e Libyan maneater. A redhot
crowbar and some liniment rubbing on the burning part produced Fritz of
Amsterdam, the thinking hyena. (He glares.) I possess the Indian sign. The
glint of my eye does it with these breastsparklers. (With a bewitching
smile.) I now introduce Mademoiselle Ruby, the pride of the ring.
FIRST WATCH Come. Name and address.
BLOOM I have forgotten for the moment. Ah, yes! (He takes off his high
grade hat, saluting.) Dr Bloom, Leopold, dental surgeon. You have heard of
von Bloom Pasha. Umpteen mil lions. Donnerwetter! Owns half Austria. Egypt.
Cousin.
FIRST WATCH Proof.
(A card falls from inside the leather headband of Bloom's hat.)
BLOOM (In red fez, cadi's dress coat with broad green sash, wearing a
false badge of the Legion of Honour, picks up the card hastily and offers
it.) Allow me. My club is the Junior Army and Navy. Solicitors: Messrs John
Henry Menton, 27 Bachelor's Walk.
FIRST WATCH (Reads.) Henry Flower. No fixed abode. Un lawfully watching
and besetting.
SECOND WATCH An alibi. You are cautioned.
BLOOM (Produces from his heartpocket a crumpled yellow flower.) This is
the flower in question. It was given me by a man I don't know his name.
(Plausibly.) You know that old joke, rose of Castille. Bloom. The change of
name Virag. (He murmurs privately and confidentially.) We are engaged you
see, sergeant. Lady in the case. Love entanglement. (He shoulders the second
watch gently.) Dash it all. It's a way we gallants have in the navy. Uniform
that does it. (He turns gravely to the first watch.) Still, of course, you
do get your Waterloo sometimes. Drop in some evening and have a glass of old
Burgundy. (To the second watch gaily.) I'll introduce you, inspector. She's
game. Do it in shake of a lamb's tail.
(A dark mercurialised face appears, leading a veiled figure.)
THE DARK MERCURY The Castle is looking for him. He was drummed out of
the army.
MARTHA (Thickveiled, a crimson halter round her neck, a copy of the
Irish Times in her hand, in tone of reproach, pointing.) Henry! Leopold!
Leopold! Lionel, thou lost one! Clear my name.
FIRST WATCH (Sternly.) Come to the station.
BLOOM (Scared, hats himself steps back, then, plucking at his heart and
lifting his right forearm on the square, he gives the sign and dueguard of
fellowcraft.) No, no, worshipful master, light of love. Mistaken identity.
The Lyons mail. Lesurques and Dubosc. You remember the Childs fratricide
case. We medical men. By striking him dead with a hatchet. I am wrongfully
accused. Better one guilty escape than ninetynine wrongfully condemned.
MARTHA (Sobbing behind her veil.) Breach of promise. My real name is
Peggy Griffin. He wrote to me that he was miserable. I'll tell my brother,
the Bective rugger fullback, on you, heartless flirt.
BLOOM (Behind his hand.) She's drunk. The woman is inebriated. (He
murmurs vaguely the past of Ephraim.) Shitbroleeth.
SECOND WATCH (Tears in his eyes, to Bloom.) You ought to be thoroughly
well ashamed of yourself.
BLOOM Gentleman of the jury, let me explain. A pure mare's nest. I am a
man misunderstood. I am being made a scapegoat of. I am a respectable
married man, without a stain on my character. I live in Eccles street. My
wife, I am the daughter of a most distinguished commander, a gallant
upstanding gentleman, who do you call him, Majorgeneral Brian Tweedy, one of
Britain's fighting men who helped to win our battles. Got his majority for
the heroic defence of Rorke's Drift.
FIRST WATCH Regiment.
BLOOM (Turns to the gallery.) The royal Dublins, boys, the salt of the
earth, known the world over. I think I see some old comrades in arms up
there among you. The R. D. F. With our own Metropolitan police, guardians of
our homes, the pluckiest lads and the finest body of men, as physique, in
the service of our sovereign.
A VOICE Turncoat! Up the Boers! Who booed Joe Chamberlain?
BLOOM (His hand on the shoulder of the first watch.) My old dad too was
a J.P. I'm as staunch a Britisher as you are, sir. I fought with the colours
for king and country in the absentminded war under General Gough in the park
and was disabled at Spion Kop and Bloemfontein, was mentioned in dispatches.
I did all a white man could. (With quiet feeling.) Jim Bludso. Hold her
nozzle again the bank.
FIRST WATCH Profession or trade.
BLOOM Well, I follow a literary occupation. Author-journalist. In fact
we are just bringing out a collection of prize stories of which I am the
inventor, something that is an entirely new departure. I am connected with
the British and Irish press. If you ring up...
(Myles Crawford strides out jerkily, a quill between his teeth. His
scarlet beak blazes within the aureole of his straw hat. He dangles a hank
of Spanish onions in one hand and holds with the other hand a telephone
receiver nozzle to his ear.)
MYLES CRAWFORD (His cock's wattles wagging.) Hello, seventyseven
eightfour. Hello. Freeman's Urinal and Weekly Arse wiper here. Paralyse
Europe. You which? Bluebags? Who writes? Is it Bloom?
