_(He
exhibits
to Dublin reporters traces of burning.
James Joyce - Ulysses
His Most Catholic
Majesty will now administer open air justice. Free medical and legal
advice, solution of doubles and other problems. All cordially invited.
Given at this our loyal city of Dublin in the year I of the Paradisiacal
Era.
PADDY LEONARD: What am I to do about my rates and taxes?
BLOOM: Pay them, my friend.
PADDY LEONARD: Thank you.
NOSEY FLYNN: Can I raise a mortgage on my fire insurance?
BLOOM: _(Obdurately)_ Sirs, take notice that by the law of torts you are
bound over in your own recognisances for six months in the sum of five
pounds.
J. J. O'MOLLOY: A Daniel did I say? Nay! A Peter O'Brien!
NOSEY FLYNN: Where do I draw the five pounds?
PISSER BURKE: For bladder trouble?
BLOOM:
_Acid. nit. hydrochlor. dil. ,_ 20 minims
_Tinct. nux vom. ,_ 5 minims
_Extr. taraxel. iiq. ,_ 30 minims.
_Aq. dis. ter in die. _
CHRIS CALLINAN: What is the parallax of the subsolar ecliptic of
Aldebaran?
BLOOM: Pleased to hear from you, Chris. K. II.
JOE HYNES: Why aren't you in uniform?
BLOOM: When my progenitor of sainted memory wore the uniform of the
Austrian despot in a dank prison where was yours?
BEN DOLLARD: Pansies?
BLOOM: Embellish (beautify) suburban gardens.
BEN DOLLARD: When twins arrive?
BLOOM: Father (pater, dad) starts thinking.
LARRY O'ROURKE: An eightday licence for my new premises. You remember
me, sir Leo, when you were in number seven. I'm sending around a dozen
of stout for the missus.
BLOOM: _(Coldly)_ You have the advantage of me. Lady Bloom accepts no
presents.
CROFTON: This is indeed a festivity.
BLOOM: _(Solemnly)_ You call it a festivity. I call it a sacrament.
ALEXANDER KEYES: When will we have our own house of keys?
BLOOM: I stand for the reform of municipal morals and the plain ten
commandments. New worlds for old. Union of all, jew, moslem and gentile.
Three acres and a cow for all children of nature. Saloon motor hearses.
Compulsory manual labour for all. All parks open to the public day and
night. Electric dishscrubbers. Tuberculosis, lunacy, war and mendicancy
must now cease. General amnesty, weekly carnival with masked licence,
bonuses for all, esperanto the universal language with universal
brotherhood. No more patriotism of barspongers and dropsical impostors.
Free money, free rent, free love and a free lay church in a free lay
state.
O'MADDEN BURKE: Free fox in a free henroost.
DAVY BYRNE: _(Yawning)_ Iiiiiiiiiaaaaaaach!
BLOOM: Mixed races and mixed marriage.
LENEHAN: What about mixed bathing?
_(bloom explains to those near him his schemes for social regeneration.
All agree with him. The keeper of the Kildare Street Museum appears,
dragging a lorry on which are the shaking statues of several naked
goddesses, Venus Callipyge, Venus Pandemos, Venus Metempsychosis, and
plaster figures, also naked, representing the new nine muses, Commerce,
Operatic Music, Amor, Publicity, Manufacture, Liberty of Speech, Plural
Voting, Gastronomy, Private Hygiene, Seaside Concert Entertainments,
Painless Obstetrics and Astronomy for the People. )_
FATHER FARLEY: He is an episcopalian, an agnostic, an anythingarian
seeking to overthrow our holy faith.
MRS RIORDAN: _(Tears up her will)_ I'm disappointed in you! You bad man!
MOTHER GROGAN: _(Removes her boot to throw it at Bloom)_ You beast! You
abominable person!
NOSEY FLYNN: Give us a tune, Bloom. One of the old sweet songs.
BLOOM: _(With rollicking humour)_
I vowed that I never would leave her,
She turned out a cruel deceiver.
With my tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom.
HOPPY HOLOHAN: Good old Bloom! There's nobody like him after all.
PADDY LEONARD: Stage Irishman!
BLOOM: What railway opera is like a tramline in Gibraltar? The Rows of
Casteele. _(Laughter. )_
LENEHAN: Plagiarist! Down with Bloom!
THE VEILED SIBYL: _(Enthusiastically)_ I'm a Bloomite and I glory in it.
I believe in him in spite of all. I'd give my life for him, the funniest
man on earth.
BLOOM: _(Winks at the bystanders)_ I bet she's a bonny lassie.
THEODORE PUREFOY: _(In fishingcap and oilskin jacket)_ He employs a
mechanical device to frustrate the sacred ends of nature.
THE VEILED SIBYL: _(Stabs herself)_ My hero god! _(She dies)_
_(Many most attractive and enthusiastic women also commit suicide by
stabbing, drowning, drinking prussic acid, aconite, arsenic, opening
their veins, refusing food, casting themselves under steamrollers, from
the top of Nelson's Pillar, into the great vat of Guinness's brewery,
asphyxiating themselves by placing their heads in gasovens, hanging
themselves in stylish garters, leaping from windows of different
storeys. )_
ALEXANDER J DOWIE: _(Violently)_ Fellowchristians and antiBloomites, the
man called Bloom is from the roots of hell, a disgrace to christian
men. A fiendish libertine from his earliest years this stinking goat
of Mendes gave precocious signs of infantile debauchery, recalling the
cities of the plain, with a dissolute granddam. This vile hypocrite,
bronzed with infamy, is the white bull mentioned in the Apocalypse.
A worshipper of the Scarlet Woman, intrigue is the very breath of his
nostrils. The stake faggots and the caldron of boiling oil are for him.
Caliban!
THE MOB: Lynch him! Roast him! He's as bad as Parnell was. Mr Fox!
_(Mother Grogan throws her boot at Bloom. Several shopkeepers from upper
and lower Dorset street throw objects of little or no commercial value,
hambones, condensed milk tins, unsaleable cabbage, stale bread, sheep's
tails, odd pieces of fat. )_
BLOOM: _(Excitedly)_ This is midsummer madness, some ghastly joke again.
By heaven, I am guiltless as the unsunned snow! It was my brother Henry.
He is my double. He lives in number 2 Dolphin's Barn. Slander, the
viper, has wrongfully accused me. Fellowcountrymen, _sgenl inn ban bata
coisde gan capall. _ I call on my old friend, Dr Malachi Mulligan, sex
specialist, to give medical testimony on my behalf.
