No More Learning

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

BLOOM: _(Hurriedly)_ Not so loud my name. Whatever do you think of me?
Don't give me away. Walls have ears. How do you do? It's ages since I.
You're looking splendid. Absolutely it. Seasonable weather we are having
this time of year. Black refracts heat. Short cut home here. Interesting
quarter. Rescue of fallen women. Magdalen asylum. I am the secretary. . .

MRS BREEN: _(Holds up a finger)_ Now, don't tell a big fib! I know
somebody won't like that. O just wait till I see Molly! _(Slily)_
Account for yourself this very sminute or woe betide you!

BLOOM: _(Looks behind)_ She often said she'd like to visit. Slumming.
The exotic, you see. Negro servants in livery too if she had money.
Othello black brute. Eugene Stratton. Even the bones and cornerman at
the Livermore christies. Bohee brothers. Sweep for that matter.

_(Tom and Sam Bohee, coloured coons in white duck suits, scarlet socks,
upstarched Sambo chokers and large scarlet asters in their buttonholes,
leap out. Each has his banjo slung. Their paler smaller negroid hands
jingle the twingtwang wires. Flashing white Kaffir eyes and tusks they
rattle through a breakdown in clumsy clogs, twinging, singing, back to
back, toe heel, heel toe, with smackfatclacking nigger lips. )_

TOM AND SAM:

There's someone in the house with Dina
There's someone in the house, I know,
There's someone in the house with Dina
Playing on the old banjo.

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

BLOOM: _(With a sour tenderish smile)_ A little frivol, shall we, if
you are so inclined? Would you like me perhaps to embrace you just for a
fraction of a second?

MRS BREEN: _(Screams gaily)_ O, you ruck! You ought to see yourself!

BLOOM: For old sake' sake. I only meant a square party, a mixed marriage
mingling of our different little conjugials. You know I had a soft
corner for you. _(Gloomily)_ 'Twas I sent you that valentine of the dear
gazelle.

MRS BREEN: Glory Alice, you do look a holy show! Killing simply. _(She
puts out her hand inquisitively)_ What are you hiding behind your back?
Tell us, there's a dear.

BLOOM: _(Seizes her wrist with his free hand)_ Josie Powell that was,
prettiest deb in Dublin. How time flies by! Do you remember, harking
back in a retrospective arrangement, Old Christmas night, Georgina
Simpson's housewarming while they were playing the Irving Bishop game,
finding the pin blindfold and thoughtreading? Subject, what is in this
snuffbox?

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

BLOOM: _(Squire of dames, in dinner jacket with wateredsilk facings,
blue masonic badge in his buttonhole, black bow and mother-of-pearl
studs, a prismatic champagne glass tilted in his hand)_ Ladies and
gentlemen, I give you Ireland, home and beauty.

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

BLOOM: _(Meaningfully dropping his voice)_ I confess I'm teapot with
curiosity to find out whether some person's something is a little teapot
at present.

MRS BREEN: _(Gushingly)_ Tremendously teapot! London's teapot and I'm
simply teapot all over me! _(She rubs sides with him)_ After the parlour
mystery games and the crackers from the tree we sat on the staircase
ottoman. Under the mistletoe. Two is company.

BLOOM: _(Wearing a purple Napoleon hat with an amber halfmoon, his
fingers and thumb passing slowly down to her soft moist meaty palm which
she surrenders gently)_ The witching hour of night. I took the splinter
out of this hand, carefully, slowly. _(Tenderly, as he slips on her
finger a ruby ring) La ci darem la mano. _

MRS BREEN: _(In a onepiece evening frock executed in moonlight blue, a
tinsel sylph's diadem on her brow with her dancecard fallen beside
her moonblue satin slipper, curves her palm softly, breathing quickly)
Voglio e non. _ You're hot! You're scalding! The left hand nearest the
heart.

BLOOM: When you made your present choice they said it was beauty and
the beast. I can never forgive you for that. _(His clenched fist at
his brow)_ Think what it means. All you meant to me then. _(Hoarsely)_
Woman, it's breaking me!

_(Denis Breen, whitetallhatted, with Wisdom Hely's sandwich-boards,
shuffles past them in carpet slippers, his dull beard thrust out,
muttering to right and left. Little Alf Bergan, cloaked in the pall of
the ace of spades, dogs him to left and right, doubled in laughter. )_

ALF BERGAN: _(Points jeering at the sandwichboards)_ U. p: Up.

MRS BREEN: _(To Bloom)_ High jinks below stairs. _(She gives him the
glad eye)_ Why didn't you kiss the spot to make it well? You wanted to.

