ULYSSES

by James Joyce

Prepared and Published by:

Ebd
E-BooksDirectory.com
 —I—
Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather
on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was
sustained gently behind him on the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and
intoned:
—Introibo ad altare Dei.
Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called out coarsely:
—Come up, Kinch! Come up, you fearful jesuit!
Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest. He faced about and
blessed gravely thrice the tower, the surrounding land and the awaking
mountains. Then, catching sight of Stephen Dedalus, he bent towards him and
made rapid crosses in the air, gurgling in his throat and shaking his head. Stephen
Dedalus, displeased and sleepy, leaned his arms on the top of the staircase and
looked coldly at the shaking gurgling face that blessed him, equine in its length,
and at the light untonsured hair, grained and hued like pale oak.
Buck Mulligan peeped an instant under the mirror and then covered the bowl
smartly.
—Back to barracks! he said sternly.
He added in a preacher's tone:
—For this, O dearly beloved, is the genuine Christine: body and soul and blood
and ouns. Slow music, please. Shut your eyes, gents. One moment. A little trouble
about those white corpuscles. Silence, all.
He peered sideways up and gave a long slow whistle of call, then paused awhile
in rapt attention, his even white teeth glistening here and there with gold points.
Chrysostomos. Two strong shrill whistles answered through the calm.
—Thanks, old chap, he cried briskly. That will do nicely. Switch off the current,
will you?
He skipped off the gunrest and looked gravely at his watcher, gathering about
his legs the loose folds of his gown. The plump shadowed face and sullen oval
jowl recalled a prelate, patron of arts in the middle ages. A pleasant smile broke
quietly over his lips.
—The mockery of it! he said gaily. Your absurd name, an ancient Greek!
He pointed his finger in friendly jest and went over to the parapet, laughing to
himself. Stephen Dedalus stepped up, followed him wearily halfway and sat down
on the edge of the gunrest, watching him still as he propped his mirror on the
parapet, dipped the brush in the bowl and lathered cheeks and neck.
 Buck Mulligan's gay voice went on.
—My name is absurd too: Malachi Mulligan, two dactyls. But it has a Hellenic
ring, hasn't it? Tripping and sunny like the buck himself. We must go to Athens.
Will you come if I can get the aunt to fork out twenty quid?
He laid the brush aside and, laughing with delight, cried:
—Will he come? The jejune jesuit!
Ceasing, he began to shave with care.
—Tell me, Mulligan, Stephen said quietly.
—Yes, my love?
—How long is Haines going to stay in this tower?
Buck Mulligan showed a shaven cheek over his right shoulder.
—God, isn't he dreadful? he said frankly. A ponderous Saxon. He thinks you're
not a gentleman. God, these bloody English! Bursting with money and indigestion.
Because he comes from Oxford. You know, Dedalus, you have the real Oxford
manner. He can't make you out. O, my name for you is the best: Kinch, the knife-
blade.
He shaved warily over his chin.
—He was raving all night about a black panther, Stephen said. Where is his
guncase?
—A woful lunatic! Mulligan said. Were you in a funk?
—I was, Stephen said with energy and growing fear. Out here in the dark with a
man I don't know raving and moaning to himself about shooting a black panther.
You saved men from drowning. I'm not a hero, however. If he stays on here I am
off.
Buck Mulligan frowned at the lather on his razorblade. He hopped down from
his perch and began to search his trouser pockets hastily.
—Scutter! he cried thickly.
He came over to the gunrest and, thrusting a hand into Stephen's upper pocket,
said:
—Lend us a loan of your noserag to wipe my razor.
Stephen suffered him to pull out and hold up on show by its corner a dirty
crumpled handkerchief. Buck Mulligan wiped the razorblade neatly. Then, gazing
over the handkerchief, he said:
—The bard's noserag! A new art colour for our Irish poets: snotgreen. You can
almost taste it, can't you?
 He mounted to the parapet again and gazed out over Dublin bay, his fair
oakpale hair stirring slightly.
—God! he said quietly. Isn't the sea what Algy calls it: a great sweet mother?
The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea. Epi oinopa ponton. Ah, Dedalus,
the Greeks! I must teach you. You must read them in the original. Thalatta!
Thalatta! She is our great sweet mother. Come and look.
Stephen stood up and went over to the parapet. Leaning on it he looked down
on the water and on the mailboat clearing the harbourmouth of Kingstown.
—Our mighty mother! Buck Mulligan said.
He turned abruptly his grey searching eyes from the sea to Stephen's face.
—The aunt thinks you killed your mother, he said. That's why she won't let me
have anything to do with you.
—Someone killed her, Stephen said gloomily.
—You could have knelt down, damn it, Kinch, when your dying mother asked
you, Buck Mulligan said. I'm hyperborean as much as you. But to think of your
mother begging you with her last breath to kneel down and pray for her. And you
refused. There is something sinister in you...
He broke off and lathered again lightly his farther cheek. A tolerant smile curled
his lips.
—But a lovely mummer! he murmured to himself. Kinch, the loveliest mummer
of them all!
He shaved evenly and with care, in silence, seriously.
Stephen, an elbow rested on the jagged granite, leaned his palm against his
brow and gazed at the fraying edge of his shiny black coat-sleeve. Pain, that was
not yet the pain of love, fretted his heart. Silently, in a dream she had come to
him after her death, her wasted body within its loose brown graveclothes giving
off an odour of wax and rosewood, her breath, that had bent upon him, mute,
reproachful, a faint odour of wetted ashes. Across the threadbare cuffedge he saw
the sea hailed as a great sweet mother by the wellfed voice beside him. The ring of
bay and skyline held a dull green mass of liquid. A bowl of white china had stood
beside her deathbed holding the green sluggish bile which she had torn up from
her rotting liver by fits of loud groaning vomiting.
Buck Mulligan wiped again his razorblade.
—Ah, poor dogsbody! he said in a kind voice. I must give you a shirt and a few
noserags. How are the secondhand breeks?
—They fit well enough, Stephen answered.
Buck Mulligan attacked the hollow beneath his underlip.
 —The mockery of it, he said contentedly. Secondleg they should be. God knows
what poxy bowsy left them off. I have a lovely pair with a hair stripe, grey. You'll
look spiffing in them. I'm not joking, Kinch. You look damn well when you're
dressed.
—Thanks, Stephen said. I can't wear them if they are grey.
—He can't wear them, Buck Mulligan told his face in the mirror. Etiquette is
etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.
He folded his razor neatly and with stroking palps of fingers felt the smooth
skin.
Stephen turned his gaze from the sea and to the plump face with its smokeblue
mobile eyes.
—That fellow I was with in the Ship last night, said Buck Mulligan, says you
have g.p.i. He's up in Dottyville with Connolly Norman. General paralysis of the
insane!
He swept the mirror a half circle in the air to flash the tidings abroad in sunlight
now radiant on the sea. His curling shaven lips laughed and the edges of his white
glittering teeth. Laughter seized all his strong wellknit trunk.
—Look at yourself, he said, you dreadful bard!
Stephen bent forward and peered at the mirror held out to him, cleft by a
crooked crack. Hair on end. As he and others see me. Who chose this face for me?
This dogsbody to rid of vermin. It asks me too.
—I pinched it out of the skivvy's room, Buck Mulligan said. It does her all right.
The aunt always keeps plainlooking servants for Malachi. Lead him not into
temptation. And her name is Ursula.
Laughing again, he brought the mirror away from Stephen's peering eyes.
—The rage of Caliban at not seeing his face in a mirror, he said. If Wilde were
only alive to see you!
Drawing back and pointing, Stephen said with bitterness:
—It is a symbol of Irish art. The cracked looking-glass of a servant.
Buck Mulligan suddenly linked his arm in Stephen's and walked with him round
the tower, his razor and mirror clacking in the pocket where he had thrust them.
—It's not fair to tease you like that, Kinch, is it? he said kindly. God knows you
have more spirit than any of them.
Parried again. He fears the lancet of my art as I fear that of his. The cold
steelpen.
—Cracked lookingglass of a servant! Tell that to the oxy chap downstairs and
touch him for a guinea. He's stinking with money and thinks you're not a
gentleman. His old fellow made his tin by selling jalap to Zulus or some bloody
swindle or other. God, Kinch, if you and I could only work together we might do
something for the island. Hellenise it.
Cranly's arm. His arm.
—And to think of your having to beg from these swine. I'm the only one that
knows what you are. Why don't you trust me more? What have you up your nose
against me? Is it Haines? If he makes any noise here I'll bring down Seymour and
we'll give him a ragging worse than they gave Clive Kempthorpe.
Young shouts of moneyed voices in Clive Kempthorpe's rooms. Palefaces: they
hold their ribs with laughter, one clasping another. O, I shall expire! Break the
news to her gently, Aubrey! I shall die! With slit ribbons of his shirt whipping the
air he hops and hobbles round the table, with trousers down at heels, chased by
Ades of Magdalen with the tailor's shears. A scared calf's face gilded with
marmalade. I don't want to be debagged! Don't you play the giddy ox with me!
Shouts from the open window startling evening in the quadrangle. A deaf
gardener, aproned, masked with Matthew Arnold's face, pushes his mower on the
sombre lawn watching narrowly the dancing motes of grasshalms.
To ourselves... new paganism... omphalos.
—Let him stay, Stephen said. There's nothing wrong with him except at night.
—Then what is it? Buck Mulligan asked impatiently. Cough it up. I'm quite
frank with you. What have you against me now?
They halted, looking towards the blunt cape of Bray Head that lay on the water
like the snout of a sleeping whale. Stephen freed his arm quietly.
—Do you wish me to tell you? he asked.
—Yes, what is it? Buck Mulligan answered. I don't remember anything.
He looked in Stephen's face as he spoke. A light wind passed his brow, fanning
softly his fair uncombed hair and stirring silver points of anxiety in his eyes.
Stephen, depressed by his own voice, said:
—Do you remember the first day I went to your house after my mother's death?
Buck Mulligan frowned quickly and said:
—What? Where? I can't remember anything. I remember only ideas and
sensations. Why? What happened in the name of God?
—You were making tea, Stephen said, and went across the landing to get more
hot water. Your mother and some visitor came out of the drawingroom. She asked
you who was in your room.
—Yes? Buck Mulligan said. What did I say? I forget.
 —You said, Stephen answered, O, it's only Dedalus whose mother is beastly
dead.
A flush which made him seem younger and more engaging rose to Buck
Mulligan's cheek.
—Did I say that? he asked. Well? What harm is that?
He shook his constraint from him nervously.
—And what is death, he asked, your mother's or yours or my own? You saw
only your mother die. I see them pop off every day in the Mater and Richmond
and cut up into tripes in the dissectingroom. It's a beastly thing and nothing else.
It simply doesn't matter. You wouldn't kneel down to pray for your mother on her
deathbed when she asked you. Why? Because you have the cursed jesuit strain in
you, only it's injected the wrong way. To me it's all a mockery and beastly. Her
cerebral lobes are not functioning. She calls the doctor sir Peter Teazle and picks
buttercups off the quilt. Humour her till it's over. You crossed her last wish in
death and yet you sulk with me because I don't whinge like some hired mute from
Lalouette's. Absurd! I suppose I did say it. I didn't mean to offend the memory of
your mother.
He had spoken himself into boldness. Stephen, shielding the gaping wounds
which the words had left in his heart, said very coldly:
—I am not thinking of the offence to my mother.
—Of what then? Buck Mulligan asked.
—Of the offence to me, Stephen answered.
Buck Mulligan swung round on his heel.
—O, an impossible person! he exclaimed.
He walked off quickly round the parapet. Stephen stood at his post, gazing over
the calm sea towards the headland. Sea and headland now grew dim. Pulses were
beating in his eyes, veiling their sight, and he felt the fever of his cheeks.
A voice within the tower called loudly:
—Are you up there, Mulligan?
—I'm coming, Buck Mulligan answered.
He turned towards Stephen and said:
—Look at the sea. What does it care about offences? Chuck Loyola, Kinch, and
come on down. The Sassenach wants his morning rashers.
His head halted again for a moment at the top of the staircase, level with the
roof:
 —Don't mope over it all day, he said. I'm inconsequent. Give up the moody
brooding.
His head vanished but the drone of his descending voice boomed out of the
stairhead:

And no more turn aside and brood

Upon love's bitter mystery
For Fergus rules the brazen cars.
Woodshadows floated silently by through the morning peace from the stairhead
seaward where he gazed. Inshore and farther out the mirror of water whitened,
spurned by lightshod hurrying feet. White breast of the dim sea. The twining
stresses, two by two. A hand plucking the harpstrings, merging their twining
chords. Wavewhite wedded words shimmering on the dim tide.
A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, wholly, shadowing the bay in deeper
green. It lay beneath him, a bowl of bitter waters. Fergus' song: I sang it alone in
the house, holding down the long dark chords. Her door was open: she wanted to
hear my music. Silent with awe and pity I went to her bedside. She was crying in
her wretched bed. For those words, Stephen: love's bitter mystery.
Where now?
Her secrets: old featherfans, tasselled dancecards, powdered with musk, a gaud
of amber beads in her locked drawer. A birdcage hung in the sunny window of her
house when she was a girl. She heard old Royce sing in the pantomime of Turko
the Terrible and laughed with others when he sang:

I am the boy
That can enjoy
Invisibility.
Phantasmal mirth, folded away: muskperfumed.
And no more turn aside and brood.
Folded away in the memory of nature with her toys. Memories beset his
brooding brain. Her glass of water from the kitchen tap when she had approached
the sacrament. A cored apple, filled with brown sugar, roasting for her at the hob
on a dark autumn evening. Her shapely fingernails reddened by the blood of
squashed lice from the children's shirts.
In a dream, silently, she had come to him, her wasted body within its loose
graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood, her breath, bent over him
with mute secret words, a faint odour of wetted ashes.
Her glazing eyes, staring out of death, to shake and bend my soul. On me alone.
The ghostcandle to light her agony. Ghostly light on the tortured face. Her hoarse
loud breath rattling in horror, while all prayed on their knees. Her eyes on me to
strike me down. Liliata rutilantium te confessorum turma circumdet: iubilantium te
virginum chorus excipiat.
Ghoul! Chewer of corpses!
No, mother! Let me be and let me live.
—Kinch ahoy!
Buck Mulligan's voice sang from within the tower. It came nearer up the
staircase, calling again. Stephen, still trembling at his soul's cry, heard warm
running sunlight and in the air behind him friendly words.
—Dedalus, come down, like a good mosey. Breakfast is ready. Haines is
apologising for waking us last night. It's all right.
—I'm coming, Stephen said, turning.
—Do, for Jesus' sake, Buck Mulligan said. For my sake and for all our sakes.
His head disappeared and reappeared.
—I told him your symbol of Irish art. He says it's very clever. Touch him for a
quid, will you? A guinea, I mean.
—I get paid this morning, Stephen said.
—The school kip? Buck Mulligan said. How much? Four quid? Lend us one.
—If you want it, Stephen said.
—Four shining sovereigns, Buck Mulligan cried with delight. We'll have a
glorious drunk to astonish the druidy druids. Four omnipotent sovereigns.
He flung up his hands and tramped down the stone stairs, singing out of tune
with a Cockney accent:

O, won't we have a merry time,

Drinking whisky, beer and wine!
On coronation,
Coronation day!
O, won't we have a merry time
On coronation day!
Warm sunshine merrying over the sea. The nickel shavingbowl shone, forgotten,
on the parapet. Why should I bring it down? Or leave it there all day, forgotten
friendship?
He went over to it, held it in his hands awhile, feeling its coolness, smelling the
clammy slaver of the lather in which the brush was stuck. So I carried the boat of
incense then at Clongowes. I am another now and yet the same. A servant too. A
server of a servant.
 In the gloomy domed livingroom of the tower Buck Mulligan's gowned form
moved briskly to and fro about the hearth, hiding and revealing its yellow glow.
Two shafts of soft daylight fell across the flagged floor from the high barbacans:
and at the meeting of their rays a cloud of coalsmoke and fumes of fried grease
floated, turning.
—We'll be choked, Buck Mulligan said. Haines, open that door, will you?
Stephen laid the shavingbowl on the locker. A tall figure rose from the hammock
where it had been sitting, went to the doorway and pulled open the inner doors.
—Have you the key? a voice asked.
—Dedalus has it, Buck Mulligan said. Janey Mack, I'm choked!
He howled, without looking up from the fire:
—Kinch!
—It's in the lock, Stephen said, coming forward.
The key scraped round harshly twice and, when the heavy door had been set
ajar, welcome light and bright air entered. Haines stood at the doorway, looking
out. Stephen haled his upended valise to the table and sat down to wait. Buck
Mulligan tossed the fry on to the dish beside him. Then he carried the dish and a
large teapot over to the table, set them down heavily and sighed with relief.
—I'm melting, he said, as the candle remarked when... But, hush! Not a word
more on that subject! Kinch, wake up! Bread, butter, honey. Haines, come in. The
grub is ready. Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts. Where's the sugar? O, jay,
there's no milk.
Stephen fetched the loaf and the pot of honey and the buttercooler from the
locker. Buck Mulligan sat down in a sudden pet.
—What sort of a kip is this? he said. I told her to come after eight.
—We can drink it black, Stephen said thirstily. There's a lemon in the locker.
—O, damn you and your Paris fads! Buck Mulligan said. I want Sandycove
milk.
Haines came in from the doorway and said quietly:
—That woman is coming up with the milk.
—The blessings of God on you! Buck Mulligan cried, jumping up from his chair.
Sit down. Pour out the tea there. The sugar is in the bag. Here, I can't go fumbling
at the damned eggs.
He hacked through the fry on the dish and slapped it out on three plates,
saying:
—In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.
 Haines sat down to pour out the tea.
—I'm giving you two lumps each, he said. But, I say, Mulligan, you do make
strong tea, don't you?
Buck Mulligan, hewing thick slices from the loaf, said in an old woman's
wheedling voice:
—When I makes tea I makes tea, as old mother Grogan said. And when I makes
water I makes water.
—By Jove, it is tea, Haines said.
Buck Mulligan went on hewing and wheedling:
—So I do, Mrs Cahill, says she. Begob, ma'am, says Mrs Cahill, God send you
don't make them in the one pot.
He lunged towards his messmates in turn a thick slice of bread, impaled on his
knife.
—That's folk, he said very earnestly, for your book, Haines. Five lines of text
and ten pages of notes about the folk and the fishgods of Dundrum. Printed by the
weird sisters in the year of the big wind.
He turned to Stephen and asked in a fine puzzled voice, lifting his brows:
—Can you recall, brother, is mother Grogan's tea and water pot spoken of in the
Mabinogion or is it in the Upanishads?
—I doubt it, said Stephen gravely.
—Do you now? Buck Mulligan said in the same tone. Your reasons, pray?
—I fancy, Stephen said as he ate, it did not exist in or out of the Mabinogion.
Mother Grogan was, one imagines, a kinswoman of Mary Ann.
Buck Mulligan's face smiled with delight.
—Charming! he said in a finical sweet voice, showing his white teeth and
blinking his eyes pleasantly. Do you think she was? Quite charming!
Then, suddenly overclouding all his features, he growled in a hoarsened rasping
voice as he hewed again vigorously at the loaf:

—For old Mary Ann

She doesn't care a damn.
But, hising up her petticoats...
He crammed his mouth with fry and munched and droned.
The doorway was darkened by an entering form.
—The milk, sir!
 —Come in, ma'am, Mulligan said. Kinch, get the jug.
An old woman came forward and stood by Stephen's elbow.
—That's a lovely morning, sir, she said. Glory be to God.
—To whom? Mulligan said, glancing at her. Ah, to be sure!
Stephen reached back and took the milkjug from the locker.
—The islanders, Mulligan said to Haines casually, speak frequently of the
collector of prepuces.
—How much, sir? asked the old woman.
—A quart, Stephen said.
He watched her pour into the measure and thence into the jug rich white milk,
not hers. Old shrunken paps. She poured again a measureful and a tilly. Old and
secret she had entered from a morning world, maybe a messenger. She praised the
goodness of the milk, pouring it out. Crouching by a patient cow at daybreak in
the lush field, a witch on her toadstool, her wrinkled fingers quick at the squirting
dugs. They lowed about her whom they knew, dewsilky cattle. Silk of the kine and
poor old woman, names given her in old times. A wandering crone, lowly form of
an immortal serving her conqueror and her gay betrayer, their common
cuckquean, a messenger from the secret morning. To serve or to upbraid, whether
he could not tell: but scorned to beg her favour.
—It is indeed, ma'am, Buck Mulligan said, pouring milk into their cups.
—Taste it, sir, she said.
He drank at her bidding.
—If we could live on good food like that, he said to her somewhat loudly, we
wouldn't have the country full of rotten teeth and rotten guts. Living in a
bogswamp, eating cheap food and the streets paved with dust, horsedung and
consumptives' spits.
—Are you a medical student, sir? the old woman asked.
—I am, ma'am, Buck Mulligan answered.
—Look at that now, she said.
Stephen listened in scornful silence. She bows her old head to a voice that
speaks to her loudly, her bonesetter, her medicineman: me she slights. To the
voice that will shrive and oil for the grave all there is of her but her woman's
unclean loins, of man's flesh made not in God's likeness, the serpent's prey. And
to the loud voice that now bids her be silent with wondering unsteady eyes.
—Do you understand what he says? Stephen asked her.
—Is it French you are talking, sir? the old woman said to Haines.
 Haines spoke to her again a longer speech, confidently.
—Irish, Buck Mulligan said. Is there Gaelic on you?
—I thought it was Irish, she said, by the sound of it. Are you from the west, sir?
—I am an Englishman, Haines answered.
—He's English, Buck Mulligan said, and he thinks we ought to speak Irish in
Ireland.
—Sure we ought to, the old woman said, and I'm ashamed I don't speak the
language myself. I'm told it's a grand language by them that knows.
—Grand is no name for it, said Buck Mulligan. Wonderful entirely. Fill us out
some more tea, Kinch. Would you like a cup, ma'am?
—No, thank you, sir, the old woman said, slipping the ring of the milkcan on
her forearm and about to go.
Haines said to her:
—Have you your bill? We had better pay her, Mulligan, hadn't we?
Stephen filled again the three cups.
—Bill, sir? she said, halting. Well, it's seven mornings a pint at twopence is
seven twos is a shilling and twopence over and these three mornings a quart at
fourpence is three quarts is a shilling. That's a shilling and one and two is two and
two, sir.
Buck Mulligan sighed and, having filled his mouth with a crust thickly buttered
on both sides, stretched forth his legs and began to search his trouser pockets.
—Pay up and look pleasant, Haines said to him, smiling.
Stephen filled a third cup, a spoonful of tea colouring faintly the thick rich milk.
Buck Mulligan brought up a florin, twisted it round in his fingers and cried:
—A miracle!
He passed it along the table towards the old woman, saying:
—Ask nothing more of me, sweet. All I can give you I give.
Stephen laid the coin in her uneager hand.
—We'll owe twopence, he said.
—Time enough, sir, she said, taking the coin. Time enough. Good morning, sir.
She curtseyed and went out, followed by Buck Mulligan's tender chant:

—Heart of my heart, were it more,

More would be laid at your feet.
 He turned to Stephen and said:
—Seriously, Dedalus. I'm stony. Hurry out to your school kip and bring us back
some money. Today the bards must drink and junket. Ireland expects that every
man this day will do his duty.
—That reminds me, Haines said, rising, that I have to visit your national library
today.
—Our swim first, Buck Mulligan said.
He turned to Stephen and asked blandly:
—Is this the day for your monthly wash, Kinch?
Then he said to Haines:
—The unclean bard makes a point of washing once a month.
—All Ireland is washed by the gulfstream, Stephen said as he let honey trickle
over a slice of the loaf.
Haines from the corner where he was knotting easily a scarf about the loose
collar of his tennis shirt spoke:
—I intend to make a collection of your sayings if you will let me.
Speaking to me. They wash and tub and scrub. Agenbite of inwit. Conscience.
Yet here's a spot.
—That one about the cracked lookingglass of a servant being the symbol of Irish
art is deuced good.
Buck Mulligan kicked Stephen's foot under the table and said with warmth of
tone:
—Wait till you hear him on Hamlet, Haines.
—Well, I mean it, Haines said, still speaking to Stephen. I was just thinking of it
when that poor old creature came in.
—Would I make any money by it? Stephen asked.
Haines laughed and, as he took his soft grey hat from the holdfast of the
hammock, said:
—I don't know, I'm sure.
He strolled out to the doorway. Buck Mulligan bent across to Stephen and said
with coarse vigour:
—You put your hoof in it now. What did you say that for?
—Well? Stephen said. The problem is to get money. From whom? From the
milkwoman or from him. It's a toss up, I think.
 —I blow him out about you, Buck Mulligan said, and then you come along with
your lousy leer and your gloomy jesuit jibes.
—I see little hope, Stephen said, from her or from him.
Buck Mulligan sighed tragically and laid his hand on Stephen's arm.
—From me, Kinch, he said.
In a suddenly changed tone he added:
—To tell you the God's truth I think you're right. Damn all else they are good
for. Why don't you play them as I do? To hell with them all. Let us get out of the
kip.
He stood up, gravely ungirdled and disrobed himself of his gown, saying
resignedly:
—Mulligan is stripped of his garments.
He emptied his pockets on to the table.
—There's your snotrag, he said.
And putting on his stiff collar and rebellious tie he spoke to them, chiding them,
and to his dangling watchchain. His hands plunged and rummaged in his trunk
while he called for a clean handkerchief. God, we'll simply have to dress the
character. I want puce gloves and green boots. Contradiction. Do I contradict
myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. Mercurial Malachi. A limp black
missile flew out of his talking hands.
—And there's your Latin quarter hat, he said.
Stephen picked it up and put it on. Haines called to them from the doorway:
—Are you coming, you fellows?
—I'm ready, Buck Mulligan answered, going towards the door. Come out,
Kinch. You have eaten all we left, I suppose. Resigned he passed out with grave
words and gait, saying, wellnigh with sorrow:
—And going forth he met Butterly.
Stephen, taking his ashplant from its leaningplace, followed them out and, as
they went down the ladder, pulled to the slow iron door and locked it. He put the
huge key in his inner pocket.
At the foot of the ladder Buck Mulligan asked:
—Did you bring the key?
—I have it, Stephen said, preceding them.
He walked on. Behind him he heard Buck Mulligan club with his heavy
bathtowel the leader shoots of ferns or grasses.
 —Down, sir! How dare you, sir!
Haines asked:
—Do you pay rent for this tower?
—Twelve quid, Buck Mulligan said.
—To the secretary of state for war, Stephen added over his shoulder.
They halted while Haines surveyed the tower and said at last:
—Rather bleak in wintertime, I should say. Martello you call it?
—Billy Pitt had them built, Buck Mulligan said, when the French were on the
sea. But ours is the omphalos.
—What is your idea of Hamlet? Haines asked Stephen.
—No, no, Buck Mulligan shouted in pain. I'm not equal to Thomas Aquinas and
the fiftyfive reasons he has made out to prop it up. Wait till I have a few pints in
me first.
He turned to Stephen, saying, as he pulled down neatly the peaks of his
primrose waistcoat:
—You couldn't manage it under three pints, Kinch, could you?
—It has waited so long, Stephen said listlessly, it can wait longer.
—You pique my curiosity, Haines said amiably. Is it some paradox?
—Pooh! Buck Mulligan said. We have grown out of Wilde and paradoxes. It's
quite simple. He proves by algebra that Hamlet's grandson is Shakespeare's
grandfather and that he himself is the ghost of his own father.
—What? Haines said, beginning to point at Stephen. He himself?
Buck Mulligan slung his towel stolewise round his neck and, bending in loose
laughter, said to Stephen's ear:
—O, shade of Kinch the elder! Japhet in search of a father!
—We're always tired in the morning, Stephen said to Haines. And it is rather
long to tell.
Buck Mulligan, walking forward again, raised his hands.
—The sacred pint alone can unbind the tongue of Dedalus, he said.
—I mean to say, Haines explained to Stephen as they followed, this tower and
these cliffs here remind me somehow of Elsinore. That beetles o'er his base into the
sea, isn't it?
 Buck Mulligan turned suddenly for an instant towards Stephen but did not
speak. In the bright silent instant Stephen saw his own image in cheap dusty
mourning between their gay attires.
—It's a wonderful tale, Haines said, bringing them to halt again.
Eyes, pale as the sea the wind had freshened, paler, firm and prudent. The seas'
ruler, he gazed southward over the bay, empty save for the smokeplume of the
mailboat vague on the bright skyline and a sail tacking by the Muglins.
—I read a theological interpretation of it somewhere, he said bemused. The
Father and the Son idea. The Son striving to be atoned with the Father.
Buck Mulligan at once put on a blithe broadly smiling face. He looked at them,
his wellshaped mouth open happily, his eyes, from which he had suddenly
withdrawn all shrewd sense, blinking with mad gaiety. He moved a doll's head to
and fro, the brims of his Panama hat quivering, and began to chant in a quiet
happy foolish voice:

—I'm the queerest young fellow that ever you heard.

My mother's a jew, my father's a bird.
With Joseph the joiner I cannot agree.
So here's to disciples and Calvary.
He held up a forefinger of warning.

—If anyone thinks that I amn't divine

He'll get no free drinks when I'm making the wine
But have to drink water and wish it were plain
That i make when the wine becomes water again.
He tugged swiftly at Stephen's ashplant in farewell and, running forward to a
brow of the cliff, fluttered his hands at his sides like fins or wings of one about to
rise in the air, and chanted:

—Goodbye, now, goodbye! Write down all I said

And tell Tom, Dick and Harry I rose from the dead.
What's bred in the bone cannot fail me to fly
And Olivet's breezy... Goodbye, now, goodbye!
He capered before them down towards the fortyfoot hole, fluttering his winglike
hands, leaping nimbly, Mercury's hat quivering in the fresh wind that bore back to
them his brief birdsweet cries.
Haines, who had been laughing guardedly, walked on beside Stephen and said:
—We oughtn't to laugh, I suppose. He's rather blasphemous. I'm not a believer
myself, that is to say. Still his gaiety takes the harm out of it somehow, doesn't it?
What did he call it? Joseph the Joiner?
 —The ballad of joking Jesus, Stephen answered.
—O, Haines said, you have heard it before?
—Three times a day, after meals, Stephen said drily.
—You're not a believer, are you? Haines asked. I mean, a believer in the narrow
sense of the word. Creation from nothing and miracles and a personal God.
—There's only one sense of the word, it seems to me, Stephen said.
Haines stopped to take out a smooth silver case in which twinkled a green
stone. He sprang it open with his thumb and offered it.
—Thank you, Stephen said, taking a cigarette.
Haines helped himself and snapped the case to. He put it back in his sidepocket
and took from his waistcoatpocket a nickel tinderbox, sprang it open too, and,
having lit his cigarette, held the flaming spunk towards Stephen in the shell of his
hands.
—Yes, of course, he said, as they went on again. Either you believe or you don't,
isn't it? Personally I couldn't stomach that idea of a personal God. You don't stand
for that, I suppose?
—You behold in me, Stephen said with grim displeasure, a horrible example of
free thought.
He walked on, waiting to be spoken to, trailing his ashplant by his side. Its
ferrule followed lightly on the path, squealing at his heels. My familiar, after me,
calling, Steeeeeeeeeeeephen! A wavering line along the path. They will walk on it
tonight, coming here in the dark. He wants that key. It is mine. I paid the rent.
Now I eat his salt bread. Give him the key too. All. He will ask for it. That was in
his eyes.
—After all, Haines began...
Stephen turned and saw that the cold gaze which had measured him was not all
unkind.
—After all, I should think you are able to free yourself. You are your own
master, it seems to me.
—I am a servant of two masters, Stephen said, an English and an Italian.
—Italian? Haines said.
A crazy queen, old and jealous. Kneel down before me.
—And a third, Stephen said, there is who wants me for odd jobs.
—Italian? Haines said again. What do you mean?
 —The imperial British state, Stephen answered, his colour rising, and the holy
Roman catholic and apostolic church.
Haines detached from his underlip some fibres of tobacco before he spoke.
—I can quite understand that, he said calmly. An Irishman must think like that,
I daresay. We feel in England that we have treated you rather unfairly. It seems
history is to blame.
The proud potent titles clanged over Stephen's memory the triumph of their
brazen bells: et unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam: the slow
growth and change of rite and dogma like his own rare thoughts, a chemistry of
stars. Symbol of the apostles in the mass for pope Marcellus, the voices blended,
singing alone loud in affirmation: and behind their chant the vigilant angel of the
church militant disarmed and menaced her heresiarchs. A horde of heresies fleeing
with mitres awry: Photius and the brood of mockers of whom Mulligan was one,
and Arius, warring his life long upon the consubstantiality of the Son with the
Father, and Valentine, spurning Christ's terrene body, and the subtle African
heresiarch Sabellius who held that the Father was Himself His own Son. Words
Mulligan had spoken a moment since in mockery to the stranger. Idle mockery.
The void awaits surely all them that weave the wind: a menace, a disarming and a
worsting from those embattled angels of the church, Michael's host, who defend
her ever in the hour of conflict with their lances and their shields.
Hear, hear! Prolonged applause. Zut! Nom de Dieu!
—Of course I'm a Britisher, Haines's voice said, and I feel as one. I don't want
to see my country fall into the hands of German jews either. That's our national
problem, I'm afraid, just now.
Two men stood at the verge of the cliff, watching: businessman, boatman.
—She's making for Bullock harbour.
The boatman nodded towards the north of the bay with some disdain.
—There's five fathoms out there, he said. It'll be swept up that way when the
tide comes in about one. It's nine days today.
The man that was drowned. A sail veering about the blank bay waiting for a
swollen bundle to bob up, roll over to the sun a puffy face, saltwhite. Here I am.
They followed the winding path down to the creek. Buck Mulligan stood on a
stone, in shirtsleeves, his unclipped tie rippling over his shoulder. A young man
clinging to a spur of rock near him, moved slowly frogwise his green legs in the
deep jelly of the water.
—Is the brother with you, Malachi?
—Down in Westmeath. With the Bannons.
—Still there? I got a card from Bannon. Says he found a sweet young thing
down there. Photo girl he calls her.
 —Snapshot, eh? Brief exposure.
Buck Mulligan sat down to unlace his boots. An elderly man shot up near the
spur of rock a blowing red face. He scrambled up by the stones, water glistening
on his pate and on its garland of grey hair, water rilling over his chest and paunch
and spilling jets out of his black sagging loincloth.
Buck Mulligan made way for him to scramble past and, glancing at Haines and
Stephen, crossed himself piously with his thumbnail at brow and lips and
breastbone.
—Seymour's back in town, the young man said, grasping again his spur of rock.
Chucked medicine and going in for the army.
—Ah, go to God! Buck Mulligan said.
—Going over next week to stew. You know that red Carlisle girl, Lily?
—Yes.
—Spooning with him last night on the pier. The father is rotto with money.
—Is she up the pole?
—Better ask Seymour that.
—Seymour a bleeding officer! Buck Mulligan said.
He nodded to himself as he drew off his trousers and stood up, saying tritely:
—Redheaded women buck like goats.
He broke off in alarm, feeling his side under his flapping shirt.
—My twelfth rib is gone, he cried. I'm the Uebermensch. Toothless Kinch and I,
the supermen.
He struggled out of his shirt and flung it behind him to where his clothes lay.
—Are you going in here, Malachi?
—Yes. Make room in the bed.
The young man shoved himself backward through the water and reached the
middle of the creek in two long clean strokes. Haines sat down on a stone,
smoking.
—Are you not coming in? Buck Mulligan asked.
—Later on, Haines said. Not on my breakfast.
Stephen turned away.
—I'm going, Mulligan, he said.
—Give us that key, Kinch, Buck Mulligan said, to keep my chemise flat.
 Stephen handed him the key. Buck Mulligan laid it across his heaped clothes.
—And twopence, he said, for a pint. Throw it there.
Stephen threw two pennies on the soft heap. Dressing, undressing. Buck
Mulligan erect, with joined hands before him, said solemnly:
—He who stealeth from the poor lendeth to the Lord. Thus spake Zarathustra.
His plump body plunged.
—We'll see you again, Haines said, turning as Stephen walked up the path and
smiling at wild Irish.
Horn of a bull, hoof of a horse, smile of a Saxon.
—The Ship, Buck Mulligan cried. Half twelve.
—Good, Stephen said.
He walked along the upwardcurving path.

Liliata rutilantium.
Turma circumdet.
Iubilantium te virginum.
The priest's grey nimbus in a niche where he dressed discreetly. I will not sleep
here tonight. Home also I cannot go.
A voice, sweettoned and sustained, called to him from the sea. Turning the
curve he waved his hand. It called again. A sleek brown head, a seal's, far out on
the water, round.
Usurper.
—You, Cochrane, what city sent for him?
—Tarentum, sir.
—Very good. Well?
—There was a battle, sir.
—Very good. Where?
The boy's blank face asked the blank window.
Fabled by the daughters of memory. And yet it was in some way if not as
memory fabled it. A phrase, then, of impatience, thud of Blake's wings of excess. I
hear the ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry, and time one
livid final flame. What's left us then?
—I forget the place, sir. 279 B. C.
 —Asculum, Stephen said, glancing at the name and date in the gorescarred
book.
—Yes, sir. And he said: Another victory like that and we are done for.
That phrase the world had remembered. A dull ease of the mind. From a hill
above a corpsestrewn plain a general speaking to his officers, leaned upon his
spear. Any general to any officers. They lend ear.
—You, Armstrong, Stephen said. What was the end of Pyrrhus?
—End of Pyrrhus, sir?
—I know, sir. Ask me, sir, Comyn said.
—Wait. You, Armstrong. Do you know anything about Pyrrhus?
A bag of figrolls lay snugly in Armstrong's satchel. He curled them between his
palms at whiles and swallowed them softly. Crumbs adhered to the tissue of his
lips. A sweetened boy's breath. Welloff people, proud that their eldest son was in
the navy. Vico road, Dalkey.
—Pyrrhus, sir? Pyrrhus, a pier.
All laughed. Mirthless high malicious laughter. Armstrong looked round at his
classmates, silly glee in profile. In a moment they will laugh more loudly, aware of
my lack of rule and of the fees their papas pay.
—Tell me now, Stephen said, poking the boy's shoulder with the book, what is a
pier.
—A pier, sir, Armstrong said. A thing out in the water. A kind of a bridge.
Kingstown pier, sir.
Some laughed again: mirthless but with meaning. Two in the back bench
whispered. Yes. They knew: had never learned nor ever been innocent. All. With
envy he watched their faces: Edith, Ethel, Gerty, Lily. Their likes: their breaths,
too, sweetened with tea and jam, their bracelets tittering in the struggle.
—Kingstown pier, Stephen said. Yes, a disappointed bridge.
The words troubled their gaze.
—How, sir? Comyn asked. A bridge is across a river.
For Haines's chapbook. No-one here to hear. Tonight deftly amid wild drink and
talk, to pierce the polished mail of his mind. What then? A jester at the court of
his master, indulged and disesteemed, winning a clement master's praise. Why had
they chosen all that part? Not wholly for the smooth caress. For them too history
was a tale like any other too often heard, their land a pawnshop.
Had Pyrrhus not fallen by a beldam's hand in Argos or Julius Caesar not been
knifed to death. They are not to be thought away. Time has branded them and
fettered they are lodged in the room of the infinite possibilities they have ousted.
But can those have been possible seeing that they never were? Or was that only
possible which came to pass? Weave, weaver of the wind.
—Tell us a story, sir.
—O, do, sir. A ghoststory.
—Where do you begin in this? Stephen asked, opening another book.
--Weep no more, Comyn said.
—Go on then, Talbot.
—And the story, sir?
—After, Stephen said. Go on, Talbot.
A swarthy boy opened a book and propped it nimbly under the breastwork of
his satchel. He recited jerks of verse with odd glances at the text:

—Weep no more, woful shepherds, weep no more

For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead,
Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor...
It must be a movement then, an actuality of the possible as possible. Aristotle's
phrase formed itself within the gabbled verses and floated out into the studious
silence of the library of Saint Genevieve where he had read, sheltered from the sin
of Paris, night by night. By his elbow a delicate Siamese conned a handbook of
strategy. Fed and feeding brains about me: under glowlamps, impaled, with faintly
beating feelers: and in my mind's darkness a sloth of the underworld, reluctant,
shy of brightness, shifting her dragon scaly folds. Thought is the thought of
thought. Tranquil brightness. The soul is in a manner all that is: the soul is the
form of forms. Tranquility sudden, vast, candescent: form of forms.
Talbot repeated:

—Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves,

Through the dear might...
—Turn over, Stephen said quietly. I don't see anything.
—What, sir? Talbot asked simply, bending forward.
His hand turned the page over. He leaned back and went on again, having just
remembered. Of him that walked the waves. Here also over these craven hearts
his shadow lies and on the scoffer's heart and lips and on mine. It lies upon their
eager faces who offered him a coin of the tribute. To Caesar what is Caesar's, to
God what is God's. A long look from dark eyes, a riddling sentence to be woven
and woven on the church's looms. Ay.
 Riddle me, riddle me, randy ro.
My father gave me seeds to sow.
Talbot slid his closed book into his satchel.
—Have I heard all? Stephen asked.
—Yes, sir. Hockey at ten, sir.
—Half day, sir. Thursday.
—Who can answer a riddle? Stephen asked.
They bundled their books away, pencils clacking, pages rustling. Crowding
together they strapped and buckled their satchels, all gabbling gaily:
—A riddle, sir? Ask me, sir.
—O, ask me, sir.
—A hard one, sir.
—This is the riddle, Stephen said:

The cock crew,

The sky was blue:
The bells in heaven
Were striking eleven.
'Tis time for this poor soul
To go to heaven.
What is that?
—What, sir?
—Again, sir. We didn't hear.
Their eyes grew bigger as the lines were repeated. After a silence Cochrane said:
—What is it, sir? We give it up.
Stephen, his throat itching, answered:
—The fox burying his grandmother under a hollybush.
He stood up and gave a shout of nervous laughter to which their cries echoed
dismay.
A stick struck the door and a voice in the corridor called:
—Hockey!
They broke asunder, sidling out of their benches, leaping them. Quickly they
were gone and from the lumberroom came the rattle of sticks and clamour of their
boots and tongues.
 Sargent who alone had lingered came forward slowly, showing an open
copybook. His thick hair and scraggy neck gave witness of unreadiness and
through his misty glasses weak eyes looked up pleading. On his cheek, dull and
bloodless, a soft stain of ink lay, dateshaped, recent and damp as a snail's bed.
He held out his copybook. The word Sums was written on the headline. Beneath
were sloping figures and at the foot a crooked signature with blind loops and a
blot. Cyril Sargent: his name and seal.
—Mr Deasy told me to write them out all again, he said, and show them to you,
sir.
Stephen touched the edges of the book. Futility.
—Do you understand how to do them now? he asked.
—Numbers eleven to fifteen, Sargent answered. Mr Deasy said I was to copy
them off the board, sir.
—Can you do them yourself? Stephen asked.
—No, sir.
Ugly and futile: lean neck and thick hair and a stain of ink, a snail's bed. Yet
someone had loved him, borne him in her arms and in her heart. But for her the
race of the world would have trampled him underfoot, a squashed boneless snail.
She had loved his weak watery blood drained from her own. Was that then real?
The only true thing in life? His mother's prostrate body the fiery Columbanus in
holy zeal bestrode. She was no more: the trembling skeleton of a twig burnt in the
fire, an odour of rosewood and wetted ashes. She had saved him from being
trampled underfoot and had gone, scarcely having been. A poor soul gone to
heaven: and on a heath beneath winking stars a fox, red reek of rapine in his fur,
with merciless bright eyes scraped in the earth, listened, scraped up the earth,
listened, scraped and scraped.
Sitting at his side Stephen solved out the problem. He proves by algebra that
Shakespeare's ghost is Hamlet's grandfather. Sargent peered askance through his
slanted glasses. Hockeysticks rattled in the lumberroom: the hollow knock of a
ball and calls from the field.
Across the page the symbols moved in grave morrice, in the mummery of their
letters, wearing quaint caps of squares and cubes. Give hands, traverse, bow to
partner: so: imps of fancy of the Moors. Gone too from the world, Averroes and
Moses Maimonides, dark men in mien and movement, flashing in their mocking
mirrors the obscure soul of the world, a darkness shining in brightness which
brightness could not comprehend.
—Do you understand now? Can you work the second for yourself?
—Yes, sir.
 In long shaky strokes Sargent copied the data. Waiting always for a word of help
his hand moved faithfully the unsteady symbols, a faint hue of shame flickering
behind his dull skin. Amor matris: subjective and objective genitive. With her
weak blood and wheysour milk she had fed him and hid from sight of others his
swaddling bands.
Like him was I, these sloping shoulders, this gracelessness. My childhood bends
beside me. Too far for me to lay a hand there once or lightly. Mine is far and his
secret as our eyes. Secrets, silent, stony sit in the dark palaces of both our hearts:
secrets weary of their tyranny: tyrants, willing to be dethroned.
The sum was done.
—It is very simple, Stephen said as he stood up.
—Yes, sir. Thanks, Sargent answered.
He dried the page with a sheet of thin blottingpaper and carried his copybook
back to his bench.
—You had better get your stick and go out to the others, Stephen said as he
followed towards the door the boy's graceless form.
—Yes, sir.
In the corridor his name was heard, called from the playfield.
—Sargent!
—Run on, Stephen said. Mr Deasy is calling you.
He stood in the porch and watched the laggard hurry towards the scrappy field
where sharp voices were in strife. They were sorted in teams and Mr Deasy came
away stepping over wisps of grass with gaitered feet. When he had reached the
schoolhouse voices again contending called to him. He turned his angry white
moustache.
—What is it now? he cried continually without listening.
—Cochrane and Halliday are on the same side, sir, Stephen said.
—Will you wait in my study for a moment, Mr Deasy said, till I restore order
here.
And as he stepped fussily back across the field his old man's voice cried sternly:
—What is the matter? What is it now?
Their sharp voices cried about him on all sides: their many forms closed round
him, the garish sunshine bleaching the honey of his illdyed head.
Stale smoky air hung in the study with the smell of drab abraded leather of its
chairs. As on the first day he bargained with me here. As it was in the beginning,
is now. On the sideboard the tray of Stuart coins, base treasure of a bog: and ever
shall be. And snug in their spooncase of purple plush, faded, the twelve apostles
having preached to all the gentiles: world without end.
A hasty step over the stone porch and in the corridor. Blowing out his rare
moustache Mr Deasy halted at the table.
—First, our little financial settlement, he said.
He brought out of his coat a pocketbook bound by a leather thong. It slapped
open and he took from it two notes, one of joined halves, and laid them carefully
on the table.
—Two, he said, strapping and stowing his pocketbook away.
And now his strongroom for the gold. Stephen's embarrassed hand moved over
the shells heaped in the cold stone mortar: whelks and money cowries and leopard
shells: and this, whorled as an emir's turban, and this, the scallop of saint James.
An old pilgrim's hoard, dead treasure, hollow shells.
A sovereign fell, bright and new, on the soft pile of the tablecloth.
—Three, Mr Deasy said, turning his little savingsbox about in his hand. These
are handy things to have. See. This is for sovereigns. This is for shillings.
Sixpences, halfcrowns. And here crowns. See.
He shot from it two crowns and two shillings.
—Three twelve, he said. I think you'll find that's right.
—Thank you, sir, Stephen said, gathering the money together with shy haste
and putting it all in a pocket of his trousers.
—No thanks at all, Mr Deasy said. You have earned it.
Stephen's hand, free again, went back to the hollow shells. Symbols too of
beauty and of power. A lump in my pocket: symbols soiled by greed and misery.
—Don't carry it like that, Mr Deasy said. You'll pull it out somewhere and lose
it. You just buy one of these machines. You'll find them very handy.
Answer something.
—Mine would be often empty, Stephen said.
The same room and hour, the same wisdom: and I the same. Three times now.
Three nooses round me here. Well? I can break them in this instant if I will.
—Because you don't save, Mr Deasy said, pointing his finger. You don't know
yet what money is. Money is power. When you have lived as long as I have. I
know, I know. If youth but knew. But what does Shakespeare say? Put but money
in thy purse.
—Iago, Stephen murmured.
 He lifted his gaze from the idle shells to the old man's stare.
—He knew what money was, Mr Deasy said. He made money. A poet, yes, but
an Englishman too. Do you know what is the pride of the English? Do you know
what is the proudest word you will ever hear from an Englishman's mouth?
The seas' ruler. His seacold eyes looked on the empty bay: it seems history is to
blame: on me and on my words, unhating.
—That on his empire, Stephen said, the sun never sets.
—Ba! Mr Deasy cried. That's not English. A French Celt said that. He tapped his
savingsbox against his thumbnail.
—I will tell you, he said solemnly, what is his proudest boast. I paid my way.
Good man, good man.
—I paid my way. I never borrowed a shilling in my life. Can you feel that? I owe
nothing. Can you?
Mulligan, nine pounds, three pairs of socks, one pair brogues, ties. Curran, ten
guineas. McCann, one guinea. Fred Ryan, two shillings. Temple, two lunches.
Russell, one guinea, Cousins, ten shillings, Bob Reynolds, half a guinea, Koehler,
three guineas, Mrs MacKernan, five weeks' board. The lump I have is useless.
—For the moment, no, Stephen answered.
Mr Deasy laughed with rich delight, putting back his savingsbox.
—I knew you couldn't, he said joyously. But one day you must feel it. We are a
generous people but we must also be just.
—I fear those big words, Stephen said, which make us so unhappy.
Mr Deasy stared sternly for some moments over the mantelpiece at the shapely
bulk of a man in tartan filibegs: Albert Edward, prince of Wales.
—You think me an old fogey and an old tory, his thoughtful voice said. I saw
three generations since O'Connell's time. I remember the famine in '46. Do you
know that the orange lodges agitated for repeal of the union twenty years before
O'Connell did or before the prelates of your communion denounced him as a
demagogue? You fenians forget some things.
Glorious, pious and immortal memory. The lodge of Diamond in Armagh the
splendid behung with corpses of papishes. Hoarse, masked and armed, the
planters' covenant. The black north and true blue bible. Croppies lie down.
Stephen sketched a brief gesture.
—I have rebel blood in me too, Mr Deasy said. On the spindle side. But I am
descended from sir John Blackwood who voted for the union. We are all Irish, all
kings' sons.
 —Alas, Stephen said.
—Per vias rectas, Mr Deasy said firmly, was his motto. He voted for it and put
on his topboots to ride to Dublin from the Ards of Down to do so.

Lal the ral the ra

The rocky road to Dublin.
A gruff squire on horseback with shiny topboots. Soft day, sir John! Soft day,
your honour!... Day!... Day!... Two topboots jog dangling on to Dublin. Lal the ral
the ra. Lal the ral the raddy.
—That reminds me, Mr Deasy said. You can do me a favour, Mr Dedalus, with
some of your literary friends. I have a letter here for the press. Sit down a
moment. I have just to copy the end.
He went to the desk near the window, pulled in his chair twice and read off
some words from the sheet on the drum of his typewriter.
—Sit down. Excuse me, he said over his shoulder, the dictates of common sense.
Just a moment.
He peered from under his shaggy brows at the manuscript by his elbow and,
muttering, began to prod the stiff buttons of the keyboard slowly, sometimes
blowing as he screwed up the drum to erase an error.
Stephen seated himself noiselessly before the princely presence. Framed around
the walls images of vanished horses stood in homage, their meek heads poised in
air: lord Hastings' Repulse, the duke of Westminster's Shotover, the duke of
Beaufort's Ceylon, prix de Paris, 1866. Elfin riders sat them, watchful of a sign.
He saw their speeds, backing king's colours, and shouted with the shouts of
vanished crowds.
—Full stop, Mr Deasy bade his keys. But prompt ventilation of this allimportant
question...
Where Cranly led me to get rich quick, hunting his winners among the
mudsplashed brakes, amid the bawls of bookies on their pitches and reek of the
canteen, over the motley slush. Fair Rebel! Fair Rebel! Even money the favourite:
ten to one the field. Dicers and thimbleriggers we hurried by after the hoofs, the
vying caps and jackets and past the meatfaced woman, a butcher's dame, nuzzling
thirstily her clove of orange.
Shouts rang shrill from the boys' playfield and a whirring whistle.
Again: a goal. I am among them, among their battling bodies in a medley, the
joust of life. You mean that knockkneed mother's darling who seems to be slightly
crawsick? Jousts. Time shocked rebounds, shock by shock. Jousts, slush and
uproar of battles, the frozen deathspew of the slain, a shout of spearspikes baited
with men's bloodied guts.
 —Now then, Mr Deasy said, rising.
He came to the table, pinning together his sheets. Stephen stood up.
—I have put the matter into a nutshell, Mr Deasy said. It's about the foot and
mouth disease. Just look through it. There can be no two opinions on the matter.
May I trespass on your valuable space. That doctrine of laissez faire which so
often in our history. Our cattle trade. The way of all our old industries. Liverpool
ring which jockeyed the Galway harbour scheme. European conflagration. Grain
supplies through the narrow waters of the channel. The pluterperfect
imperturbability of the department of agriculture. Pardoned a classical allusion.
Cassandra. By a woman who was no better than she should be. To come to the
point at issue.
—I don't mince words, do I? Mr Deasy asked as Stephen read on.
Foot and mouth disease. Known as Koch's preparation. Serum and virus.
Percentage of salted horses. Rinderpest. Emperor's horses at Murzsteg, lower
Austria. Veterinary surgeons. Mr Henry Blackwood Price. Courteous offer a fair
trial. Dictates of common sense. Allimportant question. In every sense of the word
take the bull by the horns. Thanking you for the hospitality of your columns.
—I want that to be printed and read, Mr Deasy said. You will see at the next
outbreak they will put an embargo on Irish cattle. And it can be cured. It is cured.
My cousin, Blackwood Price, writes to me it is regularly treated and cured in
Austria by cattledoctors there. They offer to come over here. I am trying to work
up influence with the department. Now I'm going to try publicity. I am surrounded
by difficulties, by... intrigues by... backstairs influence by...
He raised his forefinger and beat the air oldly before his voice spoke.
—Mark my words, Mr Dedalus, he said. England is in the hands of the jews. In
all the highest places: her finance, her press. And they are the signs of a nation's
decay. Wherever they gather they eat up the nation's vital strength. I have seen it
coming these years. As sure as we are standing here the jew merchants are already
at their work of destruction. Old England is dying.
He stepped swiftly off, his eyes coming to blue life as they passed a broad
sunbeam. He faced about and back again.
—Dying, he said again, if not dead by now.

The harlot's cry from street to street

Shall weave old England's windingsheet.
His eyes open wide in vision stared sternly across the sunbeam in which he
halted.
—A merchant, Stephen said, is one who buys cheap and sells dear, jew or
gentile, is he not?
 —They sinned against the light, Mr Deasy said gravely. And you can see the
darkness in their eyes. And that is why they are wanderers on the earth to this
day.
On the steps of the Paris stock exchange the goldskinned men quoting prices on
their gemmed fingers. Gabble of geese. They swarmed loud, uncouth about the
temple, their heads thickplotting under maladroit silk hats. Not theirs: these
clothes, this speech, these gestures. Their full slow eyes belied the words, the
gestures eager and unoffending, but knew the rancours massed about them and
knew their zeal was vain. Vain patience to heap and hoard. Time surely would
scatter all. A hoard heaped by the roadside: plundered and passing on. Their eyes
knew their years of wandering and, patient, knew the dishonours of their flesh.
—Who has not? Stephen said.
—What do you mean? Mr Deasy asked.
He came forward a pace and stood by the table. His underjaw fell sideways
open uncertainly. Is this old wisdom? He waits to hear from me.
—History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.
From the playfield the boys raised a shout. A whirring whistle: goal. What if
that nightmare gave you a back kick?
—The ways of the Creator are not our ways, Mr Deasy said. All human history
moves towards one great goal, the manifestation of God.
Stephen jerked his thumb towards the window, saying:
—That is God.
Hooray! Ay! Whrrwhee!
—What? Mr Deasy asked.
—A shout in the street, Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders.
Mr Deasy looked down and held for awhile the wings of his nose tweaked
between his fingers. Looking up again he set them free.
—I am happier than you are, he said. We have committed many errors and
many sins. A woman brought sin into the world. For a woman who was no better
than she should be, Helen, the runaway wife of Menelaus, ten years the Greeks
made war on Troy. A faithless wife first brought the strangers to our shore here,
MacMurrough's wife and her leman, O'Rourke, prince of Breffni. A woman too
brought Parnell low. Many errors, many failures but not the one sin. I am a
struggler now at the end of my days. But I will fight for the right till the end.

