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(Div. Scep.) remark (or should it be called an interruption?) that an
omnivorous being which can masticate, deglute, digest and apparently pass
through the ordinary channel with pluterperfect imperturbability such
multifarious aliments as cancrenous females emaciated by parturition,
corpulent professional gentlemen, not to speak of jaundiced politicians and
chlorotic nuns, might possibly find gastric relief in an innocent collation
of staggering bob, reveals as nought else could and in a very unsavoury
light the tendency above alluded to. For the enlightenment of those who are
not so intimately acquainted with the minutiae of the municipal abattoir as
this morbidminded esthete and embryo philosopher who for all his overweening
bumptiousness in things scientific can scarcely distinguish an acid from an
alkali prides himself on being, it should perhaps be stated that staggering
bob in the vile parlance of our lower class licensed victuallers signifies
the cookable and eatable flesh of a calf newly dropped from its mother. In a
recent public controversy with Mr L. Bloom (Pubb. Canv.) which took place in
the commons' hall of the National Maternity Hospital, 29, 30 and 31 Holles
street, of which, as is well known, Dr A. Horne (Lic. in Mdw., F. K. Q. C.
P. I.) is the able and popular master, he is reported by eyewitnesses as
having stated that once a woman has let the cat into the bag (an esthetic
allusion, presumably, to one of the most complicated and marvellous of all
nature's processes, the act of sexual congress) she must let it out again or
give it life, as he phrased it, to save her own. At the risk of her own was
the telling rejoinder of his interlocutor none the less effective for the
moderate and measured tone in which it was delivered.
Meanwhile the skill and patience of the physician had brought about a
happy accouchement. It had been a weary weary while both for patient and
doctor. All that surgical skill could do was done and the brave woman had
manfully helped. She had. She had fought the good fight and now she was very
very happy. Those who have passed on, who have gone before, are happy too as
they gaze down and smile upon the touching scene. Reverently look at her as
she reclines there with the motherlight in her eyes, that longing hunger for
baby fingers (a pretty sight it is to see), in the first bloom of her new
motherhood, breathing a silent prayer of thanksgiving to One above, the
Universal Husband. And as her loving eyes behold her babe she wishes only
one blessing more, to have her dear Doady there with her to share her joy,
to lay in his arms that mite of God's clay, the fruit of their lawful
embraces. He is older now (you and I may whisper it) and a trifle stooped in
the shoulders yet in the whirligig of years a grave dignity has come to the
conscientious second accountant of the Ulster bank, College Green branch. O
Doady, loved one of old, faithful lifemate now, it may never be again, that
faroff time of the roses! With the old shake of her pretty head she recalls
those days. God, how beautiful now across the mist of years! But their
children are grouped in her imagination about the bedside, hers and his,
Charley, Mary Alice, Frederick Albert (if he had lived), Mamy, Budgy
(Victoria Frances), Tom, Violet Constance Louisa, darling little Bobsy
(called after our famous hero of the South African war, lord Bobs of
Waterford and Candahar) and now this last pledge of their union, a Purefoy
if ever there was one, with the true Purefoy nose. Young hopeful will be
christened Mortimer Edward after the influential third cousin of Mr Purefoy
in the Treasury Remembrancer's office, Dublin Castle. And so time wags on:
but father Cronion has dealt lightly here. No, let no sigh break from that
bosom, dear gentle Mina. And Doady, knock the ashes from your pipe, the
seasoned briar you still fancy when the curfew rings for you (may it be the
distant day!) and dout the light whereby you read in the Sacred Book for the
oil too has run low and so with a tranquil heart to bed, to rest. He knows
and will call in His own good time. You too have fought the good fight and
played loyally your man's part. Sir, to you my hand. Well done, thou good
and faithful servant!
There are sins or (let us call them as the world calls them) evil
memories which are hidden away by man in the darkest places of the heart but
they abide there and wait. He may suffer their memory to grow dim, let them
be as though they had not been and all but persuade himself that they were
not or at least were otherwise. Yet a chance word will call them forth
suddenly and they will rise up to confront him in the most various
circumstances, a vision or a dream, or while timbrel and harp soothe his
senses or amid the cool silver tranquillity of the evening or at the feast
at midnight when he is now filled with wine. Not to insult over him will the
vision come as over one that lies under her wrath, not for vengeance to cut
off from the living but shrouded in the piteous vesture of the past, silent,
remote, reproachful.
The stranger still regarded on the face before him a slow recession of
that false calm there, imposed, as it seemed, by habit or some studied
trick, upon words so embittered as to accuse in their speaker an
unhealthiness, a flair, for the cruder things of life. A scene disengages
itself in the observer's memory, evoked, it would seem, by a word of so
natural a homeliness as if those days were really present there (as some
thought) with their immediate pleasures. A shaven space of lawn one soft May
evening, the wellremembered grove of lilacs at Roundtown, purple and white,
fragrant slender spectators of the game but with much real interest in the
pellets as they run slowly forward over the sward or collide and stop, one
by its fellow, with a brief alert shock. And yonder about that grey urn
where the water moves at times in thoughtful irrigation you saw another as
fragrant sisterhood, Floey, Atty, Tiny and their darker friend with I know
not what of arresting in her pose then, Our Lady of the Cherries, a comely
brace of them pendent from an ear, bringing out the foreign warmth of the
skin so daintily against the cool ardent fruit. A lad of four or five in
linseywoolsey (blossomtime but there will be cheer in the kindly hearth when
ere long the bowls are gathered and hutched) is standing on the urn secured
by that circle of girlish fond hands. He frowns a little just as this young
man does now with a perhaps too conscious enjoyment of danger but must needs
glance at whiles towards where his mother watches from the piazzetta giving
upon the flower-close with a faint shadow of remoteness or of reproach
(alles Vergдnghche) in her glad look.
Mark this farther and remember. The end comes suddenly. Enter that
antechamber of birth where the studious are assembled and note their faces.
Nothing, as it seems, there of rash or violent. Quietude of custody rather,
befitting their station in that house, the vigilant watch of shepherds and
of angels about a crib in Bethlehem of Juda long ago. But as before the
lightning the serried stormclouds, heavy with preponderant excess of
moisture, in swollen masses turgidly distended, compass earth and sky in one
vast slumber, impending above parched field and drowsy oxen and blighted
growth of shrub and verdure till in an instant a flash rives their centres
and with the reverberation of the thunder the cloudburst pours its torrent,
so and not otherwise was the transformation, violent and instantaneous, upon
the utterance of the Word.
Burke's! Outflings my lord Stephen, giving the cry, and a tag and
bobtail of all them after, cockerel, jackanapes, welsher, pilldoctor,
punctual Bloom at heels with a universal grabbing at headgear, ashplants,
bilbos, Panama hats and scabbards, Zermatt alpenstocks and what not. A
dedale of lusty youth, noble every student there. Nurse Callan taken aback
in the hallway cannot stay them nor smiling surgeon coming downstairs with
news of placentation ended, a full pound if a milligramme. They hark him on.
The door! It is open? Ha? They are out tumultuously, off for a minute's
race, all bravely legging it, Burke's of Denzille and Holles their ulterior
goal. Dixon follows, giving them sharp language but raps out an oath, he
too, and on. Bloom stays with nurse a thought to send a kind word to happy
mother and nurseling up there. Doctor Diet and Doctor Quiet. Looks she too
not other now? Ward of watching in Horne's house has told its tale in that
washedout pallor. Them all being gone, a glance of motherwit helping he
whispers close in going: Madam, when comes the storkbird for thee?
The air without is impregnated with raindew moisture, life essence
celestial, glistering on Dublin stone there under starshiny coelum. God's
air, the Allfather's air, scintillant circumambient cessile air. Breathe it
deep into thee. By heaven, Theodore Purefoy, thou hast done a doughty deed
and no botch! Thou art, I vow, the remarkablest progenitor barring none in
this chaffering allincluding most farraginous chronicle. Astounding! In her
lay a Godframed Godgiven preformed possibility which thou hast fructified
with thy modicum of man's work. Cleave to her! Serve! Toil on, labour like a
very bandog and let scholarment and all Malthusiasts go hang. Thou art all
their daddies, Theodore. Art drooping under thy load, bemoiled with
butcher's bills at home and ingots (not thine!) in the countinghouse? Head
up? For every newbegotten thou shalt gather thy homer of ripe wheat. See,
thy fleece is drenched. Dost envy Darby Dullman there with his Joan? A
canting jay and a rheumeyed curdog is all their progeny. Pshaw, I tell thee!
He is a mule, a dead gasteropod, without vim or stamina, not worth a cracked
kreutzer. Copulation without population! No, say I! Herod's slaughter of the
innocents were the truer name. Vegetables, forsooth, and sterile
cohabitation! Give her beefsteaks, red, raw, bleeding! She is a hoary
pandemonium of ills, enlarged glands, mumps, quinsy, bunions, hayfever,
bedsores, ringworm, floating kidney, Derbyshire neck, warts, bilious
attacks, gallstones, cold feet, varicose veins. A truce to threnes and
trentals and jeremies and all such congenital defunctive music. Twenty years
of it, regret them not. With thee it was not as with many that will and
would and wait and never do. Thou sawest thy America, thy lifetask, and
didst charge to cover like the transpontine bison. How saith Zarathusthra?
Deine kuh Trэbsal melkest Du. Nun trinkst Du die sэsse Milch des Euters.
See! It displodes for thee in abundance. Drink, man, an udderful! Mother's
milk, Purefoy, the milk of human kin, milk too of those burgeoning stars
overhead, rutilant in thin rainvapour, punch milk, such as those rioters
will quaff in their guzzlingden, milk of madness, the honeymilk of Canaan's
land. Thy cow's dug was tough, what? Ay, but her milk is hot and sweet and
fattening. No dollop this but thick rich bonnyclaber. To her, old patriarch!
Pap! Per deam Partulam et Pertundam nunc est bibendum!
All off for a buster, armstrong, hollering down the street. Bonafides.
Where you slep las nigh? Timothy of the battered naggin. Like ole Billyo.
Any brollies or gumboots in the family? Where the Henry Nevil's sawbones and
ole clo? Sorra one o me knows. Hurrah there, Dix! Forward the ribbon
counter. Where's Punch? All serene. Jay, look at the drunken minister coming
out of the maternity hospal! Benedicat vos omnipotens Deus, Pater et Filius.
