"Ulysses" - читать интересную книгу автора (Joyce James)UlyssesJames Joyce
I am the boy
That can enjoy
Invisibility.
Phantasmal mirth, folded away: muskperfumed.
And no more turn aside and brood.
Folded away in the memory of nature with her toys. Memories beset
his brooding brain. Her glass of water from the kitchen tap when she had
approached the sacrament. A cored apple, filled with brown sugar, roasting
for her at the hob on a dark autumn evening. Her shapely fingernails
reddened by the blood of squashed lice from the children's shirts.
In a dream, silently, she had come to him, her wasted body within its
loose graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood, her breath,
bent over him with mute secret words, a faint odour of wetted ashes.
Her glazing eyes, staring out of death, to shake and bend my soul. On
me alone. The ghostcandle to light her agony. Ghostly light on the tortured
face. Her hoarse loud breath rattling in horror, while all prayed on their
knees. Her eyes on me to strike me down. Liliata rutilantium te confessorum
turma circumdet: iubilantium te virginum chorus excipiat.
Ghoul! Chewer of corpses!
No, mother! Let me be and let me live.
-- Kinch ahoy!
Buck Mulligan's voice sang from within the tower. It came nearer up
the staircase, calling again. Stephen, still trembling at his soul's cry, heard
warm running sunlight and in the air behind him friendly words.
-- Dedalus, come down, like a good mosey. Breakfast is ready. Haines is
apologising for waking us last night. It's all right.
-- I'm coming, Stephen said, turning.
-- Do, for Jesus' sake, Buck Mulligan said. For my sake and for all our
sakes.
His head disappeared and reappeared.
-- I told him your symbol of Irish art. He says it's very clever. Touch him
for a quid, will you? A guinea, I mean.
-- I get paid this morning, Stephen said.
-- The school kip? Buck Mulligan said. How much? Four quid? Lend us
one.
-- If you want it, Stephen said.
-- Four shining sovereigns, Buck Mulligan cried with delight. We'll have a
glorious drunk to astonish the druidy druids. Four omnipotent sovereigns.
He flung up his hands and tramped down the stone stairs, singing out
of tune with a Cockney accent:
-- O, won't we have a merry time,
Drinking whisky, beer and wine!
On coronation,
Coronation day!
O, won't we have a merry time
On coronation day!
Warm sunshine merrying over the sea. The nickel shavingbowl shone,
forgotten, on the parapet. Why should I bring it down? Or leave it there all
day, forgotten friendship?
He went over to it, held it in his hands awhile, feeling its coolness,
smelling the clammy slaver of the lather in which the brush was stuck. So I
carried the boat of incense then at Clongowes. I am another now and yet
the same. A servant too. A server of a servant.
In the gloomy domed livingroom of the tower Buck Mulligan's
gowned form moved briskly to and fro about the hearth, hiding and
revealing its yellow glow. Two shafts of soft daylight fell across the flagged
floor from the high barbacans: and at the meeting of their rays a cloud of
coalsmoke and fumes of fried grease floated, turning.
-- We'll be choked, Buck Mulligan said. Haines, open that door, will you?
Stephen laid the shavingbowl on the locker. A tall figure rose from the
hammock where it had been sitting, went to the doorway and pulled open
the inner doors.
-- Have you the key? a voice asked.
-- Dedalus has it, Buck Mulligan said. Janey Mack, I'm choked!
He howled, without looking up from the fire:
-- Kinch!
-- It's in the lock, Stephen said, coming forward.
The key scraped round harshly twice and, when the heavy door had
been set ajar, welcome light and bright air entered. Haines stood at the
doorway, looking out. Stephen haled his upended valise to the table and sat
down to wait. Buck Mulligan tossed the fry on to the dish beside him. Then
he carried the dish and a large teapot over to the table, set them down
heavily and sighed with relief.
-- I'm melting, he said, as the candle remarked when.... But, hush! Not a
word more on that subject! Kinch, wake up! Bread, butter, honey. Haines,
come in. The grub is ready. Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts. Where's
the sugar? O, jay, there's no milk.
Stephen fetched the loaf and the pot of honey and the buttercooler
from the locker. Buck Mulligan sat down in a sudden pet.
-- What sort of a kip is this? he said. I told her to come after eight.
-- We can drink it black, Stephen said thirstily. There's a lemon in the
locker.
-- O, damn you and your Paris fads! Buck Mulligan said. I want Sandycove
milk.
Haines came in from the doorway and said quietly:
-- That woman is coming up with the milk.
-- The blessings of God on you! Buck Mulligan cried, jumping up from his
chair. Sit down. Pour out the tea there. The sugar is in the bag. Here, I
can't go fumbling at the damned eggs.
He hacked through the fry on the dish and slapped it out on three
plates, saying:
-- In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.
Haines sat down to pour out the tea.
-- I'm giving you two lumps each, he said. But, I say, Mulligan, you do
make strong tea, don't you?
Buck Mulligan, hewing thick slices from the loaf, said in an old
woman's wheedling voice:
-- When I makes tea I makes tea, as old mother Grogan said. And when I
makes water I makes water.
-- By Jove, it is tea, Haines said.
Buck Mulligan went on hewing and wheedling:
-- So I do, Mrs Cahill, says she. Begob, ma'am, says Mrs Cahill, God send
you don't make them in the one pot.
He lunged towards his messmates in turn a thick slice of bread,
impaled on his knife.
-- That's folk, he said very earnestly, for your book, Haines. Five lines of
text and ten pages of notes about the folk and the fishgods of Dundrum.
Printed by the weird sisters in the year of the big wind.
He turned to Stephen and asked in a fine puzzled voice, lifting his
brows:
-- Can you recall, brother, is mother Grogan's tea and water pot spoken of
in the Mabinogion or is it in the Upanishads?
-- I doubt it, said Stephen gravely.
-- Do you now? Buck Mulligan said in the same tone. Your reasons, pray?
-- I fancy, Stephen said as he ate, it did not exist in or out of the
Mabinogion. Mother Grogan was, one imagines, a kinswoman of Mary
Ann.
Buck Mulligan's face smiled with delight.
-- Charming! he said in a finical sweet voice, showing his white teeth and
blinking his eyes pleasantly. Do you think she was? Quite charming!
Then, suddenly overclouding all his features, he growled in a
hoarsened rasping voice as he hewed again vigorously at the loaf:
-- For old Mary Ann
She doesn't care a damn.
But, hising up her petticoats ....
He crammed his mouth with fry and munched and droned.
The doorway was darkened by an entering form.
-- The milk, sir!
-- Come in, ma'am, Mulligan said. Kinch, get the jug.
An old woman came forward and stood by Stephen's elbow.
-- That's a lovely morning, sir, she said. Glory be to God.
-- To whom? Mulligan said, glancing at her. Ah, to be sure!
Stephen reached back and took the milkjug from the locker.
-- The islanders, Mulligan said to Haines casually, speak frequently of the
collector of prepuces.
-- How much, sir? asked the old woman.
-- A quart, Stephen said.
He watched her pour into the measure and thence into the jug rich
white milk, not hers. Old shrunken paps. She poured again a measureful
and a tilly. Old and secret she had entered from a morning world, maybe a
messenger. She praised the goodness of the milk, pouring it out. Crouching
by a patient cow at daybreak in the lush field, a witch on her toadstool, her
wrinkled fingers quick at the squirting dugs. They lowed about her whom
they knew, dewsilky cattle. Silk of the kine and poor old woman, names
given her in old times. A wandering crone, lowly form of an immortal
serving her conqueror and her gay betrayer, their common cuckquean, a
messenger from the secret morning. To serve or to upbraid, whether he
could not tell: but scorned to beg her favour.
-- It is indeed, ma'am, Buck Mulligan said, pouring milk into their cups.
-- Taste it, sir, she said.
He drank at her bidding.
-- If we could live on good food like that, he said to her somewhat loudly,
we wouldn't have the country full of rotten teeth and rotten guts. Living in
a bogswamp, eating cheap food and the streets paved with dust, horsedung
and consumptives' spits.
-- Are you a medical student, sir? the old woman asked.
-- I am, ma'am, Buck Mulligan answered.
-- Look at that now, she said.
Stephen listened in scornful silence. She bows her old head to a voice
that speaks to her loudly, her bonesetter, her medicineman: me she slights.
To the voice that will shrive and oil for the grave all there is of her but her
woman's unclean loins, of man's flesh made not in God's likeness, the
serpent's prey. And to the loud voice that now bids her be silent with
wondering unsteady eyes.
-- Do you understand what he says? Stephen asked her.
-- Is it French you are talking, sir? the old woman said to Haines.
Haines spoke to her again a longer speech, confidently.
-- Irish, Buck Mulligan said. Is there Gaelic on you?
-- I thought it was Irish, she said, by the sound of it. Are you from the west,
sir?
-- I am an Englishman, Haines answered.
-- He's English, Buck Mulligan said, and he thinks we ought to speak Irish
in Ireland.
-- Sure we ought to, the old woman said, and I'm ashamed I don't speak the
language myself. I'm told it's a grand language by them that knows.
-- Grand is no name for it, said Buck Mulligan. Wonderful entirely. Fill us
out some more tea, Kinch. Would you like a cup, ma'am?
-- No, thank you, sir, the old woman said, slipping the ring of the milkcan
on her forearm and about to go.
Haines said to her:
-- Have you your bill? We had better pay her, Mulligan, hadn't we?
Stephen filled again the three cups.
-- Bill, sir? she said, halting. Well, it's seven mornings a pint at twopence is
seven twos is a shilling and twopence over and these three mornings a quart
at fourpence is three quarts is a shilling. That's a shilling and one and two is
two and two, sir.
Buck Mulligan sighed and, having filled his mouth with a crust
thickly buttered on both sides, stretched forth his legs and began to search
his trouser pockets.
-- Pay up and look pleasant, Haines said to him, smiling.
Stephen filled a third cup, a spoonful of tea colouring faintly the thick
rich milk. Buck Mulligan brought up a florin, twisted it round in his fingers
and cried:
-- A miracle!
He passed it along the table towards the old woman, saying:
-- Ask nothing more of me, sweet.
All I can give you I give.
Stephen laid the coin in her uneager hand.
-- We'll owe twopence, he said.
-- Time enough, sir, she said, taking the coin. Time enough. Good morning,
sir.
She curtseyed and went out, followed by Buck Mulligan's tender
chant:
-- Heart of my heart, were it more,
More would be laid at your feet.
He turned to Stephen and said:
-- Seriously, Dedalus. I'm stony. Hurry out to your school kip and bring us
back some money. Today the bards must drink and junket. Ireland expects
that every man this day will do his duty.
-- That reminds me, Haines said, rising, that I have to visit your national
library today.
-- Our swim first, Buck Mulligan said.
He turned to Stephen and asked blandly:
-- Is this the day for your monthly wash, Kinch?
Then he said to Haines:
-- The unclean bard makes a point of washing once a month.
-- All Ireland is washed by the gulfstream, Stephen said as he let honey
trickle over a slice of the loaf.
Haines from the corner where he was knotting easily a scarf about
the loose collar of his tennis shirt spoke:
-- I intend to make a collection of your sayings if you will let me.
Speaking to me. They wash and tub and scrub. Agenbite of inwit.
Conscience. Yet here's a spot.
-- That one about the cracked lookingglass of a servant being the symbol of
Irish art is deuced good.
Buck Mulligan kicked Stephen's foot under the table and said with
warmth of tone:
-- Wait till you hear him on Hamlet, Haines.
-- Well, I mean it, Haines said, still speaking to Stephen. I was just thinking
of it when that poor old creature came in.
-- Would I make any money by it? Stephen asked.
Haines laughed and, as he took his soft grey hat from the holdfast of
the hammock, said:
-- I don't know, I'm sure.
He strolled out to the doorway. Buck Mulligan bent across to Stephen
and said with coarse vigour:
-- You put your hoof in it now. What did you say that for?
-- Well? Stephen said. The problem is to get money. From whom? From the
milkwoman or from him. It's a toss up, I think.
-- I blow him out about you, Buck Mulligan said, and then you come along
with your lousy leer and your gloomy jesuit jibes.
-- I see little hope, Stephen said, from her or from him.
Buck Mulligan sighed tragically and laid his hand on Stephen's arm.
-- From me, Kinch, he said.
In a suddenly changed tone he added:
-- To tell you the God's truth I think you're right. Damn all else they are
good for. Why don't you play them as I do? To hell with them all. Let us get
out of the kip.
He stood up, gravely ungirdled and disrobed himself of his gown,
saying resignedly:
-- Mulligan is stripped of his garments.
He emptied his pockets on to the table.
-- There's your snotrag, he said.
And putting on his stiff collar and rebellious tie he spoke to them,
chiding them, and to his dangling watchchain. His hands plunged and
rummaged in his trunk while he called for a clean handkerchief. God, we'll
simply have to dress the character. I want puce gloves and green boots.
Contradiction. Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself.
Mercurial Malachi. A limp black missile flew out of his talking hands.
-- And there's your Latin quarter hat, he said.
Stephen picked it up and put it on. Haines called to them from the
doorway:
-- Are you coming, you fellows?
-- I'm ready, Buck Mulligan answered, going towards the door. Come out,
Kinch. You have eaten all we left, I suppose.
Resigned he passed out with grave words and gait, saying, wellnigh
with sorrow:
-- And going forth he met Butterly.
Stephen, taking his ashplant from its leaningplace, followed them out
and, as they went down the ladder, pulled to the slow iron door and locked
it. He put the huge key in his inner pocket.
At the foot of the ladder Buck Mulligan asked:
-- Did you bring the key?
-- I have it, Stephen said, preceding them.
He walked on. Behind him he heard Buck Mulligan club with his
heavy bathtowel the leader shoots of ferns or grasses.
-- Down, sir! How dare you, sir!
Haines asked:
-- Do you pay rent for this tower?
-- Twelve quid, Buck Mulligan said.
-- To the secretary of state for war, Stephen added over his shoulder.
They halted while Haines surveyed the tower and said at last:
-- Rather bleak in wintertime, I should say. Martello you call it?
-- Billy Pitt had them built, Buck Mulligan said, when the French were on
the sea. But ours is the omphalos.
-- What is your idea of Hamlet? Haines asked Stephen.
-- No, no, Buck Mulligan shouted in pain. I'm not equal to Thomas
Aquinas and the fiftyfive reasons he has made out to prop it up. Wait till I
have a few pints in me first.
He turned to Stephen, saying, as he pulled down neatly the peaks of
his primrose waistcoat:
-- You couldn't manage it under three pints, Kinch, could you?
-- It has waited so long, Stephen said listlessly, it can wait longer.
-- You pique my curiosity, Haines said amiably. Is it some paradox?
-- Pooh! Buck Mulligan said. We have grown out of Wilde and paradoxes.
It's quite simple. He proves by algebra that Hamlet's grandson is
Shakespeare's grandfather and that he himself is the ghost of his own
father.
-- What? Haines said, beginning to point at Stephen. He himself?
Buck Mulligan slung his towel stolewise round his neck and, bending
in loose laughter, said to Stephen's ear:
-- O, shade of Kinch the elder! Japhet in search of 'a father!
-- We're always tired in the morning, Stephen said to Haines. And it is
rather long to tell.
Buck Mulligan, walking forward again, raised his hands.
-- The sacred pint alone can unbind the tongue of Dedalus, he said.
-- I mean to say, Haines explained to Stephen as they followed, this tower
and these cliffs here remind me somehow of Elsinore. That beetles o'er his
base into the sea, isn't it?
Buck Mulligan turned suddenly. for an instant towards Stephen but
did not speak. In the bright silent instant Stephen saw his own image in
cheap dusty mourning between their gay attires.
-- It's a wonderful tale, Haines said, bringing them to halt again.
Eyes, pale as the sea the wind had freshened, paler, firm and prudent.
The seas' ruler, he gazed southward over the bay, empty save for the
smokeplume of the mailboat vague on the bright skyline and a sail tacking
by the Muglins.
-- I read a theological interpretation of it somewhere, he said bemused. The
Father and the Son idea. The Son striving to be atoned with the Father.
Buck Mulligan at once put on a blithe broadly smiling face. He
looked at them, his wellshaped mouth open happily, his eyes, from which he
had suddenly withdrawn all shrewd sense, blinking with mad gaiety. He
moved a doll's head to and fro, the brims of his Panama hat quivering, and
began to chant in a quiet happy foolish voice:
-- I'm the queerest young fellow that ever you heard.
My mother's a jew, my father's a bird.
With Joseph the joiner I cannot agree.
So here's to disciples and Calvary.
He held up a forefinger of warning.
-- If anyone thinks that I amn't divine
He'll get no free drinks when I'm making the wine
But have to drink water and wish it were plain
That I make when the wine becomes water again.
He tugged swiftly at Stephen's ashplant in farewell and, running
forward to a brow of the cliff, fluttered his hands at his sides like fins or
wings of one about to rise in the air, and chanted:
-- Goodbye, now, goodbye! Write down all I said
And tell Tom, Diek and Harry I rose from the dead.
What's bred in the bone cannot fail me to fIy
And Olivet's breezy - Goodbye, now, goodbye!
He capered before them down towards the fortyfoot hole, fluttering
his winglike hands, leaping nimbly, Mercury's hat quivering in the fresh
wind that bore back to them his brief birdsweet cries.
Haines, who had been laughing guardedly, walked on beside Stephen
and said:
-- We oughtn't to laugh, I suppose. He's rather blasphemous. I'm not a
believer myself, that is to say. Still his gaiety takes the harm out of it
somehow, doesn't it? What did he call it? Joseph the Joiner?
-- The ballad of joking Jesus, Stephen answered.
-- O, Haines said, you have heard it before?
-- Three times a day, after meals, Stephen said drily.
-- You're not a believer, are you? Haines asked. I mean, a believer in the
narrow sense of the word. Creation from nothing and miracles and a
personal God.
-- There's only one sense of the word, it seems to me, Stephen said.
Haines stopped to take out a smooth silver case in which twinkled a
green stone. He sprang it open with his thumb and offered it.
-- Thank you, Stephen said, taking a cigarette.
Haines helped himself and snapped the case to. He put it back in his
sidepocket and took from his waistcoatpocket a nickel tinderbox, sprang it
open too, and, having lit his cigarette, held the flaming spunk towards
Stephen in the shell of his hands.
-- Yes, of course, he said, as they went on again. Either you believe or you
don't, isn't it? Personally I couldn't stomach that idea of a personal God.
You don't stand for that, I suppose?
-- You behold in me, Stephen said with grim displeasure, a horrible example
of free thought.
He walked on, waiting to be spoken to, trailing his ashplant by his
side. Its ferrule followed lightly on the path, squealing at his heels. My
familiar, after me, calling, Steeeeeeeeeeeephen! A wavering line along the
path. They will walk on it tonight, coming here in the dark. He wants that
key. It is mine. I paid the rent. Now I eat his salt bread. Give him the key
too. All. He will ask for it. That was in his eyes.
-- After all, Haines began
Stephen turned and saw that the cold gaze which had measured him
was not all unkind.
-- After all, I should think you are able to free yourself. You are your own
master, it seems to me.
-- I am a servant of two masters, Stephen said, an English and an Italian.
-- Italian? Haines said.
A crazy queen, old and jealous. Kneel down before me.
-- And a third, Stephen said, there is who wants me for odd jobs.
-- Italian? Haines said again. What do you mean?
-- The imperial British state, Stephen answered, his colour rising, and the
holy Roman catholic and apostolic church.
Haines detached from his underlip some fibres of tobacco before he
spoke.
-- I can quite understand that, he said calmly. An Irishman must think like
that, I daresay. We feel in England that we have treated you rather unfairly.
It seems history is to blame.
The proud potent titles clanged over Stephen's memory the triumph
of their brazen bells: et unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam:
the slow growth and change of rite and dogma like his own rare thoughts, a
chemistry of stars. Symbol of the apostles in the mass for pope Marcellus,
the voices blended, singing alone loud in affirmation: and behind their
chant the vigilant angel of the church militant disarmed and menaced her
heresiarchs. A horde of heresies fleeing with mitres awry: Photius and the
brood of mockers of whom Mulligan was one, and Arius, warring his life
long upon the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father, and Valentine,
spurning Christ's terrene body, and the subtle African heresiarch Sabellius
who held that the Father was Himself His own Son. Words Mulligan had
spoken a moment since in mockery to the stranger. Idle mockery. The void
awaits surely all them that weave the wind: a menace, a disarming and a
worsting from those embattled angels of the church, Michael's host, who
defend her ever in the hour of conflict with their lances and their shields.
Hear, hear! Prolonged applause. Zut! Nom de Dieu!
-- Of course I'm a Britisher, Haines's voice said, and I feel as one. I don't
want to see my country fall into the hands of German jews either. That's
our national problem, I'm afraid, just now.
Two men stood at the verge of the cliff, watching: businessman,
boatman.
-- She's making for Bullock harbour.
The boatman nodded towards the north of the bay with some disdain.
-- There's five fathoms out there, he said. It'll be swept up that way when
the tide comes in about one. It's nine days today.
The man that was drowned. A sail veering about the blank bay
waiting for a swollen bundle to bob up, roll over to the sun a puffy face,
saltwhite. Here I am.
They followed the winding path down to the creek. Buck Mulligan
stood on a stone, in shirtsleeves, his unclipped tie rippling over his shoulder.
A young man clinging to a spur of rock near him, moved slowly frogwise
his green legs in the deep jelly of the water.
-- Is the brother with you, Malachi?
-- Down in Westmeath. With the Bannons.
-- Still there? I got a card from Bannon. Says he found a sweet young thing
down there. Photo girl he calls her.
-- Snapshot, eh? Brief exposure.
Buck Mulligan sat down to unlace his boots. An elderly man shot up
near the spur of rock a blowing red face. He scrambled up by the stones,
water glistening on his pate and on its garland of grey hair, water rilling
over his chest and paunch and spilling jets out of his black sagging
loincloth.
Buck Mulligan made way for him to scramble past and, glancing at
Haines and Stephen, crossed himself piously with his thumbnail at brow
and lips and breastbone.
-- Seymour's back in town, the young man said, grasping again his spur of
rock. Chucked medicine and going in for the army.
-- Ah, go to God! Buck Mulligan said.
-- Going over next week to stew. You know that red Carlisle girl, Lily?
-- Yes.
-- Spooning with him last night on the pier. The father is rotto with money.
-- Is she up the pole?
-- Better ask Seymour that.
-- Seymour a bleeding officer! Buck Mulligan said.
He nodded to himself as he drew off his trousers and stood up, saying
tritely:
-- Redheaded women buck like goats.
He broke off in alarm, feeling his side under his flapping shirt.
-- My twelfth rib is gone, he cried. I'm the sbermench. Toothless Kinch
and I, the supermen.
He struggled out of his shirt and flung it behind him to where his
clothes lay.
-- Are you going in here, Malachi?
-- Yes. Make room in the bed.
The young man shoved himself backward through the water and
reached the middle of the creek in two long clean strokes. Haines sat down
on a stone, smoking.
-- Are you not coming in? Buck Mulligan asked.
-- Later on, Haines said. Not on my breakfast.
Stephen turned away.
-- I'm going, Mulligan, he said.
-- Give us that key, Kinch, Buck Mulligan said, to keep my chemise flat.
Stephen handed him the key. Buck Mulligan laid it across his heaped
clothes.
-- And twopence, he said, for a pint. Throw it there.
Stephen threw two pennies on the soft heap. Dressing, undressing.
Buck Mulligan erect, with joined hands before him, said solemnly:
-- He who stealeth from the poor lendeth to the Lord. Thus spake
Zarathustra.
His plump body plunged.
-- We'll see you again, Haines said, turning as Stephen walked up the path
and smiling at wild Irish.
Horn of a bull, hoof of a horse, smile of a Saxon.
-- The Ship, Buck Mulligan cried. Half twelve.
-- Good, Stephen said.
He walked along the upwardcurving path.
Liliata rutilantium.
Turma circumdet.
Iubilantium te Virginum.
The priest's grey nimbus in a niche where he dressed discreetly. I will
not sleep here tonight. Home also I cannot go.
A voice, sweettoned and sustained, called to him from the sea.
Turning the curve he waved his hand. It called again. A sleek brown head, a
seal's, far out on the water, round.
Usurper.
-- Weep no more, woful shepherds, weep no more For Lycidas,your sorrow, is not dead, Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor ....It must be a movement then, an actuality of the possible as possible. Aristotle's phrase formed itself within the gabbled verses and floated out into the studious silence of the library of Saint Genevieve where he had read, sheltered from the sin of Paris, night by night. By his elbow a delicate Siamese conned a handbook of strategy. Fed and feeding brains about me: under glowlamps, impaled, with faintly beating feelers: and in my mind's darkness a sloth of the underworld, reluctant, shy of brightness, shifting her dragon scaly folds. Thought is the thought of thought. Tranquil brightness. The soul is in a manner all that is: the soul is the form of forms. Tranquility sudden, vast, candescent: form of forms. Talbot repeated: -- Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves, Through the dear might .... -- Turn over, Stephen said quietly. I don't see anything. -- What, sir? Talbot asked simply, bending forward. His hand turned the page over. He leaned back and went on again, having just remembered. Of him that walked the waves. Here also over these craven hearts his shadow lies and on the scoffer's heart and lips and on mine. It lies upon their eager faces who offered him a coin of the tribute. To Caesar what is Caesar's, to God what is God's. A long look from dark eyes, a riddling sentence to be woven and woven on the church's looms. Ay.
Riddle me, riddle me, randy ro.
My father gave me seeds to sow.
Talbot slid his closed book into his satchel.
-- Have I heard all? Stephen asked.
-- Yes, sir. Hockey at ten, sir.
-- Half day, sir. Thursday.
-- Who can answer a riddle? Stephen asked.
They bundled their books away, pencils clacking, pages rustling.
Crowding together they strapped and buckled their satchels, all gabbling
gaily:
-- A riddle, sir? Ask me, sir.
-- O, ask me, sir.
-- A hard one, sir.
-- This is the riddle, Stephen said:
The cock crew,
The sky was blue:
The bells in heaven
Were striking eleven.
'Tis time for this poor soul
To go to heaven.
What is that?
-- What, sir?
-- Again, sir. We didn't hear.
Their eyes grew bigger as the lines were repeated. After a silence
Cochrane said:
-- What is it, sir? We give it up.
Stephen, his throat itching, answered:
-- The fox burying his grandmother under a hollybush.
He stood up and gave a shout of nervous laughter to which their cries
echoed dismay.
A stick struck the door and a voice in the corridor called:
-- Hockey!
They broke asunder, sidling out of their benches, leaping them.
Quickly they were gone and from the lumberroom came the rattle of sticks
and clamour of their boots and tongues.
Sargent who alone had lingered came forward slowly, showing an
open copybook. His thick hair and scraggy neck gave witness of
unreadiness and through his misty glasses weak eyes looked up pleading.
On his cheek, dull and bloodless, a soft stain of ink lay, dateshaped, recent
and damp as a snail's bed.
He held out his copybook. The word Sums was written on the
headline. Beneath were sloping figures and at the foot a crooked signature
with blind loops and a blot. Cyril Sargent: his name and seal.
-- Mr Deasy told me to write them out all again, he said, and show them to
you, sir.
Stephen touched the edges of the book. Futility.
-- Do you understand how to do them now? he asked.
-- Numbers eleven to fifteen, Sargent answered. Mr Deasy said I was to
copy them off the board, sir.
-- Can you do them. yourself? Stephen asked.
-- No, sir.
Ugly and futile: lean neck and thick hair and a stain of ink, a snail's
bed. Yet someone had loved him, borne him in her arms and in her heart.
But for her the race of the world would have trampled him underfoot, a
squashed boneless snail. She had loved his weak watery blood drained from
her own. Was that then real? The only true thing in life? His mother's
prostrate body the fiery Columbanus in holy zeal bestrode. She was no
more: the trembling skeleton of a twig burnt in the fire, an odour of
rosewood and wetted ashes. She had saved him from being trampled
underfoot and had gone, scarcely having been. A poor soul gone to heaven:
and on a heath beneath winking stars a fox, red reek of rapine in his fur,
with merciless bright eyes scraped in the earth, listened, scraped up the
earth, listened, scraped and scraped.
Sitting at his side Stephen solved out the problem. He proves by
algebra that Shakespeare's ghost is Hamlet's grandfather. Sargent peered
askance through his slanted glasses. Hockeysticks rattled in the
lumberroom: the hollow knock of a ball and calls from the field.
Across the page the symbols moved in grave morrice, in the mummery
of their letters, wearing quaint caps of squares and cubes. Give hands,
traverse, bow to partner: so: imps of fancy of the Moors. Gone too from
the world, Averroes and Moses Maimonides, dark men in mien and
movement, flashing in their mocking mirrors the obscure soul of the world,
a darkness shining in brightness which brightness could not comprehend.
-- Do you understand now? Can you work the second for yourself?
-- Yes, sir.
In long shaky strokes Sargent copied the data. Waiting always for a
word of help his hand moved faithfully the unsteady symbols, a faint hue of
shame flickering behind his dull skin. Amor matris: subjective and objective
genitive. With her weak blood and wheysour milk she had fed him and hid
from sight of others his swaddlingbands.
Like him was I, these sloping shoulders, this gracelessness. My
childhood bends beside me. Too far for me to lay a hand there once or
lightly. Mine is far and his secret as our eyes. Secrets, silent, stony sit in the
dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their tyranny: tyrants,
willing to be dethroned.
The sum was done.
-- It is very simple, Stephen said as he stood up.
-- Yes, sir. Thanks, Sargent answered.
He dried the page with a sheet of thin blottingpaper and carried his
copybook back to his bench.
-- You had better get your stick and go out to the others, Stephen said as he
followed towards the door the boy's graceless form.
-- Yes, sir.
In the corridor his name was heard, called from the playfield.
-- Sargent!
-- Run on, Stephen said. Mr Deasy is calling you.
He stood in the porch and watched the laggard hurry towards the
scrappy field where sharp voices were in strife. They were sorted in teams
and Mr Deasy came away stepping over wisps of grass with gaitered feet.
When he had reached the schoolhouse voices again contending called to
him. He turned his angry white moustache.
-- What is it now? he cried continually without listening.
-- Cochrane and Halliday are on the same side, sir, Stephen said.
-- Will you wait in my study for a moment, Mr Deasy said, till I restore
order here.
And as he stepped fussily back across the field his old man's voice
cried sternly:
-- What is the matter? What is it now?
Their sharp voices cried about him on all sides: their many forms
closed round him, the garish sunshine bleaching the honey of his illdyed
head.
Stale smoky air hung in the study with the smell of drab abraded
leather of its chairs. As on the first day he bargained with me here. As it was
in the beginning, is now. On the sideboard the tray of Stuart coins, base
treasure of a bog: and ever shall be. And snug in their spooncase of purple
plush, faded, the twelve apostles having preached to all the gentiles: world
without end.
A hasty step over the stone porch and in the corridor. Blowing out his
rare moustache Mr Deasy halted at the table.
-- First, our little financial settlement, he said.
He brought out of his coat a pocketbook bound by a leather thong. It
slapped open and he took from it two notes, one of joined halves, and laid
them carefully on the table.
-- Two, he said, strapping and stowing his pocketbook away.
And now his strongroom for the gold. Stephen's embarrassed hand
moved over the shells heaped in the cold stone mortar: whelks and money
cowries and leopard shells: and this, whorled as an emir's turban, and this,
the scallop of saint James. An old pilgrim's hoard, dead treasure, hollow
shells.
A sovereign fell, bright and new, on the soft pile of the tablecloth.
-- Three, Mr Deasy said, turning his little savingsbox about in his hand.
These are handy things to have. See. This is for sovereigns. This is for
shillings. Sixpences, halfcrowns. And here crowns. See.
He shot from it two crowns and two shillings.
-- Three twelve, he said. I think you'll find that's right.
-- Thank you, sir, Stephen said, gathering the money together with shy
haste and putting it all in a pocket of his trousers.
-- No thanks at all, Mr Deasy said. You have earned it.
Stephen's hand, free again, went back to the hollow shells. Symbols
too of beauty and of power. A lump in my pocket: symbols soiled by greed
and misery.
-- Don't carry it like that, Mr Deasy said. You'll pull it out somewhere and
lose it. You just buy one of these machines. You'll find them very handy.
Answer something.
-- Mine would be often empty, Stephen said.
The same room and hour, the same wisdom: and I the same. Three
times now. Three nooses round me here. Well? I can break them in this
instant if I will.
-- Because you don't save, Mr Deasy said, pointing his finger. You don't
know yet what money is. Money is power. When you have lived as long as I
have. I know, I know. If youth but knew. But what does Shakespeare say?
Put but money in thy purse.
-- Iago, Stephen murmured.
He lifted his gaze from the idle shells to the old man's stare.
-- He knew what money was, Mr Deasy said. He made money. A poet, yes,
but an Englishman too. Do you know what is the pride of the English? Do
you know what is the proudest word you will ever hear from an
Englishman's mouth?
The seas' ruler. His seacold eyes looked on the empty bay: it seems
history is to blame: on me and on my words, unhating.
-- That on his empire, Stephen said, the sun never sets.
-- Ba! Mr Deasy cried. That's not English. A French Celt said that.
He tapped his savingsbox against his thumbnail.
-- I will tell you, he said solemnly, what is his proudest boast. I paid my way.
Good man, good man.
-- I paid my way. I never borrowed a shilling in my life. Can you feel that? I
owe nothing. Can you?
Mulligan, nine pounds, three pairs of socks, one pair brogues, ties.
Curran, ten guineas. McCann, one guinea. Fred Ryan, two shillings.
Temple, two lunches. Russell, one guinea, Cousins, ten shillings, Bob
Reynolds, half a guinea, Koehler, three guineas, Mrs MacKernan, five
weeks' board. The lump I have is useless.
-- For the moment, no, Stephen answered.
Mr Deasy laughed with rich delight, putting back his savingsbox.
-- I knew you couldn't, he said joyously. But one day you must feel it. We
are a generous people but we must also be just.
-- I fear those big words, Stephen said, which make us so unhappy.
Mr Deasy stared sternly for some moments over the mantelpiece at
the shapely bulk of a man in tartan filibegs: Albert Edward, prince of
Wales.
-- You think me an old fogey and an old tory, his thoughtful voice said. I
saw three generations since O'Connell's time. I remember the famine in '46.
Do you know that the orange lodges agitated for repeal of the union twenty
years before O'Connell did or before the prelates of your communion
denounced him as a demagogue? You fenians forget some things.
Glorious, pious and immortal memory. The lodge of Diamond in
Armagh the splendid behung with corpses of papishes. Hoarse, masked and
armed, the planters' covenant. The black north and true blue bible.
Croppies lie down.
Stephen sketched a brief gesture.
-- I have rebel blood in me too, Mr Deasy said. On the spindle side. But I
am descended from sir John Blackwood who voted for the union. We are all
Irish, all kings' sons.
-- Alas, Stephen said.
-- Per vias rectas, Mr Deasy said firmly, was his motto. He voted for it and
put on his topboots to ride to Dublin from the Ards of Down to do so.
Lal the ral the ra
The rocky road to Dublin.
A gruff squire on horseback with shiny topboots. Soft day, sir John!
Soft day, your honour! .... Day! .... Day! .... Two topboots jog dangling on
to Dublin. Lal the ral the ra. Lal the ral the raddy.
-- That reminds me, Mr Deasy said. You can do me a favour, Mr Dedalus,
with some of your literary friends. I have a letter here for the press. Sit
down a moment. I have just to copy the end.
He went to the desk near the window, pulled in his chair twice and
read off some words from the sheet on the drum of his typewriter.
-- Sit down. Excuse me, he said over his shoulder, the dictates of common
sense. Just a moment.
He peered from under his shaggy brows at the manuscript by his
elbow and, muttering, began to prod the stiff buttons of the keyboard
slowly, sometimes blowing as he screwed up the drum to erase an error.
Stephen seated himself noiselessly before the princely presence.
Framed around the walls images of vanished horses stood in homage, their
meek heads poised in air: lord Hastings' Repulse, the duke of
Westminster's Shotover, the duke of Beaufort's Ceylon, prix de Paris,
1866. Elfin riders sat them, watchful of a sign. He saw their speeds, backing
king's colours, and shouted with the shouts of vanished crowds.
-- Full stop, Mr Deasy bade his keys. But prompt ventilation of this
allimportant question....
Where Cranly led me to get rich quick, hunting his winners among
the mudsplashed brakes, amid the bawls of bookies on their pitches and
reek of the canteen, over the motley slush. Fair Rebel! Fair Rebel! Even
money the favourite: ten to one the field. Dicers and thimbleriggers we
hurried by after the hoofs, the vying caps and jackets and past the
meatfaced woman, a butcher's dame, nuzzling thirstily her clove of orange.
Shouts rang shrill from the boys' playfield and a whirring whistle.
Again: a goal. I am among them, among their battling bodies in a
medley, the joust of life. You mean that knockkneed mother's darling who
seems to be slightly crawsick? Jousts. Time shocked rebounds, shock by
shock. Jousts, slush and uproar of battles, the frozen deathspew of the slain,
a shout of spearspikes baited with men's bloodied guts.
-- Now then, Mr Deasy said, rising.
He came to the table, pinning together his sheets. Stephen stood up.
-- I have put the matter into a nutshell, Mr Deasy said. It's about the foot
and mouth disease. Just look through it. There can be no two opinions on
the matter.
May I trespass on your valuable space. That doctrine of laissez faire
which so often in our history. Our cattle trade. The way of all our old
industries. Liverpool ring which jockeyed the Galway harbour scheme.
European conflagration. Grain supplies through the narrow waters of the
channel. The pluterperfect imperturbability of the department of
agriculture. Pardoned a classical allusion. Cassandra. By a woman who
was no better than she should be. To come to the point at issue.
-- I don't mince words, do I? Mr Deasy asked as Stephen read on.
Foot and mouth disease. Known as Koch's preparation. Serum and
virus. Percentage of salted horses. Rinderpest. Emperor's horses at
M*rzsteg, lower Austria. Veterinary surgeons. Mr Henry Blackwood Price.
Courteous offer a fair trial. Dictates of common sense. Allimportant
question. In every sense of the word take the bull by the horns. Thanking
you for the hospitality of your columns.
-- I want that to be printed and read, Mr Deasy said. You will see at the next
outbreak they will put an embargo on Irish cattle. And it can be cured. It is
cured. My cousin, Blackwood Price, writes to me it is regularly treated and
cured in Austria by cattledoctors there. They offer to come over here. I am
trying to work up influence with the department. Now I'm going to try
publicity. I am surrounded by difficulties, by .... intrigues by .... backstairs
influence by ....
He raised his forefinger and beat the air oldly before his voice spoke.
-- Mark my words, Mr Dedalus, he said. England is in the hands of the
jews. In all the highest places: her finance, her press. And they are the signs
of a nation's decay. Wherever they gather they eat up the nation's vital
strength. I have seen it coming these years. As sure as we are standing here
the jew merchants are already at their work of destruction. Old England is
dying.
He stepped swiftly off, his eyes coming to blue life as they passed a
broad sunbeam. He faced about and back again.
-- Dying, he said again, if not dead by now.
The harlot's cry from street to street
Shall weave old England's windingsheet.
His eyes open wide in vision stared sternly across the sunbeam in
which he halted.
-- A merchant, Stephen said, is one who buys cheap and sells dear, jew or
gentile, is he not?
-- They sinned against the light, Mr Deasy said gravely. And you can see the
darkness in their eyes. And that is why they are wanderers on the earth to
this day.
On the steps of the Paris stock exchange the goldskinned men quoting
prices on their gemmed fingers. Gabble of geese. They swarmed loud,
uncouth about the temple, their heads thickplotting under maladroit silk
hats. Not theirs: these clothes, this speech, these gestures. Their full slow
eyes belied the words, the gestures eager and unoffending, but knew the
rancours massed about them and knew their zeal was vain. Vain patience to
heap and hoard. Time surely would scatter all. A hoard heaped by the
roadside: plundered and passing on. Their eyes knew their years of
wandering and, patient, knew the dishonours of their flesh.
-- Who has not? Stephen said.
-- What do you mean? Mr Deasy asked.
He came forward a pace and stood by the table. His underjaw fell
sideways open uncertainly. Is this old wisdom? He waits to hear from me.
-- History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.
From the playfield the boys raised a shout. A whirring whistle: goal.
What if that nightmare gave you a back kick?
-- The ways of the Creator are not our ways, Mr Deasy said. All human
history moves towards one great goal, the manifestation of God.
Stephen jerked his thumb towards the window, saying:
-- That is God.
Hooray! Ay! Whrrwhee!
-- What? Mr Deasy asked.
-- A shout in the street, Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders.
Mr Deasy looked down and held for awhile the wings of his nose
tweaked between his fingers. Looking up again he set them free.
-- I am happier than you are, he said. We have committed many errors and
many sins. A woman brought sin into the world. For a woman who was no
better than she should be, Helen, the runaway wife of Menelaus, ten years
the Greeks made war on Troy. A faithless wife first brought the strangers to
our shore here, MacMurrough's wife and her leman, O'Rourke, prince of
Breffni. A woman too brought Parnell low. Many errors, many failures but
not the one sin. I am a struggler now at the end of my days. But I will fight
for the right till the end.
For Ulster will fight
And Ulster will be right.
Stephen raised the sheets in his hand.
-- Well, sir, he began .....
-- I foresee, Mr Deasy said, that you will not remain here very long at this
work. You were not born to be a teacher, I think. Perhaps I am wrong.
-- A learner rather, Stephen said.
And here what will you learn more?
Mr Deasy shook his head.
-- Who knows? he said. To learn one must be humble. But life is the great
teacher.
Stephen rustled the sheets again.
-- As regards these, he began .....
-- Yes, Mr Deasy said. You have two copies there. If you can have them 410
published at once.
Telegraph. Irish Homestead.
-- I will try, Stephen said, and let you know tomorrow. I know two editors
slightly.
-- That will do, Mr Deasy said briskly. I wrote last night to Mr Field, M. P.
There is a meeting of the cattletraders' association today at the City Arms
hotel. I asked him to lay my letter before the meeting. You see if you can get
it into your two papers. What are they?
-- The Evening Telegraph .....
-- That will do, Mr Deasy said. There is no time to lose. Now I have to 420
answer that letter from my cousin.
-- Good morning, sir, Stephen said, putting the sheets in his pocket. Thank
you.
-- Not at all, Mr Deasy said as he searched the papers on his desk. I like to
break a lance with you, old as I am.
-- Good morning, sir, Stephen said again, bowing to his bent back.
He went out by the open porch and down the gravel path under the
trees, hearing the cries of voices and crack of sticks from the playfield. The
lions couchant on the pillars as he passed out through the gate: toothless
terrors. Still I will help him in his fight. Mulligan will dub me a new name: 430
the bullockbefriending bard.
-- Mr Dedalus!
Running after me. No more letters, I hope.
-- Just one moment.
-- Yes, sir, Stephen said, turning back at the gate.
Mr Deasy halted, breathing hard and swallowing his breath.
-- I just wanted to say, he said. Ireland, they say, has the honour of being
the only country which never persecuted the jews. Do you know that? No.
And do you know why?
He frowned sternly on the bright air.
-- Why, sir? Stephen asked, beginning to smile.
-- Because she never let them in, Mr Deasy said solemnly.
A coughball of laughter leaped from his throat dragging after it a
rattling chain of phlegm. He turned back quickly, coughing, laughing, his
lifted arms waving to the air.
-- She never let them in, he cried again through his laughter as he stamped
on gaitered feet over the gravel of the path. That's why.
On his wise shoulders through the checkerwork of leaves the sun
flung spangles, dancing coins.
Won't you come to Sandymount,
Madeline the mare?
Rhythm begins, you see. I hear. Acatalectic tetrameter of iambs
marching. No, agallop: deline the mare.
Open your eyes now. I will. One moment. Has all vanished since? If I
open and am for ever in the black adiaphane. Basta! I will see if I can see.
See now. There all the time without you: and ever shall be, world
without end.
They came down the steps from Leahy's terrace prudently,
Frauenzimmer: and down the shelving shore flabbily, their splayed feet
sinking in the silted sand. Like me, like Algy, coming down to our mighty
mother. Number one swung lourdily her midwife's bag, the other's gamp
poked in the beach. From the liberties, out for the day. Mrs Florence
MacCabe, relict of the late Patk MacCabe, deeply lamented, of Bride Street.One of her sisterhood lugged me squealing into life. Creation from nothing.
What has she in the bag? A misbirth with a trailing navelcord, hushed in
ruddy wool. The cords of all link back, strandentwining cable of all flesh.
That is why mystic monks. Will you be as gods? Gaze in your omphalos.
Hello! Kinch here. Put me on to Edenville. Aleph, alpha: nought, nought,
one.
Spouse and helpmate of Adam Kadmon: Heva, naked Eve. She had
no navel. Gaze. Belly without blemish, bulging big, a buckler of taut vellum,
no, whiteheaped corn, orient and immortal, standing from everlasting to
everlasting. Womb of sin.
Wombed in sin darkness I was too, made not begotten. By them, the
man with my voice and my eyes and a ghostwoman with ashes on her
breath. They clasped and sundered, did the coupler's will. From before the
ages He willed me and now may not will me away or ever. A lex eterna
stays about Him. Is that then the divine substance wherein Father and Son
are consubstantial? Where is poor dear Arius to try conclusions? Warring
his life long upon the contransmagnificandjewbangtantiality. Illstarred
heresiarch' In a Greek watercloset he breathed his last: euthanasia. With
beaded mitre and with crozier, stalled upon his throne, widower of a
widowed see, with upstiffed omophorion, with clotted hinderparts.
Airs romped round him, nipping and eager airs. They are coming,
waves. The whitemaned seahorses, champing, brightwindbridled, the steeds
of Mananaan.
I mustn't forget his letter for the press. And after? The Ship, half
twelve. By the way go easy with that money like a good young imbecile.
Yes, I must.
His pace slackened. Here. Am I going to aunt Sara's or not? My
consubstantial father's voice. Did you see anything of your artist brother
Stephen lately? No? Sure he's not down in Strasburg terrace with his aunt
Sally? Couldn't he fly a bit higher than that, eh? And and and and tell us,
Stephen, how is uncle Si? O, weeping God, the things I married into! De
boys up in de hayloft. The drunken little costdrawer and his brother, the
cornet player. Highly respectable gondoliers! And skeweyed Walter sirring
his father, no less! Sir. Yes, sir. No, sir. Jesus wept: and no wonder, by
Christ!
I pull the wheezy bell of their shuttered cottage: and wait. They take
me for a dun, peer out from a coign of vantage.
-- It's Stephen, sir.
-- Let him in. Let Stephen in.
A bolt drawn back and Walter welcomes me.
-- We thought you were someone else.
In his broad bed nuncle Richie, pillowed and blanketed, extends over
the hillock of his knees a sturdy forearm. Cleanchested. He has washed the
upper moiety.
-- Morrow, nephew. Sit down and take a walk.
He lays aside the lapboard whereon he drafts his bills of costs for the
eyes of master Goff and master Shapland Tandy, filing consents and
common searches and a writ of Duces Tecum. A bogoak frame over his bald
head: Wilde's Requiescat. The drone of his misleading whistle brings
Walter back.
-- Yes, sir?
-- Malt for Richie and Stephen, tell mother. Where is she?
-- Bathing Crissie, sir.
Papa's little bedpal. Lump of love.
-- No, uncle Richie ....
-- Call me Richie. Damn your lithia water. It lowers. Whusky!
-- Uncle Richie, really ....
-- Sit down or by the law Harry I'll knock you down.
Walter squints vainly for a chair.
-- He has nothing to sit down on, sir.
-- He has nowhere to put it, you mug. Bring in our chippendale chair.
Would you like a bite of something? None of your damned lawdeedaw airs
here. The rich of a rasher fried with a herring? Sure? So much the better.
We have nothing in the house but backache pills.
All'erta!
He 'drones bars of Ferrando's aria di sortita. The grandest number,
Stephen, in the whole opera. Listen.
His tuneful whistle sounds again, finely shaded, with rushes of the air,
his fists bigdrumming on his padded knees.
This wind is sweeter.
Houses of decay, mine, his and all. You told the Clongowes gentry
you had an uncle a judge and an uncle a general in the army. Come out of
them, Stephen. Beauty is not there. Nor in the stagnant bay of Marsh's
library where you read the fading prophecies of Joachim Abbas. For
whom? The hundredheaded rabble of the cathedral close. A hater of his
kind ran from them to the wood of madness, his mane foaming in the
moon, his eyeballs stars. Houyhnhnm, horsenostrilled. The oval equine
faces, Temple, Buck Mulligan, Foxy Campbell, Lanternjaws. Abbas father, -
furious dean, what offence laid fire to their brains? Paff! Descende, calve, ut
ne amplius decalveris. A garland of grey hair on his comminated head see
him me clambering down to the footpace (descende!), clutching a
monstrance, basiliskeyed. Get down, baldpoll! A choir gives back menace
and echo, assisting about the altar's horns, the snorted Latin of jackpriests
moving burly in their albs, tonsured and oiled and gelded, fat with the fat of
kidneys of wheat.
And at the same instant perhaps a priest round the corner is elevating
it. Dringdring! And two streets off another locking it into a pyx.
Dringadring! And in a ladychapel another taking housel all to his own
cheek. Dringdring! Down, up, forward, back. Dan Occam thought of that,
invincible doctor. A misty English morning the imp hypostasis tickled his
brain. Bringing his host down and kneeling he heard twine with his second
bell the first bell in the transept (he is lifting his) and, rising, heard (now I
am lifting) their two bells (he is kneeling) twang in diphthong.
Cousin Stephen, you will never be a saint. Isle of saints. You were
awfully holy, weren't you? You prayed to the Blessed Virgin that you might
not have a red nose. You prayed to the devil in Serpentine avenue that the
fubsy widow in front might lift her clothes still more from the wet street. O
si, certo! Sell your soul for that, do, dyed rags pinned round a squaw. More
tell me, more still!! On the top of the Howth tram alone crying to the rain:
Naked women! Naked women! What about that, eh?
What about what? What else were they invented for?
Reading two pages apiece of seven books every night, eh? I was
young. You bowed to yourself in the mirror, stepping forward to applause
earnestly, striking face. Hurray for the Goddamned idiot! Hray! No-one
saw: tell no-one. Books you were going to write with letters for titles. Have
you read his F? O yes, but I prefer Q. Yes, but W is wonderful. O yes, W.
Remember your epiphanies written on green oval leaves, deeply deep, copies
to be sent if you died to all the great libraries of the world, including
Alexandria? Someone was to read them there after a few thousand years, a
mahamanvantara. Pico della Mirandola like. Ay, very like a whale. When
one reads these strange pages of one long gone one feels that one is at one
with one who once .....
The grainy sand had gone from under his feet. His boots trod again a
damp crackling mast, razorshells, squeaking pebbles, that on the
unnumbered pebbles beats, wood sieved by the shipworm, lost Armada.
Unwholesome sandflats waited to suck his treading soles, breathing upward
sewage breath, a pocket of seaweed smouldered in seafire under a midden
of man's ashes. He coasted them, walking warily. A porterbottle stood up,
stogged to its waist, in the cakey sand dough. A sentinel: isle of dreadful
thirst. Broken hoops on the shore; at the land a maze of dark cunning nets;
farther away chalkscrawled backdoors and on the higher beach a
dryingline with two crucified shirts. Ringsend: wigwams of brown
steersmen and master mariners. Human shells.
He halted. I have passed the way to aunt Sara's. Am I not going
there? Seems not. No-one about. He turned northeast and crossed the
firmer sand towards the Pigeonhouse.
-- Qui vous a mis dans cette fichue position?
-- C'est le pigeon, Joseph.
Patrice, home on furlough, lapped warm milk with me in the bar
MacMahon. Son of the wild goose, Kevin Egan of Paris. My father's a bird,
he lapped the sweet lait chaud with pink young tongue, plump bunny's face.
Lap, lapin. He hopes to win in the gros lots. About the nature of women he
read in Michelet. But he must send me La Vie de Jesus by M. Leo Taxil.
Lent it to his friend.
-- C'est tordant, vous savez. Moi, je suis socialiste. Je ne crois pas en
l'existence de Dieu. Faut pas le dire a mon p’re.
-- Il croit?
-- Mon pere, oui.
Schluss. He laps.
My Latin quarter hat. God, we simply must dress the character. I
want puce gloves. You were a student, weren't you? Of what in the other
devil's name? Paysayenn. P. C. N., you know: physiques, chimiques et
naturelles. Aha. Eating your groatsworth of mou en civet, fleshpots of
Egypt, elbowed by belching cabmen. Just say in the most natural tone:
when I was in Paris; boul' Mich', I used to. Yes, used to carry punched
tickets to prove an alibi if they arrested you for murder somewhere. Justice.
On the night of the seventeenth of February 1904 the prisoner was seen by
two witnesses. Other fellow did it: other me. Hat, tie, overcoat, nose. Lui,
c'est moi. You seem to have enjoyed yourself.
Proudly walking. Whom were you trying to walk like? Forget: a
dispossessed. With mother's money order, eight shillings, the banging door
of the post office slammed in your face by the usher. Hunger toothache.
Encore deux minutes. Look clock. Must get. Ferm’. Hired dog! Shoot him
to bloody bits with a bang shotgun, bits man spattered walls all brass
buttons. Bits all khrrrrklak in place clack back. Not hurt? O, that's all
right. Shake hands. See what I meant, see? O, that's all right. Shake a
shake. O, that's all only all right.
You were going to do wonders, what? Missionary to Europe after
fiery Columbanus. Fiacre and Scotus on their creepystools in heaven spilt
from their pintpots, loudlatinlaughing: Euge! Euge! Pretending to speak
broken English as you dragged your valise, porter threepence, across the
slimy pier at Newhaven. Comment? Rich booty you brought back; Le
Tutu, five tattered numbers of Pantalon Blanc et Culotte Rouge; a blue
French telegram, curiosity to show:
-- Nother dying come home father.
The aunt thinks you killed your mother. That's why she won't.
Then here's a health to Mulligan's aunt
And I'll tell you the reason why.
She always kept things decent in
The Hannigan famileye.
His feet marched in sudden proud rhythm over the sand furrows,
along by the boulders of the south wall. He stared at them proudly, piled
stone mammoth skulls. Gold light on sea, on sand, on boulders. The sun is
there, the slender trees, the lemon houses.
Paris rawly waking, crude sunlight on her lemon streets. Moist pith of
farls of bread, the froggreen wormwood, her matin incense, court the air.
Belluomo rises from the bed of his wife's lover's wife, the kerchiefed
housewife is astir, a saucer of acetic acid in her hand. In Rodot's Yvonne
and Madeleine newmake their tumbled beauties, shattering with gold teeth
chaussons of pastry, their mouths yellowed with the pus of flan breton.
Faces of Paris men go by, their wellpleased pleasers, curled conquistadores.
Noon slumbers. Kevin Egan rolls gunpowder cigarettes through
fingers smeared with printer's ink, sipping his green fairy as Patrice his
white. About us gobblers fork spiced beans down their gullets. Un demi
setier! A jet of coffee steam from the burnished caldron. She serves me at
his beck. Il est irlandais. Hollandais? Non fromage. Deux irlandais, nous,
Irlande, vous savez Ah, oui! She thought you wanted a cheese hollandais.
Your postprandial, do you know that word? Postprandial. There was a
fellow I knew once in Barcelona, queer fellow, used to call it his
postprandial. Well: slainte! Around the slabbed tables the tangle of wined
breaths and grumbling gorges. His breath hangs over our saucestained
plates, the green fairy's fang thrusting between his lips. Of Ireland, the
Dalcassians, of hopes, conspiracies, of Arthur Griffith now, A E, pimander,
good shepherd of men. To yoke me as his yokefellow, our crimes our
common cause. You're your father's son. I know the voice. His fustian
shirt, sanguineflowered, trembles its Spanish tassels at his secrets. M.
Drumont, famous journalist, Drumont, know what he called queen
Victoria? Old hag with the yellow teeth. Vieille ogresse with the dents
jaunes. Maud Gonne, beautiful woman, la Patrie, M. Millevoye, F’lix
Faure, know how he died? Licentious men. The froeken, bonne Љ tout faire,
who rubs male nakedness in the bath at Upsala. Moi faire, she said, tous les
messieurs. Not this monsieur, I said. Most licentious custom. Bath a most
private thing. I wouldn't let my brother, not even my own brother, most
lascivious thing. Green eyes, I see you. Fang, I feel. Lascivious people.
The blue fuse burns deadly between hands and burns clear. Loose
tobaccoshreds catch fire: a flame and acrid smoke light our corner. Raw
facebones under his peep of day boy's hat. How the head centre got away,
authentic version. Got up as a young bride, man, veil, orangeblossoms,
drove out the road to Malahide. Did, faith. Of lost leaders, the betrayed,
wild escapes. Disguises, clutched at, gone, not here.
Spurned lover. I was a strapping young gossoon at that time, I tell
you. I'll show you my likeness one day. I was, faith. Lover, for her love he
prowled with colonel Richard Burke, tanist of his sept, under the walls of
Clerkenwell and, crouching, saw a flame of vengeance hurl them upward in
the fog. Shattered glass and toppling masonry. In gay Paree he hides, Egan
of Paris, unsought by any save by me. Making his day's stations, the dingy
printingcase, his three taverns, the Montmartre lair he sleeps short night in,
rue de la Goutte-d'Or, damascened with flyblown faces of the gone.
Loveless, landless, wifeless. She is quite nicey comfy without her outcast
man, madame in rue G‘t-le-C ur, canary and two buck lodgers. Peachy
cheeks, a zebra skirt, frisky as a young thing's. Spurned and undespairing.
Tell Pat you saw me, won't you? I wanted to get poor Pat a job one time.
Mon fils, soldier of France. I taught him to sing The boys of Kilkenny are
stout roaring blades. Know that old lay? I taught Patrice that. Old
Kilkenny: saint Canice, Strongbow's castle on the Nore. Goes like this. O,
O. He takes me, Napper Tandy, by the hand.
O, O the boysof
Kilkenny ....
Weak wasting hand on mine. They have forgotten Kevin Egan, not he
them. Remembering thee, O Sion.
He had come nearer the edge of the sea and wet sand slapped his
boots. The new air greeted him, harping in wild nerves, wind of wild air of
seeds of brightness. Here, I am not walking out to the Kish lightship, am I?
He stood suddenly, his feet beginning to sink slowly in the quaking soil.
Turn back.
Turning, he scanned the shore south, his feet sinking again slowly in
new sockets. The cold domed room of the tower waits. Through the
barbacans the shafts of light are moving ever, slowly ever as my feet are
sinking, creeping duskward over the dial floor. Blue dusk, nightfall, deep
blue night. In the darkness of the dome they wait, their pushedback chairs,
my obelisk valise, around a board of abandoned platters. Who to clear it?
He has the key. I will not sleep there when this night comes. A shut door of
a silent tower, entombing their - blind bodies, the panthersahib and his
pointer. Call: no answer. He lifted his feet up from the suck and turned
back by the mole of boulders. Take all, keep all. My soul walks with me,
form of forms. So in the moon's midwatches I pace the path above the
rocks, in sable silvered, hearing Elsinore's tempting flood.
The flood is following me. I can watch it flow past from here. Get
back then by the Poolbeg road to the strand there. He climbed over the
sedge and eely oarweeds and sat on a stool of rock, resting his ashplant in a
grike.
A bloated carcass of a dog lay lolled on bladderwrack. Before him the
gunwale of a boat, sunk in sand. Un coche ensabl’ Louis Veuillot called
Gautier's prose. These heavy sands are language tide and wind have silted
here. And these, the stoneheaps of dead builders, a warren of weasel rats.
Hide gold there. Try it. You have some. Sands and stones. Heavy of the
past. Sir Lout's toys. Mind you don't get one bang on the ear. I'm the
bloody well gigant rolls all them bloody well boulders, bones for my
steppingstones. Feefawfum. I zmellz de bloodz odz an Iridzman.
A point, live dog, grew into sight running across the sweep of sand.
Lord, is he going to attack me? Respect his liberty. You will not be master of
others or their slave. I have my stick. Sit tight. From farther away, walking
shoreward across from the crested tide, figures, two. The two maries. They
have tucked it safe mong the bulrushes. Peekaboo. I see you. No, the dog.
He is running back to them. Who?
Galleys of the Lochlanns ran here to beach, in quest of prey, their
bloodbeaked prows riding low on a molten pewter surf. Dane vikings, torcs
of tomahawks aglitter on their breasts when Malachi wore the collar of
gold. A school of turlehide whales stranded in hot noon, spouting, hobbling
in the shallows. Then from the starving cagework city a horde of jerkined
dwarfs, my people, with flayers' knives, running, scaling, hacking in green
blubbery whalemeat. Famine, plague and slaughters. Their blood is in me,
their lusts my waves. I moved among them on the frozen Liffey, that I, a
changeling, among the spluttering resin fires. I spoke to no-one: none to
me.
The dog's bark ran towards him, stopped, ran back. Dog of my
enemy. I just simply stood pale, silent, bayed about. Terribilia meditans. A
primrose doublet, fortune's knave, smiled on my fear. For that are you
pining, the bark of their applause? Pretenders: live their lives. The Bruce's
brother, Thomas Fitzgerald, silken knight, Perkin Warbeck, York's false
scion, in breeches of silk of whiterose ivory, wonder of a day, and Lambert
Simnel, with a tail of nans and sutlers, a scullion crowned. All kings' sons.
Paradise of pretenders then and now. He saved men from drowning and
you shake at a cur's yelping. But the courtiers who mocked Guido in Or
san Michele were in their own house. House of... We don't want any of
your medieval abstrusiosities. Would you do what he did? A boat would be
near, a lifebuoy. Nat*rlich, put there for you. Would you or would you
not? The man that was drowned nine days ago off Maiden's rock. They are
waiting for him now. The truth, spit it out. I would want to. I would try. I
am not a strong swimmer. Water cold soft. When I put my face into it in the
basin at Clongowes. Can't see! Who's behind me? Out quickly, quickly!
Do you see the tide flowing quickly in on all sides, sheeting the lows of sand
quickly, shellcocoacoloured? If I had land under my feet. I want his life still
to be his, mine to be mine. A drowning man. His human eyes scream to me
out of horror of his death. I ... With him together down .... I could not save
her. Waters: bitter death: lost.
A woman and a man. I see her skirties. Pinned up, I bet.
Their dog ambled about a bank of dwindling sand, trotting, sniffing
on all sides. Looking for something lost in a past life. Suddenly he made off
like a bounding hare, ears flung back, chasing the shadow of a
lowskimming gull. The man's shrieked whistle struck his limp ears. He
turned, bounded back, came nearer, trotted on twinkling shanks. On a field
tenney a buck, trippant, proper, unattired. At the lacefringe of the tide he
halted with stiff forehoofs, seawardpointed ears. His snout lifted barked at
the wavenoise, herds of seamorse. They serpented towards his feet, curling,
unfurling many crests, every ninth, breaking, plashing, from far, from
farther out, waves and waves.
Cocklepickers. They waded a little way in the water and, stooping,
soused their bags and, lifting them again, waded out. The dog yelped
running to them, reared up and pawed them, dropping on all fours, again
reared up at them with mute bearish fawning. Unheeded he kept by them as
they came towards the drier sand, a rag of wolf's tongue redpanting from
his jaws. His speckled body ambled ahead of them and then loped off at a
calf's gallop. The carcass lay on his path. He stopped, sniffed, stalked
round it, brother, nosing closer, went round it, sniffling rapidly like a dog
all over the dead dog's bedraggled fell. Dogskull, dogsniff, eyes on the
ground, moves to one great goal. Ah, poor dogsbody! Here lies poor
dogsbody's body.
-- Tatters! Outofthat, you mongrel!
The cry brought him skulking back to his master and a blunt bootless
kick sent him unscathed across a spit of sand, crouched in flight. He slunk
back in a curve. Doesn't see me. Along by the edge of the mole he lolloped,
dawdled, smelt a rock. and from under a cocked hindleg pissed against it.
He trotted forward and, lifting again his hindleg, pissed quick short at an
unsmelt rock. The simple pleasures of the poor. His hindpaws then
scattered the sand: then his forepaws dabbled and delved. Something he
buried there, his grandmother. He rooted in the sand, dabbling, delving and
stopped to listen to the air, scraped up the sand again with a fury of his
claws, soon ceasing, a pard, a panther, got in spousebreach, vulturing the
dead.
After he woke me last night same dream or was it? Wait. Open
hallway. Street of harlots. Remember. Haroun al Raschid. I am almosting
it. That man led me, spoke. I was not afraid. The melon he had he held
against my face. Smiled: creamfruit smell. That was the rule, said. In.
Come. Red carpet spread. You will see who.
Shouldering their bags they trudged, the red Egyptians. His blued
feet out of turnedup trousers slapped the clammy sand, a dull brick muffler
strangling his unshaven neck. With woman steps she followed: the ruffian
and his strolling mort. Spoils slung at her back. Loose sand and shellgrit
crusted her bare feet. About her windraw face hair trailed. Behind her lord,
his helpmate, bing awast to Romeville. When night hides her body's flaws
calling under her brown shawl from an archway where dogs have mired.
Her fancyman is treating two Royal Dublins in O'Loughlin's of Blackpitts.
Buss her, wap in rogues' rum lingo, for, O, my dimber wapping dell! A
shefiend's whiteness under her rancid rags. Fumbally's lane that night: the
tanyard smells.
White thy fambles, red thy gan
And thy quarrons dainty is.
Couch a hogshead with me then.
In the darkmans clip and kiss.
Morose delectation Aquinas tunbelly calls this, frate porcospino.
Unfallen Adam rode and not rutted. Call away let him: thy quarrons dainty
is. Language no whit worse than his. Monkwords, marybeads jabber on
their girdles: roguewords, tough nuggets patter in their pockets.
Passing now.
A side eye at my Hamlet hat. If I were suddenly naked here as I sit? I
am not. Across the sands of all the world, followed by the sun's flaming
sword, to the west, trekking to evening lands. She trudges, schlepps, trains,
drags, trascines her load. A tide westering, moondrawn, in her wake. Tides,
myriadislanded, within her, blood not mine, oinopa ponton, a winedark sea.
Behold the handmaid of the moon. In sleep the wet sign calls her hour, bids
her rise. Bridebed, childbed, bed of death, ghostcandled. Omnis caro ad te
veniet. He comes, pale vampire, through storm his eyes, his bat sails
bloodying the sea, mouth to her mouth's kiss.
Here. Put a pin in that chap, will you? My tablets. Mouth to her kiss.
No. Must be two of em. Glue em well. Mouth to her mouth;s kiss.
His lips lipped and mouthed fleshless lips of air: mouth to her
moomb. Oomb, allwombing tomb. His mouth moulded issuing breath,
unspeeched: ooeeehah: roar of cataractic planets, globed, blazing, roaring
wayawayawayawayaway. Paper. The banknotes, blast them. Old Deasy's
letter. Here. Thanking you for the hospitality tear the blank end off.
Turning his back to the sun he bent over far to a table of rock and scribbled
words. That's twice I forgot to take slips from the library counter.
His shadow lay over the rocks as he bent, ending. Why not endless till
the farthest star? Darkly they are there behind this light, darkness shining
in the brightness, delta of Cassiopeia, worlds. Me sits there with his augur's
rod of ash, in borrowed sandals, by day beside a livid sea, unbeheld, in
violet night walking beneath a reign of uncouth stars. I throw this ended
shadow from me, manshape ineluctable, call it back. Endless, would it be
mine, form of my form? Who watches me here? Who ever anywhere will
read these written words? Signs on a white field. Somewhere to someone in
your flutiest voice. The good bishop of Cloyne took the veil of the temple
out of his shovel hat: veil of space with coloured emblems hatched on its
field. Hold hard. Coloured on a flat: yes, that's right. Flat I see, then think
distance, near, far, flat I see, east, back. Ah, see now! Falls back suddenly,
frozen in stereoscope. Click does the trick. You find my words dark.
Darkness is in our souls do you not think? Flutier. Our souls,
shamewounded by our sins, cling to us yet more, a woman to her lover
clinging, the more the more.
She trusts me, her hand gentle, the longlashed eyes. Now where the
blue hell am I bringing her beyond the veil? Into the ineluctable modality of
the ineluctable visuality. She, she, she. What she? The virgin at Hodges
Figgis' window on Monday looking in for one of the alphabet books you
were going to write. Keen glance you gave her. Wrist through the braided
jesse of her sunshade. She lives in Leeson park with a grief and kickshaws,
a lady of letters. Talk that to someone else, Stevie: a pickmeup. Bet she
wears those curse of God stays suspenders and yellow stockings, darned
with lumpy wool. Talk about apple dumplings, piuttosto. Where are your
wits?
Touch me. Soft eyes. Soft soft soft hand. I am lonely here. C, .ouch
me soon, now. What is that word known to all men? I am quiet here alone.
Sad too. Touch, touch me.
He lay back at full stretch over the sharp rocks, cramming the
scribbled note and pencil into a pock his hat . His hat down on his eyes. That
is Kevin Egan's movement I made, nodding for his nap, sabbath sleep. Et
vidit Deus. Et erant valde bona. Hlo! Bonjour. Welcome as the flowers in
May. Under its leaf he watched through peacocktwittering lashes the
southing sun. I am caught in this burning scene. Pan's hour, the faunal
noon. Among gumheavy serpentplants, milkoozing fruits, where on the
tawny waters leaves lie wide. Pain is far.
And no more turn aside and brood.
His gaze brooded on his broadtoed boots, a buck's castoffs,
nebeneinander. He counted the creases of rucked leather wherein another's
foot had nested warm. The foot that beat the ground in tripudium, foot I
dislove. But you were delighted when Esther Osvalt's shoe went on you:
girl I knew in Paris. Tiens, quel petit pied! Staunch friend, a brother soul:
Wilde's love that dare not speak its name. His arm: Cranly's arm. He now
will leave me. And the blame? As I am. As I am. All or not at all.
In long lassoes from the Cock lake the water flowed full, covering
greengoldenly lagoons of sand, rising, flowing. My ashplant will float away.
I shall wait. No, they will pass on, passing, chafing against the low rocks,
swirling, passing. Better get this job over quick. Listen: a fourworded
wavespeech: seesoo, hrss, rsseeiss, ooos. Vehement breath of waters amid
seasnakes, rearing horses, rocks. In cups of rocks it slops: flop, slop, slap:
bounded in barrels. And, spent, its speech ceases. It flows purling, widely
flowing, floating foampool, flower unfurling.
Under the upswelling tide he saw the writhing weeds lift languidly
and sway reluctant arms, hising up their petticoats, in whispering water
swaying and upturning coy silver fronds. Day by day: night by night:
lifted, flooded and let fall. Lord, they are weary; and, whispered to, they
sigh. Saint Ambrose heard it, sigh of leaves and waves, waiting, awaiting the
fullness of their times, diebus ac noctibus iniurias patiens ingemiscit. To no
end gathered; vainly then released, forthflowing, wending back: loom of
the moon. Weary too in sight of lovers, lascivious men, a naked woman
shining in her courts, she draws a toil of waters.
Five fathoms out there. Full fathom five thy father lies. At one, he
said. Found drowned. High water at Dublin bar. Driving before it a loose
drift of rubble, fanshoals of fishes, silly shells. A corpse rising saltwhite
from the undertow, bobbing a pace a pace a porpoise landward. There he
is. Hook it quick. Pull. Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor. We
have him. Easy now.
Bag of corpsegas sopping in foul brine. A quiver of minnows, fat of a
spongy titbit, flash through the slits of his buttoned trouserfly. God
becomes man becomes fish becomes barnacle goose becomes featherbed
mountain. Dead breaths I living breathe, tread dead dust, devour a urinous
offal from all dead. Hauled stark over the gunwale he breathes upward the
stench of his green grave, his leprous nosehole snoring to the sun.
A seachange this, brown eyes saltblue. Seadeath, mildest of all deaths
known to man. Old Father Ocean. Prix de Paris: beware of imitations. Just
you give it a fair trial. We enjoyed ourselves immensely.
Come. I thirst. Clouding over. No black clouds anywhere, are there?
Thunderstorm. Allbright he falls, proud lightning of the intellect, Lucifer,
dico, qui nescit occasum. No. My cockle hat and staff and hismy sandal
shoon. Where? To evening lands. Evening will find itself.
He took the hilt of his ashplant, lunging with it softly, dallying still.
Yes, evening will find itself in me, without me. All days make their end. By
the way next when is it Tuesday will be the longest day. Of all the glad new
year, mother, the rum tum tiddledy tum. Lawn Tennyson, gentleman poet.
GiЉ. For the old hag with the yellow teeth. And Monsieur Drumont,
gentleman journalist. GiЉ. My teeth are very bad. Why, I wonder. Feel.
That one is going too. Shells. Ought I go to a dentist, I wonder, with that
money? That one. This. Toothless Kinch, the superman. Why is that, I
wonder, or does it mean something perhaps?
My handkerchief. He threw it. I remember. Did I not take it up?
His hand groped vainly in his pockets. No, I didn't. Better buy one.
He laid the dry snot picked from his nostril on a ledge of rock,
carefully. For the rest let look who will.
Behind. Perhaps there is someone.
He turned his face over a shoulder, rere regardant. Moving through
the air high spars of a threemaster, her sails brailed up on the crosstrees,
homing, upstream, silently moving, a silent ship.
O, Milly Bloom,you are my darling. You are my lookingglass from night to morning. I'd rather have you without a farthing Than Katey Keogh with her ass and garden.Poor old professor Goodwin. Dreadful old case. Still he was a courteous old chap. Oldfashioned way he used to bow Molly off the platform. And the little mirror in his silk hat. The night Milly brought it into the parlour. O, look what I found in professor Goodwin's hat! All we laughed. Sex breaking out even then. Pert little piece she was. He prodded a fork into the kidney and slapped it over: then fitted the teapot on the tray. Its hump bumped as he took it up. Everything on it? Bread and butter, four, sugar, spoon, her cream. Yes. He carried it upstairs, his thumb hooked in the teapot handle. Nudging the door open with his knee he carried the tray in and set it on the chair by the bedhead. -- What a time you were! she said. She set the brasses jingling as she raised herself briskly, an elbow on the pillow. He looked calmly down on her bulk and between her large soft bubs, sloping within her nightdress like a shegoat's udder. The warmth of her couched body rose on the air, mingling with the fragrance of the tea she poured. A strip of torn envelope peeped from under the dimpled pillow. In the act of going he stayed to straighten the bedspread. -- Who was the letter from? he asked. Bold hand. Marion. -- O, Boylan, she said. He's bringing the programme. -- What are you singing? -- LЉ ci darem with J. C. Doyle, she said, and Love's Old Sweet Song. Her full lips, drinking, smiled. Rather stale smell that incense leaves next day. Like foul flowerwater. -- Would you like the window open a little? She doubled a slice of bread into her mouth, asking: -- What time is the funeral? -- Eleven, I think, he answered. I didn't see the paper. Following the pointing of her finger he took up a leg of her soiled drawers from the bed. No? Then, a twisted grey garter looped round a stocking: rumpled, shiny sole. -- No: that book. Other stocking. Her petticoat. -- It must have fell down, she said. He felt here and there. Voglio e non vorrei. Wonder if she pronounces that right: voglio. Not in the bed. Must have slid down. He stooped and lifted the valance. The book, fallen, sprawled against the bulge of the orangekeyed chamberpot. -- Show here, she said. I put a mark in it. There's a word I wanted to ask you. She swallowed a draught of tea from her cup held by nothandle and, having wiped her fingertips smartly on the blanket, began to search the text with the hairpin till she reached the word. -- Met him what? he asked. -- Here, she said. What does that mean? He leaned downward and read near her polished thumbnail. -- Metempsychosis? -- Yes. Who's he when he's at home? -- Metempsychosis, he said, frowning. It's Greek: from the Greek. That means the transmigration of souls. -- O, rocks! she said. Tell us in plain words. He smiled, glancing askance at her mocking eyes. The same young eyes. The first night after the charades. Dolphin's Barn. He turned over the smudged pages. Ruby: the Pride of the Ring. Hello. Illustration. Fierce Italian with carriagewhip. Must be Ruby pride of the on the floor naked. Sheet kindly lent. The monster Maffei desisted and flung his victim from him with an oath. Cruelty behind it all. Doped animals. Trapeze at Hengler's. Had to look the other way. Mob gaping. Break your neck and we'll break our sides. Families of them. Bone them young so they metamspychosis. That we live after death. Our souls. That a man's soul after he dies, Dignam's soul .... -- Did you finish it? he asked. -- Yes, she said. There's nothing smutty in it. Is she in love with the first fellow all the time? -- Never read it. Do you want another? -- Yes. Get another of Paul de Kock's. Nice name he has. She poured more tea into her cup, watching it flow sideways. Must get that Capel street library book renewed or they'll write to Kearney, my guarantor. Reincarnation: that's the word. -- Some people believe, he said, that we go on living in another body after death, that we lived before. They call it reincarnation. That we all lived before on the earth thousands of years ago or some other planet. They say we have forgotten it. Some say they remember their past lives. The sluggish cream wound curdling spirals through her tea. Bette remind her of the word: metempsychosis. An example would be better. An example? The Bath of the Nymph over the bed. Given away with the Easter number of Photo Bits: splendid masterpiece in art colours. Tea before you put milk in. Not unlike her with her hair down: slimmer. Three and six I gave for the frame. She said it would look nice over the bed. Naked nymphs: Greece: and for instance all the people that lived then. He turned the pages back. -- Metempsychosis, he said, is what the ancient Greeks called it. They used to believe you could be changed into an animal or a tree, for instance. What they called nymphs, for example. Her spoon ceased to stir up the sugar. She gazed straight before her, inhaling through her arched nostrils. -- There's a smell of burn, she said. Did you leave anything on the fire? -- The kidney! he cried suddenly. He fitted the book roughly into his inner pocket and, stubbing his toes against the broken commode, hurried out towards the smell, stepping hastily down the stairs with a flurried stork's legs. Pungent smoke shot up in an angry jet from a side of the pan. By prodding a prong of the fork under the kidney he detached it and turned it turtle on its back. Only a little burnt. He tossed it off the pan on to a plate and let the scanty brown gravy trickle over it. Cup of tea now. He sat down, cut and buttered a slice of the loaf. He shore away the burnt flesh and flung it to the cat. Then he put a forkful into his mouth, chewing with discernment the toothsome pliant meat. Done to a turn. A mouthful of tea. Then he cut away dies of bread, sopped one in the gravy and put it in his mouth. What was that about some young student and a picnic? He creased out the letter at his side, reading it slowly as he chewed, sopping another die of bread in the gravy and raising it to his mouth. Dearest Papli Thanks ever so much for the lovely birthday present. It suits me splendid. Everyone says I am quite the belle in my new tam. I got mummy's Iovely box of creams and am writing. They are lovely. I am getting on swimming in the photo business now. Mr Coghlan took one of me and Mrs. Will send when developed. We did great biz yesterday. Fair day and all the beef to the heels were in. We are going to lough Owel on Monday with a few friends to make a scrap picnic. Give my love to mummy and to yourself a big kiss and thanks. I hear them at the piano downstairs. There is to be a concert in the Greville Arms on Saturday. There is a young student comes here some evenings named Bannon his cousins or something are big swells and he sings Boylan's (I was on the pop of writing Blazes Boylan's) song about those seaside girls. Tell him silly Milly sends my best respects. I must now close with fondest love Your fond daughter Milly P. S. Excuse bad writing am in hurry. Byby. M. Fifteen yesterday. Curious, fifteenth of the month too. Her first birthday away from home. Separation. Remember the summer morning she was born, running to knock up Mrs Thornton in Denzille street. Jolly old woman. Lot of babies she must have helped into the world. She knew from the first poor little Rudy wouldn't live. Well, God is good, sir. She knew at once. He would be eleven now if he had lived. His vacant face stared pityingly at the postscript. Excuse bad writing. Hurry. Piano downstairs. Coming out of her shell. Row with her in the XL Cafe about the bracelet. Wouldn't eat her cakes or speak or look. Saucebox. He sopped other dies of bread in the gravy and ate piece after piece of kidney. Twelve and six a week. Not much. Still, she might do worse. Musichall stage. Young student. He drank a draught of cooler tea to wash down his meal. Then he read the letter again: twice. O, well: she knows how to mind herself. But if not? No, nothing has happened. Of course it might. Wait in any case till it does. A wild piece of goods. Her slim legs running up the staircase. Destiny. Ripening now. Vain: very. He smiled with troubled affection at the kitchen window. Day I caught her in the street pinching her cheeks to make them red. Anemic a little. Was given milk too long. On the Erin's King that day round the Kish. Damned old tub pitching about. Not a bit funky. Her pale blue scarf loose in the wind with her hair.
All dimpled cheeks and curls,
Your head it simply swirls.
Seaside girls. Torn envelope. Hands stuck in his trousers' pockets, jarvey
off for the day, singing. Friend of the family. Swurls, he says. Pier with
lamps, summer evening, band.
Those girls, those girls,
Those lovely seaside girls.
Milly too. Young kisses: the first. Far away now past. Mrs Marion.
Reading, lying back now, counting the strands of her hair, smiling,
braiding.
A soft qualm, regret, flowed down his backbone, increasing. Will
happen, yes. Prevent. Useless: can't move. Girl's sweet light lips. Will
happen too. He felt the flowing qualm spread over him. Useless to move
now. Lips kissed, kissing, kissed. Full gluey woman's lips.
Better where she is down there: away. Occupy her. Wanted a dog to
pass the time. Might take a trip down there. August bank holiday, only two
and six return. Six weeks off, however. Might work a press pass. Or
through M'Coy.
The cat, having cleaned all her fur, returned to the meatstained paper,
nosed at it and stalked to the door. She looked back at him, mewing. Wants
to go out. Wait before a door sometime it will open. Let her wait. Has the
fidgets. Electric. Thunder in the air. Was washing at her ear with her back
to the fire too.
He felt heavy, full: then a gentle loosening of his bowels. He stood up,
undoing the waistband of his trousers. The cat mewed to him.
--Miaow! he said in answer. Wait till I'm ready.
Heaviness: hot day coming. Too much trouble to fag up the stairs to
the landing.
A paper. He liked to read at stool. Hope no ape comes knocking just
as I'm.
In the tabledrawer he found an old number of Titbits. He folded it
under his armpit, went to the door and opened it. The cat went up in soft
bounds. Ah, wanted to go upstairs, curl up in a ball on the bed.
Listening, he heard her voice:
-- Come, come, pussy. Come.
He went out through the backdoor into the garden: stood to listen
towards the next garden. No sound. Perhaps hanging clothes out to dry.
The maid was in the garden. Fine morning.
He bent down to regard a lean file of spearmint growing by the wall.
Make a summerhouse here. Scarlet runners. Virginia creepers. Want to
manure the whole place over, scabby soil. A coat of liver of sulphur. All soil
like that without dung. Household slops. Loam, what is this that is? The
hens in the next garden: their droppings are very good top dressing. Best of
all though are the cattle, especially when they are fed on those oilcakes.
Mulch of dung. Best thing to clean ladies' kid gloves. Dirty cleans. Ashes
too. Reclaim the whole place. Grow peas in that corner there. Lettuce.
Always have fresh greens then. Still gardens have their drawbacks. That bee
or bluebottle here Whitmonday.
He walked on. Where is my hat, by the way? Must have put it back
on the peg. Or hanging up on the floor. Funny I don't remember that.
Hallstand too full. Four umbrellas, her raincloak. Picking up the letters.
Drago's shopbell ringing. Queer I was just thinking that moment. Brown
brillantined hair over his collar. Just had a wash and brushup. Wonder have
I time for a bath this morning. Tara street. Chap in the paybox there got
away James Stephens, they say. O'Brien.
Deep voice that fellow Dlugacz has. Agendath what is it? Now, my
miss. Enthusiast.
He kicked open the crazy door of the jakes. Better be careful not to
get these trousers dirty for the funeral. He went in, bowing his head under
the low lintel. Leaving the door ajar, amid the stench of mouldy limewash
and stale cobwebs he undid his braces. Before sitting down he peered
through a chink up at the nextdoor windows. The king was in his
countinghouse. Nobody.
Asquat on the cuckstool he folded out his paper, turning its pages
over on his bared knees. Something new and easy. No great hurry. Keep it
a bit. Our prize titbit: Mateham's Masterstroke. Written by Mr Philip
Beaufoy, Playgoers' Club, London. Payment at the rate of one guinea a
column has been made to the writer. Three and a half. Three pounds three.
Three pounds, thirteen and six.
Quietly he read, restraining himself, the first column and, yielding but
resisting, began the second. Midway, his last resistance yielding, he allowed
his bowels to ease themselves quietly as he read, reading still patiently that
slight constipation of yesterday quite gone. Hope it's not too big bring on
piles again. No, just right. So. Ah! Costive. One tabloid of cascara sagrada.
Life might be so. It did not move or touch him but it was something quick
and neat. Print anything now. Silly season. He read on, seated calm above
his own rising smell. Neat certainly. Matcham often thinks of the
masterstroke by which he won the laughing witch who now. Begins and
ends morally. Hand in hand. Smart. He glanced back through what he had
read and, while feeling his water flow quietly, he envied kindly Mr Beaufoy
who had written it and received payment of three pounds, thirteen and six.
Might manage a sketch. By Mr and Mrs L. M. Bloom. Invent a story
for some proverb. Which? Time I used to try jotting down on my cuff what
she said dressing. Dislike dressing together. Nicked myself shaving. Biting
her nether lip, hooking the placket of her skirt. Timing her. 9.l5. Did
Roberts pay you yet? 9.20. What had Gretta Conroy on? 9.23. What
possessed me to buy this comb? 9.24. I'm swelled after that cabbage. A
speck of dust on the patent leather of her boot: rubbing smartly in turn
each welt against her stockinged calf. Morning after the bazaar dance when
May's band played Ponchielli's dance of the hours. Explain that: morning
hours, noon, then evening coming on, then night hours. Washing her teeth.
That was the first night. Her head dancing. Her fansticks clicking. Is that
Boylan well off? He has money. Why? I noticed he had a good rich smell
off his breath dancing. No use humming then. Allude to it. Strange kind of
music that last night. The mirror was in shadow. She rubbed her handglass
briskly on her woollen vest against her full wagging bub. Peering into it.
Lines in her eyes. It wouldn't pan out somehow.
Evening hours, girls in grey gauze. Night hours then: black with
daggers and eyemasks. Poetical idea: pink, then golden, then grey, then
black. Still, true to life also. Day: then the night.
He tore away half the prize story sharply and wiped himself with it.
Then he girded up his trousers, braced and buttoned himself. He pulled
back the jerky shaky door of the jakes and came forth from the gloom into
the air.
In the bright light, lightened and cooled in limb, he eyed carefully his
black trousers: the ends, the knees, the houghs of the knees. What time is
the funeral? Better find out in the paper.
A creak and a dark whirr in the air high up. The bells of George's
church. They tolled the hour: loud dark iron.
Heigho! Heigho!
Heigho! Heigho!
Heigho! Heigho!
Quarter to. There again: the overtone following through the air. A
third.
Poor Dignam!
What is home without
Plumtree's Potted Meat?
Incomplete
With it an abode of bliss.
-- My missus has just got an engagement. At least it's not settled yet.
Valise tack again. By the way no harm. I'm off that, thanks.
Mr Bloom turned his largelidded eyes with unhasty friendliness.
-- My wife too, he said. She's going to sing at a swagger affair in the Ulster
Hall, Belfast, on the twentyfifth.
-- That so? M'Coy said. Glad to hear that, old man. Who's getting it up?
Mrs Marion Bloom. Not up yet. Queen was in her bedroom eating
bread and. No book. Blackened court cards laid along her thigh by sevens.
Dark lady and fair man. Letter. Cat furry black ball. Torn strip of envelope.
Love's.
Old.
Sweet.
Song.
Comes lo-ove's old ....
-- It's a kind of a tour, don't you see, Mr Bloom said thoughtfully. Sweeeet
song. There's a committee formed. Part shares and part profits.
M'Coy nodded, picking at his moustache stubble.
-- O, well, he said. That's good news.
He moved to go.
-- Well, glad to see you looking fit, he said. Meet you knocking around.
-- Yes, Mr Bloom said.
-- Tell you what, M'Coy said. You might put down my name at the funeral,
will you? I'd like to go but I mightn't be able, you see. There's a drowning
case at Sandycove may turn up and then the coroner and myself would
have to go down if the body is found. You just shove in my name if I'm not
there, will you?
-- I'll do that, Mr Bloom said, moving to get off. That'll be all right.
-- Right, M'Coy said brightly. Thanks, old man. I'd go if I possibly could.
Well. Tolloll. Just C. P. M'Coy will do.
-- That will be done, Mr Bloom answered firmly.
Didn't catch me napping that wheeze. The quick touch. Soft mark.
I'd like my job. Valise I have a particular fancy for. Leather. Capped
corners, rivetted edges, double action lever lock. Bob Cowley lent him his
for the Wicklow regatta concert last year and never heard tidings of it from
that good day to this.
Mr Bloom, strolling towards Brunswick street, smiled. My missus has
just got an. Reedy freckled soprano. Cheeseparing nose. Nice enough in its
way: for a little ballad. No guts in it. You and me, don't you know: in the
same boat. Softsoaping. Give you the needle that would. Can't he hear the
difference? Think he's that way inclined a bit. Against my grain somehow.
Thought that Belfast would fetch him. I hope that smallpox up there
doesn't get worse. Suppose she wouldn't let herself be vaccinated again.
Your wife and my wife.
Wonder is he pimping after me?
Mr Bloom stood at the corner, his eyes wandering over the
multicoloured hoardings. Cantrell and Cochrane's Ginger Ale (Aromatic).
Clery's Summer Sale. No, he's going on straight. Hello. Leah tonight. Mrs
Bandmann Palmer. Like to see her again in that. Hamlet she played last
night. Male impersonator. Perhaps he was a woman. Why Ophelia
committed suicide. Poor papa! How he used to talk of Kate Bateman in
that. Outside the Adelphi in London waited all the afternoon to get in. Year
before I was born that was: sixtyfive. And Ristori in Vienna. What is this
the right name is? By Mosenthal it is. Rachel, is it? No. The scene he was
always talking about where the old blind Abraham recognises the voice and
puts his fingers on his face.
Nathan's voice! His son's voice! I hear the voice of Nathan who left
his father to die of grief and misery in my arms, who left the house of his
father and left the God of his father.
Every word is so deep, Leopold.
Poor papa! Poor man! I'm glad I didn't go into the room to look at
his face. That day! O, dear! O, dear! Ffoo! Well, perhaps it was best for
him.
Mr Bloom went round the corner and passed the drooping nags of the
hazard. No use thinking of it any more. Nosebag time. Wish I hadn't met
that M'Coy fellow.
He came nearer and heard a crunching of gilded oats, the gently
champing teeth. Their full buck eyes regarded him as he went by, amid the
sweet oaten reek of horsepiss. Their Eldorado. Poor jugginses! Damn all
they know or care about anything with their long noses stuck in nosebags.
Too full for words. Still they get their feed all right and their doss. Gelded
too: a stump of black guttapercha wagging limp between their haunches.
Might be happy all the same that way. Good poor brutes they look. Still
their neigh can be very irritating.
He drew the letter from his pocket and folded it into the newspaper he
carried. Might just walk into her here. The lane is safer.
He passed the cabman's shelter. Curious the life of drifting cabbies.
All weathers, all places, time or setdown, no will of their own. Voglio e non.
Like to give them an odd cigarette. Sociable. Shout a few flying syllables as
they pass. He hummed:
LЉ ci darem la mano
La la lala la la.
He turned into Cumberland street and, going on some paces, halted
in the lee of the station wall. No-one. Meade's timberyard. Piled balks.
Ruins and tenements. With careful tread he passed over a hopscotch court
with its forgotten pickeystone. Not a sinner. Near the timberyard a
squatted child at marbles, alone, shooting the taw with a cunnythumb. A
wise tabby, a blinking sphinx, watched from her warm sill. Pity to disturb
them. Mohammed cut a piece out of his mantle not to wake her. Open it.
And once I played marbles when I went to that old dame's school. She liked
mignonette. Mrs Ellis's. And Mr? He opened the letter within the
newspaper.
A flower. I think it's a. A yellow flower with flattened petals. Not
annoyed then? What does she say?
Dear Henry
I got your last letter to me and thank you very much for it. I am sorry
you did not like my last letter. Why did you enclose the stamps? I am
awfully angry with you. I do wish I could punish you for that. I called you
naughty boy because I do not like that other world. Please tell me what is
the real meaning of that word? Are you not happy in your home you poor
little naughty boy? I do wish I could do something for you. Please tell me
what you think of poor me. I often think of the beautiful name you have.
Dear Henry, when will we meet? I think of you so often you have no idea. I
have never felt myself so much drawn to a man as you. I feel so bad about.
Please write me a long letter and tell me more. Remember if you do not I
will punish you. So now you know what I will do to you, you naughty boy,
if you do not wrote. O how I long to meet you. Henry dear, do not deny my
request before my patience are exhausted. Then I will tell you all. Goodbye
now, naughty darling, I have such a bad headache. today. and write by
return to your longing
Martha
P. S. Do tell me what kind of perfume does your wife use. I want to know.
x x x x
He tore the flower gravely from its pinhold smelt its almost no smell
and placed it in his heart pocket. Language of flowers. They like it because
no-one can hear. Or a poison bouquet to strike him down. Then walking
slowly forward he read the letter again, murmuring here and there a word.
Angry tulips with you darling manflower punish your cactus if you don't
please poor forgetmenot how I long violets to dear roses when we soon
anemone meet all naughty nightstalk wife Martha's perfume. Having read
it all he took it from the newspaper and put it back in his sidepocket.
Weak joy opened his lips. Changed since the first letter. Wonder did
she wrote it herself. Doing the indignant: a girl of good family like me,
respectable character. Could meet one Sunday after the rosary. Thank you:
not having any. Usual love scrimmage. Then running round corners. Bad
as a row with Molly. Cigar has a cooling effect. Narcotic. Go further next
time. Naughty boy: punish: afraid of words, of course. Brutal, why not?
Try it anyhow. A bit at a time.
Fingering still the letter in his pocket he drew the pin out of it.
Common pin, eh? He threw it on the road. Out of her clothes somewhere:
pinned together. Queer the number of pins they always have. No roses
without thorns.
Flat Dublin voices bawled in his head. Those two sluts that night in
the Coombe, linked together in the rain.
O, Mairy lost the pin of her drawers.
She didn't know what to do
To keep it up,
To keep it up.
It? Them. Such a bad headache. Has her roses probably. Or sitting all day
typing. Eyefocus bad for stomach nerves. What perfume does your wife
use. Now could you make out a thing like that?
To keep it up.
Martha, Mary. I saw that picture somewhere I forget now old master or
faked for money. He is sitting in their house, talking. Mysterious. Also the
two sluts in the Coombe would listen.
To keep it up.
Nice kind of evening feeling. No more wandering about. Just loll there:
quiet dusk: let everything rip. Forget. Tell about places you have been,
strange customs. The other one, jar on her head, was getting the supper:
fruit, olives, lovely cool water out of a well, stonecold like the hole in the
wall at Ashtown. Must carry a paper goblet next time I go to the
trottingmatches. She listens with big dark soft eyes. Tell her: more and
more: all. Then a sigh: silence. Long long long rest.
Going under the railway arch he took out the envelope, tore it swiftly
in shreds and scattered them towards the road. The shreds fluttered away,
sank in the dank air: a white flutter, then all sank.
Henry Flower. You could tear up a cheque for a hundred pounds in
the same way. Simple bit of paper. Lord Iveagh once cashed a sevenfigure
cheque for a million in the bank of Ireland. Shows you the money to be
made out of porter. Still the other brother lord Ardilaun has to change his
shirt four times a day, they say. Skin breeds lice or vermin. A million
pounds, wait a moment. Twopence a pint, fourpence a quart, eightpence a
gallon of porter, no, one and fourpence a gallon of porter. One and four
into twenty: fifteen about. Yes, exactly. Fifteen millions of barrels of porter.
What am I saying barrels? Gallons. About a million barrels all the
same.
An incoming train clanked heavily above his head, coach after coach.
Barrels bumped in his head: dull porter slopped and churned inside. The
bungholes sprang open and a huge dull flood leaked out, flowing together,
winding through mudflats all over the level land, a lazy pooling swirl of
liquor bearing along wideleaved flowers of its froth.
He had reached the open backdoor of All Hallows. Stepping into the
porch he doffed his hat, took the card from his pocket and tucked it again
behind the leather headband. Damn it. I might have tried to work M'Coy
for a pass to Mullingar.
Same notice on the door. Sermon by the very reverend John Conmee
S. J. on saint Peter Claver S. J. and the African Mission. Prayers for the
conversion of Gladstone they had too when he was almost unconscious.
The protestants are the same. Convert Dr William J. Walsh D. D. to the
true religion. Save China's millions. Wonder how they explain it to the
heathen Chinee. Prefer an ounce of opium. Celestials. Rank heresy for
them. Buddha their god lying on his side in the museum. Taking it easy with
hand under his cheek. Josssticks burning. Not like Ecce Homo. Crown of
thorns and cross. Clever idea Saint Patrick the shamrock. Chopsticks?
Conmee: Martin Cunningham knows him: distinguishedlooking. Sorry I
didn't work him about getting Molly into the choir instead of that Father
Farley who looked a fool but wasn't. They're taught that. He's not going
out in bluey specs with the sweat rolling off him to baptise blacks, is he? The
glasses would take their fancy, flashing. Like to see them sitting round in a
ring with blub lips, entranced, listening. Still life. Lap it up like milk, I
suppose.
The cold smell of sacred stone called him. He trod the worn steps,
pushed the swingdoor and entered softly by the rere.
Something going on: some sodality. Pity so empty. Nice discreet place
to be next some girl. Who is my neighbour? Jammed by the hour to slow
music. That woman at midnight mass. Seventh heaven. Women knelt in the
benches with crimson halters round their necks, heads bowed. A batch knelt
at the altarrails. The priest went along by them, murmuring, holding the
thing in his hands. He stopped at each, took out a communion, shook a
drop or two (are they in water?) off it and put it neatly into her mouth. Her
hat and head sank. Then the next one. Her hat sank at once. Then the next
one: a small old woman. The priest bent down to put it into her mouth,
murmuring all the time. Latin. The next one. Shut your eyes and open your
mouth. What? Corpus: body. Corpse. Good idea the Latin. Stupefies them
first. Hospice for the dying. They don't seem to chew it: only swallow it
down. Rum idea: eating bits of a corpse. Why the cannibals cotton to it.
He stood aside watching their blind masks pass down the aisle, one by
one, and seek their places. He approached a bench and seated himself in its
corner, nursing his hat and newspaper. These pots we have to wear. We
ought to have hats modelled on our heads. They were about him here and
there, with heads still bowed in their crimson halters, waiting for it to melt
in their stomachs. Something like those mazzoth: it's that sort of bread:
unleavened shewbread. Look at them. Now I bet it makes them feel happy.
Lollipop. It does. Yes, bread of angels it's called. There's a big idea behind
it, kind of kingdom of God is within you feel. First communicants.
Hokypoky penny a lump. Then feel all like one family party, same in the
theatre, all in the same swim. They do. I'm sure of that. Not so lonely. In
our confraternity. Then come out a bit spreeish. Let off steam. Thing is if
you really believe in it. Lourdes cure, waters of oblivion, and the Knock
apparition, statues bleeding. Old fellow asleep near that confessionbox.
Hence those snores. Blind faith. Safe in the arms of kingdom come. Lulls all
pain. Wake this time next year.
He saw the priest stow the communion cup away, well in, and kneel
an instant before it, showing a large grey bootsole from under the lace
affair he had on. Suppose he lost the pin of his. He wouldn't know what to
do to. Bald spot behind. Letters on his back: I. N. R. I? No: I. H. S. Molly
told me one time I asked her. I have sinned: or no: I have suffered, it is. And
the other one? Iron nails ran in.
Meet one Sunday after the rosary. Do not deny my request. Turn up
with a veil and black bag. Dusk and the light behind her. She might be here
with a ribbon round her neck and do the other thing all the same on the sly.
Their character. That fellow that turned queen's evidence on the invincibles
he used to receive the, Carey was his name, the communion every morning.
This very church. Peter Carey, yes. No, Peter Claver I am thinking of.
Denis Carey. And just imagine that. Wife and six children at home. And
plotting that murder all the time. Those crawthumpers, now that's a good
name for them, there's always something shiftylooking about them. They're
not straight men of business either. O, no, she's not here: the flower: no,
no. By the way, did I tear up that envelope? Yes: under the bridge.
The priest was rinsing out the chalice: then he tossed off the dregs
smartly. Wine. Makes it more aristocratic than for example if he drank
what they are used to Guinness's porter or some temperance beverage
Wheatley's Dublin hop bitters or Cantrell and Cochrane's ginger ale
(aromatic). Doesn't give them any of it: shew wine: only the other. Cold
comfort. Pious fraud but quite right: otherwise they'd have one old booser
worse than another coming along, cadging for a drink. Queer the whole
atmosphere of the. Quite right. Perfectly right that is.
Mr Bloom looked back towards the choir. Not going to be any music.
Pity. Who has the organ here I wonder? Old Glynn he knew how to make
that instrument talk, the vibrato: fifty pounds a year they say he had in
Gardiner street. Molly was in fine voice that day, the Stabat Mater of
Rossini. Father Bernard Vaughan's sermon first. Christ or Pilate? Christ,
but don't keep us all night over it. Music they wanted. Footdrill stopped.
Could hear a pin drop. I told her to pitch her voice against that corner. I
could feel the thrill in the air, the full, the people looking up:
Quis est homo.
Some of that old sacred music splendid. Mercadante: seven last
words. Mozart's twelfth mass: Gloria in that. Those old popes keen on
music, on art and statues and pictures of all kinds. Palestrina for example
too. They had a gay old time while it lasted. Healthy too, chanting, regular
hours, then brew liqueurs. Benedictine. Green Chartreuse. Still, having
eunuchs in their choir that was coming it a bit thick. What kind of voice is
it? Must be curious to hear after their own strong basses. Connoisseurs.
Suppose they wouldn't feel anything after. Kind of a placid. No worry. Fall
into flesh, don't they? Gluttons, tall, long legs. Who knows? Eunuch. One
way out of it.
He saw the priest bend down and kiss the altar and then face about
and bless all the people. All crossed themselves and stood up. Mr Bloom
glanced about him and then stood up, looking over the risen hats. Stand up
at the gospel of course. Then all settled down on their knees again and he
sat back quietly in his bench. The priest came down from the altar, holding
the thing out from him, and he and the massboy answered each other in
Latin. Then the priest knelt down and began to read off a card:
-- O God, our refuge and our strength .....
Mr Bloom put his face forward to catch the words. English. Throw
them the bone. I remember slightly. How long since your last mass?
Glorious and immaculate virgin. Joseph, her spouse. Peter and Paul. More
interesting if you understood what it was all about. Wonderful organisation
certainly, goes like clockwork. Confession. Everyone wants to. Then I will
tell you all. Penance. Punish me, please. Great weapon in their hands. More
than doctor or solicitor. Woman dying to. And I schschschschschsch. And
did you chachachachacha? And why did you? Look down at her ring to
find an excuse. Whispering gallery walls have ears. Husband learn to his
surprise. God's little joke. Then out she comes. Repentance skindeep.
Lovely shame. Pray at an altar. Hail Mary and Holy Mary. Flowers,
incense, candles melting. Hide her blushes. Salvation army blatant
imitation. Reformed prostitute will address the meeting. How I found the
Lord. Squareheaded chaps those must be in Rome: they work the whole
show. And don't they rake in the money too? Bequests also: to the P. P. for
the time being in his absolute discretion. Masses for the repose of my soul to
be said publicly with open doors. Monasteries and convents. The priest in
that Fermanagh will case in the witnessbox. No browbeating him. He had
his answer pat for everything. Liberty and exaltation of our holy mother the
church. The doctors of the church: they mapped out the whole theology of
it.
The priest prayed:
--Blessed Michael, archangel, defend us in the hour of conflict. Be our
safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil (may God restrain
him, we humbly pray!): and do thou, O prince of the heavenly host, by the
power of God thrust Satan down to hell and with him those other wicked
spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls.
The priest and the massboy stood up and walked off. All over. The
women remained behind: thanksgiving.
Better be shoving along. Brother Buzz. Come around with the plate
perhaps. Pay your Easter duty.
He stood up. Hello. Were those two buttons of my waistcoat open all
the time? Women enjoy it. Never tell you. But we. Excuse, miss, there's a
(whh!) just a (whh!) fluff. Or their skirt behind, placket unhooked.
Glimpses of the moon. Annoyed if you don't. Why didn't you tell me
before. Still like you better untidy. Good job it wasn't farther south. He
passed, discreetly buttoning, down the aisle and out through the main door
into the light. He stood a moment unseeing by the cold black marble bowl
while before him and behind two worshippers dipped furtive hands in the
low tide of holy water. Trams: a car of Prescott's dyeworks: a widow in her
weeds. Notice because I'm in mourning myself. He covered himself. How
goes the time? Quarter past. Time enough yet. Better get that lotion made
up. Where is this? Ah yes, the last time. Sweny's in Lincoln place. Chemists
rarely move. Their green and gold beaconjars too heavy to stir. Hamilton
Long's, founded in the year of the flood. Huguenot churchyard near there.
Visit some day.
He walked southward along Westland row. But the recipe is in the
other trousers. O, and I forgot that latchkey too. Bore this funeral affair. O
well, poor fellow, it's not his fault. When was it I got it made up last? Wait.
I changed a sovereign I remember. First of the month it must have been or
the second. O, he can look it up in the prescriptions book.
The chemist turned back page after page. Sandy shrivelled smell he
seems to have. Shrunken skull. And old. Quest for the philosopher's stone.
The alchemists. Drugs age you after mental excitement. Lethargy then.
Why? Reaction. A lifetime in a night. Gradually changes your character.
Living all the day among herbs, ointments, disinfectants. All his alabaster
lilypots. Mortar and pestle. Aq. Dist. Fol. Laur. Te Virid. Smell almost cure
you like the dentist's doorbell. Doctor Whack. He ought to physic himself a
bit. Electuary or emulsion. The first fellow that picked an herb to cure
himself had a bit of pluck. Simples. Want to be careful. Enough stuff here to
chloroform you. Test: turns blue litmus paper red. Chloroform. Overdose
of laudanum. Sleeping draughts. Lovephiltres. Paragoric poppysyrup bad
for cough. Clogs the pores or the phlegm. Poisons the only cures. Remedy
where you least expect it. Clever of nature.
-- About a fortnight ago, sir?
-- Yes, Mr Bloom said.
He waited by the counter, inhaling slowly the keen reek of drugs, the
dusty dry smell of sponges and loofahs. Lot of time taken up telling your
aches and pains.
-- Sweet almond oil and tincture of benzoin, Mr Bloom said, and then
orangeflower water ....
It certainly did make her skin so delicate white like wax.
-- And white wax also, he said.
Brings out the darkness of her eyes. Looking at me, the sheet up to
her eyes, Spanish, smelling herself, when I was fixing the links in my cuffs.
Those homely recipes are often the best: strawberries for the teeth: nettles
and rainwater: oatmeal they say steeped in buttermilk. Skinfood. One of
the old queen's sons, duke of Albany was it? had only one skin. Leopold,
yes. Three we have. Warts, bunions and pimples to make it worse. But you
want a perfume too. What perfume does your? Peau d'Espagne. That
orangeflower water is so fresh. Nice smell these soaps have. Pure curd soap.
Time to get a bath round the corner. Hammam. Turkish. Massage. Dirt
gets rolled up in your navel. Nicer if a nice girl did it. Also I think I. Yes I.
Do it in the bath. Curious longing I. Water to water. Combine business with
pleasure. Pity no time for massage. Feel fresh then all the day. Funeral be
rather glum.
-- Yes, sir, the chemist said. That was two and nine. Have you brought a
bottle?
-- No, Mr Bloom said. Make it up, please. I'll call later in the day and I'll
take one of these soaps. How much are they?
-- Fourpence, sir.
Mr Bloom raised a cake to his nostrils. Sweet lemony wax.
-- I'll take this one, he said. That makes three and a penny.
-- Yes, sir, the chemist said. You can pay all together, sir, when you come
back.
-- Good, Mr Bloom said.
He strolled out of the shop, the newspaper baton under his armpit,
the coolwrappered soap in his left hand.
At his armpit Bantam Lyons' voice and hand said:
-- Hello, Bloom. What's the best news? Is that today's? Show us a minute.
Shaved off his moustache again, by Jove! Long cold upper lip. To
look younger. He does look balmy. Younger than I am.
Bantam Lyons's yellow blacknailed fingers unrolled the baton. Wants
a wash too. Take off the rough dirt. Good morning, have you used Pears'
soap? Dandruff on his shoulders. Scalp wants oiling.
-- I want to see about that French horse that's running today, Bantam
Lyons said. Where the bugger is it?
He rustled the pleated pages, jerking his chin on his high collar.
Barber's itch. Tight collar he'll lose his hair. Better leave him the paper and
get shut of him.
-- You can keep it, Mr Bloom said.
-- Ascot. Gold cup. Wait, Bantam Lyons muttered. Half a mo. Maximum
the second.
-- I was just going to throw it away, Mr Bloom said.
Bantam Lyons raised his eyes suddenly and leered weakly.
-- What's that? his sharp voice said.
-- I say you can keep it, Mr Bloom answered. I was going to throw it away
that moment.
Bantam Lyons doubted an instant, leering: then thrust the outspread
sheets back on Mr Bloom's arms.
-- I'll risk it, he said. Here, thanks.
He sped off towards Conway's corner. God speed scut.
Mr Bloom folded the sheets again to a neat square and lodged the
soap in it, smiling. Silly lips of that chap. Betting. Regular hotbed of it
lately. Messenger boys stealing to put on sixpence. Raffle for large tender
turkey. Your Christmas dinner for threepence. Jack Fleming embezzling to
gamble then smuggled off to America. Keeps a hotel now. They never come
back. Fleshpots of Egypt.
He walked cheerfully towards the mosque of the baths. Remind you
of a mosque, redbaked bricks, the minarets. College sports today I see. He
eyed the horseshoe poster over the gate of college park: cyclist doubled up
like a cod in a pot. Damn bad ad. Now if they had made it round like a
wheel. Then the spokes: sports, sports, sports: and the hub big: college.
Something to catch the eye.
There's Hornblower standing at the porter's lodge. Keep him on
hands: might take a turn in there on the nod. How do you do, Mr
Hornblower? How do you do, sir?
Heavenly weather really. If life was always like that. Cricket weather.
Sit around under sunshades. Over after over. Out. They can't play it here.
Duck for six wickets. Still Captain Culler broke a window in the Kildare
street club with a slog to square leg. Donnybrook fair more in their line.
And the skulls we were acracking when M'Carthy took the floor.
Heatwave. Won't last. Always passing, the stream of life, which in the
stream of life we trace is dearer thaaan them all.
Enjoy a bath now: clean trough of water, cool enamel, the gentle
tepid stream. This is my body.
He foresaw his pale body reclined in it at full, naked, in a womb of
warmth, oiled by scented melting soap, softly laved. He saw his trunk and
limbs riprippled over and sustained, buoyed lightly upward, lemonyellow:
his navel, bud of flesh: and saw the dark tangled curls of his bush floating,
floating hair of the stream around the limp father of thousands, a languid
floating flower.
It is now a month since dear Henry fled
To his home up above in the sky
While his family weeps and mourns his loss
Hoping some day to meet him on high.
I tore up the envelope? Yes. Where did I put her letter after I read it in
the bath? He patted his waistcoatpocket. There all right. Dear Henry fled.
Before my patience are exhausted.
National school. Meade's yard. The hazard. Only two there now.
Nodding. Full as a tick. Too much bone in their skulls. The other trotting
round with a fare. An hour ago I was passing there. The jarvies raised their
hats.
A pointsman's back straightened itself upright suddenly against a
tramway standard by Mr Bloom's window. Couldn't they invent something
automatic so that the wheel itself much handier? Well but that fellow would
lose his job then? Well but then another fellow would get a job making the
new invention?
Antient concert rooms. Nothing on there. A man in a buff suit with a
crape armlet. Not much grief there. Quarter mourning. People in law
perhaps.
They went past the bleak pulpit of saint Mark's, under the railway
bridge, past the Queen's theatre: in silence. Hoardings: Eugene Stratton,
Mrs Bandmann Palmer. Could I go to see Leah tonight, I wonder. I said I.
Or the Lily of Killarney? Elster Grimes Opera Company. Big powerful
change. Wet bright bills for next week. Fun on the Bristol. Martin
Cunningham could work a pass for the Gaiety. Have to stand a drink or
two. As broad as it's long.
He's coming in the afternoon. Her songs.
Plasto's. Sir Philip Crampton's memorial fountain bust. Who was he?
-- How do you do? Martin Cunningham said, raising his palm to his brow
in salute.
-- He doesn't see us, Mr Power said. Yes, he does. How do you do?
-- Who? Mr Dedalus asked.
-- Blazes Boylan, Mr Power said. There he is airing his quiff.
Just that moment I was thinking.
Mr Dedalus bent across to salute. From the door of the Red Bank the
white disc of a straw hat flashed reply: spruce figure: passed.
Mr Bloom reviewed the nails of his left hand, then those of his right
hand. The nails, yes. Is there anything more in him that they she sees?
Fascination. Worst man in Dublin. That keeps him alive. They sometimes
feel what a person is. Instinct. But a type like that. My nails. I am just
looking at them: well pared. And after: thinking alone. Body getting a bit
softy. I would notice that: from remembering. What causes that? I suppose
the skin can't contract quickly enough when the flesh falls off. But the
shape is there. The shape is there still. Shoulders. Hips. Plump. Night of the
dance dressing. Shift stuck between the cheeks behind.
He clasped his hands between his knees and, satisfied, sent his vacant
glance over their faces.
Mr Power asked:
-- How is the concert tour getting on, Bloom?
-- O, very well, Mr Bloom said. I hear great accounts of it. It's a good idea,
you see ...
-- Are you going yourself?
-- Well no, Mr Bloom said. In point of fact I have to go down to the county
Clare on some private business. You see the idea is to tour the chief towns.
What you lose on one you can make up on the other.
-- Quite so, Martin Cunningham said. Mary Anderson is up there now.
Have you good artists?
-- Louis Werner is touring her, Mr Bloom said. O yes, we'll have all
topnobbers. J. C. Doyle and John MacCormack I hope and. The best, in
fact.
-- And madame, Mr Power said smiling. Last but not least.
Mr Bloom unclasped his hands in a gesture of soft politeness and
clasped them. Smith O'Brien. Someone has laid a bunch of flowers there.
Woman. Must be his deathday. For many happy returns. The carriage
wheeling by Farrell's statue united noiselessly their unresisting knees.
Oot: a dullgarbed old man from the curbstone tendered his wares, his
mouth opening: oot.
-- Four bootlaces for a penny.
Wonder why he was struck off the rolls. Had his office in Hume
street. Same house as Molly's namesake, Tweedy, crown solicitor for
Waterford. Has that silk hat ever since. Relics of old decency. Mourning
too. Terrible comedown, poor wretch! Kicked about like snuff at a wake.
O'Callaghan on his last legs.
And madame. Twenty past eleven. Up. Mrs Fleming is in to clean.
Doing her hair, humming. Voglio e non vorrei. No. Vorrei e non. Looking
at the tips of her hairs to see if they are split. Mi trema un poco il. Beautiful
on that tre her voice is: weeping tone. A thrush. A throstle. There is a word
throstle that expresses that.
His eyes passed lightly over Mr Power's goodlooking face. Greyish
over the ears. Madame: smiling. I smiled back. A smile goes a long way.
Only politeness perhaps. Nice fellow. Who knows is that true about the
woman he keeps? Not pleasant for the wife. Yet they say, who was it told
me, there is no carnal. You would imagine that would get played out pretty
quick. Yes, it was Crofton met him one evening bringing her a pound of
rumpsteak. What is this she was? Barmaid in Jury's. Or the Moira, was it?
They passed under the hugecloaked Liberator's form.
Martin Cunningham nudged Mr Power.
-- Of the tribe of Reuben, he said.
A tall blackbearded figure, bent on a stick, stumping round the corner
of Elvery's Elephant house, showed them a curved hand open on his spine.
-- In all his pristine beauty, Mr Power said.
Mr Dedalus looked after the stumping figure and said mildly:
-- The devil break the hasp of your back!
Mr Power, collapsing in laughter, shaded his face from the window as
the carriage passed Gray's statue.
-- We have all been there, Martin Cunningham said broadly.
His eyes met Mr Bloom's eyes. He caressed his beard, adding:
-- Well, nearly all of us.
Mr Bloom began to speak with sudden eagerness to his companions'
faces.
-- That's an awfully good one that's going the rounds about Reuben J and
the son.
-- About the boatman? Mr Power asked.
-- Yes. Isn't it awfully good?
-- What is that? Mr Dedalus asked. I didn't hear it.
-- There was a girl in the case, Mr Bloom began, and he determined to send
him to the Isle of Man out of harm's way but when they were both ...
-- What? Mr Dedalus asked. That confirmed bloody hobbledehoy is it?
-- Yes, Mr Bloom said. They were both on the way to the boat and he tried
to drown.....
-- Drown Barabbas! Mr Dedalus cried. I wish to Christ he did!
Mr Power sent a long laugh down his shaded nostrils.
-- No, Mr Bloom said, the son himself....
Martin Cunningham thwarted his speech rudely:
-- Reuben and the son were piking it down the quay next the river on their
way to the Isle of Man boat and the young chiseller suddenly got loose and
over the wall with him into the Liffey.
-- For God' sake! Mr Dedalus exclaimed in fright. Is he dead?
-- Dead! Martin Cunningham cried. Not he! A boatman got a pole and
fished him out by the slack of the breeches and he was landed up to the
father on the quay more dead than alive. Half the town was there.
-- Yes, Mr Bloom said. But the funny part is ....
-- And Reuben J, Martin Cunningham said, gave the boatman a florin for
saving his son's life.
A stifled sigh came from under Mr Power's hand.
-- O, he did, Martin Cunningham affirmed. Like a hero. A silver florin.
-- Isn't it awfully good? Mr Bloom said eagerly.
-- One and eightpence too much, Mr Dedalus said drily.
Mr Power's choked laugh burst quietly in the carriage.
Nelson's pillar.
-- Eight plums a penny! Eight for a penny!
-- We had better look a little serious, Martin Cunningham said.
Mr Dedalus sighed.
-- Ah then indeed, he said, poor little Paddy wouldn't grudge us a laugh.
Many a good one he told himself.
-- The Lord forgive me! Mr Power said, wiping his wet eyes with his
fingers. Poor Paddy! I little thought a week ago when I saw him last and he
was in his usual health that I'd be driving after him like this. He's gone
from us.
-- As decent a little man as ever wore a hat, Mr Dedalus said. He went very
suddenly.
-- Breakdown, Martin Cunningham said. Heart.
He tapped his chest sadly.
Blazing face: redhot. Too much John Barleycorn. Cure for a red
nose. Drink like the devil till it turns adelite. A lot of money he spent
colouring it.
Mr Power gazed at the passing houses with rueful apprehension.
-- He had a sudden death, poor fellow, he said.
-- The best death, Mr Bloom said.
Their wideopen eyes looked at him.
-- No suffering, he said. A moment and all is over. Like dying in sleep.
No-one spoke.
Dead side of the street this. Dull business by day, land agents,
temperance hotel, Falconer's railway guide, civil service college, Gill's,
catholic club, the industrious blind. Why? Some reason. Sun or wind. At
night too. Chummies and slaveys. Under the patronage of the late Father
Mathew. Foundation stone for Parnell. Breakdown. Heart.
White horses with white frontlet plumes came round the Rotunda
corner, galloping. A tiny coffin flashed by. In a hurry to bury. A mourning
coach. Unmarried. Black for the married. Piebald for bachelors. Dun for a
nun.
-- Sad, Martin Cunningham said. A child.
A dwarf's face, mauve and wrinkled like little Rudy's was. Dwarf's
body, weak as putty, in a whitelined deal box. Burial friendly society pays.
Penny a week for a sod of turf. Our. Little. Beggar. Baby. Meant nothing.
Mistake of nature. If it's healthy it's from the mother. If not from the man.
Better luck next time.
-- Poor little thing, Mr Dedalus said. It's well out of it.
The carriage climbed more slowly the hill of Rutland square. Rattle
his bones. Over the stones. Only a pauper. Nobody owns.
-- In the midst of life, Martin Cunningham said.
-- But the worst of all, Mr Power said, is the man who takes.his own life.
Martin Cunningham drew out his watch briskly, coughed and put it
back.
-- The greatest disgrace to have in the family, Mr Power added.
-- Temporary insanity, of course, Martin Cunningham said decisively. We
must take a charitable view of it.
-- They say a man who does it is a coward, Mr Dedalus said.
-- It is not for us to judge, Martin Cunningham said.
Mr Bloom, about to speak, closed his lips again. Martin
Cunningham's large eyes. Looking away now. Sympathetic human man he
is. Intelligent. Like Shakespeare's face. Always a good word to say. They
have no mercy on that here or infanticide. Refuse christian burial. They
used to drive a stake of wood through his heart in the grave. As if it wasn't
broken already. Yet sometimes they repent too late. Found in the riverbed
clutching rushes. He looked at me. And that awful drunkard of a wife of
his. Setting up house for her time after time and then pawning the furniture
on him every Saturday almost. Leading him the life of the damned. Wear
the heart out of a stone, that. Monday morning. Start afresh. Shoulder to
the wheel. Lord, she must have looked a sight that night Dedalus told me he
was in there. Drunk about the place and capering with Martin's umbrella.
And they call me the jewel of Asia,
Of Asia,
The geisha.
He looked away from me. He knows. Rattle his bones.
That afternoon of the inquest. The redlabelled bottle on the table. The
room in the hotel with hunting pictures. Stuffy it was. Sunlight through the
slats of the Venetian blind. The coroner's sunlit ears, big and hairy. Boots
giving evidence. Thought he was asleep first. Then saw like yellow streaks
on his face. Had slipped down to the foot of the bed. Verdict: overdose.
Death by misadventure. The letter. For my son Leopold.
No more pain. Wake no more. Nobody owns.
The carriage rattled swiftly along Blessington street. Over the stones.
-- We are going the pace, I think, Martin Cunningham said.
-- God grant he doesn't upset us on the road, Mr Power said.
-- I hope not, Martin Cunningham said. That will be a great race tomorrow
in Germany. The Gordon Bennett.
-- Yes, by Jove, Mr Dedalus said. That will be worth seeing, faith.
As they turned into Berkeley street a streetorgan near the Basin sent
over and after them a rollicking rattling song of the halls. Has anybody
here seen Kelly? Kay ee double ell wy. Dead March from Saul. He's as bad
as old Antonio. He left me on my ownio. Pirouette! The Mater
Misericordiae. Eccles street. My house down there. Big place. Ward for
incurables there. Very encouraging. Our Lady's Hospice for the dying.
Deadhouse handy underneath. Where old Mrs Riordan died. They look
terrible the women. Her feeding cup and rubbing her mouth with the
spoon. Then the screen round her bed for her to die. Nice young student
that was dressed that bite the bee gave me. He's gone over to the lying-in
hospital they told me. From one extreme to the other.
The carriage galloped round a corner: stopped.
-- What's wrong now?
A divided drove of branded cattle passed the windows, lowing,
slouching by on padded hoofs, whisking their tails slowly on their clotted
bony croups. Outside them and through them ran raddled sheep bleating
their fear.
-- Emigrants, Mr Power said.
-- Huuuh! the drover's voice cried, his switch sounding on their flanks.
Huuuh! out of that!
Thursday, of course. Tomorrow is killing day. Springers. Cuffe sold
them about twentyseven quid each. For Liverpool probably. Roastbeef for
old England. They buy up all the juicy ones. And then the fifth quarter lost:
all that raw stuff, hide, hair, horns. Comes to a big thing in a year. Dead
meat trade. Byproducts of the slaughterhouses for tanneries, soap,
margarine. Wonder if that dodge works now getting dicky meat off the
train at Clonsilla.
The carriage moved on through the drove.
-- I can't make out why the corporation doesn't run a tramline from the
parkgate to the quays, Mr Bloom said. All those animals could be taken in
trucks down to the boats.
-- Instead of blocking up the thoroughfare, Martin Cunningham said. Quite
right. They ought to.
-- Yes, Mr Bloom said, and another thing I often thought, is to have
municipal funeral trams like they have in Milan, you know. Run the line out
to the cemetery gates and have special trams, hearse and carriage and all.
Don't you see what I mean?
-- O, that be damned for a story, Mr Dedalus said. Pullman car and saloon
diningroom.
-- A poor lookout for Corny, Mr Power added.
-- Why? Mr Bloom asked, turning to Mr Dedalus. Wouldn't it be more
decent than galloping two abreast?
-- Well, there's something in that, Mr Dedalus granted.
-- And, Martin Cunningham said, we wouldn't have scenes like that when
the hearse capsized round Dunphy's and upset the coffin on to the road.
-- That was terrible, Mr Power's shocked face said, and the corpse fell
about the road. Terrible!
-- First round Dunphy's, Mr Dedalus said, nodding. Gordon Bennett cup.
-- Praises be to God! Martin Cunningham said piously.
Bom! Upset. A coffin bumped out on to the road. Burst open. Paddy
Dignam shot out and rolling over stiff in the dust in a brown habit too large
for him. Red face: grey now. Mouth fallen open. Asking what's up now.
Quite right to close it. Looks horrid open. Then the insides decompose
quickly. Much better to close up all the orifices. Yes, also. With wax. The
sphincter loose. Seal up all.
-- Dunphy's, Mr Power announced as the carriage turned right.
Dunphy's corner. Mourning coaches drawn up, drowning their grief.
A pause by the wayside. Tiptop position for a pub. Expect we'll pull up here
on the way back to drink his health. Pass round the consolation. Elixir of
life.
But suppose now it did happen. Would he bleed if a nail say cut him in
the knocking about? He would and he wouldn't, I suppose. Depends on
where. The circulation stops. Still some might ooze out of an artery. It
would be better to bury them in red: a dark red.
In silence they drove along Phibsborough road. An empty hearse
trotted by, coming from the cemetery: looks relieved.
Crossguns bridge: the royal canal.
Water rushed roaring through the sluices. A man stood on his
dropping barge, between clamps of turf. On the towpath by the lock a
slacktethered horse. Aboard of the Bugabu.
Their eyes watched him. On the slow weedy waterway he had floated
on his raft coastward over Ireland drawn by a haulage rope past beds of
reeds, over slime, mudchoked bottles, carrion dogs. Athlone, Mullingar,
Moyvalley, I could make a walking tour to see Milly by the canal. Or cycle
down. Hire some old crock, safety. Wren had one the other day at the
auction but a lady's. Developing waterways. James M'Cann's hobby to row
me o'er the ferry. Cheaper transit. By easy stages. Houseboats. Camping
out. Also hearses. To heaven by water. Perhaps I will without writing.
Come as a surprise, Leixlip, Clonsilla. Dropping down lock by lock to
Dublin. With turf from the midland bogs. Salute. He lifted his brown straw
hat, saluting Paddy Dignam.
They drove on past Brian Boroimhe house. Near it now.
-- I wonder how is our friend Fogarty getting on, Mr Power said.
-- Better ask Tom Kernan, Mr Dedalus said.
-- How is that? Martin Cunningham said. Left him weeping, I suppose?
-- Though lost to sight, Mr Dedalus said, to memory dear.
The carriage steered left for Finglas road.
The stonecutter's yard on the right. Last lap. Crowded on the spit of
land silent shapes appeared, white, sorrowful, holding out calm hands, knelt
in grief, pointing. Fragments of shapes, hewn. In white silence: appealing.
The best obtainable. Thos. H. Dennany, monumental builder and sculptor.
Passed.
On the curbstone before Jimmy Geary, the sexton's, an old tramp sat,
grumbling, emptying the dirt and stones out of his huge dustbrown
yawning boot. After life's journey.
Gloomy gardens then went by: one by one: gloomy houses.
Mr Power pointed.
-- That is where Childs was murdered, he said. The last house.
-- So it is, Mr Dedalus said. A gruesome case. Seymour Bushe got him off.
Murdered his brother. Or so they said.
-- The crown had no evidence, Mr Power said.
-- Only circumstantial, Martin Cunningham added. That's the maxim of
the law. Better for ninetynine guilty to escape than for one innocent person
to be wrongfully condemned.
They looked. Murderer's ground. It passed darkly. Shuttered,
tenantless, unweeded garden. Whole place gone to hell. Wrongfully
condemned. Murder. The murderer's image in the eye of the murdered.
They love reading about it. Man's head found in a garden. Her clothing
consisted of. How she met her death. Recent outrage. The weapon used.
Murderer is still at large. Clues. A shoelace. The body to be exhumed.
Murder will out.
Cramped in this carriage. She mightn't like me to come that way
without letting her know. Must be careful about women. Catch them once
with their pants down. Never forgive you after. Fifteen.
The high railings of Prospect rippled past their gaze. Dark poplars,
rare white forms. Forms more frequent, white shapes thronged amid the
trees, white forms and fragments streaming by mutely, sustaining vain
gestures on the air.
The felly harshed against the curbstone: stopped. Martin
Cunningham put out his arm and, wrenching back the handle, shoved the
door open with his knee. He stepped out. Mr Power and Mr Dedalus
followed.
Change that soap now. Mr Bloom's hand unbuttoned his hip pocket
swiftly and transferred the paperstuck soap to his inner handkerchief
pocket. He stepped out of the carriage, replacing the newspaper his other
hand still held.
Paltry funeral: coach and three carriages. It's all the same.
Pallbearers, gold reins, requiem mass, firing a volley. Pomp of death.
Beyond the hind carriage a hawker stood by his barrow of cakes and fruit.
Simnel cakes those are, stuck together: cakes for the dead. Dogbiscuits.
Who ate them? Mourners coming out.
He followed his companions. Mr Kernan and Ned Lambert followed,
Hynes walking after them. Corny Kelleher stood by the opened hearse and
took out the two wreaths. He handed one to the boy.
Where is that child's funeral disappeared to?
A team of horses passed from Finglas with toiling plodding tread,
dragging through the funereal silence a creaking waggon on which lay a
granite block. The waggoner marching at their head saluted. Coffin now.
Got here before us, dead as he is. Horse looking round at it with his plume
skeowways. Dull eye: collar tight on his neck, pressing on a bloodvessel or
something. Do they know what they cart out here every day? Must be
twenty or thirty funerals every day. Then Mount Jerome for the
protestants. Funerals all over the world everywhere every minute.
Shovelling them under by the cartload doublequick. Thousands every hour.
Too many in the world.
Mourners came out through the gates: woman and a girl. Leanjawed
harpy, hard woman at a bargain, her bonnet awry. Girl's face stained with
dirt and tears, holding the woman's arm, looking up at her for a sign to cry.
Fish's face, bloodless and livid.
The mutes shouldered the coffin and bore it in through the gates. So
much dead weight. Felt heavier myself stepping out of that bath. First the
stiff: then the friends of the stiff. Corny Kelleher and the boy followed with
their wreaths. Who is that beside them? Ah, the brother-in-law.
All walked after.
Martin Cunningham whispered:
-- I was in mortal agony with you talking of suicide before Bloom.
-- What? Mr Power whispered. How so?
-- His father poisoned himself, Martin Cunningham whispered. Had the
Queen's hotel in Ennis. You heard him say he was going to Clare.
Anniversary.
-- O God! Mr Power whispered. First I heard of it. Poisoned himself?
He glanced behind him to where a face with dark thinking eyes
followed towards the cardinal's mausoleum. Speaking.
-- Was he insured? Mr Bloom asked.
-- I believe so, Mr Kernan answered. But the policy was heavily mortgaged.
Martin is trying to get the youngster into Artane.
-- How many children did he leave?
-- Five. Ned Lambert says he'll try to get one of the girls into Todd's.
-- A sad case, Mr Bloom said gently. Five young children.
-- A great blow to the poor wife, Mr Kernan added.
-- Indeed yes, Mr Bloom agreed.
Has the laugh at him now.
He looked down at the boots he had blacked and polished. She had
outlived him. Lost her husband. More dead for her than for me. One must
outlive the other. Wise men say. There are more women than men in the
world. Condole with her. Your terrible loss. I hope you'll soon follow him.
For Hindu widows only. She would marry another. Him? No. Yet who
knows after. Widowhood not the thing since the old queen died. Drawn on
a guncarriage. Victoria and Albert. Frogmore memorial mourning. But in
the end she put a few violets in her bonnet. Vain in her heart of hearts. All
for a shadow. Consort not even a king. Her son was the substance.
Something new to hope for not like the past she wanted back, waiting. It
never comes. One must go first: alone, under the ground: and lie no more
in her warm bed.
-- How are you, Simon? Ned Lambert said softly, clasping hands. Haven't
seen you for a month of Sundays.
-- Never better. How are all in Cork's own town?
-- I was down there for the Cork park races on Easter Monday, Ned
Lambert said. Same old six and eightpence. Stopped with Dick Tivy.
-- And how is Dick, the solid man?
-- Nothing between himself and heaven, Ned Lambert answered.
-- By the holy Paul! Mr Dedalus said in subdued wonder. Dick Tivy bald?
-- Martin is going to get up a whip for the youngsters, Ned Lambert said,
pointing ahead. A few bob a skull. Just to keep them going till the insurance
is cleared up.
-- Yes, yes, Mr Dedalus said dubiously. Is that the eldest boy in front?
-- Yes, Ned Lambert said, with the wife's brother. John Henry Menton is
behind. He put down his name for a quid.
-- I'll engage he did, Mr Dedalus said. I often told poor Paddy he ought to
mind that job. John Henry is not the worst in the world.
-- How did he lose it? Ned Lambert asked. Liquor, what?
-- Many a good man's fault, Mr Dedalus said with a sigh.
They halted about the door of the mortuary chapel. Mr Bloom stood
behind the boy with the wreath looking down at his sleekcombed hair and
at the slender furrowed neck inside his brandnew collar. Poor boy! Was he
there when the father? Both unconscious. Lighten up at the last moment
and recognise for the last time. All he might have done. I owe three shillings
to O'Grady. Would he understand? The mutes bore the coffin into the
chapel. Which end is his head?
After a moment he followed the others in, blinking in the screened
light. The coffin lay on its bier before the chancel, four tall yellow candles at
its corners. Always in front of us. Corny Kelleher, laying a wreath at each
fore corner, beckoned to the boy to kneel. The mourners knelt here and
there in prayingdesks. Mr Bloom stood behind near the font and, when all
had knelt, dropped carefully his unfolded newspaper from his pocket and
knelt his right knee upon it. He fitted his black hat gently on his left knee
and, holding its brim, bent over piously.
A server bearing a brass bucket with something in it came out through
a door. The whitesmocked priest came after him, tidying his stole with one
hand, balancing with the other a little book against his toad's belly. Who'll
read the book? I, said the rook.
They halted by the bier and the priest began to read out of his book
with a fluent croak.
Father Coffey. I knew his name was like a coffin. Dominenamine.
Bully about the muzzle he looks. Bosses the show. Muscular christian. Woe
betide anyone that looks crooked at him: priest. Thou art Peter. Burst
sideways like a sheep in clover Dedalus says he will. With a belly on him
like a poisoned pup. Most amusing expressions that man finds. Hhhn: burst
sideways.
-- Non intres in judicium cum servo tuo, Domine.
Makes them feel more important to be prayed over in Latin. Requiem
mass. Crape weepers. Blackedged notepaper. Your name on the altarlist.
Chilly place this. Want to feed well, sitting in there all the morning in the
gloom kicking his heels waiting for the next please. Eyes of a toad too.
What swells him up that way? Molly gets swelled after cabbage. Air of the
place maybe. Looks full up of bad gas. Must be an infernal lot of bad gas
round the place. Butchers, for instance: they get like raw beefsteaks. Who
was telling me? Mervyn Browne. Down in the vaults of saint Werburgh's
lovely old organ hundred and fifty they have to bore a hole in the coffins
sometimes to let out the bad gas and burn it. Out it rushes: blue. One whiff
of that and you're a doner.
My kneecap is hurting me. Ow. That's better.
The priest took a stick with a knob at the end of it out of the boy's
bucket and shook it over the coffin. Then he walked to the other end and
shook it again. Then he came back and put it back in the bucket. As you
were before you rested. It's all written down: he has to do it.
-- Et ne nos inducas in tentationem.
The server piped the answers in the treble. I often thought it would be
better to have boy servants. Up to fifteen or so. After that, of course ...
Holy water that was, I expect. Shaking sleep out of it. He must be fed
up with that job, shaking that thing over all the corpses they trot up. What
harm if he could see what he was shaking it over. Every mortal day a fresh
batch: middleaged men, old women, children, women dead in childbirth,
men with beards, baldheaded businessmen, consumptive girls with little
sparrows' breasts. All the year round he prayed the same thing over them
all and shook water on top of them: sleep. On Dignam now.
-- In paradisum.
Said he was going to paradise or is in paradise. Says that over
everybody. Tiresome kind of a job. But he has to say something.
The priest closed his book and went off, followed by the server.
Corny Kelleher opened the sidedoors and the gravediggers came in, hoisted
the coffin again, carried it out and shoved it on their cart. Corny Kelleher
gave one wreath to the boy and one to the brother-in-law. All followed
them out of the sidedoors into the mild grey air. Mr Bloom came last
folding his paper again into his pocket. He gazed gravely at the ground till
the coffincart wheeled off to the left. The metal wheels ground the gravel
with a sharp grating cry and the pack of blunt boots followed the trundled
barrow along a lane of sepulchres.
The ree the ra the ree the ra the roo. Lord, I mustn't lilt here.
-- The O'Connell circle, Mr Dedalus said about him.
Mr Power's soft eyes went up to the apex of the lofty cone.
-- He's at rest, he said, in the middle of his people, old Dan O'. But his heart
is buried in Rome. How many broken hearts are buried here, Simon!
-- Her grave is over there, Jack, Mr Dedalus said. I'll soon be stretched
beside her. Let Him take me whenever He likes.
Breaking down, he began to weep to himself quietly, stumbling a little
in his walk. Mr Power took his arm.
-- She's better where she is, he said kindly.
-- I suppose so, Mr Dedalus said with a weak gasp. I suppose she is in
heaven if there is a heaven.
Corny Kelleher stepped aside from his rank and allowed the
mourners to plod by.
-- Sad occasions, Mr Kernan began politely.
Mr Bloom closed his eyes and sadly twice bowed his head.
-- The others are putting on their hats, Mr Kernan said. I suppose we can
do so too. We are the last. This cemetery is a treacherous place.
They covered their heads.
-- The reverend gentleman read the service too quickly, don't you think? Mr
Kernan said with reproof.
Mr Bloom nodded gravely looking in the quick bloodshot eyes. Secret
eyes, secretsearching. Mason, I think: not sure. Beside him again. We arc
the last. In the same boat. Hope he'll say something else.
Mr Kernan added:
-- The service of the Irish church used in Mount Jerome is simpler, more
impressive I must say.
Mr Bloom gave prudent assent. The language of course was another
thing.
Mr Kernan said with solemnity:
-- I am the resurrection and the life. That touches a man's inmost heart.
-- It does, Mr Bloom said.
Your heart perhaps but what price the fellow in the six feet by two
with his toes to the daisies? No touching that. Seat of the affections. Broken
heart. A pump after all, pumping thousands of gallons of blood every day.
One fine day it gets bunged up: and there you are. Lots of them lying
around here: lungs, hearts, livers. Old rusty pumps: damn the thing else.
The resurrection and the life. Once you are dead you are dead. That last
day idea. Knocking them all up out of their graves. Come forth, Lazarus!
And he came fifth and lost the job. Get up! Last day! Then every fellow
mousing around for his liver and his lights and the rest of his traps. Find
damn all of himself that morning. Pennyweight of powder in a skull.
Twelve grammes one pennyweight. Troy measure.
Corny Kelleher fell into step at their side.
-- Everything went off A 1, he said. What?
He looked on them from his drawling eye. Policeman's shoulders.
With your tooraloom tooraloom.
-- As it should be, Mr Kernan said.
-- What? Eh? Corny Kelleher said.
Mr Kernan assured him.
-- Who is that chap behind with Tom Kernan? John Henry Menton asked. I
know his face.
Ned Lambert glanced back.
-- Bloom, he said, Madame Marion Tweedy that was, is, I mean, the
soprano. She's his wife.
-- O, to be sure, John Henry Menton said. I haven't seen her for some time.
She was a finelooking woman. I danced with her, wait, fifteen seventeen
golden years ago, at Mat Dillon's in Roundtown. And a good armful she
was.
He looked behind through the others.
-- What is he? he asked. What does he do? Wasn't he in the stationery line?
I fell foul of him one evening, I remember, at bowls.
Ned Lambert smiled.
-- Yes, he was, he said, in Wisdom Hely's. A traveller for blottingpaper.
-- In God's name, John Henry Menton said, what did she marry a coon like
that for? She had plenty of game in her then.
-- Has still, Ned Lambert said. He does some canvassing for ads.
John Henry Menton's large eyes stared ahead.
The barrow turned into a side lane. A portly man, ambushed among
the grasses, raised his hat in homage. The gravediggers touched their caps.
-- John O'Connell, Mr Power said pleased. He never forgets a friend.
Mr O'Connell shook all their hands in silence. Mr Dedalus said:
-- I am come to pay you another visit.
-- My dear Simon, the caretaker answered in a low voice. I don't want your
custom at all.
Saluting Ned Lambert and John Henry Menton he walked on at
Martin Cunningham's side puzzling two long keys at his back.
-- Did you hear that one, he asked them, about Mulcahy from the Coombe?
-- I did not, Martin Cunningham said.
They bent their silk hats in concert and Hynes inclined his ear. The
caretaker hung his thumbs in the loops of his gold watchchain and spoke in
a discreet tone to their vacant smiles.
-- They tell the story, he said, that two drunks came out here one foggy
evening to look for the grave of a friend of theirs. They asked for Mulcahy
from the Coombe and were told where he was buried. After traipsing about
in the fog they found the grave sure enough. One of the drunks spelt out the
name: Terence Mulcahy. The other drunk was blinking up at a statue of
Our Saviour the widow had got put up.
The caretaker blinked up at one of the sepulchres they passed. He
resumed:
-- And, after blinking up at the sacred figure, Not a bloody bit like the man,
says he. That's not Mulcahy, says he, whoever done it.
Rewarded by smiles he fell back and spoke with Corny Kelleher,
accepting the dockets given him, turning them over and scanning them as he
walked.
-- That's all done with a purpose, Martin Cunningham explained to Hynes.
-- I know, Hynes said. I know that.
-- To cheer a fellow up, Martin Cunningham said. It's pure good-
heartedness: damn the thing else.
Mr Bloom admired the caretaker's prosperous bulk. All want to be on
good terms with him. Decent fellow, John O'Connell, real good sort. Keys:
like Keyes's ad: no fear of anyone getting out. No passout checks. Habeas
corpus. I must see about that ad after the funeral. Did I write Ballsbridge on
the envelope I took to cover when she disturbed me writing to Martha?
Hope it's not chucked in the dead letter office. Be the better of a shave. Grey
sprouting beard. That's the first sign when the hairs come out grey. And
temper getting cross. Silver threads among the grey. Fancy being his wife.
Wonder he had the gumption to propose to any girl. Come out and live in
the graveyard. Dangle that before her. It might thrill her first. Courting
death. Shades of night hovering here with all the dead stretched about. The
shadows of the tombs when churchyards yawn and Daniel O'Connell must
be a descendant I suppose who is this used to say he was a queer breedy
man great catholic all the same like a big giant in the dark. Will o' the wisp.
Gas of graves. Want to keep her mind off it to conceive at all. Women
especially are so touchy. Tell her a ghost story in bed to make her sleep.
Have you ever seen a ghost? Well, I have. It was a pitchdark night. The
clock was on the stroke of twelve. Still they'd kiss all right if properly keyed
up. Whores in Turkish graveyards. Learn anything if taken young. You
might pick up a young widow here. Men like that. Love among the
tombstones. Romeo. Spice of pleasure. In the midst of death we are in life.
Both ends meet. Tantalising for the poor dead. Smell of grilled beefsteaks to
the starving. Gnawing their vitals. Desire to grig people. Molly wanting to
do it at the window. Eight children he has anyway.
He has seen a fair share go under in his time, lying around him field
after field. Holy fields. More room if they buried them standing. Sitting or
kneeling you couldn't. Standing? His head might come up some day above
ground in a landslip with his hand pointing. All honeycombed the ground
must be: oblong cells. And very neat he keeps it too: trim grass and edgings.
His garden Major Gamble calls Mount Jerome. Well, so it is. Ought to be
flowers of sleep. Chinese cemeteries with giant poppies growing produce the
best opium Mastiansky told me. The Botanic Gardens are just over there.
It's the blood sinking in the earth gives new life. Same idea those jews they
said killed the christian boy. Every man his price. Well preserved fat corpse,
gentleman, epicure, invaluable for fruit garden. A bargain. By carcass of
William Wilkinson, auditor and accountant, lately deceased, three pounds
thirteen and six. With thanks.
I daresay the soil would be quite fat with corpsemanure, bones, flesh,
nails. Charnelhouses. Dreadful. Turning green and pink decomposing. Rot
quick in damp earth. The lean old ones tougher. Then a kind of a tallowy
kind of a cheesy. Then begin to get black, black treacle oozing out of them.
Then dried up. Deathmoths. Of course the cells or whatever they are go on
living. Changing about. Live for ever practically. Nothing to feed on feed
on themselves.
But they must breed a devil of a lot of maggots. Soil must be simply
swirling with them. Your head it simply swurls. Those pretty little seaside
gurls. He looks cheerful enough over it. Gives him a sense of power seeing
all the others go under first. Wonder how he looks at life. Cracking his
jokes too: warms the cockles of his heart. The one about the bulletin.
Spurgeon went to heaven 4 a.m. this morning. 11 p.m. (closing time). Not
arrived yet. Peter. The dead themselves the men anyhow would like to hear
an odd joke or the women to know what's in fashion. A juicy pear or
ladies' punch, hot, strong and sweet. Keep out the damp. You must laugh
sometimes so better do it that way. Gravediggers in Hamlet. Shows the
profound knowledge of the human heart. Daren't joke about the dead for
two years at least. De mortuis nil nisi prius. Go out of mourning first. Hard
to imagine his funeral. Seems a sort of a joke. Read your own obituary
notice they say you live longer. Gives you second wind. New lease of life.
-- How many have-you for tomorrow? the caretaker asked.
-- Two, Corny Kelleher said. Half ten and eleven.
The caretaker put the papers in his pocket. The barrow had ceased to
trundle. The mourners split and moved to each side of the hole, stepping
with care round the graves. The gravediggers bore the coffin and set its nose
on the brink, looping the bands round it.
Burying him. We come to bury Caesar. His ides of March or June.
He doesn't know who is here nor care.
Now who is that lankylooking galoot over there in the macintosh?
Now who is he I'd like to know? Now I'd give a trifle to know who he is.
Always someone turns up you never dreamt of. A fellow could live on his
lonesome all his life. Yes, he could. Still he'd have to get someone to sod him
after he died though he could dig his own grave. We all do. Only man
buries. No, ants too. First thing strikes anybody. Bury the dead. Say
Robinson Crusoe was true to life. Well then Friday buried him. Every
Friday buries a Thursday if you come to look at it.
O, poor Robinson Crusoe!
How could you possibly do so?
Poor Dignam! His last lie on the earth in his box. When you think of
them all it does seem a waste of wood. All gnawed through. They could
invent a handsome bier with a kind of panel sliding, let it down that way.
Ay but they might object to be buried out of another fellow's. They're so
particular. Lay me in my native earth. Bit of clay from the holy land. Only a
mother and deadborn child ever buried in the one coffin. I see what it
means. I see. To protect him as long as possible even in the earth. The
Irishman's house is his coffin. Embalming in catacombs, mummies the same
idea.
Mr Bloom stood far back, his hat in his hand, counting the bared
heads. Twelve. I'm thirteen. No. The chap in the macintosh is thirteen.
Death's number. Where the deuce did he pop out of? He wasn't in the
chapel, that I'll swear. Silly superstition that about thirteen.
Nice soft tweed Ned Lambert has in that suit. Tinge of purple. I had
one like that when we lived in Lombard street west. Dressy fellow he was
once. Used to change three suits in the day. Must get that grey suit of mine
turned by Mesias. Hello. It's dyed. His wife I forgot he's not married or his
landlady ought to have picked out those threads for him.
The coffin dived out of sight, eased down by the men straddled on the
gravetrestles. They struggled up and out: and all uncovered. Twenty.
Pause.
If we were all suddenly somebody else.
Far away a donkey brayed. Rain. No such ass. Never see a dead one,
they say. Shame of death. They hide. Also poor papa went away.
Gentle sweet air blew round the bared heads in a whisper. Whisper.
The boy by the gravehead held his wreath with both hands staring quietly
in the black open space. Mr Bloom moved behind the portly kindly
caretaker. Wellcut frockcoat. Weighing them up perhaps to see which will
go next. Well, it is a long rest. Feel no more. It's the moment you feel. Must
be damned unpleasant. Can't believe it at first. Mistake must be: someone
else. Try the house opposite. Wait, I wanted to. I haven't yet. Then
darkened deathchamber. Light they want. Whispering around you. Would
you like to see a priest? Then rambling and wandering. Delirium all you hid
all your life. The death struggle. His sleep is not natural. Press his lower
eyelid. Watching is his nose pointed is his jaw sinking are the soles of his
feet yellow. Pull the pillow away and finish it off on the floor since he's
doomed. Devil in that picture of sinner's death showing him a woman.
Dying to embrace her in his shirt. Last act of Lucia. Shall I nevermore
behold thee? Bam! He expires. Gone at last. People talk about you a bit:
forget you. Don't forget to pray for him. Remember him in your prayers.
Even Parnell. Ivy day dying out. Then they follow: dropping into a hole,
one after the other.
We are praying now for the repose of his soul. Hoping you're well
and not in hell. Nice change of air. Out of the fryingpan of life into the fire
of purgatory.
Does he ever think of the hole waiting for himself? They say you do
when you shiver in the sun. Someone walking over it. Callboy's warning.
Near you. Mine over there towards Finglas, the plot I bought. Mamma,
poor mamma, and little Rudy.
The gravediggers took up their spades and flung heavy clods of clay
in on the coffin. Mr Bloom turned away his face. And if he was alive all the
time? Whew! By jingo, that would be awful! No, no: he is dead, of course.
Of course he is dead. Monday he died. They ought to have some law to
pierce the heart and make sure or an electric clock or a telephone in the
coffin and some kind of a canvas airhole. Flag of distress. Three days.
Rather long to keep them in summer. Just as well to get shut of them as
soon as you are sure there's no.
The clay fell softer. Begin to be forgotten. Out of sight, out of mind.
The caretaker moved away a few paces and put on his hat. Had
enough of it. The mourners took heart of grace, one by one, covering
themselves without show. Mr Bloom put on his hat and saw the portly
figure make its way deftly through the maze of graves. Quietly, sure of his
ground, he traversed the dismal fields.
Hynes jotting down something in his notebook. Ah, the names. But he
knows them all. No: coming to me.
-- I am just taking the names, Hynes said below his breath. What is your
christian name? I'm not sure.
-- L, Mr Bloom said. Leopold. And you might put down M'Coy's name too.
He asked me to.
-- Charley, Hynes said writing. I know. He was on the Freeman once.
So he was before he got the job in the morgue under Louis Byrne.
Good idea a postmortem for doctors. Find out what they imagine they
know. He died of a Tuesday. Got the run. Levanted with the cash of a few
ads. Charley, you're my darling. That was why he asked me to. O well,
does no harm. I saw to that, M'Coy. Thanks, old chap: much obliged.
Leave him under an obligation: costs nothing.
-- And tell us, Hynes said, do you know that fellow in the, fellow was over
there in the...
He looked around.
-- Macintosh. Yes, I saw him, Mr Bloom said. Where is he now?
-- M'Intosh, Hynes said scribbling. I don't know who he is. Is that his
name?
He moved away, looking about him.
-- No, Mr Bloom began, turning and stopping. I say, Hynes!
Didn't hear. What? Where has he disappeared to? Not a sign. Well of
all the. Has anybody here seen? Kay ee double ell. Become invisible. Good
Lord, what became of him?
A seventh gravedigger came beside Mr Bloom to take up an idle
spade.
-- O, excuse me!
He stepped aside nimbly.
Clay, brown, damp, began to be seen in the hole. It rose. Nearly over.
A mound of damp clods rose more, rose, and the gravediggers rested their
spades. All uncovered again for a few instants. The boy propped his wreath
against a corner: the brother-in-law his on a lump. The gravediggers put on
their caps and carried their earthy spades towards the barrow. Then
knocked the blades lightly on the turf: clean. One bent to pluck from the
haft a long tuft of grass. One, leaving his mates, walked slowly on with
shouldered weapon, its blade blueglancing. Silently at the gravehead
another coiled the coffinband. His navelcord. The brother-in-law, turning
away, placed something in his free hand. Thanks in silence. Sorry, sir:
trouble. Headshake. I know that. For yourselves just.
The mourners moved away slowly without aim, by devious paths,
staying at whiles to read a name on a tomb.
-- Let us go round by the chief's grave, Hynes said. We have time.
-- Let us, Mr Power said.
They turned to the right, following their slow thoughts. With awe Mr
Power's blank voice spoke:
-- Some say he is not in that grave at all. That the coffin was filled with
stones. That one day he will come again.
Hynes shook his head.
-- Parnell will never come again, he said. He's there, all that was mortal of
him. Peace to his ashes.
Mr Bloom walked unheeded along his grove by saddened angels,
crosses, broken pillars, family vaults, stone hopes praying with upcast eyes,
old Ireland's hearts and hands. More sensible to spend the money on some
charity for the living. Pray for the repose of the soul of. Does anybody
really? Plant him and have done with him. Like down a coalshoot. Then
lump them together to save time. All souls' day. Twentyseventh I'll be at his
grave. Ten shillings for the gardener. He keeps it free of weeds. Old man
himself. Bent down double with his shears clipping. Near death's door.
Who passed away. Who departed this life. As if they did it of their own
accord. Got the shove, all of them. Who kicked the bucket. More interesting
if they told you what they were. So and So, wheelwright. I travelled for
cork lino. I paid five shillings in the pound. Or a woman's with her
saucepan. I cooked good Irish stew. Eulogy in a country churchyard it
ought to be that poem of whose is it Wordsworth or Thomas Campbell.
Entered into rest the protestants put it. Old Dr Murren's. The great
physician called him home. Well it's God's acre for them. Nice country
residence. Newly plastered and painted. Ideal spot to have a quiet smoke
and read the Church Times. Marriage ads they never try to beautify. Rusty
wreaths hung on knobs, garlands of bronzefoil. Better value that for the
money. Still, the flowers are more poetical. The other gets rather tiresome,
never withering. Expresses nothing. Immortelles.
A bird sat tamely perched on a poplar branch. Like stuffed. Like the
wedding present alderman Hooper gave us. Hoo! Not a budge out of him.
Knows there are no catapults to let fly at him. Dead animal even sadder.
Silly-Milly burying the little dead bird in the kitchen matchbox, a
daisychain and bits of broken chainies on the grave.
The Sacred Heart that is: showing it. Heart on his sleeve. Ought to be
sideways and red it should be painted like a real heart. Ireland was
dedicated to it or whatever that. Seems anything but pleased. Why this
infliction? Would birds come then and peck like the boy with the basket of
fruit but he said no because they ought to have been afraid of the boy.
Apollo that was.
How many! All these here once walked round Dublin. Faithful
departed. As you are now so once were we.
Besides how could you remember everybody? Eyes, walk, voice. Well,
the voice, yes: gramophone. Have a gramophone in every grave or keep it
in the house. After dinner on a Sunday. Put on poor old greatgrandfather.
Kraahraark! Hellohellohello amawfullyglad kraark awfullygladaseeagain
hellohello amawf krpthsth. Remind you of the voice like the photograph
reminds you of the face. Otherwise you couldn't remember the face after
fifteen years, say. For instance who? For instance some fellow that died
when I was in Wisdom Hely's.
Rtststr! A rattle of pebbles. Wait. Stop!
He looked down intently into a stone crypt. Some animal. Wait.
There he goes.
An obese grey rat toddled along the side of the crypt, moving the
pebbles. An old stager: greatgrandfather: he knows the ropes. The grey
alive crushed itself in under the plinth, wriggled itself in under it. Good
hidingplace for treasure.
Who lives there? Are laid the remains of Robert Emery. Robert
Emmet was buried here by torchlight, wasn't he? Making his rounds.
Tail gone now.
One of those chaps would make short work of a fellow. Pick the
bones clean no matter who it was. Ordinary meat for them. A corpse is
meat gone bad. Well and what's cheese? Corpse of milk. I read in that
Voyages in China that the Chinese say a white man smells like a corpse.
Cremation better. Priests dead against it. Devilling for the other firm.
Wholesale burners and Dutch oven dealers. Time of the plague. Quicklime
feverpits to eat them. Lethal chamber. Ashes to ashes. Or bury at sea.
Where is that Parsee tower of silence? Eaten by birds. Earth, fire, water.
Drowning they say is the pleasantest. See your whole life in a flash. But
being brought back to life no. Can't bury in the air however. Out of a flying
machine. Wonder does the news go about whenever a fresh one is let down.
Underground communication. We learned that from them. Wouldn't be
surprised. Regular square feed for them. Flies come before he's well dead.
Got wind of Dignam. They wouldn't care about the smell of it. Saltwhite
crumbling mush of corpse: smell, taste like raw white turnips.
The gates glimmered in front: still open. Back to the world again.
Enough of this place. Brings you a bit nearer every time. Last time I was
here was Mrs Sinico's funeral. Poor papa too. The love that kills. And even
scraping up the earth at night with a lantern like that case I read of to get at
fresh buried females or even putrefied with running gravesores. Give you
the creeps after a bit. I will appear to you after death. You will see my ghost
after death. My ghost will haunt you after death. There is another world
after death named hell. I do not like that other world she wrote. No more
do I. Plenty to see and hear and feel yet. Feel live warm beings near you. Let
them sleep in their maggoty beds. They are not going to get me this innings.
Warm beds: warm fullblooded life.
Martin Cunningham emerged from a sidepath, talking gravely.
Solicitor, I think. I know his face. Menton, John Henry, solicitor,
commissioner for oaths and affidavits. Dignam used to be in his office. Mat
Dillon's long ago. Jolly Mat. Convivial evenings. Cold fowl, cigars, the
Tantalus glasses. Heart of gold really. Yes, Menton. Got his rag out that
evening on the bowlinggreen because I sailed inside him. Pure fluke of
mine: the bias. Why he took such a rooted dislike to me. Hate at first sight.
Molly and Floey Dillon linked under the lilactree, laughing. Fellow always
like that, mortified if women are by.
Got a dinge in the side of his hat. Carriage probably.
-- Excuse me, sir, Mr Bloom said beside them.
They stopped.
-- Your hat is a little crushed, Mr Bloom said pointing.
John Henry Menton stared at him for an instant without moving.
-- There, Martin Cunningham helped, pointing also.
John Henry Menton took off his hat, bulged out the dinge and
smoothed the nap with care on his coatsleeve. He clapped the hat on his
head again.
-- It's all right now, Martin Cunningham said.
John Henry Menton jerked his head down in acknowledgment.
-- Thank you, he said shortly.
They walked on towards the gates. Mr Bloom, chapfallen, drew
behind a few paces so as not to overhear. Martin laying down the law.
Martin could wind a sappyhead like that round his little finger, without his
seeing it.
Oyster eyes. Never mind. Be sorry after perhaps when it dawns on
him. Get the pull over him that way.
Thank you. How grand we are this morning!
IN THE HEART OF THE HIBERNIAN
METROPOLIS
* Before Nelson's pillar trams slowed, shunted, changed trolley, started
for Blackrock, Kingstown and Dalkey, Clonskea, Rathgar and Terenure,
Palmerston Park and upper Rathmines, Sandymount Green, Rathmines,
Ringsend and Sandymount Tower, Harold's Cross. The hoarse Dublin
United Tramway Company's timekeeper bawled them off:
-- Rathgar and Terenure!
-- Come on, Sandymount Green!
Right and left parallel clanging ringing a doubledecker and a
singledeck moved from their railheads, swerved to the down line, glided
parallel.
-- Start, Palmerston Park!
THE WEARER OF THE CROWN
Under the porch of the general post office shoeblacks called and
polished. Parked in North Prince's street His Majesty's vermilion mailcars,
bearing on their sides the royal initials, E. R., received loudly flung sacks of
letters, postcards, lettercards, parcels, insured and paid, for local,
provincial, British and overseas delivery.
GENTLEMEN OF THE PRESS
Grossbooted draymen rolled barrels dullthudding out of Prince's
stores and bumped them up on the brewery float. On the brewery float
bumped dullthudding barrels rolled by grossbooted draymen out of
Prince's stores.
-- There it is, Red Murray said. Alexander Keyes.
-- Just cut it out, will you? Mr Bloom said, and I'll take it round to the
Telegraph office.
The door of Ruttledge's office creaked again. Davy Stephens, minute
in a large capecoat, a small felt hat crowning his ringlets, passed out with a
roll of papers under his cape, a king's courier.
Red Murray's long shears sliced out the advertisement from the
newspaper in four clean strokes. Scissors and paste.
-- I'll go through the printingworks, Mr Bloom said, taking the cut square.
-- Of course, if he wants a par, Red Murray said earnestly, a pen behind his
ear, we can do him one.
-- Right, Mr Bloom said with a nod. I'll rub that in.
We.
WILLIAM BRAYDEN, ESQUIRE, OF OAKLANDS,
SANDYMOUNT
Red Murray touched Mr Bloom's arm with the shears and whispered:
-- Brayden.
Mr Bloom turned and saw the liveried porter raise his lettered cap as a
stately figure entered between the newsboards of the Weekly Freeman and
National Press and the Freeman's Journal and National Press. Dullthudding
Guinness's barrels. It passed statelily up the staircase, steered by an
umbrella, a solemn beardframed face. The broadcloth back ascended each
step: back. All his brains are in the nape of his neck, Simon Dedalus says.
Welts of flesh behind on him. Fat folds of neck, fat, neck, fat, neck.
-- Don't you think his face is like Our Saviour? Red Murray whispered.
The door of Ruttledge's office whispered: ee: cree. They always build
one door opposite another for the wind to. Way in. Way out.
Our Saviour: beardframed oval face: talking in the dusk. Mary,
Martha. Steered by an umbrella sword to the footlights: Mario the tenor.
-- Or like Mario, Mr Bloom said.
-- Yes, Red Murray agreed. But Mario was said to be the picture of Our
Saviour.
Jesusmario with rougy cheeks, doublet and spindle legs. Hand on his
heart. In Martha.
Co-ome thou lost one,
Co-ome thou dear one!
THE CROZIER AND THE PEN
-- His grace phoned down twice this morning, Red Murray said gravely.
They watched the knees, legs, boots vanish. Neck.
A telegram boy stepped in nimbly, threw an envelope on the counter
and stepped off posthaste with a word:
-- Freeman!
Mr Bloom said slowly:
-- Well, he is one of our saviours also.
A meek smile accompanied him as he lifted the counterflap, as he
passed in through a sidedoor and along the warm dark stairs and passage,
along the now reverberating boards. But will he save the circulation?
Thumping. Thumping.
He pushed in the glass swingdoor and entered, stepping over strewn
packing paper. Through a lane of clanking drums he made his way towards
Nannetti's reading closet.
Hynes here too: account of the funeral probably. Thumping. Thump.
WITH UNFEIGNED REGRET IT IS WE
ANNOUNCE THE DISSOLUTION OF A MOST
RESPECTED DUBLIN BURGESS
This morning the remains of the late Mr Patrick Dignam. Machines.
Smash a man to atoms if they got him caught. Rule the world today. His
machineries are pegging away too. Like these, got out of hand: fermenting.
Working away, tearing away. And that old grey rat tearing to get in.
HOW A GREAT DAILY ORGAN IS TURNED OUT
Mr Bloom halted behind the foreman's spare body, admiring a glossy
crown.
Strange he never saw his real country. Ireland my country. Member
for College green. He boomed that workaday worker tack for all it was
worth. It's the ads and side features sell a weekly, not the stale news in the
official gazette. Queen Anne is dead. Published by authority in the year one
thousand and. Demesne situate in the townland of Rosenallis, barony of
Tinnahinch. To all whom it may concern schedule pursuant to statute
showing return of number of mules and jennets exported from Ballina.
Nature notes. Cartoons. Phil Blake's weekly Pat and Bull story. Uncle
Toby's page for tiny tots. Country bumpkin's queries. Dear Mr Editor,
what is a good cure for flatulence? I'd like that part. Learn a lot teaching
others. The personal note. M. A. P. Mainly all pictures. Shapely bathers on
golden strand. World's biggest balloon. Double marriage of sisters
celebrated. Two bridegrooms laughing heartily at each other. Cuprani too,
printer. More Irish than the Irish.
The machines clanked in threefour time. Thump, thump, thump.
Now if he got paralysed there and no-one knew how to stop them they'd
clank on and on the same, print it over and over and up and back.
Monkeydoodle the whole thing. Want a cool head.
-- Well, get it into the evening edition, councillor, Hynes said.
Soon be calling him my lord mayor. Long John is backing him, they
say.
The foreman, without answering, scribbled press on a corner of the
sheet and made a sign to a typesetter. He handed the sheet silently over the
dirty glass screen.
-- Right: thanks, Hynes said moving off.
Mr Bloom stood in his way.
-- If you want to draw the cashier is just going to lunch, he said, pointing
backward with his thumb.
-- Did you? Hynes asked.
-- Mm, Mr Bloom said. Look sharp and you'll catch him.
-- Thanks, old man, Hynes said. I'll tap him too.
He hurried on eagerly towards the Freeman's Journal office.
Three bob I lent him in Meagher's. Three weeks. Third hint.
WE SEE THE CANVASSER AT WORKMr Bloom laid his cutting on Mr Nannetti's desk. -- Excuse me, councillor, he said. This ad, you see. Keyes, you remember? Mr Nannetti considered the cutting awhile and nodded. -- He wants it in for July, Mr Bloom said. The foreman moved his pencil towards it. -- But wait, Mr Bloom said. He wants it changed. Keyes, you see. He wants two keys at the top. Hell of a racket they make. He doesn't hear it. Nannan. Iron nerves. Maybe he understands what I. The foreman turned round to hear patiently and, lifting an elbow, began to scratch slowly in the armpit of his alpaca jacket. -- Like that, Mr Bloom said, crossing his forefingers at the top. Let him take that in first. Mr Bloom, glancing sideways up from the cross he had made, saw the foreman's sallow face, think he has a touch of jaundice, and beyond the obedient reels feeding in huge webs of paper. Clank it. Clank it. Miles of it unreeled. What becomes of it after? O, wrap up meat, parcels: various uses, thousand and one things. Slipping his words deftly into the pauses of the clanking he drew swiftly on the scarred woodwork.
HOUSE OF KEY(E)S
-- Like that, see. Two crossed keys here. A circle. Then here the name.
Alexander Keyes, tea, wine and spirit merchant. So on.
Better not teach him his own business.
-- You know yourself, councillor, just what he wants. Then round the top in
leaded: the house of keys. You see? Do you think that's a good idea?
The foreman moved his scratching hand to his lower ribs and
scratched there quietly.
-- The idea, Mr Bloom said, is the house of keys. You know, councillor, the
Manx parliament. Innuendo of home rule. Tourists, you know, from the isle
of Man. Catches the eye, you see. Can you do that?
I could ask him perhaps about how to pronounce that voglio. But
then if he didn't know only make it awkward for him. Better not.
-- We can do that, the foreman said. Have you the design?
-- I can get it, Mr Bloom said. It was in a Kilkenny paper. He has a house
there too. I'll just run out and ask him. Well, you can do that and just a little
par calling attention. You know the usual. Highclass licensed premises.
Longfelt want. So on.
The foreman thought for an instant.
-- We can do that, he said. Let him give us a three months' renewal.
A typesetter brought him a limp galleypage. He began to check it
silently. Mr Bloom stood by, hearing the loud throbs of cranks, watching
the silent typesetters at their cases.
ORTHOGRAPHICAL
Want to be sure of his spelling. Proof fever. Martin Cunningham
forgot to give us his spellingbee conundrum this morning. It is amusing to
view the unpar one ar alleled embarra two ars is it? double ess ment of a
harassed pedlar while gauging au the symmetry with a y of a peeled pear
under a cemetery wall. Silly, isn't it? Cemetery put in of course on account
of the symmetry.
I should have said when he clapped on his topper. Thank you. I ought
to have said something about an old hat or something. No. I could have
said. Looks as good as new now. See his phiz then.
Sllt. The nethermost deck of the first machine jogged forward its
flyboard with sllt the first batch of quirefolded papers. Sllt. Almost human
the way it sllt to call attention. Doing its level best to speak. That door too
sllt creaking, asking to be shut. Everything speaks in its own way. Sllt.
NOTED CHURCHMAN AN OCCASIONAL
CONTRIBUTOR
The foreman handed back the galleypage suddenly, saying:
-- Wait. Where's the archbishop's letter? It's to be repeated in the Telegraph.
Where's what's his name?
He looked about him round his loud unanswering machines.
-- Monks, sir? a voice asked from the castingbox.
-- Ay. Where's Monks?
-- Monks!
Mr Bloom took up his cutting. Time to get out.
-- Then I'll get the design, Mr Nannetti, he said, and you'll give it a good
place I know.
-- Monks!
-- Yes, sir.
Three months' renewal. Want to get some wind off my chest first. Try
it anyhow. Rub in August: good idea: horseshow month. Ballsbridge.
Tourists over for the show.
A DAYFATHER
He walked on through the caseroom passing an old man, bowed,
spectacled, aproned. Old Monks, the dayfather. Queer lot of stuff he must
have put through his hands in his time: obituary notices, pubs' ads,
speeches, divorce suits, found drowned. Nearing the end of his tether now.
Sober serious man with a bit in the savingsbank I'd say. Wife a good cook
and washer. Daughter working the machine in the parlour. Plain Jane, no
damn nonsense.
AND IT WAS THE FEAST OF THE PASSOVERHe stayed in his walk to watch a typesetter neatly distributing type. Reads it backwards first. Quickly he does it. Must require some practice that. mangiD kcirtaP. Poor papa with his hagadah book, reading backwards with his finger to me. Pessach. Next year in Jerusalem. Dear, O dear! All that long business about that brought us out of the land of Egypt and into the house of bondage alleluia. Shema Israel Adonai Elohenu. No, that's the other. Then the twelve brothers, Jacob's sons. And then the lamb and the cat and the dog and the stick and the water and the butcher. And then the angel of death kills the butcher and he kills the ox and the dog kills the cat. Sounds a bit silly till you come to look into it well. Justice it means but it's everybody eating everyone else. That's what life is after all. How quickly he does that job. Practice makes perfect. Seems to see with his fingers. Mr Bloom passed on out of the clanking noises through the gallery on to the landing. Now am I going to tram it out all the way and then catch him out perhaps. Better phone him up first. Number? Yes. Same as Citron's house. Twentyeight. Twentyeight double four.
ONLY ONCE MORE THAT SOAP
He went down the house staircase. Who the deuce scrawled all over
those walls with matches? Looks as if they did it for a bet. Heavy greasy
smell there always is in those works. Lukewarm glue in Thom's next door
when I was there.
He took out his handkerchief to dab his nose. Citronlemon? Ah, the
soap I put there. Lose it out of that pocket. Putting back his handkerchief
he took out the soap and stowed it away, buttoned, into the hip pocket of
his trousers.
What perfume does your wife use? I could go home still: tram:
something I forgot. Just to see: before: dressing. No. Here. No.
A sudden screech of laughter came from the Evening Telegraph
office. Know who that is. What's up? Pop in a minute to phone. Ned
Lambert it is.
He entered softly.
ERIN, GREEN GEM OF THE SILVER SEA
-- The ghost walks, professor MacHugh murmured softly, biscuitfully to
the dusty windowpane.
Mr Dedalus, staring from the empty fireplace at Ned Lambert's
quizzing face, asked of it sourly:
-- Agonising Christ, wouldn't it give you a heartburn on your arse?
Ned Lambert, seated on the table, read on:
-- Or again, note the meanderings of some purling rill as it babbles on its
way, tho' quarrelling with the stony obstacles, to the tumbling waters of
Neptune's blue domain, 'mid mossy banks, fanned by gentlest zephyrs,
played on by the glorious sunlight or 'neath the shadows cast o'er its pensive
bosom by the overarching leafage of the giants of the forest. What about
that, Simon? he asked over the fringe of his newspaper. How's that for
high?
-- Changing his drink, Mr Dedalus said.
Ned Lambert, laughing, struck the newspaper on his knees,
repeating:
-- The pensive bosom and the overarsing leafage. O boys! O boys!
-- And Xenophon looked upon Marathon, Mr Dedalus said, looking again
on the fireplace and to the window, and Marathon looked on the sea.
-- That will do, professor MacHugh cried from the window. I don't want to
hear any more of the stuff.
He ate off the crescent of water biscuit he had been nibbling and,
hungered, made ready to nibble the biscuit in his other hand.
High falutin stuff. Bladderbags. Ned Lambert is taking a day off I
see. Rather upsets a man's day, a funeral does. He has influence they say.
Old Chatterton, the vicechancellor, is his granduncle or his
greatgranduncle. Close on ninety they say. Subleader for his death written
this long time perhaps. Living to spite them. Might go first himself. Johnny,
make room for your uncle. The right honourable Hedges Eyre Chatterton.
Daresay he writes him an odd shaky cheque or two on gale days. Windfall
when he kicks out. Alleluia.
-- Just another spasm, Ned Lambert said.
-- What is it? Mr Bloom asked.
-- A recently discovered fragment of Cicero, professor MacHugh answered
with pomp of tone. Our lovely land.
SHORT BUT TO THE POINT
-- Whose land? Mr Bloom said simply.
-- Most pertinent question, the professor said between his chews. With an
accent on the whose.
-- Dan Dawson's land Mr Dedalus said.
-- Is it his speech last night? Mr Bloom asked.
Ned Lambert nodded.
-- But listen to this, he said.
The doorknob hit Mr Bloom in the small of the back as the door was
pushed in.
-- Excuse me, J. J. O'Molloy said, entering.
Mr Bloom moved nimbly aside.
-- I beg yours, he said.
-- Good day, Jack.
-- Come in. Come in.
-- Good day.
-- How are you, Dedalus?
-- Well. And yourself?
J. J. O'Molloy shook his head.
SAD
Cleverest fellow at the junior bar he used to be. Decline, poor chap.
That hectic flush spells finis for a man. Touch and go with him. What's in
the wind, I wonder. Money worry.
-- Or again if we but climb the serried mountain peaks.
-- You're looking extra.
-- Is the editor to be seen? J. J. O'Molloy asked, looking towards the inner
door.
-- Very much so, professor MacHugh said. To be seen and heard. He's in
his sanctum with Lenehan.
J. J. o'Molloy strolled to the sloping desk and began to turn back the
pink pages of the file.
Practice dwindling. A mighthavebeen. Losing heart. Gambling. Debts
of honour. Reaping the whirlwind. Used to get good retainers from D. and
T. Fitzgerald. Their wigs to show the grey matter. Brains on their sleeve
like the statue in Glasnevin. Believe he does some literary work for the
Express with Gabriel Conroy. Wellread fellow. Myles Crawford began on
the Independent. Funny the way those newspaper men veer about when
they get wind of a new opening. Weathercocks. Hot and cold in the same
breath. Wouldn't know which to believe. One story good till you hear the
next. Go for one another baldheaded in the papers and then all blows over.
Hail fellow well met the next moment.
-- Ah, listen to this for God' sake, Ned Lambert pleaded. Or again if we but
climb the serried mountain peaks ...
-- Bombast! the professor broke in testily. Enough of the inflated windbag!
-- Peaks, Ned Lambert went on, towering high on high, to bathe our souls,
as it were ...
-- Bathe his lips, Mr Dedalus said. Blessed and eternal God! Yes? Is he
taking anything for it?
-- As 'twere, in the peerless panorama of Ireland's portfolio, unmatched,
despite their wellpraised prototypes in other vaunted prize regions, for very
beauty, of bosky grove and undulating plain and luscious pastureland of
vernal green, steeped in the transcendent translucent glow of our mild
mysterious Irish twilight ...
-- The moon, professor MacHugh said. He forgot Hamlet.
HIS NATIVE DORIC
-- That mantles the vista far and wide and wait till the glowing orb of the
moon shine forth to irradiate her silver effulgence ...
-- O! Mr Dedalus cried, giving vent to a hopeless groan. Shite and onions!
That'll do, Ned. Life is too short.
He took off his silk hat and, blowing out impatiently his bushy
moustache, welshcombed his hair with raking fingers.
Ned Lambert tossed the newspaper aside, chuckling with delight. An
instant after a hoarse bark of laughter burst over professor MacHugh's
unshaven blackspectacled face.
-- Doughy Daw! he cried.
WHAT WETHERUP SAID
All very fine to jeer at it now in cold print but it goes down like hot
cake that stuff. He was in the bakery line too, wasn't he? Why they call him
Doughy Daw. Feathered his nest well anyhow. Daughter engaged to that
chap in the inland revenue office with the motor. Hooked that nicely.
Entertainments. Open house. Big blowout. Wetherup always said that. Get
a grip of them by the stomach.
The inner door was opened violently and a scarlet beaked face,
crested by a comb of feathery hair, thrust itself in. The bold blue eyes stared
about them and the harsh voice asked:
-- What is it?
-- And here comes the sham squire himself! professor MacHugh said
grandly.
-- Getonouthat, you bloody old pedagogue! the editor said in recognition.
-- Come, Ned, Mr Dedalus said, putting on his hat. I must get a drink after
that.
-- Drink! the editor cried. No drinks served before mass.
-- Quite right too, Mr Dedalus said, going out. Come on, Ned.
Ned Lambert sidled down from the table. The editor's blue eyes roved
towards Mr Bloom's face, shadowed by a smile.
-- Will you join us, Myles? Ned Lambert asked.
MEMORABLE BATTLES RECALLED
-- North Cork militia! the editor cried, striding to the mantelpiece. We won
every time! North Cork and Spanish officers!
-- Where was that, Myles? Ned Lambert asked with a reflective glance at his
toecaps.
-- In Ohio! the editor shouted.
-- So it was, begad, Ned Lambert agreed.
Passing out he whispered to J. J. O'Molloy:
-- Incipient jigs. Sad case.
-- Ohio! the editor crowed in high treble from his uplifted scarlet face. My
Ohio!
-- A perfect cretic! the professor said. Long, short and long.
O, HARP EOLIAN!
He took a reel of dental floss from his waistcoat pocket and, breaking
off a piece, twanged it smartly between two and two of his resonant
unwashed teeth.
-- Bingbang, bangbang.
Mr Bloom, seeing the coast clear, made for the inner door.
-- Just a moment, Mr Crawford, he said. I just want to phone about an ad.
He went in.
-- What about that leader this evening? professor MacHugh asked, coming
to the editor and laying a firm hand on his shoulder.
-- That'll be all right, Myles Crawford said more calmly. Never you fret.
Hello, Jack. That's all right.
-- Good day, Myles, J. J. O'Molloy said, letting the pages he held slip limply
back on the file. Is that Canada swindle case on today?
The telephone whirred inside.
-- Twentyeight. No. Twenty. Double four, yes.
SPOT THE WINNER
Lenehan came out of the inner office with Sport's tissues.
-- Who wants a dead cert for the Gold cup? he asked. Sceptre with O.
Madden up.
He tossed the tissues on to the table.
Screams of newsboys barefoot in the hall rushed near and the door
was flung open.
-- Hush, Lenehan said. I hear feetstoops.
Professor MacHugh strode across the room and seized the cringing
urchin by the collar as the others scampered out of the hall and down the
steps. The tissues rustled up in the draught, floated softly in the air blue
scrawls and under the table came to earth.
-- It wasn't me, sir. It was the big fellow shoved me, sir.
-- Throw him out and shut the door, the editor said. There's a hurricane
blowing.
Lenehan began to paw the tissues up from the floor, grunting as he
stooped twice.
-- Waiting for the racing special, sir, the newsboy said. It was Pat Farrell
shoved me, sir.
He pointed to two faces peering in round the doorframe.
-- Him, sir.
-- Out of this with you, professor MacHugh said gruffly.
He hustled the boy out and banged the door to.
J. ]. O'Molloy turned the files crackingly over, murmuring, seeking:
-- Continued on page six, column four.
-- Yes, Evening Telegraph here, Mr Bloom phoned from the inner office. Is
the boss...? Yes, Telegraph .... To where? Aha! Which auction rooms?...
Aha! I see. Right. I'll catch him.
A COLLISION ENSUES
The bell whirred again as he rang off. He came in quickly and
bumped against Lenehan who was struggling up with the second tissue.
-- Pardon, monsieur, Lenehan said, clutching him for an instant and making
a grimace.
-- My fault, Mr Bloom said, suffering his grip. Are you hurt? I'm in a hurry.
-- Knee, Lenehan said.
He made a comic face and whined, rubbing his knee:
-- The accumulation of the anno Domini.
-- Sorry, Mr Bloom said.
He went to the door and, holding it ajar, paused. J. J. O'Molloy
slapped the heavy pages over. The noise of two shrill voices, a mouthorgan,
echoed in the bare hallway from the newsboys squatted on the doorsteps:
-- We are the boys of WexfordWho fought with heart and hand.
EXIT BLOOM
-- I'm just running round to Bachelor's walk, Mr Bloom said, about this ad
of Keyes's. Want to fix it up. They tell me he's round there in Dillon's.
He looked indecisively for a moment at their faces. The editor who,
leaning against the mantelshelf, had propped his head on his hand,
suddenly stretched forth an arm amply.
-- Begone! he said. The world is before you.
-- Back in no time, Mr Bloom said, hurrying out.
J. J. O'Molloy took the tissues from Lenehan's hand and read them,
blowing them apart gently, without comment.
-- He'll get that advertisement, the professor said, staring through his
blackrimmed spectacles over the crossblind. Look at the young scamps after
him.
-- Show. Where? Lenehan cried, running to the window.
A STREET CORTEGE
Both smiled over the crossblind at the file of capering newsboys in Mr
Bloom's wake, the last zigzagging white on the breeze a mocking kite, a tail
of white bowknots.
-- Look at the young guttersnipe behind him hue and cry, Lenehan said, and
you'll kick. O, my rib risible! Taking off his flat spaugs and the walk. Small
nines. Steal upon larks.
He began to mazurka in swift caricature across the floor on sliding
feet past the fireplace to J. J. O'Molloy who placed the tissues in his
receiving hands.
-- What's that? Myles Crawford said with a start. Where are the other two
gone?
-- Who? the professor said, turning. They're gone round to the Oval for a
drink. Paddy Hooper is there with Jack Hall. Came over last night.
-- Come on then, Myles Crawford said. Where's my hat?
He walked jerkily into the office behind, parting the vent of his jacket,
jingling his keys in his back pocket. They jingled then in the air and against
the wood as he locked his desk drawer.
-- He's pretty well on, professor MacHugh said in a low voice.
-- Seems to be, J. J. O'Molloy said, taking out a cigarettecase in murmuring
meditation, but it is not always as it seems. Who has the most matches?
THE CALUMET OF PEACE
He offered a cigarette to the professor and took one himself. Lenehan
promptly struck a match for them and lit their cigarettes in turn. J. J.
O'Molloy opened his case again and offered it.
-- Thanky vous, Lenehan said, helping himself.
The editor came from the inner office, a straw hat awry on his brow.
He declaimed in song, pointing sternly at professor MacHugh:
-- 'Twas rank and fame that tempted thee,'Twas empire charmed thy heart. The professor grinned, locking his long lips. -- Eh? You bloody old Roman empire? Myles Crawford said. He took a cigarette from the open case. Lenehan, lighting it for him with quick grace, said: -- Silence for my brandnew riddle! -- Imperium romanum, J. J. O'Molloy said gently. It sounds nobler than British or Brixton. The word reminds one somehow of fat in the fire. Myles Crawford blew his first puff violently towards the ceiling. -- That's it, he said. We are the fat. You and I are the fat in the fire. We haven't got the chance of a snowball in hell.
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
-- Wait a moment, professor MacHugh said, raising two quiet claws. We
mustn't be led away by words, by sounds of words. We think of Rome,
imperial, imperious, imperative.
He extended elocutionary arms from frayed stained shirtcuffs,
pausing:
-- What was their civilisation? Vast, I allow: but vile. Cloacae: sewers. The
jews in the wilderness and on the mountaintop said: It is meet to be here.
Let us build an altar to Jehovah. The Roman, like the Englishman who
follows in his footsteps, brought to every new shore on which he set his foot
(on our shore he never set it) only his cloacal obsession. He gazed about
him in his toga and he said: It is meet to be here. Let us construct a
watercloset.
-- Which they accordingly did do, Lenehan said. Our old ancient ancestors,
as we read in the first chapter of Guinness's, were partial to the running
stream.
-- They were nature's gentlemen, J. J. O'Molloy murmured. But we have
also Roman law.
-- And Pontius Pilate is its prophet, professor MacHugh responded.
-- Do you know that story about chief baron Palles? J. J. O'Molloy asked.
It was at the royal university dinner. Everything was going swimmingly .....
-- First my riddle, Lenehan said. Are you ready?
Mr O'Madden Burke, tall in copious grey of Donegal tweed, came in
from the hallway. Stephen Dedalus, behind him, uncovered as he entered.
-- Entrez, mes enfants! Lenehan cried.
-- I escort a suppliant, Mr O'Madden Burke said melodiously. Youth led by
Experience visits Notoriety.
-- How do you do? the editor said, holding out a hand. Come in. Your
governor is just gone.
? ? ?
Lenehan said to all:
-- Silence! What opera resembles a railwayline? Reflect, ponder, excogitate,
reply.
Stephen handed over the typed sheets, pointing to the title and
signature.
-- Who? the editor asked.
Bit torn off.
-- Mr Garrett Deasy, Stephen said.
-- That old pelters, the editor said. Who tore it? Was he short taken?
On swift sail flaming
From storm and south
He comes, pale vampire,
Mouth to my mouth.
-- Good day, Stephen, the professor said, coming to peer over their
shoulders. Foot and mouth? Are you turned ...?
Bullockbefriending bard.
SHINDY IN WELLKNOWN RESTAURANT-- Good day, sir, Stephen answered blushing. The letter is not mine. Mr Garrett Deasy asked me to ... -- O, I know him, Myles Crawford said, and I knew his wife too. The bloodiest old tartar God ever made. By Jesus, she had the foot and mouth disease and no mistake! The night she threw the soup in the waiter's face in the Star and Garter. Oho! A woman brought sin into the world. For Helen, the runaway wife of Menelaus, ten years the Greeks. O'Rourke, prince of Breffni. -- Is he a widower? Stephen asked. -- Ay, a grass one, Myles Crawford said, his eye running down the typescript. Emperor's horses. Habsburg. An Irishman saved his life on the ramparts of Vienna. Don't you forget! Maximilian Karl O'Donnell, graf von Tirconnell in Ireland. Sent his heir over to make the king an Austrian fieldmarshal now. Going to be trouble there one day. Wild geese. O yes, every time. Don't you forget that! -- The moot point is did he forget it, J. J. O'Molloy said quietly, turning a horseshoe paperweight. Saving princes is a thankyou job. Professor MacHugh turned on him. -- And if not? he said. -- I'll tell you how it was, Myles Crawford began. A Hungarian it was one day ...
LOST CAUSES
NOBLE MARQUESS MENTIONED
-- We were always loyal to lost causes, the professor said. Success for us is
the death of the intellect and of the imagination. We were never loyal to the
successful. We serve them. I teach the blatant Latin language. I speak the
tongue of a race the acme of whose mentality is the maxim: time is money.
Material domination. Domine! Lord! Where is the spirituality? Lord Jesus?
Lord Salisbury? A sofa in a westend club. But the Greek!
KYRIE ELEISON!
A smile of light brightened his darkrimmed eyes, lengthened his long
lips.
-- The Greek! he said again. Kyrios! Shining word! The vowels the Semite
and the Saxon know not. Kyrie! The radiance of the intellect. I ought to
profess Greek, the language of the mind. Kyrie eleison! The closetmaker
and the cloacamaker will never be lords of our spirit. We are liege subjects
of the catholic chivalry of Europe that foundered at Trafalgar and of the
empire of the spirit, not an imperium, that went under with the Athenian
fleets at Aegospotami. Yes, yes. They went under. Pyrrhus, misled by an
oracle, made a last attempt to retrieve the fortunes of Greece. Loyal to a lost
cause.
He strode away from them towards the window.
-- They went forth to battle, Mr O'Madden Burke said greyly, but they
always fell.
-- Boohoo! Lenehan wept with a little noise. Owing to a brick received in
the latter half of the matin’e. Poor, poor, poor Pyrrhus!
He whispered then near Stephen's ear:
LENEHAN'S LIMERICK
-- There's a ponderous pundit MacHugh
Who wears goggles of ebony hue.
As he mostly sees double
To wear them why trouble?
I can't see the Joe Miller. Can you?
In mourning for Sallust, Mulligan says. Whose mother is beastly
dead.
Myles Crawford crammed the sheets into a sidepocket.
-- That'll be all right, he said. I'll read the rest after. That'll be all right.
Lenehan extended his hands in protest.
-- But my riddle! he said. What opera is like a railwayline?
-- Opera? Mr O'Madden Burke's sphinx face reriddled.
Lenehan announced gladly:
-- The Rose of Castile. See the wheeze? Rows of cast steel. Gee!
He poked Mr O'Madden Burke mildly in the spleen. Mr O'Madden
Burke fell back with grace on his umbrella, feigning a gasp.
-- Help! he sighed. I feel a strong weakness.
Lenehan, rising to tiptoe, fanned his face rapidly with the rustling
tissues.
The professor, returning by way of the files, swept his hand across
Stephen's and Mr O'Madden Burke's loose ties.
-- Paris, past and present, he said. You look like communards.
-- Like fellows who had blown up the Bastile, J. J. O'Molloy said in quiet
mockery. Or was it you shot the lord lieutenant of Finland between you?
You look as though you had done the deed. General Bobrikoff.
-- We were only thinking about it, Stephen said.
OMNIUM GATHERUM
-- All the talents, Myles Crawford said. Law, the classics
-- The turf, Lenehan put in.
-- Literature, the press.
-- If Bloom were here, the professor said. The gentle art of advertisement.
-- And Madam Bloom, Mr O'Madden Burke added. The vocal muse.
Dublin's prime favourite.
Lenehan gave a loud cough.
-- Ahem! he said very softly. O, for a fresh of breath air! I caught a cold in
the park. The gate was open.
"YOU CAN DO IT!"
The editor laid a nervous hand on Stephen's shoulder.
-- I want you to write something for me, he said. Something with a bite in it.
You can do it. I see it in your face. In the lexicon of youth .....
See it in your face. See it in your eye. Lazy idle little schemer.
-- Foot and mouth disease! the editor cried in scornful invective. Great
nationalist meeting in Borris-in-Ossory. All balls! Bulldosing the public!
Give them something with a bite in it. Put us all into it, damn its soul.
Father, Son and Holy Ghost and Jakes M'Carthy.
-- We can all supply mental pabulum, Mr O'Madden Burke said.
Stephen raised his eyes to the bold unheeding stare.
-- He wants you for the pressgang, J. J. O'Molloy said.
THE GREAT GALLAHER
-- You can do it, Myles Crawford repeated, clenching his hand in emphasis.
Wait a minute. We'll paralyse Europe as Ignatius Gallaher used to say whenhe was on the shaughraun, doing billiardmarking in the Clarence. Gallaher,
that was a pressman for you. That was a pen. You know how he made his
mark? I'll tell you. That was the smartest piece of journalism ever known.
That was in eightyone, sixth of May, time of the invincibles, murder in the
Phoenix park, before you were born, I suppose. I'll show you.
He pushed past them to the files.
-- Look at here, he said turning. The New York World cabled for a special.
Remember that time?
Professor MacHugh nodded.
-- New York World, the editor said, excitedly pushing back his straw hat.
Where it took place. Tim Kelly, or Kavanagh I mean. Joe Brady and the
rest of them. Where Skin-the-Goat drove the car. Whole route, see?
-- Skin-the-Goat, Mr O'Madden Burke said. Fitzharris. He has that
cabman's shelter, they say, down there at Butt bridge. Holohan told me.
You know Holohan?
-- Hop and carry one, is it? Myles Crawford said.
-- And poor Gumley is down there too, so he told me, minding stones for
the corporation. A night watchman.
Stephen turned in surprise.
-- Gumley? he said. You don't say so? A friend of my father's, is it?
-- Never mind Gumley, Myles Crawford cried angrily. Let Gumley mind
the stones, see they don't run away. Look at here. What did Ignatius
Gallaher do? I'll tell you. Inspiration of genius. Cabled right away. Have
you Weekly Freeman of 17 March? Right. Have you got that?
He flung back pages of the files and stuck his finger on a point.
-- Take page four, advertisement for Bransome's coffee, let us say. Have
you got that? Right.
The telephone whirred.
A DISTANT VOICE
-- I'll answer it, the professor said, going.
-- B is parkgate. Good.
His finger leaped and struck point after point, vibrating.
-- T is viceregal lodge. C is where murder took place. K is Knockmaroon
gate.
The loose flesh of his neck shook like a cock's wattles. An illstarched
dicky jutted up and with a rude gesture he thrust it back into his waistcoat.
-- Hello? Evening Telegraph here. Hello?... Who's there?... Yes... Yes....
Yes.
-- F to P is the route Skin-the-Goat drove the car for an alibi, Inchicore,
Roundtown, Windy Arbour, Palmerston Park, Ranelagh. F. A. B. P. Got
that? X is Davy's publichouse in upper Leeson street.
The professor came to the inner door.
-- Bloom is at the telephone, he said.
-- Tell him go to hell, the editor said promptly. X is Davy's publichouse,
see?
CLEVER, VERY
-- Clever, Lenehan said. Very.
-- Gave it to them on a hot plate, Myles Crawford said, the whole bloody
history.
Nightmare from which you will never awake.
-- I saw it, the editor said proudly. I was present. Dick Adams, the
besthearted bloody Corkman the Lord ever put the breath of life in, and
myself.
Lenehan bowed to a shape of air, announcing:
-- Madam, I'm Adam. And Able was I ere I saw Elba.
-- History! Myles Crawford cried. The Old Woman of Prince's street was
there first. There was weeping and gnashing of teeth over that. Out of an
advertisement. Gregor Grey made the design for it. That gave him the leg
up. Then Paddy Hooper worked Tay Pay who took him on to the Star.
Now he's got in with Blumenfeld. That's press. That's talent. Pyatt! He
was all their daddies!
-- The father of scare journalism, Lenehan confirmed, and the
brother-in-law of Chris Callinan.
-- Hello? Are you there? Yes, he's here still. Come across yourself.
-- Where do you find a pressman like that now, eh? the editor cried.
He flung the pages down.
-- Clamn dever, Lenehan said to Mr O'Madden Burke.
-- Very smart, Mr O'Madden Burke said.
Professor MacHugh came from the inner office.
-- Talking about the invincibles, he said, did you see that some hawkers
were up before the recorder
-- O yes, J. J. O'Molloy said eagerly. Lady Dudley was walking home
through the park to see all the trees that were blown down by that cyclone
last year and thought she'd buy a view of Dublin. And it turned out to be a
commemoration postcard of Joe Brady or Number One or Skin-the-Goat.
Right outside the viceregal lodge, imagine!
-- They're only in the hook and eye department, Myles Crawford said.
Psha! Press and the bar! Where have you a man now at the bar like those
fellows, like Whiteside, like Isaac Butt, like silvertongued O'Hagan. Eh?
Ah, bloody nonsense. Psha! Only in the halfpenny place.
His mouth continued to twitch unspeaking in nervous curls of
disdain.
Would anyone wish that mouth for her kiss? How do you know?
Why did you write it then?
RHYMES AND REASONS
Mouth, south. Is the mouth south someway? Or the south a mouth?
Must be some. South, pout, out, shout, drouth. Rhymes: two men dressed
the same, looking the same, two by two.
. . . . . . . . la tua pace
. . . . . che parlar ti piace
Mentre che il vento, come fa, si tace.
He saw them three by three, approaching girls, in green, in rose, in
russet, entwining, per l'aer perso, in mauve, in purple, quella pacifica
oriafiamma, gold of oriflamme, di rimirar fS pi‹ ardenti. But I old men,
penitent, leadenfooted, underdarkneath the night: mouth south: tomb
womb.
-- Speak up for yourself, Mr O'Madden Burke said.
SUFFICIENT FOR THE DAY...
J. J. O'Molloy, smiling palely, took up the gage.
-- My dear Myles, he said, flinging his cigarette aside, you put a false
construction on my words. I hold no brief, as at present advised, for the
third profession qua profession but your Cork legs are running away with
you. Why not bring in Henry Grattan and Flood and Demosthenes and
Edmund Burke? Ignatius Gallaher we all know and his Chapelizod boss,
Harmsworth of the farthing press, and his American cousin of the Bowery
guttersheet not to mention Paddy Kelly's Budget, Pue's Occurrences and our
watchful friend The Skibbereen Eagle. Why bring in a master of forensic
eloquence like Whiteside? Sufficient for the day is the newspaper thereof.
LINKS WITH BYGONE DAYS OF YORE
-- Grattan and Flood wrote for this very paper, the editor cried in his face.
Irish volunteers. Where are you now? Established 1763. Dr Lucas. Who
have you now like John Philpot Curran? Psha!
-- Well, J. J. O'Molloy said, Bushe K. C., for example.
-- Bushe? the editor said. Well, yes: Bushe, yes. He has a strain of it in his
blood. Kendal Bushe or I mean Seymour Bushe.
-- He would have been on the bench long ago, the professor said, only
for .... But no matter.
J. J. O'Molloy turned to Stephen and said quietly and slowly:
-- One of the most polished periods I think I ever listened to in my life fell
from the lips of Seymour Bushe. It was in that case of fratricide, the Childs
murder case. Bushe defended him.
And in the porches of mine ear did pour.
By the way how did he find that out? He died in his sleep. Or the
other story, beast with two backs?
-- What was that? the professor asked.
ITALIA, MAGISTRA ARTIUM
-- He spoke on the law of evidence, J. J. O'Molloy said, of Roman justice as
contrasted with the earlier Mosaic code, the lex talionis. And he cited the
Moses of Michelangelo in the vatican.
-- Ha.
-- A few wellchosen words, Lenehan prefaced. Silence!
Pause. J. J. O'Molloy took out his cigarettecase.
False lull. Something quite ordinary.
Messenger took out his matchbox thoughtfully and lit his cigar.
I have often thought since on looking back over that strange time that
it was that small act, trivial in itself, that striking of that match, that
determined the whole aftercourse of both our lives.
A POLISHED PERIOD
J. J. O'Molloy resumed, moulding his words:
-- He said of it: that stony effigy in frozen music, horned and terrible, of the
human form divine, that eternal symbol of wisdom and of prophecy which,
if aught that the imagination or the hand of sculptor has wrought in marble
of soultransfigured and of soultransfiguring deserves to live, deserves to live.
His slim hand with a wave graced echo and fall.
-- Fine! Myles Crawford said at once.
-- The divine afflatus, Mr O'Madden Burke said.
-- You like it? J. J. O'Molloy asked Stephen.
Stephen, his blood wooed by grace of language and gesture, blushed.
He took a cigarette from the case. J. J. O'Molloy offered his case to Myles
Crawford. Lenehan lit their cigarettes as before and took his trophy,
saying:
-- Muchibus thankibus.
A MAN OF HIGH MORALE
-- Professor Magennis was speaking to me about you, J. J. O'Molloy said to
Stephen. What do you think really of that hermetic crowd, the opal hush
poets: A. E. the mastermystic? That Blavatsky woman started it. She was a
nice old bag of tricks. A. E. has been telling some yankee interviewer that
you came to him in the small hours of the morning to ask him about planes
of consciousness. Magennis thinks you must have been pulling A. E.'s leg.
He is a man of the very highest morale, Magennis.
Speaking about me. What did he say? What did he say? What did he
say about me? Don't ask.
-- No, thanks, professor MacHugh said, waving the cigarettecase aside.
Wait a moment. Let me say one thing. The finest display of oratory I ever
heard was a speech made by John F Taylor at the college historical society.
Mr Justice Fitzgibbon, the present lord justice of appeal, had spoken and
the paper under debate was an essay (new for those days), advocating the
revival of the Irish tongue.
He turned towards Myles Crawford and said:
-- You know Gerald Fitzgibbon. Then you can imagine the style of his
discourse.
-- He is sitting with Tim Healy, J. J. O'Molloy said, rumour has it, on the
Trinity college estates commission.
-- He is sitting with a sweet thing, Myles Crawford said, in a child's frock.
Go on. Well?
-- It was the speech, mark you, the professor said, of a finished orator, full
of courteous haughtiness and pouring in chastened diction I will not say the
vials of his wrath but pouring the proud man's contumely upon the new
movement. It was then a new movement. We were weak, therefore
worthless.
He closed his long thin lips an instant but, eager to be on, raised an
outspanned hand to his spectacles and, with trembling thumb and
ringfinger touching lightly the black rims, steadied them to a new focus.
IMPROMPTU
In ferial tone he addressed J. J. O'Molloy:
-- Taylor had come there, you must know, from a sickbed. That he had
prepared his speech I do not believe for there was not even one
shorthandwriter in the hall. His dark lean face had a growth of shaggy
beard round it. He wore a loose white silk neckcloth and altogether he
looked (though he was not) a dying man.
His gaze turned at once but slowly from J. J. O'Molloy's towards
Stephen's face and then bent at once to the ground, seeking. His unglazed
linen collar appeared behind his bent head, soiled by his withering hair. Still
seeking, he said:
-- When Fitzgibbon's speech had ended John F Taylor rose to reply. Briefly,
as well as I can bring them to mind, his words were these.
He raised his head firmly. His eyes bethought themselves once more.
Witless shellfish swam in the gross lenses to and fro, seeking outlet.
He began:
-- Mr chairman, ladies and gentlemen: Great was my admiration in listening
to the remarks addressed to the youth of Ireland a moment since by my
learned friend. It seemed to me that I had been transported into a country far
away from this country, into an age remote from this age, that I stood in
ancient Egypt and that I was listening to the speech of some highpriest of that
land addressed to the youthful Moses.
His listeners held their cigarettes poised to hear, their smokes
ascending in frail stalks that flowered with his speech. And let our crooked
smokes. Noble words coming. Look out. Could you try your hand at it
yourself?
-- And it seemed to me that I heard the voice of that Egyptian highpriest
raised in a tone of like haughtiness and like pride. I heard his words and their
meaning was revealed to me.
FROM THE FATHERS
It was revealed to me that those things are good which yet are
corrupted which neither if they were supremely good nor unless they were
good could be corrupted. Ah, curse you! That's saint Augustine.
-- Why will you jews not accept our culture, our religion and our language?
You are a tribe of nomad herdsmen: we are a mighty people. You have no
cities nor no wealth: our cities are hives of humanity and our galleys, trireme
and quadrireme, laden with all manner merchandise furrow the waters of the
known globe. You have but emerged from primitive conditions: we have a
literature, a priesthood, an agelong history and a polity.
Nile.
Child, man, effigy.
By the Nilebank the babemaries kneel, cradle of bulrushes: a man
supple in combat: stonehorned, stonebearded, heart of stone.
-- You pray to a local and obscure idol: our temples, majestic and mysterious,
are the abodes of Isis and Osiris, of Horus and Ammon Ra. Yours serfdom,
awe and humbleness: ours thunder and the seas. Israel is weak and few are
her children: Egypt is an host and terrible are her arms. Vagrants and
daylabourers are you called: the world trembles at our name.
A dumb belch of hunger cleft his speech. He lifted his voice above it
boldly:
-- But, ladies and gentlemen, had the youthful Moses listened to and accepted
that view of life, had he bowed his head and bowed his will and bowed his
spirit before that arrogant admonition he would never have brought the
chosen people out of their house of bondage, nor followed the pillar of the
cloud by day. He would never have spoken with the Eternal amid lightnings
on Sinai's mountaintop nor ever have come down with the light of
inspiration shining in his countenance and bearing in his arms the tables of
the law, graven in the language of the outlaw.
He ceased and looked at them, enjoying a silence.
OMINOUS - FOR HIM!
J. J. O'Molloy said not without regret:
-- And yet he died without having entered the land of promise.
-- A sudden - at - the - moment - though - from - lingering - illness - often -
previously - expectorated - demise, Lenehan added. And with a great future
behind him.
The troop of bare feet was heard rushing along the hallway and
pattering up the staircase.