(Mr Philip Beaufoy, palefaced, stands in the witnessbox, in accurate
morning dress, outbreast pocket with peak of handkerchief showing, creased
lavender trousers and patent boots. He cames a lace portfolio labelled
Matcham's Masterstrokes.)
BEAUFOY (Drawls.) No, you aren't, not by a long shot if I know it. I
don't see it, that's all. No born gentleman, no one with the most
rudimentary promptings of a gentleman would stoop to such particularly
loathsome conduct. One of those, my lord. A plagiarist. A soapy sneak
masquerading as a literateur. It's perfectly obvious that with the most
inherent baseness he has cribbed some of my bestselling books, really
gorgeous stuff, a perfect gem, the love passages in which are beneath
suspicion. The Beaufoy books of love and great possessions with which your
lordship is doubtless familiar, are a household word throughout the kingdom.
BLOOM (Murmurs with hangdog meekness.) That bit about the laughing
witch hand in hand I take exception to, if I may... ?
BEAUFOY (His lip upcurled, smiles superciliously on the court.) You
funny ass, you! You're too beastly awfully weird for words! I don't think
you need over excessively disincommodate yourself in that regard. My
literary agent Mr J. B. Pinker is in attendance. I presume, my lord, we
shall receive the usual witnesses' fees, shan't we? We are considerably out
of pocket over this bally pressman johnny, this jackdaw of Rheims, who has
not even been to a university.
BLOOM (Indistinctly.) University of life. Bad art.
BEAUFOY (Shouts.) It's a damnably foul lie showing the moral rottenness
of the man! (He extends his portfolio.) We have here damning evidence, the
corpus delicti, my lord, a specimen of my maturer work disfigured by the
hallmark of the beast.
A VOICE FROM THE GALLERY
Moses, Moses, king of the jews,
Wiped his arse in the Daily News.
BLOOM (Bravely.) Overdrawn.
BEAUFOY You low cad! You ought to be ducked in the horsepond, you
rotter! (To the court.) Why, look at the man's private life! Leading a
quadruple existence! Street angel and house devil. Not fit to be mentioned
in mixed society. The arch conspirator of the age.
BLOOM (To the court.) And he, a bachelor, how.
FIRST WATCH The King versus Bloom. Call the woman Driscoll.
THE CRIER Mary Driscoll, scullerymaid!
(Mary Driscoll, a slipshod servant girl, approaches. She has a bucket
on the crook of her arm and a scouringbrush in her hand.)
SECOND WATCH Another! Are you of the unfortunate class?
MARY DRISCOLL (Indignantly.) I'm not a bad one. I bear a respectable
character and was four months in my last place. I was in a situation, six
pounds a year and my chances with Fridays out, and I had to leave owing to
his carryings on.
FIRST WATCH What do you tax him with?
MARY DRISCOLL He made a certain suggestion but I thought more of myself
as poor as I am.
BLOOM (In housejacket of ripplecloth, flannel trousers, heelless
slippers, unshaven, his hair rumpled softly.) I treated you white. I gave
you mementoes, smart emerald garters far above your station. Incautiously I
took your part when you were accused of pilfering. There's a medium in all
things. Play cricket.
MARY DRISCOLL (Excitedly.) As God is looking down on me this night if
ever I laid a hand to them oysters!
FIRST WATCH The offence complained of? Did something happen?
MARY DRISCOLL He surprised me in the rere of the premises, your honour,
when the missus was out shopping one morning with a request for a safety
pin. He held me and I was discoloured in four places as a result. And he
interfered twice with my clothing.
BLOOM She counterassaulted.
MARY DRISCOLL (Scornfully.) I had more respect for the scouringbrush,
so I had. I remonstrated with him, your lord, and he remarked: Keep it
quiet!
(General laughter.)
GEORGES FOTTRELL (Clerk of the crown and peace, resonantly.) Order in
court! The accused will now make a bogus statement.
(Bloom, pleading not guilty and holding a fullblown waterlily, begins a
long unintelligible speech. They would hear what counsel had to say in his
stirring address to the grand-jury. He was down and out but, though branded
as a black sheep, if he might say so, he meant to reform, to retrieve the
memory of the past in a purely sisterly way and return to nature as a purely
domestic animal. A seven months' child, he had been carefully brought up and
nurtured by an aged bedridden parent. There might have been lapses of an
erring father but he wanted to turn over a new leaf and now, when at long
last in sight of the whipping post, to lead a homely life in the evening of
his days, permeated by the affectionate surroundings of the heaving bosom of
the family. An acclimatised Britisher he had seen that summer eve from the
footplate of an engine cab of the Loop line railway company while the rain
refrained from falling glimpses, as it were, through the windows of loveful
households in Dublin city and urban district of scenes truly rural of
happiness of the better land with Dockrell's wallpaper at one and ninepence
a dozen, innocent British born bairns lisping prayers to the Sacred Infant,
youthful scholars grappling with their pensums, model young ladies playing
on the pianoforte or anon all with fervour reciting the family rosary round
the crackling Yulelog while in the boreens and green lanes the colleens with
their swains strolled what times the strains of the organtoned melodeon
Britannia metalbound with four acting stops and twelvefold bellows, a
sacrifice, greatest bargain ever... )
(Renewed laughter. He mumbles incoherently. Reporters complain that
they cannot hear.)
