ULYSSES - Chap. 15 - Circe //

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Conventions for this chapter:

  • External narrative

  • Internal narrative ...in Leopold Bloom's mind

  • Internal narrative ...in Stephen Dedalus's mind

  • —External dialog ...All individual speech included

  • Telegraphic external narrative ...Reporting collective dialog and musing; silent reading (See for ex., lines 114-16)

  • Annotations ...Displayed on selected words when link is touched by mouse pointer
  • 00 ...Line counter by tens (if touched by mouse pointer, it displays a brief summary of the action in the adjacent lines ).

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    This background color indicates a different approach to the narrative: a world of magical realism (see pages 3-95)

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      This background color indicates a different approach to the narrative: the World of Hallucination of Bloom (see pages 211-29)

      .
        This background color indicatesrtif a different approach to the narrative: the World of Hallucination of Stephen Dedalus (see pages
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        00

          [15]

          (The Mabbot street entrance of nighttown, before which stretches

          an uncobbled tramsiding set with skeleton tracks, red and green
          will-o'-the-wisps and danger signals. Rows of grimy houses with
          gaping doors. Rare lamps with faint rainbow fins. Round
          Rabaiotti's halted ice gondola stunted men and women squabble.
          They grab wafers between which are wedged lumps of coral and
          copper snow. Sucking, they scatter slowly, children. The swancomb
          of the gondola, highreared, forges on through the murk, white and
          blue under a lighthouse. Whistles call and answer.)
        Wait, my love, and I'll be with you.

                THE ANSWER

        Round behind the stable.

          (A deafmute idiot with goggle eyes, his shapeless mouth dribbling,
          jerks past, shaken in Saint Vitus' dance. A chain of children 's hands
          imprisons him.)

                THE CHILDREN

        Kithogue! Salute!

                THE IDIOT

        (lifts a palsied left arm and gurgles) Ghahute!

        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
          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 comer 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
          40
          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 so
          50
          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
          60
          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,
              70
              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

        80
        (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

        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.


        .
        .

                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
          100
          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

        110
        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?

        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.

        .
              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
          140
          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
          150
          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
          160
          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

        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.

          (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)

        .
        .

        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 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
        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! .

        .

          (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
        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.)


        .
        .

        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
        O

          (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.
          250
          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
        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 ....

        .
        .

          (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
          (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
        370
        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

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

                THE BAWD

        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.

                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 ...

        (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
        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.
        410
        Bohee brothers. Sweep for that matter

          (Tom and Sam Bohee, coloured coons in white duck suits, scarlet
          socks, upstarched Sambo chokers and large scarlet asters in their
          buttonholes, leap out Each has his banjo slung Their paler smaller
          negroid hands jingle the twingtwang wires. Flashing white kaffir
          eyes and tusks they rattle through a breakdown in clumsy clogs,
          twinging, singing, back to back, toe heel, heel toe, with
          smackfatclacking nigger lips.)

                TOM AND SAM

              420
              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?


        (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.

        (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
        (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

        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.


                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.

        (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-
          480
          boards, shuffles past them in carpet slippers, his dull beard
          thrust out, muttering to right and left. Little Alf Bergan, cloaked in
          the pall of the ace of spades, dogs him to left and right, doubled in
          laughter.)

                ALF BERGAN

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

                MRS BREEN

        (to Bloom) High jinks below stairs. (she gives him the glad eye) Why
        didn't you kiss the spot to make it well? You wanted to.

                BLOOM

        490
        (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
          500
          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
        510
        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.

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

                MRS BREEN

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

                BLOOM

        I mean, Leopardstown. And Molly won seven shillings on a three year old
        named Nevertell and coming home along by Foxrock in that old fiveseater
        shanderadan of a waggonette you were in your heyday then and you had
        on that new hat of white velours with a surround of molefur that Mrs
        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 ....

                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
        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

        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 ....

                MRS BREEN

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

          (She fades from his side. . . . . .
          (BREa|=

          .
        .
          . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 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
          580
          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!

          590
          (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

              600
              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?

        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
        (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

        630
        (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
        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.

        650
        (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
        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.

          (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
          (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

        690
        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.

        (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
        (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

        720
        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

        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.



                FIRST WATCH

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

                SECOND WATCH

        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.

          (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.

        (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.

                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
        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
        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.