A make, mister. The Denzille lane boys. Hell, blast ye! Scoot. Righto,
Isaacs, shove em out of the bleeding limelight. Yous join us, dear sir? No
hentrusion in life. Lou heap good man. Allee samee this bunch. En avant, mes
enfants! Fire away number one on the gun. Burke's! Thence they advanced five
parasangs. Slattery's mounted foot where's that bleeding awfur? Parson
Steve, apostates' creed! No, no. Mulligan! Abaft there! Shove ahead. Keep a
watch on the clock. Chuckingout time. Mullee! What's on you? Ma mхre m'a
mariиe. British Beatitudes! Ratamplan Digidi Boum Boum. Ayes have it. To be
printed and bound at the Druiddrum press by two designing females. Calf
covers of pissedon green. Last word in art shades. Most beautiful book come
out of Ireland my time. Silentium! Get a spurt on. Tention. Proceed to
nearest canteen and there annex liquor stores. March! Tramp, tramp the boys
are (attitudes!) parching. Beer, beef, business, bibles, bulldogs,
battleships, buggery and bishops. Whether on the scaffold high. Beerbeef
trample the bibles. When for Irelandear. Trample the trampellers.
Thunderation! Keep the durned millingtary step. We fall. Bishops' boosebox.
Halt! Heave to. Rugger. Scrum in. No touch kicking. Wow, my tootsies! You
hurt? Most amazingly sorry!
Query. Who's astanding this here do? Proud possessor of damnall.
Declare misery. Bet to the ropes. Me nantee saltee. Not a red at me this
week gone. Yours? Mead of our fathers for the Эbermensch. Dittoh. Five
number ones. You, sir? Ginger cordial. Chase me, the cabby's candle.
Stimulate the caloric. Winding of his ticker. Stopped short never to go
again when the old. Absinthe for me, savvy? Caramba! Have an eggnog or a
prairie oyster. Enemy? Avuncular's got my timepiece. Ten to. Obligated
awful. Don't mention it. Got a pectoral trauma, eh, Dix? Pos fact. Got bet
be a boomblebee whenever he was settin sleep in hes bit garten. Digs up near
the Mater. Buckled he is. Know his dona? Yup, sartin, I do. Full of a dure.
See her in her dishybilly. Peels off a credit. Lovey lovekin. None of your
lean kine, not much. Pull down the blind, love. Two Ardilauns. Same here.
Look slippery. If you fall don't wait to get up. Five, seven, nine. Fine!
Got a prime pair of mincepies, no kid. And her take me to rests and her
anker of rum. Must be seen to be believed. Your starving eyes and
allbeplastered neck you stole my heart, O gluepot. Sir? Spud again the
rheumatiz? All poppycock, you'll scuse me saying. For the hoi polloi. I vear
thee best a gert vool. Well, doc? Back fro Lapland? Your corporosity
sagaciating OK? How's the squaws and papooses? Womanbody after going on the
straw? Stand and deliver. Password. There's hair. Ours the white death and
the ruddy birth. Hi! Spit in your own eye, boss. Mummer's wire. Cribbed out
of Meredith. Jesified orchidised polycimical jesuit! Aunty mine's writing Pa
Kinch. Baddybad Stephen lead astray goodygood Malachi.
Hurroo! Collar the leather, youngun. Roun wi the nappy. Here, Jock braw
Hielentman's your barleybree. Lang may your lum reek and your kailpot boil!
My tipple. Merci. Here's to us. How's that? Leg before wicket. Don't stain
my brandnew sitinems. Give's a shake of pepper, you there. Catch aholt.
Caraway seed to carry away. Twig? Shrieks of silence. Every cove to his
gentry mort. Venus Pandemos. Les petites femmes. Bold bad girl from the town
of Mullingar. Tell her I was axing at her. Hauding Sara by the wame. On the
road to Malahide. Me? If she who seduced me had left but the name. What do
you want for ninepence? Machree, Macruiskeen. Smutty Moll for a mattress
jig. And a pull altogether. Ex!
Waiting, guvnor? Most deciduously. Bet your boots on. Stunned like
seeing as how no shiners is acoming, Underconstumble? He've got the chink ad
lib. Seed near free poun on un a spell ago a said war hisn. Us come right in
on your invite, see? Up to you, matey. Out with the oof. Two bar and a wing.
You larn that go off of they there Frenchy bilks? Won't wash here for nuts
nohow. Lil chile vely solly. Ise de cutest colour coon down our side. Gawds
teruth, Chawley. We are nae fou. We're nae tha fou. Au reservoir, Mossoo.
Tanks you.
'Tis, sure. What say? In the speakeasy. Tight. I shee you, shir.
Bantam, two days teetee. Mowsing nowt but claretwine. Garn! Have a glint,
do. Gum, I'm jiggered. And been to barber he have. Too full for words. With
a railway bloke. How come you so? Opera he'd like? Rose of Castille. Rows of
cast. Police! Some H2O for a gent fainted. Look at Bantam's flowers. Gemini,
he's going to holler. The colleen bawn, my colleen bawn. O, cheese it! Shut
his blurry Dutch oven with a firm hand. Had the winner today till I tipped
him a dead cert. The ruffin cly the nab of Stephen. Hand as give me the jady
coppaleen. He strike a telegramboy paddock wire big bug Bass to the depot.
Shove him a joey and grahamise. Mare on form hot order. Guinea to a
goosegog. Tell a cram, that. Gospel-true. Criminal diversion? I think that
yes. Sure thing. Land him in chokeechokee if the harman beck copped the
game. Madden back Madden's a maddening back. O, lust, our refuge and our
strength. Decamping. Must you go? Off to mammy. Stand by. Hide my blushes
someone. All in if he spots me. Comeahome, our Bantam. Horryvar, mong vioo.
Dinna forget the cowslips for hersel. Cornfide. Wha gev ye thon colt? Pal to
pal. Jannock. Of John Thomas, her spouse. No fake, old man Leo. S'elp me,
honest injun. Shiver my timbers if I had. There's a great big holy friar.
Vyfor you no me tell? Vel, I ses, if that aint a sheeny nachez, vel, I vil
get misha mishinnah. Through yerd our lord, Amen.
You move a motion? Steve boy, you're going it some. More bluggy
drunkables? Will immensely splendiferous stander permit one stooder of most
extreme poverty and one largesize grandacious thirst to terminate one
expensive inaugurated libation? Give's a breather. Landlord, landlord, have
you good wine, staboo? Hoots, mon, wee drap to pree. Cut and some again.
Right Boniface! Absinthe the lot. Nos omnes biberimus viridum toxicum
diabolus capiat posteriora nostra Closingtime, gents. Eh? Rome boose for the
Bloom toff. I hear you say onions? Bloo? Cadges ads? Photo's papli, by all
that's gorgeous! Play low, pardner. Slide. Bonsoir la compagnie. And snares
of the poxfiend. Where's the buck and Namby Amby? Skunked? Leg bail. Aweel,
ye maun e'en gang yer gates. Checkmate. King to tower. Kind Kristyann will
yu help, yung man hoose frend tuk bungalo kee to find plais whear to lay
crown off his hed 2 night. Crickey, I'm about sprung. Tarnally dog gone my
shins if this beent the bestest putties longbreakyet. Item, curate, couple
of cookies for this child. Cot's plood and prandypalls, none! Not a pite of
sheeses? Thrust syphilis down to hell and with him those other licensed
spirits. Time. Who wander through the world. Health all. A la vтtre!
Golly, whatten tunket's yon guy in the mackintosh? Dusty Rhodes. Peep
at his wearables. By mighty! What's he got? Jubilee mutton. Bovril, by
James. Wants it real bad. D'ye ken bare socks? Seedy cuss in the Richmond?
Rawthere! Thought he had a deposit of lead in his penis. Trumpery insanity.
Bartle the Bread we calls him. That, sir, was once a prosperous cit. Man all
tattered and torn that married a maiden all forlorn. Slung her hook, she
did. Here see lost love. Walking Mackintosh of lonely canyon. Tuck and turn
in. Schedule time. Nix for the hornies. Pardon? See him today at a runefal?
Chum o yourn passed in his checks? Ludamassy! Pore picanninies! Thou'll no
be telling me thot, Pold veg! Did urns blubble bigsplash crytears cos fries
Padney was took off in black bag? Of all de darkies Massa Pat was verra
best. I never see the like since I was born. Tiens, tiens, but it is well
sad, that, my faith, yes. O get, rev on a gradient one in nine. Live axle
drives are souped. Lay you two to one Jenatzy licks him ruddy well hollow.
Jappies? High angle fire, inyah! Sunk by war specials. Be worse for him,
says he, nor any Rooshian. Time all. There's eleven of them. Get ye gone.
Forward, woozy wobblers! Night. Night. May Allah, the Excellent One, your
soul this night ever tremendously conserve.
Your attention! We're nae thy fou. The Leith police dismisseth us. The
least tholice. Ware hawks for the chap puking. Unwell in his abominable
regions. Yooka. Night. Mona, my thrue love. Yook. Mona, my own love. Ook.
Hark! Shut your obstropolos. Pflaap! Pflaap! Blaze on. There she goes.
Brigade! Bout ship. Mount street way. Cut up. Pflaap! Tally ho. You not
come? Run, skelter, race. Pflaaaap!
Lynch! Hey? Sign on long o me. Denzille lane this way. Change here for
Bawdyhouse. We two, she said, will seek the kips there shady Mary is.
Righto, any old time. Laetabuntur in cubilibus suis. You coming long?
Whisper, who the sooty hell's the johnny in the black duds? Hush! Sinned
against the light and even now that day is at hand when he shall come to
judge the world by fire. Pflaap! Ut implerentur scripturae. Strike up a
ballad. Then outspake medical Dick to his comrade medical Davy. Christicle,
who's this excrement yellow gospeller on the Merrion hall? Elijah is coming
washed in the Blood of the Lamb. Come on, you winefizzling ginsizzling
booseguzzling existences! Come on, you dog-gone, bullnecked, beetlebrowed,
hogjowled, peanutbrained, weaseleyed four flushers, false alarms and excess
baggage! Come on, you triple extract of infamy! Alexander J. Christ Dowie,
that's yanked to glory most half this planet from 'Frisco Beach to
Vladivostok. The Deity ain't no nickel dime bumshow. I put it to you that
he's on the square and a corking fine business proposition. He's the
grandest thing yet and don't you forget it. Shout salvation in King Jesus.
You'll need to rise precious early, you sinner there, if you want to diddle
the Almighty God. Pflaaaap! Not half. He's got a coughmixture with a punch
in it for you, my friend, In his backpocket. Just you try it on.
Circe
The Mabbot street entrance of nighttown, before which stretches an
uncobbled transiding set with skeleton tracks, red and green
will-o'-the-wisps and danger signals. Rows of flimsy houses with gaping
doors. Rare lamps with faint rainbow fans. Round Rabaiotti's halted ice
gondola stunted men and women squabble. They grab wafers between which are
wedged lumps of coal and copper snow. Sucking, they scatter slowly.
