MRS YELVERTON BARRY Shame on him!(A crowd of sluts and ragamuffins sues forward.)THE SLUTS AND RAGAMUFFINS (Screaming.) Stop thief! Hurrah there, Bluebeard! Three cheers for Ikey Mo!SECOND WATCH (Produces handcuffs.) Here are the darbies.MRS BELLINGHAM He addressed me in several handwritings with fulsome compliments as a Venus in furs and alleged profound pity for my frostbound coachman Balmer while in the same breath he expressed himself as envious of his earflaps and fleecy sheepskins and of his fortunate proximity to my person, when standing behind my chair wearing my livery and the armorial bearings of the Bellingham escutcheon garnished sable, a buck's head couped or. He lauded almost extravagantly my nether extremities, my swelling calves in silk hose drawn up to the limit, and eulogised glowingly my other hidden treasures in priceless lace which, he said, he could conjure up. He urged me, stating that he felt it his mission in life to urge me, to defile the marriage bed, to commit adultery at the earliest possible opportunity.THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS (In amazon costume, hard hat, jackboots cockspurred, vermilion waistcoat, fawn musketeer gauntlets with bra idea drums, long train held up and hunting crop with which she strikes her welt constantly.) Also me. Because he saw me on the polo ground of the Phnix park at the match All Ireland versus the Rest of Ireland. My eyes, I know, shone divinely as I watched Captain Slogger Dennehy of the Inniskillings win the final chukkar on his darling cob Centaur. This plebeian Don Juan observed me from behind a hackney car and sent me in double envelopes an obscene photograph, such as are sold after dark on Paris boulevards, insulting to any lady. I have it still. It represents a partially nude senorita, frail and lovely (his wife as he solemnly assured me, taken by him from nature), practising illicit intercourse with a muscular torero, evidently a blackguard. He urged me to do likewise, to misbehave, to sin with officers of the garrison. He implored me to soil his letter in an unspeakable manner, to chastise him as he richly deserves, to bestride and ride him, to give him a most vicious horsewhipping.MRS BELLINGHAM Me too.MRS YELVERTON BARRY Me too.(Several highly respectable Dublin ladies hold up improper letters received from Bloom.)THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS (Stamps her jingling spurs in a sudden paroxysm of sudden fury.) I will, by the God above me. I'll scourge the pigeonlivered cur as long as I can stand over him. I'll flay him alive.BLOOM (His eyes closing, quails expectantly.) Here? (He squirms.) Again! (He pants cringing.) I love the danger.THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS Very much so! I'll make it hot for you. I'll make you dance Jack Latten for that.MRS BELLINGHAM Tan his breech well, the upstart! Write the stars and stripes on it!MRS YELVERTON BARRY Disgraceful! There's no excuse for him! A married man!BLOOM All these people. I meant only the spanking idea. A warm tingling glow without effusion. Refined birching to stimulate the circulation.THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS (Laughs derisively.) O, did you, my fine fellow? Well, by the living God, you'll get the surprise of your life now, believe me, the most unmerciful hiding a man ever bargained for. You have lashed the dormant tigress in my nature into fury.MRS BELLINGHAM (Shakes her muff and quizzing-glasses vindictively.) Make him smart, Hanna dear. Give him ginger. Thrash the mongrel within an inch of his life. The cat-o' nine-tails. Geld him. Vivisect him.BLOOM (Shuddering, shrinking, joins his hands with hangdog mien.) O cold! O shivery! It was your ambrosial beauty. Forget, forgive. Kismet. Let me off this once. (He offers the other cheek.)MRS YELVERTON BARRY (Severely.) Don't do so on any account, Mrs Talboys! He should be soundly trounced!THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS (Unbuttoning her gauntlet violently.) I'll do no such thing. Pig dog and always was ever since he was pupped! To dare address me! I'll flog him black and blue in the public streets. I'll dig my spurs in him up to the rowel. He is a wellknown cuckold. (She swishes her hunting crop savagely in the air.) Take down his trousers without loss of time. Come here, sir! Quick! Ready?BLOOM (Trembling, beginning to obey.) The weather has been so warm.(Davy Stephens, ringleted, passes with a bevy of barefoot newsboys.)DAVY STEPHENS Messenger of the Sacred Heart and Evening Telegraph with Saint Patrick's Day Supplement. Containing the new addresses of all the cuckolds in Dublin.(The very reverend Canon O'Hanlon in cloth of gold cope elevates and exposes a marble timepiece. Before him Father Conroy and the reverend John Hughes S.J. bend low.)THE TIMEPIECE (Unportalling.)CuckooCuckooCuckoo(The brass quoits of a bed are heard to jingle.)THE QUOITS Jigjag, Jigajiga. Jigjag.(A panel of fog rolls back rapidly, revealing rapidly in the jurybox the faces of Martin Cunningham, foreman silkhatted, Jack Power Simon Dedalus, Tom Kernan, Ned Lambert, John Henry Menton, Myles Crawford, Lenehan, Paddy Leonard Nosey Flynn, M'Coy and the featureless face of a Nameless One.)THE NAMELESS ONE Bareback riding. Weight for age. Gob, he organised her.THE JURORS (All their heads turned to his voice.) Really?THE NAMELESS ONE (Snarls.) Arse over tip. Hundred shillings to five.THE JURORS (All their heads lowered in assent.) Most of us thought as much.FIRST WATCH He is a marked man. Another girl's plait cut. Wanted: Jack the Ripper. A thousand pounds reward.SECOND WATCH (Awed, whispers.) And in black. A mormon. Anarchist.THE CRIER (Loudly.) Whereas Leopold Bloom of no fixed abode is a well-known dynamitard, forger, bigamist, bawd and cuckold ad a public nuisance to the citizens of Dublin and whereas at this commission of assizes the most honourable.