THE ANSWERS

The Mabbot street entrance of nighttown, before which stretches an uncobbled transiding set with skeleton tracks, red and green will-o'-the-wisps and danger signals. Rows of flimsy houses with gaping doors. Rare lamps with faint rainbow fans. Round Rabaiotti's halted ice gondola stunted men and women squabble. They grab wafers between which are wedged lumps of coal and copper snow. Sucking, they scatter slowly. Children. The swancomb of the gondola, highreared, forges on through the murk, white and blue under a lighthouse. Whistles call and answer.

Wait, my love, and I'll be with you.

Round behind the stable.

THE IDIOT

(A deaf mute idiot with goggle eyes, his shapeless mouth dribbling, jerks past, shaken in Saint Vitus' dance. A chain of children's hands imprisons him.)

THE CHILDREN

(Lifts a palsied left arm and gurgles.) Grhahute!

(Gobbing.) Ghaghahest.

Kithoguel Salute.

THE CHILDREN

(They release him. He jerks on. A pygmy woman swings on a rope slung between the railings, counting. A form sprawled against a dustbin and muffled by its arm and hat moves, groans, grinding growling teeth, and snores again. On a step a gnome totting among a rubbish tip crouches to shoulder a sack of rags and bones. A crone standing by with a smoky oil lamp rams the last bottle in the maw of his sack. He heaves his booty, tugs askew his peaked cap and hobbles off mutely. The crone makes back for her lair swaying her lamp. A bandy child, asquat on the doorstep with a papershuttlecock, crawls sidling after her in spurts, clutches her skirt, scrambles up. A drunken navvy ups with both hands the railings of an area, lurching heavily. At a corner two night watch in shoulder capes, their hands upon their staffholsters, loom tall. A plate crashes; a woman screams; a child wails. Oaths of a man roar, mutter, cease. Figures wander, lurk, peer from warrens. In a room lit by a candle stuck in a bottleneck a slut combs out the tatts from the hair of a scrofulous child. Cissy Caffrey's voice, still young, sings shrill from a lane.)

Where's the great light?

THE IDIOT

THE CALLS

The leg of the duck

The leg of the duck

(Her voice soaring higher.)

(Jerks his finger.) Way for the parson.

CISSY CAFFREY

(Turns and calls.) What ho, parson!

THE VIRAGO

To stick in her belly

Signs on you, hairy arse. More power the Cavan girl.

She has it, she got it,

I gave it to Nelly

(Stephen, flourishing the ashplant in his left hand, chants with joy the introit for paschal time. Lynch, his jockey cap low on his brow, attends him, a sneer of discontent wrinkling his face.)

CISSY CAFFREY

(Private Cart and Private Compton turn and counterretort, their tunics bloodbright in a lampglow, black sockets of caps on their blond copper polls. Stephen Dedalus and Lynch pass through the crowd close to the redcoats.)

PRIVATE COMPTON

(Private Cart and Private Compton, swaggersticks tight in their oxters, as they march unsteadily rightaboutface and burst together from their mouths a volleyed fart. Laughter of men from the lane. A hoarse virago retorts.)

Because she was jolly,

The leg of the duck.

I gave it to Molly

Wherever she put it

More luck to me. Cavan, Cootehill and Belturbet.(She sings.)

The leg of the duck.

CISSY CAFFREY

PRIVATE CARR

The leg of the duck.

(Edy Boardman, sniffling, crouched with Bertha Supple, draws her shawl across her nostrils.)

(Spits in their trail her jet of venom.) Trinity medicals. Fallopian tube. All prick and no pence.

THE BAWD

EDY BOARDMAN

(Altius aliqantulum) Et omnes ad quos pervenit acqua ista.

Vidi aquam egredientem de templo a latere dextro. Alleluia.

STEPHEN

STEPHEN

THE BAWD

(Her voice whispering huskily.) Sst! Come here till I tell you. Maidenhead inside. Sst.

(Bickering.) And say the one: I seen you up Faithful place with your squarepusher, the greaser off the railway, in his cometobed hat. Did you, says I. That's not for you to say, says I. You never seen me in the mantrap with a married highlander, says I. The likes of her! Stag that one is. Stubborn as a mule! And her walking with two fellows the one time, Kildbride the enginedriver and lancecorporal Oliphant.

STEPHEN

(The famished snaggletusks of an elderly bawd protrude from a doorway.)

(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.)

(Triumphaliter.) Salvi facti i sunt.

LYNCH

Which is the jug of bread? It skills not. That or the customhouse. Illustrate thou. Here take your crutch and walk.

So that?

(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.

(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

We have shrewridden Shakespeare and henpecked Socrates. Even the allwisest stagyrite was bitted, bridled and mounted by a light of love.

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.

Damn your yellow stick. Where are we going?

LYNCH

Lecherous lynx, to la belle dame sans merci, Georgina Johnson, ad deam qui laetificat juventutem meam.

Pornosophical philotheology. Metaphysics in Mecklenburg street!

LYNCH

STEPHEN

LYNCH

STEPHEN

STEPHEN

(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.

(He takes breath with care and goes forward slowly towards the lampset siding. The glow leaps again.)

BLOOM

(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

BLOOM

What is that? A flasher? Searchlight.

(He stands at Cormack's corner watching.)

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.

Fish and taters. N. g. Ah!

At Antonio Babaiotti's door Bloom halts, sweated under the bright arclamps. He disappears. In a moment he reappears and hurries on.)

Stitch in my side. Why did I run?

BLOOM

THE BELLS

(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 GONG

Hey, shitbreeches, are you doing the hattrick?

Haltyaltyaltyall.

(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.)

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!

Bang Bang Bla Bak Blud Bugg Bloo.

THE URCHINS

THE MOTORMAN

(Halts erect stung by a spasm.) Ow.

BLOOM

Mind out, mister! (Two cyclists, with lighted paper lanterns aswing, swim by him, grazing him, their bells rattling.)

(Bloom trickleaps to the curbstone and halts again. He brushes a mudflake from his cheek with a parcelled hand.)

BLOOM

(He darts to cross the road. Urchins shout.)

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.

Buenos noches, se? orita Blanca, que calle es esta?

(Impassive, raises a signal arm.) Password. Sraid Mabbot.

BLOOM

(Jacky Caffrey, hunted by Tommy Caffrey, runs full tilt against Bloom.)

BLOOM

I beg.

BLOOM

(He steps forward. A sackshouldered ragman bars his path. He steps left, ragsackman left.)

(He swerves, sidles, stepsaside, slips past and on.)

Haha. Merci. Esperanto. Slan leath. (He mutters.) Gaelic league spy, sent by that fireeater.

BLOOM

THE FIGURE

(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.)

(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

O!

BLOOM

Second halfcrown waste money today. I told you not go with drunken goy ever. So. You catch no money.

RUDOLPH

(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.)

Beware of pickpockets. Old thieves' dodge. Collide. Then snatch your purse.

(Hides the crubeen and trotter behind his back and, crestfallen, feels warm and cold feetmeat) Ja, ich weiss, papachi.

BLOOM

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?

RUDOLPH

(With contempt) Ooim nachez. Nice spectacles for your poor mother!

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

(Severely.) One night they bring you home drunk as dog after spend your good money. What you call them running chaps?

RUDOLPH

BLOOM

(With precaution.) I suppose so, father. Mosenthal. All that's left of him.

Mamma!

RUDOLPH

Once! Mud head to foot. Cut your hand open. Lockjaw. They make you kaput, Leopoldleben. You watch them chaps.

(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?

(Weakly.) They challenged me to a sprint. It was muddy. I slipped.

BLOOM

BLOOM

ELLEN BLOOM

BLOOM

(Sharply.) Poldy!

(Bloom, mumbling, his eyes downcast, begins to bestow his parcels in his filled pockets but desists, muttering.)

Molly!

(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

(Shifts from foot to foot.) No, no. Not the least little bit.

MARION

BLOOM

A VOICE

Welly? Mrs Marion from this out, my dear man, when you speak to me. (Satirically.) Has poor little hubby cold feet waiting so long?

Who? (He ducks and wards off a blow clumsily.) At your service.

(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.)

(The freckled face of Sweny, the druggist, appeals in the disc of the soapsun.)

BLOOM

(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.)

He brightens the earth, I polish the sky.

I can give you… I mean as your business menagerer Mrs Marion… if you…

We're a capital couple are Bloom and I;

BLOOM

(He points to the south, then to the east. A cake of new clean lemon soap arises, diffusing light and perfume.)

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.

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!

THE SOAP

Nebrakada! Feminimum.

MARION

MARION

THE BAWD

BLOOM

BLOOM

(She points. In the gap of her dark den furtive, rainbedraggled Bridie Kelly stands.)

(In disdain she saunters away, plump as a pampered pouter pigeon, humming the duet from Don Giovanni)

BRIDIE

Hatch street. Any good in your mind?

MARION

Three and a penny, please.

BLOOM

(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.

Ti trema un poco il cuore?

Are you sure about that Voglio? I mean the pronunciati…

Ten shillings a maidenhead. Fresh thing was never touched. Fifteen. There's no-one in it only her old father that's dead drunk.

Yes. For my wife, Mrs Marion. Special recipe.

(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.)

SWENY

MARION

(Softly.) Poldy!

THE BAWD

Yes, ma'am?

(He follows, followed by the sniffing terrier. The elderly bawd seizes his sleeve, the bristles of her chinmole glittering.)

(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.)

GERTY

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.

Mr.

THE BAWD

Mr Bloom! You down here in the haunts of sin! I caught you nicely! Scamp!

(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.

BLOOM

MRS BREEN

I? When? You're dreaming. I never saw you.

BLOOM

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…

(Coughs gravely.) Madam, when we last had this pleasure by letter dated the sixteenth instant.

MRS BREEN

GERTY

(Leering Gerty MacDowell limps forward. She draws from behind ogling, and shows coyly her bloodied clout.)

With all my worldly goods I thee and thou. (She murmurs.) You did that. I hate you.

MRS BREEN

(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.

(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!

(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

BLOOM

There's someone in the house, I know,

Playing on the old banjo.

There's someone in the house with Dina

(They whisk black masks from raw babby faces: then, chuckling, chortling, trumming, twanging they diddle diddle cakewalk dance away.)

MRS BREEN

MRS BREEN

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?

BLOOM

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.

You were the lion of the night with your seriocomic recitation and you looked the part. You were always a favourite with the ladies.

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.

(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?

(Screams gaily.) O, you ruck! You ought to see yourself!

MRS BREEN

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Ireland, home and beauty.

MRS BREEN

The dear dead days beyond recall. Love's old sweet song.

(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.

BLOOM

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.)

(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.) Là ci darem la mano.

(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.

MRS BREEN

BLOOM

MRS BREEN

BLOOM

(Shocked.) Molly's best friend! Could you?

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.)

(Points jeering at the sandwich boards.) U. p.: Up.

(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.

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.

ALF BERGAN

BLOOM

Best value in Dub.

(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

PAT

(With hanging head he marches doggedly forward. The navvy, lurching by, gores him with his flaming pronghorn.)

(Her pulpy tongue between her lips, offers a pigeon kiss.) Hnhn. The answer is a lemon. Have you a little present for me there?

(Bald Pat, bothered beetle, stands on the curbstone, folding his napkin, waiting to wait.)

(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.)

Goodgod. Inev erate inall…

BLOOM

RICHIE

MRS BREEN

(Advances with a tilted dish of spillspilling gravy.) Steak and kidney. Bottle of lager. Hee hee hee. Wait till I wait.

(All agog.) O, not for worlds.

BLOOM

Jewman's melt!

BLOOM

Humbugging and delutbering as per usual with your cock and bull story.

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.

BLOOM

MRS BREEN

(With a cry of pain, his hand to his back) Ah! Bright's! Lights!

THE BAWD

RICHIE

Let's walk on. Shall us?

MRS BREEN

BLOOM

Let's.

(The bawd makes an unheeded sign. Bloom walks on with Mrs Breen. The terrier follows, whining piteously, wagging his tail.)

MRS BREEN

(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.

(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?

BLOOM

BLOOM

MRS BREEN

She did, of course, the cat! Don't tell me! Nice adviser!

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…

(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.

BLOOM

(In smart Saxe tailormade, white velours hat and spider veil.) Leopardstown.

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.

MRS BREEN

Too.

MRS BREEN

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.

BLOOM

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.

(Gripping the two redcoats, staggers forward with them.) Come on, you British army!

(Their paintspeckled hats wag. Spattered with size and lime of their lodges they frisk limblessly about him.)

THE NAVVY

THE SHEBEENKEEPER

Are you going far, queer fellow?

(Guffaw with cleft palates.) O jays!

THE WHORES

Got a match on you?

THE LOITERERS

(Bloom passes. Cheap whores, singly, coupled, shawled, dishevelled, call from lanes, doors, corners.)

Purdon street. Shilling a bottle of stout. Respectable woman.

(Belching.) Where's the bloody house?

THE NAVVY

(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.)

Jays, that's a good one. Glauber salts. O jays, into the men's porter.

BLOOM

Coincidence too. They think it funny. Anything but that. Broad daylight. Trying to walk. Lucky no woman.

How's your middle leg?

THE LOITERERS

Eh, come here till I stiffen it for you.

BLOOM

And free our native land.

PRIVATE CARR

(He staggers forward, dragging them with him. Bloom stops, at fault. The dog approaches, his tongue outlolling, panting.)

THE NAVVY

(Shouts.) The galling chain.

(To the navvy.) Portobello barracks canteen. You ask for Carr. Just Carr.

(Behind his back.) He aint half balmy.

(Shouts.) We are the boys. Of Wexford.

Say! What price the sergeantmajor?

Bennett? He's my pal. I love old Bennett.

THENAVVY

PRIVATE CARR

PRIVATE CARR

(LAughs.) What ho!

PRIVATE COMPTON

PRIVATE COMPTON

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.

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.)

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 go? t. 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.

THE WREATHS

(He gazes ahead reading on the wall a scrawled chalk legend Wet Dream and a phallic design.)

Sweet are the sweets. Sweets of sin.

BLOOM

(He points. Bob Doran, toppling from a high bars tool, sways over the munching spaniel.)

FIRST WATCH

(Each lays a hand on Blooms shoulder.)

Kaw kave kankury kake.

(A covey of gulls, storm petrels, rises hungrily from Liffey slime with Banbury cakes in their beaks.)

BLOOM

(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 GULLS

BOB DORAN

Prevention of cruelty to animals.

THE WATCH

(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.)

(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.

The friend of man. Trained by kindness.

Bloom. Of Bloom. For Bloom. Bloom.

Towser. Give us the paw. Give the paw.

BLOOM

Caught in the act. Commit no nuisance.

BLOOM

(Stammers.) I am doing good to others.

SECOND WATCH

Come. Name and address.

(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.)

FIRST WATCH

SIGNOR MAFFEI

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.

(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.

BLOOM

(A card falls from inside the leather headband of Bloom's hat.)

BLOOM

FIRST WATCH

Proof.

(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.

SECOND WATCH

(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.

BLOOM

(Reads.) Henry Flower. No fixed abode. Un lawfully watching and besetting.

An alibi. You are cautioned.

FIRST WATCH

The Castle is looking for him. He was drummed out of the army.

(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.

(Sternly.) Come to the station.

(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.

(A dark mercurialised face appears, leading a veiled figure.)

THE DARK MERCURY

BLOOM

MARTHA

MARTHA

(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.

FIRST WATCH

BLOOM

SECOND WATCH

(Behind his hand.) She's drunk. The woman is inebriated. (He murmurs vaguely the past of Ephraim.) Shitbroleeth.

FIRST WATCH

BLOOM

Regiment.

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.

(Tears in his eyes, to Bloom.) You ought to be thoroughly well ashamed of yourself.

(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.

BLOOM

Turncoat! Up the Boers! Who booed Joe Chamberlain?

A VOICE

(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

(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.)

(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?

(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.

(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

BLOOM

BEAUFOY

(Bravely.) Overdrawn.

(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.

(Murmurs with hangdog meekness.) That bit about the laughing witch hand in hand I take exception to, if I may…?

BLOOM

BLOOM

Wiped his arse in the Daily News.

(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.

BEAUFOY

Moses, Moses, king of the jews,

A VOICE FROM THE GALLERY

(Indistinctly.) University of life. Bad art.

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.

BEAUFOY

What do you tax him with?

(Mary Driscoll, a slipshod servant girl, approaches. She has a bucket on the crook of her arm and a scouringbrush in her hand.)

BLOOM

He made a certain suggestion but I thought more of myself as poor as I am.

SECOND WATCH

MARY DRISCOLL

FIRST WATCH

MARY DRISCOLL

FIRST WATCH

(To the court.) And he, a bachelor, how.

(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.

BLOOM

(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.

Another! Are you of the unfortunate class?

MARY DRISCOLL

Mary Driscoll, scullerymaid!

THE CRIER

The King versus Bloom. Call the woman Driscoll.

(Clerk of the crown and peace, resonantly.) Order in court! The accused will now make a bogus statement.

She counterassaulted.

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.

MARY DRISCOLL

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!

FIRST WATCH

(Excitedly.) As God is looking down on me this night if ever I laid a hand to them oysters!

The offence complained of? Did something happen?

BLOOM

(General laughter.)

GEORGES FOTTRELL

(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… )

(Without looking up from their notebooks.) Loosen his boots.

LONGHAND AND SHORTHAND

PROFESSOR MACHUGH

(Renewed laughter. He mumbles incoherently. Reporters complain that they cannot hear.)

(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.)

(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.

J. J. O'MOLLOY

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.)

(Hotly to the populace.) This is a lonehand fight. By Hades, I will not have any client of mine gagged and badgered in this fashion by a pack of curs and laughing hyenas. The Mosaic code has superseded the law of the jungle. I say it and I say it emphatically without wishing for one moment to defeat the ends of justice, accused was not accessory before the act and prosecutrix has not been tampered with. The young person was treated by defendant as if she were his very own daughter. (Bloom takes J. J. O'Molloy's hand and raises it to his lips.) I shall call rebutting evidence to prove up to the hilt that the hidden hand is again at its old game. When in doubt persecute Bloom. My client, an innately bashful man, would be the last man in the world to do anything ungentlemanly which injured modesty could object to or cast a stone at a girl who took the wrong turning when some dastard, responsible for her condition, had worked his own sweet will on her. He wants to go straight. I regard him as the whitest man I know. He is down on his luck at present owing to the mortgaging of his extensive property at Agendath Netaim in faraway Asia Minor, slides of which will now be shown. (To Bloom.) I suggest that you will do the handsome thing.

J. J. O'MOLLOY

A penny in the pound.

J. J. O'MOLLOY

BLOOM

(The mirage of the lake of Kinnereth with blurred cattle cropping in silver haze is projected on the wall. Moses Dlugacz, ferreteyed albino, in blue dungarees, stands up in the gallery, holding in each hand an orange citron and a pork kidney.)

DLUGACZ

(Almost voicelessly.) Excuse me, I am suffering from a severe chill, have recently come from a sickbed. A few wellchosen words. (He assumes the avine head, foxy moustache and proboscidal eloquence of Seymour Bushe.) When the angel's book comes to be opened if aught that the pensive bosom has inaugurated of soultransfigured and of soultransfiguring deserves to live I say accord the prisoner at the bar the sacred benefit of the doubt. (A paper with something written on it is handed into court.)

(J. J. O'Molloy steps on to a low plinth and holds the lapel of his coat with solemnity. His face lengthens, grows pale and bearded, with sunken eyes, the blotches of phthisis and hectic cheekbones of John F. Taylor. He applies his handkerchief to his mouth and scrutinises the galloping tide of rosepink blood.)

(Hoarsely.) Bleibtreustrasse, Berlin, W. 13.

BLOOM

(In court dress.) Can give best references. Messrs Callan, Coleman. Mr Wisdom Hely J. P. My old chief Joe Cuffe. Mr V. B. Dillon, ex-lord mayor of Dublin. I have moved in the charmed circle of the highest. Queens of Dublin Society. (Carelessly.) I was just chatting this afternoon at the viceregal lodge to my old pals, sir Robert and lady Ball, astronomer royal, at the levee. Sir Bob, I said…

MRS YELVERTON BARRY

(In lowcorsaged opal balldress and elbowlength ivory gloves, wearing a sabletrimmed brick quilted dolman, a comb of brilliants and panache of osprey in her hair.) Arrest him constable. He wrote me an anonymous letter in prentice backhand when my husband was in the North Riding of Tipperary on the Munster circuit, signed James Lovebirch. He said that he had seen from the gods my peerless globes as I sat in a box of the Theatre Royal at a command performance of La Cigale. I deeply inflamed him, he said. He made improper overtures to me to misconduct myself at half past four p. m. on the following Thursday, Dunsink time. He offered to send me through the post a work of fiction by Monsieur Paul de Kock, entitled The Girl with the Three Pairs of Stays.

Shame on him!

THE SLUTS AND RAGAMUFFINS

SECOND WATCH

(Produces handcuffs.) Here are the darbies.

He addressed me in several handwritings with fulsome compliments as a Venus in furs and alleged profound pity for my frostbound coachman Balmer while in the same breath he expressed himself as envious of his earflaps and fleecy sheepskins and of his fortunate proximity to my person, when standing behind my chair wearing my livery and the armorial bearings of the Bellingham escutcheon garnished sable, a buck's head couped or. He lauded almost extravagantly my nether extremities, my swelling calves in silk hose drawn up to the limit, and eulogised glowingly my other hidden treasures in priceless lace which, he said, he could conjure up. He urged me, stating that he felt it his mission in life to urge me, to defile the marriage bed, to commit adultery at the earliest possible opportunity.

