In a weak moment I erred and did what I did
on Constitution hill.
on Constitution hill.
James Joyce - Ulysses
_(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. )_
ELIJAH: No yapping, if you please, in this booth. Jake Crane, Creole
Sue, Dove Campbell, Abe Kirschner, do your coughing with your mouths
shut. Say, I am operating all this trunk line. Boys, do it now. God's
time is 12. 25. Tell mother you'll be there. Rush your order and you play
a slick ace. Join on right here. Book through to eternity junction, the
nonstop run. Just one word more. Are you a god or a doggone clod? If the
second advent came to Coney Island are we ready? Florry Christ, Stephen
Christ, Zoe Christ, Bloom Christ, Kitty Christ, Lynch Christ, it's up to
you to sense that cosmic force. Have we cold feet about the cosmos?
No. Be on the side of the angels. Be a prism. You have that something
within, the higher self. You can rub shoulders with a Jesus, a Gautama,
an Ingersoll. Are you all in this vibration? I say you are. You once
nobble that, congregation, and a buck joyride to heaven becomes a back
number. You got me? It's a lifebrightener, sure. The hottest stuff ever
was. It's the whole pie with jam in. It's just the cutest snappiest line
out. It is immense, supersumptuous. It restores. It vibrates. I know
and I am some vibrator. Joking apart and, getting down to bedrock, A.
J. Christ Dowie and the harmonial philosophy, have you got that? O. K.
Seventyseven west sixtyninth street. Got me? That's it. You call me up
by sunphone any old time. Bumboosers, save your stamps. _(He shouts)_
Now then our glory song. All join heartily in the singing. Encore! _(He
sings)_ Jeru. . .
THE GRAMOPHONE: _(Drowning his voice)_ Whorusalaminyourhighhohhhh. . .
_(The disc rasps gratingly against the needle)_
THE THREE WHORES: _(Covering their ears, squawk)_ Ahhkkk!
ELIJAH: _(In rolledup shirtsleeves, black in the face, shouts at the top
of his voice, his arms uplifted)_ Big Brother up there, Mr President,
you hear what I done just been saying to you. Certainly, I sort of
believe strong in you, Mr President. I certainly am thinking now Miss
Higgins and Miss Ricketts got religion way inside them. Certainly seems
to me I don't never see no wusser scared female than the way you been,
Miss Florry, just now as I done seed you. Mr President, you come long
and help me save our sisters dear. _(He winks at his audience)_ Our Mr
President, he twig the whole lot and he aint saying nothing.
KITTY-KATE: I forgot myself.
In a weak moment I erred and did what I did
on Constitution hill. I was confirmed by the bishop and enrolled in
the brown scapular. My mother's sister married a Montmorency. It was a
working plumber was my ruination when I was pure.
ZOE-FANNY: I let him larrup it into me for the fun of it.
FLORRY-TERESA: It was in consequence of a portwine beverage on top of
Hennessy's three star. I was guilty with Whelan when he slipped into the
bed.
STEPHEN: In the beginning was the word, in the end the world without
end. Blessed be the eight beatitudes.
_(The beatitudes, Dixon, Madden, Crotthers, Costello, Lenehan, Bannon,
Mulligan and Lynch in white surgical students' gowns, four abreast,
goosestepping, tramp fist past in noisy marching)_
THE BEATITUDES: _(Incoherently)_ Beer beef battledog buybull businum
barnum buggerum bishop.
LYSTER: _(In quakergrey kneebreeches and broadbrimmed hat, says
discreetly)_ He is our friend. I need not mention names. Seek thou the
light.
_(He corantos by. Best enters in hairdresser's attire, shinily
laundered, his locks in curlpapers. He leads John Eglinton who wears a
mandarin's kimono of Nankeen yellow, lizardlettered, and a high pagoda
hat. )_
BEST: _(Smiling, lifts the hat and displays a shaven poll from the crown
of which bristles a pigtail toupee tied with an orange topknot)_ I was
just beautifying him, don't you know. A thing of beauty, don't you know,
Yeats says, or I mean, Keats says.
JOHN EGLINTON: _(Produces a greencapped dark lantern and flashes it
towards a corner: with carping accent)_ Esthetics and cosmetics are for
the boudoir. I am out for truth. Plain truth for a plain man. Tanderagee
wants the facts and means to get them.