LONGHAND AND SHORTHAND (Without looking up from their notebooks.)
Loosen his boots.
PROFESSOR MACHUGH (From the presstable, coughs and calls.) Cough it up,
man. Get it out in bits.
(The crossexamination proceeds re Bloom and the bucket. A lace bucket.
Bloom himself Bowel trouble. In Beaver street. Gripe, yes. Quite bad. A
plasterers bucket. By walking stifflegged. Suffered untold misery. Deadly
agony. About noon. Love or burgundy. Yes, some spinach. Crucial moment. He
did not look in the bucket. Nobody. Rather a mess. Not completely. A Titbits
back number.)
(Uproar and catcalls. Bloom, in a torn frockcoat stained with
whitewash, dinged silk hat sideways on his head, a strip of sticking-plaster
across his nose, talks inaudibly.)
J. J. O'MOLLOY (In barrister's grey wig and stuffgown, speaking with a
voice of pained protest.) This is no place for indecent levity at the
expense of an erring mortal disguised in liquor. We are not in a beargarden
nor at an Oxford rag nor is this a travesty of justice. My client is an
infant, a poor foreign immigrant who started scratch as a stowaway and is
now trying to turn an honest penny. The trumped up misdemeanour was due to a
momentary aberration of heredity, brought on by hallucination, such
familiarities as the alleged guilty occurrence being quite permitted in my
client's native place, the land of the Pharaoh. Prima facie, I put it to you
that there was no attempt at carnally knowing. Intimacy did not occur and
the offence complained of by Driscoll, that her virtue was solicited, was
not repeated. I would deal inespecial with atavism. There have been cases of
shipwreck and somnambulism in my client's family. If the accused could speak
he could a tale unfold one of the strangest that have ever been narrated
between the covers of a book. He himself, my lord, is a physical wreck from
cobbler's weak chest. His submission is that he is of Mongolian extraction
and irresponsible for his actions. Not all there, in fact.
BLOOM (Barefoot, pigeonbreasted, in lascar's vest and trousers,
apologetic toes turned in, opens his tiny mole's eyes and looks about him
dazedly, passing a slow hand across his forehead. Then he hitches his belt
sailor fashion and with a shrug of oriental obeisance salutes the court,
pointing one thumb heavenward.) Him makee velly muchee fine night. (He
begins to lilt simply.)
Li li poo lil chile,
Blingee pigfoot evly night.
Payee two shilly...
(He is howled down.)
J. J. O'MOLLOY (Hotly to the populace.) This is a lonehand fight. By
Hades, I will not have any client of mine gagged and badgered in this
fashion by a pack of curs and laughing hyenas. The Mosaic code has
superseded the law of the jungle. I say it and I say it emphatically without
wishing for one moment to defeat the ends of justice, accused was not
accessory before the act and prosecutrix has not been tampered with. The
young person was treated by defendant as if she were his very own daughter.
(Bloom takes J. J. O'Molloy's hand and raises it to his lips.) I shall call
rebutting evidence to prove up to the hilt that the hidden hand is again at
its old game. When in doubt persecute Bloom. My client, an innately bashful
man, would be the last man in the world to do anything ungentlemanly which
injured modesty could object to or cast a stone at a girl who took the wrong
turning when some dastard, responsible for her condition, had worked his own
sweet will on her. He wants to go straight. I regard him as the whitest man
I know. He is down on his luck at present owing to the mortgaging of his
extensive property at Agendath Netaim in faraway Asia Minor, slides of which
will now be shown. (To Bloom.) I suggest that you will do the handsome
thing.
BLOOM A penny in the pound.
(The mirage of the lake of Kinnereth with blurred cattle cropping in
silver haze is projected on the wall. Moses Dlugacz, ferreteyed albino, in
blue dungarees, stands up in the gallery, holding in each hand an orange
citron and a pork kidney.)
DLUGACZ (Hoarsely.) Bleibtreustrasse, Berlin, W. 13.
(J. J. O'Molloy steps on to a low plinth and holds the lapel of his
coat with solemnity. His face lengthens, grows pale and bearded, with sunken
eyes, the blotches of phthisis and hectic cheekbones of John F. Taylor. He
applies his handkerchief to his mouth and scrutinises the galloping tide of
rosepink blood.)
J. J. O'MOLLOY (Almost voicelessly.) Excuse me, I am suffering from a
severe chill, have recently come from a sickbed. A few wellchosen words. (He
assumes the avine head, foxy moustache and proboscidal eloquence of Seymour
Bushe.) When the angel's book comes to be opened if aught that the pensive
bosom has inaugurated of soultransfigured and of soultransfiguring deserves
to live I say accord the prisoner at the bar the sacred benefit of the
doubt. (A paper with something written on it is handed into court.)
BLOOM (In court dress.) Can give best references. Messrs Callan,
Coleman. Mr Wisdom Hely J. P. My old chief Joe Cuffe. Mr V. B. Dillon,
ex-lord mayor of Dublin. I have moved in the charmed circle of the highest .
Queens of Dublin Society. (Carelessly.) I was just chatting this afternoon
at the viceregal lodge to my old pals, sir Robert and lady Ball, astronomer
royal, at the levee. Sir Bob, I said...
