ULYSSES - Chap. 15 - Circe //

00

[15]

Wait, my love, and I'll be with you.

Round behind the stable.

Kithogue! Salute!

(lifts a palsied left arm and gurgles) Ghahute!

Where's the great light?

(gobbling) Ghaghahest.


Signs on you, hairy arse. More power the Cavan girl.

More luck to me. Cavan, Cootehill and Belturbet. (she sings)


(jerks his finger) Way for the parson.

(turns and calls) What ho, parson!

(her voice soaring higher)

Vidi aquam egredientem de templo a latere dextro. Alleluia.

80
(her voice whispering huskily) Sst! Come here till I tell you. Maidenhead
inside. Sst!

(altius aliquantulum) Et omnes ad quos pervenit aqua ista.

(spits in their trail her jet of venom) Trinity medicals. Fallopian tube. All
prick and no pence.

90
(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.


(triumphaliter) Salvi facti sunt.

So that?

(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.

Pornosophical philotheology. Metaphysics in Mecklenburgh street!

110
We have shrewridden Shakespeare and henpecked Socrates. Even the
allwisest Stagyrite was bitted, bridled and mounted by a light of love.

Ba!

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.

Damn your yellow stick. Where are we going?

Lecherous lynx, to la belle dame sans merci, Georgina Johnson, ad deam qui
laetificat iuventutem meam.


Which is the jug of bread? It skills not. That or the customhouse. Illustrate
thou. Here take your crutch and walk.

Fish and taters. N. g. Ah!

Stitch in my side. Why did I run?


What is that? A flasher? Searchlight.

170
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.

Mind out, mister!

Haltyaltyaltyall.

(halts erect, stung by a spasm) Ow!

Bang Bang Bla Bak Blud Bugg Bloo.

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.)


No thoroughfare. Close shave that but cured the stitch. Must take up
200
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.
210
Monthly or effect of the other. Brainfogfag. That tired feeling. Too much
for me now. Ow!

Buenas noches, senorita Blanca. Que calle es esta?

(impassive, raises a signal arm) Password. Sraid Mabbot.

220
Haha. Merci. Esperanto. Slan leath. (he mutters) Gaelic league spy, sent
by that fireeater.

I beg.

(He leaps right, sackragman right.)

I beg.

 


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.

240
O

Beware of pickpockets. Old thieves' dodge. Collide. Then snatch your
purse.

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
260
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,
270
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!

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
)
290
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,
    300
    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,
    310
    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,
    320
    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.


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
    340
    soapsun.)

          SWENY

Three and a penny, please.

          BLOOM

Yes. For my wife. Mrs Marion. Special recipe.

          MARION

(softly) Poldy!

          BLOOM

Yes, ma'am?

          MARION

350
Ti trema un poco il cuore?

    (In disdain she saunters away, humming the duet from Don
    Giovanni, plump as a pampered pouter pigeon.)

          BLOOM

Are you sure about that Voglio? I mean the pronunciati ....

Ten shillings a maidenhead. Fresh thing was never touched. Fifteen. There's
no-one in it only her old father that's dead drunk.


Hatch street. Any good in your mind?

(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
370
clothes sees us. Sixtyseven is a bitch.

With all my worldly goods I thee and thou. (she murmurs) You did that. I
hate you.

l? When? You're dreaming. I never saw you.

Leave the gentleman alone, you cheat. Writing the gentleman false letters.
380
Streetwalking and soliciting. Better for your mother take the strap to you at
the bedpost, hussy like you.

(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.

Mr ...

(coughs gravely) Madam, when we last had this pleasure by letter dated
the sixteenth instant ....


Mr Bloom! You down here in the haunts of sin! I caught you nicely!
Scamp!

(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
400
of year. Black refracts heat. Short cut home here. Interesting quarter.
Rescue of fallen women. Magdalen asylum. I am the secretary .....

(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!

(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.
410
Bohee brothers. Sweep for that matter

(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?


(screams gaily) O, you ruck! You ought to see yourself!

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.

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.

(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?

You were the lion of the night with your seriocomic recitation and you
looked the part. You were always a favourite with the ladies.

450
(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.

The dear dead days beyond recall. Love's old sweet song.

(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.

460
(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.


(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)
La ci darem la mano.

(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.

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!

(points jeering at the sandwichboards) U. p: up.

(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.

490
(shocked) Molly's best friend! Could you?

(her pulpy tongue between her lips, offers a pigeon kiss) Hnhn. The
answer is a lemon. Have you a little present for me there?

(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.


Best value in Dub.

(advances with a tilted dish of spillspilling gravy) Steak and kidney. Bottle
510
of lager. Hee hee hee. Wait till I wait.

Goodgod. Inev erate inall ....

(with a cry of pain, his hand to his back) Ah! Bright's! Lights!

(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.

Humbugging and deluthering as per usual with your cock and bull story.

