, the  new Bloomusalem  in the
Nova Hibernia of the future.
     (<i>Thirtytwo workmen wearing  rosettes, from all the counties of Ireland,
under the guidance  of Derwan  the builder construct the new Bloomusalem. It
is a colossal  edifice, with crystal roof built in the shape of a  huge pork
kidney,  containing forty thousand  rooms. In the  course of  its  extension
several  buildings and  monuments  are  demolished.  Government  offices are
temporarily transferred to railway  sheds. Numerous houses  are razed to the
ground. The inhabitants are lodged  in barrels and  boxes, all marked in red
with the letters: L.  B. Several paupers fall  from a ladder. A  part of the
walls of Dublin, crowded with loyal sightseers, collapses</i>.)
     THE SIGHTSEERS (<i>Dying) Morituri te salutant. (They die</i>.)
     (<i>A  man in a brown macintosh springs  up through a trap-door. He points
an elongated finger at Bloom</i>.)
     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!
     (<i>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</i>, billets doux <i>in the form  of
cocked  hats, readymade suits, porringers  of  toad  in the hole, bottles of
Jeyes'  Fluid,  purchase  stamps,  40  days'  indulgences,  spurious  coins,
dairyfed pork sausages,  theatre passes,  season tickets available  for  all
tram  lines, coupons of the royal and  privileged  Hungarian  lottery, penny
dinner  counters, cheap reprints of the World's Twelve  Worst  Books: Froggy
and Fritz  (politic),  Care  of the  Baby  (infantilic),  So  Meals  for 7/6
(culinic), Was  Jesus a  Sun  Myth?  (historic), Expel  that  Pain  (medic),
Infant's Compendium  of the Universe (cosmic), Let's All  Chortle (hilaric),
Canvasser's  Vade  Mecum  (journalic),  love-letters  of   Mother  Assistant
(erotic),  Who's  Who  in  Space  (astric),  Songs that  Reached  Our  Heart
(melodic),  Pennywise's  Way  to Wealth  (parsimonic). A  general  rush  and
scramble.  Women press forward to touch  the  hem of Bloom's  robe. The lady
Gwendolen Dubedat bursts through the throng, leaps on his  horse and  kisses
him on both cheeks amid great acclamation. A magnesium flashlight photograph
is taken. Babes and sucklings are held up</i>.)
     THE WOMEN Little father! Little father!
     THE BABES AND SUCKLINGS
     Clap clap hands till Poldy comes home,
     Cakes in his pocket for Leo alone.
     (<i>Bloom, bending down, pokes Baby Boardman gently in the stomach</i>.)
     BABY BOARDMAN (<i>Hiccups, curdled milk flowing from his mouth</i>.) Hajajaja.
     BLOOM (<i>Shaking hands with  a blind stripling</i>.)  My more  than  Brother!
(<i>Placing his arms round the shoulders of an old couple</i>.) Dear  old  friends!
(<i>He  plays pussy fourcorners with ragged boys and girls</i>.)  Peep! Bopeep! (<i>He
wheels twins in a perambulator</i>.)  Ticktacktwo wouldyousetashoe? (<i>He performs
juggler's tricks,  draws red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet
silk  handkerchiefs  from  his mouth</i>.)  Roygbiv.  32  feet per  second.  (<i>He
consoles  a  widow</i>.)  Absence makes the heart  grow younger. (<i>He  dances the
Highland fling  with grotesque antics</i>.)  Leg  it, ye devils! (<i>He kisses  the
bedsores of  a palsied  veteran</i>.)  Honourable  wounds!  (<i>He trips  up  a fat
policeman</i>.)  U.p.:  up. U.p.:  up. (<i>He  whispers  in  the ear of a  blushing
waitress and  laughs kindly</i>.) Ah, naughty, naughty!  (<i>He  eats a  raw turnip
offered him by  Maurice Butterly,  farmer</i>.) Fine!  Splendid! (<i>He  refuses to
accept  three shillings  offered him by Joseph  Hynes, journalist</i>.)  My dear
fellow, not  at all! (<i>He gives his  coat  to a beggar</i>.)  Please accept.  (<i>He
takes part in a stomach  race with  elderly male  and female cripples</i>.) Come
on, boys! Wriggle it, girls!
     THE CITIZEN (<i>Choked with  emotion, brushes aside a tear  in his emerald
muffler</i>.) May the good God bless him!
     (<i>The rams' horns sound for silence. The standard of Zion is hoisted</i>.)
     BLOOM (<i>Uncloaks  impressively, revealing obesity,  unrolls  a paper and
reads solemnly</i>.) Aleph Beth Ghimel Daleth Hagadah Tephilim Kosher Yom Kippur
Hanukah Ros chaschana  Beni  Brith Bar Mitzvah  Mazzoth Askenazim  Meshuggah
Talith.
     (<i>An official translation is read by Jimmy Henry, assistant town clerk</i>.)
     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 (<i>Obdurately</i>.) 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'MOLLY 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
     <i>Acid. nit. hydrochlor dil</i>., 20 minims,
     <i>Tinct. mix. vom</i>., 4 minims.
     <i>Extr. taraxel. lig</i>., 30 minims.
     <i>Aq. dis. ter in die</i>.
     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 eight day licence  for my  new premises. You remember
me, sir Leo, when you were in  number  seven. I'm sending around a dozen  of
stout for the missus.
     BLOOM  (<i>Coldly</i>.)  You have the advantage  of  me. Lady Bloom accepts no
presents.
     CROFTON This is indeed a festivity.
     BLOOM (<i>Solemnly</i>.) 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  brotherhood.  No  more  patriotism  of
barspongers and dropsical impostors. Free money,  free  love and a  free lay
church in a free lay state.
     O'MADDEN BURKE Free fox in a free henroost.
     DAVY BYRNE (<i>Yawning</i>.) Iiiiiiiiiaaaaaaach!
     BLOOM Mixed races and mixed marriage.
     LENEHAN What about mixed bathing?
     (<i>Bloom explains  to those near him his schemes for social regeneration.
All  agree  with  him.  The  keeper  of  the Kildare  Street Museum appears,
dragging  a  lorry  on which  are  the  shaking  statues  of  several  naked
goddesses, Venus Callipyge, Venus Pandemos Venus Metempsychosis, and plaster
figures,  also naked, representing the  new  nine muses, Commerce,  Operatic
Music,  Amor  Publicity,  Manufacture,  liberty  of  Speech, Plural  Voting,
Gastronomy,  Private  Hygiene,  Seaside  Concert  Entertainments,   Painless
Obstetrics and Astronomy for the People</i>.)
     FATHER FARLEY He  is  an episcopalian,  an agnostic,  an any thingarian
seeking to overthrow our holy faith.
     MRS RIORDAN (<i>Tears up her will</i>.) I'm disappointed in you! You bad man!
     MOTHER GROGAN (<i>Removes her boot to throw it at  Bloom</i>.) You beast!  You
abominable person!
     NOSEY FLYNN Give us a tune, Bloom. One of the old sweet songs.
     BLOOM (<i>With rollicking humour</i>.)
     I vowed that I never would leave her,
     She turned out a cruel deceiver.
     With my tooraloom tooraloom tooralcom 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. (<i>Laughter</i>.)
     LENEHAN Plagiarist! Down with Bloom!
     THE VEILED SIBYL (<i>Enthusiastically</i>.) 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 (<i>Winks at the bystanders</i>.) I bet she's a bonny lassie.
     THEODORE PUREFOY  (<i>In fishing cap  and oilskin  jacket</i>.) He  employs  a
mechanical device to frustrate the sacred ends of nature.
     THE VEILED SIBYL (<i>Stabs herself</i>.) My hero god! (<i>She dies</i>.)
     (<i>Many most attractive  and  enthusiastic women also  commit suicide  by
stabbing,  drowning, drinking prussic acid, aconite,  arsenic, opening their
veins, refusing food, casting themselves under steamrollers, from the top of
Nelson's Pillar, into  the  great  vat  of  Guinness's brewery, asphyxiating
themselves  by placing  their  heads  in  gas  ovens, hanging themselves  in
stylish garters, leaping from windows of different storeys</i>.)
     ALEXANDER J. DOWIE (<i>Violently</i>.) 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!
     (<i>Mother Grogan throws her boot at Bloom. Several shopkeepers from upper
and lower  Dorset  street throw objects of  little or  no  commercial value,
hambones,  condensed milk  tins,  unsaleable cabbage, stale  bread,  sheeps'
tails, odd pieces of fat</i>.)
     BLOOM (<i>Excitedly</i>.) 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,  <i>sgenl  inn  ban bata  coisde gan
capall</i>. I call on my old friend, Dr Malachi Mulligan, sex specialist to give
medical testimony on my behalf.
     DR  MULLIGAN (<i>In motor jerkin, green motoroggles on his brow</i>.) 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 <i>virgo intacta.
     (Bloom holds his high grade hat over his genital organs</i>.)
     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 <i>fetor judaicus</i> is most perceptible.
     DR  DIXON  (<i>Reads  a  bill  of health</i>.)  Professor Bloom is a  finished
example of the new womanly man. His moral nature is simple and lovable. Many
have found him  a dear  man,  a dear person. He is a rather quaint fellow on
the whole, coy though not feeble-minded in the medical sense. He has written
a really beautiful letter, a poem in  itself, to the court missionary of the
Reformed  Priests'  Protection Society which  clears  up  everything. He  is
practically  a total abstainer and  I  can affirm  that he sleeps on a straw
litter and eats the most  Spartan food, cold dried grocer's peas. He wears a
hairshirt winter and summer and scourges himself  every Saturday. He  was, I
understand,  at one time  a firstclass misdemeanant in Glencree reformatory.
Another  report states that  he was a  very posthumous  child. I appeal  for
clemency in the name of the most sacred word our vocal organs have ever been
called upon to speak. He is about to have a baby.
     (<i>General  commotion  and compassion.  Women  faint. A wealthy  American
makes  a street collection  for Bloom. Gold and silver  coins, bank cheques,
banknotes,  jewels, treasury  bonds, maturing  bills  of  exchange, I.O.U.s,
wedding  rings'  watch-chains,  lockets, necklaces and bracelets are rapidly
collected</i>.)
     BLOOM O, I so want to be a mother.
     MRS THORNTON (<i>In nursetender's gown</i>.) Embrace me tight, dear. You'll be
soon over it. Tight, dear.