-- That is oratory, the professor said uncontradicted.
Gone with the wind. Hosts at Mullaghmast and Tara of the kings.
Miles of ears of porches. The tribune's words, howled and scattered to the
four winds. A people sheltered within his voice. Dead noise. Akasic records
of all that ever anywhere wherever was. Love and laud him: me no more.
I have money.
-- Gentlemen, Stephen said. As the next motion on the agenda paper may I
suggest that the house do now adjourn?
-- You take my breath away. It is not perchance a French compliment? Mr
O'Madden Burke asked. 'Tis the hour, methinks, when the winejug,
metaphorically speaking, is most grateful in Ye ancient hostelry.
-- That it be and hereby is resolutely resolved. All that are in favour say ay,
Lenehan announced. The contrary no. I declare it carried. To which
particular boosingshed ...? My casting vote is: Mooney's!
He led the way, admonishing:
-- We will sternly refuse to partake of strong waters, will we not? Yes, we
will not. By no manner of means.
Mr O'Madden Burke, following close, said with an ally's lunge of his
umbrella:
-- Lay on, Macduff!
-- Chip of the old block! the editor cried, clapping Stephen on the shoulder.
Let us go. Where are those blasted keys?
He fumbled in his pocket pulling out the crushed typesheets.
-- Foot and mouth. I know. That'll be all right. That'll go in. Where are
they? That's all right.
He thrust the sheets back and went into the inner office.
LET US HOPE
J. J. O'Molloy, about to follow him in, said quietly to Stephen:
-- I hope you will live to see it published. Myles, one moment.
He went into the inner office, closing the door behind him.
-- Come along, Stephen, the professor said. That is fine, isn't it? It has the
prophetic vision. Fuit Ilium! The sack of windy Troy. Kingdoms of this
world. The masters of the Mediterranean are fellaheen today.
The first newsboy came pattering down the stairs at their heels and
rushed out into the street, yelling:
-- Racing special!
Dublin. I have much, much to learn.
They turned to the left along Abbey street.
-- I have a vision too, Stephen said.
-- Yes? the professor said, skipping to get into step. Crawford will follow.
Another newsboy shot past them, yelling as he ran:
-- Racing special!
DEAR DIRTY DUBLIN
Dubliners.
-- Two Dublin vestals, Stephen said, elderly and pious, have lived fifty and
fiftythree years in Fumbally's lane.
-- Where is that? the professor asked.
-- Off Blackpitts, Stephen said.
Damp night reeking of hungry dough. Against the wall. Face
glistering tallow under her fustian shawl. Frantic hearts. Akasic records.
Quicker, darlint!
On now. Dare it. Let there be life.
-- They want to see the views of Dublin from the top of Nelson's pillar.
They save up three and tenpence in a red tin letterbox moneybox. They
shake out the threepenny bits and sixpences and coax out the pennies with
the blade of a knife. Two and three in silver and one and seven in coppers.
They put on their bonnets and best clothes and take their umbrellas for fear
it may come on to rain.
-- Wise virgins, professor MacHugh said.
LIFE ON THE RAW
-- They buy one and fourpenceworth of brawn and four slices of panloaf at
the north city diningrooms in Marlborough street from Miss Kate Collins,
proprietress. They purchase four and twenty ripe plums from a girl at the
foot of Nelson's pillar to take off the thirst of the brawn. They give two
threepenny bits to the gentleman at the turnstile and begin to waddle slowly
up the winding staircase, grunting, encouraging each other, afraid of the
dark, panting, one asking the other have you the brawn, praising God and
the Blessed Virgin, threatening to come down, peeping at the airslits. Glory
be to God. They had no idea it was that high.
Their names are Anne Kearns and Florence MacCabe. Anne Kearns
has the lumbago for which she rubs on Lourdes water, given her by a lady
who got a bottleful from a passionist father. Florence MacCabe takes a
crubeen and a bottle of double X for supper every Saturday.
-- Antithesis, the professor said nodding twice. Vestal virgins. I can see
them. What's keeping our friend?
He turned.
A bevy of scampering newsboys rushed down the steps, scattering in
all directions, yelling, their white papers fluttering. Hard after them Myles
Crawford appeared on the steps, his hat aureoling his scarlet face, talking
with J. J. O'Molloy.
-- Come along, the professor cried, waving his arm.
He set off again to walk by Stephen's side.
-- Yes, he said. I see them.
RETURN OF BLOOM
Mr Bloom, breathless, caught in a whirl of wild newsboys near the
offices of the Irish Catholic and Dublin Penny Journal, called:
-- Mr Crawford! A moment!
-- Telegraph! Racing special!
-- What is it? Myles Crawford said, falling back a pace.
A newsboy cried in Mr Bloom's face:
-- Terrible tragedy in Rathmines! A child bit by a bellows!
INTERVIEW WITH THE EDITOR
-- Just this ad, Mr Bloom said, pushing through towards the steps, puffing,
and taking the cutting from his pocket. I spoke with Mr Keyes just now.
He'll give a renewal for two months, he says. After he'll see. But he wants a
par to call attention in the Telegraph too, the Saturday pink. And he wants
it copied if it's not too late I told councillor Nannetti from the Kilkenny
People. I can have access to it in the national library. House of keys, don't
you see? His name is Keyes. It's a play on the name. But he practically
promised he'd give the renewal. But he wants just a little puff. What will I
tell him, Mr Crawford?
K.M. A.
-- Will you tell him he can kiss my arse? Myles Crawford said throwing out
his arm for emphasis. Tell him that straight from the stable.
A bit nervy. Look out for squalls. All off for a drink. Arm in arm.
Lenehan's yachting cap on the cadge beyond. Usual blarney. Wonder is
that young Dedalus the moving spirit. Has a good pair of boots on him
today. Last time I saw him he had his heels on view. Been walking in muck
somewhere. Careless chap. What was he doing in Irishtown?
-- Well, Mr Bloom said, his eyes returning, if I can get the design I suppose
it's worth a short par. He'd give the ad, I think. I'll tell him...
K. M. R. I. A.
-- He can kiss my royal Irish arse, Myles Crawford cried loudly over his
shoulder. Any time he likes, tell him.
While Mr Bloom stood weighing the point and about to smile he
strode on jerkily.
RAISING THE WIND
-- Nulla bona, Jack, he said, raising his hand to his chin. I'm up to here.
I've been through the hoop myself. I was looking for a fellow to back a bill
for me no later than last week. Sorry, Jack. You must take the will for the
deed. With a heart and a half if I could raise the wind anyhow.
J. J. O'Molloy pulled a long face and walked on silently. They caught
up on the others and walked abreast.
-- When they have eaten the brawn and the bread and wiped their twenty
fingers in the paper the bread was wrapped in they go nearer to the railings.
-- Something for you, the professor explained to Myles Crawford. Two old
Dublin women on the top of Nelson's pillar.
SOME COLUMN! - THAT'S WHAT WADDLER
ONE SAID
-- That's new, Myles Crawford said. That's copy. Out for the waxies
Dargle. Two old trickies, what?
-- But they are afraid the pillar will fall, Stephen went on. They see the roofs
and argue about where the different churches are: Rathmines' blue dome,
Adam and Eve's, saint Laurence O'Toole's. But it makes them giddy to look
so they pull up their skirts ....
THOSE SLIGHTLY RAMBUNCTIOUS FEMALES
-- Easy all, Myles Crawford said. No poetic licence. We're in the
archdiocese here.
-- And settle down on their striped petticoats, peering up at the statue of the
onehandled adulterer.
-- Onehandled adulterer! the professor cried. I like that. I see the idea. I see
what you mean.
DAMES DONATE DUBLIN'S CITS
SPEEDPILLS VELOCITOUS AEROLITHS, BELIEF
-- It gives them a crick in their necks, Stephen said, and they are too tired to
look up or down or to speak. They put the bag of plums between them and
eat the plums out of it, one after another, wiping off with their
handkerchiefs the plumjuice that dribbles out of their mouths and spitting
the plumstones slowly out between the railings.
He gave a sudden loud young laugh as a close. Lenehan and Mr
O'Madden Burke, hearing, turned, beckoned and led on across towards
Mooney's.
-- Finished? Myles Crawford said. So long as they do no worse.
SOPHIST WALLOPS HAUGHTY HELEN SQUARE
ON PROBOSCIS. SPARTANS GNASH MOLARS.
ITHACANS VOW PEN IS CHAMP.
-- You remind me of Antisthenes, the professor said, a disciple of Gorgias,
the sophist. It is said of him that none could tell if he were bitterer against
others or against himself. He was the son of a noble and a bondwoman.
And he wrote a book in which he took away the palm of beauty from
Argive Helen and handed it to poor Penelope.
Poor Penelope. Penelope Rich.
They made ready to cross O'Connell street.
HELLO THERE, CENTRAL!
At various points along the eight lines tramcars with motionless
trolleys stood in their tracks, bound for or from Rathmines, Rathfarnham,
Blackrock, Kingstown and Dalkey, Sandymount Green, Ringsend and
Sandymount Tower, Donnybrook, Palmerston Park and Upper Rathmines,
all still, becalmed in short circuit. Hackney cars, cabs, delivery waggons,
mailvans, private broughams, aerated mineral water floats with rattling
crates of bottles, rattled, rolled, horsedrawn, rapidly.
WHAT? - AND LIKEWISE - WHERE?
-- But what do you call it? Myles Crawford asked. Where did they get the
plums?
VIRGILIAN, SAYS PEDAGOGUE. SOPHOMORE
PLUMPS FOR OLD MAN MOSES.
-- Call it, wait, the professor said, opening his long lips wide to reflect. Call
it, let me see. Call it: Deus nobis haec otia fecit.
-- No, Stephen said. I call it A Pisgah Sight of Palestine or The Parable of
The Plums.
-- I see, the professor said.
He laughed richly.
-- I see, he said again with new pleasure. Moses and the promised land. We
gave him that idea, he added to J. J. O'Molloy.
HORATIO IS CYNOSURE THIS FAIR JUNE DAYJ. J. O'Molloy sent a weary sidelong glance towards the statue and held his peace. -- I see, the professor said. He halted on sir John Gray's pavement island and peered aloft at Nelson through the meshes of his wry smile. DIMINISHED DIGITS PROVE TOO TITILLATING FOR FRISKY FRUMPS. ANNE WIMBLES, FLO WANGLES - YET CAN YOU BLAME THEM?-- Onehandled adulterer, he said smiling grimly. That tickles me, I must say. -- Tickled the old ones too, Myles Crawford said, if the God Almighty's truth was known.
The hungry famished gull
Flaps o'er the waters dull.
That is how poets write, the similar sounds. But then Shakespeare has
no rhymes: blank verse. The flow of the language it is. The thoughts.
Solemn.
Hamlet, I am thy father's spirit
Doomed for a certain time to walk the earth.
--Two apples a penny! Two for a penny!
His gaze passed over the glazed apples serried on her stand.
Australians they must be this time of year. Shiny peels: polishes them up
with a rag or a handkerchief.
Wait. Those poor birds.
He halted again and bought from the old applewoman two Banbury
cakes for a penny and broke the brittle paste and threw its fragments down
into the Liffey. See that? The gulls swooped silently, two, then all from their
heights, pouncing on prey. Gone. Every morsel. Aware of their greed and
cunning he shook the powdery crumb from his hands. They never expected
that. Manna. Live on fish, fishy flesh they have, all seabirds, gulls, seagoose.
Swans from Anna Liffey swim down here sometimes to preen themselves.
No accounting for tastes. Wonder what kind is swanmeat. Robinson
Crusoe had to live on them.
They wheeled flapping weakly. I'm not going to throw any more.
Penny quite enough. Lot of thanks I get. Not even a caw. They spread foot
and mouth disease too. If you cram a turkey say on chestnutmeal it tastes
like that.Eat pig like pig.But then why is it that saltwater fish are not salty?
How is that?
His eyes sought answer from the river and saw a rowboat rock at
anchor on the treacly swells lazily its plastered board.
Kino's
II/-
Trousers
Good idea that. Wonder if he pays rent to the corporation. How can
you own water really? It's always flowing in a stream, never the same,
which in the stream of life we trace. Because life is a stream. All kinds of
places are good for ads. That quack doctor for the clap used to be stuck up
in all the greenhouses. Never see it now. Strictly confidential. Dr Hy
Franks. Didn't cost him a red like Maginni the dancing master self
advertisement. Got fellows to stick them up or stick them up himself for
that matter on the q. t. running in to loosen a button. Flybynight. Just the
place too. POST NO BILLS. POST IIO PILLS. Some chap with a dose burning him.
If he ..?
O!
Eh?
No ...... No.
No, no. I don't believe it. He wouldn't surely?
No, no.
Mr Bloom moved forward, raising his troubled eyes. Think no more
about that. After one. Timeball on the ballastoffice is down. Dunsink time.
Fascinating little book that is of sir Robert Ball's. Parallax. I never exactly
understood. There's a priest. Could ask him. Par it's Greek: parallel,
parallax. Met him pike hoses she called it till I told her about the
transmigration. O rocks!
Mr Bloom smiled O rocks at two windows of the ballastoffice. She's
right after all. Only big words for ordinary things on account of the sound.
She's not exactly witty. Can be rude too. Blurt out what I was thinking.
Still, I don't know. She used to say Ben Dollard had a base barreltone
voice. He has legs like barrels and you'd think he was singing into a barrel.
Now, isn't that wit. They used to call him big Ben. Not half as witty as
calling him base barreltone. Appetite like an albatross. Get outside of a
baron of beef. Powerful man he was at stowing away number one Bass.
Barrel of Bass. See? It all works out.
A procession of whitesmocked sandwichmen marched slowly towards
him along the gutter, scarlet sashes across their boards. Bargains. Like that
priest they are this morning: we have sinned: we have suffered. He read the
scarlet letters on their five tall white hats: H. E. L. Y. S. Wisdom Hely's. Y
lagging behind drew a chunk of bread from under his foreboard, crammed
it into his mouth and munched as he walked. Our staple food. Three bob a
day, walking along the gutters, street after street. Just keep skin and bone
together, bread and skilly. They are not Boyl: no, M Glade's men. Doesn't
bring in any business either. I suggested to him about a transparent
showcart with two smart girls sitting inside writing letters, copybooks,
envelopes, blottingpaper. I bet that would have caught on. Smart girls
writing something catch the eye at once. Everyone dying to know what
she's writing. Get twenty of them round you if you stare at nothing. Have a
finger in the pie. Women too. Curiosity. Pillar of salt. Wouldn't have it of
course because he didn't think of it himself first. Or the inkbottle I
suggested with a false stain of black celluloid. His ideas for ads like
Plumtree's potted under the obituaries, cold meat department. You can't
lick 'em. What? Our envelopes. Hello, Jones, where are you going? Can't
stop, Robinson, I am hastening to purchase the only reliable inkeraser
Kansell, sold by Hely's Ltd, 85 Dame street. Well out of that ruck I am.
Devil of a job it was collecting accounts of those convents. Tranquilla
convent. That was a nice nun there, really sweet face. Wimple suited her
small head. Sister? Sister? I am sure she was crossed in love by her eyes.
Very hard to bargain with that sort of a woman. I disturbed her at her
devotions that morning. But glad to communicate with the outside world.
Our great day, she said. Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Sweet name
too: caramel. She knew I, I think she knew by the way she. If she had
married she would have changed. I suppose they really were short of
money. Fried everything in the best butter all the same. No lard for them.
My heart's broke eating dripping. They like buttering themselves in and
out. Molly tasting it, her veil up. Sister? Pat Claffey, the pawnbroker's
daughter. It was a nun they say invented barbed wire.
He crossed Westmoreland street when apostrophe S had plodded by.
Rover cycleshop. Those races are on today. How long ago is that? Year
Phil Gilligan died. We were in Lombard street west. Wait: was in Thom's.
Got the job in Wisdom Hely's year we married. Six years. Ten years ago:
ninetyfour he died yes that's right the big fire at Arnott's. Val Dillon was
lord mayor. The Glencree dinner. Alderman Robert O'Reilly emptying the
port into his soup before the flag fell. Bobbob lapping it for the inner
alderman. Couldn't hear what the band played. For what we have already
received may the Lord make us. Milly was a kiddy then. Molly had that
elephantgrey dress with the braided frogs. Mantailored with selfcovered
buttons. She didn't like it because I sprained my ankle first day she wore
choir picnic at the Sugarloaf. As if that. Old Goodwin's tall hat done up
with some sticky stuff. Flies' picnic too. Never put a dress on her back like
it. Fitted her like a glove, shoulders and hips. Just beginning to plump it out
well. Rabbitpie we had that day. People looking after her.
Happy. Happier then. Snug little room that was with the red
wallpaper. Dockrell's, one and ninepence a dozen. Milly's tubbing night.
American soap I bought: elderflower. Cosy smell of her bathwater. Funny
she looked soaped all over. Shapely too. Now photography. Poor papa's
daguerreotype atelier he told me of. Hereditary taste.
He walked along the curbstone.
Stream of life. What was the name of that priestylooking chap was
always squinting in when he passed? Weak eyes, woman. Stopped in
Citron's saint Kevin's parade. Pen something. Pendennis? My memory is
getting. Pen ...? Of course it's years ago. Noise of the trams probably. Well,
if he couldn't remember the dayfather's name that he sees every day.
Bartell d'Arcy was the tenor, just coming out then. Seeing her home
after practice. Conceited fellow with his waxedup moustache. Gave her that
song Winds that blow from the south.
Windy night that was I went to fetch her there was that lodge meeting
on about those lottery tickets after Goodwin's concert in the supperroom or
oakroom of the Mansion house. He and I behind. Sheet of her music blew
out of my hand against the High school railings. Lucky it didn't. Thing like
that spoils the effect of a night for her. Professor Goodwin linking her in
front. Shaky on his pins, poor old sot. His farewell concerts. Positively last
appearance on any stage. May be for months and may be for never.
Remember her laughing at the wind, her blizzard collar up. Corner of
Harcourt road remember that gust. Brrfoo! Blew up all her skirts and her
boa nearly smothered old Goodwin. She did get flushed in the wind.
Remember when we got home raking up the fire and frying up those pieces
of lap of mutton for her supper with the Chutney sauce she liked. And the
mulled rum. Could see her in the bedroom from the hearth unclamping the
busk of her stays: white.
Swish and soft flop her stays made on the bed. Always warm from
her. Always liked to let her self out. Sitting there after till near two taking
out her hairpins. Milly tucked up in beddyhouse. Happy. Happy. That was
the night .....
--O, Mr Bloom, how do you do?
--O, how do you do, Mrs Breen?
--No use complaining. How is Molly those times? Haven't seen her for
ages.
--In the pink, Mr Bloom said gaily. Milly has a position down in Mullingar,
you know.
--Go away! Isn't that grand for her?
--Yes. In a photographer's there. Getting on like a house on fire. How are
all your charges?
--All on the baker's list, Mrs Breen said.
How many has she? No other in sight.
--You're in black, I see. You have no ...?
--No, Mr Bloom said. I have just come from a funeral.
Going to crop up all day, I foresee. Who's dead, when and what did
he die of? Turn up like a bad penny.
--O, dear me, Mrs Breen said. I hope it wasn't any near relation.
May as well get her sympathy.
--Dignam, Mr Bloom said. An old friend of mine. He died quite suddenly,
poor fellow. Heart trouble, I believe. Funeral was this morning.
Your funeral's tomorrow
While you're coming through the rye.
Diddlediddle dumdum
Diddlediddle ...
--Sad to lose the old friends, Mrs Breen's womaneyes said melancholily.
Now that's quite enough about that. Just: quietly: husband.
--And your lord and master?
Mrs Breen turned up her two large eyes. Hasn't lost them anyhow.
--O, don't be talking! she said. He's a caution to rattlesnakes. He's in there
now with his lawbooks finding out the law of libel. He has me heartscalded.
Wait till I show you.
Hot mockturtle vapour and steam of newbaked jampuffs rolypoly
poured out from Harrison's. The heavy noonreek tickled the top of Mr
Bloom's gullet. Want to make good pastry, butter, best flour, Demerara
sugar, or they'd taste it with the hot tea. Or is it from her? A barefoot arab
stood over the grating, breathing in the fumes. Deaden the gnaw of hunger
that way. Pleasure or pain is it? Penny dinner. Knife and fork chained to
the table.
Opening her handbag, chipped leather. Hatpin: ought to have a
guard on those things. Stick it in a chap's eye in the tram. Rummaging.
Open. Money. Please take one. Devils if they lose sixpence. Raise Cain.
Husband barging. Where's the ten shillings I gave you on Monday? Are
you feeding your little brother's family? Soiled handkerchief:
medicinebottle. Pastille that was fell. What is she ...?
--There must be a new moon out, she said. He's always bad then. Do you
know what he did last night?
Her hand ceased to rummage. Her eyes fixed themselves on him, wide
in alarm, yet smiling.
--What? Mr Bloom asked.
Let her speak. Look straight in her eyes. I believe you. Trust me.
--Woke me up in the night, she said. Dream he had, a nightmare.
Indiges.
--Said the ace of spades was walking up the stairs.
--The ace of spades! Mr Bloom said.
She took a folded postcard from her handbag.
--Read that, she said. He got it this morning.
--What is it? Mr Bloom asked, taking the card. U. P.?
--U. p: up, she said. Someone taking a rise out of him. It's a great shame
for them whoever he is.
--Indeed it is, Mr Bloom said.
She took back the card, sighing.
--And now he's going round to Mr Menton's office. He's going to take an
action for ten thousand pounds, he says.
She folded the card into her untidy bag and snapped the catch.
Same blue serge dress she had two years ago, the nap bleaching. Seen
its best days. Wispish hair over her ears. And that dowdy toque: three old
grapes to take the harm out of it. Shabby genteel. She used to be a tasty
dresser. Lines round her mouth. Only a year or so older than Molly.
See the eye that woman gave her, passing. Cruel. The unfair sex.
He looked still at her, holding back behind his look his discontent.
Pungent mockturtle oxtail mulligatawny. I'm hungry too. Flakes of pastry
on the gusset of her dress: daub of sugary flour stuck to her cheek.
Rhubarb tart with liberal fillings, rich fruit interior. Josie Powell that was.
In Luke Doyle's long ago. Dolphin's Barn, the charades. U. p: up.
Change the subject.
--Do you ever see anything of Mrs Beaufoy? Mr Bloom asked.
--Mina Purefoy? she said.
Philip Beaufoy I was thinking. Playgoers' Club. Matcham often
thinks of the masterstroke. Did I pull the chain? Yes. The last act.
--Yes.
--I just called to ask on the way in is she over it. She's in the lying-in
hospital in Holles street. Dr Horne got her in. She's three days bad now.
--O, Mr Bloom said. I'm sorry to hear that.
--Yes, Mrs Breen said. And a houseful of kids at home. It's a very stiff birth,
the nurse told me.
---O, Mr Bloom said.
His heavy pitying gaze absorbed her news. His tongue clacked in
compassion. Dth! Dth!
--I'm sorry to hear that, he said. Poor thing! Three days! That's terrible
for her.
Mrs Breen nodded.
--She was taken bad on the Tuesday...
Mr Bloom touched her funnybone gently, warning her:
--Mind! Let this man pass.
A bony form strode along the curbstone from the river staring with a
rapt gaze into the sunlight through a heavystringed glass. Tight as a
skullpiece a tiny hat gripped his head. From his arm a folded dustcoat, a
stick and an umbrella dangled to his stride.
--Watch him, Mr Bloom said. He always walks outside the lampposts.
Watch!
--Who is he if it's a fair question? Mrs Breen asked. Is he dotty?
--His name is Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell, Mr
Bloom said smiling. Watch!
--He has enough of them, she said. Denis will be like that one of these days.
She broke off suddenly.
--There he is, she said. I must go after him. Goodbye. Remember me to
Molly, won't you?
--I will, Mr Bloom said.
He watched her dodge through passers towards the shopfronts. Denis
Breen in skimpy frockcoat and blue canvas shoes shuffled out of Harrison's
hugging two heavy tomes to his ribs. Blown in from the bay. Like old times.
He suffered her to overtake him without surprise and thrust his dull grey
beard towards her, his loose jaw wagging as he spoke earnestly.
Meshuggah. Off his chump.
Mr Bloom walked on again easily, seeing ahead of him in sunlight the
tight skullpiece, the dangling stickumbrelladustcoat. Going the two days.
Watch him! Out he goes again. One way of getting on in the world. And
that other old mosey lunatic in those duds. Hard time she must have with
him.
U. p: up. I'll take my oath that's Alf Bergan or Richie Goulding.
Wrote it for a lark in the Scotch house I bet anything. Round to Menton's
office. His oyster eyes staring at the postcard. Be a feast for the gods.
He passed the Irish Times. There might be other answers Iying there.
Like to answer them all. Good system for criminals. Code. At their lunch
now. Clerk with the glasses there doesn't know me. O, leave them there to
simmer. Enough bother wading through fortyfour of them. Wanted, smart
lady typist to aid gentleman in literary work. I called you naughty darling
because I do not like that other world. Please tell me what is the meaning.
Please tell me what perfume does your wife. Tell me who made the world.
The way they spring those questions on you. And the other one Lizzie
Twigg. My literary efforts have had the good fortune to meet with the
approval of the eminent poet A. E. (Mr Geo. Russell). No time to do her
hair drinking sloppy tea with a book of poetry.
Best paper by long chalks for a small ad. Got the provinces now.
Cook and general, exc. cuisine, housemaid kept. Wanted live man for spirit
counter. Resp. girl (R. C.) wishes to hear of post in fruit or pork shop.
James Carlisle made that. Six and a half per cent dividend. Made a big deal
on Coates's shares. Ca' canny. Cunning old Scotch hunks. All the toady
news. Our gracious and popular vicereine. Bought the Irish Field now.
Lady Mountcashel has quite recovered after her confinement and rode out
with the Ward Union staghounds at the enlargement yesterday at Rathoath.
Uneatable fox. Pothunters too. Fear injects juices make it tender enough for
them. Riding astride. Sit her horse like a man. Weightcarrying huntress. No
sidesaddle or pillion for her, not for Joe. First to the meet and in at the
death. Strong as a brood mare some of those horsey women. Swagger
around livery stables. Toss off a glass of brandy neat while you'd say knife.
That one at the Grosvenor this morning. Up with her on the car:
wishswish. Stonewall or fivebarred gate put her mount to it. Think that
pugnosed driver did it out of spite. Who is this she was like? O yes! Mrs
Miriam Dandrade that sold me her old wraps and black underclothes in the
Shelbourne hotel. Divorced Spanish American. Didn't take a feather out of
her my handling them. As if I was her clotheshorse. Saw her in the viceregal
party when Stubbs the park ranger got me in with Whelan of the Express.
Scavenging what the quality left. High tea. Mayonnaise I poured on the
plums thinking it was custard. Her ears ought to have tingled for a few
weeks after. Want to be a bull for her. Born courtesan. No nursery work
for her, thanks.
Poor Mrs Purefoy! Methodist husband. Method in his madness.
Saffron bun and milk and soda lunch in the educational dairy. Y. M. C. A.
Eating with a stopwatch, thirtytwo chews to the minute. And still his
muttonchop whiskers grew. Supposed to be well connected. Theodore's
cousin in Dublin Castle. One tony relative in every family. Hardy annuals
he presents her with. Saw him out at the Three Jolly Topers marching along
bareheaded and his eldest boy carrying one in a marketnet. The squallers.
Poor thing! Then having to give the breast year after year all hours of the
night. Selfish those t.t's are. Dog in the manger. Only one lump of sugar in
my tea, if you please.
He stood at Fleet street crossing. Luncheon interval. A sixpenny at
Rowe's? Must look up that ad in the national library. An eightpenny in the
Burton. Better. On my way.
He walked on past Bolton's Westmoreland house. Tea. Tea. Tea. I
forgot to tap Tom Kernan.
Sss. Dth, dth, dth! Three days imagine groaning on a bed with a
vinegared handkerchief round her forehead, her belly swollen out. Phew!
Dreadful simply! Child's head too big: forceps. Doubled up inside her
trying to butt its way out blindly, groping for the way out. Kill me that
would. Lucky Molly got over hers lightly. They ought to invent something
to stop that. Life with hard labour. Twilight sleep idea: queen Victoria was
given that. Nine she had. A good layer. Old woman that lived in a shoe she
had so many children. Suppose he was consumptive. Time someone thought
about it instead of gassing about the what was it the pensive bosom of the
silver effulgence. Flapdoodle to feed fools on. They could easily have big
establishments whole thing quite painless out of all the taxes give every child
born five quid at compound interest up to twentyone five per cent is a
hundred shillings and five tiresome pounds multiply by twenty decimal
system encourage people to put by money save hundred and ten and a bit
twentyone years want to work it out on paper come to a tidy sum more than
you think.
Not stillborn of course. They are not even registered. Trouble for
nothing.
Funny sight two of them together, their bellies out. Molly and Mrs
Moisel. Mothers' meeting. Phthisis retires for the time being, then returns.
How flat they look all of a sudden after. Peaceful eyes. Weight off their
mind. Old Mrs Thornton was a jolly old soul. All my babies, she said. The
spoon of pap in her mouth before she fed them. O, that's nyumnyum. Got
her hand crushed by old Tom Wall's son. His first bow to the public. Head
like a prize pumpkin. Snuffy Dr Murren. People knocking them up at all
hours. For God' sake, doctor. Wife in her throes. Then keep them waiting
months for their fee. To attendance on your wife. No gratitude in people.
Humane doctors, most of them.
Before the huge high door of the Irish house of parliament a flock of
pigeons flew. Their little frolic after meals. Who will we do it on? I pick the
fellow in black. Here goes. Here's good luck. Must be thrilling from the air.
Apjohn, myself and Owen Goldberg up in the trees near Goose green
playing the monkeys. Mackerel they called me.
A squad of constables debouched from College street, marching in
Indian file. Goosestep. Foodheated faces, sweating helmets, patting their
truncheons. After their feed with a good load of fat soup under their belts.
Policeman's lot is oft a happy one. They split up in groups and scattered,
saluting, towards their beats. Let out to graze. Best moment to attack one in
pudding time. A punch in his dinner. A squad of others, marching
irregularly, rounded Trinity railings making for the station. Bound for their
troughs. Prepare to receive cavalry. Prepare to receive soup.
He crossed under Tommy Moore's roguish finger. They did right to
put him up over a urinal: meeting of the waters. Ought to be places for
women. Running into cakeshops. Settle my hat straight. There is not in this
wide world a vallee. Great song of Julia Morkan's. Kept her voice up to the
very last. Pupil of Michael Balfe's, wasn't she?
He gazed after the last broad tunic. Nasty customers to tackle. Jack
Power could a tale unfold: father a G man. If a fellow gave them trouble
being lagged they let him have it hot and heavy in the bridewell. Can't
blame them after all with the job they have especially the young hornies.
That horsepoliceman the day Joe Chamberlain was given his degree in
Trinity he got a run for his money. My word he did! His horse's hoofs
clattering after us down Abbey street. Lucky I had the presence of mind to
dive into Manning's or I was souped. He did come a wallop, by George.
Must have cracked his skull on the cobblestones. I oughtn't to have got
myself swept along with those medicals. And the Trinity jibs in their
mortarboards. Looking for trouble. Still I got to know that young Dixon
who dressed that sting for me in the Mater and now he's in Holles street
where Mrs Purefoy. Wheels within wheels. Police whistle in my ears still.
All skedaddled. Why he fixed on me. Give me in charge. Right here it
began.
--Up the Boers!
--Three cheers for De Wet!
--We'll hang Joe Chamberlain on a sourapple tree.
Silly billies: mob of young cubs yelling their guts out. Vinegar hill.
The Butter exchange band. Few years' time half of them magistrates and
civil servants. War comes on: into the army helterskelter: same fellows used
to. Whether on the scaffold high.
Never know who you're talking to. Corny Kelleher he has Harvey
Duff in his eye. Like that Peter or Denis or James Carey that blew the gaff
on the invincibles. Member of the corporation too. Egging raw youths on to
get in the know all the time drawing secret service pay from the castle. Drop
him like a hot potato. Why those plainclothes men are always courting
slaveys. Easily twig a man used to uniform. Squarepushing up against a
backdoor. Maul her a bit. Then the next thing on the menu. And who is the
gentleman does be visiting there? Was the young master saying anything?
Peeping Tom through the keyhole. Decoy duck. Hotblooded young student
fooling round her fat arms ironing.
--Are those yours, Mary?
--I don't wear such things ..Stop or I'll tell the missus on you. Out half
the night.
--There are great times coming, Mary. Wait till you see.
--Ah, gelong with your great times coming.
Barmaids too. Tobaccoshopgirls.
James Stephens' idea was the best. He knew them. Circles of ten so
that a fellow couldn't round on more than his own ring. Sinn Fein. Back
out you get the knife. Hidden hand. Stay in. The firing squad. Turnkey's
daughter got him out of Richmond, off from Lusk. Putting up in the
Buckingham Palace hotel under their very noses. Garibaldi.
You must have a certain fascination: Parnell. Arthur Griffith is a
squareheaded fellow but he has no go in him for the mob. Or gas about our
lovely land. Gammon and spinach. Dublin Bakery Company's tearoom.
Debating societies. That republicanism is the best form of government.
That the language question should take precedence of the economic
question. Have your daughters inveigling them to your house. Stuff them
up with meat and drink. Michaelmas goose. Here's a good lump of thyme
seasoning under the apron for you. Have another quart of goosegrease
before it gets too cold. Halffed enthusiasts. Penny roll and a walk with the
band. No grace for the carver. The thought that the other chap pays best
sauce in the world. Make themselves thoroughly at home. Show us over
those apricots, meaning peaches. The not far distant day. Homerule sun
rising up in the northwest.
His smile faded as he walked, a heavy cloud hiding the sun slowly,
shadowing Trinity's surly front. Trams passed one another, ingoing,
outgoing, clanging. Useless words. Things go on same, day after day:
squads of police marching out, back: trams in, out. Those two loonies
mooching about. Dignam carted off. Mina Purefoy swollen belly on a bed
groaning to have a child tugged out of her. One born every second
somewhere. Other dying every second. Since I fed the birds five minutes.
Three hundred kicked the bucket. Other three hundred born, washing the
blood off, all are washed in the blood of the lamb, bawling maaaaaa.
Cityful passing away, other cityful coming, passing away too: other
coming on, passing on. Houses, lines of houses, streets, miles of pavements,
piledup bricks, stones. Changing hands. This owner, that. Landlord never
dies they say. Other steps into his shoes when he gets his notice to quit.
They buy the place up with gold and still they have all the gold. Swindle in
it somewhere. Piled up in cities, worn away age after age. Pyramids in sand.
Built on bread and onions. Slaves Chinese wall. Babylon. Big stones left.
Round towers. Rest rubble, sprawling suburbs, jerrybuilt. Kerwan's
mushroom houses built of breeze. Shelter, for the night.
No-one is anything.
This is the very worst hour of the day. Vitality. Dull, gloomy: hate
this hour. Feel as if I had been eaten and spewed.
Provost's house. The reverend Dr Salmon: tinned salmon. Well
tinned in there. Like a mortuary chapel. Wouldn't live in it if they paid me.
Hope they have liver and bacon today. Nature abhors a vacuum.
The sun freed itself slowly and lit glints of light among the silverware
opposite in Walter Sexton's window by which John Howard Parnell passed,
unseeing.
There he is: the brother. Image of him. Haunting face. Now that's a
coincidence. Course hundreds of times you think of a person and don't
meet him. Like a man walking in his sleep. No-one knows him. Must be a
corporation meeting today. They say he never put on the city marshal's
uniform since he got the job. Charley Kavanagh used to come out on his
high horse, cocked hat, puffed, powdered and shaved. Look at the
woebegone walk of him. Eaten a bad egg. Poached eyes on ghost. I have a
pain. Great man's brother: his brother's brother. He'd look nice on the city
charger. Drop into the D. B. C. probably for his coffee, play chess there.
His brother used men as pawns. Let them all go to pot. Afraid to pass a
remark on him. Freeze them up with that eye of his. That's the fascination:
the name. All a bit touched. Mad Fanny and his other sister Mrs Dickinson
driving about with scarlet harness. Bolt upright like surgeon M'Ardle. Still
David Sheehy beat him for south Meath. Apply for the Chiltern Hundreds
and retire into public life. The patriot's banquet. Eating orangepeels in the
park. Simon Dedalus said when they put him in parliament that Parnell
would come back from the grave and lead him out of the house of commons
by the arm.
--Of the twoheaded octopus, one of whose heads is the head upon which
the ends of the world have forgotten to come while the other speaks with a
Scotch accent. The tentacles ....
They passed from behind Mr Bloom along the curbstone. Beard and
bicycle. Young woman.
And there he is too. Now that's really a coincidence: second time.
Coming events cast their shadows before. With the approval of the eminent
poet, Mr Geo. Russell. That might be Lizzie Twigg with him. A. E.: what
does that mean? Initials perhaps. Albert Edward, Arthur Edmund,
Alphonsus Eb Ed El Esquire. What was he saying? The ends of the world
with a Scotch accent. Tentacles: octopus. Something occult: symbolism.
Holding forth. She's taking it all in. Not saying a word. To aid gentleman
in literary work.
His eyes followed the high figure in homespun, beard and bicycle, a
listening woman at his side. Coming from the vegetarian. Only
weggebobbles and fruit. Don't eat a beefsteak. If you do the eyes of that
cow will pursue you through all eternity. They say it's healthier.
Windandwatery though. Tried it. Keep you on the run all day. Bad as a
bloater. Dreams all night. Why do they call that thing they gave me
nutsteak? Nutarians. Fruitarians. To give you the idea you are eating
rumpsteak. Absurd. Salty too. They cook in soda. Keep you sitting by the
tap all night.
Her stockings are loose over her ankles. I detest that: so tasteless.
Those literary etherial people they are all. Dreamy, cloudy, symbolistic.
Esthetes they are. I wouldn't be surprised if it was that kind of food you see
produces the like waves of the brain the poetical. For example one of those
policemen sweating Irish stew into their shirts you couldn't squeeze a line
of poetry out of him. Don't know what poetry is even. Must be in a certain
mood.
The dreamy cloudy gull
Waves o'er the waters dull.
He crossed at Nassau street corner and stood before the window of
Yeates and Son, pricing the fieldglasses. Or will I drop into old Harris's and
have a chat with young Sinclair? Wellmannered fellow. Probably at his
lunch. Must get those old glasses of mine set right. Goerz lenses six guineas.
Germans making their way everywhere. Sell on easy terms to capture trade.
Undercutting. Might chance on a pair in the railway lost property office.
Astonishing the things people leave behind them in trains and cloakrooms.
What do they be thinking about? Women too. Incredible. Last year
travelling to Ennis had to pick up that farmer's daughter's bag and hand it
to her at Limerick junction. Unclaimed money too. There's a little watch up
there on the roof of the bank to test those glasses by.
His lids came down on the lower rims of his irides. Can't see it. If you
imagine it's there you can almost see it. Can't see it.
He faced about and, standing between the awnings, held out his right
hand at arm's length towards the sun. Wanted to try that often. Yes:
completely. The tip of his little finger blotted out the sun's disk. Must be the
focus where the rays cross. If I had black glasses. Interesting. There was a
lot of talk about those sunspots when we were in Lombard street west.
Looking up from the back garden. Terrific explosions they are. There will
be a total eclipse this year: autumn some time.
Now that I come to think of it that ball falls at Greenwich time. It's
the clock is worked by an electric wire from Dunsink. Must go out there
some first Saturday of the month. If I could get an introduction to professor
Joly or learn up something about his family. That would do to: man always
feels complimented. Flattery where least expected. Nobleman proud to be
descended from some king's mistress. His foremother. Lay it on with a
trowel. Cap in hand goes through the land. Not go in and blurt out what
you know you're not to: what's parallax? Show this gentleman the door.
Ah.
His hand fell to his side again.
Never know anything about it. Waste of time. Gasballs spinning
about, crossing each other, passing. Same old dingdong always. Gas: then
solid: then world: then cold: then dead shell drifting around, frozen rock,
like that pineapple rock. The moon. Must be a new moon out, she said. I
believe there is.
He went on by la maison Claire.
Wait. The full moon was the night we were Sunday fortnight exactly
there is a new moon. Walking down by the Tolka. Not bad for a Fairview
moon. She was humming. The young May moon she's beaming, love. He
other side of her. Elbow, arm. He. Glowworm's la-amp is gleaming, love.
Touch. Fingers. Asking. Answer. Yes.
Stop. Stop. If it was it was. Must.
Mr Bloom, quickbreathing, slowlier walking passed Adam court.
With ha quiet keep quiet relief his eyes took note this is the street here
middle of the day of Bob Doran's bottle shoulders. On his annual bend,
M Coy said. They drink in order to say or do something or cherchez la
femme. Up in the Coombe with chummies and streetwalkers and then the
rest of the year sober as a judge.
Yes. Thought so. Sloping into the Empire. Gone. Plain soda would do
him good. Where Pat Kinsella had his Harp theatre before Whitbred ran
the Queen's. Broth of a boy. Dion Boucicault business with his
harvestmoon face in a poky bonnet. Three Purty Maids from School. How
time flies, eh? Showing long red pantaloons under his skirts. Drinkers,
drinking, laughed spluttering, their drink against their breath. More power,
Pat. Coarse red: fun for drunkards: guffaw and smoke. Take off that white
hat. His parboiled eyes. Where is he now? Beggar somewhere. The harp
that once did starve us all.
I was happier then. Or was that I? Or am I now I? Twentyeight I was.
She twentythree. When we left Lombard street west something changed.
Could never like it again after Rudy. Can't bring back time. Like holding
water in your hand. Would you go back to then? Just beginning then.
Would you? Are you not happy in your home you poor little naughty boy?
Wants to sew on buttons for me. I must answer. Write it in the library.
Grafton street gay with housed awnings lured his senses. Muslin
prints, silkdames and dowagers, jingle of harnesses, hoofthuds lowringing
in the baking causeway. Thick feet that woman has in the white stockings.
Hope the rain mucks them up on her. Countrybred chawbacon. All the beef
to the heels were in. Always gives a woman clumsy feet. Molly looks out of
plumb.
He passed, dallying, the windows of Brown Thomas, silk mercers.
Cascades of ribbons. Flimsy China silks. A tilted urn poured from its mouth
a flood of bloodhued poplin: lustrous blood. The huguenots brought that
here. Lacaus esant tara tara. Great chorus that. Taree tara. Must be washed
in rainwater. Meyerbeer. Tara: bom bom bom.
Pincushions. I'm a long time threatening to buy one. Sticking them all
over the place. Needles in window curtains.
He bared slightly his left forearm. Scrape: nearly gone. Not today
anyhow. Must go back for that lotion. For her birthday perhaps.
Junejulyaugseptember eighth. Nearly three months off. Then she mightn't
like it. Women won't pick up pins. Say it cuts lo.
Gleaming silks, petticoats on slim brass rails, rays of flat silk
stockings.
Useless to go back. Had to be. Tell me all.
High voices. Sunwarm silk. Jingling harnesses. All for a woman,
home and houses, silkwebs, silver, rich fruits spicy from Jaffa. Agendath
Netaim. Wealth of the world.
A warm human plumpness settled down on his brain. His brain
yielded. Perfume of embraces all him assailed. With hungered flesh
obscurely, he mutely craved to adore.
Duke street. Here we are. Must eat. The Burton. Feel better then.
He turned Combridge's corner, still pursued. Jingling, hoofthuds.
Perfumed bodies, warm, full. All kissed, yielded: in deep summer fields,
tangled pressed grass, in trickling hallways of tenements, along sofas,
creaking beds.
--Jack, love!
--Darling!
--Kiss me, Reggy!
--My boy!
--Love!
His heart astir he pushed in the door of the Burton restaurant. Stink
gripped his trembling breath: pungent meatjuice, slush of greens. See the
animals feed.
Men, men, men.
Perched on high stools by the bar, hats shoved back, at the tables
calling for more bread no charge, swilling, wolfing gobfuls of sloppy food,
their eyes bulging, wiping wetted moustaches. A pallid suetfaced young man
polished his tumbler knife fork and spoon with his napkin. New set of
microbes. A man with an infant's saucestained napkin tucked round him
shovelled gurgling soup down his gullet. A man spitting back on his plate:
halfmasticated gristle: gums: no teeth to chewchewchew it. Chump chop
from the grill. Bolting to get it over. Sad booser's eyes. Bitten off more than
he can chew. Am I like that? See ourselves as others see us. Hungry man is
an angry man. Working tooth and jaw. Don't! O! A bone! That last pagan
king of Ireland Cormac in the schoolpoem choked himself at Sletty
southward of the Boyne. Wonder what he was eating. Something
galoptious. Saint Patrick converted him to Christianity. Couldn't swallow it
all however.
--Roast beef and cabbage.
--One stew.
Smells of men. Spaton sawdust, sweetish warmish cigarettesmoke,
reek of plug, spilt beer, men's beery piss, the stale of ferment.
His gorge rose.
Couldn't eat a morsel here. Fellow sharpening knife and fork to eat
all before him, old chap picking his tootles. Slight spasm, full, chewing the
cud. Before and after. Grace after meals. Look on this picture then on that.
Scoffing up stewgravy with sopping sippets of bread. Lick it off the plate,
man! Get out of this.
He gazed round the stooled and tabled eaters, tightening the wings of
his nose.
--Two stouts here. --One corned and cabbage.
That fellow ramming a knifeful of cabbage down as if his life
depended on it. Good stroke. Give me the fidgets to look. Safer to eat from
his three hands. Tear it limb from limb. Second nature to him. Born with a
silver knife in his mouth. That's witty, I think. Or no. Silver means born
rich. Born with a knife. But then the allusion is lost.
An illgirt server gathered sticky clattering plates. Rock, the head
bailiff, standing at the bar blew the foamy crown from his tankard. Well up:
it splashed yellow near his boot. A diner, knife and fork upright, elbows on
table, ready for a second helping stared towards the foodlift across his
stained square of newspaper. Other chap telling him something with his
mouth full. Sympathetic listener. Table talk. I munched hum un thu
Unchster Bunk un Munchday. Ha? Did you, faith?
Mr Bloom raised two fingers doubtfully to his lips. His eyes said:
--Not here. Don't see him.
Out. I hate dirty eaters.
He backed towards the door. Get a light snack in Davy Byrne's.
Stopgap. Keep me going. Had a good breakfast.
--Roast and mashed here.
--Pint of stout.
Every fellow for his own, tooth and nail. Gulp. Grub. Gulp. Gobstuff.
He came out into clearer air and turned back towards Grafton street.
Eat or be eaten. Kill! Kill!
Suppose that communal kitchen years to come perhaps. All trotting
down with porringers and tommycans to be filled. Devour contents in the
street. John Howard Parnell example the provost of Trinity every mother's
son don't talk of your provosts and provost of Trinity women and children
cabmen priests parsons fieldmarshals archbishops. From Ailesbury road,
Clyde road, artisans' dwellings, north Dublin union, lord mayor in his
gingerbread coach, old queen in a bathchair. My plate's empty. After you
with our incorporated drinkingcup. Like sir Philip Crampton's fountain.
Rub off the microbes with your handkerchief. Next chap rubs on a new
batch with his. Father O'Flynn would make hares of them all. Have rows
all the same. All for number one. Children fighting for the scrapings of the
pot. Want a souppot as big as the Phoenix park. Harpooning flitches and
hindquarters out of it. Hate people all round you. City Arms hotel table
d'hіte she called it. Soup, joint and sweet. Never know whose thoughts
you're chewing. Then who'd wash up all the plates and forks? Might be all
feeding on tabloids that time. Teeth getting worse and worse.
After all there's a lot in that vegetarian fine flavour of things from the
earth garlic of course it stinks after Italian organgrinders crisp of onions
mushrooms truffles. Pain to the animal too. Pluck and draw fowl.
Wretched brutes there at the cattlemarket waiting for the poleaxe to split
their skulls open. Moo. Poor trembling calves. Meh. Staggering bob. Bubble
and squeak. Butchers' buckets wobbly lights. Give us that brisket off the
hook. Plup. Rawhead and bloody bones. Flayed glasseyed sheep hung from
their haunches, sheepsnouts bloodypapered snivelling nosejam on sawdust.
Top and lashers going out. Don't maul them pieces, young one.
Hot fresh blood they prescribe for decline. Blood always needed.
Insidious. Lick it up smokinghot, thick sugary. Famished ghosts.
Ah, I'm hungry.
He entered Davy Byrne's. Moral pub. He doesn't chat. Stands a
drink now and then. But in leapyear once in four. Cashed a cheque for me
once.
What will I take now? He drew his watch. Let me see now.
Shandygaff?
--Hello, Bloom, Nosey Flynn said from his nook.
--Hello, Flynn.
--How's things?
--Tiptop ... Let me see. I'll take a glass of burgundy and ... let me see.
Sardines on the shelves. Almost taste them by looking. Sandwich?
Ham and his descendants musterred and bred there. Potted meats. What is
home without Plumtree's potted meat? Incomplete. What a stupid ad!
Under the obituary notices they stuck it. All up a plumtree. Dignam's
potted meat. Cannibals would with lemon and rice. White missionary too
salty. Like pickled pork. Expect the chief consumes the parts of honour.
Ought to be tough from exercise. His wives in a row to watch the effect.
There was a right royal old nigger. Who ate or something the somethings of
the reverend Mr MacTrigger. With it an abode of bliss. Lord knows what
concoction. Cauls mouldy tripes windpipes faked and minced up. Puzzle
find the meat. Kosher. No meat and milk together. Hygiene that was what
they call now. Yom Kippur fast spring cleaning of inside. Peace and war
depend on some fellow's digestion. Religions. Christmas turkeys and geese.
Slaughter of innocents. Eat drink and be merry. Then casual wards full
after. Heads bandaged. Cheese digests all but itself. Mity cheese.
--Have you a cheese sandwich?
--Yes, sir.
Like a few olives too if they had them. Italian I prefer. Good glass of
burgundy take away that. Lubricate. A nice salad, cool as a cucumber, Tom
Kernan can dress. Puts gusto into it. Pure olive oil. Milly served me that
cutlet with a sprig of parsley. Take one Spanish onion. God made food, the
devil the cooks. Devilled crab.
--Wife well?
--Quite well, thanks .... A cheese sandwich, then. Gorgonzola, have you?
--Yes, sir.
Nosey Flynn sipped his grog.
--Doing any singing those times?
Look at his mouth. Could whistle in his own ear. Flap ears to match.
Music. Knows as much about it as my coachman. Still better tell him. Does
no harm. Free ad.
--She's engaged for a big tour end of this month. You may have heard
perhaps.
--No. O, that's the style. Who's getting it up?
The curate served.
--How much is that?
--Seven d, sir.... Thank you, sir.
Mr Bloom cut his sandwich into slender strips. Mr MacTrigger. Easier
than the dreamy creamy stuff. His five hundred wives. Had the time of their
lives.
--Mustard, sir?
--Thank you.
He studded under each lifted strip yellow blobs. Their lives. I have it.
It grew bigger and bigger and bigger.
--Getting it up? he said. Well, it's like a company idea, you see. Part shares
and part profits.
--Ay, now I remember, Nosey Flynn said, putting his hand in his pocket to
scratch his groin. Who is this was telling me? Isn't Blazes Boylan mixed up
in it?
A warm shock of air heat of mustard hanched on Mr Bloom's heart.
He raised his eyes and met the stare of a bilious clock. Two. Pub clock five
minutes fast. Time going on. Hands moving. Two. Not yet.
His midriff yearned then upward, sank within him, yearned more
longly, longingly.
Wine.
He smellsipped the cordial juice and, bidding his throat strongly to
speed it, set his wineglass delicately down.
--Yes, he said. He's the organiser in point of fact.
No fear: no brains.
Nosey Flynn snuffled and scratched. Flea having a good square meal.
--He had a good slice of luck, Jack Mooney was telling me, over that
boxingmatch Myler Keogh won again that soldier in the Portobello
barracks. By God, he had the little kipper down in the county Carlow he
was telling me ...
Hope that dewdrop doesn't come down into his glass. No, snuffled it
up.
--For near a month, man, before it came off. Sucking duck eggs by God till
further orders. Keep him off the boose, see? O, by God, Blazes is a hairy
chap.
Davy Byrne came forward from the hindbar in tuckstitched
shirtsleeves, cleaning his lips with two wipes of his napkin. Herring's blush.
Whose smile upon each feature plays with such and such replete. Too much
fat on the parsnips.
--And here's himself and pepper on him, Nosey Flynn said. Can you give
us a good one for the Gold cup?
--I'm off that, Mr Flynn, Davy Byrne answered. I never put anything on a
horse.
--You're right there, Nosey Flynn said.
Mr Bloom ate his strips of sandwich, fresh clean bread, with relish of
disgust pungent mustard, the feety savour of green cheese. Sips of his wine
soothed his palate. Not logwood that. Tastes fuller this weather with the
chill off.
Nice quiet bar. Nice piece of wood in that counter. Nicely planed.
Like the way it curves there.
--I wouldn't do anything at all in that line, Davy Byrne said. It ruined
many a man, the same horses.
Vintners' sweepstake. Licensed for the sale of beer, wine and spirits
for consumption on the premises. Heads I win tails you lose.
--True for you, Nosey Flynn said. Unless you're in the know. There's no
straight sport going now. Lenehan gets some good ones. He's giving
Sceptre today. Zinfandel's the favourite, lord Howard de Walden's, won at
Epsom. Morny Cannon is riding him. I could have got seven to one against
Saint Amant a fortnight before.
--That so? Davy Byrne said.
He went towards the window and, taking up the pettycash book,
scanned its pages.
--I could, faith, Nosey Flynn said, snuffling. That was a rare bit of
horseflesh. Saint Frusquin was her sire. She won in a thunderstorm,
Rothschild's filly, with wadding in her ears. Blue jacket and yellow cap.
Bad luck to big Ben Dollard and his John O'Gaunt. He put me off it. Ay.
He drank resignedly from his tumbler, running his fingers down the
flutes.
--Ay, he said, sighing.
Mr Bloom, champing, standing, looked upon his sigh. Nosey
numbskull. Will I tell him that horse Lenehan? He knows already. Better let
him forget. Go and lose more. Fool and his money. Dewdrop coming down
again. Cold nose he'd have kissing a woman. Still they might like. Prickly
beards they like. Dogs' cold noses. Old Mrs Riordan with the rumbling
stomach's Skye terrier in the City Arms hotel. Molly fondling him in her
lap. O, the big doggybowwowsywowsy!
Wine soaked and softened rolled pith of bread mustard a moment
mawkish cheese. Nice wine it is. Taste it better because I'm not thirsty. Bath
of course does that. Just a bite or two. Then about six o'clock I can. Six.
Six. Time will be gone then. She.
Mild fire of wine kindled his veins. I wanted that badly. Felt so off
colour. His eyes unhungrily saw shelves of tins: sardines, gaudy lobsters'
claws. All the odd things people pick up for food. Out of shells, periwinkles
with a pin, off trees, snails out of the ground the French eat, out of the sea
with bait on a hook. Silly fish learn nothing in a thousand years. If you
didn't know risky putting anything into your mouth. Poisonous berries.
Johnny Magories. Roundness you think good. Gaudy colour warns you
off. One fellow told another and so on. Try it on the dog first. Led on by the
smell or the look. Tempting fruit. Ice cones. Cream. Instinct. Orangegroves
for instance. Need artificial irrigation. Bleibtreustrasse. Yes but what about
oysters. Unsightly like a clot of phlegm. Filthy shells. Devil to open them
too. Who found them out? Garbage, sewage they feed on. Fizz and Red
bank oysters. Effect on the sexual. Aphrodis. He was in the Red Bank this
morning. Was he oysters old fish at table perhaps he young flesh in bed no
June has no ar no oysters. But there are people like things high. Tainted
game. Jugged hare. First catch your hare. Chinese eating eggs fifty years
old, blue and green again. Dinner of thirty courses. Each dish harmless
might mix inside. Idea for a poison mystery. That archduke Leopold was it
no yes or was it Otto one of those Habsburgs? Or who was it used to eat
the scruff off his own head? Cheapest lunch in town. Of course aristocrats,
then the others copy to be in the fashion. Milly too rock oil and flour. Raw
pastry I like myself. Half the catch of oysters they throw back in the sea to
keep up the price. Cheap no-one would buy. Caviare. Do the grand. Hock
in green glasses. Swell blowout. Lady this. Powdered bosom pearls. The
elite. Creme de la creme. They want special dishes to pretend they're.
Hermit with a platter of pulse keep down the stings of the flesh. Know me
come eat with me. Royal sturgeon high sheriff, Coffey, the butcher, right to
venisons of the forest from his ex. Send him back the half of a cow. Spread
I saw down in the Master of the Rolls' kitchen area. Whitehatted chef like a
rabbi. Combustible duck. Curly cabbage a la duchesse de Parme. Just as
well to write it on the bill of fare so you can know what you've eaten. Too
many drugs spoil the broth. I know it myself. Dosing it with Edwards'
desiccated soup. Geese stuffed silly for them. Lobsters boiled alive. Do
ptake some ptarmigan. Wouldn't mind being a waiter in a swell hotel. Tips,
evening dress, halfnaked ladies. May I tempt you to a little more filleted
lemon sole, miss Dubedat? Yes, do bedad. And she did bedad. Huguenot
name I expect that. A miss Dubedat lived in Killiney, I remember. Du de la
French. Still it's the same fish perhaps old Micky Hanlon of Moore street
ripped the guts out of making money hand over fist finger in fishes' gills
can't write his name on a cheque think he was painting the landscape with
his mouth twisted. Moooikill A Aitcha Ha ignorant as a kish of brogues,
worth fifty thousand pounds.
Stuck on the pane two flies buzzed, stuck.
Glowing wine on his palate lingered swallowed. Crushing in the
winepress grapes of Burgundy. Sun's heat it is. Seems to a secret touch
telling me memory. Touched his sense moistened remembered. Hidden
under wild ferns on Howth below us bay sleeping: sky. No sound. The sky.
The bay purple by the Lion's head. Green by Drumleck. Yellowgreen
towards Sutton. Fields of undersea, the lines faint brown in grass, buried
cities. Pillowed on my coat she had her hair, earwigs in the heather scrub
my hand under her nape, you'll toss me all. O wonder! Coolsoft with
ointments her hand touched me, caressed: her eyes upon me did not turn
away. Ravished over her I lay, full lips full open, kissed her mouth. Yum.
Softly she gave me in my mouth the seedcake warm and chewed. Mawkish
pulp her mouth had mumbled sweetsour of her spittle. Joy: I ate it: joy.
Young life, her lips that gave me pouting. Soft warm sticky gumjelly lips.
Flowers her eyes were, take me, willing eyes. Pebbles fell. She lay still. A
goat. No-one. High on Ben Howth rhododendrons a nannygoat walking
surefooted, dropping currants. Screened under ferns she laughed
warmfolded. Wildly I lay on her, kissed her: eyes, her lips, her stretched
neck beating, woman's breasts full in her blouse of nun's veiling, fat nipples
upright. Hot I tongued her. She kissed me. I was kissed. All yielding she
tossed my hair. Kissed, she kissed me.
Me. And me now.
Stuck, the flies buzzed.
His downcast eyes followed the silent veining of the oaken slab.
Beauty: it curves: curves are beauty. Shapely goddesses, Venus, Juno:
curves the world admires. Can see them library museum standing in the
round hall, naked goddesses. Aids to digestion. They don't care what man
looks. All to see. Never speaking. I mean to say to fellows like Flynn.
Suppose she did Pygmalion and Galatea what would she say first? Mortal!
Put you in your proper place. Quaffing nectar at mess with gods golden
dishes, all ambrosial. Not like a tanner lunch we have, boiled mutton,
carrots and turnips, bottle of Allsop. Nectar imagine it drinking electricity:
gods' food. Lovely forms of women sculped Junonian. Immortal lovely.
And we stuffing food in one hole and out behind: food, chyle, blood, dung,
earth, food: have to feed it like stoking an engine. They have no. Never
looked. I'll look today. Keeper won't see. Bend down let something drop.
See if she.
Dribbling a quiet message from his bladder came to go to do not to do
there to do. A man and ready he drained his glass to the lees and walked, to
men too they gave themselves, manly conscious, lay with men lovers, a
youth enjoyed her, to the yard.
When the sound of his boots had ceased Davy Byrne said from his
book:
--What is this he is? Isn't he in the insurance line?
--He's out of that long ago, Nosey Flynn said. He does canvassing for the
Freeman.
--I know him well to see, Davy Byrne said. Is he in trouble?
--Trouble? Nosey Flynn said. Not that I heard of. Why?
--I noticed he was in mourning.
--Was he? Nosey Flynn said. So he was, faith. I asked him how was all at
home. You're right, by God. So he was.
--I never broach the subject, Davy Byrne said humanely, if I see a
gentleman is in trouble that way. It only brings it up fresh in their minds.
--It's not the wife anyhow, Nosey Flynn said. I met him the day before
yesterday and he coming out of that Irish farm dairy John Wyse Nolan's
wife has in Henry street with a jar of cream in his hand taking it home to
his better half. She's well nourished, I tell you. Plovers on toast.
--And is he doing for the Freeman? Davy Byrne said.
Nosey Flynn pursed his lips.
---He doesn't buy cream on the ads he picks up. You can make bacon of
that.
--How so? Davy Byrne asked, coming from his book.
Nosey Flynn made swift passes in the air with juggling fingers. He
winked.
--He's in the craft, he said. --Do you tell me so? Davy Byrne said.
--Very much so, Nosey Flynn said. Ancient free and accepted order. He's
an excellent brother. Light, life and love, by God. They give him a leg up. I
was told that by a - well, I won't say who.
--Is that a fact?
--O, it's a fine order, Nosey Flynn said. They stick to you when you're
down. I know a fellow was trying to get into it. But they're as close as damn
it. By God they did right to keep the women out of it.
Davy Byrne smiledyawnednodded all in one:
--Iiiiiichaaaaaaach!
--There was one woman, Nosey Flynn said, hid herself in a clock to find
out what they do be doing. But be damned but they smelt her out and swore
her in on the spot a master mason. That was one of the saint Legers of
Doneraile.
Davy Byrne, sated after his yawn, said with tearwashed eyes:
--And is that a fact? Decent quiet man he is. I often saw him in here and I
never once saw him - you know, over the line.
--God Almighty couldn't make him drunk, Nosey Flynn said firmly. Slips
off when the fun gets too hot. Didn't you see him look at his watch? Ah,
you weren't there. If you ask him to have a drink first thing he does he outs
with the watch to see what he ought to imbibe. Declare to God he does.
--There are some like that, Davy Byrne said. He's a safe man, I'd say.
--He's not too bad, Nosey Flynn said, snuffling it up. He's been known to
put his hand down too to help a fellow. Give the devil his due. O, Bloom has
his good points. But there's one thing he'll never do.
His hand scrawled a dry pen signature beside his grog.
--I know, Davy Byrne said.
--Nothing in black and white, Nosey Flynn said.
Paddy Leonard and Bantam Lyons came in. Tom Rochford followed
frowning, a plaining hand on his claret waistcoat.
--Day, Mr Byrne.
--Day, gentlemen.
They paused at the counter.
--Who's standing? Paddy Leonard asked.
--I'm sitting anyhow, Nosey Flynn answered.
--Well, what'll it be? Paddy Leonard asked.
--I'll take a stone ginger, Bantam Lyons said.
--How much? Paddy Leonard cried. Since when, for God' sake? What's
yours, Tom?
--How is the main drainage? Nosey Flynn asked, sipping.
For answer Tom Rochford pressed his hand to his breastbone and
hiccupped.
--Would I trouble you for a glass of fresh water, Mr Byrne? he said.
--Certainly, sir.
Paddy Leonard eyed his alemates.
--Lord love a duck, he said. Look at what I'm standing drinks to! Cold
water and gingerpop! Two fellows that would suck whisky off a sore leg.
He has some bloody horse up his sleeve for the Gold cup. A dead snip.
--Zinfandel is it? Nosey Flynn asked.
Tom Rochford spilt powder from a twisted paper into the water set
before him.
--That cursed dyspepsia, he said before drinking.
--Breadsoda is very good, Davy Byrne said.
Tom Rochford nodded and drank.
--Is it Zinfandel?
--Say nothing! Bantam Lyons winked. I'm going to plunge five bob on my
own.
--Tell us if you're worth your salt and be damned to you, Paddy Leonard
said. Who gave it to you?
Mr Bloom on his way out raised three fingers in greeting.
--So long! Nosey Flynn said.
The others turned.
--That's the man now that gave it to me, Bantam Lyons whispered.
--Prrwht! Paddy Leonard said with scorn. Mr Byrne, sir, we'll take two of
your small Jamesons after that and a ....
--Stone ginger, Davy Byrne added civilly.
--Ay, Paddy Leonard said. A suckingbottle for the baby.
Mr Bloom walked towards Dawson street, his tongue brushing his
teeth smooth. Something green it would have to be: spinach, say. Then with
those RІntgen rays searchlight you could.
At Duke lane a ravenous terrier choked up a sick knuckly cud on the
cobblestones and lapped it with new zest. Surfeit. Returned with thanks
having fully digested the contents. First sweet then savoury. Mr Bloom
coasted warily. Ruminants. His second course. Their upper jaw they move.
Wonder if Tom Rochford will do anything with that invention of his?
Wasting time explaining it to Flynn's mouth. Lean people long mouths.
Ought to be a hall or a place where inventors could go in and invent free.
Course then you'd have all the cranks pestering.
He hummed, prolonging in solemn echo the closes of the bars:-Don Giovanni, a cenar teco M'invitasti.Feel better. Burgundy. Good pick me up. Who distilled first? Some chap in the blues. Dutch courage. That Kilkenny People in the national library now I must. Bare clean closestools waiting in the window of William Miller, plumber, turned back his thoughts. They could: and watch it all the way down, swallow a pin sometimes come out of the ribs years after, tour round the body changing biliary duct spleen squirting liver gastric juice coils of intestines like pipes. But the poor buffer would have to stand all the time with his insides entrails on show. Science. --A cenar teco. What does that teco mean? Tonight perhaps. --Don Giovanni, thou hast me invited To come to supper tonight, The rum the rumdum.Doesn't go properly. Keyes: two months if I get Nannetti to. That'll be two pounds ten about two pounds eight. Three Hynes owes me. Two eleven. Prescott's dyeworks van over there. If I get Billy Prescott's ad: two fifteen. Five guineas about. On the pig's back. Could buy one of those silk petticoats for Molly, colour of her new garters. Today. Today. Not think. Tour the south then. What about English wateringplaces? Brighton, Margate. Piers by moonlight. Her voice floating out. Those lovely seaside girls. Against John Long's a drowsing loafer lounged in heavy thought, gnawing a crusted knuckle. Handy man wants job. Small wages. Will eat anything. Mr Bloom turned at Gray's confectioner's window of unbought tarts and passed the reverend Thomas Connellan's bookstore. Why I left the church of Rome. Birds' nest women run him. They say they used to give pauper children soup to change to protestants in the time of the potato blight. Society over the way papa went to for the conversion of poor jews. Same bait. Why we left the church of Rome. A blind stripling stood tapping the curbstone with his slender cane. No tram in sight. Wants to cross. --Do you want to cross? Mr Bloom asked. The blind stripling did not answer. His wallface frowned weakly. He moved his head uncertainly. --You're in Dawson street, Mr Bloom said. Molesworth street is opposite. Do you want to cross? There's nothing in the way. The cane moved out trembling to the left. Mr Bloom's eye followed its line and saw again the dyeworks' van drawn up before Drago's. Where I saw his brillantined hair just when I was. Horse drooping. Driver in John Long's. Slaking his drouth. --There's a van there, Mr Bloom said, but it's not moving. I'll see you across. Do you want to go to Molesworth street? --Yes, the stripling answered. South Frederick street. --Come, Mr Bloom said. He touched the thin elbow gently: then took the limp seeing hand to guide it forward. Say something to him. Better not do the condescending. They mistrust what you tell them. Pass a common remark. --The rain kept off. No answer. Stains on his coat. Slobbers his food, I suppose. Tastes all different for him. Have to be spoonfed first. Like a child's hand, his hand. Like Milly's was. Sensitive. Sizing me up I daresay from my hand. Wonder if he has a name. Van. Keep his cane clear of the horse's legs: tired drudge get his doze. That's right. Clear. Behind a bull: in front of a horse. --Thanks, sir. Knows I'm a man. Voice. --Right now? First turn to the left. The blind stripling tapped the curbstone and went on his way, drawing his cane back, feeling again. Mr Bloom walked behind the eyeless feet, a flatcut suit of herringbone tweed. Poor young fellow! How on earth did he know that van was there? Must have felt it. See things in their forehead perhaps: kind of sense of volume. Weight or size of it, something blacker than the dark. Wonder would he feel it if something was removed. Feel a gap. Queer idea of Dublin he must have, tapping his way round by the stones. Could he walk in a beeline if he hadn't that cane? Bloodless pious face like a fellow going in to be a priest. Penrose! That was that chap's name. Look at all the things they can learn to do. Read with their fingers. Tune pianos. Or we are surprised they have any brains. Why we think a deformed person or a hunchback clever if he says something we might say. Of course the other senses are more. Embroider. Plait baskets. People ought to help. Workbasket I could buy for Molly's birthday. Hates sewing. Might take an objection. Dark men they call them. Sense of smell must be stronger too. Smells on all sides, bunched together. Each street different smell. Each person too. Then the spring, the summer: smells. Tastes? They say you can't taste wines with your eyes shut or a cold in the head. Also smoke in the dark they say get no pleasure. And with a woman, for instance. More shameless not seeing. That girl passing the Stewart institution, head in the air. Look at me. I have them all on. Must be strange not to see her. Kind of a form in his mind's eye. The voice, temperatures: when he touches her with his fingers must almost see the lines, the curves. His hands on her hair, for instance. Say it was black, for instance. Good. We call it black. Then passing over her white skin. Different feel perhaps. Feeling of white. Postoffice. Must answer. Fag today. Send her a postal order two shillings, half a crown. Accept my little present. Stationer's just here too. Wait. Think over it. With a gentle finger he felt ever so slowly the hair combed back above his ears. Again. Fibres of fine fine straw. Then gently his finger felt the skin of his right cheek. Downy hair there too. Not smooth enough. The belly is the smoothest. No-one about. There he goes into Frederick street. Perhaps to Levenston's dancing academy piano. Might be settling my braces. Walking by Doran's publichouse he slid his hand between his waistcoat and trousers and, pulling aside his shirt gently, felt a slack fold of his belly. But I know it's whitey yellow. Want to try in the dark to see. He withdrew his hand and pulled his dress to. Poor fellow! Quite a boy. Terrible. Really terrible. What dreams would he have, not seeing? Life a dream for him. Where is the justice being born that way? All those women and children excursion beanfeast burned and drowned in New York. Holocaust. Karma they call that transmigration for sins you did in a past life the reincarnation met him pike hoses. Dear, dear, dear. Pity, of course: but somehow you can't cotton on to them someway. Sir Frederick Falkiner going into the freemasons' hall. Solemn as Troy. After his good lunch in Earlsfort terrace. Old legal cronies cracking a magnum. Tales of the bench and assizes and annals of the bluecoat school. I sentenced him to ten years. I suppose he'd turn up his nose at that stuff I drank. Vintage wine for them, the year marked on a dusty bottle. Has his own ideas of justice in the recorder's court. Wellmeaning old man. Police chargesheets crammed with cases get their percentage manufacturing crime. Sends them to the rightabout. The devil on moneylenders. Gave Reuben J a great strawcalling. Now he's really what they call a dirty jew. Power those judges have. Crusty old topers in wigs. Bear with a sore paw. And may the Lord have mercy on your soul. Hello, placard. Mirus bazaar. His Excellency the lord lieutenant. Sixteenth. Today it is. In aid of funds for Mercer's hospital. The Messiah was first given for that. Yes. Handel. What about going out there: Ballsbridge. Drop in on Keyes. No use sticking to him like a leech. Wear out my welcome. Sure to know someone on the gate. Mr Bloom came to Kildare street. First I must. Library. Straw hat in sunlight. Tan shoes. Turnedup trousers. It is. It is. His heart quopped softly. To the right. Museum. Goddesses. He swerved to the right. Is it? Almost certain. Won't look. Wine in my face. Why did I? Too heady. Yes, it is. The walk. Not see. Get on. Making for the museum gate with long windy steps he lifted his eyes. Handsome building. Sir Thomas Deane designed. Not following me? Didn't see me perhaps. Light in his eyes. The flutter of his breath came forth in short sighs. Quick. Cold statues: quiet there. Safe in a minute. No. Didn't see me. After two. Just at the gate. My heart! His eyes beating looked steadfastly at cream curves of stone. Sir Thomas Deane was the Greek architecture. Look for something I. His hasty hand went quick into a pocket, took out, read unfolded Agendath Netaim. Where did I? Busy looking. He thrust back quick Agendath. Afternoon she said. I am looking for that. Yes, that. Try all pockets. Handker. Freeman. Where did I? Ah, yes. Trousers. Potato. Purse. Where? Hurry. Walk quietly. Moment more. My heart. His hand looking for the where did I put found in his hip pocket soap lotion have to call tepid paper stuck. Ah soap there I yes. Gate. Safe!
First he tickled her
Then he patted her
Then he passed the female catheter
For he was a medical
Jolly old medi .....
--I feel you would need one more for Hamlet. Seven is dear to the mystic
mind. The shining seven WB calls them.
Glittereyed his rufous skull close to his greencapped desklamp sought
the face bearded amid darkgreener shadow, an ollav, holyeyed. He laughed
low: a sizar's laugh of Trinity: unanswered.
Orchestral Satan, weeping many a rood
Tears such as angels weep.
Ed egli avea del cul fatto trombetta.
He holds my follies hostage.
Cranly's eleven true Wicklowmen to free their sireland. Gaptoothed
Kathleen, her four beautiful green fields, the stranger in her house. And one
more to hail him: ave, rabbi: the Tinahely twelve. In the shadow of the glen
he cooees for them. My soul's youth I gave him, night by night. God speed.
Good hunting.
Mulligan has my telegram.
Folly. Persist.
--Our young Irish bards, John Eglinton censured, have yet to create a
figure which the world will set beside Saxon Shakespeare's Hamlet though
I admire him, as old Ben did, on this side idolatry.
--All these questions are purely academic, Russell oracled out of his
shadow. I mean, whether Hamlet is Shakespeare or James I or Essex.
Clergymen's discussions of the historicity of Jesus. Art has to reveal to us
ideas, formless spiritual essences. The supreme question about a work of art
is out of how deep a life does it spring. The painting of Gustave Moreau is
the painting of ideas. The deepest poetry of Shelley, the words of Hamlet
bring our minds into contact with the eternal wisdom, Plato's world of
ideas. All the rest is the speculation of schoolboys for schoolboys.
A. E. has been telling some yankee interviewer. Wall, tarnation strike
me!
--The schoolmen were schoolboys first, Stephen said superpolitely.
Aristotle was once Plato's schoolboy.
--And has remained so, one should hope, John Eglinton sedately said. One
can see him, a model schoolboy with his diploma under his arm.
He laughed again at the now smiling bearded face.
Formless spiritual. Father, Word and Holy Breath. Allfather, the
heavenly man. Hiesos Kristos, magician of the beautiful, the Logos who
suffers in us at every moment. This verily is that. I am the fire upon the
altar. I am the sacrificial butter.
Dunlop, Judge, the noblest Roman of them all, A. E., Arval, the Name
Ineffable, in heaven hight: K. H., their master, whose identity is no secret to
adepts. Brothers of the great white lodge always watching to see if they can
help. The Christ with the bridesister, moisture of light, born of an ensouled
virgin, repentant sophia, departed to the plane of buddhi. The life esoteric is
not for ordinary person. O. P. must work off bad karma first. Mrs Cooper
Oakley once glimpsed our very illustrious sister H. P. B.'s elemental.
O, fie! Out on't! Pfuiteufel! You naughtn't to look, missus, so you
naughtn't when a lady's ashowing of her elemental.
Mr Best entered, tall, young, mild, light. He bore in his hand with
grace a notebook, new, large, clean, bright.
--That model schoolboy, Stephen said, would find Hamlet's musings about
the afterlife of his princely soul, the improbable, insignificant and
undramatic monologue, as shallow as Plato's.
John Eglinton, frowning, said, waxing wroth:
--Upon my word it makes my blood boil to hear anyone compare Aristotle
with Plato.
--Which of the two, Stephen asked, would have banished me from his
commonwealth?
Unsheathe your dagger definitions. Horseness is the whatness of
allhorse. Streams of tendency and eons they worship. God: noise in the
street: very peripatetic. Space: what you damn well have to see. Through
spaces smaller than red globules of man's blood they creepycrawl after
Blake's buttocks into eternity of which this vegetable world is but a shadow.
Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past.
Mr Best came forward, amiable, towards his colleague.
--Haines is gone, he said.
--Is he?
--I was showing him Jubainville's book. He's quite enthusiastic, don't you
know, about Hyde's Lovesongs of Connacht. I couldn't bring him in to
hear the discussion. He's gone to Gill's to buy it.
Bound thee forth, my booklet, quick
To greet the callous public,
Writ, I ween, 'twas not my wish
In lean unlovely English.
--The peatsmoke is going to his head, John Eglinton opined.
We feel in England. Penitent thief. Gone. I smoked his baccy. Green
twinkling stone. An emerald set in the ring of the sea.
--People do not know how dangerous lovesongs can be, the auric egg of
Russell warned occultly. The movements which work revolutions in the
world are born out of the dreams and visions in a peasant's heart on the
hillside. For them the earth is not an exploitable ground but the living
mother. The rarefied air of the academy and the arena produce the
sixshilling novel, the musichall song. France produces the finest flower of
corruption in Mallarm’ but the desirable life is revealed only to the poor of
heart, the life of Homer's Phaeacians.
From these words Mr Best turned an unoffending face to Stephen.
--Mallarm’, don't you know, he said, has written those wonderful prose
poems Stephen MacKenna used to read to me in Paris. The one about
Hamlet. He says: il se promSne, lisant au livre de lui-meme, don't you
know, reading the book of himself. He describes Hamlet given in a French
town, don't you know, a provincial town. They advertised it.
His free hand graciously wrote tiny signs in air.
Hamlet
ou
Le Distrait
PiSce de Shakespeare
He repeated to John Eglinton's newgathered frown:
--PiSce de Shakespeare, don't you know. It's so French. The French point
of view. Hamlet ou...
--The absentminded beggar, Stephen ended.
John Eglinton laughed.
--Yes, I suppose it would be, he said. Excellent people, no doubt, but
distressingly shortsighted in some matters.
Sumptuous and stagnant exaggeration of murder.
--A deathsman of the soul Robert Greene called him, Stephen said. Not for
nothing was he a butcher's son, wielding the sledded poleaxe and spitting in
his palms. Nine lives are taken off for his father's one. Our Father who art
in purgatory. Khaki Hamlets don't hesitate to shoot. The bloodboltered
shambles in act five is a forecast of the concentration camp sung by Mr
Swinburne.
Cranly, I his mute orderly, following battles from afar.
Whelps and dams of murderous foes whom none But we had spared ....Between the Saxon smile and yankee yawp. The devil and the deep sea. --He will have it that Hamlet is a ghoststory, John Eglinton said for Mr Best's behoof. Like the fat boy in Pickwick he wants to make our flesh creep.
List! List! O list!
My flesh hears him: creeping, hears.
If thou didst ever ....
--What is a ghost? Stephen said with tingling energy. One who has faded
into impalpability through death, through absence, through change of
manners. Elizabethan London lay as far from Stratford as corrupt Paris
lies from virgin Dublin. Who is the ghost from limbo patrum, returning to
the world that has forgotten him? Who is King Hamlet?
John Eglinton shifted his spare body, leaning back to judge.
Lifted.
--It is this hour of a day in mid June, Stephen said, begging with a swift
glance their hearing. The flag is up on the playhouse by the bankside. The
bear Sackerson growls in the pit near it, Paris garden. Canvasclimbers who
sailed with Drake chew their sausages among the groundlings.
Local colour. Work in all you know. Make them accomplices.
--Shakespeare has left the huguenot's house in Silver street and walks by
the swanmews along the riverbank. But he does not stay to feed the pen
chivying her game of cygnets towards the rushes. The swan of Avon has
other thoughts.
Composition of place. Ignatius Loyola, make haste to help me!
--The play begins. A player comes on under the shadow, made up in the
castoff mail of a court buck, a wellset man with a bass voice. It is the ghost,
the king, a king and no king, and the player is Shakespeare who has studied
Hamlet all the years of his life which were not vanity in order to play the
part of the spectre. He speaks the words to Burbage, the young player who
stands before him beyond the rack of cerecloth, calling him by a name:
Hamlet, I am thy father's spirit,
bidding him list. To a son he speaks, the son of his soul, the prince, young
Hamlet and to the son of his body, Hamnet Shakespeare, who has died in
Stratford that his namesake may live for ever.
Is it possible that that player Shakespeare, a ghost by absence, and in the
vesture of buried Denmark, a ghost by death, speaking his own words to
his own son's name (had Hamnet Shakespeare lived he would have been
prince Hamlet's twin), is it possible, I want to know, or probable that he
did not draw or foresee the logical conclusion of those premises: you are
the dispossessed son: I am the murdered father: your mother is the
guilty queen, Ann Shakespeare, born Hathaway?
--But this prying into the family life of a great man, Russell began
impatiently.
Art thou there, truepenny?
--Interesting only to the parish clerk. I mean, we have the plays. I mean
when we read the poetry of King Lear what is it to us how the poet lived?
As for living our servants can do that for us, Villiers de l'Isle has said.
Peeping and prying into greenroom gossip of the day, the poet's drinking,
the poet's debts. We have King Lear: and it is immortal.
Mr Best's face, appealed to, agreed.
Flow over them with your waves and with your waters, Mananaan,
Mananaan MacLir ....
How now, sirrah, that pound he lent you when you were hungry?
Marry, I wanted it.
Take thou this noble.
Go to! You spent most of it in Georgina Johnson's bed, clergyman's
daughter. Agenbite of inwit.
Do you intend to pay it back?
O, yes.
When? Now?
Well....No.
When, then?
I paid my way. I paid my way.
Steady on. He's from beyant Boyne water. The northeast corner. You
owe it.
Wait. Five months. Molecules all change. I am other I now. Other I
got pound.
Buzz. Buzz.
But I, entelechy, form of forms, am I by memory because under
everchanging forms.
I that sinned and prayed and fasted.
A child Conmee saved from pandies.
I, I and I. I.
A.E.I.O.U.
--Do you mean to fly in the face of the tradition of three centuries? John
Eglinton's carping voice asked. Her ghost at least has been laid for ever.
She died, for literature at least, before she was born.
--She died, Stephen retorted, sixtyseven years after she was born. She saw
him into and out of the world. She took his first embraces. She bore his
children and she laid pennies on his eyes to keep his eyelids closed when he
lay on his deathbed.
Mother's deathbed. Candle. The sheeted mirror. Who brought me
into this world lies there, bronzelidded, under few cheap flowers. Liliata
rutilantium.
I wept alone.
John Eglinton looked in the tangled glowworm of his lamp.
--The world believes that Shakespeare made a mistake, he said, and got out
of it as quickly and as best he could.
--Bosh! Stephen said rudely. A man of genius makes no mistakes. His
errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
Portals of discovery opened to let in the quaker librarian,
softcreakfooted, bald, eared and assiduous.
--A shrew, John Eglinton said shrewdly, is not a useful portal of discovery,
one should imagine. What useful discovery did Socrates learn from
Xanthippe?
--Dialectic, Stephen answered: and from his mother how to bring thoughts
into the world. What he learnt from his other wife Myrto (absit nomen!),
Socratididion's Epipsychidion, no man, not a woman, will ever know. But
neither the midwife's lore nor the caudlelectures saved him from the
archons of Sinn Fein and their naggin of hemlock.
--But Ann Hathaway? Mr Best's quiet voice said forgetfully. Yes, we seem
to be forgetting her as Shakespeare himself forgot her.
His look went from brooder's beard to carper's skull, to remind, to
chide them not unkindly, then to the baldpink lollard costard, guiltless
though maligned.
--He had a good groatsworth of wit, Stephen said, and no truant memory.
He carried a memory in his wallet as he trudged to Romeville whistling The
Girl I left behind me. If the earthquake did not time it we should know
where to place poor Wat, sitting in his form, the cry of hounds, the studded
bridle and her blue windows. That memory, Venus and Adonis, lay in the
bedchamber of every light-of-love in London. Is Katharine the shrew
illfavoured? Hortensio calls her young and beautiful. Do you think the
writer of Antony and Cleopatra, a passionate pilgrim, had his eyes in the
back of his head that he chose the ugliest doxy in all Warwickshire to lie
withal? Good: he left her and gained the world of men. But his boywomen
are the women of a boy. Their life, thought, speech are lent them by males.
He chose badly? He was chosen, it seems to me. If others have their will
Ann hath a way. By cock, she was to blame. She put the comether on him,
sweet and twentysix. The greyeyed goddess who bends over the boy Adonis,
stooping to conquer, as prologue to the swelling act, is a boldfaced
Stratford wench who tumbles in a cornfield a lover younger than herself. And my turn? When?
Come!
--Ryefield, Mr Best said brightly, gladly, raising his new book, gladly,
brightly.
He murmured then with blond delight for all:
--Between the acres of the ryeThese pretty countryfolk would lie. Paris: the wellpleased pleaser. A tall figure in bearded homespun rose from shadow and unveiled its cooperative watch. --I am afraid I am due at the Homestead. Whither away? Exploitable ground. --Are you going? John Eglinton's active eyebrows asked. Shall we see you at Moore's tonight? Piper is coming. --Piper! Mr Best piped. Is Piper back? Peter Piper pecked a peck of pick of peck of pickled pepper. --I don't know if I can. Thursday. We have our meeting. If I can get away in time. Yogibogeybox in Dawson chambers. Isis Unveiled. Their Pali book we tried to pawn. Crosslegged under an umbrel umbershoot he thrones an Aztec logos, functioning on astral levels, their oversoul, mahamahatma. The faithful hermetists await the light, ripe for chelaship, ringroundabout him. Louis H. Victory. T. Caulfield Irwin. Lotus ladies tend them i'the eyes, their pineal glands aglow. Filled with his god, he thrones, Buddh under plantain. Gulfer of souls, engulfer. Hesouls, shesouls, shoals of souls. Engulfed with wailing creecries, whirled, whirling, they bewail.
In quintessential triviality
For years in this fleshcase a shesoul dwelt.
--They say we are to have a literary surprise, the quaker librarian said,
friendly and earnest. Mr Russell, rumour has it, is gathering together a
sheaf of our younger poets' verses. We are all looking forward anxiously.
Anxiously he glanced in the cone of lamplight where three faces,
lighted, shone.
See this. Remember.
Stephen looked down on a wide headless caubeen, hung on his
ashplanthandle over his knee. My casque and sword. Touch lightly with
two index fingers. Aristotle's experiment. One or two? Necessity is that in
virtue of which it is impossible that one can be otherwise. Argal, one hat is
one hat.
Listen.
Young Colum and Starkey. George Roberts is doing the commercial
part. Longworth will give it a good puff in the Express. O, will he? I liked
Colum's Drover. Yes, I think he has that queer thing genius. Do you think
he has genius really? Yeats admired his line: As in wild earth a Grecian
vase. Did he? I hope you'll be able to come tonight. Malachi Mulligan is
coming too. Moore asked him to bring Haines. Did you hear Miss
Mitchell's joke about Moore and Martyn? That Moore is Martyn's wild
oats? Awfully clever, isn't it? They remind one of Don Quixote and Sancho
Panza. Our national epic has yet to be written, Dr Sigerson says. Moore is
the man for it. A knight of the rueful countenance here in Dublin. With a
saffron kilt? O'Neill Russell? O, yes, he must speak the grand old tongue.
And his Dulcinea? James Stephens is doing some clever sketches. We are
becoming important, it seems.
Cordelia. Cordoglio. Lir's loneliest daughter.
Nookshotten. Now your best French polish.
--Thank you very much, Mr Russell, Stephen said, rising. If you will be so
kind as to give the letter to Mr Norman ...
--O, yes. If he considers it important it will go in. We have so much
correspondence.
--I understand, Stephen said. Thanks.
God ild you. The pigs' paper. Bullockbefriending.
Synge has promised me an article for Dana too. Are we going to be
read? I feel we are. The Gaelic league wants something in Irish. I hope you
will come round tonight. Bring Starkey.
Stephen sat down.
The quaker librarian came from the leavetakers. Blushing, his mask
said:
--Mr Dedalus, your views are most illuminating.
He creaked to and fro, tiptoing up nearer heaven by the altitude of a
chopine, and, covered by the noise of outgoing, said low:
--Is it your view, then, that she was not faithful to the poet?
Alarmed face asks me. Why did he come? Courtesy or an inward
light?
--Where there is a reconciliation, Stephen said, there must have been first a
sundering.
--Yes.
Christfox in leather trews, hiding, a runaway in blighted treeforks,
from hue and cry. Knowing no vixen, walking lonely in the chase. Women
he won to him, tender people, a whore of Babylon, ladies of justices, bully
tapsters' wives. Fox and geese. And in New Place a slack dishonoured body
that once was comely, once as sweet, as fresh as cinnamon, now her leaves
falling, all, bare, frighted of the narrow grave and unforgiven.
--Yes. So you think....
The door closed behind the outgoer.
Rest suddenly possessed the discreet vaulted cell, rest of warm and
brooding air.
A vestal's lamp.
Here he ponders things that were not: what Caesar would have lived
to do had he believed the soothsayer: what might have been: possibilities of
the possible as possible: things not known: what name Achilles bore when
he lived among women.
Coffined thoughts around me, in mummycases, embalmed in spice of
words. Thoth, god of libraries, a birdgod, moonycrowned. And I heard the
voice of that Egyptian highpriest. In painted chambers loaded with
tilebooks.
They are still. Once quick in the brains of men. Still: but an itch of
death is in them, to tell me in my ear a maudlin tale, urge me to wreak their
will.
--Certainly, John Eglinton mused, of all great men he is the most enigmatic.
We know nothing but that he lived and suffered. Not even so much. Others
abide our question. A shadow hangs over all the rest.
--But Hamlet is so personal, isn't it? Mr Best pleaded. I mean, a kind of
private paper, don't you know, of his private life. I mean, I don't care a
button, don't you know, who is killed or who is guilty ...
He rested an innocent book on the edge of the desk, smiling his
defiance. His private papers in the original. Ta an bad ar an tir. Taim in mo
shagart. Put beurla on it, littlejohn.
Quoth littlejohn Eglinton:
--I was prepared for paradoxes from what Malachi Mulligan told us but I
may as well warn you that if you want to shake my belief that Shakespeare
is Hamlet you have a stern task before you.
Bear with me.
Stephen withstood the bane of miscreant eyes glinting stern under
wrinkled brows. A basilisk. E quando vede l'uomo l'attosca. Messer
Brunetto, I thank thee for the word.
--As we, or mother Dana, weave and unweave our bodies, Stephen said,
from day to day, their molecules shuttled to and fro, so does the artist
weave and unweave his image. And as the mole on my right breast is where
it was when I was born, though all my body has been woven of new stuff
time after time, so through the ghost of the unquiet father the image of the
unliving son looks forth. In the intense instant of imagination, when the
mind, Shelley says, is a fading coal, that which I was is that which I am and
that which in possibility I may come to be. So in the future, the sister of the
past, I may see myself as I sit here now but by reflection from that which
then I shall be.
Drummond of Hawthornden helped you at that stile.
--Yes, Mr Best said youngly. I feel Hamlet quite young. The bitterness
might be from the father but the passages with Ophelia are surely from the
son.
Has the wrong sow by the lug. He is in my father. I am in his son.
--That mole is the last to go, Stephen said, laughing.
John Eglinton made a nothing pleasing mow.
--If that were the birthmark of genius, he said, genius would be a drug in
the market. The plays of Shakespeare's later years which Renan admired so
much breathe another spirit.
--The spirit of reconciliation, the quaker librarian breathed.
--There can be no reconciliation, Stephen said, if there has not been a
sundering.
Said that.
--If you want to know what are the events which cast their shadow over the
hell of time of King Lear, Othello, Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, look to
see when and how the shadow lifts. What softens the heart of a man,
shipwrecked in storms dire, Tried, like another Ulysses, Pericles, prince of
Tyre?
Head, redconecapped, buffeted, brineblinded.
--A child, a girl, placed in his arms, Marina.
--The leaning of sophists towards the bypaths of apocrypha is a constant
quantity, John Eglinton detected. The highroads are dreary but they lead to
the town.
Good Bacon: gone musty. Shakespeare Bacon's wild oats.
Cypherjugglers going the highroads. Seekers on the great quest. What
town, good masters? Mummed in names: A. E., eon: Magee, John Eglinton.
East of the sun, west of the moon: Tir na n-og. Booted the twain and
staved.
How many miles to Dublin?
Three score and ten, sir.
Will we be there by candlelight?
--Mr Brandes accepts it, Stephen said, as the first play of the closing period.
--Does he? What does Mr Sidney Lee, or Mr Simon Lazarus as some aver
his name is, say of it?
--Marina, Stephen said, a child of storm, Miranda, a wonder, Perdita, that
which was lost. What was lost is given back to him: his daughter's child.
My dearest wife, Pericles says, was like this maid. Will any man love the
daughter if he has not loved the mother?
--The art of being a grandfather, Mr Best gan murmur. L'art d'–tre
grandp .....
--Will he not see reborn in her, with the memory of his own youth added,
another image?
Do you know what you are talking about? Love, yes. Word known to
all men. Amor vero aliquid alicui bonum vult unde et ea quae
concupiscimus ...
--His own image to a man with that queer thing genius is the standard of
all experience, material and moral. Such an appeal will touch him. The
images of other males of his blood will repel him. He will see in them
grotesque attempts of nature to foretell or to repeat himself.
The benign forehead of the quaker librarian enkindled rosily with
hope.
--I hope Mr Dedalus will work out his theory for the enlightenment of the
public. And we ought to mention another Irish commentator, Mr George
Bernard Shaw. Nor should we forget Mr Frank Harris. His articles on
Shakespeare in the Saturday Review were surely brilliant. Oddly enough
he too draws for us an unhappy relation with the dark lady of the sonnets.
The favoured rival is William Herbert, earl of Pembroke. I own that if the
poet must be rejected such a rejection would seem more in harmony with -
what shall I say? - our notions of what ought not to have been.
Felicitously he ceased and held a meek head among them, auk's egg,
prize of their fray.
He thous and thees her with grave husbandwords. Dost love,
Miriam? Dost love thy man?
--That may be too, Stephen said. There's a saying of Goethe's which Mr
Magee likes to quote. Beware of what you wish for in youth because you
will get it in middle life. Why does he send to one who is a buonaroba, a bay
where all men ride, a maid of honour with a scandalous girlhood, a lordling
to woo for him? He was himself a lord of language and had made himself a
coistrel gentleman and he had written Romeo and Juliet. Why? Belief in
himself has been untimely killed. He was overborne in a cornfield first (a
ryefield, I should say) and he will never be a victor in his own eyes after nor
play victoriously the game of laugh and lie down. Assumed dongiovannism
will not save him. No later undoing will undo the first undoing. The tusk of
the boar has wounded him there where love lies ableeding. If the shrew is
worsted yet there remains to her woman's invisible weapon. There is, I feel
in the words, some goad of the flesh driving him into a new passion, a
darker shadow of the first, darkening even his own understanding of
himself. A like fate awaits him and the two rages commingle in a whirlpool.
They list. And in the porches of their ears I pour.
--The soul has been before stricken mortally, a poison poured in the porch
of a sleeping ear. But those who are done to death in sleep cannot know the
manner of their quell unless their Creator endow their souls with that
knowledge in the life to come. The poisoning and the beast with two backs
that urged it King Hamlet's ghost could not know of were he not endowed
with knowledge by his creator. That is why the speech (his lean unlovely
English) is always turned elsewhere, backward. Ravisher and ravished,
what he would but would not, go with him from Lucrece's bluecircled ivory
globes to Imogen's breast, bare, with its mole cinquespotted. He goes back,
weary of the creation he has piled up to hide him from himself, an old dog
licking an old sore. But, because loss is his gain, he passes on towards
eternity in undiminished personality, untaught by the wisdom he has
written or by the laws he has revealed. His beaver is up. He is a ghost, a
shadow now, the wind by Elsinore's rocks or what you will, the sea's voice,
a voice heard only in the heart of him who is the substance of his shadow,
the son consubstantial with the father.
--Amen! was responded from the doorway.
Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?
Entr'acte.
A ribald face, sullen as a dean's, Buck Mulligan came forward, then
blithe in motley, towards the greeting of their smiles. My telegram.
--You were speaking of the gaseous vertebrate, if I mistake not? he asked of
Stephen.
Primrosevested he greeted gaily with his doffed Panama as with a
bauble.
They make him welcome. Was Du verlachst wirst Du noch dienen.
Brood of mockers: Photius, pseudo Malachi, Johann Most.
He Who Himself begot middler the Holy Ghost and Himself sent
Himself, Agenbuyer, between Himself and others, Who, put upon by His
fiends, stripped and whipped, was nailed like bat to barndoor, starved on
crosstree, Who let Him bury, stood up, harrowed hell, fared into heaven
and there these nineteen hundred years sitteth on the right hand of His
Own Self but yet shall come in the latter day to doom the quick and dead
when all the quick shall be dead already.
Glo-o--ri--a in ex--cel--sis De------o.He lifts his hands. Veils fall. O, flowers! Bells with bells with bells aquiring. --Yes, indeed, the quaker librarian said. A most instructive discussion. Mr Mulligan, I'll be bound, has his theory too of the play and of Shakespeare. All sides of life should be represented. He smiled on all sides equally. Buck Mulligan thought, puzzled. --Shakespeare? he said. I seem to know the name. A flying sunny smile rayed in his loose features. --To be sure, he said, remembering brightly. The chap that writes like Synge. Mr Best turned to him. --Haines missed you, he said. Did you meet him? He'll see you after at the D. B. C. He's gone to Gill's to buy Hyde's Lovesongs of Connacht. --I came through the museum, Buck Mulligan said. Was he here? --The bard's fellowcountrymen, John Eglinton answered, are rather tired perhaps of our brilliancies of theorising. I hear that an actress played Hamlet for the fourhundredandeighth time last night in Dublin. Vining held that the prince was a woman. Has no-one made him out to be an Irishman? Judge Barton, I believe, is searching for some clues. He swears (His Highness not His Lordship) by saint Patrick. --The most brilliant of all is that story of Wilde's, Mr Best said, lifting his brilliant notebook. That Portrait of Mr W. H. where he proves that the sonnets were written by a Willie Hughes, a man all hues. --For Willie Hughes, is it not? the quaker librarian asked. Or Hughie Wills? Mr William Himself. W. H.: who am I? --I mean, for Willie Hughes, Mr Best said, amending his gloss easily. Of course it's all paradox, don't you know, Hughes and hews and hues, the colour, but it's so typical the way he works it out. It's the very essence of Wilde, don't you know. The light touch. His glance touched their faces lightly as he smiled, a blond ephebe. Tame essence of Wilde. You're darned witty. Three drams of usquebaugh you drank with Dan Deasy's ducats. How much did I spend? O, a few shillings. For a plump of pressmen. Humour wet and dry. Wit. You would give your five wits for youth's proud livery he pranks in. Lineaments of gratified desire. There be many mo. Take her for me. In pairing time. Jove, a cool ruttime send them. Yea, turtledove her. Eve. Naked wheatbellied sin. A snake coils her, fang in's kiss. --Do you think it is only a paradox? the quaker librarian was asking. The mocker is never taken seriously when he is most serious. They talked seriously of mocker's seriousness. Buck Mulligan's again heavy face eyed Stephen awhile. Then, his head wagging, he came near, drew a folded telegram from his pocket. His mobile lips read, smiling with new delight. --Telegram! he said. Wonderful inspiration! Telegram! A papal bull! He sat on a corner of the unlit desk, reading aloud joyfully: --The sentimentalist is he who would enjoy without incurring the immense debtorship for a thing done. Signed: Dedalus. Where did you launch it from? The kips? No. College Green. Have you drunk the four quid? The aunt is going to call on your unsubstantial father. Telegram! Malachi Mulligan, The Ship, lower Abbey street. O, you peerless mummer! O, you priestified Kinchite! Joyfully he thrust message and envelope into a pocket but keened in a querulous brogue: --It's what I'm telling you, mister honey, it's queer and sick we were, Haines and myself, the time himself brought it in. 'Twas murmur we did for a gallus potion would rouse a friar, I'm thinking, and he limp with leching. And we one hour and two hours and three hours in Connery's sitting civil waiting for pints apiece. He wailed: --And we to be there, mavrone, and you to be unbeknownst sending us your conglomerations the way we to have our tongues out a yard long like the drouthy clerics do be fainting for a pussful. Stephen laughed. Quickly, warningfully Buck Mulligan bent down. --The tramper Synge is looking for you, he said, to murder you. He heard you pissed on his halldoor in Glasthule. He's out in pampooties to murder you. --Me! Stephen exclaimed. That was your contribution to literature. Buck Mulligan gleefully bent back, laughing to the dark eavesdropping ceiling. --Murder you! he laughed. Harsh gargoyle face that warred against me over our mess of hash of lights in rue Saint Andre des Arts. In words of words for words, palabras. Oisin with Patrick. Faunman he met in Clamart woods, brandishing a winebottle. C'est vendredi saint! Murthering Irish. His image, wandering, he met. I mine. I met a fool i'the forest. --Mr Lyster, an attendant said from the door ajar. --.....in which everyone can find his own. So Mr Justice Madden in his Diary of Master William Silence has found the hunting terms.... Yes? What is it? --There's a gentleman here, sir, the attendant said, coming forward and offering a card. From the Freeman. He wants to see the files of the Kilkenny People for last year. --Certainly, certainly, certainly. Is the gentleman......? He took the eager card, glanced, not saw, laid down unglanced, looked, asked, creaked, asked: --Is he......? O, there! Brisk in a galliard he was off, out. In the daylit corridor he talked with voluble pains of zeal, in duty bound, most fair, most kind, most honest broadbrim. --This gentleman? Freeman's Journal? Kilkenny People? To be sure. Good day, sir. Kilkenny.... We have certainly.... A patient silhouette waited, listening. --All the leading provincial.... Northern Whig, Cork Examiner, Enniscorthy Guardian. Last year. 1903.... Will you please... Evans, conduct this gentleman... If you just follow the atten.... Or, please allow me.... This way... Please, sir.... Voluble, dutiful, he led the way to all the provincial papers, a bowing dark figure following his hasty heels. The door closed. --The sheeny! Buck Mulligan cried. He jumped up and snatched the card. --What's his name? Ikey Moses? Bloom. He rattled on: --Jehovah, collector of prepuces, is no more. I found him over in the museum where I went to hail the foamborn Aphrodite. The Greek mouth that has never been twisted in prayer. Every day we must do homage to her. Life of life, thy lips enkindle. Suddenly he turned to Stephen: --He knows you. He knows your old fellow. O, I fear me, he is Greeker than the Greeks. His pale Galilean eyes were upon her mesial groove. Venus Kallipyge. O, the thunder of those loins! The god pursuing the maiden hid. --We want to hear more, John Eglinton decided with Mr Best's approval. We begin to be interested in Mrs S. Till now we had thought of her, if at all, as a patient Griselda, a Penelope stay-at-home. --Antisthenes, pupil of Gorgias, Stephen said, took the palm of beauty from Kyrios Menelaus' brooddam, Argive Helen, the wooden mare of Troy in whom a score of heroes slept, and handed it to poor Penelope. Twenty years he lived in London and, during part of that time, he drew a salary equal to that of the lord chancellor of Ireland. His life was rich. His art, more than the art of feudalism as Walt Whitman called it, is the art of surfeit. Hot herringpies, green mugs of sack, honeysauces, sugar of roses, marchpane, gooseberried pigeons, ringocandies. Sir Walter Raleigh, when they arrested him, had half a million francs on his back including a pair of fancy stays. The gombeenwoman Eliza Tudor had underlinen enough to vie with her of Sheba. Twenty years he dallied there between conjugial love and its chaste delights and scortatory love and its foul pleasures. You know Manningham's story of the burgher's wife who bade Dick Burbage to her bed after she had seen him in Richard III and how Shakespeare, overhearing, without more ado about nothing, took the cow by the horns and, when Burbage came knocking at the gate, answered from the capon's blankets: William the conqueror came before Richard III. And the gay lakin, mistress Fitton, mount and cry O, and his dainty birdsnies, lady Penelope Rich, a clean quality woman is suited for a player, and the punks of the bankside, a penny a time. Cours la Reine. Encore vingt sous. Nous ferons de petites cochonneries. Minette? Tu veux? --The height of fine society. And sir William Davenant of oxford's mother with her cup of canary for any cockcanary. Buck Mulligan, his pious eyes upturned, prayed: --Blessed Margaret Mary Anycock! --And Harry of six wives' daughter. And other lady friends from neighbour seats as Lawn Tennyson, gentleman poet, sings. But all those twenty years what do you suppose poor Penelope in Stratford was doing behind the diamond panes? Do and do. Thing done. In a rosery of Fetter lane of Gerard, herbalist, he walks, greyedauburn. An azured harebell like her veins. Lids of Juno's eyes, violets. He walks. One life is all. One body. Do. But do. Afar, in a reek of lust and squalor, hands are laid on whiteness. Buck Mulligan rapped John Eglinton's desk sharply. --Whom do you suspect? he challenged. --Say that he is the spurned lover in the sonnets. Once spurned twice spurned. But the court wanton spurned him for a lord, his dearmylove. Love that dare not speak its name. --As an Englishman, you mean, John sturdy Eglinton put in, he loved a lord. Old wall where sudden lizards flash. At Charenton I watched them. --It seems so, Stephen said, when he wants to do for him, and for all other and singular uneared wombs, the holy office an ostler does for the stallion. Maybe, like Socrates, he had a midwife to mother as he had a shrew to wife. But she, the giglot wanton, did not break a bedvow. Two deeds are rank in that ghost's mind: a broken vow and the dullbrained yokel on whom her favour has declined, deceased husband's brother. Sweet Ann, I take it, was hot in the blood. Once a wooer, twice a wooer. Stephen turned boldly in his chair. --The burden of proof is with you not with me, he said frowning. If you deny that in the fifth scene of Hamlet he has branded her with infamy tell me why there is no mention of her during the thirtyfour years between the day she married him and the day she buried him. All those women saw their men down and under: Mary, her goodman John, Ann, her poor dear Willun, when he went and died on her, raging that he was the first to go, Joan, her four brothers, Judith, her husband and all her sons, Susan, her husband too, while Susan's daughter, Elizabeth, to use granddaddy's words, wed her second, having killed her first. O, yes, mention there is. In the years when he was living richly in royal London to pay a debt she had to borrow forty shillings from her father's shepherd. Explain you then. Explain the swansong too wherein he has commended her to posterity. He faced their silence. To whom thus Eglinton: You mean the will. But that has been explained, I believe, by jurists. She was entitled to her widow's dower At common law. His legal knowledge was great Our judges tell us. Him Satan fleers, Mocker: And therefore he left out her name From the first draft but he did not leave out The presents for his granddaughter, for his daughters, For his sister, for his old cronies in Stratford And in London. And therefore when he was urged, As I believe, to name her He left her his Secondbest Bed. Punkt. Leftherhis Secondbest Leftherhis Bestabed Secabest Leftabed.Woa! --Pretty countryfolk had few chattels then, John Eglinton observed, as they have still if our peasant plays are true to type. --He was a rich country gentleman, Stephen said, with a coat of arms and landed estate at Stratford and a house in Ireland yard, a capitalist shareholder, a bill promoter, a tithefarmer. Why did he not leave her his best bed if he wished her to snore away the rest of her nights in peace? --It is clear that there were two beds, a best and a secondbest, Mr Secondbest Best said finely. --Separatio a mensa et a thalamo, bettered Buck Mulligan and was smiled on. --Antiquity mentions famous beds, Second Eglinton puckered, bedsmiling. Let me think. --Antiquity mentions that Stagyrite schoolurchin and bald heathen sage, Stephen said, who when dying in exile frees and endows his slaves, pays tribute to his elders, wills to be laid in earth near the bones of his dead wife and bids his friends be kind to an old mistress (don't forget Nell Gwynn Herpyllis) and let her live in his villa. --Do you mean he died so? Mr Best asked with slight concern. I mean .... --He died dead drunk, Buck Mulligan capped. A quart of ale is a dish for a king. O, I must tell you what Dowden said! --What? asked Besteglinton. William Shakespeare and company, limited. The people's William. For terms apply: E. Dowden, Highfield house .... --Lovely! Buck Mulligan suspired amorously. I asked him what he thought of the charge of pederasty brought against the bard. He lifted his hands and said: All we can say is that life ran very high in those days. Lovely! Catamite. --The sense of beauty leads us astray, said beautifulinsadness Best to ugling Eglinton. Steadfast John replied severe: --The doctor can tell us what those words mean. You cannot eat your cake and have it. Sayest thou so? Will they wrest from us, from me, the palm of beauty? --And the sense of property, Stephen said. He drew Shylock out of his own long pocket. The son of a maltjobber and moneylender he was himself a cornjobber and moneylender, with ten tods of corn hoarded in the famine riots. His borrowers are no doubt those divers of worship mentioned by Chettle Falstaff who reported his uprightness of dealing. He sued a fellowplayer for the price of a few bags of malt and exacted his pound of flesh in interest for every money lent. How else could Aubrey's ostler and callboy get rich quick? All events brought grist to his mill. Shylock chimes with the jewbaiting that followed the hanging and quartering of the queen's leech Lopez, his jew's heart being plucked forth while the sheeny was yet alive: Hamlet and Macbeth with the coming to the throne of a Scotch philosophaster with a turn for witchroasting. The lost armada is his jeer in Love's Labour Lost. His pageants, the histories, sail fullbellied on a tide of Mafeking enthusiasm. Warwickshire jesuits are tried and we have a porter's theory of equivocation. The Sea Venture comes home from Bermudas and the play Renan admired is written with Patsy Caliban, our American cousin. The sugared sonnets follow Sidney's. As for fay Elizabeth, otherwise carrotty Bess, the gross virgin who inspired the Merry Wives of Windsor, let some meinherr from Almany grope his life long for deephid meanings in the depths of the buckbasket. I think you're getting on very nicely. Just mix up a mixture of theolologicophilolological. Mingo, minxi, mictum, mingere. --Prove that he was a jew, John Eglinton dared,'expectantly. Your dean of studies holds he was a holy Roman. Sufflaminandus sum. --He was made in Germany, Stephen replied, as the champion French polisher of Italian scandals. --A myriadminded man, Mr Best reminded. Coleridge called him myriadminded. Amplius. In societate humana hoe est maxime necessarium ut sit amicitia inter multos. --Saint Thomas, Stephen began --Ora pro nobis, Monk Mulligan groaned, sinking to a chair. There he keened a wailing rune: --Pogue mahone! Acushla machree! It's destroyed we are from this day! It's destroyed we are surely! All smiled their smiles. --Saint Thomas, Stephen smiling said, whose gorbellied works I enjoy reading in the original, writing of incest from a standpoint different from that of the new Viennese school Mr Magee spoke of, likens it in his wise and curious way to an avarice of the emotions. He means that the love so given to one near in blood is covetously withheld from some stranger who, it may be, hungers for it. Jews, whom christians tax with avarice, are of all races the most given to intermarriage. Accusations are made in anger. The christian laws which built up the hoards of the jews (for whom, as for the lollards, storm was shelter) bound their affections too with hoops of steel. Whether these be sins or virtues old Nobodaddy will tell us at doomsday leet. But a man who holds so tightly to what he calls his rights over what he calls his debts will hold tightly also to what he calls his rights over her whom he calls his wife. No sir smile neighbour shall covet his ox or his wife or his manservant or his maidservant or his jackass. --Or his jennyass, Buck Mulligan antiphoned. --Gentle Will is being roughly handled, gentle Mr Best said gently. --Which will? gagged sweetly Buck Mulligan. We are getting mixed. --The will to live, John Eglinton philosophised, for poor Ann, Will's widow, is the will to die. --Requiescat! Stephen prayed.
What of all the will to do?
It has vanished long ago ...
--She lies laid out in stark stiffness in that secondbest bed, the mobled
queen, even though you prove that a bed in those days was as rare as a
motorcar is now and that its carvings were the wonder of seven parishes. In
old age she takes up with gospellers (one stayed with her at New Place and
drank a quart of sack the town council paid for but in which bed he slept it
skills not to ask) and heard she had a soul. She read or had read to her his
chapbooks preferring them to the Merry Wives and, loosing her nightly
waters on the jordan, she thought over Hooks and Eyes for Believers'
Breeches and The Most Spiritual Snuffbox to Make the Most Devout Souls
Sneeze. Venus has twisted her lips in prayer. Agenbite of inwit: remorse of
conscience. It is an age of exhausted whoredom groping for its god.
--History shows that to be true, inquit Eglintonus Chronolologos. The ages
succeed one another. But we have it on high authority that a man's worst
enemies shall be those of his own house and family. I feel that Russell is
right. What do we care for his wife or father? I should say that only family
poets have family lives. Falstaff was not a family man. I feel that the fat
knight is his supreme creation.
Lean, he lay back. Shy, deny thy kindred, the unco guid. Shy, supping
with the godless, he sneaks the cup. A sire in Ultonian Antrim bade it him.
Visits him here on quarter days. Mr Magee, sir, there's a gentleman to see
you. Me? Says he's your father, sir. Give me my Wordsworth. Enter Magee
Mor Matthew, a rugged rough rugheaded kern, in strossers with a buttoned
codpiece, his nether stocks bemired with clauber of ten forests, a wand of
wilding in his hand.
Your own? He knows your old fellow. The widower.
Hurrying to her squalid deathlair from gay Paris on the quayside I
touched his hand. The voice, new warmth, speaking. Dr Bob Kenny is
attending her. The eyes that wish me well. But do not know me.
--A father, Stephen said, battling against hopelessness, is a necessary evil.
He wrote the play in the months that followed his father's death. If you
hold that he, a greying man with two marriageable daughters, with
thirtyfive years of life, nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, with fifty of
experience, is the beardless undergraduate from Wittenberg then you must
hold that his seventyyear old mother is the lustful queen. No. The corpse of
John Shakespeare does not walk the night. From hour to hour it rots and
rots. He rests, disarmed of fatherhood, having devised that mystical estate
upon his son. Boccaccio's Calandrino was the first and last man who felt
himself with child. Fatherhood, in the sense of conscious begetting, is
unknown to man. It is a mystical estate, an apostolic succession, from only
begetter to only begotten. On that mystery and not on the madonna which
the cunning Italian intellect flung to the mob of Europe the church is
founded and founded irremovably because founded, like the world, macro
and microcosm, upon the void. Upon incertitude, upon unlikelihood. Amor
matris, subjective and objective genitive, may be the only true thing in life.
Paternity may be a legal fiction. Who is the father of any son that any son
should love him or he any son?
What the hell are you driving at?
I know. Shut up. Blast you. I have reasons.
Amplius. Adhuc. Iterum. Postea.
Are you condemned to do this?
--They are sundered by a bodily shame so steadfast that the criminal annals
of the world, stained with all other incests and bestialities, hardly record its
breach. Sons with mothers, sires with daughters, lesbic sisters, loves that
dare not speak their name, nephews with grandmothers, jailbirds with
keyholes, queens with prize bulls. The son unborn mars beauty: born, he
brings pain, divides affection, increases care. He is a new male: his growth
is his father's decline, his youth his father's envy, his friend his father's
enemy.
In rue Monsieur le Prince I thought it.
--What links them in nature? An instant of blind rut.
Am I a father? If I were? Shrunken uncertain hand.
--Sabellius,the African,subtlest heresiarch of all the beasts of the field, held
that the Father was Himself His Own Son. The bulldog of Aquin, with
whom no word shall be impossible, refutes him. Well: if the father who has
not a son be not a father can the son who has not a father be a son? When
Rutlandbaconsouthamptonshakespeare or another poet of the same name
in the comedy of errors wrote Hamlet he was not the father of his own son
merely but, being no more a son, he was and felt himself the father of all his
race, the father of his own grandfather, the father of his unborn grandson
who, by the same token, never was born, for nature, as Mr Magee understands her, abhors perfection.
Eglintoneyes, quick with pleasure, looked up shybrightly. Gladly
glancing, a merry puritan, through the twisted eglantine.
Flatter. Rarely. But flatter.
--Himself his own father, Sonmulligan told himself. Wait. I am big with
child. I have an unborn child in my brain. Pallas Athena! A play! The
play's the thing! Let me parturiate!
He clasped his paunchbrow with both birthaiding hands.
--As for his family, Stephen said, his mother's name lives in the forest of
Arden. Her death brought from him the scene with Volumnia in
Coriolanus. His boyson's death is the deathscene of young Arthur in King
John. Hamlet, the black prince, is Hamnet Shakespeare. Who the girls in
The Tempest, in Pericles, in Winter's Tale are we know. Who Cleopatra,
fleshpot of Egypt, and Cressid and Venus are we may guess. But there is
another member of his family who is recorded.
--The plot thickens, John Eglinton said.
The quaker librarian, quaking, tiptoed in, quake, his mask, quake,
with haste, quake, quack.
Door closed. Cell. Day.
They list. Three. They. I you he they.
Come, mess.
STEPHEN
He had three brothers, Gilbert, Edmund, Richard. Gilbert in his old age
told some cavaliers he got a pass for nowt from Maister Gatherer one time
mass he did and he seen his brud Maister Wull the playwriter up in Lunnon
in a wrastling play wud a man on's back. The playhouse sausage filled
Gilbert's soul. He is nowhere: but an Edmund and a Richard are recorded
in the works of sweet William.
MAGEEGLINJOHN
Names! What's in a name?
BEST
That is my name, Richard, don't you know. I hope you are going to say a
good word for Richard, don't you know, for my sake.
(laughter)
BUCKMULLIGAN
(piano, diminuendo)
Then outspoke medical Dick
To his comrade medical Davy ...
STEPHEN
In his trinity of black Wills, the villain shakebags, Iago, Richard
Crookback, Edmund in King Lear, two bear the wicked uncles' names.
Nay, that last play was written or being written while his brother Edmund
lay dying in Southwark.
BEST
I hope Edmund is going to catch it. I don't want Richard, my name.....
(laughter)
QUAKERLYSTER
(a tempo) But he that filches from me my good name .....
STEPHEN
(stringendo) He has hidden his own name, a fair name, William, in the
plays, a super here, a clown there, as a painter of old Italy set his face in a
dark corner of his canvas. He has revealed it in the sonnets where there is
Will in overplus. Like John o'Gaunt his name is dear to him, as dear as the
coat and crest he toadied for, on a bend sable a spear or steeled argent,
honorificabilitudinitatibus, dearer than his glory of greatest shakescene in
the country. What's in a name? That is what we ask ourselves in childhood
when we write the name that we are told is ours. A star, a daystar, a
firedrake, rose at his birth. It shone by day in the heavens alone, brighter
than Venus in the night, and by night it shone over delta in Cassiopeia, the
recumbent constellation which is the signature of his initial among the stars.
His eyes watched it, lowlying on the horizon, eastward of the bear, as he
walked by the slumberous summer fields at midnight returning from
Shottery and from her arms.
Both satisfied. I too.
Don't tell them he was nine years old when it was quenched.
And from her arms.
Wait to be wooed and won. Ay, meacock. Who will woo you?
Read the skies. Autontimorumenos. Bous Stephanoumenos. Where's
your configuration? Stephen, Stephen, cut the bread even. S. D: sua donna.
Gia: di lui. Gelindo risolve di non amare S. D.
--What is that, Mr Dedalus? the quaker librarian asked. Was it a celestial
phenomenon?
--A star by night, Stephen said. A pillar of the cloud by day.
What more's to speak?
Stephen looked on his hat, his stick, his boots.
Stephanos, my crown. My sword. His boots are spoiling the shape of
my feet. Buy a pair. Holes in my socks. Handkerchief too.
--You make good use of the name, John Eglinton allowed. Your own name
is strange enough. I suppose it explains your fantastical humour.
Me, Magee and Mulligan.
Fabulous artificer. The hawklike man. You flew. Whereto?
Newhaven-Dieppe, steerage passenger. Paris and back. Lapwing. Icarus.
Pater, ait. Seabedabbled, fallen, weltering. Lapwing you are. Lapwing be.
Mr Best eagerquietly lifted his book to say:
--That's very interesting because that brother motive, don't you know, we
find also in the old Irish myths. Just what you say. The three brothers
Shakespeare. In Grimm too, don't you know, the fairytales. The third
brother that always marries the sleeping beauty and wins the best prize.
Best of Best brothers. Good, better, best.
The quaker librarian springhalted near.
--I should like to know, he said, which brother you I understand you to
suggest there was misconduct with one of the brothers But perhaps I am
anticipating?
He caught himself in the act: looked at all: refrained.
An attendant from the doorway called:
--Mr Lyster! Father Dineen wants ...
--O, Father Dineen! Directly.
Swiftly rectly creaking rectly rectly he was rectly gone.
John Eglinton touched the foil.
--Come, he said. Let us hear what you have to say of Richard and
Edmund. You kept them for the last, didn't you?
--In asking you to remember those two noble kinsmen nuncle Richie and
nuncle Edmund, Stephen answered, I feel I am asking too much perhaps. A
brother is as easily forgotten as an umbrella.
Lapwing.
Where is your brother? Apothecaries' hall. My whetstone. Him, then
Cranly, Mulligan: now these. Speech, speech. But act. Act speech. They
mock to try you. Act. Be acted on.
Lapwing.
I am tired of my voice, the voice of Esau. My kingdom for a drink.
On.
--You will say those names were already in the chronicles from which he
took the stuff of his plays. Why did he take them rather than others?
Richard, a whoreson crookback, misbegotten, makes love to a widowed
Ann (what's in a name?), woos and wins her, a whoreson merry widow.
Richard the conqueror, third brother, came after William the conquered.
The other four acts of that play hang limply from that first. Of all his kings
Richard is the only king unshielded by Shakespeare's reverence, the angel
of the world. Why is the underplot of King Lear in which Edmund figures
lifted out of Sidney's Arcadia and spatchcocked on to a Celtic legend older
than history?
--That was Will's way, John Eglinton defended. We should not now
combine a Norse saga with an excerpt from a novel by George Meredith.
Que voulez-vous? Moore would say. He puts Bohemia on the seacoast and
makes Ulysses quote Aristotle.
--Why? Stephen answered himself. Because the theme of the false or the
usurping or the adulterous brother or all three in one is to Shakespeare,
what the poor are not, always with him. The note of banishment,
banishment from the heart, banishment from home, sounds uninterruptedly
from The Two Gentlemen of Verona onward till Prospero breaks his staff,
buries it certain fathoms in the earth and drowns his book. It doubles itself
in the middle of his life, reflects itself in another, repeats itself, protasis,
epitasis, catastasis, catastrophe. It repeats itself again when he is near the
grave, when his married daughter Susan, chip of the old block, is accused
of adultery. But it was the original sin that darkened his understanding,
weakened his will and left in him a strong inclination to evil. The words are
those of my lords bishops of Maynooth. An original sin and, like original
sin, committed by another in whose sin he too has sinned. It is between the
lines of his last written words, it is petrified on his tombstone under which
her four bones are not to be laid. Age has not withered it. Beauty and peace
have not done it away. It is in infinite variety everywhere in the world he
has created, in Much Ado about Nothing, twice in As You Like It, in The
Tempest, in Hamlet, in Measure for Measure - and in all the other plays
which I have not read.
He laughed to free his mind from his mind's bondage.
Judge Eglinton summed up.
--The truth is midway, he affirmed. He is the ghost and the prince. He is all
in all.
--He is, Stephen said. The boy of act one is the mature man of act five. All
in all. In Cymbeline, in Othello he is bawd and cuckold. He acts and is
acted on. Lover of an ideal or a perversion, like Jose he kills the real
Carmen. His unremitting intellect is the hornmad Iago ceaselessly willing
that the moor in him shall suffer.
--Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuck Mulligan clucked lewdly. O word of fear!
Dark dome received, reverbed.
--And what a character is Iago! undaunted John Eglinton exclaimed.
When all is said Dumas Fils (or is it Dumas pSre?) is right. After God
Shakespeare has created most.
--Man delights him not nor woman neither, Stephen said. He returns after a life of absence to that spot of earth where he was born, where he has
always been, man and boy, a silent witness and there, his journey of life
ended, he plants his mulberrytree in the earth. Then dies. The motion is
ended. Gravediggers bury Hamlet pSre and Hamlet fils. A king and a
prince at last in death, with incidental music. And, what though murdered
and betrayed, bewept by all frail tender hearts for, Dane or Dubliner,
sorrow for the dead is the only husband from whom they refuse to be
divorced. If you like the epilogue look long on it: prosperous Prospero, the
good man rewarded, Lizzie, grandpa's lump of love, and nuncle Richie, the
bad man taken off by poetic justice to the place where the bad niggers go.
Strong curtain. He found in the world without as actual what was in his
world within as possible. Maeterlinck says: If Socrates leave his house today
he will find the sage seated on his doorstep. If Judas go forth tonight it is to
Judas his steps will tend. Every life is many days, day after day. We walk
through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men,
wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves. The
playwright who wrote the folio of this world and wrote it badly (He gave us
light first and the sun two days later), the lord of things as they are whom
the most Roman of catholics call dio boia, hangman god, is doubtless all in
all in all of us, ostler and butcher, and would be bawd and cuckold too but that in the economy of heaven, foretold by Hamlet, there are no more
marriages, glorified man, an androgynous angel, being a wife unto himself.
--Eureka! Buck Mulligan cried. Eureka!
Suddenly happied he jumped up and reached in a stride John
Eglinton's desk.
--May I? he said. The Lord has spoken to Malachi.
He began to scribble on a slip of paper.
Take some slips from the counter going out.
--Those who are married, Mr Best, douce herald, said, all save one, shall
live. The rest shall keep as they are.
He laughed, unmarried, at Eglinton Johannes, of arts a bachelor.
Unwed, unfancied, ware of wiles, they fingerponder nightly each his
variorum edition of The Taming of the Shrew.
--You are a delusion, said roundly John Eglinton to Stephen. You have
brought us all this way to show us a French triangle. Do you believe your
own theory?
--No, Stephen said promptly.
--Are you going to write it? Mr Best asked. You ought to make it a
dialogue, don't you know, like the Platonic dialogues Wilde wrote.
John Eclecticon doubly smiled.
--Well, in that case, he said, I don't see why you should expect payment for
it since you don't believe it yourself. Dowden believes there is some mystery
in Hamlet but will say no more. Herr Bleibtreu, the man Piper met in
Berlin, who is working up that Rutland theory, believes that the secret is
hidden in the Stratford monument. He is going to visit the present duke,
Piper says, and prove to him that his ancestor wrote the plays. It will come
as a surprise to his grace. But he believes his theory.
I believe, O Lord, help my unbelief. That is, help me to believe or help
me to unbelieve? Who helps to believe? Egomen. Who to unbelieve? Other
chap.
--You are the only contributor to Dana who asks for pieces of silver. Then
I don't know about the next number. Fred Ryan wants space for an article
on economics.
Fraidrine. Two pieces of silver he lent me. Tide you over. Economics.
--For a guinea, Stephen said, you can publish this interview.
Buck Mulligan stood up from his laughing scribbling, laughing: and
then gravely said, honeying malice:
--I called upon the bard Kinch at his summer residence in upper
Mecklenburgh street and found him deep in the study of the Summa contra
Gentiles in the company of two gonorrheal ladies, Fresh Nelly and Rosalie,
the coalquay whore.
He broke away.
--Come, Kinch. Come, wandering Aengus of the birds.
Come, Kinch. You have eaten all we left. Ay. I will serve you your orts
and offals.
Stephen rose.
Life is many days. This will end.
--We shall see you tonight, John Eglinton said. Notre ami Moore says
Malachi Mulligan must be there.
Buck Mulligan flaunted his slip and panama.
--Monsieur Moore, he said, lecturer on French letters to the youth of
Ireland. I'll be there. Come, Kinch, the bards must drink. Can you walk
straight?
Laughing, he....
Swill till eleven. Irish nights entertainment.
Lubber ....
Stephen followed a lubber...
One day in the national library we had a discussion. Shakes. After.
His lub back: I followed. I gall his kibe.
Stephen, greeting, then all amort, followed a lubber jester, a
wellkempt head, newbarbered, out of the vaulted cell into a shattering
daylight of no thought.
What have I learned? Of them? Of me?
Walk like Haines now.
The constant readers' room. In the readers' book Cashel Boyle
O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell parafes his polysyllables. Item: was
Hamlet mad? The quaker's pate godlily with a priesteen in booktalk.
--O please do, sir...I shall be most pleased
Amused Buck Mulligan mused in pleasant murmur with himself,
selfnodding:
--A pleased bottom.
The turnstile.
Is that...? Blueribboned hat...? Idly writing...? What? .... Looked...?
The curving balustrade: smoothsliding Mincius.
Puck Mulligan, panamahelmeted, went step by step, iambing, trolling:
--John Eglinton, my jo, John,
Why won't you wed a wife?
He spluttered to the air:
--O, the chinless Chinaman! Chin Chon Eg Lin Ton. We went over to their
playbox, Haines and I, the plumbers' hall. Our players are creating a new
art for Europe like the Greeks or M. Maeterlinck. Abbey Theatre! I smell
the pubic sweat of monks.
He spat blank.
Forgot: any more than he forgot the whipping lousy Lucy gave him.
And left the femme de trente ans. And why no other children born? And his
first child a girl?
Afterwit. Go back.
The dour recluse still there (he has his cake) and the douce youngling,
minion of pleasure, Phedo's toyable fair hair.
Eh ... I just eh .... wanted ... I forgot ... eh ...
--Longworth and M'Curdy Atkinson were there ...
Puck Mulligan footed featly, trilling:
--I hardly hear the purlieu cry Or a Tommy talk as I pass one by Before my thoughts begin to run On F. M'Curdy Atkinson, The same that had the wooden leg And that filibustering filibeg That never dared to slake his drouth, Magee that had the chinless mouth. Being afraid to marry on earth They masturbated for all they were worth.Jest on. Know thyself. Halted, below me, a quizzer looks at me. I halt. --Mournful mummer, Buck Mulligan moaned. Synge has left off wearing black to be like nature. Only crows, priests and English coal are black. A laugh tripped over his lips. --Longworth is awfully sick, he said, after what you wrote about that old hake Gregory. O you inquisitional drunken jewjesuit! She gets you a job on the paper and then you go and slate her drivel to Jaysus. Couldn't you do the Yeats touch? He went on and down, mopping, chanting with waving graceful arms: --The most beautiful book that has come out of our country in my time. One thinks of Homer. He stopped at the stairfoot. --I have conceived a play for the mummers, he said solemnly. The pillared Moorish hall, shadows entwined. Gone the nine men's morrice with caps of indices. In sweetly varying voices Buck Mulligan read his tablet:
--Everyman His Own Wife
or
A Honeymoon in the Hand
(a national immorality in three orgasms)
by
Ballocky Mulligan
He turned a happy patch's smirk to Stephen, saying:
--The disguise, I fear, is thin. But listen.
He read, marcato:
--Characters: TODY TOSTOFF (a ruined Pole) CRAB (a bushranger) MEDICAL DICK and (two birds with one stone) MEDICAL DAVY MOTHER GROGAN (a watercarrier) FRESH NELLY and ROSALIE (the coalquay whore).He laughed, lolling a to and fro head, walking on, followed by Stephen: and mirthfully he told the shadows, souls of men: --O, the night in the Camden hall when the daughters of Erin had to lift their skirts to step over you as you lay in your mulberrycoloured, multicoloured, multitudinous vomit! --The most innocent son of Erin, Stephen said, for whom they ever lifted them. About to pass through the doorway, feeling one behind, he stood aside. Part. The moment is now. Where then? If Socrates leave his house today, if Judas go forth tonight. Why? That lies in space which I in time must come to, ineluctably. My will: his will that fronts me. Seas between. A man passed out between them, bowing, greeting. --Good day again, Buck Mulligan said. The portico. Here I watched the birds for augury. Aengus of the birds. They go, they come. Last night I flew. Easily flew. Men wondered. Street of harlots after. A creamfruit melon he held to me. In. You will see. --The wandering jew, Buck Mulligan whispered with clown's awe. Did you see his eye? He looked upon you to lust after you. I fear thee, ancient mariner. O, Kinch, thou art in peril. Get thee a breechpad. Manner of Oxenford. Day. Wheelbarrow sun over arch of bridge. A dark back went before them, step of a pard, down, out by the gateway, under portcullis barbs. They followed. Offend me still. Speak on. Kind air defined the coigns of houses in Kildare street. No birds. Frail from the housetops two plumes of smoke ascended, pluming, and in a flaw of softness softly were blown. Cease to strive. Peace of the druid priests of Cymbeline: hierophantic: from wide earth an altar.
Laud we the gods
And let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils
From our bless'd altars.
At the siege of Ross did my father fall.
A cavalcade in easy trot along Pembroke quay passed, outriders
leaping, leaping in their, in their saddles. Frockcoats. Cream sunshades.
Mr Kernan hurried forward, blowing pursily.
His Excellency! Too bad! Just missed that by a hair. Damn it! What a
pity!
* * *
Stephen Dedalus watched through the webbed window the lapidary's
fingers prove a timedulled chain. Dust webbed the window and the
showtrays. Dust darkened the toiling fingers with their vulture nails. Dust
slept on dull coils of bronze and silver, lozenges of cinnabar, on rubies,
leprous and winedark stones.
Born all in the dark wormy earth, cold specks of fire, evil, lights
shining in the darkness. Where fallen archangels flung the stars of their
brows. Muddy swinesnouts, hands, root and root, gripe and wrest them.
She dances in a foul gloom where gum bums with garlic. A
sailorman, rustbearded, sips from a beaker rum and eyes her. A long and
seafed silent rut. She dances, capers, wagging her sowish haunches and her
hips, on her gross belly flapping a ruby egg.
Old Russell with a smeared shammy rag burnished again his gem,
turned it and held it at the point of his Moses' beard. Grandfather ape
gloating on a stolen hoard.
And you who wrest old images from the burial earth? The brainsick
words of sophists: Antisthenes. A lore of drugs. Orient and immortal wheat
standing from everlasting to everlasting.
Two old women fresh from their whiff of the briny trudged through
Irishtown along London bridge road, one with a sanded tired umbrella, one
with a midwife's bag in which eleven cockles rolled.
The whirr of flapping leathern bands and hum of dynamos from the
powerhouse urged Stephen to be on. Beingless beings. Stop! Throb always
without you and the throb always within. Your heart you sing of. I between
them. Where? Between two roaring worlds where they swirl, I. Shatter
them, one and both. But stun myself too in the blow. Shatter me you who
can. Bawd and butcher were the words. I say! Not yet awhile. A look
around.
Yes, quite true. Very large and wonderful and keeps famous time. You
say right, sir. A Monday morning. 'Twas so, indeed.
Stephen went down Bedford row, the handle of the ash clacking
against his shoulderblade. In Clohissey's window a faded 186O print of
Heenan boxing Sayers held his eye. Staring backers with square hats stood
round the roped prizering. The heavyweights in tight loincloths proposed
gently each to other his bulbous fists. And they are throbbing: heroes'
hearts.
He turned and halted by the slanted bookcart.
--Twopence each, the huckster said. Four for sixpence.
Tattered pages. The Irish Beekeeper. Life and Miracles of the Cure' of
Ars. Pocket Guide to Killarney.
I might find here one of my pawned schoolprizes. Stephano Dedalo,
alumno optimo, palmam ferenti.
Father Conmee, having read his little hours, walked through the
hamlet of Donnycarney, murmuring vespers.
Binding too good probably. What is this? Eighth and ninth book of
Moses. Secret of all secrets. Seal of King David. Thumbed pages: read and
read. Who has passed here before me? How to soften chapped hands.
Recipe for white wine vinegar. How to win a woman's love. For me this.
Say the following talisman three times with hands folded:
--Se el yilo nebrakada femininum! Amor me solo! Sanktus! Amen.
Who wrote this? Charms and invocations of the most blessed abbot
Peter Salanka to all true believers divulged. As good as any other abbot's
charms, as mumbling Joachim's. Down, baldynoddle, or we'll wool your
wool.
--What are you doing here, Stephen?
Dilly's high shoulders and shabby dress.
Shut the book quick. Don't let see.
--What are you doing? Stephen said.
A Stuart face of nonesuch Charles, lank locks falling at its sides. It
glowed as she crouched feeding the fire with broken boots. I told her of
Paris. Late lieabed under a quilt of old overcoats, fingering a pinchbeck
bracelet, Dan Kelly's token. Nebrakada femininum.
--What have you there? Stephen asked.
--I bought it from the other cart for a penny, Dilly said, laughing
nervously. Is it any good?
My eyes they say she has. Do others see me so? Quick, far and
daring. Shadow of my mind.
He took the coverless book from her hand. Chardenal's French
primer.
--What did you buy that for? he asked. To learn French?
She nodded, reddening and closing tight her lips.
Show no surprise. Quite natural.
--Here, Stephen said. It's all right. Mind Maggy doesn't pawn it on you. I
suppose all my books are gone.
--Some, Dilly said. We had to.
She is drowning. Agenbite. Save her. Agenbite. All against us. She will
drown me with her, eyes and hair. Lank coils of seaweed hair around me,
my heart, my soul. Salt green death.
We.
Agenbite of inwit. Inwit's agenbite.
Misery! Misery!
* * *
--Hello, Simon, Father Cowley said. How are things?
--Hello, Bob, old man, Mr Dedalus answered, stopping.
They clasped hands loudly outside Reddy and Daughter's. Father
Cowley brushed his moustache often downward with a scooping hand.
--What's the best news? Mr Dedalus said.
--Why then not much, Father Cowley said. I'm barricaded up, Simon, with
two men prowling around the house trying to effect an entrance.
--Jolly, Mr Dedalus said. Who is it?
--O, Father Cowley said. A certain gombeen man of our acquaintance.
--With a broken back, is it? Mr Dedalus asked.
--The same, Simon, Father Cowley answered. Reuben of that ilk. I'm just
waiting for Ben Dollard. He's going to say a word to long John to get him
to take those two men off. All I want is a little time.
He looked with vague hope up and down the quay, a big apple
bulging in his neck.
--I know, Mr Dedalus said, nodding. Poor old bockedy Ben! He's always
doing a good turn for someone. Hold hard!
He put on his glasses and gazed towards the metal bridge an instant.
--Here he is, by God, he said, arse and pockets.
Ben Dollard's loose blue cutaway and square hat above large slops
crossed the quay in full gait from the metal bridge. He came towards them
at an amble, scratching actively behind his coattails.
As he came near Mr Dedalus greeted:
--Hold that fellow with the bad trousers.
--Hold him now, Ben Dollard said.
Mr Dedalus eyed with cold wandering scorn various points of Ben
Dollard's figure. Then, turning to Father Cowley with a nod, he muttered
sneeringly:
--That's a pretty garment, isn't it, for a summer's day?
--Why, God eternally curse your soul, Ben Dollard growled furiously, I
threw out more clothes in my time than you ever saw.
He stood beside them beaming, on them first and on his roomy
clothes from points of which Mr Dedalus flicked fluff, saying:
--They were made for a man in his health, Ben, anyhow.
--Bad luck to the jewman that made them, Ben Dollard said. Thanks be to
God he's not paid yet.
--And how is that basso profondo, Benjamin? Father Cowley asked.
Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell, murmuring,
glassyeyed, strode past the Kildare street club.
Ben Dollard frowned and, making suddenly a chanter's mouth, gave
forth a deep note.
--Aw! he said.
--That's the style, Mr Dedalus said, nodding to its drone.
--What about that? Ben Dollard said. Not too dusty? What?
He turned to both.
--That'll do, Father Cowley said, nodding also.
The reverend Hugh C. Love walked from the old chapterhouse of
saint Mary's abbey past James and Charles Kennedy's, rectifiers, attended
by Geraldines tall and personable, towards the Tholsel beyond the ford of
hurdles.
Ben Dollard with a heavy list towards the shopfronts led them
forward, his joyful fingers in the air.
--Come along with me to the subsheriff's office, he said. I want to show you
the new beauty Rock has for a bailiff. He's a cross between Lobengula and
Lynchehaun. He's well worth seeing, mind you. Come along. I saw John
Henry Menton casually in the Bodega just now and it will cost me a fall if I
don't ... Wait awhile ..... We're on the right lay, Bob, believe you me.
--For a few days tell him, Father Cowley said anxiously.
Ben Dollard halted and stared, his loud orifice open, a dangling
button of his coat wagging brightbacked from its thread as he wiped away
the heavy shraums that clogged his eyes to hear aright.
--What few days? he boomed. Hasn't your landlord distrained for rent?
--He has, Father Cowley said.
--Then our friend's writ is not worth the paper it's printed on, Ben Dollard
said. The landlord has the prior claim. I gave him all the particulars. 29
Windsor avenue. Love is the name?
--That's right, Father Cowley said. The reverend Mr Love. He's a minister
in the country somewhere. But are you sure of that?
--You can tell Barabbas from me, Ben Dollard said, that he can put that
writ where Jacko put the nuts.
He led Father Cowley boldly forward, linked to his bulk.
--Filberts I believe they were, Mr Dedalus said, as he dropped his glasses on
his coatfront, following them.
* * *
--The youngster will be all right, Martin Cunningham said, as they passed
out of the Castleyard gate.
The policeman touched his forehead.
--God bless you, Martin Cunningham said, cheerily.
He signed to the waiting jarvey who chucked at the reins and set on
towards Lord Edward street.
Bronze by gold, Miss Kennedy's head by Miss Douce's head,
appeared above the crossblind of the Ormond hotel.
--Yes, Martin Cunningham said, fingering his beard. I wrote to Father
Conmee and laid the whole case before him.
--You could try our friend, Mr Power suggested backward.
--Boyd? Martin Cunningham said shortly. Touch me not.
John Wyse Nolan, lagging behind, reading the list, came after them
quickly down Cork hill.
On the steps of the City hall Councillor Nannetti, descending, hailed
Alderman Cowley and Councillor Abraham Lyon ascending.
The castle car wheeled empty into upper Exchange street.
--Look here, Martin, John Wyse Nolan said, overtaking them at the Mail
office. I see Bloom put his name down for five shillings.
--Quite right, Martin Cunningham said, taking the list. And put down the
five shillings too.
--Without a second word either, Mr Power said.
--Strange but true, Martin Cunningham added.
John Wyse Nolan opened wide eyes.
--I'll say there is much kindness in the jew, he quoted, elegantly.
They went down Parliament street.
--There's Jimmy Henry, Mr Power said, just heading for Kavanagh's.
--Righto, Martin Cunningham said. Here goes.
Outside la maison Claire Blazes Boylan waylaid Jack Mooney's
brother-in-law, humpy, tight, making for the liberties.
John Wyse Nolan fell back with Mr Power, while Martin
Cunningham took the elbow of a dapper little man in a shower of hail suit,
who walked uncertainly, with hasty steps past Micky Anderson's watches.
--The assistant town clerk's corns are giving him some trouble, John Wyse
Nolan told Mr Power.
They followed round the corner towards James Kavanagh's
winerooms. The empty castle car fronted them at rest in Essex gate. Martin
Cunningham, speaking always, showed often the list at which Jimmy Henry
did not glance.
--And long John Fanning is here too, John Wyse Nolan said, as large as
life.
The tall form of long John Fanning filled the doorway where he
stood.
--Good day, Mr Subsheriff, Martin Cunningham said, as all halted and
greeted.
Long John Fanning made no way for them. He removed his large
Henry Clay decisively and his large fierce eyes scowled intelligently over all
their faces.
--Are the conscript fathers pursuing their peaceful deliberations? he said
with rich acrid utterance to the assistant town clerk.
Hell open to christians they were having, Jimmy Henry said pettishly,
about their damned Irish language. Where was the marshal, he wanted to
know, to keep order in the council chamber. And old Barlow the
macebearer laid up with asthma, no mace on the table, nothing in order, no
quorum even, and Hutchinson, the lord mayor, in Llandudno and little
Lorcan Sherlock doing locum tenens for him. Damned Irish language,
language of our forefathers.
Long John Fanning blew a plume of smoke from his lips.
Martin Cunningham spoke by turns, twirling the peak of his beard, to
the assistant town clerk and the subsheriff, while John Wyse Nolan held his
peace.
--What Dignam was that? long John Fanning asked.
Jimmy Henry made a grimace and lifted his left foot.
--O, my corns! he said plaintively. Come upstairs for goodness' sake till I
sit down somewhere. Uff! Ooo! Mind!
Testily he made room for himself beside long John Fanning's flank
and passed in and up the stairs.
--Come on up, Martin Cunningham said to the subsheriff. I don't think
you knew him or perhaps you did, though.
With John Wyse Nolan Mr Power followed them in.
--Decent little soul he was, Mr Power said to the stalwart back of long John
Fanning ascending towards long John Fanning in the mirror.
--Rather lowsized. Dignam of Menton's office that was, Martin
Cunningham said.
Long John Fanning could not remember him.
Clatter of horsehoofs sounded from the air.
--What's that? Martin Cunningham said.
All turned where they stood. John Wyse Nolan came down again.
From the cool shadow of the doorway he saw the horses pass Parliament
street, harness and glossy pasterns in sunlight shimmering. Gaily they went
past before his cool unfriendly eyes, not quickly. In saddles of the leaders,
leaping leaders, rode outriders.
--What was it? Martin Cunningham asked, as they went on up the
staircase.
--The lord lieutenantgeneral and general governor of Ireland, John Wyse
Nolan answered from the stairfoot.
* * *
As they trod across the thick carpet Buck Mulligan whispered behind
his Panama to Haines:
--Parnell's brother. There in the corner.
They chose a small table near the window, opposite a longfaced man
whose beard and gaze hung intently down on a chessboard.
--Is that he? Haines asked, twisting round in his seat.
--Yes, Mulligan said. That's John Howard, his brother, our city marshal.
John Howard Parnell translated a white bishop quietly and his grey
claw went up again to his forehead whereat it rested. An instant after, under
its screen, his eyes looked quickly, ghostbright, at his foe and fell once more
upon a working corner.
--I'll take a m’lange, Haines said to the waitress.
--Two m’langes, Buck Mulligan said. And bring us some scones and butter
and some cakes as well.
When she had gone he said, laughing:
--We call it D. B. C. because they have damn bad cakes. O, but you missed
Dedalus on Hamlet.
Haines opened his newbought book.
--I'm sorry, he said. Shakespeare is the happy huntingground of all minds
that have lost their balance.
The onelegged sailor growled at the area of 14 Nelson street:
--England expects .....
Buck Mulligan's primrose waistcoat shook gaily to his laughter.
--You should see him, he said, when his body loses its balance. Wandering
Aengus I call him.
--I am sure he has an id’e fixe, Haines said, pinching his chin thoughtfully
with thumb and forefinger. Now I am speculating what it would be likely to
be. Such persons always have.
Buck Mulligan bent across the table gravely.
--They drove his wits astray, he said, by visions of hell. He will never
capture the Attic note. The note of Swinburne, of all poets, the white death
and the ruddy birth. That is his tragedy. He can never be a poet. The joy of
creation ....
--Eternal punishment, Haines said, nodding curtly. I see. I tackled him this
morning on belief. There was something on his mind, I saw. It's rather
interesting because professor Pokorny of Vienna makes an interesting point
out of that.
Buck Mulligan's watchful eyes saw the waitress come. He helped her to unload her tray.
--He can find no trace of hell in ancient Irish myth, Haines said, amid the
cheerful cups. The moral idea seems lacking, the sense of destiny, of
retribution. Rather strange he should have just that fixed idea. Does he
write anything for your movement?
He sank two lumps of sugar deftly longwise through the whipped
cream. Buck Mulligan slit a steaming scone in two and plastered butter over
its smoking pith. He bit off a soft piece hungrily.
--Ten years, he said, chewing and laughing. He is going to write something
in ten years.
--Seems a long way off, Haines said, thoughtfully lifting his spoon. Still, I
shouldn't wonder if he did after all.
He tasted a spoonful from the creamy cone of his cup.
--This is real Irish cream I take it, he said with forbearance. I don't want to
be imposed on.
Elijah, skiff, light crumpled throwaway, sailed eastward by flanks of
ships and trawlers, amid an archipelago of corks, beyond new Wapping
street past Benson's ferry, and by the threemasted schooner Rosevean from
Bridgwater with bricks.
* * *
Almidano Artifoni walked past Holles street, past Sewell's yard.
Behind him Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell, with
stickumbrelladustcoat dangling, shunned the lamp before Mr Law Smith's
house and, crossing, walked along Merrion square. Distantly behind him a
blind stripling tapped his way by the wall of College park.
Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell walked as far as
Mr Lewis Werner's cheerful windows, then turned and strode back along
Merrion square, his stickumbrelladustcoat dangling.
At the corner of Wilde's house he halted, frowned at Elijah's name
announced on the Metropolitan hall, frowned at the distant pleasance of
duke's lawn. His eyeglass flashed frowning in the sun. With ratsteeth bared
he muttered:
--Coactus volui.
He strode on for Clare street, grinding his fierce word.
As he strode past Mr Bloom's dental windows the sway of his
dustcoat brushed rudely from its angle a slender tapping cane and swept
onwards, having buffeted a thewless body. The blind stripling turned his
sickly face after the striding form.
--God's curse on you, he said sourly, whoever you are! You're blinder nor
I am, you bitch's bastard!
* * *
Opposite Ruggy O'Donohoe's Master Patrick Aloysius Dignam,
pawing the pound and a half of Mangan's, late Fehrenbach's, porksteaks he
had been sent for, went along warm Wicklow street dawdling. It was too
blooming dull sitting in the parlour with Mrs Stoer and Mrs Quigley and
Mrs MacDowell and the blind down and they all at their sniffles and
sipping sups of the superior tawny sherry uncle Barney brought from
Tunney's. And they eating crumbs of the cottage fruitcake, jawing the
whole blooming time and sighing.
After Wicklow lane the window of Madame Doyle, courtdress
milliner, stopped him. He stood looking in at the two puckers stripped to
their pelts and putting up their props. From the sidemirrors two mourning
Masters Dignam gaped silently. Myler Keogh, Dublin's pet lamb, will meet
sergeantmajor Bennett, the Portobello bruiser, for a purse of fifty
sovereigns. Gob, that'd be a good pucking match to see. Myler Keogh,
that's the chap sparring out to him with the green sash. Two bar entrance,
soldiers half price. I could easy do a bunk on ma. Master Dignam on his left
turned as he turned. That's me in mourning. When is it? May the
twentysecond. Sure, the blooming thing is all over. He turned to the right
and on his right Master Dignam turned, his cap awry, his collar sticking up.
Buttoning it down, his chin lifted, he saw the image of Marie Kendall,
charming soubrette, beside the two puckers. One of them mots that do be in
the packets of fags Stoer smokes that his old fellow welted hell out of him
for one time he found out.
Master Dignam got his collar down and dawdled on. The best pucker
going for strength was Fitzsimons. One puck in the wind from that fellow
would knock you into the middle of next week, man. But the best pucker
for science was Jem Corbet before Fitzsimons knocked the stuffings out of
him, dodging and all.
In Grafton street Master Dignam saw a red flower in a toff's mouth
and a swell pair of kicks on him and he listening to what the drunk was
telling him and grinning all the time.
No Sandymount tram.
Master Dignam walked along Nassau street, shifted the porksteaks to
his other hand. His collar sprang up again and he tugged it down. The
blooming stud was too small for the buttonhole of the shirt, blooming end
to it. He met schoolboys with satchels. I'm not going tomorrow either, stay
away till Monday. He met other schoolboys. Do they notice I'm in
mourning? Uncle Barney said he'd get it into the paper tonight. Then
they'll all see it in the paper and read my name printed and pa's name.
His face got all grey instead of being red like it was and there was a
fly walking over it up to his eye. The scrunch that was when they were
screwing the screws into the coffin: and the bumps when they were bringing
it downstairs.
Pa was inside it and ma crying in the parlour and uncle Barney telling
the men how to get it round the bend. A big coffin it was, and high and
heavylooking. How was that? The last night pa was boosed he was standing
on the landing there bawling out for his boots to go out to Tunney's for to
boose more and he looked butty and short in his shirt. Never see him again.
Death, that is. Pa is dead. My father is dead. He told me to be a good son to
ma. I couldn't hear the other things he said but I saw his tongue and his
teeth trying to say it better. Poor pa. That was Mr Dignam, my father. I
hope he's in purgatory now because he went to confession to Father
Conroy on Saturday night.
* * *
William Humble, earl of Dudley, and lady Dudley, accompanied by
lieutenantcolonel Heseltine, drove out after luncheon from the viceregal
lodge. In the following carriage were the honourable Mrs Paget, Miss de
Courcy and the honourable Gerald Ward A. D. C. in attendance.
The cavalcade passed out by the lower gate of Phoenix park saluted
by obsequious policemen and proceeded past Kingsbridge along the
northern quays. The viceroy was most cordially greeted on his way through
the metropolis. At Bloody bridge Mr Thomas Kernan beyond the river
greeted him vainly from afar Between Queen's and Whitworth bridges lord
Dudley's viceregal carriages passed and were unsaluted by Mr Dudley
White, B. L., M. A., who stood on Arran quay outside Mrs M. E. White's,
the pawnbroker's, at the corner of Arran street west stroking his nose with
his forefinger, undecided whether he should arrive at Phibsborough more
quickly by a triple change of tram or by hailing a car or on foot through
Smithfield, Constitution hill and Broadstone terminus. In the porch of Four
Courts Richie Goulding with the costbag of Goulding, Collis and Ward saw
him with surprise. Past Richmond bridge at the doorstep of the office of
Reuben J Dodd, solicitor, agent for the Patriotic Insurance Company, an
elderly female about to enter changed her plan and retracing her steps by
King's windows smiled credulously on the representative of His Majesty.
From its sluice in Wood quay wall under Tom Devan's office Poddle river
hung out in fealty a tongue of liquid sewage. Above the crossblind of the
Ormond hotel, gold by bronze, Miss Kennedy's head by Miss Douce's head
watched and admired. On Ormond quay Mr Simon Dedalus, steering his
way from the greenhouse for the subsheriff's office, stood still in midstreet
and brought his hat low. His Excellency graciously returned Mr Dedalus'
greeting. From Cahill's corner the reverend Hugh C. Love, M. A., made
obeisance unperceived, mindful of lords deputies whose hands benignant
had held of yore rich advowsons. On Grattan bridge Lenehan and M'Coy,
taking leave of each other, watched the carriages go by. Passing by Roger
Greene's office and Dollard's big red printinghouse Gerty MacDowell,
carrying the Catesby's cork lino letters for her father who was laid up,
knew by the style it was the lord and lady lieutenant but she couldn't see
what Her Excellency had on because the tram and Spring's big yellow
furniture van had to stop in front of her on account of its being the lord
lieutenant. Beyond Lundy Foot's from the shaded door of Kavanagh's
winerooms John Wyse Nolan smiled with unseen coldness towards the lord
lieutenantgeneral and general governor of Ireland. The Right Honourable
William Humble, earl of Dudley, G. C. V. O., passed Micky Anderson's
alltimesticking watches and Henry and James's wax smartsuited
freshcheeked models, the gentleman Henry, dernier cri James. Over against
Dame gate Tom Rochford and Nosey Flynn watched the approach of the
cavalcade. Tom Rochford, seeing the eyes of lady Dudley fixed on him,
took his thumbs quickly out of the pockets of his claret waistcoat and
doffed his cap to her. A charming soubrette, great Marie Kendall, with
dauby cheeks and lifted skirt smiled daubily from her poster upon William
Humble, earl of Dudley, and upon lieutenantcolonel H. G. Heseltine, and
also upon the honourable Gerald Ward A. D. C. From the window of the
D. B. C. Buck Mulligan gaily, and Haines gravely, gazed down on the
viceregal equipage over the shoulders of eager guests, whose mass of forms
darkened the chessboard whereon John Howard Parnell looked intently. In
Fownes's street Dilly Dedalus, straining her sight upward from
Chardenal's first French primer, saw sunshades spanned and wheelspokes
spinning in the glare. John Henry Menton, filling the doorway of
Commercial Buildings, stared from winebig oyster eyes, holding a fat gold
hunter watch not looked at in his fat left hand not feeling it. Where the
foreleg of King Billy's horse pawed the air Mrs Breen plucked her
hastening husband back from under the hoofs of the outriders. She shouted
in his ear the tidings. Understanding, he shifted his tomes to his left breast
and saluted the second carriage. The honourable Gerald Ward A. D. C.,
agreeably surprised, made haste to reply. At Ponsonby's corner a jaded
white flagon H. halted and four tallhatted white flagons halted behind him,
E. L. Y'S, while outriders pranced past and carriages. Opposite Pigott's
music warerooms Mr Denis J Maginni, professor of dancing &c, gaily
apparelled, gravely walked, outpassed by a viceroy and unobserved. By the
provost's wall came jauntily Blazes Boylan, stepping in tan shoes and socks
with skyblue clocks to the refrain of My girl's a Yorkshire girl. Blazes
Boylan presented to the leaders' skyblue frontlets and high action a skyblue
tie, a widebrimmed straw hat at a rakish angle and a suit of indigo serge.
His hands in his jacket pockets forgot to salute but he offered to the three
ladies the bold admiration of his eyes and the red flower between his lips. As
they drove along Nassau street His Excellency drew the attention of his
bowing consort to the programme of music which was being discoursed in
College park. Unseen brazen highland laddies blared and drumthumped
after the cortege:
But though she's a factory lass
And wears no fancy clothes.
Baraabum.
Yet I've a sort of a
Yorkshire relish for
My little Yorkshire rose.
Baraabum.
Thither of the wall the quartermile flat handicappers, M. C. Green, H.
Shrift, T. M. Patey, C. Scaife, J. B. Jeffs, G. N. Morphy, F. Stevenson, C.
Adderly and W. C. Huggard, started in pursuit. Striding past Finn's hotel
Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell stared through a fierce
eyeglass across the carriages at the head of Mr M. E. Solomons in the
window of the Austro-Hungarian viceconsulate. Deep in Leinster street by
Trinity's postern a loyal king's man, Hornblower, touched his tallyho cap.
As the glossy horses pranced by Merrion square Master Patrick Aloysius
Dignam, waiting, saw salutes being given to the gent with the topper and
raised also his new black cap with fingers greased by porksteak paper. His
collar too sprang up. The viceroy, on his way to inaugurate the Mirus
bazaar in aid of funds for Mercer's hospital, drove with his following
towards Lower Mount street. He passed a blind stripling opposite
Broadbent's. In Lower Mount street a pedestrian in a brown macintosh,
eating dry bread, passed swiftly and unscathed across the viceroy's path. At
the Royal Canal bridge, from his hoarding, Mr Eugene Stratton, his blub
lips agrin, bade all comers welcome to Pembroke township. At Haddington
road corner two sanded women halted themselves, an umbrella and a bag in
which eleven cockles rolled to view with wonder the lord mayor and lady
mayoress without his golden chain. On Northumberland and Lansdowne
roads His Excellency acknowledged punctually salutes from rare male
walkers, the salute of two small schoolboys at the garden gate of the house
said to have been admired by the late queen when visiting the Irish capital
with her husband, the prince consort, in 1849 and the salute of Almidano
Artifoni's sturdy trousers swallowed by a closing door.
* Bronze by gold heard the hoofirons, steelyringing. Imperthnthn thnthnthn. Chips, picking chips off rocky thumbnail, chips. Horrid! And gold flushed more. A husky fifenote blew. Blew. Blue bloom is on the. Goldpinnacled hair. A jumping rose on satiny breast of satin, rose of Castile. Trilling, trilling: Idolores. Peep! Who's in the .... peepofgold? Tink cried to bronze in pity. And a call, pure, long and throbbing. Longindying call. Decoy. Soft word. But look: the bright stars fade. Notes chirruping answer. O rose! Castile. The morn is breaking. Jingle jingle jaunted jingling. Coin rang. Clock clacked. Avowal. Sonnez. I could. Rebound of garter. Not leave thee. Smack. La cloche! Thigh smack. Avowal. Warm. Sweetheart, goodbye! Jingle. Bloo. Boomed crashing chords. When love absorbs. War! War! The tympanum. A sail! A veil awave upon the waves. Lost. Throstle fluted. All is lost now. Horn. Hawhorn. When first he saw. Alas! Full tup. Full throb. Warbling. Ah, lure! Alluring. Martha! Come! Clapclap. Clipclap. Clappyclap. Goodgod henev erheard inall. Deaf bald Pat brought pad knife took up. A moonlit nightcall: far, far. I feel so sad. P. S. So lonely blooming. Listen! The spiked and winding cold seahorn. Have you the? Each, and for other, plash and silent roar. Pearls: when she. Liszt's rhapsodies. Hissss. You don't? Did not: no, no: believe: Lidlyd. With a cock with a carra. Black. Deepsounding. Do, Ben, do. Wait while you wait. Hee hee. Wait while you hee. But wait! Low in dark middle earth. Embedded ore. Naminedamine. Preacher is he: All gone. All fallen. Tiny, her tremulous fernfoils of maidenhair. Amen! He gnashed in fury. Fro. To, fro. A baton cool protruding. Bronzelydia by Minagold. By bronze, by gold, in oceangreen of shadow. Bloom. Old Bloom. One rapped, one tapped, with a carra, with a cock. Pray for him! Pray, good people! His gouty fingers nakkering. Big Benaben. Big Benben. Last rose Castile of summer left bloom I feel so sad alone. Pwee! Little wind piped wee. True men. Lid Ker Cow De and Doll. Ay, ay. Like you men. Will lift your tschink with tschunk. Fff! Oo! Where bronze from anear? Where gold from afar? Where hoofs? Rrrpr. Kraa. Kraandl. Then not till then. My eppripfftaph. Be pfrwritt. Done. Begin!Bronze by gold, miss Douce's head by miss Kennedy's head, over the crossblind of the Ormond bar heard the viceregal hoofs go by, ringing steel. --Is that her? asked miss Kennedy. Miss Douce said yes, sitting with his ex, pearl grey and eau de Nil. --Exquisite contrast, miss Kennedy said. When all agog miss Douce said eagerly: --Look at the fellow in the tall silk. --Who? Where? gold asked more eagerly. --In the second carriage, miss Douce's wet lips said, laughing in the sun. He's looking. Mind till I see. She darted, bronze, to the backmost corner, flattening her face against the pane in a halo of hurried breath. Her wet lips tittered: --He's killed looking back. She laughed: --O wept! Aren't men frightful idiots? With sadness. Miss Kennedy sauntered sadly from bright light, twining a loose hair behind an ear. Sauntering sadly, gold no more, she twisted twined a hair. Sadly she twined in sauntering gold hair behind a curving ear. --It's them has the fine times, sadly then she said. A man. Bloowho went by by Moulang's pipes bearing in his breast the sweets of sin, by Wine's antiques, in memory bearing sweet sinful words, by Carroll's dusky battered plate, for Raoul. The boots to them, them in the bar, them barmaids came. For them unheeding him he banged on the counter his tray of chattering china. And --There's your teas, he said. Miss Kennedy with manners transposed the teatray down to an upturned lithia crate, safe from eyes, low. --What is it? loud boots unmannerly asked. --Find out, miss Douce retorted, leaving her spyingpoint. --Your beau, is it? A haughty bronze replied: --I'll complain to Mrs de Massey on you if I hear any more of your impertinent insolence. --Imperthnthn thnthnthn, bootssnout sniffed rudely, as he retreated as she threatened as he had come. Bloom. On her flower frowning miss Douce said: --Most aggravating that young brat is. If he doesn't conduct himself I'll wring his ear for him a yard long. Ladylike in exquisite contrast. --Take no notice, miss Kennedy rejoined. She poured in a teacup tea, then back in the teapot tea. They cowered under their reef of counter, waiting on footstools, crates upturned, waiting for their teas to draw. They pawed their blouses, both of black satin, two and nine a yard, waiting for their teas to draw, and two and seven. Yes, bronze from anear, by gold from afar, heard steel from anear, hoofs ring from afar, and heard steelhoofs ringhoof ringsteel. --Am I awfully sunburnt? Miss bronze unbloused her neck. --No, said miss Kennedy. It gets brown after. Did you try the borax with the cherry laurel water? Miss Douce halfstood to see her skin askance in the barmirror gildedlettered where hock and claret glasses shimmered and in their midst a shell. --And leave it to my hands, she said. --Try it with the glycerine, miss Kennedy advised. Bidding her neck and hands adieu miss Douce --Those things only bring out a rash, replied, reseated. I asked that old fogey in Boyd's for something for my skin. Miss Kennedy, pouring now a fulldrawn tea, grimaced and prayed: --O, don't remind me of him for mercy' sake! --But wait till I tell you, miss Douce entreated. Sweet tea miss Kennedy having poured with milk plugged both two ears with little fingers. --No, don't, she cried. --I won't listen, she cried. But Bloom? Miss Douce grunted in snuffy fogey's tone: --For your what? says he. Miss Kennedy unplugged her ears to hear, to speak: but said, but prayed again: --Don't let me think of him or I'll expire. The hideous old wretch! That night in the Antient Concert Rooms. She sipped distastefully her brew, hot tea, a sip, sipped, sweet tea. --Here he was, miss Douce said, cocking her bronze head three quarters, ruffling her nosewings. Hufa! Hufa! Shrill shriek of laughter sprang from miss Kennedy's throat. Miss Douce huffed and snorted down her nostrils that quivered imperthnthn like a snout in quest. --O! shrieking, miss Kennedy cried. Will you ever forget his goggle eye? Miss Douce chimed in in deep bronze laughter, shouting: --And your other eye! Bloowhose dark eye read Aaron Figatner's name. Why do I always think Figather? Gathering figs, I think. And Prosper Lore's huguenot name. By Bassi's blessed virgins Bloom's dark eyes went by. Bluerobed, white under, come to me. God they believe she is: or goddess. Those today. I could not see. That fellow spoke. A student. After with Dedalus' son. He might be Mulligan. All comely virgins. That brings those rakes of fellows in: her white. By went his eyes. The sweets of sin. Sweet are the sweets. Of sin. In a giggling peal young goldbronze voices blended, Douce with Kennedy your other eye. They threw young heads back, bronze gigglegold, to let freefly their laughter, screaming, your other, signals to each other, high piercing notes. Ah, panting, sighing, sighing, ah, fordone, their mirth died down. Miss Kennedy lipped her cup again, raised, drank a sip and gigglegiggled. Miss Douce, bending over the teatray, ruffled again her nose and rolled droll fattened eyes. Again Kennygiggles, stooping, her fair pinnacles of hair, stooping, her tortoise napecomb showed, spluttered out of her mouth her tea, choking in tea and laughter, coughing with choking, crying: --O greasy eyes! Imagine being married to a man like that! she cried. With his bit of beard! Douce gave full vent to a splendid yell, a full yell of full woman, delight, joy, indignation. --Married to the greasy nose! she yelled. Shrill, with deep laughter, after, gold after bronze, they urged each each to peal after peal, ringing in changes, bronzegold, goldbronze, shrilldeep, to laughter after laughter. And then laughed more. Greasy I knows. Exhausted, breathless, their shaken heads they laid, braided and pinnacled by glossycombed, against the counterledge. All flushed (O!), panting, sweating (O!), all breathless. Married to Bloom, to greaseabloom. --O saints above! miss Douce said, sighed above her jumping rose. I wished I hadn't laughed so much. I feel all wet. --O, miss Douce! miss Kennedy protested. You horrid thing! And flushed yet more (you horrid!), more goldenly. By Cantwell's offices roved Greaseabloom, by Ceppi's virgins, bright of their oils. Nannetti's father hawked those things about, wheedling at doors as I. Religion pays. Must see him for that par. Eat first. I want. Not yet. At four, she said. Time ever passing. Clockhands turning. On. Where eat? The Clarence, Dolphin. On. For Raoul. Eat. If I net five guineas with those ads. The violet silk petticoats. Not yet. The sweets of sin. Flushed less, still less, goldenly paled. Into their bar strolled Mr Dedalus. Chips, picking chips off one of his rocky thumbnails. Chips. He strolled. --O, welcome back, miss Douce. He held her hand. Enjoyed her holidays? --Tiptop. He hoped she had nice weather in Rostrevor. --Gorgeous, she said. Look at the holy show I am. Lying out on the strand all day. Bronze whiteness. --That was exceedingly naughty of you, Mr Dedalus told her and pressed her hand indulgently. Tempting poor simple males. Miss Douce of satin douced her arm away. --O go away! she said. You're very simple, I don't think. He was. --Well now I am, he mused. I looked so simple in the cradle they christened me simple Simon. --You must have been a doaty, miss Douce made answer. And what did the doctor order today? --Well now, he mused, whatever you say yourself. I think I'll trouble you for some fresh water and a half glass of whisky. Jingle. --With the greatest alacrity, miss Douce agreed. With grace of alacrity towards the mirror gilt Cantrell and Cochrane's she turned herself. With grace she tapped a measure of gold whisky from her crystal keg. Forth from the skirt of his coat Mr Dedalus brought pouch and pipe. Alacrity she served. He blew through the flue two husky fifenotes. --By Jove, he mused, I often wanted to see the Mourne mountains. Must be a great tonic in the air down there. But a long threatening comes at last, they say. Yes. Yes. Yes. He fingered shreds of hair, her maidenhair, her mermaid's, into the bowl. Chips. Shreds. Musing. Mute. None nought said nothing. Yes. Gaily miss Douce polished a tumbler, trilling: --O, Idolores, queen of the eastern seas! --Was Mr Lidwell in today? In came Lenehan. Round him peered Lenehan. Mr Bloom reached Essex bridge. Yes, Mr Bloom crossed bridge of Yessex. To Martha I must write. Buy paper. Daly's. Girl there civil. Bloom. Old Bloom. Blue bloom is on the rye. --He was in at lunchtime, miss Douce said. Lenehan came forward. --Was Mr Boylan looking for me? He asked. She answered: --Miss Kennedy, was Mr Boylan in while I was upstairs? She asked. Miss voice of Kennedy answered, a second teacup poised, her gaze upon a page: --No. He was not. Miss gaze of Kennedy, heard, not seen, read on. Lenehan round the sandwichbell wound his round body round. --Peep! Who's in the corner? No glance of Kennedy rewarding him he yet made overtures. To mind her stops. To read only the black ones: round o and crooked ess. Jingle jaunty jingle. Girlgold she read and did not glance. Take no notice. She took no notice while he read by rote a solfa fable for her, plappering flatly: --Ah fox met ah stork. Said thee fox too thee stork: Will you put your bill down inn my troath and pull upp ah bone? He droned in vain. Miss Douce turned to her tea aside. He sighed aside: --Ah me! O my! He greeted Mr Dedalus and got a nod. --Greetings from the famous son of a famous father. --Who may he be? Mr Dedalus asked. Lenehan opened most genial arms. Who? --Who may he be? he asked. Can you ask? Stephen, the youthful bard. Dry. Mr Dedalus, famous father, laid by his dry filled pipe. --I see, he said. I didn't recognise him for the moment. I hear he is keeping very select company. Have you seen him lately? He had. --I quaffed the nectarbowl with him this very day, said Lenehan. In Mooney's en ville and in Mooney's sur mer. He had received the rhino for the labour of his muse. He smiled at bronze's teabathed lips, at listening lips and eyes: --The ’lite of Erin hung upon his lips. The ponderous pundit, Hugh MacHugh, Dublin's most brilliant scribe and editor and that minstrel boy of the wild wet west who is known by the euphonious appellation of the O'Madden Burke. After an interval Mr Dedalus raised his grog and --That must have been highly diverting, said he. I see. He see. He drank. With faraway mourning mountain eye. Set down his glass. He looked towards the saloon door. --I see you have moved the piano. --The tuner was in today, miss Douce replied, tuning it for the smoking concert and I never heard such an exquisite player. --Is that a fact? --Didn't he, miss Kennedy? The real classical, you know. And blind too, poor fellow. Not twenty I'm sure he was. --Is that a fact? Mr Dedalus said. He drank and strayed away. --So sad to look at his face, miss Douce condoled. God's curse on bitch's bastard. Tink to her pity cried a diner's bell. To the door of the bar and diningroom came bald Pat, came bothered Pat, came Pat, waiter of Ormond. Lager for diner. Lager without alacrity she served. With patience Lenehan waited for Boylan with impatience, for jinglejaunty blazes boy. Upholding the lid he (who?) gazed in the coffin (coffin?) at the oblique triple (piano!) wires. He pressed (the same who pressed indulgently her hand), soft pedalling, a triple of keys to see the thicknesses of felt advancing, to hear the muffled hammerfall in action. Two sheets cream vellum paper one reserve two envelopes when I was in Wisdom Hely's wise Bloom in Daly's Henry Flower bought. Are you not happy in your home? Flower to console me and a pin cuts lo. Means something, language of flow. Was it a daisy? Innocence that is. Respectable girl meet after mass. Thanks awfully muchly. Wise Bloom eyed on the door a poster, a swaying mermaid smoking mid nice waves. Smoke mermaids, coolest whiff of all. Hair streaming: lovelorn. For some man. For Raoul. He eyed and saw afar on Essex bridge a gay hat riding on a jaunting car. It is. Again. Third time. Coincidence. Jingling on supple rubbers it jaunted from the bridge to Ormond quay. Follow. Risk it. Go quick. At four. Near now. Out. --Twopence, sir, the shopgirl dared to say. --Aha... I was forgetting... Excuse... --And four. At four she. Winsomely she on Bloohimwhom smiled. Bloo smi qui go. Ternoon. Think you're the only pebble on the beach? Does that to all. For men. In drowsy silence gold bent on her page. From the saloon a call came, long in dying. That was a tuningfork the tuner had that he forgot that he now struck. A call again. That he now poised that it now throbbed. You hear? It throbbed, pure, purer, softly and softlier, its buzzing prongs. Longer in dying call. Pat paid for diner's popcorked bottle: and over tumbler, tray and popcorked bottle ere he went he whispered, bald and bothered, with miss Douce. --The bright stars fade .... A voiceless song sang from within, singing: --... the morn is breaking. A duodene of birdnotes chirruped bright treble answer under sensitive hands. Brightly the keys, all twinkling, linked, all harpsichording, called to a voice to sing the strain of dewy morn, of youth, of love's leavetaking, life's, love's morn. --The dewdrops pearl .... Lenehan's lips over the counter lisped a low whistle of decoy. --But look this way, he said, rose of Castile. Jingle jaunted by the curb and stopped. She rose and closed her reading, rose of Castile: fretted, forlorn, dreamily rose. --Did she fall or was she pushed? he asked her. She answered, slighting: --Ask no questions and you'll hear no lies. Like lady, ladylike. Blazes Boylan's smart tan shoes creaked on the barfloor where he strode. Yes, gold from anear by bronze from afar. Lenehan heard and knew and hailed him: --See the conquering hero comes. Between the car and window, warily walking, went Bloom, unconquered hero. See me he might. The seat he sat on: warm. Black wary hecat walked towards Richie Goulding's legal bag, lifted aloft, saluting. --And I from thee .... --I heard you were round, said Blazes Boylan. He touched to fair miss Kennedy a rim of his slanted straw. She smiled on him. But sister bronze outsmiled her, preening for him her richer hair, a bosom and a rose. Smart Boylan bespoke potions. --What's your cry? Glass of bitter? Glass of bitter, please, and a sloegin for me. Wire in yet? Not yet. At four she. Who said four? Cowley's red lugs and bulging apple in the door of the sheriff's office. Avoid. Goulding a chance. What is he doing in the Ormond? Car waiting. Wait. Hello. Where off to? Something to eat? I too was just. In here. What, Ormond? Best value in Dublin. Is that so? Diningroom. Sit tight there. See, not be seen. I think I'll join you. Come on. Richie led on. Bloom followed bag. Dinner fit for a prince. Miss Douce reached high to take a flagon, stretching her satin arm, her bust, that all but burst, so high. --O! O! jerked Lenehan, gasping at each stretch. O! But easily she seized her prey and led it low in triumph. --Why don't you grow? asked Blazes Boylan. Shebronze, dealing from her oblique jar thick syrupy liquor for his lips, looked as it flowed (flower in his coat: who gave him?), and syrupped with her voice: --Fine goods in small parcels. That is to say she. Neatly she poured slowsyrupy sloe. --Here's fortune, Blazes said. He pitched a broad coin down. Coin rang. --Hold on, said Lenehan, till I .... --Fortune, he wished, lifting his bubbled ale. --Sceptre will win in a canter, he said. --I plunged a bit, said Boylan winking and drinking. Not on my own, you know. Fancy of a friend of mine. Lenehan still drank and grinned at his tilted ale and at miss Douce's lips that all but hummed, not shut, the oceansong her lips had trilled. Idolores. The eastern seas. Clock whirred. Miss Kennedy passed their way (flower, wonder who gave), bearing away teatray. Clock clacked. Miss Douce took Boylan's coin, struck boldly the cashregister. It clanged. Clock clacked. Fair one of Egypt teased and sorted in the till and hummed and handed coins in change. Look to the west. A clack. For me. --What time is that? asked Blazes Boylan. Four? O'clock. Lenehan, small eyes ahunger on her humming, bust ahumming, tugged Blazes Boylan's elbowsleeve. --Let's hear the time, he said. The bag of Goulding, Collis, Ward led Bloom by ryebloom flowered tables. Aimless he chose with agitated aim, bald Pat attending, a table near the door. Be near. At four. Has he forgotten? Perhaps a trick. Not come: whet appetite. I couldn't do. Wait, wait. Pat, waiter, waited. Sparkling bronze azure eyed Blazure's skyblue bow and eyes. --Go on, pressed Lenehan. There's no-one. He never heard. -- ... to Flora's lips did hie. High, a high note pealed in the treble clear. Bronzedouce communing with her rose that sank and rose sought Blazes Boylan's flower and eyes. --Please, please. He pleaded over returning phrases of avowal. --I could not leave thee ... --Afterwits, miss Douce promised coyly. --No, now, urged Lenehan. Sonnez la cloche! O do! There's no-one. She looked. Quick. Miss Kenn out of earshot. Sudden bent. Two kindling faces watched her bend. Quavering the chords strayed from the air, found it again, lost chord, and lost and found it, faltering. --Go on! Do! Sonnez! Bending, she nipped a peak of skirt above her knee. Delayed. Taunted them still, bending, suspending, with wilful eyes. --Sonnez! Smack. She set free sudden in rebound her nipped elastic garter smackwarm against her smackable a woman's warmhosed thigh. --La cloche! cried gleeful Lenehan. Trained by owner. No sawdust there. She smilesmirked supercilious (wept! aren't men?), but, lightward gliding, mild she smiled on Boylan. --You're the essence of vulgarity, she in gliding said. Boylan, eyed, eyed. Tossed to fat lips his chalice, drank off his chalice tiny, sucking the last fat violet syrupy drops. His spellbound eyes went after, after her gliding head as it went down the bar by mirrors, gilded arch for ginger ale, hock and claret glasses shimmering, a spiky shell, where it concerted, mirrored, bronze with sunnier bronze. Yes, bronze from anearby. -- ... sweetheart, goodbye! --I'm off, said Boylan with impatience. He slid his chalice brisk away, grasped his change. --Wait a shake, begged Lenehan, drinking quickly. I wanted to tell you. Tom Rochford ... --Come on to blazes, said Blazes Boylan, going. Lenehan gulped to go. --Got the horn or what? he said. Wait. I'm coming. He followed the hasty creaking shoes but stood by nimbly by the threshold, saluting forms, a bulky with a slender. --How do you do, Mr Dollard? --Eh? How do? How do? Ben Dollard's vague bass answered, turning an instant from Father Cowley's woe. He won't give you any trouble, Bob. Alf Bergan will speak to the long fellow. We'll put a barleystraw in that Judas Iscariot's ear this time. Sighing Mr Dedalus came through the saloon, a finger soothing an eyelid. --Hoho, we will, Ben Dollard yodled jollily. Come on, Simon. Give us a ditty. We heard the piano. Bald Pat, bothered waiter, waited for drink orders. Power for Richie. And Bloom? Let me see. Not make him walk twice. His corns. Four now. How warm this black is. Course nerves a bit. Refracts (is it?) heat. Let me see. Cider. Yes, bottle of cider. --What's that? Mr Dedalus said. I was only vamping, man. --Come on, come on, Ben Dollard called. Begone dull care. Come, Bob. He ambled Dollard, bulky slops, before them (hold that fellow with the: hold him now) into the saloon. He plumped him Dollard on the stool. His gouty paws plumped chords. Plumped, stopped abrupt. Bald Pat in the doorway met tealess gold returning. Bothered, he wanted Power and cider. Bronze by the window, watched, bronze from afar. Jingle a tinkle jaunted. Bloom heard a jing, a little sound. He's off. Light sob of breath Bloom sighed on the silent bluehued flowers. Jingling. He's gone. Jingle. Hear. --Love and War, Ben, Mr Dedalus said. God be with old times. Miss Douce's brave eyes, unregarded, turned from the crossblind, smitten by sunlight. Gone. Pensive (who knows?), smitten (the smiting light), she lowered the dropblind with a sliding cord. She drew down pensive (why did he go so quick when I?) about her bronze, over the bar where bald stood by sister gold, inexquisite contrast, contrast inexquisite nonexquisite, slow cool dim seagreen sliding depth of shadow, eau de Nil. --Poor old Goodwin was the pianist that night, Father Cowley reminded them. There was a slight difference of opinion between himself and the Collard grand. There was. --A symposium all his own, Mr Dedalus said. The devil wouldn't stop him. He was a crotchety old fellow in the primary stage of drink. --God, do you remember? Ben bulky Dollard said, turning from the punished keyboard. And by Japers I had no wedding garment. They laughed all three. He had no wed. All trio laughed. No wedding garment. --Our friend Bloom turned in handy that night, Mr Dedalus said. Where's my pipe, by the way? He wandered back to the bar to the lost chord pipe. Bald Pat carried two diners' drinks, Richie and Poldy. And Father Cowley laughed again. --I saved the situation, Ben, I think. --You did, averred Ben Dollard. I remember those tight trousers too. That was a brilliant idea, Bob. Father Cowley blushed to his brilliant purply lobes. He saved the situa. Tight trou. Brilliant ide. --I knew he was on the rocks, he said. The wife was playing the piano in the coffee palace on Saturdays for a very trifling consideration and who was it gave me the wheeze she was doing the other business? Do you remember? We had to search all Holles street to find them till the chap in Keogh's gave us the number. Remember? Ben remembered, his broad visage wondering. --By God, she had some luxurious operacloaks and things there. Mr Dedalus wandered back, pipe in hand. --Merrion square style. Balldresses, by God, and court dresses. He wouldn't take any money either. What? Any God's quantity of cocked hats and boleros and trunkhose. What? --Ay, ay, Mr Dedalus nodded. Mrs Marion Bloom has left off clothes of all descriptions. Jingle jaunted down the quays. Blazes sprawled on bounding tyres. Liver and bacon. Steak and kidney pie. Right, sir. Right, Pat. Mrs Marion. Met him pike hoses. Smell of burn. Of Paul de Kock. Nice name he. --What's this her name was? A buxom lassy. Marion ...? --Tweedy. --Yes. Is she alive? --And kicking. --She was a daughter of ... --Daughter of the regiment. --Yes, begad. I remember the old drummajor. Mr Dedalus struck, whizzed, lit, puffed savoury puff after --Irish? I don't know, faith. Is she, Simon? Puff after stiff, a puff, strong, savoury, crackling. --Buccinator muscle is ... What? ... Bit rusty ... O, she is ... My Irish Molly, O. He puffed a pungent plumy blast. --From the rock of Gibraltar... all the way. They pined in depth of ocean shadow, gold by the beerpull, bronze by maraschino, thoughtful all two. Mina Kennedy, 4 Lismore terrace, Drumcondra with Idolores, a queen, Dolores, silent. Pat served, uncovered dishes. Leopold cut liverslices. As said before he ate with relish the inner organs, nutty gizzards, fried cods' roes while Richie Goulding, Collis, Ward ate steak and kidney, steak then kidney, bite by bite of pie he ate Bloom ate they ate. Bloom with Goulding, married in silence, ate. Dinners fit for princes. By Bachelor's walk jogjaunty jingled Blazes Boylan, bachelor, in sun in heat, mare's glossy rump atrot, with flick of whip, on bounding tyres: sprawled, warmseated, Boylan impatience, ardentbold. Horn. Have you the? Horn. Have you the? Haw haw horn. Over their voices Dollard bassooned attack, booming over bombarding chords: --When love absorbs my ardent soul ... Roll of Bensoulbenjamin rolled to the quivery loveshivery roofpanes. --War! War! cried Father Cowley. You're the warrior. --So I am, Ben Warrior laughed. I was thinking of your landlord. Love or money. He stopped. He wagged huge beard, huge face over his blunder huge. --Sure, you'd burst the tympanum of her ear, man, Mr Dedalus said through smoke aroma, with an organ like yours. In bearded abundant laughter Dollard shook upon the keyboard. He would. --Not to mention another membrane, Father Cowley added. Half time, Ben. Amoroso ma non troppo. Let me there. Miss Kennedy served two gentlemen with tankards of cool stout. She passed a remark. It was indeed, first gentleman said, beautiful weather. They drank cool stout. Did she know where the lord lieutenant was going? And heard steelhoofs ringhoof ring. No, she couldn't say. But it would be in the paper. O, she need not trouble. No trouble. She waved about her outspread Independent, searching, the lord lieutenant, her pinnacles of hair slowmoving, lord lieuten. Too much trouble, first gentleman said. O, not in the least. Way he looked that. Lord lieutenant. Gold by bronze heard iron steel. -- ........... my ardent soul I care not foror the morrow. In liver gravy Bloom mashed mashed potatoes. Love and War someone is. Ben Dollard's famous. Night he ran round to us to borrow a dress suit for that concert. Trousers tight as a drum on him. Musical porkers. Molly did laugh when he went out. Threw herself back across the bed, screaming, kicking. With all his belongings on show. O saints above, I'm drenched! O, the women in the front row! O, I never laughed so many! Well, of course that's what gives him the base barreltone. For instance eunuchs. Wonder who's playing. Nice touch. Must be Cowley. Musical. Knows whatever note you play. Bad breath he has, poor chap. Stopped. Miss Douce, engaging, Lydia Douce, bowed to suave solicitor, George Lidwell, gentleman, entering. Good afternoon. She gave her moist (a lady's) hand to his firm clasp. Afternoon. Yes, she was back. To the old dingdong again. --Your friends are inside, Mr Lidwell. George Lidwell, suave, solicited, held a lydiahand. Jingle. Bloom ate liv as said before. Clean here at least. That chap in the Burton, gummy with gristle. No-one here: Goulding and I. Clean tables, flowers, mitres of napkins. Pat to and fro. Bald Pat. Nothing to do. Best value in Dub. Piano again. Cowley it is. Way he sits in to it, like one together, mutual understanding. Tiresome shapers scraping fiddles, eye on the bowend, sawing the cello, remind you of toothache. Her high long snore. Night we were in the box. Trombone under blowing like a grampus, between the acts, other brass chap unscrewing, emptying spittle. Conductor's legs too, bagstrousers, jiggedy jiggedy. Do right to hide them. Jiggedy jingle jaunty jaunty. Only the harp. Lovely. Gold glowering light. Girl touched it. Poop of a lovely. Gravy's rather good fit for a. Golden ship. Erin. The harp that once or twice. Cool hands. Ben Howth, the rhododendrons. We are their harps. I. He. Old. Young. --Ah, I couldn't, man, Mr Dedalus said, shy, listless. Strongly. --Go on, blast you! Ben Dollard growled. Get it out in bits. --M'appari, Simon, Father Cowley said. Down stage he strode some paces, grave, tall in affliction, his long arms outheld. Hoarsely the apple of his throat hoarsed softly. Softly he sang to a dusty seascape there: A Last Farewell. A headland, a ship, a sail upon the billows. Farewell. A lovely girl, her veil awave upon the wind upon the headland, wind around her. Cowley sang: --M'appari tutt'amor: Il mio sguardo l'incontr ...She waved, unhearing Cowley, her veil, to one departing, dear one, to wind, love, speeding sail, return. --Go on, Simon. --Ah, sure, my dancing days are done, Ben ... Well ... Mr Dedalus laid his pipe to rest beside the tuningfork and, sitting, touched the obedient keys. --No, Simon, Father Cowley turned. Play it in the original. One flat. The keys, obedient, rose higher, told, faltered, confessed, confused. Up stage strode Father Cowley. --Here, Simon, I'll accompany you, he said. Get up. By Graham Lemon's pineapple rock, by Elvery's elephant jingly jogged. Steak, kidney, liver, mashed, at meat fit for princes sat princes Bloom and Goulding. Princes at meat they raised and drank, Power and cider. Most beautiful tenor air ever written, Richie said: Sonnambula. He heard Joe Maas sing that one night. Ah, what M'Guckin! Yes. In his way. Choirboy style. Maas was the boy. Massboy. A lyrical tenor if you like. Never forget it. Never. Tenderly Bloom over liverless bacon saw the tightened features strain. Backache he. Bright's bright eye. Next item on the programme. Paying the piper. Pills, pounded bread, worth a guinea a box. Stave it off awhile. Sings too: Down among the dead men. Appropriate. Kidney pie. Sweets to the. Not making much hand of it. Best value in. Characteristic of him. Power. Particular about his drink. Flaw in the glass, fresh Vartry water. Fecking matches from counters to save. Then squander a sovereign in dribs and drabs. And when he's wanted not a farthing. Screwed refusing to pay his fare. Curious types. Never would Richie forget that night. As long as he lived: never. In the gods of the old Royal with little Peake. And when the first note. Speech paused on Richie's lips. Coming out with a whopper now. Rhapsodies about damn all. Believes his own lies. Does really. Wonderful liar. But want a good memory. --Which air is that? asked Leopold Bloom. --All is lost now. Richie cocked his lips apout. A low incipient note sweet banshee murmured: all. A thrush. A throstle. His breath, birdsweet, good teeth he's proud of, fluted with plaintive woe. Is lost. Rich sound. Two notes in one there. Blackbird I heard in the hawthorn valley. Taking my motives he twined and turned them. All most too new call is lost in all. Echo. How sweet the answer. How is that done? All lost now. Mournful he whistled. Fall, surrender, lost. Bloom bent leopold ear, turning a fringe of doyley down under the vase. Order. Yes, I remember. Lovely air. In sleep she went to him. Innocence in the moon. Brave. Don't know their danger. Still hold her back. Call name. Touch water. Jingle jaunty. Too late. She longed to go. That's why. Woman. As easy stop the sea. Yes: all is lost. --A beautiful air, said Bloom lost Leopold. I know it well. Never in all his life had Richie Goulding. He knows it well too. Or he feels. Still harping on his daughter. Wise child that knows her father, Dedalus said. Me? Bloom askance over liverless saw. Face of the all is lost. Rollicking Richie once. Jokes old stale now. Wagging his ear. Napkinring in his eye. Now begging letters he sends his son with. Crosseyed Walter sir I did sir. Wouldn't trouble only I was expecting some money. Apologise. Piano again. Sounds better than last time I heard. Tuned probably. Stopped again. Dollard and Cowley still urged the lingering singer out with it. --With it, Simon. --It, Simon. --Ladies and gentlemen, I am most deeply obliged by your kind solicitations. --It, Simon. --I have no money but if you will lend me your attention I shall endeavour to sing to you of a heart bowed down. By the sandwichbell in screening shadow Lydia, her bronze and rose, a lady's grace, gave and withheld: as in cool glaucous eau de Nil Mina to tankards two her pinnacles of gold. The harping chords of prelude closed. A chord, longdrawn, expectant, drew a voice away. --When First I saw that form endearing ... Richie turned. --Si Dedalus' voice, he said. Braintipped, cheek touched with flame, they listened feeling that flow endearing flow over skin limbs human heart soul spine. Bloom signed to Pat, bald Pat is a waiter hard of hearing, to set ajar the door of the bar. The door of the bar. So. That will do. Pat, waiter, waited, waiting to hear, for he was hard of hear by the door. -- ... Sorrow from me seemed to depart. Through the hush of air a voice sang to them, low, not rain, not leaves in murmur, like no voice of strings or reeds or whatdoyoucallthem dulcimers touching their still ears with words, still hearts of their each his remembered lives. Good, good to hear: sorrow from them each seemed to from both depart when first they heard. When first they saw, lost Richie Poldy, mercy of beauty, heard from a person wouldn't expect it in the least, her first merciful lovesoft oftloved word. Love that is singing: love's old sweet song. Bloom unwound slowly the elastic band of his packet. Love's old sweet sonnez la gold. Bloom wound a skein round four forkfingers, stretched it, relaxed, and wound it round his troubled double, fourfold, in octave, gyved them fast. --Full of hope and all delighted ... Tenors get women by the score. Increase their flow. Throw flower at his feet. When will we meet? My head it simply. Jingle all delighted. He can't sing for tall hats. Your head it simply swurls. Perfumed for him. What perfume does your wife? I want to know. Jing. Stop. Knock. Last look at mirror always before she answers the door. The hall. There? How do you? I do well. There? What? Or? Phial of cachous, kissing comfits, in her satchel. Yes? Hands felt for the opulent. Alas the voice rose, sighing, changed: loud, full, shining, proud. --But alas, 'twas idle dreaming ... Glorious tone he has still. Cork air softer also their brogue. Silly man! Could have made oceans of money. Singing wrong words. Wore out his wife: now sings. But hard to tell. Only the two themselves. If he doesn't break down. Keep a trot for the avenue. His hands and feet sing too. Drink. Nerves overstrung. Must be abstemious to sing. Jenny Lind soup: stock, sage, raw eggs, half pint of cream. For creamy dreamy. Tenderness it welled: slow, swelling, full it throbbed. That's the chat. Ha, give! Take! Throb, a throb, a pulsing proud erect. Words? Music? No: it's what's behind. Bloom looped, unlooped, noded, disnoded. Bloom. Flood of warm jamjam lickitup secretness flowed to flow in music out, in desire, dark to lick flow invading. Tipping her tepping her tapping her topping her. Tup. Pores to dilate dilating. Tup. The joy the feel the warm the. Tup. To pour o'er sluices pouring gushes. Flood, gush, flow, joygush, tupthrob. Now! Language of love. -- ... ray of hope is... Beaming. Lydia for Lidwell squeak scarcely hear so ladylike the muse unsqueaked a ray of hopk. Martha it is. Coincidence. Just going to write. Lionel's song. Lovely name you have. Can't write. Accept my little pres. Play on her heartstrings pursestrings too. She's a. I called you naughty boy. Still the name: Martha. How strange! Today. The voice of Lionel returned, weaker but unwearied. It sang again to Richie Poldy Lydia Lidwell also sang to Pat open mouth ear waiting to wait. How first he saw that form endearing, how sorrow seemed to part, how look, form, word charmed him Gould Lidwell, won Pat Bloom's heart. Wish I could see his face, though. Explain better. Why the barber in Drago's always looked my face when I spoke his face in the glass. Still hear it better here than in the bar though farther. --Each graceful look .... First night when first I saw her at Mat Dillon's in Terenure. Yellow, black lace she wore. Musical chairs. We two the last. Fate. After her. Fate. Round and round slow. Quick round. We two. All looked. Halt. Down she sat. All ousted looked. Lips laughing. Yellow knees. --Charmed my eye ... Singing. Waiting she sang. I turned her music. Full voice of perfume of what perfume does your lilactrees. Bosom I saw, both full, throat warbling. First I saw. She thanked me. Why did she me? Fate. Spanishy eyes. Under a peartree alone patio this hour in old Madrid one side in shadow Dolores shedolores. At me. Luring. Ah, alluring. --Martha! Ah, Martha! Quitting all languor Lionel cried in grief, in cry of passion dominant to love to return with deepening yet with rising chords of harmony. In cry of lionel loneliness that she should know, must martha feel. For only her he waited. Where? Here there try there here all try where. Somewhere. --Co-ome, thou lost one! Co-ome, thou dear one! Alone. One love. One hope. One comfort me. Martha, chestnote, return! --Come ...! It soared, a bird, it held its flight, a swift pure cry, soar silver orb it leaped serene, speeding, sustained, to come, don't spin it out too long long breath he breath long life, soaring high, high resplendent, aflame, crowned, high in the effulgence symbolistic, high, of the etherial bosom, high, of the high vast irradiation everywhere all soaring all around about the all, the endlessnessnessness ....... --To me! Siopold! Consumed. Come. Well sung. All clapped. She ought to. Come. To me, to him, to her, you too, me, us. --Bravo! Clapclap. Good man, Simon. Clappyclapclap. Encore! Clapclipclap clap. Sound as a bell. Bravo, Simon! Clapclopclap. Encore, enclap, said, cried, clapped all, Ben Dollard, Lydia Douce, George Lidwell, Pat, Mina Kennedy, two gentlemen with two tankards, Cowley, first gent with tank and bronze miss Douce and gold miss Mina. Blazes Boylan's smart tan shoes creaked on the barfloor, said before. Jingle by monuments of sir John Gray, Horatio onehandled Nelson, reverend father Theobald Mathew, jaunted, as said before just now. Atrot, in heat, heatseated. Cloche. Sonnez la. Cloche. Sonnez la. Slower the mare went up the hill by the Rotunda, Rutland square. Too slow for Boylan, blazes Boylan, impatience Boylan, joggled the mare. An afterclang of Cowley's chords closed, died on the air made richer. And Richie Goulding drank his Power and Leopold Bloom his cider drank, Lidwell his Guinness, second gentleman said they would partake of two more tankards if she did not mind. Miss Kennedy smirked, disserving, coral lips, at first, at second. She did not mind. --Seven days in jail, Ben Dollard said, on bread and water. Then you'd sing, Simon, like a garden thrush. Lionel Simon, singer, laughed. Father Bob Cowley played. Mina Kennedy served. Second gentleman paid. Tom Kernan strutted in. Lydia, admired, admired. But Bloom sang dumb. Admiring. Richie, admiring, descanted on that man's glorious voice. He remembered one night long ago. Never forget that night. Si sang 'Twas rank and fame: in Ned Lambert's 'twas. Good God he never heard in all his life a note like that he never did then false one we had better part so clear so God he never heard since love lives not a clinking voice lives not ask Lambert he can tell you too. Goulding, a flush struggling in his pale, told Mr Bloom, face of the night, Si in Ned Lambert's, Dedalus house, sang 'Twas rank and fame. He, Mr Bloom, listened while he, Richie Goulding, told him, Mr Bloom, of the night he, Richie, heard him, Si Dedalus, sing 'Twas rank and fame in his, Ned Lambert's, house. Brothers-in-law: relations. We never speak as we pass by. Rift in the lute I think. Treats him with scorn. See. He admires him all the more. The night Si sang. The human voice, two tiny silky chords, wonderful, more than all others. That voice was a lamentation. Calmer now. It's in the silence after you feel you hear. Vibrations. Now silent air. Bloom ungyved his crisscrossed hands and with slack fingers plucked the slender catgut thong. He drew and plucked. It buzz, it twanged. While Goulding talked of Barraclough's voice production, while Tom Kernan, harking back in a retrospective sort of arrangement talked to listening Father Cowley, who played a voluntary, who nodded as he played. While big Ben Dollard talked with Simon Dedalus, lighting, who nodded as he smoked, who smoked. Thou lost one. All songs on that theme. Yet more Bloom stretched his string. Cruel it seems. Let people get fond of each other: lure them on. Then tear asunder. Death. Explos. Knock on the head. Outtohelloutofthat. Human life. Dignam. Ugh, that rat's tail wriggling! Five bob I gave. Corpus paradisum. Corncrake croaker: belly like a poisoned pup. Gone. They sing. Forgotten. I too; And one day she with. Leave her: get tired. Suffer then. Snivel. Big spanishy eyes goggling at nothing. Her wavyavyeavyheavyeavyevyevyhair un comb:'d. Yet too much happy bores. He stretched more, more. Are you not happy in your? Twang. It snapped. Jingle into Dorset street. Miss Douce withdrew her satiny arm, reproachful, pleased. --Don't make half so free, said she, till we are better acquainted. George Lidwell told her really and truly: but she did not believe. First gentleman told Mina that was so. She asked him was that so. And second tankard told her so. That that was so. Miss Douce, miss Lydia, did not believe: miss Kennedy, Mina, did not believe: George Lidwell, no: miss Dou did not: the first, the first: gent with the tank: believe, no, no: did not, miss Kenn: Lidlydiawell: the tank. Better write it here. Quills in the postoffice chewed and twisted. Bald Pat at a sign drew nigh. A pen and ink. He went. A pad. He went. A pad to blot. He heard, deaf Pat. --Yes, Mr Bloom said, teasing the curling catgut line. It certainly is. Few lines will do. My present. All that Italian florid music is. Who is this wrote? Know the name you know better. Take out sheet notepaper, envelope: unconcerned. It's so characteristic. --Grandest number in the whole opera, Goulding said. --It is, Bloom said. Numbers it is. All music when you come to think. Two multiplied by two divided by half is twice one. Vibrations: chords those are. One plus two plus six is seven. Do anything you like with figures juggling. Always find out this equal to that. Symmetry under a cemetery wall. He doesn't see my mourning. Callous: all for his own gut. Musemathematics. And you think you're listening to the etherial. But suppose you said it like: Martha, seven times nine minus x is thirtyfive thousand. Fall quite flat. It's on account of the sounds it is. Instance he's playing now. Improvising. Might be what you like, till you hear the words. Want to listen sharp. Hard. Begin all right: then hear chords a bit off: feel lost a bit. In and out of sacks, over barrels, through wirefences, obstacle race. Time makes the tune. Question of mood you're in. Still always nice to hear. Except scales up and down, girls learning. Two together nextdoor neighbours. Ought to invent dummy pianos for that. Milly no taste. Queer because we both, I mean. Blumenlied I bought for her. The name. Playing it slow, a girl, night I came home, the girl. Door of the stables near Cecilia street. Bald deaf Pat brought quite flat pad ink. Pat set with ink pen quite flat pad. Pat took plate dish knife fork. Pat went. It was the only language Mr Dedalus said to Ben. He heard them as a boy in Ringabella, Crosshaven, Ringabella, singing their barcaroles. Queenstown harbour full of Italian ships. Walking, you know, Ben, in the moonlight with those earthquake hats. Blending their voices. God, such music, Ben. Heard as a boy. Cross Ringabella haven mooncarole. Sour pipe removed he held a shield of hand beside his lips that cooed a moonlight nightcall, clear from anear, a call from afar, replying. Down the edge of his Freeman baton ranged Bloom's, your other eye, scanning for where did I see that. Callan, Coleman, Dignam Patrick. Heigho! Heigho! Fawcett. Aha! Just I was looking. Hope he's not looking, cute as a rat. He held unfurled his Freeman. Can't see now. Remember write Greek ees. Bloom dipped, Bloo mur: dear sir. Dear Henry wrote: dear Mady. Got your lett and flow. Hell did I put? Some pock or oth. It is utterl imposs. Underline imposs. To write today. Bore this. Bored Bloom tambourined gently with I am just reflecting fingers on flat pad Pat brought. On. Know what I mean. No, change that ee. Accep my poor litt pres enclos. Ask her no answ. Hold on. Five Dig. Two about here. Penny the gulls. Elijah is com. Seven Davy Byrne's. Is eight about. Say half a crown. My poor little pres: p. o. two and six. Write me a long. Do you despise? Jingle, have you the? So excited. Why do you call me naught? You naughty too? O, Mairy lost the string of her. Bye for today. Yes, yes, will tell you. Want to. To keep it up. Call me that other. Other world she wrote. My patience are exhaust. To keep it up. You must believe. Believe. The tank. It. Is. True. Folly am I writing? Husbands don't. That's marriage does, their wives. Because I'm away from. Suppose. But how? She must. Keep young. If she found out. Card in my high grade ha. No, not tell all. Useless pain. If they don't see. Woman. Sauce for the gander. A hackney car, number three hundred and twentyfour, driver Barton James of number one Harmony avenue, Donnybrook, on which sat a fare, a young gentleman, stylishly dressed in an indigoblue serge suit made by George Robert Mesias, tailor and cutter, of number five Eden quay, and wearing a straw hat very dressy, bought of John Plasto of number one Great Brunswick street, hatter. Eh? This is the jingle that joggled and jingled. By Dlugacz' porkshop bright tubes of Agendath trotted a gallantbuttocked mare. --Answering an ad? keen Richie's eyes asked Bloom. --Yes, Mr Bloom said. Town traveller. Nothing doing, I expect. Bloom mur: best references. But Henry wrote: it will excite me. You know how. In haste. Henry. Greek ee. Better add postscript. What is he playing now? Improvising. Intermezzo. P. S. The rum tum tum. How will you pun? You punish me? Crooked skirt swinging, whack by. Tell me I want to. Know. O. Course if I didn't I wouldn't ask. La la la ree. Trails off there sad in minor. Why minor sad? Sign H. They like sad tail at end. P. P. S. La la la ree. I feel so sad today. La ree. So lonely. Dee. He blotted quick on pad of Pat. Envel. Address. Just copy out of paper. Murmured: Messrs Callan, Coleman and Co, limited. Henry wrote:
Miss Martha Clifford
c/o P. O.
