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


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


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


BLOOM: She is rather lean.


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


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


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


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


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


BLOOM: With...?


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


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


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


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


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


VIRAG: (Excitedly.) I say so. I say so. E'en so. Technic. (He taps his parchmentroll energetically.) This book tells you how to act with all descriptive particulars. Consult index for agitated fear of aconite, melancholy of muriatic, priapic pulsatilla. Virag is going to talk about amputation. Our old friend caustic. They must be starved. Snip off with horsehair under the denned neck. But, to change the venue to the Bulgar and the Basque, have you made up your mind whether you like or dislike women in male habiliments? (With a dry snigger.) You intended to devote an entire year to the study of the religious problem and the summer months of 1886 to square the circle and win that million. Pomegranate! From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step. Pyjamas, let us say? Or stockingette gussetted knickers, closed? Or, put we the case, those complicated combinations, camiknickers? (He crows derisively.) Keekeereekee!


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


VIRAG: (Head askew, arches his back and hunched wingshoulders, peers at the moth out of blear bulged eyes, points a horning claw and cries.) Who's moth moth? Who's dear Gerald? Dear Ger, that you? O dear, he is Gerald. O, I much fear he shall be most badly burned. Will some pleashe pershon not now impediment so catastrophics mit agitation of firstclass tablenumpkin? (He mews.) Puss puss puss puss! (He sighs, draws back and stares sideways down with dropping underjaw.) Well, well. He doth rest anon. (He snaps his jaws suddenly on the air.)


I'm a tiny tiny thing Ever flying in the spring Round and round a ringaring. Long ago I was a king Now I do this kind of thing On the wing, on the wing! Bing!


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


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


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


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


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


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


FLORRY: Sing us something. Love's old sweet song.


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


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


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


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


PHILIP DRUNK: (Impatiently.) Ah, bosh, man. Go to hell! I paid my way. If I could only find out about octaves. Reduplication of personality. Who was it told me his name? (His lawnmower begins to purr.) Aha, yes. Zoe mou sas agapo. Have a notion I was here before. When was it not Atkinson his card I have somewhere. Mac Somebody. Unmack I have it. He told me about, hold on, Swinburne, was it, no?


FLORRY: And the song?


STEPHEN: Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


ZOE: (Lightly.) Only for what happened him.


BLOOM: How?


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


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


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


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


FLORRY: (Nods.) Locomotor ataxy.


ZOE: (Gaily.) O, my dictionary.


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


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


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


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


A VOICE: Hold that fellow with the bad breeches.


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


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


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


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


THE FLYBILL: K. 11. Post No Bills. Strictly confidential. Dr Hy Franks.


HENRY: All is lost now.


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


(Exeunt severally.)


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


LYNCH: All one and the same God to her.


STEPHEN: (Devoutly.) And sovereign Lord of all things.


FLORRY: (To Stephen.) I'm sure you're a spoiled priest. Or a monk.


LYNCH: He is. A cardinal's son.


STEPHEN: Cardinal sin. Monks of the screw.


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


Conservio lies captured He lies in the lowest dungeon With manacles and chains around his limbs Weighing upwards of three tons.


(He looks at all for a moment, his right eye closed tight, his left cheek puffed out. Then, unable to repress his merriment, he rocks to and fro, arms akimbo, and sings with broad rollicking humour:)


O, the poor little fellow Hihihihihis legs they were yellow He was plump, fat and heavy and brisk as a snake But some bloody savage To graize his white cabbage He murdered Nell Flaherty's duckloving drake.


(A multitude of midges swarms white over his robe. He scratches himself with crossed arms at his ribs, grimacing, and exclaims:)


I'm suffering the agony of the damned. By the hoky fiddle, thanks be to Jesus those funny little chaps are not unanimous. If they were they'd walk me off the face of the bloody globe.


(His head aslant he blesses curtly with fore and middle fingers, imparts the Easter kiss and doubleshuffles off comically, swaying his hat from side to side, shrinking quickly to the size of his trainbearers. The dwarf acolytes, giggling, peeping, nudging, ogling, Easterkissing, zigzag behind him. His voice is heard mellow from afar, merciful male, melodious:)


Shall carry my heart to thee, Shall carry my heart to thee, And the breath of the balmy night Shall carry my heart to thee!


(The trick doorhandle turns.)


THE DOORHANDLE: Theeee!


ZOE: The devil is in that door.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


BLOOM: (Solemnly.) Thanks.


ZOE: Do as you're bid. Here!


(A firm heelclacking tread is heard on the stairs.)


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


(The door opens. Bella Cohen, a massive whoremistress, enters. She is dressed in a threequarter ivory gown, fringed round the hem with tasselled selvedge, and cools herself flirting a black horn fan like Minnie Hauck in Carmen. On her left hand are wedding and keeper rings. Her eyes are deeply carboned. She has a sprouting moustache. Her olive face is heavy, slightly sweated and fullnosed with orangetainted nostrils. She has large pendant beryl eardrops.)


BELLA: My word! I'm all of a mucksweat.


(She glances round her at the couples. Then her eyes rest on Bloom with hard insistence. Her large fan winnows wind towards her heated faceneck and embonpoint. Her falcon eyes glitter.)


THE FAN: (Flirting quickly, then slowly.) Married, I see.


BLOOM: Yes. Partly, I have mislaid...


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


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


THE FAN: (Folding together, rests against her left eardrop.) Have you forgotten me?


BLOOM: Nes. Yo.


THE FAN: (Folded akimbo against her waist.) Is me her was you dreamed before? Was then she him you us since knew? Am all them and the same now we?


(Bella approaches, gently tapping with the fan.)