MRS YELVERTON BARRY (In lowcorsaged opal balldress and elbowlength
ivory gloves, wearing a sabletrimmed brick quilted dolman, a comb of
brilliants and panache of osprey in her hair.) Arrest him constable. He
wrote me an anonymous letter in prentice backhand when my husband was in the
North Riding of Tipperary on the Munster circuit, signed James Lovebirch. He
said that he had seen from the gods my peerless globes as I sat in a box of
the Theatre Royal at a command performance of La Cigale. I deeply inflamed
him, he said. He made improper overtures to me to misconduct myself at half
past four p.m. on the following Thursday, Dunsink time. He offered to send
me through the post a work of fiction by Monsieur Paul de Kock, entitled The
Girl with the Three Pairs of Stays.
MRS BELLINGHAM (In cap and seal coneymantle, wrapped up to the nose,
steps out of her brougham and scans through tortoiseshell quizzingglasses
which she takes from inside her huge opossum muff.) Also to me. Yes, I
believe it is the same objectionable person. Because he closed my carriage
door outside sir Thornley Stoker's one sleety day during the cold snap of
February ninetythree when even the grid of the wastepipe and ballstop in my
bath cistern were frozen. Subsequently he enclosed a bloom of edelweiss
culled on the heights, as he said, in my honour. I had it examined by a
botanical expert and elicited the information that it was a blossom of the
homegrown potato plant purloined from a forcingcase of the model farm.
MRS YELVERTON BARRY Shame on him!
(A crowd of sluts and ragamuffins sues forward.)
THE SLUTS AND RAGAMUFFINS (Screaming.) Stop thief! Hurrah there,
Bluebeard! Three cheers for Ikey Mo!
SECOND WATCH (Produces handcuffs.) Here are the darbies.
MRS BELLINGHAM He addressed me in several handwritings with fulsome
compliments as a Venus in furs and alleged profound pity for my frostbound
coachman Balmer while in the same breath he expressed himself as envious of
his earflaps and fleecy sheepskins and of his fortunate proximity to my
person, when standing behind my chair wearing my livery and the armorial
bearings of the Bellingham escutcheon garnished sable, a buck's head couped
or. He lauded almost extravagantly my nether extremities, my swelling calves
in silk hose drawn up to the limit, and eulogised glowingly my other hidden
treasures in priceless lace which, he said, he could conjure up. He urged
me, stating that he felt it his mission in life to urge me, to defile the
marriage bed, to commit adultery at the earliest possible opportunity.
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS (In amazon costume, hard hat,
jackboots cockspurred, vermilion waistcoat, fawn musketeer gauntlets with
bra idea drums, long train held up and hunting crop with which she strikes
her welt constantly.) Also me. Because he saw me on the polo ground of the
Phnix park at the match All Ireland versus the Rest of Ireland. My eyes,
I know, shone divinely as I watched Captain Slogger Dennehy of the
Inniskillings win the final chukkar on his darling cob Centaur. This
plebeian Don Juan observed me from behind a hackney car and sent me in
double envelopes an obscene photograph, such as are sold after dark on Paris
boulevards, insulting to any lady. I have it still. It represents a
partially nude senorita, frail and lovely (his wife as he solemnly assured
me, taken by him from nature), practising illicit intercourse with a
muscular torero, evidently a blackguard. He urged me to do likewise, to
misbehave, to sin with officers of the garrison. He implored me to soil his
letter in an unspeakable manner, to chastise him as he richly deserves, to
bestride and ride him, to give him a most vicious horsewhipping.
MRS BELLINGHAM Me too.
MRS YELVERTON BARRY Me too.
(Several highly respectable Dublin ladies hold up improper letters
received from Bloom.)
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS (Stamps her jingling spurs in a
sudden paroxysm of sudden fury.) I will, by the God above me. I'll scourge
the pigeonlivered cur as long as I can stand over him. I'll flay him alive.
BLOOM (His eyes closing, quails expectantly.) Here? (He squirms.)
Again! (He pants cringing.) I love the danger.
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS Very much so! I'll make it hot for
you. I'll make you dance Jack Latten for that.
MRS BELLINGHAM Tan his breech well, the upstart! Write the stars and
stripes on it!
MRS YELVERTON BARRY Disgraceful! There's no excuse for him! A married
man!
BLOOM All these people. I meant only the spanking idea. A warm tingling
glow without effusion. Refined birching to stimulate the circulation.
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS (Laughs derisively.) O, did you, my
fine fellow? Well, by the living God, you'll get the surprise of your life
now, believe me, the most unmerciful hiding a man ever bargained for. You
have lashed the dormant tigress in my nature into fury.
MRS BELLINGHAM (Shakes her muff and quizzing-glasses vindictively.)
Make him smart, Hanna dear. Give him ginger. Thrash the mongrel within an
inch of his life. The cat-o' nine-tails. Geld him. Vivisect him.
BLOOM (Shuddering, shrinking, joins his hands with hangdog mien.) O
cold! O shivery! It was your ambrosial beauty. Forget, forgive. Kismet. Let
me off this once. (He offers the other cheek.)
MRS YELVERTON BARRY (Severely.) Don't do so on any account, Mrs
Talboys! He should be soundly trounced!
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS (Unbuttoning her gauntlet violently.)
