, 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 Dublin, crowded with loyal sightseers, collapses.)
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 preservatives, in sealed envelopes tied with
gold thread, butter scotch, pineapple rock, billets doux in the form of
cocked hats, readymade suits, porringers of toad in the hole, bottles of
Jeyes' Fluid, purchase stamps, 40 days' indulgences, spurious coins,
dairyfed pork sausages, theatre passes, season tickets available for all
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), So Meals for 7/6
(culinic), Was Jesus a Sun Myth? (historic), Expel that Pain (medic),
Infant's Compendium of the Universe (cosmic), Let's All Chortle (hilaric),
Canvasser's Vade Mecum (journalic), love-letters of Mother Assistant
(erotic), Who's Who in Space (astric), Songs that Reached Our Heart
(melodic), Pennywise's Way to Wealth (parsimonic). A general rush and
scramble. Women press forward to touch the hem of Bloom's robe. The lady
Gwendolen Dubedat bursts through the throng, leaps on his horse and kisses
him on both cheeks amid great acclamation. A magnesium flashlight photograph
is taken. Babes and sucklings are held up.)
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. 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 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 carnival, with masked licence, bonuses
for all, esperanto the universal brotherhood. No more patriotism of
barspongers and dropsical impostors. Free money, free love and a free lay
church in a free lay state.
O'MADDEN BURKE Free fox in a free henroost.
DAVY BYRNE (Yawning.) Iiiiiiiiiaaaaaaach!
BLOOM 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 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 of different storeys.)
ALEXANDER J. DOWIE (Violently.) Fellowchristians and antiBloomites, the
man called Bloom is from the roots of hell, a disgrace to christian men. A
fiendish libertine from his earliest years this stinking goat of Mendes gave
precocious signs of infantile debauchery recalling the cities of the plain,
with a dissolute granddam. This vile hypocrite, bronzed with infamy, is the
white bull mentioned in the Apocalypse. A worshipper of the Scarlet Woman,
intrigue is the very breath of his nostrils. The stake faggots and the
caldron of boiling oil are for him. Caliban!
THE MOB Lynch him! Roast him! He's as bad as Parnell was. Mr Fox!
(Mother Grogan throws her boot at Bloom. Several shopkeepers from upper
and lower Dorset street throw objects of little or no commercial value,
hambones, condensed milk tins, unsaleable cabbage, stale bread, 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 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 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 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' 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, Goldfinger,
Chrysostomos, MaindorÉe, Silversmile, Silberselber Vifargent, Panargros.
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 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 Mendelssohn, Henry Irving, Rip van Winkle,
Rossuth, 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 began 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 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 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 sugaun, with a smile in his eye.) Let me be going now, woman of the
house, for by all the goats in Connemara I'm after having the father and
mother of a bating. (With a tear in his eye.) All insanity. Patriotism,
sorrow for the dead, music, future of the race. To be or not to be. Life's
dream is o'er. End it peacefully. They can live on. (He gazes far away
mournfully.) I am ruined. A few pastilles of aconite. The blinds drawn. A
letter. Then lie back to rest. (He breathes softly.) No more. I have lived.
Fare. Farewell.
ZOE (Stiffly, her finger in her neckfillet.) Honest? Till the next
time. (She sneers.) 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 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 tapes-tried with a paper of yewfronds and clear glades. In the
grate is spread a screen of peacock feathers. Lynch squats crosslegged on
the hearth rug of matted hair, his cap back to the front. With a wand he
beats time slowly. Kitty Ricketts, a bony pallid whore in navy costume,
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 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 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 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 Cla 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' altar and David's tip from the stable to
his chief bassoonist about his almightiness. Mais, nom de nom, that is
another pair of trousers. Jetez la gourme. Faut que jeunesse se passe. (He
stops, points at Lynch's cap, smiles, laughs.) Which side is your knowledge
bump?
THE CAP (With saturnine spleen.) 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 on 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 Anti christ. O, my
foot's tickling.