_(In the cone of the searchlight behind the coalscuttle, ollave,
holyeyed, the bearded figure of Mananaun Maclir broods, chin on knees.
He rises slowly. A cold seawind blows from his druid mouth. About his
head writhe eels and elvers. He is encrusted with weeds and shells. His
right hand holds a bicycle pump. His left hand grasps a huge crayfish by
its two talons. )_
MANANAUN MACLIR: _(With a voice of waves)_ Aum! Hek! Wal! Ak! Lub! Mor!
Ma! White yoghin of the gods. Occult pimander of Hermes Trismegistos.
_(With a voice of whistling seawind)_ Punarjanam patsypunjaub! I won't
have my leg pulled. It has been said by one: beware the left, the cult
of Shakti. _(With a cry of stormbirds)_ Shakti Shiva, darkhidden Father!
_(He smites with his bicycle pump the crayfish in his left hand. On its
cooperative dial glow the twelve signs of the zodiac. He wails with
the vehemence of the ocean. )_ Aum! Baum! Pyjaum! I am the light of the
homestead! I am the dreamery creamery butter.
_(A skeleton judashand strangles the light. The green light wanes to
mauve. The gasjet wails whistling. )_
THE GASJET: Pooah! Pfuiiiiiii!
_(Zoe runs to the chandelier and, crooking her leg, adjusts the
mantle. )_
ZOE: Who has a fag as I'm here?
LYNCH: _(Tossing a cigarette on to the table)_ Here.
ZOE: _(Her head perched aside in mock pride)_ Is that the way to hand
the _pot_ to a lady? _(She stretches up to light the cigarette over the
flame, twirling it slowly, showing the brown tufts of her armpits. Lynch
with his poker lifts boldly a side of her slip. Bare from her garters up
her flesh appears under the sapphire a nixie's green. She puffs calmly
at her cigarette. )_ Can you see the beautyspot of my behind?
LYNCH: I'm not looking
ZOE: _(Makes sheep's eyes)_ No? You wouldn't do a less thing. Would you
suck a lemon?
_(Squinting in mock shame she glances with sidelong meaning at Bloom,
then twists round towards him, pulling her slip free of the poker. Blue
fluid again flows over her flesh. Bloom stands, smiling desirously,
twirling his thumbs. Kitty Ricketts licks her middle finger with her
spittle and, gazing in the mirror, smooths both eyebrows. Lipoti Virag,
basilicogrammate, chutes rapidly down through the chimneyflue and struts
two steps to the left on gawky pink stilts. He is sausaged into several
overcoats and wears a brown macintosh under which he holds a roll of
parchment. In his left eye flashes the monocle of Cashel Boyle O'connor
Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell. On his head is perched an Egyptian pshent.
Two quills project over his ears. )_
VIRAG: _(Heels together, bows)_ My name is Virag Lipoti, of Szombathely.
_(He coughs thoughtfully, drily)_ Promiscuous nakedness is much in
evidence hereabouts, eh? Inadvertently her backview revealed the fact
that she is not wearing those rather intimate garments of which you
are a particular devotee. The injection mark on the thigh I hope you
perceived? Good.
BLOOM: Granpapachi. But. . .
VIRAG: Number two on the other hand, she of the cherry rouge and
coiffeuse white, whose hair owes not a little to our tribal elixir of
gopherwood, is in walking costume and tightly staysed by her sit, I
should opine. Backbone in front, so to say. Correct me but I always
understood that the act so performed by skittish humans with glimpses of
lingerie appealed to you in virtue of its exhibitionististicicity. In a
word. Hippogriff. Am I right?
BLOOM: She is rather lean.
VIRAG: _(Not unpleasantly)_ Absolutely! Well observed and those pannier
pockets of the skirt and slightly pegtop effect are devised to suggest
bunchiness of hip. A new purchase at some monster sale for which a gull
has been mulcted. Meretricious finery to deceive the eye. Observe the
attention to details of dustspecks. Never put on you tomorrow what you
can wear today. Parallax! _(With a nervous twitch of his head)_ Did you
hear my brain go snap? Pollysyllabax!
BLOOM: _(An elbow resting in a hand, a forefinger against his cheek)_
She seems sad.
VIRAG: _(Cynically, his weasel teeth bared yellow, draws down his left
eye with a finger and barks hoarsely)_ Hoax! Beware of the flapper
and bogus mournful. Lily of the alley. All possess bachelor's button
discovered by Rualdus Columbus. Tumble her. Columble her. Chameleon.
