Lyrics
Pick up to six lines to make a card.
The Mabbot street entrance of nighttown, before which stretches an uncobbled transiding set with skeleton tracks, red and green will-o'-the-wisps and danger signals. Rows of flimsy houses with gaping doors. Rare lamps with faint rainbow fans. Round Rabaiotti's halted ice gondola stunted men and women squabble. They grab wafers between which are wedged lumps of coal and copper snow. Sucking, they s
THE CALLS Wait, my love, and I'll be with you.
THE ANSWERS Round behind the stable.
(A deaf mute 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 Kithoguel 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 pygmy 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 rubbish tip 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 sa
CISSY CAFFREY
I gave it to Molly
Because she was jolly,
The leg of the duck
The leg of the duck.
(Private Cart 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 Cart 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 aliqantulum) Et omnes ad quos pervenit acqua 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 say 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, Kildbride the enginedriver and
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 scar's 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 Mecklenburg street!
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 clasps to climb. The navvy lurches against the lamp. The twins scuttle off in the dark. The navvy, swaying, presses a forefinger against a wing of his nose and ejects from the farther nostril a long liquid jet of snot. Shouldering the lamp he staggers away through the c
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 Gillens ha
At Antonio Babaiotti'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 g
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.) London's burning, London's burning! On fire, on fire! (He catches sight of the navvy lurching through the crowd at the farther side of Talbot street.) I'll miss him. Run. Quick. Better cross here.
(He darts to cross the road. Urchins shout.)
THE URCHINS Mind out, mister! (Two cyclists, with lighted paper lanterns aswing, swim by him, grazing him, their bells rattling.)
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 trolley 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 wh
(A sinister figure leans on plaited legs against O'Beirnes wall, a visage unknown, injected with dark mercury. From under a wideleaved sombrero the figure regards him with evil eye.)
BLOOM Buenos noches, señorita 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 midnight. A fence more likely. First place murderer makes for. Wash off his sins of the world.
(Jacky Caffrey, hunted by Tommy Caffrey, runs full tilt against Bloom.)
BLOOM O!
(Shocked, on weak hams, he halts. Tommy and Jacky vanish there, there. Bloom pats with parcelled 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 garbed in the long caftan of an elder in Zion and a smoking cap with magenta tassels. Horned spectacles hang down at the wings of the nose. Yellow poison streaks are on the drawn face.)
RUDOLPH Second halfcrown waste money today. I told you not go with drunken goy ever. So. You catch no money.
BLOOM (Hides the crubeen and trotter behind his back and, crestfallen, feels warm and cold feetmeat) Ja, ich weiss, papachi.
RUDOLPH What you making down this place? Have you no soul? (With feeble vulture 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) Ooim 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 hairplaited in a crisping 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 skir
(Bloom, mumbling, his eyes downcast, begins to bestow his parcels in his filled pockets but desists, muttering.)
A VOICE (Sharply.) Poldy!
BLOOM Who? (He ducks and wards off a blow clumsily.) At your service.
(He looks up. Beside her mirage of datepalms a handsome woman in Turkish costume stands before him. Opulent curves fill out her scarlet trousers and jacket slashed with gold. A wide yells cummerbund girdles her. A white yashmak violet in the night, covers her face, leaving free only her lace dark eyes and raven hair.)
BLOOM Molly!
MARION Welly? Mrs Marion from this out, my dear man, when you speak to me. (Satirically.) Has poor little hubby cold feet waiting so long?
BLOOM (Shifts from foot to foot.) No, no. Not the least little bit.
(He breathes in deep agitation, swallowing gulps of air questions, 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 w
MARION Nebrakada! Feminimum.
(The camel, lifting a foreleg, plucks from a tree a lace 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...
MARION So you notice some change? (Her hands passing slowly over her trinketed stomacher. A slow friendly mockery in her eyes.) O Poldy, Poldy, you are a poor old stick in the mud! Go and see life. See the wide world.
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 moving kidney. Ah!
