No More Learning

In fact
we are just bringing out a collection of prize stories of which I am the
inventor, something that is an entirely new departure. I am connected
with the British and Irish press. If you ring up. . .

_(Myles Crawford strides out jerkily, a quill between his teeth. His
scarlet beak blazes within the aureole of his straw hat. He dangles
a hank of Spanish onions in one hand and holds with the other hand a
telephone receiver nozzle to his ear. )_

MYLES CRAWFORD: _(His cock's wattles wagging)_ Hello, seventyseven
eightfour. Hello. _Freeman's Urinal_ and _Weekly Arsewipe_ here.
Paralyse Europe. You which? Bluebags? Who writes? Is it Bloom?

_(Mr Philip Beaufoy, palefaced, stands in the witnessbox, in accurate
morning dress, outbreast pocket with peak of handkerchief showing,
creased lavender trousers and patent boots. He carries a large portfolio
labelled_ Matcham's Masterstrokes. )

BEAUFOY: _(Drawls)_ No, you aren't. Not by a long shot if I know it.
I don't see it that's all. No born gentleman, no-one with the most
rudimentary promptings of a gentleman would stoop to such particularly
loathsome conduct. One of those, my lord. A plagiarist. A soapy sneak
masquerading as a litterateur. It's perfectly obvious that with the most
inherent baseness he has cribbed some of my bestselling copy, really
gorgeous stuff, a perfect gem, the love passages in which are beneath
suspicion. The Beaufoy books of love and great possessions, with which
your lordship is doubtless familiar, are a household word throughout the
kingdom.

BLOOM: _(Murmurs with hangdog meekness glum)_ That bit about the
laughing witch hand in hand I take exception to, if I may. . .

BEAUFOY: _(His lip upcurled, smiles superciliously on the court)_ You
funny ass, you! You're too beastly awfully weird for words! I don't
think you need over excessively disincommodate yourself in that regard.
My literary agent Mr J. B. Pinker is in attendance. I presume, my
lord, we shall receive the usual witnesses' fees, shan't we? We are
considerably out of pocket over this bally pressman johnny, this jackdaw
of Rheims, who has not even been to a university.

BLOOM: _(Indistinctly)_ University of life. Bad art.

BEAUFOY: _(Shouts)_ It's a damnably foul lie, showing the moral
rottenness of the man! _(He extends his portfolio)_ We have here damning
evidence, the _corpus delicti_, my lord, a specimen of my maturer work
disfigured by the hallmark of the beast.

A VOICE FROM THE GALLERY:

Moses, Moses, king of the jews, Wiped his arse in the Daily News.

BLOOM: _(Bravely)_ Overdrawn.

BEAUFOY: You low cad! You ought to be ducked in the horsepond, you
rotter! _(To the court)_ Why, look at the man's private life! Leading
a quadruple existence! Street angel and house devil. Not fit to be
mentioned in mixed society! The archconspirator of the age!

BLOOM: _(To the court)_ And he, a bachelor, how. . .

FIRST WATCH: The King versus Bloom. Call the woman Driscoll.

THE CRIER: Mary Driscoll, scullerymaid!

_(Mary Driscoll, a slipshod servant girl, approaches. She has a bucket
on the crook of her arm and a scouringbrush in her hand. )_

SECOND WATCH: Another! Are you of the unfortunate class?

MARY DRISCOLL: _(Indignantly)_ I'm not a bad one. I bear a respectable
character and was four months in my last place. I was in a situation,
six pounds a year and my chances with Fridays out and I had to leave
owing to his carryings on.

FIRST WATCH: What do you tax him with?

MARY DRISCOLL: He made a certain suggestion but I thought more of myself
as poor as I am.

BLOOM: _(In housejacket of ripplecloth, flannel trousers, heelless
slippers, unshaven, his hair rumpled: softly)_ I treated you white.
I gave you mementos, smart emerald garters far above your station.
Incautiously I took your part when you were accused of pilfering.
There's a medium in all things. Play cricket.

MARY DRISCOLL: _(Excitedly)_ As God is looking down on me this night if
ever I laid a hand to them oysters!