_(More genially)_ Well then, permit me to draw your attention to item
number three. There is plenty of her visible to the naked eye. Observe
the mass of oxygenated vegetable matter on her skull. What ho, she
bumps! The ugly duckling of the party, longcasted and deep in keel.
BLOOM: _(Regretfully)_ When you come out without your gun.
VIRAG: We can do you all brands, mild, medium and strong. Pay your
money, take your choice. How happy could you be with either. . .
BLOOM: With. . . ?
VIRAG: _(His tongue upcurling)_ Lyum! Look. Her beam is broad. She
is coated with quite a considerable layer of fat. Obviously mammal in
weight of bosom you remark that she has in front well to the fore two
protuberances of very respectable dimensions, inclined to fall in the
noonday soupplate, while on her rere lower down are two additional
protuberances, suggestive of potent rectum and tumescent for palpation,
which leave nothing to be desired save compactness. Such fleshy parts
are the product of careful nurture. When coopfattened their livers
reach an elephantine size. Pellets of new bread with fennygreek and
gumbenjamin swamped down by potions of green tea endow them during their
brief existence with natural pincushions of quite colossal blubber. That
suits your book, eh? Fleshhotpots of Egypt to hanker after. Wallow in
it. Lycopodium. _(His throat twitches)_ Slapbang! There he goes again.
BLOOM: The stye I dislike.
VIRAG: _(Arches his eyebrows)_ Contact with a goldring, they say.
_Argumentum ad feminam_, as we said in old Rome and ancient Greece
in the consulship of Diplodocus and Ichthyosauros. For the rest Eve's
sovereign remedy. Not for sale. Hire only. Huguenot. _(He twitches)_ It
is a funny sound. _(He coughs encouragingly)_ But possibly it is only a
wart. I presume you shall have remembered what I will have taught you on
that head? Wheatenmeal with honey and nutmeg.
BLOOM: _(Reflecting)_ Wheatenmeal with lycopodium and syllabax. This
searching ordeal. It has been an unusually fatiguing day, a chapter of
accidents. Wait. I mean, wartsblood spreads warts, you said. . .
VIRAG: _(Severely, his nose hardhumped, his side eye winking)_ Stop
twirling your thumbs and have a good old thunk. See, you have forgotten.
Exercise your mnemotechnic. _La causa e santa_. Tara. Tara. _(Aside)_ He
will surely remember.
BLOOM: Rosemary also did I understand you to say or willpower over
parasitic tissues. Then nay no I have an inkling. The touch of a
deadhand cures. Mnemo?
VIRAG: _(Excitedly)_ I say so. I say so. E'en so. Technic. _(He taps his
parchmentroll energetically)_ This book tells you how to act with all
descriptive particulars. Consult index for agitated fear of aconite,
melancholy of muriatic, priapic pulsatilla. Virag is going to talk about
amputation. Our old friend caustic. They must be starved. Snip off with
horsehair under the denned neck. But, to change the venue to the Bulgar
and the Basque, have you made up your mind whether you like or dislike
women in male habiliments? _(With a dry snigger)_ You intended to devote
an entire year to the study of the religious problem and the summer
months of 1886 to square the circle and win that million. Pomegranate!
From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step. Pyjamas, let us say?
Or stockingette gussetted knickers, closed? Or, put we the case,
those complicated combinations, camiknickers? _(He crows derisively)_
Keekeereekee!
_(Bloom surveys uncertainly the three whores then gazes at the veiled
mauve light, hearing the everflying moth. )_
BLOOM: I wanted then to have now concluded. Nightdress was never. Hence
this. But tomorrow is a new day will be. Past was is today. What now is
will then morrow as now was be past yester.
VIRAG: _(Prompts in a pig's whisper)_ Insects of the day spend their
brief existence in reiterated coition, lured by the smell of the
inferiorly pulchritudinous fumale possessing extendified pudendal nerve
in dorsal region. Pretty Poll! _(His yellow parrotbeak gabbles nasally)_
They had a proverb in the Carpathians in or about the year five thousand
five hundred and fifty of our era. One tablespoonful of honey will
attract friend Bruin more than half a dozen barrels of first choice malt
vinegar. Bear's buzz bothers bees. But of this apart. At another time
we may resume. We were very pleased, we others. _(He coughs and, bending
his brow, rubs his nose thoughtfully with a scooping hand)_ You shall
find that these night insects follow the light.
