Joyce J. Ulysses

than never. Try truffles at Andrews.
(The door opens. Bella Cohen, a massive whoremistress enters. She is
dressed in a threequarter ivory gown, fringed round the hem with tasselled
selvedge, and cools herself flirting a black horn fan like Minnie Hauck in
Carmen. On her left hand are wedding and keeper rings. Her eyes are deeply
carboned. She has a sprouting moustache. Her olive face is heavy, slightly
sweated and fullnosed, with orangetainted nostrils. She has lace pendant
beryl eardrops.)
BELLA My word! I'm all of a mucksweat.
(She glances around her at the couples. Then her eyes rest on Bloom
with hard insistence. Her lace fan winnows wind towards her heated face,
neck and embonpoint. Her falcon eyes glitter.)
THE FAN (Flirting quickly, then slowly.) Married, I see.
BLOOM Yes... Partly, I have mislaid .
THE FAN (Half opening, then closing.) And the missus is master.
Petticoat government.
BLOOM (Looks down with a sheepish grin.) That is so.
THE FAN (Folding together, rests against her eardrop.) Have you
forgotten me?
BLOOM Yes. No.
THE FAN (Folded akimbo against her waist.) Is me her was you dreamed
before? Was then she him you us since knew? Am all them and the same now we?
(Bella approaches, gently tapping with the fan.)
BLOOM (Wincing.) Powerful being. In my eyes read that slumber which
women love.
THE FAN (Tapping.) We have met. You are mine. It is fate.
BLOOM (Cowed.) Exuberant female. Enormously I desiderate your
domination. I am exhausted, abandoned, no more young. I stand, so to speak,
with an unposted letter bearing the extra regulation fee before the too late
box of the general postoffice of human life. The door and window open at a
right angle cause a draught of thirtytwo feet per second according to the
law of falling bodies. I have felt this instant a twinge of sciatica in my
left glutear muscle. It runs in our family. Poor dear papa, a widower, was a
regular barometer from it. He believed in animal heat. A skin of tabby lined
his winter waistcoat. Near the end, remembering king David and the Sunamite,
he shared his bed with Athos, faithful after death. A dog's spittle, as you
probably... (He winces.) Ah!
RICHIE GOULDING (Bagweighted, passes the door.) Mocking is catch. Best
value in Dub. Fit for a prince's liver and kidney.
THE FAN (Tapping.) All things end. Be mine. Now.
BLOOM (Undecided.) All now? I should not have parted with my talisman.
Rain, exposure at dewfall on the sea rocks, a peccadillo at my time of life.
Every phenomenon has a natural cause.
THE FAN (Points downwards slowly.) You may.
BLOOM (Looks downwards and perceives her unfastened bootlace. ) We are
observed.
THE FAN (Points downwards quickly.) You must.
BLOOM (With desire, with reluctance.) I can make a true black knot.
Learned when I served my time and worked the mail order line for Kellet's.
Experienced hand. Every knot says a lot. Let me. In courtesy. I knelt once
before today. Ah!
(Bella raises her gown slightly and, steadying her pose, lifts to the
edge of a chair a plump buskined hoof and a full pastern, silksocked. Bloom,
stifflegged ageing, bends over her hoof and with gentle fingers draws out
and in her laces.)
BLOOM (Murmurs lovingly.) To be a shoefitter in Mansfield's was my
love's young dream, the darling joys of sweet buttonhooking, to lace up
crisscrossed to kneelength the dressy kid footwear satinlined, so incredibly
small, of Clyde Road ladies. Even their wax model Raymonde I visited daily
to admire her cobweb hose and stick of rhubarb toe, as worn in Paris.
THE HOOF Smell my hot goathide. Feel my royal weight.
BLOOM (Crosslacing.) Too tight?
THE HOOF If you bungle, Handy Andy, I'll kick your football for you.
BLOOM Not to lace the wrong eyelet as I did the night of the bazaar
dance. Bad luck. Nook in wrong tache of her... person you mentioned. That
night she met... Now!
(He knots the lace. Bella places her foot on the floor. Bloom raises
his head. Her heavy face, her eyes strike him in mid-brow. His eyes grow
dull, darker and pouched, his nose thickens.)
BLOOM (Mumbles.) Awaiting your further orders, we remain, gentlemen.
BELLO (With a hard basilisk stare, in a baritone voice.) Hound of
dishonour!
BLOOM (Infatuated.) Empress!
BELLO (His heavy cheekchops sagging.) Adorer of the adulterous rump!
BLOOM (Plaintively.) Hugeness!
BELLO Dungdevourer!
BLOOM (With sinews semiflexed.) Magnificence.
BELLO Down! (He taps her on the shoulder with his fan.) Incline feet
forward! Slide left foot one pace back. You will fall. You are falling. On
the hands down!
BLOOM (Her eyes upturned in the sign of admiration, closing.) Truffles!
(With a piercing epileptic cry she sinks on all fours, grunting,
snuffling, rooting at his feet, then lies, shamming dead with eyes shut
tight, trembling eyelids, bowed upon the ground in the attitude of most
excellent master.)
BELLO (With bobbed hair purple gills, fat moustache rings round his
shaven mouth, in mountaineer's puttees, green silverbuttoned coat, sport
skirt and alpine hat with moor cock's feather, his hands stuck deep in his
breeches pockets, places his heel on her neck and grinds it in.) Feel my
entire weight. Bow, bondslave, before the throne of your despot's glorious
heels, so glistening in their proud erectness.