(Ragged barefoot newsboys, jogging a wagtail kite, patterpast,
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, wanderingjew, a clutching hand open on his
spine, stumps forward. Across his loins is slung a pilgrims 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 primigene! (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 son! 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 Jerusalem! 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 tight-rope taut from zenith to nadir the End of
the World, a two headed octopus in gillies kilts, busby and tartan filibegs,
whirls through the murk, head over heels, in the fob of the Three Lugs 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 corncrakes, jars on high. Perspiring in a loose lawn surplice with
funnel sleeves he is seen, vergefaced 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 play a slick
ace. Join on right here! Book through to eternity junction, the nonstop run.
Just one word more. Are you a god or a doggone clod? If the second advent
came to Coney Island are we ready? Florry Christ, Stephen Christ, Zoe
Christ, Bloom Christ, Kitty Christ, Lynch Christ, it's up to you to sense
that cosmic force. Have we cold feet about the cosmos? No. Be on the side of
the angels. Be a prism. You have that something within, the higher self. You
can rub shoulders with a Jesus, a Gautama, an Ingersoll. Are you all in this
vibration? I say you are. You once nobble that, congregation, and a buck
joyride to heaven becomes a back number. You got me? It's a lifebrightener,
sure. The hottest stuff ever was. It's the whole pie with jam in. It's just
the cutest snappiest line out. It is immense, supersumptuous. It restores.
It vibrates. I know and I am some vibrator. Joking apart and getting down to
bedrock, A. J. Christ Dowie and the harmonial philosophy, have you got that?
O.K. Seventyseven west sixtyninth street. Got me? That's it. You call me up
by sunphone any old time. Bumboosers, save your stamps. (He shouts.) Now
then our glory song. All join heartily in the singing. Encore! (He sings.)
Jeru...
THE GRAMOPHONE (Drowning his voice.) Whorusalaminyour highhohhhh.
(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, Dixon, Madden, Crotthers, Costello, Lenehan, Bannon,
Mulligan and Lynch in white surgical students' gowns, four abreast,
goosestepping, tramp fast past in noisy marching.)
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, lizard-lettered, 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. (Produces a greencapped dark lantern and
flashes it towards a corner; with carping accent.) Esthetics and cosmetics
are for the boudoir. I am out for truth. Plain truth for a plain man.
Tanderagee wants the facts and means to get them.
(In the cone of the search light 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 co-operative 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 judas hand 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 lifts boldly a side of her slip. Bare from her garters up her flesh
appears under the sapphire a nixie's green. She puffs calmly at her
cigarette.) Can you see 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 Szombathely.
(He coughs thoughtfully, drily.) Promiscuous nakedness is much in evidence
hereabouts, eh? Inadvertently her backview revealed the fact that she is not
wearing those rather intimate garments of which you are a particular
devotee. The injection mark on the thigh I hope you perceived? Good.
BLOOM Granpapachi. But...
VIRAG Number two on the other hand, she of the cherry rouge and
coiffeuse white, whose hair owes not a little to our tribal elixir of
gopherwood, is in walking costume and tightly staysed by her sit, I should
opine. Backbone in front, so to say. Correct me but I always understood that
the act so performed by skittish humans with glimpses of lingerie appealed
to you in virtue of its exhibitionististicicity. In a word. Hippogriff. Am I
right?
BLOOM She is rather lean.
VIRAG (Not unpleasantly.) Absolutely! Well observed and those pannier
pockets of the skirt and slightly pegtop effect are devised to suggest
bunchiness of hip. A new purchase at some monster sale for which a gull has
been mulcted. Meretricious finery to deceive the eye. Observe the attention
to details of dustspecks. Never put on you tomorrow what you can wear today.
Parallax! (With a nervous twitch of his head.) Did you hear my brain go
snap? Pollysyllabax!
BLOOM (An elbow resting in a hand, a forefinger against his cheek.) She
seems sad.
VIRAG (Cynically, his weasel teeth bared yellow, draws down his left
eye with a finger and barks hoarsely.) Hoax! Beware of the flapper and bogus
mournful. Lily of the alley. All possess bachelor's button discovered by
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 rere lower down are two additional protuberances, suggestive of
potent rectum and tumescent for palpation which leave nothing to be desired
save compactness. Such fleshy parts are the product of careful nurture. When
coopfattened their livers reach an elephantine size. Pellets of new bread
with fennygreek and gumbenjamin swamped down by potions of green tea endow
them during their brief existence with natural pincushions of quite colossal
blubber. That suits your book, eh? Fleshhotpots of Egypt to hanker after.