DR MULLIGAN: _(In motor jerkin, green motorgoggles on his brow)_ Dr
Bloom is bisexually abnormal. He has recently escaped from Dr Eustace's
private asylum for demented gentlemen. Born out of bedlock hereditary
epilepsy is present, the consequence of unbridled lust. Traces of
elephantiasis have been discovered among his ascendants. There are
marked symptoms of chronic exhibitionism. Ambidexterity is also
latent. He is prematurely bald from selfabuse, perversely idealistic in
consequence, a reformed rake, and has metal teeth. In consequence of a
family complex he has temporarily lost his memory and I believe him
to be more sinned against than sinning. I have made a pervaginal
examination and, after application of the acid test to 5427 anal,
axillary, pectoral and pubic hairs, I declare him to be _virgo intacta. _
_(Bloom holds his high grade hat over his genital organs. )_
DR MADDEN: Hypsospadia is also marked. In the interest of coming
generations I suggest that the parts affected should be preserved in
spirits of wine in the national teratological museum.
DR CROTTHERS: I have examined the patient's urine. It is albuminoid.
Salivation is insufficient, the patellar reflex intermittent.
DR PUNCH COSTELLO: The _fetor judaicus_ is most perceptible.
DR DIXON: _(Reads a bill of health)_ Professor Bloom is a finished
example of the new womanly man. His moral nature is simple and lovable.
Many have found him a dear man, a dear person. He is a rather quaint
fellow on the whole, coy though not feebleminded in the medical sense.
He has written a really beautiful letter, a poem in itself, to the court
missionary of the Reformed Priests' Protection Society which clears up
everything. He is practically a total abstainer and I can affirm that
he sleeps on a straw litter and eats the most Spartan food, cold dried
grocer's peas. He wears a hairshirt of pure Irish manufacture winter and
summer and scourges himself every Saturday. He was, I understand, at one
time a firstclass misdemeanant in Glencree reformatory. Another report
states that he was a very posthumous child. I appeal for clemency in the
name of the most sacred word our vocal organs have ever been called upon
to speak. He is about to have a baby.
_(General commotion and compassion. Women faint. A wealthy American
makes a street collection for Bloom. Gold and silver coins, blank
cheques, banknotes, jewels, treasury bonds, maturing bills of exchange,
I. O. U's, wedding rings, watchchains, lockets, necklaces and bracelets
are rapidly collected. )_
BLOOM: O, I so want to be a mother.
MRS THORNTON: _(In nursetender's gown)_ Embrace me tight, dear. You'll
be soon over it. Tight, dear.
_(Bloom embraces her tightly and bears eight male yellow and white
children. They appear on a redcarpeted staircase adorned with expensive
plants. All the octuplets are handsome, with valuable metallic faces,
wellmade, respectably dressed and wellconducted, speaking five modern
languages fluently and interested in various arts and sciences. Each
has his name printed in legible letters on his shirtfront: Nasodoro,
Goldfinger, Chrysostomos, Maindoree, Silversmile, Silberselber,
Vifargent, Panargyros. They are immediately appointed to positions of
high public trust in several different countries as managing directors
of banks, traffic managers of railways, chairmen of limited liability
companies, vicechairmen of hotel syndicates. )_
A VOICE: Bloom, are you the Messiah ben Joseph or ben David?
BLOOM: _(Darkly)_ You have said it.
BROTHER BUZZ: Then perform a miracle like Father Charles.
BANTAM LYONS: Prophesy who will win the Saint Leger.
_(Bloom walks on a net, covers his left eye with his left ear, passes
through several walls, climbs Nelson's Pillar, hangs from the top ledge
by his eyelids, eats twelve dozen oysters (shells included), heals
several sufferers from king's evil, contracts his face so as to resemble
many historical personages, Lord Beaconsfield, Lord Byron, Wat Tyler,
Moses of Egypt, Moses Maimonides, Moses Mendelssohn, Henry Irving, Rip
van Winkle, Kossuth, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Baron Leopold Rothschild,
Robinson Crusoe, Sherlock Holmes, Pasteur, turns each foot
simultaneously in different directions, bids the tide turn back,
eclipses the sun by extending his little finger. )_
BRINI, PAPAL NUNCIO: _(In papal zouave's uniform, steel cuirasses as
breastplate, armplates, thighplates, legplates, large profane moustaches
and brown paper mitre) Leopoldi autem generatio. _ Moses begat Noah
and Noah begat Eunuch and Eunuch begat O'Halloran and O'Halloran begat
Guggenheim and Guggenheim begat Agendath and Agendath begat Netaim and
Netaim begat Le Hirsch and Le Hirsch begat Jesurum and Jesurum begat
MacKay and MacKay begat Ostrolopsky and Ostrolopsky begat Smerdoz
and Smerdoz begat Weiss and Weiss begat Schwarz and Schwarz begat
Adrianopoli and Adrianopoli begat Aranjuez and Aranjuez begat Lewy
Lawson and Lewy Lawson begat Ichabudonosor and Ichabudonosor begat
O'Donnell Magnus and O'Donnell Magnus begat Christbaum and Christbaum
begat ben Maimun and ben Maimun begat Dusty Rhodes and Dusty Rhodes
begat Benamor and Benamor begat Jones-Smith and Jones-Smith begat
Savorgnanovich and Savorgnanovich begat Jasperstone and Jasperstone
begat Vingtetunieme and Vingtetunieme begat Szombathely and Szombathely
begat Virag and Virag begat Bloom _et vocabitur nomen eius Emmanuel. _
A DEADHAND: _(Writes on the wall)_ Bloom is a cod.
CRAB: _(In bushranger's kit)_ What did you do in the cattlecreep behind
Kilbarrack?
A FEMALE INFANT: _(Shakes a rattle)_ And under Ballybough bridge?
A HOLLYBUSH: And in the devil's glen?
BLOOM: _(Blushes furiously all over from frons to nates, three tears
filling from his left eye)_ Spare my past.
THE IRISH EVICTED TENANTS: _(In bodycoats, kneebreeches, with Donnybrook
fair shillelaghs)_ Sjambok him!
_(Bloom with asses' ears seats himself in the pillory with crossed arms,
his feet protruding. He whistles_ Don Giovanni, a cenar teco. _Artane
orphans, joining hands, caper round him. Girls of the Prison Gate
Mission, joining hands, caper round in the opposite direction. )_
THE ARTANE ORPHANS:
You hig, you hog, you dirty dog!
You think the ladies love you!
THE PRISON GATE GIRLS:
If you see Kay
Tell him he may
See you in tea
Tell him from me.
HORNBLOWER: _(In ephod and huntingcap, announces)_ And he shall carry
the sins of the people to Azazel, the spirit which is in the wilderness,
and to Lilith, the nighthag. And they shall stone him and defile him,
yea, all from Agendath Netaim and from Mizraim, the land of Ham.
_(All the people cast soft pantomime stones at Bloom. Many bonafide
travellers and ownerless dogs come near him and defile him. Mastiansky
and Citron approach in gaberdines, wearing long earlocks. They wag their
beards at Bloom. )_
MASTIANSKY AND CITRON: Belial! Laemlein of Istria, the false Messiah!
