Stubborn
as a mule!
James Joyce - Ulysses
Eh?
Rome boose for the Bloom toff.
I hear you say
onions? Bloo? Cadges ads. Photo's papli, by all that's gorgeous. Play
low, pardner. Slide. _Bonsoir la compagnie_. And snares of the poxfiend.
Where's the buck and Namby Amby? Skunked? Leg bail. Aweel, ye maun e'en
gang yer gates. Checkmate. King to tower. Kind Kristyann wil yu help
yung man hoose frend tuk bungellow kee tu find plais whear tu lay crown
of his hed 2 night. Crickey, I'm about sprung. Tarnally dog gone my
shins if this beent the bestest puttiest longbreak yet. Item, curate,
couple of cookies for this child. Cot's plood and prandypalls, none! Not
a pite of sheeses? Thrust syphilis down to hell and with him those other
licensed spirits. Time, gents! Who wander through the world. Health all!
_a la votre_!
Golly, whatten tunket's yon guy in the mackintosh? Dusty Rhodes. Peep
at his wearables. By mighty! What's he got? Jubilee mutton. Bovril,
by James. Wants it real bad. D'ye ken bare socks? Seedy cuss in the
Richmond? Rawthere! Thought he had a deposit of lead in his penis.
Trumpery insanity. Bartle the Bread we calls him. That, sir, was once
a prosperous cit. Man all tattered and torn that married a maiden all
forlorn. Slung her hook, she did. Here see lost love. Walking Mackintosh
of lonely canyon. Tuck and turn in. Schedule time. Nix for the hornies.
Pardon? Seen him today at a runefal? Chum o' yourn passed in his checks?
Ludamassy! Pore piccaninnies! Thou'll no be telling me thot, Pold veg!
Did ums blubble bigsplash crytears cos fren Padney was took off in black
bag? Of all de darkies Massa Pat was verra best. I never see the like
since I was born. _Tiens, tiens_, but it is well sad, that, my faith,
yes. O, get, rev on a gradient one in nine. Live axle drives are souped.
Lay you two to one Jenatzy licks him ruddy well hollow. Jappies? High
angle fire, inyah! Sunk by war specials. Be worse for him, says he, nor
any Rooshian. Time all. There's eleven of them. Get ye gone. Forward,
woozy wobblers! Night. Night. May Allah the Excellent One your soul this
night ever tremendously conserve.
Your attention! We're nae tha fou. The Leith police dismisseth us. The
least tholice. Ware hawks for the chap puking. Unwell in his abominable
regions. Yooka. Night. Mona, my true love. Yook. Mona, my own love. Ook.
Hark! Shut your obstropolos. Pflaap! Pflaap! Blaze on. There she goes.
Brigade! Bout ship. Mount street way. Cut up! Pflaap! Tally ho. You not
come? Run, skelter, race. Pflaaaap!
Lynch! Hey? Sign on long o' me. Denzille lane this way. Change here for
Bawdyhouse. We two, she said, will seek the kips where shady Mary is.
Righto, any old time. _Laetabuntur in cubilibus suis_. You coming long?
Whisper, who the sooty hell's the johnny in the black duds? Hush! Sinned
against the light and even now that day is at hand when he shall come to
judge the world by fire. Pflaap! _Ut implerentur scripturae_. Strike
up a ballad. Then outspake medical Dick to his comrade medical Davy.
Christicle, who's this excrement yellow gospeller on the Merrion
hall? Elijah is coming! Washed in the blood of the Lamb. Come on you
winefizzling, ginsizzling, booseguzzling existences! Come on, you
dog-gone, bullnecked, beetlebrowed, hogjowled, peanutbrained, weaseleyed
fourflushers, false alarms and excess baggage! Come on, you triple
extract of infamy! Alexander J Christ Dowie, that's my name, that's
yanked to glory most half this planet from Frisco beach to Vladivostok.
The Deity aint no nickel dime bumshow. I put it to you that He's on the
square and a corking fine business proposition. He's the grandest thing
yet and don't you forget it. Shout salvation in King Jesus. You'll
need to rise precious early you sinner there, if you want to diddle the
Almighty God. Pflaaaap! Not half. He's got a coughmixture with a punch
in it for you, my friend, in his back pocket. Just you try it on.
_The Mabbot street entrance of nighttown, before which stretches
an uncobbled tramsiding set with skeleton tracks, red and green
will-o'-the-wisps and danger signals. Rows of grimy houses with gaping
doors. Rare lamps with faint rainbow fins. Round Rabaiotti's halted ice
gondola stunted men and women squabble. They grab wafers between which
are wedged lumps of coral and copper snow. Sucking, they scatter slowly.
Children. The swancomb of the gondola, highreared, forges on through the
murk, white and blue under a lighthouse. Whistles call and answer. _
THE CALLS: Wait, my love, and I'll be with you.