(His Honour sir Frederick Falkiner recorder of Dublin, in judicial garb of grey stone rises from the bench, stonebearded. He bears in his arms an umbrella sceptre. From his forehead arise starkly the Mosaic ramshorns.)THE RECORDER I will put an end to this white slave traffic and rid Dublin of this odious pest. Scandalous! (He dons the black cap.) Let him be taken, Mr Subsheriff, from the dock where he now stands and detained in custody in Mountjoy prison during His Majesty's pleasure and there be hanged by the neck until he is dead and therein fail not at your peril or may the Lord have-mercy on your soul. Remove him. (A black skullcap descends upon his head.)(The subsheriff long John Fanning appears, smoking a pungent Henry Clay.)LONG JOHN FANNING (Scowls and calls with rich rolling utterance.) Who'll hang Judas Iscariot?(H. Rumbold, master barber in a bloodcoloured jerk in and tanner's apron, a rope coiled over his shoulder mounts the block. A life preserver and a nailstudded bludgeon are stuck in his belt. He rubs grimly his grapping hands, knobbed with knuckledusters.)RUMBOLD (To the recorder with sinister familiarity.) Hanging Harry, your Majesty, the Mersey terror. Five guineas a jugular. Neck or nothing.(The bells of George's church toll slowly, loud dark iron.)THE BELLS Heigho! Heigho!BLOOM (Desperately.) Wait. Stop. Gulls. Good heart. I saw. Innocence. Girl in the monkeyhouse. Zoo. Lewd chimpanzees. (Breathlessly.) Pelvic basin. Her artless blush unmanned me. (Overcome with emotion.) I left the precincts. (He turns to a figure in the crowd, appealing.) Hynes, may I speak to you? You know me. That three shillings you can keep. If you want a little more .HYNES (Coldly.) You are a perfect stranger.SECOND WATCH (Points to the corner.) The bomb is here. FIRST WATCH Infernal machine with a time fuse. BLOOM No, no. Pig's feet. I was at a funeral. FIRST WATCH (Draws his truncheon.) Liar!(The beagle lifts his snout, showing the grey scorbutic face of Paddy Dignam. He has gnawed all. He exhales a putrid carcasefed breath. He grows to human size and shape. His dachshund coat becomes a brown mortuary habit. His green eyeflashes bloodshot. Half of one ear all the nose and both thumbs are ghouleaten.)PADDY DIGNAM (In a hollow voice.) It is true. It was my funeral. Doctor Finucane pronounced life extinct when I succumbed to the disease from natural causes.(He lifts his mutilated ashen face moonwards and bays lugubriously.)BLOOM (In triumph.) You hear?PADDY DIGNAM Bloom, I am Paddy Dignam's spirit. List, list, O list!BLOOM The voice is the voice of Esau.SECOND WATCH (Blesses himself.) How is that possible?FIRST WATCH It is not in the penny catechism.PADDY DIGNAM By metempsychosis. Spooks.A VOICE O rocks.PADDY DIGNAM (Earnestly.) Once I was in the employ of Mr J. H. Menton, solicitor, commissioner for oaths and affidavits, of 27 Bachelor's Walk. Now I am defunct, the wall of the heart hypertrophied. Hard lines. The poor wife was awfully cut up. Dow is she bearing it? Keep her off that bottle of sherry. (He looks round him.) A lamp. I must satisfy an animal need. That buttermilk didn't agree with me.(The portly figure of John O'Connell, caretaker stands forth, holding a bunch of keys tied with crape. Beside him stands Father Coffey, chaplain, toad bellied, wrynecked, in a surplice and bandanna nightcap, holding sleepily a staff of twisted poppies.)FATHER COFFEY (Yawns, then chants with a hoarse croak.) Namine. Jacobs Vobiscuits. Amen.(Foghorns stormily through his megaphone.) Dignam, Patrick T., deceased.PADDY DIGNAM (With pricked up ears, winces.) Overtones.(He wriggles forward, places an ear to the ground.) My masters' voice!JOHN O'CONNELL Burial docket letter number U. P. Eightyfive thousand. Field seventeen. House of Keys. Plot, one hundred and one.(Paddy Dignam listens with visible effort, thinking, his tailstiffpointed, his ears cocked.)PADDY DIGNAM Pray for the repose of his soul.(He worms down through a coal hole, his brown habit trailing its tether over rattling pebbles. After him toddles an obese grandfather rat on fungus turtle paws under a grey carapace. Dignam's voice, muffled, is heard baying under ground: Dignam's dead and gone below. Tom Rochford, robinredbreasted, in cap and breeches, jumps from his two-columned machine.)TOM ROCHFORD (A hand to his breastbone, bows.) Reuben J. A florin I find him. (He fixes the manhole with a resolute stare.) My turn now on. Follow me up to Carlow.(He executes a daredevil salmon leap in the air and is engulfed in the coalhole. Two discs on the columns wobble eyes of nought. All recedes. Bloom plodges forward again. He stands before a lighted house, listening. The kisses, winging from their bowers, fly about him, twittering, warbling, cooing.)THE KISSES (Warbling.) Leo! (Twittering.) Icky licky micky sticky for Leo! (Cooing.) Coo coocoo! Yummyumm Wom worn! (Warbling.) Big comebig! Pirouette! Leopopold! (Twittering.) Leeolee! (Warbling.) O Leo!(They rustle, flutter upon his garments, alight, bright giddyflecks, silvery sequins.)BLOOM A man's touch. Sad music. Church music. Perhaps here.(Zoe Higgins, a young whore in a sapphire slip, closed with three bronze buckles, a slim black velvet fillet round her throat, nods, trips down the steps and accosts him.)ZOE Are you looking for someone? He's inside with his friend.BLOOM Is this Mrs Mack's?ZOE No, eightyone. Mrs Cohen's. You might go farther and fare worse. Mother Slipperslapper. (Familiarly.) She's on the job herself tonight with the vet, her tipster, that gives her all the winners and pays for her son in Oxford. Working overtime but her luck's turned today. (Suspiciously.) You're not his father, are you?BLOOM Not I!ZOE You both in black. Has little mousey any tickles tonight?(His skin, alert, feels her fingertips approach. A hand slides over his left thigh.)ZOE How's the nuts?BLOOM Off side. Curiously they are on the right. Heavier I suppose. One in a million my tailor, Mesias, says.ZOE (In sudden alarm.) You've a hard chancre.BLOOM Not likely.ZOE I feel it.(Her hand slides into his left trouser pocket and brings out a hard black shrivelled potato. She regards it and Bloom with dumb moist lips.)BLOOM A talisman. Heirloom.ZOE For Zoe? For keeps? For being so nice, eh?(She puts the potato greedily into a pocket, then links his arm, cuddling him with supple warmth. He smiles uneasily. Slowly, note by note, oriental music is played. He gazes in the tawny crystal of her eyes, ringed with kohol. His smile softens.)ZOE You'll know me the next time.BLOOM (Forlornly.) I never loved a dear gazelle but it was sure to.