BLOOM: _(Shocked)_ Molly's best friend! Could you?

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

BLOOM: _(Offhandedly)_ Kosher. A snack for supper. The home without
potted meat is incomplete. I was at _Leah. _ Mrs Bandmann Palmer.
Trenchant exponent of Shakespeare. Unfortunately threw away the
programme. Rattling good place round there for pigs' feet. Feel.

_(Richie Goulding, three ladies' hats pinned on his head, appears
weighted to one side by the black legal bag of Collis and Ward on which
a skull and crossbones are painted in white limewash. He opens it
and shows it full of polonies, kippered herrings, Findon haddies and
tightpacked pills. )_

RICHIE: Best value in Dub.

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

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

RICHIE: Goodgod. Inev erate inall. . .

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

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

BLOOM: _(Ooints to the navvy)_ A spy. Don't attract attention. I hate
stupid crowds. I am not on pleasure bent. I am in a grave predicament.

MRS BREEN: Humbugging and deluthering as per usual with your cock and
bull story.

BLOOM: I want to tell you a little secret about how I came to be here.
But you must never tell. Not even Molly. I have a most particular
reason.

MRS BREEN: _(All agog)_ O, not for worlds.

BLOOM: Let's walk on. Shall us?

MRS BREEN: Let's.

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

THE BAWD: Jewman's melt!

BLOOM: _(In an oatmeal sporting suit, a sprig of woodbine in the lapel,
tony buff shirt, shepherd's plaid Saint Andrew's cross scarftie, white
spats, fawn dustcoat on his arm, tawny red brogues, fieldglasses in
bandolier and a grey billycock hat)_ Do you remember a long long time,
years and years ago, just after Milly, Marionette we called her, was
weaned when we all went together to Fairyhouse races, was it?

MRS BREEN: _(In smart Saxe tailormade, white velours hat and spider
veil)_ Leopardstown.

BLOOM: I mean, Leopardstown. And Molly won seven shillings on a three
year old named Nevertell and coming home along by Foxrock in that old
fiveseater shanderadan of a waggonette you were in your heyday then and
you had on that new hat of white velours with a surround of molefur that
Mrs Hayes advised you to buy because it was marked down to nineteen and
eleven, a bit of wire and an old rag of velveteen, and I'll lay you what
you like she did it on purpose. . .

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

BLOOM: Because it didn't suit you one quarter as well as the other ducky
little tammy toque with the bird of paradise wing in it that I admired
on you and you honestly looked just too fetching in it though it was a
pity to kill it, you cruel naughty creature, little mite of a thing with
a heart the size of a fullstop.

MRS BREEN: _(Squeezes his arm, simpers)_ Naughty cruel I was!

BLOOM: _(Low, secretly, ever more rapidly)_ And Molly was eating a
sandwich of spiced beef out of Mrs Joe Gallaher's lunch basket. Frankly,
though she had her advisers or admirers, I never cared much for her
style. She was. . .

MRS BREEN: Too. . .

BLOOM: Yes. And Molly was laughing because Rogers and Maggot O'Reilly
were mimicking a cock as we passed a farmhouse and Marcus Tertius Moses,
the tea merchant, drove past us in a gig with his daughter, Dancer Moses
was her name, and the poodle in her lap bridled up and you asked me if I
ever heard or read or knew or came across. . .

MRS BREEN: _(Eagerly)_ Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

_(She fades from his side. Followed by the whining dog he walks on
towards hellsgates. In an archway a standing woman, bent forward, her
feet apart, pisses cowily. Outside a shuttered pub a bunch of loiterers
listen to a tale which their brokensnouted gaffer rasps out with raucous
humour. An armless pair of them flop wrestling, growling, in maimed
sodden playfight. )_

THE GAFFER: _(Crouches, his voice twisted in his snout)_ And when Cairns
came down from the scaffolding in Beaver street what was he after doing
it into only into the bucket of porter that was there waiting on the
shavings for Derwan's plasterers.

THE LOITERERS: _(Guffaw with cleft palates)_ O jays!

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

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

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

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

THE WHORES:

Are you going far, queer fellow?
How's your middle leg?
Got a match on you?
Eh, come here till I stiffen it for you.


_(He plodges through their sump towards the lighted street beyond. From
a bulge of window curtains a gramophone rears a battered brazen trunk.
In the shadow a shebeenkeeper haggles with the navvy and the two
redcoats. )_

THE NAVVY: _(Belching)_ Where's the bloody house?