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


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


BLOOM: (Cowed.) Exuberant female. Enormously I desiderate your domination. I am exhausted, abandoned, no more young. I stand, so to speak, with an unposted letter bearing the extra regulation fee before the too late box of the general postoffice of human life. The door and window open at a right angle cause a draught of thirtytwo feet per second according to the law of falling bodies. I have felt this instant a twinge of sciatica in my left glutear muscle. It runs in our family. Poor dear papa, a widower, was a regular barometer from it. He believed in animal heat. A skin of tabby lined his winter waistcoat. Near the end, remembering king David and the Sunamite, he shared his bed with Athos, faithful after death. A dog's spittle as you probably... (He winces.) Ah!


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


THE FAN: (Tapping.) All things end. Be mine. Now.


BLOOM: (Undecided.) All now? I should not have parted with my talisman. Rain, exposure at dewfall on the searocks, a peccadillo at my time of life. Every phenomenon has a natural cause.


THE FAN: (Points downwards slowly.) You may.


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


THE FAN: (Points downwards quickly.) You must.


BLOOM: (With desire, with reluctance.) I can make a true black knot. Learned when I served my time and worked the mail order line for Kellett's. Experienced hand. Every knot says a lot. Let me. In courtesy. I knelt once before today. Ah!


(Bella raises her gown slightly and, steadying her pose, lifts to the edge of a chair a plump buskined hoof and a full pastern, silksocked. Bloom, stifflegged, aging, bends over her hoof and with gentle fingers draws out and in her laces.)


BLOOM: (Murmurs lovingly.) To be a shoefitter in Manfield's was my love's young dream, the darling joys of sweet buttonhooking, to lace up crisscrossed to kneelength the dressy kid footwear satinlined, so incredibly impossibly small, of Clyde Road ladies. Even their wax model Raymonde I visited daily to admire her cobweb hose and stick of rhubarb toe, as worn in Paris.


THE HOOF: Smell my hot goathide. Feel my royal weight.


BLOOM: (Crosslacing.) Too tight?


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


BLOOM: Not to lace the wrong eyelet as I did the night of the bazaar dance. Bad luck. Hook in wrong tache of her... person you mentioned. That night she met... Now!


(He knots the lace. Bella places her foot on the floor. Bloom raises his head. Her heavy face, her eyes strike him in midbrow. His eyes grow dull, darker and pouched, his nose thickens.)


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


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


BLOOM: (Infatuated.) Empress!


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


BLOOM: (Plaintively.) Hugeness!


BLOOM: (With sinews semiflexed.) Magmagnificence!


BELLO: Down! (He taps her on the shoulder with his fan.) Incline feet forward! Slide left foot one pace back! You will fall. You are falling. On the hands down!


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


(With a piercing epileptic cry she sinks on all fours, grunting, snuffling, rooting at his feet: then lies, shamming dead, with eyes shut tight, trembling eyelids, bowed upon the ground in the attitude of most excellent master.)


BELLO: (With bobbed hair, purple gills, fat moustache rings round his shaven mouth, in mountaineer's puttees, green silverbuttoned coat, sport skirt and alpine hat with moorcock's feather, his hands stuck deep in his breeches pockets, places his heel on her neck and grinds it in.) Footstool! Feel my entire weight. Bow, bondslave, before the throne of your despot's glorious heels so glistening in their proud erectness.


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


BELLO: (Laughs loudly.) Holy smoke! You little know what's in store for you. I'm the Tartar to settle your little lot and break you in! I'll bet Kentucky cocktails all round I shame it out of you, old son. Cheek me, I dare you. If you do tremble in anticipation of heel discipline to be inflicted in gym costume.


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


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


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


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


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


BELLO: (Coaxingly.) Come, ducky dear, I want a word with you, darling, just to administer correction. Just a little heart to heart talk, sweety. (Bloom puts out her timid head.) There's a good girly now. (Bello grabs her hair violently and drags her forward.) I only want to correct you for your own good on a soft safe spot. How's that tender behind? O, ever so gently, pet. Begin to get ready.


BLOOM: (Fainting.) Don't tear my...


BELLO: (Savagely.) The nosering, the pliers, the bastinado, the hanging hook, the knout I'll make you kiss while the flutes play like the Nubian slave of old. You're in for it this time! I'll make you remember me for the balance of your natural life. (His forehead veins swollen, his face congested.) I shall sit on your ottoman saddleback every morning after my thumping good breakfast of Matterson's fat hamrashers and a bottle of Guinness's porter. (He belches.) And suck my thumping good Stock Exchange cigar while I read the Licensed Victualler's Gazette. Very possibly I shall have you slaughtered and skewered in my stables and enjoy a slice of you with crisp crackling from the baking tin basted and baked like sucking pig with rice and lemon or currant sauce. It will hurt you. (He twists her arm. Bloom squeals, turning turtle.)


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


BELLO: (Twisting.) Another!


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


BELLO: (Shouts.) Good, by the rumping jumping general! That's the best bit of news I heard these six weeks. Here, don't keep me waiting, damn you! (He slaps her face.)


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


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


ZOE: Yes. Walk on him! I will.


FLORRY: I will. Don't be greedy.


KITTY: No, me. Lend him to me.


(The brothel cook, Mrs Keogh, wrinkled, greybearded, in a greasy bib, men's grey and green socks and brogues, floursmeared, a rollingpin stuck with raw pastry in her bare red arm and hand, appears at the door.)


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


BELLO: (Squats with a grunt on Bloom's upturned face, puffing cigarsmoke, nursing a fat leg.) I see Keating Clay is elected vicechairman of the Richmond asylum and by the by Guinness's preference shares are at sixteen three quarters. Curse me for a fool that didn't buy that lot Craig and Gardner told me about. Just my infernal luck, curse it. And that Goddamned outsider Throwaway at twenty to one. (He quenches his cigar angrily on Bloom's ear.) Where's that Goddamned cursed ashtray?