(He points to the south, then to the east. A cake of new clean lemon soap arises, diffusing light and perfume.)
THE SOAP
We're a capital couple are Bloom and I;
He brightens the earth, I polish the sky.
(The freckled face of Sweny, the druggist, appears in the disc of the soapsun.)
SWENY Three and a penny, please.
BLOOM Yes. For my wife, Mrs Marion. Special recipe.
MARION (Softly.) Poldy!
BLOOM Yes, ma'am?
MARION Ti trema un poco il cuore?
(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 Hatch street. Any good in your mind?
(With a squeak she flaps her bat shawl and runs. A burly rough pursues with booted strides. He stumbles on the steps, recovers, plunges into gloom. Weak squeaks of laughter are heard, weaker.)
THE BAWD (Her wolfeyes shining.) He's getting his pleasure. You won't get a virgin in the flash houses. Ten shillings. Don't be all night before the polis in plain 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 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 Livermore christies. Bohee brothers. Sweep for that matter.
(Tom and Sam Bohee, coloured coons in white duck suits, scarlet socks, upstarched Sambo chokers and lace 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
There's someone in the house with Dina
There's someone in the house, I know,
There's someone in the house with Dina
Playing on the old banjo.
(They whisk black masks from raw babby faces: then, chuckling, chortling, trumming, twanging they diddle diddle cakewalk dance away.)
BLOOM (With a sour tenderish smile.) A little frivol, shall we, if you are so inclined? Would you like me perhaps to embrace you just for a fraction of a second?
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 Alice, you do look a holy show! Killing simply. (She puts out her hand inquisitively.) What are you hiding behind your back? Tell us, there's a dear.
BLOOM (Seizes her wrist with his free hand.) Josie Powell that was, prettiest deb in Dublin. How time flies by! Do you remember, harking back in a retrospective arrangement, Old Christmas night Georgina Simpson's housewarming while they were playing the Irving Bishop game, finding the pin blindfold and thoughtreading? Subject, what is in this snuff box?
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 The dear dead days beyond recall. Love's old sweet song.
BLOOM (Meaningfully dropping his voice.) I confess I'm teapot with curiosity to find out whether some person's something is a little teapot at present.
MRS BREEN (Gushingly.) Tremendously teapot! London's tea pot and I'm simply teapot all over me. (She rubs sides with him.) After the parlour mystery games and the crackers from the tree we sat on the staircase ottoman. Under the mistletoe. Two is company.
BLOOM (Wearing a purple Napoleon hat with an amber halfmoon, his fingers and 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 eveningfrock 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 sandwich board, shuffles past them in cadet slippers, his dull beard thrust out, muttering to right and left. Little Al
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 (Off handedly.) Kosher. A snack for supper. 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 ins 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 delutbering 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 sporting suit, a sprig of woodbine in the lapel, tony buff shirt, shepherd's plaid Saint Andrew's cross scarftie, white spats, fawn dustcoat on his arm, tawny red brogues, fieldglasses in bandolier and a grey billycock hat.) Do you remember a long long time, years and years ago, just after Milly, Marionette we called her, was weaned when we all went together to Fairyhouse race
MRS BREEN (In smart Saxe tailormade, white velours hat and spider veil.) Leopardstown.
BLOOM I mean, Leopardstown. And Molly won seven shillings on a three year old named Nevertell and coming home along by Foxrock in that old fiveseater shanderadan of a waggonette you were in your heyday then and you had on that new hat of white velours with a surround of molefur that Mrs Hayes advised you to buy because it was marked down to nineteen and eleven, a bit of wire and an old rag of velv
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 for 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 Purdon street. Shilling a bottle of stout. Respectable woman.
THE NAVVY (Gripping the two redcoats, staggers forward with them.) Come on, you British army!
PRIVATE CARR (Behind his back.) He aint half balmy.
PRIVATE COMPTON (LAughs.) What ho!
PRIVATE CARR (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.
THENAVVY (Shouts.)
The galling chain.
And free our native land.