FIRST WATCH: The offence complained of? Did something happen?

MARY DRISCOLL: He surprised me in the rere of the premises, Your honour,
when the missus was out shopping one morning with a request for a safety
pin. He held me and I was discoloured in four places as a result. And he
interfered twict with my clothing.

BLOOM: She counterassaulted.

MARY DRISCOLL: _(Scornfully)_ I had more respect for the scouringbrush,
so I had. I remonstrated with him, Your lord, and he remarked: keep it
quiet.

_(General laughter. )_

GEORGE FOTTRELL: _(Clerk of the crown and peace, resonantly)_ Order in
court! The accused will now make a bogus statement.

_(Bloom, pleading not guilty and holding a fullblown waterlily, begins
a long unintelligible speech. They would hear what counsel had to say in
his stirring address to the grand jury. He was down and out but, though
branded as a black sheep, if he might say so, he meant to reform, to
retrieve the memory of the past in a purely sisterly way and return to
nature as a purely domestic animal. A sevenmonths' child, he had been
carefully brought up and nurtured by an aged bedridden parent. There
might have been lapses of an erring father but he wanted to turn over
a new leaf and now, when at long last in sight of the whipping post,
to lead a homely life in the evening of his days, permeated by the
affectionate surroundings of the heaving bosom of the family. An
acclimatised Britisher, he had seen that summer eve from the footplate
of an engine cab of the Loop line railway company while the rain
refrained from falling glimpses, as it were, through the windows of
loveful households in Dublin city and urban district of scenes truly
rural of happiness of the better land with Dockrell's wallpaper at one
and ninepence a dozen, innocent Britishborn bairns lisping prayers to
the Sacred Infant, youthful scholars grappling with their pensums or
model young ladies playing on the pianoforte or anon all with fervour
reciting the family rosary round the crackling Yulelog while in the
boreens and green lanes the colleens with their swains strolled what
times the strains of the organtoned melodeon Britannia metalbound with
four acting stops and twelvefold bellows, a sacrifice, greatest bargain
ever. . . _

_(Renewed laughter. He mumbles incoherently. Reporters complain that
they cannot hear. )_

LONGHAND AND SHORTHAND: _(Without looking up from their notebooks)_
Loosen his boots.

PROFESSOR MACHUGH: _(From the presstable, coughs and calls)_ Cough it
up, man. Get it out in bits.

_(The crossexamination proceeds re Bloom and the bucket. A large bucket.
Bloom himself. Bowel trouble. In Beaver street Gripe, yes. Quite bad.
A plasterer's bucket. By walking stifflegged. Suffered untold misery.
Deadly agony. About noon. Love or burgundy. Yes, some spinach. Crucial
moment. He did not look in the bucket Nobody. Rather a mess. Not
completely. _ A Titbits _back number_. )

_(Uproar and catcalls. Bloom in a torn frockcoat stained with whitewash,
dinged silk hat sideways on his head, a strip of stickingplaster across
his nose, talks inaudibly. )_

J. J. O'MOLLOY: _(In barrister's grey wig and stuffgown, speaking with
a voice of pained protest)_ This is no place for indecent levity at
the expense of an erring mortal disguised in liquor. We are not in a
beargarden nor at an Oxford rag nor is this a travesty of justice. My
client is an infant, a poor foreign immigrant who started scratch as
a stowaway and is now trying to turn an honest penny. The trumped up
misdemeanour was due to a momentary aberration of heredity, brought on
by hallucination, such familiarities as the alleged guilty occurrence
being quite permitted in my client's native place, the land of the
Pharaoh. _Prima facie_, I put it to you that there was no attempt at
carnally knowing. Intimacy did not occur and the offence complained of
by Driscoll, that her virtue was solicited, was not repeated. I would
deal in especial with atavism. There have been cases of shipwreck and
somnambulism in my client's family. If the accused could speak he could
a tale unfold--one of the strangest that have ever been narrated between
the covers of a book. He himself, my lord, is a physical wreck from
cobbler's weak chest. His submission is that he is of Mongolian
extraction and irresponsible for his actions. Not all there, in fact.

