No More Learning

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.

_(He breathes in deep agitation, swallowing gulps of air, questions,
hopes, crubeens for her supper, things to tell her, excuse, desire,
spellbound. A coin gleams on her forehead. On her feet are jewelled
toerings. Her ankles are linked by a slender fetterchain. Beside her
a camel, hooded with a turreting turban, waits. A silk ladder of
innumerable rungs climbs to his bobbing howdah. He ambles near with
disgruntled hindquarters. Fiercely she slaps his haunch, her goldcurb
wristbangles angriling, scolding him in Moorish. )_

MARION: Nebrakada! Femininum!

_(The camel, lifting a foreleg, plucks from a tree a large mango fruit,
offers it to his mistress, blinking, in his cloven hoof, then droops his
head and, grunting, with uplifted neck, fumbles to kneel. Bloom stoops
his back for leapfrog. )_

BLOOM: I can give you. . . I mean as your business menagerer. . . Mrs
Marion. . . if you. . .

MARION: So you notice some change? _(Her hands passing slowly over her
trinketed stomacher, a slow friendly mockery in her eyes)_ O Poldy,
Poldy, you are a poor old stick in the mud! Go and see life. See the
wide world.

BLOOM: I was just going back for that lotion whitewax, orangeflower
water. Shop closes early on Thursday. But the first thing in the
morning. _(He pats divers pockets)_ This moving kidney. Ah!

_(He points to the south, then to the east. A cake of new clean lemon
soap arises, diffusing light and perfume. )_

THE SOAP: We're a capital couple are Bloom and I. He brightens the
earth. I polish the sky.


_(The freckled face of Sweny, the druggist, appears in the disc of the
soapsun. )_

SWENY: Three and a penny, please.

BLOOM: Yes. For my wife. Mrs Marion. Special recipe.

MARION: _(Softly)_ Poldy!

BLOOM: Yes, ma'am?

MARION: _ti trema un poco il cuore? _

_(In disdain she saunters away, plump as a pampered pouter pigeon,
humming the duet from_ Don Giovanni. )

BLOOM: Are you sure about that _voglio_? I mean the pronunciati. . .

_(He follows, followed by the sniffing terrier. The elderly bawd seizes
his sleeve, the bristles of her chinmole glittering. )_

THE BAWD: Ten shillings a maidenhead. Fresh thing was never touched.
Fifteen. There's no-one in it only her old father that's dead drunk.

_(She points. In the gap of her dark den furtive, rainbedraggled, Bridie
Kelly stands. )_

BRIDIE: Hatch street. Any good in your mind?

_(With a squeak she flaps her bat shawl and runs. A burly rough pursues
with booted strides. He stumbles on the steps, recovers, plunges into
gloom. Weak squeaks of laughter are heard, weaker. )_

THE BAWD: _(Her wolfeyes shining)_ He's getting his pleasure. You won't
get a virgin in the flash houses. Ten shillings. Don't be all night
before the polis in plain clothes sees us. Sixtyseven is a bitch.

_(Leering, Gerty Macdowell limps forward. She draws from behind, ogling,
and shows coyly her bloodied clout. )_

GERTY: With all my worldly goods I thee and thou. _(She murmurs)_ You
did that. I hate you.

BLOOM: I? When? You're dreaming. I never saw you.

THE BAWD: Leave the gentleman alone, you cheat. Writing the gentleman
false letters. Streetwalking and soliciting. Better for your mother take
the strap to you at the bedpost, hussy like you.

GERTY: _(To Bloom)_ When you saw all the secrets of my bottom drawer.
_(She paws his sleeve, slobbering)_ Dirty married man! I love you for
doing that to me.

_(She glides away crookedly. Mrs Breen in man's frieze overcoat
with loose bellows pockets, stands in the causeway, her roguish eyes
wideopen, smiling in all her herbivorous buckteeth. )_

MRS BREEN: Mr. . .

BLOOM: _(Coughs gravely)_ Madam, when we last had this pleasure by
letter dated the sixteenth instant. . .

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

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

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

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

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

TOM AND SAM:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RICHIE: Best value in Dub.

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

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

RICHIE: Goodgod. Inev erate inall. . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

BLOOM: Let's walk on. Shall us?

MRS BREEN: Let's.

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

THE BAWD: Jewman's melt!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MRS BREEN: Too. . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE WHORES:

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


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

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

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

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

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

PRIVATE COMPTON: _(Laughs)_ What ho!

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

THE NAVVY: _(Shouts)_

We are the boys. Of Wexford.

PRIVATE COMPTON: Say! What price the sergeantmajor?

PRIVATE CARR: Bennett? He's my pal. I love old Bennett.

THE NAVVY: _(Shouts)_

The galling chain.
And free our native land.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE GULLS: Kaw kave kankury kake.

BLOOM: The friend of man. Trained by kindness.

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

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