Wallow in it. Lycopodium. (His throat twitches.) Slapbang! There he goes
again.
BLOOM The stye I dislike.
VIRAG (Arches his eyebrows.) Contact with a goldring, they say.
Argumentum ad feminam, as we said in old Rome and ancient Greece in the
consulship of Diplodocus and Ichthyo saurus. For the rest Eve's sovereign
remedy. Not for sale. Hire only. Huguenot. (He twitches.) It is a funny
sound.
(He coughs encouragingly.) But possibly it is only a wart. I presume
you shall have remembered what I will have taught you on that head?
Wheatenmeal with honey and nutmeg.
BLOOM (Reflecting.) Wheatenmeal with lycopodium and syllabax. This
searching ordeal. It has been an unusually fatiguing day, a chapter of
accidents. Wait. I mean, wartsblood spreads warts, you said .
VIRAG (Severely, his nose hardhumped, his side eye winking.) Stop
twirling your thumbs and have a good old thunk. See, you have forgotten.
Exercise your mnemotechnic. La causa È santa. Tara. Tara. (Aside.) He will
surely remember.
BLOOM Rosemary also did I understand you to say or will power 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 then to have now concluded. Nightdress was never. Hence
this. But tomorrow is a new day will be. Past was is today. What now is will
then tomorrow as now was 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 their way through miles of
omnivorous forest to sucksucculent her breast dry. Like those bubblyjocular
Roman matrons one reads of in Elephantuliasis.
VIRAG (His mouth projected in hard wrinkles, eyes stonily forlornly
closed, psalms in outlandish monotone.) That the cows with their those
distended udders 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 homing 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 catastrophics 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
Ever 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 Jacobs 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, thin beard and moustache. His spindlelegs and sparrow feet
are those of the tenor Mario, prince of Candia. He settles down his goffered
ruffs and moistens his lips with a passage of his amorous tongue.)
HENRY (In a low dulcet voice, touching the strings of his guitar.)
There is a flower that bloometh.
(Virag truculent, his jowl set, stares at the lamp. Grave Bloom 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 of this morning has left on me a deep
impression. Though our ages. Will write fully tomorrow. I'm partially drunk,
by the way. (He touches the keys again.) Minor chord comes now. Yes. Not
much however.
(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 Drunk and Philip Sober two Oxford dons with
lawnmowers, appear in the window embrasure. Both are masked with Matthew
Arnold's face.)
PHILIP SOBER Take a fool's advice. All is not well. Work it out with
the buttend of a pencil, like a good young idiot. Three pounds twelve you
got, two notes, one sovereign, two crowns, if youth but knew. Mooney's en
ville, Mooney's sur mer, the Moira, Larchet's, Holles street hospital,
Burke's. Eh? I am watching you.
PHILIP DRUNK (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. Why I left the
Church of Rome. Read the Priest, the Woman and the Confessional. Penrose.
Flipperty Jippert. (He wriggles.) Woman, undoing with sweet pudor her belt
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 Shortall that was in the lock with the pox she got from
Jimmy Pidgeon in the blue caps had a child off him that couldn't swallow and
was smothered with the convulsions in the mattress and we all subscribed for
the funeral.
PHILIP DRUNK (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 whores
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 POLLARD (Nakkering castanet bones in his huge padded paws, yodels
jovially in base barreltone.) When love absorbs my ardent soul.
(The virgins, Nurse Callan and Nurse Quigley, burst through the
ringkeepers and the ropes and mob him with open arms.)
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 cows lick to his hair. Steered by his rapier, he glides to the
door his wild had 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!
(Exeunt severally.)
