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?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 by 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 grasps 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 Iacchias, 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'était le sacré 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 whores 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, orange flower. 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, fatpapped, stands forth, his loins and genitals tightened into a pair of black bathing bagslops.)BEN POLLARD (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 MacChree!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 parchment roll.) 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 cows lick to his hair. Steered by his rapier, he glides to the door his wild had 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. 11. 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 Anus 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 are a spoiled priest. Or a monk.LYNCH He is. A Cardinal's son.STEPHEN Cardinal sin. Monks of the screw.(His Eminence, Simon Stephen Cardinal Dedalus, Primate of all Ireland, appears in the doorway, dressed in red soutane, sandals and socks. Seven dwarf simian acolytes, also in red, cardinal sins, uphold his train, peeping under it. He wears a battered silk hat sideways on his head. His thumbs are stuck in his armpits and his palms outspread. Round his neck hangs a rosary of corks ending on his breast in a corkscrew cross. Releasing his thumbs, he invokes grace from on high with lace wave gestures and proclaims with bloated pomp.)THE CARDINALConservio lies captured.He lies in the lowest dungeonWith manacles and chains around his limbsWeighing upwards of three tons.(He looks at all for a moment, his right eye closed tight, his left cheek puffed out. Then, unable to repress his merriment, he rocks to and fro, ads akimbo, and sings with broad rollicking humour.) O, the poor little fellow Hi-hi-hi-hi-his legs they were yellow He was plump, fat and heavy and brisk as a snake But some bloody savage To graize his white cabbage He murdered Nell Flaherty's duckloving drake.(A multitude of midges swarms over his robe. He scratches himself with crossed arms at his ribs, grimacing, and exclaims.) I'm suffering the agony of the damned. By the hoky fiddle, thanks be to Jesus those funny little chaps are not unanimous. If they were they'd walk me off the face of the bloody globe.(His head aslant, he blesses curtly with fore and middle fingers, imparts the Easter kiss and doubleshuffles off comically, swaying his hat from side to side, shrinking quickly to the size of his train bearers. The dwarf acolytes, giggling, peeping, nudging, ogling, Easterkissing, zigzag behind him. His voice is heard mellow from afar, merciful, male, melodious.) Shall carry my heart to thee, Shall carry my heart to thee, And the breath of the balmy night Shall carry my heart to thee.(The trick doorhandle turns.)THE DOORHANDLE Theeee.ZOE The devil is in that door.(A male form passes down the creaking staircase and is heard taking the waterproof and hat from the rack. Bloom starts forward involuntarily and, half closing the door as he passes, takes the chocolate from his pocket and offers it nervously to Zoe.)ZOE (Sniffs his hair briskly.) Hum. Thank your mother for the rabbits. I'm very fond of what I like.BLOOM (Hearing a male voice in talk with the whores on the doorstep, pricks his ears.) If it were he? After? Or because not? Or the double event?ZOE (Tears open the silverfoil.) Fingers was made before forks. (She breaks off and nibbles a piece, gives a piece to Kitty Ricketts and then turns kittenishly to Lynch.) No objection to French lozenges? (He nods. She taunts him.) Have it now or wait till you get it? (He opens his mouth, his head cocked. She whirls the prize in left circle. His head follows. She whirls it back in right circle. He eyes her.) Catch.