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


BELLO: Ask for that every ten minutes. Beg. Pray for it as you never prayed before. (He thrusts out a figged fist and foul cigar.) Here, kiss that. Both. Kiss. (He throws a leg astride and, pressing with horseman's knees, calls in a hard voice.) Gee up! A cockhorse to Banbury cross. I'll ride him for the Eclipse stakes. (He bends sideways and squeezes his mount's testicles roughly, shouting.) Ho! Off we pop! I'll nurse you in proper fashion. (He horserides cockhorse, leaping in the, in the saddle.) The lady goes a pace a pace and the coachman goes a trot a trot and the gentleman goes a gallop a gallop a gallop a gallop.


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


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


BLOOM: (Stifling.) Can't.


BELLO: Well, I'm not. Wait. (He holds in his breath.) Curse it. Here. This bung's about burst. (He uncorks himself behind: then, contorting his features, farts loudly.) Take that! (He recorks himself.) Yes, by Jingo, sixteen three quarters.


BLOOM: (A sweat breaking out over him.) Not man. (He sniffs.) Woman.


BELLO: (Stands up.) No more blow hot and cold. What you longed for has come to pass. Henceforth you are unmanned and mine in earnest, a thing under the yoke. Now for your punishment frock. You will shed your male garments, you understand, Ruby Cohen? and don the shot silk luxuriously rustling over head and shoulders. And quickly too!


BLOOM: (Shrinks.) Silk, mistress said! O crinkly! scrapy! Must I tiptouch it with my nails?


BELLO: (Points to his whores.) As they are now so will you be, wigged, singed, perfumesprayed, ricepowdered, with smoothshaven armpits. Tape measurements will be taken next your skin. You will be laced with cruel force into vicelike corsets of soft dove coutille with whalebone busk to the diamondtrimmed pelvis, the absolute outside edge, while your figure, plumper than when at large, will be restrained in nettight frocks, pretty two ounce petticoats and fringes and things stamped, of course, with my houseflag, creations of lovely lingerie for Alice and nice scent for Alice. Alice will feel the pullpull. Martha and Mary will be a little chilly at first in such delicate thighcasing but the frilly flimsiness of lace round your bare knees will remind you...


BLOOM: (A charming soubrette with dauby cheeks, mustard hair and large male hands and nose, leering mouth.) I tried her things on only twice, a small prank, in Holles street. When we were hard up I washed them to save the laundry bill. My own shirts I turned. It was the purest thrift.


BELLO: (Jeers.) Little jobs that make mother pleased, eh? And showed off coquettishly in your domino at the mirror behind closedrawn blinds your unskirted thighs and hegoat's udders in various poses of surrender, eh? Ho! ho! I have to laugh! That secondhand black operatop shift and short trunkleg naughties all split up the stitches at her last rape that Mrs Miriam Dandrade sold you from the Shelbourne hotel, eh?


BLOOM: Miriam. Black. Demimondaine.


BELLO: (Guffaws.) Christ Almighty it's too tickling, this! You were a nicelooking Miriam when you clipped off your backgate hairs and lay swooning in the thing across the bed as Mrs Dandrade about to be violated by lieutenant Smythe-Smythe, Mr Philip Augustus Blockwell M. P., signor Laci Daremo, the robust tenor, blueeyed Bert, the liftboy, Henri Fleury of Gordon Bennett fame, Sheridan, the quadroon Croesus, the varsity wetbob eight from old Trinity, Ponto, her splendid Newfoundland and Bobs, dowager duchess of Manorhamilton. (He guffaws again.) Christ, wouldn't it make a Siamese cat laugh?


BLOOM: (Her hands and features working.) It was Gerald converted me to be a true corsetlover when I was female impersonator in the High School play Vice Versa. It was dear Gerald. He got that kink, fascinated by sister's stays. Now dearest Gerald uses pinky greasepaint and gilds his eyelids. Cult of the beautiful.


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


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


BELLO: (Sternly.) No insubordination! The sawdust is there in the corner for you. I gave you strict instructions, didn't I? Do it standing, sir! I'll teach you to behave like a jinkleman! If I catch a trace on your swaddles. Aha! By the ass of the Dorans you'll find I'm a martinet. The sins of your past are rising against you. Many. Hundreds.


THE SINS OF THE PAST: (In a medley of voices.) He went through a form of clandestine marriage with at least one woman in the shadow of the Black church. Unspeakable messages he telephoned mentally to Miss Dunn at an address in D'Olier street while he presented himself indecently to the instrument in the callbox. By word and deed he frankly encouraged a nocturnal strumpet to deposit fecal and other matter in an unsanitary outhouse attached to empty premises. In five public conveniences he wrote pencilled messages offering his nuptial partner to all strongmembered males. And by the offensively smelling vitriol works did he not pass night after night by loving courting couples to see if and what and how much he could see? Did he not lie in bed, the gross boar, gloating over a nauseous fragment of wellused toilet paper presented to him by a nasty harlot, stimulated by gingerbread and a postal order?


BELLO: (Whistles loudly.) Say! What was the most revolting piece of obscenity in all your career of crime? Go the whole hog. Puke it out! Be candid for once.


(Mute inhuman faces throng forward, leering, vanishing, gibbering, Booloohoom. Poldy Kock, Bootlaces a penny, Cassidy's hag, blind stripling, Larry Rhinoceros, the girl, the woman, the whore, the other, the...)


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


BELLO: (Peremptorily.) Answer. Repugnant wretch! I insist on knowing. Tell me something to amuse me, smut or a bloody good ghoststory or a line of poetry, quick, quick, quick! Where? How? What time? With how many? I give you just three seconds. One! Two! Thr...


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


BLOOM: (Bows.) Master! Mistress! Mantamer!


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


BELLO: (Satirically.) By day you will souse and bat our smelling underclothes also when we ladies are unwell, and swab out our latrines with dress pinned up and a dishclout tied to your tail. Won't that be nice? (He places a ruby ring on her finger.) And there now! With this ring I thee own. Say, thank you, mistress.


BLOOM: Thank you, mistress.