STEPHEN (Over his shoulder to Zoe.) You would have preferred the
fighting parson who founded the protestant error. But beware Antisthenes,
the dog sage, and the last end of Anus Heresiarchus. The agony in 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 Ireland,
appears in the doorway, dressed in red soutane, sandals and socks. Seven
dwarf simian acolytes, also in red, cardinal sins, uphold his train, peeping
under it. He wears a battered silk hat sideways on his head. His thumbs are
stuck in his armpits and his palms outspread. Round his neck hangs a rosary
of corks ending on his breast in a corkscrew cross. Releasing his thumbs, he
invokes grace from on high with lace wave gestures and proclaims with
bloated pomp.)
THE CARDINAL
Conservio lies captured.
He lies in the lowest dungeon
With manacles and chains around his limbs
Weighing upwards of three tons.
(He looks at all for a moment, his right eye closed tight, his left
cheek puffed out. Then, unable to repress his merriment, he rocks to and
fro, ads 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 train bearers. 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 that door.
(A male form passes down the creaking staircase and is heard taking the
waterproof and hat from the rack. Bloom starts forward involuntarily and,
half closing the door as he passes, takes the chocolate from his pocket and
offers it nervously to Zoe.)
ZOE (Sniffs his hair briskly.) 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.
Blooms 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
Carmen. On her left hand are wedding and keeper rings. Her eyes are deeply
carboned. She has a sprouting moustache. Her olive face is heavy, slightly
sweated and fullnosed, with orangetainted nostrils. She has lace 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 lace 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 (Folding together, rests against her eardrop.) Have you
forgotten me?
BLOOM Yes. No.
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 may.
BLOOM (Looks downwards and perceives her unfastened bootlace. ) We are
observed.
THE FAN (Points downwards quickly.) 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 Paris.
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 mid-brow. His eyes grow
dull, darker and pouched, his nose thickens.)
BLOOM (Mumbles.) Awaiting your further orders, we remain, gentlemen.
BELLO (With a hard basilisk stare, in a baritone voice.) Hound of
dishonour!
BLOOM (Infatuated.) Empress!
BELLO (His heavy cheekchops sagging.) Adorer of the adulterous rump!
BLOOM (Plaintively.) Hugeness!
BELLO Dungdevourer!
BLOOM (With sinews semiflexed.) Magnificence.
BELLO Down! (He taps her on the shoulder with his fan.) Incline feet
forward! Slide left foot one pace back. You will fall. You are falling. On
the hands down!
BLOOM (Her eyes upturned in the sign of admiration, closing.) 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 moor cock'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.
BELLO (Laughs loudly.) Holy smoke! You little know what's in store for
you. I'm the tartar to settle your little lot and break you in! I'll bet
Kentucky cocktails all round I shame it out of you, old son. Cheek me, I
dare you. If you do tremble in anticipation of heel discipline to be
inflicted in gym costume.
(Bloom creeps under the sofa and peers out through the fringe.
ZOE (Widening her slip to screen her.) She's not here.
BLOOM (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.
BELLO (Coaxingly.) Come, ducky dear. I want a word with you, darling,
just to administer correction. Just a little heart to heart talk, sweety.
(Bloom puts out her timid head.) There's a good girly now. (Bello grabs her
hair violently and drags her forward.) I only want to correct you for your
own good on a soft safe spot. How's that tender behind? O, ever so gently,
pet. Begin to get ready.
BLOOM (Fainting.) Don't tear my.
BELLO (Savagely.) The nosering, the pliers, the bastinado, the hanging
hook, the knout I'll make you kiss while the flutes play like the Nubian
slave of old. You're in for it this time. I'll make you remember me for the
balance of your natural life. (His forehead veins swollen, his face
congested.) I shall sit on your ottoman saddleback every morning after my
thumping good breakfast of Matterson's fat ham rashers and a bottle of
Guinness's porter. (He belches.) And suck my thumping good Stock Exchange
cigar while I read the Licensed Victualler's Gazette. Very possibly I shall
have you slaughtered and skewered in my stables and enjoy a slice Of you
with crisp crackling from the baking tin basted and baked like sucking pig
with rice and lemon or currant sauce. It will hurt you.
(He twists her arm. Bloom squeaks, turning turtle.)
BLOOM Don't be cruel, nurse! Don't!
BELLO (Twisting.) Another!
BLOOM (Screams.) O, it's hell itself! Every nerve in my body aches like
mad!