THE ANSWERS: Round behind the stable.
_(A deafmute idiot with goggle eyes, his shapeless mouth dribbling,
jerks past, shaken in Saint Vitus' dance. A chain of children 's hands
imprisons him. )_
THE CHILDREN: Kithogue! Salute!
THE IDIOT: _(Lifts a palsied left arm and gurgles)_ Grhahute!
THE CHILDREN: Where's the great light?
THE IDIOT: _(Gobbing)_ Ghaghahest.
_(They release him. He jerks on. A pigmy woman swings on a rope slung
between two railings, counting. A form sprawled against a dustbin and
muffled by its arm and hat snores, groans, grinding growling teeth, and
snores again. On a step a gnome totting among a rubbishtip crouches
to shoulder a sack of rags and bones. A crone standing by with a smoky
oillamp rams her last bottle in the maw of his sack. He heaves his
booty, tugs askew his peaked cap and hobbles off mutely. The crone
makes back for her lair, swaying her lamp. A bandy child, asquat on the
doorstep with a paper shuttlecock, crawls sidling after her in spurts,
clutches her skirt, scrambles up. A drunken navvy grips with both hands
the railings of an area, lurching heavily. At a comer two night watch in
shouldercapes, their hands upon their staffholsters, loom tall. A plate
crashes: a woman screams: a child wails. Oaths of a man roar, mutter,
cease. Figures wander, lurk, peer from warrens. In a room lit by a
candle stuck in a bottleneck a slut combs out the tatts from the hair
of a scrofulous child. Cissy Caffrey's voice, still young, sings shrill
from a lane. )_
CISSY CAFFREY:
_I gave it to Molly
Because she was jolly,
The leg of the duck,
The leg of the duck. _
_(Private Carr and Private Compton, swaggersticks tight in their oxters,
as they march unsteadily rightaboutface and burst together from their
mouths a volleyed fart. Laughter of men from the lane. A hoarse virago
retorts. )_
THE VIRAGO: Signs on you, hairy arse. More power the Cavan girl.
CISSY CAFFREY: More luck to me. Cavan, Cootehill and Belturbet. _(She
sings)_
_I gave it to Nelly
To stick in her belly,
The leg of the duck,
The leg of the duck. _
_(Private Carr and Private Compton turn and counterretort, their tunics
bloodbright in a lampglow, black sockets of caps on their blond cropped
polls. Stephen Dedalus and Lynch pass through the crowd close to the
redcoats. )_
PRIVATE COMPTON: _(Jerks his finger)_ Way for the parson.
PRIVATE CARR: _(Turns and calls)_ What ho, parson!
CISSY CAFFREY: _(Her voice soaring higher)_
_She has it, she got it,
Wherever she put it,
The leg of the duck. _
_(Stephen, flourishing the ashplant in his left hand, chants with joy
the_ introit _for paschal time. Lynch, his jockeycap low on his brow,
attends him, a sneer of discontent wrinkling his face. )_
STEPHEN: _Vidi aquam egredientem de templo a latere dextro. Alleluia_.
_(The famished snaggletusks of an elderly bawd protrude from a
doorway. )_
THE BAWD: _(Her voice whispering huskily)_ Sst! Come here till I tell
you. Maidenhead inside. Sst!
STEPHEN: _(Altius aliquantulum) Et omnes ad quos pervenit aqua ista_.
THE BAWD: _(Spits in their trail her jet of venom)_ Trinity medicals.
Fallopian tube. All prick and no pence.
_(Edy Boardman, sniffling, crouched with bertha supple, draws her shawl
across her nostrils. )_
EDY BOARDMAN: _(Bickering)_ And says the one: I seen you up Faithful
place with your squarepusher, the greaser off the railway, in his
cometobed hat. Did you, says I. That's not for you to say, says I. You
never seen me in the mantrap with a married highlander, says I. The
likes of her! Stag that one is!
Stubborn as a mule! And her walking with
two fellows the one time, Kilbride, the enginedriver, and lancecorporal
Oliphant.
STEPHEN: _(Ttriumphaliter) Salvi facti sunt. _
_(He flourishes his ashplant, shivering the lamp image, shattering light
over the world. A liver and white spaniel on the prowl slinks after him,
growling. Lynch scares it with a kick. )_
LYNCH: So that?
STEPHEN: (_Looks behind_) So that gesture, not music not odour, would be
a universal language, the gift of tongues rendering visible not the lay
sense but the first entelechy, the structural rhythm.
LYNCH: Pornosophical philotheology. Metaphysics in Mecklenburgh street!
STEPHEN: We have shrewridden Shakespeare and henpecked Socrates. Even
the allwisest Stagyrite was bitted, bridled and mounted by a light of
love.
LYNCH: Ba!
STEPHEN: Anyway, who wants two gestures to illustrate a loaf and a jug?
