Public Domain Tales: Ulysses: Book Six

Public Domain Tales: Ulysses: Book Six is the one-hundred-and-twentieth book in the Public Domain Tales series.
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_(The Mabbot street entrance of nighttown, before which stretches an
uncobbled tramsiding set with skeleton tracks, red and green
will-o’-the-wisps and danger signals. Rows of grimy houses with gaping
doors. Rare lamps with faint rainbow fans. Round Rabaiotti’s halted ice
gondola stunted men and women squabble. They grab wafers between which
are wedged lumps of coral and copper snow. Sucking, they scatter
slowly. Children. The swancomb of the gondola, highreared, forges on
through the murk, white and blue under a lighthouse. Whistles call and
answer.)_
THE CALLS: Wait, my love, and I’ll be with you.
THE ANSWERS: Round behind the stable.
_(A deafmute idiot with goggle eyes, his shapeless mouth dribbling,
jerks past, shaken in Saint Vitus’ dance. A chain of children ’s hands
imprisons him.)_
THE CHILDREN: Kithogue! Salute!
THE IDIOT: _(Lifts a palsied left arm and gurgles.)_ Grhahute!
THE CHILDREN: Where’s the great light?
THE IDIOT: _(Gobbling.)_ Ghaghahest.
_(They release him. He jerks on. A pigmy woman swings on a rope slung
between two railings, counting. A form sprawled against a dustbin and
muffled by its arm and hat snores, groans, grinding growling teeth, and
snores again. On a step a gnome totting among a rubbishtip crouches to
shoulder a sack of rags and bones. A crone standing by with a smoky
oillamp rams her last bottle in the maw of his sack. He heaves his
booty, tugs askew his peaked cap and hobbles off mutely. The crone
makes back for her lair, swaying her lamp. A bandy child, asquat on the
doorstep with a paper shuttlecock, crawls sidling after her in spurts,
clutches her skirt, scrambles up. A drunken navvy grips with both hands
the railings of an area, lurching heavily. At a corner two night watch
in shouldercapes, their hands upon their staffholsters, loom tall. A
plate crashes: a woman screams: a child wails. Oaths of a man roar,
mutter, cease. Figures wander, lurk, peer from warrens. In a room lit
by a candle stuck in a bottleneck a slut combs out the tatts from the
hair of a scrofulous child. Cissy Caffrey’s voice, still young, sings
shrill from a lane.)_
CISSY CAFFREY:
 I gave it to Molly
 Because she was jolly,
 The leg of the duck,
 The leg of the duck.
_(Private Carr and Private Compton, swaggersticks tight in their
oxters, as they march unsteadily rightaboutface and burst together from
their mouths a volleyed fart. Laughter of men from the lane. A hoarse
virago retorts.)_
THE VIRAGO: Signs on you, hairy arse. More power the Cavan girl.
CISSY CAFFREY: More luck to me. Cavan, Cootehill and Belturbet. _(She
sings.)_
 I gave it to Nelly
 To stick in her belly,
 The leg of the duck,
 The leg of the duck.
_(Private Carr and Private Compton turn and counterretort, their tunics
bloodbright in a lampglow, black sockets of caps on their blond cropped
polls. Stephen Dedalus and Lynch pass through the crowd close to the
redcoats.)_
PRIVATE COMPTON: _(Jerks his finger.)_ Way for the parson.
PRIVATE CARR: _(Turns and calls.)_ What ho, parson!
CISSY CAFFREY: _(Her voice soaring higher.)_
 She has it, she got it,
 Wherever she put it,
 The leg of the duck.
_(Stephen, flourishing the ashplant in his left hand, chants with joy
the_ introit _for paschal time. Lynch, his jockeycap low on his brow,
attends him, a sneer of discontent wrinkling his face.)_
STEPHEN: _Vidi aquam egredientem de templo a latere dextro. Alleluia_.
_(The famished snaggletusks of an elderly bawd protrude from a
doorway.)_
THE BAWD: _(Her voice whispering huskily.)_ Sst! Come here till I tell
you. Maidenhead inside. Sst!
STEPHEN: _(Altius aliquantulum.) Et omnes ad quos pervenit aqua ista_.
THE BAWD: _(Spits in their trail her jet of venom.)_ Trinity medicals.
Fallopian tube. All prick and no pence.
_(Edy Boardman, sniffling, crouched with Bertha Supple, draws her shawl
across her nostrils.)_
EDY BOARDMAN: _(Bickering.)_ And says the one: I seen you up Faithful
place with your squarepusher, the greaser off the railway, in his
cometobed hat. Did you, says I. That’s not for you to say, says I. You
never seen me in the mantrap with a married highlander, says I. The
likes of her! Stag that one is! Stubborn as a mule! And her walking
with two fellows the one time, Kilbride, the enginedriver, and
lancecorporal Oliphant.
STEPHEN: _(Triumphaliter.) Salvi facti sunt._
_(He flourishes his ashplant, shivering the lamp image, shattering
light over the world. A liver and white spaniel on the prowl slinks
after him, growling. Lynch scares it with a kick.)_
LYNCH: So that?
STEPHEN: (_Looks behind_.) So that gesture, not music not odour, would
be a universal language, the gift of tongues rendering visible not the
lay sense but the first entelechy, the structural rhythm.
LYNCH: Pornosophical philotheology. Metaphysics in Mecklenburgh street!
STEPHEN: We have shrewridden Shakespeare and henpecked Socrates. Even
the allwisest Stagyrite was bitted, bridled and mounted by a light of
love.
LYNCH: Ba!
STEPHEN: Anyway, who wants two gestures to illustrate a loaf and a jug?
This movement illustrates the loaf and jug of bread or wine in Omar.
Hold my stick.
LYNCH: Damn your yellow stick. Where are we going?
STEPHEN: Lecherous lynx, to _la belle dame sans merci,_ Georgina
Johnson, _ad deam qui laetificat iuventutem meam._
_(Stephen thrusts the ashplant on him and slowly holds out his hands,
his head going back till both hands are a span from his breast, down
turned, in planes intersecting, the fingers about to part, the left
being higher.)_
LYNCH: Which is the jug of bread? It skills not. That or the
customhouse. Illustrate thou. Here take your crutch and walk.
_(They pass. Tommy Caffrey scrambles to a gaslamp and, clasping, climbs
in spasms. From the top spur he slides down. Jacky Caffrey clasps to
climb. The navvy lurches against the lamp. The twins scuttle off in the
dark. The navvy, swaying, presses a forefinger against a wing of his
nose and ejects from the farther nostril a long liquid jet of snot.
Shouldering the lamp he staggers away through the crowd with his
flaring cresset._
_Snakes of river fog creep slowly. From drains, clefts, cesspools,
middens arise on all sides stagnant fumes. A glow leaps in the south
beyond the seaward reaches of the river. The navvy, staggering forward,
cleaves the crowd and lurches towards the tramsiding. On the farther
side under the railway bridge Bloom appears, flushed, panting, cramming
bread and chocolate into a sidepocket. From Gillen’s hairdresser’s
window a composite portrait shows him gallant Nelson’s image. A concave
mirror at the side presents to him lovelorn longlost lugubru
Booloohoom. Grave Gladstone sees him level, Bloom for Bloom. He passes,
struck by the stare of truculent Wellington, but in the convex mirror
grin unstruck the bonham eyes and fatchuck cheekchops of Jollypoldy the
rixdix doldy._
_At Antonio Rabaiotti’s door Bloom halts, sweated under the bright
arclamp. He disappears. In a moment he reappears and hurries on.)_
BLOOM: Fish and taters. N. g. Ah!
_(He disappears into Olhausen’s, the porkbutcher’s, under the
downcoming rollshutter. A few moments later he emerges from under the
shutter, puffing Poldy, blowing Bloohoom. In each hand he holds a
parcel, one containing a lukewarm pig’s crubeen, the other a cold
sheep’s trotter, sprinkled with wholepepper. He gasps, standing
upright. Then bending to one side he presses a parcel against his ribs
and groans.)_
BLOOM: Stitch in my side. Why did I run?
_(He takes breath with care and goes forward slowly towards the lampset
siding. The glow leaps again.)_
BLOOM: What is that? A flasher? Searchlight.
_(He stands at Cormack’s corner, watching.)_
BLOOM: _Aurora borealis_ or a steel foundry? Ah, the brigade, of
course. South side anyhow. Big blaze. Might be his house. Beggar’s
bush. We’re safe. _(He hums cheerfully.)_ London’s burning, London’s
burning! On fire, on fire! (_He catches sight of the navvy lurching
through the crowd at the farther side of Talbot street._) I’ll miss
him. Run. Quick. Better cross here.
_(He darts to cross the road. Urchins shout.)_
THE URCHINS: Mind out, mister!
(_Two cyclists, with lighted paper lanterns aswing, swim by him,
grazing him, their bells rattling._)
THE BELLS: Haltyaltyaltyall.
BLOOM: _(Halts erect, stung by a spasm.)_ Ow!
_(He looks round, darts forward suddenly. Through rising fog a dragon
sandstrewer, travelling at caution, slews heavily down upon him, its
huge red headlight winking, its trolley hissing on the wire. The
motorman bangs his footgong.)_
THE GONG: Bang Bang Bla Bak Blud Bugg Bloo.
_(The brake cracks violently. Bloom, raising a policeman’s whitegloved
hand, blunders stifflegged out of the track. The motorman, thrown
forward, pugnosed, on the guidewheel, yells as he slides past over
chains and keys.)_
THE MOTORMAN: Hey, shitbreeches, are you doing the hat trick?
_(Bloom trickleaps to the curbstone and halts again. He brushes a
mudflake from his cheek with a parcelled hand.)_
BLOOM: No thoroughfare. Close shave that but cured the stitch. Must
take up Sandow’s exercises again. On the hands down. Insure against
street accident too. The Providential. _(He feels his trouser pocket.)_
Poor mamma’s panacea. Heel easily catch in track or bootlace in a cog.
Day the wheel of the black Maria peeled off my shoe at Leonard’s
corner. Third time is the charm. Shoe trick. Insolent driver. I ought
to report him. Tension makes them nervous. Might be the fellow balked
me this morning with that horsey woman. Same style of beauty. Quick of
him all the same. The stiff walk. True word spoken in jest. That awful
cramp in Lad lane. Something poisonous I ate. Emblem of luck. Why?
Probably lost cattle. Mark of the beast. _(He closes his eyes an
instant.)_ Bit light in the head. Monthly or effect of the other.
Brainfogfag. That tired feeling. Too much for me now. Ow!
_(A sinister figure leans on plaited legs against O’Beirne’s wall, a
visage unknown, injected with dark mercury. From under a wideleaved
sombrero the figure regards him with evil eye.)_
BLOOM: _Buenas noches, 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.
_(He steps forward. A sackshouldered ragman bars his path. He steps
left, ragsackman left.)_
BLOOM: I beg.
(_He leaps right, sackragman right._)
BLOOM: I beg.
(_He swerves, sidles, stepaside, slips past and on._)
BLOOM: Keep to the right, right, right. If there is a signpost planted
by the 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 darkest Stepaside_. Keep, keep, keep to the right.
Rags and bones at midnight. A fence more likely. First place murderer
makes for. Wash off his sins of the world.
_(Jacky Caffrey, hunted by Tommy Caffrey, runs full tilt against
Bloom.)_
BLOOM: O.
_(Shocked, on weak hams, he halts. Tommy and Jacky vanish there, there.
Bloom pats with parcelled hands watch, fobpocket, bookpocket,
pursepoke, sweets of sin, potato soap.)_
BLOOM: Beware of pickpockets. Old thieves’ dodge. Collide. Then snatch
your purse.
_(The retriever approaches sniffing, nose to the ground. A sprawled
form sneezes. A stooped bearded figure appears garbed in the long
caftan of an elder in Zion and a smokingcap with magenta tassels.
Horned spectacles hang down at the wings of the nose. Yellow poison
streaks are on the drawn face.)_
RUDOLPH: Second halfcrown waste money today. I told you not go with
drunken goy ever. So you catch no money.
BLOOM: _(Hides the crubeen and trotter behind his back and,
crestfallen, feels warm and cold feetmeat.) Ja, ich weiss, papachi._
RUDOLPH: What you making down this place? Have you no soul? _(With
feeble vulture talons he feels the silent face of Bloom.)_ Are you not
my son Leopold, the grandson of Leopold? Are you not my dear son
Leopold who left the house of his father and left the god of his
fathers Abraham and Jacob?
BLOOM: _(With precaution.)_ I suppose so, father. Mosenthal. All that’s
left of him.
RUDOLPH: _(Severely.)_ One night they bring you home drunk as dog after
spend your good money. What you call them running chaps?
BLOOM: _(In youth’s smart blue Oxford suit with white vestslips,
narrowshouldered, in brown Alpine hat, wearing gent’s sterling silver
waterbury keyless watch and double curb Albert with seal attached, one
side of him coated with stiffening mud.)_ Harriers, father. Only that
once.
RUDOLPH: Once! Mud head to foot. Cut your hand open. Lockjaw. They make
you kaputt, Leopoldleben. You watch them chaps.
BLOOM: _(Weakly.)_ They challenged me to a sprint. It was muddy. I
slipped.
RUDOLPH: _(With contempt.) Goim nachez!_ Nice spectacles for your poor
mother!
BLOOM: Mamma!
ELLEN BLOOM: _(In pantomime dame’s stringed mobcap, widow Twankey’s
crinoline and bustle, blouse with muttonleg sleeves buttoned behind,
grey mittens and cameo brooch, her plaited hair in a crispine net,
appears over the staircase banisters, a slanted candlestick in her
hand, and cries out in shrill alarm.)_ O blessed Redeemer, what have
they done to him! My smelling salts! _(She hauls up a reef of skirt and
ransacks the pouch of her striped blay petticoat. A phial, an Agnus
Dei, a shrivelled potato and a celluloid doll fall out.)_ Sacred Heart
of Mary, where were you at all at all?
_(Bloom, mumbling, his eyes downcast, begins to bestow his parcels in
his filled pockets but desists, muttering.)_
A VOICE: _(Sharply.)_ Poldy!
BLOOM: Who? _(He ducks and wards off a blow clumsily.)_ At your
service.
_(He looks up. Beside her mirage of datepalms a handsome woman in
Turkish costume stands before him. Opulent curves fill out her scarlet
trousers and jacket, slashed with gold. A wide yellow cummerbund
girdles her. A white yashmak, violet in the night, covers her face,
leaving free only her large dark eyes and raven hair.)_
BLOOM: Molly!
MARION: Welly? Mrs Marion from this out, my dear man, when you speak to
me. _(Satirically.)_ Has poor little hubby cold feet waiting so long?
BLOOM: _(Shifts from foot to foot.)_ No, no. Not the least little bit.
_(He breathes in deep agitation, swallowing gulps of air, questions,
hopes, crubeens for her supper, things to tell her, excuse, desire,
spellbound. A coin gleams on her forehead. On her feet are jewelled
toerings. Her ankles are linked by a slender fetterchain. Beside her a
camel, hooded with a turreting turban, waits. A silk ladder of
innumerable rungs climbs to his bobbing howdah. He ambles near with
disgruntled hindquarters. Fiercely she slaps his haunch, her goldcurb
wristbangles angriling, scolding him in Moorish.)_
MARION: Nebrakada! Femininum!
_(The camel, lifting a foreleg, plucks from a tree a large mango fruit,
offers it to his mistress, blinking, in his cloven hoof, then droops
his head and, grunting, with uplifted neck, fumbles to kneel. Bloom
stoops his back for leapfrog.)_
BLOOM: I can give you... I mean as your business menagerer... Mrs
Marion... if you...
MARION: So you notice some change? _(Her hands passing slowly over her
trinketed stomacher, a slow friendly mockery in her eyes.)_ O Poldy,
Poldy, you are a poor old stick in the mud! Go and see life. See the
wide world.
BLOOM: I was just going back for that lotion whitewax, orangeflower
water. Shop closes early on Thursday. But the first thing in the
morning. _(He pats divers pockets.)_ This moving kidney. Ah!
_(He points to the south, then to the east. A cake of new clean lemon
soap arises, diffusing light and perfume.)_
THE SOAP:
 We’re a capital couple are Bloom and I.
 He brightens the earth. I polish the sky.
_(The freckled face of Sweny, the druggist, appears in the disc of the
soapsun.)_
SWENY: Three and a penny, please.
BLOOM: Yes. For my wife. Mrs Marion. Special recipe.
MARION: _(Softly.)_ Poldy!
BLOOM: Yes, ma’am?
MARION: _Ti trema un poco il cuore?_
_(In disdain she saunters away, plump as a pampered pouter pigeon,
humming the duet from_ Don Giovanni.)
BLOOM: Are you sure about that _Voglio_? I mean the pronunciati...
_(He follows, followed by the sniffing terrier. The elderly bawd seizes
his sleeve, the bristles of her chinmole glittering.)_
THE BAWD: Ten shillings a maidenhead. Fresh thing was never touched.
Fifteen. There’s no-one in it only her old father that’s dead drunk.
_(She points. In the gap of her dark den furtive, rainbedraggled,
Bridie Kelly stands.)_
BRIDIE: Hatch street. Any good in your mind?
_(With a squeak she flaps her bat shawl and runs. A burly rough pursues
with booted strides. He stumbles on the steps, recovers, plunges into
gloom. Weak squeaks of laughter are heard, weaker.)_
THE BAWD: _(Her wolfeyes shining.)_ He’s getting his pleasure. You
won’t get a virgin in the flash houses. Ten shillings. Don’t be all
night before the polis in plain clothes sees us. Sixtyseven is a bitch.
_(Leering, Gerty Macdowell limps forward. She draws from behind,
ogling, and shows coyly her bloodied clout.)_
GERTY: With all my worldly goods I thee and thou. _(She murmurs.)_ You
did that. I hate you.
BLOOM: I? When? You’re dreaming. I never saw you.
THE BAWD: Leave the gentleman alone, you cheat. Writing the gentleman
false letters. Streetwalking and soliciting. Better for your mother
take the strap to you at the bedpost, hussy like you.
GERTY: _(To Bloom.)_ When you saw all the secrets of my bottom drawer.
_(She paws his sleeve, slobbering.)_ Dirty married man! I love you for
doing that to me.
_(She glides away crookedly. Mrs Breen in man’s frieze overcoat with
loose bellows pockets, stands in the causeway, her roguish eyes
wideopen, smiling in all her herbivorous buckteeth.)_
MRS BREEN: Mr...
BLOOM: _(Coughs gravely.)_ Madam, when we last had this pleasure by
letter dated the sixteenth instant...
MRS BREEN: Mr Bloom! You down here in the haunts of sin! I caught you
nicely! Scamp!
BLOOM: _(Hurriedly.)_ Not so loud my name. Whatever do you think of me?
Don’t give me away. Walls have ears. How do you do? It’s ages since I.
You’re looking splendid. Absolutely it. Seasonable weather we are
having this time of year. Black refracts heat. Short cut home here.
Interesting quarter. Rescue of fallen women. Magdalen asylum. I am the
secretary...
MRS BREEN: _(Holds up a finger.)_ Now, don’t tell a big fib! I know
somebody won’t like that. O just wait till I see Molly! _(Slily.)_
Account for yourself this very sminute or woe betide you!
BLOOM: _(Looks behind.)_ She often said she’d like to visit. Slumming.
The exotic, you see. Negro servants in livery too if she had money.
Othello black brute. Eugene Stratton. Even the bones and cornerman at
the Livermore christies. Bohee brothers. Sweep for that matter.
_(Tom and Sam Bohee, coloured coons in white duck suits, scarlet socks,
upstarched Sambo chokers and large scarlet asters in their buttonholes,
leap out. Each has his banjo slung. Their paler smaller negroid hands
jingle the twingtwang wires. Flashing white Kaffir eyes and tusks they
rattle through a breakdown in clumsy clogs, twinging, singing, back to
back, toe heel, heel toe, with smackfatclacking slave lips.)_
TOM AND SAM:
 There’s someone in the house with Dina
 There’s someone in the house, I know,
 There’s someone in the house with Dina
 Playing on the old banjo.
_(They whisk black masks from raw babby faces: then, chuckling,
chortling, trumming, twanging, they diddle diddle cakewalk dance
away.)_
BLOOM: _(With a sour tenderish smile.)_ A little frivol, shall we, if
you are so inclined? Would you like me perhaps to embrace you just for
a fraction of a second?
MRS BREEN: _(Screams gaily.)_ O, you ruck! You ought to see yourself!
BLOOM: For old sake’ sake. I only meant a square party, a mixed
marriage mingling of our different little conjugials. You know I had a
soft corner for you. _(Gloomily.)_ ’Twas I sent you that valentine of
the dear gazelle.
MRS BREEN: Glory Alice, you do look a holy show! Killing simply. _(She
puts out her hand inquisitively.)_ What are you hiding behind your
back? Tell us, there’s a dear.
BLOOM: _(Seizes her wrist with his free hand.)_ Josie Powell that was,
prettiest deb in Dublin. How time flies by! Do you remember, harking
back in a retrospective arrangement, Old Christmas night, Georgina
Simpson’s housewarming while they were playing the Irving Bishop game,
finding the pin blindfold and thoughtreading? Subject, what is in this
snuffbox?
MRS BREEN: You were the lion of the night with your seriocomic
recitation and you looked the part. You were always a favourite with
the ladies.
BLOOM: _(Squire of dames, in dinner jacket with wateredsilk facings,
blue masonic badge in his buttonhole, black bow and mother-of-pearl
studs, a prismatic champagne glass tilted in his hand.)_ Ladies and
gentlemen, I give you Ireland, home and beauty.
MRS BREEN: The dear dead days beyond recall. Love’s old sweet song.
BLOOM: _(Meaningfully dropping his voice.)_ I confess I’m teapot with
curiosity to find out whether some person’s something is a little
teapot at present.
MRS BREEN: _(Gushingly.)_ Tremendously teapot! London’s teapot and I’m
simply teapot all over me! _(She rubs sides with him.)_ After the
parlour mystery games and the crackers from the tree we sat on the
staircase ottoman. Under the mistletoe. Two is company.
BLOOM: _(Wearing a purple Napoleon hat with an amber halfmoon, his
fingers and thumb passing slowly down to her soft moist meaty palm
which she 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!
_(Denis Breen, whitetallhatted, with Wisdom Hely’s sandwichboards,
shuffles past them in carpet slippers, his dull beard thrust out,
muttering to right and left. Little Alf Bergan, cloaked in the pall of
the ace of spades, dogs him to left and right, doubled in laughter.)_
ALF BERGAN: _(Points jeering at the sandwichboards.)_ U. p: up.
MRS BREEN: _(To Bloom.)_ High jinks below stairs. _(She gives him the
glad eye.)_ Why didn’t you kiss the spot to make it well? You wanted
to.
BLOOM: _(Shocked.)_ Molly’s best friend! Could you?
MRS BREEN: _(Her pulpy tongue between her lips, offers a pigeon kiss.)_
Hnhn. The answer is a lemon. Have you a little present for me there?
BLOOM: _(Offhandedly.)_ Kosher. A snack for supper. The home without
potted meat is incomplete. I was at _Leah_, Mrs Bandmann Palmer.
Trenchant exponent of Shakespeare. Unfortunately threw away the
programme. Rattling good place round there for pigs’ feet. Feel.
_(Richie Goulding, three ladies’ hats pinned on his head, appears
weighted to one side by the black legal bag of Collis and Ward on which
a skull and crossbones are painted in white limewash. He opens it and
shows it full of polonies, kippered herrings, Findon haddies and
tightpacked pills.)_
RICHIE: Best value in Dub.
_(Bald Pat, bothered beetle, stands on the curbstone, folding his
napkin, waiting to wait.)_
PAT: _(Advances with a tilted dish of spillspilling gravy.)_ Steak and
kidney. Bottle of lager. Hee hee hee. Wait till I wait.
RICHIE: Goodgod. Inev erate inall...
_(With hanging head he marches doggedly forward. The navvy, lurching
by, gores him with his flaming pronghorn.)_
RICHIE: _(With a cry of pain, his hand to his back.)_ Ah! Bright’s!
Lights!
BLOOM: _(Points to the navvy.)_ A spy. Don’t attract attention. I hate
stupid crowds. I am not on pleasure bent. I am in a grave predicament.
MRS BREEN: Humbugging and deluthering as per usual with your cock and
bull story.
BLOOM: I want to tell you a little secret about how I came to be here.
But you must never tell. Not even Molly. I have a most particular
reason.
MRS BREEN: _(All agog.)_ O, not for worlds.
BLOOM: Let’s walk on. Shall us?
MRS BREEN: Let’s.
_(The bawd makes an unheeded sign. Bloom walks on with Mrs Breen. The
terrier follows, whining piteously, wagging his tail.)_
THE BAWD: Jewman’s melt!
BLOOM: _(In an oatmeal sporting suit, a sprig of woodbine in the lapel,
tony buff shirt, shepherd’s plaid Saint Andrew’s cross scarftie, white
spats, fawn dustcoat on his arm, tawny red brogues, fieldglasses in
bandolier and a grey billycock hat.)_ Do you remember a long long time,
years and years ago, just after Milly, Marionette we called her, was
weaned when we all went together to Fairyhouse races, was it?
MRS BREEN: _(In smart Saxe tailormade, white velours hat and spider
veil.)_ 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 naughty creature, little mite of a
thing with a heart the size of a fullstop.
MRS BREEN: _(Squeezes his arm, simpers.)_ Naughty cruel I was!
BLOOM: _(Low, secretly, ever more rapidly.)_ And Molly was eating a
sandwich of spiced beef out of Mrs Joe Gallaher’s lunch basket.
Frankly, though she had her advisers or admirers, I never cared much
for her style. She was...
MRS BREEN: Too...
BLOOM: Yes. And Molly was laughing because Rogers and Maggot O’Reilly
were mimicking a cock as we passed a farmhouse and Marcus Tertius
Moses, the tea merchant, drove past us in a gig with his daughter,
Dancer Moses was her name, and the poodle in her lap bridled up and you
asked me if I ever heard or read or knew or came across...
MRS BREEN: _(Eagerly.)_ Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
_(She fades from his side. Followed by the whining dog he walks on
towards hellsgates. In an archway a standing woman, bent forward, her
feet apart, pisses cowily. Outside a shuttered pub a bunch of loiterers
listen to a tale which their brokensnouted gaffer rasps out with
raucous humour. An armless pair of them flop wrestling, growling, in
maimed sodden playfight.)_
THE GAFFER: _(Crouches, his voice twisted in his snout.)_ And when
Cairns came down from the scaffolding in Beaver street what was he
after doing it into only into the bucket of porter that was there
waiting on the shavings for Derwan’s plasterers.
THE LOITERERS: _(Guffaw with cleft palates.)_ O jays!
_(Their paintspeckled hats wag. Spattered with size and lime of their
lodges they frisk limblessly about him.)_
BLOOM: Coincidence too. They think it funny. Anything but that. Broad
daylight. Trying to walk. Lucky no woman.
THE LOITERERS: Jays, that’s a good one. Glauber salts. O jays, into the
men’s porter.
_(Bloom passes. Cheap whores, singly, coupled, shawled, dishevelled,
call from lanes, doors, corners.)_
THE WHORES:
Are you going far, queer fellow?
How’s your middle leg?
Got a match on you?
Eh, come here till I stiffen it for you.
_(He plodges through their sump towards the lighted street beyond. From
a bulge of window curtains a gramophone rears a battered brazen trunk.
In the shadow a shebeenkeeper haggles with the navvy and the two
redcoats.)_
THE NAVVY: _(Belching.)_ Where’s the bloody house?
THE SHEBEENKEEPER: Purdon street. Shilling a bottle of stout.
Respectable woman.
THE NAVVY: _(Gripping the two redcoats, staggers forward with them.)_
Come on, you British army!
PRIVATE CARR: _(Behind his back.)_ He aint half balmy.
PRIVATE COMPTON: _(Laughs.)_ What ho!
PRIVATE CARR: _(To the navvy.)_ Portobello barracks canteen. You ask
for Carr. Just Carr.
THE NAVVY: _(Shouts.)_
 We are the boys. Of Wexford.
PRIVATE COMPTON: Say! What price the sergeantmajor?
PRIVATE CARR: Bennett? He’s my pal. I love old Bennett.
THE NAVVY: _(Shouts.)_
 The galling chain.
 And free our native land.
_(He staggers forward, dragging them with him. Bloom stops, at fault.
The dog approaches, his tongue outlolling, panting.)_
BLOOM: Wildgoose chase this. Disorderly houses. Lord knows where they
are gone. Drunks cover distance double quick. Nice mixup. Scene at
Westland row. Then jump in first class with third ticket. Then too far.
Train with engine behind. Might have taken me to Malahide or a siding
for the night or collision. Second drink does it. Once is a dose. What
am I following him for? Still, he’s the best of that lot. If I hadn’t
heard about Mrs Beaufoy Purefoy I wouldn’t have gone and wouldn’t have
met. Kismet. He’ll lose that cash. Relieving office here. Good biz for
cheapjacks, organs. What do ye lack? Soon got, soon gone. Might have
lost my life too with that 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.
_(He gazes ahead, reading on the wall a scrawled chalk legend_ Wet
Dream _and a phallic design._) Odd! Molly drawing on the frosted
carriagepane at Kingstown. What’s that like? _(Gaudy dollwomen loll in
the lighted doorways, in window embrasures, smoking birdseye
cigarettes. The odour of the sicksweet weed floats towards him in slow
round ovalling wreaths.)_
THE WREATHS: Sweet are the sweets. Sweets of sin.
BLOOM: My spine’s a bit limp. Go or turn? And this food? Eat it and get
all pigsticky. Absurd I am. Waste of money. One and eightpence too
much. _(The retriever drives a cold snivelling muzzle against his hand,
wagging his tail.)_ Strange how they take to me. Even that brute today.
Better speak to him first. Like women they like _rencontres._ Stinks
like a polecat. _Chacun son goût_. He might be mad. Dogdays. Uncertain
in his movements. Good fellow! Fido! Good fellow! Garryowen! _(The
wolfdog sprawls on his back, wriggling obscenely with begging paws, his
long black tongue lolling out.)_ Influence of his surroundings. Give
and have done with it. Provided nobody. _(Calling encouraging words he
shambles back with a furtive poacher’s tread, dogged by the setter into
a dark stalestunk corner. He unrolls one parcel and goes to dump the
crubeen softly but holds back and feels the trotter.)_ Sizeable for
threepence. But then I have it in my left hand. Calls for more effort.
Why? Smaller from want of use. O, let it slide. Two and six.
_(With regret he lets the unrolled crubeen and trotter slide. The
mastiff mauls the bundle clumsily and gluts himself with growling
greed, crunching the bones. Two raincaped watch approach, silent,
vigilant. They murmur together.)_
THE WATCH: Bloom. Of Bloom. For Bloom. Bloom.
_(Each lays hand on Bloom’s shoulder.)_
FIRST WATCH: Caught in the act. Commit no nuisance.
BLOOM: _(Stammers.)_ I am doing good to others.
_(A covey of gulls, storm petrels, rises hungrily from Liffey slime
with Banbury cakes in their beaks.)_
THE GULLS: Kaw kave kankury kake.
BLOOM: The friend of man. Trained by kindness.
_(He points. Bob Doran, toppling from a high barstool, sways over the
munching spaniel.)_
BOB DORAN: Towser. Give us the paw. Give the paw.
_(The bulldog growls, his scruff standing, a gobbet of pig’s knuckle
between his molars through which rabid scumspittle dribbles. Bob Doran
falls silently into an area.)_
SECOND WATCH: Prevention of cruelty to animals.
BLOOM: _(Enthusiastically.)_ A noble work! I scolded that tramdriver on
Harold’s cross bridge for illusing the poor horse with his harness
scab. Bad French I got for my pains. Of course it was frosty and the
last tram. All tales of circus life are highly demoralising.
_(Signor Maffei, passionpale, in liontamer’s costume with diamond studs
in his shirtfront, steps forward, holding a circus paperhoop, a curling
carriagewhip and a revolver with which he covers the gorging
boarhound.)_
SIGNOR MAFFEI: _(With a sinister smile.)_ Ladies and gentlemen, my
educated greyhound. It was I broke in the bucking broncho Ajax with my
patent spiked saddle for carnivores. Lash under the belly with a
knotted thong. Block tackle and a strangling pulley will bring your
lion to heel, no matter how fractious, even _Leo ferox_ there, the
Libyan maneater. A redhot crowbar and some liniment rubbing on the
burning part produced Fritz of Amsterdam, the thinking hyena. _(He
glares.)_ I possess the Indian sign. The glint of my eye does it with
these breastsparklers. _(With a bewitching smile.)_ I now introduce
Mademoiselle Ruby, the pride of the ring.
FIRST WATCH: Come. Name and address.
BLOOM: I have forgotten for the moment. Ah, yes! _(He takes off his
high grade hat, saluting.)_ Dr Bloom, Leopold, dental surgeon. You have
heard of von Blum Pasha. Umpteen millions. _Donnerwetter!_ Owns half
Austria. Egypt. Cousin.
FIRST WATCH: Proof.
_(A card falls from inside the leather headband of Bloom’s hat.)_
BLOOM: _(In red fez, cadi’s dress coat with broad green sash, wearing a
false badge of the Legion of Honour, picks up the card hastily and
offers it.)_ Allow me. My club is the Junior Army and Navy. Solicitors:
Messrs John Henry Menton, 27 Bachelor’s Walk.
FIRST WATCH: _(Reads.)_ Henry Flower. No fixed abode. Unlawfully
watching and 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.
_(A dark mercurialised face appears, leading a veiled figure.)_
THE DARK MERCURY: The Castle is looking for him. He was drummed out of
the army.
MARTHA: _(Thickveiled, a crimson halter round her neck, a copy of the_
Irish Times _in her hand, in tone of reproach, pointing.)_ Henry!
Leopold! Lionel, thou lost one! Clear my name.
FIRST WATCH: _(Sternly.)_ Come to the station.
BLOOM: _(Scared, hats himself, steps back, then, plucking at his heart
and lifting his right forearm on the square, he gives the sign and
dueguard of fellowcraft.)_ No, no, worshipful master, light of love.
Mistaken identity. The Lyons mail. Lesurques and Dubosc. You remember
the Childs fratricide case. We medical men. By striking him dead with a
hatchet. I am wrongfully accused. Better one guilty escape than
ninetynine wrongfully condemned.
MARTHA: _(Sobbing behind her veil.)_ Breach of promise. My real name is
Peggy Griffin. He wrote to me that he was miserable. I’ll tell my
brother, the Bective rugger fullback, on you, heartless flirt.
BLOOM: _(Behind his hand.)_ She’s drunk. The woman is inebriated. _(He
murmurs vaguely the pass of Ephraim.)_ Shitbroleeth.
SECOND WATCH: _(Tears in his eyes, to Bloom.)_ You ought to be
thoroughly well ashamed of 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 strides out jerkily, a quill between his teeth. His
scarlet beak blazes within the aureole of his straw hat. He dangles a
hank of Spanish onions in one hand and holds with the other hand a
telephone receiver nozzle to his ear.)_
MYLES CRAWFORD: _(His cock’s wattles wagging.)_ Hello, seventyseven
eightfour. Hello. _Freeman’s Urinal_ and _Weekly Arsewipe_ here.
Paralyse Europe. You which? Bluebags? Who writes? Is it Bloom?
_(Mr Philip Beaufoy, palefaced, stands in the witnessbox, in accurate
morning dress, outbreast pocket with peak of handkerchief showing,
creased lavender trousers and patent boots. He carries a large
portfolio labelled_ Matcham’s Masterstrokes.)
BEAUFOY: _(Drawls.)_ No, you aren’t. Not by a long shot if I know it. I
don’t see it, that’s all. No born gentleman, no-one with the most
rudimentary 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 copy, 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 glum.)_ That bit about the
laughing witch hand in hand I take exception to, if I may...
BEAUFOY: _(His lip upcurled, smiles superciliously on the court.)_ You
funny ass, you! You’re too beastly awfully weird for words! I don’t
think you need over excessively disincommodate yourself in that regard.
My literary agent Mr J. B. Pinker is in attendance. I presume, my lord,
we shall receive the usual witnesses’ fees, shan’t we? We are
considerably out of pocket over this bally pressman johnny, this
jackdaw of Rheims, who has not even been to a 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 archconspirator of the age!
BLOOM: _(To the court.)_ And he, a bachelor, how...
FIRST WATCH: The King versus Bloom. Call the woman Driscoll.
THE CRIER: Mary Driscoll, scullerymaid!
_(Mary Driscoll, a slipshod servant girl, approaches. She has a bucket
on the crook of her arm and a scouringbrush in her hand.)_
SECOND WATCH: Another! Are you of the unfortunate class?
MARY DRISCOLL: _(Indignantly.)_ I’m not a bad one. I bear a respectable
character and was four months in my last place. I was in a situation,
six pounds a year and my chances with Fridays out and I had to leave
owing to his carryings on.
FIRST WATCH: What do you tax him with?
MARY DRISCOLL: He made a certain suggestion but I thought more of
myself as poor as I am.
BLOOM: _(In housejacket of ripplecloth, flannel trousers, heelless
slippers, unshaven, his hair rumpled: softly.)_ I treated you white. I
gave you mementos, smart emerald garters far above your station.
Incautiously I took your part when you were accused of pilfering.
There’s a medium in all things. Play cricket.
MARY DRISCOLL: _(Excitedly.)_ As God is looking down on me this night
if ever I laid a hand to them 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.
_(General laughter.)_
GEORGE FOTTRELL: _(Clerk of the crown and peace, resonantly.)_ Order in
court! The accused will now make a bogus statement.
_(Bloom, pleading not guilty and holding a fullblown waterlily, begins
a long unintelligible speech. They would hear what counsel had to say
in his stirring address to the grand jury. He was down and out but,
though branded as a black sheep, if he might say so, he meant to
reform, to retrieve the memory of the past in a purely sisterly way and
return to nature as a purely domestic animal. A sevenmonths’ child, he
had been carefully brought up and nurtured by an aged bedridden parent.
There might have been lapses of an erring father but he wanted to turn
over a new leaf and now, when at long last in sight of the whipping
post, to lead a homely life in the evening of his days, permeated by
the affectionate surroundings of the heaving bosom of the family. An
acclimatised Britisher, he had seen that summer eve from the footplate
of an engine cab of the Loop line railway company while the rain
refrained from falling glimpses, as it were, through the windows of
loveful households in Dublin city and urban district of scenes truly
rural of happiness of the better land with Dockrell’s wallpaper at one
and ninepence a dozen, innocent Britishborn bairns lisping prayers to
the Sacred Infant, youthful scholars grappling with their pensums or
model young ladies playing on the pianoforte or anon all with fervour
reciting the family rosary round the crackling Yulelog while in the
boreens and green lanes the colleens with their swains strolled what
times the strains of the organtoned melodeon Britannia metalbound with
four acting stops and twelvefold bellows, a sacrifice, greatest bargain
ever...._
_(Renewed laughter. He mumbles incoherently. Reporters complain that
they cannot hear.)_
LONGHAND AND SHORTHAND: _(Without looking up from their notebooks.)_
Loosen his boots.