Dolphin's Barn Lane
Dublin
Blot over the other so he can't read. There. Right. Idea prize titbit.
Something detective read off blottingpad. Payment at the rate of guinea per
col. Matcham often thinks the laughing witch. Poor Mrs Purefoy. U. P: up.
Too poetical that about the sad. Music did that. Music hath charms.
Shakespeare said. Quotations every day in the year. To be or not to be.
Wisdom while you wait.
In Gerard's rosery of Fetter lane he walks, greyedauburn. One life is
all. One body. Do. But do.
Done anyhow. Postal order, stamp. Postoffice lower down. Walk
now. Enough. Barney Kiernan's I promised to meet them. Dislike that job.
House of mourning. Walk. Pat! Doesn't hear. Deaf beetle he is.
Car near there now. Talk. Talk. Pat! Doesn't. Settling those napkins.
Lot of ground he must cover in the day. Paint face behind on him then he'd
be two. Wish they'd sing more. Keep my mind off.
Bald Pat who is bothered mitred the napkins. Pat is a waiter hard of
his hearing. Pat is a waiter who waits while you wait. Hee hee hee hee. He
waits while you wait. Hee hee. A waiter is he. Hee hee hee hee. He waits
while you wait. While you wait if you wait he will wait while you wait. Hee
hee hee hee. Hoh. Wait while you wait.
Douce now. Douce Lydia. Bronze and rose.
She had a gorgeous, simply gorgeous, time. And look at the lovely
shell she brought.
To the end of the bar to him she bore lightly the spiked and winding
seahorn that he, George Lidwell, solicitor, might hear.
--Listen! she bade him.
Under Tom Kernan's ginhot words the accompanist wove music slow.
Authentic fact. How Walter Bapty lost his voice. Well, sir, the husband took
him by the throat. Scoundrel, said he, you'll sing no more lovesongs. He
did, faith, sir Tom. Bob Cowley wove. Tenors get wom. Cowley lay back.
Ah, now he heard, she holding it to his ear. Hear! He heard.
Wonderful. She held it to her own. And through the sifted light pale gold in
contrast glided. To hear.
Tap.
Bloom through the bardoor saw a shell held at their ears. He heard
more faintly that that they heard, each for herself alone, then each for
other, hearing the plash of waves, loudly, a silent roar.
Bronze by a weary gold, anear, afar, they listened.
Her ear too is a shell, the peeping lobe there. Been to the seaside.
Lovely seaside girls. Skin tanned raw. Should have put on coldcream first
make it brown. Buttered toast. O and that lotion mustn't forget. Fever near
her mouth. Your head it simply. Hair braided over: shell with seaweed.
Why do they hide their ears with seaweed hair? And Turks the mouth,
why? Her eyes over the sheet. Yashmak. Find the way in. A cave. No
admittance except on business.
The sea they think they hear. Singing. A roar. The blood it is. Souse
in the ear sometimes. Well, it's a sea. Corpuscle islands.
Wonderful really. So distinct. Again. George Lidwell held its murmur,
hearing: then laid it by, gently.
--What are the wild waves saying? he asked her, smiled.
Charming, seasmiling and unanswering Lydia on Lidwell smiled. Tap.
By Larry O'Rourke's, by Larry, bold Larry O', Boylan swayed and
Boylan turned.
From the forsaken shell miss Mina glided to her tankards waiting.
No, she was not so lonely archly miss Douce's head let Mr Lidwell know.
Walks in the moonlight by the sea. No, not alone. With whom? She nobly
answered: with a gentleman friend.
Bob Cowley's twinkling fingers in the treble played again. The
landlord has the prior. A little time. Long John. Big Ben. Lightly he played a
light bright tinkling measure for tripping ladies, arch and smiling, and for
their gallants, gentlemen friends. One: one, one, one, one, one: two, one,
three, four.
Sea, wind, leaves, thunder, waters, cows lowing, the cattlemarket,
cocks, hens don't crow, snakes hissss. There's music everywhere.
Ruttledge's door: ee creaking. No, that's noise. Minuet of Don Giovanni
he's playing now. Court dresses of all descriptions in castle chambers
dancing. Misery. Peasants outside. Green starving faces eating dockleaves.
Nice that is. Look: look, look, look, look, look: you look at us.
That's joyful I can feel. Never have written it. Why? My joy is other
joy. But both are joys. Yes, joy it must be. Mere fact of music shows you
are. Often thought she was in the dumps till she began to lilt. Then know.
M'Coy valise. My wife and your wife. Squealing cat. Like tearing silk.
Tongue when she talks like the clapper of a bellows. They can't manage
men's intervals. Gap in their voices too. Fill me. I'm warm, dark, open.
Molly in quis est homo: Mercadante. My ear against the wall to hear. Want
a woman who can deliver the goods.
Jog jig jogged stopped. Dandy tan shoe of dandy Boylan socks
skyblue clocks came light to earth.
O, look we are so! Chamber music. Could make a kind of pun on
that. It is a kind of music I often thought when she. Acoustics that is.
Tinkling. Empty vessels make most noise. Because the acoustics, the
resonance changes according as the weight of the water is equal to the law
of falling water. Like those rhapsodies of Liszt's, Hungarian, gipsyeyed.
Pearls. Drops. Rain. Diddleiddle addleaddle ooddleooddle. Hissss. Now.
Maybe now. Before.
One rapped on a door, one tapped with a knock, did he knock Paul
de Kock with a loud proud knocker with a cock carracarracarra cock.
Cockcock.
Tap.
--Qui sdegno, Ben, said Father Cowley.
--No, Ben, Tom Kernan interfered. The Croppy Boy. Our native Doric.
--Ay do, Ben, Mr Dedalus said. Good men and true.
--Do, do, they begged in one.
I'll go. Here, Pat, return. Come. He came, he came, he did not stay.
To me. How much?
--What key? Six sharps?
--F sharp major, Ben Dollard said.
Bob Cowley's outstretched talons griped the black deepsounding
chords.
Must go prince Bloom told Richie prince. No, Richie said. Yes, must.
Got money somewhere. He's on for a razzle backache spree. Much? He
seehears lipspeech. One and nine. Penny for yourself. Here. Give him
twopence tip. Deaf, bothered. But perhaps he has wife and family waiting,
waiting Patty come home. Hee hee hee hee. Deaf wait while they wait.
But wait. But hear. Chords dark. Lugugugubrious. Low. In a cave of
the dark middle earth. Embedded ore. Lumpmusic.
The voice of dark age, of unlove, earth's fatigue made grave approach
and painful, come from afar, from hoary mountains, called on good men
and true. The priest he sought. With him would he speak a word.
Tap.
Ben Dollard's voice. Base barreltone. Doing his level best to say it.
Croak of vast manless moonless womoonless marsh. Other comedown. Big
ships' chandler's business he did once. Remember: rosiny ropes, ships'
lanterns. Failed to the tune of ten thousand pounds. Now in the Iveagh
home. Cubicle number so and so. Number one Bass did that for him.
The priest's at home. A false priest's servant bade him welcome. Step
in. The holy father. With bows a traitor servant. Curlycues of chords.
Ruin them. Wreck their lives. Then build them cubicles to end their
days in. Hushaby. Lullaby. Die, dog. Little dog, die.
The voice of warning, solemn warning, told them the youth had
entered a lonely hall, told them how solemn fell his footsteps there, told
them the gloomy chamber, the vested priest sitting to shrive.
Decent soul. Bit addled now. Thinks he'll win in Answers, poets'
picture puzzle. We hand you crisp five pound note. Bird sitting hatching in
a nest. Lay of the last minstrel he thought it was. See blank tee what
domestic animal? Tee dash ar most courageous mariner. Good voice he has
still. No eunuch yet with all his belongings.
Listen. Bloom listened. Richie Goulding listened. And by the door
deaf Pat, bald Pat, tipped Pat, listened.
The chords harped slower.
The voice of penance and of grief came slow, embellished, tremulous.
Ben's contrite beard confessed. In nomine Domini, in God's name he knelt.
He beat his hand upon his breast, confessing: mea culpa.
Latin again. That holds them like birdlime. Priest with the
communion corpus for those women. Chap in the mortuary, coffin or
coffey, corpusnomine. Wonder where that rat is by now. Scrape.
Tap.
They listened. Tankards and miss Kennedy. George Lidwell, eyelid
well expressive, fullbusted satin. Kernan. Si.
The sighing voice of sorrow sang. His sins. Since Easter he had
cursed three times. You bitch's bast. And once at masstime he had gone to
play. Once by the churchyard he had passed and for his mother's rest he
had not prayed. A boy. A croppy boy.
Bronze, listening, by the beerpull gazed far away. Soulfully. Doesn't
half know I'm. Molly great dab at seeing anyone looking.
Bronze gazed far sideways. Mirror there. Is that best side of her face?
They always know. Knock at the door. Last tip to titivate.
Cockcarracarra.
What do they think when they hear music? Way to catch rattlesnakes.
Night Michael Gunn gave us the box. Tuning up. Shah of Persia liked that
best. Remind him of home sweet home. Wiped his nose in curtain too.
Custom his country perhaps. That's music too. Not as bad as it sounds.
Tootling. Brasses braying asses through uptrunks. Doublebasses helpless,
gashes in their sides. Woodwinds mooing cows. Semigrand open crocodile
music hath jaws. Woodwind like Goodwin's name.
She looked fine. Her crocus dress she wore lowcut, belongings on
show. Clove her breath was always in theatre when she bent to ask a
question. Told her what Spinoza says in that book of poor papa's.
Hypnotised, listening. Eyes like that. She bent. Chap in dresscircle staring
down into her with his operaglass for all he was worth. Beauty of music
you must hear twice. Nature woman half a look. God made the country
man the tune. Met him pike hoses. Philosophy. O rocks!
All gone. All fallen. At the siege of Ross his father, at Gorey all his
brothers fell. To Wexford, we are the boys of Wexford, he would. Last of
his name and race.
I too. Last of my race. Milly young student. Well, my fault perhaps.
No son. Rudy. Too late now. Or if not? If not? If still?
He bore no hate.
Hate. Love. Those are names. Rudy. Soon I am old.
Big Ben his voice unfolded. Great voice Richie Goulding said, a flush
struggling in his pale, to Bloom soon old. But when was young?
Ireland comes now. My country above the king. She listens. Who
fears to speak of nineteen four? Time to be shoving. Looked enough.
--Bless me, father, Dollard the croppy cried. Bless me and let me go.
Tap.
Bloom looked, unblessed to go. Got up to kill: on eighteen bob a
week. Fellows shell out the dibs. Want to keep your weathereye open. Those
girls, those lovely. By the sad sea waves. Chorusgirl's romance. Letters read
out for breach of promise. From Chickabiddy's owny Mumpsypum.
Laughter in court. Henry. I never signed it. The lovely name you.
Low sank the music, air and words. Then hastened. The false priest
rustling soldier from his cassock. A yeoman captain. They know it all by
heart. The thrill they itch for. Yeoman cap.
Tap. Tap.
Thrilled she listened, bending in sympathy to hear.
Blank face. Virgin should say: or fingered only. Write something on
it: page. If not what becomes of them? Decline, despair. Keeps them young.
Even admire themselves. See. Play on her. Lip blow. Body of white woman,
a flute alive. Blow gentle. Loud. Three holes, all women. Goddess I didn't
see. They want it. Not too much polite. That's why he gets them. Gold in
your pocket, brass in your face. Say something. Make her hear. With look
to look. Songs without words. Molly, that hurdygurdy boy. She knew he
meant the monkey was sick. Or because so like the Spanish. Understand
animals too that way. Solomon did. Gift of nature.
Ventriloquise. My lips closed. Think in my stom. What?
Will? You? I. Want. You. To.
With hoarse rude fury the yeoman cursed, swelling in apoplectic
bitch's bastard. A good thought, boy, to come. One hour's your time to live,
your last.
Tap. Tap.
Thrill now. Pity they feel. To wipe away a tear for martyrs that want
to, dying to, die. For all things dying, for all things born. Poor Mrs
Purefoy. Hope she's over. Because their wombs.
A liquid of womb of woman eyeball gazed under a fence of lashes,
calmly, hearing. See real beauty of the eye when she not speaks. On yonder
river. At each slow satiny heaving bosom's wave (her heaving embon) red
rose rose slowly sank red rose. Heartbeats: her breath: breath that is life.
And all the tiny tiny fernfoils trembled of maidenhair.
But look. The bright stars fade. O rose! Castile. The morn.
Ha. Lidwell. For him then not for. Infatuated. I like that? See her
from here though. Popped corks, splashes of beerfroth, stacks of empties.
On the smooth jutting beerpull laid Lydia hand, lightly, plumply,
leave it to my hands. All lost in pity for croppy. Fro, to: to, fro: over the
polished knob (she knows his eyes, my eyes, her eyes) her thumb and finger
passed in pity: passed, reposed and, gently touching, then slid so smoothly,
slowly down, a cool firm white enamel baton protruding through their
sliding ring.
With a cock with a carra.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I hold this house. Amen. He gnashed in fury. Traitors swing.
The chords consented. Very sad thing. But had to be.
Get out before the end. Thanks, that was heavenly. Where's my hat.
Pass by her. Can leave that Freeman. Letter I have. Suppose she were the?
No. Walk, walk, walk. Like Cashel Boylo Connoro Coylo Tisdall Maurice
Tisntdall Farrell. Waaaaaaalk.
Well, I must be. Are you off? Yrfmstbyes. Blmstup. O'er ryehigh blue.
Ow. Bloom stood up. Soap feeling rather sticky behind. Must have
sweated: music. That lotion, remember. Well, so long. High grade. Card
inside. Yes.
By deaf Pat in the doorway straining ear Bloom passed.
At Geneva barrack that young man died. At Passage was his body
laid. Dolor! O, he dolores! The voice of the mournful chanter called to
dolorous prayer.
By rose, by satiny bosom, by the fondling hand, by slops, by empties,
by popped corks, greeting in going, past eyes and maidenhair, bronze and
faint gold in deepseashadow, went Bloom, soft Bloom, I feel so lonely
Bloom.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Pray for him, prayed the bass of Dollard. You who hear in peace.
Breathe a prayer, drop a tear, good men, good people. He was the croppy
boy.
Scaring eavesdropping boots croppy bootsboy Bloom in the Ormond
hallway heard the growls and roars of bravo, fat backslapping, their boots
all treading, boots not the boots the boy. General chorus off for a swill to
wash it down. Glad I avoided.
--Come on, Ben, Simon Dedalus cried. By God, you're as good as ever you
were.
--Better, said Tomgin Kernan. Most trenchant rendition of that ballad,
upon my soul and honour It is.
--Lablache, said Father Cowley.
Ben Dollard bulkily cachuchad towards the bar, mightily praisefed
and all big roseate, on heavyfooted feet, his gouty fingers nakkering
castagnettes in the air.
Big Benaben Dollard. Big Benben. Big Benben.
Rrr.
And deepmoved all, Simon trumping compassion from foghorn nose,
all laughing they brought him forth, Ben Dollard, in right good cheer.
--You're looking rubicund, George Lidwell said.
Miss Douce composed her rose to wait.
--Ben machree, said Mr Dedalus, clapping Ben's fat back shoulderblade.
Fit as a fiddle only he has a lot of adipose tissue concealed about his person.
Rrrrrrrsss.
--Fat of death, Simon, Ben Dollard growled.
Richie rift in the lute alone sat: Goulding, Collis, Ward. Uncertainly
he waited. Unpaid Pat too.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Miss Mina Kennedy brought near her lips to ear of tankard one.
--Mr Dollard, they murmured low.
--Dollard, murmured tankard.
Tank one believed: miss Kenn when she: that doll he was: she doll:
the tank.
He murmured that he knew the name. The name was familiar to him,
that is to say. That was to say he had heard the name of. Dollard, was it?
Dollard, yes.
Yes, her lips said more loudly, Mr Dollard. He sang that song lovely,
murmured Mina. Mr Dollard. And The Last Rose of Summer was a lovely
song. Mina loved that song. Tankard loved the song that Mina.
'Tis the last rose of summer dollard left bloom felt wind wound round
inside.
Gassy thing that cider: binding too. Wait. Postoffice near Reuben J's
one and eightpence too. Get shut of it. Dodge round by Greek street. Wish
I hadn't promised to meet. Freer in air. Music. Gets on your nerves.
Beerpull. Her hand that rocks the cradle rules the. Ben Howth. That rules
the world.
Far. Far. Far. Far.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Up the quay went Lionelleopold, naughty Henry with letter for
Mady, with sweets of sin with frillies for Raoul with met him pike hoses
went Poldy on.
Tap blind walked tapping by the tap the curbstone tapping, tap by tap.
Cowley, he stuns himself with it: kind of drunkenness. Better give
way only half way the way of a man with a maid. Instance enthusiasts. All
ears. Not lose a demisemiquaver. Eyes shut. Head nodding in time. Dotty.
You daren't budge. Thinking strictly prohibited. Always talking shop.
Fiddlefaddle about notes.
All a kind of attempt to talk. Unpleasant when it stops because you
never know exac. Organ in Gardiner street. Old Glynn fifty quid a year.
Queer up there in the cockloft, alone, with stops and locks and keys. Seated
all day at the organ. Maunder on for hours, talking to himself or the other
fellow blowing the bellows. Growl angry, then shriek cursing (want to have
wadding or something in his no don't she cried), then all of a soft sudden
wee little wee little pipy wind.
Pwee! A wee little wind piped eeee. In Bloom's little wee.
--Was he? Mr Dedalus said, returning with fetched pipe. I was with him
this morning at poor little Paddy Dignam's ...
--Ay, the Lord have mercy on him.
--By the bye there's a tuningfork in there on the ...
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
--The wife has a fine voice. Or had. What? Lidwell asked.
--O, that must be the tuner, Lydia said to Simonlionel first I saw, forgot it
when he was here.
Blind he was she told George Lidwell second I saw. And played so
exquisitely, treat to hear. Exquisite contrast: bronzelid, minagold.
--Shout! Ben Dollard shouted, pouring. Sing out!
--'lldo! cried Father Cowley.
Rrrrrr.
I feel I want....
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap
--Very, Mr Dedalus said, staring hard at a headless sardine.
Under the sandwichbell lay on a bier of bread one last, one lonely, last sardine of summer.
Bloom alone.
--Very, he stared. The lower register, for choice.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Bloom went by Barry's. Wish I could. Wait. That wonderworker if I
had. Twentyfour solicitors in that one house. Counted them. Litigation.
Love one another. Piles of parchment. Messrs Pick and Pocket have power
of attorney. Goulding, Collis, Ward.
But for example the chap that wallops the big drum. His vocation:
Mickey Rooney's band. Wonder how it first struck him. Sitting at home
after pig's cheek and cabbage nursing it in the armchair. Rehearsing his
band part. Pom. Pompedy. Jolly for the wife. Asses' skins. Welt them
through life, then wallop after death. Pom. Wallop. Seems to be what you
call yashmak or I mean kismet. Fate.
Tap. Tap. A stripling, blind, with a tapping cane came taptaptapping
by Daly's window where a mermaid hair all streaming (but he couldn't see)
blew whiffs of a mermaid (blind couldn't), mermaid, coolest whiff of all.
Instruments. A blade of grass, shell of her hands, then blow. Even
comb and tissuepaper you can knock a tune out of. Molly in her shift in
Lombard street west, hair down. I suppose each kind of trade made its own,
don't you see? Hunter with a horn. Haw. Have you the? Cloche. Sonnez la.
Shepherd his pipe. Pwee little wee. Policeman a whistle. Locks and keys!
Sweep! Four o'clock's all's well! Sleep! All is lost now. Drum? Pompedy.
Wait. I know. Towncrier, bumbailiff. Long John. Waken the dead. Pom.
Dignam. Poor little nominedomine. Pom. It is music. I mean of course it's
all pom pom pom very much what they call da capo. Still you can hear. As
we march, we march along, march along. Pom.
I must really. Fff. Now if I did that at a banquet. Just a question of
custom shah of Persia. Breathe a prayer, drop a tear. All the same he must
have been a bit of a natural not to see it was a yeoman cap. Muffled up.
Wonder who was that chap at the grave in the brown macin. O, the whore
of the lane!
A frowsy whore with black straw sailor hat askew came glazily in the
day along the quay towards Mr Bloom. When first he saw that form
endearing? Yes, it is. I feel so lonely. Wet night in the lane. Horn. Who had
the? Heehaw shesaw. Off her beat here. What is she? Hope she. Psst! Any
chance of your wash. Knew Molly. Had me decked. Stout lady does be with
you in the brown costume. Put you off your stroke, that. Appointment we
made knowing we'd never, well hardly ever. Too dear too near to home
sweet home. Sees me, does she? Looks a fright in the day. Face like dip.
Damn her. O, well, she has to live like the rest. Look in here.
In Lionel Marks's antique saleshop window haughty Henry Lionel
Leopold dear Henry Flower earnestly Mr Leopold Bloom envisaged
battered candlesticks melodeon oozing maggoty blowbags. Bargain: six
bob. Might learn to play. Cheap. Let her pass. Course everything is dear if
you don't want it. That's what good salesman is. Make you buy what he
wants to sell. Chap sold me the Swedish razor he shaved me with. Wanted
to charge me for the edge he gave it. She's passing now. Six bob.
Must be the cider or perhaps the burgund.
Near bronze from anear near gold from afar they chinked their
clinking glasses all, brighteyed and gallant, before bronze Lydia's tempting
last rose of summer, rose of Castile. First Lid, De, Cow, Ker, Doll, a fifth:
Lidwell, Si Dedalus, Bob Cowley, Kernan and big Ben Dollard.
Tap. A youth entered a lonely Ormond hall.
Bloom viewed a gallant pictured hero in Lionel Marks's window.
Robert Emmet's last words. Seven last words. Of Meyerbeer that is.
--True men like you men.
--Ay, ay, Ben.
--Will lift your glass with us.
They lifted.
Tschink. Tschunk.
Tip. An unseeing stripling stood in the door. He saw not bronze. He
saw not gold. Nor Ben nor Bob nor Tom nor Si nor George nor tanks nor
Richie nor Pat. Hee hee hee hee. He did not see.
Seabloom, greaseabloom viewed last words. Softly. When my country
takes her place among.
Prrprr.
Must be the bur.
Fff! Oo. Rrpr.
Nations of the earth. No-one behind. She's passed. Then and not till
then. Tram kran kran kran. Good oppor. Coming. Krandlkrankran. I'm
sure it's the burgund. Yes. One, two. Let my epitaph be. Kraaaaaa. Written.
I have.
Pprrpffrrppffff.
Done.
-- 7 Hunter Street,
Liverpool.
To the High Sheriff of Dublin,
Dublin.
Honoured sir i beg to offer my services in the abovementioned painful case i
hanged Joe Gann in Bootle jail on the 12 of Febuary 1900 and i hanged ....
--Show us, Joe, says I.
--... private Arthur Chace for fowl murder of Jessie Tilsit in Pentonville
prison and i was assistant when ....
--Jesus, says I.
--... Billington executed the awful murderer Toad Smith ...
The citizen made a grab at the letter.
--Hold hard, says Joe, i have a special nack of putting the noose once in he
can't get out hoping to be favoured i remain, honoured sir, my terms is five
ginnees.
H. Rumbold,
Master Barber.
--And a barbarous bloody barbarian he is too, says the citizen.
--And the dirty scrawl of the wretch, says Joe. Here, says he, take them to
hell out of my sight, Alf. Hello, Bloom, says he, what will you have?
So they started arguing about the point, Bloom saying he wouldn't
and he couldn't and excuse him no offence and all to that and then he said
well he'd just take a cigar. Gob, he's a prudent member and no mistake.
--Give us one of your prime stinkers, Terry, says Joe.
And Alf was telling us there was one chap sent in a mourning card
with a black border round it.
--They're all barbers, says he, from the black country that would hang
their own fathers for five quid down and travelling expenses.
And he was telling us there's two fellows waiting below to pull his
heels down when he gets the drop and choke him properly and then they
chop up the rope after and sell the bits for a few bob a skull.
In the dark land they bide, the vengeful knights of the razor. Their
deadly coil they grasp: yea, and therein they lead to Erebus whatsoever
wight hath done a deed of blood for I will on nowise suffer it even so saith
the Lord.
So they started talking about capital punishment and of course Bloom
comes out with the why and the wherefore and all the codology of the
business and the old dog smelling him all the time I'm told those jewies does
have a sort of a queer odour coming off them for dogs about I don't know
what all deterrent effect and so forth and so on.
--There's one thing it hasn't a deterrent effect on, says Alf.
--What's that? says Joe.
--The poor bugger's tool that's being hanged, says Alf.
--That so? says Joe.
--God's truth, says Alf. I heard that from the head warder that was in
Kilmainham when they hanged Joe Brady, the invincible. He told me when
they cut him down after the drop it was standing up in their faces like a
poker.
--Ruling passion strong in death, says Joe, as someone said.
--That can be explained by science, says Bloom. It's only a natural
phenomenon, don't you see, because on account of the ...
And then he starts with his jawbreakers about phenomenon and
science and this phenomenon and the other phenomenon.
The distinguished scientist Herr Professor Luitpold Blumenduft
tendered medical evidence to the effect that the instantaneous fracture of the
cervical vertebrae and consequent scission of the spinal cord would,
according to the best approved tradition of medical science, be calculated to
inevitably produce in the human subject a violent ganglionic stimulus of the
nerve centres of the genital apparatus, thereby causing the elastic pores of
the corpora cavernosa to rapidly dilate in such a way as to instantaneously
facilitate the flow of blood to that part of the human anatomy known as the
penis or male organ resulting in the phenomenon which has been
denominated by the faculty a morbid upwards and outwards
philoprogenitive erection in articulo mortis per diminutionem capitis.
So of course the citizen was only waiting for the wink of the word
and he starts gassing out of him about the invincibles and the old guard and
the men of sixtyseven and who fears to speak of ninetyeight and Joe with
him about all the fellows that were hanged, drawn and transported for the
cause by drumhead courtmartial and a new Ireland and new this, that and
the other. Talking about new Ireland he ought to go and get a new dog so
he ought. Mangy ravenous brute sniffing and sneezing all round the place
and scratching his scabs. And round he goes to Bob Doran that was
standing Alf a half one sucking up for what he could get. So of course Bob
Doran starts doing the bloody fool with his:
--Give us the paw! Give the paw, doggy! Good old doggy! Give the paw
here! Give us the paw!
Arrah, bloody end to the paw he'd paw and Alf trying to keep him
from tumbling off the bloody stool atop of the bloody old dog and he
talking all kinds of drivel about training by kindness and thoroughbred dog
and intelligent dog: give you the bloody pip. Then he starts scraping a few
bits of old biscuit out of the bottom of a Jacobs' tin he told Terry to bring.
Gob, he golloped it down like old boots and his tongue hanging out of him
a yard long for more. Near ate the tin and all, hungry bloody mongrel.
And the citizen and Bloom having an argument about the point, the
brothers Sheares and Wolfe Tone beyond on Arbour Hill and Robert
Emmet and die for your country, the Tommy Moore touch about Sara
Curran and she's far from the land. And Bloom, of course, with his
knockmedown cigar putting on swank with his lardy face. Phenomenon!
The fat heap he married is a nice old phenomenon with a back on her like a
ballalley. Time they were stopping up in the City Arms pisser Burke told me
there was an old one there with a cracked loodheramaun of a nephew and
Bloom trying to get the soft side of her doing the mollycoddle playing
b’zique to come in for a bit of the wampum in her will and not eating meat
of a Friday because the old one was always thumping her craw and taking
the lout out for a walk. And one time he led him the rounds of Dublin and,
by the holy farmer, he never cried crack till he brought him home as drunk
as a boiled owl and he said he did it to teach him the evils of alcohol and by
herrings, if the three women didn't near roast him, it's a queer story, the old
one, Bloom's wife and Mrs O'Dowd that kept the hotel. Jesus, I had to
laugh at pisser Burke taking them off chewing the fat. And Bloom with his
but don't you see? and but on the other hand. And sure, more be token, the
lout I'm told was in Power's after, the blender's, round in Cope street going
home footless in a cab five times in the week after drinking his way through
all the samples in the bloody establishment. Phenomenon!
--The memory of the dead, says the citizen taking up his pintglass and
glaring at Bloom.
--Ay, ay, says Joe.
--You don't grasp my point, says Bloom. What I mean is ....
--Sinn Fein! says the citizen. Sinn fein amhain! The friends we love are by
our side and the foes we hate before us.
The last farewell was affecting in the extreme. From the belfries far
and near the funereal deathbell tolled unceasingly while all around the
gloomy precincts rolled the ominous warning of a hundred muffled drums
punctuated by the hollow booming of pieces of ordnance. The deafening
claps of thunder and the dazzling flashes of lightning which lit up the
ghastly scene testified that the artillery of heaven had lent its supernatural
pomp to the already gruesome spectacle. A torrential rain poured down
from the floodgates of the angry heavens upon the bared heads of the
assembled multitude which numbered at the lowest computation five
hundred thousand persons. A posse of Dublin Metropolitan police
superintended by the Chief Commissioner in person maintained order in
the vast throng for whom the York street brass and reed band whiled away
the intervening time by admirably rendering on their blackdraped
instruments the matchless melody endeared to us from the cradle by
Speranza's plaintive muse. Special quick excursion trains and upholstered
charabancs had been provided for the comfort of our country cousins of
whom there were large contingents. Considerable amusement was caused
by the favourite Dublin streetsingers L-n-h-n and M-ll-g-n who sang The
Night before Larry was Stretched in their usual mirthprovoking fashion.
Our two inimitable drolls did a roaring trade with their broadsheets among
lovers of the comedy element and nobody who has a corner in his heart for
real Irish fun without vulgarity will grudge them their hardearned pennies.
The children of the Male and Female Foundling Hospital who thronged the
windows overlooking the scene were delighted with this unexpected
addition to the day's entertainment and a word of praise is due to the Little
Sisters of the Poor for their excellent idea of affording the poor fatherless
and motherless children a genuinely instructive treat. The viceregal
houseparty which included many wellknown ladies was chaperoned by
Their Excellencies to the most favourable positions on the grandstand while
the picturesque foreign delegation known as the Friends of the Emerald Isle
was accommodated on a tribune directly opposite. The delegation, present
in full force, consisted of Commendatore Bacibaci Beninobenone (the
semiparalysed doyen of the party who had to be assisted to his seat by the
aid of a powerful steam crane), Monsieur Pierrepaul Petit’patant, the
Grandjoker Vladinmire Pokethankertscheff, the Archjoker Leopold
Rudolph von Schwanzenbad-Hodenthaler, Countess Marha Viraga
Kisaszony Putr pesthi, Hiram Y. Bomboost, Count Athanatos
Karamelopulos, Ali Baba Backsheesh Rahat Lokum Effendi, Se¤or Hidalgo
Caballero Don Pecadillo y Palabras y Paternoster de la Malora de la
Malaria, Hokopoko Harakiri, Hi Hung Chang, Olaf Kobberkeddelsen,
Mynheer Trik van Trumps, Pan Poleaxe Paddyrisky, Goosepond P hkl t
Kratchinabritchisitch, Borus Hupinkoff, Herr Hurhausdirektorpresident
Hans Chuechli-Steuerli, Nationalgymnasiummuseumsanatoriumand-
suspensoriumsordinaryprivatdocentgeneralhistoryspecialprofessordoctor
Kriegfried Ueberallgemein. All the delegates without exception expressed
themselves in the strongest possible heterogeneous terms concerning the
nameless barbarity which they had been called upon to witness.
An animated altercation (in which all took part) ensued among
the F. O. T. E. I. as to whether the eighth or the ninth of March was the
correct date of the birth of Ireland's patron saint. In the course of the
argument cannonballs, scimitars, boomerangs, blunderbusses, stinkpots,
meatchoppers, umbrellas, catapults, knuckledusters, sandbags, lumps of pig
iron were resorted to and blows were freely exchanged. The baby
policeman, Constable MacFadden, summoned by special courier from
Booterstown, quickly restored order and with lightning promptitude
proposed the seventeenth of the month as a solution equally honourable for
both contending parties. The readywitted ninefooter's suggestion at once
appealed to all and was unanimously accepted. Constable MacFadden was
heartily congratulated by all the F. O. T. E. I., several of whom were
bleeding profusely. Commendatore Beninobenone having been extricated
from underneath the presidential armchair, it was explained by his legal
adviser Avvocato Pagamimi that the various articles secreted in his
thirtytwo pockets had been abstracted by him during the affray from the
pockets of his junior colleagues in the hope of bringing them to their senses.
The objects (which included several hundred ladies' and gentlemen's gold
and silver watches) were promptly restored to their rightful owners and
general harmony reigned supreme.
Quietly, unassumingly Rumbold stepped on to the scaffold in faultless
morning dress and wearing his favourite flower, the Gladiolus Cruentus.
He announced his presence by that gentle Rumboldian cough which so
many have tried (unsuccessfully) to imitate - short, painstaking yet withal
so characteristic of the man. The arrival of the worldrenowned headsman
was greeted by a roar of acclamation from the huge concourse, the
viceregal ladies waving their handkerchiefs in their excitement while the
even more excitable foreign delegates cheered vociferously in a medley of
cries, hoch, banzai, eljen, zivio, chinchin, polla kronia, hiphip, vive,
Allah, amid which the ringing evviva of the delegate of the land of song
(a high double F recalling those piercingly lovely notes with which the
eunuch Catalani beglamoured our greatgreatgrandmothers) was easily
distinguishable. It was exactly seventeen o'clock. The signal for prayer was
then promptly given by megaphone and in an instant all heads were bared,
the commendatore's patriarchal sombrero, which has been in the possession
of his family since the revolution of Rienzi, being removed by his medical
adviser in attendance, Dr Pippi. The learned prelate who administered the
last comforts of holy religion to the hero martyr when about to pay the
death penalty knelt in a most christian spirit in a pool of rainwater, his
cassock above his hoary head, and offered up to the throne of grace fervent
prayers of supplication. Hand by the block stood the grim figure of the
executioner, his visage being concealed in a tengallon pot with two circular
perforated apertures through which his eyes glowered furiously. As he
awaited the fatal signal he tested the edge of his horrible weapon by honing
it upon his brawny forearm or decapitated in rapid succession a flock of
sheep which had been provided by the admirers of his fell but necessary
office. On a handsome mahogany table near him were neatly arranged the
quartering knife, the various finely tempered disembowelling appliances
(specially supplied by the worldfamous firm of cutlers, Messrs John Round
and Sons, Sheffield), a terra cotta saucepan for the reception of the
duodenum, colon, blind intestine and appendix etc when successfully
extracted and two commodious milkjugs destined to receive the most
precious blood of the most precious victim. The housesteward of the
amalgamated cats' and dogs' home was in attendance to convey these
vessels when replenished to that beneficent institution. Quite an excellent
repast consisting of rashers and eggs, fried steak and onions, done to a
nicety, delicious hot breakfast rolls and invigorating tea had been
considerately provided by the authorities for the consumption of the central
figure of the tragedy who was in capital spirits when prepared for death and
evinced the keenest interest in the proceedings from beginning to end but
he, with an abnegation rare in these our times, rose nobly to the occasion
and expressed the dying wish (immediately acceded to) that the meal should
be divided in aliquot parts among the members of the sick and indigent
roomkeepers' association as a token of his regard and esteem. The nec and
non plus ultra of emotion were reached when the blushing bride elect burst
her way through the serried ranks of the bystanders and flung herself upon
the muscular bosom of him who was about to be launched into eternity for
her sake. The hero folded her willowy form in a loving embrace murmuring
fondly Sheila, my own. Encouraged by this use of her christian name she
kissed passionately all the various suitable areas of his person which the
decencies of prison garb permitted her ardour to reach. She swore to him as
they mingled the salt streams of their tears that she would ever cherish his
memory, that she would never forget her hero boy who went to his death
with a song on his lips as if he were but going to a hurling match in
Clonturk park. She brought back to his recollection the happy days of
blissful childhood together on the banks of Anna Liffey when they had
indulged in the innocent pastimes of the young and, oblivious of the
dreadful present, they both laughed heartily, all the spectators, including
the venerable pastor, joining in the general merriment. That monster
audience simply rocked with delight. But anon they were overcome with
grief and clasped their hands for the last time. A fresh torrent of tears burst
from their lachrymal ducts and the vast concourse of people, touched to the
inmost core, broke into heartrending sobs, not the least affected being the
aged prebendary himself. Big strong men, officers of the peace and genial
giants of the royal Irish constabulary, were making frank use of their
handkerchiefs and it is safe to say that there was not a dry eye in that
record assemblage. A most romantic incident occurred when a handsome
young Oxford graduate, noted for his chivalry towards the fair sex, stepped
forward and, presenting his visiting card, bankbook and genealogical tree,
solicited the hand of the hapless young lady, requesting her to name the
day, and was accepted on the spot. Every lady in the audience was
presented with a tasteful souvenir of the occasion in the shape of a skull and
crossbones brooch, a timely and generous act which evoked a fresh
outburst of emotion: and when the gallant young Oxonian (the bearer, by
the way, of one of the most timehonoured names in Albion's history) placed
on the finger of his blushing fianc’e an expensive engagement ring with
emeralds set in the form of a fourleaved shamrock the excitement knew no
bounds. Nay, even the stern provostmarshal, lieutenantcolonel
Tomkin-Maxwell ffrenchmullan Tomlinson, who presided on the sad
occasion, he who had blown a considerable number of sepoys from the
cannonmouth without flinching, could not now restrain his natural
emotion. With his mailed gauntlet he brushed away a furtive tear and was
overheard, by those privileged burghers who happened to be in his
immediate entourage, to murmur to himself in a faltering undertone:
--God blimey if she aint a clinker, that there bleeding tart. Blimey it makes
me kind of bleeding cry, straight, it does, when I sees her cause I thinks of
my old mashtub what's waiting for me down Limehouse way.
So then the citizen begins talking about the Irish language and the
corporation meeting and all to that and the shoneens that can't speak their
own language and Joe chipping in because he stuck someone for a quid and
Bloom putting in his old goo with his twopenny stump that he cadged off of
Joe and talking about the Gaelic league and the antitreating league and
drink, the curse of Ireland. Antitreating is about the size of it. Gob, he'd let
you pour all manner of drink down his throat till the Lord would call him
before you'd ever see the froth of his pint. And one night I went in with a
fellow into one of their musical evenings, song and dance about she could
get up on a truss of hay she could my Maureen Lay and there was a fellow
with a Ballyhooly blue ribbon badge spiffing out of him in Irish and a lot of
colleen bawns going about with temperance beverages and selling medals
and oranges and lemonade and a few old dry buns, gob, flahoolagh
entertainment, don't be talking. Ireland sober is Ireland free. And then an
old fellow starts blowing into his bagpipes and all the gougers shuffling
their feet to the tune the old cow died of. And one or two sky pilots having
an eye around that there was no goings on with the females, hitting below
the belt.
So howandever, as I was saying, the old dog seeing the tin was empty
starts mousing around by Joe and me. I'd train him by kindness, so I
would, if he was my dog. Give him a rousing fine kick now and again where
it wouldn't blind him.
--Afraid he'll bite you? says the citizen, jeering.
--No, says I. But he might take my leg for a lamppost.
So he calls the old dog over.
--What's on you, Garry? says he.
Then he starts hauling and mauling and talking to him in Irish and
the old towser growling, letting on to answer, like a duet in the opera. Such
growling you never heard as they let off between them. Someone that has
nothing better to do ought to write a letter pro bono publico to the papers
about the muzzling order for a dog the like of that. Growling and grousing
and his eye all bloodshot from the drouth is in it and the hydrophobia
dropping out of his jaws.
All those who are interested in the spread of human culture among
the lower animals (and their name is legion) should make a point of not
missing the really marvellous exhibition of cynanthropy given by the
famous old Irish red setter wolfdog formerly known by the sobriquet of
Garryowen and recently rechristened by his large circle of friends and
acquaintances Owen Garry. The exhibition, which is the result of years of
training by kindness and a carefully thoughtout dietary system, comprises,
among other achievements, the recitation of verse. Our greatest living
phonetic expert (wild horses shall not drag it from us!) has left no stone
unturned in his efforts to delucidate and compare the verse recited and has
found it bears a striking resemblance (the italics are ours) to the ranns of
ancient Celtic bards. We are not speaking so much of those delightful
lovesongs with which the writer who conceals his identity under the
graceful pseudonym of the Little Sweet Branch has familiarised the
bookloving world but rather (as a contributor D. O. C. points out in an
interesting communication published by an evening contemporary) of the
harsher and more personal note which is found in the satirical effusions of
the famous Raftery and of Donal MacConsidine to say nothing of a more
modern lyrist at present very much in the public eye. We subjoin a specimen
which has been rendered into English by an eminent scholar whose name
for the moment we are not at liberty to disclose though we believe that our
readers will find the topical allusion rather more than an indication. The
metrical system of the canine original, which recalls the intricate alliterative
and isosyllabic rules of the Welsh englyn, is infinitely more complicated but
we believe our readers will agree that the spirit has been well caught.
Perhaps it should be added that the effect is greatly increased if Owen's
verse be spoken somewhat slowly and indistinctly in a tone suggestive of
suppressed rancour.
The curse of my curses
Seven days every day
And seven dry Thursdays
On you, Barney Kiernan,
Has no sup of water
To cool my courage,
And my guts red roaring
After Lowry's lights.
So he told Terry to bring some water for the dog and, gob, you could
hear him lapping it up a mile off. And Joe asked him would he have
another.
--I will, says he, a chara, to show there's no ill feeling.
Gob, he's not as green as he's cabbagelooking. Arsing around from
one pub to another, leaving it to your own honour, with old Giltrap's dog
and getting fed up by the ratepayers and corporators. Entertainment for
man and beast. And says Joe:
--Could you make a hole in another pint?
--Could a swim duck? says I.
--Same again, Terry, says Joe. Are you sure you won't have anything in the
way of liquid refreshment? says he.
--Thank you, no, says Bloom. As a matter of fact I just wanted to meet
Martin Cunningham, don't you see, about this insurance of poor Dignam's.
Martin asked me to go to the house. You see, he, Dignam, I mean, didn't
serve any notice of the assignment on the company at the time and
nominally under the act the mortgagee can't recover on the policy.
--Holy Wars, says Joe, laughing, that's a good one if old Shylock is landed.
So the wife comes out top dog, what?
--Well, that's a point, says Bloom, for the wife's admirers.
--Whose admirers? says Joe.
--The wife's advisers, I mean, says Bloom.
Then he starts all confused mucking it up about mortgagor under the
act like the lord chancellor giving it out on the bench and for the benefit of
the wife and that a trust is created but on the other hand that Dignam owed
Bridgeman the money and if now the wife or the widow contested the
mortgagee's right till he near had the head of me addled with his mortgagor
under the act. He was bloody safe he wasn't run in himself under the act
that time as a rogue and vagabond only he had a friend in court. Selling
bazaar tickets or what do you call it royal Hungarian privileged lottery.
True as you're there. O, commend me to an israelite! Royal and privileged
Hungarian robbery.
So Bob Doran comes lurching around asking Bloom to tell Mrs
Dignam he was sorry for her trouble and he was very sorry about the
funeral and to tell her that he said and everyone who knew him said that
there was never a truer, a finer than poor little Willy that's dead to tell her.
Choking with bloody foolery. And shaking Bloom's hand doing the tragic
to tell her that. Shake hands, brother. You're a rogue and I'm another.
--Let me, said he, so far presume upon our acquaintance which, however
slight it may appear if judged by the standard of mere time, is founded, as I
hope and believe, on a sentiment of mutual esteem as to request of you this
favour. But, should I have overstepped the limits of reserve let the sincerity
of my feelings be the excuse for my boldness.
--No, rejoined the other, I appreciate to the full the motives which actuate
your conduct and I shall discharge the office you entrust to me consoled by
the reflection that, though the errand be one of sorrow, this proof of your
confidence sweetens in some measure the bitterness of the cup.
--Then suffer me to take your hand, said he. The goodness of your heart, I
feel sure, will dictate to you better than my inadequate words the
expressions which are most suitable to convey an emotion whose
poignancy, were I to give vent to my feelings, would deprive me even of
speech.
And off with him and out trying to walk straight. Boosed at five
o'clock. Night he was near being lagged only Paddy Leonard knew the
bobby, 14 A. Blind to the world up in a shebeen in Bride street after closing
time, fornicating with two shawls and a bully on guard, drinking porter out
of teacups. And calling himself a Frenchy for the shawls, Joseph Manuo,
and talking against the Catholic religion, and he serving mass in Adam and
Eve's when he was young with his eyes shut, who wrote the new testament,
and the old testament, and hugging and smugging. And the two shawls
killed with the laughing, picking his pockets, the bloody fool and he spilling
the porter all over the bed and the two shawls screeching laughing at one
another. How is your testament? Have you got an old testament? Only
Paddy was passing there, I tell you what. Then see him of a Sunday with his
little concubine of a wife, and she wagging her tail up the aisle of the chapel
with her patent boots on her, no less, and her violets, nice as pie, doing the
little lady. Jack Mooney's sister. And the old prostitute of a mother
procuring rooms to street couples. Gob, Jack made him toe the line. Told
him if he didn't patch up the pot, Jesus, he'd kick the shite out of him.
So Terry brought the three pints.
--Here, says Joe, doing the honours. Here, citizen.
--Slan leat, says he.
--Fortune, Joe, says I. Good health, citizen.
Gob, he had his mouth half way down the tumbler already. Want a
small fortune to keep him in drinks.
--Who is the long fellow running for the mayoralty, Alf? says Joe.
--Friend of yours, says Alf.
--Nannan? says Joe. The mimber?
--I won't mention any names, says Alf.
--I thought so, says Joe. I saw him up at that meeting now with William
Field, M. P., the cattle traders.
--Hairy Iopas, says the citizen, that exploded volcano, the darling of all
countries and the idol of his own.
So Joe starts telling the citizen about the foot and mouth disease and
the cattle traders and taking action in the matter and the citizen sending
them all to the rightabout and Bloom coming out with his sheepdip for the
scab and a hoose drench for coughing calves and the guaranteed remedy
for timber tongue. Because he was up one time in a knacker's yard.
Walking about with his book and pencil here's my head and my heels are
coming till Joe Cuffe gave him the order of the boot for giving lip to a
grazier. Mister Knowall. Teach your grandmother how to milk ducks.
Pisser Burke was telling me in the hotel the wife used to be in rivers of tears
some times with Mrs O'Dowd crying her eyes out with her eight inches of
fat all over her. Couldn't loosen her farting strings but old cod's eye was
waltzing around her showing her how to do it. What's your programme
today? Ay. Humane methods. Because the poor animals suffer and experts
say and the best known remedy that doesn't cause pain to the animal and
on the sore spot administer gently. Gob, he'd have a soft hand under a hen.
Ga Ga Gara. Klook Klook Klook. Black Liz is our hen. She lays eggs
for us. When she lays her egg she is so glad. Gara. Klook Klook Klook.
Then comes good uncle Leo. He puts his hand under black Liz and takes
her fresh egg. Ga ga ga ga Gara. Klook Klook Klook.
--Anyhow, says Joe, Field and Nannetti are going over tonight to London
to ask about it on the floor of the house of commons.
--Are you sure, says Bloom, the councillor is going? I wanted to see him, as
it happens.
--Well, he's going off by the mailboat, says Joe, tonight.
--That's too bad, says Bloom. I wanted particularly. Perhaps only Mr Field
is going. I couldn't phone. No. You're sure?
--Nannan's going too, says Joe. The league told him to ask a question
tomorrow about the commissioner of police forbidding Irish games in the
park. What do you think of that, citizen? The Sluagh na h-Eireann.
Mr Cowe Conacre (Multifarnham. Nat.): Arising out of the question of my honourable friend, the member for Shillelagh, may I ask the right honourable gentleman whether the government has issued orders that these animals shall be slaughtered though no medical evidence is forthcoming as to their pathological condition? Mr Allfours (Tamoshant. Con.): Honourable members are already in possession of the evidence produced before a committee of the whole house. I feel I cannot usefully add anything to that. The answer to the honourable member's question is in the affirmative. Mr Orelli O'Reilly (Montenotte. Nat.): Have similar orders been issued for the slaughter of human animals who dare to play Irish games in the Phoenix park? Mr Allfours: The answer is in the negative. Mr Cowe Conacre: Has the right honourable gentleman's famous Mitchelstown telegram inspired the policy of gentlemen on the Treasury bench? (O! O!) Mr Allfours: I must have notice of that question. Mr Staylewit (Buncombe. Ind.): Don't hesitate to shoot. (Ironical opposition cheers.) The speaker: Order! Order! (The house rises. Cheers.)--There's the man, says Joe, that made the Gaelic sports revival. There he is sitting there. The man that got away James Stephens. The champion of all Ireland at putting the sixteen pound shot. What was your best throw, citizen? --Na bacleis , says the citizen, letting on to be modest. There was a time I was as good as the next fellow anyhow. --Put it there, citizen, says Joe. You were and a bloody sight better. --Is that really a fact? says Alf. --Yes, says Bloom. That's well known. Did you not know that? So off they started about Irish sports and shoneen games the like of lawn tennis and about hurley and putting the stone and racy of the soil and building up a nation once again and all to that. And of course Bloom had to have his say too about if a fellow had a rower's heart violent exercise was bad. I declare to my antimacassar if you took up a straw from the bloody floor and if you said to Bloom: Look at, Bloom. Do you see that straw? That's a straw. Declare to my aunt he'd talk about it for an hour so he would and talk steady. A most interesting discussion took place in the ancient hall of Brian O'Ciarnain's in Sraid na Bretaine Bheag, under the auspices of Sluagh na h-Eireann, on the revival of ancient Gaelic sports and the importance of physical culture, as understood in ancient Greece and ancient Rome and ancient Ireland, for the development of the race. The venerable president of the noble order was in the chair and the attendance was of large dimensions. After an instructive discourse by the chairman, a magnificent oration eloquently and forcibly expressed, a most interesting and instructive discussion of the usual high standard of excellence ensued as to the desirability of the revivability of the ancient games and sports of our ancient Panceltic forefathers. The wellknown and highly respected worker in the cause of our old tongue, Mr Joseph M'Carthy Hynes, made an eloquent appeal for the resuscitation of the ancient Gaelic sports and pastimes, practised morning and evening by Finn MacCool, as calculated to revive the best traditions of manly strength and prowess handed down to us from ancient ages. L. Bloom, who met with a mixed reception of applause and hisses, having espoused the negative the vocalist chairman brought the discussion to a close, in response to repeated requests and hearty plaudits from all parts of a bumper house, by a remarkably noteworthy rendering of the immortal Thomas Osborne Davis' evergreen verses (happily too familiar to need recalling here) A Nation Once Again in the execution of which the veteran patriot champion may be said without fear of contradiction to have fairly excelled himself. The Irish Caruso-Garibaldi was in superlative form and his stentorian notes were heard to the greatest advantage in the timehonoured anthem sung as only our citizen can sing it. His superb highclass vocalism, which by its superquality greatly enhanced his already international reputation, was vociferously applauded by the large audience among which were to be noticed many prominent members of the clergy as well as representatives of the press and the bar and the other learned professions. The proceedings then terminated. Amongst the clergy present were the very rev. William Delany, S. J., L. L. D.; the rt rev. Gerald Molloy, D. D.; the rev. P. J. Kavanagh, C. S. Sp.; the rev. T. Waters, C. C.; the rev. John M. Ivers, P. P.; the rev. P. J. Cleary, O. S. F.; the rev. L. J. Hickey, O. P.; the very rev. Fr. Nicholas, O. S. F. C.; the very rev. B. Gorman, O. D. C.; the rev. T. Maher, S. J.; the very rev. James Murphy, S. J.; the rev. John Lavery, V. F.; the very rev. William Doherty, D. D.; the rev. Peter Fagan, O. M.; the rev. T. Brangan, O. S. A.; the rev. J. Flavin, C. C.; the rev. M. A. Hackett, C. C.; the rev. W. Hurley, C. C.; the rt rev. Mgr M'Manus, V. G.; the rev. B. R. Slattery, O. M. I.; the very rev. M. D. Scally, P. P.; the rev. F. T. Purcell, O. P.; the very rev. Timothy canon Gorman, P. P.; the rev. J. Flanagan, C. C. The laity included P. Fay, T. Quirke, etc., etc. --Talking about violent exercise, says Alf, were you at that Keogh-Bennett match? --No, says Joe. --I heard So and So made a cool hundred quid over it, says Alf. --Who? Blazes? says Joe. And says Bloom: --What I meant about tennis, for example, is the agility and training the eye. --Ay, Blazes, says Alf. He let out that Myler was on the beer to run up the odds and he swatting all the time. --We know him, says the citizen. The traitor's son. We know what put English gold in his pocket. --True for you, says Joe. And Bloom cuts in again about lawn tennis and the circulation of the blood, asking Alf: --Now, don't you think, Bergan? --Myler dusted the floor with him, says Alf. Heenan and Sayers was only a bloody fool to it. Handed him the father and mother of a beating. See the little kipper not up to his navel and the big fellow swiping. God, he gave him one last puck in the wind, Queensberry rules and all, made him puke what he never ate. It was a historic and a hefty battle when Myler and Percy were scheduled to don the gloves for the purse of fifty sovereigns. Handicapped as he was by lack of poundage, Dublin's pet lamb made up for it by superlative skill in ringcraft. The final bout of fireworks was a gruelling for both champions. The welterweight sergeantmajor had tapped some lively claret in the previous mixup during which Keogh had been receivergeneral of rights and lefts, the artilleryman putting in some neat work on the pet's nose, and Myler came on looking groggy. The soldier got to business, leading off with a powerful left jab to which the Irish gladiator retaliated by shooting out a stiff one flush to the point of Bennett's jaw. The redcoat ducked but the Dubliner lifted him with a left hook, the body punch being a fine one. The men came to handigrips. Myler quickly became busy and got his man under, the bout ending with the bulkier man on the ropes, Myler punishing him. The Englishman, whose right eye was nearly closed, took his corner where he was liberally drenched with water and when the bell went came on gamey and brimful of pluck, confident of knocking out the fistic Eblanite in jigtime. It was a fight to a finish and the best man for it. The two fought like tigers and excitement ran fever high. The referee twice cautioned Pucking Percy for holding but the pet was tricky and his footwork a treat to watch. After a brisk exchange of courtesies during which a smart upper cut of the military man brought blood freely from his opponent's mouth the lamb suddenly waded in all over his man and landed a terrific left to Battling Bennett's stomach, flooring him flat. It was a knockout clean and clever. Amid tense expectation the Portobello bruiser was being counted out when Bennett's second Ole Pfotts Wettstein threw in the towel and the Santry boy was declared victor to the frenzied cheers of the public who broke through the ringropes and fairly mobbed him with delight. --He knows which side his bread is buttered, says Alf. I hear he's running a concert tour now up in the north. --He is, says Joe. Isn't he? --Who? says Bloom. Ah, yes. That's quite true. Yes, a kind of summer tour, you see. Just a holiday. --Mrs B. is the bright particular star, isn't she? says Joe. --My wife? says Bloom. She's singing, yes. I think it will be a success too. He's an excellent man to organise. Excellent. Hoho begob says I to myself says I. That explains the milk in the cocoanut and absence of hair on the animal's chest. Blazes doing the tootle on the flute. Concert tour. Dirty Dan the dodger's son off Island bridge that sold the same horses twice over to the government to fight the Boers. Old Whatwhat. I called about the poor and water rate, Mr Boylan. You what? The water rate, Mr Boylan. You whatwhat? That's the bucko that'll organise her, take my tip. 'Twixt me and you Caddareesh. Pride of Calpe's rocky mount, the ravenhaired daughter of Tweedy. There grew she to peerless beauty where loquat and almond scent the air. The gardens of Alameda knew her step: the garths of olives knew and bowed. The chaste spouse of Leopold is she: Marion of the bountiful bosoms. And lo, there entered one of the clan of the O'Molloy's, a comely hero of white face yet withal somewhat ruddy, his majesty's counsel learned in the law, and with him the prince and heir of the noble line of Lambert. --Hello, Ned. --Hello, Alf. --Hello, Jack. --Hello, Joe. --God save you, says the citizen. --Save you kindly, says J. J. What'll it be, Ned? --Half one, says Ned. So J. J. ordered the drinks. --Were you round at the court? says Joe. --Yes, says J. J. He'll square that, Ned, says he. --Hope so, says Ned. Now what were those two at? J. J. getting him off the grand jury list and the other give him a leg over the stile. With his name in Stubbs's. Playing cards, hobnobbing with flash toffs with a swank glass in their eye, adrinking fizz and he half smothered in writs and garnishee orders. Pawning his gold watch in Cummins of Francis street where no-one would know him in the private office when I was there with Pisser releasing his boots out of the pop. What's your name, sir? Dunne, says he. Ay, and done says I. Gob, he'll come home by weeping cross one of those days, I'm thinking. --Did you see that bloody lunatic Breen round there? says Alf. U. p: up. --Yes, says J. J. Looking for a private detective. --Ay, says Ned. And he wanted right go wrong to address the court only Corny Kelleher got round him telling him to get the handwriting examined first. --Ten thousand pounds, says Alf, laughing. God, I'd give anything to hear him before a judge and jury. --Was it you did it, Alf? says Joe. The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you Jimmy Johnson. --Me? says Alf. Don't cast your nasturtiums on my character. --Whatever statement you make, says Joe, will be taken down in evidence against you. --Of course an action would lie, says J. J. It implies that he is not compos mentis. U. p: up. --Compos your eye! says Alf, laughing. Do you know that he's balmy? Look at his head. Do you know that some mornings he has to get his hat on with a shoehorn. --Yes, says J. J., but the truth of a libel is no defence to an indictment for publishing it in the eyes of the law. --Ha ha, Alf, says Joe. --Still, says Bloom, on account of the poor woman, I mean his wife. --Pity about her, says the citizen. Or any other woman marries a half and half. --How half and half? says Bloom. Do you mean he --Half and half I mean, says the citizen. A fellow that's neither fish nor flesh. --Nor good red herring, says Joe. --That what's I mean, says the citizen. A pishogue, if you know what that is. Begob I saw there was trouble coming. And Bloom explaining he meant on account of it being cruel for the wife having to go round after the old stuttering fool. Cruelty to animals so it is to let that bloody povertystricken Breen out on grass with his beard out tripping him, bringing down the rain. And she with her nose cockahoop after she married him because a cousin of his old fellow's was pewopener to the pope. Picture of him on the wall with his Smashall Sweeney's moustaches, the signior Brini from Summerhill, the eyetallyano, papal Zouave to the Holy Father, has left the quay and gone to Moss street. And who was he, tell us? A nobody, two pair back and passages, at seven shillings a week, and he covered with all kinds of breastplates bidding defiance to the world. --And moreover, says J. J., a postcard is publication. It was held to be sufficient evidence of malice in the testcase Sadgrove v. Hole. In my opinion an action might lie. Six and eightpence, please. Who wants your opinion? Let us drink our pints in peace. Gob, we won't be let even do that much itself. --Well, good health, Jack, says Ned. --Good health, Ned, says J. ]. ---There he is again, says Joe. --Where? says Alf. And begob there he was passing the door with his books under his oxter and the wife beside him and Corny Kelleher with his wall eye looking in as they went past, talking to him like a father, trying to sell him a secondhand coffin. --How did that Canada swindle case go off? says Joe. --Remanded, says J. J. One of the bottlenosed fraternity it was went by the name of James Wought alias Saphiro alias Spark and Spiro, put an ad in the papers saying he'd give a passage to Canada for twenty bob. What? Do you see any green in the white of my eye? Course it was a bloody barney. What? Swindled them all, skivvies and badhachs from the county Meath, ay, and his own kidney too. J. J. was telling us there was an ancient Hebrew Zaretsky or something weeping in the witnessbox with his hat on him, swearing by the holy Moses he was stuck for two quid. --Who tried the case? says Joe. --Recorder, says Ned. --Poor old sir Frederick, says Alf, you can cod him up to the two eyes. --Heart as big as a lion, says Ned. Tell him a tale of woe about arrears of rent and a sick wife and a squad of kids and, faith, he'll dissolve in tears on the bench. --Ay, says Alf. Reuben J was bloody lucky he didn't clap him in the dock the other day for suing poor little Gumley that's minding stones, for the corporation there near Butt bridge. And he starts taking off the old recorder letting on to cry: --A most scandalous thing! This poor hardworking man! How many children? Ten, did you say? --Yes, your worship. And my wife has the typhoid. --And the wife with typhoid fever! Scandalous! Leave the court immediately, sir. No, sir, I'll make no order for payment. How dare you, sir, come up before me and ask me to make an order! A poor hardworking industrious man! I dismiss the case. And whereas on the sixteenth day of the month of the oxeyed goddess and in the third week after the feastday of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, the daughter of the skies, the virgin moon being then in her first quarter, it came to pass that those learned judges repaired them to the halls of law. There master Courtenay, sitting in his own chamber, gave his rede and master Justice Andrews, sitting without a jury in the probate court, weighed well and pondered the claim of the first chargeant upon the property in the matter of the will propounded and final testamentary disposition in re the real and personal estate of the late lamented Jacob Halliday, vintner, deceased, versus Livingstone, an infant, of unsound mind, and another. And to the solemn court of Green street there came sir Frederick the Falconer. And he sat him there about the hour of five o'clock to administer the law of the brehons at the commission for all that and those parts to be holden in and for the county of the city of Dublin. And there sat with him the high sinhedrim of the twelve tribes of Iar, for every tribe one man, of the tribe of Patrick and of the tribe of Hugh and of the tribe of Owen and of the tribe of Conn and of the tribe of Oscar and of the tribe of Fergus and of the tribe of Finn and of the tribe of Dermot and of the tribe of Cormac and of the tribe of Kevin and of the tribe of Caolte and of the tribe of Ossian, there being in all twelve good men and true. And he conjured them by Him who died on rood that they should well and truly try and true deliverance make in the issue joined between their sovereign lord the king and the prisoner at the bar and true verdict give according to the evidence so help them God and kiss the book. And they rose in their seats, those twelve of Iar, and they swore by the name of Him Who is from everlasting that they would do His rightwiseness. And straightway the minions of the law led forth from their donjon keep one whom the sleuthhounds of justice had apprehended in consequence of information received. And they shackled him hand and foot and would take of him ne bail ne mainprise but preferred a charge against him for he was a malefactor. --Those are nice things, says the citizen, coming over here to Ireland filling the country with bugs. So Bloom lets on he heard nothing and he starts talking with Joe, telling him he needn't trouble about that little matter till the first but if he would just say a word to Mr Crawford. And so Joe swore high and holy by this and by that he'd do the devil and all. --Because, you see, says Bloom, for an advertisement you must have repetition. That's the whole secret. --Rely on me, says Joe. --Swindling the peasants, says the citizen, and the poor of Ireland. We want no more strangers in our house. --O, I'm sure that will be all right, Hynes, says Bloom. It's just that Keyes, you see. --Consider that done, says Joe. --Very kind of you, says Bloom. --The strangers, says the citizen. Our own fault. We let them come in. We brought them in. The adulteress and her paramour brought the Saxon robbers here. --Decree nisi, says J. J. And Bloom letting on to be awfully deeply interested in nothing, a spider's web in the corner behind the barrel, and the citizen scowling after him and the old dog at his feet looking up to know who to bite and when. --A dishonoured wife, says the citizen, that's what's the cause of all our misfortunes. --And here she is, says Alf, that was giggling over the Police Gazette with Terry on the counter, in all her warpaint. --Give us a squint at her, says I. And what was it only one of the smutty yankee pictures Terry borrows off of Corny Kelleher. Secrets for enlarging your private parts. Misconduct of society belle. Norman W. Tupper, wealthy Chicago contractor, finds pretty but faithless wife in lap of officer Taylor. Belle in her bloomers misconducting herself, and her fancyman feeling for her tickles and Norman W. Tupper bouncing in with his peashooter just in time to be late after she doing the trick of the loop with officer Taylor. --O jakers, Jenny, says Joe, how short your shirt is! --There's hair, Joe, says I. Get a queer old tailend of corned beef off of that one, what? So anyhow in came John Wyse Nolan and Lenehan with him with a face on him as long as a late breakfast. --Well, says the citizen, what's the latest from the scene of action? What did those tinkers in the city hall at their caucus meeting decide about the Irish language? O'Nolan, clad in shining armour, low bending made obeisance to the puissant and high and mighty chief of all Erin and did him to wit of that which had befallen, how that the grave elders of the most obedient city, second of the realm, had met them in the tholsel, and there, after due prayers to the gods who dwell in ether supernal, had taken solemn counsel whereby they might, if so be it might be, bring once more into honour among mortal men the winged speech of the seadivided Gael. --It's on the march, says the citizen. To hell with the bloody brutal Sassenachs and their patois. So J. J. puts in a word, doing the toff about one story was good till you heard another and blinking facts and the Nelson policy, putting your blind eye to the telescope and drawing up a bill of attainder to impeach a nation, and Bloom trying to back him up moderation and botheration and their colonies and their civilisation. --Their syphilisation, you mean, says the citizen. To hell with them! The curse of a goodfornothing God light sideways on the bloody thicklugged sons of whores' gets! No music and no art and no literature worthy of the name. Any civilisation they have they stole from us. Tonguetied sons of bastards' ghosts. --The European family, says J. J --They're not European, says the citizen. I was in Europe with Kevin Egan of Paris. You wouldn't see a trace of them or their language anywhere in Europe except in a cabinet d'aisance. And says John Wyse: --Full many a flower is born to blush unseen. And says Lenehan that knows a bit of the lingo: --Conspuez les anglais! Perfide Albion! He said and then lifted he in his rude great brawny strengthy hands the medher of dark strong foamy ale and, uttering his tribal slogan Lamb Dearg Abu, he drank to the undoing of his foes, a race of mighty valorous heroes, rulers of the waves, who sit on thrones of alabaster silent as the deathless gods. --What's up with you, says I to Lenehan. You look like a fellow that had lost a bob and found a tanner. --Gold cup, says he. --Who won, Mr Lenehan? says Terry. --Throwaway, says he, at twenty to one. A rank outsider. And the rest nowhere. --And Bass's mare? says Terry. --Still running, says he. We're all in a cart. Boylan plunged two quid on my tip Sceptre for himself and a lady friend. --I had half a crown myself, says Terry, on Zinfandel that Mr Flynn gave me. Lord Howard de Walden's. --Twenty to one, says Lenehan. Such is life in an outhouse. Throwaway, says he. Takes the biscuit, and talking about bunions. Frailty, thy name is Sceptre. So he went over to the biscuit tin Bob Doran left to see if there was anything he could lift on the nod, the old cur after him backing his luck with his mangy snout up. Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard. --Not there, my child, says he. --Keep your pecker up, says Joe. She'd have won the money only for the other dog. And J. J. and the citizen arguing about law and history with Bloom sticking in an odd word. --Some people, says Bloom, can see the mote in others' eyes but they can't see the beam in their own. --Raimeis, says the citizen. There's no-one as blind as the fellow that won't see, if you know what that means. Where are our missing twenty millions of Irish should be here today instead of four, our lost tribes? And our potteries and textiles, the finest in the whole world! And our wool that was sold in Rome in the time of Juvenal and our flax and our damask from the looms of Antrim and our Limerick lace, our tanneries and our white flint glass down there by Ballybough and our Huguenot poplin that we have since Jacquard de Lyon and our woven silk and our Foxford tweeds and ivory raised point from the Carmelite convent in New Ross, nothing like it in the whole wide world. Where are the Greek merchants that came through the pillars of Hercules, the Gibraltar now grabbed by the foe of mankind, with gold and Tyrian purple to sell in Wexford at the fair of Carmen? Read Tacitus and Ptolemy, even Giraldus Cambrensis. Wine, peltries, Connemara marble, silver from Tipperary, second to none, our farfamed horses even today, the Irish hobbies, with king Philip of Spain offering to pay customs duties for the right to fish in our waters. What do the yellowjohns of Anglia owe us for our ruined trade and our ruined hearths? And the beds of the Barrow and Shannon they won't deepen with millions of acres of marsh and bog to make us all die of consumption? --As treeless as Portugal we'll be soon, says John Wyse, or Heligoland with its one tree if something is not done to reafforest the land. Larches, firs, all the trees of the conifer family are going fast. I was reading a report of lord Castletown's .... --Save them, says the citizen, the giant ash of Galway and the chieftain elm of Kildare with a fortyfoot bole and an acre of foliage. Save the trees of Ireland for the future men of Ireland on the fair hills of Eire, O. --Europe has its eyes on you, says Lenehan. The fashionable international world attended en masse this afternoon at the wedding of the chevalier Jean Wyse de Neaulan, grand high chief ranger of the Irish National Foresters, with Miss Fir Conifer of Pine Valley. Lady Sylvester Elmshade, Mrs Barbara Lovebirch, Mrs Poll Ash, Mrs Holly Hazeleyes, Miss Daphne Bays, Miss Dorothy Canebrake, Mrs Clyde Twelvetrees, Mrs Rowan Greene, Mrs Helen Vinegadding, Miss Virginia Creeper, Miss Gladys Beech, Miss Olive Garth, Miss Blanche Maple, Mrs Maud Mahogany, Miss Myra Myrtle, Miss Priscilla Elderflower, Miss Bee Honeysuckle, Miss Grace Poplar, Miss O Mimosa San, Miss Rachel Cedarfrond, the Misses Lilian and Viola Lilac, Miss Timidity Aspenall, Mrs Kitty Dewey-Mosse, Miss May Hawthorne, Mrs Gloriana Palme, Mrs Liana Forrest, Mrs Arabella Blackwood and Mrs Norma Holyoake of Oakholme Regis graced the ceremony by their presence. The bride who was given away by her father, the M'Conifer of the Glands, looked exquisitely charming in a creation carried out in green mercerised silk, moulded on an underslip of gloaming grey, sashed with a yoke of broad emerald and finished with a triple flounce of darkerhued fringe, the scheme being relieved by bretelles and hip insertions of acorn bronze. The maids of honour, Miss Larch Conifer and Miss Spruce Conifer, sisters of the bride, wore very becoming costumes in the same tone, a dainty motif of plume rose being worked into the pleats in a pinstripe and repeated capriciously in the jadegreen toques in the form of heron feathers of paletinted coral. Senhor Enrique Flor presided at the organ with his wellknown ability and, in addition to the prescribed numbers of the nuptial mass, played a new and striking arrangement of Woodman, spare that tree at the conclusion of the service. On leaving the church of Saint Fiacre in Horto after the papal blessing the happy pair were subjected to a playful crossfire of hazelnuts, beechmast, bayleaves, catkins of willow, ivytod, hollyberries, mistletoe sprigs and quicken shoots. Mr and Mrs Wyse Conifer Neaulan will spend a quiet honeymoon in the Black Forest. --And our eyes are on Europe, says the citizen. We had our trade with Spain and the French and with the Flemings before those mongrels were pupped, Spanish ale in Galway, the winebark on the winedark waterway. --And will again, says Joe. --And with the help of the holy mother of God we will again, says the citizen, clapping his thigh. our harbours that are empty will be full again, Queenstown, Kinsale, Galway, Blacksod Bay, Ventry in the kingdom of Kerry, Killybegs, the third largest harbour in the wide world with a fleet of masts of the Galway Lynches and the Cavan O'Reillys and the O'Kennedys of Dublin when the earl of Desmond could make a treaty with the emperor Charles the Fifth himself. And will again, says he, when the first Irish battleship is seen breasting the waves with our own flag to the fore, none of your Henry Tudor's harps, no, the oldest flag afloat, the flag of the province of Desmond and Thomond, three crowns on a blue field, the three sons of Milesius. And he took the last swig out of the pint. Moya. All wind and piss like a tanyard cat. Cows in Connacht have long horns. As much as his bloody life is worth to go down and address his tall talk to the assembled multitude in Shanagolden where he daren't show his nose with the Molly Maguires looking for him to let daylight through him for grabbing the holding of an evicted tenant. --Hear, hear to that, says John Wyse. What will you have? --An imperial yeomanry, says Lenehan, to celebrate the occasion. --Half one, Terry, says John Wyse, and a hands up. Terry! Are you asleep? --Yes, sir, says Terry. Small whisky and bottle of Allsop. Right, sir. Hanging over the bloody paper with Alf looking for spicy bits instead of attending to the general public. Picture of a butting match, trying to crack their bloody skulls, one chap going for the other with his head down like a bull at a gate. And another one: Black Beast Burned in Omaha, Ga. A lot of Deadwood Dicks in slouch hats and they firing at a Sambo strung up in a tree with his tongue out and a bonfire under him. Gob, they ought to drown him in the sea after and electrocute and crucify him to make sure of their job. --But what about the fighting navy, says Ned, that keeps our foes at bay? --I'll tell you what about it, says the citizen. Hell upon earth it is. Read the revelations that's going on in the papers about flogging on the training ships at Portsmouth. A fellow writes that calls himself Disgusted One. So he starts telling us about corporal punishment and about the crew of tars and officers and rearadmirals drawn up in cocked hats and the parson with his protestant bible to witness punishment and a young lad brought out, howling for his ma, and they tie him down on the buttend of a gun. --A rump and dozen, says the citizen, was what that old ruffian sir John Beresford called it but the modern God's Englishman calls it caning on the breech. And says John Wyse: --'Tis a custom more honoured in the breach than in the observance. Then he was telling us the master at arms comes along with a long cane and he draws out and he flogs the bloody backside off of the poor lad till he yells meila murder. --That's your glorious British navy, says the citizen, that bosses the earth. The fellows that never will be slaves, with the only hereditary chamber on the face of God's earth and their land in the hands of a dozen gamehogs and cottonball barons. That's the great empire they boast about of drudges and whipped serfs. --On which the sun never rises, says Joe. --And the tragedy of it is, says the citizen, they believe it. The unfortunate yahoos believe it. They believe in rod, the scourger almighty, creator of hell upon earth, and in Jacky Tar, the son of a gun, who was conceived of unholy boast, born of the fighting navy, suffered under rump and dozen, was scarified, flayed and curried, yelled like bloody hell, the third day he arose again from the bed, steered into haven, sitteth on his beamend till further orders whence he shall come to drudge for a living and be paid. --But, says Bloom, isn't discipline the same everywhere. I mean wouldn't it be the same here if you put force against force? Didn't I tell you? As true as I'm drinking this porter if he was at his last gasp he'd try to downface you that dying was living. --We'll put force against force, says the citizen. We have our greater Ireland beyond the sea. They were driven out of house and home in the black '47. Their mudcabins and their shielings by the roadside were laid low by the batteringram and the Times rubbed its hands and told the whitelivered Saxons there would soon be as few Irish in Ireland as redskins in America. Even the Grand Turk sent us his piastres. But the Sassenach tried to starve the nation at home while the land was full of crops that the British hyenas bought and sold in Rio de Janeiro. Ay, they drove out the peasants in hordes. Twenty thousand of them died in the coffinships. But those that came to the land of the free remember the land of bondage. And they will come again and with a vengeance, no cravens, the sons of Granuaile, the champions of Kathleen ni Houlihan. --Perfectly true, says Bloom. But my point was .... --We are a long time waiting for that day, citizen, says Ned. Since the poor old woman told us that the French were on the sea and landed at Killala. --Ay, says John Wyse. We fought for the royal Stuarts that reneged us against the Williamites and they betrayed us. Remember Limerick and the broken treatystone. We gave our best blood to France and Spain, the wild geese. Fontenoy, eh? And Sarsfield and O'Donnell, duke of Tetuan in Spain, and Ulysses Browne of Camus that was fieldmarshal to Maria Teresa. But what did we ever get for it? --The French! says the citizen. Set of dancing masters! Do you know what it is? They were never worth a roasted fart to Ireland. Aren't they trying to make an entente cordial now at Tay Pay's dinnerparty with perfidious Albion? Firebrands of Europe and they always were. --Conspuez les franэais, says Lenehan, nobbling his beer. --And as for the Prooshians and the Hanoverians, says Joe, haven't we had enough of those sausageeating bastards on the throne from George the elector down to the German lad and the flatulent old bitch that's dead? Jesus, I had to laugh at the way he came out with that about the old one with the winkers on her, blind drunk in her royal palace every night of God, old Vic, with her jorum of mountain dew and her coachman carting her up body and bones to roll into bed and she pulling him by the whiskers and singing him old bits of songs about Ehren on the Rhine and come where the boose is cheaper. --Well, says J. J. We have Edward the peacemaker now. --Tell that to a fool, says the citizen. There's a bloody sight more pox than pax about that boyo. Edward Guelph-Wettin! --And what do you think, says Joe, of the holy boys, the priests and bishops of Ireland doing up his room in Maynooth in His Satanic Majesty's racing colours and sticking up pictures of all the horses his jockeys rode. The earl of Dublin, no less. --They ought to have stuck up all the women he rode himself, says little Alf. And says J. J.: --Considerations of space influenced their lordships' decision. --Will you try another, citizen? says Joe. --Yes, sir, says he. I will. --You? says Joe. --Beholden to you, Joe, says I. May your shadow never grow less. --Repeat that dose, says Joe. Bloom was talking and talking with John Wyse and he quite excited with his dunducketymudcoloured mug on him and his old plumeyes rolling about. --Persecution, says he, all the history of the world is full of it. Perpetuating national hatred among nations. --But do you know what a nation means? says John Wyse. --Yes, says Bloom. --What is it? says John Wyse. --A nation? says Bloom. A nation is the same people living in the same place. --By God, then, says Ned, laughing, if that's so I'm a nation for I'm living in the same place for the past five years. So of course everyone had the laugh at Bloom and says he, trying to muck out of it: --Or also living in different places. --That covers my case, says Joe. --What is your nation if I may ask? says the citizen. --Ireland, says Bloom. I was born here. Ireland. The citizen said nothing only cleared the spit out of his gullet and, gob, he spat a Red bank oyster out of him right in the corner. --After you with the push, Joe, says he, taking out his handkerchief to swab himself dry. --Here you are, citizen, says Joe. Take that in your right hand and repeat after me the following words. The muchtreasured and intricately embroidered ancient Irish facecloth attributed to Solomon of Droma and Manus Tomaltach og MacDonogh, authors of the Book of Ballymote, was then carefully produced and called forth prolonged admiration. No need to dwell on the legendary beauty of the cornerpieces, the acme of art, wherein one can distinctly discern each of the four evangelists in turn presenting to each of the four masters his evangelical symbol, a bogoak sceptre, a North American puma (a far nobler king of beasts than the British article, be it said in passing), a Kerry calf and a golden eagle from Carrantuohill. The scenes depicted on the emunctory field, showing our ancient duns and raths and cromlechs and grianauns and seats of learning and maledictive stones, are as wonderfully beautiful and the pigments as delicate as when the Sligo illuminators gave free rein to their artistic fantasy long long ago in the time of the Barmecides. Glendalough, the lovely lakes of Killarney, the ruins of Clonmacnois, Cong Abbey, Glen Inagh and the Twelve Pins, Ireland's Eye, the Green Hills of Tallaght, Croagh Patrick, the brewery of Messrs Arthur Guinness, Son and Company (Limited), Lough Neagh's banks, the vale of Ovoca, Isolde's tower, the Mapas obelisk, Sir Patrick Dun's hospital, Cape Clear, the glen of Aherlow, Lynch's castle, the Scotch house, Rathdown Union Workhouse at Loughlinstown, Tullamore jail, Castleconnel rapids, Kilballymacshonakill, the cross at Monasterboice, Jury's Hotel, S. Patrick's Purgatory, the Salmon Leap, Maynooth college refectory, Curley's hole, the three birthplaces of the first duke of Wellington, the rock of Cashel, the bog of Allen, the Henry Street Warehouse, Fingal's Cave - all these moving scenes are still there for us today rendered more beautiful still by the waters of sorrow which have passed over them and by the rich incrustations of time. --Show us over the drink, says I. Which is which? --That's mine, says Joe, as the devil said to the dead policeman. --And I belong to a race too, says Bloom, that is hated and persecuted. Also now. This very moment. This very instant. Gob, he near burnt his fingers with the butt of his old cigar. --Robbed, says he. Plundered. Insulted. Persecuted. Taking what belongs to us by right. At this very moment, says he, putting up his fist, sold by auction in Morocco like slaves or cattle. --Are you talking about the new Jerusalem? says the citizen. --I'm talking about injustice, says Bloom. --Right, says John Wyse. Stand up to it then with force like men. .That's an almanac picture for you. Mark for a softnosed bullet. Old lardyface standing up to the business end of a gun. Gob, he'd adorn a sweepingbrush, so he would, if he only had a nurse's apron on him. And then he collapses all of a sudden, twisting around all the opposite, as limp as a wet rag. --But it's no use, says he.Force, hatred, history, all that. That's not life for men and women, insult and hatred. And everybody knows that it's the very opposite of that that is really life. --What? says Alf. --Love, says Bloom. I mean the opposite of hatred. I must go now, says he to John Wyse. Just round to the court a moment to see if Martin is there. If he comes just say I'll be back in a second. Just a moment. Who's hindering you? And off he pops like greased lightning. --A new apostle to the gentiles, says the citizen. Universal love. --Well, says John Wyse. Isn't that what we're told. Love your neighbour. --That chap? says the citizen. Beggar my neighbour is his motto. Love, moya! He's a nice pattern of a Romeo and Juliet. Love loves to love love. Nurse loves the new chemist. Constable 14 A loves Mary Kelly. Gerty MacDowell loves the boy that has the bicycle. M. B. loves a fair gentleman. Li Chi Han lovey up kissy Cha Pu Chow. Jumbo, the elephant, loves Alice, the elephant. Old Mr Verschoyle with the ear trumpet loves old Mrs Verschoyle with the turnedin eye. The man in the brown macintosh loves a lady who is dead. His Majesty the King loves Her Majesty the Queen. Mrs Norman W. Tupper loves officer Taylor. You love a certain person. And this person loves that other person because everybody loves somebody but God loves everybody. --Well, Joe, says I, your very good health and song. More power, citizen. --Hurrah, there, says Joe. --The blessing of God and Mary and Patrick on you, says the citizen. And he ups with his pint to wet his whistle. --We know those canters, says he, preaching and picking your pocket. What about sanctimonious Cromwell and his ironsides that put the women and children of Drogheda to the sword with the bible text God is love pasted round the mouth of his cannon? The bible! Did you read that skit in the United Irishman today about that Zulu chief that's visiting England? --What's that? says Joe. So the citizen takes up one of his paraphernalia papers and he starts reading out: --A delegation of the chief cotton magnates of Manchester was presented yesterday to His Majesty the Alaki of Abeakuta by Gold Stick in Waiting, Lord Walkup of Walkup on Eggs, to tender to His Majesty the heartfelt thanks of British traders for the facilities afforded them in his dominions. The delegation partook of luncheon at the conclusion of which the dusky potentate, in the course of a happy speech, freely translated by the British chaplain, the reverend Ananias Praisegod Barebones, tendered his best thanks to Massa Walkup and emphasised the cordial relations existing between Abeakuta and the British empire, stating that he treasured as one of his dearest possessions an illuminated bible, the volume of the word of God and the secret of England's greatness, graciously presented to him by the white chief woman, the great squaw Victoria, with a personal dedication from the august hand of the Royal Donor. The Alaki then drank a lovingcup of firstshot usquebaugh to the toast Black and White from the skull of his immediate predecessor in the dynasty Kakachakachak, surnamed Forty Warts, after which he visited the chief factory of Cottonopolis and signed his mark in the visitors' book, subsequently executing a charming old Abeakutic wardance, in the course of which he swallowed several knives and forks, amid hilarious applause from the girl hands. --Widow woman, says Ned. I wouldn't doubt her. Wonder did he put that bible to the same use as I would. --Same only more so, says Lenehan. And thereafter in that fruitful land the broadleaved mango flourished exceedingly. --Is that by Griffith? says John Wyse. --No, says the citizen. It's not signed Shanganagh. It's only initialled: P. --And a very good initial too, says Joe. --That's how it's worked, says the citizen. Trade follows the flag. --Well, says J. J., if they're any worse than those Belgians in the Congo Free State they must be bad. Did you read that report by a man what's this his name is? --Casement, says the citizen. He's an Irishman. --Yes, that's the man, says J. J. Raping the women and girls and flogging the natives on the belly to squeeze all the red rubber they can out of them. --I know where he's gone, says Lenehan, cracking his fingers. --Who? says I. --Bloom, says he. The courthouse is a blind. He had a few bob on Throwaway and he's gone to gather in the shekels. --Is it that whiteeyed kaffir? says the citizen, that never backed a horse in anger in his life? --That's where he's gone, says Lenehan. I met Bantam Lyons going to back that horse only I put him off it and he told me Bloom gave him the tip. Bet you what you like he has a hundred shillings to five on. He's the only man in Dublin has it. A dark horse. --He's a bloody dark horse himself, says Joe. --Mind, Joe, says I. Show us the entrance out. --There you are, says Terry. Goodbye Ireland I'm going to Gort. So I just went round the back of the yard to pumpship and begob (hundred shillings to five) while I was letting off my (Throwaway twenty to) letting off my load gob says I to myself I knew he was uneasy in his (two pints off of Joe and one in Slattery's off) in his mind to get off the mark to (hundred shillings is five quid) and when they were in the (dark horse) pisser Burke was telling me card party and letting on the child was sick (gob, must have done about a gallon) flabbyarse of a wife speaking down the tube she's better or she's (ow!) all a plan so he could vamoose with the pool if he won or (Jesus, full up I was) trading without a licence (ow!) Ireland my nation says he (hoik! phthook!) never be up to those bloody (there's the last of it) Jerusalem (ah!) cuckoos. So anyhow when I got back they were at it dingdong, John Wyse saying it was Bloom gave the ideas for Sinn Fein to Griffith to put in his paper all kinds of jerrymandering, packed juries and swindling the taxes off of the government and appointing consuls all over the world to walk about selling Irish industries. Robbing Peter to pay Paul. Gob, that puts the bloody kybosh on it if old sloppy eyes is mucking up the show. Give us a bloody chance. God save Ireland from the likes of that bloody mouseabout. Mr Bloom with his argol bargol. And his old fellow before him perpetrating frauds, old Methusalem Bloom, the robbing bagman, that poisoned himself with the prussic acid after he swamping the country with his baubles and his penny diamonds. Loans by post on easy terms. Any amount of money advanced on note of hand. Distance no object. No security. Gob, he's like Lanty MacHale's goat that'd go a piece of the road with every one. --Well, it's a fact, says John Wyse. And there's the man now that'll tell you all about it, Martin Cunningham. Sure enough the castle car drove up with Martin on it and Jack Power with him and a fellow named Crofter or Crofton, pensioner out of the collector general's, an orangeman Blackburn does have on the registration and he drawing his pay or Crawford gallivanting around the country at the king's expense. Our travellers reached the rustic hostelry and alighted from their palfreys. --Ho, varlet! cried he, who by his mien seemed the leader of the party. Saucy knave! To us! So saying he knocked loudly with his swordhilt upon the open lattice. Mine host came forth at the summons, girding him with his tabard. --Give you good den, my masters, said he with an obsequious bow. --Bestir thyself, sirrah! cried he who had knocked. Look to our steeds. And for ourselves give us of your best for ifaith we need it. --Lackaday, good masters, said the host, my poor house has but a bare larder. I know not what to offer your lordships. --How now, fellow? cried the second of the party, a man of pleasant countenance, So servest thou the king's messengers, master Taptun? An instantaneous change overspread the landlord's visage. --Cry you mercy, gentlemen, he said humbly. An you be the king's messengers (God shield His Majesty!) you shall not want for aught. The king's friends (God bless His Majesty!) shall not go afasting in my house I warrant me. --Then about! cried the traveller who had not spoken, a lusty trencherman by his aspect. Hast aught to give us? Mine host bowed again as he made answer: --What say you, good masters, to a squab pigeon pasty, some collops of venison, a saddle of veal, widgeon with crisp hog's bacon, a boar's head with pistachios, a bason of jolly custard, a medlar tansy and a flagon of old Rhenish? --Gadzooks! cried the last speaker. That likes me well. Pistachios! --Aha! cried he of the pleasant countenance. A poor house and a bare larder, quotha! 'Tis a merry rogue. So in comes Martin asking where was Bloom. --Where is he? says Lenehan. Defrauding widows and orphans. --Isn't that a fact, says John Wyse, what I was telling the citizen about Bloom and the Sinn Fein? --That's so, says Martin. Or so they allege. --Who made those allegations? says Alf. --I, says Joe. I'm the alligator. --And after all, says John Wyse, why can't a jew love his country like the next fellow? --Why not? says J. J., when he's quite sure which country it is. --Is he a jew or a gentile or a holy Roman or a swaddler or what the hell is he? says Ned. Or who is he? No offence, Crofton. --Who is Junius? says J. J. --We don't want him, says Crofter the Orangeman or presbyterian. --He's a perverted jew, says Martin, from a place in Hungary and it was he drew up all the plans according to the Hungarian system. We know that in the castle. --Isn't he a cousin of Bloom the dentist? says Jack Power. --Not at all, says Martin. Only namesakes. His name was Virag, the father's name that poisoned himself. He changed it by deedpoll, the father did. --That's the new Messiah for Ireland! says the citizen. Island of saints and sages! --Well, they're still waiting for their redeemer, says Martin. For that matter so are we. --Yes, says J. J., and every male that's born they think it may be their Messiah. And every jew is in a tall state of excitement, I believe, till he knows if he's a father or a mother. --Expecting every moment will be his next, says Lenehan. --O, by God, says Ned, you should have seen Bloom before that son of his that died was born. I met him one day in the south city markets buying a tin of Neave's food six weeks before the wife was delivered. --En ventre sa mSre, says J. J. --Do you call that a man? says the citizen. --I wonder did he ever put it out of sight, says Joe. --Well, there were two children born anyhow, says Jack Power. --And who does he suspect? says the citizen. Gob, there's many a true word spoken in jest. One of those mixed middlings he is. Lying up in the hotel Pisser was telling me once a month with headache like a totty with her courses. Do you know what I'm telling you? It'd be an act of God to take a hold of a fellow the like of that and throw him in the bloody sea. Justifiable homicide, so it would. Then sloping off with his five quid without putting up a pint of stuff like a man. Give us your blessing. Not as much as would blind your eye. --Charity to the neighbour, says Martin. But where is he? We can't wait. --A wolf in sheep's clothing, says the citizen. That's what he is. Virag from Hungary! Ahasuerus I call him. Cursed by God. --Have you time for a brief libation, Martin? says Ned. --Only one, says Martin. We must be quick. J. J. and S. --You, Jack? Crofton? Three half ones, Terry. --Saint Patrick would want to land again at Ballykinlar and convert us, says the citizen, after allowing things like that to contaminate our shores. --Well, says Martin, rapping for his glass. God bless all here is my prayer. --Amen, says the citizen. --And I'm sure He will, says Joe. And at the sound of the sacring bell, headed by a crucifer with acolytes, thurifers, boatbearers, readers, ostiarii, deacons and subdeacons, the blessed company drew nigh of mitred abbots and priors and guardians and monks and friars: the monks of Benedict of Spoleto, Carthusians and Camaldolesi, Cistercians and Olivetans, Oratorians and Vallombrosans, and the friars of Augustine, Brigittines, Premonstratensians, Servi, Trinitarians, and the children of Peter Nolasco: and therewith from Carmel mount the children of Elijah prophet led by Albert bishop and by Teresa of Avila, calced and other: and friars, brown and grey, sons of poor Francis, capuchins, cordeliers, minimes and observants and the daughters of Clara: and the sons of Dominic, the friars preachers, and the sons of Vincent: and the monks of S. Wolstan: and Ignatius his children: and the confraternity of the christian brothers led by the reverend brother Edmund Ignatius Rice. And after came all saints and martyrs, virgins and confessors: S. Cyr and S. Isidore Arator and S. James the Less and S. Phocas of Sinope and S. Julian Hospitator and S. Felix de Cantalice and S. Simon Stylites and S. Stephen Protomartyr and S. John of God and S. Ferreol and S. Leugarde and S. Theodotus and S. Vulmar and S. Richard and S. Vincent de Paul and S. Martin of Todi and S. Martin of Tours and S. Alfred and S. Joseph and S. Denis and S. Cornelius and S. Leopold and S. Bernard and S. Terence and S. Edward and S. Owen Caniculus and S. Anonymous and S. Eponymous and S. Pseudonymous and S. Homonymous and S. Paronymous and S. Synonymous and S. Laurence O'Toole and S. James of Dingle and Compostella and S. Columcille and S. Columba and S. Celestine and S. Colman and S. Kevin and S. Brendan and S. Frigidian and S. Senan and S. Fachtna and S. Columbanus and S. Gall and S. Fursey and S. Fintan and S. Fiacre and S. John Nepomuc and S. Thomas Aquinas and S. Ives of Brittany and S. Michan and S. Herman-Joseph and the three patrons of holy youth S. Aloysius Gonzaga and S. Stanislaus Kostka and S. John Berchmans and the saints Gervasius, Servasius and Bonifacius and S. Bride and S. Kieran and S. Canice of Kilkenny and S. Jarlath of Tuam and S. Finbarr and S. Pappin of Ballymun and Brother Aloysius Pacificus and Brother Louis Bellicosus and the saints Rose of Lima and of Viterbo and S. Martha of Bethany and S. Mary of Egypt and S. Lucy and S. Brigid and S. Attracta and S. Dympna and S. Ita and S. Marion Calpensis and the Blessed Sister Teresa of the Child Jesus and S. Barbara and S. Scholastica and S. Ursula with eleven thousand virgins. And all came with nimbi and aureoles and gloriae, bearing palms and harps and swords and olive crowns, in robes whereon were woven the blessed symbols of their efficacies, inkhorns, arrows, loaves, cruses, fetters, axes, trees, bridges, babes in a bathtub, shells, wallets, shears, keys, dragons, lilies, buckshot, beards, hogs, lamps, bellows, beehives, soupladles, stars, snakes, anvils, boxes of vaseline, bells, crutches, forceps, stags' horns, watertight boots, hawks, millstones, eyes on a dish, wax candles, aspergills, unicorns. And as they wended their way by Nelson's Pillar, Henry street, Mary street, Capel street, Little Britain street chanting the introit in Epiphania Domini which beginneth Surge, illuminare and thereafter most sweetly the gradual Omnes which saith de Saba venient they did divers wonders such as casting out devils, raising the dead to life, multiplying fishes, healing the halt and the blind, discovering various articles which had been mislaid, interpreting and fulfilling the scriptures, blessing and prophesying. And last, beneath a canopy of cloth of gold came the reverend Father O'Flynn attended by Malachi and Patrick. And when the good fathers had reached the appointed place, the house of Bernard Kiernan and Co, limited, 8, 9 and 10 Little Britain street, wholesale grocers, wine and brandy shippers, licensed for the sale of beer, wine and spirits for consumption on the premises, the celebrant blessed the house and censed the mullioned windows and the groynes and the vaults and the arrises and the capitals and the pediments and the cornices and the engrailed arches and the spires and the cupolas and sprinkled the lintels thereof with blessed water and prayed that God might bless that house as he had blessed the house of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and make the angels of His light to inhabit therein. And entering he blessed the viands and the beverages and the company of all the blessed answered his prayers. --Adiutorium nostrum in nomine Domini. --Qui fecit coelum et terram. --Dominus vobiscum. --Et cum spiritu tuo. And he laid his hands upon that he blessed and gave thanks and he prayed and they all with him prayed: --Deus, cuius verbo sanctificantur omnia, benedictionem tuam effunde super creaturas istas: et praesta ut quisquis eis secundum legem et voluntatem Tuam cum gratiarum actione usus fuerit per invocationem sanctissimi nominis Tui corporis sanitatem et animae tutelam Te auctore percipiat per Christum Dominum nostrum. --And so say all of us, says Jack. --Thousand a year, Lambert, says Crofton or Crawford. --Right, says Ned, taking up his John Jameson. And butter for fish. I was just looking around to see who the happy thought would strike when be damned but in he comes again letting on to be in a hell of a hurry. --I was just round at the courthouse, says he, looking for you. I hope I'm not .... --No, says Martin, we're ready. Courthouse my eye and your pockets hanging down with gold and silver. Mean bloody scut. Stand us a drink itself. Devil a sweet fear! There's a jew for you! All for number one. Cute as a shithouse rat. Hundred to five. --Don't tell anyone, says the citizen, --Beg your pardon, says he. --Come on boys, says Martin, seeing it was looking blue. Come along now. --Don't tell anyone, says the citizen, letting a bawl out of him. It's a secret. And the bloody dog woke up and let a growl. --Bye bye all, says Martin. And he got them out as quick as he could, Jack Power and Crofton or whatever you call him and him in the middle of them letting on to be all at sea and up with them on the bloody jaunting car. --Off with you, says Martin to the jarvey. The milkwhite dolphin tossed his mane and, rising in the golden poop the helmsman spread the bellying sail upon the wind and stood off forward with all sail set, the spinnaker to larboard. A many comely nymphs drew nigh to starboard and to larboard and, clinging to the sides of the noble bark, they linked their shining forms as doth the cunning wheelwright when he fashions about the heart of his wheel the equidistant rays whereof each one is sister to another and he binds them all with an outer ring and giveth speed to the feet of men whenas they ride to a hosting or contend for the smile of ladies fair. Even so did they come and set them, those willing nymphs, the undying sisters. And they laughed, sporting in a circle of their foam: and the bark clave the waves. But begob I was just lowering the heel of the pint when I saw the citizen getting up to waddle to the door, puffing and blowing with the dropsy, and he cursing the curse of Cromwell on him, bell, book and candle in Irish, spitting and spatting out of him and Joe and little Alf round him like a leprechaun trying to peacify him. --Let me alone, says he. And begob he got as far as the door and they holding him and he bawls out of him: --Three cheers for Israel! Arrah, sit down on the parliamentary side of your arse for Christ' sake and don't be making a public exhibition of yourself. Jesus, there's always some bloody clown or other kicking up a bloody murder about bloody nothing. Gob, it'd turn the porter sour in your guts, so it would. And all the ragamuffins and sluts of the nation round the door and Martin telling the jarvey to drive ahead and the citizen bawling and Alf and Joe at him to whisht and he on his high horse about the jews and the loafers calling for a speech and Jack Power trying to get him to sit down on the car and hold his bloody jaw and a loafer with a patch over his eye starts singing If the man in the moon was a jew, jew, jew and a slut shouts out of her: --Eh, mister! Your fly is open, mister! And says he: --Mendelssohn was a jew and Karl Marx and Mercadante and Spinoza. And the Saviour was a jew and his father was a jew. Your God. --He had no father, says Martin. That'll do now. Drive ahead. --Whose God? says the citizen. --Well, his uncle was a jew, says he. Your God was a jew. Christ was a jew like me. Gob, the citizen made a plunge back into the shop. --By Jesus, says he, I'll brain that bloody jewman for using the holy name. By Jesus, I'll crucify him so I will. Give us that biscuitbox here. --Stop! Stop! says Joe. A large and appreciative gathering of friends and acquaintances from the metropolis and greater Dublin assembled in their thousands to bid farewell to Nagyas gos uram Lipўti Virag, late of Messrs Alexander Thom's, printers to His Majesty, on the occasion of his departure for the distant clime of Sz zharminczbrojЈguly s-Dugul s (Meadow of Murmuring Waters). The ceremony which went off with great ’clat was characterised by the most affecting cordiality. An illuminated scroll of ancient Irish vellum, the work of Irish artists, was presented to the distinguished phenomenologist on behalf of a large section of the community and was accompanied by the gift of a silver casket, tastefully executed in the style of ancient Celtic ornament, a work which reflects every credit on the makers, Messrs Jacob agus Jacob. The departing guest was the recipient of a hearty ovation, many of those who were present being visibly moved when the select orchestra of Irish pipes struck up the wellknown strains of Come Back to Erin, followed immediately by Rakўczsy's March. Tarbarrels and bonfires were lighted along the coastline of the four seas on the summits of the Hill of Howth, Three Rock Mountain, Sugarloaf, Bray Head, the mountains of Mourne, the Galtees, the Ox and Donegal and Sperrin peaks, the Nagles and the Bograghs, the Connemara hills, the reeks of M Gillicuddy, Slieve Aughty, Slieve Bernagh and Slieve Bloom. Amid cheers that rent the welkin, responded to by answering cheers from a big muster of henchmen on the distant Cambrian and Caledonian hills, the mastodontic pleasureship slowly moved away saluted by a final floral tribute from the representatives of the fair sex who were present in large numbers while, as it proceeded down the river, escorted by a flotilla of barges, the flags of the Ballast office and Custom House were dipped in salute as were also those of the electrical power station at the Pigeonhouse and the Poolbeg Light. Visszontl t sra, kedv’s bar tom! Visszontl t sra! Gone but not forgotten. Gob, the devil wouldn't stop him till he got hold of the bloody tin anyhow and out with him and little Alf hanging on to his elbow and he shouting like a stuck pig, as good as any bloody play in the Queen's royal theatre: --Where is he till I murder him? And Ned and J. J. paralysed with the laughing. --Bloody wars, says I, I'll be in for the last gospel. But as luck would have it the jarvey got the nag's head round the other way and off with him. --Hold on, citizen, says Joe. Stop! Begob he drew his hand and made a swipe and let fly. Mercy of God the sun was in his eyes or he'd have left him for dead. Gob, he near sent it into the county Longford. The bloody nag took fright and the old mongrel after the car like bloody hell and all the populace shouting and laughing and the old tinbox clattering along the street. The catastrophe was terrific and instantaneous in its effect. The observatory of Dunsink registered in all eleven shocks, all of the fifth grade of Mercalli's scale, and there is no record extant of a similar seismic disturbance in our island since the earthquake of 1534, the year of the rebellion of Silken Thomas. The epicentre appears to have been that part of the metropolis which constitutes the Inn's Quay ward and parish of Saint Michan covering a surface of fortyone acres, two roods and one square pole or perch.All the lordly residences in the vicinity of the palace of justice were demolished and that noble edifice itself, in which at the time of the catastrophe important legal debates were in progress, is literally a mass of ruins beneath which it is to be feared all the occupants have been buried alive. From the reports of eyewitnesses it transpires that the seismic waves were accompanied by a violent atmospheric perturbation of cyclonic character. An article of headgear since ascertained to belong to the much respected clerk of the crown and peace Mr George Fottrell and a silk umbrella with gold handle with the engraved initials, crest, coat of arms and house number of the erudite and worshipful chairman of quarter sessions sir Frederick Falkiner, recorder of Dublin, have been discovered by search parties in remote parts of the island respectively, the former on the third basaltic ridge of the giant's causeway, the latter embedded to the extent of one foot three inches in the sandy beach of Holeopen bay near the old head of Kinsale. Other eyewitnesses depose that they observed an incandescent object of enormous proportions hurtling through the atmosphere at a terrifying velocity in a trajectory directed southwest by west. Messages of condolence and sympathy are being hourly received from all parts of the different continents and the sovereign pontiff has been graciously pleased to decree that a special missa pro defunctis shall be celebrated simultaneously by the ordinaries of each and every cathedral church of all the episcopal dioceses subject to the spiritual authority of the Holy See in suffrage of the souls of those faithful departed who have been so unexpectedly called away from our midst. The work of salvage, removal of d’bris, human remains etc has been entrusted to Messrs Michael Meade and Son, 159 Great Brunswick street, and Messrs T. and C. Martin, 77, 78, 79 and 80 North Wall, assisted by the men and officers of the Duke of Cornwall's light infantry under the general supervision of H. R. H., rear admiral, the right honourable sir Hercules Hannibal Habeas Corpus Anderson, K. G., K. P., K. T., P. C., K. C. B., M. P, J. P., M. B., D. S. O., S. O. D., M. F. H., M. R. I. A., B. L., Mus. Doc., P. L. G., F. T. C. D., F. R. U. I., F. R. C. P. I. and F. R. C. S. I. You never saw the like of it in all your born puff. Gob, if he got that lottery ticket on the side of his poll he'd remember the gold cup, he would so, but begob the citizen would have been lagged for assault and battery and Joe for aiding and abetting. The jarvey saved his life by furious driving as sure as God made Moses. What? O, Jesus, he did. And he let a volley of oaths after him. --Did I kill him, says he, or what? And he shouting to the bloody dog: --After him, Garry! After him, boy! And the last we saw was the bloody car rounding the corner and old sheepsface on it gesticulating and the bloody mongrel after it with his lugs back for all he was bloody well worth to tear him limb from limb. Hundred to five! Jesus, he took the value of it out of him, I promise you. When, lo, there came about them all a great brightness and they beheld the chariot wherein He stood ascend to heaven. And they beheld Him in the chariot, clothed upon in the glory of the brightness, having raiment as of the sun, fair as the moon and terrible that for awe they durst not look upon Him. And there came a voice out of heaven, calling: Elijah! Elijah! And He answered with a main cry: Abba! Adonai! And they beheld Him even Him, ben Bloom Elijah, amid clouds of angels ascend to the glory of the brightness at an angle of fortyfive degrees over Donohoe's in Little Green street like a shot off a shovel.
Her maiden name was Jemina Brown
And she lived with her mother in Irishtown.
Place made me think of that I suppose. All tarred with the same
brush. Wiping pens in their stockings. But the ball rolled down to her as if it
understood. Every bullet has its billet. Course I never could throw anything
straight at school. Crooked as a ram's horn. Sad however because it lasts
only a few years till they settle down to potwalloping and papa's pants will
soon fit Willy and fuller's earth for the baby when they hold him out to do
ah ah. No soft job. Saves them. Keeps them out of harm's way. Nature.
Washing child, washing corpse. Dignam. Children's hands always round
them. Cocoanut skulls, monkeys, not even closed at first, sour milk in their
swaddles and tainted curds. Oughtn't to have given that child an empty teat
to suck. Fill it up with wind. Mrs Beaufoy, Purefoy. Must call to the
hospital. Wonder is nurse Callan there still. She used to look over some
nights when Molly was in the Coffee Palace. That young doctor O'Hare I
noticed her brushing his coat. And Mrs Breen and Mrs Dignam once like
that too, marriageable. Worst of all at night Mrs Duggan told me in the City
Arms. Husband rolling in drunk, stink of pub off him like a polecat. Have
that in your nose in the dark, whiff of stale boose. Then ask in the morning:
was I drunk last night? Bad policy however to fault the husband. Chickens
come home to roost. They stick by one another like glue. Maybe the
women's fault also. That's where Molly can knock spots off them. It's the
blood of the south. Moorish. Also the form, the figure. Hands felt for the
opulent. Just compare for instance those others. Wife locked up at home,
skeleton in the cupboard. Allow me to introduce my. Then they trot you out
some kind of a nondescript, wouldn't know what to call her. Always see a
fellow's weak point in his wife. Still there's destiny in it, falling in love.
Have their own secrets between them. Chaps that would go to the dogs if
some woman didn't take them in hand. Then little chits of girls, height of a
shilling in coppers, with little hubbies. As God made them he matched them.
Sometimes children turn out well enough. Twice nought makes one. Or old
rich chap of seventy and blushing bride. Marry in May and repent in
December. This wet is very unpleasant. Stuck. Well the foreskin is not back.
Better detach.
Ow!
Other hand a sixfooter with a wifey up to his watchpocket. Long and
the short of it. Big he and little she. Very strange about my watch.
Wristwatches are always going wrong. Wonder is there any magnetic
influence between the person because that was about the time he. Yes, I
suppose, at once. Cat's away, the mice will play. I remember looking in Pill
lane. Also that now is magnetism. Back of everything magnetism. Earth for
instance pulling this and being pulled. That causes movement. And time,
well that's the time the movement takes. Then if one thing stopped the
whole ghesabo would stop bit by bit. Because it's all arranged. Magnetic
needle tells you what's going on in the sun, the stars. Little piece of steel
iron. When you hold out the fork. Come. Come. Tip. Woman and man that
is. Fork and steel. Molly, he. Dress up and look and suggest and let you see
and see more and defy you if you're a man to see that and, like a sneeze
coming, legs, look, look and if you have any guts in you. Tip. Have to let
fly.
Wonder how is she feeling in that region. Shame all put on before
third person. More put out about a hole in her stocking. Molly, her
underjaw stuck out, head back, about the farmer in the ridingboots and
spurs at the horse show. And when the painters were in Lombard street
west. Fine voice that fellow had. How Giuglini began. Smell that I did. Like
flowers. It was too. Violets. Came from the turpentine probably in the
paint. Make their own use of everything. Same time doing it scraped her
slipper on the floor so they wouldn't hear. But lots of them can't kick the
beam, I think. Keep that thing up for hours. Kind of a general all round
over me and half down my back.
Wait. Hm. Hm. Yes. That's her perfume. Why she waved her hand. I
leave you this to think of me when I'm far away on the pillow. What is it?
Heliotrope? No. Hyacinth? Hm. Roses, I think. She'd like scent of that
kind. Sweet and cheap: soon sour. Why Molly likes opoponax. Suits her,
with a little jessamine mixed. Her high notes and her low notes. At the
dance night she met him, dance of the hours. Heat brought it out. She was
wearing her black and it had the perfume of the time before. Good
conductor, is it? Or bad? Light too. Suppose there's some connection. For
instance if you go into a cellar where it's dark. Mysterious thing too. Why
did I smell it only now? Took its time in coming like herself, slow but sure.
Suppose it's ever so many millions of tiny grains blown across. Yes, it is.
Because those spice islands, Cinghalese this morning, smell them leagues
off.Tell you what it is.It's like a fine fine veil or web they have all over the
skin, fine like what do you call it gossamer, and they're always spinning it
out of them, fine as anything, like rainbow colours without knowing it.
Clings to everything she takes off. Vamp of her stockings. Warm shoe.
Stays. Drawers: little kick, taking them off. Byby till next time. Also the cat
likes to sniff in her shift on the bed. Know her smell in a thousand.
Bathwater too. Reminds me of strawberries and cream. Wonder where it is
really. There or the armpits or under the neck. Because you get it out of all
holes and corners. Hyacinth perfume made of oil of ether or something.
Muskrat. Bag under their tails. One grain pour off odour for years. Dogs at
each other behind. Good evening. Evening. How do you sniff? Hm. Hm.
Very well, thank you. Animals go by that. Yes now, look at it that way.
We're the same. Some women, instance, warn you off when they have their
period. Come near. Then get a hogo you could hang your hat on. Like
what? Potted herrings gone stale or. Boof! Please keep off the grass.
Perhaps they get a man smell off us. What though? Cigary gloves long
John had on his desk the other day. Breath? What you eat and drink gives
that. No. Mansmell, I mean. Must be connected with that because priests
that are supposed to be are different. Women buzz round it like flies round
treacle. Railed off the altar get on to it at any cost. The tree of forbidden
priest. O, father, will you? Let me be the first to. That diffuses itself all
through the body, permeates. Source of life. And it's extremely curious the
smell. Celery sauce. Let me.
Mr Bloom inserted his nose. Hm. Into the. Hm. Opening of his
waistcoat. Almonds or. No. Lemons it is. Ah no, that's the soap.
O by the by that lotion. I knew there was something on my mind.
Never went back and the soap not paid. Dislike carrying bottles like that
hag this morning. Hynes might have paid me that three shillings. I could
mention Meagher's just to remind him. Still if he works that paragraph.
Two and nine. Bad opinion of me he'll have. Call tomorrow. How much do
I owe you? Three and nine? Two and nine, sir. Ah. Might stop him giving
credit another time. Lose your customers that way. Pubs do. Fellows run up
a bill on the slate and then slinking around the back streets into somewhere
else.
Here's this nobleman passed before. Blown in from the bay. Just went
as far as turn back. Always at home at dinnertime. Looks mangled out: had
a good tuck in. Enjoying nature now. Grace after meals. After supper walk
a mile. Sure he has a small bank balance somewhere, government sit. Walk
after him now make him awkward like those newsboys me today. Still you
learn something. See ourselves as others see us. So long as women don't
mock what matter? That's the way to find out. Ask yourself who is he now.
The Mystery Man on the Beach, prize titbit story by Mr Leopold Bloom.
Payment at the rate of one guinea per column. And that fellow today at the
graveside in the brown macintosh. Corns on his kismet however. Healthy
perhaps absorb all the. Whistle brings rain they say. Must be some
somewhere. Salt in the Ormond damp. The body feels the atmosphere. Old
Betty's joints are on the rack. Mother Shipton's prophecy that is about
ships around they fly in the twinkling. No. Signs of rain it is. The royal
reader. And distant hills seem coming nigh.
Howth. Bailey light. Two, four, six, eight, nine. See. Has to change or
they might think it a house. Wreckers. Grace Darling. People afraid of the
dark. Also glowworms, cyclists: lightingup time. Jewels diamonds flash
better. Women. Light is a kind of reassuring. Not going to hurt you. Better
now of course than long ago. Country roads. Run you through the small
guts for nothing. Still two types there are you bob against. Scowl or smile.
Pardon! Not at all. Best time to spray plants too in the shade after the sun.
Some light still. Red rays are longest. Roygbiv Vance taught us: red,
orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.A star I see. Venus? Can't tell yet.
Two. When three it's night. Were those nightclouds there all the time?
Looks like a phantom ship. No. Wait. Trees are they? An optical illusion.
Mirage. Land of the setting sun this. Homerule sun setting in the southeast.
My native land, goodnight.
Dew falling. Bad for you, dear, to sit on that stone. Brings on white
fluxions. Never have little baby then less he was big strong fight his way up
through. Might get piles myself. Sticks too like a summer cold, sore on the
mouth. Cut with grass or paper worst. Friction of the position. Like to be
that rock she sat on. O sweet little, you don't know how nice you looked. I
begin to like them at that age. Green apples. Grab at all that offer. Suppose
it's the only time we cross legs, seated. Also the library today: those girl
graduates. Happy chairs under them. But it's the evening influence. They
feel all that. Open like flowers, know their hours, sunflowers, Jerusalem
artichokes, in ballrooms, chandeliers, avenues under the lamps. Nightstock
in Mat Dillon's garden where I kissed her shoulder. Wish I had a full length
oilpainting of her then. June that was too I wooed. The year returns.
History repeats itself. Ye crags and peaks I'm with you once again. Life,
love, voyage round your own little world. And now? Sad about her lame of
course but must be on your guard not to feel too much pity. They take
advantage.
All quiet on Howth now. The distant hills seem. Where we. The
rhododendrons. I am a fool perhaps. He gets the plums, and I the
plumstones. Where I come in. All that old hill has seen. Names change:
that's all. Lovers: yum yum.
Tired I feel now. Will I get up? O wait. Drained all the manhood out
of me, little wretch. She kissed me. Never again. My youth. Only once it
comes. Or hers. Take the train there tomorrow. No. Returning not the
same. Like kids your second visit to a house. The new I want. Nothing new
under the sun. Care of P. O. Dolphin's Barn. Are you not happy in your?
Naughty darling. At Dolphin's barn charades in Luke Doyle's house. Mat
Dillon and his bevy of daughters: Tiny, Atty, Floey, Maimy, Louy, Hetty.
Molly too. Eightyseven that was. Year before we. And the old major, partial
to his drop of spirits. Curious she an only child, I an only child. So it
returns. Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is
the shortest way home. And just when he and she. Circus horse walking in
a ring. Rip van Winkle we played. Rip: tear in Henny Doyle's overcoat.
Van: breadvan delivering. Winkle: cockles and periwinkles. Then I did Rip
van Winkle coming back. She leaned on the sideboard watching. Moorish
eyes. Twenty years asleep in Sleepy Hollow. All changed. Forgotten. The
young are old. His gun rusty from the dew.
Ba. What is that flying about? Swallow? Bat probably. Thinks I'm a
tree, so blind. Have birds no smell? Metempsychosis. They believed you
could be changed into a tree from grief. Weeping willow. Ba. There he goes.
Funny little beggar. Wonder where he lives. Belfry up there. Very likely.
Hanging by his heels in the odour of sanctity. Bell scared him out, I
suppose. Mass seems to be over. Could hear them all at it. Pray for us. And
pray for us. And pray for us. Good idea the repetition. Same thing with ads.
Buy from us. And buy from us. Yes, there's the light in the priest's house.
Their frugal meal. Remember about the mistake in the valuation when I
was in Thom's. Twentyeight it is. Two houses they have. Gabriel Conroy's
brother is curate. Ba. Again. Wonder why they come out at night like mice.
They're a mixed breed. Birds are like hopping mice. What frightens them,
light or noise? Better sit still. All instinct like the bird in drouth got water
out of the end of a jar by throwing in pebbles. Like a little man in a cloak he
is with tiny hands. Weeny bones. Almost see them shimmering, kind of a
bluey white. Colours depend on the light you see. Stare the sun for example
like the eagle then look at a shoe see a blotch blob yellowish. Wants to
stamp his trademark on everything. Instance, that cat this morning on the
staircase. Colour of brown turf. Say you never see them with three colours.
Not true. That half tabbywhite tortoiseshell in the City Arms with the letter
em on her forehead. Body fifty different colours. Howth a while ago
amethyst. Glass flashing. That's how that wise man what's his name with
the burning glass. Then the heather goes on fire. It can't be tourists'
matches. What? Perhaps the sticks dry rub together in the wind and light.
Or broken bottles in the furze act as a burning glass in the sun.
Archimedes. I have it! My memory's not so bad.
Ba. Who knows what they're always flying for. Insects? That bee last
week got into the room playing with his shadow on the ceiling. Might be the
one bit me, come back to see. Birds too. Never find out. Or what they say.
Like our small talk. And says she and says he. Nerve they have to fly over
the ocean and back. Lots must be killed in storms, telegraph wires.
Dreadful life sailors have too. Big brutes of oceangoing steamers
floundering along in the dark, lowing out like seacows. Faugh a ballagh!
Out of that, bloody curse to you! Others in vessels, bit of a handkerchief
sail, pitched about like snuff at a wake when the stormy winds do blow.
Married too. Sometimes away for years at the ends of the earth somewhere.
No ends really because it's round. Wife in every port they say. She has a
good job if she minds it till Johnny comes marching home again. If ever he
does. Smelling the tail end of ports. How can they like the sea? Yet they do.
The anchor's weighed. Off he sails with a scapular or a medal on him for
luck. Well. And the tephilim no what's this they call it poor papa's father
had on his door to touch. That brought us out of the land of Egypt and into
the house of bondage. Something in all those superstitions because when
you go out never know what dangers. Hanging on to a plank or astride of a
beam for grim life, lifebelt round him, gulping salt water, and that's the last
of his nibs till the sharks catch hold of him. Do fish ever get seasick?
Then you have a beautiful calm without a cloud, smooth sea, placid,
crew and cargo in smithereens, Davy Jones' locker, moon looking down so
peaceful. Not my fault, old cockalorum.
A last lonely candle wandered up the sky from Mirus bazaar in search
of funds for Mercer's hospital and broke, drooping, and shed a cluster of
violet but one white stars. They floated, fell: they faded. The shepherd's
hour: the hour of folding: hour of tryst. From house to house, giving his
everwelcome double knock, went the nine o'clock postman, the
glowworm's lamp at his belt gleaming here and there through the laurel
hedges. And among the five young trees a hoisted lintstock lit the lamp at
Leahy's terrace. By screens of lighted windows, by equal gardens a shrill
voice went crying, wailing: Evening Telegraph, stop press edition! Result of
the Gold Cup races! and from the door of Dignam's house a boy ran out
and called. Twittering the bat flew here, flew there. Far out over the sands
the coming surf crept, grey. Howth settled for slumber, tired of long days,
of yumyum rhododendrons (he was old) and felt gladly the night breeze
lift, ruffle his fell of ferns. He lay but opened a red eye unsleeping, deep and
slowly breathing, slumberous but awake. And far on Kish bank the
anchored lightship twinkled, winked at Mr Bloom.
Life those chaps out there must have, stuck in the same spot. Irish
Lights board. Penance for their sins. Coastguards too. Rocket and breeches
buoy and lifeboat. Day we went out for the pleasure cruise in the Erin's
King, throwing them the sack of old papers. Bears in the zoo. Filthy trip.
Drunkards out to shake up their livers. Puking overboard to feed the
herrings. Nausea. And the women, fear of God in their faces. Milly, no sign
of funk. Her blue scarf loose, laughing. Don't know what death is at that
age. And then their stomachs clean. But being lost they fear. When we hid
behind the tree at Crumlin. I didn't want to. Mamma! Mamma! Babes in
the wood. Frightening them with masks too. Throwing them up in the air to
catch them. I'll murder you. Is it only half fun? Or children playing battle.
Whole earnest. How can people aim guns at each other. Sometimes they go
off. Poor kids! Only troubles wildfire and nettlerash. Calomel purge I got
her for that. After getting better asleep with Molly. Very same teeth she has.
What do they love? Another themselves? But the morning she chased her
with the umbrella. Perhaps so as not to hurt. I felt her pulse. Ticking. Little
hand it was: now big. Dearest Papli. All that the hand says when you touch.
Loved to count my waistcoat buttons. Her first stays I remember. Made me
laugh to see. Little paps to begin with. Left one is more sensitive, I think.
Mine too. Nearer the heart? Padding themselves out if fat is in fashion. Her
growing pains at night, calling, wakening me. Frightened she was when her
nature came on her first. Poor child! Strange moment for the mother too.
Brings back her girlhood. Gibraltar. Looking from Buena Vista. O'Hara's
tower. The seabirds screaming. Old Barbary ape that gobbled all his family.
Sundown, gunfire for the men to cross the lines. Looking out over the sea
she told me. Evening like this, but clear, no clouds. I always thought I'd
marry a lord or a rich gentleman coming with a private yacht. Buenas
noches, senorita. El hombre ama la muchacha hermosa. Why me? Because
you were so foreign from the others.
Better not stick here all night like a limpet. This weather makes you
dull. Must be getting on for nine by the light. Go home. Too late for Leah.
Lily of Killarney. No. Might be still up. Call to the hospital to see. Hope
she's over. Long day I've had. Martha, the bath, funeral, house of Keyes,
museum with those goddesses, Dedalus' song. Then that bawler in Barney
Kiernan's. Got my own back there. Drunken ranters what I said about his
God made him wince. Mistake to hit back. Or? No. Ought to go home and
laugh at themselves. Always want to be swilling in company. Afraid to be
alone like a child of two. Suppose he hit me. Look at it other way round.
Not so bad then. Perhaps not to hurt he meant. Three cheers for Israel.
Three cheers for the sister-in-law he hawked about, three fangs in her
mouth. Same style of beauty. Particularly nice old party for a cup of tea.
The sister of the wife of the wild man of Borneo has just come to town.
Imagine that in the early morning at close range. Everyone to his taste as
Morris said when he kissed the cow. But Dignam's put the boots on it.
Houses of mourning so depressing because you never know. Anyhow she
wants the money. Must call to those Scottish Widows as I promised.
Strange name. Takes it for granted we're going to pop off first. That widow
on Monday was it outside Cramer's that looked at me. Buried the poor
husband but progressing favourably on the premium. Her widow's mite.
Well? What do you expect her to do? Must wheedle her way along.
Widower I hate to see. Looks so forlorn. Poor man O'Connor wife and five
children poisoned by mussels here. The sewage. Hopeless. Some good
matronly woman in a porkpie hat to mother him. Take him in tow, platter
face and a large apron. Ladies' grey flannelette bloomers, three shillings a
pair, astonishing bargain. Plain and loved, loved for ever, they say. Ugly:
no woman thinks she is. Love, lie and be handsome for tomorrow we die.
See him sometimes walking about trying to find out who played the trick.
U. p: up. Fate that is. He, not me. Also a shop often noticed. Curse seems to
dog it. Dreamt last night? Wait. Something confused. She had red slippers
on. Turkish. Wore the breeches. Suppose she does? Would I like her in
pyjamas? Damned hard to answer. Nannetti's gone. Mailboat. Near
Holyhead by now. Must nail that ad of Keyes's. Work Hynes and
Crawford. Petticoats for Molly. She has something to put in them. What's
that? Might be money.
Mr Bloom stooped and turned over a piece of paper on the strand. He
brought it near his eyes and peered. Letter? No. Can't read. Better go.
Better. I'm tired to move. Page of an old copybook. All those holes and
pebbles. Who could count them? Never know what you find. Bottle with
story of a treasure in it, thrown from a wreck. Parcels post. Children
always want to throw things in the sea. Trust? Bread cast on the waters.
What's this? Bit of stick.
O! Exhausted that female has me. Not so young now. Will she come
here tomorrow? Wait for her somewhere for ever. Must come back.
Murderers do. Will I?
Mr Bloom with his stick gently vexed the thick sand at his foot. Write
a message for her. Might remain. What?
I.
Some flatfoot tramp on it in the morning. Useless. Washed away. Tide
comes here. Saw a pool near her foot. Bend, see my face there, dark mirror,
breathe on it, stirs. All these rocks with lines and scars and letters. O, those
transparent! Besides they don't know. What is the meaning of that other
world. I called you naughty boy because I do not like.
AM. A.
No room. Let it go.
Mr Bloom effaced the letters with his slow boot. Hopeless thing sand.
Nothing grows in it. All fades. No fear of big vessels coming up here.
Except Guinness's barges. Round the Kish in eighty days. Done half by
design.
He flung his wooden pen away. The stick fell in silted sand, stuck.
Now if you were trying to do that for a week on end you couldn't. Chance.
We'll never meet again. But it was lovely. Goodbye, dear. Thanks. Made me
feel so young.
Short snooze now if I had. Must be near nine. Liverpool boat long
gone.. Not even the smoke. And she can do the other. Did too. And Belfast.
I won't go. Race there, race back to Ennis. Let him. Just close my eyes a
moment. Won't sleep, though. Half dream. It never comes the same. Bat
again. No harm in him. Just a few.
O sweety all your little girlwhite up I saw dirty bracegirdle made me
do love sticky we two naughty Grace darling she him half past the bed met
him pike hoses frillies for Raoul de perfume your wife black hair heave
under embon senorita young eyes Mulvey plump bubs me breadvan Winkle
red slippers she rusty sleep wander years of dreams return tail end
Agendath swoony lovey showed me her next year in drawers return next in
her next her next.
A bat flew. Here. There. Here. Far in the grey a bell chimed. Mr
Bloom with open mouth, his left boot sanded sideways, leaned, breathed.
Just for a few
Cuckoo
Cuckoo
Cuckoo.
The clock on the mantelpiece in the priest's house cooed where Canon
O'Hanlon and Father Conroy and the reverend John Hughes S. J. were
taking tea and sodabread and butter and fried mutton chops with catsup
and talking about
Cuckoo
Cuckoo
Cuckoo
because it was a little canarybird that came out of its little house to tell the
time that Gerty MacDowell noticed the time she was there because she was
as quick as anything about a thing like that, was Gerty MacDowell, and she
noticed at once that that foreign gentleman that was sitting on the rocks
looking was
Cuckoo
Cuckoo
Cuckoo.
--Behold the mansion reared by dedal Jack See the malt stored in many a refluent sack In the proud cirque of Jackjohn's bivouac.A black crack of noise in the street here, alack, bawled back. Loud on left Thor thundered: in anger awful the hammerhurler. Came now the storm that hist his heart. And Master Lynch bade him have a care to flout and witwanton as the god self was angered for his hellprate and paganry. And he that had erst challenged to be so doughty waxed wan as they might all mark and shrank together and his pitch that was before so haught uplift was now of a sudden quite plucked down and his heart shook within the cage of his breast as he tasted the rumour of that storm. Then did some mock and some jeer and Punch Costello fell hard again to his yale which Master Lenehan vowed he would do after and he was indeed but a word and a blow on any the least colour. But the braggart boaster cried that an old Nobodaddy was in his cups it was muchwhat indifferent and he would not lag behind his lead. But this was only to dye his desperation as cowed he crouched in Horne's hall. He drank indeed at one draught to pluck up a heart of any grace for it thundered long rumblingly over all the heavens so that Master Madden, being godly certain whiles, knocked him on his ribs upon that crack of doom and Master Bloom, at the braggart's side, spoke to him calming words to slumber his great fear, advertising how it was no other thing but a hubbub noise that he heard, the discharge of fluid from the thunderhead, look you, having taken place, and all of the order of a natural phenomenon. But was young Boasthard's fear vanquished by Calmer's words? No, for he had in his bosom a spike named Bitterness which could not by words be done away. And was he then neither calm like the one nor godly like the other? He was neither as much as he would have liked to be either. But could he not have endeavoured to have found again as in his youth the bottle Holiness that then he lived withal? Indeed no for Grace was not there to find that bottle. Heard he then in that clap the voice of the god Bringforth or, what Calmer said, a hubbub of Phenomenon? Heard? Why, he could not but hear unless he had plugged him up the tube Understanding (which he had not done). For through that tube he saw that he was in the land of Phenomenon where he must for a certain one day die as he was like the rest too a passing show. And would he not accept to die like the rest and pass away? By no means would he though he must nor would he make more shows according as men do with wives which Phenomenon has commanded them to do by the book Law. Then wotted he nought of that other land which is called Believe-on-Me, that is the land of promise which behoves to the king Delightful and shall be for ever where there is no death and no birth neither wiving nor mothering at which all shall come as many as believe on it? Yes, Pious had told him of that land and Chaste had pointed him to the way but the reason was that in the way he fell in with a certain whore of an eyepleasing exterior whose name, she said, is Bird-in-the-Hand and she beguiled him wrongways from the true path by her flatteries that she said to him as, Ho, you pretty man, turn aside hither and I will show you a brave place, and she lay at him so flatteringly that she had him in her grot which is named Two-in-the-Bush or, by some learned, Carnal Concupiscence. This was it what all that company that sat there at commons in Manse of Mothers the most lusted after and if they met with this whore Bird-in-the-Hand (which was within all foul plagues, monsters and a wicked devil) they would strain the last but they would make at her and know her. For regarding Believe-on-Me they said it was nought else but notion and they could conceive no thought of it for, first, Two-in-the-Bush whither she ticed them was the very goodliest grot and in it were four pillows on which were four tickets with these words printed on them, Pickaback and Topsyturvy and Shameface and Cheek by Jowl and, second, for that foul plague Allpox and the monsters they cared not for them for Preservative had given them a stout shield of oxengut and, third, that they might take no hurt neither from Offspring that was that wicked devil by virtue of this same shield which was named Killchild. So were they all in their blind fancy, Mr Cavil and Mr Sometimes Godly, Mr Ape Swillale, Mr False Franklin, Mr Dainty Dixon, Young Boasthard and Mr Cautious Calmer. Wherein, O wretched company, were ye all deceived for that was the voice of the god that was in a very grievous rage that he would presently lift his arm up and spill their souls for their abuses and their spillings done by them contrariwise to his word which forth to bring brenningly biddeth. So Thursday sixteenth June Patk. Dignam laid in clay of an apoplexy and after hard drought, please God, rained, a bargeman coming in by water a fifty mile or thereabout with turf saying the seed won't sprout, fields athirst, very sadcoloured and stunk mightily, the quags and tofts too. Hard to breathe and all the young quicks clean consumed without sprinkle this long while back as no man remembered to be without. The rosy buds all gone brown and spread out blobs and on the hills nought but dry flag and faggots that would catch at first fire. All the world saying, for aught they knew, the big wind of last February a year that did havoc the land so pitifully a small thing beside this barrenness. But by and by, as said, this evening after sundown, the wind sitting in the west, biggish swollen clouds to be seen as the night increased and the weatherwise poring up at them and some sheet lightnings at first and after, past ten of the clock, one great stroke with a long thunder and in a brace of shakes all scamper pellmell within door for the smoking shower, the men making shelter for their straws with a clout or kerchief, womenfolk skipping off with kirtles catched up soon as the pour came. In Ely place, Baggot street, Duke's lawn, thence through Merrion green up to Holles street a swash of water flowing that was before bonedry and not one chair or coach or fiacre seen about but no more crack after that first. Over against the Rt. Hon. Mr Justice Fitzgibbon's door (that is to sit with Mr Healy the lawyer upon the college lands) Mal. Mulligan a gentleman's gentleman that had but come from Mr Moore's the writer's (that was a papish but is now, folk say, a good Williamite) chanced against Alec. Bannon in a cut bob (which are now in with dance cloaks of Kendal green) that was new got to town from Mullingar with the stage where his coz and Mal M's brother will stay a month yet till Saint Swithin and asks what in the earth he does there, he bound home and he to Andrew Horne's being stayed for to crush a cup of wine, so he said, but would tell him of a skittish heifer, big of her age and beef to the heel, and all this while poured with rain and so both together on to Horne's. There Leop. Bloom of Crawford's journal sitting snug with a covey of wags, likely brangling fellows, Dixon jun., scholar of my lady of Mercy's, Vin. Lynch, a Scots fellow, Will. Madden, T. Lenehan, very sad about a racer he fancied and Stephen D. Leop. Bloom there for a languor he had but was now better, be having dreamed tonight a strange fancy of his dame Mrs Moll with red slippers on in a pair of Turkey trunks which is thought by those in ken to be for a change and Mistress Purefoy there, that got in through pleading her belly, and now on the stools, poor body, two days past her term, the midwives sore put to it and can't deliver, she queasy for a bowl of riceslop that is a shrewd drier up of the insides and her breath very heavy more than good and should be a bullyboy from the knocks, they say, but God give her soon issue. 'Tis her ninth chick to live, I hear, and Lady day bit off her last chick's nails that was then a twelvemonth and with other three all breastfed that died written out in a fair hand in the king's bible. Her hub fifty odd and a methodist but takes the sacrament and is to be seen any fair sabbath with a pair of his boys off Bullock harbour dapping on the sound with a heavybraked reel or in a punt he has trailing for flounder and pollock and catches a fine bag, I hear. In sum an infinite great fall of rain and all refreshed and will much increase the harvest yet those in ken say after wind and water fire shall come for a prognostication of Malachi's almanac (and I hear that Mr Russell has done a prophetical charm of the same gist out of the Hindustanish for his farmer's gazette) to have three things in all but this a mere fetch without bottom of reason for old crones and bairns yet sometimes they are found in the right guess with their queerities no telling how. With this came up Lenehan to the feet of the table to say how the letter was in that night's gazette and he made a show to find it about him (for he swore with an oath that he had been at pains about it) but on Stephen's persuasion he gave over the search and was bidden to sit near by which he did mighty brisk. He was a kind of sport gentleman that went for a merryandrew or honest pickle and what belonged of women, horseflesh or hot scandal he had it pat. To tell the truth he was mean in fortunes and for the most part hankered about the coffeehouses and low taverns with crimps, ostlers, bookies, Paul's men, runners, flatcaps, waistcoateers, ladies of the bagnio and other rogues of the game or with a chanceable catchpole or a tipstaff often at nights till broad day of whom he picked up between his sackpossets much loose gossip. He took his ordinary at a boilingcook's and if he had but gotten into him a mess of broken victuals or a platter of tripes with a bare tester in his purse he could always bring himself off with his tongue, some randy quip he had from a punk or whatnot that every mother's son of them would burst their sides. The other, Costello that is, hearing this talk asked was it poetry or a tale. Faith, no, he says, Frank (that was his name), 'tis all about Kerry cows that are to be butchered along of the plague. But they can go hang, says he with a wink, for me with their bully beef, a pox on it. There's as good fish in this tin as ever came out of it and very friendly he offered to take of some salty sprats that stood by which he had eyed wishly in the meantime and found the place which was indeed the chief design of his embassy as he was sharpset. Mort aux vaches, says Frank then in the French language that had been indentured to a brandyshipper that has a winelodge in Bordeaux and he spoke French like a gentleman too. From a child this Frank had been a donought that his father, a headborough, who could ill keep him to school to learn his letters and the use of the globes, matriculated at the university to study the mechanics but he took the bit between his teeth like a raw colt and was more familiar with the justiciary and the parish beadle than with his volumes. One time he would be a playactor, then a sutler or a welsher, then nought would keep him from the bearpit and the cocking main, then he was for the ocean sea or to hoof it on the roads with the romany folk, kidnapping a squire's heir by favour of moonlight or fecking maids' linen or choking chicken behind a hedge. He had been off as many times as a cat has lives and back again with naked pockets as many more to his father the headborough who shed a pint of tears as often as he saw him. What, says Mr Leopold with his hands across, that was earnest to know the drift of it, will they slaughter all? I protest I saw them but this,day morning going to the Liverpool boats, says he. I can scarce believe 'tis so bad, says he. And he had experience of the like brood beasts and of springers, greasy hoggets and wether wool, having been some years before actuary for Mr Joseph Cuffe, a worthy salesmaster that drove his trade for live stock and meadow auctions hard by Mr Gavin Low's yard in Prussia street. I question with you there, says he. More like 'tis the hoose or the timber tongue. Mr Stephen, a little moved but very handsomely told him no such matter and that he had dispatches from the emperor's chief tailtickler thanking him for the hospitality, that was sending over Doctor Rinderpest, the bestquoted cowcatcher in all Muscovy, with a bolus or two of physic to take the bull by the horns. Come, come, says Mr Vincent, plain dealing. He'll find himself on the horns of a dilemma if he meddles with a bull that's Irish, says he. Irish by name and irish by nature, says Mr Stephen, and he sent the ale purling about, an Irish bull in an English chinashop. I conceive you, says Mr Dixon. It is that same bull that was sent to our island by farmer Nicholas, the bravest cattlebreeder of them all, with an emerald ring in his nose. True for you, says Mr Vincent cross the table, and a bullseye into the bargain, says he, and a plumper and a portlier bull, says he, never shit on shamrock. He had horns galore, a coat of cloth of gold and a sweet smoky breath coming out of his nostrils so that the women of our island, leaving doughballs and rollingpins, followed after him hanging his bulliness in daisychains. What for that, says Mr Dixon, but before he came over farmer Nicholas that was a eunuch had him properly gelded by a college of doctors who were no better off than himself. So be off now, says he, and do all my cousin german the lord Harry tells you and take a farmer's blessing, and with that he slapped his posteriors very soundly. But the slap and the blessing stood him friend, says Mr Vincent, for to make up he taught him a trick worth two of the other so that maid, wife, abbess and widow to this day affirm that they would rather any time of the month whisper in his ear in the dark of a cowhouse or get a lick on the nape from his long holy tongue than lie with the finest strapping young ravisher in the four fields of all Ireland. Another then put in his word: And they dressed him, says he, in a point shift and petticoat with a tippet and girdle and ruffles on his wrists and clipped his forelock and rubbed him all over with spermacetic oil and built stables for him at every turn of the road with a gold manger in each full of the best hay in the market so that he could doss and dung to his heart's content. By this time the father of the faithful (for so they called him) was grown so heavy that he could scarce walk to pasture. To remedy which our cozening dames and damsels brought him his fodder in their apronlaps and as soon as his belly was full he would rear up on his hind quarters to show their ladyships a mystery and roar and bellow out of him in bulls' language and they all after him. Ay, says another, and so pampered was he that he would suffer nought to grow in all the land but green grass for himself (for that was the only colour to his mind) and there was a board put up on a hillock in the middle of the island with a printed notice, saying: By the Lord Harry, Green is the grass that grows on the ground. And, says Mr Dixon, if ever he got scent of a cattleraider in Roscommon or the wilds of Connemara or a husbandman in Sligo that was sowing as much as a handful of mustard or a bag of rapeseed out he'd run amok over half the countryside rooting up with his horns whatever was planted and all by lord Harry's orders. There was bad blood between them at first, says Mr Vincent, and the lord Harry called farmer Nicholas all the old Nicks in the world and an old whoremaster that kept seven trulls in his house and I'll meddle in his matters, says he. I'll make that animal smell hell, says he, with the help of that good pizzle my father left me. But one evening, says Mr Dixon, when the lord Harry was cleaning his royal pelt to go to dinner after winning a boatrace (he had spade oars for himself but the first rule of the course was that the others were to row with pitchforks) he discovered in himself a wonderful likeness to a bull and on picking up a blackthumbed chapbook that he kept in the pantry he found sure enough that he was a lefthanded descendant of the famous champion bull of the Romans, Bos Bovum, which is good bog Latin for boss of the show. After that, says Mr Vincent, the lord Harry put his head into a cow's drinkingtrough in the presence of all his courtiers and pulling it out again told them all his new name. Then, with the water running off him, he got into an old smock and skirt that had belonged to his grandmother and bought a grammar of the bulls' language to study but he could never learn a word of it except the first personal pronoun which he copied out big and got off by heart and if ever he went out for a walk he filled his pockets with chalk to write it upon what took his fancy, the side of a rock or a teahouse table or a bale of cotton or a corkfloat. In short, he and the bull of Ireland were soon as fast friends as an arse and a shirt. They were, says Mr Stephen, and the end was that the men of the island seeing no help was toward, as the ungrate women were all of one mind, made a wherry raft, loaded themselves and their bundles of chattels on shipboard, set all masts erect, manned the yards, sprang their luff, heaved to, spread three sheets in the wind, put her head between wind and water, weighed anchor, ported her helm, ran up the jolly Roger, gave three times three, let the bullgine run, pushed off in their bumboat and put to sea to recover the main of America. Which was the occasion, says Mr Vincent, of the composing by a boatswain of that rollicking chanty: --Pope Peter's but a pissabed. man's a man for a' that.Our worthy acquaintance Mr Malachi Mulligan now appeared in the doorway as the students were finishing their apologue accompanied with a friend whom he had just rencountered, a young gentleman, his name Alec Bannon, who had late come to town, it being his intention to buy a colour or a cornetcy in the fencibles and list for the wars. Mr Mulligan was civil enough to express some relish of it all the more as it jumped with a project of his own for the cure of the very evil that had been touched on. Whereat he handed round to the company a set of pasteboard cards which he had had printed that day at Mr Quinnell's bearing a legend printed in fair italics: Mr Malachi Mulligan. Fertiliser and Incubator. Lambay Island. His project, as he went on to expound, was to withdraw from the round of idle pleasures such as form the chief business of sir Fopling Popinjay and sir Milksop Quidnunc in town and to devote himself to the noblest task for which our bodily organism has been framed. Well, let us hear of it, good my friend, said Mr Dixon. I make no doubt it smacks of wenching. Come, be seated, both. 'Tis as cheap sitting as standing. Mr Mulligan accepted of the invitation and, expatiating upon his design, told his hearers that he had been led into this thought by a consideration of the causes of sterility, both the inhibitory and the prohibitory, whether the inhibition in its turn were due to conjugal vexations or to a parsimony of the balance as well as whether the prohibition proceeded from defects congenital or from proclivities acquired. It grieved him plaguily, he said, to see the nuptial couch defrauded of its dearest pledges: and to reflect upon so many agreeable females with rich jointures, a prey to the vilest bonzes, who hide their flambeau under a bushel in an uncongenial cloister or lose their womanly bloom in the embraces of some unaccountable muskin when they might multiply the inlets of happiness, sacrificing the inestimable jewel of their sex when a hundred pretty fellows were at hand to caress, this, he assured them, made his heart weep. To curb this inconvenient (which he concluded due to a suppression of latent heat), having advised with certain counsellors of worth and inspected into this matter, he had resolved to purchase in fee simple for ever the freehold of Lambay island from its holder, lord Talbot de Malahide, a Tory gentleman of note much in favour with our ascendancy party. He proposed to set up there a national fertilising farm to be named Omphalos with an obelisk hewn and erected after the fashion of Egypt and to offer his dutiful yeoman services for the fecundation of any female of what grade of life soever who should there direct to him with the desire of fulfilling the functions of her natural. Money was no object, he said, nor would he take a penny for his pains. The poorest kitchenwench no less than the opulent lady of fashion, if so be their constructions and their tempers were warm persuaders for their petitions, would find in him their man. For his nutriment he shewed how he would feed himself exclusively upon a diet of savoury tubercles and fish and coneys there, the flesh of these latter prolific rodents being highly recommended for his purpose, both broiled and stewed with a blade of mace and a pod or two of capsicum chillies. After this homily which he delivered with much warmth of asseveration Mr Mulligan in a trice put off from his hat a kerchief with which he had shielded it. They both, it seems, had been overtaken by the rain and for all their mending their pace had taken water, as might be observed by Mr Mulligan's smallclothes of a hodden grey which was now somewhat piebald. His project meanwhile was very favourably entertained by his auditors and won hearty eulogies from all though Mr Dixon of Mary's excepted to it, asking with a finicking air did he purpose also to carry coals to Newcastle. Mr Mulligan however made court to the scholarly by an apt quotation from the classics which, as it dwelt upon his memory, seemed to him a sound and tasteful support of his contention: Talis ac tanta depravatio hujus seculi, O quirites, ut matresfamiliarum nostrae lascivas cujuslibet semiviri libici titillationes testibus ponderosis atque excelsis erectionibus centurionum Romanorum magnopere anteponunt, while for those of ruder wit he drove home his point by analogies of the animal kingdom more suitable to their stomach, the buck and doe of the forest glade, the farmyard drake and duck. Valuing himself not a little upon his elegance, being indeed a proper man of person, this talkative now applied himself to his dress with animadversions of some heat upon the sudden whimsy of the atmospherics while the company lavished their encomiums upon the project he had advanced. The young gentleman, his friend, overjoyed as he was at a passage that had late befallen him, could not forbear to tell it his nearest neighbour. Mr Mulligan, now perceiving the table, asked for whom were those loaves and fishes and, seeing the stranger, he made him a civil bow and said, Pray, sir, was you in need of any professional assistance we could give? Who, upon his offer, thanked him very heartily, though preserving his proper distance, and replied that he was come there about a lady, now an inmate of Horne's house, that was in an interesting condition, poor body, from woman's woe (and here he fetched a deep sigh) to know if her happiness had yet taken place. Mr Dixon, to turn the table, took on to ask of Mr Mulligan himself whether his incipient ventripotence, upon which he rallied him, betokened an ovoblastic gestation in the prostatic utricle or male womb or was due, as with the noted physician, Mr Austin Meldon, to a wolf in the stomach. For answer Mr Mulligan, in a gale of laughter at his smalls, smote himself bravely below the diaphragm, exclaiming with an admirable droll mimic of Mother Grogan (the most excellent creature of her sex though 'tis pity she's a trollop): There's a belly that never bore a bastard. This was so happy a conceit that it renewed the storm of mirth and threw the whole room into the most violent agitations of delight. The spry rattle had run on in the same vein of mimicry but for some larum in the antechamber. Here the listener who was none other than the Scotch student, a little fume of a fellow, blond as tow, congratulated in the liveliest fashion with the young gentleman and, interrupting the narrative at a salient point, having desired his visavis with a polite beck to have the obligingness to pass him a flagon of cordial waters at the same time by a questioning poise of the head (a whole century of polite breeding had not achieved so nice a gesture) to which was united an equivalent but contrary balance of the bottle asked the narrator as plainly as was ever done in words if he might treat him with a cup of it. Mais bien sr, noble stranger, said he cheerily, et mille compliments. That you may and very opportunely. There wanted nothing but this cup to crown my felicity. But, gracious heaven, was I left with but a crust in my wallet and a cupful of water from the well, my God, I would accept of them and find it in my heart to kneel down upon the ground and give thanks to the powers above for the happiness vouchsafed me by the Giver of good things. With these words he approached the goblet to his lips, took a complacent draught of the cordial, slicked his hair and, opening his bosom, out popped a locket that hung from a silk riband, that very picture which he had cherished ever since her hand had wrote therein. Gazing upon those features with a world of tenderness, Ah, Monsieur, he said, had you but beheld her as I did with these eyes at that affecting instant with her dainty tucker and her new coquette cap (a gift for her feastday as she told me prettily) in such an artless disorder, of so melting a tenderness, 'pon my conscience, even you, Monsieur, had been impelled by generous nature to deliver yourself wholly into the hands of such an enemy or to quit the field for ever. I declare, I was never so touched in all my life. God, I thank thee, as the Author of my days! Thrice happy will he be whom so amiable a creature will bless with her favours. A sigh of affection gave eloquence to these words and, having replaced the locket in his bosom, he wiped his eye and sighed again. Beneficent Disseminator of blessings to all Thy creatures, how great and universal must be that sweetest of Thy tyrannies which can hold in thrall the free and the bond, the simple swain and the polished coxcomb, the lover in the heyday of reckless passion and the husband of maturer years. But indeed, sir, I wander from the point. How mingled and imperfect are all our sublunary joys. Maledicity! he exclaimed in anguish. Would to God that foresight had but remembered me to take my cloak along! I could weep to think of it. Then, though it had poured seven showers, we were neither of us a penny the worse. But beshrew me, he cried, clapping hand to his forehead, tomorrow will be a new day and, thousand thunders, I know of a marchand de capotes, Monsieur Poyntz, from whom I can have for a livre as snug a cloak of the French fashion as ever kept a lady from wetting. Tut, tut! cries Le F’condateur, tripping in, my friend Monsieur Moore, that most accomplished traveller (I have just cracked a half bottle avec lui in a circle of the best wits of the town), is my authority that in Cape Horn, ventre biche, they have a rain that will wet through any, even the stoutest cloak. A drenching of that violence, he tells me, sans blague, has sent more than one luckless fellow in good earnest posthaste to another world. Pooh! A livre! cries Monsieur Lynch. The clumsy things are dear at a sou. One umbrella, were it no bigger than a fairy mushroom, is worth ten such stopgaps. No woman of any wit would wear one. My dear Kitty told me today that she would dance in a deluge before ever she would starve in such an ark of salvation for, as she reminded me (blushing piquantly and whispering in my ear though there was none to snap her words but giddy butterflies), dame Nature, by the divine blessing, has implanted it in our hearts and it has become a household word that il y a deux choses for which the innocence of our original garb, in other circumstances a breach of the proprieties, is the fittest, nay, the only garment. The first, said she (and here my pretty philosopher, as I handed her to her tilbury, to fix my attention, gently tipped with her tongue the outer chamber of my ear), the first is a bath - But at this point a bell tinkling in the hall cut short a discourse which promised so bravely for the enrichment of our store of knowledge. Amid the general vacant hilarity of the assembly a bell rang and, while all were conjecturing what might be the cause, Miss Callan entered and, having spoken a few words in a low tone to young Mr Dixon, retired with a profound bow to the company. The presence even for a moment among a party of debauchees of a woman endued with every quality of modesty and not less severe than beautiful refrained the humourous sallies even of the most licentious but her departure was the signal for an outbreak of ribaldry. Strike me silly, said Costello, a low fellow who was fuddled. A monstrous fine bit of cowflesh! I'll be sworn she has rendezvoused you. What, you dog? Have you a way with them? Gad's bud, immensely so, said Mr Lynch. The bedside manner it is that they use in the Mater hospice. Demme, does not Doctor O'Gargle chuck the nuns there under the chin. As I look to be saved I had it from my Kitty who has been wardmaid there any time these seven months. Lawksamercy, doctor, cried the young blood in the primrose vest, feigning a womanish simper and with immodest squirmings of his body, how you do tease a body! Drat the man! Bless me, I'm all of a wibbly wobbly. Why, you're as bad as dear little Father Cantekissem, that you are! May this pot of four half choke me, cried Costello, if she aint in the family way. I knows a lady what's got a white swelling quick as I claps eyes on her. The young surgeon, however, rose and begged the company to excuse his retreat as the nurse had just then informed him that he was needed in the ward. Merciful providence had been pleased to put a period to the sufferings of the lady who was enceinte which she had borne with a laudable fortitude and she had given birth to a bouncing boy. I want patience, said he, with those who, without wit to enliven or learning to instruct, revile an ennobling profession which, saving the reverence due to the Deity, is the greatest power for happiness upon the earth. I am positive when I say that if need were I could produce a cloud of witnesses to the excellence of her noble exercitations which, so far from being a byword, should be a glorious incentive in the human breast. I cannot away with them. What? Malign such an one, the amiable Miss Callan, who is the lustre of her own sex and the astonishment of ours? And at an instant the most momentous that can befall a puny child of clay? Perish the thought! I shudder to think of the future of a race where the seeds of such malice have been sown and where no right reverence is rendered to mother and maid in house of Horne. Having delivered himself of this rebuke he saluted those present on the by and repaired to the door. A murmur of approval arose from all and some were for ejecting the low soaker without more ado, a design which would have been effected nor would he have received more than his bare deserts had he not abridged his transgression by affirming with a horrid imprecation (for he swore a round hand) that he was as good a son of the true fold as ever drew breath. Stap my vitals, said he, them was always the sentiments of honest Frank Costello which I was bred up most particular to honour thy father and thy mother that had the best hand to a rolypoly or a hasty pudding as you ever see what I always looks back on with a loving heart. To revert to Mr Bloom who, after his first entry, had been conscious of some impudent mocks which he however had borne with as being the fruits of that age upon which it is commonly charged that it knows not pity. The young sparks, it is true, were as full of extravagancies as overgrown children: the words of their tumultuary discussions were difficultly understood and not often nice: their testiness and outrageous mots were such that his intellects resiled from: nor were they scrupulously sensible of the proprieties though their fund of strong animal spirits spoke in their behalf. But the word of Mr Costello was an unwelcome language for him for he nauseated the wretch that seemed to him a cropeared creature of a misshapen gibbosity, born out of wedlock and thrust like a crookback toothed and feet first into the world, which the dint of the surgeon's pliers in his skull lent indeed a colour to, so as to put him in thought of that missing link of creation's chain desiderated by the late ingenious Mr Darwin. It was now for more than the middle span of our allotted years that he had passed through the thousand vicissitudes of existence and, being of a wary ascendancy and self a man of rare forecast, he had enjoined his heart to repress all motions of a rising choler and, by intercepting them with the readiest precaution, foster within his breast that plenitude of sufferance which base minds jeer at, rash judgers scorn and all find tolerable and but tolerable. To those who create themselves wits at the cost of feminine delicacy (a habit of mind which he never did hold with) to them he would concede neither to bear the name nor to herit the tradition of a proper breeding: while for such that, having lost all forbearance, can lose no more, there remained the sharp antidote of experience to cause their insolency to beat a precipitate and inglorious retreat. Not but what he could feel with mettlesome youth which, caring nought for the mows of dotards or the gruntlings of the severe, is ever (as the chaste fancy of the Holy Writer expresses it) for eating of the tree forbid it yet not so far forth as to pretermit humanity upon any condition soever towards a gentlewoman when she was about her lawful occasions. To conclude, while from the sister's words he had reckoned upon a speedy delivery he was, however, it must be owned, not a little alleviated by the intelligence that the issue so auspicated after an ordeal of such duress now testified once more to the mercy as well as to the bounty of the Supreme Being. Accordingly he broke his mind to his neighbour, saying that, to express his notion of the thing, his opinion (who ought not perchance to express one) was that one must have a cold constitution and a frigid genius not to be rejoiced by this freshest news of the fruition of her confinement since she had been in such pain through no fault of hers. The dressy young blade said it was her husband's that put her in that expectation or at least it ought to be unless she were another Ephesian matron. I must acquaint you, said Mr Crotthers, clapping on the table so as to evoke a resonant comment of emphasis, old Glory Allelujurum was round again today, an elderly man with dundrearies, preferring through his nose a request to have word of Wilhelmina, my life, as he calls her. I bade him hold himself in readiness for that the event would burst anon. 'Slife, I'll be round with you. I cannot but extol the virile potency of the old bucko that could still knock another child out of her. All fell to praising of it, each after his own fashion, though the same young blade held with his former view that another than her conjugial had been the man in the gap, a clerk in orders, a linkboy (virtuous) or an itinerant vendor of articles needed in every household. Singular, communed the guest with himself, the wonderfully unequal faculty of metempsychosis possessed by them, that the puerperal dormitory and the dissecting theatre should be the seminaries of such frivolity, that the mere acquisition of academic titles should suffice to transform in a pinch of time these votaries of levity into exemplary practitioners of an art which most men anywise eminent have esteemed the noblest. But, he further added, it is mayhap to relieve the pentup feelings that in common oppress them for I have more than once observed that birds of a feather laugh together. But with what fitness, let it be asked of the noble lord, his patron, has this alien, whom the concession of a gracious prince has admitted to civic rights, constituted himself the lord paramount of our internal polity? Where is now that gratitude which loyalty should have counselled? During the recent war whenever the enemy had a temporary advantage with his granados did this traitor to his kind not seize that moment to discharge his piece against the empire of which he is a tenant at will while he trembled for the security of his four per cents? Has he forgotten this as he forgets all benefits received? Or is it that from being a deluder of others he has become at last his own dupe as he is, if report belie him not, his own and his only enjoyer? Far be it from candour to violate the bedchamber of a respectable lady, the daughter of a gallant major, or to cast the most distant reflections upon her virtue but if he challenges attention there (as it was indeed highly his interest not to have done) then be it so. Unhappy woman, she has been too long and too persistently denied her legitimate prerogative to listen to his objurgations with any other feeling than the derision of the desperate. He says this, a censor of morals, a very pelican in his piety, who did not scruple, oblivious of the ties of nature, to attempt illicit intercourse with a female domestic drawn from the lowest strata of society! Nay, had the hussy's scouringbrush not been her tutelary angel, it had gone with her as hard as with Hagar, the Egyptian! In the question of the grazing lands his peevish asperity is notorious and in Mr Cuffe's hearing brought upon him from an indignant rancher a scathing retort couched in terms as straightforward as they were bucolic. It ill becomes him to preach that gospel. Has he not nearer home a seedfield that lies fallow for the want of the ploughshare? A habit reprehensible at puberty is second nature and an opprobrium in middle life. If he must dispense his balm of Gilead in nostrums and apothegms of dubious taste to restore to health a generation of unfledged profligates let his practice consist better with the doctrines that now engross him. His marital breast is the repository of secrets which decorum is reluctant to adduce. The lewd suggestions of some faded beauty may console him for a consort neglected and debauched but this new exponent of morals and healer of ills is at his best an exotic tree which, when rooted in its native orient, throve and flourished and was abundant in balm but, transplanted to a clime more temperate, its roots have lost their quondam vigour while the stuff that comes away from it is stagnant, acid and inoperative. The news was imparted with a circumspection recalling the ceremonial usage of the Sublime Porte by the second female infirmarian to the junior medical officer in residence, who in his turn announced to the delegation that an heir had been born, When he had betaken himself to the women's apartment to assist at the prescribed ceremony of the afterbirth in the presence of the secretary of state for domestic affairs and the members of the privy council, silent in unanimous exhaustion and approbation the delegates, chafing under the length and solemnity of their vigil and hoping that the joyful occurrence would palliate a licence which the simultaneous absence of abigail and obstetrician rendered the easier, broke out at once into a strife of tongues. In vain the voice of Mr Canvasser Bloom was heard endeavouring to urge, to mollify, to refrain. The moment was too propitious for the display of that discursiveness which seemed the only bond of union among tempers so divergent. Every phase of the situation was successively eviscerated: the prenatal repugnance of uterine brothers, the Caesarean section, posthumity with respect to the father and, that rarer form, with respect to the mother, the fratricidal case known as the Childs Murder and rendered memorable by the impassioned plea of Mr Advocate Bushe which secured the acquittal of the wrongfully accused, the rights of primogeniture and king's bounty touching twins and triplets, miscarriages and infanticides, simulated or dissimulated, the acardiac foetus in foetu and aprosopia due to a congestion, the agnathia of certain chinless Chinamen (cited by Mr Candidate Mulligan) in consequence of defective reunion of the maxillary knobs along the medial line so that (as he said) one ear could hear what the other spoke, the benefits of anesthesia or twilight sleep, the prolongation of labour pains in advanced gravidancy by reason of pressure on the vein, the premature relentment of the amniotic fluid (as exemplified in the actual case) with consequent peril of sepsis to the matrix, artificial insemination by means of syringes, involution of the womb consequent upon the menopause, the problem of the perpetration of the species in the case of females impregnated by delinquent rape, that distressing manner of delivery called by the Brandenburghers Sturzgeburt, the recorded instances of multiseminal, twikindled and monstrous births conceived during the catamenic period or of consanguineous parents - in a word all the cases of human nativity which Aristotle has classified in his masterpiece with chromolithographic illustrations. The gravest problems of obstetrics and forensic medicine were examined with as much animation as the most popular beliefs on the state of pregnancy such as the forbidding to a gravid woman to step over a countrystile lest, by her movement, the navelcord should strangle her creature and the injunction upon her in the event of a yearning, ardently and ineffectually entertained, to place her hand against that part of her person which long usage has consecrated as the seat of castigation. The abnormalities of harelip, breastmole, supernumerary digits, negro's inkle, strawberry mark and portwine stain were alleged by one as a prima facie and natural hypothetical explanation of those swineheaded (the case of Madame Grissel Steevens was not forgotten) or doghaired infants occasionally born. The hypothesis of a plasmic memory, advanced by the Caledonian envoy and worthy of the metaphysical traditions of the land he stood for, envisaged in such cases an arrest of embryonic development at some stage antecedent to the human. An outlandish delegate sustained against both these views, with such heat as almost carried conviction, the theory of copulation between women and the males of brutes, his authority being his own avouchment in support of fables such as that of the Minotaur which the genius of the elegant Latin poet has handed down to us in the pages of his Metamorphoses. The impression made by his words was immediate but shortlived. It was effaced as easily as it had been evoked by an allocution from Mr Candidate Mulligan in that vein of pleasantry which none better than he knew how to affect, postulating as the supremest object of desire a nice clean old man. Contemporaneously, a heated argument having arisen between Mr Delegate Madden and Mr Candidate Lynch regarding the juridical and theological dilemma created in the event of one Siamese twin predeceasing the other, the difficulty by mutual consent was referred to Mr Canvasser Bloom for instant submittal to Mr Coadjutor Deacon Dedalus. Hitherto silent, whether the better to show by preternatural gravity that curious dignity of the garb with which he was invested or in obedience to an inward voice, he delivered briefly and, as some thought, perfunctorily the ecclesiastical ordinance forbidding man to put asunder what God has joined. But Malachias' tale began to freeze them with horror. He conjured up the scene before them. The secret panel beside the chimney slid back and in the recess appeared - Haines! Which of us did not feel his flesh creep! He had a portfolio full of Celtic literature in one hand, in the other a phial marked Poison. Surprise, horror, loathing were depicted on all faces while he eyed them with a ghostly grin. I anticipated some such reception, he began with an eldritch laugh, for which, it seems, history is to blame. Yes, it is true. I am the murderer of Samuel Childs. And how I am punished! The inferno has no terrors for me. This is the appearance is on me. Tare and ages, what way would I be resting at all, he muttered thickly, and I tramping Dublin this while back with my share of songs and himself after me the like of a soulth or a bullawurrus? My hell, and Ireland's, is in this life. It is what I tried to obliterate my crime. Distractions, rookshooting, the Erse language (he recited some), laudanum (he raised the phial to his lips), camping out. In vain! His spectre stalks me. Dope is my only hope .... Ah! Destruction! The black panther! With a cry he suddenly vanished and the panel slid back. An instant later his head appeared in the door opposite and said: Meet me at Westland Row station at ten past eleven. He was gone. Tears gushed from the eyes of the dissipated host. The seer raised his hand to heaven, murmuring: The vendetta of Mananaun! The sage repeated: Lex talionis. The sentimentalist is he who would enjoy without incurring the immense debtorship for a thing done. Malachias, overcome by emotion, ceased. The mystery was unveiled. Haines was the third brother. His real name was Childs. The black panther was himself the ghost of his own father. He drank drugs to obliterate. For this relief much thanks. The lonely house by the graveyard is uninhabited. No soul will live there. The spider pitches her web in the solitude. The nocturnal rat peers from his hole. A curse is on it. It is haunted. Murderer's ground. What is the age of the soul of man? As she hath the virtue of the chameleon to change her hue at every new approach, to be gay with the merry and mournful with the downcast, so too is her age changeable as her mood. No longer is Leopold, as he sits there, ruminating, chewing the cud of reminiscence, that staid agent of publicity and holder of a modest substance in the funds. A score of years are blown away. He is young Leopold. There, as in a retrospective arrangement, a mirror within a mirror (hey, presto!), he beholdeth himself. That young figure of then is seen, precociously manly, walking on a nipping morning from the old house in Clanbrassil street to the high school, his booksatchel on him bandolierwise, and in it a goodly hunk of wheaten loaf, a mother's thought. Or it is the same figure, a year or so gone over, in his first hard hat (ah, that was a day!), already on the road, a fullfledged traveller for the family firm, equipped with an orderbook, a scented handkerchief (not for show only), his case of bright trinketware (alas! a thing now of the past!) and a quiverful of compliant smiles for this or that halfwon housewife reckoning it out upon her fingertips or for a budding virgin, shyly acknowledging (but the heart? tell me!) his studied baisemoins. The scent, the smile, but, more than these, the dark eyes and oleaginous address, brought home at duskfall many a commission to the head of the firm, seated with Jacob's pipe after like labours in the paternal ingle (a meal of noodles, you may be sure, is aheating), reading through round horned spectacles some paper from the Europe of a month before. But hey, presto, the mirror is breathed on and the young knighterrant recedes, shrivels, dwindles to a tiny speck within the mist. Now he is himself paternal and these about him might be his sons. Who can say? The wise father knows his own child. He thinks of a drizz1ing night in Hatch street, hard by the bonded stores there, the first. Together (she is a poor waif, a child of shame, yours and mine and of all for a bare shilling and her luckpenny), together they hear the heavy tread of the watch as two raincaped shadows pass the new royal university. Bridie! Bridie Kelly! He will never forget the name, ever remember the night: first night, the bridenight. They are entwined in nethermost darkness, the willer with the willed, and in an instant (fiat!) light shall flood the world. Did heart leap to heart? Nay, fair reader. In a breath 'twas done but - hold! Back! It must not be! In terror the poor girl flees away through the murk. She is the bride of darkness, a daughter of night. She dare not bear the sunnygolden babe of day. No, Leopold. Name and memory solace thee not. That youthful illusion of thy strength was taken from thee - and in vain. No son of thy loins is by thee. There is none now to be for Leopold, what Leopold was for Rudolph. The voices blend and fuse in clouded silence: silence that is the infinite of space: and swiftly, silently the soul is wafted over regions of cycles of generations that have lived. A region where grey twilight ever descends, never falls on wide sagegreen pasturefields, shedding her dusk, scattering a perennial dew of stars. She follows her mother with ungainly steps, a mare leading her fillyfoal. Twilight phantoms are they, yet moulded in prophetic grace of structure, slim shapely haunches, a supple tendonous neck, the meek apprehensive skull. They fade, sad phantoms: all is gone. Agendath is a waste land, a home of screechowls and the sandblind upupa. Netaim, the golden, is no more. And on the highway of the clouds they come, muttering thunder of rebellion, the ghosts of beasts. Huuh! Hark! Huuh! Parallax stalks behind and goads them, the lancinating lightnings of whose brow are scorpions. Elk and yak, the bulls of Bashan and of Babylon, mammoth and mastodon, they come trooping to the sunken sea, Lacus Mortis. Ominous revengeful zodiacal host! They moan, passing upon the clouds, horned and capricorned, the trumpeted with the tusked, the lionmaned, the giantantlered, snouter and crawler, rodent, ruminant and pachyderm, all their moving moaning multitude, murderers of the sun. Onward to the dead sea they tramp to drink, unslaked and with horrible gulpings, the salt somnolent inexhaustible flood. And the equine portent grows again, magnified in the deserted heavens, nay to heaven's own magnitude, till it looms, vast, over the house of Virgo. And lo, wonder of metempsychosis, it is she, the everlasting bride, harbinger of the daystar, the bride, ever virgin. It is she, Martha, thou lost one, Millicent, the young, the dear, the radiant. How serene does she now arise, a queen among the Pleiades, in the penultimate antelucan hour, shod in sandals of bright gold, coifed with a veil of what do you call it gossamer. It floats, it flows about her starborn flesh and loose it streams, emerald, sapphire, mauve and heliotrope, sustained on currents of the cold interstellar wind, winding, coiling, simply swirling, writhing in the skies a mysterious writing till, after a myriad metamorphoses of symbol, it blazes, Alpha, a ruby and triangled sign upon the forehead of Taurus. Francis was reminding Stephen of years before when they had been at school together in Conmee's time. He asked about Glaucon, Alcibiades, Pisistratus. Where were they now? Neither knew. You have spoken of the past and its phantoms, Stephen said. Why think of them? If I call them into life across the waters of Lethe will not the poor ghosts troop to my call? Who supposes it? I, Bous Stephanoumenos, bullockbefriending bard, am lord and giver of their life. He encircled his gadding hair with a coronal of vineleaves, smiling at Vincent. That answer and those leaves, Vincent said to him, will adorn you more fitly when something more, and greatly more, than a capful of light odes can call your genius father. All who wish you well hope this for you. All desire to see you bring forth the work you meditate, to acclaim you Stephaneforos. I heartily wish you may not fail them. O no, Vincent, Lenehan said, laying a hand on the shoulder near him. Have no fear. He could not leave his mother an orphan. The young man's face grew dark. All could see how hard it was for him to be reminded of his promise and of his recent loss. He would have withdrawn from the feast had not the noise of voices allayed the smart. Madden had lost five drachmas on Sceptre for a whim of the rider's name: Lenehan as much more. He told them of the race. The flag fell and, huuh! off, scamper, the mare ran out freshly with 0. Madden up. She was leading the field. All hearts were beating. Even Phyllis could not contain herself. She waved her scarf and cried: Huzzah! Sceptre wins! But in the straight on the run home when all were in close order the dark horse Throwaway drew level, reached, outstripped her. All was lost now. Phyllis was silent: her eyes were sad anemones. Juno, she cried, I am undone. But her lover consoled her and brought her a bright casket of gold in which lay some oval sugarplums which she partook. A tear fell: one only. A whacking fine whip, said Lenehan, is W. Lane. Four winners yesterday and three today. What rider is like him? Mount him on the camel or the boisterous buffalo the victory in a hack canter is still his. But let us bear it as was the ancient wont. Mercy on the luckless! Poor Sceptre! he said with a light sigh. She is not the filly that she was. Never, by this hand, shall we behold such another. By gad, sir, a queen of them. Do you remember her, Vincent? I wish you could have seen my queen today, Vincent said. How young she was and radiant (Lalage were scarce fair beside her) in her yellow shoes and frock of muslin, I do not know the right name of it. The chestnuts that shaded us were in bloom: the air drooped with their persuasive odour and with pollen floating by us. In the sunny patches one might easily have cooked on a stone a batch of those buns with Corinth fruit in them that Periplipomenes sells in his booth near the bridge. But she had nought for her teeth but the arm with which I held her and in that she nibbled mischievously when I pressed too close. A week ago she lay ill, four days on the couch, but today she was free, blithe, mocked at peril. She is more taking then. Her posies tool Mad romp that she is, she had pulled her fill as we reclined together. And in your ear, my friend, you will not think who met us as we left the field. Conmee himself! He was walking by the hedge, reading, I think a brevier book with, I doubt not, a witty letter in it from Glycera or Chloe to keep the page. The sweet creature turned all colours in her confusion, feigning to reprove a slight disorder in her dress: a slip of underwood clung there for the very trees adore her. When Conmee had passed she glanced at her lovely echo in that little mirror she carries. But he had been kind. In going by he had blessed us. The gods too are ever kind, Lenehan said. If I had poor luck with Bass's mare perhaps this draught of his may serve me more propensely. He was laying his hand upon a winejar: Malachi saw it and withheld his act, pointing to the stranger and to the scarlet label. Warily, Malachi whispered, preserve a druid silence. His soul is far away. It is as painful perhaps to be awakened from a vision as to be born. Any object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access to the incorruptible eon of the gods. Do you not think it, Stephen? Theosophos told me so, Stephen answered, whom in a previous existence Egyptian priests initiated into the mysteries of karmic law. The lords of the moon, Theosophos told me, an orangefiery shipload from planet Alpha of the lunar chain would not assume the etheric doubles and these were therefore incarnated by the rubycoloured egos from the second constellation. However, as a matter of fact though, the preposterous surmise about him being in some description of a doldrums or other or mesmerised which was. entirely due to a misconception of the shallowest character, was not the case at all. The individual whose visual organs while the above was going on were at this juncture commencing to exhibit symptoms of animation was as astute if not astuter than any man living and anybody that conjectured the contrary would have found themselves pretty speedily in the wrong shop. During the past four minutes or thereabouts he had been staring hard at a certain amount of number one Bass bottled by Messrs Bass and Co at Burton-on-Trent which happened to be situated amongst a lot of others right opposite to where he was and which was certainly calculated to attract anyone's remark on account of its scarlet appearance. He was simply and solely, as it subsequently transpired for reasons best known to himself, which put quite an altogether different complexion on the proceedings, after the moment before's observations about boyhood days and the turf, recollecting two or three private transactions of his own which the other two were as mutually innocent of as the babe unborn. Eventually, however, both their eyes met and as soon as it began to dawn on him that the other was endeavouring to help himself to the thing he involuntarily determined to help him himself and so he accordingly took hold of the neck of the mediumsized glass recipient which contained the fluid sought after and made a capacious hole in it by pouring a lot of it out with, also at the same time, however, a considerable degree of attentiveness in order not to upset any of the beer that was in it about the place. The debate which ensued was in its scope and progress an epitome of the course of life. Neither place nor council was lacking in dignity. The debaters were the keenest in the land, the theme they were engaged on the loftiest and most vital. The high hall of Horne's house had never beheld an assembly so representative and so varied nor had the old rafters of that establishment ever listened to a language so encyclopaedic. A gallant scene in truth it made. Crotthers was there at the foot of the table in his striking Highland garb, his face glowing from the briny airs of the Mull of Galloway. There too, opposite to him, was Lynch whose countenance bore already the stigmata of early depravity and premature wisdom. Next the Scotchman was the place assigned to Costello, the eccentric, while at his side was seated in stolid repose the squat form of Madden. The chair of the resident indeed stood vacant before the hearth but on either flank of it the figure of Bannon in explorer's kit of tweed shorts and salted cowhide brogues contrasted sharply with the primrose elegance and townbred manners of Malachi Roland St John Mulligan. Lastly at the head of the board was the young poet who found a refuge from his labours of pedagogy and metaphysical inquisition in the convivial atmosphere of Socratic discussion, while to right and left of him were accommodated the flippant prognosticator, fresh from the hippodrome, and that vigilant wanderer, soiled by the dust of travel and combat and stained by the mire of an indelible dishonour, but from whose steadfast and constant heart no lure or peril or threat or degradation could ever efface the image of that voluptuous loveliness which the inspired pencil of Lafayette has limned for ages yet to come. It had better be stated here and now at the outset that the perverted transcendentalism to which Mr S. Dedalus' (Div. Scep.) contentions would appear to prove him pretty badly addicted runs directly counter to accepted scientific methods. Science, it cannot be too often repeated, deals with tangible phenomena. The man of science like the man in the street has to face hardheaded facts that cannot be blinked and explain them as best he can. There may be, it is true, some questions which science cannot answer - at present - such as the first problem submitted by Mr L. Bloom (Pubb. Canv.) regarding the future determination of sex. Must we accept the view of Empedocles of Trinacria that the right ovary (the postmenstrual period, assert others) is responsible for the birth of males or are the too long neglected spermatozoa or nemasperms the differentiating factors or is it, as most embryologists incline to opine, such as Culpepper, Spallanzani, Blumenbach, Lusk, Hertwig, Leopold and Valenti, a mixture of both? This would be tantamount to a cooperation (one of nature's favourite devices) between the nisus formativus of the nemasperm on the one hand and on the other a happily chosen position, succubitus felix of the passive element. The other problem raised by the same inquirer is scarcely less vital: infant mortality. It is interesting because, as he pertinently remarks, we are all born in the same way but we all die in different ways. Mr M. Mulligan (Hyg. et Eug. Doc.) blames the sanitary conditions in which our greylunged citizens contract adenoids, pulmonary complaints etc. by inhaling the bacteria which lurk in dust. These factors, he alleged, and the revolting spectacles offered by our streets, hideous publicity posters, religious ministers of all denominations, mutilated soldiers and sailors, exposed scorbutic cardrivers, the suspended carcases of dead animals, paranoic bachelors and unfructified duennas - these, he said, were accountable for any and every fallingoff in the calibre of the race. Kalipedia, he prophesied, would soon be generally adopted and all the graces of life, genuinely good music, agreeable literature, light philosophy, instructive pictures, plastercast reproductions of the classical statues such as Venus and Apollo, artistic coloured photographs of prize babies, all these little attentions would enable ladies who were in a particular condition to pass the intervening months in a most enjoyable manner. Mr J. Crotthers (Disc. Bacc.) attributes some of these demises to abdominal trauma in the case of women workers subjected to heavy labours in the workshop and to marital discipline in the home but by far the vast majority to neglect, private or official, culminating in the exposure of newborn infants, the practice of criminal abortion or in the atrocious crime of infanticide. Although the former (we are thinking of neglect) is undoubtedly only too true the case he cites of nurses forgetting to count the sponges in the peritoneal cavity is too rare to be normative. In fact when one comes to look into it the wonder is that so many pregnancies and deliveries go off so well as they do, all things considered and in spite of our human shortcomings which often baulk nature in her intentions. An ingenious suggestion is that thrown out by Mr V. Lynch (Bacc. Arith.) that both natality and mortality, as well as all other phenomena of evolution, tidal movements, lunar phases, blood temperatures, diseases in general, everything, in fine, in nature's vast workshop from the extinction of some remote sun to the blossoming of one of the countless flowers which beautify our public parks is subject to a law of numeration as yet unascertained. Still the plain straightforward question why a child of normally healthy parents and seemingly a healthy child and properly looked after succumbs unaccountably in early childhood (though other children of the same marriage do not) must certainly, in the poet's words, give us pause. Nature, we may rest assured, has her own good and cogent reasons for whatever she does and in all probability such deaths are due to some law of anticipation by which organisms in which morbous germs have taken up their residence (modern science has conclusively shown that only the plasmic substance can be said to be immortal) tend to disappear at an increasingly earlier stage of development, an arrangement which, though productive of pain to some of our feelings (notably the maternal), is nevertheless, some of us think, in the long run beneficial to the race in general in securing thereby the survival of the fittest. Mr S. Dedalus' (Div. Scep.) remark (or should it be called an interruption?) that an omnivorous being which can masticate, deglute, digest and apparently pass through the ordinary channel with pluterperfect imperturbability such multifarious aliments as cancrenous females emaciated by parturition, corpulent professional gentlemen, not to speak of jaundiced politicians and chlorotic nuns, might possibly find gastric relief in an innocent collation of staggering bob, reveals as nought else could and in a very unsavoury light the tendency above alluded to. For the enlightenment of those who are not so intimately acquainted with the minutiae of the municipal abattoir as this morbidminded esthete and embryo philosopher who for all his overweening bumptiousness in things scientific can scarcely distinguish an acid from an alkali prides himself on being, it should perhaps be stated that staggering bob in the vile parlance of our lowerclass licensed victuallers signifies the cookable and eatable flesh of a calf newly dropped from its mother. In a recent public controversy with Mr L. Bloom (Pubb. Canv.) which took place in the commons' hall of the National Maternity Hospital, 29, 30 and 31 Holles street, of which, as is well known, Dr A. Horne (Lic. in Midw., F. K. Q. C. P. I.) is the able and popular master, he is reported by eyewitnesses as having stated that once a woman has let the cat into the bag (an esthete's allusion, presumably, to one of the most complicated and marvellous of all nature's processes - the act of sexual congress) she must let it out again or give it life, as he phrased it, to save her own. At the risk of her own, was the telling rejoinder of his interlocutor, none the less effective for the moderate and measured tone in which it was delivered. Meanwhile the skill and patience of the physician had brought about a happy accouchement. It had been a weary weary while both for patient and doctor. All that surgical skill could do was done and the brave woman had manfully helped. She had. She had fought the good fight and now she was very very happy. Those who have passed on, who have gone before, are happy too as they gaze down and smile upon the touching scene. Reverently look at her as she reclines there with the motherlight in her eyes, that longing hunger for baby fingers (a pretty sight it is to see), in the first bloom of her new motherhood, breathing a silent prayer of thanksgiving to One above, the Universal Husband. And as her loving eyes behold her babe she wishes only one blessing more, to have her dear Doady there with her to share her joy, to lay in his arms that mite of God's clay, the fruit of their lawful embraces. He is older now (you and I may whisper it) and a trifle stooped in the shoulders yet in the whirligig of years a grave dignity has come to the conscientious second accountant of the Ulster bank, College Green branch. O Doady, loved one of old, faithful lifemate now, it may never be again, that faroff time of the roses! With the old shake of her pretty head she recalls those days. God! How beautiful now across the mist of years! But their children are grouped in her imagination about the bedside, hers and his, Charley, Mary Alice, Frederick Albert (if he had lived), Mamy, Budgy (Victoria Frances), Tom, Violet Constance Louisa, darling little Bobsy (called after our famous hero of the South African war, lord Bobs of Waterford and Candahar) and now this last pledge of their union, a Purefoy if ever there was one, with the true Purefoy nose. Young hopeful will be christened Mortimer Edward after the influential third cousin of Mr Purefoy in the Treasury Remembrancer's office, Dublin Castle. And so time wags on: but father Cronion has dealt lightly here. No, let no sigh break from that bosom, dear gentle Mina. And Doady, knock the ashes from your pipe, the seasoned briar you still fancy when the curfew rings for you (may it be the distant day!) and dout the light whereby you read in the Sacred Book for the oil too has run low, and so with a tranquil heart to bed, to rest. He knows and will call in His own good time. You too have fought the good fight and played loyally your man's part. Sir, to you my hand. Well done, thou good and faithful servant! There are sins or (let us call them as the world calls them) evil memories which are hidden away by man in the darkest places of the heart but they abide there and wait. He may suffer their memory to grow dim, let them be as though they had not been and all but persuade himself that they were not or at least were otherwise. Yet a chance word will call them forth suddenly and they will rise up to confront him in the most various circumstances, a vision or a dream, or while timbrel and harp soothe his senses or amid the cool silver tranquility of the evening or at the feast, at midnight, when he is now filled with wine. Not to insult over him will the vision come as over one that lies under her wrath, not for vengeance to cut him off from the living but shrouded in the piteous vesture of the past, silent, remote, reproachful. The stranger still regarded on the face before him a slow recession of that false calm there, imposed, as it seemed, by habit or some studied trick, upon words so embittered as to accuse in their speaker an unhealthiness, a flair, for the cruder things of life. A scene disengages itself in the observer's memory, evoked, it would seem, by a word of so natural a homeliness as if those days were really present there (as some thought) with their immediate pleasures. A shaven space of lawn one soft May evening, the wellremembered grove of lilacs at Roundtown, purple and white, fragrant slender spectators of the game but with much real interest in the pellets as they run slowly forward over the sward or collide and stop, one by its fellow, with a brief alert shock. And yonder about that grey urn where the water moves at times in thoughtful irrigation you saw another as fragrant sisterhood, Floey, Atty, Tiny and their darker friend with I know not what of arresting in her pose then, Our Lady of the Cherries, a comely brace of them pendent from an ear, bringing out the foreign warmth of the skin so daintily against the cool ardent fruit. A lad of four or five in linseywoolsey (blossomtime but there will be cheer in the kindly hearth when ere long the bowls are gathered and hutched) is standing on the urn secured by that circle of girlish fond hands. He frowns a little just as this young man does now with a perhaps too conscious enjoyment of the danger but must needs glance at whiles towards where his mother watches from the piazzetta giving upon the flowerclose with a faint shadow of remoteness or of reproach (alles Vetg“ngliche) in her glad look. Mark this farther and remember. The end comes suddenly. Enter that antechamber of birth where the studious are assembled and note their faces. Nothing, as it seems, there of rash or violent. Quietude of custody, rather, befitting their station in that house, the vigilant watch of shepherds and of angels about a crib in Bethlehem of Juda long ago. But as before the lightning the serried stormclouds, heavy with preponderant excess of moisture, in swollen masses turgidly distended, compass earth and sky in one vast slumber, impending above parched field and drowsy oxen and blighted growth of shrub and verdure till in an instant a flash rives their centres and with the reverberation of the thunder the cloudburst pours its torrent, so and not otherwise was the transformation, violent and instantaneous, upon the utterance of the word. Burke's! outflings my lord Stephen, giving the cry, and a tag and bobtail of all them after, cockerel, jackanapes, welsher, pilldoctor, punctual Bloom at heels with a universal grabbing at headgear, ashplants, bilbos, Panama hats and scabbards, Zermatt alpenstocks and what not. A dedale of lusty youth, noble every student there. Nurse Callan taken aback in the hallway cannot stay them nor smiling surgeon coming downstairs with news of placentation ended, a full pound if a milligramme. They hark him on. The door! It is open? Ha! They are out, tumultuously, off for a minute's race, all bravely legging it, Burke's of Denzille and Holles their ulterior goal. Dixon follows giving them sharp language but raps out an oath, he too, and on. Bloom stays with nurse a thought to send a kind word to happy mother and nurseling up there. Doctor Diet and Doctor Quiet. Looks she too not other now? Ward of watching in Horne's house has told its tale in that washedout pallor. Then all being gone, a glance of motherwit helping, he whispers close in going: Madam, when comes the storkbird for thee? The air without is impregnated with raindew moisture, life essence celestial, glistening on Dublin stone there under starshiny coelum. God's air, the Allfather's air, scintillant circumambient cessile air. Breathe it deep into thee. By heaven, Theodore Purefoy, thou hast done a doughty deed and no botch! Thou art, I vow, the remarkablest progenitor barring none in this chaffering allincluding most farraginous chronicle. Astounding! In her lay a Godframed Godgiven preformed possibility which thou hast fructified with thy modicum of man's work. Cleave to her! Serve! Toil on, labour like a very bandog and let scholarment and all Malthusiasts go hang. Thou art all their daddies, Theodore. Art drooping under thy load, bemoiled with butcher's bills at home and ingots (not thine!) in the countinghouse? Head up! For every newbegotten thou shalt gather thy homer of ripe wheat. See, thy fleece is drenched. Dost envy Darby Dullman there with his Joan? A canting jay and a rheumeyed curdog is all their progeny. Pshaw, I tell thee! He is a mule, a dead gasteropod, without vim or stamina, not worth a cracked kreutzer. Copulation without population! No, say I! Herod's slaughter of the innocents were the truer name. Vegetables, forsooth, and sterile cohabitation! Give her beefsteaks, red, raw, bleeding! She is a hoary pandemonium of ills, enlarged glands, mumps, quinsy, bunions, hayfever, bedsores, ringworm, floating kidney, Derbyshire neck, warts, bilious attacks, gallstones, cold feet, varicose veins. A truce to threnes and trentals and jeremies and all such congenital defunctive music! Twenty years of it, regret them not. With thee it was not as with many that will and would and wait and never - do. Thou sawest thy America, thy lifetask, and didst charge to cover like the transpontine bison. How saith Zarathustra? Deine Kuh Tr*bsal melkest Du. Nun trinkst Du die s*sse Milch des Euters. See! it displodes for thee in abundance. Drink, man, an udderful! Mother's milk, Purefoy, the milk of human kin, milk too of those burgeoning stars overhead rutilant in thin rainvapour, punch milk, such as those rioters will quaff in their guzzling den, milk of madness, the honeymilk of Canaan's land. Thy cow's dug was tough, what? Ay, but her milk is hot and sweet and fattening. No dollop this but thick rich bonnyclaber. To her, old patriarch! Pap! Per deam Partulam et Pertundam nunc est bibendum! All off for a buster, armstrong, hollering down the street. Bonafides. Where you slep las nigh? Timothy of the battered naggin. Like ole Billyo. Any brollies or gumboots in the fambly? Where the Henry Nevil's sawbones and ole clo? Sorra one o' me knows. Hurrah there, Dix! Forward to the ribbon counter. Where's Punch? All serene. Jay, look at the drunken minister coming out of the maternity hospal! Benedicat vos omnipotens Deus, Pater et Filius. A make, mister. The Denzille lane boys. Hell, blast ye! Scoot. Righto, Isaacs, shove em out of the bleeding limelight. Yous join uz, dear sir? No hentrusion in life. Lou heap good man. Allee samee dis bunch. En avant, mes enfants! Fire away number one on the gun. Burke's! Burke's! Thence they advanced five parasangs. Slattery's mounted foot. Where's that bleeding awfur? Parson Steve, apostates' creed! No, no, Mulligan! Abaft there! Shove ahead. Keep a watch on the clock. Chuckingout time. Mullee! What's on you? Ma mSre m'a mari’e. British Beatitudes! Retamplatan digidi boumboum. Ayes have it. To be printed and bound at the Druiddrum press by two designing females. Calf covers of pissedon green. Last word in art shades. Most beautiful book come out of Ireland my time. Silentium! Get a spurt on. Tention. Proceed to nearest canteen and there annex liquor stores. March! Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are (atitudes!) parching. Beer, beef, business, bibles, bulldogs battleships, buggery and bishops. Whether on the scaffold high. Beer, beef, trample the bibles. When for Irelandear. Trample the trampellers. Thunderation! Keep the durned millingtary step. We fall. Bishops boosebox. Halt! Heave to. Rugger. Scrum in. No touch kicking. Wow, my tootsies! You hurt? Most amazingly sorry! Query. Who's astanding this here do? Proud possessor of damnall. Declare misery. Bet to the ropes. Me nantee saltee. Not a red at me this week gone. Yours? Mead of our fathers for the sbermensch. Dittoh. Five number ones. You, sir? Ginger cordial. Chase me, the cabby's caudle. Stimulate the caloric. Winding of his ticker. Stopped short never to go again when the old. Absinthe for me, savvy? Caramba! Have an eggnog or a prairie oyster. Enemy? Avuncular's got my timepiece. Ten to. Obligated awful. Don't mention it. Got a pectoral trauma, eh, Dix? Pos fact. Got bet be a boomblebee whenever he wus settin sleepin in hes bit garten. Digs up near the Mater. Buckled he is. Know his dona? Yup, sartin I do. Full of a dure. See her in her dishybilly. Peels off a credit. Lovey lovekin. None of your lean kine, not much. Pull down the blind, love. Two Ardilauns. Same here. Look slippery. If you fall don't wait to get up. Five, seven, nine. Fine! Got a prime pair of mincepies, no kid. And her take me to rests and her anker of rum. Must be seen to be believed. Your starving eyes and allbeplastered neck you stole my heart, O gluepot. Sir? Spud again the rheumatiz? All poppycock, you'll scuse me saying. For the hoi polloi. I vear thee beest a gert vool. Well, doc? Back fro Lapland? Your corporosity sagaciating O K? How's the squaws and papooses? Womanbody after going on the straw? Stand and deliver. Password. There's hair. Ours the white death and the ruddy birth. Hi! Spit in your own eye, boss! Mummer's wire. Cribbed out of Meredith. Jesified, orchidised, polycimical jesuit! Aunty mine's writing Pa Kinch. Baddybad Stephen lead astray goodygood Malachi. Hurroo! Collar the leather, youngun. Roun wi the nappy. Here, Jock braw Hielentman's your barleybree. Lang may your lum reek and your kailpot boil! My tipple. Merci. Here's to us. How's that? Leg before wicket. Don't stain my brandnew sitinems. Give's a shake of peppe, you there. Catch aholt. Caraway seed to carry away. Twig? Shrieks of silence. Every cove to his gentry mort. Venus Pandemos. Les petites femmes. Bold bad girl from the town of Mullingar. Tell her I was axing at her. Hauding Sara by the wame. On the road to Malahide. Me? If she who seduced me had left but the name. What do you want for ninepence? Machree, macruiskeen. Smutty Moll for a mattress jig. And a pull all together. Ex! Waiting, guvnor? Most deciduously. Bet your boots on. Stunned like, seeing as how no shiners is acoming. Underconstumble? He've got the chink ad lib. Seed near free poun on un a spell ago a said war hisn. Us come right in on your invite, see? Up to you, matey. Out with the oof. Two bar and a wing. You larn that go off of they there Frenchy bilks? Won't wash here for nuts nohow. Lil chile velly solly. Ise de cutest colour coon down our side. Gawds teruth, Chawley. We are nae fou. We're nae tha fou. Au reservoir, mossoo. Tanks you. 'Tis, sure. What say? In the speakeasy. Tight. I shee you, shir. Bantam, two days teetee. Bowsing nowt but claretwine. Garn! Have a glint, do. Gum, I'm jiggered. And been to barber he have. Too full for words. With a railway bloke. How come you so? Opera he'd like? Rose of Castile. Rows of cast. Police! Some H2O for a gent fainted. Look at Bantam's flowers. Gemini. He's going to holler. The colleen bawn. My colleen bawn. O, cheese it! Shut his blurry Dutch oven with a firm hand. Had the winner today till I tipped him a dead cert. The ruffin cly the nab of Stephen Hand as give me the jady coppaleen. He strike a telegramboy paddock wire big bug Bass to the depot. Shove him a joey and grahamise. Mare on form hot order. Guinea to a goosegog. Tell a cram, that. Gospeltrue. Criminal diversion? I think that yes. Sure thing. Land him in chokeechokee if the harman beck copped the game. Madden back Madden's a maddening back. O lust our refuge and our strength. Decamping. Must you go? Off to mammy. Stand by. Hide my blushes someone. All in if he spots me. Come ahome, our Bantam. Horryvar, mong vioo. Dinna forget the cowslips for hersel. Cornfide. Wha gev ye thon colt? Pal to pal. Jannock. Of John Thomas, her spouse. No fake, old man Leo. S'elp me, honest injun. Shiver my timbers if I had. There's a great big holy friar. Vyfor you no me tell? Vel, I ses, if that aint a sheeny nachez, vel, I vil get misha mishinnah. Through yerd our lord, Amen. You move a motion? Steve boy, you're going it some. More bluggy drunkables? Will immensely splendiferous stander permit one stooder of most extreme poverty and one largesize grandacious thirst to terminate one expensive inaugurated libation? Give's a breather. Landlord, landlord, have you good wine, staboo? Hoots, mon, a wee drap to pree. Cut and come again. Right. Boniface! Absinthe the lot. Nos omnes biberimus viridum toxicum, diabolus capiat posterioria nostria. Closingtime, gents. Eh? Rome boose for the Bloom toff. I hear you say onions? Bloo? Cadges ads. Photo's papli, by all that's gorgeous. Play low, pardner. Slide. Bonsoir la compagnie. And snares of the poxfiend. Where's the buck and Namby Amby? Skunked? Leg bail. Aweel, ye maun e'en gang yer gates. Checkmate. King to tower. Kind Kristyann wil yu help yung man hoose frend tuk bungellow kee tu find plais whear tu lay crown of his hed 2 night. Crickey, I'm about sprung. Tarnally dog gone my shins if this beent the bestest puttiest longbreak yet. Item, curate, couple of cookies for this child. Cot's plood and prandypalls, none! Not a pite of sheeses? Thrust syphilis down to hell and with him those other licensed spirits. Time, gents! Who wander through the world. Health all! la vіtre! Golly, whatten tunket's yon guy in the mackintosh? Dusty Rhodes. Peep at his wearables. By mighty! What's he got? Jubilee mutton. Bovril, by James. Wants it real bad. D'ye ken bare socks? Seedy cuss in the Richmond? Rawthere! Thought he had a deposit of lead in his penis. Trumpery insanity. Bartle the Bread we calls him. That, sir, was once a prosperous cit. Man all tattered and torn that married a maiden all forlorn. Slung her hook, she did. Here see lost love. Walking Mackintosh of lonely canyon. Tuck and turn in. Schedule time. Nix for the hornies. Pardon? Seen him today at a runefal? Chum o' yourn passed in his checks? Ludamassy! Pore piccaninnies! Thou'll no be telling me thot, Pold veg! Did ums blubble bigsplash crytears cos fren Padney was took off in black bag? Of all de darkies Massa Pat was verra best. I never see the like since I was born. Tiens, tiens, but it is well sad, that, my faith, yes. O, get, rev on a gradient one in nine. Live axle drives are souped. Lay you two to one Jenatzy licks him ruddy well hollow. Jappies? High angle fire, inyah! Sunk by war specials. Be worse for him, says he, nor any Rooshian. Time all. There's eleven of them. Get ye gone. Forward, woozy wobblers! Night. Night. May Allah the Excellent One your soul this night ever tremendously conserve. Your attention! We're nae tha fou. The Leith police dismisseth us. The least tholice. Ware hawks for the chap puking. Unwell in his abominable regions. Yooka. Night. Mona, my true love. Yook. Mona, my own love. Ook. Hark! Shut your obstropolos. Pflaap! Pflaap! Blaze on. There she goes. Brigade! Bout ship. Mount street way. Cut up! Pflaap! Tally ho. You not come? Run, skelter, race. Pflaaaap! Lynch! Hey? Sign on long o' me. Denzille lane this way. Change here for Bawdyhouse. We two, she said, will seek the kips where shady Mary is. Righto, any old time. Laetabuntur in cubilibus suis. You coming long? Whisper, who the sooty hell's the johnny in the black duds? Hush! Sinned against the light and even now that day is at hand when he shall come to judge the world by fire. Pflaap! Ut implerentur scripturae. Strike up a ballad. Then outspake medical Dick to his comrade medical Davy. Christicle, who's this excrement yellow gospeller on the Merrion hall? Elijah is coming! Washed in the blood of the Lamb. Come on you winefizzling, ginsizzling, booseguzzling existences! Come on, you dog-gone, bullnecked, beetlebrowed, hogjowled, peanutbrained, weaseleyed fourflushers, false alarms and excess baggage! Come on, you triple extract of infamy! Alexander J Christ Dowie, that's my name, that's yanked to glory most half this planet from Frisco beach to Vladivostok. The Deity aint no nickel dime bumshow. I put it to you that He's on the square and a corking fine business proposition. He's the grandest thing yet and don't you forget it. Shout salvation in King Jesus. You'll need to rise precious early you sinner there, if you want to diddle the Almighty God. Pflaaaap! Not half. He's got a coughmixture with a punch in it for you, my friend, in his back pocket. Just you try it on.
THE CALL
Wait, my love, and I'll be with you.
THE ANSWER
Round behind the stable.
(A deafmute 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
Kithogue! Salute!
THE IDIOT
(lifts a palsied left arm and gurgles) Ghahute!
THE CHILDREN
Where's the great light?
THE IDIOT
(gobbling) Ghaghahest.
(They release him. He jerks on. A pigmy woman swings on a rope
slung between two railings, counting. A form sprawled against a
dustbin and muffled by its arm and hat snores, groans, grinding
growling teeth, and snores again. On a step a gnome totting among
a rubbishtip crouches to shoulder a sack of rags and bones. A crone
standing by with a smoky oillamp rams her 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 paper
shuttlecock, crawls sidling after her in spurts, clutches her skirt,
scrambles up. A drunken navvy grips with both hands the railings
of an area, lurching heavily. At a comer two night watch in
shouldercapes, their hands upon their staffholsters, loom tall. A
plate crashes: a woman screams: a child wails. Oaths of a man
roar, mutter, cease. Figures wander, lurk, peer from warrens. In a
room lit by a candle stuck in a bottleneck a slut combs out the tatts
from the hair of a scrofulous child. Cissy Caffrey's voice, still
young, sings shrill from a lane.)
CISSY CAFFREY
I gave it to Molly
Because she was jolly,
The leg of the duck,
The leg of the duck.
(Private Carr 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 so
hoarse virago retorts.)
THE VIRAGO
Signs on you, hairy arse. More power the Cavan girl.
CISSY CAFFREY
More luck to me. Cavan, Cootehill and Belturbet. (she sings)
I gave it to Nelly
To stick in her belly,
The leg of the duck,
The leg of the duck.
(Private Carr and Private Compton turn and counterretort, their
tunics bloodbright in a lampglow, black sockets of caps on their
blond cropped polls. Stephen Dedalus and Lynch pass through the
crowd close to the redcoats.)
PRIVATE COMPTON
(jerks his finger) Way for the parson.
PRIVATE CARR
(turns and calls) What ho, parson!
CISSY CAFFREY
(her voice soaring higher)
She has it, she got it,
Wherever she put it,
The leg of the duck.
(Stephen, flourishing the ashplant in his left hand, chants with joy
the introit for paschal time. Lynch, his jockeycap low on his brow,
attends him, a sneer of discontent wrinkling his face.)
STEPHEN
Vidi aquam egredientem de templo a latere dextro. Alleluia.
(The famished snaggletusks of an elderly bawd protrude from a
doorway.)
THE BAWD
(her voice whispering huskily) Sst! Come here till I tell you. Maidenhead
inside. Sst!
STEPHEN
(altius aliquantulum) Et omnes ad quos pervenit aqua ista.
THE BAWD
(spits in their trail her jet of venom) Trinity medicals. Fallopian tube. All
prick and no pence.
(Edy Boardman, sniffling, crouched with Bertha Supple, draws her
shawl across her nostrils.)
EDY BOARDMAN
(bickering) And says 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,
Kilbride, the enginedriver, and lancecorporal Oliphant.
STEPHEN
(triumphaliter) Salvi facti sunt.
(He flourishes his ashplant, shivering the lamp image, shattering
light over the world. A liver and white spaniel on the prowl slinks
after him, growling. Lynch scares it with a kick.)
LYNCH
So that?
STEPHEN
(looks behind) So that gesture, not music not odour, would be a universal
language, the gift of tongues rendering visible not the lay sense but the first
entelechy, the structural rhythm.
LYNCH
Pornosophical philotheology. Metaphysics in Mecklenburgh street!
STEPHEN
We have shrewridden Shakespeare and henpecked Socrates. Even the
allwisest Stagyrite was bitted, bridled and mounted by a light of love.
LYNCH
Ba!
STEPHEN
Anyway, who wants two gestures to illustrate a loaf and a jug? This
movement illustrates the loaf and jug of bread or wine in Omar. Hold my
stick.
LYNCH
Damn your yellow stick. Where are we going?
STEPHEN
Lecherous lynx, to la belle dame sans merci, Georgina Johnson, ad deam qui
laetificat iuventutem meam.
(Stephen thrusts the ashplant on him and slowly holds out his
hands, his head going back till both hands are a span from his
breast, down turned, in planes intersecting, the fingers about to
part, the left being higher.)
LYNCH
Which is the jug of bread? It skills not. That or the customhouse. Illustrate
thou. Here take your crutch and walk.
(They pass. Tommy Caffrey scrambles to a gaslamp and, clasping,
climbs in spasms. From the top spur he slides down. Jacky Caffrey
clasps to climb. The navvy lurches against the lamp. The twins
scuttle off in the dark. The navvy, swaying, presses a forefinger
against a wing of his nose and ejects from the farther nostril a long
liquid jet of snot. Shouldering the lamp he staggers away through
the crowd with his flaring cresset.
Snakes of river fog creep slowly. From drains, clefts, cesspools,
middens arise on all sides stagnant fumes. A glow leaps in the south
beyond the seaward reaches of the river. The navvy, staggering
forward, cleaves the crowd and lurches towards the tramsiding On
the farther side under the railway bridge Bloom appears, flushed,
panting, cramming bread and chocolate into a sidepocket. From
Gillen's hairdresser's 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 convex mirror grin unstruck the bonham eyes
and fatchuck cheekchops of jollypoldy the rixdix doldy.
At Antonio Pabaiotti's door Bloom halts, sweated under the bright
arclamp. He disappears. In a moment he reappears and hurries
on.)
BLOOM
Fish and taters. N. g. Ah!
(He disappears into Olhausen's, the porkbutcher'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 ribs and groans.)
BLOOM
Stitch in my side. Why did I run?
(He takes breath with care and goes forward slowly towards the
lampset siding The glow leaps again.)
BLOOM
What is that? A flasher? Searchlight.
(He stands at Cormack's corner, watching)
BLOOM
Aurora borealis or a steel foundry? Ah, the brigade, of course. South side
anyhow. Big blaze. Might be his house. Beggar's bush. We're safe. (he
hums cheerfully) London's burning, London's burning! On fire, on fire!
(he catches sight of the navvy lurching through the crowd at the farther
side of Talbot street) I'll miss him. Run. Quick. Better cross here.
(He darts to cross the road Urchins shout.)
THE URCHINS
Mind out, mister!
(Two cyclists, with lighted paper lanterns aswing, swim by him,
grazing him, their bells rattling)
THE BELLS
Haltyaltyaltyall.
BLOOM
(halts erect, stung by a spasm) Ow!
(He looks round, darts forward suddenly. Through rising fog a
dragon sandstrewer, travelling at caution, slews heavily down upon
him, its huge red headlight winking, its trolley hissing on the wire.
The motorman bangs his footgong.)
THE GONG
Bang Bang Bla Bak Blud Bugg Bloo.
(The brake cracks violently. Bloom, raising a policeman's
whitegloved hand, blunders stifflegged out of the track. The
motorman, thrown forward, pugnosed, on the guidewheel, yells as
he slides past over chains and keys.)
THE MOTORMAN
Hey, shitbreeches, are you doing the hat trick?
(Bloom trickleaps to the curbstone and halts again. He brushes a
mudflake from his cheek with a parcelled hand.)
BLOOM
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 track or bootlace in a cog. Day the
wheel of the black Maria peeled off my shoe at Leonard's corner. Third
time is the charm. Shoe trick. Insolent driver. I ought to report him.