Children. The swancomb of the gondola, highreared, forges on through the
murk, white and blue under a lighthouse. Whistles call and answer.
THE CALLS Wait, my love, and I'll be with you.
THE ANSWERS Round behind the stable.
(A deaf mute idiot with goggle eyes, his shapeless mouth dribbling,
jerks past, shaken in Saint Vitus' dance. A chain of children's hands
imprisons him.)
THE CHILDREN Kithoguel Salute.
THE IDIOT (Lifts a palsied left arm and gurgles.) Grhahute!
THE CHILDREN Where's the great light?
THE IDIOT (Gobbing.) Ghaghahest.
(They release him. He jerks on. A pygmy woman swings on a rope slung
between the railings, counting. A form sprawled against a dustbin and
muffled by its arm and hat moves, groans, grinding growling teeth, and
snores again. On a step a gnome totting among a rubbish tip crouches to
shoulder a sack of rags and bones. A crone standing by with a smoky oil lamp
rams the last bottle in the maw of his sack. He heaves his booty, tugs askew
his peaked cap and hobbles off mutely. The crone makes back for her lair
swaying her lamp. A bandy child, asquat on the doorstep with a
papershuttlecock, crawls sidling after her in spurts, clutches her skirt,
scrambles up. A drunken navvy ups with both hands the railings of an area,
lurching heavily. At a corner two night watch in shoulder capes, their hands
upon their staffholsters, loom tall. A plate crashes; a woman screams; a
child wails. Oaths of a man roar, mutter, cease. Figures wander, lurk, peer
from warrens. In a room lit by a candle stuck in a bottleneck a slut combs
out the tatts from the hair of a scrofulous child. Cissy Caffrey's voice,
still young, sings shrill from a lane.)
CISSY CAFFREY
I gave it to Molly
Because she was jolly,
The leg of the duck
The leg of the duck.
(Private Cart and Private Compton, swaggersticks tight in their oxters,
as they march unsteadily rightaboutface and burst together from their mouths
a volleyed fart. Laughter of men from the lane. A hoarse virago retorts.)
THE VIRAGO Signs on you, hairy arse. More power the Cavan girl.
CISSY CAFFREY More luck to me. Cavan, Cootehill and Belturbet.
(She sings.)
I gave it to Nelly
To stick in her belly
The leg of the duck
The leg of the duck.
(Private Cart and Private Compton turn and counterretort, their tunics
bloodbright in a lampglow, black sockets of caps on their blond copper
polls. Stephen Dedalus and Lynch pass through the crowd close to the
redcoats.)
PRIVATE COMPTON (Jerks his finger.) Way for the parson.
PRIVATE CARR (Turns and calls.) What ho, parson!
CISSY CAFFREY (Her voice soaring higher.)
She has it, she got it,
Wherever she put it
The leg of the duck.
(Stephen, flourishing the ashplant in his left hand, chants with joy
the introit for paschal time. Lynch, his jockey cap low on his brow, attends
him, a sneer of discontent wrinkling his face.)
STEPHEN Vidi aquam egredientem de templo a latere dextro. Alleluia.
(The famished snaggletusks of an elderly bawd protrude from a doorway.)
THE BAWD (Her voice whispering huskily.) Sst! Come here till I tell
you. Maidenhead inside. Sst.
STEPHEN (Altius aliqantulum) Et omnes ad quos pervenit acqua ista.
THE BAWD (Spits in their trail her jet of venom.) Trinity medicals.
Fallopian tube. All prick and no pence.
(Edy Boardman, sniffling, crouched with Bertha Supple, draws her shawl
across her nostrils.)
EDY BOARDMAN (Bickering.) And say the one: I seen you up Faithful place
with your squarepusher, the greaser off the railway, in his cometobed hat.
Did you, says I. That's not for you to say, says I. You never seen me in the
mantrap with a married highlander, says I. The likes of her! Stag that one
is. Stubborn as a mule! And her walking with two fellows the one time,
Kildbride the enginedriver and lancecorporal Oliphant.
STEPHEN (Triumphaliter.) Salvi facti i sunt.
(He flourishes his ashplant shivering the lamp image, shattering light
over the world. A liver and white spaniel on the prowl slinks after him,
growling. Lynch scar's it with a kick.)
LYNCH So that?
STEPHEN (Looks behind.) So that gesture, not music, not odours, would
be a universal language, the gift of tongues rendering visible not the lay
sense but the first entelechy, the structural rhythm.
LYNCH Pornosophical philotheology. Metaphysics in Mecklenburg street!
STEPHEN We have shrewridden Shakespeare and henpecked Socrates. Even
the allwisest stagyrite was bitted, bridled and mounted by a light of love.
LYNCH Ba!
STEPHEN Anyway, who wants two gestures to illustrate a loaf and a jug?
This movement illustrates the loaf and jug of bread and wine in Omar. Hold
my stick.
LYNCH Damn your yellow stick. Where are we going?
STEPHEN Lecherous lynx, to la belle dame sans merci, Georgina Johnson,
ad deam qui laetificat juventutem meam.
(Stephen thrusts the ashplant on him and slowly holds out his hands,
his head going back till both hands are a span from his breast, down turned
in planes intersecting, the fingers about to part, the left being higher.)
LYNCH Which is the jug of bread? It skills not. That or the
customhouse. Illustrate thou. Here take your crutch and walk.
(They pass. Tommy Caffrey scrambles to a gaslamp and, clasping, climbs
in spasms. From the top spur he slides down. Jacky Caffrey clasps to climb.
The navvy lurches against the lamp. The twins scuttle off in the dark. The
navvy, swaying, presses a forefinger against a wing of his nose and ejects
from the farther nostril a long liquid jet of snot. Shouldering the lamp he
staggers away through the crowd with his flaring cresset.
Snakes of river fog creep slowly. From drains, clefts, cesspools,
middens arise on all sides stagnant fumes. A glow leaps in the south beyond
the seaward reaches of the river. The navvy staggering forward cleaves the
crowd and lurches towards the tramsiding. On the farther side under the
railway bridge Bloom appears flushed, panting, cramming bread and chocolate
into a side pocket. From Gillens hairdressers window a composite portrait
shows him gallant Nelson's image. A concave mirror at the side presents to
him lovelorn longlost lugubru Booloohoom. Grave Gladstone sees him level
Bloom for Bloom. He passes, struck by the stare of truculent Wellington but
in the con vex mirror grin unstruck the bonham eyes and fatchuck cheekchops
of Jollypoldy the rixdix doldy.
At Antonio Babaiotti's door Bloom halts, sweated under the bright
arclamps. He disappears. In a moment he reappears and hurries on.)
BLOOM Fish and taters. N. g. Ah!
(He disappears into Olhousen's, the pork butcher's, under the
downcoming rollshutter. A few moments later he emerges from under the
shutter puffing Poldy, blowing Bloohoom. In each hand he holds a parcel, one
containing a lukewarm pig's crubeen, the other a cold sheep's trotter
sprinkled with wholepepper He gasps, standing upright. Then bending to one
side he presses a parcel against his rib and groans.)
BLOOM Stitch in my side. Why did I run?
(He takes breath with care and goes forward slowly towards the lampset
siding. The glow leaps again.)
BLOOM What is that? A flasher? Searchlight.
(He stands at Cormack's corner watching.)
BLOOM Aurora borealis or a steel foundry? Ah, the brigade, of course.
South side anyhow. Big blaze. Might be his house. Beggar's bush. We're safe.
(He hums cheerfully.) London's burning, London's burning! On fire, on fire!
(He catches sight of the navvy lurching through the crowd at the farther
side of Talbot street.) I'll miss him. Run. Quick. Better cross here.
(He darts to cross the road. Urchins shout.)
THE URCHINS Mind out, mister! (Two cyclists, with lighted paper
lanterns aswing, swim by him, grazing him, their bells rattling.)
THE BELLS Haltyaltyaltyall.
BLOOM (Halts erect stung by a spasm.) Ow.
(He looks round, darts forward suddenly. Through rising fog a dragon
sandstrewer, travelling at caution, slews heavily down upon him, its huge
red headlight winking, its trolley hissing on the wire. The motorman bangs
his footgong.)
THE GONG Bang Bang Bla Bak Blud Bugg Bloo.
(The brake cracks violently. Bloom, raising a policeman's whitegloved
hand, blunders stifflegged, out of the track. The motorman thrown forward,
pugnosed, on the guidewheel, yells as he slides past over chains and keys.)
THE MOTORMAN Hey, shitbreeches, are you doing the hattrick?
BLOOM (Bloom trickleaps to the curbstone and halts again. He brushes a
mudflake from his cheek with a parcelled hand.) No thoroughfare. Close shave
that but cured the stitch. Must take up Sandow's exercises again. On the
hands down. Insure against street accident too. The Providential. (He feels
his trouser pocket.) Poor mamma's panacea. Heel easily catch in tracks or
bootlace in a cog. Day the wheel of the black Maria peeled off my shoe at
Leonard's corner. Third time is the charm. Shoe trick. Insolent driver. I
ought to report him. Tension makes them nervous. Might be the fellow balked
me this morning with that horsey woman. Same style of beauty. Quick of him
all the same. The stiff walk. True word spoken in jest. That awful cramp in
Lad lane. Something poisonous I ate. Emblem of luck. Why? Probably lost
cattle. Mark of the beast. (He closes his eyes an instant.) Bit light in the
head. Monthly or effect of the other. Brainfogfag. That tired feeling. Too
much for me now. Ow!
(A sinister figure leans on plaited legs against O'Beirnes wall, a
visage unknown, injected with dark mercury. From under a wideleaved sombrero
the figure regards him with evil eye.)
BLOOM Buenos noches, seяorita Blanca, que calle es esta?
THE FIGURE (Impassive, raises a signal arm.) Password. Sraid Mabbot.
BLOOM Haha. Merci. Esperanto. Slan leath. (He mutters.) Gaelic league
spy, sent by that fireeater.
(He steps forward. A sackshouldered ragman bars his path. He steps
left, ragsackman left.)
BLOOM I beg. (He swerves, sidles, stepsaside, slips past and on.)
BLOOM Keep to the right, right, right. If there is a fingerpost planted
by the Touring Club at Stepaside who procured that public boon? I who lost
my way and contributed to the columns of the Irish Cyclist the letter
headed, In darkest Stepaside. Keep, keep, keep to the right. Rags and bones,
at midnight. A fence more likely. First place murderer makes for. Wash off
his sins of the world.
(Jacky Caffrey, hunted by Tommy Caffrey, runs full tilt against Bloom.)
BLOOM O!
(Shocked, on weak hams, he halts. Tommy and Jacky vanish there, there.