(She tosses a piece. With an adroit snap he catches it and bites it through with a crack.)KITTY (Chewing.) The engineer I was with at the bazaar does have lovely ones. Full of the best liqueurs. And the viceroy was there with his lady. The gas we had on the Toft's hobbyhorses. I'm giddy still.BLOOM (In Svengali's fur overcoat, with folded arms and Napoleonic forelock, frowns in ventriloquial exorcism with piercing eagle glance towards the door. Then, rigid, with left foot advanced, he makes a swift pass with impelling fingers and gives the sign of past master, drawing his right arm downwards from his left shoulder.) Go, go, go, I conjure you, whoever you are.(A male cough and tread are heard passing through the mist outside. Blooms features relax. He places a hand in his waistcoat, posing calmly. Zoe offers him chocolate.)BLOOM (Solemnly.) Thanks.ZOE Do as you're bid. Here.(A firm heelclacking is heard on the stairs.)BLOOM (Takes the chocolate.) Aphrodisiac? But I thought it. Vanilla calms or? Mnemo. Confused light confuses memory. Red influences lupus. Colours affect women's characters, any they have. This black makes me sad. Eat and be merry for tomorrow. (He eats.) Influence taste too, mauve. But it is so long since I. Seems new. Aphro. That priest. Must come. Better late than never. Try truffles at Andrews.(The door opens. Bella Cohen, a massive whoremistress enters. She is dressed in a threequarter ivory gown, fringed round the hem with tasselled selvedge, and cools herself flirting a black horn fan like Minnie Hauck in Carmen. On her left hand are wedding and keeper rings. Her eyes are deeply carboned. She has a sprouting moustache. Her olive face is heavy, slightly sweated and fullnosed, with orangetainted nostrils. She has lace pendant beryl eardrops.)BELLA My word! I'm all of a mucksweat.(She glances around her at the couples. Then her eyes rest on Bloom with hard insistence. Her lace fan winnows wind towards her heated face, neck and embonpoint. Her falcon eyes glitter.)THE FAN (Flirting quickly, then slowly.) Married, I see.BLOOM Yes... Partly, I have mislaid .THE FAN (Half opening, then closing.) And the missus is master. Petticoat government.BLOOM (Looks down with a sheepish grin.) That is so.THE FAN (Folding together, rests against her eardrop.) Have you forgotten me?BLOOM Yes. No.THE FAN (Folded akimbo against her waist.) Is me her was you dreamed before? Was then she him you us since knew? Am all them and the same now we? (Bella approaches, gently tapping with the fan.)BLOOM (Wincing.) Powerful being. In my eyes read that slumber which women love.THE FAN (Tapping.) We have met. You are mine. It is fate.BLOOM (Cowed.) Exuberant female. Enormously I desiderate your domination. I am exhausted, abandoned, no more young. I stand, so to speak, with an unposted letter bearing the extra regulation fee before the too late box of the general postoffice of human life. The door and window open at a right angle cause a draught of thirtytwo feet per second according to the law of falling bodies. I have felt this instant a twinge of sciatica in my left glutear muscle. It runs in our family. Poor dear papa, a widower, was a regular barometer from it. He believed in animal heat. A skin of tabby lined his winter waistcoat. Near the end, remembering king David and the Sunamite, he shared his bed with Athos, faithful after death. A dog's spittle, as you probably... (He winces.) Ah!RICHIE GOULDING (Bagweighted, passes the door.) Mocking is catch. Best value in Dub. Fit for a prince's liver and kidney.THE FAN (Tapping.) All things end. Be mine. Now.BLOOM (Undecided.) All now? I should not have parted with my talisman. Rain, exposure at dewfall on the sea rocks, a peccadillo at my time of life. Every phenomenon has a natural cause.THE FAN (Points downwards slowly.) You may.BLOOM (Looks downwards and perceives her unfastened bootlace. ) We are observed.THE FAN (Points downwards quickly.) You must.BLOOM (With desire, with reluctance.) I can make a true black knot. Learned when I served my time and worked the mail order line for Kellet's. Experienced hand. Every knot says a lot. Let me. In courtesy. I knelt once before today. Ah!