BLOOM (Enthralled, bleats.) I promise never to disobey.
BELLO (Laughs loudly.) Holy smoke! You little know what's in store for
you. I'm the tartar to settle your little lot and break you in! I'll bet
Kentucky cocktails all round I shame it out of you, old son. Cheek me, I
dare you. If you do tremble in anticipation of heel discipline to be
inflicted in gym costume.
(Bloom creeps under the sofa and peers out through the fringe.
ZOE (Widening her slip to screen her.) She's not here.
BLOOM (Closing her eyes.) She's not here.
FLORRY (Hiding her with her gown.) She didn't mean it, Mr Bello. She'll
be good, sir.
KITTY Don't be too hard on her, Mr Bello. Sure you won't, ma'amsir.
BELLO (Coaxingly.) Come, ducky dear. I want a word with you, darling,
just to administer correction. Just a little heart to heart talk, sweety.
(Bloom puts out her timid head.) There's a good girly now. (Bello grabs her
hair violently and drags her forward.) I only want to correct you for your
own good on a soft safe spot. How's that tender behind? O, ever so gently,
pet. Begin to get ready.
BLOOM (Fainting.) Don't tear my.
BELLO (Savagely.) The nosering, the pliers, the bastinado, the hanging
hook, the knout I'll make you kiss while the flutes play like the Nubian
slave of old. You're in for it this time. I'll make you remember me for the
balance of your natural life. (His forehead veins swollen, his face
congested.) I shall sit on your ottoman saddleback every morning after my
thumping good breakfast of Matterson's fat ham rashers and a bottle of
Guinness's porter. (He belches.) And suck my thumping good Stock Exchange
cigar while I read the Licensed Victualler's Gazette. Very possibly I shall
have you slaughtered and skewered in my stables and enjoy a slice Of you
with crisp crackling from the baking tin basted and baked like sucking pig
with rice and lemon or currant sauce. It will hurt you.
(He twists her arm. Bloom squeaks, turning turtle.)
BLOOM Don't be cruel, nurse! Don't!
BELLO (Twisting.) Another!
BLOOM (Screams.) O, it's hell itself! Every nerve in my body aches like
mad!
BELLO (Shouts.) Good, by the rumping jumping general! That's the best
bit of news I heard these six weeks. Here, don't keep me waiting, damn you.
(He slaps her face.)
BLOOM (Whimpers.) You're after hitting me. I'll tell...
BELLO Hold him down, girls, till I squat on him.
ZOE Yes. Walk on him! I will.
FLORRY I will. Don't be greedy.
KITTY No, me. Lend him to me.
(The brothel cook, Mrs Keogh, wrinkled, greybearded, in a greasy bib,
men's grey and green socks and brogues, flour-smeared, a rollingpin stuck
with raw pastry in her bare red arm and hand, appears at the door.)
MRS KEOCH (Ferociously.) Can I help? (They hold and pinion Bloom.)
BELLO (Squats, with a grunt, on Bloom's upturned face, puffing
cigar-smoke, nursing a fat leg.) I see Keating Clay is elected chairman of
the Richmond Asylum and bytheby Guinness's preference shares are at sixteen
three quarters. Curse me for a fool that I didn't buy that lot Craig and
Gardner told me about. Just my infernal luck, curse it. And that Goddamned
outsider Throwaway at twenty to one. (He quenches his cigar angrily on
Bloom's ear.) Where's that Goddamned cursed ashtray?
BLOOM (Goaded, buttocksmothered.) O! O! Monsters! Cruel one!
BELLO Ask for that every ten minutes. Beg, pray for it as you never
prayed before. (He thrusts out a figged fist and foul cigar.) Here, kiss
that. Both. Kiss. (He throws a leg astride and, pressing with horseman's
knees, calls in a hard voice.) Gee up! A cockhorse to Banbury cross. I'll
ride him for the Eclipse stakes. (He bends sideways and squeezes his mount's
testicles roughly, shouting.) Ho! off we pop! I'll nurse you in proper
fashion. (He horserides cockhorse, leaping in the saddle.) The lady goes a
pace a pace and the coachman goes a trot a trot and the gentleman goes a
gallop a gallop a gallop a gallop.
FLORRY (Pulls at Bello.) Let me on him now. You had enough. I asked
before you.
ZOE (Pulling at Florry.) Me. Me. Are you not finished with him yet,
suckeress?
BLOOM (Stifling.) Can't.
BELLO Well, I'm not. Wait. (He holds in his breath.) Curse it. Here.
This bung's about burst. (He uncorks himself behind: then, contorting his
features, farts loudly.) Take that! (He recorks himself) Yes, by Jingo,
sixteen three quarters.
BLOOM (A sweat breaking out over him.) Not man. (He sniffs.) Woman.
BELLO (Stands up.) No more blow hot and cold. What you longed for has
come to pass. Henceforth you are unmanned and mine in earnest, a thing under
the yoke. Now for your punishment frock. You will shed your male garments,
you understand, Ruby Cohen? and don the shot silk luxuriously rustling over
head and shoulders and quickly too.
BLOOM (Shrinks.) Silk, mistress said! O crinkly! scrapy! Must I
tip-touch it with my nails?
BELLO (Points to his whores.) As they are now, so will you be, wigged,
singed, perfumesprayed, ricepowdered, with smoothshaven armpits. Tape
measurements will be taken next your skin. You will be laced with cruel
force into vicelike corsets of soft dove coutille, with whalebone busk, to
the diamond trimmed pelvis, the absolute outside edge, while your figure,
plumper than when at large, will be restrained in nettight frocks, pretty
two ounce petticoats and fringes and things stamped, of course, with my
houseflag, creations of lovely lingerie for Alice and nice scent for Alice.