This movement illustrates the loaf and jug of bread or wine in Omar.
Hold my stick.
LYNCH: Damn your yellow stick. Where are we going?
STEPHEN: Lecherous lynx, _to la belle dame sans merci,_ Georgina
Johnson, _ad deam qui laetificat iuventutem meam. _
_(Stephen thrusts the ashplant on him and slowly holds out his hands,
his head going back till both hands are a span from his breast, down
turned, in planes intersecting, the fingers about to part, the left
being higher. )_
LYNCH: Which is the jug of bread? It skills not. That or the
customhouse. Illustrate thou. Here take your crutch and walk.
_(They pass. Tommy Caffrey scrambles to a gaslamp and, clasping, climbs
in spasms. From the top spur he slides down. Jacky Caffrey clasps to
climb. The navvy lurches against the lamp. The twins scuttle off in the
dark. The navvy, swaying, presses a forefinger against a wing of his
nose and ejects from the farther nostril a long liquid jet of snot.
Shouldering the lamp he staggers away through the crowd with his flaring
cresset. _
_Snakes of river fog creep slowly. From drains, clefts, cesspools,
middens arise on all sides stagnant fumes. A glow leaps in the south
beyond the seaward reaches of the river. The navvy, staggering forward,
cleaves the crowd and lurches towards the tramsiding on the farther side
under the railway bridge bloom appears, flushed, panting, cramming bread
and chocolate into a sidepocket. From Gillen's hairdresser's window a
composite portrait shows him gallant Nelson's image. A concave mirror
at the side presents to him lovelorn longlost lugubru Booloohoom. Grave
Gladstone sees him level, Bloom for Bloom. he passes, struck by the
stare of truculent Wellington, but in the convex mirror grin unstruck
the bonham eyes and fatchuck cheekchops of Jollypoldy the rixdix doldy. _
_At Antonio Pabaiotti's door Bloom halts, sweated under the bright
arclamp. He disappears. In a moment he reappears and hurries on. )_
BLOOM: Fish and taters. N. g. Ah!
_(He disappears into Olhausen's, the porkbutcher's, under the downcoming
rollshutter. A few moments later he emerges from under the shutter,
puffing Poldy, blowing Bloohoom. In each hand he holds a parcel, one
containing a lukewarm pig's crubeen, the other a cold sheep's trotter,
sprinkled with wholepepper. He gasps, standing upright. Then bending to
one side he presses a parcel against his ribs and groans. )_
BLOOM: Stitch in my side. Why did I run?
_(He takes breath with care and goes forward slowly towards the lampset
siding. The glow leaps again. )_
BLOOM: What is that? A flasher? Searchlight.
_(He stands at Cormack's corner, watching)_
BLOOM: _Aurora borealis_ or a steel foundry? Ah, the brigade, of course.
South side anyhow. Big blaze. Might be his house. Beggar's bush. We're
safe. _(He hums cheerfully)_ London's burning, London's burning! On
fire, on fire! (_He catches sight of the navvy lurching through the
crowd at the farther side of Talbot street_) I'll miss him. Run. Quick.
Better cross here.
_(He darts to cross the road. Urchins shout. )_
THE URCHINS: Mind out, mister! (_Two cyclists, with lighted paper
lanterns aswing, swim by him, grazing him, their bells rattling_)
THE BELLS: Haltyaltyaltyall.
BLOOM: _(Halts erect, stung by a spasm)_ Ow!
_(He looks round, darts forward suddenly. Through rising fog a dragon
sandstrewer, travelling at caution, slews heavily down upon him,
its huge red headlight winking, its trolley hissing on the wire. The
motorman bangs his footgong. )_
THE GONG: Bang Bang Bla Bak Blud Bugg Bloo.
_(The brake cracks violently. Bloom, raising a policeman's whitegloved
hand, blunders stifflegged out of the track. The motorman, thrown
forward, pugnosed, on the guidewheel, yells as he slides past over
chains and keys. )_
THE MOTORMAN: Hey, shitbreeches, are you doing the hat trick?
BLOOM: _(Bloom trickleaps to the curbstone and halts again. He brushes a
mudflake from his cheek with a parcelled hand. )_ No thoroughfare. Close
shave that but cured the stitch. Must take up Sandow's exercises again.
On the hands down. Insure against street accident too. The Providential.
_(He feels his trouser pocket)_ Poor mamma's panacea. Heel easily catch
in track or bootlace in a cog. Day the wheel of the black Maria peeled
off my shoe at Leonard's corner. Third time is the charm. Shoe trick.
Insolent driver. I ought to report him. Tension makes them nervous.
Might be the fellow balked me this morning with that horsey woman. Same
style of beauty. Quick of him all the same. The stiff walk. True word
spoken in jest. That awful cramp in Lad lane. Something poisonous I
ate. Emblem of luck. Why? Probably lost cattle. Mark of the beast. _(He
closes his eyes an instant)_ Bit light in the head. Monthly or effect of
the other. Brainfogfag. That tired feeling. Too much for me now. Ow!
