(THE
THE CALLS: Wait, my love, and I'll be with you.
'(A deafmute idiot with goggle eyes, his shapeless
mouth dribbling, jerks past, shaken in Saint Vitus' dance. A chain of children's hands imprisons him.)
THE CHILDREN: Kithogue! Salute.
THE IDIOT: (Lifts a palsied left arm and
gurgles) Grhahute!
THE CHILDREN: Where's the great light?
THE IDIOT: (Gobbing) Ghaghahest.
(They release him.
He jerks on. A pigmy woman swings
on a rope slung between the railings, counting.
A form sprawled against a dustbin and muffled by its arm and hat moves,
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 oil lamp rams the last bottle in the
maw of his sack. He heaves his booty,
tugs askew his peaked cap and hobbles off mutely. The crone makes back for her lair swaying her
lamp. A bandy child, asquat on the
doorstep with a papershuttlecock, crawls sidling after her in spurts, clutches
her skirt, scrambles up. A drunken navvy
grips with both hands the railings of an area, lurching heavily. At a corner two night watch in shoulder
capes, their hands upon their staffholsters, loom tall. A plate crashes; a woman screams; a child
wails. Oaths of a man roar, mutter,
cease. Figures wander, lurk, peer from
warrens. In a room lit by a candle stuck
in a bottleneck a slut combs out the tatts from the hair of a scrofulous
child. Cissy Caffrey's voice, still
young, sings shrill from a lane.)
CISSY CAFFREY:
I
gave it to Molly
Because
she was jolly,
The
leg of the duck
The
leg of the duck.
(Private Carr and Private Compton, swaggersticks
tight in their oxters, as they march unsteadily rightaboutface and burst
together from their mouths a volleyed fart.
Laughter of men from the lane. A
hoarse virago retorts.)
THE VIRAGO: Signs on you, hairy arse. More power the Cavan girl.
CISSY CAFFREY: More luck to me. Cavan, Cootehill and Belturbet.
(She sings)
I
gave it to Nelly
To
stick in her belly
The
leg of the duck
The
leg of the duck.
(Private Carr and Private Compton turn and
counterretort, their tunics bloodbright in a lampglow, black sockets of caps on
their blond copper polls. Stephen
Dedalus and Lynch pass through the crowd close to the redcoats.)
PRIVATE COMPTON: (Jerks his finger) Way for
the parson.
PRIVATE CARR: (Turns and calls) What ho,
parson!
CISSY CAFFREY: (Her voice soaring higher)
She
has it, she got it,
Wherever
she put it
The
leg of the duck.
(Stephen, flourishing the ashplant in his left
hand, chants with joy the introit for
paschal time. Lynch, his jockey cap low
on his brow, attends him, a sneer of discontent wrinkling his face.)
STEPHEN: Vidi aquam egredientem de templo a
latere dextro. Alleluia.
(The famished snaggletusks of an elderly bawd
protrude from a doorway.)
THE BAWD: (Her voice whispering huskily) Sst! Come here till I tell you. Maidenhead inside. Sst.
STEPHEN: (Altius aliquantulum) Et omnes ad quos
pervenit aqua ista.
THE BAWD: (Spits in their trail her jet of
venom) Trinity medicals. Fallopian
tube. All prick and no pence.
(Edy Boardman, sniffling, crouched with Bertha
Supple, draws her shawl across her nostrils.)
EDY BOARDMAN: (Bickering) And says the one:
I seen you up Faithful place with your squarepusher, the greaser off the
railway, in his cometobed hat. Did you,
says I. That's not for you to say, says
I. You never seen me in the mantrap with
a married highlander, says I. The likes
of her! Stag that one is. Stubborn as a mule! And her walking with two fellows the one
time, Kilbride the enginedriver and lancecorporal Oliphant.
STEPHEN: (Triumphaliter) Salvi facti i sunt.
(He flourishes his ashplant shivering the lamp
image, shattering light over the world.
A liver and white spaniel on the prowl slinks after him, growling. Lynch scares it with a kick.)
LYNCH: So that?
STEPHEN: (Looks behind) So that gesture, not
music, not odours, 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
STEPHEN: We have shrewridden Shakespeare and
henpecked Socrates. Even the allwisest
stagyrite was bitted, bridled and mounted by a light of love.
LYNCH: Ba!
STEPHEN: Anyway, who wants two gestures to
illustrate a loaf and a jug? This
movement illustrates the loaf and jug of bread and wine in Omar. Hold my stick.
LYNCH: Damn your yellow stick. Where are we going?
STEPHEN: Lecherous lynx, to la belle dame sans
merci, Georgina Johnson, ad deam qui laetificat juventutem meam.
(Stephen thrusts the ashplant on him and slowly
holds out his hands, his head going back till both hands are a span from his
breast, down turned in planes intersecting, the fingers about to part, the left
being higher.)
LYNCH: Which is the jug of bread? It skills not. That or the customhouse. Illustrate thou. Here, take your crutch and walk.
(They pass.
Tommy Caffrey scrambles to a gaslamp and, clasping, climbs in
spasms. From the top spur he slides
down. Jacky Caffrey claps to climb. The navvy lurches against the lamp. The twins scuttle off in the dark. The navvy, swaying, presses a forefinger
against a wing of his nose and ejects from the farther nostril a long liquid
jet of snot. Shouldering the lamp he
staggers away through the crowd with his flaring cresset.
Snakes of river fog creep slowly. From drains, clefts, cesspools, middens arise
on all sides stagnant fumes. A glow
leaps in the south beyond the seaward reaches of the river. The navvy staggering forward cleaves the
crowd and lurches towards the tramsiding.
On the farther side under the railway bridge Bloom appears flushed,
panting, cramming bread and chocolate into a side pocket. From Gillen's hairdresser's window a
composite portrait shows him gallant Nelson's image. A concave mirror at the side presents to him
lovelorn longlost lugubru Booloohoom.
Grave
At Antonio Rabaiotti's door Bloom halts, sweated
under the bright arclamps. He
disappears. In a moment he reappears and
hurries on.)
BLOOM: Fish and taters. N.g.
Ah!
(He disappears into Olhousen's, the pork butcher'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 rib and groans.)
BLOOM: Stitch in my side. Why did I run?
(He takes breath with care and goes forward slowly
towards the lampset siding. The glow
leaps again.)
BLOOM: What is that? A flasher?
Searchlight.
(He stands at Cormack's corner, watching.)
BLOOM: Aurora borealis or a steel
foundry? Ah, the brigade, of
course. South side anyhow. Big blaze.
Might be his house. Beggar's
bush. We're safe. (He hums cheerfully)
(He darts to cross the road. Urchins shout.)
THE URCHINS: Mind out, mister! (Two cyclists, with lighted paper lanters
aswing, swim by him, grazing him, their bells rattling.)
THE BELLS: Haltyaltyaltyall.
BLOOM: (Halts erect stung by a spasm) Ow.
(He looks round, darts forward suddenly. Through rising fog a dragon sandstrewer,
travelling at caution, slews heavily down upon him, its huge red headlight
winking, its trolly hissing on the wire.
The motorman bangs his footgong.)
THE GONG: Bang Bang Bla Bak Blud Bugg Bloo.
(The brake cracks violently. Bloom, raising a policeman's whitegloved
hand, blunders stifflegged, out of the track.
The motorman thrown forward, pugnosed, on the guidewheel, yells as he
slides past over chains and keys.)
THE MOTORMAN: Hey, shitbreeches, are you doing the
hattrick?
BLOOM: (Bloom trickleaps to the curbstone and halts
again. He brushes a mudflake from his
cheek with a parcelled hand) No
thoroughfare. Close shave that but cured
the stitch. Must take up Sandow's
exercises again. On the hands down. Insure against street accident too. The Providential. (He feels his trouser pocket) Poor Mamma's panacea. Heel easily catch in tracks or bootlace in a
cog. Day the wheel of the black Maria
peeled off my shoe at Leonard's corner.
Third time is the charm. Shoe
trick. Insolent driver. I ought to report him. Tension makes them nervous. Might be the fellow balked me this morning
with that horsey woman. Same style of
beauty. Quick of him all the same. The stiff walk. True word spoken in jest. That awful cramp in Lad lane. Something poisonous I ate. Emblem of luck. Why?
Probably lost cattle. Mark of the
beast. (He closes his eyes an instant)
Bit light in the head.
Monthly or effect of the other.
Brainfogfag. That tired
feeling. Too much for me now. Ow!
(A sinister figure leans on plaited legs against O'Beirne's
wall, a visage unknown, injected with dark mercury. From under a wideleaved sombrero the figure
regards him with evil eye.)
BLOOM: Buenas noches, senorita Blanca, que calle
es esta?
THE FIGURE: (Impassive, raises a signal arm) Password. Sraid Mabbot.
BLOOM: Haha.
Merci. Esperanto. Slan leath. (He mutters) Gaelic league spy, sent
by that fireeater.
(He steps forward.
A sackshouldered ragman bars his path.
He steps left, ragsackman left.)
BLOOM: I beg.
(He swerves, sidles, stepsaside, slips past and on.)
BLOOM: Keep to the right, right, right. If there is a fingerpost 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
(Jacky Caffrey, hunted by Tommy Caffrey, runs full
tilt against Bloom.)
BLOOM: O!
(Shocked, on weak hams, he halts. Tommy and Jacky vanish there, there. Bloom pats with parallel hands watch,
fobpocket, bookpocket, pursepocket, sweets of sin, potato soap.)
BLOOM: Beware of pickpockets. Old thieves' dodge. Collide.
Then snatch your purse.
(The retriever approaches sniffling, nose to the
ground. A sprawled form sneezes. A stooped bearded figure appears in the long
caftan of an elder in
RUDOLPH: Second halfcrown waste money today. I told you not to 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 the place? Have you no soul?
(With feeble vulture talons he feels the silent
face of Bloom) Are you not my son Leopold,
the grandson of Leopold? Are you not my
dear son Leopold who left the house of his father and left the god of his
fathers Abraham and Jacob?
BLOOM: (With precaution) I suppose so,
father. Mosenthal. All that's left of him.
RUDOLPH: (Severely) One night they bring you
home drunk as dog after spend your good money.
What you call them running chaps?
BLOOM: (In youth's smart blue Oxford suit with
white vestslips, narrowshouldered, in brown Alpine hat, wearing gent's sterling
silver waterbury keyless watch and double curb Albert with seal attached, one
side of him coated with stiffening mud) Harriers, father. Only that once.
RUDOLPH: Once!
Mud head to foot. Cut your hand
open. Lockjaw. They make you Kaput, Leopoldleben. You watch them chaps.
BLOOM: (Weakly) They challenged me to a
sprint. It was muddy. I slipped.
RUDOLPH: (With contempt) Goim nachez. Nice spectacles for your poor mother!
BLOOM: Mamma!
ELLEN BLOOM: (In pantomime dame's stringed
mobcap, crinoline and bustle, widow Twankey's blouse with muttonleg sleeves
buttoned behind, grey mittens and cameo brooch, her hair plaited in a crispine
net, appears over the staircase banisters, a slanted candlestick in her hand
and cries out in shrill alarm) O blessed Redeemer, what have they done to
him! My smelling salts! (She hauls up a reef of skirt and ransacks
the pouch of her striped blay petticoat.
A phial, an Agnus Dei, a shrivelled potato and a celluloid doll fall
out) Sacred Heart of Mary, where were you at all, at all?
(Bloom, mumbling, his eyes downcast, begins to
bestow his parcels in his filled pockets but desists, muttering.)
A VOICE: (Sharply) Poldy!
BLOOM: Who? (He
ducks and wards off a blow clumsily) At
your service.
(He looks up.
Beside her mirage of datepalms a handsome woman in Turkish custume
stands before him. Opulent curves fill
out her scarlet trousers and jacket slashed with gold. A wide yellow cummerbund girdles her. A white yashmak violet in the night, covers
her face, leaving free only her large dark eyes and raven hair.)
BLOOM: Molly!
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, excuses,
desire, spellbound. A coin gleams on her
forehead. On her feet are jewelled
toerings. Her ankles are linked by a
slender fetterchain. Beside her a camel,
hooded with a turreting turban, waits. A
silk ladder of innumerable rungs climbs to his bobbing howdah. He ambles near with disgruntled
hindquarters. Fiercely she slaps his
haunch, her goldcurb wristbangles angriling, scolding him in Moorish.)
(The camel, lifting a foreleg, plucks from a tree a
large mango fruit, offers it to his mistress, blinking, in his cloven hoof,
then droops his head and, grunting, with uplifted neck, fumbles to kneel. Bloom stoops his back for leapfrog.)
BLOOM: I can give you ... I mean as your business
menagerer ... Mrs Marion ... if you ...
BLOOM: I was just going back for that lotion
whitewax, orangeflower water. Shop
closes early on Thursday. But the first
thing in the morning. (He pats divers
pockets) This morning kidney. Ah!
(He points to the south, then to the east. A cake of new clean lemon soap arises,
diffusing light and perfume.)
THE SOAP:
We're
a capital couple are Bloom and I;
He
brightens the earth, I polish the sky.
(The freckled face of Sweny, the druggist, appears
in the disc of the soapsun.)
SWENY: Three and a penny, please.
BLOOM: Yes.
For my wife, Mrs Marion. Special
recipe.
BLOOM: Yes, ma'am?
(In disdain she saunters away, plump as a pampered
pouter pigeon, humming the duet from Don
Giovanni.)
BLOOM: Are you sure about that Voglio? I mean the pronunciati ...
(He follows, followed by the sniffing terrier. The elderly bawd seizes his sleeve, the
bristles of her chinmole glittering.)
THE BAWD: Ten shillings a maidenhead. Fresh thing was never touched. Fifteen.
There's no-one in it only her old father that's dead drunk.
(She points.
In the gap of her dark den furtive, rainbedraggled Bridie Kelly stands.)
BRIDIE:
(With a squeak she flaps her bat shawl and
runs. A burly rough pursues with booted
strides. He stumbles on the steps,
recovers, plungers into gloom. Weak
squeaks of laughter are heard, weaker.)
THE BAWD: (Her wolfeyes shining) He's getting his pleasure. You won't get a virgin in the flash
houses. Ten shillings. Don't be all night before the polis in plain
clothes sees us. Sixtyseven is a bitch.
(Leering, Gerty MacDowell limps forward. She draws from behind ogling, and shows coyly
her bloodied clout.)
GERTY: With all my worldly goods I thee and
thou. (She murmurs) You did that. I hate you.
BLOOM: I?
When? You're dreaming. I never saw you.
THE BAWD: Leave the gentleman alone, you
cheat. Writing the gentleman false
letters. Streetwalking and soliciting. Better for your mother to take the strap to
you at the bedpost, hussy like you.
GERTY: (To Bloom) When you saw all the secrets of my bottom
drawer. (She paws his sleeve,
slobbering) Dirty married man! I love you for doing that to me.
(She slides away crookedly. Mrs Breen in man's frieze overcoat with loose
bellows pockets, stands in the causeway, her roguish eyes wideopen, smiling in
all her herbivorous buckteeth.)
MRS BREEN: Mr ...
BLOOM: (Coughs gravely) Madam, when we last
had this pleasure by letter dated the sixteenth instant ...
MRS BREEN: Mr Bloom! You down here in the haunts of sin! I caught you nicely! Scamp!
BLOOM: (Hurriedly) Not so loud my name. Whatever do you think me? Don't give me away. Walls have hears. How do you do? It's ages since I. You're looking splendid. Absolutely it. Seasonable weather we are having this time of
year. Black refracts heat. Short cut home here. Interesting quarter. Rescue of fallen women. Magdalen asylum. I am the secretary ...
MRS BREEN: (Holds up a finger) Now don't
tell a big fib! I know somebody won't
like that. O just wait till I see Molly!
(Slily) Account for yourself this
very minute or woe betide you!
BLOOM: (Looks behind) She often said she'd
like to visit. Slumming. The exotic, you see. Negro servants too in livery if she had
money. Othello black brute. Eugene Stratton. Even the bones and cornerman at the
(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.)
There's
someone in the house with Dina
There's
someone in the house, I know,
There's
someone in the house with Dina
Playing
an old banjo.
(They whisk black masks from raw babby faces: then,
chuckling, chortling, trumming, twanging they diddle diddle cakewalk dance
away.)
BLOOM: (With a sour tenderish smile) A little frivol, shall we, if you are so
inclined? Would you like me perhaps to
embrace you just for a fraction of a second?
MRS BREEN: (Screams gaily) O, you ruck! You ought to see yourself!
BLOOM: For old sake'sake. I only meant a square party, a mixed marriage
mingling of our different little conjugials.
You know I had a soft corner for you.
(Gloomily) 'Twas I sent
you that valentine of the dear gazelle.
MRS BREEN: Glory
(She puts out her hand inquisitively) What
are you hiding behind your back? Tell
us, there's a dear.
BLOOM: (Seizes her wrist with his free
hand) Josie Powell that was,
prettiest deb in
MRS BREEN: You were the lion of the night with your
seriocomic recitation and you looked the part.
You were always a favourite with the ladies.
BLOOM: (Squire of dames, in dinner jacket, with
watered silk facings, blue masonic badge in his buttonhole, black bow and
mother-of-pearl studs, a prismatic champagne glass tilted in his hand) Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Ireland,
home and beauty.
MRS BREEN: To dear dead days beyond recall. Love's old sweet song.
BLOOM: (Meaningfully dropping his voice) I confess I'm teapot with curiosity to
find out whether some person's something is a little teapot at present.
MRS BREEN: (Gushingly) Tremendously teapot!
BLOOM: (Wearing a purple Napoleon hat with an
amber halfmoon, his fingers and thumbs passing slowly down to her soft moist
meaty palm which she surrenders gently) The
witching hour of night. I took the
splinter out of this hand, carefully, slowly.
(Tenderly, as he slips on her finger a ruby ring) Là ci darem la
mano.
MRS BREEN: (In a onepiece evening frock executed
in moonlight blue, a tinsel sylph's diadem on her brow with her dancecard
fallen beside her moonblue satin slipper, curves her palm softly, breathing
quickly) Voglio e non. You're hot! You're scalding! The left hand nearest the heart.
BLOOM: When you made your present choice they said
it was beauty and the beast. I can never
forgive you for that. (His clenched
fist at his brow) Think what it
means. All you meant to me then. (Hoarsely)
Woman, it's breaking me!
(Dennis Breen, whitetallhatted, with Wisdom Hely's
sandwichboard, shuffles past them in carpet slippers, his dull beard thrust
out, muttering to right and left. Little
Alf Bergan, cloaked in the pall of the ace of spaces, dogs him to left and
right, doubled in laughter.)
ALF BERGAN: (Points jeering at the sandwich
boards) U.p.: Up.
MRS BREEN: (To Bloom) High jinks below stairs. (She gives him the glad eye) Why didn't you kiss the spot to make it
well? You wanted to.
BLOOM: (Shocked)
Molly's best friend! Could
you?
MRS BREEN: (Her pulpy tongue between her lips,
offers a pigeon kiss) Hnhn. The answer is a lemon. Have you a little present for me there?
BLOOM: (Offhandedly) Kosher.
A snack for super. The home without
potted meat is incomplete. I was at Leah. Mrs Bandman Palmer. Trenchant exponent of Shakespeare. Unfortunately threw away the programme. Rattling good place round there for pig's
feet. Feel.
(Richie Goulding, three ladies' hats pinned on his
head, appears weighted to one side by the black legal bag of Collis and Ward on
which a skull and crossbones are painted in white limewash. He opens it and shows it full of polonies,
kippered herrings, Findon haddies and tightpacked pills.)
RICHIE: Best value in Dub.
(Bald Pat, bothered beetle, stands on the
curbstone, folding his napkin, waiting to wait.)
PAT: (Advances with a tilted dish of
spillspilling gravy) Steak and
kidney. Bottle of lager. Hee hee hee.
Wait till I wait.
RICHIE: Goodgod.
Inev erate inall ...
(With hanging head he marches doggedly
forward. The navvy, lurching by, gores
him with his flaming pronghorn.)
RICHIE: (With a cry of pain, his hand to his
back) Ah! Bright's! Lights!
BLOOM: (Points to the navvy) A spy.
Don't attract attention. I hate
stupid crowds. I am not on pleasure
bent. I am in a grave predicament.
MRS BREEN: Humbugging and deluthering as per usual
with your cock and bull story.
BLOOM: I want to tell you a little secret about how
I came to be here. But you must never
tell. Not even Molly. I have a most particular reason.
MRS BREEN: (All agog) O, not for worlds.
BLOOM: Let's walk on. Shall us?
MRS BREEN: Let's.
(The bawd makes an unheeded sign. Bloom walks on with Mrs Breen. The terrier follows, whining piteously,
wagging his tail.)
THE BAWD: Jewman's melt!
BLOOM: (In an oatmeal 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 as Milly, Marionette
we called her, was weaned when we all went together to Fairyhouse races, was
it?
MRS BREEN: (In smart Saxe tailormade, white velours
hat and spider veil) Leopardstown.
BLOOM: I men, Leopardstown. And Molly won seven shillings on a three year
old names 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 Haynes advised you
to buy because it was marked down to nineteen and eleven, a bit of wire and an
old rag of velveteen, and I'll lay what you like she did it on purpose ...
MRS BREEN: She did, of course, the cat! Don't tell me! Nice adviser!
BLOOM: Because it didn't suit you one quarter as
well as the other ducky little tammy toque with the bird of paradise wing in it
that I admired on you and you honestly looked just too fetching in it though it
was a pity to kill it, you cruel creature, little mite of a thing with a heart
the size of a fullstop.
MRS BREEN: (Squeezes his arm, simpers) Naughty cruel I was.
BLOOM: (Low, secretly, ever more rapidly) And Molly was eating a sandwich of spiced
beef out of Mrs Joe Gallaher's lunch basket.
Frankly, though she had her advisers or admirers, I never cared much for
her style. She was ...
MRS BREEN: Too ...
BLOOM: Yes.
And Molly was laughing because Rogers and Maggot O'Reilly were mimicking
a cock as we passed a farmhouse and Marcus Tertius Moses, the tea merchant,
drove past us in a gig with his daughter, Dancer Moses was her name, and the
poodle in her lap bridled up and you asked me if I ever heard or read or knew
or came across ...
MRS BREEN: (Eagerly) Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
(She fades from his side. Followed by the whining dog he walks on
towards hellsgates. In an archway a
standing woman, bent forward, her feet apart, pisses cowily. Outside a shuttered pub a bunch of loiterers
listen to a tale which their broken snouted gaffer rasps out with raucous
humour. An armless pair of them flop
wrestling, growling, in maimed sodden playfight.)
THE GAFFER: (Crouches, his voice twisted in his
snout) And when Cairns came down
from the scaffolding in Beaver Street what was he after doing it into only into
the bucket of porter that was there waiting on the shavings of Derwan's
plasterers.
THE LOITERERS: (Guffaw with cleft palates) O jays!
(Their paintspeckled hats wag. Spattered with size and lime of their lodges
they frisk limblessly about him.)