Bloom pats with parcelled hands watch, fobpocket, bookpocket, pursepocket,
sweets of sin, potato soap.)
BLOOM Beware of pickpockets. Old thieves' dodge. Collide. Then snatch
your purse.
(The retriever approaches sniffling, nose to the ground. A sprawled
form sneezes. A stooped bearded figure appears garbed in the long caftan of
an elder in Zion and a smoking cap with magenta tassels. Horned spectacles
hang down at the wings of the nose. Yellow poison streaks are on the drawn
face.)
RUDOLPH Second halfcrown waste money today. I told you not go with
drunken goy ever. So. You catch no money.
BLOOM (Hides the crubeen and trotter behind his back and, crestfallen,
feels warm and cold feetmeat) Ja, ich weiss, papachi.
RUDOLPH What you making down this place? Have you no soul? (With feeble
vulture talons he feels the silent face of Bloom) Are you not my son
Leopold, the grandson of Leopold? Are you not my dear son Leopold who left
the house of his father and left the god of his fathers Abraham and Jacob?
BLOOM (With precaution.) I suppose so, father. Mosenthal. All that's
left of him.
RUDOLPH (Severely.) One night they bring you home drunk as dog after
spend your good money. What you call them running chaps?
BLOOM (In youth's smart blue Oxford suit with white vestslips,
narrowshouldered, in brown Alpine hat, wearing gent's sterling silver
waterbury keyless watch and double curb Albert with seal attached, one side
of him coated with stiffening mud.) Harriers, father. Only that once.
RUDOLPH Once! Mud head to foot. Cut your hand open. Lockjaw. They make
you kaput, Leopoldleben. You watch them chaps.
BLOOM (Weakly.) They challenged me to a sprint. It was muddy. I
slipped.
RUDOLPH (With contempt) Ooim nachez. Nice spectacles for your poor
mother!
BLOOM Mamma!
ELLEN BLOOM (In pantomime dame's stringed mobcap, crinoline and bustle,
widow Twankey's blouse with muttonleg sleeves buttoned behind, grey mittens
and cameo brooch, her hairplaited in a crisping net, appears over the
staircase banisters, a slanted candlestick in her hand and cries out in
shrill alarm.) O blessed Redeemer, what have they done to him! My smelling
salts! (She hauls up a reef of skirt and ransacks the pouch of her striped
blay petticoat. A phial, an Agnus Dei, a shrivelled potato and a celluloid
doll fall out.) Sacred Heart of Mary, where were you at all, at all?
(Bloom, mumbling, his eyes downcast, begins to bestow his parcels in
his filled pockets but desists, muttering.)
A VOICE (Sharply.) Poldy!
BLOOM Who? (He ducks and wards off a blow clumsily.) At your service.
(He looks up. Beside her mirage of datepalms a handsome woman in
Turkish costume stands before him. Opulent curves fill out her scarlet
trousers and jacket slashed with gold. A wide yells cummerbund girdles her.
A white yashmak violet in the night, covers her face, leaving free only her
lace dark eyes and raven hair.)
BLOOM Molly!
MARION Welly? Mrs Marion from this out, my dear man, when you speak to
me. (Satirically.) Has poor little hubby cold feet waiting so long?
BLOOM (Shifts from foot to foot.) No, no. Not the least little bit.
(He breathes in deep agitation, swallowing gulps of air questions,
hopes, crubeens for her supper things to tell her excuses, desire,
spellbound. A coin gleams on her forehead. On her feet are jewelled
toerings. Her ankles are linked by a slender fetterchain. Beside her a
camel, hooded with a turreting turban, waits. A silk ladder of innumerable
rungs climbs to his bobbing howdah. He ambles near with disgruntled
hindquarters. Fiercely she slaps his haunch, her goldcurb wristbangles
angriling, scolding him in Moorish.)
MARION Nebrakada! Feminimum.
(The camel, lifting a foreleg, plucks from a tree a lace mango fruit,
offers it to his mistress, blinking, in his cloven hoof then droops his head
and, grunting, with uplifted neck, fumbles to kneel. Bloom stoops his back
for leapfrog.)
BLOOM I can give you... I mean as your business menagerer Mrs Marion...
if you...
MARION So you notice some change? (Her hands passing slowly over her
trinketed stomacher. A slow friendly mockery in her eyes.) O Poldy, Poldy,
you are a poor old stick in the mud! Go and see life. See the wide world.
BLOOM I was just going back for that lotion whitewax, orangeflower
water. Shop closes early on Thursday. But the first thing in the morning.
(He pats divers pockets.) This moving kidney. Ah!
(He points to the south, then to the east. A cake of new clean lemon
soap arises, diffusing light and perfume.)
THE SOAP
We're a capital couple are Bloom and I;
He brightens the earth, I polish the sky.
(The freckled face of Sweny, the druggist, appeals in the disc of the
soapsun.)
SWENY Three and a penny, please.
BLOOM Yes. For my wife, Mrs Marion. Special recipe.
MARION (Softly.) Poldy!
BLOOM Yes, ma'am?
MARION Ti trema un poco il cuore?
(In disdain she saunters away, plump as a pampered pouter pigeon,
humming the duet from Don Giovanni)
BLOOM Are you sure about that Voglio? I mean the pronunciati...
(He follows, followed by the sniffing terrier. The elderly bawd seizes
his sleeve, the bristles of her chinmole glittering.)
THE BAWD Ten shillings a maidenhead. Fresh thing was never touched.
Fifteen. There's no-one in it only her old father that's dead drunk.
(She points. In the gap of her dark den furtive, rainbedraggled Bridie
Kelly stands.)
BRIDIE Hatch street. Any good in your mind?
(With a squeak she flaps her bat shawl and runs. A burly rough pursues
with booted strides. He stumbles on the steps, recovers, plunges into gloom.
Weak squeaks of laughter are heard, weaker.)
THE BAWD (Her wolfeyes shining.) He's getting his pleasure. You won't
get a virgin in the flash houses. Ten shillings. Don't be all night before
the polis in plain clothes sees us. Sixtyseven is a bitch.
(Leering Gerty MacDowell limps forward. She draws from behind ogling,
and shows coyly her bloodied clout.)
GERTY With all my worldly goods I thee and thou. (She murmurs.) You did
that. I hate you.
BLOOM I? When? You're dreaming. I never saw you.
THE BAWD Leave the gentleman alone, you cheat. Writing the gentleman
false letters. Streetwalking and soliciting. Better for your mother take the
strap to you at the bedpost, hussy like you.
GERTY (To Bloom.) When you saw all the secrets of my bottom drawer.
(She paws his sleeve, slobbering.) Dirty married man! I love you for doing
that to me.
(She slides away crookedly. Mrs Breen in man's frieze overcoat with
loose bellows pockets, stands in the causeway, her roguish eyes wideopen,
smiling in all her herbivorous buckteeth.)
MRS BREEN Mr.
BLOOM (Coughs gravely.) Madam, when we last had this pleasure by letter
dated the sixteenth instant .
MRS BREEN Mr Bloom! You down here in the haunts of sin! I caught you
nicely! Scamp!
BLOOM (Hurriedly.) Not so loud my name. Whatever do you think me? Don't
give me away. Walls have hears. How do you do? It's ages since I. You're
looking splendid. Absolutely it. Seasonable weather we are having this time
of year. Black refracts heat. Short cut home here. Interesting quarter.
Rescue of fallen women Magdalen asylum. I am the secretary...
MRS BREEN (Holds up a finger.) Now don't tell a big fib! I know
somebody won't like that. O just wait till I see Molly! (Slily.) Account for
yourself this very minute or woe betide you!
BLOOM (Looks behind.) She often said she'd like to visit. Slumming. The
exotic, you see. Negro servants too in livery if she had money. Othello
black brute. Eugene Stratton. Even the bones and cornerman at the Livermore
christies. Bohee brothers. Sweep for that matter.
(Tom and Sam Bohee, coloured coons in white duck suits, scarlet socks,
upstarched Sambo chokers and lace scarlet asters in their buttonholes leap
out. Each has his banjo slung. Their paler smaller negroid hands jingle the
twingtwang wires. Flashing white Kaffir eyes and tusks they rattle through a
breakdown in clumsy clogs, twinging, singing, back to back, toe heel, heel
toe, with smackfatclacking nigger lips.)
There's someone in the house with Dina
There's someone in the house, I know,
There's someone in the house with Dina
Playing on the old banjo.
(They whisk black masks from raw babby faces: then, chuckling,
chortling, trumming, twanging they diddle diddle cakewalk dance away.)
BLOOM (With a sour tenderish smile.) A little frivol, shall we, if you
are so inclined? Would you like me perhaps to embrace you just for a
fraction of a second?
MRS BREEN (Screams gaily.) O, you ruck! You ought to see yourself!
BLOOM For old sake'sake. I only meant a square party, a mixed marriage
mingling of our different little conjugials. You know I had a soft corner
for you. (Gloomily.) 'Twas I sent you that valentine of the dear gazelle.
MRS BREEN Glory Alice, you do look a holy show! Killing simply. (She
puts out her hand inquisitively.) What are you hiding behind your back? Tell
us, there's a dear.
BLOOM (Seizes her wrist with his free hand.) Josie Powell that was,
prettiest deb in Dublin. How time flies by! Do you remember, harking back in
a retrospective arrangement, Old Christmas night Georgina Simpson's
housewarming while they were playing the Irving Bishop game, finding the pin
blindfold and thoughtreading? Subject, what is in this snuff box?
MRS BREEN You were the lion of the night with your seriocomic
recitation and you looked the part. You were always a favourite with the
ladies.
BLOOM (Squire of dames, in dinner jacket, with watered-silk facings,
blue masonic badge in his buttonhole, black bow and mother-of-pearl studs, a
prismatic champagne glass tilted in his hand.) Ladies and gentlemen, I give
you Ireland, home and beauty.
MRS BREEN The dear dead days beyond recall. Love's old sweet song.
BLOOM (Meaningfully dropping his voice.) I confess I'm teapot with
curiosity to find out whether some person's something is a little teapot at
present.
MRS BREEN (Gushingly.) Tremendously teapot! London's tea pot and I'm
simply teapot all over me. (She rubs sides with him.) After the parlour
mystery games and the crackers from the tree we sat on the staircase
ottoman. Under the mistletoe. Two is company.
BLOOM (Wearing a purple Napoleon hat with an amber halfmoon, his
fingers and thumbs passing slowly down to her soft moist meaty palm which
she surrenders gently.) The witching hour of night. I took the splinter out
of this hand, carefully, slowly. (Tenderly, as he slips on her finger a ruby
ring.) Lю ci darem la mano.