     (<i>Bloom  embraces her  tightly and  bears  eight male yellow  and  white
children.  They appear on  a redcarpeted  staircase  adorned  with expensive
plants.   All  are  handsome,  with   valuable  metallic   faces,  wellmade,
respectably  dressed  and  wellconducted,  speaking  five  modern  languages
fluently  and  interested  in various arts and  sciences.  Each has his name
printed  in   legible  letters  on  his  shirtfront:  Nasodoro,  Goldfinger,
Chrysostomos,  MaindorÉe, Silversmile,  Silberselber  Vifargent,  Panargros.
They are immediately appointed to positions of high  public trust in several
different  countries as  managing directors  of  banks, traffic  managers of
railways, chairmen of limited liability  companies, vice  chairmen of  hotel
syndicates</i>.)
     A VOICE Bloom, are you the Messiah ben Joseph or ben David?
     BLOOM (<i>Darkly</i>.) You have said it.
     BROTHER BUZZ Then perform a miracle.
     BANTAM LYONS Prophesy who will win the Saint Leger.
     (<i>Bloom walks on a  net, covers  his left eye  with his left ear, passes
through several walls, climbs  Nelson's Pillar, hangs from  the the ledge by
his  eyelids, eats  twelve  dozen  oysters (shells included), heals  several
sufferers  from  kings  evil, contracts his  face so  as  to  resemble  many
historical personages, lord Beaconsfield, lord  Byron,  Wat  Tyler, Moses of
Egypt, Moses Maimonides, Moses Mendelssohn,  Henry  Irving, Rip  van Winkle,
Rossuth, Jean Jacques  Rousseau, Baron Leopold Rothschild, Robinson  Crusoe,
Sherlock  Holmes,  Pasteur, turns  each  foot  simultaneously  in  different
directions,  bids the tide turn  back,  eclipses the  sun by  extending  his
little finger</i>.)
     BRINI,  PAPAL  NUNCIO (<i>In papal zouave's  uniform, steel  cuirasses  as
breastplate, armplates, thighplates, legplates, large profane moustaches and
brown  paper  mitre.)  Leopoldi autem generatio</i>.  Moses begat  Noah and Noah
begat Eunuch and Eunuch begat O'Halloran and O'Halloran begat Guggenheim and
Guggenheim  begat  Agendath and Agendath  begat  Netaim  and Netaim begat Le
Hirsch and Le Hirsch begat Jesurum and Jesurum begat MacKay and MacKay begat
Ostrolopsky and Ostrolopsky begat Smerdoz and Smerdoz begat Weiss and  Weiss
begat Schwarz and Schwarz begat Adrianopoli  and Adrianopoli  began Aranjuez
and Aranjuez  begat  Lewy  Lawson  and Lewy Lawson  begat Ichabudonosor  and
Ichabudonosor begat O'Donnell  Magnus and  O'Donnell Magnus begat Christbaum
and  Christbaum begat Ben Maimun and Ben Maimun begat Dusty Rhodes and Dusty
Rhodes begat Benamor and Benamor  begat  Jones-Smith and  Jones-Smith  begat
Savorgnanovich  and Savorgnanovich begat  Jasperstone and Jasperstone  begat
Vingtetunieme  and  Vingtetunieme  begat  Szombathely  and Szombathely begat
Virag and Virag begat Bloom <i>et vocabitur nomen eius Emmanuel</i>.
     A  DEADHAND  (<i>Writes on the  wall</i>.)  Bloom is a cod.  A CRAB  (<i>In  bush
ranger's kit</i>.) What did you do in the cattlecreep behind Kilbarrack?
     A FEMALE INFANT (<i>Shakes a rattle</i>.) And under Ballybough bridge?
     A HOLLYBUSH And in the devil's glen?
     BLOOM  (<i>Blushes furiously  all over  from  front  to nates, three tears
falling from his left eye</i>.) Spare my past.
     THE IRISH EVICTED  TENANTS (<i>In bodycoats, kneebreeches, with Donnybrook
fair shillelaghs</i>.) Sjambok him!
     (<i>Bloom with asses' ears seats himself in the pillory with crossed arms,
his feet protruding. He whistles Don Giovanni</i>, a cenar teco. <i>Artane orphans,
joining hands,  caper round him. Girls  of the Prison Gate Mission,  joining
hands, caper round in the opposite direction</i>.)
     THE ARTANE ORPHANS
     You big, you bog, 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 (<i>In ephod and huntingcap, announces</i>.) 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.
     (<i>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</i>.)
     MASTIANSKY AND CITRON  Belial!  Laemlein of Istria!  the false Messiah!
Abulafia!
     (<i>George S. Mesias,  Bloom's tailor, appears, a tailor's goose under his
arm, presenting a bill</i>.)
     MESIAS To alteration one pair trousers eleven shillings.
     BLOOM (<i>Rubs his hands cheerfully</i>.) Just like old times. Poor Bloom!
     (<i>Reuben J. Dodd, black  bearded Iscariot,  bad shepherd, bearing on his
shoulders the drowned corpse of his son, approaches the pillory</i>.)
     REUBEN J. (<i>Whispers hoarsely</i>.)  The squeak is out. A split  is gone for
the flatties. Nip the first rattler.
     THE FIRE BRIGADE Pflaap!
     BROTHER  BUZZ (<i>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</i>.)  Forgive  him his
trespasses.
     (<i>Lieutenant Myers  of the Dublin  Fire Brigade by general request  sets
fire to Bloom. Lamentations</i>.)
     THE CITIZEN Thank heaven!
     BLOOM (<i>In  a seamless  garment marked  I.  H.  S.  stands  upright amid
phoenix flames</i>.) Weep not for me, O daughters of Erin.
     (<i>He  exhibits to Dublin reporters traces  of burning. The daughters  of
Erin,  in black garments with lace prayerbooks  and long lighted candles  in
their hands, kneel down and pray</i>.)
     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.
     (<i>A choir of six hundred voices, conducted by Mr  Vincent O'Brien, sings
the Alleluia chorus, accompanied on the organ by Joseph Glynn. Bloom becomes
mute, shrunken, carbonised</i>.)
     ZOE Talk away till you're black in the face.
     BLOOM (<i>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</i>.) 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. (<i>With a  tear in  his eye</i>.) 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. (<i>He  gazes far  away
mournfully</i>.) I am ruined. A few pastilles  of aconite.  The blinds drawn.  A
letter. Then lie  back to rest. (<i>He breathes softly</i>.) No more. I have lived.
Fare. Farewell.
     ZOE  (<i>Stiffly, her finger in  her neckfillet</i>.)  Honest?  Till  the next
time. (<i>She sneers</i>.) 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 (<i>Bitterly</i>.) Man and woman, love, what is it? A cork and bottle.
     ZOE  (<i>In sudden  sulks</i>.)  I  hate a rotter  that's  insincere.  Give  a
bleeding whore a chance.
     BLOOM (<i>Repentantly</i>.) I am very disagreeable. You are a  necessary evil.
Where are you from? London?
     ZOE  (<i>Glibly</i>.)  Hog's  Norton  where  the  pigs  play  the organs.  I'm
Yorkshire born. (<i>She holds his hand which is feeling for her nipple</i>.) I say,
Tommy  Tittlemouse. Stop  that and  begin  worse. Have you cash for  a short
time? Ten shillings?
     BLOOM (<i>Smiles, nods slowly</i>.) More, houri, more.
     ZOE And more's mother? (<i>She pats him offhandedly with velvet paws</i>.) Are
you coming  into  the musicroom to  see our new pianola? Come and I'll  peel
off.
     BLOOM   (<i>Feeling   his   occiput  dubiously   with   the   unparalleled
embarrassment  of  a  harassed pedlar gauging  the  symmetry of  her  peeled
pears</i>.) Somebody  would  be dreadfully  jealous if  she knew.  The greeneyed
monster. (<i>Earnestly</i>.) You know how difficult it is. I needn't tell you.
     ZOE (<i>Flattered</i>.) What the eye can't  see the  heart  can't grieve  for.
(<i>She pats him</i>.) Come.
     BLOOM Laughing witch! The hand that rocks the cradle.
     ZOE Babby!
     BLOOM (<i>In babylinen and pelisse,  bigheaded, with a  caul of dark hair,
fixes big eyes on her fluid slip and counts its bronze buckles with a chubby
finger,  his  moist  tongue tolling and lisping</i>.) One  two  tlee: tlee  tlwo
tlone.
     THE BUCKLES Love me. Love me not. Love me.
     ZOE Silent means consent. (<i>With little parted  talons she captures  his
hand, her forefinger  giving  to  his palm the pass touch of secret monitor,
luring him to doom</i>.) Hot hands cold gizzard.
     (<i>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</i>.)
     THE MALE BRUTES (<i>Exhaling sulphur of rut and dung and ramping in  their
loosebox, faintly roaring, their drugged heads swaying to and fro</i>.) Good!
     (<i>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</i>.)
     ZOE (<i>Her lucky hand instantly saving him</i>.) Hoopsa! Don't fall upstairs.
     BLOOM  The  just  man  falls  seven times.  (<i>He  stands  aside  at  the
threshold</i>.) After you is good manners.
     ZOE Ladies first, gentlemen after.
     (<i>She crosses  the threshold.  He hesitates.  She turns and, holding out
her hands, draws him over. He hops. On the an tiered rack of the hall hang a
man's hat and waterproof Bloom uncovers himself  but, seeing  them,  frowns,
then smiles, preoccupied. A door on the return landing is thrown open. A man
in  purple shirt and  grey trousers, brownsocked, passes with an apes  gait,
his  bald head  and  goatee  beard upheld,  hugging  a full waterjugjar  his
twotailed black braces  dangling at heels. Averting his  face  quickly Bloom
bends to examine on  the halltable the spaniel eyes of  a running fox: then,
his lifted head  sniffing, follows  Zoe into the musicroom. A shade of mauve
tissuepaper dims the light of the  chandelier. Round and round a moth flies,
colliding,  escaping. The floor is covered with an  oilcloth mosaic of  jade
and azure  and cinnabar  rhomboids. Footmarks  are stamped  over it  in  all
senses, heel to  heel, heel to hollow, toe to toe, feet locked, a  morris of
shuffling feet without  body phantoms, all in a scrimmage  higgledypiggledy.