BLOOM: _(Barefoot, pigeonbreasted, in lascar's vest and trousers,
apologetic toes turned in, opens his tiny mole's eyes and looks about
him dazedly, passing a slow hand across his forehead. Then he hitches
his belt sailor fashion and with a shrug of oriental obeisance salutes
the court, pointing one thumb heavenward. )_ Him makee velly muchee fine
night. _(He begins to lilt simply)_

Li li poo lil chile
Blingee pigfoot evly night
Payee two shilly. . .

_(He is howled down. )_

J. J. O'MOLLOY: _(Hotly to the populace)_ This is a lonehand fight. By
Hades, I will not have any client of mine gagged and badgered in this
fashion by a pack of curs and laughing hyenas. The Mosaic code has
superseded the law of the jungle. I say it and I say it emphatically,
without wishing for one moment to defeat the ends of justice, accused
was not accessory before the act and prosecutrix has not been tampered
with. The young person was treated by defendant as if she were his very
own daughter. _(Bloom takes J. J. O'Molloy's hand and raises it to his
lips. )_ I shall call rebutting evidence to prove up to the hilt that the
hidden hand is again at its old game. When in doubt persecute Bloom. My
client, an innately bashful man, would be the last man in the world to
do anything ungentlemanly which injured modesty could object to or
cast a stone at a girl who took the wrong turning when some dastard,
responsible for her condition, had worked his own sweet will on her. He
wants to go straight. I regard him as the whitest man I know. He is down
on his luck at present owing to the mortgaging of his extensive property
at Agendath Netaim in faraway Asia Minor, slides of which will now be
shown. _(To Bloom)_ I suggest that you will do the handsome thing.

BLOOM: A penny in the pound.

_(The image of the lake of Kinnereth with blurred cattle cropping in
silver haze is projected on the wall. Moses Dlugacz, ferreteyed albino,
in blue dungarees, stands up in the gallery, holding in each hand an
orange citron and a pork kidney. )_

DLUGACZ: _(Hoarsely)_ Bleibtreustrasse, Berlin, W. 13.

_(J. J. O'Molloy steps on to a low plinth and holds the lapel of his
coat with solemnity. His face lengthens, grows pale and bearded, with
sunken eyes, the blotches of phthisis and hectic cheekbones of John F.
Taylor. He applies his handkerchief to his mouth and scrutinises the
galloping tide of rosepink blood. )_

J. J. O'MOLLOY: _(Almost voicelessly)_ Excuse me. I am suffering from a
severe chill, have recently come from a sickbed. A few wellchosen words.
_(He assumes the avine head, foxy moustache and proboscidal eloquence of
Seymour Bushe. )_ When the angel's book comes to be opened if aught
that the pensive bosom has inaugurated of soultransfigured and of
soultransfiguring deserves to live I say accord the prisoner at the bar
the sacred benefit of the doubt. _(A paper with something written on it
is handed into court. _)

BLOOM: _(In court dress)_ Can give best references. Messrs Callan,
Coleman. Mr Wisdom Hely J. P. My old chief Joe Cuffe. Mr V. B. Dillon,
ex lord mayor of Dublin. I have moved in the charmed circle of the
highest. . . Queens of Dublin society. _(Carelessly)_ I was just chatting
this afternoon at the viceregal lodge to my old pals, sir Robert and
lady Ball, astronomer royal at the levee. Sir Bob, I said. . .

MRS YELVERTON BARRY: _(In lowcorsaged opal balldress and elbowlength
ivory gloves, wearing a sabletrimmed brickquilted dolman, a comb of
brilliants and panache of osprey in her hair)_ Arrest him, constable. He
wrote me an anonymous letter in prentice backhand when my husband was
in the North Riding of Tipperary on the Munster circuit, signed James
Lovebirch. He said that he had seen from the gods my peerless globes as
I sat in a box of the _Theatre Royal_ at a command performance of _La
Cigale_. I deeply inflamed him, he said. He made improper overtures
to me to misconduct myself at half past four p. m. on the following
Thursday, Dunsink time. He offered to send me through the post a work
of fiction by Monsieur Paul de Kock, entitled _The Girl with the Three
Pairs of Stays_.