(A sinister figure leans on plaited legs against o'beirne's wall, a
visage unknown, injected with dark mercury. From under a wideleaved
sombrero the figure regards him with evil eye. )
BLOOM: _Buenas noches, senorita Blanca, que calle es esta? _
THE FIGURE: (_Impassive, raises a signal arm_) Password. _Sraid Mabbot. _
BLOOM: Haha. _Merci. _ Esperanto. _Slan leath. (He mutters)_ Gaelic
league spy, sent by that fireeater.
_(He steps forward. A sackshouldered ragman bars his path. He steps
left, ragsackman left. )_
BLOOM: I beg. (_He swerves, sidles, stepaside, slips past and on_. )
BLOOM: Keep to the right, right, right. If there is a signpost planted
by the Touring Club at Stepaside who procured that public boon? I who
lost my way and contributed to the columns of the _Irish Cyclist_ the
letter headed _In darkest Stepaside_. Keep, keep, keep to the right.
Rags and bones at midnight. A fence more likely. First place murderer
makes for. Wash off his sins of the world.
_(Jacky Caffrey, hunted by Tommy Caffrey, runs full tilt against
Bloom. )_
BLOOM: O
_(Shocked, on weak hams, he halts. Tommy and Jacky vanish there, there.
Bloom pats with parcelled hands watch fobpocket, bookpocket, pursepoket,
sweets of sin, potato soap. )_
BLOOM: Beware of pickpockets. Old thieves' dodge. Collide. Then snatch
your purse.
_(The retriever approaches sniffing, nose to the ground. A sprawled form
sneezes. A stooped bearded figure appears garbed in the long caftan
of an elder in Zion and a smokingcap with magenta tassels. Horned
spectacles hang down at the wings of the nose. Yellow poison streaks are
on the drawn face. )_
RUDOLPH: Second halfcrown waste money today. I told you not go with
drunken goy ever. So you catch no money.
BLOOM: _(Hides the crubeen and trotter behind his back and, crestfallen,
feels warm and cold feetmeat) Ja, ich weiss, papachi. _
RUDOLPH: What you making down this place? Have you no soul? _(with
feeble vulture talons he feels the silent face of Bloom)_ Are you not
my son Leopold, the grandson of Leopold? Are you not my dear son Leopold
who left the house of his father and left the god of his fathers Abraham
and Jacob?
BLOOM: _(With precaution)_ I suppose so, father. Mosenthal. All that's
left of him.
RUDOLPH: _(Severely)_ One night they bring you home drunk as dog after
spend your good money. What you call them running chaps?
BLOOM: _(In youth's smart blue Oxford suit with white vestslips,
narrowshouldered, in brown Alpine hat, wearing gent's sterling silver
waterbury keyless watch and double curb Albert with seal attached, one
side of him coated with stiffening mud)_ Harriers, father. Only that
once.
RUDOLPH: Once! Mud head to foot. Cut your hand open. Lockjaw. They make
you kaputt, Leopoldleben. You watch them chaps.
BLOOM: _(Weakly)_ They challenged me to a sprint. It was muddy. I
slipped.
RUDOLPH: _(With contempt) Goim nachez_! Nice spectacles for your poor
mother!
BLOOM: Mamma!
ELLEN BLOOM: _(In pantomime dame's stringed mobcap, widow Twankey's
crinoline and bustle, blouse with muttonleg sleeves buttoned behind,
grey mittens and cameo brooch, her plaited hair in a crispine net,
appears over the staircase banisters, a slanted candlestick in her hand,
and cries out in shrill alarm)_ O blessed Redeemer, what have they done
to him! My smelling salts! _(She hauls up a reef of skirt and ransacks
the pouch of her striped blay petticoat. A phial, an Agnus Dei, a
shrivelled potato and a celluloid doll fall out)_ Sacred Heart of Mary,
where were you at all at all?
_(Bloom, mumbling, his eyes downcast, begins to bestow his parcels in
his filled pockets but desists, muttering. )_
A VOICE: _(Sharply)_ Poldy!
BLOOM: Who? _(He ducks and wards off a blow clumsily)_ At your service.
_(He looks up. Beside her mirage of datepalms a handsome woman in
Turkish costume stands before him. Opulent curves fill out her scarlet
trousers and jacket, slashed with gold. A wide yellow cummerbund girdles
her. A white yashmak, violet in the night, covers her face, leaving free
only her large dark eyes and raven hair. )_
BLOOM: Molly!
MARION: Welly? Mrs Marion from this out, my dear man, when you speak to
me. _(Satirically)_ Has poor little hubby cold feet waiting so long?