PROFESSOR MACHUGH: _(From the presstable, coughs and calls.)_ Cough it
up, man. Get it out in bits.
_(The crossexamination proceeds_ re _Bloom and the bucket. A large
bucket. Bloom himself. Bowel trouble. In Beaver street. Gripe, yes.
Quite bad. A plasterer’s bucket. By walking stifflegged. Suffered
untold misery. Deadly agony. About noon. Love or burgundy. Yes, some
spinach. Crucial moment. He did not look in the bucket. Nobody. Rather
a mess. Not completely. A_ Titbits _back number_.)
_(Uproar and catcalls. Bloom in a torn frockcoat stained with
whitewash, dinged silk hat sideways on his head, a strip of
stickingplaster across his nose, talks inaudibly.)_
J. J. O’MOLLOY: _(In barrister’s grey wig and stuffgown, speaking with
a voice of pained protest.)_ This is no place for indecent levity at
the expense of an erring mortal disguised in liquor. We are not in a
beargarden nor at an Oxford rag nor is this a travesty of justice. My
client is an infant, a poor foreign immigrant who started scratch as a
stowaway and is now trying to turn an honest penny. The trumped up
misdemeanour was due to a momentary 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...
_(He is howled down.)_
J. J. O’MOLLOY: _(Hotly to the populace.)_ This is a lonehand fight. By
Hades, I will not have any client of mine gagged and badgered in this
fashion by a pack of curs and laughing hyenas. The Mosaic code has
superseded the law of the jungle. I say it and I say it emphatically,
without wishing for one moment to defeat the ends of justice, accused
was not accessory before the act and prosecutrix has not been tampered
with. The young person was treated by defendant as if she were his very
own daughter. _(Bloom takes J. J. O’Molloy’s hand and raises it to his
lips.)_ I shall call rebutting evidence to prove up to the hilt that
the hidden hand is again at its old game. When in doubt persecute
Bloom. My client, an innately bashful man, would be the last man in the
world to do anything ungentlemanly which injured modesty could object
to or cast a stone at a girl who took the wrong turning when some
dastard, responsible for her condition, had worked his own sweet will
on her. He wants to go straight. I regard him as the whitest man I
know. He is down on his luck at present owing to the mortgaging of his
extensive property at Agendath Netaim in faraway Asia Minor, slides of
which will now be shown. _(To Bloom.)_ I suggest that you will do the
handsome thing.
BLOOM: A penny in the pound.
_(The image of the lake of Kinnereth with blurred cattle cropping in
silver haze is projected on the wall. Moses Dlugacz, ferreteyed albino,
in blue dungarees, stands up in the gallery, holding in each hand an
orange citron and a pork kidney.)_
DLUGACZ: _(Hoarsely.)_ Bleibtreustrasse, Berlin, W. 13.
_(J. J. O’Molloy steps on to a low plinth and holds the lapel of his
coat with solemnity. His face lengthens, grows pale and bearded, with
sunken eyes, the blotches of phthisis and hectic cheekbones of John F.
Taylor. He applies his handkerchief to his mouth and scrutinises the
galloping tide of rosepink blood.)_
J. J. O’MOLLOY: _(Almost voicelessly.)_ Excuse me. I am suffering from
a severe chill, have recently come from a sickbed. A few wellchosen
words. _(He assumes the avine head, foxy moustache and proboscidal
eloquence of Seymour Bushe.)_ When the angel’s book comes to be opened
if aught that the pensive 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 brickquilted dolman, a comb of
brilliants and panache of osprey in her hair.)_ Arrest him, constable.
He wrote me an anonymous letter in prentice backhand when my husband
was in the North Riding of Tipperary on the Munster circuit, signed
James Lovebirch. He said that he had seen from the gods my peerless
globes as I sat in a box of the _Theatre Royal_ at a command
performance of _La Cigale_. I deeply inflamed him, he said. He made
improper overtures to me to misconduct myself at half past four p.m. on
the following Thursday, Dunsink time. He offered to send me through the
post a work of fiction by Monsieur Paul de Kock, entitled _The Girl
with the Three Pairs of Stays_.
MRS BELLINGHAM: _(In cap and seal coney mantle, wrapped up to the nose,
steps out of her brougham and scans through tortoiseshell
quizzing-glasses which she takes from inside her huge opossum muff.)_
Also to me. Yes, I believe it is the same objectionable person. Because
he closed my carriage door outside sir Thornley Stoker’s one sleety day
during the cold snap of February ninetythree when even the grid of the
wastepipe and the ballstop in my bath cistern were frozen. Subsequently
he enclosed a bloom of edelweiss culled on the heights, as he said, in
my honour. I had it examined by a botanical expert and elicited the
information that it was a blossom of the homegrown potato plant
purloined from a forcingcase of the model farm.
MRS YELVERTON BARRY: Shame on him!
_(A crowd of sluts and ragamuffins surges forward.)_
THE SLUTS AND RAGAMUFFINS: _(Screaming.)_ Stop thief! Hurrah there,
Bluebeard! Three cheers for Ikey Mo!
SECOND WATCH: _(Produces handcuffs.)_ Here are the darbies.
MRS BELLINGHAM: He addressed me in several handwritings with fulsome
compliments as a Venus in furs and alleged profound pity for my
frostbound coachman Palmer while in the same breath he expressed
himself as envious of his earflaps and fleecy sheepskins and of his
fortunate proximity to my person, when standing behind my chair wearing
my livery and the armorial bearings of the Bellingham escutcheon
garnished sable, a buck’s head 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 Phoenix park at the match All Ireland versus the Rest of
Ireland. My eyes, I know, shone divinely as I watched Captain Slogger
Dennehy of the Inniskillings win the final chukkar on his darling cob
_Centaur._ This plebeian Don Juan observed me from behind a hackney car
and sent me in double envelopes an obscene photograph, such as are sold
after dark on Paris boulevards, insulting to any lady. I have it still.
It represents a partially nude 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.
_(Several highly respectable Dublin ladies hold up improper letters
received from Bloom.)_
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: _(Stamps her jingling spurs in a
sudden paroxysm of fury.)_ I will, by the God above me. I’ll scourge
the pigeonlivered cur as long as I can stand over him. I’ll flay him
alive.
BLOOM: _(His eyes closing, quails expectantly.)_ Here? _(He squirms.)_
Again! _(He pants cringing.)_ I love the danger.
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: Very much so! I’ll make it hot for
you. I’ll make you dance Jack Latten for that.
MRS BELLINGHAM: Tan his breech well, the upstart! Write the stars and
stripes on it!
MRS YELVERTON BARRY: Disgraceful! There’s no excuse for him! A married
man!
BLOOM: All these people. I meant only the spanking idea. A warm
tingling glow without effusion. Refined birching to stimulate the
circulation.
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: _(Laughs derisively.)_ O, did you,
my fine fellow? Well, by the living God, you’ll get the surprise of
your life now, believe me, the most unmerciful hiding a man ever
bargained for. You have lashed the dormant tigress in my nature into
fury.
MRS BELLINGHAM: _(Shakes her muff and quizzing-glasses vindictively.)_
Make him smart, Hanna dear. Give him ginger. Thrash the mongrel within
an inch of his life. The cat-o’-nine-tails. Geld him. Vivisect him.
BLOOM: _(Shuddering, shrinking, joins his hands: with hangdog mien.)_ O
cold! O shivery! It was your ambrosial beauty. Forget, forgive. Kismet.
Let me off this once. _(He offers the other cheek.)_
MRS YELVERTON BARRY: _(Severely.)_ Don’t do so on any account, Mrs
Talboys! He should be soundly trounced!
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: _(Unbuttoning her gauntlet
violently.)_ I’ll do no such thing. Pigdog and always was ever since he
was pupped! To dare address me! I’ll flog him black and blue in the
public streets. I’ll dig my spurs in him up to the rowel. He is a
wellknown cuckold. _(She swishes her huntingcrop savagely in the air.)_
Take down his trousers without loss of time. Come here, sir! Quick!
Ready?
BLOOM: _(Trembling, beginning to obey.)_ The weather has been so warm.
_(Davy Stephens, ringletted, passes with a bevy of barefoot newsboys.)_
DAVY STEPHENS: _Messenger of the Sacred Heart_ and _Evening Telegraph_
with Saint Patrick’s Day supplement. Containing the new addresses of
all the cuckolds in Dublin.
_(The very reverend Canon O’Hanlon in cloth of gold cope elevates and
exposes a marble timepiece. Before him Father Conroy and the reverend
John Hughes S. J. bend low.)_
THE TIMEPIECE: _(Unportalling.)_
 Cuckoo.
 Cuckoo.
 Cuckoo.
_(The brass quoits of a bed are heard to jingle.)_
THE QUOITS: Jigjag. Jigajiga. Jigjag.
_(A panel of fog rolls back rapidly, revealing rapidly in the jurybox
the faces of Martin Cunningham, foreman, silkhatted, Jack Power, Simon
Dedalus, Tom Kernan, Ned Lambert, John Henry Menton, Myles Crawford,
Lenehan, Paddy Leonard, Nosey Flynn, M’Coy and the featureless face of
a Nameless One.)_
THE NAMELESS ONE: Bareback riding. Weight for age. Gob, he organised
her.
THE JURORS: _(All their heads turned to his voice.)_ Really?
THE NAMELESS ONE: _(Snarls.)_ Arse over tip. Hundred shillings to five.
THE JURORS: _(All their heads lowered in assent.)_ Most of us thought
as much.
FIRST WATCH: He is a marked man. Another girl’s plait cut. Wanted: Jack
the Ripper. A thousand pounds reward.
SECOND WATCH: _(Awed, whispers.)_ And in black. A mormon. Anarchist.
THE CRIER: _(Loudly.)_ Whereas Leopold Bloom of no fixed abode is a
wellknown dynamitard, forger, bigamist, bawd and cuckold and a public
nuisance to the citizens of Dublin and whereas at this commission of
assizes the most honourable...
_(His Honour, sir Frederick Falkiner, recorder of Dublin, in judicial
garb of grey stone rises from the bench, stonebearded. He bears in his
arms an umbrella sceptre. From his forehead arise starkly the Mosaic
ramshorns.)_
THE RECORDER: I will put an end to this white slave traffic and rid
Dublin of this odious pest. Scandalous! _(He dons the black cap.)_ Let
him be taken, Mr Subsheriff, from the dock where he now stands and
detained in custody in Mountjoy prison during His Majesty’s pleasure
and there be hanged by the neck until he is dead and therein fail not
at your peril or may the Lord have mercy on your soul. Remove him. _(A
black skullcap descends upon his head.)_
_(The subsheriff Long John Fanning appears, smoking a pungent Henry
Clay.)_
LONG JOHN FANNING: _(Scowls and calls with rich rolling utterance.)_
Who’ll hang Judas Iscariot?
_(H. Rumbold, master barber, in a bloodcoloured jerkin and tanner’s
apron, a rope coiled over his shoulder, mounts the block. A life
preserver and a nailstudded bludgeon are stuck in his belt. He rubs
grimly his grappling hands, knobbed with knuckledusters.)_
RUMBOLD: _(To the recorder with sinister familiarity.)_ Hanging Harry,
your Majesty, the Mersey terror. Five guineas a jugular. Neck or
nothing.
_(The bells of George’s church toll slowly, loud dark iron.)_
THE BELLS: Heigho! Heigho!
BLOOM: _(Desperately.)_ Wait. Stop. Gulls. Good heart. I saw.
Innocence. Girl in the monkeyhouse. Zoo. Lewd chimpanzee.
_(Breathlessly.)_ Pelvic basin. Her artless blush unmanned me.
_(Overcome with emotion.)_ I left the precincts. (He turns to a figure
in the crowd, appealing.) Hynes, may I speak to you? You know me. That
three shillings you can keep. If you want a little more...
HYNES: _(Coldly.)_ You are a perfect stranger.
SECOND WATCH: _(Points to the corner.)_ The bomb is here.
FIRST WATCH: Infernal machine with a time fuse.
BLOOM: No, no. Pig’s feet. I was at a funeral.
FIRST WATCH: _(Draws his truncheon.)_ Liar!
_(The beagle lifts his snout, showing the grey scorbutic face of Paddy
Dignam. He has gnawed all. He exhales a putrid carcasefed breath. He
grows to human size and shape. His dachshund coat becomes a brown
mortuary habit. His green eye flashes bloodshot. Half of one ear, all
the nose and both thumbs are ghouleaten.)_
PADDY DIGNAM: _(In a hollow voice.)_ It is true. It was my funeral.
Doctor Finucane pronounced life extinct when I succumbed to the disease
from natural causes.
_(He lifts his mutilated ashen face moonwards and bays lugubriously.)_
BLOOM: _(In triumph.)_ You hear?
PADDY DIGNAM: Bloom, I am Paddy Dignam’s spirit. List, list, O list!
BLOOM: The voice is the voice of Esau.
SECOND WATCH: _(Blesses himself.)_ How is that possible?
FIRST WATCH: It is not in the penny catechism.
PADDY DIGNAM: By metempsychosis. Spooks.
A VOICE: O rocks.
PADDY DIGNAM: _(Earnestly.)_ Once I was in the employ of Mr J. H.
Menton, solicitor, commissioner for oaths and affidavits, of 27
Bachelor’s Walk. Now I am defunct, the wall of the heart hypertrophied.
Hard lines. The poor wife was awfully cut up. How is she bearing it?
Keep her off that bottle of sherry. _(He looks round him.)_ A lamp. I
must satisfy an animal need. That buttermilk didn’t agree with me.
_(The portly figure of John O’Connell, caretaker, stands forth, holding
a bunch of keys tied with crape. Beside him stands Father Coffey,
chaplain, toadbellied, wrynecked, in a surplice and bandanna nightcap,
holding sleepily a staff of twisted poppies.)_
FATHER COFFEY: _(Yawns, then chants with a hoarse croak.)_ Namine.
Jacobs. Vobiscuits. Amen.
JOHN O’CONNELL: _(Foghorns stormily through his megaphone.)_ Dignam,
Patrick T, deceased.
PADDY DIGNAM: _(With pricked up ears, winces.)_ Overtones. _(He
wriggles forward and places an ear to the ground.)_ My master’s voice!
JOHN O’CONNELL: Burial docket letter number U. P. eightyfive thousand.
Field seventeen. House of Keys. Plot, one hundred and one.
_(Paddy Dignam listens with visible effort, thinking, his tail
stiffpointed, his ears cocked.)_
PADDY DIGNAM: Pray for the repose of his soul.
_(He worms down through a coalhole, his brown habit trailing its tether
over rattling pebbles. After him toddles an obese grandfather rat on
fungus turtle paws under a grey carapace. Dignam’s voice, muffled, is
heard baying under ground:_ Dignam’s dead and gone below. _Tom
Rochford, robinredbreasted, in cap and breeches, jumps from his
twocolumned machine.)_
TOM ROCHFORD: _(A hand to his breastbone, bows.)_ Reuben J. A florin I
find him. _(He fixes the manhole with a resolute stare.)_ My turn now
on. Follow me up to Carlow.
_(He executes a daredevil salmon leap in the air and is engulfed in the
coalhole. Two discs on the columns wobble, eyes of nought. All recedes.
Bloom plodges forward again through the sump. Kisses chirp amid the
rifts of fog. A piano sounds. He stands before a lighted house,
listening. The kisses, winging from their bowers, fly about him,
twittering, warbling, cooing.)_
THE KISSES: _(Warbling.)_ Leo! _(Twittering.)_ Icky licky micky sticky
for Leo! _(Cooing.)_ Coo coocoo! Yummyyum, Womwom! _(Warbling.)_ Big
comebig! Pirouette! Leopopold! _(Twittering.)_ Leeolee! _(Warbling.)_ O
Leo!
_(They rustle, flutter upon his garments, alight, bright giddy flecks,
silvery sequins.)_
BLOOM: A man’s touch. Sad music. Church music. Perhaps here.
_(Zoe Higgins, a young whore in a sapphire slip, closed with three
bronze buckles, a slim black velvet fillet round her throat, nods,
trips down the steps and accosts him.)_
ZOE: Are you looking for someone? He’s inside with his friend.
BLOOM: Is this Mrs Mack’s?
ZOE: No, eightyone. Mrs Cohen’s. You might go farther and fare worse.
Mother Slipperslapper. _(Familiarly.)_ She’s on the job herself tonight
with the vet her tipster that gives her all the winners and pays for
her son in Oxford. Working overtime but her luck’s turned today.
_(Suspiciously.)_ You’re not his father, are you?
BLOOM: Not I!
ZOE: You both in black. Has little mousey any tickles tonight?
_(His skin, alert, feels her fingertips approach. A hand glides over
his left thigh.)_
ZOE: How’s the nuts?
BLOOM: Off side. Curiously they are on the right. Heavier, I suppose.
One in a million my tailor, Mesias, says.
ZOE: _(In sudden alarm.)_ You’ve a hard chancre.
BLOOM: Not likely.
ZOE: I feel it.
_(Her hand slides into his left trouser pocket and brings out a hard
black shrivelled potato. She regards it and Bloom with dumb moist
lips.)_
BLOOM: A talisman. Heirloom.
ZOE: For Zoe? For keeps? For being so nice, eh?
_(She puts the potato greedily into a pocket then links his arm,
cuddling him with supple warmth. He smiles uneasily. Slowly, note by
note, oriental music is played. He gazes in the tawny crystal of her
eyes, ringed with kohol. His smile softens.)_
ZOE: You’ll know me the next time.
BLOOM: _(Forlornly.)_ I never loved a dear gazelle but it was sure
to...
_(Gazelles are leaping, feeding on the mountains. Near are lakes. Round
their shores file shadows black of cedargroves. Aroma rises, a strong
hairgrowth of resin. It burns, the orient, a sky of sapphire, cleft by
the bronze flight of eagles. Under it lies the womancity, nude, white,
still, cool, in luxury. A fountain murmurs among damask roses. Mammoth
roses murmur of scarlet winegrapes. A wine of shame, lust, blood
exudes, strangely murmuring.)_
ZOE: _(Murmuring singsong with the music, her odalisk lips lusciously
smeared with salve of swinefat and rosewater.) Schorach ani wenowach,
benoith Hierushaloim._
BLOOM: _(Fascinated.)_ I thought you were of good stock by your accent.
ZOE: And you know what thought did?
_(She bites his ear gently with little goldstopped teeth, sending on
him a cloying breath of stale garlic. The roses draw apart, disclose a
sepulchre of the gold of kings and their mouldering bones.)_
BLOOM: _(Draws back, mechanically caressing her right bub with a flat
awkward hand.)_ Are you a Dublin girl?
ZOE: _(Catches a stray hair deftly and twists it to her coil.)_ No
bloody fear. I’m English. Have you a swaggerroot?
BLOOM: _(As before.)_ Rarely smoke, dear. Cigar now and then. Childish
device. _(Lewdly.)_ The mouth can be better engaged than with a
cylinder of rank weed.
ZOE: Go on. Make a stump speech out of it.
BLOOM: _(In workman’s corduroy overalls, black gansy with red floating
tie and apache cap.)_ Mankind is incorrigible. Sir Walter Ralegh
brought from the new world that potato and that weed, the one a killer
of pestilence by absorption, the other a poisoner of the ear, eye,
heart, memory, will, understanding, all. That is to say he brought the
poison a hundred years before another person whose name I forget
brought the food. Suicide. Lies. All our habits. Why, look at our
public life!
_(Midnight chimes from distant steeples.)_
THE CHIMES: Turn again, Leopold! Lord mayor of Dublin!
BLOOM: _(In alderman’s gown and chain.)_ Electors of Arran Quay, Inns
Quay, Rotunda, Mountjoy and North Dock, better run a tramline, I say,
from the cattlemarket to the river. That’s the music of the future.
That’s my programme. _Cui bono?_ But our bucaneering Vanderdeckens in
their phantom ship of finance...
AN ELECTOR: Three times three for our future chief magistrate!
_(The aurora borealis of the torchlight procession leaps.)_
THE TORCHBEARERS: Hooray!
_(Several wellknown burgesses, city magnates and freemen of the city
shake hands with Bloom and congratulate him. Timothy Harrington, late
thrice Lord Mayor of Dublin, imposing in mayoral scarlet, gold chain
and white silk tie, confers with councillor Lorcan Sherlock,_ locum
tenens. _They nod vigorously in agreement.)_
LATE LORD MAYOR HARRINGTON: _(In scarlet robe with mace, gold mayoral
chain and large white silk scarf.)_ That alderman sir Leo Bloom’s
speech be printed at the expense of the ratepayers. That the house in
which he was born be ornamented with a commemorative tablet and that
the thoroughfare hitherto known as Cow Parlour off Cork street be
henceforth designated Boulevard Bloom.
COUNCILLOR LORCAN SHERLOCK: Carried unanimously.
BLOOM: _(Impassionedly.)_ These flying Dutchmen or lying Dutchmen as
they recline in their upholstered poop, casting dice, what reck they?
Machines is their cry, their chimera, their panacea. Laboursaving
apparatuses, supplanters, bugbears, manufactured monsters for mutual
murder, hideous hobgoblins produced by a horde of capitalistic lusts
upon our prostituted labour. The poor man starves while they are
grassing their royal mountain stags or shooting peasants and
phartridges in their purblind pomp of pelf and power. But their reign
is rover for rever and ever and ev...
_(Prolonged applause. Venetian masts, maypoles and festal arches spring
up. A streamer bearing the legends_ Cead Mile Failte _and_ Mah Ttob
Melek Israel _spans the street. All the windows are thronged with
sightseers, chiefly ladies. Along the route the regiments of the Royal
Dublin Fusiliers, the King’s own Scottish Borderers, the Cameron
Highlanders and the Welsh Fusiliers, standing to attention, keep back
the crowd. Boys from High school are perched on the lampposts,
telegraph poles, windowsills, cornices, gutters, chimneypots, railings,
rainspouts, whistling and cheering. The pillar of the cloud appears. A
fife and drum band is heard in the distance playing the Kol Nidre. The
beaters approach with imperial eagles hoisted, trailing banners and
waving oriental palms. The chryselephantine papal standard rises high,
surrounded by pennons of the civic flag. The van of the procession
appears headed by John Howard Parnell, city marshal, in a chessboard
tabard, the Athlone Poursuivant and Ulster King of Arms. They are
followed by the Right Honourable Joseph Hutchinson, lord mayor of
Dublin, his lordship the lord mayor of Cork, their worships the mayors
of Limerick, Galway, Sligo and Waterford, twentyeight Irish
representative peers, sirdars, grandees and maharajahs bearing the
cloth of estate, the Dublin Metropolitan Fire Brigade, the chapter of
the saints of finance in their plutocratic order of precedence, the
bishop of Down and Connor, His Eminence Michael cardinal Logue,
archbishop of Armagh, primate of all Ireland, His Grace, the most
reverend Dr William Alexander, archbishop of Armagh, primate of all
Ireland, the chief rabbi, the presbyterian moderator, the heads of the
baptist, anabaptist, methodist and Moravian chapels and the honorary
secretary of the society of friends. After them march the guilds and
trades and trainbands with flying colours: coopers, bird fanciers,
millwrights, newspaper canvassers, law scriveners, masseurs, vintners,
trussmakers, chimneysweeps, lard refiners, tabinet and poplin weavers,
farriers, Italian warehousemen, church decorators, bootjack
manufacturers, undertakers, silk mercers, lapidaries, salesmasters,
corkcutters, assessors of fire losses, dyers and cleaners, export
bottlers, fellmongers, ticketwriters, heraldic seal engravers, horse
repository hands, bullion brokers, cricket and archery outfitters,
riddlemakers, egg and potato factors, hosiers and glovers, plumbing
contractors. After them march gentlemen of the bedchamber, Black Rod,
Deputy Garter, Gold Stick, the master of horse, the lord great
chamberlain, the earl marshal, the high constable carrying the sword of
state, saint Stephen’s iron crown, the chalice and bible. Four buglers
on foot blow a sennet. Beefeaters reply, winding clarions of welcome.
Under an arch of triumph Bloom appears, bareheaded, in a crimson velvet
mantle trimmed with ermine, bearing Saint Edward’s staff, the orb and
sceptre with the dove, the curtana. He is seated on a milkwhite horse
with long flowing crimson tail, richly caparisoned, with golden
headstall. Wild excitement. The ladies from their balconies throw down
rosepetals. The air is perfumed with essences. The men cheer. Bloom’s
boys run amid the bystanders with branches of hawthorn and
wrenbushes.)_
BLOOM’S BOYS:
 The wren, the wren,
 The king of all birds,
 Saint Stephen’s his day
 Was caught in the furze.
A BLACKSMITH: _(Murmurs.)_ For the honour of God! And is that Bloom? He
scarcely looks thirtyone.
A PAVIOR AND FLAGGER: That’s the famous Bloom now, the world’s greatest
reformer. Hats off!
_(All uncover their heads. Women whisper eagerly.)_
A MILLIONAIRESS: _(Richly.)_ Isn’t he simply wonderful?
A NOBLEWOMAN: _(Nobly.)_ All that man has seen!
A FEMINIST: _(Masculinely.)_ And done!
A BELLHANGER: A classic face! He has the forehead of a thinker.
_(Bloom’s weather. A sunburst appears in the northwest.)_
THE BISHOP OF DOWN AND CONNOR: I here present your undoubted
emperor-president and king-chairman, the most serene and potent and
very puissant ruler of this realm. God save Leopold the First!
ALL: God save Leopold the First!
BLOOM: _(In dalmatic and purple mantle, to the bishop of Down and
Connor, with dignity.)_ Thanks, somewhat eminent sir.
WILLIAM, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH: _(In purple stock and shovel hat.)_ Will
you to your power cause law and mercy to be executed in all your
judgments in Ireland and territories thereunto belonging?
BLOOM: _(Placing his right hand on his testicles, swears.)_ So may the
Creator deal with me. All this I promise to do.
MICHAEL, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH: _(Pours a cruse of hairoil over Bloom’s
head.) Gaudium magnum annuntio vobis. Habemus carneficem._ Leopold,
Patrick, Andrew, David, George, be thou anointed!
_(Bloom assumes a mantle of cloth of gold and puts on a ruby ring. He
ascends and stands on the stone of destiny. The representative peers
put on at the same time their twentyeight crowns. Joybells ring in
Christ church, Saint Patrick’s, George’s and gay Malahide. Mirus bazaar
fireworks go up from all sides with symbolical phallopyrotechnic
designs. The peers do homage, one by one, approaching and
genuflecting.)_
THE PEERS: I do become your liege man of life and limb to earthly
worship.
_(Bloom holds up his right hand on which sparkles the Koh-i-Noor
diamond. His palfrey neighs. Immediate silence. Wireless
intercontinental and interplanetary transmitters are set for reception
of message.)_
BLOOM: My subjects! We hereby nominate our faithful charger Copula
Felix hereditary Grand Vizier and announce that we have this day
repudiated our former spouse and have bestowed our royal hand upon the
princess Selene, the splendour of night.
_(The former morganatic spouse of Bloom is hastily removed in the Black
Maria. The princess Selene, in moonblue robes, a silver crescent on her
head, descends from a Sedan chair, borne by two giants. An outburst of
cheering.)_
JOHN HOWARD PARNELL: _(Raises the royal standard.)_ Illustrious Bloom!
Successor to my famous brother!
BLOOM: _(Embraces John Howard Parnell.)_ We thank you from our heart,
John, for this right royal welcome to green Erin, the promised land of
our common ancestors.
_(The freedom of the city is presented to him embodied in a charter.
The keys of Dublin, crossed on a crimson cushion, are given to him. He
shows all that he is wearing green socks.)_
TOM KERNAN: You deserve it, your honour.
BLOOM: On this day twenty years ago we overcame the hereditary enemy at
Ladysmith. Our howitzers and camel swivel guns played on his lines with
telling effect. Half a league onward! They charge! All is lost now! Do
we yield? No! We drive them headlong! Lo! We charge! Deploying to the
left our light horse swept across the heights of Plevna and, uttering
their warcry _Bonafide Sabaoth_, sabred the Saracen gunners to a man.
THE CHAPEL OF FREEMAN TYPESETTERS: Hear! Hear!
JOHN WYSE NOLAN: There’s the man that got away James Stephens.
A BLUECOAT SCHOOLBOY: Bravo!
AN OLD RESIDENT: You’re a credit to your country, sir, that’s what you
are.
AN APPLEWOMAN: He’s a man like Ireland wants.
BLOOM: My beloved subjects, a new era is about to dawn. I, Bloom, tell
you verily it is even now at hand. Yea, on the word of a Bloom, ye
shall ere long enter into the golden city which is to be, the new
Bloomusalem in the Nova Hibernia of the future.
_(Thirtytwo workmen, wearing rosettes, from all the counties of
Ireland, under the guidance of Derwan the builder, construct the new
Bloomusalem. It is a colossal edifice with crystal roof, built in the
shape of a huge pork kidney, containing forty thousand rooms. In the
course of its extension several buildings and monuments are demolished.
Government offices are temporarily transferred to railway sheds.
Numerous houses are razed to the ground. The inhabitants are lodged in
barrels and boxes, all marked in red with the letters: L. B. Several
paupers fall from a ladder. A part of the walls of Dublin, crowded with
loyal sightseers, collapses.)_
THE SIGHTSEERS: _(Dying.) Morituri te salutant. (They die.)_
_(A man in a brown macintosh springs up through a trapdoor. He points
an elongated finger at Bloom.)_
THE MAN IN THE MACINTOSH: Don’t you believe a word he says. That man is
Leopold M’Intosh, the notorious fireraiser. His real name is Higgins.
BLOOM: Shoot him! Dog of a christian! So much for M’Intosh!
_(A cannonshot. The man in the macintosh disappears. Bloom with his
sceptre strikes down poppies. The instantaneous deaths of many powerful
enemies, graziers, members of parliament, members of standing
committees, are reported. Bloom’s bodyguard distribute Maundy money,
commemoration medals, loaves and fishes, temperance badges, expensive
Henry Clay cigars, free cowbones for soup, rubber preservatives in
sealed envelopes tied with gold thread, butter scotch, pineapple rock,_
billets doux _in the form of cocked hats, readymade suits, porringers
of toad in the hole, bottles of Jeyes’ Fluid, purchase stamps, 40 days’
indulgences, spurious coins, dairyfed pork sausages, theatre passes,
season tickets available for all tramlines, coupons of the royal and
privileged Hungarian lottery, penny dinner counters, cheap reprints of
the World’s Twelve Worst Books: Froggy And Fritz (politic), Care of the
Baby (infantilic), 50 Meals for 7/6 (culinic), Was Jesus a Sun Myth?
(historic), Expel that Pain (medic), Infant’s Compendium of the
Universe (cosmic), Let’s All Chortle (hilaric), Canvasser’s Vade Mecum
(journalic), Loveletters of Mother Assistant (erotic), Who’s Who in
Space (astric), Songs that Reached Our Heart (melodic), Pennywise’s Way
to Wealth (parsimonic). A general rush and scramble. Women press
forward to touch the hem of Bloom’s robe. The lady Gwendolen Dubedat
bursts through the throng, leaps on his horse and kisses him on both
cheeks amid great acclamation. A magnesium flashlight photograph is
taken. Babes and sucklings are held up.)_
THE WOMEN: Little father! Little father!
THE BABES AND SUCKLINGS:
 Clap clap hands till Poldy comes home,
 Cakes in his pocket for Leo alone.
_(Bloom, bending down, pokes Baby Boardman gently in the stomach.)_
BABY BOARDMAN: _(Hiccups, curdled milk flowing from his mouth.)_
Hajajaja.
BLOOM: _(Shaking hands with a blind stripling.)_ My more than Brother!
_(Placing his arms round the shoulders of an old couple.)_ Dear old
friends! _(He plays pussy fourcorners with ragged boys and girls.)_
Peep! Bopeep! _(He wheels twins in a perambulator.)_ Ticktacktwo
wouldyousetashoe? _(He performs juggler’s tricks, draws red, orange,
yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet silk handkerchiefs 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!
_(The rams’ horns sound for silence. The standard of Zion is hoisted.)_
BLOOM: _(Uncloaks impressively, revealing obesity, unrolls a paper and
reads solemnly.)_ Aleph Beth Ghimel Daleth Hagadah Tephilim Kosher Yom
Kippur Hanukah Roschaschana Beni Brith Bar Mitzvah Mazzoth Askenazim
Meshuggah Talith.
_(An official translation is read by Jimmy Henry, assistant town
clerk.)_
JIMMY HENRY: The Court of Conscience is now open. His Most Catholic
Majesty will now administer open air justice. Free medical and legal
advice, solution of doubles and other problems. All cordially invited.
Given at this our loyal city of Dublin in the year 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. nux 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 eightday licence for my new premises. You remember
me, sir Leo, when you were in number seven. I’m sending around a dozen
of stout for the missus.
BLOOM: _(Coldly.)_ You have the advantage of me. Lady Bloom accepts no
presents.
CROFTON: This is indeed a festivity.
BLOOM: _(Solemnly.)_ You call it a festivity. I call it a sacrament.
ALEXANDER KEYES: When will we have our own house of keys?
BLOOM: I stand for the reform of municipal morals and the plain ten
commandments. New worlds for old. Union of all, jew, moslem and
gentile. Three acres and a cow for all children of nature. Saloon motor
hearses. Compulsory manual labour for all. All parks open to the public
day and night. Electric dishscrubbers. Tuberculosis, lunacy, war and
mendicancy must now cease. General amnesty, weekly carnival with masked
licence, bonuses for all, esperanto the universal language with
universal brotherhood. No more patriotism of barspongers and dropsical
impostors. Free money, free rent, free love and a free lay church in a
free lay state.
O’MADDEN BURKE: Free fox in a free henroost.
DAVY BYRNE: _(Yawning.)_ Iiiiiiiiiaaaaaaach!
BLOOM: Mixed races and mixed marriage.
LENEHAN: What about mixed bathing?
_(Bloom explains to those near him his schemes for social regeneration.
All agree with him. The keeper of the Kildare street museum appears,
dragging a lorry on which are the shaking statues of several naked
goddesses, Venus Callipyge, Venus Pandemos, Venus Metempsychosis, and
plaster figures, also naked, representing the new nine muses, Commerce,
Operatic Music, Amor, Publicity, Manufacture, Liberty of Speech, Plural
Voting, Gastronomy, Private Hygiene, Seaside Concert Entertainments,
Painless Obstetrics and Astronomy for the People.)_
FATHER FARLEY: He is an episcopalian, an agnostic, an anythingarian
seeking to overthrow our holy faith.
MRS RIORDAN: _(Tears up her will.)_ I’m disappointed in you! You bad
man!
MOTHER GROGAN: _(Removes her boot to throw it at Bloom.)_ You beast!
You abominable 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.)_
_(Many most attractive and enthusiastic women also commit suicide by
stabbing, drowning, drinking prussic acid, aconite, arsenic, opening
their veins, refusing food, casting themselves under steamrollers, from
the top of Nelson’s Pillar, into the great vat of Guinness’s brewery,
asphyxiating themselves by placing their heads in gasovens, hanging
themselves in stylish garters, leaping from windows of different
storeys.)_
ALEXANDER J DOWIE: _(Violently.)_ Fellowchristians and antiBloomites,
the man called Bloom is from the roots of hell, a disgrace to christian
men. A fiendish libertine from his earliest years this stinking goat of
Mendes gave precocious signs of infantile debauchery, recalling the
cities of the plain, with a 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 his
nostrils. The stake woodcuts and the caldron of boiling oil are for him.
Caliban!
THE MOB: Lynch him! Roast him! He’s as bad as Parnell was. Mr Fox!
_(Mother Grogan throws her boot at Bloom. Several shopkeepers from
upper and lower Dorset street throw objects of little or no commercial
value, hambones, condensed milk tins, unsaleable cabbage, stale bread,
sheep’s tails, odd pieces of fat.)_
BLOOM: _(Excitedly.)_ This is midsummer madness, some ghastly joke
again. By 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._
_(Bloom holds his high grade hat over his genital organs.)_
DR MADDEN: Hypsospadia is also marked. In the interest of coming
generations I suggest that the parts affected should be preserved in
spirits of wine in the national teratological museum.
DR CROTTHERS: I have examined the patient’s urine. It is albuminoid.
Salivation is insufficient, the patellar reflex intermittent.
DR PUNCH COSTELLO: The _fetor judaicus_ is most perceptible.
DR DIXON: _(Reads a bill of health.)_ Professor Bloom is a finished
example of the new womanly man. His moral nature is simple and lovable.
Many have found him a dear man, a dear person. He is a rather quaint
fellow on the whole, coy though not feebleminded in the medical sense.
He has written a really beautiful letter, a poem in itself, to the
court missionary of the Reformed Priests’ Protection Society which
clears up everything. He is practically a total abstainer and I can
affirm that he sleeps on a straw litter and eats the most Spartan food,
cold dried grocer’s peas. He wears a hairshirt of pure Irish
manufacture winter and summer and scourges himself every 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.
_(General commotion and compassion. Women faint. A wealthy American
makes a street collection for Bloom. Gold and silver coins, blank
cheques, banknotes, jewels, treasury bonds, maturing bills of exchange,
I. O. U’s, wedding rings, watchchains, lockets, necklaces and bracelets
are rapidly collected.)_
BLOOM: O, I so want to be a mother.
MRS THORNTON: _(In nursetender’s gown.)_ Embrace me tight, dear. You’ll
be soon over it. Tight, dear.
_(Bloom embraces her tightly and bears eight male yellow and white
children. They appear on a redcarpeted staircase adorned with expensive
plants. All the octuplets are handsome, with valuable metallic faces,
wellmade, respectably dressed and wellconducted, speaking five modern
languages fluently and interested in various arts and sciences. Each
has his name printed in legible letters on his shirtfront: Nasodoro,
Goldfinger, Chrysostomos, Maindorée, Silversmile, Silberselber,
Vifargent, Panargyros. They are immediately appointed to positions of
high public trust in several different countries as managing directors
of banks, traffic managers of railways, chairmen of limited liability
companies, vicechairmen of hotel syndicates.)_
A VOICE: Bloom, are you the Messiah ben Joseph or ben David?
BLOOM: _(Darkly.)_ You have said it.
BROTHER BUZZ: Then perform a miracle like Father Charles.
BANTAM LYONS: Prophesy who will win the Saint Leger.