(Gazelles are leaping, feeding on the mountains. Near are lakes. Round their shores file shadows black of cedargroves. Aroma rises, a strong hairgrowth of resin. It burns, the orient, a sky of sapphire, cleft by the bronze flight of eagles. Under it lies the womancity, nude, white, still, cool, in luxury. A fountain murmurs among damask roses. Mammoth roses murmur of scarlet winegrapes. A wine of shame, lust, blood exudes, strangely murmuring.)ZOE (Murmuring singsong with the music, her odalisk lips lusciously smeared with salve of swinefat and rosewater.) Schorach ani wenowach, benoith Hierushaloim.BLOOM (Fascinated.) I thought you were of good stock by your accent.ZOE And you know what thought did?(She bites his ear gently with little goldstopped teeth sending on him a cloying breath of stale garlic. The roses draw apart, disclose a sepulchre of the gold of kings and their mouldering bones.)BLOOM (Draws back, mechanically caressing her right bub with a flat awkward hand.) Are you a Dublin girl?ZOE (Catches a stray hair deftly and twists it to her coil.) No bloody fear. I'm English. Have you a swaggerroot?BLOOM (As before.) Rarely smoke, dear. Cigar now and then. Childish device. (Lewdly.) The mouth can be better engaged than with a cylinder of rank weed.ZOE Go on. Make a stump speech out of it.BLOOM (In workman's corduroy overalls, black gansy with red floating tie and apache cap.) Mankind is incorrigible. Sir Walter Raleigh brought from the new world that potato and that weed, the one a killer of pestilence by absorption, the other a poisoner of the ear, eye, heart, memory, will, understanding, all. That is to say, he brought the poison a hundred years before another person whose name I forget brought the food. Suicide. Lies. All our habits. Why, look at our public life!(Midnight chimes from distant steeples.)THE CHIMES Turn again, Leopold! Lord Mayor of Dublin!BLOOM (In alderman's gown and chain.) Electors of Arran Quay, Inns Quay, Rotunda, Mountjoy and North Dock, better run a tramline, I say, from the cattlemarket to the river. That's the music of the future. That's my programme. Cui Bono? But our buccaneering Vanderdeckens in their phantom ship of finance...AN ELECTOR Three times three for our future chief magistrate!(The aurora borealis of the torchlight procession leaps.)THE TORCH BEARERS Hooray!(Several wellknown burgesses, city magnates and freemen of the city shake hands with Bloom and congratulate him. Timothy Harrington, late thrice Lord Mayor of Dublin, imposing in mayoral scarlet, gold chain and white silk tie, confers with councillor Lorcan Sherlock, locum tenens. They nod vigorously in agreement.)LATE LORD MAYOR HARRINGTON (In scarlet robe with mace, gold mayoral chain and lace white silk scarf) That alder man sir Leo Bloom's speech be printed at the expense of the ratepayers. That the house in which he was born be ornamented with a commemorative tablet and that the thoroughfare hitherto known as Cow Parlour off Cork street be henceforth designated Boulevard Bloom.COUNCILLOR LORCAN SHERLOCK Carried unanimously.BLOOM (Impassionedly.) These flying Dutchmen or lying Dutchmen as they recline in their upholstered poop, casting dice, what reck they? Machines is their cry, their chimera, their panacea. Laboursaving apparatuses, supplanters, bug-bears, manufactured monsters for mutual murder, hideous hobgoblins produced by a horde of capitalistic lusts upon our prostituted labour. The poor man starves while they are grassing their royal mountain stags or shooting peasants and phartridges in their purblind pomp of pelf and power. But their reign is rover for rever and ever and ev...(Prolonged applause. Venetian masts, maypoles and festal arches spring up. A streamer bearing the legends Cead Mille Failte and Mah Ttob Melek Israel spans the street. All the windows are thronged with sightseers, chiefly ladies. Along the route the regiments of the royal Dublin Fusiliers, the Kings Own Scottish Boraerers, the Cameron Highlanders and the Welsh Fusiliers, standing to attention, keep back the crowd. Boys from High school are perched on the lampposts, telegraph poles, windowsills, cornices, gutters, chimneypots, railings, rainspouts, whistling and cheering. The pillar of the cloud appears. A fife and drum band is heard in the distance playing the Kol Nidre. The beaters approach with imperial eagles hoisted, trailing banners and waving oriental palms. The chryselephantine papal standard rises high, surrounded by pennons of the civic flag. The van of the procession appears headed by John Howard Parnell, city marshal, in a chessboard tabard, the Athlone Poursuivant and Ulster King of Arms. They are followed by the Right Honourable Joseph Hutchinson, lord mayor of Dublin, the lord mayor of Cork, their worships the mayors of Limerick, Galway, Sligo and Watedord, twentyeight Irish representative peers, sirdars, grandees and maharajahs bearing the cloth of estate, the Dublin Metropolitan Fire Brigade, the chapter of the saints of finance in their plutocratic order of precedence, the bishop of Down and Connor His Eminence Michael cardinal Logue archbishop of Armagh, primate of all Ireland, His Grace, the most reverend Dr William Alexander archbishop of Armagh, primate of all Ireland, the chief rabbi, the presbyterian moderator, the heads of the baptist, anabaptist, methodist and Moravian chapels and the honorary secretary of the society of friends. her them march the guilds and trades and trainbands with flying colours: coopen, bird fanciers, millwrights, newspaper canvassers, law scriveners, masseurs, vintners, trussmakers, chimney sweeps, lard refiners, tabinet and poplin weavers, farriers, Italian warehousemen, church decorators, bootjack manufacturers, undertaken, silk mercers, lapidaries, salesmasters, corkcutters, assessors of fire losses, dyers and cleaners, export bottlers, fellmongers, ticketwriters, heraldic seal engravers, horse repository hands, bullion broken, cricket and archery outfitters, riddlemakers, egg and potato factors, hosiers and glovers, plumbing contractors. After them march