The walls are tapes-tried with a paper of yewfronds and clear glades. In the
grate is  spread a screen of peacock feathers.  Lynch squats crosslegged  on
the hearth rug of matted  hair, his cap  back to  the front. With  a wand he
beats time  slowly. Kitty  Ricketts, a bony  pallid  whore in navy  costume,
doeskin gloves rolled back from a coral wristlet, a chain purse in her hand,
sits  perched on the  edge of  the table  swinging her leg and  glancing  at
herself in  the gilt  mirror over the mantelpiece. A tag of her corset  lace
hangs slightly below her jacket. Lynch indicates mockingly the couple at the
piano</i>.)
     KITTY (<i>Coughs behind her  hand</i>.) She's a bit imbecilic. (<i>She signs with
a  waggling  forefinger</i>.)  Blemblem.  (<i>Lynch lifts up her  skirt  and  white
petticoat with  the wand. She settles them down quickly</i>.) Respect  yourself.
(<i>She hiccups, then bends quickly her sailor hat under which  her hair glows,
red with henna</i>.) O, excuse!
     ZOE More limelight, Charley. (<i>She goes to the chandelier  and turns the
gas full cock</i>.)
     KITTY (<i>Peers at the gasjet</i>.) What ails it tonight?
     LYNCH (<i>Deeply</i>.) Enter a ghost and hobgoblins.
     ZOE Clap on the back for Zoe.
     (<i>The wand in Lynch's hand flashes: a brass poker. Stephen stands at the
pianola on which sprawl his  hat and ashplant.  With two  fingers he repeats
once more the series of empty fifths. Florry Talbot, a blond feeble goosefat
whore in a tatterdemalion gown of  mildewed strawberry, lolls spreadeagle in
the sofa  corner, her limp forearm  pendent over  the bolster, listening.  A
heavy stye droops over her sleepy eyelid</i>.)
     KITTY (<i>Hiccups again with a kick of her horsed foot</i>.) O, excuse!
     ZOE (<i>Promptly</i>.) Your boy's thinking of you. Tie a knot on your shift.
     (<i>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</i>.)
     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 <i>C<oe>la enarrant gloriam Domini</i>. It  is
susceptible  of nodes or modes as  far apart as hyperphrygian and mixolydian
and  of  texts  so  divergent  as priests  haihooping round  David's that is
Circe's or what am I  saying Ceres' altar and David's tip from the stable to
his  chief bassoonist  about his almightiness.  <i>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</i>.) Which side is your knowledge
bump?
     THE  CAP  (<i>With saturnine spleen</i>.)  Bah!  It is because it  is. Woman's
reason.  Jewgreek is greekjew.  Extremes meet. Death is the highest  form of
life. Bah!
     STEPHEN You remember fairly accurately all my errors, boasts, mistakes.
How long shall I continue to close my eyes to disloyalty? Whetstone!
     THE CAP Bah!
     STEPHEN  Here's another for you. (<i>He frowns</i>.) 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  (<i>With on  effort</i>.) Interval  which.  Is  the greatest possible
ellipse. Consistent with. The ultimate return. The octave. Which.
     THE CAP Which? (<i>Outside the gramophone begins to blare</i> The Holy City.)
     STEPHEN (<i>Abruptly</i>.)  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. <i>Ecco!</i>
     LYNCH  (<i>With  a  mocking whinny  of  laughter  grins at Bloom  and  Zoe
Higgins</i>.) What a learned speech, eh?
     ZOE  (<i>Briskly</i>.) God  help  your  head,  he  knows  more than  you  have
forgotten.
     (<i>With obese stupidity Florry Talbot regards Stephen</i>.)
     FLORRY They say the last day is coming this summer.
     KITTY No!
     ZOE (<i>Explodes in laughter</i>.) Great unjust God!
     FLORRY (<i>Offended.)</i> Well, it was in the papers about Anti  christ. O, my
foot's tickling.
     (<i>Ragged  barefoot  newsboys,   jogging  a   wagtail  kite,  patterpast,
yelling</i>.)
     THE  NEWSBOYS Stop press edition. Result of the rockinghorse races. Sea
serpent in the royal canal. Safe arrival of Antichrist.
     (<i>Stephen turns and sees Bloom</i>.)
     STEPHEN A time, times and half a time.
     (<i>Reuben  J.  Antichrist,  wanderingjew, a  clutching  hand open on  his
spine,  stumps forward. Across his  loins is  slung  a  pilgrims wallet from
which  protrude  promissory  notes and  dishonoured  bills.  Aloft  over his
shoulder he bears a long boatpole from the hook of  which the sodden huddled
mass of his only son,  saved from Liffey waters, hangs from the slack of its
breeches. A  hobgoblin in the image of Punch Costello, hipshot, crookbacked,
hydrocephalic,  prognathic  with  receding forehead  and  Ally Sloper  nose,
tumbles in somersaults through the gathering darkness</i>.)
     ALL What?
     THE HOBGOBLIN (<i>His  jaws  chattering,  capers to and  fro, goggling his
eyes, squeaking, kangaroohopping, with outstretched clutching arms, then all
at once thrusts his lipless face through the fork of  his thighs.) Il vient!
C'est moi! L'homme  qui rit! L'homme  primigene! (He whirls round and  round
with  dervish  howls.)  Sieurs  et  dames,  faites  vos jeux!  (He  crouches
juggling. Tiny roulette planets fly from his  hands.)  Les  jeux son! faits!
(The planets rush together, uttering crepitant cracks.) Rien n'va plus. (The
planets, buoyant balloons, sail  swollen  up  and away. He  springs off into
vacuum</i>.)
     FLORRY (<i>Sinking into torpor, crosses  herself secretly</i>.) The end of the
world!
     (<i>A  female  tepid  effluvium  leaks  out from  her. Nebulous  obscurity
occupies space. Through the drifting fog without  the gramophone blares over
coughs and feetshuffling</i>.)
     THE GRAMOPHONE Jerusalem! Open your gates and sing Hosanna...
     (<i>A rocket rushes up  the sky and  bursts.  A white  star falls from it,
proclaiming the consummation  of  all things  and second coming  of  Elijah.
Along  an infinite invisible tight-rope taut from zenith to nadir the End of
the World, a two headed octopus in gillies kilts, busby and tartan filibegs,
whirls  through the  murk, head over  heels, in the fob of the Three Lugs of
Man</i>.)
     THE END OF THE WORLD (<i>With a Scotch accent</i>.) Wha'll dance the keel row,
the keel row, the keel row?
     (<i>Over the passing drift and choking breathcoughs, Elijah's voice, harsh
as a  corncrakes, jars  on  high.  Perspiring  in a loose lawn surplice with
funnel sleeves he is seen, vergefaced above a rostrum about which the banner
of old glory is draped. He thumps the parapet.</i>)
     ELIJAH  No yapping, if you please, in  this  booth. Jake  Crane, Creole
Sue, Dave Campbell, Abe Kirschner,  do your coughing with your  mouths shut.
Say,  I am operating all  this trunk line.  Boys, do it  now.  God's time is
12.25.  Tell mother you'll  be there. Rush your  order  and you play a slick
ace. Join on right here! Book through to eternity junction, the nonstop run.
Just one word more.  Are you  a god or a doggone  clod? If the second advent
came  to  Coney  Island are  we ready?  Florry  Christ,  Stephen Christ, Zoe
Christ, Bloom Christ, Kitty Christ, Lynch Christ,  it's up to  you to  sense
that cosmic force. Have we cold feet about the cosmos? No. Be on the side of
the angels. Be a prism. You have that something within, the higher self. You
can rub shoulders with a Jesus, a Gautama, an Ingersoll. Are you all in this
vibration?  I  say you are. You once  nobble that, congregation, and a  buck
joyride to heaven becomes  a back number. You got me? It's a lifebrightener,
sure. The hottest stuff ever was.  It's the whole pie with jam in. It's just
the  cutest snappiest line out. It is immense, supersumptuous. It  restores.
It vibrates. I know and I am some vibrator. Joking apart and getting down to
bedrock, A. J. Christ Dowie and the harmonial philosophy, have you got that?
O.K. Seventyseven west sixtyninth street. Got me? That's it. You call me  up
by sunphone  any old time. Bumboosers,  save  your stamps. (<i>He  shouts</i>.) Now
then our glory  song. All join heartily  in the singing. Encore! (<i>He sings.)
Jeru</i>...
     THE GRAMOPHONE (<i>Drowning his voice</i>.) Whorusalaminyour highhohhhh.
     (<i>The disc rasps gratingly against the needle</i>.)
     THE THREE' WHORES (<i>Covering their ears, squawk</i>.) Ahhkkk!
     ELIJAH (<i>In rolledup shirtsleeves, black in the face,  shouts at the top
of his voice, his  arms  uplifted</i>.) 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.  (<i>He winks  at his audience</i>.) Our Mr President,  he  twig  the
whole lot and he ain't 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. 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 stars 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.
     (<i>The beatitudes,  Dixon, Madden, Crotthers, Costello, Lenehan,  Bannon,
Mulligan  and  Lynch  in  white  surgical  students'  gowns,  four  abreast,
goosestepping, tramp fast past in noisy marching</i>.)
     THE  BEATITUDES  (<i>Incoherently</i>.)  Beer  beef battledog  buybull businum
barnum buggerum bishop.
     LYSTER  (<i>In   quakergrey  kneebreeches   and   broadbrimmed  hat,  says
discreetly</i>.)  He is our friend.  I need not  mention  names.  Seek thou  the
light.
     (<i>He corantos by. Best enters in hairdresser  attire, shinily laundered,
his  locks in  curlpapers.  He  leads John  Eglinton who  wears a mandarin's
kimono of Nankeen yellow, lizard-lettered, and a high pagoda hat</i>.)
     BEST (<i>Smiling, lifts the hat and displays a shaven poll  from the crown
of which bristles a  pigtail toupee tied with an orange topknot</i>.) I was just
beautifying  him, don't you  know. A thing of beauty, don't you know.  Yeats
says,  or  I mean, Keats says. (<i>Produces  a  greencapped  dark  lantern  and
flashes it towards  a  corner; with carping accent</i>.) 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.
     (<i>In  the  cone  of the  search light  behind the  coalscuttle,  ollave,
holyeyed, the bearded figure  of Mananaan MacLir  broods,  chin on knees. He
rises  slowly. A  cold seawind blows from his druid  mantle.  About his head
writhe eels and  elvers. He is encrusted  with  weeds and  shells. His right
hand holds a bicycle pump.  His left hand grasps a huge crayfish by  its two
talons</i>.)
     MANANAAN MACLIR (<i>With a voice  of waves</i>.) Aum! Hek! Wal! Ak! Lub!  Mor!