_(Bloom walks on a net, covers his left eye with his left ear, passes
through several walls, climbs Nelson’s Pillar, hangs from the top ledge
by his eyelids, eats twelve dozen oysters (shells included), heals
several sufferers from king’s evil, contracts his face so as to
resemble many historical personages, Lord Beaconsfield, Lord Byron, Wat
Tyler, Moses of Egypt, Moses Maimonides, Moses Mendelssohn, Henry
Irving, Rip van Winkle, Kossuth, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Baron Leopold
Rothschild, Robinson Crusoe, Sherlock Holmes, Pasteur, turns each foot
simultaneously in different directions, bids the tide turn back,
eclipses the sun by extending his little finger.)_
BRINI, PAPAL NUNCIO: _(In papal zouave’s uniform, steel cuirasses as
breastplate, armplates, thighplates, legplates, large profane
moustaches and brown paper mitre.) Leopoldi autem generatio._ Moses
begat Noah and Noah begat Eunuch and Eunuch begat O’Halloran and
O’Halloran begat Guggenheim and Guggenheim begat Agendath and Agendath
begat Netaim and Netaim begat Le Hirsch and Le Hirsch begat Jesurum and
Jesurum begat MacKay and MacKay begat Ostrolopsky and Ostrolopsky begat
Smerdoz and Smerdoz begat Weiss and Weiss begat Schwarz and Schwarz
begat Adrianopoli and Adrianopoli begat Aranjuez and Aranjuez begat
Lewy Lawson and Lewy Lawson begat Ichabudonosor and Ichabudonosor begat
O’Donnell Magnus and O’Donnell Magnus begat Christbaum and Christbaum
begat ben Maimun and ben 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!
_(Bloom with asses’ ears seats himself in the pillory with crossed
arms, his feet protruding. He whistles_ Don Giovanni, a cenar teco.
_Artane orphans, joining hands, caper round him. Girls of the Prison
Gate Mission, joining hands, caper round in the opposite direction.)_
THE ARTANE ORPHANS:
 You hig, you hog, you dirty dog!
 You think the ladies love you!
 THE PRISON GATE GIRLS:
 If you see Kay
 Tell him he may
 See you in tea
 Tell him from me.
HORNBLOWER: _(In ephod and huntingcap, announces.)_ And he shall carry
the sins of the people to Azazel, the spirit which is in the
wilderness, and to Lilith, the nighthag. And they shall stone him and
defile him, yea, all from Agendath Netaim and from Mizraim, the land of
Ham.
_(All the people cast soft pantomime stones at Bloom. Many bonafide
travellers and ownerless dogs come near him and defile him. Mastiansky
and Citron approach in gaberdines, wearing long earlocks. They wag
their beards at Bloom.)_
MASTIANSKY AND CITRON: Belial! Laemlein of Istria, the false Messiah!
Abulafia! Recant!
_(George R Mesias, Bloom’s tailor, appears, a tailor’s goose under his
arm, presenting a bill.)_
MESIAS: To alteration one pair trousers eleven shillings.
BLOOM: _(Rubs his hands cheerfully.)_ Just like old times. Poor Bloom!
_(Reuben J Dodd, blackbearded Iscariot, bad shepherd, bearing on his
shoulders the drowned corpse of his son, approaches the pillory.)_
REUBEN J: _(Whispers hoarsely.)_ The squeak is out. A split is gone for
the flatties. Nip the first rattler.
THE FIRE BRIGADE: Pflaap!
BROTHER BUZZ: _(Invests Bloom in a yellow habit with embroidery of
painted flames and high pointed hat. He places a bag of gunpowder round
his neck and hands him over to the civil power, saying.)_ Forgive him
his trespasses.
_(Lieutenant Myers of the Dublin Fire Brigade by general request sets
fire to Bloom. Lamentations.)_
THE CITIZEN: Thank heaven!
BLOOM: _(In a seamless garment marked I. H. S. stands upright amid
phoenix flames.)_ Weep not for me, O daughters of Erin.
_(He exhibits to Dublin reporters traces of burning. The daughters of
Erin, in black garments, with large prayerbooks and long lighted
candles in their hands, kneel down and pray.)_
THE DAUGHTERS OF ERIN:
 Kidney of Bloom, pray for us
 Flower of the Bath, pray for us
 Mentor of Menton, pray for us
 Canvasser for the Freeman, pray for us
 Charitable Mason, pray for us
 Wandering Soap, pray for us
 Sweets of Sin, pray for us
 Music without Words, pray for us
 Reprover of the Citizen, pray for us
 Friend of all Frillies, pray for us
 Midwife Most Merciful, pray for us
 Potato Preservative against Plague and Pestilence, pray for us.
_(A choir of six hundred voices, conducted by Vincent O’Brien, sings
the chorus from Handel’s Messiah_ Alleluia for the Lord God Omnipotent
reigneth, _accompanied on the organ by Joseph Glynn. Bloom becomes
mute, shrunken, carbonised.)_
ZOE: Talk away till you’re black in the face.
BLOOM: _(In caubeen with clay pipe stuck in the band, dusty brogues, an
emigrant’s red handkerchief bundle in his hand, leading a black bogoak
pig by a sugaun, with a smile in his eye.)_ Let me be going now, woman
of the house, for by all the goats in Connemara I’m after having the
father and mother of a bating. _(With a tear in his eye.)_ All
insanity. Patriotism, sorrow for the dead, 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. I’m sick of it. Let everything rip.
ZOE: _(In sudden sulks.)_ I hate a rotter that’s insincere. Give a
bleeding whore a chance.
BLOOM: _(Repentantly.)_ I am very disagreeable. You are a necessary
evil. Where are you from? London?
ZOE: _(Glibly.)_ Hog’s Norton where the pigs plays the organs. I’m
Yorkshire born. _(She holds his hand which is feeling for her nipple.)_
I say, Tommy Tittlemouse. Stop that and begin worse. Have you cash for
a short time? Ten shillings?
BLOOM: _(Smiles, nods slowly.)_ More, houri, more.
ZOE: And more’s mother? _(She pats him offhandedly with velvet paws.)_
Are you coming into the musicroom to see our new pianola? Come and I’ll
peel off.
BLOOM: _(Feeling his occiput dubiously with the unparalleled
embarrassment of a harassed pedlar gauging the symmetry of her peeled
pears.)_ Somebody would be dreadfully jealous if she knew. The
greeneyed monster. _(Earnestly.)_ You know how difficult it is. I
needn’t tell you.
ZOE: _(Flattered.)_ What the eye can’t see the heart can’t grieve for.
_(She pats him.)_ Come.
BLOOM: Laughing witch! The hand that rocks the cradle.
ZOE: Babby!
BLOOM: _(In babylinen and pelisse, bigheaded, with a caul of dark hair,
fixes big eyes on her fluid slip and counts its bronze buckles with a
chubby finger, his moist tongue lolling and lisping.)_ One two tlee:
tlee tlwo tlone.
THE BUCKLES: Love me. Love me not. Love me.
ZOE: Silent means consent. _(With little parted talons she captures his
hand, her forefinger giving to his palm the passtouch of secret
monitor, luring him to doom.)_ Hot hands cold gizzard.
_(He hesitates amid scents, music, temptations. She leads him towards
the steps, drawing him by the odour of her armpits, the vice of her
painted eyes, the rustle of her slip in whose sinuous folds lurks the
lion reek of all the male brutes that have possessed her.)_
THE MALE BRUTES: _(Exhaling sulphur of rut and dung and ramping in
their loosebox, faintly roaring, their drugged heads swaying to and
fro.)_ Good!
_(Zoe and Bloom reach the doorway where two sister whores are seated.
They examine him curiously from under their pencilled brows and smile
to his hasty bow. He trips awkwardly.)_
ZOE: _(Her lucky hand instantly saving him.)_ Hoopsa! Don’t fall
upstairs.
BLOOM: The just man falls seven times. _(He stands aside at the
threshold.)_ After you is good manners.
ZOE: Ladies first, gentlemen after.
_(She crosses the threshold. He hesitates. She turns and, holding out
her hands, draws him over. He hops. On the antlered rack of the hall
hang a man’s hat and waterproof. Bloom uncovers himself but, seeing
them, frowns, then smiles, preoccupied. A door on the return landing is
flung open. A man in purple shirt and grey trousers, brownsocked,
passes with an ape’s gait, his bald head and goatee beard upheld,
hugging a full waterjugjar, his twotailed black braces dangling at
heels. Averting his face quickly Bloom bends to examine on the
halltable the spaniel eyes of a running fox: then, his lifted head
sniffing, follows Zoe into the musicroom. A shade of mauve tissuepaper
dims the light of the chandelier. Round and round a moth flies,
colliding, escaping. The floor is covered with an oilcloth mosaic of
jade and azure and cinnabar rhomboids. Footmarks are stamped over it in
all senses, heel to heel, heel to hollow, toe to toe, feet locked, a
morris of shuffling feet without body phantoms, all in a scrimmage
higgledypiggledy. The walls are tapestried with a paper of yewfronds
and clear glades. In the grate is spread a screen of peacock feathers.
Lynch squats crosslegged on the hearthrug of matted hair, his cap back
to the front. With a wand he beats time slowly. Kitty Ricketts, a bony
pallid whore in navy costume, doeskin gloves rolled back from a coral
wristlet, a chain purse in her hand, sits perched on the edge of the
table swinging her leg and glancing at herself in the gilt mirror over
the mantelpiece. A tag of her corsetlace hangs slightly below her
jacket. Lynch indicates mockingly the couple at the piano.)_
KITTY: _(Coughs behind her hand.)_ She’s a bit imbecillic. _(She signs
with a waggling forefinger.)_ Blemblem. _(Lynch lifts up her skirt and
white petticoat with 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.
_(The wand in Lynch’s hand flashes: a brass poker. Stephen stands at
the pianola on which sprawl his hat and ashplant. With two fingers he
repeats once more the series of empty fifths. Florry Talbot, a blond
feeble goosefat whore in a tatterdemalion gown of mildewed strawberry,
lolls spreadeagle in the sofacorner, her limp forearm pendent over the
bolster, listening. A heavy stye droops over her sleepy eyelid.)_
KITTY: _(Hiccups again with a kick of her horsed foot.)_ O, excuse!
ZOE: _(Promptly.)_ Your boy’s thinking of you. Tie a knot on your
shift.
_(Kitty Ricketts bends her head. Her boa uncoils, slides, glides over
her shoulder, back, arm, chair to the ground. Lynch lifts the curled
catterpillar on his wand. She snakes her neck, nestling. Stephen
glances behind at the squatted figure with its cap back to the front.)_
STEPHEN: As a matter of fact it is of no importance whether Benedetto
Marcello found it or made it. The rite is the poet’s rest. It may be an
old hymn to Demeter or also illustrate _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 alrightness of
his almightiness. _Mais nom de nom,_ that is another pair of trousers.
_Jetez la gourme. Faut que jeunesse se passe. (He stops, points at
Lynch’s cap, smiles, laughs.)_ Which side is your knowledge bump?
THE CAP: _(With saturnine spleen.)_ Bah! It is because it is. Woman’s
reason. Jewgreek is greekjew. Extremes meet. Death is the highest form
of life. Bah!
STEPHEN: You remember fairly accurately all my errors, boasts,
mistakes. How long shall I continue to close my eyes to disloyalty?
Whetstone!
THE CAP: Bah!
STEPHEN: Here’s another for you. _(He frowns.)_ The reason is because
the fundamental and the dominant are separated by the greatest possible
interval which...
THE CAP: Which? Finish. You can’t.
STEPHEN: _(With an effort.)_ Interval which. Is the greatest possible
ellipse. Consistent with. The ultimate return. The octave. Which.
THE CAP: Which?
_(Outside the gramophone begins to blare_ The Holy City.)
STEPHEN: _(Abruptly.)_ What went forth to the ends of the world to
traverse not itself, God, the sun, Shakespeare, a commercial traveller,
having itself traversed in reality itself becomes that self. Wait a
moment. Wait a second. Damn that fellow’s noise in the street. Self
which it itself was ineluctably 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.
_(With obese stupidity Florry Talbot regards Stephen.)_
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.
_(Ragged barefoot newsboys, jogging a wagtail kite, patter past,
yelling.)_
THE NEWSBOYS: Stop press edition. Result of the rockinghorse races. Sea
serpent in the royal canal. Safe arrival of Antichrist.
_(Stephen turns and sees Bloom.)_
STEPHEN: A time, times and half a time.
_(Reuben J Antichrist, wandering jew, a clutching hand open on his
spine, stumps forward. Across his loins is slung a pilgrim’s wallet
from which protrude promissory notes and dishonoured bills. Aloft over
his shoulder he bears a long boatpole from the hook of which the sodden
huddled mass of his only son, saved from Liffey waters, hangs from the
slack of its breeches. A hobgoblin in the image of Punch Costello,
hipshot, crookbacked, hydrocephalic, prognathic with receding forehead
and Ally Sloper nose, tumbles in somersaults through the gathering
darkness.)_
ALL: What?
THE 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 va plus! (The planets, buoyant balloons, sail swollen up
and away. He springs off into vacuum.)_
FLORRY: _(Sinking into torpor, crossing herself secretly.)_ The end of
the world!
_(A female tepid effluvium leaks out from her. Nebulous obscurity
occupies space. Through the drifting fog without the gramophone blares
over coughs and feetshuffling.)_
THE GRAMOPHONE:
 Jerusalem!
 Open your gates and sing
 Hosanna...
_(A rocket rushes up the sky and bursts. A white star falls from it,
proclaiming the consummation of all things and second coming of Elijah.
Along an infinite invisible tightrope taut from zenith to nadir the End
of the World, a twoheaded octopus in gillie’s kilts, busby and tartan
filibegs, whirls through the murk, head over heels, in the form of the
Three Legs of Man.)_
THE END OF THE WORLD: _(With a Scotch accent.)_ Wha’ll dance the keel
row, the keel row, the keel row?
_(Over the possing drift and choking breathcoughs, Elijah’s voice,
harsh as a corncrake’s, jars on high. Perspiring in a loose lawn
surplice with funnel sleeves he is seen, vergerfaced, above a rostrum
about which the banner of old glory is draped. He thumps the parapet.)_
ELIJAH: No yapping, if you please, in this booth. Jake Crane, Creole
Sue, Dove Campbell, Abe Kirschner, do your coughing with your mouths
shut. Say, I am operating all this trunk line. Boys, do it now. God’s
time is 12.25. Tell mother you’ll be there. Rush your order and you
play a slick ace. Join on right here. Book through to eternity
junction, the nonstop run. Just one word more. Are you a god or a
doggone clod? If the second advent came to Coney Island are we ready?
Florry Christ, Stephen Christ, Zoe Christ, Bloom Christ, Kitty Christ,
Lynch Christ, it’s up to you to sense that 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: _(Drowning his voice.)_ Whorusalaminyourhighhohhhh...
_(The disc rasps gratingly against the needle.)_
THE THREE WHORES: _(Covering their ears, squawk.)_ Ahhkkk!
ELIJAH: _(In rolledup shirtsleeves, black in the face, shouts at the
top of his voice, his arms uplifted.)_ Big Brother up there, Mr
President, you hear what I done just been saying to you. Certainly, I
sort of believe strong in you, Mr President. I certainly am thinking
now Miss Higgins and Miss Ricketts got religion way inside them.
Certainly seems to me I don’t never see no wusser scared female than
the way you been, Miss Florry, just now as I done seed you. Mr
President, you come long and help me save our sisters dear. _(He winks
at his audience.)_ Our Mr President, he twig the whole lot and he aint
saying nothing.
KITTY-KATE: I forgot myself. In a weak moment I erred and did what I
did on Constitution hill. I was confirmed by the bishop and enrolled in
the brown scapular. My mother’s sister married a Montmorency. It was a
working plumber was my ruination when I was pure.
ZOE-FANNY: I let him larrup it into me for the fun of it.
FLORRY-TERESA: It was in consequence of a portwine beverage on top of
Hennessy’s three star. I was guilty with Whelan when he slipped into
the bed.
STEPHEN: In the beginning was the word, in the end the world without
end. Blessed be the eight beatitudes.
_(The beatitudes, Dixon, Madden, Crotthers, Costello, Lenehan, Bannon,
Mulligan and Lynch in white surgical students’ gowns, four abreast,
goosestepping, tramp fast past in noisy marching.)_
THE BEATITUDES: _(Incoherently.)_ Beer beef battledog buybull businum
barnum buggerum bishop.
LYSTER: _(In quakergrey kneebreeches and broadbrimmed hat, says
discreetly.)_ He is our friend. I need not mention names. Seek thou the
light.
_(He corantos by. Best enters in hairdresser’s attire, shinily
laundered, his locks in curlpapers. He leads John Eglinton who wears a
mandarin’s kimono of Nankeen yellow, lizardlettered, and a high pagoda
hat.)_
BEST: _(Smiling, lifts the hat and displays a shaven poll from the
crown of which bristles a pigtail toupee tied with an orange topknot.)_
I was just 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.
_(In the cone of the searchlight behind the coalscuttle, ollave,
holyeyed, the bearded figure of Mananaun MacLir broods, chin on knees.
He rises slowly. A cold seawind blows from his druid mouth. About his
head writhe eels and elvers. He is encrusted with weeds and shells. His
right hand holds a bicycle pump. His left hand grasps a huge crayfish
by its two talons.)_
MANANAUN MACLIR: _(With a voice of waves.)_ Aum! Hek! Wal! Ak! Lub!
Mor! Ma! White yoghin of the gods. Occult pimander of Hermes
Trismegistos. _(With a voice of whistling seawind.)_ Punarjanam
patsypunjaub! I won’t have my leg pulled. It has been said by one:
beware the left, the cult of Shakti. _(With a cry of stormbirds.)_
Shakti Shiva, darkhidden Father! _(He smites with his bicycle pump the
crayfish in his left hand. On its cooperative dial glow the twelve
signs of the zodiac. He wails with the vehemence of the ocean.)_ Aum!
Baum! Pyjaum! I am the light of the homestead! I am the dreamery
creamery butter.
_(A skeleton judashand strangles the light. The green light wanes to
mauve. The gasjet wails whistling.)_
THE GASJET: Pooah! Pfuiiiiiii!
_(Zoe runs to the chandelier and, crooking her leg, adjusts the
mantle.)_
ZOE: Who has a fag as I’m here?
LYNCH: _(Tossing a cigarette on to the table.)_ Here.
ZOE: _(Her head perched aside in mock pride.)_ Is that the way to hand
the _pot_ to a lady? _(She stretches up to light the cigarette over the
flame, twirling it slowly, showing the brown tufts of her armpits.
Lynch with his poker lifts boldly a side of her slip. Bare from her
garters up her flesh appears under the sapphire a nixie’s green. She
puffs calmly at her cigarette.)_ Can you see the beautyspot of my
behind?
LYNCH: I’m not looking
ZOE: _(Makes sheep’s eyes.)_ No? You wouldn’t do a less thing. Would
you suck a lemon?
_(Squinting in mock shame she glances with sidelong meaning at Bloom,
then twists round towards him, pulling her slip free of the poker. Blue
fluid again flows over her flesh. Bloom stands, smiling desirously,
twirling his thumbs. Kitty Ricketts licks her middle finger with her
spittle and, gazing in the mirror, smooths both eyebrows. Lipoti Virag,
basilicogrammate, chutes rapidly down through the chimneyflue and
struts two steps to the left on gawky pink stilts. He is sausaged into
several overcoats and wears a brown macintosh under which he holds a
roll of parchment. In his left eye flashes the monocle of Cashel Boyle
O’Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell. On his head is perched an
Egyptian pshent. Two quills project over his ears.)_
VIRAG: _(Heels together, bows.)_ My name is Virag Lipoti, of
Szombathely. _(He coughs thoughtfully, drily.)_ Promiscuous nakedness
is much in evidence hereabouts, eh? Inadvertently her backview revealed
the fact that she is not wearing those rather intimate garments of
which you are a 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 with a finger and barks hoarsely.)_ Hoax! Beware of the flapper and
bogus mournful. Lily of the alley. All possess bachelor’s button
discovered by Rualdus Columbus. Tumble her. Columble her. Chameleon.
_(More genially.)_ Well then, permit me to draw your attention to item
number three. There is plenty of her visible to the naked eye. Observe
the mass of oxygenated vegetable matter on her skull. What ho, she
bumps! The ugly duckling of the party, longcasted and deep in keel.
BLOOM: _(Regretfully.)_ When you come out without your gun.
VIRAG: We can do you all brands, mild, medium and strong. Pay your
money, take your choice. How happy could you be with either...
BLOOM: With...?
VIRAG: _(His tongue upcurling.)_ Lyum! Look. Her beam is broad. She is
coated with quite a considerable layer of fat. Obviously mammal in
weight of bosom you remark that she has in front well to the fore two
protuberances of very respectable dimensions, inclined to fall in the
noonday soupplate, while on her rere lower down are two additional
protuberances, suggestive of potent rectum and tumescent for palpation,
which leave nothing to be desired save compactness. Such fleshy parts
are the product of careful nurture. When coopfattened their livers
reach an elephantine size. Pellets of new bread with fennygreek and
gumbenjamin swamped down by potions of green tea endow them during
their brief existence with natural pincushions of quite colossal
blubber. That suits your book, eh? Fleshhotpots of Egypt to hanker
after. Wallow in it. Lycopodium. _(His throat twitches.)_ Slapbang!
There he goes again.
BLOOM: The stye I dislike.
VIRAG: _(Arches his eyebrows.)_ Contact with a goldring, they say.
_Argumentum ad feminam_, as we said in old Rome and ancient Greece in
the consulship of Diplodocus and Ichthyosauros. For the rest Eve’s
sovereign remedy. Not for sale. Hire only. Huguenot. _(He twitches.)_
It is a funny sound. _(He coughs encouragingly.)_ But possibly it is
only a wart. I presume you shall have remembered what I will have
taught you on that head? Wheatenmeal with honey and nutmeg.
BLOOM: _(Reflecting.)_ Wheatenmeal with lycopodium and syllabax. This
searching ordeal. It has been an unusually fatiguing day, a chapter of
accidents. Wait. I mean, wartsblood spreads warts, you said...
VIRAG: _(Severely, his nose hardhumped, his side eye winking.)_ Stop
twirling your thumbs and have a good old thunk. See, you have
forgotten. Exercise your mnemotechnic. _La causa 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 parchmentroll energetically.)_ This book tells you how to act with
all descriptive particulars. Consult index for agitated fear of
aconite, melancholy of muriatic, priapic pulsatilla. Virag is going to
talk about amputation. Our old friend caustic. They must be starved.
Snip off with horsehair under the denned neck. But, to change the venue
to the Bulgar and the Basque, have you made up your mind whether you
like or dislike women in male habiliments? _(With a dry laugh)_ You
intended to devote an entire year to the study of the religious problem
and the summer months of 1886 to square the circle and win that
million. Pomegranate! From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step.
Pyjamas, let us say? Or stockingette gussetted knickers, closed? Or,
put we the case, those complicated combinations, camiknickers? _(He
crows derisively.)_ Keekeereekee!
_(Bloom surveys uncertainly the three whores then gazes at the veiled
mauve light, hearing the everflying moth.)_
BLOOM: I wanted then to have now concluded. Nightdress was never. Hence
this. But tomorrow is a new day will be. Past was is today. What now is
will then morrow as now was be past yester.
VIRAG: _(Prompts in a pig’s whisper.)_ Insects of the day spend their
brief existence in reiterated coition, lured by the smell of the
inferiorly pulchritudinous female possessing extendified pudendal nerve
in dorsal region. Pretty Poll! _(His yellow parrotbeak gabbles
nasally.)_ They had a proverb in the Carpathians in or about the year
five thousand five hundred and fifty of our era. One tablespoonful of
honey will attract friend Bruin more than half a dozen 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! _(He blows into
Bloom’s ear.)_ Buzz!
BLOOM: Bee or bluebottle too other day butting shadow on wall dazed
self then me wandered dazed down shirt good job I...
VIRAG: _(His face impassive, laughs in a rich feminine key.)_ Splendid!
Spanish fly in his fly or mustard plaster on his dibble. _(He gobbles
gluttonously with turkey wattles.)_ Bubbly jock! Bubbly jock! Where are
we? Open Sesame! Cometh forth! _(He unrolls his parchment rapidly and
reads, his glowworm’s nose running backwards over the letters which he
claws.)_ Stay, good friend. I bring thee thy answer. Redbank oysters
will shortly be upon us. I’m the best o’cook. Those succulent bivalves
may help us and the truffles of Perigord, tubers dislodged through
mister omnivorous porker, were 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. _(He
sneezes.)_ Amen!
BLOOM: _(Absently.)_ Ocularly woman’s bivalve case is worse. Always
open sesame. The cloven sex. Why they fear vermin, creeping things. Yet
Eve and the serpent contradicts. Not a historical fact. Obvious analogy
to my idea. Serpents too are gluttons for woman’s milk. Wind their way
through miles of omnivorous forest to sucksucculent her breast dry.
Like those bubblyjocular Roman matrons one reads of in Elephantuliasis.
VIRAG: _(His mouth projected in hard wrinkles, eyes stonily forlornly
closed, psalms in outlandish monotone.)_ That the cows with their those
distended udders that they have been the the known...
BLOOM: I am going to scream. I beg your pardon. Ah? So. _(He repeats.)_
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 moth moth? Who’s dear Gerald? Dear Ger, that you? O
dear, he is Gerald. O, I much fear he shall be most badly burned. Will
some pleashe pershon not now impediment so catastrophics mit agitation
of firstclass tablenumpkin? _(He mews.)_ Puss puss puss puss! _(He
sighs, draws back and stares sideways down with dropping underjaw.)_
Well, well. He doth rest anon. (He snaps his jaws suddenly on the air.)
THE MOTH:
 I’m a tiny tiny thing
 Ever flying in the spring
 Round and round a ringaring.
 Long ago I was a king
 Now I do this kind of thing
 On the wing, on the wing!
 Bing!
_(He rushes against the mauve shade, flapping noisily.)_ Pretty pretty
pretty pretty pretty pretty petticoats.
_(From left upper entrance with two gliding steps Henry Flower comes
forward to left front centre. He wears a dark mantle and drooping
plumed sombrero. He carries a silverstringed inlaid dulcimer and a
longstemmed bamboo Jacob’s pipe, its clay bowl fashioned as a female
head. He wears dark velvet hose and silverbuckled pumps. He has the
romantic Saviour’s face with flowing locks, thin beard and moustache.
His spindlelegs and sparrow feet are those of the tenor Mario, prince
of Candia. He settles down his goffered ruffs and moistens his lips
with a passage of his amorous tongue.)_
HENRY: _(In a low dulcet voice, touching the strings of his guitar.)_
There is a flower that bloometh.
_(Virag truculent, his jowl set, stares at the lamp. Grave Bloom
regards Zoe’s neck. Henry gallant turns with pendant dewlap to the
piano.)_
STEPHEN: _(To himself.)_ Play with your eyes shut. Imitate pa. Filling
my belly with husks of swine. Too much of this. I will arise and go to
my. Expect this is the. Steve, thou art in a parlous way. Must visit
old Deasy or telegraph. Our interview of this morning has left on me a
deep impression. Though our ages. Will write fully tomorrow. I’m
partially drunk, by the way. _(He touches the keys again.)_ Minor chord
comes now. Yes. Not much however.
_(Almidano Artifoni holds out a batonroll of music with vigorous
moustachework.)_
ARTIFONI: _Ci rifletta. Lei rovina tutto._
FLORRY: Sing us something. Love’s old sweet song.
STEPHEN: No voice. I am a most finished artist. Lynch, did I show you
the letter about the lute?
FLORRY: _(Smirking.)_ The bird that can sing and won’t sing.
_(The Siamese twins, Philip Drunk and Philip Sober, two Oxford dons
with lawnmowers, appear in the window embrasure. Both are masked with
Matthew Arnold’s face.)_
PHILIP SOBER: Take a fool’s advice. All is not well. Work it out with
the buttend of a pencil, like a good young idiot. Three pounds twelve
you got, two notes, one sovereign, two crowns, if youth but knew.
Mooney’s en ville, Mooney’s sur mer, the Moira, Larchet’s, Holles
street hospital, Burke’s. Eh? I am watching you.
PHILIP DRUNK: _(Impatiently.)_ Ah, bosh, man. Go to hell! I paid my
way. If I could only find out about octaves. Reduplication of
personality. Who was it told me 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. Out of it out of it. By the bye
have you the book, the thing, the ashplant? Yes, there it, yes.
Cleverever outofitnow. Keep in condition. Do like us.
ZOE: There was a priest down here two nights ago to do his bit of
business with his coat buttoned up. You needn’t try to hide, I says to
him. I know you’ve a Roman collar.
VIRAG: Perfectly logical from his standpoint. Fall of man. _(Harshly,
his pupils waxing.)_ To hell with the pope! Nothing new under the sun.
I am the Virag who disclosed the Sex Secrets of Monks and Maidens. Why
I left the church of Rome. Read the Priest, the Woman and the
Confessional. Penrose. 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 scraggy neck forward. He lifts a mooncalf nozzle and howls.)
Verfluchte Goim!_ He had a father, forty fathers. He never existed. Pig
God! He had two left feet. He was Judas Iacchia, a Libyan eunuch, the
pope’s bastard. _(He leans out on tortured forepaws, elbows bent rigid,
his eye agonising in his flat skullneck and yelps over the mute
world.)_ A son of a whore. 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._
_(Kitty unpins her hat and sets it down calmly, patting her henna hair.
And a prettier, a daintier head of winsome curls was never seen on a
whore’s shoulders. Lynch puts on her hat. She whips it off.)_
LYNCH: _(Laughs.)_ And to such delights has Metchnikoff inoculated
anthropoid apes.
FLORRY: _(Nods.)_ Locomotor ataxy.
ZOE: _(Gaily.)_ O, my dictionary.
LYNCH: Three wise virgins.
VIRAG: _(Agueshaken, profuse yellow spawn foaming over his bony
epileptic lips.)_ She sold lovephiltres, whitewax, orangeflower.
Panther, the Roman centurion, polluted her with his genitories. _(He
sticks out a flickering phosphorescent scorpion tongue, his hand on his
fork.)_ Messiah! He burst her tympanum. _(With gibbering baboon’s cries
he jerks his hips in the cynical spasm.)_ Hik! Hek! Hak! Hok! Huk! Kok!
Kuk!
_(Ben Jumbo Dollard, rubicund, musclebound, hairynostrilled,
hugebearded, cabbageeared, shaggychested, shockmaned, fatpapped, stands
forth, his loins and genitals tightened into a pair of black bathing
bagslops.)_
BEN DOLLARD: _(Nakkering castanet bones in his huge padded paws, yodels
jovially in base barreltone.)_ When love absorbs my ardent soul.
_(The virgins Nurse Callan and Nurse Quigley burst through the
ringkeepers and the ropes and mob him with open arms.)_
THE VIRGINS: _(Gushingly.)_ Big Ben! Ben my Chree!
A VOICE: Hold that fellow with the bad breeches.
BEN DOLLARD: _(Smites his thigh in abundant laughter.)_ Hold him now.
HENRY: _(Caressing on his breast a severed female head, murmurs.)_
Thine heart, mine love. _(He plucks his lutestrings.)_ When first I
saw...
VIRAG: _(Sloughing his skins, his multitudinous plumage moulting.)_
Rats! _(He yawns, showing a coalblack throat, and closes his jaws by an
upward push of his parchmentroll.)_ After having said which I took my
departure. Farewell. Fare thee well. _Dreck!_
_(Henry Flower combs his moustache and beard rapidly with a pocketcomb
and gives a cow’s lick to his hair. Steered by his rapier, he glides to
the door, his wild harp slung behind him. Virag reaches the door in two
ungainly stilthops, his tail cocked, and deftly claps sideways on the
wall a pusyellow flybill, butting it with his head.)_
THE FLYBILL: K. 11. Post No Bills. Strictly confidential. Dr Hy Franks.
HENRY: All is lost now.
_(Virag unscrews his head in a trice and holds it under his arm.)_
VIRAG’S HEAD: Quack!
_(Exeunt severally.)_
STEPHEN: _(Over his shoulder to Zoe.)_ You would have preferred the
fighting parson who founded the protestant error. But beware
Antisthenes, the dog sage, and the last end of Arius Heresiarchus. The
agony in the closet.
LYNCH: All one and the same God to her.
STEPHEN: _(Devoutly.)_ And sovereign Lord of all things.
FLORRY: _(To Stephen.)_ I’m sure you’re a spoiled priest. Or a monk.
LYNCH: He is. A cardinal’s son.
STEPHEN: Cardinal sin. Monks of the screw.
_(His Eminence Simon Stephen Cardinal Dedalus, Primate of all Ireland,
appears in the doorway, dressed in red soutane, sandals and socks.
Seven dwarf simian acolytes, also in red, cardinal sins, uphold his
train, peeping under it. He wears a battered silk hat sideways on his
head. His thumbs are stuck in his armpits and his palms outspread.
Round his neck hangs a rosary of corks ending on his breast in a
corkscrew cross. Releasing his thumbs, he invokes grace from on high
with large wave gestures and proclaims with bloated pomp:)_
THE CARDINAL:
 Conservio lies captured
 He lies in the lowest dungeon
 With manacles and chains around his limbs
 Weighing upwards of three tons.
_(He looks at all for a moment, his right eye closed tight, his left
cheek puffed out. Then, unable to repress his merriment, he rocks to
and fro, arms akimbo, and sings with broad rollicking humour:)_
 O, the poor little fellow
 Hihihihihis legs they were yellow
 He was plump, fat and heavy and brisk as a snake
 But some bloody savage
 To graize his white cabbage
 He murdered Nell Flaherty’s duckloving drake.
_(A multitude of midges swarms white over his robe. He scratches
himself with crossed arms at his ribs, grimacing, and exclaims:)_
I’m suffering the agony of the damned. By the hoky fiddle, thanks be to
Jesus those funny little chaps are not unanimous. If they were they’d
walk me off the face of the bloody globe.
_(His head aslant he blesses curtly with fore and middle fingers,
imparts the Easter kiss and doubleshuffles off comically, swaying his
hat from side to side, shrinking quickly to the size of his
trainbearers. The dwarf acolytes, giggling, peeping, nudging, ogling,
Easterkissing, zigzag behind him. His voice is heard mellow from afar,
merciful male, melodious:)_
 Shall carry my heart to thee,
 Shall carry my heart to thee,
 And the breath of the balmy night
 Shall carry my heart to thee!
 _(The trick doorhandle turns.)_
THE DOORHANDLE: Theeee!
ZOE: The devil is in that door.
_(A male form passes down the creaking staircase and is heard taking
the waterproof and hat from the rack. Bloom starts forward
involuntarily and, half closing the door as he passes, takes the
chocolate from his pocket and offers it nervously to Zoe.)_
ZOE: _(Sniffs his hair briskly.)_ Hmmm! Thank your mother for the
rabbits. I’m very fond of what I like.
BLOOM: _(Hearing a male voice in talk with the whores on the doorstep,
pricks his ears.)_ If it were he? After? Or because not? Or the double
event?
ZOE: _(Tears open the silverfoil.)_ Fingers was made before forks.
_(She breaks off and nibbles a piece, gives a piece to Kitty Ricketts
and then turns kittenishly to Lynch.)_ No objection to French lozenges?
_(He nods. She taunts him.)_ Have it now or wait till you get it? _(He
opens his mouth, his head cocked. She whirls the prize in left circle.
His head follows. She whirls it back in right circle. He eyes her.)_
Catch!
_(She tosses a piece. With an adroit snap he catches it and bites it
through with a crack.)_
KITTY: _(Chewing.)_ The engineer I was with at the bazaar does have
lovely ones. Full of the best liqueurs. And the viceroy was there with
his lady. The gas we had on the Toft’s hobbyhorses. I’m giddy still.
BLOOM: _(In Svengali’s fur overcoat, with folded arms and Napoleonic
forelock, frowns in ventriloquial exorcism with piercing eagle glance
towards the door. Then rigid with left foot advanced he makes a swift
pass with impelling fingers and gives the sign of past master, drawing
his right arm downwards from his left shoulder.)_ Go, go, go, I conjure
you, whoever you are!
_(A male cough and tread are heard passing through the mist outside.
Bloom’s features relax. He places a hand in his waistcoat, posing
calmly. Zoe offers him chocolate.)_
BLOOM: _(Solemnly.)_ Thanks.
ZOE: Do as you’re bid. Here!
_(A firm heelclacking tread is heard on the stairs.)_
BLOOM: _(Takes the chocolate.)_ Aphrodisiac? Tansy and pennyroyal. But
I bought it. Vanilla calms or? Mnemo. Confused light confuses memory.
Red influences lupus. Colours affect women’s characters, any they have.
This black makes me sad. Eat and be merry for tomorrow. _(He eats.)_
Influence taste too, mauve. But it is so long since I. Seems new.
Aphro. That priest. Must come. Better late than never. Try truffles at
Andrews.
_(The door opens. Bella Cohen, a massive whoremistress, enters. She is
dressed in a threequarter ivory gown, fringed round the hem with
tasselled selvedge, and cools herself flirting a black horn fan like
Minnie Hauck in_ Carmen. _On her left hand are wedding and keeper
rings. Her eyes are deeply carboned. She has a sprouting moustache. Her
olive face is heavy, slightly sweated and fullnosed with orangetainted
nostrils. She has large pendant beryl eardrops.)_
BELLA: My word! I’m all of a mucksweat.
_(She glances round her at the couples. Then her eyes rest on Bloom
with hard insistence. Her large fan winnows wind towards her heated
faceneck and embonpoint. Her falcon eyes glitter.)_
THE FAN: _(Flirting quickly, then slowly.)_ Married, I see.
BLOOM: Yes. Partly, I have mislaid...
THE FAN: _(Half opening, then closing.)_ And the missus is master.
Petticoat government.
BLOOM: _(Looks down with a sheepish grin.)_ That is so.
THE FAN: _(Folding together, rests against her left eardrop.)_ Have you
forgotten me?
BLOOM: Nes. Yo.
THE FAN: _(Folded akimbo against her waist.)_ Is me her was you dreamed
before? Was then she him you us since knew? Am all them and the same
now we?
_(Bella approaches, gently tapping with the fan.)_
BLOOM: _(Wincing.)_ Powerful being. In my eyes read that slumber which
women love.
THE FAN: _(Tapping.)_ We have met. You are mine. It is fate.
BLOOM: _(Cowed.)_ Exuberant female. Enormously I desiderate your
domination. I am exhausted, abandoned, no more young. I stand, so to
speak, with an 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 searocks, a peccadillo at my
time of life. Every phenomenon has a natural cause.
THE FAN: _(Points downwards slowly.)_ You may.
BLOOM: _(Looks downwards and perceives her unfastened bootlace.)_ We
are 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!
_(Bella raises her gown slightly and, steadying her pose, lifts to the
edge of a chair a plump buskined hoof and a full pastern, silksocked.
Bloom, stifflegged, aging, bends over her hoof and with gentle fingers
draws out and in her laces.)_
BLOOM: _(Murmurs lovingly.)_ To be a shoefitter in Manfield’s was my
love’s young dream, the darling joys of sweet buttonhooking, to lace up
crisscrossed to kneelength the dressy kid footwear satinlined, so
incredibly impossibly small, of Clyde Road ladies. Even their wax model
Raymonde I visited daily to admire her cobweb hose and stick of rhubarb
toe, as worn in Paris.
THE HOOF: Smell my hot goathide. Feel my royal weight.
BLOOM: _(Crosslacing.)_ Too tight?
THE HOOF: If you bungle, Handy Andy, I’ll kick your football for you.
BLOOM: Not to lace the wrong eyelet as I did the night of the bazaar
dance. Bad luck. Hook in wrong tache of her... person you mentioned.
That night she met... Now!