gentlemen of the bed chamber Black Rod, Deputy Garter Gold Stick, the master of hone, the lord great chamberlain, the earl marshal, the high constable carrying the sword of state, saint Stephen's iron crown, the chalice and bible. Four buglers on foot blow a sennet. Beefeaten reply, winding clarions of welcome. Under an arch of triumph Bloom appears bareheaded, in a crimson velvet mantle trimmed with ermine, bearing Saint Edward's staff the orb and sceptre with the dove, the curtana. He is seated on a milkwhite hone with long flowing crimson tail, richly caparisoned, with golden heads tall. Wild excitement. The ladies from their balconies throw down rosepetals. The air is perfumed with essences. The men cheer. Bloom's boys run amid the bystanders with branches of hawthorn and wrenbushes.)BLOOM'S BOYSThe wren, the wren,The king of all birds,Saint Stephen's his day,Was caught in the furze.A BLACKSMITH (Murmurs.) For the Honour of God! And is that Bloom? He scarcely looks thirtyone.A PAVIOR AND FLAGGER That's the famous Bloom now, the world's greatest reformer. Hats off!(All uncover their heads. Women whisper eagerly.)A MILLIONAIRESS (Richly.) Isn't he simply wonderful?A NOBLEWOMAN (Nobly.) All that man has seen!A FEMINIST (Masculinely.) And done!A BELLHANGER A classic face! He has the forehead of a thinker.(Bloom's weather. A sunburst appears in the northwest.)THE BISHOP OF DOWN AND CONNOR I here present your un doubted emperor president and king chairman, the most serene and potent and very puissant ruler of this realm. God save Leopold the First!ALL God save Leopold the First!BLOOM (In dalmatic and purple mantle, to the bishop of Down and Connor with dignity.) Thanks, somewhat eminent sir.WILLIAM, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH (In purple stock and shovel hat.) Will you to your power cause law and mercy to be executed in all your judgments in Ireland and territories thereunto belonging?BLOOM (Placing his right hand on his testicles, swears.) So may the Creator deal with me. All this I promise to do.MICHAEL, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH (Pours a cruse of hair oil over Bloom's head.) Gaudium magnum annuntio vobis. Habemus carneficem. Leopold, Patrick, Andrew, David, George, be thou anointed!(Bloom assumes a mantle of cloth of gold and puts on a ruby ring. He ascends and stands on the stone of destiny. The representative peers put on at the same time their twentyeight crowns. Joybells ring in Christ church, Saint Patrick's, George's and gay Malahide. Mirus bazaar fireworks go up from all sides with symbolical phallopyrotechnic designs. The peers do homage, one by one, approaching and genuflecting.)THE PEERS I do become your liege man of life and limb to earthly worship.(Bloom holds up his right hand on which sparkles the Koh-i-Noor diamond. His palfrey neighs. Immediate silence. Wireless intercontinental and interplanetary transmitters are set for reception of message.)BLOOM My subjects! We hereby nominate our faithful charger Copula Felix hereditary Grand Vizier and announce that we have this day repudiated our former spouse and have bestowed our royal hand upon the princess Selene, the splendour of night.(The former morganatic spouse of Bloom is hastily removed in the Black Maria. The princess Selene, in moon blue robes, a silver crescent on her head, descends from a Sedan chair borne by two giants. An outburst of cheering.)JOHN HOWARD PARNELL (Raises the royal standard.) Illustrious Bloom! Successor to my famous brother!BLOOM (Embraces John Howard Parnell.) We thank you from our heart, John, for this right royal welcome to green Erin, the promised land of our common ancestors.(The freedom of the city is presented to him embodied in a charter. The keys of Dublin, crossed on a crimson cushion, are given to him. He shows all that he is wearing green socks.)TOM KERNAN You deserve it, your honour.BLOOM On this day twenty years ago we overcame the hereditary enemy at Ladysmith. Our howitzers and camel swivel guns played on his lines with telling effect. Half a league onward! They charge! All is lost now! Do we yield? No! We drive them headlong! Lo! We charge! Deploying to the left our light horse swept across the heights of Plevna and, uttering their warcry, Bonafide Sabaoth, sabred the Saracen gunners to a man.THE CHAPEL OF FREEMAN TYPESETTERS Hear! Hear!JOHN WYSE NOLAN There's the man that got away James Stephens.A BLUECOAT SCHOOLBOY Bravo!AN OLD RESIDENT You're a credit to your country, sir, that's what you are.AN APPLEWOMAN He's a man like Ireland wants.BLOOM My beloved subjects, a new era is about to dawn. I, Bloom, tell you verily it is even now at hand. Yea, on the word of a Bloom, ye shall ere long enter into the golden city which is to be, the new Bloomusalem in the Nova Hibernia of the future.(Thirtytwo workmen wearing rosettes, from all the counties of Ireland, under the guidance of Derwan the builder construct the new Bloomusalem. It is a colossal edifice, with crystal roof built in the shape of a huge pork kidney, containing forty thousand rooms. In the course of its extension several buildings and monuments are demolished. Government offices are temporarily transferred to railway sheds. Numerous houses are razed to the ground. The inhabitants are lodged in barrels and boxes, all marked in red with the letters: L. B. Several paupers fall from a ladder. A part of the walls of Dublin, crowded with loyal sightseers, collapses.)THE SIGHTSEERS (Dying) Morituri te salutant. (They die.)(A man in a brown macintosh springs up through a trap-door. He points an elongated finger at Bloom.)THE MAN IN THE MACINTOSH Don't you believe a word he Says. That man is Leopold M'Intosh, the notorious fireraiser. His real name is Higgins.BLOOM Shoot him! Dog of a christian! So much for M'Intosh!