Tension makes them nervous. Might be the fellow balked me this morning
with that horsey woman. Same style of beauty. Quick of him all the same.
The stiff walk. True word spoken in jest. That awful cramp in Lad lane.
Something poisonous I ate. Emblem of luck. Why? Probably lost cattle.
Mark of the beast. (he closes his eyes an instant) Bit light in the head.
Monthly or effect of the other. Brainfogfag. That tired feeling. Too much
for me now. Ow!
(A sinister figure leans on plaited legs against O'Beirne's wall, a
visage unknown, injected with dark mercury. From under a
wideleaved sombrero the figure regards him with evil eye.)
BLOOM
Buenas noches, senorita Blanca. Que calle es esta?
THE FIGURE
(impassive, raises a signal arm) Password. Sraid Mabbot.
BLOOM
Haha. Merci. Esperanto. Slan leath. (he mutters) Gaelic league spy, sent
by that fireeater.
(He steps forward. A sackshouldered ragman bars his path. He
steps left, ragsackman left.)
BLOOM
I beg.
(He leaps right, sackragman right.)
BLOOM
I beg.
(He swerves, sidles, stepaside, slips past and on.)
BLOOM
Keep to the right, right, right. If there is a signpost planted by the Touring
Club at Stepaside who procured that public boon? I who lost my way and
contributed to the columns of the Irish Cyclist the letter headed In darkest
Stepaside. Keep, keep, keep to the right. Rags and bones at midnight. A
fence more likely. First place murderer makes for. Wash off his sins of the
world.
(Jacky Caffrey, hunted by Tommy Caffrey, runs full tilt against
Bloom.)
BLOOM
O
(Shocked, on weak hams, he halts. Tommy and Jacky vanish
there, there. Bloom pats with parcelled hands watchfob,
pocketbookpocket, pursepoke, sweets of sin, potatosoap.)
BLOOM
Beware of pickpockets. Old thieves' dodge. Collide. Then snatch your
purse.
(The retriever approaches sniffing, 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 smokingcap with magenta tassels.
Horned spectacles hang down at the wings of the nose. Yellow
poison streaks are on the drawn face.)
RUDOLPH
Second halfcrown waste money today. I told you not go with drunken goy
ever. So you catch no money.
BLOOM
(hides the crubeen and trotter behind his back and, crestfallen, feels warm
and cold feetmeat) Ja, ich weiss, papachi.
RUDOLPH
What you making down this place? Have you no soul? (with feeble vulture
talons he feels the silent face of Bloom) Are you not my son Leopold, the
grandson of Leopold? Are you not my dear son Leopold who left the house
of his father and left the god of his fathers Abraham and Jacob?
BLOOM
(with precaution) I suppose so, father. Mosenthal. All that's left of him.
RUDOLPH
(severely) One night they bring you home drunk as dog after spend your
good money. What you call them running chaps?
BLOOM
(in youth's smart blue Oxford suit with white vestslips, narrowshouldered,
in brown Alpine hat, wearing gent's sterling silver Waterbury keyless watch
and double curb Albert with seal attached, one side of him coated with
stiffening mud) Harriers, father. Only that once.
RUDOLPH
Once! Mud head to foot. Cut your hand open. Lockjaw. They make you
kaputt, Leopoldleben. You watch them chaps.
BLOOM
(weakly) They challenged me to a sprint. It was muddy. I slipped.
RUDOLPH
(with contempt) Goim nachez! Nice spectacles for your poor mother!
BLOOM
Mamma!
ELLEN BLOOM
(in pantomime dame's stringed mobcap, widow Twankey's crinoline and
bustle, blouse with muttonleg sleeves buttoned behind, grey mittens and
cameo brooch, her plaited hair in a crispine net, appears over the staircase
banisters, a slanted candlestick in her hand, and cries out in shrill alarm)
O blessed Redeemer, what have they done to him! My smelling salts! (She
hauls up a reef of skirt and ransacks the pouch of her striped blay petticoat
A phial, an Agnus Dei, a shrivelled potato and a celluloid doll fall out)
Sacred Heart of Mary, where were you at all at all?
(Bloom, mumbling, his eyes downcast, begins to bestow his parcels
in his filled pockets but desists, muttering.)
A VOICE
(sharply) Poldy!
BLOOM
Who? (he ducks and wards off a blow clumsily) At your service.
(He looks up. Beside her mirage of datepalms a handsome woman
in Turkish costume stands before him. Opulent curves fill out her
scarlet trousers and jacket, slashed with gold. A wide yellow
cummerbund girdles her. A white yashmak, violet in the night,
covers her face, leaving free only her large dark eyes and raven
hair.)
BLOOM
Molly!
MARION
Welly? Mrs Marion from this out, my dear man, when you speak to me.
(satirically) Has poor little hubby cold feet waiting so long?
BLOOM
(shifts from foot to foot) No, no. Not the least little bit.
(He breathes in deep agitation, swallowing gulps of air, questions,
hopes, crubeens for her supper, things to tell her, excuse, desire,
spellbound. A coin gleams on her forehead. On her feet are jewelled
toerings. Her ankles are linked by a slender fetterchain. Beside her a
camel, hooded with a turreting turban, waits. A silk ladder of
innumerable rungs climbs to his bobbing howdah. He ambles near
with disgruntled hindquarters. Fiercely she slaps his haunch, her
goldcurb wristbangles angriling, scolding him in Moorish.)
MARION
Nebrakada! Femininum!
(The camel, lifting a foreleg, plucks from a tree a large mango fruit,
offers it to his mistress, blinking, in his cloven hoof, then droops his
head and, grunting, with uplifted neck, fumbles to kneel. Bloom
stoops his back for leapfrog.)
BLOOM
I can give you ... I mean as your business menagerer .. Mrs Marion ..... if
you ....
MARION
So you notice some change? (her hands passing slowly over her trinketed
stomacher, a slow friendly mockery in her eyes) O Poldy, Poldy, you are a
poor old stick in the mud! Go and see life. See the wide world.
BLOOM
I was just going back for that lotion whitewax, orangeflower water. Shop
closes early on Thursday. But the first thing in the morning. (he pats divers
pockets) This moving kidney. Ah!
(He points to the south, then to the east. A cake of new clean lemon
soap arises, diffusing light and perfume.)
THE SOAP
We're a capital couple are Bloom and I.
He brightens the earth. I polish the sky.
(The freckled face of Sweny, the druggist, appears in the disc of the
soapsun.)
SWENY
Three and a penny, please.
BLOOM
Yes. For my wife. Mrs Marion. Special recipe.
MARION
(softly) Poldy!
BLOOM
Yes, ma'am?
MARION
Ti trema un poco il cuore?
(In disdain she saunters away, humming the duet from Don
Giovanni, plump as a pampered pouter pigeon.)
BLOOM
Are you sure about that Voglio? I mean the pronunciati ....
(He follows, followed by the sniffing terrier. The elderly bawd
seizes his sleeve, the bristles of her chinmole glittering.)
THE BAWD
Ten shillings a maidenhead. Fresh thing was never touched. Fifteen. There's
no-one in it only her old father that's dead drunk.
(She points. In the gap of her dark den furtive, rainbedraggled,
Bridie Kelly stands.)
BRIDIE
Hatch street. Any good in your mind?
(With a squeak she flaps her bat shawl and runs. A burly rough
pursues with booted strides. He stumbles on the steps, recovers,
plunges into gloom. Weak squeaks of laughter are heard, weaker.)
THE BAWD
(her wolfeyes shining) He's getting his pleasure. You won't get a virgin in
the flash houses. Ten shillings. Don't be all night before the polis in plain
clothes sees us. Sixtyseven is a bitch.
(Leering, Gerty MacDowell limps forward. She draws from behind,
ogling, and shows coyly her bloodied clout.)
GERTY
With all my worldly goods I thee and thou. (she murmurs) You did that. I
hate you.
BLOOM
l? When? You're dreaming. I never saw you.
THE BAWD
Leave the gentleman alone, you cheat. Writing the gentleman false letters.
Streetwalking and soliciting. Better for your mother take the strap to you at
the bedpost, hussy like you.
GERTY
(to Bloom) When you saw all the secrets of my bottom drawer. (she paws
his sleeve, slobbering) Dirty married man! I love you for doing that to me.
(She glides away crookedly. Mrs Breen in man's frieze overcoat
with loose bellows pockets, stands in the causeway, her roguish eyes
wideopen, smiling in all her herbivorous buckteeth.)
MRS BREEN
Mr ...
BLOOM
(coughs gravely) Madam, when we last had this pleasure by letter dated
the sixteenth instant ....
MRS BREEN
Mr Bloom! You down here in the haunts of sin! I caught you nicely!
Scamp!
BLOOM
(hurriedly) Not so loud my name. Whatever do you think of me? Don't
give me away. Walls have ears. How do you do? It's ages since I. You're
looking splendid. Absolutely it. Seasonable weather we are having this time
of year. Black refracts heat. Short cut home here. Interesting quarter.
Rescue of fallen women. Magdalen asylum. I am the secretary .....
MRS BREEN
(holds up a finger) Now, don't tell a big fib! I know somebody won't like
that. O just wait till I see Molly! (slily) Account for yourself this very
sminute or woe betide you!
BLOOM
(looks behind) She often said she'd like to visit. Slumming. The exotic, you
see. Negro servants in livery too if she had money. Othello black brute.
Eugene Stratton. Even the bones and cornerman at the Livermore christies.
Bohee brothers. Sweep for that matter.
(Tom and Sam Bohee, coloured coons in white duck suits, scarlet
socks, upstarched Sambo chokers and large 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.)
TOM AND SAM
There's someone in the house with Dina
There's someone in the house, I know,
There's someone in the house with Dina
Playing on the old banjo.
(They whisk black masks from raw babby faces: then, chuckling,
chortling, trumming, twanging, they diddle diddle cakewalk dance
away.)
BLOOM
(with a sour tenderish smile) A little frivol, shall we, if you are so inclined?
Would you like me perhaps to embrace you just for a fraction of a second?
MRS BREEN
(screams gaily) O, you ruck! You ought to see yourself!
BLOOM
For old sake' sake. I only meant a square party, a mixed marriage mingling
of our different little conjugials. You know I had a soft corner for you.
(gloomily) 'Twas I sent you that valentine of the dear gazelle.
MRS BREEN
Glory Alice, you do look a holy show! Killing simply. (she puts out her
hand inquisitively) What are you hiding behind your back? Tell us, there's
a dear.
BLOOM
(seizes her wrist with his free hand) Josie Powell that was, prettiest deb in
Dublin. How time flies by! Do you remember, harking back in a
retrospective arrangement, Old Christmas night, Georgina Simpson's
housewarming while they were playing the Irving Bishop game, finding the
pin blindfold and thoughtreading? Subject, what is in this snuffbox?
MRS BREEN
You were the lion of the night with your seriocomic recitation and you
looked the part. You were always a favourite with the ladies.
BLOOM
(squire of dames, in dinner jacket with wateredsilk facings, blue masonic
badge in his buttonhole, black bow and mother-of-pearl studs, a prismatic
champagne glass tilted in his hand) Ladies and gentlemen, I give you
Ireland, home and beauty.
MRS BREEN
The dear dead days beyond recall. Love's old sweet song.
BLOOM
(meaningfully dropping his voice) I confess I'm teapot with curiosity to
find out whether some person's something is a little teapot at present.
MRS BREEN
(gushingly) Tremendously teapot! London's teapot and I'm simply teapot
all over me! (she rubs sides with him) After the parlour mystery games and
the crackers from the tree we sat on the staircase ottoman. Under the
mistletoe. Two is company.
BLOOM
(wearing a purple Napoleon hat with an amber halfmoon, his fingers and
thumb 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)
La ci darem la mano.
MRS BREEN
(in a onepiece evening frock executed in moonlight blue, a tinsel sylph's
diadem on her brow with her dancecard fallen beside her moonblue satin
slipper, curves her palm softly, breathing quickly) Voglio e non ..... You're
hot! You're scalding! The left hand nearest the heart.
BLOOM
When you made your present choice they said it was beauty and the beast. I
can never forgive you for that. (his clenched fist at his brow) Think what it
means. All you meant to me then. (hoarsely) Woman, it's breaking me!
(Denis Breen, whitetallhatted, with Wisdom Hely's sandwich-
boards, shuffles past them in carpet slippers, his dull beard
thrust out, muttering to right and left. Little Alf Bergan, cloaked in
the pall of the ace of spades, dogs him to left and right, doubled in
laughter.)
ALF BERGAN
(points jeering at the sandwichboards) U. p: up.
MRS BREEN
(to Bloom) High jinks below stairs. (she gives him the glad eye) Why
didn't you kiss the spot to make it well? You wanted to.
BLOOM
(shocked) Molly's best friend! Could you?
MRS BREEN
(her pulpy tongue between her lips, offers a pigeon kiss) Hnhn. The
answer is a lemon. Have you a little present for me there?
BLOOM
(offhandedly) Kosher. A snack for supper. The home without potted meat
is incomplete. I was at Leah, Mrs Bandmann Palmer. Trenchant exponent
of Shakespeare. Unfortunately threw away the programme. Rattling good
place round there for pigs' feet. Feel.
(Richie Goulding, three ladies' hats pinned on his head, appears
weighted to one side by the black legal bag of Collis and Ward on
which a skull and crossbones are painted in white limewash. He
opens it and shows it full of polonies, kippered herrings, Findon
haddies and tightpacked pills.)
RICHIE
Best value in Dub.
(Bald Pat, bothered beetle, stands on the curbstone, folding his
napkin, waiting to wait.)
PAT
(advances with a tilted dish of spillspilling gravy) Steak and kidney. Bottle
of lager. Hee hee hee. Wait till I wait.
RICHIE
Goodgod. Inev erate inall ....
(With hanging head he marches doggedly forward The navvy,
lurching by, gores him with his flaming pronghorn.)
RICHIE
(with a cry of pain, his hand to his back) Ah! Bright's! Lights!
BLOOM
(points to the navvy) A spy. Don't attract attention. I hate stupid crowds. I
am not on pleasure bent. I am in a grave predicament.
MRS BREEN
Humbugging and deluthering as per usual with your cock and bull story.
BLOOM
I want to tell you a little secret about how I came to be here. But you must
never tell. Not even Molly. I have a most particular reason.
MRS BREEN
(all agog) O, not for worlds.
BLOOM
Let's walk on. Shall us?
MRS BREEN
Let's.
(The bawd makes an unheeded sign. Bloom walks on with Mrs
Breen. The terrier follows, whining piteously, wagging his tail.)
THE BAWD
Jewman's melt!
BLOOM
(in an oatmeal sporting suit, a sprig of woodbine in the lapel, tony buff
shirt, shepherd's plaid Saint Andrew's cross scarftie, white spats, fawn
dustcoat on his arm, tawny red brogues, fieldglasses in bandolier and a grey
billycock hat) Do you remember a long long time, years and years ago, just
after Milly, Marionette we called her, was weaned when we all went
together to Fairyhouse races, was it?
MRS BREEN
(in smart Saxe tailormade, white velours hat and spider veil) Leopards-
town.
BLOOM
I mean, Leopardstown. And Molly won seven shillings on a three year old
named Nevertell and coming home along by Foxrock in that old fiveseater
shanderadan of a waggonette you were in your heyday then and you had
on that new hat of white velours with a surround of molefur that Mrs
Hayes advised you to buy because it was marked down to nineteen and
eleven, a bit of wire and an old rag of velveteen, and I'll lay you what you
like she did it on purpose ....
MRS BREEN
She did, of course, the cat! Don't tell me! Nice adviser!
BLOOM
Because it didn't suit you one quarter as well as the other ducky little
tammy toque with the bird of paradise wing in it that I admired on you and
you honestly looked just too fetching in it though it was a pity to kill it, you
cruel naughty creature, little mite of a thing with a heart the size of a
fullstop.
MRS BREEN
(squeezes his arm, simpers) Naughty cruel I was!
BLOOM
(low, secretly, ever more rapidly) And Molly was eating a sandwich of
spiced beef out of Mrs Joe Gallaher's lunch basket. Frankly, though she
had her advisers or admirers, I never cared much for her style. She was ....
MRS BREEN
Too ....
BLOOM
Yes. And Molly was laughing because Rogers and Maggot O'Reilly were
mimicking a cock as we passed a farmhouse and Marcus Tertius Moses, the
tea merchant, drove past us in a gig with his daughter, Dancer Moses was
her name, and the poodle in her lap bridled up and you asked me if I ever
heard or read or knew or came across ....
MRS BREEN
(eagerly) Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
(She fades from his side. Followed by the whining dog he walks on
towards hellsgates. In an archway a standing woman, bent forward,
her feet apart, pisses cowily. Outside a shuttered pub a bunch of
loiterers listen to a tale which their brokensnouted gaffer rasps out
with raucous humour. An armless pair of them flop wrestling,
growling, in maimed sodden playfight.)
THE GAFFER
(crouches, his voice twisted in his snout) And when Cairns came down
from the scaffolding in Beaver street what was he after doing it into only
into the bucket of porter that was there waiting on the shavings for
Derwan's plasterers.
THE LOITERERS
(guffaw with cleft palates) O jays!
(Their paintspeckled hats wag. Spattered with size and lime of their
lodges they frisk limblessly about him.)
BLOOM
Coincidence too. They think it funny. Anything but that. Broad daylight.
Trying to walk. Lucky no woman.
THE LOITERERS
Jays, that's a good one. Glauber salts. O jays, into the men's porter.
(Bloom passes. Cheap whores, singly, coupled, shawled, dishevelled,
call from lanes, doors, corners.)
THE WHORES
Are you going far, queer fellow?
How's your middle leg?
Got a match on you?
Eh, come here till I stiffen it for you.
(He plodges through their sump towards the lighted street beyond.
From a bulge of window curtains a gramophone rears a battered
brazen trunk. In the shadow a shebeenkeeper haggles with the
navvy and the two redcoats.)
THE NAVVY
(belching) Where's the bloody house?
THE SHEBEENKEEPER
Purdon street. Shilling a bottle of stout. Respectable woman.
THE NAVVY
(gripping the two redcoats, staggers forward with them) Come on, you
British army!
PRIVATE CARR
(behind his back) He aint half balmy.
PRIVATE COMPTON
(laughs) What ho!
PRIVATE CARR
(to the navvy) Portobello barracks canteen. You ask for Carr. Just Carr.
THE NAVVY
(shouts)
We are the boys. Of Wexford.
PRIVATE COMPTON
Say! What price the sergeantmajor?
PRIVATE CARR
Bennett? He's my pal. I love old Bennett.
THE NAVVY
(shouts)
The galling chain.
And free our native land.
(He staggers forward, dragging them with him. Bloom stops, at
fault. The dog approaches, his tongue outlolling, panting)
BLOOM
Wildgoose chase this. Disorderly houses. Lord knows where they are gone.
Drunks cover distance double quick. Nice mixup. Scene at Westland row.
Then jump in first class with third ticket. Then too far. Train with engine
behind. Might have taken me to Malahide or a siding for the night or
collision. Second drink does it. Once is a dose. What am I following him
for? Still, he's the best of that lot. If I hadn't heard about Mrs Beaufoy
Purefoy I wouldn't have gone and wouldn't have met. Kismet. He'll lose
that cash. Relieving office here. Good biz for cheapjacks, organs. What do
ye lack? Soon got, soon gone. Might have lost my life too with that man-
gongwheeltracktrolleyglarejuggernaut only for presence of mind. Can't
always save you, though. If I had passed Truelock's window that day two
minutes later would have been shot. Absence of body. Still if bullet only
went through my coat get damages for shock, five hundred pounds. What
was he? Kildare street club toff. God help his gamekeeper.
(He gazes ahead, reading on the wall a scrawled chalk legend Wet Dream
and a phallic design.) Odd! Molly drawing on the frosted carriagepane at
Kingstown. What's that like? (Gaudy dollwomen loll in the lighted
doorways, in window embrasures, smoking birdseye cigarettes. The odour
of the sicksweet weed floats towards him in slow round ovalling wreaths.)
THE WREATHS
Sweet are the sweets. Sweets of sin.
BLOOM
My spine's a bit limp. Go or turn? And this food? Eat it and get all
pigsticky. Absurd I am. Waste of money. One and eightpence too much.
(The retriever drives a cold snivelling muzzle against his hand, wagging his
tail.) Strange how they take to me. Even that brute today. Better speak to
him first. Like women they like rencontres. Stinks like a polecat. Chacun
son got. He might be mad. Dogdays. Uncertain in his movements. Good
fellow! Fido! Good fellow! Garryowen! (The wolfdog sprawls on his back,
wriggling obscenely with begging paws, his long black tongue lolling out.)
Influence of his surroundings. Give and have done with it. Provided
nobody. (Calling encouraging words he shambles back with a furtive
poacher's tread, dogged by the setter into a dark stalestunk corner. He
unrolls one parcel and goes to dump the crubeen softly but holds back and
feels the trotter.) Sizeable for threepence. But then I have it in my left hand.
Calls for more effort. Why? Smaller from want of use. O, let it slide. Two
and six.
(With regret he lets the unrolled crubeen and trotter slide. The
mastiff mauls the bundle clumsily and gluts himself with growling
greed, crunching the bones. Two raincaped watch approach, silent,
vigilant. They murmur together.)
THE WATCH
Bloom. Of Bloom. For Bloom. Bloom.
(Each lays hand on Bloom's shoulder.)
FIRST WATCH
Caught in the act. Commit no nuisance.
BLOOM
(stammers) I am doing good to others.
(A covey of gulls, storm petrels, rises hungrily from Liffey slime
with Banbury cakes in their beaks.)
THE GULLS
Kaw kave kankury kake.
BLOOM
The friend of man. Trained by kindness.
(He points. Bob Doran, toppling from a high barstool, sways over
the munching spaniel.)
BOB DORAN
Towser. Give us the paw. Give the paw.
(The bulldog growls, his scruff standing, a gobbet of pig's knuckle
between his molars through which rabid scumspittle dribbles Bob
Doran fills silently into an area.)
SECOND WATCH
Prevention of cruelty to animals.
BLOOM
(enthusiastically) A noble work! I scolded that tramdriver on Harold's
cross bridge for illusing the poor horse with his harness scab. Bad French I
got for my pains. Of course it was frosty and the last tram. All tales of
circus life are highly demoralising.
(Signor Maffei, passionpale, in liontamer's costume with diamond
studs in his shirtfront, steps forward, holding a circus paperhoop, a
curling carriagewhip and a revolver with which he covers the
gorging boarhound.)
SIGNOR MAFFEI
(with a sinister smile) Ladies and gentlemen, my educated greyhound. It
was I broke in the bucking broncho Ajax with my patent spiked saddle for
carnivores. Lash under the belly with a knotted thong. Block tackle and a
strangling pulley will bring your lion to heel, no matter how fractious, even
Leo ferox there, the Libyan maneater. A redhot crowbar and some liniment
rubbing on the burning part produced Fritz of Amsterdam, the thinking
hyena. (he glares) I possess the Indian sign. The glint of my eye does it
with these breastsparklers. (with a bewitching smile) I now introduce
Mademoiselle Ruby, the pride of the ring.
FIRST WATCH
Come. Name and address.
BLOOM
I have forgotten for the moment. Ah, yes! (he takes off his high grade hat,
saluting) Dr Bloom, Leopold, dental surgeon. You have heard of von Blum
Pasha. Umpteen millions. Donnerwetter! Owns half Austria. Egypt.
Cousin.
FIRST WATCH
Proof.
(A card falls from inside the leather headband of Bloom's hat.)
BLOOM
(in red fez, cadi's dress coat with broad green sash, wearing a false badge
of the Legion of Honour, picks up the card hastily and offers it) Allow me.
My club is the Junior Army and Navy. Solicitors: Messrs John Henry
Menton, 27 Bachelor's Walk.
FIRST WATCH
(reads) Henry Flower. No fixed abode. Unlawfully watching and
besetting.
SECOND WATCH
An alibi. You are cautioned.
BLOOM
(produces from his heartpocket a crumpled yellow flower) This is the
flower in question. It was given me by a man I don't know his name.
(plausibly) You know that old joke, rose of Castile. 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 the shake of a lamb's tail.
(A dark mercurialised face appears, leading a veiled figure.)
THE DARK MERCURY
The Castle is looking for him. He was drummed out of the army.
MARTHA
(thickveiled, a crimson halter round her neck, a copy of the Irish Times in
her hand, in tone of reproach, pointing) Henry! Leopold! Lionel, thou lost
one! Clear my name.
FIRST WATCH
(sternly) Come to the station.
BLOOM
(scared, hats himself, steps back, then, plucking at his heart and lifting his
right forearm on the square, he gives the sign and dueguard of fellowcraft)
No, no, worshipful master, light of love. Mistaken identity. The Lyons mail.
Lesurques and Dubosc. You remember the Childs fratricide case. We
medical men. By striking him dead with a hatchet. I am wrongfully
accused. Better one guilty escape than ninetynine wrongfully condemned.
MARTHA
(sobbing behind her veil) Breach of promise. My real name is Peggy
Griffin. He wrote to me that he was miserable. I'll tell my brother, the
Bective rugger fullback, on you, heartless flirt.
BLOOM
(behind his hand) She's drunk. The woman is inebriated. (he murmurs
vaguely the pass of Ephraim) Shitbroleeth.
SECOND WATCH
(tears in his eyes, to Bloom) You ought to be thoroughly well ashamed of
yourself.
BLOOM
Gentlemen 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, what do you call him, Majorgeneral Brian Tweedy, one of
Britain's fighting men who helped to win our battles. Got his majority for
the heroic defence of Rorke's Drift.
FIRST WATCH
Regiment.
BLOOM
(turns to the gallery) The royal Dublins, boys, the salt of the earth, known
the world over. I think I see some old comrades in arms up there among
you. The R. D. F., with our own Metropolitan police, guardians of our
homes, the pluckiest lads and the finest body of men, as physique, in the
service of our sovereign.
A VOICE
Turncoat! Up the Boers! Who booed Joe Chamberlain?
BLOOM
(his hand on the shoulder of the first watch) My old dad too was a J. P.
I'm as staunch a Britisher as you are, sir. I fought with the colours for king
and country in the absentminded war under general Gough in the park and
was disabled at Spion Kop and Bloemfontein, was mentioned in dispatches.
I did all a white man could. (with quiet feeling) Jim Bludso. Hold her
nozzle again the bank.
FIRST WATCH
Profession or trade.
BLOOM
Well, I follow a literary occupation, author-journalist. In fact we are just
bringing out a collection of prize stories of which I am the inventor,
something that is an entirely new departure. I am connected with the British
and Irish press. If you ring up ....
(Myles Crawford strides out jerkily, a quill between his teeth. His
scarlet beak blazes within the aureole of his straw hat He dangles a
hank of Spanish onions in one hand and holds with the other hand
a telephone receiver nozzle to his ear.)
MYLES CRAWFORD
(his cock's wattles wagging) Hello, seventyseven eightfour. Hello.
Freeman's Urinal and Weekly Arsewipe here. Paralyse Europe. You which?
Bluebags? Who writes? Is it Bloom?
(Mr Philip Beaufoy, palefaced, stands in the witnessbox, in accurate
morning dress, outbreast pocket with peak of handkerchief
showing, creased lavender trousers and patent boots. He carries a
large portfolio labelled Matcham's Masterstrokes.)
BEAUFOY
(drawls) No, you aren't. Not by a long shot if I know it. I don't see it
that's all. No born gentleman, no-one with the most rudimentary
promptings of a gentleman would stoop to such particularly loathsome
conduct. One of those, my lord. A plagiarist. A soapy sneak masquerading
as a litterateur. It's perfectly obvious that with the most inherent baseness
he has cribbed some of my bestselling copy, really gorgeous stuff, a perfect
gem, the love passages in which are beneath suspicion. The Beaufoy books
of love and great possessions, with which your lordship is doubtless
familiar, are a household word throughout the kingdom.
BLOOM
(murmurs with hangdog meekness glum) That bit about the laughing
witch hand in hand I take exception to, if I may ...
BEAUFOY
(his lip upcurled, smiles superciliously on the court) You funny ass, you!
You're too beastly awfully weird for words! I don't think you need over
excessively disincommodate yourself in that regard. My literary agent Mr
J. B. Pinker is in attendance. I presume, my lord, we shall receive the usual
witnesses' fees, shan't we? We are considerably out of pocket over this bally
pressman johnny, this jackdaw of Rheims, who has not even been to a
university.
BLOOM
(indistinctly) University of life. Bad art.
BEAUFOY
(shouts) It's a damnably foul lie, showing the moral rottenness of the man!
(he extends his portfolio) We have here damning evidence, the corpus
delicti, my lord, a specimen of my maturer work disfigured by the hallmark
of the beast.
A VOICE FROM THE GALLERY
Moses, Moses, king of the jews,
Wiped his arse in the Daily News.
BLOOM
(bravely) Overdrawn.
BEAUFOY
You low cad! You ought to be ducked in the horsepond, you rotter! (to the
court) Why, look at the man's private life! Leading a quadruple existence!
Street angel and house devil. Not fit to be mentioned in mixed society! The
archconspirator of the age!
BLOOM
(to the court) And he, a bachelor, how...
FIRST WATCH
The King versus Bloom. Call the woman Driscoll.
THE CRIER
Mary Driscoll, scullerymaid!
(Mary Driscoll, a slipshod servant girl, approaches. She has a
bucket on the crook of her arm and a scouringbrush in her hand.)
SECOND WATCH
Another! Are you of the unfortunate class?
MARY DRISCOLL
(indignantly) I'm not a bad one. I bear a respectable character and was
four months in my last place. I was in a situation, six pounds a year and my
chances with Fridays out and I had to leave owing to his carryings on.
FIRST WATCH
What do you tax him with?
MARY DRISCOLL
He made a certain suggestion but I thought more of myself as poor as I am.
BLOOM
(in housejacket of ripplecloth, flannel trousers, heelless slippers, unshaven,
his hair rumpled: softly) I treated you white. I gave you mementos, smart
emerald garters far above your station. Incautiously I took your part when
you were accused of pilfering. There's a medium in all things. Play cricket.
MARY DRISCOLL
(excitedly) As God is looking down on me this night if ever I laid a hand to
them oylsters!
FIRST WATCH
The offence complained of? Did something happen?
MARY DRISCOLL
He surprised me in the rere of the premises, Your honour, when the missus
was out shopping one morning with a request for a safety pin. He held me
and I was discoloured in four places as a result. And he interfered twict
with my clothing.
BLOOM
She counterassaulted.
MARY DRISCOLL
(scornfully) I had more respect for the scouringbrush, so I had. I
remonstrated with him, Your lord, and he remarked: keep it quiet.
(General laughter.)
GEORGE FOTTRELL
(clerk of the crown and peace, resonantly) Order in court! The accused
will now make a bogus statement.
(Bloom, pleading not guilty and holding a fullblown waterlily,
begins a long unintelligible speech. They would hear what counsel
had to say in his stirring address to the grand jury. He was down
and out but, though branded as a black sheep, if he might say so, he
meant to reform, to retrieve the memory of the past in a purely
sisterly way and return to nature as a purely domestic animal. A
sevenmonths' 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 Britishborn bairns lisping prayers to the Sacred
Infant, youthful scholars grappling with their pensums or 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 Britanniametalbound
with four acting stops and twelvefold bellows, a sacrifice, greatest
bargain ever ....
Renewed laughter. He mumbles incoherently. Reporters complain
that they cannot hear.)
LONGHAND AND SHORTHAND
(without looking up from their notebooks) Loosen his boots.
PROFESSOR MACHUGH
(from the presstable, coughs and calls) Cough it up, man. Get it out in bits.
(The crossexamination proceeds re Bloom and the bucket. A large
bucket. Bloom himself. Bowel trouble. In Beaver street Gripe, yes.
Quite bad. A plasterer's 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
stickingplaster across his nose, talks inaudibly.)
J. J. O'MOLLOY
(in barrister's grey wig and stuffgown, speaking with a voice of pained
protest) This is no place for indecent levity at the expense of an erring
mortal disguised in liquor. We are not in a beargarden nor at an Oxford rag
nor is this a travesty of justice. My client is an infant, a poor foreign
immigrant who started scratch as a stowaway and is now trying to turn an
honest penny. The trumped up misdemeanour was due to a momentary
aberration of heredity, brought on by hallucination, such familiarities as the
alleged guilty occurrence being quite permitted in my client's native place,
the land of the Pharaoh. Prima facie, I put it to you that there was no
attempt at carnally knowing. Intimacy did not occur and the offence
complained of by Driscoll, that her virtue was solicited, was not repeated. I
would deal in especial with atavism. There have been cases of shipwreck
and somnambulism in my client's family. If the accused could speak he
could a tale unfold - one of the strangest that have ever been narrated
between the covers of a book. He himself, my lord, is a physical wreck from
cobbler's weak chest. His submission is that he is of Mongolian extraction
and irresponsible for his actions. Not all there, in fact.
BLOOM
(Barefoot, pigeonbreasted, in lascar's vest and trousers, apologetic toes
turned in, opens his tiny mole's eyes and looks about him dazedly, passing a
slow hand across his forehead. Then he hitches his belt sailor fashion and
with a shrug of oriental obeisance salutes the court, pointing one thumb
heavenward.) Him makee velly muchee fine night. (he begins to lilt simply)
Li li poo lil chile
Blingee pigfoot evly night
Payee two shilly ....
(He is howled down.)
J. J. O'MOLLOY
(hotly to the populace) This is a lonehand fight. By Hades, I will not have
any client of mine gagged and badgered in this fashion by a pack of curs
and laughing hyenas. The Mosaic code has superseded the law of the
jungle. I say it and I say it emphatically, without wishing for one moment to
defeat the ends of justice, accused was not accessory before the act and
prosecutrix has not been tampered with. The young person was treated by
defendant as if she were his very own daughter. (Bloom takes J. J.
O'Molloy's hand and raises it to his lips) I shall call rebutting evidence to
prove up to the hilt that the hidden hand is again at its old game. When in
doubt persecute Bloom. My client, an innately bashful man, would be the
last man in the world to do anything ungentlemanly which injured modesty
could object to or cast a stone at a girl who took the wrong turning when
some dastard, responsible for her condition, had worked his own sweet will
on her. He wants to go straight. I regard him as the whitest man I know.
He is down on his luck at present owing to the mortgaging of his extensive
property at Agendath Netaim in faraway Asia Minor, slides of which will
now be shown. (to Bloom) I suggest that you will do the handsome thing.
BLOOM
A penny in the pound.
(The image of the lake of Kinnereth with blurred cattle cropping in
silver haze is projected on the walL Moses Dlugacz, ferreteyed
albino, in blue dungarees, stands up in the gallery, holding in each
hand an orange citron and a pork kidney.)
DLUGACZ
(hoarsely) Bleibtreustrasse, Berlin, W. 13.
(J. J. O'Molloy steps on to a low plinth and holds the lapel of his
coat with solemnity. His face lengthens, grows pale and bearded,
with sunken eyes, the blotches of phthisis and hectic cheekbones of
John F. Taylor. He applies his handkerchief to his mouth and
scrutinises the galloping tide of rosepink blood.)
J.J.O'MOLLOY
(almost voicelessly) Excuse me. I am suffering from a severe chill, have
recently come from a sickbed. A few wellchosen words. (He assumes the
avine head, foxy moustache and proboscidal eloquence of Seymour
Bushe.) When the angel's book comes to be opened if aught that
the pensive bosom has inaugurated of soultransfigured and of
soultransfiguring deserves to live I say accord the prisoner at the bar the
sacred benefit of the doubt.
(A paper with something written on it is handed into court.)
BLOOM
(in court dress) Can give best references. Messrs Callan, Coleman. Mr
Wisdom Hely J. P. My old chief Joe Cuffe. Mr V. B. Dillon, ex lord mayor
of Dublin. I have moved in the charmed circle of the highest .... Queens of
Dublin society. (carelessly) I was just chatting this afternoon at the
viceregal lodge to my old pals, sir Robert and lady Ball, astronomer royal
at the levee. Sir Bob, I said ......
MRS YELVERTON BARRY
(in lowcorsaged opal balldress and elbowlength ivory gloves, wearing a
sabletrimmed brickquilted dolman, a comb of brilliants and panache of
osprey in her hair) Arrest him, constable. He wrote me an anonymous
letter in prentice backhand when my husband was in the North Riding of
Tipperary on the Munster circuit, signed James Lovebirch. He said that he
had seen from the gods my peerless globes as I sat in a box of the Theatre
Royal at a command performance of La Cigale. I deeply inflamed him, he
said. He made improper overtures to me to misconduct myself at half past
four p.m. on the following Thursday, Dunsink time. He offered to send me
through the post a work of fiction by Monsieur Paul de Kock, entitled The
Girl with the Three Pairs of Stays.
MRS BELLINGHAM
(in cap and seal coney mantle, wrapped up to the nose, steps out of her
brougham and scans through tortoiseshell quizzing-glasses 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 the ballstop in my bath
cistern were frozen. Subsequently he enclosed a bloom of edelweiss culled
on the heights, as he said, in my honour. I had it examined by a botanical
expert and elicited the information that it was a blossom of the homegrown
potato plant purloined from a forcingcase of the model farm.
MRS YELVERTON BARRY
Shame on him!
(A crowd of sluts and ragamuffins surges forward)
THE SLUTS AND RAGAMUFFINS
(screaming) Stop thief! Hurrah there, Bluebeard! Three cheers for Ikey
Mo!
SECOND WATCH
(produces handcuffs) Here are the darbies.
MRS BELLINGHAM
He addressed me in several handwritings with fulsome compliments as a
Venus in furs and alleged profound pity for my frostbound coachman
Palmer while in the same breath he expressed himself as envious of his
earflaps and fleecy sheepskins and of his fortunate proximity to my person,
when standing behind my chair wearing my livery and the armorial
bearings of the Bellingham escutcheon garnished sable, a buck's head
couped or. He lauded almost extravagantly my nether extremities, my
swelling calves in silk hose drawn up to the limit, and eulogised glowingly
my other hidden treasures in priceless lace which, he said, he could conjure
up. He urged me (stating that he felt it his mission in life to urge me) to
defile the marriage bed, to commit adultery at the earliest possible
opportunity.
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS
(in amazon costume, hard hat, jackboots cockspurred, vermilion waistcoat,
fawn musketeer gauntlets with braided 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 Phoenix park at the match All Ireland
versus the Rest of Ireland. My eyes, I know, shone divinely as I watched
Captain Slogger Dennehy of the Inniskillings win the final chukkar on his
darling cob Centaur. This plebeian Don Juan observed me from behind a
hackney car and sent me in double envelopes an obscene photograph, such
as are sold after dark on Paris boulevards, insulting to any lady. I have it
still. It represents a partially nude senorita, frail and lovely (his wife, as he
solemnly assured me, taken by him from nature), practising illicit
intercourse with a muscular torero, evidently a blackguard. He urged me to
do likewise, to misbehave, to sin with officers of the garrison. He implored
me to soil his letter in an unspeakable manner, to chastise him as he richly
deserves, to bestride and ride him, to give him a most vicious
horsewhipping.
MRS BELLINGHAM
Me too.
MRS YELVERTON BARRY
Me too.
(Several highly respectable Dublin ladies hold up improper letters
received from Bloom.)
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS
(stamps her jingling spurs in a sudden paroxysm of fury) I will, by the
God above me. I'll scourge the pigeonlivered cur as long as I can stand over
him. I'll flay him alive.
BLOOM
(his eyes closing, quails expectantly) Here? (he squirms) Again! (he pants
cringing) I love the danger.
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS
Very much so! I'll make it hot for you. I'll make you dance Jack Latten for
that.
MRS BELLINGHAM
Tan his breech well, the upstart! Write the stars and stripes on it!
MRS YELVERTON BARRY
Disgraceful! There's no excuse for him! A married man!
BLOOM
All these people. I meant only the spanking idea. A warm tingling glow
without effusion. Refined birching to stimulate the circulation.
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS
(laughs derisively) O, did you, my fine fellow? Well, by the living God,
you'll get the surprise of your life now, believe me, the most unmerciful
hiding a man ever bargained for. You have lashed the dormant tigress in my
nature into fury.
MRS BELLINGHAM
(shakes her muff and quizzing-glasses vindictively) Make him smart,
Hanna dear. Give him ginger. Thrash the mongrel within an inch of his
life. The cat-o'-nine-tails. Geld him. Vivisect him.
BLOOM
(shuddering, shrinking, joins his hands: with hangdog mien) O cold! O
shivery! It was your ambrosial beauty. Forget, forgive. Kismet. Let me off
this once. (he offers the other cheek)
MRS YELVERTON BARRY
(severely) Don't do so on any account, Mrs Talboys! He should be
soundly trounced!
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS
(unbuttoning her gauntlet violently) I'll do no such thing. Pigdog 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 huntingcrop savagely in the
air) Take down his trousers without loss of time. Come here, sir! Quick!
Ready?
BLOOM
(trembling, beginning to obey) The weather has been so warm.
(Davy Stephens, ringletted, passes with a bevy of barefoot
newsboys.)
DAVY STEPHENS
Messenger of the Sacred Heart and Evening Telegraph with Saint Patrick's
Day supplement. Containing the new addresses of all the cuckolds in
Dublin.
(The very reverend Canon O'Hanlon in cloth of gold cope elevates
and exposes a marble timepiece. Before him Father Conroy and the
reverend John Hughes S. J. bend low.)
THE TIMEPIECE
(unportalling)
Cuckoo.
Cuckoo.
Cuckoo.
(The brass quoits of a bed are heard to jingle.)
THE QUOITS
Jigjag. Jigajiga. Jigjag.
(A panel of fog rolls back rapidly, revealing rapidly in the jurybox
the faces of Martin Cunningham, foreman, silkhatted, Jack Power,
Simon Dedalus, Tom Kernan, Ned Lambert, John Henry Menton
Myles Crawford, Lenehan, Paddy Leonard, Nosey Flynn, M'Coy
and the featureless face of a Nameless One.)
THE NAMELESS ONE
Bareback riding. Weight for age. Gob, he organised her.
THE JURORS
(all their heads turned to his voice) Really?
THE NAMELESS ONE
(snarls) Arse over tip. Hundred shillings to five.
THE JURORS
(all their heads lowered in assent) Most of us thought as much.
FIRST WATCH
He is a marked man. Another girl's plait cut. Wanted: Jack the Ripper. A
thousand pounds reward.
SECOND WATCH
(awed, whispers) And in black. A mormon. Anarchist.
THE CRIER
(loudly) Whereas Leopold Bloom of no fixed abode is a wellknown
dynamitard, forger, bigamist, bawd and cuckold and a public nuisance to
the citizens of Dublin and whereas at this commission of assizes the most
honourable ....
(His Honour, sir Frederick Falkiner, recorder of Dublin, in judicial
garb of grey stone rises from the bench, stonebearded. He bears in
his arms an umbrella sceptre. From his forehead arise starkly the
Mosaic ramshorns.)
THE RECORDER
I will put an end to this white slave traffic and rid Dublin of this odious
pest. Scandalous! (he dons the black cap) Let him be taken, Mr Subsheriff,
from the dock where he now stands and detained in custody in Mountjoy
prison during His Majesty's pleasure and there be hanged by the neck until
he is dead and therein fail not at your peril or may the Lord have mercy on
your soul. Remove him.
(A black skullcap descends upon his head. The subsheriff Long
John Fanning appears, smoking a pungent Henry Clay.)
LONG JOHN FANNING
(scowls and calls with rich rolling utterance) Who'll hang Judas Iscariot?
(H. Rumbold, master barber, in a bloodcoloured jerkin 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 grappling hands, knobbed with knuckledusters.)
RUMBOLD
(to the recorder with sinister familiarity) Hanging Harry, your Majesty,
the Mersey terror. Five guineas a jugular. Neck or nothing.
(The bells of George's church toll slowly, loud dark iron.)
THE BELLS
Heigho! Heigho!
BLOOM
(desperately) Wait. Stop. Gulls. Good heart. I saw. Innocence. Girl in the
monkeyhouse. Zoo. Lewd chimpanzee. (breathlessly) Pelvic basin. Her
artless blush unmanned me. (overcome with emotion) I left the precincts.
(he turns to a figure in the crowd, appealing) Hynes, may I speak to you?
You know me. That three shillings you can keep. If you want a little
more .....
HYNES
(coldly) You are a perfect stranger.
SECOND WATCH
(points to the corner) The bomb is here.
FIRST WATCH
Infernal machine with a time fuse.
BLOOM
No, no. Pig's feet. I was at a funeral.
FIRST WATCH
(draws his truncheon) Liar!
(The beagle lifts his snout, showing the grey scorbutic face of
Paddy Dignam. He has gnawed all. He exhales a putrid carcasefed
breath. He grows to human size and shape. His dachshund coat
becomes a brown mortuary habit His green eye flashes bloodshot
Half of one ear, all the nose and both thumbs are ghouleaten.)
PADDY DIGNAM
(in a hollow voice) It is true. It was my funeral. Doctor Finucane
pronounced life extinct when I succumbed to the disease from natural
causes.
(He lifts his mutilated ashen face moonwards and bays
lugubriously.)
BLOOM
(in triumph) You hear?
PADDY DIGNAM
Bloom, I am Paddy Dignam's spirit. List, list, O list!
BLOOM
The voice is the voice of Esau.
SECOND WATCH
(blesses himself) How is that possible?
FIRST WATCH
It is not in the penny catechism.
PADDY DIGNAM
By metempsychosis. Spooks.
A VOICE
O rocks.
PADDY DIGNAM
(earnestly) Once I was in the employ of Mr J. H. Menton, solicitor,
commissioner for oaths and affidavits, of 27 Bachelor's Walk. Now I am
defunct, the wall of the heart hypertrophied. Hard lines. The poor wife was
awfully cut up. How 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, toadbellied, wrynecked, in a surplice and
bandanna nightcap, holding sleepily a staff twisted poppies.)
FATHER COFFEY
(yawns, then chants with a hoarse croak) Namine. Jacobs. Vobiscuits.
Amen.
JOHN O'CONNELL
(foghorns stormily through his megaphone) Dignam, Patrick T, deceased.
PADDY DIGNAM
(with pricked up ears, winces) Overtones. (he wriggles forward and
places an ear to the ground) My master's voice!
JOHN O'CONNELL
Burial docket letter number U. P. eightyfive thousand. Field seventeen.
House of Keys. Plot, one hundred and one.
(Paddy Dignam listens with visible effort, thinking, his tail
stiffpointcd, his ears cocked.)
PADDY DIGNAM
Pray for the repose of his soul.
(He worms down through a coalhole, 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 twocolumned machine.)
TOM ROCHFORD
(a hand to his breastbone, bows) Reuben J. A florin I find him. (he fixes
the manhole with a resolute stare) My turn now on. Follow me up to
Carlow.
(He executes a daredevil salmon leap in the air and is engulfed in
the coalhole. Two discs on the columns wobble, eyes of nought All
recedes. Bloom plodges forward again through the sump. Kisses
chirp amid the rifts of fog A piano sounds. He stands before a
lighted house, listening. The kisses, winging from their bowers fly
about him, twittering, warbling, cooing.)
THE KISSES
(warbling) Leo! (twittering) Icky licky micky sticky for Leo! (cooing)
Coo coocoo! Yummyyum, Womwom! (warbling) Big comebig! Pirouette!
Leopopold! (twittering) Leeolee! (warbling) O Leo!
(They rustle, flutter upon his garments, alight, bright giddy flecks,
silvery sequins.)
BLOOM
A man's touch. Sad music. Church music. Perhaps here.
(Zoe Higgins, a young whore in a sapphire slip, closed with three
bronze buckles, a slim black velvet fillet round her throat, nods,
trips down the steps and accosts him.)
ZOE
Are you looking for someone? He's inside with his friend.
BLOOM
Is this Mrs Mack's?
ZOE
No, eightyone. Mrs Cohen's. You might go farther and fare worse. Mother
Slipperslapper. (familiarly) She's on the job herself tonight with the vet her
tipster that gives her all the winners and pays for her son in Oxford.
Working overtime but her luck's turned today. (suspiciously) You're not
his father, are you?
BLOOM
Not I!
ZOE
You both in black. Has little mousey any tickles tonight?
(His skin, alert, feels her fingertips approach. A hand glides over
his left thigh.)
ZOE
How's the nuts?
BLOOM
Off side. Curiously they are on the right. Heavier, I suppose. One in a
million my tailor, Mesias, says.
ZOE
(in sudden alarm) You've a hard chancre.
BLOOM
Not likely.
ZOE
I feel it.
(Her hand slides into his left trouser pocket and brings out a hard
black shrivelled potato. She regards it and Bloom with dumb moist
lips.)
BLOOM
A talisman. Heirloom.
ZOE
For Zoe? For keeps? For being so nice, eh?
(She puts the potato greedily into a pocket then links his arm,
cuddling him with supple warmth. He smiles uneasily. Slowly, note
by note, oriental music is played. He gazes in the tawny crystal of
her eyes, ringed with kohol. His smile softens.)
ZOE
You'll know me the next time.
BLOOM
(forlornly) I never loved a dear gazelle but it was sure to ....
(Gazelles are leaping, feeding on the mountains. Near are lakes.
Round their shores file shadows black of cedargroves. Aroma rises,
a strong hairgrowth of resin. It burns, the orient, a sky of sapphire,
cleft by the bronze flight of eagles. Under it lies the womancity
nude, white, still, cool, in luxury. A fountain murmurs among
damask roses. Mammoth roses murmur of scarlet winegrapes. A
wine of shame, lust, blood exudes, strangely murmuring.)
ZOE
(murmuring singsong with the music, her odalisk lips lusciously smeared
with salve of swinefat and rosewater) Schorach ani wenowach, benoith
Hierushaloim.
BLOOM
(fascinated) I thought you were of good stock by your accent.
ZOE
And you know what thought did?
(She bites his ear gently with little goldstopped teeth, sending on
him a cloying breath of stale garlic The roses draw apart, disclose a
sepulchre of the gold of kings and their mouldering bones.)
BLOOM
(draws back, mechanically caressing her right bub with a flat awkward
hand) Are you a Dublin girl?
ZOE
(catches a stray hair deftly and twists it to her coil) No bloody fear. I'm
English. Have you a swaggerroot?
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
Go on. Make a stump speech out of it.
BLOOM
(in workman's corduroy overalls, black gansy with red floating tie and
apache cap) Mankind is incorrigible. Sir Walter Ralegh 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!
(Midnight chimes from distant steeples.)
THE CHIMES
Turn again, Leopold! Lord mayor of Dublin!
BLOOM
(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 bucaneering Vanderdeckens in their
phantom ship of finance .....
AN ELECTOR
Three times three for our future chief magistrate!
(The aurora borealis of the torchlight procession leaps.)
THE TORCHBEARERS
Hooray!
(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.)
LATE LORD MAYOR HARRINGTON
(in scarlet robe with mace, gold mayoral chain and large white silk scarf)
That alderman 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.
COUNCILLOR LORCAN SHERLOCK
Carried unanimously.
BLOOM
(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,
bugbears, 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 ...
(Prolonged applause. Venetian masts, maypoles and festal arches
spring up. A streamer bearing the legends Cead Mile 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 King's Own Scottish
Borderers, 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, his lordship the lord mayor of Cork, their worships the
mayors of Limerick, Galway, Sligo and Waterford, 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. After them march the guilds and trades and
trainbands with flying colours: coopers, bird fanciers, millwrights,
newspaper canvassers, law scriveners, masseurs, vintners,
trussmakers, chimneysweeps, lard refiners, tabinet and poplin
weavers, farriers, Italian warehousemen, church decorators,
bootjack manufacturers, undertakers, silk mercers, lapidaries,
salesmasters, corkcutters, assessors of fire losses, dyers and cleaners,
export bottlers, fellmongers, ticketwriters, heraldic seal engravers,
horse repository hands, bullion brokers, cricket and archery
outfitters, riddlemakers, egg and potato factors, hosiers and glovers,
plumbing contractors. After them march gentlemen of the
bedchamber, Black Rod, Deputy Garter, Gold Stick, the master of
horse, 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. Beefeaters
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 horse with long
flowing crimson tail, richly caparisoned, with golden headstall. 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.)
BLOOM'S BOYS
The wren, the wren,
The king of all birds,
Saint Stephen's his day
Was caught in the furze.
A BLACKSMITH
(murmurs) For the honour of God! And is that Bloom? He scarcely looks
thirtyone.
A PAVIOR AND FLAGGER
That's the famous Bloom now, the world's greatest reformer. Hats off!
(All uncover their heads. Women whisper eagerly.)
A MILLIONAIRESS
(richly) Isn't he simply wonderful?
A NOBLEWOMAN
(nobly) All that man has seen!
A FEMINIST
(masculinely) And done!
A BELLHANGER
A classic face! He has the forehead of a thinker.
(Bloom's weather. A sunburst appears in the northwest.)
THE BISHOP OF DOWN AND CONNOR
I here present your undoubted emperor-president and king-chairman, the
most serene and potent and very puissant ruler of this realm. God save
Leopold the First!
ALL
God save Leopold the First!
BLOOM
(in dalmatic and purple mantle, to the bishop of Down and Connor, with
dignity) Thanks, somewhat eminent sir.
WILLIAM, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH
(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?
BLOOM
(placing his right hand on his testicles, swears) So may the Creator deal
with me. All this I promise to do.
MICHAEL, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH
(pours a cruse of hairoil over Bloom's head) Gaudium magnum annuntio
vobis. Habemus carneficem. Leopold, Patrick, Andrew, David, George, be
thou anointed!
(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.)
THE PEERS
I do become your liege man of life and limb to earthly worship.
(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.)
BLOOM
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 moonblue 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!
BLOOM
(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.
(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.)
TOM KERNAN
You deserve it, your honour.
BLOOM
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.
THE CHAPEL OF FREEMAN TYPESETTERS
Hear! Hear!
JOHN WYSE NOLAN
There's the man that got away James Stephens.
A BLUECOAT SCHOOLBOY
Bravo!
AN OLD RESIDENT
You're a credit to your country, sir, that's what you are.
AN APPLEWOMAN
He's a man like Ireland wants.
BLOOM
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.
(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 fill from a ladder. A part of the
walls of Dublin, crowded with loyal sightseers, collapses.)
THE SIGHTSEERS
(dying) Morituri te salutant. (they die)
(A man in a brown macintosh springs up through a trapdoor. He
points an elongated finger at Bloom.)
THE MAN IN THE MACINTOSH
Don't you believe a word he says. That man is Leopold M'Intosh, the
notorious fireraiser. His real name is Higgins.
BLOOM
Shoot him! Dog of a christian! So much for M'Intosh!
(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 tramlines, 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), Loveletters 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.)
THE WOMEN
Little father! Little father!
THE BABES AND SUCKLINGS
Clap clap hands till Poldy comes home,
Cakes in his pocket for Leo alone.
(Bloom, bending down, pokes Baby Boardman gently in the
stomach.)
BABY BOARDMAN
(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 fit
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!
THE CITIZEN
(choked with emotion, brushes aside a tear in his emerald muffler) May the
good God bless him!
(The rams' horns sound for silence. The standard of Zion is
hoisted.)
BLOOM
(uncloaks impressively, revealing obesity, unrolls a paper and reads
solemnly) Aleph Beth Ghimel Daleth Hagadah Tephilim Kosher Yom
Kippur Hanukah Roschaschana Beni Brith Bar Mitzvah Mazzoth
Askenazim Meshuggah Talith.
(An official translation is read by Jimmy Henry, assistant town
clerk.)
JIMMY HENRY
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.
PADDY LEONARD
What am I to do about my rates and taxes?
BLOOM
Pay them, my friend.
PADDY LEONARD
Thank you.
NOSEY FLYNN
Can I raise a mortgage on my fire insurance?
BLOOM
(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.
J. J. O'MOLLOY
A Daniel did I say? Nay! A Peter O'Brien!
NOSEY FLYNN
Where do I draw the five pounds?
PISSER BURKE
For bladder trouble?
BLOOM
Acid. nit. hydrochlor. dil., 20 minims
Tinct. nux vom., 5 minims
Extr. taraxel. Iiq., 30 minims.
Aq. dis. ter in die.
CHRIS CALLINAN
What is the parallax of the subsolar ecliptic of Aldebaran?
BLOOM
Pleased to hear from you, Chris. K. II.
JOE HYNES
Why aren't you in uniform?
BLOOM
When my progenitor of sainted memory wore the uniform of the Austrian
despot in a dank prison where was yours?
BEN DOLLARD
Pansies?
BLOOM
Embellish (beautify) suburban gardens.
BEN DOLLARD
When twins arrive?
BLOOM
Father (pater, dad) starts thinking.
LARRY O'ROURKE
An eightday 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.
BLOOM
(coldly) You have the advantage of me. Lady Bloom accepts no presents.
CROFTON
This is indeed a festivity.
BLOOM
(solemnly) You call it a festivity. I call it a sacrament.
ALEXANDER KEYES
When will we have our own house of keys?
BLOOM
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 language with universal
brotherhood. No more patriotism of barspongers and dropsical impostors.
Free money, free rent, free love and a free lay church in a free lay state.
O'MADDEN BURKE
Free fox in a free henroost.
DAVY BYRNE
(yawning) Iiiiiiiiiaaaaaaach!
BLOOM
Mixed races and mixed marriage.
LENEHAN
What about mixed bathing?
(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.)
FATHER FARLEY
He is an episcopalian, an agnostic, an anythingarian seeking to overthrow
our holy faith.
MRS RIORDAN
(tears up her will) I'm disappointed in you! You bad man!
MOTHER GROGAN
(removes her boot to throw it at Bloom) You beast! You abominable
person!
NOSEY FLYNN
Give us a tune, Bloom. One of the old sweet songs.
BLOOM
(with rollicking humour)
I vowed that I never would leave her,
She turned out a cruel deceiver.
With my tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom.
HOPPY HOLOHAN
Good old Bloom! There's nobody like him after all.
PADDY LEONARD
Stage Irishman!
BLOOM
What railway opera is like a tramline in Gibraltar? The Rows of Casteele.
(Laughter.)
LENEHAN
Plagiarist! Down with Bloom!
THE VEILED SIBYL
(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
(winks at the bystanders) I bet she's a bonny lassie.
THEODORE PUREFOY
(in fishingcap and oilskin jacket) He employs a mechanical device to
frustrate the sacred ends of nature.
THE VEILED SIBYL
(stabs herself) My hero god! (she dies)
(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 gasovens, hanging themselves in stylish garters, leaping from
windows of different storeys.)
ALEXANDER J DOWIE
(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!
THE MOB
Lynch him! Roast him! He's as bad as Parnell was. Mr Fox!
(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, sheep's tails, odd pieces of fat.)
BLOOM
(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, sgeul i mbarr bata coisde gan
capall. I call on my old friend, Dr Malachi Mulligan, sex specialist, to give
medical testimony on my behalf.
DR MULLIGAN
(in motor jerkin, green motorgoggles 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.
(Bloom holds his high grade hat over his genital organs.)
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 CROTTHERS
I have examined the patient's urine. It is albuminoid. Salivation is
insufficient, the patellar reflex intermittent.
DR PUNCH COSTELLO
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 feebleminded 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 of pure
Irish manufacture 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, blank cheques, banknotes, jewels, treasury bonds, maturing
bills of exchange, I. O. U's, wedding rings, watchchains, lockets,
necklaces and bracelets are rapidly collected.)
BLOOM
O, I so want to be a mother.
MRS THORNTON
(in nursetender's gown) Embrace me tight, dear. You'll be soon over it.
Tight, dear.
(Bloom embraces her tightly and bears eight male yellow and white
children. They appear on a redcarpeted staircase adorned with
expensive plants. All the octuplets 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, Maindor’e,
Silversmile, Silberselber, Vifargent, Panargyros. 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, vicechairmen
of hotel syndicates.)
A VOICE
Bloom, are you the Messiah ben Joseph or ben David?
BLOOM
(darkly) You have said it.
BROTHER BUZZ
Then perform a miracle like Father Charles.
BANTAM LYONS
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 top
ledge by his eyelids, eats twelve dozen oysters (shells included),
heals several sufferers from king's 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, Kossuth, 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.)
BRINI, PAPAL NUNCIO
(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 begat 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.
A DEADHAND
(writes on the wall) Bloom is a cod.
CRAB
(in bushranger's kit) What did you do in the cattlecreep behind
Kilbarrack?
A FEMALE INFANT
(shakes a rattle) And under Ballybough bridge?
A HOLLYBUSH
And in the devil's glen?
BLOOM
(blushes furiously all over from frons to nates, three tears filling from his
left eye) Spare my past.
THE IRISH EVICTED TENANTS
(in bodycoats, kneebreeches, with Donnybrook fair shillelaghs) Sjambok
him!
(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 ARTANE ORPHANS
You hig, you hog, you dirty dog!
You think the ladies love you!
THE PRISON GATE GIRLS
If you see Kay
Tell him he may
See you in tea
Tell him from me.
HORNBLOWER
(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.
(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.)
MASTIANSKY AND CITRON
Belial! Laemlein of Istria, the false Messiah! Abulafia! Recant!
(George R Mesias, Bloom's tailor, appears, a tailor's goose under
his arm, presenting a bill)
MESIAS
To alteration one pair trousers eleven shillings.
BLOOM
(rubs his hands cheerfully) Just like old times. Poor Bloom!
(Reuben J Dodd, blackbearded Iscariot, bad shepherd, bearing on
his shoulders the drowned corpse of his son, approaches the
pillory.)
REUBEN J
(whispers hoarsely) The squeak is out. A split is gone for the flatties. Nip
the first rattler.
THE FIRE BRIGADE
Pflaap!
BROTHER BUZZ
(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.
(Lieutenant Myers of the Dublin Fire Brigade by general request
sets fire to Bloom. Lamentations.)
THE CITIZEN
Thank heaven!
BLOOM
(in a seamless garment marked I. H. S. stands upright amid phoenix
flames) Weep not for me, O daughters of Erin. (he exhibits to Dublin
reporters traces of burning)
(The daughters of Erin, in black garments, with large prayerbooks
and long lighted candles in their hands, kneel down and pray.)
THE DAUGHTERS OF ERIN
Kidney of Bloom, pray for us
Flower of the Bath, pray for us
Mentor of Menton, pray for us
Canvasser for the Freeman, pray for us
Charitable Mason, pray for us
Wandering Soap, pray for us
Sweets of Sin, pray for us
Music without Words, pray for us
Reprover of the Citizen, pray for us
Friend of all Frillies, pray for us
Midwife Most Merciful, pray for us
Potato Preservative against Plague and Pestilence, pray for us.
(A choir of six hundred voices, conducted by Vincent O'Brien,
sings the chorus from Handel's Messiah Alleluia for the Lord God
Omnipotent reigneth, accompanied on the organ by Joseph Glynn.
Bloom becomes mute, shrunken, carbonised.)
ZOE
Talk away till you're black in the face.
BLOOM
(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.
ZOE
(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!
BLOOM
(bitterly) Man and woman, love, what is it? A cork and bottle. I'm sick of
it. Let everything rip.
ZOE
(in sudden sulks) I hate a rotter that's insincere. Give a bleeding whore a
chance.
BLOOM
(repentantly) I am very disagreeable. You are a necessary evil. Where are
you from? London?
ZOE
(glibly) Hog's Norton where the pigs plays 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
(smiles, nods slowly) More, houri, more.
ZOE
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.
BLOOM
(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.
ZOE
(flattered) What the eye can't see the heart can't grieve for. (she pats him)
Come.
BLOOM
Laughing witch! The hand that rocks the cradle.
ZOE
Babby!
BLOOM
(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 lolling and lisping) One two tlee: tlee tlwo tlone.
THE BUCKLES
Love me. Love me not. Love me.
ZOE
Silent means consent. (With little parted talons she captures his hand, her
forefinger giving to his palm the passtouch of secret monitor, luring him to
doom.) Hot hands cold gizzard.
(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.)
THE MALE BRUTES
(exhaling sulphur of rut and dung and ramping in their loosebox, faintly
roaring, their drugged heads swaying to and fro) Good!
(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
(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
Ladies first, gentlemen after.
(She crosses the threshold. He hesitates. She turns and, holding out
her hands, draws him over. He hops. On the antlered 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 flung open. A man in purple shirt and grey trousers,
brownsocked, passes with an ape's 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 tapestried with a paper
of yewfronds and clear glades. In the grate is spread a screen of
peacock feathers. Lynch squats crosslegged on the hearthrug 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 corsetlace hangs slightly below her jacket Lynch indicates
mockingly the couple at the piano.)
KITTY
(coughs behind her hand) She's a bit imbecillic. (she signs with a waggling
forefinger) Blemblem. (Lynch lifts up her skirt and white petticoat with his
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!
ZOE
More limelight, Charley. (she goes to the chandelier and turns the gas full
cock)
KITTY
(peers at the gasjet) What ails it tonight?
LYNCH
(deeply) Enter a ghost and hobgoblins.
ZOE
Clap on the back for Zoe.
(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 sofacorner, her limp
forearm pendent over the bolster, listening. A heavy stye droops
over her sleepy eyelid.)
KITTY
(hiccups again with a kick of her horsed foot) O, excuse!
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 Coela 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 the alrightness of 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
(with saturnine spleen) Ba! It is because it is. Woman's reason. Jewgreek is
greekjew. Extremes meet. Death is the highest form of life. Ba!
STEPHEN
You remember fairly accurately all my errors, boasts, mistakes. How long
shall I continue to close my eyes to disloyalty? Whetstone!
THE CAP
Ba!
STEPHEN
Here's another for you. (he frowns) The reason is because the
fundamental and the dominant are separated by the greatest possible
interval which ....
THE CAP
Which? Finish. You can't.
STEPHEN
(with an effort) Interval which. Is the greatest possible ellipse. Consistent
with. The ultimate return. The octave. Which.
THE CAP
Which?
(Outside the gramophone begins to blare The Holy City.)
STEPHEN
(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!
LYNCH
(with a mocking whinny of laughter grins at Bloom and Zoe Higgins)
What a learned speech, eh?
ZOE
(briskly) God help your head, he knows more than you have forgotten.
(With obese stupidity Florry Talbot regards Stephen.)
FLORRY
They say the last day is coming this summer.
KITTY
No!
ZOE
(explodes in laughter) Great unjust God!
FLORRY
(offended) Well, it was in the papers about Antichrist. O, my foot's
tickling.
(Ragged barefoot newsboys, jogging a wagtail kite, patter past,
yelling.)
THE NEWSBOYS
Stop press edition. Result of the rockinghorse races. Sea serpent in the
royal canal. Safe arrival of Antichrist.
(Stephen turns and sees Bloom.)
STEPHEN
A time, times and half a time.
(Reuben I Antichrist, wandering jew, a clutching hand open on his
spine, stumps forward. Across his loins is slung a pilgrim's 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.)
ALL
What?
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 primigSne! (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 sont faits! (the planets rush
together, uttering crepitant cracks) Rien va plus! (The planets, buoyant
balloons, sail swollen up and away. He springs off into vacuum.)
FLORRY
(sinking into torpor, crossing herself secretly) The end of the world!
(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 GRAMOPHONE
Jerusalem!
Open your gates and sing
Hosanna ....
(A rocket rushes up the sky and bursts. A white star fills from it,
proclaiming the consummation of all things and second coming of
Elijah. Along an infinite invisible tightrope taut from zenith to nadir
the End of the World, a twoheaded octopus in gillie's kilts, busby
and tartan filibegs, whirls through the murk, head over heels, in the
form of the Three Legs of Man.)
THE END OF THE WORLD
(with a Scotch accent) Wha'll dance the keel row, the keel row, the keel
row?
(Over the possing drift and choking breathcoughs, Elijah's voice,
harsh as a corncrake's, jars on high. Perspiring in a loose lawn
surplice with funnel sleeves he is seen, vergerfaced, above a rostrum
about which the banner of old glory is draped. He thumps the
parapet.)
ELIJAH
No yapping, if you please, in this booth. Jake Crane, Creole Sue, Dove
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) Whorusalaminyourhighhohhhh... (the disc rasps
gratingly against the needle)
THE THREE WHORES
(covering their ears, squawk) Ahhkkk!
ELIJAH
(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 aint
saying nothing.
KITTY-KATE
I forgot myself. In a weak moment I erred and did what I did on
Constitution hill. I was confirmed by the bishop and enrolled in the brown
scapular. My mother's sister married a Montmorency. It was a working
plumber was my ruination when I was pure.
ZOE-FANNY
I let him larrup it into me for the fun of it.
FLORRY-TERESA
It was in consequence of a portwine beverage on top of Hennessy's three
star. I was guilty with Whelan when he slipped into the bed.
STEPHEN
In the beginning was the word, in the end the world without end. Blessed be
the eight beatitudes.
(The beatitudes, Dixon, Madden, Crotthers, Costello, Lenehan,
Bannon, Mulligan and Lynch in white surgical students' gowns,
four abreast, goosestepping, tramp fist past in noisy marching)
THE BEATITUDES
(incoherently) Beer beef battledog buybull businum barnum buggerum
bishop.
LYSTER
(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's attire, shinily
laundered, his locks in curlpapers. He leads John Eglinton who
wears a mandarin's kimono of Nankeen yellow, lizardlettered, and
a high pagoda hat.)
BEST
(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.
JOHN EGLINTON
(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.
(In the cone of the searchlight behind the coalscuttle, ollave,
holyeyed, the bearded figure of Mananaun MacLir broods, chin on
knees. He rises slowly. A cold seawind blows from his druid mouth.
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.)
MANANAUN MACLIR
(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, darkhidden Father! (He smites with his
bicycle pump the crayfish in his left hand. On its cooperative 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.
(A skeleton judashand strangles the light. The green light wanes to
mauve. The gasjet wails whistling.)
THE GASJET
Pooah! Pfuiiiiiii!
(Zoe runs to the chandelier and, crooking her leg, adjusts the
mantle.)
ZOE
Who has a fag as I'm here?
LYNCH
(tossing a cigarette on to the table) Here.
ZOE
(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 beautyspot of my behind?
LYNCH
I'm not looking
ZOE
(makes sheep's eyes) No? You wouldn't do a less thing. Would you suck a
lemon?
(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
(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.
BLOOM
Granpapachi. But .....
VIRAG
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?
BLOOM
She is rather lean.
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
(an elbow resting in a hand, a forefinger against his cheek) She seems sad.
VIRAG
(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 Columbus. 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
(regretfully) When you come out without your gun.
VIRAG
We can do you all brands, mild, medium and strong. Pay your money, take
your choice. How happy could you be with either...
BLOOM
With ...?
VIRAG
(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.
BLOOM
The stye I dislike.
VIRAG
(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 Ichthyosauros. 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.
BLOOM
(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 ...
VIRAG
(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 S santa. Tara. Tara. (aside) He will surely
remember.
BLOOM
Rosemary also did I understand you to say or willpower over parasitic
tissues. Then nay no I have an inkling. The touch of a deadhand cures.
Mnemo?
VIRAG
(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 1886 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 gussetted
knickers, closed? Or, put we the case, those complicated combinations,
camiknickers? (he crows derisively) Keekeereekee!
(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
morrow as now was be past yester.
VIRAG
(prompts in a pig's whisper) Insects of the day spend their brief existence
in reiterated coition, lured by the smell of the inferiorly pulchritudinous
fumale possessing extendified pudendal nerve 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! (he blows into Bloom's ear) Buzz!
BLOOM
Bee or bluebottle too other day butting shadow on wall dazed self then me
wandered dazed down shirt good job I ....
VIRAG
(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 his head with cackling raillery) Jocular. With
my eyeglass in my ocular. (he sneezes) Amen!
BLOOM
(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 contradicts. 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.
VIRAG
(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 the known ....
BLOOM
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.
VIRAG
(head askew, arches his back and hunched wingshoulders, peers at the
moth out of blear bulged eyes, points a horning claw and cries) Who's
moth moth? Who's dear Gerald? Dear Ger, that you? O dear, he is 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) Puss puss puss puss! (he sighs, draws back and
stares sideways down with dropping underjaw) Well, well. He doth rest
anon. (he snaps his jaws suddenly on the air)
THE MOTH
I'm a tiny tiny thing
Ever flying in the spring
Round and round a ringaring.
Long ago I was a king
Now I do this kind of thing
On the wing, on the wing!
Bing!
(he rushes against the mauve shade, flapping noisily)
Pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty petticoats.
(From left upper entrance with two gliding 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 Jacob's 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.)
HENRY
(in a low dulcet voice, touching the strings of his guitar) There is a flower
that bloometh.
(Virag truculent, his jowl set, stares at the lamp. Grave Bloom
regards Zoe's neck. Henry gallant turns with pendant dewlap to the
piano.)
STEPHEN
(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.
(Almidano Artifoni holds out a batonroll of music with vigorous
moustachework.)
ARTIFONI
Ci rifletta. Lei rovina tutto.
FLORRY
Sing us something. Love's old sweet song.
STEPHEN
No voice. I am a most finished artist. Lynch, did I show you the letter about
the lute?
FLORRY
(smirking) The bird that can sing and won't sing.
(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.)
PHILIP SOBER
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 DRUNK
(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? (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?
FLORRY
And the song?
STEPHEN
Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.
FLORRY
Are you out of Maynooth? You're like someone I knew once.
STEPHEN
Out of it now. (to himself) Clever.
PHILIP DRUNK AND PHILIP SOBER
(their lawnmowers purring with a rigadoon of grasshalms) Clever ever.
Out of it out of it. By the bye have you the book, the thing, the ashplant?
Yes, there it, yes. Cleverever outofitnow. Keep in condition. Do like us.
ZOE
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.
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 grapses 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!
LYNCH
I hope you gave the good father a penance. Nine glorias for shooting a
bishop.
ZOE
(spouts walrus smoke through her nostrils) He couldn't get a connection.
Only, you know, sensation. A dry rush.
BLOOM
Poor man!
ZOE
(lightly) Only for what happened him.
BLOOM
How?
VIRAG
(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 Iacchia, 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.
KITTY
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.
PHILIP DRUNK
(gravely) Qui vous a mis dans cette fichue position, Philippe?
PHILIP SOBER
(gaily) C'etait le sacr’ pigeon, Philippe.
(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 whore's shoulders. Lynch puts on her hat. She whips it off.)
LYNCH
(laughs) And to such delights has Metchnikoff inoculated anthropoid apes.
FLORRY
(nods) Locomotor ataxy.
ZOE
(gaily) O, my dictionary.
LYNCH
Three wise virgins.
VIRAG
(agueshaken, profuse yellow spawn foaming over his bony epileptic lips)
She sold lovephiltres, whitewax, orangeflower. 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!
(Ben Jumbo Dollard, rubicund, musclebound, hairynostrilled,
hugebearded, cabbageeared, shaggychested, shockmaned, fat-
papped, stands forth, his loins and genitals tightened into a pair
of black bathing bagslops.)
BEN DOLLARD
(nakkering castanet bones in his huge padded paws, yodels jovially in base
barreltone) When love absorbs my ardent soul.
(The virgins Nurse Callan and Nurse Quigley burst through the
ringkeepers and the ropes and mob him with open arms.)
THE VIRGINS
(gushingly) Big Ben! Ben my Chree!
A VOICE
Hold that fellow with the bad breeches.
BEN DOLLARD
(smites his thigh in abundant laughter) Hold him now.
HENRY
(caressing on his breast a severed female head, murmurs) Thine heart,
mine love. (he plucks his lutestrings) When first I saw ...
VIRAG
(sloughing his skins, his multitudinous plumage moulting) Rats! (he
yawns, showing a coalblack throat, and closes his jaws by an upward push
of his parchmentroll) After having said which I took my departure.
Farewell. Fare thee well. Dreck!
(Henry Flower combs his moustache and beard rapidly with a
pocketcomb and gives a cow's lick to his hair. Steered by his rapier,
he glides to the door, his wild harp 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.)
THE FLYBILL
K. II. Post No Bills. Strictly confidential. Dr Hy Franks.
HENRY
All is lost now.
(Virag unscrews his head in a trice and holds it under his arm.)
VIRAG'S HEAD
Quack!
(Exeunt severally.)
STEPHEN
(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 Arius Heresiarchus. The agony in the closet.
LYNCH
All one and the same God to her.
STEPHEN
(devoutly) And sovereign Lord of all things.
FLORRY
(to Stephen) I'm sure you're a spoiled priest. Or a monk.
LYNCH
He is. A cardinal's son.
STEPHEN
Cardinal sin. Monks of the screw.
(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 large wave gestures and proclaims with
bloated pomp:)
THE CARDINAL
Conservio lies captured
He lies in the lowest dungeon
With manacles and chains around his limbs
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, arms akimbo, and sings with broad rollicking humour:)
O, the poor little fellow
Hihihihihis 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.
(A multitude of midges swarms white 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.
(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
trainbearers.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!
(The trick doorhandle turns.)
THE DOORHANDLE
Theeee!
ZOE
The devil is in that door.
(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
(sniffs his hair briskly) Hmmm! Thank your mother for the rabbits. I'm
very fond of what I like.
BLOOM
(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?
ZOE
(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!
(She tosses a piece. With an adroit snap he catches it and bites it
through with a crack.)
KITTY
(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.
BLOOM
(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!
(A male cough and tread are heard passing through the mist
outside. Bloom's features relax. He places a hand in his waistcoat,
posing calmly. Zoe offers him chocolate.)
BLOOM
(solemnly) Thanks.
ZOE
Do as you're bid. Here!
(A firm heelclacking tread is heard on the stairs.)
BLOOM
(takes the chocolate) Aphrodisiac? Tansy and pennyroyal. But I bought 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.
(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 large pendant beryl eardrops.)
BELLA
My word! I'm all of a mucksweat.
(She glances round her at the couples Then her eyes rest on Bloom
with hard insistence. Her large fan winnows wind towards her
heated faceneck and embonpoint. Her falcon eyes glitter.)
THE FAN
(flirting quickly, then slowly) Married, I see.
BLOOM
Yes. Partly, I have mislaid.....
THE FAN
(half opening, then closing) And the missus is master. Petticoat
government.
BLOOM
(looks down with a sheepish grin) That is so.
THE FAN
(folding together, rests against her left eardrop) Have you forgotten me?
BLOOM
Nes. Yo.
THE FAN
(folded akimbo against her waist) Is me her was you dreamed before? Was
then she him you us since knew? Am all them and the same now me?
(Bella approaches, gently tapping with the fan.)
BLOOM
(wincing) Powerful being. In my eyes read that slumber which women
love.
THE FAN
(tapping) We have met. You are mine. It is fate.
BLOOM
(cowed) Exuberant female. Enormously I desiderate your domination. I
am exhausted, abandoned, no more young. I stand, so to speak, with an
unposted letter bearing the extra regulation fee before the too late box of the
general postoffice of human life. The door and window open at a right
angle cause a draught of thirtytwo feet per second according to the law of
falling bodies. I have felt this instant a twinge of sciatica in my left glutear
muscle. It runs in our family. Poor dear papa, a widower, was a regular
barometer from it. He believed in animal heat. A skin of tabby lined his
winter waistcoat. Near the end, remembering king David and the Sunamite,
he shared his bed with Athos, faithful after death. A dog's spittle as you
probably.... (he winces) Ah!
RICHIE GOULDING
(bagweighted, passes the door) Mocking is catch. Best value in Dub. Fit for
a prince's. Liver and kidney.
THE FAN
(tapping) All things end. Be mine. Now,
BLOOM
(undecided) All now? I should not have parted with my talisman. Rain,
exposure at dewfall on the searocks, a peccadillo at my time of life. Every
phenomenon has a natural cause.
THE FAN
(points downwards slowly) You may.
BLOOM
(looks downwards and perceives her unfastened bootlace) We are
observed.
THE FAN
(points downwards quickly) You must.
BLOOM
(with desire, with reluctance) I can make a true black knot. Learned when
I served my time and worked the mail order line for Kellett's. Experienced
hand. Every knot says a lot. Let me. In courtesy. I knelt once before today.
(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, aging, bends over her hoof and with
gentle fingers draws out and in her laces.)
BLOOM
(murmurs lovingly) To be a shoefitter in Manfield'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 impossibly
small, of Clyde Road ladies. Even their wax model Raymonde I visited daily
to admire her cobweb hose and stick of rhubarb toe, as worn in Paris.
THE HOOF
Smell my hot goathide. Feel my royal weight.
BLOOM
(crosslacing) Too tight?
THE HOOF
If you bungle, Handy Andy, I'll kick your football for you.
BLOOM
Not to lace the wrong eyelet as I did the night of the bazaar dance. Bad
luck. Hook in wrong tache of her .... person you mentioned. That night she
met.... Now!
(He knots the lace. Bella places her foot on the floor. Bloom raises
his head. Her heavy face, her eyes strike him in midbrow. His eyes
grow dull, darker and pouched, his nose thickens.)
BLOOM
(mumbles) Awaiting your further orders we remain, gentlemen, ....
BELLO
(with a hard basilisk stare, in a baritone voice) Hound of dishonour!
BLOOM
(infatuated) Empress!
BELLO
(his heavy cheekchops sagging) Adorer of the adulterous rump!
BLOOM
(plaintively) Hugeness!
BELLO
Dungdevourer!
BLOOM
(with sinews semiflexed) Magmagnificence!
BELLO
Down! (he taps her on the shoulder with his fan) Incline feet forward!
Slide left foot one pace back! You will fall. You are falling. On the hands
down!
BLOOM
(her eyes upturned in the sign of admiration, closing, yaps) Truffles!
(With a piercing epileptic cry she sinks on all fours, grunting,
snuffling, rooting at his feet: then lies, shamming dead, with eyes
shut tight, trembling eyelids, bowed upon the ground in the attitude
of most excellent master.)
BELLO
(with bobbed hair, purple gills, fit moustache rings round his shaven
mouth, in mountaineer's puttees, green silverbuttoned coat, sport skirt and
alpine hat with moorcock's feather, his hands stuck deep in his breeches
pockets, places his heel on her neck and grinds it in) Footstool! Feel my
entire weight. Bow, bondslave, before the throne of your despot's glorious
heels so glistening in their proud erectness.
BLOOM
(enthralled, bleats) I promise never to disobey.
BELLO
(laughs loudly) Holy smoke! You little know what's in store for you. I'm
the Tartar to settle your little lot and break you in! I'll bet Kentucky
cocktails all round I shame it out of you, old son. Cheek me, I dare you. If
you do tremble in anticipation of heel discipline to be inflicted in gym
costume.
(Bloom creeps under the sofa and peers out through the fringe.)
ZOE
(widening her slip to screen her) She's not here.
BLOOM
(closing her eyes) She's not here.
FLORRY
(hiding her with her gown) She didn't mean it, Mr Bello. She'll be good,
sir.
KITTY
Don't be too hard on her, Mr Bello. Sure you won't, ma'amsir.
BELLO
(coaxingly) Come, ducky dear, I want a word with you, darling, just to
administer correction. Just a little heart to heart talk, sweety. (Bloom puts
out her timid head) There's a good girly now. (Bello grabs her hair
violently and drags her forward) I only want to correct you for your own
good on a soft safe spot. How's that tender behind? O, ever so gently, pet.
Begin to get ready.
BLOOM
(fainting) Don't tear my ...
BELLO
(savagely) The nosering, the pliers, the bastinado, the hanging hook, the
knout I'll make you kiss while the flutes play like the Nubian slave of old.
You're in for it this time! I'll make you remember me for the balance of
your natural life. (his forehead veins swollen, his face congested) I shall sit
on your ottoman saddleback every morning after my thumping good
breakfast of Matterson's fat hamrashers and a bottle of Guinness's porter.
(he belches) And suck my thumping good Stock Exchange cigar while I
read the Licensed Victualler's Gazette. Very possibly I shall have you
slaughtered and skewered in my stables and enjoy a slice of you with crisp
crackling from the baking tin basted and baked like sucking pig with rice
and lemon or currant sauce. It will hurt you. (He twists her arm. Bloom
squeals, turning turtle.)
BLOOM
Don't be cruel, nurse! Don't!
BELLO
(twisting) Another!
BLOOM
(screams) O, it's hell itself! Every nerve in my body aches like mad!
BELLO
(shouts) Good, by the rumping jumping general! That's the best bit of
news I heard these six weeks. Here, don't keep me waiting, damn you! (he
slaps her face)
BLOOM
(whimpers) You're after hitting me. I'll tell ....
BELLO
Hold him down, girls, till I squat on him.
ZOE
Yes. Walk on him! I will.
FLORRY
I will. Don't be greedy.
KITTY
No, me. Lend him to me.
(The brothel cook, Mrs Keogh, wrinkled, greybearded, in a greasy
bib, men's grey and green socks and brogues, floursmeared, a
rollingpin stuck with raw pastry in her bare red arm and hand,
appears at the door.)
MRS KEOGH
(ferociously) Can I help?
(They hold and pinion Bloom.)
BELLO
(squats with a grunt on Bloom's upturned face, puffing cigarsmoke,
nursing a fat leg) I see Keating Clay is elected vicechairman of the
Richmond asylum and by the by Guinness's preference shares are at sixteen
three quaffers. Curse me for a fool that didn't buy that lot Craig and
Gardner told me about. Just my infernal luck, curse it. And that
Goddamned outsider Throwaway at twenty to one. (he quenches his cigar
angrily on Bloom's ear) Where's that Goddamned cursed ashtray?
BLOOM
(goaded, buttocksmothered) O! O! Monsters! Cruel one!
BELLO
Ask for that every ten minutes. Beg. Pray for it as you never prayed before.
(he thrusts out a figged fist and foul cigar) Here, kiss that. Both. Kiss. (he
throws a leg astride and, pressing with horseman's knees, calls in a hard
voice) Gee up! A cockhorse to Banbury cross. I'll ride him for the Eclipse
stakes. (he bends sideways and squeezes his mount's testicles roughly,
shouting) Ho! Off we pop! I'll nurse you in proper fashion. (he horserides
cockhorse, leaping in the, in the saddle) The lady goes a pace a pace and
the coachman goes a trot a trot and the gentleman goes a gallop a gallop a
gallop a gallop.
FLORRY
(pulls at Bello) Let me on him now. You had enough. I asked before you.
ZOE
(pulling at Florry) Me. Me. Are you not finished with him yet, suckeress?
BLOOM
(stifling) Can't.
BELLO
Well, I'm not. Wait. (he holds in his breath) Curse it. Here. This bung's
about burst. (he uncorks himself behind: then, contorting his features, farts
stoutly) Take that! (he recorks himself) Yes, by Jingo, sixteen three
quarters.
BLOOM
(a sweat breaking out over him) Not man. (he sniffs) Woman.
BELLO
(stands up) No more blow hot and cold. What you longed for has come to
pass. Henceforth you are unmanned and mine in earnest, a thing under the
yoke. Now for your punishment frock. You will shed your male garments,
you understand, Ruby Cohen? and don the shot silk luxuriously rustling
over head and shoulders. And quickly too!
BLOOM
(shrinks) Silk, mistress said! O crinkly! scrapy! Must I tiptouch it with my
nails?
BELLO
(points to his whores) As they are now so will you be, wigged, singed,
perfumesprayed, ricepowdered, with smoothshaven armpits. Tape
measurements will be taken next your skin. You will be laced with cruel
force into vicelike corsets of soft dove coutille with whalebone busk to the
diamondtrimmed pelvis, the absolute outside edge, while your figure,
plumper than when at large, will be restrained in nettight frocks, pretty two
ounce petticoats and fringes and things stamped, of course, with my
houseflag, creations of lovely lingerie for Alice and nice scent for Alice.
Alice will feel the pullpull.Martha and Mary will be a little chilly at first in
such delicate thighcasing but the frilly flimsiness of lace round your bare
knees will remind you .....
BLOOM
(charming soubrette with dauby cheeks, mustard hair and large male
hands and nose, leering mouth) I tried her things on only twice, a small
prank, in Holles street. When we were hard up I washed them to save the
laundry bill. My own shirts I turned. It was the purest thrift.
BELLO
(jeers) Little jobs that make mother pleased, eh? And showed off
coquettishly in your domino at the mirror behind closedrawn 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
trunkleg naughties all split up the stitches at her last rape that Mrs Miriam
Dandrade sold you from the Shelbourne hotel, eh?
BLOOM
Miriam. Black. Demimondaine.
BELLO
(guffaws) Christ Almighty it's too tickling, this! You were a nicelooking
Miriam when you clipped off your backgate hairs and lay swooning in the
thing across the bed as Mrs Dandrade about to be violated by lieutenant
Smythe-Smythe, Mr Philip Augustus Blockwell M. P., signor Laci Daremo,
the robust tenor, blueeyed Bert, the liftboy, Henri Fleury of Gordon
Bennett fame, Sheridan, the quadroon Croesus, the varsity wetbob eight
from old Trinity, Ponto, her splendid Newfoundland and Bobs, dowager
duchess of Manorhamilton. (he guffaws again) Christ, wouldn't it make a
Siamese cat laugh?
BLOOM
(her hands and features working) It was Gerald converted me to be a true
corsetlover when I was female impersonator in the High School play Vice
Versa. It was dear Gerald. He got that kink, fascinated by sister's stays.
Now dearest Gerald uses pinky greasepaint and gilds his eyelids. Cult of
the beautiful.
BELLO
(with wicked glee) Beautiful! Give us a breather! When you took your seat
with womanish care, lifting your billowy flounces, on the smoothworn
throne.
BLOOM
Science. To compare the various joys we each enjoy. (earnestly) And really
it's better the position .... because often I used to wet ....
BELLO
(sternly) No insubordination! The sawdust is there in the corner for you. I
gave you strict instructions, didn't I? Do it standing, sir! I'll teach you to
behave like a jinkleman! If I catch a trace on your swaddles. Aha! By the
ass of the Dorans you'll find I'm a martinet. The sins of your past are rising
against you. Many. Hundreds.
THE SINS OF THE PAST
(in a medley of voices) He went through a form of clandestine marriage
with at least one woman in the shadow of the Black church. Unspeakable
messages he telephoned mentally to Miss Dunn at an address in D'Olier
street while he presented himself indecently to the instrument in the callbox.
By word and deed he frankly encouraged a nocturnal strumpet to deposit
fecal and other matter in an unsanitary outhouse attached to empty
premises. In five public conveniences he wrote pencilled messages offering
his nuptial partner to all strongmembered males. And by the offensively
smelling vitriol works did he not pass night after night by loving courting
couples to see if and what and how much he could see? Did he not lie in
bed, the gross boar, gloating over a nauseous fragment of wellused toilet
paper presented to him by a nasty harlot, stimulated by gingerbread and a
postal order?
BELLO
(whistles loudly) Say! What was the most revolting piece of obscenity in all
your career of crime? Go the whole hog. Puke it out! Be candid for once.
(Mute inhuman faces throng forward, leering, vanishing, gibbering,
Booloohoom, Poldy Kock, Bootlaces a penny Cassidy's hag, blind
stripling, Larry rhinoceros, the girl, the woman, the whore, the
other the, lane the.)
BLOOM
Don't ask me! Our mutual faith. Pleasants street. I only thought the half of
the ... I swear on my sacred oath ....
BELLO
(peremptorily) Answer. Repugnant wretch! I insist on knowing. Tell me
something to amuse me, smut or a bloody good ghoststory or a line of
poetry, quick, quick, quick! Where? How? What time? With how many? I
give you just three seconds. One! Two! Thr .....
BLOOM
(docile, gurgles) I rererepugnosed in rerererepugnant
BELLO
(imperiously) O, get out, you skunk! Hold your tongue! Speak when
you're spoken to.
BLOOM
(bows) Master! Mistress! Mantamer!
(He lifts his arms. His bangle bracelets fill.)
BELLO
(satirically) By day you will souse and bat our smelling underclothes also
when we ladies are unwell, and swab out our latrines with dress pinned up
and a dishclout tied to your tail. Won't that be nice? (he places a ruby ring
on her finger) And there now! With this ring I thee own. Say, thank you,
mistress.
BLOOM
Thank you, mistress.
BELLO
You will make the beds, get my tub ready, empty the pisspots in the different
rooms, including old Mrs Keogh's the cook's, a sandy one. Ay, and rinse
the seven of them well, mind, or lap it up like champagne. Drink me piping
hot. Hop! You will dance attendance or I'll lecture you on your misdeeds,
Miss Ruby, and spank your bare bot right well, miss, with the hairbrush.
You'll be taught the error of your ways. At night your wellcreamed
braceletted hands will wear fortythreebutton gloves newpowdered with talc
and having delicately scented fingertips. For such favours knights of old
laid down their lives. (he chuckles) My boys will be no end charmed to see
you so ladylike, the colonel, above all, when they come here the night before
the wedding to fondle my new attraction in gilded heels. First I'll have a go
at you myself. A man I know on the turf named Charles Alberta Marsh (I
was in bed with him just now and another gentleman out of the Hanaper
and Petty Bag office) is on the lookout for a maid of all work at a short
knock. Swell the bust. Smile. Droop shoulders. What offers? (he points)
For that lot. Trained by owner to fetch and carry, basket in mouth. (he
bares his arm and plunges it elbowdeep in Bloom's vulva) There's fine
depth for you! What, boys? That give you a hardon? (he shoves his arm in
a bidder's face) Here wet the deck and wipe it round!
A BIDDER
A florin.
(Dillon's lacquey rings his handbell.)
THE LACQUEY
Barang!
A VOICE
One and eightpence too much.
CHARLES ALBERTA MARSH
Must be virgin. Good breath. Clean.
BELLO
(gives a rap with his gavel) Two bar. Rockbottom figure and cheap at the
price. Fourteen hands high. Touch and examine shis points. Handle hrim.
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
stockgetter, 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 C on Bloom's croup) So! Warranted Cohen!
What advance on two bob, gentlemen?
A DARKVISAGED MAN
(in disguised accent) Hoondert punt sterlink.
VOICES
(subdued) For the Caliph. Haroun Al Raschid.
BELLO
(gaily) Right. Let them all come. The scanty, daringly short skirt, riding up
at the knee to show a peep of white pantalette, is a potent weapon and
transparent stockings, emeraldgartered, with the long straight seam trailing
up beyond the knee, appeal to the better instincts of the blase man about
town. Learn the smooth mincing walk on four inch Louis Quinze heels, the
Grecian bend with provoking croup, the thighs fluescent, knees modestly
kissing. Bring all your powers of fascination to bear on them. Pander to
their Gomorrahan vices.
BLOOM
(bends his blushing face into his armpit and simpers with forefinger in
mouth) O, I know what you're hinting at now!
BELLO
What else are you good for, an impotent thing like you? (he stoops and,
peering, pokes with his fan rudely under the fat suet folds of Bloom's
haunches) Up! Up! Manx cat! What have we here? Where's your curly
teapot gone to or who docked it on you, cockyolly? Sing, birdy, sing. It's as
limp as a boy of six's doing his pooly behind a cart. Buy a bucket or sell
your pump. (loudly) Can you do a man's job?
BLOOM
Eccles street....
BELLO
(sarcastically) I wouldn't hurt your feelings for the world but there's a
man of brawn in possession there. The tables are turned, my gay young
fellow! He is something like a fullgrown outdoor man. Well for you, you
muff, if you had that weapon with knobs and lumps and warts all over it.
He shot his bolt, I can tell you! Foot to foot, knee to knee, belly to belly,
bubs to breast! He's no eunuch. A shock of red hair he has sticking out of
him behind like a furzebush! Wait for nine months, my lad! Holy ginger,
it's kicking and coughing up and down in her guts already! That makes
you wild, don't it? Touches the spot? (he spits in contempt) Spittoon!
BLOOM
I was indecently treated, I ..... Inform the police. Hundred pounds.
Unmentionable. I ....
BELLO
Would if you could, lame duck. A downpour we want not your drizzle.
BLOOM
To drive me mad! Moll! I forgot! Forgive! Moll .... We .... Still .....
BELLO
(ruthlessly) No, Leopold Bloom, all is changed by woman's will since you
slept horizontal in Sleepy Hollow your night of twenty years. Return and
see.
(Old Sleepy Hollow calls over the wold.)
SLEEPY HOLLOW
Rip van Wink! Rip van Winkle!
BLOOM
(in tattered mocassins with a rusty fowlingpiece, tiptoeing, fingertipping,
his haggard bony bearded face peering through the diamond panes, cries
out) I see her! It's she! The first night at Mat Dillon's! But that dress, the
green! And her hair is dyed gold and he ....
BELLO
(laughs mockingly) That's your daughter, you owl, with a Mullingar
student.
(Milly Bloom, fairhaired, greenvested, slimsandalled, her blue scarf
in the seawind simply swirling, breaks from the arms of her lover
and calls, her young eyes wonderwide.)
MILLY
My! It's Papli! But, O Papli, how old you've grown!
BELLO
Changed, eh? Our whatnot, our writingtable where we never wrote, aunt
Hegarty's armchair, our classic reprints of old masters. A man and his
menfriends are living there in clover. The Cuckoos' Rest! Why not? How
many women had you, eh, following them up dark streets, flatfoot, exciting
them by your smothered grunts, what, you male prostitute? Blameless
dames with parcels of groceries. Turn about. Sauce for the goose, my
gander O.
BLOOM
They.... I ....
BELLO
(cuttingly) Their heelmarks will stamp the Brusselette carpet you bought at
Wren's auction. In their horseplay with Moll the romp to find the buck flea
in her breeches they will deface the little statue you carried home in the rain
for art for art' sake. They will violate the secrets of your bottom drawer.
Pages will be torn from your handbook of astronomy to make them
pipespills. And they will spit in your ten shilling brass fender from
Hampton Leedom's.
BLOOM
Ten and six. The act of low scoundrels. Let me go. I will return. I will
prove ...
A VOICE
Swear!
(Bloom clenches his fists and crawls forward, a bowieknife between
his teeth.)
BELLO
As a paying guest or a kept man? Too late. You have made your secondbest
bed and others must lie in it. Your epitaph is written. You are down and out
and don't you forget it, old bean.
BLOOM
Justice! All Ireland versus one! Has nobody ...? (he bites his thumb)
BELLO
Die and be damned to you if you have any sense of decency or grace about
you. I can give you a rare old wine that'll send you skipping to hell and
back. Sign a will and leave us any coin you have! If you have none see you
damn well get it, steal it, rob it! We'll bury you in our shrubbery jakes
where you'll be dead and dirty with old Cuck Cohen, my stepnephew I
married, the bloody old gouty procurator and sodomite with a crick in his
neck, and my other ten or eleven husbands, whatever the buggers' names
were, suffocated in the one cesspool. (he explodes in a loud phlegmy laugh)
We'll manure you, Mr Flower! (he pipes scoffingly) Byby, Poldy! Byby,
Papli!
BLOOM
(clasps his head) My willpower! Memory! I have sinned! I have suff.... (he
weeps tearlessly)
BELLO
(sneers) Crybabby! Crocodile tears!
(Bloom, broken, closely veiled for the sacrifice, sobs, his face to the
earth. The passing bell is heard. Darkshawled figures of the
circumcised, in sackcloth and ashes, stand by the wailing wall, M.
Shulomowitz, Joseph Goldwater, Moses Herzog, Harris
Rosenberg, M. Moisel, J. Citron, Minnie Watchman, P. Mastiansky,
the reverend Leopold Abramovitz, chazen. With swaying arms they
wail in pneuma over the recreant Bloom.)
THE CIRCUMCISED
(in dark guttural chant as they cast dead sea fruit upon him, no flowers)
Shema Israel Adonai Elohenu Adonai Echad.
VOICES
(sighing) So he's gone. Ah yes. Yes, indeed. Bloom? Never heard of him.
No? Queer kind of chap. There's the widow. That so? Ah, yes.
(From the suttee pyre the flame of gum camphire ascends. The pall
of incense smoke screens and disperses. Out of her oakframe a
nymph with hair unbound, lightly clad in teabrown artcolours,
descends from her grotto and passing under interlacing yews stands
over Bloom.)
THE YEWS
(their leaves whispering) Sister. Our sister. Ssh!
THE NYMPH
(softly) Mortal! (kindly) Nay, dost not weepest!
BLOOM
(crawls jellily forward under the boughs, streaked by sunlight, with
dignity) This position. I felt it was expected of me. Force of habit.
THE NYMPH
Mortal! You found me in evil company, highkickers, coster picnicmakers,
pugilists, popular generals, immoral panto boys in fleshtights and the nifty
shimmy dancers, La Aurora and Karini, musical act, the hit of the century.
I was hidden in cheap pink paper that smelt of rock oil. I was surrounded
by the stale smut of clubmen, stories to disturb callow youth, ads for
transparencies, truedup dice and bustpads, proprietary articles and why
wear a truss with testimonial from ruptured gentleman. Useful hints to the
married.
BLOOM
(lifts a turtle head towards her lap) We have met before. On another star.
THE NYMPH
(sadly) Rubber goods. Neverrip brand as supplied to the aristocracy.
Corsets for men. I cure fits or money refunded. Unsolicited testimonials for
Professor Waldmann's wonderful chest exuber. My bust developed four
inches in three weeks, reports Mrs Gus Rublin with photo.
BLOOM
You mean Photo Bits?
THE NYMPH
I do. You bore me away, framed me in oak and tinsel, set me above your
marriage couch. Unseen, one summer eve, you kissed me in four places.
And with loving pencil you shaded my eyes, my bosom and my shame.
BLOOM
(humbly kisses her long hair) Your classic curves, beautiful immortal, I
was glad to look on you, to praise you, a thing of beauty, almost to pray.
THE NYMPH
During dark nights I heard your praise.
BLOOM
(quickly) Yes, yes. You mean that I.... Sleep reveals the worst side of
everyone, children perhaps excepted. I know I fell out of bed or rather was
pushed. Steel wine is said to cure snoring. For the rest there is that English
invention, pamphlet of which I received some days ago, incorrectly
addressed. It claims to afford a noiseless, inoffensive vent. (he sighs) 'Twas
ever thus. Frailty, thy name is marriage.
THE NYMPH
(her fingers in her ears) And words. They are not in my dictionary.
BLOOM
You understood them?
THE YEWS
Ssh!
THE NYMPH
(covers her face with her hands) What have I not seen in that chamber?
What must my eyes look down on?
BLOOM
(apologetically) I know. Soiled personal linen, wrong side up with care.
The quoits are loose. From Gibraltar by long sea long ago.
THE NYMPH
(bends her head) Worse, worse!
BLOOM
(reflects precautiously) That antiquated commode. It wasn't her weight.
She scaled just eleven stone nine. She put on nine pounds after weaning. It
was a crack and want of glue. Eh? And that absurd orangekeyed utensil
which has only one handle.
(The sound of a waterfall is heard in bright cascade.)
THE WATERFALL
Poulaphouca Poulaphouca
Poulaphouca Poulaphouca.
THE YEWS
(mingling their boughs) Listen. Whisper. She is right, our sister. We grew
by Poulaphouca waterfall. We gave shade on languorous summer days.
JOHN WYSE NOLAN
(in the background, in Irish National Forester's uniform, doffs his plumed
hat) Prosper! Give shade on languorous days, trees of Ireland!
THE YEWS
(murmuring) Who came to Poulaphouca with the High School excursion?
Who left his nutquesting classmates to seek our shade?
BLOOM
(scared) High School of Poula? Mnemo? Not in full possession of
faculties. Concussion. Run over by tram.
THE ECHO
Sham!
BLOOM
(pigeonbreasted, bottleshouldered, padded, in nondescript juvenile grey
and black striped suit, too small for him, white tennis shoes, bordered
stockings with turnover tops and a red schoolcap 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, instinct of the herd, and the dark
sexsmelling theatre unbridles vice), even a pricelist of their hosiery. And
then the heat. There were sunspots that summer. End of school. And
tipsycake. Halcyon days.
(Halcyon Days, High School boys in blue and white football
jerseys and shorts, Master Donald Turnbull, Master Abraham
Chatterton, Master Owen Goldberg, Master Jack Meredith, Master
Percy Apjohn, stand in a clearing of the trees and shout to Master
Leopold Bloom.)
THE HALCYON DAYS
Mackerel! Live us again. Hurray! (they cheer)
BLOOM
(hobbledehoy, warmgloved, mammamufflered, starred with spent
snowballs, struggles to rise) Again! I feel sixteen! What a lark! Let's ring
all the bells in Montague street. (he cheers feebly) Hurray for the High
School!
THE ECHO
Fool!
THE YEWS
(rustling) She is right, our sister. Whisper. (Whispered kisses are heard in
all the wood. Faces of hamadryads peep out from the boles and among the
leaves and break, blossoming into bloom.) Who profaned our silent shade?
THE NYMPH
(coyly, through parting fingers) There? In the open air?
THE YEWS
(sweeping downward) Sister, yes. And on our virgin sward.
THE WATERFALL
Poulaphouca Poulaphouca
Phoucaphouca Phoucaphouca.
THE NYMPH
(with wide fingers) O, infamy!
BLOOM
I was precocious. Youth. The fauna. 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 illclosed curtains with poor papa's operaglasses: The
wanton ate grass wildly. She rolled downhill at Rialto bridge to tempt me
with her flow of animal spirits. She climbed their crooked tree and I. A saint
couldn't resist it. The demon possessed me. Besides, who saw?
(Staggering Bob, a whitepolled calf, thrusts a ruminating head with
humid nostrils through the foliage.)
STAGGERING BOB
(large teardrops rolling from his prominent eyes, snivels) Me. Me see.
BLOOM
Simply satisfying a need I... (with pathos) No girl would when I went
girling. Too ugly. They wouldn't play ....
(High on Ben Howth through rhododendrons a nannygoat passes,
plumpuddered, buttytailed, dropping currants.)
THE NANNYGOAT
(bleats) Megeggaggegg! Nannannanny!
BLOOM
(hatless, flushed, covered with burrs of thistledown and gorsespine)
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 roteatingly from the Lion's Head cliff into the purple
waiting waters.)
THE DUMMYMUMMY
Bbbbblllllblblblblobschb!
(Far out in the bay between Bailey and Kish lights the Erin's King
sails, sending a broadening plume of coalsmoke from her funnel
towards the land.)
COUNCILLOR NANNETII
(alone on deck, in dark alpaca, yellowkitefaced, his hand in his waistcoat
opening, declaims) When my country takes her place among the nations of
the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written. I have ...
BLOOM
Done. Prff!
THE NYMPH
(loftily) We immortals, as you saw today, have not such a place and no hair
there either. We are stonecold and pure. We eat electric light. (she arches
her body in lascivious crispation, placing her forefinger in her mouth)
Spoke to me. Heard from behind. How then could you ...?
BLOOM
(pawing the heather abjectly) O, I have been a perfect pig. Enemas too I
have administered. One third of a pint of quassia to which add a
tablespoonful of rocksalt. Up the fundament. With Hamilton Long's
syringe, the ladies' friend.
THE NYMPH
In my presence. The powderpuff. (she blushes and makes a knee) And the
rest!
BLOOM
(dejected) Yes. Peccavi! I have paid homage on that living altar where the
back changes name. (with sudden fervour) For why should the dainty
scented jewelled hand, the hand that rules ...?
(Figures wind serpenting in slow woodland pattern around the
treestems, cooeeing)
THE VOICE OF KITTY
(in the thicket) Show us one of them cushions.
THE VOICE OF FLORRY
Here.
(A grouse wings clumsily through the underwood.)
THE VOICE OF LYNCH
(in the thicket) Whew! Piping hot!
THE VOICE OF ZOE
(in the thicket) Came from a hot place.
THE VOICE OF VIRAG
(a birdchief, bluestreaked and feathered in war panoply with his assegai,
striding through a crackling canebrake over beechmast and acorns) Hot!
Hot! Ware Sitting Bull!
BLOOM
It overpowers me. The warm impress of her warm form. Even to sit where a
woman has sat, especially with divaricated thighs, as though to grant the
last favours, most especially with previously well uplifted white sateen
coatpans. So womanly, full. It fills me full.
THE WATERFALL
Phillaphulla Poulaphouca
Poulaphouca Poulaphouca.
THE YEWS
Ssh! Sister, speak!
THE NYMPH
(eyeless, in nun's white habit, coif and hugewinged wimple, softly, with
remote eyes) Tranquilla convent. Sister Agatha. Mount Carmel. The
apparitions of Knock and Lourdes. No more desire. (she reclines her head,
sighing) Only the ethereal. Where dreamy creamy gull waves o'er the
waters dull.
(Bloom half rises. His back trouserbutton snaps.)
THE BUTTON
Bip!
(Two sluts of the Coombe dance rainily by, shawled, yelling flatly.)
THE SLUTS
O, Leopold lost the pin of his drawers
He didn't know what to do,
To keep it up,
To keep it up.
BLOOM
(coldly) You have broken the spell. The last straw. If there were only
ethereal where would you all be, postulants and novices? Shy but willing
like an ass pissing.
THE YEWS
(their silverfoil of leaves precipitating, their skinny arms aging and
swaying) Deciduously!
THE NYMPH
(her features hardening, gropes in the folds of her habit) 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 again in her robe) Wait. Satan, you'll sing no more lovesongs.
Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. (she draws a poniard and, clad in the
sheathmail of an elected knight of nine, strikes at his loins) Nekum!
BLOOM
(starts up, seizes her hand) Hoy! Nebrakada! Cat o' nine lives! Fair play,
madam. No pruningknife. The fox and the grapes, is it? What do you lack
with your barbed wire? Crucifix not thick enough? (he clutches her veil) A
holy abbot you want or Brophy, the lame gardener, or the spoutless statue
of the watercarrier, or good mother Alphonsus, eh Reynard?
THE NYMPH
(with a cry flees from him unveiled, her plaster cast cracking, a cloud of
stench escaping from the cracks) Poli ...!
BLOOM
(calls after her) As if you didn't get it on the double yourselves. No jerks
and multiple mucosities all over you. I tried it. Your strength our weakness.
What's our studfee? What will you pay on the nail? You fee mendancers 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) Rut.
Onions. Stale. Sulphur. Grease.
(The figure of Bella Cohen stands before him.)
BELLA
You'll know me the next time.
BLOOM
(composed, regards her) Pass’e. Mutton dressed as lamb. Long in the
tooth and superfluous hair. 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 glasseyes of your stuffed fox. They have the dimensions of your
other features, that's all. I'm not a triple screw propeller.
BELLA
(contemptuously) You're not game, in fact. (her sowcunt barks)
Fbhracht!
BLOOM
(contemptuously) Clean your nailless middle finger first, your bully's cold
spunk is dripping from your cockscomb. Take a handful of hay and wipe
yourself.
BELLA
I know you, canvasser! Dead cod!
BLOOM
I saw him, kipkeeper! Pox and gleet vendor!
BELLA
(turns to the piano) Which of you was playing the dead march from Saul?
ZOE
Me. Mind your cornflowers. (she darts to the piano and bangs chords on it
with crossed arms) The cat's ramble through the slag. (she glances back)
Eh? Who's making love to my sweeties? (she darts back to the table)
What's yours is mine and what's mine is my own.
(Kitty, disconcerted, coats her teeth with the silver paper. Bloom
approaches Zoe.)
BLOOM
(gently) Give me back that potato, will you?
ZOE
Forfeits, a fine thing and a superfine thing.
BLOOM
(with feeling) It is nothing, but still, a relic of poor mamma.
ZOE
Give a thing and take it back
God'll ask you where is that
You'll say you don't know
God'll send you down below.
BLOOM
There is a memory attached to it. I should like to have it.
STEPHEN
To have or not to have that is the question.
ZOE
Here. (she hauls up a reef of her slip, revealing her bare thigh, and unrolls
the potato from the top of her stocking) Those that hides knows where to
find.
BELLA
(frowns) Here. This isn't a musical peepshow. And don't you smash that
piano. Who's paying here?
(She goes to the pianola. Stephen fumbles in his pocket and, taking
out a banknote by its corner, hands it to her.)
STEPHEN
(with exaggerated politeness) This silken purse I made out of the sow's ear
of the public. Madam, excuse me. If you allow me. (he indicates vaguely
Lynch and Bloom) We are all in the same sweepstake, Kinch and Lynch.
Dans ce bordel o‹ tenons nostre ’tat.
LYNCH
(calls from the hearth) Dedalus! Give her your blessing for me.
STEPHEN
(hands Bella a coin) Gold. She has it.
BELLA
(looks at the money, then at Stephen, then at Zoe, Florry and Kitty) Do
you want three girls? It's ten shillings here.
STEPHEN
(delightedly) A hundred thousand apologies. (he fumbles again and takes
out and hands her two crowns) Permit, brevi manu, my sight is somewhat
troubled.
(Bella goes to the table to count the money while Stephen talks to
himself in monosyllables. Zoe bends over the table. Kitty leans over
Zoe's neck. Lynch gets up, rights his cap and, clasping Kitty's
waist, adds his head to the group.)
FLORRY
(strives heavily to rise) Ow! My foot's asleep. (She limps over to the table.
Bloom approaches.)
BELLA, ZOE, KITTY, LYNCH, BLOOM
(chattering and squabbling) The gentleman... ten shillings.... paying for
the three... allow me a moment... this gentleman pays separate.... who's
touching it?... ow!... mind who you're pinching... are you staying the
night or a short time?... who did?... you're a liar, excuse me... the
gentleman paid down like a gentleman ... drink ... it's long after eleven.
STEPHEN
(at the pianola, making a gesture of abhorrence) No bottles! What, eleven?
A riddle!
ZOE
(lifting up her pettigown and folding a half sovereign into the top of her
stocking) Hard earned on the flat of my back.
LYNCH
(lifting Kitty from the table) Come!
KITTY
Wait. (she clutches the two crowns)
FLORRY
And me?
LYNCH
Hoopla!
(He lifts her, carries her and bumps her down on the sofa.)
STEPHEN
The fox crew, the cocks flew,
The bells in heaven
Were striking eleven.
'Tis time for her poor soul
To get out of heaven.
BLOOM
(quietly lays a half sovereign on the table between Bella and Florry) So.
Allow me. (he takes up the poundnote) Three times ten. We're square.
BELLA
(admiringly) You're such a slyboots, old cocky. I could kiss you.
ZOE
(points) Him? Deep as a drawwell.
(Lynch bends Kitty back over the sofa and kisses her. Bloom goes
with the poundnote to Stephen.)
BLOOM
This is yours.
STEPHEN
How is that? The distrait or absentminded beggar. (He fumbles again in
his pocket and draws out a handful of coins. An object fills.) That fell.
BLOOM
(stooping, picks up and hands a box of matches) This.
STEPHEN
Lucifer. Thanks.
BLOOM
(quietly) You had better hand over that cash to me to take care of. Why
pay more?
STEPHEN
(hands him all his coins) Be just before you are generous.
BLOOM
I will but is it wise? (he counts) One, seven, eleven, and five. Six. Eleven. I
don't answer for what you may have lost.
STEPHEN
Why striking eleven? Proparoxyton. Moment before the next Lessing says.
Thirsty fox. (he laughs loudly) Burying his grandmother. Probably he
killed her.
BLOOM
That is one pound six and eleven. One pound seven, say.
STEPHEN
Doesn't matter a rambling damn.
BLOOM
No, but....
STEPHEN
(comes to the table) Cigarette, please. (Lynch tosses a cigarette from the
sofa to the table) And so Georgina Johnson is dead and married. (A
cigarette appears on the table. Stephen looks at it) Wonder. Parlour
magic. Married. Hm. (he strikes a match and proceeds to light the cigarette
with enigmatic melancholy)
LYNCH
(watching him) You would have a better chance of lighting it if you held
the match nearer.
STEPHEN
(brings the match near his eye) Lynx eye. Must get glasses. Broke them
yesterday. Sixteen years ago. Distance. The eye sees all flat. (He draws the
match away. It goes out.) Brain thinks. Near: far. Ineluctable modality of
the visible. (he frowns mysteriously) Hm. Sphinx. The beast that has two
backs at midnight. Married.
ZOE
It was a commercial traveller married her and took her away with him.
FLORRY
(nods) Mr Lambe from London.
STEPHEN
Lamb of London, who takest away the sins of our world.
LYNCH
(embracing Kitty on the sofa, chants deeply) Dona nobis pacem.
(The cigarette slips from Stephen 's fingers. Bloom picks it up and
throws it in the grate.)
BLOOM
Don't smoke. You ought to eat. Cursed dog I met. (to Zoe) You have
nothing?
ZOE
Is he hungry?
STEPHEN
(extends his hand to her smiling and chants to the air of the bloodoath in
The Dusk of the Gods)
Hangende Hunger,
Fragende Frau,
Macht uns alle kaputt.
ZOE
(tragically) Hamlet, I am thy father's gimlet! (she takes his hand) Blue
eyes beauty I'll read your hand. (she points to his forehead) No wit, no
wrinkles. (she counts) Two, three, Mars, that's courage. (Stephen shakes
his head) No kid.
LYNCH
Sheet lightning courage. The youth who could not shiver and shake. (to
Zoe) Who taught you palmistry?
ZOE
(turns) Ask my ballocks that I haven't got. (to Stephen) I see it in your
face. The eye, like that. (she frowns with lowered head)
LYNCH
(laughing, slaps Kitty behind twice) Like that. Pandybat.
(Twice loudly a pandybat cracks, the coffin of the pianola flies open,
the bald little round jack-in-the-box head of Father Dolan springs
up.)
FATHER DOLAN
Any boy want flogging? Broke his glasses? Lazy idle little schemer. See it in
your eye.
(Mild, benign, rectorial, reproving, the head of Don John Conmee
rises from the pianola coffin.)
DON JOHN CONMEE
Now, Father Dolan! Now. I'm sure that Stephen is a very good little boy!
ZOE
(examining Stephen's palm) Woman's hand.
STEPHEN
(murmurs) Continue. Lie. Hold me. Caress. I never could read His
handwriting except His criminal thumbprint on the haddock.
ZOE
What day were you born?
STEPHEN
Thursday. Today.
ZOE
Thursday's child has far to go. (she traces lines on his hand) Line of fate.
Influential friends.
FLORRY
(pointing) Imagination.
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
(detaches her fingers and offers his palm) More harm than good. Here.
Read mine.
BELLA
Show. (she turns up Bloom's hand) I thought so. Knobby knuckles for the
women.
ZOE
(peering at Bloom's palm) Gridiron. Travels beyond the sea and marry
money.
BLOOM
Wrong.
ZOE
(quickly) O, I see. Short little finger. Henpecked husband. That wrong?
(Black Liz, a huge rooster hatching in a chalked circle, rises,
stretches her wings and clucks.)
BLACK LIZ
Gara. Klook. Klook. Klook. (she sidles from her newlaid egg and waddles
off)
BLOOM
(points to his hand) That weal there is an accident. Fell and cut it
twentytwo years ago. I was sixteen.
ZOE
I see, says the blind man. Tell us news.
STEPHEN
See? Moves to one great goal. I am twentytwo. Sixteen years ago he was
twentytwo 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?
(Zoe whispers to Florry. They giggle. Bloom releases his hand and
writes idly on the table in backhand, pencilling slow curves.)
FLORRY
What?
(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.)
THE BOOTS
(jogging, mocks them with thumb and wriggling wormfingers) Haw haw
have you the horn?
(Bronze by gold they whisper.)
ZOE
(to Florry) Whisper. (she whispers again)
(Over the well of the car Blazes Boylan leans, his boater straw set
sideways, a red flower in his mouth. Lenehan in yachtsman's cap
and white shoes officiously detaches a long hair from Blazes
Boylan's coat shoulder.)
LENEHAN
Ho! What do I here behold? Were you brushing the cobwebs off a few
quims?
BOYLAN
(sated, smiles) Plucking a turkey.
LENEHAN
A good night's work.
BOYLAN
(holding up four thick bluntungulated fingers, winks) Blazes Kate! Up to
sample or your money back. (he holds out a forefinger) Smell that.
LENEHAN
(smells gleefully) Ah! Lobster and mayonnaise. Ah!
ZOE AND FLORRY
(laugh together) Ha ha ha ha.
BOYLAN
(jumps surely from the car and calls loudly for all to hear) Hello, Bloom!
Mrs Bloom dressed yet?
BLOOM
(in flunkey's prune plush coat and kneebreeches, buff stockings and
powdered wig) I'm afraid not, sir. The last articles .....
BOYLAN
(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?
BLOOM
Thank you, sir. Yes, sir. Madam Tweedy is in her bath, sir.
MARION
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.
BOYLAN
(a merry twinkle in his eye) Topping!
BELLA
What? What is it?
(Zoe whispers to her.)
MARION
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.
BOYLAN
(clasps himself) Here, I can't hold this little lot much longer. (he strides off
on stiff cavalry legs)
BELLA
(laughing) Ho ho ho ho.
BOYLAN
(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.
BLOOM
Thank you, sir. I will, sir. May I bring two men chums to witness the deed
and take a snapshot? (he holds out an ointment jar) Vaseline, sir?
Orangeflower...? Lukewarm water...?
KITTY
(from the sofa) Tell us, Florry. Tell us. What ...
(Florry whispers to her. Whispering lovewords murmur, liplapping
loudly, poppysmic plopslop.)
MINA KENNEDY
(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!
LYDIA DOUCE
(her mouth opening) Yumyum. O, he's carrying her round the room doing
it! Ride a cockhorse. You could hear them in Paris and New York. Like
mouthfuls of strawberries and cream.
KITTY
(laughing) Hee hee hee.
BOYLAN'S VOICE
(sweetly, hoarsely, in the pit of his stomach) Ah! Godblazegruk-
brukarchkhrasht!
MARION'S VOICE
(hoarsely, sweetly, rising to her throat) O! Weeshwashtkissinapoo-
isthnapoohuck?
BLOOM
(his eyes wildly dilated, clasps himself) Show! Hide! Show! Plough her!
More! Shoot!
BELLA, ZOE, FLORRY, KITTY
Ho ho! Ha ha! Hee hee!
LYNCH
(points) The mirror up to nature. (he laughs) Hu hu hu hu hu!
(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.)
SHAKESPEARE
(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
Thursdaymornun. Iagogogo!
BLOOM
(smiles yellowly at the three whores) When will I hear the joke?
ZOE
Before you're twice married and once a widower.
BLOOM
Lapses are condoned. Even the great Napoleon when measurements were
taken next the skin after his death ...
(Mrs Dignam, widow woman, her snubnose and cheeks flushed
with deathtalk, tears and Tunney'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,
large eights. She holds a Scottish Widows' insurance policy and a
large marquee umbrella under which her brood run with her, Patsy
hopping on one shod foot, his collar loose, a hank of porksteaks
dangling, Freddy whimpering, Susy with a crying cod's mouth,
Alice struggling with the baby. She cuffs them on, her streamers
flaunting aloft.)
FREDDY
Ah, ma, you're dragging me along!
SUSY
Mamma, the beeftea is fizzing over!
SHAKESPEARE
(with paralytic rage) Weda seca whokilla farst.
(The face of Martin Cunningham, bearded, refeatures
Shakespeare's beardless face. The marquee umbrella sways
drunkenly, the children run aside. Under the umbrella appears Mrs
Cunningham in merry widow hat and kimono gown. She glides
sidling and bowing, twirling japanesily.)
MRS CUNNINGHAM
(sings)
And they call me the jewel of Asia!
MARTIN CUNNINGHAM
(gazes on her, impassive) Immense! Most bloody awful demirep!
STEPHEN
Et exaltabuntur cornua iusti. Queens lay with prize bulls. Remember
Pasiphae for whose lust my grandoldgrossfather 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.
BELLA
None of that here. Come to the wrong shop.
LYNCH
Let him alone. He's back from Paris.
ZOE
(runs to Stephen and links him) O go on! Give us some parleyvoo.
(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.)
LYNCH
(pommelling on the sofa) Rmm Rmm Rmm Rrrrrrmmmm.
STEPHEN
(gabbles with marionette jerks) Thousand places of entertainment to
expense your evenings with lovely ladies saling gloves and other things
perhaps hers 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 clacks his tongue loudly) Ho,
la la! Ce pif qu'il a!
LYNCH
Vive le vampire!
THE WHORES
Bravo! Parleyvoo!
STEPHEN
(with head back, laughs loudly, clapping himself grimacing) Great success
of laughing. Angels much prostitutes like and holy apostles big damn
ruffians. Demimondaines nicely handsome sparkling of diamonds very
amiable costumed. 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 tompeeptom of virgins nudities very lesbic the kiss five
ten times. Enter, gentleman, to see in mirror every positions trapezes all that
machine there besides also if desire act awfully bestial butcher's boy
pollutes in warm veal liver or omlet on the belly piece de Shakespeare.
BELLA
(clapping her belly sinks back on the sofa, with a shout of laughter) An
omelette on the.... Ho! ho! ho! ho!... omelette on the....
STEPHEN
(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)
BELLA
(laughing) Omelette....
THE WHORES
(laughing) Encore! Encore!
STEPHEN
Mark me. I dreamt of a watermelon.
ZOE
Go abroad and love a foreign lady.
LYNCH
Across the world for a wife.
FLORRY
Dreams goes by contraries.
STEPHEN
(extends his arms) It was here. Street of harlots. In Serpentine avenue
Beelzebub showed me her, a fubsy widow. Where's the red carpet spread?
BLOOM
(approaching Stephen) Look ....
STEPHEN
No, I flew. My foes beneath me. And ever shall be. World without end. (he
cries) Pater! Free!
BLOOM
I say, look...
STEPHEN
Break my spirit, will he? O merde alors! (he cries, his vulture talons
sharpened) HolЉ! Hillyho!
(Simon Dedalus' voice hilloes in answer, somewhat sleepy but
ready.)
SIMON
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! Haihoop! (he
makes the beagle's call, giving tongue) Bulbul! Burblblburblbl! Hai, boy!
(The fronds and spaces of the wallpaper file rapidly crosscountry.
A stout fox, drawn from covert, brush pointed, having buried his
grandmother, runs swift for the open, brighteyed, seeking badger
earth, under the leaves. The pack of staghounds follows, nose to the
ground, sniffing their quarry, beaglebaying, burblbrbling 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, hayforks, salmongaffs,
lassos, flockmasters with stockwhips, bearbaiters with tomtoms,
toreadors with bullswords, greynegroes waving torches. The crowd
bawls of dicers, crown and anchor players, thimbleriggers,
broadsmen. Crows and touts, hoarse bookies in high wizard hats
clamour deafeningly.)
THE CROWD
Card of the races. Racing card!
Ten to one the field!
Tommy on the clay here! Tommy on the clay!
Ten to one bar one! Ten to one bar one!
Try your luck on Spinning Jenny!
Ten to one bar one!
Sell the monkey, boys! Sell the monkey!
I'll give ten to one!
Ten to one bar one!
(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 Westminster's Shotover, Repulse,
the duke of Beaufort's Ceylon, prix de Paris. Dwarfs ride them,
rustyarmoured, leaping, leaping in their, in their saddles. Last in a
drizzle of rain on a brokenwinded isabelle nag, Cock of the North,
the favourite, honey cap, green jacket, orange sleeves, Garrett Deasy
up, gripping the reins, a hockeystick at the ready. His nag on
spavined whitegaitered feet jogs along the rocky road.)
THE ORANGE LODGES
(jeering) Get down and push, mister. Last lap! You'll be home the night!
GARRETT DEASY
(bolt upright, his nailscraped face plastered with postagestamps, brandishes
his hockeystick, his blue eyes flashing in the prism of the chandelier as his
mount lopes by at schooling gallop) Per vias rectas!
(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.)
THE GREEN LODGES
Soft day, sir John! Soft day, your honour!
(Private Carr, Private Compton and Cissy Caffrey pass beneath the
windows, singing in discord.)
STEPHEN
Hark! Our friend noise in the street.
ZOE
(holds up her hand) Stop!
PRIVATE CARR, PRIVATE COMPTON AND CISSY CAFFREY
Yet I've a sort of a
Yorkshire relish for...
ZOE
That's me. (she claps her hands) Dance! Dance! (she runs to the pianola)
Who has twopence?
BLOOM
Who'll ...?
LYNCH
(handing her coins) Here.
STEPHEN
(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)
ZOE
(turns the drumhandle) There.
(She drops two pennies in the slot. Gold, 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 pianostool
and lifts and beats handless sticks of arms on the keyboard, nodding
with damsel's grace, his bowknot bobbing)
ZOE
(twirls round herself, heeltapping) Dance. Anybody here for there?
Who'll dance? Clear the table.
(The pianola with changing lights plays in waltz time the prelude
of My Girl's a Yorkshire Girl. Stephen throws his ashplant on the
table and seizes Zoe round the waist. Florry and Bella push the
table towards the fireplace. Stephen, arming Zoe with exaggerated
grace, begins to waltz her round the room. Bloom stands aside. Her
sleeve filling from gracing arms reveals a white fleshflower of
vaccination. 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 gorget of cream tulle, a green
lowcut waistcoat, stock collar with white kerchief, tight lavender
trousers, patent pumps and canary gloves. In his buttonhole is an
immense dahlia. He twirls in reversed directions a clouded cane,
then wedges it tight in his oxter. He places a hand lightly on his
breastbone, bows, and fondles his flower and buttons.)
MAGINNI
The poetry of motion, art of calisthenics. No connection with Madam
Legget Byrne's or Levenston's. Fancy dress balls arranged. Deportment.
The Katty Lanner step. So. Watch me! My terpsichorean abilities. (he
minuets forward three paces on tripping bee's feet) Tout le monde en
avant! Reverence! Tout le monde en place!
(The prelude ceases. Professor Goodwin, beating vague arms
shrivels, sinks, his live cape filling about the stool. The air in firmer
waltz time sounds. Stephen and Zoe circle freely. The lights
change, glow, fide gold rosy violet.)
THE PIANOLA
Two young fellows were talking about their girls, girls, girls,
Sweethearts they'd left behind ......
(From a corner the morning hours run out, goldhaired,
slimsandalled, 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.)
MAGINNI
(clipclaps glovesilent hands) Carr’! Avant deux! Breathe evenly! Balance!
(The morning and noon hours waltz in their places, turning,
advancing to each other, shaping their curves, bowing visavis.
Cavaliers behind them arch and suspend their arms, with hands
descending to, touching, rising from their shoulders.)
HOURS
You may touch my.
CAVALIERS
May I touch your?
HOURS
O, but lightly!
CAVALIERS
O, so lightly!
THE PIANOLA
My little shy little lass has a waist.
(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 landbreeze.)
MAGINNI
Avant huit! Travers’! Salut! Cours de mains! Crois’!
(The night hours, one by one, 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.)
THE BRACELETS
Heigho! Heigho!
ZOE
(twirling, her hand to her brow) O!
MAGINNI
Les tiroirs! Cha‘ne de dames! La corbeille! Dos a dos!
(Arabesquing wearily they weave a pattern on the floor, weaving,
unweaving, curtseying, twirling, simply swirling.)
ZOE
I'm giddy!
(She frees herself, droops on a chair. Stephen seizes Florry and
turns with her.)
MAGINNI
BoulangSre! Les ronds! Les ponts! Chevaux de bois! Escargots!
(Twining, receding, with interchanging hands the night hours link
each each with arching arms in a mosaic of movements. Stephen
and Florry turn cumbrously.)
MAGINNI
Dansez avec vos dames! Changez de dames! Donnez le petit bouquet a votre
dame! Remerciez!
THE PIANOLA
Best, best of all,
Baraabum!
KITTY
(jumps up) O, they played that on the hobbyhorses at the Mirus bazaar!
(She runs to Stephen. He leaves Florry brusquely and seizes
Kitty. A screaming bittern's harsh high whistle shrieks.
Groangrousegurgling Toft's cumbersome whirligig turns slowly the
room right roundabout the room.)
THE PIANOLA
My girl's a Yorkshire girl.
ZOE
Yorkshire through and through. Come on all!
(She seizes Florry and waltzes her.)
STEPHEN
Pas seul!
(He wheels Kitty into Lynch's arms, 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
hornblower 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
Though she's a factory lass
And wears no fancy clothes.
(Closeclutched swift swifter with glareblareflare scudding they
scootlootshoot lumbering by. Baraabum!)
TUTTI
Encore! Bis! Bravo! Encore!
SIMON
Think of your mother's people!
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 onehandled Nelson two trickies
Frauenzimmer plumstained from pram filling 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 switchback lumbering up
and down bump mashtub sort of viceroy and reine relish for
tublumber bumpshire rose. Baraabum!
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 walls. He stops
dead.)
STEPHEN
Ho!
(Stephen's mother, emaciated, rises stark through the floor, in leper
grey with a wreath of faded orangeblossoms and a torn bridal veil,
her face worn and noseless, green with gravemould. 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.)
THE CHOIR
Liliata rutilantium te confessorum
Iubilantium te virginum
(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.)
BUCK MULLIGAN
She's beastly dead. The pity of it! Mulligan meets the afflicted mother. (he
upturns his eyes) Mercurial Malachi!
THE MOTHER
(with the subtle smile of death's madness) I was once the beautiful May
Goulding. I am dead.
STEPHEN
(horrorstruck) Lemur, who are you? No. What bogeyman's trick is this?
BUCK MULLIGAN
(shakes his curling capbell) The mockery of it! Kinch dogsbody killed her
bitchbody. She kicked the bucket. (tears of molten butter fall from his eyes
on to the scone) Our great sweet mother! Epi oinopa ponton.
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.
STEPHEN
(choking with fright, remorse and horror) They say I killed you, mother.
He offended your memory. Cancer did it, not I. Destiny.
THE MOTHER
(a green rill of bile trickling from a side of her mouth) You sang that song
to me. Love's bitter mystery.
STEPHEN
(eagerly) Tell me the word, mother, if you know now. The word known to
all men.
THE MOTHER
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 allpowerful. Prayer for the suffering souls in the Ursuline manual
and forty days' indulgence. Repent, Stephen.
STEPHEN
The ghoul! Hyena!
THE MOTHER
I pray for you in my other world. Get Dilly to make you that boiled rice
every night after your brainwork. Years and years I loved you, O, my son,
my firstborn, when you lay in my womb.
ZOE
(fanning herself with the gratefan) I'm melting!
FLORRY
(points to Stephen) Look! He's white.
BLOOM
(goes to the window to open it more) Giddy.
THE MOTHER
(with smouldering eyes) Repent! O, the fire of hell!
STEPHEN
(panting) His noncorrosive sublimate! The corpsechewer! Raw head and
bloody bones.
THE MOTHER
(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 finger) Beware God's hand!
(A green crab with malignant red eyes sticks deep its grinning claws
in Stephen's heart.)
STEPHEN
(strangled with rage, his features drawn grey and old) Shite!
BLOOM
(at the window) What?
STEPHEN
Ah non, par exemple! The intellectual imagination! With me all or not at
all. Non serviam!
FLORRY
Give him some cold water. Wait. (she rushes out)
THE MOTHER
(wrings her hands slowly, moaning desperately) O Sacred Heart of Jesus,
have mercy on him! Save him from hell, O Divine Sacred Heart!
STEPHEN
No! No! No! Break my spirit, all of you, if you can! I'll bring you all to
heel!
THE MOTHER
(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
Nothung!
(He lifts 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.)
THE GASJET
Pwfungg!
BLOOM
Stop!
LYNCH
(rushes forward and seizes Stephen's hand) Here! Hold on! Don't run
amok!
BELLA
Police!
(Stephen, abandoning his ashplant, his head and arms thrown back
stark, beats the ground and flies from the room, past the whores at
the door.)
BELLA
(screams) After him!
(The two whores rush to the halldoor. Lynch and Kitty and Zoe
stampede from the room. They talk excitedly. Bloom follows,
returns.)
THE WHORES
(jammed in the doorway, pointing) Down there.
ZOE
(pointing) There. There's something up.
BELLA
Who pays for the lamp? (she seizes Bloom's coattail) Here, you were with
him. The lamp's broken.
BLOOM
(rushes to the hall, rushes back) What lamp, woman?
A WHORE
He tore his coat.
BELLA
(her eyes hard with anger and cupidity, points) Who's to pay for that? Ten
shillings. You're a witness.
BLOOM
(snatches up Stephen's ashplant) Me? Ten shillings? Haven't you lifted
enough off him? Didn't he ....?
BELLA
(loudly) Here, none of your tall talk. This isn't a brothel. A tenshilling
house.
BLOOM
(His head under the lamp, pulls the chain. Puling, the gasjet lights up a
crushed mauve purple shade. He raises the ashplant.) Only the chimney's
broken. Here is all he ....
BELLA
(shrinks back and screams) Jesus! Don't!
BLOOM
(warding off a blow) To show you how he hit the paper. There's not
sixpenceworth of damage done. Ten shillings!
FLORRY
(with a glass of water, enters) Where is he?
BELLA
Do you want me to call the police?
BLOOM
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 vicechancellor. You don't want a
scandal.
BELLA
(angrily) Trinity. Coming down here ragging after the boatraces and
paying nothing. Are you my commander here or? Where is he? I'll charge
him! Disgrace him, I will! (she shouts) Zoe! Zoe!
BLOOM
(urgently) And if it were your own son in Oxford? (warningly) I know.
BELLA
(almost speechless) Who are. Incog!
ZOE
(in the doorway) There's a row on.
BLOOM
What? Where? (he throws a shilling on the table and starts) 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 urges on her
whores. They blow ickylickysticky yumyum kisses. Corny Kelleher
replies with a ghastly 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 Raschid 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, follow from fir, 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, woman's 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, VB Dillon, Councillor Nannetti, Alexander Keyes,
Larry O'Rourke, Joe Cuffe Mrs O'Dowd, Pisser Burke, the
Nameless One, Mrs Riordan, the Citizen, Garryowen,
Whodoyoucallhim, Strangeface, Fellowthatsolike, Sawhimbefore,
Chapwithawen, 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,
maninthestreet, othermaninthestreet, 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-general's, Dan Dawson, dental surgeon Bloom with
tweezers, Mrs Bob Doran, Mrs Kennefick, Mrs Wyse Nolan, John
Wyse Nolan, handsomemarriedwomanrubbedagainstwidebehind-
inClonskeatram, the bookseller of Sweets of Sin, Miss
Dubedatandshedidbedad, Mesdames Gerald and Stanislaus Moran
of Roebuck, the managing clerk of Drimmie's, Wetherup, 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.)
THE HUE AND CRY
(helterskelterpelterwelter) He's Bloom! Stop Bloom! Stopabloom!
Stopperrobber! Hi! Hi! Stophim on the corner!
(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.)
STEPHEN
(with elaborate gestures, breathing deeply and slowly) You are my guests.
Uninvited. By virtue of the fifth of George and seventh of Edward. History
to blame. Fabled by mothers of memory.
PRIVATE CARR
(to Cissy Caffrey) Was he insulting you?
STEPHEN
Addressed her in vocative feminine. Probably neuter. Ungenitive.
VOICES
No, he didn't. I seen him. The girl there. He was in Mrs Cohen's. What's
up? Soldier and civilian.
CISSY CAFFREY
I was in company with the soldiers and they left me to do, you know, and
the young man run up behind me. But I'm faithful to the man that's treating
me though I'm only a shilling whore.
VOICES
Shesfaithfultheman.
STEPHEN
(catches sight of Lynch's and Kitty's heads) Hail, Sisyphus. (he points to
himself and the others) Poetic. Uropoetic.
CISSY CAFFREY
Yes, to go with him. And me with a soldier friend.
PRIVATE COMPTON
He doesn't half want a thick ear, the blighter. Biff him one, Harry.
PRIVATE CARR
(to Cissy) Was he insulting you while me and him was having a piss?
LORD TENNYSON
(gentleman poet in Union Jack blazer and cricket flannels, bareheaded,
flowingbearded) Theirs not to reason why.
PRIVATE COMPTON
Biff him, Harry.
STEPHEN
(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.
CISSY CAFFREY
(to the crowd) No, I was with the privates.
STEPHEN
(amiably) Why not? The bold soldier boy. In my opinion every lady for
example .....
PRIVATE CARR
(his cap awry, advances to Stephen) Say, how would it be, governor, if I
was to bash in your jaw?
STEPHEN
(looks up to the sky) How? Very unpleasant. Noble art of selfpretence.
Personally, I detest action. (he waves his hand) Hand hurts me slightly.
Enfin ce sont vos oignons. (to Cissy Caffrey) Some trouble is on here.
What is it precisely?
DOLLY GRAY
(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.
(The soldiers turn their swimming eyes.)
BLOOM
(elbowing through the crowd, plucks Stephen's sleeve vigorously) Come
now, professor, that carman is waiting.
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
(propping him) Retain your own.
STEPHEN
(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 but human 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.
BIDDY THE CLAP
Did you hear what the professor said? He's a professor out of the college.
CUNTY KATE
I did. I heard that.
BIDDY THE CLAP
He expresses himself with such marked refinement of phraseology.
CUNTY KATE
Indeed, yes. And at the same time with such apposite trenchancy.
PRIVATE CARR
(pulls himself free and comes forward) What's that you're saying about
my king?
(Edward the Seventh appears in an archway. He wars 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, Skinner's and Probyn's 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 plasterer's bucket on which is printed
Defense d'uriner. A roar of welcome greets him.)
EDWARD THE SEVENTH
(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 bak. (he shakes hands with Private Carr,
Private Compton, Stephen, Bloom and Lynch)
(General applause. Edward the Seventh lifts his bucket graciously
in acknowledgment.)
PRIVATE CARR
(to Stephen) Say it again.
STEPHEN
(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
medicines. 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 didn't want it to die. Damn death. Long live life!
EDWARD THE SEVENTH
(levitates over heaps of slain, in the garb and with the halo of Joking Jesus,
a white jujube in his phosphorescent face)
My methods are new and are causing surprise.
To make the blind see I throw dust in their eyes.
STEPHEN
Kings and unicorns! (he fills back a pace) Come somewhere and we'll...
What was that girl saying ...?
PRIVATE COMPTON
Eh, Harry, give him a kick in the knackers. Stick one into Jerry.
BLOOM
(to the privates, softly) He doesn't know what he's saying. Taken a little
more than is good for him. Absinthe. Greeneyed monster. I know him.
He's a gentleman, a poet. It's all right.
STEPHEN
(nods, smiling and laughing) Gentleman, patriot, scholar and judge of
impostors.
PRIVATE CARR
I don't give a bugger who he is.
PRIVATE COMPTON
We don't give a bugger who he is.
STEPHEN
I seem to annoy them. Green rag to a bull.
(Kevin Egan of Paris in black Spanish tasselled shirt and
peep-o'-day boy's hat signs to Stephen.)
KEVIN EGAN
H'lo! Bonjour! The vieille ogresse with the dents jaunes.
(Patrice Egan peeps from behind, his rabbitface nibbling a quince
leaf.)
PATRICE
Socialiste!
DON EMILE PATRIZ1O FRANZ RUPERT POPE HENNESSY
(in medieval hauberk, two wild geese volant on his helm, with noble
indignation points a mailed hand against the privates) Werf those eykes to
footboden, big grand porcos of johnyellows todos covered of gravy!
BLOOM
(to Stephen) Come home. You'll get into trouble.
STEPHEN
(swaying) I don't avoid it. He provokes my intelligence.
BIDDY THE CLAP
One immediately observes that he is of patrician lineage.
THE VIRAGO
Green above the red, says he. Wolfe Tone.
THE BAWD
The red's as good as the green. And better. Up the soldiers! Up King
Edward!
A ROUGH
(laughs) Ay! Hands up to De Wet.
THE CITIZEN
(with a huge emerald muffler and shillelagh, calls)
May the God above
Send down a dove
With teeth as sharp as razors
To slit the throats
Of the English dogs
That hanged our Irish leaders.
THE CROPPY BOY
(the ropenoose round his neck, gripes in his issuing bowels with both
hands)
I bear no hate to a living thing,
But I love my country beyond the king.
RUMBOLD, DEMON BARBER
(accompanied by two blackmasked assistants, advances with 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 body of Miss
Barron which sent Seddon to the gallows.
(He jerks the rope. The assistants leap at the victim's legs and drag
him downward, grunting The croppy boy's tongue protrudes
violently.)
THE CROPPY BOY
Horhot ho hray hor hother's hest.
(He gives up the ghost. A violent erection of the hanged sends gouts
of sperm spouting through his deathclothes on to the cobblestones.
Mrs Bellingham, Mrs Yelverton Barry and the Honourable Mrs
Mervyn Talboys rush forward with their handkerchiefs to sop it
up.)
RUMBOLD
I'm near it myself. (he undoes the noose) Rope which hanged the awful
rebel. Ten shillings a time. As applied to Her 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!
EDWARD THE SEVENTH
(dances slowly, solemnly, rattling his bucket, and sings with soft
contentment)
On coronation day, on coronation day,
O, won't we have a merry time,
Drinking whisky, beer and wine!
PRIVATE CARR
Here. What are you saying about my king?
STEPHEN
(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.
PRIVATE CARR
Who wants your bleeding money?
STEPHEN
(tries to move off) Will someone tell me where I am least likely to meet
these necessary evils? Ca se voit aussi a Paris. Not that I ... But, by saint
Patrick ....!
(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
Aha! I know you, gammer! Hamlet, revenge! The old sow that eats her
farrow!
OLD GUMMY GRANNY
(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?
STEPHEN
How do I stand you? The hat trick! Where's the third person of the Blessed
Trinity? Soggarth Aroon? The reverend Carrion Crow.
CISSY CAFFREY
(shrill) Stop them from fighting!
A ROUGH
Our men retreated.
PRIVATE CARR
(tugging at his belt) I'll wring the neck of any fucker says a word against
my fucking king.
BLOOM
(terrified) He said nothing. Not a word. A pure misunderstanding.
PRIVATE COMPTON
Go it, Harry. Do him one in the eye. He's a proBoer.
STEPHEN
Did I? When?
BLOOM
(to the redcoats) We fought for you in South Africa, Irish missile troops.
Isn't that history? Royal Dublin Fusiliers. Honoured by our monarch.
THE NAVVY
(staggering past) O, yes! O God, yes! O, make the kwawr a krowawr! O!
Bo!
(Casqued halberdiers in armour thrust forward a pentice of gutted
spearpoints. Major Tweedy, moustached like Turko the terrible, in
bearskin cap with hackleplume and accoutrements, with epaulettes,
gilt chevrons and sabretaches, his breast bright with medals, toes
the line. He gives the pilgrim warrior's sign of the knights
templars.)
MAJOR TWEEDY
(growls gruffly) Rorke's Drift! Up, guards, and at them! Mahar shalal
hashbaz.
THE CITIZEN
Erin go bragh!
(Major Tweedy and the Citizen exhibit to each other medals,
decorations, trophies of war, wounds. Both salute with fierce
hostility.)
PRIVATE CARR
I'll do him in.
PRIVATE COMPTON
(moves the crowd back) Fair play, here. Make a bleeding butcher's shop of
the bugger.
(Massed bands blare Garryowen and God save the king.)
CISSY CAFFREY
They're going to fight. For me!
CUNTY KATE
The brave and the fair.
BIDDY THE CLAP
Methinks yon sable knight will joust it with the best.
CUNTY KATE
(blushing deeply) Nay, madam. The gules doublet and merry saint George
for me!
STEPHEN
The harlot's cry from street to street
Shall weave Old Ireland's windingsheet.
PRIVATE CARR
(loosening his belt, shouts) I'll wring the neck of any fucking bastard says
a word against my bleeding fucking king.
BLOOM
(shakes Cissy Caffrey's shoulders) Speak, you! Are you struck dumb? You
are the link between nations and generations. Speak, woman, sacred
lifegiver!
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!
STEPHEN
(ecstatically, to Cissy Caffrey)
White thy fambles, red thy gan
And thy quarrons dainty is.
VOICES
Police!
DISTANT VOICES
Dublin's burning! Dublin's burning! On fire, on fire!
(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 marshlands, swooping from
eyries, hover screaming, gannets, cormorants, vultures, goshawks,
climbing woodcocks, peregrines, merlins, 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 goatfell cloaks arise
and appear to many. A chasm opens with a noiseless yawn. Tom
Rochford, winner, in athlete's 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 dragons' 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 Lear
O'Johnny, Lord Edward Fitzgerald against Lord Gerald
Fitzedward, The O'Donoghue of The Glens against The Glens of
The O'Donoghue. On an eminence, the centre of the earth, rises the
feldaltar of Saint Barbara. Black candles rise from its gospel and
epistle horns. From the high barbacans 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 lace petticoat
and reversed chasuble, his two left feet back to the front, celebrates
camp mass. The Reverend Mr Hugh C Haines Love M. A. in a
plain cassock and mortarboard, his head and collar back to the
front, holds over the celebrant's head an open umbrella.)
FATHER MALACHI O'FLYNN
Introibo ad altare diaboli.
THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE
To the devil which hath made glad my young days.
FATHER MALACHI O'FLYNN
(takes from the chalice and elevates a blooddripping host) Corpus meum.
THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE
(raises high behind the celebrant's petticoat, revealing his grey bare hairy
buttocks between which a carrot is stuck) My body.
THE VOICE OF ALL THE DAMNED
Htengier Tnetopinmo Dog Drol eht rof, Aiulella!
(From on high the voice of Adonai calls.)
ADONAI
Dooooooooooog!
THE VOICE OF ALL THE BLESSED
Alleluia, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth!
(From on high the voice of Adonai calls.)
ADONAI
Goooooooooood!
(In strident discord peasants and townsmen of Orange and Green
factions sing Kick the Pope and Daily, daily sing to Mary.)
PRIVATE CARR
(with ferocious articulation) I'll do him in, so help me fucking Christ! I'll
wring the bastard fucker's bleeding blasted fucking windpipe!
(The retriever, nosing on the fringe of the crowd, barks noisily.)
BLOOM
(runs to Lynch) Can't you get him away?
LYNCH
He likes dialectic, the universal language. Kitty! (to Bloom) Get him away,
you. He won't listen to me.
(He drags Kitty away.)
STEPHEN
(points) Exit Judas. Et laqueo se suspendit.
BLOOM
(runs to Stephen) Come along with me now before worse happens. Here's
your stick.
STEPHEN
Stick, no. Reason. This feast of pure reason.
OLD GUMMY GRANNY
(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!
CISSY CAFFREY
(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.
BLOOM
(over Stephen's shoulder) Yes, go. You see he's incapable.
PRIVATE CARR
(breaks loose) I'll insult him.
(He rushes towards Stephen, fist 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.)
MAJOR TWEEDY
(loudly) Carbine in bucket! Cease fire! Salute!
THE RETRIEVER
(barking furiously) Ute ute ute ute ute ute ute ute.
THE CROWD
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!
A HAG
What call had the redcoat to strike the gentleman and he under the
influence. Let them go and fight the Boers!
THE BAWD
Listen to who's talking! Hasn't the soldier a right to go with his girl? He
gave him the coward's blow.
(They grab at each other's hair, claw at each other and spit)
THE RETRIEVER
(barking) Wow wow wow.
BLOOM
(shoves them back, loudly) Get back, stand back!
PRIVATE COMPTON
(tugging his comrade) Here. Bugger off, Harry. Here's the cops!
(Two raincaped watch, tall, stand in the group.)
FIRST WATCH
What's wrong here?
PRIVATE COMPTON
We were with this lady. And he insulted us. And assaulted my chum. (the
retriever barks) Who owns the bleeding tyke?
CISSY CAFFREY
(with expectation) Is he bleeding!
A MAN
(rising from his knees) No. Gone off. He'll come to all right.
BLOOM
(glances sharply at the man) Leave him to me. I can easily .....
SECOND WATCH
Who are you? Do you know him?
PRIVATE CARR
(lurches towards the watch) He insulted my lady friend.
BLOOM
(angrily) You hit him without provocation. I'm a witness. Constable, take
his regimental number.
SECOND WATCH
I don't want your instructions in the discharge of my duty.
PRIVATE COMPTON
(pulling his comrade) Here, bugger off Harry. Or Bennett'll shove you in
the lockup.
PRIVATE CARR
(staggering as he is pulled away) God fuck old Bennett. He's a whitearsed
bugger. I don't give a shit for him.
FIRST WATCH
(takes out his notebook) What's his name?
BLOOM
(peering over the crowd) I just see a car there. If you give me a hand a
second, sergeant....
FIRST WATCH
Name and address.
(Corny Kelleker, weepers round his hat, a death wreath in his hand,
appears among the bystanders.)
BLOOM
(quickly) O, the very man! (he whispers) Simon Dedalus' son. A bit
sprung. Get those policemen to move those loafers back.
SECOND WATCH
Night, Mr Kelleher.
CORNY KELLEHER
(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?
FIRST WATCH
(turns to the crowd) Here, what are you all gaping at? Move on out of
that.
(The crowd disperses slowly, muttering, down the lane.)
CORNY KELLEHER
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
(laughs) I suppose so.
CORNY KELLEHER
(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?
SECOND WATCH
(genially) Ah, sure we were too.
CORNY KELLEHER
(winking) Boys will be boys. I've a car round there.
SECOND WATCH
All right, Mr Kelleher. Good night.
CORNY KELLEHER
I'll see to that.
BLOOM
(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 wellknown highly respected citizen.
Just a little wild oats, you understand.
FIRST WATCH
O. I understand, sir.
SECOND WATCH
That's all right, sir.
FIRST WATCH
It was only in case of corporal injuries I'd have to report it at the station.
BLOOM
(nods rapidly) Naturally. Quite right. Only your bounden duty.
SECOND WATCH
It's our duty.
CORNY KELLEHER
Good night, men.
THE WATCH
(saluting together) Night, gentlemen.
(They move off with slow heavy tread)
BLOOM
(blows) Providential you came on the scene. You have a car...?
CORNY KELLEHER
(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.
BLOOM
I was just going home by Gardiner street when I happened to ...
CORNY KELLEHER
(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!
BLOOM
(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 neighs.)
THE HORSE
Hohohohohohoh! Hohohohome!
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 speciality. Will I give him a lift home?
Where does he hang out? Somewhere in Cabra, what?
BLOOM
No, in Sandycove, I believe, from what he let drop.
(Stephen, prone, breathes to the stars. Corny Kelleher, asquint,
drawls at the horse. Bloom, in gloom, looms town.)
CORNY KELLEHER
(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.
BLOOM
No, no, no. I have his money and his hat here and stick.
CORNY KELLEHER
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!
THE HORSE
(neighs) Hohohohohome.
BLOOM
Good night. I'll just wait and take him along in a few ...
(Corny Kelleher returns to the outside car and mounts it. The
horseharness jingles.)
CORNY KELLEHER
(from the car, standing) Night.
BLOOM
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
Bloom's 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 tooralooloo looloo lay. Bloom, holding in
his hand Stephen's hat, festooned with shavings, and ashplant,
stands irresolute. Then he bends to him and shakes him by the
shoulder.)
BLOOM
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!
STEPHEN
(frowns) 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 ..?
(He turns on his left side, sighing, doubling himself together.)
BLOOM
Poetry. Well educated. Pity. (he bends again and undoes the buttons of
Stephen's waistcoat) To breathe. (he brushes the woodshavings from
Stephen's clothes with light hand and fingers) One pound seven. Not hurt
anyhow. (he listens) What?
STEPHEN
(murmurs)
.... shadows ... the woods
... white breast... dim sea.
(He stretches out his arms, sighs again and curls his body. Bloom,
holding the 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.)
BLOOM
(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 .....
(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.)
BLOOM
(wonderstruck, calls inaudibly) Rudy!
RUDY
(gazes, unseeing, into Bloom's eyes and goes on reading, kissing, smiling
He has a delicate mauve face. On his suit he has diamond and ruby
buttons. In his free left hand he holds a slim ivory cane with a violet
bowknot. A white lambkin peeps out of his waistcoat pocket.)
--The biscuits was as hard as brass And the beef as salt as Lot's wife's arse. 980 O, Johnny Lever! Johnny Lever, O!After which effusion the redoubtable specimen duly arrived on the scene and regaining his seat he sank rather than sat heavily on the form provided. Skin-the-Goat, assuming he was he, evidently with an axe to grind, was airing his grievances in a forcible-feeble philippic anent the natural resources of Ireland or something of that sort which he described in his lengthy dissertation as the richest country bar none on the face of God's earth, far and away superior to England, with coal in large quantities, six million pounds worth of pork exported every year, ten millions between 990 butter and eggs and all the riches drained out of it by England levying taxes on the poor people that paid through the nose always and gobbling up the best meat in the market and a lot more surplus steam in the same vein. Their conversation accordingly became general and all agreed that that was a fact. You could grow any mortal thing in Irish soil, he stated, and there was that colonel Everard down there in Navan growing tobacco. Where would you find anywhere the like of Irish bacon? But a day of reckoning, he stated crescendo with no uncertain voice, thoroughly monopolising all the conversation, was in store for mighty England, despite her power of pelf on account of her crimes. There would be a fall and the greatest fall in history. The Germans and the Japs were going to have their little lookin, he affirmed. The Boers were the beginning of the end. Brummagem England was toppling already and her downfall would be Ireland, her Achilles heel, which he explained to them about the vulnerable point of Achilles, the Greek hero, a point his auditors at once seized as he completely gripped their attention by showing the tendon referred to on his boot. His advice to every Irishman was: stay in the land of your birth and work for Ireland and live for Ireland. Ireland, Parnell said, could not spare a single one of her sons. Silence all round marked the termination of his finale. The l o l o impervious navigator heard these lurid tidings, undismayed. --Take a bit of doing, boss, retaliated that rough diamond palpably a bit peeved in response to the foregoing truism. To which cold douche referring to downfall and so on the keeper concurred but nevertheless held to his main view. --Who's the best troops in the army? the grizzled old veteran irately interrogated. And the best jumpers and racers? And the best admirals and generals we've got? Tell me that. --The Irish, for choice, retorted the cabby like Campbell, facial blemishes apart. --That's right, the old tarpaulin corroborated. The Irish catholic peasant. He's the backbone of our empire. You know Jem Mullins? While allowing him his individual opinions as everyman the keeper added he cared nothing for any empire, ours or his, and considered no Irishman worthy of his salt that served it. Then they began to have a few irascible words when it waxed hotter, both, needless to say, appealing to the listeners who followed the passage of arms with interest so long as they didn't indulge in recriminations and come to blows. From inside information extending over a series of years Mr Bloom was rather inclined to poohpooh the suggestion as egregious balderdash for, pending that consummation devoutly to be or not to be wished for, he was fully cognisant of the fact that their neighbours across the channel, unless they were much bigger fools than he took them for, rather concealed their strength than the opposite. It was quite on a par with the quixotic idea in certain quarters that in a hundred million years the coal seam of the sister island would be played out and if, as time went on, that turned out to be how the cat jumped all he could personally say on the matter was that as a host of contingencies, equally relevant to the issue, might occur ere then it was highly advisable in the interim to try to make the most of both countries even though poles apart. Another little interesting point, the amours of whores and chummies, to put it in common parlance, reminded him Irish soldiers had as often fought for England as against her, more so, in fact. And now, why? So the scene between the pair of them, the licensee of the place rumoured to be or have been Fitzharris, the famous invincible, and the other, obviously bogus, reminded him forcibly as being on all fours with the confidence trick, supposing, that is, it was prearranged as the lookeron, a student of the human soul if anything, the others seeing least of the game. And as for the lessee or keeper, who probably wasn't the other person at all, he (B.) couldn't help feeling and most properly it was better to give people like that the goby unless you were a blithering idiot altogether and refuse to have anything to do with them as a golden rule in private life and their felonsetting, there always being the offchance of a Dannyman coming forward and turning queen's evidence or king's now like Denis or Peter Carey, an idea he utterly repudiated. Quite apart from that he disliked those careers of wrongdoing and crime on principle. Yet, though such criminal propensities had never been an inmate of his bosom in any shape or form, he certainly did feel and no denying it (while inwardly remaining what he was) a certain kind of admiration for a man who had actually brandished a knife, cold steel, with the courage of his political convictions (though, personally, he would never be a party to any such thing), off the same bat as those love vendettas of the south, have her or swing for her, when the husband frequently, after some words passed between the two concerning her relations with the other lucky mortal (he having had the pair watched), inflicted fatal injuries on his adored one as a result of an alternative postnuptial liaison by plunging his knife into her, until it just struck him that Fitz, nicknamed Skin-the, merely drove the car for the actual perpetrators of the outrage and so was not, if he was reliably informed, actually party to the ambush which, in point of fact, was the plea some legal luminary saved his skin on. In any case that was very ancient history by now and as for our friend, the pseudo Skin-the-etcetera, he had 1070 transparently outlived his welcome. He ought to have either died naturally or on the scaffold high. Like actresses, always farewell positively last performance then come up smiling again. Generous to a fault of course, temperamental, no economising or any idea of the sort, always snapping at the bone for the shadow. So similarly he had a very shrewd suspicion that Mr Johnny Lever got rid of some ¦ s d. in the course of his perambulations round the docks in the congenial atmosphere of the Old Ireland tavern, come back to Erin and so on. Then as for the other he had heard not so long before the same identical lingo as he told Stephen how he simply but effectually silenced the offender. --He took umbrage at something or other, that muchinjured but on the whole eventempered person declared, I let slip. He called me a jew and in a heated fashion offensively. So I without deviating from plain facts in the least told him his God, I mean Christ, was a jew too and all his family like me though in reality I'm not. That was one for him. A soft answer turns away wrath. He hadn't a word to say for himself as everyone saw. Am I not right? He turned a long you are wrong gaze on Stephen of timorous dark pride at the soft impeachment with a glance also of entreaty for he seemed to glean in a kind of a way that it wasn't all exactly. 1090 --Ex quibus, Stephen mumbled in a noncommittal accent, their two or four eyes conversing, Christus or Bloom his name is or after all any other, secundum carnem. --Of course, Mr B. proceeded to stipulate, you must look at both sides of the question. It is hard to lay down any hard and fast rules as to right and wrong but room for improvement all round there certainly is though every country, they say, our own distressful included, has the government it deserves. But with a little goodwill all round. It's all very fine to boast of mutual superiority but what about mutual equality. I resent violence and intolerance in any shape or form. It never reaches anything or stops anything. A revolution must come on the due instalments plan. It's a patent absurdity on the face of it to hate people because they live round the corner and speak another vernacular, in the next house so to speak. --Memorable bloody bridge battle and seven minutes' war, Stephen assented, between Skinner's alley and Ormond market. Yes, Mr Bloom thoroughly agreed, entirely endorsing the remark, that was overwhelmingly right. And the whole world was full of that sort of thing. --You just took the words out of my mouth, he said. A hocuspocus of conflicting evidence that candidly you couldn't remotely .... All those wretched quarrels, in his humble opinion, stirring up bad blood, from some bump of combativeness or gland of some kind, erroneously supposed to be about a punctilio of honour and a flag, were very largely a question of the money question which was at the back of everything greed and jealousy, people never knowing when to stop. --They accuse, remarked he audibly. He turned away from the others who probably and spoke nearer to, so as the others in case they. --Jews, he softly imparted in an aside in Stephen's ear, are accused of ruining. Not a vestige of truth in it, I can safely say. History, would you be surprised to learn, proves up to the hilt Spain decayed when the inquisition hounded the jews out and England prospered when Cromwell, an uncommonly able ruffian who in other respects has much to answer for, imported them. Why? Because they are imbued with the proper spirit. They are practical and are proved to be so. I don't want to indulge in any because you know the standard works on the subject and then orthodox as you are. But in the economic, not touching religion, domain the priest spells poverty. Spain again, you saw in the war, compared with goahead America. Turks. It's in the dogma. Because if they didn't believe they'd go straight to heaven when they die they'd try to live better, at least so I think. That's the juggle on which the p.p's raise the wind on false pretences. I'm, he resumed with dramatic force, as good an Irishman as that rude person I told you about at the outset and I want to see everyone, concluded he, all creeds and classes pro rata having a comfortable tidysized income, in no niggard fashion either, something in the neighbourhood of ¦300 per annum. That's the vital issue at stake and it's feasible and would be provocative of friendlier intercourse between man and man. At least that's my idea for what it's worth. I call that patriotism. Ubi patria, as we learned a smattering of in our classical days in Alma Mater, vita bene. Where you can live well, the sense is, if you work. Over his untastable apology for a cup of coffee, listening to this synopsis of things in general, Stephen stared at nothing in particular. He could hear, of course, all kinds of words changing colour like those crabs about Ringsend in the morning burrowing quickly into all colours of different sorts of the same sand where they had a home somewhere beneath or seemed to. Then he looked up and saw the eyes that said or didn't say the words the voice he heard said, if you work. --Count me out, he managed to remark, meaning work. The eyes were surprised at this observation because as he, the person who owned them pro tem. observed or rather his voice speaking did, all must work, have to, together. --I mean, of course, the other hastened to affirm, work in the widest possible sense. Also literary labour not merely for the kudos of the thing. Writing for the newspapers which is the readiest channel nowadays. That's work too. Important work. After all, from the little I know of you, after all the money expended on your education you are entitled to recoup yourself and command your price. You have every bit as much right to live by your pen in pursuit of your philosophy as the peasant has. What? You both belong to Ireland, the brain and the brawn. Each is equally important. --You suspect, Stephen retorted with a sort of a half laugh, that I may be 1160 important because I belong to the faubourg Saint PЉtrice called Ireland for short. --I would go a step farther, Mr Bloom insinuated. --But I suspect, Stephen interrupted, that Ireland must be important because it belongs to me. --What belongs, queried Mr Bloom bending, fancying he was perhaps under some misapprehension. Excuse me. Unfortunately, I didn't catch the latter portion. What was it you ....? Stephen, patently crosstempered, repeated and shoved aside his mug of coffee or whatever you like to call it none too politely, adding: 1170 --We can't change the country. Let us change the subject. At this pertinent suggestion Mr Bloom, to change the subject, looked down but in a quandary, as he couldn't tell exactly what construction to put on belongs to which sounded rather a far cry. The rebuke of some kind was clearer than the other part. Needless to say the fumes of his recent orgy spoke then with some asperity in a curious bitter way foreign to his sober state. Probably the homelife to which Mr B attached the utmost importance had not been all that was needful or he hadn't been familiarised with the right sort of people. With a touch of fear for the young man beside him whom he furtively scrutinised with an air of some consternation 1180 remembering he had just come back from Paris, the eyes more especially reminding him forcibly of father and sister, failing to throw much light on the subject, however, he brought to mind instances of cultured fellows that promised so brilliantly nipped in the bud of premature decay and nobody to blame but themselves. For instance there was the case of O'Callaghan, for one, the halfcrazy faddist, respectably connected though of inadequate means, with his mad vagaries among whose other gay doings when rotto and making himself a nuisance to everybody all round he was in the habit of ostentatiously sporting in public a suit of brown paper (a fact). And then the usual d’nouement after the fun had gone on fast and furious he got 1190 landed into hot water and had to be spirited away by a few friends, after a strong hint to a blind horse from John Mallon of Lower Castle Yard, so as not to be made amenable under section two of the criminal law amendment act, certain names of those subpoenaed being handed in but not divulged for reasons which will occur to anyone with a pick of brains. Briefly, putting two and two together, six sixteen which he pointedly turned a deaf ear to, Antonio and so forth, jockeys and esthetes and the tattoo which was all the go in the seventies or thereabouts even in the house of lords because early in life the occupant of the throne, then heir apparent, the other members of the upper ten and other high personages simply following in the footsteps of the head of the state, he reflected about the errors of notorieties and crowned heads running counter to morality such as the Cornwall case a number of years before under their veneer in a way scarcely intended by nature, a thing good Mrs Grundy, as the law stands, was terribly down on though not for the reason they thought they were probably whatever it was except women chiefly who were always fiddling more or less at one another it being largely a matter of dress and all the rest of it. Ladies who like distinctive underclothing should, and every welltailored man must, trying to make the gap wider between them by innuendo and give more of a genuine filip to acts of impropriety between the two, she unbuttoned his and then he untied her, mind the pin, whereas savages in the cannibal islands, say, at ninety degrees in the shade not caring a continental. However, reverting to the original, there were on the other hand others who had forced their way to the top from the lowest rung by the aid of their bootstraps. Sheer force of natural genius, that. With brains, sir. For which and further reasons he felt it was his interest and duty even to wait on and profit by the unlookedfor occasion though why he could not exactly tell being as it was already several shillings to the bad having in fact let himself in for it. Still to cultivate the acquaintance of someone of no uncommon calibre who could provide food for reflection would amply repay any small. Intellectual stimulation, as such, was, he felt, from time to time a firstrate tonic for the mind. Added to which was the coincidence of meeting, discussion, dance, row, old salt of the here today and gone tomorrow type, night loafers, the whole galaxy of events, all went to make up a miniature cameo of the world we live in especially as the lives of the submerged tenth, viz. coalminers, divers, scavengers etc., were very much under the microscope lately. To improve the shining hour he wondered whether he might meet with anything approaching the same luck as Mr Philip Beaufoy if taken down in writing suppose he were to pen something out of the common groove (as he fully intended doing) at the rate of one guinea per column. My Experiences, let us say, in a Cabman's Shelter. The pink edition extra sporting of the Telegraph tell a graphic lie lay, as luck would have it, beside his elbow and as he was just puzzling again, far from satisfied, over a country belonging to him and the preceding rebus the vessel came from Bridgwater and the postcard was addressed A. Boudin find the captain's age, his eyes went aimlessly over the respective captions which came under his special province the allembracing give us this day our daily press. First he got a bit of a start but it turned out to be only something about somebody named H. du Boyes, agent for typewriters or something like that. Great battle, Tokio. Lovemaking in Irish, ¦200 damages. Gordon Bennett. Emigration Swindle. Letter from His Grace. William . Ascot meeting, the Gold Cup. Victory of outsider Throwaway recalls Derby of '92 when Capt. Marshall's dark horse Sir Hugo captured the blue ribband at long odds. New York disaster. Thousand lives lost. Foot and Mouth. Funeral of the late Mr Patrick Dignam. So to change the subject he read about Dignam R. I. P. which, he reflected, was anything but a gay sendoff. Or a change of address anyway. --This morning (Hynes put it in of course) the remains of the late Mr Patrick Dignam were removed from his residence, no 9 Newbridge Avenue, Sandymount, for interment in Glasnevin. The deceased gentleman was a 1250 most popular and genial personality in city life and his demise after a brief illness came as a great shock to citizens of all classes by whom he is deeply regretted. The obsequies, at which many friends of the deceased were present, were carried out by (certainly Hynes wrote it with a nudge from Corny) Messrs H. J. O'Neill and Son, 164 North Strand Road. The mourners included: Patk. Dignam (son), Bernard Corrigan (brother-in-law), Jno. Henry Menton, solr, Martin Cunningham, John Power, .)eatondph 1/8 ador dorador douradora (must be where he called Monks the dayfather about Keyes's ad) Thomas Kernan, Simon Dedalus, Stephen Dedalus B. ,4., Edw. J. Lambert, Cornelius T. Kelleher, Joseph M'C Hynes, L. Boom, CP 1260 M'Coy, - M'lntosh and several others. Nettled not a little by L. Boom (as it incorrectly stated) and the line of bitched type but tickled to death simultaneously by C. P. M'Coy and Stephen Dedalus B. A. who were conspicuous, needless to say, by their total absence (to say nothing of M'Intosh) L. Boom pointed it out to his companion B. A. engaged in stifling another yawn, half nervousness, not forgetting the usual crop of nonsensical howlers of misprints. --Is that first epistle to the Hebrews, he asked as soon as his bottom jaw would let him, in? Text: open thy mouth and put thy foot in it. --It is. Really, Mr Bloom said (though first he fancied he alluded to the archbishop till he added about foot and mouth with which there could be no possible connection) overjoyed to set his mind at rest and a bit flabbergasted at Myles Crawford's after all managing to. There. While the other was reading it on page two Boom (to give him for the nonce his new misnomer) whiled away a few odd leisure moments in fits and starts with the account of the third event at Ascot on page three, his side. Value 1000 sovs with 3000 sovs in specie added. For entire colts and fillies. Mr F. Alexander's Throwaway, b. h. by Rightaway-Thrale, 5 yrs, 9 st 4 lbs (W. Lane) 1, lord Howard de Walden's Zinfandel (M. Cannon) z, Mr W. Bass's Sceptre 3. Betting 5 to 4 on Zinfandel, 20 to I Throwaway (off). Sceptre a shade heavier, 5 to 4 on Zinfandel, 20 to I Throwaway (off). Throwaway and Zinfandel stood close order. It was anybody's race then the rank outsider drew to the fore, got long lead, beating lord Howard de Walden's chestnut colt and Mr W. Bass's bay filly Sceptre on a 2 1/2 mile course. Winner trained by Braime so that Lenehan's version of the business was all pure buncombe. Secured the verdict cleverly by a length. 1000 sovs with 3000 in specie. Also ran: J de Bremond's (French horse Bantam Lyons was anxiously inquiring after not in yet but expected any minute) Maximum II. Different ways of bringing off a coup. Lovemaking damages. Though that halfbaked Lyons ran off at a tangent in his impetuosity to get left. Of course gambling eminently lent itself to that sort of thing though as the event turned out the poor fool hadn't much reason to congratulate himself on his pick, the forlorn hope. Guesswork it reduced itself to eventually. --There was every indication they would arrive at that, he, Bloom, said. --Who? the other, whose hand by the way was hurt, said. One morning you would open the paper, the cabman affirmed, and read: Return of Parnell. He bet them what they liked. A Dublin fusilier was in that shelter one night and said he saw him in South Africa. Pride it was killed him. He ought to have done away with himself or lain low for a time after committee room no 15 until he was his old self again with no-one to point a finger at him. Then they would all to a man have gone down on their marrowbones to him to come back when he had recovered his senses. Dead he wasn't. Simply absconded somewhere. The coffin they brought over was full of stones. He changed his name to De Wet, the Boer general. He made a mistake to fight the priests. And so forth and so on. All the same Bloom (properly so dubbed) was rather surprised at their memories for in nine cases out of ten it was a case of tarbarrels and not singly but in their thousands and then complete oblivion because it was twenty odd years. Highly unlikely of course there was even a shadow of truth in the stones and, even supposing, he thought a return highly inadvisable, all things considered. Something evidently riled them in his death. Either he petered out too tamely of acute pneumonia just when his various different political arrangements were nearing completion or whether it transpired he owed his death to his having neglected to change his boots and clothes-after a wetting when a cold resulted and failing to consult a specialist he being confined to his room till he eventually died of it amid widespread regret before a fortnight was at an end or quite possibly they were distressed to find the job was taken out of their hands. Of course nobody being acquainted with his movements even before there was absolutely no clue as to his whereabouts which were decidedly of the Alice, where art thou order even prior to his starting to go under several aliases such as Fox and Stewart so the remark which emanated from friend cabby might be within the bounds of possibility. Naturally then it would prey on his mind as a born leader of men which undoubtedly he was and a commanding figure, a sixfooter or at any rate five feet ten or eleven in his stockinged feet, whereas Messrs So and So who, though they weren't even a patch on the former man, ruled the roost after their redeeming features were very few and far between. It certainly pointed a moral, the idol with feet of clay, and then seventytwo of his trusty henchmen rounding on him with mutual mudslinging. And the identical same with murderers. You had to come back. That haunting sense kind of drew you. To show the understudy in the title role how to. He saw him once on the auspicious occasion when they broke up the type in the Insuppressible or was it United Ireland, a privilege he keenly appreciated, and, in point of fact, handed him his silk hat when it was knocked off and he said Thank you, excited as he undoubtedly was under his frigid exterior notwithstanding the little misadventure mentioned between the cup and the lip: what's bred in the bone. Still as regards return. You were a lucky dog if they didn't set the terrier at you directly you got back. Then a lot of shillyshally usually followed, Tom for and Dick and Harry against. And then, number one, you came up against the man in possession and had to produce your credentials like the claimant in the Tichborne case, Roger Charles Tichborne, Bella was the boat's name to the best of his recollection he, the heir, went down in as the evidence went to show and there was a tattoo mark too in Indian ink, lord Bellew was it, as he might very easily have picked up the details from some pal on board ship and then, when got up to tally with the description given, introduce himself with: Excuse me, my name is So and So or some such commonplace remark. A more prudent course, as Bloom said to the not over effusive, in fact like the distinguished personage under discussion beside him, would have been to sound the lie of the land first. --That bitch, that English whore, did for him, the shebeen proprietor commented. She put the first nail in his coffin. --Fine lump of a woman all the same, the soi-disant townclerk Henry Campbell remarked, and plenty of her. She loosened many a man's thighs. I seen her picture in a barber's. The husband was a captain or an officer. --Ay, Skin-the-Goat amusingly added, he was and a cottonball one. This gratuitous contribution of a humorous character occasioned a fair amount of laughter among his entourage. As regards Bloom he, without the faintest suspicion of a smile, merely gazed in the direction of the 1360 door and reflected upon the historic story which had aroused extraordinary interest at the time when the facts, to make matters worse, were made public with the usual affectionate letters that passed between them full of sweet nothings. First it was strictly Platonic till nature intervened and an attachment sprang up between them till bit by bit matters came to a climax and the matter became the talk of the town till the staggering blow came as a welcome intelligence to not a few evildisposed, however, who were resolved upon encompassing his downfall though the thing was public property all along though not to anything like the sensational extent that it subsequently blossomed into. Since their names were coupled, though, since he was her declared favourite, where was the particular necessity to proclaim it to the rank and file from the housetops, the fact, namely, that he had shared her bedroom which came out in the witnessbox on oath when a thrill went through the packed court literally electrifying everybody in the shape of witnesses swearing to having witnessed him on such and such a particular date in the act of scrambling out of an upstairs apartment with the assistance of a ladder in night apparel, having gained admittance in the same fashion, a fact the weeklies, addicted to the lubric a little, simply coined shoals of money out of. Whereas the simple fact of the case was it was simply a case of the husband not being up to the scratch, with nothing in common between them beyond the name, and then a real man arriving on the scene, strong to the verge of weakness, falling a victim to her siren charms and forgetting home ties, the usual sequel, to bask in the loved one's smiles. The eternal question of the life connubial, needless to say, cropped up. Can real love, supposing there happens to be another chap in the case, exist between married folk? Poser. Though it was no concern of theirs absolutely if he regarded her with affection, carried away by a wave of folly. A magnificent specimen of manhood he was truly augmented obviously by gifts of a high order, as compared with the other military supernumerary that is (who was just the usual everyday farewell, my gallant captain kind of an individual in the light dragoons, the l8th hussars to be accurate) and inflammable doubtless (the fallen leader, that is, not the other) in his own peculiar way which she of course, woman, quickly perceived as highly likely to carve his way to fame which he almost bid fair to do till the priests and ministers of the gospel as a whole, his erstwhile staunch adherents, and his beloved evicted tenants for whom he had done yeoman service in the rural parts of the country by taking up the cudgels on their behalf in a way that exceeded their most sanguine expectations, very effectually cooked his matrimonial goose, thereby heaping coals of fire on his head much in the same way as the fabled ass's kick. Looking back now in a retrospective kind of arrangement all seemed a kind of dream. And then coming back was the worst thing you ever did because it went without saying you would feel out of place as things always moved with the times. Why, as he reflected, Irishtown strand, a locality he had not been in for quite a number of years looked different somehow since, as it happened, he went to reside on the north side. North or south, however, it was just the wellknown case of hot passion, pure and simple, upsetting the applecart with a vengeance and just bore out the very thing he was saying as she also was Spanish or half so, types that wouldn't do things by halves, passionate abandon of the south, casting every shred of decency to the winds. --Just bears out what I was saying, he, with glowing bosom said to Stephen, about blood and the sun. And, if I don't greatly mistake she was Spanish too. --The king of Spain's daughter, Stephen answered, adding something or other rather muddled about farewell and adieu to you Spanish onions and the first land called the Deadman and from Ramhead to Scilly was so and so many. --Was she? Bloom ejaculated, surprised though not astonished by any means, I never heard that rumour before. Possible, especially there, it was as she lived there. So, Spain. Carefully avoiding a book in his pocket Sweets of, which reminded him by the by of that Cap l street library book out of date, he took out his pocketbook and, turning over the various contents it contained rapidly finally he. --Do you consider, by the by, he said, thoughtfully selecting a faded photo which he laid on the table, that a Spanish type? Stephen, obviously addressed, looked down on the photo showing a large sized lady with her fleshy charms on evidence in an open fashion as she was in the full bloom of womanhood in evening dress cut ostentatiously low for the occasion to give a liberal display of bosom, with more than vision of breasts, her full lips parted and some perfect teeth, standing near, ostensibly with gravity, a piano on the rest of which was In Old Madrid, a ballad, pretty in its way, which was then all the vogue. Her (the lady's) eyes, dark, large, looked at Stephen, about to smile about something to be admired, Lafayette of Westmoreland street, Dublin's premier photographic artist, being responsible for the esthetic execution. --Mrs Bloom, my wife the prima donna Madam Marion Tweedy, Bloom indicated. Taken a few years since. In or about ninety six. Very like her then. Beside the young man he looked also at the photo of the lady now his 1440 legal wife who, he intimated, was the accomplished daughter of Major Brian Tweedy and displayed at an early age remarkable proficiency as a singer having even made her bow to the public when her years numbered barely sweet sixteen. As for the face it was a speaking likeness in expression but it did not do justice to her figure which came in for a lot of notice usually and which did not come out to the best advantage in that getup. She could without difficulty, he said, have posed for the ensemble, not to dwell on certain opulent curves of the. He dwelt, being a bit of an artist in his spare time, on the female form in general developmentally because, as it so happened, no later than that afternoon he had seen those Grecian statues, 1450 perfectly developed as works of art, in the National Museum. Marble could give the original, shoulders, back, all the symmetry, all the rest. Yes, puritanisme, it does though Saint Joseph's sovereign thievery alors (Bandez!) Figne toi trop. Whereas no photo could because it simply wasn't art in a word. The spirit moving him he would much have liked to follow Jack Tar's good example and leave the likeness there for a very few minutes to speak for itself on the plea he so that the other could drink in the beauty for himself, her stage presence being, frankly, a treat in itself which the camera could not at all do justice to. But it was scarcely professional etiquette so. 1460 Though it was a warm pleasant sort of a night now yet wonderfully cool for the season considering, for sunshine after storm. And he did feel a kind of need there and then to follow suit like a kind of inward voice and satisfy a possible need by moving a motion. Nevertheless he sat tight just viewing the slightly soiled photo creased by opulent curves, none the worse for wear however, and looked away thoughtfully with the intention of not further increasing the other's possible embarrassment while gauging her symmetry of heaving embonpoint. In fact the slight soiling was only an added charm like the case of linen slightly soiled, good as new, much better in fact with the starch out. Suppose she was gone when he? I looked for the lamp which she told me came into his mind but merely as a passing fancy of his because he then recollected the morning littered bed etcetera and the book about Ruby with met him pike hoses (sic) in it which must have fell down sufficiently appropriately beside the domestic chamberpot with apologies to Lindley Murray. The vicinity of the young man he certainly relished, educated, distingu’ and impulsive into the bargain, far and away the pick of the bunch though you wouldn't think he had it in him yet you would. Besides he said the picture was handsome which, say what you like, it was though at the moment she was distinctly stouter. And why not? An awful lot of makebelieve went on about that sort of thing involving a lifelong slur with the usual splash page of gutterpress about the same old matrimonial tangle alleging misconduct with professional golfer or the newest stage favourite instead of being honest and aboveboard about the whole business. How they were fated to meet and an attachment sprang up between the two so that their names were coupled in the public eye was told in court with letters containing the habitual mushy and compromising expressions leaving no loophole to show that they openly cohabited two or three times a week at some wellknown seaside hotel and relations, when the thing ran its normal course, became in due course intimate. Then the decree nisi and the King's proctor tries to show cause why and, he failing to quash it, nisi was made absolute. But as for that the two misdemeanants, wrapped up as they largely were in one another, could safely afford to ignore it as they very largely did till the matter was put in the hands of a solicitor who filed a petition for the party wronged in due course. He, B, enjoyed the distinction of being close to Erin's uncrowned king in the flesh when the thing occurred on the historic fracas when the fallen leader's, who notoriously stuck to his guns to the last drop even when clothed in the mantle of adultery, (leader's) trusty henchmen to the number of ten or a dozen or possibly even more than that penetrated into the printing works of the Insuppressible or no it was United Ireland (a by no means by the by appropriate appellative) and broke up the typecases with hammers or something like that all on account of some scurrilous effusions from the facile pens of the O'Brienite scribes at the usual mudslinging occupation reflecting on the erstwhile tribune's private morals. Though palpably a radically altered man he was still a commanding figure though carelessly garbed as usual with that look of settled purpose which went a long way with the shillyshallyers till they discovered to their vast discomfiture that their idol had feet of clay after placing him upon a pedestal which she, however, was the first to perceive. As those were particularly hot times in the general hullaballoo Bloom sustained a minor injury from a nasty prod of some chap's elbow in the crowd that of course congregated lodging some place about the pit of the stomach, fortunately not of a grave character. His hat (Parnell's) a silk one was inadvertently knocked off and, as a matter of strict history, Bloom was the man who picked it up in the crush after witnessing the occurrence meaning to return it to him (and return it to him he did with the utmost celerity) who panting and hatless and whose thoughts were miles away from his hat at the time all the same being a gentleman born with a stake in the country he, as a matter of fact, having gone into it more for the kudos of the thing than anything else, what's bred in the bone instilled into him in infancy at his mother's knee in the shape of knowing what good form was came out at once because he turned round to the donor and thanked him with perfect aplomb, saying: Thank you, sir, though in a very different tone of voice from the ornament of the legal profession whose headgear Bloom also set to rights earlier in the course of the day, history repeating itself with a difference, after the burial of a mutual friend when they had left him alone in his glory after the grim task of having committed his remains to the grave. On the other hand what incensed him more inwardly was the blatant jokes of the cabman and so on who passed it all off as a jest, laughing 1530 immoderately, pretending to understand everything, the why and the wherefore, and in reality not knowing their own minds, it being a case for the two parties themselves unless it ensued that the legitimate husband happened to be a party to it owing to some anonymous letter from the usual boy Jones, who happened to come across them at the crucial moment in a loving position locked in one another's arms, drawing attention to their illicit proceedings and leading up to a domestic rumpus and the erring fair one begging forgiveness of her lord and master upon her knees and promising to sever the connection and not receive his visits any more if only the aggrieved husband would overlook the matter and let bygones be bygones with tears in her eyes though possibly with her tongue in her fair cheek at the same time as quite possibly there were several others. He personally, being of a sceptical bias, believed and didn't make the smallest bones about saying so either that man or men in the plural were always hanging around on the waiting list about a lady, even supposing she was the best wife in the world and they got on fairly well together for the sake of argument, when, neglecting her duties, she chose to be tired of wedded life and was on for a little flutter in polite debauchery to press their attentions on her with improper intent, the upshot being that her affections centred on another, the cause of many liaisons between still attractive married women getting on for fair and forty and younger men, no doubt as several famous cases of feminine infatuation proved up to the hilt. It was a thousand pities a young fellow, blessed with an allowance of brains as his neighbour obviously was, should waste his valuable time with profligate women who might present him with a nice dose to last him his lifetime. In the nature of single blessedness he would one day take unto himself a wife when Miss Right came on the scene but in the interim ladies' society was a conditio sine qua non though he had the gravest possible doubts, not that he wanted in the smallest to pump Stephen about Miss Ferguson (who was very possibly the particular lodestar who brought him down to Irishtown so early in the morning), as to whether he would find much satisfaction basking in the boy and girl courtship idea and the company of smirking misses without a penny to their names bi or triweekly with the orthodox preliminary canter of complimentplaying and walking out leading up to fond lovers' ways and flowers and chocs. To think of him house and homeless, rooked by some landlady worse than any stepmother, was really too bad at his age. The queer suddenly things he popped out with attracted the elder man who was several years the other's senior or like his father but something substantial he certainly ought to eat even were it only an eggflip made on unadulterated maternal nutriment or, failing that, the homely Humpty Dumpty boiled. --At what o'clock did you dine? he questioned of the slim form and tired though unwrinkled face. --Some time yesterday, Stephen said. --Yesterday! exclaimed Bloom till he remembered it was already tomorrow Friday. Ah, you mean it's after twelve! --The day before yesterday, Stephen said, improving on himself. Literally astounded at this piece of intelligence Bloom reflected. Though they didn't see eye to eye in everything a certain analogy there somehow was as if both their minds were travelling, so to speak, in the one train of thought. At his age when dabbling in politics roughly some score of years previously when he had been a quasi aspirant to parliamentary honours in the Buckshot Foster days he too recollected in retrospect (which was a source of keen satisfaction in itself) he had a sneaking regard for those same ultra ideas. For instance when the evicted tenants question, then at its first inception, bulked largely in people's mind though, it goes without saying, not contributing a copper or pinning his faith absolutely to its dictums, some of which wouldn't exactly hold water, he at the outset in principle at all events was in thorough sympathy with peasant possession as voicing the trend of modern opinion (a partiality, however, which, realising his mistake, he was subsequently partially cured of) and even was twitted with going a step farther than Michael Davitt in the striking views he at one time inculcated as a backtothelander, which was one reason he strongly resented the innuendo put upon him in so barefaced a fashion by our friend at the gathering of the clans in Barney Kiernan's so that he, though often considerably misunderstood and the least pugnacious of mortals, be it repeated, departed from his customary habit to give him (metaphorically) one in the gizzard though, so far as politics themselves were concerned, he was only too conscious of the casualties invariably resulting from propaganda and displays of mutual animosity and the misery and suffering it entailed as a foregone conclusion on fine young fellows, chiefly, destruction of the fittest, in a word. Anyhow upon weighing up the pros and cons, getting on for one, as it was, it was high time to be retiring for the night. The crux was it was a bit risky to bring him home as eventualities might possibly ensue (somebody having a temper of her own sometimes) and spoil the hash altogether as on the night he misguidedly brought home a dog (breed unknown) with a lame paw (not that the cases were either identical or the reverse though he had hurt his hand too) to Ontario Terrace as he very distinctly remembered, having been there, so to speak. On the other hand it was altogether far and away too late for the Sandymount or Sandycove suggestion so that he was in some perplexity as to which of the two alternatives. Everything pointed to the fact that it behoved him to avail himself to the full of the opportunity, all things considered. His initial impression was he was a shade standoffish or not over effusive but it grew on him someway. For one thing he mightn't what you call jump at the idea, if approached, and what mostly worried him was he didn't know how to lead up to it or word it exactly, supposing he did entertain the proposal, as it would afford him very great personal pleasure if he would allow him to help to put coin in his way or some wardrobe, if found suitable. At all events he wound up by concluding, eschewing for the nonce hidebound precedent, a cup of Epps's cocoa and a shakedown for the night plus the use of a rug or two and overcoat doubled into a pillow at least he would be in safe hands and as warm as a toast on a trivet he failed to perceive any very vast amount of harm in that always with the proviso no rumpus of any sort was kicked up. A move had to be made because that merry old soul, the grasswidower in question who appeared to be glued to the spot, didn't appear in any particular hurry to wend his way home to his dearly beloved Queenstown and it was highly likely some sponger's bawdyhouse of retired beauties where age was no bar off Sheriff street lower would be the best clue to that equivocal character's whereabouts for a few days to come, alternately racking their feelings (the mermaids') with sixchamber revolver anecdotes verging on the tropical calculated to freeze the marrow of anybody's bones and mauling their largesized charms betweenwhiles with rough and tumble gusto to the accompaniment of large potations of potheen and the usual blarney about himself for as to who he in reality was let x equal my right name and address, as Mr Algebra remarks passim. At the same time he inwardly chuckled over his gentle repartee to the blood and ouns champion about his god being a jew. People could put up with being bitten by a wolf but what properly riled them was a bite from a sheep. The most vulnerable point too of tender Achilles. Your god was a jew. Because mostly they appeared to imagine he came from Carrick-on-Shannon or somewhereabouts in the county Sligo. --I propose, our hero eventually suggested after mature reflection while prudently pocketing her photo, as it's rather stuffy here you just come home with me and talk things over. My diggings are quite close in the vicinity. You can't drink that stuff. Do you like cocoa? Wait. I'll just pay this lot. The best plan clearly being to clear out, the remainder being plain sailing, he beckoned, while prudently pocketing the photo, to the keeper of the shanty who didn't seem to. --Yes, that's the best, he assured Stephen to whom for the matter of that Brazen Head or him or anywhere else was all more or less. All kinds of Utopian plans were flashing through his (B's) busy brain, education (the genuine article), literature, journalism, prize titbits, up to date billing, concert tours in English watering resorts packed with hydros and seaside theatres, turning money away, duets in Italian with the accent perfectly true to nature and a quantity of other things, no necessity, of course, to tell the world and his wife from the housetops about it, and a slice of luck. An opening was all was wanted. Because he more than suspected he had his father's voice to bank his hopes on which it was quite on the cards he had so it would be just as well, by the way no harm, to trail the conversation in the direction of that particular red herring just to. The cabby read out of the paper he had got hold of that the former viceroy, earl Cadogan, had presided at the cabdrivers' association dinner in London somewhere. Silence with a yawn or two accompanied this thrilling announcement. Then the old specimen in the corner who appeared to have some spark of vitality left read out that sir Anthony MacDonnell had left Euston for the chief secretary's lodge or words to that effect. To which absorbing piece of intelligence echo answered why. --Give us a squint at that literature, grandfather, the ancient mariner put in, manifesting some natural impatience. --And welcome, answered the elderly party thus addressed. The sailor lugged out from a case he had a pair of greenish goggles which he very slowly hooked over his nose and both ears. --Are you bad in the eyes? the sympathetic personage like the townclerk queried. --Why, answered the seafarer with the tartan beard, who seemingly was a bit of a literary cove in his own small way, staring out of seagreen portholes as you might well describe them as, I uses goggles reading. Sand in the Red Sea done that. One time I could read a book in the dark, manner of speaking. The Arabian Nights Entertainment was my favourite and Red as a Rose is She. Hereupon he pawed the journal open and pored upon Lord only knows what, found drowned or the exploits of King Willow, Iremonger having made a hundred and something second wicket not out for Notts, during which time (completely regardless of Ire) the keeper was intensely occupied loosening an apparently new or secondhand boot which manifestly pinched him as he muttered against whoever it was sold it, all of them who were sufficiently awake enough to be picked out by their facial expressions, that is to say, either simply looking on glumly or passing a trivial remark. To cut a long story short Bloom, grasping the situation, was the first to rise from his seat so as not to outstay their welcome having first and foremost, being as good as his word that he would foot the bill for the occasion, taken the wise precaution to unobtrusively motion to mine host as a parting shot a scarcely perceptible sign when the others were not looking to the effect that the amount due was forthcoming, making a grand total of fourpence (the amount he deposited unobtrusively in four coppers, literally the last of the Mohicans), he having previously spotted on the printed pricelist for all who ran to read opposite him in unmistakable figures, coffee 2d, confectionery do, and honestly well worth twice the money once in a way, as Wetherup used to remark. --Come, he counselled to close the s’ance. Seeing that the ruse worked and the coast was clear they left the shelter or shanty together and the ’lite society of oilskin and company whom nothing short of an earthquake would move out of their dolce far niente. Stephen, who confessed to still feeling poorly and fagged out, paused at the, for a moment, the door. --One thing I never understood, he said to be original on the spur of the moment. Why they put tables upside down at night, I mean chairs upside down, on the tables in cafes. 1710 To which impromptu the neverfailing Bloom replied without a moment's hesitation, saying straight off: --To sweep the floor in the morning. So saying he skipped around, nimbly considering, frankly at the same time apologetic to get on his companion's right, a habit of his, by the bye, his right side being, in classical idiom, his tender Achilles. The night air was certainly now a treat to breathe though Stephen was a bit weak on his pins. --It will (the air) do you good, Bloom said, meaning also the walk, in a moment. The only thing is to walk then you'll feel a different man. Come. It's not far. Lean on me. Accordingly he passed his left arm in Stephen's right and led him on accordingly. --Yes, Stephen said uncertainly because he thought he felt a strange kind of flesh of a different man approach him, sinewless and wobbly and all that. Anyhow they passed the sentrybox with stones, brazier etc. where the municipal supernumerary, ex Gumley, was still to all intents and purposes wrapped in the arms of Murphy, as the adage has it, dreaming of fresh fields and pastures new. And apropos of coffin of stones the analogy was not at all bad as it was in fact a stoning to death on the part of seventytwo out of eighty odd constituencies that ratted at the time of the split and chiefly the belauded peasant class, probably the selfsame evicted tenants he had put in their holdings. So they turned on to chatting about music, a form of art for which Bloom, as a pure amateur, possessed the greatest love, as they made tracks arm in arm across Beresford place. Wagnerian music, though confessedly grand in its way, was a bit too heavy for Bloom and hard to follow at the first go-off but the music of Mercadante's Huguenots, Meyerbeer's Seven Last Words on the Cross and Mozart's Twelfth Mass he simply revelled in, the Gloria in that being, to his mind, the acme of first class music as such, literally knocking everything else into a cocked hat. He infinitely preferred the sacred music of the catholic church to anything the opposite shop could offer in that line such as those Moody and Sankey hymns or Bid me to live and I will live thy protestant to be. He also yielded to none in his admiration of Rossini's Stabat Mater, a work simply abounding in immortal numbers, in which his wife, Madam Marion Tweedy, made a hit, a veritable sensation, he might safely say, greatly adding to her other laureis and putting the others totally in the shade, in the jesuit fathers' church in upper Gardiner street, the sacred edifice being thronged to the doors to hear her with virtuosos, or virtuosi rather. There was the unanimous opinion that there was none to come up to her and suffice it to say in a place of worship for music of a sacred character there was a generally voiced desire for an encore. On the whole though favouring preferably light opera of the Don Giovanni description and Martha, a gem in its line, he had a penchant, though with only a surface knowledge, for the severe classical school such as Mendelssohn. And talking of that, taking it for granted he knew all about the old favourites, he mentioned par excellence Lionel's air in Martha, M'appari, which, curiously enough, he had heard or overheard, to be more accurate, on yesterday, a privilege he keenly appreciated, from the lips of Stephen's respected father, sung to perfection, a study of the number, in fact, which made all the others take a back seat. Stephen, in reply to a politely put query, said he didn't sing it but launched out into praises of Shakespeare's songs, at least of in or about that period, the lutenist Dowland who lived in Fetter lane near Gerard the herbalist, who annos ludendo hausi, Doulandus, an instrument he was contemplating purchasing from Mr Arnold Dolmetsch, whom B. did not quite recall though the name certainly sounded familiar, for sixtyfive guineas and Farnaby and son with their dux and comes conceits and Byrd (William) who played the virginals, he said, in the Queen's chapel or anywhere else he found them and one Tomkins who made toys or airs and John Bull. On the roadway which they were approaching whilst still speaking beyond the swingchains a horse, dragging a sweeper, paced on the paven ground, brushing a long swathe of mire up so that with the noise Bloom was not perfectly certain whether he had caught aright the allusion to sixtyfive guineas and John Bull. He inquired if it was John Bull the political celebrity of that ilk, as it struck him, the two identical names, as a striking coincidence. By the chains the horse slowly swerved to turn, which perceiving, Bloom, who was keeping a sharp lookout as usual, plucked the other's sleeve gently, jocosely remarking: --Our lives are in peril tonight. Beware of the steamroller. They thereupon stopped. Bloom looked at the head of a horse not worth anything like sixtyfive guineas, suddenly in evidence in the dark quite near so that it seemed new, a different grouping of bones and even flesh because palpably it was a fourwalker, a hipshaker, a blackbuttocker, a taildangler, a headhanger putting his hind foot foremost the while the lord of his creation sat on the perch, busy with his thoughts. But such a good poor brute he was sorry he hadn't a lump of sugar but, as he wisely reflected, you could scarcely be prepared for every emergency that might crop up. He was just a big nervous foolish noodly kind of a horse, without a second care in the world. But even a dog, he reflected, take that mongrel in Barney Kiernan's, of the same size, would be a holy horror to face. But it was no animal's fault in particular if he was built that way like the camel, ship of the desert, distilling grapes into potheen in his hump. Nine tenths of them all could be caged or trained, nothing beyond the art of man barring the bees. Whale with a harpoon hairpin, alligator tickle the small of his back and he sees the joke, chalk a circle for a rooster, tiger my eagle eye. These timely reflections anent the brutes of the field occupied his mind somewhat distracted from Stephen's words while the ship of the street was manoeuvring and Stephen went on about the highly interesting old. --What's this I was saying? Ah, yes! My wife, he intimated, plunging in medias res, would have the greatest of pleasure in making your acquaintance as she is passionately attached to music of any kind. He looked sideways in a friendly fashion at the sideface of Stephen, image of his mother, which was not quite the same as the usual handsome blackguard type they unquestionably had an insatiable hankering after as he was perhaps not that way built. Still, supposing he had his father's gift as he more than suspected, it opened up new vistas in his mind such as Lady Fingall's Irish industries, concert on the preceding Monday, and aristocracy in general. Exquisite variations he was now describing on an air Youth here has End by Jans Pieter Sweelinck, a Dutchman of Amsterdam where the frows come from. Even more he liked an old German song of Johannes Jeep about the clear sea and the voices of sirens, sweet murderers of men, which boggled Bloom a bit:
Von der Sirenen Listigkeit
Tun die Poeten dichten.
These opening bars he sang and translated extempore. Bloom,
nodding, said he perfectly understood and begged him to go on by all
means which he did.
A phenomenally beautiful tenor voice like that, the rarest of boons,
which Bloom appreciated at the very first note he got out, could easily, if
properly handled by some recognised authority on voice production such as
Barraclough and being able to read music into the bargain, command its
own price where baritones were ten a penny and procure for its fortunate
possessor in the near future an entr’e into fashionable houses in the best
residential quarters of financial magnates in a large way of business and
titled people where with his university degree of B. A. (a huge ad in its way)
and gentlemanly bearing to all the more influence the good impression he
would infallibly score a distinct success, being blessed with brains which
also could be utilised for the purpose and other requisites, if his clothes
were properly attended to so as to the better worm his way into their good
graces as he, a youthful tyro in- society's sartorial niceties, hardly
understood how a little thing like that could militate against you. It was in
fact only a matter of months and he could easily foresee him participating
in their musical and artistic conversaziones during the festivities of the
Christmas season, for choice, causing a slight flutter in the dovecotes of the
fair sex and being made a lot of by ladies out for sensation, cases of which,
as he happened to know, were on record - in fact, without giving the show
away, he himself once upon a time, if he cared to, could easily have. Added
to which of course would be the pecuniary emolument by no mean.s to be
sneezed at, going hand in hand with his tuition fees. Not, he parenthesised,
that for the sake of filthy lucre he need necessarily embrace the lyric
platform as a walk in life for any lengthy space of time. But a step in the
required direction it was beyond yea or nay and both monetarily and
mentally it contained no reflection on his dignity in the smallest and it often
turned in uncommonly handy to be handed a cheque at a muchneeded
moment when every little helped. Besides, though taste latterly had
deteriorated to a degree, original music like that, different from the
conventional rut, would rapidly have a great vogue as it would be a decided
novelty for Dublin's musical world after the usual hackneyed run of catchy
tenor solos foisted on a confiding public by Ivan St Austell and Hilton
St Just and their genus omne. Yes, beyond a shadow of a doubt he could
with all the cards in his hand and he had a capital opening to make a name
for himself and win a high place in the city's esteem where he could
command a stiff figure and, booking ahead, give a grand concert for the
patrons of the King street house, given a backerup, if one were forthcoming
to kick him upstairs, so to speak, a big if however, with some impetus of the
goahead sort to obviate the inevitable procrastination which often tripped
-up a too much feted prince of good fellows. And it need not detract from
the other by one iota as, being his own master, he would have heaps of time
to practise literature in his spare moments when desirous of so doing
without its clashing with his vocal career or containing anything derogatory
whatsoever as it was a matter for himself alone. In fact, he had the ball at
his feet and that was the very reason why the other, possessed of a
remarkably sharp nose for smelling a rat of any sort, hung on to him at all.
The horse was just then. And later on at a propitious opportunity he
purposed (Bloom did), without anyway prying into his private affairs on the
fools step in where angels principle, advising him to sever his connection
with a certain budding practitioner who, he noticed, was prone to disparage
and even to a slight extent with some hilarious pretext when not present,
deprecate him, or whatever you like to call it which in Bloom's humble
opinion threw a nasty sidelight on that side of a person's character, no pun
intended.
The horse having reached the end of his tether, so to speak, halted
and, rearing high a proud feathering tail, added his quota by letting fall on
the floor which the brush would soon brush up and polish, three smoking
globes of turds. Slowly three times, one after another, from a full crupper he
mired. And humanely his driver waited till he (or she) had ended, patient in
his scythed car.
Side by side Bloom, profiting by the contretemps, with Stephen passed
through the gap of the chains, divided by the upright, and, stepping over a
strand of mire, went across towards Gardiner street lower, Stephen singing
more boldly, but not loudly, the end of the ballad.
Und alle Schiffe br*cken.
The driver never said a word, good, bad or indifferent, but merely
watched the two figures, as he sat on his lowbacked car, both black, one
full, one lean, walk towards the railway bridge, to be married by Father
Maher. As they walked they at times stopped and walked again continuing
their t’te Љ t’te (which, of course, he was utterly out of) about sirens
enemies of man's reason, mingled with a number of other topics of the same
category, usurpers, historical cases of the kind while the man in the sweeper
car or you might as well call it in the sleeper car who in any case couldn't
possibly hear because they were too far simply sat in his seat near the end of
lower Gardiner street and looked after their lowbacked car.