Alice will feel the pullpull. Martha and Mary will be a little chilly at
first in such delicate thighcasing but the frilly flimsiness of lace round
your bare knees will remind you...
BLOOM (A chafing soubrette with dauby cheeks, mustard hair and lace
male hands and nose, leering mouth.) I tried her things on only once, a
small prank, in Holles street. When we were hardup I washed them to save the
laundry bill. My own shirts I turned. It was the purest thrift.
BELLO (Jeers.) Little jobs that make mother pleased, eh! and showed off
coquettishly in your domino at the mirror behind close-drawn blinds your
unskirted thighs and hegoat's udders, in various poses of surrender, eh? Ho!
Ho! I have to laugh! That secondhand black operatop shift and short trunk
leg naughties all split up the stitches at her last rape that Mrs Miriam
Dandrade sold you from the Shelbourne Hotel, eh?
BLOOM Miriam, Black. Demimondaine.
BELLO (Guffaws.) Christ Almighty, it's too tickling, this! You were a
nicelooking Miriam when you clipped off your backgate hairs and lay swooning
in the thing across the bed as Mrs Dandrade, about to be violated by
Lieutenant Smythe Smythe, Mr Philip Augustus Blockwell, M.P., Signor Laci
Daremo, the robust tenor, blueeyed Bert, the liftboy, Henry Fleury of Gordon
Bennett fame, Sheridan, the quadroon Cr&Aelig;sus, the varsity wetbob eight
from old Trinity, Ponto, her splendid Newfoundland and Bobs, dowager duchess
of Manorhamilton. (He guffaws again.) Christ, wouldn't it make a Siamese cat
laugh?
BLOOM (Her hands and features working.) It was Gerald converted me to
be a true corsetlover when I was female impersonator in the High School play
Vice Versa. It was dear Gerald. He got that kink, fascinated by sister's
stays. Now dearest Gerald uses pinky greasepaint and gilds his eyelids. Cult
of the beautiful.
BELLO (With wicked glee.) Beautiful! Give us a breather! When you took
your seat with womanish care, lifting your billowy flounces, on the
smoothworn throne.
BLOOM Science. To compare the various joys we each enjoy. (Earnestly.)
And really it's better the position... because often I used to wet.
BELLO (Sternly.) No insubordination. The sawdust is there in the corner
for you. I gave you strict instructions, didn't I? Do it standing, sir! I'll
teach you to behave like a jinkleman! If I catch a trace on your swaddles.
Aha! By the ass of the Dorans you'll find I'm a martinet. The sins of your
past are rising against you. Many. Hundreds.
THE SINS OF THE PAST (In a medley of voices.) He went through a form of
clandestine marriage with at least one woman in the shadow of the Black
Church. Unspeakable messages he telephoned mentally to Miss Dunn at an
address in d'Olier Street while he presented himself indecently to the
instrument in the callbox. By word and deed he encouraged a nocturnal
strumpet to deposit fecal and other matter in an unsanitary outhouse
attached to empty premises. In five public conveniences he wrote pencilled
messages offering his nuptial partner to all strongmembered males. And by
the offensively smelling vitriol works did he not pass night after night by
loving courting couples to see if and what and how much he could see? Did he
not lie in bed, the gross boar, gloating over a nauseous fragment of
wellused toilet paper presented to him by a nasty harlot, stimulated by
gingerbread and a postal order?
BELLO (Whistles loudly.) Say! What was the most revolting piece of
obscenity in all your career of crime? Go the whole hog. Puke it out. Be
candid for once.
(Mute inhuman faces throng forward, leering, vanishing, gibbering,
Eooloohoom. Poldy Hock, Bootlaces a penny, cassidy's hag, blind stripling,
Larry Rhinoceros, the girl, the woman, the whore, the other the... )
BLOOM Don't ask me. Our mutual faith. Pleasants street. I only thought
the half of the... I swear on my sacred oath...
BELLO (Peremptorily.) Answer. Repugnant wretch! I insist on knowing.
Tell me something to amuse me, smut or a bloody good-ghoststory or a line of
poetry, quick, quick, quick! Where? How? What time? With how many? I give
you just three seconds. One! Two! Thr... !
BLOOM (Docile, gurgles.) I rererepugnosed in rerererepugnant...
BELLO (Imperiously.) O get out, you skunk! Hold your tongue! Speak when
you're spoken to.
BLOOM (Bows.) Master! Mistress! Mantamer!
(He lifts his arms. His bangle bracelets fall.)
BELLO (Satirically.) By day you will souse and bat our smelling
underclothes, also when we ladies are unwell, and swab out our latrines with
dress pinned up and a dishclout tied to your tail. Won't that be nice? (He
places a ruby ring on her finger.) And there now! With this ring I thee own.
Say, thank you, mistress.
BLOOM Thank you, mistress.