MRS BREEN (In a onepiece eveningfrock executed in moonlight blue, a
tinsel sylph's diadem on her brow with her dancecard fallen beside her
omnivorous being which can masticate, deglute, digest and apparently pass
through the ordinary channel with pluterperfect imperturbability such
multifarious aliments as cancrenous females emaciated by parturition,
corpulent professional gentlemen, not to speak of jaundiced politicians and
chlorotic nuns, might possibly find gastric relief in an innocent collation
of staggering bob, reveals as nought else could and in a very unsavoury
light the tendency above alluded to. For the enlightenment of those who are
not so intimately acquainted with the minutiae of the municipal abattoir as
this morbidminded esthete and embryo philosopher who for all his overweening
bumptiousness in things scientific can scarcely distinguish an acid from an
alkali prides himself on being, it should perhaps be stated that staggering
bob in the vile parlance of our lower class licensed victuallers signifies
the cookable and eatable flesh of a calf newly dropped from its mother. In a
recent public controversy with Mr L. Bloom (Pubb. Canv.) which took place in
the commons' hall of the National Maternity Hospital, 29, 30 and 31 Holles
street, of which, as is well known, Dr A. Horne (Lic. in Mdw., F. K. Q. C.
P. I.) is the able and popular master, he is reported by eyewitnesses as
having stated that once a woman has let the cat into the bag (an esthetic
allusion, presumably, to one of the most complicated and marvellous of all
nature's processes, the act of sexual congress) she must let it out again or
give it life, as he phrased it, to save her own. At the risk of her own was
the telling rejoinder of his interlocutor none the less effective for the
moderate and measured tone in which it was delivered.
Meanwhile the skill and patience of the physician had brought about a
happy accouchement. It had been a weary weary while both for patient and
doctor. All that surgical skill could do was done and the brave woman had
manfully helped. She had. She had fought the good fight and now she was very
very happy. Those who have passed on, who have gone before, are happy too as
they gaze down and smile upon the touching scene. Reverently look at her as
she reclines there with the motherlight in her eyes, that longing hunger for
baby fingers (a pretty sight it is to see), in the first bloom of her new
motherhood, breathing a silent prayer of thanksgiving to One above, the
Universal Husband. And as her loving eyes behold her babe she wishes only
one blessing more, to have her dear Doady there with her to share her joy,
to lay in his arms that mite of God's clay, the fruit of their lawful
embraces. He is older now (you and I may whisper it) and a trifle stooped in
the shoulders yet in the whirligig of years a grave dignity has come to the
conscientious second accountant of the Ulster bank, College Green branch. O
Doady, loved one of old, faithful lifemate now, it may never be again, that
faroff time of the roses! With the old shake of her pretty head she recalls
those days. God, how beautiful now across the mist of years! But their
children are grouped in her imagination about the bedside, hers and his,
Charley, Mary Alice, Frederick Albert (if he had lived), Mamy, Budgy
(Victoria Frances), Tom, Violet Constance Louisa, darling little Bobsy
(called after our famous hero of the South African war, lord Bobs of
Waterford and Candahar) and now this last pledge of their union, a Purefoy
if ever there was one, with the true Purefoy nose. Young hopeful will be
christened Mortimer Edward after the influential third cousin of Mr Purefoy
in the Treasury Remembrancer's office, Dublin Castle. And so time wags on:
but father Cronion has dealt lightly here. No, let no sigh break from that
bosom, dear gentle Mina. And Doady, knock the ashes from your pipe, the
seasoned briar you still fancy when the curfew rings for you (may it be the
distant day!) and dout the light whereby you read in the Sacred Book for the
oil too has run low and so with a tranquil heart to bed, to rest. He knows
and will call in His own good time. You too have fought the good fight and
played loyally your man's part. Sir, to you my hand. Well done, thou good
and faithful servant!
There are sins or (let us call them as the world calls them) evil
memories which are hidden away by man in the darkest places of the heart but
they abide there and wait. He may suffer their memory to grow dim, let them
be as though they had not been and all but persuade himself that they were
not or at least were otherwise. Yet a chance word will call them forth
suddenly and they will rise up to confront him in the most various
circumstances, a vision or a dream, or while timbrel and harp soothe his
senses or amid the cool silver tranquillity of the evening or at the feast
at midnight when he is now filled with wine. Not to insult over him will the
vision come as over one that lies under her wrath, not for vengeance to cut
off from the living but shrouded in the piteous vesture of the past, silent,
remote, reproachful.
The stranger still regarded on the face before him a slow recession of
that false calm there, imposed, as it seemed, by habit or some studied
trick, upon words so embittered as to accuse in their speaker an
unhealthiness, a flair, for the cruder things of life. A scene disengages
itself in the observer's memory, evoked, it would seem, by a word of so
natural a homeliness as if those days were really present there (as some
thought) with their immediate pleasures. A shaven space of lawn one soft May
evening, the wellremembered grove of lilacs at Roundtown, purple and white,
fragrant slender spectators of the game but with much real interest in the
pellets as they run slowly forward over the sward or collide and stop, one
by its fellow, with a brief alert shock. And yonder about that grey urn
where the water moves at times in thoughtful irrigation you saw another as
fragrant sisterhood, Floey, Atty, Tiny and their darker friend with I know
not what of arresting in her pose then, Our Lady of the Cherries, a comely
brace of them pendent from an ear, bringing out the foreign warmth of the
skin so daintily against the cool ardent fruit. A lad of four or five in
linseywoolsey (blossomtime but there will be cheer in the kindly hearth when
ere long the bowls are gathered and hutched) is standing on the urn secured
by that circle of girlish fond hands. He frowns a little just as this young
man does now with a perhaps too conscious enjoyment of danger but must needs
glance at whiles towards where his mother watches from the piazzetta giving
upon the flower-close with a faint shadow of remoteness or of reproach
(alles Vergдnghche) in her glad look.
Mark this farther and remember. The end comes suddenly. Enter that
antechamber of birth where the studious are assembled and note their faces.
Nothing, as it seems, there of rash or violent. Quietude of custody rather,
befitting their station in that house, the vigilant watch of shepherds and
of angels about a crib in Bethlehem of Juda long ago. But as before the
lightning the serried stormclouds, heavy with preponderant excess of
moisture, in swollen masses turgidly distended, compass earth and sky in one
vast slumber, impending above parched field and drowsy oxen and blighted
growth of shrub and verdure till in an instant a flash rives their centres
and with the reverberation of the thunder the cloudburst pours its torrent,
so and not otherwise was the transformation, violent and instantaneous, upon
the utterance of the Word.
Burke's! Outflings my lord Stephen, giving the cry, and a tag and
bobtail of all them after, cockerel, jackanapes, welsher, pilldoctor,
punctual Bloom at heels with a universal grabbing at headgear, ashplants,
bilbos, Panama hats and scabbards, Zermatt alpenstocks and what not. A
dedale of lusty youth, noble every student there. Nurse Callan taken aback
in the hallway cannot stay them nor smiling surgeon coming downstairs with
news of placentation ended, a full pound if a milligramme. They hark him on.
The door! It is open? Ha? They are out tumultuously, off for a minute's
race, all bravely legging it, Burke's of Denzille and Holles their ulterior
goal. Dixon follows, giving them sharp language but raps out an oath, he
too, and on. Bloom stays with nurse a thought to send a kind word to happy
mother and nurseling up there. Doctor Diet and Doctor Quiet. Looks she too
not other now? Ward of watching in Horne's house has told its tale in that
washedout pallor. Them all being gone, a glance of motherwit helping he
whispers close in going: Madam, when comes the storkbird for thee?
The air without is impregnated with raindew moisture, life essence
celestial, glistering on Dublin stone there under starshiny coelum. God's
air, the Allfather's air, scintillant circumambient cessile air. Breathe it
deep into thee. By heaven, Theodore Purefoy, thou hast done a doughty deed
and no botch! Thou art, I vow, the remarkablest progenitor barring none in
this chaffering allincluding most farraginous chronicle. Astounding! In her
lay a Godframed Godgiven preformed possibility which thou hast fructified
with thy modicum of man's work. Cleave to her! Serve! Toil on, labour like a
very bandog and let scholarment and all Malthusiasts go hang. Thou art all
their daddies, Theodore. Art drooping under thy load, bemoiled with
butcher's bills at home and ingots (not thine!) in the countinghouse? Head
up? For every newbegotten thou shalt gather thy homer of ripe wheat. See,
thy fleece is drenched. Dost envy Darby Dullman there with his Joan? A
canting jay and a rheumeyed curdog is all their progeny. Pshaw, I tell thee!
He is a mule, a dead gasteropod, without vim or stamina, not worth a cracked
kreutzer. Copulation without population! No, say I! Herod's slaughter of the
innocents were the truer name. Vegetables, forsooth, and sterile
cohabitation! Give her beefsteaks, red, raw, bleeding! She is a hoary
pandemonium of ills, enlarged glands, mumps, quinsy, bunions, hayfever,
bedsores, ringworm, floating kidney, Derbyshire neck, warts, bilious
attacks, gallstones, cold feet, varicose veins. A truce to threnes and
trentals and jeremies and all such congenital defunctive music. Twenty years
of it, regret them not. With thee it was not as with many that will and
would and wait and never do. Thou sawest thy America, thy lifetask, and
didst charge to cover like the transpontine bison. How saith Zarathusthra?
Deine kuh Trэbsal melkest Du. Nun trinkst Du die sэsse Milch des Euters.
See! It displodes for thee in abundance. Drink, man, an udderful! Mother's
milk, Purefoy, the milk of human kin, milk too of those burgeoning stars
overhead, rutilant in thin rainvapour, punch milk, such as those rioters
will quaff in their guzzlingden, milk of madness, the honeymilk of Canaan's
land. Thy cow's dug was tough, what? Ay, but her milk is hot and sweet and
fattening. No dollop this but thick rich bonnyclaber. To her, old patriarch!
Pap! Per deam Partulam et Pertundam nunc est bibendum!
All off for a buster, armstrong, hollering down the street. Bonafides.
Where you slep las nigh? Timothy of the battered naggin. Like ole Billyo.
Any brollies or gumboots in the family? Where the Henry Nevil's sawbones and
ole clo? Sorra one o me knows. Hurrah there, Dix! Forward the ribbon
counter. Where's Punch? All serene. Jay, look at the drunken minister coming
out of the maternity hospal! Benedicat vos omnipotens Deus, Pater et Filius.