_(He knots the lace. Bella places her foot on the floor. Bloom raises
his head. Her heavy face, her eyes strike him in midbrow. His eyes grow
dull, darker and pouched, his nose thickens.)_
BLOOM: _(Mumbles.)_ Awaiting your further orders we remain,
gentlemen,...
BELLO: _(With a hard basilisk stare, in a baritone voice.)_ Hound of
dishonour!
BLOOM: _(Infatuated.)_ Empress!
BELLO: _(His heavy cheekchops sagging.)_ Adorer of the adulterous rump!
BLOOM: _(Plaintively.)_ Hugeness!
BELLO: Dungdevourer!
BLOOM: _(With sinews semiflexed.)_ Magmagnificence!
BELLO: Down! _(He taps her on the shoulder with his fan.)_ Incline feet
forward! Slide left foot one pace back! You will fall. You are falling.
On the hands down!
BLOOM: _(Her eyes upturned in the sign of admiration, closing, yaps.)_
Truffles!
_(With a piercing epileptic cry she sinks on all fours, grunting,
snuffling, rooting at his feet: then lies, shamming dead, with eyes
shut tight, trembling eyelids, bowed upon the ground in the attitude of
most excellent master.)_
BELLO: _(With bobbed hair, purple gills, fat moustache rings round his
shaven mouth, in mountaineer’s puttees, green silverbuttoned coat,
sport skirt and alpine hat with moorcock’s feather, his hands stuck
deep in his breeches pockets, places his heel on her neck and grinds it
in.)_ Footstool! Feel my entire weight. Bow, bondslave, before the
throne of your despot’s glorious heels so glistening in their proud
erectness.
BLOOM: _(Enthralled, bleats.)_ I promise never to disobey.
BELLO: _(Laughs loudly.)_ Holy smoke! You little know what’s in store
for you. I’m the Tartar to settle your little lot and break you in!
I’ll bet Kentucky cocktails all round I shame it out of you, old son.
Cheek me, I dare you. If you do tremble in anticipation of heel
discipline to be inflicted in gym costume.
_(Bloom creeps under the sofa and peers out through the fringe.)_
ZOE: _(Widening her slip to screen her.)_ She’s not here.
BLOOM: _(Closing her eyes.)_ She’s not here.
FLORRY: _(Hiding her with her gown.)_ She didn’t mean it, Mr Bello.
She’ll be good, sir.
KITTY: Don’t be too hard on her, Mr Bello. Sure you won’t, ma’amsir.
BELLO: _(Coaxingly.)_ Come, ducky dear, I want a word with you,
darling, just to administer correction. Just a little heart to heart
talk, sweety. _(Bloom puts out her timid head.)_ There’s a good girly
now. _(Bello grabs her hair violently and drags her forward.)_ I only
want to correct you for your own good on a soft safe spot. How’s that
tender behind? O, ever so gently, pet. Begin to get ready.
BLOOM: _(Fainting.)_ Don’t tear my...
BELLO: _(Savagely.)_ The nosering, the pliers, the bastinado, the
hanging hook, the knout I’ll make you kiss while the flutes play like
the Nubian slave of old. You’re in for it this time! I’ll make you
remember me for the balance of your natural life. _(His forehead veins
swollen, his face congested.)_ I shall sit on your ottoman saddleback
every morning after my thumping good breakfast of Matterson’s fat
hamrashers and a bottle of Guinness’s porter. _(He belches.)_ And suck
my thumping good Stock Exchange cigar while I read the _Licensed
Victualler’s Gazette_. Very possibly I shall have you slaughtered and
skewered in my stables and enjoy a slice of you with crisp crackling
from the baking tin basted and baked like sucking pig with rice and
lemon or currant sauce. It will hurt you. _(He twists her arm. Bloom
squeals, turning turtle.)_
BLOOM: Don’t be cruel, nurse! Don’t!
BELLO: _(Twisting.)_ Another!
BLOOM: _(Screams.)_ O, it’s hell itself! Every nerve in my body aches
like mad!
BELLO: _(Shouts.)_ Good, by the rumping jumping general! That’s the
best bit of news I heard these six weeks. Here, don’t keep me waiting,
damn you! _(He slaps her face.)_
BLOOM: _(Whimpers.)_ You’re after hitting me. I’ll tell...
BELLO: Hold him down, girls, till I squat on him.
ZOE: Yes. Walk on him! I will.
FLORRY: I will. Don’t be greedy.
KITTY: No, me. Lend him to me.
_(The brothel cook, Mrs Keogh, wrinkled, greybearded, in a greasy bib,
men’s grey and green socks and brogues, floursmeared, a rollingpin
stuck with raw pastry in her bare red arm and hand, appears at the
door.)_
MRS KEOGH: _(Ferociously.)_ Can I help? _(They hold and pinion Bloom.)_
BELLO: _(Squats with a grunt on Bloom’s upturned face, puffing
cigarsmoke, nursing a fat leg.)_ I see Keating Clay is elected
vicechairman of the Richmond asylum and by the by Guinness’s preference
shares are at sixteen three quarters. Curse me for a fool that didn’t
buy that lot Craig and Gardner told me about. Just my infernal luck,
curse it. And that Goddamned outsider _Throwaway_ at twenty to one.
_(He quenches his cigar angrily on Bloom’s ear.)_ Where’s that
Goddamned cursed ashtray?
BLOOM: _(Goaded, buttocksmothered.)_ O! O! Monsters! Cruel one!
BELLO: Ask for that every ten minutes. Beg. Pray for it as you never
prayed before. _(He thrusts out a figged fist and foul cigar.)_ Here,
kiss that. Both. Kiss. _(He throws a leg astride and, pressing with
horseman’s knees, calls in a hard voice.)_ Gee up! A cockhorse to
Banbury cross. I’ll ride him for the Eclipse stakes. _(He bends
sideways and squeezes his mount’s testicles roughly, shouting.)_ Ho!
Off we pop! I’ll nurse you in proper fashion. _(He horserides
cockhorse, leaping in the, 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 diamondtrimmed pelvis, the absolute outside edge,
while your figure, plumper than when at large, will be restrained in
nettight frocks, pretty two ounce petticoats and fringes and things
stamped, of course, with my houseflag, creations of lovely lingerie for
Alice and nice scent for Alice. Alice will feel the pullpull. Martha
and Mary will be a little chilly at first in such delicate thighcasing
but the frilly flimsiness of lace round your bare knees will remind
you...
BLOOM: _(A charming soubrette with dauby cheeks, mustard hair and large
male hands and nose, leering mouth.)_ I tried her things on only twice,
a small prank, in Holles street. When we were hard up I washed them to
save the laundry bill. My own shirts I turned. It was the purest
thrift.
BELLO: _(Jeers.)_ Little jobs that make mother pleased, eh? And showed
off coquettishly in your domino at the mirror behind closedrawn blinds
your unskirted thighs and hegoat’s udders in various poses of
surrender, eh? Ho! ho! I have to laugh! That secondhand black operatop
shift and short trunkleg naughties all split up the stitches at her
last rape that Mrs Miriam Dandrade sold you from the Shelbourne hotel,
eh?
BLOOM: Miriam. Black. Demimondaine.
BELLO: _(Guffaws.)_ Christ Almighty it’s too tickling, this! You were a
nicelooking Miriam when you clipped off your backgate hairs and lay
swooning in the thing across the bed as Mrs Dandrade about to be
violated by lieutenant Smythe-Smythe, Mr Philip Augustus Blockwell M.
P., signor Laci Daremo, the robust tenor, blueeyed Bert, the liftboy,
Henri Fleury of Gordon Bennett fame, Sheridan, the quadroon Croesus,
the varsity wetbob eight from old Trinity, Ponto, her splendid
Newfoundland and Bobs, dowager duchess of Manorhamilton. _(He guffaws
again.)_ Christ, wouldn’t it make a Siamese cat laugh?
BLOOM: _(Her hands and features working.)_ It was Gerald converted me
to be a true corsetlover when I was female impersonator in the High
School play _Vice Versa_. It was dear Gerald. He got that kink,
fascinated by sister’s stays. Now dearest Gerald uses pinky greasepaint
and gilds his eyelids. Cult of the beautiful.
BELLO: _(With wicked glee.)_ Beautiful! Give us a breather! When you
took your seat with womanish care, lifting your billowy flounces, on
the smoothworn throne.
BLOOM: Science. To compare the various joys we each enjoy.
_(Earnestly.)_ And really it’s better the position... because often I
used to wet...
BELLO: _(Sternly.)_ No insubordination! The sawdust is there in the
corner for you. I gave you strict instructions, didn’t I? Do it
standing, sir! I’ll teach you to behave like a jinkleman! If I catch a
trace on your swaddles. Aha! By the ass of the Dorans you’ll find I’m a
martinet. The sins of your past are rising against you. Many. Hundreds.
THE SINS OF THE PAST: _(In a medley of voices.)_ He went through a form
of clandestine marriage with at least one woman in the shadow of the
Black church. Unspeakable messages he telephoned mentally to Miss Dunn
at an address in D’Olier street while he presented himself indecently
to the instrument in the callbox. By word and deed he frankly
encouraged a nocturnal strumpet to deposit fecal and other matter in an
unsanitary outhouse attached to empty premises. In five public
conveniences he wrote pencilled messages offering his nuptial partner
to all strongmembered males. And by the offensively smelling vitriol
works did he not pass night after night by loving courting couples to
see if and what and how much he could see? Did he not lie in bed, the
gross boar, gloating over a nauseous fragment of wellused toilet paper
presented to him by a nasty harlot, stimulated by gingerbread and a
postal order?
BELLO: _(Whistles loudly.)_ Say! What was the most revolting piece of
obscenity in all your career of crime? Go the whole hog. Puke it out!
Be candid for once.
_(Mute inhuman faces throng forward, leering, vanishing, gibbering,
Booloohoom. Poldy Kock, Bootlaces a penny, Cassidy’s hag, blind
stripling, Larry Rhinoceros, the girl, the woman, the whore, the other,
the...)_
BLOOM: Don’t ask me! Our mutual faith. Pleasants street. I only thought
the half of the... I swear on my sacred oath...
BELLO: _(Peremptorily.)_ Answer. Repugnant wretch! I insist on knowing.
Tell me something to amuse me, smut or a bloody good ghoststory or a
line of poetry, quick, quick, quick! Where? How? What time? With how
many? I give you just three seconds. One! Two! Thr...
BLOOM: _(Docile, gurgles.)_ I rererepugnosed in rerererepugnant...
BELLO: _(Imperiously.)_ O, get out, you skunk! Hold your tongue! Speak
when you’re spoken to.
BLOOM: _(Bows.)_ Master! Mistress! Mantamer!
_(He lifts his arms. His bangle bracelets fall.)_
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.
_(Dillon’s lacquey rings his handbell.)_
THE LACQUEY: Barang!
A VOICE: One and eightpence too much.
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 Quinze heels, the Grecian bend with provoking croup,
the thighs fluescent, knees modestly kissing. Bring all your powers of
fascination to bear on them. Pander to their Gomorrahan vices.
BLOOM: _(Bends his blushing face into his armpit and simpers with
forefinger in mouth.)_ O, I know what you’re hinting at now!
BELLO: What else are you good for, an impotent thing like you? _(He
stoops and, peering, pokes with his fan rudely under the fat suet folds
of Bloom’s haunches.)_ Up! Up! Manx cat! What have we here? Where’s
your curly teapot gone to or who docked it on you, cockyolly? Sing,
birdy, sing. It’s as limp as a boy of six’s doing his pooly behind a
cart. Buy a bucket or sell your pump. _(Loudly.)_ Can you do a man’s
job?
BLOOM: Eccles street...
BELLO: _(Sarcastically.)_ I wouldn’t hurt your feelings for the world
but there’s a man of brawn in possession there. The tables are turned,
my gay young fellow! He is something like a fullgrown outdoor man. Well
for you, you muff, if you had that weapon with knobs and lumps and
warts all over it. He shot his bolt, I can tell you! Foot to foot, knee
to knee, belly to 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.
_(Old Sleepy Hollow calls over the wold.)_
SLEEPY HOLLOW: Rip van Wink! Rip van Winkle!
BLOOM: _(In tattered mocassins with a rusty fowlingpiece, tiptoeing,
fingertipping, his haggard bony bearded face peering through the
diamond panes, cries out.)_ I see her! It’s she! The first night at Mat
Dillon’s! But that dress, the green! And her hair is dyed gold and
he...
BELLO: _(Laughs mockingly.)_ That’s your daughter, you owl, with a
Mullingar student.
_(Milly Bloom, fairhaired, greenvested, slimsandalled, her blue scarf
in the seawind simply swirling, breaks from the arms of her lover and
calls, her young eyes wonderwide.)_
MILLY: My! It’s Papli! But, O Papli, how old you’ve grown!
BELLO: Changed, eh? Our whatnot, our writingtable where we never wrote,
aunt Hegarty’s armchair, our classic reprints of old masters. A man and
his menfriends are living there in clover. The _Cuckoos’ Rest!_ Why
not? How many women had you, eh, following them up dark streets,
flatfoot, 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’s sake. They will violate
the secrets of your bottom drawer. Pages will be torn from your
handbook of astronomy to make them pipespills. And they will spit in
your ten shilling brass fender from Hampton Leedom’s.
BLOOM: Ten and six. The act of low scoundrels. Let me go. I will
return. I will prove...
A VOICE: Swear!
_(Bloom clenches his fists and crawls forward, a bowieknife between his
teeth.)_
BELLO: As a paying guest or a kept man? Too late. You have made your
secondbest bed and others must lie in it. Your epitaph is written. You
are down and out and don’t you forget it, old bean.
BLOOM: Justice! All Ireland versus one! Has nobody...? _(He bites his
thumb.)_
BELLO: Die and be damned to you if you have any sense of decency or
grace about you. I can give you a rare old wine that’ll send you
skipping to hell and back. Sign a will and leave us any coin you have!
If you have none see you damn well get it, steal it, rob it! We’ll bury
you in our shrubbery jakes where you’ll be dead and dirty with old Cuck
Cohen, my stepnephew I 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 willpower! Memory! I have sinned! I have
suff...
_(He weeps tearlessly.)_
BELLO: _(Sneers.)_ Crybabby! Crocodile tears!
_(Bloom, broken, closely veiled for the sacrifice, sobs, his face to
the earth. The passing bell is heard. Darkshawled figures of the
circumcised, in sackcloth and ashes, stand by the wailing wall. M.
Shulomowitz, Joseph Goldwater, Moses Herzog, Harris Rosenberg, M.
Moisel, J. Citron, Minnie Watchman, P. Mastiansky, The Reverend Leopold
Abramovitz, Chazen. With swaying arms they wail in pneuma over the
recreant Bloom.)_
THE CIRCUMCISED: _(In dark guttural chant as they cast dead sea fruit
upon him, no flowers.) Shema Israel Adonai Elohenu Adonai Echad._
VOICES: _(Sighing.)_ So he’s gone. Ah yes. Yes, indeed. Bloom? Never
heard of him. No? Queer kind of chap. There’s the widow. That so? Ah,
yes.
_(From the suttee pyre the flame of gum camphire ascends. The pall of
incense smoke screens and disperses. Out of her oakframe a nymph with
hair unbound, lightly clad in teabrown artcolours, descends from her
grotto and passing under interlacing yews stands over Bloom.)_
THE YEWS: _(Their leaves whispering.)_ Sister. Our sister. Ssh!
THE NYMPH: _(Softly.)_ Mortal! _(Kindly.)_ Nay, dost not weepest!
BLOOM: _(Crawls jellily forward under the boughs, streaked by sunlight,
with dignity.)_ This position. I felt it was expected of me. Force of
habit.
THE NYMPH: Mortal! You found me in evil company, highkickers, coster
picnicmakers, pugilists, popular generals, immoral panto boys in
fleshtights and the nifty shimmy dancers, La Aurora and Karini, musical
act, the hit of the century. I was hidden in cheap pink paper that
smelt of rock oil. I was surrounded by the stale smut of clubmen,
stories to disturb callow youth, ads for transparencies, truedup dice
and bustpads, proprietary articles and why wear a truss with
testimonial from ruptured gentleman. Useful hints to the married.
BLOOM: _(Lifts a turtle head towards her lap.)_ We have met before. On
another star.
THE NYMPH: _(Sadly.)_ Rubber goods. Neverrip brand as supplied to the
aristocracy. 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
bed or rather was pushed. Steel wine is said to cure snoring. For the
rest there is that English invention, pamphlet of which I received some
days ago, incorrectly addressed. It claims to afford a noiseless,
inoffensive vent. _(He sighs.)_ ’Twas ever thus. Frailty, thy name is
marriage.
THE NYMPH: _(Her fingers in her ears.)_ And words. They are not in my
dictionary.
BLOOM: You understood them?
THE YEWS: Ssh!
THE NYMPH: _(Covers her face with her hands.)_ What have I not seen in
that chamber? What must my eyes look down on?
BLOOM: _(Apologetically.)_ I know. Soiled personal linen, wrong side up
with care. The quoits are loose. From Gibraltar by long sea long ago.
THE NYMPH: _(Bends her head.)_ Worse, worse!
BLOOM: _(Reflects precautiously.)_ That antiquated commode. It wasn’t
her weight. She scaled just eleven stone nine. She put on nine pounds
after weaning. It was a crack and want of glue. Eh? And that absurd
orangekeyed utensil which has only one handle.
_(The sound of a waterfall is heard in bright cascade.)_
THE WATERFALL:
 Poulaphouca Poulaphouca
 Poulaphouca Poulaphouca.
THE YEWS: _(Mingling their boughs.)_ Listen. Whisper. She is right, our
sister. We grew by Poulaphouca waterfall. We gave shade on languorous
summer days.
JOHN WYSE NOLAN: _(In the background, in Irish National Forester’s
uniform, doffs his plumed hat.)_ Prosper! Give shade on languorous
days, trees of Ireland!
THE YEWS: _(Murmuring.)_ Who came to Poulaphouca with the High School
excursion? Who left his nutquesting classmates to seek our shade?
BLOOM: _(Scared.)_ High School of Poula? Mnemo? Not in full possession
of faculties. Concussion. Run over by tram.
THE ECHO: Sham!
BLOOM: _(Pigeonbreasted, bottleshouldered, padded, in nondescript
juvenile grey and black striped suit, too small for him, white tennis
shoes, bordered stockings with turnover tops and a red schoolcap with
badge.)_ I was in my teens, a growing boy. A little then sufficed, a
jolting car, the mingling odours of the ladies’ cloakroom and lavatory,
the throng penned tight on the old Royal stairs (for they love crushes,
instinct of the herd, and the dark sexsmelling theatre unbridles vice),
even a pricelist of their hosiery. And then the heat. There were
sunspots that summer. End of school. And tipsycake. Halcyon days.
_(Halcyon days, high school boys in blue and white football jerseys and
shorts, Master Donald Turnbull, Master Abraham Chatterton, Master Owen
Goldberg, Master Jack Meredith, Master Percy Apjohn, stand in a
clearing of the trees and shout to Master Leopold Bloom.)_
THE HALCYON DAYS: Mackerel! Live us again. Hurray! _(They cheer.)_
BLOOM: _(Hobbledehoy, warmgloved, mammamufflered, starred with spent
snowballs, struggles to rise.)_ Again! I feel sixteen! What a lark!
Let’s ring all the bells in Montague street. _(He cheers feebly.)_
Hurray for the High School!
THE ECHO: Fool!
THE YEWS: _(Rustling.)_ She is right, our sister. Whisper. _(Whispered
kisses are heard in all the wood. Faces of hamadryads peep out from the
boles and among the leaves and break, blossoming into bloom.)_ Who
profaned our silent shade?
THE NYMPH: _(Coyly, through parting fingers.)_ There? In the open air?
THE YEWS: _(Sweeping downward.)_ Sister, yes. And on our virgin sward.
THE WATERFALL:
 Poulaphouca Poulaphouca
 Phoucaphouca Phoucaphouca.
THE NYMPH: _(With wide fingers.)_ O, infamy!
BLOOM: I was precocious. Youth. The fauna. I sacrificed to the god of
the forest. The flowers that bloom in the spring. It was pairing time.
Capillary attraction is a natural phenomenon. Lotty Clarke,
flaxenhaired, I saw at her night toilette through illclosed curtains
with poor papa’s operaglasses: The wanton ate grass wildly. She rolled
downhill at Rialto bridge to tempt me with her flow of animal spirits.
She climbed their crooked tree and I... A saint couldn’t resist it. The
demon possessed me. Besides, who saw?
_(Staggering Bob, a whitepolled calf, thrusts a ruminating head with
humid nostrils through the foliage.)_
STAGGERING BOB: (_Large teardrops rolling from his prominent eyes,
snivels._) Me. Me see.
BLOOM: Simply satisfying a need I... _(With pathos.)_ No girl would
when I went girling. Too ugly. They wouldn’t play...
_(High on Ben Howth through rhododendrons a nannygoat passes,
plumpuddered, buttytailed, dropping currants.)_
THE NANNYGOAT: _(Bleats.)_ Megeggaggegg! Nannannanny!
BLOOM: _(Hatless, flushed, covered with burrs of thistledown and
gorsespine.)_ Regularly engaged. Circumstances alter cases. _(He gazes
intently downwards on the water.)_ Thirtytwo head over heels per
second. Press nightmare. Giddy Elijah. Fall from cliff. Sad end of
government 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: Bbbbblllllblblblblobschbg!
_(Far out in the bay between Bailey and Kish lights the_ Erin’s King
_sails, sending a broadening plume of coalsmoke from her funnel towards
the land.)_
COUNCILLOR NANNETTI: _(Alone on deck, in dark alpaca, yellowkitefaced,
his hand in his waistcoat opening, declaims.)_ When my country takes
her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let
my epitaph be written. I have...
BLOOM: Done. Prff!
THE NYMPH: _(Loftily.)_ We immortals, as you saw today, have not such a
place and no hair there either. We are stonecold and pure. We eat
electric light. _(She arches her body in lascivious crispation, placing
her forefinger in her mouth.)_ Spoke to me. Heard from behind. How then
could you...?
BLOOM: _(Pawing the heather abjectly.)_ O, I have been a perfect pig.
Enemas too I have administered. One third of a pint of quassia to which
add a 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...?
_(Figures wind serpenting in slow woodland pattern around the
treestems, cooeeing.)_
THE VOICE OF KITTY: _(In the thicket.)_ Show us one of them cushions.
THE VOICE OF FLORRY: Here.
_(A grouse wings clumsily through the underwood.)_
THE VOICE OF LYNCH: _(In the thicket.)_ Whew! Piping hot!
THE VOICE OF ZOE: _(From the thicket.)_ Came from a hot place.
THE VOICE OF VIRAG: _(A birdchief, bluestreaked and feathered in war
panoply with his assegai, striding through a crackling canebrake over
beechmast and acorns.)_ Hot! Hot! Ware Sitting Bull!
BLOOM: It overpowers me. The warm impress of her warm form. Even to sit
where a woman has sat, especially with divaricated thighs, as though to
grant the last favours, most especially with previously well uplifted
white sateen coatpans. So womanly, full. It fills me full.
THE WATERFALL:
 Phillaphulla Poulaphouca
 Poulaphouca Poulaphouca.
THE YEWS: Ssh! Sister, speak!
THE NYMPH: _(Eyeless, in nun’s white habit, coif and hugewinged wimple,
softly, with remote eyes.)_ Tranquilla convent. Sister Agatha. Mount
Carmel. The 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.
_(Bloom half rises. His back trouserbutton snaps.)_
THE BUTTON: Bip!
_(Two sluts of the Coombe dance rainily by, shawled, yelling flatly.)_
THE SLUTS:
 O, Leopold lost the pin of his drawers
 He didn’t know what to do,
 To keep it up,
 To keep it up.
BLOOM: _(Coldly.)_ You have broken the spell. The last straw. If there
were only ethereal where would you all be, postulants and novices? Shy
but willing like an ass pissing.
THE YEWS: _(Their silverfoil of leaves precipitating, their skinny arms
aging and swaying.)_ Deciduously!
THE NYMPH: _(Her features hardening, gropes in the folds of her
habit.)_ Sacrilege! To attempt my virtue! _(A large moist stain appears
on her robe.)_ Sully my innocence! You are not fit to touch the garment
of a pure woman. _(She clutches again in her robe.)_ Wait. Satan,
you’ll sing no more lovesongs. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. _(She draws a
poniard and, clad in the sheathmail of an elected knight of nine,
strikes at his loins.)_ Nekum!
BLOOM: _(Starts up, seizes her hand.)_ Hoy! Nebrakada! Cat o’ nine
lives! Fair play, madam. No pruningknife. The fox and the grapes, is
it? What do you lack with your barbed wire? Crucifix not thick enough?
_(He clutches her veil.)_ A holy abbot you want or Brophy, the lame
gardener, or the spoutless statue of the watercarrier, or good mother
Alphonsus, eh Reynard?
THE NYMPH: _(With a cry flees from him unveiled, her plaster cast
cracking, a cloud of stench escaping from the cracks.)_ Poli...!
BLOOM: _(Calls after her.)_ As if you didn’t get it on the double
yourselves. No jerks and multiple mucosities all over you. I tried it.
Your strength our weakness. What’s our studfee? What will you pay on
the nail? You fee mendancers on the Riviera, I read. _(The fleeing
nymph raises a keen.)_ Eh? I have sixteen years of black slave labour
behind me. And would a jury give me five shillings alimony tomorrow,
eh? Fool someone else, not me. _(He sniffs.)_ Rut. Onions. Stale.
Sulphur. Grease.
_(The figure of Bella Cohen stands before him.)_
BELLA: You’ll know me the next time.
BLOOM: _(Composed, regards her.) Passée._ Mutton dressed as lamb. Long
in the tooth and superfluous hair. A raw onion the last thing at night
would benefit your complexion. And take some double chin drill. Your
eyes are as vapid as the glasseyes of your stuffed fox. They have the
dimensions of your other features, that’s all. I’m not a triple screw
propeller.
BELLA: _(Contemptuously.)_ You’re not game, in fact. _(Her sowcunt
barks.)_ Fbhracht!
BLOOM: _(Contemptuously.)_ Clean your nailless middle finger first,
your bully’s cold spunk is dripping from your cockscomb. Take a handful
of hay and wipe 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.
_(Kitty, disconcerted, coats her teeth with the silver paper. Bloom
approaches Zoe.)_
BLOOM: _(Gently.)_ Give me back that potato, will you?
ZOE: Forfeits, a fine thing and a superfine thing.
BLOOM: _(With feeling.)_ It is nothing, but still, a relic of poor
mamma.
ZOE:
 Give a thing and take it back
 God’ll ask you where is that
 You’ll say you don’t know
 God’ll send you down below.
BLOOM: There is a memory attached to it. I should like to have it.
STEPHEN: To have or not to have that is the question.
ZOE: Here. _(She hauls up a reef of her slip, revealing her bare thigh,
and unrolls the potato from the top of her stocking.)_ Those that hides
knows where to find.
BELLA: _(Frowns.)_ Here. This isn’t a musical peepshow. And don’t you
smash that piano. Who’s paying here?
_(She goes to the pianola. Stephen fumbles in his pocket and, taking
out a banknote by its corner, hands it to her.)_
STEPHEN: _(With exaggerated politeness.)_ This silken purse I made out
of the sow’s ear of the public. Madam, excuse me. If you allow me. _(He
indicates vaguely Lynch and Bloom.)_ We are all in the same sweepstake,
Kinch and Lynch. _Dans ce bordel 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 Stephen, then at Zoe, Florry and
Kitty.)_ Do you want three girls? It’s ten shillings here.
STEPHEN: _(Delightedly.)_ A hundred thousand apologies. _(He fumbles
again and takes out and hands her two crowns.)_ Permit, _brevi manu_,
my sight is somewhat troubled.
_(Bella goes to the table to count the money while Stephen talks to
himself in monosyllables. Zoe bends over the table. Kitty leans over
Zoe’s neck. Lynch gets up, rights his cap and, clasping Kitty’s waist,
adds his head to the group.)_
FLORRY: _(Strives heavily to rise.)_ Ow! My foot’s asleep. _(She limps
over to the table. Bloom approaches.)_
BELLA, ZOE, KITTY, LYNCH, BLOOM: _(Chattering and squabbling.)_ The
gentleman... ten shillings... paying for the three... allow me a
moment... this gentleman pays separate... who’s touching it?... ow! ...
mind who you’re pinching... are you staying the night or a short
time?... who did?... you’re a liar, excuse me... the gentleman paid
down like a gentleman... drink... it’s long after eleven.
STEPHEN: _(At the pianola, making a gesture of abhorrence.)_ No
bottles! What, eleven? A riddle!
ZOE: _(Lifting up her pettigown and folding a half sovereign into the
top of her stocking.)_ Hard earned on the flat of my back.
LYNCH: _(Lifting Kitty from the table.)_ Come!
KITTY: Wait. _(She clutches the two crowns.)_
FLORRY: And me?
LYNCH: Hoopla!
_(He lifts her, carries her and bumps her down on the sofa.)_
STEPHEN:
 The fox crew, the cocks flew,
 The bells in heaven
 Were striking eleven.
 ’Tis time for her poor soul
 To get out of heaven.
BLOOM: _(Quietly lays a half sovereign on the table between Bella and
Florry.)_ So. Allow me. _(He takes up the poundnote.)_ Three times ten.
We’re square.
BELLA: _(Admiringly.)_ You’re such a slyboots, old cocky. I could kiss
you.
ZOE: _(Points.)_ Him? Deep as a drawwell. _(Lynch bends Kitty back over
the sofa and kisses her. Bloom goes with the poundnote to Stephen.)_
BLOOM: This is yours.
STEPHEN: How is that? _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 near his eye.)_ Lynx eye. Must get glasses.
Broke them yesterday. Sixteen years ago. Distance. The eye sees all
flat. _(He draws the match away. It goes out.)_ Brain thinks. Near:
far. Ineluctable modality of the visible. _(He frowns mysteriously.)_
Hm. Sphinx. The beast that has two backs at midnight. Married.
ZOE: It was a commercial traveller married her and took her away with
him.
FLORRY: _(Nods.)_ Mr Lambe from London.
STEPHEN: Lamb of London, who takest away the sins of our world.
LYNCH: _(Embracing Kitty on the sofa, chants deeply.) Dona nobis
pacem._
_(The cigarette slips from Stephen’s fingers. Bloom picks it up and
throws it in the grate.)_
BLOOM: Don’t smoke. You ought to eat. Cursed dog I met. _(To Zoe.)_ You
have nothing?
ZOE: Is he hungry?
STEPHEN: _(Extends his hand to her smiling and chants to the air of the
bloodoath in the_ Dusk of the Gods.)
 Hangende Hunger,
 Fragende Frau,
 Macht uns alle kaputt.
ZOE: _(Tragically.)_ Hamlet, I am thy father’s gimlet! _(She takes his
hand.)_ Blue eyes beauty I’ll read your hand. _(She points to his
forehead.)_ No wit, no wrinkles. _(She counts.)_ Two, three, Mars,
that’s courage. _(Stephen shakes his head.)_ No kid.
LYNCH: Sheet lightning courage. The youth who could not shiver and
shake. _(To Zoe.)_ Who taught you palmistry?
ZOE: _(Turns.)_ Ask my ballocks that I haven’t got. _(To Stephen.)_ I
see it in your face. The eye, like that. _(She frowns with lowered
head.)_
LYNCH: _(Laughing, slaps Kitty behind twice.)_ Like that. Pandybat.
_(Twice loudly a pandybat cracks, the coffin of the pianola flies open,
the bald little round jack-in-the-box head of Father Dolan springs
up.)_
FATHER DOLAN: Any boy want flogging? Broke his glasses? Lazy idle
little schemer. See it in your eye.
_(Mild, benign, rectorial, reproving, the head of Don John Conmee rises
from the pianola coffin.)_
DON JOHN CONMEE: Now, Father Dolan! Now. I’m sure that Stephen is a
very good little boy!
ZOE: _(Examining Stephen’s palm.)_ Woman’s hand.
STEPHEN: _(Murmurs.)_ Continue. Lie. Hold me. Caress. I never could
read His handwriting except His criminal thumbprint on the haddock.
ZOE: What day were you born?
STEPHEN: Thursday. Today.
ZOE: Thursday’s child has far to go. _(She traces lines on his hand.)_
Line of fate. Influential friends.
FLORRY: _(Pointing.)_ Imagination.
ZOE: Mount of the moon. You’ll meet with a... _(She peers at his hands
abruptly.)_ I won’t tell you what’s not good for you. Or do you want to
know?
BLOOM: _(Detaches her fingers and offers his palm.)_ More harm than
good. Here. Read mine.
BELLA: Show. _(She turns up Bloom’s hand.)_ I thought so. Knobby
knuckles for the women.
ZOE: _(Peering at Bloom’s palm.)_ Gridiron. Travels beyond the sea and
marry money.
BLOOM: Wrong.
ZOE: _(Quickly.)_ O, I see. Short little finger. Henpecked husband.
That wrong?
_(Black Liz, a huge rooster hatching in a chalked circle, rises,
stretches her wings and clucks.)_
BLACK LIZ: Gara. Klook. Klook. Klook.
_(She sidles from her newlaid egg and waddles off.)_
BLOOM: _(Points to his hand.)_ That weal there is an accident. Fell and
cut it twentytwo years ago. I was sixteen.
ZOE: I see, says the blind man. Tell us news.
STEPHEN: See? Moves to one great goal. I am twentytwo. Sixteen years
ago he was twentytwo too. Sixteen years ago I twentytwo tumbled.
Twentytwo years ago he sixteen fell off his hobbyhorse. _(He winces.)_
Hurt my hand somewhere. Must see a dentist. Money?
_(Zoe whispers to Florry. They giggle. Bloom releases his hand and
writes idly on the table in backhand, pencilling slow curves.)_
FLORRY: What?
_(A hackneycar, number three hundred and twentyfour, with a
gallantbuttocked mare, driven by James Barton, Harmony Avenue,
Donnybrook, trots past. Blazes Boylan and Lenehan sprawl swaying on the
sideseats. The Ormond boots crouches behind on the axle. Sadly over the
crossblind Lydia Douce and Mina Kennedy gaze.)_
THE BOOTS: _(Jogging, mocks them with thumb and wriggling
wormfingers.)_ Haw haw have you the horn?
_(Bronze by gold they whisper.)_
ZOE: _(To Florry.)_ Whisper.
_(They whisper again.)_
_(Over the well of the car Blazes Boylan leans, his boater straw set
sideways, a red flower in his mouth. Lenehan in yachtsman’s cap and
white shoes officiously detaches a long hair from Blazes Boylan’s coat
shoulder.)_
LENEHAN: Ho! What do I here behold? Were you brushing the cobwebs off a
few quims?
BOYLAN: _(Sated, smiles.)_ Plucking a turkey.
LENEHAN: A good night’s work.
BOYLAN: _(Holding up four thick bluntungulated fingers, winks.)_ Blazes
Kate! Up to sample or your money back. _(He holds out a forefinger.)_
Smell that.
LENEHAN: _(Smells gleefully.)_ Ah! Lobster and mayonnaise. Ah!
ZOE AND FLORRY: _(Laugh together.)_ Ha ha ha ha.
BOYLAN: _(Jumps surely from the car and calls loudly for all to hear.)_
Hello, Bloom! Mrs Bloom dressed yet?
BLOOM: _(In flunkey’s prune plush coat and kneebreeches, buff stockings
and powdered wig.)_ I’m afraid not, sir. The last articles...
BOYLAN: _(Tosses him sixpence.)_ Here, to buy yourself a gin and
splash. _(He hangs his hat smartly on a peg of Bloom’s antlered head.)_
Show me in. I have a little private business with your wife, you
understand?
BLOOM: Thank you, sir. Yes, sir. Madam Tweedy is in her bath, sir.
MARION: He ought to feel himself highly honoured. _(She plops splashing
out of the water.)_ Raoul darling, come and dry me. I’m in my pelt.
Only my new hat and a carriage sponge.
BOYLAN: _(A merry twinkle in his eye.)_ Topping!
BELLA: What? What is it?
_(Zoe whispers to her.)_
MARION: Let him look, the pishogue! Pimp! And scourge himself! I’ll
write to a powerful prostitute or Bartholomona, the bearded woman, to
raise weals out on him an inch thick and make him bring me back a
signed and stamped receipt.
BOYLAN: (Clasps himself.) Here, I can’t hold this little lot much
longer. (He strides off on stiff cavalry legs.)
BELLA: _(Laughing.)_ Ho ho ho ho.
BOYLAN: _(To Bloom, over his shoulder.)_ You can apply your eye to the
keyhole and play with yourself while I just go through her a few times.
BLOOM: Thank you, sir. I will, sir. May I bring two men chums to
witness the deed and take a snapshot? _(He holds out an ointment jar.)_
Vaseline, sir? Orangeflower...? Lukewarm water...?
KITTY: _(From the sofa.)_ Tell us, Florry. Tell us. What...
_(Florry whispers to her. Whispering lovewords murmur, liplapping
loudly, poppysmic plopslop.)_
MINA KENNEDY: _(Her eyes upturned.)_ O, it must be like the scent of
geraniums and lovely peaches! O, he simply idolises every bit of her!
Stuck together! Covered with kisses!
LYDIA DOUCE: _(Her mouth opening.)_ Yumyum. O, he’s carrying her round
the room doing it! Ride a cockhorse. You could hear them in Paris and
New York. Like mouthfuls of strawberries and cream.
KITTY: _(Laughing.)_ Hee hee hee.
BOYLAN’S VOICE: _(Sweetly, hoarsely, in the pit of his stomach.)_ Ah!
Godblazeqrukbrukarchkrasht!
MARION’S VOICE: _(Hoarsely, sweetly, rising to her throat.)_ O!
Weeshwashtkissinapooisthnapoohuck?
BLOOM: _(His eyes wildly dilated, clasps himself.)_ Show! Hide! Show!
Plough her! More! Shoot!
BELLA, ZOE, FLORRY, KITTY: Ho ho! Ha ha! Hee hee!
LYNCH: _(Points.)_ The mirror up to nature. _(He laughs.)_ Hu hu hu hu
hu!
_(Stephen and Bloom gaze in the mirror. The face of William
Shakespeare, beardless, appears there, rigid in facial paralysis,
crowned by the reflection of the reindeer antlered hatrack in the
hall.)_
SHAKESPEARE: _(In dignified ventriloquy.)_ ’Tis the loud laugh bespeaks
the vacant mind. _(To Bloom.)_ Thou thoughtest as how thou wastest
invisible. Gaze. _(He crows with a black capon’s laugh.)_ Iagogo! How
my Oldfellow chokit his Thursdaymornun. Iagogogo!
BLOOM: _(Smiles yellowly at the three whores.)_ When will I hear the
joke?
ZOE: Before you’re twice married and once a widower.
BLOOM: Lapses are condoned. Even the great Napoleon when measurements
were taken next the skin after his death...