BLOOM: _(Shifts from foot to foot)_ No, no. Not the least little bit.
onions? Bloo? Cadges ads. Photo's papli, by all that's gorgeous. Play
low, pardner. Slide. _Bonsoir la compagnie_. And snares of the poxfiend.
Where's the buck and Namby Amby? Skunked? Leg bail. Aweel, ye maun e'en
gang yer gates. Checkmate. King to tower. Kind Kristyann wil yu help
yung man hoose frend tuk bungellow kee tu find plais whear tu lay crown
of his hed 2 night. Crickey, I'm about sprung. Tarnally dog gone my
shins if this beent the bestest puttiest longbreak yet. Item, curate,
couple of cookies for this child. Cot's plood and prandypalls, none! Not
a pite of sheeses? Thrust syphilis down to hell and with him those other
licensed spirits. Time, gents! Who wander through the world. Health all!
_a la votre_!
Golly, whatten tunket's yon guy in the mackintosh? Dusty Rhodes. Peep
at his wearables. By mighty! What's he got? Jubilee mutton. Bovril,
by James. Wants it real bad. D'ye ken bare socks? Seedy cuss in the
Richmond? Rawthere! Thought he had a deposit of lead in his penis.
Trumpery insanity. Bartle the Bread we calls him. That, sir, was once
a prosperous cit. Man all tattered and torn that married a maiden all
forlorn. Slung her hook, she did. Here see lost love. Walking Mackintosh
of lonely canyon. Tuck and turn in. Schedule time. Nix for the hornies.
Pardon? Seen him today at a runefal? Chum o' yourn passed in his checks?
Ludamassy! Pore piccaninnies! Thou'll no be telling me thot, Pold veg!
Did ums blubble bigsplash crytears cos fren Padney was took off in black
bag? Of all de darkies Massa Pat was verra best. I never see the like
since I was born. _Tiens, tiens_, but it is well sad, that, my faith,
yes. O, get, rev on a gradient one in nine. Live axle drives are souped.
Lay you two to one Jenatzy licks him ruddy well hollow. Jappies? High
angle fire, inyah! Sunk by war specials. Be worse for him, says he, nor
any Rooshian. Time all. There's eleven of them. Get ye gone. Forward,
woozy wobblers! Night. Night. May Allah the Excellent One your soul this
night ever tremendously conserve.
Your attention! We're nae tha fou. The Leith police dismisseth us. The
least tholice. Ware hawks for the chap puking. Unwell in his abominable
regions. Yooka. Night. Mona, my true love. Yook. Mona, my own love. Ook.
Hark! Shut your obstropolos. Pflaap! Pflaap! Blaze on. There she goes.
Brigade! Bout ship. Mount street way. Cut up! Pflaap! Tally ho. You not
come? Run, skelter, race. Pflaaaap!
Lynch! Hey? Sign on long o' me. Denzille lane this way. Change here for
Bawdyhouse. We two, she said, will seek the kips where shady Mary is.
Righto, any old time. _Laetabuntur in cubilibus suis_. You coming long?
Whisper, who the sooty hell's the johnny in the black duds? Hush! Sinned
against the light and even now that day is at hand when he shall come to
judge the world by fire. Pflaap! _Ut implerentur scripturae_. Strike
up a ballad. Then outspake medical Dick to his comrade medical Davy.
Christicle, who's this excrement yellow gospeller on the Merrion
hall? Elijah is coming! Washed in the blood of the Lamb. Come on you
winefizzling, ginsizzling, booseguzzling existences! Come on, you
dog-gone, bullnecked, beetlebrowed, hogjowled, peanutbrained, weaseleyed
fourflushers, false alarms and excess baggage! Come on, you triple
extract of infamy! Alexander J Christ Dowie, that's my name, that's
yanked to glory most half this planet from Frisco beach to Vladivostok.
The Deity aint no nickel dime bumshow. I put it to you that He's on the
square and a corking fine business proposition. He's the grandest thing
yet and don't you forget it. Shout salvation in King Jesus. You'll
need to rise precious early you sinner there, if you want to diddle the
Almighty God. Pflaaaap! Not half. He's got a coughmixture with a punch
in it for you, my friend, in his back pocket. Just you try it on.
_The Mabbot street entrance of nighttown, before which stretches
an uncobbled tramsiding set with skeleton tracks, red and green
will-o'-the-wisps and danger signals. Rows of grimy houses with gaping
doors. Rare lamps with faint rainbow fins. Round Rabaiotti's halted ice
gondola stunted men and women squabble. They grab wafers between which
are wedged lumps of coral and copper snow. Sucking, they scatter slowly.
Children. The swancomb of the gondola, highreared, forges on through the
murk, white and blue under a lighthouse. Whistles call and answer. _
THE CALLS: Wait, my love, and I'll be with you.
THE ANSWERS: Round behind the stable.