Abulafia! Recant!
_(George R Mesias, Bloom's tailor, appears, a tailor's goose under his
arm, presenting a bill)_
MESIAS: To alteration one pair trousers eleven shillings.
BLOOM: _(Rubs his hands cheerfully)_ Just like old times. Poor Bloom!
_(Reuben J Dodd, blackbearded iscariot, bad shepherd, bearing on his
shoulders the drowned corpse of his son, approaches the pillory. )_
REUBEN J: _(Whispers hoarsely)_ The squeak is out. A split is gone for
the flatties. Nip the first rattler.
THE FIRE BRIGADE: Pflaap!
BROTHER BUZZ: _(Invests Bloom in a yellow habit with embroidery of
painted flames and high pointed hat. He places a bag of gunpowder round
his neck and hands him over to the civil power, saying)_ Forgive him his
trespasses.
_(Lieutenant Myers of the Dublin Fire Brigade by general request sets
fire to Bloom. Lamentations. )_
THE CITIZEN: Thank heaven!
BLOOM: _(In a seamless garment marked I. H. S. stands upright amid
phoenix flames)_ Weep not for me, O daughters of Erin.
_(He exhibits to Dublin reporters traces of burning. The daughters of
Erin, in black garments, with large prayerbooks and long lighted candles
in their hands, kneel down and pray. )_
THE DAUGHTERS OF ERIN:
Kidney of Bloom, pray for us
Flower of the Bath, pray for us
Mentor of Menton, pray for us
Canvasser for the Freeman, pray for us
Charitable Mason, pray for us
Wandering Soap, pray for us
Sweets of Sin, pray for us
Music without Words, pray for us
Reprover of the Citizen, pray for us
Friend of all Frillies, pray for us
Midwife Most Merciful, pray for us
Potato Preservative against Plague and Pestilence, pray for us.
_(A choir of six hundred voices, conducted by Vincent O'brien, sings
the chorus from Handel's Messiah alleluia for the lord god omnipotent
reigneth, accompanied on the organ by Joseph Glynn. Bloom becomes mute,
shrunken, carbonised. )_
ZOE: Talk away till you're black in the face.
BLOOM: _(In caubeen with clay pipe stuck in the band, dusty brogues, an
emigrant's red handkerchief bundle in his hand, leading a black bogoak
pig by a sugaun, with a smile in his eye)_ Let me be going now, woman of
the house, for by all the goats in Connemara I'm after having the
father and mother of a bating. _(With a tear in his eye)_ All insanity.
Patriotism, sorrow for the dead, music, future of the race. To be or not
to be. Life's dream is o'er. End it peacefully. They can live on. _(He
gazes far away mournfully)_ I am ruined. A few pastilles of aconite. The
blinds drawn. A letter. Then lie back to rest. _(He breathes softly)_ No
more. I have lived. Fare. Farewell.
ZOE: _(Stiffly, her finger in her neckfillet)_ Honest? Till the next
time. _(She sneers)_ Suppose you got up the wrong side of the bed or
came too quick with your best girl. O, I can read your thoughts!
BLOOM: _(Bitterly)_ Man and woman, love, what is it? A cork and bottle.
I'm sick of it. Let everything rip.
ZOE: _(In sudden sulks)_ I hate a rotter that's insincere. Give a
bleeding whore a chance.
BLOOM: _(Repentantly)_ I am very disagreeable. You are a necessary evil.
Where are you from? London?
ZOE: _(Glibly)_ Hog's Norton where the pigs plays the organs. I'm
Yorkshire born. _(She holds his hand which is feeling for her nipple)_
I say, Tommy Tittlemouse. Stop that and begin worse. Have you cash for a
short time? Ten shillings?
BLOOM: _(Smiles, nods slowly)_ More, houri, more.
ZOE: And more's mother? _(She pats him offhandedly with velvet paws)_
Are you coming into the musicroom to see our new pianola? Come and I'll
peel off.
BLOOM: _(Feeling his occiput dubiously with the unparalleled
embarrassment of a harassed pedlar gauging the symmetry of her peeled
pears)_ Somebody would be dreadfully jealous if she knew. The greeneyed
monster. _(Earnestly)_ You know how difficult it is. I needn't tell you.
ZOE: _(Flattered)_ What the eye can't see the heart can't grieve for.
_(She pats him)_ Come.
BLOOM: Laughing witch! The hand that rocks the cradle.
ZOE: Babby!
BLOOM: _(In babylinen and pelisse, bigheaded, with a caul of dark hair,
fixes big eyes on her fluid slip and counts its bronze buckles with a
chubby finger, his moist tongue lolling and lisping)_ One two tlee: tlee
tlwo tlone.
THE BUCKLES: Love me. Love me not. Love me.
ZOE: Silent means consent. _(With little parted talons she captures his
hand, her forefinger giving to his palm the passtouch of secret monitor,
luring him to doom. )_ Hot hands cold gizzard.
_(He hesitates amid scents, music, temptations. She leads him towards
the steps, drawing him by the odour of her armpits, the vice of her
painted eyes, the rustle of her slip in whose sinuous folds lurks the
lion reek of all the male brutes that have possessed her. )_
THE MALE BRUTES: _(Exhaling sulphur of rut and dung and ramping in their
loosebox, faintly roaring, their drugged heads swaying to and fro)_
Good!
_(Zoe and Bloom reach the doorway where two sister whores are seated.
They examine him curiously from under their pencilled brows and smile to
his hasty bow. He trips awkwardly. )_
ZOE: _(Her lucky hand instantly saving him)_ Hoopsa! Don't fall
upstairs.
BLOOM: The just man falls seven times. _(He stands aside at the
threshold)_ After you is good manners.
ZOE: Ladies first, gentlemen after.
_(She crosses the threshold. He hesitates. She turns and, holding out
her hands, draws him over. He hops. On the antlered rack of the hall
hang a man 's hat and waterproof. Bloom uncovers himself but, seeing
them, frowns, then smiles, preoccupied. A door on the return landing is
flung open. A man in purple shirt and grey trousers, brownsocked, passes
with an ape's gait, his bald head and goatee beard upheld, hugging a
full waterjugjar, his twotailed black braces dangling at heels. Averting
his face quickly Bloom bends to examine on the halltable the spaniel
eyes of a running fox: then, his lifted head sniffing, follows Zoe
into the musicroom. A shade of mauve tissuepaper dims the light of the
chandelier. Round and round a moth flies, colliding, escaping. The
floor is covered with an oilcloth mosaic of jade and azure and cinnabar
rhomboids. Footmarks are stamped over it in all senses, heel to heel,
heel to hollow, toe to toe, feet locked, a morris of shuffling feet
without body phantoms, all in a scrimmage higgledypiggledy. The walls
are tapestried with a paper of yewfronds and clear glades. In the grate
is spread a screen of peacock feathers. Lynch squats crosslegged on
the hearthrug of matted hair, his cap back to the front. With a wand he
beats time slowly. Kitty Ricketts, a bony pallid whore in navy costume,
doeskin gloves rolled back from a coral wristlet, a chain purse in
her hand, sits perched on the edge of the table swinging her leg and
glancing at herself in the gilt mirror over the mantelpiece. A tag
of her corsetlace hangs slightly below her jacket. Lynch indicates
mockingly the couple at the piano. )_
KITTY: _(Coughs behind her hand)_ She's a bit imbecillic. _(She signs
with a waggling forefinger)_ Blemblem. _(Lynch lifts up her skirt and
white petticoat with his wand she settles them down quickly. )_ Respect
yourself. _(She hiccups, then bends quickly her sailor hat under which
her hair glows, red with henna)_ O, excuse!