THE SHEBEENKEEPER: Purdon street. Shilling a bottle of stout.
Respectable woman.

THE NAVVY: _(Gripping the two redcoats, staggers forward with them)_
Come on, you British army!

PRIVATE CARR: _(Behind his back)_ He aint half balmy.

PRIVATE COMPTON: _(Laughs)_ What ho!

PRIVATE CARR: _(To the navvy)_ Portobello barracks canteen. You ask for
Carr. Just Carr.

THE NAVVY: _(Shouts)_

We are the boys. Of Wexford.

PRIVATE COMPTON: Say! What price the sergeantmajor?
PRIVATE CARR: Bennett? He's my pal. I love old Bennett.

THE NAVVY: _(Shouts)_

The galling chain.
And free our native land.

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

BLOOM: Wildgoose chase this. Disorderly houses. Lord knows where they
are gone. Drunks cover distance double quick. Nice mixup. Scene at
Westland row. Then jump in first class with third ticket. Then too far.
Train with engine behind. Might have taken me to Malahide or a siding
for the night or collision. Second drink does it. Once is a dose. What
am I following him for? Still, he's the best of that lot. If I hadn't
heard about Mrs Beaufoy Purefoy I wouldn't have gone and wouldn't have
met. Kismet. He'll lose that cash. Relieving office here. Good biz for
cheapjacks, organs. What do ye lack? Soon got, soon gone. Might have
lost my life too with that mangongwheeltracktrolleyglarejuggernaut only
for presence of mind. Can't always save you, though. If I had passed
Truelock's window that day two minutes later would have been shot.
Absence of body. Still if bullet only went through my coat get damages
for shock, five hundred pounds. What was he? Kildare street club toff.
God help his gamekeeper.

_(He gazes ahead, reading on the wall a scrawled chalk legend_ Wet Dream
_and a phallic design. _) Odd! Molly drawing on the frosted carriagepane
at Kingstown. What's that like? _(Gaudy dollwomen loll in the lighted
doorways, in window embrasures, smoking birdseye cigarettes. The
odour of the sicksweet weed floats towards him in slow round ovalling
wreaths. )_

THE WREATHS: Sweet are the sweets. Sweets of sin.

BLOOM: My spine's a bit limp. Go or turn? And this food? Eat it and get
all pigsticky. Absurd I am. Waste of money. One and eightpence too
much. _(The retriever drives a cold snivelling muzzle against his hand,
wagging his tail. )_ Strange how they take to me. Even that brute today.
Better speak to him first. Like women they like _rencontres. _ Stinks
like a polecat. _Chacun son gout_. He might be mad. Dogdays. Uncertain
in his movements. Good fellow! Fido! Good fellow! Garryowen! _(The
wolfdog sprawls on his back, wriggling obscenely with begging paws, his
long black tongue lolling out. )_ Influence of his surroundings. Give
and have done with it. Provided nobody. _(Calling encouraging words he
shambles back with a furtive poacher's tread, dogged by the setter into
a dark stalestunk corner. He unrolls one parcel and goes to dump the
crubeen softly but holds back and feels the trotter. )_ Sizeable for
threepence. But then I have it in my left hand. Calls for more effort.
Why? Smaller from want of use. O, let it slide. Two and six.

_(With regret he lets the unrolled crubeen and trotter slide. The
mastiff mauls the bundle clumsily and gluts himself with growling greed,
crunching the bones. Two raincaped watch approach, silent, vigilant.
They murmur together. )_

THE WATCH: Bloom. Of Bloom. For Bloom. Bloom.

_(Each lays hand on Bloom's shoulder. )_

FIRST WATCH: Caught in the act. Commit no nuisance.

BLOOM: _(Stammers)_ I am doing good to others.

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

THE GULLS: Kaw kave kankury kake.

BLOOM: The friend of man. Trained by kindness.

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

BOB DORAN: Towser. Give us the paw. Give the paw.

_(The bulldog growls, his scruff standing, a gobbet of pig's knuckle
between his molars through which rabid scumspittle dribbles. Bob Doran
fills silently into an area. )_

SECOND WATCH: Prevention of cruelty to animals.

BLOOM: _(Enthusiastically)_ A noble work! I scolded that tramdriver on
Harold's cross bridge for illusing the poor horse with his harness scab.
Bad French I got for my pains. Of course it was frosty and the last
tram. All tales of circus life are highly demoralising.

