00 |
(The Mabbot street entrance of nighttown,
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 |
40 |
CISSY CAFFREY
I gave it to Molly
Because she was jolly,
The leg of the duck,
The leg of the duck.
(Private Carr and Private Compton, swaggersticks tight in their
oxters, as they march unsteadily rightaboutface and burst together
from their mouths a volleyed fart. Laughter of men from the lane. A so
hoarse virago retorts.)
50
THE VIRAGO
Signs on you, hairy arse. More power the Cavan girl.
CISSY CAFFREY
More luck to me. Cavan, Cootehill and Belturbet. (she sings)
I gave it to Nelly
To stick in her belly,
The leg of the duck,
The leg of the duck.
(Private Carr and Private Compton turn and counterretort, their
tunics bloodbright in a lampglow, black sockets of caps on their 60
blond cropped polls. Stephen Dedalus and Lynch pass through the
crowd close to the redcoats.)
PRIVATE COMPTON
(jerks his finger) Way for the parson.
PRIVATE CARR
(turns and calls) What ho, parson!
CISSY CAFFREY
(her voice soaring higher)
(Stephen, flourishing the ashplant in his left hand, chants with
joy
the introit for paschal time. Lynch, his jockeycap low on his brow,
attends him, a sneer of discontent wrinkling his face.)
STEPHEN
Vidi aquam egredientem de templo a latere dextro. Alleluia.
(The famished snaggletusks of an elderly bawd protrude from a
doorway.)
THE BAWD
80 |
STEPHEN
(altius aliquantulum) Et omnes ad quos pervenit aqua ista.
THE BAWD
(spits in their trail her jet of venom) Trinity medicals. Fallopian
tube. All
prick and no pence.
(Edy Boardman, sniffling, crouched with Bertha Supple, draws her
shawl across her nostrils.)
EDY BOARDMAN
90 |
STEPHEN
(triumphaliter) Salvi facti sunt.
(He flourishes his ashplant, shivering the lamp image, shattering
light over the world. A liver and white spaniel on the prowl slinks
after him, growling. Lynch scares it with a kick.)
100
LYNCH
So that?
STEPHEN
(looks behind) So that gesture, not music not odour, would be
a universal
language, the gift of tongues rendering visible not the lay sense but the
first
entelechy, the structural rhythm.
LYNCH
Pornosophical philotheology. Metaphysics in Mecklenburgh street!
STEPHEN
110 |
LYNCH
Ba!
STEPHEN
Anyway, who wants two gestures to illustrate a loaf and a jug? This
movement illustrates the loaf and jug of bread or wine in Omar. Hold my
stick.
LYNCH
Damn your yellow stick. Where are we going?
Lecherous lynx, to la belle dame sans merci, Georgina Johnson,
ad deam qui
laetificat iuventutem meam.
(Stephen thrusts the ashplant on him and slowly holds out his
hands, his head going back till both hands are a span from his
breast, down turned, in planes intersecting, the fingers about to
part, the left being higher.)
LYNCH
Which is the jug of bread? It skills not. That or the customhouse. Illustrate
thou. Here take your crutch and walk.
130 |
140 |
150 |
BLOOM
(He disappears into Olhausen's, the porkbutcher's, under the
downcoming rollshutter. A few moments later he emerges from
under the shutter, puffing Poldy, blowing Bloohoom. In each hand
he holds a parcel, one containing a lukewarm pig's crubeen, the
other a cold sheep's trotter, sprinkled with wholepepper. He gasps,
standing upright. Then bending to one side he presses a parcel
against his ribs and groans.) 160
BLOOM
Stitch in my side. Why did I run?
(He takes breath with care and goes forward slowly towards the
lampset siding The glow leaps again.)
BLOOM
What is that? A flasher? Searchlight.
(He stands at Cormack's corner, watching)
BLOOM
170 |
(He darts to cross the road. Urchins shout.)
THE URCHINS
Mind out, mister!
(Two cyclists, with lighted paper lanterns aswing, swim by him,
grazing him, their bells rattling)
Haltyaltyaltyall.
BLOOM
(halts erect, stung by a spasm) Ow!
(He looks round, darts forward suddenly. Through rising fog a
dragon sandstrewer, travelling at caution, slews heavily down upon
him, its huge red headlight winking, its trolley hissing on the wire.
The motorman bangs his footgong.)
THE GONG
Bang Bang Bla Bak Blud Bugg Bloo.
190 |
THE MOTORMAN
Hey, shitbreeches, are you doing the hat trick?
(Bloom trickleaps to the curbstone and halts again. He brushes a
mudflake from his cheek with a parcelled hand.)
BLOOM
No thoroughfare. Close shave that but cured the stitch. Must take up
200 |
210 |
(A sinister figure leans on plaited legs against O'Beirne's wall,
a
visage unknown, injected with dark mercury. From under a
wideleaved sombrero the figure regards him with evil eye.)
BLOOM
Buenas noches, senorita Blanca. Que calle es esta?
THE FIGURE
(impassive, raises a signal arm) Password. Sraid Mabbot.
BLOOM
220 |
(He steps forward. A sackshouldered ragman bars his path. He
steps left, ragsackman left.)
BLOOM
I beg.
(He leaps right, sackragman right.)
BLOOM
I beg.
(He swerves, sidles, stepaside, slips past and on.)
Keep to the right, right, right. If there is a signpost planted by the
Touring
Club at Stepaside who procured that public boon? I who lost my way and
contributed to the columns of the Irish Cyclist the letter headed
In darkest
Stepaside. Keep, keep, keep to the right. Rags and bones at midnight.
A
fence more likely. First place murderer makes for. Wash off his sins of
the
world.
(Jacky Caffrey, hunted by Tommy Caffrey, runs full tilt against
Bloom.)
BLOOM
240 |
(Shocked, on weak hams, he halts. Tommy and Jacky vanish
there, there. Bloom pats with parcelled hands watchfob,
pocketbookpocket, pursepoke, sweets of sin, potatosoap.)
BLOOM
Beware of pickpockets. Old thieves' dodge. Collide. Then snatch your
purse.
(The retriever approaches sniffing, nose to the ground. A sprawled
form sneezes. A stooped bearded figure appears garbed in the long
caftan of an elder in Zion and a smokingcap with magenta tassels.
Horned spectacles hang down at the wings of the nose. Yellow 250
poison streaks are on the drawn face.)
RUDOLPH
Second halfcrown waste money today. I told you not go with drunken goy
ever. So you catch no money.
BLOOM
(hides the crubeen and trotter behind his back and, crestfallen,
feels warm
and cold feetmeat) Ja, ich weiss, papachi.
RUDOLPH
What you making down this place? Have you no soul? (with feeble vulture
talons he feels the silent face of Bloom) Are you not my son Leopold,
the 260
grandson of Leopold? Are you not my dear son Leopold who left the house
of his father and left the god of his fathers Abraham and Jacob?
BLOOM
(with precaution) I suppose so, father. Mosenthal. All that's left of him.
RUDOLPH
(severely) One night they bring you home drunk as dog after spend
your
good money. What you call them running chaps?
BLOOM
(in youth's smart blue Oxford suit with white vestslips, narrowshouldered,
in brown Alpine hat, wearing gent's sterling silver Waterbury keyless watch 270
and double curb Albert with seal attached, one side of him coated with
stiffening mud) Harriers, father. Only that once.
RUDOLPH
Once! Mud head to foot. Cut your hand open. Lockjaw. They make you
kaputt, Leopoldleben. You watch them chaps.
BLOOM
(weakly) They challenged me to a sprint. It was muddy. I slipped.
RUDOLPH
(with contempt) Goim nachez! Nice spectacles for your poor mother!
Mamma!
ELLEN BLOOM
(in pantomime dame's stringed mobcap, widow Twankey's crinoline and
bustle, blouse with muttonleg sleeves buttoned behind, grey mittens and
cameo brooch, her plaited hair in a crispine net, appears over the staircase
banisters, a slanted candlestick in her hand, and cries out in shrill alarm)
O blessed Redeemer, what have they done to him! My smelling salts!
(She
hauls up a reef of skirt and ransacks the pouch of her striped blay petticoat
A phial, an Agnus Dei, a shrivelled potato and a celluloid doll fall out)
290 |
(Bloom, mumbling, his eyes downcast, begins to bestow his parcels
in his filled pockets but desists, muttering.)
A VOICE
(sharply) Poldy!
BLOOM
Who? (he ducks and wards off a blow clumsily) At your service.
(He looks up. Beside her mirage of datepalms a handsome woman
in Turkish costume stands before him. Opulent curves fill out her
scarlet trousers and jacket, slashed with gold. A wide yellow
cummerbund girdles her. A white yashmak, violet in the night,
covers her face, leaving free only her large dark eyes and raven 300
hair.)
BLOOM
Molly!
MARION
Welly? Mrs Marion from this out, my dear man, when you speak to me.
(satirically) Has poor little hubby cold feet waiting so long?
BLOOM
(shifts from foot to foot) No, no. Not the least little bit.
(He breathes in deep agitation, swallowing gulps of air, questions,
hopes, crubeens for her supper, things to tell her, excuse, desire, 310
spellbound. A coin gleams on her forehead. On her feet are jewelled
toerings. Her ankles are linked by a slender fetterchain. Beside her a
camel, hooded with a turreting turban, waits. A silk ladder of
innumerable rungs climbs to his bobbing howdah. He ambles near
with disgruntled hindquarters. Fiercely she slaps his haunch, her
goldcurb wristbangles angriling, scolding him in Moorish.)
MARION
Nebrakada! Femininum!
(The camel, lifting a foreleg, plucks from a tree a large mango fruit,
offers it to his mistress, blinking, in his cloven hoof, then droops his 320
head and, grunting, with uplifted neck, fumbles to kneel. Bloom
stoops his back for leapfrog.)
BLOOM
I can give you ... I mean as your business menagerer .. Mrs Marion .....
if
you ....
MARION
So you notice some change? (her hands passing slowly over her trinketed
stomacher, a slow friendly mockery in her eyes) O Poldy, Poldy, you
are a
poor old stick in the mud! Go and see life. See the wide world.
I was just going back for that lotion whitewax, orangeflower water.
Shop
closes early on Thursday. But the first thing in the morning. (he pats
divers
pockets) This moving kidney. Ah!
(He points to the south, then to the east. A cake of new clean lemon
soap arises, diffusing light and perfume.)
THE SOAP
We're a capital couple are Bloom and I.
He brightens the earth. I polish the sky.
(The freckled face of Sweny, the druggist, appears in the disc of
the
soapsun.)
340
SWENY
Three and a penny, please.
BLOOM
Yes. For my wife. Mrs Marion. Special recipe.
MARION
(softly) Poldy!
BLOOM
Yes, ma'am?
MARION
350 |
(In disdain she saunters away, humming the duet from Don
Giovanni, plump as a pampered pouter pigeon.)
BLOOM
Are you sure about that Voglio? I mean the pronunciati ....
(He follows, followed by the sniffing terrier. The elderly bawd
seizes his sleeve, the bristles of her chinmole glittering.)
THE BAWD
Ten shillings a maidenhead. Fresh thing was never touched. Fifteen.
There's
no-one in it only her old father that's dead drunk.
BRIDIE
Hatch street. Any good in your mind?
(With a squeak she flaps her bat shawl and runs. A burly rough
pursues with booted strides. He stumbles on the steps, recovers,
plunges into gloom. Weak squeaks of laughter are heard, weaker.)
THE BAWD
(her wolfeyes shining) He's getting his pleasure. You won't get
a virgin in
the flash houses. Ten shillings. Don't be all night before the polis in
plain
370 |
(Leering, Gerty MacDowell limps forward. She draws from behind,
ogling, and shows coyly her bloodied clout.)
GERTY
With all my worldly goods I thee and thou. (she murmurs) You
did that. I
hate you.
BLOOM
l? When? You're dreaming. I never saw you.
THE BAWD
Leave the gentleman alone, you cheat. Writing the gentleman false letters.
380 |
GERTY
(to Bloom) When you saw all the secrets of my bottom drawer.
(she paws
his sleeve, slobbering) Dirty married man! I love you for doing that
to me.
(She glides away crookedly. Mrs Breen in man's frieze overcoat
with loose bellows pockets, stands in the causeway, her roguish eyes
[BREa]
wideopen, smiling in all her herbivorous buckteeth.)
MRS BREEN
Mr ...
(coughs gravely) Madam, when we last had this pleasure by letter
dated
the sixteenth instant ....
MRS BREEN
Mr Bloom! You down here in the haunts of sin! I caught you nicely!
Scamp!
BLOOM
(hurriedly) Not so loud my name. Whatever do you think of me?
Don't
give me away. Walls have ears. How do you do? It's ages since I. You're
looking splendid. Absolutely it. Seasonable weather we are having this
time
400 |
MRS BREEN
(holds up a finger) Now, don't tell a big fib! I know somebody
won't like
that. O just wait till I see Molly! (slily) Account for yourself
this very
sminute or woe betide you!
BLOOM
(looks behind) She often said she'd like to visit. Slumming.
The exotic, you
see. Negro servants in livery too if she had money. Othello black brute.
Eugene Stratton. Even the bones and cornerman at the Livermore christies.
410 |
(Tom and Sam Bohee, coloured coons in white duck suits, scarlet
socks, upstarched Sambo chokers and large scarlet asters in their
buttonholes, leap out Each has his banjo slung Their paler smaller
negroid hands jingle the twingtwang wires. Flashing white kaffir
eyes and tusks they rattle through a breakdown in clumsy clogs,
twinging, singing, back to back, toe heel, heel toe, with
smackfatclacking nigger lips.)
TOM AND SAM
(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 |
MRS BREEN
The dear dead days beyond recall. Love's old sweet song.
BLOOM
(meaningfully dropping his voice) I confess I'm teapot with curiosity
to
find out whether some person's something is a little teapot at present.
MRS BREEN
460 |
BLOOM
(wearing a purple Napoleon hat with an amber halfmoon, his fingers
and
thumb passing slowly down to her soft moist meaty palm which she
surrenders gently) The witching hour of night. I took the splinter
out of
this hand, carefully, slowly. (tenderly, as he slips on her finger a
ruby ring)
La ci darem la mano.
(in a onepiece evening frock executed in moonlight blue, a tinsel
sylph's
diadem on her brow with her dancecard fallen beside her moonblue satin
slipper, curves her palm softly, breathing quickly) Voglio e non
..... You're
hot! You're scalding! The left hand nearest the heart.
BLOOM
When you made your present choice they said it was beauty and the beast.
I
can never forgive you for that. (his clenched fist at his brow)
Think what it
means. All you meant to me then. (hoarsely) Woman, it's breaking
me!
(Denis Breen, whitetallhatted, with Wisdom Hely's sandwich-
boards, shuffles past them in carpet slippers, his dull beard 480
thrust out, muttering to right and left. Little Alf Bergan, cloaked in
the pall of the ace of spades, dogs him to left and right, doubled in
laughter.)
ALF BERGAN
(points jeering at the sandwichboards) U. p: up.
MRS BREEN
(to Bloom) High jinks below stairs. (she gives him the glad
eye) Why
didn't you kiss the spot to make it well? You wanted to.
BLOOM
490 |
MRS BREEN
(her pulpy tongue between her lips, offers a pigeon kiss) Hnhn.
The
answer is a lemon. Have you a little present for me there?
BLOOM
(offhandedly) Kosher. A snack for supper. The home without potted
meat
is incomplete. I was at Leah, Mrs Bandmann Palmer. Trenchant exponent
of Shakespeare. Unfortunately threw away the programme. Rattling good
place round there for pigs' feet. Feel.
(Richie Goulding, three ladies' hats pinned on his head, appears
weighted to one side by the black legal bag of Collis and Ward on 500
which a skull and crossbones are painted in white limewash. He
opens it and shows it full of polonies, kippered herrings, Findon
haddies and tightpacked pills.)
RICHIE
Best value in Dub.
(Bald Pat, bothered beetle, stands on the curbstone, folding his
napkin, waiting to wait.)
PAT
(advances with a tilted dish of spillspilling gravy) Steak and
kidney. Bottle
510 |
RICHIE
Goodgod. Inev erate inall ....
(With hanging head he marches doggedly forward The navvy,
lurching by, gores him with his flaming pronghorn.)
RICHIE
(with a cry of pain, his hand to his back) Ah! Bright's! Lights!
BLOOM
(points to the navvy) A spy. Don't attract attention. I hate
stupid crowds. I
am not on pleasure bent. I am in a grave predicament.
Humbugging and deluthering as per usual with your cock and bull story.
BLOOM
I want to tell you a little secret about how I came to be here. But
you must
never tell. Not even Molly. I have a most particular reason.
MRS BREEN
(all agog) O, not for worlds.
BLOOM
Let's walk on. Shall us?
MRS BREEN
530 |
(The bawd makes an unheeded sign. Bloom walks on with Mrs
Breen. The terrier follows, whining piteously, wagging his tail.)
THE BAWD
Jewman's melt!
BLOOM
(in an oatmeal sporting suit, a sprig of woodbine in the lapel, tony
buff
shirt, shepherd's plaid Saint Andrew's cross scarftie, white spats, fawn
dustcoat on his arm, tawny red brogues, fieldglasses in bandolier and a
grey
billycock hat) Do you remember a long long time, years and years ago,
just
540 |
MRS BREEN
(in smart Saxe tailormade, white velours hat and spider veil)
Leopards-
town.
BLOOM
I mean, Leopardstown. And Molly won seven shillings on a three year
old
named Nevertell and coming home along by Foxrock in that old fiveseater
shanderadan of a waggonette you were in your heyday then and you had
on that new hat of white velours with a surround of molefur that Mrs
550 |
MRS BREEN
She did, of course, the cat! Don't tell me! Nice adviser!
BLOOM
Because it didn't suit you one quarter as well as the other ducky little
tammy toque with the bird of paradise wing in it that I admired on you
and
you honestly looked just too fetching in it though it was a pity to kill
it, you
cruel naughty creature, little mite of a thing with a heart the size of
a
560 |
MRS BREEN
(squeezes his arm, simpers) Naughty cruel I was!