BLOOM: Coincidence too. They think it funny. Anything but that. Broad daylight. Trying to walk. Lucky no woman.
THE LOITERERS: Jays, that's a good one. Glauber salts. O jays, into the men's porter.
(Bloom passes.
Cheap whores, singly, coupled, shawled, dishevelled, call from lanes,
doors, corners.)
THE WHORES:
Are
you going far, queer fellow?
How's
your middle leg?
Got
a match on you?
Eh,
come here till I stiffen it for you.
(He plodges through their sump towards the lighted
street beyond. From a bulge of window
curtains a gramophone rears a battered brazen trunk. In the shadow a shebeenkeeper haggles with
the navvy and the two redcoats.)
THE NAVVY: (Belching) Where's the bloody house?
THE SHEBEENKEEPER:
THE NAVVY: (Gripping the two redcoats, staggers
forward with them) Come on, you
British army!
PRIVATE CARR: (Behind his back) He aint half balmy.
PRIVATE COMPTON: (Laughs) What ho!
PRIVATE CARR: (To the navvy) Portobello barracks canteen. You ask for Carr. Just Carr.
THE NAVVY: (Shouts)
We
are the boys. Of Wexford.
PRIVATE COMPTON: Say! What price the sergeantmajor?
PRIVATE CARR: Bennett? He's my pal.
I love old Bennett.
THE NAVVY: (Shouts)
The
galling chain.
And
free our native land.
(He staggers forward, dragging them with him. Bloom stops, at fault. The dog approaches, his tongue outlolling,
panting.)
BLOOM: Wildgoose chase this. Disorderly houses. Lord knows where they are gone. Drunks cover distance double quick. Nice mixup.
Scene at
(He gazes ahead reading on the wall a scrawled
chalk legend Wet Dream and a phallic
design.)
Odd! Molly
drawing on the frosted carriagepane at
THE WREATHS: Sweet are the sweets. Sweets of sin.
BLOOM: My spine's a bit limp. Go or turn?
And this food? Eat it and get all
pigsticky. Absurd I am. Waste of money. One and eightpence too much. (The retriever drives a cold snivelling
muzzle against his hand, wagging his tail)
Strange how they take to me.
Even that brute today. Better
speak to him first. Like women they like
rencontres. Stinks like a
polecat. Chacun son gout. He might be mad. Fido.
Uncertain in his movements. Good
fellow! Garryowen! (The wolfdog sprawls on his back,
wriggling obscenely with begging paws, his long black tongue lolling out) Influence of his surroundings. Give and have done with it. Provided nobody. (Calling encouraging words he shambles
back with a furtive poacher's tread, dogged by the setter into a dark
stalestunk corner. He unrolls one parcel
and goes to dump the crubeen softly but holds back and feels the trotter) Sizeable for threepence. But then I have it in my left hand. Calls for more effort. Why?
Smaller from want of use. O, let
it slide. Two and six.
(With regret he lets unrolled crubeen and trotter
slide. The mastiff mauls the bundle clumsily
and gluts himself with growling greed, crunching the bones. Two raincaped watch approach, silent,
vigilant. They murmur together.)
THE WATCH: Bloom.
Of Bloom. For Bloom. Bloom.
(Each lays a hand on Bloom's shoulder.)
FIRST WATCH: Caught in the act. Commit no nuisance.
BLOOM: (Stammers) I am doing good to others.
(A covey of gulls, storm petrels, rises hungrily
from Liffey slime with Banbury cakes in their beaks.)
THE GULLS: Kaw kave kankury kake.
BLOOM: The friend of man. Trained by kindness.
(He points.
Bob Doran, toppling from a high barstool, sways over the munching
spaniel.)
BOB DORAN: Towser.
Give us the paw. Give the paw.
(The bulldog growls, his scruff standing, a gobbet
of pig's knuckle between his molars through which rabid scumspittle
dribbles. Bob Doran falls silently into
an area.)
SECOND WATCH: Prevention of cruelty to animals.
BLOOM: (Enthusiastically) A noble work! I scolded that tramdriver on Harold's cross
bridge for illusing the poor horse with his harness scab. Bad French I got for my pains. Of course it was frosty and the last
tram. All tales of circus life are
highly demoralising.
(Signor Maffei, passion pale, in liontamer's
costume with diamond studs in his shirtfront, steps forward, holding a circus
paper hoop, a curling carriagewhip and a revolver with which he covers the
gorging boarhound.)
SIGNOR MAFFEI: (With a sinister smile) Ladies and gentlemen, my educated
greyhound. It was I broke in the bucking
broncho
FIRST WATCH: Come.
Name and address.
BLOOM: I have forgotten for the moment. Ah, yes! (He takes off his high grade hat,
saluting) Dr Bloom, Leopold, dental
surgeon. You have heard of von Bloom
Pasha. Umpteen millions. Donnerwetter! Owns half
FIRST WATCH: Proof.
(A card falls from inside the leather headband of
Bloom's hat.)
BLOOM: (In red fez, cadi's dress coat with broad
green sash, wearing a false badge of the Legion of Honour, picks up the card
hastily and offers it) Allow
me. My club is the Junior Army and
Navy. Solicitors: Messrs John Henry
Menton, 27 Bachelor's Walk.
FIRST WATCH: (Reads) Henry Flower. No fixed abode. Unlawfully watching and besetting.
SECOND WATCH: An alibi. You are cautioned.
BLOOM: (Produces from his heartpocket a crumpled
yellow flower) This is the flower in
question. It was given me by a man I
don't know his name. (Plausibly) You
know that old joke, rose of Castille.
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
(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!
Leopold! Lionel, thou lost
one! Clear my name.
FIRST WATCH: (Sternly) Come to the station.
BLOOM: (Scared, hats himself, steps back, then,
plucking at his heart and lifting his right forearm on the square, he gives the
sign and dueguard of fellowcraft) No,
no, worshipful master, light of love.
Mistaken identity. The
MARTHA: (Sobbing behind her veil) Breach of promise. My real name is Peggy Griffin. He wrote to me that he was miserable. I'll tell my brother, the Bective rugger
fullback, on you, heartless flirt.
BLOOM: (Behind his hand) She's drunk. The woman is inebriated. (He murmurs vaguely the past of
Ephraim) Shitbroleeth.
SECOND WATCH: (Tears in his eyes, to Bloom) You ought to be thoroughly well ashamed
of yourself.
BLOOM: Gentlemen of the jury, let me explain. A pure mare's nest. I am a man misunderstood. I am being made a scapegoat of. I am a respectable married man, without a
stain on my character. I live in
FIRST WATCH: Regiment.
BLOOM: (Turns to the gallery) The royal Dublins, boys, the salt of the
earth, known the world over. I think I
see some old comrades in arms up there among you. The R.D.F.
With our own Metropolitan police, guardians of our homes, the pluckiest
lads and the finest body of men, as physique, in the service of our sovereign.
A VOICE: Turncoat!
Up the Boers! Who booed Joe
Chamberlain?
BLOOM: (His hand on the shoulder of the first
watch) My old dad too was a
J.P. I'm as staunch a Britisher as you
are, sir. I fought with the colours for
king and country in the absentminded war under General Gough in the park and
was disabled at Spion Kop and
FIRST WATCH: Profession or trade.
BLOOM: Well, I follow a literary occupation. Author-journalist. In fact we are just bringing out a collection
of prize stories of which I am the inventor, something that is an entirely new
departure. I am connected with the
British and Irish press. If you ring up
...
(Myles Crawford strides out jerkily, a quill
between his teeth. His scarlet beak
blazes within the aureole of his straw hat.
He dangles a hank of Spanish onions in one hand and holds with the other
hand a telephone receiver nozzle to his ear.)
MYLES CRAWFORD: (His cock's wattles wagging) Hello, seventyseven eightfour. Hello. Freeman's Urinal and Weekly Arsewiper here. Paralyse
(Mr Philip Beaufoy, palefaced, stands in the
witnessbox, in accurate morning dress, outbreast pocket with peak of
handkerchief showing, creased lavender trousers and patent boots. He carries a large portfolio labelled Matcham's
Masterstrokes.)
BEAUFOY: (Drawls) No, you aren't, not by a long shot if I
know it. I don't see it, that's
all. No born gentleman, no one with the
most rudimentary promptings of a gentleman would stoop to such particularly
loathsome conduct. One of those, my lord. A plagiarist.
A soapy sneak masquerading as a literateur. It's perfectly obvious that with the most
inherent baseness he has cribbed some of my bestselling books, really gorgeous
stuff, a perfect gem, the love passages in which are beneath suspicion. The Beaufoy books of love and great
possessions with which your lordship is doubtless familiar, are a household
word throughout the kingdom.
BLOOM: (Murmurs with hangdog meekness) 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
BLOOM: (Indistinctly) University of life. Bad art.
BEAUFOY: (Shouts) It's a damnably foul lie showing the moral
rottenness of the man! (He extends his portfolio) We have here damning evidence, the corpus
delicti, my lord, a specimen of my maturer work disfigured by the hallmark
of the beast.
A VOICE FROM THE GALLERY:
Moses,
Moses, king of the jews,
Wiped
his arse in the Daily News.
BLOOM: (Bravely)
Overdrawn.
BEAUFOY: You low cad! You ought to be ducked in the horsepond, you
rotter! (To the court) Why, look at the man's private life! Leading a quadruple existence! Street angel and house devil. Not fit to be mentioned in mixed
society. The arch conspirator of the
age.
BLOOM: (To the court) And he, a bachelor, how ...
FIRST WATCH: The King verses Bloom. Call the woman Driscoll.
THE CRIER: Mary Driscoll, scullerymaid!
(Mary Driscoll, a slipshod servant girl,
approaches. She has a bucket on the
crook of her arm and a scouringbrush in her hand.)
SECOND WATCH: Another! Are you of the unfortunate class?
MARY DRISCOLL: (Indignantly) I'm not a bad one. I bear a respectable character and was four months
in my last place. I was in a situation,
six pounds a year and my chances with Fridays out, and I had to leave owing to
his carryings on.
FIRST WATCH: What do you tax him with?
MARY DRISCOLL: He made a certain suggestion but I
thought more of myself as poor as I am.
BLOOM: (In housejacket of ripplecloth, flannel
trousers, heelless slippers, unshaven, his hair rumpled softly) I treated you white. I gave you momentos, smart emerald garters
far above your station. Incautiously I
took your part when you were accused of pilfering. There's a medium in all things. Play cricket.
MARY DRISCOLL: (Excitedly) As God is looking down on me this night
if ever I laid a hand to them oysters!
FIRST WATCH: The offence complained of? Did something happen?
MARY DRISCOLL: He surprised me in the rear 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 twice with my clothing.
BLOOM: She counterassaulted.
MARY DRISCOLL: (Scornfully) I had more respect for the scouringbrush,
so I had. I remonstrated with him, your
lord, and he remarked: Keep it quiet!
(General laughter.)
GEORGES FOTTRELL: (Clerk of the crown and peace,
resonantly) Order in court! The
accused will now make a bogus statement.
(Bloom, pleading not guilty and holding a fullblown
waterlily, begins a long unintelligible speech.
They would hear what counsel had to say in his stirring address to the
grandjury. He was down and out but,
though branded as a black sheep, if he might say so, he meant to reform, to
retrieve the memory of the past in a purely sisterly way and return to nature
as a purely domestic animal. A seven
months' child, he had been carefully brought up and nurtured by an aged
bedridden parent. There might have been
lapses of an erring father but he wanted to turn over a new leaf and now, when
at long last in sight of the whipping post, to lead a homely life in the evening
of his days, permeated by the affectionate surroundings of the heaving bosom of
the family. An acclimatised Britisher,
he had seen that summer eve from the footplate of an engine cab of the Loop
line railway company while the rain refrained from falling glimpses, as it
were, through the windows of loveful households in Dublin city and urban
district of scenes truly rural of happiness of the better land with Dockrell's
wallpaper at one and ninepence a dozen, innocent Britishborn bairns lisping
prayers to the Sacred Infant, youthful scholars grappling with their pensums,
model young ladies playing on the pianoforte or anon all with fervour reciting
the family rosary round the crackling Yulelog while in the boreens and green
lanes the colleens with their swains strolled what times the strains of the
organtoned medodeon Britannia metalbound with four acting stops and twelvefold
bellows, a sacrifice, greatest bargain ever ...)
(Renewed laughter.
He mumbles incoherently.
Reporters complain that they cannot hear.)
LONGHAND AND SHORTHAND: (Without looking up from
their notebooks) Loosen his boots.
PROFESSOR MACHUGH: (From the presstable, coughs
and calls) Cough it up, man. Get it out in bits.
(The crossexamination proceeds re Bloom and the bucket.
A large bucket. Bloom
himself. Bowel trouble. In
(Uproar and catcalls. Bloom, in a torn frockcoat stained with
whitewash, dinged silk hat sideways on his head, a strip of stickingplaster
across his nose, talks inaudibly.)
J.J. O'MOLLOY: (In barrister's grey wig and
stuffgown, speaking with a voice of pained protest) This is no place for indecent levity at
the expense of an erring mortal disguised in liquor. We are not in a beargarden nor at an
BLOOM: (Barefoot, pigeonbreasted, in lascar's
vest and trousers, apologetic toes turned in, opens his tiny mole's eyes and
looks about him dazedly, passing a slow hand across his forehead. Then he hitches his belt sailor fashion and
with a shrug of oriental obeisance salutes the court, pointing one thumb
heavenward) Him makee velly muchee
fine night.
(He begins to lilt simply)
Li
li poo lil chile,
Blingee
pigfoot evly night.
Payee
two shilly ...
(He is howled down.)
J.J. O'MOLLOY: (Hotly to the populace) This is a lonehand fight. By Hades, I will not have any client of mine
gagged and badgered in this fashion by a pack of curs and laughing hyenas. The Mosaic code has superseded the law of the
jungle. I say it and I say it
emphatically without wishing for one moment to defeat the ends of justice,
accused was not accessory before the act and prosecutrix has not been tampered
with. The young person was treated by
defendant as if she were his very own daughter.
(Bloom takes J.J. O'Molloy's hand and raises it to his lips) I shall call rebutting evidence to prove
up to the hilt that the hidden hand is again at its old game. When in doubt persecute Bloom. My client, an innately bashful man, would be
the last man in the world to do anything ungentlemanly which injured modesty
could object to or cast a stone at a girl who took the wrong turning when some
dastard, responsible for her condition,
had worked his own sweet will on her. He
wants to go straight. I regard him as
the whitest man I know. He is down on
his luck at present owing to the mortgaging of his extensive property at
Agendath Nataim in faraway
BLOOM: A penny in the pound.
(The mirage of the
DLUGACZ: (Hoarsely)
(J.J. O'Molloy steps on to a low plinth and holds
the lapel of his coat with solemnity.
His face lengthens, grows pale and bearded, with sunken eyes, the
blotches of phthisis and hectic cheekbones of John F. Taylor. He applies his handkerchief to his mouth and
scrutinises the galloping tide of rosepink blood.)
J.J. O'MOLLOY: (Almost voicelessly) Excuse me, I am suffering from a severe
chill, have recently come from a sickbed.
A few wellchosen words. (He
assumes the avine head, foxy moustache and proboscidal eloquence of
BLOOM: (In court dress) Can give best references. Messrs Callan, Coleman. Mr Wisdom Hely J.P. My old chief Joe Cuffe. Mr V.B. Dillon, ex-lord mayor of
MRS YELVERTON BARRY: (In lowcorsaged opal
balldress and elbowlength ivory gloves, wearing a sabletrimmed brick quilted
dolman, a comb of brilliants and panache of osprey in her hair) Arrest him constable. He wrote me an anonymous letter in prentice
backhand when my husband was in the North Riding of
MRS BELLINGHAN: (In cap and seal conymantle,
wrapped up to the nose, steps out of her brougham and scans through
tortoiseshell quizzingglasses which she takes from inside her huge opossum
muff) Also to me. Yes, I believe it is the same objectionable
person. Because he closed my carriage
door outside sir Thornley Stoker's one sleety day during the cold snap of
February ninetythree when even the grid of the wastepipe and ballstop in my
bath cistern were frozen. Subsequently
he enclosed a bloom of edelweiss culled on the heights, as he said, in my
honour. I had it examined by a botanical
expert and elicited the information that it was a blossom of the homegrown
potato plant purloined from a forcingcase of the model farm.
MRS YELVERTON BARRY: Shame on him!
(A crowd of sluts and ragamuffins surges forward.)
THE SLUTS AND RAGAMUFFINS: (Screaming) Stop thief! Hurrah there, Bluebeard! Three cheers for
SECOND WATCH: (Produces handcuffs) Here are the darbies.
MRS BELLINGHAM: He addressed me in several handwritings
with fulsome compliments as a Venus in furs and alleged profound pity for my
frostbound coachman Balmer while in the same breath he expressed himself as
envious of his earflaps and fleecy sheepskins and of his fortunate proximity to
my person, when standing behind my chair wearing my livery and the armorial
bearings of the Bellingham escutcheon garnished sable, a buck's head couped
or. He lauded almost extravagantly my
nether extremities, my swelling calves in silk hose drawn up to the limit, and eulogised
glowingly my other hidden treasures in priceless lace which, he said, he could
conjure up. He urged me, stating that he
felt it his mission in life to urge me, to defile the marriage bed, to commit
adultery at the earliest possible opportunity.
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: (In amazon
costume, hard hat, jackboots cockspurred, vermilion waistcoat, fawn musketeer
gauntlets with braided drums, long train held up and hunting crop with which
she strikes her welt constantly) Also
me. Because he saw me on the polo ground
of the
MRS BELLINGHAM: Me too.
MRS YELVERTON BARRY: Me too.
(Several highly respectable
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: (Stamps her
jingling spurs in a sudden paroxysm of sudden fury) I will, by the God above me. I'll scourge the pigeonlivered cur as long as
I can stand over him. I'll flay him
alive.
BLOOM: (His eyes closing, quails expectantly) Here? (He
squirms) Again! (He pants cringing) I love the danger.
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: Very much
so! I'll make it hot for you. I'll make you dance Jack Latten for that.
MRS BELLINGHAM: Tan his breech well, the
upstart! Write the stars and stripes on
it!
MRS YELVERTON BARRY: Disgraceful! There's no excuse for him! A married man!
BLOOM: All these people. I meant only the spanking idea. A warm tingling glow without effusion. Refined birching to stimulate the
circulation.
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: (Laughs
derisively) O, did you, my fine
fellow? Well, by the living God, you'll
get the surprise of your life now, believe me, the most unmerciful hiding a man
ever bargained for. You have lashed the
dormant tigress in my nature into fury.
MRS BELLINGHAM: (Shakes her muff and
quizzingglasses vindictively) Make
him smart, Hanna dear. Give him
ginger. Thrash the mongrel within an
inch of his life. The cat-o'-nine tails. Geld him.
Vivisect him.
BLOOM: (Shuddering, shrinking, joins his hands
with hangdog mien) O cold! O shivery!
It was your ambrosial beauty.
Forget, forgive. Kismet. Let me off this once. (He offers the other cheek.)
MRS YELVERTON BARRY: (Severely) Don't do so on my account, Mrs
Talboys! He should be soundly trounced!
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: (Unbuttoning
her gauntlet violently) I'll do no
such thing. Pig dog and always was ever
since he was pupped! To dare address
me! I'll flog him black and blue in the
public streets. I'll dig my spurs in him
up to the rowel. He is a wellknown
cuckold. (She swishes her huntingcrop
savagely in the air) Take down his
trousers without loss of time. Come
here, sir! Quick! Ready?
BLOOM: (Trembling, beginning to obey) The weather has been so warm.
(Davy Stephens, ringleted, passes with a bevy of
barefoot newsboys.)
DAVY STEPHENS: Messenger of the Sacred Heart and
Evening Telegraph with Saint Patrick's Day Supplement. Containing the new addresses of all the
cuckolds in
(The very reverend Canon O'Hanlon in cloth of gold
cope elevates and exposes a marble timepiece.
Before him Father Conroy and the reverend John Hughes S.J. bend low.)
THE TIMEPIECE: (Unportalling)
Cuckoo.
Cuckoo.
Cuckoo.
(The brass quoits of a bed are heard to jingle.)
THE QUOITS: Jigjag, Jigajiga, Jigjag.
(A panel of fog rolls back rapidly, revealing
rapidly in the jurybox the faces of Martin Cunningham, foreman silkhatted, Jack
Power, Simon Dedalus, Tom Kernan, Ned Lambert, John Henry Menton, Myles
Crawford, Lenehan, Paddy Leonard, Nosey Flynn, M'Coy and the featureless face
of a Nameless One.)
THE NAMELESS ONE: Bareback riding. Weight for age. Gob, he organised her.
THE JURORS: (All their heads turned to his
voice) Really?
THE NAMELESS ONE: (Snarls) Arse over tip. Hundred shillings to five.
THE JURORS: (All their heads lowered in
assent) Most of us thought as much.
FIRST WATCH: He is a marked man. Another girl's plait cut. Wanted: Jack the Ripper. A thousand pounds reward.
SECOND WATCH: (Awed, whispers) And in black. A mormon.
Anarchist.
THE CRIER: (Loudly) Whereas Leopold Bloom of no fixed abode
is a wellknown dynamitard, forger, bigamist, bawd and cuckold and a public
nuisance to the citizens of
(His Honour, sir Frederick Falkiner, recorder of
THE RECORDER: I will put an end to this white slave
traffic and rid
(The subsheriff Long John Fanning appears, smoking
a pungent Henry Clay.)
LONG JOHN FANNING: (Scowls and calls with rich
rolling utterance) Who'll hang Judas
Iscariot?
(H. Rumbold, master barber, in a bloodcoloured
jerkin and tanner's apron, a rope coiled over his shoulder, mounts the
block. A life preserver and a
nailstudded bludgeon are stuck in his belt.
He rubs grimly his grappling hands, knobbed with knuckledusters.)
RUMBOLD: (To the recorder with sinister
familiarity) Hanging Harry, your
Majesty, the
(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 chimpanzees. (Breathlessly) Pelvic basin. Her artless blush unmanned me. (Overcome
with emotion) I left the
pricincts. (He turns to a figure in
the crowd, appealing) Hynes, may I
speak to you? You know me. That three shillings you can keep. If you want a little more ...
HYNES (Coldly)
You are a perfect stranger.
SECOND WATCH: (Points to the corner) The bomb is here.
FIRST WATCH: Infernal machine with a time fuse.
BLOOM: No, no.
Pig's feet. I was at a funeral.
FIRST WATCH: (Draws his truncheon) Liar!
(The beagle lifts his snout, showing the grey
scorbutic face of Paddy Dignam. He has
gnawed all. He exhales a putrid
carcasefed breath. He grows to human
size and shape. His dachshound coat
becomes a brown mortuary habit. His
green eye flashes bloodshot. Half of one
ear, all the nose and both thumbs are ghouleaten.)
PADDY DIGNAM: (In a hollow voice) It is true. It was my funeral. Doctor Finucane pronounced life extinct when
I succumbed to the disease from natural causes.