A make, mister. The Denzille lane boys. Hell, blast ye! Scoot. Righto,
Isaacs, shove em out of the bleeding limelight. Yous join us, dear sir? No
hentrusion in life. Lou heap good man. Allee samee this bunch. En avant, mes
enfants! Fire away number one on the gun. Burke's! Thence they advanced five
parasangs. Slattery's mounted foot where's that bleeding awfur? Parson
Steve, apostates' creed! No, no. Mulligan! Abaft there! Shove ahead. Keep a
watch on the clock. Chuckingout time. Mullee! What's on you? Ma mхre m'a
mariиe. British Beatitudes! Ratamplan Digidi Boum Boum. Ayes have it. To be
printed and bound at the Druiddrum press by two designing females. Calf
covers of pissedon green. Last word in art shades. Most beautiful book come
out of Ireland my time. Silentium! Get a spurt on. Tention. Proceed to
nearest canteen and there annex liquor stores. March! Tramp, tramp the boys
are (attitudes!) parching. Beer, beef, business, bibles, bulldogs,
battleships, buggery and bishops. Whether on the scaffold high. Beerbeef
trample the bibles. When for Irelandear. Trample the trampellers.
Thunderation! Keep the durned millingtary step. We fall. Bishops' boosebox.
Halt! Heave to. Rugger. Scrum in. No touch kicking. Wow, my tootsies! You
hurt? Most amazingly sorry!
Query. Who's astanding this here do? Proud possessor of damnall.
Declare misery. Bet to the ropes. Me nantee saltee. Not a red at me this
week gone. Yours? Mead of our fathers for the Эbermensch. Dittoh. Five
number ones. You, sir? Ginger cordial. Chase me, the cabby's candle.
Stimulate the caloric. Winding of his ticker. Stopped short never to go
again when the old. Absinthe for me, savvy? Caramba! Have an eggnog or a
prairie oyster. Enemy? Avuncular's got my timepiece. Ten to. Obligated
awful. Don't mention it. Got a pectoral trauma, eh, Dix? Pos fact. Got bet
be a boomblebee whenever he was settin sleep in hes bit garten. Digs up near
the Mater. Buckled he is. Know his dona? Yup, sartin, I do. Full of a dure.
See her in her dishybilly. Peels off a credit. Lovey lovekin. None of your
lean kine, not much. Pull down the blind, love. Two Ardilauns. Same here.
Look slippery. If you fall don't wait to get up. Five, seven, nine. Fine!
Got a prime pair of mincepies, no kid. And her take me to rests and her
anker of rum. Must be seen to be believed. Your starving eyes and
allbeplastered neck you stole my heart, O gluepot. Sir? Spud again the
rheumatiz? All poppycock, you'll scuse me saying. For the hoi polloi. I vear
thee best a gert vool. Well, doc? Back fro Lapland? Your corporosity
sagaciating OK? How's the squaws and papooses? Womanbody after going on the
straw? Stand and deliver. Password. There's hair. Ours the white death and
the ruddy birth. Hi! Spit in your own eye, boss. Mummer's wire. Cribbed out
of Meredith. Jesified orchidised polycimical jesuit! Aunty mine's writing Pa
Kinch. Baddybad Stephen lead astray goodygood Malachi.
Hurroo! Collar the leather, youngun. Roun wi the nappy. Here, Jock braw
Hielentman's your barleybree. Lang may your lum reek and your kailpot boil!
My tipple. Merci. Here's to us. How's that? Leg before wicket. Don't stain
my brandnew sitinems. Give's a shake of pepper, you there. Catch aholt.
Caraway seed to carry away. Twig? Shrieks of silence. Every cove to his
gentry mort. Venus Pandemos. Les petites femmes. Bold bad girl from the town
of Mullingar. Tell her I was axing at her. Hauding Sara by the wame. On the
road to Malahide. Me? If she who seduced me had left but the name. What do
you want for ninepence? Machree, Macruiskeen. Smutty Moll for a mattress
jig. And a pull altogether. Ex!
Waiting, guvnor? Most deciduously. Bet your boots on. Stunned like
seeing as how no shiners is acoming, Underconstumble? He've got the chink ad
lib. Seed near free poun on un a spell ago a said war hisn. Us come right in
on your invite, see? Up to you, matey. Out with the oof. Two bar and a wing.
You larn that go off of they there Frenchy bilks? Won't wash here for nuts
nohow. Lil chile vely solly. Ise de cutest colour coon down our side. Gawds
teruth, Chawley. We are nae fou. We're nae tha fou. Au reservoir, Mossoo.
Tanks you.
'Tis, sure. What say? In the speakeasy. Tight. I shee you, shir.
Bantam, two days teetee. Mowsing nowt but claretwine. Garn! Have a glint,
do. Gum, I'm jiggered. And been to barber he have. Too full for words. With
a railway bloke. How come you so? Opera he'd like? Rose of Castille. Rows of
cast. Police! Some H2O for a gent fainted. Look at Bantam's flowers. Gemini,
he's going to holler. The colleen bawn, my colleen bawn. O, cheese it! Shut
his blurry Dutch oven with a firm hand. Had the winner today till I tipped
him a dead cert. The ruffin cly the nab of Stephen. Hand as give me the jady
coppaleen. He strike a telegramboy paddock wire big bug Bass to the depot.
Shove him a joey and grahamise. Mare on form hot order. Guinea to a
goosegog. Tell a cram, that. Gospel-true. Criminal diversion? I think that
yes. Sure thing. Land him in chokeechokee if the harman beck copped the
game. Madden back Madden's a maddening back. O, lust, our refuge and our
strength. Decamping. Must you go? Off to mammy. Stand by. Hide my blushes
someone. All in if he spots me. Comeahome, our Bantam. Horryvar, mong vioo.
Dinna forget the cowslips for hersel. Cornfide. Wha gev ye thon colt? Pal to
pal. Jannock. Of John Thomas, her spouse. No fake, old man Leo. S'elp me,
honest injun. Shiver my timbers if I had. There's a great big holy friar.
Vyfor you no me tell? Vel, I ses, if that aint a sheeny nachez, vel, I vil
get misha mishinnah. Through yerd our lord, Amen.
You move a motion? Steve boy, you're going it some. More bluggy
drunkables? Will immensely splendiferous stander permit one stooder of most
extreme poverty and one largesize grandacious thirst to terminate one
expensive inaugurated libation? Give's a breather. Landlord, landlord, have
you good wine, staboo? Hoots, mon, wee drap to pree. Cut and some again.
Right Boniface! Absinthe the lot. Nos omnes biberimus viridum toxicum
diabolus capiat posteriora nostra Closingtime, gents. Eh? Rome boose for the
Bloom toff. I hear you say onions? Bloo? Cadges ads? Photo's papli, by all
that's gorgeous! Play low, pardner. Slide. Bonsoir la compagnie. And snares
of the poxfiend. Where's the buck and Namby Amby? Skunked? Leg bail. Aweel,
ye maun e'en gang yer gates. Checkmate. King to tower. Kind Kristyann will
yu help, yung man hoose frend tuk bungalo kee to find plais whear to lay
crown off his hed 2 night. Crickey, I'm about sprung. Tarnally dog gone my
shins if this beent the bestest putties longbreakyet. Item, curate, couple
of cookies for this child. Cot's plood and prandypalls, none! Not a pite of
sheeses? Thrust syphilis down to hell and with him those other licensed
spirits. Time. Who wander through the world. Health all. A la vтtre!
Golly, whatten tunket's yon guy in the mackintosh? Dusty Rhodes. Peep
at his wearables. By mighty! What's he got? Jubilee mutton. Bovril, by
James. Wants it real bad. D'ye ken bare socks? Seedy cuss in the Richmond?
Rawthere! Thought he had a deposit of lead in his penis. Trumpery insanity.
Bartle the Bread we calls him. That, sir, was once a prosperous cit. Man all
tattered and torn that married a maiden all forlorn. Slung her hook, she
did. Here see lost love. Walking Mackintosh of lonely canyon. Tuck and turn
in. Schedule time. Nix for the hornies. Pardon? See him today at a runefal?
Chum o yourn passed in his checks? Ludamassy! Pore picanninies! Thou'll no
be telling me thot, Pold veg! Did urns blubble bigsplash crytears cos fries
Padney was took off in black bag? Of all de darkies Massa Pat was verra
best. I never see the like since I was born. Tiens, tiens, but it is well
sad, that, my faith, yes. O get, rev on a gradient one in nine. Live axle
drives are souped. Lay you two to one Jenatzy licks him ruddy well hollow.
Jappies? High angle fire, inyah! Sunk by war specials. Be worse for him,
says he, nor any Rooshian. Time all. There's eleven of them. Get ye gone.
Forward, woozy wobblers! Night. Night. May Allah, the Excellent One, your
soul this night ever tremendously conserve.
Your attention! We're nae thy fou. The Leith police dismisseth us. The
least tholice. Ware hawks for the chap puking. Unwell in his abominable
regions. Yooka. Night. Mona, my thrue love. Yook. Mona, my own love. Ook.
Hark! Shut your obstropolos. Pflaap! Pflaap! Blaze on. There she goes.
Brigade! Bout ship. Mount street way. Cut up. Pflaap! Tally ho. You not
come? Run, skelter, race. Pflaaaap!
Lynch! Hey? Sign on long o me. Denzille lane this way. Change here for
Bawdyhouse. We two, she said, will seek the kips there shady Mary is.
Righto, any old time. Laetabuntur in cubilibus suis. You coming long?
Whisper, who the sooty hell's the johnny in the black duds? Hush! Sinned
against the light and even now that day is at hand when he shall come to
judge the world by fire. Pflaap! Ut implerentur scripturae. Strike up a
ballad. Then outspake medical Dick to his comrade medical Davy. Christicle,
who's this excrement yellow gospeller on the Merrion hall? Elijah is coming
washed in the Blood of the Lamb. Come on, you winefizzling ginsizzling
booseguzzling existences! Come on, you dog-gone, bullnecked, beetlebrowed,
hogjowled, peanutbrained, weaseleyed four flushers, false alarms and excess
baggage! Come on, you triple extract of infamy! Alexander J. Christ Dowie,
that's yanked to glory most half this planet from 'Frisco Beach to
Vladivostok. The Deity ain't no nickel dime bumshow. I put it to you that
he's on the square and a corking fine business proposition. He's the
grandest thing yet and don't you forget it. Shout salvation in King Jesus.
You'll need to rise precious early, you sinner there, if you want to diddle
the Almighty God. Pflaaaap! Not half. He's got a coughmixture with a punch
in it for you, my friend, In his backpocket. Just you try it on.
Circe
The Mabbot street entrance of nighttown, before which stretches an
uncobbled transiding set with skeleton tracks, red and green
will-o'-the-wisps and danger signals. Rows of flimsy houses with gaping
doors. Rare lamps with faint rainbow fans. Round Rabaiotti's halted ice
gondola stunted men and women squabble. They grab wafers between which are
wedged lumps of coal and copper snow. Sucking, they scatter slowly.