(He staggers forward, dragging them with him. Bloom stops, at fault. The dog approaches, his tongue outlolling, panting.)
BLOOM Wildgoose chase this. Disorderly houses. Lord knows where they are gone. Drunks cover distance double quick. Nice mixup. Scene at Westland row. Then jump in first class with third ticket. Then too far. Train with engine behind. Might have taken me to Malahide or a siding for the night or collision. Second drink does it. Once is a dose. What am I following him for? Still, he's the best of tha
(He gazes ahead reading on the wall a scrawled chalk legend Wet Dream and a phallic design.)
Odd! Molly drawing on the frosted carriagepane at Kingstown. What's that like? (Gaudy dollwomen loll in the lighted doorways, in window embrasures, smoking birdseye cigarettes. The odour of the sicksweet weed floats towards him in slow round ovalling wreaths.)
THE WREATHS Sweet are the sweets. Sweets of sin.
BLOOM My spine's a bit limp. Go or turn? And this food? Eat it and get all 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 goût. He might be mad. Fid
(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 Blooms 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 bars tool, sways over the munching spaniel.)
BOB DORAN Towser. Give us the paw. Give the paw.
(The bulldog growls, his scruff standing, a gobbet of pigs knuckle between his molars through which rabid scrumspittle 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 going boarhound.)
SIGNOR MAFFEI (With a sinister smile.) Ladies and gentlemen, my educated greyhound. It was I broke in the bucking broncho Ajax with my patent spiked saddle for carnivores. Lash under the belly with a knotted thong. Block tackle and a strangling pully will bring your lion to heel, no matter how fractious, even Leo ferox there, the Libyan maneater. A redhot crowbar and some liniment rubbing on the b
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 mil lions. Donnerwetter! Owns half Austria. Egypt. Cousin.
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. Un lawfully 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. I
(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 Lyons mail. Lesurques and Dubosc. You remember the Childs fratricide case. We medical men. By striking him dead with a hatchet. I am wrongfully accused. Better one guilty esc
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 Gentleman 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 Eccles street. My wife, I am the daughter of a most distinguished commander, a gallant upstanding gentleman, who do you call him, Majorgeneral Brian Tweedy, one of Britain's fighting men who helped to w
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 Bloemfontein, was mentioned in dispatches. I did all a white man could. (With quiet feeling.) Jim Bludso. Hold her nozzle again the bank.
FIRST WATCH Profession or trade.
BLOOM Well, I follow a literary occupation. Author-journalist. In fact we are just bringing out a collection of prize stories of which I am the inventor, something that is an entirely new departure. I am connected with the British and Irish press. If you ring up...
(Myles Crawford strides out jerkily, a quill between his teeth. His scarlet beak blazes within the aureole of his straw hat. He dangles a 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 Arse wiper here. Paralyse Europe. You which? Bluebags? Who writes? Is it Bloom?
(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 cames a lace 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 bestsell
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
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 versus Bloom. Call the woman Driscoll.
THE CRIER Mary Driscoll, scullerymaid!
(Mary Driscoll, a slipshod servant girl, approaches. She has a bucket on the crook of her arm and a scouringbrush in her hand.)
SECOND WATCH Another! Are you of the unfortunate class?
MARY DRISCOLL (Indignantly.) I'm not a bad one. I bear a respectable character and was 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 mementoes, 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 rere of the premises, your honour, when the missus was out shopping one morning with a request for a safety pin. He held me and I was discoloured in four places as a result. And he interfered 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 grand-jury. He was down and out but, though branded as a black sheep, if he might say so, he meant to reform, to retrieve the memory of the past in a purely sisterly way and return to nature as a purely domestic animal. A seven m
(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 lace bucket. Bloom himself Bowel trouble. In Beaver street. Gripe, yes. Quite bad. A plasterers bucket. By walking stifflegged. Suffered untold misery. Deadly agony. About noon. Love or burgundy. Yes, some spinach. Crucial moment. He did not look in the bucket. Nobody. Rather a mess. Not completely. A Titbits back number.)