BELLO: You will make the beds, get my tub ready, empty the pisspots in the different rooms, including old Mrs Keogh's the cook's, a sandy one. Ay, and rinse the seven of them well, mind, or lap it up like champagne. Drink me piping hot. Hop! You will dance attendance or I'll lecture you on your misdeeds, Miss Ruby, and spank your bare bot right well, miss, with the hairbrush. You'll be taught the error of your ways. At night your wellcreamed braceletted hands will wear fortythreebutton gloves newpowdered with talc and having delicately scented fingertips. For such favours knights of old laid down their lives. (He chuckles.) My boys will be no end charmed to see you so ladylike, the colonel, above all, when they come here the night before the wedding to fondle my new attraction in gilded heels. First I'll have a go at you myself. A man I know on the turf named Charles Alberta Marsh (I was in bed with him just now and another gentleman out of the Hanaper and Petty Bag office) is on the lookout for a maid of all work at a short knock. Swell the bust. Smile. Droop shoulders. What offers? (He points.) For that lot. Trained by owner to fetch and carry, basket in mouth. (He bares his arm and plunges it elbowdeep in Bloom's vulva.) There's fine depth for you! What, boys? That give you a hardon? (He shoves his arm in a bidder's face.) Here wet the deck and wipe it round!


(Dillon's lacquey rings his handbell.)


A VOICE: One and eightpence too much.


CHARLES ALBERTA MARSH: Must be virgin. Good breath. Clean.


BELLO: (Gives a rap with his gavel.) Two bar. Rockbottom figure and cheap at the price. Fourteen hands high. Touch and examine shis points. Handle hrim. This downy skin, these soft muscles, this tender flesh. If I had only my gold piercer here! And quite easy to milk. Three newlaid gallons a day. A pure stockgetter, due to lay within the hour. His sire's milk record was a thousand gallons of whole milk in forty weeks. Whoa, my jewel! Beg up! Whoa! (He brands his initial C on Bloom's croup.) So! Warranted Cohen! What advance on two bob, gentlemen?


VOICES: (Subdued.) For the Caliph. Haroun Al Raschid.


BELLO: (Gaily.) Right. Let them all come. The scanty, daringly short skirt, riding up at the knee to show a peep of white pantalette, is a potent weapon and transparent stockings, emeraldgartered, with the long straight seam trailing up beyond the knee, appeal to the better instincts of the blasé man about town. Learn the smooth mincing walk on four inch Louis Quinze heels, the Grecian bend with provoking croup, the thighs fluescent, knees modestly kissing. Bring all your powers of fascination to bear on them. Pander to their Gomorrahan vices.


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


BELLO: What else are you good for, an impotent thing like you? (He stoops and, peering, pokes with his fan rudely under the fat suet folds of Bloom's haunches.) Up! Up! Manx cat! What have we here? Where's your curly teapot gone to or who docked it on you, cockyolly? Sing, birdy, sing. It's as limp as a boy of six's doing his pooly behind a cart. Buy a bucket or sell your pump. (Loudly.) Can you do a man's job?


BLOOM: Eccles street...


BELLO: (Sarcastically.) I wouldn't hurt your feelings for the world but there's a man of brawn in possession there. The tables are turned, my gay young fellow! He is something like a fullgrown outdoor man. Well for you, you muff, if you had that weapon with knobs and lumps and warts all over it. He shot his bolt, I can tell you! Foot to foot, knee to knee, belly to belly, bubs to breast! He's no eunuch. A shock of red hair he has sticking out of him behind like a furzebush! Wait for nine months, my lad! Holy ginger, it's kicking and coughing up and down in her guts already! That makes you wild, don't it? Touches the spot? (He spits in contempt.) Spittoon!


BLOOM: I was indecently treated, I... Inform the police. Hundred pounds. Unmentionable. I...


BELLO: Would if you could, lame duck. A downpour we want not your drizzle.


BELLO: (Ruthlessly.) No, Leopold Bloom, all is changed by woman's will since you slept horizontal in Sleepy Hollow your night of twenty years. Return and see.


(Old Sleepy Hollow calls over the wold.)


BLOOM: (In tattered mocassins with a rusty fowlingpiece, tiptoeing, fingertipping, his haggard bony bearded face peering through the diamond panes, cries out.) I see her! It's she! The first night at Mat Dillon's! But that dress, the green! And her hair is dyed gold and he...


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


(Milly Bloom, fairhaired, greenvested, slimsandalled, her blue scarf in the seawind simply swirling, breaks from the arms of her lover and calls, her young eyes wonderwide.)


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


BELLO: Changed, eh? Our whatnot, our writingtable where we never wrote, aunt Hegarty's armchair, our classic reprints of old masters. A man and his menfriends are living there in clover. The Cuckoos' Rest! Why not? How many women had you, eh, following them up dark streets, flatfoot, exciting them by your smothered grunts, what, you male prostitute? Blameless dames with parcels of groceries. Turn about. Sauce for the goose, my gander O.


BLOOM: They... I...


BELLO: (Cuttingly.) Their heelmarks will stamp the Brusselette carpet you bought at Wren's auction. In their horseplay with Moll the romp to find the buck flea in her breeches they will deface the little statue you carried home in the rain for art for art's sake. They will violate the secrets of your bottom drawer. Pages will be torn from your handbook of astronomy to make them pipespills. And they will spit in your ten shilling brass fender from Hampton Leedom's.


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


A VOICE: Swear!


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


BELLO: As a paying guest or a kept man? Too late. You have made your secondbest bed and others must lie in it. Your epitaph is written. You are down and out and don't you forget it, old bean.


BLOOM: Justice! All Ireland versus one! Has nobody...? (He bites his thumb.)


BELLO: Die and be damned to you if you have any sense of decency or grace about you. I can give you a rare old wine that'll send you skipping to hell and back. Sign a will and leave us any coin you have! If you have none see you damn well get it, steal it, rob it! We'll bury you in our shrubbery jakes where you'll be dead and dirty with old Cuck Cohen, my stepnephew I married, the bloody old gouty procurator and sodomite with a crick in his neck, and my other ten or eleven husbands, whatever the buggers' names were, suffocated in the one cesspool. (He explodes in a loud phlegmy laugh.) We'll manure you, Mr Flower! (He pipes scoffingly.) Byby, Poldy! Byby, Papli!