_(Mrs Dignam, widow woman, her snubnose and cheeks flushed with
deathtalk, tears and Tunney’s tawny sherry, hurries by in her weeds,
her bonnet awry, rouging and powdering her cheeks, lips and nose, a pen
chivvying her brood of cygnets. Beneath her skirt appear her late
husband’s everyday trousers and turnedup boots, large eights. She holds
a Scottish widow’s insurance policy and a large marquee umbrella under
which her brood run with her, Patsy hopping on one shod foot, his
collar loose, a hank of porksteaks dangling, Freddy whimpering, Susy
with a crying cod’s mouth, Alice struggling with the baby. She cuffs
them on, her streamers flaunting aloft.)_
FREDDY: Ah, ma, you’re dragging me along!
SUSY: Mamma, the beeftea is fizzing over!
SHAKESPEARE: _(With paralytic rage.)_ Weda seca whokilla farst.
_(The face of Martin Cunningham, bearded, refeatures Shakespeare’s
beardless face. The marquee umbrella sways drunkenly, the children run
aside. Under the umbrella appears Mrs Cunningham in Merry Widow hat and
kimono gown. She glides sidling and bowing, twirling japanesily.)_
MRS CUNNINGHAM: _(Sings.)_
 And they call me the jewel of Asia!
MARTIN CUNNINGHAM: _(Gazes on her, impassive.)_ Immense! Most bloody
awful demirep!
STEPHEN: _Et exaltabuntur cornua iusti._ Queens lay with prize bulls.
Remember Pasiphae for whose lust my grandoldgrossfather made the first
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.
_(Stephen claps hat on head and leaps over to the fireplace where he
stands with shrugged shoulders, finny hands outspread, a painted smile
on his face.)_
LYNCH: _(Pommelling on the sofa.)_ Rmm Rmm Rmm Rrrrrrmmmmm.
STEPHEN: _(Gabbles with marionette jerks.)_ Thousand places of
entertainment to expense your evenings with lovely ladies saling gloves
and other things perhaps hers heart beerchops perfect fashionable house
very eccentric where lots cocottes beautiful dressed much about
princesses like are dancing cancan and walking there parisian
clowneries extra foolish for bachelors foreigns the same if talking a
poor english how much smart they are on things love and sensations
voluptuous. Misters very selects for is pleasure must to visit heaven
and hell show with mortuary candles and they tears silver which occur
every night. Perfectly shocking terrific of 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,
là là! 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 tompeeptom of virgins
nudities very lesbic the kiss five ten times. Enter, gentleman, to see
in mirror every positions trapezes all that machine there besides also
if desire act awfully bestial butcher’s boy pollutes in warm veal liver
or omlet on the belly _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 goes by contraries.
STEPHEN: _(Extends his arms.)_ It was here. Street of harlots. In
Serpentine avenue Beelzebub showed me her, a fubsy widow. Where’s the
red carpet spread?
BLOOM: _(Approaching Stephen.)_ Look...
STEPHEN: No, I flew. My foes beneath me. And ever shall be. World
without end. _(He cries.) Pater!_ Free!
BLOOM: I say, look...
STEPHEN: Break my spirit, will he? _O merde alors! (He cries, his
vulture talons sharpened.)_ Hola! Hillyho!
_(Simon Dedalus’ voice hilloes in answer, somewhat sleepy but ready.)_
SIMON: That’s all right. _(He swoops uncertainly through the air,
wheeling, uttering cries of heartening, on strong ponderous buzzard
wings.)_ Ho, boy! Are you going to win? Hoop! Pschatt! Stable with
those halfcastes. Wouldn’t let them within the bawl of an ass. Head up!
Keep our flag flying! An eagle gules volant in a field argent
displayed. Ulster king at arms! Haihoop! _(He makes the beagle’s call,
giving tongue.)_ Bulbul! Burblblburblbl! Hai, boy!
_(The fronds and spaces of the wallpaper file rapidly across country. A
stout fox, drawn from covert, brush pointed, having buried his
grandmother, runs swift for the open, brighteyed, seeking badger earth,
under the leaves. The pack of staghounds follows, nose to the ground,
sniffing their quarry, beaglebaying, burblbrbling to be blooded. Ward
Union huntsmen and huntswomen live with them, hot for a kill. From Six
Mile Point, Flathouse, Nine Mile Stone follow the footpeople with
knotty sticks, hayforks, salmongaffs, lassos, flockmasters with
stockwhips, bearbaiters with tomtoms, toreadors with bullswords, grey
negroes waving torches. The crowd bawls of dicers, crown and anchor
players, thimbleriggers, broadsmen. Crows and touts, hoarse bookies in
high wizard hats clamour deafeningly.)_
THE CROWD:
 Card of the races. Racing card!
 Ten to one the field!
 Tommy on the clay here! Tommy on the clay!
 Ten to one bar one! Ten to one bar one!
 Try your luck on Spinning Jenny!
 Ten to one bar one!
 Sell the monkey, boys! Sell the monkey!
 I’ll give ten to one!
 Ten to one bar one!
_(A dark horse, riderless, bolts like a phantom past the winningpost,
his mane moonfoaming, his eyeballs stars. The field follows, a bunch of
bucking mounts. Skeleton horses, Sceptre, Maximum the Second,
Zinfandel, the Duke of Westminster’s Shotover, Repulse, the Duke of
Beaufort’s Ceylon, prix de Paris. Dwarfs ride them, rustyarmoured,
leaping, leaping in their, in their saddles. Last in a drizzle of rain
on a brokenwinded isabelle nag, Cock of the North, the favourite, honey
cap, green jacket, orange sleeves, Garrett Deasy up, gripping the
reins, a hockeystick at the ready. His nag on spavined whitegaitered
feet jogs along the rocky road.)_
THE ORANGE LODGES: _(Jeering.)_ Get down and push, mister. Last lap!
You’ll be home the night!
GARRETT DEASY: _(Bolt upright, his nailscraped face plastered with
postagestamps, brandishes his hockeystick, his blue eyes flashing in
the prism of the chandelier as his mount lopes by at schooling
gallop.)_
_Per vias rectas!_
_(A yoke of buckets leopards all over him and his rearing nag a torrent
of mutton broth with dancing coins of carrots, barley, onions, turnips,
potatoes.)_
THE GREEN LODGES: Soft day, sir John! Soft day, your honour!
_(Private Carr, Private Compton and Cissy Caffrey pass beneath the
windows, singing in discord.)_
STEPHEN: Hark! Our friend noise in the street.
ZOE: _(Holds up her hand.)_ Stop!
PRIVATE CARR, PRIVATE COMPTON AND CISSY CAFFREY:
 Yet I’ve a sort of a
 Yorkshire relish for...
ZOE: That’s me. _(She claps her hands.)_ Dance! Dance! _(She runs to
the pianola.)_ Who has twopence?
BLOOM: Who’ll...?
LYNCH: _(Handing her coins.)_ Here.
STEPHEN: _(Cracking his fingers impatiently.)_ Quick! Quick! Where’s my
augur’s rod? _(He runs to the piano and takes his ashplant, beating his
foot in tripudium.)_
ZOE: _(Turns the drumhandle.)_ There.
_(She drops two pennies in the slot. Gold, pink and violet lights start
forth. The drum turns purring in low hesitation waltz. Professor
Goodwin, in a bowknotted periwig, in court dress, wearing a stained
inverness cape, bent in two from incredible age, totters across the
room, his hands fluttering. He sits tinily on the pianostool and lifts
and beats handless sticks of arms on the keyboard, nodding with
damsel’s grace, his bowknot bobbing.)_
ZOE: _(Twirls round herself, heeltapping.)_ Dance. Anybody here for
there? Who’ll dance? Clear the table.
_(The pianola with changing lights plays in waltz time the prelude of_
My Girl’s a Yorkshire Girl. _Stephen throws his ashplant on the table
and seizes Zoe round the waist. Florry and Bella push the table towards
the fireplace. Stephen, arming Zoe with exaggerated grace, begins to
waltz her round the room. Bloom stands aside. Her sleeve falling from
gracing arms, reveals a white fleshflower of vaccination. Between the
curtains Professor Maginni inserts a leg on the toepoint of which spins
a silk hat. With a deft kick he sends it spinning to his crown and
jauntyhatted skates in. He wears a slate frockcoat with claret silk
lapels, a gorget of cream tulle, a green lowcut waistcoat, stock collar
with white kerchief, tight lavender trousers, patent pumps and canary
gloves. In his buttonhole is an immense dahlia. He twirls in reversed
directions a clouded cane, then wedges it tight in his oxter. He places
a hand lightly on his breastbone, bows, and fondles his flower and
buttons.)_
MAGINNI: The poetry of motion, art of calisthenics. No connection with
Madam Legget Byrne’s or Levenston’s. Fancy dress balls arranged.
Deportment. The Katty Lanner step. So. Watch me! My terpsichorean
abilities. _(He minuets forward three paces on tripping bee’s feet.)
Tout le monde en avant! Révérence! Tout le monde en place!_
_(The prelude ceases. Professor Goodwin, beating vague arms shrivels,
sinks, his live cape falling about the stool. The air in firmer waltz
time sounds. Stephen and Zoe circle freely. The lights change, glow,
fade gold rosy violet.)_
THE PIANOLA:
 Two young fellows were talking about their girls, girls, girls,
 Sweethearts they’d left behind...
_(From a corner the morning hours run out, goldhaired, slimsandalled,
in girlish blue, waspwaisted, with innocent hands. Nimbly they dance,
twirling their skipping ropes. The hours of noon follow in amber gold.
Laughing, linked, high haircombs flashing, they catch the sun in
mocking mirrors, lifting their arms.)_
MAGINNI: _(Clipclaps glovesilent hands.) Carré! Avant deux!_ Breathe
evenly! _Balance!_
_(The morning and noon hours waltz in their places, turning, advancing
to each other, shaping their curves, bowing visavis. Cavaliers behind
them arch and suspend their arms, with hands descending to, touching,
rising from their shoulders.)_
HOURS: You may touch my.
CAVALIERS: May I touch your?
HOURS: O, but lightly!
CAVALIERS: O, so lightly!
THE PIANOLA:
 My little shy little lass has a waist.
_(Zoe and Stephen turn boldly with looser swing. The twilight hours
advance from long landshadows, dispersed, lagging, languideyed, their
cheeks delicate with cipria and false faint bloom. They are in grey
gauze with dark bat sleeves that flutter in the land breeze.)_
MAGINNI: _Avant huit! Traversé! Salut! Cours de mains! Croisé!_
_(The night hours, one by one, steal to the last place. Morning, noon
and twilight hours retreat before them. They are masked, with daggered
hair and bracelets of dull bells. Weary they curchycurchy under
veils.)_
THE BRACELETS: Heigho! Heigho!
ZOE: _(Twirling, her hand to her brow.)_ O!
MAGINNI: _Les tiroirs! Chaîne de dames! La corbeille! Dos à dos!_
_(Arabesquing wearily they weave a pattern on the floor, weaving,
unweaving, curtseying, twirling, simply swirling.)_
ZOE: I’m giddy!
_(She frees herself, droops on a chair. Stephen seizes Florry and turns
with her.)_
MAGINNI: _Boulangère! Les ronds! Les ponts! Chevaux de bois!
Escargots!_
_(Twining, receding, with interchanging hands the night hours link each
each with arching arms in a mosaic of movements. Stephen and Florry
turn cumbrously.)_
MAGINNI: _Dansez avec vos dames! Changez de dames! Donnez le petit
bouquet 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!
_(She runs to Stephen. He leaves Florry brusquely and seizes Kitty. A
screaming bittern’s harsh high whistle shrieks. Groangrousegurgling
Toft’s cumbersome whirligig turns slowly the room right roundabout the
room.)_
THE PIANOLA:
 My girl’s a Yorkshire girl.
ZOE:
Yorkshire through and through. Come on all!
_(She seizes Florry and waltzes her.)_
STEPHEN: _Pas seul!_
_(He wheels Kitty into Lynch’s arms, snatches up his ashplant from the
table and takes the floor. All wheel whirl waltz twirl. Bloombella
Kittylynch Florryzoe jujuby women. Stephen with hat ashplant frogsplits
in middle highkicks with skykicking mouth shut hand clasp part under
thigh. With clang tinkle boomhammer tallyho hornblower blue green
yellow flashes Toft’s cumbersome turns with hobbyhorse riders from
gilded snakes dangled, bowels fandango leaping spurn soil foot and fall
again.)_
THE PIANOLA:
 Though she’s a factory lass
 And wears no fancy clothes.
_(Closeclutched swift swifter with glareblareflare scudding they
scootlootshoot lumbering by. Baraabum!)_
TUTTI: Encore! Bis! Bravo! Encore!
SIMON: Think of your mother’s people!
STEPHEN: Dance of death.
_(Bang fresh barang bang of lacquey’s bell, horse, nag, steer,
piglings, Conmee on Christass, lame crutch and leg sailor in cockboat
armfolded ropepulling hitching stamp hornpipe through and through.
Baraabum! On nags hogs bellhorses Gadarene swine Corny in coffin steel
shark stone onehandled Nelson two trickies Frauenzimmer plumstained
from pram falling bawling. Gum he’s a champion. Fuseblue peer from
barrel rev. evensong Love on hackney jaunt Blazes blind coddoubled
bicyclers Dilly with snowcake no fancy clothes. Then in last switchback
lumbering up and down bump mashtub sort of viceroy and reine relish for
tublumber bumpshire rose. Baraabum!)_
_(The couples fall aside. Stephen whirls giddily. Room whirls back.
Eyes closed he totters. Red rails fly spacewards. Stars all around suns
turn roundabout. Bright midges dance on walls. He stops dead.)_
STEPHEN: Ho!
_(Stephen’s mother, emaciated, rises stark through the floor, in leper
grey with a wreath of faded orangeblossoms and a torn bridal veil, her
face worn and noseless, green with gravemould. Her hair is scant and
lank. She fixes her bluecircled hollow eyesockets on Stephen and opens
her toothless mouth uttering a silent word. A choir of virgins and
confessors sing voicelessly.)_
THE CHOIR:
 Liliata rutilantium te confessorum...
 Iubilantium te virginum...
_(From the top of a tower Buck Mulligan, in particoloured jester’s
dress of puce and yellow and clown’s cap with curling bell, stands
gaping at her, a smoking buttered split scone in his hand.)_
BUCK MULLIGAN: She’s beastly dead. The pity of it! Mulligan meets the
afflicted mother. _(He upturns his eyes.)_ Mercurial Malachi!
THE MOTHER: _(With the subtle smile of death’s madness.)_ I was once
the beautiful May Goulding. I am dead.
STEPHEN: _(Horrorstruck.)_ Lemur, who are you? No. What bogeyman’s
trick is this?
BUCK MULLIGAN: _(Shakes his curling capbell.)_ The mockery of it! Kinch
dogsbody killed her bitchbody. She kicked the bucket. _(Tears of molten
butter fall from his eyes on to the scone.)_ Our great sweet mother!
_Epi oinopa ponton._
THE MOTHER: _(Comes nearer, breathing upon him softly her breath of
wetted ashes.)_ All must go through it, Stephen. More women than men in
the world. You too. Time will come.
STEPHEN: _(Choking with fright, remorse and horror.)_ They say I killed
you, mother. He offended your memory. Cancer did it, not I. Destiny.
THE MOTHER: _(A green rill of bile trickling from a side of her
mouth.)_ You sang that song to me. _Love’s bitter mystery._
STEPHEN: _(Eagerly.)_ Tell me the word, mother, if you know now. The
word known to all men.
THE MOTHER: Who saved you the night you jumped into the train at Dalkey
with Paddy Lee? Who had pity for you when you were sad among the
strangers? Prayer is allpowerful. Prayer for the suffering souls in the
Ursuline manual and forty days’ indulgence. Repent, Stephen.
STEPHEN: The ghoul! Hyena!
THE MOTHER: I pray for you in my other world. Get Dilly to make you
that boiled rice every night after your brainwork. Years and years I
loved you, O, my son, my firstborn, when you lay in my womb.
ZOE: _(Fanning herself with the grate fan.)_ I’m melting!
FLORRY: _(Points to Stephen.)_ Look! He’s white.
BLOOM: _(Goes to the window to open it more.)_ Giddy.
THE MOTHER: _(With smouldering eyes.)_ Repent! O, the fire of hell!
STEPHEN: _(Panting.)_ His noncorrosive sublimate! The corpsechewer! Raw
head and bloody bones.
THE MOTHER: _(Her face drawing near and nearer, sending out an ashen
breath.)_ Beware! _(She raises her blackened withered right arm slowly
towards Stephen’s breast with outstretched finger.)_ Beware God’s hand!
_(A green crab with malignant red eyes sticks deep its grinning claws
in Stephen’s heart.)_
STEPHEN: _(Strangled with rage.)_ Shite! _(His features grow drawn 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!_
_(He lifts his ashplant high with both hands and smashes the
chandelier. Time’s livid final flame leaps and, in the following
darkness, ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry.)_
THE GASJET: Pwfungg!
BLOOM: Stop!
LYNCH: _(Rushes forward and seizes Stephen’s hand.)_ Here! Hold on!
Don’t run amok!
BELLA: Police!
_(Stephen, abandoning his ashplant, his head and arms thrown back
stark, beats the ground and flies from the room, past the whores at the
door.)_
BELLA: _(Screams.)_ After him!
_(The two whores rush to the halldoor. Lynch and Kitty and Zoe stampede
from the room. They talk excitedly. Bloom follows, returns.)_
THE WHORES: _(Jammed in the doorway, pointing.)_ Down there.
ZOE: _(Pointing.)_ There. There’s something up.
BELLA: Who pays for the lamp? _(She seizes Bloom’s coattail.)_ Here,
you were with him. The lamp’s broken.
BLOOM: _(Rushes to the hall, rushes back.)_ What lamp, woman?
A WHORE: He tore his coat.
BELLA: _(Her eyes hard with anger and cupidity, points.)_ Who’s to pay
for that? Ten shillings. You’re a witness.
BLOOM: _(Snatches up Stephen’s ashplant.)_ Me? Ten shillings? Haven’t
you lifted enough off him? Didn’t he...?
BELLA: _(Loudly.)_ Here, none of your tall talk. This isn’t a brothel.
A ten shilling house.
BLOOM: _(His head under the lamp, pulls the chain. 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 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
boatraces and paying nothing. Are you my commander here or? Where is
he? I’ll charge him! Disgrace him, I will! _(She shouts.)_ Zoe! Zoe!
BLOOM: _(Urgently.)_ And if it were your own son in Oxford?
_(Warningly.)_ I know.
BELLA: _(Almost speechless.)_ Who are. Incog!
ZOE: _(In the doorway.)_ There’s a row on.
BLOOM: What? Where? _(He throws a shilling on the table and starts.)_
That’s for the chimney. Where? I need mountain air.
_(He hurries out through the hall. The whores point. Florry follows,
spilling water from her tilted tumbler. On the doorstep all the whores
clustered talk volubly, pointing to the right where the fog has cleared
off. From the left arrives a jingling hackney car. It slows to in front
of the house. Bloom at the halldoor perceives Corny Kelleher who is
about to dismount from the car with two silent lechers. He averts his
face. Bella from within the hall urges on her whores. They blow
ickylickysticky yumyum kisses. Corny Kelleher replies with a ghastly
lewd smile. The silent lechers turn to pay the jarvey. Zoe and Kitty
still point right. Bloom, parting them swiftly, draws his caliph’s hood
and poncho and hurries down the steps with sideways face. Incog Haroun
al Raschid he flits behind the silent lechers and hastens on by the
railings with fleet step of a pard strewing the drag behind him, torn
envelopes drenched in aniseed. The ashplant marks his stride. A pack of
bloodhounds, led by Hornblower of Trinity brandishing a dogwhip in
tallyho cap and an old pair of grey trousers, follows from far, picking
up the scent, nearer, baying, panting, at fault, breaking away,
throwing their tongues, biting his heels, leaping at his tail. He
walks, runs, zigzags, gallops, lugs laid back. He is pelted with
gravel, cabbagestumps, biscuitboxes, eggs, potatoes, dead codfish,
woman’s slipperslappers. After him freshfound the hue and cry zigzag
gallops in hot pursuit of follow my leader: 65 C, 66 C, night watch,
John Henry Menton, Wisdom Hely, V. B. Dillon, Councillor Nannetti,
Alexander Keyes, Larry O’Rourke, Joe Cuffe, Mrs O’Dowd, Pisser Burke,
The Nameless One, Mrs Riordan, The Citizen, Garryowen, Whodoyoucallhim,
Strangeface, Fellowthatsolike, Sawhimbefore, Chapwithawen, Chris
Callinan, sir Charles Cameron, Benjamin Dollard, Lenehan, Bartell
d’Arcy, Joe Hynes, red Murray, editor Brayden, T. M. Healy, Mr Justice
Fitzgibbon, John Howard Parnell, the reverend Tinned Salmon, Professor
Joly, Mrs Breen, Denis Breen, Theodore Purefoy, Mina Purefoy, the
Westland Row postmistress, C. P. M’Coy, friend of Lyons, Hoppy Holohan,
maninthestreet, othermaninthestreet, Footballboots, pugnosed driver,
rich protestant lady, Davy Byrne, Mrs Ellen M’Guinness, Mrs Joe
Gallaher, George Lidwell, Jimmy Henry on corns, Superintendent Laracy,
Father Cowley, Crofton out of the Collector-general’s, Dan Dawson,
dental surgeon Bloom with tweezers, Mrs Bob Doran, Mrs Kennefick, Mrs
Wyse Nolan, John Wyse Nolan,
handsomemarriedwomanrubbedagainstwidebehindinClonskea tram, the
bookseller of_ Sweets of Sin, _Miss Dubedatandshedidbedad, Mesdames
Gerald and Stanislaus Moran of Roebuck, the managing clerk of
Drimmie’s, Wetherup, colonel Hayes, Mastiansky, Citron, Penrose, Aaron
Figatner, Moses Herzog, Michael E Geraghty, Inspector Troy, Mrs
Galbraith, the constable off Eccles street corner, old doctor Brady
with stethoscope, the mystery man on the beach, a retriever, Mrs Miriam
Dandrade and all her lovers.)_
THE HUE AND CRY: _(Helterskelterpelterwelter.)_ He’s Bloom! Stop Bloom!
Stopabloom! Stopperrobber! Hi! Hi! Stophim on the corner!
_(At the corner of Beaver street beneath the scaffolding Bloom panting
stops on the fringe of the noisy quarrelling knot, a lot not knowing a
jot what hi! hi! row and wrangle round the whowhat brawlaltogether.)_
STEPHEN: _(With elaborate gestures, breathing deeply and slowly.)_ You
are my guests. Uninvited. By virtue of the fifth of George and seventh
of Edward. 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. I seen him. The girl there. He was in Mrs
Cohen’s. What’s up? Soldier and civilian.
CISSY CAFFREY: I was in company with the soldiers and they left me to
do—you know, and the young man run up behind me. But I’m faithful to
the man that’s treating me though I’m only a shilling whore.
STEPHEN: _(Catches sight of Lynch’s and Kitty’s heads.)_ Hail,
Sisyphus. _(He points to himself and the others.)_ Poetic. Uropoetic.
VOICES: Shes faithfultheman.
CISSY CAFFREY: Yes, to go with him. And me with a soldier friend.
PRIVATE COMPTON: He doesn’t half want a thick ear, the blighter. Biff
him one, Harry.
PRIVATE CARR: _(To Cissy.)_ Was he insulting you while me and him was
having a piss?
LORD TENNYSON: _(Gentleman poet in Union Jack blazer and cricket
flannels, bareheaded, flowingbearded.)_ Theirs not to reason why.
PRIVATE COMPTON: Biff him, Harry.
STEPHEN: _(To Private Compton.)_ I don’t know your name but you are
quite right. Doctor Swift says one man in armour will beat ten men in
their shirts. Shirt is synechdoche. Part for the whole.
CISSY CAFFREY: _(To the crowd.)_ No, I was with the privates.
STEPHEN: _(Amiably.)_ Why not? The bold soldier boy. In my opinion
every lady for example...
PRIVATE CARR: _(His cap awry, advances to Stephen.)_ Say, how would it
be, governor, if I was to bash in your jaw?
STEPHEN: _(Looks up to the sky.)_ How? Very unpleasant. Noble art of
selfpretence. Personally, I detest action. _(He waves his hand.)_ Hand
hurts me slightly. _Enfin ce sont vos oignons._ _(To Cissy Caffrey.)_
Some trouble is on here. What is it precisely?
DOLLY GRAY: _(From her balcony waves her handkerchief, giving the sign
of the heroine of Jericho.)_ Rahab. Cook’s son, goodbye. Safe home to
Dolly. Dream of the girl you left behind and she will dream of you.
_(The soldiers turn their swimming eyes.)_
BLOOM: _(Elbowing through the crowd, plucks Stephen’s sleeve
vigorously.)_ Come now, professor, that carman is waiting.
STEPHEN: _(Turns.)_ Eh? _(He disengages himself.)_ Why should I not
speak to him or to any human being who walks upright upon this oblate
orange? _(He points his finger.)_ I’m not afraid of what I can talk to
if I see his eye. Retaining the perpendicular.
_(He staggers a pace back.)_
BLOOM: _(Propping him.)_ Retain your own.
STEPHEN: _(Laughs emptily.)_ My centre of gravity is displaced. I have
forgotten the trick. Let us sit down somewhere and discuss. Struggle
for life is the law of existence but but human philirenists, notably
the tsar and the king of England, have invented arbitration. _(He taps
his brow.)_ But in here it is I must kill the priest and the king.
BIDDY THE CLAP: Did you hear what the professor said? He’s a professor
out of the college.
CUNTY KATE: I did. I heard that.
BIDDY THE CLAP: He expresses himself with such marked refinement of
phraseology.
CUNTY KATE: Indeed, yes. And at the same time with such apposite
trenchancy.
PRIVATE CARR: _(Pulls himself free and comes forward.)_ What’s that
you’re saying about my king?
_(Edward the Seventh appears in an archway. He wears a white jersey on
which an image of the Sacred Heart is stitched with the insignia of
Garter and Thistle, Golden Fleece, Elephant of Denmark, Skinner’s and
Probyn’s horse, Lincoln’s Inn bencher and ancient and honourable
artillery company of Massachusetts. He sucks a red jujube. He is robed
as a grand elect perfect and sublime mason with trowel and apron,
marked_ made in Germany. _In his left hand he holds a plasterer’s
bucket on which is printed_ Défense d’uriner. _A roar of welcome greets
him.)_
EDWARD THE SEVENTH: _(Slowly, solemnly but indistinctly.)_ Peace,
perfect peace. For identification, bucket in my hand. Cheerio, boys.
_(He turns to his subjects.)_ We have come here to witness a clean
straight fight and we heartily wish both men the best of good luck.
Mahak makar a bak.
_(He shakes hands with Private Carr, Private Compton, Stephen, Bloom
and Lynch. General applause. Edward the Seventh lifts his bucket
graciously in acknowledgment.)_
PRIVATE CARR: _(To Stephen.)_ Say it again.
STEPHEN: _(Nervous, friendly, pulls himself up.)_ I understand your
point of view though I have no king myself for the moment. This is the
age of patent medicines. A discussion is difficult down here. But this
is the point. You die for your country. Suppose. _(He places his arm on
Private Carr’s sleeve.)_ Not that I wish it for you. But I say: Let my
country die for me. Up to the present it has done so. I didn’t want it
to die. Damn death. Long live life!
EDWARD THE SEVENTH: _(Levitates over heaps of slain, in the garb and
with the halo of Joking Jesus, a white jujube in his phosphorescent
face.)_
 My methods are new and are causing surprise.
 To make the blind see I throw dust in their eyes.
STEPHEN: Kings and unicorns! _(He 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.
Taken a little more than is good for him. Absinthe. Greeneyed monster.
I know him. He’s a gentleman, a poet. It’s all right.
STEPHEN: _(Nods, smiling and laughing.)_ Gentleman, patriot, scholar
and judge of 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 of Paris in black Spanish tasselled shirt and peep-o’-day
boy’s hat signs to Stephen.)_
KEVIN EGAN: H’lo! _Bonjour!_ The _vieille ogresse_ with the _dents
jaunes_.
_(Patrice Egan peeps from behind, his rabbitface nibbling a quince
leaf.)_
PATRICE: _Socialiste!_
DON EMILE PATRIZIO FRANZ RUPERT POPE HENNESSY: _(In medieval hauberk,
two wild geese volant on his helm, with noble indignation points a
mailed hand against the privates.)_ Werf those eykes to footboden, big
grand porcos of johnyellows todos covered of gravy!
BLOOM: _(To Stephen.)_ Come home. You’ll get into trouble.
STEPHEN: _(Swaying.)_ I don’t avoid it. He provokes my intelligence.
BIDDY THE CLAP: One immediately observes that he is of patrician
lineage.
THE VIRAGO: Green above the red, says he. Wolfe Tone.
THE BAWD: The red’s as good as the green. And better. Up the soldiers!
Up King Edward!
A ROUGH: _(Laughs.)_ Ay! Hands up to De Wet.
THE CITIZEN: _(With a huge emerald muffler and shillelagh, calls.)_
 May the God above
 Send down a dove
 With teeth as sharp as razors
 To slit the throats
 Of the English dogs
 That hanged our Irish leaders.
THE CROPPY BOY: _(The ropenoose round his neck, gripes in his issuing
bowels with both hands.)_
 I bear no hate to a living thing,
 But I love my country beyond the king.
RUMBOLD, DEMON BARBER: _(Accompanied by two blackmasked assistants,
advances with gladstone bag which he opens.)_ Ladies and gents, cleaver
purchased by Mrs Pearcy to slay Mogg. Knife with which Voisin
dismembered the wife of a compatriot and hid remains in a sheet in the
cellar, the unfortunate female’s throat being cut from ear to ear.
Phial containing arsenic retrieved from body of Miss Barron which sent
Seddon to the gallows.
_(He jerks the rope. The assistants leap at the victim’s legs and drag
him downward, grunting: the croppy boy’s tongue protrudes violently.)_
THE CROPPY BOY:
 Horhot ho hray hor hother’s hest.
_(He gives up the ghost. A violent erection of the hanged sends gouts
of sperm spouting through his deathclothes on to the cobblestones. Mrs
Bellingham, Mrs Yelverton Barry and the Honourable Mrs Mervyn Talboys
rush forward with their handkerchiefs to sop it up.)_
RUMBOLD: I’m near it myself. _(He undoes the noose.)_ Rope which hanged
the awful rebel. Ten shillings a time. As applied to Her Royal
Highness. _(He plunges his head into the gaping belly of the hanged and
draws out his head again clotted with coiled and smoking entrails.)_ My
painful duty has now been done. God save the king!
EDWARD THE SEVENTH: _(Dances slowly, solemnly, rattling his bucket, and
sings with soft contentment.)_
 On coronation day, on coronation day,
 O, won’t we have a merry time,
 Drinking whisky, beer and wine!
PRIVATE CARR: Here. What are you saying about my king?
STEPHEN: _(Throws up his hands.)_ O, this is too monotonous! Nothing.
He wants my money and my life, though want must be his master, for some
brutish empire of his. Money I haven’t. _(He searches his pockets
vaguely.)_ Gave it to someone.
PRIVATE CARR: Who wants your bleeding money?
STEPHEN: _(Tries to move off.)_ Will someone tell me where I am least
likely to meet these necessary evils? _Ça se voit aussi à Paris._ Not
that I... But, by Saint Patrick...!
_(The women’s heads coalesce. Old Gummy Granny in sugarloaf hat appears
seated on a toadstool, the deathflower of the potato blight on her
breast.)_
STEPHEN: Aha! I know you, gammer! Hamlet, revenge! The old sow that
eats her farrow!
OLD GUMMY GRANNY: _(Rocking to and fro.)_ Ireland’s sweetheart, the
king of Spain’s daughter, alanna. Strangers in my house, bad manners to
them! _(She keens with banshee woe.)_ Ochone! Ochone! Silk of the kine!
_(She wails.)_ You met with poor old Ireland and how does she stand?
STEPHEN: How do I stand you? The hat trick! Where’s the third person of
the Blessed Trinity? Soggarth Aroon? The reverend Carrion Crow.
CISSY CAFFREY: _(Shrill.)_ Stop them from fighting!
A ROUGH: Our men retreated.
PRIVATE CARR: _(Tugging at his belt.)_ I’ll wring the neck of any
fucker says a word against my fucking king.
BLOOM: _(Terrified.)_ He said nothing. Not a word. A pure
misunderstanding.
THE CITIZEN: _Erin go bragh!_
_(Major Tweedy and the Citizen exhibit to each other medals,
decorations, trophies of war, wounds. Both salute with fierce
hostility.)_
PRIVATE COMPTON: Go it, Harry. Do him one in the eye. He’s a proboer.
STEPHEN: Did I? When?
BLOOM: _(To the redcoats.)_ We fought for you in South Africa, Irish
missile troops. Isn’t that history? Royal Dublin Fusiliers. Honoured by
our monarch.
THE NAVVY: _(Staggering past.)_ O, yes! O God, yes! O, make the kwawr a
krowawr! O! Bo!
_(Casqued halberdiers in armour thrust forward a pentice of gutted
spearpoints. Major Tweedy, moustached like Turko the terrible, in
bearskin cap with hackleplume and accoutrements, with epaulettes, gilt
chevrons and sabretaches, his breast bright with medals, toes the line.
He gives the pilgrim warrior’s sign of the knights templars.)_
MAJOR TWEEDY: _(Growls gruffly.)_ Rorke’s Drift! Up, guards, and at
them! Mahar 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.
_(Massed bands blare_ Garryowen _and_ God save the King.)
CISSY CAFFREY: They’re going to fight. For me!
CUNTY KATE: The brave and the fair.
BIDDY THE CLAP: Methinks yon sable knight will joust it with the best.
CUNTY KATE: _(Blushing deeply.)_ Nay, madam. The gules doublet and
merry saint George for me!
STEPHEN:
 The harlot’s cry from street to street
 Shall weave Old Ireland’s windingsheet.
PRIVATE CARR: _(Loosening his belt, shouts.)_ I’ll wring the neck of
any fucking bastard says a word against my bleeding fucking king.
BLOOM: _(Shakes Cissy Caffrey’s shoulders.)_ Speak, you! Are you struck
dumb? You are the link between nations and generations. Speak, woman,
sacred lifegiver!
CISSY CAFFREY: _(Alarmed, seizes Private Carr’s sleeve.)_ Amn’t I with
you? Amn’t I your girl? Cissy’s your girl. _(She cries.)_ Police!
STEPHEN: _(Ecstatically, to Cissy Caffrey.)_
 White thy fambles, red thy gan
 And thy quarrons dainty is.
VOICES: Police!
DISTANT VOICES: Dublin’s burning! Dublin’s burning! On fire, on fire!
_(Brimstone fires spring up. Dense clouds roll past. Heavy Gatling guns
boom. Pandemonium. Troops deploy. Gallop of hoofs. Artillery. Hoarse
commands. Bells clang. Backers shout. Drunkards bawl. Whores screech.
Foghorns hoot. Cries of valour. Shrieks of dying. Pikes clash on
cuirasses. Thieves rob the slain. Birds of prey, winging from the sea,
rising from marshlands, swooping from eyries, hover screaming, gannets,
cormorants, vultures, goshawks, climbing woodcocks, peregrines,
merlins, blackgrouse, sea eagles, gulls, albatrosses, barnacle geese.
The midnight sun is darkened. The earth trembles. The dead of Dublin
from Prospect and Mount Jerome in white sheepskin overcoats and black
goatfell cloaks arise and appear to many. A chasm opens with a
noiseless yawn. Tom Rochford, winner, in athlete’s singlet and
breeches, arrives at the head of the national hurdle handicap and leaps
into the void. He is followed by a race of runners and leapers. In wild
attitudes they spring from the brink. Their bodies plunge. Factory
lasses with fancy clothes toss redhot Yorkshire baraabombs. Society
ladies lift their skirts above their heads to protect themselves.
Laughing witches in red cutty sarks ride through the air on
broomsticks. Quakerlyster plasters blisters. It rains dragons’ teeth.
Armed heroes spring up from furrows. They exchange in amity the pass of
knights of the red cross and fight duels with cavalry sabres: Wolfe
Tone against Henry Grattan, Smith O’Brien against Daniel O’Connell,
Michael Davitt against Isaac Butt, Justin M’Carthy against Parnell,
Arthur Griffith against John Redmond, John O’Leary against Lear
O’Johnny, Lord Edward Fitzgerald against Lord Gerald Fitzedward, The
O’Donoghue of the Glens against The Glens of The O’Donoghue. On an
eminence, the centre of the earth, rises the fieldaltar of Saint
Barbara. Black candles rise from its gospel and epistle horns. From the
high barbacans of the tower two shafts of light fall on the smokepalled
altarstone. On the altarstone Mrs Mina Purefoy, goddess of unreason,
lies, naked, fettered, a chalice resting on her swollen belly. Father
Malachi O’Flynn in a lace petticoat and reversed chasuble, his two left
feet back to the front, celebrates camp mass. The Reverend Mr Hugh C
Haines Love M. A. in a plain cassock and mortarboard, his head and
collar back to the front, holds over the celebrant’s head an open
umbrella.)_
FATHER MALACHI O’FLYNN: _Introibo ad altare diaboli._
THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE: To the devil which hath made glad my young
days.
FATHER MALACHI O’FLYNN: _(Takes from the chalice and elevates a
blooddripping host.) Corpus meum._
THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE: _(Raises high behind the celebrant’s
petticoat, revealing his grey bare hairy buttocks between which a
carrot is stuck.)_ My body.
THE VOICE OF ALL THE DAMNED: Htengier Tnetopinmo Dog Drol eht rof,
Aiulella!
_(From on high the voice of Adonai calls.)_
ADONAI: Dooooooooooog!
THE VOICE OF ALL THE BLESSED: Alleluia, for the Lord God Omnipotent
reigneth!
_(From on high the voice of Adonai calls.)_
ADONAI: Goooooooooood!
_(In strident discord peasants and townsmen of Orange and Green
factions sing_ Kick the Pope _and_ Daily, daily sing to Mary.)
PRIVATE CARR: _(With ferocious articulation.)_ I’ll do him in, so help
me fucking Christ! I’ll wring the bastard fucker’s bleeding blasted
fucking windpipe!
_(The retriever, nosing on the fringe of the crowd, barks noisily.)_
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.
_(He drags Kitty away.)_
STEPHEN: _(Points.) Exit Judas. Et laqueo se suspendit._
BLOOM: _(Runs to Stephen.)_ Come along with me now before worse
happens. Here’s your stick.
STEPHEN: Stick, no. Reason. This feast of pure reason.
CISSY CAFFREY: _(Pulling Private Carr.)_ Come on, you’re boosed. He
insulted me but I forgive him. _(Shouting in his ear.)_ I forgive him
for insulting me.
BLOOM: _(Over Stephen’s shoulder.)_ Yes, go. You see he’s incapable.
PRIVATE CARR: _(Breaks loose.)_ I’ll insult him.
_(He rushes towards Stephen, fist outstretched, and strikes him in the
face. Stephen totters, collapses, falls, stunned. He lies prone, his
face to the sky, his hat rolling to the wall. Bloom follows and picks
it up.)_
MAJOR TWEEDY: _(Loudly.)_ Carbine in bucket! Cease fire! Salute!