                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
        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.
        800
        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
          810
          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
          [BEAa]

          morning dress, outbreast pocket with peak of handkerchief
          showing, creased lavender trousers and patent boots. He carries a
          large portfolio labelled Matcham's Masterstrokes.)

        (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 ...

                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
        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,
              850
              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
        =|BEAa|=

        archconspirator of the age!

                BLOOM

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

        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
        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
        880
        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
        890
        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.

          900
          (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
          910
          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
          920
          reciting the family rosary round the crackling Yulelog while in the
          boreens and green lanes the colleens with their swains strolled what
          times the strains of the organtoned melodeon Britanniametalbound
          with four acting stops and twelvefold bellows, a sacrifice, greatest
          bargain ever ....)

          (Renewed laughter. He mumbles incoherently. Reporters complain
          that they cannot hear.)

                LONGHAND AND SHORTHAND

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

                PROFESSOR MACHUGH

        930
        (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.)

        =[OMOa

        (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.

                BLOOM

        (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)

              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
        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.



                BLOOM

        A penny in the pound.

          (The image of the lake of Kinnereth with blurred cattle cropping in
          990
          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.)

        (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.)

        OMOa]=

                BLOOM

        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 ......

                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
        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
        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.

                MRS YELVERTON BARRY

        1040
        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

        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.



                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
        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.

                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.

        (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
        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
        1110
        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
        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?

                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
        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.
              1140
              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

        1150
        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.


        (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
          1170
          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.

          1180
          (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,
        1190
        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 .....

        (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
          (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
          1220
          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

        1230
        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.
        1240
        (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 twisted poppies.)

                FATHER COFFEY

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

                JOHN O'CONNELL

        1250
        (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
          stiffpointcd, his ears cocked.)

                PADDY DIGNAM

        1260
        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
        1270
        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!
        1280
        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

        1290
        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

        1300
        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.

        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.)

        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
          1330
          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
          1340
          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.
        1350
        (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
        1360
        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
        1370
        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
          1380
          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

        1390
        (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
          1400
          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
          1410
          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
          1420
          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
          1430
          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,
          1440
          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.)

              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!

          1460
          (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.)


                1470

                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.

                1480
                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
        1490
        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.

          1500
          (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
          1510
          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.

          1520
          (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
        1530
        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.

        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
          1550
          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 fill 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
          1560
          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
          1570
          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
          1580
          (infantilic), so 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
          1590
          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.


        (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 fit
        1610
        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!

          1620
          (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

        1630
        The Court of Conscience is now open. His Most Catholic Majesty will now
        administer open air justice. Free medical and legal advice, solution of
        doubles and other problems. All cordially invited. Given at this our loyal
        city of Dublin in the year I of the Paradisiacal Era.

                PADDY LEONARD

        What am I to do about my rates and taxes?


                BLOOM

        Pay them, my friend.

                PADDY LEONARD

        Thank you.

        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

        1650
        For bladder trouble?

                BLOOM

              Acid. nit. hydrochlor. dil., 20 minims
              Tinct. nux vom., 5 minims
              Extr. taraxel. Iiq., 30 minims.
              Aq. dis. ter in die.

                CHRIS CALLINAN

        What is the parallax of the subsolar ecliptic of Aldebaran?

                BLOOM

        Pleased to hear from you, Chris. K. II.

        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

        1670
        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

        1680
        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
        1690
        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

        1700
        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,
          1710
          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!

        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

        1730
        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

        1740
        (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
          1750
          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
        1760
        is the very breath of his nostrils. The stake faggots and the caldron of
        boiling oil are for him. Caliban!


                THE MOB

        Lynch him! Roast him! He's as bad as Parnell was. Mr Fox!

          (Mother Grogan throws her boot at Bloom. Several shopkeepers
          from upper and lower Dorset street throw objects of little or no
          commercial value, hambones, condensed milk tins, unsaleable
          cabbage, stale bread, sheep's tails, odd pieces of fat.)

                BLOOM

        (excitedly) This is midsummer madness, some ghastly joke again. By
        1770
        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, sgeul i mbarr bata coisde gan
        capall
        . I call on my old friend, Dr Malachi Mulligan, sex specialist, to give
        medical testimony on my behalf.

                DR MULLIGAN

        (in motor jerkin, green motorgoggles on his brow) Dr Bloom is bisexually
        abnormal. He has recently escaped from Dr Eustace's private asylum for
        demented gentlemen. Born out of bedlock hereditary epilepsy is present, the
        consequence of unbridled lust. Traces of elephantiasis have been discovered
        1780
        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.)