(He lifts his mutilated ashen face moonwards and
bays lugubriously.)
BLOOM: (In triumph) You hear?
PADDY DIGNAM: Bloom, I am Paddy Dignam's
spirit. List, list, o list!
BLOOM: The voice is the voice of Esau.
SECOND WATCH: (Blesses himself) How is that possible?
FIRST WATCH: It is not in the penny catechism.
PADDY DIGNAM: By metempsychosis. Spooks.
A VOICE: O rocks.
PADDY DIGNAM: (Earnestly) Once I was in the employ of Mr J.H.
Menton, solicitor, commissioner for oaths and affidavits, of 27 Bachelor's
Walk. Now I am defunct, the wall of the
heart hypertrophied. Hard lines. The poor wife was awfully cut up. How is she bearing it? Keep her off that bottle of sherry. (He looks round him) A lamp.
I must satisfy an animal need.
That buttermilk didn't agree with me.
(The portly figure of John O'Connell, caretaker,
stands forth, holding a bunch of keys tied with crape. Beside him stands Father Coffey, chaplain
toadbellied, wrynecked, in a surplice and bandanna nightcap, holding sleepily a
staff of twisted poppies.)
FATHER COFFEY: (Yawns, then chants with a hoarse
croak) Namine, Jacobs
Vobiscuits. Amen.
JOHN O'CONNELL: (Foghorns stormily through his
megaphone) Dignam, Patrick T., deceased.
PADDY DIGNAM: (With pricked up ears,
winces) Overtones. (He wriggles forward, places an ear to the
ground) My masters' voice!
JOHN O'CONNELL: Burial docket letter number
U.P. Eightyfive thousand. Field seventeen. House of Keys. Plot, one hundred and one.
(Paddy Dignam listens with visible effort,
thinking, his tail stiffpointed, his ears cocked.)
PADDY DIGNAM: Pray for the repose of his soul.
(He worms down through a coalhole, his brown habit
trailing its tether over rattling pebbles.
After him toddles an obese grandfather rat on fungus turtle paws under a
grey carapace. Dignam's voice, muffled,
is heard baying under ground: Dignam's dead and gone below.
Tom Rochford, robinredbreasted, in cap and breeches, jumps from his
twocolumned machine.)
TOM ROCHFORD: (A hand to his breastbone,
bows) Reuben J. A florin I find him. (He fixes the manhole with a resolute
stare) My turn now on. Follow me up to Carlow.
(He executes a daredevil salmon leap in the air and
is engulfed in the coalhole. Two discs
on the columns wobble eyes of nought.
All recedes. Bloom plodges forward
again. He stands before a lighted house,
listening. The kisses, winging from
their bowers, fly about him, twittering, warbling, cooing.)
THE KISSES: (Warbling) Leo!
(Twittering) Icky licky
micky sticky for Leo! (Cooing) Coo coocoo! Yummyumm Womwom! (Warbling) Big comebig! Pirouette!
Leopopold! (Twittering) Leeolee! (Warbling)
O Leo!
(They rustle, flutter upon his garments, alight,
bright giddy flecks, silvery sequins.)
BLOOM: A man's touch. Sad music.
Church music. Perhaps here.
(Zoe Higgins, a young whore in a sapphire slip,
closed with three bronze buckles, a slim black velvet fillet round her throat,
nods, trips down the steps and accosts him.)
ZOE: Are you looking for someone? He's inside with his friend.
BLOOM: Is this Mrs Mack's?
ZOE: No, eightyone.
Mrs Cohen's. You might go farther
and fare worse. Mother
Slipperslapper. (Familiarly) She's on the job herself tonight with the
vet, her tipster, that gives her all the winners and pays for her son in
BLOOM: Not I!
ZOE: You both in black. Has little mousey any tickles tonight?
(His skin, alert, feels her fingertips
approach. A hand slides over his left
thigh.)
ZOE: How's the nuts?
BLOOM: Off side.
Curiously they are on the right.
Heavier I suppose. One in a
million my tailor, Mesias, says.
ZOE: (In sudden alarm) You've a hard chancre.
BLOOM: Not likely.
ZOE: I feel it.
(Her hand slides into his left trouser pocket and
brings out a hard black shrivelled potato.
She regards it and Bloom with dumb moist lips.)
BLOOM: A talisman.
Heirloom.
ZOE: For Zoe?
For keeps? For being so nice, eh?
(She puts the potato greedily into a pocket, then
links his arm, cuddling him with supple warmth.
He smiles uneasily. Slowly, note
by note, oriental music is played. He
gazes in the tawny crystal of her eyes, ringed with kohol. His smile softens.)
ZOE: You'll know me the next time.
BLOOM: (Forlornly) I never loved a dear gazelle but it was
sure to ...
(Gazelles are leaping, feeding on the
mountains. Near are lakes. Round their shores file shadows black of
cedargroves. Aroma rises, a strong
hairgrowth of resin. It burns, the
orient, a sky of sapphire, cleft by the bronze flight of eagles. Under it lies the womancity, nude, white,
still, cool, in luxury. A fountain
murmurs among damask roses. Mammoth
roses murmur of scarlet winegrapes. A
wine of shame, lust, blood exudes, strangely murmuring.)
ZOE: (Murmuring singsong with the music, her odalisk
lips lusciously smeared with salve of swinefat and rosewater) Schoarach ani
wenowach, benoith Hierushaloim.
BLOOM: (Fascinated) I thought you were of good stock by your
accent.
ZOE: And you know what thought did?
(She bites his ear gently with little goldstopped
teeth sending on him a cloying breath of stale garlic. The roses draw apart, disclose a sepulchre of
the gold of kings and their mouldering bones.)
BLOOM: (Draws back, mechanically caressing her
right bub with a flat awkward hand) Are
you a
ZOE: (Catches a stray hair deftly and twists it
to her coil) No bloody fear. I'm English.
Have you a swaggerroot?
BLOOM: (As before) Rarely smoke, dear. Cigar now and then. Childish device. (Lewdly)
The mouth can be better engaged than with a cylinder of rank weed.
ZOE: Go on.
Make a stump speech out of it.
BLOOM: (In workman's corduroy overalls, black
gansy with red floating tie and apache cap)
Mankind is incorrigible. Sir
Walter Raleigh brought from the new world that potato and that weed, the one a
killer of pestilence by absorption, the other a poisoner of the ear, eye,
heart, memory, will, understanding, all.
That is to say, he brought the poison a hundred years before another
person whose name I forget brought the food.
Suicide. Lies. All our habits. Why, look at our public life!
(
THE CHIMES: Turn again, Leopold! Lord mayor of
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 buccaneering Vanderdeckens in
their phantom ship of finance ...
AN ELECTOR: Three times three for our future chief
magistrate!
(The aurora borealis of the torchlight procession
leaps.)
THE TORCHBEARERS: Hooray!
(Several wellknown burgesses, city magnates and
freemen of the city shake hands with Bloom and congratulate him. Timothy Harrington, late thrice Lord Mayor of
Dublin, imposing in mayoral scarlet, gold chain and white silk tie, confers
with councillor Lorcan Sherlock, locum tenens.
The y nod vigorously in agreement.)
LATE LORD MAYOR HARRINGTON: (In scarlet robe
with mace, gold mayoral chain and large white silk scarf) That alderman sir Leo Bloom's speech be
printed at the expense of the ratepayers.
That the house in which he was born be ornamented with a commemorative
tablet and that the thoroughfare hitherto known as Cow Parlour off
COUNCILLOR LORCAN SHERLOCK: Carried unanimously.
BLOOM: (Impassionedly) These flying Dutchmen or lying Dutchmen
as they recline in their upholstered poop, casting dice, what reck they? Machines is their cry, their chimera, their
panacea. Laboursaving apparatuses,
supplanters, bugbears, manufactured monsters for mutual murder, hideous
hobgoblins produced by a horde of capitalistic lusts upon our prostituted
labour. The poor man starves while they
are grassing their royal mountain stags or shooting peasants and phartridges in
their purblind pomp of pelf and power.
But their reign is rover for rever and ever and ev ...
(Prolonged applause. Venetian masts, maypoles and festal arches spring
up. A streamer bearing the legends Caed Mile Failte and Mah Ttob Melek
BLOOM'S BOYS:
The
wren, the wren,
The
king of all birds,
Saint
Stephen's his day,
Was
caught in the furze.
A BLACKSMITH: (Murmurs) For the Honour of God! And is that Bloom? He scarcely looks thirtyone.
A PAVIOR AND FLAGGER: That's the famous Bloom now,
the world's greatest reformer. Hats off!
(All uncover their heads. Women whisper eagerly.)
A MILLIONAIRESS: (Richly) Isn't he simply wonderful?
A NOBLEWOMAN: (Nobly) All that man has seen!
A FEMINIST: (Masculinely) And done!
A BELLHANGER: A classic face! He has the forehead of a thinker.
(Bloom's weather.
A sunburst appears in the northwest.)
THE BISHOP OF DOWN AND CONNOR: I here present your
undoubted emperor president and king chairman, the most serene and potent and
very puissant ruler of this realm. God
save Leopold the First!
ALL: God save Leopold the First!
BLOOM: (In dalmatic and purple mantle, to the
Bishop of Down and Connor, with dignity)
Thanks, somewhat eminent sir.
WILLIAM, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH: (In purple stock
and shovel hat) Will you to your power cause law and mercy to be executed
in all your judgements in
BLOOM: (Placing his right hand on his testicles,
swears) So may the Creator deal with
me. All this I promise to do.
MICHAEL, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH: (Pours a cruse of
hairoil over Bloom's head) Gaudium magnum annuntio vobis. Habemus carneficem. Leopold, Patrick, Andrew, David, George, be
thou anointed!
(Bloom assumes a mantle of cloth of gold and puts
on a ruby ring. He ascends and stands on
the stone of destiny. The representative
peers put on at the same time their twentyeight crowns. Joybells ring in Christ church, Saint
Patrick's, George's and gay Malahide.
Mirus bazaar fireworks go up from all sides with symbolical
phallopyrotechnic designs. The peers do
homage, one by one, approaching and genuflecting.)
THE PEERS: I do become your liege man of life and
limb to earthly worship.
(Bloom holds up his right hand on which sparkles
the Koh-i-Noor diamond. His palfrey
neighs. Immediate silence. Wireless intercontinental and interplanetary
transmitters are set for reception of message.)
BLOOM: My subjects!
We hereby nominate our faithful charger Copula Felix hereditary Grand
Vizier and announce that we have this day repudiated our former spouse and have
bestowed our royal hand upon the princess Selene, the splendour of night.
(The former morganatic spouse of Bloom is hastily
removed in the Black Maria. The princess
Selene, in moonblue robes, a silver crescent on her head, descends from a Sedan
chair, borne by two giants. An outburst
of cheering.)
JOHN HOWARD PARNELL: (Raises the royal
standard) Illustrious Bloom! Successor to my famous brother!
BLOOM: (Embraces John Howard Parnell) We thank you from our heart, John, for
this right royal welcome to green Erin, the promised land of our common
ancestors.
(The freedom of the city is presented to him
embodied in a charter. The keys of
TOM KERNAN: You deserve it, your honour.
BLOOM: On this day twenty years ago we overcame the
hereditary enemy at Ladysmith. Our
howitzers and camel swivel guns played on his lines with telling effect. Half a league onward! They charge!
All is lost now! Do we
yield? No! We drive them headlong! Lo! We
charge! Deploying to the left our light horse
swept across the heights of Plevna and, uttering their warcry, Bonafide
Sabaoth, sabred the Saracen gunners to a man.
THE CHAPEL OF FREEMAN TYPESETTERS: Hear! Hear!
JOHN WYSE NOLAN: There's the man that got away
James Stephens.
A BLUECOAT SCHOOLBOY: Bravo!
AN OLD RESIDENT: You're a credit to your country,
sir, that's what you are.
AN APPLEWOMAN: He's a man like
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
Bloom, ye shall ere long enter into the golden city which is to be, the new
Bloomusalem in the Nova Hibernia of the future.
(Thirtytwo workmen wearing rosettes, from all the
counties of Ireland, under the guidance of Derwan the builder, construct the
new Bloomusalem. It is a colossal
edifice, with crystal roof, built in the shape of a huge pork kidney,
containing forty thousand rooms. In the
course of its extension several
buildings and monuments are demolished.
Government offices are temporarily transferred to railway sheds. Numerous houses are razed to the ground. The inhabitants are lodged in barrels and
boxes, all marked in red with the letters: L.B.
Several paupers fall from a ladder.
A part of the walls of
THE SIGHTSEERS: (Dying) Morituri te salutant.
(They die.)
(A man in a brown macintosh springs up through a
trapdoor. He points an elongated finger
at Bloom.)
THE MAN IN THE MACINTOSH: Don't you believe a word
he says. That man is Leopold M'Intosh,
the notorious fireraiser. His real name
is Higgins.
BLOOM: Shoot him!
Dog of a christian! So much for
M'Intosh!
(A cannonshot.
The man in the macintosh disappears.
Bloom with his sceptre, strikes down poppies. The instantaneous deaths of many powerful
enemies, graziers, members of parliament, members of standing committees, are
reported. Bloom's bodyguard distribute
Maundy money, commemoration medals, loaves and fishes, temperance badges,
expensive Henry Clay cigars, free cowbones for soup, rubber preservatives, in
sealed envelopes tied with gold thread, butterscotch, 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 tram lines, coupons of the royal and
privileged Hungarian lottery, penny dinner counters, cheap reprints of the
World's Twelve Worst Books: Froggy and Fritz (politic), Care of the Baby
(infantilic), 50 Meals for 7/6 (culinic), Was Jesus a Sun Myth? (historic),
Expel that Pain (medic), Infant's Compendium of the Universe (cosmic), Let's
All Chortle (hilaric), Canvasser's Vade Mercum (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 Gweldolen Dubedat
bursts through the throng, leaps on his horse and kisses him on both cheeks
amid great acclamation. A magnesium
flashlight photograph is taken. Babes
and sucklings are held up.)
THE WOMEN: Little father! Little father!
THE BABES AND SUCKLINGS:
Clap
clap hands till Poldy comes home,
Cakes
in his pocket for Leo alone.
(Bloom, bending down, pokes Baby Boardman gently in
the stomach.)
BABY BOARDMAN: (Hiccups, curdled milk flowing
from his mouth) Hajajaja.
BLOOM: (Shaking hands with a blind stripling) My more than Brother! (Placing his arms round the shoulders of
an old couple) Dear old
friends! (He plays pussy fourcorners
with ragged boys and girls) Peep! Bopeep!
(He wheels twins in a perambulator)
Ticktacktwo wouldyousetashoe?
(He performs juggler's tricks, draws red, orange, yellow, green,
blue, indigo and violet silk handkerchiefs from his mouth) Roygbiv. 32 feet per second. (He consoles a widow) Absence makes the heart grow
younger. (He dances the Highland
fling with grotesque antics) Leg it,
ye devils! (He kisses the bedsores of
a palsied veteran) Honourable
wounds! (He trips up a fat
policeman) U.p.: up. (He whispers in the ear of a blushing
waitress and laughs kindly) Ah,
naughty, naughty! (He eats a raw turnip
offered him by Maurice Butterly, farmer)
Fine! Splendid! (He refuses to accept three shillings
offered him by Joseph Hynes, journalist)
My dear fellow, not at all! (He
gives his coat to a beggar) Please
accept. (He takes part in a stomach
race with elderly male and female cripples)
Come on, boys! Wriggle it,
girls!
THE CITIZEN: (Choked with emotion, brushes aside
a tear in his emerald muffler) May
the good God bless him!
(The rams' horns stand for silence. The standard of
BLOOM: (Uncloaks impressively, revealing
obesity, unrolls a paper and reads solemnly)
Aleph Beth Ghimel Daleth Hagadah Tephilim Kosher Yom Kippur Hanukah
Roschaschana Beni Brith Bar Mitzvah Mazzoth Askenazim Meshuggah Talith.
(An official translation is read by Jimmy Henry,
assistant town clerk.)
JIMMY HENRY: The Court of Conscience is now
open. His Most Catholic Majesty will now
administer open air justice. Free
medical and legal advice, solution of doubles and other problems. All cordially invited. Given at this our loyal city of
PADDY LEONARD: What am I to do about my rates and
taxes?
BLOOM: Pay them, my friend.
PADDY LEONARD: Thank you.
NOSEY FLYNN: Can I raise a mortgage on my fire
insurance?
BLOOM: (Obdurately) Sirs, take notice that by the law of
torts you are bound over in your own recognisances for six months in the sum of
five pounds.
J.J. O'MOLLOY: A Daniel did I say? Nay! A
Peter O'Brien!
NOSEY FLYNN: Where do I draw the five pounds?
PISSER BURKE: For bladder trouble?
BLOOM:
Acid. nit. hydrochlor dil., 20 minims,
Tinct. mix. vom., 4 minims.
Extr. taraxel. lig., 30 minims.
Aq. dis. ter in die.
CHRIS CALLINAN: What is the parallax of the
subsolar ecliptic of Alderbaran?
BLOOM: Pleased to hear from you, Chris. K. 11.
JOE HYNES: Why aren't you in uniform?
BLOOM: When my progenitor of sainted memory wore
the uniform of the Austrian despot in a dank prison where was yours?
BEN DOLLARD: Pansies?
BLOOM: Embellish (beautify) suburban gardens.
BEN DOLLARD: When twins arrive?
BLOOM: Father (pater, dad) starts thinking.
LARRY O'ROURKE: An eight day licence for my new
premises. You remember me, sir Leo, when
you were in number seven. I'm sending
around a dozen of stout for the missus.
BLOOM: (Coldly)
You have the advantage of me.
Lady Bloom accepts no presents.
CROFTON: This is indeed a festivity.
BLOOM: (Solemnly) You call it a festivity. I call it a sacrament.
ALEXANDER KEYES: When will we have our own house of
keys?
BLOOM: I stand for the reform of municipal morals
and the plain ten commandments. New
worlds for old.
O'MADDEN BURKE: Free fox in a free henroost.
DAVY BYRNE: (Yawning) Iiiiiiiiiaaaaaaach!
BLOOM: Mixed races and mixed marriage.
LENEHAN: What about mixed bathing?
(Bloom explains to those near him his schemes for
social regeneration. All agree with
him. The keeper of the Kildare Street
Museum appears, dragging a lorry on which are the shaking statues of several
naked goddesses, Venus Callipyge, Venus Pandemos, Venus Metempsychosis, and
plaster figures, also naked, representing the new nine muses, Commerce,
Operatic Music, Amor, Publicity, Manufacture, Liberty of Speech, Plural Voting,
Gastronomy, Private Hygiene, Seaside Concert Entertainments, Painless
Obstetrics and Astronomy for the People.)
FATHER FARLEY: He is an episcopalian, an agnostic,
an anythingarian seeking to overthrow our holy faith.
MRS RIORDAN: (Tears up her will) I'm disappointed in you! You bad man!
MOTHER GROGAN: (Removes her boot to throw it at
Bloom) You beast! You abominable person!
NOSEY FLYNN: Give us a tune, Bloom. One of the old sweet songs.
BLOOM: (With rollicking humour)
I
vowed that I never would leave her,
She
turned out a cruel deceiver.
With
my tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom.
HOPPY HOLOHAN: Good old Bloom! There's nobody like him after all.
PADDY LEONARD: Stage Irishman!
BLOOM: What railway opera is like a tramline in
LENEHAN: Plagiarist! Down with Bloom!
THE VEILED SIBYL: (Enthusiastically) I'm a Bloomite and I glory in it. I believe in him in spite of all. I'd give my life for him, the funniest man on
earth.
BLOOM: (Winks at the bystanders) I bet she's a bonny lassie.
THEODORE PUREFOY: (In fishing cap and oilskin
jacket) He employs a mechanical
device to frustrate the sacred ends of nature.
THE VEILED SIBYL: (Stabs herself) My hero
god! (She dies.)
(Many most attractive and enthusiastic women also
commit suicide by stabbing, drowning, drinking prussic acid, aconite, arsenic,
opening their veins, refusing food, casting themselves under steamrollers, from
the top of Nelson's Pillar, into the great vat of Guinness's brewery,
asphyxiating themselves by placing their heads in gas ovens, hanging themselves
in stylish garters, leaping from windows of different storeys.)
ALEXANDER J. DOWIE: (Violently) Fellowchristians and anti-Bloomites, the
man called Bloom is from the roots of hell, a disgrace to christian men. A fiendish libertine from his earliest years
this stinking goat of Mendes gave precocious signs of infantile debauchery
recalling the cities of the plain, with a dissolute granddam. This vile hypocrite, bronzed with infamy, is
the white bull mentioned in the Apocalypse.
A worshipper of the Scarlet Woman, intrigue is the very breath of his
nostrils. The stake faggots and the
caldron of boiling oil are for him.
Caliban!
THE MOB: Lynch him!
Roast him! He's as bad as Parnell
was. Mr Fox!
(Mother Grogan throws her boot at Bloom. Several shopkeepers from upper and lower
BLOOM: (Excitedly) This is midsummer madness, some ghastly
joke again. By heaven, I am guiltless as
the unsunned snow! It was my brother
Henry. He is my double. He lives in number 2 Dolphin's Barn. Slander, the viper, has wrongfully accused
me. Fellow countrymen, sgenl inn ban
bata coisde gan capall. I call on my
old friend, Dr Malachi Mulligan, sex specialist, to give medical testimony on
my behalf.
DR MULLIGAN: (In motor jerkin, green
motorgoggles on his brow) Dr Bloom
is bisexually abnormal. He has recently
escaped from Dr Eustace's private asylum for demented gentlemen. Born out of bedlock hereditary epilepsy is
present, the consequence of unbridled lust.
Traces of elephantiasis have been discovered among his ascendants. There are marked symptoms of chronic
exhibitionism. Ambidexterity is also
latent. He is prematurely bald from
selfabuse, perversely idealistic in consequence, a reformed rake, and has metal
teeth. In consequence of a family
complex he has temporarily lost his memory and I believe him to be more sinned
against than sinning. I have made a
pervaginal examination and, after application of the acid test to 5427 anal,
axillary, pectoral and pubic hairs, I declare him to be virgo intacta.
(Bloom holds his high grade hat over his genital organs.)
DR MADDEN: Hypospadia is also marked. In the interests of coming generations I
suggest that the parts affected should be preserved in spirits of wine in the
national teratological museum.
DR CROTTHERS: I have examined the patient's
urine. It is albuminoid. Salivation is insufficient, the patellar
reflex intermittent.
DR PUNCH COSTELLO: The fetor judaicus is
most perceptible.
DR DIXON: (Reads a bill of health) Professor Bloom is a finished example of
the new womanly man. His moral nature is
simple and lovable. Many have found him
a dear man, a dear person. He is a
rather quaint fellow on the whole, coy though not feebleminded in the medical
sense. He has written a really beautiful
letter, a poem in itself, to the court missionary of the Reformed Priests'
Protection Society which clears up everything.