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.

(all agog) O, not for worlds.

Let's walk on. Shall us?


530
Let's.

Jewman's melt!

(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
540
after Milly, Marionette we called her, was weaned when we all went
together to Fairyhouse races, was it?

(in smart Saxe tailormade, white velours hat and spider veil) Leopards-
town.

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
550
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 ....

She did, of course, the cat! Don't tell me! Nice adviser!

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
560
fullstop.

(squeezes his arm, simpers) Naughty cruel I was!


(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 ....

Too ....

570
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 ....

(eagerly) Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

(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.

(guffaw with cleft palates) O jays!

Coincidence too. They think it funny. Anything but that. Broad daylight.
Trying to walk. Lucky no woman.


Jays, that's a good one. Glauber salts. O jays, into the men's porter.

(belching) Where's the bloody house?

Purdon street. Shilling a bottle of stout. Respectable woman.

(gripping the two redcoats, staggers forward with them) Come on, you
British army!

(behind his back) He aint half balmy.

(laughs) What ho!

620
(to the navvy) Portobello barracks canteen. You ask for Carr. Just Carr.

(shouts)


Say! What price the sergeantmajor?

Bennett? He's my pal. I love old Bennett.

630
(shouts)

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
640
collision. Second drink does it. Once is a dose. What am I following him
for? Still, he's the best of that lot. If I hadn't heard about Mrs Beaufoy
Purefoy I wouldn't have gone and wouldn't have met. Kismet. He'll lose
that cash. Relieving office here. Good biz for cheapjacks, organs. What do
ye lack? Soon got, soon gone. Might have lost my life too with that man-
gongwheeltracktrolleyglarejuggernaut only for presence of mind. Can't
always save you, though. If I had passed Truelock's window that day two
minutes later would have been shot. Absence of body. Still if bullet only
went through my coat get damages for shock, five hundred pounds. What
was he? Kildare street club toff. God help his gamekeeper.

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.)

Sweet are the sweets. Sweets of sin.

My spine's a bit limp. Go or turn? And this food? Eat it and get all
660
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 got
. 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
670
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.

Bloom. Of Bloom. For Bloom. Bloom.

Caught in the act. Commit no nuisance.

(stammers) I am doing good to others.

Kaw kave kankury kake.

690
The friend of man. Trained by kindness.

Towser. Give us the paw. Give the paw.


Prevention of cruelty to animals.

(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.

710
(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.

720
Come. Name and address.

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.

Proof.

730
(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.


(reads) Henry Flower. No fixed abode. Unlawfully watching and
besetting.

An alibi. You are cautioned.

(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,
750
inspector. She's game. Do it in the shake of a lamb's tail.

The Castle is looking for him. He was drummed out of the army.

(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.

(sternly) Come to the station.

(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
[P]

medical men. By striking him dead with a hatchet. I am wrongfully
accused. Better one guilty escape than ninetynine wrongfully condemned.

(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
770
Bective rugger fullback, on you, heartless flirt.


(behind his hand) She's drunk. The woman is inebriated. (he murmurs
vaguely the pass of Ephraim
) Shitbroleeth.

(tears in his eyes, to Bloom) You ought to be thoroughly well ashamed of
yourself.

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
780
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.

Regiment.

(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
790
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.

Turncoat! Up the Boers! Who booed Joe Chamberlain?

(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.
800
I did all a white man could. (with quiet feeling) Jim Bludso. Hold her
nozzle again the bank.

Profession or trade.


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 ....

(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?

(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 litterateur. 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.

(murmurs with hangdog meekness glum) That bit about the laughing
witch hand in hand I take exception to, if I may ...

(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
840
university.


(indistinctly) University of life. Bad art.

(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.

(bravely) Overdrawn.

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!

(to the court) And he, a bachelor, how...

The King versus Bloom. Call the woman Driscoll.

Mary Driscoll, scullerymaid!

Another! Are you of the unfortunate class?

(indignantly) I'm not a bad one. I bear a respectable character and was
870
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.


What do you tax him with?

He made a certain suggestion but I thought more of myself as poor as I am.

(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
880
you were accused of pilfering. There's a medium in all things. Play cricket.

(excitedly) As God is looking down on me this night if ever I laid a hand to
them oylsters!

The offence complained of? Did something happen?

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
890
with my clothing.

She counterassaulted.

(scornfully) I had more respect for the scouringbrush, so I had. I
remonstrated with him, Your lord, and he remarked: keep it quiet.

(clerk of the crown and peace, resonantly) Order in court! The accused
will now make a bogus statement.


(without looking up from their notebooks) Loosen his boots.

930
(from the presstable, coughs and calls) Cough it up, man. Get it out in bits.

(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
950
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.