For Ulster will fight

And Ulster will be right.
 Stephen raised the sheets in his hand.
—Well, sir, he began...
—I foresee, Mr Deasy said, that you will not remain here very long at this work.
You were not born to be a teacher, I think. Perhaps I am wrong.
—A learner rather, Stephen said.
And here what will you learn more?
Mr Deasy shook his head.
—Who knows? he said. To learn one must be humble. But life is the great
teacher.
Stephen rustled the sheets again.
—As regards these, he began.
—Yes, Mr Deasy said. You have two copies there. If you can have them
published at once.
Telegraph. Irish Homestead.
—I will try, Stephen said, and let you know tomorrow. I know two editors
slightly.
—That will do, Mr Deasy said briskly. I wrote last night to Mr Field, M.P.
There is a meeting of the cattletraders' association today at the City Arms hotel. I
asked him to lay my letter before the meeting. You see if you can get it into your
two papers. What are they?
—The Evening Telegraph...
—That will do, Mr Deasy said. There is no time to lose. Now I have to answer
that letter from my cousin.
—Good morning, sir, Stephen said, putting the sheets in his pocket. Thank you.
—Not at all, Mr Deasy said as he searched the papers on his desk. I like to
break a lance with you, old as I am.
—Good morning, sir, Stephen said again, bowing to his bent back.
He went out by the open porch and down the gravel path under the trees,
hearing the cries of voices and crack of sticks from the playfield. The lions
couchant on the pillars as he passed out through the gate: toothless terrors. Still I
will help him in his fight. Mulligan will dub me a new name: the
bullockbefriending bard.
—Mr Dedalus!
Running after me. No more letters, I hope.
 —Just one moment.
—Yes, sir, Stephen said, turning back at the gate.
Mr Deasy halted, breathing hard and swallowing his breath.
—I just wanted to say, he said. Ireland, they say, has the honour of being the
only country which never persecuted the jews. Do you know that? No. And do
you know why?
He frowned sternly on the bright air.
—Why, sir? Stephen asked, beginning to smile.
—Because she never let them in, Mr Deasy said solemnly.
A coughball of laughter leaped from his throat dragging after it a rattling chain
of phlegm. He turned back quickly, coughing, laughing, his lifted arms waving to
the air.
—She never let them in, he cried again through his laughter as he stamped on
gaitered feet over the gravel of the path. That's why.
On his wise shoulders through the checkerwork of leaves the sun flung spangles,
dancing coins.
Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my
eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the
nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs. Limits of
the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. Then he was aware of them bodies before of
them coloured. How? By knocking his sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he
was and a millionaire, maestro di color che sanno. Limit of the diaphane in. Why
in? Diaphane, adiaphane. If you can put your five fingers through it it is a gate, if
not a door. Shut your eyes and see.
Stephen closed his eyes to hear his boots crush crackling wrack and shells. You
are walking through it howsomever. I am, a stride at a time. A very short space of
time through very short times of space. Five, six: the nacheinander. Exactly: and
that is the ineluctable modality of the audible. Open your eyes. No. Jesus! If I fell
over a cliff that beetles o'er his base, fell through the nebeneinander ineluctably! I
am getting on nicely in the dark. My ash sword hangs at my side. Tap with it:
they do. My two feet in his boots are at the ends of his legs, nebeneinander.
Sounds solid: made by the mallet of Los Demiurgos. Am I walking into eternity
along Sandymount strand? Crush, crack, crick, crick. Wild sea money. Dominie
Deasy kens them a'. Won't you come to Sandymount, Madeline the mare?
Rhythm begins, you see. I hear. Acatalectic tetrameter of iambs marching. No,
agallop: deline the mare.
Open your eyes now. I will. One moment. Has all vanished since? If I open and
am for ever in the black adiaphane. Basta! I will see if I can see.
See now. There all the time without you: and ever shall be, world without end.
 They came down the steps from Leahy's terrace prudently, Frauenzimmer: and
down the shelving shore flabbily, their splayed feet sinking in the silted sand. Like
me, like Algy, coming down to our mighty mother. Number one swung lourdily her
midwife's bag, the other's gamp poked in the beach. From the liberties, out for the
day. Mrs Florence MacCabe, relict of the late Patk MacCabe, deeply lamented, of
Bride Street. One of her sisterhood lugged me squealing into life. Creation from
nothing. What has she in the bag? A misbirth with a trailing navelcord, hushed in
ruddy wool. The cords of all link back, strandentwining cable of all flesh. That is
why mystic monks. Will you be as gods? Gaze in your omphalos. Hello! Kinch
here. Put me on to Edenville. Aleph, alpha: nought, nought, one.
Spouse and helpmate of Adam Kadmon: Heva, naked Eve. She had no navel.
Gaze. Belly without blemish, bulging big, a buckler of taut vellum, no,
whiteheaped corn, orient and immortal, standing from everlasting to everlasting.
Womb of sin.
Wombed in sin darkness I was too, made not begotten. By them, the man with
my voice and my eyes and a ghostwoman with ashes on her breath. They clasped
and sundered, did the coupler's will. From before the ages He willed me and now
may not will me away or ever. A lex eterna stays about Him. Is that then the
divine substance wherein Father and Son are consubstantial? Where is poor dear
Arius to try conclusions? Warring his life long upon the
contransmagnificandjewbangtantiality. Illstarred heresiarch' In a Greek watercloset
he breathed his last: euthanasia. With beaded mitre and with crozier, stalled upon
his throne, widower of a widowed see, with upstiffed omophorion, with clotted
hinderparts.
Airs romped round him, nipping and eager airs. They are coming, waves. The
whitemaned seahorses, champing, brightwindbridled, the steeds of Mananaan.
I mustn't forget his letter for the press. And after? The Ship, half twelve. By the
way go easy with that money like a good young imbecile.
Yes, I must.
His pace slackened. Here. Am I going to aunt Sara's or not? My consubstantial
father's voice. Did you see anything of your artist brother Stephen lately? No?
Sure he's not down in Strasburg terrace with his aunt Sally? Couldn't he fly a bit
higher than that, eh? And and and and tell us, Stephen, how is uncle Si? O,
weeping God, the things I married into! De boys up in de hayloft. The drunken
little costdrawer and his brother, the cornet player. Highly respectable gondoliers!
And skeweyed Walter sirring his father, no less! Sir. Yes, sir. No, sir. Jesus wept:
and no wonder, by Christ!
I pull the wheezy bell of their shuttered cottage: and wait. They take me for a
dun, peer out from a coign of vantage.
—It's Stephen, sir.
—Let him in. Let Stephen in.
 A bolt drawn back and Walter welcomes me.
—We thought you were someone else.
In his broad bed nuncle Richie, pillowed and blanketed, extends over the hillock
of his knees a sturdy forearm. Cleanchested. He has washed the upper moiety.
—Morrow, nephew.
He lays aside the lapboard whereon he drafts his bills of costs for the eyes of
master Goff and master Shapland Tandy, filing consents and common searches
and a writ of Duces Tecum. A bogoak frame over his bald head: Wilde's
Requiescat. The drone of his misleading whistle brings Walter back.
—Yes, sir?
—Malt for Richie and Stephen, tell mother. Where is she?
—Bathing Crissie, sir.
Papa's little bedpal. Lump of love.
—No, uncle Richie...
—Call me Richie. Damn your lithia water. It lowers. Whusky!
—Uncle Richie, really...
—Sit down or by the law Harry I'll knock you down.
Walter squints vainly for a chair.
—He has nothing to sit down on, sir.
—He has nowhere to put it, you mug. Bring in our chippendale chair. Would
you like a bite of something? None of your damned lawdeedaw airs here. The rich
of a rasher fried with a herring? Sure? So much the better. We have nothing in the
house but backache pills.
All'erta!
He drones bars of Ferrando's aria di sortita. The grandest number, Stephen, in
the whole opera. Listen.
His tuneful whistle sounds again, finely shaded, with rushes of the air, his fists
bigdrumming on his padded knees.
This wind is sweeter.
Houses of decay, mine, his and all. You told the Clongowes gentry you had an
uncle a judge and an uncle a general in the army. Come out of them, Stephen.
Beauty is not there. Nor in the stagnant bay of Marsh's library where you read the
fading prophecies of Joachim Abbas. For whom? The hundredheaded rabble of the
cathedral close. A hater of his kind ran from them to the wood of madness, his
mane foaming in the moon, his eyeballs stars. Houyhnhnm, horsenostrilled. The
oval equine faces, Temple, Buck Mulligan, Foxy Campbell, Lanternjaws. Abbas
father,—furious dean, what offence laid fire to their brains? Paff! Descende, calve,
ut ne amplius decalveris. A garland of grey hair on his comminated head see him
me clambering down to the footpace (descende!), clutching a monstrance,
basiliskeyed. Get down, baldpoll! A choir gives back menace and echo, assisting
about the altar's horns, the snorted Latin of jackpriests moving burly in their albs,
tonsured and oiled and gelded, fat with the fat of kidneys of wheat.
And at the same instant perhaps a priest round the corner is elevating it.
Dringdring! And two streets off another locking it into a pyx. Dringadring! And in
a ladychapel another taking housel all to his own cheek. Dringdring! Down, up,
forward, back. Dan Occam thought of that, invincible doctor. A misty English
morning the imp hypostasis tickled his brain. Bringing his host down and kneeling
he heard twine with his second bell the first bell in the transept (he is lifting his)
and, rising, heard (now I am lifting) their two bells (he is kneeling) twang in
diphthong.
Cousin Stephen, you will never be a saint. Isle of saints. You were awfully holy,
weren't you? You prayed to the Blessed Virgin that you might not have a red nose.
You prayed to the devil in Serpentine avenue that the fubsy widow in front might
lift her clothes still more from the wet street. O si, certo! Sell your soul for that,
do, dyed rags pinned round a squaw. More tell me, more still!! On the top of the
Howth tram alone crying to the rain: Naked women! naked women! What about
that, eh?
What about what? What else were they invented for?
Reading two pages apiece of seven books every night, eh? I was young. You
bowed to yourself in the mirror, stepping forward to applause earnestly, striking
face. Hurray for the Goddamned idiot! Hray! No-one saw: tell no-one. Books you
were going to write with letters for titles. Have you read his F? O yes, but I prefer
Q. Yes, but W is wonderful. O yes, W. Remember your epiphanies written on
green oval leaves, deeply deep, copies to be sent if you died to all the great
libraries of the world, including Alexandria? Someone was to read them there after
a few thousand years, a mahamanvantara. Pico della Mirandola like. Ay, very like
a whale. When one reads these strange pages of one long gone one feels that one is
at one with one who once...
The grainy sand had gone from under his feet. His boots trod again a damp
crackling mast, razorshells, squeaking pebbles, that on the unnumbered pebbles
beats, wood sieved by the shipworm, lost Armada. Unwholesome sandflats waited
to suck his treading soles, breathing upward sewage breath, a pocket of seaweed
smouldered in seafire under a midden of man's ashes. He coasted them, walking
warily. A porterbottle stood up, stogged to its waist, in the cakey sand dough. A
sentinel: isle of dreadful thirst. Broken hoops on the shore; at the land a maze of
dark cunning nets; farther away chalkscrawled backdoors and on the higher beach
a dryingline with two crucified shirts. Ringsend: wigwams of brown steersmen and
master mariners. Human shells.
 He halted. I have passed the way to aunt Sara's. Am I not going there? Seems
not. No-one about. He turned northeast and crossed the firmer sand towards the
Pigeonhouse.
—Qui vous a mis dans cette fichue position?
—c'est le pigeon, Joseph.
Patrice, home on furlough, lapped warm milk with me in the bar MacMahon.
Son of the wild goose, Kevin Egan of Paris. My father's a bird, he lapped the sweet
lait chaud with pink young tongue, plump bunny's face. Lap, lapin. He hopes to
win in the gros lots. About the nature of women he read in Michelet. But he must
send me La Vie de Jesus by M. Leo Taxil. Lent it to his friend.
—C'est tordant, vous savez. Moi, je suis socialiste. Je ne crois pas en l'existence de
Dieu. Faut pas le dire a mon p-re.
—Il croit?
—Mon pere, oui.
Schluss. He laps.
My Latin quarter hat. God, we simply must dress the character. I want puce
gloves. You were a student, weren't you? Of what in the other devil's name?
Paysayenn. P. C. N., you know: physiques, chimiques et naturelles. Aha. Eating
your groatsworth of mou en civet, fleshpots of Egypt, elbowed by belching
cabmen. Just say in the most natural tone: when I was in Paris; boul' Mich', I used
to. Yes, used to carry punched tickets to prove an alibi if they arrested you for
murder somewhere. Justice. On the night of the seventeenth of February 1904 the
prisoner was seen by two witnesses. Other fellow did it: other me. Hat, tie,
overcoat, nose. Lui, c'est moi. You seem to have enjoyed yourself.
Proudly walking. Whom were you trying to walk like? Forget: a dispossessed.
With mother's money order, eight shillings, the banging door of the post office
slammed in your face by the usher. Hunger toothache. Encore deux minutes. Look
clock. Must get. Ferme. Hired dog! Shoot him to bloody bits with a bang shotgun,
bits man spattered walls all brass buttons. Bits all khrrrrklak in place clack back.
Not hurt? O, that's all right. Shake hands. See what I meant, see? O, that's all
right. Shake a shake. O, that's all only all right.
You were going to do wonders, what? Missionary to Europe after fiery
Columbanus. Fiacre and Scotus on their creepystools in heaven spilt from their
pintpots, loudlatinlaughing: Euge! Euge! Pretending to speak broken English as you
dragged your valise, porter threepence, across the slimy pier at Newhaven.
Comment? Rich booty you brought back; Le Tutu, five tattered numbers of
Pantalon Blanc et Culotte Rouge; a blue French telegram, curiosity to show:
—Mother dying come home father.
The aunt thinks you killed your mother. That's why she won't.
 Then here's a health to Mulligan's aunt
And I'll tell you the reason why.
She always kept things decent in
The Hannigan famileye.
His feet marched in sudden proud rhythm over the sand furrows, along by the
boulders of the south wall. He stared at them proudly, piled stone mammoth
skulls. Gold light on sea, on sand, on boulders. The sun is there, the slender trees,
the lemon houses.
Paris rawly waking, crude sunlight on her lemon streets. Moist pith of farls of
bread, the froggreen wormwood, her matin incense, court the air. Belluomo rises
from the bed of his wife's lover's wife, the kerchiefed housewife is astir, a saucer
of acetic acid in her hand. In Rodot's Yvonne and Madeleine newmake their
tumbled beauties, shattering with gold teeth chaussons of pastry, their mouths
yellowed with the pus of flan breton. Faces of Paris men go by, their wellpleased
pleasers, curled conquistadores.
Noon slumbers. Kevin Egan rolls gunpowder cigarettes through fingers smeared
with printer's ink, sipping his green fairy as Patrice his white. About us gobblers
fork spiced beans down their gullets. Un demi setier! A jet of coffee steam from
the burnished caldron. She serves me at his beck. Il est irlandais. Hollandais? Non
fromage. Deux irlandais, nous, Irlande, vous savez ah, oui! She thought you wanted
a cheese hollandais. Your postprandial, do you know that word? Postprandial.
There was a fellow I knew once in Barcelona, queer fellow, used to call it his
postprandial. Well: slainte! Around the slabbed tables the tangle of wined breaths
and grumbling gorges. His breath hangs over our saucestained plates, the green
fairy's fang thrusting between his lips. Of Ireland, the Dalcassians, of hopes,
conspiracies, of Arthur Griffith now, A E, pimander, good shepherd of men. To
yoke me as his yokefellow, our crimes our common cause. You're your father's
son. I know the voice. His fustian shirt, sanguineflowered, trembles its Spanish
tassels at his secrets. M. Drumont, famous journalist, Drumont, know what he
called queen Victoria? Old hag with the yellow teeth. Vieille ogresse with the dents
jaunes. Maud Gonne, beautiful woman, La Patrie, M. Millevoye, Felix Faure,
know how he died? Licentious men. The froeken, bonne a tout faire, who rubs
male nakedness in the bath at Upsala. Moi faire, she said, Tous les messieurs. Not
this Monsieur, I said. Most licentious custom. Bath a most private thing. I
wouldn't let my brother, not even my own brother, most lascivious thing. Green
eyes, I see you. Fang, I feel. Lascivious people.
The blue fuse burns deadly between hands and burns clear. Loose
tobaccoshreds catch fire: a flame and acrid smoke light our corner. Raw facebones
under his peep of day boy's hat. How the head centre got away, authentic version.
Got up as a young bride, man, veil, orangeblossoms, drove out the road to
Malahide. Did, faith. Of lost leaders, the betrayed, wild escapes. Disguises,
clutched at, gone, not here.
 Spurned lover. I was a strapping young gossoon at that time, I tell you. I'll show
you my likeness one day. I was, faith. Lover, for her love he prowled with colonel
Richard Burke, tanist of his sept, under the walls of Clerkenwell and, crouching,
saw a flame of vengeance hurl them upward in the fog. Shattered glass and
toppling masonry. In gay Paree he hides, Egan of Paris, unsought by any save by
me. Making his day's stations, the dingy printingcase, his three taverns, the
Montmartre lair he sleeps short night in, rue de la Goutte-d'Or, damascened with
flyblown faces of the gone. Loveless, landless, wifeless. She is quite nicey comfy
without her outcast man, madame in rue Git-le-Coeur, canary and two buck
lodgers. Peachy cheeks, a zebra skirt, frisky as a young thing's. Spurned and
undespairing. Tell Pat you saw me, won't you? I wanted to get poor Pat a job one
time. Mon fils, soldier of France. I taught him to sing The boys of Kilkenny are
stout roaring blades. Know that old lay? I taught Patrice that. Old Kilkenny: saint
Canice, Strongbow's castle on the Nore. Goes like this. O, O. He takes me, Napper
Tandy, by the hand.

O, O THE BOYS OF KILKENNY...

Weak wasting hand on mine. They have forgotten Kevin Egan, not he them.
Remembering thee, O Sion.
He had come nearer the edge of the sea and wet sand slapped his boots. The
new air greeted him, harping in wild nerves, wind of wild air of seeds of
brightness. Here, I am not walking out to the Kish lightship, am I? He stood
suddenly, his feet beginning to sink slowly in the quaking soil. Turn back.
Turning, he scanned the shore south, his feet sinking again slowly in new
sockets. The cold domed room of the tower waits. Through the barbacans the
shafts of light are moving ever, slowly ever as my feet are sinking, creeping
duskward over the dial floor. Blue dusk, nightfall, deep blue night. In the
darkness of the dome they wait, their pushedback chairs, my obelisk valise,
around a board of abandoned platters. Who to clear it? He has the key. I will not
sleep there when this night comes. A shut door of a silent tower, entombing
their—blind bodies, the panthersahib and his pointer. Call: no answer. He lifted
his feet up from the suck and turned back by the mole of boulders. Take all, keep
all. My soul walks with me, form of forms. So in the moon's midwatches I pace
the path above the rocks, in sable silvered, hearing Elsinore's tempting flood.
The flood is following me. I can watch it flow past from here. Get back then by
the Poolbeg road to the strand there. He climbed over the sedge and eely oarweeds
and sat on a stool of rock, resting his ashplant in a grike.
A bloated carcass of a dog lay lolled on bladderwrack. Before him the gunwale
of a boat, sunk in sand. Un coche ensablé Louis Veuillot called Gautier's prose.
These heavy sands are language tide and wind have silted here. And these, the
stoneheaps of dead builders, a warren of weasel rats. Hide gold there. Try it. You
have some. Sands and stones. Heavy of the past. Sir Lout's toys. Mind you don't
get one bang on the ear. I'm the bloody well gigant rolls all them bloody well
boulders, bones for my steppingstones. Feefawfum. I zmellz de bloodz odz an
Iridzman.
A point, live dog, grew into sight running across the sweep of sand. Lord, is he
going to attack me? Respect his liberty. You will not be master of others or their
slave. I have my stick. Sit tight. From farther away, walking shoreward across
from the crested tide, figures, two. The two maries. They have tucked it safe mong
the bulrushes. Peekaboo. I see you. No, the dog. He is running back to them.
Who?
Galleys of the Lochlanns ran here to beach, in quest of prey, their bloodbeaked
prows riding low on a molten pewter surf. Dane vikings, torcs of tomahawks
aglitter on their breasts when Malachi wore the collar of gold. A school of
turlehide whales stranded in hot noon, spouting, hobbling in the shallows. Then
from the starving cagework city a horde of jerkined dwarfs, my people, with
flayers' knives, running, scaling, hacking in green blubbery whalemeat. Famine,
plague and slaughters. Their blood is in me, their lusts my waves. I moved among
them on the frozen Liffey, that I, a changeling, among the spluttering resin fires. I
spoke to no-one: none to me.
The dog's bark ran towards him, stopped, ran back. Dog of my enemy. I just
simply stood pale, silent, bayed about. Terribilia meditans. A primrose doublet,
fortune's knave, smiled on my fear. For that are you pining, the bark of their
applause? Pretenders: live their lives. The Bruce's brother, Thomas Fitzgerald,
silken knight, Perkin Warbeck, York's false scion, in breeches of silk of whiterose
ivory, wonder of a day, and Lambert Simnel, with a tail of nans and sutlers, a
scullion crowned. All kings' sons. Paradise of pretenders then and now. He saved
men from drowning and you shake at a cur's yelping. But the courtiers who
mocked Guido in Or san Michele were in their own house. House of... We don't
want any of your medieval abstrusiosities. Would you do what he did? A boat
would be near, a lifebuoy. Natürlich, put there for you. Would you or would you
not? The man that was drowned nine days ago off Maiden's rock. They are
waiting for him now. The truth, spit it out. I would want to. I would try. I am not
a strong swimmer. Water cold soft. When I put my face into it in the basin at
Clongowes. Can't see! Who's behind me? Out quickly, quickly! Do you see the tide
flowing quickly in on all sides, sheeting the lows of sand quickly,
shellcocoacoloured? If I had land under my feet. I want his life still to be his, mine
to be mine. A drowning man. His human eyes scream to me out of horror of his
death. I... With him together down... I could not save her. Waters: bitter death:
lost.
A woman and a man. I see her skirties. Pinned up, I bet.
Their dog ambled about a bank of dwindling sand, trotting, sniffing on all sides.
Looking for something lost in a past life. Suddenly he made off like a bounding
hare, ears flung back, chasing the shadow of a lowskimming gull. The man's
shrieked whistle struck his limp ears. He turned, bounded back, came nearer,
trotted on twinkling shanks. On a field tenney a buck, trippant, proper, unattired.
At the lacefringe of the tide he halted with stiff forehoofs, seawardpointed ears.
His snout lifted barked at the wavenoise, herds of seamorse. They serpented
towards his feet, curling, unfurling many crests, every ninth, breaking, plashing,
from far, from farther out, waves and waves.
Cocklepickers. They waded a little way in the water and, stooping, soused their
bags and, lifting them again, waded out. The dog yelped running to them, reared
up and pawed them, dropping on all fours, again reared up at them with mute
bearish fawning. Unheeded he kept by them as they came towards the drier sand,
a rag of wolf's tongue redpanting from his jaws. His speckled body ambled ahead
of them and then loped off at a calf's gallop. The carcass lay on his path. He
stopped, sniffed, stalked round it, brother, nosing closer, went round it, sniffling
rapidly like a dog all over the dead dog's bedraggled fell. Dogskull, dogsniff, eyes
on the ground, moves to one great goal. Ah, poor dogsbody! Here lies poor
dogsbody's body.
—Tatters! Out of that, you mongrel!
The cry brought him skulking back to his master and a blunt bootless kick sent
him unscathed across a spit of sand, crouched in flight. He slunk back in a curve.
Doesn't see me. Along by the edge of the mole he lolloped, dawdled, smelt a rock
and from under a cocked hindleg pissed against it. He trotted forward and, lifting
again his hindleg, pissed quick short at an unsmelt rock. The simple pleasures of
the poor. His hindpaws then scattered the sand: then his forepaws dabbled and
delved. Something he buried there, his grandmother. He rooted in the sand,
dabbling, delving and stopped to listen to the air, scraped up the sand again with
a fury of his claws, soon ceasing, a pard, a panther, got in spousebreach, vulturing
the dead.
After he woke me last night same dream or was it? Wait. Open hallway. Street
of harlots. Remember. Haroun al Raschid. I am almosting it. That man led me,
spoke. I was not afraid. The melon he had he held against my face. Smiled:
creamfruit smell. That was the rule, said. In. Come. Red carpet spread. You will
see who.
Shouldering their bags they trudged, the red Egyptians. His blued feet out of
turnedup trousers slapped the clammy sand, a dull brick muffler strangling his
unshaven neck. With woman steps she followed: the ruffian and his strolling mort.
Spoils slung at her back. Loose sand and shellgrit crusted her bare feet. About her
windraw face hair trailed. Behind her lord, his helpmate, bing awast to Romeville.
When night hides her body's flaws calling under her brown shawl from an archway
where dogs have mired. Her fancyman is treating two Royal Dublins in
O'Loughlin's of Blackpitts. Buss her, wap in rogues' rum lingo, for, O, my dimber
wapping dell! A shefiend's whiteness under her rancid rags. Fumbally's lane that
night: the tanyard smells.

White thy fambles, red thy gan

And thy quarrons dainty is.
Couch a hogshead with me then.
 In the darkmans clip and kiss.
Morose delectation Aquinas tunbelly calls this, frate porcospino. Unfallen Adam
rode and not rutted. Call away let him: thy quarrons dainty is. Language no whit
worse than his. Monkwords, marybeads jabber on their girdles: roguewords, tough
nuggets patter in their pockets.
Passing now.
A side eye at my Hamlet hat. If I were suddenly naked here as I sit? I am not.
Across the sands of all the world, followed by the sun's flaming sword, to the
west, trekking to evening lands. She trudges, schlepps, trains, drags, trascines her
load. A tide westering, moondrawn, in her wake. Tides, myriadislanded, within
her, blood not mine, oinopa ponton, a winedark sea. Behold the handmaid of the
moon. In sleep the wet sign calls her hour, bids her rise. Bridebed, childbed, bed
of death, ghostcandled. Omnis caro ad te veniet. He comes, pale vampire, through
storm his eyes, his bat sails bloodying the sea, mouth to her mouth's kiss.
Here. Put a pin in that chap, will you? My tablets. Mouth to her kiss.
No. Must be two of em. Glue em well. Mouth to her mouth's kiss.
His lips lipped and mouthed fleshless lips of air: mouth to her moomb. Oomb,
allwombing tomb. His mouth moulded issuing breath, unspeeched: ooeeehah: roar
of cataractic planets, globed, blazing, roaring wayawayawayawayaway. Paper. The
banknotes, blast them. Old Deasy's letter. Here. Thanking you for the hospitality
tear the blank end off. Turning his back to the sun he bent over far to a table of
rock and scribbled words. That's twice I forgot to take slips from the library
counter.
His shadow lay over the rocks as he bent, ending. Why not endless till the
farthest star? Darkly they are there behind this light, darkness shining in the
brightness, delta of Cassiopeia, worlds. Me sits there with his augur's rod of ash,
in borrowed sandals, by day beside a livid sea, unbeheld, in violet night walking
beneath a reign of uncouth stars. I throw this ended shadow from me, manshape
ineluctable, call it back. Endless, would it be mine, form of my form? Who
watches me here? Who ever anywhere will read these written words? Signs on a
white field. Somewhere to someone in your flutiest voice. The good bishop of
Cloyne took the veil of the temple out of his shovel hat: veil of space with
coloured emblems hatched on its field. Hold hard. Coloured on a flat: yes, that's
right. Flat I see, then think distance, near, far, flat I see, east, back. Ah, see now!
Falls back suddenly, frozen in stereoscope. Click does the trick. You find my
words dark. Darkness is in our souls do you not think? Flutier. Our souls,
shamewounded by our sins, cling to us yet more, a woman to her lover clinging,
the more the more.
She trusts me, her hand gentle, the longlashed eyes. Now where the blue hell
am I bringing her beyond the veil? Into the ineluctable modality of the ineluctable
visuality. She, she, she. What she? The virgin at Hodges Figgis' window on
Monday looking in for one of the alphabet books you were going to write. Keen
glance you gave her. Wrist through the braided jesse of her sunshade. She lives in
Leeson park with a grief and kickshaws, a lady of letters. Talk that to someone
else, Stevie: a pickmeup. Bet she wears those curse of God stays suspenders and
yellow stockings, darned with lumpy wool. Talk about apple dumplings, piuttosto.
Where are your wits?
Touch me. Soft eyes. Soft soft soft hand. I am lonely here. O, touch me soon,
now. What is that word known to all men? I am quiet here alone. Sad too. Touch,
touch me.
He lay back at full stretch over the sharp rocks, cramming the scribbled note
and pencil into a pock his hat. His hat down on his eyes. That is Kevin Egan's
movement I made, nodding for his nap, sabbath sleep. Et vidit Deus. Et erant
valde bona. Alo! Bonjour. Welcome as the flowers in May. Under its leaf he
watched through peacocktwittering lashes the southing sun. I am caught in this
burning scene. Pan's hour, the faunal noon. Among gumheavy serpentplants,
milkoozing fruits, where on the tawny waters leaves lie wide. Pain is far.

And no more turn aside and brood.

His gaze brooded on his broadtoed boots, a buck's castoffs, nebeneinander. He
counted the creases of rucked leather wherein another's foot had nested warm.
The foot that beat the ground in tripudium, foot I dislove. But you were delighted
when Esther Osvalt's shoe went on you: girl I knew in Paris. Tiens, quel petit pied!
Staunch friend, a brother soul: Wilde's love that dare not speak its name. His arm:
Cranly's arm. He now will leave me. And the blame? As I am. As I am. All or not
at all.
In long lassoes from the Cock lake the water flowed full, covering greengoldenly
lagoons of sand, rising, flowing. My ashplant will float away. I shall wait. No,
they will pass on, passing, chafing against the low rocks, swirling, passing. Better
get this job over quick. Listen: a fourworded wavespeech: seesoo, hrss, rsseeiss,
ooos. Vehement breath of waters amid seasnakes, rearing horses, rocks. In cups of
rocks it slops: flop, slop, slap: bounded in barrels. And, spent, its speech ceases.
It flows purling, widely flowing, floating foampool, flower unfurling.
Under the upswelling tide he saw the writhing weeds lift languidly and sway
reluctant arms, hising up their petticoats, in whispering water swaying and
upturning coy silver fronds. Day by day: night by night: lifted, flooded and let fall.
Lord, they are weary; and, whispered to, they sigh. Saint Ambrose heard it, sigh
of leaves and waves, waiting, awaiting the fullness of their times, diebus ac
noctibus iniurias patiens ingemiscit. To no end gathered; vainly then released,
forthflowing, wending back: loom of the moon. Weary too in sight of lovers,
lascivious men, a naked woman shining in her courts, she draws a toil of waters.
Five fathoms out there. Full fathom five thy father lies. At one, he said. Found
drowned. High water at Dublin bar. Driving before it a loose drift of rubble,
fanshoals of fishes, silly shells. A corpse rising saltwhite from the undertow,
bobbing a pace a pace a porpoise landward. There he is. Hook it quick. Pull. Sunk
though he be beneath the watery floor. We have him. Easy now.
Bag of corpsegas sopping in foul brine. A quiver of minnows, fat of a spongy
titbit, flash through the slits of his buttoned trouserfly. God becomes man
becomes fish becomes barnacle goose becomes featherbed mountain. Dead breaths
I living breathe, tread dead dust, devour a urinous offal from all dead. Hauled
stark over the gunwale he breathes upward the stench of his green grave, his
leprous nosehole snoring to the sun.
A seachange this, brown eyes saltblue. Seadeath, mildest of all deaths known to
man. Old Father Ocean. Prix de paris: beware of imitations. Just you give it a fair
trial. We enjoyed ourselves immensely.
Come. I thirst. Clouding over. No black clouds anywhere, are there?
Thunderstorm. Allbright he falls, proud lightning of the intellect, Lucifer, dico, qui
nescit occasum. No. My cockle hat and staff and hismy sandal shoon. Where? To
evening lands. Evening will find itself.
He took the hilt of his ashplant, lunging with it softly, dallying still. Yes,
evening will find itself in me, without me. All days make their end. By the way
next when is it Tuesday will be the longest day. Of all the glad new year, mother,
the rum tum tiddledy tum. Lawn Tennyson, gentleman poet. Già. For the old hag
with the yellow teeth. And Monsieur Drumont, gentleman journalist. Già. My
teeth are very bad. Why, I wonder. Feel. That one is going too. Shells. Ought I go
to a dentist, I wonder, with that money? That one. This. Toothless Kinch, the
superman. Why is that, I wonder, or does it mean something perhaps?
My handkerchief. He threw it. I remember. Did I not take it up?
His hand groped vainly in his pockets. No, I didn't. Better buy one.
He laid the dry snot picked from his nostril on a ledge of rock, carefully. For the
rest let look who will.
Behind. Perhaps there is someone.
He turned his face over a shoulder, rere regardant. Moving through the air high
spars of a threemaster, her sails brailed up on the crosstrees, homing, upstream,
silently moving, a silent ship.

Ebd
E-BooksDirectory.com
 — II —
Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked
thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with
crustcrumbs, fried hencods' roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys
which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.
Kidneys were in his mind as he moved about the kitchen softly, righting her
breakfast things on the humpy tray. Gelid light and air were in the kitchen but out
of doors gentle summer morning everywhere. Made him feel a bit peckish.
The coals were reddening.
Another slice of bread and butter: three, four: right. She didn't like her plate
full. Right. He turned from the tray, lifted the kettle off the hob and set it
sideways on the fire. It sat there, dull and squat, its spout stuck out. Cup of tea
soon. Good. Mouth dry. The cat walked stiffly round a leg of the table with tail on
high.
—Mkgnao!
—O, there you are, Mr Bloom said, turning from the fire.
The cat mewed in answer and stalked again stiffly round a leg of the table,
mewing. Just how she stalks over my writingtable. Prr. Scratch my head. Prr.
Mr Bloom watched curiously, kindly the lithe black form. Clean to see: the gloss
of her sleek hide, the white button under the butt of her tail, the green flashing
eyes. He bent down to her, his hands on his knees.
—Milk for the pussens, he said.
—Mrkgnao! the cat cried.
They call them stupid. They understand what we say better than we understand
them. She understands all she wants to. Vindictive too. Cruel. Her nature. Curious
mice never squeal. Seem to like it. Wonder what I look like to her. Height of a
tower? No, she can jump me.
—Afraid of the chickens she is, he said mockingly. Afraid of the chookchooks. I
never saw such a stupid pussens as the pussens.
Cruel. Her nature. Curious mice never squeal. Seem to like it.
—Mrkrgnao! the cat said loudly.
 She blinked up out of her avid shameclosing eyes, mewing plaintively and long,
showing him her milkwhite teeth. He watched the dark eyeslits narrowing with
greed till her eyes were green stones. Then he went to the dresser, took the jug
Hanlon's milkman had just filled for him, poured warmbubbled milk on a saucer
and set it slowly on the floor.
—Gurrhr! she cried, running to lap.
He watched the bristles shining wirily in the weak light as she tipped three
times and licked lightly. Wonder is it true if you clip them they can't mouse after.
Why? They shine in the dark, perhaps, the tips. Or kind of feelers in the dark,
perhaps.
He listened to her licking lap. Ham and eggs, no. No good eggs with this drouth.
Want pure fresh water. Thursday: not a good day either for a mutton kidney at
Buckley's. Fried with butter, a shake of pepper. Better a pork kidney at Dlugacz's.
While the kettle is boiling. She lapped slower, then licking the saucer clean. Why
are their tongues so rough? To lap better, all porous holes. Nothing she can eat?
He glanced round him. No.
On quietly creaky boots he went up the staircase to the hall, paused by the
bedroom door. She might like something tasty. Thin bread and butter she likes in
the morning. Still perhaps: once in a way.
He said softly in the bare hall:
—I'm going round the corner. Be back in a minute.
And when he had heard his voice say it he added:
—You don't want anything for breakfast?
A sleepy soft grunt answered:
—Mn.
No. She didn't want anything. He heard then a warm heavy sigh, softer, as she
turned over and the loose brass quoits of the bedstead jingled. Must get those
settled really. Pity. All the way from Gibraltar. Forgotten any little Spanish she
knew. Wonder what her father gave for it. Old style. Ah yes! of course. Bought it
at the governor's auction. Got a short knock. Hard as nails at a bargain, old
Tweedy. Yes, sir. At Plevna that was. I rose from the ranks, sir, and I'm proud of
it. Still he had brains enough to make that corner in stamps. Now that was
farseeing.
His hand took his hat from the peg over his initialled heavy overcoat and his
lost property office secondhand waterproof. Stamps: stickyback pictures. Daresay
lots of officers are in the swim too. Course they do. The sweated legend in the
crown of his hat told him mutely: Plasto's high grade ha. He peeped quickly inside
the leather headband. White slip of paper. Quite safe.
 On the doorstep he felt in his hip pocket for the latchkey. Not there. In the
trousers I left off. Must get it. Potato I have. Creaky wardrobe. No use disturbing
her. She turned over sleepily that time. He pulled the halldoor to after him very
quietly, more, till the footleaf dropped gently over the threshold, a limp lid.
Looked shut. All right till I come back anyhow.
He crossed to the bright side, avoiding the loose cellarflap of number
seventyfive. The sun was nearing the steeple of George's church. Be a warm day I
fancy. Specially in these black clothes feel it more. Black conducts, reflects,
(refracts is it?), the heat. But I couldn't go in that light suit. Make a picnic of it.
His eyelids sank quietly often as he walked in happy warmth. Boland's breadvan
delivering with trays our daily but she prefers yesterday's loaves turnovers crisp
crowns hot. Makes you feel young. Somewhere in the east: early morning: set off
at dawn. Travel round in front of the sun, steal a day's march on him. Keep it up
for ever never grow a day older technically. Walk along a strand, strange land,
come to a city gate, sentry there, old ranker too, old Tweedy's big moustaches,
leaning on a long kind of a spear. Wander through awned streets. Turbaned faces
going by. Dark caves of carpet shops, big man, Turko the terrible, seated
crosslegged, smoking a coiled pipe. Cries of sellers in the streets. Drink water
scented with fennel, sherbet. Dander along all day. Might meet a robber or two.
Well, meet him. Getting on to sundown. The shadows of the mosques among the
pillars: priest with a scroll rolled up. A shiver of the trees, signal, the evening
wind. I pass on. Fading gold sky. A mother watches me from her doorway. She
calls her children home in their dark language. High wall: beyond strings twanged.
Night sky, moon, violet, colour of Molly's new garters. Strings. Listen. A girl
playing one of those instruments what do you call them: dulcimers. I pass.
Probably not a bit like it really. Kind of stuff you read: in the track of the sun.
Sunburst on the titlepage. He smiled, pleasing himself. What Arthur Griffith said
about the headpiece over the Freeman leader: a homerule sun rising up in the
northwest from the laneway behind the bank of Ireland. He prolonged his pleased
smile. Ikey touch that: homerule sun rising up in the north-west.
He approached Larry O'Rourke's. From the cellar grating floated up the flabby
gush of porter. Through the open doorway the bar squirted out whiffs of ginger,
teadust, biscuitmush. Good house, however: just the end of the city traffic. For
instance M'Auley's down there: n. g. as position. Of course if they ran a tramline
along the North Circular from the cattlemarket to the quays value would go up
like a shot.
Baldhead over the blind. Cute old codger. No use canvassing him for an ad. Still
he knows his own business best. There he is, sure enough, my bold Larry, leaning
against the sugarbin in his shirtsleeves watching the aproned curate swab up with
mop and bucket. Simon Dedalus takes him off to a tee with his eyes screwed up.
Do you know what I'm going to tell you? What's that, Mr O'Rourke? Do you know
what? The Russians, they'd only be an eight o'clock breakfast for the Japanese.
Stop and say a word: about the funeral perhaps. Sad thing about poor Dignam,
Mr O'Rourke.
 Turning into Dorset street he said freshly in greeting through the doorway:
—Good day, Mr O'Rourke.
—Good day to you.
—Lovely weather, sir.
—'Tis all that.
Where do they get the money? Coming up redheaded curates from the county
Leitrim, rinsing empties and old man in the cellar. Then, lo and behold, they
blossom out as Adam Findlaters or Dan Tallons. Then thin of the competition.
General thirst. Good puzzle would be cross Dublin without passing a pub. Save it
they can't. Off the drunks perhaps. Put down three and carry five. What is that, a
bob here and there, dribs and drabs. On the wholesale orders perhaps. Doing a
double shuffle with the town travellers. Square it you with the boss and we'll split
the job, see?
How much would that tot to off the porter in the month? Say ten barrels of
stuff. Say he got ten per cent off. O more. Fifteen. He passed Saint Joseph's
National school. Brats' clamour. Windows open. Fresh air helps memory. Or a lilt.
Ahbeesee defeegee kelomen opeecue rustyouvee doubleyou. Boys are they? Yes.
Inishturk. Inishark. Inishboffin. At their joggerfry. Mine. Slieve Bloom.
He halted before Dlugacz's window, staring at the hanks of sausages, polonies,
black and white. Fifteen multiplied by. The figures whitened in his mind,
unsolved: displeased, he let them fade. The shiny links, packed with forcemeat,
fed his gaze and he breathed in tranquilly the lukewarm breath of cooked spicy
pigs' blood.
A kidney oozed bloodgouts on the willowpatterned dish: the last. He stood by
the nextdoor girl at the counter. Would she buy it too, calling the items from a slip
in her hand? Chapped: washingsoda. And a pound and a half of Denny's sausages.
His eyes rested on her vigorous hips. Woods his name is. Wonder what he does.
Wife is oldish. New blood. No followers allowed. Strong pair of arms. Whacking a
carpet on the clothesline. She does whack it, by George. The way her crooked
skirt swings at each whack.
The ferreteyed porkbutcher folded the sausages he had snipped off with blotchy
fingers, sausagepink. Sound meat there: like a stallfed heifer.
He took a page up from the pile of cut sheets: the model farm at Kinnereth on
the lakeshore of Tiberias. Can become ideal winter sanatorium. Moses Montefiore.
I thought he was. Farmhouse, wall round it, blurred cattle cropping. He held the
page from him: interesting: read it nearer, the title, the blurred cropping cattle,
the page rustling. A young white heifer. Those mornings in the cattlemarket, the
beasts lowing in their pens, branded sheep, flop and fall of dung, the breeders in
hobnailed boots trudging through the litter, slapping a palm on a ripemeated
hindquarter, there's a prime one, unpeeled switches in their hands. He held the
page aslant patiently, bending his senses and his will, his soft subject gaze at rest.
The crooked skirt swinging, whack by whack by whack.
The porkbutcher snapped two sheets from the pile, wrapped up her prime
sausages and made a red grimace.
—Now, my miss, he said.
She tendered a coin, smiling boldly, holding her thick wrist out.
—Thank you, my miss. And one shilling threepence change. For you, please?
Mr Bloom pointed quickly. To catch up and walk behind her if she went slowly,
behind her moving hams. Pleasant to see first thing in the morning. Hurry up,
damn it. Make hay while the sun shines. She stood outside the shop in sunlight
and sauntered lazily to the right. He sighed down his nose: they never understand.
Sodachapped hands. Crusted toenails too. Brown scapulars in tatters, defending
her both ways. The sting of disregard glowed to weak pleasure within his breast.
For another: a constable off duty cuddling her in Eccles lane. They like them
sizeable. Prime sausage. O please, Mr Policeman, I'm lost in the wood.
—Threepence, please.
His hand accepted the moist tender gland and slid it into a sidepocket. Then it
fetched up three coins from his trousers' pocket and laid them on the rubber
prickles. They lay, were read quickly and quickly slid, disc by disc, into the till.
—Thank you, sir. Another time.
A speck of eager fire from foxeyes thanked him. He withdrew his gaze after an
instant. No: better not: another time.
—Good morning, he said, moving away.
—Good morning, sir.
No sign. Gone. What matter?
He walked back along Dorset street, reading gravely. Agendath Netaim: planters'
company. To purchase waste sandy tracts from Turkish government and plant
with eucalyptus trees. Excellent for shade, fuel and construction. Orangegroves
and immense melonfields north of Jaffa. You pay eighty marks and they plant a
dunam of land for you with olives, oranges, almonds or citrons. Olives cheaper:
oranges need artificial irrigation. Every year you get a sending of the crop. Your
name entered for life as owner in the book of the union. Can pay ten down and
the balance in yearly instalments. Bleibtreustrasse 34, Berlin, W. 15.
Nothing doing. Still an idea behind it.
He looked at the cattle, blurred in silver heat. Silverpowdered olivetrees. Quiet
long days: pruning, ripening. Olives are packed in jars, eh? I have a few left from
Andrews. Molly spitting them out. Knows the taste of them now. Oranges in
tissue paper packed in crates. Citrons too. Wonder is poor Citron still in Saint
Kevin's parade. And Mastiansky with the old cither. Pleasant evenings we had
then. Molly in Citron's basketchair. Nice to hold, cool waxen fruit, hold in the
hand, lift it to the nostrils and smell the perfume. Like that, heavy, sweet, wild
perfume. Always the same, year after year. They fetched high prices too, Moisel
told me. Arbutus place: Pleasants street: pleasant old times. Must be without a
flaw, he said. Coming all that way: Spain, Gibraltar, Mediterranean, the Levant.
Crates lined up on the quayside at Jaffa, chap ticking them off in a book, navvies
handling them barefoot in soiled dungarees. There's whatdoyoucallhim out of.
How do you? Doesn't see. Chap you know just to salute bit of a bore. His back is
like that Norwegian captain's. Wonder if I'll meet him today. Watering cart. To
provoke the rain. On earth as it is in heaven.
A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, wholly. Grey. Far.
No, not like that. A barren land, bare waste. Vulcanic lake, the dead sea: no
fish, weedless, sunk deep in the earth. No wind could lift those waves, grey metal,
poisonous foggy waters. Brimstone they called it raining down: the cities of the
plain: Sodom, Gomorrah, Edom. All dead names. A dead sea in a dead land, grey
and old. Old now. It bore the oldest, the first race. A bent hag crossed from
Cassidy's, clutching a naggin bottle by the neck. The oldest people. Wandered far
away over all the earth, captivity to captivity, multiplying, dying, being born
everywhere. It lay there now. Now it could bear no more. Dead: an old woman's:
the grey sunken cunt of the world.
Desolation.
Grey horror seared his flesh. Folding the page into his pocket he turned into
Eccles street, hurrying homeward. Cold oils slid along his veins, chilling his blood:
age crusting him with a salt cloak. Well, I am here now. Yes, I am here now.
Morning mouth bad images. Got up wrong side of the bed. Must begin again those
Sandow's exercises. On the hands down. Blotchy brown brick houses. Number
eighty still unlet. Why is that? Valuation is only twenty-eight. Towers, Battersby,
North, MacArthur: parlour windows plastered with bills. Plasters on a sore eye.
To smell the gentle smoke of tea, fume of the pan, sizzling butter. Be near her
ample bedwarmed flesh. Yes, yes.
Quick warm sunlight came running from Berkeley road, swiftly, in slim sandals,
along the brightening footpath. Runs, she runs to meet me, a girl with gold hair on
the wind.
Two letters and a card lay on the hallfloor. He stooped and gathered them. Mrs
Marion Bloom. His quickened heart slowed at once. Bold hand. Mrs Marion.
—Poldy!
Entering the bedroom he halfclosed his eyes and walked through warm yellow
twilight towards her tousled head.
—Who are the letters for?
He looked at them. Mullingar. Milly.
 —A letter for me from Milly, he said carefully, and a card to you. And a letter
for you.
He laid her card and letter on the twill bedspread near the curve of her knees.
—Do you want the blind up?
Letting the blind up by gentle tugs halfway his backward eye saw her glance at
the letter and tuck it under her pillow.
—That do? he asked, turning.
She was reading the card, propped on her elbow.
—She got the things, she said.
He waited till she had laid the card aside and curled herself back slowly with a
snug sigh.
—Hurry up with that tea, she said. I'm parched.
—The kettle is boiling, he said.
But he delayed to clear the chair: her striped petticoat, tossed soiled linen: and
lifted all in an armful on to the foot of the bed.
As he went down the kitchen stairs she called:
—Poldy!
—What?
—Scald the teapot.
On the boil sure enough: a plume of steam from the spout. He scalded and
rinsed out the teapot and put in four full spoons of tea, tilting the kettle then to
let the water flow in. Having set it to draw he took off the kettle, crushed the pan
flat on the live coals and watched the lump of butter slide and melt. While he
unwrapped the kidney the cat mewed hungrily against him. Give her too much
meat she won't mouse. Say they won't eat pork. Kosher. Here. He let the
bloodsmeared paper fall to her and dropped the kidney amid the sizzling butter
sauce. Pepper. He sprinkled it through his fingers ringwise from the chipped
eggcup.
Then he slit open his letter, glancing down the page and over. Thanks: new tam:
Mr Coghlan: lough Owel picnic: young student: Blazes Boylan's seaside girls.
The tea was drawn. He filled his own moustachecup, sham crown
Derby, smiling. Silly Milly's birthday gift. Only five she was then. No, wait:
four. I gave her the amberoid necklace she broke. Putting pieces of folded brown
paper in the letterbox for her. He smiled, pouring.
 O, Milly Bloom, you are my darling.
You are my lookingglass from night to morning.
I'd rather have you without a farthing
Than Katey Keogh with her ass and garden.
Poor old professor Goodwin. Dreadful old case. Still he was a courteous old
chap. Oldfashioned way he used to bow Molly off the platform. And the little
mirror in his silk hat. The night Milly brought it into the parlour. O, look what I
found in professor Goodwin's hat! All we laughed. Sex breaking out even then.
Pert little piece she was.
He prodded a fork into the kidney and slapped it over: then fitted the teapot on
the tray. Its hump bumped as he took it up. Everything on it? Bread and butter,
four, sugar, spoon, her cream. Yes. He carried it upstairs, his thumb hooked in
the teapot handle.
Nudging the door open with his knee he carried the tray in and set it on the
chair by the bedhead.
—What a time you were! she said.
She set the brasses jingling as she raised herself briskly, an elbow on the pillow.
He looked calmly down on her bulk and between her large soft bubs, sloping
within her nightdress like a shegoat's udder. The warmth of her couched body rose
on the air, mingling with the fragrance of the tea she poured.
A strip of torn envelope peeped from under the dimpled pillow. In the act of
going he stayed to straighten the bedspread.
—Who was the letter from? he asked.
Bold hand. Marion.
—O, Boylan, she said. He's bringing the programme.
—What are you singing?
—La ci darem with J. C. Doyle, she said, and Love's Old Sweet Song.
Her full lips, drinking, smiled. Rather stale smell that incense leaves next day.
Like foul flowerwater.
—Would you like the window open a little?
She doubled a slice of bread into her mouth, asking:
—What time is the funeral?
—Eleven, I think, he answered. I didn't see the paper.
Following the pointing of her finger he took up a leg of her soiled drawers from
the bed. No? Then, a twisted grey garter looped round a stocking: rumpled, shiny
sole.
 —No: that book.
Other stocking. Her petticoat.
—It must have fell down, she said.
He felt here and there. Voglio e non vorrei. Wonder if she pronounces that right:
voglio. Not in the bed. Must have slid down. He stooped and lifted the valance.
The book, fallen, sprawled against the bulge of the orangekeyed chamberpot.
—Show here, she said. I put a mark in it. There's a word I wanted to ask you.
She swallowed a draught of tea from her cup held by nothandle and, having
wiped her fingertips smartly on the blanket, began to search the text with the
hairpin till she reached the word.
—Met him what? he asked.
—Here, she said. What does that mean?
He leaned downward and read near her polished thumbnail.
—Metempsychosis?
—Yes. Who's he when he's at home?
—Metempsychosis, he said, frowning. It's Greek: from the Greek. That means
the transmigration of souls.
—O, rocks! she said. Tell us in plain words.
He smiled, glancing askance at her mocking eyes. The same young eyes. The
first night after the charades. Dolphin's Barn. He turned over the smudged pages.
Ruby: the Pride of the Ring. Hello. Illustration. Fierce Italian with carriagewhip.
Must be Ruby pride of the on the floor naked. Sheet kindly lent. The monster
Maffei desisted and flung his victim from him with an oath. Cruelty behind it all.
Doped animals. Trapeze at Hengler's. Had to look the other way. Mob gaping.
Break your neck and we'll break our sides. Families of them. Bone them young so
they metamspychosis. That we live after death. Our souls. That a man's soul after
he dies. Dignam's soul...
—Did you finish it? he asked.
—Yes, she said. There's nothing smutty in it. Is she in love with the first fellow
all the time?
—Never read it. Do you want another?
—Yes. Get another of Paul de Kock's. Nice name he has.
She poured more tea into her cup, watching it flow sideways.
Must get that Capel street library book renewed or they'll write to Kearney, my
guarantor. Reincarnation: that's the word.
 —Some people believe, he said, that we go on living in another body after
death, that we lived before. They call it reincarnation. That we all lived before on
the earth thousands of years ago or some other planet. They say we have forgotten
it. Some say they remember their past lives.
The sluggish cream wound curdling spirals through her tea. Bette remind her of
the word: metempsychosis. An example would be better. An example?
The Bath of the Nymph over the bed. Given away with the Easter number of
Photo Bits: Splendid masterpiece in art colours. Tea before you put milk in. Not
unlike her with her hair down: slimmer. Three and six I gave for the frame. She
said it would look nice over the bed. Naked nymphs: Greece: and for instance all
the people that lived then.
He turned the pages back.
—Metempsychosis, he said, is what the ancient Greeks called it. They used to
believe you could be changed into an animal or a tree, for instance. What they
called nymphs, for example.
Her spoon ceased to stir up the sugar. She gazed straight before her, inhaling
through her arched nostrils.
—There's a smell of burn, she said. Did you leave anything on the fire?
—The kidney! he cried suddenly.
He fitted the book roughly into his inner pocket and, stubbing his toes against
the broken commode, hurried out towards the smell, stepping hastily down the
stairs with a flurried stork's legs. Pungent smoke shot up in an angry jet from a
side of the pan. By prodding a prong of the fork under the kidney he detached it
and turned it turtle on its back. Only a little burnt. He tossed it off the pan on to
a plate and let the scanty brown gravy trickle over it.
Cup of tea now. He sat down, cut and buttered a slice of the loaf. He shore
away the burnt flesh and flung it to the cat. Then he put a forkful into his mouth,
chewing with discernment the toothsome pliant meat. Done to a turn. A mouthful
of tea. Then he cut away dies of bread, sopped one in the gravy and put it in his
mouth. What was that about some young student and a picnic? He creased out the
letter at his side, reading it slowly as he chewed, sopping another die of bread in
the gravy and raising it to his mouth.
Dearest Papli
Thanks ever so much for the lovely birthday present. It suits me splendid.
Everyone says I am quite the belle in my new tam. I got mummy's Iovely box of
creams and am writing. They are lovely. I am getting on swimming in the photo
business now. Mr Coghlan took one of me and Mrs. Will send when developed.
We did great biz yesterday. Fair day and all the beef to the heels were in. We are
going to lough Owel on Monday with a few friends to make a scrap picnic. Give
my love to mummy and to yourself a big kiss and thanks. I hear them at the piano
downstairs. There is to be a concert in the Greville Arms on Saturday. There is a
young student comes here some evenings named Bannon his cousins or something
are big swells and he sings Boylan's (I was on the pop of writing Blazes Boylan's)
song about those seaside girls. Tell him silly Milly sends my best respects. I must
now close with fondest love
Your fond daughter, MILLY.
P. S. Excuse bad writing am in hurry. Byby. M.
Fifteen yesterday. Curious, fifteenth of the month too. Her first birthday away
from home. Separation. Remember the summer morning she was born, running to
knock up Mrs Thornton in Denzille street. Jolly old woman. Lot of babies she
must have helped into the world. She knew from the first poor little Rudy
wouldn't live. Well, God is good, sir. She knew at once. He would be eleven now if
he had lived.
His vacant face stared pityingly at the postscript. Excuse bad writing. Hurry.
Piano downstairs. Coming out of her shell. Row with her in the XL Cafe about the
bracelet. Wouldn't eat her cakes or speak or look. Saucebox. He sopped other dies
of bread in the gravy and ate piece after piece of kidney. Twelve and six a week.
Not much. Still, she might do worse. Music hall stage. Young student. He drank a
draught of cooler tea to wash down his meal. Then he read the letter again: twice.
O, well: she knows how to mind herself. But if not? No, nothing has happened.
Of course it might. Wait in any case till it does. A wild piece of goods. Her slim
legs running up the staircase. Destiny. Ripening now.
Vain: very.
He smiled with troubled affection at the kitchen window. Day I caught her in
the street pinching her cheeks to make them red. Anemic a little. Was given milk
too long. On the ERIN'S KING that day round the Kish. Damned old tub pitching
about. Not a bit funky. Her pale blue scarf loose in the wind with her hair. All
dimpled cheeks and curls, Your head it simply swirls.
Seaside girls. Torn envelope. Hands stuck in his trousers' pockets, jarvey off for
the day, singing. Friend of the family. Swurls, he says. Pier with lamps, summer
evening, band,

Those girls, those girls,

Those lovely seaside girls.
Milly too. Young kisses: the first. Far away now past. Mrs Marion. Reading,
lying back now, counting the strands of her hair, smiling, braiding.
A soft qualm, regret, flowed down his backbone, increasing. Will happen, yes.
Prevent. Useless: can't move. Girl's sweet light lips. Will happen too. He felt the
flowing qualm spread over him. Useless to move now. Lips kissed, kissing, kissed.
Full gluey woman's lips.
 Better where she is down there: away. Occupy her. Wanted a dog to pass the
time. Might take a trip down there. August bank holiday, only two and six return.
Six weeks off, however. Might work a press pass. Or through M'Coy.
The cat, having cleaned all her fur, returned to the meatstained paper, nosed at
it and stalked to the door. She looked back at him, mewing. Wants to go out. Wait
before a door sometime it will open. Let her wait. Has the fidgets. Electric.
Thunder in the air. Was washing at her ear with her back to the fire too.
He felt heavy, full: then a gentle loosening of his bowels. He stood up, undoing
the waistband of his trousers. The cat mewed to him.
—Miaow! he said in answer. Wait till I'm ready.
Heaviness: hot day coming. Too much trouble to fag up the stairs to the
landing.
A paper. He liked to read at stool. Hope no ape comes knocking just as I'm.
In the tabledrawer he found an old number of Titbits. He folded it under his
armpit, went to the door and opened it. The cat went up in soft bounds. Ah,
wanted to go upstairs, curl up in a ball on the bed.
Listening, he heard her voice:
—Come, come, pussy. Come.
He went out through the backdoor into the garden: stood to listen towards the
next garden. No sound. Perhaps hanging clothes out to dry. The maid was in the
garden. Fine morning.
He bent down to regard a lean file of spearmint growing by the wall. Make a
summerhouse here. Scarlet runners. Virginia creepers. Want to manure the whole
place over, scabby soil. A coat of liver of sulphur. All soil like that without dung.
Household slops. Loam, what is this that is? The hens in the next garden: their
droppings are very good top dressing. Best of all though are the cattle, especially
when they are fed on those oilcakes. Mulch of dung. Best thing to clean ladies' kid
gloves. Dirty cleans. Ashes too. Reclaim the whole place. Grow peas in that corner
there. Lettuce. Always have fresh greens then. Still gardens have their drawbacks.
That bee or bluebottle here Whitmonday.
He walked on. Where is my hat, by the way? Must have put it back on the peg.
Or hanging up on the floor. Funny I don't remember that. Hallstand too full. Four
umbrellas, her raincloak. Picking up the letters. Drago's shopbell ringing. Queer I
was just thinking that moment. Brown brillantined hair over his collar. Just had a
wash and brushup. Wonder have I time for a bath this morning. Tara street. Chap
in the paybox there got away James Stephens, they say. O'Brien.
Deep voice that fellow Dlugacz has. Agendath what is it? Now, my miss.
Enthusiast.
 He kicked open the crazy door of the jakes. Better be careful not to get these
trousers dirty for the funeral. He went in, bowing his head under the low lintel.
Leaving the door ajar, amid the stench of mouldy limewash and stale cobwebs he
undid his braces. Before sitting down he peered through a chink up at the
nextdoor windows. The king was in his countinghouse. Nobody.
Asquat on the cuckstool he folded out his paper, turning its pages over on his
bared knees. Something new and easy. No great hurry. Keep it a bit. Our prize
titbit: Matcham's Masterstroke. Written by Mr Philip Beaufoy, Playgoers' Club,
London. Payment at the rate of one guinea a column has been made to the writer.
Three and a half. Three pounds three. Three pounds, thirteen and six.
Quietly he read, restraining himself, the first column and, yielding but resisting,
began the second. Midway, his last resistance yielding, he allowed his bowels to
ease themselves quietly as he read, reading still patiently that slight constipation
of yesterday quite gone. Hope it's not too big bring on piles again. No, just right.
So. Ah! Costive. One tabloid of cascara sagrada. Life might be so. It did not move
or touch him but it was something quick and neat. Print anything now. Silly
season. He read on, seated calm above his own rising smell. Neat certainly.
Matcham often thinks of the masterstroke by which he won the laughing witch who
now. Begins and ends morally. Hand in hand. Smart. He glanced back through
what he had read and, while feeling his water flow quietly, he envied kindly Mr
Beaufoy who had written it and received payment of three pounds, thirteen and
six.
Might manage a sketch. By Mr and Mrs L. M. Bloom. Invent a story for some
proverb. Which? Time I used to try jotting down on my cuff what she said
dressing. Dislike dressing together. Nicked myself shaving. Biting her nether lip,
hooking the placket of her skirt. Timing her. 9.l5. Did Roberts pay you yet? 9.20.
What had Gretta Conroy on? 9.23. What possessed me to buy this comb? 9.24.
I'm swelled after that cabbage. A speck of dust on the patent leather of her boot.
Rubbing smartly in turn each welt against her stockinged calf. Morning after the
bazaar dance when May's band played Ponchielli's dance of the hours. Explain
that: morning hours, noon, then evening coming on, then night hours. Washing
her teeth. That was the first night. Her head dancing. Her fansticks clicking. Is
that Boylan well off? He has money. Why? I noticed he had a good rich smell off
his breath dancing. No use humming then. Allude to it. Strange kind of music that
last night. The mirror was in shadow. She rubbed her handglass briskly on her
woollen vest against her full wagging bub. Peering into it. Lines in her eyes. It
wouldn't pan out somehow.
Evening hours, girls in grey gauze. Night hours then: black with daggers and
eyemasks. Poetical idea: pink, then golden, then grey, then black. Still, true to life
also. Day: then the night.
He tore away half the prize story sharply and wiped himself with it. Then he
girded up his trousers, braced and buttoned himself. He pulled back the jerky
shaky door of the jakes and came forth from the gloom into the air.
 In the bright light, lightened and cooled in limb, he eyed carefully his black
trousers: the ends, the knees, the houghs of the knees. What time is the funeral?
Better find out in the paper.
A creak and a dark whirr in the air high up. The bells of George's church. They
tolled the hour: loud dark iron.

