Joyce J. Ulysses

moonblue satin slipper curves her palm softly, breathing quickly.) Voglio e
non. You're hot! You're scalding! The left hand nearest the heart.
BLOOM When you made your present choice they said it was beauty and the
beast. I can never forgive you for that. (His clenched fist at his brow.)
Think what it means. All you meant to me then. (Hoarsely.) Woman, it's
breaking me! (Dennis Breen, whitetallhatted, with Wisdom Hely's sandwich
board, shuffles past them in cadet slippers, his dull beard thrust out,
muttering to right and left. Little Alf Bergan, cloaked in the pall of the
ace of spaces, dogs him to left and right, doubled in laughter.)
ALF BERGAN (Points jeering at the sandwich boards.) U.p.: Up.
MRS BREEN (To Bloom.) High jinks below stairs. (She gives him the glad
eye.) Why didn't you kiss the spot to make it well? You wanted to.
BLOOM (Shocked.) Molly's best friend! Could you?
MRS BREEN (Her pulpy tongue between her lips, offers a pigeon kiss.)
Hnhn. The answer is a lemon. Have you a little present for me there?
BLOOM (Off handedly.) Kosher. A snack for supper. The home without
potted meat is incomplete. I was at Leah. Mrs Bandman Palmer. Trenchant
exponent of Shakespeare. Unfortunately threw away the programme. Rattling
good place round there for pig's feet. Feel.
(Richie Goulding, three ladies' hats pinned on his head, appears
weighted to one side by the black legal bag of Collis and Ward on which a
skull and crossbones are painted in white limewash. He ins it and shows it
full of polonies, kippered, herrings, Findon haddies and tightpacked pills.)
RICHIE Best value in Dub.
(Bald Pat, bothered beetle, stands on the curbstone, folding his
napkin, waiting to wait.)
PAT (Advances with a tilted dish of spillspilling gravy.) Steak and
kidney. Bottle of lager. Hee hee hee. Wait till I wait.
RICHIE Goodgod. Inev erate inall...
(With hanging head he marches doggedly forward. The navvy, lurching by,
gores him with his flaming pronghorn.)
RICHIE (With a cry of pain, his hand to his back) Ah! Bright's! Lights!
BLOOM (Points to the navvy.) A spy. Don't attract attention. I hate
stupid crowds. I am not on pleasure bent. I am in a grave predicament.
MRS BREEN Humbugging and delutbering as per usual with your cock and
bull story.
BLOOM I want to tell you a little secret about how I came to be here.
But you must never tell. Not even Molly. I have a most particular reason.
MRS BREEN (All agog.) O, not for worlds.
BLOOM Let's walk on. Shall us?
MRS BREEN Let's.
(The bawd makes an unheeded sign. Bloom walks on with Mrs Breen. The
terrier follows, whining piteously, wagging his tail.)
THE BAWD Jewman's melt!
BLOOM (In an oatmeal sporting suit, a sprig of woodbine in the lapel,
tony buff shirt, shepherd's plaid Saint Andrew's cross scarftie, white
spats, fawn dustcoat on his arm, tawny red brogues, fieldglasses in
bandolier and a grey billycock hat.) Do you remember a long long time, years
and years ago, just after Milly, Marionette we called her, was weaned when
we all went together to Fairyhouse races, was it?
MRS BREEN (In smart Saxe tailormade, white velours hat and spider
veil.) Leopardstown.
BLOOM I mean, Leopardstown. And Molly won seven shillings on a three
year old named Nevertell and coming home along by Foxrock in that old
fiveseater shanderadan of a waggonette you were in your heyday then and you
had on that new hat of white velours with a surround of molefur that Mrs
Hayes advised you to buy because it was marked down to nineteen and eleven,
a bit of wire and an old rag of velveteen, and I'll lay you what you like
she did it on purpose...
MRS BREEN She did, of course, the cat! Don't tell me! Nice adviser!
BLOOM Because it didn't suit you one quarter as well as the other ducky
little tammy toque with the bird of paradise wing in it that I admired on
you and you honestly looked just too fetching in it though it was a pity to
kill it, you cruel creature, little mite of a thing with a heart the size of
a fullstop.
MRS BREEN (Squeezes his arm, simpers.) Naughty cruel I was.
BLOOM (Low, secretly, ever more rapidly.) And Molly was eating a
sandwich of spiced beef out of Mrs Joe Gallaher's lunch basket. Frankly,
though she had her advisers or admirers, I never cared much for her style.
She was .
MRS BREEN Too.
BLOOM Yes. And Molly was laughing because Rogers and Maggot O'Reilly
were mimicking a cock as we passed a farmhouse and Marcus Tertius Moses, the
tea merchant, drove past us in a gig with his daughter, Dancer Moses was her
name, and the poodle in her lap bridled up and you asked me if I ever heard
or read or knew or came across .
MRS BREEN (Eagerly.) Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
(She fades from his side. Followed by the whining dog he walks on
towards hellsgates. In an archway a standing woman, bent forward, her feet
apart, pisses cowily. Outside a shuttered pub a bunch of loiterers listen to
a tale which their broken snouted gaffer rasps out with raucous humour. An
armless pair of them flop wrestling, growling, in maimed sodden playfight.)
THE GAFFER (Crouches, his voice twisted in his snout.) And when Cairns
came down from the scaffolding in Beaver Street what was he after doing it
into only into the bucket of porter that was there waiting on the shavings
for Derwan's plasterers.
THE LOITERERS (Guffaw with cleft palates.) O jays!
(Their paintspeckled hats wag. Spattered with size and lime of their
lodges they frisk limblessly about him.)
BLOOM Coincidence too. They think it funny. Anything but that. Broad
daylight. Trying to walk. Lucky no woman.