BLOOM: (Clasps his head.) My willpower! Memory! I have sinned! I have suff...


(He weeps tearlessly.)


BELLO: (Sneers.) Crybabby! Crocodile tears!


(Bloom, broken, closely veiled for the sacrifice, sobs, his face to the earth. The passing bell is heard. Darkshawled figures of the circumcised, in sackcloth and ashes, stand by the wailing wall. M. Shulomowitz, Joseph Goldwater, Moses Herzog, Harris Rosenberg, M. Moisel, J. Citron, Minnie Watchman, P. Mastiansky, The Reverend Leopold Abramovitz, Chazen. With swaying arms they wail in pneuma over the recreant Bloom.)


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


VOICES: (Sighing.) So he's gone. Ah yes. Yes, indeed. Bloom? Never heard of him. No? Queer kind of chap. There's the widow. That so? Ah, yes.


(From the suttee pyre the flame of gum camphire ascends. The pall of incense smoke screens and disperses. Out of her oakframe a nymph with hair unbound, lightly clad in teabrown artcolours, descends from her grotto and passing under interlacing yews stands over Bloom.)


THE YEWS: (Their leaves whispering.) Sister. Our sister. Ssh!


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


BLOOM: (Crawls jellily forward under the boughs, streaked by sunlight, with dignity.) This position. I felt it was expected of me. Force of habit.


THE NYMPH: Mortal! You found me in evil company, highkickers, coster picnicmakers, pugilists, popular generals, immoral panto boys in fleshtights and the nifty shimmy dancers, La Aurora and Karini, musical act, the hit of the century. I was hidden in cheap pink paper that smelt of rock oil. I was surrounded by the stale smut of clubmen, stories to disturb callow youth, ads for transparencies, truedup dice and bustpads, proprietary articles and why wear a truss with testimonial from ruptured gentleman. Useful hints to the married.


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


THE NYMPH: (Sadly.) Rubber goods. Neverrip brand as supplied to the aristocracy. Corsets for men. I cure fits or money refunded. Unsolicited testimonials for Professor Waldmann's wonderful chest exuber. My bust developed four inches in three weeks, reports Mrs Gus Rublin with photo.


BLOOM: You mean Photo Bits?


THE NYMPH: I do. You bore me away, framed me in oak and tinsel, set me above your marriage couch. Unseen, one summer eve, you kissed me in four places. And with loving pencil you shaded my eyes, my bosom and my shame.


BLOOM: (Humbly kisses her long hair.) Your classic curves, beautiful immortal, I was glad to look on you, to praise you, a thing of beauty, almost to pray.


THE NYMPH: During dark nights I heard your praise.


BLOOM: (Quickly.) Yes, yes. You mean that I... Sleep reveals the worst side of everyone, children perhaps excepted. I know I fell out of bed or rather was pushed. Steel wine is said to cure snoring. For the rest there is that English invention, pamphlet of which I received some days ago, incorrectly addressed. It claims to afford a noiseless, inoffensive vent. (He sighs.) 'Twas ever thus. Frailty, thy name is marriage.


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


BLOOM: You understood them?


THE YEWS: Ssh!


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


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


THE NYMPH: (Bends her head.) Worse, worse!


BLOOM: (Reflects precautiously.) That antiquated commode. It wasn't her weight. She scaled just eleven stone nine. She put on nine pounds after weaning. It was a crack and want of glue. Eh? And that absurd orangekeyed utensil which has only one handle.


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


Poulaphouca Poulaphouca Poulaphouca Poulaphouca.


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


JOHN WYSE NOLAN: (In the background, in Irish National Forester's uniform, doffs his plumed hat.) Prosper! Give shade on languorous days, trees of Ireland!


THE YEWS: (Murmuring.) Who came to Poulaphouca with the High School excursion? Who left his nutquesting classmates to seek our shade?


BLOOM: (Scared.) High School of Poula? Mnemo? Not in full possession of faculties. Concussion. Run over by tram.


BLOOM: (Pigeonbreasted, bottleshouldered, padded, in nondescript juvenile grey and black striped suit, too small for him, white tennis shoes, bordered stockings with turnover tops and a red schoolcap with badge.) I was in my teens, a growing boy. A little then sufficed, a jolting car, the mingling odours of the ladies' cloakroom and lavatory, the throng penned tight on the old Royal stairs (for they love crushes, instinct of the herd, and the dark sexsmelling theatre unbridles vice), even a pricelist of their hosiery. And then the heat. There were sunspots that summer. End of school. And tipsycake. Halcyon days.


(Halcyon days, high school boys in blue and white football jerseys and shorts, Master Donald Turnbull, Master Abraham Chatterton, Master Owen Goldberg, Master Jack Meredith, Master Percy Apjohn, stand in a clearing of the trees and shout to Master Leopold Bloom.)


THE HALCYON DAYS: Mackerel! Live us again. Hurray! (They cheer.)


BLOOM: (Hobbledehoy, warmgloved, mammamufflered, starred with spent snowballs, struggles to rise.) Again! I feel sixteen! What a lark! Let's ring all the bells in Montague street. (He cheers feebly.) Hurray for the High School!


THE ECHO: Fool!


THE YEWS: (Rustling.) She is right, our sister. Whisper. (Whispered kisses are heard in all the wood. Faces of hamadryads peep out from the boles and among the leaves and break, blossoming into bloom.) Who profaned our silent shade?


THE NYMPH: (Coyly, through parting fingers.) There? In the open air?


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


Poulaphouca Poulaphouca Phoucaphouca Phoucaphouca.


THE NYMPH: (With wide fingers.) O, infamy!