Heigho! Heigho!
Heigho! Heigho!
Heigho! Heigho!
Quarter to. There again: the overtone following through the air, third.
Poor Dignam!
By lorries along sir John Rogerson's quay Mr Bloom walked soberly, past
Windmill lane, Leask's the linseed crusher, the postal telegraph office. Could have
given that address too. And past the sailors' home. He turned from the morning
noises of the quayside and walked through Lime street. By Brady's cottages a boy
for the skins lolled, his bucket of offal linked, smoking a chewed fagbutt. A
smaller girl with scars of eczema on her forehead eyed him, listlessly holding her
battered caskhoop. Tell him if he smokes he won't grow. O let him! His life isn't
such a bed of roses. Waiting outside pubs to bring da home. Come home to ma,
da. Slack hour: won't be many there. He crossed Townsend street, passed the
frowning face of Bethel. El, yes: house of: Aleph, Beth. And past Nichols' the
undertaker. At eleven it is. Time enough. Daresay Corny Kelleher bagged the job
for O'Neill's. Singing with his eyes shut. Corny. Met her once in the park. In the
dark. What a lark. Police tout. Her name and address she then told with my
tooraloom tooraloom tay. O, surely he bagged it. Bury him cheap in a
whatyoumaycall. With my tooraloom, tooraloom, tooraloom, tooraloom.
In Westland row he halted before the window of the Belfast and Oriental Tea
Company and read the legends of leadpapered packets: choice blend, finest
quality, family tea. Rather warm. Tea. Must get some from Tom Kernan. Couldn't
ask him at a funeral, though. While his eyes still read blandly he took off his hat
quietly inhaling his hairoil and sent his right hand with slow grace over his brow
and hair. Very warm morning. Under their dropped lids his eyes found the tiny
bow of the leather headband inside his high grade ha. Just there. His right hand
came down into the bowl of his hat. His fingers found quickly a card behind the
headband and transferred it to his waistcoat pocket.
So warm. His right hand once more more slowly went over his brow and hair.
Then he put on his hat again, relieved: and read again: choice blend, made of the
finest Ceylon brands. The far east. Lovely spot it must be: the garden of the
world, big lazy leaves to float about on, cactuses, flowery meads, snaky lianas
they call them. Wonder is it like that. Those Cinghalese lobbing about in the sun
in dolce far niente, not doing a hand's turn all day. Sleep six months out of twelve.
Too hot to quarrel. Influence of the climate. Lethargy. Flowers of idleness. The air
feeds most. Azotes. Hothouse in Botanic gardens. Sensitive plants. Waterlilies.
Petals too tired to. Sleeping sickness in the air. Walk on roseleaves. Imagine trying
to eat tripe and cowheel. Where was the chap I saw in that picture somewhere?
Ah yes, in the dead sea floating on his back, reading a book with a parasol open.
Couldn't sink if you tried: so thick with salt. Because the weight of the water, no,
the weight of the body in the water is equal to the weight of the what? Or is it the
volume is equal to the weight? It's a law something like that. Vance in High school
cracking his fingerjoints, teaching. The college curriculum. Cracking curriculum.
What is weight really when you say the weight? Thirtytwo feet per second per
second. Law of falling bodies: per second per second. They all fall to the ground.
The earth. It's the force of gravity of the earth is the weight.
He turned away and sauntered across the road. How did she walk with her
sausages? Like that something. As he walked he took the folded Freeman from his
sidepocket, unfolded it, rolled it lengthwise in a baton and tapped it at each
sauntering step against his trouserleg. Careless air: just drop in to see. Per second
per second. Per second for every second it means. From the curbstone he darted a
keen glance through the door of the postoffice. Too late box. Post here. No-one.
In.
He handed the card through the brass grill.
—Are there any letters for me? he asked.
While the postmistress searched a pigeonhole he gazed at the recruiting poster
with soldiers of all arms on parade: and held the tip of his baton against his
nostrils, smelling freshprinted rag paper. No answer probably. Went too far last
time.
The postmistress handed him back through the grill his card with a letter. He
thanked her and glanced rapidly at the typed envelope.
Henry Flower Esq, c/o P. O. Westland Row, City.
Answered anyhow. He slipped card and letter into his sidepocket, reviewing
again the soldiers on parade. Where's old Tweedy's regiment? Castoff soldier.
There: bearskin cap and hackle plume. No, he's a grenadier. Pointed cuffs. There
he is: royal Dublin fusiliers. Redcoats. Too showy. That must be why the women
go after them. Uniform. Easier to enlist and drill. Maud Gonne's letter about
taking them off O'Connell street at night: disgrace to our Irish capital. Griffith's
paper is on the same tack now: an army rotten with venereal disease: overseas or
halfseasover empire. Half baked they look: hypnotised like. Eyes front. Mark time.
Table: able. Bed: ed. The King's own. Never see him dressed up as a fireman or a
bobby. A mason, yes.
He strolled out of the postoffice and turned to the right. Talk: as if that would
mend matters. His hand went into his pocket and a forefinger felt its way under
the flap of the envelope, ripping it open in jerks. Women will pay a lot of heed, I
don't think. His fingers drew forth the letter the letter and crumpled the envelope
in his pocket. Something pinned on: photo perhaps. Hair? No.
 M'Coy. Get rid of him quickly. Take me out of my way. Hate company when
you.
—Hello, Bloom. Where are you off to?
—Hello, M'Coy. Nowhere in particular.
—How's the body?
—Fine. How are you?
—Just keeping alive, M'Coy said.
His eyes on the black tie and clothes he asked with low respect:
—Is there any... no trouble I hope? I see you're...
—O, no, Mr Bloom said. Poor Dignam, you know. The funeral is today.
—To be sure, poor fellow. So it is. What time?
A photo it isn't. A badge maybe.
—E... eleven, Mr Bloom answered.
—I must try to get out there, M'Coy said. Eleven, is it? I only heard it last night.
Who was telling me? Holohan. You know Hoppy?
—I know.
Mr Bloom gazed across the road at the outsider drawn up before the door of the
Grosvenor. The porter hoisted the valise up on the well. She stood still, waiting,
while the man, husband, brother, like her, searched his pockets for change.
Stylish kind of coat with that roll collar, warm for a day like this, looks like
blanketcloth. Careless stand of her with her hands in those patch pockets. Like
that haughty creature at the polo match. Women all for caste till you touch the
spot. Handsome is and handsome does. Reserved about to yield. The honourable
Mrs and Brutus is an honourable man. Possess her once take the starch out of her.
—I was with Bob Doran, he's on one of his periodical bends, and what do you
call him Bantam Lyons. Just down there in Conway's we were.
Doran Lyons in Conway's. She raised a gloved hand to her hair. In came Hoppy.
Having a wet. Drawing back his head and gazing far from beneath his vailed
eyelids he saw the bright fawn skin shine in the glare, the braided drums. Clearly
I can see today. Moisture about gives long sight perhaps. Talking of one thing or
another. Lady's hand. Which side will she get up?
—And he said: Sad thing about our poor friend Paddy! What Paddy? I said. Poor
little Paddy Dignam, he said.
Off to the country: Broadstone probably. High brown boots with laces dangling.
Wellturned foot. What is he foostering over that change for? Sees me looking. Eye
out for other fellow always. Good fallback. Two strings to her bow.
 —Why? I said. What's wrong with him? I said.
Proud: rich: silk stockings.
—Yes, Mr Bloom said.
He moved a little to the side of M'Coy's talking head. Getting up in a minute.
—What's wrong with him? He said. He's dead, he said. And, faith, he filled up.
Is it Paddy Dignam? I said. I couldn't believe it when I heard it. I was with him no
later than Friday last or Thursday was it in the Arch. Yes, he said. He's gone. He
died on Monday, poor fellow. Watch! Watch! Silk flash rich stockings white. Watch!
A heavy tramcar honking its gong slewed between.
Lost it. Curse your noisy pugnose. Feels locked out of it. Paradise and the peri.
Always happening like that. The very moment. Girl in Eustace street hallway
Monday was it settling her garter. Her friend covering the display of esprit de
corps. Well, what are you gaping at?
—Yes, yes, Mr Bloom said after a dull sigh. Another gone.
—One of the best, M'Coy said.
The tram passed. They drove off towards the Loop Line bridge, her rich gloved
hand on the steel grip. Flicker, flicker: the laceflare of her hat in the sun: flicker,
flick.
—Wife well, I suppose? M'Coy's changed voice said.
—O, yes, Mr Bloom said. Tiptop, thanks.
He unrolled the newspaper baton idly and read idly:
What is home without Plumtree's Potted Meat? Incomplete With it an abode of
bliss.
—My missus has just got an engagement. At least it's not settled yet.
Valise tack again. By the way no harm. I'm off that, thanks.
Mr Bloom turned his largelidded eyes with unhasty friendliness.
—My wife too, he said. She's going to sing at a swagger affair in the Ulster Hall,
Belfast, on the twenty-fifth.
—That so? M'Coy said. Glad to hear that, old man. Who's getting it up?
Mrs Marion Bloom. Not up yet. Queen was in her bedroom eating bread and.
No book. Blackened court cards laid along her thigh by sevens. Dark lady and fair
man. Letter. Cat furry black ball. Torn strip of envelope.

Love's
Old
 Sweet
Song
Comes lo-ove's old...
—It's a kind of a tour, don't you see, Mr Bloom said thoughtfully. Sweeeet song.
There's a committee formed. Part shares and part profits.
M'Coy nodded, picking at his moustache stubble.
—O, well, he said. That's good news.
He moved to go.
—Well, glad to see you looking fit, he said. Meet you knocking around.
—Yes, Mr Bloom said.
—Tell you what, M'Coy said. You might put down my name at the funeral, will
you? I'd like to go but I mightn't be able, you see. There's a drowning case at
Sandycove may turn up and then the coroner and myself would have to go down if
the body is found. You just shove in my name if I'm not there, will you?
—I'll do that, Mr Bloom said, moving to get off. That'll be all right.
—Right, M'Coy said brightly. Thanks, old man. I'd go if I possibly could. Well,
tolloll. Just C. P. M'Coy will do.
—That will be done, Mr Bloom answered firmly.
Didn't catch me napping that wheeze. The quick touch. Soft mark. I'd like my
job. Valise I have a particular fancy for. Leather. Capped corners, rivetted edges,
double action lever lock. Bob Cowley lent him his for the Wicklow regatta concert
last year and never heard tidings of it from that good day to this.
Mr Bloom, strolling towards Brunswick street, smiled. My missus has just got
an. Reedy freckled soprano. Cheeseparing nose. Nice enough in its way: for a little
ballad. No guts in it. You and me, don't you know: in the same boat. Softsoaping.
Give you the needle that would. Can't he hear the difference? Think he's that way
inclined a bit. Against my grain somehow. Thought that Belfast would fetch him. I
hope that smallpox up there doesn't get worse. Suppose she wouldn't let herself be
vaccinated again. Your wife and my wife.
Wonder is he pimping after me?
Mr Bloom stood at the corner, his eyes wandering over the multicoloured
hoardings. Cantrell and Cochrane's Ginger Ale (Aromatic). Clery's Summer Sale.
No, he's going on straight. Hello. Leah tonight. Mrs Bandmann Palmer. Like to see
her again in that. Hamlet she played last night. Male impersonator. Perhaps he
was a woman. Why Ophelia committed suicide. Poor papa! How he used to talk of
Kate Bateman in that. Outside the Adelphi in London waited all the afternoon to
get in. Year before I was born that was: sixtyfive. And Ristori in Vienna. What is
this the right name is? By Mosenthal it is. Rachel, is it? No. The scene he was
always talking about where the old blind Abraham recognises the voice and puts
his fingers on his face.
Nathan's voice! His son's voice! I hear the voice of Nathan who left his father to
die of grief and misery in my arms, who left the house of his father and left the
God of his father.
Every word is so deep, Leopold.
Poor papa! Poor man! I'm glad I didn't go into the room to look at his face. That
day! O, dear! O, dear! Ffoo! Well, perhaps it was best for him.
Mr Bloom went round the corner and passed the drooping nags of the hazard.
No use thinking of it any more. Nosebag time. Wish I hadn't met that M'Coy
fellow.
He came nearer and heard a crunching of gilded oats, the gently champing
teeth. Their full buck eyes regarded him as he went by, amid the sweet oaten reek
of horsepiss. Their Eldorado. Poor jugginses! Damn all they know or care about
anything with their long noses stuck in nosebags. Too full for words. Still they get
their feed all right and their doss. Gelded too: a stump of black guttapercha
wagging limp between their haunches. Might be happy all the same that way.
Good poor brutes they look. Still their neigh can be very irritating.
He drew the letter from his pocket and folded it into the newspaper he carried.
Might just walk into her here. The lane is safer.
He passed the cabman's shelter. Curious the life of drifting cabbies. All
weathers, all places, time or setdown, no will of their own. Voglio e non. Like to
give them an odd cigarette. Sociable. Shout a few flying syllables as they pass. He
hummed:

La ci darem la mano
La la lala la la.
He turned into Cumberland street and, going on some paces, halted in the lee of
the station wall. No-one. Meade's timberyard. Piled balks. Ruins and tenements.
With careful tread he passed over a hopscotch court with its forgotten
pickeystone. Not a sinner. Near the timberyard a squatted child at marbles, alone,
shooting the taw with a cunnythumb. A wise tabby, a blinking sphinx, watched
from her warm sill. Pity to disturb them. Mohammed cut a piece out of his mantle
not to wake her. Open it. And once I played marbles when I went to that old
dame's school. She liked mignonette. Mrs Ellis's. And Mr? He opened the letter
within the newspaper.
A flower. I think it's a. A yellow flower with flattened petals. Not annoyed then?
What does she say?
Dear Henry
 I got your last letter to me and thank you very much for it. I am sorry you did
not like my last letter. Why did you enclose the stamps? I am awfully angry with
you. I do wish I could punish you for that. I called you naughty boy because I do
not like that other world. Please tell me what is the real meaning of that word?
Are you not happy in your home you poor little naughty boy? I do wish I could do
something for you. Please tell me what you think of poor me. I often think of the
beautiful name you have. Dear Henry, when will we meet? I think of you so often
you have no idea. I have never felt myself so much drawn to a man as you. I feel
so bad about. Please write me a long letter and tell me more. Remember if you do
not I will punish you. So now you know what I will do to you, you naughty boy, if
you do not wrote. O how I long to meet you. Henry dear, do not deny my request
before my patience are exhausted. Then I will tell you all. Goodbye now, naughty
darling, I have such a bad headache. today. and write by return to your longing
Martha
P. S. Do tell me what kind of perfume does your wife use. I want to know.
He tore the flower gravely from its pinhold smelt its almost no smell and placed
it in his heart pocket. Language of flowers. They like it because no-one can hear.
Or a poison bouquet to strike him down. Then walking slowly forward he read the
letter again, murmuring here and there a word. Angry tulips with you darling
manflower punish your cactus if you don't please poor forgetmenot how I long
violets to dear roses when we soon anemone meet all naughty nightstalk wife
Martha's perfume. Having read it all he took it from the newspaper and put it
back in his sidepocket.
Weak joy opened his lips. Changed since the first letter. Wonder did she wrote it
herself. Doing the indignant: a girl of good family like me, respectable character.
Could meet one Sunday after the rosary. Thank you: not having any. Usual love
scrimmage. Then running round corners. Bad as a row with Molly. Cigar has a
cooling effect. Narcotic. Go further next time. Naughty boy: punish: afraid of
words, of course. Brutal, why not? Try it anyhow. A bit at a time.
Fingering still the letter in his pocket he drew the pin out of it. Common pin,
eh? He threw it on the road. Out of her clothes somewhere: pinned together.
Queer the number of pins they always have. No roses without thorns.
Flat Dublin voices bawled in his head. Those two sluts that night in the
Coombe, linked together in the rain.

O, Mary lost the pin of her drawers.

She didn't know what to do
To keep it up
To keep it up.
It? Them. Such a bad headache. Has her roses probably. Or sitting all day
typing. Eyefocus bad for stomach nerves. What perfume does your wife use. Now
could you make out a thing like that?
 To keep it up.
Martha, Mary. I saw that picture somewhere I forget now old master or faked
for money. He is sitting in their house, talking. Mysterious. Also the two sluts in
the Coombe would listen.

To keep it up.
Nice kind of evening feeling. No more wandering about. Just loll there: quiet
dusk: let everything rip. Forget. Tell about places you have been, strange customs.
The other one, jar on her head, was getting the supper: fruit, olives, lovely cool
water out of a well, stonecold like the hole in the wall at Ashtown. Must carry a
paper goblet next time I go to the trottingmatches. She listens with big dark soft
eyes. Tell her: more and more: all. Then a sigh: silence. Long long long rest.
Going under the railway arch he took out the envelope, tore it swiftly in shreds
and scattered them towards the road. The shreds fluttered away, sank in the dank
air: a white flutter, then all sank.
Henry Flower. You could tear up a cheque for a hundred pounds in the same
way. Simple bit of paper. Lord Iveagh once cashed a sevenfigure cheque for a
million in the bank of Ireland. Shows you the money to be made out of porter.
Still the other brother lord Ardilaun has to change his shirt four times a day, they
say. Skin breeds lice or vermin. A million pounds, wait a moment. Twopence a
pint, fourpence a quart, eightpence a gallon of porter, no, one and fourpence a
gallon of porter. One and four into twenty: fifteen about. Yes, exactly. Fifteen
millions of barrels of porter.
What am I saying barrels? Gallons. About a million barrels all the same.
An incoming train clanked heavily above his head, coach after coach. Barrels
bumped in his head: dull porter slopped and churned inside. The bungholes
sprang open and a huge dull flood leaked out, flowing together, winding through
mudflats all over the level land, a lazy pooling swirl of liquor bearing along
wideleaved flowers of its froth.
He had reached the open backdoor of All Hallows. Stepping into the porch he
doffed his hat, took the card from his pocket and tucked it again behind the
leather headband. Damn it. I might have tried to work M'Coy for a pass to
Mullingar.
Same notice on the door. Sermon by the very reverend John Conmee S.J. on
saint Peter Claver S.J. and the African Mission. Prayers for the conversion of
Gladstone they had too when he was almost unconscious. The protestants are the
same. Convert Dr William J. Walsh D.D. to the true religion. Save China's millions.
Wonder how they explain it to the heathen Chinee. Prefer an ounce of opium.
Celestials. Rank heresy for them. Buddha their god lying on his side in the
museum. Taking it easy with hand under his cheek. Josssticks burning. Not like
Ecce Homo. Crown of thorns and cross. Clever idea Saint Patrick the shamrock.
Chopsticks? Conmee: Martin Cunningham knows him: distinguishedlooking. Sorry
I didn't work him about getting Molly into the choir instead of that Father Farley
who looked a fool but wasn't. They're taught that. He's not going out in bluey
specs with the sweat rolling off him to baptise blacks, is he? The glasses would
take their fancy, flashing. Like to see them sitting round in a ring with blub lips,
entranced, listening. Still life. Lap it up like milk, I suppose.
The cold smell of sacred stone called him. He trod the worn steps, pushed the
swingdoor and entered softly by the rere.
Something going on: some sodality. Pity so empty. Nice discreet place to be next
some girl. Who is my neighbour? Jammed by the hour to slow music. That woman
at midnight mass. Seventh heaven. Women knelt in the benches with crimson
halters round their necks, heads bowed. A batch knelt at the altarrails. The priest
went along by them, murmuring, holding the thing in his hands. He stopped at
each, took out a communion, shook a drop or two (are they in water?) off it and
put it neatly into her mouth. Her hat and head sank. Then the next one. Her hat
sank at once. Then the next one: a small old woman. The priest bent down to put
it into her mouth, murmuring all the time. Latin. The next one. Shut your eyes
and open your mouth. What? Corpus: body. Corpse. Good idea the Latin.
Stupefies them first. Hospice for the dying. They don't seem to chew it: only
swallow it down. Rum idea: eating bits of a corpse. Why the cannibals cotton to it.
He stood aside watching their blind masks pass down the aisle, one by one, and
seek their places. He approached a bench and seated himself in its corner, nursing
his hat and newspaper. These pots we have to wear. We ought to have hats
modelled on our heads. They were about him here and there, with heads still
bowed in their crimson halters, waiting for it to melt in their stomachs. Something
like those mazzoth: it's that sort of bread: unleavened shewbread. Look at them.
Now I bet it makes them feel happy. Lollipop. It does. Yes, bread of angels it's
called. There's a big idea behind it, kind of kingdom of God is within you feel.
First communicants. Hokypoky penny a lump. Then feel all like one family party,
same in the theatre, all in the same swim. They do. I'm sure of that. Not so lonely.
In our confraternity. Then come out a bit spreeish. Let off steam. Thing is if you
really believe in it. Lourdes cure, waters of oblivion, and the Knock apparition,
statues bleeding. Old fellow asleep near that confessionbox. Hence those snores.
Blind faith. Safe in the arms of kingdom come. Lulls all pain. Wake this time next
year.
He saw the priest stow the communion cup away, well in, and kneel an instant
before it, showing a large grey bootsole from under the lace affair he had on.
Suppose he lost the pin of his. He wouldn't know what to do to. Bald spot behind.
Letters on his back: I.N.R.I? No: I.H.S. Molly told me one time I asked her. I have
sinned: or no: I have suffered, it is. And the other one? Iron nails ran in.
Meet one Sunday after the rosary. Do not deny my request. Turn up with a veil
and black bag. Dusk and the light behind her. She might be here with a ribbon
round her neck and do the other thing all the same on the sly. Their character.
That fellow that turned queen's evidence on the invincibles he used to receive the,
Carey was his name, the communion every morning. This very church. Peter
Carey, yes. No, Peter Claver I am thinking of. Denis Carey. And just imagine that.
Wife and six children at home. And plotting that murder all the time. Those
crawthumpers, now that's a good name for them, there's always something
shiftylooking about them. They're not straight men of business either. O, no, she's
not here: the flower: no, no. By the way, did I tear up that envelope? Yes: under
the bridge.
The priest was rinsing out the chalice: then he tossed off the dregs smartly.
Wine. Makes it more aristocratic than for example if he drank what they are used
to Guinness's porter or some temperance beverage Wheatley's Dublin hop bitters
or Cantrell and Cochrane's ginger ale (aromatic). Doesn't give them any of it: shew
wine: only the other. Cold comfort. Pious fraud but quite right: otherwise they'd
have one old booser worse than another coming along, cadging for a drink. Queer
the whole atmosphere of the. Quite right. Perfectly right that is.
Mr Bloom looked back towards the choir. Not going to be any music. Pity. Who
has the organ here I wonder? Old Glynn he knew how to make that instrument
talk, the vibrato: fifty pounds a year they say he had in Gardiner street. Molly was
in fine voice that day, the Stabat Mater of Rossini. Father Bernard Vaughan's
sermon first. Christ or Pilate? Christ, but don't keep us all night over it. Music
they wanted. Footdrill stopped. Could hear a pin drop. I told her to pitch her
voice against that corner. I could feel the thrill in the air, the full, the people
looking up:
Quis est homo.
Some of that old sacred music splendid. Mercadante: seven last words. Mozart's
twelfth mass: Gloria in that. Those old popes keen on music, on art and statues
and pictures of all kinds. Palestrina for example too. They had a gay old time
while it lasted. Healthy too, chanting, regular hours, then brew liqueurs.
Benedictine. Green Chartreuse. Still, having eunuchs in their choir that was
coming it a bit thick. What kind of voice is it? Must be curious to hear after their
own strong basses. Connoisseurs. Suppose they wouldn't feel anything after. Kind
of a placid. No worry. Fall into flesh, don't they? Gluttons, tall, long legs. Who
knows? Eunuch. One way out of it.
He saw the priest bend down and kiss the altar and then face about and bless
all the people. All crossed themselves and stood up. Mr Bloom glanced about him
and then stood up, looking over the risen hats. Stand up at the gospel of course.
Then all settled down on their knees again and he sat back quietly in his bench.
The priest came down from the altar, holding the thing out from him, and he and
the massboy answered each other in Latin. Then the priest knelt down and began
to read off a card:
—O God, our refuge and our strength...
Mr Bloom put his face forward to catch the words. English. Throw them the
bone. I remember slightly. How long since your last mass? Glorious and
immaculate virgin. Joseph, her spouse. Peter and Paul. More interesting if you
understood what it was all about. Wonderful organisation certainly, goes like
clockwork. Confession. Everyone wants to. Then I will tell you all. Penance.
Punish me, please. Great weapon in their hands. More than doctor or solicitor.
Woman dying to. And I schschschschschsch. And did you chachachachacha? And
why did you? Look down at her ring to find an excuse. Whispering gallery walls
have ears. Husband learn to his surprise. God's little joke. Then out she comes.
Repentance skindeep. Lovely shame. Pray at an altar. Hail Mary and Holy Mary.
Flowers, incense, candles melting. Hide her blushes. Salvation army blatant
imitation. Reformed prostitute will address the meeting. How I found the Lord.
Squareheaded chaps those must be in Rome: they work the whole show. And don't
they rake in the money too? Bequests also: to the P.P. for the time being in his
absolute discretion. Masses for the repose of my soul to be said publicly with open
doors. Monasteries and convents. The priest in that Fermanagh will case in the
witnessbox. No browbeating him. He had his answer pat for everything. Liberty
and exaltation of our holy mother the church. The doctors of the church: they
mapped out the whole theology of it.
The priest prayed:
—Blessed Michael, archangel, defend us in the hour of conflict. Be our
safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil (may God restrain him,
we humbly pray!): and do thou, O prince of the heavenly host, by the power of
God thrust Satan down to hell and with him those other wicked spirits who
wander through the world for the ruin of souls.
The priest and the massboy stood up and walked off. All over. The women
remained behind: thanksgiving.
Better be shoving along. Brother Buzz. Come around with the plate perhaps. Pay
your Easter duty.
He stood up. Hello. Were those two buttons of my waistcoat open all the time?
Women enjoy it. Never tell you. But we. Excuse, miss, there's a (whh!) just a
(whh!) fluff. Or their skirt behind, placket unhooked. Glimpses of the moon.
Annoyed if you don't. Why didn't you tell me before. Still like you better untidy.
Good job it wasn't farther south. He passed, discreetly buttoning, down the aisle
and out through the main door into the light. He stood a moment unseeing by the
cold black marble bowl while before him and behind two worshippers dipped
furtive hands in the low tide of holy water. Trams: a car of Prescott's dyeworks: a
widow in her weeds. Notice because I'm in mourning myself. He covered himself.
How goes the time? Quarter past. Time enough yet. Better get that lotion made
up. Where is this? Ah yes, the last time. Sweny's in Lincoln place. Chemists rarely
move. Their green and gold beaconjars too heavy to stir. Hamilton Long's, founded
in the year of the flood. Huguenot churchyard near there. Visit some day.
He walked southward along Westland row. But the recipe is in the other
trousers. O, and I forgot that latchkey too. Bore this funeral affair. O well, poor
fellow, it's not his fault. When was it I got it made up last? Wait. I changed a
sovereign I remember. First of the month it must have been or the second. O, he
can look it up in the prescriptions book.
The chemist turned back page after page. Sandy shrivelled smell he seems to
have. Shrunken skull. And old. Quest for the philosopher's stone. The alchemists.
Drugs age you after mental excitement. Lethargy then. Why? Reaction. A lifetime
in a night. Gradually changes your character. Living all the day among herbs,
ointments, disinfectants. All his alabaster lilypots. Mortar and pestle. Aq. Dist.
Fol. Laur. Te Virid. Smell almost cure you like the dentist's doorbell. Doctor
Whack. He ought to physic himself a bit. Electuary or emulsion. The first fellow
that picked an herb to cure himself had a bit of pluck. Simples. Want to be
careful. Enough stuff here to chloroform you. Test: turns blue litmus paper red.
Chloroform. Overdose of laudanum. Sleeping draughts. Lovephiltres. Paragoric
poppysyrup bad for cough. Clogs the pores or the phlegm. Poisons the only cures.
Remedy where you least expect it. Clever of nature.
—About a fortnight ago, sir?
—Yes, Mr Bloom said.
He waited by the counter, inhaling slowly the keen reek of drugs, the dusty dry
smell of sponges and loofahs. Lot of time taken up telling your aches and pains.
—Sweet almond oil and tincture of benzoin, Mr Bloom said, and then
orangeflower water...
It certainly did make her skin so delicate white like wax.
—And white wax also, he said.
Brings out the darkness of her eyes. Looking at me, the sheet up to her eyes,
Spanish, smelling herself, when I was fixing the links in my cuffs. Those homely
recipes are often the best: strawberries for the teeth: nettles and rainwater:
oatmeal they say steeped in buttermilk. Skinfood. One of the old queen's sons,
duke of Albany was it? had only one skin. Leopold, yes. Three we have. Warts,
bunions and pimples to make it worse. But you want a perfume too. What
perfume does your? Peau d'Espagne. That orangeflower water is so fresh. Nice
smell these soaps have. Pure curd soap. Time to get a bath round the corner.
Hammam. Turkish. Massage. Dirt gets rolled up in your navel. Nicer if a nice girl
did it. Also I think I. Yes I. Do it in the bath. Curious longing I. Water to water.
Combine business with pleasure. Pity no time for massage. Feel fresh then all the
day. Funeral be rather glum.
—Yes, sir, the chemist said. That was two and nine. Have you brought a bottle?
—No, Mr Bloom said. Make it up, please. I'll call later in the day and I'll take
one of these soaps. How much are they?
—Fourpence, sir.
Mr Bloom raised a cake to his nostrils. Sweet lemony wax.
 —I'll take this one, he said. That makes three and a penny.
—Yes, sir, the chemist said. You can pay all together, sir, when you come back.
—Good, Mr Bloom said.
He strolled out of the shop, the newspaper baton under his armpit, the
coolwrappered soap in his left hand.
At his armpit Bantam Lyons' voice and hand said:
—Hello, Bloom. What's the best news? Is that today's? Show us a minute.
Shaved off his moustache again, by Jove! Long cold upper lip. To look younger.
He does look balmy. Younger than I am.
Bantam Lyons's yellow blacknailed fingers unrolled the baton. Wants a wash
too. Take off the rough dirt. Good morning, have you used Pears' soap? Dandruff
on his shoulders. Scalp wants oiling.
—I want to see about that French horse that's running today, Bantam Lyons
said. Where the bugger is it?
He rustled the pleated pages, jerking his chin on his high collar. Barber's itch.
Tight collar he'll lose his hair. Better leave him the paper and get shut of him.
—You can keep it, Mr Bloom said.
—Ascot. Gold cup. Wait, Bantam Lyons muttered. Half a mo. Maximum the
second.
—I was just going to throw it away, Mr Bloom said.
Bantam Lyons raised his eyes suddenly and leered weakly.
—What's that? his sharp voice said.
—I say you can keep it, Mr Bloom answered. I was going to throw it away that
moment.
Bantam Lyons doubted an instant, leering: then thrust the outspread sheets
back on Mr Bloom's arms.
—I'll risk it, he said. Here, thanks.
He sped off towards Conway's corner. God speed scut.
Mr Bloom folded the sheets again to a neat square and lodged the soap in it,
smiling. Silly lips of that chap. Betting. Regular hotbed of it lately. Messenger
boys stealing to put on sixpence. Raffle for large tender turkey. Your Christmas
dinner for threepence. Jack Fleming embezzling to gamble then smuggled off to
America. Keeps a hotel now. They never come back. Fleshpots of Egypt.
He walked cheerfully towards the mosque of the baths. Remind you of a
mosque, redbaked bricks, the minarets. College sports today I see. He eyed the
horseshoe poster over the gate of college park: cyclist doubled up like a cod in a
pot. Damn bad ad. Now if they had made it round like a wheel. Then the spokes:
sports, sports, sports: and the hub big: college. Something to catch the eye.
There's Hornblower standing at the porter's lodge. Keep him on hands: might
take a turn in there on the nod. How do you do, Mr Hornblower? How do you do,
sir?
Heavenly weather really. If life was always like that. Cricket weather. Sit
around under sunshades. Over after over. Out. They can't play it here. Duck for
six wickets. Still Captain Culler broke a window in the Kildare street club with a
slog to square leg. Donnybrook fair more in their line. And the skulls we were
acracking when M'Carthy took the floor. Heatwave. Won't last. Always passing,
the stream of life, which in the stream of life we trace is dearer than them all.
Enjoy a bath now: clean trough of water, cool enamel, the gentle tepid stream.
This is my body.
He foresaw his pale body reclined in it at full, naked, in a womb of warmth,
oiled by scented melting soap, softly laved. He saw his trunk and limbs riprippled
over and sustained, buoyed lightly upward, lemonyellow: his navel, bud of flesh:
and saw the dark tangled curls of his bush floating, floating hair of the stream
around the limp father of thousands, a languid floating flower.
Martin Cunningham, first, poked his silkhatted head into the creaking carriage
and, entering deftly, seated himself. Mr Power stepped in after him, curving his
height with care.
—Come on, Simon.
—After you, Mr Bloom said.
Mr Dedalus covered himself quickly and got in, saying:
Yes, yes.
—Are we all here now? Martin Cunningham asked. Come along, Bloom.
Mr Bloom entered and sat in the vacant place. He pulled the door to after him
and slammed it twice till it shut tight. He passed an arm through the armstrap and
looked seriously from the open carriagewindow at the lowered blinds of the
avenue. One dragged aside: an old woman peeping. Nose whiteflattened against
the pane. Thanking her stars she was passed over. Extraordinary the interest they
take in a corpse. Glad to see us go we give them such trouble coming. Job seems
to suit them. Huggermugger in corners. Slop about in slipperslappers for fear he'd
wake. Then getting it ready. Laying it out. Molly and Mrs Fleming making the
bed. Pull it more to your side. Our windingsheet. Never know who will touch you
dead. Wash and shampoo. I believe they clip the nails and the hair. Keep a bit in
an envelope. Grows all the same after. Unclean job.
 All waited. Nothing was said. Stowing in the wreaths probably. I am sitting on
something hard. Ah, that soap: in my hip pocket. Better shift it out of that. Wait
for an opportunity.
All waited. Then wheels were heard from in front, turning: then nearer: then
horses' hoofs. A jolt. Their carriage began to move, creaking and swaying. Other
hoofs and creaking wheels started behind. The blinds of the avenue passed and
number nine with its craped knocker, door ajar. At walking pace.
They waited still, their knees jogging, till they had turned and were passing
along the tramtracks. Tritonville road. Quicker. The wheels rattled rolling over the
cobbled causeway and the crazy glasses shook rattling in the doorframes.
—What way is he taking us? Mr Power asked through both windows.
—Irishtown, Martin Cunningham said. Ringsend. Brunswick street.
Mr Dedalus nodded, looking out.
—That's a fine old custom, he said. I am glad to see it has not died out.
All watched awhile through their windows caps and hats lifted by passers.
Respect. The carriage swerved from the tramtrack to the smoother road past
Watery lane. Mr Bloom at gaze saw a lithe young man, clad in mourning, a wide
hat.
—There's a friend of yours gone by, Dedalus, he said.
—Who is that?
—Your son and heir.
—Where is he? Mr Dedalus said, stretching over across.
The carriage, passing the open drains and mounds of rippedup roadway before
the tenement houses, lurched round the corner and, swerving back to the
tramtrack, rolled on noisily with chattering wheels. Mr Dedalus fell back, saying:
—Was that Mulligan cad with him? His fidus Achates!
—No, Mr Bloom said. He was alone.
—Down with his aunt Sally, I suppose, Mr Dedalus said, the Goulding faction,
the drunken little costdrawer and Crissie, papa's little lump of dung, the wise
child that knows her own father.
Mr Bloom smiled joylessly on Ringsend road. Wallace Bros: the bottleworks:
Dodder bridge.
Richie Goulding and the legal bag. Goulding, Collis and Ward he calls the firm.
His jokes are getting a bit damp. Great card he was. Waltzing in Stamer street
with Ignatius Gallaher on a Sunday morning, the landlady's two hats pinned on
his head. Out on the rampage all night. Beginning to tell on him now: that
backache of his, I fear. Wife ironing his back. Thinks he'll cure it with pills. All
breadcrumbs they are. About six hundred per cent profit.
—He's in with a lowdown crowd, Mr Dedalus snarled. That Mulligan is a
contaminated bloody doubledyed ruffian by all accounts. His name stinks all over
Dublin. But with the help of God and His blessed mother I'll make it my business
to write a letter one of those days to his mother or his aunt or whatever she is
that will open her eye as wide as a gate. I'll tickle his catastrophe, believe you me.
He cried above the clatter of the wheels:
—I won't have her bastard of a nephew ruin my son. A counterjumper's son.
Selling tapes in my cousin, Peter Paul M'Swiney's. Not likely.
He ceased. Mr Bloom glanced from his angry moustache to Mr Power's mild face
and Martin Cunningham's eyes and beard, gravely shaking. Noisy selfwilled man.
Full of his son. He is right. Something to hand on. If little Rudy had lived. See him
grow up. Hear his voice in the house. Walking beside Molly in an Eton suit. My
son. Me in his eyes. Strange feeling it would be. From me. Just a chance. Must
have been that morning in Raymond terrace she was at the window watching the
two dogs at it by the wall of the cease to do evil. And the sergeant grinning up.
She had that cream gown on with the rip she never stitched. Give us a touch,
Poldy. God, I'm dying for it. How life begins.
Got big then. Had to refuse the Greystones concert. My son inside her. I could
have helped him on in life. I could. Make him independent. Learn German too.
—Are we late? Mr Power asked.
—Ten minutes, Martin Cunningham said, looking at his watch.
Molly. Milly. Same thing watered down. Her tomboy oaths. O jumping Jupiter!
Ye gods and little fishes! Still, she's a dear girl. Soon be a woman. Mullingar.
Dearest Papli. Young student. Yes, yes: a woman too. Life, life.
The carriage heeled over and back, their four trunks swaying.
—Corny might have given us a more commodious yoke, Mr Power said.
—He might, Mr Dedalus said, if he hadn't that squint troubling him. Do you
follow me?
He closed his left eye. Martin Cunningham began to brush away crustcrumbs
from under his thighs.
—What is this, he said, in the name of God? Crumbs?
—Someone seems to have been making a picnic party here lately, Mr Power
said.
All raised their thighs and eyed with disfavour the mildewed buttonless leather
of the seats. Mr Dedalus, twisting his nose, frowned downward and said:
 —Unless I'm greatly mistaken. What do you think, Martin?
—It struck me too, Martin Cunningham said.
Mr Bloom set his thigh down. Glad I took that bath. Feel my feet quite clean.
But I wish Mrs Fleming had darned these socks better.
Mr Dedalus sighed resignedly.
—After all, he said, it's the most natural thing in the world.
—Did Tom Kernan turn up? Martin Cunningham asked, twirling the peak of his
beard gently.
—Yes, Mr Bloom answered. He's behind with Ned Lambert and Hynes.
—And Corny Kelleher himself? Mr Power asked.
—At the cemetery, Martin Cunningham said.
—I met M'Coy this morning, Mr Bloom said. He said he'd try to come.
The carriage halted short.
—What's wrong?
—We're stopped.
—Where are we?
Mr Bloom put his head out of the window.
—The grand canal, he said.
Gasworks. Whooping cough they say it cures. Good job Milly never got it. Poor
children! Doubles them up black and blue in convulsions. Shame really. Got off
lightly with illnesses compared. Only measles. Flaxseed tea. Scarlatina, influenza
epidemics. Canvassing for death. Don't miss this chance. Dogs' home over there.
Poor old Athos! Be good to Athos, Leopold, is my last wish. Thy will be done. We
obey them in the grave. A dying scrawl. He took it to heart, pined away. Quiet
brute. Old men's dogs usually are.
A raindrop spat on his hat. He drew back and saw an instant of shower spray
dots over the grey flags. Apart. Curious. Like through a colander. I thought it
would. My boots were creaking I remember now.
—The weather is changing, he said quietly.
—A pity it did not keep up fine, Martin Cunningham said.
—Wanted for the country, Mr Power said. There's the sun again coming out.
Mr Dedalus, peering through his glasses towards the veiled sun, hurled a mute
curse at the sky.
—It's as uncertain as a child's bottom, he said.
 —We're off again.
The carriage turned again its stiff wheels and their trunks swayed gently. Martin
Cunningham twirled more quickly the peak of his beard.
—Tom Kernan was immense last night, he said. And Paddy Leonard taking him
off to his face.
—O, draw him out, Martin, Mr Power said eagerly. Wait till you hear him,
Simon, on Ben Dollard's singing of The Croppy Boy.
—Immense, Martin Cunningham said pompously. His singing of that simple
ballad, Martin, is the most trenchant rendering I ever heard in the whole course of
my experience.
—Trenchant, Mr Power said laughing. He's dead nuts on that. And the
retrospective arrangement.
—Did you read Dan Dawson's speech? Martin Cunningham asked.
—I did not then, Mr Dedalus said. Where is it?
—In the paper this morning.
Mr Bloom took the paper from his inside pocket. That book I must change for
her.
—No, no, Mr Dedalus said quickly. Later on please.
Mr Bloom's glance travelled down the edge of the paper, scanning the deaths:
Callan, Coleman, Dignam, Fawcett, Lowry, Naumann, Peake, what Peake is that?
is it the chap was in Crosbie and Alleyne's? no, Sexton, Urbright. Inked characters
fast fading on the frayed breaking paper. Thanks to the Little Flower. Sadly
missed. To the inexpressible grief of his. Aged 88 after a long and tedious illness.
Month's mind: Quinlan. On whose soul Sweet Jesus have mercy.
It is now a month since dear Henry fled To his home up above in the sky While
his family weeps and mourns his loss Hoping some day to meet him on high.
I tore up the envelope? Yes. Where did I put her letter after I read it in the
bath? He patted his waistcoatpocket. There all right. Dear Henry fled. Before my
patience are exhausted.
National school. Meade's yard. The hazard. Only two there now. Nodding. Full
as a tick. Too much bone in their skulls. The other trotting round with a fare. An
hour ago I was passing there. The jarvies raised their hats.
A pointsman's back straightened itself upright suddenly against a tramway
standard by Mr Bloom's window. Couldn't they invent something automatic so
that the wheel itself much handier? Well but that fellow would lose his job then?
Well but then another fellow would get a job making the new invention?
 Antient concert rooms. Nothing on there. A man in a buff suit with a crape
armlet. Not much grief there. Quarter mourning. People in law perhaps.
They went past the bleak pulpit of saint Mark's, under the railway bridge, past
the Queen's theatre: in silence. Hoardings: Eugene Stratton, Mrs Bandmann
Palmer. Could I go to see LEAH tonight, I wonder. I said I. Or the Lily of
Killarney? Elster Grimes Opera Company. Big powerful change. Wet bright bills
for next week. Fun on the Bristol. Martin Cunningham could work a pass for the
Gaiety. Have to stand a drink or two. As broad as it's long.
He's coming in the afternoon. Her songs.
Plasto's. Sir Philip Crampton's memorial fountain bust. Who was he?
—How do you do? Martin Cunningham said, raising his palm to his brow in
salute.
—He doesn't see us, Mr Power said. Yes, he does. How do you do?
—Who? Mr Dedalus asked.
—Blazes Boylan, Mr Power said. There he is airing his quiff.
Just that moment I was thinking.
Mr Dedalus bent across to salute. From the door of the Red Bank the white disc
of a straw hat flashed reply: spruce figure: passed.
Mr Bloom reviewed the nails of his left hand, then those of his right hand. The
nails, yes. Is there anything more in him that they she sees? Fascination. Worst
man in Dublin. That keeps him alive. They sometimes feel what a person is.
Instinct. But a type like that. My nails. I am just looking at them: well pared. And
after: thinking alone. Body getting a bit softy. I would notice that: from
remembering. What causes that? I suppose the skin can't contract quickly enough
when the flesh falls off. But the shape is there. The shape is there still. Shoulders.
Hips. Plump. Night of the dance dressing. Shift stuck between the cheeks behind.
He clasped his hands between his knees and, satisfied, sent his vacant glance
over their faces.
Mr Power asked:
—How is the concert tour getting on, Bloom?
—O, very well, Mr Bloom said. I hear great accounts of it. It's a good idea, you
see...
—Are you going yourself?
—Well no, Mr Bloom said. In point of fact I have to go down to the county
Clare on some private business. You see the idea is to tour the chief towns. What
you lose on one you can make up on the other.
—Quite so, Martin Cunningham said. Mary Anderson is up there now.
 Have you good artists?
—Louis Werner is touring her, Mr Bloom said. O yes, we'll have all topnobbers.
J. C. Doyle and John MacCormack I hope and. The best, in fact.
—And Madame, Mr Power said smiling. Last but not least.
Mr Bloom unclasped his hands in a gesture of soft politeness and clasped them.
Smith O'Brien. Someone has laid a bunch of flowers there. Woman. Must be his
deathday. For many happy returns. The carriage wheeling by Farrell's statue
united noiselessly their unresisting knees.
Oot: a dullgarbed old man from the curbstone tendered his wares, his mouth
opening: oot.
—Four bootlaces for a penny.
Wonder why he was struck off the rolls. Had his office in Hume street. Same
house as Molly's namesake, Tweedy, crown solicitor for Waterford. Has that silk
hat ever since. Relics of old decency. Mourning too. Terrible comedown, poor
wretch! Kicked about like snuff at a wake. O'Callaghan on his last legs.
And Madame. Twenty past eleven. Up. Mrs Fleming is in to clean. Doing her
hair, humming. voglio e non vorrei. No. vorrei e non. Looking at the tips of her
hairs to see if they are split. Mi trema un poco il. Beautiful on that tre her voice is:
weeping tone. A thrush. A throstle. There is a word throstle that expresses that.
His eyes passed lightly over Mr Power's goodlooking face. Greyish over the ears.
Madame: smiling. I smiled back. A smile goes a long way. Only politeness
perhaps. Nice fellow. Who knows is that true about the woman he keeps? Not
pleasant for the wife. Yet they say, who was it told me, there is no carnal. You
would imagine that would get played out pretty quick. Yes, it was Crofton met
him one evening bringing her a pound of rumpsteak. What is this she was?
Barmaid in Jury's. Or the Moira, was it?
They passed under the hugecloaked Liberator's form.
Martin Cunningham nudged Mr Power.
—Of the tribe of Reuben, he said.
A tall blackbearded figure, bent on a stick, stumping round the corner of
Elvery's Elephant house, showed them a curved hand open on his spine.
—In all his pristine beauty, Mr Power said.
Mr Dedalus looked after the stumping figure and said mildly:
—The devil break the hasp of your back!
Mr Power, collapsing in laughter, shaded his face from the window as the
carriage passed Gray's statue.
—We have all been there, Martin Cunningham said broadly.
 His eyes met Mr Bloom's eyes. He caressed his beard, adding:
—Well, nearly all of us.
Mr Bloom began to speak with sudden eagerness to his companions' faces.
—That's an awfully good one that's going the rounds about Reuben J and the
son.
—About the boatman? Mr Power asked.
—Yes. Isn't it awfully good?
—What is that? Mr Dedalus asked. I didn't hear it.
—There was a girl in the case, Mr Bloom began, and he determined to send him
to the Isle of Man out of harm's way but when they were both ...
—What? Mr Dedalus asked. That confirmed bloody hobbledehoy is it?
—Yes, Mr Bloom said. They were both on the way to the boat and he tried to
drown...
—Drown Barabbas! Mr Dedalus cried. I wish to Christ he did!
Mr Power sent a long laugh down his shaded nostrils.
—No, Mr Bloom said, the son himself...
Martin Cunningham thwarted his speech rudely:
—Reuben and the son were piking it down the quay next the river on their way
to the Isle of Man boat and the young chiseller suddenly got loose and over the
wall with him into the Liffey.
—For God's sake! Mr Dedalus exclaimed in fright. Is he dead?
—Dead! Martin Cunningham cried. Not he! A boatman got a pole and fished
him out by the slack of the breeches and he was landed up to the father on the
quay more dead than alive. Half the town was there.
—Yes, Mr Bloom said. But the funny part is...
—And Reuben J, Martin Cunningham said, gave the boatman a florin for saving
his son's life.
A stifled sigh came from under Mr Power's hand.
—O, he did, Martin Cunningham affirmed. Like a hero. A silver florin.
—Isn't it awfully good? Mr Bloom said eagerly.
—One and eightpence too much, Mr Dedalus said drily.
Mr Power's choked laugh burst quietly in the carriage.
 Nelson's pillar.
—Eight plums a penny! Eight for a penny!
—We had better look a little serious, Martin Cunningham said.
Mr Dedalus sighed.
—Ah then indeed, he said, poor little Paddy wouldn't grudge us a laugh. Many a
good one he told himself.
—The Lord forgive me! Mr Power said, wiping his wet eyes with his fingers.
Poor Paddy! I little thought a week ago when I saw him last and he was in his
usual health that I'd be driving after him like this. He's gone from us.
—As decent a little man as ever wore a hat, Mr Dedalus said. He went very
suddenly.
—Breakdown, Martin Cunningham said. Heart.
He tapped his chest sadly.
Blazing face: redhot. Too much John Barleycorn. Cure for a red nose. Drink like
the devil till it turns adelite. A lot of money he spent colouring it.
Mr Power gazed at the passing houses with rueful apprehension.
—He had a sudden death, poor fellow, he said.
—The best death, Mr Bloom said.
Their wide open eyes looked at him.
—No suffering, he said. A moment and all is over. Like dying in sleep.
No-one spoke.
Dead side of the street this. Dull business by day, land agents, temperance
hotel, Falconer's railway guide, civil service college, Gill's, catholic club, the
industrious blind. Why? Some reason. Sun or wind. At night too. Chummies and
slaveys. Under the patronage of the late Father Mathew. Foundation stone for
Parnell. Breakdown. Heart.
White horses with white frontlet plumes came round the Rotunda corner,
galloping. A tiny coffin flashed by. In a hurry to bury. A mourning coach.
Unmarried. Black for the married. Piebald for bachelors. Dun for a nun.
—Sad, Martin Cunningham said. A child.
A dwarf's face, mauve and wrinkled like little Rudy's was. Dwarf's body, weak
as putty, in a whitelined deal box. Burial friendly society pays. Penny a week for a
sod of turf. Our. Little. Beggar. Baby. Meant nothing. Mistake of nature. If it's
healthy it's from the mother. If not from the man. Better luck next time.
—Poor little thing, Mr Dedalus said. It's well out of it.
 The carriage climbed more slowly the hill of Rutland square. Rattle his bones.
Over the stones. Only a pauper. Nobody owns.
—In the midst of life, Martin Cunningham said.
—But the worst of all, Mr Power said, is the man who takes his own life.
Martin Cunningham drew out his watch briskly, coughed and put it back.
—The greatest disgrace to have in the family, Mr Power added.
—Temporary insanity, of course, Martin Cunningham said decisively. We must
take a charitable view of it.
—They say a man who does it is a coward, Mr Dedalus said.
—It is not for us to judge, Martin Cunningham said.
Mr Bloom, about to speak, closed his lips again. Martin Cunningham's large
eyes. Looking away now. Sympathetic human man he is. Intelligent. Like
Shakespeare's face. Always a good word to say. They have no mercy on that here
or infanticide. Refuse christian burial. They used to drive a stake of wood through
his heart in the grave. As if it wasn't broken already. Yet sometimes they repent
too late. Found in the riverbed clutching rushes. He looked at me. And that awful
drunkard of a wife of his. Setting up house for her time after time and then
pawning the furniture on him every Saturday almost. Leading him the life of the
damned. Wear the heart out of a stone, that. Monday morning. Start afresh.
Shoulder to the wheel. Lord, she must have looked a sight that night Dedalus told
me he was in there. Drunk about the place and capering with Martin's umbrella.

