No More Learning

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. An illusion for remember
their complex unadjustable eye. For all these knotty points see the
seventeenth book of my Fundamentals of Sexology or the Love Passion
which Doctor L. B. says is the book sensation of the year. Some, to
example, there are again whose movements are automatic. Perceive. That
is his appropriate sun. Nightbird nightsun nighttown. Chase me, Charley!
_(He blows into bloom's ear)_ Buzz!

BLOOM: Bee or bluebottle too other day butting shadow on wall dazed self
then me wandered dazed down shirt good job I. . .

VIRAG: _(His face impassive, laughs in a rich feminine key)_ Splendid!
Spanish fly in his fly or mustard plaster on his dibble. _(He gobbles
gluttonously with turkey wattles)_ Bubbly jock! Bubbly jock! Where are
we? Open Sesame! Cometh forth! _(He unrolls his parchment rapidly and
reads, his glowworm's nose running backwards over the letters which he
claws)_ Stay, good friend. I bring thee thy answer. Redbank oysters will
shortly be upon us. I'm the best o'cook. Those succulent bivalves may
help us and the truffles of Perigord, tubers dislodged through mister
omnivorous porker, were unsurpassed in cases of nervous debility or
viragitis. Though they stink yet they sting. _(He wags his head with
cackling raillery)_ Jocular. With my eyeglass in my ocular. _(He
sneezes)_ Amen!

BLOOM: _(Absently)_ Ocularly woman's bivalve case is worse. Always open
sesame. The cloven sex. Why they fear vermin, creeping things. Yet Eve
and the serpent contradicts.
Not a historical fact. Obvious analogy
to my idea. Serpents too are gluttons for woman's milk. Wind their way
through miles of omnivorous forest to sucksucculent her breast dry. Like
those bubblyjocular Roman matrons one reads of in Elephantuliasis.

VIRAG: _(His mouth projected in hard wrinkles, eyes stonily forlornly
closed, psalms in outlandish monotone)_ That the cows with their those
distended udders that they have been the the known. . .

BLOOM: I am going to scream. I beg your pardon. Ah? So. _(He repeats)_
Spontaneously to seek out the saurian's lair in order to entrust their
teats to his avid suction. Ant milks aphis. _(Profoundly)_ Instinct
rules the world. In life. In death.

VIRAG: _(Head askew, arches his back and hunched wingshoulders, peers
at the moth out of blear bulged eyes, points a horning claw and cries)_
Who's moth moth? Who's dear Gerald? Dear Ger, that you? O dear, he is
Gerald. O, I much fear he shall be most badly burned. Will some pleashe
pershon not now impediment so catastrophics mit agitation of firstclass
tablenumpkin? _(He mews)_ Puss puss puss puss! _(He sighs, draws back
and stares sideways down with dropping underjaw)_ Well, well. He doth
rest anon. (He snaps his jaws suddenly on the air)

THE MOTH:

I'm a tiny tiny thing
Ever flying in the spring
Round and round a ringaring.
Long ago I was a king
Now I do this kind of thing
On the wing, on the wing!
Bing!

_(He rushes against the mauve shade, flapping noisily)_ Pretty pretty
pretty pretty pretty pretty petticoats.

_(From left upper entrance with two gliding steps Henry Flower comes
forward to left front centre. He wears a dark mantle and drooping plumed
sombrero. He carries a silverstringed inlaid dulcimer and a longstemmed
bamboo Jacob's pipe, its clay bowl fashioned as a female head. He wears
dark velvet hose and silverbuckled pumps. He has the romantic Saviour's
face with flowing locks, thin beard and moustache. His spindlelegs and
sparrow feet are those of the tenor Mario, prince of Candia. He settles
down his goffered ruffs and moistens his lips with a passage of his
amorous tongue. )_

HENRY: _(In a low dulcet voice, touching the strings of his guitar)_
There is a flower that bloometh.