I'll do no such thing. Pig dog and always was ever since he was pupped! To
dare address me! I'll flog him black and blue in the public streets. I'll
dig my spurs in him up to the rowel. He is a wellknown cuckold. (She swishes
her hunting crop savagely in the air.) Take down his trousers without loss
of time. Come here, sir! Quick! Ready?
BLOOM (Trembling, beginning to obey.) The weather has been so warm.
(Davy Stephens, ringleted, passes with a bevy of barefoot newsboys.)
DAVY STEPHENS Messenger of the Sacred Heart and Evening Telegraph with
Saint Patrick's Day Supplement. Containing the new addresses of all the
cuckolds in Dublin.
(The very reverend Canon O'Hanlon in cloth of gold cope elevates and
exposes a marble timepiece. Before him Father Conroy and the reverend John
Hughes S.J. bend low.)
THE TIMEPIECE (Unportalling.)
Cuckoo
Cuckoo
Cuckoo
(The brass quoits of a bed are heard to jingle.)
THE QUOITS Jigjag, Jigajiga. Jigjag.
(A panel of fog rolls back rapidly, revealing rapidly in the jurybox
the faces of Martin Cunningham, foreman silkhatted, Jack Power Simon
Dedalus, Tom Kernan, Ned Lambert, John Henry Menton, Myles Crawford,
Lenehan, Paddy Leonard Nosey Flynn, M'Coy and the featureless face of a
Nameless One.)
THE NAMELESS ONE Bareback riding. Weight for age. Gob, he organised
her.
THE JURORS (All their heads turned to his voice.) Really?
THE NAMELESS ONE (Snarls.) Arse over tip. Hundred shillings to five.
THE JURORS (All their heads lowered in assent.) Most of us thought as
much.
FIRST WATCH He is a marked man. Another girl's plait cut. Wanted: Jack
the Ripper. A thousand pounds reward.
SECOND WATCH (Awed, whispers.) And in black. A mormon. Anarchist.
THE CRIER (Loudly.) Whereas Leopold Bloom of no fixed abode is a
well-known dynamitard, forger, bigamist, bawd and cuckold ad a public
nuisance to the citizens of Dublin and whereas at this commission of assizes
the most honourable.
(His Honour sir Frederick Falkiner recorder of Dublin, in judicial garb
of grey stone rises from the bench, stonebearded. He bears in his arms an
umbrella sceptre. From his forehead arise starkly the Mosaic ramshorns.)
THE RECORDER I will put an end to this white slave traffic and rid
Dublin of this odious pest. Scandalous! (He dons the black cap.) Let him be
taken, Mr Subsheriff, from the dock where he now stands and detained in
custody in Mountjoy prison during His Majesty's pleasure and there be hanged
by the neck until he is dead and therein fail not at your peril or may the
Lord have-mercy on your soul. Remove him. (A black skullcap descends upon
his head.)
(The subsheriff long John Fanning appears, smoking a pungent Henry
Clay.)
LONG JOHN FANNING (Scowls and calls with rich rolling utterance.)
Who'll hang Judas Iscariot?
(H. Rumbold, master barber in a bloodcoloured jerk in and tanner's
apron, a rope coiled over his shoulder mounts the block. A life preserver
and a nailstudded bludgeon are stuck in his belt. He rubs grimly his
grapping hands, knobbed with knuckledusters.)
RUMBOLD (To the recorder with sinister familiarity.) Hanging Harry,
your Majesty, the Mersey terror. Five guineas a jugular. Neck or nothing.
(The bells of George's church toll slowly, loud dark iron.)
THE BELLS Heigho! Heigho!
BLOOM (Desperately.) Wait. Stop. Gulls. Good heart. I saw. Innocence.
Girl in the monkeyhouse. Zoo. Lewd chimpanzees. (Breathlessly.) Pelvic
basin. Her artless blush unmanned me. (Overcome with emotion.) I left the
precincts. (He turns to a figure in the crowd, appealing.) Hynes, may I
speak to you? You know me. That three shillings you can keep. If you want a
little more .
HYNES (Coldly.) You are a perfect stranger.
SECOND WATCH (Points to the corner.) The bomb is here. FIRST WATCH
Infernal machine with a time fuse. BLOOM No, no. Pig's feet. I was at a
funeral. FIRST WATCH (Draws his truncheon.) Liar!
(The beagle lifts his snout, showing the grey scorbutic face of Paddy
Dignam. He has gnawed all. He exhales a putrid carcasefed breath. He grows
to human size and shape. His dachshund coat becomes a brown mortuary habit.
His green eyeflashes bloodshot. Half of one ear all the nose and both thumbs
are ghouleaten.)
PADDY DIGNAM (In a hollow voice.) It is true. It was my funeral. Doctor
Finucane pronounced life extinct when I succumbed to the disease from
natural causes.
(He lifts his mutilated ashen face moonwards and bays lugubriously.)
BLOOM (In triumph.) You hear?
PADDY DIGNAM Bloom, I am Paddy Dignam's spirit. List, list, O list!
BLOOM The voice is the voice of Esau.
SECOND WATCH (Blesses himself.) How is that possible?
FIRST WATCH It is not in the penny catechism.
PADDY DIGNAM By metempsychosis. Spooks.
A VOICE O rocks.