(Screaming.) Stop thief! Hurrah there, Bluebeard! Three cheers for Ikey Mo!

(In cap and seal coneymantle, wrapped up to the nose, steps out of her brougham and scans through tortoiseshell quizzingglasses which she takes from inside her huge opossum muff.) Also to me. Yes, I believe it is the same objectionable person. Because he closed my carriage door outside sir Thornley Stoker's one sleety day during the cold snap of February ninetythree when even the grid of the wastepipe and ballstop in my bath cistern were frozen. Subsequently he enclosed a bloom of edelweiss culled on the heights, as he said, in my honour. I had it examined by a botanical expert and elicited the information that it was a blossom of the homegrown potato plant purloined from a forcingcase of the model farm.

(A crowd of sluts and ragamuffins sues forward.)

MRS BELLINGHAM

MRS YELVERTON BARRY

MRS BELLINGHAM

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS

(In amazon costume, hard hat, jackboots cockspurred, vermilion waistcoat, fawn musketeer gauntlets with bra idea drums, long train held up and hunting crop with which she strikes her welt constantly.) Also me. Because he saw me on the polo ground of the Phnix park at the match All Ireland versus the Rest of Ireland. My eyes, I know, shone divinely as I watched Captain Slogger Dennehy of the Inniskillings win the final chukkar on his darling cob Centaur. This plebeian Don Juan observed me from behind a hackney car and sent me in double envelopes an obscene photograph, such as are sold after dark on Paris boulevards, insulting to any lady. I have it still. It represents a partially nude senorita, frail and lovely (his wife as he solemnly assured me, taken by him from nature), practising illicit intercourse with a muscular torero, evidently a blackguard. He urged me to do likewise, to misbehave, to sin with officers of the garrison. He implored me to soil his letter in an unspeakable manner, to chastise him as he richly deserves, to bestride and ride him, to give him a most vicious horsewhipping.

Me too.

MRS YELVERTON BARRY

MRS BELLINGHAM

(Stamps her jingling spurs in a sudden paroxysm of sudden fury.) I will, by the God above me. I'll scourge the pigeonlivered cur as long as I can stand over him. I'll flay him alive.

All these people. I meant only the spanking idea. A warm tingling glow without effusion. Refined birching to stimulate the circulation.

Me too.

BLOOM

BLOOM

Tan his breech well, the upstart! Write the stars and stripes on it!

Very much so! I'll make it hot for you. I'll make you dance Jack Latten for that.

(Laughs derisively.) O, did you, my fine fellow? Well, by the living God, you'll get the surprise of your life now, believe me, the most unmerciful hiding a man ever bargained for. You have lashed the dormant tigress in my nature into fury.

(His eyes closing, quails expectantly.) Here? (He squirms.) Again! (He pants cringing.) I love the danger.

Disgraceful! There's no excuse for him! A married man!

MRS BELLINGHAM

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS

MRS YELVERTON BARRY

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS

(Several highly respectable Dublin ladies hold up improper letters received from Bloom.)

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS

(Severely.) Don't do so on any account, Mrs Talboys! He should be soundly trounced!

(Shuddering, shrinking, joins his hands with hangdog mien.) O cold! O shivery! It was your ambrosial beauty. Forget, forgive. Kismet. Let me off this once. (He offers the other cheek.)

(Unbuttoning her gauntlet violently.) I'll do no such thing. Pig dog and always was ever since he was pupped! To dare address me! I'll flog him black and blue in the public streets. I'll dig my spurs in him up to the rowel. He is a wellknown cuckold. (She swishes her hunting crop savagely in the air.) Take down his trousers without loss of time. Come here, sir! Quick! Ready?

BLOOM

(Trembling, beginning to obey.) The weather has been so warm.

MRS BELLINGHAM

(Davy Stephens, ringleted, passes with a bevy of barefoot newsboys.)

(Shakes her muff and quizzing-glasses vindictively.) Make him smart, Hanna dear. Give him ginger. Thrash the mongrel within an inch of his life. The cat-o' nine-tails. Geld him. Vivisect him.

BLOOM

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS

MRS YELVERTON BARRY

Bareback riding. Weight for age. Gob, he organised her.

THE JURORS

Cuckoo

Cuckoo

THE QUOITS

(Unportalling.)

(Snarls.) Arse over tip. Hundred shillings to five.

Messenger of the Sacred Heart and Evening Telegraph with Saint Patrick's Day Supplement. Containing the new addresses of all the cuckolds in Dublin.

(All their heads turned to his voice.) Really?

THE NAMELESS ONE

Jigjag, Jigajiga. Jigjag.

DAVY STEPHENS

THE NAMELESS ONE

(The brass quoits of a bed are heard to jingle.)

(A panel of fog rolls back rapidly, revealing rapidly in the jurybox the faces of Martin Cunningham, foreman silkhatted, Jack Power Simon Dedalus, Tom Kernan, Ned Lambert, John Henry Menton, Myles Crawford, Lenehan, Paddy Leonard Nosey Flynn, M'Coy and the featureless face of a Nameless One.)

THE TIMEPIECE

THE JURORS

(The very reverend Canon O'Hanlon in cloth of gold cope elevates and exposes a marble timepiece. Before him Father Conroy and the reverend John Hughes S. J. bend low.)

(All their heads lowered in assent.) Most of us thought as much.

Cuckoo

He is a marked man. Another girl's plait cut. Wanted: Jack the Ripper. A thousand pounds reward.

FIRST WATCH

SECOND WATCH

(Awed, whispers.) And in black. A mormon. Anarchist.

THE CRIER

THE RECORDER

(His Honour sir Frederick Falkiner recorder of Dublin, in judicial garb of grey stone rises from the bench, stonebearded. He bears in his arms an umbrella sceptre. From his forehead arise starkly the Mosaic ramshorns.)

I will put an end to this white slave traffic and rid Dublin of this odious pest. Scandalous! (He dons the black cap.) Let him be taken, Mr Subsheriff, from the dock where he now stands and detained in custody in Mountjoy prison during His Majesty's pleasure and there be hanged by the neck until he is dead and therein fail not at your peril or may the Lord have-mercy on your soul. Remove him. (A black skullcap descends upon his head.)

(Loudly.) Whereas Leopold Bloom of no fixed abode is a well-known dynamitard, forger, bigamist, bawd and cuckold ad a public nuisance to the citizens of Dublin and whereas at this commission of assizes the most honourable.

Heigho! Heigho!

(Scowls and calls with rich rolling utterance.) Who'll hang Judas Iscariot?

(To the recorder with sinister familiarity.) Hanging Harry, your Majesty, the Mersey terror. Five guineas a jugular. Neck or nothing.

(H. Rumbold, master barber in a bloodcoloured jerk in and tanner's apron, a rope coiled over his shoulder mounts the block. A life preserver and a nailstudded bludgeon are stuck in his belt. He rubs grimly his grapping hands, knobbed with knuckledusters.)

LONG JOHN FANNING

THE BELLS

(The subsheriff long John Fanning appears, smoking a pungent Henry Clay.)

(The bells of George's church toll slowly, loud dark iron.)

RUMBOLD

(Desperately.) Wait. Stop. Gulls. Good heart. I saw. Innocence. Girl in the monkeyhouse. Zoo. Lewd chimpanzees. (Breathlessly.) Pelvic basin. Her artless blush unmanned me. (Overcome with emotion.) I left the precincts. (He turns to a figure in the crowd, appealing.) Hynes, may I speak to you? You know me. That three shillings you can keep. If you want a little more.

BLOOM

(In triumph.) You hear?

FIRST WATCH

HYNES

(Points to the corner.) The bomb is here.

Blesses himself.) How is that possible?

(The beagle lifts his snout, showing the grey scorbutic face of Paddy Dignam. He has gnawed all. He exhales a putrid carcasefed breath. He grows to human size and shape. His dachshund coat becomes a brown mortuary habit. His green eyeflashes bloodshot. Half of one ear all the nose and both thumbs are ghouleaten.)

BLOOM

PADDY DIGNAM

BLOOM

It is not in the penny catechism.

(In a hollow voice.) It is true. It was my funeral. Doctor Finucane pronounced life extinct when I succumbed to the disease from natural causes.

(Coldly.) You are a perfect stranger.

SECOND WATCH

(He lifts his mutilated ashen face moonwards and bays lugubriously.)

BLOOM

PADDY DIGNAM

(Draws his truncheon.) Liar!

Infernal machine with a time fuse.

FIRST WATCH

The voice is the voice of Esau.

SECOND WATCH

No, no. Pig's feet. I was at a funeral.

FIRST WATCH

Bloom, I am Paddy Dignam's spirit. List, list, O list!

O rocks.

PADDY DIGNAM

By metempsychosis. Spooks.

FATHER COFFEY

(Yawns, then chants with a hoarse croak.) Namine. Jacobs Vobiscuits. Amen.

PADDY DIGNAM

A VOICE

(Foghorns stormily through his megaphone.) Dignam, Patrick T., deceased.

JOHN O'CONNELL

(Earnestly.) Once I was in the employ of Mr J. H. Menton, solicitor, commissioner for oaths and affidavits, of 27 Bachelor's Walk. Now I am defunct, the wall of the heart hypertrophied. Hard lines. The poor wife was awfully cut up. Dow is she bearing it? Keep her off that bottle of sherry. (He looks round him.) A lamp. I must satisfy an animal need. That buttermilk didn't agree with me.

(The portly figure of John O'Connell, caretaker stands forth, holding a bunch of keys tied with crape. Beside him stands Father Coffey, chaplain, toad bellied, wrynecked, in a surplice and bandanna nightcap, holding sleepily a staff of twisted poppies.)

PADDY DIGNAM

(With pricked up ears, winces.) Overtones.

(He wriggles forward, places an ear to the ground.) My masters' voice!

Burial docket letter number U. P. Eightyfive thousand. Field seventeen. House of Keys. Plot, one hundred and one.

(Paddy Dignam listens with visible effort, thinking, his tailstiffpointed, his ears cocked.)

(He worms down through a coal hole, his brown habit trailing its tether over rattling pebbles. After him toddles an obese grandfather rat on fungus turtle paws under a grey carapace. Dignam's voice, muffled, is heard baying under ground: Dignam's dead and gone below. Tom Rochford, robinredbreasted, in cap and breeches, jumps from his two-columned machine.)

PADDY DIGNAM

JOHN O'CONNELL

Pray for the repose of his soul.

(A hand to his breastbone, bows.) Reuben J. A florin I find him. (He fixes the manhole with a resolute stare.) My turn now on. Follow me up to Carlow.

TOM ROCHFORD

(He executes a daredevil salmon leap in the air and is engulfed in the coalhole. Two discs on the columns wobble eyes of nought. All recedes. Bloom plodges forward again. He stands before a lighted house, listening. The kisses, winging from their bowers, fly about him, twittering, warbling, cooing.)

ZOE

Not I!

ZOE

A man's touch. Sad music. Church music. Perhaps here.

BLOOM

BLOOM

(Zoe Higgins, a young whore in a sapphire slip, closed with three bronze buckles, a slim black velvet fillet round her throat, nods, trips down the steps and accosts him.)

No, eightyone. Mrs Cohen's. You might go farther and fare worse. Mother Slipperslapper. (Familiarly.) She's on the job herself tonight with the vet, her tipster, that gives her all the winners and pays for her son in Oxford. Working overtime but her luck's turned today. (Suspiciously.) You're not his father, are you?

ZOE

THE KISSES

Are you looking for someone? He's inside with his friend.

Is this Mrs Mack's?

(Warbling.) Leo! (Twittering.) Icky licky micky sticky for Leo! (Cooing.) Coo coocoo! Yummyumm Wom worn! (Warbling.) Big comebig! Pirouette! Leopopold! (Twittering.) Leeolee! (Warbling.) O Leo!

BLOOM

(They rustle, flutter upon his garments, alight, bright giddyflecks, silvery sequins.)

You both in black. Has little mousey any tickles tonight?

BLOOM

You'll know me the next time.

ZOE

I feel it.

(Gazelles are leaping, feeding on the mountains. Near are lakes. Round their shores file shadows black of cedargroves. Aroma rises, a strong hairgrowth of resin. It burns, the orient, a sky of sapphire, cleft by the bronze flight of eagles. Under it lies the womancity, nude, white, still, cool, in luxury. A fountain murmurs among damask roses. Mammoth roses murmur of scarlet winegrapes. A wine of shame, lust, blood exudes, strangely murmuring.)

BLOOM

ZOE

BLOOM

Not likely.

(In sudden alarm.) You've a hard chancre.

For Zoe? For keeps? For being so nice, eh?

(His skin, alert, feels her fingertips approach. A hand slides over his left thigh.)

ZOE

A talisman. Heirloom.

BLOOM

(She puts the potato greedily into a pocket, then links his arm, cuddling him with supple warmth. He smiles uneasily. Slowly, note by note, oriental music is played. He gazes in the tawny crystal of her eyes, ringed with kohol. His smile softens.)

ZOE

Off side. Curiously they are on the right. Heavier I suppose. One in a million my tailor, Mesias, says.

(Her hand slides into his left trouser pocket and brings out a hard black shrivelled potato. She regards it and Bloom with dumb moist lips.)

How's the nuts?

ZOE

(Forlornly.) I never loved a dear gazelle but it was sure to.

(Catches a stray hair deftly and twists it to her coil.) No bloody fear. I'm English. Have you a swaggerroot?

Go on. Make a stump speech out of it.

ZOE

And you know what thought did?

(Fascinated.) I thought you were of good stock by your accent.

(Murmuring singsong with the music, her odalisk lips lusciously smeared with salve of swinefat and rosewater.) Schorach ani wenowach, benoith Hierushaloim.

(In workman's corduroy overalls, black gansy with red floating tie and apache cap.) Mankind is incorrigible. Sir Walter Raleigh brought from the new world that potato and that weed, the one a killer of pestilence by absorption, the other a poisoner of the ear, eye, heart, memory, will, understanding, all. That is to say, he brought the poison a hundred years before another person whose name I forget brought the food. Suicide. Lies. All our habits. Why, look at our public life!

(She bites his ear gently with little goldstopped teeth sending on him a cloying breath of stale garlic. The roses draw apart, disclose a sepulchre of the gold of kings and their mouldering bones.)

BLOOM

ZOE

BLOOM

(As before.) Rarely smoke, dear. Cigar now and then. Childish device. (Lewdly.) The mouth can be better engaged than with a cylinder of rank weed.

ZOE

(Draws back, mechanically caressing her right bub with a flat awkward hand.) Are you a Dublin girl?

BLOOM

ZOE

BLOOM

Turn again, Leopold! Lord Mayor of Dublin!

(In scarlet robe with mace, gold mayoral chain and lace white silk scarf) That alder man sir Leo Bloom's speech be printed at the expense of the ratepayers. That the house in which he was born be ornamented with a commemorative tablet and that the thoroughfare hitherto known as Cow Parlour off Cork street be henceforth designated Boulevard Bloom.

LATE LORD MAYOR HARRINGTON

(Several wellknown burgesses, city magnates and freemen of the city shake hands with Bloom and congratulate him. Timothy Harrington, late thrice Lord Mayor of Dublin, imposing in mayoral scarlet, gold chain and white silk tie, confers with councillor Lorcan Sherlock, locum tenens. They nod vigorously in agreement.)

Three times three for our future chief magistrate!

AN ELECTOR

(The aurora borealis of the torchlight procession leaps.)

THE TORCH BEARERS

THE CHIMES

Hooray!

(Midnight chimes from distant steeples.)

(In alderman's gown and chain.) Electors of Arran Quay, Inns Quay, Rotunda, Mountjoy and North Dock, better run a tramline, I say, from the cattlemarket to the river. That's the music of the future. That's my programme. Cui Bono? But our buccaneering Vanderdeckens in their phantom ship of finance…

BLOOM

BLOOM

Carried unanimously.

(Impassionedly.) These flying Dutchmen or lying Dutchmen as they recline in their upholstered poop, casting dice, what reck they? Machines is their cry, their chimera, their panacea. Laboursaving apparatuses, supplanters, bug-bears, manufactured monsters for mutual murder, hideous hobgoblins produced by a horde of capitalistic lusts upon our prostituted labour. The poor man starves while they are grassing their royal mountain stags or shooting peasants and phartridges in their purblind pomp of pelf and power. But their reign is rover for rever and ever and ev…

COUNCILLOR LORCAN SHERLOCK

(Prolonged applause. Venetian masts, maypoles and festal arches spring up. A streamer bearing the legends Cead Mille Failte and Mah Ttob Melek Israel spans the street. All the windows are thronged with sightseers, chiefly ladies. Along the route the regiments of the royal Dublin Fusiliers, the Kings Own Scottish Boraerers, the Cameron Highlanders and the Welsh Fusiliers, standing to attention, keep back the crowd. Boys from High school are perched on the lampposts, telegraph poles, windowsills, cornices, gutters, chimneypots, railings, rainspouts, whistling and cheering. The pillar of the cloud appears. A fife and drum band is heard in the distance playing the Kol Nidre. The beaters approach with imperial eagles hoisted, trailing banners and waving oriental palms. The chryselephantine papal standard rises high, surrounded by pennons of the civic flag. The van of the procession appears headed by John Howard Parnell, city marshal, in a chessboard tabard, the Athlone Poursuivant and Ulster King of Arms. They are followed by the Right Honourable Joseph Hutchinson, lord mayor of Dublin, the lord mayor of Cork, their worships the mayors of Limerick, Galway, Sligo and Watedord, twentyeight Irish representative peers, sirdars, grandees and maharajahs bearing the cloth of estate, the Dublin Metropolitan Fire Brigade, the chapter of the saints of finance in their plutocratic order of precedence, the bishop of Down and Connor His Eminence Michael cardinal Logue archbishop of Armagh, primate of all Ireland, His Grace, the most reverend Dr William Alexander archbishop of Armagh, primate of all Ireland, the chief rabbi, the presbyterian moderator, the heads of the baptist, anabaptist, methodist and Moravian chapels and the honorary secretary of the society of friends. her them march the guilds and trades and trainbands with flying colours: coopen, bird fanciers, millwrights, newspaper canvassers, law scriveners, masseurs, vintners, trussmakers, chimney sweeps, lard refiners, tabinet and poplin weavers, farriers, Italian warehousemen, church decorators, bootjack manufacturers, undertaken, silk mercers, lapidaries, salesmasters, corkcutters, assessors of fire losses, dyers and cleaners, export bottlers, fellmongers, ticketwriters, heraldic seal engravers, horse repository hands, bullion broken, cricket and archery outfitters, riddlemakers, egg and potato factors, hosiers and glovers, plumbing contractors. After them march gentlemen of the bed chamber Black Rod, Deputy Garter Gold Stick, the master of hone, the lord great chamberlain, the earl marshal, the high constable carrying the sword of state, saint Stephen's iron crown, the chalice and bible. Four buglers on foot blow a sennet. Beefeaten reply, winding clarions of welcome. Under an arch of triumph Bloom appears bareheaded, in a crimson velvet mantle trimmed with ermine, bearing Saint Edward's staff the orb and sceptre with the dove, the curtana. He is seated on a milkwhite hone with long flowing crimson tail, richly caparisoned, with golden heads tall. Wild excitement. The ladies from their balconies throw down rosepetals. The air is perfumed with essences. The men cheer. Bloom's boys run amid the bystanders with branches of hawthorn and wrenbushes.)

I here present your un doubted emperor president and king chairman, the most serene and potent and very puissant ruler of this realm. God save Leopold the First!

(Masculinely.) And done!

A FEMINIST

(In dalmatic and purple mantle, to the bishop of Down and Connor with dignity.) Thanks, somewhat eminent sir.

A BLACKSMITH

(Murmurs.) For the Honour of God! And is that Bloom? He scarcely looks thirtyone.

The king of all birds,

A classic face! He has the forehead of a thinker.

(All uncover their heads. Women whisper eagerly.)

A BELLHANGER

Saint Stephen's his day,

(Nobly.) All that man has seen!

(In purple stock and shovel hat.) Will you to your power cause law and mercy to be executed in all your judgments in Ireland and territories thereunto belonging?

A PAVIOR AND FLAGGER

(Richly.) Isn't he simply wonderful?

ALL

(Bloom's weather. A sunburst appears in the northwest.)

THE BISHOP OF DOWN AND CONNOR

BLOOM'S BOYS

BLOOM

That's the famous Bloom now, the world's greatest reformer. Hats off!

A NOBLEWOMAN

God save Leopold the First!

A MILLIONAIRESS

Was caught in the furze.

WILLIAM, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH

The wren, the wren,

BLOOM

MICHAEL, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH

(Placing his right hand on his testicles, swears.) So may the Creator deal with me. All this I promise to do.

(Bloom assumes a mantle of cloth of gold and puts on a ruby ring. He ascends and stands on the stone of destiny. The representative peers put on at the same time their twentyeight crowns. Joybells ring in Christ church, Saint Patrick's, George's and gay Malahide. Mirus bazaar fireworks go up from all sides with symbolical phallopyrotechnic designs. The peers do homage, one by one, approaching and genuflecting.)

(Pours a cruse of hair oil over Bloom's head.) Gaudium magnum annuntio vobis. Habemus carneficem. Leopold, Patrick, Andrew, David, George, be thou anointed!

THE PEERS

BLOOM

(Bloom holds up his right hand on which sparkles the Koh-i-Noor diamond. His palfrey neighs. Immediate silence. Wireless intercontinental and interplanetary transmitters are set for reception of message.)

I do become your liege man of life and limb to earthly worship.

My subjects! We hereby nominate our faithful charger Copula Felix hereditary Grand Vizier and announce that we have this day repudiated our former spouse and have bestowed our royal hand upon the princess Selene, the splendour of night.