(Uproar and catcalls. Bloom, in a torn frockcoat stained with whitewash, dinged silk hat sideways on his head, a strip of sticking-plaster 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 Oxford rag nor is this a travesty of justice. My client is an infant, a poor foreign immigrant who started scratch as a stowaway and is now trying to turn an honest penny. T
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 no
BLOOM A penny in the pound.
(The mirage of the lake of Kinnereth with blurred cattle cropping in silver haze is projected on the wall. Moses Dlugacz, ferreteyed albino, in blue dungarees, stands up in the gallery, holding in each hand an orange citron and a pork kidney.)
DLUGACZ (Hoarsely.) Bleibtreustrasse, Berlin, W. 13.
(J. J. O'Molloy steps on to a low plinth and holds the lapel of his coat with solemnity. His face lengthens, grows pale and bearded, with sunken eyes, the blotches of phthisis and hectic cheekbones of John F. Taylor. He applies his handkerchief to his mouth and scrutinises the galloping tide of rosepink blood.)
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 Seymour Bushe.) When the angel's book comes to be opened if aught that the pensive bosom has inaugurated of soultransfigured and of soultransfiguring deserves to live I say accord the p
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 Dublin. I have moved in the charmed circle of the highest . Queens of Dublin Society. (Carelessly.) I was just chatting this afternoon at the viceregal lodge to my old pals, sir Robert and lady Ball, astronomer royal, at the levee. Sir Bob, I said
MRS YELVERTON BARRY (In lowcorsaged opal balldress and elbowlength ivory gloves, wearing a sabletrimmed 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 Tipperary on the Munster circuit, signed James Lovebirch. He said that he had seen from the gods my
MRS BELLINGHAM (In cap and seal coneymantle, 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 gr
MRS YELVERTON BARRY Shame on him!
(A crowd of sluts and ragamuffins sues forward.)
THE SLUTS AND RAGAMUFFINS (Screaming.) Stop thief! Hurrah there, Bluebeard! Three cheers for Ikey Mo!
SECOND WATCH (Produces handcuffs.) Here are the darbies.
MRS BELLINGHAM 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 escutcheo
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS (In amazon costume, hard hat, jackboots cockspurred, vermilion waistcoat, fawn musketeer gauntlets with bra idea drums, long train held up and hunting crop with which she strikes her welt constantly.) Also me. Because he saw me on the polo ground of the Phoenix park at the match All Ireland versus the Rest of Ireland. My eyes, I know, shone divinely as I watched C
MRS BELLINGHAM Me too.
MRS YELVERTON BARRY Me too.
(Several highly respectable Dublin ladies hold up improper letters received from Bloom.)
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS (Stamps her jingling spurs in a sudden paroxysm of 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 quizzing-glasses 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 any 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 hunting crop savagely in the air.) Take down his trousers without loss of time. Come here, sir! Qu
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 Dublin.
(The very reverend Canon O'Hanlon in cloth of gold cope elevates and exposes a marble timepiece. Before him Father Conroy and the reverend John Hughes S.J. bend low.)
THE TIMEPIECE (Unportalling.)
Cuckoo
Cuckoo
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 well-known dynamitard, forger, bigamist, bawd and cuckold ad a public nuisance to the citizens of Dublin and whereas at this commission of assizes the most honourable.
(His Honour sir Frederick Falkiner recorder of Dublin, in judicial garb of grey stone rises from the bench, stonebearded. He bears in his arms an umbrella sceptre. From his forehead arise starkly the Mosaic ramshorns.)
THE RECORDER I will put an end to this white slave traffic and rid Dublin of this odious pest. Scandalous! (He dons the black cap.) Let him be taken, Mr Subsheriff, from the dock where he now stands and detained in custody in Mountjoy prison during His Majesty's pleasure and there be hanged by the neck until he is dead and therein fail not at your peril or may the Lord have-mercy on your soul. Rem
(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 jerk in 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 grapping hands, knobbed with knuckledusters.)