BELLO (Shouts.) Good, by the rumping jumping general! That's the best
bit of news I heard these six weeks. Here, don't keep me waiting, damn you.
(He slaps her face.)
BLOOM (Whimpers.) You're after hitting me. I'll tell...
BELLO Hold him down, girls, till I squat on him.
ZOE Yes. Walk on him! I will.
FLORRY I will. Don't be greedy.
KITTY No, me. Lend him to me.
(The brothel cook, Mrs Keogh, wrinkled, greybearded, in a greasy bib,
men's grey and green socks and brogues, flour-smeared, a rollingpin stuck
with raw pastry in her bare red arm and hand, appears at the door.)
MRS KEOCH (Ferociously.) Can I help? (They hold and pinion Bloom.)
BELLO (Squats, with a grunt, on Bloom's upturned face, puffing
cigar-smoke, 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
Gardner told me about. Just my infernal luck, curse it. And that Goddamned
outsider Throwaway at twenty to one. (He quenches his cigar angrily on
Bloom's ear.) Where's that Goddamned cursed ashtray?
BLOOM (Goaded, buttocksmothered.) O! O! Monsters! Cruel one!
BELLO Ask for that every ten minutes. Beg, pray for it as you never
prayed before. (He thrusts out a figged fist and foul cigar.) Here, kiss
that. Both. Kiss. (He throws a leg astride and, pressing with horseman's
knees, calls in a hard voice.) Gee up! A cockhorse to Banbury cross. I'll
ride him for the Eclipse stakes. (He bends sideways and squeezes his mount's
testicles roughly, shouting.) Ho! off we pop! I'll nurse you in proper
fashion. (He horserides cockhorse, leaping in the saddle.) The lady goes a
pace a pace and the coachman goes a trot a trot and the gentleman goes a
gallop a gallop a gallop a gallop.
FLORRY (Pulls at Bello.) Let me on him now. You had enough. I asked
before you.
ZOE (Pulling at Florry.) Me. Me. Are you not finished with him yet,
suckeress?
BLOOM (Stifling.) Can't.
BELLO Well, I'm not. Wait. (He holds in his breath.) Curse it. Here.
This bung's about burst. (He uncorks himself behind: then, contorting his
features, farts loudly.) Take that! (He recorks himself) Yes, by Jingo,
sixteen three quarters.
BLOOM (A sweat breaking out over him.) Not man. (He sniffs.) Woman.
BELLO (Stands up.) No more blow hot and cold. What you longed for has
come to pass. Henceforth you are unmanned and mine in earnest, a thing under
the yoke. Now for your punishment frock. You will shed your male garments,
you understand, Ruby Cohen? and don the shot silk luxuriously rustling over
head and shoulders and quickly too.
BLOOM (Shrinks.) Silk, mistress said! O crinkly! scrapy! Must I
tip-touch it with my nails?
BELLO (Points to his whores.) As they are now, so will you be, wigged,
singed, perfumesprayed, ricepowdered, with smoothshaven armpits. Tape
measurements will be taken next your skin. You will be laced with cruel
force into vicelike corsets of soft dove coutille, with whalebone busk, to
the diamond trimmed pelvis, the absolute outside edge, while your figure,
plumper than when at large, will be restrained in nettight frocks, pretty
two ounce petticoats and fringes and things stamped, of course, with my
houseflag, creations of lovely lingerie for Alice and nice scent for Alice.
Alice will feel the pullpull. Martha and Mary will be a little chilly at
first in such delicate thighcasing but the frilly flimsiness of lace round
your bare knees will remind you...
BLOOM (A chafing soubrette with dauby cheeks, mustard hair and lace
male hands and nose, leering mouth.) I tried her things on only once, a
small prank, in Holles street. When we were hardup I washed them to save the
laundry bill. My own shirts I turned. It was the purest thrift.
BELLO (Jeers.) Little jobs that make mother pleased, eh! and showed off
coquettishly in your domino at the mirror behind close-drawn blinds your
unskirted thighs and hegoat's udders, in various poses of surrender, eh? Ho!