(The former morganatic spouse of Bloom is hastily removed in the Black Maria. The princess Selene, in moon blue robes, a silver crescent on her head, descends from a Sedan chair borne by two giants. An outburst of cheering.)

JOHN HOWARD PARNELL

(Raises the royal standard.) Illustrious Bloom! Successor to my famous brother!

(Embraces John Howard Parnell.) We thank you from our heart, John, for this right royal welcome to green Erin, the promised land of our common ancestors.

BLOOM

(The freedom of the city is presented to him embodied in a charter. The keys of Dublin, crossed on a crimson cushion, are given to him. He shows all that he is wearing green socks.)

BLOOM

TOM KERNAN

You deserve it, your honour.

On this day twenty years ago we overcame the hereditary enemy at Ladysmith. Our howitzers and camel swivel guns played on his lines with telling effect. Half a league onward! They charge! All is lost now! Do we yield? No! We drive them headlong! Lo! We charge! Deploying to the left our light horse swept across the heights of Plevna and, uttering their warcry, Bonafide Sabaoth, sabred the Saracen gunners to a man.

There's the man that got away James Stephens.

JOHN WYSE NOLAN

THE CHAPEL OF FREEMAN TYPESETTERS

A BLUECOAT SCHOOLBOY

BLOOM

(Thirtytwo workmen wearing rosettes, from all the counties of Ireland, under the guidance of Derwan the builder construct the new Bloomusalem. It is a colossal edifice, with crystal roof built in the shape of a huge pork kidney, containing forty thousand rooms. In the course of its extension several buildings and monuments are demolished. Government offices are temporarily transferred to railway sheds. Numerous houses are razed to the ground. The inhabitants are lodged in barrels and boxes, all marked in red with the letters: L. B. Several paupers fall from a ladder. A part of the walls of Dublin, crowded with loyal sightseers, collapses.)

You're a credit to your country, sir, that's what you are.

AN APPLEWOMAN

Hear! Hear!

My beloved subjects, a new era is about to dawn. I, Bloom, tell you verily it is even now at hand. Yea, on the word of a Bloom, ye shall ere long enter into the golden city which is to be, the new Bloomusalem in the Nova Hibernia of the future.

He's a man like Ireland wants.

Bravo!

AN OLD RESIDENT

THE SIGHTSEERS

THE MAN IN THE MACINTOSH

(A man in a brown macintosh springs up through a trap-door. He points an elongated finger at Bloom.)

(Dying) Morituri te salutant. (They die.)

Shoot him! Dog of a christian! So much for M'Intosh!

BLOOM

Don't you believe a word he Says. That man is Leopold M'Intosh, the notorious fireraiser. His real name is Higgins.

(A cannonshot. The man in the macintosh disappears. Bloom with his sceptre strikes down poppies. The instantaneous deaths of many powerful enemies, graziers, members of parliament, members of standing committees, are reported. Bloom's bodyguard distribute Maundy money, commemoration medals, loaves and fishes, temperance badges, expensive Henry Clay cigars, free cowbones for soup, rubber preservatives, in sealed envelopes tied with gold thread, butter scotch, pineapple rock, billets doux in the form of cocked hats, readymade suits, porringers of toad in the hole, bottles of Jeyes' Fluid, purchase stamps, 40 days' indulgences, spurious coins, dairyfed pork sausages, theatre passes, season tickets available for all tram lines, coupons of the royal and privileged Hungarian lottery, penny dinner counters, cheap reprints of the World's Twelve Worst Books: Froggy and Fritz (politic), Care of the Baby (infantilic), So Meals for 7/6 (culinic), Was Jesus a Sun Myth? (historic), Expel that Pain (medic), Infant's Compendium of the Universe (cosmic), Let's All Chortle (hilaric), Canvasser's Vade Mecum (journalic), love-letters of Mother Assistant (erotic), Who's Who in Space (astric), Songs that Reached Our Heart (melodic), Pennywise's Way to Wealth (parsimonic). A general rush and scramble. Women press forward to touch the hem of Bloom's robe. The lady Gwendolen Dubedat bursts through the throng, leaps on his horse and kisses him on both cheeks amid great acclamation. A magnesium flashlight photograph is taken. Babes and sucklings are held up.)

Little father! Little father!

THE WOMEN

Cakes in his pocket for Leo alone.

THE BABES AND SUCKLINGS

Clap clap hands till Poldy comes home,

BABY BOARDMAN

(Bloom, bending down, pokes Baby Boardman gently in the stomach.)

(Hiccups, curdled milk flowing from his mouth.) Hajajaja.

BLOOM

(Shaking hands with a blind stripling.) My more than Brother! (Placing his arms round the shoulders of an old couple.) Dear old friends! (He plays pussy fourcorners with ragged boys and girls.) Peep! Bopeep! (He wheels twins in a perambulator.) Ticktacktwo wouldyousetashoe? (He performs juggler's tricks, draws red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet silk handkerchiefs from his mouth.) Roygbiv. 32 feet per second. (He consoles a widow.) Absence makes the heart grow younger. (He dances the Highland fling with grotesque antics.) Leg it, ye devils! (He kisses the bedsores of a palsied veteran.) Honourable wounds! (He trips up a fat policeman.) U. p.: up. U. p.: up. (He whispers in the ear of a blushing waitress and laughs kindly.) Ah, naughty, naughty! (He eats a raw turnip offered him by Maurice Butterly, farmer.) Fine! Splendid! (He refuses to accept three shillings offered him by Joseph Hynes, journalist.) My dear fellow, not at all! (He gives his coat to a beggar.) Please accept. (He takes part in a stomach race with elderly male and female cripples.) Come on, boys! Wriggle it, girls!

BLOOM

Can I raise a mortgage on my fire insurance?

BLOOM

(Uncloaks impressively, revealing obesity, unrolls a paper and reads solemnly.) Aleph Beth Ghimel Daleth Hagadah Tephilim Kosher Yom Kippur Hanukah Ros chaschana Beni Brith Bar Mitzvah Mazzoth Askenazim Meshuggah Talith.

NOSEY FLYNN

Pay them, my friend.

Thank you.

(Choked with emotion, brushes aside a tear in his emerald muffler.) May the good God bless him!

PADDY LEONARD

(The rams' horns sound for silence. The standard of Zion is hoisted.)

(An official translation is read by Jimmy Henry, assistant town clerk.)

What am I to do about my rates and taxes?

THE CITIZEN

PADDY LEONARD

The Court of Conscience is now open. His Most Catholic Majesty will now administer open air justice. Free medical and legal advice, solution of doubles and other problems. All cordially invited. Given at this our loyal city of Dublin in the year I of the Paradisiacal Era.

BLOOM

JIMMY HENRY

(Obdurately.) Sirs, take notice that by the law of torts you are bound over in your own recognisances for six months in the sum of five pounds.

Where do I draw the five pounds?

Pansies?

BLOOM

A Daniel did I say? Nay! A Peter O'Brien!

What is the parallax of the subsolar ecliptic of Aldebaran?

Tinct. mix. vom., 4 minims.

BLOOM

Extr. taraxel. lig., 30 minims.

Father (pater, dad) starts thinking.

An eight day licence for my new premises. You remember me, sir Leo, when you were in number seven. I'm sending around a dozen of stout for the missus.

Aq. dis. ter in die.

BLOOM

BLOOM

For bladder trouble?

PISSER BURKE

BEN DOLLARD

When my progenitor of sainted memory wore the uniform of the Austrian despot in a dank prison where was yours?

(Solemnly.) You call it a festivity. I call it a sacrament.

JOE HYNES

NOSEY FLYNN

Why aren't you in uniform?

This is indeed a festivity.

BLOOM

BEN DOLLARD

CHRIS CALLINAN

LARRY O'ROURKE

BLOOM

When twins arrive?

BLOOM

Embellish (beautify) suburban gardens.

Acid. nit. hydrochlor dil., 20 minims,

(Coldly.) You have the advantage of me. Lady Bloom accepts no presents.

CROFTON

Pleased to hear from you, Chris. K. II.

J. J. O'MOLLY

What about mixed bathing?

Free fox in a free henroost.

(Bloom explains to those near him his schemes for social regeneration. All agree with him. The keeper of the Kildare Street Museum appears, dragging a lorry on which are the shaking statues of several naked goddesses, Venus Callipyge, Venus Pandemos Venus Metempsychosis, and plaster figures, also naked, representing the new nine muses, Commerce, Operatic Music, Amor Publicity, Manufacture, liberty of Speech, Plural Voting, Gastronomy, Private Hygiene, Seaside Concert Entertainments, Painless Obstetrics and Astronomy for the People.)

I stand for the reform of municipal morals and the plain ten commandments. New worlds for old. union of all, jew, moslem and gentile. Three acres and a cow for all children of nature. Saloon motor hearses. Compulsory manual labour for all. All parks open to the public day and night. Electric dishscrubbers. Tuberculosis, lunacy, war and mendicancy must now cease. General amnesty, weekly carnival, with masked licence, bonuses for all, esperanto the universal brotherhood. No more patriotism of barspongers and dropsical impostors. Free money, free love and a free lay church in a free lay state.

O'MADDEN BURKE

(Yawning.) Iiiiiiiiiaaaaaaach!

LENEHAN

When will we have our own house of keys?

Mixed races and mixed marriage.

ALEXANDER KEYES

BLOOM

BLOOM

DAVY BYRNE

(In fishing cap and oilskin jacket.) He employs a mechanical device to frustrate the sacred ends of nature.

MRS RIORDAN

What railway opera is like a tramline in Gibraltar? The Rows of Casteele. (Laughter.)

Good old Bloom! There's nobody like him after all.

(With rollicking humour.)

(Removes her boot to throw it at Bloom.) You beast! You abominable person!

NOSEY FLYNN

MOTHER GROGAN

I vowed that I never would leave her,

FATHER FARLEY

THE VEILED SIBYL

(Tears up her will.) I'm disappointed in you! You bad man!

BLOOM

Plagiarist! Down with Bloom!

He is an episcopalian, an agnostic, an any thingarian seeking to overthrow our holy faith.

BLOOM

HOPPY HOLOHAN

LENEHAN

Stage Irishman!

Give us a tune, Bloom. One of the old sweet songs.

With my tooraloom tooraloom tooralcom tooraloom.

PADDY LEONARD

She turned out a cruel deceiver.

(Winks at the bystanders.) I bet she's a bonny lassie.

THEODORE PUREFOY

(Enthusiastically.) I'm a Bloomite and I glory in it. I believe in him in spite of all. I'd give my life for him, the funniest man on earth.

BLOOM

(Violently.) Fellowchristians and antiBloomites, the man called Bloom is from the roots of hell, a disgrace to christian men. A fiendish libertine from his earliest years this stinking goat of Mendes gave precocious signs of infantile debauchery recalling the cities of the plain, with a dissolute granddam. This vile hypocrite, bronzed with infamy, is the white bull mentioned in the Apocalypse. A worshipper of the Scarlet Woman, intrigue is the very breath of his nostrils. The stake faggots and the caldron of boiling oil are for him. Caliban!

(Stabs herself.) My hero god! (She dies.)

THE VEILED SIBYL

(Many most attractive and enthusiastic women also commit suicide by stabbing, drowning, drinking prussic acid, aconite, arsenic, opening their veins, refusing food, casting themselves under steamrollers, from the top of Nelson's Pillar, into the great vat of Guinness's brewery, asphyxiating themselves by placing their heads in gas ovens, hanging themselves in stylish garters, leaping from windows of different storeys.)

ALEXANDER J. DOWIE

THE MOB

(In motor jerkin, green motoroggles on his brow.) Dr Bloom is bisexually abnormal. He has recently escaped from Dr Eustace's private asylum for demented gentlemen. Born out of bedlock hereditary epilepsy is present, the consequence of unbridled lust. Traces of elephantiasis have been discovered among his ascendants. There are marked symptoms of chronic exhibitionism. Ambidexterity is also latent. He is prematurely bald from selfabuse, perversely idealistic in consequence, a reformed rake, and has metal teeth. In consequence of a family complex he has temporarily lost his memory and I believe him to be more sinned against than sinning. I have made a pervaginal examination and, after application of the acid test to 5427 anal, axillary, pectoral and pubic hairs, I declare him to be virgo intacta.

Lynch him! Roast him! He's as bad as Parnell was. Mr Fox!

(Excitedly.) This is midsummer madness, some ghastly joke again. By heaven, I am guiltless as the unsunned snow! It was my brother Henry. He is my double. He lives in number 2 Dolphin's Barn. Slander, the viper, has wrongfully accused me. Fellowcountrymen, sgenl inn ban bata coisde gan capall. I call on my old friend, Dr Malachi Mulligan, sex specialist to give medical testimony on my behalf.

(Mother Grogan throws her boot at Bloom. Several shopkeepers from upper and lower Dorset street throw objects of little or no commercial value, hambones, condensed milk tins, unsaleable cabbage, stale bread, sheeps' tails, odd pieces of fat.)

BLOOM

DR MULLIGAN

(Bloom holds his high grade hat over his genital organs.)

DR CROTTHERS

DR MADDEN

Hypsospadia is also marked. In the interest of coming generations I suggest that the parts affected should be preserved in spirits of wine in the national teratological museum.

DR PUNCH COSTELLO

I have examined the patient's urine. It is albuminoid. Salivation is insufficient, the patellar reflex intermittent.

The fetor judaicus is most perceptible.

DR DIXON

(Reads a bill of health.) Professor Bloom is a finished example of the new womanly man. His moral nature is simple and lovable. Many have found him a dear man, a dear person. He is a rather quaint fellow on the whole, coy though not feeble-minded in the medical sense. He has written a really beautiful letter, a poem in itself, to the court missionary of the Reformed Priests' Protection Society which clears up everything. He is practically a total abstainer and I can affirm that he sleeps on a straw litter and eats the most Spartan food, cold dried grocer's peas. He wears a hairshirt winter and summer and scourges himself every Saturday. He was, I understand, at one time a firstclass misdemeanant in Glencree reformatory. Another report states that he was a very posthumous child. I appeal for clemency in the name of the most sacred word our vocal organs have ever been called upon to speak. He is about to have a baby.

(General commotion and compassion. Women faint. A wealthy American makes a street collection for Bloom. Gold and silver coins, bank cheques, banknotes, jewels, treasury bonds, maturing bills of exchange, I. O. U. s, wedding rings' watch-chains, lockets, necklaces and bracelets are rapidly collected.)

BLOOM

O, I so want to be a mother.

MRS THORNTON

(Bloom embraces her tightly and bears eight male yellow and white children. They appear on a redcarpeted staircase adorned with expensive plants. All are handsome, with valuable metallic faces, wellmade, respectably dressed and wellconducted, speaking five modern languages fluently and interested in various arts and sciences. Each has his name printed in legible letters on his shirtfront: Nasodoro, Goldfinger, Chrysostomos, Maindorée, Silversmile, Silberselber Vifargent, Panargros. They are immediately appointed to positions of high public trust in several different countries as managing directors of banks, traffic managers of railways, chairmen of limited liability companies, vice chairmen of hotel syndicates.)

(In nursetender's gown.) Embrace me tight, dear. You'll be soon over it. Tight, dear.

Bloom, are you the Messiah ben Joseph or ben David?

(Darkly.) You have said it.

BROTHER BUZZ

Then perform a miracle.

(In papal zouave's uniform, steel cuirasses as breastplate, armplates, thighplates, legplates, large profane moustaches and brown paper mitre.) Leopoldi autem generatio. Moses begat Noah and Noah begat Eunuch and Eunuch begat O'Halloran and O'Halloran begat Guggenheim and Guggenheim begat Agendath and Agendath begat Netaim and Netaim begat Le Hirsch and Le Hirsch begat Jesurum and Jesurum begat MacKay and MacKay begat Ostrolopsky and Ostrolopsky begat Smerdoz and Smerdoz begat Weiss and Weiss begat Schwarz and Schwarz begat Adrianopoli and Adrianopoli began Aranjuez and Aranjuez begat Lewy Lawson and Lewy Lawson begat Ichabudonosor and Ichabudonosor begat O'Donnell Magnus and O'Donnell Magnus begat Christbaum and Christbaum begat Ben Maimun and Ben Maimun begat Dusty Rhodes and Dusty Rhodes begat Benamor and Benamor begat Jones-Smith and Jones-Smith begat Savorgnanovich and Savorgnanovich begat Jasperstone and Jasperstone begat Vingtetunieme and Vingtetunieme begat Szombathely and Szombathely begat Virag and Virag begat Bloom et vocabitur nomen eius Emmanuel.

BANTAM LYONS

BLOOM

Prophesy who will win the Saint Leger.

(Bloom walks on a net, covers his left eye with his left ear, passes through several walls, climbs Nelson's Pillar, hangs from the the ledge by his eyelids, eats twelve dozen oysters (shells included), heals several sufferers from kings evil, contracts his face so as to resemble many historical personages, lord Beaconsfield, lord Byron, Wat Tyler, Moses of Egypt, Moses Maimonides, Moses Mendelssohn, Henry Irving, Rip van Winkle, Rossuth, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Baron Leopold Rothschild, Robinson Crusoe, Sherlock Holmes, Pasteur, turns each foot simultaneously in different directions, bids the tide turn back, eclipses the sun by extending his little finger.)

A VOICE

BRINI, PAPAL NUNCIO

THE ARTANE ORPHANS

See you in tea

A CRAB

(In ephod and huntingcap, announces.) And he shall carry the sins of the people to Azazel, the spirit which is in the wilderness, and to Lilith, the nighthag. And they shall stone him and defile him, yea, all from Agendath Netaim and from Mizraim, the land of Ham.

(In bush ranger's kit.) What did you do in the cattlecreep behind Kilbarrack?

HORNBLOWER

THE IRISH EVICTED TENANTS

(Blushes furiously all over from front to nates, three tears falling from his left eye.) Spare my past.

Tell him he may

BLOOM

(In bodycoats, kneebreeches, with Donnybrook fair shillelaghs.) Sjambok him!

A DEADHAND

Tell him from me.

You think the ladies love you!

(Bloom with asses' ears seats himself in the pillory with crossed arms, his feet protruding. He whistles Don Giovanni, a cenar teco. Artane orphans, joining hands, caper round him. Girls of the Prison Gate Mission, joining hands, caper round in the opposite direction.)

THE PRISON GATE GIRLS

(Shakes a rattle.) And under Ballybough bridge?

And in the devil's glen?

(Writes on the wall.) Bloom is a cod.

You big, you bog, you dirty dog!

A FEMALE INFANT

A HOLLYBUSH

If you see kay

BROTHER BUZZ

THE FIRE BRIGADE

(All the people cast soft pantomime stones at Bloom. Many bonafide travellers and ownerless dogs come near him and defile him. Mastiansky and Citron approach in gaberdines, wearing long earlocks. They wag their beards at Bloom.)

To alteration one pair trousers eleven shillings.

MESIAS

BLOOM

(Rubs his hands cheerfully.) Just like old times. Poor Bloom!

(Reuben J. Dodd, black bearded Iscariot, bad shepherd, bearing on his shoulders the drowned corpse of his son, approaches the pillory.)

MASTIANSKY AND CITRON

REUBEN J.

(Invests Bloom in a yellow habit with embroidery of painted flames and high pointed hat. He places a bag of gunpowder round his neck and hands him over to the civil power, saying.) Forgive him his trespasses.

(Whispers hoarsely.) The squeak is out. A split is gone for the flatties. Nip the first rattler.

Pflaap!

(George S. Mesias, Bloom's tailor, appears, a tailor's goose under his arm, presenting a bill.)

Belial! Laemlein of Istria! the false Messiah! Abulafia!

Charitable Mason, pray for us.

Potato Preservative against Plague and Pestilence, pray for us.

THE CITIZEN

Flower of the Bath, pray for us.

(In a seamless garment marked I. H. S. stands upright amid phoenix flames.) Weep not for me, O daughters of Erin.

Kidney of Bloom, pray for us.

Wandering Soap, pray for us.

Canvasser for the Freeman, pray for us.

Friend of all Frillies, pray for us.

Midwife Most Merciful, pray for us.

BLOOM

(A choir of six hundred voices, conducted by Mr Vincent O'Brien, sings the Alleluia chorus, accompanied on the organ by Joseph Glynn. Bloom becomes mute, shrunken, carbonised.)

(He exhibits to Dublin reporters traces of burning. The daughters of Erin, in black garments with lace prayerbooks and long lighted candles in their hands, kneel down and pray.)

Mentor of Menton, pray for us.

THE DAUGHTERS OF ERIN

Sweets of Sin, pray for us.

(Lieutenant Myers of the Dublin Fire Brigade by general request sets fire to Bloom. Lamentations.)

Music without Words, pray for us.

Thank heaven!

Reprover of the Citizen, pray for us.

Talk away till you're black in the face.

ZOE

(In caubeen with clay pipe stuck in the band, dusty brogues, an emigrant's red handkerchief bundle in his hand, leading a black bogoak pig by a sugaun, with a smile in his eye.) Let me be going now, woman of the house, for by all the goats in Connemara I'm after having the father and mother of a bating. (With a tear in his eye.) All insanity. Patriotism, sorrow for the dead, music, future of the race. To be or not to be. Life's dream is o'er. End it peacefully. They can live on. (He gazes far away mournfully.) I am ruined. A few pastilles of aconite. The blinds drawn. A letter. Then lie back to rest. (He breathes softly.) No more. I have lived. Fare. Farewell.

BLOOM

ZOE

BLOOM

(Stiffly, her finger in her neckfillet.) Honest? Till the next time. (She sneers.) Suppose you got up the wrong side of the bed or came too quick with your best girl. O, I can read your thoughts.

