding butcher’s shop of the bugger.
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!
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 petticoats, revealing his grey bare hairy buttocks between which a carrot is stuck.) My body.
the voice of all the damned
Htengier Lnetopinmo Dog Drol eht rof, Aiulella!
adonai
Dooooooooooog!
the voice of all the blessed
Alleluia, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth!
adonai
Goooooooooood!
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!
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
the retriever
(Barking.) Wow wow wow.
bloom
(Shoves them back, loudly.) Get back, stand back!
private compton
(Tugging his comrade.) Here bugger off, Harry. There’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 have 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
(Taking 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.
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 follow me?
first watch
(Turns to the crowd.) Here, what are you all gaping at? Move on out of that.
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 well known, highly respected citizen. 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 had 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
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 specialty. 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.
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
(From the car, standing.) Night.
bloom
Night.
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, hesitating, brings his mouth near the face of the prostrate form.) Stephen! (There is no answer. He calls again.) Stephen!
stephen
(Groans.) 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?…
bloom
Poetry. Well educated. Pity. (He bends again and undoes the buttons of Stephen’s waistcoat.) To breathe. (He brushes the woodshavings from Stephen’s clothes with light hands and fingers.) One pound seven. Not hurt anyhow. (He listens.) What!
stephen
…shadows… the woods. …white breast… dim…
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 cabletow’s length from the shore… where the tide ebbs… and flows…
Bloom
(Wonderstruck, calls inaudibly.) Rudy!
Rudy