RUMBOLD (To the recorder with sinister familiarity.) Hanging Harry, your Majesty, the Mersey terror. Five guineas a jugular. Neck or nothing.
(The bells of George's church toll slowly, loud dark iron.)
THE BELLS Heigho! Heigho!
BLOOM (Desperately.) Wait. Stop. Gulls. Good heart. I saw. Innocence. Girl in the monkeyhouse. Zoo. Lewd chimpanzees. (Breathlessly.) Pelvic basin. Her artless blush unmanned me. (Overcome with emotion.) I left the precincts. (He turns to a figure in the crowd, appealing.) Hynes, may I speak to you? You know me. That three shillings you can keep. If you want a little more .
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 dachshund coat becomes a brown mortuary habit. His green eyeflashes 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. Dow 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 m
(The portly figure of John O'Connell, caretaker stands forth, holding a bunch of keys tied with crape. Beside him stands Father Coffey, chaplain, toad bellied, 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.
(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 tailstiffpointed, his ears cocked.)
PADDY DIGNAM Pray for the repose of his soul.
(He worms down through a coal hole, 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 two-columned 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 Wom worn! (Warbling.) Big comebig! Pirouette! Leopopold! (Twittering.) Leeolee! (Warbling.) O Leo!
(They rustle, flutter upon his garments, alight, bright giddyflecks, 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 Oxford. Working overtime but her luck's turned today. (Suspiciously.) You're not his father, are you?
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
ZOE (Murmuring singsong with the music, her odalisk lips lusciously smeared with salve of swinefat and rosewater.) Schorach ani wenowach, benoith Hierushaloim.
BLOOM (Fascinated.) I thought you were of good stock by your accent.
ZOE And you know what thought did?
(She bites his ear gently with little goldstopped teeth sending on him a cloying breath of stale garlic. The roses draw apart, disclose a sepulchre of the gold of kings and their mouldering bones.)
BLOOM (Draws back, mechanically caressing her right bub with a flat awkward hand.) Are you a Dublin girl?
ZOE (Catches a stray hair deftly and twists it to her coil.) No bloody fear. I'm English. Have you a swaggerroot?
BLOOM (As before.) Rarely smoke, dear. Cigar now and then. Childish device. (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
(Midnight chimes from distant steeples.)
THE CHIMES Turn again, Leopold! Lord Mayor of Dublin!
BLOOM (In alderman's gown and chain.) Electors of Arran Quay, Inns Quay, Rotunda, Mountjoy and North Dock, better run a tramline, I say, from the cattlemarket to the river. That's the music of the future. That's my programme. Cui Bono? But our 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 TORCH BEARERS Hooray!
(Several wellknown burgesses, city magnates and freemen of the city shake hands with Bloom and congratulate him. Timothy Harrington, late thrice Lord Mayor of Dublin, imposing in mayoral scarlet, gold chain and white silk tie, confers with councillor Lorcan Sherlock, locum tenens. They nod vigorously in agreement.)
LATE LORD MAYOR HARRINGTON (In scarlet robe with mace, gold mayoral chain and lace white silk scarf) That alder man sir Leo Bloom's speech be printed at the expense of the ratepayers. That the house in which he was born be ornamented with a commemorative tablet and that the thoroughfare hitherto known as Cow Parlour off Cork street be henceforth designated Boulevard Bloom.
COUNCILLOR LORCAN SHERLOCK Carried unanimously.
BLOOM (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, bug-bears, manufactured monsters for mutual murder, hideous hobgoblins produced by a horde of capitalistic lusts upon our prostituted labour. The poor man starves while the
(Prolonged applause. Venetian masts, maypoles and festal arches spring up. A streamer bearing the legends Cead Mille Failte and Mah Ttob Melek Israel spans the street. All the windows are thronged with sightseers, chiefly ladies. Along the route the regiments of the royal Dublin Fusiliers, the Kings Own Scottish Boraerers, the Cameron Highlanders and the Welsh Fusiliers, standing to attention, kee
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 un doubted 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 judgments in Ireland and territories thereunto belonging?