ZOE: More limelight, Charley. _(She goes to the chandelier and turns the
gas full cock)_
KITTY: _(Peers at the gasjet)_ What ails it tonight?
LYNCH: _(Deeply)_ Enter a ghost and hobgoblins.
ZOE: Clap on the back for Zoe.
_(The wand in Lynch's hand flashes: a brass poker. Stephen stands at
the pianola on which sprawl his hat and ashplant. With two fingers he
repeats once more the series of empty fifths. Florry Talbot, a blond
feeble goosefat whore in a tatterdemalion gown of mildewed strawberry,
lolls spreadeagle in the sofacorner, her limp forearm pendent over the
bolster, listening. A heavy stye droops over her sleepy eyelid. )_
KITTY: _(Hiccups again with a kick of her horsed foot)_ O, excuse!
ZOE: _(Promptly)_ Your boy's thinking of you. Tie a knot on your shift.
_(Kitty Ricketts bends her head. Her boa uncoils, slides, glides over
her shoulder, back, arm, chair to the ground. Lynch lifts the curled
caterpillar on his wand. She snakes her neck, nestling. Stephen glances
behind at the squatted figure with its cap back to the front. )_
STEPHEN: As a matter of fact it is of no importance whether Benedetto
Marcello found it or made it. The rite is the poet's rest. It may be an
old hymn to Demeter or also illustrate _Coela enarrant gloriam Domini. _
It is susceptible of nodes or modes as far apart as hyperphrygian and
mixolydian and of texts so divergent as priests haihooping round David's
that is Circe's or what am I saying Ceres' altar and David's tip
from the stable to his chief bassoonist about the alrightness of his
almightiness. _Mais nom de nom,_ that is another pair of trousers.
_Jetez la gourme. Faut que jeunesse se passe. (He stops, points at
Lynch's cap, smiles, laughs)_ Which side is your knowledge bump?
THE CAP: _(With saturnine spleen)_ Bah! It is because it is. Woman's
reason. Jewgreek is greekjew. Extremes meet. Death is the highest form
of life. Bah!
STEPHEN: You remember fairly accurately all my errors, boasts, mistakes.
How long shall I continue to close my eyes to disloyalty? Whetstone!
THE CAP: Bah!
STEPHEN: Here's another for you. _(He frowns)_ The reason is because
the fundamental and the dominant are separated by the greatest possible
interval which. . .
THE CAP: Which? Finish. You can't.
STEPHEN: _(With an effort)_ Interval which. Is the greatest possible
ellipse. Consistent with. The ultimate return. The octave. Which.
THE CAP: Which?
_(Outside the gramophone begins to blare_ The Holy City. )
STEPHEN: _(Abruptly)_ What went forth to the ends of the world to
traverse not itself, God, the sun, Shakespeare, a commercial traveller,
having itself traversed in reality itself becomes that self. Wait a
moment. Wait a second. Damn that fellow's noise in the street. Self
which it itself was ineluctably preconditioned to become. _Ecco! _
LYNCH: _(With a mocking whinny of laughter grins at Bloom and Zoe
Higgins)_ What a learned speech, eh?
ZOE: _(Briskly)_ God help your head, he knows more than you have
forgotten.
_(With obese stupidity Florry Talbot regards Stephen. )_
FLORRY: They say the last day is coming this summer.
KITTY: No!
ZOE: _(Explodes in laughter)_ Great unjust God!
FLORRY: _(Offended)_ Well, it was in the papers about Antichrist. O, my
foot's tickling.
_(Ragged barefoot newsboys, jogging a wagtail kite, patter past,
yelling. )_
THE NEWSBOYS: Stop press edition. Result of the rockinghorse races. Sea
serpent in the royal canal. Safe arrival of Antichrist.
_(Stephen turns and sees Bloom. )_
STEPHEN: A time, times and half a time.
_(Reuben I Antichrist, wandering jew, a clutching hand open on his
spine, stumps forward. Across his loins is slung a pilgrim's wallet from
which protrude promissory notes and dishonoured bills. Aloft over his
shoulder he bears a long boatpole from the hook of which the sodden
huddled mass of his only son, saved from Liffey waters, hangs from
the slack of its breeches. A hobgoblin in the image of Punch Costello,
hipshot, crookbacked, hydrocephalic, prognathic with receding forehead
and Ally Sloper nose, tumbles in somersaults through the gathering
darkness. )_
ALL: What?
THE HOBGOBLIN: _(His jaws chattering, capers to and fro, goggling his
eyes, squeaking, kangaroohopping with outstretched clutching arms, then
all at once thrusts his lipless face through the fork of his thighs) Il
vient! C'est moi! L'homme qui rit! L'homme primigene! (He whirls round
and round with dervish howls) Sieurs et dames, faites vos jeux! (He
crouches juggling. Tiny roulette planets fly from his hands. ) Les jeux
sont faits! (The planets rush together, uttering crepitant cracks) Rien
va plus! (The planets, buoyant balloons, sail swollen up and away. He
springs off into vacuum. )_
FLORRY: _(Sinking into torpor, crossing herself secretly)_ The end of
the world!
_(A female tepid effluvium leaks out from her. Nebulous obscurity
occupies space. Through the drifting fog without the gramophone blares
over coughs and feetshuffling. )_
THE GRAMOPHONE: Jerusalem!
Open your gates and sing
Hosanna. . .
_(A rocket rushes up the sky and bursts. A white star fills from it,
proclaiming the consummation of all things and second coming of Elijah.
Along an infinite invisible tightrope taut from zenith to nadir the End
of the World, a twoheaded octopus in gillie's kilts, busby and tartan
filibegs, whirls through the murk, head over heels, in the form of the
Three Legs of Man. )_
THE END OF THE WORLD: _(with a Scotch accent)_ Wha'll dance the keel
row, the keel row, the keel row?
_(Over the possing drift and choking breathcoughs, Elijah's voice, harsh
as a corncrake's, jars on high. Perspiring in a loose lawn surplice with
funnel sleeves he is seen, vergerfaced, above a rostrum about which the
banner of old glory is draped. He thumps the parapet.