And they call me the jewel of Asia,

Of Asia,
The Geisha.
He looked away from me. He knows. Rattle his bones.
That afternoon of the inquest. The redlabelled bottle on the table. The room in
the hotel with hunting pictures. Stuffy it was. Sunlight through the slats of the
Venetian blind. The coroner's sunlit ears, big and hairy. Boots giving evidence.
Thought he was asleep first. Then saw like yellow streaks on his face. Had slipped
down to the foot of the bed. Verdict: overdose. Death by misadventure. The letter.
For my son Leopold.
No more pain. Wake no more. Nobody owns.
The carriage rattled swiftly along Blessington street. Over the stones.
—We are going the pace, I think, Martin Cunningham said.
—God grant he doesn't upset us on the road, Mr Power said.
 —I hope not, Martin Cunningham said. That will be a great race tomorrow in
Germany. The Gordon Bennett.
—Yes, by Jove, Mr Dedalus said. That will be worth seeing, faith.
As they turned into Berkeley street a streetorgan near the Basin sent over and
after them a rollicking rattling song of the halls. Has anybody here seen Kelly?
Kay ee double ell wy. Dead March from Saul. He's as bad as old Antonio. He left
me on my ownio. Pirouette! The Mater Misericordiae. Eccles street. My house
down there. Big place. Ward for incurables there. Very encouraging. Our Lady's
Hospice for the dying. Deadhouse handy underneath. Where old Mrs Riordan
died. They look terrible the women. Her feeding cup and rubbing her mouth with
the spoon. Then the screen round her bed for her to die. Nice young student that
was dressed that bite the bee gave me. He's gone over to the lying-in hospital they
told me. From one extreme to the other. The carriage galloped round a corner:
stopped.
—What's wrong now?
A divided drove of branded cattle passed the windows, lowing, slouching by on
padded hoofs, whisking their tails slowly on their clotted bony croups. Outside
them and through them ran raddled sheep bleating their fear.
—Emigrants, Mr Power said.
—Huuuh! the drover's voice cried, his switch sounding on their flanks.
Huuuh! out of that!
Thursday, of course. Tomorrow is killing day. Springers. Cuffe sold them about
twentyseven quid each. For Liverpool probably. Roastbeef for old England. They
buy up all the juicy ones. And then the fifth quarter lost: all that raw stuff, hide,
hair, horns. Comes to a big thing in a year. Dead meat trade. Byproducts of the
slaughterhouses for tanneries, soap, margarine. Wonder if that dodge works now
getting dicky meat off the train at Clonsilla.
The carriage moved on through the drove.
—I can't make out why the corporation doesn't run a tramline from the parkgate
to the quays, Mr Bloom said. All those animals could be taken in trucks down to
the boats.
—Instead of blocking up the thoroughfare, Martin Cunningham said. Quite
right. They ought to.
—Yes, Mr Bloom said, and another thing I often thought, is to have municipal
funeral trams like they have in Milan, you know. Run the line out to the cemetery
gates and have special trams, hearse and carriage and all. Don't you see what I
mean?
—O, that be damned for a story, Mr Dedalus said. Pullman car and saloon
diningroom.
 —A poor lookout for Corny, Mr Power added.
—Why? Mr Bloom asked, turning to Mr Dedalus. Wouldn't it be more decent
than galloping two abreast?
—Well, there's something in that, Mr Dedalus granted.
—And, Martin Cunningham said, we wouldn't have scenes like that when the
hearse capsized round Dunphy's and upset the coffin on to the road.
—That was terrible, Mr Power's shocked face said, and the corpse fell about the
road. Terrible!
—First round Dunphy's, Mr Dedalus said, nodding. Gordon Bennett cup.
—Praises be to God! Martin Cunningham said piously.
Bom! Upset. A coffin bumped out on to the road. Burst open. Paddy Dignam
shot out and rolling over stiff in the dust in a brown habit too large for him. Red
face: grey now. Mouth fallen open. Asking what's up now. Quite right to close it.
Looks horrid open. Then the insides decompose quickly. Much better to close up
all the orifices. Yes, also. With wax. The sphincter loose. Seal up all.
—Dunphy's, Mr Power announced as the carriage turned right.
Dunphy's corner. Mourning coaches drawn up, drowning their grief. A pause by
the wayside. Tiptop position for a pub. Expect we'll pull up here on the way back
to drink his health. Pass round the consolation. Elixir of life.
But suppose now it did happen. Would he bleed if a nail say cut him in the
knocking about? He would and he wouldn't, I suppose. Depends on where. The
circulation stops. Still some might ooze out of an artery. It would be better to bury
them in red: a dark red.
In silence they drove along Phibsborough road. An empty hearse trotted by,
coming from the cemetery: looks relieved.
Crossguns bridge: the royal canal.
Water rushed roaring through the sluices. A man stood on his dropping barge,
between clamps of turf. On the towpath by the lock a slacktethered horse. Aboard
of the Bugabu.
Their eyes watched him. On the slow weedy waterway he had floated on his raft
coastward over Ireland drawn by a haulage rope past beds of reeds, over slime,
mudchoked bottles, carrion dogs. Athlone, Mullingar, Moyvalley, I could make a
walking tour to see Milly by the canal. Or cycle down. Hire some old crock,
safety. Wren had one the other day at the auction but a lady's. Developing
waterways. James M'Cann's hobby to row me o'er the ferry. Cheaper transit. By
easy stages. Houseboats. Camping out. Also hearses. To heaven by water. Perhaps
I will without writing. Come as a surprise, Leixlip, Clonsilla. Dropping down lock
by lock to Dublin. With turf from the midland bogs. Salute. He lifted his brown
straw hat, saluting Paddy Dignam.
 They drove on past Brian Boroimhe house. Near it now.
—I wonder how is our friend Fogarty getting on, Mr Power said.
—Better ask Tom Kernan, Mr Dedalus said.
—How is that? Martin Cunningham said. Left him weeping, I suppose?
—Though lost to sight, Mr Dedalus said, to memory dear.
The carriage steered left for Finglas road.
The stonecutter's yard on the right. Last lap. Crowded on the spit of land silent
shapes appeared, white, sorrowful, holding out calm hands, knelt in grief,
pointing. Fragments of shapes, hewn. In white silence: appealing. The best
obtainable. Thos. H. Dennany, monumental builder and sculptor.
Passed.
On the curbstone before Jimmy Geary, the sexton's, an old tramp sat,
grumbling, emptying the dirt and stones out of his huge dustbrown yawning boot.
After life's journey.
Gloomy gardens then went by: one by one: gloomy houses.
Mr Power pointed.
—That is where Childs was murdered, he said. The last house.
—So it is, Mr Dedalus said. A gruesome case. Seymour Bushe got him off.
Murdered his brother. Or so they said.
—The crown had no evidence, Mr Power said.
—Only circumstantial, Martin Cunningham added. That's the maxim of the law.
Better for ninetynine guilty to escape than for one innocent person to be
wrongfully condemned.
They looked. Murderer's ground. It passed darkly. Shuttered, tenantless,
unweeded garden. Whole place gone to hell. Wrongfully condemned. Murder. The
murderer's image in the eye of the murdered. They love reading about it. Man's
head found in a garden. Her clothing consisted of. How she met her death. Recent
outrage. The weapon used. Murderer is still at large. Clues. A shoelace. The body
to be exhumed. Murder will out.
Cramped in this carriage. She mightn't like me to come that way without letting
her know. Must be careful about women. Catch them once with their pants down.
Never forgive you after. Fifteen.
The high railings of Prospect rippled past their gaze. Dark poplars, rare white
forms. Forms more frequent, white shapes thronged amid the trees, white forms
and fragments streaming by mutely, sustaining vain gestures on the air.
 The felly harshed against the curbstone: stopped. Martin Cunningham put out
his arm and, wrenching back the handle, shoved the door open with his knee. He
stepped out. Mr Power and Mr Dedalus followed.
Change that soap now. Mr Bloom's hand unbuttoned his hip pocket swiftly and
transferred the paperstuck soap to his inner handkerchief pocket. He stepped out
of the carriage, replacing the newspaper his other hand still held.
Paltry funeral: coach and three carriages. It's all the same. Pallbearers, gold
reins, requiem mass, firing a volley. Pomp of death. Beyond the hind carriage a
hawker stood by his barrow of cakes and fruit. Simnel cakes those are, stuck
together: cakes for the dead. Dogbiscuits. Who ate them? Mourners coming out.
He followed his companions. Mr Kernan and Ned Lambert followed, Hynes
walking after them. Corny Kelleher stood by the opened hearse and took out the
two wreaths. He handed one to the boy.
Where is that child's funeral disappeared to?
A team of horses passed from Finglas with toiling plodding tread, dragging
through the funereal silence a creaking waggon on which lay a granite block. The
waggoner marching at their head saluted.
Coffin now. Got here before us, dead as he is. Horse looking round at it with his
plume skeowways. Dull eye: collar tight on his neck, pressing on a bloodvessel or
something. Do they know what they cart out here every day? Must be twenty or
thirty funerals every day. Then Mount Jerome for the protestants. Funerals all
over the world everywhere every minute. Shovelling them under by the cartload
doublequick. Thousands every hour. Too many in the world.
Mourners came out through the gates: woman and a girl. Leanjawed harpy, hard
woman at a bargain, her bonnet awry. Girl's face stained with dirt and tears,
holding the woman's arm, looking up at her for a sign to cry. Fish's face, bloodless
and livid.
The mutes shouldered the coffin and bore it in through the gates. So much dead
weight. Felt heavier myself stepping out of that bath. First the stiff: then the
friends of the stiff. Corny Kelleher and the boy followed with their wreaths. Who
is that beside them? Ah, the brother-in-law.
All walked after.
Martin Cunningham whispered:
—I was in mortal agony with you talking of suicide before Bloom.
—What? Mr Power whispered. How so?
—His father poisoned himself, Martin Cunningham whispered. Had the Queen's
hotel in Ennis. You heard him say he was going to Clare. Anniversary.
—O God! Mr Power whispered. First I heard of it. Poisoned himself?
 He glanced behind him to where a face with dark thinking eyes followed
towards the cardinal's mausoleum. Speaking.
—Was he insured? Mr Bloom asked.
—I believe so, Mr Kernan answered. But the policy was heavily mortgaged.
Martin is trying to get the youngster into Artane.
—How many children did he leave?
—Five. Ned Lambert says he'll try to get one of the girls into Todd's.
—A sad case, Mr Bloom said gently. Five young children.
—A great blow to the poor wife, Mr Kernan added.
—Indeed yes, Mr Bloom agreed.
Has the laugh at him now.
He looked down at the boots he had blacked and polished. She had outlived
him. Lost her husband. More dead for her than for me. One must outlive the
other. Wise men say. There are more women than men in the world. Condole with
her. Your terrible loss. I hope you'll soon follow him. For Hindu widows only. She
would marry another. Him? No. Yet who knows after. Widowhood not the thing
since the old queen died. Drawn on a guncarriage. Victoria and Albert. Frogmore
memorial mourning. But in the end she put a few violets in her bonnet. Vain in
her heart of hearts. All for a shadow. Consort not even a king. Her son was the
substance. Something new to hope for not like the past she wanted back, waiting.
It never comes. One must go first: alone, under the ground: and lie no more in her
warm bed.
—How are you, Simon? Ned Lambert said softly, clasping hands. Haven't seen
you for a month of Sundays.
—Never better. How are all in Cork's own town?
—I was down there for the Cork park races on Easter Monday, Ned Lambert
said. Same old six and eightpence. Stopped with Dick Tivy.
—And how is Dick, the solid man?
—Nothing between himself and heaven, Ned Lambert answered.
—By the holy Paul! Mr Dedalus said in subdued wonder. Dick Tivy bald?
—Martin is going to get up a whip for the youngsters, Ned Lambert said,
pointing ahead. A few bob a skull. Just to keep them going till the insurance is
cleared up.
—Yes, yes, Mr Dedalus said dubiously. Is that the eldest boy in front?
—Yes, Ned Lambert said, with the wife's brother. John Henry Menton is behind.
He put down his name for a quid.
 —I'll engage he did, Mr Dedalus said. I often told poor Paddy he ought to mind
that job. John Henry is not the worst in the world.
—How did he lose it? Ned Lambert asked. Liquor, what?
—Many a good man's fault, Mr Dedalus said with a sigh.
They halted about the door of the mortuary chapel. Mr Bloom stood behind the
boy with the wreath looking down at his sleekcombed hair and at the slender
furrowed neck inside his brandnew collar. Poor boy! Was he there when the
father? Both unconscious. Lighten up at the last moment and recognise for the last
time. All he might have done. I owe three shillings to O'Grady. Would he
understand? The mutes bore the coffin into the chapel. Which end is his head?
After a moment he followed the others in, blinking in the screened light. The
coffin lay on its bier before the chancel, four tall yellow candles at its corners.
Always in front of us. Corny Kelleher, laying a wreath at each fore corner,
beckoned to the boy to kneel. The mourners knelt here and there in prayingdesks.
Mr Bloom stood behind near the font and, when all had knelt, dropped carefully
his unfolded newspaper from his pocket and knelt his right knee upon it. He fitted
his black hat gently on his left knee and, holding its brim, bent over piously.
A server bearing a brass bucket with something in it came out through a door.
The whitesmocked priest came after him, tidying his stole with one hand,
balancing with the other a little book against his toad's belly. Who'll read the
book? I, said the rook.
They halted by the bier and the priest began to read out of his book with a
fluent croak.
Father Coffey. I knew his name was like a coffin. Domine-namine. Bully about
the muzzle he looks. Bosses the show. Muscular christian. Woe betide anyone that
looks crooked at him: priest. Thou art Peter. Burst sideways like a sheep in clover
Dedalus says he will. With a belly on him like a poisoned pup. Most amusing
expressions that man finds. Hhhn: burst sideways.
—Non intres in judicium cum servo tuo, Domine.
Makes them feel more important to be prayed over in Latin. Requiem mass.
Crape weepers. Blackedged notepaper. Your name on the altarlist. Chilly place
this. Want to feed well, sitting in there all the morning in the gloom kicking his
heels waiting for the next please. Eyes of a toad too. What swells him up that
way? Molly gets swelled after cabbage. Air of the place maybe. Looks full up of
bad gas. Must be an infernal lot of bad gas round the place. Butchers, for
instance: they get like raw beefsteaks. Who was telling me? Mervyn Browne.
Down in the vaults of saint Werburgh's lovely old organ hundred and fifty they
have to bore a hole in the coffins sometimes to let out the bad gas and burn it.
Out it rushes: blue. One whiff of that and you're a goner.
My kneecap is hurting me. Ow. That's better.
 The priest took a stick with a knob at the end of it out of the boy's bucket and
shook it over the coffin. Then he walked to the other end and shook it again. Then
he came back and put it back in the bucket. As you were before you rested. It's all
written down: he has to do it.
—Et ne nos inducas in tentationem.
The server piped the answers in the treble. I often thought it would be better to
have boy servants. Up to fifteen or so. After that, of course ...
Holy water that was, I expect. Shaking sleep out of it. He must be fed up with
that job, shaking that thing over all the corpses they trot up. What harm if he
could see what he was shaking it over. Every mortal day a fresh batch: middleaged
men, old women, children, women dead in childbirth, men with beards,
baldheaded businessmen, consumptive girls with little sparrows' breasts. All the
year round he prayed the same thing over them all and shook water on top of
them: sleep. On Dignam now.
—In paradisum.
Said he was going to paradise or is in paradise. Says that over everybody.
Tiresome kind of a job. But he has to say something.
The priest closed his book and went off, followed by the server. Corny Kelleher
opened the sidedoors and the gravediggers came in, hoisted the coffin again,
carried it out and shoved it on their cart. Corny Kelleher gave one wreath to the
boy and one to the brother-in-law. All followed them out of the sidedoors into the
mild grey air. Mr Bloom came last folding his paper again into his pocket. He
gazed gravely at the ground till the coffincart wheeled off to the left. The metal
wheels ground the gravel with a sharp grating cry and the pack of blunt boots
followed the trundled barrow along a lane of sepulchres.
The ree the ra the ree the ra the roo. Lord, I mustn't lilt here.
—The O'Connell circle, Mr Dedalus said about him.
Mr Power's soft eyes went up to the apex of the lofty cone.
—He's at rest, he said, in the middle of his people, old Dan O'. But his heart is
buried in Rome. How many broken hearts are buried here, Simon!
—Her grave is over there, Jack, Mr Dedalus said. I'll soon be stretched beside
her. Let Him take me whenever He likes.
Breaking down, he began to weep to himself quietly, stumbling a little in his
walk. Mr Power took his arm.
—She's better where she is, he said kindly.
—I suppose so, Mr Dedalus said with a weak gasp. I suppose she is in heaven if
there is a heaven.
 Corny Kelleher stepped aside from his rank and allowed the mourners to plod
by.
—Sad occasions, Mr Kernan began politely.
Mr Bloom closed his eyes and sadly twice bowed his head.
—The others are putting on their hats, Mr Kernan said. I suppose we can do so
too. We are the last. This cemetery is a treacherous place.
They covered their heads.
—The reverend gentleman read the service too quickly, don't you think? Mr
Kernan said with reproof.
Mr Bloom nodded gravely looking in the quick bloodshot eyes. Secret eyes,
secretsearching. Mason, I think: not sure. Beside him again. We are the last. In
the same boat. Hope he'll say something else.
Mr Kernan added:
—The service of the Irish church used in Mount Jerome is simpler, more
impressive I must say.
Mr Bloom gave prudent assent. The language of course was another thing.
Mr Kernan said with solemnity:
—I am the resurrection and the life. That touches a man's inmost heart.
—It does, Mr Bloom said.
Your heart perhaps but what price the fellow in the six feet by two with his toes
to the daisies? No touching that. Seat of the affections. Broken heart. A pump
after all, pumping thousands of gallons of blood every day. One fine day it gets
bunged up: and there you are. Lots of them lying around here: lungs, hearts,
livers. Old rusty pumps: damn the thing else. The resurrection and the life. Once
you are dead you are dead. That last day idea. Knocking them all up out of their
graves. Come forth, Lazarus! And he came fifth and lost the job. Get up! Last day!
Then every fellow mousing around for his liver and his lights and the rest of his
traps. Find damn all of himself that morning. Pennyweight of powder in a skull.
Twelve grammes one pennyweight. Troy measure.
Corny Kelleher fell into step at their side.
—Everything went off A1, he said. What?
He looked on them from his drawling eye. Policeman's shoulders. With your
tooraloom tooraloom.
—As it should be, Mr Kernan said.
—What? Eh? Corny Kelleher said.
 Mr Kernan assured him.
—Who is that chap behind with Tom Kernan? John Henry Menton asked. I
know his face.
Ned Lambert glanced back.
—Bloom, he said, Madame Marion Tweedy that was, is, I mean, the soprano.
She's his wife.
—O, to be sure, John Henry Menton said. I haven't seen her for some time. He
was a finelooking woman. I danced with her, wait, fifteen seventeen golden years
ago, at Mat Dillon's in Roundtown. And a good armful she was.
He looked behind through the others.
—What is he? he asked. What does he do? Wasn't he in the stationery line? I
fell foul of him one evening, I remember, at bowls.
Ned Lambert smiled.
—Yes, he was, he said, in Wisdom Hely's. A traveller for blottingpaper.
—In God's name, John Henry Menton said, what did she marry a coon like that
for? She had plenty of game in her then.
—Has still, Ned Lambert said. He does some canvassing for ads.
John Henry Menton's large eyes stared ahead.
The barrow turned into a side lane. A portly man, ambushed among the grasses,
raised his hat in homage. The gravediggers touched their caps.
—John O'Connell, Mr Power said pleased. He never forgets a friend.
Mr O'Connell shook all their hands in silence. Mr Dedalus said:
—I am come to pay you another visit.
—My dear Simon, the caretaker answered in a low voice. I don't want your
custom at all.
Saluting Ned Lambert and John Henry Menton he walked on at Martin
Cunningham's side puzzling two long keys at his back.
—Did you hear that one, he asked them, about Mulcahy from the Coombe?
—I did not, Martin Cunningham said.
They bent their silk hats in concert and Hynes inclined his ear. The caretaker
hung his thumbs in the loops of his gold watchchain and spoke in a discreet tone
to their vacant smiles.
—They tell the story, he said, that two drunks came out here one foggy evening
to look for the grave of a friend of theirs. They asked for Mulcahy from the
Coombe and were told where he was buried. After traipsing about in the fog they
found the grave sure enough. One of the drunks spelt out the name: Terence
Mulcahy. The other drunk was blinking up at a statue of Our Saviour the widow
had got put up.
The caretaker blinked up at one of the sepulchres they passed. He resumed:
—And, after blinking up at the sacred figure, Not a bloody bit like the man, says
he. That's not Mulcahy, says he, whoever done it.
Rewarded by smiles he fell back and spoke with Corny Kelleher, accepting the
dockets given him, turning them over and scanning them as he walked.
—That's all done with a purpose, Martin Cunningham explained to Hynes.
—I know, Hynes said. I know that.
—To cheer a fellow up, Martin Cunningham said. It's pure goodheartedness:
damn the thing else.
Mr Bloom admired the caretaker's prosperous bulk. All want to be on good
terms with him. Decent fellow, John O'Connell, real good sort. Keys: like Keyes's
ad: no fear of anyone getting out. No passout checks. Habeas corpus. I must see
about that ad after the funeral. Did I write Ballsbridge on the envelope I took to
cover when she disturbed me writing to Martha? Hope it's not chucked in the
dead letter office. Be the better of a shave. Grey sprouting beard. That's the first
sign when the hairs come out grey. And temper getting cross. Silver threads
among the grey. Fancy being his wife. Wonder he had the gumption to propose to
any girl. Come out and live in the graveyard. Dangle that before her. It might
thrill her first. Courting death... Shades of night hovering here with all the dead
stretched about. The shadows of the tombs when churchyards yawn and Daniel
O'Connell must be a descendant I suppose who is this used to say he was a queer
breedy man great catholic all the same like a big giant in the dark. Will o' the
wisp. Gas of graves. Want to keep her mind off it to conceive at all. Women
especially are so touchy. Tell her a ghost story in bed to make her sleep. Have you
ever seen a ghost? Well, I have. It was a pitchdark night. The clock was on the
stroke of twelve. Still they'd kiss all right if properly keyed up. Whores in Turkish
graveyards. Learn anything if taken young. You might pick up a young widow
here. Men like that. Love among the tombstones. Romeo. Spice of pleasure. In the
midst of death we are in life. Both ends meet. Tantalising for the poor dead. Smell
of grilled beefsteaks to the starving. Gnawing their vitals. Desire to grig people.
Molly wanting to do it at the window. Eight children he has anyway.
He has seen a fair share go under in his time, lying around him field after field.
Holy fields. More room if they buried them standing. Sitting or kneeling you
couldn't. Standing? His head might come up some day above ground in a landslip
with his hand pointing. All honeycombed the ground must be: oblong cells. And
very neat he keeps it too: trim grass and edgings. His garden Major Gamble calls
Mount Jerome. Well, so it is. Ought to be flowers of sleep. Chinese cemeteries
with giant poppies growing produce the best opium Mastiansky told me. The
Botanic Gardens are just over there. It's the blood sinking in the earth gives new
life. Same idea those jews they said killed the christian boy. Every man his price.
Well preserved fat corpse, gentleman, epicure, invaluable for fruit garden. A
bargain. By carcass of William Wilkinson, auditor and accountant, lately deceased,
three pounds thirteen and six. With thanks.
I daresay the soil would be quite fat with corpsemanure, bones, flesh, nails.
Charnelhouses. Dreadful. Turning green and pink decomposing. Rot quick in
damp earth. The lean old ones tougher. Then a kind of a tallowy kind of a cheesy.
Then begin to get black, black treacle oozing out of them. Then dried up.
Deathmoths. Of course the cells or whatever they are go on living. Changing
about. Live for ever practically. Nothing to feed on feed on themselves.
But they must breed a devil of a lot of maggots. Soil must be simply swirling
with them. Your head it simply swurls. Those pretty little seaside gurls. He looks
cheerful enough over it. Gives him a sense of power seeing all the others go under
first. Wonder how he looks at life. Cracking his jokes too: warms the cockles of his
heart. The one about the bulletin. Spurgeon went to heaven 4 a.m. this morning.
11 p.m. (closing time). Not arrived yet. Peter. The dead themselves the men
anyhow would like to hear an odd joke or the women to know what's in fashion. A
juicy pear or ladies' punch, hot, strong and sweet. Keep out the damp. You must
laugh sometimes so better do it that way. Gravediggers in Hamlet. Shows the
profound knowledge of the human heart. Daren't joke about the dead for two
years at least. De mortuis nil nisi prius. Go out of mourning first. Hard to imagine
his funeral. Seems a sort of a joke. Read your own obituary notice they say you
live longer. Gives you second wind. New lease of life.
—How many have-you for tomorrow? the caretaker asked.
—Two, Corny Kelleher said. Half ten and eleven.
The caretaker put the papers in his pocket. The barrow had ceased to trundle.
The mourners split and moved to each side of the hole, stepping with care round
the graves. The gravediggers bore the coffin and set its nose on the brink, looping
the bands round it.
Burying him. We come to bury Caesar. His ides of March or June. He doesn't
know who is here nor care. Now who is that lankylooking galoot over there in the
macintosh? Now who is he I'd like to know? Now I'd give a trifle to know who he
is. Always someone turns up you never dreamt of. A fellow could live on his
lonesome all his life. Yes, he could. Still he'd have to get someone to sod him after
he died though he could dig his own grave. We all do. Only man buries. No, ants
too. First thing strikes anybody. Bury the dead. Say Robinson Crusoe was true to
life. Well then Friday buried him. Every Friday buries a Thursday if you come to
look at it.

O, poor Robinson Crusoe!

How could you possibly do so?
 Poor Dignam! His last lie on the earth in his box. When you think of them all it
does seem a waste of wood. All gnawed through. They could invent a handsome
bier with a kind of panel sliding, let it down that way. Ay but they might object to
be buried out of another fellow's. They're so particular. Lay me in my native earth.
Bit of clay from the holy land. Only a mother and deadborn child ever buried in
the one coffin. I see what it means. I see. To protect him as long as possible even
in the earth. The Irishman's house is his coffin. Embalming in catacombs,
mummies the same idea.
Mr Bloom stood far back, his hat in his hand, counting the bared heads.
Twelve. I'm thirteen. No. The chap in the macintosh is thirteen. Death's number.
Where the deuce did he pop out of? He wasn't in the chapel, that I'll swear. Silly
superstition that about thirteen.
Nice soft tweed Ned Lambert has in that suit. Tinge of purple. I had one like
that when we lived in Lombard street west. Dressy fellow he was once. Used to
change three suits in the day. Must get that grey suit of mine turned by Mesias.
Hello. It's dyed. His wife I forgot he's not married or his landlady ought to have
picked out those threads for him.
The coffin dived out of sight, eased down by the men straddled on the
gravetrestles. They struggled up and out: and all uncovered. Twenty.
Pause.
If we were all suddenly somebody else.
Far away a donkey brayed. Rain. No such ass. Never see a dead one, they say.
Shame of death. They hide. Also poor papa went away.
Gentle sweet air blew round the bared heads in a whisper. Whisper. The boy by
the gravehead held his wreath with both hands staring quietly in the black open
space. Mr Bloom moved behind the portly kindly caretaker. Wellcut frockcoat.
Weighing them up perhaps to see which will go next. Well, it is a long rest. Feel no
more. It's the moment you feel. Must be damned unpleasant. Can't believe it at
first. Mistake must be: someone else. Try the house opposite. Wait, I wanted to. I
haven't yet. Then darkened deathchamber. Light they want. Whispering around
you. Would you like to see a priest? Then rambling and wandering. Delirium all
you hid all your life. The death struggle. His sleep is not natural. Press his lower
eyelid. Watching is his nose pointed is his jaw sinking are the soles of his feet
yellow. Pull the pillow away and finish it off on the floor since he's doomed. Devil
in that picture of sinner's death showing him a woman. Dying to embrace her in
his shirt. Last act of Lucia. Shall i nevermore behold thee? Bam! He expires. Gone
at last. People talk about you a bit: forget you. Don't forget to pray for him.
Remember him in your prayers. Even Parnell. Ivy day dying out. Then they follow:
dropping into a hole, one after the other.
We are praying now for the repose of his soul. Hoping you're well and not in
hell. Nice change of air. Out of the fryingpan of life into the fire of purgatory.
 Does he ever think of the hole waiting for himself? They say you do when you
shiver in the sun. Someone walking over it. Callboy's warning. Near you. Mine
over there towards Finglas, the plot I bought. Mamma, poor mamma, and little
Rudy.
The gravediggers took up their spades and flung heavy clods of clay in on the
coffin. Mr Bloom turned away his face. And if he was alive all the time? Whew!
By jingo, that would be awful! No, no: he is dead, of course. Of course he is dead.
Monday he died. They ought to have some law to pierce the heart and make sure
or an electric clock or a telephone in the coffin and some kind of a canvas airhole.
Flag of distress. Three days. Rather long to keep them in summer. Just as well to
get shut of them as soon as you are sure there's no.
The clay fell softer. Begin to be forgotten. Out of sight, out of mind.
The caretaker moved away a few paces and put on his hat. Had enough of it.
The mourners took heart of grace, one by one, covering themselves without show.
Mr Bloom put on his hat and saw the portly figure make its way deftly through
the maze of graves. Quietly, sure of his ground, he traversed the dismal fields.
Hynes jotting down something in his notebook. Ah, the names. But he knows
them all. No: coming to me.
—I am just taking the names, Hynes said below his breath. What is your
christian name? I'm not sure.
—L, Mr Bloom said. Leopold. And you might put down M'Coy's name too. He
asked me to.
—Charley, Hynes said writing. I know. He was on the Freeman once.
So he was before he got the job in the morgue under Louis Byrne. Good idea a
postmortem for doctors. Find out what they imagine they know. He died of a
Tuesday. Got the run. Levanted with the cash of a few ads. Charley, you're my
darling. That was why he asked me to. O well, does no harm. I saw to that,
M'Coy. Thanks, old chap: much obliged. Leave him under an obligation: costs
nothing.
—And tell us, Hynes said, do you know that fellow in the, fellow was over there
in the...
He looked around.
—Macintosh. Yes, I saw him, Mr Bloom said. Where is he now?
—M'Intosh, Hynes said scribbling. I don't know who he is. Is that his name?
He moved away, looking about him.
—No, Mr Bloom began, turning and stopping. I say, Hynes!
 Didn't hear. What? Where has he disappeared to? Not a sign. Well of all the.
Has anybody here seen? Kay ee double ell. Become invisible. Good Lord, what
became of him?
A seventh gravedigger came beside Mr Bloom to take up an idle spade.
—O, excuse me!
He stepped aside nimbly.
Clay, brown, damp, began to be seen in the hole. It rose. Nearly over. A mound
of damp clods rose more, rose, and the gravediggers rested their spades. All
uncovered again for a few instants. The boy propped his wreath against a corner:
the brother-in-law his on a lump. The gravediggers put on their caps and carried
their earthy spades towards the barrow. Then knocked the blades lightly on the
turf: clean. One bent to pluck from the haft a long tuft of grass. One, leaving his
mates, walked slowly on with shouldered weapon, its blade blueglancing. Silently
at the gravehead another coiled the coffinband. His navelcord. The brother-in-law,
turning away, placed something in his free hand. Thanks in silence. Sorry, sir:
trouble. Headshake. I know that. For yourselves just.
The mourners moved away slowly without aim, by devious paths, staying at
whiles to read a name on a tomb.
—Let us go round by the chief's grave, Hynes said. We have time.
—Let us, Mr Power said.
They turned to the right, following their slow thoughts. With awe Mr Power's
blank voice spoke:
—Some say he is not in that grave at all. That the coffin was filled with stones.
That one day he will come again.
Hynes shook his head.
—Parnell will never come again, he said. He's there, all that was mortal of him.
Peace to his ashes.
Mr Bloom walked unheeded along his grove by saddened angels, crosses, broken
pillars, family vaults, stone hopes praying with upcast eyes, old Ireland's hearts
and hands. More sensible to spend the money on some charity for the living. Pray
for the repose of the soul of. Does anybody really? Plant him and have done with
him. Like down a coalshoot. Then lump them together to save time. All souls' day.
Twentyseventh I'll be at his grave. Ten shillings for the gardener. He keeps it free
of weeds. Old man himself. Bent down double with his shears clipping. Near
death's door. Who passed away. Who departed this life. As if they did it of their
own accord. Got the shove, all of them. Who kicked the bucket. More interesting
if they told you what they were. So and So, wheelwright. I travelled for cork lino.
I paid five shillings in the pound. Or a woman's with her saucepan. I cooked good
Irish stew. Eulogy in a country churchyard it ought to be that poem of whose is it
Wordsworth or Thomas Campbell. Entered into rest the protestants put it. Old Dr
Murren's. The great physician called him home. Well it's God's acre for them. Nice
country residence. Newly plastered and painted. Ideal spot to have a quiet smoke
and read the Church Times. Marriage ads they never try to beautify. Rusty
wreaths hung on knobs, garlands of bronzefoil. Better value that for the money.
Still, the flowers are more poetical. The other gets rather tiresome, never
withering. Expresses nothing. Immortelles.
A bird sat tamely perched on a poplar branch. Like stuffed. Like the wedding
present alderman Hooper gave us. Hoo! Not a budge out of him. Knows there are
no catapults to let fly at him. Dead animal even sadder. Silly-Milly burying the
little dead bird in the kitchen matchbox, a daisychain and bits of broken chainies
on the grave.
The Sacred Heart that is: showing it. Heart on his sleeve. Ought to be sideways
and red it should be painted like a real heart. Ireland was dedicated to it or
whatever that. Seems anything but pleased. Why this infliction? Would birds come
then and peck like the boy with the basket of fruit but he said no because they
ought to have been afraid of the boy. Apollo that was.
How many! All these here once walked round Dublin. Faithful departed. As you
are now so once were we.
Besides how could you remember everybody? Eyes, walk, voice. Well, the voice,
yes: gramophone. Have a gramophone in every grave or keep it in the house. After
dinner on a Sunday. Put on poor old greatgrandfather. Kraahraark! Hellohellohello
amawfullyglad kraark awfullygladaseeagain hellohello amawf krpthsth. Remind
you of the voice like the photograph reminds you of the face. Otherwise you
couldn't remember the face after fifteen years, say. For instance who? For instance
some fellow that died when I was in Wisdom Hely's.
Rtststr! A rattle of pebbles. Wait. Stop!
He looked down intently into a stone crypt. Some animal. Wait. There he goes.
An obese grey rat toddled along the side of the crypt, moving the pebbles. An
old stager: greatgrandfather: he knows the ropes. The grey alive crushed itself in
under the plinth, wriggled itself in under it. Good hidingplace for treasure.
Who lives there? Are laid the remains of Robert Emery. Robert Emmet was
buried here by torchlight, wasn't he? Making his rounds.
Tail gone now.
One of those chaps would make short work of a fellow. Pick the bones clean no
matter who it was. Ordinary meat for them. A corpse is meat gone bad. Well and
what's cheese? Corpse of milk. I read in that Voyages in China that the Chinese
say a white man smells like a corpse. Cremation better. Priests dead against it.
Devilling for the other firm. Wholesale burners and Dutch oven dealers. Time of
the plague. Quicklime feverpits to eat them. Lethal chamber. Ashes to ashes. Or
bury at sea. Where is that Parsee tower of silence? Eaten by birds. Earth, fire,
water. Drowning they say is the pleasantest. See your whole life in a flash. But
being brought back to life no. Can't bury in the air however. Out of a flying
machine. Wonder does the news go about whenever a fresh one is let down.
Underground communication. We learned that from them. Wouldn't be surprised.
Regular square feed for them. Flies come before he's well dead. Got wind of
Dignam. They wouldn't care about the smell of it. Saltwhite crumbling mush of
corpse: smell, taste like raw white turnips.
The gates glimmered in front: still open. Back to the world again. Enough of this
place. Brings you a bit nearer every time. Last time I was here was Mrs Sinico's
funeral. Poor papa too. The love that kills. And even scraping up the earth at night
with a lantern like that case I read of to get at fresh buried females or even
putrefied with running gravesores. Give you the creeps after a bit. I will appear to
you after death. You will see my ghost after death. My ghost will haunt you after
death. There is another world after death named hell. I do not like that other
world she wrote. No more do I. Plenty to see and hear and feel yet. Feel live warm
beings near you. Let them sleep in their maggoty beds. They are not going to get
me this innings. Warm beds: warm fullblooded life.
Martin Cunningham emerged from a sidepath, talking gravely.
Solicitor, I think. I know his face. Menton, John Henry, solicitor, commissioner
for oaths and affidavits. Dignam used to be in his office. Mat Dillon's long ago.
Jolly Mat. Convivial evenings. Cold fowl, cigars, the Tantalus glasses. Heart of
gold really. Yes, Menton. Got his rag out that evening on the bowlinggreen
because I sailed inside him. Pure fluke of mine: the bias. Why he took such a
rooted dislike to me. Hate at first sight. Molly and Floey Dillon linked under the
lilactree, laughing. Fellow always like that, mortified if women are by.
Got a dinge in the side of his hat. Carriage probably.
—Excuse me, sir, Mr Bloom said beside them.
They stopped.
—Your hat is a little crushed, Mr Bloom said pointing.
John Henry Menton stared at him for an instant without moving.
—There, Martin Cunningham helped, pointing also. John Henry Menton took
off his hat, bulged out the dinge and smoothed the nap with care on his
coatsleeve. He clapped the hat on his head again.
—It's all right now, Martin Cunningham said.
John Henry Menton jerked his head down in acknowledgment.
—Thank you, he said shortly.
They walked on towards the gates. Mr Bloom, chapfallen, drew behind a few
paces so as not to overhear. Martin laying down the law. Martin could wind a
sappyhead like that round his little finger, without his seeing it.
 Oyster eyes. Never mind. Be sorry after perhaps when it dawns on him. Get the
pull over him that way.
Thank you. How grand we are this morning!
IN THE HEART OF THE HIBERNIAN METROPOLIS
Before Nelson's pillar trams slowed, shunted, changed trolley, started for
Blackrock, Kingstown and Dalkey, Clonskea, Rathgar and Terenure, Palmerston
Park and upper Rathmines, Sandymount Green, Rathmines, Ringsend and
Sandymount Tower, Harold's Cross. The hoarse Dublin United Tramway
Company's timekeeper bawled them off:
—Rathgar and Terenure!
—Come on, Sandymount Green!
Right and left parallel clanging ringing a doubledecker and a singledeck moved
from their railheads, swerved to the down line, glided parallel.
—Start, Palmerston Park!
THE WEARER OF THE CROWN
Under the porch of the general post office shoeblacks called and polished.
Parked in North Prince's street His Majesty's vermilion mailcars, bearing on their
sides the royal initials, E. R., received loudly flung sacks of letters, postcards,
lettercards, parcels, insured and paid, for local, provincial, British and overseas
delivery.
GENTLEMEN OF THE PRESS
Grossbooted draymen rolled barrels dullthudding out of Prince's stores and
bumped them up on the brewery float. On the brewery float bumped dullthudding
barrels rolled by grossbooted draymen out of Prince's stores.
—There it is, Red Murray said. Alexander Keyes.
—Just cut it out, will you? Mr Bloom said, and I'll take it round to the Telegraph
office.
The door of Ruttledge's office creaked again. Davy Stephens, minute in a large
capecoat, a small felt hat crowning his ringlets, passed out with a roll of papers
under his cape, a king's courier.
Red Murray's long shears sliced out the advertisement from the newspaper in
four clean strokes. Scissors and paste.
—I'll go through the printingworks, Mr Bloom said, taking the cut square.
—Of course, if he wants a par, Red Murray said earnestly, a pen behind his ear,
we can do him one.
—Right, Mr Bloom said with a nod. I'll rub that in.
 We.
WILLIAM BRAYDEN, ESQUIRE, OF OAKLANDS, SANDYMOUNT
Red Murray touched Mr Bloom's arm with the shears and whispered:
—Brayden.
Mr Bloom turned and saw the liveried porter raise his lettered cap as a stately
figure entered between the newsboards of the Weekly Freeman and National Press
and the Freeman's Journal and National Press. Dullthudding Guinness's barrels. It
passed statelily up the staircase, steered by an umbrella, a solemn beardframed
face. The broadcloth back ascended each step: back. All his brains are in the nape
of his neck, Simon Dedalus says. Welts of flesh behind on him. Fat folds of neck,
fat, neck, fat, neck.
—Don't you think his face is like Our Saviour? Red Murray whispered.
The door of Ruttledge's office whispered: ee: cree. They always build one door
opposite another for the wind to. Way in. Way out.
Our Saviour: beardframed oval face: talking in the dusk. Mary, Martha. Steered
by an umbrella sword to the footlights: Mario the tenor.
—Or like Mario, Mr Bloom said.
—Yes, Red Murray agreed. But Mario was said to be the picture of Our Saviour.
Jesusmario with rougy cheeks, doublet and spindle legs. Hand on his heart. In
Martha.

Co-ome thou lost one,

Co-ome thou dear one!
THE CROZIER AND THE PEN
—His grace phoned down twice this morning, Red Murray said gravely.
They watched the knees, legs, boots vanish. Neck.
A telegram boy stepped in nimbly, threw an envelope on the counter and
stepped off posthaste with a word:
—Freeman!
Mr Bloom said slowly:
—Well, he is one of our saviours also.
A meek smile accompanied him as he lifted the counterflap, as he passed in
through a sidedoor and along the warm dark stairs and passage, along the now
reverberating boards. But will he save the circulation? Thumping. Thumping.
 He pushed in the glass swingdoor and entered, stepping over strewn packing
paper. Through a lane of clanking drums he made his way towards Nannetti's
reading closet.
WITH UNFEIGNED REGRET IT IS WE ANNOUNCE THE DISSOLUTION OF A
MOST RESPECTED DUBLIN BURGESS
Hynes here too: account of the funeral probably. Thumping. Thump. This
morning the remains of the late Mr Patrick Dignam. Machines. Smash a man to
atoms if they got him caught. Rule the world today. His machineries are pegging
away too. Like these, got out of hand: fermenting. Working away, tearing away.
And that old grey rat tearing to get in.
HOW A GREAT DAILY ORGAN IS TURNED OUT
Mr Bloom halted behind the foreman's spare body, admiring a glossy crown.
Strange he never saw his real country. Ireland my country. Member for College
green. He boomed that workaday worker tack for all it was worth. It's the ads and
side features sell a weekly, not the stale news in the official gazette. Queen Anne
is dead. Published by authority in the year one thousand and. Demesne situate in
the townland of Rosenallis, barony of Tinnahinch. To all whom it may concern
schedule pursuant to statute showing return of number of mules and jennets
exported from Ballina. Nature notes. Cartoons. Phil Blake's weekly Pat and Bull
story. Uncle Toby's page for tiny tots. Country bumpkin's queries. Dear Mr Editor,
what is a good cure for flatulence? I'd like that part. Learn a lot teaching others.
The personal note. M. A. P. Mainly all pictures. Shapely bathers on golden strand.
World's biggest balloon. Double marriage of sisters celebrated. Two bridegrooms
laughing heartily at each other. Cuprani too, printer. More Irish than the Irish.
The machines clanked in threefour time. Thump, thump, thump. Now if he got
paralysed there and no-one knew how to stop them they'd clank on and on the
same, print it over and over and up and back. Monkeydoodle the whole thing.
Want a cool head.
—Well, get it into the evening edition, councillor, Hynes said.
Soon be calling him my lord mayor. Long John is backing him, they say.
The foreman, without answering, scribbled press on a corner of the sheet and
made a sign to a typesetter. He handed the sheet silently over the dirty glass
screen.
—Right: thanks, Hynes said moving off.
Mr Bloom stood in his way.
—If you want to draw the cashier is just going to lunch, he said, pointing
backward with his thumb.
—Did you? Hynes asked.
—Mm, Mr Bloom said. Look sharp and you'll catch him.
 —Thanks, old man, Hynes said. I'll tap him too.
He hurried on eagerly towards the Freeman's Journal.
Three bob I lent him in Meagher's. Three weeks. Third hint.
WE SEE THE CANVASSER AT WORK
Mr Bloom laid his cutting on Mr Nannetti's desk.
—Excuse me, councillor, he said. This ad, you see. Keyes, you remember?
Mr Nannetti considered the cutting awhile and nodded.
—He wants it in for July, Mr Bloom said.
The foreman moved his pencil towards it.
—But wait, Mr Bloom said. He wants it changed. Keyes, you see. He wants two
keys at the top.
Hell of a racket they make. He doesn't hear it. Nannan. Iron nerves. Maybe he
understands what I.
The foreman turned round to hear patiently and, lifting an elbow, began to
scratch slowly in the armpit of his alpaca jacket.
—Like that, Mr Bloom said, crossing his forefingers at the top.
Let him take that in first.
Mr Bloom, glancing sideways up from the cross he had made, saw the foreman's
sallow face, think he has a touch of jaundice, and beyond the obedient reels
feeding in huge webs of paper. Clank it. Clank it. Miles of it unreeled. What
becomes of it after? O, wrap up meat, parcels: various uses, thousand and one
things.
Slipping his words deftly into the pauses of the clanking he drew swiftly on the
scarred woodwork.
HOUSE OF KEY(E)S
—Like that, see. Two crossed keys here. A circle. Then here the name.
Alexander Keyes, tea, wine and spirit merchant. So on.
Better not teach him his own business.
—You know yourself, councillor, just what he wants. Then round the top in
leaded: the house of keys. You see? Do you think that's a good idea?
The foreman moved his scratching hand to his lower ribs and scratched there
quietly.
 —The idea, Mr Bloom said, is the house of keys. You know, councillor, the
Manx parliament. Innuendo of home rule. Tourists, you know, from the isle of
Man. Catches the eye, you see. Can you do that?
I could ask him perhaps about how to pronounce that voglio. But then if he
didn't know only make it awkward for him. Better not.
—We can do that, the foreman said. Have you the design?
—I can get it, Mr Bloom said. It was in a Kilkenny paper. He has a house there
too. I'll just run out and ask him. Well, you can do that and just a little par calling
attention. You know the usual. Highclass licensed premises. Longfelt want. So on.
The foreman thought for an instant.
—We can do that, he said. Let him give us a three months' renewal.
A typesetter brought him a limp galleypage. He began to check it silently. Mr
Bloom stood by, hearing the loud throbs of cranks, watching the silent typesetters
at their cases.
ORTHOGRAPHICAL
Want to be sure of his spelling. Proof fever. Martin Cunningham forgot to give
us his spellingbee conundrum this morning. It is amusing to view the unpar one ar
alleled embarra two ars is it? double ess ment of a harassed pedlar while gauging
au the symmetry with a y of a peeled pear under a cemetery wall. Silly, isn't it?
Cemetery put in of course on account of the symmetry.
I should have said when he clapped on his topper. Thank you. I ought to have
said something about an old hat or something. No. I could have said. Looks as
good as new now. See his phiz then.
Sllt. The nethermost deck of the first machine jogged forward its flyboard with
sllt the first batch of quirefolded papers. Sllt. Almost human the way it sllt to call
attention. Doing its level best to speak. That door too sllt creaking, asking to be
shut. Everything speaks in its own way. Sllt.
NOTED CHURCHMAN AN OCCASIONAL CONTRIBUTOR
The foreman handed back the galleypage suddenly, saying:
—Wait. Where's the archbishop's letter? It's to be repeated in the Telegraph.
Where's what's his name?
He looked about him round his loud unanswering machines.
—Monks, sir? a voice asked from the castingbox.
—Ay. Where's Monks?
—Monks!
Mr Bloom took up his cutting. Time to get out.
 —Then I'll get the design, Mr Nannetti, he said, and you'll give it a good place I
know.
—Monks!
—Yes, sir.
Three months' renewal. Want to get some wind off my chest first. Try it
anyhow. Rub in August: good idea: horseshow month. Ballsbridge. Tourists over
for the show.
A DAYFATHER
He walked on through the caseroom passing an old man, bowed, spectacled,
aproned. Old Monks, the dayfather. Queer lot of stuff he must have put through
his hands in his time: obituary notices, pubs' ads, speeches, divorce suits, found
drowned. Nearing the end of his tether now. Sober serious man with a bit in the
savingsbank I'd say. Wife a good cook and washer. Daughter working the machine
in the parlour. Plain Jane, no damn nonsense. AND IT WAS THE FEAST OF THE
PASSOVER
He stayed in his walk to watch a typesetter neatly distributing type. Reads it
backwards first. Quickly he does it. Must require some practice that. mangiD
kcirtaP. Poor papa with his hagadah book, reading backwards with his finger to
me. Pessach. Next year in Jerusalem. Dear, O dear! All that long business about
that brought us out of the land of Egypt and into the house of bondage Alleluia.
Shema Israel Adonai Elohenu. No, that's the other. Then the twelve brothers,
Jacob's sons. And then the lamb and the cat and the dog and the stick and the
water and the butcher. And then the angel of death kills the butcher and he kills
the ox and the dog kills the cat. Sounds a bit silly till you come to look into it
well. Justice it means but it's everybody eating everyone else. That's what life is
after all. How quickly he does that job. Practice makes perfect. Seems to see with
his fingers.
Mr Bloom passed on out of the clanking noises through the gallery on to the
landing. Now am I going to tram it out all the way and then catch him out
perhaps. Better phone him up first. Number? Yes. Same as Citron's house.
Twentyeight. Twentyeight double four.
ONLY ONCE MORE THAT SOAP
He went down the house staircase. Who the deuce scrawled all over those walls
with matches? Looks as if they did it for a bet. Heavy greasy smell there always is
in those works. Lukewarm glue in Thom's next door when I was there.
He took out his handkerchief to dab his nose. Citronlemon? Ah, the soap I put
there. Lose it out of that pocket. Putting back his handkerchief he took out the
soap and stowed it away, buttoned, into the hip pocket of his trousers.
What perfume does your wife use? I could go home still: tram: something I
forgot. Just to see: before: dressing. No. Here. No.
 A sudden screech of laughter came from the Evening Telegraph office. Know
who that is. What's up? Pop in a minute to phone. Ned Lambert it is.
He entered softly.
ERIN, GREEN GEM OF THE SILVER SEA
—The ghost walks, professor MacHugh murmured softly, biscuitfully to the
dusty windowpane.
Mr Dedalus, staring from the empty fireplace at Ned Lambert's quizzing face,
asked of it sourly:
—Agonising Christ, wouldn't it give you a heartburn on your arse?
Ned Lambert, seated on the table, read on:
—Or again, note the meanderings of some purling rill as it babbles on its way, tho'
quarrelling with the stony obstacles, to the tumbling waters of Neptune's blue
domain, 'mid mossy banks, fanned by gentlest zephyrs, played on by the glorious
sunlight or 'neath the shadows cast o'er its pensive bosom by the overarching leafage
of the giants of the forest. What about that, Simon? he asked over the fringe of his
newspaper. How's that for high?
—Changing his drink, Mr Dedalus said.
Ned Lambert, laughing, struck the newspaper on his knees, repeating:
—The pensive bosom and the overarsing leafage. O boys! O boys!
—And Xenophon looked upon Marathon, Mr Dedalus said, looking again on the
fireplace and to the window, and Marathon looked on the sea.
—That will do, professor MacHugh cried from the window. I don't want to hear
any more of the stuff.
He ate off the crescent of water biscuit he had been nibbling and, hungered,
made ready to nibble the biscuit in his other hand.
High falutin stuff. Bladderbags. Ned Lambert is taking a day off I see. Rather
upsets a man's day, a funeral does. He has influence they say. Old Chatterton, the
vicechancellor, is his granduncle or his greatgranduncle. Close on ninety they say.
Subleader for his death written this long time perhaps. Living to spite them. Might
go first himself. Johnny, make room for your uncle. The right honourable Hedges
Eyre Chatterton. Daresay he writes him an odd shaky cheque or two on gale days.
Windfall when he kicks out. Alleluia.
—Just another spasm, Ned Lambert said.
—What is it? Mr Bloom asked.
—A recently discovered fragment of Cicero, professor MacHugh answered with
pomp of tone. Our lovely land. SHORT BUT TO THE POINT
 —Whose land? Mr Bloom said simply.
—Most pertinent question, the professor said between his chews. With an
accent on the whose.
—Dan Dawson's land Mr Dedalus said.
—Is it his speech last night? Mr Bloom asked.
Ned Lambert nodded.
—But listen to this, he said.
The doorknob hit Mr Bloom in the small of the back as the door was pushed in.
—Excuse me, J. J. O'Molloy said, entering.
Mr Bloom moved nimbly aside.
—I beg yours, he said.
—Good day, Jack.
—Come in. Come in.
—Good day.
—How are you, Dedalus?
—Well. And yourself?
J. J. O'Molloy shook his head.
SAD
Cleverest fellow at the junior bar he used to be. Decline, poor chap. That hectic
flush spells finis for a man. Touch and go with him. What's in the wind, I wonder.
Money worry.
—Or again if we but climb the serried mountain peaks.
—You're looking extra.
—Is the editor to be seen? J. J. O'Molloy asked, looking towards the inner door.
—Very much so, professor MacHugh said. To be seen and heard. He's in his
sanctum with Lenehan.
J. J. O'Molloy strolled to the sloping desk and began to turn back the pink pages
of the file.
Practice dwindling. A mighthavebeen. Losing heart. Gambling. Debts of honour.
Reaping the whirlwind. Used to get good retainers from D. and T. Fitzgerald.
Their wigs to show the grey matter. Brains on their sleeve like the statue in
Glasnevin. Believe he does some literary work for the Express with Gabriel
Conroy. Wellread fellow. Myles Crawford began on the Independent. Funny the
way those newspaper men veer about when they get wind of a new opening.
Weathercocks. Hot and cold in the same breath. Wouldn't know which to believe.
One story good till you hear the next. Go for one another baldheaded in the
papers and then all blows over. Hail fellow well met the next moment.
—Ah, listen to this for God' sake, Ned Lambert pleaded. Or again if we but
climb the serried mountain peaks...
—Bombast! the professor broke in testily. Enough of the inflated windbag!
—Peaks, Ned Lambert went on, towering high on high, to bathe our souls, as it
were...
—Bathe his lips, Mr Dedalus said. Blessed and eternal God! Yes? Is he taking
anything for it?
—As 'twere, in the peerless panorama of Ireland's portfolio, unmatched, despite
their wellpraised prototypes in other vaunted prize regions, for very beauty, of bosky
grove and undulating plain and luscious pastureland of vernal green, steeped in the
transcendent translucent glow of our mild mysterious Irish twilight...
HIS NATIVE DORIC
—The moon, professor MacHugh said. He forgot Hamlet.
—That mantles the vista far and wide and wait till the glowing orb of the moon
shine forth to irradiate her silver effulgence...
—O! Mr Dedalus cried, giving vent to a hopeless groan. Shite and onions!
That'll do, Ned. Life is too short.
He took off his silk hat and, blowing out impatiently his bushy moustache,
welshcombed his hair with raking fingers.
Ned Lambert tossed the newspaper aside, chuckling with delight. An instant
after a hoarse bark of laughter burst over professor MacHugh's unshaven
blackspectacled face.
—Doughy Daw! he cried.
WHAT WETHERUP SAID
All very fine to jeer at it now in cold print but it goes down like hot cake that
stuff. He was in the bakery line too, wasn't he? Why they call him Doughy Daw.
Feathered his nest well anyhow. Daughter engaged to that chap in the inland
revenue office with the motor. Hooked that nicely. Entertainments. Open house.
Big blowout. Wetherup always said that. Get a grip of them by the stomach.
The inner door was opened violently and a scarlet beaked face, crested by a
comb of feathery hair, thrust itself in. The bold blue eyes stared about them and
the harsh voice asked:
—What is it?
 —And here comes the sham squire himself! professor MacHugh said grandly.
—Getonouthat, you bloody old pedagogue! the editor said in recognition.
—Come, Ned, Mr Dedalus said, putting on his hat. I must get a drink after that.
—Drink! the editor cried. No drinks served before mass.
—Quite right too, Mr Dedalus said, going out. Come on, Ned.
Ned Lambert sidled down from the table. The editor's blue eyes roved towards
Mr Bloom's face, shadowed by a smile.
—Will you join us, Myles? Ned Lambert asked.
MEMORABLE BATTLES RECALLED
—North Cork militia! the editor cried, striding to the mantelpiece. We won
every time! North Cork and Spanish officers!
—Where was that, Myles? Ned Lambert asked with a reflective glance at his
toecaps.
—In Ohio! the editor shouted.
—So it was, begad, Ned Lambert agreed.
Passing out he whispered to J. J. O'Molloy:
—Incipient jigs. Sad case.
—Ohio! the editor crowed in high treble from his uplifted scarlet face. My Ohio!
—A perfect cretic! the professor said. Long, short and long.
O, HARP EOLIAN!
He took a reel of dental floss from his waistcoat pocket and, breaking off a
piece, twanged it smartly between two and two of his resonant unwashed teeth.
—Bingbang, bangbang.
Mr Bloom, seeing the coast clear, made for the inner door.
—Just a moment, Mr Crawford, he said. I just want to phone about an ad.
He went in.
—What about that leader this evening? professor MacHugh asked, coming to
the editor and laying a firm hand on his shoulder.
—That'll be all right, Myles Crawford said more calmly. Never you fret. Hello,
Jack. That's all right.
—Good day, Myles, J. J. O'Molloy said, letting the pages he held slip limply
back on the file. Is that Canada swindle case on today?
 The telephone whirred inside.
—Twentyeight... No, twenty... Double four... Yes.
SPOT THE WINNER
Lenehan came out of the inner office with SPORT'S tissues.
—Who wants a dead cert for the Gold cup? he asked. Sceptre with O. Madden
up.
He tossed the tissues on to the table.
Screams of newsboys barefoot in the hall rushed near and the door was flung
open.
—Hush, Lenehan said. I hear feetstoops.
Professor MacHugh strode across the room and seized the cringing urchin by the
collar as the others scampered out of the hall and down the steps. The tissues
rustled up in the draught, floated softly in the air blue scrawls and under the table
came to earth.
—It wasn't me, sir. It was the big fellow shoved me, sir.
—Throw him out and shut the door, the editor said. There's a hurricane
blowing.
Lenehan began to paw the tissues up from the floor, grunting as he stooped
twice.
—Waiting for the racing special, sir, the newsboy said. It was Pat Farrell shoved
me, sir.
He pointed to two faces peering in round the doorframe.
—Him, sir.
—Out of this with you, professor MacHugh said gruffly.
He hustled the boy out and banged the door to.
J. J. O'Molloy turned the files crackingly over, murmuring, seeking:
—Continued on page six, column four.
—Yes, Evening Telegraph here, Mr Bloom phoned from the inner office. Is the
boss...? Yes, Telegraph... To where? Aha! Which auction rooms ?... Aha! I see...
Right. I'll catch him.
A COLLISION ENSUES
The bell whirred again as he rang off. He came in quickly and bumped against
Lenehan who was struggling up with the second tissue.
 —Pardon, monsieur, Lenehan said, clutching him for an instant and making a
grimace.
—My fault, Mr Bloom said, suffering his grip. Are you hurt? I'm in a hurry.
—Knee, Lenehan said.
He made a comic face and whined, rubbing his knee:
—The accumulation of the anno Domini.
—Sorry, Mr Bloom said.
He went to the door and, holding it ajar, paused. J. J. O'Molloy slapped the
heavy pages over. The noise of two shrill voices, a mouthorgan, echoed in the bare
hallway from the newsboys squatted on the doorsteps:

—We are the boys of Wexford

Who fought with heart and hand.
EXIT BLOOM
—I'm just running round to Bachelor's walk, Mr Bloom said, about this ad of
Keyes's. Want to fix it up. They tell me he's round there in Dillon's.
He looked indecisively for a moment at their faces. The editor who, leaning
against the mantelshelf, had propped his head on his hand, suddenly stretched
forth an arm amply.
—Begone! he said. The world is before you.
—Back in no time, Mr Bloom said, hurrying out.
J. J. O'Molloy took the tissues from Lenehan's hand and read them, blowing
them apart gently, without comment.
—He'll get that advertisement, the professor said, staring through his
blackrimmed spectacles over the crossblind. Look at the young scamps after him.
—Show. Where? Lenehan cried, running to the window.
A STREET CORTEGE
Both smiled over the crossblind at the file of capering newsboys in Mr Bloom's
wake, the last zigzagging white on the breeze a mocking kite, a tail of white
bowknots.
—Look at the young guttersnipe behind him hue and cry, Lenehan said, and
you'll kick. O, my rib risible! Taking off his flat spaugs and the walk. Small nines.
Steal upon larks.
He began to mazurka in swift caricature across the floor on sliding feet past the
fireplace to J. J. O'Molloy who placed the tissues in his receiving hands.
 —What's that? Myles Crawford said with a start. Where are the other two gone?
—Who? the professor said, turning. They're gone round to the Oval for a drink.
Paddy Hooper is there with Jack Hall. Came over last night.
—Come on then, Myles Crawford said. Where's my hat?
He walked jerkily into the office behind, parting the vent of his jacket, jingling
his keys in his back pocket. They jingled then in the air and against the wood as
he locked his desk drawer.
—He's pretty well on, professor MacHugh said in a low voice.
—Seems to be, J. J. O'Molloy said, taking out a cigarettecase in murmuring
meditation, but it is not always as it seems. Who has the most matches?
THE CALUMET OF PEACE
He offered a cigarette to the professor and took one himself. Lenehan promptly
struck a match for them and lit their cigarettes in turn. J. J. O'Molloy opened his
case again and offered it.
—Thanky vous, Lenehan said, helping himself.
The editor came from the inner office, a straw hat awry on his brow. He
declaimed in song, pointing sternly at professor MacHugh:
—'Twas rank and fame that tempted thee, 'Twas empire charmed thy heart.
The professor grinned, locking his long lips.
—Eh? You bloody old Roman empire? Myles Crawford said.
He took a cigarette from the open case. Lenehan, lighting it for him with quick
grace, said:
—Silence for my brandnew riddle!
—Imperium romanum, J. J. O'Molloy said gently. It sounds nobler than British
or Brixton. The word reminds one somehow of fat in the fire.
Myles Crawford blew his first puff violently towards the ceiling.
—That's it, he said. We are the fat. You and I are the fat in the fire. We haven't
got the chance of a snowball in hell.
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
—Wait a moment, professor MacHugh said, raising two quiet claws. We mustn't
be led away by words, by sounds of words. We think of Rome, imperial,
imperious, imperative.
He extended elocutionary arms from frayed stained shirtcuffs, pausing:
 —What was their civilisation? Vast, I allow: but vile. Cloacae: sewers. The Jews
in the wilderness and on the mountaintop said: It is meet to be here. Let us build
an altar to Jehovah. The Roman, like the Englishman who follows in his footsteps,
brought to every new shore on which he set his foot (on our shore he never set it)
only his cloacal obsession. He gazed about him in his toga and he said: It is meet
to be here. Let us construct a watercloset.
—Which they accordingly did do, Lenehan said. Our old ancient ancestors, as
we read in the first chapter of Guinness's, were partial to the running stream.
—They were nature's gentlemen, J. J. O'Molloy murmured. But we have also
Roman law.
—And Pontius Pilate is its prophet, professor MacHugh responded.
—Do you know that story about chief baron Palles? J. J. O'Molloy asked. It was
at the royal university dinner. Everything was going swimmingly ...
—First my riddle, Lenehan said. Are you ready?
Mr O'Madden Burke, tall in copious grey of Donegal tweed, came in from the
hallway. Stephen Dedalus, behind him, uncovered as he entered.
—Entrez, mes enfants! Lenehan cried.
—I escort a suppliant, Mr O'Madden Burke said melodiously. Youth led by
Experience visits Notoriety.
—How do you do? the editor said, holding out a hand. Come in. Your governor
is just gone.???
Lenehan said to all:
—Silence! What opera resembles a railwayline? Reflect, ponder, excogitate,
reply.
Stephen handed over the typed sheets, pointing to the title and signature.
—Who? the editor asked.
Bit torn off.
—Mr Garrett Deasy, Stephen said.
—That old pelters, the editor said. Who tore it? Was he short taken?