_(Virag truculent, his jowl set, stares at the lamp. Grave Bloom regards
Zoe's neck. Henry gallant turns with pendant dewlap to the piano. )_

STEPHEN: _(To himself)_ Play with your eyes shut. Imitate pa. Filling my
belly with husks of swine. Too much of this. I will arise and go to my.
Expect this is the. Steve, thou art in a parlous way. Must visit old
Deasy or telegraph. Our interview of this morning has left on me a deep
impression. Though our ages. Will write fully tomorrow. I'm partially
drunk, by the way. _(He touches the keys again)_ Minor chord comes now.
Yes. Not much however.

_(Almidano Artifoni holds out a batonroll of music with vigorous
moustachework. )_

ARTIFONI: _Ci rifletta. Lei rovina tutto. _

FLORRY: Sing us something. Love's old sweet song.

STEPHEN: No voice. I am a most finished artist. Lynch, did I show you
the letter about the lute?

FLORRY: _(Smirking)_ The bird that can sing and won't sing.

_(The Siamese twins, Philip Drunk and Philip Sober, two Oxford dons with
lawnmowers, appear in the window embrasure. Both are masked with Matthew
Arnold's face. )_

PHILIP SOBER: Take a fool's advice. All is not well. Work it out with
the buttend of a pencil, like a good young idiot. Three pounds twelve
you got, two notes, one sovereign, two crowns, if youth but knew.
Mooney's en ville, Mooney's sur mer, the Moira, Larchet's, Holles street
hospital, Burke's. Eh? I am watching you.

PHILIP DRUNK: _(Impatiently)_ Ah, bosh, man. Go to hell! I paid my way.
If I could only find out about octaves. Reduplication of personality.
Who was it told me his name? _(His lawnmower begins to purr)_ Aha, yes.
_Zoe mou sas agapo_. Have a notion I was here before. When was it not
Atkinson his card I have somewhere. Mac Somebody. Unmack I have it. He
told me about, hold on, Swinburne, was it, no?

FLORRY: And the song?

STEPHEN: Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.

FLORRY: Are you out of Maynooth? You're like someone I knew once.

STEPHEN: Out of it now. _(To himself)_ Clever.

PHILIP DRUNK AND PHILIP SOBER: _(Their lawnmowers purring with a
rigadoon of grasshalms)_ Clever ever. Out of it out of it. By the
bye have you the book, the thing, the ashplant? Yes, there it, yes.
Cleverever outofitnow. Keep in condition. Do like us.

ZOE: There was a priest down here two nights ago to do his bit of
business with his coat buttoned up. You needn't try to hide, I says to
him. I know you've a Roman collar.

VIRAG: Perfectly logical from his standpoint. Fall of man. _(Harshly,
his pupils waxing)_ To hell with the pope! Nothing new under the sun. I
am the Virag who disclosed the Sex Secrets of Monks and Maidens. Why
I left the church of Rome. Read the Priest, the Woman and the
Confessional. Penrose. Flipperty Jippert. _(He wriggles)_ Woman, undoing
with sweet pudor her belt of rushrope, offers her allmoist yoni to man's
lingam. Short time after man presents woman with pieces of jungle meat.
Woman shows joy and covers herself with featherskins. Man loves her yoni
fiercely with big lingam, the stiff one. _(He cries) Coactus volui. _
Then giddy woman will run about. Strong man grapses woman's wrist.
Woman squeals, bites, spucks. Man, now fierce angry, strikes woman's fat
yadgana. _(He chases his tail)_ Piffpaff! Popo! _(He stops, sneezes)_
Pchp! _(He worries his butt)_ Prrrrrht!

LYNCH: I hope you gave the good father a penance. Nine glorias for
shooting a bishop.

ZOE: _(Spouts walrus smoke through her nostrils)_ He couldn't get a
connection. Only, you know, sensation. A dry rush.

BLOOM: Poor man!

ZOE: _(Lightly)_ Only for what happened him.

BLOOM: How?