PADDY DIGNAM (Earnestly.) Once I was in the employ of Mr J. H. Menton,
solicitor, commissioner for oaths and affidavits, of 27 Bachelor's Walk. Now
I am defunct, the wall of the heart hypertrophied. Hard lines. The poor wife
was awfully cut up. Dow is she bearing it? Keep her off that bottle of
sherry. (He looks round him.) A lamp. I must satisfy an animal need. That
buttermilk didn't agree with me.
(The portly figure of John O'Connell, caretaker stands forth, holding a
bunch of keys tied with crape. Beside him stands Father Coffey, chaplain,
toad bellied, wrynecked, in a surplice and bandanna nightcap, holding
sleepily a staff of twisted poppies.)
FATHER COFFEY (Yawns, then chants with a hoarse croak.) Namine. Jacobs
Vobiscuits. Amen.
(Foghorns stormily through his megaphone.) Dignam, Patrick T.,
deceased.
PADDY DIGNAM (With pricked up ears, winces.) Overtones.
(He wriggles forward, places an ear to the ground.) My masters' voice!
JOHN O'CONNELL Burial docket letter number U. P. Eightyfive thousand.
Field seventeen. House of Keys. Plot, one hundred and one.
(Paddy Dignam listens with visible effort, thinking, his
tailstiffpointed, his ears cocked.)
PADDY DIGNAM Pray for the repose of his soul.
(He worms down through a coal hole, his brown habit trailing its tether
over rattling pebbles. After him toddles an obese grandfather rat on fungus
turtle paws under a grey carapace. Dignam's voice, muffled, is heard baying
under ground: Dignam's dead and gone below. Tom Rochford, robinredbreasted,
in cap and breeches, jumps from his two-columned machine.)
TOM ROCHFORD (A hand to his breastbone, bows.) Reuben J. A florin I
find him. (He fixes the manhole with a resolute stare.) My turn now on.
Follow me up to Carlow.
(He executes a daredevil salmon leap in the air and is engulfed in the
coalhole. Two discs on the columns wobble eyes of nought. All recedes. Bloom
plodges forward again. He stands before a lighted house, listening. The
kisses, winging from their bowers, fly about him, twittering, warbling,
cooing.)
THE KISSES (Warbling.) Leo! (Twittering.) Icky licky micky sticky for
Leo! (Cooing.) Coo coocoo! Yummyumm Wom worn! (Warbling.) Big comebig!
Pirouette! Leopopold! (Twittering.) Leeolee! (Warbling.) O Leo!
(They rustle, flutter upon his garments, alight, bright giddyflecks,
silvery sequins.)
BLOOM A man's touch. Sad music. Church music. Perhaps here.
(Zoe Higgins, a young whore in a sapphire slip, closed with three
bronze buckles, a slim black velvet fillet round her throat, nods, trips
down the steps and accosts him.)
ZOE Are you looking for someone? He's inside with his friend.
BLOOM Is this Mrs Mack's?
ZOE No, eightyone. Mrs Cohen's. You might go farther and fare worse.
Mother Slipperslapper. (Familiarly.) She's on the job herself tonight with
the vet, her tipster, that gives her all the winners and pays for her son in
Oxford. Working overtime but her luck's turned today. (Suspiciously.) You're
not his father, are you?
BLOOM Not I!
ZOE You both in black. Has little mousey any tickles tonight?
(His skin, alert, feels her fingertips approach. A hand slides over his
left thigh.)
ZOE How's the nuts?
BLOOM Off side. Curiously they are on the right. Heavier I suppose. One
in a million my tailor, Mesias, says.
ZOE (In sudden alarm.) You've a hard chancre.
BLOOM Not likely.
ZOE I feel it.
(Her hand slides into his left trouser pocket and brings out a hard
black shrivelled potato. She regards it and Bloom with dumb moist lips.)
BLOOM A talisman. Heirloom.
ZOE For Zoe? For keeps? For being so nice, eh?
(She puts the potato greedily into a pocket, then links his arm,
cuddling him with supple warmth. He smiles uneasily. Slowly, note by note,
oriental music is played. He gazes in the tawny crystal of her eyes, ringed
with kohol. His smile softens.)
ZOE You'll know me the next time.
BLOOM (Forlornly.) I never loved a dear gazelle but it was sure to.
(Gazelles are leaping, feeding on the mountains. Near are lakes. Round
their shores file shadows black of cedargroves. Aroma rises, a strong
hairgrowth of resin. It burns, the orient, a sky of sapphire, cleft by the
bronze flight of eagles. Under it lies the womancity, nude, white, still,
cool, in luxury. A fountain murmurs among damask roses. Mammoth roses murmur
of scarlet winegrapes. A wine of shame, lust, blood exudes, strangely
murmuring.)
ZOE (Murmuring singsong with the music, her odalisk lips lusciously
smeared with salve of swinefat and rosewater.) Schorach ani wenowach,
benoith Hierushaloim.
BLOOM (Fascinated.) I thought you were of good stock by your accent.
ZOE And you know what thought did?
(She bites his ear gently with little goldstopped teeth sending on him
a cloying breath of stale garlic. The roses draw apart, disclose a sepulchre
of the gold of kings and their mouldering bones.)