Ma! White yoghin of the Gods. Occult  pimander of Hermes Trismegistos. (<i>With
a voice of whistling  seawind</i>.) Punarjanam patsypunjaub! I won't have my leg
pulled. It has been said by one: beware the left, the cult  of Shakti. (<i>With
a cry of stormbirds</i>.) Shakti, Shiva! Dark hidden Father! (<i>He smites with his
bicycle pump the crayfish in his  left hand. On  its co-operative  dial glow
the twelve  signs of the zodiac.  He wails with the vehemence of the ocean</i>.)
Aum! Baum!  Pyjaum! I  am the light  of  the  homestead,  I  am the dreamery
creamery butter.
     (<i>A  skeleton  judas hand strangles the light. The green light  wanes to
mauve. The gasjet wails whistling</i>.)
     THE GASJET Pooah! Pfuiiiiii!
     (<i>Zoe runs to the chandelier and, crooking her leg, adjusts the mantle</i>.)
     ZOE Who has a fag as I'm here?
     LYNCH (<i>Tossing a cigarette on to the table</i>.) Here.
     ZOE (<i>Her head perched aside in mock pride</i>.) Is that the way to hand the
<i>pot</i> to  a  lady? (<i>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</i>.) Can you see the beauty spot of my behind?
     LYNCH I'm not looking.
     ZOE (<i>Makes sheep's  eyes</i>.)  No? You wouldn't do a less thing. Would you
suck a lemon?
     (<i>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</i>.)
     VIRAG (<i>Heels together bows</i>.) My name is Virag  Lipoti,  of Szombathely.
(<i>He coughs thoughtfully, drily</i>.) 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  (<i>Not  unpleasantly</i>.) 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! (<i>With a  nervous  twitch of his head</i>.) Did  you hear my  brain  go
snap? Pollysyllabax!
     BLOOM (<i>An elbow resting in a hand, a forefinger against his cheek</i>.) She
seems sad.
     VIRAG (<i>Cynically, his  weasel teeth bared yellow, draws  down  his left
eye with a finger and barks hoarsely</i>.) Hoax! Beware of the flapper and bogus
mournful.  Lily of the alley.  All possess  bachelor's button  discovered by
Rualdus Colombus. Tumble her. Columble her. Chameleon. (<i>More genially</i>.) 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 (<i>Regretfully</i>.) 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 (<i>His tongue  upcurling</i>.) 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.  (<i>His throat twitches</i>.) Slapbang!  There he goes
again.
     BLOOM The stye I dislike.
     VIRAG  (<i>Arches  his  eyebrows</i>.)  Contact  with  a  goldring,  they say.
<i>Argumentum  ad  feminam</i>,  as we  said in old Rome and  ancient Greece in the
consulship of Diplodocus and  Ichthyo saurus.  For the rest  Eve's sovereign
remedy. Not for  sale. Hire only.  Huguenot.  (<i>He  twitches</i>.)  It is a funny
sound.
     (<i>He coughs encouragingly</i>.)  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  (<i>Reflecting</i>.)  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 (<i>Severely,  his  nose  hardhumped,  his  side eye winking</i>.)  Stop
twirling your thumbs  and have a  good old thunk.  See, you have  forgotten.
Exercise  your mnemotechnic. <i>La causa È santa</i>. Tara.  Tara. (<i>Aside</i>.) He will
surely remember.
     BLOOM  Rosemary also did I understand  you  to  say or will  power over
parasitic tissues. Then nay no I have  an inkling. The touch  of  a deadhand
cures. Mnemo?
     VIRAG (<i>Excitedly</i>.) I say so.  I say so. E'en so. Technic.  (<i>He taps his
parchmentroll  energetically.)</i>  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?  (<i>With a  dry snigger</i>.) You intended to devote an  entire
year to the study of the religious  problem and the summer months of 1882 to
square the circle and win that million. Pomegranate! From the sublime to the
ridiculous  is  but a  step. Pyjamas, let us say? Or  stockingette  gusseted
knickers,  closed?  Or,  put  we the case, those  complicated  combinations,
camiknickers? (<i>He crows derisively</i>.) Keekeereekee!
     (<i>Bloom surveys uncertainly the  three whores, then gazes at the  veiled
mauve light, hearing the everflying moth</i>.)
     BLOOM I wanted  then to have now concluded. Nightdress was never. Hence
this. But tomorrow is a new day will be. Past was is today. What now is will
then tomorrow as now was be past yester.
     VIRAG  (<i>Prompts  into his ear in a  pig's whisper</i>.) Insects  of the day
spend their brief existence in reiterated coition, lured by the smell of the
inferiorly pulchritudinous  female  possessing extendified pudendal verve in
dorsal region.  Pretty  Poll! (<i>His yellow parrotbeak gabbles  nasally</i>.) 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.  (<i>He coughs and, bending his  brow, rubs his  nose
thoughtfully with a scooping hand</i>.)  You shall find that these night insects
follow the light. An  illusion for remember their complex  unadjustable eye.
For all these knotty  points see the  seventeenth book of my Fundamentals of
Sexology  or the Love Passion which Doctor L. B.  says is the book sensation
of  the  year.  Some,  to  example,  there are  again  whose  movements  are
automatic.  Perceive.  That  is  his  appropriate  sun.  Nightbird  nightsun
nighttown. Chase me, Charley! Buzz!
     BLOOM Bee or bluebottle too other day butting shadow on wall dazed self
then me wandered dazed down shirt good job I...
     VIRAG (<i>His face  impassive, laughs in a rich feminine  key</i>.)  Splendid!
Spanish  fly  in  his  fly  or  mustard plaster  on his dibble. (<i>He  gobbles
gluttonously with turkey wattles</i>.) Bubbly jock! Bubbly jock!  Where  are we?
Open Sesame! Cometh forth!  (<i>He unrolls his parchment rapidly and reads, his
glowworm's  nose running backwards over the  letters which he  claws</i>.) 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. (<i>He wags head with cackling  raillery</i>.) Jocular. With
my eyeglass in my ocular.
     BLOOM  (<i>Absently</i>.) Ocularly woman's bivalve case is  worse. Always open
sesame. The cloven  sex.  Why they fear vermin, creeping things. Yet Eve and
the serpent contradict. Not a  historical fact. Obvious analogy to my  idea.
Serpents too are gluttons for woman's milk. Wind  their way through miles of
omnivorous forest  to sucksucculent her breast dry. Like those bubblyjocular
Roman matrons one reads of in Elephantuliasis.
     VIRAG (<i>His mouth projected  in  hard  wrinkles, eyes  stonily forlornly
closed,  psalms  in outlandish  monotone</i>.)  That the  cows with  their those
distended udders that they have been the known...
     BLOOM I  am  going to scream. I beg your  pardon. Ah? So. (<i>He repeats</i>.)
Spontaneously to seek out the saurian's lair in order to entrust their teats
to  his  avid suction.  Ant  milks aphis. (<i>Profoundly</i>.) Instinct  rules  the
world. In life. In death.
     VIRAG (<i>Head askew, arches his back and hunched  wing-  shoulders, peers
at the moth out of blear bulged eyes, points a homing claw and cries</i>.) Who's
Ger Ger?  Who's dear Gerald?  O,  I much fear he shall be most badly burned.
Will some  pleashe pershon not now impediment so catastrophics mit agitation
of firstclass tablenumpkin? (<i>He mews</i>.) Luss puss puss puss! (<i>He sighs, draws
back and stares sideways down  with dropping  underjaw</i>.) Well, well. He doth
rest anon.
     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!
     (<i>He  rushes  against the  mauve shade flapping  noisily</i>.) Pretty pretty
pretty pretty pretty pretty petticoats.
     (<i>From  left upper  entrance with two sliding  steps Henry Flower  comes
forward  to  left  front centre. He wears a dark mantle and  drooping plumed
sombrero. He carries  a silverstringed  inlaid  dulcimer and  a  longstemmed
bamboo Jacobs pipe, its  clay bowl fashioned as a female head. He wears dark
velvet hose and silverbuckled pumps. He has the romantic Saviour's face with
flowing locks, thin beard and  moustache.  His spindlelegs and  sparrow feet
are those of the tenor Mario, prince of Candia. He settles down his goffered
ruffs and moistens his lips with a passage of his amorous tongue</i>.)
     HENRY (<i>In  a low  dulcet  voice, touching the strings of  his  guitar</i>.)
There is a flower that bloometh.
     (<i>Virag truculent, his jowl set, stares at the lamp. Grave Bloom regards
Zoe's neck. Henry gallant turns with pendent dewlap to the piano</i>.)
     STEPHEN (<i>To himself</i>.) 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. (<i>He  touches the keys  again</i>.) Minor  chord comes now.  Yes. Not
much however.
     (<i>Almidano  Artifoni  holds out  a  batonroll  of  music  with  vigorous
moustachework</i>.)
     ARTIFONI <i>Ci rifletta. Lei rovina tutto</i>.
     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 (<i>Smirking</i>.) The bird that can sing and won't sing.
     (<i>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</i>.)
     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 (<i>Impatiently</i>.)  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?
     (<i>His  lawnmower begins  to purr</i>.)  Aha, yes. <i>Zoe mou sas  agapo</i>. 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. (<i>To himself</i>.) Clever.
     PHILIP DRUNK AND PHILIP SOBER (<i>Their lawnmowers purring with a rigadoon
of grasshalms</i>.)  Clever  ever.  Out of it. Out of it. By the by have you the
book,  the thing, the ashplant? Yes,  there it,  yes. Cleverever outofitnow.
Keep in condition. Do like us.
     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. (<i>Harshly, his
pupils waxing</i>.) 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. (<i>He wriggles</i>.) 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.  (<i>He cries.)  Coactus  volui</i>. Then giddy woman  will run  about.
Strong  man grasps  woman's  wrist. Woman  squeals, bites, spucks. Man,  now
fierce angry,  strikes woman's fat yadgana.  (<i>He chases his tail</i>.) Piffpaff!
Popo! (<i>He stops, sneezes.)</i> Pchp! (<i>He worries his butt</i>.) Prrrrrht!
     LYNCH  I  hope you  gave the good father a  penance.  Nine  glorias for
shooting a bishop.
     ZOE (<i>Spouts  walrus  smoke through her  nostrils</i>.) He  couldn't  get  a
connection. Only, you know, sensation. A dry rush.
     BLOOM Poor man!
     ZOE (<i>Lightly</i>.) Only for what happened him.
     BLOOM How?