(Bitterly.) Man and woman, love, what is it? A cork and bottle.

ZOE

(In sudden sulks.) I hate a rotter that's insincere. Give a bleeding whore a chance.

And more's mother? (She pats him offhandedly with velvet paws.) Are you coming into the musicroom to see our new pianola? Come and I'll peel off.

ZOE

(Feeling his occiput dubiously with the unparalleled embarrassment of a harassed pedlar gauging the symmetry of her peeled pears.) Somebody would be dreadfully jealous if she knew. The greeneyed monster. (Earnestly.) You know how difficult it is. I needn't tell you.

(Smiles, nods slowly.) More, houri, more.

Babby!

BLOOM

ZOE

ZOE

Laughing witch! The hand that rocks the cradle.

BLOOM

BLOOM

BLOOM

ZOE

(Repentantly.) I am very disagreeable. You are a necessary evil. Where are you from? London?

(Flattered.) What the eye can't see the heart can't grieve for. (She pats him.) Come.

(In babylinen and pelisse, bigheaded, with a caul of dark hair, fixes big eyes on her fluid slip and counts its bronze buckles with a chubby finger, his moist tongue tolling and lisping.) One two tlee: tlee tlwo tlone.

(Glibly.) Hog's Norton where the pigs play the organs. I'm Yorkshire born. (She holds his hand which is feeling for her nipple.) I say, Tommy Tittlemouse. Stop that and begin worse. Have you cash for a short time? Ten shillings?

BLOOM

(Zoe and Bloom reach the doorway where two sister whores are seated. They examine him curiously from under their pencilled brows and smile to his hasty bow. He trips awkwardly.)

ZOE

Silent means consent. (With little parted talons she captures his hand, her forefinger giving to his palm the pass touch of secret monitor, luring him to doom.) Hot hands cold gizzard.

Ladies first, gentlemen after.

THE MALE BRUTES

(Exhaling sulphur of rut and dung and ramping in their loosebox, faintly roaring, their drugged heads swaying to and fro.) Good!

(He hesitates amid scents, music, temptations. She leads him towards the steps, drawing him by the odour of her armpits, the vice of her painted eyes, the rustle of her slip in whose sinuous folds lurks the lion reek of all the male brutes that have possessed her.)

ZOE

(Her lucky hand instantly saving him.) Hoopsa! Don't fall upstairs.

BLOOM

The just man falls seven times. (He stands aside at the threshold.) After you is good manners.

ZOE

Love me. Love me not. Love me.

THE BUCKLES

(She crosses the threshold. He hesitates. She turns and, holding out her hands, draws him over. He hops. On the an tiered rack of the hall hang a man's hat and waterproof Bloom uncovers himself but, seeing them, frowns, then smiles, preoccupied. A door on the return landing is thrown open. A man in purple shirt and grey trousers, brownsocked, passes with an apes gait, his bald head and goatee beard upheld, hugging a full waterjugjar his twotailed black braces dangling at heels. Averting his face quickly Bloom bends to examine on the halltable the spaniel eyes of a running fox: then, his lifted head sniffing, follows Zoe into the musicroom. A shade of mauve tissuepaper dims the light of the chandelier. Round and round a moth flies, colliding, escaping. The floor is covered with an oilcloth mosaic of jade and azure and cinnabar rhomboids. Footmarks are stamped over it in all senses, heel to heel, heel to hollow, toe to toe, feet locked, a morris of shuffling feet without body phantoms, all in a scrimmage higgledypiggledy. The walls are tapes-tried with a paper of yewfronds and clear glades. In the grate is spread a screen of peacock feathers. Lynch squats crosslegged on the hearth rug of matted hair, his cap back to the front. With a wand he beats time slowly. Kitty Ricketts, a bony pallid whore in navy costume, doeskin gloves rolled back from a coral wristlet, a chain purse in her hand, sits perched on the edge of the table swinging her leg and glancing at herself in the gilt mirror over the mantelpiece. A tag of her corset lace hangs slightly below her jacket. Lynch indicates mockingly the couple at the piano.)

LYNCH

KITTY

ZOE

(Peers at the gasjet.) What ails it tonight?

ZOE

(Coughs behind her hand.) She's a bit imbecilic. (She signs with a waggling forefinger.) Blemblem. (Lynch lifts up her skirt and white petticoat with the wand. She settles them down quickly.) Respect yourself. (She hiccups, then bends quickly her sailor hat under which her hair glows, red with henna.) O, excuse!

KITTY

KITTY

(Deeply.) Enter a ghost and hobgoblins.

(The wand in Lynch's hand flashes: a brass poker. Stephen stands at the pianola on which sprawl his hat and ashplant. With two fingers he repeats once more the series of empty fifths. Florry Talbot, a blond feeble goosefat whore in a tatterdemalion gown of mildewed strawberry, lolls spreadeagle in the sofa corner, her limp forearm pendent over the bolster, listening. A heavy stye droops over her sleepy eyelid.)

More limelight, Charley. (She goes to the chandelier and turns the gas full cock.)

Clap on the back for Zoe.

(Hiccups again with a kick of her horsed foot.) O, excuse!

(With saturnine spleen.) Bah! It is because it is. Woman's reason. Jewgreek is greekjew. Extremes meet. Death is the highest form of life. Bah!

ZOE

(Promptly.) Your boy's thinking of you. Tie a knot on your shift.

(Kitty Ricketts bends her head. Her boa uncoils, slides, glides over her shoulder, back, arm, chair to the ground. Lynch lifts the curled caterpillar on his wand. She snakes her neck, nestling. Stephen glances behind at the squatted figure with its cap back to the front.)

STEPHEN

As a matter of fact it is of no importance whether Benedetto Marcello found it or made it. The rite is the poet's rest. It may be an old hymn to Demeter or also illustrate Cla enarrant gloriam Domini. It is susceptible of nodes or modes as far apart as hyperphrygian and mixolydian and of texts so divergent as priests haihooping round David's that is Circe's or what am I saying Ceres' altar and David's tip from the stable to his chief bassoonist about his almightiness. Mais, nom de nom, that is another pair of trousers. Jetez la gourme. Faut que jeunesse se passe. (He stops, points at Lynch's cap, smiles, laughs.) Which side is your knowledge bump?

THE CAP

You remember fairly accurately all my errors, boasts, mistakes. How long shall I continue to close my eyes to disloyalty? Whetstone!

(Outside the gramophone begins to blare The Holy City.)

LYNCH

(Abruptly.) What went forth to the ends of the world to traverse not itself. God, the sun, Shakespeare, a commercial traveller, having itself traversed in reality itself, becomes that self. Wait a moment. Wait a second. Damn that fellow's noise in the street. Self which it itself was ineluctably preconditioned to become. Ecco!

Which? Finish. You can't.

THE CAP

Bah!

THE CAP

THE CAP

STEPHEN

(Briskly.) God help your head, he knows more than you have forgotten.

(With on effort.) Interval which. Is the greatest possible ellipse. Consistent with. The ultimate return. The octave. Which.

Here's another for you. (He frowns.) The reason is because the fundamental and the dominant are separated by the greatest possible interval which.

Which?

STEPHEN

STEPHEN

(With a mocking whinny of laughter grins at Bloom and Zoe Higgins.) What a learned speech, eh?

ZOE

STEPHEN

(With obese stupidity Florry Talbot regards Stephen.)

They say the last day is coming this summer.

STEPHEN

KITTY

A time, times and half a time.

(Explodes in laughter.) Great unjust God!

(Stephen turns and sees Bloom.)

Stop press edition. Result of the rockinghorse races. Sea serpent in the royal canal. Safe arrival of Antichrist.

(Reuben J. Antichrist, wanderingjew, a clutching hand open on his spine, stumps forward. Across his loins is slung a pilgrims wallet from which protrude promissory notes and dishonoured bills. Aloft over his shoulder he bears a long boatpole from the hook of which the sodden huddled mass of his only son, saved from Liffey waters, hangs from the slack of its breeches. A hobgoblin in the image of Punch Costello, hipshot, crookbacked, hydrocephalic, prognathic with receding forehead and Ally Sloper nose, tumbles in somersaults through the gathering darkness.)

No!

(Ragged barefoot newsboys, jogging a wagtail kite, patterpast, yelling.)

FLORRY

THE NEWSBOYS

(Offended.) Well, it was in the papers about Anti christ. O, my foot's tickling.

ZOE

FLORRY

ALL

(A female tepid effluvium leaks out from her. Nebulous obscurity occupies space. Through the drifting fog without the gramophone blares over coughs and feetshuffling.)

THE HOBGOBLIN

(His jaws chattering, capers to and fro, goggling his eyes, squeaking, kangaroohopping, with outstretched clutching arms, then all at once thrusts his lipless face through the fork of his thighs.) Il vient! C'est moi! L'homme qui rit! L'homme primigene! (He whirls round and round with dervish howls.) Sieurs et dames, faites vos jeux! (He crouches juggling. Tiny roulette planets fly from his hands.) Les jeux son! faits! (The planets rush together, uttering crepitant cracks.) Rien n'va plus. (The planets, buoyant balloons, sail swollen up and away. He springs off into vacuum.)

FLORRY

Jerusalem! Open your gates and sing Hosanna…

What?

(Sinking into torpor, crosses herself secretly.) The end of the world!

(A rocket rushes up the sky and bursts. A white star falls from it, proclaiming the consummation of all things and second coming of Elijah. Along an infinite invisible tight-rope taut from zenith to nadir the End of the World, a two headed octopus in gillies kilts, busby and tartan filibegs, whirls through the murk, head over heels, in the fob of the Three Lugs of Man.)

THE GRAMOPHONE

(With a Scotch accent.) Wha'll dance the keel row, the keel row, the keel row?

(Over the passing drift and choking breathcoughs, Elijah's voice, harsh as a corncrakes, jars on high. Perspiring in a loose lawn surplice with funnel sleeves he is seen, vergefaced above a rostrum about which the banner of old glory is draped. He thumps the parapet.)

ELIJAH

THE END OF THE WORLD

No yapping, if you please, in this booth. Jake Crane, Creole Sue, Dave Campbell, Abe Kirschner, do your coughing with your mouths shut. Say, I am operating all this trunk line. Boys, do it now. God's time is 12.25. Tell mother you'll be there. Rush your order and you play a slick ace. Join on right here! Book through to eternity junction, the nonstop run. Just one word more. Are you a god or a doggone clod? If the second advent came to Coney Island are we ready? Florry Christ, Stephen Christ, Zoe Christ, Bloom Christ, Kitty Christ, Lynch Christ, it's up to you to sense that cosmic force. Have we cold feet about the cosmos? No. Be on the side of the angels. Be a prism. You have that something within, the higher self. You can rub shoulders with a Jesus, a Gautama, an Ingersoll. Are you all in this vibration? I say you are. You once nobble that, congregation, and a buck joyride to heaven becomes a back number. You got me? It's a lifebrightener, sure. The hottest stuff ever was. It's the whole pie with jam in. It's just the cutest snappiest line out. It is immense, supersumptuous. It restores. It vibrates. I know and I am some vibrator. Joking apart and getting down to bedrock, A. J. Christ Dowie and the harmonial philosophy, have you got that? O. K. Seventyseven west sixtyninth street. Got me? That's it. You call me up by sunphone any old time. Bumboosers, save your stamps. (He shouts.) Now then our glory song. All join heartily in the singing. Encore! (He sings.) Jeru…

THE GRAMOPHONE

(Drowning his voice.) Whorusalaminyour highhohhhh.

THE THREE' WHORES

(Covering their ears, squawk.) Ahhkkk!

ELIJAH

KITTY-KATE

(The disc rasps gratingly against the needle.)

(In rolledup shirtsleeves, black in the face, shouts at the top of his voice, his arms uplifted.) Big Brother up there, Mr President, you hear what I done just been saying to you. Certainly, I sort of believe strong in you, Mr President. I certainly am thinking now Miss Higgins and Miss Ricketts got religion way inside them. Certainly seems to me I don't never see no wusser scared female than the way you been, Miss Florry, just now as I done seed you. Mr President, you come long and help me save our sisters dear. (He winks at his audience.) Our Mr President, he twig the whole lot and he ain't saying nothing.

I forgot myself. In a weak moment I erred and did what I did on Constitution hill. I was confirmed by the bishop. My mother's sister married a Montmorency. It was a working plumber was my ruination when I was pure.

FLORRY-TERESA

STEPHEN

(The beatitudes, Dixon, Madden, Crotthers, Costello, Lenehan, Bannon, Mulligan and Lynch in white surgical students' gowns, four abreast, goosestepping, tramp fast past in noisy marching.)

THE BEATITUDES

It was in consequence of a portwine beverage on top of Hennessy's three stars I was guilty with Whelan when he slipped into the bed.

(Incoherently.) Beer beef battledog buybull businum barnum buggerum bishop.

In the beginning was the word, in the end the world without end. Blessed be the eight beatitudes.

I let him larrup it into me for the fun of it.

(In quakergrey kneebreeches and broadbrimmed hat, says discreetly.) He is our friend. I need not mention names. Seek thou the light.

(He corantos by. Best enters in hairdresser attire, shinily laundered, his locks in curlpapers. He leads John Eglinton who wears a mandarin's kimono of Nankeen yellow, lizard-lettered, and a high pagoda hat.)

(Smiling, lifts the hat and displays a shaven poll from the crown of which bristles a pigtail toupee tied with an orange topknot.) I was just beautifying him, don't you know. A thing of beauty, don't you know. Yeats says, or I mean, Keats says. (Produces a greencapped dark lantern and flashes it towards a corner; with carping accent.) Esthetics and cosmetics are for the boudoir. I am out for truth. Plain truth for a plain man. Tanderagee wants the facts and means to get them.

LYSTER

ZOE-FANNY

BEST

(With a voice of waves.) Aum! Hek! Wal! Ak! Lub! Mor! Ma! White yoghin of the Gods. Occult pimander of Hermes Trismegistos. (With a voice of whistling seawind.) Punarjanam patsypunjaub! I won't have my leg pulled. It has been said by one: beware the left, the cult of Shakti. (With a cry of stormbirds.) Shakti, Shiva! Dark hidden Father! (He smites with his bicycle pump the crayfish in his left hand. On its co-operative dial glow the twelve signs of the zodiac. He wails with the vehemence of the ocean.) Aum! Baum! Pyjaum! I am the light of the homestead, I am the dreamery creamery butter.

MANANAAN MACLIR

(In the cone of the search light behind the coalscuttle, ollave, holyeyed, the bearded figure of Mananaan MacLir broods, chin on knees. He rises slowly. A cold seawind blows from his druid mantle. About his head writhe eels and elvers. He is encrusted with weeds and shells. His right hand holds a bicycle pump. His left hand grasps a huge crayfish by its two talons.)

(A skeleton judas hand strangles the light. The green light wanes to mauve. The gasjet wails whistling.)

(Makes sheep's eyes.) No? You wouldn't do a less thing. Would you suck a lemon?

THE GASJET

ZOE

Who has a fag as I'm here?

(Tossing a cigarette on to the table.) Here.

Pooah! Pfuiiiiii!

LYNCH

(Her head perched aside in mock pride.) Is that the way to hand the pot to a lady? (She stretches up to light the cigarette over the flame, twirling it slowly, showing the brown tufts of her armpits. Lynch with his poker lifts boldly a side of her slip. Bare from her garters up her flesh appears under the sapphire a nixie's green. She puffs calmly at her cigarette.) Can you see the beauty spot of my behind?

LYNCH

ZOE

ZOE

(Zoe runs to the chandelier and, crooking her leg, adjusts the mantle.)

I'm not looking.

(Squinting in mock shame she glances with sidelong meaning at Bloom, then twists round towards him, pulling her slip free of the poker. Blue fluid again flows over her flesh. Bloom stands, smiling desirously, twirling his thumbs. Kitty Ricketts licks her middle finger with her spittle and gazing in the mirror, smooths both eyebrows. Lipoti Virag, basilicogrammate, chutes rapidly down through the chimneyflue and struts two steps to the left on gawky pink stilts. He is sausaged into several overcoats and wears a brown macintosh under which he holds a roll of parchment. In his left eye flashes the monocle of Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell. On his head is perched an Egyptian pshent. Two quills project over his ears.)

VIRAG

BLOOM

(Heels together bows.) My name is Virag Lipoti, of Szombathely. (He coughs thoughtfully, drily.) Promiscuous nakedness is much in evidence hereabouts, eh? Inadvertently her backview revealed the fact that she is not wearing those rather intimate garments of which you are a particular devotee. The injection mark on the thigh I hope you perceived? Good.

Number two on the other hand, she of the cherry rouge and coiffeuse white, whose hair owes not a little to our tribal elixir of gopherwood, is in walking costume and tightly staysed by her sit, I should opine. Backbone in front, so to say. Correct me but I always understood that the act so performed by skittish humans with glimpses of lingerie appealed to you in virtue of its exhibitionististicicity. In a word. Hippogriff. Am I right?

VIRAG

Granpapachi. But…

VIRAG

(Not unpleasantly.) Absolutely! Well observed and those pannier pockets of the skirt and slightly pegtop effect are devised to suggest bunchiness of hip. A new purchase at some monster sale for which a gull has been mulcted. Meretricious finery to deceive the eye. Observe the attention to details of dustspecks. Never put on you tomorrow what you can wear today. Parallax! (With a nervous twitch of his head.) Did you hear my brain go snap? Pollysyllabax!

BLOOM

She is rather lean.

BLOOM

(An elbow resting in a hand, a forefinger against his cheek.) She seems sad.

VIRAG

We can do you all brands, mild, medium and strong. Pay your money, take your choice. How happy could you be with either…

(Regretfully.) When you come out without your gun.

(His tongue upcurling.) Lyum! Look. Her beam is broad. She is coated with quite a considerable layer of fat. Obviously mammal in weight of bosom you remark that she has in front well to the fore two protuberances of very respectable dimensions, inclined to fall in the noonday soupplate, while on her rere lower down are two additional protuberances, suggestive of potent rectum and tumescent for palpation which leave nothing to be desired save compactness. Such fleshy parts are the product of careful nurture. When coopfattened their livers reach an elephantine size. Pellets of new bread with fennygreek and gumbenjamin swamped down by potions of green tea endow them during their brief existence with natural pincushions of quite colossal blubber. That suits your book, eh? Fleshhotpots of Egypt to hanker after. Wallow in it. Lycopodium. (His throat twitches.) Slapbang! There he goes again.

(Cynically, his weasel teeth bared yellow, draws down his left eye with a finger and barks hoarsely.) Hoax! Beware of the flapper and bogus mournful. Lily of the alley. All possess bachelor's button discovered by Rualdus Colombus. Tumble her. Columble her. Chameleon. (More genially.) Well then, permit me to draw your attention to item number three. There is plenty of her visible to the naked eye. Observe the mass of oxygenated vegetable matter on her skull. What ho, she bumps! The ugly duckling of the party, longcasted and deep in keel.

BLOOM

VIRAG

VIRAG

BLOOM

With?…

VIRAG

The stye I dislike.

BLOOM

BLOOM

(Arches his eyebrows.) Contact with a goldring, they say. Argumentum ad feminam, as we said in old Rome and ancient Greece in the consulship of Diplodocus and Ichthyo saurus. For the rest Eve's sovereign remedy. Not for sale. Hire only. Huguenot. (He twitches.) It is a funny sound. (He coughs encouragingly.) But possibly it is only a wart. I presume you shall have remembered what I will have taught you on that head? Wheatenmeal with honey and nutmeg.

(Reflecting.) Wheatenmeal with lycopodium and syllabax. This searching ordeal. It has been an unusually fatiguing day, a chapter of accidents. Wait. I mean, wartsblood spreads warts, you said.

BLOOM

VIRAG

Rosemary also did I understand you to say or will power over parasitic tissues. Then nay no I have an inkling. The touch of a deadhand cures. Mnemo?

(Severely, his nose hardhumped, his side eye winking.) Stop twirling your thumbs and have a good old thunk. See, you have forgotten. Exercise your mnemotechnic. La causa è santa. Tara. Tara. (Aside.) He will surely remember.

(Excitedly.) I say so. I say so. E'en so. Technic. (He taps his parchmentroll energetically.) This book tells you how to act with all descriptive particulars. Consult index for agitated fear of aconite, melancholy of muriatic, priapic pulsatilla. Virag is going to talk about amputation. Our old friend caustic. They must be starved. Snip off with horsehair under the denned neck. But, to change the venue to the Bulgar and the Basque, have you made up your mind whether you like or dislike women in male habiliments? (With a dry snigger.) You intended to devote an entire year to the study of the religious problem and the summer months of 1882 to square the circle and win that million. Pomegranate! From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step. Pyjamas, let us say? Or stockingette gusseted knickers, closed? Or, put we the case, those complicated combinations, camiknickers? (He crows derisively.) Keekeereekee!

VIRAG

(Bloom surveys uncertainly the three whores, then gazes at the veiled mauve light, hearing the everflying moth.)

BLOOM

I wanted then to have now concluded. Nightdress was never. Hence this. But tomorrow is a new day will be. Past was is today. What now is will then tomorrow as now was be past yester.