BLOOM (Draws back, mechanically caressing her right bub with a flat
awkward hand.) Are you a Dublin girl?
ZOE (Catches a stray hair deftly and twists it to her coil.) No bloody
fear. I'm English. Have you a swaggerroot?
BLOOM (As before.) Rarely smoke, dear. Cigar now and then. Childish
device. (Lewdly.) The mouth can be better engaged than with a cylinder of
rank weed.
ZOE Go on. Make a stump speech out of it.
BLOOM (In workman's corduroy overalls, black gansy with red floating
tie and apache cap.) Mankind is incorrigible. Sir Walter Raleigh brought
from the new world that potato and that weed, the one a killer of pestilence
by absorption, the other a poisoner of the ear, eye, heart, memory, will,
understanding, all. That is to say, he brought the poison a hundred years
before another person whose name I forget brought the food. Suicide. Lies.
All our habits. Why, look at our public life!
(Midnight chimes from distant steeples.)
THE CHIMES Turn again, Leopold! Lord Mayor of Dublin!
BLOOM (In alderman's gown and chain.) Electors of Arran Quay, Inns
Quay, Rotunda, Mountjoy and North Dock, better run a tramline, I say, from
the cattlemarket to the river. That's the music of the future. That's my
programme. Cui Bono? But our buccaneering Vanderdeckens in their phantom
ship of finance...
AN ELECTOR Three times three for our future chief magistrate!
(The aurora borealis of the torchlight procession leaps.)
THE TORCH BEARERS Hooray!
(Several wellknown burgesses, city magnates and freemen of the city
shake hands with Bloom and congratulate him. Timothy Harrington, late thrice
Lord Mayor of Dublin, imposing in mayoral scarlet, gold chain and white silk
tie, confers with councillor Lorcan Sherlock, locum tenens. They nod
vigorously in agreement.)
LATE LORD MAYOR HARRINGTON (In scarlet robe with mace, gold mayoral
chain and lace white silk scarf) That alder man sir Leo Bloom's speech be
printed at the expense of the ratepayers. That the house in which he was
born be ornamented with a commemorative tablet and that the thoroughfare
hitherto known as Cow Parlour off Cork street be henceforth designated
Boulevard Bloom.
COUNCILLOR LORCAN SHERLOCK Carried unanimously.
BLOOM (Impassionedly.) These flying Dutchmen or lying Dutchmen as they
recline in their upholstered poop, casting dice, what reck they? Machines is
their cry, their chimera, their panacea. Laboursaving apparatuses,
supplanters, bug-bears, manufactured monsters for mutual murder, hideous
hobgoblins produced by a horde of capitalistic lusts upon our prostituted
labour. The poor man starves while they are grassing their royal mountain
stags or shooting peasants and phartridges in their purblind pomp of pelf
and power. But their reign is rover for rever and ever and ev...
(Prolonged applause. Venetian masts, maypoles and festal arches spring
up. A streamer bearing the legends Cead Mille Failte and Mah Ttob Melek
Israel spans the street. All the windows are thronged with sightseers,
chiefly ladies. Along the route the regiments of the royal Dublin Fusiliers,
the Kings Own Scottish Boraerers, the Cameron Highlanders and the Welsh
Fusiliers, standing to attention, keep back the crowd. Boys from High school
are perched on the lampposts, telegraph poles, windowsills, cornices,
gutters, chimneypots, railings, rainspouts, whistling and cheering. The
pillar of the cloud appears. A fife and drum band is heard in the distance
playing the Kol Nidre. The beaters approach with imperial eagles hoisted,
trailing banners and waving oriental palms. The chryselephantine papal
standard rises high, surrounded by pennons of the civic flag. The van of the
procession appears headed by John Howard Parnell, city marshal, in a
chessboard tabard, the Athlone Poursuivant and Ulster King of Arms. They are
followed by the Right Honourable Joseph Hutchinson, lord mayor of Dublin,
the lord mayor of Cork, their worships the mayors of Limerick, Galway, Sligo
and Watedord, twentyeight Irish representative peers, sirdars, grandees and
maharajahs bearing the cloth of estate, the Dublin Metropolitan Fire
Brigade, the chapter of the saints of finance in their plutocratic order of
precedence, the bishop of Down and Connor His Eminence Michael cardinal
Logue archbishop of Armagh, primate of all Ireland, His Grace, the most
reverend Dr William Alexander archbishop of Armagh, primate of all Ireland,
the chief rabbi, the presbyterian moderator, the heads of the baptist,
anabaptist, methodist and Moravian chapels and the honorary secretary of the
society of friends. her them march the guilds and trades and trainbands with
flying colours: coopen, bird fanciers, millwrights, newspaper canvassers,
law scriveners, masseurs, vintners, trussmakers, chimney sweeps, lard
refiners, tabinet and poplin weavers, farriers, Italian warehousemen, church
decorators, bootjack manufacturers, undertaken, silk mercers, lapidaries,
salesmasters, corkcutters, assessors of fire losses, dyers and cleaners,
export bottlers, fellmongers, ticketwriters, heraldic seal engravers, horse
repository hands, bullion broken, cricket and archery outfitters,
riddlemakers, egg and potato factors, hosiers and glovers, plumbing
contractors. After them march gentlemen of the bed chamber Black Rod, Deputy
Garter Gold Stick, the master of hone, the lord great chamberlain, the earl
marshal, the high constable carrying the sword of state, saint Stephen's
iron crown, the chalice and bible. Four buglers on foot blow a sennet.