BELLO You will make the beds, get my tub ready, empty the pisspots in
the different rooms, including old Mrs Keogh's the cook's, a sandy one. Ay,
and rinse the seven of them well, mind, or lap it up like champagne. Drink
me piping hot. Hop! you will dance attendance or I'll lecture you on your
misdeeds, Miss Ruby, and spank your bare bot right well, miss, with the
hairbrush. You'll be taught the error of your ways. At night your
wellcreamed braceleted hands will wear fortythreebutton gloves newpowdered
with talc and having delicately scented fingertips. For such favours knights
of old laid down their lives. (He chuckles.) My boys will be no end charmed
to see you so ladylike, the colonel, above all. When they come here the
night before the wedding to fondle my new attraction in gilded heels. First,
I'll have a go at you myself. A man I know on the turf named Charles Alberta
Marsh (I was in bed with him just now and another gentleman out of the
Hanaper and Petty Bag office) is on the lookout for a maid of all work at a
short knock. Swell the bust. Smile. Droop shoulders. What offers? (He
points.) For that lot trained by owner to fetch and carry, basket in mouth.
(He bares his arm and plunges it elbowdeep in Bloom's vulva.) There's fine
depth for you! What, boys? That give you a hardon? (He shoves his arm in a
bidder's face.) Here, wet the deck and wipe it round!
A BIDDER A florin!
(Dillon's lacquey rings his handbell.)
A VOICE One and eightpence too much.
THE LACQUEY Barang!
CHARLES ALBERTA MARSH Must be virgin. Good breath. Clean.
BELLO (Gives a rap with his gavel.) Two bar. Rockbottom figure and
cheap at the price. Fourteen hands high. Touch and examine his points.
Handle him. This downy skin, these soft muscles, this tender flesh. If I had
only my gold piercer here! And quite easy to milk. Three newlaid gallons a
day. A pure stock getter, due to lay within the hour. His sire's milk record
was a thousand gallons of whole milk in forty weeks. Whoa, my jewel! Beg up!
Whoa! (He brands his initial Con Bloom's croup.) So! Warranted Cohen! What
advance on two bob, gentlemen?
A DARKVISAGED MAN (In disguised accent.) Hoondert punt sterlink.
VOICES (Subdued.) For the Caliph Haroun Al Raschid.
BELLO (Gaily.) Right. Let them all come. The scanty, daringly short
skirt, riding up at the knee to show a peep of white pantalette, is a potent
weapon and transparent stockings, emeraldgartered, with the long straight
seam trailing up beyond the knee, appeal to the better instincts of the
blasи man about town. Learn the smooth mincing walk on four inch Louis XV
heels, the Grecian bend with provoking croup, the thighs fluescent, knees
modestly kissing. Bring all your power of fascination to bear on them.
Pander to their Gomorrahan vices.
BLOOM (Bends his blushing face into his armpit and simpers with
forefinger in mouth.) O, I know what you're hinting at now.
BELLO What else are you good for, an impotent thing like you? (He
stoops and, peering, pokes with his fan rudely under the fat suetfolds of
Bloom's haunches.) Up! Up! Manx cat! What have we here? Where's your curly
teapot gone to or who docked it on you, cockyolly? Sing, birdy, sing. It's
as limp as a boy of six's doing his pooly behind a cart. Buy a bucket or
sell your pump. (Loudly.) Can you do a man's job?
BLOOM Eccles Street.
BELLO (Sarcastically.) I wouldn't hurt your feelings for the world but
there's a man of brawn in possession there. The tables are turned, my gay
young fellow! He is something like a fullgrown outdoor man. Well for you,
you muff, if you had that weapon with knobs and lumps and warts all over it.
He shot his bolt, I can tell you! Foot to foot, knee to knee, belly to
belly, bubs to breast! He's no eunuch. A shock of red hair he has sticking
out of him behind like a furzebush! Wait for nine months, my lad! Holy
ginger, it's kicking and coughing up and down in her guts already! That
makes you wild, don't it? Touches the spot? (He spits in contempt.)
Spittoon!
BLOOM I was indecently treated, I... inform the police. Hundred pounds.
Unmentionable. I.
BELLO Would if you could, lame duck. A downpour we want, not your
drizzle.
BLOOM To drive me mad! Moll! I forgot! Forgive! Moll!... We... Still...
BELLO (Ruthlessly.) No, Leopold Bloom, all is changed by woman's will
since you slept horizontal in Sleepy Hollow your night of twenty years.
Return and see.
(Old Sleepy Hollow calls over the wold.)
SLEEPY HOLLOW Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!
BLOOM (In tattered moccasins with a rusty fowlingpiece, tip toeing,
fingertipping, his haggard bony bearded face peering through the diamond
panes, cries out.) I see her! It's she! The first night at Mat Dillon's! But
that dress, the green! And her hair is dyed gold and he.
BELLO (Laughs mockingly.) That's your daughter, you owl, with a
Mullingar student.
(Milly Bloom, fairhaired, greenvested, slimsandalled, her bluescab in
the seawind simply swirling, breaks from the arms of her lover and calls,
her young eyes wonderwide.)
MILLY My! It's Papli! But. O Papli, how old you've grown!
BELLO Changed, eh? Our whatnot, our writing table where we never wrote,
Aunt Hegarty's armchair, our classic reprints of old masters. A man and his
men friends are living there in clover. The Cuckoos' Rest! Why not? How many
women had you, say? Following them up dark streets, flatfoot, exciting them
by your smothered grunts. What, you male prostitute? Blameless dames with
parcels of groceries. Turn about. Sauce for the goose, my gander, O.
BLOOM They... I
BELLO (Cuttingly.) Their heelmarks will stamp the Brusselette carpet
you bought at Wren's auction. In their horseplay with Moll the romp to find
the buck flea in her breeches they will deface the little statue you carried
home in the rain for art for art's sake. They will violate the secrets of
your bottom drawer. Pages will be torn from your handbook of astronomy to
make them pipespills. And they will spit in your ten shilling brass fender
from Hampton Leedom's.