On swift sail flaming

From storm and south
He comes, pale vampire,
Mouth to my mouth.
—Good day, Stephen, the professor said, coming to peer over their shoulders.
Foot and mouth? Are you turned...?
 Bullockbefriending bard.
SHINDY IN WELLKNOWN RESTAURANT
—Good day, sir, Stephen answered blushing. The letter is not mine. Mr Garrett
Deasy asked me to...
—O, I know him, Myles Crawford said, and I knew his wife too. The bloodiest
old tartar God ever made. By Jesus, she had the foot and mouth disease and no
mistake! The night she threw the soup in the waiter's face in the Star and Garter.
Oho!
A woman brought sin into the world. For Helen, the runaway wife of Menelaus,
ten years the Greeks. O'Rourke, prince of Breffni.
—Is he a widower? Stephen asked.
—Ay, a grass one, Myles Crawford said, his eye running down the typescript.
Emperor's horses. Habsburg. An Irishman saved his life on the ramparts of Vienna.
Don't you forget! Maximilian Karl O'Donnell, graf von Tirconnell in Ireland. Sent
his heir over to make the king an Austrian fieldmarshal now. Going to be trouble
there one day. Wild geese. O yes, every time. Don't you forget that!
—The moot point is did he forget it, J. J. O'Molloy said quietly, turning a
horseshoe paperweight. Saving princes is a thank you job.
Professor MacHugh turned on him.
—And if not? he said.
—I'll tell you how it was, Myles Crawford began. A Hungarian it was one day...
LOST CAUSES
NOBLE MARQUESS MENTIONED
—We were always loyal to lost causes, the professor said. Success for us is the
death of the intellect and of the imagination. We were never loyal to the
successful. We serve them. I teach the blatant Latin language. I speak the tongue
of a race the acme of whose mentality is the maxim: time is money. Material
domination. Dominus! Lord! Where is the spirituality? Lord Jesus? Lord Salisbury?
A sofa in a westend club. But the Greek!
KYRIE ELEISON!
A smile of light brightened his darkrimmed eyes, lengthened his long lips.
—The Greek! he said again. Kyrios! Shining word! The vowels the Semite and
the Saxon know not. Kyrie! The radiance of the intellect. I ought to profess Greek,
the language of the mind. Kyrie eleison! The closetmaker and the cloacamaker will
never be lords of our spirit. We are liege subjects of the catholic chivalry of Europe
that foundered at Trafalgar and of the empire of the spirit, not an imperium, that
went under with the Athenian fleets at Aegospotami. Yes, yes. They went under.
Pyrrhus, misled by an oracle, made a last attempt to retrieve the fortunes of
Greece. Loyal to a lost cause.
He strode away from them towards the window.
—They went forth to battle, Mr O'Madden Burke said greyly, but they always
fell.
—Boohoo! Lenehan wept with a little noise. Owing to a brick received in the
latter half of the matinée. Poor, poor, poor Pyrrhus!
He whispered then near Stephen's ear:
LENEHAN'S LIMERICK

There's a ponderous pundit MacHugh

Who wears goggles of ebony hue.
As he mostly sees double
To wear them why trouble?
I can't see the Joe Miller. Can you?
In mourning for Sallust, Mulligan says. Whose mother is beastly dead.
Myles Crawford crammed the sheets into a sidepocket.
—That'll be all right, he said. I'll read the rest after. That'll be all right.
Lenehan extended his hands in protest.
—But my riddle! he said. What opera is like a railwayline?
—Opera? Mr O'Madden Burke's sphinx face reriddled.
Lenehan announced gladly:
—The Rose of Castile. See the wheeze? Rows of cast steel. Gee!
He poked Mr O'Madden Burke mildly in the spleen. Mr O'Madden Burke fell
back with grace on his umbrella, feigning a gasp.
—Help! he sighed. I feel a strong weakness.
Lenehan, rising to tiptoe, fanned his face rapidly with the rustling tissues.
The professor, returning by way of the files, swept his hand across Stephen's
and Mr O'Madden Burke's loose ties.
—Paris, past and present, he said. You look like communards.
—Like fellows who had blown up the Bastile, J. J. O'Molloy said in quiet
mockery. Or was it you shot the lord lieutenant of Finland between you? You look
as though you had done the deed. General Bobrikoff.
OMNIUM GATHERUM
 —We were only thinking about it, Stephen said.
—All the talents, Myles Crawford said. Law, the classics...
—The turf, Lenehan put in.
—Literature, the press.
—If Bloom were here, the professor said. The gentle art of advertisement.
—And Madam Bloom, Mr O'Madden Burke added. The vocal muse. Dublin's
prime favourite.
Lenehan gave a loud cough.
—Ahem! he said very softly. O, for a fresh of breath air! I caught a cold in the
park. The gate was open.
YOU CAN DO IT!
The editor laid a nervous hand on Stephen's shoulder.
—I want you to write something for me, he said. Something with a bite in it.
You can do it. I see it in your face. In the lexicon of youth ...
See it in your face. See it in your eye. Lazy idle little schemer.
—Foot and mouth disease! the editor cried in scornful invective. Great
nationalist meeting in Borris-in-Ossory. All balls! Bulldosing the public! Give them
something with a bite in it. Put us all into it, damn its soul. Father, Son and Holy
Ghost and Jakes M'Carthy.
—We can all supply mental pabulum, Mr O'Madden Burke said.
Stephen raised his eyes to the bold unheeding stare.
—He wants you for the pressgang, J. J. O'Molloy said.
THE GREAT GALLAHER
—You can do it, Myles Crawford repeated, clenching his hand in emphasis.
Wait a minute. We'll paralyse Europe as Ignatius Gallaher used to say when he
was on the shaughraun, doing billiardmarking in the Clarence. Gallaher, that was
a pressman for you. That was a pen. You know how he made his mark? I'll tell
you. That was the smartest piece of journalism ever known. That was in
eightyone, sixth of May, time of the invincibles, murder in the Phoenix park,
before you were born, I suppose. I'll show you.
He pushed past them to the files.
—Look at here, he said turning. The New York World cabled for a special.
Remember that time?
Professor MacHugh nodded.
 —New York World, the editor said, excitedly pushing back his straw hat. Where
it took place. Tim Kelly, or Kavanagh I mean. Joe Brady and the rest of them.
Where Skin-the-Goat drove the car. Whole route, see?
—Skin-the-Goat, Mr O'Madden Burke said. Fitzharris. He has that cabman's
shelter, they say, down there at Butt bridge. Holohan told me. You know
Holohan?
—Hop and carry one, is it? Myles Crawford said.
—And poor Gumley is down there too, so he told me, minding stones for the
corporation. A night watchman.
Stephen turned in surprise.
—Gumley? he said. You don't say so? A friend of my father's, is it?
—Never mind Gumley, Myles Crawford cried angrily. Let Gumley mind the
stones, see they don't run away. Look at here. What did Ignatius Gallaher do? I'll
tell you. Inspiration of genius. Cabled right away. Have you Weekly Freeman of
17 March? Right. Have you got that?
He flung back pages of the files and stuck his finger on a point.
—Take page four, advertisement for Bransome's coffee, let us say. Have you got
that? Right.
The telephone whirred.
A DISTANT VOICE
—I'll answer it, the professor said, going.
—B is parkgate. Good.
His finger leaped and struck point after point, vibrating.
—T is viceregal lodge. C is where murder took place. K is Knockmaroon gate.
The loose flesh of his neck shook like a cock's wattles. An illstarched dicky
jutted up and with a rude gesture he thrust it back into his waistcoat.
—Hello? Evening Telegraph here... Hello?... Who's there?... Yes... Yes... Yes.
—F to P is the route Skin-the-Goat drove the car for an alibi, Inchicore,
Roundtown, Windy Arbour, Palmerston Park, Ranelagh. F.A.B.P. Got that? X is
Davy's publichouse in upper Leeson street.
The professor came to the inner door.
—Bloom is at the telephone, he said.
—Tell him go to hell, the editor said promptly. X is Davy's publichouse, see?
CLEVER, VERY
 —Clever, Lenehan said. Very.
—Gave it to them on a hot plate, Myles Crawford said, the whole bloody
history.
Nightmare from which you will never awake.
—I saw it, the editor said proudly. I was present. Dick Adams, the besthearted
bloody Corkman the Lord ever put the breath of life in, and myself.
Lenehan bowed to a shape of air, announcing:
—Madam, I'm Adam. And Able was I ere I saw Elba.
—History! Myles Crawford cried. The Old Woman of Prince's street was there
first. There was weeping and gnashing of teeth over that. Out of an advertisement.
Gregor Grey made the design for it. That gave him the leg up. Then Paddy Hooper
worked Tay Pay who took him on to the Star. Now he's got in with Blumenfeld.
That's press. That's talent. Pyatt! He was all their daddies!
—The father of scare journalism, Lenehan confirmed, and the brother-in-law of
Chris Callinan.
—Hello?... Are you there?... Yes, he's here still. Come across yourself.
—Where do you find a pressman like that now, eh? the editor cried. He flung
the pages down.
—Clamn dever, Lenehan said to Mr O'Madden Burke.
—Very smart, Mr O'Madden Burke said.
Professor MacHugh came from the inner office.
—Talking about the invincibles, he said, did you see that some hawkers were up
before the recorder?
—O yes, J. J. O'Molloy said eagerly. Lady Dudley was walking home through the
park to see all the trees that were blown down by that cyclone last year and
thought she'd buy a view of Dublin. And it turned out to be a commemoration
postcard of Joe Brady or Number One or Skin-the-Goat. Right outside the viceregal
lodge, imagine!
—They're only in the hook and eye department, Myles Crawford said. Psha!
Press and the bar! Where have you a man now at the bar like those fellows, like
Whiteside, like Isaac Butt, like silvertongued O'Hagan. Eh? Ah, bloody nonsense.
Psha! Only in the halfpenny place.
His mouth continued to twitch unspeaking in nervous curls of disdain.
Would anyone wish that mouth for her kiss? How do you know? Why did you
write it then?
RHYMES AND REASONS
 Mouth, south. Is the mouth south someway? Or the south a mouth? Must be
some. South, pout, out, shout, drouth. Rhymes: two men dressed the same,
looking the same, two by two.

........................ la tua pace

.................. che parlar ti piace
.... mentreché il vento, come fa, si tace.
He saw them three by three, approaching girls, in green, in rose, in russet,
entwining, per l'aer perso, in mauve, in purple, quella pacifica oriafiamma, gold of
oriflamme, di rimirar fe piu ardenti. But I old men, penitent, leadenfooted,
underdarkneath the night: mouth south: tomb womb.
—Speak up for yourself, Mr O'Madden Burke said.
SUFFICIENT FOR THE DAY...
J. J. O'Molloy, smiling palely, took up the gage.
—My dear Myles, he said, flinging his cigarette aside, you put a false
construction on my words. I hold no brief, as at present advised, for the third
profession qua profession but your Cork legs are running away with you. Why not
bring in Henry Grattan and Flood and Demosthenes and Edmund Burke? Ignatius
Gallaher we all know and his Chapelizod boss, Harmsworth of the farthing press,
and his American cousin of the Bowery guttersheet not to mention Paddy Kelly's
Budget, Pue's Occurrences and our watchful friend The Skibbereen Eagle. Why
bring in a master of forensic eloquence like Whiteside? Sufficient for the day is the
newspaper thereof. LINKS WITH BYGONE DAYS OF YORE
—Grattan and Flood wrote for this very paper, the editor cried in his face. Irish
volunteers. Where are you now? Established 1763. Dr Lucas. Who have you now
like John Philpot Curran? Psha!
—Well, J. J. O'Molloy said, Bushe K.C., for example.
—Bushe? the editor said. Well, yes: Bushe, yes. He has a strain of it in his
blood. Kendal Bushe or I mean Seymour Bushe.
—He would have been on the bench long ago, the professor said, only for ... But
no matter.
J. J. O'Molloy turned to Stephen and said quietly and slowly:
—One of the most polished periods I think I ever listened to in my life fell from
the lips of Seymour Bushe. It was in that case of fratricide, the Childs murder
case. Bushe defended him. And in the porches of mine ear did pour.
By the way how did he find that out? He died in his sleep. Or the other story,
beast with two backs?
—What was that? the professor asked.
 ITALIA, MAGISTRA ARTIUM
—He spoke on the law of evidence, J. J. O'Molloy said, of Roman justice as
contrasted with the earlier Mosaic code, the lex talionis. And he cited the Moses of
Michelangelo in the vatican.
—Ha.
—A few wellchosen words, Lenehan prefaced. Silence!
Pause. J. J. O'Molloy took out his cigarettecase.
False lull. Something quite ordinary.
Messenger took out his matchbox thoughtfully and lit his cigar.
I have often thought since on looking back over that strange time that it was
that small act, trivial in itself, that striking of that match, that determined the
whole aftercourse of both our lives. A POLISHED PERIOD
J. J. O'Molloy resumed, moulding his words:
—He said of it: that stony effigy in frozen music, horned and terrible, of the
human form divine, that eternal symbol of wisdom and of prophecy which, if aught
that the imagination or the hand of sculptor has wrought in marble of
soultransfigured and of soultransfiguring deserves to live, deserves to live.
His slim hand with a wave graced echo and fall.
—Fine! Myles Crawford said at once.
—The divine afflatus, Mr O'Madden Burke said.
—You like it? J. J. O'Molloy asked Stephen.
Stephen, his blood wooed by grace of language and gesture, blushed. He took a
cigarette from the case. J. J. O'Molloy offered his case to Myles Crawford. Lenehan
lit their cigarettes as before and took his trophy, saying:
—Muchibus thankibus.
A MAN OF HIGH MORALE
—Professor Magennis was speaking to me about you, J. J. O'Molloy said to
Stephen. What do you think really of that hermetic crowd, the opal hush poets: A.
E. the mastermystic? That Blavatsky woman started it. She was a nice old bag of
tricks. A. E. has been telling some yankee interviewer that you came to him in the
small hours of the morning to ask him about planes of consciousness. Magennis
thinks you must have been pulling A. E.'s leg. He is a man of the very highest
morale, Magennis.
Speaking about me. What did he say? What did he say? What did he say about
me? Don't ask.
 —No, thanks, professor MacHugh said, waving the cigarettecase aside. Wait a
moment. Let me say one thing. The finest display of oratory I ever heard was a
speech made by John F Taylor at the college historical society. Mr Justice
Fitzgibbon, the present lord justice of appeal, had spoken and the paper under
debate was an essay (new for those days), advocating the revival of the Irish
tongue.
He turned towards Myles Crawford and said:
—You know Gerald Fitzgibbon. Then you can imagine the style of his discourse.
—He is sitting with Tim Healy, J. J. O'Molloy said, rumour has it, on the Trinity
college estates commission.
—He is sitting with a sweet thing, Myles Crawford said, in a child's frock. Go
on. Well?
—It was the speech, mark you, the professor said, of a finished orator, full of
courteous haughtiness and pouring in chastened diction I will not say the vials of
his wrath but pouring the proud man's contumely upon the new movement. It was
then a new movement. We were weak, therefore worthless.
He closed his long thin lips an instant but, eager to be on, raised an outspanned
hand to his spectacles and, with trembling thumb and ringfinger touching lightly
the black rims, steadied them to a new focus.
IMPROMPTU
In ferial tone he addressed J. J. O'Molloy:
—Taylor had come there, you must know, from a sickbed. That he had prepared
his speech I do not believe for there was not even one shorthandwriter in the hall.
His dark lean face had a growth of shaggy beard round it. He wore a loose white
silk neckcloth and altogether he looked (though he was not) a dying man.
His gaze turned at once but slowly from J. J. O'Molloy's towards Stephen's face
and then bent at once to the ground, seeking. His unglazed linen collar appeared
behind his bent head, soiled by his withering hair. Still seeking, he said:
—When Fitzgibbon's speech had ended John F Taylor rose to reply. Briefly, as
well as I can bring them to mind, his words were these.
He raised his head firmly. His eyes bethought themselves once more. Witless
shellfish swam in the gross lenses to and fro, seeking outlet.
He began:
—Mr Chairman, ladies and gentlemen: Great was my admiration in listening to
the remarks addressed to the youth of Ireland a moment since by my learned friend.
It seemed to me that I had been transported into a country far away from this
country, into an age remote from this age, that I stood in ancient Egypt and that I
was listening to the speech of some highpriest of that land addressed to the youthful
Moses.
 His listeners held their cigarettes poised to hear, their smokes ascending in frail
stalks that flowered with his speech. And let our crooked smokes. Noble words
coming. Look out. Could you try your hand at it yourself?
—And it seemed to me that I heard the voice of that Egyptian highpriest raised in
a tone of like haughtiness and like pride. I heard his words and their meaning was
revealed to me.
FROM THE FATHERS
It was revealed to me that those things are good which yet are corrupted which
neither if they were supremely good nor unless they were good could be
corrupted. Ah, curse you! That's saint Augustine.
—Why will you jews not accept our culture, our religion and our language? You
are a tribe of nomad herdsmen: we are a mighty people. You have no cities nor no
wealth: our cities are hives of humanity and our galleys, trireme and quadrireme,
laden with all manner merchandise furrow the waters of the known globe. You have
but emerged from primitive conditions: we have a literature, a priesthood, an
agelong history and a polity.
Nile.
Child, man, effigy.
By the Nilebank the babemaries kneel, cradle of bulrushes: a man supple in
combat: stonehorned, stonebearded, heart of stone.
—You pray to a local and obscure idol: our temples, majestic and mysterious, are
the abodes of Isis and Osiris, of Horus and Ammon Ra. Yours serfdom, awe and
humbleness: ours thunder and the seas. Israel is weak and few are her children:
Egypt is an host and terrible are her arms. Vagrants and daylabourers are you
called: the world trembles at our name.
A dumb belch of hunger cleft his speech. He lifted his voice above it boldly:
—But, ladies and gentlemen, had the youthful Moses listened to and accepted that
view of life, had he bowed his head and bowed his will and bowed his spirit before
that arrogant admonition he would never have brought the chosen people out of their
house of bondage, nor followed the pillar of the cloud by day. He would never have
spoken with the Eternal amid lightnings on Sinai's mountaintop nor ever have come
down with the light of inspiration shining in his countenance and bearing in his
arms the tables of the law, graven in the language of the outlaw.
He ceased and looked at them, enjoying a silence.
OMINOUS—FOR HIM!
J. J. O'Molloy said not without regret:
—And yet he died without having entered the land of promise.
 —A sudden—at—the—moment—though—from—lingering—illness—often—
previously—expectorated—demise, Lenehan added. And with a great future
behind him.
The troop of bare feet was heard rushing along the hallway and pattering up the
staircase.
—That is oratory, the professor said uncontradicted. Gone with the wind. Hosts
at Mullaghmast and Tara of the kings. Miles of ears of porches. The tribune's
words, howled and scattered to the four winds. A people sheltered within his
voice. Dead noise. Akasic records of all that ever anywhere wherever was. Love
and laud him: me no more.
I have money.
—Gentlemen, Stephen said. As the next motion on the agenda paper may I
suggest that the house do now adjourn?
—You take my breath away. It is not perchance a French compliment? Mr
O'Madden Burke asked. 'Tis the hour, methinks, when the winejug, metaphorically
speaking, is most grateful in Ye ancient hostelry.
—That it be and hereby is resolutely resolved. All that are in favour say ay,
Lenehan announced. The contrary no. I declare it carried. To which particular
boosing shed?... My casting vote is: Mooney's!
He led the way, admonishing:
—We will sternly refuse to partake of strong waters, will we not? Yes, we will
not. By no manner of means.
Mr O'Madden Burke, following close, said with an ally's lunge of his umbrella:
—Lay on, Macduff!
—Chip of the old block! the editor cried, clapping Stephen on the shoulder. Let
us go. Where are those blasted keys?
He fumbled in his pocket pulling out the crushed typesheets.
—Foot and mouth. I know. That'll be all right. That'll go in. Where are they?
That's all right.
He thrust the sheets back and went into the inner office. LET US HOPE
J. J. O'Molloy, about to follow him in, said quietly to Stephen:
—I hope you will live to see it published. Myles, one moment.
He went into the inner office, closing the door behind him.
—Come along, Stephen, the professor said. That is fine, isn't it? It has the
prophetic vision. Fuit Ilium! The sack of windy Troy. Kingdoms of this world. The
masters of the Mediterranean are fellaheen today.
 The first newsboy came pattering down the stairs at their heels and rushed out
into the street, yelling:
—Racing special!
Dublin. I have much, much to learn.
They turned to the left along Abbey street.
—I have a vision too, Stephen said.
—Yes? the professor said, skipping to get into step. Crawford will follow.
Another newsboy shot past them, yelling as he ran:
—Racing special!
DEAR DIRTY DUBLIN
Dubliners.
—Two Dublin vestals, Stephen said, elderly and pious, have lived fifty and
fiftythree years in Fumbally's lane.
—Where is that? the professor asked.
—Off Blackpitts, Stephen said.
Damp night reeking of hungry dough. Against the wall. Face glistering tallow
under her fustian shawl. Frantic hearts. Akasic records. Quicker, darlint!
On now. Dare it. Let there be life.
—They want to see the views of Dublin from the top of Nelson's pillar. They
save up three and tenpence in a red tin letterbox moneybox. They shake out the
threepenny bits and sixpences and coax out the pennies with the blade of a knife.
Two and three in silver and one and seven in coppers. They put on their bonnets
and best clothes and take their umbrellas for fear it may come on to rain.
—Wise virgins, professor MacHugh said.
LIFE ON THE RAW
—They buy one and fourpenceworth of brawn and four slices of panloaf at the
north city diningrooms in Marlborough street from Miss Kate Collins,
proprietress... They purchase four and twenty ripe plums from a girl at the foot of
Nelson's pillar to take off the thirst of the brawn. They give two threepenny bits to
the gentleman at the turnstile and begin to waddle slowly up the winding
staircase, grunting, encouraging each other, afraid of the dark, panting, one asking
the other have you the brawn, praising God and the Blessed Virgin, threatening to
come down, peeping at the airslits. Glory be to God. They had no idea it was that
high.
 Their names are Anne Kearns and Florence MacCabe. Anne Kearns has the
lumbago for which she rubs on Lourdes water, given her by a lady who got a
bottleful from a passionist father. Florence MacCabe takes a crubeen and a bottle
of double X for supper every Saturday.
—Antithesis, the professor said nodding twice. Vestal virgins. I can see them.
What's keeping our friend?
He turned.
A bevy of scampering newsboys rushed down the steps, scattering in all
directions, yelling, their white papers fluttering. Hard after them Myles Crawford
appeared on the steps, his hat aureoling his scarlet face, talking with J. J.
O'Molloy.
—Come along, the professor cried, waving his arm.
He set off again to walk by Stephen's side. RETURN OF BLOOM
—Yes, he said. I see them.
Mr Bloom, breathless, caught in a whirl of wild newsboys near the offices of the
Irish Catholic and Dublin Penny Journal, called:
—Mr Crawford! A moment!
—Telegraph! Racing special!
—What is it? Myles Crawford said, falling back a pace.
A newsboy cried in Mr Bloom's face:
—Terrible tragedy in Rathmines! A child bit by a bellows!
INTERVIEW WITH THE EDITOR
—Just this ad, Mr Bloom said, pushing through towards the steps, puffing, and
taking the cutting from his pocket. I spoke with Mr Keyes just now. He'll give a
renewal for two months, he says. After he'll see. But he wants a par to call
attention in the Telegraph too, the Saturday pink. And he wants it copied if it's not
too late I told councillor Nannetti from the Kilkenny People. I can have access to it
in the national library. House of keys, don't you see? His name is Keyes. It's a play
on the name. But he practically promised he'd give the renewal. But he wants just
a little puff. What will I tell him, Mr Crawford? K.M.A.
—Will you tell him he can kiss my arse? Myles Crawford said throwing out his
arm for emphasis. Tell him that straight from the stable.
A bit nervy. Look out for squalls. All off for a drink. Arm in arm. Lenehan's
yachting cap on the cadge beyond. Usual blarney. Wonder is that young Dedalus
the moving spirit. Has a good pair of boots on him today. Last time I saw him he
had his heels on view. Been walking in muck somewhere. Careless chap. What was
he doing in Irishtown?
 —Well, Mr Bloom said, his eyes returning, if I can get the design I suppose it's
worth a short par. He'd give the ad, I think. I'll tell him ... K.M.R.I.A.
—He can kiss my royal Irish arse, Myles Crawford cried loudly over his
shoulder. Any time he likes, tell him.
While Mr Bloom stood weighing the point and about to smile he strode on
jerkily.
RAISING THE WIND
—Nulla bona, Jack, he said, raising his hand to his chin. I'm up to here. I've
been through the hoop myself. I was looking for a fellow to back a bill for me no
later than last week. Sorry, Jack. You must take the will for the deed. With a heart
and a half if I could raise the wind anyhow.
J. J. O'Molloy pulled a long face and walked on silently. They caught up on the
others and walked abreast.
—When they have eaten the brawn and the bread and wiped their twenty
fingers in the paper the bread was wrapped in they go nearer to the railings.
—Something for you, the professor explained to Myles Crawford. Two old
Dublin women on the top of Nelson's pillar.
SOME COLUMN!—THAT'S WHAT WADDLER ONE SAID
—That's new, Myles Crawford said. That's copy. Out for the waxies Dargle. Two
old trickies, what?
—But they are afraid the pillar will fall, Stephen went on. They see the roofs
and argue about where the different churches are: Rathmines' blue dome, Adam
and Eve's, saint Laurence O'Toole's. But it makes them giddy to look so they pull
up their skirts...
THOSE SLIGHTLY RAMBUNCTIOUS FEMALES
—Easy all, Myles Crawford said. No poetic licence. We're in the archdiocese
here.
—And settle down on their striped petticoats, peering up at the statue of the
onehandled adulterer.
—Onehandled adulterer! the professor cried. I like that. I see the idea. I see
what you mean.
DAMES DONATE DUBLIN'S CITS SPEEDPILLS VELOCITOUS AEROLITHS,
BELIEF
—It gives them a crick in their necks, Stephen said, and they are too tired to
look up or down or to speak. They put the bag of plums between them and eat the
plums out of it, one after another, wiping off with their handkerchiefs the
plumjuice that dribbles out of their mouths and spitting the plumstones slowly out
between the railings.
He gave a sudden loud young laugh as a close. Lenehan and Mr O'Madden
Burke, hearing, turned, beckoned and led on across towards Mooney's.
—Finished? Myles Crawford said. So long as they do no worse.
SOPHIST WALLOPS HAUGHTY HELEN SQUARE ON PROBOSCIS. SPARTANS
GNASH MOLARS. ITHACANS VOW PEN IS CHAMP.
—You remind me of Antisthenes, the professor said, a disciple of Gorgias, the
sophist. It is said of him that none could tell if he were bitterer against others or
against himself. He was the son of a noble and a bondwoman. And he wrote a
book in which he took away the palm of beauty from Argive Helen and handed it
to poor Penelope.
Poor Penelope. Penelope Rich.
They made ready to cross O'Connell street.
HELLO THERE, CENTRAL!
At various points along the eight lines tramcars with motionless trolleys stood in
their tracks, bound for or from Rathmines, Rathfarnham, Blackrock, Kingstown
and Dalkey, Sandymount Green, Ringsend and Sandymount Tower, Donnybrook,
Palmerston Park and Upper Rathmines, all still, becalmed in short circuit.
Hackney cars, cabs, delivery waggons, mailvans, private broughams, aerated
mineral water floats with rattling crates of bottles, rattled, rolled, horsedrawn,
rapidly.
WHAT?—AND LIKEWISE—WHERE?
—But what do you call it? Myles Crawford asked. Where did they get the
plums?
VIRGILIAN, SAYS PEDAGOGUE. SOPHOMORE PLUMPS FOR OLD MAN
MOSES.
—Call it, wait, the professor said, opening his long lips wide to reflect. Call it,
let me see. Call it: deus nobis haec otia fecit.
—No, Stephen said. I call it A Pisgah Sight of Palestine or the Parable of The
Plums.
—I see, the professor said.
He laughed richly.
—I see, he said again with new pleasure. Moses and the promised land. We
gave him that idea, he added to J. J. O'Molloy.
HORATIO IS CYNOSURE THIS FAIR JUNE DAY
 J. J. O'Molloy sent a weary sidelong glance towards the statue and held his
peace.
—I see, the professor said.
He halted on sir John Gray's pavement island and peered aloft at Nelson
through the meshes of his wry smile.
DIMINISHED DIGITS PROVE TOO TITILLATING FOR FRISKY FRUMPS.
ANNE WIMBLES, FLO WANGLES—YET CAN YOU BLAME THEM?
—Onehandled adulterer, he said smiling grimly. That tickles me, I must say.
—Tickled the old ones too, Myles Crawford said, if the God Almighty's truth
was known.
Pineapple rock, lemon platt, butter scotch. A sugarsticky girl shovelling
scoopfuls of creams for a christian brother. Some school treat. Bad for their
tummies. Lozenge and comfit manufacturer to His Majesty the King. God. Save.
Our. Sitting on his throne sucking red jujubes white.
A sombre Y.M.C.A. young man, watchful among the warm sweet fumes of
Graham Lemon's, placed a throwaway in a hand of Mr Bloom.
Heart to heart talks.
Bloo... Me? No.
Blood of the Lamb.
His slow feet walked him riverward, reading. Are you saved? All are washed in
the blood of the lamb. God wants blood victim. Birth, hymen, martyr, war,
foundation of a building, sacrifice, kidney burntoffering, druids' altars. Elijah is
coming. Dr John Alexander Dowie restorer of the church in Zion is coming.
Is coming! Is coming!! Is coming!!! All heartily welcome. Paying game. Torry and
Alexander last year. Polygamy. His wife will put the stopper on that. Where was
that ad some Birmingham firm the luminous crucifix. Our Saviour. Wake up in the
dead of night and see him on the wall, hanging. Pepper's ghost idea. Iron nails ran
in.
Phosphorus it must be done with. If you leave a bit of codfish for instance. I
could see the bluey silver over it. Night I went down to the pantry in the kitchen.
Don't like all the smells in it waiting to rush out. What was it she wanted? The
Malaga raisins. Thinking of Spain. Before Rudy was born. The phosphorescence,
that bluey greeny. Very good for the brain.
From Butler's monument house corner he glanced along Bachelor's walk.
Dedalus' daughter there still outside Dillon's auctionrooms. Must be selling off
some old furniture. Knew her eyes at once from the father. Lobbing about waiting
for him. Home always breaks up when the mother goes. Fifteen children he had.
Birth every year almost. That's in their theology or the priest won't give the poor
woman the confession, the absolution. Increase and multiply. Did you ever hear
such an idea? Eat you out of house and home. No families themselves to feed.
Living on the fat of the land. Their butteries and larders. I'd like to see them do
the black fast Yom Kippur. Crossbuns. One meal and a collation for fear he'd
collapse on the altar. A housekeeper of one of those fellows if you could pick it
out of her. Never pick it out of her. Like getting l.s.d. out of him. Does himself
well. No guests. All for number one. Watching his water. Bring your own bread
and butter. His reverence: mum's the word.
Good Lord, that poor child's dress is in flitters. Underfed she looks too.
Potatoes and marge, marge and potatoes. It's after they feel it. Proof of the
pudding. Undermines the constitution.
As he set foot on O'Connell bridge a puffball of smoke plumed up from the
parapet. Brewery barge with export stout. England. Sea air sours it, I heard. Be
interesting some day get a pass through Hancock to see the brewery. Regular
world in itself. Vats of porter wonderful. Rats get in too. Drink themselves bloated
as big as a collie floating. Dead drunk on the porter. Drink till they puke again
like christians. Imagine drinking that! Rats: vats. Well, of course, if we knew all
the things.
Looking down he saw flapping strongly, wheeling between the gaunt quaywalls,
gulls. Rough weather outside. If I threw myself down? Reuben J's son must have
swallowed a good bellyful of that sewage. One and eightpence too much. Hhhhm.
It's the droll way he comes out with the things. Knows how to tell a story too.
They wheeled lower. Looking for grub. Wait.
He threw down among them a crumpled paper ball. Elijah thirtytwo feet per sec
is com. Not a bit. The ball bobbed unheeded on the wake of swells, floated under
by the bridgepiers. Not such damn fools. Also the day I threw that stale cake out
of the Erin's King picked it up in the wake fifty yards astern. Live by their wits.
They wheeled, flapping.

The hungry famished gull

Flaps o'er the waters dull.
That is how poets write, the similar sounds. But then Shakespeare has no
rhymes: blank verse. The flow of the language it is. The thoughts. Solemn.