He is practically a total abstainer and I can affirm that he sleeps on a
straw litter and eats the most Spartan food, cold dried grocer's peas. He wears a hairshirt winter and summer and
scourges himself every Saturday. He was,
I understand, at one time a firstclass misdemeanant in Glencree
reformatory. Another report states that
he was a very posthumous child. I appeal
for clemency in the name of the most sacred word our vocal organs have ever been
called upon to speak. He is about to
have a baby.
(General commotion and compassion. Women faint.
A wealthy American makes a street collection for Bloom. Gold and silver coins, bank cheques,
banknotes, jewels, treasury bonds, maturing bills of exchange, I.O.U.'s,
wedding rings, watchchains, lockets, necklaces and bracelets are rapidly
collected.)
BLOOM: O, I so want to be a mother.
MRS THORTON: (In nursetender's gown) Embrace me tight, dear. You'll soon be 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 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, Maindoree, Silversmile,
Silberselber, Vifargent, Panargyros.
They are immediately appointed to positions of high public trust in
several different countries as managing directors of banks, traffic managers of
railways, chairmen of limited liability companies, vice chairmen of hotel
syndicates.)
A VOICE: Bloom, are you the Messiah ben Joseph or
ben David?
BLOOM: (Darkly)
You have said it.
BROTHER BUZZ: Then perform a miracle.
BANTAM
(Bloom walks on a net, covers his left eye with his
left ear, passes through several walls, climbs Nelson's Pillar, hangs from the
top ledge by his eyelids, eats twelve dozen oysters (shells included), heals
several sufferers from king's evil, contracts his face so as to resemble many
historical personages, Lord Beaconsfield, Lord Byron, Wat Tyler, Moses of
Egypt, Moses Maimonides, Moses Mendelssohn, Henry Irving, Rip van Winkle,
Kossuth, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Baron Leopold Rothschild, Robinson Crusoe,
Sherlock Holmes, Pasteur, turns each foot simultaneously in different
directions, bids the tide turn back, eclipses the sun by extending his little
finger.)
BRINI, PAPAL NUNCIO: (In papal zouave's uniform,
steel cuirasses as breastplate, armplates, thighplates, legplates, large
profane moustaches and brown paper mitre) Leopoldi autem generatio. Moses begat Noah and Noah begat Eunuch
and Eunuch begat O'Halloran and O'Halloran begat Guggenheim and Guggenheim begat
Agendath and Agendath begat Netaim and Netaim begat Le Hirsch and Le Hirsch
begat Jesurum and Jesurum begat MacKay and MacKay begat Ostrolopsky and
Ostrolopsky begat Smerdoz and Smerdoz begat Weiss and Weiss begat Schwarz and
Schwarz begat Adrianopoli and Adrianopoli begat Aranjuez and Aranjuez begat
Lewy Lawson and Lewy Lawson begat Ichabudonosor and Ichabudonosor begat
O'Donnell Magnus and O'Donnell Magnus begat Christbaum and Christbaum begat Ben
Maimun and Ben Maimun begat Dusty Rhodes and Dusty Rhodes begat Benamor and
Benamor begat Jones-Smith and Jones-Smith begat Savorgnanovich and
Savorgnanovich begat Jasperstone and Jasperstone begat Vingtetunieme and
Vingtetunieme begat Szombathely and Szombathely begat Virag and Virag begat
Bloom et vocabitur nomen eius Emmanuel.
A DEADHAND: (Writes on the wall) Bloom is a cod.
A CRAB: (In bushranger's kit) What did you do in the cattlecreep behind
Kilbarrack?
A FEMALE INFANT: (Shakes a rattle) And under Ballybough bridge?
A HOLLYBUSH: And in the devil's glen?
BLOOM: (Blushes furiously all over from front to
nates, three tears falling from his left eye)
Spare my past.
THE IRISH EVICTED TENANTS: (In bodycoats,
kneebreeches, with Donnybrook fair shillelaghs)
Sjambok him!
(Bloom with asses' ears seats himself in the
pillory with crossed arms, his feet protruding.
He whistles Don Giovanni, a cenar
teco. Artane orphans, joining hands,
caper round him. Girls of the Prison
Gate
THE ARTANE ORPHANS:
You
hig, you hog, you dirty dog!
You
think the ladies love you!
THE PRISON GATE GIRLS:
If
you see kay
Tell
him he may
See
you in tea
Tell
him from me.
HORNBLOWER: (In ephod and huntingcap,
announces) And he shall carry the
sins of the people to Azazel, the spirit which is in the wilderness, and to
Lilith, the nighthag. And they shall
stone him and defile him, yea, all from Agendath Netaim and from Mizraim, the
(All the people cast soft pantomime stones at
Bloom. Many bonafide travellers and
ownerless dogs come near him and defile him.
Mastiansky and Citron approach in gaberdines, wearing long earlocks. They wag their beards at Bloom.)
MASTIANSKY AND CITRON: Belial! Laemlein of
(George S. Mesias, Bloom's tailor, appears, a
tailor's goose under his arm, presenting a bill.)
MESIAS: To alteration one pair trousers eleven
shillings.
BLOOM: (Rubs his hands cheerfully) Just like old times. Poor Bloom!
(Reuben J. Dodd, blackbearded Iscariot, bad
shepherd, bearing on his shoulders the drowned corpse of his son, approaches
the pillory.)
REUBEN J.: (Whispers hoarsely) The squeak is out. A split is gone for the flatties. Nip the first rattler.
THE FIRE BRIGADE: Pflaap!
BROTHER BUZZ: (Invests Bloom in a yellow habit
with embroidery of painted flames and high pointed hat. He places a bag of gunpowder round his neck
and hands him over to the civil power, saying)
Forgive him his trespasses. (Lieutenant
Myers of the
THE CITIZENS: Thank heaven!
BLOOM: (In a seamless garment marked I.H.S.
stands upright amid phoenix flames) Weep
not for me, O daughters of
(He exhibits to
THE DAUGHTERS OF
Kidney
of Bloom, pray for us.
Flower
of the
Mentor
of Menton, pray for us.
Canvasser
for the Freeman, pray for us.
Charitable
Mason, pray for us.
Wandering
Soap, pray for us.
Sweets
of Sin, pray for us.
Music
without Words, pray for us.
Reprover
of the Citizen, pray for us.
Friend
of the Frillies, pray for us.
Midwife
Most Merciful, pray for us.
Potato
Preservative against Plague and Pestilence, pray for us.
(A choir of six hundred voices, conducted by Mr
Vincent O'Brien, sings the Alleluia chorus, 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 suguan, with a smile in his eye) Let me be going now, woman of the house,
for by all the goats in Connemera I'm after having the father and mother of a
bating.
(With a tear in his eye) All
insanity. Patriotism, sorrow for the
dead, music, future of the race. To be
or not to be. Life's dream is o'er. End it peacefully. They can live on. (He gazes far away mournfully) I am ruined. A few pastilles of aconite. The blinds drawn. A letter.
Then lie back to rest. (He breathes softly) No more.
I have lived. Fare. Farewell.
ZOE: (Stiffly, her finger in her
neckfillet) Honest? Till the next time. (She sneers) Suppose you got up the wrong side of the
bed or came too quickly with your best girl.
O, I can read your thoughts.
BLOOM: (Bitterly) Man and woman, love, what is it? A cork and bottle.
ZOE: (In sudden sulks) I hate a rotter that insincere. Give a bleeding whore a chance.
BLOOM: (Repentantly) I am very disagreeable. You are a necessary evil. Where are you from?
ZOE: (Glibly)
Hog's Norton where the pigs play the organs. I'm
BLOOM: (Smiles, nods slowly) More, houri, more.
ZOE: And more's mother? (She pats him offhandedly with velvet
paws) Are you coming into the
musicroom to see our new pianola? Come
and I'll peel off.
BLOOM: (Feeling his occiput dubiously with the
unparalleled embarrassment of a harassed pedlar gauging the symmetry of her
peeled pears) Somebody would be
dreadfully jealous if she knew. The
greeneyed monster. (Earnestly) You know how difficult it is. I needn't tell you.
ZOE: (Flattered)
What the eye can't see the heart can't grieve for. (She pats him) Come.
BLOOM: Laughing witch! The hand that rocks the cradle.
ZOE: Babby!
BLOOM: (In babylinen and pelisse, bigheaded,
with a caul of dark hair, fixes big eyes on her fluid slip and counts its
bronze buckles with a chubby finger, his moist tongue tolling and lisping) One two tlee: tlee tlwo tlone.
THE BUCKLES: Love me. Love me not.
Love me.
ZOE: Silent means consent. (With little parted talons she captures
his hand, her forefinger giving to his palm the passtouch of secret monitor,
luring him to doom) Hot hands cold
gizzard.
(He hesitates amid scents, music, temptations. She leads him towards the steps, drawing him
by the odour of her armpits, the vice of her painted eyes, the rustle of her
slip in whose sinuous folds lurks the lion reek of all the male brutes that
have possessed her.)
THE MALE BRUTES: (Exhaling sulphur of rut and
dung and ramping in their loosebox, faintly roaring, their drugged heads
swaying to and fro) Good!
(Zoe and Bloom reach the doorway where two sister
whores are seated. They examine him
curiously from under their pencilled brows and smile to his hasty bow. He trips awkwardly.)
ZOE: (Her lucky hand instantly saving him) Hoopsa!
Don't fall upstairs.
BLOOM: The just man falls seven times. (He stands aside at the threshold) After you is good manners.
ZOE: Ladies first, gentlemen after.
(She crosses the threshold. He hesitates.
She turns and, holding out her hands, draws him over. He hops.
On the antlered rack of the hall hang a man's hat and waterproof. Bloom uncovers himself but, seeing them,
frowns, then smiles, preoccupied. A door
on the return landing is thrown open. A
man in purple shirt and grey trousers, brownsocked, passes with an ape's gait,
his bald head and goatee beard upheld, hugging a full waterjugjar, his
twotailed black braces dangling at heels.
Averting his face quickly Bloom bends to examine on the halltable the
spaniel eyes of a running fox: then, his lifted head sniffing, follows Zoe into
the musicroom. A shade of mauve
tissuepaper dims the light of the chandelier.
Round and round a moth flies, colliding, escaping. The floor is covered with an oilcloth mosaic
of jade and azure and cinnabar rhomboids.
Footmarks are stamped over it in all senses, heel to heel, heel to
hollow, toe to toe, feet locked, a morris of shuffling feet without body
phantoms, all in a scrimmage higgledypiggledy.
The walls are tapestried with a paper of yewfronds and clear
glades. In the grate is spread a screen
of peacock feathers. Lynch squats
crosslegged on the hearthrug of matted hair, his cap back to front. With a wand he beats time slowly. Kitty Ricketts, a bony pallid whore in navy
costume, doeskin gloves rolled back from a coral wristlet, a chain purse in her
hand, sits perched on the edge of the table swinging her leg and glancing at
herself in the gilt mirror over the mantelpiece. A tag of her corset lace hangs slightly below
her jacket. Lynch indicates mockingly
the couple at the piano.)
KITTY: (Coughs behind her hand) She's a bit imbecillic. (She signs with a waggling
forefinger) Blemblem. (Lynch lifts up her skirt and white
petticoat with the wand. She settles
them down quickly.) Respect
yourself. (She hiccups, then bends
quickly her sailor hat under which her hair glows, red with henna) O, excuse!
ZOE: More limelight, Charley. (She goes to the chandelier and turns the
gas full cock.)
KITTY: (Peers at the gasjet) What ails it tonight?
LYNCH: (Deeply)
Enter a ghost and hobgoblins.
ZOE: Clap on the back for Zoe.
(The wand in Lynch's hand flashes: a brass
poker. Stephen stands at the pianola on
which sprawl his hat and ashplant. With
two fingers he repeats once more the series of empty fifths. Florry Talbot, a blond feeble goosefat whore
in a tatterdemalion gown of mildewed strawberry, lolls spreadeagle in the sofa
corner, her limp forearm pendent over the bolster, listening. A heavy stye droops over her sleepy eyelid.)
KITTY: (Hiccups again with a kick of her horsed
foot) O, excuse!
ZOE: (Promptly)
Your boy's thinking of you.
Tie a knot on your shift.
(Kitty Ricketts bends her head. Her boa uncoils, slides, glides over her
shoulder, back, arm, chair to the ground.
Lynch lifts the curled caterpillar on his wand. She snakes her neck, nestling. Stephen glances behind at the squatted figure
with its cap back to 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 divergent
as priests hailhooping round David's that is Circe's or what am I saying Ceres'
altar and David's tip from the stable to his chief bassoonist about his
almightiness. Maid, nom de nom,
that is another pair of trousers. Jetez
la gourme. Faut que jeunesse se passe.
(He stops, points at Lynch's cap, smiles, laughs) Which side is your knowledge bump?
THE CAP: (With saturnine spleen) Bah!
It is because it is. Woman's
reason. Jewgreek is greekjew. Extremes meet. Death is the highest form of life. Bah!
STEPHEN: You remember fairly accurately all my
errors, boasts, mistakes. How long shall
I continue to close my eyes to disloyalty?
Whetstone!
THE CAP: Bah!
STEPHEN: Here's another for you. (He frowns) The reason is because the fundamental and
the dominant are separated by the greatest possible interval which ...
THE CAP: Which?
Finish. You can't.
STEPHEN: (With an effort) Interval which. Is the greatest possible ellipse. Consistent with. The ultimate return. The octave.
Which.
THE CAP: Which?
(Outside the gramophone begins to blare The Holy City.)
STEPHEN: (Abruptly) What went forth to the ends of the world
to traverse not itself. God, the sun,
Shakespeare, a commercial traveller, having itself traversed in reality itself,
becomes that self. Wait a moment. Wait a second. Damn that fellow's noise in the street. Self which it itself was ineluctably
preconditioned to become. Ecco!
LYNCH: (With a mocking whinny of laughter grins
at Bloom and Zoe Higgins) What a
learned speech, eh?
ZOE: (Briskly)
God help your head, he knows more than you have forgotten.
(With obese stupidity Florry Talbot regards
Stephen.)
FLORRY: They say the last day is coming this
summer.
KITTY: No!
ZOE: (Explodes in laughter) Great unjust God!
FLORRY: (Offended) Well, it was in the papers about
Antichrist. O, my foot's tickling.
(Ragged barefoot newsboys, jogging a wagtail kite,
patter past, yelling.)
THE NEWSBOYS: Stop press edition. Result of the rockinghorse races. Sea serpent in the royal canal. Safe arrival of Antichrist.
(Stephen turns and sees Bloom.)
STEPHEN: A time, times and half a time.
(Reuben J. Antichrist, wandering jew, a clutching
hand open on his spine, stumps forward.
Across his loins is slung a pilgrim's wallet from which protrude
promissory notes and dishonoured bills.
Aloft over his shoulder he bears a long boatpole from the hook of which
the sodden huddled mass of his only son, saved from Liffey waters, hangs from
the slack of its breeches. A hobgoblin
in the image of Punch Costello, hipshot, crookbacked, hydrocephalic, prognathic
with receding forehead and Ally Sloper nose, tumbles in somersaults through the
gathering darkness.)
ALL: What?
THE HOBGOBLIN: (His jaws chattering, capers to
and fro, goggling his eyes, squeaking, kangaroohopping, with outstretched
clutching arms, then all at once thrusts his lipless face through the fork of
his thighs) Il vient! C'est moi! L'homme
qui rit! L'homme primigène! (He whirls
round and round with dervish howls) Sieurs et dames, faites vos jeux! (He
crouches juggling. Tiny roulette planets
fly from his hands.) Les jeux sont faits! (The planets rush together, uttering
crepitant cracks) Rien n'va plus. (The planets, buoyant balloons, sail swollen
up and away. He springs off into
vacuum.)
FLORRY: (Sinking into torpor, crosses 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:
Open your gates and sing
Hosanna ...
(A rocket rushes up the sky and bursts. A white star falls from it, proclaiming the
consummation of all things and second coming of Elijah. Along an infinite invisible tightrope taut
from zenith to nadir the End of the World, a twoheaded octopus in gillie's
kilts, busby and tartan filibegs, whirls through the murk, head over heels, in
the form of the Three Legs of Man.)
THE END OF THE WORLD: (With a Scotch
accent) Wha'll dance the keel row,
the keel row, the keel row?
(Over the passing drift and choking breathcoughs,
Elijah's voice, harsh as a corncrake's, jars on high. Perspiring in a loose 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, Dave
Campbell, Abe Kirschner, do your coughing with your mouths shut. Say, I am operating all this trunk line. Boys, do it now. God's time is 12.25. Tell mother you'll be there. Rush your order and you a play a slick
ace. Join on right here! Book through to eternity junction, the
nonstop run. Just one word more. Are you a god or a doggone clod? If the second advent came to
THE GRAMOPHONE: (Drowning his voice) Whorusalaminyourhighhohhhh ... (The
disc rasps gratingly against the needle.)
THE THREE WHORES: (Covering their ears,
squawk) Ahhkkk!
ELIJAH: (In rolledup shirtsleeves, black in the
face, shouts at the top of his voice, his arms uplifted) Big Brother up there, Mr President, you
hear what I done just been saying to you.
Certainly, I sort of believe strong in you, Mr President. I certainly am thinking now Miss Higgins and
Miss Ricketts got religion way inside them.
Certainly seems to me I don't never see no wusser scared female than the
way you been, Miss Florry, just now as I done seed you. Mr President, you come long and help me save
our sisters dear. (He winks at his
audience) Our Mr President, he twig the whole lot and he ain't saying
nothing.
KITTY-KATE: I forgot myself. In a weak moment I erred and did what I did
on Constitution hill. I was confirmed by
the bishop. My mother's sister married a
Montmorency. It was a working plumber
was my ruination when I was pure.
ZOE-FANNY: I let him larrup it into me for the fun
of it.
FLORRY-TERESA: It was in consequence of a portwine
beverage on top of Hennessy's three stars 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,
THE BEATITUDES: (Incoherently) Beer beef battledog buybull businum
barnum buggerum bishop.
LYSTER: (In quakergrey kneebreeches and
broadbrimmed hat, says discreetly) He
is our friend. I need not mention
names. Seek thou the light.
(He corantos by.
Best enters in hairdresser attire, shinily laundered, his locks in
curlpapers. He leads John Eglinton who
wears a mandarin's kimono of Nankeen yellow, lizardlettered, and a high pagoda
hat.)
BEST: (Smiling, lifts the hat and displays a
shaven poll from the crown of which bristles a pigtail toupee tied with an
orange topknot) I was just beautifying
him, don't you know. A thing of beauty,
don't you know. Yeats says, or I mean,
Keats says.
JOHN EGLINTON: (Produces a greencapped dark
lantern and flashes it towards a corner; with carping accent) Esthetics and cosmetics are for the
bourdoir. 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 Mananaan MacLir broods,
chin on knees. He rises slowly. A cold seawind blows from his druid
mantle. 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.)
MANANAAN 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! Dark hidden Father! (He smites with his bicycle pump the
crayfish in his left hand. On its
cooperative dial glow the twelve signs of the zodiac. He wails with the vehemence of the ocean) Aum!
Baum! Pyjaum! I am the light of the homestead, I am the
dreamery creamery butter.
(A skeleton judashand strangles the light. The green light wanes to mauve. The gasjet wails whistling.)
THE GASJET: Pooah!
Pfuiiiiii!
(Zoe runs to the chandelier and, crooking her leg,
adjusts the mantle.)
ZOE: Who has a fag as I'm here?
LYNCH: (Tossing a cigarette on to the
table) Here.
ZOE: (Her head perched aside in mock pride) Is that the way to hand the pot to
a lady? (She stretches up to light
the cigarette over the flame, twirling it slowly, showing the brown tufts of
her armpits. Lynch with his poker flits
boldly a side of her slip. Bare from her
garters up her flesh appears under the sapphire a nixie's green. She puffs calmly at her cigarette) Can you see the beauty spot of my behind?
LYNCH: I'm not looking.
ZOE: (Makes sheep's eyes) No?
You wouldn't do a less thing.
Would you suck a lemon?
(Squinting in mock shame she glances with sidelong
meaning at Bloom, then twists round towards him, pulling her slip free of the
poker. Blue fluid again flows over her
flesh. Bloom stands, smiling desirously,
twirling his thumbs. Kitty Ricketts
licks her middle finger with her spittle and gazing in the mirror, smooths both
eyebrows. Lipoti Virag,
basilicogrammate, chutes rapidly down through the chimneyflue and struts two
steps to the left on gawky pink stilts.
He is sausaged into several overcoats and wears a brown macintosh under
which he holds a roll of parchment. In
his left eye flashes the monocle of Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall
Farrell. On his head is perched an
Egyptian pshent. Two quills project over
his ears.)
VIRAG: (Heels together, bows) My name is Virag Lipoti, of
BLOOM: Granpapachi.
But ...
VIRAG: Number two on the other hand, she of the
cherry rouge and coiffeuse white, whose hair owes not a little to our tribal
elixir of gopherwood, is in walking costume and tightly staysed by her sit, I
should opine. Backbone in front, so to
say. Correct me but I always understood
that the act so performed by skittish humans with glimpses of lingerie appealed
to you in virtue of its exhibitionististicicity. In a word Hippogriff. Am I right?
BLOOM: She is rather lean.
VIRAG: (Not unpleasantly) Absolutely! Well observed and those pannier pockets on
the skirt and slightly pegtop effect are devised to suggest bunchiness of
hip. A new purchase at some monster sale
for which a gull has been mulcted.
Meretricious finery to deceive the eye.
Observe the attention to details of dustspecks. Never put on your tomorrow what you can wear
today. Parallax! (With a nervous
twitch of his head) Did you hear my
brain go snap? Pollysyllabax!
BLOOM: (An elbow resting in a hand, a forefinger
against his cheek) She seems sad.
VIRAG: (Cynically, his weasel teeth bared
yellow, draws down his left eye with a finger and barks hoarsely) Hoax!
Beware of the flapper and bogus mournful. Lily of the alley. All possess bachelor's button discovered by
Rualdus Colombus. Tumble her. Columble her.
Chameleon. (More
genially) Well then, permit me to
draw your attention to item number three.
There is plenty of her visible to the naked eye. Observe the mass of oxygenated vegetable
matter on her skull. What ho, she bumps! The ugly duckling of the party, longcasted
and deep in keel.
BLOOM: (Regretfully) When you come out without your gun.
VIRAG: We can do you all brands, mild, medium and
strong. Pay your money, take your
choice. How happy could you be with
either ...
BLOOM: With? ...
VIRAG: (His tongue upcurling) Lyum!
Look. Her beam is broad. She is coated with quite a considerable layer
of fat. Obviously mammal in weight of
bosom you remark that she has in front well to the fore two protuberances of
very respectable dimensions, inclined to fall in the noonday soupplate, while
on her rear lower down are two additional protuberances, suggestive of potent
rectum and tumescent for palpation which leave nothing to be desired save
compactness. Such fleshy parts are the
product of careful nurture. When
coopfattened their livers reach an elephantine size. Pellets of new bread with fennygreek and
gumbenjamin swamped down by potions of green tea endow them during their brief
existence with natural pincushions of quite colossal blubber. That suits your book, eh? Fleshhotpots of Egypt to hanker after. Wallow in it.