VIRAG

(Prompts into his ear in a pig's whisper.) Insects of the day spend their brief existence in reiterated coition, lured by the smell of the inferiorly pulchritudinous female possessing extendified pudendal verve in dorsal region. Pretty Poll! (His yellow parrotbeak gabbles nasally.) They had a proverb in the Carpathians in or about the year five thousand five hundred and fifty of our era. One tablespoonful of honey will attract friend Bruin more than half a dozen barrels of first choice malt vinegar. Bear's buzz bothers bees. But of this apart. At another time we may resume. We were very pleased, we others. (He coughs and, bending his brow, rubs his nose thoughtfully with a scooping hand.) You shall find that these night insects follow the light. An illusion for remember their complex unadjustable eye. For all these knotty points see the seventeenth book of my Fundamentals of Sexology or the Love Passion which Doctor L. B. says is the book sensation of the year. Some, to example, there are again whose movements are automatic. Perceive. That is his appropriate sun. Nightbird nightsun nighttown. Chase me, Charley! Buzz!

Bee or bluebottle too other day butting shadow on wall dazed self then me wandered dazed down shirt good job I…

BLOOM

(His face impassive, laughs in a rich feminine key.) Splendid! Spanish fly in his fly or mustard plaster on his dibble. (He gobbles gluttonously with turkey wattles.) Bubbly jock! Bubbly jock! Where are we? Open Sesame! Cometh forth! (He unrolls his parchment rapidly and reads, his glowworm's nose running backwards over the letters which he claws.) Stay, good friend. I bring thee thy answer Redbank oysters will shortly be upon us. I'm the best o'cook. Those succulent bivalves may help us and the truffles of Perigord, tubers dislodged through mister omnivorous porker, were unsurpassed in cases of nervous debility or viragitis. Though they stink yet they sting. (He wags head with cackling raillery.) Jocular. With my eyeglass in my ocular.

(Absently.) Ocularly woman's bivalve case is worse. Always open sesame. The cloven sex. Why they fear vermin, creeping things. Yet Eve and the serpent contradict. Not a historical fact. Obvious analogy to my idea. Serpents too are gluttons for woman's milk. Wind their way through miles of omnivorous forest to sucksucculent her breast dry. Like those bubblyjocular Roman matrons one reads of in Elephantuliasis.

BLOOM

VIRAG

I am going to scream. I beg your pardon. Ah? So. (He repeats.) Spontaneously to seek out the saurian's lair in order to entrust their teats to his avid suction. Ant milks aphis. (Profoundly.) Instinct rules the world. In life. In death.

BLOOM

(Head askew, arches his back and hunched wing- shoulders, peers at the moth out of blear bulged eyes, points a homing claw and cries.) Who's Ger Ger? Who's dear Gerald? O, I much fear he shall be most badly burned. Will some pleashe pershon not now impediment so catastrophics mit agitation of firstclass tablenumpkin? (He mews.) Luss puss puss puss! (He sighs, draws back and stares sideways down with dropping underjaw.) Well, well. He doth rest anon.

Round and round a ringaring.

Ever flying in the spring

VIRAG

VIRAG

I'm a tiny tiny thing

(His mouth projected in hard wrinkles, eyes stonily forlornly closed, psalms in outlandish monotone.) That the cows with their those distended udders that they have been the known…

Now I do this kind of thing

Long ago I was a king,

On the wing, on the wing!

Bing!

(He rushes against the mauve shade flapping noisily.) Pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty petticoats.

(In a low dulcet voice, touching the strings of his guitar.) There is a flower that bloometh.

HENRY

(To himself.) Play with your eyes shut. Imitate pa. Filling my belly with husks of swine. Too much of this. I will arise and go to my. Expect this is the. Steve, thou art in a parlous way. Must visit old Deasy or telegraph. Our interview of this morning has left on me a deep impression. Though our ages. Will write fully tomorrow. I'm partially drunk, by the way. (He touches the keys again.) Minor chord comes now. Yes. Not much however.

(Virag truculent, his jowl set, stares at the lamp. Grave Bloom regards Zoe's neck. Henry gallant turns with pendent dewlap to the piano.)

(From left upper entrance with two sliding steps Henry Flower comes forward to left front centre. He wears a dark mantle and drooping plumed sombrero. He carries a silverstringed inlaid dulcimer and a longstemmed bamboo Jacobs pipe, its clay bowl fashioned as a female head. He wears dark velvet hose and silverbuckled pumps. He has the romantic Saviour's face with flowing locks, thin beard and moustache. His spindlelegs and sparrow feet are those of the tenor Mario, prince of Candia. He settles down his goffered ruffs and moistens his lips with a passage of his amorous tongue.)

STEPHEN

PHILIP DRUNK

(His lawnmower begins to purr.) Aha, yes. Zoe mou sas agapo. Have a notion I was here before. When was it not Atkinson his card I have somewhere? Mac somebody. Unmack I have it. He told me about, hold on, Swinburne, was it, no?

Ci rifletta. Lei rovina tutto.

STEPHEN

FLORRY

(Smirking.) The bird that can sing and won't sing.

No voice. I am a most finished artist. Lynch, did I show you the letter about the lute?

Take a fool's advice. All is not well. Work it out with the buttend of a pencil, like a good young idiot. Three pounds twelve you got, two notes, one sovereign, two crowns, if youth but knew. Mooney's en ville, Mooney's sur mer, the Moira, Larchet's, Holles street hospital, Burke's. Eh? I am watching you.

PHILIP SOBER

FLORRY

(Almidano Artifoni holds out a batonroll of music with vigorous moustachework.)

(The Siamese twins, Philip Drunk and Philip Sober two Oxford dons with lawnmowers, appear in the window embrasure. Both are masked with Matthew Arnold's face.)

ARTIFONI

Sing us something. Love's old sweet song.

(Impatiently.) Ah, bosh, man. Go to hell! I paid my way. If I could only find out about octaves. Reduplication of personality. Who was it told me his name?

Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.

STEPHEN

Out of it now. (To himself.) Clever.

(Their lawnmowers purring with a rigadoon of grasshalms.) Clever ever. Out of it. Out of it. By the by have you the book, the thing, the ashplant? Yes, there it, yes. Cleverever outofitnow. Keep in condition. Do like us.

VIRAG

Perfectly logical from his standpoint. Fall of man. (Harshly, his pupils waxing.) To hell with the pope! Nothing new under the sun. I am the Virag who disclosed the sex secrets of monks and maidens. Why I left the Church of Rome. Read the Priest, the Woman and the Confessional. Penrose. Flipperty Jippert. (He wriggles.) Woman, undoing with sweet pudor her belt of rushrope, offers her allmoist yoni to man's lingam. Short time after man presents woman with pieces of jungle meat. Woman shows joy and covers herself with featherskins. Man loves her yoni fiercely with big lingam, the stiff one. (He cries.) Coactus volui. Then giddy woman will run about. Strong man grasps woman's wrist. Woman squeals, bites, spucks. Man, now fierce angry, strikes woman's fat yadgana. (He chases his tail.) Piffpaff! Popo! (He stops, sneezes.) Pchp! (He worries his butt.) Prrrrrht!

PHILIP DRUNK AND PHILIP SOBER

There was a priest down here two nights ago to do his bit of business with his coat buttoned up. You needn't try to hide, I says to him. I know you've a Roman collar.

And the song?

Are you out of Maynooth? You're like someone I knew once.

FLORRY

ZOE

FLORRY

STEPHEN

BLOOM

ZOE

(Spouts walrus smoke through her nostrils.) He couldn't get a connection. Only, you know, sensation. A dry rush.

(A diabolic rictus of black luminosity contracting his visage, cranes his scraggy neck forward. He lifts a mooncalf nozzle and howls.) Verfluchte Goim! He had a father, forty fathers. He never existed. Pig God! He had two left feet. He was Judas Iacchias, a Libyan eunuch, the pope's bastard. (He leans out on tortured forepaws, elbows bent rigid, his eye agonising in his flat skullneck and yelps over the mute world.) A son of a whore. Apocalypse.

BLOOM

Poor man!

And Mary Shortall that was in the lock with the pox she got from Jimmy Pidgeon in the blue caps had a child off him that couldn't swallow and was smothered with the convulsions in the mattress and we all subscribed for the funeral.

(Lightly.) Only for what happened him.

LYNCH

I hope you gave the good father a penance. Nine glorias for shooting a bishop.

(Gravely.) Qui vous a mis dans cette fichue position, Philippe?

VIRAG

ZOE

PHILIP DRUNK

How?

KITTY

(Agueshaken, profuse yellow spawn foaming over his bony epileptic lips.) She sold lovephiltres, whitewax, orange flower. Panther, the Roman centurion, polluted her with his genitories. (He sticks out a flickering phosphorescent scorpion tongue, his hand on his fork.) Messiah! He burst her tympanum. (With gibbering baboon's cries he jerks his hips in the cynical spasm.) Hik! Hek! Hak! Hok! Huk! Kok! Kuk!

LYNCH

PHILIP SOBER

VIRAG

FLORRY

LYNCH

(Gaily.) O, my dictionary.

ZOE

(Laughs.) And to such delights has Metchnikoff inoculated anthropoid apes.

Three wise virgins.

(Kitty unpins her hat and sets it down calmly, patting her henna hair. And a prettier, a daintier head of winsome curls was never seen on a whores shoulders. Lynch puts on her hat. She whips it off.)

(Nods.) Locomotor ataxy.

(Ben Jumbo Dollard, rubicund, musclebound, hairynostrilled, hugebearded, cabbageeared, shaggychested, shockmaned, fatpapped, stands forth, his loins and genitals tightened into a pair of black bathing bagslops.)

(Gaily.) C'était le sacré pigeon, Philippe.

BEN DOLLARD

THE VIRGINS

(Gushingly.) Big Ben! Ben MacChree!

A VOICE

(The virgins, Nurse Callan and Nurse Quigley, burst through the ringkeepers and the ropes and mob him with open arms.)

Hold that fellow with the bad breeches.

(Smites his thigh in abundant laughter.) Hold him now.

(Sloughing his skins, his multitudinous plumage moulting.) Rats! (He yawns; showing a coalblack throat and closes his jaws by an upward push of his parchment roll.) After having said which I took my departure. Farewell. Fare thee well. Dreck!

(Nakkering castanet bones in his huge padded paws, yodels jovially in base barreltone.) When love absorbs my ardent soul.

HENRY

(Henry Flower combs his moustache and beard rapidly with a pocketcomb and gives a cows lick to his hair. Steered by his rapier, he glides to the door his wild had slung behind him. Virag reaches the door in two ungainly stilthops, his tail cocked, and deftly claps sideways on the wall a pusyellow flybill, butting it with his head.)

VIRAG

(Caressing on his breast a severed female head, murmurs.) Thine heart, mine love. (He plucks his lutestrings.) When first I saw.

BEN POLLARD

(Devoutly.) And Sovereign Lord of all things.

STEPHEN

(His Eminence, Simon Stephen Cardinal Dedalus, Primate of all Ireland, appears in the doorway, dressed in red soutane, sandals and socks. Seven dwarf simian acolytes, also in red, cardinal sins, uphold his train, peeping under it. He wears a battered silk hat sideways on his head. His thumbs are stuck in his armpits and his palms outspread. Round his neck hangs a rosary of corks ending on his breast in a corkscrew cross. Releasing his thumbs, he invokes grace from on high with lace wave gestures and proclaims with bloated pomp.)

LYNCH

(Exeunt severally.)

K. 11. post no bills. Strictly confidential. Dr Hy Franks.

Quack!

(Over his shoulder to Zoe.) You would have preferred the fighting parson who founded the protestant error. But beware Antisthenes, the dog sage, and the last end of Anus Heresiarchus. The agony in the closet.

THE FLYBILL

HENRY

FLORRY

Cardinal sin. Monks of the screw.

All is lost now.

(Virag unscrews his head in a trice and holds it under his arm.)

(To Stephen.) I'm sure you are a spoiled priest. Or a monk.

VIRAG'S HEAD

LYNCH

He is. A Cardinal's son.

STEPHEN

STEPHEN

All one and the same God to her.

THE CARDINAL

Conservio lies captured.

He lies in the lowest dungeon

Weighing upwards of three tons.

(He looks at all for a moment, his right eye closed tight, his left cheek puffed out. Then, unable to repress his merriment, he rocks to and fro, ads akimbo, and sings with broad rollicking humour.) O, the poor little fellow Hi-hi-hi-hi-his legs they were yellow He was plump, fat and heavy and brisk as a snake But some bloody savage To graize his white cabbage He murdered Nell Flaherty's duckloving drake.

With manacles and chains around his limbs

(His head aslant, he blesses curtly with fore and middle fingers, imparts the Easter kiss and doubleshuffles off comically, swaying his hat from side to side, shrinking quickly to the size of his train bearers. The dwarf acolytes, giggling, peeping, nudging, ogling, Easterkissing, zigzag behind him. His voice is heard mellow from afar, merciful, male, melodious.) Shall carry my heart to thee, Shall carry my heart to thee, And the breath of the balmy night Shall carry my heart to thee.

(A multitude of midges swarms over his robe. He scratches himself with crossed arms at his ribs, grimacing, and exclaims.) I'm suffering the agony of the damned. By the hoky fiddle, thanks be to Jesus those funny little chaps are not unanimous. If they were they'd walk me off the face of the bloody globe.

Theeee.

(Tears open the silverfoil.) Fingers was made before forks. (She breaks off and nibbles a piece, gives a piece to Kitty Ricketts and then turns kittenishly to Lynch.) No objection to French lozenges? (He nods. She taunts him.) Have it now or wait till you get it? (He opens his mouth, his head cocked. She whirls the prize in left circle. His head follows. She whirls it back in right circle. He eyes her.) Catch.

ZOE

BLOOM

THE DOORHANDLE

(She tosses a piece. With an adroit snap he catches it and bites it through with a crack.)

(Hearing a male voice in talk with the whores on the doorstep, pricks his ears.) If it were he? After? Or because not? Or the double event?

The devil is in that door.

(Sniffs his hair briskly.) Hum. Thank your mother for the rabbits. I'm very fond of what I like.

ZOE

(The trick doorhandle turns.)

(A male form passes down the creaking staircase and is heard taking the waterproof and hat from the rack. Bloom starts forward involuntarily and, half closing the door as he passes, takes the chocolate from his pocket and offers it nervously to Zoe.)

ZOE

(A firm heelclacking is heard on the stairs.)

KITTY

BLOOM

(A male cough and tread are heard passing through the mist outside. Blooms features relax. He places a hand in his waistcoat, posing calmly. Zoe offers him chocolate.)

Do as you're bid. Here.

(Solemnly.) Thanks.

(Chewing.) The engineer I was with at the bazaar does have lovely ones. Full of the best liqueurs. And the viceroy was there with his lady. The gas we had on the Toft's hobbyhorses. I'm giddy still.

ZOE

BLOOM

BLOOM

(Takes the chocolate.) Aphrodisiac? But I thought it. Vanilla calms or? Mnemo. Confused light confuses memory. Red influences lupus. Colours affect women's characters, any they have. This black makes me sad. Eat and be merry for tomorrow. (He eats.) Influence taste too, mauve. But it is so long since I. Seems new. Aphro. That priest. Must come. Better late than never. Try truffles at Andrews.

(In Svengali's fur overcoat, with folded arms and Napoleonic forelock, frowns in ventriloquial exorcism with piercing eagle glance towards the door. Then, rigid, with left foot advanced, he makes a swift pass with impelling fingers and gives the sign of past master, drawing his right arm downwards from his left shoulder.) Go, go, go, I conjure you, whoever you are.

My word! I'm all of a mucksweat.

THE FAN

BLOOM

(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.)

BLOOM

THE FAN

(Half opening, then closing.) And the missus is master. Petticoat government.

BELLA

Yes. No.

BLOOM

(Flirting quickly, then slowly.) Married, I see.

Yes… Partly, I have mislaid.

(Looks down with a sheepish grin.) That is so.

THE FAN

(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.)

(Folding together, rests against her eardrop.) Have you forgotten me?

BLOOM

(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

THE FAN

THE FAN

(Wincing.) Powerful being. In my eyes read that slumber which women love.

(Tapping.) We have met. You are mine. It is fate.

(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!

THE FAN

BLOOM

BLOOM

(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.)

(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.

(Points downwards quickly.) You must.

(Points downwards slowly.) You may.

BLOOM

(Looks downwards and perceives her unfastened bootlace. ) We are observed.

THE FAN

RICHIE GOULDING

(Bagweighted, passes the door.) Mocking is catch. Best value in Dub. Fit for a prince's liver and kidney.

THE FAN

(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!

(Tapping.) All things end. Be mine. Now.

BLOOM

Smell my hot goathide. Feel my royal weight.

BLOOM

BLOOM

(Crosslacing.) Too tight?

THE HOOF

(With a hard basilisk stare, in a baritone voice.) Hound of dishonour!

BLOOM

(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.)

BELLO

BLOOM

THE HOOF

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!

(Mumbles.) Awaiting your further orders, we remain, gentlemen.

If you bungle, Handy Andy, I'll kick your football for you.

(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.

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

(Plaintively.) Hugeness!

(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.

BELLO

BELLO

BELLO

(With sinews semiflexed.) Magnificence.

(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.)

BLOOM

BLOOM

(His heavy cheekchops sagging.) Adorer of the adulterous rump!

Dungdevourer!

(Her eyes upturned in the sign of admiration, closing.) Truffles!

BELLO

(Infatuated.) Empress!

ZOE

(Hiding her with her gown.) She didn't mean it, Mr Bello. She'll be good, sir.

Don't be too hard on her, Mr Bello. Sure you won't, ma'amsir.

(Widening her slip to screen her.) She's not here.

(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.

(Enthralled, bleats.) I promise never to disobey.

(Closing her eyes.) She's not here.

BELLO

BLOOM

FLORRY

(Bloom creeps under the sofa and peers out through the fringe.

KITTY

(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.

BELLO

BLOOM

(Screams.) O, it's hell itself! Every nerve in my body aches like mad!

BLOOM

BELLO

(He twists her arm. Bloom squeaks, turning turtle.)

BLOOM

BELLO

BELLO

(Twisting.) Another!

(Fainting.) Don't tear my.

(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.

BLOOM

Don't be cruel, nurse! Don't!

(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?

BELLO

KITTY

No, me. Lend him to me.

ZOE

MRS KEOCH

I will. Don't be greedy.

Yes. Walk on him! I will.

BLOOM

BELLO

FLORRY

Hold him down, girls, till I squat on him.

(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.)

(Ferociously.) Can I help? (They hold and pinion Bloom.)

(Whimpers.) You're after hitting me. I'll tell…

(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.)

ZOE

BELLO

FLORRY

(Stifling.) Can't.

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.

(Pulling at Florry.) Me. Me. Are you not finished with him yet, suckeress?

BLOOM

(Pulls at Bello.) Let me on him now. You had enough. I asked before you.

BELLO

(Goaded, buttocksmothered.) O! O! Monsters! Cruel one!

BLOOM

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

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…

(Shrinks.) Silk, mistress said! O crinkly! scrapy! Must I tip-touch it with my nails?

BLOOM

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?

Miriam, Black. Demimondaine.

(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

BELLO

(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.

BLOOM

BLOOM

THE SINS OF THE PAST

(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.

(With wicked glee.) Beautiful! Give us a breather! When you took your seat with womanish care, lifting your billowy flounces, on the smoothworn throne.

BELLO

Science. To compare the various joys we each enjoy. (Earnestly.) And really it's better the position… because often I used to wet.

(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

(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.

BELLO

(Bows.) Master! Mistress! Mantamer!

(Docile, gurgles.) I rererepugnosed in rerererepugnant…

BLOOM

BLOOM

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…!

(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.

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

Don't ask me. Our mutual faith. Pleasants street. I only thought the half of the… I swear on my sacred oath…

(Imperiously.) O get out, you skunk! Hold your tongue! Speak when you're spoken to.

(He lifts his arms. His bangle bracelets fall.)

(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…)

BELLO

Thank you, mistress.

BLOOM

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!

VOICES

(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 blasé 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.

A DARKVISAGED MAN

A florin!

Must be virgin. Good breath. Clean.

CHARLES ALBERTA MARSH

(Dillon's lacquey rings his handbell.)

(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 VOICE

A BIDDER

Barang!

BELLO

One and eightpence too much.

BELLO

(In disguised accent.) Hoondert punt sterlink.

THE LACQUEY

(Subdued.) For the Caliph Haroun Al Raschid.

BLOOM

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?

(Bends his blushing face into his armpit and simpers with forefinger in mouth.) O, I know what you're hinting at now.

BLOOM

Eccles Street.

BELLO

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!

MILLY

(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.

(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.)

To drive me mad! Moll! I forgot! Forgive! Moll!… We… Still…

BLOOM

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.

(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.

SLEEPY HOLLOW

BLOOM

BELLO

BELLO

Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!

(Old Sleepy Hollow calls over the wold.)

(Laughs mockingly.) That's your daughter, you owl, with a Mullingar student.

BELLO

My! It's Papli! But. O Papli, how old you've grown!

BLOOM

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.

BELLO

BLOOM

(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.

They… I

Ten and six. The act of low scoundrels. Let me go. I will return. I will prove…

Swear!

A VOICE

BELLO

(Bloom clenches his fists and crawls forward, a bowie knife between his teeth.)

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.

Justice! All Ireland versus one! Has nobody…?

BLOOM

BELLO

(He bites his thumb.)

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, 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.)

(Sneers.) Crybabby! Crocodile tears!

(Clasps his head.) My will power! Memory! I have sinned! I have suff… (He weeps tearlessly.)

BLOOM

THE CIRCUMCISED

BELLO

(In a dark guttural chant as they cast dead sea fruit upon him, no flowers.) Shema Israel Adonai Elohenu Adonai Echad.

VOICES

(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.)

(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.

THE YEWS

(Softly.) Mortal! (Kindly.) Nay, dost not weepest!

THE NYMPH

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

THE NYMPH

BLOOM

(Lifts a turtle head towards her lap.) We have met before. On another star.