(Bella raises her gown slightly and, steadying her pose, lifts to the edge of a chair a plump buskined hoof and a full pastern, silksocked. Bloom, stifflegged ageing, bends over her hoof and with gentle fingers draws out and in her laces.)BLOOM (Murmurs lovingly.) To be a shoefitter in Mansfield's was my love's young dream, the darling joys of sweet buttonhooking, to lace up crisscrossed to kneelength the dressy kid footwear satinlined, so incredibly small, of Clyde Road ladies. Even their wax model Raymonde I visited daily to admire her cobweb hose and stick of rhubarb toe, as worn in Paris.THE HOOF Smell my hot goathide. Feel my royal weight.BLOOM (Crosslacing.) Too tight?THE HOOF If you bungle, Handy Andy, I'll kick your football for you.BLOOM Not to lace the wrong eyelet as I did the night of the bazaar dance. Bad luck. Nook in wrong tache of her... person you mentioned. That night she met... Now!(He knots the lace. Bella places her foot on the floor. Bloom raises his head. Her heavy face, her eyes strike him in mid-brow. His eyes grow dull, darker and pouched, his nose thickens.)BLOOM (Mumbles.) Awaiting your further orders, we remain, gentlemen.BELLO (With a hard basilisk stare, in a baritone voice.) Hound of dishonour!BLOOM (Infatuated.) Empress!BELLO (His heavy cheekchops sagging.) Adorer of the adulterous rump!BLOOM (Plaintively.) Hugeness!BELLO Dungdevourer!BLOOM (With sinews semiflexed.) Magnificence.BELLO Down! (He taps her on the shoulder with his fan.) Incline feet forward! Slide left foot one pace back. You will fall. You are falling. On the hands down!BLOOM (Her eyes upturned in the sign of admiration, closing.) Truffles!(With a piercing epileptic cry she sinks on all fours, grunting, snuffling, rooting at his feet, then lies, shamming dead with eyes shut tight, trembling eyelids, bowed upon the ground in the attitude of most excellent master.)BELLO (With bobbed hair purple gills, fat moustache rings round his shaven mouth, in mountaineer's puttees, green silverbuttoned coat, sport skirt and alpine hat with moor cock's feather, his hands stuck deep in his breeches pockets, places his heel on her neck and grinds it in.) Feel my entire weight. Bow, bondslave, before the throne of your despot's glorious heels, so glistening in their proud erectness.BLOOM (Enthralled, bleats.) I promise never to disobey.BELLO (Laughs loudly.) Holy smoke! You little know what's in store for you. I'm the tartar to settle your little lot and break you in! I'll bet Kentucky cocktails all round I shame it out of you, old son. Cheek me, I dare you. If you do tremble in anticipation of heel discipline to be inflicted in gym costume.(Bloom creeps under the sofa and peers out through the fringe.ZOE (Widening her slip to screen her.) She's not here.BLOOM (Closing her eyes.) She's not here.FLORRY (Hiding her with her gown.) She didn't mean it, Mr Bello. She'll be good, sir.KITTY Don't be too hard on her, Mr Bello. Sure you won't, ma'amsir.BELLO (Coaxingly.) Come, ducky dear. I want a word with you, darling, just to administer correction. Just a little heart to heart talk, sweety. (Bloom puts out her timid head.) There's a good girly now. (Bello grabs her hair violently and drags her forward.) I only want to correct you for your own good on a soft safe spot. How's that tender behind? O, ever so gently, pet. Begin to get ready.BLOOM (Fainting.) Don't tear my.BELLO (Savagely.) The nosering, the pliers, the bastinado, the hanging hook, the knout I'll make you kiss while the flutes play like the Nubian slave of old. You're in for it this time. I'll make you remember me for the balance of your natural life. (His forehead veins swollen, his face congested.) I shall sit on your ottoman saddleback every morning after my thumping good breakfast of Matterson's fat ham rashers and a bottle of Guinness's porter. (He belches.) And suck my thumping good Stock Exchange cigar while I read the Licensed Victualler's Gazette. Very possibly I shall have you slaughtered and skewered in my stables and enjoy a slice Of you with crisp crackling from the baking tin basted and baked like sucking pig with rice and lemon or currant sauce. It will hurt you.(He twists her arm. Bloom squeaks, turning turtle.)BLOOM Don't be cruel, nurse! Don't!BELLO (Twisting.) Another!BLOOM (Screams.) O, it's hell itself! Every nerve in my body aches like mad!