VIRAG: _(A diabolic rictus of black luminosity contracting his visage,
cranes his scraggy neck forward. He lifts a mooncalf nozzle and howls. )
Verfluchte Goim! _ He had a father, forty fathers. He never existed. Pig
God! He had two left feet. He was Judas Iacchia, a Libyan eunuch, the
pope's bastard. _(He leans out on tortured forepaws, elbows bent rigid,
his eye agonising in his flat skullneck and yelps over the mute world)_
A son of a whore. Apocalypse.

KITTY: And Mary Shortall that was in the lock with the pox she got from
Jimmy Pidgeon in the blue caps had a child off him that couldn't swallow
and was smothered with the convulsions in the mattress and we all
subscribed for the funeral.

PHILIP DRUNK: _(Gravely) Qui vous a mis dans cette fichue position,
Philippe? _

PHILIP SOBER: _(Gaily) c'etait le sacre pigeon, Philippe. _

_(Kitty unpins her hat and sets it down calmly, patting her henna hair.
And a prettier, a daintier head of winsome curls was never seen on a
whore's shoulders. Lynch puts on her hat. She whips it off. )_

LYNCH: _(Laughs)_ And to such delights has Metchnikoff inoculated
anthropoid apes.

FLORRY: _(Nods)_ Locomotor ataxy.

ZOE: _(Gaily)_ O, my dictionary.

LYNCH: Three wise virgins.

VIRAG: _(Agueshaken, profuse yellow spawn foaming over his bony
epileptic lips)_ She sold lovephiltres, whitewax, orangeflower. Panther,
the Roman centurion, polluted her with his genitories. _(He sticks out
a flickering phosphorescent scorpion tongue, his hand on his fork)_
Messiah! He burst her tympanum. _(With gibbering baboon's cries he jerks
his hips in the cynical spasm)_ Hik! Hek! Hak! Hok! Huk! Kok! Kuk!

_(Ben Jumbo Dollard, Rubicund, musclebound, hairynostrilled,
hugebearded, cabbageeared, shaggychested, shockmaned, fat-papped, stands
forth, his loins and genitals tightened into a pair of black bathing
bagslops. )_

BEN DOLLARD: _(Nakkering castanet bones in his huge padded paws, yodels
jovially in base barreltone)_ When love absorbs my ardent soul.

_(The virgins Nurse Callan and Nurse Quigley burst through the
ringkeepers and the ropes and mob him with open arms. )_

THE VIRGINS: _(Gushingly)_ Big Ben! Ben my Chree!

A VOICE: Hold that fellow with the bad breeches.

BEN DOLLARD: _(Smites his thigh in abundant laughter)_ Hold him now.

HENRY: _(Caressing on his breast a severed female head, murmurs)_ Thine
heart, mine love. _(He plucks his lutestrings)_ When first I saw. . .

VIRAG: _(Sloughing his skins, his multitudinous plumage moulting)_ Rats!
_(He yawns, showing a coalblack throat, and closes his jaws by an upward
push of his parchmentroll)_ After having said which I took my departure.
Farewell. Fare thee well. _Dreck! _

_(Henry Flower combs his moustache and beard rapidly with a pocketcomb
and gives a cow's lick to his hair. Steered by his rapier, he glides to
the door, his wild harp slung behind him. Virag reaches the door in two
ungainly stilthops, his tail cocked, and deftly claps sideways on the
wall a pusyellow flybill, butting it with his head. )_

THE FLYBILL: K. II. Post No Bills. Strictly confidential. Dr Hy Franks.

HENRY: All is lost now.

_(Virag unscrews his head in a trice and holds it under his arm. )_

VIRAG'S HEAD: Quack!

_(Exeunt severally. )_

STEPHEN: _(Over his shoulder to zoe)_ You would have preferred
the fighting parson who founded the protestant error. But beware
Antisthenes, the dog sage, and the last end of Arius Heresiarchus. The
agony in the closet.

LYNCH: All one and the same God to her.

STEPHEN: _(Devoutly)_ And sovereign Lord of all things.

FLORRY: _(To Stephen)_ I'm sure you're a spoiled priest. Or a monk.

LYNCH: He is.