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.

(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.

(Their leaves whispering.) Sister. Our sister. Ssh.

During dark nights I heard your praise.

THE NYMPH

(Covers her face with her hand.) What have I not seen in that chamber? What must my eyes look down on?

THE NYMPH

BLOOM

(Her fingers in her ears.) And words. They are not in my dictionary.

You mean Photo Bits?

(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.

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.

Ssh.

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.

THE NYMPH

BLOOM

THE YEWS

You understood them?

BLOOM

JOHN WYSE NOLAN

THE YEWS

BLOOM

(Mingling their boughs.) Listen. Whisper. She is right, our sister. We grew by Poulaphouca waterfall. We gave shade on languorous summer days.

THE YEWS

(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.

(Apologetically.) I know. Soiled personal linen, wrong side up with care. The quoits are loose. From Gibraltar by long sea, long ago.

(The sound of a waterfall is heard in bright cascade.)

(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.

(In the background, in Irish National For ester's uniform, doffs his plumed hat.) Prosper! Give shade on languorous days, trees of Ireland!

THE NYMPH

BLOOM

THE WATERFALL

Poulaphouca Poulaphouca

Poulaphouca Poulaphouca.

(Murmuring.) Who came to Poulaphouca with the high school excursion? Who left his nutquesting classmates to seek our shade?

BLOOM

(Bends her head.) Worse! Worse!

THE NYMPH

THE HALCYON DAYS

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 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?

Poulaphouca Poulaphouca

THE YEWS

THE WATERFALL

(Coyly through parting fingers.) There! In the open air?

(Sweeping downward.) Sister, yes. And on our virgin sward.

(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 NYMPH

THE ECHO

Mackerel! Live us again. Hurray!(They cheer.)

Phoucaphouca Phoucaphouca.

Fool!

(Staggering Bob, a whitepolled calf thrusts a ruminating head with humid nostrils through the foliage.)

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?

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 NANNYGOAT

Me. Me see.

(High on Ben Howth through rhododendrons a nannygoat passes, plumpuddered, buttytailed, dropping curvants.)

(With wide fingers.) O! Infamy!

Simply satisfying a need. (With pathos.) No girl would when I went girling. Too ugly. They wouldn't play.

BLOOM

BLOOM

(Bleats.) Megegaggegg! Nannannanny!

STAGGERING BOB

(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.)

THE NYMPH

In my presence. The powderpuff. (She blushes and makes a knee.) And the rest.

(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…?

(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…

THE NYMPH

Bbbbblllllbbblblodschbg?

(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.

BLOOM

THE DUMMYMUMMY

BLOOM

COUNCILLOR NANNETI

Done. Prff.

(Figures wind serpenting in slow woodland pattern around the treestems, cooeeing.)

THE WATERFALL

THE VOICE OF FLORRY

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.

Here.

(From the thicket.) Came from a hot place.

THE VOICE OF VIRAG

(A grouse wings clumsily through the underwood.)

THE VOICE OF LYNCH

THE VOICE OF ZOE

(In the thicket.) Whew! Piping hot!

(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…?

THE VOICE OF KITTY

(In the thicket.) Show us one of them cushions.

(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

BLOOM

Ssh! Sister, speak!

O Leopold lost the pin of his drawers

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.

(Their silverfoil of leaves precipitating, their skinny arms ageing and swaying.) Deciduously!

To keep it up.

(Bloom half rises. His back trousers button snaps.)

(Two sluts of the Coombe dance rainily by, shawled, yelling flatly.)

Phillaphulla Poulaphouca

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!

(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 BUTTON

BLOOM

To keep it up,

Poulaphouca Poulaphouca.

He didn't know what to do,

THE NYMPH

THE YEWS

THE YEWS

Bip!

BLOOM

BLOOM

THE NYMPH

(With a cry, flees from him unveiled, her plaster cast cracking, a cloud of stench escaping from the cracks.) Poli…!

(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.

(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 figure of Bella Cohen stands before him.)

ZOE

BELLA

(Turns to the piano.) Which of you was playing the dead march from Saul?

BELLA

BLOOM

BLOOM

I know you, canvasser! Dead cod!

(Composed, regards her.) Passée. 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

You'll know me the next time.

(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.

I saw him, kipkeeper! Pox and gleet vendor!

BELLA

BLOOM

(Contemptuously.) You're not game, in fact. (Her sowcunt barks.) Fohracht!

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.

To have or not to have, that is the question.

You'll say you don't know

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.

(Gently.) Give me back that potato, will you? Zoe Forfeits, a fine thing and a superfine thing.

ZOE

(With feeling.) It is nothing, but still a relic of poor mamma.

(Kitty disconcerted coats her teeth with the silver paper. Bloom approaches Zoe.)

(She goes to the pianola. Stephen fumbles in his pocket and, taking out a banknote by its corner, hands it to her.)

BELLA

BLOOM

STEPHEN

ZOE

(Frowns.) Here. This isn't a musical peepshow. And don't you smash that piano. Who's paying here?

(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 où tenons nostre état.

There is a memory attached to it. I should like to have it.

BLOOM

God'll send you down below.

BLOOM

God'll ask you where is that

Give a thing and take it back

STEPHEN

(Hands Bella a coin.) Gold. She has it.

(Strives heavily to rise.) Ow! My foot's asleep. (She limps over to the table. Bloom approaches.)

(Calls from the hearth.) Dedalus! Give her your blessing for me.

(Delightedly.) A hundred thousand apologies. (He fumbles again and takes out and hands her two crowns.) Permit, brevi manu, my sight is somewhat troubled.

(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.

(Looks at the money, then at Zoe, Florry and Kitty.) Do you want three girls? It's ten shillings here.

FLORRY

LYNCH

(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.)

BELLA

STEPHEN

BELLA, ZOE. KITTY, LYNCH, BLOOM

STEPHEN

BLOOM

FLORRY

(At the pianola, making a gesture of abhorrence.) No bottles! What, eleven? A riddle.

(Admiringly.) You're such a slyboots, old cocky. I could kiss you.

And me?

(Points.) Hum? Deep as a drawwell. (Lynch bends Kitty back over the sofa and kisses her. Bloom goes with the poundnote to Stephen.)

STEPHEN

STEPHEN

Wait. (She clutches the two crowns.)

LYNCH

The fox crew, the cocks flew, The bells in heaven Were striking eleven. 'Tis time for her poor soul To get out of heaven.

(Lifting Kitty from the table.) Come!

BELLA

Hoopla! (He lifts her carries her and bumps her down on the sofa.)

STEPHEN

(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.

BLOOM

LYNCH

ZOE

KITTY

ZOE

This is yours.

(Lifting up her pettigown and folding a half sovereign into the top of her stocking.) Hard earned on the flat of my back.

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.

No, but…

BLOOM

(Hands him all his coins.) Be just before you are generous.

STEPHEN

(Stooping, picks up and hands a box of matches.) This.

BLOOM

STEPHEN

BLOOM

STEPHEN

LYNCH

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.

BLOOM

(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.)

Lucifer. Thanks.

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.

Doesn't matter a rambling damn.

(Quietly.) You had better hand over that cash to me to take care of. Why pay more?

STEPHEN

STEPHEN

(Watching him.) You would have a better chance of lighting it if you held the match nearer.

ZOE

STEPHEN

(Extends his hand to her smiling and chants to the air of the bloodoath in the Dusk of the Gods.)

It was a commercial traveller married her and took her away with him.

(Nods.) Mr Lambe from London.

STEPHEN

(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.)

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.

(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.

Lamb of London, who takest away the sins of our world.

ZOE

BLOOM

Fragende Frau,

Don't smoke. You ought to eat. Cursed dog I met. (To Zoe.) You have nothing?

Hangende Hunger,

LYNCH

ZOE

Is he hungry?

FLORRY

Macht uns alle kaput.

(Murmurs.) Continue. Lie. Hold me. Caress. I never could read His handwriting except His criminal thumbprint on the haddock.

LYNCH

ZOE

What day were you born?

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 from the pianola coffin.)

Now, Father Dolan! Now. I'm sure that Stephen is a very good little boy.

(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.)

DON JOHN CONMEE

(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.)

ZOE

Thursday. Today.

(Examining Stephen's palm.) Woman's hand.

Thursday's child has far to go. (She traces lines on his hand.) Line of fate. Influential friends.

(Laughing, slaps Kitty behind twice.) Like that. Pandy bat.

Sheet lightning courage. The youth who could not shiver and shake. (To Zoe.) Who taught you palmistry?

FATHER DOLAN

LYNCH

STEPHEN

STEPHEN

ZOE

ZOE

Mount of the moon. You'll meet with a… (She peers at his hands abruptly.) I won't tell you what's not good for you. Or do you want to know?

BLOOM

Wrong.

STEPHEN

BLACK LIZ

(Pointing.) Imagination.

BELLA

BLOOM

(Black Liz, a huge rooster hatching in a chalked circle, rises, stretches her wings and clucks.)

Gara. Klook. Klook. Klook. (She sidles from her newlaid egg and waddles off.)

(Detaches her fingers and offers his palm.) More harm than good. Here. Read mine.

(Peering at Bloom's palm.) Gridiron. Travels beyond the sea and marry money.

Show. (She turns up Bloom's hand.) I thought so. Knobby knuckles, for the women.

See? Moves to one great goal. I am twenty two too. Sixteen years ago I twentytwo tumbled, twentytwo years ago he sixteen fell off his hobbyhorse. (He winces.) Hurt my hand somewhere. Must see a dentist. Money?

FLORRY

ZOE

(Quickly.) O, I see. Short little finger. Henpecked husband. That wrong?

ZOE

I see, says the blind man. Tell us news.

ZOE

ZOE

BLOOM

(Points to his hand.) That weal there is an accident. Fell and cut it twenty-two years ago. I was sixteen.

(Zoe whispers to Florry. They giggle. Bloom releases his hand and writes idly on the table in backhand, pencilling slow curves.)

A good night's work.

THE BOOTS

(Jogging, mocks them with thumb and wriggling wormfingers.) Haw, haw, have you the horn?

LENEHAN

Ho! What do I here behold? Were you brushing the cobwebs off a few quims?

(To Florry.) Whisper.

ZOE

(Over the well of the car Blazes Boylan leans, his boater straw set sideways, a red flower in his mouth. Lenehan, in a yachtsman's cap and white shoes, officiously detaches a long hair from Blazes Boylan s shoulder.)

BOYLAN

LENEHAN

(Bronze by gold they whisper.)

FLORRY

BOYLAN

(Seated, smiles.) Plucking a turkey.

(A hackneycar number three hundred and twentyfour, with a gallantbuttocked mare, driven by James Barton, Harmony Avenue, Donnybrook, trots past. Blazes Boylan and Lenehan sprawl swaying on the sideseats. The Ormond boots crouches behind on the axle. Sadly over the crossblind Lydia Douce and Mina Kennedy gaze.)

What?

(They whisper again.)

(Smells gleefully.) Ah! Lobster and mayonnaise. Ah!

(Tosses him sixpence.) Here, to buy yourself a gin and splash. (He hangs his hat smartly on a peg of Bloom's antlered head.) Show me in. I have a little private business with your wife. You understand?

(bumps surely from the car and calls loudly for all to hear. ) Hello, Bloom! Mrs Bloom up yet?

ZOE AND FLORRY

BOYLAN

Thank you, sir. Yes, sir, Madam Tweedy is in her bath, sir.

MARION

(Laugh together.) Ha ha ha ha.

BLOOM

LENEHAN

(Zoe whispers to her.)

(In a flunkey's plum plush coat and kneebreeches, buff stockings and powdered wig.) I'm afraid not, sir, the last articles…

(A merry twinkle in his eye.) Topping!

BOYLAN

BOYLAN

BLOOM

He ought to feel himself highly honoured. (She plops splashing out of the water.) Raoul, darling, come and dry me. I'm in my pelt. Only my new hat and a carriage sponge.

BELLA

What? What is it?

(Holding up four thick bluntungulated fingers, winks.) Blazes Kate! Up to sample or your money back. (He holds out a forefinger.) Smell that.

Thank you, sir, I will, sir. May I bring two men chums to witness the deed and take a snapshot? (He holds an ointment jar.) Vaseline, sir? Orangeflower?… Lukewarm water?…

(Her eyes upturned.) O, it must be like the scent of geraniums and lovely peaches! O, he simply idolises every bit of her! Stuck together! Covered with kisses!

BELLA

LYDIA DOUCE

BLOOM

MINA KENNEDY

(To Bloom, over his shoulder.) You can apply your eye to the keyhole and play with yourself while I just go through her a few times.

MARION

BOYLAN

KITTY

(Florry whispers to her. Whispering lovewords murmur lip-lapping loudly, poppysmic plopslop.)

Let him look, the pishogue! Pimp! And scourge himself! I'll write to a powerful prostitute or Bartholomona, the bearded woman, to raise weals out on him an inch thick and make him bring me back a signed and stamped receipt.

(Her mouth opening.) Yumyum. O, he's carrying her round the room doing it! Ride a cock horse. You could hear them in Paris and New York. Like mouthfuls of strawberries and cream.

(Laughing.) Ho ho ho ho.

(From the sofa.) Tell us, Florry. Tell us. What.

(Stephen and Bloom gaze in the mirror. The face of William Shakespeare, beardless, appears there, rigid in facial paralysis, crowned by the reflection of the reindeer antlered hatrack in the hall.)

LYNCH

Before you're twice married and once a widower.

BLOOM

(In dignified ventriloquy.) 'Tis the loud laugh bespeaks the vacant mind. (To Bloom.) Thou thoughtest as how thou wastest invisible. Gaze. (He crows with a black capon's laugh.) Iagogo! How my Oldfellow chokit his Thursdaymomun. Iagogogo!

(Laughing.) Hee hee hee.

(Points.) The mirror up to nature. (He laughs.) Hu hu hu hu hu hu.

(His eyes wildly dilated, clasps himself) Show! Hide! Show! Plough her! More! Shoot!

KITTY

Ho ho! Ha ha! Hee hee!

(Hoarsely, sweetly rising to her throat.) O! Weeshwashtkissima, pooisthnapoohuck!

BOYLAN'S VOICE

(Smiles yellowly at the whores.) When will I hear the joke?

SHAKESPEARE

BELLA, ZOE, FLORRY. KITTY

MARION'S VOICE

BLOOM

ZOE

BLOOM

(Sweetly, hoarsely, in the pit of his stomach.) Ah! Gooblazqruk brukarchkrasht!

FREDDY

Lapses are condoned. Even the great Napoleon, when measurements were taken near the skin after his death…

(Mrs Dignam, widow woman, her snubnose and cheeks flushed with deathtalk, tears and Tunny's tawny sherry, hurries by in her weeds, her bonnet awry, rouging and powdering her cheeks, lips and nose, a pen chivvying her brood of cygnets. Beneath her skirt appear her late husband's everyday trousers and turnedup boots, lace eights. She holds a Scottish widow's insurance policy and lace marqueeumbrella under which her brood runs with her, Patsy hopping on one short foot, his collar loose, a hank of porksteaks dangling, Freddy whimpering, Susy with a crying cods mouth, Alice struggling with the baby. She cuffs them on, her streamers flaunting aloft.)

Ah, ma, you're dragging me along!

SUSY

Mamma, the beeftea is fizzing over!

(With paralytic rage.) Weda seca whokilla farst.

(The face of Martin Cunningham, bearded, refeatures Shakespeares beardless face. The marqueeumbrella sways drunkenly, the children run aside. Under the umbrella appears Mrs Cunningham in Merry Widow hat and kimono gown. She glides sidling and bowing, twisting japanesily.)

SHAKESPEARE

Et exaltabuntur cornua iusti. Queens lay with prize bulls. Remember Pasiphae for whose lust my grandoldgross father made the first confessionbox. Forget not Madam Grissel Steevens nor the suine scions of the house of Lambert. And Noah was drunk with wine. And his ark was open.

STEPHEN

Let him alone. He's back from Paris.

MARTIN CUNNINGHAM

None of that here. Come to the wrong shop.

LYNCH

BELLA

(Sings.) And they call me the jewel of Asia.

STEPHEN

(Runs to Stephen and links him.) O go on! Give us some parleyvoo.

(Pommelling on the sofa.) Rmm Rmm Rmm Rrr rrrmmmmm.

LYNCH

(Gobbles, with marionette jerks. ) Thousand places of entertainment to expenses your evenings with lovely ladies saling gloves and other things perhaps her heart beerchops perfect fashionable house very eccentric where lots cocottes beautiful dressed much about princesses like are dancing cancan and walking there parisian clowneries extra foolish for bachelors foreigns the same if talking a poor english how much smart they are on things love and sensations voluptuous. Misters very selects for is pleasure must to visit heaven and hell show with mortuary candles and they tears silver which occur every night. Perfectly shocking terrific of religion's things mockery seen in universal world. All chic womans which arrive full of modesty then disrobe and squeal loud to see vampire man debauch nun very fresh young with dessous troublants. (He clocks his tongue loudly.) Ho, la la! Ce pif qu'il a!

(Stephen claps hat on head and leaps over to the fireplace, where he stands with shrugged shoulders, finny hands outspread, a painted smile on his face.)

(Gazes on her impassive.) Immense! Most bloody awful demirep!

ZOE

MRS CUNNINGHAM

THE WHORES

Vive le vampire!

LYNCH

Bravo! Parleyvoo!

BELLA

STEPHEN

(Grimacing with head back, laughs loudly, clapping himself) Great success of laughing. Angels much prostitutes like and holy apostles big damn ruffians. Demimondaines nicely handsome sparkling of diamonds very amiable cos turned. Or do you are fond better what belongs they moderns pleasure turpitude of old mans? (He points about him with grotesque gestures which Lynch and the whores reply to.) Caoutchouc statue woman reversible or lifesize tompeeptoms virgins nudities very lesbic the kiss five ten times. Enter gentlemen to see in mirrors every positions trapezes all that machine there besides also if desire act awfully bestial butcher's boy pollutes in warm veal liver or omelette on the belly pièce de Shakespeare.

STEPHEN

(Clapping her belly, sinks back on the sofa with a shout of laughter.) An omelette on the… Ho! ho! ho! ho!… Omelette on the…

(Mincingly.) I love you, Sir darling. Speak you englishman tongue for double entente cordiale. O yes, mon loup. How much cost? Waterloo. Watercloset. (He ceases suddenly and holds up a forefinger.)

STEPHEN

FLORRY

Break my spirit, will he? O merde alors! (He cries, his vulture talons sharpened.) Hola! Hillyho!

(Approaching Stephen.) Look.

STEPHEN

THE WHORES

No, I flew. My foes beneath me. And ever shall be. World without end. (He cries.) Pater! Free!

LYNCH

Mark me. I dreamt of a watermelon.

(Laughing.) Encore! Encore!

(Laughing.) Omelette…

That's all right. (He swoops uncertainly through the air, wheeling, uttering cries of heartening, on strong ponderous buzzard wings.) Ho, boy! Are you going to win? Hoop! Pschatt! Stable with those halfcastes. Wouldn't let them within the bawl of an ass. Head up! Keep our flag flying! An eagle gules volant in a field argent displayed. Ulster king at arms! hai hoop! (He makes the beagle's call giving tongue.) Bulbul! Burblblbrurblbl! Hai, boy!

BLOOM

ZOE

BLOOM

(Simon Dedalus' voice hilloes in answer, somewhat sleepy but ready.)

(Extending his arms.) It was here. Street of harlots. In Serpentine Avenue Beelzebub showed me her, a fubsy widow. Where's the red carpet spread?

BELLA

SIMON

Go abroad and love a foreign lady.

I say, look…

STEPHEN

Dreams go by contraries.

STEPHEN

Across the world for a wife.

Card of the races. Racing card!

Tommy on the clay!

Sell the monkey!

Ten to one the field!

Tommy on the clay here!

Ten to one bar one.

(The fronds and spaces of the wallpaper file rapidly across country. A stout fox drawn from covert, brush pointed, having buried his grandmother, runs swift for the open, bright-eyed, seeking badger earth, under the leaves. The pack of staghounds follows, nose to the ground, sniffing their quarry, beaglebaying, burblbrblng to be blooded. Ward union huntsmen and huntswomen live with them, hot for a kill. From Six Mile Point, Flathouse, Nine Mile Stone follow the footpeople with knotty sticks, salmongaffs, lassos, flockmasters with stockwhips, bearbaiters with tomtoms, toreadors with bullswords, grey negroes waving torches. The crowd bowls of dicers, crown and anchor players, thimbleriggers, broadsmen. Crows and touts, hoarse bookies in high wizard hats clamour deafeningly.)

Sell the monkey, boys!

Ten to one bar one!

Try your luck on spinning Jenny!

Ten to one bar one.

THE CROWD

(A dark horse, riderless, bolts like a phantom past the winningpost, his mane moonfoaming, his eyeballs stars. The field follows, a bunch of bucking mounts. Skeleton horses: Sceptre, Maximum the Second, Zinfandel, the Duke of Westminsters Shotover, Repulse, the Duke of Beauforts' Ceylon, prix de Paris. Dwarfs ride them, rusty armoured, leaping, leaping in their saddles. Last in a drizzle of rain, on a broken-winded isabelle nag, Cock of the North, the favourite, honey cap, green jacket, orange sleeves, Garrett Deasy up, gripping the reins, a hockey stick at the ready. His nag, stumbling on whitegaitered feet, jogs along the rocky road.)

I'll give ten to one!

THE ORANGE LODGES

(Jeering.) Get down and push, mister. Last lap! You'll be home the night!

Ten to one bar one!