THE RETRIEVER: _(Barking furiously.)_ Ute ute ute ute ute ute ute ute.
THE CROWD: Let him up! Don’t strike him when he’s down! Air! Who? The
soldier hit him. He’s a professor. Is he hurted? Don’t manhandle him!
He’s fainted!
A HAG: What call had the redcoat to strike the gentleman and he under
the influence. Let them go and fight the Boers!
THE BAWD: Listen to who’s talking! Hasn’t the soldier a right to go
with his girl? He gave him the coward’s blow.
_(They grab at each other’s hair, claw at each other and spit.)_
THE RETRIEVER: _(Barking.)_ Wow wow wow.
BLOOM: _(Shoves them back, loudly.)_ Get back, stand back!
PRIVATE COMPTON: _(Tugging his comrade.)_ Here. Bugger off, Harry.
Here’s the cops! _(Two raincaped watch, tall, stand in the group.)_
FIRST WATCH: What’s wrong here?
PRIVATE COMPTON: We were with this lady. And he insulted us. And
assaulted my chum. _(The retriever barks.)_ Who owns the bleeding tyke?
CISSY CAFFREY: _(With expectation.)_ Is he bleeding!
A MAN: _(Rising from his knees.)_ No. Gone off. He’ll come to all
right.
BLOOM: _(Glances sharply at the man.)_ Leave him to me. I can easily...
SECOND WATCH: Who are you? Do you know him?
PRIVATE CARR: _(Lurches towards the watch.)_ He insulted my lady
friend.
BLOOM: _(Angrily.)_ You hit him without provocation. I’m a witness.
Constable, take his regimental number.
SECOND WATCH: I don’t want your instructions in the discharge of my
duty.
PRIVATE COMPTON: _(Pulling his comrade.)_ Here, bugger off Harry. Or
Bennett’ll shove you in the lockup.
PRIVATE CARR: _(Staggering as he is pulled away.)_ God fuck old
Bennett. He’s a whitearsed bugger. I don’t give a shit for him.
FIRST WATCH: _(Takes out his notebook.)_ What’s his name?
BLOOM: _(Peering over the crowd.)_ I just see a car there. If you give
me a hand a second, sergeant...
FIRST WATCH: Name and address.
_(Corny Kelleher, weepers round his hat, a death wreath in his hand,
appears among the bystanders.)_
BLOOM: _(Quickly.)_ O, the very man! _(He whispers.)_ Simon Dedalus’
son. A bit sprung. Get those policemen to move those loafers back.
SECOND WATCH: Night, Mr Kelleher.
CORNY KELLEHER: _(To the watch, with drawling eye.)_ That’s all right.
I know him. Won a bit on the races. Gold cup. Throwaway. _(He laughs.)_
Twenty to one. Do you follow me?
FIRST WATCH: _(Turns to the crowd.)_ Here, what are you all gaping at?
Move on out of that.
_(The crowd disperses slowly, muttering, down the lane.)_
CORNY KELLEHER: Leave it to me, sergeant. That’ll be all right. _(He
laughs, shaking his head.)_ We were often as bad ourselves, ay or
worse. What? Eh, what?
FIRST WATCH: _(Laughs.)_ I suppose so.
CORNY KELLEHER: _(Nudges the second watch.)_ Come and wipe your name
off the slate. _(He lilts, wagging his head.)_ With my tooraloom
tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom. What, eh, do you follow me?
SECOND WATCH: _(Genially.)_ Ah, sure we were too.
CORNY KELLEHER: _(Winking.)_ Boys will be boys. I’ve a car round there.
SECOND WATCH: All right, Mr Kelleher. Good night.
CORNY KELLEHER: I’ll see to that.
BLOOM: _(Shakes hands with both of the watch in turn.)_ Thank you very
much, gentlemen. Thank you. _(He mumbles confidentially.)_ We don’t
want any scandal, you understand. Father is a wellknown highly
respected 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 to
report it at the station.
BLOOM: _(Nods rapidly.)_ Naturally. Quite right. Only your bounden
duty.
SECOND WATCH: It’s our duty.
CORNY KELLEHER: Good night, men.
THE WATCH: _(Saluting together.)_ Night, gentlemen. _(They move off
with slow heavy tread.)_
BLOOM: _(Blows.)_ Providential you came on the scene. You have a
car?...
CORNY KELLEHER: _(Laughs, pointing his thumb over his right shoulder to
the car brought up against the scaffolding.)_ Two commercials that were
standing fizz in Jammet’s. Like princes, faith. One of them lost two
quid on the race. Drowning his grief. And were on for a go with the
jolly girls. So I landed them up on Behan’s car and down to nighttown.
BLOOM: I was just going home by Gardiner street when I happened to...
CORNY KELLEHER: _(Laughs.)_ Sure they wanted me to join in with the
mots. No, by God, says I. Not for old stagers like myself and yourself.
_(He laughs again and leers with lacklustre eye.)_ Thanks be to God we
have it in the house, what, eh, do you follow me? Hah, hah, hah!
BLOOM: _(Tries to laugh.)_ He, he, he! Yes. Matter of fact I was just
visiting an old friend of mine there, Virag, you don’t know him (poor
fellow, he’s laid up for the past week) and we had a liquor together
and I was just making my way home...
_(The horse neighs.)_
THE HORSE: Hohohohohohoh! Hohohohome!
CORNY KELLEHER: Sure it was Behan our jarvey there that told me after
we left the two commercials in Mrs Cohen’s and I told him to pull up
and got off to see. _(He laughs.)_ Sober hearsedrivers a speciality.
Will I give him a lift home? Where does he hang out? Somewhere in
Cabra, what?
BLOOM: No, in Sandycove, I believe, from what he let drop.
_(Stephen, prone, breathes to the stars. Corny Kelleher, asquint,
drawls at the horse. Bloom, in gloom, looms down.)_
CORNY KELLEHER: _(Scratches his nape.)_ Sandycove! _(He bends down and
calls to Stephen.)_ Eh! _(He calls again.)_ Eh! He’s covered with
shavings anyhow. Take care they didn’t lift anything off him.
BLOOM: No, no, no. I have his money and his hat here and stick.
CORNY KELLEHER: Ah, well, he’ll get over it. No bones broken. Well,
I’ll shove along. _(He laughs.)_ I’ve a rendezvous in the morning.
Burying the dead. Safe home!
THE HORSE: _(Neighs.)_ Hohohohohome.
BLOOM: Good night. I’ll just wait and take him along in a few...
_(Corny Kelleher returns to the outside car and mounts it. The horse
harness jingles.)_
CORNY KELLEHER: _(From the car, standing.)_ Night.
BLOOM: Night.
_(The jarvey chucks the reins and raises his whip encouragingly. The
car and horse back slowly, awkwardly, and turn. Corny Kelleher on the
sideseat sways his head to and fro in sign of mirth at Bloom’s plight.
The jarvey joins in the mute pantomimic merriment nodding from the
farther seat. Bloom shakes his head in mute mirthful reply. With thumb
and palm Corny Kelleher reassures that the two bobbies will allow the
sleep to continue for what else is to be done. With a slow nod Bloom
conveys his gratitude as that is exactly what Stephen needs. The car
jingles tooraloom round the corner of the tooraloom lane. Corny
Kelleher again reassuralooms with his hand. Bloom with his hand
assuralooms Corny Kelleher that he is reassuraloomtay. The tinkling
hoofs and jingling harness grow fainter with their tooralooloo looloo
lay. Bloom, holding in his hand Stephen’s hat, festooned with shavings,
and ashplant, stands irresolute. Then he bends to him and shakes him by
the shoulder.)_
BLOOM: Eh! Ho! _(There is no answer; he bends again.)_ Mr Dedalus!
_(There is no answer.)_ The name if you call. Somnambulist. _(He bends
again and, 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?...
_(He turns on his left side, sighing, doubling himself together.)_
BLOOM: Poetry. Well educated. Pity. _(He bends again and undoes the
buttons of Stephen’s waistcoat.)_ To breathe. _(He brushes the
woodshavings from Stephen’s clothes with light hand and fingers.)_ One
pound seven. Not hurt anyhow. _(He listens.)_ What?
STEPHEN: _(Murmurs.)_
 ... shadows... the woods
 ... white breast... dim sea.
_(He stretches out his arms, sighs again and curls his body. Bloom,
holding the hat and ashplant, stands erect. A dog barks in the
distance. Bloom tightens and loosens his grip on the ashplant. He looks
down on Stephen’s face and form.)_
BLOOM: _(Communes with the night.)_ Face reminds me of his poor mother.
In the shady wood. The deep white breast. Ferguson, I think I caught. A
girl. Some girl. Best thing could happen him. _(He murmurs.)_... swear
that I will always hail, ever conceal, never reveal, any part or parts,
art or arts... _(He murmurs.)_... in the rough sands of the sea... a
cabletow’s length from the shore... where the tide ebbs... and flows
...
_(Silent, thoughtful, alert he stands on guard, his fingers at his lips
in the attitude of secret master. Against the dark wall a figure
appears slowly, a fairy boy of eleven, a changeling, kidnapped, dressed
in an Eton suit with glass shoes and a little bronze helmet, holding a
book in his hand. He reads from right to left inaudibly, smiling,
kissing the page.)_
BLOOM: _(Wonderstruck, calls inaudibly.)_ Rudy!
RUDY: _(Gazes, unseeing, into Bloom’s eyes and goes on reading,
kissing, smiling. He has a delicate mauve face. On his suit he has
diamond and ruby buttons. In his free left hand he holds a slim ivory
cane with a violet bowknot. A white lambkin peeps out of his waistcoat
pocket.)_
— III —
[ 16 ]
Preparatory to anything else Mr Bloom brushed off the greater bulk of
the shavings and handed Stephen the hat and ashplant and bucked him up
generally in orthodox Samaritan fashion which he very badly needed. His
(Stephen’s) mind was not exactly what you would call wandering but a
bit unsteady and on his expressed desire for some beverage to drink Mr
Bloom in view of the hour it was and there being no pump of Vartry
water available for their ablutions let alone drinking purposes hit
upon an expedient by suggesting, off the reel, the propriety of the
cabman’s shelter, as it was called, hardly a stonesthrow away near Butt
bridge where they might hit upon some drinkables in the shape of a milk
and soda or a mineral. But how to get there was the rub. For the nonce
he was rather nonplussed but inasmuch as the duty plainly devolved upon
him to take some measures on the subject he pondered suitable ways and
means during which Stephen repeatedly yawned. So far as he could see he
was rather pale in the face so that it occurred to him as highly
advisable to get a conveyance of some description which would answer in
their then condition, both of them being e.d.ed, particularly Stephen,
always assuming that there was such a thing to be found. Accordingly
after a few such preliminaries as brushing, in spite of his having
forgotten to take up his rather soapsuddy handkerchief after it had
done yeoman service in the shaving line, they both walked together
along Beaver street or, more properly, lane as far as the farrier’s and
the distinctly fetid atmosphere of the livery stables at the corner of
Montgomery street where they made tracks to the left from thence
debouching into Amiens street round by the corner of Dan Bergin’s. But
as he confidently anticipated there was not a sign of a Jehu plying for
hire anywhere to be seen except a fourwheeler, probably engaged by some
fellows inside on the spree, outside the North Star hotel and there was
no symptom of its budging a quarter of an inch when Mr Bloom, who was
anything but a professional whistler, endeavoured to hail it by
emitting a kind of a whistle, holding his arms arched over his head,
twice.
This was a quandary but, bringing common sense to bear on it, evidently
there was nothing for it but put a good face on the matter and foot it
which they accordingly did. So, bevelling around by Mullett’s and the
Signal House which they shortly reached, they proceeded perforce in the
direction of Amiens street railway terminus, Mr Bloom being handicapped
by the circumstance that one of the back buttons of his trousers had,
to vary the timehonoured adage, gone the way of all buttons though,
entering thoroughly into the spirit of the thing, he heroically made
light of the mischance. So as neither of them were particularly pressed
for time, as it happened, and the temperature refreshing since it
cleared up after the recent visitation of Jupiter Pluvius, they
dandered along past by where the empty vehicle was waiting without a
fare or a jarvey. As it so happened a Dublin United Tramways Company’s
sandstrewer happened to be returning and the elder man recounted to his
companion _à propos_ of the incident his own truly miraculous escape of
some little while back. They passed the main entrance of the Great
Northern railway station, the starting point for Belfast, where of
course all traffic was suspended at that late hour and passing the
backdoor of the morgue (a not very enticing locality, not to say
gruesome to a degree, more especially at night) ultimately gained the
Dock Tavern and in due course turned into Store street, famous for its
C division police station. Between this point and the high at present
unlit warehouses of Beresford place Stephen thought to think of Ibsen,
associated with Baird’s the stonecutter’s in his mind somehow in Talbot
place, first turning on the right, while the other who was acting as
his _fidus Achates_ inhaled with internal satisfaction the smell of
James Rourke’s city bakery, situated quite close to where they were,
the very palatable odour indeed of our daily bread, of all commodities
of the public the primary and most indispensable. Bread, the staff of
life, earn your bread, O tell me where is fancy bread, at Rourke’s the
baker’s it is said.
_En route_ to his taciturn and, not to put too fine a point on it, not
yet perfectly sober companion Mr Bloom who at all events was in
complete possession of his faculties, never more so, in fact
disgustingly sober, spoke a word of caution _re_ the dangers of
nighttown, women of ill fame and swell mobsmen, which, barely
permissible once in a while though not as a habitual practice, was of
the nature of a regular deathtrap for young fellows of his age
particularly if they had acquired drinking habits under the influence
of liquor unless you knew a little jiujitsu for every contingency as
even a fellow on the broad of his back could administer a nasty kick if
you didn’t look out. Highly providential was the appearance on the
scene of Corny Kelleher when Stephen was blissfully unconscious but for
that man in the gap turning up at the eleventh hour the finis might
have been that he might have been a candidate for the accident ward or,
failing that, the bridewell and an appearance in the court next day
before Mr Tobias or, he being the solicitor rather, old Wall, he meant
to say, or Mahony which simply spelt ruin for a chap when it got
bruited about. The reason he mentioned the fact was that a lot of those
policemen, whom he cordially disliked, were admittedly unscrupulous in
the service of the Crown and, as Mr Bloom put it, recalling a case or
two in the A division in Clanbrassil street, prepared to swear a hole
through a ten gallon pot. Never on the spot when wanted but in quiet
parts of the city, Pembroke road for example, the guardians of the law
were well in evidence, the obvious reason being they were paid to
protect the upper classes. Another thing he commented on was equipping
soldiers with firearms or sidearms of any description liable to go off
at any time which was tantamount to inciting them against civilians
should by any chance they fall out over anything. You frittered away
your time, he very sensibly maintained, and health and also character
besides which, the squandermania of the thing, fast women of the
_demimonde_ ran away with a lot of £. s. d. into the bargain and the
greatest danger of all was who you got drunk with though, touching the
much vexed question of stimulants, he relished a glass of choice old
wine in season as both nourishing and bloodmaking and possessing
aperient virtues (notably a good burgundy which he was a staunch
believer in) still never beyond a certain point where he invariably
drew the line as it simply led to trouble all round to say nothing of
your being at the tender mercy of others practically. Most of all he
commented adversely on the desertion of Stephen by all his pubhunting
_confrères_ but one, a most glaring piece of ratting on the part of his
brother medicos under all the circs.
—And that one was Judas, Stephen said, who up to then had said nothing
whatsoever of any kind.
Discussing these and kindred topics they made a beeline across the back
of the Customhouse and passed under the Loop Line bridge where a
brazier of coke burning in front of a sentrybox or something like one
attracted their rather lagging footsteps. Stephen of his own accord
stopped for no special reason to look at the heap of barren
cobblestones and by the light emanating from the brazier he could just
make out the darker figure of the corporation watchman inside the gloom
of the sentrybox. He began to remember that this had happened or had
been mentioned as having happened before but it cost him no small
effort before he remembered that he recognised in the sentry a
_quondam_ friend of his father’s, Gumley. To avoid a meeting he drew
nearer to the pillars of the railway bridge.
—Someone saluted you, Mr Bloom said.
A figure of middle height on the prowl evidently under the arches
saluted again, calling:
—Night!
Stephen of course started rather dizzily and stopped to return the
compliment. Mr Bloom actuated by motives of inherent delicacy inasmuch
as he always believed in minding his own business moved off but
nevertheless remained on the _qui vive_ with just a shade of anxiety
though not funkyish in the least. Though unusual in the Dublin area he
knew that it was not by any means unknown for desperadoes who had next
to nothing to live on to be abroad waylaying and generally terrorising
peaceable pedestrians by placing a pistol at their head in some
secluded spot outside the city proper, famished loiterers of the Thames
embankment category they might be hanging about there or simply
marauders ready to decamp with whatever boodle they could in one fell
swoop at a moment’s notice, your money or your life, leaving you there
to point a moral, gagged and garrotted.
Stephen, that is when the accosting figure came to close quarters,
though he was not in an over sober state himself recognised Corley’s
breath redolent of rotten cornjuice. Lord John Corley some called him
and his genealogy came about in this wise. He was the eldest son of
inspector Corley of the G division, lately deceased, who had married a
certain Katherine Brophy, the daughter of a Louth farmer. His
grandfather Patrick Michael Corley of New Ross had married the widow of
a publican there whose maiden name had been Katherine (also) Talbot.
Rumour had it (though not proved) that she descended from the house of
the lords Talbot de Malahide in whose mansion, really an unquestionably
fine residence of its kind and well worth seeing, her mother or aunt or
some relative, a woman, as the tale went, of extreme beauty, had
enjoyed the distinction of being in service in the washkitchen. This
therefore was the reason why the still comparatively young though
dissolute man who now addressed Stephen was spoken of by some with
facetious proclivities as Lord John Corley.
Taking Stephen on one side he had the customary doleful ditty to tell.
Not as much as a farthing to purchase a night’s lodgings. His friends
had all deserted him. Furthermore he had a row with Lenehan and called
him to Stephen a mean bloody swab with a sprinkling of a number of
other uncalledfor expressions. He was out of a job and implored of
Stephen to tell him where on God’s earth he could get something,
anything at all, to do. No, it was the daughter of the mother in the
washkitchen that was fostersister to the heir of the house or else they
were connected through the mother in some way, both occurrences
happening at the same time if the whole thing wasn’t a complete
fabrication from start to finish. Anyhow he was all in.
—I wouldn’t ask you only, pursued he, on my solemn oath and God knows
I’m on the rocks.
—There’ll be a job tomorrow or next day, Stephen told him, in a boys’
school at Dalkey for a gentleman usher. Mr Garrett Deasy. Try it. You
may mention my name.
—Ah, God, Corley replied, sure I couldn’t teach in a school, man. I was
never one of your bright ones, he added with a half laugh. I got stuck
twice in the junior at the christian brothers.
—I have no place to sleep myself, Stephen informed him.
Corley at the first go-off was inclined to suspect it was something to
do with Stephen being fired out of his digs for bringing in a bloody
tart off the street. There was a dosshouse in Marlborough street, Mrs
Maloney’s, but it was only a tanner touch and full of undesirables but
M’Conachie told him you got a decent enough do in the Brazen Head over
in Winetavern street (which was distantly suggestive to the person
addressed of friar Bacon) for a bob. He was starving too though he
hadn’t said a word about it.
Though this sort of thing went on every other night or very near it
still Stephen’s feelings got the better of him in a sense though he
knew that Corley’s brandnew rigmarole on a par with the others was
hardly deserving of much credence. However _haud ignarus malorum
miseris succurrere disco etcetera_ as the Latin poet remarks especially
as luck would have it he got paid his screw after every middle of the
month on the sixteenth which was the date of the month as a matter of
fact though a good bit of the wherewithal was demolished. But the cream
of the joke was nothing would get it out of Corley’s head that he was
living in affluence and hadn’t a thing to do but hand out the needful.
Whereas. He put his hand in a pocket anyhow not with the idea of
finding any food there but thinking he might lend him anything up to a
bob or so in lieu so that he might endeavour at all events and get
sufficient to eat but the result was in the negative for, to his
chagrin, he found his cash missing. A few broken biscuits were all the
result of his investigation. He tried his hardest to recollect for the
moment whether he had lost as well he might have or left because in
that contingency it was not a pleasant lookout, very much the reverse
in fact. He was altogether too fagged out to institute a thorough
search though he tried to recollect. About biscuits he dimly
remembered. Who now exactly gave them he wondered or where was or did
he buy. However in another pocket he came across what he surmised in
the dark were pennies, erroneously however, as it turned out.
—Those are halfcrowns, man, Corley corrected him.
And so in point of fact they turned out to be. Stephen anyhow lent him
one of them.
—Thanks, Corley answered, you’re a gentleman. I’ll pay you back one
time. Who’s that with you? I saw him a few times in the Bleeding Horse
in Camden street with Boylan, the billsticker. You might put in a good
word for us to get me taken on there. I’d carry a sandwichboard only
the girl in the office told me they’re full up for the next three
weeks, man. God, you’ve to book ahead, man, you’d think it was for the
Carl Rosa. I don’t give a shite anyway so long as I get a job, even as
a crossing sweeper.
Subsequently being not quite so down in the mouth after the two and six
he got he informed Stephen about a fellow by the name of Bags Comisky
that he said Stephen knew well out of Fullam’s, the shipchandler’s,
bookkeeper there that used to be often round in Nagle’s back with
O’Mara and a little chap with a stutter the name of Tighe. Anyhow he
was lagged the night before last and fined ten bob for a drunk and
disorderly and refusing to go with the constable.
Mr Bloom in the meanwhile kept dodging about in the vicinity of the
cobblestones near the brazier of coke in front of the corporation
watchman’s sentrybox who evidently a glutton for work, it struck him,
was having a quiet forty winks for all intents and purposes on his own
private account while Dublin slept. He threw an odd eye at the same
time now and then at Stephen’s anything but immaculately attired
interlocutor as if he had seen that nobleman somewhere or other though
where he was not in a position to truthfully state nor had he the
remotest idea when. Being a levelheaded individual who could give
points to not a few in point of shrewd observation he also remarked on
his very dilapidated hat and slouchy wearing apparel generally
testifying to a chronic impecuniosity. Palpably he was one of his
hangerson but for the matter of that it was merely a question of one
preying on his nextdoor neighbour all round, in every deep, so to put
it, a deeper depth and for the matter of that if the man in the street
chanced to be in the dock himself penal servitude with or without the
option of a fine would be a very _rara avis_ altogether. In any case he
had a consummate amount of cool assurance intercepting people at that
hour of the night or morning. Pretty thick that was certainly.
The pair parted company and Stephen rejoined Mr Bloom who, with his
practised eye, was not without perceiving that he had succumbed to the
blandiloquence of the other parasite. Alluding to the encounter he
said, laughingly, Stephen, that is:
—He is down on his luck. He asked me to ask you to ask somebody named
Boylan, a billsticker, to give him a job as a sandwichman.
At this intelligence, in which he seemingly evinced little interest, Mr
Bloom gazed abstractedly for the space of a half a second or so in the
direction of a bucketdredger, rejoicing in the farfamed name of Eblana,
moored alongside Customhouse quay and quite possibly out of repair,
whereupon he observed evasively:
—Everybody gets their own ration of luck, they say. Now you mention it
his face was familiar to me. But, leaving that for the moment, how much
did you part with, he queried, if I am not too inquisitive?
—Half a crown, Stephen responded. I daresay he needs it to sleep
somewhere.
—Needs! Mr Bloom ejaculated, professing not the least surprise at the
intelligence, I can quite credit the assertion and I guarantee he
invariably does. Everyone according to his needs or everyone according
to his deeds. But, talking about things in general, where, added he
with a smile, will you sleep yourself? Walking to Sandycove is out of
the question. And even supposing you did you won’t get in after what
occurred at Westland Row station. Simply fag out there for nothing. I
don’t mean to presume to dictate to you in the slightest degree but why
did you leave your father’s house?
—To seek misfortune, was Stephen’s answer.
—I met your respected father on a recent occasion, Mr Bloom
diplomatically returned, today in fact, or to be strictly accurate, on
yesterday. Where does he live at present? I gathered in the course of
conversation that he had moved.
—I believe he is in Dublin somewhere, Stephen answered unconcernedly.
Why?
—A gifted man, Mr Bloom said of Mr Dedalus senior, in more respects
than one and a born _raconteur_ if ever there was one. He takes great
pride, quite legitimate, out of you. You could go back perhaps, he
hasarded, still thinking of the very unpleasant scene at Westland Row
terminus when it was perfectly evident that the other two, Mulligan,
that is, and that English tourist friend of his, who eventually euchred
their third companion, were patently trying as if the whole bally
station belonged to them to give Stephen the slip in the confusion,
which they did.
There was no response forthcoming to the suggestion however, such as it
was, Stephen’s mind’s eye being too busily engaged in repicturing his
family hearth the last time he saw it with his sister Dilly sitting by
the ingle, her hair hanging down, waiting for some weak Trinidad shell
cocoa that was in the sootcoated kettle to be done so that she and he
could drink it with the oatmealwater for milk after the Friday herrings
they had eaten at two a penny with an egg apiece for Maggy, Boody and
Katey, the cat meanwhile under the mangle devouring a mess of eggshells
and charred fish heads and bones on a square of brown paper, in
accordance with the third precept of the church to fast and abstain on
the days commanded, it being quarter tense or if not, ember days or
something like that.
—No, Mr Bloom repeated again, I wouldn’t personally repose much trust
in that boon companion of yours who contributes the humorous element,
Dr Mulligan, as a guide, philosopher and friend if I were in your
shoes. He knows which side his bread is buttered on though in all
probability he never realised what it is to be without regular meals.
Of course you didn’t notice as much as I did. But it wouldn’t occasion
me the least surprise to learn that a pinch of tobacco or some narcotic
was put in your drink for some ulterior object.
He understood however from all he heard that Dr Mulligan was a
versatile allround man, by no means confined to medicine only, who was
rapidly coming to the fore in his line and, if the report was verified,
bade fair to enjoy a flourishing practice in the not too distant future
as a tony medical practitioner drawing a handsome fee for his services
in addition to which professional status his rescue of that man from
certain drowning by artificial respiration and what they call first aid
at Skerries, or Malahide was it?, was, he was bound to admit, an
exceedingly plucky deed which he could not too highly praise, so that
frankly he was utterly at a loss to fathom what earthly reason could be
at the back of it except he put it down to sheer cussedness or
jealousy, pure and simple.
—Except it simply amounts to one thing and he is what they call picking
your brains, he ventured to throw out.
The guarded glance of half solicitude half curiosity augmented by
friendliness which he gave at Stephen’s at present morose expression of
features did not throw a flood of light, none at all in fact on the
problem as to whether he had let himself be badly bamboozled to judge
by two or three lowspirited remarks he let drop or the other way about
saw through the affair and for some reason or other best known to
himself allowed matters to more or less. Grinding poverty did have that
effect and he more than conjectured that, high educational abilities
though he possessed, he experienced no little difficulty in making both
ends meet.
Adjacent to the men’s public urinal they perceived an icecream car
round which a group of presumably Italians in heated altercation were
getting rid of voluble expressions in their vivacious language in a
particularly animated way, there being some little differences between
the parties.
—_Puttana madonna, che ci dia i quattrini! Ho ragione? Culo rotto!_
_—Intendiamoci. Mezzo sovrano più..._
_—Dice lui, però!_
_—Mezzo._
_—Farabutto! Mortacci sui!_
_—Ma ascolta! Cinque la testa più..._
Mr Bloom and Stephen entered the cabman’s shelter, an unpretentious
wooden structure, where, prior to then, he had rarely if ever been
before, the former having previously whispered to the latter a few
hints anent the keeper of it said to be the once famous Skin-the-Goat
Fitzharris, the invincible, though he could not vouch for the actual
facts which quite possibly there was not one vestige of truth in. A few
moments later saw our two noctambules safely seated in a discreet
corner only to be greeted by stares from the decidedly miscellaneous
collection of waifs and strays and other nondescript specimens of the
genus _homo_ already there engaged in eating and drinking diversified
by conversation for whom they seemingly formed an object of marked
curiosity.
—Now touching a cup of coffee, Mr Bloom ventured to plausibly suggest
to break the ice, it occurs to me you ought to sample something in the
shape of solid food, say, a roll of some description.
Accordingly his first act was with characteristic _sangfroid_ to order
these commodities quietly. The _hoi polloi_ of jarvies or stevedores or
whatever they were after a cursory examination turned their eyes
apparently dissatisfied, away though one redbearded bibulous
individual, portion of whose hair was greyish, a sailor probably, still
stared for some appreciable time before transferring his rapt attention
to the floor. Mr Bloom, availing himself of the right of free speech,
he having just a bowing acquaintance with the language in dispute,
though, to be sure, rather in a quandary over _voglio_, remarked to his
_protégé_ in an audible tone of voice _à propos_ of the battle royal in
the street which was still raging fast and furious:
—A beautiful language. I mean for singing purposes. Why do you not
write your poetry in that language? _Bella Poetria_! It is so melodious
and full. _Belladonna. Voglio._
Stephen, who was trying his dead best to yawn if he could, suffering
from lassitude generally, replied:
—To fill the ear of a cow elephant. They were haggling over money.
—Is that so? Mr Bloom asked. Of course, he subjoined pensively, at the
inward reflection of there being more languages to start with than were
absolutely necessary, it may be only the southern glamour that
surrounds it.
The keeper of the shelter in the middle of this _tête-à-tête_ put a
boiling swimming cup of a choice concoction labelled coffee on the
table and a rather antediluvian specimen of a bun, or so it seemed.
After which he beat a retreat to his counter, Mr Bloom determining to
have a good square look at him later on so as not to appear to. For
which reason he encouraged Stephen to proceed with his eyes while he
did the honours by surreptitiously pushing the cup of what was
temporarily supposed to be called coffee gradually nearer him.
—Sounds are impostures, Stephen said after a pause of some little time,
like names. Cicero, Podmore, Napoleon, Mr Goodbody. Jesus, Mr Doyle.
Shakespeares were as common as Murphies. What’s in a name?
—Yes, to be sure, Mr Bloom unaffectedly concurred. Of course. Our name
was changed too, he added, pushing the socalled roll across.
The redbearded sailor who had his weather eye on the newcomers boarded
Stephen, whom he had singled out for attention in particular, squarely
by asking:
—And what might your name be?
Just in the nick of time Mr Bloom touched his companion’s boot but
Stephen, apparently disregarding the warm pressure from an unexpected
quarter, answered:
—Dedalus.
The sailor stared at him heavily from a pair of drowsy baggy eyes,
rather bunged up from excessive use of boose, preferably good old
Hollands and water.
—You know Simon Dedalus? he asked at length.
—I’ve heard of him, Stephen said.
Mr Bloom was all at sea for a moment, seeing the others evidently
eavesdropping too.
—He’s Irish, the seaman bold affirmed, staring still in much the same
way and nodding. All Irish.
—All too Irish, Stephen rejoined.
As for Mr Bloom he could neither make head or tail of the whole
business and he was just asking himself what possible connection when
the sailor of his own accord turned to the other occupants of the
shelter with the remark:
—I seen him shoot two eggs off two bottles at fifty yards over his
shoulder. The lefthand dead shot.
Though he was slightly hampered by an occasional stammer and his
gestures being also clumsy as it was still he did his best to explain.
—Bottles out there, say. Fifty yards measured. Eggs on the bottles.
Cocks his gun over his shoulder. Aims.
He turned his body half round, shut up his right eye completely. Then
he screwed his features up someway sideways and glared out into the
night with an unprepossessing cast of countenance.
—Pom! he then shouted once.
The entire audience waited, anticipating an additional detonation,
there being still a further egg.
—Pom! he shouted twice.
Egg two evidently demolished, he nodded and winked, adding
bloodthirstily:
_—Buffalo Bill shoots to kill,
Never missed nor he never will._
A silence ensued till Mr Bloom for agreeableness’ sake just felt like
asking him whether it was for a marksmanship competition like the
Bisley.
—Beg pardon, the sailor said.
—Long ago? Mr Bloom pursued without flinching a hairsbreadth.
—Why, the sailor replied, relaxing to a certain extent under the magic
influence of diamond cut diamond, it might be a matter of ten years. He
toured the wide world with Hengler’s Royal Circus. I seen him do that
in Stockholm.
—Curious coincidence, Mr Bloom confided to Stephen unobtrusively.
—Murphy’s my name, the sailor continued. D. B. Murphy of Carrigaloe.
Know where that is?
—Queenstown harbour, Stephen replied.
—That’s right, the sailor said. Fort Camden and Fort Carlisle. That’s
where I hails from. I belongs there. That’s where I hails from. My
little woman’s down there. She’s waiting for me, I know. _For England,
home and beauty_. She’s my own true wife I haven’t seen for seven years
now, sailing about.
Mr Bloom could easily picture his advent on this scene, the homecoming
to the mariner’s roadside shieling after having diddled Davy Jones, a
rainy night with a blind moon. Across the world for a wife. Quite a
number of stories there were on that particular Alice Ben Bolt topic,
Enoch Arden and Rip van Winkle and does anybody hereabouts remember
Caoc O’Leary, a favourite and most trying declamation piece by the way
of poor John Casey and a bit of perfect poetry in its own small way.
Never about the runaway wife coming back, however much devoted to the
absentee. The face at the window! Judge of his astonishment when he
finally did breast the tape and the awful truth dawned upon him anent
his better half, wrecked in his affections. You little expected me but
I’ve come to stay and make a fresh start. There she sits, a grasswidow,
at the selfsame fireside. Believes me dead, rocked in the cradle of the
deep. And there sits uncle Chubb or Tomkin, as the case might be, the
publican of the Crown and Anchor, in shirtsleeves, eating rumpsteak and
onions. No chair for father. Broo! The wind! Her brandnew arrival is on
her knee, _post mortem_ child. With a high ro! and a randy ro! and my
galloping tearing tandy, O! Bow to the inevitable. Grin and bear it. I
remain with much love your brokenhearted husband W. B. Murphy.
The sailor, who scarcely seemed to be a Dublin resident, turned to one
of the jarvies with the request:
—You don’t happen to have such a thing as a spare chaw about you?
The jarvey addressed as it happened had not but the keeper took a die
of plug from his good jacket hanging on a nail and the desired object
was passed from hand to hand.
—Thank you, the sailor said.
He deposited the quid in his gob and, chewing and with some slow
stammers, proceeded:
—We come up this morning eleven o’clock. The threemaster _Rosevean_
from Bridgwater with bricks. I shipped to get over. Paid off this
afternoon. There’s my discharge. See? D. B. Murphy. A. B. S.
In confirmation of which statement he extricated from an inside pocket
and handed to his neighbour a not very cleanlooking folded document.
—You must have seen a fair share of the world, the keeper remarked,
leaning on the counter.
—Why, the sailor answered upon reflection upon it, I’ve circumnavigated
a bit since I first joined on. I was in the Red Sea. I was in China and
North America and South America. We was chased by pirates one voyage. I
seen icebergs plenty, growlers. I was in Stockholm and the Black Sea,
the Dardanelles under Captain Dalton, the best bloody man that ever
scuttled a ship. I seen Russia. _Gospodi pomilyou_. That’s how the
Russians prays.
—You seen queer sights, don’t be talking, put in a jarvey.
—Why, the sailor said, shifting his partially chewed plug. I seen queer
things too, ups and downs. I seen a crocodile bite the fluke of an
anchor same as I chew that quid.
He took out of his mouth the pulpy quid and, lodging it between his
teeth, bit ferociously:
—Khaan! Like that. And I seen maneaters in Peru that eats corpses and
the livers of horses. Look here. Here they are. A friend of mine sent
me.
He fumbled out a picture postcard from his inside pocket which seemed
to be in its way a species of repository and pushed it along the table.
The printed matter on it stated: _Choza de Indios. Beni, Bolivia._
All focussed their attention at the scene exhibited, a group of savage
women in striped loincloths, squatted, blinking, suckling, frowning,
sleeping amid a swarm of infants (there must have been quite a score of
them) outside some primitive shanties of osier.
—Chews coca all day, the communicative tarpaulin added. Stomachs like
breadgraters. Cuts off their diddies when they can’t bear no more
children.
See them sitting there stark ballocknaked eating a dead horse’s liver
raw.
His postcard proved a centre of attraction for Messrs the greenhorns
for several minutes if not more.
—Know how to keep them off? he inquired generally.
Nobody volunteering a statement he winked, saying:
—Glass. That boggles ’em. Glass.
Mr Bloom, without evincing surprise, unostentatiously turned over the
card to peruse the partially obliterated address and postmark. It ran
as follows: _Tarjeta Postal, Señor A Boudin, Galeria Becche, Santiago,
Chile._ There was no message evidently, as he took particular notice.
Though not an implicit believer in the lurid story narrated (or the
eggsniping transaction for that matter despite William Tell and the
Lazarillo-Don Cesar de Bazan incident depicted in _Maritana_ on which
occasion the former’s ball passed through the latter’s hat) having
detected a discrepancy between his name (assuming he was the person he
represented himself to be and not sailing under false colours after
having boxed the compass on the strict q.t. somewhere) and the
fictitious addressee of the missive which made him nourish some
suspicions of our friend’s _bona fides_ nevertheless it reminded him in
a way of a longcherished plan he meant to one day realise some
Wednesday or Saturday of travelling to London _via_ long sea not to say
that he had ever travelled extensively to any great extent but he was
at heart a born adventurer though by a trick of fate he had
consistently remained a landlubber except you call going to Holyhead
which was his longest. Martin Cunningham frequently said he would work
a pass through Egan but some deuced hitch or other eternally cropped up
with the net result that the scheme fell through. But even suppose it
did come to planking down the needful and breaking Boyd’s heart it was
not so dear, purse permitting, a few guineas at the outside considering
the fare to Mullingar where he figured on going was five and six, there
and back. The trip would benefit health on account of the bracing ozone
and be in every way thoroughly pleasurable, especially for a chap whose
liver was out of order, seeing the different places along the route,
Plymouth, Falmouth, Southampton and so on culminating in an instructive
tour of the sights of the great metropolis, the spectacle of our modern
Babylon where doubtless he would see the greatest improvement, tower,
abbey, wealth of Park lane to renew acquaintance with. Another thing
just struck him as a by no means bad notion was he might have a gaze
around on the spot to see about trying to make arrangements about a
concert tour of summer music embracing the most prominent pleasure
resorts, Margate with mixed bathing and firstrate hydros and spas,
Eastbourne, Scarborough, Margate and so on, beautiful Bournemouth, the
Channel islands and similar bijou spots, which might prove highly
remunerative. Not, of course, with a hole and corner scratch company or
local ladies on the job, witness Mrs C P M’Coy type lend me your valise
and I’ll post you the ticket. No, something top notch, an all star
Irish caste, the Tweedy-Flower grand opera company with his own legal
consort as leading lady as a sort of counterblast to the Elster Grimes
and Moody-Manners, perfectly simple matter and he was quite sanguine of
success, providing puffs in the local papers could be managed by some
fellow with a bit of bounce who could pull the indispensable wires and
thus combine business with pleasure. But who? That was the rub.