BLOOM
(low, secretly, ever more rapidly) And Molly was eating a sandwich
of
spiced beef out of Mrs Joe Gallaher's lunch basket. Frankly, though she
had her advisers or admirers, I never cared much for her style. She was
....
MRS BREEN
Too ....
BLOOM
570 |
MRS BREEN
(eagerly) Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
(She fades from his side. Followed by the whining dog he walks on =|BREa|=
towards hellsgates. In an archway a standing woman, bent forward,
her feet apart, pisses cowily. Outside a shuttered pub a bunch of
loiterers listen to a tale which their brokensnouted gaffer rasps out 580
with raucous humour. An armless pair of them flop wrestling,
growling, in maimed sodden playfight.)
THE GAFFER
(crouches, his voice twisted in his snout) And when Cairns came
down
from the scaffolding in Beaver street what was he after doing it into only
into the bucket of porter that was there waiting on the shavings for
Derwan's plasterers.
THE LOITERERS
(guffaw with cleft palates) O jays!
590 |
BLOOM
Coincidence too. They think it funny. Anything but that. Broad daylight.
Trying to walk. Lucky no woman.
THE LOITERERS
Jays, that's a good one. Glauber salts. O jays, into the men's porter.
(Bloom passes. Cheap whores, singly, coupled, shawled, dishevelled,
call from lanes, doors, corners.)
THE WHORES
(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 |
THE NAVVY
(shouts)
We are the boys.
Of Wexford.
PRIVATE COMPTON
Say! What price the sergeantmajor?
PRIVATE CARR
Bennett? He's my pal. I love old Bennett.
THE NAVVY
630 |
The galling chain.
And free our native land.
(He staggers forward, dragging them with him. Bloom stops, at
fault. The dog approaches, his tongue outlolling, panting)
BLOOM
Wildgoose chase this. Disorderly houses. Lord knows where they are gone.
Drunks cover distance double quick. Nice mixup. Scene at Westland row.
Then jump in first class with third ticket. Then too far. Train with engine
behind. Might have taken me to Malahide or a siding for the night or
640 |
Odd! Molly drawing on the frosted carriagepane at
Kingstown. What's that like?
THE WREATHS
Sweet are the sweets. Sweets of sin.
BLOOM
My spine's a bit limp. Go or turn? And this food? Eat it and get all
660 |
670 |
(With regret he lets the unrolled crubeen and trotter slide. The
mastiff mauls the bundle clumsily and gluts himself with growling
greed, crunching the bones. Two raincaped watch approach, silent,
vigilant. They murmur together.)
THE WATCH
Bloom. Of Bloom. For Bloom. Bloom.
FIRST WATCH
Caught in the act. Commit no nuisance.
BLOOM
(stammers) I am doing good to others.
(A covey of gulls, storm petrels, rises hungrily from Liffey slime
with Banbury cakes in their beaks.)
THE GULLS
Kaw kave kankury kake.
BLOOM
690 |
(He points. Bob Doran, toppling from a high barstool, sways over
the munching spaniel.)
BOB DORAN
Towser. Give us the paw. Give the paw.
(The bulldog growls, his scruff standing, a gobbet of pig's knuckle
between his molars through which rabid scumspittle dribbles Bob
Doran falls silently into an area.)
SECOND WATCH
Prevention of cruelty to animals.
(enthusiastically) A noble work! I scolded that tramdriver on
Harold's
cross bridge for illusing the poor horse with his harness scab. Bad French
I
got for my pains. Of course it was frosty and the last tram. All tales
of
circus life are highly demoralising.
(Signor Maffei, passionpale, in liontamer's costume with diamond
[P]
studs in his shirtfront, steps forward, holding a circus paperhoop, a
curling carriagewhip and a revolver with which he covers the
gorging boarhound.)
SIGNOR MAFFEI
710 |
FIRST WATCH
720 |
BLOOM
I have forgotten for the moment. Ah, yes! (he takes off his high
grade hat,
saluting) Dr Bloom, Leopold, dental surgeon. You have heard of von
Blum
Pasha. Umpteen millions. Donnerwetter! Owns half Austria. Egypt.
Cousin.
FIRST WATCH
Proof.
(A card falls from inside the leather headband of Bloom's hat.)
BLOOM
730 |
FIRST WATCH
(reads) Henry Flower. No fixed abode. Unlawfully watching and
besetting.
SECOND WATCH
An alibi. You are cautioned.
(produces from his heartpocket a crumpled yellow flower) This
is the
flower in question. It was given me by a man I don't know his name.
(plausibly) You know that old joke, rose of Castile. Bloom. The
change of
name. Virag. (he murmurs privately and confidentially) We are engaged
you see, sergeant. Lady in the case. Love entanglement. (he shoulders
the
second watch gently) Dash it all. It's a way we gallants have in the
navy.
Uniform that does it. (he turns gravely to the first watch) Still,
of course,
you do get your Waterloo sometimes. Drop in some evening and have a
glass of old Burgundy. (to the second watch gaily) I'll introduce
you,
750 |
(A dark mercurialised face appears, leading a veiled figure.)
THE DARK MERCURY
The Castle is looking for him. He was drummed out of the army.
MARTHA
(thickveiled, a crimson halter round her neck, a copy of the Irish
Times in
her hand, in tone of reproach, pointing) Henry! Leopold! Lionel, thou
lost
one! Clear my name.
FIRST WATCH
(sternly) Come to the station.
(scared, hats himself, steps back, then, plucking at his heart and
lifting his
right forearm on the square, he gives the sign and dueguard of fellowcraft)
No, no, worshipful master, light of love. Mistaken identity. The Lyons
mail.
Lesurques and Dubosc. You remember the Childs fratricide case. We
[P] |
MARTHA
(sobbing behind her veil) Breach of promise. My real name is
Peggy
Griffin. He wrote to me that he was miserable. I'll tell my brother, the
770 |
BLOOM
(behind his hand) She's drunk. The woman is inebriated. (he
murmurs
vaguely the pass of Ephraim) Shitbroleeth.
SECOND WATCH
(tears in his eyes, to Bloom) You ought to be thoroughly well
ashamed of
yourself.
BLOOM
Gentlemen of the jury, let me explain. A pure mare's nest. I am a man
misunderstood. I am being made a scapegoat of. I am a respectable married
780 |
FIRST WATCH
Regiment.
BLOOM
(turns to the gallery) The royal Dublins, boys, the salt of the
earth, known
the world over. I think I see some old comrades in arms up there among
790 |
A VOICE
Turncoat! Up the Boers! Who booed Joe Chamberlain?
BLOOM
(his hand on the shoulder of the first watch) My old dad too
was a J. P.
I'm as staunch a Britisher as you are, sir. I fought with the colours for
king
and country in the absentminded war under general Gough in the park and
was disabled at Spion Kop and Bloemfontein, was mentioned in dispatches.
800 |
FIRST WATCH
Profession or trade.
BLOOM
Well, I follow a literary occupation, author-journalist. In fact we
are just
bringing out a collection of prize stories of which I am the inventor,
something that is an entirely new departure. I am connected with the British
and Irish press. If you ring up ....
(Myles Crawford strides out jerkily, a quill between his teeth. His
scarlet beak blazes within the aureole of his straw hat He dangles a
hank of Spanish onions in one hand and holds with the other hand 810
a telephone receiver nozzle to his ear.)
MYLES CRAWFORD
(his cock's wattles wagging) Hello, seventyseven eightfour. Hello.
Freeman's Urinal and Weekly Arsewipe here. Paralyse Europe.
You which?
Bluebags? Who writes? Is it Bloom?
(Mr Philip Beaufoy, palefaced, stands in the witnessbox, in accurate
[P]
morning dress, outbreast pocket with peak of handkerchief
showing, creased lavender trousers and patent boots. He carries a
large portfolio labelled Matcham's Masterstrokes.)
(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 |
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 |
BLOOM
(bravely) Overdrawn.
BEAUFOY
You low cad! You ought to be ducked in the horsepond, you rotter! (to
the
court) Why, look at the man's private life! Leading a quadruple existence!
Street angel and house devil. Not fit to be mentioned in mixed society!
The
archconspirator of the age!
BLOOM
(to the court) And he, a bachelor, how...
The King versus Bloom. Call the woman Driscoll.
THE CRIER
Mary Driscoll, scullerymaid!
(Mary Driscoll, a slipshod servant girl, approaches. She has a
bucket on the crook of her arm and a scouringbrush in her hand.)
SECOND WATCH
Another! Are you of the unfortunate class?
MARY DRISCOLL
(indignantly) I'm not a bad one. I bear a respectable character
and was
870 |
FIRST WATCH
What do you tax him with?
MARY DRISCOLL
He made a certain suggestion but I thought more of myself as poor as I am.
BLOOM
(in housejacket of ripplecloth, flannel trousers, heelless slippers,
unshaven,
his hair rumpled: softly) I treated you white. I gave you mementos,
smart
emerald garters far above your station. Incautiously I took your part when
880 |
MARY DRISCOLL
(excitedly) As God is looking down on me this night if ever I
laid a hand to
them oylsters!
FIRST WATCH
The offence complained of? Did something happen?
MARY DRISCOLL
He surprised me in the rere of the premises, Your honour, when the missus
was out shopping one morning with a request for a safety pin. He held me
and I was discoloured in four places as a result. And he interfered twict
890 |
BLOOM
She counterassaulted.
MARY DRISCOLL
(scornfully) I had more respect for the scouringbrush, so I had.
I
remonstrated with him, Your lord, and he remarked: keep it quiet.
(General laughter.)
GEORGE FOTTRELL
(clerk of the crown and peace, resonantly) Order in court! The
accused
will now make a bogus statement.
900 |
sevenmonths' child, he had been carefully brought up and nurtured
by an aged bedridden parent. There might have been lapses of an
erring father but he wanted to turn over a new leaf and now, when
at long last in sight of the whipping post, to lead a homely life in the
evening of his days, permeated by the affectionate surroundings of 910
the heaving bosom of the family. An acclimatised Britisher, he had
seen that summer eve from the footplate of an engine cab of the
Loop line railway company while the rain refrained from falling
glimpses, as it were, through the windows of loveful households in
Dublin city and urban district of scenes truly rural of happiness of
the better land with Dockrell's wallpaper at one and ninepence a
dozen, innocent Britishborn bairns lisping prayers to the Sacred
Infant, youthful scholars grappling with their pensums or model
young ladies playing on the pianoforte or anon all with fervour
reciting the family rosary round the crackling Yulelog while in the 920
boreens and green lanes the colleens with their swains strolled what
times the strains of the organtoned melodeon Britanniametalbound
with four acting stops and twelvefold bellows, a sacrifice, greatest
bargain ever ....)
(Renewed laughter. He mumbles incoherently. Reporters complain
that they cannot hear.)
LONGHAND AND SHORTHAND
(without looking up from their notebooks) Loosen his boots.
PROFESSOR MACHUGH
930 |
(The crossexamination proceeds re Bloom and the bucket. A
large
bucket. Bloom himself. Bowel trouble. In Beaver street Gripe, yes.
Quite bad. A plasterer's bucket. By walking stifflegged. Suffered
untold misery. Deadly agony. About noon. Love or burgundy. Yes,
some spinach. Crucial moment. He did not look in the bucket
Nobody. Rather a mess. Not completely. A Titbits back number
Uproar and catcalls. Bloom in a torn frockcoat stained with
whitewash, dinged silk hat sideways on his head, a strip of
stickingplaster across his nose, talks inaudibly.)
(in barrister's grey wig and stuffgown, speaking with a voice of
pained
protest) This is no place for indecent levity at the expense of an
erring
mortal disguised in liquor. We are not in a beargarden nor at an Oxford
rag
nor is this a travesty of justice. My client is an infant, a poor foreign
immigrant who started scratch as a stowaway and is now trying to turn an
honest penny. The trumped up misdemeanour was due to a momentary
950 |
BLOOM
(Barefoot, pigeonbreasted, in lascar's vest and trousers, apologetic
toes
turned in, opens his tiny mole's eyes and looks about him dazedly, passing
a 960
slow hand across his forehead. Then he hitches his belt sailor fashion
and
with a shrug of oriental obeisance salutes the court, pointing one thumb
heavenward.) Him makee velly muchee fine night. (he begins to lilt
simply)
Li li poo lil chile
Blingee pigfoot evly night
Payee two shilly ....
(He is howled down.)
J. J. O'MOLLOY
(hotly to the populace) This is a lonehand fight. By Hades, I
will not have
970 |
980 |
[P] |
BLOOM
A penny in the pound.
(The image of the lake of Kinnereth with blurred cattle cropping
in
silver haze is projected on the wall. Moses Dlugacz, ferreteyed 990
albino, in blue dungarees, stands up in the gallery, holding in each
hand an orange citron and a pork kidney.)
DLUGACZ
(hoarsely) Bleibtreustrasse, Berlin, W. 13.
(J. J. O'Molloy steps on to a low plinth and holds the lapel of his
coat with solemnity. His face lengthens, grows pale and bearded,
with sunken eyes, the blotches of phthisis and hectic cheekbones of
John F. Taylor. He applies his handkerchief to his mouth and
scrutinises the galloping tide of rosepink blood.)
(almost voicelessly) Excuse me. I am suffering from a severe
chill, have
recently come from a sickbed. A few wellchosen words. (He assumes the
avine head, foxy moustache and proboscidal eloquence of Seymour
Bushe.) When the angel's book comes to be opened if aught that
the pensive bosom has inaugurated of soultransfigured and of
soultransfiguring deserves to live I say accord the prisoner at the bar
the
sacred benefit of the doubt.
(A paper with something written on it is handed into court.)
BLOOM
1010 |
MRS YELVERTON BARRY
(in lowcorsaged opal balldress and elbowlength ivory gloves, wearing
a
sabletrimmed brickquilted dolman, a comb of brilliants and panache of
osprey in her hair) Arrest him, constable. He wrote me an anonymous
1020 |
MRS BELLINGHAM
(in cap and seal coney mantle, wrapped up to the nose, steps out
of her
brougham and scans through tortoiseshell quizzing-glasses which she takes 1030
from inside her huge opossum muff) Also to me. Yes, I believe it is
the same
objectionable person. Because he closed my carriage door outside sir
Thornley Stoker's one sleety day during the cold snap of February
ninetythree when even the grid of the wastepipe and the ballstop in my
bath
cistern were frozen. Subsequently he enclosed a bloom of edelweiss culled
on the heights, as he said, in my honour. I had it examined by a botanical
expert and elicited the information that it was a blossom of the homegrown
potato plant purloined from a forcingcase of the model farm.
MRS YELVERTON BARRY
1040 |
(A crowd of sluts and ragamuffins surges forward)
THE SLUTS AND RAGAMUFFINS
(screaming) Stop thief! Hurrah there, Bluebeard! Three cheers
for Ikey
Mo!
SECOND WATCH
(produces handcuffs) Here are the darbies.
MRS BELLINGHAM
1050 |
1060 |
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS
(in amazon costume, hard hat, jackboots cockspurred, vermilion waistcoat,
fawn musketeer gauntlets with braided drums, long train held up and
hunting crop with which she strikes her welt constantly) Also me. Because
he saw me on the polo ground of the Phoenix park at the match All Ireland
versus the Rest of Ireland. My eyes, I know, shone divinely as I watched
Captain Slogger Dennehy of the Inniskillings win the final chukkar on his
1070 |
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 |
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS
(laughs derisively) O, did you, my fine fellow? Well, by the
living God,
you'll get the surprise of your life now, believe me, the most unmerciful
hiding a man ever bargained for. You have lashed the dormant tigress in
my
nature into fury.
MRS BELLINGHAM
(shakes her muff and quizzing-glasses vindictively) Make him
smart,
Hanna dear. Give him ginger. Thrash the mongrel within an inch of his
1110 |
BLOOM
(shuddering, shrinking, joins his hands: with hangdog mien) O
cold! O
shivery! It was your ambrosial beauty. Forget, forgive. Kismet. Let me
off
this once. (he offers the other cheek)
MRS YELVERTON BARRY
(severely) Don't do so on any account, Mrs Talboys! He should
be
soundly trounced!
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS
(unbuttoning her gauntlet violently) I'll do no such thing. Pigdog
and
1120 |
BLOOM
(trembling, beginning to obey) The weather has been so warm.
(Davy Stephens, ringletted, passes with a bevy of barefoot
newsboys.)
DAVY STEPHEN S
1130 |
(The very reverend Canon O'Hanlon in cloth of gold cope elevates
and exposes a marble timepiece. Before him Father Conroy and the
reverend John Hughes S. J. bend low.)
THE TIMEPIECE
(unportalling)
(The brass quoits of a bed are heard to jingle.)
THE QUOITS
Jigjag. Jigajiga. Jigjag.
(A panel of fog rolls back rapidly, revealing rapidly in the jurybox
the faces of Martin Cunningham, foreman, silkhatted, Jack Power,
Simon Dedalus, Tom Kernan, Ned Lambert, John Henry Menton
Myles Crawford, Lenehan, Paddy Leonard, Nosey Flynn, M'Coy
and the featureless face of a Nameless One.)
THE NAMELESS ONE
1150 |
THE JURORS
(all their heads turned to his voice) Really?
THE NAMELESS ONE
(snarls) Arse over tip. Hundred shillings to five.
THE JURORS
(all their heads lowered in assent) Most of us thought as much.
FIRST WATCH
He is a marked man. Another girl's plait cut. Wanted: Jack the Ripper.
A
thousand pounds reward.
(awed, whispers) And in black. A mormon. Anarchist.
THE CRIER
(loudly) Whereas Leopold Bloom of no fixed abode is a wellknown
dynamitard, forger, bigamist, bawd and cuckold and a public nuisance to
the citizens of Dublin and whereas at this commission of assizes the most
honourable ....
(His Honour, sir Frederick Falkiner, recorder of Dublin, in judicial
garb of grey stone rises from the bench, stonebearded. He bears in
his arms an umbrella sceptre. From his forehead arise starkly the
Mosaic ramshorns.)
1170
THE RECORDER
I will put an end to this white slave traffic and rid Dublin of this
odious
pest. Scandalous! (he dons the black cap) Let him be taken, Mr Subsheriff,
from the dock where he now stands and detained in custody in Mountjoy
prison during His Majesty's pleasure and there be hanged by the neck until
he is dead and therein fail not at your peril or may the Lord have mercy
on
your soul. Remove him.