_(A deafmute idiot with goggle eyes, his shapeless mouth dribbling,
jerks past, shaken in Saint Vitus' dance. A chain of children 's hands
imprisons him. )_
THE CHILDREN: Kithogue! Salute!
THE IDIOT: _(Lifts a palsied left arm and gurgles)_ Grhahute!
THE CHILDREN: Where's the great light?
THE IDIOT: _(Gobbing)_ Ghaghahest.
_(They release him. He jerks on. A pigmy woman swings on a rope slung
between two railings, counting. A form sprawled against a dustbin and
muffled by its arm and hat snores, groans, grinding growling teeth, and
snores again. On a step a gnome totting among a rubbishtip crouches
to shoulder a sack of rags and bones. A crone standing by with a smoky
oillamp rams her last bottle in the maw of his sack. He heaves his
booty, tugs askew his peaked cap and hobbles off mutely. The crone
makes back for her lair, swaying her lamp. A bandy child, asquat on the
doorstep with a paper shuttlecock, crawls sidling after her in spurts,
clutches her skirt, scrambles up. A drunken navvy grips with both hands
the railings of an area, lurching heavily. At a comer two night watch in
shouldercapes, their hands upon their staffholsters, loom tall. A plate
crashes: a woman screams: a child wails. Oaths of a man roar, mutter,
cease. Figures wander, lurk, peer from warrens. In a room lit by a
candle stuck in a bottleneck a slut combs out the tatts from the hair
of a scrofulous child. Cissy Caffrey's voice, still young, sings shrill
from a lane. )_
CISSY CAFFREY:
_I gave it to Molly
Because she was jolly,
The leg of the duck,
The leg of the duck. _
_(Private Carr and Private Compton, swaggersticks tight in their oxters,
as they march unsteadily rightaboutface and burst together from their
mouths a volleyed fart. Laughter of men from the lane. A hoarse virago
retorts. )_
THE VIRAGO: Signs on you, hairy arse. More power the Cavan girl.
CISSY CAFFREY: More luck to me. Cavan, Cootehill and Belturbet. _(She
sings)_
_I gave it to Nelly
To stick in her belly,
The leg of the duck,
The leg of the duck. _
_(Private Carr and Private Compton turn and counterretort, their tunics
bloodbright in a lampglow, black sockets of caps on their blond cropped
polls. Stephen Dedalus and Lynch pass through the crowd close to the
redcoats. )_
PRIVATE COMPTON: _(Jerks his finger)_ Way for the parson.
PRIVATE CARR: _(Turns and calls)_ What ho, parson!
CISSY CAFFREY: _(Her voice soaring higher)_
_She has it, she got it,
Wherever she put it,
The leg of the duck. _
_(Stephen, flourishing the ashplant in his left hand, chants with joy
the_ introit _for paschal time. Lynch, his jockeycap low on his brow,
attends him, a sneer of discontent wrinkling his face. )_
STEPHEN: _Vidi aquam egredientem de templo a latere dextro. Alleluia_.
_(The famished snaggletusks of an elderly bawd protrude from a
doorway. )_
THE BAWD: _(Her voice whispering huskily)_ Sst! Come here till I tell
you. Maidenhead inside. Sst!
STEPHEN: _(Altius aliquantulum) Et omnes ad quos pervenit aqua ista_.
THE BAWD: _(Spits in their trail her jet of venom)_ Trinity medicals.
Fallopian tube. All prick and no pence.
_(Edy Boardman, sniffling, crouched with bertha supple, draws her shawl
across her nostrils. )_
EDY BOARDMAN: _(Bickering)_ And says the one: I seen you up Faithful
place with your squarepusher, the greaser off the railway, in his
cometobed hat. Did you, says I. That's not for you to say, says I. You
never seen me in the mantrap with a married highlander, says I. The
likes of her! Stag that one is!
Stubborn as a mule! And her walking with
two fellows the one time, Kilbride, the enginedriver, and lancecorporal
Oliphant.
STEPHEN: _(Ttriumphaliter) Salvi facti sunt. _
_(He flourishes his ashplant, shivering the lamp image, shattering light
over the world. A liver and white spaniel on the prowl slinks after him,
growling. Lynch scares it with a kick. )_
LYNCH: So that?
STEPHEN: (_Looks behind_) So that gesture, not music not odour, would be
a universal language, the gift of tongues rendering visible not the lay
sense but the first entelechy, the structural rhythm.
LYNCH: Pornosophical philotheology. Metaphysics in Mecklenburgh street!
STEPHEN: We have shrewridden Shakespeare and henpecked Socrates. Even
the allwisest Stagyrite was bitted, bridled and mounted by a light of
love.
LYNCH: Ba!
STEPHEN: Anyway, who wants two gestures to illustrate a loaf and a jug?
This movement illustrates the loaf and jug of bread or wine in Omar.