(A cannonshot. The man in the macintosh disappears. Bloom with his sceptre strikes down poppies. The instantaneous deaths of many powerful enemies, graziers, members of parliament, members of standing committees, are reported. Bloom's bodyguard distribute Maundy money, commemoration medals, loaves and fishes, temperance badges, expensive Henry Clay cigars, free cowbones for soup, rubber preservatives, in sealed envelopes tied with gold thread, butter scotch, pineapple rock, billets doux in the form of cocked hats, readymade suits, porringers of toad in the hole, bottles of Jeyes' Fluid, purchase stamps, 40 days' indulgences, spurious coins, dairyfed pork sausages, theatre passes, season tickets available for all tram lines, coupons of the royal and privileged Hungarian lottery, penny dinner counters, cheap reprints of the World's Twelve Worst Books: Froggy and Fritz (politic), Care of the Baby (infantilic), So Meals for 7/6 (culinic), Was Jesus a Sun Myth? (historic), Expel that Pain (medic), Infant's Compendium of the Universe (cosmic), Let's All Chortle (hilaric), Canvasser's Vade Mecum (journalic), love-letters of Mother Assistant (erotic), Who's Who in Space (astric), Songs that Reached Our Heart (melodic), Pennywise's Way to Wealth (parsimonic). A general rush and scramble. Women press forward to touch the hem of Bloom's robe. The lady Gwendolen Dubedat bursts through the throng, leaps on his horse and kisses him on both cheeks amid great acclamation. A magnesium flashlight photograph is taken. Babes and sucklings are held up.)THE WOMEN Little father! Little father!THE BABES AND SUCKLINGSClap clap hands till Poldy comes home,Cakes in his pocket for Leo alone.(Bloom, bending down, pokes Baby Boardman gently in the stomach.)BABY BOARDMAN (Hiccups, curdled milk flowing from his mouth.) Hajajaja.BLOOM (Shaking hands with a blind stripling.) My more than Brother! (Placing his arms round the shoulders of an old couple.) Dear old friends! (He plays pussy fourcorners with ragged boys and girls.) Peep! Bopeep! (He wheels twins in a perambulator.) Ticktacktwo wouldyousetashoe? (He performs juggler's tricks, draws red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet silk handkerchiefs from his mouth.) Roygbiv. 32 feet per second. (He consoles a widow.) Absence makes the heart grow younger. (He dances the Highland fling with grotesque antics.) Leg it, ye devils! (He kisses the bedsores of a palsied veteran.) Honourable wounds! (He trips up a fat policeman.) U.p.: up. U.p.: up. (He whispers in the ear of a blushing waitress and laughs kindly.) Ah, naughty, naughty! (He eats a raw turnip offered him by Maurice Butterly, farmer.) Fine! Splendid! (He refuses to accept three shillings offered him by Joseph Hynes, journalist.) My dear fellow, not at all! (He gives his coat to a beggar.) Please accept. (He takes part in a stomach race with elderly male and female cripples.) Come on, boys! Wriggle it, girls!THE CITIZEN (Choked with emotion, brushes aside a tear in his emerald muffler.) May the good God bless him!(The rams' horns sound for silence. The standard of Zion is hoisted.)BLOOM (Uncloaks impressively, revealing obesity, unrolls a paper and reads solemnly.) Aleph Beth Ghimel Daleth Hagadah Tephilim Kosher Yom Kippur Hanukah Ros chaschana Beni Brith Bar Mitzvah Mazzoth Askenazim Meshuggah Talith.(An official translation is read by Jimmy Henry, assistant town clerk.)JIMMY HENRY The Court of Conscience is now open. His Most Catholic Majesty will now administer open air justice. Free medical and legal advice, solution of doubles and other problems. All cordially invited. Given at this our loyal city of Dublin in the year I of the Paradisiacal Era.PADDY LEONARD What am I to do about my rates and taxes?BLOOM Pay them, my friend.PADDY LEONARD Thank you.NOSEY FLYNN Can I raise a mortgage on my fire insurance?BLOOM (Obdurately.) Sirs, take notice that by the law of torts you are bound over in your own recognisances for six months in the sum of five pounds.J.J. O'MOLLY A Daniel did I say? Nay! A Peter O'Brien!NOSEY FLYNN Where do I draw the five pounds?PISSER BURKE For bladder trouble?BLOOMAcid. nit. hydrochlor dil., 20 minims,Tinct. mix. vom., 4 minims.Extr. taraxel. lig., 30 minims.Aq. dis. ter in die.CHRIS CALLINAN What is the parallax of the subsolar ecliptic of Aldebaran?BLOOM Pleased to hear from you, Chris. K. II.JOE HYNES Why aren't you in uniform?BLOOM When my progenitor of sainted memory wore the uniform of the Austrian despot in a dank prison where was yours?BEN DOLLARD Pansies?BLOOM Embellish (beautify) suburban gardens.BEN DOLLARD When twins arrive?BLOOM Father (pater, dad) starts thinking.LARRY O'ROURKE An eight day licence for my new premises. You remember me, sir Leo, when you were in number seven. I'm sending around a dozen of stout for the missus.BLOOM (Coldly.) You have the advantage of me. Lady Bloom accepts no presents.CROFTON This is indeed a festivity.BLOOM (Solemnly.) You call it a festivity. I call it a sacrament.ALEXANDER KEYES When will we have our own house of keys?BLOOM I stand for the reform of municipal morals and the plain ten commandments. New worlds for old. Union of all, jew, moslem and gentile. Three acres and a cow for all children of nature. Saloon motor hearses. Compulsory manual labour for all. All parks open to the public day and night. Electric dishscrubbers. Tuberculosis, lunacy, war and mendicancy must now cease. General amnesty, weekly carnival, with masked licence, bonuses for all, esperanto the universal brotherhood. No more patriotism of barspongers and dropsical impostors. Free money, free love and a free lay church in a free lay state.O'MADDEN BURKE Free fox in a free henroost.DAVY BYRNE (Yawning.) Iiiiiiiiiaaaaaaach!BLOOM Mixed races and mixed marriage.LENEHAN What about mixed bathing?