1180 |
LONG JOHN FANNING
(scowls and calls with rich rolling utterance) Who'll hang Judas Iscariot?
(H. Rumbold, master barber, in a bloodcoloured jerkin and
tanner's apron, a rope coiled over his shoulder, mounts the block. A
life preserver and a nailstudded bludgeon are stuck in his belt He
rubs grimly his grappling hands, knobbed with knuckledusters.)
RUMBOLD
(to the recorder with sinister familiarity) Hanging Harry, your
Majesty,
1190 |
(The bells of George's church toll slowly, loud dark iron.)
THE BELLS
Heigho! Heigho!
BLOOM
(desperately) Wait. Stop. Gulls. Good heart. I saw. Innocence.
Girl in the
monkeyhouse. Zoo. Lewd chimpanzee. (breathlessly) Pelvic basin.
Her
artless blush unmanned me. (overcome with emotion) I left the precincts.
(he turns to a figure in the crowd, appealing) Hynes, may I speak
to you?
You know me. That three shillings you can keep. If you want a little
more .....
(coldly) You are a perfect stranger.
SECOND WATCH
(points to the corner) The bomb is here.
FIRST WATCH
Infernal machine with a time fuse.
BLOOM
No, no. Pig's feet. I was at a funeral.
FIRST WATCH
(draws his truncheon) Liar!
1210 |
PADDY DIGNAM
(in a hollow voice) It is true. It was my funeral. Doctor Finucane
pronounced life extinct when I succumbed to the disease from natural
causes.
BLOOM
(in triumph) You hear?
PADDY DIGNAM
Bloom, I am Paddy Dignam's spirit. List, list, O list!
BLOOM
The voice is the voice of Esau.
SECOND WATCH
(blesses himself) How is that possible?
FIRST WATCH
1230 |
PADDY DIGNAM
By metempsychosis. Spooks.
A VOICE
O rocks.
PADDY DIGNAM
(earnestly) Once I was in the employ of Mr J. H. Menton, solicitor,
commissioner for oaths and affidavits, of 27 Bachelor's Walk. Now I am
defunct, the wall of the heart hypertrophied. Hard lines. The poor wife
was
awfully cut up. How is she bearing it? Keep her off that bottle of sherry.
1240 |
(The portly figure of John O'Connell, caretaker, stands forth,
holding a bunch of keys tied with crape. Beside him stands Father
Coffey, chaplain, toadbellied, wrynecked, in a surplice and
bandanna nightcap, holding sleepily a staff twisted poppies.)
FATHER COFFEY
(yawns, then chants with a hoarse croak) Namine. Jacobs. Vobiscuits.
Amen.
JOHN O'CONNELL
1250 |
PADDY DIGNAM
(with pricked up ears, winces) Overtones. (he wriggles forward
and
places an ear to the ground) My master's voice!
JOHN O'CONNELL
Burial docket letter number U. P. eightyfive thousand. Field seventeen.
House of Keys. Plot, one hundred and one.
(Paddy Dignam listens with visible effort, thinking, his tail
stiffpointcd, his ears cocked.)
PADDY DIGNAM
1260 |
(He worms down through a coalhole, his brown habit trailing its
tether over rattling pebbles. After him toddles an obese grandfather
rat on fungus turtle paws under a grey carapace. Dignam's voice,
muffled, is heard baying under ground: Dignam's dead and gone
below. Tom Rochford, robinredbreasted, in cap and breeches,
jumps from his twocolumned machine.)
TOM ROCHFORD
(a hand to his breastbone, bows) Reuben J. A florin I find him.
(he fixes
the manhole with a resolute stare) My turn now on. Follow me up to
1270 |
(He executes a daredevil salmon leap in the air and is engulfed in
the coalhole. Two discs on the columns wobble, eyes of nought All
recedes.
THE KISSES
(warbling) Leo! (twittering) Icky licky micky sticky for
Leo! (cooing)
Coo coocoo! Yummyyum, Womwom! (warbling) Big comebig! Pirouette!
1280 |
(They rustle, flutter upon his garments, alight, bright giddy flecks,
silvery sequins.)
BLOOM
A man's touch. Sad music. Church music. Perhaps here.
(Zoe Higgins, a young whore in a sapphire slip, closed with three
bronze buckles, a slim black velvet fillet round her throat, nods,
trips down the steps and accosts him.)
ZOE
Are you looking for someone? He's inside with his friend.
BLOOM
1290 |
ZOE
No, eightyone. Mrs Cohen's. You might go farther and fare worse. Mother
Slipperslapper. (familiarly) She's on the job herself tonight with
the vet her
tipster that gives her all the winners and pays for her son in Oxford.
Working overtime but her luck's turned today. (suspiciously) You're
not
his father, are you?
BLOOM
Not I!
ZOE
1300 |
(His skin, alert, feels her fingertips approach. A hand glides over
his left thigh.)
ZOE
How's the nuts?
BLOOM
Off side. Curiously they are on the right. Heavier, I suppose. One in
a
million my tailor, Mesias, says.
ZOE
(in sudden alarm) You've a hard chancre.
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
wine of shame, lust, blood exudes, strangely murmuring.)
1330
ZOE
(murmuring singsong with the music, her odalisk lips lusciously smeared
with salve of swinefat and rosewater) Schorach ani wenowach, benoith
Hierushaloim.
BLOOM
(fascinated) I thought you were of good stock by your accent.
ZOE
And you know what thought did?
(She bites his ear gently with little goldstopped teeth, sending
on
him a cloying breath of stale garlic The roses draw apart, disclose a 1340
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 |
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 |
(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 |
AN ELECTOR
Three times three for our future chief magistrate!
(The aurora borealis of the torchlight procession leaps.)
THE TORCHBEARERS
Hooray!
(Several wellknown burgesses, city magnates and freemen of the
city shake hands with Bloom and congratulate him. Timothy
Harrington, late thrice Lord Mayor of Dublin, imposing in mayoral
scarlet, gold chain and white silk tie, confers with councillor Lorcan
Sherlock, locum tenens. They nod vigorously in agreement.)
1380
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 |
(Prolonged applause. Venetian masts, maypoles and festal arches
spring up. A streamer bearing the legends Cead Mile Failte and
Mah Ttob Melek Israel spans the street All the windows are 1400
thronged with sightseers, chiefly ladies. Along the route the
regiments of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, the King's Own Scottish
Borderers, the Cameron Highlanders and the Welsh Fusiliers
standing to attention, keep back the crowd. Boys from High school
are perched on the lampposts, telegraph poles, windowsills,
cornices, gutters, chimneypots, railings, rainspouts, whistling and
cheering The pillar of the cloud appears. A fife and drum band is
heard in the distance playing the Kol Nidre. The beaters approach
with imperial eagles hoisted, trailing banners and waving oriental
palms. The chryselephantine papal standard rises high, surrounded 1410
by pennons of the civic flag. The van of the procession appears
headed by John Howard Parnell, city marshal, in a chessboard
tabard, the Athlone poursuivant and Ulster King of Arms. They are
followed by the Right Honourable Joseph Hutchinson, lord mayor
of Dublin, his lordship the lord mayor of Cork, their worships the
mayors of Limerick, Galway, Sligo and Waterford, twentyeight
Irish representative peers, sirdars, grandees and maharajahs bearing
the cloth of estate, the Dublin Metropolitan Fire Brigade, the
chapter of the saints of finance in their plutocratic order of
precedence, the bishop of Down and Connor, His Eminence 1420
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 |
1440 |
The wren, the wren,
The king of all birds,
Saint Stephen's his day
Was caught in the furze.
A BLACKSMITH
(murmurs) For the honour of God! And is that Bloom? He scarcely
looks
thirtyone.
A PAVIOR AND FLAGGER
That's the famous Bloom now, the world's greatest reformer. Hats off!
A MILLIONAIRESS
(richly) Isn't he simply wonderful?
A NOBLEWOMAN
(nobly) All that man has seen!
A FEMINIST
(masculinely) And done!
A BELLHANGER
A classic face! He has the forehead of a thinker.
(Bloom's weather. A sunburst appears in the northwest.)
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.
(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 |
(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
My subjects! We hereby nominate our faithful charger Copula Felix
hereditary Grand Vizier and announce that we have this day repudiated
our former spouse and have bestowed our royal hand upon the princess
Selene, the splendour of night.
(The former morganatic spouse of Bloom is hastily removed in the
Black Maria. The princess Selene, in moonblue robes, a silver 1510
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 |
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 |
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
the shape of a huge pork kidney, containing forty thousand rooms. 1550
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
points an elongated finger at Bloom.) 1560
THE MAN IN THE MACINTOSH
Don't you believe a word he says. That man is Leopold M'Intosh, the
notorious fireraiser. His real name is Higgins.
BLOOM
Shoot him! Dog of a christian! So much for M'Intosh!
(A cannonshot. The man in the macintosh disappears. Bloom with
his sceptre strikes down poppies. The instantaneous deaths of many
powerful enemies, graziers, members of parliament, members of
standing committees, are reported. Bloom's bodyguard distribute
Maundy money, commemoration medals, loaves and fishes, 1570
temperance badges, expensive Henry Clay cigars, free cowbones for
soup, rubber preservatives in sealed envelopes tied with gold thread,
butter scotch, pineapple rock, billets doux in the form of cocked
hats, readymade suits, porringers of toad in the hole, bottles of
Jeyes' Fluid, purchase stamps, 40 days' indulgences, spurious coins,
dairyfed pork sausages, theatre passes, season tickets available for
all tramlines, coupons of the royal and privileged Hungarian
lottery, penny dinner counters, cheap reprints of the World's Twelve
Worst Books: Froggy and Fritz (politic), Care of the Baby
(infantilic), so Meals for 7/6 (culinic), Was Jesus a Sun Myth? 1580
(historic), Expel That Pain (medic), Infant's Compendium of the
Universe (cosmic), Let's All Chortle (hilaric), Canvasser's Vade
Mecum (journalic), Loveletters of Mother Assistant (erotic), Who's
Who in Space (astric), Songs that Reached Our Heart (melodic),
Pennywise's Way to Wealth (parsimonic). A general rush and
scramble. Women press forward to touch the hem of Bloom's robe.
The lady Gwendolen Dubedat bursts through the throng, leaps on
his horse and kisses him on both cheeks amid great acclamation. A
magnesium flashlight photograph is taken. Babes and sucklings are
held up.)
1590
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
policeman) U. p: up. U. p: up. (he whispers in the ear of a blushing 1610
waitress and laughs kindly) Ah, naughty, naughty! (he eats a raw
turnip
offered him by Maurice Butterly, farmer) Fine! Splendid! (he refuses
to
accept three shillings offered him by Joseph Hynes, journalist) My
dear
fellow, not at all! (he gives his coat to a beggar) Please accept.
(he takes
part in a stomach race with elderly male and female cripples) Come
on,
boys! Wriggle it, girls!
THE CITIZEN
(choked with emotion, brushes aside a tear in his emerald muffler)
May the
good God bless him!
BLOOM
(uncloaks impressively, revealing obesity, unrolls a paper and reads
solemnly) Aleph Beth Ghimel Daleth Hagadah Tephilim Kosher Yom
Kippur Hanukah Roschaschana Beni Brith Bar Mitzvah Mazzoth
Askenazim Meshuggah Talith.
(An official translation is read by Jimmy Henry, assistant town
clerk.)
JIMMY HENRY
1630 |
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 |
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 |
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 |
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 |
O'MADDEN BURKE
Free fox in a free henroost.
DAVY BYRNE
(yawning) Iiiiiiiiiaaaaaaach!
BLOOM
1700 |
LENEHAN
What about mixed bathing?
(Bloom explains to those near him his schemes for social
regeneration. All agree with him. The keeper of the Kildare street
museum appears, dragging a lorry on which are the shaking statues
of several naked goddesses, Venus Callipyge, Venus Pandemos,
Venus Metempsychosis, and plaster figures, also naked, representing
the new nine muses, Commerce, Operatic Music, Amor, Publicity,
Manufacture, Liberty of Speech, Plural Voting, Gastronomy,
Private Hygiene, Seaside Concert Entertainments, Painless 1710
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 |
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 |
THEODORE PUREFOY
(in fishingcap and oilskin jacket) He employs a mechanical device
to
frustrate the sacred ends of nature.
THE VEILED SIBYL
(stabs herself) My hero god! (she dies)
(Many most attractive and enthusiastic women also commit suicide
by stabbing, drowning, drinking prussic acid, aconite, arsenic,
opening their veins, refusing food, casting themselves under
steamrollers, from the top of Nelson's Pillar, into the great vat of
Guinness's brewery, asphyxiating themselves by placing their heads 1750
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 |
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 |
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 |
(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 |
1810 |
(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,
Silversmile, Silberselber, Vifargent, Panargyros. They are 1830
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 |
BANTAM LYONS
Prophesy who will win the Saint Leger.
(Bloom walks on a net, covers his left eye with his left ear, passes
through several walls, climbs Nelson's Pillar, hangs from the top
ledge by his eyelids, eats twelve dozen oysters (shells included),
heals several sufferers from king's evil, contracts his face so as to
resemble many historical personages, Lord Beaconsfield, Lord
Byron, Wat Tyler, Moses of Egypt, Moses Maimonides, Moses
Mendelssohn, Henry Irving, Rip van Winkle, Kossuth, Jean Jacques
Rousseau, Baron Leopold Rothschild, Robinson Crusoe, Sherlock 1850
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 |
1870 |
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.
Artane orphans, joining hands, caper round him. Girls of the Prison 1890
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 |
(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
sets fire to Bloom. Lamentations.)
1930
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 |
1950 |
(A choir of six hundred voices, conducted by Vincent O'Brien,
sings the chorus from Handel's Messiah Alleluia for the Lord God
Omnipotent reigneth, accompanied on the organ by Joseph Glynn.
Bloom becomes mute, shrunken, carbonised.)
ZOE
Talk away till you're black in the face.
BLOOM
(in caubeen with clay pipe stuck in the band, dusty brogues, an emigrant's
red handkerchief bundle in his hand, leading a black bogoak pig by a 1960
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 |
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 |
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 |
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 |
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 |
(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
(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 |
2040 |
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 |
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)
O, excuse! 2060
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 |
KITTY
(hiccups again with a kick of her horsed foot) O, excuse!
ZOE
2080 |
(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 |
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 |
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 |
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 |
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 |
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 |
(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
Punch Costello, hipshot, crookbacked, hydrocephalic, prognathic 2150
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
howls) Sieurs et dames, faites vos jeux! (He crouches juggling Tiny 2160
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
(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 |
(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 |
2200 |
THE GRAMOPHONE
2210 |
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
2220 |
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 |
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 |
JOHN EGLINTON
(produces a greencapped dark lantern and flashes it towards a corner:
with
carping accent) Esthetics and cosmetics are for the boudoir. I am out
for
truth. Plain truth for a plain man. Tanderagee wants the facts and means
to
get them.
(In the cone of the searchlight behind the coalscuttle, ollave,
holyeyed, the bearded figure of Mananaun MacLir broods, chin on 2260
knees. He rises slowly. A cold seawind blows from his druid mouth.
About his head writhe eels and elvers. He is encrusted with weeds
and shells. His right hand holds a bicycle pump. His left hand
grasps a huge crayfish by its two talons.)
MANANAUN MACLIR
(with a voice of waves) Aum! Hek! Wal! Ak! Lub! Mor! Ma! White
yoghin of the gods. Occult pimander of Hermes Trismegistos. (with a
voice
of whistling seawind) Punarjanam patsypunjaub! I won't have my leg
pulled. It has been said by one: beware the left, the cult of Shakti. (with
a
cry of stormbirds) Shakti Shiva, darkhidden Father! (He smites with
his 2270
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
Who has a fag as I'm here?
LYNCH
(tossing a cigarette on to the table) Here.
ZOE
(her head perched aside in mock pride) Is that the way to hand
the pot to
a lady? (She stretches up to light the cigarette over the flame, twirling
it
slowly, showing the brown tufts of her armpits. Lynch with his poker lifts
boldly a side of her slip. Bare from her garters up her flesh appears under
the sapphire a nixie's green. She puffs calmly at her cigarette.) Can
you see 2290
the beautyspot of my behind?
LYNCH
I'm not looking
ZOE
(makes sheep's eyes) No? You wouldn't do a less thing. Would
you suck a
lemon?
(Squinting in mock shame she glances with sidelong meaning at
Bloom, then twists round towards him, pulling her slip free of the
poker. Blue fluid again flows over her flesh. Bloom stands, smiling
desirously, twirling his thumbs. Kitty Ricketts licks her middle 2300
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 |
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 |
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 |
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 |
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 |
colossal blubber. That suits your book, eh? Fleshhotpots of Egypt to
hanker after. Wallow in it. Lycopodium. (his throat twitches) Slapbang!
There he goes again.
BLOOM
The stye I dislike.
VIRAG
(arches his eyebrows) Contact with a goldring, they say. Argumentum
ad
feminam, as we said in old Rome and ancient Greece in the consulship
of 2370
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 |
2400 |
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 |
2420 |
BLOOM
Bee or bluebottle too other day butting shadow on wall dazed self then
me
wandered dazed down shirt good job I ....
VIRAG
2430 |
2440 |
BLOOM
(absently) Ocularly woman's bivalve case is worse. Always open
sesame.
The cloven sex. Why they fear vermin, creeping things. Yet Eve and the
serpent contradicts. Not a historical fact. Obvious analogy to my idea.
Serpents too are gluttons for woman's milk. Wind their way through miles
of omnivorous forest to sucksucculent her breast dry. Like those
bubblyjocular Roman matrons one reads of in Elephantuliasis.
VIRAG
(his mouth projected in hard wrinkles, eyes stonily forlornly closed,
psalms
in outlandish monotone) That the cows with their those distended udders 2450
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 |
THE MOTH
(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 |
HENRY
(in a low dulcet voice, touching the strings of his guitar) There
is a flower
that bloometh.
(Virag truculent, his jowl set, stares at the lamp. Grave Bloom
regards Zoe's neck. Henry gallant turns with pendant dewlap to the 2490
piano.)