Majesty will now administer open air justice. Free medical and legal
advice, solution of doubles and other problems. All cordially invited.
Given at this our loyal city of Dublin in the year I of the Paradisiacal
Era.
PADDY LEONARD: What am I to do about my rates and taxes?
BLOOM: Pay them, my friend.
PADDY LEONARD: Thank you.
NOSEY FLYNN: Can I raise a mortgage on my fire insurance?
BLOOM: _(Obdurately)_ Sirs, take notice that by the law of torts you are
bound over in your own recognisances for six months in the sum of five
pounds.
J. J. O'MOLLOY: A Daniel did I say? Nay! A Peter O'Brien!
NOSEY FLYNN: Where do I draw the five pounds?
PISSER BURKE: For bladder trouble?
BLOOM:
_Acid. nit. hydrochlor. dil. ,_ 20 minims
_Tinct. nux vom. ,_ 5 minims
_Extr. taraxel. iiq. ,_ 30 minims.
_Aq. dis. ter in die. _
CHRIS CALLINAN: What is the parallax of the subsolar ecliptic of
Aldebaran?
BLOOM: Pleased to hear from you, Chris. K. II.
JOE HYNES: Why aren't you in uniform?
BLOOM: When my progenitor of sainted memory wore the uniform of the
Austrian despot in a dank prison where was yours?
BEN DOLLARD: Pansies?
BLOOM: Embellish (beautify) suburban gardens.
BEN DOLLARD: When twins arrive?
BLOOM: Father (pater, dad) starts thinking.
LARRY O'ROURKE: An eightday licence for my new premises. You remember
me, sir Leo, when you were in number seven. I'm sending around a dozen
of stout for the missus.
BLOOM: _(Coldly)_ You have the advantage of me. Lady Bloom accepts no
presents.
CROFTON: This is indeed a festivity.
BLOOM: _(Solemnly)_ You call it a festivity. I call it a sacrament.
ALEXANDER KEYES: When will we have our own house of keys?
BLOOM: I stand for the reform of municipal morals and the plain ten
commandments. New worlds for old. Union of all, jew, moslem and gentile.
Three acres and a cow for all children of nature. Saloon motor hearses.
Compulsory manual labour for all. All parks open to the public day and
night. Electric dishscrubbers. Tuberculosis, lunacy, war and mendicancy
must now cease. General amnesty, weekly carnival with masked licence,
bonuses for all, esperanto the universal language with universal
brotherhood. No more patriotism of barspongers and dropsical impostors.
Free money, free rent, free love and a free lay church in a free lay
state.
O'MADDEN BURKE: Free fox in a free henroost.
DAVY BYRNE: _(Yawning)_ Iiiiiiiiiaaaaaaach!
BLOOM: Mixed races and mixed marriage.
LENEHAN: What about mixed bathing?
_(bloom explains to those near him his schemes for social regeneration.
All agree with him. The keeper of the Kildare Street Museum appears,
dragging a lorry on which are the shaking statues of several naked
goddesses, Venus Callipyge, Venus Pandemos, Venus Metempsychosis, and
plaster figures, also naked, representing the new nine muses, Commerce,
Operatic Music, Amor, Publicity, Manufacture, Liberty of Speech, Plural
Voting, Gastronomy, Private Hygiene, Seaside Concert Entertainments,
Painless Obstetrics and Astronomy for the People. )_
FATHER FARLEY: He is an episcopalian, an agnostic, an anythingarian
seeking to overthrow our holy faith.
MRS RIORDAN: _(Tears up her will)_ I'm disappointed in you! You bad man!
MOTHER GROGAN: _(Removes her boot to throw it at Bloom)_ You beast! You
abominable person!
NOSEY FLYNN: Give us a tune, Bloom. One of the old sweet songs.
BLOOM: _(With rollicking humour)_
I vowed that I never would leave her,
She turned out a cruel deceiver.
With my tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom.
HOPPY HOLOHAN: Good old Bloom! There's nobody like him after all.
PADDY LEONARD: Stage Irishman!
BLOOM: What railway opera is like a tramline in Gibraltar? The Rows of
Casteele. _(Laughter. )_
LENEHAN: Plagiarist! Down with Bloom!
THE VEILED SIBYL: _(Enthusiastically)_ I'm a Bloomite and I glory in it.
I believe in him in spite of all. I'd give my life for him, the funniest
man on earth.
BLOOM: _(Winks at the bystanders)_ I bet she's a bonny lassie.
THEODORE PUREFOY: _(In fishingcap and oilskin jacket)_ He employs a
mechanical device to frustrate the sacred ends of nature.
THE VEILED SIBYL: _(Stabs herself)_ My hero god! _(She dies)_
_(Many most attractive and enthusiastic women also commit suicide by
stabbing, drowning, drinking prussic acid, aconite, arsenic, opening
their veins, refusing food, casting themselves under steamrollers, from
the top of Nelson's Pillar, into the great vat of Guinness's brewery,
asphyxiating themselves by placing their heads in gasovens, hanging
themselves in stylish garters, leaping from windows of different
storeys. )_
ALEXANDER J DOWIE: _(Violently)_ Fellowchristians and antiBloomites, the
man called Bloom is from the roots of hell, a disgrace to christian
men. A fiendish libertine from his earliest years this stinking goat
of Mendes gave precocious signs of infantile debauchery, recalling the
cities of the plain, with a dissolute granddam. This vile hypocrite,
bronzed with infamy, is the white bull mentioned in the Apocalypse.
A worshipper of the Scarlet Woman, intrigue is the very breath of his
nostrils. The stake faggots and the caldron of boiling oil are for him.
Caliban!
THE MOB: Lynch him! Roast him! He's as bad as Parnell was. Mr Fox!
_(Mother Grogan throws her boot at Bloom. Several shopkeepers from upper
and lower Dorset street throw objects of little or no commercial value,
hambones, condensed milk tins, unsaleable cabbage, stale bread, sheep's
tails, odd pieces of fat. )_
BLOOM: _(Excitedly)_ This is midsummer madness, some ghastly joke again.
By heaven, I am guiltless as the unsunned snow! It was my brother Henry.
He is my double. He lives in number 2 Dolphin's Barn. Slander, the
viper, has wrongfully accused me. Fellowcountrymen, _sgenl inn ban bata
coisde gan capall. _ I call on my old friend, Dr Malachi Mulligan, sex
specialist, to give medical testimony on my behalf.