     VIRAG (<i>A  diabolic rictus  of black  luminosity contracting his visage,
cranes  his scraggy  neck forward.  He lifts  a mooncalf  nozzle and howls.)
Verfluchte Goim!</i> He had a father, forty fathers.  He never existed. Pig God!
He  had two left  feet. He was Judas  Iacchias, a Libyan  eunuch, the pope's
bastard. (<i>He leans out  on tortured forepaws,  elbows  bent  rigid,  his eye
agonising in his flat skullneck and yelps  over the mute world</i>.) 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  (<i>Gravely.)  Qui vous  a mis dans  cette fichue  position,
Philippe?</i>
     PHILIP SOBER (<i>Gaily.) C'Était le sacrÉ pigeon, Philippe.
     (Kitty unpins her hat and sets it  down calmly, patting her henna hair</i>.
And <i>a prettier, a daintier head of winsome curls was never seen on  a whores
shoulders. Lynch puts on her hat. She whips it off</i>.)
     LYNCH  (<i>Laughs</i>.)  And  to  such  delights  has  Metchnikoff  inoculated
anthropoid apes.
     FLORRY (<i>Nods</i>.) Locomotor ataxy.
     ZOE (<i>Gaily</i>.) O, my dictionary.
     LYNCH Three wise virgins.
     VIRAG (<i>Agueshaken, profuse yellow spawn foaming over his bony epileptic
lips</i>.)  She sold  lovephiltres, whitewax, orange  flower. Panther, the Roman
centurion,  polluted her  with his genitories.  (<i>He sticks  out a flickering
phosphorescent scorpion tongue, his hand on his fork</i>.) Messiah! He burst her
tympanum.  (<i>With gibbering  baboon's cries he jerks his hips in the  cynical
spasm</i>.) Hik! Hek! Hak! Hok! Huk! Kok! Kuk!
     (<i>Ben   Jumbo   Dollard,    rubicund,   musclebound,    hairynostrilled,
hugebearded,  cabbageeared,  shaggychested,  shockmaned,  fatpapped,  stands
forth, his loins  and genitals  tightened  into  a  pair  of  black  bathing
bagslops</i>.)
     BEN POLLARD (<i>Nakkering  castanet  bones in his huge padded paws, yodels
jovially in base barreltone</i>.) When love absorbs my ardent soul.
     (<i>The  virgins,  Nurse  Callan  and  Nurse  Quigley, burst  through  the
ringkeepers and the ropes and mob him with open arms</i>.)
     THE VIRGINS (<i>Gushingly</i>.) Big Ben! Ben MacChree!
     A VOICE Hold that fellow with the bad breeches.
     BEN DOLLARD (<i>Smites his thigh in abundant laughter</i>.) Hold him now.
     HENRY (<i>Caressing on his breast a  severed female head,  murmurs</i>.) Thine
heart, mine love. (<i>He plucks his lutestrings</i>.) When first I saw.
     VIRAG (<i>Sloughing his skins, his  multitudinous plumage moulting</i>.) Rats!
(<i>He yawns; showing a coalblack throat and closes his  jaws by an upward push
of  his  parchment roll</i>.)  After  having  said which  I took  my  departure.
Farewell. Fare thee well. <i>Dreck!
     (Henry Flower combs  his moustache and  beard rapidly with a pocketcomb
and gives a  cows lick to  his hair. Steered by his rapier, he glides to the
door his wild had slung  behind him. Virag reaches the door in  two ungainly
stilthops,  his  tail  cocked,  and  deftly  claps sideways  on  the wall  a
pusyellow flybill, butting it with his head</i>.)
     THE FLYBILL K. 11. post no bills. Strictly confidential. Dr Hy Franks.
     HENRY All is lost now.
     (<i>Virag unscrews his head in a trice and holds it under his arm</i>.)
     VIRAG'S HEAD Quack!
     (<i>Exeunt severally</i>.)
     STEPHEN  (<i>Over  his shoulder  to Zoe</i>.)  You would  have  preferred  the
fighting  parson who  founded the protestant  error. But beware Antisthenes,
the  dog sage,  and  the last  end  of <i>Anus Heresiarchus</i>.  The  agony in the
closet.
     LYNCH All one and the same God to her.
     STEPHEN (<i>Devoutly</i>.) And Sovereign Lord of all things.
     FLORRY (<i>To Stephen</i>.) I'm sure you are a spoiled priest. Or a monk.
     LYNCH He is. A Cardinal's son.
     STEPHEN Cardinal sin. Monks of the screw.
     (<i>His Eminence, Simon  Stephen Cardinal Dedalus, Primate of all Ireland,
appears  in  the doorway, dressed  in red  soutane, sandals and socks. Seven
dwarf simian acolytes, also in red, cardinal sins, uphold his train, peeping
under it. He  wears a battered silk hat sideways on his head. His thumbs are
stuck in his armpits and his  palms outspread. Round his neck hangs a rosary
of corks ending on his breast in a corkscrew cross. Releasing his thumbs, he
invokes grace from on high  with  lace  wave  gestures  and  proclaims  with
bloated pomp</i>.)
     THE CARDINAL
     Conservio lies captured.
     He lies in the lowest dungeon
     With manacles and chains around his limbs
     Weighing upwards of three tons.
     (<i>He  looks at all for a  moment, his right  eye closed tight,  his left
cheek puffed out.  Then,  unable to  repress  his merriment, he rocks to and
fro, ads akimbo, and sings with broad rollicking humour</i>.) O, the poor little
fellow Hi-hi-hi-hi-his legs they were yellow He was plump, fat and heavy and
brisk  as  a snake  But some bloody  savage To  graize his  white cabbage He
murdered Nell Flaherty's duckloving drake.
     (<i>A multitude of midges swarms over his  robe. He scratches himself with
crossed arms at his ribs, grimacing, and exclaims</i>.) 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.
     (<i>His  head aslant,  he blesses  curtly  with  fore  and middle fingers,
imparts the  Easter kiss and doubleshuffles off comically,  swaying his  hat
from  side to side,  shrinking quickly to the size of his train bearers. The
dwarf  acolytes, giggling,  peeping,  nudging, ogling, Easterkissing, zigzag
behind him. His voice is heard mellow from afar, merciful, male, melodious</i>.)
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.
     (<i>The trick doorhandle turns</i>.)
     THE DOORHANDLE Theeee.
     ZOE The devil is in that door.
     (<i>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</i>.)
     ZOE (<i>Sniffs his hair briskly</i>.) Hum. Thank your mother for  the rabbits.
I'm very fond of what I like.
     BLOOM  (<i>Hearing a male voice  in talk with the whores on  the doorstep,
pricks his ears</i>.) If it were he? After? Or because not? Or the double event?
     ZOE (<i>Tears open the  silverfoil</i>.) Fingers was made  before  forks. (<i>She
breaks  off  and nibbles a piece, gives a piece to  Kitty Ricketts  and then
turns kittenishly to Lynch</i>.) No objection to French lozenges? (<i>He nods.  She
taunts  him</i>.) Have it now or  wait till you get it? (<i>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</i>.) Catch.
     (<i>She  tosses a piece.  With an adroit snap  he catches it and bites  it
through with a crack</i>.)
     KITTY (<i>Chewing</i>.) 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  (<i>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</i>.) Go,  go, go,  I conjure you,
whoever you are.
     (<i>A male  cough and  tread are  heard passing through the mist  outside.
Blooms features relax. He places a hand in his waistcoat, posing calmly. Zoe
offers him chocolate</i>.)
     BLOOM (<i>Solemnly</i>.) Thanks.
     ZOE Do as you're bid. Here.
     (<i>A firm heelclacking is heard on the stairs</i>.)
     BLOOM  (<i>Takes the  chocolate</i>.) Aphrodisiac? But I  thought  it. Vanilla
calms  or? Mnemo. Confused  light  confuses  memory.  Red influences  lupus.
Colours affect women's characters, any  they have. This black makes  me sad.
Eat and be merry for tomorrow. (<i>He eats</i>.) 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.
     (<i>The  door opens. Bella Cohen,  a massive whoremistress  enters. She is
dressed in a threequarter  ivory gown, fringed  round the hem with tasselled
selvedge, and cools herself  flirting a black horn fan like Minnie Hauck  in
Carmen.  On her left hand are  wedding and keeper rings. Her eyes are deeply
carboned. She  has a sprouting moustache. Her  olive face is heavy, slightly
sweated  and fullnosed, with orangetainted  nostrils. She has  lace  pendant
beryl eardrops</i>.)
     BELLA My word! I'm all of a mucksweat.
     (<i>She glances  around her  at the couples. Then  her eyes rest  on Bloom
with hard insistence.  Her  lace fan winnows wind towards  her heated  face,
neck and embonpoint. Her falcon eyes glitter</i>.)
     THE FAN (<i>Flirting quickly, then slowly</i>.) Married, I see.
     BLOOM Yes... Partly, I have mislaid .
     THE  FAN (<i>Half  opening,  then closing</i>.)  And  the  missus  is  master.
Petticoat government.
     BLOOM (<i>Looks down with a sheepish grin</i>.) That is so.
     THE  FAN  (<i>Folding  together,  rests  against  her eardrop</i>.)  Have  you
forgotten me?
     BLOOM Yes. No.
     THE FAN (<i>Folded akimbo  against  her waist</i>.) Is me her  was you dreamed
before? Was then she him you us since knew? Am all them and the same now we?
(<i>Bella approaches, gently tapping with the fan</i>.)
     BLOOM  (<i>Wincing</i>.)  Powerful being. In my  eyes read  that slumber which
women love.
     THE FAN (<i>Tapping</i>.) We have met. You are mine. It is fate.
     BLOOM   (<i>Cowed</i>.)   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... (<i>He winces</i>.) Ah!
     RICHIE GOULDING (<i>Bagweighted, passes the door</i>.) Mocking  is catch. Best
value in Dub. Fit for a prince's liver and kidney.
     THE FAN (<i>Tapping</i>.) All things end. Be mine. Now.
     BLOOM (<i>Undecided</i>.) All now? I should  not have parted with my talisman.
Rain, exposure at dewfall on the sea rocks, a peccadillo at my time of life.
Every phenomenon has a natural cause.
     THE FAN (<i>Points downwards slowly</i>.) You may.
     BLOOM  (<i>Looks downwards and perceives her unfastened bootlace</i>. ) We are
observed.
     THE FAN (<i>Points downwards quickly</i>.) You must.
     BLOOM (<i>With desire,  with reluctance</i>.)  I can make a  true  black knot.