STEPHEN
(to himself) Play with your eyes shut. Imitate pa. Filling my
belly with
husks of swine. Too much of this. I will arise and go to my. Expect this
is
the. Steve, thou art in a parlous way. Must visit old Deasy or telegraph.
Our
interview of this morning has left on me a deep impression. Though our
ages. Will write fully tomorrow. I'm partially drunk, by the way. (he
touches the keys again) Minor chord comes now. Yes. Not much however.
ARTIFONI
Ci rifletta. Lei rovina tutto.
FLORRY
Sing us something. Love's old sweet song.
STEPHEN
No voice. I am a most finished artist. Lynch, did I show you the letter
about
the lute?
FLORRY
(smirking) The bird that can sing and won't sing.
2510 |
PHILIP SOBER
Take a fool's advice. All is not well. Work it out with the buttend
of a pencil,
like a good young idiot. Three pounds twelve you got, two notes, one
sovereign, two crowns, if youth but knew. Mooney's en ville, Mooney's sur
mer, the Moira, Larchet's, Holles street hospital, Burke's. Eh? I am
watching you.
PHILIP DRUNK
2520 |
FLORRY
And the song?
STEPHEN
Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.
Are you out of Maynooth? You're like someone I knew once.
STEPHEN
Out of it now. (to himself) Clever.
PHILIP DRUNK AND PHILIP SOBER
(their lawnmowers purring with a rigadoon of grasshalms) Clever
ever.
Out of it out of it. By the bye have you the book, the thing, the ashplant?
Yes, there it, yes. Cleverever outofitnow. Keep in condition. Do like us.
ZOE
There was a priest down here two nights ago to do his bit of business
with
2540 |
VIRAG
Perfectly logical from his standpoint. Fall of man. (harshly, his
pupils
waxing) To hell with the pope! Nothing new under the sun. I am the
Virag
who disclosed the Sex Secrets of Monks and Maidens. Why I left the church
of Rome. Read the Priest, the Woman and the Confessional. Penrose.
Flipperty Jippert. (he wriggles) Woman, undoing with sweet pudor
her belt
2550 |
LYNCH
I hope you gave the good father a penance. Nine glorias for shooting
a
bishop.
ZOE
(spouts walrus smoke through her nostrils) He couldn't get a
connection.
Only, you know, sensation. A dry rush.
Poor man!
ZOE
(lightly) Only for what happened him.
BLOOM
How?
VIRAG
(A diabolic rictus of black luminosity contracting his visage, cranes
his
scraggy neck forward. He lifts a mooncalf nozzle and howls.) Verfluchte
Goim! He had a father, forty fathers. He never existed. Pig God! He
had
2570 |
KITTY
And Mary Shortall that was in the lock with the pox she got from Jimmy
Pidgeon in the blue caps had a child off him that couldn't swallow and
was
smothered with the convulsions in the mattress and we all subscribed for
the funeral.
PHILIP DRUNK
2580 |
PHILIP SOBER
(gaily) C'etait le sacr pigeon, Philippe.
(Kitty unpins her hat and sets it down calmly, patting her henna
hair. And a prettier, a daintier head of winsome curls was never seen
on a whore's shoulders. Lynch puts on her hat. She whips it off.)
LYNCH
(laughs) And to such delights has Metchnikoff inoculated anthropoid apes.
FLORRY
(nods) Locomotor ataxy.
(gaily) O, my dictionary.
LYNCH
Three wise virgins.
VIRAG
(agueshaken, profuse yellow spawn foaming over his bony epileptic
lips)
She sold lovephiltres, whitewax, orangeflower. Panther, the Roman
centurion, polluted her with his genitories. (he sticks out a flickering
phosphorescent scorpion tongue, his hand on his fork) Messiah! He burst
her tympanum. (with gibbering baboon's cries he jerks his hips in the
cynical spasm) Hik! Hek! Hak! Hok! Huk! Kok! Kuk! 2600
(Ben Jumbo Dollard, rubicund, musclebound, hairynostrilled,
hugebearded, cabbageeared, shaggychested, shockmaned, fat-
papped, stands forth, his loins and genitals tightened into a pair
of black bathing bagslops.)
BEN DOLLARD
(nakkering castanet bones in his huge padded paws, yodels jovially
in base
barreltone) When love absorbs my ardent soul.
(The virgins Nurse Callan and Nurse Quigley burst through the
ringkeepers and the ropes and mob him with open arms.)
(gushingly) Big Ben! Ben my Chree!
A VOICE
Hold that fellow with the bad breeches.
BEN DOLLARD
(smites his thigh in abundant laughter) Hold him now.
HENRY
(caressing on his breast a severed female head, murmurs) Thine
heart,
mine love. (he plucks his lutestrings) When first I saw ...
VIRAG
2620 |
(Henry Flower combs his moustache and beard rapidly with a
pocketcomb and gives a cow's lick to his hair. Steered by his rapier,
he glides to the door, his wild harp slung behind him. Virag reaches
the door in two ungainly stilthops, his tail cocked, and deftly claps
sideways on the wall a pusyellow flybill, butting it with his head.)
THE FLYBILL
2630 |
HENRY
All is lost now.
(Virag unscrews his head in a trice and holds it under his arm.)
VIRAG'S HEAD
Quack!
(Exeunt severally.)
STEPHEN
(over his shoulder to Zoe) You would have preferred the fighting
parson
who founded the protestant error. But beware Antisthenes, the dog sage,
2640 |
LYNCH
All one and the same God to her.
STEPHEN
(devoutly) And sovereign Lord of all things.
FLORRY
(to Stephen) I'm sure you're a spoiled priest. Or a monk.
LYNCH
He is. A cardinal's son.
STEPHEN
2650 |
(His Eminence Simon Stephen cardinal Dedalus, primate of all
Ireland, appears in the doorway, dressed in red soutane, sandals
and socks Seven dwarf simian acolytes, also in red, cardinal sins,
uphold his train, peeping under it He wears a battered silk hat
sideways on his head. His thumbs are stuck in his armpits and his
palms outspread. Round his neck hangs a rosary of corks ending on
his breast in a corkscrew cross. Releasing his thumbs, he invokes
grace from on high with large wave gestures and proclaims with
bloated pomp:)
Conservio lies captured
He lies in the lowest dungeon
With manacles and chains around his limbs
Weighing upwards of three tons.
(He looks at all for a moment, his right eye closed tight, his left
cheek puffed out Then, unable to repress his merriment, he rocks to
and fro, arms akimbo, and sings with broad rollicking humour:)
(A multitude of midges swarms white over his robe. He scratches
himself with crossed arms at his ribs, grimacing, and exclaims:)
I'm suffering the agony of the damned. By the hoky fiddle, thanks be
to
Jesus those funny little chaps are not unanimous. If they were they'd walk
me off the face of the bloody globe.
(His head aslant he blesses curtly with fore and middle fingers,
imparts the Easter kiss and doubleshuffles off comically, swaying his 2680
hat from side to side, shrinking quickly to the size of his
trainbearers.The dwarf acolytes, giggling, peeping, nudging, ogling,
easterkissing, zigzag behind him. His voice is heard mellow from
afar, merciful male, melodious:)
Shall carry my heart to thee,
Shall carry my heart to thee,
And the breath of the balmy night
Shall carry my heart to thee!
(The trick doorhandle turns.)
Theeee!
ZOE
The devil is in that door.
(A male form passes down the creaking staircase and is heard
taking the waterproof and hat from the rack. Bloom starts forward
involuntarily and, half closing the door as he passes, takes the
chocolate from his pocket and offers it nervously to Zoe.)
ZOE
(sniffs his hair briskly) Hmmm! Thank your mother for the rabbits.
I'm
2700 |
BLOOM
(hearing a male voice in talk with the whores on the doorstep, pricks
his
ears)
ZOE
(tears open the silverfoil) Fingers was made before forks. (she
breaks off
and nibbles a piece gives a piece to Kitty Ricketts and then turns kittenishly
to Lynch) No objection to French lozenges? (He nods. She taunts
him.)
Have it now or wait till you get it? (He opens his mouth, his head cocked.
She whirls the prize in left circle. His head follows. She whirls it back
in
right circle. He eyes her.) Catch!
2710
(She tosses a piece. With an adroit snap he catches it and bites
it
through with a crack.)
KITTY
(chewing) The engineer I was with at the bazaar does have lovely
ones.
Full of the best liqueurs. And the viceroy was there with his lady. The
gas
we had on the Toft's hobbyhorses. I'm giddy still.
BLOOM
(In Svengali's fur overcoat, with folded arms and Napoleonic forelock,
frowns in ventriloquial exorcism with piercing eagle glance towards the
door. Then rigid with left foot advanced he makes a swift pass with 2720
impelling fingers and gives the sign of past master, drawing his right
arm
downwards from his left shoulder.) Go, go, go, I conjure you, whoever
you
are!
(A male cough and tread are heard passing through the mist
outside. Bloom's features relax. He places a hand in his waistcoat,
posing calmly. Zoe offers him chocolate.)
BLOOM
(solemnly) Thanks.
ZOE
2730 |
(A firm heelclacking tread is heard on the stairs.)
BLOOM
(takes the chocolate) Aphrodisiac? Tansy and pennyroyal. But
I bought it.
Vanilla calms or? Mnemo. Confused light confuses memory. Red influences
lupus. Colours affect women's characters, any they have. This black makes
me sad. Eat and be merry for tomorrow. (he eats) Influence taste
too,
mauve. But it is so long since I. Seems new. Aphro. That priest. Must come.
Better late than never. Try truffles at Andrews.
(The door opens. Bella Cohen, a massive whoremistress, enters. She
is dressed in a threequarter ivory gown, fringed round the hem with 2740
tasselled selvedge, and cools herself flirting a black horn fan like
Minnie Hauck in Carmen. On her left hand are wedding and
keeper rings. Her eyes are deeply carboned. She has a sprouting
moustache. Her olive face is heavy, slightly sweated and fullnosed
with orangetainted nostrils. She has large pendant beryl eardrops.)
BELLA
My word! I'm all of a mucksweat.
(She glances round her at the couples Then her eyes rest on Bloom THE FAN (flirting quickly, then slowly) Married, I see. BLOOM Yes. Partly, I have mislaid..... THE FAN (half opening, then closing) And the missus is master. Petticoat BLOOM (looks down with a sheepish grin) That is so.
with hard insistence. Her large fan winnows wind towards her
heated faceneck and embonpoint. Her falcon eyes glitter.)
2750
government.
(folding together, rests against her left eardrop) Have you forgotten me?
BLOOM
Nes. Yo.
THE FAN
(folded akimbo against her waist) Is me her was you dreamed before?
Was
then she him you us since knew? Am all them and the same now me?
(Bella approaches, gently tapping with the fan.)
BLOOM
(wincing) Powerful being. In my eyes read that slumber which
women
2770 |
THE FAN
(tapping) We have met. You are mine. It is fate.
BLOOM
(cowed) Exuberant female. Enormously I desiderate your domination.
I
am exhausted, abandoned, no more young. I stand, so to speak, with an
unposted letter bearing the extra regulation fee before the too late box
of the
general postoffice of human life. The door and window open at a right
2780 |
RICHIE GOULDING
(bagweighted, passes the door) Mocking is catch. Best value in
Dub. Fit for
a prince's. Liver and kidney.
THE FAN
(tapping) All things end. Be mine. Now,
(undecided) All now? I should not have parted with my talisman.
Rain,
exposure at dewfall on the searocks, a peccadillo at my time of life. Every
phenomenon has a natural cause.
THE FAN
(points downwards slowly) You may.
BLOOM
(looks downwards and perceives her unfastened bootlace) We are
observed.
THE FAN
2800 |
BLOOM
(with desire, with reluctance) I can make a true black knot.
Learned when
I served my time and worked the mail order line for Kellett's. Experienced
hand. Every knot says a lot. Let me. In courtesy. I knelt once before today.
(Bella raises her gown slightly and, steadying her pose, lifts to
the
edge of a chair a plump buskined hoof and a full pastern,
silksocked. Bloom, stifflegged, aging, bends over her hoof and with
gentle fingers draws out and in her laces.)
BLOOM
2810 |
THE HOOF
Smell my hot goathide. Feel my royal weight.
BLOOM
(crosslacing) Too tight?
THE HOOF
2820 |
BLOOM
Not to lace the wrong eyelet as I did the night of the bazaar dance.
Bad
luck. Hook in wrong tache of her .... person you mentioned. That night
she
met.... Now!
(He knots the lace. Bella places her foot on the floor. Bloom raises BLOOM (mumbles) Awaiting your further orders we remain, gentlemen,
....
his head. Her heavy face, her eyes strike him in midbrow. His eyes
grow dull, darker and pouched, his nose thickens.)
(with a hard basilisk stare, in a baritone voice) Hound of dishonour!
BLOOM
(infatuated) Empress!
BELLO
(his heavy cheekchops sagging) Adorer of the adulterous rump!
BLOOM
(plaintively) Hugeness!
BELLO
Dungdevourer!
(with sinews semiflexed) Magmagnificence!
BELLO
Down! (he taps her on the shoulder with his fan) Incline feet
forward!
Slide left foot one pace back! You will fall. You are falling. On the hands
down!
BLOOM
(her eyes upturned in the sign of admiration, closing, yaps) Truffles!
(With a piercing epileptic cry she sinks on all fours, grunting,
snuffling, rooting at his feet: then lies, shamming dead, with eyes
shut tight, trembling eyelids, bowed upon the ground in the attitude 2850
of most excellent master.)
BELLO
(with bobbed hair, purple gills, fit moustache rings round his shaven
mouth, in mountaineer's puttees, green silverbuttoned coat, sport skirt
and
alpine hat with moorcock's feather, his hands stuck deep in his breeches
pockets, places his heel on her neck and grinds it in) Footstool! Feel
my
entire weight. Bow, bondslave, before the throne of your despot's glorious
heels so glistening in their proud erectness.
BLOOM
2860 |
BELLO
(laughs loudly) Holy smoke! You little know what's in store for
you. I'm
the Tartar to settle your little lot and break you in! I'll bet Kentucky
cocktails all round I shame it out of you, old son. Cheek me, I dare you.
If
you do tremble in anticipation of heel discipline to be inflicted in gym
costume.
(Bloom creeps under the sofa and peers out through the fringe.)
ZOE
(widening her slip to screen her) She's not here.
BLOOM
2870 |
FLORRY
(hiding her with her gown) She didn't mean it, Mr Bello. She'll
be good,
sir.
KITTY
Don't be too hard on her, Mr Bello. Sure you won't, ma'amsir.
BELLO
(coaxingly) Come, ducky dear, I want a word with you, darling,
just to
administer correction. Just a little heart to heart talk, sweety. (Bloom
puts
out her timid head) There's a good girly now. (Bello grabs her hair
violently and drags her forward) I only want to correct you for your
own 2880
good on a soft safe spot. How's that tender behind? O, ever so gently,
pet.
Begin to get ready.
BLOOM
(fainting) Don't tear my ...
BELLO
(savagely) The nosering, the pliers, the bastinado, the hanging
hook, the
knout I'll make you kiss while the flutes play like the Nubian slave of
old.
You're in for it this time! I'll make you remember me for the balance of
your natural life. (his forehead veins swollen, his face congested)
I shall sit
2890 |
BLOOM
Don't be cruel, nurse! Don't!
(twisting) Another!
BLOOM
(screams) O, it's hell itself! Every nerve in my body aches like mad!
BELLO
(shouts) Good, by the rumping jumping general! That's the best
bit of
news I heard these six weeks. Here, don't keep me waiting, damn you! (he
slaps her face)
BLOOM
(whimpers) You're after hitting me. I'll tell ....
Hold him down, girls, till I squat on him.
ZOE
Yes. Walk on him! I will.
FLORRY
I will. Don't be greedy.
KITTY
No, me. Lend him to me.
(The brothel cook, Mrs Keogh, wrinkled, greybearded, in a greasy
bib, men's grey and green socks and brogues, floursmeared, a
rollingpin stuck with raw pastry in her bare red arm and hand, 2920
appears at the door.)
MRS KEOGH
(ferociously) Can I help?
(They hold and pinion Bloom.)
BELLO
(squats with a grunt on Bloom's upturned face, puffing cigarsmoke,
nursing a fat leg) I see Keating Clay is elected vicechairman of the
Richmond asylum and by the by Guinness's preference shares are at sixteen
three quaffers. Curse me for a fool that didn't buy that lot Craig and
2930 |
BLOOM
(goaded, buttocksmothered) O! O! Monsters! Cruel one!
BELLO
Ask for that every ten minutes. Beg. Pray for it as you never prayed
before.
(he thrusts out a figged fist and foul cigar) Here, kiss that. Both.
Kiss. (he
throws a leg astride and, pressing with horseman's knees, calls in a hard
voice) Gee up! A cockhorse to Banbury cross. I'll ride him for the
Eclipse
2940 |
FLORRY
(pulls at Bello) Let me on him now. You had enough. I asked before you.
ZOE
(pulling at Florry) Me. Me. Are you not finished with him yet, suckeress?
BLOOM
2950 |
BELLO
Well, I'm not. Wait. (he holds in his breath) Curse it. Here.
This bung's
about burst. (he uncorks himself behind: then, contorting his features,
farts
stoutly) Take that! (he recorks himself) Yes, by Jingo, sixteen
three
quarters.
BLOOM
(a sweat breaking out over him) Not man. (he sniffs) Woman.
BELLO
(stands up) No more blow hot and cold. What you longed for has
come to
2960 |
BLOOM
(shrinks) Silk, mistress said! O crinkly! scrapy! Must I tiptouch
it with my
nails?
BELLO
(points to his whores) As they are now so will you be, wigged,
singed,
perfumesprayed, ricepowdered, with smoothshaven armpits. Tape
2970 |
BLOOM
2980 |
BELLO
(jeers) Little jobs that make mother pleased, eh? And showed
off
coquettishly in your domino at the mirror behind closedrawn blinds your
unskirted thighs and hegoat's udders in various poses of surrender, eh?
Ho! ho! I have to laugh! That secondhand black operatop shift and short
trunkleg naughties all split up the stitches at her last rape that Mrs
Miriam
2990 |
BLOOM
Miriam. Black. Demimondaine.