(Bloom explains to those near him his schemes for social regeneration. All agree with him. The keeper of the Kildare Street Museum appears, dragging a lorry on which are the shaking statues of several naked goddesses, Venus Callipyge, Venus Pandemos Venus Metempsychosis, and plaster figures, also naked, representing the new nine muses, Commerce, Operatic Music, Amor Publicity, Manufacture, liberty of Speech, Plural Voting, Gastronomy, Private Hygiene, Seaside Concert Entertainments, Painless Obstetrics and Astronomy for the People.)FATHER FARLEY He is an episcopalian, an agnostic, an any thingarian seeking to overthrow our holy faith.MRS RIORDAN (Tears up her will.) I'm disappointed in you! You bad man!MOTHER GROGAN (Removes her boot to throw it at Bloom.) You beast! You abominable person!NOSEY FLYNN Give us a tune, Bloom. One of the old sweet songs.BLOOM (With rollicking humour.)I vowed that I never would leave her,She turned out a cruel deceiver.With my tooraloom tooraloom tooralcom tooraloom.HOPPY HOLOHAN Good old Bloom! There's nobody like him after all.PADDY LEONARD Stage Irishman!BLOOM What railway opera is like a tramline in Gibraltar? The Rows of Casteele. (Laughter.)LENEHAN Plagiarist! Down with Bloom!THE VEILED SIBYL (Enthusiastically.) I'm a Bloomite and I glory in it. I believe in him in spite of all. I'd give my life for him, the funniest man on earth.BLOOM (Winks at the bystanders.) I bet she's a bonny lassie.THEODORE PUREFOY (In fishing cap and oilskin jacket.) He employs a mechanical device to frustrate the sacred ends of nature.THE VEILED SIBYL (Stabs herself.) My hero god! (She dies.)(Many most attractive and enthusiastic women also commit suicide by stabbing, drowning, drinking prussic acid, aconite, arsenic, opening their veins, refusing food, casting themselves under steamrollers, from the top of Nelson's Pillar, into the great vat of Guinness's brewery, asphyxiating themselves by placing their heads in gas ovens, hanging themselves in stylish garters, leaping from windows of different storeys.)ALEXANDER J. DOWIE (Violently.) Fellowchristians and antiBloomites, the man called Bloom is from the roots of hell, a disgrace to christian men. A fiendish libertine from his earliest years this stinking goat of Mendes gave precocious signs of infantile debauchery recalling the cities of the plain, with a dissolute granddam. This vile hypocrite, bronzed with infamy, is the white bull mentioned in the Apocalypse. A worshipper of the Scarlet Woman, intrigue is the very breath of his nostrils. The stake faggots and the caldron of boiling oil are for him. Caliban!THE MOB Lynch him! Roast him! He's as bad as Parnell was. Mr Fox!(Mother Grogan throws her boot at Bloom. Several shopkeepers from upper and lower Dorset street throw objects of little or no commercial value, hambones, condensed milk tins, unsaleable cabbage, stale bread, sheeps' tails, odd pieces of fat.)BLOOM (Excitedly.) This is midsummer madness, some ghastly joke again. By heaven, I am guiltless as the unsunned snow! It was my brother Henry. He is my double. He lives in number 2 Dolphin's Barn. Slander, the viper, has wrongfully accused me. Fellowcountrymen, sgenl inn ban bata coisde gan capall. I call on my old friend, Dr Malachi Mulligan, sex specialist to give medical testimony on my behalf.DR MULLIGAN (In motor jerkin, green motoroggles on his brow.) Dr Bloom is bisexually abnormal. He has recently escaped from Dr Eustace's private asylum for demented gentlemen. Born out of bedlock hereditary epilepsy is present, the consequence of unbridled lust. Traces of elephantiasis have been discovered among his ascendants. There are marked symptoms of chronic exhibitionism. Ambidexterity is also latent. He is prematurely bald from selfabuse, perversely idealistic in consequence, a reformed rake, and has metal teeth. In consequence of a family complex he has temporarily lost his memory and I believe him to be more sinned against than sinning. I have made a pervaginal examination and, after application of the acid test to 5427 anal, axillary, pectoral and pubic hairs, I declare him to be virgo intacta.(Bloom holds his high grade hat over his genital organs.)DR MADDEN Hypsospadia is also marked. In the interest of coming generations I suggest that the parts affected should be preserved in spirits of wine in the national teratological museum.DR CROTTHERS I have examined the patient's urine. It is albuminoid. Salivation is insufficient, the patellar reflex intermittent.DR PUNCH COSTELLO The fetor judaicus is most perceptible.DR DIXON (Reads a bill of health.) Professor Bloom is a finished example of the new womanly man. His moral nature is simple and lovable. Many have found him a dear man, a dear person. He is a rather quaint fellow on the whole, coy though not feeble-minded in the medical sense. He has written a really beautiful letter, a poem in itself, to the court missionary of the Reformed Priests' Protection Society which clears up everything. He is practically a total abstainer and I can affirm that he sleeps on a straw litter and eats the most Spartan food, cold dried grocer's peas. He wears a hairshirt winter and summer and scourges himself every Saturday. He was, I understand, at one time a firstclass misdemeanant in Glencree reformatory. Another report states that he was a very posthumous child. I appeal for clemency in the name of the most sacred word our vocal organs have ever been called upon to speak. He is about to have a baby.(General commotion and compassion. Women faint. A wealthy American makes a street collection for Bloom. Gold and silver coins, bank cheques, banknotes, jewels, treasury bonds, maturing bills of exchange, I.O.U.s, wedding rings' watch-chains, lockets, necklaces and bracelets are rapidly collected.)BLOOM O, I so want to be a mother.MRS THORNTON (In nursetender's gown.) Embrace me tight, dear. You'll be soon over it. Tight, dear.(Bloom embraces her tightly and bears eight male yellow and white children. They appear on a redcarpeted staircase adorned with expensive plants. All are handsome, with valuable metallic faces, wellmade, respectably dressed and wellconducted, speaking five modern languages fluently and interested in various arts and sciences. Each has his name printed in legible letters on his shirtfront: Nasodoro, Goldfinger, Chrysostomos, Maindorée, Silversmile, Silberselber Vifargent, Panargros. They are immediately appointed to positions of high public trust in several different countries as managing directors of banks, traffic managers of railways, chairmen of limited liability companies, vice chairmen of hotel syndicates.)A VOICE Bloom, are you the Messiah ben Joseph or ben David?BLOOM (Darkly.) You have said it.BROTHER BUZZ Then perform a miracle.BANTAM LYONS Prophesy who will win the Saint Leger.