BLOOM (Placing his right hand on his testicles, swears.) So may the Creator deal with me. All this I promise to do.
MICHAEL, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH (Pours a cruse of hair oil 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
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 moon blue 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 Dublin, crossed on a crimson cushion, are given to him. He shows all that he is wearing green socks.)
TOM KERNAN You deserve it, your honour.
BLOOM On this day twenty years ago we overcame the hereditary enemy at Ladysmith. Our howitzers and camel swivel guns played on his lines with telling effect. Half a league onward! They charge! All is lost now! Do we yield? No! We drive them headlong! Lo! We charge! Deploying to the left our light horse swept across the heights of Plevna and, uttering their warcry, Bonafide Sabaoth, sabred the Sar
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 Ireland wants.
BLOOM My beloved subjects, a new era is about to dawn. I, Bloom, tell you verily it is even now at hand. Yea, on the word of a Bloom, ye shall ere long enter into the golden city which is to be, the new Bloomusalem in the Nova Hibernia of the future.
(Thirtytwo workmen wearing rosettes, from all the counties of Ireland, under the guidance of Derwan the builder construct the new Bloomusalem. It is a colossal edifice, with crystal roof built in the shape of a huge pork kidney, containing forty thousand rooms. In the course of its extension several buildings and monuments are demolished. Government offices are temporarily transferred to railway s
THE SIGHTSEERS (Dying) Morituri te salutant. (They die.)
(A man in a brown macintosh springs up through a trap-door. 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 preservati
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 mo
THE CITIZEN (Choked with emotion, brushes aside a tear in his emerald muffler.) May the good God bless him!
(The rams' horns sound for silence. The standard of Zion is hoisted.)
BLOOM (Uncloaks impressively, revealing obesity, unrolls a paper and reads solemnly.) Aleph Beth Ghimel Daleth Hagadah Tephilim Kosher Yom Kippur Hanukah Ros chaschana 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 Dublin in the year I of the Paradisiacal Era.
PADDY LEONARD What am I to do about my rates and taxes?
BLOOM Pay them, my friend.
PADDY LEONARD Thank you.
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'MOLLY 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 Aldebaran?
BLOOM Pleased to hear from you, Chris. K. II.
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. Union of all, jew, moslem and gentile. Three acres and a cow for all children of nature. Saloon motor hearses. Compulsory manual labour for all. All parks open to the public day and night. Electric dishscrubbers. Tuberculosis, lunacy, war and mendicancy must now cease. General amnesty, weekly carni
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
FATHER FARLEY He is an episcopalian, an agnostic, an any thingarian 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 tooralcom 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 Gibraltar? The Rows of Casteele. (Laughter.)
LENEHAN Plagiarist! Down with Bloom!
THE VEILED SIBYL (Enthusiastically.) I'm a Bloomite and I glory in it. I believe in him in spite of all. I'd give my life for him, the funniest man on earth.
BLOOM (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
ALEXANDER J. DOWIE (Violently.) Fellowchristians and antiBloomites, the man called Bloom is from the roots of hell, a disgrace to christian men. A fiendish libertine from his earliest years this stinking goat of Mendes gave precocious signs of infantile debauchery recalling the cities of the plain, with a dissolute granddam. This vile hypocrite, bronzed with infamy, is the white bull mentioned in
THE MOB Lynch him! Roast him! He's as bad as Parnell was. Mr Fox!
(Mother Grogan throws her boot at Bloom. Several shopkeepers from upper and lower Dorset street throw objects of little or no commercial value, hambones, condensed milk tins, unsaleable cabbage, stale bread, sheeps' tails, odd pieces of fat.)
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. Fellowcountrymen, 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 motoroggles 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 a
(Bloom holds his high grade hat over his genital organs.)
DR MADDEN Hypsospadia is also marked. In the interest of coming generations I suggest that the parts affected should be preserved in spirits of wine in the national teratological museum.