BLOOM Ten and six. The act of low scoundrels. Let me go. I will return.
I will prove...
A VOICE Swear!
(Bloom clenches his fists and crawls forward, a bowie knife between his
teeth.)
BELLO As a paying guest or a kept man? Too late. You have made your
secondbest bed and others must lie in it. Your epitaph is written. You are
down and out and don't you forget it, old bean.
BLOOM Justice! All Ireland versus one! Has nobody... ?
(He bites his thumb.)
BELLO Die and be damned to you if you have any sense of decency or
grace about you. I can give you a rare old wine that'll send you skipping to
hell and back. Sign a will and leave us any coin you have. If you have none
see you damn well get it, steal it, rob it! We'll bury you in our shrubbery
jakes where you'll be dead and dirty with old Cuck Cohen, my stepnephew I
married, the bloody old gouty procurator and sodomite with a crick in his
neck, and my other ten or eleven husbands, what ever the buggers' names
were, suffocated in the one cess pool. (He explodes in a loud phlegmy
laugh.) We'll manure you, Mr Flower! (He pipes scoffingly.) Byby, Poldy!
Byby, Papli!
BLOOM (Clasps his head.) My will power! Memory! I have sinned! I have
suff... (He weeps tearlessly.)
BELLO (Sneers.) Crybabby! Crocodile tears!
(Bloom, broken, closely veiled for the sacrifice, sobs, his face to the
earth. The passing bell is heard. Darkshawled figures of the circumcised, in
sackcloth and ashes, stand by the wailing wall. M. Shulomowitz, Joseph
Goldwater Moses Herzog, Harris Rosenberg, M. Moisel, J. Citron, Minnie
Watchman, 0. Mastiansky, the Reverend Leopold Abramovitz, Chazen. With
swaying arms they wail in pneuma over the recreant Bloom.)
THE CIRCUMCISED (In a dark guttural chant as they cast dead sea fruit
upon him, no flowers.) Shema Israel Adonai Elohenu Adonai Echad.
VOICES (Sighing.) So he's gone. Ah, yes. Yes, indeed. Bloom? Never
heard of him. No? Queer kind of chap. There's the widow. That so? Ah, yes.
(From the suttee pyre the flame of gum camphire ascends. The pall of
incense smoke screens and disperses. Out of her oak frame a nymph with hair
unbound, lightly clad in teabrown art colours, descends from her grotto and
passing under interlacing yews, stands over Bloom.)
THE YEWS (Their leaves whispering.) Sister. Our sister. Ssh.
THE NYMPH (Softly.) Mortal! (Kindly.) Nay, dost not weepest!
BLOOM (Crawls jellily forward under the boughs, streaked by sunlight,
with dignity.) This position. I felt it was expected of me. Force of habit.
THE NYMPH Mortal! You found me in evil company, high kickers, coster
picnic makers, pugilists, popular generals, immoral panto boys in flesh
tights and the nifty shimmy dancers, La Aurora and Karini, musical act, the
hit of the century. I was hidden in cheap pink paper that smelt of rock oil.
I was surrounded by the stale smut of clubmen, stories to disturb callow
youth, ads for transparencies, truedup dice and bustpads, proprietary
articles and why wear a truss with testimonial from ruptured gentleman.
Useful hints to the married.
BLOOM (Lifts a turtle head towards her lap.) We have met before. On
another star.
THE NYMPH (Sadly.) Rubber goods. Neverrip. Brand as sup plied to the
aristocracy. Corsets for men. I cure fits or money refunded. Unsolicited
testimonials for Professor Waldmann's wonderful chest exuber. My bust
developed four inches in three weeks, reports Mrs Gus Rublin with photo.
BLOOM You mean Photo Bits?
THE NYMPH I do. You bore me away, framed me in oak and tinsel, set me
above your marriage couch. Unseen, one summer eve, you kissed me in four
places. And with loving pencil you shaded my eyes, my bosom and my shame.
BLOOM (Humbly kisses her long hair.) Your classic curves, beautiful
immortal. I was glad to look on you, to praise you, a thing of beauty,
almost to pray.
THE NYMPH During dark nights I heard your praise.
BLOOM (Quickly.) Yes, yes. You mean that I... Sleep reveals the worst
side of everyone, children perhaps excepted. I know I fell out of my bed or
rather was pushed. Steel wine is said to cure snoring. For the rest there is
that English invention, pamphlet of which I received some days ago,
incorrectly addressed. It claims to afford a noiseless inoffensive vent. (He
sighs.) 'Twas ever thus. Frailty, thy name is marriage.
THE NYMPH (Her fingers in her ears.) And words. They are not in my
dictionary.
BLOOM You understood them?
THE YEWS Ssh.
THE NYMPH (Covers her face with her hand.) What have I not seen in that
chamber? What must my eyes look down on?
BLOOM (Apologetically.) I know. Soiled personal linen, wrong side up
with care. The quoits are loose. From Gibraltar by long sea, long ago.
THE NYMPH (Bends her head.) Worse! Worse!
BLOOM (Reflects precautiously.) That antiquated commode. It wasn't her
weight. She scaled just eleven stone nine. She put on nine pounds after
weaning. It was a crack and want of glue. Eh? And that absurd orangekeyed
utensil which has only one handle.