MRS BELLINGHAM: _(In cap and seal coney mantle, wrapped up to the
nose, steps out of her brougham and scans through tortoiseshell
quizzing-glasses which she takes from inside her huge opossum muff)_
Also to me. Yes, I believe it is the same objectionable person.
Because
he closed my carriage door outside sir Thornley Stoker's one sleety day
during the cold snap of February ninetythree when even the grid of the
wastepipe and the ballstop in my bath cistern were frozen. Subsequently
he enclosed a bloom of edelweiss culled on the heights, as he said,
in my honour. I had it examined by a botanical expert and elicited the
information that it was ablossom of the homegrown potato plant purloined
from a forcingcase of the model farm.

MRS YELVERTON BARRY: Shame on him!

_(A crowd of sluts and ragamuffins surges forward)_

THE SLUTS AND RAGAMUFFINS: _(Screaming)_ Stop thief! Hurrah there,
Bluebeard! Three cheers for Ikey Mo!

SECOND WATCH: _(Produces handcuffs)_ Here are the darbies.

MRS BELLINGHAM: He addressed me in several handwritings with fulsome
compliments as a Venus in furs and alleged profound pity for my
frostbound coachman Palmer while in the same breath he expressed himself
as envious of his earflaps and fleecy sheepskins and of his fortunate
proximity to my person, when standing behind my chair wearing my livery
and the armorial bearings of the Bellingham escutcheon garnished sable,
a buck's head couped or. He lauded almost extravagantly my nether
extremities, my swelling calves in silk hose drawn up to the limit, and
eulogised glowingly my other hidden treasures in priceless lace which,
he said, he could conjure up. He urged me (stating that he felt it
his mission in life to urge me) to defile the marriage bed, to commit
adultery at the earliest possible opportunity.

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: _(In amazon costume, hard hat,
jackboots cockspurred, vermilion waistcoat, fawn musketeer gauntlets
with braided drums, long train held up and hunting crop with which she
strikes her welt constantly)_ Also me. Because he saw me on the polo
ground of the Phoenix park at the match All Ireland versus the Rest of
Ireland. My eyes, I know, shone divinely as I watched Captain Slogger
Dennehy of the Inniskillings win the final chukkar on his darling cob
_Centaur. _ This plebeian Don Juan observed me from behind a hackney car
and sent me in double envelopes an obscene photograph, such as are sold
after dark on Paris boulevards, insulting to any lady. I have it still.
It represents a partially nude senorita, frail and lovely (his wife, as
he solemnly assured me, taken by him from nature), practising illicit
intercourse with a muscular torero, evidently a blackguard. He urged me
to do likewise, to misbehave, to sin with officers of the garrison. He
implored me to soil his letter in an unspeakable manner, to chastise
him as he richly deserves, to bestride and ride him, to give him a most
vicious horsewhipping.

MRS BELLINGHAM: Me too.

MRS YELVERTON BARRY: Me too.

_(Several highly respectable Dublin ladies hold up improper letters
received from Bloom. )_

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: _(Stamps her jingling spurs in a
sudden paroxysm of fury)_ I will, by the God above me. I'll scourge the
pigeonlivered cur as long as I can stand over him. I'll flay him alive.

BLOOM: _(His eyes closing, quails expectantly)_ Here? _(He squirms)_
Again! _(He pants cringing)_ I love the danger.

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: Very much so! I'll make it hot for
you. I'll make you dance Jack Latten for that.

MRS BELLINGHAM: Tan his breech well, the upstart! Write the stars and
stripes on it!

MRS YELVERTON BARRY: Disgraceful! There's no excuse for him! A married
man!

BLOOM: All these people. I meant only the spanking idea. A warm tingling
glow without effusion. Refined birching to stimulate the circulation.

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: _(Laughs derisively)_ O, did you, my
fine fellow? Well, by the living God, you'll get the surprise of your
life now, believe me, the most unmerciful hiding a man ever bargained
for. You have lashed the dormant tigress in my nature into fury.

