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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
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
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
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