Hamlet, I am thy father's spirit

Doomed for a certain time to walk the earth.
—Two apples a penny! Two for a penny!
His gaze passed over the glazed apples serried on her stand. Australians they
must be this time of year. Shiny peels: polishes them up with a rag or a
handkerchief.
Wait. Those poor birds.
 He halted again and bought from the old applewoman two Banbury cakes for a
penny and broke the brittle paste and threw its fragments down into the Liffey.
See that? The gulls swooped silently, two, then all from their heights, pouncing on
prey. Gone. Every morsel.
Aware of their greed and cunning he shook the powdery crumb from his hands.
They never expected that. Manna. Live on fish, fishy flesh they have, all seabirds,
gulls, seagoose. Swans from Anna Liffey swim down here sometimes to preen
themselves. No accounting for tastes. Wonder what kind is swanmeat. Robinson
Crusoe had to live on them.
They wheeled flapping weakly. I'm not going to throw any more. Penny quite
enough. Lot of thanks I get. Not even a caw. They spread foot and mouth disease
too. If you cram a turkey say on chestnutmeal it tastes like that. Eat pig like pig.
But then why is it that saltwater fish are not salty? How is that?
His eyes sought answer from the river and saw a rowboat rock at anchor on the
treacly swells lazily its plastered board.
Kino's 11/- Trousers
Good idea that. Wonder if he pays rent to the corporation. How can you own
water really? It's always flowing in a stream, never the same, which in the stream
of life we trace. Because life is a stream. All kinds of places are good for ads. That
quack doctor for the clap used to be stuck up in all the greenhouses. Never see it
now. Strictly confidential. Dr Hy Franks. Didn't cost him a red like Maginni the
dancing master self advertisement. Got fellows to stick them up or stick them up
himself for that matter on the q. t. running in to loosen a button. Flybynight. Just
the place too. POST NO BILLS. POST 110 PILLS. Some chap with a dose burning
him.
If he...?
O!
Eh?
No... No.
No, no. I don't believe it. He wouldn't surely?
No, no.
Mr Bloom moved forward, raising his troubled eyes. Think no more about that.
After one. Timeball on the ballastoffice is down. Dunsink time. Fascinating little
book that is of sir Robert Ball's. Parallax. I never exactly understood. There's a
priest. Could ask him. Par it's Greek: parallel, parallax. Met him pike hoses she
called it till I told her about the transmigration. O rocks!
Mr Bloom smiled O rocks at two windows of the ballastoffice. She's right after
all. Only big words for ordinary things on account of the sound. She's not exactly
witty. Can be rude too. Blurt out what I was thinking. Still, I don't know. She
used to say Ben Dollard had a base barreltone voice. He has legs like barrels and
you'd think he was singing into a barrel. Now, isn't that wit. They used to call him
big Ben. Not half as witty as calling him base barreltone. Appetite like an
albatross. Get outside of a baron of beef. Powerful man he was at stowing away
number one Bass. Barrel of Bass. See? It all works out.
A procession of whitesmocked sandwichmen marched slowly towards him along
the gutter, scarlet sashes across their boards. Bargains. Like that priest they are
this morning: we have sinned: we have suffered. He read the scarlet letters on
their five tall white hats: H. E. L. Y. S. Wisdom Hely's. Y lagging behind drew a
chunk of bread from under his foreboard, crammed it into his mouth and
munched as he walked. Our staple food. Three bob a day, walking along the
gutters, street after street. Just keep skin and bone together, bread and skilly.
They are not Boyl: no, M Glade's men. Doesn't bring in any business either. I
suggested to him about a transparent showcart with two smart girls sitting inside
writing letters, copybooks, envelopes, blottingpaper. I bet that would have caught
on. Smart girls writing something catch the eye at once. Everyone dying to know
what she's writing. Get twenty of them round you if you stare at nothing. Have a
finger in the pie. Women too. Curiosity. Pillar of salt. Wouldn't have it of course
because he didn't think of it himself first. Or the inkbottle I suggested with a false
stain of black celluloid. His ideas for ads like Plumtree's potted under the
obituaries, cold meat department. You can't lick 'em. What? Our envelopes. Hello,
Jones, where are you going? Can't stop, Robinson, I am hastening to purchase the
only reliable inkeraser Kansell, sold by Hely's Ltd, 85 Dame street. Well out of
that ruck I am. Devil of a job it was collecting accounts of those convents.
Tranquilla convent. That was a nice nun there, really sweet face. Wimple suited
her small head. Sister? Sister? I am sure she was crossed in love by her eyes. Very
hard to bargain with that sort of a woman. I disturbed her at her devotions that
morning. But glad to communicate with the outside world. Our great day, she
said. Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Sweet name too: caramel. She knew I, I
think she knew by the way she. If she had married she would have changed. I
suppose they really were short of money. Fried everything in the best butter all
the same. No lard for them. My heart's broke eating dripping. They like buttering
themselves in and out. Molly tasting it, her veil up. Sister? Pat Claffey, the
pawnbroker's daughter. It was a nun they say invented barbed wire.
He crossed Westmoreland street when apostrophe S had plodded by. Rover
cycleshop. Those races are on today. How long ago is that? Year Phil Gilligan
died. We were in Lombard street west. Wait: was in Thom's. Got the job in
Wisdom Hely's year we married. Six years. Ten years ago: ninetyfour he died yes
that's right the big fire at Arnott's. Val Dillon was lord mayor. The Glencree
dinner. Alderman Robert O'Reilly emptying the port into his soup before the flag
fell. Bobbob lapping it for the inner alderman. Couldn't hear what the band
played. For what we have already received may the Lord make us. Milly was a
kiddy then. Molly had that elephantgrey dress with the braided frogs. Mantailored
with selfcovered buttons. She didn't like it because I sprained my ankle first day
she wore choir picnic at the Sugarloaf. As if that. Old Goodwin's tall hat done up
with some sticky stuff. Flies' picnic too. Never put a dress on her back like it.
Fitted her like a glove, shoulders and hips. Just beginning to plump it out well.
Rabbitpie we had that day. People looking after her.
Happy. Happier then. Snug little room that was with the red wallpaper.
Dockrell's, one and ninepence a dozen. Milly's tubbing night. American soap I
bought: elderflower. Cosy smell of her bathwater. Funny she looked soaped all
over. Shapely too. Now photography. Poor papa's daguerreotype atelier he told me
of. Hereditary taste.
He walked along the curbstone.
Stream of life. What was the name of that priestylooking chap was always
squinting in when he passed? Weak eyes, woman. Stopped in Citron's saint
Kevin's parade. Pen something. Pendennis? My memory is getting. Pen ...? Of
course it's years ago. Noise of the trams probably. Well, if he couldn't remember
the dayfather's name that he sees every day.
Bartell d'Arcy was the tenor, just coming out then. Seeing her home after
practice. Conceited fellow with his waxedup moustache. Gave her that song Winds
that blow from the south.
Windy night that was I went to fetch her there was that lodge meeting on about
those lottery tickets after Goodwin's concert in the supperroom or oakroom of the
Mansion house. He and I behind. Sheet of her music blew out of my hand against
the High school railings. Lucky it didn't. Thing like that spoils the effect of a night
for her. Professor Goodwin linking her in front. Shaky on his pins, poor old sot.
His farewell concerts. Positively last appearance on any stage. May be for months
and may be for never. Remember her laughing at the wind, her blizzard collar up.
Corner of Harcourt road remember that gust. Brrfoo! Blew up all her skirts and
her boa nearly smothered old Goodwin. She did get flushed in the wind.
Remember when we got home raking up the fire and frying up those pieces of lap
of mutton for her supper with the Chutney sauce she liked. And the mulled rum.
Could see her in the bedroom from the hearth unclamping the busk of her stays:
white.
Swish and soft flop her stays made on the bed. Always warm from her. Always
liked to let her self out. Sitting there after till near two taking out her hairpins.
Milly tucked up in beddyhouse. Happy. Happy. That was the night...
—O, Mr Bloom, how do you do?
—O, how do you do, Mrs Breen?
—No use complaining. How is Molly those times? Haven't seen her for ages.
—In the pink, Mr Bloom said gaily. Milly has a position down in Mullingar, you
know.
—Go away! Isn't that grand for her?
—Yes. In a photographer's there. Getting on like a house on fire. How are all
your charges?
 —All on the baker's list, Mrs Breen said.
How many has she? No other in sight.
—You're in black, I see. You have no...
—No, Mr Bloom said. I have just come from a funeral.
Going to crop up all day, I foresee. Who's dead, when and what did he die of?
Turn up like a bad penny.
—O, dear me, Mrs Breen said. I hope it wasn't any near relation.
May as well get her sympathy.
—Dignam, Mr Bloom said. An old friend of mine. He died quite suddenly, poor
fellow. Heart trouble, I believe. Funeral was this morning.
Your funeral's tomorrow While you're coming through the rye. Diddlediddle
dumdum Diddlediddle...
—Sad to lose the old friends, Mrs Breen's womaneyes said melancholily.
Now that's quite enough about that. Just: quietly: husband.
—And your lord and master?
Mrs Breen turned up her two large eyes. Hasn't lost them anyhow.
—O, don't be talking! she said. He's a caution to rattlesnakes. He's in there now
with his lawbooks finding out the law of libel. He has me heartscalded. Wait till I
show you.
Hot mockturtle vapour and steam of newbaked jampuffs rolypoly poured out
from Harrison's. The heavy noonreek tickled the top of Mr Bloom's gullet. Want to
make good pastry, butter, best flour, Demerara sugar, or they'd taste it with the
hot tea. Or is it from her? A barefoot arab stood over the grating, breathing in the
fumes. Deaden the gnaw of hunger that way. Pleasure or pain is it? Penny dinner.
Knife and fork chained to the table.
Opening her handbag, chipped leather. Hatpin: ought to have a guard on those
things. Stick it in a chap's eye in the tram. Rummaging. Open. Money. Please take
one. Devils if they lose sixpence. Raise Cain. Husband barging. Where's the ten
shillings I gave you on Monday? Are you feeding your little brother's family?
Soiled handkerchief: medicinebottle. Pastille that was fell. What is she?...
—There must be a new moon out, she said. He's always bad then. Do you know
what he did last night?
Her hand ceased to rummage. Her eyes fixed themselves on him, wide in alarm,
yet smiling.
—What? Mr Bloom asked.
 Let her speak. Look straight in her eyes. I believe you. Trust me.
—Woke me up in the night, she said. Dream he had, a nightmare.
Indiges.
—Said the ace of spades was walking up the stairs.
—The ace of spades! Mr Bloom said.
She took a folded postcard from her handbag.
—Read that, she said. He got it this morning.
—What is it? Mr Bloom asked, taking the card. U.P.?
—U.P.: up, she said. Someone taking a rise out of him. It's a great shame for
them whoever he is.
—Indeed it is, Mr Bloom said.
She took back the card, sighing.
—And now he's going round to Mr Menton's office. He's going to take an action
for ten thousand pounds, he says.
She folded the card into her untidy bag and snapped the catch.
Same blue serge dress she had two years ago, the nap bleaching. Seen its best
days. Wispish hair over her ears. And that dowdy toque: three old grapes to take
the harm out of it. Shabby genteel. She used to be a tasty dresser. Lines round her
mouth. Only a year or so older than Molly.
See the eye that woman gave her, passing. Cruel. The unfair sex.
He looked still at her, holding back behind his look his discontent. Pungent
mockturtle oxtail mulligatawny. I'm hungry too. Flakes of pastry on the gusset of
her dress: daub of sugary flour stuck to her cheek. Rhubarb tart with liberal
fillings, rich fruit interior. Josie Powell that was. In Luke Doyle's long ago.
Dolphin's Barn, the charades. U.P.: up.
Change the subject.
—Do you ever see anything of Mrs Beaufoy? Mr Bloom asked.
—Mina Purefoy? she said.
Philip Beaufoy I was thinking. Playgoers' Club. Matcham often thinks of the
masterstroke. Did I pull the chain? Yes. The last act.
—Yes.
—I just called to ask on the way in is she over it. She's in the lying-in hospital in
Holles street. Dr Horne got her in. She's three days bad now.
—O, Mr Bloom said. I'm sorry to hear that.
 —Yes, Mrs Breen said. And a houseful of kids at home. It's a very stiff birth,
the nurse told me.
—-O, Mr Bloom said.
His heavy pitying gaze absorbed her news. His tongue clacked in compassion.
Dth! Dth!
—I'm sorry to hear that, he said. Poor thing! Three days! That's terrible for her.
Mrs Breen nodded.
—She was taken bad on the Tuesday...
Mr Bloom touched her funnybone gently, warning her:
—Mind! Let this man pass.
A bony form strode along the curbstone from the river staring with a rapt gaze
into the sunlight through a heavystringed glass. Tight as a skullpiece a tiny hat
gripped his head. From his arm a folded dustcoat, a stick and an umbrella dangled
to his stride.
—Watch him, Mr Bloom said. He always walks outside the lampposts. Watch!
—Who is he if it's a fair question? Mrs Breen asked. Is he dotty?
—His name is Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell, Mr Bloom said
smiling. Watch!
—He has enough of them, she said. Denis will be like that one of these days.
She broke off suddenly.
—There he is, she said. I must go after him. Goodbye. Remember me to Molly,
won't you?
—I will, Mr Bloom said.
He watched her dodge through passers towards the shopfronts. Denis Breen in
skimpy frockcoat and blue canvas shoes shuffled out of Harrison's hugging two
heavy tomes to his ribs. Blown in from the bay. Like old times. He suffered her to
overtake him without surprise and thrust his dull grey beard towards her, his
loose jaw wagging as he spoke earnestly.
Meshuggah. Off his chump.
Mr Bloom walked on again easily, seeing ahead of him in sunlight the tight
skullpiece, the dangling stickumbrelladustcoat. Going the two days. Watch him!
Out he goes again. One way of getting on in the world. And that other old mosey
lunatic in those duds. Hard time she must have with him.
 U.P.: up. I'll take my oath that's Alf Bergan or Richie Goulding. Wrote it for a
lark in the Scotch house I bet anything. Round to Menton's office. His oyster eyes
staring at the postcard. Be a feast for the gods.
He passed the Irish Times. There might be other answers Iying there. Like to
answer them all. Good system for criminals. Code. At their lunch now. Clerk with
the glasses there doesn't know me. O, leave them there to simmer. Enough bother
wading through fortyfour of them. Wanted, smart lady typist to aid gentleman in
literary work. I called you naughty darling because I do not like that other world.
Please tell me what is the meaning. Please tell me what perfume does your wife.
Tell me who made the world. The way they spring those questions on you. And
the other one Lizzie Twigg. My literary efforts have had the good fortune to meet
with the approval of the eminent poet A. E. (Mr Geo. Russell). No time to do her
hair drinking sloppy tea with a book of poetry.
Best paper by long chalks for a small ad. Got the provinces now. Cook and
general, exc. cuisine, housemaid kept. Wanted live man for spirit counter. Resp.
girl (R.C.) wishes to hear of post in fruit or pork shop. James Carlisle made that.
Six and a half per cent dividend. Made a big deal on Coates's shares. Ca' canny.
Cunning old Scotch hunks. All the toady news. Our gracious and popular
vicereine. Bought the Irish Field now. Lady Mountcashel has quite recovered after
her confinement and rode out with the Ward Union staghounds at the enlargement
yesterday at Rathoath. Uneatable fox. Pothunters too. Fear injects juices make it
tender enough for them. Riding astride. Sit her horse like a man. Weightcarrying
huntress. No sidesaddle or pillion for her, not for Joe. First to the meet and in at
the death. Strong as a brood mare some of those horsey women. Swagger around
livery stables. Toss off a glass of brandy neat while you'd say knife. That one at
the Grosvenor this morning. Up with her on the car: wishswish. Stonewall or
fivebarred gate put her mount to it. Think that pugnosed driver did it out of spite.
Who is this she was like? O yes! Mrs Miriam Dandrade that sold me her old
wraps and black underclothes in the Shelbourne hotel. Divorced Spanish
American. Didn't take a feather out of her my handling them. As if I was her
clotheshorse. Saw her in the viceregal party when Stubbs the park ranger got me
in with Whelan of the Express. Scavenging what the quality left. High tea.
Mayonnaise I poured on the plums thinking it was custard. Her ears ought to have
tingled for a few weeks after. Want to be a bull for her. Born courtesan. No
nursery work for her, thanks.
Poor Mrs Purefoy! Methodist husband. Method in his madness. Saffron bun and
milk and soda lunch in the educational dairy. Y. M. C. A. Eating with a
stopwatch, thirtytwo chews to the minute. And still his muttonchop whiskers
grew. Supposed to be well connected. Theodore's cousin in Dublin Castle. One
tony relative in every family. Hardy annuals he presents her with. Saw him out at
the Three Jolly Topers marching along bareheaded and his eldest boy carrying one
in a marketnet. The squallers. Poor thing! Then having to give the breast year
after year all hours of the night. Selfish those t.t's are. Dog in the manger. Only
one lump of sugar in my tea, if you please.
 He stood at Fleet street crossing. Luncheon interval. A sixpenny at Rowe's?
Must look up that ad in the national library. An eightpenny in the Burton. Better.
On my way.
He walked on past Bolton's Westmoreland house. Tea. Tea. Tea. I forgot to tap
Tom Kernan.
Sss. Dth, dth, dth! Three days imagine groaning on a bed with a vinegared
handkerchief round her forehead, her belly swollen out. Phew! Dreadful simply!
Child's head too big: forceps. Doubled up inside her trying to butt its way out
blindly, groping for the way out. Kill me that would. Lucky Molly got over hers
lightly. They ought to invent something to stop that. Life with hard labour.
Twilight sleep idea: queen Victoria was given that. Nine she had. A good layer.
Old woman that lived in a shoe she had so many children. Suppose he was
consumptive. Time someone thought about it instead of gassing about the what
was it the pensive bosom of the silver effulgence. Flapdoodle to feed fools on.
They could easily have big establishments whole thing quite painless out of all the
taxes give every child born five quid at compound interest up to twentyone five
per cent is a hundred shillings and five tiresome pounds multiply by twenty
decimal system encourage people to put by money save hundred and ten and a bit
twentyone years want to work it out on paper come to a tidy sum more than you
think.
Not stillborn of course. They are not even registered. Trouble for nothing.
Funny sight two of them together, their bellies out. Molly and Mrs Moisel.
Mothers' meeting. Phthisis retires for the time being, then returns. How flat they
look all of a sudden after. Peaceful eyes. Weight off their mind. Old Mrs Thornton
was a jolly old soul. All my babies, she said. The spoon of pap in her mouth
before she fed them. O, that's nyumnyum. Got her hand crushed by old Tom
Wall's son. His first bow to the public. Head like a prize pumpkin. Snuffy Dr
Murren. People knocking them up at all hours. For God' sake, doctor. Wife in her
throes. Then keep them waiting months for their fee. To attendance on your wife.
No gratitude in people. Humane doctors, most of them.
Before the huge high door of the Irish house of parliament a flock of pigeons
flew. Their little frolic after meals. Who will we do it on? I pick the fellow in
black. Here goes. Here's good luck. Must be thrilling from the air. Apjohn, myself
and Owen Goldberg up in the trees near Goose green playing the monkeys.
Mackerel they called me.
A squad of constables debouched from College street, marching in Indian file.
Goosestep. Foodheated faces, sweating helmets, patting their truncheons. After
their feed with a good load of fat soup under their belts. Policeman's lot is oft a
happy one. They split up in groups and scattered, saluting, towards their beats.
Let out to graze. Best moment to attack one in pudding time. A punch in his
dinner. A squad of others, marching irregularly, rounded Trinity railings making
for the station. Bound for their troughs. Prepare to receive cavalry. Prepare to
receive soup.
 He crossed under Tommy Moore's roguish finger. They did right to put him up
over a urinal: meeting of the waters. Ought to be places for women. Running into
cakeshops. Settle my hat straight. There is not in this wide world a vallee. Great
song of Julia Morkan's. Kept her voice up to the very last. Pupil of Michael Balfe's,
wasn't she?
He gazed after the last broad tunic. Nasty customers to tackle. Jack Power could
a tale unfold: father a G man. If a fellow gave them trouble being lagged they let
him have it hot and heavy in the bridewell. Can't blame them after all with the job
they have especially the young hornies. That horsepoliceman the day Joe
Chamberlain was given his degree in Trinity he got a run for his money. My word
he did! His horse's hoofs clattering after us down Abbey street. Lucky I had the
presence of mind to dive into Manning's or I was souped. He did come a wallop,
by George. Must have cracked his skull on the cobblestones. I oughtn't to have got
myself swept along with those medicals. And the Trinity jibs in their
mortarboards. Looking for trouble. Still I got to know that young Dixon who
dressed that sting for me in the Mater and now he's in Holles street where Mrs
Purefoy. Wheels within wheels. Police whistle in my ears still. All skedaddled.
Why he fixed on me. Give me in charge. Right here it began.
—Up the Boers!
—Three cheers for De Wet!
—We'll hang Joe Chamberlain on a sourapple tree.
Silly billies: mob of young cubs yelling their guts out. Vinegar hill. The Butter
exchange band. Few years' time half of them magistrates and civil servants. War
comes on: into the army helterskelter: same fellows used to. Whether on the
scaffold high.
Never know who you're talking to. Corny Kelleher he has Harvey Duff in his
eye. Like that Peter or Denis or James Carey that blew the gaff on the invincibles.
Member of the corporation too. Egging raw youths on to get in the know all the
time drawing secret service pay from the castle. Drop him like a hot potato. Why
those plainclothes men are always courting slaveys. Easily twig a man used to
uniform. Squarepushing up against a backdoor. Maul her a bit. Then the next
thing on the menu. And who is the gentleman does be visiting there? Was the
young master saying anything? Peeping Tom through the keyhole. Decoy duck.
Hotblooded young student fooling round her fat arms ironing.
—Are those yours, Mary?
—I don't wear such things... Stop or I'll tell the missus on you. Out half the
night.
—There are great times coming, Mary. Wait till you see.
—Ah, gelong with your great times coming.
Barmaids too. Tobaccoshopgirls.
 James Stephens' idea was the best. He knew them. Circles of ten so that a fellow
couldn't round on more than his own ring. Sinn Fein. Back out you get the knife.
Hidden hand. Stay in. The firing squad. Turnkey's daughter got him out of
Richmond, off from Lusk. Putting up in the Buckingham Palace hotel under their
very noses. Garibaldi.
You must have a certain fascination: Parnell. Arthur Griffith is a squareheaded
fellow but he has no go in him for the mob. Or gas about our lovely land.
Gammon and spinach. Dublin Bakery Company's tearoom. Debating societies.
That republicanism is the best form of government. That the language question
should take precedence of the economic question. Have your daughters inveigling
them to your house. Stuff them up with meat and drink. Michaelmas goose. Here's
a good lump of thyme seasoning under the apron for you. Have another quart of
goosegrease before it gets too cold. Halffed enthusiasts. Penny roll and a walk
with the band. No grace for the carver. The thought that the other chap pays best
sauce in the world. Make themselves thoroughly at home. Show us over those
apricots, meaning peaches. The not far distant day. Homerule sun rising up in the
northwest.
His smile faded as he walked, a heavy cloud hiding the sun slowly, shadowing
Trinity's surly front. Trams passed one another, ingoing, outgoing, clanging.
Useless words. Things go on same, day after day: squads of police marching out,
back: trams in, out. Those two loonies mooching about. Dignam carted off. Mina
Purefoy swollen belly on a bed groaning to have a child tugged out of her. One
born every second somewhere. Other dying every second. Since I fed the birds five
minutes. Three hundred kicked the bucket. Other three hundred born, washing
the blood off, all are washed in the blood of the lamb, bawling maaaaaa.
Cityful passing away, other cityful coming, passing away too: other coming on,
passing on. Houses, lines of houses, streets, miles of pavements, piledup bricks,
stones. Changing hands. This owner, that. Landlord never dies they say. Other
steps into his shoes when he gets his notice to quit. They buy the place up with
gold and still they have all the gold. Swindle in it somewhere. Piled up in cities,
worn away age after age. Pyramids in sand. Built on bread and onions. Slaves
Chinese wall. Babylon. Big stones left. Round towers. Rest rubble, sprawling
suburbs, jerrybuilt. Kerwan's mushroom houses built of breeze. Shelter, for the
night.
No-one is anything.
This is the very worst hour of the day. Vitality. Dull, gloomy: hate this hour.
Feel as if I had been eaten and spewed.
Provost's house. The reverend Dr Salmon: tinned salmon. Well tinned in there.
Like a mortuary chapel. Wouldn't live in it if they paid me. Hope they have liver
and bacon today. Nature abhors a vacuum.
The sun freed itself slowly and lit glints of light among the silverware opposite
in Walter Sexton's window by which John Howard Parnell passed, unseeing.
 There he is: the brother. Image of him. Haunting face. Now that's a coincidence.
Course hundreds of times you think of a person and don't meet him. Like a man
walking in his sleep. No-one knows him. Must be a corporation meeting today.
They say he never put on the city marshal's uniform since he got the job. Charley
Kavanagh used to come out on his high horse, cocked hat, puffed, powdered and
shaved. Look at the woebegone walk of him. Eaten a bad egg. Poached eyes on
ghost. I have a pain. Great man's brother: his brother's brother. He'd look nice on
the city charger. Drop into the D.B.C. probably for his coffee, play chess there.
His brother used men as pawns. Let them all go to pot. Afraid to pass a remark on
him. Freeze them up with that eye of his. That's the fascination: the name. All a
bit touched. Mad Fanny and his other sister Mrs Dickinson driving about with
scarlet harness. Bolt upright lik surgeon M'Ardle. Still David Sheehy beat him for
south Meath. Apply for the Chiltern Hundreds and retire into public life. The
patriot's banquet. Eating orangepeels in the park. Simon Dedalus said when they
put him in parliament that Parnell would come back from the grave and lead him
out of the house of commons by the arm.
—Of the twoheaded octopus, one of whose heads is the head upon which the
ends of the world have forgotten to come while the other speaks with a Scotch
accent. The tentacles...
They passed from behind Mr Bloom along the curbstone. Beard and bicycle.
Young woman.
And there he is too. Now that's really a coincidence: second time. Coming
events cast their shadows before. With the approval of the eminent poet, Mr Geo.
Russell. That might be Lizzie Twigg with him. A. E.: what does that mean? Initials
perhaps. Albert Edward, Arthur Edmund, Alphonsus Eb Ed El Esquire. What was
he saying? The ends of the world with a Scotch accent. Tentacles: octopus.
Something occult: symbolism. Holding forth. She's taking it all in. Not saying a
word. To aid gentleman in literary work.
His eyes followed the high figure in homespun, beard and bicycle, a listening
woman at his side. Coming from the vegetarian. Only weggebobbles and fruit.
Don't eat a beefsteak. If you do the eyes of that cow will pursue you through all
eternity. They say it's healthier. Windandwatery though. Tried it. Keep you on the
run all day. Bad as a bloater. Dreams all night. Why do they call that thing they
gave me nutsteak? Nutarians. Fruitarians. To give you the idea you are eating
rumpsteak. Absurd. Salty too. They cook in soda. Keep you sitting by the tap all
night.
Her stockings are loose over her ankles. I detest that: so tasteless. Those literary
etherial people they are all. Dreamy, cloudy, symbolistic. Esthetes they are. I
wouldn't be surprised if it was that kind of food you see produces the like waves
of the brain the poetical. For example one of those policemen sweating Irish stew
into their shirts you couldn't squeeze a line of poetry out of him. Don't know what
poetry is even. Must be in a certain mood.
 The dreamy cloudy gull
Waves o'er the waters dull.
He crossed at Nassau street corner and stood before the window of Yeates and
Son, pricing the fieldglasses. Or will I drop into old Harris's and have a chat with
young Sinclair? Wellmannered fellow. Probably at his lunch. Must get those old
glasses of mine set right. Goerz lenses six guineas. Germans making their way
everywhere. Sell on easy terms to capture trade. Undercutting. Might chance on a
pair in the railway lost property office. Astonishing the things people leave behind
them in trains and cloakrooms. What do they be thinking about? Women too.
Incredible. Last year travelling to Ennis had to pick up that farmer's daughter's ba
and hand it to her at Limerick junction. Unclaimed money too. There's a little
watch up there on the roof of the bank to test those glasses by.
His lids came down on the lower rims of his irides. Can't see it. If you imagine
it's there you can almost see it. Can't see it.
He faced about and, standing between the awnings, held out his right hand at
arm's length towards the sun. Wanted to try that often. Yes: completely. The tip of
his little finger blotted out the sun's disk. Must be the focus where the rays cross.
If I had black glasses. Interesting. There was a lot of talk about those sunspots
when we were in Lombard street west. Looking up from the back garden. Terrific
explosions they are. There will be a total eclipse this year: autumn some time.
Now that I come to think of it that ball falls at Greenwich time. It's the clock is
worked by an electric wire from Dunsink. Must go out there some first Saturday
of the month. If I could get an introduction to professor Joly or learn up something
about his family. That would do to: man always feels complimented. Flattery
where least expected. Nobleman proud to be descended from some king's mistress.
His foremother. Lay it on with a trowel. Cap in hand goes through the land. Not
go in and blurt out what you know you're not to: what's parallax? Show this
gentleman the door.
Ah.
His hand fell to his side again.
Never know anything about it. Waste of time. Gasballs spinning about, crossing
each other, passing. Same old dingdong always. Gas: then solid: then world: then
cold: then dead shell drifting around, frozen rock, like that pineapple rock. The
moon. Must be a new moon out, she said. I believe there is.
He went on by la maison Claire.
Wait. The full moon was the night we were Sunday fortnight exactly there is a
new moon. Walking down by the Tolka. Not bad for a Fairview moon. She was
humming. The young May moon she's beaming, love. He other side of her. Elbow,
arm. He. Glowworm's la-amp is gleaming, love. Touch. Fingers. Asking. Answer.
Yes.
Stop. Stop. If it was it was. Must.
 Mr Bloom, quickbreathing, slowlier walking passed Adam court.
With a keep quiet relief his eyes took note this is the street here middle of the
day of Bob Doran's bottle shoulders. On his annual bend, M Coy said. They drink
in order to say or do something or cherchez la femme. Up in the Coombe with
chummies and streetwalkers and then the rest of the year sober as a judge.
Yes. Thought so. Sloping into the Empire. Gone. Plain soda would do him good.
Where Pat Kinsella had his Harp theatre before Whitbred ran the Queen's. Broth of
a boy. Dion Boucicault business with his harvestmoon face in a poky bonnet.
Three Purty Maids from School. How time flies, eh? Showing long red pantaloons
under his skirts. Drinkers, drinking, laughed spluttering, their drink against their
breath. More power, Pat. Coarse red: fun for drunkards: guffaw and smoke. Take
off that white hat. His parboiled eyes. Where is he now? Beggar somewhere. The
harp that once did starve us all.
I was happier then. Or was that I? Or am I now I? Twentyeight I was. She
twentythree. When we left Lombard street west something changed. Could never
like it again after Rudy. Can't bring back time. Like holding water in your hand.
Would you go back to then? Just beginning then. Would you? Are you not happy
in your home you poor little naughty boy? Wants to sew on buttons for me. I must
answer. Write it in the library.
Grafton street gay with housed awnings lured his senses. Muslin prints,
silkdames and dowagers, jingle of harnesses, hoofthuds lowringing in the baking
causeway. Thick feet that woman has in the white stockings. Hope the rain mucks
them up on her. Countrybred chawbacon. All the beef to the heels were in. Always
gives a woman clumsy feet. Molly looks out of plumb.
He passed, dallying, the windows of Brown Thomas, silk mercers. Cascades of
ribbons. Flimsy China silks. A tilted urn poured from its mouth a flood of
bloodhued poplin: lustrous blood. The huguenots brought that here. La causa è
santa! Tara tara. Great chorus that. Taree tara. Must be washed in rainwater.
Meyerbeer. Tara: bom bom bom.
Pincushions. I'm a long time threatening to buy one. Sticking them all over the
place. Needles in window curtains.
He bared slightly his left forearm. Scrape: nearly gone. Not today anyhow. Must
go back for that lotion. For her birthday perhaps. Junejulyaugseptember eighth.
Nearly three months off. Then she mightn't like it. Women won't pick up pins. Say
it cuts lo.
Gleaming silks, petticoats on slim brass rails, rays of flat silk stockings.
Useless to go back. Had to be. Tell me all.
High voices. Sunwarm silk. Jingling harnesses. All for a woman, home and
houses, silkwebs, silver, rich fruits spicy from Jaffa. Agendath Netaim. Wealth of
the world.
 A warm human plumpness settled down on his brain. His brain yielded.
Perfume of embraces all him assailed. With hungered flesh obscurely, he mutely
craved to adore.
Duke street. Here we are. Must eat. The Burton. Feel better then.
He turned Combridge's corner, still pursued. Jingling, hoofthuds. Perfumed
bodies, warm, full. All kissed, yielded: in deep summer fields, tangled pressed
grass, in trickling hallways of tenements, along sofas, creaking beds.
—Jack, love!
—Darling!
—Kiss me, Reggy!
—My boy!
—Love!
His heart astir he pushed in the door of the Burton restaurant. Stink gripped his
trembling breath: pungent meatjuice, slush of greens. See the animals feed.
Men, men, men.
Perched on high stools by the bar, hats shoved back, at the tables calling for
more bread no charge, swilling, wolfing gobfuls of sloppy food, their eyes bulging,
wiping wetted moustaches. A pallid suetfaced young man polished his tumbler
knife fork and spoon with his napkin. New set of microbes. A man with an infant's
saucestained napkin tucked round him shovelled gurgling soup down his gullet. A
man spitting back on his plate: halfmasticated gristle: gums: no teeth to
chewchewchew it. Chump chop from the grill. Bolting to get it over. Sad booser's
eyes. Bitten off more than he can chew. Am I like that? See ourselves as others see
us. Hungry man is an angry man. Working tooth and jaw. Don't! O! A bone! That
last pagan king of Ireland Cormac in the schoolpoem choked himself at Sletty
southward of the Boyne. Wonder what he was eating. Something galoptious. Saint
Patrick converted him to Christianity. Couldn't swallow it all however.
—Roast beef and cabbage.
—One stew.
Smells of men. His gorge rose. Spaton sawdust, sweetish warmish cigarette
smoke, reek of plug, spilt beer, men's beery piss, the stale of ferment.
Couldn't eat a morsel here. Fellow sharpening knife and fork to eat all before
him, old chap picking his tootles. Slight spasm, full, chewing the cud. Before and
after. Grace after meals. Look on this picture then on that. Scoffing up stewgravy
with sopping sippets of bread. Lick it off the plate, man! Get out of this.
He gazed round the stooled and tabled eaters, tightening the wings of his nose.
—Two stouts here.
 —One corned and cabbage.
That fellow ramming a knifeful of cabbage down as if his life depended on it.
Good stroke. Give me the fidgets to look. Safer to eat from his three hands. Tear it
limb from limb. Second nature to him. Born with a silver knife in his mouth.
That's witty, I think. Or no. Silver means born rich. Born with a knife. But then
the allusion is lost.
An illgirt server gathered sticky clattering plates. Rock, the head bailiff,
standing at the bar blew the foamy crown from his tankard. Well up: it splashed
yellow near his boot. A diner, knife and fork upright, elbows on table, ready for a
second helping stared towards the foodlift across his stained square of newspaper.
Other chap telling him something with his mouth full. Sympathetic listener. Table
talk. I munched hum un thu Unchster Bunk un Munchday. Ha? Did you, faith?
Mr Bloom raised two fingers doubtfully to his lips. His eyes said:
—Not here. Don't see him.
Out. I hate dirty eaters.
He backed towards the door. Get a light snack in Davy Byrne's. Stopgap. Keep
me going. Had a good breakfast.
—Roast and mashed here.
—Pint of stout.
Every fellow for his own, tooth and nail. Gulp. Grub. Gulp. Gobstuff.
He came out into clearer air and turned back towards Grafton street. Eat or be
eaten. Kill! Kill!
Suppose that communal kitchen years to come perhaps. All trotting down with
porringers and tommycans to be filled. Devour contents in the street. John
Howard Parnell example the provost of Trinity every mother's son don't talk of
your provosts and provost of Trinity women and children cabmen priests parsons
fieldmarshals archbishops. From Ailesbury road, Clyde road, artisans' dwellings,
north Dublin union, lord mayor in his gingerbread coach, old queen in a
bathchair. My plate's empty. After you with our incorporated drinkingcup. Like sir
Philip Crampton's fountain. Rub off the microbes with your handkerchief. Next
chap rubs on a new batch with his. Father O'Flynn would make hares of them all.
Have rows all the same. All for number one. Children fighting for the scrapings of
the pot. Want a souppot as big as the Phoenix park. Harpooning flitches and
hindquarters out of it. Hate people all round you. City Arms hotel table d'hôte she
called it. Soup, joint and sweet. Never know whose thoughts you're chewing. Then
who'd wash up all the plates and forks? Might be all feeding on tabloids that time.
Teeth getting worse and worse.
After all there's a lot in that vegetarian fine flavour of things from the earth
garlic of course it stinks after Italian organgrinders crisp of onions mushrooms
truffles. Pain to the animal too. Pluck and draw fowl. Wretched brutes there at the
cattlemarket waiting for the poleaxe to split their skulls open. Moo. Poor
trembling calves. Meh. Staggering bob. Bubble and squeak. Butchers' buckets
wobbly lights. Give us that brisket off the hook. Plup. Rawhead and bloody bones.
Flayed glasseyed sheep hung from their haunches, sheepsnouts bloodypapered
snivelling nosejam on sawdust. Top and lashers going out. Don't maul them
pieces, young one.
Hot fresh blood they prescribe for decline. Blood always needed. Insidious. Lick
it up smokinghot, thick sugary. Famished ghosts.
Ah, I'm hungry.
He entered Davy Byrne's. Moral pub. He doesn't chat. Stands a drink now and
then. But in leapyear once in four. Cashed a cheque for me once.
What will I take now? He drew his watch. Let me see now. Shandygaff?
—Hello, Bloom, Nosey Flynn said from his nook.
—Hello, Flynn.
—How's things?
—Tiptop... Let me see. I'll take a glass of burgundy and... let me see.
Sardines on the shelves. Almost taste them by looking. Sandwich? Ham and his
descendants musterred and bred there. Potted meats. What is home without
Plumtree's potted meat? Incomplete. What a stupid ad! Under the obituary notices
they stuck it. All up a plumtree. Dignam's potted meat. Cannibals would with
lemon and rice. White missionary too salty. Like pickled pork. Expect the chief
consumes the parts of honour. Ought to be tough from exercise. His wives in a
row to watch the effect. There was a right royal old nigger. Who ate or something
the somethings of the reverend Mr MacTrigger. With it an abode of bliss. Lord
knows what concoction. Cauls mouldy tripes windpipes faked and minced up.
Puzzle find the meat. Kosher. No meat and milk together. Hygiene that was what
they call now. Yom Kippur fast spring cleaning of inside. Peace and war depend
on some fellow's digestion. Religions. Christmas turkeys and geese. Slaughter of
innocents. Eat drink and be merry. Then casual wards full after. Heads bandaged.
Cheese digests all but itself. Mity cheese.
—Have you a cheese sandwich?
—Yes, sir.
Like a few olives too if they had them. Italian I prefer. Good glass of burgundy
take away that. Lubricate. A nice salad, cool as a cucumber, Tom Kernan can
dress. Puts gusto into it. Pure olive oil. Milly served me that cutlet with a sprig of
parsley. Take one Spanish onion. God made food, the devil the cooks. Devilled
crab.
—Wife well?
—Quite well, thanks... A cheese sandwich, then. Gorgonzola, have you?
 —Yes, sir.
Nosey Flynn sipped his grog.
—Doing any singing those times?
Look at his mouth. Could whistle in his own ear. Flap ears to match. Music.
Knows as much about it as my coachman. Still better tell him. Does no harm. Free
ad.
—She's engaged for a big tour end of this month. You may have heard perhaps.
—No. O, that's the style. Who's getting it up?
The curate served.
—How much is that?
—Seven d., sir... Thank you, sir.
Mr Bloom cut his sandwich into slender strips. Mr MacTrigger. Easier than the
dreamy creamy stuff. His five hundred wives. Had the time of their lives.
—Mustard, sir?
—Thank you.
He studded under each lifted strip yellow blobs. Their lives. I have it. It grew
bigger and bigger and bigger.
—Getting it up? he said. Well, it's like a company idea, you see. Part shares and
part profits.
—Ay, now I remember, Nosey Flynn said, putting his hand in his pocket to
scratch his groin. Who is this was telling me? Isn't Blazes Boylan mixed up in it?
A warm shock of air heat of mustard hanched on Mr Bloom's heart. He raised
his eyes and met the stare of a bilious clock. Two. Pub clock five minutes fast.
Time going on. Hands moving. Two. Not yet.
His midriff yearned then upward, sank within him, yearned more longly,
longingly.
Wine.
He smellsipped the cordial juice and, bidding his throat strongly to speed it, set
his wineglass delicately down.
—Yes, he said. He's the organiser in point of fact.
No fear: no brains.
Nosey Flynn snuffled and scratched. Flea having a good square meal.
 —He had a good slice of luck, Jack Mooney was telling me, over that
boxingmatch Myler Keogh won again that soldier in the Portobello barracks. By
God, he had the little kipper down in the county Carlow he was telling me...
Hope that dewdrop doesn't come down into his glass. No, snuffled it up.
—For near a month, man, before it came off. Sucking duck eggs by God till
further orders. Keep him off the boose, see? O, by God, Blazes is a hairy chap.
Davy Byrne came forward from the hindbar in tuckstitched shirtsleeves,
cleaning his lips with two wipes of his napkin. Herring's blush. Whose smile upon
each feature plays with such and such replete. Too much fat on the parsnips.
—And here's himself and pepper on him, Nosey Flynn said. Can you give us a
good one for the Gold cup?
—I'm off that, Mr Flynn, Davy Byrne answered. I never put anything on a
horse.
—You're right there, Nosey Flynn said.
Mr Bloom ate his strips of sandwich, fresh clean bread, with relish of disgust
pungent mustard, the feety savour of green cheese. Sips of his wine soothed his
palate. Not logwood that. Tastes fuller this weather with the chill off.
Nice quiet bar. Nice piece of wood in that counter. Nicely planed. Like the way
it curves there.
—I wouldn't do anything at all in that line, Davy Byrne said. It ruined many a
man, the same horses.
Vintners' sweepstake. Licensed for the sale of beer, wine and spirits for
consumption on the premises. Heads I win tails you lose.
—True for you, Nosey Flynn said. Unless you're in the know. There's no straight
sport going now. Lenehan gets some good ones. He's giving Sceptre today.
Zinfandel's the favourite, lord Howard de Walden's, won at Epsom. Morny Cannon
is riding him. I could have got seven to one against Saint Amant a fortnight
before.
—That so? Davy Byrne said...
He went towards the window and, taking up the pettycash book, scanned its
pages.
—I could, faith, Nosey Flynn said, snuffling. That was a rare bit of horseflesh.
Saint Frusquin was her sire. She won in a thunderstorm, Rothschild's filly, with
wadding in her ears. Blue jacket and yellow cap. Bad luck to big Ben Dollard and
his John O'Gaunt. He put me off it. Ay.
He drank resignedly from his tumbler, running his fingers down the flutes.
—Ay, he said, sighing.
 Mr Bloom, champing, standing, looked upon his sigh. Nosey numbskull. Will I
tell him that horse Lenehan? He knows already. Better let him forget. Go and lose
more. Fool and his money. Dewdrop coming down again. Cold nose he'd have
kissing a woman. Still they might like. Prickly beards they like. Dogs' cold noses.
Old Mrs Riordan with the rumbling stomach's Skye terrier in the City Arms hotel.
Molly fondling him in her lap. O, the big doggybowwowsywowsy!
Wine soaked and softened rolled pith of bread mustard a moment mawkish
cheese. Nice wine it is. Taste it better because I'm not thirsty. Bath of course does
that. Just a bite or two. Then about six o'clock I can. Six. Six. Time will be gone
then. She...
Mild fire of wine kindled his veins. I wanted that badly. Felt so off colour. His
eyes unhungrily saw shelves of tins: sardines, gaudy lobsters' claws. All the odd
things people pick up for food. Out of shells, periwinkles with a pin, off trees,
snails out of the ground the French eat, out of the sea with bait on a hook. Silly
fish learn nothing in a thousand years. If you didn't know risky putting anything
into your mouth. Poisonous berries. Johnny Magories. Roundness you think good.
Gaudy colour warns you off. One fellow told another and so on. Try it on the dog
first. Led on by the smell or the look. Tempting fruit. Ice cones. Cream. Instinct.
Orangegroves for instance. Need artificial irrigation. Bleibtreustrasse. Yes but
what about oysters. Unsightly like a clot of phlegm. Filthy shells. Devil to open
them too. Who found them out? Garbage, sewage they feed on. Fizz and Red bank
oysters. Effect on the sexual. Aphrodis. He was in the Red Bank this morning. Was
he oysters old fish at table perhaps he young flesh in bed no June has no ar no
oysters. But there are people like things high. Tainted game. Jugged hare. First
catch your hare. Chinese eating eggs fifty years old, blue and green again. Dinner
of thirty courses. Each dish harmless might mix inside. Idea for a poison mystery.
That archduke Leopold was it no yes or was it Otto one of those Habsburgs? Or
who was it used to eat the scruff off his own head? Cheapest lunch in town. Of
course aristocrats, then the others copy to be in the fashion. Milly too rock oil and
flour. Raw pastry I like myself. Half the catch of oysters they throw back in the
sea to keep up the price. Cheap no-one would buy. Caviare. Do the grand. Hock in
green glasses. Swell blowout. Lady this. Powdered bosom pearls. The élite. Crème
de la crème. They want special dishes to pretend they're. Hermit with a platter of
pulse keep down the stings of the flesh. Know me come eat with me. Royal
sturgeon high sheriff, Coffey, the butcher, right to venisons of the forest from his
ex. Send him back the half of a cow. Spread I saw down in the Master of the Rolls'
kitchen area. Whitehatted chef like a rabbi. Combustible duck. Curly cabbage à la
duchesse de Parme. Just as well to write it on the bill of fare so you can know
what you've eaten. Too many drugs spoil the broth. I know it myself. Dosing it
with Edwards' desiccated soup. Geese stuffed silly for them. Lobsters boiled alive.
Do ptake some ptarmigan. Wouldn't mind being a waiter in a swell hotel. Tips,
evening dress, halfnaked ladies. May I tempt you to a little more filleted lemon
sole, miss Dubedat? Yes, do bedad. And she did bedad. Huguenot name I expect
that. A miss Dubedat lived in Killiney, I remember. Du, de la French. Still it's the
same fish perhaps old Micky Hanlon of Moore street ripped the guts out of
making money hand over fist finger in fishes' gills can't write his name on a
cheque think he was painting the landscape with his mouth twisted. Moooikill A
Aitcha Ha ignorant as a kish of brogues, worth fifty thousand pounds.
Stuck on the pane two flies buzzed, stuck.
Glowing wine on his palate lingered swallowed. Crushing in the winepress
grapes of Burgundy. Sun's heat it is. Seems to a secret touch telling me memory.
Touched his sense moistened remembered. Hidden under wild ferns on Howth
below us bay sleeping: sky. No sound. The sky. The bay purple by the Lion's head.
Green by Drumleck. Yellowgreen towards Sutton. Fields of undersea, the lines
faint brown in grass, buried cities. Pillowed on my coat she had her hair, earwigs
in the heather scrub my hand under her nape, you'll toss me all. O wonder!
Coolsoft with ointments her hand touched me, caressed: her eyes upon me did not
turn away. Ravished over her I lay, full lips full open, kissed her mouth. Yum.
Softly she gave me in my mouth the seedcake warm and chewed. Mawkish pulp
her mouth had mumbled sweetsour of her spittle. Joy: I ate it: joy. Young life, her
lips that gave me pouting. Soft warm sticky gumjelly lips. Flowers her eyes were,
take me, willing eyes. Pebbles fell. She lay still. A goat. No-one. High on Ben
Howth rhododendrons a nannygoat walking surefooted, dropping currants.
Screened under ferns she laughed warmfolded. Wildly I lay on her, kissed her:
eyes, her lips, her stretched neck beating, woman's breasts full in her blouse of
nun's veiling, fat nipples upright. Hot I tongued her. She kissed me. I was kissed.
All yielding she tossed my hair. Kissed, she kissed me.
Me. And me now.
Stuck, the flies buzzed.
His downcast eyes followed the silent veining of the oaken slab. Beauty: it
curves: curves are beauty. Shapely goddesses, Venus, Juno: curves the world
admires. Can see them library museum standing in the round hall, naked
goddesses. Aids to digestion. They don't care what man looks. All to see. Never
speaking. I mean to say to fellows like Flynn. Suppose she did Pygmalion and
Galatea what would she say first? Mortal! Put you in your proper place. Quaffing
nectar at mess with gods golden dishes, all ambrosial. Not like a tanner lunch we
have, boiled mutton, carrots and turnips, bottle of Allsop. Nectar imagine it
drinking electricity: gods' food. Lovely forms of women sculped Junonian.
Immortal lovely. And we stuffing food in one hole and out behind: food, chyle,
blood, dung, earth, food: have to feed it like stoking an engine. They have no.
Never looked. I'll look today. Keeper won't see. Bend down let something drop see
if she.
Dribbling a quiet message from his bladder came to go to do not to do there to
do. A man and ready he drained his glass to the lees and walked, to men too they
gave themselves, manly conscious, lay with men lovers, a youth enjoyed her, to
the yard.
When the sound of his boots had ceased Davy Byrne said from his book:
—What is this he is? Isn't he in the insurance line?
 —He's out of that long ago, Nosey Flynn said. He does canvassing for the
Freeman.
—I know him well to see, Davy Byrne said. Is he in trouble?
—Trouble? Nosey Flynn said. Not that I heard of. Why?
—I noticed he was in mourning.
—Was he? Nosey Flynn said. So he was, faith. I asked him how was all at
home. You're right, by God. So he was.
—I never broach the subject, Davy Byrne said humanely, if I see a gentleman is
in trouble that way. It only brings it up fresh in their minds.
—It's not the wife anyhow, Nosey Flynn said. I met him the day before
yesterday and he coming out of that Irish farm dairy John Wyse Nolan's wife has
in Henry street with a jar of cream in his hand taking it home to his better half.
She's well nourished, I tell you. Plovers on toast.
—And is he doing for the Freeman? Davy Byrne said.
Nosey Flynn pursed his lips.
—-He doesn't buy cream on the ads he picks up. You can make bacon of that.
—How so? Davy Byrne asked, coming from his book.
Nosey Flynn made swift passes in the air with juggling fingers. He winked.
—He's in the craft, he said.
—-Do you tell me so? Davy Byrne said.
—Very much so, Nosey Flynn said. Ancient free and accepted order. He's an
excellent brother. Light, life and love, by God. They give him a leg up. I was told
that by a—well, I won't say who.
—Is that a fact?
—O, it's a fine order, Nosey Flynn said. They stick to you when you're down. I
know a fellow was trying to get into it. But they're as close as damn it. By God
they did right to keep the women out of it.
Davy Byrne smiledyawnednodded all in one:
—Iiiiiichaaaaaaach!
—There was one woman, Nosey Flynn said, hid herself in a clock to find out
what they do be doing. But be damned but they smelt her out and swore her in on
the spot a master mason. That was one of the saint Legers of Doneraile.
Davy Byrne, sated after his yawn, said with tearwashed eyes:
 —And is that a fact? Decent quiet man he is. I often saw him in here and I
never once saw him—you know, over the line.
—God Almighty couldn't make him drunk, Nosey Flynn said firmly. Slips off
when the fun gets too hot. Didn't you see him look at his watch? Ah, you weren't
there. If you ask him to have a drink first thing he does he outs with the watch to
see what he ought to imbibe. Declare to God he does.
—There are some like that, Davy Byrne said. He's a safe man, I'd say.
—He's not too bad, Nosey Flynn said, snuffling it up. He's been known to put
his hand down too to help a fellow. Give the devil his due. O, Bloom has his good
points. But there's one thing he'll never do.
His hand scrawled a dry pen signature beside his grog.
—I know, Davy Byrne said.
—Nothing in black and white, Nosey Flynn said.
Paddy Leonard and Bantam Lyons came in. Tom Rochford followed frowning, a
plaining hand on his claret waistcoat.
—Day, Mr Byrne.
—Day, gentlemen.
They paused at the counter.
—Who's standing? Paddy Leonard asked.
—I'm sitting anyhow, Nosey Flynn answered.
—Well, what'll it be? Paddy Leonard asked.
—I'll take a stone ginger, Bantam Lyons said.
—How much? Paddy Leonard cried. Since when, for God' sake? What's yours,
Tom?
—How is the main drainage? Nosey Flynn asked, sipping.
For answer Tom Rochford pressed his hand to his breastbone and hiccupped.
—Would I trouble you for a glass of fresh water, Mr Byrne? he said.
—Certainly, sir.
Paddy Leonard eyed his alemates.
—Lord love a duck, he said. Look at what I'm standing drinks to! Cold water
and gingerpop! Two fellows that would suck whisky off a sore leg. He has some
bloody horse up his sleeve for the Gold cup. A dead snip.
—Zinfandel is it? Nosey Flynn asked.
 Tom Rochford spilt powder from a twisted paper into the water set before him.
—That cursed dyspepsia, he said before drinking.
—Breadsoda is very good, Davy Byrne said.
Tom Rochford nodded and drank.
—Is it Zinfandel?
—Say nothing! Bantam Lyons winked. I'm going to plunge five bob on my own.
—Tell us if you're worth your salt and be damned to you, Paddy Leonard said.
Who gave it to you?
Mr Bloom on his way out raised three fingers in greeting.
—So long! Nosey Flynn said.
The others turned.
—That's the man now that gave it to me, Bantam Lyons whispered.
—Prrwht! Paddy Leonard said with scorn. Mr Byrne, sir, we'll take two of your
small Jamesons after that and a...
—Stone ginger, Davy Byrne added civilly.
—Ay, Paddy Leonard said. A suckingbottle for the baby.
Mr Bloom walked towards Dawson street, his tongue brushing his teeth smooth.
Something green it would have to be: spinach, say. Then with those Rontgen rays
searchlight you could.
At Duke lane a ravenous terrier choked up a sick knuckly cud on the
cobblestones and lapped it with new zest. Surfeit. Returned with thanks having
fully digested the contents. First sweet then savoury. Mr Bloom coasted warily.
Ruminants. His second course. Their upper jaw they move. Wonder if Tom
Rochford will do anything with that invention of his? Wasting time explaining it to
Flynn's mouth. Lean people long mouths. Ought to be a hall or a place where
inventors could go in and invent free. Course then you'd have all the cranks
pestering.
He hummed, prolonging in solemn echo the closes of the bars:
Don Giovanni, a cenar teco M'invitasti.
Feel better. Burgundy. Good pick me up. Who distilled first? Some chap in the
blues. Dutch courage. That Kilkenny People in the national library now I must.
Bare clean closestools waiting in the window of William Miller, plumber, turned
back his thoughts. They could: and watch it all the way down, swallow a pin
sometimes come out of the ribs years after, tour round the body changing biliary
duct spleen squirting liver gastric juice coils of intestines like pipes. But the poor
buffer would have to stand all the time with his insides entrails on show. Science.
—A cenar teco.
What does that teco mean? Tonight perhaps.

Don Giovanni, thou hast me invited

To come to supper tonight,
The rum the rumdum.
Doesn't go properly.
Keyes: two months if I get Nannetti to. That'll be two pounds ten about two
pounds eight. Three Hynes owes me. Two eleven. Prescott's dyeworks van over
there. If I get Billy Prescott's ad: two fifteen. Five guineas about. On the pig's
back.
Could buy one of those silk petticoats for Molly, colour of her new garters.
Today. Today. Not think.
Tour the south then. What about English wateringplaces? Brighton, Margate.
Piers by moonlight. Her voice floating out. Those lovely seaside girls. Against John
Long's a drowsing loafer lounged in heavy thought, gnawing a crusted knuckle.
Handy man wants job. Small wages. Will eat anything.
Mr Bloom turned at Gray's confectioner's window of unbought tarts and passed
the reverend Thomas Connellan's bookstore. Why I left the church of Rome? Birds'
Nest. Women run him. They say they used to give pauper children soup to change
to protestants in the time of the potato blight. Society over the way papa went to
for the conversion of poor jews. Same bait. Why we left the church of Rome.
A blind stripling stood tapping the curbstone with his slender cane. No tram in
sight. Wants to cross.
—Do you want to cross? Mr Bloom asked.
The blind stripling did not answer. His wallface frowned weakly. He moved his
head uncertainly.
—You're in Dawson street, Mr Bloom said. Molesworth street is opposite. Do
you want to cross? There's nothing in the way.
The cane moved out trembling to the left. Mr Bloom's eye followed its line and
saw again the dyeworks' van drawn up before Drago's. Where I saw his
brillantined hair just when I was. Horse drooping. Driver in John Long's. Slaking
his drouth.
—There's a van there, Mr Bloom said, but it's not moving. I'll see you across. Do
you want to go to Molesworth street?
 —Yes, the stripling answered. South Frederick street.
—Come, Mr Bloom said.
He touched the thin elbow gently: then took the limp seeing hand to guide it
forward.
Say something to him. Better not do the condescending. They mistrust what you
tell them. Pass a common remark.
—The rain kept off.
No answer.
Stains on his coat. Slobbers his food, I suppose. Tastes all different for him.
Have to be spoonfed first. Like a child's hand, his hand. Like Milly's was.
Sensitive. Sizing me up I daresay from my hand. Wonder if he has a name. Van.
Keep his cane clear of the horse's legs: tired drudge get his doze. That's right.
Clear. Behind a bull: in front of a horse.
—Thanks, sir.
Knows I'm a man. Voice.
—Right now? First turn to the left.
The blind stripling tapped the curbstone and went on his way, drawing his cane
back, feeling again.
Mr Bloom walked behind the eyeless feet, a flatcut suit of herringbone tweed.
Poor young fellow! How on earth did he know that van was there? Must have felt
it. See things in their forehead perhaps: kind of sense of volume. Weight or size of
it, something blacker than the dark. Wonder would he feel it if something was
removed. Feel a gap. Queer idea of Dublin he must have, tapping his way round
by the stones. Could he walk in a beeline if he hadn't that cane? Bloodless pious
face like a fellow going in to be a priest.
Penrose! That was that chap's name.
Look at all the things they can learn to do. Read with their fingers. Tune pianos.
Or we are surprised they have any brains. Why we think a deformed person or a
hunchback clever if he says something we might say. Of course the other senses
are more. Embroider. Plait baskets. People ought to help. Workbasket I could buy
for Molly's birthday. Hates sewing. Might take an objection. Dark men they call
them.
Sense of smell must be stronger too. Smells on all sides, bunched together. Each
street different smell. Each person too. Then the spring, the summer: smells.
Tastes? They say you can't taste wines with your eyes shut or a cold in the head.
Also smoke in the dark they say get no pleasure.
And with a woman, for instance. More shameless not seeing. That girl passing
the Stewart institution, head in the air. Look at me. I have them all on. Must be
strange not to see her. Kind of a form in his mind's eye. The voice, temperatures:
when he touches her with his fingers must almost see the lines, the curves. His
hands on her hair, for instance. Say it was black, for instance. Good. We call it
black. Then passing over her white skin. Different feel perhaps. Feeling of white.
Postoffice. Must answer. Fag today. Send her a postal order two shillings, half a
crown. Accept my little present. Stationer's just here too. Wait. Think over it.
With a gentle finger he felt ever so slowly the hair combed back above his ears.
Again. Fibres of fine fine straw. Then gently his finger felt the skin of his right
cheek. Downy hair there too. Not smooth enough. The belly is the smoothest. No-
one about. There he goes into Frederick street. Perhaps to Levenston's dancing
academy piano. Might be settling my braces.
Walking by Doran's publichouse he slid his hand between his waistcoat and
trousers and, pulling aside his shirt gently, felt a slack fold of his belly. But I
know it's whitey yellow. Want to try in the dark to see.
He withdrew his hand and pulled his dress to.
Poor fellow! Quite a boy. Terrible. Really terrible. What dreams would he have,
not seeing? Life a dream for him. Where is the justice being born that way? All
those women and children excursion beanfeast burned and drowned in New York.
Holocaust. Karma they call that transmigration for sins you did in a past life the
reincarnation met him pike hoses. Dear, dear, dear. Pity, of course: but somehow
you can't cotton on to them someway.
Sir Frederick Falkiner going into the freemasons' hall. Solemn as Troy. After his
good lunch in Earlsfort terrace. Old legal cronies cracking a magnum. Tales of the
bench and assizes and annals of the bluecoat school. I sentenced him to ten years.
I suppose he'd turn up his nose at that stuff I drank. Vintage wine for them, the
year marked on a dusty bottle. Has his own ideas of justice in the recorder's court.
Wellmeaning old man. Police chargesheets crammed with cases get their
percentage manufacturing crime. Sends them to the rightabout. The devil on
moneylenders. Gave Reuben J. a great strawcalling. Now he's really what they call
a dirty jew. Power those judges have. Crusty old topers in wigs. Bear with a sore
paw. And may the Lord have mercy on your soul.
Hello, placard. Mirus bazaar. His Excellency the lord lieutenant. Sixteenth.
Today it is. In aid of funds for Mercer's hospital. The Messiah was first given for
that. Yes. Handel. What about going out there: Ballsbridge. Drop in on Keyes. No
use sticking to him like a leech. Wear out my welcome. Sure to know someone on
the gate.
Mr Bloom came to Kildare street. First I must. Library.
Straw hat in sunlight. Tan shoes. Turnedup trousers. It is. It is.
His heart quopped softly. To the right. Museum. Goddesses. He swerved to the
right.
 Is it? Almost certain. Won't look. Wine in my face. Why did I? Too heady. Yes,
it is. The walk. Not see. Get on.
Making for the museum gate with long windy steps he lifted his eyes.
Handsome building. Sir Thomas Deane designed. Not following me?
Didn't see me perhaps. Light in his eyes.
The flutter of his breath came forth in short sighs. Quick. Cold statues: quiet
there. Safe in a minute.
No. Didn't see me. After two. Just at the gate.
My heart!
His eyes beating looked steadfastly at cream curves of stone. Sir Thomas Deane
was the Greek architecture.
Look for something I.
His hasty hand went quick into a pocket, took out, read unfolded Agendath
Netaim. Where did I?
Busy looking.
He thrust back quick Agendath.
Afternoon she said.
I am looking for that. Yes, that. Try all pockets. Handker. Freeman. Where did
I? Ah, yes. Trousers. Potato. Purse. Where?
Hurry. Walk quietly. Moment more. My heart.
His hand looking for the where did I put found in his hip pocket soap lotion
have to call tepid paper stuck. Ah soap there I yes. Gate.
Safe!
Urbane, to comfort them, the quaker librarian purred:
—And we have, have we not, those priceless pages of Wilhelm Meister. A great
poet on a great brother poet. A hesitating soul taking arms against a sea of
troubles, torn by conflicting doubts, as one sees in real life.
He came a step a sinkapace forward on neatsleather creaking and a step
backward a sinkapace on the solemn floor.
A noiseless attendant setting open the door but slightly made him a noiseless
beck.
—Directly, said he, creaking to go, albeit lingering. The beautiful ineffectual
dreamer who comes to grief against hard facts. One always feels that Goethe's
judgments are so true. True in the larger analysis.
 Twicreakingly analysis he corantoed off. Bald, most zealous by the door he gave
his large ear all to the attendant's words: heard them: and was gone.
Two left.
—Monsieur de la Palice, Stephen sneered, was alive fifteen minutes before his
death.
—Have you found those six brave medicals, John Eglinton asked with elder's
gall, to write Paradise Lost at your dictation? The Sorrows of Satan he calls it.
Smile. Smile Cranly's smile.

First he tickled her

Then he patted her
Then he passed the female catheter.
For he was a medical
Jolly old medi...
—I feel you would need one more for Hamlet. Seven is dear to the mystic mind.
The shining seven W.B. calls them.
Glittereyed his rufous skull close to his greencapped desklamp sought the face
bearded amid darkgreener shadow, an ollav, holyeyed. He laughed low: a sizar's
laugh of Trinity: unanswered.

Orchestral Satan, weeping many a rood

Tears such as angels weep.
Ed egli avea del cul fatto trombetta.
He holds my follies hostage.
Cranly's eleven true Wicklowmen to free their sireland. Gaptoothed Kathleen,
her four beautiful green fields, the stranger in her house. And one more to hail
him: ave, rabbi: the Tinahely twelve. In the shadow of the glen he cooees for
them. My soul's youth I gave him, night by night. God speed. Good hunting.
Mulligan has my telegram.
Folly. Persist.
—Our young Irish bards, John Eglinton censured, have yet to create a figure
which the world will set beside Saxon Shakespeare's Hamlet though I admire him,
as old Ben did, on this side idolatry.
—All these questions are purely academic, Russell oracled out of his shadow. I
mean, whether Hamlet is Shakespeare or James I or Essex. Clergymen's
discussions of the historicity of Jesus. Art has to reveal to us ideas, formless
spiritual essences. The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a
life does it spring. The painting of Gustave Moreau is the painting of ideas. The
deepest poetry of Shelley, the words of Hamlet bring our minds into contact with
the eternal wisdom, Plato's world of ideas. All the rest is the speculation of
schoolboys for schoolboys.
A. E. has been telling some yankee interviewer. Wall, tarnation strike me!
—The schoolmen were schoolboys first, Stephen said superpolitely. Aristotle
was once Plato's schoolboy.
—And has remained so, one should hope, John Eglinton sedately said. One can
see him, a model schoolboy with his diploma under his arm.
He laughed again at the now smiling bearded face.
Formless spiritual. Father, Word and Holy Breath. Allfather, the heavenly man.
Hiesos Kristos, magician of the beautiful, the Logos who suffers in us at every
moment. This verily is that. I am the fire upon the altar. I am the sacrificial
butter.
Dunlop, Judge, the noblest Roman of them all, A.E., Arval, the Name Ineffable,
in heaven hight: K.H., their master, whose identity is no secret to adepts. Brothers
of the great white lodge always watching to see if they can help. The Christ with
the bridesister, moisture of light, born of an ensouled virgin, repentant sophia,
departed to the plane of buddhi. The life esoteric is not for ordinary person. O.P.
must work off bad karma first. Mrs Cooper Oakley once glimpsed our very
illustrious sister H.P.B.'s elemental.
O, fie! Out on't! Pfuiteufel! You naughtn't to look, missus, so you naughtn't
when a lady's ashowing of her elemental.
Mr Best entered, tall, young, mild, light. He bore in his hand with grace a
notebook, new, large, clean, bright.
—That model schoolboy, Stephen said, would find Hamlet's musings about the
afterlife of his princely soul, the improbable, insignificant and undramatic
monologue, as shallow as Plato's.
John Eglinton, frowning, said, waxing wroth:
—Upon my word it makes my blood boil to hear anyone compare Aristotle with
Plato.
—Which of the two, Stephen asked, would have banished me from his
commonwealth?
Unsheathe your dagger definitions. Horseness is the whatness of allhorse.
Streams of tendency and eons they worship. God: noise in the street: very
peripatetic. Space: what you damn well have to see. Through spaces smaller than
red globules of man's blood they creepycrawl after Blake's buttocks into eternity of
which this vegetable world is but a shadow. Hold to the now, the here, through
which all future plunges to the past.
Mr Best came forward, amiable, towards his colleague.
 —Haines is gone, he said.
—Is he?
—I was showing him Jubainville's book. He's quite enthusiastic, don't you know,
about Hyde's Lovesongs of Connacht. I couldn't bring him in to hear the discussion.
He's gone to Gill's to buy it.

Bound thee forth, my booklet, quick

To greet the callous public.
Writ, I ween, 'twas not my wish
In lean unlovely English.
—The peatsmoke is going to his head, John Eglinton opined.
We feel in England. Penitent thief. Gone. I smoked his baccy. Green twinkling
stone. An emerald set in the ring of the sea.
—People do not know how dangerous lovesongs can be, the auric egg of Russell
warned occultly. The movements which work revolutions in the world are born
out of the dreams and visions in a peasant's heart on the hillside. For them the
earth is not an exploitable ground but the living mother. The rarefied air of the
academy and the arena produce the sixshilling novel, the musichall song. France
produces the finest flower of corruption in Mallarme but the desirable life is
revealed only to the poor of heart, the life of Homer's Phaeacians.
From these words Mr Best turned an unoffending face to Stephen.
—Mallarme, don't you know, he said, has written those wonderful prose poems
Stephen MacKenna used to read to me in Paris. The one about Hamlet. He says: il
se promène, lisant au livre de lui-même, don't you know, reading the book of
himself. He describes Hamlet given in a French town, don't you know, a provincial
town. They advertised it.
His free hand graciously wrote tiny signs in air.