MRS BELLINGHAM: _(Shakes her muff and quizzing-glasses vindictively)_
Make him smart, Hanna dear. Give him ginger. Thrash the mongrel within
an inch of his life. The cat-o'-nine-tails. Geld him. Vivisect him.

BLOOM: _(Shuddering, shrinking, joins his hands: with hangdog mien)_ O
cold! O shivery! It was your ambrosial beauty. Forget, forgive. Kismet.
Let me off this once. _(He offers the other cheek)_

MRS YELVERTON BARRY: _(Severely)_ Don't do so on any account, Mrs
Talboys! He should be soundly trounced!

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: _(Unbuttoning her gauntlet
violently)_ I'll do no such thing. Pigdog and always was ever since
he was pupped! To dare address me! I'll flog him black and blue in
the public streets. I'll dig my spurs in him up to the rowel. He is a
wellknown cuckold. _(She swishes her huntingcrop savagely in the air)_
Take down his trousers without loss of time. Come here, sir! Quick!
Ready?

BLOOM: _(Trembling, beginning to obey)_ The weather has been so warm.

_(Davy Stephens, ringletted, passes with a bevy of barefoot newsboys. )_

DAVY STEPHENS: _Messenger of the Sacred Heart and Evening Telegraph_
with Saint Patrick's Day supplement. Containing the new addresses of all
the cuckolds in Dublin.

_(The very reverend Canon O'Hanlon in cloth of gold cope elevates and
exposes a marble timepiece. Before him Father Conroy and the reverend
John Hughes S. J. bend low. )_

THE TIMEPIECE: _(Unportalling)_

Cuckoo.
Cuckoo.
Cuckoo.

_(The brass quoits of a bed are heard to jingle. )_

THE QUOITS: Jigjag. Jigajiga. Jigjag.

_(A panel of fog rolls back rapidly, revealing rapidly in the jurybox
the faces of Martin Cunningham, foreman, silkhatted, Jack Power, Simon
Dedalus, Tom Kernan, Ned Lambert, John Henry Menton Myles Crawford,
Lenehan, Paddy Leonard, Nosey Flynn, M'Coy and the featureless face of a
Nameless One. )_

THE NAMELESS ONE: Bareback riding. Weight for age. Gob, he organised
her.

THE JURORS: _(All their heads turned to his voice)_ Really?

THE NAMELESS ONE: _(Snarls)_ Arse over tip. Hundred shillings to five.

THE JURORS: _(All their heads lowered in assent)_ Most of us thought as
much.

FIRST WATCH: He is a marked man. Another girl's plait cut. Wanted: Jack
the Ripper. A thousand pounds reward.

SECOND WATCH: _(Awed, whispers)_ And in black. A mormon. Anarchist.

THE CRIER: _(Loudly)_ Whereas Leopold Bloom of no fixed abode is a
wellknown dynamitard, forger, bigamist, bawd and cuckold and a public
nuisance to the citizens of Dublin and whereas at this commission of
assizes the most honourable. . .

_(His Honour, sir Frederick Falkiner, recorder of Dublin, in judicial
garb of grey stone rises from the bench, stonebearded. He bears in his
arms an umbrella sceptre. From his forehead arise starkly the Mosaic
ramshorns. )_

THE RECORDER: I will put an end to this white slave traffic and rid
Dublin of this odious pest. Scandalous! _(He dons the black cap)_ Let
him be taken, Mr Subsheriff, from the dock where he now stands and
detained in custody in Mountjoy prison during His Majesty's pleasure
and there be hanged by the neck until he is dead and therein fail not
at your peril or may the Lord have mercy on your soul. Remove him. _(A
black skullcap descends upon his head. )_

_(The subsheriff Long John Fanning appears, smoking a pungent Henry
Clay. )_

LONG JOHN FANNING: _(Scowls and calls with rich rolling utterance)_
Who'll hang Judas Iscariot?

_(H. Rumbold, master barber, in a bloodcoloured jerkin and tanner's
apron, a rope coiled over his shoulder, mounts the block. A life
preserver and a nailstudded bludgeon are stuck in his belt. He rubs
grimly his grappling hands, knobbed with knuckledusters. )_

RUMBOLD: _(To the recorder with sinister familiarity)_ Hanging Harry,
your Majesty, the Mersey terror. Five guineas a jugular. Neck or
nothing.