        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

        1800
        (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
        1810
        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.

        (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, Maindore,
          1830
          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

        1840
        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
          1850
          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
        1860
        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
        1870
        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?

        And in the devil's glen?

                BLOOM

        (blushes furiously all over from frons to nates, three tears filling from his
        left eye
        ) Spare my past.

                THE IRISH EVICTED TENANTS

        (in bodycoats, kneebreeches, with Donnybrook fair shillelaghs) Sjambok
        him!

          (Bloom with asses' ears seats himself in the pillory with crossed
          arms, his feet protruding. He whistles Don Giovanni, a cenar teco.
          1890
          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.

        (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

        1910
        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.)

        (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
          1930
          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

        1940
        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
        1950
        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
        1960
        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)
        1970
        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
        1980
        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
        1990
        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

        2000
        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

        2010
        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!

        .
        .

          2020
          (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.

          2030
          (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
          2040
          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,
          2050
          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 his
        wand She settles them down quickly.)
        Respect yourself. (she hiccups, then
        bends quickly her sailor hat under which her hair glows, red with henna)
        2060
        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.

          2070
          (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

        2080
        (promptly) Your boy's thinking of you. Tie a knot on your shift.

          (Kitty Ricketts bends her head. Her boa uncoils, slides, glides over
          her shoulder, back, arm, chair to the ground. Lynch lifts the curled
          caterpillar on his wand. She snakes her neck, nestling. Stephen
          glances behind at the squatted 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 Coela enarrant gloriam Domini. It is susceptible of nodes
        or modes as far apart as hyperphrygian and mixolydian and of texts so
        2090
        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) Ba! It is because it is. Woman's reason. Jewgreek is
        greekjew. Extremes meet. Death is the highest form of life. Ba!

                STEPHEN

        You remember fairly accurately all my errors, boasts, mistakes. How long
        2100
        shall I continue to close my eyes to disloyalty? Whetstone!

                THE CAP

        Ba!

                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

        2110
        (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
        2120
        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

        2130
        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
        2140
        royal canal. Safe arrival of Antichrist.

        .
        .

          (Stephen turns and sees Bloom.)


                STEPHEN

        A time, times and half a time.

        .
        .

          (Reuben I 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
          2150
          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 primigne! (he whirls round and round with dervish
        2160
        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

              2170
              Jerusalem!
              Open your gates and sing
              Hosanna ....

          (A rocket rushes up the sky and bursts. A white star fills from it,
          proclaiming the consummation of all things and second coming of
          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

        2180
        (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
        2190
        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
        2200
        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

        2210
        (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
        2220
        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

        2230
        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 fist past in noisy marching)

        (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.)

        2250
        (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,
          2260
          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
        2270
        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
          2280
          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
        2290
        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
          2300
          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

        2310
        (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
        2320
        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.
        2330
        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
        2340
        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...

        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
        2360
        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
        2370
        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 ...

        (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 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

        2390
        (excitedly) I say so. I say so. E'en so. Technic. (he taps his parchmentroll
        energetically
        ) This book tells you how to act with all descriptive
        particulars. Consult index for agitated fear of aconite, melancholy of
        muriatic, priapic pulsatilla. Virag is going to talk about amputation. Our
        old friend caustic. They must be starved. Snip off with horsehair under the
        denned neck. But, to change the venue to the Bulgar and the Basque, have
        you made up your mind whether you like or dislike women in male
        habiliments? (with a dry snigger) You intended to devote an entire year to
        the study of the religious problem and the summer months of 1886 to
        square the circle and win that million. Pomegranate! From the sublime to
        2400
        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

        2410
        (prompts in a pig's whisper) Insects of the day spend their brief existence
        in reiterated coition, lured by the smell of the inferiorly pulchritudinous
        fumale possessing extendified pudendal nerve in dorsal region. Pretty Poll!
        (his yellow parrotbeak gabbles nasally) They had a proverb in the
        Carpathians in or about the year five thousand five hundred and fifty of our
        era. One tablespoonful of honey will attract friend Bruin more than half a
        dozen 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
        2420
        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

        2430
        (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
        2440
        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
        2450
        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
        2460
        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.
              2470
              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
          2480
          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
          2490
          regards Zoe's neck. Henry gallant turns with pendant dewlap to the
          piano.)

        .
        .


                ==< End of first half of Chap.[15] >==