Lycopodium. (His throat
twitches) Slapbang! There he goes again.
BLOOM: The style I dislike.
VIRAG: (Arches his eyebrows) Contact with a goldring, they say. Augumentum ad feminam, as we said in
old
BLOOM: (Reflecting) Wheatenmeal with lycopodium and
syllabax. This searching ordeal. It has been an unusually fatiguing day, a
chapter of accidents. Wait. I mean, wartsblood spreads warts, you said
...
VIRAG: (Severely, his nose hardhumped, his side
eye winking) Stop twirling your thumbs and a have a good old thunk. See, you have forgotten. Exercise your mnemotechnic. La causa è santa.
BLOOM: Rosemary also did I understand you to say or
willpower over parasitic tissues. Then
nay no I have an inkling. The touch of a
deadhand cures. Mnemo?
VIRAG: (Excitedly) I say so.
I say so. E'en so. Technic.
(He taps his parchmentroll energetically) This book tells you how to act with all
descriptive particulars. Consult index
for agitated fear of aconite, melancholy of muriatic, priapic pulsatilla. Virag is going to talk about amputation. Our old friend caustic. They must be starved. Snip off with horsehair under the denned
neck. But, to change the venue to the
Bulgar and the Basque, have you made up your mind whether you like or dislike
women in male habiliments? (With a
dry snigger) You intended to devote
an entire year to the study of the religious problem and the summer months of
1882 to square the circle and win that million.
Pomegranate! From the sublime to
the ridiculous is but a step. Pyjamas,
let us say? Or stockingette gusseted
knickers, closed? Or, put we the case,
those complicated combinations, camiknickers?
(He crows derisively) Keekeereekee!
(Bloom surveys uncertainly the three whores, then
gazes at the veiled mauve light, hearing the everflying moth.)
BLOOM: I wanted them 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 tomorrow as now as be past yester.
VIRAG: (Prompts into his ear in a pig's whisper) Insects of the day spend their brief
existence in reiterated coition, lured by the smell of the inferiorly
pulchritudinous female possessing extendified pudendal verve in dorsal
region. Pretty Poll! (His yellow parrotbeak gabbles
nasally) They had a proverb in the
Carpathians in or about the year five thousand five hundred and fifty of our
era. One tablespoonful of honey will
attract friend Bruin more than half a dozen barrels of first choice malt
vinegar. Bear's buzz bothers bees. But of this apart. At another time we may resume. We were very pleased, we others. (He
coughs and, bending his brow, rubs his nose thoughtfully with a scooping
hand) You shall find that these
night insects follow the light. An
illusion for remember their complex unadjustable eye. For all these knotty points see the
seventeenth book of my Fundamentals of Sexology or the Love Passion which
Doctor L.B. says is the book sensation of the year. Some, to example, there are again whose
movements are automatic. perceive. That is his appropriate sun. Nightbird nightsun nighttown. Chase me, Charley! Buzz!
BLOOM: Bee or bluebottle too other day butting
shadow on wall dazed self then me wandered dazed down shirt good job I ...
VIRAG: (His face impassive, laughs in a rich feminine
key) Splendid! Spanish fly in his fly or mustard plaster on
his dibble. (He gobbles gluttonously
with turkey wattles) Bubbly
jock! Bubbly jock! Where are we?
Open Sesame! Cometh forth! (He
unrolls his parchment rapidly and reads, his glowworm's nose running backwards
over the letters which he claws) Stay,
good friend. I bring thee thy
answer. Redbank oysters will shortly be
upon us. I'm the best o'cook. Those succulent bivalves may help us and the
truffles of Perigord, tubers dislodged through mister omnivorous porker, were
unsurpassed in cases of nervous debility or viragitis. Though they stink yet they sting. (He wags head with cackling raillery) Jocular.
With my eyeglass in my ocular.
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 contradict. Not a historical fact. Obvious analogy to my idea. Serpents too are gluttons for woman's milk. Wind they way through miles of omnivorous
forest to sucksucculent her breast dry.
Like those bubblyjocular Roman matrons one reads of in Elephantuliasis.
VIRAG: (His mouth projected in hard wrinkles,
eyes stonily forlornly closed, psalms in outlandish monotone) That the cows with their those distended
udders that they have been the 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
wing shoulders, peers at the moth out of blear bulged eyes, points a horning
claw and cries) Who's Ger Ger? Who's dear Gerald? O, I much fear he shall be most badly
burned. Will some pleashe pershon not
now impediment so catastophics mit agitation of firstclass tablenumpkin? '(He
mews)' Luss puss puss puss! (He
sighs, draws back and stares sideways down with dropping underjaw) Well, well. He doth rest anon.
I'm
a tiny tiny thing
Every
flying in the spring
Round
and round a ringaring.
Long
ago I was a king,
Now
I do this kind of thing
On
the wing, on the wing!
Bing!
(He rushes against the mauve shade flapping
noisily) Pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty petticoats.
(From left upper entrance with two sliding steps
Henry Flower comes forward to left front centre. He wears a dark mantle and drooping plumed
sombrero. He carries a silverstringed
inlaid dulcimer and a longstemmed bamboo Jacob's pipe, its clay bowl fashioned
as a female head. He wears dark velvet
hose and silverbuckled pumps. He has the
romantic Saviour's face with flowing locks, then beard and moustache. His spindlelegs and sparrow feet are those of
the tenor Mario, prince of
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 pendent
dewlap to the piano.)
STEPHEN: (To himself) Play with your eyes shut. Imitate pa.
Filling my belly with husks of swine.
Too much of this. I will arise and
go to my. Expect this is the. Steve, thou art in a parlous way. Must visit old Deasy or telegraph. Our interview this morning has left on me a
deep impression. Though our ages. Will write fully tomorrow. I'm partially drunk, by the way. (He touches the keys again) Minor chord comes now. Yes.
Not much however.
(Almidano Artifoni holds out a batonroll of music
with vigorous moustachework.)
ARTIFONI: Ci rifletta. Lei rovina tutto.
FLORRY: Sing us something. Love's old sweet song.
STEPHEN: No voice.
I am a most finished artist.
Lynch, did I show you the letter about the lute?
FLORRY: (Smirking) The bird that can sing and won't sing.
(The Siamese twins, Philip Drink and Philip Sober,
two
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,
PHILIP DRUNK: (Impatiently) Ah, bosh, man. Go to hell!
I paid my way. If I could only
find out about octaves. Reduplication of
personality. Who was it told me his
name? (His lawnmower begins to
purr) Aha, yes. Zoe mou sas agapo. Have a notion I was here before. When was it not Atkinson his card I have
somewhere? Mac somebody. Unmack I have it. He told me about, hold on, Swinburne, was it,
no?
FLORRY: And the song?
STEPHEN: Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.
FLORRY: Are you out of Maynooth? You're like someone I knew once.
STEPHEN: Out of it now. (To himself) Clever.
PHILIP DRUNK AND PHILIP SOBER: (Their lawnmowers
purring with a rigadoon of grasshalms) Clever
ever. Out of it. Out of it.
By the by have you the book, the thing, the ashplant? Yes, there it, yes. Cleverever outofitnow. Keep in condition. Do like us.
ZOE: There was a priest down here two nights ago to
do his bit of business with his coat buttoned up. You needn't try to hide, I says to him. I know you've a Roman collar.
VIRAG: Perfectly logical from his standpoint. Fall of man. (Harshly, his pupils
waxing) To hell with the pope! Nothing new under the sun. I am the Virag who disclosed the sex secrets
of monks and maidens. Who I left the
Church of Rome. Read the Priest, the
Woman and the Confessional.
Penrose. Flipperty Jippert. (He
wriggles) Woman, undoing with sweet
pudor her belt of rushrope, offers her allmoist yoni to man's lingam. Short time after man presents woman with
pieces of jungle meat. Woman shows joy
and covers herself with featherskins.
Man loves her yoni fiercely with big lingam, the stiff one. (He cries) Coactus volui. Then giddy woman will run about. Strong man grasps woman's wrist. Woman squeals, bites, spucks. Man, now fierce angry, strikes woman's fat
yadgana. (He chases his tail) Piffpaff!
Popo! (He stops, sneezes) Pchp!
(He worries his butt) Prrrrrht!
LYNCH: I hope you gave the good father a
penance. Nine glorias for shooting a
bishop.
ZOE: (Spouts walrus smoke through her
nostrils) He couldn't get a
connection. Only, you know,
sensation. A dry rush.
BLOOM: Poor man!
ZOE: (Lightly)
Only for what happened him.
BLOOM: How?
VIRAG: (A diabolic rictus of black luminosity
contracting his visage, cranes his scraggy neck forward. He lifts a mooncalf nozzle and howls)
Verfluchte Goim! He had a father,
forty fathers. He never existed. Pig God!
He had two left feet. He was
Judas Iacchias, a Libyan eunuch, the pope's bastard. (He leans out on tortured forepaws, elbows
bent rigid, his eye agonising in his flat skullneck and yelps over the mute
world) A son of a whore. Apocalypse.
KITTY: And Mary Shorthall that was in the lock with
the pox she got from Jimmy Pidgeon in the blue caps had a child off him that
couldn't swallow and was smothered with the convulsions in the mattress and we
all subscribed for the funeral.
PHILIP DRUNK (Gravely) Qui vous a mis dans cette
fichue position, Philippe?
PHILIP SOBER: (Gaily) C'était le sacré pigeon,
Philippe.
(Kitty unpins her hat and sets it down calmly,
patting her henna hair. And a prettier,
a daintier head of winsome curls was never seen on a whore's shoulders. Lynch puts on her hat. She whips it off.)
LYNCH: (Laughs)
And to such delights has Metchnikoff inoculated anthropoid apes.
FLORRY: (Nods)
Locomotor ataxy.
ZOE: (Gaily)
O, my dictionary.
LYNCH: Three wise virgins.
VIRAG: (Agueshaken, profuse yellow spawn foaming
over his bony epileptic lips) She
sold lovephiltres, whitewax, orange flower.
Panther, the Roman centurion, polluted her with his genitories. (He
sticks out a flickering phosphorescent scorpion tongue, his hand on his
fork) Messiah! He burst her tympanum. (With gibbering baboon's cries he jerks
his hips in the cynical spasm) Hik! Hek!
Hak! Hok! Huk!
Kok! Kuk!
(Ben Jumbo Dollard, rubicund, musclebound,
hairynostrilled, hugebearded, cabbageeared, shaggychested, shockmaned, fatpapped,
stands forth, his loins and genitals tightened into a pair of black bathing
bagslops.)
BEN DOLLARD: (Nakkering castanet bones in his
huge padded paws, yodels jovially in base barreltone) When love absorbs my ardent soul.
(The virgins, Nurse Callan and Nurse Quigly, burst
through the ringkeepers and the ropes and mob him with open arms.)
THE VIRGINS: (Gushingly) Big Ben!
Ben MacChree!
A VOICE: Hold that fellow with the bad breeches.
BEN DOLLARD: (Smites his thigh in abundant
laughter) Hold him now.
HENRY: (Caressing on his breast a severed female
head, murmurs) Thine heart, mine
love. (He plucks his
lutestrings) When first I saw ...
VIRAG: (Sloughing his skins, his multitudinous
plumage moulting) Rats! (He
yawns, showing a coalblack throat and closes his jaws by an upward push of his
parchment roll) After having said
which I took my departure.
Farewell. Fare thee well. Dreck!
(Henry Flower combs his moustache and beard rapidly
with a pocketcomb and gives a cow's lick to his hair. Steered by his rapier, he glides to the door,
his wild harp slung behind him. Virag
reaches the door in two ungainly stilthops, his tail cocked, and deftly claps
sideways on the wall a pusyellow flybill, butting it with his head.)
THE FLYBILL: K. 11. post no bills. Strictly confidential. Dr Hy Franks.
HENRY: All is lost now.
(Virag unscrews his head in a trice and holds it
under his arm.)
VIRAG'S HEAD: Quack!
(Exuent severally)
STEPHEN: (Over his shoulder to Zoe) You would have preferred the fighting
parson who founded the protestant error.
But beware Antisthenes, the dog sage, and the last end of Arius
Heresiarchus. The agony of the closet.
LYNCH: All one and the same God to her.
STEPHEN: (Devoutly) And Sovereign Lord of all things.
FLORRY: (To Stephen) I'm sure you are a spoiled priest. Or a monk.
LYNCH: He is.
A Cardinal's son.
STEPHEN: Cardinal sin. Monks of the screw.
(His Eminence, Simon Stephen Cardinal Dedalus,
Primate of all
THE CARDINAL:
Conservio
lies captured.
He
lies in the lowest dungeon
With
manacles and chains round his limbs
Weighing
upwards of three tons.
(He looks at all for a moment, his right eye closed
tight, his left cheek puffed out. Then,
unable to repress his merriment, he rocks to and fro, arms akimbo, and sings
with broad rollicking humour)
O,
the poor little fellow
Hi-hi-hi-hi-his
legs they were yellow
He
was plump, fat and heavy and brisk as a snake
But
some bloody savage
To
graize his white cabbage
He
murdered Nell Flaherty's duckloving drake.
(A multitude of midges swarms over his robe. He scratches himself with crossed arms at his
ribs, grimacing, and exclaims)'
I'm suffering the agony of the damned. By the hoky fiddle, thanks be to Jesus those
funny little chaps are not unanimous. If
they were they'd walk me off the face of the bloody globe.
'(His head aslant, he blesses curtly with fore and
middle fingers, imparts the Easter kiss and doubleshuffles off comically,
swaying his hat from side to side, shrinking quickly to the size of his
trainbearers. The dwarf acolytes,
giggling, peeping, nudging, ogling, Easterkissing, zigzag behind him. His voice is heard mellow from afar,
merciful, male, melodious)
Shall
carry my heart to thee,
Shall
carry my heart to thee,
And
the breath of the balmy night
Shall
carry my heart to thee.
(The trick doorhandle turns.)
THE DOORHANDLE: Theeee.
ZOE: The devil is in the 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 form his pocket and offers
it nervously to Zoe.)
ZOE: (Sniffs his hair briskly) Hum.
Thank your mother for the rabbits.
I'm very fond of what I like.
BLOOM: (Hearing a male voice in talk with the
whores on the doorstep, pricks his ears)
If it were he? After? Or because not? Or the double event?
ZOE: (Tears open the silverfoil) Fingers was made before forks. (She
breaks off and nibbles a piece, gives a piece to Kitty Ricketts and then turns
kittenishly to Lynch) No objection
to French lozenges? (He nods. She taunts him) Have it now or wait till you get it? (He opens his mouth, his head cocked. She whirls the prize in left circle. His head follows. She whirls it back in right circle. He eyes her.)
Catch. (She tosses a
piece. With an adroit snap he catches it
and bites it through with a crack.)
KITTY: (Chewing)
The engineer I was with at the bazaar does have lovely ones. Full of the best liqueurs. And the viceroy was there with his lady. The gas we had on the Toft's
hobbyhorses. I'm giddy still.
BLOOM: (In Svengali's fur overcoat, with folded
arms and Napoleonic forelock, frowns in ventriloquial exorcism with piercing
eagle glance towards the door. Then,
rigid, with left foot advanced, he makes a swift pass with impelling fingers
and gives the sign of past master, drawing his right arm downwards from his
left shoulder) Go, go, go, I conjure
you, whoever you are.
(A male cough and tread are heard passing through
the mist outside. Bloom's features
relax. He places a hand in his
waistcoat, posing calmly. Zoe offers him
chocolate.)
BLOOM: (Solemnly) Thanks.
ZOE: Do as you're bid. Here.
(A firm heelclacking is heard on the stairs.)
BLOOM: (Takes the chocolate) Aphrodisiac? But I thought it. Vanilla calms or? Mnemo.
Confused light confuses memory.
Red influences lupus. Colours
affect women's characters, any they have.
This black makes me sad. Eat and
be merry for tomorrow. (He eats) Influence taste too, mauve. But it is so long since I. Seems new.
Aphro. That priest. Must come.
Better late than never. Try
truffles at Andrews.
(The door opens.
Bella Cohen, a massive whoremistress enters. She is dressed in a threequarter ivory gown,
fringed round the hem with tasselled selvedge, and cools herself, flirting a
black horn fan like Minnie Hauck in Carmem. On her left hand are wedding and keeper
rings. Her eyes are deeply
carboned. She has a sprouting
moustache. Her love 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 around her at the couples. Then her eyes rest on Bloom with hard
insistence. Her large fan winnows wind
towards her heated face, neck and embonpoint.
Her falcon eyes glitter.)
THE FAN: (Flirting quickly, then slowly) Married, I see.
BLOOM: Yes ... Partly, I have mislaid ...
THE FAN: (Half opening, then closing) And the missus is master. Petticoat government.
BLOOM: (Looks down with a sheepish grin) That is so.
THE FAN: (Folded akimbo against her waist) Is me her was you dreamed before? Was then she him you us since knew? Am all them and the same now we?
(Bella approaches, gently tapping with the fan.)
BLOOM: (Wincing)
Powerful being. In my eyes
read that slumber which women love.
THE FAN: (Tapping) We have met. You are mine.
It is fate.
BLOOM: (Cowed)
Exuberant female. Enormously
I desiderate your domination. I am
exhausted, abandoned, no more young. I
stand, so to speak, with an unposted letter bearing the extra regulation fee
before the too late box of the general postoffice of human life. The door and window open at a right angle
cause a draught of thirtytwo feet per second according to the law of falling
bodies. I have felt this instant a
twinge of sciatica in my left glutear muscle.
It runs in our family. Poor dear
papa, a widower, was a regular barometer from it. He believed in animal heat. A skin of tabby lined his winter
waistcoat. Near the end, remembering
king David and the Sunamite, he shared his bed with Athos, faithful after
death. A dog's spittle, as you probably
... (He winces) Ah!
RICHIE GOULDING: (Bagweighted, passes the
door) Mocking is catch. Best value in Dub. Fit for a prince's liver and kidney.
THE FAN: (Tapping) All things end. Be mine.
Now.
BLOOM: (Undecided) All now?
I should not have parted with my talisman. Rain, exposure at dewfall on the sea rocks, a
peccadillo at my time of life. Every phenomenon
has a natural cause.
THE FAN: (Points downwards slowly) You must.
BLOOM: (With desire, with reluctance) I can make a true black knot. Learned when I served my time and worked the
mail order line for Kellet's.
Experienced hand. Every knot says
a lot. Let me. In courtesy.
I knelt once before today. Ah!
(Bella raises her gown slightly and, steadying her
pose, lifts to the edge of a chair a plump buskined hoof and a full pastern,
silksocked. bloom, stifflegged, ageing,
bends over her hoof and with gentle fingers draws out and in her laces.)
BLOOM: (Murmurs lovingly) To be a shoefitter in Mansfield's was my
love's young dream, the darling joys of sweet buttonhooking, to lace up
crisscrossed to kneelength the dressy kid footwear satinlined, so incredibly
small, of Clyde Road ladies. Even their
wax model Raymonde I visited daily to admire her cobweb hose and stick of
rhubarb toe, as worn in
THE HOOF: Smell my hot goathide. Feel my royal weight.
BLOOM: (Crosslacing) Too tight?
THE HOOF: If you bungle, Handy Andy, I'll kick your
football for you.
BLOOM: Not to lace the wrong eyelet as I did the
night of the bazaar dance. Bad
luck. Nook in wrong tache of her ...
person you mentioned. That night she met
... Now!
(He knots the lace.
Bella places her foot on the floor.
Bloom raises his head. her heavy
face, her eyes strike him in midbrow.
His eyes grow dull, darker and pouched, his nose thickens.)
BLOOM: (Mumbles)
Awaiting your further orders, we remain, gentlemen ...
BLOOM: (Infatuated) Empress!
BLOOM: (Plaintively) Hugeness!
BLOOM: (With sinews semiflexed) Magnificence.
BLOOM: (Her eyes upturned in the sign of
admiration, closing) Truffles! (With
a piercing epileptic cry she sinks on all fours, grunting, snuffling, rooting
at his feet, then lies, shamming dead with eyes shut tight, trembling eyelids,
bowed upon the ground in the attitude of most excellent master.)
BELLO: (With bobbed hair, purple gills, fat
moustache rings round his shaven mouth, in mountaineer's puttees, green
silverbuttoned coat, sport skirt and alpine hat with moorcock's feather, his
hands stuck deep in his breeches pockets, places his heel on her neck and
grinds it in) Feel my entire
weight. Bow, bondslave, before the
throne of your despot's glorious heels, so glistening in their proud erectness.
BLOOM: (Enthralled, bleats) I promise never to disobey.
(Bloom creeps under the sofa and peers out through
the fringe.)
ZOE: (Widening her slip to screen her) She's not here.
BLOOM: (Closing her eyes) She's not here.
FLORRY: (Hiding her with her gown) She didn't mean it, Mr Bello. She'll be good, sir.
KITTY: Don't be too hard on her, Mr Bello. Sure you won't, ma'amsir.
BLOOM: (Fainting) Don't tear my ...
(He twists her arm.
Bloom squeaks, turning turtle.)
BLOOM: Don't be cruel, nurse! Don't!
BLOOM: (Screams)
O, it's hell itself! Every
nerve in my body aches like mad!
BLOOM: (Whimpers) You're after hitting me. I'll tell ...
ZOE: Yes.
Walk on him! I will.
FLORRY: I will.
Don't be greedy.
KITTY: No, me.
Lend him to me.
(The brothel cook, Mrs Keogh, wrinkled,
greybearded, in a greasy bib, men's grey and green socks and brogues,
floursmeared, a rollingpin stuck with raw pastry in her bare red arm and hand,
appears at the door.)
MRS KEOGH: (Ferociously) Can I help? (They hold and pinion Bloom.)
BELLO: (Squats, with a grunt, on Bloom's
upturned face, puffing cigarsmoke, nursing a fat leg) I see Keating Clay is elected chairman of
the Richmond Asylum and bytheby Guinness's preference shares are at sixteen
three quarters. Curse me for a fool that
I didn't buy that lot Craig and
BLOOM: (Goaded, buttocksmothered) O! O!
Monsters! Cruel one!
FLORRY: (Pulls at
ZOE: (Pulling at Florry) Me.
Me. Are you not finished with him
yet, suckeress?
BLOOM: (Stifling) Can't.
BLOOM: (A sweat breaking out over him) Not man.
(He sniffs) Woman.
BLOOM: (Shrinks)
Silk, mistress said! O
crinkly! scrap! Must I tiptouch it with
my nails?
BLOOM: (A charming soubrette with dauby cheeks,
mustard hair and large male hands and nose, leering mouth) I tried her things on only once, a small
prank, in
BLOOM: Miriam, Black. Demimondaine.
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!
BLOOM: Science.
To compare the various joys we each enjoy. (Earnestly) And really it's better the position ...
because often I used to wet ...
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
(Mute inhuman faces throng forward, leering, vanishing,
gibbering, Booloohoom. Poldy Kock,
Bootlaces a penny, Cassidy's hag, blind stripling, Larry Rhinoceros, the girl,
the woman, the whore, the other, the ...)