Learned when I served my time  and worked  the mail order line for Kellet's.
Experienced hand. Every knot says a lot.  Let me. In courtesy.  I knelt once
before today. Ah!
     (<i>Bella raises her gown slightly and, steadying  her  pose, lifts to the
edge of a chair a plump buskined hoof and a full pastern, silksocked. Bloom,
stifflegged ageing, bends over  her  hoof and with  gentle fingers draws out
and in her laces</i>.)
     BLOOM  (<i>Murmurs  lovingly</i>.)  To  be  a shoefitter in Mansfield's was my
love's  young  dream, the darling  joys of  sweet buttonhooking, to lace  up
crisscrossed to kneelength the dressy kid footwear satinlined, so incredibly
small, of Clyde Road ladies. Even their wax model  Raymonde  I visited daily
to admire her cobweb hose and stick of rhubarb toe, as worn in Paris.
     THE HOOF Smell my hot goathide. Feel my royal weight.
     BLOOM (<i>Crosslacing</i>.) Too tight?
     THE HOOF If you bungle, Handy Andy, I'll kick your football for you.
     BLOOM  Not  to lace the wrong eyelet as I  did the night of the  bazaar
dance. Bad luck. Nook in  wrong  tache of her... person you mentioned.  That
night she met... Now!
     (<i>He  knots the lace. Bella places her foot on the  floor.  Bloom raises
his head.  Her heavy face, her eyes strike him in  mid-brow. His  eyes  grow
dull, darker and pouched, his nose thickens</i>.)
     BLOOM (Mumbles.) Awaiting your further orders, we remain, gentlemen.
     BELLO (<i>With  a hard basilisk  stare,  in a  baritone  voice</i>.)  Hound of
dishonour!
     BLOOM (<i>Infatuated</i>.) Empress!
     BELLO (<i>His heavy cheekchops sagging</i>.) Adorer of the adulterous rump!
     BLOOM (<i>Plaintively</i>.) Hugeness!
     BELLO Dungdevourer!
     BLOOM (<i>With sinews semiflexed</i>.) Magnificence.
     BELLO Down!  (<i>He taps her on the shoulder with his  fan</i>.)  Incline feet
forward! Slide  left foot one pace back. You will fall. You are falling.  On
the hands down!
     BLOOM (<i>Her eyes upturned in the sign of admiration, closing</i>.) Truffles!
     (<i>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</i>.)
     BELLO  (<i>With  bobbed  hair  purple gills, fat moustache rings round his
shaven  mouth, in  mountaineer's puttees,  green  silverbuttoned coat, sport
skirt and alpine  hat with moor cock's feather,  his hands stuck deep in his
breeches pockets, places his  heel on  her  neck and  grinds it in</i>.) Feel my
entire weight. Bow, bondslave,  before the  throne of your despot's glorious
heels, so glistening in their proud erectness.
     BLOOM (<i>Enthralled, bleats</i>.) I promise never to disobey.
     BELLO (<i>Laughs loudly</i>.) 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.
     (<i>Bloom creeps under the sofa and peers out through the fringe</i>.
     ZOE (<i>Widening her slip to screen her</i>.) She's not here.
     BLOOM (<i>Closing her eyes</i>.) She's not here.
     FLORRY (<i>Hiding her with her gown</i>.) 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 (<i>Coaxingly</i>.) Come, ducky dear. I want  a  word with you, darling,
just to administer correction. Just  a little  heart to  heart talk, sweety.
(<i>Bloom puts out her timid head</i>.)  There's a good girly now. (<i>Bello grabs her
hair violently and drags her forward</i>.) 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 (<i>Fainting</i>.) Don't tear my.
     BELLO (<i>Savagely</i>.) 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.  (<i>His  forehead  veins  swollen,  his face
congested</i>.) I shall sit on your  ottoman  saddleback every morning after  my
thumping  good breakfast of  Matterson's  fat  ham  rashers and  a bottle of
Guinness's porter. (<i>He  belches</i>.) And suck my thumping  good Stock  Exchange
cigar while  I read the <i>Licensed Victualler's</i> 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.
     (<i>He twists her arm. Bloom squeaks, turning turtle</i>.)
     BLOOM Don't be cruel, nurse! Don't!
     BELLO (<i>Twisting</i>.) Another!
     BLOOM (<i>Screams</i>.) O, it's hell itself! Every nerve in my body aches like
mad!
     BELLO (<i>Shouts</i>.) 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.
(<i>He slaps her face</i>.)
     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.
     (<i>The  brothel  cook, Mrs Keogh, wrinkled, greybearded, in a greasy bib,
men's grey  and green socks  and brogues, flour-smeared, a  rollingpin stuck
with raw pastry in her bare red arm and hand, appears at the door</i>.)
     MRS KEOCH (<i>Ferociously</i>.) Can I help? (<i>They hold and pinion Bloom</i>.)
     BELLO  (<i>Squats,  with  a  grunt,  on  Bloom's  upturned  face,  puffing
cigar-smoke, nursing a fat leg</i>.) I see Keating Clay is elected  chairman  of
the Richmond Asylum and bytheby Guinness's preference shares  are at sixteen
three  quarters. Curse  me for a  fool  that I didn't buy that lot Craig and
Gardner told me about. Just  my  infernal luck, curse it. And that Goddamned
outsider  <i>Throwaway</i>  at  twenty to one. (<i>He  quenches his cigar  angrily  on
Bloom's ear</i>.) Where's that Goddamned cursed ashtray?
     BLOOM (<i>Goaded, buttocksmothered</i>.) O! O! Monsters! Cruel one!
     BELLO  Ask for  that every  ten minutes. Beg, pray  for it as you never
prayed before. (<i>He thrusts out a  figged  fist  and foul  cigar</i>.) Here, kiss
that. Both.  Kiss. (<i>He throws a leg  astride and,  pressing with  horseman's
knees, calls  in  a hard voice</i>.) Gee up! A  cockhorse to Banbury cross. I'll
ride him for the Eclipse stakes. (<i>He bends sideways and squeezes his mount's
testicles  roughly,  shouting</i>.)  Ho! off  we  pop! I'll  nurse you in proper
fashion. (<i>He horserides cockhorse, leaping  in  the saddle</i>.) 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 (<i>Pulls at Bello</i>.)  Let me on him now.  You  had enough.  I asked
before you.
     ZOE  (<i>Pulling at Florry</i>.) Me. Me. Are you not  finished  with  him yet,
suckeress?
     BLOOM (<i>Stifling</i>.) Can't.
     BELLO Well, I'm not. Wait. (<i>He  holds in  his  breath</i>.) Curse it. Here.
This bung's about burst.  (<i>He uncorks  himself behind: then,  contorting his
features,  farts  loudly</i>.) Take  that! (<i>He recorks himself</i>) Yes,  by  Jingo,
sixteen three quarters.
     BLOOM (<i>A sweat breaking out over him</i>.) Not man. (<i>He sniffs</i>.) Woman.
     BELLO  (<i>Stands up</i>.) 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  (<i>Shrinks</i>.)  Silk,  mistress  said!  O crinkly!  scrapy!  Must  I
tip-touch it with my nails?
     BELLO (<i>Points to  his whores</i>.) As they are now, so will you be, wigged,
singed,  perfumesprayed,   ricepowdered,  with  smoothshaven  armpits.  Tape
measurements will  be  taken  next your  skin. You  will be laced with cruel
force into  vicelike corsets of soft dove coutille,  with whalebone busk, to
the diamond trimmed pelvis, the  absolute outside  edge, while  your figure,
plumper  than when at  large, will be restrained  in nettight frocks, pretty
two ounce  petticoats and  fringes and things stamped,  of  course, with  my
houseflag, creations of lovely lingerie  for Alice and nice scent for Alice.
Alice will  feel the  pullpull. Martha and Mary  will be  a little chilly at
first in  such delicate thighcasing but the frilly flimsiness  of lace round
your bare knees will remind you...
     BLOOM (<i>A chafing soubrette with  dauby cheeks, mustard  hair  and  lace
male hands and nose,  leering  mouth</i>.) I  tried her  things on only once,  a
small prank, in Holles street. When we were hardup I washed them to save the
laundry bill. My own shirts I turned. It was the purest thrift.
     BELLO (<i>Jeers</i>.) Little jobs that make mother pleased, eh! and showed off
coquettishly  in your  domino at the mirror behind close-drawn  blinds  your
unskirted thighs and hegoat's udders, in various poses of surrender, eh? Ho!
Ho!  I  have to laugh!  That secondhand black operatop shift and short trunk
leg naughties  all split  up  the  stitches at her last rape that Mrs Miriam
Dandrade sold you from the Shelbourne Hotel, eh?
     BLOOM Miriam, Black. Demimondaine.
     BELLO (<i>Guffaws</i>.) Christ Almighty,  it's too tickling, this!  You were a
nicelooking Miriam when you clipped off your backgate hairs and lay swooning
in  the  thing  across  the bed as  Mrs  Dandrade,  about  to be violated by
Lieutenant Smythe  Smythe, Mr  Philip Augustus  Blockwell, M.P., Signor Laci
Daremo, the robust tenor, blueeyed Bert, the liftboy, Henry Fleury of Gordon
Bennett  fame, Sheridan, the quadroon Cr&Aelig;sus, the varsity wetbob eight
from old Trinity, Ponto, her splendid Newfoundland and Bobs, dowager duchess
of Manorhamilton. (<i>He guffaws again</i>.) Christ, wouldn't it make a Siamese cat
laugh?
     BLOOM (<i>Her hands and features working</i>.) It  was Gerald converted me  to
be a true corsetlover when I was female impersonator in the High School play
<i>Vice  Versa</i>. 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 (<i>With wicked glee</i>.) 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.  (<i>Earnestly</i>.)
And really it's better the position... because often I used to wet.
     BELLO (<i>Sternly</i>.) 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 (<i>In a medley of voices</i>.) He went through a form of
clandestine  marriage  with at least one woman in  the  shadow of  the Black
Church. Unspeakable  messages  he  telephoned  mentally to  Miss Dunn at  an
address  in  d'Olier  Street while he  presented himself  indecently to  the
instrument in the  callbox.  By  word  and  deed he  encouraged a  nocturnal
strumpet  to  deposit  fecal  and  other matter  in an  unsanitary  outhouse
attached to empty premises. In  five public conveniences he wrote  pencilled
messages offering  his nuptial partner to  all strongmembered males. And  by
the offensively smelling vitriol  works did he not pass night after night by
loving courting couples to see if and what and how much he could see? Did he
not  lie  in bed,  the  gross boar,  gloating  over  a  nauseous fragment of
wellused  toilet  paper  presented to him by a nasty  harlot, stimulated  by
gingerbread and a postal order?