DR MULLIGAN: _(In motor jerkin, green motorgoggles on his brow)_ Dr
Bloom is bisexually abnormal. He has recently escaped from Dr Eustace's
private asylum for demented gentlemen. Born out of bedlock hereditary
epilepsy is present, the consequence of unbridled lust. Traces of
elephantiasis have been discovered among his ascendants. There are
marked symptoms of chronic exhibitionism. Ambidexterity is also
latent. He is prematurely bald from selfabuse, perversely idealistic in
consequence, a reformed rake, and has metal teeth. In consequence of a
family complex he has temporarily lost his memory and I believe him
to be more sinned against than sinning. I have made a pervaginal
examination and, after application of the acid test to 5427 anal,
axillary, pectoral and pubic hairs, I declare him to be _virgo intacta. _
_(Bloom holds his high grade hat over his genital organs. )_
DR MADDEN: Hypsospadia is also marked. In the interest of coming
generations I suggest that the parts affected should be preserved in
spirits of wine in the national teratological museum.
DR CROTTHERS: I have examined the patient's urine. It is albuminoid.
Salivation is insufficient, the patellar reflex intermittent.
DR PUNCH COSTELLO: The _fetor judaicus_ is most perceptible.
DR DIXON: _(Reads a bill of health)_ Professor Bloom is a finished
example of the new womanly man. His moral nature is simple and lovable.
Many have found him a dear man, a dear person. He is a rather quaint
fellow on the whole, coy though not feebleminded in the medical sense.
He has written a really beautiful letter, a poem in itself, to the court
missionary of the Reformed Priests' Protection Society which clears up
everything. He is practically a total abstainer and I can affirm that
he sleeps on a straw litter and eats the most Spartan food, cold dried
grocer's peas. He wears a hairshirt of pure Irish manufacture winter and
summer and scourges himself every Saturday. He was, I understand, at one
time a firstclass misdemeanant in Glencree reformatory. Another report
states that he was a very posthumous child. I appeal for clemency in the
name of the most sacred word our vocal organs have ever been called upon
to speak. He is about to have a baby.
_(General commotion and compassion. Women faint. A wealthy American
makes a street collection for Bloom. Gold and silver coins, blank
cheques, banknotes, jewels, treasury bonds, maturing bills of exchange,
I. O. U's, wedding rings, watchchains, lockets, necklaces and bracelets
are rapidly collected. )_
BLOOM: O, I so want to be a mother.
MRS THORNTON: _(In nursetender's gown)_ Embrace me tight, dear. You'll
be soon over it. Tight, dear.
_(Bloom embraces her tightly and bears eight male yellow and white
children. They appear on a redcarpeted staircase adorned with expensive
plants. All the octuplets are handsome, with valuable metallic faces,
wellmade, respectably dressed and wellconducted, speaking five modern
languages fluently and interested in various arts and sciences. Each
has his name printed in legible letters on his shirtfront: Nasodoro,
Goldfinger, Chrysostomos, Maindoree, Silversmile, Silberselber,
Vifargent, Panargyros. They are immediately appointed to positions of
high public trust in several different countries as managing directors
of banks, traffic managers of railways, chairmen of limited liability
companies, vicechairmen of hotel syndicates. )_
A VOICE: Bloom, are you the Messiah ben Joseph or ben David?
BLOOM: _(Darkly)_ You have said it.
BROTHER BUZZ: Then perform a miracle like Father Charles.
BANTAM LYONS: Prophesy who will win the Saint Leger.
_(Bloom walks on a net, covers his left eye with his left ear, passes
through several walls, climbs Nelson's Pillar, hangs from the top ledge
by his eyelids, eats twelve dozen oysters (shells included), heals
several sufferers from king's evil, contracts his face so as to resemble
many historical personages, Lord Beaconsfield, Lord Byron, Wat Tyler,
Moses of Egypt, Moses Maimonides, Moses Mendelssohn, Henry Irving, Rip
van Winkle, Kossuth, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Baron Leopold Rothschild,
Robinson Crusoe, Sherlock Holmes, Pasteur, turns each foot
simultaneously in different directions, bids the tide turn back,
eclipses the sun by extending his little finger. )_
BRINI, PAPAL NUNCIO: _(In papal zouave's uniform, steel cuirasses as
breastplate, armplates, thighplates, legplates, large profane moustaches
and brown paper mitre) Leopoldi autem generatio. _ Moses begat Noah
and Noah begat Eunuch and Eunuch begat O'Halloran and O'Halloran begat
Guggenheim and Guggenheim begat Agendath and Agendath begat Netaim and
Netaim begat Le Hirsch and Le Hirsch begat Jesurum and Jesurum begat
MacKay and MacKay begat Ostrolopsky and Ostrolopsky begat Smerdoz
and Smerdoz begat Weiss and Weiss begat Schwarz and Schwarz begat
Adrianopoli and Adrianopoli begat Aranjuez and Aranjuez begat Lewy
Lawson and Lewy Lawson begat Ichabudonosor and Ichabudonosor begat
O'Donnell Magnus and O'Donnell Magnus begat Christbaum and Christbaum
begat ben Maimun and ben Maimun begat Dusty Rhodes and Dusty Rhodes
begat Benamor and Benamor begat Jones-Smith and Jones-Smith begat
Savorgnanovich and Savorgnanovich begat Jasperstone and Jasperstone
begat Vingtetunieme and Vingtetunieme begat Szombathely and Szombathely
begat Virag and Virag begat Bloom _et vocabitur nomen eius Emmanuel. _
A DEADHAND: _(Writes on the wall)_ Bloom is a cod.
CRAB: _(In bushranger's kit)_ What did you do in the cattlecreep behind
Kilbarrack?
A FEMALE INFANT: _(Shakes a rattle)_ And under Ballybough bridge?
A HOLLYBUSH: And in the devil's glen?
BLOOM: _(Blushes furiously all over from frons to nates, three tears
filling from his left eye)_ Spare my past.
THE IRISH EVICTED TENANTS: _(In bodycoats, kneebreeches, with Donnybrook
fair shillelaghs)_ Sjambok him!
_(Bloom with asses' ears seats himself in the pillory with crossed arms,
his feet protruding. He whistles_ Don Giovanni, a cenar teco. _Artane
orphans, joining hands, caper round him. Girls of the Prison Gate
Mission, joining hands, caper round in the opposite direction. )_
THE ARTANE ORPHANS:
You hig, you hog, you dirty dog!
You think the ladies love you!
THE PRISON GATE GIRLS:
If you see Kay
Tell him he may
See you in tea
Tell him from me.
HORNBLOWER: _(In ephod and huntingcap, announces)_ And he shall carry
the sins of the people to Azazel, the spirit which is in the wilderness,
and to Lilith, the nighthag. And they shall stone him and defile him,
yea, all from Agendath Netaim and from Mizraim, the land of Ham.
_(All the people cast soft pantomime stones at Bloom. Many bonafide
travellers and ownerless dogs come near him and defile him. Mastiansky
and Citron approach in gaberdines, wearing long earlocks. They wag their
beards at Bloom. )_
MASTIANSKY AND CITRON: Belial! Laemlein of Istria, the false Messiah!
Abulafia! Recant!