BLOOM: Don't ask me. Our mutual faith.
BLOOM: (Docile, gurgles) I rearrepugnosed in rearrepugnant ...
BLOOM: (Bows)
Master! Mistress! Mantamer!
(He lifts his arms.
His bangle bracelets fall.)
BELLO: (Satirically) By day you will souse and bat our
smelling underclothes, also when we ladies are unwell, and swab out our
latrines with dress pinned up and a dishclout tied to your tail. Won't that be nice? (He places a ruby ring on her finger) And there now! With this ring I thee own. Say, thank you, mistress.
BLOOM: Thank you, mistress.
BELLO: You will make the beds, get my tub ready,
empty the pisspots in the different rooms, including old Mrs Keogh's the
cook's, a sandy one. Ay, and rinse the
seven of them well, mind, or lap it up like champagne. Drink me piping hot. Hop! you will dance attendance or I'll
lecture you on your misdeeds, Miss Ruby, and spank your bare bot right well,
miss, with the hairbrush. You'll be
taught the error of your ways. At night
your wellcreamed braceleted hands will wear fortythreebutton gloves newpowdered
with talc and having delicately scented fingertips. For such favours knights of old laid down
their lives. (He chuckles) My boys will be no end charmed to see you
so ladylike, the colonel, above all.
When they come here the night before the wedding to fondle my new
attraction in gilded heels. First, I'll
have a go at you myself. A man I know on
the turf named Charles Alberta Marsh (I was in bed with him just now and
another gentleman out of the Hanaper and Petty Bag Office) is on the lookout
for a maid of all work at a short knock.
Swell the bust. Smile. Droop shoulders. What offers? (He points) For that lot trained by owner to fetch
and carry, basket in mouth. (He bares
his arm and plunges it elbowdeep in Bloom's vulva) There's a fine depth for you! What, boys?
That give you a hardon? (He
shoves his arm in a bidder's face) Here,
wet the deck and wipe it round!
A BIDDER: A florin!
(Dillon's lacquey rings his handbell.)
A VOICE: One and eightpence too much.
THE LACQUEY: Barang!
CHARLES
A DARKVISAGED MAN: (In disguised accent) Hoondert punt sterlink.
VOICES: (Subdued) For the Caliph Haroun Al Raschid.
BLOOM: (Bends his blushing face into his armpits
and simpers with forefinger in mouth) O,
I know what you're hinting at now.
BLOOM:
BLOOM: I was indecently treated, I ... inform the
police. Hundred pounds. Unmentionable. I ...
BLOOM: To drive me mad! Moll!
I forgot! Forgive! Moll! ... We ... Still ...
(Old Sleepy Hollow calls over the wold.)
SLEEPY HOLLOW: Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!
BLOOM: (In tattered moccasins 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 ...
(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!
BLOOM: They ... I ...
BLOOM: Ten and six.
The act of low scoundrels. Let me
go. I will return. I will prove ...
A VOICE: Swear!
(Bloom clenches his fists and crawls forward, a
bowie knife between his teeth.)
BLOOM: Justice!
All
(He bites his thumb.)
BLOOM: (Clasps his head) My willpower! Memory!
I have sinned! I have suff ...
(He weeps tearlessly.)
(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, O. Mastiansky,
the Reverend Leopold Abramovitz, Chazen.
With swaying arms they wail in pneuma over the recreant Bloom.)
THE CIRCUMCISED: (In a dark guttural chant as
they cast dead sea fruit upon him, no flowers) Shema
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 oak
frame a nymph with hair unbound, lightly clad in teabrown art colours, descends
from her grotto and passing under interlacing yews, stands over Bloom.)
THE YEWS: (Their leaves whispering) Sister. Our Sister. Ssh.
THE NYMPH: (Softly) Mortal!
(Kindly) Nay, dost not weepest!
BLOOM: (Crawls jellily forward under the boughs,
streaked by sunlight, with dignity) This
position. I felt it was expected of
me. Force of habit.
THE NYMPH: Mortal!
You found me in evil company, highkickers, coster picnic makers,
pugilists, popular generals, immoral panto boys in flesh tights and the nifty
shimmy dancers, La Aurora and Karini, musical acts, the hit of the
century. I was hidden in cheap pink
paper that smelt of rock oil. I was
surrounded by the stale smut of clubmen, stories to disturb callow youth, ads
for transparencies, truedup dice and bustpads, proprietary articles and why
wear a truss with testimonial from ruptured gentleman. Useful hints to the married.
BLOOM: (Lifts a turtle head towards her
lap) We have met before. On another star.
THE NYMPH: (Sadly) Rubber goods. Neverrip.
Brand as supplied to the aristocracy.
Corsets for men. I cure fits or
money refunded. Unsolicited testimonials
for Professor Waldmann's wonderful chest exuber. My bust developed four inches in three weeks,
reports Mrs Gus Rublin with photo.
BLOOM: You mean Photo Bits?
THE NYMPH: I do.
You bore me away, framed me in oak and tinsel, set me above your
marriage couch. Unseen, one summer eve,
you kissed me in four places. And with
loving pencil you shaded my eyes, my bosom and my shame.
BLOOM: (Humbly kisses her long hair) Your classic curves, beautiful
immortal. I was glad to look on you, to
praise you, a thing of beauty, almost to pray.
THE NYMPH: During dark nights I heard your praise.
BLOOM: (Quickly)
Yes, yes. You mean that I ...
Sleep reveals the worst side of everyone, children perhaps excepted. I know I fell out of my bed or rather was
pushed. Steel wine is said to cure
snoring. For the rest there is that English
invention, pamphlet of which I received some days ago, incorrectly
addressed. It claims to afford a
noiseless inoffensive vent. (He sighs)
'Twas ever thus. Frailty, thy
name is marriage.
THE NYMPH: (Her fingers in her ears) And words. They are not in my dictionary.
BLOOM: You understand them?
THE YEWS: Ssh.
THE NYMPH: (Covers her face with her hand) What have I not seen in that
chamber? What must my eyes look down on?
BLOOM: (Apologetically) I know.
Soiled personal linen, wrong side up with care. The quoits are loose. From
THE NYMPH: (Bends her head) Worse!
Worse!
BLOOM: (Reflects precautiously) That antiquated commode. It wasn't her weight. She scaled just eleven stone nine. She put on nine pounds after weaning. It was a crack and want of glue. Eh?
And that absurd orangekeyed utensil which has only one handle.
(The sound of a waterfall is heard in bright
cascade.)
THE WATERFALL:
Poulaphouca
Poulaphouca
Poulaphouca
Poulaphouca
THE YEWS: (Mingling their boughs) Listen.
Whisper. She is right, our
sister. We grew by Poulaphouca
waterfall. We gave shade on languorous
summer days.
JOHN WYSE NOLAN: (In the background, in Irish
National Forester's uniform, doffs his plumed hat) Prosper!
Give shade on languorous days, trees of
THE YEWS: (Murmuring) Who came to Poulaphouca with the high
school excursion? Who left his
nutquesting classmates to seek our shade?
BLOOM: (Pigeonbreasted, bottleshouldered,
padded, in nondescript juvenile grey and
black striped suit, too small for him, white tennis shoes, bordered stockings
with turnover tops, and a red school cap 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 the love crushes, instincts of the herd, and the
dark sexsmelling theatre unbridles vice.
Even a pricelist of their hosiery.
And then the heat. There were
snapshots that summer. End of
school. And tipsycake. Halcyon days.
(Halcyon Days, high school boys in blue and white
football jerseys and shorts, Master Donald Turnbull, Master Abraham Chatterton,
Master Owen Goldberg, Master Jack Meredith, Master Percy Apjohn, stand in a
clearing of the trees and shout to Master Leopold Bloom.)
THE HALCYON DAYS: Mackerel! Live us again. Hurray!
(They cheer.)
BLOOM: (Hobbledehoy, warmgloved, mammamufflered,
stunned with spent snowballs, struggles to rise) Again!
I feel sixteen! What a lark! Let's ring all the bells in
THE ECHO: Fool!
THE YEWS: (Rustling) She is right, our sister. Whisper. (Whispered kisses are heard in
all the wood. Faces of hamadryads peep
out from the boles and among the leaves and break blossoming into bloom) Who profaned our silent shade?
THE NYMPH: (Coyly through parting fingers) There! In the open air?
THE YEWS: (Sweeping downward) Sister, yes.
And on our virgin sward.
THE WATERFALL:
Poulaphouca
Poulaphouca
Phoucaphouca
Phoucaphouca.
THE NYMPH: (With wide
fingers) O! Infamy!
BLOOM: I was precocious. Youth.
The fauns. I sacrificed to the
god of the forest. The flowers that
bloom in the spring. It was pairing
time. Capillary attraction is a natural
phenomenon. Lotty Clarke, flaxenhaired,
I saw at her night toilet through illclosed curtains, with poor papa's
operaglasses. The wanton ate grass
wildly. She rolled downhill at
(Staggering Bob, a whitepolled calf, thrusts a
ruminating head with humid nostrils through the foliage.)
STAGGERING BOB: Me. Me see.
BLOOM: Simply satisfying a need. (With pathos) No girl would when I went girling. Too ugly.
They wouldn't play ...
(High on Ben Howth through rhododendrons a
nannygoat passes, plumpuddered, buttytailed, dropping currents.)
THE NANNYGOAT: (Bleats) Megegaggegg! Nannannanny!
BLOOM: (Hatless, flushed, covered with burrs of
thistledown and gorsepine) Regularly
engaged. Circumstances alter cases. (He gazes intently downwards on the
water) Thirtytwo head over heels per
second. Press nightmare. Giddy Elijah.
Fall from cliff. Sad end of
government printer's clerk. (Through
silversilent summer air the dummy of Bloom, rolled in a mummy, rolls rotatingly
from the Lion's Head cliff into the purple waiting waters.)
THE DUMMYMUMMY: Bbbbblllllbbblblodschbg?
(Far out in the bay between Bailey and
COUNCILLOR NANNETTI: (Alone on deck, in dark
alpaca, yellow kitefaced, his hand in his waistcoat opening, declaims) When my country takes her place among the
nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written. I have ...
BLOOM: Done.
Prff.
THE NYMPH: (Loftily) We immortals, as you saw today, have not
such a place and no hair there either.
We are stonecold and pure. We eat
electric light. (She arches her body
in lascivious crispation, placing her forefinger in her mouth) Spoke to
me. Heard from behind. How then could you ...?
BLOOM: (Pacing the heather abjectly) O, I have been a perfect pig. Enemas too I have administered. One third of a pint of quassia, to which add
a tablespoonful of rocksalt. Up the fundament. With Hamilton Long's syringe, the ladies'
friend.
THE NYMPH: In my presence. The powderpuff. (She blushes and makes a knee) And the rest.
BLOOM: (Dejected) Yes.
Peccavi! I have paid
homage on that living altar where the back changes name. (With sudden
fervour) For why should the dainty scented jewelled hand, the hand that
rules ...?
(Figures wind serpenting in slow woodland pattern
around the treestems, cooeeing.)
THE VOICE OF KITTY: (In the thicket) Show us one of them cushions.
THE VOICE OF FLORRY: Here.
(A grouse wings clumsily through the underwood.)
THE VOICE OF LYNCH: (In the thicket) Whew!
Piping hot!
THE VOICE OF ZOE: (From the thicket) Came from a hot place.
THE VOICE OF VIRAG: (A birdchief, bluestreaked
and feathered in war panoply with his assegai, striding through a crackling
canebrake over beechmast and acorns) Hot! Hot!
Ware Sitting Bull!
BLOOM: It overpowers me. The warm impress of her warm form. Even to sit where a woman has sat, especially
with divaricated thighs, as though to grant the last favours, most especially
with previously well uplifted with sateen coatpants. So womanly full. It fills me full.
THE WATERFALL:
Phillaphulla
Poulaphouca
Poulaphouca
Poulaphouca.
THE YEWS: Ssh! Sister, speak!
THE NYMPH: (Eyeless, in nun's white habit, coif
and huge winged wimple, softly, with remote eyes) Tranquilla convent. Sister Agatha. Mount
(Bloom half rises.
His back trousers' button snaps.)
THE BUTTON: Bip!
(Two sluts of the Coombe dance rainily by, shawled,
yelling flatly.)
THE SLUTS:
O
Leopold lost the pin of his drawers
He
didn't know what to do,
To
keep it up,
To
keep it up.
BLOOM: (Coldly)
You have broken the spell.
The last straw. If there were
only ethereal where would you all be, postulants and novices? Shy but willing, like an ass pissing.
THE YEWS: (Their silverfoil of leaves
precipitating, their skinny arms ageing and swaying) Deciduously!
THE NYMPH: 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 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 of nine
lives! Fair play, madam. No pruning knife. The fox and the grapes, is it? What do we lack with your barbed wire? Crucifix not thick enough? (He clutches her veil) A holy abbot you want or Brophy, the lame
gardener, or the spoutless statue of the watercarrier or good Mother Alphonsus,
eh Raynard?
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
muscosities all over you. I tried
it. Your strength our weakness. What's our studfee? What will you pay on the nail? You men dancers on the
(The figure of Bella Cohen stands before him.)
BELLA: You'll know me the next time.
BLOOM: (Composed, regards her) Passée. Mutton dressed as lamb. Long in the tooth and superfluous hairs. A raw onion the last thing at night would
benefit your complexion. And take some
double chin drill. Your eyes are as
vapid as the glass eyes of your stuffed fox.
They have the dimensions of your other features, that's all. I'm not a triple screw propeller.
BELLA: (Contemptuously) You're not game, in fact. (Her sowcunt barks) Fohracht!
BLOOM: (Contemptuously) Clean your nailless middle finger first,
the cold spunk of your bully is dripping from your cockscomb. Take a handful of hay and wipe yourself.
BELLA: I know you, canvasser! Dead cod!
BLOOM: I saw him, kipkeeper! Pox and gleet vendor!
BELLA: (Turns to the piano) Which of you was playing the dead march
from Saul?
ZOE: Me.
Mind your cornflowers. (She
darts to the piano and bangs chords on it with crossed arms) The cat's ramble through the slag. (She glances back) Eh?
Who's making love to my sweeties?
(She darts back to the table) What's
yours is mine and what's mine is my own.
(Kitty disconcerted coats her teeth with the silver
paper. Bloom approaches Zoe.)
BLOOM: (Gently) Give me back that potato,
will you?
ZOE: Forfeits, a fine thing and a superfine thing.
ZOE:
Give
a thing and take it back
God'll
ask you where is that
You'll
say you don't know
God'll
send you down below.
BLOOM: There is a memory attached to it. I should like to have it.
STEPHEN: To have or not to have, that is the
question.
ZOE: Here. (She
hauls up a reef of her slip, revealing her bare thigh and unrolls the potato
from the top of her stocking) Those
that hides knows where to find.
BELLA: (Frowns)
Here. This isn't a musical
peepshow. And don't you smash that
piano. Who's paying here?
(She goes to the pianola. Stephen fumbles in his pocket and, taking out
a banknote by its corner, hands it to her.)
STEPHEN: (With exaggerated politeness) This silken purse I made out of the sow's
ear of the public. Madam, excuse
me. If you allow me. (He indicates vaguely Lynch and Bloom) We are all in the same sweepstake, Kinch
and Lynch. Dans ce bordel ou tenons notre
état.
LYNCH: (Calls from the hearth) Dedalus!
Give her your blessing for me.
STEPHEN: (Hands Bella a coin) Gold.
She has it.
BELLA: (Looks at the money, then at Zoe, Florry
and Kitty) Do you want three
girls? It's ten shillings here.
STEPHEN: (Delightedly) A hundred thousand apologies. (He fumbles again and takes out and hands
her two crowns) Permit, brevi
manu, my sight is somewhat troubled.
(Bella goes to the table to count the money while
Stephen talks to himself in monosyllables.
Zoe bounds over to the table.
Kitty leans over Zoe's neck.
Lynch gets up, rights his cap and, clasping Kitty's waist, adds his head
to the group.)
FLORRY: (Strives heavily to rise) Ow!
My foot's asleep.
(She limps over to the table. Bloom approaches.)
BELLA, ZOE, KITTY, LYNCH, BLOOM: (Chattering and
squabbling) The gentleman ... ten
shillings ... paying for the three ... allow me a moment ... this gentleman
pays separate ... who's touching it? ... ow ... mind who you're pinching ...
are you staying the night or a short time? ... who did? ... you're a liar,
excuse me ... the gentleman paid down like a gentleman ... drink ... it's long
after eleven.
STEPHEN: (At the pianola, making a gesture of
abhorrence) No bottles! What, eleven?
A riddle.
ZOE: (Lifting up her pettigown and folding a
half sovereign into the top of her stocking)
Hard earned on the flat of my back.
LYNCH: (Lifting Kitty from the table) Come!
KITTY: Wait.
(She clutches the two crowns.)
FLORRY: And me?
LYNCH: Hoopla! (He lifts her, carries her and bumps her down
on the sofa.)
STEPHEN:
The
fox crew, the cocks flew,
The
bells in heaven
Were
striking eleven.
'Tis
time for her poor soul
To
get out of heaven.
BLOOM: (Quietly lays a half sovereign on the
table between Bella and Florry) So. Allow me. (He takes up the poundnote) Three times ten. We're square.
BELLA: (Admiringly) You're such a slyboots, old cocky. I could kiss you.
ZOE: (Points)
Hum? Deep as a drawwell. (Lynch bends Kitty back over the sofa and
kisses her. Bloom goes with the poundnote to Stephen.)
BLOOM: This is yours.
STEPHEN: How is that? Le distrait or absentminded
beggar. (He fumbles again in his
pocket and draws out a handful of coins.
An object falls) That fell.
BLOOM: (Stooping, picks up and hands a box of
matches) This.
STEPHEN: Lucifer.
Thanks.
BLOOM: (Quietly)
You had better hand over that cash to me to take care of. Why pay more?
STEPHEN: (Hands him all his coins) But just before you are generous.
BLOOM: I will but is it wise? (He counts) One, seven, eleven, and five. Six.
Eleven. I don't answer for what
you may have lost.
STEPHEN: Why striking eleven? Proparoxyton.
Moment before the next Lessing says.
Thirsty fox. (He laughs
loudly) Burying his grandmother. Probably he killed her.
BLOOM: That is one pound six and eleven. One pound seven, say.
STEPHEN: Doesn't matter a rambling damn.
BLOOM: No, but ...
STEPHEN: (Comes to the table) Cigarette, please. (Lynch tosses a cigarette from the sofa to
the table) And so Georgina Johnson
is dead and married. (A cigarette
appears on the table. Stephen looks at
it.) Wonder. Parlour magic. Married.
Hm. (He strikes a match and proceeds to light the cigarette with enigmatic
melancholy.)
LYNCH: (Watching him) You would have a better chance of
lighting it if you held the match nearer.
STEPHEN: (Brings the match nearer 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
ZOE: It was a commercial traveller married her and
took her away with him.
FLORRY: (Nods)
Mr Lambe from
STEPHEN: Lamb of
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 into the
grate.)
BLOOM: Don't smoke.
You ought to eat. Cursed dog I
met. (To Zoe) You have nothing?
ZOE: Is he hungry?
STEPHEN: (Extends his hand to her smiling and
chants to the air of the bloodoath in the Dusk of the Gods)
Hangende
Hunger
Fragende
Frau,
Macht
uns alle kaput.
ZOE: (Tragically) Hamlet, I am thy father's
gimlet! (She takes his hand) Blue eyed beauty, I'll read your
hand. (She points to his
forehead) No wit, no wrinkles. (She
counts) Two, three, Mars, that's
courage. (Stephen shakes his
head) No kid.
LYNCH: Sheet lightning courage. The youth who could not shiver and shake. (To Zoe)
Who taught you palmistry?
ZOE: (Turns)
Ask my ballocks that I haven't got.
(To Stephen) I see it in your face. The eye, like that. (She frowns with lowered head.)
LYNCH: (Laughing, slaps Kitty behind twice) Like that. Pandy bat.
(Twice loudly a pandybat cracks, the coffin of the
pianola flies open, the bald little round jack-in-the-box head of Father Dolan
springs up.)
FATHER DOLAN: Any boy want flogging? Broke his glasses? Lazy idle little schemer. See it in your eye.
(Mild, benign, rectorial, reproving, the head of
Don John Conmee rises from the pianola coffin.)
DON JOHN CONMEE: Now, Father Dolan! Now. I'm sure that Stephen is a very good little
boy.
ZOE: (Examining Stephen's palm) Woman's hand.
STEPHEN: (Murmurs) Continue.
Lie. Hold me. Caress.
I never could read His handwriting except His criminal thumbprint on the
haddock.
ZOE: What day were you born?
STEPHEN: Thursday.
Today.
ZOE: Thursday's child has far to go. (She traces lines on his hand) Line of fate. Influential friends.
FLORRY: (Pointing) Imagination.
ZOE: Mount of the moon. You'll meet with a ... (She peers at his
hands abruptly) I won't tell you
what's not good for you. Or do you want
to know?
BLOOM: (Detaches her fingers and offers his
palm) More harm than good. Here.
Read mine.
BELLA: Show.
(She turns up Bloom's hand) I
thought so. Knobby knuckles, for the
women.
ZOE: (Peering at Bloom's palm) Gridiron.
Travels beyond the sea and marry money.
BLOOM: Wrong.
ZOE: (Quickly)
O, I see. Short little
finger. Henpecked husband. That wrong?
(Black Liz, a huge rooster hatching in a chalked
circle, rises, stretches her wings and clucks.)
BLACK LIZ: Gara.
Klook. Klook. Klook.
(She sidles from her newlaid egg and waddles off.)
BLOOM: (Points to his hand) That weal there is an accident. Fell and cut it twentytwo years ago. I was sixteen.
ZOE: I see, says the blind man. Tell us news.
STEPHEN: See?
Moves to one great goal. I am
twentytwo too. Sixteen years ago I
twentytwo tumbled, twentytwo years ago he sixteen fell off his hobbyhorse. (He winces) Hurt my hand somewhere. Must see a dentist. Money.
(Zoe whispers to Florry. They giggle.
Bloom releases his hand and writes idly on the table in backhand,
pencilling slow curves.)
FLORRY: What?
(A hackneycar, number three hundred and twentyfour,
with a gallantbuttocked mare, driven by James Barton, Harmony Avenue,
Donnybrook, trots past. Blazes Boylan
and Lenehan sprawl swaying on the sideseats.
The Ormond boots crouches behind on the axle. Sadly over the crossblind
THE BOOTS: (Jogging, mocks them with thumb and
wriggling wormfingers) Haw, haw,
have you the horn?
(Bronze by gold they whisper.)
ZOE: (To Florry)
Whisper.
(They whisper again.)
(Over the well of the car Blazes Boylan leans, his
boater straw set sideways, a red flower in his mouth. Lenehan, in a yachtsman's cap and white
shoes, officiously detaches a long hair from Blazes Boylan's shoulder.)
LENEHAN: Ho!