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. )_
ELIJAH: No yapping, if you please, in this booth. Jake Crane, Creole
Sue, Dove Campbell, Abe Kirschner, do your coughing with your mouths
shut. Say, I am operating all this trunk line. Boys, do it now. God's
time is 12. 25. Tell mother you'll be there. Rush your order and you play
a slick ace. Join on right here. Book through to eternity junction, the
nonstop run. Just one word more. Are you a god or a doggone clod? If the
second advent came to Coney Island are we ready? Florry Christ, Stephen
Christ, Zoe Christ, Bloom Christ, Kitty Christ, Lynch Christ, it's up to
you to sense that cosmic force. Have we cold feet about the cosmos?
No. Be on the side of the angels. Be a prism. You have that something
within, the higher self. You can rub shoulders with a Jesus, a Gautama,
an Ingersoll. Are you all in this vibration? I say you are. You once
nobble that, congregation, and a buck joyride to heaven becomes a back
number. You got me? It's a lifebrightener, sure. The hottest stuff ever
was. It's the whole pie with jam in. It's just the cutest snappiest line
out. It is immense, supersumptuous. It restores. It vibrates. I know
and I am some vibrator. Joking apart and, getting down to bedrock, A.
J. Christ Dowie and the harmonial philosophy, have you got that? O. K.
Seventyseven west sixtyninth street. Got me? That's it. You call me up
by sunphone any old time. Bumboosers, save your stamps. _(He shouts)_
Now then our glory song. All join heartily in the singing. Encore! _(He
sings)_ Jeru. . .
THE GRAMOPHONE: _(Drowning his voice)_ Whorusalaminyourhighhohhhh. . .
_(The disc rasps gratingly against the needle)_
THE THREE WHORES: _(Covering their ears, squawk)_ Ahhkkk!
ELIJAH: _(In rolledup shirtsleeves, black in the face, shouts at the top
of his voice, his arms uplifted)_ Big Brother up there, Mr President,
you hear what I done just been saying to you. Certainly, I sort of
believe strong in you, Mr President. I certainly am thinking now Miss
Higgins and Miss Ricketts got religion way inside them. Certainly seems
to me I don't never see no wusser scared female than the way you been,
Miss Florry, just now as I done seed you. Mr President, you come long
and help me save our sisters dear. _(He winks at his audience)_ Our Mr
President, he twig the whole lot and he aint saying nothing.
KITTY-KATE: I forgot myself.
In a weak moment I erred and did what I did
on Constitution hill. I was confirmed by the bishop and enrolled in
the brown scapular. My mother's sister married a Montmorency. It was a
working plumber was my ruination when I was pure.
ZOE-FANNY: I let him larrup it into me for the fun of it.
FLORRY-TERESA: It was in consequence of a portwine beverage on top of
Hennessy's three star. I was guilty with Whelan when he slipped into the
bed.
STEPHEN: In the beginning was the word, in the end the world without
end. Blessed be the eight beatitudes.
_(The beatitudes, Dixon, Madden, Crotthers, Costello, Lenehan, Bannon,
Mulligan and Lynch in white surgical students' gowns, four abreast,
goosestepping, tramp fist past in noisy marching)_
THE BEATITUDES: _(Incoherently)_ Beer beef battledog buybull businum
barnum buggerum bishop.
LYSTER: _(In quakergrey kneebreeches and broadbrimmed hat, says
discreetly)_ He is our friend. I need not mention names. Seek thou the
light.
_(He corantos by. Best enters in hairdresser's attire, shinily
laundered, his locks in curlpapers. He leads John Eglinton who wears a
mandarin's kimono of Nankeen yellow, lizardlettered, and a high pagoda
hat. )_
BEST: _(Smiling, lifts the hat and displays a shaven poll from the crown
of which bristles a pigtail toupee tied with an orange topknot)_ I was
just beautifying him, don't you know. A thing of beauty, don't you know,
Yeats says, or I mean, Keats says.
JOHN EGLINTON: _(Produces a greencapped dark lantern and flashes it
towards a corner: with carping accent)_ Esthetics and cosmetics are for
the boudoir. I am out for truth. Plain truth for a plain man. Tanderagee
wants the facts and means to get them.
_(In the cone of the searchlight behind the coalscuttle, ollave,
holyeyed, the bearded figure of Mananaun Maclir broods, chin on knees.