_(George R Mesias, Bloom's tailor, appears, a tailor's goose under his
arm, presenting a bill)_
MESIAS: To alteration one pair trousers eleven shillings.
BLOOM: _(Rubs his hands cheerfully)_ Just like old times. Poor Bloom!
_(Reuben J Dodd, blackbearded iscariot, bad shepherd, bearing on his
shoulders the drowned corpse of his son, approaches the pillory. )_
REUBEN J: _(Whispers hoarsely)_ The squeak is out. A split is gone for
the flatties. Nip the first rattler.
THE FIRE BRIGADE: Pflaap!
BROTHER BUZZ: _(Invests Bloom in a yellow habit with embroidery of
painted flames and high pointed hat. He places a bag of gunpowder round
his neck and hands him over to the civil power, saying)_ Forgive him his
trespasses.
_(Lieutenant Myers of the Dublin Fire Brigade by general request sets
fire to Bloom. Lamentations. )_
THE CITIZEN: Thank heaven!
BLOOM: _(In a seamless garment marked I. H. S. stands upright amid
phoenix flames)_ Weep not for me, O daughters of Erin.
_(He exhibits to Dublin reporters traces of burning. The daughters of
Erin, in black garments, with large prayerbooks and long lighted candles
in their hands, kneel down and pray. )_
THE DAUGHTERS OF ERIN:
Kidney of Bloom, pray for us
Flower of the Bath, pray for us
Mentor of Menton, pray for us
Canvasser for the Freeman, pray for us
Charitable Mason, pray for us
Wandering Soap, pray for us
Sweets of Sin, pray for us
Music without Words, pray for us
Reprover of the Citizen, pray for us
Friend of all Frillies, pray for us
Midwife Most Merciful, pray for us
Potato Preservative against Plague and Pestilence, pray for us.
_(A choir of six hundred voices, conducted by Vincent O'brien, sings
the chorus from Handel's Messiah alleluia for the lord god omnipotent
reigneth, accompanied on the organ by Joseph Glynn. Bloom becomes mute,
shrunken, carbonised. )_
ZOE: Talk away till you're black in the face.
BLOOM: _(In caubeen with clay pipe stuck in the band, dusty brogues, an
emigrant's red handkerchief bundle in his hand, leading a black bogoak
pig by a sugaun, with a smile in his eye)_ Let me be going now, woman of
the house, for by all the goats in Connemara I'm after having the
father and mother of a bating. _(With a tear in his eye)_ All insanity.
Patriotism, sorrow for the dead, music, future of the race. To be or not
to be. Life's dream is o'er. End it peacefully. They can live on. _(He
gazes far away mournfully)_ I am ruined. A few pastilles of aconite. The
blinds drawn. A letter. Then lie back to rest. _(He breathes softly)_ No
more. I have lived. Fare. Farewell.
ZOE: _(Stiffly, her finger in her neckfillet)_ Honest? Till the next
time. _(She sneers)_ Suppose you got up the wrong side of the bed or
came too quick with your best girl. O, I can read your thoughts!
BLOOM: _(Bitterly)_ Man and woman, love, what is it? A cork and bottle.
I'm sick of it. Let everything rip.
ZOE: _(In sudden sulks)_ I hate a rotter that's insincere. Give a
bleeding whore a chance.
BLOOM: _(Repentantly)_ I am very disagreeable. You are a necessary evil.
Where are you from? London?
ZOE: _(Glibly)_ Hog's Norton where the pigs plays the organs. I'm
Yorkshire born. _(She holds his hand which is feeling for her nipple)_
I say, Tommy Tittlemouse. Stop that and begin worse. Have you cash for a
short time? Ten shillings?
BLOOM: _(Smiles, nods slowly)_ More, houri, more.
ZOE: And more's mother? _(She pats him offhandedly with velvet paws)_
Are you coming into the musicroom to see our new pianola? Come and I'll
peel off.
BLOOM: _(Feeling his occiput dubiously with the unparalleled
embarrassment of a harassed pedlar gauging the symmetry of her peeled
pears)_ Somebody would be dreadfully jealous if she knew. The greeneyed
monster. _(Earnestly)_ You know how difficult it is. I needn't tell you.
ZOE: _(Flattered)_ What the eye can't see the heart can't grieve for.
_(She pats him)_ Come.
BLOOM: Laughing witch! The hand that rocks the cradle.
ZOE: Babby!
BLOOM: _(In babylinen and pelisse, bigheaded, with a caul of dark hair,
fixes big eyes on her fluid slip and counts its bronze buckles with a
chubby finger, his moist tongue lolling and lisping)_ One two tlee: tlee
tlwo tlone.
THE BUCKLES: Love me. Love me not. Love me.
ZOE: Silent means consent. _(With little parted talons she captures his
hand, her forefinger giving to his palm the passtouch of secret monitor,
luring him to doom. )_ Hot hands cold gizzard.
_(He hesitates amid scents, music, temptations. She leads him towards
the steps, drawing him by the odour of her armpits, the vice of her
painted eyes, the rustle of her slip in whose sinuous folds lurks the
lion reek of all the male brutes that have possessed her. )_
THE MALE BRUTES: _(Exhaling sulphur of rut and dung and ramping in their
loosebox, faintly roaring, their drugged heads swaying to and fro)_
Good!
_(Zoe and Bloom reach the doorway where two sister whores are seated.
They examine him curiously from under their pencilled brows and smile to
his hasty bow. He trips awkwardly. )_
ZOE: _(Her lucky hand instantly saving him)_ Hoopsa! Don't fall
upstairs.
BLOOM: The just man falls seven times. _(He stands aside at the
threshold)_ After you is good manners.
ZOE: Ladies first, gentlemen after.
_(She crosses the threshold. He hesitates. She turns and, holding out
her hands, draws him over. He hops. On the antlered rack of the hall
hang a man 's hat and waterproof. Bloom uncovers himself but, seeing
them, frowns, then smiles, preoccupied. A door on the return landing is
flung open. A man in purple shirt and grey trousers, brownsocked, passes
with an ape's gait, his bald head and goatee beard upheld, hugging a
full waterjugjar, his twotailed black braces dangling at heels. Averting
his face quickly Bloom bends to examine on the halltable the spaniel
eyes of a running fox: then, his lifted head sniffing, follows Zoe
into the musicroom. A shade of mauve tissuepaper dims the light of the
chandelier. Round and round a moth flies, colliding, escaping. The
floor is covered with an oilcloth mosaic of jade and azure and cinnabar
rhomboids. Footmarks are stamped over it in all senses, heel to heel,
heel to hollow, toe to toe, feet locked, a morris of shuffling feet
without body phantoms, all in a scrimmage higgledypiggledy. The walls
are tapestried with a paper of yewfronds and clear glades. In the grate
is spread a screen of peacock feathers. Lynch squats crosslegged on
the hearthrug of matted hair, his cap back to the front. With a wand he
beats time slowly. Kitty Ricketts, a bony pallid whore in navy costume,
doeskin gloves rolled back from a coral wristlet, a chain purse in
her hand, sits perched on the edge of the table swinging her leg and
glancing at herself in the gilt mirror over the mantelpiece. A tag
of her corsetlace hangs slightly below her jacket. Lynch indicates
mockingly the couple at the piano. )_
KITTY: _(Coughs behind her hand)_ She's a bit imbecillic. _(She signs
with a waggling forefinger)_ Blemblem. _(Lynch lifts up her skirt and
white petticoat with his wand she settles them down quickly. )_ Respect
yourself. _(She hiccups, then bends quickly her sailor hat under which
her hair glows, red with henna)_ O, excuse!