What I do here behold? Were you
brushing the cobwebs off a few quims?
BOYLAN: (Seated, smiles) Plucking a turkey.
LENEHAN: A good night's work.
BOYLAN: (Holding up four thick bluntungulated
fingers, winks) Blazes Kate! Up to sample or your money back. (He holds out a forefinger) Smell that.
LENEHAN: (Smells gleefully) Ah!
Lobster and mayonnaise. Ah!
ZOE AND FLORRY: (Laugh together) Ha ha ha ha.
BOYLAN: (Jumps surely from the car and calls
loudly for all to hear) Hello,
Bloom! Mrs Bloom up yet?
BLOOM: (In a flunkey's plum plush coat and
kneebreeches, buff stockings and powdered wig)
I'm afraid not, sir, the last articles ...
BOYLAN: (Tosses his sixpence) Here, to buy yourself a gin and
splash. (He hangs his hat smartly on
a peg of Bloom's antlered head) Show
me in. I have a little private business
with your wife. You understand?
BLOOM: Thank you, sir. Yes, sir, Madam Tweedy is in her bath, sir.
BOYLAN: (A merry twinkle in his eye) Topping!
BELLA: What?
What is it?
(Zoe whispers to her.)
BELLA: (Laughing) Ho ho ho ho.
BOYLAN: (To Bloom, over his shoulder) You can apply your eye to the keyhole and
play with yourself while I just go through her a few times.
BLOOM: Thank you, sir, I will, sir. May I bring two men chums to witness the deed
and take a snapshot? (He holds an
ointment jar) Vaseline, sir? Orangeflower?... Lukewarm water?...
KITTY: (From the sofa) Tell us, Florry. Tell us.
What.
(Florry whispers to her. Whispering lovewords
murmur liplapping loudly, poppysmic plopslop.)
MINA KENNEDY: (Her eyes upturned) O, it must be like the scent of geraniums
and lovely peaches! O, he simply
idolises every bit of her! Stuck
together! Covered with kisses!
KITTY: (Laughing) Hee hee hee.
BOYLAN'S VOICE: (Sweetly, hoarsely, in the pit
of his stomach) Ah! Gooblazqruk brukarchkrasht!
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 hu.
(Stephen and Bloom gaze in the mirror. The face of William Shakespeare, beardless,
appears there, rigid in facial paralysis, crowned by the reflection of the
reindeer antlered hatrack in the hall.)
SHAKESPEARE: (In dignified ventriloquy) 'Tis the loud laugh bespeaks the vacant
mind. (To Bloom) Thou thoughtest as how thou wastest
invisible. Gaze. (He crows with a black capon's laugh) Iagogo!
How my Oldfellow chokit his Thursdaymomun. Iagogogo!
BLOOM: (Smiles yellowly at the whores) When will I hear the joke?
ZOE: Before you're twice married and once a
widower.
BLOOM: Lapses are condoned. Even the great Napoleon, when measurements
were taken near the skin after his death ...
(Mrs Dignam, window woman, her snubnose and cheeks
flushed with deathtalk, tears and Tunny's tawny sherry, hurries by in her
weeds, her bonnet awry, rouging and powdering her cheeks, lips and nose, a pen
chivvying her brood of cygnets. Beneath
her skirt appear her late husband's everyday trousers and turnedup boots, large
eights. She holds a Scottish widow's
insurance policy and large marqueeumbrella under which her brood runs with her,
Patsy hopping on one short foot, his collar loose, a hank of porksteaks dangling,
Freddy whimpering, Susy with a crying cod's mouth, Alice struggling with the
baby. She cuffs them on, her streamers
flaunting aloft.)
FREDDY: Ah, ma, you're dragging me along!
SUSY: Mamma, the beeftea is fizzing over!
SHAKESPEARE: (With paralytic rage) Weda seca whokilla farst.
(The face of Martin Cunningham, bearded, refeatures
Shakespeare's beardless face. The
marqueeumbrella sways drunkenly, the children run aside. Under the umbrella appears Mrs Cunningham in
Merry Widow hat and kimono gown. She
glides sidling and bowing, twisting japanesily.)
MRS CUNNINGHAM: (Sings)
And
they call me the jewel of
MARTIN CUNNINGHAM: (Gazes on her impassive) Immense!
Most bloody awful demirep!
STEPHEN: Et exaltabuntur cornua iusti.
BELLA: None of that here. Come to the wrong shop.
LYNCH: Let him alone. He's back from
ZOE: (Runs to Stephen and links him) O go on!
Give us some parleyvoo.
(Stephen claps hat on head and leaps outspread, a
painted smile on his face.)
LYNCH: (Pommelling on the sofa) Rmm Rmm Rmm Rrrrrrmmmmm.
STEPHEN: (Gabbles, with marionette jerks) Thousand places of entertainment to
expenses your evenings with lovely ladies saling gloves and other things
perhaps her heart beerchops perfect fashionable house very eccentric where lots
cocottes beautiful dressed much about princesses like are dancing cancan and
walking there parisian clowneries extra foolish for bachelors foreigns the same
if talking a poor english how much smart they are on things love and sensations
voluptuous. Misters very selects for is
pleasure must to visit heaven and hell show with mortuary candles and they
tears silver which occur every night.
Perfectly shocking terrific of religion's things mockery seen in
universal world. All chic womans which
arrive full of modesty then disrobe and squeal loud to see vampire man debauch
nun very fresh young with dessous troublants. (He clacks his tongue loudly) Ho, la
la! Ce pif qu'il a!
LYNCH: Vive le vampire!
THE WHORES: Bravo!
Parleyvoo!
STEPHEN: (Grimacing with head back, laughs
loudly, clapping himself) Great
success of laughing. Angels much
prostitutes like and holy of diamonds very amiable costumed. Or do you are fond better what belongs they
moderns pleasure turpitude of old mans? (He
points about him with grotesque gestures which Lynch and the whores reply
to) Caoutchouc statue woman
reversible or lifesize tompeeptoms virgins nudities very lesbic the kiss five
ten times. Enter gentlemen to see in
mirrors every positions trapezes all that machine there besides also if desire
act awfully bestial butcher's boy pollutes in warm veal liver or omelette on
the belly pièce de Shakespeare.
BELLA: (Clapping her belly, sinks back on the
sofa with a shout of laughter) An
omelette on the ... Ho! ho! ho! ho! ... Omelette on the ...
STEPHEN: (Mincingly) I love you, Sir darling. Speak you englishman tongue for double
entente cordiale. O, yes, mon
loup. How much cost?
BELLA: (Laughing) Omelette ...
THE WHORES: (Laughing) Encore!
Encore!
STEPHEN: Mark me.
I dreamt of a watermelon.
ZOE: Go abroad and love a foreign lady.
LYNCH: Across the world for a wife.
FLORRY: Dreams go by contraries.
STEPHEN: (Extending his arms) It was here. Street of harlots. In Serpentine Avenue Beelzebub showed me her,
a fubsy widow. Where's the red carpet
spread?
BLOOM: (Approaching Stephen) Look ...
STEPHEN: No, I flew. My foes beneath me. And ever shall be. World without end. (He cries) Pater! Free!
BLOOM: I say, look ...
STEPHEN: Break my spirit, will he? O merde alors! (He cries, his vulture
talons sharpened) Hola! Hillyho!
(Simon Dedalus' voice hilloes in answer, somewhat
sleepy but ready.)
SIMON: That's all right. (He swoops uncertainly through the air,
wheeling, uttering cries of heartening, on strong ponderous buzzard wings) Ho, boy!
Are you going to win? Hoop! Pschatt!
Stable with those halfcastes.
Wouldn't let them within the bawl of an ass. Head up!
Keep our flag flying! An eagle
gules volant in a field argent displayed.
THE CROWD:
Card
of the races. Racing card!
Ten
to one the field!
Tommy
on the clay here! Tommy on the clay!
Ten
to one bar one. Ten to one bar one.
Try
your luck on spinning Jenny!
Ten
to one bar one!
Sell
the monkey, boys! Sell the monkey!
I'll
give ten to one!
Ten
to one bar one!
(A dark horse, riderless, bolts like a phantom past
the winningpost, his mane moonfoaming, his eyeballs stars. The field follows, a bunch of bucking
mounts. Skeleton horses: Sceptre,
Maximum the Second, Zinfandel, the Duke of
THE
GARRETT DEASY: (Bolt upright, his nailscraped
face plastered with postage stamps, brandishes his hockeystick, his blue eyes
flashing in the prism of the chandelier as his mount lopes by at a schooling
gallop) Per vias rectas!
(A yoke of buckets leopards all over him and his
rearing nag, a torrent of mutton broth with dancing coins of carrots, barley,
onions, turnips, potatoes.)
THE GREEN LODGES: Soft day, sir John! Soft day, your honour!
(Private Carr, Private Compton and Cissy Caffrey
pass beneath the windows, singing in discord.)
STEPHEN: Hark!
Our friend, noise in the street!
ZOE: (Holds up her hand) Stop!
PRIVATE CARR, PRIVATE COMPTON
AND CISSY CAFFREY:
Yet
I've a sort of
ZOE: That's me.
(She claps her hands) Dance!
Dance! (She runs to the pianola) Who has twopence?
BLOOM: Who'll ...
LYNCH: (Handing her coins) Here.
STEPHEN: (Cracking his fingers impatiently) Quick! Quick! Where's my auger's
rod? (He runs to the piano and takes
his ashplant, beating his foot in tripudium.)
ZOE: (Turns the drumhandle) There.
(She drops two pennies in the slot. Gold pink and violet lights start forth. The drum turns purring in low hesitation
waltz. Professor Goodwin, in a
bowknotted periwig, in court dress, wearing a stained inverness cape, bent in
two from incredible age, totters across the room, his hands fluttering. He sits tinily on the piano stool and lifts
and beats handless sticks of arms on the keyboard, nodding with damsel's grace,
his bowknot bobbing.)
ZOE: (Twirls around herself, heeltapping) Dance.
Anybody here for there? Who'll
dance?
(The pianola, with changing lights, plays in waltz
time the prelude to My Girl's a Yorkshire
Girl. Stephen throws his ashplant on
the table and seizes Zoe around the waist.
Florry and Bella push the table towards the fireplace. Stephen, arming Zoe with exaggerated grace,
begins to waltz her around the room. Her
sleeve, falling from gracing arms, reveals a white fleshflower of
vaccination. Bloom stands aside. Between the curtains, Professor Maginni
inserts a leg on the toepoint of which spins a silk hat. With a deft kick, he sends it spinning to his
crown and jauntyhatted skates in. He
wears a slate frockcoat with claret silk lapels, a gorget of cream tulle, a
green lowcut waistcoat, stock collar with white kerchief, tight lavender
trousers, patent pumps and canary gloves.
In his buttonhole is a dahlia. He
twirls in reversed directions a clouded cane, then wedges it tight in his
oxter. He places a hand limply on his
breastbone, bows and fondles his flower and buttons.)
MAGINNI: The poetry of motion, art of
callisthenics. No connection with Madam
Legget Byrne's or Levinstone's. Fancy
dress balls arranged. Deportment. The Katty Lanner steps. So.
Watch me! My terpsichorean
abilities.
(He minuets forward three paces on tripping bee's
feet) Tout le monde en avant!
Révérence! Tout le monde en
place!
(The prelude ceases. professor Goodwin, beating vague arms,
shrivels, shrinks, his live cape falling about the stool. The air, in firmer waltz time, pounds. Stephen and Zoe circle freely. The lights change, glow, fade, gold, rose,
violet.)
THE PIANOLA:
The
young fellows were talking about their girls,
girls, girls,
Sweethearts
they'd left behind ...
(From a corner the morning hours run out,
goldhaired, slim, in girlish blue, waspwaisted, with innocent hands. Nimbly they dance, twirling their skipping
ropes. The hours of
MAGINNI: (Clipclaps glovesilent hands)
Carré! Avant deux! Breathe evenly! Balance!
(The morning and
HOURS: You may touch my ...
CAVALIERS: May I touch your?
HOURS: O, but lightly!
CAVALIERS: O, so lightly!
THE PIANOLA:
My
little shy little lass has a waist.
(Zoe and Stephen turn boldly with looser
swing. The twilight hours advance, from
long landshadows, dispersed, lagging, languideyed, their cheeks delicate with
cipria and false faint bloom. They are
in grey gauze with dark bat sleeves that flutter in the land breeze.)
MAGINNI: Avant!
huit! Traversé! Salut!
Cours de mains! Croisé!
(The night hours steal to the last place. Morning,
THE BRACELETS: Heigho! Heigho!
ZOE: (Twisting, her hand to her brow) O!
MAGINNI: Les tiroirs! Chaine de dames! La corbeille!
Dos à dos!
(Arabesquing wearily, they weave a pattern on the
floor, weaving, unweaving, curtseying, twisting, simply swirling.)
ZOE: I'm giddy.
(She frees herself, droops on a chair, Stephen
seizes Florry and turns with her.)
MAGINNI: Boulangère! Les ronds!
Les ponts! Chevaux de bois!
Escargots!
(Twining, receding, with interchanging hands, the
night hours link, each with arching arms, in a mosaic of movements. Stephen and Florry turn cumbrously.)
MAGINNI: Dansez avec vos dames! Changez de dames! Donnez le petit bouquet à votre dame! Remerciez!
THE PIANOLA:
Best,
best of all,
Baraabum!
KITTY: (Jumps up) O, they played that on the hobbyhorses at
the Mirus bazaar!
(She runs to Stephen. He leaves Florry brusquely and seizes
Kitty. A screaming bittern's harsh high
whistle shrieks. Groangrousegurgling Toft's
cumbersome whirligig turns slowly the room right roundabout the room.)
THE PIANOLA:
My
girl's a
ZOE:
Come on all!
(She seizes Florry and waltzes her.)
STEPHEN: Pas seul!
(He wheels Kitty into Lynch's arms, snatches up his
ashplant from the table and takes the floor.
All wheel, whirl, waltz, twirl.
Bloombella, Kittylynch, Florryzoe, jujuby women. Stephen with hat ashplant frogsplits in
middle highkicks with skykicking mouth shut hand clasp part under thigh, with
clang tinkle boomhammer tallyho hornblower blue green yellow flashes. Toft's cumbersome turns with hobbyhorse
riders from gilded snakes dangled, bowels fandango leaping spurn soil foot and
fall again.)
THE PIANOLA:
Though
she's a factory lass
And
wears no fancy clothes.
(Closeclutched swift swifter with glareblareflare
scudding they scotlootshoot lumbering by.
Baraabum!)
TUTTI: Encore!
Bis! Bravo! Encore!
SIMON: Think of your mother's people!
STEPHEN: Dance of death.
(Bang fresh barang bang of lacquey's bell, horse,
nag, steer, piglings, Conmee on Christass lame crutch and leg sailor in
cockboat armfolded ropepulling hitching stamp hornpipe through and through,
Baraabum! On nags, hogs, bellhorses,
Gadarene swine, Corny in coffin. Steel
shark stone onehandled Nelson, two trickies Frauenzimmer plumstained from pram
falling bawling. Gum, he's a champion. Fuseblue peer from barrel rev. evensong Love
on hackney jaunt Blazes blind coddoubled bicyclers Dilly with snowcake no fancy
clothes. Then in last wiswitchback
lumbering up and down bump mashtub sort of viceroy and reine relish for
tublumber bumpshire rose. Baraarbum!)
(The couples fall aside. Stephen whirls giddily. Room whirls back. Eyes closed, he totters. Red rails fly spacewards. Stars all around suns turn roundabout. Bright midges dance on wall. He stops dead.)
STEPHEN: Ho!
(Stephen's mother, emaciated, rises stark through
the floor in leper grey with a wreath of faded orange blossoms and a torn
bridal veil, her face worn and noseless, green with grave mould. Her hair is scant and lank. She fixes her bluecircled hollow eyesockets
on Stephen and opens her toothless mouth uttering a silent word. A choir of virgins and confessors sing
voicelessly.)
THE CHOIR:
Liliata
rutilantium te confessorum ...
Iubilantium
te virginum ...
(From the top of a tower Buck Mulligan, in
particoloured jester's dress of puce and yellow and clown's cap with curling
bell, stands gasping at her, a smoking buttered split scone in his hand.)
BUCK MULLIGAN: She's beastly dead. The pity of it! Mulligan meets the afflicted mother. (He upturns his eyes) Mercurial Malachi.
THE MOTHER: (With the subtle smile of death's
madness) I was once the beautiful
May Goulding. I am dead.
STEPHEN: (Horrorstruck) Lemur, who are you? What bogeyman's trick is this?
BUCK MULLIGAN: (Shakes his curling capbell) The mockery of it! Kinch killed her dogsbody bitchbody. She kicked the bucket. (Tears of molten butter fall from his eyes
onto the scone) Our great sweet
mother! Epi oinopa ponton.
THE MOTHER: (Comes nearer, breathing upon him
softly her breath of wetted ashes) All
must go through it, Stephen. More women
than men in the world. You too. Time will come.
STEPHEN: (Choking with fright, remorse and
horror) They said I killed you,
mother. He offended your memory. Cancer did it, not I. Destiny.
THE MOTHER: (A green rill of bile trickling from
a side of her mouth) You sang that
song to me. Love's bitter mystery.
STEPHEN: (Eagerly) Tell me the word, mother, if you know
now. The word known to all men.
THE MOTHER: Who saved you the night you jumped into
the train at Dalkey with Paddy Lee? Who
had pity for you when you were sad among the strangers? Prayer is allpowerful. Prayer for the suffering souls in the
Ursuline manual, for forty days'
indulgence. Repent, Stephen.
STEPHEN: The ghoul!
Hyena!
THE MOTHER: I pray for you in my other world. Get Dilly to make you that boiled rice every
night after your brain work. Years and
years I loved you, O my son, my firstborn, when you lay in my womb.
ZOE: (Fanning herself with the grate fan) I'm melting!
FLORRY: (Points to Stephen) Look!
He's white.
BLOOM: (Goes to the window to open it more) Giddy.
THE MOTHER: (With smouldering eyes) Repent!
O, the fire of hell!
STEPHEN: (Panting) 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 fingers) Beware!
God's hand! (A green crab with
malignant red eyes sticks deep its grinning claws in Stephen's heart.)
STEPHEN: (Strangled with rage) Shite!
(His features grow drawn and grey and old.)
BLOOM: (At the window) What?
STEPHEN: Ah non, par exemple! The intellectual imagination! With me all or not at all. Non serviam!
FLORRY: Give him some cold water. Wait. (She
rushes out.)
THE MOTHER: (Wrings her hands slowly, moaning
desperately) O Sacred Heart of
Jesus, have mercy on him! Save him from
hell, O divine Sacred Heart!
STEPHEN: No! No! No! Break my spirit all of you if you can! I'll bring you all to heel!
THE MOTHER: (In the agony of her
deathrattle) Have mercy on Stephen,
Lord, for my sake! Inexpressible was my
anguish when expiring with love, grief and agony on
STEPHEN: Nothung!
(He lifts his ashplant high with both hands and
smashes the chandelier. Time's livid
final flame leaps and, in the following darkness, ruin of all space, shattered
glass and toppling masonry.)
THE GASJET:
Pwfungg!
BLOOM: Stop!
LYNCH: (Rushes forward and seizes Stephen's
hand) Here! Hold on!
Don't run amok!
BELLA: Police!
(Stephen, abandoning his ashplant, his head and
arms thrown back stark, beats the ground and flees from the room past the
whores at the door.)
BELLA: (Screams)
After him!
(The two whores rush to the halldoors. Lynch and Kitty and Zoe stampede from the
room. They talk excitedly. Bloom follows, returns.)
THE WHORES: (Jammed in the doorway,
pointing) Down there.
ZOE: (Pointing)
There. There's something up.
BELLA: Who pays for the lamp? (She seizes Bloom's coattail) There. You were with him. The lamp's broken.
BLOOM: (Rushes to the hall, rushes back) What lamp, woman?
A WHORE: He tore his coat.
BELLA: (Her eyes hard with anger and cupidity,
points) Who's to pay for that? Ten shillings. You're a witness.
BLOOM: (Snatches up Stephen's ashplant) Me?
Ten shillings? Haven't you lifted
enough off him? Didn't he ...!
BELLA: (Loudly)
Here, non of your tall talk.
This isn't a brothel. A ten
shilling house.
BLOOM: (His hand under the lamp, pulls the
chain. Pulling, the gasjet lights up a
crushed mauve purple shade. His 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 a sixpenceworth of damage
done. Ten shillings!
FLORRY: (With a glass of water, enters) Where is he?
BELLA: Do you want me to call the police?
BLOOM: O, I know.
Bulldog on the premises. But he's
a Trinity student. Patrons of your
establishment. Gentlemen that pay the
rent. (He makes a masonic sign) Know
what I mean? Nephew of the
vicechancellor. You don't want a
scandal.
BELLA: (Angrily)
Trinity! Coming down here
ragging after the boat races and paying nothing. Are you my commander here? Where is he?
I'll charge him. Disgrace him, I
will. (She shouts) Zoe! Zoe!
BLOOM: (Urgently) And if it were your own son in Oxford! (Warmingly) I know.
BELLA: (Almost speechless) Who are you incog?
ZOE: (In the doorway) There's a row on.
BLOOM: What?
Where? (He throws a shilling
on the table and shouts) That's for
the chimney. Where? I need mountain air.
(He hurries out through the hall. The whores point. Florry follows, spilling water from her
tilted tumbler. On the doorstep all the
whores clustered talk volubly, pointing to the right where the fog has cleared
off. From the left arrives a jingling
hackney car. It slows to in front of the
house. Bloom at the halldoor perceives
Corny Kelleher who is about to dismount form 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
ghostly lewd smile. The silent lechers
turn to pay the jarvey. Zoe and Kitty
still point right. Bloom, parting them
swiftly, draws his caliph's hood and poncho and hurries down the steps with
sideways face. Incog Haroun al Raschid,
his flits behind the silent lechers and hastens on by the railings with fleet
step of a pard stewing the drag behind him, torn envelopes drenched in
aniseed. The ashplant marks his
stride. A pack of bloodhounds, led by
Hornblower of Trinity brandishing a dogwhip in tallyho cap and an old pair of
grey trousers, follows from far, picking up the scent, nearer, baying, panting,
at fault, breaking away, throwing their tongues, biting his heels, leaping at
his tail. He walks, runs, zigzags,
gallops, lugs laid back. He is pelted
with gravel, cabbagestumps, biscuitboxes, eggs, potatoes, dead codfish, woman's
slipperslappers. After him, freshfound,
the hue and cry zigzag gallops in hot pursuit of follow my leader: 65C 66C
night watch, John Henry Menton, Wisdom Hely, V.B. Dillon, Councillor Nannetti,
Alexander Keyes, Larry O'Rourke, Joe Cuffe, Mrs O'Dowd, Pisser Burke, The
Nameless One, Mrs Riordan, The Citizen, Garryowen, Whatdoyoucallhim,
Strangeface, Fellowthatslike, Sawhimbefore, Chapwith, Chris Callinan, sir
Charles Cameron, Benjamin Dollard, Lenehan, Bartell d'Arcy, Joe Hynes, red
Murray, editor Brayden, T.M. Healy, Mr Justice Fitzgibbon, John Howard Parnell,
the reverend Tinned Salmon, Professor Joly, Mrs Breen, Denis Breen, Theodore
Purefoy, Mina Purefoy, the Westland Row postmistress, C.P. M'Coy, friend of
Lyons, Hoppy Holohan, man in the street, other man in the street,
Footballboots, pugnosed driver, rich protestant lady, Davy Byrne, Mrs Ellen
M'Guinness, Mrs Joe Gallaher, George Lidwell, Jimmy Henry on corns,
Superintendent Laracy, Father Cowley, Crofton out of the Collector General's,
Dan Dawson, dental surgeon Bloom with tweezers, Mrs Bob Doran, Mrs Kennefick,
Mrs Wyse Nolan, John Wyse Nolan,
handsomemarriedwomanrubbedagainstwidebehindinClonskeatram, the bookseller of Sweets of Sin Miss Dubedatandshedidbedad, Mesdames Gerald and
Stanislaus Moran of Roebuck, the managing clerk of Drimmie's, 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 Dundrade and all her lovers.)