_(Signor Maffei, passionpale, in liontamer's costume with diamond studs
in his shirtfront, steps forward, holding a circus paperhoop, a
curling carriagewhip and a revolver with which he covers the gorging
boarhound. )_

SIGNOR MAFFEI: _(With a sinister smile)_ Ladies and gentlemen, my
educated greyhound. It was I broke in the bucking broncho Ajax with my
patent spiked saddle for carnivores. Lash under the belly with a knotted
thong. Block tackle and a strangling pulley will bring your lion to
heel, no matter how fractious, even _Leo ferox_ there, the Libyan
maneater. A redhot crowbar and some liniment rubbing on the burning part
produced Fritz of Amsterdam, the thinking hyena. _(He glares)_ I possess
the Indian sign. The glint of my eye does it with these breastsparklers.
_(With a bewitching smile)_ I now introduce Mademoiselle Ruby, the pride
of the ring.

FIRST WATCH: Come. Name and address.

BLOOM: I have forgotten for the moment. Ah, yes! _(He takes off his high
grade hat, saluting)_ Dr Bloom, Leopold, dental surgeon. You have heard
of von Blum Pasha. Umpteen millions. _Donnerwetter! _ Owns half Austria.
Egypt. Cousin.

FIRST WATCH: Proof.

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

BLOOM: _(In red fez, cadi's dress coat with broad green sash, wearing
a false badge of the Legion of Honour, picks up the card hastily and
offers it)_ Allow me. My club is the Junior Army and Navy. Solicitors:
Messrs John Henry Menton, 27 Bachelor's Walk.

FIRST WATCH: _(Reads)_ Henry Flower. No fixed abode. Unlawfully watching
and besetting.

SECOND WATCH: An alibi. You are cautioned.

BLOOM: _(Produces from his heartpocket a crumpled yellow flower)_ This
is the flower in question. It was given me by a man I don't know his
name. _(Plausibly)_ You know that old joke, rose of Castile. Bloom. The
change of name. Virag. _(He murmurs privately and confidentially)_ We
are engaged you see, sergeant. Lady in the case. Love entanglement. _(He
shoulders the second watch gently)_ Dash it all. It's a way we gallants
have in the navy. Uniform that does it. _(He turns gravely to the first
watch)_ Still, of course, you do get your Waterloo sometimes. Drop in
some evening and have a glass of old Burgundy. _(To the second watch
gaily)_ I'll introduce you, inspector. She's game. Do it in the shake of
a lamb's tail.

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

THE DARK MERCURY: The Castle is looking for him. He was drummed out of
the army.

MARTHA: _(Thickveiled, a crimson halter round her neck, a copy of
the_ Irish Times _in her hand, in tone of reproach, pointing)_ Henry!
Leopold! Lionel, thou lost one! Clear my name.

FIRST WATCH: _(Sternly)_ Come to the station.

BLOOM: _(Scared, hats himself, steps back, then, plucking at his heart
and lifting his right forearm on the square, he gives the sign and
dueguard of fellowcraft)_ No, no, worshipful master, light of love.
Mistaken identity. The Lyons mail. Lesurques and Dubosc. You remember
the Childs fratricide case. We medical men. By striking him dead with
a hatchet. I am wrongfully accused. Better one guilty escape than
ninetynine wrongfully condemned.

MARTHA: _(Sobbing behind her veil)_ Breach of promise. My real name
is Peggy Griffin. He wrote to me that he was miserable. I'll tell my
brother, the Bective rugger fullback, on you, heartless flirt.

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

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

BLOOM: Gentlemen of the jury, let me explain. A pure mare's nest. I am
a man misunderstood. I am being made a scapegoat of. I am a respectable
married man, without a stain on my character. I live in Eccles street.
My wife, I am the daughter of a most distinguished commander, a gallant
upstanding gentleman, what do you call him, Majorgeneral Brian Tweedy,
one of Britain's fighting men who helped to win our battles. Got his
majority for the heroic defence of Rorke's Drift.

FIRST WATCH: Regiment.

BLOOM: _(Turns to the gallery)_ The royal Dublins, boys, the salt of the
earth, known the world over. I think I see some old comrades in arms
up there among you. The R. D. F. , with our own Metropolitan police,
guardians of our homes, the pluckiest lads and the finest body of men,
as physique, in the service of our sovereign.

A VOICE: Turncoat! Up the Boers! Who booed Joe Chamberlain?

BLOOM: _(His hand on the shoulder of the first watch)_ My old dad too
was a J. P. I'm as staunch a Britisher as you are, sir. I fought with
the colours for king and country in the absentminded war under general
Gough in the park and was disabled at Spion Kop and Bloemfontein, was
mentioned in dispatches.