Ho! I have to laugh! That secondhand black operatop shift and short trunk
leg naughties all split up the stitches at her last rape that Mrs Miriam
Dandrade sold you from the Shelbourne Hotel, eh?
BLOOM Miriam, Black. Demimondaine.
BELLO (Guffaws.) Christ Almighty, it's too tickling, this! You were a
nicelooking Miriam when you clipped off your backgate hairs and lay swooning
in the thing across the bed as Mrs Dandrade, about to be violated by
Lieutenant Smythe Smythe, Mr Philip Augustus Blockwell, M.P., Signor Laci
Daremo, the robust tenor, blueeyed Bert, the liftboy, Henry Fleury of Gordon
Bennett fame, Sheridan, the quadroon Cr&Aelig;sus, the varsity wetbob eight
from old Trinity, Ponto, her splendid Newfoundland and Bobs, dowager duchess
of Manorhamilton. (He guffaws again.) Christ, wouldn't it make a Siamese cat
laugh?
BLOOM (Her hands and features working.) It was Gerald converted me to
be a true corsetlover when I was female impersonator in the High School play
Vice Versa. It was dear Gerald. He got that kink, fascinated by sister's
stays. Now dearest Gerald uses pinky greasepaint and gilds his eyelids. Cult
of the beautiful.
BELLO (With wicked glee.) Beautiful! Give us a breather! When you took
your seat with womanish care, lifting your billowy flounces, on the
smoothworn throne.
BLOOM Science. To compare the various joys we each enjoy. (Earnestly.)
And really it's better the position... because often I used to wet.
BELLO (Sternly.) No insubordination. The sawdust is there in the corner
for you. I gave you strict instructions, didn't I? Do it standing, sir! I'll
teach you to behave like a jinkleman! If I catch a trace on your swaddles.
Aha! By the ass of the Dorans you'll find I'm a martinet. The sins of your
past are rising against you. Many. Hundreds.
THE SINS OF THE PAST (In a medley of voices.) He went through a form of
clandestine marriage with at least one woman in the shadow of the Black
Church. Unspeakable messages he telephoned mentally to Miss Dunn at an
address in d'Olier Street while he presented himself indecently to the
instrument in the callbox. By word and deed he encouraged a nocturnal
strumpet to deposit fecal and other matter in an unsanitary outhouse
attached to empty premises. In five public conveniences he wrote pencilled
messages offering his nuptial partner to all strongmembered males. And by
the offensively smelling vitriol works did he not pass night after night by
loving courting couples to see if and what and how much he could see? Did he
not lie in bed, the gross boar, gloating over a nauseous fragment of
wellused toilet paper presented to him by a nasty harlot, stimulated by
gingerbread and a postal order?
BELLO (Whistles loudly.) Say! What was the most revolting piece of
obscenity in all your career of crime? Go the whole hog. Puke it out. Be
candid for once.
(Mute inhuman faces throng forward, leering, vanishing, gibbering,
Eooloohoom. Poldy Hock, 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. Pleasants street. I only thought
the half of the... I swear on my sacred oath...
BELLO (Peremptorily.) Answer. Repugnant wretch! I insist on knowing.
Tell me something to amuse me, smut or a bloody good-ghoststory or a line of
poetry, quick, quick, quick! Where? How? What time? With how many? I give
you just three seconds. One! Two! Thr... !
BLOOM (Docile, gurgles.) I rererepugnosed in rerererepugnant...
BELLO (Imperiously.) O get out, you skunk! Hold your tongue! Speak when
you're spoken to.
BLOOM (Bows.) Master! Mistress! Mantamer!
(He lifts his arms. His bangle bracelets 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 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 ALBERTA MARSH Must be virgin. Good breath. Clean.
BELLO (Gives a rap with his gavel.) Two bar. Rockbottom figure and
cheap at the price. Fourteen hands high. Touch and examine his points.
Handle him. This downy skin, these soft muscles, this tender flesh. If I had
only my gold piercer here! And quite easy to milk. Three newlaid gallons a
day. A pure stock getter, due to lay within the hour. His sire's milk record
was a thousand gallons of whole milk in forty weeks. Whoa, my jewel! Beg up!