(The sound of a waterfall is heard in bright cascade.)
THE WATERFALL
Poulaphouca Poulaphouca
Poulaphouca Poulaphouca.
THE YEWS (Mingling their boughs.) Listen. Whisper. She is right, our
sister. We grew by Poulaphouca waterfall. We gave shade on languorous summer
days.
JOHN WYSE NOLAN (In the background, in Irish National For ester's
uniform, doffs his plumed hat.) Prosper! Give shade on languorous days,
trees of Ireland!
THE YEWS (Murmuring.) Who came to Poulaphouca with the high school
excursion? Who left his nutquesting classmates to seek our shade?
BLOOM (Pigeonbreasted, bottleshouldered, padded, in nondescript
juvenile grey and black striped suit, too small for him, white tennis shoes,
bordered stockings with turnover tops, and a red school cap with badge.) I
was in my teens, a growing boy. A little then sufficed, a jolting car, the
mingling odours of the ladies' cloakroom and lavatory, the throng penned
tight on the old Royal stairs, for they love crushes, instincts of the herd,
and the dark sexsmelling theatre unbridles vice. Even a pricelist of their
hosiery. And then the heat. There were sunspots that summer. End of school.
And tipsycake. Halcyon days.
(Halcyon Days, high school boys in blue and white football jerseys and
shorts, Master Donald Turnbull, Master Abraham Chatterton, Master Owen
Goldberg, Master Jack Meredith, Master Percy Apjohn, stand in a clearing of
the trees and shout to Master Leopold Bloom.)
THE HALCYON DAYS Mackerel! Live us again. Hurray!
(They cheer.)
BLOOM (Hobbledehoy, warmgloved, mammamufflered, stunned with spent
snowballs, struggles to rise.) Again! I feel sixteen! What a lark! Let's
ring all the bells in Montague Street. (He cheers feebly.) Hurray for the
High School!
THE ECHO Fool!
THE YEWS (Rustling.) She is right, our sister. Whisper. (Whispered
kisses are heard in all the wood. Faces of hamadryads peep out from the
boles and among the leaves and break blossoming into bloom.) Who profaned
our silent shade?
THE NYMPH (Coyly through parting fingers.) There! In the open air?
THE YEWS (Sweeping downward.) Sister, yes. And on our virgin sward.
THE WATERFALL
Poulaphouca Poulaphouca
Phoucaphouca Phoucaphouca.
THE NYMPH (With wide fingers.) O! Infamy!
BLOOM I was precocious. Youth. The fauns. I sacrificed to the god of
the forest. The flowers that bloom in the spring. It was pairing time.
Capillary attraction is a natural phenomenon. Lotty Clarke, flaxenhaired, I
saw at her night toilette through ill-closed curtains, with poor papa's
operaglasses. The wanton ate grass wildly. She rolled downhill at Rialto
Bridge to tempt me with her flow of animal spirits. She climbed their
crooked tree and I... A saint couldn't resist it. The demon possessed me.
Besides, who saw?
(Staggering Bob, a whitepolled calf thrusts a ruminating head with
humid nostrils through the foliage.)
STAGGERING BOB Me. Me see.
BLOOM Simply satisfying a need. (With pathos.) No girl would when I
went girling. Too ugly. They wouldn't play.
(High on Ben Howth through rhododendrons a nannygoat passes,
plumpuddered, buttytailed, dropping curvants.)
THE NANNYGOAT (Bleats.) Megegaggegg! Nannannanny!
BLOOM (Hatless, flushed, covered with burn of thistledown and
gotrepine.) Regularly engaged. Circumstances alter cases. (He gazes intently
downwards on the water.) Thirtytwo head over heels per second. Press
nightmare. Giddy Elijah. Fall from cliff. Sad end of government printer's
clerk. (Through silversilent summer air the dummy of Bloom, rolled in a
mummy, rolls rotatingly from the Lion's Head cliff into the purple Waiting
waters.)
THE DUMMYMUMMY Bbbbblllllbbblblodschbg?
(Far out in the bay between Bailey and Kish lights the Erin's King
sails, sending a broadening plume of coalsmoke from her funnel towards the
land.)
COUNCILLOR NANNETI (Alone on deck, in dark alpaca, yellow kitefaced,
his hand in his waistcoat opening, declaims.) When my country takes her
place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then let my epitaph
be written. I have...
BLOOM Done. Prff.
THE NYMPH (Loftily.) We immortals, as you saw today, have not such a
place and no hair there either. We are stonecold and pure. We eat electric
light. (She arches her body in lascivious crispation, placing her forefinger
in her mouth.) Spoke to me. Heard from behind. How then could you... ?
BLOOM (Pacing the heather abjectly.) O, I have been a perfect pig.
Enemas too I have administered. One third of a pint of quassia, to which add
a tablespoonful of rocksalt. Up the fundament. With Hamilton Long's syringe,
the ladies' friend.
THE NYMPH In my presence. The powderpuff. (She blushes and makes a
knee.) And the rest.
BLOOM (Dejected.) Yes. Peccavi! I have paid homage on that living altar
where the back changes name. (With sudden fervour.) For why should the
dainty scented jewelled hand, the hand that rules... ?
(Figures wind serpenting in slow woodland pattern around the treestems,
cooeeing.)
THE VOICE OF KITTY (In the thicket.) Show us one of them cushions.
THE VOICE OF FLORRY Here.
(A grouse wings clumsily through the underwood.)
THE VOICE OF LYNCH (In the thicket.) Whew! Piping hot!