DR CROTTHERS I have examined the patient's urine. It is albuminoid. Salivation is insufficient, the patellar reflex intermittent.
DR PUNCH COSTELLO The fetor judaicus is most perceptible.
DR DIXON (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 feeble-minded in the medical sense. He has written a really beautiful letter, a poem in itself, to the court missionary of the Reformed Priests' Protection So
(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' watch-chains, lockets, necklaces and bracelets are rapidly collected.)
BLOOM O, I so want to be a mother.
MRS THORNTON (In nursetender's gown.) Embrace me tight, dear. You'll be soon over it. Tight, dear.
(Bloom embraces her tightly and bears eight male yellow and white children. They appear on a redcarpeted staircase adorned with expensive plants. All 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
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 LYONS Prophesy who will win the Saint Leger.
(Bloom walks on a net, covers his left eye with his left ear, passes through several walls, climbs Nelson's Pillar, hangs from the the ledge by his eyelids, eats twelve dozen oysters (shells included), heals several sufferers from kings evil, contracts his face so as to resemble many historical personages, lord Beaconsfield, lord Byron, Wat Tyler, Moses of Egypt, Moses Maimonides, Moses Mendelssoh
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
A DEADHAND (Writes on the wall.) Bloom is a cod. A CRAB (In bush ranger'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 Mission, joining hands, caper round in the opposite direction.)
THE ARTANE ORPHANS
You big, you bog, 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 land of Ham.
(All the people cast soft pantomime stones at Bloom. Many bonafide travellers and ownerless dogs come near him and defile him. Mastiansky and Citron approach in gaberdines, wearing long earlocks. They wag their beards at Bloom.)
MASTIANSKY AND CITRON Belial! Laemlein of Istria! the false Messiah! Abulafia!
(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, black bearded 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 Dublin Fire Brigade by general request sets fire to Bloom. Lamentations.)
THE CITIZEN Thank heaven!
BLOOM (In a seamless garment marked I. H. S. stands upright amid phoenix flames.) Weep not for me, O daughters of Erin.
(He exhibits to Dublin reporters traces of burning. The daughters of Erin, in black garments with lace prayerbooks and long lighted candles in their hands, kneel down and pray.)
THE DAUGHTERS OF ERIN Kidney of Bloom, pray for us. Flower of the Bath, pray for us. Mentor of Menton, pray for us. Canvasser for the Freeman, pray for us. Charitable Mason, pray for us. Wandering Soap, pray for us. Sweets of Sin, pray for us. Music without Words, pray for us. Reprover of the Citizen, pray for us. Friend of all Frillies, pray for us. Midwife Most Merciful, pray for us. Potato Pres
(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 sugaun, with a smile in his eye.) Let me be going now, woman of the house, for by all the goats in Connemara I'm after having the father and mother of a bating. (With a tear in his eye.) All insanity. Patriotism, sorrow for the dead, music, future of
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 quick 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's insincere. Give a bleeding whore a chance.
BLOOM (Repentantly.) I am very disagreeable. You are a necessary evil. Where are you from? London?
ZOE (Glibly.) Hog's Norton where the pigs play the organs. I'm Yorkshire born. (She holds his hand which is feeling for her nipple.) I say, Tommy Tittlemouse. Stop that and begin worse. Have you cash for a short time? Ten shillings?
BLOOM (Smiles, nods slowly.) More, houri, more.
ZOE And more's mother? (She pats him offhandedly with velvet paws.) Are you 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 pass touch 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 an tiered 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 apes gait, his bald head and goatee bear
KITTY (Coughs behind her hand.) She's a bit imbecilic. (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 s
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 the front.)
STEPHEN As a matter of fact it is of no importance whether Benedetto Marcello found it or made it. The rite is the poet's rest. It may be an old hymn to Demeter or also illustrate Coela enarrant gloriam Domini. It is susceptible of nodes or modes as far apart as hyperphrygian and mixolydian and of texts so divergent as priests haihooping round David's that is Circe's or what am I saying Ceres' alt
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!
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