HAMLET
ou
LE DISTRAIT
Pièce de Shakespeare
He repeated to John Eglinton's newgathered frown:
—Pièce de Shakespeare, don't you know. It's so French. The French point of
view. Hamlet ou...
—The absentminded beggar, Stephen ended.
John Eglinton laughed.
 —Yes, I suppose it would be, he said. Excellent people, no doubt, but
distressingly shortsighted in some matters.
Sumptuous and stagnant exaggeration of murder.
—A deathsman of the soul Robert Greene called him, Stephen said. Not for
nothing was he a butcher's son, wielding the sledded poleaxe and spitting in his
palms. Nine lives are taken off for his father's one. Our Father who art in
purgatory. Khaki Hamlets don't hesitate to shoot. The bloodboltered shambles in
act five is a forecast of the concentration camp sung by Mr Swinburne.
Cranly, I his mute orderly, following battles from afar.
Whelps and dams of murderous foes whom none But we had spared...
Between the Saxon smile and yankee yawp. The devil and the deep sea.
—He will have it that Hamlet is a ghoststory, John Eglinton said for Mr Best's
behoof. Like the fat boy in Pickwick he wants to make our flesh creep.
List! List! O List!
My flesh hears him: creeping, hears.
If thou didst ever...
—What is a ghost? Stephen said with tingling energy. One who has faded into
impalpability through death, through absence, through change of manners.
Elizabethan London lay as far from Stratford as corrupt Paris lies from virgin
Dublin. Who is the ghost from limbo patrum, returning to the world that has
forgotten him? Who is King Hamlet?
John Eglinton shifted his spare body, leaning back to judge.
Lifted.
—It is this hour of a day in mid June, Stephen said, begging with a swift glance
their hearing. The flag is up on the playhouse by the bankside. The bear Sackerson
growls in the pit near it, Paris garden. Canvasclimbers who sailed with Drake
chew their sausages among the groundlings.
Local colour. Work in all you know. Make them accomplices.
—Shakespeare has left the huguenot's house in Silver street and walks by the
swanmews along the riverbank. But he does not stay to feed the pen chivying her
game of cygnets towards the rushes. The swan of Avon has other thoughts.
Composition of place. Ignatius Loyola, make haste to help me!
—The play begins. A player comes on under the shadow, made up in the castoff
mail of a court buck, a wellset man with a bass voice. It is the ghost, the king, a
king and no king, and the player is Shakespeare who has studied Hamlet all the
years of his life which were not vanity in order to play the part of the spectre. He
speaks the words to Burbage, the young player who stands before him beyond the
rack of cerecloth, calling him by a name:
Hamlet, I am thy father's spirit,
bidding him list. To a son he speaks, the son of his soul, the prince, young
Hamlet and to the son of his body, Hamnet Shakespeare, who has died in
Stratford that his namesake may live for ever.
Is it possible that that player Shakespeare, a ghost by absence, and in the
vesture of buried Denmark, a ghost by death, speaking his own words to his own
son's name (had Hamnet Shakespeare lived he would have been prince Hamlet's
twin), is it possible, I want to know, or probable that he did not draw or foresee
the logical conclusion of those premises: you are the dispossessed son: I am the
murdered father: your mother is the guilty queen, Ann Shakespeare, born
Hathaway?
—But this prying into the family life of a great man, Russell began impatiently.
Art thou there, truepenny?
—Interesting only to the parish clerk. I mean, we have the plays. I mean when
we read the poetry of King Lear what is it to us how the poet lived? As for living
our servants can do that for us, Villiers de l'Isle has said. Peeping and prying into
greenroom gossip of the day, the poet's drinking, the poet's debts. We have King
Lear: and it is immortal.
Mr Best's face, appealed to, agreed.
Flow over them with your waves and with your waters, Mananaan, Mananaan
MacLir...
How now, sirrah, that pound he lent you when you were hungry?
Marry, I wanted it.
Take thou this noble.
Go to! You spent most of it in Georgina Johnson's bed, clergyman's daughter.
Agenbite of inwit.
Do you intend to pay it back?
O, yes.
When? Now?
Well... No.
When, then?
I paid my way. I paid my way.
Steady on. He's from beyant Boyne water. The northeast corner. You owe it.
 Wait. Five months. Molecules all change. I am other I now. Other I got pound.
Buzz. Buzz.
But I, entelechy, form of forms, am I by memory because under everchanging
forms.
I that sinned and prayed and fasted.
A child Conmee saved from pandies.
I, I and I. I.
A.E.I.O.U.
—Do you mean to fly in the face of the tradition of three centuries? John
Eglinton's carping voice asked. Her ghost at least has been laid for ever. She died,
for literature at least, before she was born.
—She died, Stephen retorted, sixtyseven years after she was born. She saw him
into and out of the world. She took his first embraces. She bore his children and
she laid pennies on his eyes to keep his eyelids closed when he lay on his
deathbed.
Mother's deathbed. Candle. The sheeted mirror. Who brought me into this world
lies there, bronzelidded, under few cheap flowers. Liliata rutilantium.
I wept alone.
John Eglinton looked in the tangled glowworm of his lamp.
—The world believes that Shakespeare made a mistake, he said, and got out of
it as quickly and as best he could.
—Bosh! Stephen said rudely. A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are
volitional and are the portals of discovery.
Portals of discovery opened to let in the quaker librarian, softcreakfooted, bald,
eared and assiduous.
—A shrew, John Eglinton said shrewdly, is not a useful portal of discovery, one
should imagine. What useful discovery did Socrates learn from Xanthippe?
—Dialectic, Stephen answered: and from his mother how to bring thoughts into
the world. What he learnt from his other wife Myrto (absit nomen!),
Socratididion's Epipsychidion, no man, not a woman, will ever know. But neither
the midwife's lore nor the caudlelectures saved him from the archons of Sinn Fein
and their naggin of hemlock.
—But Ann Hathaway? Mr Best's quiet voice said forgetfully. Yes, we seem to be
forgetting her as Shakespeare himself forgot her.
His look went from brooder's beard to carper's skull, to remind, to chide them
not unkindly, then to the baldpink lollard costard, guiltless though maligned.
 —He had a good groatsworth of wit, Stephen said, and no truant memory. He
carried a memory in his wallet as he trudged to Romeville whistling The girl I left
behind me. If the earthquake did not time it we should know where to place poor
Wat, sitting in his form, the cry of hounds, the studded bridle and her blue
windows. That memory, Venus and Adonis, lay in the bedchamber of every light-
of-love in London. Is Katharine the shrew illfavoured? Hortensio calls her young
and beautiful. Do you think the writer of Antony and Cleopatra, a passionate
pilgrim, had his eyes in the back of his head that he chose the ugliest doxy in all
Warwickshire to lie withal? Good: he left her and gained the world of men. But
his boywomen are the women of a boy. Their life, thought, speech are lent them
by males. He chose badly? He was chosen, it seems to me. If others have their will
Ann hath a way. By cock, she was to blame. She put the comether on him, sweet
and twentysix. The greyeyed goddess who bends over the boy Adonis, stooping to
conquer, as prologue to the swelling act, is a boldfaced Stratford wench who
tumbles in a cornfield a lover younger than herself.
And my turn? When?
Come!
—Ryefield, Mr Best said brightly, gladly, raising his new book, gladly, brightly.
He murmured then with blond delight for all:
Between the acres of the rye These pretty countryfolk would lie.
Paris: the wellpleased pleaser.
A tall figure in bearded homespun rose from shadow and unveiled its
cooperative watch.
—I am afraid I am due at the Homestead.
Whither away? Exploitable ground.
—Are you going? John Eglinton's active eyebrows asked. Shall we see you at
Moore's tonight? Piper is coming.
—Piper! Mr Best piped. Is Piper back?
Peter Piper pecked a peck of pick of peck of pickled pepper.
—I don't know if I can. Thursday. We have our meeting. If I can get away in
time.
Yogibogeybox in Dawson chambers. Isis Unveiled. Their Pali book we tried to
pawn. Crosslegged under an umbrel umbershoot he thrones an Aztec logos,
functioning on astral levels, their oversoul, mahamahatma. The faithful hermetists
await the light, ripe for chelaship, ringroundabout him. Louis H. Victory. T.
Caulfield Irwin. Lotus ladies tend them i'the eyes, their pineal glands aglow. Filled
with his god, he thrones, Buddh under plantain. Gulfer of souls, engulfer.
Hesouls, shesouls, shoals of souls. Engulfed with wailing creecries, whirled,
whirling, they bewail.
 In quintessential triviality
For years in this fleshcase a shesoul dwelt.
—They say we are to have a literary surprise, the quaker librarian said, friendly
and earnest. Mr Russell, rumour has it, is gathering together a sheaf of our
younger poets' verses. We are all looking forward anxiously.
Anxiously he glanced in the cone of lamplight where three faces, lighted, shone.
See this. Remember.
Stephen looked down on a wide headless caubeen, hung on his ashplanthandle
over his knee. My casque and sword. Touch lightly with two index fingers.
Aristotle's experiment. One or two? Necessity is that in virtue of which it is
impossible that one can be otherwise. Argal, one hat is one hat.
Listen.
Young Colum and Starkey. George Roberts is doing the commercial part.
Longworth will give it a good puff in the Express. O, will he? I liked Colum's
Drover. Yes, I think he has that queer thing genius. Do you think he has genius
really? Yeats admired his line: As in wild earth a Grecian vase. Did he? I hope
you'll be able to come tonight. Malachi Mulligan is coming too. Moore asked him
to bring Haines. Did you hear Miss Mitchell's joke about Moore and Martyn? That
Moore is Martyn's wild oats? Awfully clever, isn't it? They remind one of Don
Quixote and Sancho Panza. Our national epic has yet to be written, Dr Sigerson
says. Moore is the man for it. A knight of the rueful countenance here in Dublin.
With a saffron kilt? O'Neill Russell? O, yes, he must speak the grand old tongue.
And his Dulcinea? James Stephens is doing some clever sketches. We are becoming
important, it seems.
Cordelia. Cordoglio. Lir's loneliest daughter.
Nookshotten. Now your best French polish.
—Thank you very much, Mr Russell, Stephen said, rising. If you will be so kind
as to give the letter to Mr Norman...
—O, yes. If he considers it important it will go in. We have so much
correspondence.
—I understand, Stephen said. Thanks.
God ild you. The pigs' paper. Bullockbefriending.
Synge has promised me an article for Dana too. Are we going to be read? I feel
we are. The Gaelic league wants something in Irish. I hope you will come round
tonight. Bring Starkey.
Stephen sat down.
The quaker librarian came from the leavetakers. Blushing, his mask said:
 —Mr Dedalus, your views are most illuminating.
He creaked to and fro, tiptoing up nearer heaven by the altitude of a chopine,
and, covered by the noise of outgoing, said low:
—Is it your view, then, that she was not faithful to the poet?
Alarmed face asks me. Why did he come? Courtesy or an inward light?
—Where there is a reconciliation, Stephen said, there must have been first a
sundering.
—Yes.
Christfox in leather trews, hiding, a runaway in blighted treeforks, from hue and
cry. Knowing no vixen, walking lonely in the chase. Women he won to him, tender
people, a whore of Babylon, ladies of justices, bully tapsters' wives. Fox and geese.
And in New Place a slack dishonoured body that once was comely, once as sweet,
as fresh as cinnamon, now her leaves falling, all, bare, frighted of the narrow
grave and unforgiven.
—Yes. So you think...
The door closed behind the outgoer.
Rest suddenly possessed the discreet vaulted cell, rest of warm and brooding
air.
A vestal's lamp.
Here he ponders things that were not: what Caesar would have lived to do had
he believed the soothsayer: what might have been: possibilities of the possible as
possible: things not known: what name Achilles bore when he lived among
women.
Coffined thoughts around me, in mummycases, embalmed in spice of words.
Thoth, god of libraries, a birdgod, moonycrowned. And I heard the voice of that
Egyptian highpriest. In painted chambers loaded with tilebooks.
They are still. Once quick in the brains of men. Still: but an itch of death is in
them, to tell me in my ear a maudlin tale, urge me to wreak their will.
—Certainly, John Eglinton mused, of all great men he is the most enigmatic. We
know nothing but that he lived and suffered. Not even so much. Others abide our
question. A shadow hangs over all the rest.
—But Hamlet is so personal, isn't it? Mr Best pleaded. I mean, a kind of private
paper, don't you know, of his private life. I mean, I don't care a button, don't you
know, who is killed or who is guilty...
He rested an innocent book on the edge of the desk, smiling his defiance. His
private papers in the original. Ta an bad ar an tir. Taim in mo shagart. Put beurla
on it, littlejohn.
 Quoth littlejohn Eglinton:
—I was prepared for paradoxes from what Malachi Mulligan told us but I may
as well warn you that if you want to shake my belief that Shakespeare is Hamlet
you have a stern task before you.
Bear with me.
Stephen withstood the bane of miscreant eyes glinting stern under wrinkled
brows. A basilisk. E quando vede l'uomo l'attosca. Messer Brunetto, I thank thee
for the word.
—As we, or mother Dana, weave and unweave our bodies, Stephen said, from
day to day, their molecules shuttled to and fro, so does the artist weave and
unweave his image. And as the mole on my right breast is where it was when I
was born, though all my body has been woven of new stuff time after time, so
through the ghost of the unquiet father the image of the unliving son looks forth.
In the intense instant of imagination, when the mind, Shelley says, is a fading
coal, that which I was is that which I am and that which in possibility I may come
to be. So in the future, the sister of the past, I may see myself as I sit here now
but by reflection from that which then I shall be.
Drummond of Hawthornden helped you at that stile.
—Yes, Mr Best said youngly. I feel Hamlet quite young. The bitterness might be
from the father but the passages with Ophelia are surely from the son.
Has the wrong sow by the lug. He is in my father. I am in his son.
—That mole is the last to go, Stephen said, laughing.
John Eglinton made a nothing pleasing mow.
—If that were the birthmark of genius, he said, genius would be a drug in the
market. The plays of Shakespeare's later years which Renan admired so much
breathe another spirit.
—The spirit of reconciliation, the quaker librarian breathed.
—There can be no reconciliation, Stephen said, if there has not been a
sundering.
Said that.
—If you want to know what are the events which cast their shadow over the
hell of time of King Lear, Othello, Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, look to see when
and how the shadow lifts. What softens the heart of a man, shipwrecked in storms
dire, Tried, like another Ulysses, Pericles, prince of Tyre?
Head, redconecapped, buffeted, brineblinded.
—A child, a girl, placed in his arms, Marina.
 —The leaning of sophists towards the bypaths of apocrypha is a constant
quantity, John Eglinton detected. The highroads are dreary but they lead to the
town.
Good Bacon: gone musty. Shakespeare Bacon's wild oats. Cypherjugglers going
the highroads. Seekers on the great quest. What town, good masters? Mummed in
names: A. E., eon: Magee, John Eglinton. East of the sun, west of the moon: Tir na
n-og. Booted the twain and staved.
How many miles to Dublin? Three score and ten, sir. Will we be there by
candlelight?
—Mr Brandes accepts it, Stephen said, as the first play of the closing period.
—Does he? What does Mr Sidney Lee, or Mr Simon Lazarus as some aver his
name is, say of it?
—Marina, Stephen said, a child of storm, Miranda, a wonder, Perdita, that
which was lost. What was lost is given back to him: his daughter's child. My
dearest wife, Pericles says, was like this maid. Will any man love the daughter if
he has not loved the mother?
—The art of being a grandfather, Mr Best gan murmur. l'art d'être grand...
—Will he not see reborn in her, with the memory of his own youth added,
another image?
Do you know what you are talking about? Love, yes. Word known to all men.
Amor vero aliquid alicui bonum vult unde et ea quae concupiscimus ...
—His own image to a man with that queer thing genius is the standard of all
experience, material and moral. Such an appeal will touch him. The images of
other males of his blood will repel him. He will see in them grotesque attempts of
nature to foretell or to repeat himself.
The benign forehead of the quaker librarian enkindled rosily with hope.
—I hope Mr Dedalus will work out his theory for the enlightenment of the
public. And we ought to mention another Irish commentator, Mr George Bernard
Shaw. Nor should we forget Mr Frank Harris. His articles on Shakespeare in the
Saturday Review were surely brilliant. Oddly enough he too draws for us an
unhappy relation with the dark lady of the sonnets. The favoured rival is William
Herbert, earl of Pembroke. I own that if the poet must be rejected such a rejection
would seem more in harmony with—what shall I say?—our notions of what ought
not to have been.
Felicitously he ceased and held a meek head among them, auk's egg, prize of
their fray.
He thous and thees her with grave husbandwords. Dost love, Miriam? Dost love
thy man?
 —That may be too, Stephen said. There's a saying of Goethe's which Mr Magee
likes to quote. Beware of what you wish for in youth because you will get it in
middle life. Why does he send to one who is a buonaroba, a bay where all men
ride, a maid of honour with a scandalous girlhood, a lordling to woo for him? He
was himself a lord of language and had made himself a coistrel gentleman and he
had written Romeo and Juliet. Why? Belief in himself has been untimely killed. He
was overborne in a cornfield first (ryefield, I should say) and he will never be a
victor in his own eyes after nor play victoriously the game of laugh and lie down.
Assumed dongiovannism will not save him. No later undoing will undo the first
undoing. The tusk of the boar has wounded him there where love lies ableeding. If
the shrew is worsted yet there remains to her woman's invisible weapon. There is,
I feel in the words, some goad of the flesh driving him into a new passion, a
darker shadow of the first, darkening even his own understanding of himself. A
like fate awaits him and the two rages commingle in a whirlpool.
They list. And in the porches of their ears I pour.
—The soul has been before stricken mortally, a poison poured in the porch of a
sleeping ear. But those who are done to death in sleep cannot know the manner of
their quell unless their Creator endow their souls with that knowledge in the life
to come. The poisoning and the beast with two backs that urged it King Hamlet's
ghost could not know of were he not endowed with knowledge by his creator.
That is why the speech (his lean unlovely English) is always turned elsewhere,
backward. Ravisher and ravished, what he would but would not, go with him from
Lucrece's bluecircled ivory globes to Imogen's breast, bare, with its mole
cinquespotted. He goes back, weary of the creation he has piled up to hide him
from himself, an old dog licking an old sore. But, because loss is his gain, he
passes on towards eternity in undiminished personality, untaught by the wisdom
he has written or by the laws he has revealed. His beaver is up. He is a ghost, a
shadow now, the wind by Elsinore's rocks or what you will, the sea's voice, a voice
heard only in the heart of him who is the substance of his shadow, the son
consubstantial with the father.
—Amen! was responded from the doorway.
Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?
Entr'acte.
A ribald face, sullen as a dean's, Buck Mulligan came forward, then blithe in
motley, towards the greeting of their smiles. My telegram.
—You were speaking of the gaseous vertebrate, if I mistake not? he asked of
Stephen.
Primrosevested he greeted gaily with his doffed Panama as with a bauble.
They make him welcome. Was Du verlachst wirst Du noch dienen.
Brood of mockers: Photius, pseudomalachi, Johann Most.
 He Who Himself begot middler the Holy Ghost and Himself sent Himself,
Agenbuyer, between Himself and others, Who, put upon by His fiends, stripped
and whipped, was nailed like bat to barndoor, starved on crosstree, Who let Him
bury, stood up, harrowed hell, fared into heaven and there these nineteen
hundred years sitteth on the right hand of His Own Self but yet shall come in the
latter day to doom the quick and dead when all the quick shall be dead already.
Glo—o—ri—a in ex—cel—sis De—o.
He lifts his hands. Veils fall. O, flowers! Bells with bells with bells aquiring.
—Yes, indeed, the quaker librarian said. A most instructive discussion. Mr
Mulligan, I'll be bound, has his theory too of the play and of Shakespeare. All
sides of life should be represented.
He smiled on all sides equally.
Buck Mulligan thought, puzzled:
—Shakespeare? he said. I seem to know the name.
A flying sunny smile rayed in his loose features.
—To be sure, he said, remembering brightly. The chap that writes like Synge.
Mr Best turned to him.
—Haines missed you, he said. Did you meet him? He'll see you after at the D.
B. C. He's gone to Gill's to buy Hyde's Lovesongs of Connacht.
—I came through the museum, Buck Mulligan said. Was he here?
—The bard's fellowcountrymen, John Eglinton answered, are rather tired
perhaps of our brilliancies of theorising. I hear that an actress played Hamlet for
the fourhundredandeighth time last night in Dublin. Vining held that the prince
was a woman. Has no-one made him out to be an Irishman? Judge Barton, I
believe, is searching for some clues. He swears (His Highness not His Lordship) by
saint Patrick.
—The most brilliant of all is that story of Wilde's, Mr Best said, lifting his
brilliant notebook. That Portrait of Mr W. H. where he proves that the sonnets
were written by a Willie Hughes, a man all hues.
—For Willie Hughes, is it not? the quaker librarian asked.
Or Hughie Wills? Mr William Himself. W. H.: who am I?
—I mean, for Willie Hughes, Mr Best said, amending his gloss easily. Of course
it's all paradox, don't you know, Hughes and hews and hues, the colour, but it's so
typical the way he works it out. It's the very essence of Wilde, don't you know.
The light touch.
His glance touched their faces lightly as he smiled, a blond ephebe. Tame
essence of Wilde.
 You're darned witty. Three drams of usquebaugh you drank with Dan Deasy's
ducats.
How much did I spend? O, a few shillings.
For a plump of pressmen. Humour wet and dry.
Wit. You would give your five wits for youth's proud livery he pranks in.
Lineaments of gratified desire.
There be many mo. Take her for me. In pairing time. Jove, a cool ruttime send
them. Yea, turtledove her.
Eve. Naked wheatbellied sin. A snake coils her, fang in's kiss.
—Do you think it is only a paradox? the quaker librarian was asking. The
mocker is never taken seriously when he is most serious.
They talked seriously of mocker's seriousness.
Buck Mulligan's again heavy face eyed Stephen awhile. Then, his head wagging,
he came near, drew a folded telegram from his pocket. His mobile lips read,
smiling with new delight.
—Telegram! he said. Wonderful inspiration! Telegram! A papal bull!
He sat on a corner of the unlit desk, reading aloud joyfully:
—The sentimentalist is he who would enjoy without incurring the immense
debtorship for a thing done. Signed: Dedalus. Where did you launch it from? The
kips? No. College Green. Have you drunk the four quid? The aunt is going to call
on your unsubstantial father. Telegram! Malachi Mulligan, The Ship, lower Abbey
street. O, you peerless mummer! O, you priestified Kinchite!
Joyfully he thrust message and envelope into a pocket but keened in a querulous
brogue:
—It's what I'm telling you, mister honey, it's queer and sick we were, Haines
and myself, the time himself brought it in. 'Twas murmur we did for a gallus
potion would rouse a friar, I'm thinking, and he limp with leching. And we one
hour and two hours and three hours in Connery's sitting civil waiting for pints
apiece.
He wailed:
—And we to be there, mavrone, and you to be unbeknownst sending us your
conglomerations the way we to have our tongues out a yard long like the drouthy
clerics do be fainting for a pussful.
Stephen laughed.
Quickly, warningfully Buck Mulligan bent down.
 —The tramper Synge is looking for you, he said, to murder you. He heard you
pissed on his halldoor in Glasthule. He's out in pampooties to murder you.
—Me! Stephen exclaimed. That was your contribution to literature.
Buck Mulligan gleefully bent back, laughing to the dark eavesdropping ceiling.
—Murder you! he laughed.
Harsh gargoyle face that warred against me over our mess of hash of lights in
rue Saint-André-des-Arts. In words of words for words, palabras. Oisin with
Patrick. Faunman he met in Clamart woods, brandishing a winebottle. C'est
vendredi saint! Murthering Irish. His image, wandering, he met. I mine. I met a
fool i'the forest.
—Mr Lyster, an attendant said from the door ajar.
—... in which everyone can find his own. So Mr Justice Madden in his Diary of
Master William Silence has found the hunting terms... Yes? What is it?
—There's a gentleman here, sir, the attendant said, coming forward and offering
a card. From the Freeman. He wants to see the files of the Kilkenny People for last
year.
—Certainly, certainly, certainly. Is the gentleman?...
He took the eager card, glanced, not saw, laid down unglanced, looked, asked,
creaked, asked:
—Is he?... O, there!
Brisk in a galliard he was off, out. In the daylit corridor he talked with voluble
pains of zeal, in duty bound, most fair, most kind, most honest broadbrim.
—This gentleman? Freeman's Journal? Kilkenny People? To be sure. Good day,
sir. Kilkenny... We have certainly...
A patient silhouette waited, listening.
—All the leading provincial... Northern Whig, Cork Examiner, Enniscorthy
Guardian, 1903... Will you please?... Evans, conduct this gentleman... If you just
follow the atten... Or, please allow me... This way... Please, sir...
Voluble, dutiful, he led the way to all the provincial papers, a bowing dark
figure following his hasty heels.
The door closed.
—The sheeny! Buck Mulligan cried.
He jumped up and snatched the card.
—What's his name? Ikey Moses? Bloom.
He rattled on:
 —Jehovah, collector of prepuces, is no more. I found him over in the museum
where I went to hail the foamborn Aphrodite. The Greek mouth that has never
been twisted in prayer. Every day we must do homage to her. Life of life, thy lips
enkindle.
Suddenly he turned to Stephen:
—He knows you. He knows your old fellow. O, I fear me, he is Greeker than the
Greeks. His pale Galilean eyes were upon her mesial groove. Venus Kallipyge. O,
the thunder of those loins! The god pursuing the maiden hid.
—We want to hear more, John Eglinton decided with Mr Best's approval. We
begin to be interested in Mrs S. Till now we had thought of her, if at all, as a
patient Griselda, a Penelope stayathome.
—Antisthenes, pupil of Gorgias, Stephen said, took the palm of beauty from
Kyrios Menelaus' brooddam, Argive Helen, the wooden mare of Troy in whom a
score of heroes slept, and handed it to poor Penelope. Twenty years he lived in
London and, during part of that time, he drew a salary equal to that of the lord
chancellor of Ireland. His life was rich. His art, more than the art of feudalism as
Walt Whitman called it, is the art of surfeit. Hot herringpies, green mugs of sack,
honeysauces, sugar of roses, marchpane, gooseberried pigeons, ringocandies. Sir
Walter Raleigh, when they arrested him, had half a million francs on his back
including a pair of fancy stays. The gombeenwoman Eliza Tudor had underlinen
enough to vie with her of Sheba. Twenty years he dallied there between conjugial
love and its chaste delights and scortatory love and its foul pleasures. You know
Manningham's story of the burgher's wife who bade Dick Burbage to her bed after
she had seen him in Richard III and how Shakespeare, overhearing, without more
ado about nothing, took the cow by the horns and, when Burbage came knocking
at the gate, answered from the capon's blankets: William the conqueror came before
Richard III. And the gay lakin, mistress Fitton, mount and cry O, and his dainty
birdsnies, lady Penelope Rich, a clean quality woman is suited for a player, and
the punks of the bankside, a penny a time.
Cours la Reine. Encore vingt sous. Nous ferons de petites cochonneries. Minette?
Tu veux?
—The height of fine society. And sir William Davenant of oxford's mother with
her cup of canary for any cockcanary.
Buck Mulligan, his pious eyes upturned, prayed:
—Blessed Margaret Mary Anycock!
—And Harry of six wives' daughter. And other lady friends from neighbour seats
as Lawn Tennyson, gentleman poet, sings. But all those twenty years what do you
suppose poor Penelope in Stratford was doing behind the diamond panes?
Do and do. Thing done. In a rosery of Fetter lane of Gerard, herbalist, he walks,
greyedauburn. An azured harebell like her veins. Lids of Juno's eyes, violets. He
walks. One life is all. One body. Do. But do. Afar, in a reek of lust and squalor,
hands are laid on whiteness.
Buck Mulligan rapped John Eglinton's desk sharply.
—Whom do you suspect? he challenged.
—Say that he is the spurned lover in the sonnets. Once spurned twice spurned.
But the court wanton spurned him for a lord, his dearmylove.
Love that dare not speak its name.
—As an Englishman, you mean, John sturdy Eglinton put in, he loved a lord.
Old wall where sudden lizards flash. At Charenton I watched them.
—It seems so, Stephen said, when he wants to do for him, and for all other and
singular uneared wombs, the holy office an ostler does for the stallion. Maybe,
like Socrates, he had a midwife to mother as he had a shrew to wife. But she, the
giglot wanton, did not break a bedvow. Two deeds are rank in that ghost's mind: a
broken vow and the dullbrained yokel on whom her favour has declined, deceased
husband's brother. Sweet Ann, I take it, was hot in the blood. Once a wooer, twice
a wooer.
Stephen turned boldly in his chair.
—The burden of proof is with you not with me, he said frowning. If you deny
that in the fifth scene of Hamlet he has branded her with infamy tell me why there
is no mention of her during the thirtyfour years between the day she married him
and the day she buried him. All those women saw their men down and under:
Mary, her goodman John, Ann, her poor dear Willun, when he went and died on
her, raging that he was the first to go, Joan, her four brothers, Judith, her husband
and all her sons, Susan, her husband too, while Susan's daughter, Elizabeth, to use
granddaddy's words, wed her second, having killed her first.
O, yes, mention there is. In the years when he was living richly in royal London
to pay a debt she had to borrow forty shillings from her father's shepherd. Explain
you then. Explain the swansong too wherein he has commended her to posterity.
He faced their silence.

To whom thus Eglinton:

You mean the will.
But that has been explained, I believe, by jurists.
She was entitled to her widow's dower
At common law. His legal knowledge was great
Our judges tell us.
Him Satan fleers,
Mocker:
And therefore he left out her name
From the first draft but he did not leave out
 The presents for his granddaughter, for his daughters,
For his sister, for his old cronies in Stratford
And in London. And therefore when he was urged,
As I believe, to name her
He left her his
Secondbest
Bed.
Punkt.
Leftherhis
Secondbest
Leftherhis
Bestabed
Secabest
Leftabed.
Woa!
—Pretty countryfolk had few chattels then, John Eglinton observed, as they
have still if our peasant plays are true to type.
—He was a rich country gentleman, Stephen said, with a coat of arms and
landed estate at Stratford and a house in Ireland yard, a capitalist shareholder, a
bill promoter, a tithefarmer. Why did he not leave her his best bed if he wished
her to snore away the rest of her nights in peace?
—It is clear that there were two beds, a best and a secondbest, Mr Secondbest
Best said finely.
—Separatio a mensa et a thalamo, bettered Buck Mulligan and was smiled on.
—Antiquity mentions famous beds, Second Eglinton puckered, bedsmiling. Let
me think.
—Antiquity mentions that Stagyrite schoolurchin and bald heathen sage,
Stephen said, who when dying in exile frees and endows his slaves, pays tribute to
his elders, wills to be laid in earth near the bones of his dead wife and bids his
friends be kind to an old mistress (don't forget Nell Gwynn Herpyllis) and let her
live in his villa.
—Do you mean he died so? Mr Best asked with slight concern. I mean...
—He died dead drunk, Buck Mulligan capped. A quart of ale is a dish for a
king. O, I must tell you what Dowden said!
—What? asked Besteglinton.
William Shakespeare and company, limited. The people's William. For terms
apply: E. Dowden, Highfield house...
—Lovely! Buck Mulligan suspired amorously. I asked him what he thought of
the charge of pederasty brought against the bard. He lifted his hands and said: All
we can say is that life ran very high in those days. Lovely!
 Catamite.
—The sense of beauty leads us astray, said beautifulinsadness Best to ugling
Eglinton.
Steadfast John replied severe:
—The doctor can tell us what those words mean. You cannot eat your cake and
have it.
Sayest thou so? Will they wrest from us, from me, the palm of beauty?
—And the sense of property, Stephen said. He drew Shylock out of his own long
pocket. The son of a maltjobber and moneylender he was himself a cornjobber and
moneylender, with ten tods of corn hoarded in the famine riots. His borrowers are
no doubt those divers of worship mentioned by Chettle Falstaff who reported his
uprightness of dealing. He sued a fellowplayer for the price of a few bags of malt
and exacted his pound of flesh in interest for every money lent. How else could
Aubrey's ostler and callboy get rich quick? All events brought grist to his mill.
Shylock chimes with the jewbaiting that followed the hanging and quartering of
the queen's leech Lopez, his jew's heart being plucked forth while the sheeny was
yet alive: Hamlet and Macbeth with the coming to the throne of a Scotch
philosophaster with a turn for witchroasting. The lost armada is his jeer in Love's
Labour Lost. His pageants, the histories, sail fullbellied on a tide of Mafeking
enthusiasm. Warwickshire jesuits are tried and we have a porter's theory of
equivocation. The Sea Venture comes home from Bermudas and the play Renan
admired is written with Patsy Caliban, our American cousin. The sugared sonnets
follow Sidney's. As for fay Elizabeth, otherwise carrotty Bess, the gross virgin who
inspired The Merry Wives of Windsor, let some meinherr from Almany grope his
life long for deephid meanings in the depths of the buckbasket.
I think you're getting on very nicely. Just mix up a mixture of
theolologicophilolological. Mingo, minxi, mictum, mingere.
—Prove that he was a jew, John Eglinton dared,'expectantly. Your dean of
studies holds he was a holy Roman.
Sufflaminandus sum.
—He was made in Germany, Stephen replied, as the champion French polisher
of Italian scandals.
—A myriadminded man, Mr Best reminded. Coleridge called him
myriadminded.
Amplius. In societate humana hoc est maxime necessarium ut sit amicitia inter
multos.
—Saint Thomas, Stephen began...
—Ora pro nobis, Monk Mulligan groaned, sinking to a chair.
There he keened a wailing rune.
 —Pogue mahone! Acushla machree! It's destroyed we are from this day! It's
destroyed we are surely!
All smiled their smiles.
—Saint Thomas, Stephen smiling said, whose gorbellied works I enjoy reading
in the original, writing of incest from a standpoint different from that of the new
Viennese school Mr Magee spoke of, likens it in his wise and curious way to an
avarice of the emotions. He means that the love so given to one near in blood is
covetously withheld from some stranger who, it may be, hungers for it. Jews,
whom christians tax with avarice, are of all races the most given to intermarriage.
Accusations are made in anger. The christian laws which built up the hoards of
the jews (for whom, as for the lollards, storm was shelter) bound their affections
too with hoops of steel. Whether these be sins or virtues old Nobodaddy will tell
us at doomsday leet. But a man who holds so tightly to what he calls his rights
over what he calls his debts will hold tightly also to what he calls his rights over
her whom he calls his wife. No sir smile neighbour shall covet his ox or his wife or
his manservant or his maidservant or his jackass.
—Or his jennyass, Buck Mulligan antiphoned.
—Gentle Will is being roughly handled, gentle Mr Best said gently.
—Which will? gagged sweetly Buck Mulligan. We are getting mixed.
—The will to live, John Eglinton philosophised, for poor Ann, Will's widow, is
the will to die.
—Requiescat! Stephen prayed.

What of all the will to do?

It has vanished long ago...
—She lies laid out in stark stiffness in that secondbest bed, the mobled queen,
even though you prove that a bed in those days was as rare as a motorcar is now
and that its carvings were the wonder of seven parishes. In old age she takes up
with gospellers (one stayed with her at New Place and drank a quart of sack the
town council paid for but in which bed he slept it skills not to ask) and heard she
had a soul. She read or had read to her his chapbooks preferring them to the
Merry Wives and, loosing her nightly waters on the jordan, she thought over
Hooks and Eyes for Believers' Breeches and The most Spiritual Snuffbox to Make the
Most Devout Souls Sneeze. Venus has twisted her lips in prayer. Agenbite of inwit:
remorse of conscience. It is an age of exhausted whoredom groping for its god.
—History shows that to be true, inquit Eglintonus Chronolologos. The ages
succeed one another. But we have it on high authority that a man's worst enemies
shall be those of his own house and family. I feel that Russell is right. What do we
care for his wife or father? I should say that only family poets have family lives.
Falstaff was not a family man. I feel that the fat knight is his supreme creation.
 Lean, he lay back. Shy, deny thy kindred, the unco guid. Shy, supping with the
godless, he sneaks the cup. A sire in Ultonian Antrim bade it him. Visits him here
on quarter days. Mr Magee, sir, there's a gentleman to see you. Me? Says he's
your father, sir. Give me my Wordsworth. Enter Magee Mor Matthew, a rugged
rough rugheaded kern, in strossers with a buttoned codpiece, his nether stocks
bemired with clauber of ten forests, a wand of wilding in his hand.
Your own? He knows your old fellow. The widower.
Hurrying to her squalid deathlair from gay Paris on the quayside I touched his
hand. The voice, new warmth, speaking. Dr Bob Kenny is attending her. The eyes
that wish me well. But do not know me.
—A father, Stephen said, battling against hopelessness, is a necessary evil. He
wrote the play in the months that followed his father's death. If you hold that he,
a greying man with two marriageable daughters, with thirtyfive years of life, nel
mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, with fifty of experience, is the beardless
undergraduate from Wittenberg then you must hold that his seventyyear old
mother is the lustful queen. No. The corpse of John Shakespeare does not walk the
night. From hour to hour it rots and rots. He rests, disarmed of fatherhood,
having devised that mystical estate upon his son. Boccaccio's Calandrino was the
first and last man who felt himself with child. Fatherhood, in the sense of
conscious begetting, is unknown to man. It is a mystical estate, an apostolic
succession, from only begetter to only begotten. On that mystery and not on the
madonna which the cunning Italian intellect flung to the mob of Europe the
church is founded and founded irremovably because founded, like the world,
macro and microcosm, upon the void. Upon incertitude, upon unlikelihood. Amor
matris, subjective and objective genitive, may be the only true thing in life.
Paternity may be a legal fiction. Who is the father of any son that any son should
love him or he any son?
What the hell are you driving at?
I know. Shut up. Blast you. I have reasons.
Amplius. Adhuc. Iterum. Postea.
Are you condemned to do this?
—They are sundered by a bodily shame so steadfast that the criminal annals of
the world, stained with all other incests and bestialities, hardly record its breach.
Sons with mothers, sires with daughters, lesbic sisters, loves that dare not speak
their name, nephews with grandmothers, jailbirds with keyholes, queens with
prize bulls. The son unborn mars beauty: born, he brings pain, divides affection,
increases care. He is a new male: his growth is his father's decline, his youth his
father's envy, his friend his father's enemy.
In rue Monsieur-le-Prince I thought it.
—What links them in nature? An instant of blind rut.
 Am I a father? If I were?
Shrunken uncertain hand.
—Sabellius, the African, subtlest heresiarch of all the beasts of the field, held
that the Father was Himself His Own Son. The bulldog of Aquin, with whom no
word shall be impossible, refutes him. Well: if the father who has not a son be not
a father can the son who has not a father be a son? When
Rutlandbaconsouthamptonshakespeare or another poet of the same name in the
comedy of errors wrote Hamlet he was not the father of his own son merely but,
being no more a son, he was and felt himself the father of all his race, the father
of his own grandfather, the father of his unborn grandson who, by the same
token, never was born, for nature, as Mr Magee understands her, abhors
perfection.
Eglintoneyes, quick with pleasure, looked up shybrightly. Gladly glancing, a
merry puritan, through the twisted eglantine.
Flatter. Rarely. But flatter.
—Himself his own father, Sonmulligan told himself. Wait. I am big with child. I
have an unborn child in my brain. Pallas Athena! A play! The play's the thing! Let
me parturiate!
He clasped his paunchbrow with both birthaiding hands.
—As for his family, Stephen said, his mother's name lives in the forest of Arden.
Her death brought from him the scene with Volumnia in Coriolanus. His boyson's
death is the deathscene of young Arthur in King John. Hamlet, the black prince, is
Hamnet Shakespeare. Who the girls in The Tempest, in Pericles, in Winter's Tale
are we know. Who Cleopatra, fleshpot of Egypt, and Cressid and Venus are we
may guess. But there is another member of his family who is recorded.
—The plot thickens, John Eglinton said.
The quaker librarian, quaking, tiptoed in, quake, his mask, quake, with haste,
quake, quack.
Door closed. Cell. Day.
They list. Three. They.
I you he they.
Come, mess.
STEPHEN: He had three brothers, Gilbert, Edmund, Richard. Gilbert in his old
age told some cavaliers he got a pass for nowt from Maister Gatherer one time
mass he did and he seen his brud Maister Wull the playwriter up in Lunnon in a
wrastling play wud a man on's back. The playhouse sausage filled Gilbert's soul.
He is nowhere: but an Edmund and a Richard are recorded in the works of sweet
William.
 MAGEEGLINJOHN: Names! What's in a name?
BEST: That is my name, Richard, don't you know. I hope you are going to say a
good word for Richard, don't you know, for my sake. (Laughter)
BUCKMULLIGAN: (Piano, diminuendo)

Then outspoke medical Dick

To his comrade medical Davy...
STEPHEN: In his trinity of black Wills, the villain shakebags, Iago, Richard
Crookback, Edmund in King Lear, two bear the wicked uncles' names. Nay, that
last play was written or being written while his brother Edmund lay dying in
Southwark.
BEST: I hope Edmund is going to catch it. I don't want Richard, my name ...
(Laughter)
QUAKERLYSTER: (A tempo) But he that filches from me my good name...
STEPHEN: (Stringendo) He has hidden his own name, a fair name, William, in
the plays, a super here, a clown there, as a painter of old Italy set his face in a
dark corner of his canvas. He has revealed it in the sonnets where there is Will in
overplus. Like John o'Gaunt his name is dear to him, as dear as the coat and crest
he toadied for, on a bend sable a spear or steeled argent,
honorificabilitudinitatibus, dearer than his glory of greatest shakescene in the
country. What's in a name? That is what we ask ourselves in childhood when we
write the name that we are told is ours. A star, a daystar, a firedrake, rose at his
birth. It shone by day in the heavens alone, brighter than Venus in the night, and
by night it shone over delta in Cassiopeia, the recumbent constellation which is
the signature of his initial among the stars. His eyes watched it, lowlying on the
horizon, eastward of the bear, as he walked by the slumberous summer fields at
midnight returning from Shottery and from her arms.
Both satisfied. I too.
Don't tell them he was nine years old when it was quenched.
And from her arms.
Wait to be wooed and won. Ay, meacock. Who will woo you?
Read the skies. Autontimorumenos. Bous Stephanoumenos. Where's your
configuration? Stephen, Stephen, cut the bread even. S. D: sua donna. Già: di lui.
gelindo risolve di non amare S. D.
—What is that, Mr Dedalus? the quaker librarian asked. Was it a celestial
phenomenon?
—A star by night, Stephen said. A pillar of the cloud by day.
 What more's to speak?
Stephen looked on his hat, his stick, his boots.
Stephanos, my crown. My sword. His boots are spoiling the shape of my feet.
Buy a pair. Holes in my socks. Handkerchief too.
—You make good use of the name, John Eglinton allowed. Your own name is
strange enough. I suppose it explains your fantastical humour.
Me, Magee and Mulligan.
Fabulous artificer. The hawklike man. You flew. Whereto? Newhaven-Dieppe,
steerage passenger. Paris and back. Lapwing. Icarus. Pater, ait. Seabedabbled,
fallen, weltering. Lapwing you are. Lapwing be.
Mr Best eagerquietly lifted his book to say:
—That's very interesting because that brother motive, don't you know, we find
also in the old Irish myths. Just what you say. The three brothers Shakespeare. In
Grimm too, don't you know, the fairytales. The third brother that always marries
the sleeping beauty and wins the best prize.
Best of Best brothers. Good, better, best.
The quaker librarian springhalted near.
—I should like to know, he said, which brother you... I understand you to
suggest there was misconduct with one of the brothers... But perhaps I am
anticipating?
He caught himself in the act: looked at all: refrained.
An attendant from the doorway called:
—Mr Lyster! Father Dineen wants...
—O, Father Dineen! Directly.
Swiftly rectly creaking rectly rectly he was rectly gone.
John Eglinton touched the foil.
—Come, he said. Let us hear what you have to say of Richard and Edmund. You
kept them for the last, didn't you?
—In asking you to remember those two noble kinsmen nuncle Richie and nuncle
Edmund, Stephen answered, I feel I am asking too much perhaps. A brother is as
easily forgotten as an umbrella.
Lapwing.
Where is your brother? Apothecaries' hall. My whetstone. Him, then Cranly,
Mulligan: now these. Speech, speech. But act. Act speech. They mock to try you.
Act. Be acted on.
 Lapwing.
I am tired of my voice, the voice of Esau. My kingdom for a drink.
On.
—You will say those names were already in the chronicles from which he took
the stuff of his plays. Why did he take them rather than others? Richard, a
whoreson crookback, misbegotten, makes love to a widowed Ann (what's in a
name?), woos and wins her, a whoreson merry widow. Richard the conqueror,
third brother, came after William the conquered. The other four acts of that play
hang limply from that first. Of all his kings Richard is the only king unshielded by
Shakespeare's reverence, the angel of the world. Why is the underplot of King Lear
in which Edmund figures lifted out of Sidney's Arcadia and spatchcocked on to a
Celtic legend older than history?
—That was Will's way, John Eglinton defended. We should not now combine a
Norse saga with an excerpt from a novel by George Meredith. Que voulez-vous?
Moore would say. He puts Bohemia on the seacoast and makes Ulysses quote
Aristotle.
—Why? Stephen answered himself. Because the theme of the false or the
usurping or the adulterous brother or all three in one is to Shakespeare, what the
poor are not, always with him. The note of banishment, banishment from the
heart, banishment from home, sounds uninterruptedly from The Two Gentlemen of
Verona onward till Prospero breaks his staff, buries it certain fathoms in the earth
and drowns his book. It doubles itself in the middle of his life, reflects itself in
another, repeats itself, protasis, epitasis, catastasis, catastrophe. It repeats itself
again when he is near the grave, when his married daughter Susan, chip of the old
block, is accused of adultery. But it was the original sin that darkened his
understanding, weakened his will and left in him a strong inclination to evil. The
words are those of my lords bishops of Maynooth. An original sin and, like
original sin, committed by another in whose sin he too has sinned. It is between
the lines of his last written words, it is petrified on his tombstone under which her
four bones are not to be laid. Age has not withered it. Beauty and peace have not
done it away. It is in infinite variety everywhere in the world he has created, in
Much Ado about Nothing, twice in As you like It, in The Tempest, in Hamlet, in
Measure for Measure—and in all the other plays which I have not read.
He laughed to free his mind from his mind's bondage.
Judge Eglinton summed up.
—The truth is midway, he affirmed. He is the ghost and the prince. He is all in
all.
—He is, Stephen said. The boy of act one is the mature man of act five. All in
all. In Cymbeline, in Othello he is bawd and cuckold. He acts and is acted on.
Lover of an ideal or a perversion, like Jose he kills the real Carmen. His
unremitting intellect is the hornmad Iago ceaselessly willing that the moor in him
shall suffer.
 —Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuck Mulligan clucked lewdly. O word of fear!
Dark dome received, reverbed.
—And what a character is Iago! undaunted John Eglinton exclaimed. When all is
said Dumas fils (or is it Dumas père?) is right. After God Shakespeare has created
most.
—Man delights him not nor woman neither, Stephen said. He returns after a life
of absence to that spot of earth where he was born, where he has always been,
man and boy, a silent witness and there, his journey of life ended, he plants his
mulberrytree in the earth. Then dies. The motion is ended. Gravediggers bury
Hamlet (père?) and Hamlet fils. A king and a prince at last in death, with
incidental music. And, what though murdered and betrayed, bewept by all frail
tender hearts for, Dane or Dubliner, sorrow for the dead is the only husband from
whom they refuse to be divorced. If you like the epilogue look long on it:
prosperous Prospero, the good man rewarded, Lizzie, grandpa's lump of love, and
nuncle Richie, the bad man taken off by poetic justice to the place where the bad
niggers go. Strong curtain. He found in the world without as actual what was in
his world within as possible. Maeterlinck says: If Socrates leave his house today he
will find the sage seated on his doorstep. If Judas go forth tonight it is to Judas his
steps will tend. Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves,
meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-
love, but always meeting ourselves. The playwright who wrote the folio of this
world and wrote it badly (He gave us light first and the sun two days later), the
lord of things as they are whom the most Roman of catholics call dio boia,
hangman god, is doubtless all in all in all of us, ostler and butcher, and would be
bawd and cuckold too but that in the economy of heaven, foretold by Hamlet,
there are no more marriages, glorified man, an androgynous angel, being a wife
unto himself.
—Eureka! Buck Mulligan cried. Eureka!
Suddenly happied he jumped up and reached in a stride John Eglinton's desk.
—May I? he said. The Lord has spoken to Malachi.
He began to scribble on a slip of paper.
Take some slips from the counter going out.
—Those who are married, Mr Best, douce herald, said, all save one, shall live.
The rest shall keep as they are.
He laughed, unmarried, at Eglinton Johannes, of arts a bachelor.
Unwed, unfancied, ware of wiles, they fingerponder nightly each his variorum
edition of The Taming of the Shrew.
—You are a delusion, said roundly John Eglinton to Stephen. You have brought
us all this way to show us a French triangle. Do you believe your own theory?
 —No, Stephen said promptly.
—Are you going to write it? Mr Best asked. You ought to make it a dialogue,
don't you know, like the Platonic dialogues Wilde wrote.
John Eclecticon doubly smiled.
—Well, in that case, he said, I don't see why you should expect payment for it
since you don't believe it yourself. Dowden believes there is some mystery in
Hamlet but will say no more. Herr Bleibtreu, the man Piper met in Berlin, who is
working up that Rutland theory, believes that the secret is hidden in the Stratford
monument. He is going to visit the present duke, Piper says, and prove to him
that his ancestor wrote the plays. It will come as a surprise to his grace. But he
believes his theory.
I believe, O Lord, help my unbelief. That is, help me to believe or help me to
unbelieve? Who helps to believe? Egomen. Who to unbelieve? Other chap.
—You are the only contributor to Dana who asks for pieces of silver. Then I
don't know about the next number. Fred Ryan wants space for an article on
economics.
Fraidrine. Two pieces of silver he lent me. Tide you over. Economics.
—For a guinea, Stephen said, you can publish this interview.
Buck Mulligan stood up from his laughing scribbling, laughing: and then gravely
said, honeying malice:
—I called upon the bard Kinch at his summer residence in upper Mecklenburgh
street and found him deep in the study of the Summa contra Gentiles in the
company of two gonorrheal ladies, Fresh Nelly and Rosalie, the coalquay whore.
He broke away.
—Come, Kinch. Come, wandering Aengus of the birds.
Come, Kinch. You have eaten all we left. Ay. I will serve you your orts and
offals.
Stephen rose.
Life is many days. This will end.
—We shall see you tonight, John Eglinton said. Notre ami Moore says Malachi
Mulligan must be there.
Buck Mulligan flaunted his slip and panama.
—Monsieur Moore, he said, lecturer on French letters to the youth of Ireland.
I'll be there. Come, Kinch, the bards must drink. Can you walk straight?
Laughing, he...
 Swill till eleven. Irish nights entertainment.
Lubber...
Stephen followed a lubber...
One day in the national library we had a discussion. Shakes. After. His lub
back: I followed. I gall his kibe.
Stephen, greeting, then all amort, followed a lubber jester, a wellkempt head,
newbarbered, out of the vaulted cell into a shattering daylight of no thought.
What have I learned? Of them? Of me?
Walk like Haines now.
The constant readers' room. In the readers' book Cashel Boyle O'Connor
Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell parafes his polysyllables. Item: was Hamlet mad? The
quaker's pate godlily with a priesteen in booktalk.
—O please do, sir... I shall be most pleased...
Amused Buck Mulligan mused in pleasant murmur with himself, selfnodding:
—A pleased bottom.
The turnstile.
Is that?... Blueribboned hat... Idly writing... What? Looked?...
The curving balustrade: smoothsliding Mincius.
Puck Mulligan, panamahelmeted, went step by step, iambing, trolling:
John Eglinton, my jo, John, Why won't you wed a wife?
He spluttered to the air:
—O, the chinless Chinaman! Chin Chon Eg Lin Ton. We went over to their
playbox, Haines and I, the plumbers' hall. Our players are creating a new art for
Europe like the Greeks or M. Maeterlinck. Abbey Theatre! I smell the pubic sweat
of monks.
He spat blank.
Forgot: any more than he forgot the whipping lousy Lucy gave him. And left the
femme de trente ans. And why no other children born? And his first child a girl?
Afterwit. Go back.
The dour recluse still there (he has his cake) and the douce youngling, minion of
pleasure, Phedo's toyable fair hair.
Eh... I just eh... wanted... I forgot... he...
—Longworth and M'Curdy Atkinson were there...
 Puck Mulligan footed featly, trilling:

I hardly hear the purlieu cry

Or a tommy talk as I pass one by
Before my thoughts begin to run
On F. M'Curdy Atkinson,
The same that had the wooden leg
And that filibustering filibeg
That never dared to slake his drouth,
Magee that had the chinless mouth.
Being afraid to marry on earth
They masturbated for all they were worth.
Jest on. Know thyself.
Halted, below me, a quizzer looks at me. I halt.
—Mournful mummer, Buck Mulligan moaned. Synge has left off wearing black
to be like nature. Only crows, priests and English coal are black.
A laugh tripped over his lips.
—Longworth is awfully sick, he said, after what you wrote about that old hake
Gregory. O you inquisitional drunken jewjesuit! She gets you a job on the paper
and then you go and slate her drivel to Jaysus. Couldn't you do the Yeats touch?
He went on and down, mopping, chanting with waving graceful arms:
—The most beautiful book that has come out of our country in my time. One
thinks of Homer.
He stopped at the stairfoot.
—I have conceived a play for the mummers, he said solemnly.
The pillared Moorish hall, shadows entwined. Gone the nine men's morrice with
caps of indices.
In sweetly varying voices Buck Mulligan read his tablet: Everyman His own Wife
or A Honeymoon in the Hand (a national immorality in three orgasms) by Ballocky
Mulligan.
He turned a happy patch's smirk to Stephen, saying:
—The disguise, I fear, is thin. But listen.
He read, marcato:
—Characters:

TODY TOSTOFF (a ruined Pole)

CRAB (a bushranger)
 MEDICAL DICK )
and ) (two birds with one stone)
MEDICAL DAVY )
MOTHER GROGAN (a watercarrier)
FRESH NELLY
and
ROSALIE (the coalquay whore).
He laughed, lolling a to and fro head, walking on, followed by Stephen: and
mirthfully he told the shadows, souls of men:
—O, the night in the Camden hall when the daughters of Erin had to lift their
skirts to step over you as you lay in your mulberrycoloured, multicoloured,
multitudinous vomit!
—The most innocent son of Erin, Stephen said, for whom they ever lifted them.
About to pass through the doorway, feeling one behind, he stood aside.
Part. The moment is now. Where then? If Socrates leave his house today, if
Judas go forth tonight. Why? That lies in space which I in time must come to,
ineluctably.
My will: his will that fronts me. Seas between.
A man passed out between them, bowing, greeting.
—Good day again, Buck Mulligan said.
The portico.
Here I watched the birds for augury. Aengus of the birds. They go, they come.
Last night I flew. Easily flew. Men wondered. Street of harlots after. A creamfruit
melon he held to me. In. You will see.
—The wandering jew, Buck Mulligan whispered with clown's awe. Did you see
his eye? He looked upon you to lust after you. I fear thee, ancient mariner. O,
Kinch, thou art in peril. Get thee a breechpad.
Manner of Oxenford.
Day. Wheelbarrow sun over arch of bridge.
A dark back went before them, step of a pard, down, out by the gateway, under
portcullis barbs.
They followed.
Offend me still. Speak on.
Kind air defined the coigns of houses in Kildare street. No birds. Frail from the
housetops two plumes of smoke ascended, pluming, and in a flaw of softness
softly were blown.
 Cease to strive. Peace of the druid priests of Cymbeline: hierophantic: from
wide earth an altar.

Laud we the gods

And let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils
From our bless'd altars.
The superior, the very reverend John Conmee S.J. reset his smooth watch in his
interior pocket as he came down the presbytery steps. Five to three. Just nice time
to walk to Artane. What was that boy's name again? Dignam. Yes. Vere dignum et
iustum est. Brother Swan was the person to see. Mr Cunningham's letter. Yes.
Oblige him, if possible. Good practical catholic: useful at mission time.
A onelegged sailor, swinging himself onward by lazy jerks of his crutches,
growled some notes. He jerked short before the convent of the sisters of charity
and held out a peaked cap for alms towards the very reverend John Conmee S. J.
Father Conmee blessed him in the sun for his purse held, he knew, one silver
crown.
Father Conmee crossed to Mountjoy square. He thought, but not for long, of
soldiers and sailors, whose legs had been shot off by cannonballs, ending their
days in some pauper ward, and of cardinal Wolsey's words: If I had served my God
as I have served my king He would not have abandoned me in my old days. He
walked by the treeshade of sunnywinking leaves: and towards him came the wife
of Mr David Sheehy M.P.
—Very well, indeed, father. And you, father?
Father Conmee was wonderfully well indeed. He would go to Buxton probably
for the waters. And her boys, were they getting on well at Belvedere? Was that so?
Father Conmee was very glad indeed to hear that. And Mr Sheehy himself? Still in
London. The house was still sitting, to be sure it was. Beautiful weather it was,
delightful indeed. Yes, it was very probable that Father Bernard Vaughan would
come again to preach. O, yes: a very great success. A wonderful man really.
Father Conmee was very glad to see the wife of Mr David Sheehy M.P. Iooking
so well and he begged to be remembered to Mr David Sheehy M.P. Yes, he would
certainly call.
—Good afternoon, Mrs Sheehy.
Father Conmee doffed his silk hat and smiled, as he took leave, at the jet beads
of her mantilla inkshining in the sun. And smiled yet again, in going. He had
cleaned his teeth, he knew, with arecanut paste.
Father Conmee walked and, walking, smiled for he thought on Father Bernard
Vaughan's droll eyes and cockney voice.
—Pilate! Wy don't you old back that owlin mob?
 A zealous man, however. Really he was. And really did great good in his way.
Beyond a doubt. He loved Ireland, he said, and he loved the Irish. Of good family
too would one think it? Welsh, were they not?
O, lest he forget. That letter to father provincial.
Father Conmee stopped three little schoolboys at the corner of Mountjoy square.
Yes: they were from Belvedere. The little house. Aha. And were they good boys at
school? O. That was very good now. And what was his name? Jack Sohan. And his
name? Ger. Gallaher. And the other little man? His name was Brunny Lynam. O,
that was a very nice name to have.
Father Conmee gave a letter from his breast to Master Brunny Lynam and
pointed to the red pillarbox at the corner of Fitzgibbon street.
—But mind you don't post yourself into the box, little man, he said.
The boys sixeyed Father Conmee and laughed:
—O, sir.
—Well, let me see if you can post a letter, Father Conmee said.
Master Brunny Lynam ran across the road and put Father Conmee's letter to
father provincial into the mouth of the bright red letterbox. Father Conmee smiled
and nodded and smiled and walked along Mountjoy square east.
Mr Denis J Maginni, professor of dancing &c, in silk hat, slate frockcoat with
silk facings, white kerchief tie, tight lavender trousers, canary gloves and pointed
patent boots, walking with grave deportment most respectfully took the curbstone
as he passed lady Maxwell at the corner of Dignam's court.
Was that not Mrs M'Guinness?
Mrs M'Guinness, stately, silverhaired, bowed to Father Conmee from the farther
footpath along which she sailed. And Father Conmee smiled and saluted. How did
she do?
A fine carriage she had. Like Mary, queen of Scots, something. And to think
that she was a pawnbroker! Well, now! Such a... what should he say?... such a
queenly mien.
Father Conmee walked down Great Charles street and glanced at the shutup
free church on his left. The reverend T. R. Greene B.A. will (D.V.) speak. The
incumbent they called him. He felt it incumbent on him to say a few words. But
one should be charitable. Invincible ignorance. They acted according to their
lights.
Father Conmee turned the corner and walked along the North Circular road. It
was a wonder that there was not a tramline in such an important thoroughfare.
Surely, there ought to be.
 A band of satchelled schoolboys crossed from Richmond street. All raised untidy
caps. Father Conmee greeted them more than once benignly. Christian brother
boys.
Father Conmee smelt incense on his right hand as he walked. Saint Joseph's
church, Portland row. For aged and virtuous females. Father Conmee raised his
hat to the Blessed Sacrament. Virtuous: but occasionally they were also
badtempered.
Near Aldborough house Father Conmee thought of that spendthrift nobleman.
And now it was an office or something.
Father Conmee began to walk along the North Strand road and was saluted by
Mr William Gallagher who stood in the doorway of his shop. Father Conmee
saluted Mr William Gallagher and perceived the odours that came from
baconflitches and ample cools of butter. He passed Grogan's the Tobacconist
against which newsboards leaned and told of a dreadful catastrophe in New York.
In America those things were continually happening. Unfortunate people to die
like that, unprepared. Still, an act of perfect contrition.
Father Conmee went by Daniel Bergin's publichouse against the window of
which two unlabouring men lounged. They saluted him and were saluted.
Father Conmee passed H. J. O'Neill's funeral establishment where Corny
Kelleher totted figures in the daybook while he chewed a blade of hay. A constable
on his beat saluted Father Conmee and Father Conmee saluted the constable. In
Youkstetter's, the porkbutcher's, Father Conmee observed pig's puddings, white
and black and red, lie neatly curled in tubes.
Moored under the trees of Charleville Mall Father Conmee saw a turfbarge, a
towhorse with pendent head, a bargeman with a hat of dirty straw seated
amidships, smoking and staring at a branch of poplar above him. It was idyllic:
and Father Conmee reflected on the providence of the Creator who had made turf
to be in bogs whence men might dig it out and bring it to town and hamlet to
make fires in the houses of poor people.
On Newcomen bridge the very reverend John Conmee S.J. of saint Francis
Xavier's church, upper Gardiner street, stepped on to an outward bound tram.
Off an inward bound tram stepped the reverend Nicholas Dudley C. C. of saint
Agatha's church, north William street, on to Newcomen bridge.
At Newcomen bridge Father Conmee stepped into an outward bound tram for he
disliked to traverse on foot the dingy way past Mud Island.
Father Conmee sat in a corner of the tramcar, a blue ticket tucked with care in
the eye of one plump kid glove, while four shillings, a sixpence and five pennies
chuted from his other plump glovepalm into his purse. Passing the ivy church he
reflected that the ticket inspector usually made his visit when one had carelessly
thrown away the ticket. The solemnity of the occupants of the car seemed to
Father Conmee excessive for a journey so short and cheap. Father Conmee liked
cheerful decorum.
It was a peaceful day. The gentleman with the glasses opposite Father Conmee
had finished explaining and looked down. His wife, Father Conmee supposed. A
tiny yawn opened the mouth of the wife of the gentleman with the glasses. She
raised her small gloved fist, yawned ever so gently, tiptapping her small gloved
fist on her opening mouth and smiled tinily, sweetly.
Father Conmee perceived her perfume in the car. He perceived also that the
awkward man at the other side of her was sitting on the edge of the seat.
Father Conmee at the altarrails placed the host with difficulty in the mouth of
the awkward old man who had the shaky head.
At Annesley bridge the tram halted and, when it was about to go, an old woman
rose suddenly from her place to alight. The conductor pulled the bellstrap to stay
the car for her. She passed out with her basket and a marketnet: and Father
Conmee saw the conductor help her and net and basket down: and Father Conmee
thought that, as she had nearly passed the end of the penny fare, she was one of
those good souls who had always to be told twice bless you, my child, that they
have been absolved, pray for me. But they had so many worries in life, so many
cares, poor creatures.
From the hoardings Mr Eugene Stratton grimaced with thick niggerlips at Father
Conmee.
Father Conmee thought of the souls of black and brown and yellow men and of
his sermon on saint Peter Claver S.J. and the African mission and of the
propagation of the faith and of the millions of black and brown and yellow souls
that had not received the baptism of water when their last hour came like a thief
in the night. That book by the Belgian jesuit, Le Nombre des Élus, seemed to
Father Conmee a reasonable plea. Those were millions of human souls created by
God in His Own likeness to whom the faith had not (D.V.) been brought. But they
were God's souls, created by God. It seemed to Father Conmee a pity that they
should all be lost, a waste, if one might say.
At the Howth road stop Father Conmee alighted, was saluted by the conductor
and saluted in his turn.
The Malahide road was quiet. It pleased Father Conmee, road and name. The
joybells were ringing in gay Malahide. Lord Talbot de Malahide, immediate
hereditary lord admiral of Malahide and the seas adjoining. Then came the call to
arms and she was maid, wife and widow in one day. Those were old worldish
days, loyal times in joyous townlands, old times in the barony.
Father Conmee, walking, thought of his little book Old Times in the Barony and
of the book that might be written about jesuit houses and of Mary Rochfort,
daughter of lord Molesworth, first countess of Belvedere.
 A listless lady, no more young, walked alone the shore of lough Ennel, Mary,
first countess of Belvedere, listlessly walking in the evening, not startled when an
otter plunged. Who could know the truth? Not the jealous lord Belvedere and not
her confessor if she had not committed adultery fully, eiaculatio seminis inter vas
naturale mulieris, with her husband's brother? She would half confess if she had
not all sinned as women did. Only God knew and she and he, her husband's
brother.
Father Conmee thought of that tyrannous incontinence, needed however for
man's race on earth, and of the ways of God which were not our ways.
Don John Conmee walked and moved in times of yore. He was humane and
honoured there. He bore in mind secrets confessed and he smiled at smiling noble
faces in a beeswaxed drawingroom, ceiled with full fruit clusters. And the hands
of a bride and of a bridegroom, noble to noble, were impalmed by Don John
Conmee.
It was a charming day.
The lychgate of a field showed Father Conmee breadths of cabbages, curtseying
to him with ample underleaves. The sky showed him a flock of small white clouds
going slowly down the wind. Moutonner, the French said. A just and homely word.
Father Conmee, reading his office, watched a flock of muttoning clouds over
Rathcoffey. His thinsocked ankles were tickled by the stubble of Clongowes field.
He walked there, reading in the evening, and heard the cries of the boys' lines at
their play, young cries in the quiet evening. He was their rector: his reign was
mild.
Father Conmee drew off his gloves and took his rededged breviary out. An ivory
bookmark told him the page.
Nones. He should have read that before lunch. But lady Maxwell had come.
Father Conmee read in secret Pater and Ave and crossed his breast. Deus in
adiutorium.
He walked calmly and read mutely the nones, walking and reading till he came
to Res in Beati immaculati: Principium verborum tuorum veritas: in eternum omnia
indicia iustitiae tuae.
A flushed young man came from a gap of a hedge and after him came a young
woman with wild nodding daisies in her hand. The young man raised his cap
abruptly: the young woman abruptly bent and with slow care detached from her
light skirt a clinging twig.
Father Conmee blessed both gravely and turned a thin page of his breviary. Sin:
Principes persecuti sunt me gratis: et a verbis tuis formidavit cor meum.
 Corny Kelleher closed his long daybook and glanced with his drooping eye at a
pine coffinlid sentried in a corner. He pulled himself erect, went to it and,
spinning it on its axle, viewed its shape and brass furnishings. Chewing his blade
of hay he laid the coffinlid by and came to the doorway. There he tilted his
hatbrim to give shade to his eyes and leaned against the doorcase, looking idly
out.
Father John Conmee stepped into the Dollymount tram on Newcomen bridge.
Corny Kelleher locked his largefooted boots and gazed, his hat downtilted,
chewing his blade of hay.
Constable 57C, on his beat, stood to pass the time of day.
—That's a fine day, Mr Kelleher.
—Ay, Corny Kelleher said.
—It's very close, the constable said.
Corny Kelleher sped a silent jet of hayjuice arching from his mouth while a
generous white arm from a window in Eccles street flung forth a coin.
—What's the best news? he asked.
—I seen that particular party last evening, the constable said with bated breath.

A onelegged sailor crutched himself round MacConnell's corner, skirting

Rabaiotti's icecream car, and jerked himself up Eccles street. Towards Larry
O'Rourke, in shirtsleeves in his doorway, he growled unamiably:
—For England...
He swung himself violently forward past Katey and Boody Dedalus, halted and
growled:
—home and beauty.
J. J. O'Molloy's white careworn face was told that Mr Lambert was in the
warehouse with a visitor.
A stout lady stopped, took a copper coin from her purse and dropped it into the
cap held out to her. The sailor grumbled thanks, glanced sourly at the unheeding
windows, sank his head and swung himself forward four strides.
He halted and growled angrily:
—For England...
Two barefoot urchins, sucking long liquorice laces, halted near him, gaping at
his stump with their yellowslobbered mouths.
 He swung himself forward in vigorous jerks, halted, lifted his head towards a
window and bayed deeply:
—home and beauty.
The gay sweet chirping whistling within went on a bar or two, ceased. The blind
of the window was drawn aside. A card Unfurnished Apartments slipped from the
sash and fell. A plump bare generous arm shone, was seen, held forth from a
white petticoatbodice and taut shiftstraps. A woman's hand flung forth a coin over
the area railings. It fell on the path.
One of the urchins ran to it, picked it up and dropped it into the minstrel's cap,
saying:
—There, sir.