THE VOICE OF ZOE (From the thicket.) Came from a hot place.
THE VOICE OF VIRAG (A birdchief bluestreaked and feathered in war
panoply with his assegai, striding through a crackling canebrake over
beechmast and acorns.) Hot! Hot! Ware Sitting Bull!
BLOOM It overpowers me. The warm impress of her warm form. Even to sit
where a woman has sat, especially with divaricated thighs, as though to
grant the last favours, most especially with previously well uplifted white
sateen coatpans. So womanly full. It fills me full.
THE WATERFALL
Phillaphulla Poulaphouca
Poulaphouca Poulaphouca.
THE YEWS Ssh! Sister, speak!
THE NYMPH (Eyeless, in nun's white habit, coif and huge winged wimple,
softly, with remote eyes.) Tranquilia convent. Sister Agatha. Mount Carmel,
the apparitions of Knock and Lourdes. No more desire. (She reclines her
head, sighing.) Only the ethereal. Where dreamy creamy gull waves o'er the
waters dull.
(Bloom half rises. His back trousers button snaps.)
THE BUTTON Bip!
(Two sluts of the Coombe dance rainily by, shawled, yelling flatly.)
THE SLUTS
O Leopold lost the pin of his drawers
He didn't know what to do,
To keep it up,
To keep it up.
BLOOM (Coldly.) You have broken the spell. The last straw. If there
were only ethereal where would you all be, postulants and novices? Shy but
willing, like an ass pissing.
THE YEWS (Their silverfoil of leaves precipitating, their skinny arms
ageing and swaying.) Deciduously!
THE NYMPH Sacrilege! To attempt my virtue! (A large moist stain appears
on her robe.) Sully my innocence! You are not fit to touch the garment of a
pure woman. (She clutches in her robe.) Wait, Satan. You'll sing no more
lovesongs. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. (She draws a poniard and, clad in the
sheathmail of an elected knight of nine, strikes at his loins.) Nekum!
BLOOM (Starts up, seizes her hand.) Hoy! Nebrakada! Cat of nine lives!
Fair play, madam. No pruning knife. The fox and the grapes, is it? What do
we lack with your barbed wire? Crucifix not thick enough? (He clutches her
veil.) A holy abbot you want or Brophy, the lame gardener, or the spoutless
statue of the watercarrier or good Mother Alphonsus, eh Reynard?
THE NYMPH (With a cry, flees from him unveiled, her plaster cast
cracking, a cloud of stench escaping from the cracks.) Poli... !
BLOOM (Calls after her.) As if you didn't get it on the double
yourselves. No jerks and multiple mucosities all over you. I tried it. Your
strength our weakness. What's our stud fee? What will you pay on the nail?
You fee men dancers on the Riviera, I read. (The fleeing nymph raises a
keen.) Eh! I have sixteen years of black slave labour behind me. And would a
jury give me five shillings alimony tomorrow, eh? Fool someone else, not me.
(He sniffs.) But. Onions. Stale. Sulphur. Grease.
(The figure of Bella Cohen stands before him.)
BELLA You'll know me the next time.
BLOOM (Composed, regards her.) Passиe. Mutton dressed as lamb. Lone in
the tooth and superfluous hairs. A raw onion the last thing at night would
benefit your complexion. And take some double chin drill. Your eyes are as
vapid as the glass eyes of your stuffed fox. They have the dimensions of
your other features, that's all. I'm not a triple screw propeller.
BELLA (Contemptuously.) You're not game, in fact. (Her sowcunt barks.)
Fohracht!
BLOOM (Contemptuously.) Clean your nailless middle finger first, the
cold spunk of your bully is dripping from your cockscomb. Take a handful of
hay and wipe yourself.
BELLA I know you, canvasser! Dead cod!
BLOOM I saw him, kipkeeper! Pox and gleet vendor!
BELLA (Turns to the piano.) Which of you was playing the dead march
from Saul?
ZOE Me. Mind your cornflowers. (She darts to the piano and bangs chords
on it with crossed arms.) The cat's ramble through the slag. (She glances
back.) Eh? Who's making love to my sweeties? (She darts back to the table.)
What's yours is mine and what's mine is my own.
(Kitty disconcerted coats her teeth with the silver paper. Bloom
approaches Zoe.)
BLOOM (Gently.) Give me back that potato, will you? Zoe Forfeits, a
fine thing and a superfine thing.
BLOOM (With feeling.) It is nothing, but still a relic of poor mamma.
ZOE
Give a thing and take it back
God'll ask you where is that
You'll say you don't know
God'll send you down below.
BLOOM There is a memory attached to it. I should like to have it.
STEPHEN To have or not to have, that is the question.
ZOE Here. (She hauls up a reef of her slip, revealing her bare thigh
and unrolls the potato from the top of her stocking.) Those that hides knows
where to find.
BELLA (Frowns.) Here. This isn't a musical peepshow. And don't you
smash that piano. Who's paying here?
(She goes to the pianola. Stephen fumbles in his pocket and, taking out
a banknote by its corner, hands it to her.)
STEPHEN (With exaggerated politeness.) This silken purse I made out of
the sow's ear of the public. Madam, excuse me. If you allow me. (He
indicates vaguely Lynch and Bloom.) We are all in the same sweepstake, Kinch
and Lynch. Dans ce bordel oы tenons nostre иtat.
LYNCH (Calls from the hearth.) Dedalus! Give her your blessing for me.