Whoa! (He brands his initial Con Bloom's croup.) So! Warranted Cohen! What
advance on two bob, gentlemen?
A DARKVISAGED MAN (In disguised accent.) Hoondert punt sterlink.
VOICES (Subdued.) For the Caliph Haroun Al Raschid.
BELLO (Gaily.) Right. Let them all come. The scanty, daringly short
skirt, riding up at the knee to show a peep of white pantalette, is a potent
weapon and transparent stockings, emeraldgartered, with the long straight
seam trailing up beyond the knee, appeal to the better instincts of the
blasÉ man about town. Learn the smooth mincing walk on four inch Louis XV
heels, the Grecian bend with provoking croup, the thighs fluescent, knees
modestly kissing. Bring all your power of fascination to bear on them.
Pander to their Gomorrahan vices.
BLOOM (Bends his blushing face into his armpit and simpers with
forefinger in mouth.) O, I know what you're hinting at now.
BELLO What else are you good for, an impotent thing like you? (He
stoops and, peering, pokes with his fan rudely under the fat suetfolds of
Bloom's haunches.) Up! Up! Manx cat! What have we here? Where's your curly
teapot gone to or who docked it on you, cockyolly? Sing, birdy, sing. It's
as limp as a boy of six's doing his pooly behind a cart. Buy a bucket or
sell your pump. (Loudly.) Can you do a man's job?
BLOOM Eccles Street.
BELLO (Sarcastically.) I wouldn't hurt your feelings for the world but
there's a man of brawn in possession there. The tables are turned, my gay
young fellow! He is something like a fullgrown outdoor man. Well for you,
you muff, if you had that weapon with knobs and lumps and warts all over it.
He shot his bolt, I can tell you! Foot to foot, knee to knee, belly to
belly, bubs to breast! He's no eunuch. A shock of red hair he has sticking
out of him behind like a furzebush! Wait for nine months, my lad! Holy
ginger, it's kicking and coughing up and down in her guts already! That
makes you wild, don't it? Touches the spot? (He spits in contempt.)
Spittoon!
BLOOM I was indecently treated, I... inform the police. Hundred pounds.
Unmentionable. I.
BELLO Would if you could, lame duck. A downpour we want, not your
drizzle.
BLOOM To drive me mad! Moll! I forgot! Forgive! Moll!... We... Still...
BELLO (Ruthlessly.) No, Leopold Bloom, all is changed by woman's will
since you slept horizontal in Sleepy Hollow your night of twenty years.
Return and see.
(Old Sleepy Hollow calls over the wold.)
SLEEPY HOLLOW Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!
BLOOM (In tattered moccasins with a rusty fowlingpiece, tip toeing,
fingertipping, his haggard bony bearded face peering through the diamond
panes, cries out.) I see her! It's she! The first night at Mat Dillon's! But
that dress, the green! And her hair is dyed gold and he.
BELLO (Laughs mockingly.) That's your daughter, you owl, with a
Mullingar student.
(Milly Bloom, fairhaired, greenvested, slimsandalled, her bluescab in
the seawind simply swirling, breaks from the arms of her lover and calls,
her young eyes wonderwide.)
MILLY My! It's Papli! But. O Papli, how old you've grown!
BELLO Changed, eh? Our whatnot, our writing table where we never wrote,
Aunt Hegarty's armchair, our classic reprints of old masters. A man and his
men friends are living there in clover. The Cuckoos' Rest! Why not? How many
women had you, say? Following them up dark streets, flatfoot, exciting them
by your smothered grunts. What, you male prostitute? Blameless dames with
parcels of groceries. Turn about. Sauce for the goose, my gander, O.
BLOOM They... I
BELLO (Cuttingly.) Their heelmarks will stamp the Brusselette carpet
you bought at Wren's auction. In their horseplay with Moll the romp to find
the buck flea in her breeches they will deface the little statue you carried
home in the rain for art for art's sake. They will violate the secrets of
your bottom drawer. Pages will be torn from your handbook of astronomy to
make them pipespills. And they will spit in your ten shilling brass fender
from Hampton Leedom's.
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.)
BELLO As a paying guest or a kept man? Too late. You have made your
secondbest bed and others must lie in it. Your epitaph is written. You are
down and out and don't you forget it, old bean.