Hold my stick.
LYNCH: Damn your yellow stick. Where are we going?
STEPHEN: Lecherous lynx, _to la belle dame sans merci,_ Georgina
Johnson, _ad deam qui laetificat iuventutem meam. _
_(Stephen thrusts the ashplant on him and slowly holds out his hands,
his head going back till both hands are a span from his breast, down
turned, in planes intersecting, the fingers about to part, the left
being higher. )_
LYNCH: Which is the jug of bread? It skills not. That or the
customhouse. Illustrate thou. Here take your crutch and walk.
_(They pass. Tommy Caffrey scrambles to a gaslamp and, clasping, climbs
in spasms. From the top spur he slides down. Jacky Caffrey clasps to
climb. The navvy lurches against the lamp. The twins scuttle off in the
dark. The navvy, swaying, presses a forefinger against a wing of his
nose and ejects from the farther nostril a long liquid jet of snot.
Shouldering the lamp he staggers away through the crowd with his flaring
cresset. _
_Snakes of river fog creep slowly. From drains, clefts, cesspools,
middens arise on all sides stagnant fumes. A glow leaps in the south
beyond the seaward reaches of the river. The navvy, staggering forward,
cleaves the crowd and lurches towards the tramsiding on the farther side
under the railway bridge bloom appears, flushed, panting, cramming bread
and chocolate into a sidepocket. From Gillen's hairdresser's window a
composite portrait shows him gallant Nelson's image. A concave mirror
at the side presents to him lovelorn longlost lugubru Booloohoom. Grave
Gladstone sees him level, Bloom for Bloom. he passes, struck by the
stare of truculent Wellington, but in the convex mirror grin unstruck
the bonham eyes and fatchuck cheekchops of Jollypoldy the rixdix doldy. _
_At Antonio Pabaiotti's door Bloom halts, sweated under the bright
arclamp. He disappears. In a moment he reappears and hurries on. )_
BLOOM: Fish and taters. N. g. Ah!
_(He disappears into Olhausen's, the porkbutcher's, under the downcoming
rollshutter. A few moments later he emerges from under the shutter,
puffing Poldy, blowing Bloohoom. In each hand he holds a parcel, one
containing a lukewarm pig's crubeen, the other a cold sheep's trotter,
sprinkled with wholepepper. He gasps, standing upright. Then bending to
one side he presses a parcel against his ribs and groans. )_
BLOOM: Stitch in my side. Why did I run?
_(He takes breath with care and goes forward slowly towards the lampset
siding. The glow leaps again. )_
BLOOM: What is that? A flasher? Searchlight.
_(He stands at Cormack's corner, watching)_
BLOOM: _Aurora borealis_ or a steel foundry? Ah, the brigade, of course.
South side anyhow. Big blaze. Might be his house. Beggar's bush. We're
safe. _(He hums cheerfully)_ London's burning, London's burning! On
fire, on fire! (_He catches sight of the navvy lurching through the
crowd at the farther side of Talbot street_) I'll miss him. Run. Quick.
Better cross here.
_(He darts to cross the road. Urchins shout. )_
THE URCHINS: Mind out, mister! (_Two cyclists, with lighted paper
lanterns aswing, swim by him, grazing him, their bells rattling_)
THE BELLS: Haltyaltyaltyall.
BLOOM: _(Halts erect, stung by a spasm)_ Ow!
_(He looks round, darts forward suddenly. Through rising fog a dragon
sandstrewer, travelling at caution, slews heavily down upon him,
its huge red headlight winking, its trolley hissing on the wire. The
motorman bangs his footgong. )_
THE GONG: Bang Bang Bla Bak Blud Bugg Bloo.
_(The brake cracks violently. Bloom, raising a policeman's whitegloved
hand, blunders stifflegged out of the track. The motorman, thrown
forward, pugnosed, on the guidewheel, yells as he slides past over
chains and keys. )_
THE MOTORMAN: Hey, shitbreeches, are you doing the hat trick?
BLOOM: _(Bloom trickleaps to the curbstone and halts again. He brushes a
mudflake from his cheek with a parcelled hand. )_ No thoroughfare. Close
shave that but cured the stitch. Must take up Sandow's exercises again.
On the hands down. Insure against street accident too. The Providential.
_(He feels his trouser pocket)_ Poor mamma's panacea. Heel easily catch
in track or bootlace in a cog. Day the wheel of the black Maria peeled
off my shoe at Leonard's corner. Third time is the charm. Shoe trick.
Insolent driver. I ought to report him. Tension makes them nervous.
Might be the fellow balked me this morning with that horsey woman. Same
style of beauty. Quick of him all the same. The stiff walk. True word
spoken in jest. That awful cramp in Lad lane. Something poisonous I
ate. Emblem of luck. Why? Probably lost cattle. Mark of the beast. _(He
closes his eyes an instant)_ Bit light in the head. Monthly or effect of
the other. Brainfogfag. That tired feeling. Too much for me now. Ow!