Also, without being actually positive, it struck him a great field was
to be opened up in the line of opening up new routes to keep pace with
the times _apropos_ of the Fishguard-Rosslare route which, it was
mooted, was once more on the _tapis_ in the circumlocution departments
with the usual quantity of red tape and dillydallying of effete
fogeydom and dunderheads generally. A great opportunity there certainly
was for push and enterprise to meet the travelling needs of the public
at large, the average man, i.e. Brown, Robinson and Co.
It was a subject of regret and absurd as well on the face of it and no
small blame to our vaunted society that the man in the street, when the
system really needed toning up, for the matter of a couple of paltry
pounds was debarred from seeing more of the world they lived in instead
of being always and ever cooped up since my old stick-in-the-mud took
me for a wife. After all, hang it, they had their eleven and more
humdrum months of it and merited a radical change of _venue_ after the
grind of city life in the summertime for choice when dame Nature is at
her spectacular best constituting nothing short of a new lease of life.
There were equally excellent opportunities for vacationists in the home
island, delightful sylvan spots for rejuvenation, offering a plethora
of attractions as well as a bracing tonic for the system in and around
Dublin and its picturesque environs even, Poulaphouca to which there
was a steamtram, but also farther away from the madding crowd in
Wicklow, rightly termed the garden of Ireland, an ideal neighbourhood
for elderly wheelmen so long as it didn’t come down, and in the wilds
of Donegal where if report spoke true the _coup d’œil_ was exceedingly
grand though the lastnamed locality was not easily getatable so that
the influx of visitors was not as yet all that it might be considering
the signal benefits to be derived from it while Howth with its historic
associations and otherwise, Silken Thomas, Grace O’Malley, George IV,
rhododendrons several hundred feet above sealevel was a favourite haunt
with all sorts and conditions of men especially in the spring when
young men’s fancy, though it had its own toll of deaths by falling off
the cliffs by design or accidentally, usually, by the way, on their
left leg, it being only about three quarters of an hour’s run from the
pillar. Because of course uptodate tourist travelling was as yet merely
in its infancy, so to speak, and the accommodation left much to be
desired. Interesting to fathom it seemed to him from a motive of
curiosity, pure and simple, was whether it was the traffic that created
the route or viceversa or the two sides in fact. He turned back the
other side of the card, picture, and passed it along to Stephen.
—I seen a Chinese one time, related the doughty narrator, that had
little pills like putty and he put them in the water and they opened
and every pill was something different. One was a ship, another was a
house, another was a flower. Cooks rats in your soup, he appetisingly
added, the chinks does.
Possibly perceiving an expression of dubiosity on their faces the
globetrotter went on, adhering to his adventures.
—And I seen a man killed in Trieste by an Italian chap. Knife in his
back. Knife like that.
Whilst speaking he produced a dangerouslooking claspknife quite in
keeping with his character and held it in the striking position.
—In a knockingshop it was count of a tryon between two smugglers.
Fellow hid behind a door, come up behind him. Like that. _Prepare to
meet your God_, says he. Chuk! It went into his back up to the butt.
His heavy glance drowsily roaming about kind of defied their further
questions even should they by any chance want to.
—That’s a good bit of steel, repeated he, examining his formidable
_stiletto_.
After which harrowing _dénouement_ sufficient to appal the stoutest he
snapped the blade to and stowed the weapon in question away as before
in his chamber of horrors, otherwise pocket.
—They’re great for the cold steel, somebody who was evidently quite in
the dark said for the benefit of them all. That was why they thought
the park murders of the invincibles was done by foreigners on account
of them using knives.
At this remark passed obviously in the spirit of _where ignorance is
bliss_ Mr B. and Stephen, each in his own particular way, both
instinctively exchanged meaning glances, in a religious silence of the
strictly _entre nous_ variety however, towards where Skin-the-Goat,
_alias_ the keeper, not turning a hair, was drawing spurts of liquid
from his boiler affair. His inscrutable face which was really a work of
art, a perfect study in itself, beggaring description, conveyed the
impression that he didn’t understand one jot of what was going on.
Funny, very!
There ensued a somewhat lengthy pause. One man was reading in fits and
starts a stained by coffee evening journal, another the card with the
natives _choza de_, another the seaman’s discharge. Mr Bloom, so far as
he was personally concerned, was just pondering in pensive mood. He
vividly recollected when the occurrence alluded to took place as well
as yesterday, roughly some score of years previously in the days of the
land troubles, when it took the civilised world by storm, figuratively
speaking, early in the eighties, eightyone to be correct, when he was
just turned fifteen.
—Ay, boss, the sailor broke in. Give us back them papers.
The request being complied with he clawed them up with a scrape.
—Have you seen the rock of Gibraltar? Mr Bloom inquired.
The sailor grimaced, chewing, in a way that might be read as yes, ay or
no.
—Ah, you’ve touched there too, Mr Bloom said, Europa point, thinking he
had, in the hope that the rover might possibly by some reminiscences
but he failed to do so, simply letting spirt a jet of spew into the
sawdust, and shook his head with a sort of lazy scorn.
—What year would that be about? Mr B interrogated. Can you recall the
boats?
Our _soi-disant_ sailor munched heavily awhile hungrily before
answering:
—I’m tired of all them rocks in the sea, he said, and boats and ships.
Salt junk all the time.
Tired seemingly, he ceased. His questioner perceiving that he was not
likely to get a great deal of change out of such a wily old customer,
fell to woolgathering on the enormous dimensions of the water about the
globe, suffice it to say that, as a casual glance at the map revealed,
it covered fully three fourths of it and he fully realised accordingly
what it meant to rule the waves. On more than one occasion, a dozen at
the lowest, near the North Bull at Dollymount he had remarked a
superannuated old salt, evidently derelict, seated habitually near the
not particularly redolent sea on the wall, staring quite obliviously at
it and it at him, dreaming of fresh woods and pastures new as someone
somewhere sings. And it left him wondering why. Possibly he had tried
to find out the secret for himself, floundering up and down the
antipodes and all that sort of thing and over and under, well, not
exactly under, tempting the fates. And the odds were twenty to nil
there was really no secret about it at all. Nevertheless, without going
into the _minutiae_ of the business, the eloquent fact remained that
the sea was there in all its glory and in the natural course of things
somebody or other had to sail on it and fly in the face of providence
though it merely went to show how people usually contrived to load that
sort of onus on to the other fellow like the hell idea and the lottery
and insurance which were run on identically the same lines so that for
that very reason if no other lifeboat Sunday was a highly laudable
institution to which the public at large, no matter where living inland
or seaside, as the case might be, having it brought home to them like
that should extend its gratitude also to the harbourmasters and
coastguard service who had to man the rigging and push off and out amid
the elements whatever the season when duty called _Ireland expects that
every man_ and so on and sometimes had a terrible time of it in the
wintertime not forgetting the Irish lights, Kish and others, liable to
capsize at any moment, rounding which he once with his daughter had
experienced some remarkably choppy, not to say stormy, weather.
—There was a fellow sailed with me in the _Rover_, the old seadog,
himself a rover, proceeded, went ashore and took up a soft job as
gentleman’s valet at six quid a month. Them are his trousers I’ve on me
and he gave me an oilskin and that jackknife. I’m game for that job,
shaving and brushup. I hate roaming about. There’s my son now, Danny,
run off to sea and his mother got him took in a draper’s in Cork where
he could be drawing easy money.
—What age is he? queried one hearer who, by the way, seen from the
side, bore a distant resemblance to Henry Campbell, the townclerk, away
from the carking cares of office, unwashed of course and in a seedy
getup and a strong suspicion of nosepaint about the nasal appendage.
—Why, the sailor answered with a slow puzzled utterance, my son, Danny?
He’d be about eighteen now, way I figure it.
The Skibbereen father hereupon tore open his grey or unclean anyhow
shirt with his two hands and scratched away at his chest on which was
to be seen an image tattooed in blue Chinese ink intended to represent
an anchor.
—There was lice in that bunk in Bridgwater, he remarked, sure as nuts.
I must get a wash tomorrow or next day. It’s them black lads I objects
to. I hate those buggers. Suck your blood dry, they does.
Seeing they were all looking at his chest he accommodatingly dragged
his shirt more open so that on top of the timehonoured symbol of the
mariner’s hope and rest they had a full view of the figure 16 and a
young man’s sideface looking frowningly rather.
—Tattoo, the exhibitor explained. That was done when we were lying
becalmed off Odessa in the Black Sea under Captain Dalton. Fellow, the
name of Antonio, done that. There he is himself, a Greek.
—Did it hurt much doing it? one asked the sailor.
That worthy, however, was busily engaged in collecting round the.
Someway in his. Squeezing or.
—See here, he said, showing Antonio. There he is cursing the mate. And
there he is now, he added, the same fellow, pulling the skin with his
fingers, some special knack evidently, and he laughing at a yarn.
And in point of fact the young man named Antonio’s livid face did
actually look like forced smiling and the curious effect excited the
unreserved admiration of everybody including Skin-the-Goat, who this
time stretched over.
—Ay, ay, sighed the sailor, looking down on his manly chest. He’s gone
too. Ate by sharks after. Ay, ay.
He let go of the skin so that the profile resumed the normal expression
of before.
—Neat bit of work, one longshoreman said.
—And what’s the number for? loafer number two queried.
—Eaten alive? a third asked the sailor.
—Ay, ay, sighed again the latter personage, more cheerily this time
with some sort of a half smile for a brief duration only in the
direction of the questioner about the number. Ate. A Greek he was.
And then he added with rather gallowsbird humour considering his
alleged end:
 —As bad as old Antonio,
 For he left me on my ownio.
The face of a streetwalker glazed and haggard under a black straw hat
peered askew round the door of the shelter palpably reconnoitring on
her own with the object of bringing more grist to her mill. Mr Bloom,
scarcely knowing which way to look, turned away on the moment
flusterfied but outwardly calm, and, picking up from the table the pink
sheet of the Abbey street organ which the jarvey, if such he was, had
laid aside, he picked it up and looked at the pink of the paper though
why pink. His reason for so doing was he recognised on the moment round
the door the same face he had caught a fleeting glimpse of that
afternoon on Ormond quay, the partially idiotic female, namely, of the
lane who knew the lady in the brown costume does be with you (Mrs B.)
and begged the chance of his washing. Also why washing which seemed
rather vague than not, your washing. Still candour compelled him to
admit he had washed his wife’s undergarments when soiled in Holles
street and women would and did too a man’s similar garments initialled
with Bewley and Draper’s marking ink (hers were, that is) if they
really loved him, that is to say, love me, love my dirty shirt. Still
just then, being on tenterhooks, he desired the female’s room more than
her company so it came as a genuine relief when the keeper made her a
rude sign to take herself off. Round the side of the _Evening
Telegraph_ he just caught a fleeting glimpse of her face round the side
of the door with a kind of demented glassy grin showing that she was
not exactly all there, viewing with evident amusement the group of
gazers round skipper Murphy’s nautical chest and then there was no more
of her.
—The gunboat, the keeper said.
—It beats me, Mr Bloom confided to Stephen, medically I am speaking,
how a wretched creature like that from the Lock hospital reeking with
disease can be barefaced enough to solicit or how any man in his sober
senses, if he values his health in the least. Unfortunate creature! Of
course I suppose some man is ultimately responsible for her condition.
Still no matter what the cause is from...
Stephen had not noticed her and shrugged his shoulders, merely
remarking:
—In this country people sell much more than she ever had and do a
roaring trade. Fear not them that sell the body but have not power to
buy the soul. She is a bad merchant. She buys dear and sells cheap.
The elder man, though not by any manner of means an old maid or a
prude, said it was nothing short of a crying scandal that ought to be
put a stop to _instanter_ to say that women of that stamp (quite apart
from any oldmaidish squeamishness on the subject), a necessary evil,
were not licensed and medically inspected by the proper authorities, a
thing, he could truthfully state, he, as a _paterfamilias_, was a
stalwart advocate of from the very first start. Whoever embarked on a
policy of the sort, he said, and ventilated the matter thoroughly would
confer a lasting boon on everybody concerned.
—You as a good catholic, he observed, talking of body and soul, believe
in the soul. Or do you mean the intelligence, the brainpower as such,
as distinct from any outside object, the table, let us say, that cup. I
believe in that myself because it has been explained by competent men
as the convolutions of the grey matter. Otherwise we would never have
such inventions as X rays, for instance. Do you?
Thus cornered, Stephen had to make a superhuman effort of memory to try
and concentrate and remember before he could say:
—They tell me on the best authority it is a simple substance and
therefore incorruptible. It would be immortal, I understand, but for
the possibility of its annihilation by its First Cause Who, from all I
can hear, is quite capable of adding that to the number of His other
practical jokes, _corruptio per se_ and _corruptio per accidens_ both
being excluded by court etiquette.
Mr Bloom thoroughly acquiesced in the general gist of this though the
mystical finesse involved was a bit out of his sublunary depth still he
felt bound to enter a demurrer on the head of simple, promptly
rejoining:
—Simple? I shouldn’t think that is the proper word. Of course, I grant
you, to concede a point, you do knock across a simple soul once in a
blue moon. But what I am anxious to arrive at is it is one thing for
instance to invent those rays Röntgen did or the telescope like Edison,
though I believe it was before his time Galileo was the man, I mean,
and the same applies to the laws, for example, of a farreaching natural
phenomenon such as electricity but it’s a horse of quite another colour
to say you believe in the existence of a supernatural God.
—O that, Stephen expostulated, has been proved conclusively by several
of the bestknown passages in Holy Writ, apart from circumstantial
evidence.
On this knotty point however the views of the pair, poles apart as they
were both in schooling and everything else with the marked difference
in their respective ages, clashed.
—Has been? the more experienced of the two objected, sticking to his
original point with a smile of unbelief. I’m not so sure about that.
That’s a matter for everyman’s opinion and, without dragging in the
sectarian side of the business, I beg to differ with you _in toto_
there. My belief is, to tell you the candid truth, that those bits were
genuine forgeries all of them put in by monks most probably or it’s the
big question of our national poet over again, who precisely wrote them
like _Hamlet_ and Bacon, as, you who know your Shakespeare infinitely
better than I, of course I needn’t tell you. Can’t you drink that
coffee, by the way? Let me stir it. And take a piece of that bun. It’s
like one of our skipper’s bricks disguised. Still no-one can give what
he hasn’t got. Try a bit.
—Couldn’t, Stephen contrived to get out, his mental organs for the
moment refusing to dictate further.
Faultfinding being a proverbially bad hat Mr Bloom thought well to stir
or try to the clotted sugar from the bottom and reflected with
something approaching acrimony on the Coffee Palace and its temperance
(and lucrative) work. To be sure it was a legitimate object and beyond
yea or nay did a world of good, shelters such as the present one they
were in run on teetotal lines for vagrants at night, concerts, dramatic
evenings and useful lectures (admittance free) by qualified men for the
lower orders. On the other hand he had a distinct and painful
recollection they paid his wife, Madam Marion Tweedy who had been
prominently associated with it at one time, a very modest remuneration
indeed for her pianoplaying. The idea, he was strongly inclined to
believe, was to do good and net a profit, there being no competition to
speak of. Sulphate of copper poison SO4 or something in some dried peas
he remembered reading of in a cheap eatinghouse somewhere but he
couldn’t remember when it was or where. Anyhow inspection, medical
inspection, of all eatables seemed to him more than ever necessary
which possibly accounted for the vogue of Dr Tibble’s Vi-Cocoa on
account of the medical analysis involved.
—Have a shot at it now, he ventured to say of the coffee after being
stirred.
Thus prevailed on to at any rate taste it Stephen lifted the heavy mug
from the brown puddle it clopped out of when taken up by the handle and
took a sip of the offending beverage.
—Still it’s solid food, his good genius urged, I’m a stickler for solid
food, his one and only reason being not gormandising in the least but
regular meals as the _sine qua non_ for any kind of proper work, mental
or manual. You ought to eat more solid food. You would feel a different
man.
—Liquids I can eat, Stephen said. But O, oblige me by taking away that
knife. I can’t look at the point of it. It reminds me of Roman history.
Mr Bloom promptly did as suggested and removed the incriminated
article, a blunt hornhandled ordinary knife with nothing particularly
Roman or antique about it to the lay eye, observing that the point was
the least conspicuous point about it.
—Our mutual friend’s stories are like himself, Mr Bloom _apropos_ of
knives remarked to his _confidante sotto voce_. Do you think they are
genuine? He could spin those yarns for hours on end all night long and
lie like old boots. Look at him.
Yet still though his eyes were thick with sleep and sea air life was
full of a host of things and coincidences of a terrible nature and it
was quite within the bounds of possibility that it was not an entire
fabrication though at first blush there was not much inherent
probability in all the spoof he got off his chest being strictly
accurate gospel.
He had been meantime taking stock of the individual in front of him and
Sherlockholmesing him up ever since he clapped eyes on him. Though a
wellpreserved man of no little stamina, if a trifle prone to baldness,
there was something spurious in the cut of his jib that suggested a
jail delivery and it required no violent stretch of imagination to
associate such a weirdlooking specimen with the oakum and treadmill
fraternity. He might even have done for his man supposing it was his
own case he told, as people often did about others, namely, that he
killed him himself and had served his four or five goodlooking years in
durance vile to say nothing of the Antonio personage (no relation to
the dramatic personage of identical name who sprang from the pen of our
national poet) who expiated his crimes in the melodramatic manner above
described. On the other hand he might be only bluffing, a pardonable
weakness because meeting unmistakable mugs, Dublin residents, like
those jarvies waiting news from abroad would tempt any ancient mariner
who sailed the ocean seas to draw the long bow about the schooner
_Hesperus_ and etcetera. And when all was said and done the lies a
fellow told about himself couldn’t probably hold a proverbial candle to
the wholesale whoppers other fellows coined about him.
—Mind you, I’m not saying that it’s all a pure invention, he resumed.
Analogous scenes are occasionally, if not often, met with. Giants,
though that is rather a far cry, you see once in a way, Marcella the
midget queen. In those waxworks in Henry street I myself saw some
Aztecs, as they are called, sitting bowlegged, they couldn’t straighten
their legs if you paid them because the muscles here, you see, he
proceeded, indicating on his companion the brief outline of the sinews
or whatever you like to call them behind the right knee, were utterly
powerless from sitting that way so long cramped up, being adored as
gods. There’s an example again of simple souls.
However reverting to friend Sinbad and his horrifying adventures (who
reminded him a bit of Ludwig, _alias_ Ledwidge, when he occupied the
boards of the Gaiety when Michael Gunn was identified with the
management in the _Flying Dutchman_, a stupendous success, and his host
of admirers came in large numbers, everyone simply flocking to hear him
though ships of any sort, phantom or the reverse, on the stage usually
fell a bit flat as also did trains) there was nothing intrinsically
incompatible about it, he conceded. On the contrary that stab in the
back touch was quite in keeping with those italianos though candidly he
was none the less free to admit those icecreamers and friers in the
fish way not to mention the chip potato variety and so forth over in
little Italy there near the Coombe were sober thrifty hardworking
fellows except perhaps a bit too given to pothunting the harmless
necessary animal of the feline persuasion of others at night so as to
have a good old succulent tuckin with garlic _de rigueur_ off him or
her next day on the quiet and, he added, on the cheap.
—Spaniards, for instance, he continued, passionate temperaments like
that, impetuous as Old Nick, are given to taking the law into their own
hands and give you your quietus doublequick with those poignards they
carry in the abdomen. It comes from the great heat, climate generally.
My wife is, so to speak, Spanish, half that is. Point of fact she could
actually claim Spanish nationality if she wanted, having been born in
(technically) Spain, i.e. Gibraltar. She has the Spanish type. Quite
dark, regular brunette, black. I for one certainly believe climate
accounts for character. That’s why I asked you if you wrote your poetry
in Italian.
—The temperaments at the door, Stephen interposed with, were very
passionate about ten shillings. _Roberto ruba roba sua_.
—Quite so, Mr Bloom dittoed.
—Then, Stephen said staring and rambling on to himself or some unknown
listener somewhere, we have the impetuosity of Dante and the isosceles
triangle miss Portinari he fell in love with and Leonardo and san
Tommaso Mastino.
—It’s in the blood, Mr Bloom acceded at once. All are washed in the
blood of the sun. Coincidence I just happened to be in the Kildare
street museum today, shortly prior to our meeting if I can so call it,
and I was just looking at those antique statues there. The splendid
proportions of hips, bosom. You simply don’t knock against those kind
of women here. An exception here and there. Handsome yes, pretty in a
way you find but what I’m talking about is the female form. Besides
they have so little taste in dress, most of them, which greatly
enhances a woman’s natural beauty, no matter what you say. Rumpled
stockings, it may be, possibly is, a foible of mine but still it’s a
thing I simply hate to see.
Interest, however, was starting to flag somewhat all round and then the
others got on to talking about accidents at sea, ships lost in a fog,
collisions with icebergs, all that sort of thing. Shipahoy of course
had his own say to say. He had doubled the cape a few odd times and
weathered a monsoon, a kind of wind, in the China seas and through all
those perils of the deep there was one thing, he declared, stood to him
or words to that effect, a pious medal he had that saved him.
So then after that they drifted on to the wreck off Daunt’s rock, wreck
of that illfated Norwegian barque nobody could think of her name for
the moment till the jarvey who had really quite a look of Henry
Campbell remembered it _Palme_ on Booterstown strand. That was the talk
of the town that year (Albert William Quill wrote a fine piece of
original verse of distinctive merit on the topic for the Irish
_Times_), breakers running over her and crowds and crowds on the shore
in commotion petrified with horror. Then someone said something about
the case of the s. s. _Lady Cairns_ of Swansea run into by the _Mona_
which was on an opposite tack in rather muggyish weather and lost with
all hands on deck. No aid was given. Her master, the _Mona_’s, said he
was afraid his collision bulkhead would give way. She had no water, it
appears, in her hold.
At this stage an incident happened. It having become necessary for him
to unfurl a reef the sailor vacated his seat.
—Let me cross your bows mate, he said to his neighbour who was just
gently dropping off into a peaceful doze.
He made tracks heavily, slowly with a dumpy sort of a gait to the door,
stepped heavily down the one step there was out of the shelter and bore
due left. While he was in the act of getting his bearings Mr Bloom who
noticed when he stood up that he had two flasks of presumably ship’s
rum sticking one out of each pocket for the private consumption of his
burning interior, saw him produce a bottle and uncork it or unscrew
and, applying its nozzle to his lips, take a good old delectable swig
out of it with a gurgling noise. The irrepressible Bloom, who also had
a shrewd suspicion that the old stager went out on a manœuvre after the
counterattraction in the shape of a female who however had disappeared
to all intents and purposes, could by straining just perceive him, when
duly refreshed by his rum puncheon exploit, gaping up at the piers and
girders of the Loop line rather out of his depth as of course it was
all radically altered since his last visit and greatly improved. Some
person or persons invisible directed him to the male urinal erected by
the cleansing committee all over the place for the purpose but after a
brief space of time during which silence reigned supreme the sailor,
evidently giving it a wide berth, eased himself closer at hand, the
noise of his bilgewater some little time subsequently splashing on the
ground where it apparently awoke a horse of the cabrank. A hoof scooped
anyway for new foothold after sleep and harness jingled. Slightly
disturbed in his sentrybox by the brazier of live coke the watcher of
the corporation stones who, though now broken down and fast breaking
up, was none other in stern reality than the Gumley aforesaid, now
practically on the parish rates, given the temporary job by Pat Tobin
in all human probability from dictates of humanity knowing him before
shifted about and shuffled in his box before composing his limbs again
in to the arms of Morpheus, a truly amazing piece of hard lines in its
most virulent form on a fellow most respectably connected and
familiarised with decent home comforts all his life who came in for a
cool £ 100 a year at one time which of course the doublebarrelled ass
proceeded to make general ducks and drakes of. And there he was at the
end of his tether after having often painted the town tolerably pink
without a beggarly stiver. He drank needless to be told and it pointed
only once more a moral when he might quite easily be in a large way of
business if—a big if, however—he had contrived to cure himself of his
particular partiality.
All meantime were loudly lamenting the falling off in Irish shipping,
coastwise and foreign as well, which was all part and parcel of the
same thing. A Palgrave Murphy boat was put off the ways at Alexandra
basin, the only launch that year. Right enough the harbours were there
only no ships ever called.
There were wrecks and wreckers, the keeper said, who was evidently _au
fait_.
What he wanted to ascertain was why that ship ran bang against the only
rock in Galway bay when the Galway harbour scheme was mooted by a Mr
Worthington or some name like that, eh? Ask the then captain, he
advised them, how much palmoil the British government gave him for that
day’s work, Captain John Lever of the Lever Line.
—Am I right, skipper? he queried of the sailor, now returning after his
private potation and the rest of his exertions.
That worthy picking up the scent of the fagend of the song or words
growled in wouldbe music but with great vim some kind of chanty or
other in seconds or thirds. Mr Bloom’s sharp ears heard him then
expectorate the plug probably (which it was), so that he must have
lodged it for the time being in his fist while he did the drinking and
making water jobs and found it a bit sour after the liquid fire in
question. Anyhow in he rolled after his successful
libation-_cum_-potation, introducing an atmosphere of drink into the
_soirée_, boisterously trolling, like a veritable son of a seacook:
 —The biscuits was as hard as brass
 And the beef as salt as Lot’s wife’s arse.
 O, Johnny Lever!
 Johnny Lever, O!
After which effusion the redoubtable specimen duly arrived on the scene
and regaining his seat he sank rather than sat heavily on the form
provided. Skin-the-Goat, assuming he was he, evidently with an axe to
grind, was airing his grievances in a forcible-feeble philippic anent
the natural resources of Ireland or something of that sort which he
described in his lengthy dissertation as the richest country bar none
on the face of God’s earth, far and away superior to England, with coal
in large quantities, six million pounds worth of pork exported every
year, ten millions between butter and eggs and all the riches drained
out of it by England levying taxes on the poor people that paid through
the nose always and gobbling up the best meat in the market and a lot
more surplus steam in the same vein. Their conversation accordingly
became general and all agreed that that was a fact. You could grow any
mortal thing in Irish soil, he stated, and there was that colonel
Everard down there in Navan growing tobacco. Where would you find
anywhere the like of Irish bacon? But a day of reckoning, he stated
_crescendo_ with no uncertain voice, thoroughly monopolising all the
conversation, was in store for mighty England, despite her power of
pelf on account of her crimes. There would be a fall and the greatest
fall in history. The Germans and the Japs were going to have their
little lookin, he affirmed. The Boers were the beginning of the end.
Brummagem England was toppling already and her downfall would be
Ireland, her Achilles heel, which he explained to them about the
vulnerable point of Achilles, the Greek hero, a point his auditors at
once seized as he completely gripped their attention by showing the
tendon referred to on his boot. His advice to every Irishman was: stay
in the land of your birth and work for Ireland and live for Ireland.
Ireland, Parnell said, could not spare a single one of her sons.
Silence all round marked the termination of his _finale_. The
impervious navigator heard these lurid tidings, undismayed.
—Take a bit of doing, boss, retaliated that rough diamond palpably a
bit peeved in response to the foregoing truism.
To which cold douche referring to downfall and so on the keeper
concurred but nevertheless held to his main view.
—Who’s the best troops in the army? the grizzled old veteran irately
interrogated. And the best jumpers and racers? And the best admirals
and generals we’ve got? Tell me that.
—The Irish, for choice, retorted the cabby like Campbell, facial
blemishes apart.
—That’s right, the old tarpaulin corroborated. The Irish catholic
peasant. He’s the backbone of our empire. You know Jem Mullins?
While allowing him his individual opinions as everyman the keeper added
he cared nothing for any empire, ours or his, and considered no
Irishman worthy of his salt that served it. Then they began to have a
few irascible words when it waxed hotter, both, needless to say,
appealing to the listeners who followed the passage of arms with
interest so long as they didn’t indulge in recriminations and come to
blows.
From inside information extending over a series of years Mr Bloom was
rather inclined to poohpooh the suggestion as egregious balderdash for,
pending that consummation devoutly to be or not to be wished for, he
was fully cognisant of the fact that their neighbours across the
channel, unless they were much bigger fools than he took them for,
rather concealed their strength than the opposite. It was quite on a
par with the quixotic idea in certain quarters that in a hundred
million years the coal seam of the sister island would be played out
and if, as time went on, that turned out to be how the cat jumped all
he could personally say on the matter was that as a host of
contingencies, equally relevant to the issue, might occur ere then it
was highly advisable in the interim to try to make the most of both
countries even though poles apart. Another little interesting point,
the amours of whores and chummies, to put it in common parlance,
reminded him Irish soldiers had as often fought for England as against
her, more so, in fact. And now, why? So the scene between the pair of
them, the licensee of the place rumoured to be or have been Fitzharris,
the famous invincible, and the other, obviously bogus, reminded him
forcibly as being on all fours with the confidence trick, supposing,
that is, it was prearranged as the lookeron, a student of the human
soul if anything, the others seeing least of the game. And as for the
lessee or keeper, who probably wasn’t the other person at all, he (B.)
couldn’t help feeling and most properly it was better to give people
like that the goby unless you were a blithering idiot altogether and
refuse to have anything to do with them as a golden rule in private
life and their felonsetting, there always being the offchance of a
Dannyman coming forward and turning queen’s evidence or king’s now like
Denis or Peter Carey, an idea he utterly repudiated. Quite apart from
that he disliked those careers of wrongdoing and crime on principle.
Yet, though such criminal propensities had never been an inmate of his
bosom in any shape or form, he certainly did feel and no denying it
(while inwardly remaining what he was) a certain kind of admiration for
a man who had actually brandished a knife, cold steel, with the courage
of his political convictions (though, personally, he would never be a
party to any such thing), off the same bat as those love vendettas of
the south, have her or swing for her, when the husband frequently,
after some words passed between the two concerning her relations with
the other lucky mortal (he having had the pair watched), inflicted
fatal injuries on his adored one as a result of an alternative
postnuptial _liaison_ by plunging his knife into her, until it just
struck him that Fitz, nicknamed Skin-the-Goat, merely drove the car for
the actual perpetrators of the outrage and so was not, if he was
reliably informed, actually party to the ambush which, in point of
fact, was the plea some legal luminary saved his skin on. In any case
that was very ancient history by now and as for our friend, the pseudo
Skin-the-etcetera, he had transparently outlived his welcome. He ought
to have either died naturally or on the scaffold high. Like actresses,
always farewell positively last performance then come up smiling again.
Generous to a fault of course, temperamental, no economising or any
idea of the sort, always snapping at the bone for the shadow. So
similarly he had a very shrewd suspicion that Mr Johnny Lever got rid
of some £. s. d. in the course of his perambulations round the docks in
the congenial atmosphere of the _Old Ireland_ tavern, come back to Erin
and so on. Then as for the other he had heard not so long before the
same identical lingo as he told Stephen how he simply but effectually
silenced the offender.
—He took umbrage at something or other, that muchinjured but on the
whole eventempered person declared, I let slip. He called me a jew and
in a heated fashion offensively. So I without deviating from plain
facts in the least told him his God, I mean Christ, was a jew too and
all his family like me though in reality I’m not. That was one for him.
A soft answer turns away wrath. He hadn’t a word to say for himself as
everyone saw. Am I not right?
He turned a long you are wrong gaze on Stephen of timorous dark pride
at the soft impeachment with a glance also of entreaty for he seemed to
glean in a kind of a way that it wasn’t all exactly.
—_Ex quibus_, Stephen mumbled in a noncommittal accent, their two or
four eyes conversing, _Christus_ or Bloom his name is or after all any
other, _secundum carnem_.
—Of course, Mr B. proceeded to stipulate, you must look at both sides
of the question. It is hard to lay down any hard and fast rules as to
right and wrong but room for improvement all round there certainly is
though every country, they say, our own distressful included, has the
government it deserves. But with a little goodwill all round. It’s all
very fine to boast of mutual superiority but what about mutual
equality. I resent violence and intolerance in any shape or form. It
never reaches anything or stops anything. A revolution must come on the
due instalments plan. It’s a patent absurdity on the face of it to hate
people because they live round the corner and speak another vernacular,
in the next house so to speak.
—Memorable bloody bridge battle and seven minutes’ war, Stephen
assented, between Skinner’s alley and Ormond market.
Yes, Mr Bloom thoroughly agreed, entirely endorsing the remark, that
was overwhelmingly right. And the whole world was full of that sort of
thing.
—You just took the words out of my mouth, he said. A hocuspocus of
conflicting evidence that candidly you couldn’t remotely...
All those wretched quarrels, in his humble opinion, stirring up bad
blood, from some bump of combativeness or gland of some kind,
erroneously supposed to be about a punctilio of honour and a flag, were
very largely a question of the money question which was at the back of
everything, greed and jealousy, people never knowing when to stop.
—They accuse, remarked he audibly. He turned away from the others, who
probably… and spoke nearer to, so as the others… in case they…
—Jews, he softly imparted in an aside in Stephen’s ear, are accused of
ruining. Not a vestige of truth in it, I can safely say. History, would
you be surprised to learn, proves up to the hilt Spain decayed when the
inquisition hounded the jews out and England prospered when Cromwell,
an uncommonly able ruffian who in other respects has much to answer
for, imported them. Why? Because they are imbued with the proper
spirit. They are practical and are proved to be so. I don’t want to
indulge in any because you know the standard works on the subject and
then orthodox as you are. But in the economic, not touching religion,
domain the priest spells poverty. Spain again, you saw in the war,
compared with goahead America. Turks. It’s in the dogma. Because if
they didn’t believe they’d go straight to heaven when they die they’d
try to live better, at least so I think. That’s the juggle on which the
p.p.’s raise the wind on false pretences. I’m, he resumed with dramatic
force, as good an Irishman as that rude person I told you about at the
outset and I want to see everyone, concluded he, all creeds and classes
_pro rata_ having a comfortable tidysized income, in no nig-gard fashion
either, something in the neighbourhood of £ 300 per annum. That’s the
vital issue at stake and it’s feasible and would be provocative of
friendlier intercourse between man and man. At least that’s my idea for
what it’s worth. I call that patriotism. _Ubi patria_, as we learned a
smattering of in our classical days in _Alma Mater, vita bene_. Where
you can live well, the sense is, if you work.
Over his untastable apology for a cup of coffee, listening to this
synopsis of things in general, Stephen stared at nothing in particular.
He could hear, of course, all kinds of words changing colour like those
crabs about Ringsend in the morning burrowing quickly into all colours
of different sorts of the same sand where they had a home somewhere
beneath or seemed to. Then he looked up and saw the eyes that said or
didn’t say the words the voice he heard said, if you work.
—Count me out, he managed to remark, meaning work.
The eyes were surprised at this observation because as he, the person
who owned them pro tem. observed or rather his voice speaking did, all
must work, have to, together.
—I mean, of course, the other hastened to affirm, work in the widest
possible sense. Also literary labour not merely for the kudos of the
thing. Writing for the newspapers which is the readiest channel
nowadays. That’s work too. Important work. After all, from the little I
know of you, after all the money expended on your education you are
entitled to recoup yourself and command your price. You have every bit
as much right to live by your pen in pursuit of your philosophy as the
peasant has. What? You both belong to Ireland, the brain and the brawn.
Each is equally important.
—You suspect, Stephen retorted with a sort of a half laugh, that I may
be important because I belong to the _faubourg Saint Patrice_ called
Ireland for short.
—I would go a step farther, Mr Bloom insinuated.
—But I suspect, Stephen interrupted, that Ireland must be important
because it belongs to me.
—What belongs, queried Mr Bloom bending, fancying he was perhaps under
some misapprehension. Excuse me. Unfortunately, I didn’t catch the
latter portion. What was it you...?
Stephen, patently crosstempered, repeated and shoved aside his mug of
coffee or whatever you like to call it none too politely, adding:
—We can’t change the country. Let us change the subject.
At this pertinent suggestion Mr Bloom, to change the subject, looked
down but in a quandary, as he couldn’t tell exactly what construction
to put on belongs to which sounded rather a far cry. The rebuke of some
kind was clearer than the other part. Needless to say the fumes of his
recent orgy spoke then with some asperity in a curious bitter way
foreign to his sober state. Probably the homelife to which Mr B
attached the utmost importance had not been all that was needful or he
hadn’t been familiarised with the right sort of people. With a touch of
fear for the young man beside him whom he furtively scrutinised with an
air of some consternation remembering he had just come back from Paris,
the eyes more especially reminding him forcibly of father and sister,
failing to throw much light on the subject, however, he brought to mind
instances of cultured fellows that promised so brilliantly nipped in
the bud of premature decay and nobody to blame but themselves. For
instance there was the case of O’Callaghan, for one, the halfcrazy
faddist, respectably connected though of inadequate means, with his mad
vagaries among whose other gay doings when rotto and making himself a
nuisance to everybody all round he was in the habit of ostentatiously
sporting in public a suit of brown paper (a fact). And then the usual
_dénouement_ after the fun had gone on fast and furious he got landed
into hot water and had to be spirited away by a few friends, after a
strong hint to a blind horse from John Mallon of Lower Castle Yard, so
as not to be made amenable under section two of the criminal law
amendment act, certain names of those subpœnaed being handed in but not
divulged for reasons which will occur to anyone with a pick of brains.
Briefly, putting two and two together, six sixteen which he pointedly
turned a deaf ear to, Antonio and so forth, jockeys and esthetes and
the tattoo which was all the go in the seventies or thereabouts even in
the house of lords because early in life the occupant of the throne,
then heir apparent, the other members of the upper ten and other high
personages simply following in the footsteps of the head of the state,
he reflected about the errors of notorieties and crowned heads running
counter to morality such as the Cornwall case a number of years before
under their veneer in a way scarcely intended by nature, a thing good
Mrs Grundy, as the law stands, was terribly down on though not for the
reason they thought they were probably whatever it was except women
chiefly who were always fiddling more or less at one another it being
largely a matter of dress and all the rest of it. Ladies who like
distinctive underclothing should, and every welltailored man must,
trying to make the gap wider between them by innuendo and give more of
a genuine filip to acts of impropriety between the two, she unbuttoned
his and then he untied her, mind the pin, whereas savages in the
cannibal islands, say, at ninety degrees in the shade not caring a
continental. However, reverting to the original, there were on the
other hand others who had forced their way to the top from the lowest
rung by the aid of their bootstraps. Sheer force of natural genius,
that. With brains, sir.
For which and further reasons he felt it was his interest and duty even
to wait on and profit by the unlookedfor occasion though why he could
not exactly tell being as it was already several shillings to the bad
having in fact let himself in for it. Still to cultivate the
acquaintance of someone of no uncommon calibre who could provide food
for reflection would amply repay any small. Intellectual stimulation,
as such, was, he felt, from time to time a firstrate tonic for the
mind. Added to which was the coincidence of meeting, discussion, dance,
row, old salt of the here today and gone tomorrow type, night loafers,
the whole galaxy of events, all went to make up a miniature cameo of
the world we live in especially as the lives of the submerged tenth,
viz. coalminers, divers, scavengers etc., were very much under the
microscope lately. To improve the shining hour he wondered whether he
might meet with anything approaching the same luck as Mr Philip Beaufoy
if taken down in writing suppose he were to pen something out of the
common groove (as he fully intended doing) at the rate of one guinea
per column. _My Experiences_, let us say, _in a Cabman’s Shelter_.