Yes.Trieste-Zurich-Paris 1914-1921 UlyssesJames Joyce
I am the boy
That can enjoy
Invisibility.
Phantasmal mirth, folded away: muskperfumed.
And no more turn aside and brood.
Folded away in the memory of nature with her toys. Memories beset
his brooding brain. Her glass of water from the kitchen tap when she had
approached the sacrament. A cored apple, filled with brown sugar, roasting
for her at the hob on a dark autumn evening. Her shapely fingernails
reddened by the blood of squashed lice from the children's shirts.
In a dream, silently, she had come to him, her wasted body within its
loose graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood, her breath,
bent over him with mute secret words, a faint odour of wetted ashes.
Her glazing eyes, staring out of death, to shake and bend my soul. On
me alone. The ghostcandle to light her agony. Ghostly light on the tortured
face. Her hoarse loud breath rattling in horror, while all prayed on their
knees. Her eyes on me to strike me down. Liliata rutilantium te confessorum
turma circumdet: iubilantium te virginum chorus excipiat.
Ghoul! Chewer of corpses!
No, mother! Let me be and let me live.
-- Kinch ahoy!
Buck Mulligan's voice sang from within the tower. It came nearer up
the staircase, calling again. Stephen, still trembling at his soul's cry, heard
warm running sunlight and in the air behind him friendly words.
-- Dedalus, come down, like a good mosey. Breakfast is ready. Haines is
apologising for waking us last night. It's all right.
-- I'm coming, Stephen said, turning.
-- Do, for Jesus' sake, Buck Mulligan said. For my sake and for all our
sakes.
His head disappeared and reappeared.
-- I told him your symbol of Irish art. He says it's very clever. Touch him
for a quid, will you? A guinea, I mean.
-- I get paid this morning, Stephen said.
-- The school kip? Buck Mulligan said. How much? Four quid? Lend us
one.
-- If you want it, Stephen said.
-- Four shining sovereigns, Buck Mulligan cried with delight. We'll have a
glorious drunk to astonish the druidy druids. Four omnipotent sovereigns.
He flung up his hands and tramped down the stone stairs, singing out
of tune with a Cockney accent:
-- O, won't we have a merry time,
Drinking whisky, beer and wine!
On coronation,
Coronation day!
O, won't we have a merry time
On coronation day!
Warm sunshine merrying over the sea. The nickel shavingbowl shone,
forgotten, on the parapet. Why should I bring it down? Or leave it there all
day, forgotten friendship?
He went over to it, held it in his hands awhile, feeling its coolness,
smelling the clammy slaver of the lather in which the brush was stuck. So I
carried the boat of incense then at Clongowes. I am another now and yet
the same. A servant too. A server of a servant.
In the gloomy domed livingroom of the tower Buck Mulligan's
gowned form moved briskly to and fro about the hearth, hiding and
revealing its yellow glow. Two shafts of soft daylight fell across the flagged
floor from the high barbacans: and at the meeting of their rays a cloud of
coalsmoke and fumes of fried grease floated, turning.
-- We'll be choked, Buck Mulligan said. Haines, open that door, will you?
Stephen laid the shavingbowl on the locker. A tall figure rose from the
hammock where it had been sitting, went to the doorway and pulled open
the inner doors.
-- Have you the key? a voice asked.
-- Dedalus has it, Buck Mulligan said. Janey Mack, I'm choked!
He howled, without looking up from the fire:
-- Kinch!
-- It's in the lock, Stephen said, coming forward.
The key scraped round harshly twice and, when the heavy door had
been set ajar, welcome light and bright air entered. Haines stood at the
doorway, looking out. Stephen haled his upended valise to the table and sat
down to wait. Buck Mulligan tossed the fry on to the dish beside him. Then
he carried the dish and a large teapot over to the table, set them down
heavily and sighed with relief.
-- I'm melting, he said, as the candle remarked when.... But, hush! Not a
word more on that subject! Kinch, wake up! Bread, butter, honey. Haines,
come in. The grub is ready. Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts. Where's
the sugar? O, jay, there's no milk.
Stephen fetched the loaf and the pot of honey and the buttercooler
from the locker. Buck Mulligan sat down in a sudden pet.
-- What sort of a kip is this? he said. I told her to come after eight.
-- We can drink it black, Stephen said thirstily. There's a lemon in the
locker.
-- O, damn you and your Paris fads! Buck Mulligan said. I want Sandycove
milk.
Haines came in from the doorway and said quietly:
-- That woman is coming up with the milk.
-- The blessings of God on you! Buck Mulligan cried, jumping up from his
chair. Sit down. Pour out the tea there. The sugar is in the bag. Here, I
can't go fumbling at the damned eggs.
He hacked through the fry on the dish and slapped it out on three
plates, saying:
-- In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.
Haines sat down to pour out the tea.
-- I'm giving you two lumps each, he said. But, I say, Mulligan, you do
make strong tea, don't you?
Buck Mulligan, hewing thick slices from the loaf, said in an old
woman's wheedling voice:
-- When I makes tea I makes tea, as old mother Grogan said. And when I
makes water I makes water.
-- By Jove, it is tea, Haines said.
Buck Mulligan went on hewing and wheedling:
-- So I do, Mrs Cahill, says she. Begob, ma'am, says Mrs Cahill, God send
you don't make them in the one pot.
He lunged towards his messmates in turn a thick slice of bread,
impaled on his knife.
-- That's folk, he said very earnestly, for your book, Haines. Five lines of
text and ten pages of notes about the folk and the fishgods of Dundrum.
Printed by the weird sisters in the year of the big wind.
He turned to Stephen and asked in a fine puzzled voice, lifting his
brows:
-- Can you recall, brother, is mother Grogan's tea and water pot spoken of
in the Mabinogion or is it in the Upanishads?
-- I doubt it, said Stephen gravely.
-- Do you now? Buck Mulligan said in the same tone. Your reasons, pray?
-- I fancy, Stephen said as he ate, it did not exist in or out of the
Mabinogion. Mother Grogan was, one imagines, a kinswoman of Mary
Ann.
Buck Mulligan's face smiled with delight.
-- Charming! he said in a finical sweet voice, showing his white teeth and
blinking his eyes pleasantly. Do you think she was? Quite charming!
Then, suddenly overclouding all his features, he growled in a
hoarsened rasping voice as he hewed again vigorously at the loaf:
-- For old Mary Ann
She doesn't care a damn.
But, hising up her petticoats ....
He crammed his mouth with fry and munched and droned.
The doorway was darkened by an entering form.
-- The milk, sir!
-- Come in, ma'am, Mulligan said. Kinch, get the jug.
An old woman came forward and stood by Stephen's elbow.
-- That's a lovely morning, sir, she said. Glory be to God.
-- To whom? Mulligan said, glancing at her. Ah, to be sure!
Stephen reached back and took the milkjug from the locker.
-- The islanders, Mulligan said to Haines casually, speak frequently of the
collector of prepuces.
-- How much, sir? asked the old woman.
-- A quart, Stephen said.
He watched her pour into the measure and thence into the jug rich
white milk, not hers. Old shrunken paps. She poured again a measureful
and a tilly. Old and secret she had entered from a morning world, maybe a
messenger. She praised the goodness of the milk, pouring it out. Crouching
by a patient cow at daybreak in the lush field, a witch on her toadstool, her
wrinkled fingers quick at the squirting dugs. They lowed about her whom
they knew, dewsilky cattle. Silk of the kine and poor old woman, names
given her in old times. A wandering crone, lowly form of an immortal
serving her conqueror and her gay betrayer, their common cuckquean, a
messenger from the secret morning. To serve or to upbraid, whether he
could not tell: but scorned to beg her favour.
-- It is indeed, ma'am, Buck Mulligan said, pouring milk into their cups.
-- Taste it, sir, she said.
He drank at her bidding.
-- If we could live on good food like that, he said to her somewhat loudly,
we wouldn't have the country full of rotten teeth and rotten guts. Living in
a bogswamp, eating cheap food and the streets paved with dust, horsedung
and consumptives' spits.
-- Are you a medical student, sir? the old woman asked.
-- I am, ma'am, Buck Mulligan answered.
-- Look at that now, she said.
Stephen listened in scornful silence. She bows her old head to a voice
that speaks to her loudly, her bonesetter, her medicineman: me she slights.
To the voice that will shrive and oil for the grave all there is of her but her
woman's unclean loins, of man's flesh made not in God's likeness, the
serpent's prey. And to the loud voice that now bids her be silent with
wondering unsteady eyes.
-- Do you understand what he says? Stephen asked her.
-- Is it French you are talking, sir? the old woman said to Haines.
Haines spoke to her again a longer speech, confidently.
-- Irish, Buck Mulligan said. Is there Gaelic on you?
-- I thought it was Irish, she said, by the sound of it. Are you from the west,
sir?
-- I am an Englishman, Haines answered.
-- He's English, Buck Mulligan said, and he thinks we ought to speak Irish
in Ireland.
-- Sure we ought to, the old woman said, and I'm ashamed I don't speak the
language myself. I'm told it's a grand language by them that knows.
-- Grand is no name for it, said Buck Mulligan. Wonderful entirely. Fill us
out some more tea, Kinch. Would you like a cup, ma'am?
-- No, thank you, sir, the old woman said, slipping the ring of the milkcan
on her forearm and about to go.
Haines said to her:
-- Have you your bill? We had better pay her, Mulligan, hadn't we?
Stephen filled again the three cups.
-- Bill, sir? she said, halting. Well, it's seven mornings a pint at twopence is
seven twos is a shilling and twopence over and these three mornings a quart
at fourpence is three quarts is a shilling. That's a shilling and one and two is
two and two, sir.
Buck Mulligan sighed and, having filled his mouth with a crust
thickly buttered on both sides, stretched forth his legs and began to search
his trouser pockets.
-- Pay up and look pleasant, Haines said to him, smiling.
Stephen filled a third cup, a spoonful of tea colouring faintly the thick
rich milk. Buck Mulligan brought up a florin, twisted it round in his fingers
and cried:
-- A miracle!
He passed it along the table towards the old woman, saying:
-- Ask nothing more of me, sweet.
All I can give you I give.
Stephen laid the coin in her uneager hand.
-- We'll owe twopence, he said.
-- Time enough, sir, she said, taking the coin. Time enough. Good morning,
sir.
She curtseyed and went out, followed by Buck Mulligan's tender
chant:
-- Heart of my heart, were it more,
More would be laid at your feet.
He turned to Stephen and said:
-- Seriously, Dedalus. I'm stony. Hurry out to your school kip and bring us
back some money. Today the bards must drink and junket. Ireland expects
that every man this day will do his duty.
-- That reminds me, Haines said, rising, that I have to visit your national
library today.
-- Our swim first, Buck Mulligan said.
He turned to Stephen and asked blandly:
-- Is this the day for your monthly wash, Kinch?
Then he said to Haines:
-- The unclean bard makes a point of washing once a month.
-- All Ireland is washed by the gulfstream, Stephen said as he let honey
trickle over a slice of the loaf.
Haines from the corner where he was knotting easily a scarf about
the loose collar of his tennis shirt spoke:
-- I intend to make a collection of your sayings if you will let me.
Speaking to me. They wash and tub and scrub. Agenbite of inwit.
Conscience. Yet here's a spot.
-- That one about the cracked lookingglass of a servant being the symbol of
Irish art is deuced good.
Buck Mulligan kicked Stephen's foot under the table and said with
warmth of tone:
-- Wait till you hear him on Hamlet, Haines.
-- Well, I mean it, Haines said, still speaking to Stephen. I was just thinking
of it when that poor old creature came in.
-- Would I make any money by it? Stephen asked.
Haines laughed and, as he took his soft grey hat from the holdfast of
the hammock, said:
-- I don't know, I'm sure.
He strolled out to the doorway. Buck Mulligan bent across to Stephen
and said with coarse vigour:
-- You put your hoof in it now. What did you say that for?
-- Well? Stephen said. The problem is to get money. From whom? From the
milkwoman or from him. It's a toss up, I think.
-- I blow him out about you, Buck Mulligan said, and then you come along
with your lousy leer and your gloomy jesuit jibes.
-- I see little hope, Stephen said, from her or from him.
Buck Mulligan sighed tragically and laid his hand on Stephen's arm.
-- From me, Kinch, he said.
In a suddenly changed tone he added:
-- To tell you the God's truth I think you're right. Damn all else they are
good for. Why don't you play them as I do? To hell with them all. Let us get
out of the kip.
He stood up, gravely ungirdled and disrobed himself of his gown,
saying resignedly:
-- Mulligan is stripped of his garments.
He emptied his pockets on to the table.
-- There's your snotrag, he said.
And putting on his stiff collar and rebellious tie he spoke to them,
chiding them, and to his dangling watchchain. His hands plunged and
rummaged in his trunk while he called for a clean handkerchief. God, we'll
simply have to dress the character. I want puce gloves and green boots.
Contradiction. Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself.
Mercurial Malachi. A limp black missile flew out of his talking hands.
-- And there's your Latin quarter hat, he said.
Stephen picked it up and put it on. Haines called to them from the
doorway:
-- Are you coming, you fellows?
-- I'm ready, Buck Mulligan answered, going towards the door. Come out,
Kinch. You have eaten all we left, I suppose.
Resigned he passed out with grave words and gait, saying, wellnigh
with sorrow:
-- And going forth he met Butterly.
Stephen, taking his ashplant from its leaningplace, followed them out
and, as they went down the ladder, pulled to the slow iron door and locked
it. He put the huge key in his inner pocket.
At the foot of the ladder Buck Mulligan asked:
-- Did you bring the key?
-- I have it, Stephen said, preceding them.
He walked on. Behind him he heard Buck Mulligan club with his
heavy bathtowel the leader shoots of ferns or grasses.
-- Down, sir! How dare you, sir!
Haines asked:
-- Do you pay rent for this tower?
-- Twelve quid, Buck Mulligan said.
-- To the secretary of state for war, Stephen added over his shoulder.
They halted while Haines surveyed the tower and said at last:
-- Rather bleak in wintertime, I should say. Martello you call it?
-- Billy Pitt had them built, Buck Mulligan said, when the French were on
the sea. But ours is the omphalos.
-- What is your idea of Hamlet? Haines asked Stephen.
-- No, no, Buck Mulligan shouted in pain. I'm not equal to Thomas
Aquinas and the fiftyfive reasons he has made out to prop it up. Wait till I
have a few pints in me first.
He turned to Stephen, saying, as he pulled down neatly the peaks of
his primrose waistcoat:
-- You couldn't manage it under three pints, Kinch, could you?
-- It has waited so long, Stephen said listlessly, it can wait longer.
-- You pique my curiosity, Haines said amiably. Is it some paradox?
-- Pooh! Buck Mulligan said. We have grown out of Wilde and paradoxes.
It's quite simple. He proves by algebra that Hamlet's grandson is
Shakespeare's grandfather and that he himself is the ghost of his own
father.
-- What? Haines said, beginning to point at Stephen. He himself?
Buck Mulligan slung his towel stolewise round his neck and, bending
in loose laughter, said to Stephen's ear:
-- O, shade of Kinch the elder! Japhet in search of 'a father!
-- We're always tired in the morning, Stephen said to Haines. And it is
rather long to tell.
Buck Mulligan, walking forward again, raised his hands.
-- The sacred pint alone can unbind the tongue of Dedalus, he said.
-- I mean to say, Haines explained to Stephen as they followed, this tower
and these cliffs here remind me somehow of Elsinore. That beetles o'er his
base into the sea, isn't it?
Buck Mulligan turned suddenly. for an instant towards Stephen but
did not speak. In the bright silent instant Stephen saw his own image in
cheap dusty mourning between their gay attires.
-- It's a wonderful tale, Haines said, bringing them to halt again.
Eyes, pale as the sea the wind had freshened, paler, firm and prudent.
The seas' ruler, he gazed southward over the bay, empty save for the
smokeplume of the mailboat vague on the bright skyline and a sail tacking
by the Muglins.
-- I read a theological interpretation of it somewhere, he said bemused. The
Father and the Son idea. The Son striving to be atoned with the Father.
Buck Mulligan at once put on a blithe broadly smiling face. He
looked at them, his wellshaped mouth open happily, his eyes, from which he
had suddenly withdrawn all shrewd sense, blinking with mad gaiety. He
moved a doll's head to and fro, the brims of his Panama hat quivering, and
began to chant in a quiet happy foolish voice:
-- I'm the queerest young fellow that ever you heard.
My mother's a jew, my father's a bird.
With Joseph the joiner I cannot agree.
So here's to disciples and Calvary.
He held up a forefinger of warning.
-- If anyone thinks that I amn't divine
He'll get no free drinks when I'm making the wine
But have to drink water and wish it were plain
That I make when the wine becomes water again.
He tugged swiftly at Stephen's ashplant in farewell and, running
forward to a brow of the cliff, fluttered his hands at his sides like fins or
wings of one about to rise in the air, and chanted:
-- Goodbye, now, goodbye! Write down all I said
And tell Tom, Diek and Harry I rose from the dead.
What's bred in the bone cannot fail me to fIy
And Olivet's breezy - Goodbye, now, goodbye!
He capered before them down towards the fortyfoot hole, fluttering
his winglike hands, leaping nimbly, Mercury's hat quivering in the fresh
wind that bore back to them his brief birdsweet cries.
Haines, who had been laughing guardedly, walked on beside Stephen
and said:
-- We oughtn't to laugh, I suppose. He's rather blasphemous. I'm not a
believer myself, that is to say. Still his gaiety takes the harm out of it
somehow, doesn't it? What did he call it? Joseph the Joiner?
-- The ballad of joking Jesus, Stephen answered.
-- O, Haines said, you have heard it before?
-- Three times a day, after meals, Stephen said drily.
-- You're not a believer, are you? Haines asked. I mean, a believer in the
narrow sense of the word. Creation from nothing and miracles and a
personal God.
-- There's only one sense of the word, it seems to me, Stephen said.
Haines stopped to take out a smooth silver case in which twinkled a
green stone. He sprang it open with his thumb and offered it.
-- Thank you, Stephen said, taking a cigarette.
Haines helped himself and snapped the case to. He put it back in his
sidepocket and took from his waistcoatpocket a nickel tinderbox, sprang it
open too, and, having lit his cigarette, held the flaming spunk towards
Stephen in the shell of his hands.
-- Yes, of course, he said, as they went on again. Either you believe or you
don't, isn't it? Personally I couldn't stomach that idea of a personal God.
You don't stand for that, I suppose?
-- You behold in me, Stephen said with grim displeasure, a horrible example
of free thought.
He walked on, waiting to be spoken to, trailing his ashplant by his
side. Its ferrule followed lightly on the path, squealing at his heels. My
familiar, after me, calling, Steeeeeeeeeeeephen! A wavering line along the
path. They will walk on it tonight, coming here in the dark. He wants that
key. It is mine. I paid the rent. Now I eat his salt bread. Give him the key
too. All. He will ask for it. That was in his eyes.
-- After all, Haines began
Stephen turned and saw that the cold gaze which had measured him
was not all unkind.
-- After all, I should think you are able to free yourself. You are your own
master, it seems to me.
-- I am a servant of two masters, Stephen said, an English and an Italian.
-- Italian? Haines said.
A crazy queen, old and jealous. Kneel down before me.
-- And a third, Stephen said, there is who wants me for odd jobs.
-- Italian? Haines said again. What do you mean?
-- The imperial British state, Stephen answered, his colour rising, and the
holy Roman catholic and apostolic church.
Haines detached from his underlip some fibres of tobacco before he
spoke.
-- I can quite understand that, he said calmly. An Irishman must think like
that, I daresay. We feel in England that we have treated you rather unfairly.
It seems history is to blame.
The proud potent titles clanged over Stephen's memory the triumph
of their brazen bells: et unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam:
the slow growth and change of rite and dogma like his own rare thoughts, a
chemistry of stars. Symbol of the apostles in the mass for pope Marcellus,
the voices blended, singing alone loud in affirmation: and behind their
chant the vigilant angel of the church militant disarmed and menaced her
heresiarchs. A horde of heresies fleeing with mitres awry: Photius and the
brood of mockers of whom Mulligan was one, and Arius, warring his life
long upon the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father, and Valentine,
spurning Christ's terrene body, and the subtle African heresiarch Sabellius
who held that the Father was Himself His own Son. Words Mulligan had
spoken a moment since in mockery to the stranger. Idle mockery. The void
awaits surely all them that weave the wind: a menace, a disarming and a
worsting from those embattled angels of the church, Michael's host, who
defend her ever in the hour of conflict with their lances and their shields.
Hear, hear! Prolonged applause. Zut! Nom de Dieu!
-- Of course I'm a Britisher, Haines's voice said, and I feel as one. I don't
want to see my country fall into the hands of German jews either. That's
our national problem, I'm afraid, just now.
Two men stood at the verge of the cliff, watching: businessman,
boatman.
-- She's making for Bullock harbour.
The boatman nodded towards the north of the bay with some disdain.
-- There's five fathoms out there, he said. It'll be swept up that way when
the tide comes in about one. It's nine days today.
The man that was drowned. A sail veering about the blank bay
waiting for a swollen bundle to bob up, roll over to the sun a puffy face,
saltwhite. Here I am.
They followed the winding path down to the creek. Buck Mulligan
stood on a stone, in shirtsleeves, his unclipped tie rippling over his shoulder.
A young man clinging to a spur of rock near him, moved slowly frogwise
his green legs in the deep jelly of the water.
-- Is the brother with you, Malachi?
-- Down in Westmeath. With the Bannons.
-- Still there? I got a card from Bannon. Says he found a sweet young thing
down there. Photo girl he calls her.
-- Snapshot, eh? Brief exposure.
Buck Mulligan sat down to unlace his boots. An elderly man shot up
near the spur of rock a blowing red face. He scrambled up by the stones,
water glistening on his pate and on its garland of grey hair, water rilling
over his chest and paunch and spilling jets out of his black sagging
loincloth.
Buck Mulligan made way for him to scramble past and, glancing at
Haines and Stephen, crossed himself piously with his thumbnail at brow
and lips and breastbone.
-- Seymour's back in town, the young man said, grasping again his spur of
rock. Chucked medicine and going in for the army.
-- Ah, go to God! Buck Mulligan said.
-- Going over next week to stew. You know that red Carlisle girl, Lily?
-- Yes.
-- Spooning with him last night on the pier. The father is rotto with money.
-- Is she up the pole?
-- Better ask Seymour that.
-- Seymour a bleeding officer! Buck Mulligan said.
He nodded to himself as he drew off his trousers and stood up, saying
tritely:
-- Redheaded women buck like goats.
He broke off in alarm, feeling his side under his flapping shirt.
-- My twelfth rib is gone, he cried. I'm the sbermench. Toothless Kinch
and I, the supermen.
He struggled out of his shirt and flung it behind him to where his
clothes lay.
-- Are you going in here, Malachi?
-- Yes. Make room in the bed.
The young man shoved himself backward through the water and
reached the middle of the creek in two long clean strokes. Haines sat down
on a stone, smoking.
-- Are you not coming in? Buck Mulligan asked.
-- Later on, Haines said. Not on my breakfast.
Stephen turned away.
-- I'm going, Mulligan, he said.
-- Give us that key, Kinch, Buck Mulligan said, to keep my chemise flat.
Stephen handed him the key. Buck Mulligan laid it across his heaped
clothes.
-- And twopence, he said, for a pint. Throw it there.
Stephen threw two pennies on the soft heap. Dressing, undressing.
Buck Mulligan erect, with joined hands before him, said solemnly:
-- He who stealeth from the poor lendeth to the Lord. Thus spake
Zarathustra.
His plump body plunged.
-- We'll see you again, Haines said, turning as Stephen walked up the path
and smiling at wild Irish.
Horn of a bull, hoof of a horse, smile of a Saxon.
-- The Ship, Buck Mulligan cried. Half twelve.
-- Good, Stephen said.
He walked along the upwardcurving path.
Liliata rutilantium.
Turma circumdet.
Iubilantium te Virginum.
The priest's grey nimbus in a niche where he dressed discreetly. I will
not sleep here tonight. Home also I cannot go.
A voice, sweettoned and sustained, called to him from the sea.
Turning the curve he waved his hand. It called again. A sleek brown head, a
seal's, far out on the water, round.
Usurper.
-- Weep no more, woful shepherds, weep no more For Lycidas,your sorrow, is not dead, Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor ....It must be a movement then, an actuality of the possible as possible. Aristotle's phrase formed itself within the gabbled verses and floated out into the studious silence of the library of Saint Genevieve where he had read, sheltered from the sin of Paris, night by night. By his elbow a delicate Siamese conned a handbook of strategy. Fed and feeding brains about me: under glowlamps, impaled, with faintly beating feelers: and in my mind's darkness a sloth of the underworld, reluctant, shy of brightness, shifting her dragon scaly folds. Thought is the thought of thought. Tranquil brightness. The soul is in a manner all that is: the soul is the form of forms. Tranquility sudden, vast, candescent: form of forms. Talbot repeated: -- Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves, Through the dear might .... -- Turn over, Stephen said quietly. I don't see anything. -- What, sir? Talbot asked simply, bending forward. His hand turned the page over. He leaned back and went on again, having just remembered. Of him that walked the waves. Here also over these craven hearts his shadow lies and on the scoffer's heart and lips and on mine. It lies upon their eager faces who offered him a coin of the tribute. To Caesar what is Caesar's, to God what is God's. A long look from dark eyes, a riddling sentence to be woven and woven on the church's looms. Ay.
Riddle me, riddle me, randy ro.
My father gave me seeds to sow.
Talbot slid his closed book into his satchel.
-- Have I heard all? Stephen asked.
-- Yes, sir. Hockey at ten, sir.
-- Half day, sir. Thursday.
-- Who can answer a riddle? Stephen asked.
They bundled their books away, pencils clacking, pages rustling.
Crowding together they strapped and buckled their satchels, all gabbling
gaily:
-- A riddle, sir? Ask me, sir.
-- O, ask me, sir.
-- A hard one, sir.
-- This is the riddle, Stephen said:
The cock crew,
The sky was blue:
The bells in heaven
Were striking eleven.
'Tis time for this poor soul
To go to heaven.
What is that?
-- What, sir?
-- Again, sir. We didn't hear.
Their eyes grew bigger as the lines were repeated. After a silence
Cochrane said:
-- What is it, sir? We give it up.
Stephen, his throat itching, answered:
-- The fox burying his grandmother under a hollybush.
He stood up and gave a shout of nervous laughter to which their cries
echoed dismay.
A stick struck the door and a voice in the corridor called:
-- Hockey!
They broke asunder, sidling out of their benches, leaping them.
Quickly they were gone and from the lumberroom came the rattle of sticks
and clamour of their boots and tongues.
Sargent who alone had lingered came forward slowly, showing an
open copybook. His thick hair and scraggy neck gave witness of
unreadiness and through his misty glasses weak eyes looked up pleading.
On his cheek, dull and bloodless, a soft stain of ink lay, dateshaped, recent
and damp as a snail's bed.
He held out his copybook. The word Sums was written on the
headline. Beneath were sloping figures and at the foot a crooked signature
with blind loops and a blot. Cyril Sargent: his name and seal.
-- Mr Deasy told me to write them out all again, he said, and show them to
you, sir.
Stephen touched the edges of the book. Futility.
-- Do you understand how to do them now? he asked.
-- Numbers eleven to fifteen, Sargent answered. Mr Deasy said I was to
copy them off the board, sir.
-- Can you do them. yourself? Stephen asked.
-- No, sir.
Ugly and futile: lean neck and thick hair and a stain of ink, a snail's
bed. Yet someone had loved him, borne him in her arms and in her heart.
But for her the race of the world would have trampled him underfoot, a
squashed boneless snail. She had loved his weak watery blood drained from
her own. Was that then real? The only true thing in life? His mother's
prostrate body the fiery Columbanus in holy zeal bestrode. She was no
more: the trembling skeleton of a twig burnt in the fire, an odour of
rosewood and wetted ashes. She had saved him from being trampled
underfoot and had gone, scarcely having been. A poor soul gone to heaven:
and on a heath beneath winking stars a fox, red reek of rapine in his fur,
with merciless bright eyes scraped in the earth, listened, scraped up the
earth, listened, scraped and scraped.
Sitting at his side Stephen solved out the problem. He proves by
algebra that Shakespeare's ghost is Hamlet's grandfather. Sargent peered
askance through his slanted glasses. Hockeysticks rattled in the
lumberroom: the hollow knock of a ball and calls from the field.
Across the page the symbols moved in grave morrice, in the mummery
of their letters, wearing quaint caps of squares and cubes. Give hands,
traverse, bow to partner: so: imps of fancy of the Moors. Gone too from
the world, Averroes and Moses Maimonides, dark men in mien and
movement, flashing in their mocking mirrors the obscure soul of the world,
a darkness shining in brightness which brightness could not comprehend.
-- Do you understand now? Can you work the second for yourself?
-- Yes, sir.
In long shaky strokes Sargent copied the data. Waiting always for a
word of help his hand moved faithfully the unsteady symbols, a faint hue of
shame flickering behind his dull skin. Amor matris: subjective and objective
genitive. With her weak blood and wheysour milk she had fed him and hid
from sight of others his swaddlingbands.
Like him was I, these sloping shoulders, this gracelessness. My
childhood bends beside me. Too far for me to lay a hand there once or
lightly. Mine is far and his secret as our eyes. Secrets, silent, stony sit in the
dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their tyranny: tyrants,
willing to be dethroned.
The sum was done.
-- It is very simple, Stephen said as he stood up.
-- Yes, sir. Thanks, Sargent answered.
He dried the page with a sheet of thin blottingpaper and carried his
copybook back to his bench.
-- You had better get your stick and go out to the others, Stephen said as he
followed towards the door the boy's graceless form.
-- Yes, sir.
In the corridor his name was heard, called from the playfield.
-- Sargent!
-- Run on, Stephen said. Mr Deasy is calling you.
He stood in the porch and watched the laggard hurry towards the
scrappy field where sharp voices were in strife. They were sorted in teams
and Mr Deasy came away stepping over wisps of grass with gaitered feet.
When he had reached the schoolhouse voices again contending called to
him. He turned his angry white moustache.
-- What is it now? he cried continually without listening.
-- Cochrane and Halliday are on the same side, sir, Stephen said.
-- Will you wait in my study for a moment, Mr Deasy said, till I restore
order here.
And as he stepped fussily back across the field his old man's voice
cried sternly:
-- What is the matter? What is it now?
Their sharp voices cried about him on all sides: their many forms
closed round him, the garish sunshine bleaching the honey of his illdyed
head.
Stale smoky air hung in the study with the smell of drab abraded
leather of its chairs. As on the first day he bargained with me here. As it was
in the beginning, is now. On the sideboard the tray of Stuart coins, base
treasure of a bog: and ever shall be. And snug in their spooncase of purple
plush, faded, the twelve apostles having preached to all the gentiles: world
without end.
A hasty step over the stone porch and in the corridor. Blowing out his
rare moustache Mr Deasy halted at the table.
-- First, our little financial settlement, he said.
He brought out of his coat a pocketbook bound by a leather thong. It
slapped open and he took from it two notes, one of joined halves, and laid
them carefully on the table.
-- Two, he said, strapping and stowing his pocketbook away.
And now his strongroom for the gold. Stephen's embarrassed hand
moved over the shells heaped in the cold stone mortar: whelks and money
cowries and leopard shells: and this, whorled as an emir's turban, and this,
the scallop of saint James. An old pilgrim's hoard, dead treasure, hollow
shells.
A sovereign fell, bright and new, on the soft pile of the tablecloth.
-- Three, Mr Deasy said, turning his little savingsbox about in his hand.
These are handy things to have. See. This is for sovereigns. This is for
shillings. Sixpences, halfcrowns. And here crowns. See.
He shot from it two crowns and two shillings.
-- Three twelve, he said. I think you'll find that's right.
-- Thank you, sir, Stephen said, gathering the money together with shy
haste and putting it all in a pocket of his trousers.
-- No thanks at all, Mr Deasy said. You have earned it.
Stephen's hand, free again, went back to the hollow shells. Symbols
too of beauty and of power. A lump in my pocket: symbols soiled by greed
and misery.
-- Don't carry it like that, Mr Deasy said. You'll pull it out somewhere and
lose it. You just buy one of these machines. You'll find them very handy.
Answer something.
-- Mine would be often empty, Stephen said.
The same room and hour, the same wisdom: and I the same. Three
times now. Three nooses round me here. Well? I can break them in this
instant if I will.
-- Because you don't save, Mr Deasy said, pointing his finger. You don't
know yet what money is. Money is power. When you have lived as long as I
have. I know, I know. If youth but knew. But what does Shakespeare say?
Put but money in thy purse.
-- Iago, Stephen murmured.
He lifted his gaze from the idle shells to the old man's stare.
-- He knew what money was, Mr Deasy said. He made money. A poet, yes,
but an Englishman too. Do you know what is the pride of the English? Do
you know what is the proudest word you will ever hear from an
Englishman's mouth?
The seas' ruler. His seacold eyes looked on the empty bay: it seems
history is to blame: on me and on my words, unhating.
-- That on his empire, Stephen said, the sun never sets.
-- Ba! Mr Deasy cried. That's not English. A French Celt said that.
He tapped his savingsbox against his thumbnail.
-- I will tell you, he said solemnly, what is his proudest boast. I paid my way.
Good man, good man.
-- I paid my way. I never borrowed a shilling in my life. Can you feel that? I
owe nothing. Can you?
Mulligan, nine pounds, three pairs of socks, one pair brogues, ties.
Curran, ten guineas. McCann, one guinea. Fred Ryan, two shillings.
Temple, two lunches. Russell, one guinea, Cousins, ten shillings, Bob
Reynolds, half a guinea, Koehler, three guineas, Mrs MacKernan, five
weeks' board. The lump I have is useless.
-- For the moment, no, Stephen answered.
Mr Deasy laughed with rich delight, putting back his savingsbox.
-- I knew you couldn't, he said joyously. But one day you must feel it. We
are a generous people but we must also be just.
-- I fear those big words, Stephen said, which make us so unhappy.
Mr Deasy stared sternly for some moments over the mantelpiece at
the shapely bulk of a man in tartan filibegs: Albert Edward, prince of
Wales.
-- You think me an old fogey and an old tory, his thoughtful voice said. I
saw three generations since O'Connell's time. I remember the famine in '46.
Do you know that the orange lodges agitated for repeal of the union twenty
years before O'Connell did or before the prelates of your communion
denounced him as a demagogue? You fenians forget some things.
Glorious, pious and immortal memory. The lodge of Diamond in
Armagh the splendid behung with corpses of papishes. Hoarse, masked and
armed, the planters' covenant. The black north and true blue bible.
Croppies lie down.
Stephen sketched a brief gesture.
-- I have rebel blood in me too, Mr Deasy said. On the spindle side. But I
am descended from sir John Blackwood who voted for the union. We are all
Irish, all kings' sons.
-- Alas, Stephen said.
-- Per vias rectas, Mr Deasy said firmly, was his motto. He voted for it and
put on his topboots to ride to Dublin from the Ards of Down to do so.
Lal the ral the ra
The rocky road to Dublin.
A gruff squire on horseback with shiny topboots. Soft day, sir John!
Soft day, your honour! .... Day! .... Day! .... Two topboots jog dangling on
to Dublin. Lal the ral the ra. Lal the ral the raddy.
-- That reminds me, Mr Deasy said. You can do me a favour, Mr Dedalus,
with some of your literary friends. I have a letter here for the press. Sit
down a moment. I have just to copy the end.
He went to the desk near the window, pulled in his chair twice and
read off some words from the sheet on the drum of his typewriter.
-- Sit down. Excuse me, he said over his shoulder, the dictates of common
sense. Just a moment.
He peered from under his shaggy brows at the manuscript by his
elbow and, muttering, began to prod the stiff buttons of the keyboard
slowly, sometimes blowing as he screwed up the drum to erase an error.
Stephen seated himself noiselessly before the princely presence.
Framed around the walls images of vanished horses stood in homage, their
meek heads poised in air: lord Hastings' Repulse, the duke of
Westminster's Shotover, the duke of Beaufort's Ceylon, prix de Paris,
1866. Elfin riders sat them, watchful of a sign. He saw their speeds, backing
king's colours, and shouted with the shouts of vanished crowds.
-- Full stop, Mr Deasy bade his keys. But prompt ventilation of this
allimportant question....
Where Cranly led me to get rich quick, hunting his winners among
the mudsplashed brakes, amid the bawls of bookies on their pitches and
reek of the canteen, over the motley slush. Fair Rebel! Fair Rebel! Even
money the favourite: ten to one the field. Dicers and thimbleriggers we
hurried by after the hoofs, the vying caps and jackets and past the
meatfaced woman, a butcher's dame, nuzzling thirstily her clove of orange.
Shouts rang shrill from the boys' playfield and a whirring whistle.
Again: a goal. I am among them, among their battling bodies in a
medley, the joust of life. You mean that knockkneed mother's darling who
seems to be slightly crawsick? Jousts. Time shocked rebounds, shock by
shock. Jousts, slush and uproar of battles, the frozen deathspew of the slain,
a shout of spearspikes baited with men's bloodied guts.
-- Now then, Mr Deasy said, rising.
He came to the table, pinning together his sheets. Stephen stood up.
-- I have put the matter into a nutshell, Mr Deasy said. It's about the foot
and mouth disease. Just look through it. There can be no two opinions on
the matter.
May I trespass on your valuable space. That doctrine of laissez faire
which so often in our history. Our cattle trade. The way of all our old
industries. Liverpool ring which jockeyed the Galway harbour scheme.
European conflagration. Grain supplies through the narrow waters of the
channel. The pluterperfect imperturbability of the department of
agriculture. Pardoned a classical allusion. Cassandra. By a woman who
was no better than she should be. To come to the point at issue.
-- I don't mince words, do I? Mr Deasy asked as Stephen read on.
Foot and mouth disease. Known as Koch's preparation. Serum and
virus. Percentage of salted horses. Rinderpest. Emperor's horses at
M*rzsteg, lower Austria. Veterinary surgeons. Mr Henry Blackwood Price.
Courteous offer a fair trial. Dictates of common sense. Allimportant
question. In every sense of the word take the bull by the horns. Thanking
you for the hospitality of your columns.
-- I want that to be printed and read, Mr Deasy said. You will see at the next
outbreak they will put an embargo on Irish cattle. And it can be cured. It is
cured. My cousin, Blackwood Price, writes to me it is regularly treated and
cured in Austria by cattledoctors there. They offer to come over here. I am
trying to work up influence with the department. Now I'm going to try
publicity. I am surrounded by difficulties, by .... intrigues by .... backstairs
influence by ....
He raised his forefinger and beat the air oldly before his voice spoke.
-- Mark my words, Mr Dedalus, he said. England is in the hands of the
jews. In all the highest places: her finance, her press. And they are the signs
of a nation's decay. Wherever they gather they eat up the nation's vital
strength. I have seen it coming these years. As sure as we are standing here
the jew merchants are already at their work of destruction. Old England is
dying.
He stepped swiftly off, his eyes coming to blue life as they passed a
broad sunbeam. He faced about and back again.
-- Dying, he said again, if not dead by now.
The harlot's cry from street to street
Shall weave old England's windingsheet.
His eyes open wide in vision stared sternly across the sunbeam in
which he halted.
-- A merchant, Stephen said, is one who buys cheap and sells dear, jew or
gentile, is he not?
-- They sinned against the light, Mr Deasy said gravely. And you can see the
darkness in their eyes. And that is why they are wanderers on the earth to
this day.
On the steps of the Paris stock exchange the goldskinned men quoting
prices on their gemmed fingers. Gabble of geese. They swarmed loud,
uncouth about the temple, their heads thickplotting under maladroit silk
hats. Not theirs: these clothes, this speech, these gestures. Their full slow
eyes belied the words, the gestures eager and unoffending, but knew the
rancours massed about them and knew their zeal was vain. Vain patience to
heap and hoard. Time surely would scatter all. A hoard heaped by the
roadside: plundered and passing on. Their eyes knew their years of
wandering and, patient, knew the dishonours of their flesh.
-- Who has not? Stephen said.
-- What do you mean? Mr Deasy asked.
He came forward a pace and stood by the table. His underjaw fell
sideways open uncertainly. Is this old wisdom? He waits to hear from me.
-- History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.
From the playfield the boys raised a shout. A whirring whistle: goal.
What if that nightmare gave you a back kick?
-- The ways of the Creator are not our ways, Mr Deasy said. All human
history moves towards one great goal, the manifestation of God.
Stephen jerked his thumb towards the window, saying:
-- That is God.
Hooray! Ay! Whrrwhee!
-- What? Mr Deasy asked.
-- A shout in the street, Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders.
Mr Deasy looked down and held for awhile the wings of his nose
tweaked between his fingers. Looking up again he set them free.
-- I am happier than you are, he said. We have committed many errors and
many sins. A woman brought sin into the world. For a woman who was no
better than she should be, Helen, the runaway wife of Menelaus, ten years
the Greeks made war on Troy. A faithless wife first brought the strangers to
our shore here, MacMurrough's wife and her leman, O'Rourke, prince of
Breffni. A woman too brought Parnell low. Many errors, many failures but
not the one sin. I am a struggler now at the end of my days. But I will fight
for the right till the end.
For Ulster will fight
And Ulster will be right.
Stephen raised the sheets in his hand.
-- Well, sir, he began .....
-- I foresee, Mr Deasy said, that you will not remain here very long at this
work. You were not born to be a teacher, I think. Perhaps I am wrong.
-- A learner rather, Stephen said.
And here what will you learn more?
Mr Deasy shook his head.
-- Who knows? he said. To learn one must be humble. But life is the great
teacher.
Stephen rustled the sheets again.
-- As regards these, he began .....
-- Yes, Mr Deasy said. You have two copies there. If you can have them 410
published at once.
Telegraph. Irish Homestead.
-- I will try, Stephen said, and let you know tomorrow. I know two editors
slightly.
-- That will do, Mr Deasy said briskly. I wrote last night to Mr Field, M. P.
There is a meeting of the cattletraders' association today at the City Arms
hotel. I asked him to lay my letter before the meeting. You see if you can get
it into your two papers. What are they?
-- The Evening Telegraph .....
-- That will do, Mr Deasy said. There is no time to lose. Now I have to 420
answer that letter from my cousin.
-- Good morning, sir, Stephen said, putting the sheets in his pocket. Thank
you.
-- Not at all, Mr Deasy said as he searched the papers on his desk. I like to
break a lance with you, old as I am.
-- Good morning, sir, Stephen said again, bowing to his bent back.
He went out by the open porch and down the gravel path under the
trees, hearing the cries of voices and crack of sticks from the playfield. The
lions couchant on the pillars as he passed out through the gate: toothless
terrors. Still I will help him in his fight. Mulligan will dub me a new name: 430
the bullockbefriending bard.
-- Mr Dedalus!
Running after me. No more letters, I hope.
-- Just one moment.
-- Yes, sir, Stephen said, turning back at the gate.
Mr Deasy halted, breathing hard and swallowing his breath.
-- I just wanted to say, he said. Ireland, they say, has the honour of being
the only country which never persecuted the jews. Do you know that? No.
And do you know why?
He frowned sternly on the bright air.
-- Why, sir? Stephen asked, beginning to smile.
-- Because she never let them in, Mr Deasy said solemnly.
A coughball of laughter leaped from his throat dragging after it a
rattling chain of phlegm. He turned back quickly, coughing, laughing, his
lifted arms waving to the air.
-- She never let them in, he cried again through his laughter as he stamped
on gaitered feet over the gravel of the path. That's why.
On his wise shoulders through the checkerwork of leaves the sun
flung spangles, dancing coins.
Won't you come to Sandymount,
Madeline the mare?
Rhythm begins, you see. I hear. Acatalectic tetrameter of iambs
marching. No, agallop: deline the mare.
Open your eyes now. I will. One moment. Has all vanished since? If I
open and am for ever in the black adiaphane. Basta! I will see if I can see.
See now. There all the time without you: and ever shall be, world
without end.
They came down the steps from Leahy's terrace prudently,
Frauenzimmer: and down the shelving shore flabbily, their splayed feet
sinking in the silted sand. Like me, like Algy, coming down to our mighty
mother. Number one swung lourdily her midwife's bag, the other's gamp
poked in the beach. From the liberties, out for the day. Mrs Florence
MacCabe, relict of the late Patk MacCabe, deeply lamented, of Bride Street.One of her sisterhood lugged me squealing into life. Creation from nothing.
What has she in the bag? A misbirth with a trailing navelcord, hushed in
ruddy wool. The cords of all link back, strandentwining cable of all flesh.
That is why mystic monks. Will you be as gods? Gaze in your omphalos.
Hello! Kinch here. Put me on to Edenville. Aleph, alpha: nought, nought,
one.
Spouse and helpmate of Adam Kadmon: Heva, naked Eve. She had
no navel. Gaze. Belly without blemish, bulging big, a buckler of taut vellum,
no, whiteheaped corn, orient and immortal, standing from everlasting to
everlasting. Womb of sin.
Wombed in sin darkness I was too, made not begotten. By them, the
man with my voice and my eyes and a ghostwoman with ashes on her
breath. They clasped and sundered, did the coupler's will. From before the
ages He willed me and now may not will me away or ever. A lex eterna
stays about Him. Is that then the divine substance wherein Father and Son
are consubstantial? Where is poor dear Arius to try conclusions? Warring
his life long upon the contransmagnificandjewbangtantiality. Illstarred
heresiarch' In a Greek watercloset he breathed his last: euthanasia. With
beaded mitre and with crozier, stalled upon his throne, widower of a
widowed see, with upstiffed omophorion, with clotted hinderparts.
Airs romped round him, nipping and eager airs. They are coming,
waves. The whitemaned seahorses, champing, brightwindbridled, the steeds
of Mananaan.
I mustn't forget his letter for the press. And after? The Ship, half
twelve. By the way go easy with that money like a good young imbecile.
Yes, I must.
His pace slackened. Here. Am I going to aunt Sara's or not? My
consubstantial father's voice. Did you see anything of your artist brother
Stephen lately? No? Sure he's not down in Strasburg terrace with his aunt
Sally? Couldn't he fly a bit higher than that, eh? And and and and tell us,
Stephen, how is uncle Si? O, weeping God, the things I married into! De
boys up in de hayloft. The drunken little costdrawer and his brother, the
cornet player. Highly respectable gondoliers! And skeweyed Walter sirring
his father, no less! Sir. Yes, sir. No, sir. Jesus wept: and no wonder, by
Christ!
I pull the wheezy bell of their shuttered cottage: and wait. They take
me for a dun, peer out from a coign of vantage.
-- It's Stephen, sir.
-- Let him in. Let Stephen in.
A bolt drawn back and Walter welcomes me.
-- We thought you were someone else.
In his broad bed nuncle Richie, pillowed and blanketed, extends over
the hillock of his knees a sturdy forearm. Cleanchested. He has washed the
upper moiety.
-- Morrow, nephew. Sit down and take a walk.
He lays aside the lapboard whereon he drafts his bills of costs for the
eyes of master Goff and master Shapland Tandy, filing consents and
common searches and a writ of Duces Tecum. A bogoak frame over his bald
head: Wilde's Requiescat. The drone of his misleading whistle brings
Walter back.
-- Yes, sir?
-- Malt for Richie and Stephen, tell mother. Where is she?
-- Bathing Crissie, sir.
Papa's little bedpal. Lump of love.
-- No, uncle Richie ....
-- Call me Richie. Damn your lithia water. It lowers. Whusky!
-- Uncle Richie, really ....
-- Sit down or by the law Harry I'll knock you down.
Walter squints vainly for a chair.
-- He has nothing to sit down on, sir.
-- He has nowhere to put it, you mug. Bring in our chippendale chair.
Would you like a bite of something? None of your damned lawdeedaw airs
here. The rich of a rasher fried with a herring? Sure? So much the better.
We have nothing in the house but backache pills.
All'erta!
He 'drones bars of Ferrando's aria di sortita. The grandest number,
Stephen, in the whole opera. Listen.
His tuneful whistle sounds again, finely shaded, with rushes of the air,
his fists bigdrumming on his padded knees.
This wind is sweeter.
Houses of decay, mine, his and all. You told the Clongowes gentry
you had an uncle a judge and an uncle a general in the army. Come out of
them, Stephen. Beauty is not there. Nor in the stagnant bay of Marsh's
library where you read the fading prophecies of Joachim Abbas. For
whom? The hundredheaded rabble of the cathedral close. A hater of his
kind ran from them to the wood of madness, his mane foaming in the
moon, his eyeballs stars. Houyhnhnm, horsenostrilled. The oval equine
faces, Temple, Buck Mulligan, Foxy Campbell, Lanternjaws. Abbas father, -
furious dean, what offence laid fire to their brains? Paff! Descende, calve, ut
ne amplius decalveris. A garland of grey hair on his comminated head see
him me clambering down to the footpace (descende!), clutching a
monstrance, basiliskeyed. Get down, baldpoll! A choir gives back menace
and echo, assisting about the altar's horns, the snorted Latin of jackpriests
moving burly in their albs, tonsured and oiled and gelded, fat with the fat of
kidneys of wheat.
And at the same instant perhaps a priest round the corner is elevating
it. Dringdring! And two streets off another locking it into a pyx.
Dringadring! And in a ladychapel another taking housel all to his own
cheek. Dringdring! Down, up, forward, back. Dan Occam thought of that,
invincible doctor. A misty English morning the imp hypostasis tickled his
brain. Bringing his host down and kneeling he heard twine with his second
bell the first bell in the transept (he is lifting his) and, rising, heard (now I
am lifting) their two bells (he is kneeling) twang in diphthong.
Cousin Stephen, you will never be a saint. Isle of saints. You were
awfully holy, weren't you? You prayed to the Blessed Virgin that you might
not have a red nose. You prayed to the devil in Serpentine avenue that the
fubsy widow in front might lift her clothes still more from the wet street. O
si, certo! Sell your soul for that, do, dyed rags pinned round a squaw. More
tell me, more still!! On the top of the Howth tram alone crying to the rain:
Naked women! Naked women! What about that, eh?
What about what? What else were they invented for?
Reading two pages apiece of seven books every night, eh? I was
young. You bowed to yourself in the mirror, stepping forward to applause
earnestly, striking face. Hurray for the Goddamned idiot! Hray! No-one
saw: tell no-one. Books you were going to write with letters for titles. Have
you read his F? O yes, but I prefer Q. Yes, but W is wonderful. O yes, W.
Remember your epiphanies written on green oval leaves, deeply deep, copies
to be sent if you died to all the great libraries of the world, including
Alexandria? Someone was to read them there after a few thousand years, a
mahamanvantara. Pico della Mirandola like. Ay, very like a whale. When
one reads these strange pages of one long gone one feels that one is at one
with one who once .....
The grainy sand had gone from under his feet. His boots trod again a
damp crackling mast, razorshells, squeaking pebbles, that on the
unnumbered pebbles beats, wood sieved by the shipworm, lost Armada.
Unwholesome sandflats waited to suck his treading soles, breathing upward
sewage breath, a pocket of seaweed smouldered in seafire under a midden
of man's ashes. He coasted them, walking warily. A porterbottle stood up,
stogged to its waist, in the cakey sand dough. A sentinel: isle of dreadful
thirst. Broken hoops on the shore; at the land a maze of dark cunning nets;
farther away chalkscrawled backdoors and on the higher beach a
dryingline with two crucified shirts. Ringsend: wigwams of brown
steersmen and master mariners. Human shells.
He halted. I have passed the way to aunt Sara's. Am I not going
there? Seems not. No-one about. He turned northeast and crossed the
firmer sand towards the Pigeonhouse.
-- Qui vous a mis dans cette fichue position?
-- C'est le pigeon, Joseph.
Patrice, home on furlough, lapped warm milk with me in the bar
MacMahon. Son of the wild goose, Kevin Egan of Paris. My father's a bird,
he lapped the sweet lait chaud with pink young tongue, plump bunny's face.
Lap, lapin. He hopes to win in the gros lots. About the nature of women he
read in Michelet. But he must send me La Vie de Jesus by M. Leo Taxil.
Lent it to his friend.
-- C'est tordant, vous savez. Moi, je suis socialiste. Je ne crois pas en
l'existence de Dieu. Faut pas le dire a mon p’re.
-- Il croit?
-- Mon pere, oui.
Schluss. He laps.
My Latin quarter hat. God, we simply must dress the character. I
want puce gloves. You were a student, weren't you? Of what in the other
devil's name? Paysayenn. P. C. N., you know: physiques, chimiques et
naturelles. Aha. Eating your groatsworth of mou en civet, fleshpots of
Egypt, elbowed by belching cabmen. Just say in the most natural tone:
when I was in Paris; boul' Mich', I used to. Yes, used to carry punched
tickets to prove an alibi if they arrested you for murder somewhere. Justice.
On the night of the seventeenth of February 1904 the prisoner was seen by
two witnesses. Other fellow did it: other me. Hat, tie, overcoat, nose. Lui,
c'est moi. You seem to have enjoyed yourself.
Proudly walking. Whom were you trying to walk like? Forget: a
dispossessed. With mother's money order, eight shillings, the banging door
of the post office slammed in your face by the usher. Hunger toothache.
Encore deux minutes. Look clock. Must get. Ferm’. Hired dog! Shoot him
to bloody bits with a bang shotgun, bits man spattered walls all brass
buttons. Bits all khrrrrklak in place clack back. Not hurt? O, that's all
right. Shake hands. See what I meant, see? O, that's all right. Shake a
shake. O, that's all only all right.
You were going to do wonders, what? Missionary to Europe after
fiery Columbanus. Fiacre and Scotus on their creepystools in heaven spilt
from their pintpots, loudlatinlaughing: Euge! Euge! Pretending to speak
broken English as you dragged your valise, porter threepence, across the
slimy pier at Newhaven. Comment? Rich booty you brought back; Le
Tutu, five tattered numbers of Pantalon Blanc et Culotte Rouge; a blue
French telegram, curiosity to show:
-- Nother dying come home father.
The aunt thinks you killed your mother. That's why she won't.
Then here's a health to Mulligan's aunt
And I'll tell you the reason why.
She always kept things decent in
The Hannigan famileye.
His feet marched in sudden proud rhythm over the sand furrows,
along by the boulders of the south wall. He stared at them proudly, piled
stone mammoth skulls. Gold light on sea, on sand, on boulders. The sun is
there, the slender trees, the lemon houses.
Paris rawly waking, crude sunlight on her lemon streets. Moist pith of
farls of bread, the froggreen wormwood, her matin incense, court the air.
Belluomo rises from the bed of his wife's lover's wife, the kerchiefed
housewife is astir, a saucer of acetic acid in her hand. In Rodot's Yvonne
and Madeleine newmake their tumbled beauties, shattering with gold teeth
chaussons of pastry, their mouths yellowed with the pus of flan breton.
Faces of Paris men go by, their wellpleased pleasers, curled conquistadores.
Noon slumbers. Kevin Egan rolls gunpowder cigarettes through
fingers smeared with printer's ink, sipping his green fairy as Patrice his
white. About us gobblers fork spiced beans down their gullets. Un demi
setier! A jet of coffee steam from the burnished caldron. She serves me at
his beck. Il est irlandais. Hollandais? Non fromage. Deux irlandais, nous,
Irlande, vous savez Ah, oui! She thought you wanted a cheese hollandais.
Your postprandial, do you know that word? Postprandial. There was a
fellow I knew once in Barcelona, queer fellow, used to call it his
postprandial. Well: slainte! Around the slabbed tables the tangle of wined
breaths and grumbling gorges. His breath hangs over our saucestained
plates, the green fairy's fang thrusting between his lips. Of Ireland, the
Dalcassians, of hopes, conspiracies, of Arthur Griffith now, A E, pimander,
good shepherd of men. To yoke me as his yokefellow, our crimes our
common cause. You're your father's son. I know the voice. His fustian
shirt, sanguineflowered, trembles its Spanish tassels at his secrets. M.
Drumont, famous journalist, Drumont, know what he called queen
Victoria? Old hag with the yellow teeth. Vieille ogresse with the dents
jaunes. Maud Gonne, beautiful woman, la Patrie, M. Millevoye, F’lix
Faure, know how he died? Licentious men. The froeken, bonne Љ tout faire,
who rubs male nakedness in the bath at Upsala. Moi faire, she said, tous les
messieurs. Not this monsieur, I said. Most licentious custom. Bath a most
private thing. I wouldn't let my brother, not even my own brother, most
lascivious thing. Green eyes, I see you. Fang, I feel. Lascivious people.
The blue fuse burns deadly between hands and burns clear. Loose
tobaccoshreds catch fire: a flame and acrid smoke light our corner. Raw
facebones under his peep of day boy's hat. How the head centre got away,
authentic version. Got up as a young bride, man, veil, orangeblossoms,
drove out the road to Malahide. Did, faith. Of lost leaders, the betrayed,
wild escapes. Disguises, clutched at, gone, not here.
Spurned lover. I was a strapping young gossoon at that time, I tell
you. I'll show you my likeness one day. I was, faith. Lover, for her love he
prowled with colonel Richard Burke, tanist of his sept, under the walls of
Clerkenwell and, crouching, saw a flame of vengeance hurl them upward in
the fog. Shattered glass and toppling masonry. In gay Paree he hides, Egan
of Paris, unsought by any save by me. Making his day's stations, the dingy
printingcase, his three taverns, the Montmartre lair he sleeps short night in,
rue de la Goutte-d'Or, damascened with flyblown faces of the gone.
Loveless, landless, wifeless. She is quite nicey comfy without her outcast
man, madame in rue G‘t-le-C ur, canary and two buck lodgers. Peachy
cheeks, a zebra skirt, frisky as a young thing's. Spurned and undespairing.
Tell Pat you saw me, won't you? I wanted to get poor Pat a job one time.
Mon fils, soldier of France. I taught him to sing The boys of Kilkenny are
stout roaring blades. Know that old lay? I taught Patrice that. Old
Kilkenny: saint Canice, Strongbow's castle on the Nore. Goes like this. O,
O. He takes me, Napper Tandy, by the hand.
O, O the boysof
Kilkenny ....
Weak wasting hand on mine. They have forgotten Kevin Egan, not he
them. Remembering thee, O Sion.
He had come nearer the edge of the sea and wet sand slapped his
boots. The new air greeted him, harping in wild nerves, wind of wild air of
seeds of brightness. Here, I am not walking out to the Kish lightship, am I?
He stood suddenly, his feet beginning to sink slowly in the quaking soil.
Turn back.
Turning, he scanned the shore south, his feet sinking again slowly in
new sockets. The cold domed room of the tower waits. Through the
barbacans the shafts of light are moving ever, slowly ever as my feet are
sinking, creeping duskward over the dial floor. Blue dusk, nightfall, deep
blue night. In the darkness of the dome they wait, their pushedback chairs,
my obelisk valise, around a board of abandoned platters. Who to clear it?
He has the key. I will not sleep there when this night comes. A shut door of
a silent tower, entombing their - blind bodies, the panthersahib and his
pointer. Call: no answer. He lifted his feet up from the suck and turned
back by the mole of boulders. Take all, keep all. My soul walks with me,
form of forms. So in the moon's midwatches I pace the path above the
rocks, in sable silvered, hearing Elsinore's tempting flood.
The flood is following me. I can watch it flow past from here. Get
back then by the Poolbeg road to the strand there. He climbed over the
sedge and eely oarweeds and sat on a stool of rock, resting his ashplant in a
grike.
A bloated carcass of a dog lay lolled on bladderwrack. Before him the
gunwale of a boat, sunk in sand. Un coche ensabl’ Louis Veuillot called
Gautier's prose. These heavy sands are language tide and wind have silted
here. And these, the stoneheaps of dead builders, a warren of weasel rats.
Hide gold there. Try it. You have some. Sands and stones. Heavy of the
past. Sir Lout's toys. Mind you don't get one bang on the ear. I'm the
bloody well gigant rolls all them bloody well boulders, bones for my
steppingstones. Feefawfum. I zmellz de bloodz odz an Iridzman.
A point, live dog, grew into sight running across the sweep of sand.
Lord, is he going to attack me? Respect his liberty. You will not be master of
others or their slave. I have my stick. Sit tight. From farther away, walking
shoreward across from the crested tide, figures, two. The two maries. They
have tucked it safe mong the bulrushes. Peekaboo. I see you. No, the dog.
He is running back to them. Who?
Galleys of the Lochlanns ran here to beach, in quest of prey, their
bloodbeaked prows riding low on a molten pewter surf. Dane vikings, torcs
of tomahawks aglitter on their breasts when Malachi wore the collar of
gold. A school of turlehide whales stranded in hot noon, spouting, hobbling
in the shallows. Then from the starving cagework city a horde of jerkined
dwarfs, my people, with flayers' knives, running, scaling, hacking in green
blubbery whalemeat. Famine, plague and slaughters. Their blood is in me,
their lusts my waves. I moved among them on the frozen Liffey, that I, a
changeling, among the spluttering resin fires. I spoke to no-one: none to
me.
The dog's bark ran towards him, stopped, ran back. Dog of my
enemy. I just simply stood pale, silent, bayed about. Terribilia meditans. A
primrose doublet, fortune's knave, smiled on my fear. For that are you
pining, the bark of their applause? Pretenders: live their lives. The Bruce's
brother, Thomas Fitzgerald, silken knight, Perkin Warbeck, York's false
scion, in breeches of silk of whiterose ivory, wonder of a day, and Lambert
Simnel, with a tail of nans and sutlers, a scullion crowned. All kings' sons.
Paradise of pretenders then and now. He saved men from drowning and
you shake at a cur's yelping. But the courtiers who mocked Guido in Or
san Michele were in their own house. House of... We don't want any of
your medieval abstrusiosities. Would you do what he did? A boat would be
near, a lifebuoy. Nat*rlich, put there for you. Would you or would you
not? The man that was drowned nine days ago off Maiden's rock. They are
waiting for him now. The truth, spit it out. I would want to. I would try. I
am not a strong swimmer. Water cold soft. When I put my face into it in the
basin at Clongowes. Can't see! Who's behind me? Out quickly, quickly!
Do you see the tide flowing quickly in on all sides, sheeting the lows of sand
quickly, shellcocoacoloured? If I had land under my feet. I want his life still
to be his, mine to be mine. A drowning man. His human eyes scream to me
out of horror of his death. I ... With him together down .... I could not save
her. Waters: bitter death: lost.
A woman and a man. I see her skirties. Pinned up, I bet.
Their dog ambled about a bank of dwindling sand, trotting, sniffing
on all sides. Looking for something lost in a past life. Suddenly he made off
like a bounding hare, ears flung back, chasing the shadow of a
lowskimming gull. The man's shrieked whistle struck his limp ears. He
turned, bounded back, came nearer, trotted on twinkling shanks. On a field
tenney a buck, trippant, proper, unattired. At the lacefringe of the tide he
halted with stiff forehoofs, seawardpointed ears. His snout lifted barked at
the wavenoise, herds of seamorse. They serpented towards his feet, curling,
unfurling many crests, every ninth, breaking, plashing, from far, from
farther out, waves and waves.
Cocklepickers. They waded a little way in the water and, stooping,
soused their bags and, lifting them again, waded out. The dog yelped
running to them, reared up and pawed them, dropping on all fours, again
reared up at them with mute bearish fawning. Unheeded he kept by them as
they came towards the drier sand, a rag of wolf's tongue redpanting from
his jaws. His speckled body ambled ahead of them and then loped off at a
calf's gallop. The carcass lay on his path. He stopped, sniffed, stalked
round it, brother, nosing closer, went round it, sniffling rapidly like a dog
all over the dead dog's bedraggled fell. Dogskull, dogsniff, eyes on the
ground, moves to one great goal. Ah, poor dogsbody! Here lies poor
dogsbody's body.
-- Tatters! Outofthat, you mongrel!
The cry brought him skulking back to his master and a blunt bootless
kick sent him unscathed across a spit of sand, crouched in flight. He slunk
back in a curve. Doesn't see me. Along by the edge of the mole he lolloped,
dawdled, smelt a rock. and from under a cocked hindleg pissed against it.
He trotted forward and, lifting again his hindleg, pissed quick short at an
unsmelt rock. The simple pleasures of the poor. His hindpaws then
scattered the sand: then his forepaws dabbled and delved. Something he
buried there, his grandmother. He rooted in the sand, dabbling, delving and
stopped to listen to the air, scraped up the sand again with a fury of his
claws, soon ceasing, a pard, a panther, got in spousebreach, vulturing the
dead.
After he woke me last night same dream or was it? Wait. Open
hallway. Street of harlots. Remember. Haroun al Raschid. I am almosting
it. That man led me, spoke. I was not afraid. The melon he had he held
against my face. Smiled: creamfruit smell. That was the rule, said. In.
Come. Red carpet spread. You will see who.
Shouldering their bags they trudged, the red Egyptians. His blued
feet out of turnedup trousers slapped the clammy sand, a dull brick muffler
strangling his unshaven neck. With woman steps she followed: the ruffian
and his strolling mort. Spoils slung at her back. Loose sand and shellgrit
crusted her bare feet. About her windraw face hair trailed. Behind her lord,
his helpmate, bing awast to Romeville. When night hides her body's flaws
calling under her brown shawl from an archway where dogs have mired.
Her fancyman is treating two Royal Dublins in O'Loughlin's of Blackpitts.
Buss her, wap in rogues' rum lingo, for, O, my dimber wapping dell! A
shefiend's whiteness under her rancid rags. Fumbally's lane that night: the
tanyard smells.
White thy fambles, red thy gan
And thy quarrons dainty is.
Couch a hogshead with me then.
In the darkmans clip and kiss.
Morose delectation Aquinas tunbelly calls this, frate porcospino.
Unfallen Adam rode and not rutted. Call away let him: thy quarrons dainty
is. Language no whit worse than his. Monkwords, marybeads jabber on
their girdles: roguewords, tough nuggets patter in their pockets.
Passing now.
A side eye at my Hamlet hat. If I were suddenly naked here as I sit? I
am not. Across the sands of all the world, followed by the sun's flaming
sword, to the west, trekking to evening lands. She trudges, schlepps, trains,
drags, trascines her load. A tide westering, moondrawn, in her wake. Tides,
myriadislanded, within her, blood not mine, oinopa ponton, a winedark sea.
Behold the handmaid of the moon. In sleep the wet sign calls her hour, bids
her rise. Bridebed, childbed, bed of death, ghostcandled. Omnis caro ad te
veniet. He comes, pale vampire, through storm his eyes, his bat sails
bloodying the sea, mouth to her mouth's kiss.
Here. Put a pin in that chap, will you? My tablets. Mouth to her kiss.
No. Must be two of em. Glue em well. Mouth to her mouth;s kiss.
His lips lipped and mouthed fleshless lips of air: mouth to her
moomb. Oomb, allwombing tomb. His mouth moulded issuing breath,
unspeeched: ooeeehah: roar of cataractic planets, globed, blazing, roaring
wayawayawayawayaway. Paper. The banknotes, blast them. Old Deasy's
letter. Here. Thanking you for the hospitality tear the blank end off.
Turning his back to the sun he bent over far to a table of rock and scribbled
words. That's twice I forgot to take slips from the library counter.
His shadow lay over the rocks as he bent, ending. Why not endless till
the farthest star? Darkly they are there behind this light, darkness shining
in the brightness, delta of Cassiopeia, worlds. Me sits there with his augur's
rod of ash, in borrowed sandals, by day beside a livid sea, unbeheld, in
violet night walking beneath a reign of uncouth stars. I throw this ended
shadow from me, manshape ineluctable, call it back. Endless, would it be
mine, form of my form? Who watches me here? Who ever anywhere will
read these written words? Signs on a white field. Somewhere to someone in
your flutiest voice. The good bishop of Cloyne took the veil of the temple
out of his shovel hat: veil of space with coloured emblems hatched on its
field. Hold hard. Coloured on a flat: yes, that's right. Flat I see, then think
distance, near, far, flat I see, east, back. Ah, see now! Falls back suddenly,
frozen in stereoscope. Click does the trick. You find my words dark.
Darkness is in our souls do you not think? Flutier. Our souls,
shamewounded by our sins, cling to us yet more, a woman to her lover
clinging, the more the more.
She trusts me, her hand gentle, the longlashed eyes. Now where the
blue hell am I bringing her beyond the veil? Into the ineluctable modality of
the ineluctable visuality. She, she, she. What she? The virgin at Hodges
Figgis' window on Monday looking in for one of the alphabet books you
were going to write. Keen glance you gave her. Wrist through the braided
jesse of her sunshade. She lives in Leeson park with a grief and kickshaws,
a lady of letters. Talk that to someone else, Stevie: a pickmeup. Bet she
wears those curse of God stays suspenders and yellow stockings, darned
with lumpy wool. Talk about apple dumplings, piuttosto. Where are your
wits?
Touch me. Soft eyes. Soft soft soft hand. I am lonely here. C, .ouch
me soon, now. What is that word known to all men? I am quiet here alone.
Sad too. Touch, touch me.
He lay back at full stretch over the sharp rocks, cramming the
scribbled note and pencil into a pock his hat . His hat down on his eyes. That
is Kevin Egan's movement I made, nodding for his nap, sabbath sleep. Et
vidit Deus. Et erant valde bona. Hlo! Bonjour. Welcome as the flowers in
May. Under its leaf he watched through peacocktwittering lashes the
southing sun. I am caught in this burning scene. Pan's hour, the faunal
noon. Among gumheavy serpentplants, milkoozing fruits, where on the
tawny waters leaves lie wide. Pain is far.
And no more turn aside and brood.
His gaze brooded on his broadtoed boots, a buck's castoffs,
nebeneinander. He counted the creases of rucked leather wherein another's
foot had nested warm. The foot that beat the ground in tripudium, foot I
dislove. But you were delighted when Esther Osvalt's shoe went on you:
girl I knew in Paris. Tiens, quel petit pied! Staunch friend, a brother soul:
Wilde's love that dare not speak its name. His arm: Cranly's arm. He now
will leave me. And the blame? As I am. As I am. All or not at all.
In long lassoes from the Cock lake the water flowed full, covering
greengoldenly lagoons of sand, rising, flowing. My ashplant will float away.
I shall wait. No, they will pass on, passing, chafing against the low rocks,
swirling, passing. Better get this job over quick. Listen: a fourworded
wavespeech: seesoo, hrss, rsseeiss, ooos. Vehement breath of waters amid
seasnakes, rearing horses, rocks. In cups of rocks it slops: flop, slop, slap:
bounded in barrels. And, spent, its speech ceases. It flows purling, widely
flowing, floating foampool, flower unfurling.
Under the upswelling tide he saw the writhing weeds lift languidly
and sway reluctant arms, hising up their petticoats, in whispering water
swaying and upturning coy silver fronds. Day by day: night by night:
lifted, flooded and let fall. Lord, they are weary; and, whispered to, they
sigh. Saint Ambrose heard it, sigh of leaves and waves, waiting, awaiting the
fullness of their times, diebus ac noctibus iniurias patiens ingemiscit. To no
end gathered; vainly then released, forthflowing, wending back: loom of
the moon. Weary too in sight of lovers, lascivious men, a naked woman
shining in her courts, she draws a toil of waters.
Five fathoms out there. Full fathom five thy father lies. At one, he
said. Found drowned. High water at Dublin bar. Driving before it a loose
drift of rubble, fanshoals of fishes, silly shells. A corpse rising saltwhite
from the undertow, bobbing a pace a pace a porpoise landward. There he
is. Hook it quick. Pull. Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor. We
have him. Easy now.
Bag of corpsegas sopping in foul brine. A quiver of minnows, fat of a
spongy titbit, flash through the slits of his buttoned trouserfly. God
becomes man becomes fish becomes barnacle goose becomes featherbed
mountain. Dead breaths I living breathe, tread dead dust, devour a urinous
offal from all dead. Hauled stark over the gunwale he breathes upward the
stench of his green grave, his leprous nosehole snoring to the sun.
A seachange this, brown eyes saltblue. Seadeath, mildest of all deaths
known to man. Old Father Ocean. Prix de Paris: beware of imitations. Just
you give it a fair trial. We enjoyed ourselves immensely.
Come. I thirst. Clouding over. No black clouds anywhere, are there?
Thunderstorm. Allbright he falls, proud lightning of the intellect, Lucifer,
dico, qui nescit occasum. No. My cockle hat and staff and hismy sandal
shoon. Where? To evening lands. Evening will find itself.
He took the hilt of his ashplant, lunging with it softly, dallying still.
Yes, evening will find itself in me, without me. All days make their end. By
the way next when is it Tuesday will be the longest day. Of all the glad new
year, mother, the rum tum tiddledy tum. Lawn Tennyson, gentleman poet.
GiЉ. For the old hag with the yellow teeth. And Monsieur Drumont,
gentleman journalist. GiЉ. My teeth are very bad. Why, I wonder. Feel.
That one is going too. Shells. Ought I go to a dentist, I wonder, with that
money? That one. This. Toothless Kinch, the superman. Why is that, I
wonder, or does it mean something perhaps?
My handkerchief. He threw it. I remember. Did I not take it up?
His hand groped vainly in his pockets. No, I didn't. Better buy one.
He laid the dry snot picked from his nostril on a ledge of rock,
carefully. For the rest let look who will.
Behind. Perhaps there is someone.
He turned his face over a shoulder, rere regardant. Moving through
the air high spars of a threemaster, her sails brailed up on the crosstrees,
homing, upstream, silently moving, a silent ship.
O, Milly Bloom,you are my darling. You are my lookingglass from night to morning. I'd rather have you without a farthing Than Katey Keogh with her ass and garden.Poor old professor Goodwin. Dreadful old case. Still he was a courteous old chap. Oldfashioned way he used to bow Molly off the platform. And the little mirror in his silk hat. The night Milly brought it into the parlour. O, look what I found in professor Goodwin's hat! All we laughed. Sex breaking out even then. Pert little piece she was. He prodded a fork into the kidney and slapped it over: then fitted the teapot on the tray. Its hump bumped as he took it up. Everything on it? Bread and butter, four, sugar, spoon, her cream. Yes. He carried it upstairs, his thumb hooked in the teapot handle. Nudging the door open with his knee he carried the tray in and set it on the chair by the bedhead. -- What a time you were! she said. She set the brasses jingling as she raised herself briskly, an elbow on the pillow. He looked calmly down on her bulk and between her large soft bubs, sloping within her nightdress like a shegoat's udder. The warmth of her couched body rose on the air, mingling with the fragrance of the tea she poured. A strip of torn envelope peeped from under the dimpled pillow. In the act of going he stayed to straighten the bedspread. -- Who was the letter from? he asked. Bold hand. Marion. -- O, Boylan, she said. He's bringing the programme. -- What are you singing? -- LЉ ci darem with J. C. Doyle, she said, and Love's Old Sweet Song. Her full lips, drinking, smiled. Rather stale smell that incense leaves next day. Like foul flowerwater. -- Would you like the window open a little? She doubled a slice of bread into her mouth, asking: -- What time is the funeral? -- Eleven, I think, he answered. I didn't see the paper. Following the pointing of her finger he took up a leg of her soiled drawers from the bed. No? Then, a twisted grey garter looped round a stocking: rumpled, shiny sole. -- No: that book. Other stocking. Her petticoat. -- It must have fell down, she said. He felt here and there. Voglio e non vorrei. Wonder if she pronounces that right: voglio. Not in the bed. Must have slid down. He stooped and lifted the valance. The book, fallen, sprawled against the bulge of the orangekeyed chamberpot. -- Show here, she said. I put a mark in it. There's a word I wanted to ask you. She swallowed a draught of tea from her cup held by nothandle and, having wiped her fingertips smartly on the blanket, began to search the text with the hairpin till she reached the word. -- Met him what? he asked. -- Here, she said. What does that mean? He leaned downward and read near her polished thumbnail. -- Metempsychosis? -- Yes. Who's he when he's at home? -- Metempsychosis, he said, frowning. It's Greek: from the Greek. That means the transmigration of souls. -- O, rocks! she said. Tell us in plain words. He smiled, glancing askance at her mocking eyes. The same young eyes. The first night after the charades. Dolphin's Barn. He turned over the smudged pages. Ruby: the Pride of the Ring. Hello. Illustration. Fierce Italian with carriagewhip. Must be Ruby pride of the on the floor naked. Sheet kindly lent. The monster Maffei desisted and flung his victim from him with an oath. Cruelty behind it all. Doped animals. Trapeze at Hengler's. Had to look the other way. Mob gaping. Break your neck and we'll break our sides. Families of them. Bone them young so they metamspychosis. That we live after death. Our souls. That a man's soul after he dies, Dignam's soul .... -- Did you finish it? he asked. -- Yes, she said. There's nothing smutty in it. Is she in love with the first fellow all the time? -- Never read it. Do you want another? -- Yes. Get another of Paul de Kock's. Nice name he has. She poured more tea into her cup, watching it flow sideways. Must get that Capel street library book renewed or they'll write to Kearney, my guarantor. Reincarnation: that's the word. -- Some people believe, he said, that we go on living in another body after death, that we lived before. They call it reincarnation. That we all lived before on the earth thousands of years ago or some other planet. They say we have forgotten it. Some say they remember their past lives. The sluggish cream wound curdling spirals through her tea. Bette remind her of the word: metempsychosis. An example would be better. An example? The Bath of the Nymph over the bed. Given away with the Easter number of Photo Bits: splendid masterpiece in art colours. Tea before you put milk in. Not unlike her with her hair down: slimmer. Three and six I gave for the frame. She said it would look nice over the bed. Naked nymphs: Greece: and for instance all the people that lived then. He turned the pages back. -- Metempsychosis, he said, is what the ancient Greeks called it. They used to believe you could be changed into an animal or a tree, for instance. What they called nymphs, for example. Her spoon ceased to stir up the sugar. She gazed straight before her, inhaling through her arched nostrils. -- There's a smell of burn, she said. Did you leave anything on the fire? -- The kidney! he cried suddenly. He fitted the book roughly into his inner pocket and, stubbing his toes against the broken commode, hurried out towards the smell, stepping hastily down the stairs with a flurried stork's legs. Pungent smoke shot up in an angry jet from a side of the pan. By prodding a prong of the fork under the kidney he detached it and turned it turtle on its back. Only a little burnt. He tossed it off the pan on to a plate and let the scanty brown gravy trickle over it. Cup of tea now. He sat down, cut and buttered a slice of the loaf. He shore away the burnt flesh and flung it to the cat. Then he put a forkful into his mouth, chewing with discernment the toothsome pliant meat. Done to a turn. A mouthful of tea. Then he cut away dies of bread, sopped one in the gravy and put it in his mouth. What was that about some young student and a picnic? He creased out the letter at his side, reading it slowly as he chewed, sopping another die of bread in the gravy and raising it to his mouth. Dearest Papli Thanks ever so much for the lovely birthday present. It suits me splendid. Everyone says I am quite the belle in my new tam. I got mummy's Iovely box of creams and am writing. They are lovely. I am getting on swimming in the photo business now. Mr Coghlan took one of me and Mrs. Will send when developed. We did great biz yesterday. Fair day and all the beef to the heels were in. We are going to lough Owel on Monday with a few friends to make a scrap picnic. Give my love to mummy and to yourself a big kiss and thanks. I hear them at the piano downstairs. There is to be a concert in the Greville Arms on Saturday. There is a young student comes here some evenings named Bannon his cousins or something are big swells and he sings Boylan's (I was on the pop of writing Blazes Boylan's) song about those seaside girls. Tell him silly Milly sends my best respects. I must now close with fondest love Your fond daughter Milly P. S. Excuse bad writing am in hurry. Byby. M. Fifteen yesterday. Curious, fifteenth of the month too. Her first birthday away from home. Separation. Remember the summer morning she was born, running to knock up Mrs Thornton in Denzille street. Jolly old woman. Lot of babies she must have helped into the world. She knew from the first poor little Rudy wouldn't live. Well, God is good, sir. She knew at once. He would be eleven now if he had lived. His vacant face stared pityingly at the postscript. Excuse bad writing. Hurry. Piano downstairs. Coming out of her shell. Row with her in the XL Cafe about the bracelet. Wouldn't eat her cakes or speak or look. Saucebox. He sopped other dies of bread in the gravy and ate piece after piece of kidney. Twelve and six a week. Not much. Still, she might do worse. Musichall stage. Young student. He drank a draught of cooler tea to wash down his meal. Then he read the letter again: twice. O, well: she knows how to mind herself. But if not? No, nothing has happened. Of course it might. Wait in any case till it does. A wild piece of goods. Her slim legs running up the staircase. Destiny. Ripening now. Vain: very. He smiled with troubled affection at the kitchen window. Day I caught her in the street pinching her cheeks to make them red. Anemic a little. Was given milk too long. On the Erin's King that day round the Kish. Damned old tub pitching about. Not a bit funky. Her pale blue scarf loose in the wind with her hair.
All dimpled cheeks and curls,
Your head it simply swirls.
Seaside girls. Torn envelope. Hands stuck in his trousers' pockets, jarvey
off for the day, singing. Friend of the family. Swurls, he says. Pier with
lamps, summer evening, band.
Those girls, those girls,
Those lovely seaside girls.
Milly too. Young kisses: the first. Far away now past. Mrs Marion.
Reading, lying back now, counting the strands of her hair, smiling,
braiding.
A soft qualm, regret, flowed down his backbone, increasing. Will
happen, yes. Prevent. Useless: can't move. Girl's sweet light lips. Will
happen too. He felt the flowing qualm spread over him. Useless to move
now. Lips kissed, kissing, kissed. Full gluey woman's lips.
Better where she is down there: away. Occupy her. Wanted a dog to
pass the time. Might take a trip down there. August bank holiday, only two
and six return. Six weeks off, however. Might work a press pass. Or
through M'Coy.
The cat, having cleaned all her fur, returned to the meatstained paper,
nosed at it and stalked to the door. She looked back at him, mewing. Wants
to go out. Wait before a door sometime it will open. Let her wait. Has the
fidgets. Electric. Thunder in the air. Was washing at her ear with her back
to the fire too.
He felt heavy, full: then a gentle loosening of his bowels. He stood up,
undoing the waistband of his trousers. The cat mewed to him.
--Miaow! he said in answer. Wait till I'm ready.
Heaviness: hot day coming. Too much trouble to fag up the stairs to
the landing.
A paper. He liked to read at stool. Hope no ape comes knocking just
as I'm.
In the tabledrawer he found an old number of Titbits. He folded it
under his armpit, went to the door and opened it. The cat went up in soft
bounds. Ah, wanted to go upstairs, curl up in a ball on the bed.
Listening, he heard her voice:
-- Come, come, pussy. Come.
He went out through the backdoor into the garden: stood to listen
towards the next garden. No sound. Perhaps hanging clothes out to dry.
The maid was in the garden. Fine morning.
He bent down to regard a lean file of spearmint growing by the wall.
Make a summerhouse here. Scarlet runners. Virginia creepers. Want to
manure the whole place over, scabby soil. A coat of liver of sulphur. All soil
like that without dung. Household slops. Loam, what is this that is? The
hens in the next garden: their droppings are very good top dressing. Best of
all though are the cattle, especially when they are fed on those oilcakes.
Mulch of dung. Best thing to clean ladies' kid gloves. Dirty cleans. Ashes
too. Reclaim the whole place. Grow peas in that corner there. Lettuce.
Always have fresh greens then. Still gardens have their drawbacks. That bee
or bluebottle here Whitmonday.
He walked on. Where is my hat, by the way? Must have put it back
on the peg. Or hanging up on the floor. Funny I don't remember that.
Hallstand too full. Four umbrellas, her raincloak. Picking up the letters.
Drago's shopbell ringing. Queer I was just thinking that moment. Brown
brillantined hair over his collar. Just had a wash and brushup. Wonder have
I time for a bath this morning. Tara street. Chap in the paybox there got
away James Stephens, they say. O'Brien.
Deep voice that fellow Dlugacz has. Agendath what is it? Now, my
miss. Enthusiast.
He kicked open the crazy door of the jakes. Better be careful not to
get these trousers dirty for the funeral. He went in, bowing his head under
the low lintel. Leaving the door ajar, amid the stench of mouldy limewash
and stale cobwebs he undid his braces. Before sitting down he peered
through a chink up at the nextdoor windows. The king was in his
countinghouse. Nobody.
Asquat on the cuckstool he folded out his paper, turning its pages
over on his bared knees. Something new and easy. No great hurry. Keep it
a bit. Our prize titbit: Mateham's Masterstroke. Written by Mr Philip
Beaufoy, Playgoers' Club, London. Payment at the rate of one guinea a
column has been made to the writer. Three and a half. Three pounds three.
Three pounds, thirteen and six.
Quietly he read, restraining himself, the first column and, yielding but
resisting, began the second. Midway, his last resistance yielding, he allowed
his bowels to ease themselves quietly as he read, reading still patiently that
slight constipation of yesterday quite gone. Hope it's not too big bring on
piles again. No, just right. So. Ah! Costive. One tabloid of cascara sagrada.
Life might be so. It did not move or touch him but it was something quick
and neat. Print anything now. Silly season. He read on, seated calm above
his own rising smell. Neat certainly. Matcham often thinks of the
masterstroke by which he won the laughing witch who now. Begins and
ends morally. Hand in hand. Smart. He glanced back through what he had
read and, while feeling his water flow quietly, he envied kindly Mr Beaufoy
who had written it and received payment of three pounds, thirteen and six.
Might manage a sketch. By Mr and Mrs L. M. Bloom. Invent a story
for some proverb. Which? Time I used to try jotting down on my cuff what
she said dressing. Dislike dressing together. Nicked myself shaving. Biting
her nether lip, hooking the placket of her skirt. Timing her. 9.l5. Did
Roberts pay you yet? 9.20. What had Gretta Conroy on? 9.23. What
possessed me to buy this comb? 9.24. I'm swelled after that cabbage. A
speck of dust on the patent leather of her boot: rubbing smartly in turn
each welt against her stockinged calf. Morning after the bazaar dance when
May's band played Ponchielli's dance of the hours. Explain that: morning
hours, noon, then evening coming on, then night hours. Washing her teeth.
That was the first night. Her head dancing. Her fansticks clicking. Is that
Boylan well off? He has money. Why? I noticed he had a good rich smell
off his breath dancing. No use humming then. Allude to it. Strange kind of
music that last night. The mirror was in shadow. She rubbed her handglass
briskly on her woollen vest against her full wagging bub. Peering into it.
Lines in her eyes. It wouldn't pan out somehow.
Evening hours, girls in grey gauze. Night hours then: black with
daggers and eyemasks. Poetical idea: pink, then golden, then grey, then
black. Still, true to life also. Day: then the night.
He tore away half the prize story sharply and wiped himself with it.
Then he girded up his trousers, braced and buttoned himself. He pulled
back the jerky shaky door of the jakes and came forth from the gloom into
the air.
In the bright light, lightened and cooled in limb, he eyed carefully his
black trousers: the ends, the knees, the houghs of the knees. What time is
the funeral? Better find out in the paper.
A creak and a dark whirr in the air high up. The bells of George's
church. They tolled the hour: loud dark iron.
Heigho! Heigho!
Heigho! Heigho!
Heigho! Heigho!
Quarter to. There again: the overtone following through the air. A
third.
Poor Dignam!
What is home without
Plumtree's Potted Meat?
Incomplete
With it an abode of bliss.
-- My missus has just got an engagement. At least it's not settled yet.
Valise tack again. By the way no harm. I'm off that, thanks.
Mr Bloom turned his largelidded eyes with unhasty friendliness.
-- My wife too, he said. She's going to sing at a swagger affair in the Ulster
Hall, Belfast, on the twentyfifth.
-- That so? M'Coy said. Glad to hear that, old man. Who's getting it up?
Mrs Marion Bloom. Not up yet. Queen was in her bedroom eating
bread and. No book. Blackened court cards laid along her thigh by sevens.
Dark lady and fair man. Letter. Cat furry black ball. Torn strip of envelope.
Love's.
Old.
Sweet.
Song.
Comes lo-ove's old ....
-- It's a kind of a tour, don't you see, Mr Bloom said thoughtfully. Sweeeet
song. There's a committee formed. Part shares and part profits.
M'Coy nodded, picking at his moustache stubble.
-- O, well, he said. That's good news.
He moved to go.
-- Well, glad to see you looking fit, he said. Meet you knocking around.
-- Yes, Mr Bloom said.
-- Tell you what, M'Coy said. You might put down my name at the funeral,
will you? I'd like to go but I mightn't be able, you see. There's a drowning
case at Sandycove may turn up and then the coroner and myself would
have to go down if the body is found. You just shove in my name if I'm not
there, will you?
-- I'll do that, Mr Bloom said, moving to get off. That'll be all right.
-- Right, M'Coy said brightly. Thanks, old man. I'd go if I possibly could.
Well. Tolloll. Just C. P. M'Coy will do.
-- That will be done, Mr Bloom answered firmly.
Didn't catch me napping that wheeze. The quick touch. Soft mark.
I'd like my job. Valise I have a particular fancy for. Leather. Capped
corners, rivetted edges, double action lever lock. Bob Cowley lent him his
for the Wicklow regatta concert last year and never heard tidings of it from
that good day to this.
Mr Bloom, strolling towards Brunswick street, smiled. My missus has
just got an. Reedy freckled soprano. Cheeseparing nose. Nice enough in its
way: for a little ballad. No guts in it. You and me, don't you know: in the
same boat. Softsoaping. Give you the needle that would. Can't he hear the
difference? Think he's that way inclined a bit. Against my grain somehow.
Thought that Belfast would fetch him. I hope that smallpox up there
doesn't get worse. Suppose she wouldn't let herself be vaccinated again.
Your wife and my wife.
Wonder is he pimping after me?
Mr Bloom stood at the corner, his eyes wandering over the
multicoloured hoardings. Cantrell and Cochrane's Ginger Ale (Aromatic).
Clery's Summer Sale. No, he's going on straight. Hello. Leah tonight. Mrs
Bandmann Palmer. Like to see her again in that. Hamlet she played last
night. Male impersonator. Perhaps he was a woman. Why Ophelia
committed suicide. Poor papa! How he used to talk of Kate Bateman in
that. Outside the Adelphi in London waited all the afternoon to get in. Year
before I was born that was: sixtyfive. And Ristori in Vienna. What is this
the right name is? By Mosenthal it is. Rachel, is it? No. The scene he was
always talking about where the old blind Abraham recognises the voice and
puts his fingers on his face.
Nathan's voice! His son's voice! I hear the voice of Nathan who left
his father to die of grief and misery in my arms, who left the house of his
father and left the God of his father.
Every word is so deep, Leopold.
Poor papa! Poor man! I'm glad I didn't go into the room to look at
his face. That day! O, dear! O, dear! Ffoo! Well, perhaps it was best for
him.
Mr Bloom went round the corner and passed the drooping nags of the
hazard. No use thinking of it any more. Nosebag time. Wish I hadn't met
that M'Coy fellow.
He came nearer and heard a crunching of gilded oats, the gently
champing teeth. Their full buck eyes regarded him as he went by, amid the
sweet oaten reek of horsepiss. Their Eldorado. Poor jugginses! Damn all
they know or care about anything with their long noses stuck in nosebags.
Too full for words. Still they get their feed all right and their doss. Gelded
too: a stump of black guttapercha wagging limp between their haunches.
Might be happy all the same that way. Good poor brutes they look. Still
their neigh can be very irritating.
He drew the letter from his pocket and folded it into the newspaper he
carried. Might just walk into her here. The lane is safer.
He passed the cabman's shelter. Curious the life of drifting cabbies.
All weathers, all places, time or setdown, no will of their own. Voglio e non.
Like to give them an odd cigarette. Sociable. Shout a few flying syllables as
they pass. He hummed:
LЉ ci darem la mano
La la lala la la.
He turned into Cumberland street and, going on some paces, halted
in the lee of the station wall. No-one. Meade's timberyard. Piled balks.
Ruins and tenements. With careful tread he passed over a hopscotch court
with its forgotten pickeystone. Not a sinner. Near the timberyard a
squatted child at marbles, alone, shooting the taw with a cunnythumb. A
wise tabby, a blinking sphinx, watched from her warm sill. Pity to disturb
them. Mohammed cut a piece out of his mantle not to wake her. Open it.
And once I played marbles when I went to that old dame's school. She liked
mignonette. Mrs Ellis's. And Mr? He opened the letter within the
newspaper.
A flower. I think it's a. A yellow flower with flattened petals. Not
annoyed then? What does she say?
Dear Henry
I got your last letter to me and thank you very much for it. I am sorry
you did not like my last letter. Why did you enclose the stamps? I am
awfully angry with you. I do wish I could punish you for that. I called you
naughty boy because I do not like that other world. Please tell me what is
the real meaning of that word? Are you not happy in your home you poor
little naughty boy? I do wish I could do something for you. Please tell me
what you think of poor me. I often think of the beautiful name you have.
Dear Henry, when will we meet? I think of you so often you have no idea. I
have never felt myself so much drawn to a man as you. I feel so bad about.
Please write me a long letter and tell me more. Remember if you do not I
will punish you. So now you know what I will do to you, you naughty boy,
if you do not wrote. O how I long to meet you. Henry dear, do not deny my
request before my patience are exhausted. Then I will tell you all. Goodbye
now, naughty darling, I have such a bad headache. today. and write by
return to your longing
Martha
P. S. Do tell me what kind of perfume does your wife use. I want to know.
x x x x
He tore the flower gravely from its pinhold smelt its almost no smell
and placed it in his heart pocket. Language of flowers. They like it because
no-one can hear. Or a poison bouquet to strike him down. Then walking
slowly forward he read the letter again, murmuring here and there a word.
Angry tulips with you darling manflower punish your cactus if you don't
please poor forgetmenot how I long violets to dear roses when we soon
anemone meet all naughty nightstalk wife Martha's perfume. Having read
it all he took it from the newspaper and put it back in his sidepocket.
Weak joy opened his lips. Changed since the first letter. Wonder did
she wrote it herself. Doing the indignant: a girl of good family like me,
respectable character. Could meet one Sunday after the rosary. Thank you:
not having any. Usual love scrimmage. Then running round corners. Bad
as a row with Molly. Cigar has a cooling effect. Narcotic. Go further next
time. Naughty boy: punish: afraid of words, of course. Brutal, why not?
Try it anyhow. A bit at a time.
Fingering still the letter in his pocket he drew the pin out of it.
Common pin, eh? He threw it on the road. Out of her clothes somewhere:
pinned together. Queer the number of pins they always have. No roses
without thorns.
Flat Dublin voices bawled in his head. Those two sluts that night in
the Coombe, linked together in the rain.
O, Mairy lost the pin of her drawers.
She didn't know what to do
To keep it up,
To keep it up.
It? Them. Such a bad headache. Has her roses probably. Or sitting all day
typing. Eyefocus bad for stomach nerves. What perfume does your wife
use. Now could you make out a thing like that?
To keep it up.
Martha, Mary. I saw that picture somewhere I forget now old master or
faked for money. He is sitting in their house, talking. Mysterious. Also the
two sluts in the Coombe would listen.
To keep it up.
Nice kind of evening feeling. No more wandering about. Just loll there:
quiet dusk: let everything rip. Forget. Tell about places you have been,
strange customs. The other one, jar on her head, was getting the supper:
fruit, olives, lovely cool water out of a well, stonecold like the hole in the
wall at Ashtown. Must carry a paper goblet next time I go to the
trottingmatches. She listens with big dark soft eyes. Tell her: more and
more: all. Then a sigh: silence. Long long long rest.
Going under the railway arch he took out the envelope, tore it swiftly
in shreds and scattered them towards the road. The shreds fluttered away,
sank in the dank air: a white flutter, then all sank.
Henry Flower. You could tear up a cheque for a hundred pounds in
the same way. Simple bit of paper. Lord Iveagh once cashed a sevenfigure
cheque for a million in the bank of Ireland. Shows you the money to be
made out of porter. Still the other brother lord Ardilaun has to change his
shirt four times a day, they say. Skin breeds lice or vermin. A million
pounds, wait a moment. Twopence a pint, fourpence a quart, eightpence a
gallon of porter, no, one and fourpence a gallon of porter. One and four
into twenty: fifteen about. Yes, exactly. Fifteen millions of barrels of porter.
What am I saying barrels? Gallons. About a million barrels all the
same.
An incoming train clanked heavily above his head, coach after coach.
Barrels bumped in his head: dull porter slopped and churned inside. The
bungholes sprang open and a huge dull flood leaked out, flowing together,
winding through mudflats all over the level land, a lazy pooling swirl of
liquor bearing along wideleaved flowers of its froth.
He had reached the open backdoor of All Hallows. Stepping into the
porch he doffed his hat, took the card from his pocket and tucked it again
behind the leather headband. Damn it. I might have tried to work M'Coy
for a pass to Mullingar.
Same notice on the door. Sermon by the very reverend John Conmee
S. J. on saint Peter Claver S. J. and the African Mission. Prayers for the
conversion of Gladstone they had too when he was almost unconscious.
The protestants are the same. Convert Dr William J. Walsh D. D. to the
true religion. Save China's millions. Wonder how they explain it to the
heathen Chinee. Prefer an ounce of opium. Celestials. Rank heresy for
them. Buddha their god lying on his side in the museum. Taking it easy with
hand under his cheek. Josssticks burning. Not like Ecce Homo. Crown of
thorns and cross. Clever idea Saint Patrick the shamrock. Chopsticks?
Conmee: Martin Cunningham knows him: distinguishedlooking. Sorry I
didn't work him about getting Molly into the choir instead of that Father
Farley who looked a fool but wasn't. They're taught that. He's not going
out in bluey specs with the sweat rolling off him to baptise blacks, is he? The
glasses would take their fancy, flashing. Like to see them sitting round in a
ring with blub lips, entranced, listening. Still life. Lap it up like milk, I
suppose.
The cold smell of sacred stone called him. He trod the worn steps,
pushed the swingdoor and entered softly by the rere.
Something going on: some sodality. Pity so empty. Nice discreet place
to be next some girl. Who is my neighbour? Jammed by the hour to slow
music. That woman at midnight mass. Seventh heaven. Women knelt in the
benches with crimson halters round their necks, heads bowed. A batch knelt
at the altarrails. The priest went along by them, murmuring, holding the
thing in his hands. He stopped at each, took out a communion, shook a
drop or two (are they in water?) off it and put it neatly into her mouth. Her
hat and head sank. Then the next one. Her hat sank at once. Then the next
one: a small old woman. The priest bent down to put it into her mouth,
murmuring all the time. Latin. The next one. Shut your eyes and open your
mouth. What? Corpus: body. Corpse. Good idea the Latin. Stupefies them
first. Hospice for the dying. They don't seem to chew it: only swallow it
down. Rum idea: eating bits of a corpse. Why the cannibals cotton to it.
He stood aside watching their blind masks pass down the aisle, one by
one, and seek their places. He approached a bench and seated himself in its
corner, nursing his hat and newspaper. These pots we have to wear. We
ought to have hats modelled on our heads. They were about him here and
there, with heads still bowed in their crimson halters, waiting for it to melt
in their stomachs. Something like those mazzoth: it's that sort of bread:
unleavened shewbread. Look at them. Now I bet it makes them feel happy.
Lollipop. It does. Yes, bread of angels it's called. There's a big idea behind
it, kind of kingdom of God is within you feel. First communicants.
Hokypoky penny a lump. Then feel all like one family party, same in the
theatre, all in the same swim. They do. I'm sure of that. Not so lonely. In
our confraternity. Then come out a bit spreeish. Let off steam. Thing is if
you really believe in it. Lourdes cure, waters of oblivion, and the Knock
apparition, statues bleeding. Old fellow asleep near that confessionbox.
Hence those snores. Blind faith. Safe in the arms of kingdom come. Lulls all
pain. Wake this time next year.
He saw the priest stow the communion cup away, well in, and kneel
an instant before it, showing a large grey bootsole from under the lace
affair he had on. Suppose he lost the pin of his. He wouldn't know what to
do to. Bald spot behind. Letters on his back: I. N. R. I? No: I. H. S. Molly
told me one time I asked her. I have sinned: or no: I have suffered, it is. And
the other one? Iron nails ran in.
Meet one Sunday after the rosary. Do not deny my request. Turn up
with a veil and black bag. Dusk and the light behind her. She might be here
with a ribbon round her neck and do the other thing all the same on the sly.
Their character. That fellow that turned queen's evidence on the invincibles
he used to receive the, Carey was his name, the communion every morning.
This very church. Peter Carey, yes. No, Peter Claver I am thinking of.
Denis Carey. And just imagine that. Wife and six children at home. And
plotting that murder all the time. Those crawthumpers, now that's a good
name for them, there's always something shiftylooking about them. They're
not straight men of business either. O, no, she's not here: the flower: no,
no. By the way, did I tear up that envelope? Yes: under the bridge.
The priest was rinsing out the chalice: then he tossed off the dregs
smartly. Wine. Makes it more aristocratic than for example if he drank
what they are used to Guinness's porter or some temperance beverage
Wheatley's Dublin hop bitters or Cantrell and Cochrane's ginger ale
(aromatic). Doesn't give them any of it: shew wine: only the other. Cold
comfort. Pious fraud but quite right: otherwise they'd have one old booser
worse than another coming along, cadging for a drink. Queer the whole
atmosphere of the. Quite right. Perfectly right that is.
Mr Bloom looked back towards the choir. Not going to be any music.
Pity. Who has the organ here I wonder? Old Glynn he knew how to make
that instrument talk, the vibrato: fifty pounds a year they say he had in
Gardiner street. Molly was in fine voice that day, the Stabat Mater of
Rossini. Father Bernard Vaughan's sermon first. Christ or Pilate? Christ,
but don't keep us all night over it. Music they wanted. Footdrill stopped.
Could hear a pin drop. I told her to pitch her voice against that corner. I
could feel the thrill in the air, the full, the people looking up:
Quis est homo.
Some of that old sacred music splendid. Mercadante: seven last
words. Mozart's twelfth mass: Gloria in that. Those old popes keen on
music, on art and statues and pictures of all kinds. Palestrina for example
too. They had a gay old time while it lasted. Healthy too, chanting, regular
hours, then brew liqueurs. Benedictine. Green Chartreuse. Still, having
eunuchs in their choir that was coming it a bit thick. What kind of voice is
it? Must be curious to hear after their own strong basses. Connoisseurs.
Suppose they wouldn't feel anything after. Kind of a placid. No worry. Fall
into flesh, don't they? Gluttons, tall, long legs. Who knows? Eunuch. One
way out of it.
He saw the priest bend down and kiss the altar and then face about
and bless all the people. All crossed themselves and stood up. Mr Bloom
glanced about him and then stood up, looking over the risen hats. Stand up
at the gospel of course. Then all settled down on their knees again and he
sat back quietly in his bench. The priest came down from the altar, holding
the thing out from him, and he and the massboy answered each other in
Latin. Then the priest knelt down and began to read off a card:
-- O God, our refuge and our strength .....
Mr Bloom put his face forward to catch the words. English. Throw
them the bone. I remember slightly. How long since your last mass?
Glorious and immaculate virgin. Joseph, her spouse. Peter and Paul. More
interesting if you understood what it was all about. Wonderful organisation
certainly, goes like clockwork. Confession. Everyone wants to. Then I will
tell you all. Penance. Punish me, please. Great weapon in their hands. More
than doctor or solicitor. Woman dying to. And I schschschschschsch. And
did you chachachachacha? And why did you? Look down at her ring to
find an excuse. Whispering gallery walls have ears. Husband learn to his
surprise. God's little joke. Then out she comes. Repentance skindeep.
Lovely shame. Pray at an altar. Hail Mary and Holy Mary. Flowers,
incense, candles melting. Hide her blushes. Salvation army blatant
imitation. Reformed prostitute will address the meeting. How I found the
Lord. Squareheaded chaps those must be in Rome: they work the whole
show. And don't they rake in the money too? Bequests also: to the P. P. for
the time being in his absolute discretion. Masses for the repose of my soul to
be said publicly with open doors. Monasteries and convents. The priest in
that Fermanagh will case in the witnessbox. No browbeating him. He had
his answer pat for everything. Liberty and exaltation of our holy mother the
church. The doctors of the church: they mapped out the whole theology of
it.
The priest prayed:
--Blessed Michael, archangel, defend us in the hour of conflict. Be our
safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil (may God restrain
him, we humbly pray!): and do thou, O prince of the heavenly host, by the
power of God thrust Satan down to hell and with him those other wicked
spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls.
The priest and the massboy stood up and walked off. All over. The
women remained behind: thanksgiving.
Better be shoving along. Brother Buzz. Come around with the plate
perhaps. Pay your Easter duty.
He stood up. Hello. Were those two buttons of my waistcoat open all
the time? Women enjoy it. Never tell you. But we. Excuse, miss, there's a
(whh!) just a (whh!) fluff. Or their skirt behind, placket unhooked.
Glimpses of the moon. Annoyed if you don't. Why didn't you tell me
before. Still like you better untidy. Good job it wasn't farther south. He
passed, discreetly buttoning, down the aisle and out through the main door
into the light. He stood a moment unseeing by the cold black marble bowl
while before him and behind two worshippers dipped furtive hands in the
low tide of holy water. Trams: a car of Prescott's dyeworks: a widow in her
weeds. Notice because I'm in mourning myself. He covered himself. How
goes the time? Quarter past. Time enough yet. Better get that lotion made
up. Where is this? Ah yes, the last time. Sweny's in Lincoln place. Chemists
rarely move. Their green and gold beaconjars too heavy to stir. Hamilton
Long's, founded in the year of the flood. Huguenot churchyard near there.
Visit some day.
He walked southward along Westland row. But the recipe is in the
other trousers. O, and I forgot that latchkey too. Bore this funeral affair. O
well, poor fellow, it's not his fault. When was it I got it made up last? Wait.
I changed a sovereign I remember. First of the month it must have been or
the second. O, he can look it up in the prescriptions book.
The chemist turned back page after page. Sandy shrivelled smell he
seems to have. Shrunken skull. And old. Quest for the philosopher's stone.
The alchemists. Drugs age you after mental excitement. Lethargy then.
Why? Reaction. A lifetime in a night. Gradually changes your character.
Living all the day among herbs, ointments, disinfectants. All his alabaster
lilypots. Mortar and pestle. Aq. Dist. Fol. Laur. Te Virid. Smell almost cure
you like the dentist's doorbell. Doctor Whack. He ought to physic himself a
bit. Electuary or emulsion. The first fellow that picked an herb to cure
himself had a bit of pluck. Simples. Want to be careful. Enough stuff here to
chloroform you. Test: turns blue litmus paper red. Chloroform. Overdose
of laudanum. Sleeping draughts. Lovephiltres. Paragoric poppysyrup bad
for cough. Clogs the pores or the phlegm. Poisons the only cures. Remedy
where you least expect it. Clever of nature.
-- About a fortnight ago, sir?
-- Yes, Mr Bloom said.
He waited by the counter, inhaling slowly the keen reek of drugs, the
dusty dry smell of sponges and loofahs. Lot of time taken up telling your
aches and pains.
-- Sweet almond oil and tincture of benzoin, Mr Bloom said, and then
orangeflower water ....
It certainly did make her skin so delicate white like wax.
-- And white wax also, he said.
Brings out the darkness of her eyes. Looking at me, the sheet up to
her eyes, Spanish, smelling herself, when I was fixing the links in my cuffs.
Those homely recipes are often the best: strawberries for the teeth: nettles
and rainwater: oatmeal they say steeped in buttermilk. Skinfood. One of
the old queen's sons, duke of Albany was it? had only one skin. Leopold,
yes. Three we have. Warts, bunions and pimples to make it worse. But you
want a perfume too. What perfume does your? Peau d'Espagne. That
orangeflower water is so fresh. Nice smell these soaps have. Pure curd soap.
Time to get a bath round the corner. Hammam. Turkish. Massage. Dirt
gets rolled up in your navel. Nicer if a nice girl did it. Also I think I. Yes I.
Do it in the bath. Curious longing I. Water to water. Combine business with
pleasure. Pity no time for massage. Feel fresh then all the day. Funeral be
rather glum.
-- Yes, sir, the chemist said. That was two and nine. Have you brought a
bottle?
-- No, Mr Bloom said. Make it up, please. I'll call later in the day and I'll
take one of these soaps. How much are they?
-- Fourpence, sir.
Mr Bloom raised a cake to his nostrils. Sweet lemony wax.
-- I'll take this one, he said. That makes three and a penny.
-- Yes, sir, the chemist said. You can pay all together, sir, when you come
back.
-- Good, Mr Bloom said.
He strolled out of the shop, the newspaper baton under his armpit,
the coolwrappered soap in his left hand.
At his armpit Bantam Lyons' voice and hand said:
-- Hello, Bloom. What's the best news? Is that today's? Show us a minute.
Shaved off his moustache again, by Jove! Long cold upper lip. To
look younger. He does look balmy. Younger than I am.
Bantam Lyons's yellow blacknailed fingers unrolled the baton. Wants
a wash too. Take off the rough dirt. Good morning, have you used Pears'
soap? Dandruff on his shoulders. Scalp wants oiling.
-- I want to see about that French horse that's running today, Bantam
Lyons said. Where the bugger is it?
He rustled the pleated pages, jerking his chin on his high collar.
Barber's itch. Tight collar he'll lose his hair. Better leave him the paper and
get shut of him.
-- You can keep it, Mr Bloom said.
-- Ascot. Gold cup. Wait, Bantam Lyons muttered. Half a mo. Maximum
the second.
-- I was just going to throw it away, Mr Bloom said.
Bantam Lyons raised his eyes suddenly and leered weakly.
-- What's that? his sharp voice said.
-- I say you can keep it, Mr Bloom answered. I was going to throw it away
that moment.
Bantam Lyons doubted an instant, leering: then thrust the outspread
sheets back on Mr Bloom's arms.
-- I'll risk it, he said. Here, thanks.
He sped off towards Conway's corner. God speed scut.
Mr Bloom folded the sheets again to a neat square and lodged the
soap in it, smiling. Silly lips of that chap. Betting. Regular hotbed of it
lately. Messenger boys stealing to put on sixpence. Raffle for large tender
turkey. Your Christmas dinner for threepence. Jack Fleming embezzling to
gamble then smuggled off to America. Keeps a hotel now. They never come
back. Fleshpots of Egypt.
He walked cheerfully towards the mosque of the baths. Remind you
of a mosque, redbaked bricks, the minarets. College sports today I see. He
eyed the horseshoe poster over the gate of college park: cyclist doubled up
like a cod in a pot. Damn bad ad. Now if they had made it round like a
wheel. Then the spokes: sports, sports, sports: and the hub big: college.
Something to catch the eye.
There's Hornblower standing at the porter's lodge. Keep him on
hands: might take a turn in there on the nod. How do you do, Mr
Hornblower? How do you do, sir?
Heavenly weather really. If life was always like that. Cricket weather.
Sit around under sunshades. Over after over. Out. They can't play it here.
Duck for six wickets. Still Captain Culler broke a window in the Kildare
street club with a slog to square leg. Donnybrook fair more in their line.
And the skulls we were acracking when M'Carthy took the floor.
Heatwave. Won't last. Always passing, the stream of life, which in the
stream of life we trace is dearer thaaan them all.
Enjoy a bath now: clean trough of water, cool enamel, the gentle
tepid stream. This is my body.
He foresaw his pale body reclined in it at full, naked, in a womb of
warmth, oiled by scented melting soap, softly laved. He saw his trunk and
limbs riprippled over and sustained, buoyed lightly upward, lemonyellow:
his navel, bud of flesh: and saw the dark tangled curls of his bush floating,
floating hair of the stream around the limp father of thousands, a languid
floating flower.
It is now a month since dear Henry fled
To his home up above in the sky
While his family weeps and mourns his loss
Hoping some day to meet him on high.
I tore up the envelope? Yes. Where did I put her letter after I read it in
the bath? He patted his waistcoatpocket. There all right. Dear Henry fled.
Before my patience are exhausted.
National school. Meade's yard. The hazard. Only two there now.
Nodding. Full as a tick. Too much bone in their skulls. The other trotting
round with a fare. An hour ago I was passing there. The jarvies raised their
hats.
A pointsman's back straightened itself upright suddenly against a
tramway standard by Mr Bloom's window. Couldn't they invent something
automatic so that the wheel itself much handier? Well but that fellow would
lose his job then? Well but then another fellow would get a job making the
new invention?
Antient concert rooms. Nothing on there. A man in a buff suit with a
crape armlet. Not much grief there. Quarter mourning. People in law
perhaps.
They went past the bleak pulpit of saint Mark's, under the railway
bridge, past the Queen's theatre: in silence. Hoardings: Eugene Stratton,
Mrs Bandmann Palmer. Could I go to see Leah tonight, I wonder. I said I.
Or the Lily of Killarney? Elster Grimes Opera Company. Big powerful
change. Wet bright bills for next week. Fun on the Bristol. Martin
Cunningham could work a pass for the Gaiety. Have to stand a drink or
two. As broad as it's long.
He's coming in the afternoon. Her songs.
Plasto's. Sir Philip Crampton's memorial fountain bust. Who was he?
-- How do you do? Martin Cunningham said, raising his palm to his brow
in salute.
-- He doesn't see us, Mr Power said. Yes, he does. How do you do?
-- Who? Mr Dedalus asked.
-- Blazes Boylan, Mr Power said. There he is airing his quiff.
Just that moment I was thinking.
Mr Dedalus bent across to salute. From the door of the Red Bank the
white disc of a straw hat flashed reply: spruce figure: passed.
Mr Bloom reviewed the nails of his left hand, then those of his right
hand. The nails, yes. Is there anything more in him that they she sees?
Fascination. Worst man in Dublin. That keeps him alive. They sometimes
feel what a person is. Instinct. But a type like that. My nails. I am just
looking at them: well pared. And after: thinking alone. Body getting a bit
softy. I would notice that: from remembering. What causes that? I suppose
the skin can't contract quickly enough when the flesh falls off. But the
shape is there. The shape is there still. Shoulders. Hips. Plump. Night of the
dance dressing. Shift stuck between the cheeks behind.
He clasped his hands between his knees and, satisfied, sent his vacant
glance over their faces.
Mr Power asked:
-- How is the concert tour getting on, Bloom?
-- O, very well, Mr Bloom said. I hear great accounts of it. It's a good idea,
you see ...
-- Are you going yourself?
-- Well no, Mr Bloom said. In point of fact I have to go down to the county
Clare on some private business. You see the idea is to tour the chief towns.
What you lose on one you can make up on the other.
-- Quite so, Martin Cunningham said. Mary Anderson is up there now.
Have you good artists?
-- Louis Werner is touring her, Mr Bloom said. O yes, we'll have all
topnobbers. J. C. Doyle and John MacCormack I hope and. The best, in
fact.
-- And madame, Mr Power said smiling. Last but not least.
Mr Bloom unclasped his hands in a gesture of soft politeness and
clasped them. Smith O'Brien. Someone has laid a bunch of flowers there.
Woman. Must be his deathday. For many happy returns. The carriage
wheeling by Farrell's statue united noiselessly their unresisting knees.
Oot: a dullgarbed old man from the curbstone tendered his wares, his
mouth opening: oot.
-- Four bootlaces for a penny.
Wonder why he was struck off the rolls. Had his office in Hume
street. Same house as Molly's namesake, Tweedy, crown solicitor for
Waterford. Has that silk hat ever since. Relics of old decency. Mourning
too. Terrible comedown, poor wretch! Kicked about like snuff at a wake.
O'Callaghan on his last legs.
And madame. Twenty past eleven. Up. Mrs Fleming is in to clean.
Doing her hair, humming. Voglio e non vorrei. No. Vorrei e non. Looking
at the tips of her hairs to see if they are split. Mi trema un poco il. Beautiful
on that tre her voice is: weeping tone. A thrush. A throstle. There is a word
throstle that expresses that.
His eyes passed lightly over Mr Power's goodlooking face. Greyish
over the ears. Madame: smiling. I smiled back. A smile goes a long way.
Only politeness perhaps. Nice fellow. Who knows is that true about the
woman he keeps? Not pleasant for the wife. Yet they say, who was it told
me, there is no carnal. You would imagine that would get played out pretty
quick. Yes, it was Crofton met him one evening bringing her a pound of
rumpsteak. What is this she was? Barmaid in Jury's. Or the Moira, was it?
They passed under the hugecloaked Liberator's form.
Martin Cunningham nudged Mr Power.
-- Of the tribe of Reuben, he said.
A tall blackbearded figure, bent on a stick, stumping round the corner
of Elvery's Elephant house, showed them a curved hand open on his spine.
-- In all his pristine beauty, Mr Power said.
Mr Dedalus looked after the stumping figure and said mildly:
-- The devil break the hasp of your back!
Mr Power, collapsing in laughter, shaded his face from the window as
the carriage passed Gray's statue.
-- We have all been there, Martin Cunningham said broadly.
His eyes met Mr Bloom's eyes. He caressed his beard, adding:
-- Well, nearly all of us.
Mr Bloom began to speak with sudden eagerness to his companions'
faces.
-- That's an awfully good one that's going the rounds about Reuben J and
the son.
-- About the boatman? Mr Power asked.
-- Yes. Isn't it awfully good?
-- What is that? Mr Dedalus asked. I didn't hear it.
-- There was a girl in the case, Mr Bloom began, and he determined to send
him to the Isle of Man out of harm's way but when they were both ...
-- What? Mr Dedalus asked. That confirmed bloody hobbledehoy is it?
-- Yes, Mr Bloom said. They were both on the way to the boat and he tried
to drown.....
-- Drown Barabbas! Mr Dedalus cried. I wish to Christ he did!
Mr Power sent a long laugh down his shaded nostrils.
-- No, Mr Bloom said, the son himself....
Martin Cunningham thwarted his speech rudely:
-- Reuben and the son were piking it down the quay next the river on their
way to the Isle of Man boat and the young chiseller suddenly got loose and
over the wall with him into the Liffey.
-- For God' sake! Mr Dedalus exclaimed in fright. Is he dead?
-- Dead! Martin Cunningham cried. Not he! A boatman got a pole and
fished him out by the slack of the breeches and he was landed up to the
father on the quay more dead than alive. Half the town was there.
-- Yes, Mr Bloom said. But the funny part is ....
-- And Reuben J, Martin Cunningham said, gave the boatman a florin for
saving his son's life.
A stifled sigh came from under Mr Power's hand.
-- O, he did, Martin Cunningham affirmed. Like a hero. A silver florin.
-- Isn't it awfully good? Mr Bloom said eagerly.
-- One and eightpence too much, Mr Dedalus said drily.
Mr Power's choked laugh burst quietly in the carriage.
Nelson's pillar.
-- Eight plums a penny! Eight for a penny!
-- We had better look a little serious, Martin Cunningham said.
Mr Dedalus sighed.
-- Ah then indeed, he said, poor little Paddy wouldn't grudge us a laugh.
Many a good one he told himself.
-- The Lord forgive me! Mr Power said, wiping his wet eyes with his
fingers. Poor Paddy! I little thought a week ago when I saw him last and he
was in his usual health that I'd be driving after him like this. He's gone
from us.
-- As decent a little man as ever wore a hat, Mr Dedalus said. He went very
suddenly.
-- Breakdown, Martin Cunningham said. Heart.
He tapped his chest sadly.
Blazing face: redhot. Too much John Barleycorn. Cure for a red
nose. Drink like the devil till it turns adelite. A lot of money he spent
colouring it.
Mr Power gazed at the passing houses with rueful apprehension.
-- He had a sudden death, poor fellow, he said.
-- The best death, Mr Bloom said.
Their wideopen eyes looked at him.
-- No suffering, he said. A moment and all is over. Like dying in sleep.
No-one spoke.
Dead side of the street this. Dull business by day, land agents,
temperance hotel, Falconer's railway guide, civil service college, Gill's,
catholic club, the industrious blind. Why? Some reason. Sun or wind. At
night too. Chummies and slaveys. Under the patronage of the late Father
Mathew. Foundation stone for Parnell. Breakdown. Heart.
White horses with white frontlet plumes came round the Rotunda
corner, galloping. A tiny coffin flashed by. In a hurry to bury. A mourning
coach. Unmarried. Black for the married. Piebald for bachelors. Dun for a
nun.
-- Sad, Martin Cunningham said. A child.
A dwarf's face, mauve and wrinkled like little Rudy's was. Dwarf's
body, weak as putty, in a whitelined deal box. Burial friendly society pays.
Penny a week for a sod of turf. Our. Little. Beggar. Baby. Meant nothing.
Mistake of nature. If it's healthy it's from the mother. If not from the man.
Better luck next time.
-- Poor little thing, Mr Dedalus said. It's well out of it.
The carriage climbed more slowly the hill of Rutland square. Rattle
his bones. Over the stones. Only a pauper. Nobody owns.
-- In the midst of life, Martin Cunningham said.
-- But the worst of all, Mr Power said, is the man who takes.his own life.
Martin Cunningham drew out his watch briskly, coughed and put it
back.
-- The greatest disgrace to have in the family, Mr Power added.
-- Temporary insanity, of course, Martin Cunningham said decisively. We
must take a charitable view of it.
-- They say a man who does it is a coward, Mr Dedalus said.
-- It is not for us to judge, Martin Cunningham said.
Mr Bloom, about to speak, closed his lips again. Martin
Cunningham's large eyes. Looking away now. Sympathetic human man he
is. Intelligent. Like Shakespeare's face. Always a good word to say. They
have no mercy on that here or infanticide. Refuse christian burial. They
used to drive a stake of wood through his heart in the grave. As if it wasn't
broken already. Yet sometimes they repent too late. Found in the riverbed
clutching rushes. He looked at me. And that awful drunkard of a wife of
his. Setting up house for her time after time and then pawning the furniture
on him every Saturday almost. Leading him the life of the damned. Wear
the heart out of a stone, that. Monday morning. Start afresh. Shoulder to
the wheel. Lord, she must have looked a sight that night Dedalus told me he
was in there. Drunk about the place and capering with Martin's umbrella.
And they call me the jewel of Asia,
Of Asia,
The geisha.
He looked away from me. He knows. Rattle his bones.
That afternoon of the inquest. The redlabelled bottle on the table. The
room in the hotel with hunting pictures. Stuffy it was. Sunlight through the
slats of the Venetian blind. The coroner's sunlit ears, big and hairy. Boots
giving evidence. Thought he was asleep first. Then saw like yellow streaks
on his face. Had slipped down to the foot of the bed. Verdict: overdose.
Death by misadventure. The letter. For my son Leopold.
No more pain. Wake no more. Nobody owns.
The carriage rattled swiftly along Blessington street. Over the stones.
-- We are going the pace, I think, Martin Cunningham said.
-- God grant he doesn't upset us on the road, Mr Power said.
-- I hope not, Martin Cunningham said. That will be a great race tomorrow
in Germany. The Gordon Bennett.
-- Yes, by Jove, Mr Dedalus said. That will be worth seeing, faith.
As they turned into Berkeley street a streetorgan near the Basin sent
over and after them a rollicking rattling song of the halls. Has anybody
here seen Kelly? Kay ee double ell wy. Dead March from Saul. He's as bad
as old Antonio. He left me on my ownio. Pirouette! The Mater
Misericordiae. Eccles street. My house down there. Big place. Ward for
incurables there. Very encouraging. Our Lady's Hospice for the dying.
Deadhouse handy underneath. Where old Mrs Riordan died. They look
terrible the women. Her feeding cup and rubbing her mouth with the
spoon. Then the screen round her bed for her to die. Nice young student
that was dressed that bite the bee gave me. He's gone over to the lying-in
hospital they told me. From one extreme to the other.
The carriage galloped round a corner: stopped.
-- What's wrong now?
A divided drove of branded cattle passed the windows, lowing,
slouching by on padded hoofs, whisking their tails slowly on their clotted
bony croups. Outside them and through them ran raddled sheep bleating
their fear.
-- Emigrants, Mr Power said.
-- Huuuh! the drover's voice cried, his switch sounding on their flanks.
Huuuh! out of that!
Thursday, of course. Tomorrow is killing day. Springers. Cuffe sold
them about twentyseven quid each. For Liverpool probably. Roastbeef for
old England. They buy up all the juicy ones. And then the fifth quarter lost:
all that raw stuff, hide, hair, horns. Comes to a big thing in a year. Dead
meat trade. Byproducts of the slaughterhouses for tanneries, soap,
margarine. Wonder if that dodge works now getting dicky meat off the
train at Clonsilla.
The carriage moved on through the drove.
-- I can't make out why the corporation doesn't run a tramline from the
parkgate to the quays, Mr Bloom said. All those animals could be taken in
trucks down to the boats.
-- Instead of blocking up the thoroughfare, Martin Cunningham said. Quite
right. They ought to.
-- Yes, Mr Bloom said, and another thing I often thought, is to have
municipal funeral trams like they have in Milan, you know. Run the line out
to the cemetery gates and have special trams, hearse and carriage and all.
Don't you see what I mean?
-- O, that be damned for a story, Mr Dedalus said. Pullman car and saloon
diningroom.
-- A poor lookout for Corny, Mr Power added.
-- Why? Mr Bloom asked, turning to Mr Dedalus. Wouldn't it be more
decent than galloping two abreast?
-- Well, there's something in that, Mr Dedalus granted.
-- And, Martin Cunningham said, we wouldn't have scenes like that when
the hearse capsized round Dunphy's and upset the coffin on to the road.
-- That was terrible, Mr Power's shocked face said, and the corpse fell
about the road. Terrible!
-- First round Dunphy's, Mr Dedalus said, nodding. Gordon Bennett cup.
-- Praises be to God! Martin Cunningham said piously.
Bom! Upset. A coffin bumped out on to the road. Burst open. Paddy
Dignam shot out and rolling over stiff in the dust in a brown habit too large
for him. Red face: grey now. Mouth fallen open. Asking what's up now.
Quite right to close it. Looks horrid open. Then the insides decompose
quickly. Much better to close up all the orifices. Yes, also. With wax. The
sphincter loose. Seal up all.
-- Dunphy's, Mr Power announced as the carriage turned right.
Dunphy's corner. Mourning coaches drawn up, drowning their grief.
A pause by the wayside. Tiptop position for a pub. Expect we'll pull up here
on the way back to drink his health. Pass round the consolation. Elixir of
life.
But suppose now it did happen. Would he bleed if a nail say cut him in
the knocking about? He would and he wouldn't, I suppose. Depends on
where. The circulation stops. Still some might ooze out of an artery. It
would be better to bury them in red: a dark red.
In silence they drove along Phibsborough road. An empty hearse
trotted by, coming from the cemetery: looks relieved.
Crossguns bridge: the royal canal.
Water rushed roaring through the sluices. A man stood on his
dropping barge, between clamps of turf. On the towpath by the lock a
slacktethered horse. Aboard of the Bugabu.
Their eyes watched him. On the slow weedy waterway he had floated
on his raft coastward over Ireland drawn by a haulage rope past beds of
reeds, over slime, mudchoked bottles, carrion dogs. Athlone, Mullingar,
Moyvalley, I could make a walking tour to see Milly by the canal. Or cycle
down. Hire some old crock, safety. Wren had one the other day at the
auction but a lady's. Developing waterways. James M'Cann's hobby to row
me o'er the ferry. Cheaper transit. By easy stages. Houseboats. Camping
out. Also hearses. To heaven by water. Perhaps I will without writing.
Come as a surprise, Leixlip, Clonsilla. Dropping down lock by lock to
Dublin. With turf from the midland bogs. Salute. He lifted his brown straw
hat, saluting Paddy Dignam.
They drove on past Brian Boroimhe house. Near it now.
-- I wonder how is our friend Fogarty getting on, Mr Power said.
-- Better ask Tom Kernan, Mr Dedalus said.
-- How is that? Martin Cunningham said. Left him weeping, I suppose?
-- Though lost to sight, Mr Dedalus said, to memory dear.
The carriage steered left for Finglas road.
The stonecutter's yard on the right. Last lap. Crowded on the spit of
land silent shapes appeared, white, sorrowful, holding out calm hands, knelt
in grief, pointing. Fragments of shapes, hewn. In white silence: appealing.
The best obtainable. Thos. H. Dennany, monumental builder and sculptor.
Passed.
On the curbstone before Jimmy Geary, the sexton's, an old tramp sat,
grumbling, emptying the dirt and stones out of his huge dustbrown
yawning boot. After life's journey.
Gloomy gardens then went by: one by one: gloomy houses.
Mr Power pointed.
-- That is where Childs was murdered, he said. The last house.
-- So it is, Mr Dedalus said. A gruesome case. Seymour Bushe got him off.
Murdered his brother. Or so they said.
-- The crown had no evidence, Mr Power said.
-- Only circumstantial, Martin Cunningham added. That's the maxim of
the law. Better for ninetynine guilty to escape than for one innocent person
to be wrongfully condemned.
They looked. Murderer's ground. It passed darkly. Shuttered,
tenantless, unweeded garden. Whole place gone to hell. Wrongfully
condemned. Murder. The murderer's image in the eye of the murdered.
They love reading about it. Man's head found in a garden. Her clothing
consisted of. How she met her death. Recent outrage. The weapon used.
Murderer is still at large. Clues. A shoelace. The body to be exhumed.
Murder will out.
Cramped in this carriage. She mightn't like me to come that way
without letting her know. Must be careful about women. Catch them once
with their pants down. Never forgive you after. Fifteen.
The high railings of Prospect rippled past their gaze. Dark poplars,
rare white forms. Forms more frequent, white shapes thronged amid the
trees, white forms and fragments streaming by mutely, sustaining vain
gestures on the air.
The felly harshed against the curbstone: stopped. Martin
Cunningham put out his arm and, wrenching back the handle, shoved the
door open with his knee. He stepped out. Mr Power and Mr Dedalus
followed.
Change that soap now. Mr Bloom's hand unbuttoned his hip pocket
swiftly and transferred the paperstuck soap to his inner handkerchief
pocket. He stepped out of the carriage, replacing the newspaper his other
hand still held.
Paltry funeral: coach and three carriages. It's all the same.
Pallbearers, gold reins, requiem mass, firing a volley. Pomp of death.
Beyond the hind carriage a hawker stood by his barrow of cakes and fruit.
Simnel cakes those are, stuck together: cakes for the dead. Dogbiscuits.
Who ate them? Mourners coming out.
He followed his companions. Mr Kernan and Ned Lambert followed,
Hynes walking after them. Corny Kelleher stood by the opened hearse and
took out the two wreaths. He handed one to the boy.
Where is that child's funeral disappeared to?
A team of horses passed from Finglas with toiling plodding tread,
dragging through the funereal silence a creaking waggon on which lay a
granite block. The waggoner marching at their head saluted. Coffin now.
Got here before us, dead as he is. Horse looking round at it with his plume
skeowways. Dull eye: collar tight on his neck, pressing on a bloodvessel or
something. Do they know what they cart out here every day? Must be
twenty or thirty funerals every day. Then Mount Jerome for the
protestants. Funerals all over the world everywhere every minute.
Shovelling them under by the cartload doublequick. Thousands every hour.
Too many in the world.
Mourners came out through the gates: woman and a girl. Leanjawed
harpy, hard woman at a bargain, her bonnet awry. Girl's face stained with
dirt and tears, holding the woman's arm, looking up at her for a sign to cry.
Fish's face, bloodless and livid.
The mutes shouldered the coffin and bore it in through the gates. So
much dead weight. Felt heavier myself stepping out of that bath. First the
stiff: then the friends of the stiff. Corny Kelleher and the boy followed with
their wreaths. Who is that beside them? Ah, the brother-in-law.
All walked after.
Martin Cunningham whispered:
-- I was in mortal agony with you talking of suicide before Bloom.
-- What? Mr Power whispered. How so?
-- His father poisoned himself, Martin Cunningham whispered. Had the
Queen's hotel in Ennis. You heard him say he was going to Clare.
Anniversary.
-- O God! Mr Power whispered. First I heard of it. Poisoned himself?
He glanced behind him to where a face with dark thinking eyes
followed towards the cardinal's mausoleum. Speaking.
-- Was he insured? Mr Bloom asked.
-- I believe so, Mr Kernan answered. But the policy was heavily mortgaged.
Martin is trying to get the youngster into Artane.
-- How many children did he leave?
-- Five. Ned Lambert says he'll try to get one of the girls into Todd's.
-- A sad case, Mr Bloom said gently. Five young children.
-- A great blow to the poor wife, Mr Kernan added.
-- Indeed yes, Mr Bloom agreed.
Has the laugh at him now.
He looked down at the boots he had blacked and polished. She had
outlived him. Lost her husband. More dead for her than for me. One must
outlive the other. Wise men say. There are more women than men in the
world. Condole with her. Your terrible loss. I hope you'll soon follow him.
For Hindu widows only. She would marry another. Him? No. Yet who
knows after. Widowhood not the thing since the old queen died. Drawn on
a guncarriage. Victoria and Albert. Frogmore memorial mourning. But in
the end she put a few violets in her bonnet. Vain in her heart of hearts. All
for a shadow. Consort not even a king. Her son was the substance.
Something new to hope for not like the past she wanted back, waiting. It
never comes. One must go first: alone, under the ground: and lie no more
in her warm bed.
-- How are you, Simon? Ned Lambert said softly, clasping hands. Haven't
seen you for a month of Sundays.
-- Never better. How are all in Cork's own town?
-- I was down there for the Cork park races on Easter Monday, Ned
Lambert said. Same old six and eightpence. Stopped with Dick Tivy.
-- And how is Dick, the solid man?
-- Nothing between himself and heaven, Ned Lambert answered.
-- By the holy Paul! Mr Dedalus said in subdued wonder. Dick Tivy bald?
-- Martin is going to get up a whip for the youngsters, Ned Lambert said,
pointing ahead. A few bob a skull. Just to keep them going till the insurance
is cleared up.
-- Yes, yes, Mr Dedalus said dubiously. Is that the eldest boy in front?
-- Yes, Ned Lambert said, with the wife's brother. John Henry Menton is
behind. He put down his name for a quid.
-- I'll engage he did, Mr Dedalus said. I often told poor Paddy he ought to
mind that job. John Henry is not the worst in the world.
-- How did he lose it? Ned Lambert asked. Liquor, what?
-- Many a good man's fault, Mr Dedalus said with a sigh.
They halted about the door of the mortuary chapel. Mr Bloom stood
behind the boy with the wreath looking down at his sleekcombed hair and
at the slender furrowed neck inside his brandnew collar. Poor boy! Was he
there when the father? Both unconscious. Lighten up at the last moment
and recognise for the last time. All he might have done. I owe three shillings
to O'Grady. Would he understand? The mutes bore the coffin into the
chapel. Which end is his head?
After a moment he followed the others in, blinking in the screened
light. The coffin lay on its bier before the chancel, four tall yellow candles at
its corners. Always in front of us. Corny Kelleher, laying a wreath at each
fore corner, beckoned to the boy to kneel. The mourners knelt here and
there in prayingdesks. Mr Bloom stood behind near the font and, when all
had knelt, dropped carefully his unfolded newspaper from his pocket and
knelt his right knee upon it. He fitted his black hat gently on his left knee
and, holding its brim, bent over piously.
A server bearing a brass bucket with something in it came out through
a door. The whitesmocked priest came after him, tidying his stole with one
hand, balancing with the other a little book against his toad's belly. Who'll
read the book? I, said the rook.
They halted by the bier and the priest began to read out of his book
with a fluent croak.
Father Coffey. I knew his name was like a coffin. Dominenamine.
Bully about the muzzle he looks. Bosses the show. Muscular christian. Woe
betide anyone that looks crooked at him: priest. Thou art Peter. Burst
sideways like a sheep in clover Dedalus says he will. With a belly on him
like a poisoned pup. Most amusing expressions that man finds. Hhhn: burst
sideways.
-- Non intres in judicium cum servo tuo, Domine.
Makes them feel more important to be prayed over in Latin. Requiem
mass. Crape weepers. Blackedged notepaper. Your name on the altarlist.
Chilly place this. Want to feed well, sitting in there all the morning in the
gloom kicking his heels waiting for the next please. Eyes of a toad too.
What swells him up that way? Molly gets swelled after cabbage. Air of the
place maybe. Looks full up of bad gas. Must be an infernal lot of bad gas
round the place. Butchers, for instance: they get like raw beefsteaks. Who
was telling me? Mervyn Browne. Down in the vaults of saint Werburgh's
lovely old organ hundred and fifty they have to bore a hole in the coffins
sometimes to let out the bad gas and burn it. Out it rushes: blue. One whiff
of that and you're a doner.
My kneecap is hurting me. Ow. That's better.
The priest took a stick with a knob at the end of it out of the boy's
bucket and shook it over the coffin. Then he walked to the other end and
shook it again. Then he came back and put it back in the bucket. As you
were before you rested. It's all written down: he has to do it.
-- Et ne nos inducas in tentationem.
The server piped the answers in the treble. I often thought it would be
better to have boy servants. Up to fifteen or so. After that, of course ...
Holy water that was, I expect. Shaking sleep out of it. He must be fed
up with that job, shaking that thing over all the corpses they trot up. What
harm if he could see what he was shaking it over. Every mortal day a fresh
batch: middleaged men, old women, children, women dead in childbirth,
men with beards, baldheaded businessmen, consumptive girls with little
sparrows' breasts. All the year round he prayed the same thing over them
all and shook water on top of them: sleep. On Dignam now.
-- In paradisum.
Said he was going to paradise or is in paradise. Says that over
everybody. Tiresome kind of a job. But he has to say something.
The priest closed his book and went off, followed by the server.
Corny Kelleher opened the sidedoors and the gravediggers came in, hoisted
the coffin again, carried it out and shoved it on their cart. Corny Kelleher
gave one wreath to the boy and one to the brother-in-law. All followed
them out of the sidedoors into the mild grey air. Mr Bloom came last
folding his paper again into his pocket. He gazed gravely at the ground till
the coffincart wheeled off to the left. The metal wheels ground the gravel
with a sharp grating cry and the pack of blunt boots followed the trundled
barrow along a lane of sepulchres.
The ree the ra the ree the ra the roo. Lord, I mustn't lilt here.
-- The O'Connell circle, Mr Dedalus said about him.
Mr Power's soft eyes went up to the apex of the lofty cone.
-- He's at rest, he said, in the middle of his people, old Dan O'. But his heart
is buried in Rome. How many broken hearts are buried here, Simon!
-- Her grave is over there, Jack, Mr Dedalus said. I'll soon be stretched
beside her. Let Him take me whenever He likes.
Breaking down, he began to weep to himself quietly, stumbling a little
in his walk. Mr Power took his arm.
-- She's better where she is, he said kindly.
-- I suppose so, Mr Dedalus said with a weak gasp. I suppose she is in
heaven if there is a heaven.
Corny Kelleher stepped aside from his rank and allowed the
mourners to plod by.
-- Sad occasions, Mr Kernan began politely.
Mr Bloom closed his eyes and sadly twice bowed his head.
-- The others are putting on their hats, Mr Kernan said. I suppose we can
do so too. We are the last. This cemetery is a treacherous place.
They covered their heads.
-- The reverend gentleman read the service too quickly, don't you think? Mr
Kernan said with reproof.
Mr Bloom nodded gravely looking in the quick bloodshot eyes. Secret
eyes, secretsearching. Mason, I think: not sure. Beside him again. We arc
the last. In the same boat. Hope he'll say something else.
Mr Kernan added:
-- The service of the Irish church used in Mount Jerome is simpler, more
impressive I must say.
Mr Bloom gave prudent assent. The language of course was another
thing.
Mr Kernan said with solemnity:
-- I am the resurrection and the life. That touches a man's inmost heart.
-- It does, Mr Bloom said.
Your heart perhaps but what price the fellow in the six feet by two
with his toes to the daisies? No touching that. Seat of the affections. Broken
heart. A pump after all, pumping thousands of gallons of blood every day.
One fine day it gets bunged up: and there you are. Lots of them lying
around here: lungs, hearts, livers. Old rusty pumps: damn the thing else.
The resurrection and the life. Once you are dead you are dead. That last
day idea. Knocking them all up out of their graves. Come forth, Lazarus!
And he came fifth and lost the job. Get up! Last day! Then every fellow
mousing around for his liver and his lights and the rest of his traps. Find
damn all of himself that morning. Pennyweight of powder in a skull.
Twelve grammes one pennyweight. Troy measure.
Corny Kelleher fell into step at their side.
-- Everything went off A 1, he said. What?
He looked on them from his drawling eye. Policeman's shoulders.
With your tooraloom tooraloom.
-- As it should be, Mr Kernan said.
-- What? Eh? Corny Kelleher said.
Mr Kernan assured him.
-- Who is that chap behind with Tom Kernan? John Henry Menton asked. I
know his face.
Ned Lambert glanced back.
-- Bloom, he said, Madame Marion Tweedy that was, is, I mean, the
soprano. She's his wife.
-- O, to be sure, John Henry Menton said. I haven't seen her for some time.
She was a finelooking woman. I danced with her, wait, fifteen seventeen
golden years ago, at Mat Dillon's in Roundtown. And a good armful she
was.
He looked behind through the others.
-- What is he? he asked. What does he do? Wasn't he in the stationery line?
I fell foul of him one evening, I remember, at bowls.
Ned Lambert smiled.
-- Yes, he was, he said, in Wisdom Hely's. A traveller for blottingpaper.
-- In God's name, John Henry Menton said, what did she marry a coon like
that for? She had plenty of game in her then.
-- Has still, Ned Lambert said. He does some canvassing for ads.
John Henry Menton's large eyes stared ahead.
The barrow turned into a side lane. A portly man, ambushed among
the grasses, raised his hat in homage. The gravediggers touched their caps.
-- John O'Connell, Mr Power said pleased. He never forgets a friend.
Mr O'Connell shook all their hands in silence. Mr Dedalus said:
-- I am come to pay you another visit.
-- My dear Simon, the caretaker answered in a low voice. I don't want your
custom at all.
Saluting Ned Lambert and John Henry Menton he walked on at
Martin Cunningham's side puzzling two long keys at his back.
-- Did you hear that one, he asked them, about Mulcahy from the Coombe?
-- I did not, Martin Cunningham said.
They bent their silk hats in concert and Hynes inclined his ear. The
caretaker hung his thumbs in the loops of his gold watchchain and spoke in
a discreet tone to their vacant smiles.
-- They tell the story, he said, that two drunks came out here one foggy
evening to look for the grave of a friend of theirs. They asked for Mulcahy
from the Coombe and were told where he was buried. After traipsing about
in the fog they found the grave sure enough. One of the drunks spelt out the
name: Terence Mulcahy. The other drunk was blinking up at a statue of
Our Saviour the widow had got put up.
The caretaker blinked up at one of the sepulchres they passed. He
resumed:
-- And, after blinking up at the sacred figure, Not a bloody bit like the man,
says he. That's not Mulcahy, says he, whoever done it.
Rewarded by smiles he fell back and spoke with Corny Kelleher,
accepting the dockets given him, turning them over and scanning them as he
walked.
-- That's all done with a purpose, Martin Cunningham explained to Hynes.
-- I know, Hynes said. I know that.
-- To cheer a fellow up, Martin Cunningham said. It's pure good-
heartedness: damn the thing else.
Mr Bloom admired the caretaker's prosperous bulk. All want to be on
good terms with him. Decent fellow, John O'Connell, real good sort. Keys:
like Keyes's ad: no fear of anyone getting out. No passout checks. Habeas
corpus. I must see about that ad after the funeral. Did I write Ballsbridge on
the envelope I took to cover when she disturbed me writing to Martha?
Hope it's not chucked in the dead letter office. Be the better of a shave. Grey
sprouting beard. That's the first sign when the hairs come out grey. And
temper getting cross. Silver threads among the grey. Fancy being his wife.
Wonder he had the gumption to propose to any girl. Come out and live in
the graveyard. Dangle that before her. It might thrill her first. Courting
death. Shades of night hovering here with all the dead stretched about. The
shadows of the tombs when churchyards yawn and Daniel O'Connell must
be a descendant I suppose who is this used to say he was a queer breedy
man great catholic all the same like a big giant in the dark. Will o' the wisp.
Gas of graves. Want to keep her mind off it to conceive at all. Women
especially are so touchy. Tell her a ghost story in bed to make her sleep.
Have you ever seen a ghost? Well, I have. It was a pitchdark night. The
clock was on the stroke of twelve. Still they'd kiss all right if properly keyed
up. Whores in Turkish graveyards. Learn anything if taken young. You
might pick up a young widow here. Men like that. Love among the
tombstones. Romeo. Spice of pleasure. In the midst of death we are in life.
Both ends meet. Tantalising for the poor dead. Smell of grilled beefsteaks to
the starving. Gnawing their vitals. Desire to grig people. Molly wanting to
do it at the window. Eight children he has anyway.
He has seen a fair share go under in his time, lying around him field
after field. Holy fields. More room if they buried them standing. Sitting or
kneeling you couldn't. Standing? His head might come up some day above
ground in a landslip with his hand pointing. All honeycombed the ground
must be: oblong cells. And very neat he keeps it too: trim grass and edgings.
His garden Major Gamble calls Mount Jerome. Well, so it is. Ought to be
flowers of sleep. Chinese cemeteries with giant poppies growing produce the
best opium Mastiansky told me. The Botanic Gardens are just over there.
It's the blood sinking in the earth gives new life. Same idea those jews they
said killed the christian boy. Every man his price. Well preserved fat corpse,
gentleman, epicure, invaluable for fruit garden. A bargain. By carcass of
William Wilkinson, auditor and accountant, lately deceased, three pounds
thirteen and six. With thanks.
I daresay the soil would be quite fat with corpsemanure, bones, flesh,
nails. Charnelhouses. Dreadful. Turning green and pink decomposing. Rot
quick in damp earth. The lean old ones tougher. Then a kind of a tallowy
kind of a cheesy. Then begin to get black, black treacle oozing out of them.
Then dried up. Deathmoths. Of course the cells or whatever they are go on
living. Changing about. Live for ever practically. Nothing to feed on feed
on themselves.
But they must breed a devil of a lot of maggots. Soil must be simply
swirling with them. Your head it simply swurls. Those pretty little seaside
gurls. He looks cheerful enough over it. Gives him a sense of power seeing
all the others go under first. Wonder how he looks at life. Cracking his
jokes too: warms the cockles of his heart. The one about the bulletin.
Spurgeon went to heaven 4 a.m. this morning. 11 p.m. (closing time). Not
arrived yet. Peter. The dead themselves the men anyhow would like to hear
an odd joke or the women to know what's in fashion. A juicy pear or
ladies' punch, hot, strong and sweet. Keep out the damp. You must laugh
sometimes so better do it that way. Gravediggers in Hamlet. Shows the
profound knowledge of the human heart. Daren't joke about the dead for
two years at least. De mortuis nil nisi prius. Go out of mourning first. Hard
to imagine his funeral. Seems a sort of a joke. Read your own obituary
notice they say you live longer. Gives you second wind. New lease of life.
-- How many have-you for tomorrow? the caretaker asked.
-- Two, Corny Kelleher said. Half ten and eleven.
The caretaker put the papers in his pocket. The barrow had ceased to
trundle. The mourners split and moved to each side of the hole, stepping
with care round the graves. The gravediggers bore the coffin and set its nose
on the brink, looping the bands round it.
Burying him. We come to bury Caesar. His ides of March or June.
He doesn't know who is here nor care.
Now who is that lankylooking galoot over there in the macintosh?
Now who is he I'd like to know? Now I'd give a trifle to know who he is.
Always someone turns up you never dreamt of. A fellow could live on his
lonesome all his life. Yes, he could. Still he'd have to get someone to sod him
after he died though he could dig his own grave. We all do. Only man
buries. No, ants too. First thing strikes anybody. Bury the dead. Say
Robinson Crusoe was true to life. Well then Friday buried him. Every
Friday buries a Thursday if you come to look at it.
O, poor Robinson Crusoe!
How could you possibly do so?
Poor Dignam! His last lie on the earth in his box. When you think of
them all it does seem a waste of wood. All gnawed through. They could
invent a handsome bier with a kind of panel sliding, let it down that way.
Ay but they might object to be buried out of another fellow's. They're so
particular. Lay me in my native earth. Bit of clay from the holy land. Only a
mother and deadborn child ever buried in the one coffin. I see what it
means. I see. To protect him as long as possible even in the earth. The
Irishman's house is his coffin. Embalming in catacombs, mummies the same
idea.
Mr Bloom stood far back, his hat in his hand, counting the bared
heads. Twelve. I'm thirteen. No. The chap in the macintosh is thirteen.
Death's number. Where the deuce did he pop out of? He wasn't in the
chapel, that I'll swear. Silly superstition that about thirteen.
Nice soft tweed Ned Lambert has in that suit. Tinge of purple. I had
one like that when we lived in Lombard street west. Dressy fellow he was
once. Used to change three suits in the day. Must get that grey suit of mine
turned by Mesias. Hello. It's dyed. His wife I forgot he's not married or his
landlady ought to have picked out those threads for him.
The coffin dived out of sight, eased down by the men straddled on the
gravetrestles. They struggled up and out: and all uncovered. Twenty.
Pause.
If we were all suddenly somebody else.
Far away a donkey brayed. Rain. No such ass. Never see a dead one,
they say. Shame of death. They hide. Also poor papa went away.
Gentle sweet air blew round the bared heads in a whisper. Whisper.
The boy by the gravehead held his wreath with both hands staring quietly
in the black open space. Mr Bloom moved behind the portly kindly
caretaker. Wellcut frockcoat. Weighing them up perhaps to see which will
go next. Well, it is a long rest. Feel no more. It's the moment you feel. Must
be damned unpleasant. Can't believe it at first. Mistake must be: someone
else. Try the house opposite. Wait, I wanted to. I haven't yet. Then
darkened deathchamber. Light they want. Whispering around you. Would
you like to see a priest? Then rambling and wandering. Delirium all you hid
all your life. The death struggle. His sleep is not natural. Press his lower
eyelid. Watching is his nose pointed is his jaw sinking are the soles of his
feet yellow. Pull the pillow away and finish it off on the floor since he's
doomed. Devil in that picture of sinner's death showing him a woman.
Dying to embrace her in his shirt. Last act of Lucia. Shall I nevermore
behold thee? Bam! He expires. Gone at last. People talk about you a bit:
forget you. Don't forget to pray for him. Remember him in your prayers.
Even Parnell. Ivy day dying out. Then they follow: dropping into a hole,
one after the other.
We are praying now for the repose of his soul. Hoping you're well
and not in hell. Nice change of air. Out of the fryingpan of life into the fire
of purgatory.
Does he ever think of the hole waiting for himself? They say you do
when you shiver in the sun. Someone walking over it. Callboy's warning.
Near you. Mine over there towards Finglas, the plot I bought. Mamma,
poor mamma, and little Rudy.
The gravediggers took up their spades and flung heavy clods of clay
in on the coffin. Mr Bloom turned away his face. And if he was alive all the
time? Whew! By jingo, that would be awful! No, no: he is dead, of course.
Of course he is dead. Monday he died. They ought to have some law to
pierce the heart and make sure or an electric clock or a telephone in the
coffin and some kind of a canvas airhole. Flag of distress. Three days.
Rather long to keep them in summer. Just as well to get shut of them as
soon as you are sure there's no.
The clay fell softer. Begin to be forgotten. Out of sight, out of mind.
The caretaker moved away a few paces and put on his hat. Had
enough of it. The mourners took heart of grace, one by one, covering
themselves without show. Mr Bloom put on his hat and saw the portly
figure make its way deftly through the maze of graves. Quietly, sure of his
ground, he traversed the dismal fields.
Hynes jotting down something in his notebook. Ah, the names. But he
knows them all. No: coming to me.
-- I am just taking the names, Hynes said below his breath. What is your
christian name? I'm not sure.
-- L, Mr Bloom said. Leopold. And you might put down M'Coy's name too.
He asked me to.
-- Charley, Hynes said writing. I know. He was on the Freeman once.
So he was before he got the job in the morgue under Louis Byrne.
Good idea a postmortem for doctors. Find out what they imagine they
know. He died of a Tuesday. Got the run. Levanted with the cash of a few
ads. Charley, you're my darling. That was why he asked me to. O well,
does no harm. I saw to that, M'Coy. Thanks, old chap: much obliged.
Leave him under an obligation: costs nothing.
-- And tell us, Hynes said, do you know that fellow in the, fellow was over
there in the...
He looked around.
-- Macintosh. Yes, I saw him, Mr Bloom said. Where is he now?
-- M'Intosh, Hynes said scribbling. I don't know who he is. Is that his
name?
He moved away, looking about him.
-- No, Mr Bloom began, turning and stopping. I say, Hynes!
Didn't hear. What? Where has he disappeared to? Not a sign. Well of
all the. Has anybody here seen? Kay ee double ell. Become invisible. Good
Lord, what became of him?
A seventh gravedigger came beside Mr Bloom to take up an idle
spade.
-- O, excuse me!
He stepped aside nimbly.
Clay, brown, damp, began to be seen in the hole. It rose. Nearly over.
A mound of damp clods rose more, rose, and the gravediggers rested their
spades. All uncovered again for a few instants. The boy propped his wreath
against a corner: the brother-in-law his on a lump. The gravediggers put on
their caps and carried their earthy spades towards the barrow. Then
knocked the blades lightly on the turf: clean. One bent to pluck from the
haft a long tuft of grass. One, leaving his mates, walked slowly on with
shouldered weapon, its blade blueglancing. Silently at the gravehead
another coiled the coffinband. His navelcord. The brother-in-law, turning
away, placed something in his free hand. Thanks in silence. Sorry, sir:
trouble. Headshake. I know that. For yourselves just.
The mourners moved away slowly without aim, by devious paths,
staying at whiles to read a name on a tomb.
-- Let us go round by the chief's grave, Hynes said. We have time.
-- Let us, Mr Power said.
They turned to the right, following their slow thoughts. With awe Mr
Power's blank voice spoke:
-- Some say he is not in that grave at all. That the coffin was filled with
stones. That one day he will come again.
Hynes shook his head.
-- Parnell will never come again, he said. He's there, all that was mortal of
him. Peace to his ashes.
Mr Bloom walked unheeded along his grove by saddened angels,
crosses, broken pillars, family vaults, stone hopes praying with upcast eyes,
old Ireland's hearts and hands. More sensible to spend the money on some
charity for the living. Pray for the repose of the soul of. Does anybody
really? Plant him and have done with him. Like down a coalshoot. Then
lump them together to save time. All souls' day. Twentyseventh I'll be at his
grave. Ten shillings for the gardener. He keeps it free of weeds. Old man
himself. Bent down double with his shears clipping. Near death's door.
Who passed away. Who departed this life. As if they did it of their own
accord. Got the shove, all of them. Who kicked the bucket. More interesting
if they told you what they were. So and So, wheelwright. I travelled for
cork lino. I paid five shillings in the pound. Or a woman's with her
saucepan. I cooked good Irish stew. Eulogy in a country churchyard it
ought to be that poem of whose is it Wordsworth or Thomas Campbell.
Entered into rest the protestants put it. Old Dr Murren's. The great
physician called him home. Well it's God's acre for them. Nice country
residence. Newly plastered and painted. Ideal spot to have a quiet smoke
and read the Church Times. Marriage ads they never try to beautify. Rusty
wreaths hung on knobs, garlands of bronzefoil. Better value that for the
money. Still, the flowers are more poetical. The other gets rather tiresome,
never withering. Expresses nothing. Immortelles.
A bird sat tamely perched on a poplar branch. Like stuffed. Like the
wedding present alderman Hooper gave us. Hoo! Not a budge out of him.
Knows there are no catapults to let fly at him. Dead animal even sadder.
Silly-Milly burying the little dead bird in the kitchen matchbox, a
daisychain and bits of broken chainies on the grave.
The Sacred Heart that is: showing it. Heart on his sleeve. Ought to be
sideways and red it should be painted like a real heart. Ireland was
dedicated to it or whatever that. Seems anything but pleased. Why this
infliction? Would birds come then and peck like the boy with the basket of
fruit but he said no because they ought to have been afraid of the boy.
Apollo that was.
How many! All these here once walked round Dublin. Faithful
departed. As you are now so once were we.
Besides how could you remember everybody? Eyes, walk, voice. Well,
the voice, yes: gramophone. Have a gramophone in every grave or keep it
in the house. After dinner on a Sunday. Put on poor old greatgrandfather.
Kraahraark! Hellohellohello amawfullyglad kraark awfullygladaseeagain
hellohello amawf krpthsth. Remind you of the voice like the photograph
reminds you of the face. Otherwise you couldn't remember the face after
fifteen years, say. For instance who? For instance some fellow that died
when I was in Wisdom Hely's.
Rtststr! A rattle of pebbles. Wait. Stop!
He looked down intently into a stone crypt. Some animal. Wait.
There he goes.
An obese grey rat toddled along the side of the crypt, moving the
pebbles. An old stager: greatgrandfather: he knows the ropes. The grey
alive crushed itself in under the plinth, wriggled itself in under it. Good
hidingplace for treasure.
Who lives there? Are laid the remains of Robert Emery. Robert
Emmet was buried here by torchlight, wasn't he? Making his rounds.
Tail gone now.
One of those chaps would make short work of a fellow. Pick the
bones clean no matter who it was. Ordinary meat for them. A corpse is
meat gone bad. Well and what's cheese? Corpse of milk. I read in that
Voyages in China that the Chinese say a white man smells like a corpse.
Cremation better. Priests dead against it. Devilling for the other firm.
Wholesale burners and Dutch oven dealers. Time of the plague. Quicklime
feverpits to eat them. Lethal chamber. Ashes to ashes. Or bury at sea.
Where is that Parsee tower of silence? Eaten by birds. Earth, fire, water.
Drowning they say is the pleasantest. See your whole life in a flash. But
being brought back to life no. Can't bury in the air however. Out of a flying
machine. Wonder does the news go about whenever a fresh one is let down.
Underground communication. We learned that from them. Wouldn't be
surprised. Regular square feed for them. Flies come before he's well dead.
Got wind of Dignam. They wouldn't care about the smell of it. Saltwhite
crumbling mush of corpse: smell, taste like raw white turnips.
The gates glimmered in front: still open. Back to the world again.
Enough of this place. Brings you a bit nearer every time. Last time I was
here was Mrs Sinico's funeral. Poor papa too. The love that kills. And even
scraping up the earth at night with a lantern like that case I read of to get at
fresh buried females or even putrefied with running gravesores. Give you
the creeps after a bit. I will appear to you after death. You will see my ghost
after death. My ghost will haunt you after death. There is another world
after death named hell. I do not like that other world she wrote. No more
do I. Plenty to see and hear and feel yet. Feel live warm beings near you. Let
them sleep in their maggoty beds. They are not going to get me this innings.
Warm beds: warm fullblooded life.
Martin Cunningham emerged from a sidepath, talking gravely.
Solicitor, I think. I know his face. Menton, John Henry, solicitor,
commissioner for oaths and affidavits. Dignam used to be in his office. Mat
Dillon's long ago. Jolly Mat. Convivial evenings. Cold fowl, cigars, the
Tantalus glasses. Heart of gold really. Yes, Menton. Got his rag out that
evening on the bowlinggreen because I sailed inside him. Pure fluke of
mine: the bias. Why he took such a rooted dislike to me. Hate at first sight.
Molly and Floey Dillon linked under the lilactree, laughing. Fellow always
like that, mortified if women are by.
Got a dinge in the side of his hat. Carriage probably.
-- Excuse me, sir, Mr Bloom said beside them.
They stopped.
-- Your hat is a little crushed, Mr Bloom said pointing.
John Henry Menton stared at him for an instant without moving.
-- There, Martin Cunningham helped, pointing also.
John Henry Menton took off his hat, bulged out the dinge and
smoothed the nap with care on his coatsleeve. He clapped the hat on his
head again.
-- It's all right now, Martin Cunningham said.
John Henry Menton jerked his head down in acknowledgment.
-- Thank you, he said shortly.
They walked on towards the gates. Mr Bloom, chapfallen, drew
behind a few paces so as not to overhear. Martin laying down the law.
Martin could wind a sappyhead like that round his little finger, without his
seeing it.
Oyster eyes. Never mind. Be sorry after perhaps when it dawns on
him. Get the pull over him that way.
Thank you. How grand we are this morning!
IN THE HEART OF THE HIBERNIAN
METROPOLIS
* Before Nelson's pillar trams slowed, shunted, changed trolley, started
for Blackrock, Kingstown and Dalkey, Clonskea, Rathgar and Terenure,
Palmerston Park and upper Rathmines, Sandymount Green, Rathmines,
Ringsend and Sandymount Tower, Harold's Cross. The hoarse Dublin
United Tramway Company's timekeeper bawled them off:
-- Rathgar and Terenure!
-- Come on, Sandymount Green!
Right and left parallel clanging ringing a doubledecker and a
singledeck moved from their railheads, swerved to the down line, glided
parallel.
-- Start, Palmerston Park!
THE WEARER OF THE CROWN
Under the porch of the general post office shoeblacks called and
polished. Parked in North Prince's street His Majesty's vermilion mailcars,
bearing on their sides the royal initials, E. R., received loudly flung sacks of
letters, postcards, lettercards, parcels, insured and paid, for local,
provincial, British and overseas delivery.
GENTLEMEN OF THE PRESS
Grossbooted draymen rolled barrels dullthudding out of Prince's
stores and bumped them up on the brewery float. On the brewery float
bumped dullthudding barrels rolled by grossbooted draymen out of
Prince's stores.
-- There it is, Red Murray said. Alexander Keyes.
-- Just cut it out, will you? Mr Bloom said, and I'll take it round to the
Telegraph office.
The door of Ruttledge's office creaked again. Davy Stephens, minute
in a large capecoat, a small felt hat crowning his ringlets, passed out with a
roll of papers under his cape, a king's courier.
Red Murray's long shears sliced out the advertisement from the
newspaper in four clean strokes. Scissors and paste.
-- I'll go through the printingworks, Mr Bloom said, taking the cut square.
-- Of course, if he wants a par, Red Murray said earnestly, a pen behind his
ear, we can do him one.
-- Right, Mr Bloom said with a nod. I'll rub that in.
We.
WILLIAM BRAYDEN, ESQUIRE, OF OAKLANDS,
SANDYMOUNT
Red Murray touched Mr Bloom's arm with the shears and whispered:
-- Brayden.
Mr Bloom turned and saw the liveried porter raise his lettered cap as a
stately figure entered between the newsboards of the Weekly Freeman and
National Press and the Freeman's Journal and National Press. Dullthudding
Guinness's barrels. It passed statelily up the staircase, steered by an
umbrella, a solemn beardframed face. The broadcloth back ascended each
step: back. All his brains are in the nape of his neck, Simon Dedalus says.
Welts of flesh behind on him. Fat folds of neck, fat, neck, fat, neck.
-- Don't you think his face is like Our Saviour? Red Murray whispered.
The door of Ruttledge's office whispered: ee: cree. They always build
one door opposite another for the wind to. Way in. Way out.
Our Saviour: beardframed oval face: talking in the dusk. Mary,
Martha. Steered by an umbrella sword to the footlights: Mario the tenor.
-- Or like Mario, Mr Bloom said.
-- Yes, Red Murray agreed. But Mario was said to be the picture of Our
Saviour.
Jesusmario with rougy cheeks, doublet and spindle legs. Hand on his
heart. In Martha.
Co-ome thou lost one,
Co-ome thou dear one!
THE CROZIER AND THE PEN
-- His grace phoned down twice this morning, Red Murray said gravely.
They watched the knees, legs, boots vanish. Neck.
A telegram boy stepped in nimbly, threw an envelope on the counter
and stepped off posthaste with a word:
-- Freeman!
Mr Bloom said slowly:
-- Well, he is one of our saviours also.
A meek smile accompanied him as he lifted the counterflap, as he
passed in through a sidedoor and along the warm dark stairs and passage,
along the now reverberating boards. But will he save the circulation?
Thumping. Thumping.
He pushed in the glass swingdoor and entered, stepping over strewn
packing paper. Through a lane of clanking drums he made his way towards
Nannetti's reading closet.
Hynes here too: account of the funeral probably. Thumping. Thump.
WITH UNFEIGNED REGRET IT IS WE
ANNOUNCE THE DISSOLUTION OF A MOST
RESPECTED DUBLIN BURGESS
This morning the remains of the late Mr Patrick Dignam. Machines.
Smash a man to atoms if they got him caught. Rule the world today. His
machineries are pegging away too. Like these, got out of hand: fermenting.
Working away, tearing away. And that old grey rat tearing to get in.
HOW A GREAT DAILY ORGAN IS TURNED OUT
Mr Bloom halted behind the foreman's spare body, admiring a glossy
crown.
Strange he never saw his real country. Ireland my country. Member
for College green. He boomed that workaday worker tack for all it was
worth. It's the ads and side features sell a weekly, not the stale news in the
official gazette. Queen Anne is dead. Published by authority in the year one
thousand and. Demesne situate in the townland of Rosenallis, barony of
Tinnahinch. To all whom it may concern schedule pursuant to statute
showing return of number of mules and jennets exported from Ballina.
Nature notes. Cartoons. Phil Blake's weekly Pat and Bull story. Uncle
Toby's page for tiny tots. Country bumpkin's queries. Dear Mr Editor,
what is a good cure for flatulence? I'd like that part. Learn a lot teaching
others. The personal note. M. A. P. Mainly all pictures. Shapely bathers on
golden strand. World's biggest balloon. Double marriage of sisters
celebrated. Two bridegrooms laughing heartily at each other. Cuprani too,
printer. More Irish than the Irish.
The machines clanked in threefour time. Thump, thump, thump.
Now if he got paralysed there and no-one knew how to stop them they'd
clank on and on the same, print it over and over and up and back.
Monkeydoodle the whole thing. Want a cool head.
-- Well, get it into the evening edition, councillor, Hynes said.
Soon be calling him my lord mayor. Long John is backing him, they
say.
The foreman, without answering, scribbled press on a corner of the
sheet and made a sign to a typesetter. He handed the sheet silently over the
dirty glass screen.
-- Right: thanks, Hynes said moving off.
Mr Bloom stood in his way.
-- If you want to draw the cashier is just going to lunch, he said, pointing
backward with his thumb.
-- Did you? Hynes asked.
-- Mm, Mr Bloom said. Look sharp and you'll catch him.
-- Thanks, old man, Hynes said. I'll tap him too.
He hurried on eagerly towards the Freeman's Journal office.
Three bob I lent him in Meagher's. Three weeks. Third hint.
WE SEE THE CANVASSER AT WORKMr Bloom laid his cutting on Mr Nannetti's desk. -- Excuse me, councillor, he said. This ad, you see. Keyes, you remember? Mr Nannetti considered the cutting awhile and nodded. -- He wants it in for July, Mr Bloom said. The foreman moved his pencil towards it. -- But wait, Mr Bloom said. He wants it changed. Keyes, you see. He wants two keys at the top. Hell of a racket they make. He doesn't hear it. Nannan. Iron nerves. Maybe he understands what I. The foreman turned round to hear patiently and, lifting an elbow, began to scratch slowly in the armpit of his alpaca jacket. -- Like that, Mr Bloom said, crossing his forefingers at the top. Let him take that in first. Mr Bloom, glancing sideways up from the cross he had made, saw the foreman's sallow face, think he has a touch of jaundice, and beyond the obedient reels feeding in huge webs of paper. Clank it. Clank it. Miles of it unreeled. What becomes of it after? O, wrap up meat, parcels: various uses, thousand and one things. Slipping his words deftly into the pauses of the clanking he drew swiftly on the scarred woodwork.
HOUSE OF KEY(E)S
-- Like that, see. Two crossed keys here. A circle. Then here the name.
Alexander Keyes, tea, wine and spirit merchant. So on.
Better not teach him his own business.
-- You know yourself, councillor, just what he wants. Then round the top in
leaded: the house of keys. You see? Do you think that's a good idea?
The foreman moved his scratching hand to his lower ribs and
scratched there quietly.
-- The idea, Mr Bloom said, is the house of keys. You know, councillor, the
Manx parliament. Innuendo of home rule. Tourists, you know, from the isle
of Man. Catches the eye, you see. Can you do that?
I could ask him perhaps about how to pronounce that voglio. But
then if he didn't know only make it awkward for him. Better not.
-- We can do that, the foreman said. Have you the design?
-- I can get it, Mr Bloom said. It was in a Kilkenny paper. He has a house
there too. I'll just run out and ask him. Well, you can do that and just a little
par calling attention. You know the usual. Highclass licensed premises.
Longfelt want. So on.
The foreman thought for an instant.
-- We can do that, he said. Let him give us a three months' renewal.
A typesetter brought him a limp galleypage. He began to check it
silently. Mr Bloom stood by, hearing the loud throbs of cranks, watching
the silent typesetters at their cases.
ORTHOGRAPHICAL
Want to be sure of his spelling. Proof fever. Martin Cunningham
forgot to give us his spellingbee conundrum this morning. It is amusing to
view the unpar one ar alleled embarra two ars is it? double ess ment of a
harassed pedlar while gauging au the symmetry with a y of a peeled pear
under a cemetery wall. Silly, isn't it? Cemetery put in of course on account
of the symmetry.
I should have said when he clapped on his topper. Thank you. I ought
to have said something about an old hat or something. No. I could have
said. Looks as good as new now. See his phiz then.
Sllt. The nethermost deck of the first machine jogged forward its
flyboard with sllt the first batch of quirefolded papers. Sllt. Almost human
the way it sllt to call attention. Doing its level best to speak. That door too
sllt creaking, asking to be shut. Everything speaks in its own way. Sllt.
NOTED CHURCHMAN AN OCCASIONAL
CONTRIBUTOR
The foreman handed back the galleypage suddenly, saying:
-- Wait. Where's the archbishop's letter? It's to be repeated in the Telegraph.
Where's what's his name?
He looked about him round his loud unanswering machines.
-- Monks, sir? a voice asked from the castingbox.
-- Ay. Where's Monks?
-- Monks!
Mr Bloom took up his cutting. Time to get out.
-- Then I'll get the design, Mr Nannetti, he said, and you'll give it a good
place I know.
-- Monks!
-- Yes, sir.
Three months' renewal. Want to get some wind off my chest first. Try
it anyhow. Rub in August: good idea: horseshow month. Ballsbridge.
Tourists over for the show.
A DAYFATHER
He walked on through the caseroom passing an old man, bowed,
spectacled, aproned. Old Monks, the dayfather. Queer lot of stuff he must
have put through his hands in his time: obituary notices, pubs' ads,
speeches, divorce suits, found drowned. Nearing the end of his tether now.
Sober serious man with a bit in the savingsbank I'd say. Wife a good cook
and washer. Daughter working the machine in the parlour. Plain Jane, no
damn nonsense.
AND IT WAS THE FEAST OF THE PASSOVERHe stayed in his walk to watch a typesetter neatly distributing type. Reads it backwards first. Quickly he does it. Must require some practice that. mangiD kcirtaP. Poor papa with his hagadah book, reading backwards with his finger to me. Pessach. Next year in Jerusalem. Dear, O dear! All that long business about that brought us out of the land of Egypt and into the house of bondage alleluia. Shema Israel Adonai Elohenu. No, that's the other. Then the twelve brothers, Jacob's sons. And then the lamb and the cat and the dog and the stick and the water and the butcher. And then the angel of death kills the butcher and he kills the ox and the dog kills the cat. Sounds a bit silly till you come to look into it well. Justice it means but it's everybody eating everyone else. That's what life is after all. How quickly he does that job. Practice makes perfect. Seems to see with his fingers. Mr Bloom passed on out of the clanking noises through the gallery on to the landing. Now am I going to tram it out all the way and then catch him out perhaps. Better phone him up first. Number? Yes. Same as Citron's house. Twentyeight. Twentyeight double four.
ONLY ONCE MORE THAT SOAP
He went down the house staircase. Who the deuce scrawled all over
those walls with matches? Looks as if they did it for a bet. Heavy greasy
smell there always is in those works. Lukewarm glue in Thom's next door
when I was there.
He took out his handkerchief to dab his nose. Citronlemon? Ah, the
soap I put there. Lose it out of that pocket. Putting back his handkerchief
he took out the soap and stowed it away, buttoned, into the hip pocket of
his trousers.
What perfume does your wife use? I could go home still: tram:
something I forgot. Just to see: before: dressing. No. Here. No.
A sudden screech of laughter came from the Evening Telegraph
office. Know who that is. What's up? Pop in a minute to phone. Ned
Lambert it is.
He entered softly.
ERIN, GREEN GEM OF THE SILVER SEA
-- The ghost walks, professor MacHugh murmured softly, biscuitfully to
the dusty windowpane.
Mr Dedalus, staring from the empty fireplace at Ned Lambert's
quizzing face, asked of it sourly:
-- Agonising Christ, wouldn't it give you a heartburn on your arse?
Ned Lambert, seated on the table, read on:
-- Or again, note the meanderings of some purling rill as it babbles on its
way, tho' quarrelling with the stony obstacles, to the tumbling waters of
Neptune's blue domain, 'mid mossy banks, fanned by gentlest zephyrs,
played on by the glorious sunlight or 'neath the shadows cast o'er its pensive
bosom by the overarching leafage of the giants of the forest. What about
that, Simon? he asked over the fringe of his newspaper. How's that for
high?
-- Changing his drink, Mr Dedalus said.
Ned Lambert, laughing, struck the newspaper on his knees,
repeating:
-- The pensive bosom and the overarsing leafage. O boys! O boys!
-- And Xenophon looked upon Marathon, Mr Dedalus said, looking again
on the fireplace and to the window, and Marathon looked on the sea.
-- That will do, professor MacHugh cried from the window. I don't want to
hear any more of the stuff.
He ate off the crescent of water biscuit he had been nibbling and,
hungered, made ready to nibble the biscuit in his other hand.
High falutin stuff. Bladderbags. Ned Lambert is taking a day off I
see. Rather upsets a man's day, a funeral does. He has influence they say.
Old Chatterton, the vicechancellor, is his granduncle or his
greatgranduncle. Close on ninety they say. Subleader for his death written
this long time perhaps. Living to spite them. Might go first himself. Johnny,
make room for your uncle. The right honourable Hedges Eyre Chatterton.
Daresay he writes him an odd shaky cheque or two on gale days. Windfall
when he kicks out. Alleluia.
-- Just another spasm, Ned Lambert said.
-- What is it? Mr Bloom asked.
-- A recently discovered fragment of Cicero, professor MacHugh answered
with pomp of tone. Our lovely land.
SHORT BUT TO THE POINT
-- Whose land? Mr Bloom said simply.
-- Most pertinent question, the professor said between his chews. With an
accent on the whose.
-- Dan Dawson's land Mr Dedalus said.
-- Is it his speech last night? Mr Bloom asked.
Ned Lambert nodded.
-- But listen to this, he said.
The doorknob hit Mr Bloom in the small of the back as the door was
pushed in.
-- Excuse me, J. J. O'Molloy said, entering.
Mr Bloom moved nimbly aside.
-- I beg yours, he said.
-- Good day, Jack.
-- Come in. Come in.
-- Good day.
-- How are you, Dedalus?
-- Well. And yourself?
J. J. O'Molloy shook his head.
SAD
Cleverest fellow at the junior bar he used to be. Decline, poor chap.
That hectic flush spells finis for a man. Touch and go with him. What's in
the wind, I wonder. Money worry.
-- Or again if we but climb the serried mountain peaks.
-- You're looking extra.
-- Is the editor to be seen? J. J. O'Molloy asked, looking towards the inner
door.
-- Very much so, professor MacHugh said. To be seen and heard. He's in
his sanctum with Lenehan.
J. J. o'Molloy strolled to the sloping desk and began to turn back the
pink pages of the file.
Practice dwindling. A mighthavebeen. Losing heart. Gambling. Debts
of honour. Reaping the whirlwind. Used to get good retainers from D. and
T. Fitzgerald. Their wigs to show the grey matter. Brains on their sleeve
like the statue in Glasnevin. Believe he does some literary work for the
Express with Gabriel Conroy. Wellread fellow. Myles Crawford began on
the Independent. Funny the way those newspaper men veer about when
they get wind of a new opening. Weathercocks. Hot and cold in the same
breath. Wouldn't know which to believe. One story good till you hear the
next. Go for one another baldheaded in the papers and then all blows over.
Hail fellow well met the next moment.
-- Ah, listen to this for God' sake, Ned Lambert pleaded. Or again if we but
climb the serried mountain peaks ...
-- Bombast! the professor broke in testily. Enough of the inflated windbag!
-- Peaks, Ned Lambert went on, towering high on high, to bathe our souls,
as it were ...
-- Bathe his lips, Mr Dedalus said. Blessed and eternal God! Yes? Is he
taking anything for it?
-- As 'twere, in the peerless panorama of Ireland's portfolio, unmatched,
despite their wellpraised prototypes in other vaunted prize regions, for very
beauty, of bosky grove and undulating plain and luscious pastureland of
vernal green, steeped in the transcendent translucent glow of our mild
mysterious Irish twilight ...
-- The moon, professor MacHugh said. He forgot Hamlet.
HIS NATIVE DORIC
-- That mantles the vista far and wide and wait till the glowing orb of the
moon shine forth to irradiate her silver effulgence ...
-- O! Mr Dedalus cried, giving vent to a hopeless groan. Shite and onions!
That'll do, Ned. Life is too short.
He took off his silk hat and, blowing out impatiently his bushy
moustache, welshcombed his hair with raking fingers.
Ned Lambert tossed the newspaper aside, chuckling with delight. An
instant after a hoarse bark of laughter burst over professor MacHugh's
unshaven blackspectacled face.
-- Doughy Daw! he cried.
WHAT WETHERUP SAID
All very fine to jeer at it now in cold print but it goes down like hot
cake that stuff. He was in the bakery line too, wasn't he? Why they call him
Doughy Daw. Feathered his nest well anyhow. Daughter engaged to that
chap in the inland revenue office with the motor. Hooked that nicely.
Entertainments. Open house. Big blowout. Wetherup always said that. Get
a grip of them by the stomach.
The inner door was opened violently and a scarlet beaked face,
crested by a comb of feathery hair, thrust itself in. The bold blue eyes stared
about them and the harsh voice asked:
-- What is it?
-- And here comes the sham squire himself! professor MacHugh said
grandly.
-- Getonouthat, you bloody old pedagogue! the editor said in recognition.
-- Come, Ned, Mr Dedalus said, putting on his hat. I must get a drink after
that.
-- Drink! the editor cried. No drinks served before mass.
-- Quite right too, Mr Dedalus said, going out. Come on, Ned.
Ned Lambert sidled down from the table. The editor's blue eyes roved
towards Mr Bloom's face, shadowed by a smile.
-- Will you join us, Myles? Ned Lambert asked.
MEMORABLE BATTLES RECALLED
-- North Cork militia! the editor cried, striding to the mantelpiece. We won
every time! North Cork and Spanish officers!
-- Where was that, Myles? Ned Lambert asked with a reflective glance at his
toecaps.
-- In Ohio! the editor shouted.
-- So it was, begad, Ned Lambert agreed.
Passing out he whispered to J. J. O'Molloy:
-- Incipient jigs. Sad case.
-- Ohio! the editor crowed in high treble from his uplifted scarlet face. My
Ohio!
-- A perfect cretic! the professor said. Long, short and long.
O, HARP EOLIAN!
He took a reel of dental floss from his waistcoat pocket and, breaking
off a piece, twanged it smartly between two and two of his resonant
unwashed teeth.
-- Bingbang, bangbang.
Mr Bloom, seeing the coast clear, made for the inner door.
-- Just a moment, Mr Crawford, he said. I just want to phone about an ad.
He went in.
-- What about that leader this evening? professor MacHugh asked, coming
to the editor and laying a firm hand on his shoulder.
-- That'll be all right, Myles Crawford said more calmly. Never you fret.
Hello, Jack. That's all right.
-- Good day, Myles, J. J. O'Molloy said, letting the pages he held slip limply
back on the file. Is that Canada swindle case on today?
The telephone whirred inside.
-- Twentyeight. No. Twenty. Double four, yes.
SPOT THE WINNER
Lenehan came out of the inner office with Sport's tissues.
-- Who wants a dead cert for the Gold cup? he asked. Sceptre with O.
Madden up.
He tossed the tissues on to the table.
Screams of newsboys barefoot in the hall rushed near and the door
was flung open.
-- Hush, Lenehan said. I hear feetstoops.
Professor MacHugh strode across the room and seized the cringing
urchin by the collar as the others scampered out of the hall and down the
steps. The tissues rustled up in the draught, floated softly in the air blue
scrawls and under the table came to earth.
-- It wasn't me, sir. It was the big fellow shoved me, sir.
-- Throw him out and shut the door, the editor said. There's a hurricane
blowing.
Lenehan began to paw the tissues up from the floor, grunting as he
stooped twice.
-- Waiting for the racing special, sir, the newsboy said. It was Pat Farrell
shoved me, sir.
He pointed to two faces peering in round the doorframe.
-- Him, sir.
-- Out of this with you, professor MacHugh said gruffly.
He hustled the boy out and banged the door to.
J. ]. O'Molloy turned the files crackingly over, murmuring, seeking:
-- Continued on page six, column four.
-- Yes, Evening Telegraph here, Mr Bloom phoned from the inner office. Is
the boss...? Yes, Telegraph .... To where? Aha! Which auction rooms?...
Aha! I see. Right. I'll catch him.
A COLLISION ENSUES
The bell whirred again as he rang off. He came in quickly and
bumped against Lenehan who was struggling up with the second tissue.
-- Pardon, monsieur, Lenehan said, clutching him for an instant and making
a grimace.
-- My fault, Mr Bloom said, suffering his grip. Are you hurt? I'm in a hurry.
-- Knee, Lenehan said.
He made a comic face and whined, rubbing his knee:
-- The accumulation of the anno Domini.
-- Sorry, Mr Bloom said.
He went to the door and, holding it ajar, paused. J. J. O'Molloy
slapped the heavy pages over. The noise of two shrill voices, a mouthorgan,
echoed in the bare hallway from the newsboys squatted on the doorsteps:
-- We are the boys of WexfordWho fought with heart and hand.
EXIT BLOOM
-- I'm just running round to Bachelor's walk, Mr Bloom said, about this ad
of Keyes's. Want to fix it up. They tell me he's round there in Dillon's.
He looked indecisively for a moment at their faces. The editor who,
leaning against the mantelshelf, had propped his head on his hand,
suddenly stretched forth an arm amply.
-- Begone! he said. The world is before you.
-- Back in no time, Mr Bloom said, hurrying out.
J. J. O'Molloy took the tissues from Lenehan's hand and read them,
blowing them apart gently, without comment.
-- He'll get that advertisement, the professor said, staring through his
blackrimmed spectacles over the crossblind. Look at the young scamps after
him.
-- Show. Where? Lenehan cried, running to the window.
A STREET CORTEGE
Both smiled over the crossblind at the file of capering newsboys in Mr
Bloom's wake, the last zigzagging white on the breeze a mocking kite, a tail
of white bowknots.
-- Look at the young guttersnipe behind him hue and cry, Lenehan said, and
you'll kick. O, my rib risible! Taking off his flat spaugs and the walk. Small
nines. Steal upon larks.
He began to mazurka in swift caricature across the floor on sliding
feet past the fireplace to J. J. O'Molloy who placed the tissues in his
receiving hands.
-- What's that? Myles Crawford said with a start. Where are the other two
gone?
-- Who? the professor said, turning. They're gone round to the Oval for a
drink. Paddy Hooper is there with Jack Hall. Came over last night.
-- Come on then, Myles Crawford said. Where's my hat?
He walked jerkily into the office behind, parting the vent of his jacket,
jingling his keys in his back pocket. They jingled then in the air and against
the wood as he locked his desk drawer.
-- He's pretty well on, professor MacHugh said in a low voice.
-- Seems to be, J. J. O'Molloy said, taking out a cigarettecase in murmuring
meditation, but it is not always as it seems. Who has the most matches?
THE CALUMET OF PEACE
He offered a cigarette to the professor and took one himself. Lenehan
promptly struck a match for them and lit their cigarettes in turn. J. J.
O'Molloy opened his case again and offered it.
-- Thanky vous, Lenehan said, helping himself.
The editor came from the inner office, a straw hat awry on his brow.
He declaimed in song, pointing sternly at professor MacHugh:
-- 'Twas rank and fame that tempted thee,'Twas empire charmed thy heart. The professor grinned, locking his long lips. -- Eh? You bloody old Roman empire? Myles Crawford said. He took a cigarette from the open case. Lenehan, lighting it for him with quick grace, said: -- Silence for my brandnew riddle! -- Imperium romanum, J. J. O'Molloy said gently. It sounds nobler than British or Brixton. The word reminds one somehow of fat in the fire. Myles Crawford blew his first puff violently towards the ceiling. -- That's it, he said. We are the fat. You and I are the fat in the fire. We haven't got the chance of a snowball in hell.
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
-- Wait a moment, professor MacHugh said, raising two quiet claws. We
mustn't be led away by words, by sounds of words. We think of Rome,
imperial, imperious, imperative.
He extended elocutionary arms from frayed stained shirtcuffs,
pausing:
-- What was their civilisation? Vast, I allow: but vile. Cloacae: sewers. The
jews in the wilderness and on the mountaintop said: It is meet to be here.
Let us build an altar to Jehovah. The Roman, like the Englishman who
follows in his footsteps, brought to every new shore on which he set his foot
(on our shore he never set it) only his cloacal obsession. He gazed about
him in his toga and he said: It is meet to be here. Let us construct a
watercloset.
-- Which they accordingly did do, Lenehan said. Our old ancient ancestors,
as we read in the first chapter of Guinness's, were partial to the running
stream.
-- They were nature's gentlemen, J. J. O'Molloy murmured. But we have
also Roman law.
-- And Pontius Pilate is its prophet, professor MacHugh responded.
-- Do you know that story about chief baron Palles? J. J. O'Molloy asked.
It was at the royal university dinner. Everything was going swimmingly .....
-- First my riddle, Lenehan said. Are you ready?
Mr O'Madden Burke, tall in copious grey of Donegal tweed, came in
from the hallway. Stephen Dedalus, behind him, uncovered as he entered.
-- Entrez, mes enfants! Lenehan cried.
-- I escort a suppliant, Mr O'Madden Burke said melodiously. Youth led by
Experience visits Notoriety.
-- How do you do? the editor said, holding out a hand. Come in. Your
governor is just gone.
? ? ?
Lenehan said to all:
-- Silence! What opera resembles a railwayline? Reflect, ponder, excogitate,
reply.
Stephen handed over the typed sheets, pointing to the title and
signature.
-- Who? the editor asked.
Bit torn off.
-- Mr Garrett Deasy, Stephen said.
-- That old pelters, the editor said. Who tore it? Was he short taken?
On swift sail flaming
From storm and south
He comes, pale vampire,
Mouth to my mouth.
-- Good day, Stephen, the professor said, coming to peer over their
shoulders. Foot and mouth? Are you turned ...?
Bullockbefriending bard.
SHINDY IN WELLKNOWN RESTAURANT-- Good day, sir, Stephen answered blushing. The letter is not mine. Mr Garrett Deasy asked me to ... -- O, I know him, Myles Crawford said, and I knew his wife too. The bloodiest old tartar God ever made. By Jesus, she had the foot and mouth disease and no mistake! The night she threw the soup in the waiter's face in the Star and Garter. Oho! A woman brought sin into the world. For Helen, the runaway wife of Menelaus, ten years the Greeks. O'Rourke, prince of Breffni. -- Is he a widower? Stephen asked. -- Ay, a grass one, Myles Crawford said, his eye running down the typescript. Emperor's horses. Habsburg. An Irishman saved his life on the ramparts of Vienna. Don't you forget! Maximilian Karl O'Donnell, graf von Tirconnell in Ireland. Sent his heir over to make the king an Austrian fieldmarshal now. Going to be trouble there one day. Wild geese. O yes, every time. Don't you forget that! -- The moot point is did he forget it, J. J. O'Molloy said quietly, turning a horseshoe paperweight. Saving princes is a thankyou job. Professor MacHugh turned on him. -- And if not? he said. -- I'll tell you how it was, Myles Crawford began. A Hungarian it was one day ...
LOST CAUSES
NOBLE MARQUESS MENTIONED
-- We were always loyal to lost causes, the professor said. Success for us is
the death of the intellect and of the imagination. We were never loyal to the
successful. We serve them. I teach the blatant Latin language. I speak the
tongue of a race the acme of whose mentality is the maxim: time is money.
Material domination. Domine! Lord! Where is the spirituality? Lord Jesus?
Lord Salisbury? A sofa in a westend club. But the Greek!
KYRIE ELEISON!
A smile of light brightened his darkrimmed eyes, lengthened his long
lips.
-- The Greek! he said again. Kyrios! Shining word! The vowels the Semite
and the Saxon know not. Kyrie! The radiance of the intellect. I ought to
profess Greek, the language of the mind. Kyrie eleison! The closetmaker
and the cloacamaker will never be lords of our spirit. We are liege subjects
of the catholic chivalry of Europe that foundered at Trafalgar and of the
empire of the spirit, not an imperium, that went under with the Athenian
fleets at Aegospotami. Yes, yes. They went under. Pyrrhus, misled by an
oracle, made a last attempt to retrieve the fortunes of Greece. Loyal to a lost
cause.
He strode away from them towards the window.
-- They went forth to battle, Mr O'Madden Burke said greyly, but they
always fell.
-- Boohoo! Lenehan wept with a little noise. Owing to a brick received in
the latter half of the matin’e. Poor, poor, poor Pyrrhus!
He whispered then near Stephen's ear:
LENEHAN'S LIMERICK
-- There's a ponderous pundit MacHugh
Who wears goggles of ebony hue.
As he mostly sees double
To wear them why trouble?
I can't see the Joe Miller. Can you?
In mourning for Sallust, Mulligan says. Whose mother is beastly
dead.
Myles Crawford crammed the sheets into a sidepocket.
-- That'll be all right, he said. I'll read the rest after. That'll be all right.
Lenehan extended his hands in protest.
-- But my riddle! he said. What opera is like a railwayline?
-- Opera? Mr O'Madden Burke's sphinx face reriddled.
Lenehan announced gladly:
-- The Rose of Castile. See the wheeze? Rows of cast steel. Gee!
He poked Mr O'Madden Burke mildly in the spleen. Mr O'Madden
Burke fell back with grace on his umbrella, feigning a gasp.
-- Help! he sighed. I feel a strong weakness.
Lenehan, rising to tiptoe, fanned his face rapidly with the rustling
tissues.
The professor, returning by way of the files, swept his hand across
Stephen's and Mr O'Madden Burke's loose ties.
-- Paris, past and present, he said. You look like communards.
-- Like fellows who had blown up the Bastile, J. J. O'Molloy said in quiet
mockery. Or was it you shot the lord lieutenant of Finland between you?
You look as though you had done the deed. General Bobrikoff.
-- We were only thinking about it, Stephen said.
OMNIUM GATHERUM
-- All the talents, Myles Crawford said. Law, the classics
-- The turf, Lenehan put in.
-- Literature, the press.
-- If Bloom were here, the professor said. The gentle art of advertisement.
-- And Madam Bloom, Mr O'Madden Burke added. The vocal muse.
Dublin's prime favourite.
Lenehan gave a loud cough.
-- Ahem! he said very softly. O, for a fresh of breath air! I caught a cold in
the park. The gate was open.
"YOU CAN DO IT!"
The editor laid a nervous hand on Stephen's shoulder.
-- I want you to write something for me, he said. Something with a bite in it.
You can do it. I see it in your face. In the lexicon of youth .....
See it in your face. See it in your eye. Lazy idle little schemer.
-- Foot and mouth disease! the editor cried in scornful invective. Great
nationalist meeting in Borris-in-Ossory. All balls! Bulldosing the public!
Give them something with a bite in it. Put us all into it, damn its soul.
Father, Son and Holy Ghost and Jakes M'Carthy.
-- We can all supply mental pabulum, Mr O'Madden Burke said.
Stephen raised his eyes to the bold unheeding stare.
-- He wants you for the pressgang, J. J. O'Molloy said.
THE GREAT GALLAHER
-- You can do it, Myles Crawford repeated, clenching his hand in emphasis.
Wait a minute. We'll paralyse Europe as Ignatius Gallaher used to say whenhe was on the shaughraun, doing billiardmarking in the Clarence. Gallaher,
that was a pressman for you. That was a pen. You know how he made his
mark? I'll tell you. That was the smartest piece of journalism ever known.
That was in eightyone, sixth of May, time of the invincibles, murder in the
Phoenix park, before you were born, I suppose. I'll show you.
He pushed past them to the files.
-- Look at here, he said turning. The New York World cabled for a special.
Remember that time?
Professor MacHugh nodded.
-- New York World, the editor said, excitedly pushing back his straw hat.
Where it took place. Tim Kelly, or Kavanagh I mean. Joe Brady and the
rest of them. Where Skin-the-Goat drove the car. Whole route, see?
-- Skin-the-Goat, Mr O'Madden Burke said. Fitzharris. He has that
cabman's shelter, they say, down there at Butt bridge. Holohan told me.
You know Holohan?
-- Hop and carry one, is it? Myles Crawford said.
-- And poor Gumley is down there too, so he told me, minding stones for
the corporation. A night watchman.
Stephen turned in surprise.
-- Gumley? he said. You don't say so? A friend of my father's, is it?
-- Never mind Gumley, Myles Crawford cried angrily. Let Gumley mind
the stones, see they don't run away. Look at here. What did Ignatius
Gallaher do? I'll tell you. Inspiration of genius. Cabled right away. Have
you Weekly Freeman of 17 March? Right. Have you got that?
He flung back pages of the files and stuck his finger on a point.
-- Take page four, advertisement for Bransome's coffee, let us say. Have
you got that? Right.
The telephone whirred.
A DISTANT VOICE
-- I'll answer it, the professor said, going.
-- B is parkgate. Good.
His finger leaped and struck point after point, vibrating.
-- T is viceregal lodge. C is where murder took place. K is Knockmaroon
gate.
The loose flesh of his neck shook like a cock's wattles. An illstarched
dicky jutted up and with a rude gesture he thrust it back into his waistcoat.
-- Hello? Evening Telegraph here. Hello?... Who's there?... Yes... Yes....
Yes.
-- F to P is the route Skin-the-Goat drove the car for an alibi, Inchicore,
Roundtown, Windy Arbour, Palmerston Park, Ranelagh. F. A. B. P. Got
that? X is Davy's publichouse in upper Leeson street.
The professor came to the inner door.
-- Bloom is at the telephone, he said.
-- Tell him go to hell, the editor said promptly. X is Davy's publichouse,
see?
CLEVER, VERY
-- Clever, Lenehan said. Very.
-- Gave it to them on a hot plate, Myles Crawford said, the whole bloody
history.
Nightmare from which you will never awake.
-- I saw it, the editor said proudly. I was present. Dick Adams, the
besthearted bloody Corkman the Lord ever put the breath of life in, and
myself.
Lenehan bowed to a shape of air, announcing:
-- Madam, I'm Adam. And Able was I ere I saw Elba.
-- History! Myles Crawford cried. The Old Woman of Prince's street was
there first. There was weeping and gnashing of teeth over that. Out of an
advertisement. Gregor Grey made the design for it. That gave him the leg
up. Then Paddy Hooper worked Tay Pay who took him on to the Star.
Now he's got in with Blumenfeld. That's press. That's talent. Pyatt! He
was all their daddies!
-- The father of scare journalism, Lenehan confirmed, and the
brother-in-law of Chris Callinan.
-- Hello? Are you there? Yes, he's here still. Come across yourself.
-- Where do you find a pressman like that now, eh? the editor cried.
He flung the pages down.
-- Clamn dever, Lenehan said to Mr O'Madden Burke.
-- Very smart, Mr O'Madden Burke said.
Professor MacHugh came from the inner office.
-- Talking about the invincibles, he said, did you see that some hawkers
were up before the recorder
-- O yes, J. J. O'Molloy said eagerly. Lady Dudley was walking home
through the park to see all the trees that were blown down by that cyclone
last year and thought she'd buy a view of Dublin. And it turned out to be a
commemoration postcard of Joe Brady or Number One or Skin-the-Goat.
Right outside the viceregal lodge, imagine!
-- They're only in the hook and eye department, Myles Crawford said.
Psha! Press and the bar! Where have you a man now at the bar like those
fellows, like Whiteside, like Isaac Butt, like silvertongued O'Hagan. Eh?
Ah, bloody nonsense. Psha! Only in the halfpenny place.
His mouth continued to twitch unspeaking in nervous curls of
disdain.
Would anyone wish that mouth for her kiss? How do you know?
Why did you write it then?
RHYMES AND REASONS
Mouth, south. Is the mouth south someway? Or the south a mouth?
Must be some. South, pout, out, shout, drouth. Rhymes: two men dressed
the same, looking the same, two by two.
. . . . . . . . la tua pace
. . . . . che parlar ti piace
Mentre che il vento, come fa, si tace.
He saw them three by three, approaching girls, in green, in rose, in
russet, entwining, per l'aer perso, in mauve, in purple, quella pacifica
oriafiamma, gold of oriflamme, di rimirar fS pi‹ ardenti. But I old men,
penitent, leadenfooted, underdarkneath the night: mouth south: tomb
womb.
-- Speak up for yourself, Mr O'Madden Burke said.
SUFFICIENT FOR THE DAY...
J. J. O'Molloy, smiling palely, took up the gage.
-- My dear Myles, he said, flinging his cigarette aside, you put a false
construction on my words. I hold no brief, as at present advised, for the
third profession qua profession but your Cork legs are running away with
you. Why not bring in Henry Grattan and Flood and Demosthenes and
Edmund Burke? Ignatius Gallaher we all know and his Chapelizod boss,
Harmsworth of the farthing press, and his American cousin of the Bowery
guttersheet not to mention Paddy Kelly's Budget, Pue's Occurrences and our
watchful friend The Skibbereen Eagle. Why bring in a master of forensic
eloquence like Whiteside? Sufficient for the day is the newspaper thereof.
LINKS WITH BYGONE DAYS OF YORE
-- Grattan and Flood wrote for this very paper, the editor cried in his face.
Irish volunteers. Where are you now? Established 1763. Dr Lucas. Who
have you now like John Philpot Curran? Psha!
-- Well, J. J. O'Molloy said, Bushe K. C., for example.
-- Bushe? the editor said. Well, yes: Bushe, yes. He has a strain of it in his
blood. Kendal Bushe or I mean Seymour Bushe.
-- He would have been on the bench long ago, the professor said, only
for .... But no matter.
J. J. O'Molloy turned to Stephen and said quietly and slowly:
-- One of the most polished periods I think I ever listened to in my life fell
from the lips of Seymour Bushe. It was in that case of fratricide, the Childs
murder case. Bushe defended him.
And in the porches of mine ear did pour.
By the way how did he find that out? He died in his sleep. Or the
other story, beast with two backs?
-- What was that? the professor asked.
ITALIA, MAGISTRA ARTIUM
-- He spoke on the law of evidence, J. J. O'Molloy said, of Roman justice as
contrasted with the earlier Mosaic code, the lex talionis. And he cited the
Moses of Michelangelo in the vatican.
-- Ha.
-- A few wellchosen words, Lenehan prefaced. Silence!
Pause. J. J. O'Molloy took out his cigarettecase.
False lull. Something quite ordinary.
Messenger took out his matchbox thoughtfully and lit his cigar.
I have often thought since on looking back over that strange time that
it was that small act, trivial in itself, that striking of that match, that
determined the whole aftercourse of both our lives.
A POLISHED PERIOD
J. J. O'Molloy resumed, moulding his words:
-- He said of it: that stony effigy in frozen music, horned and terrible, of the
human form divine, that eternal symbol of wisdom and of prophecy which,
if aught that the imagination or the hand of sculptor has wrought in marble
of soultransfigured and of soultransfiguring deserves to live, deserves to live.
His slim hand with a wave graced echo and fall.
-- Fine! Myles Crawford said at once.
-- The divine afflatus, Mr O'Madden Burke said.
-- You like it? J. J. O'Molloy asked Stephen.
Stephen, his blood wooed by grace of language and gesture, blushed.
He took a cigarette from the case. J. J. O'Molloy offered his case to Myles
Crawford. Lenehan lit their cigarettes as before and took his trophy,
saying:
-- Muchibus thankibus.
A MAN OF HIGH MORALE
-- Professor Magennis was speaking to me about you, J. J. O'Molloy said to
Stephen. What do you think really of that hermetic crowd, the opal hush
poets: A. E. the mastermystic? That Blavatsky woman started it. She was a
nice old bag of tricks. A. E. has been telling some yankee interviewer that
you came to him in the small hours of the morning to ask him about planes
of consciousness. Magennis thinks you must have been pulling A. E.'s leg.
He is a man of the very highest morale, Magennis.
Speaking about me. What did he say? What did he say? What did he
say about me? Don't ask.
-- No, thanks, professor MacHugh said, waving the cigarettecase aside.
Wait a moment. Let me say one thing. The finest display of oratory I ever
heard was a speech made by John F Taylor at the college historical society.
Mr Justice Fitzgibbon, the present lord justice of appeal, had spoken and
the paper under debate was an essay (new for those days), advocating the
revival of the Irish tongue.
He turned towards Myles Crawford and said:
-- You know Gerald Fitzgibbon. Then you can imagine the style of his
discourse.
-- He is sitting with Tim Healy, J. J. O'Molloy said, rumour has it, on the
Trinity college estates commission.
-- He is sitting with a sweet thing, Myles Crawford said, in a child's frock.
Go on. Well?
-- It was the speech, mark you, the professor said, of a finished orator, full
of courteous haughtiness and pouring in chastened diction I will not say the
vials of his wrath but pouring the proud man's contumely upon the new
movement. It was then a new movement. We were weak, therefore
worthless.
He closed his long thin lips an instant but, eager to be on, raised an
outspanned hand to his spectacles and, with trembling thumb and
ringfinger touching lightly the black rims, steadied them to a new focus.
IMPROMPTU
In ferial tone he addressed J. J. O'Molloy:
-- Taylor had come there, you must know, from a sickbed. That he had
prepared his speech I do not believe for there was not even one
shorthandwriter in the hall. His dark lean face had a growth of shaggy
beard round it. He wore a loose white silk neckcloth and altogether he
looked (though he was not) a dying man.
His gaze turned at once but slowly from J. J. O'Molloy's towards
Stephen's face and then bent at once to the ground, seeking. His unglazed
linen collar appeared behind his bent head, soiled by his withering hair. Still
seeking, he said:
-- When Fitzgibbon's speech had ended John F Taylor rose to reply. Briefly,
as well as I can bring them to mind, his words were these.
He raised his head firmly. His eyes bethought themselves once more.
Witless shellfish swam in the gross lenses to and fro, seeking outlet.
He began:
-- Mr chairman, ladies and gentlemen: Great was my admiration in listening
to the remarks addressed to the youth of Ireland a moment since by my
learned friend. It seemed to me that I had been transported into a country far
away from this country, into an age remote from this age, that I stood in
ancient Egypt and that I was listening to the speech of some highpriest of that
land addressed to the youthful Moses.
His listeners held their cigarettes poised to hear, their smokes
ascending in frail stalks that flowered with his speech. And let our crooked
smokes. Noble words coming. Look out. Could you try your hand at it
yourself?
-- And it seemed to me that I heard the voice of that Egyptian highpriest
raised in a tone of like haughtiness and like pride. I heard his words and their
meaning was revealed to me.
FROM THE FATHERS
It was revealed to me that those things are good which yet are
corrupted which neither if they were supremely good nor unless they were
good could be corrupted. Ah, curse you! That's saint Augustine.
-- Why will you jews not accept our culture, our religion and our language?
You are a tribe of nomad herdsmen: we are a mighty people. You have no
cities nor no wealth: our cities are hives of humanity and our galleys, trireme
and quadrireme, laden with all manner merchandise furrow the waters of the
known globe. You have but emerged from primitive conditions: we have a
literature, a priesthood, an agelong history and a polity.
Nile.
Child, man, effigy.
By the Nilebank the babemaries kneel, cradle of bulrushes: a man
supple in combat: stonehorned, stonebearded, heart of stone.
-- You pray to a local and obscure idol: our temples, majestic and mysterious,
are the abodes of Isis and Osiris, of Horus and Ammon Ra. Yours serfdom,
awe and humbleness: ours thunder and the seas. Israel is weak and few are
her children: Egypt is an host and terrible are her arms. Vagrants and
daylabourers are you called: the world trembles at our name.
A dumb belch of hunger cleft his speech. He lifted his voice above it
boldly:
-- But, ladies and gentlemen, had the youthful Moses listened to and accepted
that view of life, had he bowed his head and bowed his will and bowed his
spirit before that arrogant admonition he would never have brought the
chosen people out of their house of bondage, nor followed the pillar of the
cloud by day. He would never have spoken with the Eternal amid lightnings
on Sinai's mountaintop nor ever have come down with the light of
inspiration shining in his countenance and bearing in his arms the tables of
the law, graven in the language of the outlaw.
He ceased and looked at them, enjoying a silence.
OMINOUS - FOR HIM!
J. J. O'Molloy said not without regret:
-- And yet he died without having entered the land of promise.
-- A sudden - at - the - moment - though - from - lingering - illness - often -
previously - expectorated - demise, Lenehan added. And with a great future
behind him.
The troop of bare feet was heard rushing along the hallway and
pattering up the staircase.