THE HUE AND CRY: (Helterskelterpelterwelter) He's Bloom! Stop Bloom!
Stopabloom! Stopperrobber! Hi! Hi! Stop him 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.
The uninvited. By the virtue of
the fifth of George and seventh of Edward.
History to blame. Fabled by
mothers of memory.
PRIVATE CARR: (To Cissy Caffrey) Was he insulting you?
STEPHEN: Addressed her in vocative feminine. Probably neuter. Ungenitive.
VOICES: No, he didn't. The girl's telling lies. He was in Mrs Cohen's. What's up?
Soldiers and civilians.
CISSY CAFFREY: I was in company with the soldiers
and they left me to do - you know and the young man ran up behind me. But I'm faithful to the man that's treating
me though I'm only a shilling whore.
STEPHEN: (Catches sight of Kitty's Lynch's
heads) Hail, Sisyphus. (He points to himself and the others) Poetic.
Neopoetic.
VOICES: She's faithfultheman.
CISSY CAFFREY: Yes, to go with him. And me with a soldier friend.
PRIVATE COMPTON: He doesn't half want a thick ear,
the blighter. Biff him one, Harry.
PRIVATE CARR: (To Cissy) Was he insulting you while me and him was
having a piss?
LORD TENNYSON: (In Union Jack blazer and cricket
flannels, bareheaded, flowingbearded) Their's
not to reason why.
PRIVATE COMPTON: Biff him, Harry.
STEPHEN: (To Private Compton) I don't know your name but you are quite
right. Doctor Swift says one man in
armour will beat ten men in their shirts.
Shirt is synechdoche. Part of the
whole.
CISSY CAFFREY: (To the crowd) No, I was with the private.
STEPHEN: (Amiably) Why not?
The bold soldier boy. In my
opinion every lady for example ...
PRIVATE CARR: (His cap awry, advancing to
Stephen) Say, how would it be,
governor, if I was to bash in your jaw?
STEPHEN: (Looks up in the sky) How?
Very unpleasant. Noble art of
selfpretence. Personally, I detest
action. (He waves his hand) Hand hurts me slightly. Enfin, ce sont vos oignons. (To Cissy Caffrey) Some trouble is on
here. What is it, precisely?
DOLLY GRAY: (From her balcony waves her
handkerchief, giving the sign of the heroine of Jericho) Rahab.
Cook's son, goodbye. Safe home to
Dolly. Dream of the girl you left behind
and she will dream of you.
(The soldiers turn their swimming eyes.)
BLOOM: (Elbowing through the crowd, plucks
Stephen's sleeve vigorously) Come
now, professor, that carman is waiting.
STEPHEN: (Turns)
Eh? (He disengages
himself) Why should I not speak to
him or to any human being who walks upright upon this oblate orange? (He points his finger) I'm not afraid of what I can talk to if I
see his eye. Retaining the
perpendicular.
(He staggers a pace back.)
BLOOM: (Propping him) Retain your own.
STEPHEN: (Laughs emptily) My centre of gravity is displaced. I have forgotten the trick. Let us sit down somewhere and discuss. Struggle for life is the law of existence but
modern philirenists, notably the tsar and the king of England, have invented
arbitration. (He taps his brow) But in here it is I must kill the priest
and the king.
BIDDY THE CLAP: Did you hear what the professor
said? He's a professor out of the
college.
CUNTY KATE: I did.
I heard that.
BIDDY THE CLAP: He expresses himself with much
marked refinement of phraseology.
CUNTY KATE: Indeed, yes. And at the same time with such apposite
trenchancy.
PRIVATE CARR: (Pulls himself free and comes
forward) What's that you're saying
about my king?
(Edward the Seventh appears in an archway. He wears a white jersey on which an image of
the Sacred Heart is stitched, with the insignia of Garter and Thistle, Golden
Fleece, Elephant of Denmark, Skinner's and Probyn's horse, Lincoln's Inn
bencher and ancient and honourble artillery company of Massachusetts. He suck a red jujube. He is robed as a grand elect perfect and
sublime mason with trowel and apron, marked made in Germany. In his
left hand he holds a plasterer's bucket on which is printed: Défense
d'uriner. A roar of welcome greets
him.)
EDWARD THE SEVENTH: (Slowly, solemnly but
indistinctly) Peace, perfect
peace. For identification bucket in my
hand. Cheerio, boys. (He turns to his subjects) We have come here to witness a clean
straight fight and we heartily wish both men the best of good luck. Mahak makar a back.
(He shakes hands with Private Carr, Private
Compton, Stephen, Bloom and Lynch.
General applause. Edward the
Seventh lifts the bucket graciously in acknowledgement.)
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 medicine.
A discussion is difficult down here.
But this is the point. You die
for your country, suppose. (He places
his arm on Private Carr's sleeve) Not
that I wish it for you. But I say: Let
my country die for me. Up to the present
it has done so. I don't want it to
die. Damn death. Long live life!
EDWARD THE SEVENTH: (Levitates over heaps of
slain in the garb and with the halo of Joking Jesus, a white jujube in his
phosphorescent face)
My
methods are new and are causing surprise.
To
make the blind see I throw dust in their eyes.
STEPHEN: Kings and unicorns! (He falls back a pace) Come somewhere and we'll ... What was
that girl saying?...
PRIVATE COMPTON: Eh, Harry, give him a kick in the
knackers. Stick one into Jerry.
BLOOM: (To the privates, softly) He doesn't know what he's saying. Taking a little more than is good for
him. Absinthe, the 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
imposters.
PRIVATE CARR: I don't give a bugger who he is.
PRIVATE COMPTON: We don't give a bugger who he is.
STEPHEN: I seem to annoy them. Green rag to a bull.
(Kevin Egan of
KEVIN EGAN: H'lo. Bonjour!
The vieille ogresse with the dents jaunes.
(Patrice Egan peeps from behind, his rabbit face
nibbling a quince leaf.)
PATRICE: Socialiste!
DON EMILE PATRIZIO FRANZ RUPERT POPE HENNESSY: (In
medieval hauberk, two wild geese volant on his helm, with noble indignation
points a mailed hand against his privates)
Werf those eykes to footboden, big grand porcos of johnyellows todos
covered of gravy!
BLOOM: (To Stephen) Come home. You'll get into trouble.
STEPHEN: (Swaying) I don't avoid it. He provokes my intelligence.
BIDDY THE CLAP: One immediately observes that he is
of patrician lineage.
THE VIRAGO: Green above the red, says he. Wolfe Tone.
THE BAWD: The red's as good as the green, and
better. Up the soldiers! Up King Edward!
A ROUGH: (Laughs) Ay!
Hands up to De Wet.
THE CITIZEN: (With a huge emerald muffler and
shillelagh, calls)
May
the God above
Send
down a cove
With
teeth as sharp as razors
To
slit the throat
Of
the English dogs
That
hanged our Irish leaders.
THE CROPPY BOY: (The rope noose round his neck,
gripes in his issuing bowels with both hands)
I
bear no hate to a living thing
But
love my country beyond the king.
RUMBOLD, DEMON BARBER: (Accompanied by two
blackmasked assistants, advances with a gladstone bag which he opens) Ladies and gents, cleaver purchased by
Mrs Percy 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 the
body of Miss Barrow which send Seddon to the gallows.
(He jerks the rope, the assistants leap at the
victim's legs and drag him downward, grunting: the croppy boy's tongue
protrudes violently.)
THE CROPPY BOY:
Horhot
ho hray ho rhother's hest.
(He gives up the ghost. A violent erection of the hanged sends gouts
of sperm spouting through his death clothes on to the cobblestones. Mrs Bellingham, Mrs Yelverton Barry and the
Honourable Mrs Mervyn Talboys rush forward with their handkerchiefs to sop it
up.)
RUMBOLD: I'm near it myself. (He undoes the noose) Rope which hanged the awful rebel. Ten shillings a time as applied to His Royal
Highness. (He plunges his head into
the gaping belly of the hanged and draws out his head again clotted with coiled
and smoking entrails) My painful
duty has now been done. God save the
king!
EDWARD THE SEVENTH: (Dances slowly, solemnly,
rattling his bucket and sings with soft contentment)
On
coronation day, on coronation day,
O,
won't we have a merry time,
Drinking
whisky, beer and wine!
PRIVATE CARR: Here. What are you saying about my king?
STEPHEN: (Throws up his hands) O, this is too monotonous! Nothing.
He wants my money and my life, though want must be his master, for some
brutish empire of his. Money I haven't. (He searches his pockets vaguely) Gave it to someone.
PRIVATE CARR: Who wants your bleeding money?
STEPHEN: (Tries to move off) Will someone tell me where I am leas
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: Aha!
I know you, grammer! Hamlet,
revenge! The old sow that eats her
farrow!
OLD GUMMY GRANNY: (Rocking to and fro)
STEPHEN: How do I stand you? The hat trick! Where's the third person of the Blessed
Trinity? Soggarth Aroon? The reverend Carrion Crow.
CISSY CAFFREY: (Shrill) Stop them from fighting!
A ROUGH: Our men retreated.
PRIVATE CARR: (Tugging at his belt) I'll wring the neck of any bugger says a
word against my fucking king.
BLOOM: (Terrified) He said nothing. Not a word.
A pure misunderstanding.
THE CITIZEN:
(Major Tweedy and the Citizen exhibit to each other
medals, decorations, trophies of war, wounds.
Both salute with fierce hostility.)
PRIVATE COMPTON: Go it, Harry. Do him one in the eye. He's a proboer.
STEPHEN: Did I?
When?
BLOOM: (To the redcoats) We fought for you in
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 spear points. Major
Tweedy, moustached like Turko the terrible, in bearskin cap with hackle plume
and accoutrements, with epaulette, gilt chevrons and sabretache, 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! Mahal shalal hashbaz.
PRIVATE CARR: I'll do him in.
PRIVATE COMPTON: (Waves the crowd back) Fair play, here. Make a bleeding butcher's shop of the bugger.
(Massed bands blare Garryowen and God save the king.)
CISSY CAFFREY: They're going to fight. For me!
CUNTY KATE: The brave and the fair.
BIDDY THE CLAP: Methinks yon sable knight will
joust it with the best.
CUNTY KATE: (Blushing deeply) nay,
Madam. The gules doublet and merry Saint
George for me!
STEPHEN:
The
harlot's cry from street to street
Shall
weave old
PRIVATE CARR: (Loosening his belt, shouts) I'll wring the neck of any fucking
bastard says a word against my bleeding fucking king.
BLOOM: (Shakes Cissy Caffrey's shoulders) Speak, you! Are you struck dumb? You are the link between nations and
generations. Speak, woman, sacred
lifegiver.
CISSY CAFFREY: (Alarmed, seizes Private Carr's
sleeve) Amn't I with you? Amn't I your girl? Cissy's your girl. (She cries) Police!
STEPHEN: (Ecstatically, to Cissy Caffrey)
White
thy fambles, red thy gan
And
thy quarrons dainty is.
VOICES: Police!
DISTANT VOICES:
(Brimstone fires spring up. Dense clouds roll past. Heavy Gatling guns boom. Pandemonium.
Troops deploy. Gallop of
hoofs. Artillery. Hoarse commands. Bells clang.
Backers shout. Drunkards
bawl. Whores screech. Foghorns hoot. Cries of valour. Shrieks of dying. Pikes clash on cuirasses. Thieves rob the slain. Birds of prey, winging from the sea, rising
from marshlands, swooping from eyries, hover screaming, gannets, cormorants,
vultures, goshawks, climbing woodcocks, peregrines, merlins, blackgrouse, sea
eagles, gulls, albatrosses, barnacle geese.
The midnight sun is darkened. The
earth trembles. The dead of
FATHER MALACHI O'FLYNN: Introibo ad altare
diaboli.
THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE: To the devil which
hath made glad my young days.
FATHER MALACHI O'FLYNN: (Takes from the chalice
and elevates a blooddripping host) Corpus Meum.
THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE: (Raises high behind
the celebrant's petticoat, revealing his grey bare hairy buttocks between which
a carrot is stuck) My body.
THE VOICE OF ALL THE DAMNED: Htengier Tnetopinmo
Dog Drol eht rof, Aiulella!
(From on high the voice of Adonai calls.)
ADONAI: Dooooooooooog!
THE VOICE OF ALL THE BLESSED: Alleluia, for the
Lord God Omnipotent reigneth!
(From on high the voice of Adonai calls.)
ADONAI: Goooooooooood!
(In strident discord peasants and townsmen of
PRIVATE CARR: (With ferocious articulation) I'll do him in, so help me fucking
Christ! I'll wring the bastard fucker's
bleeding blasted fucking windpipe!
OLD GUMMY GRANNY: (Thrusts a dagger towards
Stephen's hand) Remove him, acushla.
At
BLOOM: (Runs to Lynch) Can't you get him away?
LYNCH: He likes dialectic, the universal
language. Kitty! (To Bloom)
Get him away, you. He won't
listen to me.
(He drags Kitty away.)
STEPHEN: (Points) Exit Judas. Et laqueo se suspendit.
BLOOM: (Runs to Stephen) Come along with me
now before worse happens. Here's your
stick.
STEPHEN: Stick, no.
Reason. This feast of pure
reason.
CISSY CAFFREY: (Pulling Private Carr) Come on, you're boozed. He insulted me but I forgive him. (Shouting in his ear) I forgive him for insulting me.
BLOOM: (Over Stephen's shoulder) Yes, go.
You see he's incapable.
PRIVATE CARR: (Breaks loose) I'll insult him.
(He rushes towards Stephen, fists outstretched, and
strikes him in the face. Stephen
totters, collapses, falls stunned. He
lies prone, his face to the sky, his hat rolling to the wall. Bloom follows and picks it up.)
MAJOR TWEEDY: (Loudly) Carbine in bucket! Cease fire!
Salute!
THE RETRIEVER: (Barking ferociously) 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!
(The retriever, nosing on the fringe of the crowd,
barks noisily.)
A HAG: What call had the redcoat to strike the
gentleman and he under the influence?
Let them go and fight the Boers!
THE BAWD: Listen to who's talking! Hasn't the soldier a right to go with his
girl? He gave him the coward's blow.
(They grab at each other's hair, claw at each other
and spit.)
THE RETRIEVER: (Barking) Wow wow wow.
BLOOM: (Shoves them back, loudly) Get back, stand back!
PRIVATE COMPTON: (Tugging his comrade) Here bugger off, Harry. There's the cops!
(Two raincaped watch, tall, stand in the group.)
FIRST WATCH: What's wrong here?
PRIVATE COMPTON: We were with this lady and he
insulted us and assaulted my chum. (The
retriever barks.) Who owns the
bleeding tyke?
CISSY CAFFREY: (With expectation) Is he bleeding?
A MAN: (Rising from his knees) No.
Gone off. He'll come to all
right.
BLOOM: (Glances sharply at the man) Leave him to me. I can easily ...
SECOND WATCH: Who are you? Do you know him?
PRIVATE CARR: (Lurches towards the watch) He insulted my lady friend.
BLOOM: (Angrily)
You hit him without provocation. I'm a witness.
Constable, take his regimental number.
SECOND WATCH: I don't want your instructions in the
discharge of my duty.
PRIVATE COMPTON: (Pulling his comrade) Here, bugger off, Harry. Or Bennett'll have 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: (Taking out his notebook) What's his name?
BLOOM: (Peering over the crowd) I just see a car there. If you give me a hand a second, sergeant ...
FIRST WATCH: Name and address.
(Corny Kelleher, weepers round his hat, a death
wreath in his hand, appears among the bystanders.)
BLOOM: (Quickly)
O, the very man! (He
whispers) Simon Dedalus' son. A bit sprung.
Get those policemen to move those loafers back.
SECOND WATCH: Night, Mr Kelleher.
CORNY KELLEHER: (To the watch, with drawling
eye) That's all right. I know him.
Won a bit on the races. Gold
cup. Throwaway. (He laughs) Twenty to one. Do you follow me?
FIRST WATCH: (Turns to the crowd) Here, what are you all gaping at? Move on out of that.
(The crowd disperses slowly, muttering, down the
lane.)
CORNY KELLEHER: (Nudges the second watch) Come and wipe your name off the slate. (He
lilts, wagging his head) With my
tooraloom torraloom tooraloom tooraloom.
What, eh, do you follow me?
SECOND WATCH: (Genially) Ah, sure we were too.
CORNY KELLEHER: (Winking) Boys will be boys. I've a car round there.
SECOND WATCH: All right, Mr Kelleher. Good night.
CORNY KELLEHER: I'll see to that.
BLOOM: (Shakes hands with both of the watch in
turn) Thank you very much gentlemen,
thank you. (He mumbles
confidentially) We don't want any
scandal, you understand. Father is a
well know, highly respected citizen.
Just a little wild oats, you understand.
FIRST WATCH: O, I understand, sir.
SECOND WATCH: That's all right, sir.
FIRST WATCH: It was only in case of corporal
injuries I'd have had to report it to the station.
BLOOM: (Nods rapidly) Naturally. Quite right.
Only your bounden duty.
SECOND WATCH: It's our duty.
CORNY KELLEHER: Good night, men.
THE WATCH: (Saluting together) Night, gentlemen. (They move off with slow heavy tread.)
BLOOM: (Blows)
Providential you came on the scene.
You have a car?...
CORNY KELLEHER: (Laughs, pointing his thumb over
his right shoulder to the car brought up against the scaffolding) Two commercials that were standing fizz
in Jammet's. Like princes, faith. One of them lost two quid on the race. Drowning his grief and were on for a go with
the jolly girls. So I landed them up on
Behan's car and down to nighttown.
BLOOM: I was just going home by
CORNY KELLEHER: (Laughs) Sure they wanted me to join in with the
mots. No, by God, says I. Not for old stagers like myself and
yourself. (He laughs again and leers
with lacklustre eye) Thanks be to
God we have it in the house what, eh, do you follow me? Hah! hah! hah!
BLOOM: (Tries to laugh) He, he he! Yes.
Matter of fact I was just visiting an old friend of mine there, Virag,
you don't know him (poor fellow he's laid up for the past week) and we had a
liquor together and I was just making my way home ...
(The horse neighs.)
THE HORSE: Hohohohohohoh! Hohohohome!
CORNY KELLEHER: Sure it was Behan, our jarvey
there, that told me after we left the two commercials in Mrs Cohen's and I told
him to pull up and got off to see. (He
laughs) Sober hearsedrivers a
speciality. Will I give him a lift
home? Where does he hang out? Somewhere in Cabra, what?
BLOOM: No, in Sandycove, I believe, from what he
let drop.
(Stephen, prone, breathes to the stars. Corny Kelleher, asquint, drawls at the
horse. Bloom in gloom, looms down.)
CORNY KELLEHER: (Scratches his nape) Sandycove! (He bends down and calls to Stephen) Eh!
(He calls again) Eh! He's covered with shavings anyhow. Take care they didn't lift anything off him.
BLOOM: No, no, no.
I have his money and his hat here and stick.
CORNY KELLEHER: Ah well, he'll get over it. No bones broken. Well, I'll shove along. (He laughs) I've a rendezvous in the morning. Burying the dead. Safe home!
THE HORSE: (Neighs) Hohohohohome.
BLOOM: Good night.
I'll just wait and take him along in a few ...
(Corny Kelleher returns to the outside car and
mounts it. The horse harness jingles.)
CORNY KELLEHER: (From the car, standing) Night.
BLOOM: Night.
(The jarvey chucks the reins and raises his whip
encouragingly. The car and horse back
slowly, awkwardly and turn. Corny
Kelleher on the sideseat sways his head to and fro in sign of mirth at Bloom's
plight. The jarvey joins in the mute
pantomimic merriment nodding from the farther seat. Bloom shakes his head in mute mirthful
reply. With thumb and palm Corny
Kelleher reassures that the two bobbies will allow the sleep to continue for
what else is to be done. With a slow nod
Bloom conveys his gratitude as that is exactly what Stephen needs. The car jingles tooraloom round the corner of
the tooraloom lane. Corny Kelleher again
reassuralooms with his hand. Bloom with
his hand assuralooms Corny Kelleher that he is reassuraloomtay. The tinkling hoofs and jingling harness grow
fainter with their tooralooloolooloo lay.
Bloom, holding in his hand Stephen's hat festooned with shavings and ashplant,
stands irresolute. Then he bends to him
and shakes him by the shoulder.)
BLOOM: Eh!
Ho! (There is no answer; he
bends again) Mr Dedalus! (There is no answer) The name if you call. Somnambulist.
(He bends again and, hesitating, brings his mouth near the face of
the prostrate form) Stephen! (There is no answer. He calls again) Stephen!
STEPHEN: (Groans) Who?
Black panther vampire. (He
sighs and stretches himself, then murmurs thickly with prolonged vowels)
Who
... drive ... Fergus now.
And
pierce ... wood's woven shade?...
(He turns on his left side, sighing, doubling
himself together.)
BLOOM: Poetry.
Well educated. Pity. (He bends again and undoes the buttons of
Stephen's waistcoat) To
breathe. (He brushes the wood
shavings from Stephen's clothes with light hands and fingers) One pound seven. Not hurt anyhow. (He listens) What!
STEPHEN: (Murmurs)
...
shadows ... the woods
...
white breast ... dim ...
(He stretches out his arms, sighs again and curls
his body. Bloom holding his 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.
(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 fairly boy of eleven, a changeling, kidnapped, dressed in an Eton
suit with glass shoes and a little bronze helmet, holding a book in his
hand. He reads from right to left
inaudibly, smiling, kissing the page.)
BLOOM: (Wonderstruck, calls inaudibly) Rudy!
RUDY: (Gazes unseeing into Bloom's eyes and goes
on reading, kissing, smiling. He has a
delicate mauve face. On his suit he has
diamond and ruby buttons. In his free
left hand he holds a slim ivory cane with a violet bowknot. A white lambkin peeps out of his waistcoat
pocket.)