BLOOM: I was precocious. Youth. The fauna. I sacrificed to the god of the forest. The flowers that bloom in the spring. It was pairing time. Capillary attraction is a natural phenomenon. Lotty Clarke, flaxenhaired, I saw at her night toilette through illclosed curtains with poor papa's operaglasses: The wanton ate grass wildly. She rolled downhill at Rialto bridge to tempt me with her flow of animal spirits. She climbed their crooked tree and I... A saint couldn't resist it. The demon possessed me. Besides, who saw?


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


STAGGERING BOB: (Large teardrops rolling from his prominent eyes, snivels.) Me. Me see.


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


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


BLOOM: (Hatless, flushed, covered with burrs of thistledown and gorsespine.) Regularly engaged. Circumstances alter cases. (He gazes intently downwards on the water.) Thirtytwo head over heels per second. Press nightmare. Giddy Elijah. Fall from cliff. Sad end of government printer's clerk. (Through silversilent summer air the dummy of Bloom, rolled in a mummy, rolls roteatingly from the Lion's Head cliff into the purple waiting waters.)


(Far out in the bay between Bailey and Kish lights the Erin's King sails, sending a broadening plume of coalsmoke from her funnel towards the land.)


COUNCILLOR NANNETTI: (Alone on deck, in dark alpaca, yellowkitefaced, his hand in his waistcoat opening, declaims.) When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written. I have...


THE NYMPH: (Loftily.) We immortals, as you saw today, have not such a place and no hair there either. We are stonecold and pure. We eat electric light. (She arches her body in lascivious crispation, placing her forefinger in her mouth.) Spoke to me. Heard from behind. How then could you...?


BLOOM: (Pawing the heather abjectly.) O, I have been a perfect pig. Enemas too I have administered. One third of a pint of quassia to which add a tablespoonful of rocksalt. Up the fundament. With Hamilton Long's syringe, the ladies' friend.


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


BLOOM: (Dejected.) Yes. Peccavi! I have paid homage on that living altar where the back changes name. (With sudden fervour.) For why should the dainty scented jewelled hand, the hand that rules...?


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


THE VOICE OF KITTY: (In the thicket.) Show us one of them cushions.


(A grouse wings clumsily through the underwood.)


THE VOICE OF LYNCH: (In the thicket.) Whew! Piping hot!


THE VOICE OF ZOE: (From the thicket.) Came from a hot place.


THE VOICE OF VIRAG: (A birdchief, bluestreaked and feathered in war panoply with his assegai, striding through a crackling canebrake over beechmast and acorns.) Hot! Hot! Ware Sitting Bull!


BLOOM: It overpowers me. The warm impress of her warm form. Even to sit where a woman has sat, especially with divaricated thighs, as though to grant the last favours, most especially with previously well uplifted white sateen coatpans. So womanly, full. It fills me full.


Phillaphulla Poulaphouca Poulaphouca Poulaphouca.


THE YEWS: Ssh! Sister, speak!


THE NYMPH: (Eyeless, in nun's white habit, coif and hugewinged wimple, softly, with remote eyes.) Tranquilla convent. Sister Agatha. Mount Carmel. The apparitions of Knock and Lourdes. No more desire. (She reclines her head, sighing.) Only the ethereal. Where dreamy creamy gull waves o'er the waters dull.


(Bloom half rises. His back trouserbutton snaps.)


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


O, Leopold lost the pin of his drawers He didn't know what to do, To keep it up, To keep it up.


BLOOM: (Coldly.) You have broken the spell. The last straw. If there were only ethereal where would you all be, postulants and novices? Shy but willing like an ass pissing.


THE YEWS: (Their silverfoil of leaves precipitating, their skinny arms aging and swaying.) Deciduously!


THE NYMPH: (Her features hardening, gropes in the folds of her habit.) Sacrilege! To attempt my virtue! (A large moist stain appears on her robe.) Sully my innocence! You are not fit to touch the garment of a pure woman. (She clutches again in her robe.) Wait. Satan, you'll sing no more lovesongs. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. (She draws a poniard and, clad in the sheathmail of an elected knight of nine, strikes at his loins.) Nekum!


BLOOM: (Starts up, seizes her hand.) Hoy! Nebrakada! Cat o' nine lives! Fair play, madam. No pruningknife. The fox and the grapes, is it? What do you lack with your barbed wire? Crucifix not thick enough? (He clutches her veil.) A holy abbot you want or Brophy, the lame gardener, or the spoutless statue of the watercarrier, or good mother Alphonsus, eh Reynard?


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


BLOOM: (Calls after her.) As if you didn't get it on the double yourselves. No jerks and multiple mucosities all over you. I tried it. Your strength our weakness. What's our studfee? What will you pay on the nail? You fee mendancers on the Riviera, I read. (The fleeing nymph raises a keen.) Eh? I have sixteen years of black slave labour behind me. And would a jury give me five shillings alimony tomorrow, eh? Fool someone else, not me. (He sniffs.) Rut. Onions. Stale. Sulphur. Grease.


(The figure of Bella Cohen stands before him.)


BELLA: You'll know me the next time.


BLOOM: (Composed, regards her.) Passée. Mutton dressed as lamb. Long in the tooth and superfluous hair. A raw onion the last thing at night would benefit your complexion. And take some double chin drill. Your eyes are as vapid as the glasseyes of your stuffed fox. They have the dimensions of your other features, that's all. I'm not a triple screw propeller.


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


BLOOM: (Contemptuously.) Clean your nailless middle finger first, your bully's cold spunk is dripping from your cockscomb. Take a handful of hay and wipe yourself.


BELLA: I know you, canvasser! Dead cod!


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


ZOE: Me. Mind your cornflowers. (She darts to the piano and bangs chords on it with crossed arms.) The cat's ramble through the slag. (She glances back.) Eh? Who's making love to my sweeties? (She darts back to the table.) What's yours is mine and what's mine is my own.


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


BLOOM: (Gently.) Give me back that potato, will you?