(Barefoot, pigeonbreasted, in lascar's vest and trousers, apologetic toes
960
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)

(hotly to the populace) This is a lonehand fight. By Hades, I will not have
970
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
980
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
[P]

now be shown. (to Bloom) I suggest that you will do the handsome thing.



A penny in the pound.

(hoarsely) Bleibtreustrasse, Berlin, W. 13.

(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.

1010
(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 ......

(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
1020
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.

(in cap and seal coney mantle, wrapped up to the nose, steps out of her
1030
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.

1040
Shame on him!

(screaming) Stop thief! Hurrah there, Bluebeard! Three cheers for Ikey
Mo!

(produces handcuffs) Here are the darbies.

1050
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
1060
defile the marriage bed, to commit adultery at the earliest possible
opportunity.



(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
1070
darling cob Centaur. This plebeian Don Juan observed me from behind a
hackney car and sent me in double envelopes an obscene photograph, such
as are sold after dark on Paris boulevards, insulting to any lady. I have it
still. It represents a partially nude senorita, frail and lovely (his wife, as he
solemnly assured me, taken by him from nature), practising illicit
intercourse with a muscular torero, evidently a blackguard. He urged me to
do likewise, to misbehave, to sin with officers of the 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.

Me too.

Me too.

(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.

(his eyes closing, quails expectantly) Here? (he squirms) Again! (he pants
cringing
) I love the danger.

Very much so! I'll make it hot for you. I'll make you dance Jack Latten for
that.

Tan his breech well, the upstart! Write the stars and stripes on it!


Disgraceful! There's no excuse for him! A married man!

1100
All these people. I meant only the spanking idea. A warm tingling glow
without effusion. Refined birching to stimulate the circulation.

(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.

(shakes her muff and quizzing-glasses vindictively) Make him smart,
Hanna dear. Give him ginger. Thrash the mongrel within an inch of his
1110
life. The cat-o'-nine-tails. Geld him. Vivisect him.

(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)

(severely) Don't do so on any account, Mrs Talboys! He should be
soundly trounced!

(unbuttoning her gauntlet violently) I'll do no such thing. Pigdog and
1120
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?

(trembling, beginning to obey) The weather has been so warm.



1130
Messenger of the Sacred Heart and Evening Telegraph with Saint Patrick's
Day supplement. Containing the new addresses of all the cuckolds in
Dublin.

(unportalling)

(The brass quoits of a bed are heard to jingle.)

Jigjag. Jigajiga. Jigjag.

1150
Bareback riding. Weight for age. Gob, he organised her.

(all their heads turned to his voice) Really?

(snarls) Arse over tip. Hundred shillings to five.

(all their heads lowered in assent) Most of us thought as much.

He is a marked man. Another girl's plait cut. Wanted: Jack the Ripper. A
thousand pounds reward.


(awed, whispers) And in black. A mormon. Anarchist.

(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 ....

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.

(scowls and calls with rich rolling utterance) Who'll hang Judas Iscariot?

(to the recorder with sinister familiarity) Hanging Harry, your Majesty,
1190
the Mersey terror. Five guineas a jugular. Neck or nothing.

(The bells of George's church toll slowly, loud dark iron.)

Heigho! Heigho!


(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 .....

(coldly) You are a perfect stranger.

(points to the corner) The bomb is here.

Infernal machine with a time fuse.

No, no. Pig's feet. I was at a funeral.

(draws his truncheon) Liar!

(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.

(in triumph) You hear?

Bloom, I am Paddy Dignam's spirit. List, list, O list!



The voice is the voice of Esau.

(blesses himself) How is that possible?

1230
It is not in the penny catechism.

By metempsychosis. Spooks.

O rocks.

(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.
1240
(he looks round him) A lamp. I must satisfy an animal need. That
buttermilk didn't agree with me.

(yawns, then chants with a hoarse croak) Namine. Jacobs. Vobiscuits.
Amen.

1250
(foghorns stormily through his megaphone) Dignam, Patrick T, deceased.

(with pricked up ears, winces) Overtones. (he wriggles forward and
places an ear to the ground
) My master's voice!

Burial docket letter number U. P. eightyfive thousand. Field seventeen.
House of Keys. Plot, one hundred and one.  


1260
Pray for the repose of his soul.

(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
1270
Carlow.

(warbling) Leo! (twittering) Icky licky micky sticky for Leo! (cooing)
Coo coocoo! Yummyyum, Womwom! (warbling) Big comebig! Pirouette!
1280
Leopopold! (twittering) Leeolee! (warbling) O Leo!

A man's touch. Sad music. Church music. Perhaps here.

Are you looking for someone? He's inside with his friend.


1290
Is this Mrs Mack's?

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?

Not I!

1300
You both in black. Has little mousey any tickles tonight?

How's the nuts?

Off side. Curiously they are on the right. Heavier, I suppose. One in a
million my tailor, Mesias, says.

(in sudden alarm) You've a hard chancre.

Not likely.

I feel it.