BELLO
(guffaws) Christ Almighty it's too tickling, this! You were a
nicelooking
Miriam when you clipped off your backgate hairs and lay swooning in the
thing across the bed as Mrs Dandrade about to be violated by lieutenant
Smythe-Smythe, Mr Philip Augustus Blockwell M. P., signor Laci Daremo,
the robust tenor, blueeyed Bert, the liftboy, Henri Fleury of Gordon
Bennett fame, Sheridan, the quadroon Croesus, the varsity wetbob eight
3000 |
BLOOM
(her hands and features working) It was Gerald converted me to
be a true
corsetlover when I was female impersonator in the High School play Vice
Versa. It was dear Gerald. He got that kink, fascinated by sister's stays.
Now dearest Gerald uses pinky greasepaint and gilds his eyelids. Cult of
the beautiful.
BELLO
3010 |
BLOOM
Science. To compare the various joys we each enjoy. (earnestly)
And really
it's better the position .... because often I used to wet ....
BELLO
(sternly) No insubordination! The sawdust is there in the corner
for you. I
gave you strict instructions, didn't I? Do it standing, sir! I'll teach
you to
behave like a jinkleman! If I catch a trace on your swaddles. Aha! By the
3020 |
THE SINS OF THE PAST
(in a medley of voices) He went through a form of clandestine
marriage
with at least one woman in the shadow of the Black church. Unspeakable
messages he telephoned mentally to Miss Dunn at an address in D'Olier
street while he presented himself indecently to the instrument in the callbox.
By word and deed he frankly encouraged a nocturnal strumpet to deposit
fecal and other matter in an unsanitary outhouse attached to empty
premises. In five public conveniences he wrote pencilled messages offering
3030 |
BELLO
(whistles loudly) Say! What was the most revolting piece of obscenity
in all
your career of crime? Go the whole hog. Puke it out! Be candid for once.
(Mute inhuman faces throng forward, leering, vanishing, gibbering,
Booloohoom, Poldy Kock, Bootlaces a penny Cassidy's hag, blind 3040
stripling, Larry rhinoceros, the girl, the woman, the whore, the
other the, lane the.)
BLOOM
Don't ask me! Our mutual faith. Pleasants street. I only thought the
half of
the ... I swear on my sacred oath ....
BELLO
(peremptorily) Answer. Repugnant wretch! I insist on knowing.
Tell me
something to amuse me, smut or a bloody good ghoststory or a line of
poetry, quick, quick, quick! Where? How? What time? With how many? I
3050 |
BLOOM
(docile, gurgles) I rererepugnosed in rerererepugnant
BELLO
(imperiously) O, get out, you skunk! Hold your tongue! Speak
when
you're spoken to.
BLOOM
(bows) Master! Mistress! Mantamer!
(He lifts his arms. His bangle bracelets fill.)
BELLO
3060 |
BLOOM
Thank you, mistress.
BELLO
You will make the beds, get my tub ready, empty the pisspots in the
different
rooms, including old Mrs Keogh's the cook's, a sandy one. Ay, and rinse
3070 |
laid down their lives. (he chuckles) My boys will be no end charmed
to see
you so ladylike, the colonel, above all, when they come here the night
before
the wedding to fondle my new attraction in gilded heels. First I'll have
a go
at you myself. A man I know on the turf named Charles Alberta Marsh (I
3080 |
A BIDDER
A florin.
(Dillon's lacquey rings his handbell.)
Barang!
A VOICE
One and eightpence too much.
CHARLES ALBERTA MARSH
Must be virgin. Good breath. Clean.
BELLO
(gives a rap with his gavel) Two bar. Rockbottom figure and cheap
at the
price. Fourteen hands high. Touch and examine shis points. Handle hrim.
This downy skin, these soft muscles, this tender flesh. If I had only my
gold
3100 |
A DARKVISAGED MAN
(in disguised accent) Hoondert punt sterlink.
VOICES
(subdued) For the Caliph. Haroun Al Raschid.
(gaily) Right. Let them all come. The scanty, daringly short
skirt, riding up
at the knee to show a peep of white pantalette, is a potent weapon and
transparent stockings, emeraldgartered, with the long straight seam trailing
up beyond the knee, appeal to the better instincts of the blase
man about
town. Learn the smooth mincing walk on four inch Louis Quinze heels, the
Grecian bend with provoking croup, the thighs fluescent, knees modestly
kissing. Bring all your powers of fascination to bear on them. Pander to
their Gomorrahan vices.
BLOOM
3120 |
BELLO
What else are you good for, an impotent thing like you? (he stoops
and,
peering, pokes with his fan rudely under the fat suet folds of Bloom's
haunches) Up! Up! Manx cat! What have we here? Where's your curly
teapot gone to or who docked it on you, cockyolly? Sing, birdy, sing. It's
as
limp as a boy of six's doing his pooly behind a cart. Buy a bucket or sell
your pump. (loudly) Can you do a man's job?
BLOOM
3130 |
BELLO
(sarcastically) I wouldn't hurt your feelings for the world but
there's a
man of brawn in possession there. The tables are turned, my gay young
fellow! He is something like a fullgrown outdoor man. Well for you, you
muff, if you had that weapon with knobs and lumps and warts all over it.
He shot his bolt, I can tell you! Foot to foot, knee to knee, belly to
belly,
bubs to breast! He's no eunuch. A shock of red hair he has sticking out
of
him behind like a furzebush! Wait for nine months, my lad! Holy ginger,
it's kicking and coughing up and down in her guts already! That makes
3140 |
BLOOM
I was indecently treated, I ..... Inform the police. Hundred pounds.
Unmentionable. I ....
BELLO
Would if you could, lame duck. A downpour we want not your drizzle.
BLOOM
To drive me mad! Moll! I forgot! Forgive! Moll .... We .... Still .....
BELLO
(ruthlessly) No, Leopold Bloom, all is changed by woman's will
since you
3150 |
(Old Sleepy Hollow calls over the wold.)
SLEEPY HOLLOW
Rip van Wink! Rip van Winkle!
BLOOM
(in tattered mocassins with a rusty fowlingpiece, tiptoeing, fingertipping,
his haggard bony bearded face peering through the diamond panes, cries
out) I see her! It's she! The first night at Mat Dillon's! But that
dress, the
green! And her hair is dyed gold and he ....
BELLO
3160 |
(Milly Bloom, fairhaired, greenvested, slimsandalled, her blue scarf
in the seawind simply swirling, breaks from the arms of her lover
and calls, her young eyes wonderwide.)
MILLY
My! It's Papli! But, O Papli, how old you've grown!
BELLO
Changed, eh? Our whatnot, our writingtable where we never wrote, aunt
Hegarty's armchair, our classic reprints of old masters. A man and his
3170 |
BLOOM
They.... I ....
BELLO
(cuttingly) Their heelmarks will stamp the Brusselette carpet
you bought at
Wren's auction. In their horseplay with Moll the romp to find the buck
flea
3180 |
BLOOM
Ten and six. The act of low scoundrels. Let me go. I will return. I
will
prove ...
A VOICE
Swear!
BELLO
As a paying guest or a kept man? Too late. You have made your secondbest
bed and others must lie in it. Your epitaph is written. You are down and
out
and don't you forget it, old bean.
BLOOM
Justice! All Ireland versus one! Has nobody ...? (he bites his thumb)
BELLO
Die and be damned to you if you have any sense of decency or grace about
3200 |
BLOOM
3210 |
BELLO
(sneers) Crybabby! Crocodile tears!
(Bloom, broken, closely veiled for the sacrifice, sobs, his face
to the
earth. The passing bell is heard. Darkshawled figures of the
circumcised, in sackcloth and ashes, stand by the wailing wall, M.
Shulomowitz, Joseph Goldwater, Moses Herzog, Harris
Rosenberg, M. Moisel, J. Citron, Minnie Watchman, P. Mastiansky,
the reverend Leopold Abramovitz, chazen. With swaying arms they
wail in pneuma over the recreant Bloom.)
3220
THE CIRCUMCISED
(in dark guttural chant as they cast dead sea fruit upon him, no
flowers)
Shema Israel Adonai Elohenu Adonai Echad.
VOICES
(sighing) So he's gone. Ah yes. Yes, indeed. Bloom? Never heard
of him.
No? Queer kind of chap. There's the widow. That so? Ah, yes.
(From the suttee pyre the flame of gum camphire ascends. The pall
of incense smoke screens and disperses. Out of her oakframe a
nymph with hair unbound, lightly clad in teabrown artcolours,
descends from her grotto and passing under interlacing yews stands 3230
over Bloom.)
THE YEWS
(their leaves whispering) Sister. Our sister. Ssh!
THE NYMPH
(softly) Mortal! (kindly) Nay, dost not weepest!
BLOOM
(crawls jellily forward under the boughs, streaked by sunlight, with
dignity) This position. I felt it was expected of me. Force of habit.
THE NYMPH
3240 |
by the stale smut of clubmen, stories to disturb callow youth, ads for
transparencies, truedup dice and bustpads, proprietary articles and why
wear a truss with testimonial from ruptured gentleman. Useful hints to
the
married.
BLOOM
(lifts a turtle head towards her lap) We have met before. On another star.
(sadly) Rubber goods. Neverrip brand as supplied to the aristocracy.
Corsets for men. I cure fits or money refunded. Unsolicited testimonials
for
Professor Waldmann's wonderful chest exuber. My bust developed four
inches in three weeks, reports Mrs Gus Rublin with photo.
BLOOM
You mean Photo Bits?
THE NYMPH
I do. You bore me away, framed me in oak and tinsel, set me above your
marriage couch. Unseen, one summer eve, you kissed me in four places.
3260 |
BLOOM
(humbly kisses her long hair) Your classic curves, beautiful
immortal, I
was glad to look on you, to praise you, a thing of beauty, almost to pray.
THE NYMPH
During dark nights I heard your praise.
BLOOM
(quickly) Yes, yes. You mean that I.... Sleep reveals the worst
side of
everyone, children perhaps excepted. I know I fell out of bed or rather
was
pushed. Steel wine is said to cure snoring. For the rest there is that
English
3270 |
THE NYMPH
(her fingers in her ears) And words. They are not in my dictionary.
BLOOM
You understood them?
THE YEWS
Ssh!
THE NYMPH
3280 |
BLOOM
(apologetically) I know. Soiled personal linen, wrong side up
with care.
The quoits are loose. From Gibraltar by long sea long ago.
THE NYMPH
(bends her head) Worse, worse!
BLOOM
(reflects precautiously) That antiquated commode. It wasn't her
weight.
She scaled just eleven stone nine. She put on nine pounds after weaning.
It
3290 |
(The sound of a waterfall is heard in bright cascade.)
THE WATERFALL
Poulaphouca Poulaphouca
Poulaphouca Poulaphouca.
THE YEWS
(mingling their boughs) Listen. Whisper. She is right, our sister.
We grew
by Poulaphouca waterfall. We gave shade on languorous summer days.
JOHN WYSE NOLAN
3300 |
THE YEWS
(murmuring) Who came to Poulaphouca with the High School excursion?
Who left his nutquesting classmates to seek our shade?
BLOOM
(scared) High School of Poula? Mnemo? Not in full possession
of
faculties. Concussion. Run over by tram.
THE ECHO
Sham!
(pigeonbreasted, bottleshouldered, padded, in nondescript juvenile
grey
and black striped suit, too small for him, white tennis shoes, bordered
stockings with turnover tops and a red schoolcap with badge) I was
in my
teens, a growing boy. A little then sufficed, a jolting car, the mingling
odours of the ladies' cloakroom and lavatory, the throng penned tight on
the old Royal stairs (for they love crushes, instinct of the herd, and
the dark
sexsmelling theatre unbridles vice), even a pricelist of their hosiery.
And
then the heat. There were sunspots that summer. End of school. And
tipsycake. Halcyon days.
3320 |
THE HALCYON DAYS
Mackerel! Live us again. Hurray! (they cheer)
BLOOM
(hobbledehoy, warmgloved, mammamufflered, starred with spent
snowballs, struggles to rise) Again! I feel sixteen! What a lark! Let's
ring
3330 |
THE ECHO
Fool!
THE YEWS
(rustling) She is right, our sister. Whisper. (Whispered kisses
are heard in
all the wood. Faces of hamadryads peep out from the boles and among the
leaves and break, blossoming into bloom.) Who profaned our silent shade?
THE NYMPH
(coyly, through parting fingers) There? In the open air?
(sweeping downward) Sister, yes. And on our virgin sward.
THE WATERFALL
Poulaphouca Poulaphouca
Phoucaphouca Phoucaphouca.
THE NYMPH
(with wide fingers) O, infamy!
BLOOM
I was precocious. Youth. The fauna. I sacrificed to the god of the forest.
The flowers that bloom in the spring. It was pairing time. Capillary
3350 |
(Staggering Bob, a whitepolled calf, thrusts a ruminating head with
humid nostrils through the foliage.)
STAGGERING BOB
(large teardrops rolling from his prominent eyes, snivels) Me. Me see.
BLOOM
3360 |
(High on Ben Howth through rhododendrons a nannygoat passes,
plumpuddered, buttytailed, dropping currants.)
THE NANNYGOAT
(bleats) Megeggaggegg! Nannannanny!
BLOOM
(hatless, flushed, covered with burrs of thistledown and gorsespine)
Regularly engaged. Circumstances alter cases. (he gazes intently
downwards on the water) Thirtytwo head over heels per second. Press
3370 |
(Through silversilent summer air the dummy of Bloom, rolled in a
mummy, rolls roteatingly from the Lion's Head cliff into the purple
waiting waters.)
THE DUMMYMUMMY
Bbbbblllllblblblblobschb!
(Far out in the bay between Bailey and Kish lights the Erin's King
sails, sending a broadening plume of coalsmoke from her funnel
towards the land.)
(alone on deck, in dark alpaca, yellowkitefaced, his hand in his
waistcoat
opening, declaims) When my country takes her place among the nations
of
the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written. I have ...
BLOOM
Done. Prff!
THE NYMPH
(loftily) We immortals, as you saw today, have not such a place
and no hair
there either. We are stonecold and pure. We eat electric light. (she
arches
her body in lascivious crispation, placing her forefinger in her mouth)
3390 |
BLOOM
(pawing the heather abjectly) O, I have been a perfect pig. Enemas
too I
have administered. One third of a pint of quassia to which add a
tablespoonful of rocksalt. Up the fundament. With Hamilton Long's
syringe, the ladies' friend.
THE NYMPH
In my presence. The powderpuff. (she blushes and makes a knee)
And the
rest!
BLOOM
3400 |
(Figures wind serpenting in slow woodland pattern around the
treestems, cooeeing)
THE VOICE OF KITTY
(in the thicket) Show us one of them cushions.
THE VOICE OF FLORRY
Here.
(A grouse wings clumsily through the underwood.)
(in the thicket) Whew! Piping hot!
THE VOICE OF ZOE
(in the thicket) Came from a hot place.
THE VOICE OF VIRAG
(a birdchief, bluestreaked and feathered in war panoply with his
assegai,
striding through a crackling canebrake over beechmast and acorns) Hot!
Hot! Ware Sitting Bull!
BLOOM
It overpowers me. The warm impress of her warm form. Even to sit where
a
3420 |
THE WATERFALL
Phillaphulla Poulaphouca
Poulaphouca Poulaphouca.
THE YEWS
Ssh! Sister, speak!
THE NYMPH
(eyeless, in nun's white habit, coif and hugewinged wimple, softly,
with
remote eyes) Tranquilla convent. Sister Agatha. Mount Carmel. The 3430
apparitions of Knock and Lourdes. No more desire. (she reclines her
head,
sighing) Only the ethereal. Where dreamy creamy gull waves o'er the
waters dull.
(Bloom half rises. His back trouserbutton snaps.)
THE BUTTON
Bip!
(Two sluts of the Coombe dance rainily by, shawled, yelling flatly.)
THE SLUTS
BLOOM
(coldly) You have broken the spell. The last straw. If there
were only
ethereal where would you all be, postulants and novices? Shy but willing
like an ass pissing.
THE YEWS
(their silverfoil of leaves precipitating, their skinny arms aging
and
swaying) Deciduously!
(her features hardening, gropes in the folds of her habit) Sacrilege!
To
attempt my virtue! (a large moist stain appears on her robe) Sully
my
innocence! You are not fit to touch the garment of a pure woman. (she
clutches again in her robe) Wait. Satan, you'll sing no more lovesongs.
Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. (she draws a poniard and, clad in the
sheathmail of an elected knight of nine, strikes at his loins) Nekum!
BLOOM
(starts up, seizes her hand) Hoy! Nebrakada! Cat o' nine lives!
Fair play,
madam. No pruningknife. The fox and the grapes, is it? What do you lack
3460 |
THE NYMPH
(with a cry flees from him unveiled, her plaster cast cracking, a
cloud of
stench escaping from the cracks) Poli ...!
BLOOM
(calls after her) As if you didn't get it on the double yourselves.
No jerks
and multiple mucosities all over you. I tried it. Your strength our weakness.
What's our studfee? What will you pay on the nail? You fee mendancers on
3470 |
(The figure of Bella Cohen stands before him.)
BELLA
You'll know me the next time.
BLOOM
(composed, regards her) Passe. Mutton dressed as lamb. Long
in the
tooth and superfluous hair. A raw onion the last thing at night would
3480 |
BELLA
(contemptuously) You're not game, in fact. (her sowcunt barks)
Fbhracht!
BLOOM
(contemptuously) Clean your nailless middle finger first, your
bully's cold
spunk is dripping from your cockscomb. Take a handful of hay and wipe
yourself.
I know you, canvasser! Dead cod!
BLOOM
I saw him, kipkeeper! Pox and gleet vendor!
BELLA
(turns to the piano) Which of you was playing the dead march from Saul?
ZOE
Me. Mind your cornflowers. (she darts to the piano and bangs chords
on it
with crossed arms) The cat's ramble through the slag. (she glances
back)
Eh? Who's making love to my sweeties? (she darts back to the table)
3500 |
(Kitty, disconcerted, coats her teeth with the silver paper. Bloom
approaches Zoe.)