(A yoke of buckets leopards all over him and his rearing nag, a torrent of mutton broth with dancing coins of carrots, barley, onions, turnips, potatoes.)

(Bolt upright, his nailscraped face plastered with postage stamps, brandishes his hockeystick, his blue eyes flashing in the prism of the chandelier as his mount lopes by at a schooling gallop.) Per vias rectas!

GARRETT DEASY

(Turns the drumhandle.) There.

Hark! Our friend, noise in the street!

(Cracking his fingers impatiently.) Quick! Quick! Where's my augur's rod? (He runs to the piano and takes his ashplant, beating his foot in tripudium.)

THE GREEN LODGES

(Holds up her hand.) Stop!

PRIVATE CARR, PRIVATE COMPTON and CISSY CAFFREY

ZOE

STEPHEN

Soft day, sir John! Soft day, your honour!

ZOE

(Handing her coins.) Here.

LYNCH

(She drops two pennies in the slot. Glow pink and violet lights start forth. The drum turns purring in low hesitation waltz. Professor Goodwin, in a bowknotted periwig, in court dress, wearing a stained inverness cape, bent in two from incredible age, totters across the room, his hands fluttering. He sits tinily on the piano stool and lifts and beats handless sticks of arms on the keyboard, nodding with damsels grace, his bowknot bobbing.)

STEPHEN

Who'll.

BLOOM

Yorkshire relish for…

That's me. (She claps her hands.) Dance! Dance! (She runs to the pianola.) Who has twopence?

ZOE

Yet I've a sort a

(Private Carr, Private Compton and Cissy Caffrey pass beneath the windows, singing in discord.)

(Twirls around herself heeltapping.) Dance. Anybody here for there? Who'll dance?

ZOE

(The pianola, with changing lights, plays in waltz time the prelude to My Girl's a Yorkshire Girl. Stephen throws his ashplant on the table and seizes Zoe around the waist. Florry and Bella push the table towards the fireplace. Stephen, aiming Zoe with exaggerated grace, begins to waltz her around the room. Her sleeve, falling from gracing arms, reveals a white fleshflower of vaccination. Bloom stands aside. Between the curtains, Professor Maginni inserts a leg on the toepoint of which spins a silk hat. With a deft kick, he sends it spinning to his crown and jauntyhatted skates in. He wears a slate frockcoat with claret silk lapels, a go-et of cream tulle, a green lowcut waistcoat, stock collar with white kerchief tight lavender trousers, patent pumps and canary gloves. In his buttonhole is a dahlia. He twirls in reversed directions a clouded cane, then wedges it tight in his oxter. He places a hand limply on his breastbone, bows and fondles his flower and buttons.)

The poetry of motion, art of callisthenics. No connection with Madam Legget Byrne's or Levinstone's. Fancy dress balls arranged. Deportment. The Katty Lanner steps. So. Watch me! My terpsichorean abilities. (He minuets forward three paces on tripping bee's feet.) Tout le monde an avant! Révérence! Tout le monde en place!

Two young fellows were talking about their girls, girls, girls, Sweethearts they'd left behind.

THE PIANOLA

MAGINNI

(From a corner the morning hours run out, goldhaired, slim, in girlish blue, waspwaisted, with innocent hands. Nimbly they dance, twirling their skipping ropes. The hours of noon follow in amber gold. Laughing linked, high haircombs flashing, they catch the sun in mocking mirrors, lifting their arms.)

(The prelude ceases. Professor Goodwin, beating vague arms, shrivels, shrinks, his live cape falling about the stool. The air, in firmer waltz time, pounds. Stephen and Zoe circle freely. The lights change, glow, fade, gold, rose, violet.)

(Clipclaps glovesilent hands.) Carré! Avant deux! Breathe evenly! Balance!

MAGINNI

Heigho! Heigho!

ZOE

My little shy little lass has a waist.

May I touch your?

HOURS

(The eight hours steal to the last place. Morning, noon and twilight hours retreat before them. They are masked, with daggered hair and bracelets of dull bells. Weary, they curchycurchy under veils.)

CAVALIERS

THE BRACELETS

Los tiroirs! Cha? ne de dames! La corbeille! Dos à dos!

(Twisting, her hand to her brow.) O!

MAGINNI

CAVALIERS

THE PIANOLA

(The morning and noon hours waltz in their places, turning, advancing to each other, shaping their curves, bowing vis a vis. Cavaliers behind them arch and suspend their arms, with hands descending to, touching, rising from their shoulders.)

HOURS

O, so lightly!

You may touch my.

O, but lightly!

Avant! huit! Traversé! Salut! Cours de mains! Croisé!

(Zoe and Stephen turn boldly with looser swing. The twilight hours advance, from long landshadows, dispersed, lagging, languideyed, their cheeks delicate with cipria and false faint bloom. They are in grey gauze with dark bat sleeves that flutter in the land breeze.)

MAGINNI

MAGINNI

My girl's a Yorkshire girl.

STEPHEN

MAGINNI

(Twining, receding, with interchanging hands, the night hours link, each with arching arms, in a mosaic of movements. Stephen and Florry turn cumbrously.)

ZOE

Dansez avec vos dames! Changes de dames! Donnes le petit bouquet a votre dame! Remerciez!

(She seizes Florry and waltzes her.)

THE PIANOLA

Yorkshire through and through. Come on all!

(Jumps up.) O, they played that on the hobbyhorses at the Mirus bazaar!

Baraabum!

KITTY

(Arabesquing wearily, they weave a pattern on the floor, weaving, unweaving, curtseying, twisting, simply swirling.)

THE PIANOLA

(She runs to Stephen. He leaves Florry brusquely and seizes Kitty. A screaming bit tern's harsh high whistle shrieks. Groangrousegurgling Toft's cumbersome whirligig turns slowly the room right roundabout the room.)

Boulangère! Los ronds! Los ponts! Chevaux de bois! Escargots!

(She frees herself droops on a chair, Stephen seizes Florry and turns with her.)

ZOE

I'm giddy.

Best, best of all,

(Closeclutched swift swifter with glareblareflare scudding they scotlootshoot lumbering by. Baraabum!)

TUTTI

Though she's a factory lass

And wears no fancy clothes.

(He wheels Kitty into Lynch's arm's, snatches up his ashplant from the table and takes the floor. All wheel, whirl, waltz, twirl. Bloombella, Kittylynch, Florryzoe, jujuby women. Stephen with hat ashplant frogsplits in middle highkicks with skykicking mouth shut hand clasp part under thigh, with clang tinkle boomhammer tallyho horn blower blue green yellow flashes. Toft's cumbersome turns with hobbyhorse riders from gilded snakes dangled, bowels fandango leaping spurn soil foot and fall again.)

THE PIANOLA

Encore! Bis! Bravo! Encore!

SIMON

Think of your mother's people!

Pas seul!

STEPHEN

Dance of death.

(Bang fresh barang bang of lacquey's bell, horse, nag, steer piglings, Conmee on Christass lame crutch and leg sailor in cockboat armfolded ropepulling hitching stamp hornpipe' through and through, Baraabum! On nags, hogs, bellhorses, Gadarene swine, Corny in coffin. Steel shark stone one handled Nelson, two trickies Frauenzimmer plumstained from pram falling bawling. Gum, he's a champion. Fuseblue peer from barrel rev. evensong love on hackney jaunt Blazes blind coddoubled bicyclers Dilly with snowcake no fancy clothes. Then in last wiswitchback lumbering up and down bump mash tub sort of viceroy and reine relish for tublumber bumpshire rose. Baraabum!)

STEPHEN

(Stephen's mother, emaciated, rises stark through the floor in leper grey with a wreath of faded orange blossoms and a torn bridal veil, her face worn and noseless, green with grave mould. Her hair is scant and lank. She fixes her bluecircled hollow eyesockets on Stephen and opens her toothless mouth uttering a silent word. A choir of virgins and confessors sing voicelessly.)

(From the top of a tower Buck Mulligan, in particoloured jester's dress of puce and yellow and clown's cap with curling bell, stands gaping at her, a smoking buttered split scone in his hand.)

(The couples fall aside. Stephen whirls giddily. Room whirls back. Eyes closed, he totters. Red rails fly spacewards. Stars all around suns turn roundabout. Bright midges dance on wall. He stops dead.)

THE CHOIR

Iubilantium te virginum…

BUCK MULLIGAN

Ho!

Liliata rutilantium te confessorum…

THE MOTHER

She's beastly dead. The pity of it! Mulligan meets the afflicted mother. (He upturns his eyes.) Mercurial Malachi.

(With the subtle smile of death's madness.) I was once the beautiful May Goulding. I am dead.

STEPHEN

(Choking with fright, remorse and horror.) They said I killed you, mother. He offended your memory. Cancer did it, not I. Destiny.

STEPHEN

Who saved you the night you jumped into the train at Dalkey with Paddy Lee? Who had pity for you when you were sad among the strangers? Prayer is all powerful. Prayer for the suffering souls in the Ursuline manual, and forty days' indulgence. Repent, Stephen.

THE MOTHER

(Comes nearer, breathing upon him softly her breath of wetted ashes.) All must go through it, Stephen. More women than men in the world. You too. Time will come.

(A green rill of bile trickling from a side of her mouth.) You sang that song to me. Love's bitter mystery.

(Eagerly.) Tell me the word, mother, if you know now. The word known to all men.

THE MOTHER

(Horrorstruck.) Lemur, who are you? What bogey man's trick is this?

(Shakes his curling capbell.) The mockery of it! Kinch killed her dogsbody bitchbody. She kicked the bucket. (Tears of molten butter fall from his eyes into the scone.) Our great sweet mother! Epi oinopa ponton.

BUCK MULLIGAN

THE MOTHER

STEPHEN

THE MOTHER

(With smouldering eyes.) Repent! O, the fire of hell!

FLORRY

STEPHEN

ZOE

(Strangled with rage.) Shite! (His features grow drawn and grey and old.)

STEPHEN

(Fanning herself with the grate fan.) I'm melting!

The ghoul! Hyena!

(Her face drawing near and nearer, sending out an ashen breath.) Beware! (She raises her blackened, withered right arm slowly towards Stephen's breast with outstretched fingers.) Beware! God's hand! (A green crab with malignant red eyes sticks deep its grinning claws in Stephen's heart.)

STEPHEN

THE MOTHER

(Panting.) The corpsechewer! Raw head and bloody bones!

(At the window.) What?

I pray for you in my other world. Get Dilly to make you that boiled rice every night after your brain work. Years and years I loved you, O my son, my firstborn, when you lay in my womb.

BLOOM

Ah non, par exemple! The intellectual imagination! With me all or not at all. Non serviam!

(Goes to the window to open it more.) Giddy.

STEPHEN

(Points to Stephen) Look! He's white.

THE MOTHER

BLOOM

THE MOTHER

Nothung!

Police!

(Rushes forward and seizes Stephen's hand.) Here! Hold on! Don't run amok!

(The two whores rush to the halldoors. Lynch and Kitty and Zoe stampede from the room. They talk excitedly. Bloom follows, returns.)

Give him some cold water. Wait. (She rushes out.)

(He hits his ashplant high with both hands and smashes the chandelier. Time's livid final flame leaps and, in the following darkness, ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry.)

STEPHEN

THE GASJET

(In the agony of her deathrattle.) Have mercy on Stephen, Lord, for my sake! Inexpressible was my anguish when expiring with love, grief and agony on Mount Calvary.

(Stephen, abandoning his ashplant, his head and arms thrown back stark, beats the ground and flees from the room past the whores at the door.)

(Wrings her hands slowly, moaning desperately.) O Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on him! Save him from hell, O divine Sacred Heart!

Stop!

BLOOM

LYNCH

THE MOTHER

FLORRY

BELLA

BELLA

(Screams.) After him!

Pwfungg!

No! No! No! Break my spirit all of you if you can! I'll bring you all to heel!

STEPHEN

BELLA

(Shrinks back and screams.) Jesus! Don't!

(Her eyes hard with anger and cupidity, points.) Who's to pay for that? Ten Shillings. You're a witness.

(Rushes to the hall, rushes back.) What lamp, woman?

(Snatches up Stephen's ashplant.) Me? Ten shillings? Haven't you lifted enough off him? Didn't he…

BLOOM

BLOOM

FLORRY

BELLA

(Warding off a blow.) To show you how he hit the paper. There's not a sixpenceworth of damage done. Ten shillings!

A WHORE

BELLA

BELLA

(His hand under the lamp, pulls the chain. Pulling, the gasjet lights up a crushed mauve purple shade. He raises the ashplant.) Only the chimney's broken. Here is all he…

(Pointing.) There. There's something up.

BLOOM

BELLA

(Loudly.) Here, none of your tall talk. This isn't a brothel. A ten shilling house.

He tore his coat.

BLOOM

(Jammed in the doorway, pointing.) Down there.

Who pays for the lamp? (She seizes Bloom's coattail.) There. You were with him. The lamp's broken.

ZOE

THE WHORES

(With a glass of water enters.) Where is he?

O, I know. Bulldog on the premises. But he's a Trinity student. Patrons of your establishment. Gentlemen that pay the rent. (He makes a masonic sign.) Know what I mean? Nephew of the vice-chancellor. You don't want a scandal.

BELLA

Do you want me to call the police?

(Angrily.) Trinity! Coming down here ragging after the boat races and paying nothing. Are you my commander here? Where is he? I'll charge him. Disgrace him, I will. (She shouts.) Zoe! Zoe!

BLOOM

BLOOM

(In the doorway.) There's a row on.

ZOE

(Urgently.) And if it were your own son in Oxford! (Warningly.) I know.

What? Where? (He throws a shilling on the table and shouts.) That's for the chimney. Where? I need mountain air. (He hurries out through the hall. The whores point. Florry follows, spilling water from her tilted tumbler. On the doorstep all the whores clustered talk volubly, pointing to the right where the fog has cleared off From the left arrives a jingling hackney car. It slows to in front of the house. Bloom at the halldoor perceives Corny Kelleher who is about to dismount from the car with two silent lechers. He averts his face. Bella from within the hall uses on her whores. They blow ickylickysticky yumyum kisses. Corny Kelleher replies with a ghostly lewd smile. The silent lechers turn to pay the jarvey. Zoe and Kitty still point right. Bloom, parting them swiftly, draws his caliph's hood and poncho and hurries down the steps with sideways face. Incog Haroun al Baschid, he flits behind the silent lechers and hastens on by the railings with fleet step of a pard strewing the drag behind him, torn envelopes drenched in aniseed. The ashplant marks his stride. A pack of bloodhounds, led by Hornblower of Trinity brandishing a dogwhip in tallyho cap and an old pair of grey trousers, follows from far, picking up the scent, nearer, baying, panting, at fault, breaking away, throwing their tongues, biting his heels, leaping at his tail. He walks, runs, zigzags, gallops, lugs laid back. He is pelted with gravel, cabbagestumps, biscuitboxes, eggs, potatoes, dead codfish, womans slipperslappers. After him, freshfound, the hue and cry zigzag gallops in hot pursuit of follow my leader: 65 C 66 C night watch, John Henry Menton, Wisdom Hely, V. B. Dillon, Councillor Nannetti, Alexander Keyes, Larry O'Rourke, Joe Cuffe, Mrs O'Dowd Pisser Burke, The Nameless One, Mrs Riordan, The Citizen, Garryowen, Whatdoyoucallhim, Strangeface, Fellowthatslike, Sawhimbefore, Chapwith, Chris Callinan, sir Charles Cameron, Benjamin Dollard, Lenehan, Bartell d'Arcy, Joe Hynes, red Murray, editor Brayden, T. M. Healy, Mr Justice Fitzgibbon, John Howard Parnell, the reverend Tinned Salmon, Professor Joly, Mrs Breen, Denis Breen, Theodore Purefoy, Mina Purefoy, the Westland Row postmistress, C. P. M'Coy, friend of Lyons, Hoppy Holohan, man in the street, other man in the street, Footballboots, pugnosed driver rich protestant lady, Davy Byrne, Mrs Ellen M'Guinness, Mrs Joe Gallaher George Lidwell, Jimmy Henry on corns, Superintendent Laracy, Father Cowley, Crofton out of the Collector Generals, Dan Dawson, dental surgeon Bloom with tweezers, Mrs Bob Doran, Mrs Kennefick, Mrs Wyse Nolan, John Wyse Nolan, handsomemamedwomanrubbed againstwidebehindinClonskeatram, the bookseller of Sweets of Sin, Miss Dubedatandshedidbedad, Mesdames Gerald and Stanislaus Moran of Roebuck, the managing clerk of Drimmies colonel Hayes, Mastiansky, Citron, Penrose, Aaron Figatner, Moses Herzog, Michael E. Geraghty, Inspector Troy, Mrs Galbraith, the constable off Eccles Street corner old doctor Brady with stethoscope, the mystery man on the beach, a retriever Mrs Miriam Dandrade and all her lovers.

BLOOM

(Almost speechless.) Who are you incog?

BELLA

STEPHEN

STEPHEN

I was in company with the soldiers and they left me to do -- you know and the young man ran up behind me. But I'm faithful to the man that's treating me though I'm only a shilling whore.

(To Cissy Caffrey.) Was he insulting you?

PRIVATE CARR

STEPHEN

Addressed her in vocative feminine. Probably neuter. Ungenitive.

No, he didn't. The girl's telling lies. He was in Mrs Cohen's. What's up? Soldiers and civilians.

(Helterskelterelterwelter) He's Bloom! Stop Bloom! Stopabloom! Stopperrobber! Hi! Hi! Stop him on the corner!

(Catches sight of Kitty's and Lynch's heads.) Hail, Sisyphus. (He points to himself and the others.) Poetic. Neopoetic.

CISSY CAFFREY

(With elaborate gestures, breathing deeply and slowly.) You are my guests. The uninvited. By virtue of the fifth of George and seventh of Edward. History to blame. Fabled by mothers of memory.

(At the corner of Beaver Street beneath the scaffolding Bloom panting stops on the fringe of the noisy quarrelling knot, a lot not knowing a jot what hi! hi! row and wrangle round the whowhat brawlaltogether.)

THE HUE AND CRY

VOICES

VOICES

(His cap awry, advancing to Stephen.) Say, how would it be, governor, if I was to bash in your jaw?

He doesn't half want a thick ear, the blighter. Biff him one, Harry.

(To the crowd.) No, I was with the private.

CISSY CAFFREY

Yes, to go with him. And me with a soldier friend.

STEPHEN

(In union Jack blazer and cricket flannels, bareheaded, flowingbearded.) Their's not to reason why.

PRIVATE COMPTON

(Looks up in the sky.) How? Very unpleasant. Noble art of self-pretence. Personally, I detest action. (He waves his hand) Hand hurts me slightly. Enfin, ce sont vos oignons.

LORD TENNYSON

(To Private Compton. ) I don't know your name but you are quite right. Doctor Swift says one man in armour will beat ten men in their shirts. Shirt is synechdoche. Part for the whole.

(Amiably.) Why not? The bold soldier boy. In my opinion every lady for example…

PRIVATE COMPTON

(To Cissy.) Was he insulting you while me and him was having a piss?

Biff him, Harry.

She's faithfultheman.

PRIVATE CARR

PRIVATE CARR

CISSY CAFFREY

STEPHEN

STEPHEN

(The soldiers turn their swimming eyes.)

DOLLY GRAY

BLOOM

(From her balcony waves her handkerchief giving the sign of the heroine of Jericho.) Rahab. Cook's son, goodbye. Safe home to Dolly. Dream of the girl you left behind and she will dream of you.

STEPHEN

(Turns.) Eh? (He disengages himself) Why should I not speak to him or to any human being who walks upright upon this oblate orange? (He points his finger.) I'm not afraid of what I can talk to if I see his eye. Retaining the perpendicular. (He staggers a pace back.)

BLOOM

(To Cissy Caffrey.) Some trouble is on here. What is it, precisely?

(Propping him.) Retain your own.

STEPHEN

(Elbowing through the crowd plucks Stephen's sleeve vigorously.) Come now, professor, that carman is waiting.

(Laughs emptily.) My centre of gravity is displaced. I have forgotten the trick. Let us sit down somewhere and discuss. Struggle for life is the law of existence but modern philirenists, notably the tsar and the king of England, have invented arbitration. (He taps his brow.) But in here it is I must kill the priest and the king.

CUNTY KATE

I did. I heard that.

(Edward the Seventh appears in an archway. He wears a white jersey on which an image of the Sacred Heart is stitched, with the insignia of Garter and Thistle, Golden Fleece, Elephant of Denmark, Skinners' and Probyns' horse, Lincoln's Inn bencher and ancient and honourable artillery company of Massachusetts. He sucks a red jujube. He is robed as a grand elect perfect and sublime mason with trowel and apron, marked made in Germany. In his left hand he holds a plasterers bucket on which is printed: Défense d'uriner. A roar of welcome greets him.)

BIDDY THE CLAP

Did you hear what the professor said? He's a professor out of the college.

Indeed, yes. And at the same time with such apposite trenchancy.

He expresses himself with much marked refinement of phraseology.

(Pulls himself free and comes forward.) What's that you're saying about my king?

PRIVATE CARR

(Slowly, solemnly but indistinctly.) Peace, perfect peace. For identification bucket in my hand. Cheerio, boys. (He turns to his subjects.) We have come here to witness a clean straight fight and we heartily wish both men the best of good luck. Mahak makar a back.

CUNTY KATE

EDWARD THE SEVENTH

BIDDY THE CLAP

Kings and unicorns! (He falls back a pace.) Come somewhere and we'll… What was that girl saying?…

(Levitates over heaps of slain in the garb and with the halo of Joking Jesus, a white jujube in his phosphorescent face.)

STEPHEN

My methods are new and are causing surprise.