(Bloom walks on a net, covers his left eye with his left ear, passes through several walls, climbs Nelson's Pillar, hangs from the the ledge by his eyelids, eats twelve dozen oysters (shells included), heals several sufferers from kings evil, contracts his face so as to resemble many historical personages, lord Beaconsfield, lord Byron, Wat Tyler, Moses of Egypt, Moses Maimonides, Moses Mendelssohn, Henry Irving, Rip van Winkle, Rossuth, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Baron Leopold Rothschild, Robinson Crusoe, Sherlock Holmes, Pasteur, turns each foot simultaneously in different directions, bids the tide turn back, eclipses the sun by extending his little finger.)BRINI, PAPAL NUNCIO (In papal zouave's uniform, steel cuirasses as breastplate, armplates, thighplates, legplates, large profane moustaches and brown paper mitre.) Leopoldi autem generatio. Moses begat Noah and Noah begat Eunuch and Eunuch begat O'Halloran and O'Halloran begat Guggenheim and Guggenheim begat Agendath and Agendath begat Netaim and Netaim begat Le Hirsch and Le Hirsch begat Jesurum and Jesurum begat MacKay and MacKay begat Ostrolopsky and Ostrolopsky begat Smerdoz and Smerdoz begat Weiss and Weiss begat Schwarz and Schwarz begat Adrianopoli and Adrianopoli began Aranjuez and Aranjuez begat Lewy Lawson and Lewy Lawson begat Ichabudonosor and Ichabudonosor begat O'Donnell Magnus and O'Donnell Magnus begat Christbaum and Christbaum begat Ben Maimun and Ben Maimun begat Dusty Rhodes and Dusty Rhodes begat Benamor and Benamor begat Jones-Smith and Jones-Smith begat Savorgnanovich and Savorgnanovich begat Jasperstone and Jasperstone begat Vingtetunieme and Vingtetunieme begat Szombathely and Szombathely begat Virag and Virag begat Bloom et vocabitur nomen eius Emmanuel.A DEADHAND (Writes on the wall.) Bloom is a cod. A CRAB (In bush ranger's kit.) What did you do in the cattlecreep behind Kilbarrack?A FEMALE INFANT (Shakes a rattle.) And under Ballybough bridge?A HOLLYBUSH And in the devil's glen?BLOOM (Blushes furiously all over from front to nates, three tears falling from his left eye.) Spare my past.THE IRISH EVICTED TENANTS (In bodycoats, kneebreeches, with Donnybrook fair shillelaghs.) Sjambok him!(Bloom with asses' ears seats himself in the pillory with crossed arms, his feet protruding. He whistles Don Giovanni, a cenar teco. Artane orphans, joining hands, caper round him. Girls of the Prison Gate Mission, joining hands, caper round in the opposite direction.)THE ARTANE ORPHANSYou big, you bog, you dirty dog!You think the ladies love you!THE PRISON GATE GIRLSIf you see kayTell him he maySee you in teaTell him from me.HORNBLOWER (In ephod and huntingcap, announces.) And he shall carry the sins of the people to Azazel, the spirit which is in the wilderness, and to Lilith, the nighthag. And they shall stone him and defile him, yea, all from Agendath Netaim and from Mizraim, the land of Ham.(All the people cast soft pantomime stones at Bloom. Many bonafide travellers and ownerless dogs come near him and defile him. Mastiansky and Citron approach in gaberdines, wearing long earlocks. They wag their beards at Bloom.)MASTIANSKY AND CITRON Belial! Laemlein of Istria! the false Messiah! Abulafia!(George S. Mesias, Bloom's tailor, appears, a tailor's goose under his arm, presenting a bill.)MESIAS To alteration one pair trousers eleven shillings.BLOOM (Rubs his hands cheerfully.) Just like old times. Poor Bloom!(Reuben J. Dodd, black bearded Iscariot, bad shepherd, bearing on his shoulders the drowned corpse of his son, approaches the pillory.)REUBEN J. (Whispers hoarsely.) The squeak is out. A split is gone for the flatties. Nip the first rattler.THE FIRE BRIGADE Pflaap!BROTHER BUZZ (Invests Bloom in a yellow habit with embroidery of painted flames and high pointed hat. He places a bag of gunpowder round his neck and hands him over to the civil power, saying.) Forgive him his trespasses.(Lieutenant Myers of the Dublin Fire Brigade by general request sets fire to Bloom. Lamentations.)THE CITIZEN Thank heaven!BLOOM (In a seamless garment marked I. H. S. stands upright amid phoenix flames.) Weep not for me, O daughters of Erin.(He exhibits to Dublin reporters traces of burning. The daughters of Erin, in black garments with lace prayerbooks and long lighted candles in their hands, kneel down and pray.)THE DAUGHTERS OF ERIN Kidney of Bloom, pray for us. Flower of the Bath, pray for us. Mentor of Menton, pray for us. Canvasser for the Freeman, pray for us. Charitable Mason, pray for us. Wandering Soap, pray for us. Sweets of Sin, pray for us. Music without Words, pray for us. Reprover of the Citizen, pray for us. Friend of all Frillies, pray for us. Midwife Most Merciful, pray for us. Potato Preservative against Plague and Pestilence, pray for us.(A choir of six hundred voices, conducted by Mr Vincent O'Brien, sings the Alleluia chorus, accompanied on the organ by Joseph Glynn. Bloom becomes mute, shrunken, carbonised.)ZOE Talk away till you're black in the face.BLOOM (In caubeen with clay pipe stuck in the band, dusty brogues, an emigrant's red handkerchief bundle in his hand, leading a black bogoak pig by a sugaun, with a smile in his eye.) Let me be going now, woman of the house, for by all the goats in Connemara I'm after having the father and mother of a bating. (With a tear in his eye.) All insanity. Patriotism, sorrow for the dead, music, future of the race. To be or not to be. Life's dream is o'er. End it peacefully. They can live on. (He gazes far away mournfully.) I am ruined. A few pastilles of aconite. The blinds drawn. A letter. Then lie back to rest. (He breathes softly.) No more. I have lived. Fare. Farewell.ZOE (Stiffly, her finger in her neckfillet.) Honest? Till the next time. (She sneers.) Suppose you got up the wrong side of the bed or came too quick with your best girl. O, I can read your thoughts.BLOOM (Bitterly.) Man and woman, love, what is it? A cork and bottle.ZOE (In sudden sulks.) I hate a rotter that's insincere. Give a bleeding whore a chance.BLOOM (Repentantly.) I am very disagreeable. You are a necessary evil. Where are you from? London?ZOE (Glibly.) Hog's Norton where the pigs play the organs. I'm Yorkshire born. (She holds his hand which is feeling for her nipple.) I say, Tommy Tittlemouse. Stop that and begin worse. Have you cash for a short time? Ten