-- That is oratory, the professor said uncontradicted.
Gone with the wind. Hosts at Mullaghmast and Tara of the kings.
Miles of ears of porches. The tribune's words, howled and scattered to the
four winds. A people sheltered within his voice. Dead noise. Akasic records
of all that ever anywhere wherever was. Love and laud him: me no more.
I have money.
-- Gentlemen, Stephen said. As the next motion on the agenda paper may I
suggest that the house do now adjourn?
-- You take my breath away. It is not perchance a French compliment? Mr
O'Madden Burke asked. 'Tis the hour, methinks, when the winejug,
metaphorically speaking, is most grateful in Ye ancient hostelry.
-- That it be and hereby is resolutely resolved. All that are in favour say ay,
Lenehan announced. The contrary no. I declare it carried. To which
particular boosingshed ...? My casting vote is: Mooney's!
He led the way, admonishing:
-- We will sternly refuse to partake of strong waters, will we not? Yes, we
will not. By no manner of means.
Mr O'Madden Burke, following close, said with an ally's lunge of his
umbrella:
-- Lay on, Macduff!
-- Chip of the old block! the editor cried, clapping Stephen on the shoulder.
Let us go. Where are those blasted keys?
He fumbled in his pocket pulling out the crushed typesheets.
-- Foot and mouth. I know. That'll be all right. That'll go in. Where are
they? That's all right.
He thrust the sheets back and went into the inner office.
LET US HOPE
J. J. O'Molloy, about to follow him in, said quietly to Stephen:
-- I hope you will live to see it published. Myles, one moment.
He went into the inner office, closing the door behind him.
-- Come along, Stephen, the professor said. That is fine, isn't it? It has the
prophetic vision. Fuit Ilium! The sack of windy Troy. Kingdoms of this
world. The masters of the Mediterranean are fellaheen today.
The first newsboy came pattering down the stairs at their heels and
rushed out into the street, yelling:
-- Racing special!
Dublin. I have much, much to learn.
They turned to the left along Abbey street.
-- I have a vision too, Stephen said.
-- Yes? the professor said, skipping to get into step. Crawford will follow.
Another newsboy shot past them, yelling as he ran:
-- Racing special!
DEAR DIRTY DUBLIN
Dubliners.
-- Two Dublin vestals, Stephen said, elderly and pious, have lived fifty and
fiftythree years in Fumbally's lane.
-- Where is that? the professor asked.
-- Off Blackpitts, Stephen said.
Damp night reeking of hungry dough. Against the wall. Face
glistering tallow under her fustian shawl. Frantic hearts. Akasic records.
Quicker, darlint!
On now. Dare it. Let there be life.
-- They want to see the views of Dublin from the top of Nelson's pillar.
They save up three and tenpence in a red tin letterbox moneybox. They
shake out the threepenny bits and sixpences and coax out the pennies with
the blade of a knife. Two and three in silver and one and seven in coppers.
They put on their bonnets and best clothes and take their umbrellas for fear
it may come on to rain.
-- Wise virgins, professor MacHugh said.
LIFE ON THE RAW
-- They buy one and fourpenceworth of brawn and four slices of panloaf at
the north city diningrooms in Marlborough street from Miss Kate Collins,
proprietress. They purchase four and twenty ripe plums from a girl at the
foot of Nelson's pillar to take off the thirst of the brawn. They give two
threepenny bits to the gentleman at the turnstile and begin to waddle slowly
up the winding staircase, grunting, encouraging each other, afraid of the
dark, panting, one asking the other have you the brawn, praising God and
the Blessed Virgin, threatening to come down, peeping at the airslits. Glory
be to God. They had no idea it was that high.
Their names are Anne Kearns and Florence MacCabe. Anne Kearns
has the lumbago for which she rubs on Lourdes water, given her by a lady
who got a bottleful from a passionist father. Florence MacCabe takes a
crubeen and a bottle of double X for supper every Saturday.
-- Antithesis, the professor said nodding twice. Vestal virgins. I can see
them. What's keeping our friend?
He turned.
A bevy of scampering newsboys rushed down the steps, scattering in
all directions, yelling, their white papers fluttering. Hard after them Myles
Crawford appeared on the steps, his hat aureoling his scarlet face, talking
with J. J. O'Molloy.
-- Come along, the professor cried, waving his arm.
He set off again to walk by Stephen's side.
-- Yes, he said. I see them.
RETURN OF BLOOM
Mr Bloom, breathless, caught in a whirl of wild newsboys near the
offices of the Irish Catholic and Dublin Penny Journal, called:
-- Mr Crawford! A moment!
-- Telegraph! Racing special!
-- What is it? Myles Crawford said, falling back a pace.
A newsboy cried in Mr Bloom's face:
-- Terrible tragedy in Rathmines! A child bit by a bellows!
INTERVIEW WITH THE EDITOR
-- Just this ad, Mr Bloom said, pushing through towards the steps, puffing,
and taking the cutting from his pocket. I spoke with Mr Keyes just now.
He'll give a renewal for two months, he says. After he'll see. But he wants a
par to call attention in the Telegraph too, the Saturday pink. And he wants
it copied if it's not too late I told councillor Nannetti from the Kilkenny
People. I can have access to it in the national library. House of keys, don't
you see? His name is Keyes. It's a play on the name. But he practically
promised he'd give the renewal. But he wants just a little puff. What will I
tell him, Mr Crawford?
K.M. A.
-- Will you tell him he can kiss my arse? Myles Crawford said throwing out
his arm for emphasis. Tell him that straight from the stable.
A bit nervy. Look out for squalls. All off for a drink. Arm in arm.
Lenehan's yachting cap on the cadge beyond. Usual blarney. Wonder is
that young Dedalus the moving spirit. Has a good pair of boots on him
today. Last time I saw him he had his heels on view. Been walking in muck
somewhere. Careless chap. What was he doing in Irishtown?
-- Well, Mr Bloom said, his eyes returning, if I can get the design I suppose
it's worth a short par. He'd give the ad, I think. I'll tell him...
K. M. R. I. A.
-- He can kiss my royal Irish arse, Myles Crawford cried loudly over his
shoulder. Any time he likes, tell him.
While Mr Bloom stood weighing the point and about to smile he
strode on jerkily.
RAISING THE WIND
-- Nulla bona, Jack, he said, raising his hand to his chin. I'm up to here.
I've been through the hoop myself. I was looking for a fellow to back a bill
for me no later than last week. Sorry, Jack. You must take the will for the
deed. With a heart and a half if I could raise the wind anyhow.
J. J. O'Molloy pulled a long face and walked on silently. They caught
up on the others and walked abreast.
-- When they have eaten the brawn and the bread and wiped their twenty
fingers in the paper the bread was wrapped in they go nearer to the railings.
-- Something for you, the professor explained to Myles Crawford. Two old
Dublin women on the top of Nelson's pillar.
SOME COLUMN! - THAT'S WHAT WADDLER
ONE SAID
-- That's new, Myles Crawford said. That's copy. Out for the waxies
Dargle. Two old trickies, what?
-- But they are afraid the pillar will fall, Stephen went on. They see the roofs
and argue about where the different churches are: Rathmines' blue dome,
Adam and Eve's, saint Laurence O'Toole's. But it makes them giddy to look
so they pull up their skirts ....
THOSE SLIGHTLY RAMBUNCTIOUS FEMALES
-- Easy all, Myles Crawford said. No poetic licence. We're in the
archdiocese here.
-- And settle down on their striped petticoats, peering up at the statue of the
onehandled adulterer.
-- Onehandled adulterer! the professor cried. I like that. I see the idea. I see
what you mean.
DAMES DONATE DUBLIN'S CITS
SPEEDPILLS VELOCITOUS AEROLITHS, BELIEF
-- It gives them a crick in their necks, Stephen said, and they are too tired to
look up or down or to speak. They put the bag of plums between them and
eat the plums out of it, one after another, wiping off with their
handkerchiefs the plumjuice that dribbles out of their mouths and spitting
the plumstones slowly out between the railings.
He gave a sudden loud young laugh as a close. Lenehan and Mr
O'Madden Burke, hearing, turned, beckoned and led on across towards
Mooney's.
-- Finished? Myles Crawford said. So long as they do no worse.
SOPHIST WALLOPS HAUGHTY HELEN SQUARE
ON PROBOSCIS. SPARTANS GNASH MOLARS.
ITHACANS VOW PEN IS CHAMP.
-- You remind me of Antisthenes, the professor said, a disciple of Gorgias,
the sophist. It is said of him that none could tell if he were bitterer against
others or against himself. He was the son of a noble and a bondwoman.
And he wrote a book in which he took away the palm of beauty from
Argive Helen and handed it to poor Penelope.
Poor Penelope. Penelope Rich.
They made ready to cross O'Connell street.
HELLO THERE, CENTRAL!
At various points along the eight lines tramcars with motionless
trolleys stood in their tracks, bound for or from Rathmines, Rathfarnham,
Blackrock, Kingstown and Dalkey, Sandymount Green, Ringsend and
Sandymount Tower, Donnybrook, Palmerston Park and Upper Rathmines,
all still, becalmed in short circuit. Hackney cars, cabs, delivery waggons,
mailvans, private broughams, aerated mineral water floats with rattling
crates of bottles, rattled, rolled, horsedrawn, rapidly.
WHAT? - AND LIKEWISE - WHERE?
-- But what do you call it? Myles Crawford asked. Where did they get the
plums?
VIRGILIAN, SAYS PEDAGOGUE. SOPHOMORE
PLUMPS FOR OLD MAN MOSES.
-- Call it, wait, the professor said, opening his long lips wide to reflect. Call
it, let me see. Call it: Deus nobis haec otia fecit.
-- No, Stephen said. I call it A Pisgah Sight of Palestine or The Parable of
The Plums.
-- I see, the professor said.
He laughed richly.
-- I see, he said again with new pleasure. Moses and the promised land. We
gave him that idea, he added to J. J. O'Molloy.
HORATIO IS CYNOSURE THIS FAIR JUNE DAYJ. J. O'Molloy sent a weary sidelong glance towards the statue and held his peace. -- I see, the professor said. He halted on sir John Gray's pavement island and peered aloft at Nelson through the meshes of his wry smile. DIMINISHED DIGITS PROVE TOO TITILLATING FOR FRISKY FRUMPS. ANNE WIMBLES, FLO WANGLES - YET CAN YOU BLAME THEM?-- Onehandled adulterer, he said smiling grimly. That tickles me, I must say. -- Tickled the old ones too, Myles Crawford said, if the God Almighty's truth was known.
The hungry famished gull
Flaps o'er the waters dull.
That is how poets write, the similar sounds. But then Shakespeare has
no rhymes: blank verse. The flow of the language it is. The thoughts.
Solemn.
Hamlet, I am thy father's spirit
Doomed for a certain time to walk the earth.
--Two apples a penny! Two for a penny!
His gaze passed over the glazed apples serried on her stand.
Australians they must be this time of year. Shiny peels: polishes them up
with a rag or a handkerchief.
Wait. Those poor birds.
He halted again and bought from the old applewoman two Banbury
cakes for a penny and broke the brittle paste and threw its fragments down
into the Liffey. See that? The gulls swooped silently, two, then all from their
heights, pouncing on prey. Gone. Every morsel. Aware of their greed and
cunning he shook the powdery crumb from his hands. They never expected
that. Manna. Live on fish, fishy flesh they have, all seabirds, gulls, seagoose.
Swans from Anna Liffey swim down here sometimes to preen themselves.
No accounting for tastes. Wonder what kind is swanmeat. Robinson
Crusoe had to live on them.
They wheeled flapping weakly. I'm not going to throw any more.
Penny quite enough. Lot of thanks I get. Not even a caw. They spread foot
and mouth disease too. If you cram a turkey say on chestnutmeal it tastes
like that.Eat pig like pig.But then why is it that saltwater fish are not salty?
How is that?
His eyes sought answer from the river and saw a rowboat rock at
anchor on the treacly swells lazily its plastered board.
Kino's
II/-
Trousers
Good idea that. Wonder if he pays rent to the corporation. How can
you own water really? It's always flowing in a stream, never the same,
which in the stream of life we trace. Because life is a stream. All kinds of
places are good for ads. That quack doctor for the clap used to be stuck up
in all the greenhouses. Never see it now. Strictly confidential. Dr Hy
Franks. Didn't cost him a red like Maginni the dancing master self
advertisement. Got fellows to stick them up or stick them up himself for
that matter on the q. t. running in to loosen a button. Flybynight. Just the
place too. POST NO BILLS. POST IIO PILLS. Some chap with a dose burning him.
If he ..?
O!
Eh?
No ...... No.
No, no. I don't believe it. He wouldn't surely?
No, no.
Mr Bloom moved forward, raising his troubled eyes. Think no more
about that. After one. Timeball on the ballastoffice is down. Dunsink time.
Fascinating little book that is of sir Robert Ball's. Parallax. I never exactly
understood. There's a priest. Could ask him. Par it's Greek: parallel,
parallax. Met him pike hoses she called it till I told her about the
transmigration. O rocks!
Mr Bloom smiled O rocks at two windows of the ballastoffice. She's
right after all. Only big words for ordinary things on account of the sound.
She's not exactly witty. Can be rude too. Blurt out what I was thinking.
Still, I don't know. She used to say Ben Dollard had a base barreltone
voice. He has legs like barrels and you'd think he was singing into a barrel.
Now, isn't that wit. They used to call him big Ben. Not half as witty as
calling him base barreltone. Appetite like an albatross. Get outside of a
baron of beef. Powerful man he was at stowing away number one Bass.
Barrel of Bass. See? It all works out.
A procession of whitesmocked sandwichmen marched slowly towards
him along the gutter, scarlet sashes across their boards. Bargains. Like that
priest they are this morning: we have sinned: we have suffered. He read the
scarlet letters on their five tall white hats: H. E. L. Y. S. Wisdom Hely's. Y
lagging behind drew a chunk of bread from under his foreboard, crammed
it into his mouth and munched as he walked. Our staple food. Three bob a
day, walking along the gutters, street after street. Just keep skin and bone
together, bread and skilly. They are not Boyl: no, M Glade's men. Doesn't
bring in any business either. I suggested to him about a transparent
showcart with two smart girls sitting inside writing letters, copybooks,
envelopes, blottingpaper. I bet that would have caught on. Smart girls
writing something catch the eye at once. Everyone dying to know what
she's writing. Get twenty of them round you if you stare at nothing. Have a
finger in the pie. Women too. Curiosity. Pillar of salt. Wouldn't have it of
course because he didn't think of it himself first. Or the inkbottle I
suggested with a false stain of black celluloid. His ideas for ads like
Plumtree's potted under the obituaries, cold meat department. You can't
lick 'em. What? Our envelopes. Hello, Jones, where are you going? Can't
stop, Robinson, I am hastening to purchase the only reliable inkeraser
Kansell, sold by Hely's Ltd, 85 Dame street. Well out of that ruck I am.
Devil of a job it was collecting accounts of those convents. Tranquilla
convent. That was a nice nun there, really sweet face. Wimple suited her
small head. Sister? Sister? I am sure she was crossed in love by her eyes.
Very hard to bargain with that sort of a woman. I disturbed her at her
devotions that morning. But glad to communicate with the outside world.
Our great day, she said. Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Sweet name
too: caramel. She knew I, I think she knew by the way she. If she had
married she would have changed. I suppose they really were short of
money. Fried everything in the best butter all the same. No lard for them.
My heart's broke eating dripping. They like buttering themselves in and
out. Molly tasting it, her veil up. Sister? Pat Claffey, the pawnbroker's
daughter. It was a nun they say invented barbed wire.
He crossed Westmoreland street when apostrophe S had plodded by.
Rover cycleshop. Those races are on today. How long ago is that? Year
Phil Gilligan died. We were in Lombard street west. Wait: was in Thom's.
Got the job in Wisdom Hely's year we married. Six years. Ten years ago:
ninetyfour he died yes that's right the big fire at Arnott's. Val Dillon was
lord mayor. The Glencree dinner. Alderman Robert O'Reilly emptying the
port into his soup before the flag fell. Bobbob lapping it for the inner
alderman. Couldn't hear what the band played. For what we have already
received may the Lord make us. Milly was a kiddy then. Molly had that
elephantgrey dress with the braided frogs. Mantailored with selfcovered
buttons. She didn't like it because I sprained my ankle first day she wore
choir picnic at the Sugarloaf. As if that. Old Goodwin's tall hat done up
with some sticky stuff. Flies' picnic too. Never put a dress on her back like
it. Fitted her like a glove, shoulders and hips. Just beginning to plump it out
well. Rabbitpie we had that day. People looking after her.
Happy. Happier then. Snug little room that was with the red
wallpaper. Dockrell's, one and ninepence a dozen. Milly's tubbing night.
American soap I bought: elderflower. Cosy smell of her bathwater. Funny
she looked soaped all over. Shapely too. Now photography. Poor papa's
daguerreotype atelier he told me of. Hereditary taste.
He walked along the curbstone.
Stream of life. What was the name of that priestylooking chap was
always squinting in when he passed? Weak eyes, woman. Stopped in
Citron's saint Kevin's parade. Pen something. Pendennis? My memory is
getting. Pen ...? Of course it's years ago. Noise of the trams probably. Well,
if he couldn't remember the dayfather's name that he sees every day.
Bartell d'Arcy was the tenor, just coming out then. Seeing her home
after practice. Conceited fellow with his waxedup moustache. Gave her that
song Winds that blow from the south.
Windy night that was I went to fetch her there was that lodge meeting
on about those lottery tickets after Goodwin's concert in the supperroom or
oakroom of the Mansion house. He and I behind. Sheet of her music blew
out of my hand against the High school railings. Lucky it didn't. Thing like
that spoils the effect of a night for her. Professor Goodwin linking her in
front. Shaky on his pins, poor old sot. His farewell concerts. Positively last
appearance on any stage. May be for months and may be for never.
Remember her laughing at the wind, her blizzard collar up. Corner of
Harcourt road remember that gust. Brrfoo! Blew up all her skirts and her
boa nearly smothered old Goodwin. She did get flushed in the wind.
Remember when we got home raking up the fire and frying up those pieces
of lap of mutton for her supper with the Chutney sauce she liked. And the
mulled rum. Could see her in the bedroom from the hearth unclamping the
busk of her stays: white.
Swish and soft flop her stays made on the bed. Always warm from
her. Always liked to let her self out. Sitting there after till near two taking
out her hairpins. Milly tucked up in beddyhouse. Happy. Happy. That was
the night .....
--O, Mr Bloom, how do you do?
--O, how do you do, Mrs Breen?
--No use complaining. How is Molly those times? Haven't seen her for
ages.
--In the pink, Mr Bloom said gaily. Milly has a position down in Mullingar,
you know.
--Go away! Isn't that grand for her?
--Yes. In a photographer's there. Getting on like a house on fire. How are
all your charges?
--All on the baker's list, Mrs Breen said.
How many has she? No other in sight.
--You're in black, I see. You have no ...?
--No, Mr Bloom said. I have just come from a funeral.
Going to crop up all day, I foresee. Who's dead, when and what did
he die of? Turn up like a bad penny.
--O, dear me, Mrs Breen said. I hope it wasn't any near relation.
May as well get her sympathy.
--Dignam, Mr Bloom said. An old friend of mine. He died quite suddenly,
poor fellow. Heart trouble, I believe. Funeral was this morning.
Your funeral's tomorrow
While you're coming through the rye.
Diddlediddle dumdum
Diddlediddle ...
--Sad to lose the old friends, Mrs Breen's womaneyes said melancholily.
Now that's quite enough about that. Just: quietly: husband.
--And your lord and master?
Mrs Breen turned up her two large eyes. Hasn't lost them anyhow.
--O, don't be talking! she said. He's a caution to rattlesnakes. He's in there
now with his lawbooks finding out the law of libel. He has me heartscalded.
Wait till I show you.
Hot mockturtle vapour and steam of newbaked jampuffs rolypoly
poured out from Harrison's. The heavy noonreek tickled the top of Mr
Bloom's gullet. Want to make good pastry, butter, best flour, Demerara
sugar, or they'd taste it with the hot tea. Or is it from her? A barefoot arab
stood over the grating, breathing in the fumes. Deaden the gnaw of hunger
that way. Pleasure or pain is it? Penny dinner. Knife and fork chained to
the table.
Opening her handbag, chipped leather. Hatpin: ought to have a
guard on those things. Stick it in a chap's eye in the tram. Rummaging.
Open. Money. Please take one. Devils if they lose sixpence. Raise Cain.
Husband barging. Where's the ten shillings I gave you on Monday? Are
you feeding your little brother's family? Soiled handkerchief:
medicinebottle. Pastille that was fell. What is she ...?
--There must be a new moon out, she said. He's always bad then. Do you
know what he did last night?
Her hand ceased to rummage. Her eyes fixed themselves on him, wide
in alarm, yet smiling.
--What? Mr Bloom asked.
Let her speak. Look straight in her eyes. I believe you. Trust me.
--Woke me up in the night, she said. Dream he had, a nightmare.
Indiges.
--Said the ace of spades was walking up the stairs.
--The ace of spades! Mr Bloom said.
She took a folded postcard from her handbag.
--Read that, she said. He got it this morning.
--What is it? Mr Bloom asked, taking the card. U. P.?
--U. p: up, she said. Someone taking a rise out of him. It's a great shame
for them whoever he is.
--Indeed it is, Mr Bloom said.
She took back the card, sighing.
--And now he's going round to Mr Menton's office. He's going to take an
action for ten thousand pounds, he says.
She folded the card into her untidy bag and snapped the catch.
Same blue serge dress she had two years ago, the nap bleaching. Seen
its best days. Wispish hair over her ears. And that dowdy toque: three old
grapes to take the harm out of it. Shabby genteel. She used to be a tasty
dresser. Lines round her mouth. Only a year or so older than Molly.
See the eye that woman gave her, passing. Cruel. The unfair sex.
He looked still at her, holding back behind his look his discontent.
Pungent mockturtle oxtail mulligatawny. I'm hungry too. Flakes of pastry
on the gusset of her dress: daub of sugary flour stuck to her cheek.
Rhubarb tart with liberal fillings, rich fruit interior. Josie Powell that was.
In Luke Doyle's long ago. Dolphin's Barn, the charades. U. p: up.
Change the subject.
--Do you ever see anything of Mrs Beaufoy? Mr Bloom asked.
--Mina Purefoy? she said.
Philip Beaufoy I was thinking. Playgoers' Club. Matcham often
thinks of the masterstroke. Did I pull the chain? Yes. The last act.
--Yes.
--I just called to ask on the way in is she over it. She's in the lying-in
hospital in Holles street. Dr Horne got her in. She's three days bad now.
--O, Mr Bloom said. I'm sorry to hear that.
--Yes, Mrs Breen said. And a houseful of kids at home. It's a very stiff birth,
the nurse told me.
---O, Mr Bloom said.
His heavy pitying gaze absorbed her news. His tongue clacked in
compassion. Dth! Dth!
--I'm sorry to hear that, he said. Poor thing! Three days! That's terrible
for her.
Mrs Breen nodded.
--She was taken bad on the Tuesday...
Mr Bloom touched her funnybone gently, warning her:
--Mind! Let this man pass.
A bony form strode along the curbstone from the river staring with a
rapt gaze into the sunlight through a heavystringed glass. Tight as a
skullpiece a tiny hat gripped his head. From his arm a folded dustcoat, a
stick and an umbrella dangled to his stride.
--Watch him, Mr Bloom said. He always walks outside the lampposts.
Watch!
--Who is he if it's a fair question? Mrs Breen asked. Is he dotty?
--His name is Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell, Mr
Bloom said smiling. Watch!
--He has enough of them, she said. Denis will be like that one of these days.
She broke off suddenly.
--There he is, she said. I must go after him. Goodbye. Remember me to
Molly, won't you?
--I will, Mr Bloom said.
He watched her dodge through passers towards the shopfronts. Denis
Breen in skimpy frockcoat and blue canvas shoes shuffled out of Harrison's
hugging two heavy tomes to his ribs. Blown in from the bay. Like old times.
He suffered her to overtake him without surprise and thrust his dull grey
beard towards her, his loose jaw wagging as he spoke earnestly.
Meshuggah. Off his chump.
Mr Bloom walked on again easily, seeing ahead of him in sunlight the
tight skullpiece, the dangling stickumbrelladustcoat. Going the two days.
Watch him! Out he goes again. One way of getting on in the world. And
that other old mosey lunatic in those duds. Hard time she must have with
him.
U. p: up. I'll take my oath that's Alf Bergan or Richie Goulding.
Wrote it for a lark in the Scotch house I bet anything. Round to Menton's
office. His oyster eyes staring at the postcard. Be a feast for the gods.
He passed the Irish Times. There might be other answers Iying there.
Like to answer them all. Good system for criminals. Code. At their lunch
now. Clerk with the glasses there doesn't know me. O, leave them there to
simmer. Enough bother wading through fortyfour of them. Wanted, smart
lady typist to aid gentleman in literary work. I called you naughty darling
because I do not like that other world. Please tell me what is the meaning.
Please tell me what perfume does your wife. Tell me who made the world.
The way they spring those questions on you. And the other one Lizzie
Twigg. My literary efforts have had the good fortune to meet with the
approval of the eminent poet A. E. (Mr Geo. Russell). No time to do her
hair drinking sloppy tea with a book of poetry.
Best paper by long chalks for a small ad. Got the provinces now.
Cook and general, exc. cuisine, housemaid kept. Wanted live man for spirit
counter. Resp. girl (R. C.) wishes to hear of post in fruit or pork shop.
James Carlisle made that. Six and a half per cent dividend. Made a big deal
on Coates's shares. Ca' canny. Cunning old Scotch hunks. All the toady
news. Our gracious and popular vicereine. Bought the Irish Field now.
Lady Mountcashel has quite recovered after her confinement and rode out
with the Ward Union staghounds at the enlargement yesterday at Rathoath.
Uneatable fox. Pothunters too. Fear injects juices make it tender enough for
them. Riding astride. Sit her horse like a man. Weightcarrying huntress. No
sidesaddle or pillion for her, not for Joe. First to the meet and in at the
death. Strong as a brood mare some of those horsey women. Swagger
around livery stables. Toss off a glass of brandy neat while you'd say knife.
That one at the Grosvenor this morning. Up with her on the car:
wishswish. Stonewall or fivebarred gate put her mount to it. Think that
pugnosed driver did it out of spite. Who is this she was like? O yes! Mrs
Miriam Dandrade that sold me her old wraps and black underclothes in the
Shelbourne hotel. Divorced Spanish American. Didn't take a feather out of
her my handling them. As if I was her clotheshorse. Saw her in the viceregal
party when Stubbs the park ranger got me in with Whelan of the Express.
Scavenging what the quality left. High tea. Mayonnaise I poured on the
plums thinking it was custard. Her ears ought to have tingled for a few
weeks after. Want to be a bull for her. Born courtesan. No nursery work
for her, thanks.
Poor Mrs Purefoy! Methodist husband. Method in his madness.
Saffron bun and milk and soda lunch in the educational dairy. Y. M. C. A.
Eating with a stopwatch, thirtytwo chews to the minute. And still his
muttonchop whiskers grew. Supposed to be well connected. Theodore's
cousin in Dublin Castle. One tony relative in every family. Hardy annuals
he presents her with. Saw him out at the Three Jolly Topers marching along
bareheaded and his eldest boy carrying one in a marketnet. The squallers.
Poor thing! Then having to give the breast year after year all hours of the
night. Selfish those t.t's are. Dog in the manger. Only one lump of sugar in
my tea, if you please.
He stood at Fleet street crossing. Luncheon interval. A sixpenny at
Rowe's? Must look up that ad in the national library. An eightpenny in the
Burton. Better. On my way.
He walked on past Bolton's Westmoreland house. Tea. Tea. Tea. I
forgot to tap Tom Kernan.
Sss. Dth, dth, dth! Three days imagine groaning on a bed with a
vinegared handkerchief round her forehead, her belly swollen out. Phew!
Dreadful simply! Child's head too big: forceps. Doubled up inside her
trying to butt its way out blindly, groping for the way out. Kill me that
would. Lucky Molly got over hers lightly. They ought to invent something
to stop that. Life with hard labour. Twilight sleep idea: queen Victoria was
given that. Nine she had. A good layer. Old woman that lived in a shoe she
had so many children. Suppose he was consumptive. Time someone thought
about it instead of gassing about the what was it the pensive bosom of the
silver effulgence. Flapdoodle to feed fools on. They could easily have big
establishments whole thing quite painless out of all the taxes give every child
born five quid at compound interest up to twentyone five per cent is a
hundred shillings and five tiresome pounds multiply by twenty decimal
system encourage people to put by money save hundred and ten and a bit
twentyone years want to work it out on paper come to a tidy sum more than
you think.
Not stillborn of course. They are not even registered. Trouble for
nothing.
Funny sight two of them together, their bellies out. Molly and Mrs
Moisel. Mothers' meeting. Phthisis retires for the time being, then returns.
How flat they look all of a sudden after. Peaceful eyes. Weight off their
mind. Old Mrs Thornton was a jolly old soul. All my babies, she said. The
spoon of pap in her mouth before she fed them. O, that's nyumnyum. Got
her hand crushed by old Tom Wall's son. His first bow to the public. Head
like a prize pumpkin. Snuffy Dr Murren. People knocking them up at all
hours. For God' sake, doctor. Wife in her throes. Then keep them waiting
months for their fee. To attendance on your wife. No gratitude in people.
Humane doctors, most of them.
Before the huge high door of the Irish house of parliament a flock of
pigeons flew. Their little frolic after meals. Who will we do it on? I pick the
fellow in black. Here goes. Here's good luck. Must be thrilling from the air.
Apjohn, myself and Owen Goldberg up in the trees near Goose green
playing the monkeys. Mackerel they called me.
A squad of constables debouched from College street, marching in
Indian file. Goosestep. Foodheated faces, sweating helmets, patting their
truncheons. After their feed with a good load of fat soup under their belts.
Policeman's lot is oft a happy one. They split up in groups and scattered,
saluting, towards their beats. Let out to graze. Best moment to attack one in
pudding time. A punch in his dinner. A squad of others, marching
irregularly, rounded Trinity railings making for the station. Bound for their
troughs. Prepare to receive cavalry. Prepare to receive soup.
He crossed under Tommy Moore's roguish finger. They did right to
put him up over a urinal: meeting of the waters. Ought to be places for
women. Running into cakeshops. Settle my hat straight. There is not in this
wide world a vallee. Great song of Julia Morkan's. Kept her voice up to the
very last. Pupil of Michael Balfe's, wasn't she?
He gazed after the last broad tunic. Nasty customers to tackle. Jack
Power could a tale unfold: father a G man. If a fellow gave them trouble
being lagged they let him have it hot and heavy in the bridewell. Can't
blame them after all with the job they have especially the young hornies.
That horsepoliceman the day Joe Chamberlain was given his degree in
Trinity he got a run for his money. My word he did! His horse's hoofs
clattering after us down Abbey street. Lucky I had the presence of mind to
dive into Manning's or I was souped. He did come a wallop, by George.
Must have cracked his skull on the cobblestones. I oughtn't to have got
myself swept along with those medicals. And the Trinity jibs in their
mortarboards. Looking for trouble. Still I got to know that young Dixon
who dressed that sting for me in the Mater and now he's in Holles street
where Mrs Purefoy. Wheels within wheels. Police whistle in my ears still.
All skedaddled. Why he fixed on me. Give me in charge. Right here it
began.
--Up the Boers!
--Three cheers for De Wet!
--We'll hang Joe Chamberlain on a sourapple tree.
Silly billies: mob of young cubs yelling their guts out. Vinegar hill.
The Butter exchange band. Few years' time half of them magistrates and
civil servants. War comes on: into the army helterskelter: same fellows used
to. Whether on the scaffold high.
Never know who you're talking to. Corny Kelleher he has Harvey
Duff in his eye. Like that Peter or Denis or James Carey that blew the gaff
on the invincibles. Member of the corporation too. Egging raw youths on to
get in the know all the time drawing secret service pay from the castle. Drop
him like a hot potato. Why those plainclothes men are always courting
slaveys. Easily twig a man used to uniform. Squarepushing up against a
backdoor. Maul her a bit. Then the next thing on the menu. And who is the
gentleman does be visiting there? Was the young master saying anything?
Peeping Tom through the keyhole. Decoy duck. Hotblooded young student
fooling round her fat arms ironing.
--Are those yours, Mary?
--I don't wear such things ..Stop or I'll tell the missus on you. Out half
the night.
--There are great times coming, Mary. Wait till you see.
--Ah, gelong with your great times coming.
Barmaids too. Tobaccoshopgirls.
James Stephens' idea was the best. He knew them. Circles of ten so
that a fellow couldn't round on more than his own ring. Sinn Fein. Back
out you get the knife. Hidden hand. Stay in. The firing squad. Turnkey's
daughter got him out of Richmond, off from Lusk. Putting up in the
Buckingham Palace hotel under their very noses. Garibaldi.
You must have a certain fascination: Parnell. Arthur Griffith is a
squareheaded fellow but he has no go in him for the mob. Or gas about our
lovely land. Gammon and spinach. Dublin Bakery Company's tearoom.
Debating societies. That republicanism is the best form of government.
That the language question should take precedence of the economic
question. Have your daughters inveigling them to your house. Stuff them
up with meat and drink. Michaelmas goose. Here's a good lump of thyme
seasoning under the apron for you. Have another quart of goosegrease
before it gets too cold. Halffed enthusiasts. Penny roll and a walk with the
band. No grace for the carver. The thought that the other chap pays best
sauce in the world. Make themselves thoroughly at home. Show us over
those apricots, meaning peaches. The not far distant day. Homerule sun
rising up in the northwest.
His smile faded as he walked, a heavy cloud hiding the sun slowly,
shadowing Trinity's surly front. Trams passed one another, ingoing,
outgoing, clanging. Useless words. Things go on same, day after day:
squads of police marching out, back: trams in, out. Those two loonies
mooching about. Dignam carted off. Mina Purefoy swollen belly on a bed
groaning to have a child tugged out of her. One born every second
somewhere. Other dying every second. Since I fed the birds five minutes.
Three hundred kicked the bucket. Other three hundred born, washing the
blood off, all are washed in the blood of the lamb, bawling maaaaaa.
Cityful passing away, other cityful coming, passing away too: other
coming on, passing on. Houses, lines of houses, streets, miles of pavements,
piledup bricks, stones. Changing hands. This owner, that. Landlord never
dies they say. Other steps into his shoes when he gets his notice to quit.
They buy the place up with gold and still they have all the gold. Swindle in
it somewhere. Piled up in cities, worn away age after age. Pyramids in sand.
Built on bread and onions. Slaves Chinese wall. Babylon. Big stones left.
Round towers. Rest rubble, sprawling suburbs, jerrybuilt. Kerwan's
mushroom houses built of breeze. Shelter, for the night.
No-one is anything.
This is the very worst hour of the day. Vitality. Dull, gloomy: hate
this hour. Feel as if I had been eaten and spewed.
Provost's house. The reverend Dr Salmon: tinned salmon. Well
tinned in there. Like a mortuary chapel. Wouldn't live in it if they paid me.
Hope they have liver and bacon today. Nature abhors a vacuum.
The sun freed itself slowly and lit glints of light among the silverware
opposite in Walter Sexton's window by which John Howard Parnell passed,
unseeing.
There he is: the brother. Image of him. Haunting face. Now that's a
coincidence. Course hundreds of times you think of a person and don't
meet him. Like a man walking in his sleep. No-one knows him. Must be a
corporation meeting today. They say he never put on the city marshal's
uniform since he got the job. Charley Kavanagh used to come out on his
high horse, cocked hat, puffed, powdered and shaved. Look at the
woebegone walk of him. Eaten a bad egg. Poached eyes on ghost. I have a
pain. Great man's brother: his brother's brother. He'd look nice on the city
charger. Drop into the D. B. C. probably for his coffee, play chess there.
His brother used men as pawns. Let them all go to pot. Afraid to pass a
remark on him. Freeze them up with that eye of his. That's the fascination:
the name. All a bit touched. Mad Fanny and his other sister Mrs Dickinson
driving about with scarlet harness. Bolt upright like surgeon M'Ardle. Still
David Sheehy beat him for south Meath. Apply for the Chiltern Hundreds
and retire into public life. The patriot's banquet. Eating orangepeels in the
park. Simon Dedalus said when they put him in parliament that Parnell
would come back from the grave and lead him out of the house of commons
by the arm.
--Of the twoheaded octopus, one of whose heads is the head upon which
the ends of the world have forgotten to come while the other speaks with a
Scotch accent. The tentacles ....
They passed from behind Mr Bloom along the curbstone. Beard and
bicycle. Young woman.
And there he is too. Now that's really a coincidence: second time.
Coming events cast their shadows before. With the approval of the eminent
poet, Mr Geo. Russell. That might be Lizzie Twigg with him. A. E.: what
does that mean? Initials perhaps. Albert Edward, Arthur Edmund,
Alphonsus Eb Ed El Esquire. What was he saying? The ends of the world
with a Scotch accent. Tentacles: octopus. Something occult: symbolism.
Holding forth. She's taking it all in. Not saying a word. To aid gentleman
in literary work.
His eyes followed the high figure in homespun, beard and bicycle, a
listening woman at his side. Coming from the vegetarian. Only
weggebobbles and fruit. Don't eat a beefsteak. If you do the eyes of that
cow will pursue you through all eternity. They say it's healthier.
Windandwatery though. Tried it. Keep you on the run all day. Bad as a
bloater. Dreams all night. Why do they call that thing they gave me
nutsteak? Nutarians. Fruitarians. To give you the idea you are eating
rumpsteak. Absurd. Salty too. They cook in soda. Keep you sitting by the
tap all night.
Her stockings are loose over her ankles. I detest that: so tasteless.
Those literary etherial people they are all. Dreamy, cloudy, symbolistic.
Esthetes they are. I wouldn't be surprised if it was that kind of food you see
produces the like waves of the brain the poetical. For example one of those
policemen sweating Irish stew into their shirts you couldn't squeeze a line
of poetry out of him. Don't know what poetry is even. Must be in a certain
mood.
The dreamy cloudy gull
Waves o'er the waters dull.
He crossed at Nassau street corner and stood before the window of
Yeates and Son, pricing the fieldglasses. Or will I drop into old Harris's and
have a chat with young Sinclair? Wellmannered fellow. Probably at his
lunch. Must get those old glasses of mine set right. Goerz lenses six guineas.
Germans making their way everywhere. Sell on easy terms to capture trade.
Undercutting. Might chance on a pair in the railway lost property office.
Astonishing the things people leave behind them in trains and cloakrooms.
What do they be thinking about? Women too. Incredible. Last year
travelling to Ennis had to pick up that farmer's daughter's bag and hand it
to her at Limerick junction. Unclaimed money too. There's a little watch up
there on the roof of the bank to test those glasses by.
His lids came down on the lower rims of his irides. Can't see it. If you
imagine it's there you can almost see it. Can't see it.
He faced about and, standing between the awnings, held out his right
hand at arm's length towards the sun. Wanted to try that often. Yes:
completely. The tip of his little finger blotted out the sun's disk. Must be the
focus where the rays cross. If I had black glasses. Interesting. There was a
lot of talk about those sunspots when we were in Lombard street west.
Looking up from the back garden. Terrific explosions they are. There will
be a total eclipse this year: autumn some time.
Now that I come to think of it that ball falls at Greenwich time. It's
the clock is worked by an electric wire from Dunsink. Must go out there
some first Saturday of the month. If I could get an introduction to professor
Joly or learn up something about his family. That would do to: man always
feels complimented. Flattery where least expected. Nobleman proud to be
descended from some king's mistress. His foremother. Lay it on with a
trowel. Cap in hand goes through the land. Not go in and blurt out what
you know you're not to: what's parallax? Show this gentleman the door.
Ah.
His hand fell to his side again.
Never know anything about it. Waste of time. Gasballs spinning
about, crossing each other, passing. Same old dingdong always. Gas: then
solid: then world: then cold: then dead shell drifting around, frozen rock,
like that pineapple rock. The moon. Must be a new moon out, she said. I
believe there is.
He went on by la maison Claire.
Wait. The full moon was the night we were Sunday fortnight exactly
there is a new moon. Walking down by the Tolka. Not bad for a Fairview
moon. She was humming. The young May moon she's beaming, love. He
other side of her. Elbow, arm. He. Glowworm's la-amp is gleaming, love.
Touch. Fingers. Asking. Answer. Yes.
Stop. Stop. If it was it was. Must.
Mr Bloom, quickbreathing, slowlier walking passed Adam court.
With ha quiet keep quiet relief his eyes took note this is the street here
middle of the day of Bob Doran's bottle shoulders. On his annual bend,
M Coy said. They drink in order to say or do something or cherchez la
femme. Up in the Coombe with chummies and streetwalkers and then the
rest of the year sober as a judge.
Yes. Thought so. Sloping into the Empire. Gone. Plain soda would do
him good. Where Pat Kinsella had his Harp theatre before Whitbred ran
the Queen's. Broth of a boy. Dion Boucicault business with his
harvestmoon face in a poky bonnet. Three Purty Maids from School. How
time flies, eh? Showing long red pantaloons under his skirts. Drinkers,
drinking, laughed spluttering, their drink against their breath. More power,
Pat. Coarse red: fun for drunkards: guffaw and smoke. Take off that white
hat. His parboiled eyes. Where is he now? Beggar somewhere. The harp
that once did starve us all.
I was happier then. Or was that I? Or am I now I? Twentyeight I was.
She twentythree. When we left Lombard street west something changed.
Could never like it again after Rudy. Can't bring back time. Like holding
water in your hand. Would you go back to then? Just beginning then.
Would you? Are you not happy in your home you poor little naughty boy?
Wants to sew on buttons for me. I must answer. Write it in the library.
Grafton street gay with housed awnings lured his senses. Muslin
prints, silkdames and dowagers, jingle of harnesses, hoofthuds lowringing
in the baking causeway. Thick feet that woman has in the white stockings.
Hope the rain mucks them up on her. Countrybred chawbacon. All the beef
to the heels were in. Always gives a woman clumsy feet. Molly looks out of
plumb.
He passed, dallying, the windows of Brown Thomas, silk mercers.
Cascades of ribbons. Flimsy China silks. A tilted urn poured from its mouth
a flood of bloodhued poplin: lustrous blood. The huguenots brought that
here. Lacaus esant tara tara. Great chorus that. Taree tara. Must be washed
in rainwater. Meyerbeer. Tara: bom bom bom.
Pincushions. I'm a long time threatening to buy one. Sticking them all
over the place. Needles in window curtains.
He bared slightly his left forearm. Scrape: nearly gone. Not today
anyhow. Must go back for that lotion. For her birthday perhaps.
Junejulyaugseptember eighth. Nearly three months off. Then she mightn't
like it. Women won't pick up pins. Say it cuts lo.
Gleaming silks, petticoats on slim brass rails, rays of flat silk
stockings.
Useless to go back. Had to be. Tell me all.
High voices. Sunwarm silk. Jingling harnesses. All for a woman,
home and houses, silkwebs, silver, rich fruits spicy from Jaffa. Agendath
Netaim. Wealth of the world.
A warm human plumpness settled down on his brain. His brain
yielded. Perfume of embraces all him assailed. With hungered flesh
obscurely, he mutely craved to adore.
Duke street. Here we are. Must eat. The Burton. Feel better then.
He turned Combridge's corner, still pursued. Jingling, hoofthuds.
Perfumed bodies, warm, full. All kissed, yielded: in deep summer fields,
tangled pressed grass, in trickling hallways of tenements, along sofas,
creaking beds.
--Jack, love!
--Darling!
--Kiss me, Reggy!
--My boy!
--Love!
His heart astir he pushed in the door of the Burton restaurant. Stink
gripped his trembling breath: pungent meatjuice, slush of greens. See the
animals feed.
Men, men, men.
Perched on high stools by the bar, hats shoved back, at the tables
calling for more bread no charge, swilling, wolfing gobfuls of sloppy food,
their eyes bulging, wiping wetted moustaches. A pallid suetfaced young man
polished his tumbler knife fork and spoon with his napkin. New set of
microbes. A man with an infant's saucestained napkin tucked round him
shovelled gurgling soup down his gullet. A man spitting back on his plate:
halfmasticated gristle: gums: no teeth to chewchewchew it. Chump chop
from the grill. Bolting to get it over. Sad booser's eyes. Bitten off more than
he can chew. Am I like that? See ourselves as others see us. Hungry man is
an angry man. Working tooth and jaw. Don't! O! A bone! That last pagan
king of Ireland Cormac in the schoolpoem choked himself at Sletty
southward of the Boyne. Wonder what he was eating. Something
galoptious. Saint Patrick converted him to Christianity. Couldn't swallow it
all however.
--Roast beef and cabbage.
--One stew.
Smells of men. Spaton sawdust, sweetish warmish cigarettesmoke,
reek of plug, spilt beer, men's beery piss, the stale of ferment.
His gorge rose.
Couldn't eat a morsel here. Fellow sharpening knife and fork to eat
all before him, old chap picking his tootles. Slight spasm, full, chewing the
cud. Before and after. Grace after meals. Look on this picture then on that.
Scoffing up stewgravy with sopping sippets of bread. Lick it off the plate,
man! Get out of this.
He gazed round the stooled and tabled eaters, tightening the wings of
his nose.
--Two stouts here. --One corned and cabbage.
That fellow ramming a knifeful of cabbage down as if his life
depended on it. Good stroke. Give me the fidgets to look. Safer to eat from
his three hands. Tear it limb from limb. Second nature to him. Born with a
silver knife in his mouth. That's witty, I think. Or no. Silver means born
rich. Born with a knife. But then the allusion is lost.
An illgirt server gathered sticky clattering plates. Rock, the head
bailiff, standing at the bar blew the foamy crown from his tankard. Well up:
it splashed yellow near his boot. A diner, knife and fork upright, elbows on
table, ready for a second helping stared towards the foodlift across his
stained square of newspaper. Other chap telling him something with his
mouth full. Sympathetic listener. Table talk. I munched hum un thu
Unchster Bunk un Munchday. Ha? Did you, faith?
Mr Bloom raised two fingers doubtfully to his lips. His eyes said:
--Not here. Don't see him.
Out. I hate dirty eaters.
He backed towards the door. Get a light snack in Davy Byrne's.
Stopgap. Keep me going. Had a good breakfast.
--Roast and mashed here.
--Pint of stout.
Every fellow for his own, tooth and nail. Gulp. Grub. Gulp. Gobstuff.
He came out into clearer air and turned back towards Grafton street.
Eat or be eaten. Kill! Kill!
Suppose that communal kitchen years to come perhaps. All trotting
down with porringers and tommycans to be filled. Devour contents in the
street. John Howard Parnell example the provost of Trinity every mother's
son don't talk of your provosts and provost of Trinity women and children
cabmen priests parsons fieldmarshals archbishops. From Ailesbury road,
Clyde road, artisans' dwellings, north Dublin union, lord mayor in his
gingerbread coach, old queen in a bathchair. My plate's empty. After you
with our incorporated drinkingcup. Like sir Philip Crampton's fountain.
Rub off the microbes with your handkerchief. Next chap rubs on a new
batch with his. Father O'Flynn would make hares of them all. Have rows
all the same. All for number one. Children fighting for the scrapings of the
pot. Want a souppot as big as the Phoenix park. Harpooning flitches and
hindquarters out of it. Hate people all round you. City Arms hotel table
d'hіte she called it. Soup, joint and sweet. Never know whose thoughts
you're chewing. Then who'd wash up all the plates and forks? Might be all
feeding on tabloids that time. Teeth getting worse and worse.
After all there's a lot in that vegetarian fine flavour of things from the
earth garlic of course it stinks after Italian organgrinders crisp of onions
mushrooms truffles. Pain to the animal too. Pluck and draw fowl.
Wretched brutes there at the cattlemarket waiting for the poleaxe to split
their skulls open. Moo. Poor trembling calves. Meh. Staggering bob. Bubble
and squeak. Butchers' buckets wobbly lights. Give us that brisket off the
hook. Plup. Rawhead and bloody bones. Flayed glasseyed sheep hung from
their haunches, sheepsnouts bloodypapered snivelling nosejam on sawdust.
Top and lashers going out. Don't maul them pieces, young one.
Hot fresh blood they prescribe for decline. Blood always needed.
Insidious. Lick it up smokinghot, thick sugary. Famished ghosts.
Ah, I'm hungry.
He entered Davy Byrne's. Moral pub. He doesn't chat. Stands a
drink now and then. But in leapyear once in four. Cashed a cheque for me
once.
What will I take now? He drew his watch. Let me see now.
Shandygaff?
--Hello, Bloom, Nosey Flynn said from his nook.
--Hello, Flynn.
--How's things?
--Tiptop ... Let me see. I'll take a glass of burgundy and ... let me see.
Sardines on the shelves. Almost taste them by looking. Sandwich?
Ham and his descendants musterred and bred there. Potted meats. What is
home without Plumtree's potted meat? Incomplete. What a stupid ad!
Under the obituary notices they stuck it. All up a plumtree. Dignam's
potted meat. Cannibals would with lemon and rice. White missionary too
salty. Like pickled pork. Expect the chief consumes the parts of honour.
Ought to be tough from exercise. His wives in a row to watch the effect.
There was a right royal old nigger. Who ate or something the somethings of
the reverend Mr MacTrigger. With it an abode of bliss. Lord knows what
concoction. Cauls mouldy tripes windpipes faked and minced up. Puzzle
find the meat. Kosher. No meat and milk together. Hygiene that was what
they call now. Yom Kippur fast spring cleaning of inside. Peace and war
depend on some fellow's digestion. Religions. Christmas turkeys and geese.
Slaughter of innocents. Eat drink and be merry. Then casual wards full
after. Heads bandaged. Cheese digests all but itself. Mity cheese.
--Have you a cheese sandwich?
--Yes, sir.
Like a few olives too if they had them. Italian I prefer. Good glass of
burgundy take away that. Lubricate. A nice salad, cool as a cucumber, Tom
Kernan can dress. Puts gusto into it. Pure olive oil. Milly served me that
cutlet with a sprig of parsley. Take one Spanish onion. God made food, the
devil the cooks. Devilled crab.
--Wife well?
--Quite well, thanks .... A cheese sandwich, then. Gorgonzola, have you?
--Yes, sir.
Nosey Flynn sipped his grog.
--Doing any singing those times?
Look at his mouth. Could whistle in his own ear. Flap ears to match.
Music. Knows as much about it as my coachman. Still better tell him. Does
no harm. Free ad.
--She's engaged for a big tour end of this month. You may have heard
perhaps.
--No. O, that's the style. Who's getting it up?
The curate served.
--How much is that?
--Seven d, sir.... Thank you, sir.
Mr Bloom cut his sandwich into slender strips. Mr MacTrigger. Easier
than the dreamy creamy stuff. His five hundred wives. Had the time of their
lives.
--Mustard, sir?
--Thank you.
He studded under each lifted strip yellow blobs. Their lives. I have it.
It grew bigger and bigger and bigger.
--Getting it up? he said. Well, it's like a company idea, you see. Part shares
and part profits.
--Ay, now I remember, Nosey Flynn said, putting his hand in his pocket to
scratch his groin. Who is this was telling me? Isn't Blazes Boylan mixed up
in it?
A warm shock of air heat of mustard hanched on Mr Bloom's heart.
He raised his eyes and met the stare of a bilious clock. Two. Pub clock five
minutes fast. Time going on. Hands moving. Two. Not yet.
His midriff yearned then upward, sank within him, yearned more
longly, longingly.
Wine.
He smellsipped the cordial juice and, bidding his throat strongly to
speed it, set his wineglass delicately down.
--Yes, he said. He's the organiser in point of fact.
No fear: no brains.
Nosey Flynn snuffled and scratched. Flea having a good square meal.
--He had a good slice of luck, Jack Mooney was telling me, over that
boxingmatch Myler Keogh won again that soldier in the Portobello
barracks. By God, he had the little kipper down in the county Carlow he
was telling me ...
Hope that dewdrop doesn't come down into his glass. No, snuffled it
up.
--For near a month, man, before it came off. Sucking duck eggs by God till
further orders. Keep him off the boose, see? O, by God, Blazes is a hairy
chap.
Davy Byrne came forward from the hindbar in tuckstitched
shirtsleeves, cleaning his lips with two wipes of his napkin. Herring's blush.
Whose smile upon each feature plays with such and such replete. Too much
fat on the parsnips.
--And here's himself and pepper on him, Nosey Flynn said. Can you give
us a good one for the Gold cup?
--I'm off that, Mr Flynn, Davy Byrne answered. I never put anything on a
horse.
--You're right there, Nosey Flynn said.
Mr Bloom ate his strips of sandwich, fresh clean bread, with relish of
disgust pungent mustard, the feety savour of green cheese. Sips of his wine
soothed his palate. Not logwood that. Tastes fuller this weather with the
chill off.
Nice quiet bar. Nice piece of wood in that counter. Nicely planed.
Like the way it curves there.
--I wouldn't do anything at all in that line, Davy Byrne said. It ruined
many a man, the same horses.
Vintners' sweepstake. Licensed for the sale of beer, wine and spirits
for consumption on the premises. Heads I win tails you lose.
--True for you, Nosey Flynn said. Unless you're in the know. There's no
straight sport going now. Lenehan gets some good ones. He's giving
Sceptre today. Zinfandel's the favourite, lord Howard de Walden's, won at
Epsom. Morny Cannon is riding him. I could have got seven to one against
Saint Amant a fortnight before.
--That so? Davy Byrne said.
He went towards the window and, taking up the pettycash book,
scanned its pages.
--I could, faith, Nosey Flynn said, snuffling. That was a rare bit of
horseflesh. Saint Frusquin was her sire. She won in a thunderstorm,
Rothschild's filly, with wadding in her ears. Blue jacket and yellow cap.
Bad luck to big Ben Dollard and his John O'Gaunt. He put me off it. Ay.
He drank resignedly from his tumbler, running his fingers down the
flutes.
--Ay, he said, sighing.
Mr Bloom, champing, standing, looked upon his sigh. Nosey
numbskull. Will I tell him that horse Lenehan? He knows already. Better let
him forget. Go and lose more. Fool and his money. Dewdrop coming down
again. Cold nose he'd have kissing a woman. Still they might like. Prickly
beards they like. Dogs' cold noses. Old Mrs Riordan with the rumbling
stomach's Skye terrier in the City Arms hotel. Molly fondling him in her
lap. O, the big doggybowwowsywowsy!
Wine soaked and softened rolled pith of bread mustard a moment
mawkish cheese. Nice wine it is. Taste it better because I'm not thirsty. Bath
of course does that. Just a bite or two. Then about six o'clock I can. Six.
Six. Time will be gone then. She.
Mild fire of wine kindled his veins. I wanted that badly. Felt so off
colour. His eyes unhungrily saw shelves of tins: sardines, gaudy lobsters'
claws. All the odd things people pick up for food. Out of shells, periwinkles
with a pin, off trees, snails out of the ground the French eat, out of the sea
with bait on a hook. Silly fish learn nothing in a thousand years. If you
didn't know risky putting anything into your mouth. Poisonous berries.
Johnny Magories. Roundness you think good. Gaudy colour warns you
off. One fellow told another and so on. Try it on the dog first. Led on by the
smell or the look. Tempting fruit. Ice cones. Cream. Instinct. Orangegroves
for instance. Need artificial irrigation. Bleibtreustrasse. Yes but what about
oysters. Unsightly like a clot of phlegm. Filthy shells. Devil to open them
too. Who found them out? Garbage, sewage they feed on. Fizz and Red
bank oysters. Effect on the sexual. Aphrodis. He was in the Red Bank this
morning. Was he oysters old fish at table perhaps he young flesh in bed no
June has no ar no oysters. But there are people like things high. Tainted
game. Jugged hare. First catch your hare. Chinese eating eggs fifty years
old, blue and green again. Dinner of thirty courses. Each dish harmless
might mix inside. Idea for a poison mystery. That archduke Leopold was it
no yes or was it Otto one of those Habsburgs? Or who was it used to eat
the scruff off his own head? Cheapest lunch in town. Of course aristocrats,
then the others copy to be in the fashion. Milly too rock oil and flour. Raw
pastry I like myself. Half the catch of oysters they throw back in the sea to
keep up the price. Cheap no-one would buy. Caviare. Do the grand. Hock
in green glasses. Swell blowout. Lady this. Powdered bosom pearls. The
elite. Creme de la creme. They want special dishes to pretend they're.
Hermit with a platter of pulse keep down the stings of the flesh. Know me
come eat with me. Royal sturgeon high sheriff, Coffey, the butcher, right to
venisons of the forest from his ex. Send him back the half of a cow. Spread
I saw down in the Master of the Rolls' kitchen area. Whitehatted chef like a
rabbi. Combustible duck. Curly cabbage a la duchesse de Parme. Just as
well to write it on the bill of fare so you can know what you've eaten. Too
many drugs spoil the broth. I know it myself. Dosing it with Edwards'
desiccated soup. Geese stuffed silly for them. Lobsters boiled alive. Do
ptake some ptarmigan. Wouldn't mind being a waiter in a swell hotel. Tips,
evening dress, halfnaked ladies. May I tempt you to a little more filleted
lemon sole, miss Dubedat? Yes, do bedad. And she did bedad. Huguenot
name I expect that. A miss Dubedat lived in Killiney, I remember. Du de la
French. Still it's the same fish perhaps old Micky Hanlon of Moore street
ripped the guts out of making money hand over fist finger in fishes' gills
can't write his name on a cheque think he was painting the landscape with
his mouth twisted. Moooikill A Aitcha Ha ignorant as a kish of brogues,
worth fifty thousand pounds.
Stuck on the pane two flies buzzed, stuck.
Glowing wine on his palate lingered swallowed. Crushing in the
winepress grapes of Burgundy. Sun's heat it is. Seems to a secret touch
telling me memory. Touched his sense moistened remembered. Hidden
under wild ferns on Howth below us bay sleeping: sky. No sound. The sky.
The bay purple by the Lion's head. Green by Drumleck. Yellowgreen
towards Sutton. Fields of undersea, the lines faint brown in grass, buried
cities. Pillowed on my coat she had her hair, earwigs in the heather scrub
my hand under her nape, you'll toss me all. O wonder! Coolsoft with
ointments her hand touched me, caressed: her eyes upon me did not turn
away. Ravished over her I lay, full lips full open, kissed her mouth. Yum.
Softly she gave me in my mouth the seedcake warm and chewed. Mawkish
pulp her mouth had mumbled sweetsour of her spittle. Joy: I ate it: joy.
Young life, her lips that gave me pouting. Soft warm sticky gumjelly lips.
Flowers her eyes were, take me, willing eyes. Pebbles fell. She lay still. A
goat. No-one. High on Ben Howth rhododendrons a nannygoat walking
surefooted, dropping currants. Screened under ferns she laughed
warmfolded. Wildly I lay on her, kissed her: eyes, her lips, her stretched
neck beating, woman's breasts full in her blouse of nun's veiling, fat nipples
upright. Hot I tongued her. She kissed me. I was kissed. All yielding she
tossed my hair. Kissed, she kissed me.
Me. And me now.
Stuck, the flies buzzed.
His downcast eyes followed the silent veining of the oaken slab.
Beauty: it curves: curves are beauty. Shapely goddesses, Venus, Juno:
curves the world admires. Can see them library museum standing in the
round hall, naked goddesses. Aids to digestion. They don't care what man
looks. All to see. Never speaking. I mean to say to fellows like Flynn.
Suppose she did Pygmalion and Galatea what would she say first? Mortal!
Put you in your proper place. Quaffing nectar at mess with gods golden
dishes, all ambrosial. Not like a tanner lunch we have, boiled mutton,
carrots and turnips, bottle of Allsop. Nectar imagine it drinking electricity:
gods' food. Lovely forms of women sculped Junonian. Immortal lovely.
And we stuffing food in one hole and out behind: food, chyle, blood, dung,
earth, food: have to feed it like stoking an engine. They have no. Never
looked. I'll look today. Keeper won't see. Bend down let something drop.
See if she.
Dribbling a quiet message from his bladder came to go to do not to do
there to do. A man and ready he drained his glass to the lees and walked, to
men too they gave themselves, manly conscious, lay with men lovers, a
youth enjoyed her, to the yard.
When the sound of his boots had ceased Davy Byrne said from his
book:
--What is this he is? Isn't he in the insurance line?
--He's out of that long ago, Nosey Flynn said. He does canvassing for the
Freeman.
--I know him well to see, Davy Byrne said. Is he in trouble?
--Trouble? Nosey Flynn said. Not that I heard of. Why?
--I noticed he was in mourning.
--Was he? Nosey Flynn said. So he was, faith. I asked him how was all at
home. You're right, by God. So he was.
--I never broach the subject, Davy Byrne said humanely, if I see a
gentleman is in trouble that way. It only brings it up fresh in their minds.
--It's not the wife anyhow, Nosey Flynn said. I met him the day before
yesterday and he coming out of that Irish farm dairy John Wyse Nolan's
wife has in Henry street with a jar of cream in his hand taking it home to
his better half. She's well nourished, I tell you. Plovers on toast.
--And is he doing for the Freeman? Davy Byrne said.
Nosey Flynn pursed his lips.
---He doesn't buy cream on the ads he picks up. You can make bacon of
that.
--How so? Davy Byrne asked, coming from his book.
Nosey Flynn made swift passes in the air with juggling fingers. He
winked.
--He's in the craft, he said. --Do you tell me so? Davy Byrne said.
--Very much so, Nosey Flynn said. Ancient free and accepted order. He's
an excellent brother. Light, life and love, by God. They give him a leg up. I
was told that by a - well, I won't say who.
--Is that a fact?
--O, it's a fine order, Nosey Flynn said. They stick to you when you're
down. I know a fellow was trying to get into it. But they're as close as damn
it. By God they did right to keep the women out of it.
Davy Byrne smiledyawnednodded all in one:
--Iiiiiichaaaaaaach!
--There was one woman, Nosey Flynn said, hid herself in a clock to find
out what they do be doing. But be damned but they smelt her out and swore
her in on the spot a master mason. That was one of the saint Legers of
Doneraile.
Davy Byrne, sated after his yawn, said with tearwashed eyes:
--And is that a fact? Decent quiet man he is. I often saw him in here and I
never once saw him - you know, over the line.
--God Almighty couldn't make him drunk, Nosey Flynn said firmly. Slips
off when the fun gets too hot. Didn't you see him look at his watch? Ah,
you weren't there. If you ask him to have a drink first thing he does he outs
with the watch to see what he ought to imbibe. Declare to God he does.
--There are some like that, Davy Byrne said. He's a safe man, I'd say.
--He's not too bad, Nosey Flynn said, snuffling it up. He's been known to
put his hand down too to help a fellow. Give the devil his due. O, Bloom has
his good points. But there's one thing he'll never do.
His hand scrawled a dry pen signature beside his grog.
--I know, Davy Byrne said.
--Nothing in black and white, Nosey Flynn said.
Paddy Leonard and Bantam Lyons came in. Tom Rochford followed
frowning, a plaining hand on his claret waistcoat.
--Day, Mr Byrne.
--Day, gentlemen.
They paused at the counter.
--Who's standing? Paddy Leonard asked.
--I'm sitting anyhow, Nosey Flynn answered.
--Well, what'll it be? Paddy Leonard asked.
--I'll take a stone ginger, Bantam Lyons said.
--How much? Paddy Leonard cried. Since when, for God' sake? What's
yours, Tom?
--How is the main drainage? Nosey Flynn asked, sipping.
For answer Tom Rochford pressed his hand to his breastbone and
hiccupped.
--Would I trouble you for a glass of fresh water, Mr Byrne? he said.
--Certainly, sir.
Paddy Leonard eyed his alemates.
--Lord love a duck, he said. Look at what I'm standing drinks to! Cold
water and gingerpop! Two fellows that would suck whisky off a sore leg.
He has some bloody horse up his sleeve for the Gold cup. A dead snip.
--Zinfandel is it? Nosey Flynn asked.
Tom Rochford spilt powder from a twisted paper into the water set
before him.
--That cursed dyspepsia, he said before drinking.
--Breadsoda is very good, Davy Byrne said.
Tom Rochford nodded and drank.
--Is it Zinfandel?
--Say nothing! Bantam Lyons winked. I'm going to plunge five bob on my
own.
--Tell us if you're worth your salt and be damned to you, Paddy Leonard
said. Who gave it to you?
Mr Bloom on his way out raised three fingers in greeting.
--So long! Nosey Flynn said.
The others turned.
--That's the man now that gave it to me, Bantam Lyons whispered.
--Prrwht! Paddy Leonard said with scorn. Mr Byrne, sir, we'll take two of
your small Jamesons after that and a ....
--Stone ginger, Davy Byrne added civilly.
--Ay, Paddy Leonard said. A suckingbottle for the baby.
Mr Bloom walked towards Dawson street, his tongue brushing his
teeth smooth. Something green it would have to be: spinach, say. Then with
those RІntgen rays searchlight you could.
At Duke lane a ravenous terrier choked up a sick knuckly cud on the
cobblestones and lapped it with new zest. Surfeit. Returned with thanks
having fully digested the contents. First sweet then savoury. Mr Bloom
coasted warily. Ruminants. His second course. Their upper jaw they move.
Wonder if Tom Rochford will do anything with that invention of his?
Wasting time explaining it to Flynn's mouth. Lean people long mouths.
Ought to be a hall or a place where inventors could go in and invent free.
Course then you'd have all the cranks pestering.
He hummed, prolonging in solemn echo the closes of the bars:-Don Giovanni, a cenar teco M'invitasti.Feel better. Burgundy. Good pick me up. Who distilled first? Some chap in the blues. Dutch courage. That Kilkenny People in the national library now I must. Bare clean closestools waiting in the window of William Miller, plumber, turned back his thoughts. They could: and watch it all the way down, swallow a pin sometimes come out of the ribs years after, tour round the body changing biliary duct spleen squirting liver gastric juice coils of intestines like pipes. But the poor buffer would have to stand all the time with his insides entrails on show. Science. --A cenar teco. What does that teco mean? Tonight perhaps. --Don Giovanni, thou hast me invited To come to supper tonight, The rum the rumdum.Doesn't go properly. Keyes: two months if I get Nannetti to. That'll be two pounds ten about two pounds eight. Three Hynes owes me. Two eleven. Prescott's dyeworks van over there. If I get Billy Prescott's ad: two fifteen. Five guineas about. On the pig's back. Could buy one of those silk petticoats for Molly, colour of her new garters. Today. Today. Not think. Tour the south then. What about English wateringplaces? Brighton, Margate. Piers by moonlight. Her voice floating out. Those lovely seaside girls. Against John Long's a drowsing loafer lounged in heavy thought, gnawing a crusted knuckle. Handy man wants job. Small wages. Will eat anything. Mr Bloom turned at Gray's confectioner's window of unbought tarts and passed the reverend Thomas Connellan's bookstore. Why I left the church of Rome. Birds' nest women run him. They say they used to give pauper children soup to change to protestants in the time of the potato blight. Society over the way papa went to for the conversion of poor jews. Same bait. Why we left the church of Rome. A blind stripling stood tapping the curbstone with his slender cane. No tram in sight. Wants to cross. --Do you want to cross? Mr Bloom asked. The blind stripling did not answer. His wallface frowned weakly. He moved his head uncertainly. --You're in Dawson street, Mr Bloom said. Molesworth street is opposite. Do you want to cross? There's nothing in the way. The cane moved out trembling to the left. Mr Bloom's eye followed its line and saw again the dyeworks' van drawn up before Drago's. Where I saw his brillantined hair just when I was. Horse drooping. Driver in John Long's. Slaking his drouth. --There's a van there, Mr Bloom said, but it's not moving. I'll see you across. Do you want to go to Molesworth street? --Yes, the stripling answered. South Frederick street. --Come, Mr Bloom said. He touched the thin elbow gently: then took the limp seeing hand to guide it forward. Say something to him. Better not do the condescending. They mistrust what you tell them. Pass a common remark. --The rain kept off. No answer. Stains on his coat. Slobbers his food, I suppose. Tastes all different for him. Have to be spoonfed first. Like a child's hand, his hand. Like Milly's was. Sensitive. Sizing me up I daresay from my hand. Wonder if he has a name. Van. Keep his cane clear of the horse's legs: tired drudge get his doze. That's right. Clear. Behind a bull: in front of a horse. --Thanks, sir. Knows I'm a man. Voice. --Right now? First turn to the left. The blind stripling tapped the curbstone and went on his way, drawing his cane back, feeling again. Mr Bloom walked behind the eyeless feet, a flatcut suit of herringbone tweed. Poor young fellow! How on earth did he know that van was there? Must have felt it. See things in their forehead perhaps: kind of sense of volume. Weight or size of it, something blacker than the dark. Wonder would he feel it if something was removed. Feel a gap. Queer idea of Dublin he must have, tapping his way round by the stones. Could he walk in a beeline if he hadn't that cane? Bloodless pious face like a fellow going in to be a priest. Penrose! That was that chap's name. Look at all the things they can learn to do. Read with their fingers. Tune pianos. Or we are surprised they have any brains. Why we think a deformed person or a hunchback clever if he says something we might say. Of course the other senses are more. Embroider. Plait baskets. People ought to help. Workbasket I could buy for Molly's birthday. Hates sewing. Might take an objection. Dark men they call them. Sense of smell must be stronger too. Smells on all sides, bunched together. Each street different smell. Each person too. Then the spring, the summer: smells. Tastes? They say you can't taste wines with your eyes shut or a cold in the head. Also smoke in the dark they say get no pleasure. And with a woman, for instance. More shameless not seeing. That girl passing the Stewart institution, head in the air. Look at me. I have them all on. Must be strange not to see her. Kind of a form in his mind's eye. The voice, temperatures: when he touches her with his fingers must almost see the lines, the curves. His hands on her hair, for instance. Say it was black, for instance. Good. We call it black. Then passing over her white skin. Different feel perhaps. Feeling of white. Postoffice. Must answer. Fag today. Send her a postal order two shillings, half a crown. Accept my little present. Stationer's just here too. Wait. Think over it. With a gentle finger he felt ever so slowly the hair combed back above his ears. Again. Fibres of fine fine straw. Then gently his finger felt the skin of his right cheek. Downy hair there too. Not smooth enough. The belly is the smoothest. No-one about. There he goes into Frederick street. Perhaps to Levenston's dancing academy piano. Might be settling my braces. Walking by Doran's publichouse he slid his hand between his waistcoat and trousers and, pulling aside his shirt gently, felt a slack fold of his belly. But I know it's whitey yellow. Want to try in the dark to see. He withdrew his hand and pulled his dress to. Poor fellow! Quite a boy. Terrible. Really terrible. What dreams would he have, not seeing? Life a dream for him. Where is the justice being born that way? All those women and children excursion beanfeast burned and drowned in New York. Holocaust. Karma they call that transmigration for sins you did in a past life the reincarnation met him pike hoses. Dear, dear, dear. Pity, of course: but somehow you can't cotton on to them someway. Sir Frederick Falkiner going into the freemasons' hall. Solemn as Troy. After his good lunch in Earlsfort terrace. Old legal cronies cracking a magnum. Tales of the bench and assizes and annals of the bluecoat school. I sentenced him to ten years. I suppose he'd turn up his nose at that stuff I drank. Vintage wine for them, the year marked on a dusty bottle. Has his own ideas of justice in the recorder's court. Wellmeaning old man. Police chargesheets crammed with cases get their percentage manufacturing crime. Sends them to the rightabout. The devil on moneylenders. Gave Reuben J a great strawcalling. Now he's really what they call a dirty jew. Power those judges have. Crusty old topers in wigs. Bear with a sore paw. And may the Lord have mercy on your soul. Hello, placard. Mirus bazaar. His Excellency the lord lieutenant. Sixteenth. Today it is. In aid of funds for Mercer's hospital. The Messiah was first given for that. Yes. Handel. What about going out there: Ballsbridge. Drop in on Keyes. No use sticking to him like a leech. Wear out my welcome. Sure to know someone on the gate. Mr Bloom came to Kildare street. First I must. Library. Straw hat in sunlight. Tan shoes. Turnedup trousers. It is. It is. His heart quopped softly. To the right. Museum. Goddesses. He swerved to the right. Is it? Almost certain. Won't look. Wine in my face. Why did I? Too heady. Yes, it is. The walk. Not see. Get on. Making for the museum gate with long windy steps he lifted his eyes. Handsome building. Sir Thomas Deane designed. Not following me? Didn't see me perhaps. Light in his eyes. The flutter of his breath came forth in short sighs. Quick. Cold statues: quiet there. Safe in a minute. No. Didn't see me. After two. Just at the gate. My heart! His eyes beating looked steadfastly at cream curves of stone. Sir Thomas Deane was the Greek architecture. Look for something I. His hasty hand went quick into a pocket, took out, read unfolded Agendath Netaim. Where did I? Busy looking. He thrust back quick Agendath. Afternoon she said. I am looking for that. Yes, that. Try all pockets. Handker. Freeman. Where did I? Ah, yes. Trousers. Potato. Purse. Where? Hurry. Walk quietly. Moment more. My heart. His hand looking for the where did I put found in his hip pocket soap lotion have to call tepid paper stuck. Ah soap there I yes. Gate. Safe!
First he tickled her
Then he patted her
Then he passed the female catheter
For he was a medical
Jolly old medi .....
--I feel you would need one more for Hamlet. Seven is dear to the mystic
mind. The shining seven WB calls them.
Glittereyed his rufous skull close to his greencapped desklamp sought
the face bearded amid darkgreener shadow, an ollav, holyeyed. He laughed
low: a sizar's laugh of Trinity: unanswered.
Orchestral Satan, weeping many a rood
Tears such as angels weep.
Ed egli avea del cul fatto trombetta.
He holds my follies hostage.
Cranly's eleven true Wicklowmen to free their sireland. Gaptoothed
Kathleen, her four beautiful green fields, the stranger in her house. And one
more to hail him: ave, rabbi: the Tinahely twelve. In the shadow of the glen
he cooees for them. My soul's youth I gave him, night by night. God speed.
Good hunting.
Mulligan has my telegram.
Folly. Persist.
--Our young Irish bards, John Eglinton censured, have yet to create a
figure which the world will set beside Saxon Shakespeare's Hamlet though
I admire him, as old Ben did, on this side idolatry.
--All these questions are purely academic, Russell oracled out of his
shadow. I mean, whether Hamlet is Shakespeare or James I or Essex.
Clergymen's discussions of the historicity of Jesus. Art has to reveal to us
ideas, formless spiritual essences. The supreme question about a work of art
is out of how deep a life does it spring. The painting of Gustave Moreau is
the painting of ideas. The deepest poetry of Shelley, the words of Hamlet
bring our minds into contact with the eternal wisdom, Plato's world of
ideas. All the rest is the speculation of schoolboys for schoolboys.
A. E. has been telling some yankee interviewer. Wall, tarnation strike
me!
--The schoolmen were schoolboys first, Stephen said superpolitely.
Aristotle was once Plato's schoolboy.
--And has remained so, one should hope, John Eglinton sedately said. One
can see him, a model schoolboy with his diploma under his arm.
He laughed again at the now smiling bearded face.
Formless spiritual. Father, Word and Holy Breath. Allfather, the
heavenly man. Hiesos Kristos, magician of the beautiful, the Logos who
suffers in us at every moment. This verily is that. I am the fire upon the
altar. I am the sacrificial butter.
Dunlop, Judge, the noblest Roman of them all, A. E., Arval, the Name
Ineffable, in heaven hight: K. H., their master, whose identity is no secret to
adepts. Brothers of the great white lodge always watching to see if they can
help. The Christ with the bridesister, moisture of light, born of an ensouled
virgin, repentant sophia, departed to the plane of buddhi. The life esoteric is
not for ordinary person. O. P. must work off bad karma first. Mrs Cooper
Oakley once glimpsed our very illustrious sister H. P. B.'s elemental.
O, fie! Out on't! Pfuiteufel! You naughtn't to look, missus, so you
naughtn't when a lady's ashowing of her elemental.
Mr Best entered, tall, young, mild, light. He bore in his hand with
grace a notebook, new, large, clean, bright.
--That model schoolboy, Stephen said, would find Hamlet's musings about
the afterlife of his princely soul, the improbable, insignificant and
undramatic monologue, as shallow as Plato's.
John Eglinton, frowning, said, waxing wroth:
--Upon my word it makes my blood boil to hear anyone compare Aristotle
with Plato.
--Which of the two, Stephen asked, would have banished me from his
commonwealth?
Unsheathe your dagger definitions. Horseness is the whatness of
allhorse. Streams of tendency and eons they worship. God: noise in the
street: very peripatetic. Space: what you damn well have to see. Through
spaces smaller than red globules of man's blood they creepycrawl after
Blake's buttocks into eternity of which this vegetable world is but a shadow.
Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past.
Mr Best came forward, amiable, towards his colleague.
--Haines is gone, he said.
--Is he?
--I was showing him Jubainville's book. He's quite enthusiastic, don't you
know, about Hyde's Lovesongs of Connacht. I couldn't bring him in to
hear the discussion. He's gone to Gill's to buy it.
Bound thee forth, my booklet, quick
To greet the callous public,
Writ, I ween, 'twas not my wish
In lean unlovely English.
--The peatsmoke is going to his head, John Eglinton opined.
We feel in England. Penitent thief. Gone. I smoked his baccy. Green
twinkling stone. An emerald set in the ring of the sea.
--People do not know how dangerous lovesongs can be, the auric egg of
Russell warned occultly. The movements which work revolutions in the
world are born out of the dreams and visions in a peasant's heart on the
hillside. For them the earth is not an exploitable ground but the living
mother. The rarefied air of the academy and the arena produce the
sixshilling novel, the musichall song. France produces the finest flower of
corruption in Mallarm’ but the desirable life is revealed only to the poor of
heart, the life of Homer's Phaeacians.
From these words Mr Best turned an unoffending face to Stephen.
--Mallarm’, don't you know, he said, has written those wonderful prose
poems Stephen MacKenna used to read to me in Paris. The one about
Hamlet. He says: il se promSne, lisant au livre de lui-meme, don't you
know, reading the book of himself. He describes Hamlet given in a French
town, don't you know, a provincial town. They advertised it.
His free hand graciously wrote tiny signs in air.
Hamlet
ou
Le Distrait
PiSce de Shakespeare
He repeated to John Eglinton's newgathered frown:
--PiSce de Shakespeare, don't you know. It's so French. The French point
of view. Hamlet ou...
--The absentminded beggar, Stephen ended.
John Eglinton laughed.
--Yes, I suppose it would be, he said. Excellent people, no doubt, but
distressingly shortsighted in some matters.
Sumptuous and stagnant exaggeration of murder.
--A deathsman of the soul Robert Greene called him, Stephen said. Not for
nothing was he a butcher's son, wielding the sledded poleaxe and spitting in
his palms. Nine lives are taken off for his father's one. Our Father who art
in purgatory. Khaki Hamlets don't hesitate to shoot. The bloodboltered
shambles in act five is a forecast of the concentration camp sung by Mr
Swinburne.
Cranly, I his mute orderly, following battles from afar.
Whelps and dams of murderous foes whom none But we had spared ....Between the Saxon smile and yankee yawp. The devil and the deep sea. --He will have it that Hamlet is a ghoststory, John Eglinton said for Mr Best's behoof. Like the fat boy in Pickwick he wants to make our flesh creep.
List! List! O list!
My flesh hears him: creeping, hears.
If thou didst ever ....
--What is a ghost? Stephen said with tingling energy. One who has faded
into impalpability through death, through absence, through change of
manners. Elizabethan London lay as far from Stratford as corrupt Paris
lies from virgin Dublin. Who is the ghost from limbo patrum, returning to
the world that has forgotten him? Who is King Hamlet?
John Eglinton shifted his spare body, leaning back to judge.
Lifted.
--It is this hour of a day in mid June, Stephen said, begging with a swift
glance their hearing. The flag is up on the playhouse by the bankside. The
bear Sackerson growls in the pit near it, Paris garden. Canvasclimbers who
sailed with Drake chew their sausages among the groundlings.
Local colour. Work in all you know. Make them accomplices.
--Shakespeare has left the huguenot's house in Silver street and walks by
the swanmews along the riverbank. But he does not stay to feed the pen
chivying her game of cygnets towards the rushes. The swan of Avon has
other thoughts.
Composition of place. Ignatius Loyola, make haste to help me!
--The play begins. A player comes on under the shadow, made up in the
castoff mail of a court buck, a wellset man with a bass voice. It is the ghost,
the king, a king and no king, and the player is Shakespeare who has studied
Hamlet all the years of his life which were not vanity in order to play the
part of the spectre. He speaks the words to Burbage, the young player who
stands before him beyond the rack of cerecloth, calling him by a name:
Hamlet, I am thy father's spirit,
bidding him list. To a son he speaks, the son of his soul, the prince, young
Hamlet and to the son of his body, Hamnet Shakespeare, who has died in
Stratford that his namesake may live for ever.
Is it possible that that player Shakespeare, a ghost by absence, and in the
vesture of buried Denmark, a ghost by death, speaking his own words to
his own son's name (had Hamnet Shakespeare lived he would have been
prince Hamlet's twin), is it possible, I want to know, or probable that he
did not draw or foresee the logical conclusion of those premises: you are
the dispossessed son: I am the murdered father: your mother is the
guilty queen, Ann Shakespeare, born Hathaway?
--But this prying into the family life of a great man, Russell began
impatiently.
Art thou there, truepenny?
--Interesting only to the parish clerk. I mean, we have the plays. I mean
when we read the poetry of King Lear what is it to us how the poet lived?
As for living our servants can do that for us, Villiers de l'Isle has said.
Peeping and prying into greenroom gossip of the day, the poet's drinking,
the poet's debts. We have King Lear: and it is immortal.
Mr Best's face, appealed to, agreed.
Flow over them with your waves and with your waters, Mananaan,
Mananaan MacLir ....
How now, sirrah, that pound he lent you when you were hungry?
Marry, I wanted it.
Take thou this noble.
Go to! You spent most of it in Georgina Johnson's bed, clergyman's
daughter. Agenbite of inwit.
Do you intend to pay it back?
O, yes.
When? Now?
Well....No.
When, then?
I paid my way. I paid my way.
Steady on. He's from beyant Boyne water. The northeast corner. You
owe it.
Wait. Five months. Molecules all change. I am other I now. Other I
got pound.
Buzz. Buzz.
But I, entelechy, form of forms, am I by memory because under
everchanging forms.
I that sinned and prayed and fasted.
A child Conmee saved from pandies.
I, I and I. I.
A.E.I.O.U.
--Do you mean to fly in the face of the tradition of three centuries? John
Eglinton's carping voice asked. Her ghost at least has been laid for ever.
She died, for literature at least, before she was born.
--She died, Stephen retorted, sixtyseven years after she was born. She saw
him into and out of the world. She took his first embraces. She bore his
children and she laid pennies on his eyes to keep his eyelids closed when he
lay on his deathbed.
Mother's deathbed. Candle. The sheeted mirror. Who brought me
into this world lies there, bronzelidded, under few cheap flowers. Liliata
rutilantium.
I wept alone.
John Eglinton looked in the tangled glowworm of his lamp.
--The world believes that Shakespeare made a mistake, he said, and got out
of it as quickly and as best he could.
--Bosh! Stephen said rudely. A man of genius makes no mistakes. His
errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
Portals of discovery opened to let in the quaker librarian,
softcreakfooted, bald, eared and assiduous.
--A shrew, John Eglinton said shrewdly, is not a useful portal of discovery,
one should imagine. What useful discovery did Socrates learn from
Xanthippe?
--Dialectic, Stephen answered: and from his mother how to bring thoughts
into the world. What he learnt from his other wife Myrto (absit nomen!),
Socratididion's Epipsychidion, no man, not a woman, will ever know. But
neither the midwife's lore nor the caudlelectures saved him from the
archons of Sinn Fein and their naggin of hemlock.
--But Ann Hathaway? Mr Best's quiet voice said forgetfully. Yes, we seem
to be forgetting her as Shakespeare himself forgot her.
His look went from brooder's beard to carper's skull, to remind, to
chide them not unkindly, then to the baldpink lollard costard, guiltless
though maligned.
--He had a good groatsworth of wit, Stephen said, and no truant memory.
He carried a memory in his wallet as he trudged to Romeville whistling The
Girl I left behind me. If the earthquake did not time it we should know
where to place poor Wat, sitting in his form, the cry of hounds, the studded
bridle and her blue windows. That memory, Venus and Adonis, lay in the
bedchamber of every light-of-love in London. Is Katharine the shrew
illfavoured? Hortensio calls her young and beautiful. Do you think the
writer of Antony and Cleopatra, a passionate pilgrim, had his eyes in the
back of his head that he chose the ugliest doxy in all Warwickshire to lie
withal? Good: he left her and gained the world of men. But his boywomen
are the women of a boy. Their life, thought, speech are lent them by males.
He chose badly? He was chosen, it seems to me. If others have their will
Ann hath a way. By cock, she was to blame. She put the comether on him,
sweet and twentysix. The greyeyed goddess who bends over the boy Adonis,
stooping to conquer, as prologue to the swelling act, is a boldfaced
Stratford wench who tumbles in a cornfield a lover younger than herself. And my turn? When?
Come!
--Ryefield, Mr Best said brightly, gladly, raising his new book, gladly,
brightly.
He murmured then with blond delight for all:
--Between the acres of the ryeThese pretty countryfolk would lie. Paris: the wellpleased pleaser. A tall figure in bearded homespun rose from shadow and unveiled its cooperative watch. --I am afraid I am due at the Homestead. Whither away? Exploitable ground. --Are you going? John Eglinton's active eyebrows asked. Shall we see you at Moore's tonight? Piper is coming. --Piper! Mr Best piped. Is Piper back? Peter Piper pecked a peck of pick of peck of pickled pepper. --I don't know if I can. Thursday. We have our meeting. If I can get away in time. Yogibogeybox in Dawson chambers. Isis Unveiled. Their Pali book we tried to pawn. Crosslegged under an umbrel umbershoot he thrones an Aztec logos, functioning on astral levels, their oversoul, mahamahatma. The faithful hermetists await the light, ripe for chelaship, ringroundabout him. Louis H. Victory. T. Caulfield Irwin. Lotus ladies tend them i'the eyes, their pineal glands aglow. Filled with his god, he thrones, Buddh under plantain. Gulfer of souls, engulfer. Hesouls, shesouls, shoals of souls. Engulfed with wailing creecries, whirled, whirling, they bewail.
In quintessential triviality
For years in this fleshcase a shesoul dwelt.
--They say we are to have a literary surprise, the quaker librarian said,
friendly and earnest. Mr Russell, rumour has it, is gathering together a
sheaf of our younger poets' verses. We are all looking forward anxiously.
Anxiously he glanced in the cone of lamplight where three faces,
lighted, shone.
See this. Remember.
Stephen looked down on a wide headless caubeen, hung on his
ashplanthandle over his knee. My casque and sword. Touch lightly with
two index fingers. Aristotle's experiment. One or two? Necessity is that in
virtue of which it is impossible that one can be otherwise. Argal, one hat is
one hat.
Listen.
Young Colum and Starkey. George Roberts is doing the commercial
part. Longworth will give it a good puff in the Express. O, will he? I liked
Colum's Drover. Yes, I think he has that queer thing genius. Do you think
he has genius really? Yeats admired his line: As in wild earth a Grecian
vase. Did he? I hope you'll be able to come tonight. Malachi Mulligan is
coming too. Moore asked him to bring Haines. Did you hear Miss
Mitchell's joke about Moore and Martyn? That Moore is Martyn's wild
oats? Awfully clever, isn't it? They remind one of Don Quixote and Sancho
Panza. Our national epic has yet to be written, Dr Sigerson says. Moore is
the man for it. A knight of the rueful countenance here in Dublin. With a
saffron kilt? O'Neill Russell? O, yes, he must speak the grand old tongue.
And his Dulcinea? James Stephens is doing some clever sketches. We are
becoming important, it seems.
Cordelia. Cordoglio. Lir's loneliest daughter.
Nookshotten. Now your best French polish.
--Thank you very much, Mr Russell, Stephen said, rising. If you will be so
kind as to give the letter to Mr Norman ...
--O, yes. If he considers it important it will go in. We have so much
correspondence.
--I understand, Stephen said. Thanks.
God ild you. The pigs' paper. Bullockbefriending.
Synge has promised me an article for Dana too. Are we going to be
read? I feel we are. The Gaelic league wants something in Irish. I hope you
will come round tonight. Bring Starkey.
Stephen sat down.
The quaker librarian came from the leavetakers. Blushing, his mask
said:
--Mr Dedalus, your views are most illuminating.
He creaked to and fro, tiptoing up nearer heaven by the altitude of a
chopine, and, covered by the noise of outgoing, said low:
--Is it your view, then, that she was not faithful to the poet?
Alarmed face asks me. Why did he come? Courtesy or an inward
light?
--Where there is a reconciliation, Stephen said, there must have been first a
sundering.
--Yes.
Christfox in leather trews, hiding, a runaway in blighted treeforks,
from hue and cry. Knowing no vixen, walking lonely in the chase. Women
he won to him, tender people, a whore of Babylon, ladies of justices, bully
tapsters' wives. Fox and geese. And in New Place a slack dishonoured body
that once was comely, once as sweet, as fresh as cinnamon, now her leaves
falling, all, bare, frighted of the narrow grave and unforgiven.
--Yes. So you think....
The door closed behind the outgoer.
Rest suddenly possessed the discreet vaulted cell, rest of warm and
brooding air.
A vestal's lamp.
Here he ponders things that were not: what Caesar would have lived
to do had he believed the soothsayer: what might have been: possibilities of
the possible as possible: things not known: what name Achilles bore when
he lived among women.
Coffined thoughts around me, in mummycases, embalmed in spice of
words. Thoth, god of libraries, a birdgod, moonycrowned. And I heard the
voice of that Egyptian highpriest. In painted chambers loaded with
tilebooks.
They are still. Once quick in the brains of men. Still: but an itch of
death is in them, to tell me in my ear a maudlin tale, urge me to wreak their
will.
--Certainly, John Eglinton mused, of all great men he is the most enigmatic.
We know nothing but that he lived and suffered. Not even so much. Others
abide our question. A shadow hangs over all the rest.
--But Hamlet is so personal, isn't it? Mr Best pleaded. I mean, a kind of
private paper, don't you know, of his private life. I mean, I don't care a
button, don't you know, who is killed or who is guilty ...
He rested an innocent book on the edge of the desk, smiling his
defiance. His private papers in the original. Ta an bad ar an tir. Taim in mo
shagart. Put beurla on it, littlejohn.
Quoth littlejohn Eglinton:
--I was prepared for paradoxes from what Malachi Mulligan told us but I
may as well warn you that if you want to shake my belief that Shakespeare
is Hamlet you have a stern task before you.
Bear with me.
Stephen withstood the bane of miscreant eyes glinting stern under
wrinkled brows. A basilisk. E quando vede l'uomo l'attosca. Messer
Brunetto, I thank thee for the word.
--As we, or mother Dana, weave and unweave our bodies, Stephen said,
from day to day, their molecules shuttled to and fro, so does the artist
weave and unweave his image. And as the mole on my right breast is where
it was when I was born, though all my body has been woven of new stuff
time after time, so through the ghost of the unquiet father the image of the
unliving son looks forth. In the intense instant of imagination, when the
mind, Shelley says, is a fading coal, that which I was is that which I am and
that which in possibility I may come to be. So in the future, the sister of the
past, I may see myself as I sit here now but by reflection from that which
then I shall be.
Drummond of Hawthornden helped you at that stile.
--Yes, Mr Best said youngly. I feel Hamlet quite young. The bitterness
might be from the father but the passages with Ophelia are surely from the
son.
Has the wrong sow by the lug. He is in my father. I am in his son.
--That mole is the last to go, Stephen said, laughing.
John Eglinton made a nothing pleasing mow.
--If that were the birthmark of genius, he said, genius would be a drug in
the market. The plays of Shakespeare's later years which Renan admired so
much breathe another spirit.
--The spirit of reconciliation, the quaker librarian breathed.
--There can be no reconciliation, Stephen said, if there has not been a
sundering.
Said that.
--If you want to know what are the events which cast their shadow over the
hell of time of King Lear, Othello, Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, look to
see when and how the shadow lifts. What softens the heart of a man,
shipwrecked in storms dire, Tried, like another Ulysses, Pericles, prince of
Tyre?
Head, redconecapped, buffeted, brineblinded.
--A child, a girl, placed in his arms, Marina.
--The leaning of sophists towards the bypaths of apocrypha is a constant
quantity, John Eglinton detected. The highroads are dreary but they lead to
the town.
Good Bacon: gone musty. Shakespeare Bacon's wild oats.
Cypherjugglers going the highroads. Seekers on the great quest. What
town, good masters? Mummed in names: A. E., eon: Magee, John Eglinton.
East of the sun, west of the moon: Tir na n-og. Booted the twain and
staved.
How many miles to Dublin?
Three score and ten, sir.
Will we be there by candlelight?
--Mr Brandes accepts it, Stephen said, as the first play of the closing period.
--Does he? What does Mr Sidney Lee, or Mr Simon Lazarus as some aver
his name is, say of it?
--Marina, Stephen said, a child of storm, Miranda, a wonder, Perdita, that
which was lost. What was lost is given back to him: his daughter's child.
My dearest wife, Pericles says, was like this maid. Will any man love the
daughter if he has not loved the mother?
--The art of being a grandfather, Mr Best gan murmur. L'art d'–tre
grandp .....
--Will he not see reborn in her, with the memory of his own youth added,
another image?
Do you know what you are talking about? Love, yes. Word known to
all men. Amor vero aliquid alicui bonum vult unde et ea quae
concupiscimus ...
--His own image to a man with that queer thing genius is the standard of
all experience, material and moral. Such an appeal will touch him. The
images of other males of his blood will repel him. He will see in them
grotesque attempts of nature to foretell or to repeat himself.
The benign forehead of the quaker librarian enkindled rosily with
hope.
--I hope Mr Dedalus will work out his theory for the enlightenment of the
public. And we ought to mention another Irish commentator, Mr George
Bernard Shaw. Nor should we forget Mr Frank Harris. His articles on
Shakespeare in the Saturday Review were surely brilliant. Oddly enough
he too draws for us an unhappy relation with the dark lady of the sonnets.
The favoured rival is William Herbert, earl of Pembroke. I own that if the
poet must be rejected such a rejection would seem more in harmony with -
what shall I say? - our notions of what ought not to have been.
Felicitously he ceased and held a meek head among them, auk's egg,
prize of their fray.
He thous and thees her with grave husbandwords. Dost love,
Miriam? Dost love thy man?
--That may be too, Stephen said. There's a saying of Goethe's which Mr
Magee likes to quote. Beware of what you wish for in youth because you
will get it in middle life. Why does he send to one who is a buonaroba, a bay
where all men ride, a maid of honour with a scandalous girlhood, a lordling
to woo for him? He was himself a lord of language and had made himself a
coistrel gentleman and he had written Romeo and Juliet. Why? Belief in
himself has been untimely killed. He was overborne in a cornfield first (a
ryefield, I should say) and he will never be a victor in his own eyes after nor
play victoriously the game of laugh and lie down. Assumed dongiovannism
will not save him. No later undoing will undo the first undoing. The tusk of
the boar has wounded him there where love lies ableeding. If the shrew is
worsted yet there remains to her woman's invisible weapon. There is, I feel
in the words, some goad of the flesh driving him into a new passion, a
darker shadow of the first, darkening even his own understanding of
himself. A like fate awaits him and the two rages commingle in a whirlpool.
They list. And in the porches of their ears I pour.
--The soul has been before stricken mortally, a poison poured in the porch
of a sleeping ear. But those who are done to death in sleep cannot know the
manner of their quell unless their Creator endow their souls with that
knowledge in the life to come. The poisoning and the beast with two backs
that urged it King Hamlet's ghost could not know of were he not endowed
with knowledge by his creator. That is why the speech (his lean unlovely
English) is always turned elsewhere, backward. Ravisher and ravished,
what he would but would not, go with him from Lucrece's bluecircled ivory
globes to Imogen's breast, bare, with its mole cinquespotted. He goes back,
weary of the creation he has piled up to hide him from himself, an old dog
licking an old sore. But, because loss is his gain, he passes on towards
eternity in undiminished personality, untaught by the wisdom he has
written or by the laws he has revealed. His beaver is up. He is a ghost, a
shadow now, the wind by Elsinore's rocks or what you will, the sea's voice,
a voice heard only in the heart of him who is the substance of his shadow,
the son consubstantial with the father.
--Amen! was responded from the doorway.
Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?
Entr'acte.
A ribald face, sullen as a dean's, Buck Mulligan came forward, then
blithe in motley, towards the greeting of their smiles. My telegram.
--You were speaking of the gaseous vertebrate, if I mistake not? he asked of
Stephen.
Primrosevested he greeted gaily with his doffed Panama as with a
bauble.
They make him welcome. Was Du verlachst wirst Du noch dienen.
Brood of mockers: Photius, pseudo Malachi, Johann Most.
He Who Himself begot middler the Holy Ghost and Himself sent
Himself, Agenbuyer, between Himself and others, Who, put upon by His
fiends, stripped and whipped, was nailed like bat to barndoor, starved on
crosstree, Who let Him bury, stood up, harrowed hell, fared into heaven
and there these nineteen hundred years sitteth on the right hand of His
Own Self but yet shall come in the latter day to doom the quick and dead
when all the quick shall be dead already.
Glo-o--ri--a in ex--cel--sis De------o.He lifts his hands. Veils fall. O, flowers! Bells with bells with bells aquiring. --Yes, indeed, the quaker librarian said. A most instructive discussion. Mr Mulligan, I'll be bound, has his theory too of the play and of Shakespeare. All sides of life should be represented. He smiled on all sides equally. Buck Mulligan thought, puzzled. --Shakespeare? he said. I seem to know the name. A flying sunny smile rayed in his loose features. --To be sure, he said, remembering brightly. The chap that writes like Synge. Mr Best turned to him. --Haines missed you, he said. Did you meet him? He'll see you after at the D. B. C. He's gone to Gill's to buy Hyde's Lovesongs of Connacht. --I came through the museum, Buck Mulligan said. Was he here? --The bard's fellowcountrymen, John Eglinton answered, are rather tired perhaps of our brilliancies of theorising. I hear that an actress played Hamlet for the fourhundredandeighth time last night in Dublin. Vining held that the prince was a woman. Has no-one made him out to be an Irishman? Judge Barton, I believe, is searching for some clues. He swears (His Highness not His Lordship) by saint Patrick. --The most brilliant of all is that story of Wilde's, Mr Best said, lifting his brilliant notebook. That Portrait of Mr W. H. where he proves that the sonnets were written by a Willie Hughes, a man all hues. --For Willie Hughes, is it not? the quaker librarian asked. Or Hughie Wills? Mr William Himself. W. H.: who am I? --I mean, for Willie Hughes, Mr Best said, amending his gloss easily. Of course it's all paradox, don't you know, Hughes and hews and hues, the colour, but it's so typical the way he works it out. It's the very essence of Wilde, don't you know. The light touch. His glance touched their faces lightly as he smiled, a blond ephebe. Tame essence of Wilde. You're darned witty. Three drams of usquebaugh you drank with Dan Deasy's ducats. How much did I spend? O, a few shillings. For a plump of pressmen. Humour wet and dry. Wit. You would give your five wits for youth's proud livery he pranks in. Lineaments of gratified desire. There be many mo. Take her for me. In pairing time. Jove, a cool ruttime send them. Yea, turtledove her. Eve. Naked wheatbellied sin. A snake coils her, fang in's kiss. --Do you think it is only a paradox? the quaker librarian was asking. The mocker is never taken seriously when he is most serious. They talked seriously of mocker's seriousness. Buck Mulligan's again heavy face eyed Stephen awhile. Then, his head wagging, he came near, drew a folded telegram from his pocket. His mobile lips read, smiling with new delight. --Telegram! he said. Wonderful inspiration! Telegram! A papal bull! He sat on a corner of the unlit desk, reading aloud joyfully: --The sentimentalist is he who would enjoy without incurring the immense debtorship for a thing done. Signed: Dedalus. Where did you launch it from? The kips? No. College Green. Have you drunk the four quid? The aunt is going to call on your unsubstantial father. Telegram! Malachi Mulligan, The Ship, lower Abbey street. O, you peerless mummer! O, you priestified Kinchite! Joyfully he thrust message and envelope into a pocket but keened in a querulous brogue: --It's what I'm telling you, mister honey, it's queer and sick we were, Haines and myself, the time himself brought it in. 'Twas murmur we did for a gallus potion would rouse a friar, I'm thinking, and he limp with leching. And we one hour and two hours and three hours in Connery's sitting civil waiting for pints apiece. He wailed: --And we to be there, mavrone, and you to be unbeknownst sending us your conglomerations the way we to have our tongues out a yard long like the drouthy clerics do be fainting for a pussful. Stephen laughed. Quickly, warningfully Buck Mulligan bent down. --The tramper Synge is looking for you, he said, to murder you. He heard you pissed on his halldoor in Glasthule. He's out in pampooties to murder you. --Me! Stephen exclaimed. That was your contribution to literature. Buck Mulligan gleefully bent back, laughing to the dark eavesdropping ceiling. --Murder you! he laughed. Harsh gargoyle face that warred against me over our mess of hash of lights in rue Saint Andre des Arts. In words of words for words, palabras. Oisin with Patrick. Faunman he met in Clamart woods, brandishing a winebottle. C'est vendredi saint! Murthering Irish. His image, wandering, he met. I mine. I met a fool i'the forest. --Mr Lyster, an attendant said from the door ajar. --.....in which everyone can find his own. So Mr Justice Madden in his Diary of Master William Silence has found the hunting terms.... Yes? What is it? --There's a gentleman here, sir, the attendant said, coming forward and offering a card. From the Freeman. He wants to see the files of the Kilkenny People for last year. --Certainly, certainly, certainly. Is the gentleman......? He took the eager card, glanced, not saw, laid down unglanced, looked, asked, creaked, asked: --Is he......? O, there! Brisk in a galliard he was off, out. In the daylit corridor he talked with voluble pains of zeal, in duty bound, most fair, most kind, most honest broadbrim. --This gentleman? Freeman's Journal? Kilkenny People? To be sure. Good day, sir. Kilkenny.... We have certainly.... A patient silhouette waited, listening. --All the leading provincial.... Northern Whig, Cork Examiner, Enniscorthy Guardian. Last year. 1903.... Will you please... Evans, conduct this gentleman... If you just follow the atten.... Or, please allow me.... This way... Please, sir.... Voluble, dutiful, he led the way to all the provincial papers, a bowing dark figure following his hasty heels. The door closed. --The sheeny! Buck Mulligan cried. He jumped up and snatched the card. --What's his name? Ikey Moses? Bloom. He rattled on: --Jehovah, collector of prepuces, is no more. I found him over in the museum where I went to hail the foamborn Aphrodite. The Greek mouth that has never been twisted in prayer. Every day we must do homage to her. Life of life, thy lips enkindle. Suddenly he turned to Stephen: --He knows you. He knows your old fellow. O, I fear me, he is Greeker than the Greeks. His pale Galilean eyes were upon her mesial groove. Venus Kallipyge. O, the thunder of those loins! The god pursuing the maiden hid. --We want to hear more, John Eglinton decided with Mr Best's approval. We begin to be interested in Mrs S. Till now we had thought of her, if at all, as a patient Griselda, a Penelope stay-at-home. --Antisthenes, pupil of Gorgias, Stephen said, took the palm of beauty from Kyrios Menelaus' brooddam, Argive Helen, the wooden mare of Troy in whom a score of heroes slept, and handed it to poor Penelope. Twenty years he lived in London and, during part of that time, he drew a salary equal to that of the lord chancellor of Ireland. His life was rich. His art, more than the art of feudalism as Walt Whitman called it, is the art of surfeit. Hot herringpies, green mugs of sack, honeysauces, sugar of roses, marchpane, gooseberried pigeons, ringocandies. Sir Walter Raleigh, when they arrested him, had half a million francs on his back including a pair of fancy stays. The gombeenwoman Eliza Tudor had underlinen enough to vie with her of Sheba. Twenty years he dallied there between conjugial love and its chaste delights and scortatory love and its foul pleasures. You know Manningham's story of the burgher's wife who bade Dick Burbage to her bed after she had seen him in Richard III and how Shakespeare, overhearing, without more ado about nothing, took the cow by the horns and, when Burbage came knocking at the gate, answered from the capon's blankets: William the conqueror came before Richard III. And the gay lakin, mistress Fitton, mount and cry O, and his dainty birdsnies, lady Penelope Rich, a clean quality woman is suited for a player, and the punks of the bankside, a penny a time. Cours la Reine. Encore vingt sous. Nous ferons de petites cochonneries. Minette? Tu veux? --The height of fine society. And sir William Davenant of oxford's mother with her cup of canary for any cockcanary. Buck Mulligan, his pious eyes upturned, prayed: --Blessed Margaret Mary Anycock! --And Harry of six wives' daughter. And other lady friends from neighbour seats as Lawn Tennyson, gentleman poet, sings. But all those twenty years what do you suppose poor Penelope in Stratford was doing behind the diamond panes? Do and do. Thing done. In a rosery of Fetter lane of Gerard, herbalist, he walks, greyedauburn. An azured harebell like her veins. Lids of Juno's eyes, violets. He walks. One life is all. One body. Do. But do. Afar, in a reek of lust and squalor, hands are laid on whiteness. Buck Mulligan rapped John Eglinton's desk sharply. --Whom do you suspect? he challenged. --Say that he is the spurned lover in the sonnets. Once spurned twice spurned. But the court wanton spurned him for a lord, his dearmylove. Love that dare not speak its name. --As an Englishman, you mean, John sturdy Eglinton put in, he loved a lord. Old wall where sudden lizards flash. At Charenton I watched them. --It seems so, Stephen said, when he wants to do for him, and for all other and singular uneared wombs, the holy office an ostler does for the stallion. Maybe, like Socrates, he had a midwife to mother as he had a shrew to wife. But she, the giglot wanton, did not break a bedvow. Two deeds are rank in that ghost's mind: a broken vow and the dullbrained yokel on whom her favour has declined, deceased husband's brother. Sweet Ann, I take it, was hot in the blood. Once a wooer, twice a wooer. Stephen turned boldly in his chair. --The burden of proof is with you not with me, he said frowning. If you deny that in the fifth scene of Hamlet he has branded her with infamy tell me why there is no mention of her during the thirtyfour years between the day she married him and the day she buried him. All those women saw their men down and under: Mary, her goodman John, Ann, her poor dear Willun, when he went and died on her, raging that he was the first to go, Joan, her four brothers, Judith, her husband and all her sons, Susan, her husband too, while Susan's daughter, Elizabeth, to use granddaddy's words, wed her second, having killed her first. O, yes, mention there is. In the years when he was living richly in royal London to pay a debt she had to borrow forty shillings from her father's shepherd. Explain you then. Explain the swansong too wherein he has commended her to posterity. He faced their silence. To whom thus Eglinton: You mean the will. But that has been explained, I believe, by jurists. She was entitled to her widow's dower At common law. His legal knowledge was great Our judges tell us. Him Satan fleers, Mocker: And therefore he left out her name From the first draft but he did not leave out The presents for his granddaughter, for his daughters, For his sister, for his old cronies in Stratford And in London. And therefore when he was urged, As I believe, to name her He left her his Secondbest Bed. Punkt. Leftherhis Secondbest Leftherhis Bestabed Secabest Leftabed.Woa! --Pretty countryfolk had few chattels then, John Eglinton observed, as they have still if our peasant plays are true to type. --He was a rich country gentleman, Stephen said, with a coat of arms and landed estate at Stratford and a house in Ireland yard, a capitalist shareholder, a bill promoter, a tithefarmer. Why did he not leave her his best bed if he wished her to snore away the rest of her nights in peace? --It is clear that there were two beds, a best and a secondbest, Mr Secondbest Best said finely. --Separatio a mensa et a thalamo, bettered Buck Mulligan and was smiled on. --Antiquity mentions famous beds, Second Eglinton puckered, bedsmiling. Let me think. --Antiquity mentions that Stagyrite schoolurchin and bald heathen sage, Stephen said, who when dying in exile frees and endows his slaves, pays tribute to his elders, wills to be laid in earth near the bones of his dead wife and bids his friends be kind to an old mistress (don't forget Nell Gwynn Herpyllis) and let her live in his villa. --Do you mean he died so? Mr Best asked with slight concern. I mean .... --He died dead drunk, Buck Mulligan capped. A quart of ale is a dish for a king. O, I must tell you what Dowden said! --What? asked Besteglinton. William Shakespeare and company, limited. The people's William. For terms apply: E. Dowden, Highfield house .... --Lovely! Buck Mulligan suspired amorously. I asked him what he thought of the charge of pederasty brought against the bard. He lifted his hands and said: All we can say is that life ran very high in those days. Lovely! Catamite. --The sense of beauty leads us astray, said beautifulinsadness Best to ugling Eglinton. Steadfast John replied severe: --The doctor can tell us what those words mean. You cannot eat your cake and have it. Sayest thou so? Will they wrest from us, from me, the palm of beauty? --And the sense of property, Stephen said. He drew Shylock out of his own long pocket. The son of a maltjobber and moneylender he was himself a cornjobber and moneylender, with ten tods of corn hoarded in the famine riots. His borrowers are no doubt those divers of worship mentioned by Chettle Falstaff who reported his uprightness of dealing. He sued a fellowplayer for the price of a few bags of malt and exacted his pound of flesh in interest for every money lent. How else could Aubrey's ostler and callboy get rich quick? All events brought grist to his mill. Shylock chimes with the jewbaiting that followed the hanging and quartering of the queen's leech Lopez, his jew's heart being plucked forth while the sheeny was yet alive: Hamlet and Macbeth with the coming to the throne of a Scotch philosophaster with a turn for witchroasting. The lost armada is his jeer in Love's Labour Lost. His pageants, the histories, sail fullbellied on a tide of Mafeking enthusiasm. Warwickshire jesuits are tried and we have a porter's theory of equivocation. The Sea Venture comes home from Bermudas and the play Renan admired is written with Patsy Caliban, our American cousin. The sugared sonnets follow Sidney's. As for fay Elizabeth, otherwise carrotty Bess, the gross virgin who inspired the Merry Wives of Windsor, let some meinherr from Almany grope his life long for deephid meanings in the depths of the buckbasket. I think you're getting on very nicely. Just mix up a mixture of theolologicophilolological. Mingo, minxi, mictum, mingere. --Prove that he was a jew, John Eglinton dared,'expectantly. Your dean of studies holds he was a holy Roman. Sufflaminandus sum. --He was made in Germany, Stephen replied, as the champion French polisher of Italian scandals. --A myriadminded man, Mr Best reminded. Coleridge called him myriadminded. Amplius. In societate humana hoe est maxime necessarium ut sit amicitia inter multos. --Saint Thomas, Stephen began --Ora pro nobis, Monk Mulligan groaned, sinking to a chair. There he keened a wailing rune: --Pogue mahone! Acushla machree! It's destroyed we are from this day! It's destroyed we are surely! All smiled their smiles. --Saint Thomas, Stephen smiling said, whose gorbellied works I enjoy reading in the original, writing of incest from a standpoint different from that of the new Viennese school Mr Magee spoke of, likens it in his wise and curious way to an avarice of the emotions. He means that the love so given to one near in blood is covetously withheld from some stranger who, it may be, hungers for it. Jews, whom christians tax with avarice, are of all races the most given to intermarriage. Accusations are made in anger. The christian laws which built up the hoards of the jews (for whom, as for the lollards, storm was shelter) bound their affections too with hoops of steel. Whether these be sins or virtues old Nobodaddy will tell us at doomsday leet. But a man who holds so tightly to what he calls his rights over what he calls his debts will hold tightly also to what he calls his rights over her whom he calls his wife. No sir smile neighbour shall covet his ox or his wife or his manservant or his maidservant or his jackass. --Or his jennyass, Buck Mulligan antiphoned. --Gentle Will is being roughly handled, gentle Mr Best said gently. --Which will? gagged sweetly Buck Mulligan. We are getting mixed. --The will to live, John Eglinton philosophised, for poor Ann, Will's widow, is the will to die. --Requiescat! Stephen prayed.
What of all the will to do?
It has vanished long ago ...
--She lies laid out in stark stiffness in that secondbest bed, the mobled
queen, even though you prove that a bed in those days was as rare as a
motorcar is now and that its carvings were the wonder of seven parishes. In
old age she takes up with gospellers (one stayed with her at New Place and
drank a quart of sack the town council paid for but in which bed he slept it
skills not to ask) and heard she had a soul. She read or had read to her his
chapbooks preferring them to the Merry Wives and, loosing her nightly
waters on the jordan, she thought over Hooks and Eyes for Believers'
Breeches and The Most Spiritual Snuffbox to Make the Most Devout Souls
Sneeze. Venus has twisted her lips in prayer. Agenbite of inwit: remorse of
conscience. It is an age of exhausted whoredom groping for its god.
--History shows that to be true, inquit Eglintonus Chronolologos. The ages
succeed one another. But we have it on high authority that a man's worst
enemies shall be those of his own house and family. I feel that Russell is
right. What do we care for his wife or father? I should say that only family
poets have family lives. Falstaff was not a family man. I feel that the fat
knight is his supreme creation.
Lean, he lay back. Shy, deny thy kindred, the unco guid. Shy, supping
with the godless, he sneaks the cup. A sire in Ultonian Antrim bade it him.
Visits him here on quarter days. Mr Magee, sir, there's a gentleman to see
you. Me? Says he's your father, sir. Give me my Wordsworth. Enter Magee
Mor Matthew, a rugged rough rugheaded kern, in strossers with a buttoned
codpiece, his nether stocks bemired with clauber of ten forests, a wand of
wilding in his hand.
Your own? He knows your old fellow. The widower.
Hurrying to her squalid deathlair from gay Paris on the quayside I
touched his hand. The voice, new warmth, speaking. Dr Bob Kenny is
attending her. The eyes that wish me well. But do not know me.
--A father, Stephen said, battling against hopelessness, is a necessary evil.
He wrote the play in the months that followed his father's death. If you
hold that he, a greying man with two marriageable daughters, with
thirtyfive years of life, nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, with fifty of
experience, is the beardless undergraduate from Wittenberg then you must
hold that his seventyyear old mother is the lustful queen. No. The corpse of
John Shakespeare does not walk the night. From hour to hour it rots and
rots. He rests, disarmed of fatherhood, having devised that mystical estate
upon his son. Boccaccio's Calandrino was the first and last man who felt
himself with child. Fatherhood, in the sense of conscious begetting, is
unknown to man. It is a mystical estate, an apostolic succession, from only
begetter to only begotten. On that mystery and not on the madonna which
the cunning Italian intellect flung to the mob of Europe the church is
founded and founded irremovably because founded, like the world, macro
and microcosm, upon the void. Upon incertitude, upon unlikelihood. Amor
matris, subjective and objective genitive, may be the only true thing in life.
Paternity may be a legal fiction. Who is the father of any son that any son
should love him or he any son?
What the hell are you driving at?
I know. Shut up. Blast you. I have reasons.
Amplius. Adhuc. Iterum. Postea.
Are you condemned to do this?
--They are sundered by a bodily shame so steadfast that the criminal annals
of the world, stained with all other incests and bestialities, hardly record its
breach. Sons with mothers, sires with daughters, lesbic sisters, loves that
dare not speak their name, nephews with grandmothers, jailbirds with
keyholes, queens with prize bulls. The son unborn mars beauty: born, he
brings pain, divides affection, increases care. He is a new male: his growth
is his father's decline, his youth his father's envy, his friend his father's
enemy.
In rue Monsieur le Prince I thought it.
--What links them in nature? An instant of blind rut.
Am I a father? If I were? Shrunken uncertain hand.
--Sabellius,the African,subtlest heresiarch of all the beasts of the field, held
that the Father was Himself His Own Son. The bulldog of Aquin, with
whom no word shall be impossible, refutes him. Well: if the father who has
not a son be not a father can the son who has not a father be a son? When
Rutlandbaconsouthamptonshakespeare or another poet of the same name
in the comedy of errors wrote Hamlet he was not the father of his own son
merely but, being no more a son, he was and felt himself the father of all his
race, the father of his own grandfather, the father of his unborn grandson
who, by the same token, never was born, for nature, as Mr Magee understands her, abhors perfection.
Eglintoneyes, quick with pleasure, looked up shybrightly. Gladly
glancing, a merry puritan, through the twisted eglantine.
Flatter. Rarely. But flatter.
--Himself his own father, Sonmulligan told himself. Wait. I am big with
child. I have an unborn child in my brain. Pallas Athena! A play! The
play's the thing! Let me parturiate!
He clasped his paunchbrow with both birthaiding hands.
--As for his family, Stephen said, his mother's name lives in the forest of
Arden. Her death brought from him the scene with Volumnia in
Coriolanus. His boyson's death is the deathscene of young Arthur in King
John. Hamlet, the black prince, is Hamnet Shakespeare. Who the girls in
The Tempest, in Pericles, in Winter's Tale are we know. Who Cleopatra,
fleshpot of Egypt, and Cressid and Venus are we may guess. But there is
another member of his family who is recorded.
--The plot thickens, John Eglinton said.
The quaker librarian, quaking, tiptoed in, quake, his mask, quake,
with haste, quake, quack.
Door closed. Cell. Day.
They list. Three. They. I you he they.
Come, mess.
STEPHEN
He had three brothers, Gilbert, Edmund, Richard. Gilbert in his old age
told some cavaliers he got a pass for nowt from Maister Gatherer one time
mass he did and he seen his brud Maister Wull the playwriter up in Lunnon
in a wrastling play wud a man on's back. The playhouse sausage filled
Gilbert's soul. He is nowhere: but an Edmund and a Richard are recorded
in the works of sweet William.
MAGEEGLINJOHN
Names! What's in a name?
BEST
That is my name, Richard, don't you know. I hope you are going to say a
good word for Richard, don't you know, for my sake.
(laughter)
BUCKMULLIGAN
(piano, diminuendo)
Then outspoke medical Dick
To his comrade medical Davy ...
STEPHEN
In his trinity of black Wills, the villain shakebags, Iago, Richard
Crookback, Edmund in King Lear, two bear the wicked uncles' names.
Nay, that last play was written or being written while his brother Edmund
lay dying in Southwark.
BEST
I hope Edmund is going to catch it. I don't want Richard, my name.....
(laughter)
QUAKERLYSTER
(a tempo) But he that filches from me my good name .....
STEPHEN
(stringendo) He has hidden his own name, a fair name, William, in the
plays, a super here, a clown there, as a painter of old Italy set his face in a
dark corner of his canvas. He has revealed it in the sonnets where there is
Will in overplus. Like John o'Gaunt his name is dear to him, as dear as the
coat and crest he toadied for, on a bend sable a spear or steeled argent,
honorificabilitudinitatibus, dearer than his glory of greatest shakescene in
the country. What's in a name? That is what we ask ourselves in childhood
when we write the name that we are told is ours. A star, a daystar, a
firedrake, rose at his birth. It shone by day in the heavens alone, brighter
than Venus in the night, and by night it shone over delta in Cassiopeia, the
recumbent constellation which is the signature of his initial among the stars.
His eyes watched it, lowlying on the horizon, eastward of the bear, as he
walked by the slumberous summer fields at midnight returning from
Shottery and from her arms.
Both satisfied. I too.
Don't tell them he was nine years old when it was quenched.
And from her arms.
Wait to be wooed and won. Ay, meacock. Who will woo you?
Read the skies. Autontimorumenos. Bous Stephanoumenos. Where's
your configuration? Stephen, Stephen, cut the bread even. S. D: sua donna.
Gia: di lui. Gelindo risolve di non amare S. D.
--What is that, Mr Dedalus? the quaker librarian asked. Was it a celestial
phenomenon?
--A star by night, Stephen said. A pillar of the cloud by day.
What more's to speak?
Stephen looked on his hat, his stick, his boots.
Stephanos, my crown. My sword. His boots are spoiling the shape of
my feet. Buy a pair. Holes in my socks. Handkerchief too.
--You make good use of the name, John Eglinton allowed. Your own name
is strange enough. I suppose it explains your fantastical humour.
Me, Magee and Mulligan.
Fabulous artificer. The hawklike man. You flew. Whereto?
Newhaven-Dieppe, steerage passenger. Paris and back. Lapwing. Icarus.
Pater, ait. Seabedabbled, fallen, weltering. Lapwing you are. Lapwing be.
Mr Best eagerquietly lifted his book to say:
--That's very interesting because that brother motive, don't you know, we
find also in the old Irish myths. Just what you say. The three brothers
Shakespeare. In Grimm too, don't you know, the fairytales. The third
brother that always marries the sleeping beauty and wins the best prize.
Best of Best brothers. Good, better, best.
The quaker librarian springhalted near.
--I should like to know, he said, which brother you I understand you to
suggest there was misconduct with one of the brothers But perhaps I am
anticipating?
He caught himself in the act: looked at all: refrained.
An attendant from the doorway called:
--Mr Lyster! Father Dineen wants ...
--O, Father Dineen! Directly.
Swiftly rectly creaking rectly rectly he was rectly gone.
John Eglinton touched the foil.
--Come, he said. Let us hear what you have to say of Richard and
Edmund. You kept them for the last, didn't you?
--In asking you to remember those two noble kinsmen nuncle Richie and
nuncle Edmund, Stephen answered, I feel I am asking too much perhaps. A
brother is as easily forgotten as an umbrella.
Lapwing.
Where is your brother? Apothecaries' hall. My whetstone. Him, then
Cranly, Mulligan: now these. Speech, speech. But act. Act speech. They
mock to try you. Act. Be acted on.
Lapwing.
I am tired of my voice, the voice of Esau. My kingdom for a drink.
On.
--You will say those names were already in the chronicles from which he
took the stuff of his plays. Why did he take them rather than others?
Richard, a whoreson crookback, misbegotten, makes love to a widowed
Ann (what's in a name?), woos and wins her, a whoreson merry widow.
Richard the conqueror, third brother, came after William the conquered.
The other four acts of that play hang limply from that first. Of all his kings
Richard is the only king unshielded by Shakespeare's reverence, the angel
of the world. Why is the underplot of King Lear in which Edmund figures
lifted out of Sidney's Arcadia and spatchcocked on to a Celtic legend older
than history?
--That was Will's way, John Eglinton defended. We should not now
combine a Norse saga with an excerpt from a novel by George Meredith.
Que voulez-vous? Moore would say. He puts Bohemia on the seacoast and
makes Ulysses quote Aristotle.
--Why? Stephen answered himself. Because the theme of the false or the
usurping or the adulterous brother or all three in one is to Shakespeare,
what the poor are not, always with him. The note of banishment,
banishment from the heart, banishment from home, sounds uninterruptedly
from The Two Gentlemen of Verona onward till Prospero breaks his staff,
buries it certain fathoms in the earth and drowns his book. It doubles itself
in the middle of his life, reflects itself in another, repeats itself, protasis,
epitasis, catastasis, catastrophe. It repeats itself again when he is near the
grave, when his married daughter Susan, chip of the old block, is accused
of adultery. But it was the original sin that darkened his understanding,
weakened his will and left in him a strong inclination to evil. The words are
those of my lords bishops of Maynooth. An original sin and, like original
sin, committed by another in whose sin he too has sinned. It is between the
lines of his last written words, it is petrified on his tombstone under which
her four bones are not to be laid. Age has not withered it. Beauty and peace
have not done it away. It is in infinite variety everywhere in the world he
has created, in Much Ado about Nothing, twice in As You Like It, in The
Tempest, in Hamlet, in Measure for Measure - and in all the other plays
which I have not read.
He laughed to free his mind from his mind's bondage.
Judge Eglinton summed up.
--The truth is midway, he affirmed. He is the ghost and the prince. He is all
in all.
--He is, Stephen said. The boy of act one is the mature man of act five. All
in all. In Cymbeline, in Othello he is bawd and cuckold. He acts and is
acted on. Lover of an ideal or a perversion, like Jose he kills the real
Carmen. His unremitting intellect is the hornmad Iago ceaselessly willing
that the moor in him shall suffer.
--Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuck Mulligan clucked lewdly. O word of fear!
Dark dome received, reverbed.
--And what a character is Iago! undaunted John Eglinton exclaimed.
When all is said Dumas Fils (or is it Dumas pSre?) is right. After God
Shakespeare has created most.
--Man delights him not nor woman neither, Stephen said. He returns after a life of absence to that spot of earth where he was born, where he has
always been, man and boy, a silent witness and there, his journey of life
ended, he plants his mulberrytree in the earth. Then dies. The motion is
ended. Gravediggers bury Hamlet pSre and Hamlet fils. A king and a
prince at last in death, with incidental music. And, what though murdered
and betrayed, bewept by all frail tender hearts for, Dane or Dubliner,
sorrow for the dead is the only husband from whom they refuse to be
divorced. If you like the epilogue look long on it: prosperous Prospero, the
good man rewarded, Lizzie, grandpa's lump of love, and nuncle Richie, the
bad man taken off by poetic justice to the place where the bad niggers go.
Strong curtain. He found in the world without as actual what was in his
world within as possible. Maeterlinck says: If Socrates leave his house today
he will find the sage seated on his doorstep. If Judas go forth tonight it is to
Judas his steps will tend. Every life is many days, day after day. We walk
through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men,
wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves. The
playwright who wrote the folio of this world and wrote it badly (He gave us
light first and the sun two days later), the lord of things as they are whom
the most Roman of catholics call dio boia, hangman god, is doubtless all in
all in all of us, ostler and butcher, and would be bawd and cuckold too but that in the economy of heaven, foretold by Hamlet, there are no more
marriages, glorified man, an androgynous angel, being a wife unto himself.
--Eureka! Buck Mulligan cried. Eureka!
Suddenly happied he jumped up and reached in a stride John
Eglinton's desk.
--May I? he said. The Lord has spoken to Malachi.
He began to scribble on a slip of paper.
Take some slips from the counter going out.
--Those who are married, Mr Best, douce herald, said, all save one, shall
live. The rest shall keep as they are.
He laughed, unmarried, at Eglinton Johannes, of arts a bachelor.
Unwed, unfancied, ware of wiles, they fingerponder nightly each his
variorum edition of The Taming of the Shrew.
--You are a delusion, said roundly John Eglinton to Stephen. You have
brought us all this way to show us a French triangle. Do you believe your
own theory?
--No, Stephen said promptly.
--Are you going to write it? Mr Best asked. You ought to make it a
dialogue, don't you know, like the Platonic dialogues Wilde wrote.
John Eclecticon doubly smiled.
--Well, in that case, he said, I don't see why you should expect payment for
it since you don't believe it yourself. Dowden believes there is some mystery
in Hamlet but will say no more. Herr Bleibtreu, the man Piper met in
Berlin, who is working up that Rutland theory, believes that the secret is
hidden in the Stratford monument. He is going to visit the present duke,
Piper says, and prove to him that his ancestor wrote the plays. It will come
as a surprise to his grace. But he believes his theory.
I believe, O Lord, help my unbelief. That is, help me to believe or help
me to unbelieve? Who helps to believe? Egomen. Who to unbelieve? Other
chap.
--You are the only contributor to Dana who asks for pieces of silver. Then
I don't know about the next number. Fred Ryan wants space for an article
on economics.
Fraidrine. Two pieces of silver he lent me. Tide you over. Economics.
--For a guinea, Stephen said, you can publish this interview.
Buck Mulligan stood up from his laughing scribbling, laughing: and
then gravely said, honeying malice:
--I called upon the bard Kinch at his summer residence in upper
Mecklenburgh street and found him deep in the study of the Summa contra
Gentiles in the company of two gonorrheal ladies, Fresh Nelly and Rosalie,
the coalquay whore.
He broke away.
--Come, Kinch. Come, wandering Aengus of the birds.
Come, Kinch. You have eaten all we left. Ay. I will serve you your orts
and offals.
Stephen rose.
Life is many days. This will end.
--We shall see you tonight, John Eglinton said. Notre ami Moore says
Malachi Mulligan must be there.
Buck Mulligan flaunted his slip and panama.
--Monsieur Moore, he said, lecturer on French letters to the youth of
Ireland. I'll be there. Come, Kinch, the bards must drink. Can you walk
straight?
Laughing, he....
Swill till eleven. Irish nights entertainment.
Lubber ....
Stephen followed a lubber...
One day in the national library we had a discussion. Shakes. After.
His lub back: I followed. I gall his kibe.
Stephen, greeting, then all amort, followed a lubber jester, a
wellkempt head, newbarbered, out of the vaulted cell into a shattering
daylight of no thought.
What have I learned? Of them? Of me?
Walk like Haines now.
The constant readers' room. In the readers' book Cashel Boyle
O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell parafes his polysyllables. Item: was
Hamlet mad? The quaker's pate godlily with a priesteen in booktalk.
--O please do, sir...I shall be most pleased
Amused Buck Mulligan mused in pleasant murmur with himself,
selfnodding:
--A pleased bottom.
The turnstile.
Is that...? Blueribboned hat...? Idly writing...? What? .... Looked...?
The curving balustrade: smoothsliding Mincius.
Puck Mulligan, panamahelmeted, went step by step, iambing, trolling:
--John Eglinton, my jo, John,
Why won't you wed a wife?
He spluttered to the air:
--O, the chinless Chinaman! Chin Chon Eg Lin Ton. We went over to their
playbox, Haines and I, the plumbers' hall. Our players are creating a new
art for Europe like the Greeks or M. Maeterlinck. Abbey Theatre! I smell
the pubic sweat of monks.
He spat blank.
Forgot: any more than he forgot the whipping lousy Lucy gave him.
And left the femme de trente ans. And why no other children born? And his
first child a girl?
Afterwit. Go back.
The dour recluse still there (he has his cake) and the douce youngling,
minion of pleasure, Phedo's toyable fair hair.
Eh ... I just eh .... wanted ... I forgot ... eh ...
--Longworth and M'Curdy Atkinson were there ...
Puck Mulligan footed featly, trilling:
--I hardly hear the purlieu cry Or a Tommy talk as I pass one by Before my thoughts begin to run On F. M'Curdy Atkinson, The same that had the wooden leg And that filibustering filibeg That never dared to slake his drouth, Magee that had the chinless mouth. Being afraid to marry on earth They masturbated for all they were worth.Jest on. Know thyself. Halted, below me, a quizzer looks at me. I halt. --Mournful mummer, Buck Mulligan moaned. Synge has left off wearing black to be like nature. Only crows, priests and English coal are black. A laugh tripped over his lips. --Longworth is awfully sick, he said, after what you wrote about that old hake Gregory. O you inquisitional drunken jewjesuit! She gets you a job on the paper and then you go and slate her drivel to Jaysus. Couldn't you do the Yeats touch? He went on and down, mopping, chanting with waving graceful arms: --The most beautiful book that has come out of our country in my time. One thinks of Homer. He stopped at the stairfoot. --I have conceived a play for the mummers, he said solemnly. The pillared Moorish hall, shadows entwined. Gone the nine men's morrice with caps of indices. In sweetly varying voices Buck Mulligan read his tablet:
--Everyman His Own Wife
or
A Honeymoon in the Hand
(a national immorality in three orgasms)
by
Ballocky Mulligan
He turned a happy patch's smirk to Stephen, saying:
--The disguise, I fear, is thin. But listen.
He read, marcato:
--Characters: TODY TOSTOFF (a ruined Pole) CRAB (a bushranger) MEDICAL DICK and (two birds with one stone) MEDICAL DAVY MOTHER GROGAN (a watercarrier) FRESH NELLY and ROSALIE (the coalquay whore).He laughed, lolling a to and fro head, walking on, followed by Stephen: and mirthfully he told the shadows, souls of men: --O, the night in the Camden hall when the daughters of Erin had to lift their skirts to step over you as you lay in your mulberrycoloured, multicoloured, multitudinous vomit! --The most innocent son of Erin, Stephen said, for whom they ever lifted them. About to pass through the doorway, feeling one behind, he stood aside. Part. The moment is now. Where then? If Socrates leave his house today, if Judas go forth tonight. Why? That lies in space which I in time must come to, ineluctably. My will: his will that fronts me. Seas between. A man passed out between them, bowing, greeting. --Good day again, Buck Mulligan said. The portico. Here I watched the birds for augury. Aengus of the birds. They go, they come. Last night I flew. Easily flew. Men wondered. Street of harlots after. A creamfruit melon he held to me. In. You will see. --The wandering jew, Buck Mulligan whispered with clown's awe. Did you see his eye? He looked upon you to lust after you. I fear thee, ancient mariner. O, Kinch, thou art in peril. Get thee a breechpad. Manner of Oxenford. Day. Wheelbarrow sun over arch of bridge. A dark back went before them, step of a pard, down, out by the gateway, under portcullis barbs. They followed. Offend me still. Speak on. Kind air defined the coigns of houses in Kildare street. No birds. Frail from the housetops two plumes of smoke ascended, pluming, and in a flaw of softness softly were blown. Cease to strive. Peace of the druid priests of Cymbeline: hierophantic: from wide earth an altar.
Laud we the gods
And let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils
From our bless'd altars.
At the siege of Ross did my father fall.
A cavalcade in easy trot along Pembroke quay passed, outriders
leaping, leaping in their, in their saddles. Frockcoats. Cream sunshades.
Mr Kernan hurried forward, blowing pursily.
His Excellency! Too bad! Just missed that by a hair. Damn it! What a
pity!
* * *
Stephen Dedalus watched through the webbed window the lapidary's
fingers prove a timedulled chain. Dust webbed the window and the
showtrays. Dust darkened the toiling fingers with their vulture nails. Dust
slept on dull coils of bronze and silver, lozenges of cinnabar, on rubies,
leprous and winedark stones.
Born all in the dark wormy earth, cold specks of fire, evil, lights
shining in the darkness. Where fallen archangels flung the stars of their
brows. Muddy swinesnouts, hands, root and root, gripe and wrest them.
She dances in a foul gloom where gum bums with garlic. A
sailorman, rustbearded, sips from a beaker rum and eyes her. A long and
seafed silent rut. She dances, capers, wagging her sowish haunches and her
hips, on her gross belly flapping a ruby egg.
Old Russell with a smeared shammy rag burnished again his gem,
turned it and held it at the point of his Moses' beard. Grandfather ape
gloating on a stolen hoard.
And you who wrest old images from the burial earth? The brainsick
words of sophists: Antisthenes. A lore of drugs. Orient and immortal wheat
standing from everlasting to everlasting.
Two old women fresh from their whiff of the briny trudged through
Irishtown along London bridge road, one with a sanded tired umbrella, one
with a midwife's bag in which eleven cockles rolled.
The whirr of flapping leathern bands and hum of dynamos from the
powerhouse urged Stephen to be on. Beingless beings. Stop! Throb always
without you and the throb always within. Your heart you sing of. I between
them. Where? Between two roaring worlds where they swirl, I. Shatter
them, one and both. But stun myself too in the blow. Shatter me you who
can. Bawd and butcher were the words. I say! Not yet awhile. A look
around.
Yes, quite true. Very large and wonderful and keeps famous time. You
say right, sir. A Monday morning. 'Twas so, indeed.
Stephen went down Bedford row, the handle of the ash clacking
against his shoulderblade. In Clohissey's window a faded 186O print of
Heenan boxing Sayers held his eye. Staring backers with square hats stood
round the roped prizering. The heavyweights in tight loincloths proposed
gently each to other his bulbous fists. And they are throbbing: heroes'
hearts.
He turned and halted by the slanted bookcart.
--Twopence each, the huckster said. Four for sixpence.
Tattered pages. The Irish Beekeeper. Life and Miracles of the Cure' of
Ars. Pocket Guide to Killarney.
I might find here one of my pawned schoolprizes. Stephano Dedalo,
alumno optimo, palmam ferenti.
Father Conmee, having read his little hours, walked through the
hamlet of Donnycarney, murmuring vespers.
Binding too good probably. What is this? Eighth and ninth book of
Moses. Secret of all secrets. Seal of King David. Thumbed pages: read and
read. Who has passed here before me? How to soften chapped hands.
Recipe for white wine vinegar. How to win a woman's love. For me this.
Say the following talisman three times with hands folded:
--Se el yilo nebrakada femininum! Amor me solo! Sanktus! Amen.
Who wrote this? Charms and invocations of the most blessed abbot
Peter Salanka to all true believers divulged. As good as any other abbot's
charms, as mumbling Joachim's. Down, baldynoddle, or we'll wool your
wool.
--What are you doing here, Stephen?
Dilly's high shoulders and shabby dress.
Shut the book quick. Don't let see.
--What are you doing? Stephen said.
A Stuart face of nonesuch Charles, lank locks falling at its sides. It
glowed as she crouched feeding the fire with broken boots. I told her of
Paris. Late lieabed under a quilt of old overcoats, fingering a pinchbeck
bracelet, Dan Kelly's token. Nebrakada femininum.
--What have you there? Stephen asked.
--I bought it from the other cart for a penny, Dilly said, laughing
nervously. Is it any good?
My eyes they say she has. Do others see me so? Quick, far and
daring. Shadow of my mind.
He took the coverless book from her hand. Chardenal's French
primer.
--What did you buy that for? he asked. To learn French?
She nodded, reddening and closing tight her lips.
Show no surprise. Quite natural.
--Here, Stephen said. It's all right. Mind Maggy doesn't pawn it on you. I
suppose all my books are gone.
--Some, Dilly said. We had to.
She is drowning. Agenbite. Save her. Agenbite. All against us. She will
drown me with her, eyes and hair. Lank coils of seaweed hair around me,
my heart, my soul. Salt green death.
We.
Agenbite of inwit. Inwit's agenbite.
Misery! Misery!
* * *
--Hello, Simon, Father Cowley said. How are things?
--Hello, Bob, old man, Mr Dedalus answered, stopping.
They clasped hands loudly outside Reddy and Daughter's. Father
Cowley brushed his moustache often downward with a scooping hand.
--What's the best news? Mr Dedalus said.
--Why then not much, Father Cowley said. I'm barricaded up, Simon, with
two men prowling around the house trying to effect an entrance.
--Jolly, Mr Dedalus said. Who is it?
--O, Father Cowley said. A certain gombeen man of our acquaintance.
--With a broken back, is it? Mr Dedalus asked.
--The same, Simon, Father Cowley answered. Reuben of that ilk. I'm just
waiting for Ben Dollard. He's going to say a word to long John to get him
to take those two men off. All I want is a little time.
He looked with vague hope up and down the quay, a big apple
bulging in his neck.
--I know, Mr Dedalus said, nodding. Poor old bockedy Ben! He's always
doing a good turn for someone. Hold hard!
He put on his glasses and gazed towards the metal bridge an instant.
--Here he is, by God, he said, arse and pockets.
Ben Dollard's loose blue cutaway and square hat above large slops
crossed the quay in full gait from the metal bridge. He came towards them
at an amble, scratching actively behind his coattails.
As he came near Mr Dedalus greeted:
--Hold that fellow with the bad trousers.
--Hold him now, Ben Dollard said.
Mr Dedalus eyed with cold wandering scorn various points of Ben
Dollard's figure. Then, turning to Father Cowley with a nod, he muttered
sneeringly:
--That's a pretty garment, isn't it, for a summer's day?
--Why, God eternally curse your soul, Ben Dollard growled furiously, I
threw out more clothes in my time than you ever saw.
He stood beside them beaming, on them first and on his roomy
clothes from points of which Mr Dedalus flicked fluff, saying:
--They were made for a man in his health, Ben, anyhow.
--Bad luck to the jewman that made them, Ben Dollard said. Thanks be to
God he's not paid yet.
--And how is that basso profondo, Benjamin? Father Cowley asked.
Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell, murmuring,
glassyeyed, strode past the Kildare street club.
Ben Dollard frowned and, making suddenly a chanter's mouth, gave
forth a deep note.
--Aw! he said.
--That's the style, Mr Dedalus said, nodding to its drone.
--What about that? Ben Dollard said. Not too dusty? What?
He turned to both.
--That'll do, Father Cowley said, nodding also.
The reverend Hugh C. Love walked from the old chapterhouse of
saint Mary's abbey past James and Charles Kennedy's, rectifiers, attended
by Geraldines tall and personable, towards the Tholsel beyond the ford of
hurdles.
Ben Dollard with a heavy list towards the shopfronts led them
forward, his joyful fingers in the air.
--Come along with me to the subsheriff's office, he said. I want to show you
the new beauty Rock has for a bailiff. He's a cross between Lobengula and
Lynchehaun. He's well worth seeing, mind you. Come along. I saw John
Henry Menton casually in the Bodega just now and it will cost me a fall if I
don't ... Wait awhile ..... We're on the right lay, Bob, believe you me.
--For a few days tell him, Father Cowley said anxiously.
Ben Dollard halted and stared, his loud orifice open, a dangling
button of his coat wagging brightbacked from its thread as he wiped away
the heavy shraums that clogged his eyes to hear aright.
--What few days? he boomed. Hasn't your landlord distrained for rent?
--He has, Father Cowley said.
--Then our friend's writ is not worth the paper it's printed on, Ben Dollard
said. The landlord has the prior claim. I gave him all the particulars. 29
Windsor avenue. Love is the name?
--That's right, Father Cowley said. The reverend Mr Love. He's a minister
in the country somewhere. But are you sure of that?
--You can tell Barabbas from me, Ben Dollard said, that he can put that
writ where Jacko put the nuts.
He led Father Cowley boldly forward, linked to his bulk.
--Filberts I believe they were, Mr Dedalus said, as he dropped his glasses on
his coatfront, following them.
* * *
--The youngster will be all right, Martin Cunningham said, as they passed
out of the Castleyard gate.
The policeman touched his forehead.
--God bless you, Martin Cunningham said, cheerily.
He signed to the waiting jarvey who chucked at the reins and set on
towards Lord Edward street.
Bronze by gold, Miss Kennedy's head by Miss Douce's head,
appeared above the crossblind of the Ormond hotel.
--Yes, Martin Cunningham said, fingering his beard. I wrote to Father
Conmee and laid the whole case before him.
--You could try our friend, Mr Power suggested backward.
--Boyd? Martin Cunningham said shortly. Touch me not.
John Wyse Nolan, lagging behind, reading the list, came after them
quickly down Cork hill.
On the steps of the City hall Councillor Nannetti, descending, hailed
Alderman Cowley and Councillor Abraham Lyon ascending.
The castle car wheeled empty into upper Exchange street.
--Look here, Martin, John Wyse Nolan said, overtaking them at the Mail
office. I see Bloom put his name down for five shillings.
--Quite right, Martin Cunningham said, taking the list. And put down the
five shillings too.
--Without a second word either, Mr Power said.
--Strange but true, Martin Cunningham added.
John Wyse Nolan opened wide eyes.
--I'll say there is much kindness in the jew, he quoted, elegantly.
They went down Parliament street.
--There's Jimmy Henry, Mr Power said, just heading for Kavanagh's.
--Righto, Martin Cunningham said. Here goes.
Outside la maison Claire Blazes Boylan waylaid Jack Mooney's
brother-in-law, humpy, tight, making for the liberties.
John Wyse Nolan fell back with Mr Power, while Martin
Cunningham took the elbow of a dapper little man in a shower of hail suit,
who walked uncertainly, with hasty steps past Micky Anderson's watches.
--The assistant town clerk's corns are giving him some trouble, John Wyse
Nolan told Mr Power.
They followed round the corner towards James Kavanagh's
winerooms. The empty castle car fronted them at rest in Essex gate. Martin
Cunningham, speaking always, showed often the list at which Jimmy Henry
did not glance.
--And long John Fanning is here too, John Wyse Nolan said, as large as
life.
The tall form of long John Fanning filled the doorway where he
stood.
--Good day, Mr Subsheriff, Martin Cunningham said, as all halted and
greeted.
Long John Fanning made no way for them. He removed his large
Henry Clay decisively and his large fierce eyes scowled intelligently over all
their faces.
--Are the conscript fathers pursuing their peaceful deliberations? he said
with rich acrid utterance to the assistant town clerk.
Hell open to christians they were having, Jimmy Henry said pettishly,
about their damned Irish language. Where was the marshal, he wanted to
know, to keep order in the council chamber. And old Barlow the
macebearer laid up with asthma, no mace on the table, nothing in order, no
quorum even, and Hutchinson, the lord mayor, in Llandudno and little
Lorcan Sherlock doing locum tenens for him. Damned Irish language,
language of our forefathers.
Long John Fanning blew a plume of smoke from his lips.
Martin Cunningham spoke by turns, twirling the peak of his beard, to
the assistant town clerk and the subsheriff, while John Wyse Nolan held his
peace.
--What Dignam was that? long John Fanning asked.
Jimmy Henry made a grimace and lifted his left foot.
--O, my corns! he said plaintively. Come upstairs for goodness' sake till I
sit down somewhere. Uff! Ooo! Mind!
Testily he made room for himself beside long John Fanning's flank
and passed in and up the stairs.
--Come on up, Martin Cunningham said to the subsheriff. I don't think
you knew him or perhaps you did, though.
With John Wyse Nolan Mr Power followed them in.
--Decent little soul he was, Mr Power said to the stalwart back of long John
Fanning ascending towards long John Fanning in the mirror.
--Rather lowsized. Dignam of Menton's office that was, Martin
Cunningham said.
Long John Fanning could not remember him.
Clatter of horsehoofs sounded from the air.
--What's that? Martin Cunningham said.
All turned where they stood. John Wyse Nolan came down again.
From the cool shadow of the doorway he saw the horses pass Parliament
street, harness and glossy pasterns in sunlight shimmering. Gaily they went
past before his cool unfriendly eyes, not quickly. In saddles of the leaders,
leaping leaders, rode outriders.
--What was it? Martin Cunningham asked, as they went on up the
staircase.
--The lord lieutenantgeneral and general governor of Ireland, John Wyse
Nolan answered from the stairfoot.
* * *
As they trod across the thick carpet Buck Mulligan whispered behind
his Panama to Haines:
--Parnell's brother. There in the corner.
They chose a small table near the window, opposite a longfaced man
whose beard and gaze hung intently down on a chessboard.
--Is that he? Haines asked, twisting round in his seat.
--Yes, Mulligan said. That's John Howard, his brother, our city marshal.
John Howard Parnell translated a white bishop quietly and his grey
claw went up again to his forehead whereat it rested. An instant after, under
its screen, his eyes looked quickly, ghostbright, at his foe and fell once more
upon a working corner.
--I'll take a m’lange, Haines said to the waitress.
--Two m’langes, Buck Mulligan said. And bring us some scones and butter
and some cakes as well.
When she had gone he said, laughing:
--We call it D. B. C. because they have damn bad cakes. O, but you missed
Dedalus on Hamlet.
Haines opened his newbought book.
--I'm sorry, he said. Shakespeare is the happy huntingground of all minds
that have lost their balance.
The onelegged sailor growled at the area of 14 Nelson street:
--England expects .....
Buck Mulligan's primrose waistcoat shook gaily to his laughter.
--You should see him, he said, when his body loses its balance. Wandering
Aengus I call him.
--I am sure he has an id’e fixe, Haines said, pinching his chin thoughtfully
with thumb and forefinger. Now I am speculating what it would be likely to
be. Such persons always have.
Buck Mulligan bent across the table gravely.
--They drove his wits astray, he said, by visions of hell. He will never
capture the Attic note. The note of Swinburne, of all poets, the white death
and the ruddy birth. That is his tragedy. He can never be a poet. The joy of
creation ....
--Eternal punishment, Haines said, nodding curtly. I see. I tackled him this
morning on belief. There was something on his mind, I saw. It's rather
interesting because professor Pokorny of Vienna makes an interesting point
out of that.
Buck Mulligan's watchful eyes saw the waitress come. He helped her to unload her tray.
--He can find no trace of hell in ancient Irish myth, Haines said, amid the
cheerful cups. The moral idea seems lacking, the sense of destiny, of
retribution. Rather strange he should have just that fixed idea. Does he
write anything for your movement?
He sank two lumps of sugar deftly longwise through the whipped
cream. Buck Mulligan slit a steaming scone in two and plastered butter over
its smoking pith. He bit off a soft piece hungrily.
--Ten years, he said, chewing and laughing. He is going to write something
in ten years.
--Seems a long way off, Haines said, thoughtfully lifting his spoon. Still, I
shouldn't wonder if he did after all.
He tasted a spoonful from the creamy cone of his cup.
--This is real Irish cream I take it, he said with forbearance. I don't want to
be imposed on.
Elijah, skiff, light crumpled throwaway, sailed eastward by flanks of
ships and trawlers, amid an archipelago of corks, beyond new Wapping
street past Benson's ferry, and by the threemasted schooner Rosevean from
Bridgwater with bricks.
* * *
Almidano Artifoni walked past Holles street, past Sewell's yard.
Behind him Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell, with
stickumbrelladustcoat dangling, shunned the lamp before Mr Law Smith's
house and, crossing, walked along Merrion square. Distantly behind him a
blind stripling tapped his way by the wall of College park.
Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell walked as far as
Mr Lewis Werner's cheerful windows, then turned and strode back along
Merrion square, his stickumbrelladustcoat dangling.
At the corner of Wilde's house he halted, frowned at Elijah's name
announced on the Metropolitan hall, frowned at the distant pleasance of
duke's lawn. His eyeglass flashed frowning in the sun. With ratsteeth bared
he muttered:
--Coactus volui.
He strode on for Clare street, grinding his fierce word.
As he strode past Mr Bloom's dental windows the sway of his
dustcoat brushed rudely from its angle a slender tapping cane and swept
onwards, having buffeted a thewless body. The blind stripling turned his
sickly face after the striding form.
--God's curse on you, he said sourly, whoever you are! You're blinder nor
I am, you bitch's bastard!
* * *
Opposite Ruggy O'Donohoe's Master Patrick Aloysius Dignam,
pawing the pound and a half of Mangan's, late Fehrenbach's, porksteaks he
had been sent for, went along warm Wicklow street dawdling. It was too
blooming dull sitting in the parlour with Mrs Stoer and Mrs Quigley and
Mrs MacDowell and the blind down and they all at their sniffles and
sipping sups of the superior tawny sherry uncle Barney brought from
Tunney's. And they eating crumbs of the cottage fruitcake, jawing the
whole blooming time and sighing.
After Wicklow lane the window of Madame Doyle, courtdress
milliner, stopped him. He stood looking in at the two puckers stripped to
their pelts and putting up their props. From the sidemirrors two mourning
Masters Dignam gaped silently. Myler Keogh, Dublin's pet lamb, will meet
sergeantmajor Bennett, the Portobello bruiser, for a purse of fifty
sovereigns. Gob, that'd be a good pucking match to see. Myler Keogh,
that's the chap sparring out to him with the green sash. Two bar entrance,
soldiers half price. I could easy do a bunk on ma. Master Dignam on his left
turned as he turned. That's me in mourning. When is it? May the
twentysecond. Sure, the blooming thing is all over. He turned to the right
and on his right Master Dignam turned, his cap awry, his collar sticking up.
Buttoning it down, his chin lifted, he saw the image of Marie Kendall,
charming soubrette, beside the two puckers. One of them mots that do be in
the packets of fags Stoer smokes that his old fellow welted hell out of him
for one time he found out.
Master Dignam got his collar down and dawdled on. The best pucker
going for strength was Fitzsimons. One puck in the wind from that fellow
would knock you into the middle of next week, man. But the best pucker
for science was Jem Corbet before Fitzsimons knocked the stuffings out of
him, dodging and all.
In Grafton street Master Dignam saw a red flower in a toff's mouth
and a swell pair of kicks on him and he listening to what the drunk was
telling him and grinning all the time.
No Sandymount tram.
Master Dignam walked along Nassau street, shifted the porksteaks to
his other hand. His collar sprang up again and he tugged it down. The
blooming stud was too small for the buttonhole of the shirt, blooming end
to it. He met schoolboys with satchels. I'm not going tomorrow either, stay
away till Monday. He met other schoolboys. Do they notice I'm in
mourning? Uncle Barney said he'd get it into the paper tonight. Then
they'll all see it in the paper and read my name printed and pa's name.
His face got all grey instead of being red like it was and there was a
fly walking over it up to his eye. The scrunch that was when they were
screwing the screws into the coffin: and the bumps when they were bringing
it downstairs.
Pa was inside it and ma crying in the parlour and uncle Barney telling
the men how to get it round the bend. A big coffin it was, and high and
heavylooking. How was that? The last night pa was boosed he was standing
on the landing there bawling out for his boots to go out to Tunney's for to
boose more and he looked butty and short in his shirt. Never see him again.
Death, that is. Pa is dead. My father is dead. He told me to be a good son to
ma. I couldn't hear the other things he said but I saw his tongue and his
teeth trying to say it better. Poor pa. That was Mr Dignam, my father. I
hope he's in purgatory now because he went to confession to Father
Conroy on Saturday night.
* * *
William Humble, earl of Dudley, and lady Dudley, accompanied by
lieutenantcolonel Heseltine, drove out after luncheon from the viceregal
lodge. In the following carriage were the honourable Mrs Paget, Miss de
Courcy and the honourable Gerald Ward A. D. C. in attendance.
The cavalcade passed out by the lower gate of Phoenix park saluted
by obsequious policemen and proceeded past Kingsbridge along the
northern quays. The viceroy was most cordially greeted on his way through
the metropolis. At Bloody bridge Mr Thomas Kernan beyond the river
greeted him vainly from afar Between Queen's and Whitworth bridges lord
Dudley's viceregal carriages passed and were unsaluted by Mr Dudley
White, B. L., M. A., who stood on Arran quay outside Mrs M. E. White's,
the pawnbroker's, at the corner of Arran street west stroking his nose with
his forefinger, undecided whether he should arrive at Phibsborough more
quickly by a triple change of tram or by hailing a car or on foot through
Smithfield, Constitution hill and Broadstone terminus. In the porch of Four
Courts Richie Goulding with the costbag of Goulding, Collis and Ward saw
him with surprise. Past Richmond bridge at the doorstep of the office of
Reuben J Dodd, solicitor, agent for the Patriotic Insurance Company, an
elderly female about to enter changed her plan and retracing her steps by
King's windows smiled credulously on the representative of His Majesty.
From its sluice in Wood quay wall under Tom Devan's office Poddle river
hung out in fealty a tongue of liquid sewage. Above the crossblind of the
Ormond hotel, gold by bronze, Miss Kennedy's head by Miss Douce's head
watched and admired. On Ormond quay Mr Simon Dedalus, steering his
way from the greenhouse for the subsheriff's office, stood still in midstreet
and brought his hat low. His Excellency graciously returned Mr Dedalus'
greeting. From Cahill's corner the reverend Hugh C. Love, M. A., made
obeisance unperceived, mindful of lords deputies whose hands benignant
had held of yore rich advowsons. On Grattan bridge Lenehan and M'Coy,
taking leave of each other, watched the carriages go by. Passing by Roger
Greene's office and Dollard's big red printinghouse Gerty MacDowell,
carrying the Catesby's cork lino letters for her father who was laid up,
knew by the style it was the lord and lady lieutenant but she couldn't see
what Her Excellency had on because the tram and Spring's big yellow
furniture van had to stop in front of her on account of its being the lord
lieutenant. Beyond Lundy Foot's from the shaded door of Kavanagh's
winerooms John Wyse Nolan smiled with unseen coldness towards the lord
lieutenantgeneral and general governor of Ireland. The Right Honourable
William Humble, earl of Dudley, G. C. V. O., passed Micky Anderson's
alltimesticking watches and Henry and James's wax smartsuited
freshcheeked models, the gentleman Henry, dernier cri James. Over against
Dame gate Tom Rochford and Nosey Flynn watched the approach of the
cavalcade. Tom Rochford, seeing the eyes of lady Dudley fixed on him,
took his thumbs quickly out of the pockets of his claret waistcoat and
doffed his cap to her. A charming soubrette, great Marie Kendall, with
dauby cheeks and lifted skirt smiled daubily from her poster upon William
Humble, earl of Dudley, and upon lieutenantcolonel H. G. Heseltine, and
also upon the honourable Gerald Ward A. D. C. From the window of the
D. B. C. Buck Mulligan gaily, and Haines gravely, gazed down on the
viceregal equipage over the shoulders of eager guests, whose mass of forms
darkened the chessboard whereon John Howard Parnell looked intently. In
Fownes's street Dilly Dedalus, straining her sight upward from
Chardenal's first French primer, saw sunshades spanned and wheelspokes
spinning in the glare. John Henry Menton, filling the doorway of
Commercial Buildings, stared from winebig oyster eyes, holding a fat gold
hunter watch not looked at in his fat left hand not feeling it. Where the
foreleg of King Billy's horse pawed the air Mrs Breen plucked her
hastening husband back from under the hoofs of the outriders. She shouted
in his ear the tidings. Understanding, he shifted his tomes to his left breast
and saluted the second carriage. The honourable Gerald Ward A. D. C.,
agreeably surprised, made haste to reply. At Ponsonby's corner a jaded
white flagon H. halted and four tallhatted white flagons halted behind him,
E. L. Y'S, while outriders pranced past and carriages. Opposite Pigott's
music warerooms Mr Denis J Maginni, professor of dancing &c, gaily
apparelled, gravely walked, outpassed by a viceroy and unobserved. By the
provost's wall came jauntily Blazes Boylan, stepping in tan shoes and socks
with skyblue clocks to the refrain of My girl's a Yorkshire girl. Blazes
Boylan presented to the leaders' skyblue frontlets and high action a skyblue
tie, a widebrimmed straw hat at a rakish angle and a suit of indigo serge.
His hands in his jacket pockets forgot to salute but he offered to the three
ladies the bold admiration of his eyes and the red flower between his lips. As
they drove along Nassau street His Excellency drew the attention of his
bowing consort to the programme of music which was being discoursed in
College park. Unseen brazen highland laddies blared and drumthumped
after the cortege:
But though she's a factory lass
And wears no fancy clothes.
Baraabum.
Yet I've a sort of a
Yorkshire relish for
My little Yorkshire rose.
Baraabum.
Thither of the wall the quartermile flat handicappers, M. C. Green, H.
Shrift, T. M. Patey, C. Scaife, J. B. Jeffs, G. N. Morphy, F. Stevenson, C.
Adderly and W. C. Huggard, started in pursuit. Striding past Finn's hotel
Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell stared through a fierce
eyeglass across the carriages at the head of Mr M. E. Solomons in the
window of the Austro-Hungarian viceconsulate. Deep in Leinster street by
Trinity's postern a loyal king's man, Hornblower, touched his tallyho cap.
As the glossy horses pranced by Merrion square Master Patrick Aloysius
Dignam, waiting, saw salutes being given to the gent with the topper and
raised also his new black cap with fingers greased by porksteak paper. His
collar too sprang up. The viceroy, on his way to inaugurate the Mirus
bazaar in aid of funds for Mercer's hospital, drove with his following
towards Lower Mount street. He passed a blind stripling opposite
Broadbent's. In Lower Mount street a pedestrian in a brown macintosh,
eating dry bread, passed swiftly and unscathed across the viceroy's path. At
the Royal Canal bridge, from his hoarding, Mr Eugene Stratton, his blub
lips agrin, bade all comers welcome to Pembroke township. At Haddington
road corner two sanded women halted themselves, an umbrella and a bag in
which eleven cockles rolled to view with wonder the lord mayor and lady
mayoress without his golden chain. On Northumberland and Lansdowne
roads His Excellency acknowledged punctually salutes from rare male
walkers, the salute of two small schoolboys at the garden gate of the house
said to have been admired by the late queen when visiting the Irish capital
with her husband, the prince consort, in 1849 and the salute of Almidano
Artifoni's sturdy trousers swallowed by a closing door.
* Bronze by gold heard the hoofirons, steelyringing. Imperthnthn thnthnthn. Chips, picking chips off rocky thumbnail, chips. Horrid! And gold flushed more. A husky fifenote blew. Blew. Blue bloom is on the. Goldpinnacled hair. A jumping rose on satiny breast of satin, rose of Castile. Trilling, trilling: Idolores. Peep! Who's in the .... peepofgold? Tink cried to bronze in pity. And a call, pure, long and throbbing. Longindying call. Decoy. Soft word. But look: the bright stars fade. Notes chirruping answer. O rose! Castile. The morn is breaking. Jingle jingle jaunted jingling. Coin rang. Clock clacked. Avowal. Sonnez. I could. Rebound of garter. Not leave thee. Smack. La cloche! Thigh smack. Avowal. Warm. Sweetheart, goodbye! Jingle. Bloo. Boomed crashing chords. When love absorbs. War! War! The tympanum. A sail! A veil awave upon the waves. Lost. Throstle fluted. All is lost now. Horn. Hawhorn. When first he saw. Alas! Full tup. Full throb. Warbling. Ah, lure! Alluring. Martha! Come! Clapclap. Clipclap. Clappyclap. Goodgod henev erheard inall. Deaf bald Pat brought pad knife took up. A moonlit nightcall: far, far. I feel so sad. P. S. So lonely blooming. Listen! The spiked and winding cold seahorn. Have you the? Each, and for other, plash and silent roar. Pearls: when she. Liszt's rhapsodies. Hissss. You don't? Did not: no, no: believe: Lidlyd. With a cock with a carra. Black. Deepsounding. Do, Ben, do. Wait while you wait. Hee hee. Wait while you hee. But wait! Low in dark middle earth. Embedded ore. Naminedamine. Preacher is he: All gone. All fallen. Tiny, her tremulous fernfoils of maidenhair. Amen! He gnashed in fury. Fro. To, fro. A baton cool protruding. Bronzelydia by Minagold. By bronze, by gold, in oceangreen of shadow. Bloom. Old Bloom. One rapped, one tapped, with a carra, with a cock. Pray for him! Pray, good people! His gouty fingers nakkering. Big Benaben. Big Benben. Last rose Castile of summer left bloom I feel so sad alone. Pwee! Little wind piped wee. True men. Lid Ker Cow De and Doll. Ay, ay. Like you men. Will lift your tschink with tschunk. Fff! Oo! Where bronze from anear? Where gold from afar? Where hoofs? Rrrpr. Kraa. Kraandl. Then not till then. My eppripfftaph. Be pfrwritt. Done. Begin!Bronze by gold, miss Douce's head by miss Kennedy's head, over the crossblind of the Ormond bar heard the viceregal hoofs go by, ringing steel. --Is that her? asked miss Kennedy. Miss Douce said yes, sitting with his ex, pearl grey and eau de Nil. --Exquisite contrast, miss Kennedy said. When all agog miss Douce said eagerly: --Look at the fellow in the tall silk. --Who? Where? gold asked more eagerly. --In the second carriage, miss Douce's wet lips said, laughing in the sun. He's looking. Mind till I see. She darted, bronze, to the backmost corner, flattening her face against the pane in a halo of hurried breath. Her wet lips tittered: --He's killed looking back. She laughed: --O wept! Aren't men frightful idiots? With sadness. Miss Kennedy sauntered sadly from bright light, twining a loose hair behind an ear. Sauntering sadly, gold no more, she twisted twined a hair. Sadly she twined in sauntering gold hair behind a curving ear. --It's them has the fine times, sadly then she said. A man. Bloowho went by by Moulang's pipes bearing in his breast the sweets of sin, by Wine's antiques, in memory bearing sweet sinful words, by Carroll's dusky battered plate, for Raoul. The boots to them, them in the bar, them barmaids came. For them unheeding him he banged on the counter his tray of chattering china. And --There's your teas, he said. Miss Kennedy with manners transposed the teatray down to an upturned lithia crate, safe from eyes, low. --What is it? loud boots unmannerly asked. --Find out, miss Douce retorted, leaving her spyingpoint. --Your beau, is it? A haughty bronze replied: --I'll complain to Mrs de Massey on you if I hear any more of your impertinent insolence. --Imperthnthn thnthnthn, bootssnout sniffed rudely, as he retreated as she threatened as he had come. Bloom. On her flower frowning miss Douce said: --Most aggravating that young brat is. If he doesn't conduct himself I'll wring his ear for him a yard long. Ladylike in exquisite contrast. --Take no notice, miss Kennedy rejoined. She poured in a teacup tea, then back in the teapot tea. They cowered under their reef of counter, waiting on footstools, crates upturned, waiting for their teas to draw. They pawed their blouses, both of black satin, two and nine a yard, waiting for their teas to draw, and two and seven. Yes, bronze from anear, by gold from afar, heard steel from anear, hoofs ring from afar, and heard steelhoofs ringhoof ringsteel. --Am I awfully sunburnt? Miss bronze unbloused her neck. --No, said miss Kennedy. It gets brown after. Did you try the borax with the cherry laurel water? Miss Douce halfstood to see her skin askance in the barmirror gildedlettered where hock and claret glasses shimmered and in their midst a shell. --And leave it to my hands, she said. --Try it with the glycerine, miss Kennedy advised. Bidding her neck and hands adieu miss Douce --Those things only bring out a rash, replied, reseated. I asked that old fogey in Boyd's for something for my skin. Miss Kennedy, pouring now a fulldrawn tea, grimaced and prayed: --O, don't remind me of him for mercy' sake! --But wait till I tell you, miss Douce entreated. Sweet tea miss Kennedy having poured with milk plugged both two ears with little fingers. --No, don't, she cried. --I won't listen, she cried. But Bloom? Miss Douce grunted in snuffy fogey's tone: --For your what? says he. Miss Kennedy unplugged her ears to hear, to speak: but said, but prayed again: --Don't let me think of him or I'll expire. The hideous old wretch! That night in the Antient Concert Rooms. She sipped distastefully her brew, hot tea, a sip, sipped, sweet tea. --Here he was, miss Douce said, cocking her bronze head three quarters, ruffling her nosewings. Hufa! Hufa! Shrill shriek of laughter sprang from miss Kennedy's throat. Miss Douce huffed and snorted down her nostrils that quivered imperthnthn like a snout in quest. --O! shrieking, miss Kennedy cried. Will you ever forget his goggle eye? Miss Douce chimed in in deep bronze laughter, shouting: --And your other eye! Bloowhose dark eye read Aaron Figatner's name. Why do I always think Figather? Gathering figs, I think. And Prosper Lore's huguenot name. By Bassi's blessed virgins Bloom's dark eyes went by. Bluerobed, white under, come to me. God they believe she is: or goddess. Those today. I could not see. That fellow spoke. A student. After with Dedalus' son. He might be Mulligan. All comely virgins. That brings those rakes of fellows in: her white. By went his eyes. The sweets of sin. Sweet are the sweets. Of sin. In a giggling peal young goldbronze voices blended, Douce with Kennedy your other eye. They threw young heads back, bronze gigglegold, to let freefly their laughter, screaming, your other, signals to each other, high piercing notes. Ah, panting, sighing, sighing, ah, fordone, their mirth died down. Miss Kennedy lipped her cup again, raised, drank a sip and gigglegiggled. Miss Douce, bending over the teatray, ruffled again her nose and rolled droll fattened eyes. Again Kennygiggles, stooping, her fair pinnacles of hair, stooping, her tortoise napecomb showed, spluttered out of her mouth her tea, choking in tea and laughter, coughing with choking, crying: --O greasy eyes! Imagine being married to a man like that! she cried. With his bit of beard! Douce gave full vent to a splendid yell, a full yell of full woman, delight, joy, indignation. --Married to the greasy nose! she yelled. Shrill, with deep laughter, after, gold after bronze, they urged each each to peal after peal, ringing in changes, bronzegold, goldbronze, shrilldeep, to laughter after laughter. And then laughed more. Greasy I knows. Exhausted, breathless, their shaken heads they laid, braided and pinnacled by glossycombed, against the counterledge. All flushed (O!), panting, sweating (O!), all breathless. Married to Bloom, to greaseabloom. --O saints above! miss Douce said, sighed above her jumping rose. I wished I hadn't laughed so much. I feel all wet. --O, miss Douce! miss Kennedy protested. You horrid thing! And flushed yet more (you horrid!), more goldenly. By Cantwell's offices roved Greaseabloom, by Ceppi's virgins, bright of their oils. Nannetti's father hawked those things about, wheedling at doors as I. Religion pays. Must see him for that par. Eat first. I want. Not yet. At four, she said. Time ever passing. Clockhands turning. On. Where eat? The Clarence, Dolphin. On. For Raoul. Eat. If I net five guineas with those ads. The violet silk petticoats. Not yet. The sweets of sin. Flushed less, still less, goldenly paled. Into their bar strolled Mr Dedalus. Chips, picking chips off one of his rocky thumbnails. Chips. He strolled. --O, welcome back, miss Douce. He held her hand. Enjoyed her holidays? --Tiptop. He hoped she had nice weather in Rostrevor. --Gorgeous, she said. Look at the holy show I am. Lying out on the strand all day. Bronze whiteness. --That was exceedingly naughty of you, Mr Dedalus told her and pressed her hand indulgently. Tempting poor simple males. Miss Douce of satin douced her arm away. --O go away! she said. You're very simple, I don't think. He was. --Well now I am, he mused. I looked so simple in the cradle they christened me simple Simon. --You must have been a doaty, miss Douce made answer. And what did the doctor order today? --Well now, he mused, whatever you say yourself. I think I'll trouble you for some fresh water and a half glass of whisky. Jingle. --With the greatest alacrity, miss Douce agreed. With grace of alacrity towards the mirror gilt Cantrell and Cochrane's she turned herself. With grace she tapped a measure of gold whisky from her crystal keg. Forth from the skirt of his coat Mr Dedalus brought pouch and pipe. Alacrity she served. He blew through the flue two husky fifenotes. --By Jove, he mused, I often wanted to see the Mourne mountains. Must be a great tonic in the air down there. But a long threatening comes at last, they say. Yes. Yes. Yes. He fingered shreds of hair, her maidenhair, her mermaid's, into the bowl. Chips. Shreds. Musing. Mute. None nought said nothing. Yes. Gaily miss Douce polished a tumbler, trilling: --O, Idolores, queen of the eastern seas! --Was Mr Lidwell in today? In came Lenehan. Round him peered Lenehan. Mr Bloom reached Essex bridge. Yes, Mr Bloom crossed bridge of Yessex. To Martha I must write. Buy paper. Daly's. Girl there civil. Bloom. Old Bloom. Blue bloom is on the rye. --He was in at lunchtime, miss Douce said. Lenehan came forward. --Was Mr Boylan looking for me? He asked. She answered: --Miss Kennedy, was Mr Boylan in while I was upstairs? She asked. Miss voice of Kennedy answered, a second teacup poised, her gaze upon a page: --No. He was not. Miss gaze of Kennedy, heard, not seen, read on. Lenehan round the sandwichbell wound his round body round. --Peep! Who's in the corner? No glance of Kennedy rewarding him he yet made overtures. To mind her stops. To read only the black ones: round o and crooked ess. Jingle jaunty jingle. Girlgold she read and did not glance. Take no notice. She took no notice while he read by rote a solfa fable for her, plappering flatly: --Ah fox met ah stork. Said thee fox too thee stork: Will you put your bill down inn my troath and pull upp ah bone? He droned in vain. Miss Douce turned to her tea aside. He sighed aside: --Ah me! O my! He greeted Mr Dedalus and got a nod. --Greetings from the famous son of a famous father. --Who may he be? Mr Dedalus asked. Lenehan opened most genial arms. Who? --Who may he be? he asked. Can you ask? Stephen, the youthful bard. Dry. Mr Dedalus, famous father, laid by his dry filled pipe. --I see, he said. I didn't recognise him for the moment. I hear he is keeping very select company. Have you seen him lately? He had. --I quaffed the nectarbowl with him this very day, said Lenehan. In Mooney's en ville and in Mooney's sur mer. He had received the rhino for the labour of his muse. He smiled at bronze's teabathed lips, at listening lips and eyes: --The ’lite of Erin hung upon his lips. The ponderous pundit, Hugh MacHugh, Dublin's most brilliant scribe and editor and that minstrel boy of the wild wet west who is known by the euphonious appellation of the O'Madden Burke. After an interval Mr Dedalus raised his grog and --That must have been highly diverting, said he. I see. He see. He drank. With faraway mourning mountain eye. Set down his glass. He looked towards the saloon door. --I see you have moved the piano. --The tuner was in today, miss Douce replied, tuning it for the smoking concert and I never heard such an exquisite player. --Is that a fact? --Didn't he, miss Kennedy? The real classical, you know. And blind too, poor fellow. Not twenty I'm sure he was. --Is that a fact? Mr Dedalus said. He drank and strayed away. --So sad to look at his face, miss Douce condoled. God's curse on bitch's bastard. Tink to her pity cried a diner's bell. To the door of the bar and diningroom came bald Pat, came bothered Pat, came Pat, waiter of Ormond. Lager for diner. Lager without alacrity she served. With patience Lenehan waited for Boylan with impatience, for jinglejaunty blazes boy. Upholding the lid he (who?) gazed in the coffin (coffin?) at the oblique triple (piano!) wires. He pressed (the same who pressed indulgently her hand), soft pedalling, a triple of keys to see the thicknesses of felt advancing, to hear the muffled hammerfall in action. Two sheets cream vellum paper one reserve two envelopes when I was in Wisdom Hely's wise Bloom in Daly's Henry Flower bought. Are you not happy in your home? Flower to console me and a pin cuts lo. Means something, language of flow. Was it a daisy? Innocence that is. Respectable girl meet after mass. Thanks awfully muchly. Wise Bloom eyed on the door a poster, a swaying mermaid smoking mid nice waves. Smoke mermaids, coolest whiff of all. Hair streaming: lovelorn. For some man. For Raoul. He eyed and saw afar on Essex bridge a gay hat riding on a jaunting car. It is. Again. Third time. Coincidence. Jingling on supple rubbers it jaunted from the bridge to Ormond quay. Follow. Risk it. Go quick. At four. Near now. Out. --Twopence, sir, the shopgirl dared to say. --Aha... I was forgetting... Excuse... --And four. At four she. Winsomely she on Bloohimwhom smiled. Bloo smi qui go. Ternoon. Think you're the only pebble on the beach? Does that to all. For men. In drowsy silence gold bent on her page. From the saloon a call came, long in dying. That was a tuningfork the tuner had that he forgot that he now struck. A call again. That he now poised that it now throbbed. You hear? It throbbed, pure, purer, softly and softlier, its buzzing prongs. Longer in dying call. Pat paid for diner's popcorked bottle: and over tumbler, tray and popcorked bottle ere he went he whispered, bald and bothered, with miss Douce. --The bright stars fade .... A voiceless song sang from within, singing: --... the morn is breaking. A duodene of birdnotes chirruped bright treble answer under sensitive hands. Brightly the keys, all twinkling, linked, all harpsichording, called to a voice to sing the strain of dewy morn, of youth, of love's leavetaking, life's, love's morn. --The dewdrops pearl .... Lenehan's lips over the counter lisped a low whistle of decoy. --But look this way, he said, rose of Castile. Jingle jaunted by the curb and stopped. She rose and closed her reading, rose of Castile: fretted, forlorn, dreamily rose. --Did she fall or was she pushed? he asked her. She answered, slighting: --Ask no questions and you'll hear no lies. Like lady, ladylike. Blazes Boylan's smart tan shoes creaked on the barfloor where he strode. Yes, gold from anear by bronze from afar. Lenehan heard and knew and hailed him: --See the conquering hero comes. Between the car and window, warily walking, went Bloom, unconquered hero. See me he might. The seat he sat on: warm. Black wary hecat walked towards Richie Goulding's legal bag, lifted aloft, saluting. --And I from thee .... --I heard you were round, said Blazes Boylan. He touched to fair miss Kennedy a rim of his slanted straw. She smiled on him. But sister bronze outsmiled her, preening for him her richer hair, a bosom and a rose. Smart Boylan bespoke potions. --What's your cry? Glass of bitter? Glass of bitter, please, and a sloegin for me. Wire in yet? Not yet. At four she. Who said four? Cowley's red lugs and bulging apple in the door of the sheriff's office. Avoid. Goulding a chance. What is he doing in the Ormond? Car waiting. Wait. Hello. Where off to? Something to eat? I too was just. In here. What, Ormond? Best value in Dublin. Is that so? Diningroom. Sit tight there. See, not be seen. I think I'll join you. Come on. Richie led on. Bloom followed bag. Dinner fit for a prince. Miss Douce reached high to take a flagon, stretching her satin arm, her bust, that all but burst, so high. --O! O! jerked Lenehan, gasping at each stretch. O! But easily she seized her prey and led it low in triumph. --Why don't you grow? asked Blazes Boylan. Shebronze, dealing from her oblique jar thick syrupy liquor for his lips, looked as it flowed (flower in his coat: who gave him?), and syrupped with her voice: --Fine goods in small parcels. That is to say she. Neatly she poured slowsyrupy sloe. --Here's fortune, Blazes said. He pitched a broad coin down. Coin rang. --Hold on, said Lenehan, till I .... --Fortune, he wished, lifting his bubbled ale. --Sceptre will win in a canter, he said. --I plunged a bit, said Boylan winking and drinking. Not on my own, you know. Fancy of a friend of mine. Lenehan still drank and grinned at his tilted ale and at miss Douce's lips that all but hummed, not shut, the oceansong her lips had trilled. Idolores. The eastern seas. Clock whirred. Miss Kennedy passed their way (flower, wonder who gave), bearing away teatray. Clock clacked. Miss Douce took Boylan's coin, struck boldly the cashregister. It clanged. Clock clacked. Fair one of Egypt teased and sorted in the till and hummed and handed coins in change. Look to the west. A clack. For me. --What time is that? asked Blazes Boylan. Four? O'clock. Lenehan, small eyes ahunger on her humming, bust ahumming, tugged Blazes Boylan's elbowsleeve. --Let's hear the time, he said. The bag of Goulding, Collis, Ward led Bloom by ryebloom flowered tables. Aimless he chose with agitated aim, bald Pat attending, a table near the door. Be near. At four. Has he forgotten? Perhaps a trick. Not come: whet appetite. I couldn't do. Wait, wait. Pat, waiter, waited. Sparkling bronze azure eyed Blazure's skyblue bow and eyes. --Go on, pressed Lenehan. There's no-one. He never heard. -- ... to Flora's lips did hie. High, a high note pealed in the treble clear. Bronzedouce communing with her rose that sank and rose sought Blazes Boylan's flower and eyes. --Please, please. He pleaded over returning phrases of avowal. --I could not leave thee ... --Afterwits, miss Douce promised coyly. --No, now, urged Lenehan. Sonnez la cloche! O do! There's no-one. She looked. Quick. Miss Kenn out of earshot. Sudden bent. Two kindling faces watched her bend. Quavering the chords strayed from the air, found it again, lost chord, and lost and found it, faltering. --Go on! Do! Sonnez! Bending, she nipped a peak of skirt above her knee. Delayed. Taunted them still, bending, suspending, with wilful eyes. --Sonnez! Smack. She set free sudden in rebound her nipped elastic garter smackwarm against her smackable a woman's warmhosed thigh. --La cloche! cried gleeful Lenehan. Trained by owner. No sawdust there. She smilesmirked supercilious (wept! aren't men?), but, lightward gliding, mild she smiled on Boylan. --You're the essence of vulgarity, she in gliding said. Boylan, eyed, eyed. Tossed to fat lips his chalice, drank off his chalice tiny, sucking the last fat violet syrupy drops. His spellbound eyes went after, after her gliding head as it went down the bar by mirrors, gilded arch for ginger ale, hock and claret glasses shimmering, a spiky shell, where it concerted, mirrored, bronze with sunnier bronze. Yes, bronze from anearby. -- ... sweetheart, goodbye! --I'm off, said Boylan with impatience. He slid his chalice brisk away, grasped his change. --Wait a shake, begged Lenehan, drinking quickly. I wanted to tell you. Tom Rochford ... --Come on to blazes, said Blazes Boylan, going. Lenehan gulped to go. --Got the horn or what? he said. Wait. I'm coming. He followed the hasty creaking shoes but stood by nimbly by the threshold, saluting forms, a bulky with a slender. --How do you do, Mr Dollard? --Eh? How do? How do? Ben Dollard's vague bass answered, turning an instant from Father Cowley's woe. He won't give you any trouble, Bob. Alf Bergan will speak to the long fellow. We'll put a barleystraw in that Judas Iscariot's ear this time. Sighing Mr Dedalus came through the saloon, a finger soothing an eyelid. --Hoho, we will, Ben Dollard yodled jollily. Come on, Simon. Give us a ditty. We heard the piano. Bald Pat, bothered waiter, waited for drink orders. Power for Richie. And Bloom? Let me see. Not make him walk twice. His corns. Four now. How warm this black is. Course nerves a bit. Refracts (is it?) heat. Let me see. Cider. Yes, bottle of cider. --What's that? Mr Dedalus said. I was only vamping, man. --Come on, come on, Ben Dollard called. Begone dull care. Come, Bob. He ambled Dollard, bulky slops, before them (hold that fellow with the: hold him now) into the saloon. He plumped him Dollard on the stool. His gouty paws plumped chords. Plumped, stopped abrupt. Bald Pat in the doorway met tealess gold returning. Bothered, he wanted Power and cider. Bronze by the window, watched, bronze from afar. Jingle a tinkle jaunted. Bloom heard a jing, a little sound. He's off. Light sob of breath Bloom sighed on the silent bluehued flowers. Jingling. He's gone. Jingle. Hear. --Love and War, Ben, Mr Dedalus said. God be with old times. Miss Douce's brave eyes, unregarded, turned from the crossblind, smitten by sunlight. Gone. Pensive (who knows?), smitten (the smiting light), she lowered the dropblind with a sliding cord. She drew down pensive (why did he go so quick when I?) about her bronze, over the bar where bald stood by sister gold, inexquisite contrast, contrast inexquisite nonexquisite, slow cool dim seagreen sliding depth of shadow, eau de Nil. --Poor old Goodwin was the pianist that night, Father Cowley reminded them. There was a slight difference of opinion between himself and the Collard grand. There was. --A symposium all his own, Mr Dedalus said. The devil wouldn't stop him. He was a crotchety old fellow in the primary stage of drink. --God, do you remember? Ben bulky Dollard said, turning from the punished keyboard. And by Japers I had no wedding garment. They laughed all three. He had no wed. All trio laughed. No wedding garment. --Our friend Bloom turned in handy that night, Mr Dedalus said. Where's my pipe, by the way? He wandered back to the bar to the lost chord pipe. Bald Pat carried two diners' drinks, Richie and Poldy. And Father Cowley laughed again. --I saved the situation, Ben, I think. --You did, averred Ben Dollard. I remember those tight trousers too. That was a brilliant idea, Bob. Father Cowley blushed to his brilliant purply lobes. He saved the situa. Tight trou. Brilliant ide. --I knew he was on the rocks, he said. The wife was playing the piano in the coffee palace on Saturdays for a very trifling consideration and who was it gave me the wheeze she was doing the other business? Do you remember? We had to search all Holles street to find them till the chap in Keogh's gave us the number. Remember? Ben remembered, his broad visage wondering. --By God, she had some luxurious operacloaks and things there. Mr Dedalus wandered back, pipe in hand. --Merrion square style. Balldresses, by God, and court dresses. He wouldn't take any money either. What? Any God's quantity of cocked hats and boleros and trunkhose. What? --Ay, ay, Mr Dedalus nodded. Mrs Marion Bloom has left off clothes of all descriptions. Jingle jaunted down the quays. Blazes sprawled on bounding tyres. Liver and bacon. Steak and kidney pie. Right, sir. Right, Pat. Mrs Marion. Met him pike hoses. Smell of burn. Of Paul de Kock. Nice name he. --What's this her name was? A buxom lassy. Marion ...? --Tweedy. --Yes. Is she alive? --And kicking. --She was a daughter of ... --Daughter of the regiment. --Yes, begad. I remember the old drummajor. Mr Dedalus struck, whizzed, lit, puffed savoury puff after --Irish? I don't know, faith. Is she, Simon? Puff after stiff, a puff, strong, savoury, crackling. --Buccinator muscle is ... What? ... Bit rusty ... O, she is ... My Irish Molly, O. He puffed a pungent plumy blast. --From the rock of Gibraltar... all the way. They pined in depth of ocean shadow, gold by the beerpull, bronze by maraschino, thoughtful all two. Mina Kennedy, 4 Lismore terrace, Drumcondra with Idolores, a queen, Dolores, silent. Pat served, uncovered dishes. Leopold cut liverslices. As said before he ate with relish the inner organs, nutty gizzards, fried cods' roes while Richie Goulding, Collis, Ward ate steak and kidney, steak then kidney, bite by bite of pie he ate Bloom ate they ate. Bloom with Goulding, married in silence, ate. Dinners fit for princes. By Bachelor's walk jogjaunty jingled Blazes Boylan, bachelor, in sun in heat, mare's glossy rump atrot, with flick of whip, on bounding tyres: sprawled, warmseated, Boylan impatience, ardentbold. Horn. Have you the? Horn. Have you the? Haw haw horn. Over their voices Dollard bassooned attack, booming over bombarding chords: --When love absorbs my ardent soul ... Roll of Bensoulbenjamin rolled to the quivery loveshivery roofpanes. --War! War! cried Father Cowley. You're the warrior. --So I am, Ben Warrior laughed. I was thinking of your landlord. Love or money. He stopped. He wagged huge beard, huge face over his blunder huge. --Sure, you'd burst the tympanum of her ear, man, Mr Dedalus said through smoke aroma, with an organ like yours. In bearded abundant laughter Dollard shook upon the keyboard. He would. --Not to mention another membrane, Father Cowley added. Half time, Ben. Amoroso ma non troppo. Let me there. Miss Kennedy served two gentlemen with tankards of cool stout. She passed a remark. It was indeed, first gentleman said, beautiful weather. They drank cool stout. Did she know where the lord lieutenant was going? And heard steelhoofs ringhoof ring. No, she couldn't say. But it would be in the paper. O, she need not trouble. No trouble. She waved about her outspread Independent, searching, the lord lieutenant, her pinnacles of hair slowmoving, lord lieuten. Too much trouble, first gentleman said. O, not in the least. Way he looked that. Lord lieutenant. Gold by bronze heard iron steel. -- ........... my ardent soul I care not foror the morrow. In liver gravy Bloom mashed mashed potatoes. Love and War someone is. Ben Dollard's famous. Night he ran round to us to borrow a dress suit for that concert. Trousers tight as a drum on him. Musical porkers. Molly did laugh when he went out. Threw herself back across the bed, screaming, kicking. With all his belongings on show. O saints above, I'm drenched! O, the women in the front row! O, I never laughed so many! Well, of course that's what gives him the base barreltone. For instance eunuchs. Wonder who's playing. Nice touch. Must be Cowley. Musical. Knows whatever note you play. Bad breath he has, poor chap. Stopped. Miss Douce, engaging, Lydia Douce, bowed to suave solicitor, George Lidwell, gentleman, entering. Good afternoon. She gave her moist (a lady's) hand to his firm clasp. Afternoon. Yes, she was back. To the old dingdong again. --Your friends are inside, Mr Lidwell. George Lidwell, suave, solicited, held a lydiahand. Jingle. Bloom ate liv as said before. Clean here at least. That chap in the Burton, gummy with gristle. No-one here: Goulding and I. Clean tables, flowers, mitres of napkins. Pat to and fro. Bald Pat. Nothing to do. Best value in Dub. Piano again. Cowley it is. Way he sits in to it, like one together, mutual understanding. Tiresome shapers scraping fiddles, eye on the bowend, sawing the cello, remind you of toothache. Her high long snore. Night we were in the box. Trombone under blowing like a grampus, between the acts, other brass chap unscrewing, emptying spittle. Conductor's legs too, bagstrousers, jiggedy jiggedy. Do right to hide them. Jiggedy jingle jaunty jaunty. Only the harp. Lovely. Gold glowering light. Girl touched it. Poop of a lovely. Gravy's rather good fit for a. Golden ship. Erin. The harp that once or twice. Cool hands. Ben Howth, the rhododendrons. We are their harps. I. He. Old. Young. --Ah, I couldn't, man, Mr Dedalus said, shy, listless. Strongly. --Go on, blast you! Ben Dollard growled. Get it out in bits. --M'appari, Simon, Father Cowley said. Down stage he strode some paces, grave, tall in affliction, his long arms outheld. Hoarsely the apple of his throat hoarsed softly. Softly he sang to a dusty seascape there: A Last Farewell. A headland, a ship, a sail upon the billows. Farewell. A lovely girl, her veil awave upon the wind upon the headland, wind around her. Cowley sang: --M'appari tutt'amor: Il mio sguardo l'incontr ...She waved, unhearing Cowley, her veil, to one departing, dear one, to wind, love, speeding sail, return. --Go on, Simon. --Ah, sure, my dancing days are done, Ben ... Well ... Mr Dedalus laid his pipe to rest beside the tuningfork and, sitting, touched the obedient keys. --No, Simon, Father Cowley turned. Play it in the original. One flat. The keys, obedient, rose higher, told, faltered, confessed, confused. Up stage strode Father Cowley. --Here, Simon, I'll accompany you, he said. Get up. By Graham Lemon's pineapple rock, by Elvery's elephant jingly jogged. Steak, kidney, liver, mashed, at meat fit for princes sat princes Bloom and Goulding. Princes at meat they raised and drank, Power and cider. Most beautiful tenor air ever written, Richie said: Sonnambula. He heard Joe Maas sing that one night. Ah, what M'Guckin! Yes. In his way. Choirboy style. Maas was the boy. Massboy. A lyrical tenor if you like. Never forget it. Never. Tenderly Bloom over liverless bacon saw the tightened features strain. Backache he. Bright's bright eye. Next item on the programme. Paying the piper. Pills, pounded bread, worth a guinea a box. Stave it off awhile. Sings too: Down among the dead men. Appropriate. Kidney pie. Sweets to the. Not making much hand of it. Best value in. Characteristic of him. Power. Particular about his drink. Flaw in the glass, fresh Vartry water. Fecking matches from counters to save. Then squander a sovereign in dribs and drabs. And when he's wanted not a farthing. Screwed refusing to pay his fare. Curious types. Never would Richie forget that night. As long as he lived: never. In the gods of the old Royal with little Peake. And when the first note. Speech paused on Richie's lips. Coming out with a whopper now. Rhapsodies about damn all. Believes his own lies. Does really. Wonderful liar. But want a good memory. --Which air is that? asked Leopold Bloom. --All is lost now. Richie cocked his lips apout. A low incipient note sweet banshee murmured: all. A thrush. A throstle. His breath, birdsweet, good teeth he's proud of, fluted with plaintive woe. Is lost. Rich sound. Two notes in one there. Blackbird I heard in the hawthorn valley. Taking my motives he twined and turned them. All most too new call is lost in all. Echo. How sweet the answer. How is that done? All lost now. Mournful he whistled. Fall, surrender, lost. Bloom bent leopold ear, turning a fringe of doyley down under the vase. Order. Yes, I remember. Lovely air. In sleep she went to him. Innocence in the moon. Brave. Don't know their danger. Still hold her back. Call name. Touch water. Jingle jaunty. Too late. She longed to go. That's why. Woman. As easy stop the sea. Yes: all is lost. --A beautiful air, said Bloom lost Leopold. I know it well. Never in all his life had Richie Goulding. He knows it well too. Or he feels. Still harping on his daughter. Wise child that knows her father, Dedalus said. Me? Bloom askance over liverless saw. Face of the all is lost. Rollicking Richie once. Jokes old stale now. Wagging his ear. Napkinring in his eye. Now begging letters he sends his son with. Crosseyed Walter sir I did sir. Wouldn't trouble only I was expecting some money. Apologise. Piano again. Sounds better than last time I heard. Tuned probably. Stopped again. Dollard and Cowley still urged the lingering singer out with it. --With it, Simon. --It, Simon. --Ladies and gentlemen, I am most deeply obliged by your kind solicitations. --It, Simon. --I have no money but if you will lend me your attention I shall endeavour to sing to you of a heart bowed down. By the sandwichbell in screening shadow Lydia, her bronze and rose, a lady's grace, gave and withheld: as in cool glaucous eau de Nil Mina to tankards two her pinnacles of gold. The harping chords of prelude closed. A chord, longdrawn, expectant, drew a voice away. --When First I saw that form endearing ... Richie turned. --Si Dedalus' voice, he said. Braintipped, cheek touched with flame, they listened feeling that flow endearing flow over skin limbs human heart soul spine. Bloom signed to Pat, bald Pat is a waiter hard of hearing, to set ajar the door of the bar. The door of the bar. So. That will do. Pat, waiter, waited, waiting to hear, for he was hard of hear by the door. -- ... Sorrow from me seemed to depart. Through the hush of air a voice sang to them, low, not rain, not leaves in murmur, like no voice of strings or reeds or whatdoyoucallthem dulcimers touching their still ears with words, still hearts of their each his remembered lives. Good, good to hear: sorrow from them each seemed to from both depart when first they heard. When first they saw, lost Richie Poldy, mercy of beauty, heard from a person wouldn't expect it in the least, her first merciful lovesoft oftloved word. Love that is singing: love's old sweet song. Bloom unwound slowly the elastic band of his packet. Love's old sweet sonnez la gold. Bloom wound a skein round four forkfingers, stretched it, relaxed, and wound it round his troubled double, fourfold, in octave, gyved them fast. --Full of hope and all delighted ... Tenors get women by the score. Increase their flow. Throw flower at his feet. When will we meet? My head it simply. Jingle all delighted. He can't sing for tall hats. Your head it simply swurls. Perfumed for him. What perfume does your wife? I want to know. Jing. Stop. Knock. Last look at mirror always before she answers the door. The hall. There? How do you? I do well. There? What? Or? Phial of cachous, kissing comfits, in her satchel. Yes? Hands felt for the opulent. Alas the voice rose, sighing, changed: loud, full, shining, proud. --But alas, 'twas idle dreaming ... Glorious tone he has still. Cork air softer also their brogue. Silly man! Could have made oceans of money. Singing wrong words. Wore out his wife: now sings. But hard to tell. Only the two themselves. If he doesn't break down. Keep a trot for the avenue. His hands and feet sing too. Drink. Nerves overstrung. Must be abstemious to sing. Jenny Lind soup: stock, sage, raw eggs, half pint of cream. For creamy dreamy. Tenderness it welled: slow, swelling, full it throbbed. That's the chat. Ha, give! Take! Throb, a throb, a pulsing proud erect. Words? Music? No: it's what's behind. Bloom looped, unlooped, noded, disnoded. Bloom. Flood of warm jamjam lickitup secretness flowed to flow in music out, in desire, dark to lick flow invading. Tipping her tepping her tapping her topping her. Tup. Pores to dilate dilating. Tup. The joy the feel the warm the. Tup. To pour o'er sluices pouring gushes. Flood, gush, flow, joygush, tupthrob. Now! Language of love. -- ... ray of hope is... Beaming. Lydia for Lidwell squeak scarcely hear so ladylike the muse unsqueaked a ray of hopk. Martha it is. Coincidence. Just going to write. Lionel's song. Lovely name you have. Can't write. Accept my little pres. Play on her heartstrings pursestrings too. She's a. I called you naughty boy. Still the name: Martha. How strange! Today. The voice of Lionel returned, weaker but unwearied. It sang again to Richie Poldy Lydia Lidwell also sang to Pat open mouth ear waiting to wait. How first he saw that form endearing, how sorrow seemed to part, how look, form, word charmed him Gould Lidwell, won Pat Bloom's heart. Wish I could see his face, though. Explain better. Why the barber in Drago's always looked my face when I spoke his face in the glass. Still hear it better here than in the bar though farther. --Each graceful look .... First night when first I saw her at Mat Dillon's in Terenure. Yellow, black lace she wore. Musical chairs. We two the last. Fate. After her. Fate. Round and round slow. Quick round. We two. All looked. Halt. Down she sat. All ousted looked. Lips laughing. Yellow knees. --Charmed my eye ... Singing. Waiting she sang. I turned her music. Full voice of perfume of what perfume does your lilactrees. Bosom I saw, both full, throat warbling. First I saw. She thanked me. Why did she me? Fate. Spanishy eyes. Under a peartree alone patio this hour in old Madrid one side in shadow Dolores shedolores. At me. Luring. Ah, alluring. --Martha! Ah, Martha! Quitting all languor Lionel cried in grief, in cry of passion dominant to love to return with deepening yet with rising chords of harmony. In cry of lionel loneliness that she should know, must martha feel. For only her he waited. Where? Here there try there here all try where. Somewhere. --Co-ome, thou lost one! Co-ome, thou dear one! Alone. One love. One hope. One comfort me. Martha, chestnote, return! --Come ...! It soared, a bird, it held its flight, a swift pure cry, soar silver orb it leaped serene, speeding, sustained, to come, don't spin it out too long long breath he breath long life, soaring high, high resplendent, aflame, crowned, high in the effulgence symbolistic, high, of the etherial bosom, high, of the high vast irradiation everywhere all soaring all around about the all, the endlessnessnessness ....... --To me! Siopold! Consumed. Come. Well sung. All clapped. She ought to. Come. To me, to him, to her, you too, me, us. --Bravo! Clapclap. Good man, Simon. Clappyclapclap. Encore! Clapclipclap clap. Sound as a bell. Bravo, Simon! Clapclopclap. Encore, enclap, said, cried, clapped all, Ben Dollard, Lydia Douce, George Lidwell, Pat, Mina Kennedy, two gentlemen with two tankards, Cowley, first gent with tank and bronze miss Douce and gold miss Mina. Blazes Boylan's smart tan shoes creaked on the barfloor, said before. Jingle by monuments of sir John Gray, Horatio onehandled Nelson, reverend father Theobald Mathew, jaunted, as said before just now. Atrot, in heat, heatseated. Cloche. Sonnez la. Cloche. Sonnez la. Slower the mare went up the hill by the Rotunda, Rutland square. Too slow for Boylan, blazes Boylan, impatience Boylan, joggled the mare. An afterclang of Cowley's chords closed, died on the air made richer. And Richie Goulding drank his Power and Leopold Bloom his cider drank, Lidwell his Guinness, second gentleman said they would partake of two more tankards if she did not mind. Miss Kennedy smirked, disserving, coral lips, at first, at second. She did not mind. --Seven days in jail, Ben Dollard said, on bread and water. Then you'd sing, Simon, like a garden thrush. Lionel Simon, singer, laughed. Father Bob Cowley played. Mina Kennedy served. Second gentleman paid. Tom Kernan strutted in. Lydia, admired, admired. But Bloom sang dumb. Admiring. Richie, admiring, descanted on that man's glorious voice. He remembered one night long ago. Never forget that night. Si sang 'Twas rank and fame: in Ned Lambert's 'twas. Good God he never heard in all his life a note like that he never did then false one we had better part so clear so God he never heard since love lives not a clinking voice lives not ask Lambert he can tell you too. Goulding, a flush struggling in his pale, told Mr Bloom, face of the night, Si in Ned Lambert's, Dedalus house, sang 'Twas rank and fame. He, Mr Bloom, listened while he, Richie Goulding, told him, Mr Bloom, of the night he, Richie, heard him, Si Dedalus, sing 'Twas rank and fame in his, Ned Lambert's, house. Brothers-in-law: relations. We never speak as we pass by. Rift in the lute I think. Treats him with scorn. See. He admires him all the more. The night Si sang. The human voice, two tiny silky chords, wonderful, more than all others. That voice was a lamentation. Calmer now. It's in the silence after you feel you hear. Vibrations. Now silent air. Bloom ungyved his crisscrossed hands and with slack fingers plucked the slender catgut thong. He drew and plucked. It buzz, it twanged. While Goulding talked of Barraclough's voice production, while Tom Kernan, harking back in a retrospective sort of arrangement talked to listening Father Cowley, who played a voluntary, who nodded as he played. While big Ben Dollard talked with Simon Dedalus, lighting, who nodded as he smoked, who smoked. Thou lost one. All songs on that theme. Yet more Bloom stretched his string. Cruel it seems. Let people get fond of each other: lure them on. Then tear asunder. Death. Explos. Knock on the head. Outtohelloutofthat. Human life. Dignam. Ugh, that rat's tail wriggling! Five bob I gave. Corpus paradisum. Corncrake croaker: belly like a poisoned pup. Gone. They sing. Forgotten. I too; And one day she with. Leave her: get tired. Suffer then. Snivel. Big spanishy eyes goggling at nothing. Her wavyavyeavyheavyeavyevyevyhair un comb:'d. Yet too much happy bores. He stretched more, more. Are you not happy in your? Twang. It snapped. Jingle into Dorset street. Miss Douce withdrew her satiny arm, reproachful, pleased. --Don't make half so free, said she, till we are better acquainted. George Lidwell told her really and truly: but she did not believe. First gentleman told Mina that was so. She asked him was that so. And second tankard told her so. That that was so. Miss Douce, miss Lydia, did not believe: miss Kennedy, Mina, did not believe: George Lidwell, no: miss Dou did not: the first, the first: gent with the tank: believe, no, no: did not, miss Kenn: Lidlydiawell: the tank. Better write it here. Quills in the postoffice chewed and twisted. Bald Pat at a sign drew nigh. A pen and ink. He went. A pad. He went. A pad to blot. He heard, deaf Pat. --Yes, Mr Bloom said, teasing the curling catgut line. It certainly is. Few lines will do. My present. All that Italian florid music is. Who is this wrote? Know the name you know better. Take out sheet notepaper, envelope: unconcerned. It's so characteristic. --Grandest number in the whole opera, Goulding said. --It is, Bloom said. Numbers it is. All music when you come to think. Two multiplied by two divided by half is twice one. Vibrations: chords those are. One plus two plus six is seven. Do anything you like with figures juggling. Always find out this equal to that. Symmetry under a cemetery wall. He doesn't see my mourning. Callous: all for his own gut. Musemathematics. And you think you're listening to the etherial. But suppose you said it like: Martha, seven times nine minus x is thirtyfive thousand. Fall quite flat. It's on account of the sounds it is. Instance he's playing now. Improvising. Might be what you like, till you hear the words. Want to listen sharp. Hard. Begin all right: then hear chords a bit off: feel lost a bit. In and out of sacks, over barrels, through wirefences, obstacle race. Time makes the tune. Question of mood you're in. Still always nice to hear. Except scales up and down, girls learning. Two together nextdoor neighbours. Ought to invent dummy pianos for that. Milly no taste. Queer because we both, I mean. Blumenlied I bought for her. The name. Playing it slow, a girl, night I came home, the girl. Door of the stables near Cecilia street. Bald deaf Pat brought quite flat pad ink. Pat set with ink pen quite flat pad. Pat took plate dish knife fork. Pat went. It was the only language Mr Dedalus said to Ben. He heard them as a boy in Ringabella, Crosshaven, Ringabella, singing their barcaroles. Queenstown harbour full of Italian ships. Walking, you know, Ben, in the moonlight with those earthquake hats. Blending their voices. God, such music, Ben. Heard as a boy. Cross Ringabella haven mooncarole. Sour pipe removed he held a shield of hand beside his lips that cooed a moonlight nightcall, clear from anear, a call from afar, replying. Down the edge of his Freeman baton ranged Bloom's, your other eye, scanning for where did I see that. Callan, Coleman, Dignam Patrick. Heigho! Heigho! Fawcett. Aha! Just I was looking. Hope he's not looking, cute as a rat. He held unfurled his Freeman. Can't see now. Remember write Greek ees. Bloom dipped, Bloo mur: dear sir. Dear Henry wrote: dear Mady. Got your lett and flow. Hell did I put? Some pock or oth. It is utterl imposs. Underline imposs. To write today. Bore this. Bored Bloom tambourined gently with I am just reflecting fingers on flat pad Pat brought. On. Know what I mean. No, change that ee. Accep my poor litt pres enclos. Ask her no answ. Hold on. Five Dig. Two about here. Penny the gulls. Elijah is com. Seven Davy Byrne's. Is eight about. Say half a crown. My poor little pres: p. o. two and six. Write me a long. Do you despise? Jingle, have you the? So excited. Why do you call me naught? You naughty too? O, Mairy lost the string of her. Bye for today. Yes, yes, will tell you. Want to. To keep it up. Call me that other. Other world she wrote. My patience are exhaust. To keep it up. You must believe. Believe. The tank. It. Is. True. Folly am I writing? Husbands don't. That's marriage does, their wives. Because I'm away from. Suppose. But how? She must. Keep young. If she found out. Card in my high grade ha. No, not tell all. Useless pain. If they don't see. Woman. Sauce for the gander. A hackney car, number three hundred and twentyfour, driver Barton James of number one Harmony avenue, Donnybrook, on which sat a fare, a young gentleman, stylishly dressed in an indigoblue serge suit made by George Robert Mesias, tailor and cutter, of number five Eden quay, and wearing a straw hat very dressy, bought of John Plasto of number one Great Brunswick street, hatter. Eh? This is the jingle that joggled and jingled. By Dlugacz' porkshop bright tubes of Agendath trotted a gallantbuttocked mare. --Answering an ad? keen Richie's eyes asked Bloom. --Yes, Mr Bloom said. Town traveller. Nothing doing, I expect. Bloom mur: best references. But Henry wrote: it will excite me. You know how. In haste. Henry. Greek ee. Better add postscript. What is he playing now? Improvising. Intermezzo. P. S. The rum tum tum. How will you pun? You punish me? Crooked skirt swinging, whack by. Tell me I want to. Know. O. Course if I didn't I wouldn't ask. La la la ree. Trails off there sad in minor. Why minor sad? Sign H. They like sad tail at end. P. P. S. La la la ree. I feel so sad today. La ree. So lonely. Dee. He blotted quick on pad of Pat. Envel. Address. Just copy out of paper. Murmured: Messrs Callan, Coleman and Co, limited. Henry wrote:
Miss Martha Clifford
c/o P. O.