Children. The swancomb of the gondola, highreared, forges on through the
murk, white and blue under a lighthouse. Whistles call and answer.
THE CALLS Wait, my love, and I'll be with you.
THE ANSWERS Round behind the stable.
(A deaf mute idiot with goggle eyes, his shapeless mouth dribbling,
jerks past, shaken in Saint Vitus' dance. A chain of children's hands
imprisons him.)
THE CHILDREN Kithoguel Salute.
THE IDIOT (Lifts a palsied left arm and gurgles.) Grhahute!
THE CHILDREN Where's the great light?
THE IDIOT (Gobbing.) Ghaghahest.
(They release him. He jerks on. A pygmy woman swings on a rope slung
between the railings, counting. A form sprawled against a dustbin and
muffled by its arm and hat moves, groans, grinding growling teeth, and
snores again. On a step a gnome totting among a rubbish tip crouches to
shoulder a sack of rags and bones. A crone standing by with a smoky oil lamp
rams the last bottle in the maw of his sack. He heaves his booty, tugs askew
his peaked cap and hobbles off mutely. The crone makes back for her lair
swaying her lamp. A bandy child, asquat on the doorstep with a
papershuttlecock, crawls sidling after her in spurts, clutches her skirt,
scrambles up. A drunken navvy ups with both hands the railings of an area,
lurching heavily. At a corner two night watch in shoulder capes, their hands
upon their staffholsters, loom tall. A plate crashes; a woman screams; a
child wails. Oaths of a man roar, mutter, cease. Figures wander, lurk, peer
from warrens. In a room lit by a candle stuck in a bottleneck a slut combs
out the tatts from the hair of a scrofulous child. Cissy Caffrey's voice,
still young, sings shrill from a lane.)
CISSY CAFFREY
I gave it to Molly
Because she was jolly,
The leg of the duck
The leg of the duck.
(Private Cart and Private Compton, swaggersticks tight in their oxters,
as they march unsteadily rightaboutface and burst together from their mouths
a volleyed fart. Laughter of men from the lane. A hoarse virago retorts.)
THE VIRAGO Signs on you, hairy arse. More power the Cavan girl.
CISSY CAFFREY More luck to me. Cavan, Cootehill and Belturbet.
(She sings.)
I gave it to Nelly
To stick in her belly
The leg of the duck
The leg of the duck.
(Private Cart and Private Compton turn and counterretort, their tunics
bloodbright in a lampglow, black sockets of caps on their blond copper
polls. Stephen Dedalus and Lynch pass through the crowd close to the
redcoats.)
PRIVATE COMPTON (Jerks his finger.) Way for the parson.
PRIVATE CARR (Turns and calls.) What ho, parson!
CISSY CAFFREY (Her voice soaring higher.)
She has it, she got it,
Wherever she put it
The leg of the duck.
(Stephen, flourishing the ashplant in his left hand, chants with joy
the introit for paschal time. Lynch, his jockey cap low on his brow, attends
him, a sneer of discontent wrinkling his face.)
STEPHEN Vidi aquam egredientem de templo a latere dextro. Alleluia.
(The famished snaggletusks of an elderly bawd protrude from a doorway.)
THE BAWD (Her voice whispering huskily.) Sst! Come here till I tell
you. Maidenhead inside. Sst.
STEPHEN (Altius aliqantulum) Et omnes ad quos pervenit acqua ista.
THE BAWD (Spits in their trail her jet of venom.) Trinity medicals.
Fallopian tube. All prick and no pence.
(Edy Boardman, sniffling, crouched with Bertha Supple, draws her shawl
across her nostrils.)
EDY BOARDMAN (Bickering.) And say the one: I seen you up Faithful place
with your squarepusher, the greaser off the railway, in his cometobed hat.
Did you, says I. That's not for you to say, says I. You never seen me in the
mantrap with a married highlander, says I. The likes of her! Stag that one
is. Stubborn as a mule! And her walking with two fellows the one time,
Kildbride the enginedriver and lancecorporal Oliphant.
STEPHEN (Triumphaliter.) Salvi facti i sunt.
(He flourishes his ashplant shivering the lamp image, shattering light
over the world. A liver and white spaniel on the prowl slinks after him,
growling. Lynch scar's it with a kick.)
LYNCH So that?
STEPHEN (Looks behind.) So that gesture, not music, not odours, would
be a universal language, the gift of tongues rendering visible not the lay
sense but the first entelechy, the structural rhythm.
LYNCH Pornosophical philotheology. Metaphysics in Mecklenburg street!
STEPHEN We have shrewridden Shakespeare and henpecked Socrates. Even
the allwisest stagyrite was bitted, bridled and mounted by a light of love.
LYNCH Ba!
STEPHEN Anyway, who wants two gestures to illustrate a loaf and a jug?
This movement illustrates the loaf and jug of bread and wine in Omar. Hold
my stick.
LYNCH Damn your yellow stick. Where are we going?
STEPHEN Lecherous lynx, to la belle dame sans merci, Georgina Johnson,
ad deam qui laetificat juventutem meam.
(Stephen thrusts the ashplant on him and slowly holds out his hands,
his head going back till both hands are a span from his breast, down turned
in planes intersecting, the fingers about to part, the left being higher.)
LYNCH Which is the jug of bread? It skills not. That or the
customhouse. Illustrate thou. Here take your crutch and walk.
(They pass. Tommy Caffrey scrambles to a gaslamp and, clasping, climbs
in spasms. From the top spur he slides down. Jacky Caffrey clasps to climb.
The navvy lurches against the lamp. The twins scuttle off in the dark. The
navvy, swaying, presses a forefinger against a wing of his nose and ejects
from the farther nostril a long liquid jet of snot. Shouldering the lamp he
staggers away through the crowd with his flaring cresset.
Snakes of river fog creep slowly. From drains, clefts, cesspools,
middens arise on all sides stagnant fumes. A glow leaps in the south beyond
the seaward reaches of the river. The navvy staggering forward cleaves the
crowd and lurches towards the tramsiding. On the farther side under the
railway bridge Bloom appears flushed, panting, cramming bread and chocolate
into a side pocket. From Gillens hairdressers window a composite portrait
shows him gallant Nelson's image. A concave mirror at the side presents to
him lovelorn longlost lugubru Booloohoom. Grave Gladstone sees him level
Bloom for Bloom. He passes, struck by the stare of truculent Wellington but
in the con vex mirror grin unstruck the bonham eyes and fatchuck cheekchops
of Jollypoldy the rixdix doldy.
At Antonio Babaiotti's door Bloom halts, sweated under the bright
arclamps. He disappears. In a moment he reappears and hurries on.)
BLOOM Fish and taters. N. g. Ah!
(He disappears into Olhousen's, the pork butcher's, under the
downcoming rollshutter. A few moments later he emerges from under the
shutter puffing Poldy, blowing Bloohoom. In each hand he holds a parcel, one
containing a lukewarm pig's crubeen, the other a cold sheep's trotter
sprinkled with wholepepper He gasps, standing upright. Then bending to one
side he presses a parcel against his rib and groans.)
BLOOM Stitch in my side. Why did I run?
(He takes breath with care and goes forward slowly towards the lampset
siding. The glow leaps again.)
BLOOM What is that? A flasher? Searchlight.
(He stands at Cormack's corner watching.)
BLOOM Aurora borealis or a steel foundry? Ah, the brigade, of course.
South side anyhow. Big blaze. Might be his house. Beggar's bush. We're safe.
(He hums cheerfully.) London's burning, London's burning! On fire, on fire!
(He catches sight of the navvy lurching through the crowd at the farther
side of Talbot street.) I'll miss him. Run. Quick. Better cross here.
(He darts to cross the road. Urchins shout.)
THE URCHINS Mind out, mister! (Two cyclists, with lighted paper
lanterns aswing, swim by him, grazing him, their bells rattling.)
THE BELLS Haltyaltyaltyall.
BLOOM (Halts erect stung by a spasm.) Ow.
(He looks round, darts forward suddenly. Through rising fog a dragon
sandstrewer, travelling at caution, slews heavily down upon him, its huge
red headlight winking, its trolley hissing on the wire. The motorman bangs
his footgong.)
THE GONG Bang Bang Bla Bak Blud Bugg Bloo.
(The brake cracks violently. Bloom, raising a policeman's whitegloved
hand, blunders stifflegged, out of the track. The motorman thrown forward,
pugnosed, on the guidewheel, yells as he slides past over chains and keys.)
THE MOTORMAN Hey, shitbreeches, are you doing the hattrick?
BLOOM (Bloom trickleaps to the curbstone and halts again. He brushes a
mudflake from his cheek with a parcelled hand.) No thoroughfare. Close shave
that but cured the stitch. Must take up Sandow's exercises again. On the
hands down. Insure against street accident too. The Providential. (He feels
his trouser pocket.) Poor mamma's panacea. Heel easily catch in tracks or
bootlace in a cog. Day the wheel of the black Maria peeled off my shoe at
Leonard's corner. Third time is the charm. Shoe trick. Insolent driver. I
ought to report him. Tension makes them nervous. Might be the fellow balked
me this morning with that horsey woman. Same style of beauty. Quick of him
all the same. The stiff walk. True word spoken in jest. That awful cramp in
Lad lane. Something poisonous I ate. Emblem of luck. Why? Probably lost
cattle. Mark of the beast. (He closes his eyes an instant.) Bit light in the
head. Monthly or effect of the other. Brainfogfag. That tired feeling. Too
much for me now. Ow!
(A sinister figure leans on plaited legs against O'Beirnes wall, a
visage unknown, injected with dark mercury. From under a wideleaved sombrero
the figure regards him with evil eye.)
BLOOM Buenos noches, seяorita Blanca, que calle es esta?
THE FIGURE (Impassive, raises a signal arm.) Password. Sraid Mabbot.
BLOOM Haha. Merci. Esperanto. Slan leath. (He mutters.) Gaelic league
spy, sent by that fireeater.
(He steps forward. A sackshouldered ragman bars his path. He steps
left, ragsackman left.)
BLOOM I beg. (He swerves, sidles, stepsaside, slips past and on.)
BLOOM Keep to the right, right, right. If there is a fingerpost planted
by the Touring Club at Stepaside who procured that public boon? I who lost
my way and contributed to the columns of the Irish Cyclist the letter
headed, In darkest Stepaside. Keep, keep, keep to the right. Rags and bones,
at midnight. A fence more likely. First place murderer makes for. Wash off
his sins of the world.
(Jacky Caffrey, hunted by Tommy Caffrey, runs full tilt against Bloom.)
BLOOM O!
(Shocked, on weak hams, he halts. Tommy and Jacky vanish there, there.
Bloom pats with parcelled hands watch, fobpocket, bookpocket, pursepocket,
sweets of sin, potato soap.)