He rises slowly. A cold seawind blows from his druid mouth. About his
head writhe eels and elvers. He is encrusted with weeds and shells. His
right hand holds a bicycle pump. His left hand grasps a huge crayfish by
its two talons. )_
MANANAUN MACLIR: _(With a voice of waves)_ Aum! Hek! Wal! Ak! Lub! Mor!
Ma! White yoghin of the gods. Occult pimander of Hermes Trismegistos.
_(With a voice of whistling seawind)_ Punarjanam patsypunjaub! I won't
have my leg pulled. It has been said by one: beware the left, the cult
of Shakti. _(With a cry of stormbirds)_ Shakti Shiva, darkhidden Father!
_(He smites with his bicycle pump the crayfish in his left hand. On its
cooperative dial glow the twelve signs of the zodiac. He wails with
the vehemence of the ocean. )_ Aum! Baum! Pyjaum! I am the light of the
homestead! I am the dreamery creamery butter.
_(A skeleton judashand strangles the light. The green light wanes to
mauve. The gasjet wails whistling. )_
THE GASJET: Pooah! Pfuiiiiiii!
_(Zoe runs to the chandelier and, crooking her leg, adjusts the
mantle. )_
ZOE: Who has a fag as I'm here?
LYNCH: _(Tossing a cigarette on to the table)_ Here.
ZOE: _(Her head perched aside in mock pride)_ Is that the way to hand
the _pot_ to a lady? _(She stretches up to light the cigarette over the
flame, twirling it slowly, showing the brown tufts of her armpits. Lynch
with his poker lifts boldly a side of her slip. Bare from her garters up
her flesh appears under the sapphire a nixie's green. She puffs calmly
at her cigarette. )_ Can you see the beautyspot of my behind?
LYNCH: I'm not looking
ZOE: _(Makes sheep's eyes)_ No? You wouldn't do a less thing. Would you
suck a lemon?
_(Squinting in mock shame she glances with sidelong meaning at Bloom,
then twists round towards him, pulling her slip free of the poker. Blue
fluid again flows over her flesh. Bloom stands, smiling desirously,
twirling his thumbs. Kitty Ricketts licks her middle finger with her
spittle and, gazing in the mirror, smooths both eyebrows. Lipoti Virag,
basilicogrammate, chutes rapidly down through the chimneyflue and struts
two steps to the left on gawky pink stilts. He is sausaged into several
overcoats and wears a brown macintosh under which he holds a roll of
parchment. In his left eye flashes the monocle of Cashel Boyle O'connor
Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell. On his head is perched an Egyptian pshent.
Two quills project over his ears. )_
VIRAG: _(Heels together, bows)_ My name is Virag Lipoti, of Szombathely.
_(He coughs thoughtfully, drily)_ Promiscuous nakedness is much in
evidence hereabouts, eh? Inadvertently her backview revealed the fact
that she is not wearing those rather intimate garments of which you
are a particular devotee. The injection mark on the thigh I hope you
perceived? Good.
BLOOM: Granpapachi. But. . .
VIRAG: Number two on the other hand, she of the cherry rouge and
coiffeuse white, whose hair owes not a little to our tribal elixir of
gopherwood, is in walking costume and tightly staysed by her sit, I
should opine. Backbone in front, so to say. Correct me but I always
understood that the act so performed by skittish humans with glimpses of
lingerie appealed to you in virtue of its exhibitionististicicity. In a
word. Hippogriff. Am I right?
BLOOM: She is rather lean.
VIRAG: _(Not unpleasantly)_ Absolutely! Well observed and those pannier
pockets of the skirt and slightly pegtop effect are devised to suggest
bunchiness of hip. A new purchase at some monster sale for which a gull
has been mulcted. Meretricious finery to deceive the eye. Observe the
attention to details of dustspecks. Never put on you tomorrow what you
can wear today. Parallax! _(With a nervous twitch of his head)_ Did you
hear my brain go snap? Pollysyllabax!
BLOOM: _(An elbow resting in a hand, a forefinger against his cheek)_
She seems sad.
VIRAG: _(Cynically, his weasel teeth bared yellow, draws down his left
eye with a finger and barks hoarsely)_ Hoax! Beware of the flapper
and bogus mournful. Lily of the alley. All possess bachelor's button
discovered by Rualdus Columbus. Tumble her. Columble her. Chameleon.