shillings?BLOOM (Smiles, nods slowly.) More, houri, more.ZOE And more's mother? (She pats him offhandedly with velvet paws.) Are you coming into the musicroom to see our new pianola? Come and I'll peel off.BLOOM (Feeling his occiput dubiously with the unparalleled embarrassment of a harassed pedlar gauging the symmetry of her peeled pears.) Somebody would be dreadfully jealous if she knew. The greeneyed monster. (Earnestly.) You know how difficult it is. I needn't tell you.ZOE (Flattered.) What the eye can't see the heart can't grieve for. (She pats him.) Come.BLOOM Laughing witch! The hand that rocks the cradle.ZOE Babby!BLOOM (In babylinen and pelisse, bigheaded, with a caul of dark hair, fixes big eyes on her fluid slip and counts its bronze buckles with a chubby finger, his moist tongue tolling and lisping.) One two tlee: tlee tlwo tlone.THE BUCKLES Love me. Love me not. Love me.ZOE Silent means consent. (With little parted talons she captures his hand, her forefinger giving to his palm the pass touch 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 an tiered 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 thrown open. A man in purple shirt and grey trousers, brownsocked, passes with an apes 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 tapes-tried with a paper of yewfronds and clear glades. In the grate is spread a screen of peacock feathers. Lynch squats crosslegged on the hearth rug 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 corset lace hangs slightly below her jacket. Lynch indicates mockingly the couple at the piano.)KITTY (Coughs behind her hand.) She's a bit imbecilic. (She signs with a waggling forefinger.) Blemblem. (Lynch lifts up her skirt and white petticoat with the 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 sofa corner, 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 Cla 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 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 on 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 Anti christ. O, my foot's tickling.(Ragged barefoot newsboys, jogging a wagtail kite, patterpast, 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 J. Antichrist, wanderingjew, a clutching hand open on his spine, stumps forward. Across his loins is slung a pilgrims 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 son! faits! (The planets rush together, uttering crepitant cracks.) Rien n'va plus. (The planets, buoyant balloons, sail swollen up and away. He springs off into vacuum.)FLORRY (Sinking into torpor, crosses 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 falls from it, proclaiming the consummation of all things and second coming of Elijah. Along an infinite invisible tight-rope taut from zenith to nadir the End of the World, a two headed octopus in gillies kilts, busby and tartan filibegs, whirls through the murk, head over heels, in the fob of the Three Lugs 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 passing drift and choking breathcoughs, Elijah's voice, harsh as a corncrakes, jars on high. Perspiring in a loose lawn surplice with funnel sleeves he is seen, vergefaced 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, Dave 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.) Whorusalaminyour highhohhhh.(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 ain't 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. 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 stars 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 fast 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 attire, shinily laundered, his locks in curlpapers. He leads John Eglinton who wears a mandarin's kimono of Nankeen yellow, lizard-lettered, 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. (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 search light behind the coalscuttle, ollave, holyeyed, the bearded figure of Mananaan MacLir broods, chin on knees. He rises slowly. A cold seawind blows from his druid mantle. 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.)MANANAAN 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! Dark hidden Father! (He smites with his bicycle pump the crayfish in his left hand. On its co-operative 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 judas hand strangles the light. The green light wanes to mauve. The gasjet wails whistling.)THE GASJET Pooah! Pfuiiiiii!(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 beauty spot 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 Colombus. 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 Ichthyo saurus. 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 è santa. Tara. Tara. (Aside.) He will surely remember.BLOOM Rosemary also did I understand you to say or will power 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 1882 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 gusseted 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 tomorrow as now was be past yester.VIRAG (Prompts into his ear in a pig's whisper.) Insects of the day spend their brief existence in reiterated coition, lured by the smell of the inferiorly pulchritudinous female possessing extendified pudendal verve 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! 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 head with cackling raillery.) Jocular. With my eyeglass in my ocular.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 contradict. 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 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 wing- shoulders, peers at the moth out of blear bulged eyes, points a homing claw and cries.) Who's Ger Ger? Who's dear 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.) Luss puss puss puss! (He sighs, draws back and stares sideways down with dropping underjaw.) Well, well. He doth rest anon.I'm a tiny tiny thingEver flying in the springRound and round a ringaring.Long ago I was a king,Now I do this kind of thingOn 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 sliding 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 Jacobs 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 pendent 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?