_(The bells of George's church toll slowly, loud dark iron. )_

THE BELLS: Heigho! Heigho!

BLOOM: _(Desperately)_ Wait. Stop. Gulls. Good heart. I saw. Innocence.
Girl in the monkeyhouse. Zoo. Lewd chimpanzee. _(Breathlessly)_ Pelvic
basin. Her artless blush unmanned me. _(Overcome with emotion)_ I left
the precincts. (He turns to a figure in the crowd, appealing) Hynes, may
I speak to you? You know me. That three shillings you can keep. If you
want a little more. . .

HYNES: _(Coldly)_ You are a perfect stranger.

SECOND WATCH: _(Points to the corner)_ The bomb is here.

FIRST WATCH: Infernal machine with a time fuse.

BLOOM: No, no. Pig's feet. I was at a funeral.

FIRST WATCH: _(Draws his truncheon)_ Liar!

_(The beagle lifts his snout, showing the grey scorbutic face of Paddy
Dignam. He has gnawed all. He exhales a putrid carcasefed breath.
He grows to human size and shape. His dachshund coat becomes a brown
mortuary habit. His green eye flashes bloodshot. Half of one ear, all
the nose and both thumbs are ghouleaten. )_

PADDY DIGNAM: _(In a hollow voice)_ It is true. It was my funeral.
Doctor Finucane pronounced life extinct when I succumbed to the disease
from natural causes.

_(He lifts his mutilated ashen face moonwards and bays lugubriously. )_

BLOOM: _(In triumph)_ You hear?

PADDY DIGNAM: Bloom, I am Paddy Dignam's spirit. List, list, O list!

BLOOM: The voice is the voice of Esau.

SECOND WATCH: _(Blesses himself)_ How is that possible?

FIRST WATCH: It is not in the penny catechism.

PADDY DIGNAM: By metempsychosis. Spooks.

A VOICE: O rocks.

PADDY DIGNAM: _(Earnestly)_ Once I was in the employ of Mr J. H. Menton,
solicitor, commissioner for oaths and affidavits, of 27 Bachelor's Walk.
Now I am defunct, the wall of the heart hypertrophied. Hard lines. The
poor wife was awfully cut up. How is she bearing it? Keep her off that
bottle of sherry. _(He looks round him)_ A lamp. I must satisfy an
animal need. That buttermilk didn't agree with me.

_(The portly figure of John O'Connell, caretaker, stands forth, holding
a bunch of keys tied with crape. Beside him stands Father Coffey,
chaplain, toadbellied, wrynecked, in a surplice and bandanna nightcap,
holding sleepily a staff twisted poppies. )_

FATHER COFFEY: _(Yawns, then chants with a hoarse croak)_ Namine.
Jacobs. Vobiscuits. Amen.

JOHN O'CONNELL: _(Foghorns stormily through his megaphone)_ Dignam,
Patrick T, deceased.

PADDY DIGNAM: _(With pricked up ears, winces)_ Overtones. _(He wriggles
forward and places an ear to the ground)_ My master's voice!

JOHN O'CONNELL: Burial docket letter number U. P. eightyfive thousand.
Field seventeen. House of Keys. Plot, one hundred and one.

_(Paddy Dignam listens with visible effort, thinking, his tail
stiffpointcd, his ears cocked. )_

PADDY DIGNAM: Pray for the repose of his soul.

_(He worms down through a coalhole, his brown habit trailing its tether
over rattling pebbles. After him toddles an obese grandfather rat on
fungus turtle paws under a grey carapace. Dignam's voice, muffled, is
heard baying under ground:_ Dignam's dead and gone below. _Tom Rochford,
robinredbreasted, in cap and breeches, jumps from his twocolumned
machine. )_

TOM ROCHFORD: _(A hand to his breastbone, bows)_ Reuben J. A florin I
find him. _(He fixes the manhole with a resolute stare)_ My turn now on.
Follow me up to Carlow.