Beefeaten reply, winding clarions of welcome. Under an arch of triumph Bloom
appears bareheaded, in a crimson velvet mantle trimmed with ermine, bearing
Saint Edward's staff the orb and sceptre with the dove, the curtana. He is
seated on a milkwhite hone with long flowing crimson tail, richly
caparisoned, with golden heads tall. Wild excitement. The ladies from their
balconies throw down rosepetals. The air is perfumed with essences. The men
cheer. Bloom's boys run amid the bystanders with branches of hawthorn and
wrenbushes.)
BLOOM'S BOYS
The wren, the wren,
The king of all birds,
Saint Stephen's his day,
Was caught in the furze.
A BLACKSMITH (Murmurs.) For the Honour of God! And is that Bloom? He
scarcely looks thirtyone.
A PAVIOR AND FLAGGER That's the famous Bloom now, the world's greatest
reformer. Hats off!
(All uncover their heads. Women whisper eagerly.)
A MILLIONAIRESS (Richly.) Isn't he simply wonderful?
A NOBLEWOMAN (Nobly.) All that man has seen!
A FEMINIST (Masculinely.) And done!
A BELLHANGER A classic face! He has the forehead of a thinker.
(Bloom's weather. A sunburst appears in the northwest.)
THE BISHOP OF DOWN AND CONNOR I here present your un doubted emperor
president and king chairman, the most serene and potent and very puissant
ruler of this realm. God save Leopold the First!
ALL God save Leopold the First!
BLOOM (In dalmatic and purple mantle, to the bishop of Down and Connor
with dignity.) Thanks, somewhat eminent sir.
WILLIAM, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH (In purple stock and shovel hat.) Will
you to your power cause law and mercy to be executed in all your judgments
in Ireland and territories thereunto belonging?
BLOOM (Placing his right hand on his testicles, swears.) So may the
Creator deal with me. All this I promise to do.
MICHAEL, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH (Pours a cruse of hair oil over Bloom's
head.) Gaudium magnum annuntio vobis. Habemus carneficem. Leopold, Patrick,
Andrew, David, George, be thou anointed!
(Bloom assumes a mantle of cloth of gold and puts on a ruby ring. He
ascends and stands on the stone of destiny. The representative peers put on
at the same time their twentyeight crowns. Joybells ring in Christ church,
Saint Patrick's, George's and gay Malahide. Mirus bazaar fireworks go up
from all sides with symbolical phallopyrotechnic designs. The peers do
homage, one by one, approaching and genuflecting.)
THE PEERS I do become your liege man of life and limb to earthly
worship.
(Bloom holds up his right hand on which sparkles the Koh-i-Noor
diamond. His palfrey neighs. Immediate silence. Wireless intercontinental
and interplanetary transmitters are set for reception of message.)
BLOOM My subjects! We hereby nominate our faithful charger Copula Felix
hereditary Grand Vizier and announce that we have this day repudiated our
former spouse and have bestowed our royal hand upon the princess Selene, the
splendour of night.
(The former morganatic spouse of Bloom is hastily removed in the Black
Maria. The princess Selene, in moon blue robes, a silver crescent on her
head, descends from a Sedan chair borne by two giants. An outburst of
cheering.)
JOHN HOWARD PARNELL (Raises the royal standard.) Illustrious Bloom!
Successor to my famous brother!
BLOOM (Embraces John Howard Parnell.) We thank you from our heart,
John, for this right royal welcome to green Erin, the promised land of our
common ancestors.
(The freedom of the city is presented to him embodied in a charter. The
keys of Dublin, crossed on a crimson cushion, are given to him. He shows all
that he is wearing green socks.)
TOM KERNAN You deserve it, your honour.
BLOOM On this day twenty years ago we overcame the hereditary enemy at
Ladysmith. Our howitzers and camel swivel guns played on his lines with
telling effect. Half a league onward! They charge! All is lost now! Do we
yield? No! We drive them headlong! Lo! We charge! Deploying to the left our
light horse swept across the heights of Plevna and, uttering their warcry,
Bonafide Sabaoth, sabred the Saracen gunners to a man.
THE CHAPEL OF FREEMAN TYPESETTERS Hear! Hear!
JOHN WYSE NOLAN There's the man that got away James Stephens.
A BLUECOAT SCHOOLBOY Bravo!
AN OLD RESIDENT You're a credit to your country, sir, that's what you
are.
AN APPLEWOMAN He's a man like Ireland wants.
BLOOM My beloved subjects, a new era is about to dawn. I, Bloom, tell
you verily it is even now at hand. Yea, on the word of a Bloom, ye shall ere
long enter into the golden city which is to be, the new Bloomusalem in the
Nova Hibernia of the future.
(Thirtytwo workmen wearing rosettes, from all the counties of Ireland,
under the guidance of Derwan the builder construct the new Bloomusalem. It
is a colossal edifice, with crystal roof built in the shape of a huge pork
kidney, containing forty thousand rooms. In the course of its extension
several buildings and monuments are demolished. Government offices are
temporarily transferred to railway 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 Sovere