00 |
(The Mabbot street entrance of nighttown,
10 |
THE ANSWER
Round behind the stable.
(A deafmute idiot with goggle eyes, his shapeless mouth dribbling,
jerks past, shaken in Saint Vitus' dance. A chain of children 's hands
imprisons him.)
THE CHILDREN
Kithogue! Salute!
THE IDIOT
(lifts a palsied left arm and gurgles) Ghahute!
20 |
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
30 |
40 |
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 so
hoarse virago retorts.)
50
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 60
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)
70 |
(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
80 |
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
90 |
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.)
100
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
110 |
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?
120 |
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.
130 |
140 |
150 |
BLOOM
(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.) 160
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
170 |
(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)
180 |
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.
190 |
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
200 |
210 |
(A sinister figure leans on plaited legs against O'Beirne's wall,
a
visage unknown, injected with dark mercury. From under a
wideleaved sombrero the figure regards him with evil eye.)
BLOOM
Buenas noches, senorita Blanca. Que calle es esta?
THE FIGURE
(impassive, raises a signal arm) Password. Sraid Mabbot.
BLOOM
220 |
(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.)
230 |
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
240 |
(Shocked, on weak hams, he halts. Tommy and Jacky vanish
there, there. Bloom pats with parcelled hands watchfob,
pocketbookpocket, pursepoke, sweets of sin, potatosoap.)
BLOOM
Beware of pickpockets. Old thieves' dodge. Collide. Then snatch your
purse.
(The retriever approaches sniffing, nose to the ground. A sprawled
form sneezes. A stooped bearded figure appears garbed in the long
caftan of an elder in Zion and a smokingcap with magenta tassels.
Horned spectacles hang down at the wings of the nose. Yellow 250
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 260
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 270
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!
280 |
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 |
(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 300
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, 310
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 320
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.
330 |
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.)
340
SWENY
Three and a penny, please.
BLOOM
Yes. For my wife. Mrs Marion. Special recipe.
MARION
(softly) Poldy!
BLOOM
Yes, ma'am?
MARION
350 |
(In disdain she saunters away, humming the duet from Don
Giovanni, plump as a pampered pouter pigeon.)
BLOOM
Are you sure about that Voglio? I mean the pronunciati ....
(He follows, followed by the sniffing terrier. The elderly bawd
seizes his sleeve, the bristles of her chinmole glittering.)
THE BAWD
Ten shillings a maidenhead. Fresh thing was never touched. Fifteen.
There's
no-one in it only her old father that's dead drunk.
360 |
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
370 |
(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
l? When? You're dreaming. I never saw you.
THE BAWD
Leave the gentleman alone, you cheat. Writing the gentleman false letters.
380 |
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
[BREa]
wideopen, smiling in all her herbivorous buckteeth.)
MRS BREEN
Mr ...
390 |
(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
400 |
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.
410 |
(Tom and Sam Bohee, coloured coons in white duck suits, scarlet
socks, upstarched Sambo chokers and large scarlet asters in their
buttonholes, leap out Each has his banjo slung Their paler smaller
negroid hands jingle the twingtwang wires. Flashing white kaffir
eyes and tusks they rattle through a breakdown in clumsy clogs,
twinging, singing, back to back, toe heel, heel toe, with
smackfatclacking nigger lips.)
TOM AND SAM
420 |
(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?
430 |
(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.
440 |
(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
450 |
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
460 |
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)
La ci darem la mano.
470 |
(in a onepiece evening frock executed in moonlight blue, a tinsel
sylph's
diadem on her brow with her dancecard fallen beside her moonblue satin
slipper, curves her palm softly, breathing quickly) Voglio e non
..... You're
hot! You're scalding! The left hand nearest the heart.
BLOOM
When you made your present choice they said it was beauty and the beast.
I
can never forgive you for that. (his clenched fist at his brow)
Think what it
means. All you meant to me then. (hoarsely) Woman, it's breaking
me!
(Denis Breen, whitetallhatted, with Wisdom Hely's sandwich-
boards, shuffles past them in carpet slippers, his dull beard 480
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
490 |
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 500
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
510 |
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.
520 |
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
530 |
(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
540 |
MRS BREEN
(in smart Saxe tailormade, white velours hat and spider veil)
Leopards-
town.
BLOOM
I mean, Leopardstown. And Molly won seven shillings on a three year
old
named Nevertell and coming home along by Foxrock in that old fiveseater
shanderadan of a waggonette you were in your heyday then and you had
on that new hat of white velours with a surround of molefur that Mrs
550 |
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
560 |
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
570 |
MRS BREEN
(eagerly) Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
(She fades from his side. Followed by the whining dog he walks on =|BREa|=
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 580
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!
590 |
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
600 |
(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?
610 |
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
620 |
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
630 |
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
640 |
650 |
Odd! Molly drawing on the frosted carriagepane at
Kingstown. What's that like?
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
660 |
670 |
(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.
680 |
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
690 |
(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.
700 |
(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
[P]
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
710 |
FIRST WATCH
720 |
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
730 |
FIRST WATCH
(reads) Henry Flower. No fixed abode. Unlawfully watching and
besetting.
SECOND WATCH
An alibi. You are cautioned.
740 |
(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 |
(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.
760 |
(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] |
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
770 |
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
780 |
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
790 |
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.
800 |
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 810
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
[P]
morning dress, outbreast pocket with peak of handkerchief
showing, creased lavender trousers and patent boots. He carries a
large portfolio labelled Matcham's Masterstrokes.)
820 |
(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.
830 |
(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
840 |
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
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...
860 |
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
870 |
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
880 |
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
890 |
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.
900 |
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 910
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 920
boreens and green lanes the colleens with their swains strolled what
times the strains of the organtoned melodeon Britanniametalbound
with four acting stops and twelvefold bellows, a sacrifice, greatest
bargain ever ....)
(Renewed laughter. He mumbles incoherently. Reporters complain
that they cannot hear.)
LONGHAND AND SHORTHAND
(without looking up from their notebooks) Loosen his boots.
PROFESSOR MACHUGH
930 |
(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.)
940 |
(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
950 |
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 960
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
970 |
980 |
[P] |
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 990
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.)
1000 |
(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
1010 |
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
1020 |
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 1030
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
1040 |
(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
1050 |
1060 |
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
1070 |
1080 |
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.
1090 |
(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
1100 |
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
1110 |
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
1120 |
BLOOM
(trembling, beginning to obey) The weather has been so warm.
(Davy Stephens, ringletted, passes with a bevy of barefoot
newsboys.)
DAVY STEPHEN S
1130 |
(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)
1140 |
(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
1150 |
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.
1160 |
(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.)
1170
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.
1180 |
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,
1190 |
(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 .....
1200 |
(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!
1210 |
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.)
1220
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
1230 |
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.
1240 |
(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 twisted poppies.)
FATHER COFFEY
(yawns, then chants with a hoarse croak) Namine. Jacobs. Vobiscuits.
Amen.
JOHN O'CONNELL
1250 |
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
stiffpointcd, his ears cocked.)
PADDY DIGNAM
1260 |
(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
1270 |
(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.
THE KISSES
(warbling) Leo! (twittering) Icky licky micky sticky for
Leo! (cooing)
Coo coocoo! Yummyyum, Womwom! (warbling) Big comebig! Pirouette!
1280 |
(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
1290 |
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
1300 |
(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.
1310 |
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.)