_(More genially)_ Well then, permit me to draw your attention to item
number three. There is plenty of her visible to the naked eye. Observe
the mass of oxygenated vegetable matter on her skull. What ho, she
bumps! The ugly duckling of the party, longcasted and deep in keel.
BLOOM: _(Regretfully)_ When you come out without your gun.
VIRAG: We can do you all brands, mild, medium and strong. Pay your
money, take your choice. How happy could you be with either. . .
BLOOM: With. . . ?
VIRAG: _(His tongue upcurling)_ Lyum! Look. Her beam is broad. She
is coated with quite a considerable layer of fat. Obviously mammal in
weight of bosom you remark that she has in front well to the fore two
protuberances of very respectable dimensions, inclined to fall in the
noonday soupplate, while on her rere lower down are two additional
protuberances, suggestive of potent rectum and tumescent for palpation,
which leave nothing to be desired save compactness. Such fleshy parts
are the product of careful nurture. When coopfattened their livers
reach an elephantine size. Pellets of new bread with fennygreek and
gumbenjamin swamped down by potions of green tea endow them during their
brief existence with natural pincushions of quite colossal blubber. That
suits your book, eh? Fleshhotpots of Egypt to hanker after. Wallow in
it. Lycopodium. _(His throat twitches)_ Slapbang! There he goes again.
BLOOM: The stye I dislike.
VIRAG: _(Arches his eyebrows)_ Contact with a goldring, they say.
_Argumentum ad feminam_, as we said in old Rome and ancient Greece
in the consulship of Diplodocus and Ichthyosauros. For the rest Eve's
sovereign remedy. Not for sale. Hire only. Huguenot. _(He twitches)_ It
is a funny sound. _(He coughs encouragingly)_ But possibly it is only a
wart. I presume you shall have remembered what I will have taught you on
that head? Wheatenmeal with honey and nutmeg.
BLOOM: _(Reflecting)_ Wheatenmeal with lycopodium and syllabax. This
searching ordeal. It has been an unusually fatiguing day, a chapter of
accidents. Wait. I mean, wartsblood spreads warts, you said. . .
VIRAG: _(Severely, his nose hardhumped, his side eye winking)_ Stop
twirling your thumbs and have a good old thunk. See, you have forgotten.
Exercise your mnemotechnic. _La causa e santa_. Tara. Tara. _(Aside)_ He
will surely remember.
BLOOM: Rosemary also did I understand you to say or willpower over
parasitic tissues. Then nay no I have an inkling. The touch of a
deadhand cures. Mnemo?
VIRAG: _(Excitedly)_ I say so. I say so. E'en so. Technic. _(He taps his
parchmentroll energetically)_ This book tells you how to act with all
descriptive particulars. Consult index for agitated fear of aconite,
melancholy of muriatic, priapic pulsatilla. Virag is going to talk about
amputation. Our old friend caustic. They must be starved. Snip off with
horsehair under the denned neck. But, to change the venue to the Bulgar
and the Basque, have you made up your mind whether you like or dislike
women in male habiliments? _(With a dry snigger)_ You intended to devote
an entire year to the study of the religious problem and the summer
months of 1886 to square the circle and win that million. Pomegranate!
From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step. Pyjamas, let us say?
Or stockingette gussetted knickers, closed? Or, put we the case,
those complicated combinations, camiknickers? _(He crows derisively)_
Keekeereekee!
_(Bloom surveys uncertainly the three whores then gazes at the veiled
mauve light, hearing the everflying moth. )_
BLOOM: I wanted then to have now concluded. Nightdress was never. Hence
this. But tomorrow is a new day will be. Past was is today. What now is
will then morrow as now was be past yester.
VIRAG: _(Prompts in a pig's whisper)_ Insects of the day spend their
brief existence in reiterated coition, lured by the smell of the
inferiorly pulchritudinous fumale possessing extendified pudendal nerve
in dorsal region. Pretty Poll! _(His yellow parrotbeak gabbles nasally)_
They had a proverb in the Carpathians in or about the year five thousand
five hundred and fifty of our era. One tablespoonful of honey will
attract friend Bruin more than half a dozen barrels of first choice malt
vinegar. Bear's buzz bothers bees. But of this apart. At another time
we may resume. We were very pleased, we others. _(He coughs and, bending
his brow, rubs his nose thoughtfully with a scooping hand)_ You shall
find that these night insects follow the light.