Dolphin's Barn Lane
Dublin
Blot over the other so he can't read. There. Right. Idea prize titbit.
Something detective read off blottingpad. Payment at the rate of guinea per
col. Matcham often thinks the laughing witch. Poor Mrs Purefoy. U. P: up.
Too poetical that about the sad. Music did that. Music hath charms.
Shakespeare said. Quotations every day in the year. To be or not to be.
Wisdom while you wait.
In Gerard's rosery of Fetter lane he walks, greyedauburn. One life is
all. One body. Do. But do.
Done anyhow. Postal order, stamp. Postoffice lower down. Walk
now. Enough. Barney Kiernan's I promised to meet them. Dislike that job.
House of mourning. Walk. Pat! Doesn't hear. Deaf beetle he is.
Car near there now. Talk. Talk. Pat! Doesn't. Settling those napkins.
Lot of ground he must cover in the day. Paint face behind on him then he'd
be two. Wish they'd sing more. Keep my mind off.
Bald Pat who is bothered mitred the napkins. Pat is a waiter hard of
his hearing. Pat is a waiter who waits while you wait. Hee hee hee hee. He
waits while you wait. Hee hee. A waiter is he. Hee hee hee hee. He waits
while you wait. While you wait if you wait he will wait while you wait. Hee
hee hee hee. Hoh. Wait while you wait.
Douce now. Douce Lydia. Bronze and rose.
She had a gorgeous, simply gorgeous, time. And look at the lovely
shell she brought.
To the end of the bar to him she bore lightly the spiked and winding
seahorn that he, George Lidwell, solicitor, might hear.
--Listen! she bade him.
Under Tom Kernan's ginhot words the accompanist wove music slow.
Authentic fact. How Walter Bapty lost his voice. Well, sir, the husband took
him by the throat. Scoundrel, said he, you'll sing no more lovesongs. He
did, faith, sir Tom. Bob Cowley wove. Tenors get wom. Cowley lay back.
Ah, now he heard, she holding it to his ear. Hear! He heard.
Wonderful. She held it to her own. And through the sifted light pale gold in
contrast glided. To hear.
Tap.
Bloom through the bardoor saw a shell held at their ears. He heard
more faintly that that they heard, each for herself alone, then each for
other, hearing the plash of waves, loudly, a silent roar.
Bronze by a weary gold, anear, afar, they listened.
Her ear too is a shell, the peeping lobe there. Been to the seaside.
Lovely seaside girls. Skin tanned raw. Should have put on coldcream first
make it brown. Buttered toast. O and that lotion mustn't forget. Fever near
her mouth. Your head it simply. Hair braided over: shell with seaweed.
Why do they hide their ears with seaweed hair? And Turks the mouth,
why? Her eyes over the sheet. Yashmak. Find the way in. A cave. No
admittance except on business.
The sea they think they hear. Singing. A roar. The blood it is. Souse
in the ear sometimes. Well, it's a sea. Corpuscle islands.
Wonderful really. So distinct. Again. George Lidwell held its murmur,
hearing: then laid it by, gently.
--What are the wild waves saying? he asked her, smiled.
Charming, seasmiling and unanswering Lydia on Lidwell smiled. Tap.
By Larry O'Rourke's, by Larry, bold Larry O', Boylan swayed and
Boylan turned.
From the forsaken shell miss Mina glided to her tankards waiting.
No, she was not so lonely archly miss Douce's head let Mr Lidwell know.
Walks in the moonlight by the sea. No, not alone. With whom? She nobly
answered: with a gentleman friend.
Bob Cowley's twinkling fingers in the treble played again. The
landlord has the prior. A little time. Long John. Big Ben. Lightly he played a
light bright tinkling measure for tripping ladies, arch and smiling, and for
their gallants, gentlemen friends. One: one, one, one, one, one: two, one,
three, four.
Sea, wind, leaves, thunder, waters, cows lowing, the cattlemarket,
cocks, hens don't crow, snakes hissss. There's music everywhere.
Ruttledge's door: ee creaking. No, that's noise. Minuet of Don Giovanni
he's playing now. Court dresses of all descriptions in castle chambers
dancing. Misery. Peasants outside. Green starving faces eating dockleaves.
Nice that is. Look: look, look, look, look, look: you look at us.
That's joyful I can feel. Never have written it. Why? My joy is other
joy. But both are joys. Yes, joy it must be. Mere fact of music shows you
are. Often thought she was in the dumps till she began to lilt. Then know.
M'Coy valise. My wife and your wife. Squealing cat. Like tearing silk.
Tongue when she talks like the clapper of a bellows. They can't manage
men's intervals. Gap in their voices too. Fill me. I'm warm, dark, open.
Molly in quis est homo: Mercadante. My ear against the wall to hear. Want
a woman who can deliver the goods.
Jog jig jogged stopped. Dandy tan shoe of dandy Boylan socks
skyblue clocks came light to earth.
O, look we are so! Chamber music. Could make a kind of pun on
that. It is a kind of music I often thought when she. Acoustics that is.
Tinkling. Empty vessels make most noise. Because the acoustics, the
resonance changes according as the weight of the water is equal to the law
of falling water. Like those rhapsodies of Liszt's, Hungarian, gipsyeyed.
Pearls. Drops. Rain. Diddleiddle addleaddle ooddleooddle. Hissss. Now.
Maybe now. Before.
One rapped on a door, one tapped with a knock, did he knock Paul
de Kock with a loud proud knocker with a cock carracarracarra cock.
Cockcock.
Tap.
--Qui sdegno, Ben, said Father Cowley.
--No, Ben, Tom Kernan interfered. The Croppy Boy. Our native Doric.
--Ay do, Ben, Mr Dedalus said. Good men and true.
--Do, do, they begged in one.
I'll go. Here, Pat, return. Come. He came, he came, he did not stay.
To me. How much?
--What key? Six sharps?
--F sharp major, Ben Dollard said.
Bob Cowley's outstretched talons griped the black deepsounding
chords.
Must go prince Bloom told Richie prince. No, Richie said. Yes, must.
Got money somewhere. He's on for a razzle backache spree. Much? He
seehears lipspeech. One and nine. Penny for yourself. Here. Give him
twopence tip. Deaf, bothered. But perhaps he has wife and family waiting,
waiting Patty come home. Hee hee hee hee. Deaf wait while they wait.
But wait. But hear. Chords dark. Lugugugubrious. Low. In a cave of
the dark middle earth. Embedded ore. Lumpmusic.
The voice of dark age, of unlove, earth's fatigue made grave approach
and painful, come from afar, from hoary mountains, called on good men
and true. The priest he sought. With him would he speak a word.
Tap.
Ben Dollard's voice. Base barreltone. Doing his level best to say it.
Croak of vast manless moonless womoonless marsh. Other comedown. Big
ships' chandler's business he did once. Remember: rosiny ropes, ships'
lanterns. Failed to the tune of ten thousand pounds. Now in the Iveagh
home. Cubicle number so and so. Number one Bass did that for him.
The priest's at home. A false priest's servant bade him welcome. Step
in. The holy father. With bows a traitor servant. Curlycues of chords.
Ruin them. Wreck their lives. Then build them cubicles to end their
days in. Hushaby. Lullaby. Die, dog. Little dog, die.
The voice of warning, solemn warning, told them the youth had
entered a lonely hall, told them how solemn fell his footsteps there, told
them the gloomy chamber, the vested priest sitting to shrive.
Decent soul. Bit addled now. Thinks he'll win in Answers, poets'
picture puzzle. We hand you crisp five pound note. Bird sitting hatching in
a nest. Lay of the last minstrel he thought it was. See blank tee what
domestic animal? Tee dash ar most courageous mariner. Good voice he has
still. No eunuch yet with all his belongings.
Listen. Bloom listened. Richie Goulding listened. And by the door
deaf Pat, bald Pat, tipped Pat, listened.
The chords harped slower.
The voice of penance and of grief came slow, embellished, tremulous.
Ben's contrite beard confessed. In nomine Domini, in God's name he knelt.
He beat his hand upon his breast, confessing: mea culpa.
Latin again. That holds them like birdlime. Priest with the
communion corpus for those women. Chap in the mortuary, coffin or
coffey, corpusnomine. Wonder where that rat is by now. Scrape.
Tap.
They listened. Tankards and miss Kennedy. George Lidwell, eyelid
well expressive, fullbusted satin. Kernan. Si.
The sighing voice of sorrow sang. His sins. Since Easter he had
cursed three times. You bitch's bast. And once at masstime he had gone to
play. Once by the churchyard he had passed and for his mother's rest he
had not prayed. A boy. A croppy boy.
Bronze, listening, by the beerpull gazed far away. Soulfully. Doesn't
half know I'm. Molly great dab at seeing anyone looking.
Bronze gazed far sideways. Mirror there. Is that best side of her face?
They always know. Knock at the door. Last tip to titivate.
Cockcarracarra.
What do they think when they hear music? Way to catch rattlesnakes.
Night Michael Gunn gave us the box. Tuning up. Shah of Persia liked that
best. Remind him of home sweet home. Wiped his nose in curtain too.
Custom his country perhaps. That's music too. Not as bad as it sounds.
Tootling. Brasses braying asses through uptrunks. Doublebasses helpless,
gashes in their sides. Woodwinds mooing cows. Semigrand open crocodile
music hath jaws. Woodwind like Goodwin's name.
She looked fine. Her crocus dress she wore lowcut, belongings on
show. Clove her breath was always in theatre when she bent to ask a
question. Told her what Spinoza says in that book of poor papa's.
Hypnotised, listening. Eyes like that. She bent. Chap in dresscircle staring
down into her with his operaglass for all he was worth. Beauty of music
you must hear twice. Nature woman half a look. God made the country
man the tune. Met him pike hoses. Philosophy. O rocks!
All gone. All fallen. At the siege of Ross his father, at Gorey all his
brothers fell. To Wexford, we are the boys of Wexford, he would. Last of
his name and race.
I too. Last of my race. Milly young student. Well, my fault perhaps.
No son. Rudy. Too late now. Or if not? If not? If still?
He bore no hate.
Hate. Love. Those are names. Rudy. Soon I am old.
Big Ben his voice unfolded. Great voice Richie Goulding said, a flush
struggling in his pale, to Bloom soon old. But when was young?
Ireland comes now. My country above the king. She listens. Who
fears to speak of nineteen four? Time to be shoving. Looked enough.
--Bless me, father, Dollard the croppy cried. Bless me and let me go.
Tap.
Bloom looked, unblessed to go. Got up to kill: on eighteen bob a
week. Fellows shell out the dibs. Want to keep your weathereye open. Those
girls, those lovely. By the sad sea waves. Chorusgirl's romance. Letters read
out for breach of promise. From Chickabiddy's owny Mumpsypum.
Laughter in court. Henry. I never signed it. The lovely name you.
Low sank the music, air and words. Then hastened. The false priest
rustling soldier from his cassock. A yeoman captain. They know it all by
heart. The thrill they itch for. Yeoman cap.
Tap. Tap.
Thrilled she listened, bending in sympathy to hear.
Blank face. Virgin should say: or fingered only. Write something on
it: page. If not what becomes of them? Decline, despair. Keeps them young.
Even admire themselves. See. Play on her. Lip blow. Body of white woman,
a flute alive. Blow gentle. Loud. Three holes, all women. Goddess I didn't
see. They want it. Not too much polite. That's why he gets them. Gold in
your pocket, brass in your face. Say something. Make her hear. With look
to look. Songs without words. Molly, that hurdygurdy boy. She knew he
meant the monkey was sick. Or because so like the Spanish. Understand
animals too that way. Solomon did. Gift of nature.
Ventriloquise. My lips closed. Think in my stom. What?
Will? You? I. Want. You. To.
With hoarse rude fury the yeoman cursed, swelling in apoplectic
bitch's bastard. A good thought, boy, to come. One hour's your time to live,
your last.
Tap. Tap.
Thrill now. Pity they feel. To wipe away a tear for martyrs that want
to, dying to, die. For all things dying, for all things born. Poor Mrs
Purefoy. Hope she's over. Because their wombs.
A liquid of womb of woman eyeball gazed under a fence of lashes,
calmly, hearing. See real beauty of the eye when she not speaks. On yonder
river. At each slow satiny heaving bosom's wave (her heaving embon) red
rose rose slowly sank red rose. Heartbeats: her breath: breath that is life.
And all the tiny tiny fernfoils trembled of maidenhair.
But look. The bright stars fade. O rose! Castile. The morn.
Ha. Lidwell. For him then not for. Infatuated. I like that? See her
from here though. Popped corks, splashes of beerfroth, stacks of empties.
On the smooth jutting beerpull laid Lydia hand, lightly, plumply,
leave it to my hands. All lost in pity for croppy. Fro, to: to, fro: over the
polished knob (she knows his eyes, my eyes, her eyes) her thumb and finger
passed in pity: passed, reposed and, gently touching, then slid so smoothly,
slowly down, a cool firm white enamel baton protruding through their
sliding ring.
With a cock with a carra.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I hold this house. Amen. He gnashed in fury. Traitors swing.
The chords consented. Very sad thing. But had to be.
Get out before the end. Thanks, that was heavenly. Where's my hat.
Pass by her. Can leave that Freeman. Letter I have. Suppose she were the?
No. Walk, walk, walk. Like Cashel Boylo Connoro Coylo Tisdall Maurice
Tisntdall Farrell. Waaaaaaalk.
Well, I must be. Are you off? Yrfmstbyes. Blmstup. O'er ryehigh blue.
Ow. Bloom stood up. Soap feeling rather sticky behind. Must have
sweated: music. That lotion, remember. Well, so long. High grade. Card
inside. Yes.
By deaf Pat in the doorway straining ear Bloom passed.
At Geneva barrack that young man died. At Passage was his body
laid. Dolor! O, he dolores! The voice of the mournful chanter called to
dolorous prayer.
By rose, by satiny bosom, by the fondling hand, by slops, by empties,
by popped corks, greeting in going, past eyes and maidenhair, bronze and
faint gold in deepseashadow, went Bloom, soft Bloom, I feel so lonely
Bloom.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Pray for him, prayed the bass of Dollard. You who hear in peace.
Breathe a prayer, drop a tear, good men, good people. He was the croppy
boy.
Scaring eavesdropping boots croppy bootsboy Bloom in the Ormond
hallway heard the growls and roars of bravo, fat backslapping, their boots
all treading, boots not the boots the boy. General chorus off for a swill to
wash it down. Glad I avoided.
--Come on, Ben, Simon Dedalus cried. By God, you're as good as ever you
were.
--Better, said Tomgin Kernan. Most trenchant rendition of that ballad,
upon my soul and honour It is.
--Lablache, said Father Cowley.
Ben Dollard bulkily cachuchad towards the bar, mightily praisefed
and all big roseate, on heavyfooted feet, his gouty fingers nakkering
castagnettes in the air.
Big Benaben Dollard. Big Benben. Big Benben.
Rrr.
And deepmoved all, Simon trumping compassion from foghorn nose,
all laughing they brought him forth, Ben Dollard, in right good cheer.
--You're looking rubicund, George Lidwell said.
Miss Douce composed her rose to wait.
--Ben machree, said Mr Dedalus, clapping Ben's fat back shoulderblade.
Fit as a fiddle only he has a lot of adipose tissue concealed about his person.
Rrrrrrrsss.
--Fat of death, Simon, Ben Dollard growled.
Richie rift in the lute alone sat: Goulding, Collis, Ward. Uncertainly
he waited. Unpaid Pat too.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Miss Mina Kennedy brought near her lips to ear of tankard one.
--Mr Dollard, they murmured low.
--Dollard, murmured tankard.
Tank one believed: miss Kenn when she: that doll he was: she doll:
the tank.
He murmured that he knew the name. The name was familiar to him,
that is to say. That was to say he had heard the name of. Dollard, was it?
Dollard, yes.
Yes, her lips said more loudly, Mr Dollard. He sang that song lovely,
murmured Mina. Mr Dollard. And The Last Rose of Summer was a lovely
song. Mina loved that song. Tankard loved the song that Mina.
'Tis the last rose of summer dollard left bloom felt wind wound round
inside.
Gassy thing that cider: binding too. Wait. Postoffice near Reuben J's
one and eightpence too. Get shut of it. Dodge round by Greek street. Wish
I hadn't promised to meet. Freer in air. Music. Gets on your nerves.
Beerpull. Her hand that rocks the cradle rules the. Ben Howth. That rules
the world.
Far. Far. Far. Far.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Up the quay went Lionelleopold, naughty Henry with letter for
Mady, with sweets of sin with frillies for Raoul with met him pike hoses
went Poldy on.
Tap blind walked tapping by the tap the curbstone tapping, tap by tap.
Cowley, he stuns himself with it: kind of drunkenness. Better give
way only half way the way of a man with a maid. Instance enthusiasts. All
ears. Not lose a demisemiquaver. Eyes shut. Head nodding in time. Dotty.
You daren't budge. Thinking strictly prohibited. Always talking shop.
Fiddlefaddle about notes.
All a kind of attempt to talk. Unpleasant when it stops because you
never know exac. Organ in Gardiner street. Old Glynn fifty quid a year.
Queer up there in the cockloft, alone, with stops and locks and keys. Seated
all day at the organ. Maunder on for hours, talking to himself or the other
fellow blowing the bellows. Growl angry, then shriek cursing (want to have
wadding or something in his no don't she cried), then all of a soft sudden
wee little wee little pipy wind.
Pwee! A wee little wind piped eeee. In Bloom's little wee.
--Was he? Mr Dedalus said, returning with fetched pipe. I was with him
this morning at poor little Paddy Dignam's ...
--Ay, the Lord have mercy on him.
--By the bye there's a tuningfork in there on the ...
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
--The wife has a fine voice. Or had. What? Lidwell asked.
--O, that must be the tuner, Lydia said to Simonlionel first I saw, forgot it
when he was here.
Blind he was she told George Lidwell second I saw. And played so
exquisitely, treat to hear. Exquisite contrast: bronzelid, minagold.
--Shout! Ben Dollard shouted, pouring. Sing out!
--'lldo! cried Father Cowley.
Rrrrrr.
I feel I want....
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap
--Very, Mr Dedalus said, staring hard at a headless sardine.
Under the sandwichbell lay on a bier of bread one last, one lonely, last sardine of summer.
Bloom alone.
--Very, he stared. The lower register, for choice.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Bloom went by Barry's. Wish I could. Wait. That wonderworker if I
had. Twentyfour solicitors in that one house. Counted them. Litigation.
Love one another. Piles of parchment. Messrs Pick and Pocket have power
of attorney. Goulding, Collis, Ward.
But for example the chap that wallops the big drum. His vocation:
Mickey Rooney's band. Wonder how it first struck him. Sitting at home
after pig's cheek and cabbage nursing it in the armchair. Rehearsing his
band part. Pom. Pompedy. Jolly for the wife. Asses' skins. Welt them
through life, then wallop after death. Pom. Wallop. Seems to be what you
call yashmak or I mean kismet. Fate.
Tap. Tap. A stripling, blind, with a tapping cane came taptaptapping
by Daly's window where a mermaid hair all streaming (but he couldn't see)
blew whiffs of a mermaid (blind couldn't), mermaid, coolest whiff of all.
Instruments. A blade of grass, shell of her hands, then blow. Even
comb and tissuepaper you can knock a tune out of. Molly in her shift in
Lombard street west, hair down. I suppose each kind of trade made its own,
don't you see? Hunter with a horn. Haw. Have you the? Cloche. Sonnez la.
Shepherd his pipe. Pwee little wee. Policeman a whistle. Locks and keys!
Sweep! Four o'clock's all's well! Sleep! All is lost now. Drum? Pompedy.
Wait. I know. Towncrier, bumbailiff. Long John. Waken the dead. Pom.
Dignam. Poor little nominedomine. Pom. It is music. I mean of course it's
all pom pom pom very much what they call da capo. Still you can hear. As
we march, we march along, march along. Pom.
I must really. Fff. Now if I did that at a banquet. Just a question of
custom shah of Persia. Breathe a prayer, drop a tear. All the same he must
have been a bit of a natural not to see it was a yeoman cap. Muffled up.
Wonder who was that chap at the grave in the brown macin. O, the whore
of the lane!
A frowsy whore with black straw sailor hat askew came glazily in the
day along the quay towards Mr Bloom. When first he saw that form
endearing? Yes, it is. I feel so lonely. Wet night in the lane. Horn. Who had
the? Heehaw shesaw. Off her beat here. What is she? Hope she. Psst! Any
chance of your wash. Knew Molly. Had me decked. Stout lady does be with
you in the brown costume. Put you off your stroke, that. Appointment we
made knowing we'd never, well hardly ever. Too dear too near to home
sweet home. Sees me, does she? Looks a fright in the day. Face like dip.
Damn her. O, well, she has to live like the rest. Look in here.
In Lionel Marks's antique saleshop window haughty Henry Lionel
Leopold dear Henry Flower earnestly Mr Leopold Bloom envisaged
battered candlesticks melodeon oozing maggoty blowbags. Bargain: six
bob. Might learn to play. Cheap. Let her pass. Course everything is dear if
you don't want it. That's what good salesman is. Make you buy what he
wants to sell. Chap sold me the Swedish razor he shaved me with. Wanted
to charge me for the edge he gave it. She's passing now. Six bob.
Must be the cider or perhaps the burgund.
Near bronze from anear near gold from afar they chinked their
clinking glasses all, brighteyed and gallant, before bronze Lydia's tempting
last rose of summer, rose of Castile. First Lid, De, Cow, Ker, Doll, a fifth:
Lidwell, Si Dedalus, Bob Cowley, Kernan and big Ben Dollard.
Tap. A youth entered a lonely Ormond hall.
Bloom viewed a gallant pictured hero in Lionel Marks's window.
Robert Emmet's last words. Seven last words. Of Meyerbeer that is.
--True men like you men.
--Ay, ay, Ben.
--Will lift your glass with us.
They lifted.
Tschink. Tschunk.
Tip. An unseeing stripling stood in the door. He saw not bronze. He
saw not gold. Nor Ben nor Bob nor Tom nor Si nor George nor tanks nor
Richie nor Pat. Hee hee hee hee. He did not see.
Seabloom, greaseabloom viewed last words. Softly. When my country
takes her place among.
Prrprr.
Must be the bur.
Fff! Oo. Rrpr.
Nations of the earth. No-one behind. She's passed. Then and not till
then. Tram kran kran kran. Good oppor. Coming. Krandlkrankran. I'm
sure it's the burgund. Yes. One, two. Let my epitaph be. Kraaaaaa. Written.
I have.
Pprrpffrrppffff.
Done.
-- 7 Hunter Street,
Liverpool.
To the High Sheriff of Dublin,
Dublin.
Honoured sir i beg to offer my services in the abovementioned painful case i
hanged Joe Gann in Bootle jail on the 12 of Febuary 1900 and i hanged ....
--Show us, Joe, says I.
--... private Arthur Chace for fowl murder of Jessie Tilsit in Pentonville
prison and i was assistant when ....
--Jesus, says I.
--... Billington executed the awful murderer Toad Smith ...
The citizen made a grab at the letter.
--Hold hard, says Joe, i have a special nack of putting the noose once in he
can't get out hoping to be favoured i remain, honoured sir, my terms is five
ginnees.
H. Rumbold,
Master Barber.
--And a barbarous bloody barbarian he is too, says the citizen.
--And the dirty scrawl of the wretch, says Joe. Here, says he, take them to
hell out of my sight, Alf. Hello, Bloom, says he, what will you have?
So they started arguing about the point, Bloom saying he wouldn't
and he couldn't and excuse him no offence and all to that and then he said
well he'd just take a cigar. Gob, he's a prudent member and no mistake.
--Give us one of your prime stinkers, Terry, says Joe.
And Alf was telling us there was one chap sent in a mourning card
with a black border round it.
--They're all barbers, says he, from the black country that would hang
their own fathers for five quid down and travelling expenses.
And he was telling us there's two fellows waiting below to pull his
heels down when he gets the drop and choke him properly and then they
chop up the rope after and sell the bits for a few bob a skull.
In the dark land they bide, the vengeful knights of the razor. Their
deadly coil they grasp: yea, and therein they lead to Erebus whatsoever
wight hath done a deed of blood for I will on nowise suffer it even so saith
the Lord.
So they started talking about capital punishment and of course Bloom
comes out with the why and the wherefore and all the codology of the
business and the old dog smelling him all the time I'm told those jewies does
have a sort of a queer odour coming off them for dogs about I don't know
what all deterrent effect and so forth and so on.
--There's one thing it hasn't a deterrent effect on, says Alf.
--What's that? says Joe.
--The poor bugger's tool that's being hanged, says Alf.
--That so? says Joe.
--God's truth, says Alf. I heard that from the head warder that was in
Kilmainham when they hanged Joe Brady, the invincible. He told me when
they cut him down after the drop it was standing up in their faces like a
poker.
--Ruling passion strong in death, says Joe, as someone said.
--That can be explained by science, says Bloom. It's only a natural
phenomenon, don't you see, because on account of the ...
And then he starts with his jawbreakers about phenomenon and
science and this phenomenon and the other phenomenon.
The distinguished scientist Herr Professor Luitpold Blumenduft
tendered medical evidence to the effect that the instantaneous fracture of the
cervical vertebrae and consequent scission of the spinal cord would,
according to the best approved tradition of medical science, be calculated to
inevitably produce in the human subject a violent ganglionic stimulus of the
nerve centres of the genital apparatus, thereby causing the elastic pores of
the corpora cavernosa to rapidly dilate in such a way as to instantaneously
facilitate the flow of blood to that part of the human anatomy known as the
penis or male organ resulting in the phenomenon which has been
denominated by the faculty a morbid upwards and outwards
philoprogenitive erection in articulo mortis per diminutionem capitis.
So of course the citizen was only waiting for the wink of the word
and he starts gassing out of him about the invincibles and the old guard and
the men of sixtyseven and who fears to speak of ninetyeight and Joe with
him about all the fellows that were hanged, drawn and transported for the
cause by drumhead courtmartial and a new Ireland and new this, that and
the other. Talking about new Ireland he ought to go and get a new dog so
he ought. Mangy ravenous brute sniffing and sneezing all round the place
and scratching his scabs. And round he goes to Bob Doran that was
standing Alf a half one sucking up for what he could get. So of course Bob
Doran starts doing the bloody fool with his:
--Give us the paw! Give the paw, doggy! Good old doggy! Give the paw
here! Give us the paw!
Arrah, bloody end to the paw he'd paw and Alf trying to keep him
from tumbling off the bloody stool atop of the bloody old dog and he
talking all kinds of drivel about training by kindness and thoroughbred dog
and intelligent dog: give you the bloody pip. Then he starts scraping a few
bits of old biscuit out of the bottom of a Jacobs' tin he told Terry to bring.
Gob, he golloped it down like old boots and his tongue hanging out of him
a yard long for more. Near ate the tin and all, hungry bloody mongrel.
And the citizen and Bloom having an argument about the point, the
brothers Sheares and Wolfe Tone beyond on Arbour Hill and Robert
Emmet and die for your country, the Tommy Moore touch about Sara
Curran and she's far from the land. And Bloom, of course, with his
knockmedown cigar putting on swank with his lardy face. Phenomenon!
The fat heap he married is a nice old phenomenon with a back on her like a
ballalley. Time they were stopping up in the City Arms pisser Burke told me
there was an old one there with a cracked loodheramaun of a nephew and
Bloom trying to get the soft side of her doing the mollycoddle playing
b’zique to come in for a bit of the wampum in her will and not eating meat
of a Friday because the old one was always thumping her craw and taking
the lout out for a walk. And one time he led him the rounds of Dublin and,
by the holy farmer, he never cried crack till he brought him home as drunk
as a boiled owl and he said he did it to teach him the evils of alcohol and by
herrings, if the three women didn't near roast him, it's a queer story, the old
one, Bloom's wife and Mrs O'Dowd that kept the hotel. Jesus, I had to
laugh at pisser Burke taking them off chewing the fat. And Bloom with his
but don't you see? and but on the other hand. And sure, more be token, the
lout I'm told was in Power's after, the blender's, round in Cope street going
home footless in a cab five times in the week after drinking his way through
all the samples in the bloody establishment. Phenomenon!
--The memory of the dead, says the citizen taking up his pintglass and
glaring at Bloom.
--Ay, ay, says Joe.
--You don't grasp my point, says Bloom. What I mean is ....
--Sinn Fein! says the citizen. Sinn fein amhain! The friends we love are by
our side and the foes we hate before us.
The last farewell was affecting in the extreme. From the belfries far
and near the funereal deathbell tolled unceasingly while all around the
gloomy precincts rolled the ominous warning of a hundred muffled drums
punctuated by the hollow booming of pieces of ordnance. The deafening
claps of thunder and the dazzling flashes of lightning which lit up the
ghastly scene testified that the artillery of heaven had lent its supernatural
pomp to the already gruesome spectacle. A torrential rain poured down
from the floodgates of the angry heavens upon the bared heads of the
assembled multitude which numbered at the lowest computation five
hundred thousand persons. A posse of Dublin Metropolitan police
superintended by the Chief Commissioner in person maintained order in
the vast throng for whom the York street brass and reed band whiled away
the intervening time by admirably rendering on their blackdraped
instruments the matchless melody endeared to us from the cradle by
Speranza's plaintive muse. Special quick excursion trains and upholstered
charabancs had been provided for the comfort of our country cousins of
whom there were large contingents. Considerable amusement was caused
by the favourite Dublin streetsingers L-n-h-n and M-ll-g-n who sang The
Night before Larry was Stretched in their usual mirthprovoking fashion.
Our two inimitable drolls did a roaring trade with their broadsheets among
lovers of the comedy element and nobody who has a corner in his heart for
real Irish fun without vulgarity will grudge them their hardearned pennies.
The children of the Male and Female Foundling Hospital who thronged the
windows overlooking the scene were delighted with this unexpected
addition to the day's entertainment and a word of praise is due to the Little
Sisters of the Poor for their excellent idea of affording the poor fatherless
and motherless children a genuinely instructive treat. The viceregal
houseparty which included many wellknown ladies was chaperoned by
Their Excellencies to the most favourable positions on the grandstand while
the picturesque foreign delegation known as the Friends of the Emerald Isle
was accommodated on a tribune directly opposite. The delegation, present
in full force, consisted of Commendatore Bacibaci Beninobenone (the
semiparalysed doyen of the party who had to be assisted to his seat by the
aid of a powerful steam crane), Monsieur Pierrepaul Petit’patant, the
Grandjoker Vladinmire Pokethankertscheff, the Archjoker Leopold
Rudolph von Schwanzenbad-Hodenthaler, Countess Marha Viraga
Kisaszony Putr pesthi, Hiram Y. Bomboost, Count Athanatos
Karamelopulos, Ali Baba Backsheesh Rahat Lokum Effendi, Se¤or Hidalgo
Caballero Don Pecadillo y Palabras y Paternoster de la Malora de la
Malaria, Hokopoko Harakiri, Hi Hung Chang, Olaf Kobberkeddelsen,
Mynheer Trik van Trumps, Pan Poleaxe Paddyrisky, Goosepond P hkl t
Kratchinabritchisitch, Borus Hupinkoff, Herr Hurhausdirektorpresident
Hans Chuechli-Steuerli, Nationalgymnasiummuseumsanatoriumand-
suspensoriumsordinaryprivatdocentgeneralhistoryspecialprofessordoctor
Kriegfried Ueberallgemein. All the delegates without exception expressed
themselves in the strongest possible heterogeneous terms concerning the
nameless barbarity which they had been called upon to witness.
An animated altercation (in which all took part) ensued among
the F. O. T. E. I. as to whether the eighth or the ninth of March was the
correct date of the birth of Ireland's patron saint. In the course of the
argument cannonballs, scimitars, boomerangs, blunderbusses, stinkpots,
meatchoppers, umbrellas, catapults, knuckledusters, sandbags, lumps of pig
iron were resorted to and blows were freely exchanged. The baby
policeman, Constable MacFadden, summoned by special courier from
Booterstown, quickly restored order and with lightning promptitude
proposed the seventeenth of the month as a solution equally honourable for
both contending parties. The readywitted ninefooter's suggestion at once
appealed to all and was unanimously accepted. Constable MacFadden was
heartily congratulated by all the F. O. T. E. I., several of whom were
bleeding profusely. Commendatore Beninobenone having been extricated
from underneath the presidential armchair, it was explained by his legal
adviser Avvocato Pagamimi that the various articles secreted in his
thirtytwo pockets had been abstracted by him during the affray from the
pockets of his junior colleagues in the hope of bringing them to their senses.
The objects (which included several hundred ladies' and gentlemen's gold
and silver watches) were promptly restored to their rightful owners and
general harmony reigned supreme.
Quietly, unassumingly Rumbold stepped on to the scaffold in faultless
morning dress and wearing his favourite flower, the Gladiolus Cruentus.
He announced his presence by that gentle Rumboldian cough which so
many have tried (unsuccessfully) to imitate - short, painstaking yet withal
so characteristic of the man. The arrival of the worldrenowned headsman
was greeted by a roar of acclamation from the huge concourse, the
viceregal ladies waving their handkerchiefs in their excitement while the
even more excitable foreign delegates cheered vociferously in a medley of
cries, hoch, banzai, eljen, zivio, chinchin, polla kronia, hiphip, vive,
Allah, amid which the ringing evviva of the delegate of the land of song
(a high double F recalling those piercingly lovely notes with which the
eunuch Catalani beglamoured our greatgreatgrandmothers) was easily
distinguishable. It was exactly seventeen o'clock. The signal for prayer was
then promptly given by megaphone and in an instant all heads were bared,
the commendatore's patriarchal sombrero, which has been in the possession
of his family since the revolution of Rienzi, being removed by his medical
adviser in attendance, Dr Pippi. The learned prelate who administered the
last comforts of holy religion to the hero martyr when about to pay the
death penalty knelt in a most christian spirit in a pool of rainwater, his
cassock above his hoary head, and offered up to the throne of grace fervent
prayers of supplication. Hand by the block stood the grim figure of the
executioner, his visage being concealed in a tengallon pot with two circular
perforated apertures through which his eyes glowered furiously. As he
awaited the fatal signal he tested the edge of his horrible weapon by honing
it upon his brawny forearm or decapitated in rapid succession a flock of
sheep which had been provided by the admirers of his fell but necessary
office. On a handsome mahogany table near him were neatly arranged the
quartering knife, the various finely tempered disembowelling appliances
(specially supplied by the worldfamous firm of cutlers, Messrs John Round
and Sons, Sheffield), a terra cotta saucepan for the reception of the
duodenum, colon, blind intestine and appendix etc when successfully
extracted and two commodious milkjugs destined to receive the most
precious blood of the most precious victim. The housesteward of the
amalgamated cats' and dogs' home was in attendance to convey these
vessels when replenished to that beneficent institution. Quite an excellent
repast consisting of rashers and eggs, fried steak and onions, done to a
nicety, delicious hot breakfast rolls and invigorating tea had been
considerately provided by the authorities for the consumption of the central
figure of the tragedy who was in capital spirits when prepared for death and
evinced the keenest interest in the proceedings from beginning to end but
he, with an abnegation rare in these our times, rose nobly to the occasion
and expressed the dying wish (immediately acceded to) that the meal should
be divided in aliquot parts among the members of the sick and indigent
roomkeepers' association as a token of his regard and esteem. The nec and
non plus ultra of emotion were reached when the blushing bride elect burst
her way through the serried ranks of the bystanders and flung herself upon
the muscular bosom of him who was about to be launched into eternity for
her sake. The hero folded her willowy form in a loving embrace murmuring
fondly Sheila, my own. Encouraged by this use of her christian name she
kissed passionately all the various suitable areas of his person which the
decencies of prison garb permitted her ardour to reach. She swore to him as
they mingled the salt streams of their tears that she would ever cherish his
memory, that she would never forget her hero boy who went to his death
with a song on his lips as if he were but going to a hurling match in
Clonturk park. She brought back to his recollection the happy days of
blissful childhood together on the banks of Anna Liffey when they had
indulged in the innocent pastimes of the young and, oblivious of the
dreadful present, they both laughed heartily, all the spectators, including
the venerable pastor, joining in the general merriment. That monster
audience simply rocked with delight. But anon they were overcome with
grief and clasped their hands for the last time. A fresh torrent of tears burst
from their lachrymal ducts and the vast concourse of people, touched to the
inmost core, broke into heartrending sobs, not the least affected being the
aged prebendary himself. Big strong men, officers of the peace and genial
giants of the royal Irish constabulary, were making frank use of their
handkerchiefs and it is safe to say that there was not a dry eye in that
record assemblage. A most romantic incident occurred when a handsome
young Oxford graduate, noted for his chivalry towards the fair sex, stepped
forward and, presenting his visiting card, bankbook and genealogical tree,
solicited the hand of the hapless young lady, requesting her to name the
day, and was accepted on the spot. Every lady in the audience was
presented with a tasteful souvenir of the occasion in the shape of a skull and
crossbones brooch, a timely and generous act which evoked a fresh
outburst of emotion: and when the gallant young Oxonian (the bearer, by
the way, of one of the most timehonoured names in Albion's history) placed
on the finger of his blushing fianc’e an expensive engagement ring with
emeralds set in the form of a fourleaved shamrock the excitement knew no
bounds. Nay, even the stern provostmarshal, lieutenantcolonel
Tomkin-Maxwell ffrenchmullan Tomlinson, who presided on the sad
occasion, he who had blown a considerable number of sepoys from the
cannonmouth without flinching, could not now restrain his natural
emotion. With his mailed gauntlet he brushed away a furtive tear and was
overheard, by those privileged burghers who happened to be in his
immediate entourage, to murmur to himself in a faltering undertone:
--God blimey if she aint a clinker, that there bleeding tart. Blimey it makes
me kind of bleeding cry, straight, it does, when I sees her cause I thinks of
my old mashtub what's waiting for me down Limehouse way.
So then the citizen begins talking about the Irish language and the
corporation meeting and all to that and the shoneens that can't speak their
own language and Joe chipping in because he stuck someone for a quid and
Bloom putting in his old goo with his twopenny stump that he cadged off of
Joe and talking about the Gaelic league and the antitreating league and
drink, the curse of Ireland. Antitreating is about the size of it. Gob, he'd let
you pour all manner of drink down his throat till the Lord would call him
before you'd ever see the froth of his pint. And one night I went in with a
fellow into one of their musical evenings, song and dance about she could
get up on a truss of hay she could my Maureen Lay and there was a fellow
with a Ballyhooly blue ribbon badge spiffing out of him in Irish and a lot of
colleen bawns going about with temperance beverages and selling medals
and oranges and lemonade and a few old dry buns, gob, flahoolagh
entertainment, don't be talking. Ireland sober is Ireland free. And then an
old fellow starts blowing into his bagpipes and all the gougers shuffling
their feet to the tune the old cow died of. And one or two sky pilots having
an eye around that there was no goings on with the females, hitting below
the belt.
So howandever, as I was saying, the old dog seeing the tin was empty
starts mousing around by Joe and me. I'd train him by kindness, so I
would, if he was my dog. Give him a rousing fine kick now and again where
it wouldn't blind him.
--Afraid he'll bite you? says the citizen, jeering.
--No, says I. But he might take my leg for a lamppost.
So he calls the old dog over.
--What's on you, Garry? says he.
Then he starts hauling and mauling and talking to him in Irish and
the old towser growling, letting on to answer, like a duet in the opera. Such
growling you never heard as they let off between them. Someone that has
nothing better to do ought to write a letter pro bono publico to the papers
about the muzzling order for a dog the like of that. Growling and grousing
and his eye all bloodshot from the drouth is in it and the hydrophobia
dropping out of his jaws.
All those who are interested in the spread of human culture among
the lower animals (and their name is legion) should make a point of not
missing the really marvellous exhibition of cynanthropy given by the
famous old Irish red setter wolfdog formerly known by the sobriquet of
Garryowen and recently rechristened by his large circle of friends and
acquaintances Owen Garry. The exhibition, which is the result of years of
training by kindness and a carefully thoughtout dietary system, comprises,
among other achievements, the recitation of verse. Our greatest living
phonetic expert (wild horses shall not drag it from us!) has left no stone
unturned in his efforts to delucidate and compare the verse recited and has
found it bears a striking resemblance (the italics are ours) to the ranns of
ancient Celtic bards. We are not speaking so much of those delightful
lovesongs with which the writer who conceals his identity under the
graceful pseudonym of the Little Sweet Branch has familiarised the
bookloving world but rather (as a contributor D. O. C. points out in an
interesting communication published by an evening contemporary) of the
harsher and more personal note which is found in the satirical effusions of
the famous Raftery and of Donal MacConsidine to say nothing of a more
modern lyrist at present very much in the public eye. We subjoin a specimen
which has been rendered into English by an eminent scholar whose name
for the moment we are not at liberty to disclose though we believe that our
readers will find the topical allusion rather more than an indication. The
metrical system of the canine original, which recalls the intricate alliterative
and isosyllabic rules of the Welsh englyn, is infinitely more complicated but
we believe our readers will agree that the spirit has been well caught.
Perhaps it should be added that the effect is greatly increased if Owen's
verse be spoken somewhat slowly and indistinctly in a tone suggestive of
suppressed rancour.
The curse of my curses
Seven days every day
And seven dry Thursdays
On you, Barney Kiernan,
Has no sup of water
To cool my courage,
And my guts red roaring
After Lowry's lights.
So he told Terry to bring some water for the dog and, gob, you could
hear him lapping it up a mile off. And Joe asked him would he have
another.
--I will, says he, a chara, to show there's no ill feeling.
Gob, he's not as green as he's cabbagelooking. Arsing around from
one pub to another, leaving it to your own honour, with old Giltrap's dog
and getting fed up by the ratepayers and corporators. Entertainment for
man and beast. And says Joe:
--Could you make a hole in another pint?
--Could a swim duck? says I.
--Same again, Terry, says Joe. Are you sure you won't have anything in the
way of liquid refreshment? says he.
--Thank you, no, says Bloom. As a matter of fact I just wanted to meet
Martin Cunningham, don't you see, about this insurance of poor Dignam's.
Martin asked me to go to the house. You see, he, Dignam, I mean, didn't
serve any notice of the assignment on the company at the time and
nominally under the act the mortgagee can't recover on the policy.
--Holy Wars, says Joe, laughing, that's a good one if old Shylock is landed.
So the wife comes out top dog, what?
--Well, that's a point, says Bloom, for the wife's admirers.
--Whose admirers? says Joe.
--The wife's advisers, I mean, says Bloom.
Then he starts all confused mucking it up about mortgagor under the
act like the lord chancellor giving it out on the bench and for the benefit of
the wife and that a trust is created but on the other hand that Dignam owed
Bridgeman the money and if now the wife or the widow contested the
mortgagee's right till he near had the head of me addled with his mortgagor
under the act. He was bloody safe he wasn't run in himself under the act
that time as a rogue and vagabond only he had a friend in court. Selling
bazaar tickets or what do you call it royal Hungarian privileged lottery.
True as you're there. O, commend me to an israelite! Royal and privileged
Hungarian robbery.
So Bob Doran comes lurching around asking Bloom to tell Mrs
Dignam he was sorry for her trouble and he was very sorry about the
funeral and to tell her that he said and everyone who knew him said that
there was never a truer, a finer than poor little Willy that's dead to tell her.
Choking with bloody foolery. And shaking Bloom's hand doing the tragic
to tell her that. Shake hands, brother. You're a rogue and I'm another.
--Let me, said he, so far presume upon our acquaintance which, however
slight it may appear if judged by the standard of mere time, is founded, as I
hope and believe, on a sentiment of mutual esteem as to request of you this
favour. But, should I have overstepped the limits of reserve let the sincerity
of my feelings be the excuse for my boldness.
--No, rejoined the other, I appreciate to the full the motives which actuate
your conduct and I shall discharge the office you entrust to me consoled by
the reflection that, though the errand be one of sorrow, this proof of your
confidence sweetens in some measure the bitterness of the cup.
--Then suffer me to take your hand, said he. The goodness of your heart, I
feel sure, will dictate to you better than my inadequate words the
expressions which are most suitable to convey an emotion whose
poignancy, were I to give vent to my feelings, would deprive me even of
speech.
And off with him and out trying to walk straight. Boosed at five
o'clock. Night he was near being lagged only Paddy Leonard knew the
bobby, 14 A. Blind to the world up in a shebeen in Bride street after closing
time, fornicating with two shawls and a bully on guard, drinking porter out
of teacups. And calling himself a Frenchy for the shawls, Joseph Manuo,
and talking against the Catholic religion, and he serving mass in Adam and
Eve's when he was young with his eyes shut, who wrote the new testament,
and the old testament, and hugging and smugging. And the two shawls
killed with the laughing, picking his pockets, the bloody fool and he spilling
the porter all over the bed and the two shawls screeching laughing at one
another. How is your testament? Have you got an old testament? Only
Paddy was passing there, I tell you what. Then see him of a Sunday with his
little concubine of a wife, and she wagging her tail up the aisle of the chapel
with her patent boots on her, no less, and her violets, nice as pie, doing the
little lady. Jack Mooney's sister. And the old prostitute of a mother
procuring rooms to street couples. Gob, Jack made him toe the line. Told
him if he didn't patch up the pot, Jesus, he'd kick the shite out of him.
So Terry brought the three pints.
--Here, says Joe, doing the honours. Here, citizen.
--Slan leat, says he.
--Fortune, Joe, says I. Good health, citizen.
Gob, he had his mouth half way down the tumbler already. Want a
small fortune to keep him in drinks.
--Who is the long fellow running for the mayoralty, Alf? says Joe.
--Friend of yours, says Alf.
--Nannan? says Joe. The mimber?
--I won't mention any names, says Alf.
--I thought so, says Joe. I saw him up at that meeting now with William
Field, M. P., the cattle traders.
--Hairy Iopas, says the citizen, that exploded volcano, the darling of all
countries and the idol of his own.
So Joe starts telling the citizen about the foot and mouth disease and
the cattle traders and taking action in the matter and the citizen sending
them all to the rightabout and Bloom coming out with his sheepdip for the
scab and a hoose drench for coughing calves and the guaranteed remedy
for timber tongue. Because he was up one time in a knacker's yard.
Walking about with his book and pencil here's my head and my heels are
coming till Joe Cuffe gave him the order of the boot for giving lip to a
grazier. Mister Knowall. Teach your grandmother how to milk ducks.
Pisser Burke was telling me in the hotel the wife used to be in rivers of tears
some times with Mrs O'Dowd crying her eyes out with her eight inches of
fat all over her. Couldn't loosen her farting strings but old cod's eye was
waltzing around her showing her how to do it. What's your programme
today? Ay. Humane methods. Because the poor animals suffer and experts
say and the best known remedy that doesn't cause pain to the animal and
on the sore spot administer gently. Gob, he'd have a soft hand under a hen.
Ga Ga Gara. Klook Klook Klook. Black Liz is our hen. She lays eggs
for us. When she lays her egg she is so glad. Gara. Klook Klook Klook.
Then comes good uncle Leo. He puts his hand under black Liz and takes
her fresh egg. Ga ga ga ga Gara. Klook Klook Klook.
--Anyhow, says Joe, Field and Nannetti are going over tonight to London
to ask about it on the floor of the house of commons.
--Are you sure, says Bloom, the councillor is going? I wanted to see him, as
it happens.
--Well, he's going off by the mailboat, says Joe, tonight.
--That's too bad, says Bloom. I wanted particularly. Perhaps only Mr Field
is going. I couldn't phone. No. You're sure?
--Nannan's going too, says Joe. The league told him to ask a question
tomorrow about the commissioner of police forbidding Irish games in the
park. What do you think of that, citizen? The Sluagh na h-Eireann.
Mr Cowe Conacre (Multifarnham. Nat.): Arising out of the question of my honourable friend, the member for Shillelagh, may I ask the right honourable gentleman whether the government has issued orders that these animals shall be slaughtered though no medical evidence is forthcoming as to their pathological condition? Mr Allfours (Tamoshant. Con.): Honourable members are already in possession of the evidence produced before a committee of the whole house. I feel I cannot usefully add anything to that. The answer to the honourable member's question is in the affirmative. Mr Orelli O'Reilly (Montenotte. Nat.): Have similar orders been issued for the slaughter of human animals who dare to play Irish games in the Phoenix park? Mr Allfours: The answer is in the negative. Mr Cowe Conacre: Has the right honourable gentleman's famous Mitchelstown telegram inspired the policy of gentlemen on the Treasury bench? (O! O!) Mr Allfours: I must have notice of that question. Mr Staylewit (Buncombe. Ind.): Don't hesitate to shoot. (Ironical opposition cheers.) The speaker: Order! Order! (The house rises. Cheers.)--There's the man, says Joe, that made the Gaelic sports revival. There he is sitting there. The man that got away James Stephens. The champion of all Ireland at putting the sixteen pound shot. What was your best throw, citizen? --Na bacleis , says the citizen, letting on to be modest. There was a time I was as good as the next fellow anyhow. --Put it there, citizen, says Joe. You were and a bloody sight better. --Is that really a fact? says Alf. --Yes, says Bloom. That's well known. Did you not know that? So off they started about Irish sports and shoneen games the like of lawn tennis and about hurley and putting the stone and racy of the soil and building up a nation once again and all to that. And of course Bloom had to have his say too about if a fellow had a rower's heart violent exercise was bad. I declare to my antimacassar if you took up a straw from the bloody floor and if you said to Bloom: Look at, Bloom. Do you see that straw? That's a straw. Declare to my aunt he'd talk about it for an hour so he would and talk steady. A most interesting discussion took place in the ancient hall of Brian O'Ciarnain's in Sraid na Bretaine Bheag, under the auspices of Sluagh na h-Eireann, on the revival of ancient Gaelic sports and the importance of physical culture, as understood in ancient Greece and ancient Rome and ancient Ireland, for the development of the race. The venerable president of the noble order was in the chair and the attendance was of large dimensions. After an instructive discourse by the chairman, a magnificent oration eloquently and forcibly expressed, a most interesting and instructive discussion of the usual high standard of excellence ensued as to the desirability of the revivability of the ancient games and sports of our ancient Panceltic forefathers. The wellknown and highly respected worker in the cause of our old tongue, Mr Joseph M'Carthy Hynes, made an eloquent appeal for the resuscitation of the ancient Gaelic sports and pastimes, practised morning and evening by Finn MacCool, as calculated to revive the best traditions of manly strength and prowess handed down to us from ancient ages. L. Bloom, who met with a mixed reception of applause and hisses, having espoused the negative the vocalist chairman brought the discussion to a close, in response to repeated requests and hearty plaudits from all parts of a bumper house, by a remarkably noteworthy rendering of the immortal Thomas Osborne Davis' evergreen verses (happily too familiar to need recalling here) A Nation Once Again in the execution of which the veteran patriot champion may be said without fear of contradiction to have fairly excelled himself. The Irish Caruso-Garibaldi was in superlative form and his stentorian notes were heard to the greatest advantage in the timehonoured anthem sung as only our citizen can sing it. His superb highclass vocalism, which by its superquality greatly enhanced his already international reputation, was vociferously applauded by the large audience among which were to be noticed many prominent members of the clergy as well as representatives of the press and the bar and the other learned professions. The proceedings then terminated. Amongst the clergy present were the very rev. William Delany, S. J., L. L. D.; the rt rev. Gerald Molloy, D. D.; the rev. P. J. Kavanagh, C. S. Sp.; the rev. T. Waters, C. C.; the rev. John M. Ivers, P. P.; the rev. P. J. Cleary, O. S. F.; the rev. L. J. Hickey, O. P.; the very rev. Fr. Nicholas, O. S. F. C.; the very rev. B. Gorman, O. D. C.; the rev. T. Maher, S. J.; the very rev. James Murphy, S. J.; the rev. John Lavery, V. F.; the very rev. William Doherty, D. D.; the rev. Peter Fagan, O. M.; the rev. T. Brangan, O. S. A.; the rev. J. Flavin, C. C.; the rev. M. A. Hackett, C. C.; the rev. W. Hurley, C. C.; the rt rev. Mgr M'Manus, V. G.; the rev. B. R. Slattery, O. M. I.; the very rev. M. D. Scally, P. P.; the rev. F. T. Purcell, O. P.; the very rev. Timothy canon Gorman, P. P.; the rev. J. Flanagan, C. C. The laity included P. Fay, T. Quirke, etc., etc. --Talking about violent exercise, says Alf, were you at that Keogh-Bennett match? --No, says Joe. --I heard So and So made a cool hundred quid over it, says Alf. --Who? Blazes? says Joe. And says Bloom: --What I meant about tennis, for example, is the agility and training the eye. --Ay, Blazes, says Alf. He let out that Myler was on the beer to run up the odds and he swatting all the time. --We know him, says the citizen. The traitor's son. We know what put English gold in his pocket. --True for you, says Joe. And Bloom cuts in again about lawn tennis and the circulation of the blood, asking Alf: --Now, don't you think, Bergan? --Myler dusted the floor with him, says Alf. Heenan and Sayers was only a bloody fool to it. Handed him the father and mother of a beating. See the little kipper not up to his navel and the big fellow swiping. God, he gave him one last puck in the wind, Queensberry rules and all, made him puke what he never ate. It was a historic and a hefty battle when Myler and Percy were scheduled to don the gloves for the purse of fifty sovereigns. Handicapped as he was by lack of poundage, Dublin's pet lamb made up for it by superlative skill in ringcraft. The final bout of fireworks was a gruelling for both champions. The welterweight sergeantmajor had tapped some lively claret in the previous mixup during which Keogh had been receivergeneral of rights and lefts, the artilleryman putting in some neat work on the pet's nose, and Myler came on looking groggy. The soldier got to business, leading off with a powerful left jab to which the Irish gladiator retaliated by shooting out a stiff one flush to the point of Bennett's jaw. The redcoat ducked but the Dubliner lifted him with a left hook, the body punch being a fine one. The men came to handigrips. Myler quickly became busy and got his man under, the bout ending with the bulkier man on the ropes, Myler punishing him. The Englishman, whose right eye was nearly closed, took his corner where he was liberally drenched with water and when the bell went came on gamey and brimful of pluck, confident of knocking out the fistic Eblanite in jigtime. It was a fight to a finish and the best man for it. The two fought like tigers and excitement ran fever high. The referee twice cautioned Pucking Percy for holding but the pet was tricky and his footwork a treat to watch. After a brisk exchange of courtesies during which a smart upper cut of the military man brought blood freely from his opponent's mouth the lamb suddenly waded in all over his man and landed a terrific left to Battling Bennett's stomach, flooring him flat. It was a knockout clean and clever. Amid tense expectation the Portobello bruiser was being counted out when Bennett's second Ole Pfotts Wettstein threw in the towel and the Santry boy was declared victor to the frenzied cheers of the public who broke through the ringropes and fairly mobbed him with delight. --He knows which side his bread is buttered, says Alf. I hear he's running a concert tour now up in the north. --He is, says Joe. Isn't he? --Who? says Bloom. Ah, yes. That's quite true. Yes, a kind of summer tour, you see. Just a holiday. --Mrs B. is the bright particular star, isn't she? says Joe. --My wife? says Bloom. She's singing, yes. I think it will be a success too. He's an excellent man to organise. Excellent. Hoho begob says I to myself says I. That explains the milk in the cocoanut and absence of hair on the animal's chest. Blazes doing the tootle on the flute. Concert tour. Dirty Dan the dodger's son off Island bridge that sold the same horses twice over to the government to fight the Boers. Old Whatwhat. I called about the poor and water rate, Mr Boylan. You what? The water rate, Mr Boylan. You whatwhat? That's the bucko that'll organise her, take my tip. 'Twixt me and you Caddareesh. Pride of Calpe's rocky mount, the ravenhaired daughter of Tweedy. There grew she to peerless beauty where loquat and almond scent the air. The gardens of Alameda knew her step: the garths of olives knew and bowed. The chaste spouse of Leopold is she: Marion of the bountiful bosoms. And lo, there entered one of the clan of the O'Molloy's, a comely hero of white face yet withal somewhat ruddy, his majesty's counsel learned in the law, and with him the prince and heir of the noble line of Lambert. --Hello, Ned. --Hello, Alf. --Hello, Jack. --Hello, Joe. --God save you, says the citizen. --Save you kindly, says J. J. What'll it be, Ned? --Half one, says Ned. So J. J. ordered the drinks. --Were you round at the court? says Joe. --Yes, says J. J. He'll square that, Ned, says he. --Hope so, says Ned. Now what were those two at? J. J. getting him off the grand jury list and the other give him a leg over the stile. With his name in Stubbs's. Playing cards, hobnobbing with flash toffs with a swank glass in their eye, adrinking fizz and he half smothered in writs and garnishee orders. Pawning his gold watch in Cummins of Francis street where no-one would know him in the private office when I was there with Pisser releasing his boots out of the pop. What's your name, sir? Dunne, says he. Ay, and done says I. Gob, he'll come home by weeping cross one of those days, I'm thinking. --Did you see that bloody lunatic Breen round there? says Alf. U. p: up. --Yes, says J. J. Looking for a private detective. --Ay, says Ned. And he wanted right go wrong to address the court only Corny Kelleher got round him telling him to get the handwriting examined first. --Ten thousand pounds, says Alf, laughing. God, I'd give anything to hear him before a judge and jury. --Was it you did it, Alf? says Joe. The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you Jimmy Johnson. --Me? says Alf. Don't cast your nasturtiums on my character. --Whatever statement you make, says Joe, will be taken down in evidence against you. --Of course an action would lie, says J. J. It implies that he is not compos mentis. U. p: up. --Compos your eye! says Alf, laughing. Do you know that he's balmy? Look at his head. Do you know that some mornings he has to get his hat on with a shoehorn. --Yes, says J. J., but the truth of a libel is no defence to an indictment for publishing it in the eyes of the law. --Ha ha, Alf, says Joe. --Still, says Bloom, on account of the poor woman, I mean his wife. --Pity about her, says the citizen. Or any other woman marries a half and half. --How half and half? says Bloom. Do you mean he --Half and half I mean, says the citizen. A fellow that's neither fish nor flesh. --Nor good red herring, says Joe. --That what's I mean, says the citizen. A pishogue, if you know what that is. Begob I saw there was trouble coming. And Bloom explaining he meant on account of it being cruel for the wife having to go round after the old stuttering fool. Cruelty to animals so it is to let that bloody povertystricken Breen out on grass with his beard out tripping him, bringing down the rain. And she with her nose cockahoop after she married him because a cousin of his old fellow's was pewopener to the pope. Picture of him on the wall with his Smashall Sweeney's moustaches, the signior Brini from Summerhill, the eyetallyano, papal Zouave to the Holy Father, has left the quay and gone to Moss street. And who was he, tell us? A nobody, two pair back and passages, at seven shillings a week, and he covered with all kinds of breastplates bidding defiance to the world. --And moreover, says J. J., a postcard is publication. It was held to be sufficient evidence of malice in the testcase Sadgrove v. Hole. In my opinion an action might lie. Six and eightpence, please. Who wants your opinion? Let us drink our pints in peace. Gob, we won't be let even do that much itself. --Well, good health, Jack, says Ned. --Good health, Ned, says J. ]. ---There he is again, says Joe. --Where? says Alf. And begob there he was passing the door with his books under his oxter and the wife beside him and Corny Kelleher with his wall eye looking in as they went past, talking to him like a father, trying to sell him a secondhand coffin. --How did that Canada swindle case go off? says Joe. --Remanded, says J. J. One of the bottlenosed fraternity it was went by the name of James Wought alias Saphiro alias Spark and Spiro, put an ad in the papers saying he'd give a passage to Canada for twenty bob. What? Do you see any green in the white of my eye? Course it was a bloody barney. What? Swindled them all, skivvies and badhachs from the county Meath, ay, and his own kidney too. J. J. was telling us there was an ancient Hebrew Zaretsky or something weeping in the witnessbox with his hat on him, swearing by the holy Moses he was stuck for two quid. --Who tried the case? says Joe. --Recorder, says Ned. --Poor old sir Frederick, says Alf, you can cod him up to the two eyes. --Heart as big as a lion, says Ned. Tell him a tale of woe about arrears of rent and a sick wife and a squad of kids and, faith, he'll dissolve in tears on the bench. --Ay, says Alf. Reuben J was bloody lucky he didn't clap him in the dock the other day for suing poor little Gumley that's minding stones, for the corporation there near Butt bridge. And he starts taking off the old recorder letting on to cry: --A most scandalous thing! This poor hardworking man! How many children? Ten, did you say? --Yes, your worship. And my wife has the typhoid. --And the wife with typhoid fever! Scandalous! Leave the court immediately, sir. No, sir, I'll make no order for payment. How dare you, sir, come up before me and ask me to make an order! A poor hardworking industrious man! I dismiss the case. And whereas on the sixteenth day of the month of the oxeyed goddess and in the third week after the feastday of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, the daughter of the skies, the virgin moon being then in her first quarter, it came to pass that those learned judges repaired them to the halls of law. There master Courtenay, sitting in his own chamber, gave his rede and master Justice Andrews, sitting without a jury in the probate court, weighed well and pondered the claim of the first chargeant upon the property in the matter of the will propounded and final testamentary disposition in re the real and personal estate of the late lamented Jacob Halliday, vintner, deceased, versus Livingstone, an infant, of unsound mind, and another. And to the solemn court of Green street there came sir Frederick the Falconer. And he sat him there about the hour of five o'clock to administer the law of the brehons at the commission for all that and those parts to be holden in and for the county of the city of Dublin. And there sat with him the high sinhedrim of the twelve tribes of Iar, for every tribe one man, of the tribe of Patrick and of the tribe of Hugh and of the tribe of Owen and of the tribe of Conn and of the tribe of Oscar and of the tribe of Fergus and of the tribe of Finn and of the tribe of Dermot and of the tribe of Cormac and of the tribe of Kevin and of the tribe of Caolte and of the tribe of Ossian, there being in all twelve good men and true. And he conjured them by Him who died on rood that they should well and truly try and true deliverance make in the issue joined between their sovereign lord the king and the prisoner at the bar and true verdict give according to the evidence so help them God and kiss the book. And they rose in their seats, those twelve of Iar, and they swore by the name of Him Who is from everlasting that they would do His rightwiseness. And straightway the minions of the law led forth from their donjon keep one whom the sleuthhounds of justice had apprehended in consequence of information received. And they shackled him hand and foot and would take of him ne bail ne mainprise but preferred a charge against him for he was a malefactor. --Those are nice things, says the citizen, coming over here to Ireland filling the country with bugs. So Bloom lets on he heard nothing and he starts talking with Joe, telling him he needn't trouble about that little matter till the first but if he would just say a word to Mr Crawford. And so Joe swore high and holy by this and by that he'd do the devil and all. --Because, you see, says Bloom, for an advertisement you must have repetition. That's the whole secret. --Rely on me, says Joe. --Swindling the peasants, says the citizen, and the poor of Ireland. We want no more strangers in our house. --O, I'm sure that will be all right, Hynes, says Bloom. It's just that Keyes, you see. --Consider that done, says Joe. --Very kind of you, says Bloom. --The strangers, says the citizen. Our own fault. We let them come in. We brought them in. The adulteress and her paramour brought the Saxon robbers here. --Decree nisi, says J. J. And Bloom letting on to be awfully deeply interested in nothing, a spider's web in the corner behind the barrel, and the citizen scowling after him and the old dog at his feet looking up to know who to bite and when. --A dishonoured wife, says the citizen, that's what's the cause of all our misfortunes. --And here she is, says Alf, that was giggling over the Police Gazette with Terry on the counter, in all her warpaint. --Give us a squint at her, says I. And what was it only one of the smutty yankee pictures Terry borrows off of Corny Kelleher. Secrets for enlarging your private parts. Misconduct of society belle. Norman W. Tupper, wealthy Chicago contractor, finds pretty but faithless wife in lap of officer Taylor. Belle in her bloomers misconducting herself, and her fancyman feeling for her tickles and Norman W. Tupper bouncing in with his peashooter just in time to be late after she doing the trick of the loop with officer Taylor. --O jakers, Jenny, says Joe, how short your shirt is! --There's hair, Joe, says I. Get a queer old tailend of corned beef off of that one, what? So anyhow in came John Wyse Nolan and Lenehan with him with a face on him as long as a late breakfast. --Well, says the citizen, what's the latest from the scene of action? What did those tinkers in the city hall at their caucus meeting decide about the Irish language? O'Nolan, clad in shining armour, low bending made obeisance to the puissant and high and mighty chief of all Erin and did him to wit of that which had befallen, how that the grave elders of the most obedient city, second of the realm, had met them in the tholsel, and there, after due prayers to the gods who dwell in ether supernal, had taken solemn counsel whereby they might, if so be it might be, bring once more into honour among mortal men the winged speech of the seadivided Gael. --It's on the march, says the citizen. To hell with the bloody brutal Sassenachs and their patois. So J. J. puts in a word, doing the toff about one story was good till you heard another and blinking facts and the Nelson policy, putting your blind eye to the telescope and drawing up a bill of attainder to impeach a nation, and Bloom trying to back him up moderation and botheration and their colonies and their civilisation. --Their syphilisation, you mean, says the citizen. To hell with them! The curse of a goodfornothing God light sideways on the bloody thicklugged sons of whores' gets! No music and no art and no literature worthy of the name. Any civilisation they have they stole from us. Tonguetied sons of bastards' ghosts. --The European family, says J. J --They're not European, says the citizen. I was in Europe with Kevin Egan of Paris. You wouldn't see a trace of them or their language anywhere in Europe except in a cabinet d'aisance. And says John Wyse: --Full many a flower is born to blush unseen. And says Lenehan that knows a bit of the lingo: --Conspuez les anglais! Perfide Albion! He said and then lifted he in his rude great brawny strengthy hands the medher of dark strong foamy ale and, uttering his tribal slogan Lamb Dearg Abu, he drank to the undoing of his foes, a race of mighty valorous heroes, rulers of the waves, who sit on thrones of alabaster silent as the deathless gods. --What's up with you, says I to Lenehan. You look like a fellow that had lost a bob and found a tanner. --Gold cup, says he. --Who won, Mr Lenehan? says Terry. --Throwaway, says he, at twenty to one. A rank outsider. And the rest nowhere. --And Bass's mare? says Terry. --Still running, says he. We're all in a cart. Boylan plunged two quid on my tip Sceptre for himself and a lady friend. --I had half a crown myself, says Terry, on Zinfandel that Mr Flynn gave me. Lord Howard de Walden's. --Twenty to one, says Lenehan. Such is life in an outhouse. Throwaway, says he. Takes the biscuit, and talking about bunions. Frailty, thy name is Sceptre. So he went over to the biscuit tin Bob Doran left to see if there was anything he could lift on the nod, the old cur after him backing his luck with his mangy snout up. Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard. --Not there, my child, says he. --Keep your pecker up, says Joe. She'd have won the money only for the other dog. And J. J. and the citizen arguing about law and history with Bloom sticking in an odd word. --Some people, says Bloom, can see the mote in others' eyes but they can't see the beam in their own. --Raimeis, says the citizen. There's no-one as blind as the fellow that won't see, if you know what that means. Where are our missing twenty millions of Irish should be here today instead of four, our lost tribes? And our potteries and textiles, the finest in the whole world! And our wool that was sold in Rome in the time of Juvenal and our flax and our damask from the looms of Antrim and our Limerick lace, our tanneries and our white flint glass down there by Ballybough and our Huguenot poplin that we have since Jacquard de Lyon and our woven silk and our Foxford tweeds and ivory raised point from the Carmelite convent in New Ross, nothing like it in the whole wide world. Where are the Greek merchants that came through the pillars of Hercules, the Gibraltar now grabbed by the foe of mankind, with gold and Tyrian purple to sell in Wexford at the fair of Carmen? Read Tacitus and Ptolemy, even Giraldus Cambrensis. Wine, peltries, Connemara marble, silver from Tipperary, second to none, our farfamed horses even today, the Irish hobbies, with king Philip of Spain offering to pay customs duties for the right to fish in our waters. What do the yellowjohns of Anglia owe us for our ruined trade and our ruined hearths? And the beds of the Barrow and Shannon they won't deepen with millions of acres of marsh and bog to make us all die of consumption? --As treeless as Portugal we'll be soon, says John Wyse, or Heligoland with its one tree if something is not done to reafforest the land. Larches, firs, all the trees of the conifer family are going fast. I was reading a report of lord Castletown's .... --Save them, says the citizen, the giant ash of Galway and the chieftain elm of Kildare with a fortyfoot bole and an acre of foliage. Save the trees of Ireland for the future men of Ireland on the fair hills of Eire, O. --Europe has its eyes on you, says Lenehan. The fashionable international world attended en masse this afternoon at the wedding of the chevalier Jean Wyse de Neaulan, grand high chief ranger of the Irish National Foresters, with Miss Fir Conifer of Pine Valley. Lady Sylvester Elmshade, Mrs Barbara Lovebirch, Mrs Poll Ash, Mrs Holly Hazeleyes, Miss Daphne Bays, Miss Dorothy Canebrake, Mrs Clyde Twelvetrees, Mrs Rowan Greene, Mrs Helen Vinegadding, Miss Virginia Creeper, Miss Gladys Beech, Miss Olive Garth, Miss Blanche Maple, Mrs Maud Mahogany, Miss Myra Myrtle, Miss Priscilla Elderflower, Miss Bee Honeysuckle, Miss Grace Poplar, Miss O Mimosa San, Miss Rachel Cedarfrond, the Misses Lilian and Viola Lilac, Miss Timidity Aspenall, Mrs Kitty Dewey-Mosse, Miss May Hawthorne, Mrs Gloriana Palme, Mrs Liana Forrest, Mrs Arabella Blackwood and Mrs Norma Holyoake of Oakholme Regis graced the ceremony by their presence. The bride who was given away by her father, the M'Conifer of the Glands, looked exquisitely charming in a creation carried out in green mercerised silk, moulded on an underslip of gloaming grey, sashed with a yoke of broad emerald and finished with a triple flounce of darkerhued fringe, the scheme being relieved by bretelles and hip insertions of acorn bronze. The maids of honour, Miss Larch Conifer and Miss Spruce Conifer, sisters of the bride, wore very becoming costumes in the same tone, a dainty motif of plume rose being worked into the pleats in a pinstripe and repeated capriciously in the jadegreen toques in the form of heron feathers of paletinted coral. Senhor Enrique Flor presided at the organ with his wellknown ability and, in addition to the prescribed numbers of the nuptial mass, played a new and striking arrangement of Woodman, spare that tree at the conclusion of the service. On leaving the church of Saint Fiacre in Horto after the papal blessing the happy pair were subjected to a playful crossfire of hazelnuts, beechmast, bayleaves, catkins of willow, ivytod, hollyberries, mistletoe sprigs and quicken shoots. Mr and Mrs Wyse Conifer Neaulan will spend a quiet honeymoon in the Black Forest. --And our eyes are on Europe, says the citizen. We had our trade with Spain and the French and with the Flemings before those mongrels were pupped, Spanish ale in Galway, the winebark on the winedark waterway. --And will again, says Joe. --And with the help of the holy mother of God we will again, says the citizen, clapping his thigh. our harbours that are empty will be full again, Queenstown, Kinsale, Galway, Blacksod Bay, Ventry in the kingdom of Kerry, Killybegs, the third largest harbour in the wide world with a fleet of masts of the Galway Lynches and the Cavan O'Reillys and the O'Kennedys of Dublin when the earl of Desmond could make a treaty with the emperor Charles the Fifth himself. And will again, says he, when the first Irish battleship is seen breasting the waves with our own flag to the fore, none of your Henry Tudor's harps, no, the oldest flag afloat, the flag of the province of Desmond and Thomond, three crowns on a blue field, the three sons of Milesius. And he took the last swig out of the pint. Moya. All wind and piss like a tanyard cat. Cows in Connacht have long horns. As much as his bloody life is worth to go down and address his tall talk to the assembled multitude in Shanagolden where he daren't show his nose with the Molly Maguires looking for him to let daylight through him for grabbing the holding of an evicted tenant. --Hear, hear to that, says John Wyse. What will you have? --An imperial yeomanry, says Lenehan, to celebrate the occasion. --Half one, Terry, says John Wyse, and a hands up. Terry! Are you asleep? --Yes, sir, says Terry. Small whisky and bottle of Allsop. Right, sir. Hanging over the bloody paper with Alf looking for spicy bits instead of attending to the general public. Picture of a butting match, trying to crack their bloody skulls, one chap going for the other with his head down like a bull at a gate. And another one: Black Beast Burned in Omaha, Ga. A lot of Deadwood Dicks in slouch hats and they firing at a Sambo strung up in a tree with his tongue out and a bonfire under him. Gob, they ought to drown him in the sea after and electrocute and crucify him to make sure of their job. --But what about the fighting navy, says Ned, that keeps our foes at bay? --I'll tell you what about it, says the citizen. Hell upon earth it is. Read the revelations that's going on in the papers about flogging on the training ships at Portsmouth. A fellow writes that calls himself Disgusted One. So he starts telling us about corporal punishment and about the crew of tars and officers and rearadmirals drawn up in cocked hats and the parson with his protestant bible to witness punishment and a young lad brought out, howling for his ma, and they tie him down on the buttend of a gun. --A rump and dozen, says the citizen, was what that old ruffian sir John Beresford called it but the modern God's Englishman calls it caning on the breech. And says John Wyse: --'Tis a custom more honoured in the breach than in the observance. Then he was telling us the master at arms comes along with a long cane and he draws out and he flogs the bloody backside off of the poor lad till he yells meila murder. --That's your glorious British navy, says the citizen, that bosses the earth. The fellows that never will be slaves, with the only hereditary chamber on the face of God's earth and their land in the hands of a dozen gamehogs and cottonball barons. That's the great empire they boast about of drudges and whipped serfs. --On which the sun never rises, says Joe. --And the tragedy of it is, says the citizen, they believe it. The unfortunate yahoos believe it. They believe in rod, the scourger almighty, creator of hell upon earth, and in Jacky Tar, the son of a gun, who was conceived of unholy boast, born of the fighting navy, suffered under rump and dozen, was scarified, flayed and curried, yelled like bloody hell, the third day he arose again from the bed, steered into haven, sitteth on his beamend till further orders whence he shall come to drudge for a living and be paid. --But, says Bloom, isn't discipline the same everywhere. I mean wouldn't it be the same here if you put force against force? Didn't I tell you? As true as I'm drinking this porter if he was at his last gasp he'd try to downface you that dying was living. --We'll put force against force, says the citizen. We have our greater Ireland beyond the sea. They were driven out of house and home in the black '47. Their mudcabins and their shielings by the roadside were laid low by the batteringram and the Times rubbed its hands and told the whitelivered Saxons there would soon be as few Irish in Ireland as redskins in America. Even the Grand Turk sent us his piastres. But the Sassenach tried to starve the nation at home while the land was full of crops that the British hyenas bought and sold in Rio de Janeiro. Ay, they drove out the peasants in hordes. Twenty thousand of them died in the coffinships. But those that came to the land of the free remember the land of bondage. And they will come again and with a vengeance, no cravens, the sons of Granuaile, the champions of Kathleen ni Houlihan. --Perfectly true, says Bloom. But my point was .... --We are a long time waiting for that day, citizen, says Ned. Since the poor old woman told us that the French were on the sea and landed at Killala. --Ay, says John Wyse. We fought for the royal Stuarts that reneged us against the Williamites and they betrayed us. Remember Limerick and the broken treatystone. We gave our best blood to France and Spain, the wild geese. Fontenoy, eh? And Sarsfield and O'Donnell, duke of Tetuan in Spain, and Ulysses Browne of Camus that was fieldmarshal to Maria Teresa. But what did we ever get for it? --The French! says the citizen. Set of dancing masters! Do you know what it is? They were never worth a roasted fart to Ireland. Aren't they trying to make an entente cordial now at Tay Pay's dinnerparty with perfidious Albion? Firebrands of Europe and they always were. --Conspuez les franэais, says Lenehan, nobbling his beer. --And as for the Prooshians and the Hanoverians, says Joe, haven't we had enough of those sausageeating bastards on the throne from George the elector down to the German lad and the flatulent old bitch that's dead? Jesus, I had to laugh at the way he came out with that about the old one with the winkers on her, blind drunk in her royal palace every night of God, old Vic, with her jorum of mountain dew and her coachman carting her up body and bones to roll into bed and she pulling him by the whiskers and singing him old bits of songs about Ehren on the Rhine and come where the boose is cheaper. --Well, says J. J. We have Edward the peacemaker now. --Tell that to a fool, says the citizen. There's a bloody sight more pox than pax about that boyo. Edward Guelph-Wettin! --And what do you think, says Joe, of the holy boys, the priests and bishops of Ireland doing up his room in Maynooth in His Satanic Majesty's racing colours and sticking up pictures of all the horses his jockeys rode. The earl of Dublin, no less. --They ought to have stuck up all the women he rode himself, says little Alf. And says J. J.: --Considerations of space influenced their lordships' decision. --Will you try another, citizen? says Joe. --Yes, sir, says he. I will. --You? says Joe. --Beholden to you, Joe, says I. May your shadow never grow less. --Repeat that dose, says Joe. Bloom was talking and talking with John Wyse and he quite excited with his dunducketymudcoloured mug on him and his old plumeyes rolling about. --Persecution, says he, all the history of the world is full of it. Perpetuating national hatred among nations. --But do you know what a nation means? says John Wyse. --Yes, says Bloom. --What is it? says John Wyse. --A nation? says Bloom. A nation is the same people living in the same place. --By God, then, says Ned, laughing, if that's so I'm a nation for I'm living in the same place for the past five years. So of course everyone had the laugh at Bloom and says he, trying to muck out of it: --Or also living in different places. --That covers my case, says Joe. --What is your nation if I may ask? says the citizen. --Ireland, says Bloom. I was born here. Ireland. The citizen said nothing only cleared the spit out of his gullet and, gob, he spat a Red bank oyster out of him right in the corner. --After you with the push, Joe, says he, taking out his handkerchief to swab himself dry. --Here you are, citizen, says Joe. Take that in your right hand and repeat after me the following words. The muchtreasured and intricately embroidered ancient Irish facecloth attributed to Solomon of Droma and Manus Tomaltach og MacDonogh, authors of the Book of Ballymote, was then carefully produced and called forth prolonged admiration. No need to dwell on the legendary beauty of the cornerpieces, the acme of art, wherein one can distinctly discern each of the four evangelists in turn presenting to each of the four masters his evangelical symbol, a bogoak sceptre, a North American puma (a far nobler king of beasts than the British article, be it said in passing), a Kerry calf and a golden eagle from Carrantuohill. The scenes depicted on the emunctory field, showing our ancient duns and raths and cromlechs and grianauns and seats of learning and maledictive stones, are as wonderfully beautiful and the pigments as delicate as when the Sligo illuminators gave free rein to their artistic fantasy long long ago in the time of the Barmecides. Glendalough, the lovely lakes of Killarney, the ruins of Clonmacnois, Cong Abbey, Glen Inagh and the Twelve Pins, Ireland's Eye, the Green Hills of Tallaght, Croagh Patrick, the brewery of Messrs Arthur Guinness, Son and Company (Limited), Lough Neagh's banks, the vale of Ovoca, Isolde's tower, the Mapas obelisk, Sir Patrick Dun's hospital, Cape Clear, the glen of Aherlow, Lynch's castle, the Scotch house, Rathdown Union Workhouse at Loughlinstown, Tullamore jail, Castleconnel rapids, Kilballymacshonakill, the cross at Monasterboice, Jury's Hotel, S. Patrick's Purgatory, the Salmon Leap, Maynooth college refectory, Curley's hole, the three birthplaces of the first duke of Wellington, the rock of Cashel, the bog of Allen, the Henry Street Warehouse, Fingal's Cave - all these moving scenes are still there for us today rendered more beautiful still by the waters of sorrow which have passed over them and by the rich incrustations of time. --Show us over the drink, says I. Which is which? --That's mine, says Joe, as the devil said to the dead policeman. --And I belong to a race too, says Bloom, that is hated and persecuted. Also now. This very moment. This very instant. Gob, he near burnt his fingers with the butt of his old cigar. --Robbed, says he. Plundered. Insulted. Persecuted. Taking what belongs to us by right. At this very moment, says he, putting up his fist, sold by auction in Morocco like slaves or cattle. --Are you talking about the new Jerusalem? says the citizen. --I'm talking about injustice, says Bloom. --Right, says John Wyse. Stand up to it then with force like men. .That's an almanac picture for you. Mark for a softnosed bullet. Old lardyface standing up to the business end of a gun. Gob, he'd adorn a sweepingbrush, so he would, if he only had a nurse's apron on him. And then he collapses all of a sudden, twisting around all the opposite, as limp as a wet rag. --But it's no use, says he.Force, hatred, history, all that. That's not life for men and women, insult and hatred. And everybody knows that it's the very opposite of that that is really life. --What? says Alf. --Love, says Bloom. I mean the opposite of hatred. I must go now, says he to John Wyse. Just round to the court a moment to see if Martin is there. If he comes just say I'll be back in a second. Just a moment. Who's hindering you? And off he pops like greased lightning. --A new apostle to the gentiles, says the citizen. Universal love. --Well, says John Wyse. Isn't that what we're told. Love your neighbour. --That chap? says the citizen. Beggar my neighbour is his motto. Love, moya! He's a nice pattern of a Romeo and Juliet. Love loves to love love. Nurse loves the new chemist. Constable 14 A loves Mary Kelly. Gerty MacDowell loves the boy that has the bicycle. M. B. loves a fair gentleman. Li Chi Han lovey up kissy Cha Pu Chow. Jumbo, the elephant, loves Alice, the elephant. Old Mr Verschoyle with the ear trumpet loves old Mrs Verschoyle with the turnedin eye. The man in the brown macintosh loves a lady who is dead. His Majesty the King loves Her Majesty the Queen. Mrs Norman W. Tupper loves officer Taylor. You love a certain person. And this person loves that other person because everybody loves somebody but God loves everybody. --Well, Joe, says I, your very good health and song. More power, citizen. --Hurrah, there, says Joe. --The blessing of God and Mary and Patrick on you, says the citizen. And he ups with his pint to wet his whistle. --We know those canters, says he, preaching and picking your pocket. What about sanctimonious Cromwell and his ironsides that put the women and children of Drogheda to the sword with the bible text God is love pasted round the mouth of his cannon? The bible! Did you read that skit in the United Irishman today about that Zulu chief that's visiting England? --What's that? says Joe. So the citizen takes up one of his paraphernalia papers and he starts reading out: --A delegation of the chief cotton magnates of Manchester was presented yesterday to His Majesty the Alaki of Abeakuta by Gold Stick in Waiting, Lord Walkup of Walkup on Eggs, to tender to His Majesty the heartfelt thanks of British traders for the facilities afforded them in his dominions. The delegation partook of luncheon at the conclusion of which the dusky potentate, in the course of a happy speech, freely translated by the British chaplain, the reverend Ananias Praisegod Barebones, tendered his best thanks to Massa Walkup and emphasised the cordial relations existing between Abeakuta and the British empire, stating that he treasured as one of his dearest possessions an illuminated bible, the volume of the word of God and the secret of England's greatness, graciously presented to him by the white chief woman, the great squaw Victoria, with a personal dedication from the august hand of the Royal Donor. The Alaki then drank a lovingcup of firstshot usquebaugh to the toast Black and White from the skull of his immediate predecessor in the dynasty Kakachakachak, surnamed Forty Warts, after which he visited the chief factory of Cottonopolis and signed his mark in the visitors' book, subsequently executing a charming old Abeakutic wardance, in the course of which he swallowed several knives and forks, amid hilarious applause from the girl hands. --Widow woman, says Ned. I wouldn't doubt her. Wonder did he put that bible to the same use as I would. --Same only more so, says Lenehan. And thereafter in that fruitful land the broadleaved mango flourished exceedingly. --Is that by Griffith? says John Wyse. --No, says the citizen. It's not signed Shanganagh. It's only initialled: P. --And a very good initial too, says Joe. --That's how it's worked, says the citizen. Trade follows the flag. --Well, says J. J., if they're any worse than those Belgians in the Congo Free State they must be bad. Did you read that report by a man what's this his name is? --Casement, says the citizen. He's an Irishman. --Yes, that's the man, says J. J. Raping the women and girls and flogging the natives on the belly to squeeze all the red rubber they can out of them. --I know where he's gone, says Lenehan, cracking his fingers. --Who? says I. --Bloom, says he. The courthouse is a blind. He had a few bob on Throwaway and he's gone to gather in the shekels. --Is it that whiteeyed kaffir? says the citizen, that never backed a horse in anger in his life? --That's where he's gone, says Lenehan. I met Bantam Lyons going to back that horse only I put him off it and he told me Bloom gave him the tip. Bet you what you like he has a hundred shillings to five on. He's the only man in Dublin has it. A dark horse. --He's a bloody dark horse himself, says Joe. --Mind, Joe, says I. Show us the entrance out. --There you are, says Terry. Goodbye Ireland I'm going to Gort. So I just went round the back of the yard to pumpship and begob (hundred shillings to five) while I was letting off my (Throwaway twenty to) letting off my load gob says I to myself I knew he was uneasy in his (two pints off of Joe and one in Slattery's off) in his mind to get off the mark to (hundred shillings is five quid) and when they were in the (dark horse) pisser Burke was telling me card party and letting on the child was sick (gob, must have done about a gallon) flabbyarse of a wife speaking down the tube she's better or she's (ow!) all a plan so he could vamoose with the pool if he won or (Jesus, full up I was) trading without a licence (ow!) Ireland my nation says he (hoik! phthook!) never be up to those bloody (there's the last of it) Jerusalem (ah!) cuckoos. So anyhow when I got back they were at it dingdong, John Wyse saying it was Bloom gave the ideas for Sinn Fein to Griffith to put in his paper all kinds of jerrymandering, packed juries and swindling the taxes off of the government and appointing consuls all over the world to walk about selling Irish industries. Robbing Peter to pay Paul. Gob, that puts the bloody kybosh on it if old sloppy eyes is mucking up the show. Give us a bloody chance. God save Ireland from the likes of that bloody mouseabout. Mr Bloom with his argol bargol. And his old fellow before him perpetrating frauds, old Methusalem Bloom, the robbing bagman, that poisoned himself with the prussic acid after he swamping the country with his baubles and his penny diamonds. Loans by post on easy terms. Any amount of money advanced on note of hand. Distance no object. No security. Gob, he's like Lanty MacHale's goat that'd go a piece of the road with every one. --Well, it's a fact, says John Wyse. And there's the man now that'll tell you all about it, Martin Cunningham. Sure enough the castle car drove up with Martin on it and Jack Power with him and a fellow named Crofter or Crofton, pensioner out of the collector general's, an orangeman Blackburn does have on the registration and he drawing his pay or Crawford gallivanting around the country at the king's expense. Our travellers reached the rustic hostelry and alighted from their palfreys. --Ho, varlet! cried he, who by his mien seemed the leader of the party. Saucy knave! To us! So saying he knocked loudly with his swordhilt upon the open lattice. Mine host came forth at the summons, girding him with his tabard. --Give you good den, my masters, said he with an obsequious bow. --Bestir thyself, sirrah! cried he who had knocked. Look to our steeds. And for ourselves give us of your best for ifaith we need it. --Lackaday, good masters, said the host, my poor house has but a bare larder. I know not what to offer your lordships. --How now, fellow? cried the second of the party, a man of pleasant countenance, So servest thou the king's messengers, master Taptun? An instantaneous change overspread the landlord's visage. --Cry you mercy, gentlemen, he said humbly. An you be the king's messengers (God shield His Majesty!) you shall not want for aught. The king's friends (God bless His Majesty!) shall not go afasting in my house I warrant me. --Then about! cried the traveller who had not spoken, a lusty trencherman by his aspect. Hast aught to give us? Mine host bowed again as he made answer: --What say you, good masters, to a squab pigeon pasty, some collops of venison, a saddle of veal, widgeon with crisp hog's bacon, a boar's head with pistachios, a bason of jolly custard, a medlar tansy and a flagon of old Rhenish? --Gadzooks! cried the last speaker. That likes me well. Pistachios! --Aha! cried he of the pleasant countenance. A poor house and a bare larder, quotha! 'Tis a merry rogue. So in comes Martin asking where was Bloom. --Where is he? says Lenehan. Defrauding widows and orphans. --Isn't that a fact, says John Wyse, what I was telling the citizen about Bloom and the Sinn Fein? --That's so, says Martin. Or so they allege. --Who made those allegations? says Alf. --I, says Joe. I'm the alligator. --And after all, says John Wyse, why can't a jew love his country like the next fellow? --Why not? says J. J., when he's quite sure which country it is. --Is he a jew or a gentile or a holy Roman or a swaddler or what the hell is he? says Ned. Or who is he? No offence, Crofton. --Who is Junius? says J. J. --We don't want him, says Crofter the Orangeman or presbyterian. --He's a perverted jew, says Martin, from a place in Hungary and it was he drew up all the plans according to the Hungarian system. We know that in the castle. --Isn't he a cousin of Bloom the dentist? says Jack Power. --Not at all, says Martin. Only namesakes. His name was Virag, the father's name that poisoned himself. He changed it by deedpoll, the father did. --That's the new Messiah for Ireland! says the citizen. Island of saints and sages! --Well, they're still waiting for their redeemer, says Martin. For that matter so are we. --Yes, says J. J., and every male that's born they think it may be their Messiah. And every jew is in a tall state of excitement, I believe, till he knows if he's a father or a mother. --Expecting every moment will be his next, says Lenehan. --O, by God, says Ned, you should have seen Bloom before that son of his that died was born. I met him one day in the south city markets buying a tin of Neave's food six weeks before the wife was delivered. --En ventre sa mSre, says J. J. --Do you call that a man? says the citizen. --I wonder did he ever put it out of sight, says Joe. --Well, there were two children born anyhow, says Jack Power. --And who does he suspect? says the citizen. Gob, there's many a true word spoken in jest. One of those mixed middlings he is. Lying up in the hotel Pisser was telling me once a month with headache like a totty with her courses. Do you know what I'm telling you? It'd be an act of God to take a hold of a fellow the like of that and throw him in the bloody sea. Justifiable homicide, so it would. Then sloping off with his five quid without putting up a pint of stuff like a man. Give us your blessing. Not as much as would blind your eye. --Charity to the neighbour, says Martin. But where is he? We can't wait. --A wolf in sheep's clothing, says the citizen. That's what he is. Virag from Hungary! Ahasuerus I call him. Cursed by God. --Have you time for a brief libation, Martin? says Ned. --Only one, says Martin. We must be quick. J. J. and S. --You, Jack? Crofton? Three half ones, Terry. --Saint Patrick would want to land again at Ballykinlar and convert us, says the citizen, after allowing things like that to contaminate our shores. --Well, says Martin, rapping for his glass. God bless all here is my prayer. --Amen, says the citizen. --And I'm sure He will, says Joe. And at the sound of the sacring bell, headed by a crucifer with acolytes, thurifers, boatbearers, readers, ostiarii, deacons and subdeacons, the blessed company drew nigh of mitred abbots and priors and guardians and monks and friars: the monks of Benedict of Spoleto, Carthusians and Camaldolesi, Cistercians and Olivetans, Oratorians and Vallombrosans, and the friars of Augustine, Brigittines, Premonstratensians, Servi, Trinitarians, and the children of Peter Nolasco: and therewith from Carmel mount the children of Elijah prophet led by Albert bishop and by Teresa of Avila, calced and other: and friars, brown and grey, sons of poor Francis, capuchins, cordeliers, minimes and observants and the daughters of Clara: and the sons of Dominic, the friars preachers, and the sons of Vincent: and the monks of S. Wolstan: and Ignatius his children: and the confraternity of the christian brothers led by the reverend brother Edmund Ignatius Rice. And after came all saints and martyrs, virgins and confessors: S. Cyr and S. Isidore Arator and S. James the Less and S. Phocas of Sinope and S. Julian Hospitator and S. Felix de Cantalice and S. Simon Stylites and S. Stephen Protomartyr and S. John of God and S. Ferreol and S. Leugarde and S. Theodotus and S. Vulmar and S. Richard and S. Vincent de Paul and S. Martin of Todi and S. Martin of Tours and S. Alfred and S. Joseph and S. Denis and S. Cornelius and S. Leopold and S. Bernard and S. Terence and S. Edward and S. Owen Caniculus and S. Anonymous and S. Eponymous and S. Pseudonymous and S. Homonymous and S. Paronymous and S. Synonymous and S. Laurence O'Toole and S. James of Dingle and Compostella and S. Columcille and S. Columba and S. Celestine and S. Colman and S. Kevin and S. Brendan and S. Frigidian and S. Senan and S. Fachtna and S. Columbanus and S. Gall and S. Fursey and S. Fintan and S. Fiacre and S. John Nepomuc and S. Thomas Aquinas and S. Ives of Brittany and S. Michan and S. Herman-Joseph and the three patrons of holy youth S. Aloysius Gonzaga and S. Stanislaus Kostka and S. John Berchmans and the saints Gervasius, Servasius and Bonifacius and S. Bride and S. Kieran and S. Canice of Kilkenny and S. Jarlath of Tuam and S. Finbarr and S. Pappin of Ballymun and Brother Aloysius Pacificus and Brother Louis Bellicosus and the saints Rose of Lima and of Viterbo and S. Martha of Bethany and S. Mary of Egypt and S. Lucy and S. Brigid and S. Attracta and S. Dympna and S. Ita and S. Marion Calpensis and the Blessed Sister Teresa of the Child Jesus and S. Barbara and S. Scholastica and S. Ursula with eleven thousand virgins. And all came with nimbi and aureoles and gloriae, bearing palms and harps and swords and olive crowns, in robes whereon were woven the blessed symbols of their efficacies, inkhorns, arrows, loaves, cruses, fetters, axes, trees, bridges, babes in a bathtub, shells, wallets, shears, keys, dragons, lilies, buckshot, beards, hogs, lamps, bellows, beehives, soupladles, stars, snakes, anvils, boxes of vaseline, bells, crutches, forceps, stags' horns, watertight boots, hawks, millstones, eyes on a dish, wax candles, aspergills, unicorns. And as they wended their way by Nelson's Pillar, Henry street, Mary street, Capel street, Little Britain street chanting the introit in Epiphania Domini which beginneth Surge, illuminare and thereafter most sweetly the gradual Omnes which saith de Saba venient they did divers wonders such as casting out devils, raising the dead to life, multiplying fishes, healing the halt and the blind, discovering various articles which had been mislaid, interpreting and fulfilling the scriptures, blessing and prophesying. And last, beneath a canopy of cloth of gold came the reverend Father O'Flynn attended by Malachi and Patrick. And when the good fathers had reached the appointed place, the house of Bernard Kiernan and Co, limited, 8, 9 and 10 Little Britain street, wholesale grocers, wine and brandy shippers, licensed for the sale of beer, wine and spirits for consumption on the premises, the celebrant blessed the house and censed the mullioned windows and the groynes and the vaults and the arrises and the capitals and the pediments and the cornices and the engrailed arches and the spires and the cupolas and sprinkled the lintels thereof with blessed water and prayed that God might bless that house as he had blessed the house of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and make the angels of His light to inhabit therein. And entering he blessed the viands and the beverages and the company of all the blessed answered his prayers. --Adiutorium nostrum in nomine Domini. --Qui fecit coelum et terram. --Dominus vobiscum. --Et cum spiritu tuo. And he laid his hands upon that he blessed and gave thanks and he prayed and they all with him prayed: --Deus, cuius verbo sanctificantur omnia, benedictionem tuam effunde super creaturas istas: et praesta ut quisquis eis secundum legem et voluntatem Tuam cum gratiarum actione usus fuerit per invocationem sanctissimi nominis Tui corporis sanitatem et animae tutelam Te auctore percipiat per Christum Dominum nostrum. --And so say all of us, says Jack. --Thousand a year, Lambert, says Crofton or Crawford. --Right, says Ned, taking up his John Jameson. And butter for fish. I was just looking around to see who the happy thought would strike when be damned but in he comes again letting on to be in a hell of a hurry. --I was just round at the courthouse, says he, looking for you. I hope I'm not .... --No, says Martin, we're ready. Courthouse my eye and your pockets hanging down with gold and silver. Mean bloody scut. Stand us a drink itself. Devil a sweet fear! There's a jew for you! All for number one. Cute as a shithouse rat. Hundred to five. --Don't tell anyone, says the citizen, --Beg your pardon, says he. --Come on boys, says Martin, seeing it was looking blue. Come along now. --Don't tell anyone, says the citizen, letting a bawl out of him. It's a secret. And the bloody dog woke up and let a growl. --Bye bye all, says Martin. And he got them out as quick as he could, Jack Power and Crofton or whatever you call him and him in the middle of them letting on to be all at sea and up with them on the bloody jaunting car. --Off with you, says Martin to the jarvey. The milkwhite dolphin tossed his mane and, rising in the golden poop the helmsman spread the bellying sail upon the wind and stood off forward with all sail set, the spinnaker to larboard. A many comely nymphs drew nigh to starboard and to larboard and, clinging to the sides of the noble bark, they linked their shining forms as doth the cunning wheelwright when he fashions about the heart of his wheel the equidistant rays whereof each one is sister to another and he binds them all with an outer ring and giveth speed to the feet of men whenas they ride to a hosting or contend for the smile of ladies fair. Even so did they come and set them, those willing nymphs, the undying sisters. And they laughed, sporting in a circle of their foam: and the bark clave the waves. But begob I was just lowering the heel of the pint when I saw the citizen getting up to waddle to the door, puffing and blowing with the dropsy, and he cursing the curse of Cromwell on him, bell, book and candle in Irish, spitting and spatting out of him and Joe and little Alf round him like a leprechaun trying to peacify him. --Let me alone, says he. And begob he got as far as the door and they holding him and he bawls out of him: --Three cheers for Israel! Arrah, sit down on the parliamentary side of your arse for Christ' sake and don't be making a public exhibition of yourself. Jesus, there's always some bloody clown or other kicking up a bloody murder about bloody nothing. Gob, it'd turn the porter sour in your guts, so it would. And all the ragamuffins and sluts of the nation round the door and Martin telling the jarvey to drive ahead and the citizen bawling and Alf and Joe at him to whisht and he on his high horse about the jews and the loafers calling for a speech and Jack Power trying to get him to sit down on the car and hold his bloody jaw and a loafer with a patch over his eye starts singing If the man in the moon was a jew, jew, jew and a slut shouts out of her: --Eh, mister! Your fly is open, mister! And says he: --Mendelssohn was a jew and Karl Marx and Mercadante and Spinoza. And the Saviour was a jew and his father was a jew. Your God. --He had no father, says Martin. That'll do now. Drive ahead. --Whose God? says the citizen. --Well, his uncle was a jew, says he. Your God was a jew. Christ was a jew like me. Gob, the citizen made a plunge back into the shop. --By Jesus, says he, I'll brain that bloody jewman for using the holy name. By Jesus, I'll crucify him so I will. Give us that biscuitbox here. --Stop! Stop! says Joe. A large and appreciative gathering of friends and acquaintances from the metropolis and greater Dublin assembled in their thousands to bid farewell to Nagyas gos uram Lipўti Virag, late of Messrs Alexander Thom's, printers to His Majesty, on the occasion of his departure for the distant clime of Sz zharminczbrojЈguly s-Dugul s (Meadow of Murmuring Waters). The ceremony which went off with great ’clat was characterised by the most affecting cordiality. An illuminated scroll of ancient Irish vellum, the work of Irish artists, was presented to the distinguished phenomenologist on behalf of a large section of the community and was accompanied by the gift of a silver casket, tastefully executed in the style of ancient Celtic ornament, a work which reflects every credit on the makers, Messrs Jacob agus Jacob. The departing guest was the recipient of a hearty ovation, many of those who were present being visibly moved when the select orchestra of Irish pipes struck up the wellknown strains of Come Back to Erin, followed immediately by Rakўczsy's March. Tarbarrels and bonfires were lighted along the coastline of the four seas on the summits of the Hill of Howth, Three Rock Mountain, Sugarloaf, Bray Head, the mountains of Mourne, the Galtees, the Ox and Donegal and Sperrin peaks, the Nagles and the Bograghs, the Connemara hills, the reeks of M Gillicuddy, Slieve Aughty, Slieve Bernagh and Slieve Bloom. Amid cheers that rent the welkin, responded to by answering cheers from a big muster of henchmen on the distant Cambrian and Caledonian hills, the mastodontic pleasureship slowly moved away saluted by a final floral tribute from the representatives of the fair sex who were present in large numbers while, as it proceeded down the river, escorted by a flotilla of barges, the flags of the Ballast office and Custom House were dipped in salute as were also those of the electrical power station at the Pigeonhouse and the Poolbeg Light. Visszontl t sra, kedv’s bar tom! Visszontl t sra! Gone but not forgotten. Gob, the devil wouldn't stop him till he got hold of the bloody tin anyhow and out with him and little Alf hanging on to his elbow and he shouting like a stuck pig, as good as any bloody play in the Queen's royal theatre: --Where is he till I murder him? And Ned and J. J. paralysed with the laughing. --Bloody wars, says I, I'll be in for the last gospel. But as luck would have it the jarvey got the nag's head round the other way and off with him. --Hold on, citizen, says Joe. Stop! Begob he drew his hand and made a swipe and let fly. Mercy of God the sun was in his eyes or he'd have left him for dead. Gob, he near sent it into the county Longford. The bloody nag took fright and the old mongrel after the car like bloody hell and all the populace shouting and laughing and the old tinbox clattering along the street. The catastrophe was terrific and instantaneous in its effect. The observatory of Dunsink registered in all eleven shocks, all of the fifth grade of Mercalli's scale, and there is no record extant of a similar seismic disturbance in our island since the earthquake of 1534, the year of the rebellion of Silken Thomas. The epicentre appears to have been that part of the metropolis which constitutes the Inn's Quay ward and parish of Saint Michan covering a surface of fortyone acres, two roods and one square pole or perch.All the lordly residences in the vicinity of the palace of justice were demolished and that noble edifice itself, in which at the time of the catastrophe important legal debates were in progress, is literally a mass of ruins beneath which it is to be feared all the occupants have been buried alive. From the reports of eyewitnesses it transpires that the seismic waves were accompanied by a violent atmospheric perturbation of cyclonic character. An article of headgear since ascertained to belong to the much respected clerk of the crown and peace Mr George Fottrell and a silk umbrella with gold handle with the engraved initials, crest, coat of arms and house number of the erudite and worshipful chairman of quarter sessions sir Frederick Falkiner, recorder of Dublin, have been discovered by search parties in remote parts of the island respectively, the former on the third basaltic ridge of the giant's causeway, the latter embedded to the extent of one foot three inches in the sandy beach of Holeopen bay near the old head of Kinsale. Other eyewitnesses depose that they observed an incandescent object of enormous proportions hurtling through the atmosphere at a terrifying velocity in a trajectory directed southwest by west. Messages of condolence and sympathy are being hourly received from all parts of the different continents and the sovereign pontiff has been graciously pleased to decree that a special missa pro defunctis shall be celebrated simultaneously by the ordinaries of each and every cathedral church of all the episcopal dioceses subject to the spiritual authority of the Holy See in suffrage of the souls of those faithful departed who have been so unexpectedly called away from our midst. The work of salvage, removal of d’bris, human remains etc has been entrusted to Messrs Michael Meade and Son, 159 Great Brunswick street, and Messrs T. and C. Martin, 77, 78, 79 and 80 North Wall, assisted by the men and officers of the Duke of Cornwall's light infantry under the general supervision of H. R. H., rear admiral, the right honourable sir Hercules Hannibal Habeas Corpus Anderson, K. G., K. P., K. T., P. C., K. C. B., M. P, J. P., M. B., D. S. O., S. O. D., M. F. H., M. R. I. A., B. L., Mus. Doc., P. L. G., F. T. C. D., F. R. U. I., F. R. C. P. I. and F. R. C. S. I. You never saw the like of it in all your born puff. Gob, if he got that lottery ticket on the side of his poll he'd remember the gold cup, he would so, but begob the citizen would have been lagged for assault and battery and Joe for aiding and abetting. The jarvey saved his life by furious driving as sure as God made Moses. What? O, Jesus, he did. And he let a volley of oaths after him. --Did I kill him, says he, or what? And he shouting to the bloody dog: --After him, Garry! After him, boy! And the last we saw was the bloody car rounding the corner and old sheepsface on it gesticulating and the bloody mongrel after it with his lugs back for all he was bloody well worth to tear him limb from limb. Hundred to five! Jesus, he took the value of it out of him, I promise you. When, lo, there came about them all a great brightness and they beheld the chariot wherein He stood ascend to heaven. And they beheld Him in the chariot, clothed upon in the glory of the brightness, having raiment as of the sun, fair as the moon and terrible that for awe they durst not look upon Him. And there came a voice out of heaven, calling: Elijah! Elijah! And He answered with a main cry: Abba! Adonai! And they beheld Him even Him, ben Bloom Elijah, amid clouds of angels ascend to the glory of the brightness at an angle of fortyfive degrees over Donohoe's in Little Green street like a shot off a shovel.
Her maiden name was Jemina Brown
And she lived with her mother in Irishtown.
Place made me think of that I suppose. All tarred with the same
brush. Wiping pens in their stockings. But the ball rolled down to her as if it
understood. Every bullet has its billet. Course I never could throw anything
straight at school. Crooked as a ram's horn. Sad however because it lasts
only a few years till they settle down to potwalloping and papa's pants will
soon fit Willy and fuller's earth for the baby when they hold him out to do
ah ah. No soft job. Saves them. Keeps them out of harm's way. Nature.
Washing child, washing corpse. Dignam. Children's hands always round
them. Cocoanut skulls, monkeys, not even closed at first, sour milk in their
swaddles and tainted curds. Oughtn't to have given that child an empty teat
to suck. Fill it up with wind. Mrs Beaufoy, Purefoy. Must call to the
hospital. Wonder is nurse Callan there still. She used to look over some
nights when Molly was in the Coffee Palace. That young doctor O'Hare I
noticed her brushing his coat. And Mrs Breen and Mrs Dignam once like
that too, marriageable. Worst of all at night Mrs Duggan told me in the City
Arms. Husband rolling in drunk, stink of pub off him like a polecat. Have
that in your nose in the dark, whiff of stale boose. Then ask in the morning:
was I drunk last night? Bad policy however to fault the husband. Chickens
come home to roost. They stick by one another like glue. Maybe the
women's fault also. That's where Molly can knock spots off them. It's the
blood of the south. Moorish. Also the form, the figure. Hands felt for the
opulent. Just compare for instance those others. Wife locked up at home,
skeleton in the cupboard. Allow me to introduce my. Then they trot you out
some kind of a nondescript, wouldn't know what to call her. Always see a
fellow's weak point in his wife. Still there's destiny in it, falling in love.
Have their own secrets between them. Chaps that would go to the dogs if
some woman didn't take them in hand. Then little chits of girls, height of a
shilling in coppers, with little hubbies. As God made them he matched them.
Sometimes children turn out well enough. Twice nought makes one. Or old
rich chap of seventy and blushing bride. Marry in May and repent in
December. This wet is very unpleasant. Stuck. Well the foreskin is not back.
Better detach.
Ow!
Other hand a sixfooter with a wifey up to his watchpocket. Long and
the short of it. Big he and little she. Very strange about my watch.
Wristwatches are always going wrong. Wonder is there any magnetic
influence between the person because that was about the time he. Yes, I
suppose, at once. Cat's away, the mice will play. I remember looking in Pill
lane. Also that now is magnetism. Back of everything magnetism. Earth for
instance pulling this and being pulled. That causes movement. And time,
well that's the time the movement takes. Then if one thing stopped the
whole ghesabo would stop bit by bit. Because it's all arranged. Magnetic
needle tells you what's going on in the sun, the stars. Little piece of steel
iron. When you hold out the fork. Come. Come. Tip. Woman and man that
is. Fork and steel. Molly, he. Dress up and look and suggest and let you see
and see more and defy you if you're a man to see that and, like a sneeze
coming, legs, look, look and if you have any guts in you. Tip. Have to let
fly.
Wonder how is she feeling in that region. Shame all put on before
third person. More put out about a hole in her stocking. Molly, her
underjaw stuck out, head back, about the farmer in the ridingboots and
spurs at the horse show. And when the painters were in Lombard street
west. Fine voice that fellow had. How Giuglini began. Smell that I did. Like
flowers. It was too. Violets. Came from the turpentine probably in the
paint. Make their own use of everything. Same time doing it scraped her
slipper on the floor so they wouldn't hear. But lots of them can't kick the
beam, I think. Keep that thing up for hours. Kind of a general all round
over me and half down my back.
Wait. Hm. Hm. Yes. That's her perfume. Why she waved her hand. I
leave you this to think of me when I'm far away on the pillow. What is it?
Heliotrope? No. Hyacinth? Hm. Roses, I think. She'd like scent of that
kind. Sweet and cheap: soon sour. Why Molly likes opoponax. Suits her,
with a little jessamine mixed. Her high notes and her low notes. At the
dance night she met him, dance of the hours. Heat brought it out. She was
wearing her black and it had the perfume of the time before. Good
conductor, is it? Or bad? Light too. Suppose there's some connection. For
instance if you go into a cellar where it's dark. Mysterious thing too. Why
did I smell it only now? Took its time in coming like herself, slow but sure.
Suppose it's ever so many millions of tiny grains blown across. Yes, it is.
Because those spice islands, Cinghalese this morning, smell them leagues
off.Tell you what it is.It's like a fine fine veil or web they have all over the
skin, fine like what do you call it gossamer, and they're always spinning it
out of them, fine as anything, like rainbow colours without knowing it.
Clings to everything she takes off. Vamp of her stockings. Warm shoe.
Stays. Drawers: little kick, taking them off. Byby till next time. Also the cat
likes to sniff in her shift on the bed. Know her smell in a thousand.
Bathwater too. Reminds me of strawberries and cream. Wonder where it is
really. There or the armpits or under the neck. Because you get it out of all
holes and corners. Hyacinth perfume made of oil of ether or something.
Muskrat. Bag under their tails. One grain pour off odour for years. Dogs at
each other behind. Good evening. Evening. How do you sniff? Hm. Hm.
Very well, thank you. Animals go by that. Yes now, look at it that way.
We're the same. Some women, instance, warn you off when they have their
period. Come near. Then get a hogo you could hang your hat on. Like
what? Potted herrings gone stale or. Boof! Please keep off the grass.
Perhaps they get a man smell off us. What though? Cigary gloves long
John had on his desk the other day. Breath? What you eat and drink gives
that. No. Mansmell, I mean. Must be connected with that because priests
that are supposed to be are different. Women buzz round it like flies round
treacle. Railed off the altar get on to it at any cost. The tree of forbidden
priest. O, father, will you? Let me be the first to. That diffuses itself all
through the body, permeates. Source of life. And it's extremely curious the
smell. Celery sauce. Let me.
Mr Bloom inserted his nose. Hm. Into the. Hm. Opening of his
waistcoat. Almonds or. No. Lemons it is. Ah no, that's the soap.
O by the by that lotion. I knew there was something on my mind.
Never went back and the soap not paid. Dislike carrying bottles like that
hag this morning. Hynes might have paid me that three shillings. I could
mention Meagher's just to remind him. Still if he works that paragraph.
Two and nine. Bad opinion of me he'll have. Call tomorrow. How much do
I owe you? Three and nine? Two and nine, sir. Ah. Might stop him giving
credit another time. Lose your customers that way. Pubs do. Fellows run up
a bill on the slate and then slinking around the back streets into somewhere
else.
Here's this nobleman passed before. Blown in from the bay. Just went
as far as turn back. Always at home at dinnertime. Looks mangled out: had
a good tuck in. Enjoying nature now. Grace after meals. After supper walk
a mile. Sure he has a small bank balance somewhere, government sit. Walk
after him now make him awkward like those newsboys me today. Still you
learn something. See ourselves as others see us. So long as women don't
mock what matter? That's the way to find out. Ask yourself who is he now.
The Mystery Man on the Beach, prize titbit story by Mr Leopold Bloom.
Payment at the rate of one guinea per column. And that fellow today at the
graveside in the brown macintosh. Corns on his kismet however. Healthy
perhaps absorb all the. Whistle brings rain they say. Must be some
somewhere. Salt in the Ormond damp. The body feels the atmosphere. Old
Betty's joints are on the rack. Mother Shipton's prophecy that is about
ships around they fly in the twinkling. No. Signs of rain it is. The royal
reader. And distant hills seem coming nigh.
Howth. Bailey light. Two, four, six, eight, nine. See. Has to change or
they might think it a house. Wreckers. Grace Darling. People afraid of the
dark. Also glowworms, cyclists: lightingup time. Jewels diamonds flash
better. Women. Light is a kind of reassuring. Not going to hurt you. Better
now of course than long ago. Country roads. Run you through the small
guts for nothing. Still two types there are you bob against. Scowl or smile.
Pardon! Not at all. Best time to spray plants too in the shade after the sun.
Some light still. Red rays are longest. Roygbiv Vance taught us: red,
orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.A star I see. Venus? Can't tell yet.
Two. When three it's night. Were those nightclouds there all the time?
Looks like a phantom ship. No. Wait. Trees are they? An optical illusion.
Mirage. Land of the setting sun this. Homerule sun setting in the southeast.
My native land, goodnight.
Dew falling. Bad for you, dear, to sit on that stone. Brings on white
fluxions. Never have little baby then less he was big strong fight his way up
through. Might get piles myself. Sticks too like a summer cold, sore on the
mouth. Cut with grass or paper worst. Friction of the position. Like to be
that rock she sat on. O sweet little, you don't know how nice you looked. I
begin to like them at that age. Green apples. Grab at all that offer. Suppose
it's the only time we cross legs, seated. Also the library today: those girl
graduates. Happy chairs under them. But it's the evening influence. They
feel all that. Open like flowers, know their hours, sunflowers, Jerusalem
artichokes, in ballrooms, chandeliers, avenues under the lamps. Nightstock
in Mat Dillon's garden where I kissed her shoulder. Wish I had a full length
oilpainting of her then. June that was too I wooed. The year returns.
History repeats itself. Ye crags and peaks I'm with you once again. Life,
love, voyage round your own little world. And now? Sad about her lame of
course but must be on your guard not to feel too much pity. They take
advantage.
All quiet on Howth now. The distant hills seem. Where we. The
rhododendrons. I am a fool perhaps. He gets the plums, and I the
plumstones. Where I come in. All that old hill has seen. Names change:
that's all. Lovers: yum yum.
Tired I feel now. Will I get up? O wait. Drained all the manhood out
of me, little wretch. She kissed me. Never again. My youth. Only once it
comes. Or hers. Take the train there tomorrow. No. Returning not the
same. Like kids your second visit to a house. The new I want. Nothing new
under the sun. Care of P. O. Dolphin's Barn. Are you not happy in your?
Naughty darling. At Dolphin's barn charades in Luke Doyle's house. Mat
Dillon and his bevy of daughters: Tiny, Atty, Floey, Maimy, Louy, Hetty.
Molly too. Eightyseven that was. Year before we. And the old major, partial
to his drop of spirits. Curious she an only child, I an only child. So it
returns. Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is
the shortest way home. And just when he and she. Circus horse walking in
a ring. Rip van Winkle we played. Rip: tear in Henny Doyle's overcoat.
Van: breadvan delivering. Winkle: cockles and periwinkles. Then I did Rip
van Winkle coming back. She leaned on the sideboard watching. Moorish
eyes. Twenty years asleep in Sleepy Hollow. All changed. Forgotten. The
young are old. His gun rusty from the dew.
Ba. What is that flying about? Swallow? Bat probably. Thinks I'm a
tree, so blind. Have birds no smell? Metempsychosis. They believed you
could be changed into a tree from grief. Weeping willow. Ba. There he goes.
Funny little beggar. Wonder where he lives. Belfry up there. Very likely.
Hanging by his heels in the odour of sanctity. Bell scared him out, I
suppose. Mass seems to be over. Could hear them all at it. Pray for us. And
pray for us. And pray for us. Good idea the repetition. Same thing with ads.
Buy from us. And buy from us. Yes, there's the light in the priest's house.
Their frugal meal. Remember about the mistake in the valuation when I
was in Thom's. Twentyeight it is. Two houses they have. Gabriel Conroy's
brother is curate. Ba. Again. Wonder why they come out at night like mice.
They're a mixed breed. Birds are like hopping mice. What frightens them,
light or noise? Better sit still. All instinct like the bird in drouth got water
out of the end of a jar by throwing in pebbles. Like a little man in a cloak he
is with tiny hands. Weeny bones. Almost see them shimmering, kind of a
bluey white. Colours depend on the light you see. Stare the sun for example
like the eagle then look at a shoe see a blotch blob yellowish. Wants to
stamp his trademark on everything. Instance, that cat this morning on the
staircase. Colour of brown turf. Say you never see them with three colours.
Not true. That half tabbywhite tortoiseshell in the City Arms with the letter
em on her forehead. Body fifty different colours. Howth a while ago
amethyst. Glass flashing. That's how that wise man what's his name with
the burning glass. Then the heather goes on fire. It can't be tourists'
matches. What? Perhaps the sticks dry rub together in the wind and light.
Or broken bottles in the furze act as a burning glass in the sun.
Archimedes. I have it! My memory's not so bad.
Ba. Who knows what they're always flying for. Insects? That bee last
week got into the room playing with his shadow on the ceiling. Might be the
one bit me, come back to see. Birds too. Never find out. Or what they say.
Like our small talk. And says she and says he. Nerve they have to fly over
the ocean and back. Lots must be killed in storms, telegraph wires.
Dreadful life sailors have too. Big brutes of oceangoing steamers
floundering along in the dark, lowing out like seacows. Faugh a ballagh!
Out of that, bloody curse to you! Others in vessels, bit of a handkerchief
sail, pitched about like snuff at a wake when the stormy winds do blow.
Married too. Sometimes away for years at the ends of the earth somewhere.
No ends really because it's round. Wife in every port they say. She has a
good job if she minds it till Johnny comes marching home again. If ever he
does. Smelling the tail end of ports. How can they like the sea? Yet they do.
The anchor's weighed. Off he sails with a scapular or a medal on him for
luck. Well. And the tephilim no what's this they call it poor papa's father
had on his door to touch. That brought us out of the land of Egypt and into
the house of bondage. Something in all those superstitions because when
you go out never know what dangers. Hanging on to a plank or astride of a
beam for grim life, lifebelt round him, gulping salt water, and that's the last
of his nibs till the sharks catch hold of him. Do fish ever get seasick?
Then you have a beautiful calm without a cloud, smooth sea, placid,
crew and cargo in smithereens, Davy Jones' locker, moon looking down so
peaceful. Not my fault, old cockalorum.
A last lonely candle wandered up the sky from Mirus bazaar in search
of funds for Mercer's hospital and broke, drooping, and shed a cluster of
violet but one white stars. They floated, fell: they faded. The shepherd's
hour: the hour of folding: hour of tryst. From house to house, giving his
everwelcome double knock, went the nine o'clock postman, the
glowworm's lamp at his belt gleaming here and there through the laurel
hedges. And among the five young trees a hoisted lintstock lit the lamp at
Leahy's terrace. By screens of lighted windows, by equal gardens a shrill
voice went crying, wailing: Evening Telegraph, stop press edition! Result of
the Gold Cup races! and from the door of Dignam's house a boy ran out
and called. Twittering the bat flew here, flew there. Far out over the sands
the coming surf crept, grey. Howth settled for slumber, tired of long days,
of yumyum rhododendrons (he was old) and felt gladly the night breeze
lift, ruffle his fell of ferns. He lay but opened a red eye unsleeping, deep and
slowly breathing, slumberous but awake. And far on Kish bank the
anchored lightship twinkled, winked at Mr Bloom.
Life those chaps out there must have, stuck in the same spot. Irish
Lights board. Penance for their sins. Coastguards too. Rocket and breeches
buoy and lifeboat. Day we went out for the pleasure cruise in the Erin's
King, throwing them the sack of old papers. Bears in the zoo. Filthy trip.
Drunkards out to shake up their livers. Puking overboard to feed the
herrings. Nausea. And the women, fear of God in their faces. Milly, no sign
of funk. Her blue scarf loose, laughing. Don't know what death is at that
age. And then their stomachs clean. But being lost they fear. When we hid
behind the tree at Crumlin. I didn't want to. Mamma! Mamma! Babes in
the wood. Frightening them with masks too. Throwing them up in the air to
catch them. I'll murder you. Is it only half fun? Or children playing battle.
Whole earnest. How can people aim guns at each other. Sometimes they go
off. Poor kids! Only troubles wildfire and nettlerash. Calomel purge I got
her for that. After getting better asleep with Molly. Very same teeth she has.
What do they love? Another themselves? But the morning she chased her
with the umbrella. Perhaps so as not to hurt. I felt her pulse. Ticking. Little
hand it was: now big. Dearest Papli. All that the hand says when you touch.
Loved to count my waistcoat buttons. Her first stays I remember. Made me
laugh to see. Little paps to begin with. Left one is more sensitive, I think.
Mine too. Nearer the heart? Padding themselves out if fat is in fashion. Her
growing pains at night, calling, wakening me. Frightened she was when her
nature came on her first. Poor child! Strange moment for the mother too.
Brings back her girlhood. Gibraltar. Looking from Buena Vista. O'Hara's
tower. The seabirds screaming. Old Barbary ape that gobbled all his family.
Sundown, gunfire for the men to cross the lines. Looking out over the sea
she told me. Evening like this, but clear, no clouds. I always thought I'd
marry a lord or a rich gentleman coming with a private yacht. Buenas
noches, senorita. El hombre ama la muchacha hermosa. Why me? Because
you were so foreign from the others.
Better not stick here all night like a limpet. This weather makes you
dull. Must be getting on for nine by the light. Go home. Too late for Leah.
Lily of Killarney. No. Might be still up. Call to the hospital to see. Hope
she's over. Long day I've had. Martha, the bath, funeral, house of Keyes,
museum with those goddesses, Dedalus' song. Then that bawler in Barney
Kiernan's. Got my own back there. Drunken ranters what I said about his
God made him wince. Mistake to hit back. Or? No. Ought to go home and
laugh at themselves. Always want to be swilling in company. Afraid to be
alone like a child of two. Suppose he hit me. Look at it other way round.
Not so bad then. Perhaps not to hurt he meant. Three cheers for Israel.
Three cheers for the sister-in-law he hawked about, three fangs in her
mouth. Same style of beauty. Particularly nice old party for a cup of tea.
The sister of the wife of the wild man of Borneo has just come to town.
Imagine that in the early morning at close range. Everyone to his taste as
Morris said when he kissed the cow. But Dignam's put the boots on it.
Houses of mourning so depressing because you never know. Anyhow she
wants the money. Must call to those Scottish Widows as I promised.
Strange name. Takes it for granted we're going to pop off first. That widow
on Monday was it outside Cramer's that looked at me. Buried the poor
husband but progressing favourably on the premium. Her widow's mite.
Well? What do you expect her to do? Must wheedle her way along.
Widower I hate to see. Looks so forlorn. Poor man O'Connor wife and five
children poisoned by mussels here. The sewage. Hopeless. Some good
matronly woman in a porkpie hat to mother him. Take him in tow, platter
face and a large apron. Ladies' grey flannelette bloomers, three shillings a
pair, astonishing bargain. Plain and loved, loved for ever, they say. Ugly:
no woman thinks she is. Love, lie and be handsome for tomorrow we die.
See him sometimes walking about trying to find out who played the trick.
U. p: up. Fate that is. He, not me. Also a shop often noticed. Curse seems to
dog it. Dreamt last night? Wait. Something confused. She had red slippers
on. Turkish. Wore the breeches. Suppose she does? Would I like her in
pyjamas? Damned hard to answer. Nannetti's gone. Mailboat. Near
Holyhead by now. Must nail that ad of Keyes's. Work Hynes and
Crawford. Petticoats for Molly. She has something to put in them. What's
that? Might be money.
Mr Bloom stooped and turned over a piece of paper on the strand. He
brought it near his eyes and peered. Letter? No. Can't read. Better go.
Better. I'm tired to move. Page of an old copybook. All those holes and
pebbles. Who could count them? Never know what you find. Bottle with
story of a treasure in it, thrown from a wreck. Parcels post. Children
always want to throw things in the sea. Trust? Bread cast on the waters.
What's this? Bit of stick.
O! Exhausted that female has me. Not so young now. Will she come
here tomorrow? Wait for her somewhere for ever. Must come back.
Murderers do. Will I?
Mr Bloom with his stick gently vexed the thick sand at his foot. Write
a message for her. Might remain. What?
I.
Some flatfoot tramp on it in the morning. Useless. Washed away. Tide
comes here. Saw a pool near her foot. Bend, see my face there, dark mirror,
breathe on it, stirs. All these rocks with lines and scars and letters. O, those
transparent! Besides they don't know. What is the meaning of that other
world. I called you naughty boy because I do not like.
AM. A.
No room. Let it go.
Mr Bloom effaced the letters with his slow boot. Hopeless thing sand.
Nothing grows in it. All fades. No fear of big vessels coming up here.
Except Guinness's barges. Round the Kish in eighty days. Done half by
design.
He flung his wooden pen away. The stick fell in silted sand, stuck.
Now if you were trying to do that for a week on end you couldn't. Chance.
We'll never meet again. But it was lovely. Goodbye, dear. Thanks. Made me
feel so young.
Short snooze now if I had. Must be near nine. Liverpool boat long
gone.. Not even the smoke. And she can do the other. Did too. And Belfast.
I won't go. Race there, race back to Ennis. Let him. Just close my eyes a
moment. Won't sleep, though. Half dream. It never comes the same. Bat
again. No harm in him. Just a few.
O sweety all your little girlwhite up I saw dirty bracegirdle made me
do love sticky we two naughty Grace darling she him half past the bed met
him pike hoses frillies for Raoul de perfume your wife black hair heave
under embon senorita young eyes Mulvey plump bubs me breadvan Winkle
red slippers she rusty sleep wander years of dreams return tail end
Agendath swoony lovey showed me her next year in drawers return next in
her next her next.
A bat flew. Here. There. Here. Far in the grey a bell chimed. Mr
Bloom with open mouth, his left boot sanded sideways, leaned, breathed.
Just for a few
Cuckoo
Cuckoo
Cuckoo.
The clock on the mantelpiece in the priest's house cooed where Canon
O'Hanlon and Father Conroy and the reverend John Hughes S. J. were
taking tea and sodabread and butter and fried mutton chops with catsup
and talking about
Cuckoo
Cuckoo
Cuckoo
because it was a little canarybird that came out of its little house to tell the
time that Gerty MacDowell noticed the time she was there because she was
as quick as anything about a thing like that, was Gerty MacDowell, and she
noticed at once that that foreign gentleman that was sitting on the rocks
looking was
Cuckoo
Cuckoo
Cuckoo.
--Behold the mansion reared by dedal Jack See the malt stored in many a refluent sack In the proud cirque of Jackjohn's bivouac.A black crack of noise in the street here, alack, bawled back. Loud on left Thor thundered: in anger awful the hammerhurler. Came now the storm that hist his heart. And Master Lynch bade him have a care to flout and witwanton as the god self was angered for his hellprate and paganry. And he that had erst challenged to be so doughty waxed wan as they might all mark and shrank together and his pitch that was before so haught uplift was now of a sudden quite plucked down and his heart shook within the cage of his breast as he tasted the rumour of that storm. Then did some mock and some jeer and Punch Costello fell hard again to his yale which Master Lenehan vowed he would do after and he was indeed but a word and a blow on any the least colour. But the braggart boaster cried that an old Nobodaddy was in his cups it was muchwhat indifferent and he would not lag behind his lead. But this was only to dye his desperation as cowed he crouched in Horne's hall. He drank indeed at one draught to pluck up a heart of any grace for it thundered long rumblingly over all the heavens so that Master Madden, being godly certain whiles, knocked him on his ribs upon that crack of doom and Master Bloom, at the braggart's side, spoke to him calming words to slumber his great fear, advertising how it was no other thing but a hubbub noise that he heard, the discharge of fluid from the thunderhead, look you, having taken place, and all of the order of a natural phenomenon. But was young Boasthard's fear vanquished by Calmer's words? No, for he had in his bosom a spike named Bitterness which could not by words be done away. And was he then neither calm like the one nor godly like the other? He was neither as much as he would have liked to be either. But could he not have endeavoured to have found again as in his youth the bottle Holiness that then he lived withal? Indeed no for Grace was not there to find that bottle. Heard he then in that clap the voice of the god Bringforth or, what Calmer said, a hubbub of Phenomenon? Heard? Why, he could not but hear unless he had plugged him up the tube Understanding (which he had not done). For through that tube he saw that he was in the land of Phenomenon where he must for a certain one day die as he was like the rest too a passing show. And would he not accept to die like the rest and pass away? By no means would he though he must nor would he make more shows according as men do with wives which Phenomenon has commanded them to do by the book Law. Then wotted he nought of that other land which is called Believe-on-Me, that is the land of promise which behoves to the king Delightful and shall be for ever where there is no death and no birth neither wiving nor mothering at which all shall come as many as believe on it? Yes, Pious had told him of that land and Chaste had pointed him to the way but the reason was that in the way he fell in with a certain whore of an eyepleasing exterior whose name, she said, is Bird-in-the-Hand and she beguiled him wrongways from the true path by her flatteries that she said to him as, Ho, you pretty man, turn aside hither and I will show you a brave place, and she lay at him so flatteringly that she had him in her grot which is named Two-in-the-Bush or, by some learned, Carnal Concupiscence. This was it what all that company that sat there at commons in Manse of Mothers the most lusted after and if they met with this whore Bird-in-the-Hand (which was within all foul plagues, monsters and a wicked devil) they would strain the last but they would make at her and know her. For regarding Believe-on-Me they said it was nought else but notion and they could conceive no thought of it for, first, Two-in-the-Bush whither she ticed them was the very goodliest grot and in it were four pillows on which were four tickets with these words printed on them, Pickaback and Topsyturvy and Shameface and Cheek by Jowl and, second, for that foul plague Allpox and the monsters they cared not for them for Preservative had given them a stout shield of oxengut and, third, that they might take no hurt neither from Offspring that was that wicked devil by virtue of this same shield which was named Killchild. So were they all in their blind fancy, Mr Cavil and Mr Sometimes Godly, Mr Ape Swillale, Mr False Franklin, Mr Dainty Dixon, Young Boasthard and Mr Cautious Calmer. Wherein, O wretched company, were ye all deceived for that was the voice of the god that was in a very grievous rage that he would presently lift his arm up and spill their souls for their abuses and their spillings done by them contrariwise to his word which forth to bring brenningly biddeth. So Thursday sixteenth June Patk. Dignam laid in clay of an apoplexy and after hard drought, please God, rained, a bargeman coming in by water a fifty mile or thereabout with turf saying the seed won't sprout, fields athirst, very sadcoloured and stunk mightily, the quags and tofts too. Hard to breathe and all the young quicks clean consumed without sprinkle this long while back as no man remembered to be without. The rosy buds all gone brown and spread out blobs and on the hills nought but dry flag and faggots that would catch at first fire. All the world saying, for aught they knew, the big wind of last February a year that did havoc the land so pitifully a small thing beside this barrenness. But by and by, as said, this evening after sundown, the wind sitting in the west, biggish swollen clouds to be seen as the night increased and the weatherwise poring up at them and some sheet lightnings at first and after, past ten of the clock, one great stroke with a long thunder and in a brace of shakes all scamper pellmell within door for the smoking shower, the men making shelter for their straws with a clout or kerchief, womenfolk skipping off with kirtles catched up soon as the pour came. In Ely place, Baggot street, Duke's lawn, thence through Merrion green up to Holles street a swash of water flowing that was before bonedry and not one chair or coach or fiacre seen about but no more crack after that first. Over against the Rt. Hon. Mr Justice Fitzgibbon's door (that is to sit with Mr Healy the lawyer upon the college lands) Mal. Mulligan a gentleman's gentleman that had but come from Mr Moore's the writer's (that was a papish but is now, folk say, a good Williamite) chanced against Alec. Bannon in a cut bob (which are now in with dance cloaks of Kendal green) that was new got to town from Mullingar with the stage where his coz and Mal M's brother will stay a month yet till Saint Swithin and asks what in the earth he does there, he bound home and he to Andrew Horne's being stayed for to crush a cup of wine, so he said, but would tell him of a skittish heifer, big of her age and beef to the heel, and all this while poured with rain and so both together on to Horne's. There Leop. Bloom of Crawford's journal sitting snug with a covey of wags, likely brangling fellows, Dixon jun., scholar of my lady of Mercy's, Vin. Lynch, a Scots fellow, Will. Madden, T. Lenehan, very sad about a racer he fancied and Stephen D. Leop. Bloom there for a languor he had but was now better, be having dreamed tonight a strange fancy of his dame Mrs Moll with red slippers on in a pair of Turkey trunks which is thought by those in ken to be for a change and Mistress Purefoy there, that got in through pleading her belly, and now on the stools, poor body, two days past her term, the midwives sore put to it and can't deliver, she queasy for a bowl of riceslop that is a shrewd drier up of the insides and her breath very heavy more than good and should be a bullyboy from the knocks, they say, but God give her soon issue. 'Tis her ninth chick to live, I hear, and Lady day bit off her last chick's nails that was then a twelvemonth and with other three all breastfed that died written out in a fair hand in the king's bible. Her hub fifty odd and a methodist but takes the sacrament and is to be seen any fair sabbath with a pair of his boys off Bullock harbour dapping on the sound with a heavybraked reel or in a punt he has trailing for flounder and pollock and catches a fine bag, I hear. In sum an infinite great fall of rain and all refreshed and will much increase the harvest yet those in ken say after wind and water fire shall come for a prognostication of Malachi's almanac (and I hear that Mr Russell has done a prophetical charm of the same gist out of the Hindustanish for his farmer's gazette) to have three things in all but this a mere fetch without bottom of reason for old crones and bairns yet sometimes they are found in the right guess with their queerities no telling how. With this came up Lenehan to the feet of the table to say how the letter was in that night's gazette and he made a show to find it about him (for he swore with an oath that he had been at pains about it) but on Stephen's persuasion he gave over the search and was bidden to sit near by which he did mighty brisk. He was a kind of sport gentleman that went for a merryandrew or honest pickle and what belonged of women, horseflesh or hot scandal he had it pat. To tell the truth he was mean in fortunes and for the most part hankered about the coffeehouses and low taverns with crimps, ostlers, bookies, Paul's men, runners, flatcaps, waistcoateers, ladies of the bagnio and other rogues of the game or with a chanceable catchpole or a tipstaff often at nights till broad day of whom he picked up between his sackpossets much loose gossip. He took his ordinary at a boilingcook's and if he had but gotten into him a mess of broken victuals or a platter of tripes with a bare tester in his purse he could always bring himself off with his tongue, some randy quip he had from a punk or whatnot that every mother's son of them would burst their sides. The other, Costello that is, hearing this talk asked was it poetry or a tale. Faith, no, he says, Frank (that was his name), 'tis all about Kerry cows that are to be butchered along of the plague. But they can go hang, says he with a wink, for me with their bully beef, a pox on it. There's as good fish in this tin as ever came out of it and very friendly he offered to take of some salty sprats that stood by which he had eyed wishly in the meantime and found the place which was indeed the chief design of his embassy as he was sharpset. Mort aux vaches, says Frank then in the French language that had been indentured to a brandyshipper that has a winelodge in Bordeaux and he spoke French like a gentleman too. From a child this Frank had been a donought that his father, a headborough, who could ill keep him to school to learn his letters and the use of the globes, matriculated at the university to study the mechanics but he took the bit between his teeth like a raw colt and was more familiar with the justiciary and the parish beadle than with his volumes. One time he would be a playactor, then a sutler or a welsher, then nought would keep him from the bearpit and the cocking main, then he was for the ocean sea or to hoof it on the roads with the romany folk, kidnapping a squire's heir by favour of moonlight or fecking maids' linen or choking chicken behind a hedge. He had been off as many times as a cat has lives and back again with naked pockets as many more to his father the headborough who shed a pint of tears as often as he saw him. What, says Mr Leopold with his hands across, that was earnest to know the drift of it, will they slaughter all? I protest I saw them but this,day morning going to the Liverpool boats, says he. I can scarce believe 'tis so bad, says he. And he had experience of the like brood beasts and of springers, greasy hoggets and wether wool, having been some years before actuary for Mr Joseph Cuffe, a worthy salesmaster that drove his trade for live stock and meadow auctions hard by Mr Gavin Low's yard in Prussia street. I question with you there, says he. More like 'tis the hoose or the timber tongue. Mr Stephen, a little moved but very handsomely told him no such matter and that he had dispatches from the emperor's chief tailtickler thanking him for the hospitality, that was sending over Doctor Rinderpest, the bestquoted cowcatcher in all Muscovy, with a bolus or two of physic to take the bull by the horns. Come, come, says Mr Vincent, plain dealing. He'll find himself on the horns of a dilemma if he meddles with a bull that's Irish, says he. Irish by name and irish by nature, says Mr Stephen, and he sent the ale purling about, an Irish bull in an English chinashop. I conceive you, says Mr Dixon. It is that same bull that was sent to our island by farmer Nicholas, the bravest cattlebreeder of them all, with an emerald ring in his nose. True for you, says Mr Vincent cross the table, and a bullseye into the bargain, says he, and a plumper and a portlier bull, says he, never shit on shamrock. He had horns galore, a coat of cloth of gold and a sweet smoky breath coming out of his nostrils so that the women of our island, leaving doughballs and rollingpins, followed after him hanging his bulliness in daisychains. What for that, says Mr Dixon, but before he came over farmer Nicholas that was a eunuch had him properly gelded by a college of doctors who were no better off than himself. So be off now, says he, and do all my cousin german the lord Harry tells you and take a farmer's blessing, and with that he slapped his posteriors very soundly. But the slap and the blessing stood him friend, says Mr Vincent, for to make up he taught him a trick worth two of the other so that maid, wife, abbess and widow to this day affirm that they would rather any time of the month whisper in his ear in the dark of a cowhouse or get a lick on the nape from his long holy tongue than lie with the finest strapping young ravisher in the four fields of all Ireland. Another then put in his word: And they dressed him, says he, in a point shift and petticoat with a tippet and girdle and ruffles on his wrists and clipped his forelock and rubbed him all over with spermacetic oil and built stables for him at every turn of the road with a gold manger in each full of the best hay in the market so that he could doss and dung to his heart's content. By this time the father of the faithful (for so they called him) was grown so heavy that he could scarce walk to pasture. To remedy which our cozening dames and damsels brought him his fodder in their apronlaps and as soon as his belly was full he would rear up on his hind quarters to show their ladyships a mystery and roar and bellow out of him in bulls' language and they all after him. Ay, says another, and so pampered was he that he would suffer nought to grow in all the land but green grass for himself (for that was the only colour to his mind) and there was a board put up on a hillock in the middle of the island with a printed notice, saying: By the Lord Harry, Green is the grass that grows on the ground. And, says Mr Dixon, if ever he got scent of a cattleraider in Roscommon or the wilds of Connemara or a husbandman in Sligo that was sowing as much as a handful of mustard or a bag of rapeseed out he'd run amok over half the countryside rooting up with his horns whatever was planted and all by lord Harry's orders. There was bad blood between them at first, says Mr Vincent, and the lord Harry called farmer Nicholas all the old Nicks in the world and an old whoremaster that kept seven trulls in his house and I'll meddle in his matters, says he. I'll make that animal smell hell, says he, with the help of that good pizzle my father left me. But one evening, says Mr Dixon, when the lord Harry was cleaning his royal pelt to go to dinner after winning a boatrace (he had spade oars for himself but the first rule of the course was that the others were to row with pitchforks) he discovered in himself a wonderful likeness to a bull and on picking up a blackthumbed chapbook that he kept in the pantry he found sure enough that he was a lefthanded descendant of the famous champion bull of the Romans, Bos Bovum, which is good bog Latin for boss of the show. After that, says Mr Vincent, the lord Harry put his head into a cow's drinkingtrough in the presence of all his courtiers and pulling it out again told them all his new name. Then, with the water running off him, he got into an old smock and skirt that had belonged to his grandmother and bought a grammar of the bulls' language to study but he could never learn a word of it except the first personal pronoun which he copied out big and got off by heart and if ever he went out for a walk he filled his pockets with chalk to write it upon what took his fancy, the side of a rock or a teahouse table or a bale of cotton or a corkfloat. In short, he and the bull of Ireland were soon as fast friends as an arse and a shirt. They were, says Mr Stephen, and the end was that the men of the island seeing no help was toward, as the ungrate women were all of one mind, made a wherry raft, loaded themselves and their bundles of chattels on shipboard, set all masts erect, manned the yards, sprang their luff, heaved to, spread three sheets in the wind, put her head between wind and water, weighed anchor, ported her helm, ran up the jolly Roger, gave three times three, let the bullgine run, pushed off in their bumboat and put to sea to recover the main of America. Which was the occasion, says Mr Vincent, of the composing by a boatswain of that rollicking chanty: --Pope Peter's but a pissabed. man's a man for a' that.Our worthy acquaintance Mr Malachi Mulligan now appeared in the doorway as the students were finishing their apologue accompanied with a friend whom he had just rencountered, a young gentleman, his name Alec Bannon, who had late come to town, it being his intention to buy a colour or a cornetcy in the fencibles and list for the wars. Mr Mulligan was civil enough to express some relish of it all the more as it jumped with a project of his own for the cure of the very evil that had been touched on. Whereat he handed round to the company a set of pasteboard cards which he had had printed that day at Mr Quinnell's bearing a legend printed in fair italics: Mr Malachi Mulligan. Fertiliser and Incubator. Lambay Island. His project, as he went on to expound, was to withdraw from the round of idle pleasures such as form the chief business of sir Fopling Popinjay and sir Milksop Quidnunc in town and to devote himself to the noblest task for which our bodily organism has been framed. Well, let us hear of it, good my friend, said Mr Dixon. I make no doubt it smacks of wenching. Come, be seated, both. 'Tis as cheap sitting as standing. Mr Mulligan accepted of the invitation and, expatiating upon his design, told his hearers that he had been led into this thought by a consideration of the causes of sterility, both the inhibitory and the prohibitory, whether the inhibition in its turn were due to conjugal vexations or to a parsimony of the balance as well as whether the prohibition proceeded from defects congenital or from proclivities acquired. It grieved him plaguily, he said, to see the nuptial couch defrauded of its dearest pledges: and to reflect upon so many agreeable females with rich jointures, a prey to the vilest bonzes, who hide their flambeau under a bushel in an uncongenial cloister or lose their womanly bloom in the embraces of some unaccountable muskin when they might multiply the inlets of happiness, sacrificing the inestimable jewel of their sex when a hundred pretty fellows were at hand to caress, this, he assured them, made his heart weep. To curb this inconvenient (which he concluded due to a suppression of latent heat), having advised with certain counsellors of worth and inspected into this matter, he had resolved to purchase in fee simple for ever the freehold of Lambay island from its holder, lord Talbot de Malahide, a Tory gentleman of note much in favour with our ascendancy party. He proposed to set up there a national fertilising farm to be named Omphalos with an obelisk hewn and erected after the fashion of Egypt and to offer his dutiful yeoman services for the fecundation of any female of what grade of life soever who should there direct to him with the desire of fulfilling the functions of her natural. Money was no object, he said, nor would he take a penny for his pains. The poorest kitchenwench no less than the opulent lady of fashion, if so be their constructions and their tempers were warm persuaders for their petitions, would find in him their man. For his nutriment he shewed how he would feed himself exclusively upon a diet of savoury tubercles and fish and coneys there, the flesh of these latter prolific rodents being highly recommended for his purpose, both broiled and stewed with a blade of mace and a pod or two of capsicum chillies. After this homily which he delivered with much warmth of asseveration Mr Mulligan in a trice put off from his hat a kerchief with which he had shielded it. They both, it seems, had been overtaken by the rain and for all their mending their pace had taken water, as might be observed by Mr Mulligan's smallclothes of a hodden grey which was now somewhat piebald. His project meanwhile was very favourably entertained by his auditors and won hearty eulogies from all though Mr Dixon of Mary's excepted to it, asking with a finicking air did he purpose also to carry coals to Newcastle. Mr Mulligan however made court to the scholarly by an apt quotation from the classics which, as it dwelt upon his memory, seemed to him a sound and tasteful support of his contention: Talis ac tanta depravatio hujus seculi, O quirites, ut matresfamiliarum nostrae lascivas cujuslibet semiviri libici titillationes testibus ponderosis atque excelsis erectionibus centurionum Romanorum magnopere anteponunt, while for those of ruder wit he drove home his point by analogies of the animal kingdom more suitable to their stomach, the buck and doe of the forest glade, the farmyard drake and duck. Valuing himself not a little upon his elegance, being indeed a proper man of person, this talkative now applied himself to his dress with animadversions of some heat upon the sudden whimsy of the atmospherics while the company lavished their encomiums upon the project he had advanced. The young gentleman, his friend, overjoyed as he was at a passage that had late befallen him, could not forbear to tell it his nearest neighbour. Mr Mulligan, now perceiving the table, asked for whom were those loaves and fishes and, seeing the stranger, he made him a civil bow and said, Pray, sir, was you in need of any professional assistance we could give? Who, upon his offer, thanked him very heartily, though preserving his proper distance, and replied that he was come there about a lady, now an inmate of Horne's house, that was in an interesting condition, poor body, from woman's woe (and here he fetched a deep sigh) to know if her happiness had yet taken place. Mr Dixon, to turn the table, took on to ask of Mr Mulligan himself whether his incipient ventripotence, upon which he rallied him, betokened an ovoblastic gestation in the prostatic utricle or male womb or was due, as with the noted physician, Mr Austin Meldon, to a wolf in the stomach. For answer Mr Mulligan, in a gale of laughter at his smalls, smote himself bravely below the diaphragm, exclaiming with an admirable droll mimic of Mother Grogan (the most excellent creature of her sex though 'tis pity she's a trollop): There's a belly that never bore a bastard. This was so happy a conceit that it renewed the storm of mirth and threw the whole room into the most violent agitations of delight. The spry rattle had run on in the same vein of mimicry but for some larum in the antechamber. Here the listener who was none other than the Scotch student, a little fume of a fellow, blond as tow, congratulated in the liveliest fashion with the young gentleman and, interrupting the narrative at a salient point, having desired his visavis with a polite beck to have the obligingness to pass him a flagon of cordial waters at the same time by a questioning poise of the head (a whole century of polite breeding had not achieved so nice a gesture) to which was united an equivalent but contrary balance of the bottle asked the narrator as plainly as was ever done in words if he might treat him with a cup of it. Mais bien sr, noble stranger, said he cheerily, et mille compliments. That you may and very opportunely. There wanted nothing but this cup to crown my felicity. But, gracious heaven, was I left with but a crust in my wallet and a cupful of water from the well, my God, I would accept of them and find it in my heart to kneel down upon the ground and give thanks to the powers above for the happiness vouchsafed me by the Giver of good things. With these words he approached the goblet to his lips, took a complacent draught of the cordial, slicked his hair and, opening his bosom, out popped a locket that hung from a silk riband, that very picture which he had cherished ever since her hand had wrote therein. Gazing upon those features with a world of tenderness, Ah, Monsieur, he said, had you but beheld her as I did with these eyes at that affecting instant with her dainty tucker and her new coquette cap (a gift for her feastday as she told me prettily) in such an artless disorder, of so melting a tenderness, 'pon my conscience, even you, Monsieur, had been impelled by generous nature to deliver yourself wholly into the hands of such an enemy or to quit the field for ever. I declare, I was never so touched in all my life. God, I thank thee, as the Author of my days! Thrice happy will he be whom so amiable a creature will bless with her favours. A sigh of affection gave eloquence to these words and, having replaced the locket in his bosom, he wiped his eye and sighed again. Beneficent Disseminator of blessings to all Thy creatures, how great and universal must be that sweetest of Thy tyrannies which can hold in thrall the free and the bond, the simple swain and the polished coxcomb, the lover in the heyday of reckless passion and the husband of maturer years. But indeed, sir, I wander from the point. How mingled and imperfect are all our sublunary joys. Maledicity! he exclaimed in anguish. Would to God that foresight had but remembered me to take my cloak along! I could weep to think of it. Then, though it had poured seven showers, we were neither of us a penny the worse. But beshrew me, he cried, clapping hand to his forehead, tomorrow will be a new day and, thousand thunders, I know of a marchand de capotes, Monsieur Poyntz, from whom I can have for a livre as snug a cloak of the French fashion as ever kept a lady from wetting. Tut, tut! cries Le F’condateur, tripping in, my friend Monsieur Moore, that most accomplished traveller (I have just cracked a half bottle avec lui in a circle of the best wits of the town), is my authority that in Cape Horn, ventre biche, they have a rain that will wet through any, even the stoutest cloak. A drenching of that violence, he tells me, sans blague, has sent more than one luckless fellow in good earnest posthaste to another world. Pooh! A livre! cries Monsieur Lynch. The clumsy things are dear at a sou. One umbrella, were it no bigger than a fairy mushroom, is worth ten such stopgaps. No woman of any wit would wear one. My dear Kitty told me today that she would dance in a deluge before ever she would starve in such an ark of salvation for, as she reminded me (blushing piquantly and whispering in my ear though there was none to snap her words but giddy butterflies), dame Nature, by the divine blessing, has implanted it in our hearts and it has become a household word that il y a deux choses for which the innocence of our original garb, in other circumstances a breach of the proprieties, is the fittest, nay, the only garment. The first, said she (and here my pretty philosopher, as I handed her to her tilbury, to fix my attention, gently tipped with her tongue the outer chamber of my ear), the first is a bath - But at this point a bell tinkling in the hall cut short a discourse which promised so bravely for the enrichment of our store of knowledge. Amid the general vacant hilarity of the assembly a bell rang and, while all were conjecturing what might be the cause, Miss Callan entered and, having spoken a few words in a low tone to young Mr Dixon, retired with a profound bow to the company. The presence even for a moment among a party of debauchees of a woman endued with every quality of modesty and not less severe than beautiful refrained the humourous sallies even of the most licentious but her departure was the signal for an outbreak of ribaldry. Strike me silly, said Costello, a low fellow who was fuddled. A monstrous fine bit of cowflesh! I'll be sworn she has rendezvoused you. What, you dog? Have you a way with them? Gad's bud, immensely so, said Mr Lynch. The bedside manner it is that they use in the Mater hospice. Demme, does not Doctor O'Gargle chuck the nuns there under the chin. As I look to be saved I had it from my Kitty who has been wardmaid there any time these seven months. Lawksamercy, doctor, cried the young blood in the primrose vest, feigning a womanish simper and with immodest squirmings of his body, how you do tease a body! Drat the man! Bless me, I'm all of a wibbly wobbly. Why, you're as bad as dear little Father Cantekissem, that you are! May this pot of four half choke me, cried Costello, if she aint in the family way. I knows a lady what's got a white swelling quick as I claps eyes on her. The young surgeon, however, rose and begged the company to excuse his retreat as the nurse had just then informed him that he was needed in the ward. Merciful providence had been pleased to put a period to the sufferings of the lady who was enceinte which she had borne with a laudable fortitude and she had given birth to a bouncing boy. I want patience, said he, with those who, without wit to enliven or learning to instruct, revile an ennobling profession which, saving the reverence due to the Deity, is the greatest power for happiness upon the earth. I am positive when I say that if need were I could produce a cloud of witnesses to the excellence of her noble exercitations which, so far from being a byword, should be a glorious incentive in the human breast. I cannot away with them. What? Malign such an one, the amiable Miss Callan, who is the lustre of her own sex and the astonishment of ours? And at an instant the most momentous that can befall a puny child of clay? Perish the thought! I shudder to think of the future of a race where the seeds of such malice have been sown and where no right reverence is rendered to mother and maid in house of Horne. Having delivered himself of this rebuke he saluted those present on the by and repaired to the door. A murmur of approval arose from all and some were for ejecting the low soaker without more ado, a design which would have been effected nor would he have received more than his bare deserts had he not abridged his transgression by affirming with a horrid imprecation (for he swore a round hand) that he was as good a son of the true fold as ever drew breath. Stap my vitals, said he, them was always the sentiments of honest Frank Costello which I was bred up most particular to honour thy father and thy mother that had the best hand to a rolypoly or a hasty pudding as you ever see what I always looks back on with a loving heart. To revert to Mr Bloom who, after his first entry, had been conscious of some impudent mocks which he however had borne with as being the fruits of that age upon which it is commonly charged that it knows not pity. The young sparks, it is true, were as full of extravagancies as overgrown children: the words of their tumultuary discussions were difficultly understood and not often nice: their testiness and outrageous mots were such that his intellects resiled from: nor were they scrupulously sensible of the proprieties though their fund of strong animal spirits spoke in their behalf. But the word of Mr Costello was an unwelcome language for him for he nauseated the wretch that seemed to him a cropeared creature of a misshapen gibbosity, born out of wedlock and thrust like a crookback toothed and feet first into the world, which the dint of the surgeon's pliers in his skull lent indeed a colour to, so as to put him in thought of that missing link of creation's chain desiderated by the late ingenious Mr Darwin. It was now for more than the middle span of our allotted years that he had passed through the thousand vicissitudes of existence and, being of a wary ascendancy and self a man of rare forecast, he had enjoined his heart to repress all motions of a rising choler and, by intercepting them with the readiest precaution, foster within his breast that plenitude of sufferance which base minds jeer at, rash judgers scorn and all find tolerable and but tolerable. To those who create themselves wits at the cost of feminine delicacy (a habit of mind which he never did hold with) to them he would concede neither to bear the name nor to herit the tradition of a proper breeding: while for such that, having lost all forbearance, can lose no more, there remained the sharp antidote of experience to cause their insolency to beat a precipitate and inglorious retreat. Not but what he could feel with mettlesome youth which, caring nought for the mows of dotards or the gruntlings of the severe, is ever (as the chaste fancy of the Holy Writer expresses it) for eating of the tree forbid it yet not so far forth as to pretermit humanity upon any condition soever towards a gentlewoman when she was about her lawful occasions. To conclude, while from the sister's words he had reckoned upon a speedy delivery he was, however, it must be owned, not a little alleviated by the intelligence that the issue so auspicated after an ordeal of such duress now testified once more to the mercy as well as to the bounty of the Supreme Being. Accordingly he broke his mind to his neighbour, saying that, to express his notion of the thing, his opinion (who ought not perchance to express one) was that one must have a cold constitution and a frigid genius not to be rejoiced by this freshest news of the fruition of her confinement since she had been in such pain through no fault of hers. The dressy young blade said it was her husband's that put her in that expectation or at least it ought to be unless she were another Ephesian matron. I must acquaint you, said Mr Crotthers, clapping on the table so as to evoke a resonant comment of emphasis, old Glory Allelujurum was round again today, an elderly man with dundrearies, preferring through his nose a request to have word of Wilhelmina, my life, as he calls her. I bade him hold himself in readiness for that the event would burst anon. 'Slife, I'll be round with you. I cannot but extol the virile potency of the old bucko that could still knock another child out of her. All fell to praising of it, each after his own fashion, though the same young blade held with his former view that another than her conjugial had been the man in the gap, a clerk in orders, a linkboy (virtuous) or an itinerant vendor of articles needed in every household. Singular, communed the guest with himself, the wonderfully unequal faculty of metempsychosis possessed by them, that the puerperal dormitory and the dissecting theatre should be the seminaries of such frivolity, that the mere acquisition of academic titles should suffice to transform in a pinch of time these votaries of levity into exemplary practitioners of an art which most men anywise eminent have esteemed the noblest. But, he further added, it is mayhap to relieve the pentup feelings that in common oppress them for I have more than once observed that birds of a feather laugh together. But with what fitness, let it be asked of the noble lord, his patron, has this alien, whom the concession of a gracious prince has admitted to civic rights, constituted himself the lord paramount of our internal polity? Where is now that gratitude which loyalty should have counselled? During the recent war whenever the enemy had a temporary advantage with his granados did this traitor to his kind not seize that moment to discharge his piece against the empire of which he is a tenant at will while he trembled for the security of his four per cents? Has he forgotten this as he forgets all benefits received? Or is it that from being a deluder of others he has become at last his own dupe as he is, if report belie him not, his own and his only enjoyer? Far be it from candour to violate the bedchamber of a respectable lady, the daughter of a gallant major, or to cast the most distant reflections upon her virtue but if he challenges attention there (as it was indeed highly his interest not to have done) then be it so. Unhappy woman, she has been too long and too persistently denied her legitimate prerogative to listen to his objurgations with any other feeling than the derision of the desperate. He says this, a censor of morals, a very pelican in his piety, who did not scruple, oblivious of the ties of nature, to attempt illicit intercourse with a female domestic drawn from the lowest strata of society! Nay, had the hussy's scouringbrush not been her tutelary angel, it had gone with her as hard as with Hagar, the Egyptian! In the question of the grazing lands his peevish asperity is notorious and in Mr Cuffe's hearing brought upon him from an indignant rancher a scathing retort couched in terms as straightforward as they were bucolic. It ill becomes him to preach that gospel. Has he not nearer home a seedfield that lies fallow for the want of the ploughshare? A habit reprehensible at puberty is second nature and an opprobrium in middle life. If he must dispense his balm of Gilead in nostrums and apothegms of dubious taste to restore to health a generation of unfledged profligates let his practice consist better with the doctrines that now engross him. His marital breast is the repository of secrets which decorum is reluctant to adduce. The lewd suggestions of some faded beauty may console him for a consort neglected and debauched but this new exponent of morals and healer of ills is at his best an exotic tree which, when rooted in its native orient, throve and flourished and was abundant in balm but, transplanted to a clime more temperate, its roots have lost their quondam vigour while the stuff that comes away from it is stagnant, acid and inoperative. The news was imparted with a circumspection recalling the ceremonial usage of the Sublime Porte by the second female infirmarian to the junior medical officer in residence, who in his turn announced to the delegation that an heir had been born, When he had betaken himself to the women's apartment to assist at the prescribed ceremony of the afterbirth in the presence of the secretary of state for domestic affairs and the members of the privy council, silent in unanimous exhaustion and approbation the delegates, chafing under the length and solemnity of their vigil and hoping that the joyful occurrence would palliate a licence which the simultaneous absence of abigail and obstetrician rendered the easier, broke out at once into a strife of tongues. In vain the voice of Mr Canvasser Bloom was heard endeavouring to urge, to mollify, to refrain. The moment was too propitious for the display of that discursiveness which seemed the only bond of union among tempers so divergent. Every phase of the situation was successively eviscerated: the prenatal repugnance of uterine brothers, the Caesarean section, posthumity with respect to the father and, that rarer form, with respect to the mother, the fratricidal case known as the Childs Murder and rendered memorable by the impassioned plea of Mr Advocate Bushe which secured the acquittal of the wrongfully accused, the rights of primogeniture and king's bounty touching twins and triplets, miscarriages and infanticides, simulated or dissimulated, the acardiac foetus in foetu and aprosopia due to a congestion, the agnathia of certain chinless Chinamen (cited by Mr Candidate Mulligan) in consequence of defective reunion of the maxillary knobs along the medial line so that (as he said) one ear could hear what the other spoke, the benefits of anesthesia or twilight sleep, the prolongation of labour pains in advanced gravidancy by reason of pressure on the vein, the premature relentment of the amniotic fluid (as exemplified in the actual case) with consequent peril of sepsis to the matrix, artificial insemination by means of syringes, involution of the womb consequent upon the menopause, the problem of the perpetration of the species in the case of females impregnated by delinquent rape, that distressing manner of delivery called by the Brandenburghers Sturzgeburt, the recorded instances of multiseminal, twikindled and monstrous births conceived during the catamenic period or of consanguineous parents - in a word all the cases of human nativity which Aristotle has classified in his masterpiece with chromolithographic illustrations. The gravest problems of obstetrics and forensic medicine were examined with as much animation as the most popular beliefs on the state of pregnancy such as the forbidding to a gravid woman to step over a countrystile lest, by her movement, the navelcord should strangle her creature and the injunction upon her in the event of a yearning, ardently and ineffectually entertained, to place her hand against that part of her person which long usage has consecrated as the seat of castigation. The abnormalities of harelip, breastmole, supernumerary digits, negro's inkle, strawberry mark and portwine stain were alleged by one as a prima facie and natural hypothetical explanation of those swineheaded (the case of Madame Grissel Steevens was not forgotten) or doghaired infants occasionally born. The hypothesis of a plasmic memory, advanced by the Caledonian envoy and worthy of the metaphysical traditions of the land he stood for, envisaged in such cases an arrest of embryonic development at some stage antecedent to the human. An outlandish delegate sustained against both these views, with such heat as almost carried conviction, the theory of copulation between women and the males of brutes, his authority being his own avouchment in support of fables such as that of the Minotaur which the genius of the elegant Latin poet has handed down to us in the pages of his Metamorphoses. The impression made by his words was immediate but shortlived. It was effaced as easily as it had been evoked by an allocution from Mr Candidate Mulligan in that vein of pleasantry which none better than he knew how to affect, postulating as the supremest object of desire a nice clean old man. Contemporaneously, a heated argument having arisen between Mr Delegate Madden and Mr Candidate Lynch regarding the juridical and theological dilemma created in the event of one Siamese twin predeceasing the other, the difficulty by mutual consent was referred to Mr Canvasser Bloom for instant submittal to Mr Coadjutor Deacon Dedalus. Hitherto silent, whether the better to show by preternatural gravity that curious dignity of the garb with which he was invested or in obedience to an inward voice, he delivered briefly and, as some thought, perfunctorily the ecclesiastical ordinance forbidding man to put asunder what God has joined. But Malachias' tale began to freeze them with horror. He conjured up the scene before them. The secret panel beside the chimney slid back and in the recess appeared - Haines! Which of us did not feel his flesh creep! He had a portfolio full of Celtic literature in one hand, in the other a phial marked Poison. Surprise, horror, loathing were depicted on all faces while he eyed them with a ghostly grin. I anticipated some such reception, he began with an eldritch laugh, for which, it seems, history is to blame. Yes, it is true. I am the murderer of Samuel Childs. And how I am punished! The inferno has no terrors for me. This is the appearance is on me. Tare and ages, what way would I be resting at all, he muttered thickly, and I tramping Dublin this while back with my share of songs and himself after me the like of a soulth or a bullawurrus? My hell, and Ireland's, is in this life. It is what I tried to obliterate my crime. Distractions, rookshooting, the Erse language (he recited some), laudanum (he raised the phial to his lips), camping out. In vain! His spectre stalks me. Dope is my only hope .... Ah! Destruction! The black panther! With a cry he suddenly vanished and the panel slid back. An instant later his head appeared in the door opposite and said: Meet me at Westland Row station at ten past eleven. He was gone. Tears gushed from the eyes of the dissipated host. The seer raised his hand to heaven, murmuring: The vendetta of Mananaun! The sage repeated: Lex talionis. The sentimentalist is he who would enjoy without incurring the immense debtorship for a thing done. Malachias, overcome by emotion, ceased. The mystery was unveiled. Haines was the third brother. His real name was Childs. The black panther was himself the ghost of his own father. He drank drugs to obliterate. For this relief much thanks. The lonely house by the graveyard is uninhabited. No soul will live there. The spider pitches her web in the solitude. The nocturnal rat peers from his hole. A curse is on it. It is haunted. Murderer's ground. What is the age of the soul of man? As she hath the virtue of the chameleon to change her hue at every new approach, to be gay with the merry and mournful with the downcast, so too is her age changeable as her mood. No longer is Leopold, as he sits there, ruminating, chewing the cud of reminiscence, that staid agent of publicity and holder of a modest substance in the funds. A score of years are blown away. He is young Leopold. There, as in a retrospective arrangement, a mirror within a mirror (hey, presto!), he beholdeth himself. That young figure of then is seen, precociously manly, walking on a nipping morning from the old house in Clanbrassil street to the high school, his booksatchel on him bandolierwise, and in it a goodly hunk of wheaten loaf, a mother's thought. Or it is the same figure, a year or so gone over, in his first hard hat (ah, that was a day!), already on the road, a fullfledged traveller for the family firm, equipped with an orderbook, a scented handkerchief (not for show only), his case of bright trinketware (alas! a thing now of the past!) and a quiverful of compliant smiles for this or that halfwon housewife reckoning it out upon her fingertips or for a budding virgin, shyly acknowledging (but the heart? tell me!) his studied baisemoins. The scent, the smile, but, more than these, the dark eyes and oleaginous address, brought home at duskfall many a commission to the head of the firm, seated with Jacob's pipe after like labours in the paternal ingle (a meal of noodles, you may be sure, is aheating), reading through round horned spectacles some paper from the Europe of a month before. But hey, presto, the mirror is breathed on and the young knighterrant recedes, shrivels, dwindles to a tiny speck within the mist. Now he is himself paternal and these about him might be his sons. Who can say? The wise father knows his own child. He thinks of a drizz1ing night in Hatch street, hard by the bonded stores there, the first. Together (she is a poor waif, a child of shame, yours and mine and of all for a bare shilling and her luckpenny), together they hear the heavy tread of the watch as two raincaped shadows pass the new royal university. Bridie! Bridie Kelly! He will never forget the name, ever remember the night: first night, the bridenight. They are entwined in nethermost darkness, the willer with the willed, and in an instant (fiat!) light shall flood the world. Did heart leap to heart? Nay, fair reader. In a breath 'twas done but - hold! Back! It must not be! In terror the poor girl flees away through the murk. She is the bride of darkness, a daughter of night. She dare not bear the sunnygolden babe of day. No, Leopold. Name and memory solace thee not. That youthful illusion of thy strength was taken from thee - and in vain. No son of thy loins is by thee. There is none now to be for Leopold, what Leopold was for Rudolph. The voices blend and fuse in clouded silence: silence that is the infinite of space: and swiftly, silently the soul is wafted over regions of cycles of generations that have lived. A region where grey twilight ever descends, never falls on wide sagegreen pasturefields, shedding her dusk, scattering a perennial dew of stars. She follows her mother with ungainly steps, a mare leading her fillyfoal. Twilight phantoms are they, yet moulded in prophetic grace of structure, slim shapely haunches, a supple tendonous neck, the meek apprehensive skull. They fade, sad phantoms: all is gone. Agendath is a waste land, a home of screechowls and the sandblind upupa. Netaim, the golden, is no more. And on the highway of the clouds they come, muttering thunder of rebellion, the ghosts of beasts. Huuh! Hark! Huuh! Parallax stalks behind and goads them, the lancinating lightnings of whose brow are scorpions. Elk and yak, the bulls of Bashan and of Babylon, mammoth and mastodon, they come trooping to the sunken sea, Lacus Mortis. Ominous revengeful zodiacal host! They moan, passing upon the clouds, horned and capricorned, the trumpeted with the tusked, the lionmaned, the giantantlered, snouter and crawler, rodent, ruminant and pachyderm, all their moving moaning multitude, murderers of the sun. Onward to the dead sea they tramp to drink, unslaked and with horrible gulpings, the salt somnolent inexhaustible flood. And the equine portent grows again, magnified in the deserted heavens, nay to heaven's own magnitude, till it looms, vast, over the house of Virgo. And lo, wonder of metempsychosis, it is she, the everlasting bride, harbinger of the daystar, the bride, ever virgin. It is she, Martha, thou lost one, Millicent, the young, the dear, the radiant. How serene does she now arise, a queen among the Pleiades, in the penultimate antelucan hour, shod in sandals of bright gold, coifed with a veil of what do you call it gossamer. It floats, it flows about her starborn flesh and loose it streams, emerald, sapphire, mauve and heliotrope, sustained on currents of the cold interstellar wind, winding, coiling, simply swirling, writhing in the skies a mysterious writing till, after a myriad metamorphoses of symbol, it blazes, Alpha, a ruby and triangled sign upon the forehead of Taurus. Francis was reminding Stephen of years before when they had been at school together in Conmee's time. He asked about Glaucon, Alcibiades, Pisistratus. Where were they now? Neither knew. You have spoken of the past and its phantoms, Stephen said. Why think of them? If I call them into life across the waters of Lethe will not the poor ghosts troop to my call? Who supposes it? I, Bous Stephanoumenos, bullockbefriending bard, am lord and giver of their life. He encircled his gadding hair with a coronal of vineleaves, smiling at Vincent. That answer and those leaves, Vincent said to him, will adorn you more fitly when something more, and greatly more, than a capful of light odes can call your genius father. All who wish you well hope this for you. All desire to see you bring forth the work you meditate, to acclaim you Stephaneforos. I heartily wish you may not fail them. O no, Vincent, Lenehan said, laying a hand on the shoulder near him. Have no fear. He could not leave his mother an orphan. The young man's face grew dark. All could see how hard it was for him to be reminded of his promise and of his recent loss. He would have withdrawn from the feast had not the noise of voices allayed the smart. Madden had lost five drachmas on Sceptre for a whim of the rider's name: Lenehan as much more. He told them of the race. The flag fell and, huuh! off, scamper, the mare ran out freshly with 0. Madden up. She was leading the field. All hearts were beating. Even Phyllis could not contain herself. She waved her scarf and cried: Huzzah! Sceptre wins! But in the straight on the run home when all were in close order the dark horse Throwaway drew level, reached, outstripped her. All was lost now. Phyllis was silent: her eyes were sad anemones. Juno, she cried, I am undone. But her lover consoled her and brought her a bright casket of gold in which lay some oval sugarplums which she partook. A tear fell: one only. A whacking fine whip, said Lenehan, is W. Lane. Four winners yesterday and three today. What rider is like him? Mount him on the camel or the boisterous buffalo the victory in a hack canter is still his. But let us bear it as was the ancient wont. Mercy on the luckless! Poor Sceptre! he said with a light sigh. She is not the filly that she was. Never, by this hand, shall we behold such another. By gad, sir, a queen of them. Do you remember her, Vincent? I wish you could have seen my queen today, Vincent said. How young she was and radiant (Lalage were scarce fair beside her) in her yellow shoes and frock of muslin, I do not know the right name of it. The chestnuts that shaded us were in bloom: the air drooped with their persuasive odour and with pollen floating by us. In the sunny patches one might easily have cooked on a stone a batch of those buns with Corinth fruit in them that Periplipomenes sells in his booth near the bridge. But she had nought for her teeth but the arm with which I held her and in that she nibbled mischievously when I pressed too close. A week ago she lay ill, four days on the couch, but today she was free, blithe, mocked at peril. She is more taking then. Her posies tool Mad romp that she is, she had pulled her fill as we reclined together. And in your ear, my friend, you will not think who met us as we left the field. Conmee himself! He was walking by the hedge, reading, I think a brevier book with, I doubt not, a witty letter in it from Glycera or Chloe to keep the page. The sweet creature turned all colours in her confusion, feigning to reprove a slight disorder in her dress: a slip of underwood clung there for the very trees adore her. When Conmee had passed she glanced at her lovely echo in that little mirror she carries. But he had been kind. In going by he had blessed us. The gods too are ever kind, Lenehan said. If I had poor luck with Bass's mare perhaps this draught of his may serve me more propensely. He was laying his hand upon a winejar: Malachi saw it and withheld his act, pointing to the stranger and to the scarlet label. Warily, Malachi whispered, preserve a druid silence. His soul is far away. It is as painful perhaps to be awakened from a vision as to be born. Any object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access to the incorruptible eon of the gods. Do you not think it, Stephen? Theosophos told me so, Stephen answered, whom in a previous existence Egyptian priests initiated into the mysteries of karmic law. The lords of the moon, Theosophos told me, an orangefiery shipload from planet Alpha of the lunar chain would not assume the etheric doubles and these were therefore incarnated by the rubycoloured egos from the second constellation. However, as a matter of fact though, the preposterous surmise about him being in some description of a doldrums or other or mesmerised which was. entirely due to a misconception of the shallowest character, was not the case at all. The individual whose visual organs while the above was going on were at this juncture commencing to exhibit symptoms of animation was as astute if not astuter than any man living and anybody that conjectured the contrary would have found themselves pretty speedily in the wrong shop. During the past four minutes or thereabouts he had been staring hard at a certain amount of number one Bass bottled by Messrs Bass and Co at Burton-on-Trent which happened to be situated amongst a lot of others right opposite to where he was and which was certainly calculated to attract anyone's remark on account of its scarlet appearance. He was simply and solely, as it subsequently transpired for reasons best known to himself, which put quite an altogether different complexion on the proceedings, after the moment before's observations about boyhood days and the turf, recollecting two or three private transactions of his own which the other two were as mutually innocent of as the babe unborn. Eventually, however, both their eyes met and as soon as it began to dawn on him that the other was endeavouring to help himself to the thing he involuntarily determined to help him himself and so he accordingly took hold of the neck of the mediumsized glass recipient which contained the fluid sought after and made a capacious hole in it by pouring a lot of it out with, also at the same time, however, a considerable degree of attentiveness in order not to upset any of the beer that was in it about the place. The debate which ensued was in its scope and progress an epitome of the course of life. Neither place nor council was lacking in dignity. The debaters were the keenest in the land, the theme they were engaged on the loftiest and most vital. The high hall of Horne's house had never beheld an assembly so representative and so varied nor had the old rafters of that establishment ever listened to a language so encyclopaedic. A gallant scene in truth it made. Crotthers was there at the foot of the table in his striking Highland garb, his face glowing from the briny airs of the Mull of Galloway. There too, opposite to him, was Lynch whose countenance bore already the stigmata of early depravity and premature wisdom. Next the Scotchman was the place assigned to Costello, the eccentric, while at his side was seated in stolid repose the squat form of Madden. The chair of the resident indeed stood vacant before the hearth but on either flank of it the figure of Bannon in explorer's kit of tweed shorts and salted cowhide brogues contrasted sharply with the primrose elegance and townbred manners of Malachi Roland St John Mulligan. Lastly at the head of the board was the young poet who found a refuge from his labours of pedagogy and metaphysical inquisition in the convivial atmosphere of Socratic discussion, while to right and left of him were accommodated the flippant prognosticator, fresh from the hippodrome, and that vigilant wanderer, soiled by the dust of travel and combat and stained by the mire of an indelible dishonour, but from whose steadfast and constant heart no lure or peril or threat or degradation could ever efface the image of that voluptuous loveliness which the inspired pencil of Lafayette has limned for ages yet to come. It had better be stated here and now at the outset that the perverted transcendentalism to which Mr S. Dedalus' (Div. Scep.) contentions would appear to prove him pretty badly addicted runs directly counter to accepted scientific methods. Science, it cannot be too often repeated, deals with tangible phenomena. The man of science like the man in the street has to face hardheaded facts that cannot be blinked and explain them as best he can. There may be, it is true, some questions which science cannot answer - at present - such as the first problem submitted by Mr L. Bloom (Pubb. Canv.) regarding the future determination of sex. Must we accept the view of Empedocles of Trinacria that the right ovary (the postmenstrual period, assert others) is responsible for the birth of males or are the too long neglected spermatozoa or nemasperms the differentiating factors or is it, as most embryologists incline to opine, such as Culpepper, Spallanzani, Blumenbach, Lusk, Hertwig, Leopold and Valenti, a mixture of both? This would be tantamount to a cooperation (one of nature's favourite devices) between the nisus formativus of the nemasperm on the one hand and on the other a happily chosen position, succubitus felix of the passive element. The other problem raised by the same inquirer is scarcely less vital: infant mortality. It is interesting because, as he pertinently remarks, we are all born in the same way but we all die in different ways. Mr M. Mulligan (Hyg. et Eug. Doc.) blames the sanitary conditions in which our greylunged citizens contract adenoids, pulmonary complaints etc. by inhaling the bacteria which lurk in dust. These factors, he alleged, and the revolting spectacles offered by our streets, hideous publicity posters, religious ministers of all denominations, mutilated soldiers and sailors, exposed scorbutic cardrivers, the suspended carcases of dead animals, paranoic bachelors and unfructified duennas - these, he said, were accountable for any and every fallingoff in the calibre of the race. Kalipedia, he prophesied, would soon be generally adopted and all the graces of life, genuinely good music, agreeable literature, light philosophy, instructive pictures, plastercast reproductions of the classical statues such as Venus and Apollo, artistic coloured photographs of prize babies, all these little attentions would enable ladies who were in a particular condition to pass the intervening months in a most enjoyable manner. Mr J. Crotthers (Disc. Bacc.) attributes some of these demises to abdominal trauma in the case of women workers subjected to heavy labours in the workshop and to marital discipline in the home but by far the vast majority to neglect, private or official, culminating in the exposure of newborn infants, the practice of criminal abortion or in the atrocious crime of infanticide. Although the former (we are thinking of neglect) is undoubtedly only too true the case he cites of nurses forgetting to count the sponges in the peritoneal cavity is too rare to be normative. In fact when one comes to look into it the wonder is that so many pregnancies and deliveries go off so well as they do, all things considered and in spite of our human shortcomings which often baulk nature in her intentions. An ingenious suggestion is that thrown out by Mr V. Lynch (Bacc. Arith.) that both natality and mortality, as well as all other phenomena of evolution, tidal movements, lunar phases, blood temperatures, diseases in general, everything, in fine, in nature's vast workshop from the extinction of some remote sun to the blossoming of one of the countless flowers which beautify our public parks is subject to a law of numeration as yet unascertained. Still the plain straightforward question why a child of normally healthy parents and seemingly a healthy child and properly looked after succumbs unaccountably in early childhood (though other children of the same marriage do not) must certainly, in the poet's words, give us pause. Nature, we may rest assured, has her own good and cogent reasons for whatever she does and in all probability such deaths are due to some law of anticipation by which organisms in which morbous germs have taken up their residence (modern science has conclusively shown that only the plasmic substance can be said to be immortal) tend to disappear at an increasingly earlier stage of development, an arrangement which, though productive of pain to some of our feelings (notably the maternal), is nevertheless, some of us think, in the long run beneficial to the race in general in securing thereby the survival of the fittest. Mr S. Dedalus' (Div. Scep.) remark (or should it be called an interruption?) that an omnivorous being which can masticate, deglute, digest and apparently pass through the ordinary channel with pluterperfect imperturbability such multifarious aliments as cancrenous females emaciated by parturition, corpulent professional gentlemen, not to speak of jaundiced politicians and chlorotic nuns, might possibly find gastric relief in an innocent collation of staggering bob, reveals as nought else could and in a very unsavoury light the tendency above alluded to. For the enlightenment of those who are not so intimately acquainted with the minutiae of the municipal abattoir as this morbidminded esthete and embryo philosopher who for all his overweening bumptiousness in things scientific can scarcely distinguish an acid from an alkali prides himself on being, it should perhaps be stated that staggering bob in the vile parlance of our lowerclass licensed victuallers signifies the cookable and eatable flesh of a calf newly dropped from its mother. In a recent public controversy with Mr L. Bloom (Pubb. Canv.) which took place in the commons' hall of the National Maternity Hospital, 29, 30 and 31 Holles street, of which, as is well known, Dr A. Horne (Lic. in Midw., F. K. Q. C. P. I.) is the able and popular master, he is reported by eyewitnesses as having stated that once a woman has let the cat into the bag (an esthete's allusion, presumably, to one of the most complicated and marvellous of all nature's processes - the act of sexual congress) she must let it out again or give it life, as he phrased it, to save her own. At the risk of her own, was the telling rejoinder of his interlocutor, none the less effective for the moderate and measured tone in which it was delivered. Meanwhile the skill and patience of the physician had brought about a happy accouchement. It had been a weary weary while both for patient and doctor. All that surgical skill could do was done and the brave woman had manfully helped. She had. She had fought the good fight and now she was very very happy. Those who have passed on, who have gone before, are happy too as they gaze down and smile upon the touching scene. Reverently look at her as she reclines there with the motherlight in her eyes, that longing hunger for baby fingers (a pretty sight it is to see), in the first bloom of her new motherhood, breathing a silent prayer of thanksgiving to One above, the Universal Husband. And as her loving eyes behold her babe she wishes only one blessing more, to have her dear Doady there with her to share her joy, to lay in his arms that mite of God's clay, the fruit of their lawful embraces. He is older now (you and I may whisper it) and a trifle stooped in the shoulders yet in the whirligig of years a grave dignity has come to the conscientious second accountant of the Ulster bank, College Green branch. O Doady, loved one of old, faithful lifemate now, it may never be again, that faroff time of the roses! With the old shake of her pretty head she recalls those days. God! How beautiful now across the mist of years! But their children are grouped in her imagination about the bedside, hers and his, Charley, Mary Alice, Frederick Albert (if he had lived), Mamy, Budgy (Victoria Frances), Tom, Violet Constance Louisa, darling little Bobsy (called after our famous hero of the South African war, lord Bobs of Waterford and Candahar) and now this last pledge of their union, a Purefoy if ever there was one, with the true Purefoy nose. Young hopeful will be christened Mortimer Edward after the influential third cousin of Mr Purefoy in the Treasury Remembrancer's office, Dublin Castle. And so time wags on: but father Cronion has dealt lightly here. No, let no sigh break from that bosom, dear gentle Mina. And Doady, knock the ashes from your pipe, the seasoned briar you still fancy when the curfew rings for you (may it be the distant day!) and dout the light whereby you read in the Sacred Book for the oil too has run low, and so with a tranquil heart to bed, to rest. He knows and will call in His own good time. You too have fought the good fight and played loyally your man's part. Sir, to you my hand. Well done, thou good and faithful servant! There are sins or (let us call them as the world calls them) evil memories which are hidden away by man in the darkest places of the heart but they abide there and wait. He may suffer their memory to grow dim, let them be as though they had not been and all but persuade himself that they were not or at least were otherwise. Yet a chance word will call them forth suddenly and they will rise up to confront him in the most various circumstances, a vision or a dream, or while timbrel and harp soothe his senses or amid the cool silver tranquility of the evening or at the feast, at midnight, when he is now filled with wine. Not to insult over him will the vision come as over one that lies under her wrath, not for vengeance to cut him off from the living but shrouded in the piteous vesture of the past, silent, remote, reproachful. The stranger still regarded on the face before him a slow recession of that false calm there, imposed, as it seemed, by habit or some studied trick, upon words so embittered as to accuse in their speaker an unhealthiness, a flair, for the cruder things of life. A scene disengages itself in the observer's memory, evoked, it would seem, by a word of so natural a homeliness as if those days were really present there (as some thought) with their immediate pleasures. A shaven space of lawn one soft May evening, the wellremembered grove of lilacs at Roundtown, purple and white, fragrant slender spectators of the game but with much real interest in the pellets as they run slowly forward over the sward or collide and stop, one by its fellow, with a brief alert shock. And yonder about that grey urn where the water moves at times in thoughtful irrigation you saw another as fragrant sisterhood, Floey, Atty, Tiny and their darker friend with I know not what of arresting in her pose then, Our Lady of the Cherries, a comely brace of them pendent from an ear, bringing out the foreign warmth of the skin so daintily against the cool ardent fruit. A lad of four or five in linseywoolsey (blossomtime but there will be cheer in the kindly hearth when ere long the bowls are gathered and hutched) is standing on the urn secured by that circle of girlish fond hands. He frowns a little just as this young man does now with a perhaps too conscious enjoyment of the danger but must needs glance at whiles towards where his mother watches from the piazzetta giving upon the flowerclose with a faint shadow of remoteness or of reproach (alles Vetg“ngliche) in her glad look. Mark this farther and remember. The end comes suddenly. Enter that antechamber of birth where the studious are assembled and note their faces. Nothing, as it seems, there of rash or violent. Quietude of custody, rather, befitting their station in that house, the vigilant watch of shepherds and of angels about a crib in Bethlehem of Juda long ago. But as before the lightning the serried stormclouds, heavy with preponderant excess of moisture, in swollen masses turgidly distended, compass earth and sky in one vast slumber, impending above parched field and drowsy oxen and blighted growth of shrub and verdure till in an instant a flash rives their centres and with the reverberation of the thunder the cloudburst pours its torrent, so and not otherwise was the transformation, violent and instantaneous, upon the utterance of the word. Burke's! outflings my lord Stephen, giving the cry, and a tag and bobtail of all them after, cockerel, jackanapes, welsher, pilldoctor, punctual Bloom at heels with a universal grabbing at headgear, ashplants, bilbos, Panama hats and scabbards, Zermatt alpenstocks and what not. A dedale of lusty youth, noble every student there. Nurse Callan taken aback in the hallway cannot stay them nor smiling surgeon coming downstairs with news of placentation ended, a full pound if a milligramme. They hark him on. The door! It is open? Ha! They are out, tumultuously, off for a minute's race, all bravely legging it, Burke's of Denzille and Holles their ulterior goal. Dixon follows giving them sharp language but raps out an oath, he too, and on. Bloom stays with nurse a thought to send a kind word to happy mother and nurseling up there. Doctor Diet and Doctor Quiet. Looks she too not other now? Ward of watching in Horne's house has told its tale in that washedout pallor. Then all being gone, a glance of motherwit helping, he whispers close in going: Madam, when comes the storkbird for thee? The air without is impregnated with raindew moisture, life essence celestial, glistening on Dublin stone there under starshiny coelum. God's air, the Allfather's air, scintillant circumambient cessile air. Breathe it deep into thee. By heaven, Theodore Purefoy, thou hast done a doughty deed and no botch! Thou art, I vow, the remarkablest progenitor barring none in this chaffering allincluding most farraginous chronicle. Astounding! In her lay a Godframed Godgiven preformed possibility which thou hast fructified with thy modicum of man's work. Cleave to her! Serve! Toil on, labour like a very bandog and let scholarment and all Malthusiasts go hang. Thou art all their daddies, Theodore. Art drooping under thy load, bemoiled with butcher's bills at home and ingots (not thine!) in the countinghouse? Head up! For every newbegotten thou shalt gather thy homer of ripe wheat. See, thy fleece is drenched. Dost envy Darby Dullman there with his Joan? A canting jay and a rheumeyed curdog is all their progeny. Pshaw, I tell thee! He is a mule, a dead gasteropod, without vim or stamina, not worth a cracked kreutzer. Copulation without population! No, say I! Herod's slaughter of the innocents were the truer name. Vegetables, forsooth, and sterile cohabitation! Give her beefsteaks, red, raw, bleeding! She is a hoary pandemonium of ills, enlarged glands, mumps, quinsy, bunions, hayfever, bedsores, ringworm, floating kidney, Derbyshire neck, warts, bilious attacks, gallstones, cold feet, varicose veins. A truce to threnes and trentals and jeremies and all such congenital defunctive music! Twenty years of it, regret them not. With thee it was not as with many that will and would and wait and never - do. Thou sawest thy America, thy lifetask, and didst charge to cover like the transpontine bison. How saith Zarathustra? Deine Kuh Tr*bsal melkest Du. Nun trinkst Du die s*sse Milch des Euters. See! it displodes for thee in abundance. Drink, man, an udderful! Mother's milk, Purefoy, the milk of human kin, milk too of those burgeoning stars overhead rutilant in thin rainvapour, punch milk, such as those rioters will quaff in their guzzling den, milk of madness, the honeymilk of Canaan's land. Thy cow's dug was tough, what? Ay, but her milk is hot and sweet and fattening. No dollop this but thick rich bonnyclaber. To her, old patriarch! Pap! Per deam Partulam et Pertundam nunc est bibendum! All off for a buster, armstrong, hollering down the street. Bonafides. Where you slep las nigh? Timothy of the battered naggin. Like ole Billyo. Any brollies or gumboots in the fambly? Where the Henry Nevil's sawbones and ole clo? Sorra one o' me knows. Hurrah there, Dix! Forward to the ribbon counter. Where's Punch? All serene. Jay, look at the drunken minister coming out of the maternity hospal! Benedicat vos omnipotens Deus, Pater et Filius. A make, mister. The Denzille lane boys. Hell, blast ye! Scoot. Righto, Isaacs, shove em out of the bleeding limelight. Yous join uz, dear sir? No hentrusion in life. Lou heap good man. Allee samee dis bunch. En avant, mes enfants! Fire away number one on the gun. Burke's! Burke's! Thence they advanced five parasangs. Slattery's mounted foot. Where's that bleeding awfur? Parson Steve, apostates' creed! No, no, Mulligan! Abaft there! Shove ahead. Keep a watch on the clock. Chuckingout time. Mullee! What's on you? Ma mSre m'a mari’e. British Beatitudes! Retamplatan digidi boumboum. Ayes have it. To be printed and bound at the Druiddrum press by two designing females. Calf covers of pissedon green. Last word in art shades. Most beautiful book come out of Ireland my time. Silentium! Get a spurt on. Tention. Proceed to nearest canteen and there annex liquor stores. March! Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are (atitudes!) parching. Beer, beef, business, bibles, bulldogs battleships, buggery and bishops. Whether on the scaffold high. Beer, beef, trample the bibles. When for Irelandear. Trample the trampellers. Thunderation! Keep the durned millingtary step. We fall. Bishops boosebox. Halt! Heave to. Rugger. Scrum in. No touch kicking. Wow, my tootsies! You hurt? Most amazingly sorry! Query. Who's astanding this here do? Proud possessor of damnall. Declare misery. Bet to the ropes. Me nantee saltee. Not a red at me this week gone. Yours? Mead of our fathers for the sbermensch. Dittoh. Five number ones. You, sir? Ginger cordial. Chase me, the cabby's caudle. Stimulate the caloric. Winding of his ticker. Stopped short never to go again when the old. Absinthe for me, savvy? Caramba! Have an eggnog or a prairie oyster. Enemy? Avuncular's got my timepiece. Ten to. Obligated awful. Don't mention it. Got a pectoral trauma, eh, Dix? Pos fact. Got bet be a boomblebee whenever he wus settin sleepin in hes bit garten. Digs up near the Mater. Buckled he is. Know his dona? Yup, sartin I do. Full of a dure. See her in her dishybilly. Peels off a credit. Lovey lovekin. None of your lean kine, not much. Pull down the blind, love. Two Ardilauns. Same here. Look slippery. If you fall don't wait to get up. Five, seven, nine. Fine! Got a prime pair of mincepies, no kid. And her take me to rests and her anker of rum. Must be seen to be believed. Your starving eyes and allbeplastered neck you stole my heart, O gluepot. Sir? Spud again the rheumatiz? All poppycock, you'll scuse me saying. For the hoi polloi. I vear thee beest a gert vool. Well, doc? Back fro Lapland? Your corporosity sagaciating O K? How's the squaws and papooses? Womanbody after going on the straw? Stand and deliver. Password. There's hair. Ours the white death and the ruddy birth. Hi! Spit in your own eye, boss! Mummer's wire. Cribbed out of Meredith. Jesified, orchidised, polycimical jesuit! Aunty mine's writing Pa Kinch. Baddybad Stephen lead astray goodygood Malachi. Hurroo! Collar the leather, youngun. Roun wi the nappy. Here, Jock braw Hielentman's your barleybree. Lang may your lum reek and your kailpot boil! My tipple. Merci. Here's to us. How's that? Leg before wicket. Don't stain my brandnew sitinems. Give's a shake of peppe, you there. Catch aholt. Caraway seed to carry away. Twig? Shrieks of silence. Every cove to his gentry mort. Venus Pandemos. Les petites femmes. Bold bad girl from the town of Mullingar. Tell her I was axing at her. Hauding Sara by the wame. On the road to Malahide. Me? If she who seduced me had left but the name. What do you want for ninepence? Machree, macruiskeen. Smutty Moll for a mattress jig. And a pull all together. Ex! Waiting, guvnor? Most deciduously. Bet your boots on. Stunned like, seeing as how no shiners is acoming. Underconstumble? He've got the chink ad lib. Seed near free poun on un a spell ago a said war hisn. Us come right in on your invite, see? Up to you, matey. Out with the oof. Two bar and a wing. You larn that go off of they there Frenchy bilks? Won't wash here for nuts nohow. Lil chile velly solly. Ise de cutest colour coon down our side. Gawds teruth, Chawley. We are nae fou. We're nae tha fou. Au reservoir, mossoo. Tanks you. 'Tis, sure. What say? In the speakeasy. Tight. I shee you, shir. Bantam, two days teetee. Bowsing nowt but claretwine. Garn! Have a glint, do. Gum, I'm jiggered. And been to barber he have. Too full for words. With a railway bloke. How come you so? Opera he'd like? Rose of Castile. Rows of cast. Police! Some H2O for a gent fainted. Look at Bantam's flowers. Gemini. He's going to holler. The colleen bawn. My colleen bawn. O, cheese it! Shut his blurry Dutch oven with a firm hand. Had the winner today till I tipped him a dead cert. The ruffin cly the nab of Stephen Hand as give me the jady coppaleen. He strike a telegramboy paddock wire big bug Bass to the depot. Shove him a joey and grahamise. Mare on form hot order. Guinea to a goosegog. Tell a cram, that. Gospeltrue. Criminal diversion? I think that yes. Sure thing. Land him in chokeechokee if the harman beck copped the game. Madden back Madden's a maddening back. O lust our refuge and our strength. Decamping. Must you go? Off to mammy. Stand by. Hide my blushes someone. All in if he spots me. Come ahome, our Bantam. Horryvar, mong vioo. Dinna forget the cowslips for hersel. Cornfide. Wha gev ye thon colt? Pal to pal. Jannock. Of John Thomas, her spouse. No fake, old man Leo. S'elp me, honest injun. Shiver my timbers if I had. There's a great big holy friar. Vyfor you no me tell? Vel, I ses, if that aint a sheeny nachez, vel, I vil get misha mishinnah. Through yerd our lord, Amen. You move a motion? Steve boy, you're going it some. More bluggy drunkables? Will immensely splendiferous stander permit one stooder of most extreme poverty and one largesize grandacious thirst to terminate one expensive inaugurated libation? Give's a breather. Landlord, landlord, have you good wine, staboo? Hoots, mon, a wee drap to pree. Cut and come again. Right. Boniface! Absinthe the lot. Nos omnes biberimus viridum toxicum, diabolus capiat posterioria nostria. Closingtime, gents. Eh? Rome boose for the Bloom toff. I hear you say onions? Bloo? Cadges ads. Photo's papli, by all that's gorgeous. Play low, pardner. Slide. Bonsoir la compagnie. And snares of the poxfiend. Where's the buck and Namby Amby? Skunked? Leg bail. Aweel, ye maun e'en gang yer gates. Checkmate. King to tower. Kind Kristyann wil yu help yung man hoose frend tuk bungellow kee tu find plais whear tu lay crown of his hed 2 night. Crickey, I'm about sprung. Tarnally dog gone my shins if this beent the bestest puttiest longbreak yet. Item, curate, couple of cookies for this child. Cot's plood and prandypalls, none! Not a pite of sheeses? Thrust syphilis down to hell and with him those other licensed spirits. Time, gents! Who wander through the world. Health all! la vіtre! Golly, whatten tunket's yon guy in the mackintosh? Dusty Rhodes. Peep at his wearables. By mighty! What's he got? Jubilee mutton. Bovril, by James. Wants it real bad. D'ye ken bare socks? Seedy cuss in the Richmond? Rawthere! Thought he had a deposit of lead in his penis. Trumpery insanity. Bartle the Bread we calls him. That, sir, was once a prosperous cit. Man all tattered and torn that married a maiden all forlorn. Slung her hook, she did. Here see lost love. Walking Mackintosh of lonely canyon. Tuck and turn in. Schedule time. Nix for the hornies. Pardon? Seen him today at a runefal? Chum o' yourn passed in his checks? Ludamassy! Pore piccaninnies! Thou'll no be telling me thot, Pold veg! Did ums blubble bigsplash crytears cos fren Padney was took off in black bag? Of all de darkies Massa Pat was verra best. I never see the like since I was born. Tiens, tiens, but it is well sad, that, my faith, yes. O, get, rev on a gradient one in nine. Live axle drives are souped. Lay you two to one Jenatzy licks him ruddy well hollow. Jappies? High angle fire, inyah! Sunk by war specials. Be worse for him, says he, nor any Rooshian. Time all. There's eleven of them. Get ye gone. Forward, woozy wobblers! Night. Night. May Allah the Excellent One your soul this night ever tremendously conserve. Your attention! We're nae tha fou. The Leith police dismisseth us. The least tholice. Ware hawks for the chap puking. Unwell in his abominable regions. Yooka. Night. Mona, my true love. Yook. Mona, my own love. Ook. Hark! Shut your obstropolos. Pflaap! Pflaap! Blaze on. There she goes. Brigade! Bout ship. Mount street way. Cut up! Pflaap! Tally ho. You not come? Run, skelter, race. Pflaaaap! Lynch! Hey? Sign on long o' me. Denzille lane this way. Change here for Bawdyhouse. We two, she said, will seek the kips where shady Mary is. Righto, any old time. Laetabuntur in cubilibus suis. You coming long? Whisper, who the sooty hell's the johnny in the black duds? Hush! Sinned against the light and even now that day is at hand when he shall come to judge the world by fire. Pflaap! Ut implerentur scripturae. Strike up a ballad. Then outspake medical Dick to his comrade medical Davy. Christicle, who's this excrement yellow gospeller on the Merrion hall? Elijah is coming! Washed in the blood of the Lamb. Come on you winefizzling, ginsizzling, booseguzzling existences! Come on, you dog-gone, bullnecked, beetlebrowed, hogjowled, peanutbrained, weaseleyed fourflushers, false alarms and excess baggage! Come on, you triple extract of infamy! Alexander J Christ Dowie, that's my name, that's yanked to glory most half this planet from Frisco beach to Vladivostok. The Deity aint no nickel dime bumshow. I put it to you that He's on the square and a corking fine business proposition. He's the grandest thing yet and don't you forget it. Shout salvation in King Jesus. You'll need to rise precious early you sinner there, if you want to diddle the Almighty God. Pflaaaap! Not half. He's got a coughmixture with a punch in it for you, my friend, in his back pocket. Just you try it on.
THE CALL
Wait, my love, and I'll be with you.
THE ANSWER
Round behind the stable.
(A deafmute 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
Kithogue! Salute!
THE IDIOT
(lifts a palsied left arm and gurgles) Ghahute!
THE CHILDREN
Where's the great light?
THE IDIOT
(gobbling) Ghaghahest.
(They release him. He jerks on. A pigmy woman swings on a rope
slung between two railings, counting. A form sprawled against a
dustbin and muffled by its arm and hat snores, groans, grinding
growling teeth, and snores again. On a step a gnome totting among
a rubbishtip crouches to shoulder a sack of rags and bones. A crone
standing by with a smoky oillamp rams her 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 paper
shuttlecock, crawls sidling after her in spurts, clutches her skirt,
scrambles up. A drunken navvy grips with both hands the railings
of an area, lurching heavily. At a comer two night watch in
shouldercapes, their hands upon their staffholsters, loom tall. A
plate crashes: a woman screams: a child wails. Oaths of a man
roar, mutter, cease. Figures wander, lurk, peer from warrens. In a
room lit by a candle stuck in a bottleneck a slut combs out the tatts
from the hair of a scrofulous child. Cissy Caffrey's voice, still
young, sings shrill from a lane.)
CISSY CAFFREY
I gave it to Molly
Because she was jolly,
The leg of the duck,
The leg of the duck.
(Private Carr 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 so
hoarse virago retorts.)
THE VIRAGO
Signs on you, hairy arse. More power the Cavan girl.
CISSY CAFFREY
More luck to me. Cavan, Cootehill and Belturbet. (she sings)
I gave it to Nelly
To stick in her belly,
The leg of the duck,
The leg of the duck.
(Private Carr and Private Compton turn and counterretort, their
tunics bloodbright in a lampglow, black sockets of caps on their
blond cropped polls. Stephen Dedalus and Lynch pass through the
crowd close to the redcoats.)
PRIVATE COMPTON
(jerks his finger) Way for the parson.
PRIVATE CARR
(turns and calls) What ho, parson!
CISSY CAFFREY
(her voice soaring higher)
She has it, she got it,
Wherever she put it,
The leg of the duck.
(Stephen, flourishing the ashplant in his left hand, chants with joy
the introit for paschal time. Lynch, his jockeycap low on his brow,
attends him, a sneer of discontent wrinkling his face.)
STEPHEN
Vidi aquam egredientem de templo a latere dextro. Alleluia.
(The famished snaggletusks of an elderly bawd protrude from a
doorway.)
THE BAWD
(her voice whispering huskily) Sst! Come here till I tell you. Maidenhead
inside. Sst!
STEPHEN
(altius aliquantulum) Et omnes ad quos pervenit aqua ista.
THE BAWD
(spits in their trail her jet of venom) Trinity medicals. Fallopian tube. All
prick and no pence.
(Edy Boardman, sniffling, crouched with Bertha Supple, draws her
shawl across her nostrils.)
EDY BOARDMAN
(bickering) And says 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,
Kilbride, the enginedriver, and lancecorporal Oliphant.
STEPHEN
(triumphaliter) Salvi facti sunt.
(He flourishes his ashplant, shivering the lamp image, shattering
light over the world. A liver and white spaniel on the prowl slinks
after him, growling. Lynch scares it with a kick.)
LYNCH
So that?
STEPHEN
(looks behind) So that gesture, not music not odour, would be a universal
language, the gift of tongues rendering visible not the lay sense but the first
entelechy, the structural rhythm.
LYNCH
Pornosophical philotheology. Metaphysics in Mecklenburgh street!
STEPHEN
We have shrewridden Shakespeare and henpecked Socrates. Even the
allwisest Stagyrite was bitted, bridled and mounted by a light of love.
LYNCH
Ba!
STEPHEN
Anyway, who wants two gestures to illustrate a loaf and a jug? This
movement illustrates the loaf and jug of bread or wine in Omar. Hold my
stick.
LYNCH
Damn your yellow stick. Where are we going?
STEPHEN
Lecherous lynx, to la belle dame sans merci, Georgina Johnson, ad deam qui
laetificat iuventutem meam.
(Stephen thrusts the ashplant on him and slowly holds out his
hands, his head going back till both hands are a span from his
breast, down turned, in planes intersecting, the fingers about to
part, the left being higher.)
LYNCH
Which is the jug of bread? It skills not. That or the customhouse. Illustrate
thou. Here take your crutch and walk.
(They pass. Tommy Caffrey scrambles to a gaslamp and, clasping,
climbs in spasms. From the top spur he slides down. Jacky Caffrey
clasps to climb. The navvy lurches against the lamp. The twins
scuttle off in the dark. The navvy, swaying, presses a forefinger
against a wing of his nose and ejects from the farther nostril a long
liquid jet of snot. Shouldering the lamp he staggers away through
the crowd with his flaring cresset.
Snakes of river fog creep slowly. From drains, clefts, cesspools,
middens arise on all sides stagnant fumes. A glow leaps in the south
beyond the seaward reaches of the river. The navvy, staggering
forward, cleaves the crowd and lurches towards the tramsiding On
the farther side under the railway bridge Bloom appears, flushed,
panting, cramming bread and chocolate into a sidepocket. From
Gillen's hairdresser's 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 convex mirror grin unstruck the bonham eyes
and fatchuck cheekchops of jollypoldy the rixdix doldy.
At Antonio Pabaiotti's door Bloom halts, sweated under the bright
arclamp. He disappears. In a moment he reappears and hurries
on.)
BLOOM
Fish and taters. N. g. Ah!
(He disappears into Olhausen's, the porkbutcher'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 ribs and groans.)
BLOOM
Stitch in my side. Why did I run?
(He takes breath with care and goes forward slowly towards the
lampset siding The glow leaps again.)
BLOOM
What is that? A flasher? Searchlight.
(He stands at Cormack's corner, watching)
BLOOM
Aurora borealis or a steel foundry? Ah, the brigade, of course. South side
anyhow. Big blaze. Might be his house. Beggar's bush. We're safe. (he
hums cheerfully) London's burning, London's burning! On fire, on fire!
(he catches sight of the navvy lurching through the crowd at the farther
side of Talbot street) I'll miss him. Run. Quick. Better cross here.
(He darts to cross the road Urchins shout.)
THE URCHINS
Mind out, mister!
(Two cyclists, with lighted paper lanterns aswing, swim by him,
grazing him, their bells rattling)
THE BELLS
Haltyaltyaltyall.
BLOOM
(halts erect, stung by a spasm) Ow!
(He looks round, darts forward suddenly. Through rising fog a
dragon sandstrewer, travelling at caution, slews heavily down upon
him, its huge red headlight winking, its trolley hissing on the wire.
The motorman bangs his footgong.)
THE GONG
Bang Bang Bla Bak Blud Bugg Bloo.
(The brake cracks violently. Bloom, raising a policeman's
whitegloved hand, blunders stifflegged out of the track. The
motorman, thrown forward, pugnosed, on the guidewheel, yells as
he slides past over chains and keys.)
THE MOTORMAN
Hey, shitbreeches, are you doing the hat trick?
(Bloom trickleaps to the curbstone and halts again. He brushes a
mudflake from his cheek with a parcelled hand.)
BLOOM
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 track or bootlace in a cog. Day the
wheel of the black Maria peeled off my shoe at Leonard's corner. Third
time is the charm. Shoe trick. Insolent driver. I ought to report him.