BLOOM
(gently) Give me back that potato, will you?
ZOE
Forfeits, a fine thing and a superfine thing.
BLOOM
(with feeling) It is nothing, but still, a relic of poor mamma.
ZOE
BLOOM
There is a memory attached to it. I should like to have it.
STEPHEN
To have or not to have that is the question.
ZOE
Here. (she hauls up a reef of her slip, revealing her bare thigh,
and unrolls
the potato from the top of her stocking) Those that hides knows where
to 3520
find.
BELLA
(frowns) Here. This isn't a musical peepshow. And don't you smash
that
piano. Who's paying here?
(She goes to the pianola. Stephen fumbles in his pocket and, taking
out a banknote by its corner, hands it to her.)
STEPHEN
(with exaggerated politeness) This silken purse I made out of
the sow's ear
of the public. Madam, excuse me. If you allow me. (he indicates vaguely
Lynch and Bloom) We are all in the same sweepstake, Kinch and Lynch. 3530
Dans ce bordel o tenons nostre tat.
LYNCH
(calls from the hearth) Dedalus! Give her your blessing for me.
STEPHEN
(hands Bella a coin) Gold. She has it.
BELLA
(looks at the money, then at Stephen, then at Zoe, Florry and Kitty)
Do
you want three girls? It's ten shillings here.
STEPHEN
3540 |
(Bella goes to the table to count the money while Stephen talks to
himself in monosyllables. Zoe bends over the table. Kitty leans over
Zoe's neck. Lynch gets up, rights his cap and, clasping Kitty's
waist, adds his head to the group.)
FLORRY
(strives heavily to rise) Ow! My foot's asleep. (She limps
over to the table.
Bloom approaches.)
(chattering and squabbling) The gentleman... ten shillings....
paying for
the three... allow me a moment... this gentleman pays separate.... who's
touching it?... ow!... mind who you're pinching... are you staying the
night or a short time?... who did?... you're a liar, excuse me... the
gentleman paid down like a gentleman ... drink ... it's long after eleven.
STEPHEN
(at the pianola, making a gesture of abhorrence) No bottles!
What, eleven?
A riddle!
ZOE
3560 |
LYNCH
(lifting Kitty from the table) Come!
KITTY
Wait. (she clutches the two crowns)
FLORRY
And me?
LYNCH
3570 |
(He lifts her, carries her and bumps her down on the sofa.)
STEPHEN
The fox crew, the cocks flew,
The bells in heaven
Were striking eleven.
'Tis time for her poor soul
To get out of heaven.
BLOOM
(quietly lays a half sovereign on the table between Bella and Florry)
So.
3580 |
BELLA
(admiringly) You're such a slyboots, old cocky. I could kiss you.
ZOE
(points) Him? Deep as a drawwell.
(Lynch bends Kitty back over the sofa and kisses her. Bloom goes
with the poundnote to Stephen.)
BLOOM
This is yours.
How is that? The distrait or absentminded beggar. (He fumbles again
in
his pocket and draws out a handful of coins. An object falls.) That
fell.
BLOOM
(stooping, picks up and hands a box of matches) This.
STEPHEN
Lucifer. Thanks.
BLOOM
(quietly) You had better hand over that cash to me to take care
of. Why
pay more?
(hands him all his coins) Be just before you are generous.
BLOOM
I will but is it wise? (he counts) One, seven, eleven, and five.
Six. Eleven. I
don't answer for what you may have lost.
STEPHEN
Why striking eleven? Proparoxyton. Moment before the next Lessing says.
Thirsty fox. (he laughs loudly) Burying his grandmother. Probably
he
killed her.
BLOOM
3610 |
STEPHEN
Doesn't matter a rambling damn.
BLOOM
No, but....
STEPHEN
(comes to the table) Cigarette, please. (Lynch tosses a cigarette
from the
sofa to the table)
3620 |
LYNCH
(watching him) You would have a better chance of lighting it
if you held
the match nearer.
STEPHEN
(brings the match near his eye) Lynx eye. Must get glasses. Broke
them
yesterday. Sixteen years ago. Distance. The eye sees all flat. (He draws
the
match away. It goes out.) Brain thinks. Near: far. Ineluctable modality
of
the visible. (he frowns mysteriously) Hm. Sphinx. The beast that
has two
backs at midnight. Married.
It was a commercial traveller married her and took her away with him.
FLORRY
(nods) Mr Lambe from London.
STEPHEN
Lamb of London, who takest away the sins of our world.
LYNCH
(embracing Kitty on the sofa, chants deeply) Dona nobis pacem.
(The cigarette slips from Stephen 's fingers. Bloom picks it up and
throws it in the grate.)
Don't smoke. You ought to eat. Cursed dog I met. (to Zoe) You
have
nothing?
ZOE
Is he hungry?
STEPHEN
(extends his hand to her smiling and chants to the air of the bloodoath
in
(The Dusk of the Gods)
ZOE
(tragically) Hamlet, I am thy father's gimlet! (she takes
his hand) Blue
eyes beauty I'll read your hand. (she points to his forehead) No
wit, no
wrinkles. (she counts) Two, three, Mars, that's courage. (Stephen
shakes
his head) No kid.
LYNCH
ZOE
3660 |
LYNCH
(laughing, slaps Kitty behind twice) Like that. Pandybat.
(Twice loudly a pandybat cracks, the coffin of the pianola flies
open,
the bald little round jack-in-the-box head of Father Dolan springs
up.)
FATHER DOLAN
Any boy want flogging? Broke his glasses? Lazy idle little schemer.
See it in
your eye.
3670 |
DON JOHN CONMEE
Now, Father Dolan! Now. I'm sure that Stephen is a very good little boy!
ZOE
(examining Stephen's palm) Woman's hand.
STEPHEN
(murmurs) Continue. Lie. Hold me. Caress. I never could read
His
handwriting except His criminal thumbprint on the haddock.
ZOE
3680 |
STEPHEN
Thursday. Today.
ZOE
Thursday's child has far to go. (she traces lines on his hand)
Line of fate.
Influential friends.
FLORRY
(pointing) Imagination.
ZOE
Mount of the moon. You'll meet with a .... (she peers at his hands
abruptly)
3690 |
BLOOM
(detaches her fingers and offers his palm) More harm than good.
Here.
Read mine.
BELLA
Show. (she turns up Bloom's hand) I thought so. Knobby knuckles
for the
women.
ZOE
(peering at Bloom's palm) Gridiron. Travels beyond the sea and
marry
money.
Wrong.
ZOE
(quickly) O, I see. Short little finger. Henpecked husband. That wrong?
(Black Liz, a huge rooster hatching in a chalked circle, rises,
stretches her wings and clucks.)
BLACK LIZ
Gara. Klook. Klook. Klook. (she sidles from her newlaid egg and waddles
off)
BLOOM
3710 |
ZOE
I see, says the blind man. Tell us news.
STEPHEN
(Zoe whispers to Florry. They giggle. Bloom releases his hand and
writes idly on the table in backhand, pencilling slow curves.)
3720
FLORRY
What?
(A hackneycar, number three hundred and twentyfour, with a
gallantbuttocked mare, driven by James Barton, Harmony avenue,
Donnybrook, trots past. Blazes Boylan and Lenehan sprawl
swaying on the sideseats. The Ormond boots crouches behind on
the axle. Sadly over the crossblind Lydia Douce and Mina Kennedy
gaze.)
THE BOOTS
3730 |
(Bronze by gold they whisper.)
ZOE
(to Florry) Whisper. (she whispers again)
(Over the well of the car Blazes Boylan leans, his boater straw set
sideways, a red flower in his mouth. Lenehan in yachtsman's cap
and white shoes officiously detaches a long hair from Blazes
Boylan's coat shoulder.)
LENEHAN
3740 |
BOYLAN
(sated, smiles) Plucking a turkey.
LENEHAN
A good night's work.
BOYLAN
(holding up four thick bluntungulated fingers, winks) Blazes
Kate! Up to
sample or your money back. (he holds out a forefinger) Smell that.
LENEHAN
3750 |
ZOE AND FLORRY
(laugh together) Ha ha ha ha.
BOYLAN
(jumps surely from the car and calls loudly for all to hear)
Hello, Bloom!
Mrs Bloom dressed yet?
BLOOM
(in flunkey's prune plush coat and kneebreeches, buff stockings and
powdered wig) I'm afraid not, sir. The last articles .....
BOYLAN
3760 |
BLOOM
Thank you, sir. Yes, sir. Madam Tweedy is in her bath, sir.
MARION
He ought to feel himself highly honoured. (she plops splashing out
of the
water) Raoul darling, come and dry me. I'm in my pelt. Only my new
hat
and a carriage sponge.
BOYLAN
3770 |
BELLA
What? What is it?
(Zoe whispers to her.)
MARION
Let him look, the pishogue! Pimp! And scourge himself! I'll write to
a
powerful prostitute or Bartholomona, the bearded woman, to raise weals
out on him an inch thick and make him bring me back a signed and
stamped receipt.
(clasps himself) Here, I can't hold this little lot much longer.
(he strides off
on stiff cavalry legs)
BELLA
(laughing) Ho ho ho ho.
BOYLAN
(to Bloom, over his shoulder) You can apply your eye to the keyhole
and
play with yourself while I just go through her a few times.
BLOOM
Thank you, sir. I will, sir. May I bring two men chums to witness the
deed
3790 |
KITTY
(from the sofa) Tell us, Florry. Tell us. What ...
(Florry whispers to her. Whispering lovewords murmur, liplapping
loudly, poppysmic plopslop.)
MINA KENNEDY
(her eyes upturned) O, it must be like the scent of geraniums
and lovely
peaches! O, he simply idolises every bit of her! Stuck together! Covered
3800 |
LYDIA DOUCE
(her mouth opening) Yumyum. O, he's carrying her round the room
doing
it! Ride a cockhorse. You could hear them in Paris and New York. Like
mouthfuls of strawberries and cream.
KITTY
(laughing) Hee hee hee.
BOYLAN'S VOICE
(sweetly, hoarsely, in the pit of his stomach) Ah! Godblazegruk-
brukarchkhrasht!
(hoarsely, sweetly, rising to her throat) O! Weeshwashtkissinapoo-
isthnapoohuck?
BLOOM
(his eyes wildly dilated, clasps himself) Show! Hide! Show! Plough
her!
More! Shoot!
BELLA, ZOE, FLORRY, KITTY
Ho ho! Ha ha! Hee hee!
LYNCH
(points) The mirror up to nature. (he laughs) Hu hu hu hu hu!
3820 |
SHAKESPEARE
(in dignified ventriloquy) 'Tis the loud laugh bespeaks the vacant
mind. (to
Bloom) Thou thoughtest as how thou wastest invisible. Gaze. (he
crows
with a black capon 's laugh) Iagogo! How my Oldfellow chokit his
Thursdaymornun. Iagogogo!
BLOOM
3830 |
ZOE
Before you're twice married and once a widower.
BLOOM
Lapses are condoned. Even the great Napoleon when measurements were
taken next the skin after his death ...
(Mrs Dignam, widow woman, her snubnose and cheeks flushed
with deathtalk, tears and Tunney's tawny sherry, hurries by in her
weeds, her bonnet awry, rouging and powdering her cheeks, lips
and nose, a pen chivvying her brood of cygnets. Beneath her skirt
appear her late husband's everyday trousers and turnedup boots, 3840
large eights. She holds a Scottish Widows' insurance policy and a
large marquee umbrella under which her brood run with her, Patsy
hopping on one shod foot, his collar loose, a hank of porksteaks
dangling, Freddy whimpering, Susy with a crying cod's mouth,
Alice struggling with the baby. She cuffs them on, her streamers
flaunting aloft.)
FREDDY
Ah, ma, you're dragging me along!
Mamma, the beeftea is fizzing over!
SHAKESPEARE
(with paralytic rage) Weda seca whokilla farst.
(The face of Martin Cunningham, bearded, refeatures
Shakespeare's beardless face. The marquee umbrella sways
drunkenly, the children run aside. Under the umbrella appears Mrs
Cunningham in merry widow hat and kimono gown. She glides
sidling and bowing, twirling japanesily.)
MRS CUNNINGHAM
3860 |
And they call me the jewel of Asia!
MARTIN CUNNINGHAM
(gazes on her, impassive) Immense! Most bloody awful demirep!
STEPHEN
Et exaltabuntur cornua iusti. Queens lay with prize bulls. Remember
Pasiphae for whose lust my grandoldgrossfather made the first
confessionbox. Forget not Madam Grissel Steevens nor the suine scions of
the house of Lambert. And Noah was drunk with wine. And his ark was
open.
None of that here. Come to the wrong shop.
LYNCH
Let him alone. He's back from Paris.
ZOE
(runs to Stephen and links him) O go on! Give us some parleyvoo.
(Stephen claps hat on head and leaps over to the fireplace where
he
stands with shrugged shoulders, finny hands outspread, a painted
smile on his face.)
LYNCH
3880 |
STEPHEN
(gabbles with marionette jerks) Thousand places of entertainment
to
expense your evenings with lovely ladies saling gloves and other things
perhaps hers heart beerchops perfect fashionable house very eccentric
where lots cocottes beautiful dressed much about princesses like are
dancing cancan and walking there parisian clowneries extra foolish for
bachelors foreigns the same if talking a poor english how much smart they
are on things love and sensations voluptuous. Misters very selects for
is
pleasure must to visit heaven and hell show with mortuary candles and they
3890 |
LYNCH
Vive le vampire!
THE WHORES
Bravo! Parleyvoo!
STEPHEN
3900 |
(clapping her belly sinks back on the sofa, with a shout of laughter)
An
omelette on the.... Ho! ho! ho! ho!... omelette on the....
STEPHEN
(mincingly) I love you, sir darling. Speak you englishman tongue
for
double entente cordiale. O yes, mon loup. How much cost?
Waterloo.
Watercloset. (he ceases suddenly and holds up a forefinger)
BELLA
(laughing) Omelette....
(laughing) Encore! Encore!
STEPHEN
Mark me. I dreamt of a watermelon.
ZOE
Go abroad and love a foreign lady.
LYNCH
Across the world for a wife.
FLORRY
Dreams goes by contraries.
(extends his arms) It was here. Street of harlots. In Serpentine
avenue
Beelzebub showed me her, a fubsy widow. Where's the red carpet spread?
BLOOM
(approaching Stephen) Look ....
STEPHEN
No, I flew. My foes beneath me. And ever shall be. World without end.
(he
cries) Pater! Free!
BLOOM
I say, look...
Break my spirit, will he? O merde alors! (he cries, his vulture
talons
sharpened) Hol! Hillyho!
(Simon Dedalus' voice hilloes in answer, somewhat sleepy but
ready.)
SIMON
That's all right. (he swoops uncertainly through the air, wheeling,
uttering
cries of heartening, on strong ponderous buzzard wings) Ho, boy! Are
you going to win? Hoop! Pschatt! Stable with those halfcastes. Wouldn't
let
3950 |
(The fronds and spaces of the wallpaper file rapidly crosscountry.
A stout fox, drawn from covert, brush pointed, having buried his
grandmother, runs swift for the open, brighteyed, seeking badger
earth, under the leaves. The pack of staghounds follows, nose to the
ground, sniffing their quarry, beaglebaying, burblbrbling to be
blooded. Ward Union huntsmen and huntswomen live with them,
hot for a kill. From Six Mile Point, Flathouse, Nine Mile Stone
follow the footpeople with knotty sticks, hayforks, salmongaffs,
lassos, flockmasters with stockwhips, bearbaiters with tomtoms, 3960
toreadors with bullswords, grey negroes waving torches. The crowd
bawls of dicers, crown and anchor players, thimbleriggers,
broadsmen. Crows and touts, hoarse bookies in high wizard hats
clamour deafeningly.)
THE CROWD
(A dark horse, riderless, bolts like a phantom past the winningpost,
his mane moonfoaming, his eyeballs stars. The field follows, a
bunch of bucking mounts. Skeleton horses, Sceptre, Maximum the
Second, Zinfandel, the duke of Westminster's Shotover, Repulse,
the duke of Beaufort's Ceylon, prix de Paris. Dwarfs ride them,
rustyarmoured, leaping, leaping in their, in their saddles. Last in a 3980
drizzle of rain on a brokenwinded isabelle nag, Cock of the North,
the favourite, honey cap, green jacket, orange sleeves, Garrett Deasy
up, gripping the reins, a hockeystick at the ready. His nag on
spavined whitegaitered feet jogs along the rocky road.)
THE ORANGE LODGES
(jeering) Get down and push, mister. Last lap! You'll be home the night!
GARRETT DEASY
(bolt upright, his nailscraped face plastered with postagestamps,
brandishes
his hockeystick, his blue eyes flashing in the prism of the chandelier
as his
mount lopes by at schooling gallop) Per vias rectas! 3990
(A yoke of buckets leopards all over him and his rearing nag a
torrent of mutton broth with dancing coins of carrots, barley,
onions, turnips, potatoes.)
THE GREEN LODGES
Soft day, sir John! Soft day, your honour!
(Private Carr, Private Compton and Cissy Caffrey pass beneath the
windows, singing in discord.)
STEPHEN
Hark! Our friend noise in the street.
(holds up her hand) Stop!
PRIVATE CARR, PRIVATE COMPTON AND CISSY CAFFREY
Yet I've a sort of a
Yorkshire relish for...
ZOE
That's me. (she claps her hands) Dance! Dance! (she runs to
the pianola)
Who has twopence?
BLOOM
Who'll ...?
LYNCH
4010 |
STEPHEN
(cracking his fingers impatiently) Quick! Quick! Where's my augur's
rod?
(he runs to the piano and takes his ashplant, beating his foot in tripudium)
ZOE
(turns the drumhandle) There.
(She drops two pennies in the slot. Gold, pink and violet lights
start
forth. The drum turns purring in low hesitation waltz.
Goodwin, in a bowknotted periwig, in court dress, wearing a
[P]
stained Inverness cape, bent in two from incredible age, totters
across the room, his hands fluttering. He sits tinily on the pianostool 4020
and lifts and beats handless sticks of arms on the keyboard, nodding
with damsel's grace, his bowknot bobbing)
ZOE
(twirls round herself, heeltapping) Dance. Anybody here for there?