ZOE: Forfeits, a fine thing and a superfine thing.


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


Give a thing and take it back God'll ask you where is that You'll say you don't know God'll send you down below.


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


STEPHEN: To have or not to have that is the question.


ZOE: Here. (She hauls up a reef of her slip, revealing her bare thigh, and unrolls the potato from the top of her stocking.) Those that hides knows where to find.


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


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


STEPHEN: (With exaggerated politeness.) This silken purse I made out of the sow's ear of the public. Madam, excuse me. If you allow me. (He indicates vaguely Lynch and Bloom.) We are all in the same sweepstake, Kinch and Lynch. Dans ce bordel où tenons nostre état.


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


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


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


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


(Bella goes to the table to count the money while Stephen talks to himself in monosyllables. Zoe bends over the table. Kitty leans over Zoe's neck. Lynch gets up, rights his cap and, clasping Kitty's waist, adds his head to the group.)


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


BELLA, ZOE, KITTY, LYNCH, BLOOM: (Chattering and squabbling.) The gentleman... ten shillings... paying for the three... allow me a moment... this gentleman pays separate... who's touching it?... ow! ... mind who you're pinching... are you staying the night or a short time?... who did?... you're a liar, excuse me... the gentleman paid down like a gentleman... drink... it's long after eleven.


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


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


LYNCH: (Lifting Kitty from the table.) Come!


KITTY: Wait. (She clutches the two crowns.)


FLORRY: And me?


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


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


BLOOM: (Quietly lays a half sovereign on the table between Bella and Florry.) So. Allow me. (He takes up the poundnote.) Three times ten. We're square.


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


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


BLOOM: This is yours.


STEPHEN: How is that? Le distrait or absentminded beggar. (He fumbles again in his pocket and draws out a handful of coins. An object falls.) That fell.


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


STEPHEN: Lucifer. Thanks.


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


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


BLOOM: I will but is it wise? (He counts.) One, seven, eleven, and five. Six. Eleven. I don't answer for what you may have lost.


STEPHEN: Why striking eleven? Proparoxyton. Moment before the next Lessing says. Thirsty fox. (He laughs loudly.) Burying his grandmother. Probably he killed her.


BLOOM: That is one pound six and eleven. One pound seven, say.


BLOOM: No, but...


STEPHEN: (Comes to the table.) Cigarette, please. (Lynch tosses a cigarette from the sofa to the table.) And so Georgina Johnson is dead and married. (A cigarette appears on the table. Stephen looks at it.) Wonder. Parlour magic. Married. Hm. (He strikes a match and proceeds to light the cigarette with enigmatic melancholy.)


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


STEPHEN: (Brings the match near his eye.) Lynx eye. Must get glasses. Broke them yesterday. Sixteen years ago. Distance. The eye sees all flat. (He draws the match away. It goes out.) Brain thinks. Near: far. Ineluctable modality of the visible. (He frowns mysteriously.) Hm. Sphinx. The beast that has two backs at midnight. Married.


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


FLORRY: (Nods.) Mr Lambe from London.


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


LYNCH: (Embracing Kitty on the sofa, chants deeply.) Dona nobis pacem.


(The cigarette slips from Stephen's fingers. Bloom picks it up and throws it in the grate.)


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


ZOE: Is he hungry?


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


ZOE: (Tragically.) Hamlet, I am thy father's gimlet! (She takes his hand.) Blue eyes beauty I'll read your hand. (She points to his forehead.) No wit, no wrinkles. (She counts.) Two, three, Mars, that's courage. (Stephen shakes his head.) No kid.


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


ZOE: (Turns.) Ask my ballocks that I haven't got. (To Stephen.) I see it in your face. The eye, like that. (She frowns with lowered head.)


LYNCH: (Laughing, slaps Kitty behind twice.) Like that. Pandybat.


(Twice loudly a pandybat cracks, the coffin of the pianola flies open, the bald little round jack-in-the-box head of Father Dolan springs up.)


FATHER DOLAN: Any boy want flogging? Broke his glasses? Lazy idle little schemer. See it in your eye.


(Mild, benign, rectorial, reproving, the head of Don John Conmee rises from the pianola coffin.)


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


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


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


ZOE: What day were you born?


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


BLOOM: (Points to his hand.) That weal there is an accident. Fell and cut it twentytwo years ago. I was sixteen.


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


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


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


FLORRY: What?


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


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


(Bronze by gold they whisper.)


ZOE: (To Florry.) Whisper.


(They whisper again.)


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


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


BOYLAN: (Sated, smiles.) Plucking a turkey.


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


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


ZOE AND FLORRY: (Laugh together.) Ha ha ha ha.


BOYLAN: (Jumps surely from the car and calls loudly for all to hear.) Hello, Bloom! Mrs Bloom dressed yet?


BLOOM: (In flunkey's prune plush coat and kneebreeches, buff stockings and powdered wig.) I'm afraid not, sir. The last articles...


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


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


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


BOYLAN: (A merry twinkle in his eye.) Topping!


BELLA: What? What is it?


(Zoe whispers to her.)


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


BOYLAN: (Clasps himself.) Here, I can't hold this little lot much longer. (He strides off on stiff cavalry legs.)


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


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


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


(Florry whispers to her. Whispering lovewords murmur, liplapping loudly, poppysmic plopslop.)


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


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


BOYLAN'S VOICE: (Sweetly, hoarsely, in the pit of his stomach.) Ah! Godblazeqrukbrukarchkrasht!


MARION'S VOICE: (Hoarsely, sweetly, rising to her throat.) O! Weeshwashtkissinapooisthnapoohuck?


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


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


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


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


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


ZOE: Before you're twice married and once a widower.


BLOOM: Lapses are condoned. Even the great Napoleon when measurements were taken next the skin after his death...


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


SUSY: Mamma, the beeftea is fizzing over!


SHAKESPEARE: (With paralytic rage.) Weda seca whokilla farst.