PRIVATE COMPTON

PRIVATE CARR

EDWARD THE SEVENTH

(Nervous, friendly, pulls himself up.) I understand your point of view, though I have no king myself for the moment. This is the age of patent medicine. A discussion is difficult down here. But this is the point. You die for your country, suppose. (He places his arm on Private Carr's sleeve.) Not that I wish it for you. But I say: Let my country die for me. Up to the present it has done so. I don't want it to die. Damn death. Long live life!

STEPHEN

(He shakes hands with Private Carr, Private Compton, Stephen, Bloom and Lynch. General applause. Edward the Seventh lifts the bucket graciously in acknowledgement.)

To make the blind see I throw dust in their eyes.

(To Stephen.) Say it again.

BLOOM

(Patrice Egan peeps from behind, his rabbit face nibbling a quince leaf.)

DON EMILE PATRIZIO FRANZ RUPERT POPE HENNESSY

(In medieval hauberk, two wild geese volant on his helm, with noble indignation points a mailed hand against the privates.) Were those eykes to footboden, big grand porcos of johnyellows todos covered of gravy!

PRIVATE CARR

PATRICE

(Nods, smiling and laughing.) Gentleman, patriot, scholar and judge of impostors.

H'lo. Bonjour! The vieille ogresse with the dents jaunes.

I don't give a bugger who he is.

(Kevin Egan of Paris in black Spanish tasselled shirt and peep-o'-day boys hat signs to Stephen.)

STEPHEN

KEVIN EGAN

STEPHEN

We don't give a bugger who he is.

PRIVATE COMPTON

Socialiste!

I seem to annoy them. Green rag to a bull.

(To the privates, softly.) He doesn't know what he's saying. Taking a little more than is good for him. Absinthe, the greeneyed monster. I know him. He's a gentleman, a poet. It's all right.

Eh, Harry, give him a kick in the knackers. Stick one into Jerry.

That hanged our Irish leaders.

May the God above

THE CITIZEN

One immediately observes that he is of patrician lineage.

(To Stephen.) Come home. You'll get into trouble.

A ROUGH

STEPHEN

To slit the throat

(Laughs.) Ay! Hands up to De Wet.

THE BAWD

Green above the red, says he. Wolfe Tone.

Send down a cove

THE VIRAGO

THE CROPPY BOY

Of the English dogs

(With a huge emerald muffler and shillelagh, calls.)

(Swaying.) I don't avoid it. He provokes my intelligence.

(Accompanied by two blackmasked assistants, advances with a gladstone bag which he opens.) Ladies and gents, cleaver purchased by Mrs Pearcy to slay Mogg. Knife with which Voisin dismembered the wife of a compatriot and hid remains in a sheet in the cellar, the unfortunate female's throat being cut from ear to ear. Phial containing arsenic retrieved from the body of Miss Barrow which sent Seddon to the gallows.

BIDDY THE CLAP

The red's as good as the green, and better. Up the soldiers! Up King Edward!

With teeth as sharp as razors

(The rope noose round his neck, gripes in his issuing bowels with both hands.)

I bear no hate to a living thing,

But love my country beyond the king.

RUMBOLD, DEMON BARBER

BLOOM

EDWARD THE SEVENTH

(Dances slowly, solemnly, rattling his bucket and sings with soft contentment.)

On coronation day, on coronation day,

Here. What are you saying about my king?

(He gives up the ghost. A violent erection of the hanged sends gouts of sperm spouting through his death clothes on to the cobblestones. Mrs Bellingham, Mrs Yelverton Barry and the Honourable Mrs Mervyn Talboys rush forward with their handkerchiefs to sop it up.)

THE CROPPY BOY

RUMBOLD

I'm near it myself. (He undoes the noose.) Rope which hanged the awful rebel. Ten shillings a time as applied to His Royal Highness. (He plunges his head into the gaping belly of the hanged and draws out his head again clotted with coiled and smoking entrails.) My painful duty has now been done. God save the king!

PRIVATE CARR

Horhot ho hray ho rhother's hest.

O, Won't We have a merry time,

Drinking whisky, beer and wine!

(He jerks the rope, the assistants leap at the victims legs and drag him downward, grunting: the croppy boys tongue protrudes violently.)

How do I stand you? The hat trick! Where's the third person of the Blessed Trinity? Soggarth Aroon? The reverend Carrion Crow.

(Rocking to and fro.) Ireland's sweetheart, the king of Spain's daughter, alanna. Strangers in my house, bad manners to them! (She keens with banshee woe.) Ochone! Ochone! Silk of the kine! (She wails.) You met with poor old Ireland and how does she stand?

PRIVATE CARR

OLD GUMMY GRANNY

(Throws up his hands.) O, this is too monotonous! Nothing. He wants my money and my life, though want must be his master, for some brutish empire of his. Money I haven't. (He searches his pockets vaguely.) Gave it to someone.

(Tries to move off.) Will some one tell me where I am least likely to meet these necessary evils?? a se voit aussi à Paris. Not that I… But by Saint Patrick!…

Aha! I know you, grammer! Hamlet, revenge! The old sow that eats her farrow!

(The women's heads coalesce. Old Gummy Granny in sugarloaf hat appears seated on a toadstool, the deathflower of the potato blight on her breast.)

STEPHEN

Who wants your bleeding money?

STEPHEN

STEPHEN

STEPHEN

(Major Tweedy and the Citizen exhibit to each other medals, decorations, trophies of war wounds. Both salute with fierce hostility.)

BLOOM

Our men retreated.

PRIVATE CARR

PRIVATE COMPTON

(Staggering past.) O, yes. O, God, yes! O, make the kwawr a krowawr! O! Bo!

(To the redcoats.) We fought for you in South Africa, Irish missile troops. Isn't that history? Royal Dublin Fusiliers. Honoured by our monarch.

(Terrified.) He said nothing. Not a word. A pure misunderstanding.

Go it, Harry. Do him one in the eye. He's a proboer.

(Shrill.) Stop them from fighting!

BLOOM

(Casqued halberdiers in armour thrust forward a pentice of gutted spear points. Major Tweedy, moustached like Turko the terrible, in bearskin cap with hackle plume and accoutrements, with epaulette, gilt chevrons and sabretache, his breast bright with medals, toes the line. He gives the pilgrim warrior's sign of the knights templars.)

STEPHEN

Erin go bragh!

(Tugging at his belt.) I'll wring the neck of any bugger says a word against my fucking king.

Did I? When?

THE CITIZEN

CISSY CAFFREY

THE NAVVY

A ROUGH

BLOOM

Methinks yon sable knight will joust it with the best.

PRIVATE COMPTON

I'll do him in.

(Blushing deeply.) Nay, Madam. The gules doublet and merry Saint George for me!

(Loosening his belt, shouts.) I'll wring the neck of any fucking bastard says a word against my bleeding fucking king.

They're going to fight. For me!

(Growls gruffly.) Rorke's Drift! Up, guards, and at them! Mahal shalal hashbaz.

CISSY CAFFREY

(Alarmed seizes Private Carr's sleeve.) Amn't I with you? Amn't I your girl? Cissy's your girl. (She cries.) Police!

PRIVATE CARR

(Waves the crowd back.) Fair play, here. Make a bleeding butcher's shop of the bugger. (Massed bands blare Garryowen and God save the king.)

PRIVATE CARR

The brave and the fair.

MAJOR TWEEDY

CISSY CAFFREY

CUNTY KATE

The harlot's cry from street to street Shall weave old Ireland's windingsheet.

CUNTY KATE

(Shakes Cissy Caffrey's shoulders.) Speak, you! Are you struck dumb? You are the link between nations and generations. Speak, woman, sacred lifegiver.

STEPHEN

BIDDY THE CLAP

And thy quarrons dainty is.

White thy fambles, red thy gan

(Ecstatically, to Cissy Caffrey.)

Dublin's burning! Dublin's burning! On fire, on fire!

STEPHEN

Police!

VOICES

(Brimstone fires spring up. Dense clouds roll past. Heavy Gatling guns boom. Pandemonium. Troops deploy. Gallop of hoofs. Artillery. Hoarse commands. Bells clang. Backers shout. Drunkards bawl. Whores screech. Foghorns hoot. Cries of valour. Shrieks of dying. Pikes clash on cuirasses. Thieves rob the slain. Birds of prey, winging from the sea, rising from marsh lands, swooping from eyries, hover screaming, gannets, connorants, vultures, goshawks, climbing woodcocks, peregrines, merlin, blackgrouse, sea eagles, gulls, albatrosses, barnacle geese. The midnight sun is darkened. The earth trembles. The dead of Dublin from Prospect and Mount Jerome in white sheepskin overcoats and black goat-fell cloaks arise and appear to many. A chasm opens with a noiseless yawn. Tom Rochford, winner in athletes singlet and breeches, arrives at the head of the national hurdle handicap and leaps into the void. He is followed by a race of runners and leapers. In wild attitudes they spring from the brink. Their bodies plunge. Factory lasses with fancy clothes toss redhot Yorkshire baraabombs. Society ladies lift their skirts above their heads to protect themselves. laughing witches in red cutty sarks ride through the air on broomsticks. Quakerlyster plasters blisters. It rains dragon's teeth. Armed heroes spring up from furrows. They exchange in amity the pass of knights of the red cross and fight duels with cavalry sabres: Wolfe Tone against Henry Grattan, Smith O'Brien against Daniel O'Connell, Michael Davitt against Isaac Butt, Justin M'Carthy against Parnell, Arthur Griffith against John Redmond John O'Leary against liar O'Johnny, lord Edward Fitzgerald against lord Gerald Fitzedward, The O'Donoghue of the Glens against The Glens of The Donoghue. On an eminence, the centre of the earth, rises the field altar of Saint Barbara. Black candles rise from its gospel and epistle horns. From the high barbicans of the tower two shafts of light fall on the smokepalled altarstone. On the altarstone Mrs Mina Purefoy, goddess of unreason, lies naked, fettered, a chalice resting on her swollen belly. Father Malachi O'Flynn, in a long petticoat and reversed chasuble, his two left feet back to the front, celebrates camp mash. The Reverend Mr Hugh C. Haines love MA. in a plain cassock and mortar board, his head and collar back to the front, holds over the celebrants head an open umbrella.)

DISTANT VOICES

(With ferocious articulation.) I'll do him in, so help me fucking Christ! I'll wring the bastard fucker's bleeding blasted fucking windpipe!

FATHER MALACHI O'FLYNN

Alleluia, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth!

PRIVATE CARR

Introibo ad altare diaboli.

ADONAI

(From on high the voice of Adonai calls.)

THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE

FATHER MALACHI O'FLYNN

(In strident discord peasants and townsmen of mange and Green factions sing Kick the Pope and Daily, daily sing to Mary.)

Dooooooooooog!

(From on high the voice of Adonai calls.)

THE VOICE OF ALL THE BLESSED

(Raises high behind the celebrant's petticoats, revealing his grey bare hairy buttocks between which a carrot is stuck.) My body.

(Thrusts a dagger towards Stephen's hand.) Remove him, acushla. At 8.35 a. m. you will be in heaven and Ireland will be free. (She prays.) O good God, take him!

(Takes from the chalice and elevates a blooddripping host.) Corpus Meum.

ADONAI

Goooooooooood!

THE VOICE OF ALL THE DAMNED

Htengier Tnetopinmo Dog Drol eht rot, Aiulella!

To the devil which hath made glad my young days.

OLD GUMMY GRANNY

THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE

MAJOR TWEEDY

BLOOM

STEPHEN

(Over Stephen's shoulder.) Yes, go. You see he's incapable.

(Pulling Private Carr.) Come on, you're boosed. He insulted me but I forgive him. (Shouting in his ear.) I forgive him for insulting me.

(He rushes towards Stephen, fists outstretched, and strikes him in the face. Stephen totters, collapses, falls stunned. He lies prone, his face to the sky, his hat rolling to the wall. Bloom follows and picks it up.)

(Points.) Exit Judas. Et laqueo se suspendit.

PRIVATE CARR

BLOOM

THE CROWD

(Barking furiously.) Ute ute ute ute ute ute uteute.

STEPHEN

CISSY CAFFREY

He likes dialectic, the universal language. Kitty! (To Bloom.) Get him away, you. He won't listen to me. (He drags Kitty away.)

(Runs to Lynch.) Can't you get him away?

Stick, no. Reason. This feast of pure reason.

(Breaks loose.) I'll insult him.

(Loudly.) Carbine in bucket! cease fire! Salute!

THE RETRIEVER

LYNCH

Let him up! Don't strike him when he's down! Air! Who? The soldier hit him. He's a professor. Is he hurted? Don't manhandle him! He's fainted!

BLOOM

(Runs to Stephen.) Come along with me now before worse happens. Here's your stick.

SECOND WATCH

(With expectation.) Is he bleeding?

(They grab at each other's hair, claw at each other and spit.)

Who are you? Do you know him?

We were with this lady and he insulted us and assaulted my chum. (The retriever barks.) Who owns the bleeding tyke?

CISSY CAFFREY

(Rising from his knees.) No. Gone off. He'll come to all right.

(Glances sharply at the man.) Leave him to me. I can easily…

A MAN

(Tugging his comrade.) Here bugger off, Harry. There's the cops!

(Shoves them back, loudly.) Get back, stand back!

A UGLY WOMAN

What call had the redcoat to strike the gentleman and he under the influence? Let them go and fight the Boers!

(The retriever, nosing on the fringe of the crowd, barks noisily.)

BLOOM

BLOOM

Listen to who's talking! Hasn't the soldier a right to go with his girl? He gave him the coward's blow.

PRIVATE CARR

THE RETRIEVER

FIRST WATCH

What's wrong here?

PRIVATE COMPTON

PRIVATE COMPTON

(Two raincaped watch, tall, stand in the group)

THE BAWD

(Lurches towards the watch.) He insulted my lady friend.

(Barking.) Wow wow wow.

I don't want your instructions in the discharge of my duty.

(Staggering as he is pulled away.) God fuck old Bennett! He's a whitearsed bugger. I don't give a shit for him.

CORNY KELLEHER

FIRST WATCH

PRIVATE CARR

(Pulling his comrade.) Here, bugger off, Harry. Or Bennett'll have you in the lockup.

BLOOM

PRIVATE COMPTON

(Taking out his notebook.) What's his name?

(Peering over the crowd.) I just see a car there. If you give me a hand a second, sergeant.

Name and address.

BLOOM

BLOOM

FIRST WATCH

(Quickly.) O, the very man! (He whispers.) Simon Dedalus' son. A bit sprung. Get those policemen to move those loafers back.

(Corny Kelleher weepers round his hat, a death wreath in his hand, appears among the bystanders.)

SECOND WATCH

(Angrily.) You hit him without provocation. I'm a witness. Constable, take his regimental number.

SECOND WATCH

(To the watch, with drawling eye.) That's all right. I know him. Won a bit on the races. Gold cup. Throwaway. (He laughs.) Twenty to one. Do you follow me?

Night, Mr Kelleher.

All right, Mr Kelleher. Good night.

CORNY KELLEHER

FIRST WATCH

BLOOM

CORNY KELLEHER

CORNY KELLEHER

SECOND WATCH

CORNY KELLEHER

(Turns to the crowd.) Here, what are you all gaping at? Move on out of that.

(Genially.) Ah, sure we were too.

FIRST WATCH

(Winking.) Boys will be boys. I've a car round there.

Leave it to me, sergeant. That'll be all right. (He laughs, shaking his head.) We were often as bad ourselves, ay or worse. What? Eh, what?

FIRST WATCH

(Shakes hands with both of the watch in turn.) Thank you very much gentlemen, thank you. (He mumbles confidentially.) We don't want any scandal, you understand. Father is a well known, highly respected citizen. Just a little wild oats, you understand.

(Nudges the second watch.) Come and wipe your name off the slate. (He lilts, wagging his head.) With my tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom. What, eh, do you follow me?

O, I understand, sir.

(The crowd disperses slowly, muttering, down the lane.)

(Laughs.) I suppose so.

SECOND WATCH

I'll see to that.

CORNY KELLEHER

That's all right, Sir.

FIRST WATCH

SECOND WATCH

(Laughs, pointing his thumb over his right shoulder to the car brought up against the scaffolding.) Two commercials that were standing fizz in Jammet's. Like princes, faith. One of them lost two quid on the race. Drowning his grief and were on for a go with the jolly girls. So I landed them up on Behan's car and down to nighttown.

THE WATCH

CORNY KELLEHER

It's our duty.

(Laughs.) Sure they wanted me to join in with the mots. No, by God, says I. Not for old stagers like myself and yourself. (He laughs again and leers with lacklustre eye.) Thanks be to God we have it in the house what, eh, do you follow me? Hah! hah! hah!

(Nods rapidly.) Naturally. Quite right. Only your bounden duty.

CORNY KELLEHER

(Blows.) Providential you came on the scene. You have a car?.

SECOND WATCH

It was only in case of corporal injuries I'd have had to report it at the station.

(Saluting together.) Night, gentlemen. (They move off with slow heavy tread.)

BLOOM

BLOOM

BLOOM

Good night, men.

I was just going home by Gardiner street when I happened to…

Hohohohohohoh! Hohohohome!

(The horse neighs.)

(Tries to laugh.) He, he, he! Yes. Matter of fact I was just visiting an old friend of mine there, Virag, you don't know him (poor fellow he's laid up for the past week) and we had a liquor together and I was just making my way home…

THE HORSE

BLOOM

CORNY KELLEHER

(Stephen, prone, breathes to the stars. Corny Kelleher asquint, drawls at the horse. Bloom in gloom, looms down.)

(Scratches his nape.) Sandycove! (He bends down and calls to Stephen.) Eh! (He calls again.) Eh! He's covered with shavings anyhow. Take care they didn't lift anything off him.

CORNY KELLEHER

Sure it was Behan, our jarvey there, that told me after we left the two commercials in Mrs Cohen's and I told him to pull up and got off to see. (He laughs.) Sober hearsedrivers a specialty. Will I give him a lift home? Where does he hang out? Somewhere in Cabra, what?

No, no, no. I have his money and his hat here and stick.

No, in Sandycove, I believe, from what he let drop.

BLOOM

BLOOM

CORNY KELLEHER

(Neighs.) Hohohohohome.

Ah well, he'll get over it. No bones broken. Well, I'll shove along. (He laughs.) I've a rendezvous in the morning. Burying the dead. Safe home!

BLOOM

Good night. I'll just wait and take him along in a few…

THE HORSE

(From the car, standing.) Night.

(Corny Kelleher returns to the outside car and mounts it. The horse harness jingles.)

CORNY KELLEHER

Night.

(The jarvey chucks the reins and raises his whip encouragingly. The car and horse back slowly, awkwardly and turn. Corny Kelleher on the sideseat sways his head to and fro in sign of mirth at Blooms plight. The jarvey joins in the mute pantomimic merriment nodding from the farther seat. Bloom shakes his head in mute mirthful reply. With thumb and palm Corny Kelleher reassures that the two bobbies will allow the sleep to continue for what else is to be done. With a slow nod Bloom conveys his gratitude as that is exactly what Stephen needs. The car jingles tooraloom round the corner of the tooraloom lane. Corny Kelleher again reassuralooms with his hand. Bloom with his hand assuralooms Corny Kelleher that he is reassuraloomtay. The tinkling hoofs and jingling harness grow fainter with their tooralooloolooloo lay. Bloom, holding in his hand Stephens hat festooned with shavings and ashplant, stands irresolute. Then he bends to him and shakes him by the shoulder.)

BLOOM

(He stretches out his arms, sighs again and curls his body. Bloom holding his hat and ashplant stands erect. A dog barks in the distance. Bloom tightens and loosens his grip on the ashplant. He looks down on Stephen's face and form.)

Eh! Ho! (There is no answer he bends again.) Mr Dedalus! (There is no answer.) The name if you call. Somnambulist. (He bends again and, hesitating, brings his mouth near the face of the prostrate form.) Stephen! (There is no answer. He calls again.) Stephen!

… white breast… dim…

Poetry. Well educated. Pity. (He bends again and undoes the buttons of Stephen's waistcoat.) To breathe. (He brushes the wood shavings from Stephen's clothes with light hands and fingers.) One pound seven. Not hurt anyhow. (He listens.) What!

(He turns on his left side, sighing, doubling himself together.)

BLOOM

(Murmurs.)

… shadows… the woods

(Groans.) Who? Black panther vampire. (He sighs and stretches himself then murmurs thickly with prolonged vowels.) Who… drive… Fergus now. And pierce… wood's woven shade?…

BLOOM

STEPHEN

(Gazes unseeing into Bloom's eyes and goes on reading, kissing, smiling. He has a delicate mauveface. On his suit he has diamond and ruby buttons. In his free left hand he holds a slim ivory cane with a violet howknot. A white lambkin peeps out of his waistcoat pocket.)

BLOOM

(Silent, thoughtful, alert, he stands on guard, his fingers at his lips in the attitude of secret master. Against the dark wall a figure appears slowly, a fairy boy of eleven, a changeling, kidnapped, dressed in an Eton suit with glass shoes and a little bronze helmet, holding a book in his hand. He reads from right to left inaudibly, smiling, kissing the page.)

RUDY

(Communes with the night.) Face reminds me of his poor mother. In the shady wood. The deep white breast. Ferguson, I think I caught. A girl. Some girl. Best thing could happen him… (He murmurs.)… swear that I will always hail, ever conceal, never reveal, any part or parts, art or arts… (He murmurs.) in the rough sands of the sea. a cabletow's length from the shore… where the tide ebbs… and flows…

BLOOM

(Wonderstruck, calls inaudibly.) Rudy!