Who'll dance? Clear the table.
(The pianola with changing lights plays in waltz time the prelude
of My Girl's a Yorkshire Girl. Stephen throws his ashplant on the
table and seizes Zoe round the waist. Florry and Bella push the
table towards the fireplace. Stephen, arming Zoe with exaggerated
grace, begins to waltz her round the room. Bloom stands aside. Her 4030
sleeve filling from gracing arms reveals a white fleshflower of
vaccination.
4040 |
MAGINNI
The poetry of motion, art of calisthenics. No connection with Madam
Legget Byrne's or Levenston's. Fancy dress balls arranged. Deportment.
The Katty Lanner step. So. Watch me! My terpsichorean abilities. (he
minuets forward three paces on tripping bee's feet) Tout le monde en
avant! Reverence! Tout le monde en place!
(The prelude ceases. Professor Goodwin, beating vague arms
shrivels, sinks, his live cape filling about the stool.
4050 |
THE PIANOLA Two young fellows were talking about their girls, girls, girls, (From a corner the morning hours run out, goldhaired,
Sweethearts they'd left behind ......
[P]
slimsandalled, in girlish blue, waspwaisted, with innocent hands.
Nimbly they dance, twirling their skipping ropes. The hours of
noon follow in amber gold. Laughing, linked, high haircombs
flashing, they catch the sun in mocking mirrors, lifting their arms.)
MAGINNI
4060 |
(The morning and noon hours waltz in their places, turning,
advancing to each other, shaping their curves, bowing visavis.
Cavaliers behind them arch and suspend their arms, with hands
descending to, touching, rising from their shoulders.)
HOURS
You may touch my.
CAVALIERS
May I touch your?
HOURS
4070 |
CAVALIERS
O, so lightly!
THE PIANOLA
My little shy little lass has a waist.
(Zoe and Stephen turn boldly with looser swing. The twilight hours
MAGINNI
advance from long landshadows, dispersed, lagging, languideyed,
their cheeks delicate with cipria and false faint bloom. They are in
grey gauze with dark bat sleeves that flutter in the landbreeze.)
Avant huit! Traversé! Salut! Cours de mains! Croisé! 4080
(The night hours, one by one, steal to the last place. Morning, noon
and twilight hours retreat before them. They are masked, with
daggered hair and bracelets of dull bells. Weary they curchycurchy
under veils.)
THE BRACELETS
Heigho! Heigho!
ZOE
(twirling, her hand to her brow) O!
MAGINNI
4090 |
(Arabesquing wearily they weave a pattern on the floor, weaving,
unweaving, curtseying, twirling, simply swirling.)
ZOE
I'm giddy!
(She frees herself, droops on a chair. Stephen seizes Florry and
turns with her.)
MAGINNI
Boulangre! Les ronds! Les ponts! Chevaux de bois! Escargots!
(Twining, receding, with interchanging hands the night hours link
each each with arching arms in a mosaic of movements.
4100 |
MAGINNI
Dansez avec vos dames! Changez de dames! Donnez le petit bouquet a votre =|MAGa|=
dame! Remerciez!
THE PIANOLA
Best, best of all,
Baraabum!
KITTY
(jumps up) O, they played that on the hobbyhorses at the Mirus bazaar!
(She runs to Stephen. He leaves Florry brusquely and seizes
Kitty. A screaming bittern's harsh high whistle shrieks.
Groangrousegurgling Toft's cumbersome whirligig turns slowly the 4110
room right roundabout the room.)
THE PIANOLA
My girl's a Yorkshire girl.
ZOE
Yorkshire through and through. Come on all!
(She seizes Florry and waltzes her.)
STEPHEN
Pas seul!
(He wheels Kitty into Lynch's arms, snatches up his ashplant from
the table and takes the floor. All wheel whirl waltz twirl Bloombella 4120
Kittylynch Florryzoe jujuby women. Stephen with hat ashplant
frogsplits in middle highkicks with skykicking mouth shut hand
clasp part under thigh. With clang tinkle boomhammer tallyho
hornblower blue green yellow flashes Toft's cumbersome turns with
hobbyhorse riders from gilded snakes dangled, bowels fandango
leaping spurn soil foot and fall again.)
THE PIANOLA
Though she's a factory lass
And wears no fancy clothes.
4130 |
TUTTI
Encore! Bis! Bravo! Encore!
SIMON
Think of your mother's people!
STEPHEN
Dance of death.
(Bang fresh barang bang of lacquey's bell, horse, nag, steer,
piglings, Conmee on Christass, lame crutch and leg sailor in
cockboat armfolded ropepulling hitching stamp hornpipe through 4140
and through. Baraabum! On nags hogs bellhorses Gadarene swine
Corny in coffin steel shark stone onehandled Nelson two trickies
Frauenzimmer plumstained from pram filling bawling Gum he's a
champion. Fuseblue peer from barrel rev. evensong Love on
hackney jaunt Blazes blind coddoubled bicyclers Dilly with
snowcake no fancy clothes. Then in last switchback lumbering up
and down bump mashtub sort of viceroy and reine relish for
tublumber bumpshire rose. Baraabum!
The couples fall aside. Stephen whirls giddily. Room whirls back.
Eyes closed he totters. Red rails fly spacewards. Stars all around 4150
suns turn roundabout. Bright midges dance on walls. He stops
dead.)
STEPHEN
Ho!
(Stephen's mother, emaciated, rises stark through the floor, in leper
grey with a wreath of faded orangeblossoms and a torn bridal veil,
her face worn and noseless, green with gravemould. Her hair is
scant and lank. She fixes her bluecircled hollow eyesockets on
Stephen and opens her toothless mouth uttering a silent word. A
choir of virgins and confessors sing voicelessly.)
4160
THE CHOIR
Liliata rutilantium te confessorum
Iubilantium te virginum
(From the top of a tower Buck Mulligan, in particoloured jester's
dress of puce and yellow and clown's cap with curling bell, stands
gaping at her, a smoking buttered split scone in his hand.)
BUCK MULLIGAN
She's beastly dead. The pity of it! Mulligan meets the afflicted mother.
(he
upturns his eyes) Mercurial Malachi!
(with the subtle smile of death's madness) I was once the beautiful
May
Goulding. I am dead.
STEPHEN
(horrorstruck) Lemur, who are you? No. What bogeyman's trick is this?
BUCK MULLIGAN
(shakes his curling capbell) The mockery of it! Kinch dogsbody
killed her
bitchbody. She kicked the bucket. (tears of molten butter fall from
his eyes
on to the scone) Our great sweet mother! Epi oinopa ponton
THE MOTHER
4180 |
STEPHEN
(choking with fright, remorse and horror) They say I killed you,
mother.
He offended your memory. Cancer did it, not I. Destiny.
THE MOTHER
(a green rill of bile trickling from a side of her mouth) You
sang that song
to me. Love's bitter mystery.
STEPHEN
4190 |
THE MOTHER
Who saved you the night you jumped into the train at Dalkey with Paddy
Lee? Who had pity for you when you were sad among the strangers?
Prayer is allpowerful. Prayer for the suffering souls in the Ursuline manual
and forty days' indulgence. Repent, Stephen.
STEPHEN
The ghoul! Hyena!
THE MOTHER
4200 |
ZOE
(fanning herself with the gratefan) I'm melting!
FLORRY
(points to Stephen) Look! He's white.
BLOOM
(goes to the window to open it more) Giddy.
THE MOTHER
4210 |
STEPHEN
(panting) His noncorrosive sublimate! The corpsechewer! Raw head
and
bloody bones.
THE MOTHER
(her face drawing near and nearer, sending out an ashen breath) Beware!
(she raises her blackened withered right arm slowly towards Stephen's
breast with outstretched finger) Beware God's hand!
(A green crab with malignant red eyes sticks deep its grinning claws
in Stephen's heart.)
(strangled with rage, his features drawn grey and old) Shite!
BLOOM
(at the window) What?
STEPHEN
Ah non, par exemple! The intellectual imagination! With me all
or not at
all. Non serviam!
FLORRY
Give him some cold water. Wait. (she rushes out)
THE MOTHER
4230 |
STEPHEN
No! No! No! Break my spirit, all of you, if you can! I'll bring you
all to
heel!
THE MOTHER
(in the agony of her deathrattle) Have mercy on Stephen, Lord,
for my
sake! Inexpressible was my anguish when expiring with love, grief and
agony on Mount Calvary.
STEPHEN
(He lifts his ashplant high with both hands and smashes the
chandelier.
THE GASJET
Pwfungg!
BLOOM
Stop!
LYNCH
(rushes forward and seizes Stephen's hand) Here! Hold on! Don't
run
4250 |
BELLA
Police!
(Stephen, abandoning his ashplant, his head and arms thrown back
stark, beats the ground and flies from the room, past the whores at
the door.)
BELLA
(screams) After him!
(The two whores rush to the halldoor. Lynch and Kitty and Zoe
stampede from the room. They talk excitedly. Bloom follows,
returns.)
4260
THE WHORES
(jammed in the doorway, pointing) Down there.
ZOE
(pointing) There. There's something up.
BELLA
Who pays for the lamp? (she seizes Bloom's coattail) Here, you
were with
him. The lamp's broken.
BLOOM
(rushes to the hall, rushes back) What lamp, woman?
He tore his coat.
BELLA
(her eyes hard with anger and cupidity, points) Who's to pay
for that? Ten
shillings. You're a witness.
BLOOM
(snatches up Stephen's ashplant) Me? Ten shillings? Haven't you
lifted
enough off him? Didn't he ....?
BELLA
(loudly) Here, none of your tall talk. This isn't a brothel.
A tenshilling
4280 |
BLOOM
(His head under the lamp, pulls the chain. Puling, the gasjet lights
up a
crushed mauve purple shade. He raises the ashplant.) Only the chimney's
broken. Here is all he ....
BELLA
(shrinks back and screams) Jesus! Don't!
BLOOM
(warding off a blow) To show you how he hit the paper. There's
not
sixpenceworth of damage done. Ten shillings!
(with a glass of water, enters) Where is he?
BELLA
Do you want me to call the police?
BLOOM
O, I know. Bulldog on the premises. But he's a Trinity student. Patrons
of
your establishment. Gentlemen that pay the rent. (he makes a masonic
sign) Know what I mean? Nephew of the vicechancellor. You don't want
a
scandal.
BELLA
4300 |
BLOOM
(urgently) And if it were your own son in Oxford? (warningly) I know.
BELLA
(almost speechless) Who are. Incog!
ZOE
(in the doorway) There's a row on.
BLOOM
4310 |
(He hurries out through the hall. The whores point. Florry follows,
spilling water from her tilted tumbler. On the doorstep all the
whores clustered talk volubly, pointing to the right where the fog
has cleared off From the left arrives a jingling hackney car. It slows
to in front of the house. Bloom at the halldoor perceives Corny
Kelleher who is about to dismount from the car with two silent
lechers. He averts his face. Bella from within the hall urges on her
whores. They blow ickylickysticky yumyum kisses. Corny Kelleher
replies with a ghastly lewd smile. The silent lechers turn to pay the 4320
jarvey. Zoe and Kitty still point right.
4330 |
4340 |
Mrs Joe Gallaher, George Lidwell, Jimmy Henry on corns,
superintendent Laracy, Father Cowley, Crofton out of the
Collector-general's, Dan Dawson, dental surgeon Bloom with
tweezers, Mrs Bob Doran, Mrs Kennefick, Mrs Wyse Nolan, John 4350
Wyse Nolan, handsomemarriedwomanrubbedagainstwidebehind-
inClonskeatram, the bookseller of Sweets of Sin, Miss
Dubedatandshedidbedad, Mesdames Gerald and Stanislaus Moran
of Roebuck, the managing clerk of Drimmie's, Wetherup, colonel
Hayes, Mastiansky, Citron, Penrose, Aaron Figatner, Moses
Herzog, Michael E Geraghty, Inspector Troy, Mrs Galbraith, the
constable off Eccles street corner, old doctor Brady with
stethoscope, the mystery man on the beach, a retriever, Mrs Miriam
Dandrade and all her lovers.)
(helterskelterpelterwelter) He's Bloom! Stop Bloom! Stopabloom!
Stopperrobber! Hi! Hi! Stophim on the corner!
(At the corner of Beaver street beneath the scaffolding Bloom
panting stops on the fringe of the noisy quarrelling knot, a lot not
knowing a jot what hi! hi! row and wrangle round the whowhat
brawlaltogether.)
STEPHEN
(with elaborate gestures, breathing deeply and slowly) You are
my guests.
Uninvited. By virtue of the fifth of George and seventh of Edward. History
4370 |
PRIVATE CARR
(to Cissy Caffrey) Was he insulting you?
STEPHEN
Addressed her in vocative feminine. Probably neuter. Ungenitive.
VOICES
No, he didn't. I seen him. The girl there. He was in Mrs Cohen's. What's
up? Soldier and civilian.
CISSY CAFFREY
I was in company with the soldiers and they left me to do, you know,
and
4380 |
VOICES
Shesfaithfultheman.
STEPHEN
(catches sight of Lynch's and Kitty's heads) Hail, Sisyphus.
(he points to
himself and the others) Poetic. Uropoetic.
CISSY CAFFREY
Yes, to go with him. And me with a soldier friend.
PRIVATE COMPTON
4390 |
PRIVATE CARR
(to Cissy) Was he insulting you while me and him was having a piss?
LORD TENNYSON
(gentleman poet in Union Jack blazer and cricket flannels, bareheaded,
flowingbearded) Theirs not to reason why.
PRIVATE COMPTON
Biff him, Harry.
STEPHEN
(to Private Compton) I don't know your name but you are quite
right.
4400 |
CISSY CAFFREY
(to the crowd) No, I was with the privates.
STEPHEN
(amiably) Why not? The bold soldier boy. In my opinion every
lady for
example .....
PRIVATE CARR
(his cap awry, advances to Stephen) Say, how would it be, governor,
if I
was to bash in your jaw?
(looks up to the sky) How? Very unpleasant. Noble art of selfpretence.
Personally, I detest action. (he waves his hand) Hand hurts me slightly.
Enfin ce sont vos oignons. (to Cissy Caffrey) Some trouble is on
here.
What is it precisely?
DOLLY GRAY
(from her balcony waves her handkerchief, giving the sign of the
heroine of
Jericho) Rahab. Cook's son, goodbye. Safe home to Dolly. Dream of the
girl you left behind and she will dream of you.
(The soldiers turn their swimming eyes.)
(elbowing through the crowd, plucks Stephen's sleeve vigorously)
Come
now, professor, that carman is waiting.
STEPHEN
(turns) Eh? (he disengages himself) Why should I not speak
to him or to
any human being who walks upright upon this oblate orange? (he points
his finger) I'm not afraid of what I can talk to if I see his eye.
Retaining the
perpendicular. (he staggers a pace back)
BLOOM
(propping him) Retain your own.
(laughs emptily) My centre of gravity is displaced. I have forgotten
the
trick. Let us sit down somewhere and discuss. Struggle for life is the
law of
existence but but human philirenists, notably the tsar and the king of
England, have invented arbitration. (he taps his brow) But in here
it is I
must kill the priest and the king.
BIDDY THE CLAP
Did you hear what the professor said? He's a professor out of the college.
CUNTY KATE
I did. I heard that.
He expresses himself with such marked refinement of phraseology.
CUNTY KATE
Indeed, yes. And at the same time with such apposite trenchancy.
PRIVATE CARR
(pulls himself free and comes forward) What's that you're saying
about
my king?
(Edward the Seventh appears in an archway. He wars a white
jersey on which an image of the Sacred Heart is stitched with the
insignia of Garter and Thistle, Golden Fleece, Elephant of
Denmark, Skinner's and Probyn's horse, Lincoln 's Inn bencher 4450
and ancient and honourable artillery company of Massachusetts.
He sucks a red jujube. He is robed as a grand elect perfect and
sublime mason with trowel and apron, marked made in Germany.
In his left hand he holds a plasterer's bucket on which is printed
Defense d'uriner. A roar of welcome greets him.)
EDWARD THE SEVENTH
(slowly, solemnly but indistinctly) Peace, perfect peace. For
identification,
bucket in my hand. Cheerio, boys. (he turns to his subjects) We
have come
here to witness a clean straight fight and we heartily wish both men the
best
4460 |
(General applause. Edward the Seventh lifts his bucket graciously
in acknowledgment.)
PRIVATE CARR
(to Stephen) Say it again.
STEPHEN
(nervous, friendly, pulls himself up) I understand your point
of view
though I have no king myself for the moment. This is the age of patent
medicines. A discussion is difficult down here. But this is the point.
You die
4470 |
EDWARD THE SEVENTH
(levitates over heaps of slain, in the garb and with the halo of
Joking Jesus,
a white jujube in his phosphorescent face)
My methods are new and are causing surprise.
To make the blind see I throw dust in their eyes.
STEPHEN
Kings and unicorns! (he fills back a pace) Come somewhere and
we'll...
4480 |
PRIVATE COMPTON
Eh, Harry, give him a kick in the knackers. Stick one into Jerry.
BLOOM
(to the privates, softly) He doesn't know what he's saying. Taken
a little
more than is good for him. Absinthe. Greeneyed monster. I know him.
He's a gentleman, a poet. It's all right.
STEPHEN
(nods, smiling and laughing) Gentleman, patriot, scholar and
judge of
impostors.
I don't give a bugger who he is.
PRIVATE COMPTON
We don't give a bugger who he is.
STEPHEN
I seem to annoy them. Green rag to a bull.
(Kevin Egan of Paris in black Spanish tasselled shirt and
peep-o'-day boy's hat signs to Stephen.)
KEVIN EGAN
H'lo! Bonjour! The vieille ogresse with the dents jaunes.
PATRICE
Socialiste!
DON EMILE PATRIZ1O FRANZ RUPERT POPE HENNESSY
(in medieval hauberk, two wild geese volant on his helm, with noble
indignation points a mailed hand against the privates) Werf those eykes
to
footboden, big grand porcos of johnyellows todos covered of gravy!
BLOOM
(to Stephen) Come home. You'll get into trouble.