Tension makes them nervous. Might be the fellow balked me this morning
with that horsey woman. Same style of beauty. Quick of him all the same.
The stiff walk. True word spoken in jest. That awful cramp in Lad lane.
Something poisonous I ate. Emblem of luck. Why? Probably lost cattle.
Mark of the beast. (he closes his eyes an instant) Bit light in the head.
Monthly or effect of the other. Brainfogfag. That tired feeling. Too much
for me now. Ow!
(A sinister figure leans on plaited legs against O'Beirne's wall, a
visage unknown, injected with dark mercury. From under a
wideleaved sombrero the figure regards him with evil eye.)
BLOOM
Buenas noches, senorita Blanca. Que calle es esta?
THE FIGURE
(impassive, raises a signal arm) Password. Sraid Mabbot.
BLOOM
Haha. Merci. Esperanto. Slan leath. (he mutters) Gaelic league spy, sent
by that fireeater.
(He steps forward. A sackshouldered ragman bars his path. He
steps left, ragsackman left.)
BLOOM
I beg.
(He leaps right, sackragman right.)
BLOOM
I beg.
(He swerves, sidles, stepaside, slips past and on.)
BLOOM
Keep to the right, right, right. If there is a signpost planted by the Touring
Club at Stepaside who procured that public boon? I who lost my way and
contributed to the columns of the Irish Cyclist the letter headed In darkest
Stepaside. Keep, keep, keep to the right. Rags and bones at midnight. A
fence more likely. First place murderer makes for. Wash off his sins of the
world.
(Jacky Caffrey, hunted by Tommy Caffrey, runs full tilt against
Bloom.)
BLOOM
O
(Shocked, on weak hams, he halts. Tommy and Jacky vanish
there, there. Bloom pats with parcelled hands watchfob,
pocketbookpocket, pursepoke, sweets of sin, potatosoap.)
BLOOM
Beware of pickpockets. Old thieves' dodge. Collide. Then snatch your
purse.
(The retriever approaches sniffing, 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 smokingcap with magenta tassels.
Horned spectacles hang down at the wings of the nose. Yellow
poison streaks are on the drawn face.)
RUDOLPH
Second halfcrown waste money today. I told you not go with drunken goy
ever. So you catch no money.
BLOOM
(hides the crubeen and trotter behind his back and, crestfallen, feels warm
and cold feetmeat) Ja, ich weiss, papachi.
RUDOLPH
What you making down this place? Have you no soul? (with feeble vulture
talons he feels the silent face of Bloom) Are you not my son Leopold, the
grandson of Leopold? Are you not my dear son Leopold who left the house
of his father and left the god of his fathers Abraham and Jacob?
BLOOM
(with precaution) I suppose so, father. Mosenthal. All that's left of him.
RUDOLPH
(severely) One night they bring you home drunk as dog after spend your
good money. What you call them running chaps?
BLOOM
(in youth's smart blue Oxford suit with white vestslips, narrowshouldered,
in brown Alpine hat, wearing gent's sterling silver Waterbury keyless watch
and double curb Albert with seal attached, one side of him coated with
stiffening mud) Harriers, father. Only that once.
RUDOLPH
Once! Mud head to foot. Cut your hand open. Lockjaw. They make you
kaputt, Leopoldleben. You watch them chaps.
BLOOM
(weakly) They challenged me to a sprint. It was muddy. I slipped.
RUDOLPH
(with contempt) Goim nachez! Nice spectacles for your poor mother!
BLOOM
Mamma!
ELLEN BLOOM
(in pantomime dame's stringed mobcap, widow Twankey's crinoline and
bustle, blouse with muttonleg sleeves buttoned behind, grey mittens and
cameo brooch, her plaited hair in a crispine net, appears over the staircase
banisters, a slanted candlestick in her hand, and cries out in shrill alarm)
O blessed Redeemer, what have they done to him! My smelling salts! (She
hauls up a reef of skirt and ransacks the pouch of her striped blay petticoat
A phial, an Agnus Dei, a shrivelled potato and a celluloid doll fall out)
Sacred Heart of Mary, where were you at all at all?
(Bloom, mumbling, his eyes downcast, begins to bestow his parcels
in his filled pockets but desists, muttering.)
A VOICE
(sharply) Poldy!
BLOOM
Who? (he ducks and wards off a blow clumsily) At your service.
(He looks up. Beside her mirage of datepalms a handsome woman
in Turkish costume stands before him. Opulent curves fill out her
scarlet trousers and jacket, slashed with gold. A wide yellow
cummerbund girdles her. A white yashmak, violet in the night,
covers her face, leaving free only her large dark eyes and raven
hair.)
BLOOM
Molly!
MARION
Welly? Mrs Marion from this out, my dear man, when you speak to me.
(satirically) Has poor little hubby cold feet waiting so long?
BLOOM
(shifts from foot to foot) No, no. Not the least little bit.
(He breathes in deep agitation, swallowing gulps of air, questions,
hopes, crubeens for her supper, things to tell her, excuse, desire,
spellbound. A coin gleams on her forehead. On her feet are jewelled
toerings. Her ankles are linked by a slender fetterchain. Beside her a
camel, hooded with a turreting turban, waits. A silk ladder of
innumerable rungs climbs to his bobbing howdah. He ambles near
with disgruntled hindquarters. Fiercely she slaps his haunch, her
goldcurb wristbangles angriling, scolding him in Moorish.)
MARION
Nebrakada! Femininum!
(The camel, lifting a foreleg, plucks from a tree a large mango fruit,
offers it to his mistress, blinking, in his cloven hoof, then droops his
head and, grunting, with uplifted neck, fumbles to kneel. Bloom
stoops his back for leapfrog.)
BLOOM
I can give you ... I mean as your business menagerer .. Mrs Marion ..... if
you ....
MARION
So you notice some change? (her hands passing slowly over her trinketed
stomacher, a slow friendly mockery in her eyes) O Poldy, Poldy, you are a
poor old stick in the mud! Go and see life. See the wide world.
BLOOM
I was just going back for that lotion whitewax, orangeflower water. Shop
closes early on Thursday. But the first thing in the morning. (he pats divers
pockets) This moving kidney. Ah!
(He points to the south, then to the east. A cake of new clean lemon
soap arises, diffusing light and perfume.)
THE SOAP
We're a capital couple are Bloom and I.
He brightens the earth. I polish the sky.
(The freckled face of Sweny, the druggist, appears in the disc of the
soapsun.)
SWENY
Three and a penny, please.
BLOOM
Yes. For my wife. Mrs Marion. Special recipe.
MARION
(softly) Poldy!
BLOOM
Yes, ma'am?
MARION
Ti trema un poco il cuore?
(In disdain she saunters away, humming the duet from Don
Giovanni, plump as a pampered pouter pigeon.)
BLOOM
Are you sure about that Voglio? I mean the pronunciati ....
(He follows, followed by the sniffing terrier. The elderly bawd
seizes his sleeve, the bristles of her chinmole glittering.)
THE BAWD
Ten shillings a maidenhead. Fresh thing was never touched. Fifteen. There's
no-one in it only her old father that's dead drunk.
(She points. In the gap of her dark den furtive, rainbedraggled,
Bridie Kelly stands.)
BRIDIE
Hatch street. Any good in your mind?
(With a squeak she flaps her bat shawl and runs. A burly rough
pursues with booted strides. He stumbles on the steps, recovers,
plunges into gloom. Weak squeaks of laughter are heard, weaker.)
THE BAWD
(her wolfeyes shining) He's getting his pleasure. You won't get a virgin in
the flash houses. Ten shillings. Don't be all night before the polis in plain
clothes sees us. Sixtyseven is a bitch.
(Leering, Gerty MacDowell limps forward. She draws from behind,
ogling, and shows coyly her bloodied clout.)
GERTY
With all my worldly goods I thee and thou. (she murmurs) You did that. I
hate you.
BLOOM
l? When? You're dreaming. I never saw you.
THE BAWD
Leave the gentleman alone, you cheat. Writing the gentleman false letters.
Streetwalking and soliciting. Better for your mother take the strap to you at
the bedpost, hussy like you.
GERTY
(to Bloom) When you saw all the secrets of my bottom drawer. (she paws
his sleeve, slobbering) Dirty married man! I love you for doing that to me.
(She glides away crookedly. Mrs Breen in man's frieze overcoat
with loose bellows pockets, stands in the causeway, her roguish eyes
wideopen, smiling in all her herbivorous buckteeth.)
MRS BREEN
Mr ...
BLOOM
(coughs gravely) Madam, when we last had this pleasure by letter dated
the sixteenth instant ....
MRS BREEN
Mr Bloom! You down here in the haunts of sin! I caught you nicely!
Scamp!
BLOOM
(hurriedly) Not so loud my name. Whatever do you think of me? Don't
give me away. Walls have ears. How do you do? It's ages since I. You're
looking splendid. Absolutely it. Seasonable weather we are having this time
of year. Black refracts heat. Short cut home here. Interesting quarter.
Rescue of fallen women. Magdalen asylum. I am the secretary .....
MRS BREEN
(holds up a finger) Now, don't tell a big fib! I know somebody won't like
that. O just wait till I see Molly! (slily) Account for yourself this very
sminute or woe betide you!
BLOOM
(looks behind) She often said she'd like to visit. Slumming. The exotic, you
see. Negro servants in livery too if she had money. Othello black brute.
Eugene Stratton. Even the bones and cornerman at the Livermore christies.
Bohee brothers. Sweep for that matter.
(Tom and Sam Bohee, coloured coons in white duck suits, scarlet
socks, upstarched Sambo chokers and large 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.)
TOM AND SAM
There's someone in the house with Dina
There's someone in the house, I know,
There's someone in the house with Dina
Playing on the old banjo.
(They whisk black masks from raw babby faces: then, chuckling,
chortling, trumming, twanging, they diddle diddle cakewalk dance
away.)
BLOOM
(with a sour tenderish smile) A little frivol, shall we, if you are so inclined?
Would you like me perhaps to embrace you just for a fraction of a second?
MRS BREEN
(screams gaily) O, you ruck! You ought to see yourself!
BLOOM
For old sake' sake. I only meant a square party, a mixed marriage mingling
of our different little conjugials. You know I had a soft corner for you.
(gloomily) 'Twas I sent you that valentine of the dear gazelle.
MRS BREEN
Glory Alice, you do look a holy show! Killing simply. (she puts out her
hand inquisitively) What are you hiding behind your back? Tell us, there's
a dear.
BLOOM
(seizes her wrist with his free hand) Josie Powell that was, prettiest deb in
Dublin. How time flies by! Do you remember, harking back in a
retrospective arrangement, Old Christmas night, Georgina Simpson's
housewarming while they were playing the Irving Bishop game, finding the
pin blindfold and thoughtreading? Subject, what is in this snuffbox?
MRS BREEN
You were the lion of the night with your seriocomic recitation and you
looked the part. You were always a favourite with the ladies.
BLOOM
(squire of dames, in dinner jacket with wateredsilk facings, blue masonic
badge in his buttonhole, black bow and mother-of-pearl studs, a prismatic
champagne glass tilted in his hand) Ladies and gentlemen, I give you
Ireland, home and beauty.
MRS BREEN
The dear dead days beyond recall. Love's old sweet song.
BLOOM
(meaningfully dropping his voice) I confess I'm teapot with curiosity to
find out whether some person's something is a little teapot at present.
MRS BREEN
(gushingly) Tremendously teapot! London's teapot and I'm simply teapot
all over me! (she rubs sides with him) After the parlour mystery games and
the crackers from the tree we sat on the staircase ottoman. Under the
mistletoe. Two is company.
BLOOM
(wearing a purple Napoleon hat with an amber halfmoon, his fingers and
thumb 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)
La ci darem la mano.
MRS BREEN
(in a onepiece evening frock executed in moonlight blue, a tinsel sylph's
diadem on her brow with her dancecard fallen beside her moonblue satin
slipper, curves her palm softly, breathing quickly) Voglio e non ..... You're
hot! You're scalding! The left hand nearest the heart.
BLOOM
When you made your present choice they said it was beauty and the beast. I
can never forgive you for that. (his clenched fist at his brow) Think what it
means. All you meant to me then. (hoarsely) Woman, it's breaking me!
(Denis Breen, whitetallhatted, with Wisdom Hely's sandwich-
boards, shuffles past them in carpet slippers, his dull beard
thrust out, muttering to right and left. Little Alf Bergan, cloaked in
the pall of the ace of spades, dogs him to left and right, doubled in
laughter.)
ALF BERGAN
(points jeering at the sandwichboards) U. p: up.
MRS BREEN
(to Bloom) High jinks below stairs. (she gives him the glad eye) Why
didn't you kiss the spot to make it well? You wanted to.
BLOOM
(shocked) Molly's best friend! Could you?
MRS BREEN
(her pulpy tongue between her lips, offers a pigeon kiss) Hnhn. The
answer is a lemon. Have you a little present for me there?
BLOOM
(offhandedly) Kosher. A snack for supper. The home without potted meat
is incomplete. I was at Leah, Mrs Bandmann Palmer. Trenchant exponent
of Shakespeare. Unfortunately threw away the programme. Rattling good
place round there for pigs' feet. Feel.
(Richie Goulding, three ladies' hats pinned on his head, appears
weighted to one side by the black legal bag of Collis and Ward on
which a skull and crossbones are painted in white limewash. He
opens it and shows it full of polonies, kippered herrings, Findon
haddies and tightpacked pills.)
RICHIE
Best value in Dub.
(Bald Pat, bothered beetle, stands on the curbstone, folding his
napkin, waiting to wait.)
PAT
(advances with a tilted dish of spillspilling gravy) Steak and kidney. Bottle
of lager. Hee hee hee. Wait till I wait.
RICHIE
Goodgod. Inev erate inall ....
(With hanging head he marches doggedly forward The navvy,
lurching by, gores him with his flaming pronghorn.)
RICHIE
(with a cry of pain, his hand to his back) Ah! Bright's! Lights!
BLOOM
(points to the navvy) A spy. Don't attract attention. I hate stupid crowds. I
am not on pleasure bent. I am in a grave predicament.
MRS BREEN
Humbugging and deluthering as per usual with your cock and bull story.
BLOOM
I want to tell you a little secret about how I came to be here. But you must
never tell. Not even Molly. I have a most particular reason.
MRS BREEN
(all agog) O, not for worlds.
BLOOM
Let's walk on. Shall us?
MRS BREEN
Let's.
(The bawd makes an unheeded sign. Bloom walks on with Mrs
Breen. The terrier follows, whining piteously, wagging his tail.)
THE BAWD
Jewman's melt!
BLOOM
(in an oatmeal sporting suit, a sprig of woodbine in the lapel, tony buff
shirt, shepherd's plaid Saint Andrew's cross scarftie, white spats, fawn
dustcoat on his arm, tawny red brogues, fieldglasses in bandolier and a grey
billycock hat) Do you remember a long long time, years and years ago, just
after Milly, Marionette we called her, was weaned when we all went
together to Fairyhouse races, was it?
MRS BREEN
(in smart Saxe tailormade, white velours hat and spider veil) Leopards-
town.
BLOOM
I mean, Leopardstown. And Molly won seven shillings on a three year old
named Nevertell and coming home along by Foxrock in that old fiveseater
shanderadan of a waggonette you were in your heyday then and you had
on that new hat of white velours with a surround of molefur that Mrs
Hayes advised you to buy because it was marked down to nineteen and
eleven, a bit of wire and an old rag of velveteen, and I'll lay you what you
like she did it on purpose ....
MRS BREEN
She did, of course, the cat! Don't tell me! Nice adviser!
BLOOM
Because it didn't suit you one quarter as well as the other ducky little
tammy toque with the bird of paradise wing in it that I admired on you and
you honestly looked just too fetching in it though it was a pity to kill it, you
cruel naughty creature, little mite of a thing with a heart the size of a
fullstop.
MRS BREEN
(squeezes his arm, simpers) Naughty cruel I was!
BLOOM
(low, secretly, ever more rapidly) And Molly was eating a sandwich of
spiced beef out of Mrs Joe Gallaher's lunch basket. Frankly, though she
had her advisers or admirers, I never cared much for her style. She was ....
MRS BREEN
Too ....
BLOOM
Yes. And Molly was laughing because Rogers and Maggot O'Reilly were
mimicking a cock as we passed a farmhouse and Marcus Tertius Moses, the
tea merchant, drove past us in a gig with his daughter, Dancer Moses was
her name, and the poodle in her lap bridled up and you asked me if I ever
heard or read or knew or came across ....
MRS BREEN
(eagerly) Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
(She fades from his side. Followed by the whining dog he walks on
towards hellsgates. In an archway a standing woman, bent forward,
her feet apart, pisses cowily. Outside a shuttered pub a bunch of
loiterers listen to a tale which their brokensnouted gaffer rasps out
with raucous humour. An armless pair of them flop wrestling,
growling, in maimed sodden playfight.)
THE GAFFER
(crouches, his voice twisted in his snout) And when Cairns came down
from the scaffolding in Beaver street what was he after doing it into only
into the bucket of porter that was there waiting on the shavings for
Derwan's plasterers.
THE LOITERERS
(guffaw with cleft palates) O jays!
(Their paintspeckled hats wag. Spattered with size and lime of their
lodges they frisk limblessly about him.)
BLOOM
Coincidence too. They think it funny. Anything but that. Broad daylight.
Trying to walk. Lucky no woman.
THE LOITERERS
Jays, that's a good one. Glauber salts. O jays, into the men's porter.
(Bloom passes. Cheap whores, singly, coupled, shawled, dishevelled,
call from lanes, doors, corners.)
THE WHORES
Are you going far, queer fellow?
How's your middle leg?
Got a match on you?
Eh, come here till I stiffen it for you.
(He plodges through their sump towards the lighted street beyond.
From a bulge of window curtains a gramophone rears a battered
brazen trunk. In the shadow a shebeenkeeper haggles with the
navvy and the two redcoats.)
THE NAVVY
(belching) Where's the bloody house?
THE SHEBEENKEEPER
Purdon street. Shilling a bottle of stout. Respectable woman.
THE NAVVY
(gripping the two redcoats, staggers forward with them) Come on, you
British army!
PRIVATE CARR
(behind his back) He aint half balmy.
PRIVATE COMPTON
(laughs) What ho!
PRIVATE CARR
(to the navvy) Portobello barracks canteen. You ask for Carr. Just Carr.
THE NAVVY
(shouts)
We are the boys. Of Wexford.
PRIVATE COMPTON
Say! What price the sergeantmajor?
PRIVATE CARR
Bennett? He's my pal. I love old Bennett.
THE NAVVY
(shouts)
The galling chain.
And free our native land.
(He staggers forward, dragging them with him. Bloom stops, at
fault. The dog approaches, his tongue outlolling, panting)
BLOOM
Wildgoose chase this. Disorderly houses. Lord knows where they are gone.
Drunks cover distance double quick. Nice mixup. Scene at Westland row.
Then jump in first class with third ticket. Then too far. Train with engine
behind. Might have taken me to Malahide or a siding for the night or
collision. Second drink does it. Once is a dose. What am I following him
for? Still, he's the best of that lot. If I hadn't heard about Mrs Beaufoy
Purefoy I wouldn't have gone and wouldn't have met. Kismet. He'll lose
that cash. Relieving office here. Good biz for cheapjacks, organs. What do
ye lack? Soon got, soon gone. Might have lost my life too with that man-
gongwheeltracktrolleyglarejuggernaut only for presence of mind. Can't
always save you, though. If I had passed Truelock's window that day two
minutes later would have been shot. Absence of body. Still if bullet only
went through my coat get damages for shock, five hundred pounds. What
was he? Kildare street club toff. God help his gamekeeper.
(He gazes ahead, reading on the wall a scrawled chalk legend Wet Dream
and a phallic design.) Odd! Molly drawing on the frosted carriagepane at
Kingstown. What's that like? (Gaudy dollwomen loll in the lighted
doorways, in window embrasures, smoking birdseye cigarettes. The odour
of the sicksweet weed floats towards him in slow round ovalling wreaths.)
THE WREATHS
Sweet are the sweets. Sweets of sin.
BLOOM
My spine's a bit limp. Go or turn? And this food? Eat it and get all
pigsticky. Absurd I am. Waste of money. One and eightpence too much.
(The retriever drives a cold snivelling muzzle against his hand, wagging his
tail.) Strange how they take to me. Even that brute today. Better speak to
him first. Like women they like rencontres. Stinks like a polecat. Chacun
son got. He might be mad. Dogdays. Uncertain in his movements. Good
fellow! Fido! Good fellow! Garryowen! (The wolfdog sprawls on his back,
wriggling obscenely with begging paws, his long black tongue lolling out.)
Influence of his surroundings. Give and have done with it. Provided
nobody. (Calling encouraging words he shambles back with a furtive
poacher's tread, dogged by the setter into a dark stalestunk corner. He
unrolls one parcel and goes to dump the crubeen softly but holds back and
feels the trotter.) Sizeable for threepence. But then I have it in my left hand.
Calls for more effort. Why? Smaller from want of use. O, let it slide. Two
and six.
(With regret he lets the unrolled crubeen and trotter slide. The
mastiff mauls the bundle clumsily and gluts himself with growling
greed, crunching the bones. Two raincaped watch approach, silent,
vigilant. They murmur together.)
THE WATCH
Bloom. Of Bloom. For Bloom. Bloom.
(Each lays hand on Bloom's shoulder.)
FIRST WATCH
Caught in the act. Commit no nuisance.
BLOOM
(stammers) I am doing good to others.
(A covey of gulls, storm petrels, rises hungrily from Liffey slime
with Banbury cakes in their beaks.)
THE GULLS
Kaw kave kankury kake.
BLOOM
The friend of man. Trained by kindness.
(He points. Bob Doran, toppling from a high barstool, sways over
the munching spaniel.)
BOB DORAN
Towser. Give us the paw. Give the paw.
(The bulldog growls, his scruff standing, a gobbet of pig's knuckle
between his molars through which rabid scumspittle dribbles Bob
Doran fills silently into an area.)
SECOND WATCH
Prevention of cruelty to animals.
BLOOM
(enthusiastically) A noble work! I scolded that tramdriver on Harold's
cross bridge for illusing the poor horse with his harness scab. Bad French I
got for my pains. Of course it was frosty and the last tram. All tales of
circus life are highly demoralising.
(Signor Maffei, passionpale, in liontamer's costume with diamond
studs in his shirtfront, steps forward, holding a circus paperhoop, a
curling carriagewhip and a revolver with which he covers the
gorging boarhound.)
SIGNOR MAFFEI
(with a sinister smile) Ladies and gentlemen, my educated greyhound. It
was I broke in the bucking broncho Ajax with my patent spiked saddle for
carnivores. Lash under the belly with a knotted thong. Block tackle and a
strangling pulley will bring your lion to heel, no matter how fractious, even
Leo ferox there, the Libyan maneater. A redhot crowbar and some liniment
rubbing on the burning part produced Fritz of Amsterdam, the thinking
hyena. (he glares) I possess the Indian sign. The glint of my eye does it
with these breastsparklers. (with a bewitching smile) I now introduce
Mademoiselle Ruby, the pride of the ring.
FIRST WATCH
Come. Name and address.
BLOOM
I have forgotten for the moment. Ah, yes! (he takes off his high grade hat,
saluting) Dr Bloom, Leopold, dental surgeon. You have heard of von Blum
Pasha. Umpteen millions. Donnerwetter! Owns half Austria. Egypt.
Cousin.
FIRST WATCH
Proof.
(A card falls from inside the leather headband of Bloom's hat.)
BLOOM
(in red fez, cadi's dress coat with broad green sash, wearing a false badge
of the Legion of Honour, picks up the card hastily and offers it) Allow me.
My club is the Junior Army and Navy. Solicitors: Messrs John Henry
Menton, 27 Bachelor's Walk.
FIRST WATCH
(reads) Henry Flower. No fixed abode. Unlawfully watching and
besetting.
SECOND WATCH
An alibi. You are cautioned.
BLOOM
(produces from his heartpocket a crumpled yellow flower) This is the
flower in question. It was given me by a man I don't know his name.
(plausibly) You know that old joke, rose of Castile. 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 the shake of a lamb's tail.
(A dark mercurialised face appears, leading a veiled figure.)
THE DARK MERCURY
The Castle is looking for him. He was drummed out of the army.
MARTHA
(thickveiled, a crimson halter round her neck, a copy of the Irish Times in
her hand, in tone of reproach, pointing) Henry! Leopold! Lionel, thou lost
one! Clear my name.
FIRST WATCH
(sternly) Come to the station.
BLOOM
(scared, hats himself, steps back, then, plucking at his heart and lifting his
right forearm on the square, he gives the sign and dueguard of fellowcraft)
No, no, worshipful master, light of love. Mistaken identity. The Lyons mail.
Lesurques and Dubosc. You remember the Childs fratricide case. We
medical men. By striking him dead with a hatchet. I am wrongfully
accused. Better one guilty escape than ninetynine wrongfully condemned.
MARTHA
(sobbing behind her veil) Breach of promise. My real name is Peggy
Griffin. He wrote to me that he was miserable. I'll tell my brother, the
Bective rugger fullback, on you, heartless flirt.
BLOOM
(behind his hand) She's drunk. The woman is inebriated. (he murmurs
vaguely the pass of Ephraim) Shitbroleeth.
SECOND WATCH
(tears in his eyes, to Bloom) You ought to be thoroughly well ashamed of
yourself.
BLOOM
Gentlemen 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, what do you call him, Majorgeneral Brian Tweedy, one of
Britain's fighting men who helped to win our battles. Got his majority for
the heroic defence of Rorke's Drift.
FIRST WATCH
Regiment.
BLOOM
(turns to the gallery) The royal Dublins, boys, the salt of the earth, known
the world over. I think I see some old comrades in arms up there among
you. The R. D. F., with our own Metropolitan police, guardians of our
homes, the pluckiest lads and the finest body of men, as physique, in the
service of our sovereign.
A VOICE
Turncoat! Up the Boers! Who booed Joe Chamberlain?
BLOOM
(his hand on the shoulder of the first watch) My old dad too was a J. P.
I'm as staunch a Britisher as you are, sir. I fought with the colours for king
and country in the absentminded war under general Gough in the park and
was disabled at Spion Kop and Bloemfontein, was mentioned in dispatches.
I did all a white man could. (with quiet feeling) Jim Bludso. Hold her
nozzle again the bank.
FIRST WATCH
Profession or trade.
BLOOM
Well, I follow a literary occupation, author-journalist. In fact we are just
bringing out a collection of prize stories of which I am the inventor,
something that is an entirely new departure. I am connected with the British
and Irish press. If you ring up ....
(Myles Crawford strides out jerkily, a quill between his teeth. His
scarlet beak blazes within the aureole of his straw hat He dangles a
hank of Spanish onions in one hand and holds with the other hand
a telephone receiver nozzle to his ear.)
MYLES CRAWFORD
(his cock's wattles wagging) Hello, seventyseven eightfour. Hello.
Freeman's Urinal and Weekly Arsewipe here. Paralyse Europe. You which?
Bluebags? Who writes? Is it Bloom?
(Mr Philip Beaufoy, palefaced, stands in the witnessbox, in accurate
morning dress, outbreast pocket with peak of handkerchief
showing, creased lavender trousers and patent boots. He carries a
large portfolio labelled Matcham's Masterstrokes.)
BEAUFOY
(drawls) No, you aren't. Not by a long shot if I know it. I don't see it
that's all. No born gentleman, no-one with the most rudimentary
promptings of a gentleman would stoop to such particularly loathsome
conduct. One of those, my lord. A plagiarist. A soapy sneak masquerading
as a litterateur. It's perfectly obvious that with the most inherent baseness
he has cribbed some of my bestselling copy, really gorgeous stuff, a perfect
gem, the love passages in which are beneath suspicion. The Beaufoy books
of love and great possessions, with which your lordship is doubtless
familiar, are a household word throughout the kingdom.
BLOOM
(murmurs with hangdog meekness glum) That bit about the laughing
witch hand in hand I take exception to, if I may ...
BEAUFOY
(his lip upcurled, smiles superciliously on the court) You funny ass, you!
You're too beastly awfully weird for words! I don't think you need over
excessively disincommodate yourself in that regard. My literary agent Mr
J. B. Pinker is in attendance. I presume, my lord, we shall receive the usual
witnesses' fees, shan't we? We are considerably out of pocket over this bally
pressman johnny, this jackdaw of Rheims, who has not even been to a
university.
BLOOM
(indistinctly) University of life. Bad art.
BEAUFOY
(shouts) It's a damnably foul lie, showing the moral rottenness of the man!
(he extends his portfolio) We have here damning evidence, the corpus
delicti, my lord, a specimen of my maturer work disfigured by the hallmark
of the beast.
A VOICE FROM THE GALLERY
Moses, Moses, king of the jews,
Wiped his arse in the Daily News.
BLOOM
(bravely) Overdrawn.
BEAUFOY
You low cad! You ought to be ducked in the horsepond, you rotter! (to the
court) Why, look at the man's private life! Leading a quadruple existence!
Street angel and house devil. Not fit to be mentioned in mixed society! The
archconspirator of the age!
BLOOM
(to the court) And he, a bachelor, how...
FIRST WATCH
The King versus Bloom. Call the woman Driscoll.
THE CRIER
Mary Driscoll, scullerymaid!
(Mary Driscoll, a slipshod servant girl, approaches. She has a
bucket on the crook of her arm and a scouringbrush in her hand.)
SECOND WATCH
Another! Are you of the unfortunate class?
MARY DRISCOLL
(indignantly) I'm not a bad one. I bear a respectable character and was
four months in my last place. I was in a situation, six pounds a year and my
chances with Fridays out and I had to leave owing to his carryings on.
FIRST WATCH
What do you tax him with?
MARY DRISCOLL
He made a certain suggestion but I thought more of myself as poor as I am.
BLOOM
(in housejacket of ripplecloth, flannel trousers, heelless slippers, unshaven,
his hair rumpled: softly) I treated you white. I gave you mementos, smart
emerald garters far above your station. Incautiously I took your part when
you were accused of pilfering. There's a medium in all things. Play cricket.
MARY DRISCOLL
(excitedly) As God is looking down on me this night if ever I laid a hand to
them oylsters!
FIRST WATCH
The offence complained of? Did something happen?
MARY DRISCOLL
He surprised me in the rere of the premises, Your honour, when the missus
was out shopping one morning with a request for a safety pin. He held me
and I was discoloured in four places as a result. And he interfered twict
with my clothing.
BLOOM
She counterassaulted.
MARY DRISCOLL
(scornfully) I had more respect for the scouringbrush, so I had. I
remonstrated with him, Your lord, and he remarked: keep it quiet.
(General laughter.)
GEORGE FOTTRELL
(clerk of the crown and peace, resonantly) Order in court! The accused
will now make a bogus statement.
(Bloom, pleading not guilty and holding a fullblown waterlily,
begins a long unintelligible speech. They would hear what counsel
had to say in his stirring address to the grand jury. He was down
and out but, though branded as a black sheep, if he might say so, he
meant to reform, to retrieve the memory of the past in a purely
sisterly way and return to nature as a purely domestic animal. A
sevenmonths' 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 Britishborn bairns lisping prayers to the Sacred
Infant, youthful scholars grappling with their pensums or 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 Britanniametalbound
with four acting stops and twelvefold bellows, a sacrifice, greatest
bargain ever ....
Renewed laughter. He mumbles incoherently. Reporters complain
that they cannot hear.)
LONGHAND AND SHORTHAND
(without looking up from their notebooks) Loosen his boots.
PROFESSOR MACHUGH
(from the presstable, coughs and calls) Cough it up, man. Get it out in bits.
(The crossexamination proceeds re Bloom and the bucket. A large
bucket. Bloom himself. Bowel trouble. In Beaver street Gripe, yes.
Quite bad. A plasterer's 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
stickingplaster across his nose, talks inaudibly.)
J. J. O'MOLLOY
(in barrister's grey wig and stuffgown, speaking with a voice of pained
protest) This is no place for indecent levity at the expense of an erring
mortal disguised in liquor. We are not in a beargarden nor at an Oxford rag
nor is this a travesty of justice. My client is an infant, a poor foreign
immigrant who started scratch as a stowaway and is now trying to turn an
honest penny. The trumped up misdemeanour was due to a momentary
aberration of heredity, brought on by hallucination, such familiarities as the
alleged guilty occurrence being quite permitted in my client's native place,
the land of the Pharaoh. Prima facie, I put it to you that there was no
attempt at carnally knowing. Intimacy did not occur and the offence
complained of by Driscoll, that her virtue was solicited, was not repeated. I
would deal in especial with atavism. There have been cases of shipwreck
and somnambulism in my client's family. If the accused could speak he
could a tale unfold - one of the strangest that have ever been narrated
between the covers of a book. He himself, my lord, is a physical wreck from
cobbler's weak chest. His submission is that he is of Mongolian extraction
and irresponsible for his actions. Not all there, in fact.
BLOOM
(Barefoot, pigeonbreasted, in lascar's vest and trousers, apologetic toes
turned in, opens his tiny mole's eyes and looks about him dazedly, passing a
slow hand across his forehead. Then he hitches his belt sailor fashion and
with a shrug of oriental obeisance salutes the court, pointing one thumb
heavenward.) Him makee velly muchee fine night. (he begins to lilt simply)
Li li poo lil chile
Blingee pigfoot evly night
Payee two shilly ....
(He is howled down.)
J. J. O'MOLLOY
(hotly to the populace) This is a lonehand fight. By Hades, I will not have
any client of mine gagged and badgered in this fashion by a pack of curs
and laughing hyenas. The Mosaic code has superseded the law of the
jungle. I say it and I say it emphatically, without wishing for one moment to
defeat the ends of justice, accused was not accessory before the act and
prosecutrix has not been tampered with. The young person was treated by
defendant as if she were his very own daughter. (Bloom takes J. J.
O'Molloy's hand and raises it to his lips) I shall call rebutting evidence to
prove up to the hilt that the hidden hand is again at its old game. When in
doubt persecute Bloom. My client, an innately bashful man, would be the
last man in the world to do anything ungentlemanly which injured modesty
could object to or cast a stone at a girl who took the wrong turning when
some dastard, responsible for her condition, had worked his own sweet will
on her. He wants to go straight. I regard him as the whitest man I know.
He is down on his luck at present owing to the mortgaging of his extensive
property at Agendath Netaim in faraway Asia Minor, slides of which will
now be shown. (to Bloom) I suggest that you will do the handsome thing.
BLOOM
A penny in the pound.
(The image of the lake of Kinnereth with blurred cattle cropping in
silver haze is projected on the walL Moses Dlugacz, ferreteyed
albino, in blue dungarees, stands up in the gallery, holding in each
hand an orange citron and a pork kidney.)
DLUGACZ
(hoarsely) Bleibtreustrasse, Berlin, W. 13.
(J. J. O'Molloy steps on to a low plinth and holds the lapel of his
coat with solemnity. His face lengthens, grows pale and bearded,
with sunken eyes, the blotches of phthisis and hectic cheekbones of
John F. Taylor. He applies his handkerchief to his mouth and
scrutinises the galloping tide of rosepink blood.)
J.J.O'MOLLOY
(almost voicelessly) Excuse me. I am suffering from a severe chill, have
recently come from a sickbed. A few wellchosen words. (He assumes the
avine head, foxy moustache and proboscidal eloquence of Seymour
Bushe.) When the angel's book comes to be opened if aught that
the pensive bosom has inaugurated of soultransfigured and of
soultransfiguring deserves to live I say accord the prisoner at the bar the
sacred benefit of the doubt.
(A paper with something written on it is handed into court.)
BLOOM
(in court dress) Can give best references. Messrs Callan, Coleman. Mr
Wisdom Hely J. P. My old chief Joe Cuffe. Mr V. B. Dillon, ex lord mayor
of Dublin. I have moved in the charmed circle of the highest .... Queens of
Dublin society. (carelessly) I was just chatting this afternoon at the
viceregal lodge to my old pals, sir Robert and lady Ball, astronomer royal
at the levee. Sir Bob, I said ......
MRS YELVERTON BARRY
(in lowcorsaged opal balldress and elbowlength ivory gloves, wearing a
sabletrimmed brickquilted dolman, a comb of brilliants and panache of
osprey in her hair) Arrest him, constable. He wrote me an anonymous
letter in prentice backhand when my husband was in the North Riding of
Tipperary on the Munster circuit, signed James Lovebirch. He said that he
had seen from the gods my peerless globes as I sat in a box of the Theatre
Royal at a command performance of La Cigale. I deeply inflamed him, he
said. He made improper overtures to me to misconduct myself at half past
four p.m. on the following Thursday, Dunsink time. He offered to send me
through the post a work of fiction by Monsieur Paul de Kock, entitled The
Girl with the Three Pairs of Stays.
MRS BELLINGHAM
(in cap and seal coney mantle, wrapped up to the nose, steps out of her
brougham and scans through tortoiseshell quizzing-glasses 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 the ballstop in my bath
cistern were frozen. Subsequently he enclosed a bloom of edelweiss culled
on the heights, as he said, in my honour. I had it examined by a botanical
expert and elicited the information that it was a blossom of the homegrown
potato plant purloined from a forcingcase of the model farm.
MRS YELVERTON BARRY
Shame on him!
(A crowd of sluts and ragamuffins surges forward)
THE SLUTS AND RAGAMUFFINS
(screaming) Stop thief! Hurrah there, Bluebeard! Three cheers for Ikey
Mo!
SECOND WATCH
(produces handcuffs) Here are the darbies.
MRS BELLINGHAM
He addressed me in several handwritings with fulsome compliments as a
Venus in furs and alleged profound pity for my frostbound coachman
Palmer while in the same breath he expressed himself as envious of his
earflaps and fleecy sheepskins and of his fortunate proximity to my person,
when standing behind my chair wearing my livery and the armorial
bearings of the Bellingham escutcheon garnished sable, a buck's head
couped or. He lauded almost extravagantly my nether extremities, my
swelling calves in silk hose drawn up to the limit, and eulogised glowingly
my other hidden treasures in priceless lace which, he said, he could conjure
up. He urged me (stating that he felt it his mission in life to urge me) to
defile the marriage bed, to commit adultery at the earliest possible
opportunity.
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS
(in amazon costume, hard hat, jackboots cockspurred, vermilion waistcoat,
fawn musketeer gauntlets with braided 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 Phoenix park at the match All Ireland
versus the Rest of Ireland. My eyes, I know, shone divinely as I watched
Captain Slogger Dennehy of the Inniskillings win the final chukkar on his
darling cob Centaur. This plebeian Don Juan observed me from behind a
hackney car and sent me in double envelopes an obscene photograph, such
as are sold after dark on Paris boulevards, insulting to any lady. I have it
still. It represents a partially nude senorita, frail and lovely (his wife, as he
solemnly assured me, taken by him from nature), practising illicit
intercourse with a muscular torero, evidently a blackguard. He urged me to
do likewise, to misbehave, to sin with officers of the garrison. He implored
me to soil his letter in an unspeakable manner, to chastise him as he richly
deserves, to bestride and ride him, to give him a most vicious
horsewhipping.
MRS BELLINGHAM
Me too.
MRS YELVERTON BARRY
Me too.
(Several highly respectable Dublin ladies hold up improper letters
received from Bloom.)
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS
(stamps her jingling spurs in a sudden paroxysm of fury) I will, by the
God above me. I'll scourge the pigeonlivered cur as long as I can stand over
him. I'll flay him alive.
BLOOM
(his eyes closing, quails expectantly) Here? (he squirms) Again! (he pants
cringing) I love the danger.
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS
Very much so! I'll make it hot for you. I'll make you dance Jack Latten for
that.
MRS BELLINGHAM
Tan his breech well, the upstart! Write the stars and stripes on it!
MRS YELVERTON BARRY
Disgraceful! There's no excuse for him! A married man!
BLOOM
All these people. I meant only the spanking idea. A warm tingling glow
without effusion. Refined birching to stimulate the circulation.
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS
(laughs derisively) O, did you, my fine fellow? Well, by the living God,
you'll get the surprise of your life now, believe me, the most unmerciful
hiding a man ever bargained for. You have lashed the dormant tigress in my
nature into fury.
MRS BELLINGHAM
(shakes her muff and quizzing-glasses vindictively) Make him smart,
Hanna dear. Give him ginger. Thrash the mongrel within an inch of his
life. The cat-o'-nine-tails. Geld him. Vivisect him.
BLOOM
(shuddering, shrinking, joins his hands: with hangdog mien) O cold! O
shivery! It was your ambrosial beauty. Forget, forgive. Kismet. Let me off
this once. (he offers the other cheek)
MRS YELVERTON BARRY
(severely) Don't do so on any account, Mrs Talboys! He should be
soundly trounced!
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS
(unbuttoning her gauntlet violently) I'll do no such thing. Pigdog 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 huntingcrop savagely in the
air) Take down his trousers without loss of time. Come here, sir! Quick!
Ready?
BLOOM
(trembling, beginning to obey) The weather has been so warm.
(Davy Stephens, ringletted, passes with a bevy of barefoot
newsboys.)
DAVY STEPHENS
Messenger of the Sacred Heart and Evening Telegraph with Saint Patrick's
Day supplement. Containing the new addresses of all the cuckolds in
Dublin.
(The very reverend Canon O'Hanlon in cloth of gold cope elevates
and exposes a marble timepiece. Before him Father Conroy and the
reverend John Hughes S. J. bend low.)
THE TIMEPIECE
(unportalling)
Cuckoo.
Cuckoo.
Cuckoo.
(The brass quoits of a bed are heard to jingle.)
THE QUOITS
Jigjag. Jigajiga. Jigjag.
(A panel of fog rolls back rapidly, revealing rapidly in the jurybox
the faces of Martin Cunningham, foreman, silkhatted, Jack Power,
Simon Dedalus, Tom Kernan, Ned Lambert, John Henry Menton
Myles Crawford, Lenehan, Paddy Leonard, Nosey Flynn, M'Coy
and the featureless face of a Nameless One.)
THE NAMELESS ONE
Bareback riding. Weight for age. Gob, he organised her.
THE JURORS
(all their heads turned to his voice) Really?
THE NAMELESS ONE
(snarls) Arse over tip. Hundred shillings to five.
THE JURORS
(all their heads lowered in assent) Most of us thought as much.
FIRST WATCH
He is a marked man. Another girl's plait cut. Wanted: Jack the Ripper. A
thousand pounds reward.
SECOND WATCH
(awed, whispers) And in black. A mormon. Anarchist.
THE CRIER
(loudly) Whereas Leopold Bloom of no fixed abode is a wellknown
dynamitard, forger, bigamist, bawd and cuckold and a public nuisance to
the citizens of Dublin and whereas at this commission of assizes the most
honourable ....
(His Honour, sir Frederick Falkiner, recorder of Dublin, in judicial
garb of grey stone rises from the bench, stonebearded. He bears in
his arms an umbrella sceptre. From his forehead arise starkly the
Mosaic ramshorns.)
THE RECORDER
I will put an end to this white slave traffic and rid Dublin of this odious
pest. Scandalous! (he dons the black cap) Let him be taken, Mr Subsheriff,
from the dock where he now stands and detained in custody in Mountjoy
prison during His Majesty's pleasure and there be hanged by the neck until
he is dead and therein fail not at your peril or may the Lord have mercy on
your soul. Remove him.
(A black skullcap descends upon his head. The subsheriff Long
John Fanning appears, smoking a pungent Henry Clay.)
LONG JOHN FANNING
(scowls and calls with rich rolling utterance) Who'll hang Judas Iscariot?
(H. Rumbold, master barber, in a bloodcoloured jerkin 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 grappling hands, knobbed with knuckledusters.)
RUMBOLD
(to the recorder with sinister familiarity) Hanging Harry, your Majesty,
the Mersey terror. Five guineas a jugular. Neck or nothing.
(The bells of George's church toll slowly, loud dark iron.)
THE BELLS
Heigho! Heigho!
BLOOM
(desperately) Wait. Stop. Gulls. Good heart. I saw. Innocence. Girl in the
monkeyhouse. Zoo. Lewd chimpanzee. (breathlessly) Pelvic basin. Her
artless blush unmanned me. (overcome with emotion) I left the precincts.
(he turns to a figure in the crowd, appealing) Hynes, may I speak to you?
You know me. That three shillings you can keep. If you want a little
more .....
HYNES
(coldly) You are a perfect stranger.
SECOND WATCH
(points to the corner) The bomb is here.
FIRST WATCH
Infernal machine with a time fuse.
BLOOM
No, no. Pig's feet. I was at a funeral.
FIRST WATCH
(draws his truncheon) Liar!
(The beagle lifts his snout, showing the grey scorbutic face of
Paddy Dignam. He has gnawed all. He exhales a putrid carcasefed
breath. He grows to human size and shape. His dachshund coat
becomes a brown mortuary habit His green eye flashes bloodshot
Half of one ear, all the nose and both thumbs are ghouleaten.)
PADDY DIGNAM
(in a hollow voice) It is true. It was my funeral. Doctor Finucane
pronounced life extinct when I succumbed to the disease from natural
causes.
(He lifts his mutilated ashen face moonwards and bays
lugubriously.)
BLOOM
(in triumph) You hear?
PADDY DIGNAM
Bloom, I am Paddy Dignam's spirit. List, list, O list!
BLOOM
The voice is the voice of Esau.
SECOND WATCH
(blesses himself) How is that possible?
FIRST WATCH
It is not in the penny catechism.
PADDY DIGNAM
By metempsychosis. Spooks.
A VOICE
O rocks.
PADDY DIGNAM
(earnestly) Once I was in the employ of Mr J. H. Menton, solicitor,
commissioner for oaths and affidavits, of 27 Bachelor's Walk. Now I am
defunct, the wall of the heart hypertrophied. Hard lines. The poor wife was
awfully cut up. How 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, toadbellied, wrynecked, in a surplice and
bandanna nightcap, holding sleepily a staff twisted poppies.)
FATHER COFFEY
(yawns, then chants with a hoarse croak) Namine. Jacobs. Vobiscuits.
Amen.
JOHN O'CONNELL
(foghorns stormily through his megaphone) Dignam, Patrick T, deceased.
PADDY DIGNAM
(with pricked up ears, winces) Overtones. (he wriggles forward and
places an ear to the ground) My master's voice!
JOHN O'CONNELL
Burial docket letter number U. P. eightyfive thousand. Field seventeen.
House of Keys. Plot, one hundred and one.
(Paddy Dignam listens with visible effort, thinking, his tail
stiffpointcd, his ears cocked.)
PADDY DIGNAM
Pray for the repose of his soul.
(He worms down through a coalhole, 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 twocolumned machine.)
TOM ROCHFORD
(a hand to his breastbone, bows) Reuben J. A florin I find him. (he fixes
the manhole with a resolute stare) My turn now on. Follow me up to
Carlow.
(He executes a daredevil salmon leap in the air and is engulfed in
the coalhole. Two discs on the columns wobble, eyes of nought All
recedes. Bloom plodges forward again through the sump. Kisses
chirp amid the rifts of fog A piano sounds. He stands before a
lighted house, listening. The kisses, winging from their bowers fly
about him, twittering, warbling, cooing.)
THE KISSES
(warbling) Leo! (twittering) Icky licky micky sticky for Leo! (cooing)
Coo coocoo! Yummyyum, Womwom! (warbling) Big comebig! Pirouette!
Leopopold! (twittering) Leeolee! (warbling) O Leo!
(They rustle, flutter upon his garments, alight, bright giddy flecks,
silvery sequins.)
BLOOM
A man's touch. Sad music. Church music. Perhaps here.
(Zoe Higgins, a young whore in a sapphire slip, closed with three
bronze buckles, a slim black velvet fillet round her throat, nods,
trips down the steps and accosts him.)
ZOE
Are you looking for someone? He's inside with his friend.
BLOOM
Is this Mrs Mack's?
ZOE
No, eightyone. Mrs Cohen's. You might go farther and fare worse. Mother
Slipperslapper. (familiarly) She's on the job herself tonight with the vet her
tipster that gives her all the winners and pays for her son in Oxford.
Working overtime but her luck's turned today. (suspiciously) You're not
his father, are you?
BLOOM
Not I!
ZOE
You both in black. Has little mousey any tickles tonight?
(His skin, alert, feels her fingertips approach. A hand glides over
his left thigh.)
ZOE
How's the nuts?
BLOOM
Off side. Curiously they are on the right. Heavier, I suppose. One in a
million my tailor, Mesias, says.
ZOE
(in sudden alarm) You've a hard chancre.
BLOOM
Not likely.
ZOE
I feel it.
(Her hand slides into his left trouser pocket and brings out a hard
black shrivelled potato. She regards it and Bloom with dumb moist
lips.)
BLOOM
A talisman. Heirloom.
ZOE
For Zoe? For keeps? For being so nice, eh?
(She puts the potato greedily into a pocket then links his arm,
cuddling him with supple warmth. He smiles uneasily. Slowly, note
by note, oriental music is played. He gazes in the tawny crystal of
her eyes, ringed with kohol. His smile softens.)
ZOE
You'll know me the next time.
BLOOM
(forlornly) I never loved a dear gazelle but it was sure to ....
(Gazelles are leaping, feeding on the mountains. Near are lakes.
Round their shores file shadows black of cedargroves. Aroma rises,
a strong hairgrowth of resin. It burns, the orient, a sky of sapphire,
cleft by the bronze flight of eagles. Under it lies the womancity
nude, white, still, cool, in luxury. A fountain murmurs among
damask roses. Mammoth roses murmur of scarlet winegrapes. A
wine of shame, lust, blood exudes, strangely murmuring.)
ZOE
(murmuring singsong with the music, her odalisk lips lusciously smeared
with salve of swinefat and rosewater) Schorach ani wenowach, benoith
Hierushaloim.
BLOOM
(fascinated) I thought you were of good stock by your accent.
ZOE
And you know what thought did?
(She bites his ear gently with little goldstopped teeth, sending on
him a cloying breath of stale garlic The roses draw apart, disclose a
sepulchre of the gold of kings and their mouldering bones.)
BLOOM
(draws back, mechanically caressing her right bub with a flat awkward
hand) Are you a Dublin girl?
ZOE
(catches a stray hair deftly and twists it to her coil) No bloody fear. I'm
English. Have you a swaggerroot?
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
Go on. Make a stump speech out of it.
BLOOM
(in workman's corduroy overalls, black gansy with red floating tie and
apache cap) Mankind is incorrigible. Sir Walter Ralegh 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!
(Midnight chimes from distant steeples.)
THE CHIMES
Turn again, Leopold! Lord mayor of Dublin!
BLOOM
(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 bucaneering Vanderdeckens in their
phantom ship of finance .....
AN ELECTOR
Three times three for our future chief magistrate!
(The aurora borealis of the torchlight procession leaps.)
THE TORCHBEARERS
Hooray!
(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.)
LATE LORD MAYOR HARRINGTON
(in scarlet robe with mace, gold mayoral chain and large white silk scarf)
That alderman 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.
COUNCILLOR LORCAN SHERLOCK
Carried unanimously.
BLOOM
(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,
bugbears, 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 ...
(Prolonged applause. Venetian masts, maypoles and festal arches
spring up. A streamer bearing the legends Cead Mile 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 King's Own Scottish
Borderers, 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, his lordship the lord mayor of Cork, their worships the
mayors of Limerick, Galway, Sligo and Waterford, 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. After them march the guilds and trades and
trainbands with flying colours: coopers, bird fanciers, millwrights,
newspaper canvassers, law scriveners, masseurs, vintners,
trussmakers, chimneysweeps, lard refiners, tabinet and poplin
weavers, farriers, Italian warehousemen, church decorators,
bootjack manufacturers, undertakers, silk mercers, lapidaries,
salesmasters, corkcutters, assessors of fire losses, dyers and cleaners,
export bottlers, fellmongers, ticketwriters, heraldic seal engravers,
horse repository hands, bullion brokers, cricket and archery
outfitters, riddlemakers, egg and potato factors, hosiers and glovers,
plumbing contractors. After them march gentlemen of the
bedchamber, Black Rod, Deputy Garter, Gold Stick, the master of
horse, 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. Beefeaters
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 horse with long
flowing crimson tail, richly caparisoned, with golden headstall. 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.)
BLOOM'S BOYS
The wren, the wren,
The king of all birds,
Saint Stephen's his day
Was caught in the furze.
A BLACKSMITH
(murmurs) For the honour of God! And is that Bloom? He scarcely looks
thirtyone.
A PAVIOR AND FLAGGER
That's the famous Bloom now, the world's greatest reformer. Hats off!
(All uncover their heads. Women whisper eagerly.)
A MILLIONAIRESS
(richly) Isn't he simply wonderful?
A NOBLEWOMAN
(nobly) All that man has seen!
A FEMINIST
(masculinely) And done!
A BELLHANGER
A classic face! He has the forehead of a thinker.
(Bloom's weather. A sunburst appears in the northwest.)
THE BISHOP OF DOWN AND CONNOR
I here present your undoubted emperor-president and king-chairman, the
most serene and potent and very puissant ruler of this realm. God save
Leopold the First!
ALL
God save Leopold the First!
BLOOM
(in dalmatic and purple mantle, to the bishop of Down and Connor, with
dignity) Thanks, somewhat eminent sir.
WILLIAM, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH
(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?
BLOOM
(placing his right hand on his testicles, swears) So may the Creator deal
with me. All this I promise to do.
MICHAEL, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH
(pours a cruse of hairoil over Bloom's head) Gaudium magnum annuntio
vobis. Habemus carneficem. Leopold, Patrick, Andrew, David, George, be
thou anointed!
(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.)
THE PEERS
I do become your liege man of life and limb to earthly worship.
(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.)
BLOOM
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 moonblue 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!
BLOOM
(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.
(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.)
TOM KERNAN
You deserve it, your honour.
BLOOM
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.
THE CHAPEL OF FREEMAN TYPESETTERS
Hear! Hear!
JOHN WYSE NOLAN
There's the man that got away James Stephens.
A BLUECOAT SCHOOLBOY
Bravo!
AN OLD RESIDENT
You're a credit to your country, sir, that's what you are.
AN APPLEWOMAN
He's a man like Ireland wants.
BLOOM
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.
(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 fill from a ladder. A part of the
walls of Dublin, crowded with loyal sightseers, collapses.)
THE SIGHTSEERS
(dying) Morituri te salutant. (they die)
(A man in a brown macintosh springs up through a trapdoor. He
points an elongated finger at Bloom.)
THE MAN IN THE MACINTOSH
Don't you believe a word he says. That man is Leopold M'Intosh, the
notorious fireraiser. His real name is Higgins.
BLOOM
Shoot him! Dog of a christian! So much for M'Intosh!
(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 tramlines, 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), Loveletters 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.)
THE WOMEN
Little father! Little father!
THE BABES AND SUCKLINGS
Clap clap hands till Poldy comes home,
Cakes in his pocket for Leo alone.
(Bloom, bending down, pokes Baby Boardman gently in the
stomach.)
BABY BOARDMAN
(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 fit
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!
THE CITIZEN
(choked with emotion, brushes aside a tear in his emerald muffler) May the
good God bless him!
(The rams' horns sound for silence. The standard of Zion is
hoisted.)
BLOOM
(uncloaks impressively, revealing obesity, unrolls a paper and reads
solemnly) Aleph Beth Ghimel Daleth Hagadah Tephilim Kosher Yom
Kippur Hanukah Roschaschana Beni Brith Bar Mitzvah Mazzoth
Askenazim Meshuggah Talith.
(An official translation is read by Jimmy Henry, assistant town
clerk.)
JIMMY HENRY
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.
PADDY LEONARD
What am I to do about my rates and taxes?
BLOOM
Pay them, my friend.
PADDY LEONARD
Thank you.
NOSEY FLYNN
Can I raise a mortgage on my fire insurance?
BLOOM
(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.
J. J. O'MOLLOY
A Daniel did I say? Nay! A Peter O'Brien!
NOSEY FLYNN
Where do I draw the five pounds?
PISSER BURKE
For bladder trouble?
BLOOM
Acid. nit. hydrochlor. dil., 20 minims
Tinct. nux vom., 5 minims
Extr. taraxel. Iiq., 30 minims.
Aq. dis. ter in die.
CHRIS CALLINAN
What is the parallax of the subsolar ecliptic of Aldebaran?
BLOOM
Pleased to hear from you, Chris. K. II.
JOE HYNES
Why aren't you in uniform?
BLOOM
When my progenitor of sainted memory wore the uniform of the Austrian
despot in a dank prison where was yours?
BEN DOLLARD
Pansies?
BLOOM
Embellish (beautify) suburban gardens.
BEN DOLLARD
When twins arrive?
BLOOM
Father (pater, dad) starts thinking.
LARRY O'ROURKE
An eightday 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.
BLOOM
(coldly) You have the advantage of me. Lady Bloom accepts no presents.
CROFTON
This is indeed a festivity.
BLOOM
(solemnly) You call it a festivity. I call it a sacrament.
ALEXANDER KEYES
When will we have our own house of keys?
BLOOM
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 language with universal
brotherhood. No more patriotism of barspongers and dropsical impostors.
Free money, free rent, free love and a free lay church in a free lay state.
O'MADDEN BURKE
Free fox in a free henroost.
DAVY BYRNE
(yawning) Iiiiiiiiiaaaaaaach!
BLOOM
Mixed races and mixed marriage.
LENEHAN
What about mixed bathing?
(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.)
FATHER FARLEY
He is an episcopalian, an agnostic, an anythingarian seeking to overthrow
our holy faith.
MRS RIORDAN
(tears up her will) I'm disappointed in you! You bad man!
MOTHER GROGAN
(removes her boot to throw it at Bloom) You beast! You abominable
person!
NOSEY FLYNN
Give us a tune, Bloom. One of the old sweet songs.
BLOOM
(with rollicking humour)
I vowed that I never would leave her,
She turned out a cruel deceiver.
With my tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom.
HOPPY HOLOHAN
Good old Bloom! There's nobody like him after all.
PADDY LEONARD
Stage Irishman!
BLOOM
What railway opera is like a tramline in Gibraltar? The Rows of Casteele.
(Laughter.)
LENEHAN
Plagiarist! Down with Bloom!
THE VEILED SIBYL
(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
(winks at the bystanders) I bet she's a bonny lassie.
THEODORE PUREFOY
(in fishingcap and oilskin jacket) He employs a mechanical device to
frustrate the sacred ends of nature.
THE VEILED SIBYL
(stabs herself) My hero god! (she dies)
(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 gasovens, hanging themselves in stylish garters, leaping from
windows of different storeys.)
ALEXANDER J DOWIE
(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!
THE MOB
Lynch him! Roast him! He's as bad as Parnell was. Mr Fox!
(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, sheep's tails, odd pieces of fat.)
BLOOM
(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, sgeul i mbarr bata coisde gan
capall. I call on my old friend, Dr Malachi Mulligan, sex specialist, to give
medical testimony on my behalf.
DR MULLIGAN
(in motor jerkin, green motorgoggles 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.
(Bloom holds his high grade hat over his genital organs.)
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 CROTTHERS
I have examined the patient's urine. It is albuminoid. Salivation is
insufficient, the patellar reflex intermittent.
DR PUNCH COSTELLO
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 feebleminded 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 of pure
Irish manufacture 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, blank cheques, banknotes, jewels, treasury bonds, maturing
bills of exchange, I. O. U's, wedding rings, watchchains, lockets,
necklaces and bracelets are rapidly collected.)
BLOOM
O, I so want to be a mother.
MRS THORNTON
(in nursetender's gown) Embrace me tight, dear. You'll be soon over it.
Tight, dear.
(Bloom embraces her tightly and bears eight male yellow and white
children. They appear on a redcarpeted staircase adorned with
expensive plants. All the octuplets 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, Maindor’e,
Silversmile, Silberselber, Vifargent, Panargyros. 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, vicechairmen
of hotel syndicates.)
A VOICE
Bloom, are you the Messiah ben Joseph or ben David?
BLOOM
(darkly) You have said it.
BROTHER BUZZ
Then perform a miracle like Father Charles.
BANTAM LYONS
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 top
ledge by his eyelids, eats twelve dozen oysters (shells included),
heals several sufferers from king's 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, Kossuth, 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.)
BRINI, PAPAL NUNCIO
(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 begat 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.
A DEADHAND
(writes on the wall) Bloom is a cod.
CRAB
(in bushranger's kit) What did you do in the cattlecreep behind
Kilbarrack?
A FEMALE INFANT
(shakes a rattle) And under Ballybough bridge?
A HOLLYBUSH
And in the devil's glen?
BLOOM
(blushes furiously all over from frons to nates, three tears filling from his
left eye) Spare my past.
THE IRISH EVICTED TENANTS
(in bodycoats, kneebreeches, with Donnybrook fair shillelaghs) Sjambok
him!
(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 ARTANE ORPHANS
You hig, you hog, you dirty dog!
You think the ladies love you!
THE PRISON GATE GIRLS
If you see Kay
Tell him he may
See you in tea
Tell him from me.
HORNBLOWER
(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.
(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.)
MASTIANSKY AND CITRON
Belial! Laemlein of Istria, the false Messiah! Abulafia! Recant!
(George R Mesias, Bloom's tailor, appears, a tailor's goose under
his arm, presenting a bill)
MESIAS
To alteration one pair trousers eleven shillings.
BLOOM
(rubs his hands cheerfully) Just like old times. Poor Bloom!
(Reuben J Dodd, blackbearded Iscariot, bad shepherd, bearing on
his shoulders the drowned corpse of his son, approaches the
pillory.)
REUBEN J
(whispers hoarsely) The squeak is out. A split is gone for the flatties. Nip
the first rattler.
THE FIRE BRIGADE
Pflaap!
BROTHER BUZZ
(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.
(Lieutenant Myers of the Dublin Fire Brigade by general request
sets fire to Bloom. Lamentations.)
THE CITIZEN
Thank heaven!
BLOOM
(in a seamless garment marked I. H. S. stands upright amid phoenix
flames) Weep not for me, O daughters of Erin. (he exhibits to Dublin
reporters traces of burning)
(The daughters of Erin, in black garments, with large prayerbooks
and long lighted candles in their hands, kneel down and pray.)
THE DAUGHTERS OF ERIN
Kidney of Bloom, pray for us
Flower of the Bath, pray for us
Mentor of Menton, pray for us
Canvasser for the Freeman, pray for us
Charitable Mason, pray for us
Wandering Soap, pray for us
Sweets of Sin, pray for us
Music without Words, pray for us
Reprover of the Citizen, pray for us
Friend of all Frillies, pray for us
Midwife Most Merciful, pray for us
Potato Preservative against Plague and Pestilence, pray for us.
(A choir of six hundred voices, conducted by Vincent O'Brien,
sings the chorus from Handel's Messiah Alleluia for the Lord God
Omnipotent reigneth, accompanied on the organ by Joseph Glynn.
Bloom becomes mute, shrunken, carbonised.)
ZOE
Talk away till you're black in the face.
BLOOM
(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.
ZOE
(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!
BLOOM
(bitterly) Man and woman, love, what is it? A cork and bottle. I'm sick of
it. Let everything rip.
ZOE
(in sudden sulks) I hate a rotter that's insincere. Give a bleeding whore a
chance.
BLOOM
(repentantly) I am very disagreeable. You are a necessary evil. Where are
you from? London?
ZOE
(glibly) Hog's Norton where the pigs plays 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
(smiles, nods slowly) More, houri, more.
ZOE
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.
BLOOM
(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.
ZOE
(flattered) What the eye can't see the heart can't grieve for. (she pats him)
Come.
BLOOM
Laughing witch! The hand that rocks the cradle.
ZOE
Babby!
BLOOM
(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 lolling and lisping) One two tlee: tlee tlwo tlone.
THE BUCKLES
Love me. Love me not. Love me.
ZOE
Silent means consent. (With little parted talons she captures his hand, her
forefinger giving to his palm the passtouch of secret monitor, luring him to
doom.) Hot hands cold gizzard.
(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.)
THE MALE BRUTES
(exhaling sulphur of rut and dung and ramping in their loosebox, faintly
roaring, their drugged heads swaying to and fro) Good!
(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
(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
Ladies first, gentlemen after.
(She crosses the threshold. He hesitates. She turns and, holding out
her hands, draws him over. He hops. On the antlered 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 flung open. A man in purple shirt and grey trousers,
brownsocked, passes with an ape's 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 tapestried with a paper
of yewfronds and clear glades. In the grate is spread a screen of
peacock feathers. Lynch squats crosslegged on the hearthrug 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 corsetlace hangs slightly below her jacket Lynch indicates
mockingly the couple at the piano.)
KITTY
(coughs behind her hand) She's a bit imbecillic. (she signs with a waggling
forefinger) Blemblem. (Lynch lifts up her skirt and white petticoat with his
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!
ZOE
More limelight, Charley. (she goes to the chandelier and turns the gas full
cock)
KITTY
(peers at the gasjet) What ails it tonight?
LYNCH
(deeply) Enter a ghost and hobgoblins.
ZOE
Clap on the back for Zoe.
(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 sofacorner, her limp
forearm pendent over the bolster, listening. A heavy stye droops
over her sleepy eyelid.)
KITTY
(hiccups again with a kick of her horsed foot) O, excuse!
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 Coela 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 the alrightness of 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
(with saturnine spleen) Ba! It is because it is. Woman's reason. Jewgreek is
greekjew. Extremes meet. Death is the highest form of life. Ba!
STEPHEN
You remember fairly accurately all my errors, boasts, mistakes. How long
shall I continue to close my eyes to disloyalty? Whetstone!
THE CAP
Ba!
STEPHEN
Here's another for you. (he frowns) The reason is because the
fundamental and the dominant are separated by the greatest possible
interval which ....
THE CAP
Which? Finish. You can't.
STEPHEN
(with an effort) Interval which. Is the greatest possible ellipse. Consistent
with. The ultimate return. The octave. Which.
THE CAP
Which?
(Outside the gramophone begins to blare The Holy City.)
STEPHEN
(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!
LYNCH
(with a mocking whinny of laughter grins at Bloom and Zoe Higgins)
What a learned speech, eh?
ZOE
(briskly) God help your head, he knows more than you have forgotten.
(With obese stupidity Florry Talbot regards Stephen.)
FLORRY
They say the last day is coming this summer.
KITTY
No!
ZOE
(explodes in laughter) Great unjust God!
FLORRY
(offended) Well, it was in the papers about Antichrist. O, my foot's
tickling.
(Ragged barefoot newsboys, jogging a wagtail kite, patter past,
yelling.)
THE NEWSBOYS
Stop press edition. Result of the rockinghorse races. Sea serpent in the
royal canal. Safe arrival of Antichrist.
(Stephen turns and sees Bloom.)
STEPHEN
A time, times and half a time.
(Reuben I Antichrist, wandering jew, a clutching hand open on his
spine, stumps forward. Across his loins is slung a pilgrim's 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.)
ALL
What?
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 primigSne! (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 sont faits! (the planets rush
together, uttering crepitant cracks) Rien va plus! (The planets, buoyant
balloons, sail swollen up and away. He springs off into vacuum.)
FLORRY
(sinking into torpor, crossing herself secretly) The end of the world!
(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 GRAMOPHONE
Jerusalem!
Open your gates and sing
Hosanna ....
(A rocket rushes up the sky and bursts. A white star fills from it,
proclaiming the consummation of all things and second coming of
Elijah. Along an infinite invisible tightrope taut from zenith to nadir
the End of the World, a twoheaded octopus in gillie's kilts, busby
and tartan filibegs, whirls through the murk, head over heels, in the
form of the Three Legs of Man.)
THE END OF THE WORLD
(with a Scotch accent) Wha'll dance the keel row, the keel row, the keel
row?
(Over the possing drift and choking breathcoughs, Elijah's voice,
harsh as a corncrake's, jars on high. Perspiring in a loose lawn
surplice with funnel sleeves he is seen, vergerfaced, above a rostrum
about which the banner of old glory is draped. He thumps the
parapet.)
ELIJAH
No yapping, if you please, in this booth. Jake Crane, Creole Sue, Dove
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) Whorusalaminyourhighhohhhh... (the disc rasps
gratingly against the needle)
THE THREE WHORES
(covering their ears, squawk) Ahhkkk!
ELIJAH
(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 aint
saying nothing.
KITTY-KATE
I forgot myself. In a weak moment I erred and did what I did on
Constitution hill. I was confirmed by the bishop and enrolled in the brown
scapular. My mother's sister married a Montmorency. It was a working
plumber was my ruination when I was pure.
ZOE-FANNY
I let him larrup it into me for the fun of it.
FLORRY-TERESA
It was in consequence of a portwine beverage on top of Hennessy's three
star. I was guilty with Whelan when he slipped into the bed.
STEPHEN
In the beginning was the word, in the end the world without end. Blessed be
the eight beatitudes.
(The beatitudes, Dixon, Madden, Crotthers, Costello, Lenehan,
Bannon, Mulligan and Lynch in white surgical students' gowns,
four abreast, goosestepping, tramp fist past in noisy marching)
THE BEATITUDES
(incoherently) Beer beef battledog buybull businum barnum buggerum
bishop.
LYSTER
(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's attire, shinily
laundered, his locks in curlpapers. He leads John Eglinton who
wears a mandarin's kimono of Nankeen yellow, lizardlettered, and
a high pagoda hat.)
BEST
(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.
JOHN EGLINTON
(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.
(In the cone of the searchlight behind the coalscuttle, ollave,
holyeyed, the bearded figure of Mananaun MacLir broods, chin on
knees. He rises slowly. A cold seawind blows from his druid mouth.
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.)
MANANAUN MACLIR
(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, darkhidden Father! (He smites with his
bicycle pump the crayfish in his left hand. On its cooperative 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.
(A skeleton judashand strangles the light. The green light wanes to
mauve. The gasjet wails whistling.)
THE GASJET
Pooah! Pfuiiiiiii!
(Zoe runs to the chandelier and, crooking her leg, adjusts the
mantle.)
ZOE
Who has a fag as I'm here?
LYNCH
(tossing a cigarette on to the table) Here.
ZOE
(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 beautyspot of my behind?
LYNCH
I'm not looking
ZOE
(makes sheep's eyes) No? You wouldn't do a less thing. Would you suck a
lemon?
(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
(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.
BLOOM
Granpapachi. But .....
VIRAG
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?
BLOOM
She is rather lean.
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
(an elbow resting in a hand, a forefinger against his cheek) She seems sad.
VIRAG
(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 Columbus. 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
(regretfully) When you come out without your gun.
VIRAG
We can do you all brands, mild, medium and strong. Pay your money, take
your choice. How happy could you be with either...
BLOOM
With ...?
VIRAG
(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.
BLOOM
The stye I dislike.
VIRAG
(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 Ichthyosauros. 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.
BLOOM
(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 ...
VIRAG
(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 S santa. Tara. Tara. (aside) He will surely
remember.
BLOOM
Rosemary also did I understand you to say or willpower over parasitic
tissues. Then nay no I have an inkling. The touch of a deadhand cures.
Mnemo?
VIRAG
(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 1886 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 gussetted
knickers, closed? Or, put we the case, those complicated combinations,
camiknickers? (he crows derisively) Keekeereekee!
(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
morrow as now was be past yester.
VIRAG
(prompts in a pig's whisper) Insects of the day spend their brief existence
in reiterated coition, lured by the smell of the inferiorly pulchritudinous
fumale possessing extendified pudendal nerve 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! (he blows into Bloom's ear) Buzz!
BLOOM
Bee or bluebottle too other day butting shadow on wall dazed self then me
wandered dazed down shirt good job I ....
VIRAG
(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 his head with cackling raillery) Jocular. With
my eyeglass in my ocular. (he sneezes) Amen!
BLOOM
(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 contradicts. 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.
VIRAG
(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 the known ....
BLOOM
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.
VIRAG
(head askew, arches his back and hunched wingshoulders, peers at the
moth out of blear bulged eyes, points a horning claw and cries) Who's
moth moth? Who's dear Gerald? Dear Ger, that you? O dear, he is 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) Puss puss puss puss! (he sighs, draws back and
stares sideways down with dropping underjaw) Well, well. He doth rest
anon. (he snaps his jaws suddenly on the air)
THE MOTH
I'm a tiny tiny thing
Ever flying in the spring
Round and round a ringaring.
Long ago I was a king
Now I do this kind of thing
On the wing, on the wing!
Bing!
(he rushes against the mauve shade, flapping noisily)
Pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty petticoats.
(From left upper entrance with two gliding 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 Jacob's 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.)
HENRY
(in a low dulcet voice, touching the strings of his guitar) There is a flower
that bloometh.
(Virag truculent, his jowl set, stares at the lamp. Grave Bloom
regards Zoe's neck. Henry gallant turns with pendant dewlap to the
piano.)
STEPHEN
(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.
(Almidano Artifoni holds out a batonroll of music with vigorous
moustachework.)
ARTIFONI
Ci rifletta. Lei rovina tutto.
FLORRY
Sing us something. Love's old sweet song.
STEPHEN
No voice. I am a most finished artist. Lynch, did I show you the letter about
the lute?
FLORRY
(smirking) The bird that can sing and won't sing.
(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.)
PHILIP SOBER
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 DRUNK
(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? (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?
FLORRY
And the song?
STEPHEN
Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.
FLORRY
Are you out of Maynooth? You're like someone I knew once.
STEPHEN
Out of it now. (to himself) Clever.
PHILIP DRUNK AND PHILIP SOBER
(their lawnmowers purring with a rigadoon of grasshalms) Clever ever.
Out of it out of it. By the bye have you the book, the thing, the ashplant?
Yes, there it, yes. Cleverever outofitnow. Keep in condition. Do like us.
ZOE
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.
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 grapses 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!
LYNCH
I hope you gave the good father a penance. Nine glorias for shooting a
bishop.
ZOE
(spouts walrus smoke through her nostrils) He couldn't get a connection.
Only, you know, sensation. A dry rush.
BLOOM
Poor man!
ZOE
(lightly) Only for what happened him.
BLOOM
How?
VIRAG
(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 Iacchia, 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.
KITTY
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.
PHILIP DRUNK
(gravely) Qui vous a mis dans cette fichue position, Philippe?
PHILIP SOBER
(gaily) C'etait le sacr’ pigeon, Philippe.
(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 whore's shoulders. Lynch puts on her hat. She whips it off.)
LYNCH
(laughs) And to such delights has Metchnikoff inoculated anthropoid apes.
FLORRY
(nods) Locomotor ataxy.
ZOE
(gaily) O, my dictionary.
LYNCH
Three wise virgins.
VIRAG
(agueshaken, profuse yellow spawn foaming over his bony epileptic lips)
She sold lovephiltres, whitewax, orangeflower. 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!
(Ben Jumbo Dollard, rubicund, musclebound, hairynostrilled,
hugebearded, cabbageeared, shaggychested, shockmaned, fat-
papped, stands forth, his loins and genitals tightened into a pair
of black bathing bagslops.)
BEN DOLLARD
(nakkering castanet bones in his huge padded paws, yodels jovially in base
barreltone) When love absorbs my ardent soul.
(The virgins Nurse Callan and Nurse Quigley burst through the
ringkeepers and the ropes and mob him with open arms.)
THE VIRGINS
(gushingly) Big Ben! Ben my Chree!
A VOICE
Hold that fellow with the bad breeches.
BEN DOLLARD
(smites his thigh in abundant laughter) Hold him now.
HENRY
(caressing on his breast a severed female head, murmurs) Thine heart,
mine love. (he plucks his lutestrings) When first I saw ...
VIRAG
(sloughing his skins, his multitudinous plumage moulting) Rats! (he
yawns, showing a coalblack throat, and closes his jaws by an upward push
of his parchmentroll) After having said which I took my departure.
Farewell. Fare thee well. Dreck!
(Henry Flower combs his moustache and beard rapidly with a
pocketcomb and gives a cow's lick to his hair. Steered by his rapier,
he glides to the door, his wild harp 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.)
THE FLYBILL
K. II. Post No Bills. Strictly confidential. Dr Hy Franks.
HENRY
All is lost now.
(Virag unscrews his head in a trice and holds it under his arm.)
VIRAG'S HEAD
Quack!
(Exeunt severally.)
STEPHEN
(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 Arius Heresiarchus. The agony in the closet.
LYNCH
All one and the same God to her.
STEPHEN
(devoutly) And sovereign Lord of all things.
FLORRY
(to Stephen) I'm sure you're a spoiled priest. Or a monk.
LYNCH
He is. A cardinal's son.
STEPHEN
Cardinal sin. Monks of the screw.
(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 large wave gestures and proclaims with
bloated pomp:)
THE CARDINAL
Conservio lies captured
He lies in the lowest dungeon
With manacles and chains around his limbs
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, arms akimbo, and sings with broad rollicking humour:)
O, the poor little fellow
Hihihihihis 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.
(A multitude of midges swarms white 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.
(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
trainbearers.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!
(The trick doorhandle turns.)
THE DOORHANDLE
Theeee!
ZOE
The devil is in that door.
(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
(sniffs his hair briskly) Hmmm! Thank your mother for the rabbits. I'm
very fond of what I like.
BLOOM
(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?
ZOE
(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!
(She tosses a piece. With an adroit snap he catches it and bites it
through with a crack.)
KITTY
(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.
BLOOM
(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!
(A male cough and tread are heard passing through the mist
outside. Bloom's features relax. He places a hand in his waistcoat,
posing calmly. Zoe offers him chocolate.)
BLOOM
(solemnly) Thanks.
ZOE
Do as you're bid. Here!
(A firm heelclacking tread is heard on the stairs.)
BLOOM
(takes the chocolate) Aphrodisiac? Tansy and pennyroyal. But I bought 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.
(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 large pendant beryl eardrops.)
BELLA
My word! I'm all of a mucksweat.
(She glances round her at the couples Then her eyes rest on Bloom
with hard insistence. Her large fan winnows wind towards her
heated faceneck and embonpoint. Her falcon eyes glitter.)
THE FAN
(flirting quickly, then slowly) Married, I see.
BLOOM
Yes. Partly, I have mislaid.....
THE FAN
(half opening, then closing) And the missus is master. Petticoat
government.
BLOOM
(looks down with a sheepish grin) That is so.
THE FAN
(folding together, rests against her left eardrop) Have you forgotten me?
BLOOM
Nes. Yo.
THE FAN
(folded akimbo against her waist) Is me her was you dreamed before? Was
then she him you us since knew? Am all them and the same now me?
(Bella approaches, gently tapping with the fan.)
BLOOM
(wincing) Powerful being. In my eyes read that slumber which women
love.
THE FAN
(tapping) We have met. You are mine. It is fate.
BLOOM
(cowed) Exuberant female. Enormously I desiderate your domination. I
am exhausted, abandoned, no more young. I stand, so to speak, with an
unposted letter bearing the extra regulation fee before the too late box of the
general postoffice of human life. The door and window open at a right
angle cause a draught of thirtytwo feet per second according to the law of
falling bodies. I have felt this instant a twinge of sciatica in my left glutear
muscle. It runs in our family. Poor dear papa, a widower, was a regular
barometer from it. He believed in animal heat. A skin of tabby lined his
winter waistcoat. Near the end, remembering king David and the Sunamite,
he shared his bed with Athos, faithful after death. A dog's spittle as you
probably.... (he winces) Ah!
RICHIE GOULDING
(bagweighted, passes the door) Mocking is catch. Best value in Dub. Fit for
a prince's. Liver and kidney.
THE FAN
(tapping) All things end. Be mine. Now,
BLOOM
(undecided) All now? I should not have parted with my talisman. Rain,
exposure at dewfall on the searocks, a peccadillo at my time of life. Every
phenomenon has a natural cause.
THE FAN
(points downwards slowly) You may.
BLOOM
(looks downwards and perceives her unfastened bootlace) We are
observed.
THE FAN
(points downwards quickly) You must.
BLOOM
(with desire, with reluctance) I can make a true black knot. Learned when
I served my time and worked the mail order line for Kellett's. Experienced
hand. Every knot says a lot. Let me. In courtesy. I knelt once before today.
(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, aging, bends over her hoof and with
gentle fingers draws out and in her laces.)
BLOOM
(murmurs lovingly) To be a shoefitter in Manfield'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 impossibly
small, of Clyde Road ladies. Even their wax model Raymonde I visited daily
to admire her cobweb hose and stick of rhubarb toe, as worn in Paris.
THE HOOF
Smell my hot goathide. Feel my royal weight.
BLOOM
(crosslacing) Too tight?
THE HOOF
If you bungle, Handy Andy, I'll kick your football for you.
BLOOM
Not to lace the wrong eyelet as I did the night of the bazaar dance. Bad
luck. Hook in wrong tache of her .... person you mentioned. That night she
met.... Now!
(He knots the lace. Bella places her foot on the floor. Bloom raises
his head. Her heavy face, her eyes strike him in midbrow. His eyes
grow dull, darker and pouched, his nose thickens.)
BLOOM
(mumbles) Awaiting your further orders we remain, gentlemen, ....
BELLO
(with a hard basilisk stare, in a baritone voice) Hound of dishonour!
BLOOM
(infatuated) Empress!
BELLO
(his heavy cheekchops sagging) Adorer of the adulterous rump!
BLOOM
(plaintively) Hugeness!
BELLO
Dungdevourer!
BLOOM
(with sinews semiflexed) Magmagnificence!
BELLO
Down! (he taps her on the shoulder with his fan) Incline feet forward!
Slide left foot one pace back! You will fall. You are falling. On the hands
down!
BLOOM
(her eyes upturned in the sign of admiration, closing, yaps) Truffles!
(With a piercing epileptic cry she sinks on all fours, grunting,
snuffling, rooting at his feet: then lies, shamming dead, with eyes
shut tight, trembling eyelids, bowed upon the ground in the attitude
of most excellent master.)
BELLO
(with bobbed hair, purple gills, fit moustache rings round his shaven
mouth, in mountaineer's puttees, green silverbuttoned coat, sport skirt and
alpine hat with moorcock's feather, his hands stuck deep in his breeches
pockets, places his heel on her neck and grinds it in) Footstool! Feel my
entire weight. Bow, bondslave, before the throne of your despot's glorious
heels so glistening in their proud erectness.
BLOOM
(enthralled, bleats) I promise never to disobey.
BELLO
(laughs loudly) Holy smoke! You little know what's in store for you. I'm
the Tartar to settle your little lot and break you in! I'll bet Kentucky
cocktails all round I shame it out of you, old son. Cheek me, I dare you. If
you do tremble in anticipation of heel discipline to be inflicted in gym
costume.
(Bloom creeps under the sofa and peers out through the fringe.)
ZOE
(widening her slip to screen her) She's not here.
BLOOM
(closing her eyes) She's not here.
FLORRY
(hiding her with her gown) She didn't mean it, Mr Bello. She'll be good,
sir.
KITTY
Don't be too hard on her, Mr Bello. Sure you won't, ma'amsir.
BELLO
(coaxingly) Come, ducky dear, I want a word with you, darling, just to
administer correction. Just a little heart to heart talk, sweety. (Bloom puts
out her timid head) There's a good girly now. (Bello grabs her hair
violently and drags her forward) I only want to correct you for your own
good on a soft safe spot. How's that tender behind? O, ever so gently, pet.
Begin to get ready.
BLOOM
(fainting) Don't tear my ...
BELLO
(savagely) The nosering, the pliers, the bastinado, the hanging hook, the
knout I'll make you kiss while the flutes play like the Nubian slave of old.
You're in for it this time! I'll make you remember me for the balance of
your natural life. (his forehead veins swollen, his face congested) I shall sit
on your ottoman saddleback every morning after my thumping good
breakfast of Matterson's fat hamrashers and a bottle of Guinness's porter.
(he belches) And suck my thumping good Stock Exchange cigar while I
read the Licensed Victualler's Gazette. Very possibly I shall have you
slaughtered and skewered in my stables and enjoy a slice of you with crisp
crackling from the baking tin basted and baked like sucking pig with rice
and lemon or currant sauce. It will hurt you. (He twists her arm. Bloom
squeals, turning turtle.)
BLOOM
Don't be cruel, nurse! Don't!
BELLO
(twisting) Another!
BLOOM
(screams) O, it's hell itself! Every nerve in my body aches like mad!
BELLO
(shouts) Good, by the rumping jumping general! That's the best bit of
news I heard these six weeks. Here, don't keep me waiting, damn you! (he
slaps her face)
BLOOM
(whimpers) You're after hitting me. I'll tell ....
BELLO
Hold him down, girls, till I squat on him.
ZOE
Yes. Walk on him! I will.
FLORRY
I will. Don't be greedy.
KITTY
No, me. Lend him to me.
(The brothel cook, Mrs Keogh, wrinkled, greybearded, in a greasy
bib, men's grey and green socks and brogues, floursmeared, a
rollingpin stuck with raw pastry in her bare red arm and hand,
appears at the door.)
MRS KEOGH
(ferociously) Can I help?
(They hold and pinion Bloom.)
BELLO
(squats with a grunt on Bloom's upturned face, puffing cigarsmoke,
nursing a fat leg) I see Keating Clay is elected vicechairman of the
Richmond asylum and by the by Guinness's preference shares are at sixteen
three quaffers. Curse me for a fool that didn't buy that lot Craig and
Gardner told me about. Just my infernal luck, curse it. And that
Goddamned outsider Throwaway at twenty to one. (he quenches his cigar
angrily on Bloom's ear) Where's that Goddamned cursed ashtray?
BLOOM
(goaded, buttocksmothered) O! O! Monsters! Cruel one!
BELLO
Ask for that every ten minutes. Beg. Pray for it as you never prayed before.
(he thrusts out a figged fist and foul cigar) Here, kiss that. Both. Kiss. (he
throws a leg astride and, pressing with horseman's knees, calls in a hard
voice) Gee up! A cockhorse to Banbury cross. I'll ride him for the Eclipse
stakes. (he bends sideways and squeezes his mount's testicles roughly,
shouting) Ho! Off we pop! I'll nurse you in proper fashion. (he horserides
cockhorse, leaping in the, in the saddle) The lady goes a pace a pace and
the coachman goes a trot a trot and the gentleman goes a gallop a gallop a
gallop a gallop.
FLORRY
(pulls at Bello) Let me on him now. You had enough. I asked before you.
ZOE
(pulling at Florry) Me. Me. Are you not finished with him yet, suckeress?
BLOOM
(stifling) Can't.
BELLO
Well, I'm not. Wait. (he holds in his breath) Curse it. Here. This bung's
about burst. (he uncorks himself behind: then, contorting his features, farts
stoutly) Take that! (he recorks himself) Yes, by Jingo, sixteen three
quarters.
BLOOM
(a sweat breaking out over him) Not man. (he sniffs) Woman.
BELLO
(stands up) No more blow hot and cold. What you longed for has come to
pass. Henceforth you are unmanned and mine in earnest, a thing under the
yoke. Now for your punishment frock. You will shed your male garments,
you understand, Ruby Cohen? and don the shot silk luxuriously rustling
over head and shoulders. And quickly too!
BLOOM
(shrinks) Silk, mistress said! O crinkly! scrapy! Must I tiptouch it with my
nails?
BELLO
(points to his whores) As they are now so will you be, wigged, singed,
perfumesprayed, ricepowdered, with smoothshaven armpits. Tape
measurements will be taken next your skin. You will be laced with cruel
force into vicelike corsets of soft dove coutille with whalebone busk to the
diamondtrimmed pelvis, the absolute outside edge, while your figure,
plumper than when at large, will be restrained in nettight frocks, pretty two
ounce petticoats and fringes and things stamped, of course, with my
houseflag, creations of lovely lingerie for Alice and nice scent for Alice.
Alice will feel the pullpull.Martha and Mary will be a little chilly at first in
such delicate thighcasing but the frilly flimsiness of lace round your bare
knees will remind you .....
BLOOM
(charming soubrette with dauby cheeks, mustard hair and large male
hands and nose, leering mouth) I tried her things on only twice, a small
prank, in Holles street. When we were hard up I washed them to save the
laundry bill. My own shirts I turned. It was the purest thrift.
BELLO
(jeers) Little jobs that make mother pleased, eh? And showed off
coquettishly in your domino at the mirror behind closedrawn 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
trunkleg naughties all split up the stitches at her last rape that Mrs Miriam
Dandrade sold you from the Shelbourne hotel, eh?
BLOOM
Miriam. Black. Demimondaine.
BELLO
(guffaws) Christ Almighty it's too tickling, this! You were a nicelooking
Miriam when you clipped off your backgate hairs and lay swooning in the
thing across the bed as Mrs Dandrade about to be violated by lieutenant
Smythe-Smythe, Mr Philip Augustus Blockwell M. P., signor Laci Daremo,
the robust tenor, blueeyed Bert, the liftboy, Henri Fleury of Gordon
Bennett fame, Sheridan, the quadroon Croesus, the varsity wetbob eight
from old Trinity, Ponto, her splendid Newfoundland and Bobs, dowager
duchess of Manorhamilton. (he guffaws again) Christ, wouldn't it make a
Siamese cat laugh?
BLOOM
(her hands and features working) It was Gerald converted me to be a true
corsetlover when I was female impersonator in the High School play Vice
Versa. It was dear Gerald. He got that kink, fascinated by sister's stays.
Now dearest Gerald uses pinky greasepaint and gilds his eyelids. Cult of
the beautiful.
BELLO
(with wicked glee) Beautiful! Give us a breather! When you took your seat
with womanish care, lifting your billowy flounces, on the smoothworn
throne.
BLOOM
Science. To compare the various joys we each enjoy. (earnestly) And really
it's better the position .... because often I used to wet ....
BELLO
(sternly) No insubordination! The sawdust is there in the corner for you. I
gave you strict instructions, didn't I? Do it standing, sir! I'll teach you to
behave like a jinkleman! If I catch a trace on your swaddles. Aha! By the
ass of the Dorans you'll find I'm a martinet. The sins of your past are rising
against you. Many. Hundreds.
THE SINS OF THE PAST
(in a medley of voices) He went through a form of clandestine marriage
with at least one woman in the shadow of the Black church. Unspeakable
messages he telephoned mentally to Miss Dunn at an address in D'Olier
street while he presented himself indecently to the instrument in the callbox.
By word and deed he frankly encouraged a nocturnal strumpet to deposit
fecal and other matter in an unsanitary outhouse attached to empty
premises. In five public conveniences he wrote pencilled messages offering
his nuptial partner to all strongmembered males. And by the offensively
smelling vitriol works did he not pass night after night by loving courting
couples to see if and what and how much he could see? Did he not lie in
bed, the gross boar, gloating over a nauseous fragment of wellused toilet
paper presented to him by a nasty harlot, stimulated by gingerbread and a
postal order?
BELLO
(whistles loudly) Say! What was the most revolting piece of obscenity in all
your career of crime? Go the whole hog. Puke it out! Be candid for once.
(Mute inhuman faces throng forward, leering, vanishing, gibbering,
Booloohoom, Poldy Kock, Bootlaces a penny Cassidy's hag, blind
stripling, Larry rhinoceros, the girl, the woman, the whore, the
other the, lane the.)
BLOOM
Don't ask me! Our mutual faith. Pleasants street. I only thought the half of
the ... I swear on my sacred oath ....
BELLO
(peremptorily) Answer. Repugnant wretch! I insist on knowing. Tell me
something to amuse me, smut or a bloody good ghoststory or a line of
poetry, quick, quick, quick! Where? How? What time? With how many? I
give you just three seconds. One! Two! Thr .....
BLOOM
(docile, gurgles) I rererepugnosed in rerererepugnant
BELLO
(imperiously) O, get out, you skunk! Hold your tongue! Speak when
you're spoken to.
BLOOM
(bows) Master! Mistress! Mantamer!
(He lifts his arms. His bangle bracelets fill.)
BELLO
(satirically) By day you will souse and bat our smelling underclothes also
when we ladies are unwell, and swab out our latrines with dress pinned up
and a dishclout tied to your tail. Won't that be nice? (he places a ruby ring
on her finger) And there now! With this ring I thee own. Say, thank you,
mistress.
BLOOM
Thank you, mistress.
BELLO
You will make the beds, get my tub ready, empty the pisspots in the different
rooms, including old Mrs Keogh's the cook's, a sandy one. Ay, and rinse
the seven of them well, mind, or lap it up like champagne. Drink me piping
hot. Hop! You will dance attendance or I'll lecture you on your misdeeds,
Miss Ruby, and spank your bare bot right well, miss, with the hairbrush.
You'll be taught the error of your ways. At night your wellcreamed
braceletted hands will wear fortythreebutton gloves newpowdered with talc
and having delicately scented fingertips. For such favours knights of old
laid down their lives. (he chuckles) My boys will be no end charmed to see
you so ladylike, the colonel, above all, when they come here the night before
the wedding to fondle my new attraction in gilded heels. First I'll have a go
at you myself. A man I know on the turf named Charles Alberta Marsh (I
was in bed with him just now and another gentleman out of the Hanaper
and Petty Bag office) is on the lookout for a maid of all work at a short
knock. Swell the bust. Smile. Droop shoulders. What offers? (he points)
For that lot. Trained by owner to fetch and carry, basket in mouth. (he
bares his arm and plunges it elbowdeep in Bloom's vulva) There's fine
depth for you! What, boys? That give you a hardon? (he shoves his arm in
a bidder's face) Here wet the deck and wipe it round!
A BIDDER
A florin.
(Dillon's lacquey rings his handbell.)
THE LACQUEY
Barang!
A VOICE
One and eightpence too much.
CHARLES ALBERTA MARSH
Must be virgin. Good breath. Clean.
BELLO
(gives a rap with his gavel) Two bar. Rockbottom figure and cheap at the
price. Fourteen hands high. Touch and examine shis points. Handle hrim.
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
stockgetter, 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 C on Bloom's croup) So! Warranted Cohen!
What advance on two bob, gentlemen?
A DARKVISAGED MAN
(in disguised accent) Hoondert punt sterlink.
VOICES
(subdued) For the Caliph. Haroun Al Raschid.
BELLO
(gaily) Right. Let them all come. The scanty, daringly short skirt, riding up
at the knee to show a peep of white pantalette, is a potent weapon and
transparent stockings, emeraldgartered, with the long straight seam trailing
up beyond the knee, appeal to the better instincts of the blase man about
town. Learn the smooth mincing walk on four inch Louis Quinze heels, the
Grecian bend with provoking croup, the thighs fluescent, knees modestly
kissing. Bring all your powers of fascination to bear on them. Pander to
their Gomorrahan vices.
BLOOM
(bends his blushing face into his armpit and simpers with forefinger in
mouth) O, I know what you're hinting at now!
BELLO
What else are you good for, an impotent thing like you? (he stoops and,
peering, pokes with his fan rudely under the fat suet folds of Bloom's
haunches) Up! Up! Manx cat! What have we here? Where's your curly
teapot gone to or who docked it on you, cockyolly? Sing, birdy, sing. It's as
limp as a boy of six's doing his pooly behind a cart. Buy a bucket or sell
your pump. (loudly) Can you do a man's job?
BLOOM
Eccles street....
BELLO
(sarcastically) I wouldn't hurt your feelings for the world but there's a
man of brawn in possession there. The tables are turned, my gay young
fellow! He is something like a fullgrown outdoor man. Well for you, you
muff, if you had that weapon with knobs and lumps and warts all over it.
He shot his bolt, I can tell you! Foot to foot, knee to knee, belly to belly,
bubs to breast! He's no eunuch. A shock of red hair he has sticking out of
him behind like a furzebush! Wait for nine months, my lad! Holy ginger,
it's kicking and coughing up and down in her guts already! That makes
you wild, don't it? Touches the spot? (he spits in contempt) Spittoon!
BLOOM
I was indecently treated, I ..... Inform the police. Hundred pounds.
Unmentionable. I ....
BELLO
Would if you could, lame duck. A downpour we want not your drizzle.
BLOOM
To drive me mad! Moll! I forgot! Forgive! Moll .... We .... Still .....
BELLO
(ruthlessly) No, Leopold Bloom, all is changed by woman's will since you
slept horizontal in Sleepy Hollow your night of twenty years. Return and
see.
(Old Sleepy Hollow calls over the wold.)
SLEEPY HOLLOW
Rip van Wink! Rip van Winkle!
BLOOM
(in tattered mocassins with a rusty fowlingpiece, tiptoeing, fingertipping,
his haggard bony bearded face peering through the diamond panes, cries
out) I see her! It's she! The first night at Mat Dillon's! But that dress, the
green! And her hair is dyed gold and he ....
BELLO
(laughs mockingly) That's your daughter, you owl, with a Mullingar
student.
(Milly Bloom, fairhaired, greenvested, slimsandalled, her blue scarf
in the seawind simply swirling, breaks from the arms of her lover
and calls, her young eyes wonderwide.)
MILLY
My! It's Papli! But, O Papli, how old you've grown!
BELLO
Changed, eh? Our whatnot, our writingtable where we never wrote, aunt
Hegarty's armchair, our classic reprints of old masters. A man and his
menfriends are living there in clover. The Cuckoos' Rest! Why not? How
many women had you, eh, following them up dark streets, flatfoot, exciting
them by your smothered grunts, what, you male prostitute? Blameless
dames with parcels of groceries. Turn about. Sauce for the goose, my
gander O.
BLOOM
They.... I ....
BELLO
(cuttingly) Their heelmarks will stamp the Brusselette carpet you bought at
Wren's auction. In their horseplay with Moll the romp to find the buck flea
in her breeches they will deface the little statue you carried home in the rain
for art for art' sake. They will violate the secrets of your bottom drawer.
Pages will be torn from your handbook of astronomy to make them
pipespills. And they will spit in your ten shilling brass fender from
Hampton Leedom's.
BLOOM
Ten and six. The act of low scoundrels. Let me go. I will return. I will
prove ...
A VOICE
Swear!
(Bloom clenches his fists and crawls forward, a bowieknife between
his teeth.)
BELLO
As a paying guest or a kept man? Too late. You have made your secondbest
bed and others must lie in it. Your epitaph is written. You are down and out
and don't you forget it, old bean.
BLOOM
Justice! All Ireland versus one! Has nobody ...? (he bites his thumb)
BELLO
Die and be damned to you if you have any sense of decency or grace about
you. I can give you a rare old wine that'll send you skipping to hell and
back. Sign a will and leave us any coin you have! If you have none see you
damn well get it, steal it, rob it! We'll bury you in our shrubbery jakes
where you'll be dead and dirty with old Cuck Cohen, my stepnephew I
married, the bloody old gouty procurator and sodomite with a crick in his
neck, and my other ten or eleven husbands, whatever the buggers' names
were, suffocated in the one cesspool. (he explodes in a loud phlegmy laugh)
We'll manure you, Mr Flower! (he pipes scoffingly) Byby, Poldy! Byby,
Papli!
BLOOM
(clasps his head) My willpower! Memory! I have sinned! I have suff.... (he
weeps tearlessly)
BELLO
(sneers) Crybabby! Crocodile tears!
(Bloom, broken, closely veiled for the sacrifice, sobs, his face to the
earth. The passing bell is heard. Darkshawled figures of the
circumcised, in sackcloth and ashes, stand by the wailing wall, M.
Shulomowitz, Joseph Goldwater, Moses Herzog, Harris
Rosenberg, M. Moisel, J. Citron, Minnie Watchman, P. Mastiansky,
the reverend Leopold Abramovitz, chazen. With swaying arms they
wail in pneuma over the recreant Bloom.)
THE CIRCUMCISED
(in dark guttural chant as they cast dead sea fruit upon him, no flowers)
Shema Israel Adonai Elohenu Adonai Echad.
VOICES
(sighing) So he's gone. Ah yes. Yes, indeed. Bloom? Never heard of him.
No? Queer kind of chap. There's the widow. That so? Ah, yes.
(From the suttee pyre the flame of gum camphire ascends. The pall
of incense smoke screens and disperses. Out of her oakframe a
nymph with hair unbound, lightly clad in teabrown artcolours,
descends from her grotto and passing under interlacing yews stands
over Bloom.)
THE YEWS
(their leaves whispering) Sister. Our sister. Ssh!
THE NYMPH
(softly) Mortal! (kindly) Nay, dost not weepest!
BLOOM
(crawls jellily forward under the boughs, streaked by sunlight, with
dignity) This position. I felt it was expected of me. Force of habit.
THE NYMPH
Mortal! You found me in evil company, highkickers, coster picnicmakers,
pugilists, popular generals, immoral panto boys in fleshtights and the nifty
shimmy dancers, La Aurora and Karini, musical act, the hit of the century.
I was hidden in cheap pink paper that smelt of rock oil. I was surrounded
by the stale smut of clubmen, stories to disturb callow youth, ads for
transparencies, truedup dice and bustpads, proprietary articles and why
wear a truss with testimonial from ruptured gentleman. Useful hints to the
married.
BLOOM
(lifts a turtle head towards her lap) We have met before. On another star.
THE NYMPH
(sadly) Rubber goods. Neverrip brand as supplied to the aristocracy.
Corsets for men. I cure fits or money refunded. Unsolicited testimonials for
Professor Waldmann's wonderful chest exuber. My bust developed four
inches in three weeks, reports Mrs Gus Rublin with photo.
BLOOM
You mean Photo Bits?
THE NYMPH
I do. You bore me away, framed me in oak and tinsel, set me above your
marriage couch. Unseen, one summer eve, you kissed me in four places.
And with loving pencil you shaded my eyes, my bosom and my shame.
BLOOM
(humbly kisses her long hair) Your classic curves, beautiful immortal, I
was glad to look on you, to praise you, a thing of beauty, almost to pray.
THE NYMPH
During dark nights I heard your praise.
BLOOM
(quickly) Yes, yes. You mean that I.... Sleep reveals the worst side of
everyone, children perhaps excepted. I know I fell out of bed or rather was
pushed. Steel wine is said to cure snoring. For the rest there is that English
invention, pamphlet of which I received some days ago, incorrectly
addressed. It claims to afford a noiseless, inoffensive vent. (he sighs) 'Twas
ever thus. Frailty, thy name is marriage.
THE NYMPH
(her fingers in her ears) And words. They are not in my dictionary.
BLOOM
You understood them?
THE YEWS
Ssh!
THE NYMPH
(covers her face with her hands) What have I not seen in that chamber?
What must my eyes look down on?
BLOOM
(apologetically) I know. Soiled personal linen, wrong side up with care.
The quoits are loose. From Gibraltar by long sea long ago.
THE NYMPH
(bends her head) Worse, worse!
BLOOM
(reflects precautiously) That antiquated commode. It wasn't her weight.
She scaled just eleven stone nine. She put on nine pounds after weaning. It
was a crack and want of glue. Eh? And that absurd orangekeyed utensil
which has only one handle.
(The sound of a waterfall is heard in bright cascade.)
THE WATERFALL
Poulaphouca Poulaphouca
Poulaphouca Poulaphouca.
THE YEWS
(mingling their boughs) Listen. Whisper. She is right, our sister. We grew
by Poulaphouca waterfall. We gave shade on languorous summer days.
JOHN WYSE NOLAN
(in the background, in Irish National Forester's uniform, doffs his plumed
hat) Prosper! Give shade on languorous days, trees of Ireland!
THE YEWS
(murmuring) Who came to Poulaphouca with the High School excursion?
Who left his nutquesting classmates to seek our shade?
BLOOM
(scared) High School of Poula? Mnemo? Not in full possession of
faculties. Concussion. Run over by tram.
THE ECHO
Sham!
BLOOM
(pigeonbreasted, bottleshouldered, padded, in nondescript juvenile grey
and black striped suit, too small for him, white tennis shoes, bordered
stockings with turnover tops and a red schoolcap 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, instinct of the herd, and the dark
sexsmelling theatre unbridles vice), even a pricelist of their hosiery. And
then the heat. There were sunspots that summer. End of school. And
tipsycake. Halcyon days.
(Halcyon Days, High School boys in blue and white football
jerseys and shorts, Master Donald Turnbull, Master Abraham
Chatterton, Master Owen Goldberg, Master Jack Meredith, Master
Percy Apjohn, stand in a clearing of the trees and shout to Master
Leopold Bloom.)
THE HALCYON DAYS
Mackerel! Live us again. Hurray! (they cheer)
BLOOM
(hobbledehoy, warmgloved, mammamufflered, starred with spent
snowballs, struggles to rise) Again! I feel sixteen! What a lark! Let's ring
all the bells in Montague street. (he cheers feebly) Hurray for the High
School!
THE ECHO
Fool!
THE YEWS
(rustling) She is right, our sister. Whisper. (Whispered kisses are heard in
all the wood. Faces of hamadryads peep out from the boles and among the
leaves and break, blossoming into bloom.) Who profaned our silent shade?
THE NYMPH
(coyly, through parting fingers) There? In the open air?
THE YEWS
(sweeping downward) Sister, yes. And on our virgin sward.
THE WATERFALL
Poulaphouca Poulaphouca
Phoucaphouca Phoucaphouca.
THE NYMPH
(with wide fingers) O, infamy!
BLOOM
I was precocious. Youth. The fauna. 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 illclosed curtains with poor papa's operaglasses: The
wanton ate grass wildly. She rolled downhill at Rialto bridge to tempt me
with her flow of animal spirits. She climbed their crooked tree and I. A saint
couldn't resist it. The demon possessed me. Besides, who saw?
(Staggering Bob, a whitepolled calf, thrusts a ruminating head with
humid nostrils through the foliage.)
STAGGERING BOB
(large teardrops rolling from his prominent eyes, snivels) Me. Me see.
BLOOM
Simply satisfying a need I... (with pathos) No girl would when I went
girling. Too ugly. They wouldn't play ....
(High on Ben Howth through rhododendrons a nannygoat passes,
plumpuddered, buttytailed, dropping currants.)
THE NANNYGOAT
(bleats) Megeggaggegg! Nannannanny!
BLOOM
(hatless, flushed, covered with burrs of thistledown and gorsespine)
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 roteatingly from the Lion's Head cliff into the purple
waiting waters.)
THE DUMMYMUMMY
Bbbbblllllblblblblobschb!
(Far out in the bay between Bailey and Kish lights the Erin's King
sails, sending a broadening plume of coalsmoke from her funnel
towards the land.)
COUNCILLOR NANNETII
(alone on deck, in dark alpaca, yellowkitefaced, his hand in his waistcoat
opening, declaims) When my country takes her place among the nations of
the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written. I have ...
BLOOM
Done. Prff!
THE NYMPH
(loftily) We immortals, as you saw today, have not such a place and no hair
there either. We are stonecold and pure. We eat electric light. (she arches
her body in lascivious crispation, placing her forefinger in her mouth)
Spoke to me. Heard from behind. How then could you ...?
BLOOM
(pawing the heather abjectly) O, I have been a perfect pig. Enemas too I
have administered. One third of a pint of quassia to which add a
tablespoonful of rocksalt. Up the fundament. With Hamilton Long's
syringe, the ladies' friend.
THE NYMPH
In my presence. The powderpuff. (she blushes and makes a knee) And the
rest!
BLOOM
(dejected) Yes. Peccavi! I have paid homage on that living altar where the
back changes name. (with sudden fervour) For why should the dainty
scented jewelled hand, the hand that rules ...?
(Figures wind serpenting in slow woodland pattern around the
treestems, cooeeing)
THE VOICE OF KITTY
(in the thicket) Show us one of them cushions.
THE VOICE OF FLORRY
Here.
(A grouse wings clumsily through the underwood.)
THE VOICE OF LYNCH
(in the thicket) Whew! Piping hot!
THE VOICE OF ZOE
(in the thicket) Came from a hot place.
THE VOICE OF VIRAG
(a birdchief, bluestreaked and feathered in war panoply with his assegai,
striding through a crackling canebrake over beechmast and acorns) Hot!
Hot! Ware Sitting Bull!
BLOOM
It overpowers me. The warm impress of her warm form. Even to sit where a
woman has sat, especially with divaricated thighs, as though to grant the
last favours, most especially with previously well uplifted white sateen
coatpans. So womanly, full. It fills me full.
THE WATERFALL
Phillaphulla Poulaphouca
Poulaphouca Poulaphouca.
THE YEWS
Ssh! Sister, speak!
THE NYMPH
(eyeless, in nun's white habit, coif and hugewinged wimple, softly, with
remote eyes) Tranquilla convent. Sister Agatha. Mount Carmel. The
apparitions of Knock and Lourdes. No more desire. (she reclines her head,
sighing) Only the ethereal. Where dreamy creamy gull waves o'er the
waters dull.
(Bloom half rises. His back trouserbutton snaps.)
THE BUTTON
Bip!
(Two sluts of the Coombe dance rainily by, shawled, yelling flatly.)
THE SLUTS
O, Leopold lost the pin of his drawers
He didn't know what to do,
To keep it up,
To keep it up.
BLOOM
(coldly) You have broken the spell. The last straw. If there were only
ethereal where would you all be, postulants and novices? Shy but willing
like an ass pissing.
THE YEWS
(their silverfoil of leaves precipitating, their skinny arms aging and
swaying) Deciduously!
THE NYMPH
(her features hardening, gropes in the folds of her habit) 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 again in her robe) Wait. Satan, you'll sing no more lovesongs.
Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. (she draws a poniard and, clad in the
sheathmail of an elected knight of nine, strikes at his loins) Nekum!
BLOOM
(starts up, seizes her hand) Hoy! Nebrakada! Cat o' nine lives! Fair play,
madam. No pruningknife. The fox and the grapes, is it? What do you lack
with your barbed wire? Crucifix not thick enough? (he clutches her veil) A
holy abbot you want or Brophy, the lame gardener, or the spoutless statue
of the watercarrier, or good mother Alphonsus, eh Reynard?
THE NYMPH
(with a cry flees from him unveiled, her plaster cast cracking, a cloud of
stench escaping from the cracks) Poli ...!
BLOOM
(calls after her) As if you didn't get it on the double yourselves. No jerks
and multiple mucosities all over you. I tried it. Your strength our weakness.
What's our studfee? What will you pay on the nail? You fee mendancers 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) Rut.
Onions. Stale. Sulphur. Grease.
(The figure of Bella Cohen stands before him.)
BELLA
You'll know me the next time.
BLOOM
(composed, regards her) Pass’e. Mutton dressed as lamb. Long in the
tooth and superfluous hair. 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 glasseyes of your stuffed fox. They have the dimensions of your
other features, that's all. I'm not a triple screw propeller.
BELLA
(contemptuously) You're not game, in fact. (her sowcunt barks)
Fbhracht!
BLOOM
(contemptuously) Clean your nailless middle finger first, your bully's cold
spunk is dripping from your cockscomb. Take a handful of hay and wipe
yourself.
BELLA
I know you, canvasser! Dead cod!
BLOOM
I saw him, kipkeeper! Pox and gleet vendor!
BELLA
(turns to the piano) Which of you was playing the dead march from Saul?
ZOE
Me. Mind your cornflowers. (she darts to the piano and bangs chords on it
with crossed arms) The cat's ramble through the slag. (she glances back)
Eh? Who's making love to my sweeties? (she darts back to the table)
What's yours is mine and what's mine is my own.
(Kitty, disconcerted, coats her teeth with the silver paper. Bloom
approaches Zoe.)
BLOOM
(gently) Give me back that potato, will you?
ZOE
Forfeits, a fine thing and a superfine thing.
BLOOM
(with feeling) It is nothing, but still, a relic of poor mamma.
ZOE
Give a thing and take it back
God'll ask you where is that
You'll say you don't know
God'll send you down below.
BLOOM
There is a memory attached to it. I should like to have it.
STEPHEN
To have or not to have that is the question.
ZOE
Here. (she hauls up a reef of her slip, revealing her bare thigh, and unrolls
the potato from the top of her stocking) Those that hides knows where to
find.
BELLA
(frowns) Here. This isn't a musical peepshow. And don't you smash that
piano. Who's paying here?
(She goes to the pianola. Stephen fumbles in his pocket and, taking
out a banknote by its corner, hands it to her.)
STEPHEN
(with exaggerated politeness) This silken purse I made out of the sow's ear
of the public. Madam, excuse me. If you allow me. (he indicates vaguely
Lynch and Bloom) We are all in the same sweepstake, Kinch and Lynch.
Dans ce bordel o‹ tenons nostre ’tat.
LYNCH
(calls from the hearth) Dedalus! Give her your blessing for me.
STEPHEN
(hands Bella a coin) Gold. She has it.
BELLA
(looks at the money, then at Stephen, then at Zoe, Florry and Kitty) Do
you want three girls? It's ten shillings here.
STEPHEN
(delightedly) A hundred thousand apologies. (he fumbles again and takes
out and hands her two crowns) Permit, brevi manu, my sight is somewhat
troubled.
(Bella goes to the table to count the money while Stephen talks to
himself in monosyllables. Zoe bends over the table. Kitty leans over
Zoe's neck. Lynch gets up, rights his cap and, clasping Kitty's
waist, adds his head to the group.)
FLORRY
(strives heavily to rise) Ow! My foot's asleep. (She limps over to the table.
Bloom approaches.)
BELLA, ZOE, KITTY, LYNCH, BLOOM
(chattering and squabbling) The gentleman... ten shillings.... paying for
the three... allow me a moment... this gentleman pays separate.... who's
touching it?... ow!... mind who you're pinching... are you staying the
night or a short time?... who did?... you're a liar, excuse me... the
gentleman paid down like a gentleman ... drink ... it's long after eleven.
STEPHEN
(at the pianola, making a gesture of abhorrence) No bottles! What, eleven?
A riddle!
ZOE
(lifting up her pettigown and folding a half sovereign into the top of her
stocking) Hard earned on the flat of my back.
LYNCH
(lifting Kitty from the table) Come!
KITTY
Wait. (she clutches the two crowns)
FLORRY
And me?
LYNCH
Hoopla!
(He lifts her, carries her and bumps her down on the sofa.)
STEPHEN
The fox crew, the cocks flew,
The bells in heaven
Were striking eleven.
'Tis time for her poor soul
To get out of heaven.
BLOOM
(quietly lays a half sovereign on the table between Bella and Florry) So.
Allow me. (he takes up the poundnote) Three times ten. We're square.
BELLA
(admiringly) You're such a slyboots, old cocky. I could kiss you.
ZOE
(points) Him? Deep as a drawwell.
(Lynch bends Kitty back over the sofa and kisses her. Bloom goes
with the poundnote to Stephen.)
BLOOM
This is yours.
STEPHEN
How is that? The distrait or absentminded beggar. (He fumbles again in
his pocket and draws out a handful of coins. An object fills.) That fell.
BLOOM
(stooping, picks up and hands a box of matches) This.
STEPHEN
Lucifer. Thanks.
BLOOM
(quietly) You had better hand over that cash to me to take care of. Why
pay more?
STEPHEN
(hands him all his coins) Be just before you are generous.
BLOOM
I will but is it wise? (he counts) One, seven, eleven, and five. Six. Eleven. I
don't answer for what you may have lost.
STEPHEN
Why striking eleven? Proparoxyton. Moment before the next Lessing says.
Thirsty fox. (he laughs loudly) Burying his grandmother. Probably he
killed her.
BLOOM
That is one pound six and eleven. One pound seven, say.
STEPHEN
Doesn't matter a rambling damn.
BLOOM
No, but....
STEPHEN
(comes to the table) Cigarette, please. (Lynch tosses a cigarette from the
sofa to the table) And so Georgina Johnson is dead and married. (A
cigarette appears on the table. Stephen looks at it) Wonder. Parlour
magic. Married. Hm. (he strikes a match and proceeds to light the cigarette
with enigmatic melancholy)
LYNCH
(watching him) You would have a better chance of lighting it if you held
the match nearer.
STEPHEN
(brings the match near his eye) Lynx eye. Must get glasses. Broke them
yesterday. Sixteen years ago. Distance. The eye sees all flat. (He draws the
match away. It goes out.) Brain thinks. Near: far. Ineluctable modality of
the visible. (he frowns mysteriously) Hm. Sphinx. The beast that has two
backs at midnight. Married.
ZOE
It was a commercial traveller married her and took her away with him.
FLORRY
(nods) Mr Lambe from London.
STEPHEN
Lamb of London, who takest away the sins of our world.
LYNCH
(embracing Kitty on the sofa, chants deeply) Dona nobis pacem.
(The cigarette slips from Stephen 's fingers. Bloom picks it up and
throws it in the grate.)
BLOOM
Don't smoke. You ought to eat. Cursed dog I met. (to Zoe) You have
nothing?
ZOE
Is he hungry?
STEPHEN
(extends his hand to her smiling and chants to the air of the bloodoath in
The Dusk of the Gods)
Hangende Hunger,
Fragende Frau,
Macht uns alle kaputt.
ZOE
(tragically) Hamlet, I am thy father's gimlet! (she takes his hand) Blue
eyes beauty I'll read your hand. (she points to his forehead) No wit, no
wrinkles. (she counts) Two, three, Mars, that's courage. (Stephen shakes
his head) No kid.
LYNCH
Sheet lightning courage. The youth who could not shiver and shake. (to
Zoe) Who taught you palmistry?
ZOE
(turns) Ask my ballocks that I haven't got. (to Stephen) I see it in your
face. The eye, like that. (she frowns with lowered head)
LYNCH
(laughing, slaps Kitty behind twice) Like that. Pandybat.
(Twice loudly a pandybat cracks, the coffin of the pianola flies open,
the bald little round jack-in-the-box head of Father Dolan springs
up.)
FATHER DOLAN
Any boy want flogging? Broke his glasses? Lazy idle little schemer. See it in
your eye.
(Mild, benign, rectorial, reproving, the head of Don John Conmee
rises from the pianola coffin.)
DON JOHN CONMEE
Now, Father Dolan! Now. I'm sure that Stephen is a very good little boy!
ZOE
(examining Stephen's palm) Woman's hand.
STEPHEN
(murmurs) Continue. Lie. Hold me. Caress. I never could read His
handwriting except His criminal thumbprint on the haddock.
ZOE
What day were you born?
STEPHEN
Thursday. Today.
ZOE
Thursday's child has far to go. (she traces lines on his hand) Line of fate.
Influential friends.
FLORRY
(pointing) Imagination.
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
(detaches her fingers and offers his palm) More harm than good. Here.
Read mine.
BELLA
Show. (she turns up Bloom's hand) I thought so. Knobby knuckles for the
women.
ZOE
(peering at Bloom's palm) Gridiron. Travels beyond the sea and marry
money.
BLOOM
Wrong.
ZOE
(quickly) O, I see. Short little finger. Henpecked husband. That wrong?
(Black Liz, a huge rooster hatching in a chalked circle, rises,
stretches her wings and clucks.)
BLACK LIZ
Gara. Klook. Klook. Klook. (she sidles from her newlaid egg and waddles
off)
BLOOM
(points to his hand) That weal there is an accident. Fell and cut it
twentytwo years ago. I was sixteen.
ZOE
I see, says the blind man. Tell us news.
STEPHEN
See? Moves to one great goal. I am twentytwo. Sixteen years ago he was
twentytwo 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?
(Zoe whispers to Florry. They giggle. Bloom releases his hand and
writes idly on the table in backhand, pencilling slow curves.)
FLORRY
What?
(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.)
THE BOOTS
(jogging, mocks them with thumb and wriggling wormfingers) Haw haw
have you the horn?
(Bronze by gold they whisper.)
ZOE
(to Florry) Whisper. (she whispers again)
(Over the well of the car Blazes Boylan leans, his boater straw set
sideways, a red flower in his mouth. Lenehan in yachtsman's cap
and white shoes officiously detaches a long hair from Blazes
Boylan's coat shoulder.)
LENEHAN
Ho! What do I here behold? Were you brushing the cobwebs off a few
quims?
BOYLAN
(sated, smiles) Plucking a turkey.
LENEHAN
A good night's work.
BOYLAN
(holding up four thick bluntungulated fingers, winks) Blazes Kate! Up to
sample or your money back. (he holds out a forefinger) Smell that.
LENEHAN
(smells gleefully) Ah! Lobster and mayonnaise. Ah!
ZOE AND FLORRY
(laugh together) Ha ha ha ha.
BOYLAN
(jumps surely from the car and calls loudly for all to hear) Hello, Bloom!
Mrs Bloom dressed yet?
BLOOM
(in flunkey's prune plush coat and kneebreeches, buff stockings and
powdered wig) I'm afraid not, sir. The last articles .....
BOYLAN
(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?
BLOOM
Thank you, sir. Yes, sir. Madam Tweedy is in her bath, sir.
MARION
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.
BOYLAN
(a merry twinkle in his eye) Topping!
BELLA
What? What is it?
(Zoe whispers to her.)
MARION
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.
BOYLAN
(clasps himself) Here, I can't hold this little lot much longer. (he strides off
on stiff cavalry legs)
BELLA
(laughing) Ho ho ho ho.
BOYLAN
(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.
BLOOM
Thank you, sir. I will, sir. May I bring two men chums to witness the deed
and take a snapshot? (he holds out an ointment jar) Vaseline, sir?
Orangeflower...? Lukewarm water...?
KITTY
(from the sofa) Tell us, Florry. Tell us. What ...
(Florry whispers to her. Whispering lovewords murmur, liplapping
loudly, poppysmic plopslop.)
MINA KENNEDY
(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!
LYDIA DOUCE
(her mouth opening) Yumyum. O, he's carrying her round the room doing
it! Ride a cockhorse. You could hear them in Paris and New York. Like
mouthfuls of strawberries and cream.
KITTY
(laughing) Hee hee hee.
BOYLAN'S VOICE
(sweetly, hoarsely, in the pit of his stomach) Ah! Godblazegruk-
brukarchkhrasht!
MARION'S VOICE
(hoarsely, sweetly, rising to her throat) O! Weeshwashtkissinapoo-
isthnapoohuck?
BLOOM
(his eyes wildly dilated, clasps himself) Show! Hide! Show! Plough her!
More! Shoot!
BELLA, ZOE, FLORRY, KITTY
Ho ho! Ha ha! Hee hee!
LYNCH
(points) The mirror up to nature. (he laughs) Hu hu hu hu hu!
(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.)
SHAKESPEARE
(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
Thursdaymornun. Iagogogo!
BLOOM
(smiles yellowly at the three whores) When will I hear the joke?
ZOE
Before you're twice married and once a widower.
BLOOM
Lapses are condoned. Even the great Napoleon when measurements were
taken next the skin after his death ...
(Mrs Dignam, widow woman, her snubnose and cheeks flushed
with deathtalk, tears and Tunney'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,
large eights. She holds a Scottish Widows' insurance policy and a
large marquee umbrella under which her brood run with her, Patsy
hopping on one shod foot, his collar loose, a hank of porksteaks
dangling, Freddy whimpering, Susy with a crying cod's mouth,
Alice struggling with the baby. She cuffs them on, her streamers
flaunting aloft.)
FREDDY
Ah, ma, you're dragging me along!
SUSY
Mamma, the beeftea is fizzing over!
SHAKESPEARE
(with paralytic rage) Weda seca whokilla farst.
(The face of Martin Cunningham, bearded, refeatures
Shakespeare's beardless face. The marquee umbrella sways
drunkenly, the children run aside. Under the umbrella appears Mrs
Cunningham in merry widow hat and kimono gown. She glides
sidling and bowing, twirling japanesily.)
MRS CUNNINGHAM
(sings)
And they call me the jewel of Asia!
MARTIN CUNNINGHAM
(gazes on her, impassive) Immense! Most bloody awful demirep!
STEPHEN
Et exaltabuntur cornua iusti. Queens lay with prize bulls. Remember
Pasiphae for whose lust my grandoldgrossfather 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.
BELLA
None of that here. Come to the wrong shop.
LYNCH
Let him alone. He's back from Paris.
ZOE
(runs to Stephen and links him) O go on! Give us some parleyvoo.
(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.)
LYNCH
(pommelling on the sofa) Rmm Rmm Rmm Rrrrrrmmmm.
STEPHEN
(gabbles with marionette jerks) Thousand places of entertainment to
expense your evenings with lovely ladies saling gloves and other things
perhaps hers 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 clacks his tongue loudly) Ho,
la la! Ce pif qu'il a!
LYNCH
Vive le vampire!
THE WHORES
Bravo! Parleyvoo!
STEPHEN
(with head back, laughs loudly, clapping himself grimacing) Great success
of laughing. Angels much prostitutes like and holy apostles big damn
ruffians. Demimondaines nicely handsome sparkling of diamonds very
amiable costumed. 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 tompeeptom of virgins nudities very lesbic the kiss five
ten times. Enter, gentleman, to see in mirror every positions trapezes all that
machine there besides also if desire act awfully bestial butcher's boy
pollutes in warm veal liver or omlet on the belly piece de Shakespeare.
BELLA
(clapping her belly sinks back on the sofa, with a shout of laughter) An
omelette on the.... Ho! ho! ho! ho!... omelette on the....
STEPHEN
(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)
BELLA
(laughing) Omelette....
THE WHORES
(laughing) Encore! Encore!
STEPHEN
Mark me. I dreamt of a watermelon.
ZOE
Go abroad and love a foreign lady.
LYNCH
Across the world for a wife.
FLORRY
Dreams goes by contraries.
STEPHEN
(extends his arms) It was here. Street of harlots. In Serpentine avenue
Beelzebub showed me her, a fubsy widow. Where's the red carpet spread?
BLOOM
(approaching Stephen) Look ....
STEPHEN
No, I flew. My foes beneath me. And ever shall be. World without end. (he
cries) Pater! Free!
BLOOM
I say, look...
STEPHEN
Break my spirit, will he? O merde alors! (he cries, his vulture talons
sharpened) HolЉ! Hillyho!
(Simon Dedalus' voice hilloes in answer, somewhat sleepy but
ready.)
SIMON
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! Haihoop! (he
makes the beagle's call, giving tongue) Bulbul! Burblblburblbl! Hai, boy!
(The fronds and spaces of the wallpaper file rapidly crosscountry.
A stout fox, drawn from covert, brush pointed, having buried his
grandmother, runs swift for the open, brighteyed, seeking badger
earth, under the leaves. The pack of staghounds follows, nose to the
ground, sniffing their quarry, beaglebaying, burblbrbling 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, hayforks, salmongaffs,
lassos, flockmasters with stockwhips, bearbaiters with tomtoms,
toreadors with bullswords, greynegroes waving torches. The crowd
bawls of dicers, crown and anchor players, thimbleriggers,
broadsmen. Crows and touts, hoarse bookies in high wizard hats
clamour deafeningly.)
THE CROWD
Card of the races. Racing card!
Ten to one the field!
Tommy on the clay here! Tommy on the clay!
Ten to one bar one! Ten to one bar one!
Try your luck on Spinning Jenny!
Ten to one bar one!
Sell the monkey, boys! Sell the monkey!
I'll give ten to one!
Ten to one bar one!
(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 Westminster's Shotover, Repulse,
the duke of Beaufort's Ceylon, prix de Paris. Dwarfs ride them,
rustyarmoured, leaping, leaping in their, in their saddles. Last in a
drizzle of rain on a brokenwinded isabelle nag, Cock of the North,
the favourite, honey cap, green jacket, orange sleeves, Garrett Deasy
up, gripping the reins, a hockeystick at the ready. His nag on
spavined whitegaitered feet jogs along the rocky road.)
THE ORANGE LODGES
(jeering) Get down and push, mister. Last lap! You'll be home the night!
GARRETT DEASY
(bolt upright, his nailscraped face plastered with postagestamps, brandishes
his hockeystick, his blue eyes flashing in the prism of the chandelier as his
mount lopes by at schooling gallop) Per vias rectas!
(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.)
THE GREEN LODGES
Soft day, sir John! Soft day, your honour!
(Private Carr, Private Compton and Cissy Caffrey pass beneath the
windows, singing in discord.)
STEPHEN
Hark! Our friend noise in the street.
ZOE
(holds up her hand) Stop!
PRIVATE CARR, PRIVATE COMPTON AND CISSY CAFFREY
Yet I've a sort of a
Yorkshire relish for...
ZOE
That's me. (she claps her hands) Dance! Dance! (she runs to the pianola)
Who has twopence?
BLOOM
Who'll ...?
LYNCH
(handing her coins) Here.
STEPHEN
(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)
ZOE
(turns the drumhandle) There.
(She drops two pennies in the slot. Gold, 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 pianostool
and lifts and beats handless sticks of arms on the keyboard, nodding
with damsel's grace, his bowknot bobbing)
ZOE
(twirls round herself, heeltapping) Dance. Anybody here for there?
Who'll dance? Clear the table.
(The pianola with changing lights plays in waltz time the prelude
of My Girl's a Yorkshire Girl. Stephen throws his ashplant on the
table and seizes Zoe round the waist. Florry and Bella push the
table towards the fireplace. Stephen, arming Zoe with exaggerated
grace, begins to waltz her round the room. Bloom stands aside. Her
sleeve filling from gracing arms reveals a white fleshflower of
vaccination. 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 gorget of cream tulle, a green
lowcut waistcoat, stock collar with white kerchief, tight lavender
trousers, patent pumps and canary gloves. In his buttonhole is an
immense dahlia. He twirls in reversed directions a clouded cane,
then wedges it tight in his oxter. He places a hand lightly on his
breastbone, bows, and fondles his flower and buttons.)
MAGINNI
The poetry of motion, art of calisthenics. No connection with Madam
Legget Byrne's or Levenston's. Fancy dress balls arranged. Deportment.
The Katty Lanner step. So. Watch me! My terpsichorean abilities. (he
minuets forward three paces on tripping bee's feet) Tout le monde en
avant! Reverence! Tout le monde en place!
(The prelude ceases. Professor Goodwin, beating vague arms
shrivels, sinks, his live cape filling about the stool. The air in firmer
waltz time sounds. Stephen and Zoe circle freely. The lights
change, glow, fide gold rosy violet.)
THE PIANOLA
Two young fellows were talking about their girls, girls, girls,
Sweethearts they'd left behind ......
(From a corner the morning hours run out, goldhaired,
slimsandalled, 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.)
MAGINNI
(clipclaps glovesilent hands) Carr’! Avant deux! Breathe evenly! Balance!
(The morning and noon hours waltz in their places, turning,
advancing to each other, shaping their curves, bowing visavis.
Cavaliers behind them arch and suspend their arms, with hands
descending to, touching, rising from their shoulders.)
HOURS
You may touch my.
CAVALIERS
May I touch your?
HOURS
O, but lightly!
CAVALIERS
O, so lightly!
THE PIANOLA
My little shy little lass has a waist.
(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 landbreeze.)
MAGINNI
Avant huit! Travers’! Salut! Cours de mains! Crois’!
(The night hours, one by one, 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.)
THE BRACELETS
Heigho! Heigho!
ZOE
(twirling, her hand to her brow) O!
MAGINNI
Les tiroirs! Cha‘ne de dames! La corbeille! Dos a dos!
(Arabesquing wearily they weave a pattern on the floor, weaving,
unweaving, curtseying, twirling, simply swirling.)
ZOE
I'm giddy!
(She frees herself, droops on a chair. Stephen seizes Florry and
turns with her.)
MAGINNI
BoulangSre! Les ronds! Les ponts! Chevaux de bois! Escargots!
(Twining, receding, with interchanging hands the night hours link
each each with arching arms in a mosaic of movements. Stephen
and Florry turn cumbrously.)
MAGINNI
Dansez avec vos dames! Changez de dames! Donnez le petit bouquet a votre
dame! Remerciez!
THE PIANOLA
Best, best of all,
Baraabum!
KITTY
(jumps up) O, they played that on the hobbyhorses at the Mirus bazaar!
(She runs to Stephen. He leaves Florry brusquely and seizes
Kitty. A screaming bittern's harsh high whistle shrieks.
Groangrousegurgling Toft's cumbersome whirligig turns slowly the
room right roundabout the room.)
THE PIANOLA
My girl's a Yorkshire girl.
ZOE
Yorkshire through and through. Come on all!
(She seizes Florry and waltzes her.)
STEPHEN
Pas seul!
(He wheels Kitty into Lynch's arms, 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
hornblower 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
Though she's a factory lass
And wears no fancy clothes.
(Closeclutched swift swifter with glareblareflare scudding they
scootlootshoot lumbering by. Baraabum!)
TUTTI
Encore! Bis! Bravo! Encore!
SIMON
Think of your mother's people!
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 onehandled Nelson two trickies
Frauenzimmer plumstained from pram filling 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 switchback lumbering up
and down bump mashtub sort of viceroy and reine relish for
tublumber bumpshire rose. Baraabum!
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 walls. He stops
dead.)
STEPHEN
Ho!
(Stephen's mother, emaciated, rises stark through the floor, in leper
grey with a wreath of faded orangeblossoms and a torn bridal veil,
her face worn and noseless, green with gravemould. 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.)
THE CHOIR
Liliata rutilantium te confessorum
Iubilantium te virginum
(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.)
BUCK MULLIGAN
She's beastly dead. The pity of it! Mulligan meets the afflicted mother. (he
upturns his eyes) Mercurial Malachi!
THE MOTHER
(with the subtle smile of death's madness) I was once the beautiful May
Goulding. I am dead.
STEPHEN
(horrorstruck) Lemur, who are you? No. What bogeyman's trick is this?
BUCK MULLIGAN
(shakes his curling capbell) The mockery of it! Kinch dogsbody killed her
bitchbody. She kicked the bucket. (tears of molten butter fall from his eyes
on to the scone) Our great sweet mother! Epi oinopa ponton.
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.
STEPHEN
(choking with fright, remorse and horror) They say I killed you, mother.
He offended your memory. Cancer did it, not I. Destiny.
THE MOTHER
(a green rill of bile trickling from a side of her mouth) You sang that song
to me. Love's bitter mystery.
STEPHEN
(eagerly) Tell me the word, mother, if you know now. The word known to
all men.
THE MOTHER
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 allpowerful. Prayer for the suffering souls in the Ursuline manual
and forty days' indulgence. Repent, Stephen.
STEPHEN
The ghoul! Hyena!
THE MOTHER
I pray for you in my other world. Get Dilly to make you that boiled rice
every night after your brainwork. Years and years I loved you, O, my son,
my firstborn, when you lay in my womb.
ZOE
(fanning herself with the gratefan) I'm melting!
FLORRY
(points to Stephen) Look! He's white.
BLOOM
(goes to the window to open it more) Giddy.
THE MOTHER
(with smouldering eyes) Repent! O, the fire of hell!
STEPHEN
(panting) His noncorrosive sublimate! The corpsechewer! Raw head and
bloody bones.
THE MOTHER
(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 finger) Beware God's hand!
(A green crab with malignant red eyes sticks deep its grinning claws
in Stephen's heart.)
STEPHEN
(strangled with rage, his features drawn grey and old) Shite!
BLOOM
(at the window) What?
STEPHEN
Ah non, par exemple! The intellectual imagination! With me all or not at
all. Non serviam!
FLORRY
Give him some cold water. Wait. (she rushes out)
THE MOTHER
(wrings her hands slowly, moaning desperately) O Sacred Heart of Jesus,
have mercy on him! Save him from hell, O Divine Sacred Heart!
STEPHEN
No! No! No! Break my spirit, all of you, if you can! I'll bring you all to
heel!
THE MOTHER
(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
Nothung!
(He lifts 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.)
THE GASJET
Pwfungg!
BLOOM
Stop!
LYNCH
(rushes forward and seizes Stephen's hand) Here! Hold on! Don't run
amok!
BELLA
Police!
(Stephen, abandoning his ashplant, his head and arms thrown back
stark, beats the ground and flies from the room, past the whores at
the door.)
BELLA
(screams) After him!
(The two whores rush to the halldoor. Lynch and Kitty and Zoe
stampede from the room. They talk excitedly. Bloom follows,
returns.)
THE WHORES
(jammed in the doorway, pointing) Down there.
ZOE
(pointing) There. There's something up.
BELLA
Who pays for the lamp? (she seizes Bloom's coattail) Here, you were with
him. The lamp's broken.
BLOOM
(rushes to the hall, rushes back) What lamp, woman?
A WHORE
He tore his coat.
BELLA
(her eyes hard with anger and cupidity, points) Who's to pay for that? Ten
shillings. You're a witness.
BLOOM
(snatches up Stephen's ashplant) Me? Ten shillings? Haven't you lifted
enough off him? Didn't he ....?
BELLA
(loudly) Here, none of your tall talk. This isn't a brothel. A tenshilling
house.
BLOOM
(His head under the lamp, pulls the chain. Puling, the gasjet lights up a
crushed mauve purple shade. He raises the ashplant.) Only the chimney's
broken. Here is all he ....
BELLA
(shrinks back and screams) Jesus! Don't!
BLOOM
(warding off a blow) To show you how he hit the paper. There's not
sixpenceworth of damage done. Ten shillings!
FLORRY
(with a glass of water, enters) Where is he?
BELLA
Do you want me to call the police?
BLOOM
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 vicechancellor. You don't want a
scandal.
BELLA
(angrily) Trinity. Coming down here ragging after the boatraces and
paying nothing. Are you my commander here or? Where is he? I'll charge
him! Disgrace him, I will! (she shouts) Zoe! Zoe!
BLOOM
(urgently) And if it were your own son in Oxford? (warningly) I know.
BELLA
(almost speechless) Who are. Incog!
ZOE
(in the doorway) There's a row on.
BLOOM
What? Where? (he throws a shilling on the table and starts) 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 urges on her
whores. They blow ickylickysticky yumyum kisses. Corny Kelleher
replies with a ghastly 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 Raschid 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, follow from fir, 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, woman's 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, VB Dillon, Councillor Nannetti, Alexander Keyes,
Larry O'Rourke, Joe Cuffe Mrs O'Dowd, Pisser Burke, the
Nameless One, Mrs Riordan, the Citizen, Garryowen,
Whodoyoucallhim, Strangeface, Fellowthatsolike, Sawhimbefore,
Chapwithawen, 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,
maninthestreet, othermaninthestreet, 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-general's, Dan Dawson, dental surgeon Bloom with
tweezers, Mrs Bob Doran, Mrs Kennefick, Mrs Wyse Nolan, John
Wyse Nolan, handsomemarriedwomanrubbedagainstwidebehind-
inClonskeatram, the bookseller of Sweets of Sin, Miss
Dubedatandshedidbedad, Mesdames Gerald and Stanislaus Moran
of Roebuck, the managing clerk of Drimmie's, Wetherup, 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.)
THE HUE AND CRY
(helterskelterpelterwelter) He's Bloom! Stop Bloom! Stopabloom!
Stopperrobber! Hi! Hi! Stophim on the corner!
(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.)
STEPHEN
(with elaborate gestures, breathing deeply and slowly) You are my guests.
Uninvited. By virtue of the fifth of George and seventh of Edward. History
to blame. Fabled by mothers of memory.
PRIVATE CARR
(to Cissy Caffrey) Was he insulting you?
STEPHEN
Addressed her in vocative feminine. Probably neuter. Ungenitive.
VOICES
No, he didn't. I seen him. The girl there. He was in Mrs Cohen's. What's
up? Soldier and civilian.
CISSY CAFFREY
I was in company with the soldiers and they left me to do, you know, and
the young man run up behind me. But I'm faithful to the man that's treating
me though I'm only a shilling whore.
VOICES
Shesfaithfultheman.
STEPHEN
(catches sight of Lynch's and Kitty's heads) Hail, Sisyphus. (he points to
himself and the others) Poetic. Uropoetic.
CISSY CAFFREY
Yes, to go with him. And me with a soldier friend.
PRIVATE COMPTON
He doesn't half want a thick ear, the blighter. Biff him one, Harry.
PRIVATE CARR
(to Cissy) Was he insulting you while me and him was having a piss?
LORD TENNYSON
(gentleman poet in Union Jack blazer and cricket flannels, bareheaded,
flowingbearded) Theirs not to reason why.
PRIVATE COMPTON
Biff him, Harry.
STEPHEN
(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.
CISSY CAFFREY
(to the crowd) No, I was with the privates.
STEPHEN
(amiably) Why not? The bold soldier boy. In my opinion every lady for
example .....
PRIVATE CARR
(his cap awry, advances to Stephen) Say, how would it be, governor, if I
was to bash in your jaw?
STEPHEN
(looks up to the sky) How? Very unpleasant. Noble art of selfpretence.
Personally, I detest action. (he waves his hand) Hand hurts me slightly.
Enfin ce sont vos oignons. (to Cissy Caffrey) Some trouble is on here.
What is it precisely?
DOLLY GRAY
(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.
(The soldiers turn their swimming eyes.)
BLOOM
(elbowing through the crowd, plucks Stephen's sleeve vigorously) Come
now, professor, that carman is waiting.
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
(propping him) Retain your own.
STEPHEN
(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 but human 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.
BIDDY THE CLAP
Did you hear what the professor said? He's a professor out of the college.
CUNTY KATE
I did. I heard that.
BIDDY THE CLAP
He expresses himself with such marked refinement of phraseology.
CUNTY KATE
Indeed, yes. And at the same time with such apposite trenchancy.
PRIVATE CARR
(pulls himself free and comes forward) What's that you're saying about
my king?
(Edward the Seventh appears in an archway. He wars 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, Skinner's and Probyn's 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 plasterer's bucket on which is printed
Defense d'uriner. A roar of welcome greets him.)
EDWARD THE SEVENTH
(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 bak. (he shakes hands with Private Carr,
Private Compton, Stephen, Bloom and Lynch)
(General applause. Edward the Seventh lifts his bucket graciously
in acknowledgment.)
PRIVATE CARR
(to Stephen) Say it again.
STEPHEN
(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
medicines. 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 didn't want it to die. Damn death. Long live life!
EDWARD THE SEVENTH
(levitates over heaps of slain, in the garb and with the halo of Joking Jesus,
a white jujube in his phosphorescent face)
My methods are new and are causing surprise.
To make the blind see I throw dust in their eyes.
STEPHEN
Kings and unicorns! (he fills back a pace) Come somewhere and we'll...
What was that girl saying ...?
PRIVATE COMPTON
Eh, Harry, give him a kick in the knackers. Stick one into Jerry.
BLOOM
(to the privates, softly) He doesn't know what he's saying. Taken a little
more than is good for him. Absinthe. Greeneyed monster. I know him.
He's a gentleman, a poet. It's all right.
STEPHEN
(nods, smiling and laughing) Gentleman, patriot, scholar and judge of
impostors.
PRIVATE CARR
I don't give a bugger who he is.
PRIVATE COMPTON
We don't give a bugger who he is.
STEPHEN
I seem to annoy them. Green rag to a bull.
(Kevin Egan of Paris in black Spanish tasselled shirt and
peep-o'-day boy's hat signs to Stephen.)
KEVIN EGAN
H'lo! Bonjour! The vieille ogresse with the dents jaunes.
(Patrice Egan peeps from behind, his rabbitface nibbling a quince
leaf.)
PATRICE
Socialiste!
DON EMILE PATRIZ1O FRANZ RUPERT POPE HENNESSY
(in medieval hauberk, two wild geese volant on his helm, with noble
indignation points a mailed hand against the privates) Werf those eykes to
footboden, big grand porcos of johnyellows todos covered of gravy!
BLOOM
(to Stephen) Come home. You'll get into trouble.
STEPHEN
(swaying) I don't avoid it. He provokes my intelligence.
BIDDY THE CLAP
One immediately observes that he is of patrician lineage.
THE VIRAGO
Green above the red, says he. Wolfe Tone.
THE BAWD
The red's as good as the green. And better. Up the soldiers! Up King
Edward!
A ROUGH
(laughs) Ay! Hands up to De Wet.
THE CITIZEN
(with a huge emerald muffler and shillelagh, calls)
May the God above
Send down a dove
With teeth as sharp as razors
To slit the throats
Of the English dogs
That hanged our Irish leaders.
THE CROPPY BOY
(the ropenoose round his neck, gripes in his issuing bowels with both
hands)
I bear no hate to a living thing,
But I love my country beyond the king.
RUMBOLD, DEMON BARBER
(accompanied by two blackmasked assistants, advances with 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 body of Miss
Barron which sent Seddon to the gallows.
(He jerks the rope. The assistants leap at the victim's legs and drag
him downward, grunting The croppy boy's tongue protrudes
violently.)
THE CROPPY BOY
Horhot ho hray hor hother's hest.
(He gives up the ghost. A violent erection of the hanged sends gouts
of sperm spouting through his deathclothes on to the cobblestones.
Mrs Bellingham, Mrs Yelverton Barry and the Honourable Mrs
Mervyn Talboys rush forward with their handkerchiefs to sop it
up.)
RUMBOLD
I'm near it myself. (he undoes the noose) Rope which hanged the awful
rebel. Ten shillings a time. As applied to Her 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!
EDWARD THE SEVENTH
(dances slowly, solemnly, rattling his bucket, and sings with soft
contentment)
On coronation day, on coronation day,
O, won't we have a merry time,
Drinking whisky, beer and wine!
PRIVATE CARR
Here. What are you saying about my king?
STEPHEN
(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.
PRIVATE CARR
Who wants your bleeding money?
STEPHEN
(tries to move off) Will someone tell me where I am least likely to meet
these necessary evils? Ca se voit aussi a Paris. Not that I ... But, by saint
Patrick ....!
(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
Aha! I know you, gammer! Hamlet, revenge! The old sow that eats her
farrow!
OLD GUMMY GRANNY
(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?
STEPHEN
How do I stand you? The hat trick! Where's the third person of the Blessed
Trinity? Soggarth Aroon? The reverend Carrion Crow.
CISSY CAFFREY
(shrill) Stop them from fighting!
A ROUGH
Our men retreated.
PRIVATE CARR
(tugging at his belt) I'll wring the neck of any fucker says a word against
my fucking king.
BLOOM
(terrified) He said nothing. Not a word. A pure misunderstanding.
PRIVATE COMPTON
Go it, Harry. Do him one in the eye. He's a proBoer.
STEPHEN
Did I? When?
BLOOM
(to the redcoats) We fought for you in South Africa, Irish missile troops.
Isn't that history? Royal Dublin Fusiliers. Honoured by our monarch.
THE NAVVY
(staggering past) O, yes! O God, yes! O, make the kwawr a krowawr! O!
Bo!
(Casqued halberdiers in armour thrust forward a pentice of gutted
spearpoints. Major Tweedy, moustached like Turko the terrible, in
bearskin cap with hackleplume and accoutrements, with epaulettes,
gilt chevrons and sabretaches, his breast bright with medals, toes
the line. He gives the pilgrim warrior's sign of the knights
templars.)
MAJOR TWEEDY
(growls gruffly) Rorke's Drift! Up, guards, and at them! Mahar shalal
hashbaz.
THE CITIZEN
Erin go bragh!
(Major Tweedy and the Citizen exhibit to each other medals,
decorations, trophies of war, wounds. Both salute with fierce
hostility.)
PRIVATE CARR
I'll do him in.
PRIVATE COMPTON
(moves the crowd back) Fair play, here. Make a bleeding butcher's shop of
the bugger.
(Massed bands blare Garryowen and God save the king.)
CISSY CAFFREY
They're going to fight. For me!
CUNTY KATE
The brave and the fair.
BIDDY THE CLAP
Methinks yon sable knight will joust it with the best.
CUNTY KATE
(blushing deeply) Nay, madam. The gules doublet and merry saint George
for me!
STEPHEN
The harlot's cry from street to street
Shall weave Old Ireland's windingsheet.
PRIVATE CARR
(loosening his belt, shouts) I'll wring the neck of any fucking bastard says
a word against my bleeding fucking king.
BLOOM
(shakes Cissy Caffrey's shoulders) Speak, you! Are you struck dumb? You
are the link between nations and generations. Speak, woman, sacred
lifegiver!
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!
STEPHEN
(ecstatically, to Cissy Caffrey)
White thy fambles, red thy gan
And thy quarrons dainty is.
VOICES
Police!
DISTANT VOICES
Dublin's burning! Dublin's burning! On fire, on fire!
(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 marshlands, swooping from
eyries, hover screaming, gannets, cormorants, vultures, goshawks,
climbing woodcocks, peregrines, merlins, 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 goatfell cloaks arise
and appear to many. A chasm opens with a noiseless yawn. Tom
Rochford, winner, in athlete's 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 dragons' 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 Lear
O'Johnny, Lord Edward Fitzgerald against Lord Gerald
Fitzedward, The O'Donoghue of The Glens against The Glens of
The O'Donoghue. On an eminence, the centre of the earth, rises the
feldaltar of Saint Barbara. Black candles rise from its gospel and
epistle horns. From the high barbacans 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 lace petticoat
and reversed chasuble, his two left feet back to the front, celebrates
camp mass. The Reverend Mr Hugh C Haines Love M. A. in a
plain cassock and mortarboard, his head and collar back to the
front, holds over the celebrant's head an open umbrella.)
FATHER MALACHI O'FLYNN
Introibo ad altare diaboli.
THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE
To the devil which hath made glad my young days.
FATHER MALACHI O'FLYNN
(takes from the chalice and elevates a blooddripping host) Corpus meum.
THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE
(raises high behind the celebrant's petticoat, revealing his grey bare hairy
buttocks between which a carrot is stuck) My body.
THE VOICE OF ALL THE DAMNED
Htengier Tnetopinmo Dog Drol eht rof, Aiulella!
(From on high the voice of Adonai calls.)
ADONAI
Dooooooooooog!
THE VOICE OF ALL THE BLESSED
Alleluia, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth!
(From on high the voice of Adonai calls.)
ADONAI
Goooooooooood!
(In strident discord peasants and townsmen of Orange and Green
factions sing Kick the Pope and Daily, daily sing to Mary.)
PRIVATE CARR
(with ferocious articulation) I'll do him in, so help me fucking Christ! I'll
wring the bastard fucker's bleeding blasted fucking windpipe!
(The retriever, nosing on the fringe of the crowd, barks noisily.)
BLOOM
(runs to Lynch) Can't you get him away?
LYNCH
He likes dialectic, the universal language. Kitty! (to Bloom) Get him away,
you. He won't listen to me.
(He drags Kitty away.)
STEPHEN
(points) Exit Judas. Et laqueo se suspendit.
BLOOM
(runs to Stephen) Come along with me now before worse happens. Here's
your stick.
STEPHEN
Stick, no. Reason. This feast of pure reason.
OLD GUMMY GRANNY
(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!
CISSY CAFFREY
(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.
BLOOM
(over Stephen's shoulder) Yes, go. You see he's incapable.
PRIVATE CARR
(breaks loose) I'll insult him.
(He rushes towards Stephen, fist 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.)
MAJOR TWEEDY
(loudly) Carbine in bucket! Cease fire! Salute!
THE RETRIEVER
(barking furiously) Ute ute ute ute ute ute ute ute.
THE CROWD
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!
A HAG
What call had the redcoat to strike the gentleman and he under the
influence. Let them go and fight the Boers!
THE BAWD
Listen to who's talking! Hasn't the soldier a right to go with his girl? He
gave him the coward's blow.
(They grab at each other's hair, claw at each other and spit)
THE RETRIEVER
(barking) Wow wow wow.
BLOOM
(shoves them back, loudly) Get back, stand back!
PRIVATE COMPTON
(tugging his comrade) Here. Bugger off, Harry. Here's the cops!
(Two raincaped watch, tall, stand in the group.)
FIRST WATCH
What's wrong here?
PRIVATE COMPTON
We were with this lady. And he insulted us. And assaulted my chum. (the
retriever barks) Who owns the bleeding tyke?
CISSY CAFFREY
(with expectation) Is he bleeding!
A MAN
(rising from his knees) No. Gone off. He'll come to all right.
BLOOM
(glances sharply at the man) Leave him to me. I can easily .....
SECOND WATCH
Who are you? Do you know him?
PRIVATE CARR
(lurches towards the watch) He insulted my lady friend.
BLOOM
(angrily) You hit him without provocation. I'm a witness. Constable, take
his regimental number.
SECOND WATCH
I don't want your instructions in the discharge of my duty.
PRIVATE COMPTON
(pulling his comrade) Here, bugger off Harry. Or Bennett'll shove you in
the lockup.
PRIVATE CARR
(staggering as he is pulled away) God fuck old Bennett. He's a whitearsed
bugger. I don't give a shit for him.
FIRST WATCH
(takes out his notebook) What's his name?
BLOOM
(peering over the crowd) I just see a car there. If you give me a hand a
second, sergeant....
FIRST WATCH
Name and address.
(Corny Kelleker, weepers round his hat, a death wreath in his hand,
appears among the bystanders.)
BLOOM
(quickly) O, the very man! (he whispers) Simon Dedalus' son. A bit
sprung. Get those policemen to move those loafers back.
SECOND WATCH
Night, Mr Kelleher.
CORNY KELLEHER
(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?
FIRST WATCH
(turns to the crowd) Here, what are you all gaping at? Move on out of
that.
(The crowd disperses slowly, muttering, down the lane.)
CORNY KELLEHER
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
(laughs) I suppose so.
CORNY KELLEHER
(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?
SECOND WATCH
(genially) Ah, sure we were too.
CORNY KELLEHER
(winking) Boys will be boys. I've a car round there.
SECOND WATCH
All right, Mr Kelleher. Good night.
CORNY KELLEHER
I'll see to that.
BLOOM
(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 wellknown highly respected citizen.
Just a little wild oats, you understand.
FIRST WATCH
O. I understand, sir.
SECOND WATCH
That's all right, sir.
FIRST WATCH
It was only in case of corporal injuries I'd have to report it at the station.
BLOOM
(nods rapidly) Naturally. Quite right. Only your bounden duty.
SECOND WATCH
It's our duty.
CORNY KELLEHER
Good night, men.
THE WATCH
(saluting together) Night, gentlemen.
(They move off with slow heavy tread)
BLOOM
(blows) Providential you came on the scene. You have a car...?
CORNY KELLEHER
(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.
BLOOM
I was just going home by Gardiner street when I happened to ...
CORNY KELLEHER
(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!
BLOOM
(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 neighs.)
THE HORSE
Hohohohohohoh! Hohohohome!
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 speciality. Will I give him a lift home?
Where does he hang out? Somewhere in Cabra, what?
BLOOM
No, in Sandycove, I believe, from what he let drop.
(Stephen, prone, breathes to the stars. Corny Kelleher, asquint,
drawls at the horse. Bloom, in gloom, looms town.)
CORNY KELLEHER
(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.
BLOOM
No, no, no. I have his money and his hat here and stick.
CORNY KELLEHER
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!
THE HORSE
(neighs) Hohohohohome.
BLOOM
Good night. I'll just wait and take him along in a few ...
(Corny Kelleher returns to the outside car and mounts it. The
horseharness jingles.)
CORNY KELLEHER
(from the car, standing) Night.
BLOOM
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
Bloom's 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 tooralooloo looloo lay. Bloom, holding in
his hand Stephen's hat, festooned with shavings, and ashplant,
stands irresolute. Then he bends to him and shakes him by the
shoulder.)
BLOOM
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!
STEPHEN
(frowns) 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 ..?
(He turns on his left side, sighing, doubling himself together.)
BLOOM
Poetry. Well educated. Pity. (he bends again and undoes the buttons of
Stephen's waistcoat) To breathe. (he brushes the woodshavings from
Stephen's clothes with light hand and fingers) One pound seven. Not hurt
anyhow. (he listens) What?
STEPHEN
(murmurs)
.... shadows ... the woods
... white breast... dim sea.
(He stretches out his arms, sighs again and curls his body. Bloom,
holding the 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.)
BLOOM
(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 .....
(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.)
BLOOM
(wonderstruck, calls inaudibly) Rudy!
RUDY
(gazes, unseeing, into Bloom's eyes and goes on reading, kissing, smiling
He has a delicate mauve face. On his suit he has diamond and ruby
buttons. In his free left hand he holds a slim ivory cane with a violet
bowknot. A white lambkin peeps out of his waistcoat pocket.)
--The biscuits was as hard as brass And the beef as salt as Lot's wife's arse. 980 O, Johnny Lever! Johnny Lever, O!After which effusion the redoubtable specimen duly arrived on the scene and regaining his seat he sank rather than sat heavily on the form provided. Skin-the-Goat, assuming he was he, evidently with an axe to grind, was airing his grievances in a forcible-feeble philippic anent the natural resources of Ireland or something of that sort which he described in his lengthy dissertation as the richest country bar none on the face of God's earth, far and away superior to England, with coal in large quantities, six million pounds worth of pork exported every year, ten millions between 990 butter and eggs and all the riches drained out of it by England levying taxes on the poor people that paid through the nose always and gobbling up the best meat in the market and a lot more surplus steam in the same vein. Their conversation accordingly became general and all agreed that that was a fact. You could grow any mortal thing in Irish soil, he stated, and there was that colonel Everard down there in Navan growing tobacco. Where would you find anywhere the like of Irish bacon? But a day of reckoning, he stated crescendo with no uncertain voice, thoroughly monopolising all the conversation, was in store for mighty England, despite her power of pelf on account of her crimes. There would be a fall and the greatest fall in history. The Germans and the Japs were going to have their little lookin, he affirmed. The Boers were the beginning of the end. Brummagem England was toppling already and her downfall would be Ireland, her Achilles heel, which he explained to them about the vulnerable point of Achilles, the Greek hero, a point his auditors at once seized as he completely gripped their attention by showing the tendon referred to on his boot. His advice to every Irishman was: stay in the land of your birth and work for Ireland and live for Ireland. Ireland, Parnell said, could not spare a single one of her sons. Silence all round marked the termination of his finale. The l o l o impervious navigator heard these lurid tidings, undismayed. --Take a bit of doing, boss, retaliated that rough diamond palpably a bit peeved in response to the foregoing truism. To which cold douche referring to downfall and so on the keeper concurred but nevertheless held to his main view. --Who's the best troops in the army? the grizzled old veteran irately interrogated. And the best jumpers and racers? And the best admirals and generals we've got? Tell me that. --The Irish, for choice, retorted the cabby like Campbell, facial blemishes apart. --That's right, the old tarpaulin corroborated. The Irish catholic peasant. He's the backbone of our empire. You know Jem Mullins? While allowing him his individual opinions as everyman the keeper added he cared nothing for any empire, ours or his, and considered no Irishman worthy of his salt that served it. Then they began to have a few irascible words when it waxed hotter, both, needless to say, appealing to the listeners who followed the passage of arms with interest so long as they didn't indulge in recriminations and come to blows. From inside information extending over a series of years Mr Bloom was rather inclined to poohpooh the suggestion as egregious balderdash for, pending that consummation devoutly to be or not to be wished for, he was fully cognisant of the fact that their neighbours across the channel, unless they were much bigger fools than he took them for, rather concealed their strength than the opposite. It was quite on a par with the quixotic idea in certain quarters that in a hundred million years the coal seam of the sister island would be played out and if, as time went on, that turned out to be how the cat jumped all he could personally say on the matter was that as a host of contingencies, equally relevant to the issue, might occur ere then it was highly advisable in the interim to try to make the most of both countries even though poles apart. Another little interesting point, the amours of whores and chummies, to put it in common parlance, reminded him Irish soldiers had as often fought for England as against her, more so, in fact. And now, why? So the scene between the pair of them, the licensee of the place rumoured to be or have been Fitzharris, the famous invincible, and the other, obviously bogus, reminded him forcibly as being on all fours with the confidence trick, supposing, that is, it was prearranged as the lookeron, a student of the human soul if anything, the others seeing least of the game. And as for the lessee or keeper, who probably wasn't the other person at all, he (B.) couldn't help feeling and most properly it was better to give people like that the goby unless you were a blithering idiot altogether and refuse to have anything to do with them as a golden rule in private life and their felonsetting, there always being the offchance of a Dannyman coming forward and turning queen's evidence or king's now like Denis or Peter Carey, an idea he utterly repudiated. Quite apart from that he disliked those careers of wrongdoing and crime on principle. Yet, though such criminal propensities had never been an inmate of his bosom in any shape or form, he certainly did feel and no denying it (while inwardly remaining what he was) a certain kind of admiration for a man who had actually brandished a knife, cold steel, with the courage of his political convictions (though, personally, he would never be a party to any such thing), off the same bat as those love vendettas of the south, have her or swing for her, when the husband frequently, after some words passed between the two concerning her relations with the other lucky mortal (he having had the pair watched), inflicted fatal injuries on his adored one as a result of an alternative postnuptial liaison by plunging his knife into her, until it just struck him that Fitz, nicknamed Skin-the, merely drove the car for the actual perpetrators of the outrage and so was not, if he was reliably informed, actually party to the ambush which, in point of fact, was the plea some legal luminary saved his skin on. In any case that was very ancient history by now and as for our friend, the pseudo Skin-the-etcetera, he had 1070 transparently outlived his welcome. He ought to have either died naturally or on the scaffold high. Like actresses, always farewell positively last performance then come up smiling again. Generous to a fault of course, temperamental, no economising or any idea of the sort, always snapping at the bone for the shadow. So similarly he had a very shrewd suspicion that Mr Johnny Lever got rid of some ¦ s d. in the course of his perambulations round the docks in the congenial atmosphere of the Old Ireland tavern, come back to Erin and so on. Then as for the other he had heard not so long before the same identical lingo as he told Stephen how he simply but effectually silenced the offender. --He took umbrage at something or other, that muchinjured but on the whole eventempered person declared, I let slip. He called me a jew and in a heated fashion offensively. So I without deviating from plain facts in the least told him his God, I mean Christ, was a jew too and all his family like me though in reality I'm not. That was one for him. A soft answer turns away wrath. He hadn't a word to say for himself as everyone saw. Am I not right? He turned a long you are wrong gaze on Stephen of timorous dark pride at the soft impeachment with a glance also of entreaty for he seemed to glean in a kind of a way that it wasn't all exactly. 1090 --Ex quibus, Stephen mumbled in a noncommittal accent, their two or four eyes conversing, Christus or Bloom his name is or after all any other, secundum carnem. --Of course, Mr B. proceeded to stipulate, you must look at both sides of the question. It is hard to lay down any hard and fast rules as to right and wrong but room for improvement all round there certainly is though every country, they say, our own distressful included, has the government it deserves. But with a little goodwill all round. It's all very fine to boast of mutual superiority but what about mutual equality. I resent violence and intolerance in any shape or form. It never reaches anything or stops anything. A revolution must come on the due instalments plan. It's a patent absurdity on the face of it to hate people because they live round the corner and speak another vernacular, in the next house so to speak. --Memorable bloody bridge battle and seven minutes' war, Stephen assented, between Skinner's alley and Ormond market. Yes, Mr Bloom thoroughly agreed, entirely endorsing the remark, that was overwhelmingly right. And the whole world was full of that sort of thing. --You just took the words out of my mouth, he said. A hocuspocus of conflicting evidence that candidly you couldn't remotely .... All those wretched quarrels, in his humble opinion, stirring up bad blood, from some bump of combativeness or gland of some kind, erroneously supposed to be about a punctilio of honour and a flag, were very largely a question of the money question which was at the back of everything greed and jealousy, people never knowing when to stop. --They accuse, remarked he audibly. He turned away from the others who probably and spoke nearer to, so as the others in case they. --Jews, he softly imparted in an aside in Stephen's ear, are accused of ruining. Not a vestige of truth in it, I can safely say. History, would you be surprised to learn, proves up to the hilt Spain decayed when the inquisition hounded the jews out and England prospered when Cromwell, an uncommonly able ruffian who in other respects has much to answer for, imported them. Why? Because they are imbued with the proper spirit. They are practical and are proved to be so. I don't want to indulge in any because you know the standard works on the subject and then orthodox as you are. But in the economic, not touching religion, domain the priest spells poverty. Spain again, you saw in the war, compared with goahead America. Turks. It's in the dogma. Because if they didn't believe they'd go straight to heaven when they die they'd try to live better, at least so I think. That's the juggle on which the p.p's raise the wind on false pretences. I'm, he resumed with dramatic force, as good an Irishman as that rude person I told you about at the outset and I want to see everyone, concluded he, all creeds and classes pro rata having a comfortable tidysized income, in no niggard fashion either, something in the neighbourhood of ¦300 per annum. That's the vital issue at stake and it's feasible and would be provocative of friendlier intercourse between man and man. At least that's my idea for what it's worth. I call that patriotism. Ubi patria, as we learned a smattering of in our classical days in Alma Mater, vita bene. Where you can live well, the sense is, if you work. Over his untastable apology for a cup of coffee, listening to this synopsis of things in general, Stephen stared at nothing in particular. He could hear, of course, all kinds of words changing colour like those crabs about Ringsend in the morning burrowing quickly into all colours of different sorts of the same sand where they had a home somewhere beneath or seemed to. Then he looked up and saw the eyes that said or didn't say the words the voice he heard said, if you work. --Count me out, he managed to remark, meaning work. The eyes were surprised at this observation because as he, the person who owned them pro tem. observed or rather his voice speaking did, all must work, have to, together. --I mean, of course, the other hastened to affirm, work in the widest possible sense. Also literary labour not merely for the kudos of the thing. Writing for the newspapers which is the readiest channel nowadays. That's work too. Important work. After all, from the little I know of you, after all the money expended on your education you are entitled to recoup yourself and command your price. You have every bit as much right to live by your pen in pursuit of your philosophy as the peasant has. What? You both belong to Ireland, the brain and the brawn. Each is equally important. --You suspect, Stephen retorted with a sort of a half laugh, that I may be 1160 important because I belong to the faubourg Saint PЉtrice called Ireland for short. --I would go a step farther, Mr Bloom insinuated. --But I suspect, Stephen interrupted, that Ireland must be important because it belongs to me. --What belongs, queried Mr Bloom bending, fancying he was perhaps under some misapprehension. Excuse me. Unfortunately, I didn't catch the latter portion. What was it you ....? Stephen, patently crosstempered, repeated and shoved aside his mug of coffee or whatever you like to call it none too politely, adding: 1170 --We can't change the country. Let us change the subject. At this pertinent suggestion Mr Bloom, to change the subject, looked down but in a quandary, as he couldn't tell exactly what construction to put on belongs to which sounded rather a far cry. The rebuke of some kind was clearer than the other part. Needless to say the fumes of his recent orgy spoke then with some asperity in a curious bitter way foreign to his sober state. Probably the homelife to which Mr B attached the utmost importance had not been all that was needful or he hadn't been familiarised with the right sort of people. With a touch of fear for the young man beside him whom he furtively scrutinised with an air of some consternation 1180 remembering he had just come back from Paris, the eyes more especially reminding him forcibly of father and sister, failing to throw much light on the subject, however, he brought to mind instances of cultured fellows that promised so brilliantly nipped in the bud of premature decay and nobody to blame but themselves. For instance there was the case of O'Callaghan, for one, the halfcrazy faddist, respectably connected though of inadequate means, with his mad vagaries among whose other gay doings when rotto and making himself a nuisance to everybody all round he was in the habit of ostentatiously sporting in public a suit of brown paper (a fact). And then the usual d’nouement after the fun had gone on fast and furious he got 1190 landed into hot water and had to be spirited away by a few friends, after a strong hint to a blind horse from John Mallon of Lower Castle Yard, so as not to be made amenable under section two of the criminal law amendment act, certain names of those subpoenaed being handed in but not divulged for reasons which will occur to anyone with a pick of brains. Briefly, putting two and two together, six sixteen which he pointedly turned a deaf ear to, Antonio and so forth, jockeys and esthetes and the tattoo which was all the go in the seventies or thereabouts even in the house of lords because early in life the occupant of the throne, then heir apparent, the other members of the upper ten and other high personages simply following in the footsteps of the head of the state, he reflected about the errors of notorieties and crowned heads running counter to morality such as the Cornwall case a number of years before under their veneer in a way scarcely intended by nature, a thing good Mrs Grundy, as the law stands, was terribly down on though not for the reason they thought they were probably whatever it was except women chiefly who were always fiddling more or less at one another it being largely a matter of dress and all the rest of it. Ladies who like distinctive underclothing should, and every welltailored man must, trying to make the gap wider between them by innuendo and give more of a genuine filip to acts of impropriety between the two, she unbuttoned his and then he untied her, mind the pin, whereas savages in the cannibal islands, say, at ninety degrees in the shade not caring a continental. However, reverting to the original, there were on the other hand others who had forced their way to the top from the lowest rung by the aid of their bootstraps. Sheer force of natural genius, that. With brains, sir. For which and further reasons he felt it was his interest and duty even to wait on and profit by the unlookedfor occasion though why he could not exactly tell being as it was already several shillings to the bad having in fact let himself in for it. Still to cultivate the acquaintance of someone of no uncommon calibre who could provide food for reflection would amply repay any small. Intellectual stimulation, as such, was, he felt, from time to time a firstrate tonic for the mind. Added to which was the coincidence of meeting, discussion, dance, row, old salt of the here today and gone tomorrow type, night loafers, the whole galaxy of events, all went to make up a miniature cameo of the world we live in especially as the lives of the submerged tenth, viz. coalminers, divers, scavengers etc., were very much under the microscope lately. To improve the shining hour he wondered whether he might meet with anything approaching the same luck as Mr Philip Beaufoy if taken down in writing suppose he were to pen something out of the common groove (as he fully intended doing) at the rate of one guinea per column. My Experiences, let us say, in a Cabman's Shelter. The pink edition extra sporting of the Telegraph tell a graphic lie lay, as luck would have it, beside his elbow and as he was just puzzling again, far from satisfied, over a country belonging to him and the preceding rebus the vessel came from Bridgwater and the postcard was addressed A. Boudin find the captain's age, his eyes went aimlessly over the respective captions which came under his special province the allembracing give us this day our daily press. First he got a bit of a start but it turned out to be only something about somebody named H. du Boyes, agent for typewriters or something like that. Great battle, Tokio. Lovemaking in Irish, ¦200 damages. Gordon Bennett. Emigration Swindle. Letter from His Grace. William . Ascot meeting, the Gold Cup. Victory of outsider Throwaway recalls Derby of '92 when Capt. Marshall's dark horse Sir Hugo captured the blue ribband at long odds. New York disaster. Thousand lives lost. Foot and Mouth. Funeral of the late Mr Patrick Dignam. So to change the subject he read about Dignam R. I. P. which, he reflected, was anything but a gay sendoff. Or a change of address anyway. --This morning (Hynes put it in of course) the remains of the late Mr Patrick Dignam were removed from his residence, no 9 Newbridge Avenue, Sandymount, for interment in Glasnevin. The deceased gentleman was a 1250 most popular and genial personality in city life and his demise after a brief illness came as a great shock to citizens of all classes by whom he is deeply regretted. The obsequies, at which many friends of the deceased were present, were carried out by (certainly Hynes wrote it with a nudge from Corny) Messrs H. J. O'Neill and Son, 164 North Strand Road. The mourners included: Patk. Dignam (son), Bernard Corrigan (brother-in-law), Jno. Henry Menton, solr, Martin Cunningham, John Power, .)eatondph 1/8 ador dorador douradora (must be where he called Monks the dayfather about Keyes's ad) Thomas Kernan, Simon Dedalus, Stephen Dedalus B. ,4., Edw. J. Lambert, Cornelius T. Kelleher, Joseph M'C Hynes, L. Boom, CP 1260 M'Coy, - M'lntosh and several others. Nettled not a little by L. Boom (as it incorrectly stated) and the line of bitched type but tickled to death simultaneously by C. P. M'Coy and Stephen Dedalus B. A. who were conspicuous, needless to say, by their total absence (to say nothing of M'Intosh) L. Boom pointed it out to his companion B. A. engaged in stifling another yawn, half nervousness, not forgetting the usual crop of nonsensical howlers of misprints. --Is that first epistle to the Hebrews, he asked as soon as his bottom jaw would let him, in? Text: open thy mouth and put thy foot in it. --It is. Really, Mr Bloom said (though first he fancied he alluded to the archbishop till he added about foot and mouth with which there could be no possible connection) overjoyed to set his mind at rest and a bit flabbergasted at Myles Crawford's after all managing to. There. While the other was reading it on page two Boom (to give him for the nonce his new misnomer) whiled away a few odd leisure moments in fits and starts with the account of the third event at Ascot on page three, his side. Value 1000 sovs with 3000 sovs in specie added. For entire colts and fillies. Mr F. Alexander's Throwaway, b. h. by Rightaway-Thrale, 5 yrs, 9 st 4 lbs (W. Lane) 1, lord Howard de Walden's Zinfandel (M. Cannon) z, Mr W. Bass's Sceptre 3. Betting 5 to 4 on Zinfandel, 20 to I Throwaway (off). Sceptre a shade heavier, 5 to 4 on Zinfandel, 20 to I Throwaway (off). Throwaway and Zinfandel stood close order. It was anybody's race then the rank outsider drew to the fore, got long lead, beating lord Howard de Walden's chestnut colt and Mr W. Bass's bay filly Sceptre on a 2 1/2 mile course. Winner trained by Braime so that Lenehan's version of the business was all pure buncombe. Secured the verdict cleverly by a length. 1000 sovs with 3000 in specie. Also ran: J de Bremond's (French horse Bantam Lyons was anxiously inquiring after not in yet but expected any minute) Maximum II. Different ways of bringing off a coup. Lovemaking damages. Though that halfbaked Lyons ran off at a tangent in his impetuosity to get left. Of course gambling eminently lent itself to that sort of thing though as the event turned out the poor fool hadn't much reason to congratulate himself on his pick, the forlorn hope. Guesswork it reduced itself to eventually. --There was every indication they would arrive at that, he, Bloom, said. --Who? the other, whose hand by the way was hurt, said. One morning you would open the paper, the cabman affirmed, and read: Return of Parnell. He bet them what they liked. A Dublin fusilier was in that shelter one night and said he saw him in South Africa. Pride it was killed him. He ought to have done away with himself or lain low for a time after committee room no 15 until he was his old self again with no-one to point a finger at him. Then they would all to a man have gone down on their marrowbones to him to come back when he had recovered his senses. Dead he wasn't. Simply absconded somewhere. The coffin they brought over was full of stones. He changed his name to De Wet, the Boer general. He made a mistake to fight the priests. And so forth and so on. All the same Bloom (properly so dubbed) was rather surprised at their memories for in nine cases out of ten it was a case of tarbarrels and not singly but in their thousands and then complete oblivion because it was twenty odd years. Highly unlikely of course there was even a shadow of truth in the stones and, even supposing, he thought a return highly inadvisable, all things considered. Something evidently riled them in his death. Either he petered out too tamely of acute pneumonia just when his various different political arrangements were nearing completion or whether it transpired he owed his death to his having neglected to change his boots and clothes-after a wetting when a cold resulted and failing to consult a specialist he being confined to his room till he eventually died of it amid widespread regret before a fortnight was at an end or quite possibly they were distressed to find the job was taken out of their hands. Of course nobody being acquainted with his movements even before there was absolutely no clue as to his whereabouts which were decidedly of the Alice, where art thou order even prior to his starting to go under several aliases such as Fox and Stewart so the remark which emanated from friend cabby might be within the bounds of possibility. Naturally then it would prey on his mind as a born leader of men which undoubtedly he was and a commanding figure, a sixfooter or at any rate five feet ten or eleven in his stockinged feet, whereas Messrs So and So who, though they weren't even a patch on the former man, ruled the roost after their redeeming features were very few and far between. It certainly pointed a moral, the idol with feet of clay, and then seventytwo of his trusty henchmen rounding on him with mutual mudslinging. And the identical same with murderers. You had to come back. That haunting sense kind of drew you. To show the understudy in the title role how to. He saw him once on the auspicious occasion when they broke up the type in the Insuppressible or was it United Ireland, a privilege he keenly appreciated, and, in point of fact, handed him his silk hat when it was knocked off and he said Thank you, excited as he undoubtedly was under his frigid exterior notwithstanding the little misadventure mentioned between the cup and the lip: what's bred in the bone. Still as regards return. You were a lucky dog if they didn't set the terrier at you directly you got back. Then a lot of shillyshally usually followed, Tom for and Dick and Harry against. And then, number one, you came up against the man in possession and had to produce your credentials like the claimant in the Tichborne case, Roger Charles Tichborne, Bella was the boat's name to the best of his recollection he, the heir, went down in as the evidence went to show and there was a tattoo mark too in Indian ink, lord Bellew was it, as he might very easily have picked up the details from some pal on board ship and then, when got up to tally with the description given, introduce himself with: Excuse me, my name is So and So or some such commonplace remark. A more prudent course, as Bloom said to the not over effusive, in fact like the distinguished personage under discussion beside him, would have been to sound the lie of the land first. --That bitch, that English whore, did for him, the shebeen proprietor commented. She put the first nail in his coffin. --Fine lump of a woman all the same, the soi-disant townclerk Henry Campbell remarked, and plenty of her. She loosened many a man's thighs. I seen her picture in a barber's. The husband was a captain or an officer. --Ay, Skin-the-Goat amusingly added, he was and a cottonball one. This gratuitous contribution of a humorous character occasioned a fair amount of laughter among his entourage. As regards Bloom he, without the faintest suspicion of a smile, merely gazed in the direction of the 1360 door and reflected upon the historic story which had aroused extraordinary interest at the time when the facts, to make matters worse, were made public with the usual affectionate letters that passed between them full of sweet nothings. First it was strictly Platonic till nature intervened and an attachment sprang up between them till bit by bit matters came to a climax and the matter became the talk of the town till the staggering blow came as a welcome intelligence to not a few evildisposed, however, who were resolved upon encompassing his downfall though the thing was public property all along though not to anything like the sensational extent that it subsequently blossomed into. Since their names were coupled, though, since he was her declared favourite, where was the particular necessity to proclaim it to the rank and file from the housetops, the fact, namely, that he had shared her bedroom which came out in the witnessbox on oath when a thrill went through the packed court literally electrifying everybody in the shape of witnesses swearing to having witnessed him on such and such a particular date in the act of scrambling out of an upstairs apartment with the assistance of a ladder in night apparel, having gained admittance in the same fashion, a fact the weeklies, addicted to the lubric a little, simply coined shoals of money out of. Whereas the simple fact of the case was it was simply a case of the husband not being up to the scratch, with nothing in common between them beyond the name, and then a real man arriving on the scene, strong to the verge of weakness, falling a victim to her siren charms and forgetting home ties, the usual sequel, to bask in the loved one's smiles. The eternal question of the life connubial, needless to say, cropped up. Can real love, supposing there happens to be another chap in the case, exist between married folk? Poser. Though it was no concern of theirs absolutely if he regarded her with affection, carried away by a wave of folly. A magnificent specimen of manhood he was truly augmented obviously by gifts of a high order, as compared with the other military supernumerary that is (who was just the usual everyday farewell, my gallant captain kind of an individual in the light dragoons, the l8th hussars to be accurate) and inflammable doubtless (the fallen leader, that is, not the other) in his own peculiar way which she of course, woman, quickly perceived as highly likely to carve his way to fame which he almost bid fair to do till the priests and ministers of the gospel as a whole, his erstwhile staunch adherents, and his beloved evicted tenants for whom he had done yeoman service in the rural parts of the country by taking up the cudgels on their behalf in a way that exceeded their most sanguine expectations, very effectually cooked his matrimonial goose, thereby heaping coals of fire on his head much in the same way as the fabled ass's kick. Looking back now in a retrospective kind of arrangement all seemed a kind of dream. And then coming back was the worst thing you ever did because it went without saying you would feel out of place as things always moved with the times. Why, as he reflected, Irishtown strand, a locality he had not been in for quite a number of years looked different somehow since, as it happened, he went to reside on the north side. North or south, however, it was just the wellknown case of hot passion, pure and simple, upsetting the applecart with a vengeance and just bore out the very thing he was saying as she also was Spanish or half so, types that wouldn't do things by halves, passionate abandon of the south, casting every shred of decency to the winds. --Just bears out what I was saying, he, with glowing bosom said to Stephen, about blood and the sun. And, if I don't greatly mistake she was Spanish too. --The king of Spain's daughter, Stephen answered, adding something or other rather muddled about farewell and adieu to you Spanish onions and the first land called the Deadman and from Ramhead to Scilly was so and so many. --Was she? Bloom ejaculated, surprised though not astonished by any means, I never heard that rumour before. Possible, especially there, it was as she lived there. So, Spain. Carefully avoiding a book in his pocket Sweets of, which reminded him by the by of that Cap l street library book out of date, he took out his pocketbook and, turning over the various contents it contained rapidly finally he. --Do you consider, by the by, he said, thoughtfully selecting a faded photo which he laid on the table, that a Spanish type? Stephen, obviously addressed, looked down on the photo showing a large sized lady with her fleshy charms on evidence in an open fashion as she was in the full bloom of womanhood in evening dress cut ostentatiously low for the occasion to give a liberal display of bosom, with more than vision of breasts, her full lips parted and some perfect teeth, standing near, ostensibly with gravity, a piano on the rest of which was In Old Madrid, a ballad, pretty in its way, which was then all the vogue. Her (the lady's) eyes, dark, large, looked at Stephen, about to smile about something to be admired, Lafayette of Westmoreland street, Dublin's premier photographic artist, being responsible for the esthetic execution. --Mrs Bloom, my wife the prima donna Madam Marion Tweedy, Bloom indicated. Taken a few years since. In or about ninety six. Very like her then. Beside the young man he looked also at the photo of the lady now his 1440 legal wife who, he intimated, was the accomplished daughter of Major Brian Tweedy and displayed at an early age remarkable proficiency as a singer having even made her bow to the public when her years numbered barely sweet sixteen. As for the face it was a speaking likeness in expression but it did not do justice to her figure which came in for a lot of notice usually and which did not come out to the best advantage in that getup. She could without difficulty, he said, have posed for the ensemble, not to dwell on certain opulent curves of the. He dwelt, being a bit of an artist in his spare time, on the female form in general developmentally because, as it so happened, no later than that afternoon he had seen those Grecian statues, 1450 perfectly developed as works of art, in the National Museum. Marble could give the original, shoulders, back, all the symmetry, all the rest. Yes, puritanisme, it does though Saint Joseph's sovereign thievery alors (Bandez!) Figne toi trop. Whereas no photo could because it simply wasn't art in a word. The spirit moving him he would much have liked to follow Jack Tar's good example and leave the likeness there for a very few minutes to speak for itself on the plea he so that the other could drink in the beauty for himself, her stage presence being, frankly, a treat in itself which the camera could not at all do justice to. But it was scarcely professional etiquette so. 1460 Though it was a warm pleasant sort of a night now yet wonderfully cool for the season considering, for sunshine after storm. And he did feel a kind of need there and then to follow suit like a kind of inward voice and satisfy a possible need by moving a motion. Nevertheless he sat tight just viewing the slightly soiled photo creased by opulent curves, none the worse for wear however, and looked away thoughtfully with the intention of not further increasing the other's possible embarrassment while gauging her symmetry of heaving embonpoint. In fact the slight soiling was only an added charm like the case of linen slightly soiled, good as new, much better in fact with the starch out. Suppose she was gone when he? I looked for the lamp which she told me came into his mind but merely as a passing fancy of his because he then recollected the morning littered bed etcetera and the book about Ruby with met him pike hoses (sic) in it which must have fell down sufficiently appropriately beside the domestic chamberpot with apologies to Lindley Murray. The vicinity of the young man he certainly relished, educated, distingu’ and impulsive into the bargain, far and away the pick of the bunch though you wouldn't think he had it in him yet you would. Besides he said the picture was handsome which, say what you like, it was though at the moment she was distinctly stouter. And why not? An awful lot of makebelieve went on about that sort of thing involving a lifelong slur with the usual splash page of gutterpress about the same old matrimonial tangle alleging misconduct with professional golfer or the newest stage favourite instead of being honest and aboveboard about the whole business. How they were fated to meet and an attachment sprang up between the two so that their names were coupled in the public eye was told in court with letters containing the habitual mushy and compromising expressions leaving no loophole to show that they openly cohabited two or three times a week at some wellknown seaside hotel and relations, when the thing ran its normal course, became in due course intimate. Then the decree nisi and the King's proctor tries to show cause why and, he failing to quash it, nisi was made absolute. But as for that the two misdemeanants, wrapped up as they largely were in one another, could safely afford to ignore it as they very largely did till the matter was put in the hands of a solicitor who filed a petition for the party wronged in due course. He, B, enjoyed the distinction of being close to Erin's uncrowned king in the flesh when the thing occurred on the historic fracas when the fallen leader's, who notoriously stuck to his guns to the last drop even when clothed in the mantle of adultery, (leader's) trusty henchmen to the number of ten or a dozen or possibly even more than that penetrated into the printing works of the Insuppressible or no it was United Ireland (a by no means by the by appropriate appellative) and broke up the typecases with hammers or something like that all on account of some scurrilous effusions from the facile pens of the O'Brienite scribes at the usual mudslinging occupation reflecting on the erstwhile tribune's private morals. Though palpably a radically altered man he was still a commanding figure though carelessly garbed as usual with that look of settled purpose which went a long way with the shillyshallyers till they discovered to their vast discomfiture that their idol had feet of clay after placing him upon a pedestal which she, however, was the first to perceive. As those were particularly hot times in the general hullaballoo Bloom sustained a minor injury from a nasty prod of some chap's elbow in the crowd that of course congregated lodging some place about the pit of the stomach, fortunately not of a grave character. His hat (Parnell's) a silk one was inadvertently knocked off and, as a matter of strict history, Bloom was the man who picked it up in the crush after witnessing the occurrence meaning to return it to him (and return it to him he did with the utmost celerity) who panting and hatless and whose thoughts were miles away from his hat at the time all the same being a gentleman born with a stake in the country he, as a matter of fact, having gone into it more for the kudos of the thing than anything else, what's bred in the bone instilled into him in infancy at his mother's knee in the shape of knowing what good form was came out at once because he turned round to the donor and thanked him with perfect aplomb, saying: Thank you, sir, though in a very different tone of voice from the ornament of the legal profession whose headgear Bloom also set to rights earlier in the course of the day, history repeating itself with a difference, after the burial of a mutual friend when they had left him alone in his glory after the grim task of having committed his remains to the grave. On the other hand what incensed him more inwardly was the blatant jokes of the cabman and so on who passed it all off as a jest, laughing 1530 immoderately, pretending to understand everything, the why and the wherefore, and in reality not knowing their own minds, it being a case for the two parties themselves unless it ensued that the legitimate husband happened to be a party to it owing to some anonymous letter from the usual boy Jones, who happened to come across them at the crucial moment in a loving position locked in one another's arms, drawing attention to their illicit proceedings and leading up to a domestic rumpus and the erring fair one begging forgiveness of her lord and master upon her knees and promising to sever the connection and not receive his visits any more if only the aggrieved husband would overlook the matter and let bygones be bygones with tears in her eyes though possibly with her tongue in her fair cheek at the same time as quite possibly there were several others. He personally, being of a sceptical bias, believed and didn't make the smallest bones about saying so either that man or men in the plural were always hanging around on the waiting list about a lady, even supposing she was the best wife in the world and they got on fairly well together for the sake of argument, when, neglecting her duties, she chose to be tired of wedded life and was on for a little flutter in polite debauchery to press their attentions on her with improper intent, the upshot being that her affections centred on another, the cause of many liaisons between still attractive married women getting on for fair and forty and younger men, no doubt as several famous cases of feminine infatuation proved up to the hilt. It was a thousand pities a young fellow, blessed with an allowance of brains as his neighbour obviously was, should waste his valuable time with profligate women who might present him with a nice dose to last him his lifetime. In the nature of single blessedness he would one day take unto himself a wife when Miss Right came on the scene but in the interim ladies' society was a conditio sine qua non though he had the gravest possible doubts, not that he wanted in the smallest to pump Stephen about Miss Ferguson (who was very possibly the particular lodestar who brought him down to Irishtown so early in the morning), as to whether he would find much satisfaction basking in the boy and girl courtship idea and the company of smirking misses without a penny to their names bi or triweekly with the orthodox preliminary canter of complimentplaying and walking out leading up to fond lovers' ways and flowers and chocs. To think of him house and homeless, rooked by some landlady worse than any stepmother, was really too bad at his age. The queer suddenly things he popped out with attracted the elder man who was several years the other's senior or like his father but something substantial he certainly ought to eat even were it only an eggflip made on unadulterated maternal nutriment or, failing that, the homely Humpty Dumpty boiled. --At what o'clock did you dine? he questioned of the slim form and tired though unwrinkled face. --Some time yesterday, Stephen said. --Yesterday! exclaimed Bloom till he remembered it was already tomorrow Friday. Ah, you mean it's after twelve! --The day before yesterday, Stephen said, improving on himself. Literally astounded at this piece of intelligence Bloom reflected. Though they didn't see eye to eye in everything a certain analogy there somehow was as if both their minds were travelling, so to speak, in the one train of thought. At his age when dabbling in politics roughly some score of years previously when he had been a quasi aspirant to parliamentary honours in the Buckshot Foster days he too recollected in retrospect (which was a source of keen satisfaction in itself) he had a sneaking regard for those same ultra ideas. For instance when the evicted tenants question, then at its first inception, bulked largely in people's mind though, it goes without saying, not contributing a copper or pinning his faith absolutely to its dictums, some of which wouldn't exactly hold water, he at the outset in principle at all events was in thorough sympathy with peasant possession as voicing the trend of modern opinion (a partiality, however, which, realising his mistake, he was subsequently partially cured of) and even was twitted with going a step farther than Michael Davitt in the striking views he at one time inculcated as a backtothelander, which was one reason he strongly resented the innuendo put upon him in so barefaced a fashion by our friend at the gathering of the clans in Barney Kiernan's so that he, though often considerably misunderstood and the least pugnacious of mortals, be it repeated, departed from his customary habit to give him (metaphorically) one in the gizzard though, so far as politics themselves were concerned, he was only too conscious of the casualties invariably resulting from propaganda and displays of mutual animosity and the misery and suffering it entailed as a foregone conclusion on fine young fellows, chiefly, destruction of the fittest, in a word. Anyhow upon weighing up the pros and cons, getting on for one, as it was, it was high time to be retiring for the night. The crux was it was a bit risky to bring him home as eventualities might possibly ensue (somebody having a temper of her own sometimes) and spoil the hash altogether as on the night he misguidedly brought home a dog (breed unknown) with a lame paw (not that the cases were either identical or the reverse though he had hurt his hand too) to Ontario Terrace as he very distinctly remembered, having been there, so to speak. On the other hand it was altogether far and away too late for the Sandymount or Sandycove suggestion so that he was in some perplexity as to which of the two alternatives. Everything pointed to the fact that it behoved him to avail himself to the full of the opportunity, all things considered. His initial impression was he was a shade standoffish or not over effusive but it grew on him someway. For one thing he mightn't what you call jump at the idea, if approached, and what mostly worried him was he didn't know how to lead up to it or word it exactly, supposing he did entertain the proposal, as it would afford him very great personal pleasure if he would allow him to help to put coin in his way or some wardrobe, if found suitable. At all events he wound up by concluding, eschewing for the nonce hidebound precedent, a cup of Epps's cocoa and a shakedown for the night plus the use of a rug or two and overcoat doubled into a pillow at least he would be in safe hands and as warm as a toast on a trivet he failed to perceive any very vast amount of harm in that always with the proviso no rumpus of any sort was kicked up. A move had to be made because that merry old soul, the grasswidower in question who appeared to be glued to the spot, didn't appear in any particular hurry to wend his way home to his dearly beloved Queenstown and it was highly likely some sponger's bawdyhouse of retired beauties where age was no bar off Sheriff street lower would be the best clue to that equivocal character's whereabouts for a few days to come, alternately racking their feelings (the mermaids') with sixchamber revolver anecdotes verging on the tropical calculated to freeze the marrow of anybody's bones and mauling their largesized charms betweenwhiles with rough and tumble gusto to the accompaniment of large potations of potheen and the usual blarney about himself for as to who he in reality was let x equal my right name and address, as Mr Algebra remarks passim. At the same time he inwardly chuckled over his gentle repartee to the blood and ouns champion about his god being a jew. People could put up with being bitten by a wolf but what properly riled them was a bite from a sheep. The most vulnerable point too of tender Achilles. Your god was a jew. Because mostly they appeared to imagine he came from Carrick-on-Shannon or somewhereabouts in the county Sligo. --I propose, our hero eventually suggested after mature reflection while prudently pocketing her photo, as it's rather stuffy here you just come home with me and talk things over. My diggings are quite close in the vicinity. You can't drink that stuff. Do you like cocoa? Wait. I'll just pay this lot. The best plan clearly being to clear out, the remainder being plain sailing, he beckoned, while prudently pocketing the photo, to the keeper of the shanty who didn't seem to. --Yes, that's the best, he assured Stephen to whom for the matter of that Brazen Head or him or anywhere else was all more or less. All kinds of Utopian plans were flashing through his (B's) busy brain, education (the genuine article), literature, journalism, prize titbits, up to date billing, concert tours in English watering resorts packed with hydros and seaside theatres, turning money away, duets in Italian with the accent perfectly true to nature and a quantity of other things, no necessity, of course, to tell the world and his wife from the housetops about it, and a slice of luck. An opening was all was wanted. Because he more than suspected he had his father's voice to bank his hopes on which it was quite on the cards he had so it would be just as well, by the way no harm, to trail the conversation in the direction of that particular red herring just to. The cabby read out of the paper he had got hold of that the former viceroy, earl Cadogan, had presided at the cabdrivers' association dinner in London somewhere. Silence with a yawn or two accompanied this thrilling announcement. Then the old specimen in the corner who appeared to have some spark of vitality left read out that sir Anthony MacDonnell had left Euston for the chief secretary's lodge or words to that effect. To which absorbing piece of intelligence echo answered why. --Give us a squint at that literature, grandfather, the ancient mariner put in, manifesting some natural impatience. --And welcome, answered the elderly party thus addressed. The sailor lugged out from a case he had a pair of greenish goggles which he very slowly hooked over his nose and both ears. --Are you bad in the eyes? the sympathetic personage like the townclerk queried. --Why, answered the seafarer with the tartan beard, who seemingly was a bit of a literary cove in his own small way, staring out of seagreen portholes as you might well describe them as, I uses goggles reading. Sand in the Red Sea done that. One time I could read a book in the dark, manner of speaking. The Arabian Nights Entertainment was my favourite and Red as a Rose is She. Hereupon he pawed the journal open and pored upon Lord only knows what, found drowned or the exploits of King Willow, Iremonger having made a hundred and something second wicket not out for Notts, during which time (completely regardless of Ire) the keeper was intensely occupied loosening an apparently new or secondhand boot which manifestly pinched him as he muttered against whoever it was sold it, all of them who were sufficiently awake enough to be picked out by their facial expressions, that is to say, either simply looking on glumly or passing a trivial remark. To cut a long story short Bloom, grasping the situation, was the first to rise from his seat so as not to outstay their welcome having first and foremost, being as good as his word that he would foot the bill for the occasion, taken the wise precaution to unobtrusively motion to mine host as a parting shot a scarcely perceptible sign when the others were not looking to the effect that the amount due was forthcoming, making a grand total of fourpence (the amount he deposited unobtrusively in four coppers, literally the last of the Mohicans), he having previously spotted on the printed pricelist for all who ran to read opposite him in unmistakable figures, coffee 2d, confectionery do, and honestly well worth twice the money once in a way, as Wetherup used to remark. --Come, he counselled to close the s’ance. Seeing that the ruse worked and the coast was clear they left the shelter or shanty together and the ’lite society of oilskin and company whom nothing short of an earthquake would move out of their dolce far niente. Stephen, who confessed to still feeling poorly and fagged out, paused at the, for a moment, the door. --One thing I never understood, he said to be original on the spur of the moment. Why they put tables upside down at night, I mean chairs upside down, on the tables in cafes. 1710 To which impromptu the neverfailing Bloom replied without a moment's hesitation, saying straight off: --To sweep the floor in the morning. So saying he skipped around, nimbly considering, frankly at the same time apologetic to get on his companion's right, a habit of his, by the bye, his right side being, in classical idiom, his tender Achilles. The night air was certainly now a treat to breathe though Stephen was a bit weak on his pins. --It will (the air) do you good, Bloom said, meaning also the walk, in a moment. The only thing is to walk then you'll feel a different man. Come. It's not far. Lean on me. Accordingly he passed his left arm in Stephen's right and led him on accordingly. --Yes, Stephen said uncertainly because he thought he felt a strange kind of flesh of a different man approach him, sinewless and wobbly and all that. Anyhow they passed the sentrybox with stones, brazier etc. where the municipal supernumerary, ex Gumley, was still to all intents and purposes wrapped in the arms of Murphy, as the adage has it, dreaming of fresh fields and pastures new. And apropos of coffin of stones the analogy was not at all bad as it was in fact a stoning to death on the part of seventytwo out of eighty odd constituencies that ratted at the time of the split and chiefly the belauded peasant class, probably the selfsame evicted tenants he had put in their holdings. So they turned on to chatting about music, a form of art for which Bloom, as a pure amateur, possessed the greatest love, as they made tracks arm in arm across Beresford place. Wagnerian music, though confessedly grand in its way, was a bit too heavy for Bloom and hard to follow at the first go-off but the music of Mercadante's Huguenots, Meyerbeer's Seven Last Words on the Cross and Mozart's Twelfth Mass he simply revelled in, the Gloria in that being, to his mind, the acme of first class music as such, literally knocking everything else into a cocked hat. He infinitely preferred the sacred music of the catholic church to anything the opposite shop could offer in that line such as those Moody and Sankey hymns or Bid me to live and I will live thy protestant to be. He also yielded to none in his admiration of Rossini's Stabat Mater, a work simply abounding in immortal numbers, in which his wife, Madam Marion Tweedy, made a hit, a veritable sensation, he might safely say, greatly adding to her other laureis and putting the others totally in the shade, in the jesuit fathers' church in upper Gardiner street, the sacred edifice being thronged to the doors to hear her with virtuosos, or virtuosi rather. There was the unanimous opinion that there was none to come up to her and suffice it to say in a place of worship for music of a sacred character there was a generally voiced desire for an encore. On the whole though favouring preferably light opera of the Don Giovanni description and Martha, a gem in its line, he had a penchant, though with only a surface knowledge, for the severe classical school such as Mendelssohn. And talking of that, taking it for granted he knew all about the old favourites, he mentioned par excellence Lionel's air in Martha, M'appari, which, curiously enough, he had heard or overheard, to be more accurate, on yesterday, a privilege he keenly appreciated, from the lips of Stephen's respected father, sung to perfection, a study of the number, in fact, which made all the others take a back seat. Stephen, in reply to a politely put query, said he didn't sing it but launched out into praises of Shakespeare's songs, at least of in or about that period, the lutenist Dowland who lived in Fetter lane near Gerard the herbalist, who annos ludendo hausi, Doulandus, an instrument he was contemplating purchasing from Mr Arnold Dolmetsch, whom B. did not quite recall though the name certainly sounded familiar, for sixtyfive guineas and Farnaby and son with their dux and comes conceits and Byrd (William) who played the virginals, he said, in the Queen's chapel or anywhere else he found them and one Tomkins who made toys or airs and John Bull. On the roadway which they were approaching whilst still speaking beyond the swingchains a horse, dragging a sweeper, paced on the paven ground, brushing a long swathe of mire up so that with the noise Bloom was not perfectly certain whether he had caught aright the allusion to sixtyfive guineas and John Bull. He inquired if it was John Bull the political celebrity of that ilk, as it struck him, the two identical names, as a striking coincidence. By the chains the horse slowly swerved to turn, which perceiving, Bloom, who was keeping a sharp lookout as usual, plucked the other's sleeve gently, jocosely remarking: --Our lives are in peril tonight. Beware of the steamroller. They thereupon stopped. Bloom looked at the head of a horse not worth anything like sixtyfive guineas, suddenly in evidence in the dark quite near so that it seemed new, a different grouping of bones and even flesh because palpably it was a fourwalker, a hipshaker, a blackbuttocker, a taildangler, a headhanger putting his hind foot foremost the while the lord of his creation sat on the perch, busy with his thoughts. But such a good poor brute he was sorry he hadn't a lump of sugar but, as he wisely reflected, you could scarcely be prepared for every emergency that might crop up. He was just a big nervous foolish noodly kind of a horse, without a second care in the world. But even a dog, he reflected, take that mongrel in Barney Kiernan's, of the same size, would be a holy horror to face. But it was no animal's fault in particular if he was built that way like the camel, ship of the desert, distilling grapes into potheen in his hump. Nine tenths of them all could be caged or trained, nothing beyond the art of man barring the bees. Whale with a harpoon hairpin, alligator tickle the small of his back and he sees the joke, chalk a circle for a rooster, tiger my eagle eye. These timely reflections anent the brutes of the field occupied his mind somewhat distracted from Stephen's words while the ship of the street was manoeuvring and Stephen went on about the highly interesting old. --What's this I was saying? Ah, yes! My wife, he intimated, plunging in medias res, would have the greatest of pleasure in making your acquaintance as she is passionately attached to music of any kind. He looked sideways in a friendly fashion at the sideface of Stephen, image of his mother, which was not quite the same as the usual handsome blackguard type they unquestionably had an insatiable hankering after as he was perhaps not that way built. Still, supposing he had his father's gift as he more than suspected, it opened up new vistas in his mind such as Lady Fingall's Irish industries, concert on the preceding Monday, and aristocracy in general. Exquisite variations he was now describing on an air Youth here has End by Jans Pieter Sweelinck, a Dutchman of Amsterdam where the frows come from. Even more he liked an old German song of Johannes Jeep about the clear sea and the voices of sirens, sweet murderers of men, which boggled Bloom a bit:
Von der Sirenen Listigkeit
Tun die Poeten dichten.
These opening bars he sang and translated extempore. Bloom,
nodding, said he perfectly understood and begged him to go on by all
means which he did.
A phenomenally beautiful tenor voice like that, the rarest of boons,
which Bloom appreciated at the very first note he got out, could easily, if
properly handled by some recognised authority on voice production such as
Barraclough and being able to read music into the bargain, command its
own price where baritones were ten a penny and procure for its fortunate
possessor in the near future an entr’e into fashionable houses in the best
residential quarters of financial magnates in a large way of business and
titled people where with his university degree of B. A. (a huge ad in its way)
and gentlemanly bearing to all the more influence the good impression he
would infallibly score a distinct success, being blessed with brains which
also could be utilised for the purpose and other requisites, if his clothes
were properly attended to so as to the better worm his way into their good
graces as he, a youthful tyro in- society's sartorial niceties, hardly
understood how a little thing like that could militate against you. It was in
fact only a matter of months and he could easily foresee him participating
in their musical and artistic conversaziones during the festivities of the
Christmas season, for choice, causing a slight flutter in the dovecotes of the
fair sex and being made a lot of by ladies out for sensation, cases of which,
as he happened to know, were on record - in fact, without giving the show
away, he himself once upon a time, if he cared to, could easily have. Added
to which of course would be the pecuniary emolument by no mean.s to be
sneezed at, going hand in hand with his tuition fees. Not, he parenthesised,
that for the sake of filthy lucre he need necessarily embrace the lyric
platform as a walk in life for any lengthy space of time. But a step in the
required direction it was beyond yea or nay and both monetarily and
mentally it contained no reflection on his dignity in the smallest and it often
turned in uncommonly handy to be handed a cheque at a muchneeded
moment when every little helped. Besides, though taste latterly had
deteriorated to a degree, original music like that, different from the
conventional rut, would rapidly have a great vogue as it would be a decided
novelty for Dublin's musical world after the usual hackneyed run of catchy
tenor solos foisted on a confiding public by Ivan St Austell and Hilton
St Just and their genus omne. Yes, beyond a shadow of a doubt he could
with all the cards in his hand and he had a capital opening to make a name
for himself and win a high place in the city's esteem where he could
command a stiff figure and, booking ahead, give a grand concert for the
patrons of the King street house, given a backerup, if one were forthcoming
to kick him upstairs, so to speak, a big if however, with some impetus of the
goahead sort to obviate the inevitable procrastination which often tripped
-up a too much feted prince of good fellows. And it need not detract from
the other by one iota as, being his own master, he would have heaps of time
to practise literature in his spare moments when desirous of so doing
without its clashing with his vocal career or containing anything derogatory
whatsoever as it was a matter for himself alone. In fact, he had the ball at
his feet and that was the very reason why the other, possessed of a
remarkably sharp nose for smelling a rat of any sort, hung on to him at all.
The horse was just then. And later on at a propitious opportunity he
purposed (Bloom did), without anyway prying into his private affairs on the
fools step in where angels principle, advising him to sever his connection
with a certain budding practitioner who, he noticed, was prone to disparage
and even to a slight extent with some hilarious pretext when not present,
deprecate him, or whatever you like to call it which in Bloom's humble
opinion threw a nasty sidelight on that side of a person's character, no pun
intended.
The horse having reached the end of his tether, so to speak, halted
and, rearing high a proud feathering tail, added his quota by letting fall on
the floor which the brush would soon brush up and polish, three smoking
globes of turds. Slowly three times, one after another, from a full crupper he
mired. And humanely his driver waited till he (or she) had ended, patient in
his scythed car.
Side by side Bloom, profiting by the contretemps, with Stephen passed
through the gap of the chains, divided by the upright, and, stepping over a
strand of mire, went across towards Gardiner street lower, Stephen singing
more boldly, but not loudly, the end of the ballad.
Und alle Schiffe br*cken.
The driver never said a word, good, bad or indifferent, but merely
watched the two figures, as he sat on his lowbacked car, both black, one
full, one lean, walk towards the railway bridge, to be married by Father
Maher. As they walked they at times stopped and walked again continuing
their t’te Љ t’te (which, of course, he was utterly out of) about sirens
enemies of man's reason, mingled with a number of other topics of the same
category, usurpers, historical cases of the kind while the man in the sweeper
car or you might as well call it in the sleeper car who in any case couldn't
possibly hear because they were too far simply sat in his seat near the end of
lower Gardiner street and looked after their lowbacked car.
Yes.Trieste-Zurich-Paris 1914-1921 |
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