BLOOM Beware of pickpockets. Old thieves' dodge. Collide. Then snatch
your purse.
(The retriever approaches sniffling, nose to the ground. A sprawled
form sneezes. A stooped bearded figure appears garbed in the long caftan of
an elder in Zion and a smoking cap with magenta tassels. Horned spectacles
hang down at the wings of the nose. Yellow poison streaks are on the drawn
face.)
RUDOLPH Second halfcrown waste money today. I told you not go with
drunken goy ever. So. You catch no money.
BLOOM (Hides the crubeen and trotter behind his back and, crestfallen,
feels warm and cold feetmeat) Ja, ich weiss, papachi.
RUDOLPH What you making down this place? Have you no soul? (With feeble
vulture talons he feels the silent face of Bloom) Are you not my son
Leopold, the grandson of Leopold? Are you not my dear son Leopold who left
the house of his father and left the god of his fathers Abraham and Jacob?
BLOOM (With precaution.) I suppose so, father. Mosenthal. All that's
left of him.
RUDOLPH (Severely.) One night they bring you home drunk as dog after
spend your good money. What you call them running chaps?
BLOOM (In youth's smart blue Oxford suit with white vestslips,
narrowshouldered, in brown Alpine hat, wearing gent's sterling silver
waterbury keyless watch and double curb Albert with seal attached, one side
of him coated with stiffening mud.) Harriers, father. Only that once.
RUDOLPH Once! Mud head to foot. Cut your hand open. Lockjaw. They make
you kaput, Leopoldleben. You watch them chaps.
BLOOM (Weakly.) They challenged me to a sprint. It was muddy. I
slipped.
RUDOLPH (With contempt) Ooim nachez. Nice spectacles for your poor
mother!
BLOOM Mamma!
ELLEN BLOOM (In pantomime dame's stringed mobcap, crinoline and bustle,
widow Twankey's blouse with muttonleg sleeves buttoned behind, grey mittens
and cameo brooch, her hairplaited in a crisping net, appears over the
staircase banisters, a slanted candlestick in her hand and cries out in
shrill alarm.) O blessed Redeemer, what have they done to him! My smelling
salts! (She hauls up a reef of skirt and ransacks the pouch of her striped
blay petticoat. A phial, an Agnus Dei, a shrivelled potato and a celluloid
doll fall out.) Sacred Heart of Mary, where were you at all, at all?
(Bloom, mumbling, his eyes downcast, begins to bestow his parcels in
his filled pockets but desists, muttering.)
A VOICE (Sharply.) Poldy!
BLOOM Who? (He ducks and wards off a blow clumsily.) At your service.
(He looks up. Beside her mirage of datepalms a handsome woman in
Turkish costume stands before him. Opulent curves fill out her scarlet
trousers and jacket slashed with gold. A wide yells cummerbund girdles her.
A white yashmak violet in the night, covers her face, leaving free only her
lace dark eyes and raven hair.)
BLOOM Molly!
MARION Welly? Mrs Marion from this out, my dear man, when you speak to
me. (Satirically.) Has poor little hubby cold feet waiting so long?
BLOOM (Shifts from foot to foot.) No, no. Not the least little bit.
(He breathes in deep agitation, swallowing gulps of air questions,
hopes, crubeens for her supper things to tell her excuses, desire,
spellbound. A coin gleams on her forehead. On her feet are jewelled
toerings. Her ankles are linked by a slender fetterchain. Beside her a
camel, hooded with a turreting turban, waits. A silk ladder of innumerable
rungs climbs to his bobbing howdah. He ambles near with disgruntled
hindquarters. Fiercely she slaps his haunch, her goldcurb wristbangles
angriling, scolding him in Moorish.)
MARION Nebrakada! Feminimum.
(The camel, lifting a foreleg, plucks from a tree a lace mango fruit,
offers it to his mistress, blinking, in his cloven hoof then droops his head
and, grunting, with uplifted neck, fumbles to kneel. Bloom stoops his back
for leapfrog.)
BLOOM I can give you... I mean as your business menagerer Mrs Marion...
if you...
MARION So you notice some change? (Her hands passing slowly over her
trinketed stomacher. A slow friendly mockery in her eyes.) O Poldy, Poldy,
you are a poor old stick in the mud! Go and see life. See the wide world.
BLOOM I was just going back for that lotion whitewax, orangeflower
water. Shop closes early on Thursday. But the first thing in the morning.
(He pats divers pockets.) This moving kidney. Ah!
(He points to the south, then to the east. A cake of new clean lemon
soap arises, diffusing light and perfume.)
THE SOAP
We're a capital couple are Bloom and I;
He brightens the earth, I polish the sky.
(The freckled face of Sweny, the druggist, appeals in the disc of the
soapsun.)
SWENY Three and a penny, please.
BLOOM Yes. For my wife, Mrs Marion. Special recipe.
MARION (Softly.) Poldy!
BLOOM Yes, ma'am?
MARION Ti trema un poco il cuore?
(In disdain she saunters away, plump as a pampered pouter pigeon,
humming the duet from Don Giovanni)
BLOOM Are you sure about that Voglio? I mean the pronunciati...
(He follows, followed by the sniffing terrier. The elderly bawd seizes
his sleeve, the bristles of her chinmole glittering.)
THE BAWD Ten shillings a maidenhead. Fresh thing was never touched.
Fifteen. There's no-one in it only her old father that's dead drunk.
(She points. In the gap of her dark den furtive, rainbedraggled Bridie
Kelly stands.)
BRIDIE Hatch street. Any good in your mind?
(With a squeak she flaps her bat shawl and runs. A burly rough pursues
with booted strides. He stumbles on the steps, recovers, plunges into gloom.
Weak squeaks of laughter are heard, weaker.)
THE BAWD (Her wolfeyes shining.) He's getting his pleasure. You won't
get a virgin in the flash houses. Ten shillings. Don't be all night before
the polis in plain clothes sees us. Sixtyseven is a bitch.
(Leering Gerty MacDowell limps forward. She draws from behind ogling,
and shows coyly her bloodied clout.)
GERTY With all my worldly goods I thee and thou. (She murmurs.) You did
that. I hate you.
BLOOM I? When? You're dreaming. I never saw you.
THE BAWD Leave the gentleman alone, you cheat. Writing the gentleman
false letters. Streetwalking and soliciting. Better for your mother take the
strap to you at the bedpost, hussy like you.
GERTY (To Bloom.) When you saw all the secrets of my bottom drawer.
(She paws his sleeve, slobbering.) Dirty married man! I love you for doing
that to me.
(She slides away crookedly. Mrs Breen in man's frieze overcoat with
loose bellows pockets, stands in the causeway, her roguish eyes wideopen,
smiling in all her herbivorous buckteeth.)
MRS BREEN Mr.
BLOOM (Coughs gravely.) Madam, when we last had this pleasure by letter
dated the sixteenth instant .
MRS BREEN Mr Bloom! You down here in the haunts of sin! I caught you
nicely! Scamp!
BLOOM (Hurriedly.) Not so loud my name. Whatever do you think me? Don't
give me away. Walls have hears. How do you do? It's ages since I. You're
looking splendid. Absolutely it. Seasonable weather we are having this time
of year. Black refracts heat. Short cut home here. Interesting quarter.
Rescue of fallen women Magdalen asylum. I am the secretary...
MRS BREEN (Holds up a finger.) Now don't tell a big fib! I know
somebody won't like that. O just wait till I see Molly! (Slily.) Account for
yourself this very minute or woe betide you!
BLOOM (Looks behind.) She often said she'd like to visit. Slumming. The
exotic, you see. Negro servants too in livery if she had money. Othello
black brute. Eugene Stratton. Even the bones and cornerman at the Livermore
christies. Bohee brothers. Sweep for that matter.
(Tom and Sam Bohee, coloured coons in white duck suits, scarlet socks,
upstarched Sambo chokers and lace scarlet asters in their buttonholes leap
out. Each has his banjo slung. Their paler smaller negroid hands jingle the
twingtwang wires. Flashing white Kaffir eyes and tusks they rattle through a
breakdown in clumsy clogs, twinging, singing, back to back, toe heel, heel
toe, with smackfatclacking nigger lips.)
There's someone in the house with Dina
There's someone in the house, I know,
There's someone in the house with Dina
Playing on the old banjo.
(They whisk black masks from raw babby faces: then, chuckling,
chortling, trumming, twanging they diddle diddle cakewalk dance away.)
BLOOM (With a sour tenderish smile.) A little frivol, shall we, if you
are so inclined? Would you like me perhaps to embrace you just for a
fraction of a second?
MRS BREEN (Screams gaily.) O, you ruck! You ought to see yourself!
BLOOM For old sake'sake. I only meant a square party, a mixed marriage
mingling of our different little conjugials. You know I had a soft corner
for you. (Gloomily.) 'Twas I sent you that valentine of the dear gazelle.
MRS BREEN Glory Alice, you do look a holy show! Killing simply. (She
puts out her hand inquisitively.) What are you hiding behind your back? Tell
us, there's a dear.
BLOOM (Seizes her wrist with his free hand.) Josie Powell that was,
prettiest deb in Dublin. How time flies by! Do you remember, harking back in
a retrospective arrangement, Old Christmas night Georgina Simpson's
housewarming while they were playing the Irving Bishop game, finding the pin
blindfold and thoughtreading? Subject, what is in this snuff box?
MRS BREEN You were the lion of the night with your seriocomic
recitation and you looked the part. You were always a favourite with the
ladies.
BLOOM (Squire of dames, in dinner jacket, with watered-silk facings,
blue masonic badge in his buttonhole, black bow and mother-of-pearl studs, a
prismatic champagne glass tilted in his hand.) Ladies and gentlemen, I give
you Ireland, home and beauty.
MRS BREEN The dear dead days beyond recall. Love's old sweet song.
BLOOM (Meaningfully dropping his voice.) I confess I'm teapot with
curiosity to find out whether some person's something is a little teapot at
present.
MRS BREEN (Gushingly.) Tremendously teapot! London's tea pot and I'm
simply teapot all over me. (She rubs sides with him.) After the parlour
mystery games and the crackers from the tree we sat on the staircase
ottoman. Under the mistletoe. Two is company.
BLOOM (Wearing a purple Napoleon hat with an amber halfmoon, his
fingers and thumbs passing slowly down to her soft moist meaty palm which
she surrenders gently.) The witching hour of night. I took the splinter out
of this hand, carefully, slowly. (Tenderly, as he slips on her finger a ruby
ring.) Lю ci darem la mano.
MRS BREEN (In a onepiece eveningfrock executed in moonlight blue, a
tinsel sylph's diadem on her brow with her dancecard fallen beside her