STEPHEN
4510 |
BIDDY THE CLAP
One immediately observes that he is of patrician lineage.
THE VIRAGO
Green above the red, says he. Wolfe Tone.
THE BAWD
The red's as good as the green. And better. Up the soldiers! Up King
Edward!
A ROUGH
(laughs) Ay! Hands up to De Wet.
(with a huge emerald muffler and shillelagh, calls)
May the God above
Send down a dove
With teeth as sharp as razors
To slit the throats
Of the English dogs
That hanged our Irish leaders.
THE CROPPY BOY
(the ropenoose round his neck, gripes in his issuing bowels with
both
hands)
4530
I bear no hate to a living thing,
But I love my country beyond the king.
RUMBOLD, DEMON BARBER
(accompanied by two blackmasked assistants, advances with gladstone
bag
which he opens) Ladies and gents, cleaver purchased by Mrs Pearcy to
slay
Mogg. Knife with which Voisin dismembered the wife of a compatriot and
hid remains in a sheet in the cellar, the unfortunate female's throat being
cut from ear to ear. Phial containing arsenic retrieved from body of Miss
Barron which sent Seddon to the gallows.
4540 |
THE CROPPY BOY
Horhot ho hray hor hother's hest.
(He gives up the ghost. A violent erection of the hanged sends gouts
of sperm spouting through his deathclothes on to the cobblestones.
Mrs Bellingham, Mrs Yelverton Barry and the Honourable Mrs
Mervyn Talboys rush forward with their handkerchiefs to sop it
up.)
I'm near it myself. (he undoes the noose) Rope which hanged the
awful
rebel. Ten shillings a time. As applied to Her Royal Highness. (he plunges
his head into the gaping belly of the hanged and draws out his head again
clotted with coiled and smoking entrails) My painful duty has now been
done. God save the king!
EDWARD THE SEVENTH
(dances slowly, solemnly, rattling his bucket, and sings with soft
contentment)
PRIVATE CARR
Here. What are you saying about my king?
STEPHEN
(throws up his hands) O, this is too monotonous! Nothing. He
wants my
money and my life, though want must be his master, for some brutish
empire of his. Money I haven't. (he searches his pockets vaguely)
Gave it
to someone.
PRIVATE CARR
4570 |
STEPHEN
(tries to move off) Will someone tell me where I am least likely
to meet
these necessary evils? Ca se voit aussi a Paris. Not that I ...
But, by saint
Patrick ....!
(The women's heads coalesce. Old Gummy Granny in sugarloaf
hat appears seated on a toadstool, the deathflower of the potato
blight on her breast.)
STEPHEN
4580 |
OLD GUMMY GRANNY
(rocking to and fro) Ireland's sweetheart, the king of Spain's
daughter,
alanna. Strangers in my house, bad manners to them! (she keens with
banshee woe) Ochone! Ochone! Silk of the kine! (she wails) You
met with
poor old Ireland and how does she stand?
STEPHEN
How do I stand you? The hat trick! Where's the third person of the Blessed
Trinity? Soggarth Aroon? The reverend Carrion Crow.
(shrill) Stop them from fighting!
A ROUGH
Our men retreated.
PRIVATE CARR
(tugging at his belt) I'll wring the neck of any fucker says
a word against
my fucking king.
BLOOM
(terrified) He said nothing. Not a word. A pure misunderstanding.
PRIVATE COMPTON
4600 |
STEPHEN
Did I? When?
BLOOM
(to the redcoats) We fought for you in South Africa, Irish missile
troops.
Isn't that history? Royal Dublin Fusiliers. Honoured by our monarch.
THE NAVVY
(staggering past) O, yes! O God, yes! O, make the kwawr a krowawr!
O!
Bo!
(Casqued halberdiers in armour thrust forward a pentice of gutted
spearpoints. Major Tweedy, moustached like Turko the terrible, in 4610
bearskin cap with hackleplume and accoutrements, with epaulettes,
gilt chevrons and sabretaches, his breast bright with medals, toes
the line. He gives the pilgrim warrior's sign of the knights
templars.)
MAJOR TWEEDY
(growls gruffly) Rorke's Drift! Up, guards, and at them! Mahar
shalal
hashbaz.
THE CITIZEN
Erin go bragh!
4620 |
PRIVATE CARR
I'll do him in.
PRIVATE COMPTON
(moves the crowd back) Fair play, here. Make a bleeding butcher's
shop of
the bugger.
(Massed bands blare Garryowen and God save the king.)
CISSY CAFFREY
4630 |
CUNTY KATE
The brave and the fair.
BIDDY THE CLAP
Methinks yon sable knight will joust it with the best.
CUNTY KATE
(blushing deeply) Nay, madam. The gules doublet and merry saint
George
for me!
STEPHEN
PRIVATE CARR
(loosening his belt, shouts) I'll wring the neck of any fucking
bastard says
a word against my bleeding fucking king.
BLOOM
(shakes Cissy Caffrey's shoulders) Speak, you! Are you struck
dumb? You
are the link between nations and generations. Speak, woman, sacred
lifegiver!
CISSY CAFFREY
(alarmed, seizes Private Carr's sleeve) Amn't I with you? Amn't
I your
4650 |
STEPHEN
(ecstatically, to Cissy Caffrey)
White thy fambles, red thy gan
And thy quarrons dainty is.
VOICES
Police!
DISTANT VOICES
Dublin's burning! Dublin's burning! On fire, on fire!
(Brimstone fires spring up. Dense clouds roll past. Heavy Gatling
guns boom. Pandemonium. Troops deploy. Gallop of hoofs. 4660
Artillery. Hoarse commands. Bells clang Backers shout. Drunkards
bawl. Whores screech. Foghorns hoot. Cries of valour. Shrieks of
dying. Pikes clash on cuirasses. Thieves rob the slain. Birds of prey,
winging from the sea, rising from marshlands, swooping from
eyries, hover screaming, gannets, cormorants, vultures, goshawks,
climbing woodcocks, peregrines, merlins, blackgrouse, sea eagles,
gulls, albatrosses, barnacle geese. The midnight sun is darkened.
The earth trembles. The dead of Dublin from Prospect and Mount
Jerome in white sheepskin overcoats and black goatfell cloaks arise
and appear to many. A chasm opens with a noiseless yawn. Tom 4670
Rochford, winner, in athlete's singlet and breeches, arrives at the
head of the national hurdle handicap and leaps into the void. He is
followed by a race of runners and leapers. In wild attitudes they
spring from the brink. Their bodies plunge. Factory lasses with
fancy clothes toss redhot Yorkshire baraabombs. Society ladies lift
their skirts above their heads to protect themselves. Laughing
witches in red cutty sarks ride through the air on broomsticks.
Quakerlyster plasters blisters. It rains dragons' teeth. Armed heroes
spring up from furrows. They exchange in amity the pass of knights
of the red cross and fight duels with cavalry sabres: Wolfe Tone 4680
against Henry Grattan, Smith O'Brien against Daniel O'Connell,
Michael Davitt against Isaac Butt, Justin M'Carthy against Parnell,
Arthur Griffith against John Redmond, John O'Leary against Lear
O'Johnny, Lord Edward Fitzgerald against Lord Gerald
Fitzedward, The O'Donoghue of The Glens against The Glens of
The O'Donoghue. On an eminence, the centre of the earth, rises the
feldaltar of Saint Barbara. Black candles rise from its gospel and
epistle horns. From the high barbacans of the tower two shafts of
light fall on the smokepalled altarstone. On the altarstone Mrs Mina
Purefoy, goddess of unreason, lies, naked, fettered, a chalice resting 4690
on her swollen belly. Father Malachi O'Flynn in a lace petticoat
and reversed chasuble, his two left feet back to the front, celebrates
camp mass. The Reverend Mr Hugh C Haines Love M. A. in a
plain cassock and mortarboard, his head and collar back to the
front, holds over the celebrant's head an open umbrella.)
FATHER MALACHI O'FLYNN
Introibo ad altare diaboli.
THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE
To the devil which hath made glad my young days.
(takes from the chalice and elevates a blooddripping host) Corpus
meum.
THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE
(raises high behind the celebrant's petticoat, revealing his grey
bare hairy
buttocks between which a carrot is stuck) My body.
THE VOICE OF ALL THE DAMNED
Htengier Tnetopinmo Dog Drol eht rof, Aiulella!
(From on high the voice of Adonai calls.)
ADONAI
4710 |
THE VOICE OF ALL THE BLESSED
Alleluia, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth!
(From on high the voice of Adonai calls.)
ADONAI
Goooooooooood!
(In strident discord peasants and townsmen of Orange and Green
factions sing Kick the Pope and Daily, daily sing to Mary.)
PRIVATE CARR
(with ferocious articulation) I'll do him in, so help me fucking
Christ! I'll
4720 |
(The retriever, nosing on the fringe of the crowd, barks noisily.)
BLOOM
(runs to Lynch) Can't you get him away?
LYNCH
He likes dialectic, the universal language. Kitty! (to Bloom)
Get him away,
you. He won't listen to me.
(He drags Kitty away.)
STEPHEN
(points) Exit Judas. Et laqueo se suspendit.
(runs to Stephen) Come along with me now before worse happens.
Here's
your stick.
STEPHEN
Stick, no. Reason. This feast of pure reason.
OLD GUMMY GRANNY
(thrusts a dagger towards Stephen's hand) Remove him, acushla.
At
8.35 a.m. you will be in heaven and Ireland will be free. (she prays)
O
good God, take him!
CISSY CAFFREY
4740 |
BLOOM
(over Stephen's shoulder) Yes, go. You see he's incapable.
PRIVATE CARR
(breaks loose) I'll insult him.
(He rushes towards Stephen, fist outstretched, and strikes him in
the face. Stephen totters, collapses, falls, stunned. He lies prone, his
face to the sky, his hat rolling to the wall Bloom follows and picks it
up.)
(loudly) Carbine in bucket! Cease fire! Salute!
THE RETRIEVER
(barking furiously) Ute ute ute ute ute ute ute ute.
THE CROWD
Let him up! Don't strike him when he's down! Air! Who? The soldier hit
him. He's a professor. Is he hurted? Don't manhandle him! He's fainted!
A HAG
What call had the redcoat to strike the gentleman and he under the
influence. Let them go and fight the Boers!
Listen to who's talking! Hasn't the soldier a right to go with his girl?
He
gave him the coward's blow.
(They grab at each other's hair, claw at each other and spit)
THE RETRIEVER
(barking) Wow wow wow.
BLOOM
(shoves them back, loudly) Get back, stand back!
PRIVATE COMPTON
(tugging his comrade) Here. Bugger off, Harry. Here's the cops!
FIRST WATCH
What's wrong here?
PRIVATE COMPTON
We were with this lady. And he insulted us. And assaulted my chum. (the
retriever barks) Who owns the bleeding tyke?
CISSY CAFFREY
(with expectation) Is he bleeding!
A MAN
(rising from his knees) No. Gone off. He'll come to all right.
(glances sharply at the man) Leave him to me. I can easily .....
SECOND WATCH
Who are you? Do you know him?
PRIVATE CARR
(lurches towards the watch) He insulted my lady friend.
BLOOM
(angrily) You hit him without provocation. I'm a witness. Constable,
take
his regimental number.
SECOND WATCH
4790 |
PRIVATE COMPTON
(pulling his comrade) Here, bugger off Harry. Or Bennett'll shove
you in
the lockup.
PRIVATE CARR
(staggering as he is pulled away) God fuck old Bennett. He's
a whitearsed
bugger. I don't give a shit for him.
FIRST WATCH
(takes out his notebook) What's his name?
BLOOM
4800 |
FIRST WATCH
Name and address.
(Corny Kelleker, weepers round his hat, a death wreath in his hand,
appears among the bystanders.)
BLOOM
(quickly) O, the very man! (he whispers) Simon Dedalus'
son. A bit
sprung. Get those policemen to move those loafers back.
SECOND WATCH
4810 |
CORNY KELLEHER
(to the watch, with drawling eye) That's all right. I know him.
Won a bit
on the races. Gold cup. Throwaway. (he laughs) Twenty to
one. Do you
follow me?
FIRST WATCH
(turns to the crowd) Here, what are you all gaping at? Move on
out of
that.
(The crowd disperses slowly, muttering, down the lane.)
CORNY KELLEHER
4820 |
FIRST WATCH
(laughs) I suppose so.
CORNY KELLEHER
(nudges the second watch) Come and wipe your name off the slate.
(he
lilts, wagging his head) With my tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom
tooraloom. What, eh, do you follow me?
SECOND WATCH
(genially) Ah, sure we were too.
(winking) Boys will be boys. I've a car round there.
SECOND WATCH
All right, Mr Kelleher. Good night.
CORNY KELLEHER
I'll see to that.
BLOOM
(shakes hands with both of the watch in turn) Thank you very
much,
gentlemen. Thank you. (he mumbles confidentially) We don't want
any
scandal, you understand. Father is a wellknown highly respected citizen.
4840 |
FIRST WATCH
O. I understand, sir.
SECOND WATCH
That's all right, sir.
FIRST WATCH
It was only in case of corporal injuries I'd have to report it at the station.
BLOOM
(nods rapidly) Naturally. Quite right. Only your bounden duty.
SECOND WATCH
4850 |
CORNY KELLEHER
Good night, men.
THE WATCH
(saluting together) Night, gentlemen.
(They move off with slow heavy tread)
BLOOM
(blows) Providential you came on the scene. You have a car...?
CORNY KELLEHER
(laughs, pointing his thumb over his right shoulder to the car brought
up
against the scaffolding) Two commercials that were standing fizz in 4860
Jammet's. Like princes, faith. One of them lost two quid on the race.
Drowning his grief. And were on for a go with the jolly girls. So I landed
them up on Behan's car and down to nighttown.
BLOOM
I was just going home by Gardiner street when I happened to ...
CORNY KELLEHER
(laughs) Sure they wanted me to join in with the mots. No, by
God, says I.
Not for old stagers like myself and yourself. (he laughs again and leers
with lacklustre eye) Thanks be to God we have it in the house, what,
eh, do
4870 |
BLOOM
(tries to laugh) He, he, he! Yes. Matter of fact I was just visiting
an old
friend of mine there, Virag, you don't know him (poor fellow, he's laid
up
for the past week) and we had a liquor together and I was just making
my
way home ......
(The horse neighs.)
THE HORSE
Hohohohohohoh! Hohohohome!
CORNY KELLEHER
4880 |
BLOOM
No, in Sandycove, I believe, from what he let drop.
(Stephen, prone, breathes to the stars. Corny Kelleher, asquint,
drawls at the horse. Bloom, in gloom, looms town.)
CORNY KELLEHER
(scratches his nape) Sandycove! (he bends down and calls to
Stephen)
4890 |
BLOOM
No, no, no. I have his money and his hat here and stick.
CORNY KELLEHER
Ah, well, he'll get over it. No bones broken. Well, I'll shove along.
(he
laughs) I've a rendezvous in the morning. Burying the dead. Safe home!
THE HORSE
(neighs) Hohohohohome.
BLOOM
4900 |
(Corny Kelleher returns to the outside car and mounts it. The
horseharness jingles.)
CORNY KELLEHER
(from the car, standing) Night.
BLOOM
Night.
(The jarvey chucks the reins and raises his whip encouragingly.
The car and horse back slowly, awkwardly, and turn. Corny
Kelleher on the sideseat sways his head to and fro in sign of mirth at
Bloom's plight. The jarvey joins in the mute pantomimic merriment 4910
nodding from the farther seat. Bloom shakes his head in mute
mirthful reply. With thumb and palm Corny Kelleher reassures that
the two bobbies will allow the sleep to continue for what else is to be
done. With a slow nod Bloom conveys his gratitude as that is
exactly what Stephen needs. The car jingles tooraloom round the
corner of the tooraloom lane. Corny Kelleher again reassuralooms
with his hand. Bloom with his hand assuralooms Corny Kelleher
that he is reassuraloomtay. The tinkling hoofs and jingling harness
grow fainter with their tooralooloo looloo lay. Bloom, holding in
his hand Stephen's hat, festooned with shavings, and ashplant, 4920
stands irresolute. Then he bends to him and shakes him by the
shoulder.)
BLOOM
Eh! Ho! (There is no answer. He bends again.) Mr Dedalus! (there
is no
answer) The name if you call. Somnambulist. (he bends again and
hesitating, brings his mouth near the face of the prostrate form) Stephen!
(There is no answer. He calls again.) Stephen!
STEPHEN
(frowns) Who? Black panther. Vampire. (he sighs and stretches
himself,
then murmurs thickly with prolonged vowels)
4930
Who... drive... Fergus now
And pierce ... wood's woven shade ..?
(He turns on his left side, sighing, doubling himself together.)
BLOOM
Poetry. Well educated. Pity.
(he bends again and undoes the buttons ofSTEPHEN
4940 |
.... shadows ... the woods
... white breast... dim sea.
(He stretches out his arms, sighs again and curls his body. Bloom,
holding the hat and ashplant, stands erect. A dog barks in the
distance. Bloom tightens and loosens his grip on the ashplant. He
looks down on Stephen's face and form.)
BLOOM
(communes with the night) Face reminds me of his poor mother.
In the
shady wood. The deep white breast. Ferguson, I think I caught. A girl.
Some girl. Best thing could happen him. (he murmurs) ..swear that
I will 4950
always hail, ever conceal, never reveal, any part or parts, art or arts
..(he
murmurs) ..in the rough sands of the sea ..a cabletow's length from
the
shore.... where the tide ebbs.... and flows .....
(Silent, thoughtful, alert he stands on guard, his fingers at his
lips in
the attitude of secret master. Against the dark wall a figure appears
slowly, a fairy boy of eleven, a changeling, kidnapped, dressed in an
Eton suit with glass shoes and a little bronze helmet, holding a book
in his hand. He reads from right to left inaudibly, smiling, kissing
the page.)
(wonderstruck, calls inaudibly) Rudy!
RUDY
(gazes, unseeing, into Bloom's eyes and goes on reading, kissing,
smiling
He has a delicate mauve face. On his suit he has diamond and ruby
buttons. In his free left hand he holds a slim ivory cane with a violet
bowknot. A white lambkin peeps out of his waistcoat pocket.)