     BELLO  (<i>Whistles loudly</i>.) 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.
     (<i>Mute  inhuman  faces  throng forward,  leering, vanishing,  gibbering,
Eooloohoom.  Poldy Hock, Bootlaces a penny, cassidy's hag, blind  stripling,
Larry Rhinoceros, the girl, the woman, the whore, the other the</i>... )
     BLOOM Don't ask me. Our mutual faith. Pleasants street. I  only thought
the half of the... I swear on my sacred oath...
     BELLO (<i>Peremptorily</i>.) 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 (<i>Docile, gurgles</i>.) I rererepugnosed in rerererepugnant...
     BELLO (<i>Imperiously</i>.) O get out, you skunk! Hold your tongue! Speak when
you're spoken to.
     BLOOM (<i>Bows</i>.) Master! Mistress! Mantamer!
     (<i>He lifts his arms. His bangle bracelets fall</i>.)
     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? (<i>He
places a ruby ring on her finger</i>.) And there now! With this ring I thee own.
Say, thank you, mistress.
     BLOOM Thank you, mistress.
     BELLO  You will make the beds, get my tub ready,  empty the pisspots in
the different rooms, including old Mrs Keogh's the cook's, a sandy one.  Ay,
and rinse  the seven  of them well, mind, or lap it up like champagne. Drink
me piping hot. Hop! you will dance attendance or  I'll lecture  you on  your
misdeeds,  Miss Ruby, and spank your bare  bot  right well,  miss, with  the
hairbrush.  You'll  be  taught  the  error  of  your  ways.  At  night  your
wellcreamed  braceleted hands  will wear fortythreebutton gloves newpowdered
with talc and having delicately scented fingertips. For such favours knights
of old laid down their lives. (<i>He chuckles</i>.)  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?  (<i>He
points</i>.) For that lot trained  by owner to fetch and carry, basket in mouth.
(<i>He bares  his arm and plunges it elbowdeep in Bloom's vulva</i>.)  There's fine
depth for  you!  What, boys? That give you a hardon? (<i>He shoves his arm in a
bidder's face</i>.) Here, wet the deck and wipe it round!
     A BIDDER A florin!
     (<i>Dillon's lacquey rings his handbell</i>.)
     A VOICE One and eightpence too much.
     THE LACQUEY Barang!
     CHARLES ALBERTA MARSH Must be virgin. Good breath. Clean.
     BELLO  (<i>Gives  a rap with his gavel</i>.)  Two  bar. Rockbottom figure  and
cheap  at  the  price.  Fourteen  hands high. Touch and  examine his points.
Handle him. This downy skin, these soft muscles, this tender flesh. If I had
only my gold piercer here! And quite  easy to  milk. Three newlaid gallons a
day. A pure stock getter, due to lay within the hour. His sire's milk record
was a thousand gallons of whole milk in forty weeks. Whoa, my jewel! Beg up!
Whoa! (<i>He  brands his initial Con Bloom's croup</i>.) So! Warranted  Cohen! What
advance on two bob, gentlemen?
     A DARKVISAGED MAN (<i>In disguised accent</i>.) Hoondert punt sterlink.
     VOICES (<i>Subdued</i>.) For the Caliph Haroun Al Raschid.
     BELLO  (<i>Gaily</i>.)  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
<i>blasÉ</i> man about town.  Learn the smooth mincing walk  on  four inch Louis XV
heels, the Grecian bend  with provoking croup,  the thighs  fluescent, knees
modestly kissing.  Bring all  your  power of  fascination to  bear  on them.
Pander to their Gomorrahan vices.
     BLOOM  (<i>Bends  his  blushing  face  into  his armpit  and  simpers with
forefinger in mouth</i>.) O, I know what you're hinting at now.
     BELLO What else are  you good  for,  an  impotent  thing like  you? (<i>He
stoops  and, peering, pokes with his fan  rudely  under the fat suetfolds of
Bloom's haunches</i>.) 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. (<i>Loudly</i>.) Can you do a man's job?
     BLOOM Eccles Street.
     BELLO (<i>Sarcastically</i>.) 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?  (<i>He spits  in  contempt</i>.)
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 (<i>Ruthlessly</i>.)  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.
     (<i>Old Sleepy Hollow calls over the wold</i>.)
     <I>SLEEPY HOLLOW</I> Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!
     BLOOM  (<i>In tattered  moccasins with a rusty  fowlingpiece,  tip toeing,
fingertipping, his haggard  bony  bearded face peering  through  the diamond
panes, cries out</i>.) 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  (<i>Laughs  mockingly</i>.)  That's  your  daughter,  you owl,  with  a
Mullingar student.
     (<i>Milly Bloom, fairhaired, greenvested,  slimsandalled, her bluescab  in
the  seawind  simply swirling, breaks from the arms of  her lover and calls,
her young eyes wonderwide</i>.)
     MILLY My! It's Papli! But. O Papli, how old you've grown!
     BELLO Changed, eh? Our whatnot, our writing table where we never wrote,
Aunt Hegarty's armchair, our classic reprints of old masters. A man  and his
men friends are living there in clover. <i>The Cuckoos' Rest!</i> Why not? How many
women had you, say? Following them up dark streets,  flatfoot, exciting them
by your  smothered grunts.  What,  you male prostitute? Blameless dames with
parcels of groceries. Turn about. Sauce for the goose, my gander, O.
     BLOOM They... I
     BELLO (<i>Cuttingly</i>.) Their  heelmarks  will  stamp the Brusselette carpet
you bought at  Wren's auction. In their horseplay with Moll the romp to find
the buck flea in her breeches they will deface the little statue you carried
home  in the rain for  art for art's  sake. They will violate the secrets of
your bottom drawer. Pages will be torn from  your  handbook  of astronomy to
make them pipespills. And they  will spit in your ten shilling brass  fender
from Hampton Leedom's.
     BLOOM Ten and six. The act of low scoundrels. Let me go. I will return.
I will prove...
     A VOICE Swear!
     (<i>Bloom clenches his fists and crawls forward, a bowie knife between his
teeth</i>.)
     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... ?
     (<i>He bites his thumb</i>.)
     BELLO Die and be damned  to you  if you  have  any  sense of decency or
grace about you. I can give you a rare old wine that'll send you skipping to
hell and back. Sign a will and leave us any coin you have. If  you have none
see you damn well get it, steal it, rob it! We'll  bury you in our shrubbery
jakes where you'll be dead  and dirty with old Cuck Cohen,  my stepnephew  I
married, the bloody old gouty  procurator  and sodomite with a crick in  his
neck, and my other ten  or eleven  husbands,  what ever the  buggers'  names
were, suffocated in  the one  cess  pool. (<i>He  explodes  in a  loud  phlegmy
laugh</i>.)  We'll  manure  you, Mr Flower! (<i>He pipes  scoffingly</i>.) Byby, Poldy!
Byby, Papli!
     BLOOM  (<i>Clasps his head</i>.) My will power! Memory! I  have sinned! I have
suff... (<i>He weeps tearlessly</i>.)
     BELLO (<i>Sneers</i>.) Crybabby! Crocodile tears!
     (<i>Bloom, broken, closely veiled for the sacrifice, sobs, his face to the
earth. The passing bell is heard. Darkshawled figures of the circumcised, in
sackcloth  and  ashes,  stand by the wailing  wall.  M.  Shulomowitz, Joseph
Goldwater  Moses  Herzog,  Harris  Rosenberg, M.  Moisel, J. Citron,  Minnie
Watchman,  0.  Mastiansky,  the Reverend Leopold  Abramovitz,  Chazen.  With
swaying arms they wail in pneuma over the recreant Bloom</i>.)
     THE CIRCUMCISED (<i>In  a dark  guttural chant as they cast dead sea fruit
upon him, no flowers.) Shema Israel Adonai Elohenu Adonai Echad</i>.
     VOICES  (<i>Sighing</i>.)  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.
     (<i>From the suttee pyre the  flame of gum camphire  ascends.  The pall of
incense smoke screens and disperses. Out of her oak  frame a nymph with hair
unbound, lightly clad  in teabrown art colours, descends from her grotto and
passing under interlacing yews, stands over Bloom</i>.)
     THE YEWS (<i>Their leaves whispering</i>.) Sister. Our sister. Ssh.
     THE NYMPH (<i>Softly</i>.) Mortal! (<i>Kindly</i>.) Nay, dost not weepest!
     BLOOM (<i>Crawls jellily forward  under the  boughs, streaked by sunlight,
with dignity</i>.) This position. I felt it was expected of me. Force of habit.
     THE NYMPH  Mortal!  You found me  in evil company, high kickers, coster
picnic makers, pugilists, popular  generals,  immoral  panto  boys in  flesh
tights and the nifty shimmy  dancers, La Aurora and Karini, musical act, the
hit of the century. I was hidden in cheap pink paper that smelt of rock oil.
I was surrounded  by the stale smut of clubmen,  stories  to  disturb callow
youth,  ads  for  transparencies,  truedup dice  and  bustpads,  proprietary
articles  and  why  wear a truss  with  testimonial from ruptured gentleman.
Useful hints to the married.
     BLOOM  (<i>Lifts a turtle  head  towards her  lap</i>.) We have met before. On
another star.
     THE NYMPH (<i>Sadly</i>.) Rubber goods.  Neverrip. Brand  as  sup plied to the
aristocracy. Corsets for men.  I cure  fits or  money  refunded. Unsolicited
testimonials  for  Professor  Waldmann's wonderful  chest  exuber.  My  bust
developed four inches in three weeks, reports Mrs Gus Rublin with photo.
     BLOOM You mean <i>Photo Bits?</i>
     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  (<i>Humbly kisses her  long hair</i>.)  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  (<i>Quickly</i>.)  Yes, yes. You mean that I... Sleep reveals the worst
side of everyone, children perhaps excepted. I know  I fell out of my bed or
rather was pushed. Steel wine is said to cure snoring. For the rest there is
that  English  invention,  pamphlet  of  which  I received  some  days  ago,
incorrectly addressed. It claims to afford a noiseless inoffensive vent. (<i>He
sighs</i>.) 'Twas ever thus. Frailty, thy name is marriage.