BLOOM Justice! All Ireland versus one! Has nobody... ?
(He bites his thumb.)
BELLO Die and be damned to you if you have any sense of decency or
grace about you. I can give you a rare old wine that'll send you skipping to
hell and back. Sign a will and leave us any coin you have. If you have none
see you damn well get it, steal it, rob it! We'll bury you in our shrubbery
jakes where you'll be dead and dirty with old Cuck Cohen, my stepnephew I
married, the bloody old gouty procurator and sodomite with a crick in his
neck, and my other ten or eleven husbands, what ever the buggers' names
were, suffocated in the one cess pool. (He explodes in a loud phlegmy
laugh.) We'll manure you, Mr Flower! (He pipes scoffingly.) Byby, Poldy!
Byby, Papli!
BLOOM (Clasps his head.) My will power! Memory! I have sinned! I have
suff... (He weeps tearlessly.)
BELLO (Sneers.) Crybabby! Crocodile tears!
(Bloom, broken, closely veiled for the sacrifice, sobs, his face to the
earth. The passing bell is heard. Darkshawled figures of the circumcised, in
sackcloth and ashes, stand by the wailing wall. M. Shulomowitz, Joseph
Goldwater Moses Herzog, Harris Rosenberg, M. Moisel, J. Citron, Minnie
Watchman, 0. 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 Israel Adonai Elohenu Adonai Echad.
VOICES (Sighing.) So he's gone. Ah, yes. Yes, indeed. Bloom? Never
heard of him. No? Queer kind of chap. There's the widow. That so? Ah, yes.
(From the suttee pyre the flame of gum camphire ascends. The pall of
incense smoke screens and disperses. Out of her 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, high kickers, coster
picnic makers, pugilists, popular generals, immoral panto boys in flesh
tights and the nifty shimmy dancers, La Aurora and Karini, musical act, 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 sup plied 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 understood 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 Gibraltar by long sea, long ago.
THE NYMPH (Bends her head.) Worse! Worse!
BLOOM (Reflects precautiously.) That antiquated commode. It wasn't her
weight. She scaled just eleven stone nine. She put on nine pounds after
weaning. It 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 For ester's
uniform, doffs his plumed hat.) Prosper! Give shade on languorous days,
trees of Ireland!
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 they 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 sunspots 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 Montague Street. (He cheers feebly.) Hurray for the
High School!
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 toilette through ill-closed curtains, with poor papa's
operaglasses. The wanton ate grass wildly. She rolled downhill at Rialto
Bridge to tempt me with her flow of animal spirits. She climbed their
crooked tree and I... A saint couldn't resist it. The demon possessed me.
Besides, who saw?
(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 curvants.)
THE NANNYGOAT (Bleats.) Megegaggegg! Nannannanny!
BLOOM (Hatless, flushed, covered with burn of thistledown and
gotrepine.) 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 Kish lights the Erin's King
sails, sending a broadening plume of coalsmoke from her funnel towards the
land.)
COUNCILLOR NANNETI (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 white
sateen coatpans. 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.) Tranquilia convent. Sister Agatha. Mount Carmel,
the apparitions of Knock and Lourdes. No more desire. (She reclines her
head, sighing.) Only the ethereal. Where dreamy creamy gull waves o'er the
waters dull.
(Bloom half rises. His back 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 Reynard?
THE NYMPH (With a cry, flees from him unveiled, her plaster cast
cracking, a cloud of stench escaping from the cracks.) Poli... !
BLOOM (Calls after her.) As if you didn't get it on the double
yourselves. No jerks and multiple mucosities all over you. I tried it. Your
strength our weakness. What's our stud fee? What will you pay on the nail?
You fee men dancers on the Riviera, I read. (The fleeing nymph raises a
keen.) Eh! I have sixteen years of black slave labour behind me. And would a
jury give me five shillings alimony tomorrow, eh? Fool someone else, not me.
(He sniffs.) But. Onions. Stale. Sulphur. Grease.
(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. Lone 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.
BLOOM (With feeling.) It is nothing, but still a relic of poor mamma.
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.