THE LOITERERS Jays, that's a good one. Glauber salts. O jays, into the
men's porter.
(Bloom passes. Cheap whores, singly, coupled, shawled, dishevelled,
call from lanes, doors, corners.)
THE WHORES Are you going far, queer fellow? How's your middle leg? Got
a match on you? Eh, come here till I stiffen it for you.
(He plodges through their sump towards the lighted street beyond. >From
a bulge of window curtains a gramophone rears a battered brazen trunk. In
the shadow a shebeenkeeper haggles with the navvy and the two redcoats.)
THE NAVVY (Belching.) Where's the bloody house?
THE SHEBEENKEEPER Purdon street. Shilling a bottle of stout.
Respectable woman.
THE NAVVY (Gripping the two redcoats, staggers forward with them.) Come
on, you British army!
PRIVATE CARR (Behind his back.) He aint half balmy.
PRIVATE COMPTON (LAughs.) What ho!
PRIVATE CARR (To the navvy.) Portobello barracks canteen. You ask for
Carr. Just Carr.
THE NAVVY (Shouts.)
We are the boys. Of Wexford.
PRIVATE COMPTON Say! What price the sergeantmajor?
PRIVATE CARR Bennett? He's my pal. I love old Bennett.
THENAVVY (Shouts.)
The galling chain.
And free our native land.
(He staggers forward, dragging them with him. Bloom stops, at fault.
The dog approaches, his tongue outlolling, panting.)
BLOOM Wildgoose chase this. Disorderly houses. Lord knows where they
are gone. Drunks cover distance double quick. Nice mixup. Scene at Westland
row. Then jump in first class with third ticket. Then too far. Train with
engine behind. Might have taken me to Malahide or a siding for the night or
collision. Second drink does it. Once is a dose. What am I following him
for? Still, he's the best of that lot. If I hadn't heard about Mrs Beaufoy
Purefoy I wouldn't have gone and wouldn't have met. Kismet. He'll lose that
cash. Relieving office here. Good biz for cheapjacks, organs. What do ye
lack? Soon got, soon gone. Might have lost my life too with that
mangongwheeltracktrolleyglarejuggernaut only for presence of mind. Can't
always save you, though. If I had passed Truelock's window that day two
minutes later would have been shot. Absence of body. Still if bullet only
went through my coat get damages for shock, five hundred pounds. What was
he? Kildare street club toff. God help his gamekeeper.
(He gazes ahead reading on the wall a scrawled chalk legend Wet Dream
and a phallic design.)
Odd! Molly drawing on the frosted carriagepane at Kingstown. What's
that like? (Gaudy dollwomen loll in the lighted doorways, in window
embrasures, smoking birdseye cigarettes. The odour of the sicksweet weed
floats towards him in slow round ovalling wreaths.)
THE WREATHS Sweet are the sweets. Sweets of sin.
BLOOM My spine's a bit limp. Go or turn? And this food? Eat it and get
all pigsticky. Absurd I am. Waste of money. One and eightpence too much.
(The retriever drives a cold snivelling muzzle against his hand, wagging his
tail.) Strange how they take to me. Even that brute today. Better speak to
him first. Like women they like rencontres. Stinks like a polecat. Chacun
son goшt. He might be mad. Fido. Uncertain in his movements. Good fellow!
Garryowen! (The wolfdog sprawls on his back, wriggling obscenely with
begging paws, his long black tongue lolling out.) Influence of his
surroundings. Give and have done with it. Provided nobody. (Calling
encouraging words he shambles back with a furtive poacher's tread, dogged by
the setter into a dark stalestunk corner. He unrolls one parcel and goes to
dump the crubeen softly but holds back and feels the trotter.) Sizeable for
threepence. But then I have it in my left hand. Calls for more effort. Why?
Smaller from want of use. O, let it slide. Two and six.
(With regret he lets unrolled crubeen and trotter slide. The mastiff
mauls the bundle clumsily and gluts himself with growling greed, crunching
the bones. Two raincaped watch approach, silent, vigilant. They murmur
together.)
THE WATCH Bloom. Of Bloom. For Bloom. Bloom.
(Each lays a hand on Blooms shoulder.)
FIRST WATCH Caught in the act. Commit no nuisance.
BLOOM (Stammers.) I am doing good to others.
(A covey of gulls, storm petrels, rises hungrily from Liffey slime with
Banbury cakes in their beaks.)
THE GULLS Kaw kave kankury kake.
BLOOM The friend of man. Trained by kindness.
(He points. Bob Doran, toppling from a high bars tool, sways over the
munching spaniel.)
BOB DORAN Towser. Give us the paw. Give the paw.
(The bulldog growls, his scruff standing, a gobbet of pigs knuckle
between his molars through which rabid scrumspittle dribbles. Bob Doran
falls silently into an area.)
SECOND WATCH Prevention of cruelty to animals.
BLOOM (Enthusiastically.) A noble work! I scolded that tramdriver on
Harold's cross bridge for illusing the poor horse with his harness scab. Bad
French I got for my pains. Of course it was frosty and the last tram. All
tales of circus life are highly demoralising.
(Signor Maffei, passion pale, in liontamer's costume with diamond studs
in his shirtfront, steps forward, holding a circus paper hoop, a curling
carriagewhip and a revolver with which he covers the going boarhound.)
SIGNOR MAFFEI (With a sinister smile.) Ladies and gentlemen, my
educated greyhound. It was I broke in the bucking broncho Ajax with my
patent spiked saddle for carnivores. Lash under the belly with a knotted
thong. Block tackle and a strangling pully will bring your lion to heel, no
matter how fractious, even Leo ferox there, the Libyan maneater. A redhot
crowbar and some liniment rubbing on the 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