(A sinister figure leans on plaited legs against o'beirne's wall, a
visage unknown, injected with dark mercury. From under a wideleaved
sombrero the figure regards him with evil eye. )
BLOOM: _Buenas noches, senorita Blanca, que calle es esta? _
THE FIGURE: (_Impassive, raises a signal arm_) Password. _Sraid Mabbot. _
BLOOM: Haha. _Merci. _ Esperanto. _Slan leath. (He mutters)_ Gaelic
league spy, sent by that fireeater.
_(He steps forward. A sackshouldered ragman bars his path. He steps
left, ragsackman left. )_
BLOOM: I beg. (_He swerves, sidles, stepaside, slips past and on_. )
BLOOM: Keep to the right, right, right. If there is a signpost planted
by the Touring Club at Stepaside who procured that public boon? I who
lost my way and contributed to the columns of the _Irish Cyclist_ the
letter headed _In darkest Stepaside_. Keep, keep, keep to the right.
Rags and bones at midnight. A fence more likely. First place murderer
makes for. Wash off his sins of the world.
_(Jacky Caffrey, hunted by Tommy Caffrey, runs full tilt against
Bloom. )_
BLOOM: O
_(Shocked, on weak hams, he halts. Tommy and Jacky vanish there, there.
Bloom pats with parcelled hands watch fobpocket, bookpocket, pursepoket,
sweets of sin, potato soap. )_
BLOOM: Beware of pickpockets. Old thieves' dodge. Collide. Then snatch
your purse.
_(The retriever approaches sniffing, nose to the ground. A sprawled form
sneezes. A stooped bearded figure appears garbed in the long caftan
of an elder in Zion and a smokingcap with magenta tassels. Horned
spectacles hang down at the wings of the nose. Yellow poison streaks are
on the drawn face. )_
RUDOLPH: Second halfcrown waste money today. I told you not go with
drunken goy ever. So you catch no money.
BLOOM: _(Hides the crubeen and trotter behind his back and, crestfallen,
feels warm and cold feetmeat) Ja, ich weiss, papachi. _
RUDOLPH: What you making down this place? Have you no soul? _(with
feeble vulture talons he feels the silent face of Bloom)_ Are you not
my son Leopold, the grandson of Leopold? Are you not my dear son Leopold
who left the house of his father and left the god of his fathers Abraham
and Jacob?
BLOOM: _(With precaution)_ I suppose so, father. Mosenthal. All that's
left of him.
RUDOLPH: _(Severely)_ One night they bring you home drunk as dog after
spend your good money. What you call them running chaps?
BLOOM: _(In youth's smart blue Oxford suit with white vestslips,
narrowshouldered, in brown Alpine hat, wearing gent's sterling silver
waterbury keyless watch and double curb Albert with seal attached, one
side of him coated with stiffening mud)_ Harriers, father. Only that
once.
RUDOLPH: Once! Mud head to foot. Cut your hand open. Lockjaw. They make
you kaputt, Leopoldleben. You watch them chaps.
BLOOM: _(Weakly)_ They challenged me to a sprint. It was muddy. I
slipped.
RUDOLPH: _(With contempt) Goim nachez_! Nice spectacles for your poor
mother!
BLOOM: Mamma!
ELLEN BLOOM: _(In pantomime dame's stringed mobcap, widow Twankey's
crinoline and bustle, blouse with muttonleg sleeves buttoned behind,
grey mittens and cameo brooch, her plaited hair in a crispine net,
appears over the staircase banisters, a slanted candlestick in her hand,
and cries out in shrill alarm)_ O blessed Redeemer, what have they done
to him! My smelling salts! _(She hauls up a reef of skirt and ransacks
the pouch of her striped blay petticoat. A phial, an Agnus Dei, a
shrivelled potato and a celluloid doll fall out)_ Sacred Heart of Mary,
where were you at all at all?
_(Bloom, mumbling, his eyes downcast, begins to bestow his parcels in
his filled pockets but desists, muttering. )_
A VOICE: _(Sharply)_ Poldy!
BLOOM: Who? _(He ducks and wards off a blow clumsily)_ At your service.
_(He looks up. Beside her mirage of datepalms a handsome woman in
Turkish costume stands before him. Opulent curves fill out her scarlet
trousers and jacket, slashed with gold. A wide yellow cummerbund girdles
her. A white yashmak, violet in the night, covers her face, leaving free
only her large dark eyes and raven hair. )_
BLOOM: Molly!
MARION: Welly? Mrs Marion from this out, my dear man, when you speak to
me. _(Satirically)_ Has poor little hubby cold feet waiting so long?
BLOOM: _(Shifts from foot to foot)_ No, no. Not the least little bit.