STEPHEN (Hands Bella a coin.) Gold. She has it.
BELLA (Looks at the money, then at Zoe, Florry and Kitty.) Do you want
three girls? It's ten shillings here.
STEPHEN (Delightedly.) A hundred thousand apologies. (He fumbles again
and takes out and hands her two crowns.) Permit, brevi manu, my sight is
somewhat troubled.
(Bella goes to the table to count the money while Stephen talks to
himself in monosyllables. Zoe bounds over to the table. Kitty leans over
Zoe's neck. Lynch gets up, rights his cap and, clasping Kitty's waist, adds
his head to the group.)
FLORRY (Strives heavily to rise.) Ow! My foot's asleep. (She limps over
to the table. Bloom approaches.)
BELLA, ZOE. KITTY, LYNCH, BLOOM (Chattering and squabbling.) The
gentleman... ten shillings... paying for the three allow me a moment... this
gentleman pays separate who's touching it?... ow... mind who you're
pinching... are you staying the night or a short time? who did?... you're a
liar, excuse me... the gentle man paid down like a gentleman... drink...
it's long after eleven.
STEPHEN (At the pianola, making a gesture of abhorrence.) No bottles!
What, eleven? A riddle.
ZOE (Lifting up her pettigown and folding a half sovereign into the top
of her stocking.) Hard earned on the flat of my back.
LYNCH (Lifting Kitty from the table.) Come!
KITTY Wait. (She clutches the two crowns.)
FLORRY And me?
LYNCH Hoopla! (He lifts her carries her and bumps her down on the
sofa.)
STEPHEN The fox crew, the cocks flew, The bells in heaven Were striking
eleven. 'Tis time for her poor soul To get out of heaven.
BLOOM (Quietly lays a half sovereign on the table between Bella and
Florry.) So. Allow me. (He takes up the pound note.) Three times ten. We're
square.
BELLA (Admiringly.) You're such a slyboots, old cocky. I could kiss
you.
ZOE (Points.) Hum? Deep as a drawwell. (Lynch bends Kitty back over the
sofa and kisses her. Bloom goes with the poundnote to Stephen.)
BLOOM This is yours.
STEPHEN How is that? Le distrait or absentminded beggar. (He fumbles
again in his pocket and draws out a handful of coins. An object falls.) That
fell.
BLOOM (Stooping, picks up and hands a box of matches.) This.
STEPHEN Lucifer. Thanks.
BLOOM (Quietly.) You had better hand over that cash to me to take care
of. Why pay more?
STEPHEN (Hands him all his coins.) Be just before you are generous.
BLOOM I will but is it wise? (He counts.) One, seven, eleven, and five.
Six. Eleven. I don't answer for what you may have lost.
STEPHEN Why striking eleven? Proparoxyton. Moment before the next
Lessing says. Thirsty fox. (He laughs loudly.) Burying his grandmother.
Probably he killed her.
BLOOM That is one pound six and eleven. One pound seven, say.
STEPHEN Doesn't matter a rambling damn.
BLOOM No, but...
STEPHEN (Comes to the table.) Cigarette, please. (Lynch tosses a
cigarette from the sofa to the table.) And so Georgina Johnson is dead and
married. (A cigarette appears on the table. Stephen looks at it.) Wonder.
Parlour magic. Married. Hm. (He strikes a match and proceeds to light the
cigarette with enigmatic melancholy.)
LYNCH (Watching him.) You would have a better chance of lighting it if
you held the match nearer.
STEPHEN (Brings the match nearer his eye.) Lynx eye. Must get glasses.
Broke them yesterday. Sixteen years ago. Distance. The eye sees all flat.
(He draws the match away. It goes out.) Brain thinks. Near: far. Ineluctable
modality of the visible. (He frowns mysteriously.) Hm. Sphinx. The beast
that has two backs at midnight. Married.
ZOE It was a commercial traveller married her and took her away with
him.
FLORRY (Nods.) Mr Lambe from London.
STEPHEN Lamb of London, who takest away the sins of our world.
LYNCH (Embracing Kitty on the sofa, chants deeply.) Dona nobis pacem.
(The cigarette slips from Stephens fingers. Bloom picks it up and throws it
into the grate.)
BLOOM Don't smoke. You ought to eat. Cursed dog I met. (To Zoe.) You
have nothing?
ZOE Is he hungry?
STEPHEN (Extends his hand to her smiling and chants to the air of the
bloodoath in the Dusk of the Gods.)
Hangende Hunger,
Fragende Frau,
Macht uns alle kaput.
ZOE (Tragically.) Hamlet, I am thy father's gimlet! (She takes his
hand.) Blue eyed beauty, I'll read your hand. (She points to his forehead.)
No wit, no wrinkles. (She counts.) Two, three, Mars, that's courage.
(Stephen shakes his head.) No kid.
LYNCH Sheet lightning courage. The youth who could not shiver and
shake. (To Zoe.) Who taught you palmistry?
ZOE (Turns.) Ask my ballocks that I haven't got. (To Stephen.) I see it
in your face. The eye, like that. (She frowns with lowered head.)
LYNCH (Laughing, slaps Kitty behind twice.) Like that. Pandy bat.
(Twice loudly a pandybat cracks, the coffin of the pianola flies open,
the bald little round jack-in-the-box head of Father Dolan springs up.)
FATHER DOLAN Any boy want flogging? Broke his glasses? Lazy idle little
schemer. See it in your eye.
(Mild, benign, rectorial, reproving, the head of Don John Conmee rises