ZOE: More limelight, Charley. _(She goes to the chandelier and turns the
gas full cock)_
KITTY: _(Peers at the gasjet)_ What ails it tonight?
LYNCH: _(Deeply)_ Enter a ghost and hobgoblins.
ZOE: Clap on the back for Zoe.
_(The wand in Lynch's hand flashes: a brass poker. Stephen stands at
the pianola on which sprawl his hat and ashplant. With two fingers he
repeats once more the series of empty fifths. Florry Talbot, a blond
feeble goosefat whore in a tatterdemalion gown of mildewed strawberry,
lolls spreadeagle in the sofacorner, her limp forearm pendent over the
bolster, listening. A heavy stye droops over her sleepy eyelid. )_
KITTY: _(Hiccups again with a kick of her horsed foot)_ O, excuse!
ZOE: _(Promptly)_ Your boy's thinking of you. Tie a knot on your shift.
_(Kitty Ricketts bends her head. Her boa uncoils, slides, glides over
her shoulder, back, arm, chair to the ground. Lynch lifts the curled
caterpillar on his wand. She snakes her neck, nestling. Stephen glances
behind at the squatted figure with its cap back to the front. )_
STEPHEN: As a matter of fact it is of no importance whether Benedetto
Marcello found it or made it. The rite is the poet's rest. It may be an
old hymn to Demeter or also illustrate _Coela enarrant gloriam Domini. _
It is susceptible of nodes or modes as far apart as hyperphrygian and
mixolydian and of texts so divergent as priests haihooping round David's
that is Circe's or what am I saying Ceres' altar and David's tip
from the stable to his chief bassoonist about the alrightness of his
almightiness. _Mais nom de nom,_ that is another pair of trousers.
_Jetez la gourme. Faut que jeunesse se passe. (He stops, points at
Lynch's cap, smiles, laughs)_ Which side is your knowledge bump?
THE CAP: _(With saturnine spleen)_ Bah! It is because it is. Woman's
reason. Jewgreek is greekjew. Extremes meet. Death is the highest form
of life. Bah!
STEPHEN: You remember fairly accurately all my errors, boasts, mistakes.
How long shall I continue to close my eyes to disloyalty? Whetstone!
THE CAP: Bah!
STEPHEN: Here's another for you. _(He frowns)_ The reason is because
the fundamental and the dominant are separated by the greatest possible
interval which. . .
THE CAP: Which? Finish. You can't.
STEPHEN: _(With an effort)_ Interval which. Is the greatest possible
ellipse. Consistent with. The ultimate return. The octave. Which.
THE CAP: Which?
_(Outside the gramophone begins to blare_ The Holy City. )
STEPHEN: _(Abruptly)_ What went forth to the ends of the world to
traverse not itself, God, the sun, Shakespeare, a commercial traveller,
having itself traversed in reality itself becomes that self. Wait a
moment. Wait a second. Damn that fellow's noise in the street. Self
which it itself was ineluctably preconditioned to become. _Ecco! _
LYNCH: _(With a mocking whinny of laughter grins at Bloom and Zoe
Higgins)_ What a learned speech, eh?
ZOE: _(Briskly)_ God help your head, he knows more than you have
forgotten.
_(With obese stupidity Florry Talbot regards Stephen. )_
FLORRY: They say the last day is coming this summer.
KITTY: No!
ZOE: _(Explodes in laughter)_ Great unjust God!
FLORRY: _(Offended)_ Well, it was in the papers about Antichrist. O, my
foot's tickling.
_(Ragged barefoot newsboys, jogging a wagtail kite, patter past,
yelling. )_
THE NEWSBOYS: Stop press edition. Result of the rockinghorse races. Sea
serpent in the royal canal. Safe arrival of Antichrist.
_(Stephen turns and sees Bloom. )_
STEPHEN: A time, times and half a time.
_(Reuben I Antichrist, wandering jew, a clutching hand open on his
spine, stumps forward. Across his loins is slung a pilgrim's wallet from
which protrude promissory notes and dishonoured bills. Aloft over his
shoulder he bears a long boatpole from the hook of which the sodden
huddled mass of his only son, saved from Liffey waters, hangs from
the slack of its breeches. A hobgoblin in the image of Punch Costello,
hipshot, crookbacked, hydrocephalic, prognathic with receding forehead
and Ally Sloper nose, tumbles in somersaults through the gathering
darkness. )_
ALL: What?
THE HOBGOBLIN: _(His jaws chattering, capers to and fro, goggling his
eyes, squeaking, kangaroohopping with outstretched clutching arms, then
all at once thrusts his lipless face through the fork of his thighs) Il
vient! C'est moi! L'homme qui rit! L'homme primigene! (He whirls round
and round with dervish howls) Sieurs et dames, faites vos jeux! (He
crouches juggling. Tiny roulette planets fly from his hands. ) Les jeux
sont faits! (The planets rush together, uttering crepitant cracks) Rien
va plus! (The planets, buoyant balloons, sail swollen up and away. He
springs off into vacuum. )_
FLORRY: _(Sinking into torpor, crossing herself secretly)_ The end of
the world!
_(A female tepid effluvium leaks out from her. Nebulous obscurity
occupies space. Through the drifting fog without the gramophone blares
over coughs and feetshuffling. )_
THE GRAMOPHONE: Jerusalem!
Open your gates and sing
Hosanna. . .
_(A rocket rushes up the sky and bursts. A white star fills from it,
proclaiming the consummation of all things and second coming of Elijah.
Along an infinite invisible tightrope taut from zenith to nadir the End
of the World, a twoheaded octopus in gillie's kilts, busby and tartan
filibegs, whirls through the murk, head over heels, in the form of the
Three Legs of Man. )_
THE END OF THE WORLD: _(with a Scotch accent)_ Wha'll dance the keel
row, the keel row, the keel row?
_(Over the possing drift and choking breathcoughs, Elijah's voice, harsh
as a corncrake's, jars on high. Perspiring in a loose lawn surplice with
funnel sleeves he is seen, vergerfaced, above a rostrum about which the
banner of old glory is draped. He thumps the parapet.