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


And they call me the jewel of Asia!


MARTIN CUNNINGHAM: (Gazes on her, impassive.) Immense! Most bloody awful demirep!


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


BELLA: None of that here. Come to the wrong shop.


LYNCH: Let him alone. He's back from Paris.


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


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


LYNCH: (Pommelling on the sofa.) Rmm Rmm Rmm Rrrrrrmmmmm.


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


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


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


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


THE WHORES: (Laughing.) Encore! Encore!


STEPHEN: Mark me. I dreamt of a watermelon.


ZOE: Go abroad and love a foreign lady.


LYNCH: Across the world for a wife.


FLORRY: Dreams goes by contraries.


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


BLOOM: (Approaching Stephen.) Look...


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


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


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


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


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


Card of the races. Racing card! Ten to one the field! Tommy on the clay here! Tommy on the clay! Ten to one bar one! Ten to one bar one! Try your luck on Spinning Jenny! Ten to one bar one! Sell the monkey, boys! Sell the monkey! I'll give ten to one! Ten to one bar one!


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


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


GARRETT DEASY: (Bolt upright, his nailscraped face plastered with postagestamps, brandishes his hockeystick, his blue eyes flashing in the prism of the chandelier as his mount lopes by at schooling gallop.)


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


THE GREEN LODGES: Soft day, sir John! Soft day, your honour!


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


STEPHEN: Hark! Our friend noise in the street.


ZOE: (Holds up her hand.) Stop!


Yet I've a sort of a Yorkshire relish for...


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


BLOOM: Who'll...?


LYNCH: (Handing her coins.) Here.


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


ZOE: (Turns the drumhandle.) There.


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


ZOE: (Twirls round herself, heeltapping.) Dance. Anybody here for there? Who'll dance? Clear the table.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


HOURS: You may touch my.


CAVALIERS: May I touch your?


HOURS: O, but lightly!


CAVALIERS: O, so lightly!


My little shy little lass has a waist.


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


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


THE BRACELETS: Heigho! Heigho!


ZOE: (Twirling, her hand to her brow.) O!


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


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


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


Best, best of all, Baraabum!


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


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


My girl's a Yorkshire girl.


Yorkshire through and through. Come on all!


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


Though she's a factory lass And wears no fancy clothes.


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


SIMON: Think of your mother's people!


STEPHEN: Dance of death.


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


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


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


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


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


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


STEPHEN: (Horrorstruck.) Lemur, who are you? No. What bogeyman's trick is this?


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


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


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


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


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


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


STEPHEN: The ghoul! Hyena!


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


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


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


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


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


STEPHEN: (Panting.) His noncorrosive sublimate! The corpsechewer! Raw head and bloody bones.


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


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


BLOOM: (At the window.) What?


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


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


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


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


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


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


BLOOM: Stop!


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


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


BELLA: (Screams.) After him!


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


THE WHORES: (Jammed in the doorway, pointing.) Down there.


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


BELLA: Who pays for the lamp? (She seizes Bloom's coattail.) Here, you were with him. The lamp's broken.


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


A WHORE: He tore his coat.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


BELLA: Do you want me to call the police?


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


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


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


BELLA: (Almost speechless.) Who are. Incog!


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


BLOOM: What? Where? (He throws a shilling on the table and starts.) That's for the chimney. Where? I need mountain air.


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


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


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


PRIVATE CARR: (To Cissy Caffrey.) Was he insulting you?


STEPHEN: Addressed her in vocative feminine. Probably neuter. Ungenitive.


VOICES: No, he didn't. I seen him. The girl there. He was in Mrs Cohen's. What's up? Soldier and civilian.


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


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


VOICES: Shes faithfultheman.


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


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


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


LORD TENNYSON: (Gentleman poet in Union Jack blazer and cricket flannels, bareheaded, flowingbearded.) Theirs not to reason why.


PRIVATE COMPTON: Biff him, Harry.


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


CISSY CAFFREY: (To the crowd.) No, I was with the privates.


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


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


STEPHEN: (Looks up to the sky.) How? Very unpleasant. Noble art of selfpretence. Personally, I detest action. (He waves his hand.) Hand hurts me slightly. Enfin ce sont vos oignons. (To Cissy Caffrey.) Some trouble is on here. What is it precisely?


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


(The soldiers turn their swimming eyes.)


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


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


(He staggers a pace back.)


BLOOM: (Propping him.) Retain your own.


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


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


CUNTY KATE: I did. I heard that.


BIDDY THE CLAP: He expresses himself with such marked refinement of phraseology.


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


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


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


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


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


PRIVATE CARR: (To Stephen.) Say it again.


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


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


My methods are new and are causing surprise. To make the blind see I throw dust in their eyes.


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


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


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


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


PRIVATE CARR: I don't give a bugger who he is.


PRIVATE COMPTON: We don't give a bugger who he is.


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


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


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


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


DON EMILE PATRIZIO FRANZ RUPERT POPE HENNESSY: (In medieval hauberk, two wild geese volant on his helm, with noble indignation points a mailed hand against the privates.) Werf those eykes to footboden, big grand porcos of johnyellows todos covered of gravy!


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


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


BIDDY THE CLAP: One immediately observes that he is of patrician lineage.


THE VIRAGO: Green above the red, says he. Wolfe Tone.


THE BAWD: The red's as good as the green. And better. Up the soldiers! Up King Edward!


A ROUGH: (Laughs.) Ay! Hands up to De Wet.


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


May the God above Send down a dove With teeth as sharp as razors To slit the throats Of the English dogs That hanged our Irish leaders.


THE CROPPY BOY: (The ropenoose round his neck, gripes in his issuing bowels with both hands.)


I bear no hate to a living thing, But I love my country beyond the king.


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


(He jerks the rope. The assistants leap at the victim's legs and drag him downward, grunting: the croppy boy's tongue protrudes violently.)


Horhot ho hray hor hother's hest.