The pink edition extra sporting of the _Telegraph_ tell a graphic lie
lay, as luck would have it, beside his elbow and as he was just
puzzling again, far from satisfied, over a country belonging to him and
the preceding rebus the vessel came from Bridgwater and the postcard
was addressed A. Boudin find the captain’s age, his eyes went aimlessly
over the respective captions which came under his special province the
allembracing give us this day our daily press. First he got a bit of a
start but it turned out to be only something about somebody named H. du
Boyes, agent for typewriters or something like that. Great battle,
Tokio. Lovemaking in Irish, £ 200 damages. Gordon Bennett. Emigration
Swindle. Letter from His Grace. William ✠. Ascot meeting, the Gold Cup.
Victory of outsider _Throwaway_ recalls Derby of ’92 when Capt.
Marshall’s dark horse _Sir Hugo_ captured the blue ribband at long
odds. New York disaster. Thousand lives lost. Foot and Mouth. Funeral
of the late Mr Patrick Dignam.
So to change the subject he read about Dignam R. I. P. which, he
reflected, was anything but a gay sendoff. Or a change of address
anyway.
—_This morning_ (Hynes put it in of course) _the remains of the late Mr
Patrick Dignam were removed from his residence, no 9 Newbridge Avenue,
Sandymount, for interment in Glasnevin. The deceased gentleman was a
most popular and genial personality in city life and his demise after a
brief illness came as a great shock to citizens of all classes by whom
he is deeply regretted. The obsequies, at which many friends of the
deceased were present, were carried out_ (certainly Hynes wrote it with
a nudge from Corny) _by Messrs H. J. O’Neill and Son, 164 North Strand
Road. The mourners included: Patk. Dignam (son), Bernard Corrigan
(brother-in-law), Jno. Henry Menton, solr, Martin Cunningham, John
Power, eatondph 1/8 ador dorador douradora_ (must be where he called
Monks the dayfather about Keyes’s ad) _Thomas Kernan, Simon Dedalus,
Stephen Dedalus B. A., Edw. J. Lambert, Cornelius T. Kelleher, Joseph
M’C Hynes, L. Boom, C P M’Coy,—M’Intosh and several others_.
Nettled not a little by L. _Boom_ (as it incorrectly stated) and the
line of bitched type but tickled to death simultaneously by C. P. M’Coy
and Stephen Dedalus B. A. who were conspicuous, needless to say, by
their total absence (to say nothing of M’Intosh) L. Boom pointed it out
to his companion B. A. engaged in stifling another yawn, half
nervousness, not forgetting the usual crop of nonsensical howlers of
misprints.
—Is that first epistle to the Hebrews, he asked as soon as his bottom
jaw would let him, in? Text: open thy mouth and put thy foot in it.
—It is. Really, Mr Bloom said (though first he fancied he alluded to
the archbishop till he added about foot and mouth with which there
could be no possible connection) overjoyed to set his mind at rest and
a bit flabbergasted at Myles Crawford’s after all managing to. There.
While the other was reading it on page two Boom (to give him for the
nonce his new misnomer) whiled away a few odd leisure moments in fits
and starts with the account of the third event at Ascot on page three,
his side. Value 1000 sovs with 3000 sovs in specie added. For entire
colts and fillies. Mr F. Alexander’s _Throwaway_, b. h. by
_Rightaway-Thrale_, 5 yrs, 9 st 4 lbs (W. Lane) 1. Lord Howard de
Walden’s _Zinfandel_ (M. Cannon) 2. Mr W. Bass’s _Sceptre_ 3. Betting 5
to 4 on _Zinfandel_, 20 to 1 _Throwaway_ (off). _Sceptre_ a shade
heavier. It was anybody’s race then the rank outsider drew to the fore,
got long lead, beating Lord Howard de Walden’s chestnut colt and Mr W.
Bass’s bay filly Sceptre on a 2 1/2 mile course. Winner trained by
Braime so that Lenehan’s version of the business was all pure buncombe.
Secured the verdict cleverly by a length. 1000 sovs with 3000 in
specie. Also ran: J de Bremond’s (French horse Bantam Lyons was
anxiously inquiring after not in yet but expected any minute) _Maximum
II_. Different ways of bringing off a coup. Lovemaking damages. Though
that halfbaked Lyons ran off at a tangent in his impetuosity to get
left. Of course gambling eminently lent itself to that sort of thing
though as the event turned out the poor fool hadn’t much reason to
congratulate himself on his pick, the forlorn hope. Guesswork it
reduced itself to eventually.
—There was every indication they would arrive at that, he, Bloom, said.
—Who? the other, whose hand by the way was hurt, said.
One morning you would open the paper, the cabman affirmed, and read:
_Return of Parnell_. He bet them what they liked. A Dublin fusilier was
in that shelter one night and said he saw him in South Africa. Pride it
was killed him. He ought to have done away with himself or lain low for
a time after committee room no 15 until he was his old self again with
no-one to point a finger at him. Then they would all to a man have gone
down on their marrowbones to him to come back when he had recovered his
senses. Dead he wasn’t. Simply absconded somewhere. The coffin they
brought over was full of stones. He changed his name to De Wet, the
Boer general. He made a mistake to fight the priests. And so forth and
so on.
All the same Bloom (properly so dubbed) was rather surprised at their
memories for in nine cases out of ten it was a case of tarbarrels and
not singly but in their thousands and then complete oblivion because it
was twenty odd years. Highly unlikely of course there was even a shadow
of truth in the stones and, even supposing, he thought a return highly
inadvisable, all things considered. Something evidently riled them in
his death. Either he petered out too tamely of acute pneumonia just
when his various different political arrangements were nearing
completion or whether it transpired he owed his death to his having
neglected to change his boots and clothes after a wetting when a cold
resulted and failing to consult a specialist he being confined to his
room till he eventually died of it amid widespread regret before a
fortnight was at an end or quite possibly they were distressed to find
the job was taken out of their hands. Of course nobody being acquainted
with his movements even before there was absolutely no clue as to his
whereabouts which were decidedly of the _Alice, where art thou_ order
even prior to his starting to go under several aliases such as Fox and
Stewart so the remark which emanated from friend cabby might be within
the bounds of possibility. Naturally then it would prey on his mind as
a born leader of men which undoubtedly he was and a commanding figure,
a sixfooter or at any rate five feet ten or eleven in his stockinged
feet, whereas Messrs So and So who, though they weren’t even a patch on
the former man, ruled the roost after their redeeming features were
very few and far between. It certainly pointed a moral, the idol with
feet of clay, and then seventytwo of his trusty henchmen rounding on
him with mutual mudslinging. And the identical same with murderers. You
had to come back. That haunting sense kind of drew you. To show the
understudy in the title _rôle_ how to. He saw him once on the
auspicious occasion when they broke up the type in the _Insuppressible_
or was it _United Ireland_, a privilege he keenly appreciated, and, in
point of fact, handed him his silk hat when it was knocked off and he
said _Thank you_, excited as he undoubtedly was under his frigid
exterior notwithstanding the little misadventure mentioned between the
cup and the lip: what’s bred in the bone. Still as regards return. You
were a lucky dog if they didn’t set the terrier at you directly you got
back. Then a lot of shillyshally usually followed, Tom for and Dick and
Harry against. And then, number one, you came up against the man in
possession and had to produce your credentials like the claimant in the
Tichborne case, Roger Charles Tichborne, _Bella_ was the boat’s name to
the best of his recollection he, the heir, went down in as the evidence
went to show and there was a tattoo mark too in Indian ink, lord Bellew
was it, as he might very easily have picked up the details from some
pal on board ship and then, when got up to tally with the description
given, introduce himself with: _Excuse me, my name is So and So_ or
some such commonplace remark. A more prudent course, as Bloom said to
the not over effusive, in fact like the distinguished personage under
discussion beside him, would have been to sound the lie of the land
first.
—That bitch, that English whore, did for him, the shebeen proprietor
commented. She put the first nail in his coffin.
—Fine lump of a woman all the same, the _soi-disant_ townclerk Henry
Campbell remarked, and plenty of her. She loosened many a man’s thighs.
I seen her picture in a barber’s. The husband was a captain or an
officer.
—Ay, Skin-the-Goat amusingly added, he was and a cottonball one.
This gratuitous contribution of a humorous character occasioned a fair
amount of laughter among his _entourage_. As regards Bloom he, without
the faintest suspicion of a smile, merely gazed in the direction of the
door and reflected upon the historic story which had aroused
extraordinary interest at the time when the facts, to make matters
worse, were made public with the usual affectionate letters that passed
between them full of sweet nothings. First it was strictly Platonic
till nature intervened and an attachment sprang up between them till
bit by bit matters came to a climax and the matter became the talk of
the town till the staggering blow came as a welcome intelligence to not
a few evildisposed, however, who were resolved upon encompassing his
downfall though the thing was public property all along though not to
anything like the sensational extent that it subsequently blossomed
into. Since their names were coupled, though, since he was her declared
favourite, where was the particular necessity to proclaim it to the
rank and file from the housetops, the fact, namely, that he had shared
her bedroom which came out in the witnessbox on oath when a thrill went
through the packed court literally electrifying everybody in the shape
of witnesses swearing to having witnessed him on such and such a
particular date in the act of scrambling out of an upstairs apartment
with the assistance of a ladder in night apparel, having gained
admittance in the same fashion, a fact the weeklies, addicted to the
lubric a little, simply coined shoals of money out of. Whereas the
simple fact of the case was it was simply a case of the husband not
being up to the scratch, with nothing in common between them beyond the
name, and then a real man arriving on the scene, strong to the verge of
weakness, falling a victim to her siren charms and forgetting home
ties, the usual sequel, to bask in the loved one’s smiles. The eternal
question of the life connubial, needless to say, cropped up. Can real
love, supposing there happens to be another chap in the case, exist
between married folk? Poser. Though it was no concern of theirs
absolutely if he regarded her with affection, carried away by a wave of
folly. A magnificent specimen of manhood he was truly augmented
obviously by gifts of a high order, as compared with the other military
supernumerary that is (who was just the usual everyday _farewell, my
gallant captain_ kind of an individual in the light dragoons, the 18th
hussars to be accurate) and inflammable doubtless (the fallen leader,
that is, not the other) in his own peculiar way which she of course,
woman, quickly perceived as highly likely to carve his way to fame
which he almost bid fair to do till the priests and ministers of the
gospel as a whole, his erstwhile staunch adherents, and his beloved
evicted tenants for whom he had done yeoman service in the rural parts
of the country by taking up the cudgels on their behalf in a way that
exceeded their most sanguine expectations, very effectually cooked his
matrimonial goose, thereby heaping coals of fire on his head much in
the same way as the fabled ass’s kick. Looking back now in a
retrospective kind of arrangement all seemed a kind of dream. And then
coming back was the worst thing you ever did because it went without
saying you would feel out of place as things always moved with the
times. Why, as he reflected, Irishtown strand, a locality he had not
been in for quite a number of years looked different somehow since, as
it happened, he went to reside on the north side. North or south,
however, it was just the wellknown case of hot passion, pure and
simple, upsetting the applecart with a vengeance and just bore out the
very thing he was saying as she also was Spanish or half so, types that
wouldn’t do things by halves, passionate abandon of the south, casting
every shred of decency to the winds.
—Just bears out what I was saying, he, with glowing bosom said to
Stephen, about blood and the sun. And, if I don’t greatly mistake she
was Spanish too.
—The king of Spain’s daughter, Stephen answered, adding something or
other rather muddled about farewell and adieu to you Spanish onions and
the first land called the Deadman and from Ramhead to Scilly was so and
so many.
—Was she? Bloom ejaculated, surprised though not astonished by any
means, I never heard that rumour before. Possible, especially there, it
was as she lived there. So, Spain.
Carefully avoiding a book in his pocket _Sweets of_, which reminded him
by the by of that Capel street library book out of date, he took out
his pocketbook and, turning over the various contents it contained
rapidly finally he.
—Do you consider, by the by, he said, thoughtfully selecting a faded
photo which he laid on the table, that a Spanish type?
Stephen, obviously addressed, looked down on the photo showing a large
sized lady with her fleshy charms on evidence in an open fashion as she
was in the full bloom of womanhood in evening dress cut ostentatiously
low for the occasion to give a liberal display of bosom, with more than
vision of breasts, her full lips parted and some perfect teeth,
standing near, ostensibly with gravity, a piano on the rest of which
was _In Old Madrid_, a ballad, pretty in its way, which was then all
the vogue. Her (the lady’s) eyes, dark, large, looked at Stephen, about
to smile about something to be admired, Lafayette of Westmoreland
street, Dublin’s premier photographic artist, being responsible for the
esthetic execution.
—Mrs Bloom, my wife the _prima donna_ Madam Marion Tweedy, Bloom
indicated. Taken a few years since. In or about ninety six. Very like
her then.
Beside the young man he looked also at the photo of the lady now his
legal wife who, he intimated, was the accomplished daughter of Major
Brian Tweedy and displayed at an early age remarkable proficiency as a
singer having even made her bow to the public when her years numbered
barely sweet sixteen. As for the face it was a speaking likeness in
expression but it did not do justice to her figure which came in for a
lot of notice usually and which did not come out to the best advantage
in that getup. She could without difficulty, he said, have posed for
the ensemble, not to dwell on certain opulent curves of the. He dwelt,
being a bit of an artist in his spare time, on the female form in
general developmentally because, as it so happened, no later than that
afternoon he had seen those Grecian statues, perfectly developed as
works of art, in the National Museum. Marble could give the original,
shoulders, back, all the symmetry, all the rest. Yes, puritanisme, it
does though, Saint Joseph’s sovereign thievery alors (Bandez!) Figne
toi trop. Whereas no photo could because it simply wasn’t art in a
word.
The spirit moving him he would much have liked to follow Jack Tar’s
good example and leave the likeness there for a very few minutes to
speak for itself on the plea he so that the other could drink in the
beauty for himself, her stage presence being, frankly, a treat in
itself which the camera could not at all do justice to. But it was
scarcely professional etiquette so. Though it was a warm pleasant sort
of a night now yet wonderfully cool for the season considering, for
sunshine after storm. And he did feel a kind of need there and then to
follow suit like a kind of inward voice and satisfy a possible need by
moving a motion. Nevertheless he sat tight just viewing the slightly
soiled photo creased by opulent curves, none the worse for wear
however, and looked away thoughtfully with the intention of not further
increasing the other’s possible embarrassment while gauging her
symmetry of heaving _embonpoint_. In fact the slight soiling was only
an added charm like the case of linen slightly soiled, good as new,
much better in fact with the starch out. Suppose she was gone when he?
I looked for the lamp which she told me came into his mind but merely
as a passing fancy of his because he then recollected the morning
littered bed etcetera and the book about Ruby with met him pike hoses
(_sic_) in it which must have fell down sufficiently appropriately
beside the domestic chamberpot with apologies to Lindley Murray.
The vicinity of the young man he certainly relished, educated,
_distingué_ and impulsive into the bargain, far and away the pick of
the bunch though you wouldn’t think he had it in him yet you would.
Besides he said the picture was handsome which, say what you like, it
was though at the moment she was distinctly stouter. And why not? An
awful lot of makebelieve went on about that sort of thing involving a
lifelong slur with the usual splash page of gutterpress about the same
old matrimonial tangle alleging misconduct with professional golfer or
the newest stage favourite instead of being honest and aboveboard about
the whole business. How they were fated to meet and an attachment
sprang up between the two so that their names were coupled in the
public eye was told in court with letters containing the habitual mushy
and compromising expressions leaving no loophole to show that they
openly cohabited two or three times a week at some wellknown seaside
hotel and relations, when the thing ran its normal course, became in
due course intimate. Then the decree _nisi_ and the King’s proctor
tries to show cause why and, he failing to quash it, _nisi_ was made
absolute. But as for that the two misdemeanants, wrapped up as they
largely were in one another, could safely afford to ignore it as they
very largely did till the matter was put in the hands of a solicitor
who filed a petition for the party wronged in due course. He, B,
enjoyed the distinction of being close to Erin’s uncrowned king in the
flesh when the thing occurred on the historic _fracas_ when the fallen
leader’s, who notoriously stuck to his guns to the last drop even when
clothed in the mantle of adultery, (leader’s) trusty henchmen to the
number of ten or a dozen or possibly even more than that penetrated
into the printing works of the _Insuppressible_ or no it was _United
Ireland_ (a by no means by the by appropriate appellative) and broke up
the typecases with hammers or something like that all on account of
some scurrilous effusions from the facile pens of the O’Brienite
scribes at the usual mudslinging occupation reflecting on the erstwhile
tribune’s private morals. Though palpably a radically altered man he
was still a commanding figure though carelessly garbed as usual with
that look of settled purpose which went a long way with the
shillyshallyers till they discovered to their vast discomfiture that
their idol had feet of clay after placing him upon a pedestal which
she, however, was the first to perceive. As those were particularly hot
times in the general hullaballoo Bloom sustained a minor injury from a
nasty prod of some chap’s elbow in the crowd that of course congregated
lodging some place about the pit of the stomach, fortunately not of a
grave character. His hat (Parnell’s) a silk one was inadvertently
knocked off and, as a matter of strict history, Bloom was the man who
picked it up in the crush after witnessing the occurrence meaning to
return it to him (and return it to him he did with the utmost celerity)
who panting and hatless and whose thoughts were miles away from his hat
at the time all the same being a gentleman born with a stake in the
country he, as a matter of fact, having gone into it more for the kudos
of the thing than anything else, what’s bred in the bone instilled into
him in infancy at his mother’s knee in the shape of knowing what good
form was came out at once because he turned round to the donor and
thanked him with perfect _aplomb_, saying: _Thank you, sir_, though in
a very different tone of voice from the ornament of the legal
profession whose headgear Bloom also set to rights earlier in the
course of the day, history repeating itself with a difference, after
the burial of a mutual friend when they had left him alone in his glory
after the grim task of having committed his remains to the grave.
On the other hand what incensed him more inwardly was the blatant jokes
of the cabman and so on who passed it all off as a jest, laughing
immoderately, pretending to understand everything, the why and the
wherefore, and in reality not knowing their own minds, it being a case
for the two parties themselves unless it ensued that the legitimate
husband happened to be a party to it owing to some anonymous letter
from the usual boy Jones, who happened to come across them at the
crucial moment in a loving position locked in one another’s arms,
drawing attention to their illicit proceedings and leading up to a
domestic rumpus and the erring fair one begging forgiveness of her lord
and master upon her knees and promising to sever the connection and not
receive his visits any more if only the aggrieved husband would
overlook the matter and let bygones be bygones with tears in her eyes
though possibly with her tongue in her fair cheek at the same time as
quite possibly there were several others. He personally, being of a
sceptical bias, believed and didn’t make the smallest bones about
saying so either that man or men in the plural were always hanging
around on the waiting list about a lady, even supposing she was the
best wife in the world and they got on fairly well together for the
sake of argument, when, neglecting her duties, she chose to be tired of
wedded life and was on for a little flutter in polite debauchery to
press their attentions on her with improper intent, the upshot being
that her affections centred on another, the cause of many _liaisons_
between still attractive married women getting on for fair and forty
and younger men, no doubt as several famous cases of feminine
infatuation proved up to the hilt.
It was a thousand pities a young fellow, blessed with an allowance of
brains as his neighbour obviously was, should waste his valuable time
with profligate women who might present him with a nice dose to last
him his lifetime. In the nature of single blessedness he would one day
take unto himself a wife when Miss Right came on the scene but in the
interim ladies’ society was a _conditio sine qua non_ though he had the
gravest possible doubts, not that he wanted in the smallest to pump
Stephen about Miss Ferguson (who was very possibly the particular
lodestar who brought him down to Irishtown so early in the morning), as
to whether he would find much satisfaction basking in the boy and girl
courtship idea and the company of smirking misses without a penny to
their names bi or triweekly with the orthodox preliminary canter of
complimentplaying and walking out leading up to fond lovers’ ways and
flowers and chocs. To think of him house and homeless, rooked by some
landlady worse than any stepmother, was really too bad at his age. The
queer suddenly things he popped out with attracted the elder man who
was several years the other’s senior or like his father but something
substantial he certainly ought to eat even were it only an eggflip made
on unadulterated maternal nutriment or, failing that, the homely Humpty
Dumpty boiled.
—At what o’clock did you dine? he questioned of the slim form and tired
though unwrinkled face.
—Some time yesterday, Stephen said.
—Yesterday! exclaimed Bloom till he remembered it was already tomorrow
Friday. Ah, you mean it’s after twelve!
—The day before yesterday, Stephen said, improving on himself.
Literally astounded at this piece of intelligence Bloom reflected.
Though they didn’t see eye to eye in everything a certain analogy there
somehow was as if both their minds were travelling, so to speak, in the
one train of thought. At his age when dabbling in politics roughly some
score of years previously when he had been a _quasi_ aspirant to
parliamentary honours in the Buckshot Foster days he too recollected in
retrospect (which was a source of keen satisfaction in itself) he had a
sneaking regard for those same ultra ideas. For instance when the
evicted tenants question, then at its first inception, bulked largely
in people’s mind though, it goes without saying, not contributing a
copper or pinning his faith absolutely to its dictums, some of which
wouldn’t exactly hold water, he at the outset in principle at all
events was in thorough sympathy with peasant possession as voicing the
trend of modern opinion (a partiality, however, which, realising his
mistake, he was subsequently partially cured of) and even was twitted
with going a step farther than Michael Davitt in the striking views he
at one time inculcated as a backtothelander, which was one reason he
strongly resented the innuendo put upon him in so barefaced a fashion
by our friend at the gathering of the clans in Barney Kiernan’s so that
he, though often considerably misunderstood and the least pugnacious of
mortals, be it repeated, departed from his customary habit to give him
(metaphorically) one in the gizzard though, so far as politics
themselves were concerned, he was only too conscious of the casualties
invariably resulting from propaganda and displays of mutual animosity
and the misery and suffering it entailed as a foregone conclusion on
fine young fellows, chiefly, destruction of the fittest, in a word.
Anyhow upon weighing up the pros and cons, getting on for one, as it
was, it was high time to be retiring for the night. The crux was it was
a bit risky to bring him home as eventualities might possibly ensue
(somebody having a temper of her own sometimes) and spoil the hash
altogether as on the night he misguidedly brought home a dog (breed
unknown) with a lame paw (not that the cases were either identical or
the reverse though he had hurt his hand too) to Ontario Terrace as he
very distinctly remembered, having been there, so to speak. On the
other hand it was altogether far and away too late for the Sandymount
or Sandycove suggestion so that he was in some perplexity as to which
of the two alternatives. Everything pointed to the fact that it behoved
him to avail himself to the full of the opportunity, all things
considered. His initial impression was he was a shade standoffish or
not over effusive but it grew on him someway. For one thing he mightn’t
what you call jump at the idea, if approached, and what mostly worried
him was he didn’t know how to lead up to it or word it exactly,
supposing he did entertain the proposal, as it would afford him very
great personal pleasure if he would allow him to help to put coin in
his way or some wardrobe, if found suitable. At all events he wound up
by concluding, eschewing for the nonce hidebound precedent, a cup of
Epps’s cocoa and a shakedown for the night plus the use of a rug or two
and overcoat doubled into a pillow at least he would be in safe hands
and as warm as a toast on a trivet he failed to perceive any very vast
amount of harm in that always with the proviso no rumpus of any sort
was kicked up. A move had to be made because that merry old soul, the
grasswidower in question who appeared to be glued to the spot, didn’t
appear in any particular hurry to wend his way home to his dearly
beloved Queenstown and it was highly likely some sponger’s bawdyhouse
of retired beauties where age was no bar off Sheriff street lower would
be the best clue to that equivocal character’s whereabouts for a few
days to come, alternately racking their feelings (the mermaids’) with
sixchamber revolver anecdotes verging on the tropical calculated to
freeze the marrow of anybody’s bones and mauling their largesized
charms betweenwhiles with rough and tumble gusto to the accompaniment
of large potations of potheen and the usual blarney about himself for
as to who he in reality was let x equal my right name and address, as
Mr Algebra remarks _passim_. At the same time he inwardly chuckled over
his gentle repartee to the blood and ouns champion about his god being
a jew. People could put up with being bitten by a wolf but what
properly riled them was a bite from a sheep. The most vulnerable point
too of tender Achilles. Your god was a jew. Because mostly they
appeared to imagine he came from Carrick-on-Shannon or somewhereabouts
in the county Sligo.
—I propose, our hero eventually suggested after mature reflection while
prudently pocketing her photo, as it’s rather stuffy here you just come
home with me and talk things over. My diggings are quite close in the
vicinity. You can’t drink that stuff. Do you like cocoa? Wait. I’ll
just pay this lot.
The best plan clearly being to clear out, the remainder being plain
sailing, he beckoned, while prudently pocketing the photo, to the
keeper of the shanty who didn’t seem to.
—Yes, that’s the best, he assured Stephen to whom for the matter of
that Brazen Head or him or anywhere else was all more or less.
All kinds of Utopian plans were flashing through his (B’s) busy brain,
education (the genuine article), literature, journalism, prize titbits,
up to date billing, concert tours in English watering resorts packed
with hydros and seaside theatres, turning money away, duets in Italian
with the accent perfectly true to nature and a quantity of other
things, no necessity, of course, to tell the world and his wife from
the housetops about it, and a slice of luck. An opening was all was
wanted. Because he more than suspected he had his father’s voice to
bank his hopes on which it was quite on the cards he had so it would be
just as well, by the way no harm, to trail the conversation in the
direction of that particular red herring just to.
The cabby read out of the paper he had got hold of that the former
viceroy, earl Cadogan, had presided at the cabdrivers’ association
dinner in London somewhere. Silence with a yawn or two accompanied this
thrilling announcement. Then the old specimen in the corner who
appeared to have some spark of vitality left read out that sir Anthony
MacDonnell had left Euston for the chief secretary’s lodge or words to
that effect. To which absorbing piece of intelligence echo answered
why.
—Give us a squint at that literature, grandfather, the ancient mariner
put in, manifesting some natural impatience.
—And welcome, answered the elderly party thus addressed.
The sailor lugged out from a case he had a pair of greenish goggles
which he very slowly hooked over his nose and both ears.
—Are you bad in the eyes? the sympathetic personage like the townclerk
queried.
—Why, answered the seafarer with the tartan beard, who seemingly was a
bit of a literary cove in his own small way, staring out of seagreen
portholes as you might well describe them as, I uses goggles reading.
Sand in the Red Sea done that. One time I could read a book in the
dark, manner of speaking. _The Arabian Nights Entertainment_ was my
favourite and _Red as a Rose is She._
Hereupon he pawed the journal open and pored upon Lord only knows what,
found drowned or the exploits of King Willow, Iremonger having made a
hundred and something second wicket not out for Notts, during which
time (completely regardless of Ire) the keeper was intensely occupied
loosening an apparently new or secondhand boot which manifestly pinched
him as he muttered against whoever it was sold it, all of them who were
sufficiently awake enough to be picked out by their facial expressions,
that is to say, either simply looking on glumly or passing a trivial
remark.
To cut a long story short Bloom, grasping the situation, was the first
to rise from his seat so as not to outstay their welcome having first
and foremost, being as good as his word that he would foot the bill for
the occasion, taken the wise precaution to unobtrusively motion to mine
host as a parting shot a scarcely perceptible sign when the others were
not looking to the effect that the amount due was forthcoming, making a
grand total of fourpence (the amount he deposited unobtrusively in four
coppers, literally the last of the Mohicans), he having previously
spotted on the printed pricelist for all who ran to read opposite him
in unmistakable figures, coffee 2d, confectionery do, and honestly well
worth twice the money once in a way, as Wetherup used to remark.
—Come, he counselled to close the _séance_.
Seeing that the ruse worked and the coast was clear they left the
shelter or shanty together and the _élite_ society of oilskin and
company whom nothing short of an earthquake would move out of their
_dolce far niente_. Stephen, who confessed to still feeling poorly and
fagged out, paused at the, for a moment, the door.
—One thing I never understood, he said to be original on the spur of
the moment. Why they put tables upside down at night, I mean chairs
upside down, on the tables in cafés. To which impromptu the
neverfailing Bloom replied without a moment’s hesitation, saying
straight off:
—To sweep the floor in the morning.
So saying he skipped around, nimbly considering, frankly at the same
time apologetic to get on his companion’s right, a habit of his, by the
bye, his right side being, in classical idiom, his tender Achilles. The
night air was certainly now a treat to breathe though Stephen was a bit
weak on his pins.
—It will (the air) do you good, Bloom said, meaning also the walk, in a
moment. The only thing is to walk then you’ll feel a different man.
Come. It’s not far. Lean on me.
Accordingly he passed his left arm in Stephen’s right and led him on
accordingly.
—Yes, Stephen said uncertainly because he thought he felt a strange
kind of flesh of a different man approach him, sinewless and wobbly and
all that.
Anyhow they passed the sentrybox with stones, brazier etc. where the
municipal supernumerary, ex Gumley, was still to all intents and
purposes wrapped in the arms of Murphy, as the adage has it, dreaming
of fresh fields and pastures new. And _apropos_ of coffin of stones the
analogy was not at all bad as it was in fact a stoning to death on the
part of seventytwo out of eighty odd constituencies that ratted at the
time of the split and chiefly the belauded peasant class, probably the
selfsame evicted tenants he had put in their holdings.
So they turned on to chatting about music, a form of art for which
Bloom, as a pure amateur, possessed the greatest love, as they made
tracks arm in arm across Beresford place. Wagnerian music, though
confessedly grand in its way, was a bit too heavy for Bloom and hard to
follow at the first go-off but the music of Mercadante’s _Huguenots_,
Meyerbeer’s _Seven Last Words on the Cross_ and Mozart’s _Twelfth Mass_
he simply revelled in, the _Gloria_ in that being, to his mind, the
acme of first class music as such, literally knocking everything else
into a cocked hat. He infinitely preferred the sacred music of the
catholic church to anything the opposite shop could offer in that line
such as those Moody and Sankey hymns or _Bid me to live and I will live
thy protestant to be_. He also yielded to none in his admiration of
Rossini’s _Stabat Mater_, a work simply abounding in immortal numbers,
in which his wife, Madam Marion Tweedy, made a hit, a veritable
sensation, he might safely say, greatly adding to her other laurels and
putting the others totally in the shade, in the jesuit fathers’ church
in upper Gardiner street, the sacred edifice being thronged to the
doors to hear her with virtuosos, or _virtuosi_ rather. There was the
unanimous opinion that there was none to come up to her and suffice it
to say in a place of worship for music of a sacred character there was
a generally voiced desire for an encore. On the whole though favouring
preferably light opera of the _Don Giovanni_ description and _Martha_,
a gem in its line, he had a _penchant_, though with only a surface
knowledge, for the severe classical school such as Mendelssohn. And
talking of that, taking it for granted he knew all about the old
favourites, he mentioned _par excellence_ Lionel’s air in _Martha,
M’appari_, which, curiously enough, he had heard or overheard, to be
more accurate, on yesterday, a privilege he keenly appreciated, from
the lips of Stephen’s respected father, sung to perfection, a study of
the number, in fact, which made all the others take a back seat.
Stephen, in reply to a politely put query, said he didn’t sing it but
launched out into praises of Shakespeare’s songs, at least of in or
about that period, the lutenist Dowland who lived in Fetter lane near
Gerard the herbalist, who _anno ludendo hausi, Doulandus_, an
instrument he was contemplating purchasing from Mr Arnold Dolmetsch,
whom B. did not quite recall though the name certainly sounded
familiar, for sixtyfive guineas and Farnaby and son with their _dux_
and _comes_ conceits and Byrd (William) who played the virginals, he
said, in the Queen’s chapel or anywhere else he found them and one
Tomkins who made toys or airs and John Bull.
On the roadway which they were approaching whilst still speaking beyond
the swingchains a horse, dragging a sweeper, paced on the paven ground,
brushing a long swathe of mire up so that with the noise Bloom was not
perfectly certain whether he had caught aright the allusion to
sixtyfive guineas and John Bull. He inquired if it was John Bull the
political celebrity of that ilk, as it struck him, the two identical
names, as a striking coincidence.
By the chains the horse slowly swerved to turn, which perceiving,
Bloom, who was keeping a sharp lookout as usual, plucked the other’s
sleeve gently, jocosely remarking:
—Our lives are in peril tonight. Beware of the steamroller.
They thereupon stopped. Bloom looked at the head of a horse not worth
anything like sixtyfive guineas, suddenly in evidence in the dark quite
near so that it seemed new, a different grouping of bones and even
flesh because palpably it was a fourwalker, a hipshaker, a
blackbuttocker, a taildangler, a headhanger putting his hind foot
foremost the while the lord of his creation sat on the perch, busy with
his thoughts. But such a good poor brute he was sorry he hadn’t a lump
of sugar but, as he wisely reflected, you could scarcely be prepared
for every emergency that might crop up. He was just a big nervous
foolish noodly kind of a horse, without a second care in the world. But
even a dog, he reflected, take that mongrel in Barney Kiernan’s, of the
same size, would be a holy horror to face. But it was no animal’s fault
in particular if he was built that way like the camel, ship of the
desert, distilling grapes into potheen in his hump. Nine tenths of them
all could be caged or trained, nothing beyond the art of man barring
the bees. Whale with a harpoon hairpin, alligator tickle the small of
his back and he sees the joke, chalk a circle for a rooster, tiger my
eagle eye. These timely reflections anent the brutes of the field
occupied his mind somewhat distracted from Stephen’s words while the
ship of the street was manœuvring and Stephen went on about the highly
interesting old.
—What’s this I was saying? Ah, yes! My wife, he intimated, plunging _in
medias res_, would have the greatest of pleasure in making your
acquaintance as she is passionately attached to music of any kind.
He looked sideways in a friendly fashion at the sideface of Stephen,
image of his mother, which was not quite the same as the usual handsome
blackguard type they unquestionably had an insatiable hankering after
as he was perhaps not that way built.
Still, supposing he had his father’s gift as he more than suspected, it
opened up new vistas in his mind such as Lady Fingall’s Irish
industries, concert on the preceding Monday, and aristocracy in
general.
Exquisite variations he was now describing on an air _Youth here has
End_ by Jans Pieter Sweelinck, a Dutchman of Amsterdam where the frows
come from. Even more he liked an old German song of _Johannes Jeep_
about the clear sea and the voices of sirens, sweet murderers of men,
which boggled Bloom a bit:
 Von der Sirenen Listigkeit
 Tun die Poeten dichten.
These opening bars he sang and translated _extempore_. Bloom, nodding,
said he perfectly understood and begged him to go on by all means which
he did.
A phenomenally beautiful tenor voice like that, the rarest of boons,
which Bloom appreciated at the very first note he got out, could
easily, if properly handled by some recognised authority on voice
production such as Barraclough and being able to read music into the
bargain, command its own price where baritones were ten a penny and
procure for its fortunate possessor in the near future an _entrée_ into
fashionable houses in the best residential quarters of financial
magnates in a large way of business and titled people where with his
university degree of B. A. (a huge ad in its way) and gentlemanly
bearing to all the more influence the good impression he would
infallibly score a distinct success, being blessed with brains which
also could be utilised for the purpose and other requisites, if his
clothes were properly attended to so as to the better worm his way into
their good graces as he, a youthful tyro in society’s sartorial
niceties, hardly understood how a little thing like that could militate
against you. It was in fact only a matter of months and he could easily
foresee him participating in their musical and artistic
_conversaziones_ during the festivities of the Christmas season, for
choice, causing a slight flutter in the dovecotes of the fair sex and
being made a lot of by ladies out for sensation, cases of which, as he
happened to know, were on record—in fact, without giving the show away,
he himself once upon a time, if he cared to, could easily have. Added
to which of course would be the pecuniary emolument by no means to be
sneezed at, going hand in hand with his tuition fees. Not, he
parenthesised, that for the sake of filthy lucre he need necessarily
embrace the lyric platform as a walk in life for any lengthy space of
time. But a step in the required direction it was beyond yea or nay and
both monetarily and mentally it contained no reflection on his dignity
in the smallest and it often turned in uncommonly handy to be handed a
cheque at a muchneeded moment when every little helped. Besides, though
taste latterly had deteriorated to a degree, original music like that,
different from the conventional rut, would rapidly have a great vogue
as it would be a decided novelty for Dublin’s musical world after the
usual hackneyed run of catchy tenor solos foisted on a confiding public
by Ivan St Austell and Hilton St Just and their _genus omne_. Yes,
beyond a shadow of a doubt he could with all the cards in his hand and
he had a capital opening to make a name for himself and win a high
place in the city’s esteem where he could command a stiff figure and,
booking ahead, give a grand concert for the patrons of the King street
house, given a backerup, if one were forthcoming to kick him upstairs,
so to speak, a big _if_, however, with some impetus of the goahead sort
to obviate the inevitable procrastination which often tripped up a too
much fêted prince of good fellows. And it need not detract from the
other by one iota as, being his own master, he would have heaps of time
to practise literature in his spare moments when desirous of so doing
without its clashing with his vocal career or containing anything
derogatory whatsoever as it was a matter for himself alone. In fact, he
had the ball at his feet and that was the very reason why the other,
possessed of a remarkably sharp nose for smelling a rat of any sort,
hung on to him at all.
The horse was just then. And later on at a propitious opportunity he
purposed (Bloom did), without anyway prying into his private affairs on
the _fools step in where angels_ principle, advising him to sever his
connection with a certain budding practitioner who, he noticed, was
prone to disparage and even to a slight extent with some hilarious
pretext when not present, deprecate him, or whatever you like to call
it which in Bloom’s humble opinion threw a nasty sidelight on that side
of a person’s character, no pun intended.
The horse having reached the end of his tether, so to speak, halted
and, rearing high a proud feathering tail, added his quota by letting
fall on the floor which the brush would soon brush up and polish, three
smoking globes of turds. Slowly three times, one after another, from a
full crupper he mired. And humanely his driver waited till he (or she)
had ended, patient in his scythed car.
Side by side Bloom, profiting by the _contretemps_, with Stephen passed
through the gap of the chains, divided by the upright, and, stepping
over a strand of mire, went across towards Gardiner street lower,
Stephen singing more boldly, but not loudly, the end of the ballad.
 Und alle Schiffe brücken.
The driver never said a word, good, bad or indifferent, but merely
watched the two figures, as he sat on his lowbacked car, both black,
one full, one lean, walk towards the railway bridge, _to be married by
Father Maher_. As they walked they at times stopped and walked again
continuing their _tête à tête_ (which, of course, he was utterly out
of) about sirens, enemies of man’s reason, mingled with a number of
other topics of the same category, usurpers, historical cases of the
kind while the man in the sweeper car or you might as well call it in
the sleeper car who in any case couldn’t possibly hear because they
were too far simply sat in his seat near the end of lower Gardiner
street _and looked after their lowbacked car_.
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