     THE NYMPH  (<i>Her fingers  in her  ears</i>.)  And words. They are  not in my
dictionary.
     BLOOM You understood them?
     THE YEWS Ssh.
     THE NYMPH (<i>Covers her face with her hand</i>.) What have I not seen in that
chamber? What must my eyes look down on?
     BLOOM (<i>Apologetically</i>.)  I know. Soiled personal  linen, wrong side  up
with care. The quoits are loose. From Gibraltar by long sea, long ago.
     THE NYMPH (<i>Bends her head</i>.) Worse! Worse!
     BLOOM  (<i>Reflects precautiously</i>.) 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.
     (<i>The sound of a waterfall is heard in bright cascade</i>.)
     THE WATERFALL
     Poulaphouca Poulaphouca
     Poulaphouca Poulaphouca.
     THE  YEWS  (<i>Mingling their boughs</i>.) Listen. Whisper. She is  right, our
sister. We grew by Poulaphouca waterfall. We gave shade on languorous summer
days.
     JOHN  WYSE  NOLAN  (<i>In  the  background, in Irish National For  ester's
uniform,  doffs  his plumed hat</i>.)  Prosper! Give shade on  languorous  days,
trees of Ireland!
     THE YEWS  (<i>Murmuring</i>.)  Who  came to Poulaphouca  with the  high school
excursion? Who left his nutquesting classmates to seek our shade?
     BLOOM   (<i>Pigeonbreasted,   bottleshouldered,  padded,   in  nondescript
juvenile grey and black striped suit, too small for him, white tennis shoes,
bordered stockings with turnover tops,  and a red school cap with badge</i>.)  I
was in my teens, a growing boy. A  little then sufficed,  a jolting car, the
mingling odours  of  the ladies' cloakroom  and lavatory,  the throng penned
tight on the old Royal stairs, for they love crushes, instincts of the herd,
and the dark sexsmelling theatre unbridles  vice.  Even a pricelist of their
hosiery. And then the heat.  There were sunspots that summer. End of school.
And tipsycake. Halcyon days.
     (<i>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</i>.)
     THE HALCYON DAYS Mackerel! Live us again. Hurray!
     (<i>They cheer</i>.)
     BLOOM  (<i>Hobbledehoy,  warmgloved,  mammamufflered,  stunned  with spent
snowballs,  struggles to  rise</i>.) Again! I feel  sixteen! What a lark!  Let's
ring all the bells in  Montague Street. (<i>He cheers feebly</i>.) Hurray  for  the
High School!
     THE ECHO Fool!
     THE  YEWS (<i>Rustling</i>.) She  is  right, our  sister.  Whisper. (<i>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</i>.) Who profaned
our silent shade?
     THE NYMPH (<i>Coyly through parting fingers</i>.) There! In the open air?
     THE YEWS (<i>Sweeping downward</i>.) Sister, yes. And on our virgin sward.
     THE WATERFALL
     Poulaphouca Poulaphouca
     Phoucaphouca Phoucaphouca.
     THE NYMPH (<i>With wide fingers</i>.) O! Infamy!
     BLOOM I  was precocious.  Youth. The fauns. I sacrificed to the  god of
the forest. The flowers that  bloom in  the  spring.  It was  pairing  time.
Capillary attraction  is a natural phenomenon. Lotty Clarke, flaxenhaired, I
saw  at her night  toilette through  ill-closed  curtains,  with poor papa's
operaglasses.  The  wanton ate grass wildly. She  rolled downhill  at Rialto
Bridge  to tempt  me with her  flow  of animal  spirits. She  climbed  their
crooked tree and  I... A saint couldn't resist  it. The demon possessed  me.
Besides, who saw?
     (<i>Staggering  Bob, a  whitepolled calf  thrusts  a ruminating head  with
humid nostrils through the foliage</i>.)
     STAGGERING BOB Me. Me see.
     BLOOM Simply satisfying a need. (<i>With pathos</i>.)  No girl  would  when  I
went girling. Too ugly. They wouldn't play.
     (<i>High   on   Ben  Howth  through  rhododendrons  a  nannygoat   passes,
plumpuddered, buttytailed, dropping curvants</i>.)
     THE NANNYGOAT (<i>Bleats</i>.) Megegaggegg! Nannannanny!
     BLOOM  (<i>Hatless,  flushed,  covered   with  burn   of  thistledown  and
gotrepine</i>.) Regularly engaged. Circumstances alter cases. (<i>He gazes intently
downwards  on  the  water</i>.)  Thirtytwo head  over  heels  per second.  Press
nightmare. Giddy  Elijah. Fall from cliff.  Sad end  of government printer's
clerk.  (<i>Through  silversilent summer  air the dummy  of Bloom, rolled  in a
mummy, rolls rotatingly from the Lion's  Head  cliff into the purple Waiting
waters</i>.)
     THE DUMMYMUMMY Bbbbblllllbbblblodschbg?
     (<i>Far out in  the  bay  between Bailey and Kish  lights the</i> Erin's  King
<i>sails,  sending a broadening plume of  coalsmoke from her funnel towards the
land</i>.)
     COUNCILLOR  NANNETI (<i>Alone  on deck, in dark alpaca,  yellow kitefaced,
his hand in his  waistcoat  opening,  declaims</i>.) 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 (<i>Loftily</i>.) 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. (<i>She arches her body in lascivious crispation, placing her forefinger
in her mouth</i>.) Spoke to me. Heard from behind. How then could you... ?
     BLOOM  (<i>Pacing the heather abjectly</i>.) 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.  (<i>She  blushes  and makes  a
knee</i>.) And the rest.
     BLOOM (<i>Dejected</i>.) Yes. <i>Peccavi!</i> I have paid homage on that living altar
where  the back  changes name.  (<i>With sudden  fervour</i>.) For  why  should the
dainty scented jewelled hand, the hand that rules... ?
     (<i>Figures wind serpenting in slow woodland pattern around the treestems,
cooeeing</i>.)
     THE VOICE OF KITTY (<i>In the thicket</i>.) Show us one of them cushions.
     THE VOICE OF FLORRY Here.
     (<i>A grouse wings clumsily through the underwood</i>.)
     THE VOICE OF LYNCH (<i>In the thicket.)</i> Whew! Piping hot!
     THE VOICE OF ZOE (<i>From the thicket</i>.) Came from a hot place.
     THE VOICE OF VIRAG  (<i>A  birdchief  bluestreaked and  feathered  in  war
panoply  with  his  assegai,  striding  through a  crackling  canebrake over
beechmast and acorns</i>.) 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 (<i>Eyeless, in nun's white habit, coif  and huge winged wimple,
softly, with remote eyes</i>.) Tranquilia  convent. Sister Agatha. Mount Carmel,
the apparitions of  Knock and Lourdes.  No  more  desire.  (<i>She reclines her
head, sighing</i>.) Only the ethereal.  Where dreamy creamy gull  waves o'er the
waters dull.
     (<i>Bloom half rises. His back trousers button snaps</i>.)
     THE BUTTON Bip!
     (<i>Two sluts of the Coombe dance rainily by, shawled, yelling flatly</i>.)
     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 (<i>Their silverfoil of leaves  precipitating,  their skinny arms
ageing and swaying</i>.) Deciduously!
     THE NYMPH Sacrilege! To attempt my virtue! (<i>A large moist stain appears
on her robe</i>.) Sully my innocence! You are not fit to touch the garment of  a
pure  woman. (<i>She clutches in her  robe</i>.) Wait, Satan. You'll  sing  no more
lovesongs.  Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. (<i>She draws a poniard and,  clad  in  the
sheathmail of an elected knight of nine, strikes at his loins</i>.) Nekum!
     BLOOM (<i>Starts up, seizes her hand</i>.) Hoy! Nebrakada! Cat of  nine lives!
Fair play, madam. No pruning knife. The fox  and the grapes, is it? What  do
we lack  with your barbed wire? Crucifix not thick  enough? (<i>He clutches her
veil</i>.) 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  (<i>With  a  cry, flees from  him  unveiled,  her plaster  cast
cracking, a cloud of stench escaping from the cracks</i>.) Poli... !
     BLOOM  (<i>Calls after  her</i>.)  As  if  you  didn't get  it on  the  double
yourselves. No jerks and multiple  mucosities all over you. I tried it. Your
strength our weakness. What's our  stud fee? What will  you pay on the nail?
You fee  men  dancers on the Riviera, I read.  (<i>The  fleeing nymph  raises a
keen</i>.) 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.
(<i>He sniffs</i>.) But. Onions. Stale. Sulphur. Grease.
     (<i>The figure of Bella Cohen stands before him</i>.)
     BELLA You'll know me the next time.
     BLOOM (<i>Composed, regards  her.) PassÉe</i>. Mutton dressed as lamb. Lone in
the  tooth and superfluous hairs. A raw onion the last  thing at night would
benefit your complexion. And take  some double  chin drill. Your eyes are as
vapid  as  the glass eyes of your stuffed fox.  They have  the dimensions of
your other features, that's all. I'm not a triple screw propeller.
     BELLA (<i>Contemptuously</i>.)  You're not game, in fact. (<i>Her sowcunt barks</i>.)
Fohracht!
     BLOOM (<i>Contemptuously</i>.) Clean  your nailless middle  finger  first, the
cold spunk of your bully is dripping from your  cockscomb. Take a handful of
hay and wipe yourself.
     BELLA I know you, canvasser! Dead cod!
     BLOOM I saw him, kipkeeper! Pox and gleet vendor!
     BELLA (<i>Turns  to  the piano</i>.) Which of  you was playing the  dead march
from <i>Saul?</i>
     ZOE Me. Mind your cornflowers. (<i>She darts to the piano and bangs chords
on it  with crossed arms</i>.) The cat's ramble  through the slag.  (<i>She glances
back</i>.) Eh? Who's making love to my sweeties? (<i>She darts back  to the table</i>.)
What's yours is mine and what's mine is my own.
     (<i>Kitty  disconcerted  coats her  teeth with  the  silver  paper.  Bloom
approaches Zoe</i>.)
     BLOOM  (<i>Gently</i>.)  Give  me  back that potato, will you? Zoe Forfeits, a
fine thing and a superfine thing.
     BLOOM (<i>With feeling</i>.) 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.  (<i>She hauls up a reef  of her slip, revealing her bare thigh
and unrolls the potato from the top of her stocking</i>.) Those that hides knows
where to find.
     BELLA  (<i>Frowns</i>.)  Here.  This  isn't a musical peepshow.