Katey and Boody Dedalus shoved in the door of the closesteaming kitchen.
—Did you put in the books? Boody asked.
Maggy at the range rammed down a greyish mass beneath bubbling suds twice
with her potstick and wiped her brow.
—They wouldn't give anything on them, she said.
Father Conmee walked through Clongowes fields, his thinsocked ankles tickled
by stubble.
—Where did you try? Boody asked.
—M'Guinness's.
Boody stamped her foot and threw her satchel on the table.
—Bad cess to her big face! she cried.
Katey went to the range and peered with squinting eyes.
—What's in the pot? she asked.
—Shirts, Maggy said.
Boody cried angrily:
—Crickey, is there nothing for us to eat?
Katey, lifting the kettlelid in a pad of her stained skirt, asked:
—And what's in this?
A heavy fume gushed in answer.
—Peasoup, Maggy said.
 —Where did you get it? Katey asked.
—Sister Mary Patrick, Maggy said.
The lacquey rang his bell.
—Barang!
Boody sat down at the table and said hungrily:
—Give us it here.
Maggy poured yellow thick soup from the kettle into a bowl. Katey, sitting
opposite Boody, said quietly, as her fingertip lifted to her mouth random crumbs:
—A good job we have that much. Where's Dilly?
—Gone to meet father, Maggy said.
Boody, breaking big chunks of bread into the yellow soup, added:
—Our father who art not in heaven.
Maggy, pouring yellow soup in Katey's bowl, exclaimed:
—Boody! For shame!
A skiff, a crumpled throwaway, Elijah is coming, rode lightly down the Liffey,
under Loopline bridge, shooting the rapids where water chafed around the
bridgepiers, sailing eastward past hulls and anchorchains, between the
Customhouse old dock and George's quay.

The blond girl in Thornton's bedded the wicker basket with rustling fibre. Blazes
Boylan handed her the bottle swathed in pink tissue paper and a small jar.
—Put these in first, will you? he said.
—Yes, sir, the blond girl said. And the fruit on top.
—That'll do, game ball, Blazes Boylan said.
She bestowed fat pears neatly, head by tail, and among them ripe shamefaced
peaches.
Blazes Boylan walked here and there in new tan shoes about the fruitsmelling
shop, lifting fruits, young juicy crinkled and plump red tomatoes, sniffing smells.
H. E. L. Y.'S filed before him, tallwhitehatted, past Tangier lane, plodding
towards their goal.
He turned suddenly from a chip of strawberries, drew a gold watch from his fob
and held it at its chain's length.
—Can you send them by tram? Now?
 A darkbacked figure under Merchants' arch scanned books on the hawker's cart.
—Certainly, sir. Is it in the city?
—O, yes, Blazes Boylan said. Ten minutes.
The blond girl handed him a docket and pencil.
—Will you write the address, sir?
Blazes Boylan at the counter wrote and pushed the docket to her.
—Send it at once, will you? he said. It's for an invalid.
—Yes, sir. I will, sir.
Blazes Boylan rattled merry money in his trousers' pocket.
—What's the damage? he asked.
The blond girl's slim fingers reckoned the fruits.
Blazes Boylan looked into the cut of her blouse. A young pullet. He took a red
carnation from the tall stemglass.
—This for me? he asked gallantly.
The blond girl glanced sideways at him, got up regardless, with his tie a bit
crooked, blushing.
—Yes, sir, she said.
Bending archly she reckoned again fat pears and blushing peaches.
Blazes Boylan looked in her blouse with more favour, the stalk of the red flower
between his smiling teeth.
—May I say a word to your telephone, missy? he asked roguishly.

—Ma! Almidano Artifoni said.

He gazed over Stephen's shoulder at Goldsmith's knobby poll.
Two carfuls of tourists passed slowly, their women sitting fore, gripping the
handrests. Palefaces. Men's arms frankly round their stunted forms. They looked
from Trinity to the blind columned porch of the bank of Ireland where pigeons
roocoocooed.
—Anch'io ho avuto di queste idee, ALMIDANO ARTIFONI SAID, quand' ero
giovine come Lei. Eppoi mi sono convinto che il mondo è una bestia. É peccato.
Perchè la sua voce... sarebbe un cespite di rendita, via. Invece, Lei si sacrifica.
—Sacrifizio incruento, Stephen said smiling, swaying his ashplant in slow
swingswong from its midpoint, lightly.
 —Speriamo, the round mustachioed face said pleasantly. Ma, dia retta a me. Ci
rifletta.
By the stern stone hand of Grattan, bidding halt, an Inchicore tram unloaded
straggling Highland soldiers of a band.
—Ci rifletterò, Stephen said, glancing down the solid trouserleg.
—Ma, sul serio, eh? Almidano Artifoni said.
His heavy hand took Stephen's firmly. Human eyes. They gazed curiously an
instant and turned quickly towards a Dalkey tram.
—Eccolo, Almidano Artifoni said in friendly haste. Venga a trovarmi e ci pensi.
Addio, caro.
—Arrivederla, maestro, Stephen said, raising his hat when his hand was freed. E
grazie.
—Di che? Almidano Artifoni said. Scusi, eh? Tante belle cose!
Almidano Artifoni, holding up a baton of rolled music as a signal, trotted on
stout trousers after the Dalkey tram. In vain he trotted, signalling in vain among
the rout of barekneed gillies smuggling implements of music through Trinity gates.

Miss Dunne hid the Capel street library copy of The Woman in White far back in
her drawer and rolled a sheet of gaudy notepaper into her typewriter.
Too much mystery business in it. Is he in love with that one, Marion? Change it
and get another by Mary Cecil Haye.
The disk shot down the groove, wobbled a while, ceased and ogled them: six.
Miss Dunne clicked on the keyboard:
—16 June 1904.
Five tallwhitehatted sandwichmen between Monypeny's corner and the slab
where Wolfe Tone's statue was not, eeled themselves turning H. E. L. Y.'S and
plodded back as they had come.
Then she stared at the large poster of Marie Kendall, charming soubrette, and,
listlessly lolling, scribbled on the jotter sixteens and capital esses. Mustard hair
and dauby cheeks. She's not nicelooking, is she? The way she's holding up her bit
of a skirt. Wonder will that fellow be at the band tonight. If I could get that
dressmaker to make a concertina skirt like Susy Nagle's. They kick out grand.
Shannon and all the boatclub swells never took his eyes off her. Hope to goodness
he won't keep me here till seven.
The telephone rang rudely by her ear.
 —Hello. Yes, sir. No, sir. Yes, sir. I'll ring them up after five. Only those two,
sir, for Belfast and Liverpool. All right, sir. Then I can go after six if you're not
back. A quarter after. Yes, sir. Twentyseven and six. I'll tell him. Yes: one, seven,
six.
She scribbled three figures on an envelope.
—Mr Boylan! Hello! That gentleman from SPORT was in looking for you. Mr
Lenehan, yes. He said he'll be in the Ormond at four. No, sir. Yes, sir. I'll ring
them up after five.

Two pink faces turned in the flare of the tiny torch.

—Who's that? Ned Lambert asked. Is that Crotty?
—Ringabella and Crosshaven, a voice replied groping for foothold.
—Hello, Jack, is that yourself? Ned Lambert said, raising in salute his pliant
lath among the flickering arches. Come on. Mind your steps there.
The vesta in the clergyman's uplifted hand consumed itself in a long soft flame
and was let fall. At their feet its red speck died: and mouldy air closed round
them.
—How interesting! a refined accent said in the gloom.
—Yes, sir, Ned Lambert said heartily. We are standing in the historic council
chamber of saint Mary's abbey where silken Thomas proclaimed himself a rebel in
1534. This is the most historic spot in all Dublin. O'Madden Burke is going to
write something about it one of these days. The old bank of Ireland was over the
way till the time of the union and the original jews' temple was here too before
they built their synagogue over in Adelaide road. You were never here before,
Jack, were you?
—No, Ned.
—He rode down through Dame walk, the refined accent said, if my memory
serves me. The mansion of the Kildares was in Thomas court.
—That's right, Ned Lambert said. That's quite right, sir.
—If you will be so kind then, the clergyman said, the next time to allow me
perhaps...
—Certainly, Ned Lambert said. Bring the camera whenever you like. I'll get
those bags cleared away from the windows. You can take it from here or from
here.
In the still faint light he moved about, tapping with his lath the piled seedbags
and points of vantage on the floor.
From a long face a beard and gaze hung on a chessboard.
 —I'm deeply obliged, Mr Lambert, the clergyman said. I won't trespass on your
valuable time...
—You're welcome, sir, Ned Lambert said. Drop in whenever you like. Next
week, say. Can you see?
—Yes, yes. Good afternoon, Mr Lambert. Very pleased to have met you.
—Pleasure is mine, sir, Ned Lambert answered.
He followed his guest to the outlet and then whirled his lath away among the
pillars. With J. J. O'Molloy he came forth slowly into Mary's abbey where draymen
were loading floats with sacks of carob and palmnut meal, O'Connor, Wexford.
He stood to read the card in his hand.
—The reverend Hugh C. Love, Rathcoffey. Present address: Saint Michael's,
Sallins. Nice young chap he is. He's writing a book about the Fitzgeralds he told
me. He's well up in history, faith.
The young woman with slow care detached from her light skirt a clinging twig.
—I thought you were at a new gunpowder plot, J. J. O'Molloy said.
Ned Lambert cracked his fingers in the air.
—God! he cried. I forgot to tell him that one about the earl of Kildare after he
set fire to Cashel cathedral. You know that one? I'm bloody sorry I did it, says he,
but I declare to God I thought the archbishop was inside. He mightn't like it,
though. What? God, I'll tell him anyhow. That was the great earl, the Fitzgerald
Mor. Hot members they were all of them, the Geraldines.
The horses he passed started nervously under their slack harness. He slapped a
piebald haunch quivering near him and cried:
—Woa, sonny!
He turned to J. J. O'Molloy and asked:
—Well, Jack. What is it? What's the trouble? Wait awhile. Hold hard.
With gaping mouth and head far back he stood still and, after an instant,
sneezed loudly.
—Chow! he said. Blast you!
—The dust from those sacks, J. J. O'Molloy said politely.
—No, Ned Lambert gasped, I caught a... cold night before... blast your soul...
night before last... and there was a hell of a lot of draught...
He held his handkerchief ready for the coming...
—I was... Glasnevin this morning... poor little... what do you call him...
Chow!... Mother of Moses!
 Tom Rochford took the top disk from the pile he clasped against his claret
waistcoat.
—See? he said. Say it's turn six. In here, see. Turn Now On.
He slid it into the left slot for them. It shot down the groove, wobbled a while,
ceased, ogling them: six.
Lawyers of the past, haughty, pleading, beheld pass from the consolidated
taxing office to Nisi Prius court Richie Goulding carrying the costbag of Goulding,
Collis and Ward and heard rustling from the admiralty division of king's bench to
the court of appeal an elderly female with false teeth smiling incredulously and a
black silk skirt of great amplitude.
—See? he said. See now the last one I put in is over here: Turns Over. The
impact. Leverage, see?
He showed them the rising column of disks on the right.
—Smart idea, Nosey Flynn said, snuffling. So a fellow coming in late can see
what turn is on and what turns are over.
—See? Tom Rochford said.
He slid in a disk for himself: and watched it shoot, wobble, ogle, stop: four.
Turn Now On.
—I'll see him now in the Ormond, Lenehan said, and sound him. One good turn
deserves another.
—Do, Tom Rochford said. Tell him I'm Boylan with impatience.
—Goodnight, M'Coy said abruptly. When you two begin
Nosey Flynn stooped towards the lever, snuffling at it.
—But how does it work here, Tommy? he asked.
—Tooraloo, Lenehan said. See you later.
He followed M'Coy out across the tiny square of Crampton court.
—He's a hero, he said simply.
—I know, M'Coy said. The drain, you mean.
—Drain? Lenehan said. It was down a manhole.
They passed Dan Lowry's musichall where Marie Kendall, charming soubrette,
smiled on them from a poster a dauby smile.
Going down the path of Sycamore street beside the Empire musichall Lenehan
showed M'Coy how the whole thing was. One of those manholes like a bloody
gaspipe and there was the poor devil stuck down in it, half choked with sewer gas.
Down went Tom Rochford anyhow, booky's vest and all, with the rope round him.
And be damned but he got the rope round the poor devil and the two were hauled
up.
—The act of a hero, he said.
At the Dolphin they halted to allow the ambulance car to gallop past them for
Jervis street.
—This way, he said, walking to the right. I want to pop into Lynam's to see
Sceptre's starting price. What's the time by your gold watch and chain?
M'Coy peered into Marcus Tertius Moses' sombre office, then at O'Neill's clock.
—After three, he said. Who's riding her?
—O. Madden, Lenehan said. And a game filly she is.
While he waited in Temple bar M'Coy dodged a banana peel with gentle pushes
of his toe from the path to the gutter. Fellow might damn easy get a nasty fall
there coming along tight in the dark.
The gates of the drive opened wide to give egress to the viceregal cavalcade.
—Even money, Lenehan said returning. I knocked against Bantam Lyons in
there going to back a bloody horse someone gave him that hasn't an earthly.
Through here.
They went up the steps and under Merchants' arch. A darkbacked figure
scanned books on the hawker's cart.
—There he is, Lenehan said.
—Wonder what he's buying, M'Coy said, glancing behind.
—Leopoldo or the Bloom is on the Rye, Lenehan said.
—He's dead nuts on sales, M'Coy said. I was with him one day and he bought a
book from an old one in Liffey street for two bob. There were fine plates in it
worth double the money, the stars and the moon and comets with long tails.
Astronomy it was about.
Lenehan laughed.
—I'll tell you a damn good one about comets' tails, he said. Come over in the
sun.
They crossed to the metal bridge and went along Wellington quay by the
riverwall.
Master Patrick Aloysius Dignam came out of Mangan's, late Fehrenbach's,
carrying a pound and a half of porksteaks.
 —There was a long spread out at Glencree reformatory, Lenehan said eagerly.
The annual dinner, you know. Boiled shirt affair. The lord mayor was there, Val
Dillon it was, and sir Charles Cameron and Dan Dawson spoke and there was
music. Bartell d'Arcy sang and Benjamin Dollard...
—I know, M'Coy broke in. My missus sang there once.
—Did she? Lenehan said.
A card Unfurnished Apartments reappeared on the windowsash of number 7
Eccles street.
He checked his tale a moment but broke out in a wheezy laugh.
—But wait till I tell you, he said. Delahunt of Camden street had the catering
and yours truly was chief bottlewasher. Bloom and the wife were there. Lashings
of stuff we put up: port wine and sherry and curacao to which we did ample
justice. Fast and furious it was. After liquids came solids. Cold joints galore and
mince pies...
—I know, M'Coy said. The year the missus was there...
Lenehan linked his arm warmly.
—But wait till I tell you, he said. We had a midnight lunch too after all the
jollification and when we sallied forth it was blue o'clock the morning after the
night before. Coming home it was a gorgeous winter's night on the Featherbed
Mountain. Bloom and Chris Callinan were on one side of the car and I was with
the wife on the other. We started singing glees and duets: Lo, the early beam of
morning. She was well primed with a good load of Delahunt's port under her
bellyband. Every jolt the bloody car gave I had her bumping up against me. Hell's
delights! She has a fine pair, God bless her. Like that.
He held his caved hands a cubit from him, frowning:
—I was tucking the rug under her and settling her boa all the time. Know what I
mean?
His hands moulded ample curves of air. He shut his eyes tight in delight, his
body shrinking, and blew a sweet chirp from his lips.
—The lad stood to attention anyhow, he said with a sigh. She's a gamey mare
and no mistake. Bloom was pointing out all the stars and the comets in the
heavens to Chris Callinan and the jarvey: the great bear and Hercules and the
dragon, and the whole jingbang lot. But, by God, I was lost, so to speak, in the
milky way. He knows them all, faith. At last she spotted a weeny weeshy one
miles away. And what star is that, Poldy? says she. By God, she had Bloom
cornered. That one, is it? says Chris Callinan, sure that's only what you might call a
pinprick. By God, he wasn't far wide of the mark.
Lenehan stopped and leaned on the riverwall, panting with soft laughter.
—I'm weak, he gasped.
 M'Coy's white face smiled about it at instants and grew grave. Lenehan walked
on again. He lifted his yachtingcap and scratched his hindhead rapidly. He
glanced sideways in the sunlight at M'Coy.
—He's a cultured allroundman, Bloom is, he said seriously. He's not one of your
common or garden... you know... There's a touch of the artist about old Bloom.

Mr Bloom turned over idly pages of The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, then
of Aristotle's Masterpiece. Crooked botched print. Plates: infants cuddled in a ball
in bloodred wombs like livers of slaughtered cows. Lots of them like that at this
moment all over the world. All butting with their skulls to get out of it. Child born
every minute somewhere. Mrs Purefoy.
He laid both books aside and glanced at the third: Tales of the Ghetto by
Leopold von Sacher Masoch.
—That I had, he said, pushing it by.
The shopman let two volumes fall on the counter.
—Them are two good ones, he said.
Onions of his breath came across the counter out of his ruined mouth. He bent
to make a bundle of the other books, hugged them against his unbuttoned
waistcoat and bore them off behind the dingy curtain.
On O'Connell bridge many persons observed the grave deportment and gay
apparel of Mr Denis J Maginni, professor of dancing &c.
Mr Bloom, alone, looked at the titles. Fair Tyrants by James Lovebirch. Know
the kind that is. Had it? Yes.
He opened it. Thought so.
A woman's voice behind the dingy curtain. Listen: the man.
No: she wouldn't like that much. Got her it once.
He read the other title: Sweets of Sin. More in her line. Let us see.
He read where his finger opened.
—All the dollarbills her husband gave her were spent in the stores on wondrous
gowns and costliest frillies. For him! For raoul!
Yes. This. Here. Try.
—Her mouth glued on his in a luscious voluptuous kiss while his hands felt for the
opulent curves inside her deshabillé.
Yes. Take this. The end.
 —You are late, he spoke hoarsely, eying her with a suspicious glare. The beautiful
woman threw off her sabletrimmed wrap, displaying her queenly shoulders and
heaving embonpoint. An imperceptible smile played round her perfect lips as she
turned to him calmly.
Mr Bloom read again: The beautiful woman.
Warmth showered gently over him, cowing his flesh. Flesh yielded amply amid
rumpled clothes: whites of eyes swooning up. His nostrils arched themselves for
prey. Melting breast ointments (for Him! For Raoul!). Armpits' oniony sweat.
Fishgluey slime (her heaving embonpoint!). Feel! Press! Crushed! Sulphur dung of
lions!
Young! Young!
An elderly female, no more young, left the building of the courts of chancery,
king's bench, exchequer and common pleas, having heard in the lord chancellor's
court the case in lunacy of Potterton, in the admiralty division the summons,
exparte motion, of the owners of the Lady Cairns versus the owners of the barque
Mona, in the court of appeal reservation of judgment in the case of Harvey versus
the Ocean Accident and Guarantee Corporation.
Phlegmy coughs shook the air of the bookshop, bulging out the dingy curtains.
The shopman's uncombed grey head came out and his unshaven reddened face,
coughing. He raked his throat rudely, puked phlegm on the floor. He put his boot
on what he had spat, wiping his sole along it, and bent, showing a rawskinned
crown, scantily haired.
Mr Bloom beheld it.
Mastering his troubled breath, he said:
—I'll take this one.
The shopman lifted eyes bleared with old rheum.
—Sweets of Sin, he said, tapping on it. That's a good one.

The lacquey by the door of Dillon's auctionrooms shook his handbell twice again
and viewed himself in the chalked mirror of the cabinet.
Dilly Dedalus, loitering by the curbstone, heard the beats of the bell, the cries
of the auctioneer within. Four and nine. Those lovely curtains. Five shillings. Cosy
curtains. Selling new at two guineas. Any advance on five shillings? Going for five
shillings.
The lacquey lifted his handbell and shook it:
—Barang!
 Bang of the lastlap bell spurred the halfmile wheelmen to their sprint. J. A.
Jackson, W. E. Wylie, A. Munro and H. T. Gahan, their stretched necks wagging,
negotiated the curve by the College library.
Mr Dedalus, tugging a long moustache, came round from Williams's row. He
halted near his daughter.
—It's time for you, she said.
—Stand up straight for the love of the lord Jesus, Mr Dedalus said. Are you
trying to imitate your uncle John, the cornetplayer, head upon shoulder?
Melancholy God!
Dilly shrugged her shoulders. Mr Dedalus placed his hands on them and held
them back.
—Stand up straight, girl, he said. You'll get curvature of the spine. Do you
know what you look like?
He let his head sink suddenly down and forward, hunching his shoulders and
dropping his underjaw.
—Give it up, father, Dilly said. All the people are looking at you.
Mr Dedalus drew himself upright and tugged again at his moustache.
—Did you get any money? Dilly asked.
—Where would I get money? Mr Dedalus said. There is no-one in Dublin would
lend me fourpence.
—You got some, Dilly said, looking in his eyes.
—How do you know that? Mr Dedalus asked, his tongue in his cheek.
Mr Kernan, pleased with the order he had booked, walked boldly along James's
street.
—I know you did, Dilly answered. Were you in the Scotch house now?
—I was not, then, Mr Dedalus said, smiling. Was it the little nuns taught you to
be so saucy? Here.
He handed her a shilling.
—See if you can do anything with that, he said.
—I suppose you got five, Dilly said. Give me more than that.
—Wait awhile, Mr Dedalus said threateningly. You're like the rest of them, are
you? An insolent pack of little bitches since your poor mother died. But wait
awhile. You'll all get a short shrift and a long day from me. Low blackguardism!
I'm going to get rid of you. Wouldn't care if I was stretched out stiff. He's dead.
The man upstairs is dead.
 He left her and walked on. Dilly followed quickly and pulled his coat.
—Well, what is it? he said, stopping.
The lacquey rang his bell behind their backs.
—Barang!
—Curse your bloody blatant soul, Mr Dedalus cried, turning on him.
The lacquey, aware of comment, shook the lolling clapper of his bell but feebly:
—Bang!
Mr Dedalus stared at him.
—Watch him, he said. It's instructive. I wonder will he allow us to talk.
—You got more than that, father, Dilly said.
—I'm going to show you a little trick, Mr Dedalus said. I'll leave you all where
Jesus left the jews. Look, there's all I have. I got two shillings from Jack Power and
I spent twopence for a shave for the funeral.
He drew forth a handful of copper coins, nervously.
—Can't you look for some money somewhere? Dilly said.
Mr Dedalus thought and nodded.
—I will, he said gravely. I looked all along the gutter in O'Connell street. I'll try
this one now.
—You're very funny, Dilly said, grinning.
—Here, Mr Dedalus said, handing her two pennies. Get a glass of milk for
yourself and a bun or a something. I'll be home shortly.
He put the other coins in his pocket and started to walk on.
The viceregal cavalcade passed, greeted by obsequious policemen, out of
Parkgate.
—I'm sure you have another shilling, Dilly said.
The lacquey banged loudly.
Mr Dedalus amid the din walked off, murmuring to himself with a pursing
mincing mouth gently:
—The little nuns! Nice little things! O, sure they wouldn't do anything! O, sure
they wouldn't really! Is it little sister Monica!
 From the sundial towards James's gate walked Mr Kernan, pleased with the
order he had booked for Pulbrook Robertson, boldly along James's street, past
Shackleton's offices. Got round him all right. How do you do, Mr Crimmins? First
rate, sir. I was afraid you might be up in your other establishment in Pimlico. How
are things going? Just keeping alive. Lovely weather we're having. Yes, indeed.
Good for the country. Those farmers are always grumbling. I'll just take a
thimbleful of your best gin, Mr Crimmins. A small gin, sir. Yes, sir. Terrible affair
that General Slocum explosion. Terrible, terrible! A thousand casualties. And
heartrending scenes. Men trampling down women and children. Most brutal thing.
What do they say was the cause? Spontaneous combustion. Most scandalous
revelation. Not a single lifeboat would float and the firehose all burst. What I can't
understand is how the inspectors ever allowed a boat like that... Now, you're
talking straight, Mr Crimmins. You know why? Palm oil. Is that a fact? Without a
doubt. Well now, look at that. And America they say is the land of the free. I
thought we were bad here.
I smiled at him. America, I said quietly, just like that. What is it? The sweepings
of every country including our own. Isn't that true? That's a fact.
Graft, my dear sir. Well, of course, where there's money going there's always
someone to pick it up.
Saw him looking at my frockcoat. Dress does it. Nothing like a dressy
appearance. Bowls them over.
—Hello, Simon, Father Cowley said. How are things?
—Hello, Bob, old man, Mr Dedalus answered, stopping.
Mr Kernan halted and preened himself before the sloping mirror of Peter
Kennedy, hairdresser. Stylish coat, beyond a doubt. Scott of Dawson street. Well
worth the half sovereign I gave Neary for it. Never built under three guineas. Fits
me down to the ground. Some Kildare street club toff had it probably. John
Mulligan, the manager of the Hibernian bank, gave me a very sharp eye yesterday
on Carlisle bridge as if he remembered me.
Aham! Must dress the character for those fellows. Knight of the road.
Gentleman. And now, Mr Crimmins, may we have the honour of your custom
again, sir. The cup that cheers but not inebriates, as the old saying has it.
North wall and sir John Rogerson's quay, with hulls and anchorchains, sailing
westward, sailed by a skiff, a crumpled throwaway, rocked on the ferrywash,
Elijah is coming.
Mr Kernan glanced in farewell at his image. High colour, of course. Grizzled
moustache. Returned Indian officer. Bravely he bore his stumpy body forward on
spatted feet, squaring his shoulders. Is that Ned Lambert's brother over the way,
Sam? What? Yes. He's as like it as damn it. No. The windscreen of that motorcar
in the sun there. Just a flash like that. Damn like him.
 Aham! Hot spirit of juniper juice warmed his vitals and his breath. Good drop
of gin, that was. His frocktails winked in bright sunshine to his fat strut.
Down there Emmet was hanged, drawn and quartered. Greasy black rope. Dogs
licking the blood off the street when the lord lieutenant's wife drove by in her
noddy.
Bad times those were. Well, well. Over and done with. Great topers too.
Fourbottle men.
Let me see. Is he buried in saint Michan's? Or no, there was a midnight burial
in Glasnevin. Corpse brought in through a secret door in the wall. Dignam is there
now. Went out in a puff. Well, well. Better turn down here. Make a detour.
Mr Kernan turned and walked down the slope of Watling street by the corner of
Guinness's visitors' waitingroom. Outside the Dublin Distillers Company's stores
an outside car without fare or jarvey stood, the reins knotted to the wheel. Damn
dangerous thing. Some Tipperary bosthoon endangering the lives of the citizens.
Runaway horse.
Denis Breen with his tomes, weary of having waited an hour in John Henry
Menton's office, led his wife over O'Connell bridge, bound for the office of Messrs
Collis and Ward.
Mr Kernan approached Island street.
Times of the troubles. Must ask Ned Lambert to lend me those reminiscences of
sir Jonah Barrington. When you look back on it all now in a kind of retrospective
arrangement. Gaming at Daly's. No cardsharping then. One of those fellows got
his hand nailed to the table by a dagger. Somewhere here lord Edward Fitzgerald
escaped from major Sirr. Stables behind Moira house.
Damn good gin that was.
Fine dashing young nobleman. Good stock, of course. That ruffian, that sham
squire, with his violet gloves gave him away. Course they were on the wrong side.
They rose in dark and evil days. Fine poem that is: Ingram. They were gentlemen.
Ben Dollard does sing that ballad touchingly. Masterly rendition.
At the siege of Ross did my father fall.
A cavalcade in easy trot along Pembroke quay passed, outriders leaping, leaping
in their, in their saddles. Frockcoats. Cream sunshades.
Mr Kernan hurried forward, blowing pursily.
His Excellency! Too bad! Just missed that by a hair. Damn it! What a pity!

Stephen Dedalus watched through the webbed window the lapidary's fingers
prove a timedulled chain. Dust webbed the window and the showtrays. Dust
darkened the toiling fingers with their vulture nails. Dust slept on dull coils of
bronze and silver, lozenges of cinnabar, on rubies, leprous and winedark stones.
Born all in the dark wormy earth, cold specks of fire, evil, lights shining in the
darkness. Where fallen archangels flung the stars of their brows. Muddy
swinesnouts, hands, root and root, gripe and wrest them.
She dances in a foul gloom where gum bums with garlic. A sailorman,
rustbearded, sips from a beaker rum and eyes her. A long and seafed silent rut.
She dances, capers, wagging her sowish haunches and her hips, on her gross belly
flapping a ruby egg.
Old Russell with a smeared shammy rag burnished again his gem, turned it and
held it at the point of his Moses' beard. Grandfather ape gloating on a stolen
hoard.
And you who wrest old images from the burial earth? The brainsick words of
sophists: Antisthenes. A lore of drugs. Orient and immortal wheat standing from
everlasting to everlasting.
Two old women fresh from their whiff of the briny trudged through Irishtown
along London bridge road, one with a sanded tired umbrella, one with a midwife's
bag in which eleven cockles rolled.
The whirr of flapping leathern bands and hum of dynamos from the powerhouse
urged Stephen to be on. Beingless beings. Stop! Throb always without you and the
throb always within. Your heart you sing of. I between them. Where? Between two
roaring worlds where they swirl, I. Shatter them, one and both. But stun myself
too in the blow. Shatter me you who can. Bawd and butcher were the words. I
say! Not yet awhile. A look around.
Yes, quite true. Very large and wonderful and keeps famous time. You say right,
sir. A Monday morning, 'twas so, indeed.
Stephen went down Bedford row, the handle of the ash clacking against his
shoulderblade. In Clohissey's window a faded 1860 print of Heenan boxing Sayers
held his eye. Staring backers with square hats stood round the roped prizering.
The heavyweights in tight loincloths proposed gently each to other his bulbous
fists. And they are throbbing: heroes' hearts.
He turned and halted by the slanted bookcart.
—Twopence each, the huckster said. Four for sixpence.
Tattered pages. The Irish Beekeeper. Life and Miracles of the Curé of Ars. Pocket
Guide to Killarney.
I might find here one of my pawned schoolprizes. Stephano Dedalo, alumno
optimo, palmam ferenti.
Father Conmee, having read his little hours, walked through the hamlet of
Donnycarney, murmuring vespers.
 Binding too good probably. What is this? Eighth and ninth book of Moses.
Secret of all secrets. Seal of King David. Thumbed pages: read and read. Who has
passed here before me? How to soften chapped hands. Recipe for white wine
vinegar. How to win a woman's love. For me this. Say the following talisman three
times with hands folded:
—Se el yilo nebrakada femininum! Amor me solo! Sanktus! Amen.
Who wrote this? Charms and invocations of the most blessed abbot Peter
Salanka to all true believers divulged. As good as any other abbot's charms, as
mumbling Joachim's. Down, baldynoddle, or we'll wool your wool.
—What are you doing here, Stephen?
Dilly's high shoulders and shabby dress.
Shut the book quick. Don't let see.
—What are you doing? Stephen said.
A Stuart face of nonesuch Charles, lank locks falling at its sides. It glowed as
she crouched feeding the fire with broken boots. I told her of Paris. Late lieabed
under a quilt of old overcoats, fingering a pinchbeck bracelet, Dan Kelly's token.
Nebrakada femininum.
—What have you there? Stephen asked.
—I bought it from the other cart for a penny, Dilly said, laughing nervously. Is
it any good?
My eyes they say she has. Do others see me so? Quick, far and daring. Shadow
of my mind.
He took the coverless book from her hand. Chardenal's French primer.
—What did you buy that for? he asked. To learn French?
She nodded, reddening and closing tight her lips.
Show no surprise. Quite natural.
—Here, Stephen said. It's all right. Mind Maggy doesn't pawn it on you. I
suppose all my books are gone.
—Some, Dilly said. We had to.
She is drowning. Agenbite. Save her. Agenbite. All against us. She will drown
me with her, eyes and hair. Lank coils of seaweed hair around me, my heart, my
soul. Salt green death.
We.
Agenbite of inwit. Inwit's agenbite.
Misery! Misery!
 —Hello, Simon, Father Cowley said. How are things?
—Hello, Bob, old man, Mr Dedalus answered, stopping.
They clasped hands loudly outside Reddy and Daughter's. Father Cowley
brushed his moustache often downward with a scooping hand.
—What's the best news? Mr Dedalus said.
—Why then not much, Father Cowley said. I'm barricaded up, Simon, with two
men prowling around the house trying to effect an entrance.
—Jolly, Mr Dedalus said. Who is it?
—O, Father Cowley said. A certain gombeen man of our acquaintance.
—With a broken back, is it? Mr Dedalus asked.
—The same, Simon, Father Cowley answered. Reuben of that ilk. I'm just
waiting for Ben Dollard. He's going to say a word to long John to get him to take
those two men off. All I want is a little time.
He looked with vague hope up and down the quay, a big apple bulging in his
neck.
—I know, Mr Dedalus said, nodding. Poor old bockedy Ben! He's always doing a
good turn for someone. Hold hard!
He put on his glasses and gazed towards the metal bridge an instant.
—There he is, by God, he said, arse and pockets.
Ben Dollard's loose blue cutaway and square hat above large slops crossed the
quay in full gait from the metal bridge. He came towards them at an amble,
scratching actively behind his coattails.
As he came near Mr Dedalus greeted:
—Hold that fellow with the bad trousers.
—Hold him now, Ben Dollard said.
Mr Dedalus eyed with cold wandering scorn various points of Ben Dollard's
figure. Then, turning to Father Cowley with a nod, he muttered sneeringly:
—That's a pretty garment, isn't it, for a summer's day?
—Why, God eternally curse your soul, Ben Dollard growled furiously, I threw
out more clothes in my time than you ever saw.
He stood beside them beaming, on them first and on his roomy clothes from
points of which Mr Dedalus flicked fluff, saying:
—They were made for a man in his health, Ben, anyhow.
 —Bad luck to the jewman that made them, Ben Dollard said. Thanks be to God
he's not paid yet.
—And how is that basso profondo, Benjamin? Father Cowley asked.
Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell, murmuring, glassyeyed,
strode past the Kildare street club.
Ben Dollard frowned and, making suddenly a chanter's mouth, gave forth a deep
note.
—Aw! he said.
—That's the style, Mr Dedalus said, nodding to its drone.
—What about that? Ben Dollard said. Not too dusty? What?
He turned to both.
—That'll do, Father Cowley said, nodding also.
The reverend Hugh C. Love walked from the old chapterhouse of saint Mary's
abbey past James and Charles Kennedy's, rectifiers, attended by Geraldines tall
and personable, towards the Tholsel beyond the ford of hurdles.
Ben Dollard with a heavy list towards the shopfronts led them forward, his
joyful fingers in the air.
—Come along with me to the subsheriff's office, he said. I want to show you the
new beauty Rock has for a bailiff. He's a cross between Lobengula and
Lynchehaun. He's well worth seeing, mind you. Come along. I saw John Henry
Menton casually in the Bodega just now and it will cost me a fall if I don't... Wait
awhile... We're on the right lay, Bob, believe you me.
—For a few days tell him, Father Cowley said anxiously.
Ben Dollard halted and stared, his loud orifice open, a dangling button of his
coat wagging brightbacked from its thread as he wiped away the heavy shraums
that clogged his eyes to hear aright.
—What few days? he boomed. Hasn't your landlord distrained for rent?
—He has, Father Cowley said.
—Then our friend's writ is not worth the paper it's printed on, Ben Dollard said.
The landlord has the prior claim. I gave him all the particulars. 29 Windsor
avenue. Love is the name?
—That's right, Father Cowley said. The reverend Mr Love. He's a minister in the
country somewhere. But are you sure of that?
—You can tell Barabbas from me, Ben Dollard said, that he can put that writ
where Jacko put the nuts.
 He led Father Cowley boldly forward, linked to his bulk.
—Filberts I believe they were, Mr Dedalus said, as he dropped his glasses on his
coatfront, following them.

—The youngster will be all right, Martin Cunningham said, as they passed out
of the Castleyard gate.
The policeman touched his forehead.
—God bless you, Martin Cunningham said, cheerily.
He signed to the waiting jarvey who chucked at the reins and set on towards
Lord Edward street.
Bronze by gold, Miss Kennedy's head by Miss Douce's head, appeared above the
crossblind of the Ormond hotel.
—Yes, Martin Cunningham said, fingering his beard. I wrote to Father Conmee
and laid the whole case before him.
—You could try our friend, Mr Power suggested backward.
—Boyd? Martin Cunningham said shortly. Touch me not.
John Wyse Nolan, lagging behind, reading the list, came after them quickly
down Cork hill.
On the steps of the City hall Councillor Nannetti, descending, hailed Alderman
Cowley and Councillor Abraham Lyon ascending.
The castle car wheeled empty into upper Exchange street.
—Look here, Martin, John Wyse Nolan said, overtaking them at the Mail office.
I see Bloom put his name down for five shillings.
—Quite right, Martin Cunningham said, taking the list. And put down the five
shillings too.
—Without a second word either, Mr Power said.
—Strange but true, Martin Cunningham added.
John Wyse Nolan opened wide eyes.
—I'll say there is much kindness in the jew, he quoted, elegantly.
They went down Parliament street.
—There's Jimmy Henry, Mr Power said, just heading for Kavanagh's.
—Righto, Martin Cunningham said. Here goes.
 Outside la Maison Claire Blazes Boylan waylaid Jack Mooney's brother-in-law,
humpy, tight, making for the liberties.
John Wyse Nolan fell back with Mr Power, while Martin Cunningham took the
elbow of a dapper little man in a shower of hail suit, who walked uncertainly,
with hasty steps past Micky Anderson's watches.
—The assistant town clerk's corns are giving him some trouble, John Wyse
Nolan told Mr Power.
They followed round the corner towards James Kavanagh's winerooms. The
empty castle car fronted them at rest in Essex gate. Martin Cunningham, speaking
always, showed often the list at which Jimmy Henry did not glance.
—And long John Fanning is here too, John Wyse Nolan said, as large as life.
The tall form of long John Fanning filled the doorway where he stood.
—Good day, Mr Subsheriff, Martin Cunningham said, as all halted and greeted.
Long John Fanning made no way for them. He removed his large Henry Clay
decisively and his large fierce eyes scowled intelligently over all their faces.
—Are the conscript fathers pursuing their peaceful deliberations? he said with
rich acrid utterance to the assistant town clerk.
Hell open to christians they were having, Jimmy Henry said pettishly, about
their damned Irish language. Where was the marshal, he wanted to know, to keep
order in the council chamber. And old Barlow the macebearer laid up with
asthma, no mace on the table, nothing in order, no quorum even, and Hutchinson,
the lord mayor, in Llandudno and little Lorcan Sherlock doing locum tenens for
him. Damned Irish language, language of our forefathers.
Long John Fanning blew a plume of smoke from his lips.
Martin Cunningham spoke by turns, twirling the peak of his beard, to the
assistant town clerk and the subsheriff, while John Wyse Nolan held his peace.
—What Dignam was that? long John Fanning asked.
Jimmy Henry made a grimace and lifted his left foot.
—O, my corns! he said plaintively. Come upstairs for goodness' sake till I sit
down somewhere. Uff! Ooo! Mind!
Testily he made room for himself beside long John Fanning's flank and passed in
and up the stairs.
—Come on up, Martin Cunningham said to the subsheriff. I don't think you
knew him or perhaps you did, though.
With John Wyse Nolan Mr Power followed them in.
 —Decent little soul he was, Mr Power said to the stalwart back of long John
Fanning ascending towards long John Fanning in the mirror.
—Rather lowsized. Dignam of Menton's office that was, Martin Cunningham
said.
Long John Fanning could not remember him.
Clatter of horsehoofs sounded from the air.
—What's that? Martin Cunningham said.
All turned where they stood. John Wyse Nolan came down again. From the cool
shadow of the doorway he saw the horses pass Parliament street, harness and
glossy pasterns in sunlight shimmering. Gaily they went past before his cool
unfriendly eyes, not quickly. In saddles of the leaders, leaping leaders, rode
outriders.
—What was it? Martin Cunningham asked, as they went on up the staircase.
—The lord lieutenantgeneral and general governor of Ireland, John Wyse Nolan
answered from the stairfoot.

As they trod across the thick carpet Buck Mulligan whispered behind his
Panama to Haines:
—Parnell's brother. There in the corner.
They chose a small table near the window, opposite a longfaced man whose
beard and gaze hung intently down on a chessboard.
—Is that he? Haines asked, twisting round in his seat.
—Yes, Mulligan said. That's John Howard, his brother, our city marshal.
John Howard Parnell translated a white bishop quietly and his grey claw went
up again to his forehead whereat it rested. An instant after, under its screen, his
eyes looked quickly, ghostbright, at his foe and fell once more upon a working
corner.
—I'll take a mélange, Haines said to the waitress.
—Two mélanges, Buck Mulligan said. And bring us some scones and butter and
some cakes as well.
When she had gone he said, laughing:
—We call it D.B.C. because they have damn bad cakes. O, but you missed
Dedalus on Hamlet.
Haines opened his newbought book.
 —I'm sorry, he said. Shakespeare is the happy huntingground of all minds that
have lost their balance.
The onelegged sailor growled at the area of 14 Nelson street:
—England expects...
Buck Mulligan's primrose waistcoat shook gaily to his laughter.
—You should see him, he said, when his body loses its balance. Wandering
Aengus I call him.
—I am sure he has an idée fixe, Haines said, pinching his chin thoughtfully with
thumb and forefinger. Now I am speculating what it would be likely to be. Such
persons always have.
Buck Mulligan bent across the table gravely.
—They drove his wits astray, he said, by visions of hell. He will never capture
the Attic note. The note of Swinburne, of all poets, the white death and the ruddy
birth. That is his tragedy. He can never be a poet. The joy of creation...
—Eternal punishment, Haines said, nodding curtly. I see. I tackled him this
morning on belief. There was something on his mind, I saw. It's rather interesting
because professor Pokorny of Vienna makes an interesting point out of that.
Buck Mulligan's watchful eyes saw the waitress come. He helped her to unload
her tray.
—He can find no trace of hell in ancient Irish myth, Haines said, amid the
cheerful cups. The moral idea seems lacking, the sense of destiny, of retribution.
Rather strange he should have just that fixed idea. Does he write anything for
your movement?
He sank two lumps of sugar deftly longwise through the whipped cream. Buck
Mulligan slit a steaming scone in two and plastered butter over its smoking pith.
He bit off a soft piece hungrily.
—Ten years, he said, chewing and laughing. He is going to write something in
ten years.
—Seems a long way off, Haines said, thoughtfully lifting his spoon. Still, I
shouldn't wonder if he did after all.
He tasted a spoonful from the creamy cone of his cup.
—This is real Irish cream I take it, he said with forbearance. I don't want to be
imposed on.
Elijah, skiff, light crumpled throwaway, sailed eastward by flanks of ships and
trawlers, amid an archipelago of corks, beyond new Wapping street past Benson's
ferry, and by the threemasted schooner Rosevean from Bridgwater with bricks.
 Almidano Artifoni walked past Holles street, past Sewell's yard. Behind him
Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell, with stickumbrelladustcoat
dangling, shunned the lamp before Mr Law Smith's house and, crossing, walked
along Merrion square. Distantly behind him a blind stripling tapped his way by
the wall of College park.
Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell walked as far as Mr Lewis
Werner's cheerful windows, then turned and strode back along Merrion square, his
stickumbrelladustcoat dangling.
At the corner of Wilde's house he halted, frowned at Elijah's name announced on
the Metropolitan hall, frowned at the distant pleasance of duke's lawn. His
eyeglass flashed frowning in the sun. With ratsteeth bared he muttered:
—Coactus volui.
He strode on for Clare street, grinding his fierce word.
As he strode past Mr Bloom's dental windows the sway of his dustcoat brushed
rudely from its angle a slender tapping cane and swept onwards, having buffeted a
thewless body. The blind stripling turned his sickly face after the striding form.
—God's curse on you, he said sourly, whoever you are! You're blinder nor I am,
you bitch's bastard!

Opposite Ruggy O'Donohoe's Master Patrick Aloysius Dignam, pawing the

pound and a half of Mangan's, late Fehrenbach's, porksteaks he had been sent for,
went along warm Wicklow street dawdling. It was too blooming dull sitting in the
parlour with Mrs Stoer and Mrs Quigley and Mrs MacDowell and the blind down
and they all at their sniffles and sipping sups of the superior tawny sherry uncle
Barney brought from Tunney's. And they eating crumbs of the cottage fruitcake,
jawing the whole blooming time and sighing.
After Wicklow lane the window of Madame Doyle, courtdress milliner, stopped
him. He stood looking in at the two puckers stripped to their pelts and putting up
their props. From the sidemirrors two mourning Masters Dignam gaped silently.
Myler Keogh, Dublin's pet lamb, will meet sergeantmajor Bennett, the Portobello
bruiser, for a purse of fifty sovereigns. Gob, that'd be a good pucking match to
see. Myler Keogh, that's the chap sparring out to him with the green sash. Two
bar entrance, soldiers half price. I could easy do a bunk on ma. Master Dignam on
his left turned as he turned. That's me in mourning. When is it? May the
twentysecond. Sure, the blooming thing is all over. He turned to the right and on
his right Master Dignam turned, his cap awry, his collar sticking up. Buttoning it
down, his chin lifted, he saw the image of Marie Kendall, charming soubrette,
beside the two puckers. One of them mots that do be in the packets of fags Stoer
smokes that his old fellow welted hell out of him for one time he found out.
Master Dignam got his collar down and dawdled on. The best pucker going for
strength was Fitzsimons. One puck in the wind from that fellow would knock you
into the middle of next week, man. But the best pucker for science was Jem
Corbet before Fitzsimons knocked the stuffings out of him, dodging and all.
In Grafton street Master Dignam saw a red flower in a toff's mouth and a swell
pair of kicks on him and he listening to what the drunk was telling him and
grinning all the time.
No Sandymount tram.
Master Dignam walked along Nassau street, shifted the porksteaks to his other
hand. His collar sprang up again and he tugged it down. The blooming stud was
too small for the buttonhole of the shirt, blooming end to it. He met schoolboys
with satchels. I'm not going tomorrow either, stay away till Monday. He met other
schoolboys. Do they notice I'm in mourning? Uncle Barney said he'd get it into the
paper tonight. Then they'll all see it in the paper and read my name printed and
pa's name.
His face got all grey instead of being red like it was and there was a fly walking
over it up to his eye. The scrunch that was when they were screwing the screws
into the coffin: and the bumps when they were bringing it downstairs.
Pa was inside it and ma crying in the parlour and uncle Barney telling the men
how to get it round the bend. A big coffin it was, and high and heavylooking. How
was that? The last night pa was boosed he was standing on the landing there
bawling out for his boots to go out to Tunney's for to boose more and he looked
butty and short in his shirt. Never see him again. Death, that is. Pa is dead. My
father is dead. He told me to be a good son to ma. I couldn't hear the other things
he said but I saw his tongue and his teeth trying to say it better. Poor pa. That
was Mr Dignam, my father. I hope he's in purgatory now because he went to
confession to Father Conroy on Saturday night.

William Humble, earl of Dudley, and lady Dudley, accompanied by

lieutenantcolonel Heseltine, drove out after luncheon from the viceregal lodge. In
the following carriage were the honourable Mrs Paget, Miss de Courcy and the
honourable Gerald Ward A.D.C. in attendance.
The cavalcade passed out by the lower gate of Phoenix park saluted by
obsequious policemen and proceeded past Kingsbridge along the northern quays.
The viceroy was most cordially greeted on his way through the metropolis. At
Bloody bridge Mr Thomas Kernan beyond the river greeted him vainly from afar
Between Queen's and Whitworth bridges lord Dudley's viceregal carriages passed
and were unsaluted by Mr Dudley White, B. L., M. A., who stood on Arran quay
outside Mrs M. E. White's, the pawnbroker's, at the corner of Arran street west
stroking his nose with his forefinger, undecided whether he should arrive at
Phibsborough more quickly by a triple change of tram or by hailing a car or on
foot through Smithfield, Constitution hill and Broadstone terminus. In the porch
of Four Courts Richie Goulding with the costbag of Goulding, Collis and Ward saw
him with surprise. Past Richmond bridge at the doorstep of the office of Reuben J
Dodd, solicitor, agent for the Patriotic Insurance Company, an elderly female
about to enter changed her plan and retracing her steps by King's windows smiled
credulously on the representative of His Majesty. From its sluice in Wood quay
wall under Tom Devan's office Poddle river hung out in fealty a tongue of liquid
sewage. Above the crossblind of the Ormond hotel, gold by bronze, Miss
Kennedy's head by Miss Douce's head watched and admired. On Ormond quay Mr
Simon Dedalus, steering his way from the greenhouse for the subsheriff's office,
stood still in midstreet and brought his hat low. His Excellency graciously returned
Mr Dedalus' greeting. From Cahill's corner the reverend Hugh C. Love, M.A.,
made obeisance unperceived, mindful of lords deputies whose hands benignant
had held of yore rich advowsons. On Grattan bridge Lenehan and M'Coy, taking
leave of each other, watched the carriages go by. Passing by Roger Greene's office
and Dollard's big red printinghouse Gerty MacDowell, carrying the Catesby's cork
lino letters for her father who was laid up, knew by the style it was the lord and
lady lieutenant but she couldn't see what Her Excellency had on because the tram
and Spring's big yellow furniture van had to stop in front of her on account of its
being the lord lieutenant. Beyond Lundy Foot's from the shaded door of
Kavanagh's winerooms John Wyse Nolan smiled with unseen coldness towards the
lord lieutenantgeneral and general governor of Ireland. The Right Honourable
William Humble, earl of Dudley, G. C. V. O., passed Micky Anderson's all times
ticking watches and Henry and James's wax smartsuited freshcheeked models, the
gentleman Henry, dernier cri James. Over against Dame gate Tom Rochford and
Nosey Flynn watched the approach of the cavalcade. Tom Rochford, seeing the
eyes of lady Dudley fixed on him, took his thumbs quickly out of the pockets of
his claret waistcoat and doffed his cap to her. A charming soubrette, great Marie
Kendall, with dauby cheeks and lifted skirt smiled daubily from her poster upon
William Humble, earl of Dudley, and upon lieutenantcolonel H. G. Heseltine, and
also upon the honourable Gerald Ward A. D. C. From the window of the D. B. C.
Buck Mulligan gaily, and Haines gravely, gazed down on the viceregal equipage
over the shoulders of eager guests, whose mass of forms darkened the chessboard
whereon John Howard Parnell looked intently. In Fownes's street Dilly Dedalus,
straining her sight upward from Chardenal's first French primer, saw sunshades
spanned and wheelspokes spinning in the glare. John Henry Menton, filling the
doorway of Commercial Buildings, stared from winebig oyster eyes, holding a fat
gold hunter watch not looked at in his fat left hand not feeling it. Where the
foreleg of King Billy's horse pawed the air Mrs Breen plucked her hastening
husband back from under the hoofs of the outriders. She shouted in his ear the
tidings. Understanding, he shifted his tomes to his left breast and saluted the
second carriage. The honourable Gerald Ward A.D.C., agreeably surprised, made
haste to reply. At Ponsonby's corner a jaded white flagon H. halted and four
tallhatted white flagons halted behind him, E.L.Y'S, while outriders pranced past
and carriages. Opposite Pigott's music warerooms Mr Denis J Maginni, professor
of dancing &c, gaily apparelled, gravely walked, outpassed by a viceroy and
unobserved. By the provost's wall came jauntily Blazes Boylan, stepping in tan
shoes and socks with skyblue clocks to the refrain of My girl's a Yorkshire girl.
Blazes Boylan presented to the leaders' skyblue frontlets and high action a
skyblue tie, a widebrimmed straw hat at a rakish angle and a suit of indigo serge.
His hands in his jacket pockets forgot to salute but he offered to the three ladies
the bold admiration of his eyes and the red flower between his lips. As they drove
along Nassau street His Excellency drew the attention of his bowing consort to the
programme of music which was being discoursed in College park. Unseen brazen
highland laddies blared and drumthumped after the cortège:

But though she's a factory lass

And wears no fancy clothes.
Baraabum.
Yet I've a sort of a
Yorkshire relish for
My little Yorkshire rose.
Baraabum.
Thither of the wall the quartermile flat handicappers, M. C. Green, H. Shrift, T.
M. Patey, C. Scaife, J. B. Jeffs, G. N. Morphy, F. Stevenson, C. Adderly and W. C.
Huggard, started in pursuit. Striding past Finn's hotel Cashel Boyle O'Connor
Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell stared through a fierce eyeglass across the carriages at
the head of Mr M. E. Solomons in the window of the Austro-Hungarian
viceconsulate. Deep in Leinster street by Trinity's postern a loyal king's man,
Hornblower, touched his tallyho cap. As the glossy horses pranced by Merrion
square Master Patrick Aloysius Dignam, waiting, saw salutes being given to the
gent with the topper and raised also his new black cap with fingers greased by
porksteak paper. His collar too sprang up. The viceroy, on his way to inaugurate
the Mirus bazaar in aid of funds for Mercer's hospital, drove with his following
towards Lower Mount street. He passed a blind stripling opposite Broadbent's. In
Lower Mount street a pedestrian in a brown macintosh, eating dry bread, passed
swiftly and unscathed across the viceroy's path. At the Royal Canal bridge, from
his hoarding, Mr Eugene Stratton, his blub lips agrin, bade all comers welcome to
Pembroke township. At Haddington road corner two sanded women halted
themselves, an umbrella and a bag in which eleven cockles rolled to view with
wonder the lord mayor and lady mayoress without his golden chain. On
Northumberland and Lansdowne roads His Excellency acknowledged punctually
salutes from rare male walkers, the salute of two small schoolboys at the garden
gate of the house said to have been admired by the late queen when visiting the
Irish capital with her husband, the prince consort, in 1849 and the salute of
Almidano Artifoni's sturdy trousers swallowed by a closing door.
Bronze by gold heard the hoofirons, steelyringing Imperthnthn thnthnthn.
Chips, picking chips off rocky thumbnail, chips.
Horrid! And gold flushed more.
A husky fifenote blew.
Blew. Blue bloom is on the.
Goldpinnacled hair.
 A jumping rose on satiny breast of satin, rose of Castile.
Trilling, trilling: Idolores.
Peep! Who's in the... peepofgold?
Tink cried to bronze in pity.
And a call, pure, long and throbbing. Longindying call.
Decoy. Soft word. But look: the bright stars fade. Notes chirruping answer.
O rose! Castile. The morn is breaking.
Jingle jingle jaunted jingling.
Coin rang. Clock clacked.
Avowal. Sonnez. I could. Rebound of garter. Not leave thee. Smack. La cloche!
Thigh smack. Avowal. Warm. Sweetheart, goodbye!
Jingle. Bloo.
Boomed crashing chords. When love absorbs. War! War! The tympanum.
A sail! A veil awave upon the waves.
Lost. Throstle fluted. All is lost now.
Horn. Hawhorn.
When first he saw. Alas!
Full tup. Full throb.
Warbling. Ah, lure! Alluring.
Martha! Come!
Clapclap. Clipclap. Clappyclap.
Goodgod henev erheard inall.
Deaf bald Pat brought pad knife took up.
A moonlit nightcall: far, far.
I feel so sad. P. S. So lonely blooming.
Listen!
The spiked and winding cold seahorn. Have you the? Each, and for other, plash
and silent roar.
Pearls: when she. Liszt's rhapsodies. Hissss.
You don't?
 Did not: no, no: believe: Lidlyd. With a cock with a carra.
Black. Deepsounding. Do, Ben, do.
Wait while you wait. Hee hee. Wait while you hee.
But wait!
Low in dark middle earth. Embedded ore.
Naminedamine. Preacher is he:
All gone. All fallen.
Tiny, her tremulous fernfoils of maidenhair.
Amen! He gnashed in fury.
Fro. To, fro. A baton cool protruding.
Bronzelydia by Minagold.
By bronze, by gold, in oceangreen of shadow. Bloom. Old Bloom.
One rapped, one tapped, with a carra, with a cock.
Pray for him! Pray, good people!
His gouty fingers nakkering.
Big Benaben. Big Benben.
Last rose Castile of summer left bloom I feel so sad alone.
Pwee! Little wind piped wee.
True men. Lid Ker Cow De and Doll. Ay, ay. Like you men. Will lift your
tschink with tschunk.
Fff! Oo!
Where bronze from anear? Where gold from afar? Where hoofs?
Rrrpr. Kraa. Kraandl.
Then not till then. My eppripfftaph. Be pfrwritt.
Done.
Begin!
Bronze by gold, miss Douce's head by miss Kennedy's head, over the crossblind
of the Ormond bar heard the viceregal hoofs go by, ringing steel.
—Is that her? asked miss Kennedy.
Miss Douce said yes, sitting with his ex, pearl grey and eau de Nil.
 —Exquisite contrast, miss Kennedy said.
When all agog miss Douce said eagerly:
—Look at the fellow in the tall silk.
—Who? Where? gold asked more eagerly.
—In the second carriage, miss Douce's wet lips said, laughing in the sun.
He's looking. Mind till I see.
She darted, bronze, to the backmost corner, flattening her face against the pane
in a halo of hurried breath.
Her wet lips tittered:
—He's killed looking back.
She laughed:
—O wept! Aren't men frightful idiots?
With sadness.
Miss Kennedy sauntered sadly from bright light, twining a loose hair behind an
ear. Sauntering sadly, gold no more, she twisted twined a hair.
Sadly she twined in sauntering gold hair behind a curving ear.
—It's them has the fine times, sadly then she said.
A man.
Bloowho went by by Moulang's pipes bearing in his breast the sweets of sin, by
Wine's antiques, in memory bearing sweet sinful words, by Carroll's dusky
battered plate, for Raoul.
The boots to them, them in the bar, them barmaids came. For them unheeding
him he banged on the counter his tray of chattering china. And
—There's your teas, he said.
Miss Kennedy with manners transposed the teatray down to an upturned lithia
crate, safe from eyes, low.
—What is it? loud boots unmannerly asked.
—Find out, miss Douce retorted, leaving her spyingpoint.
—Your beau, is it?
A haughty bronze replied:
—I'll complain to Mrs de Massey on you if I hear any more of your impertinent
insolence.
 —Imperthnthn thnthnthn, bootssnout sniffed rudely, as he retreated as she
threatened as he had come.
Bloom.
On her flower frowning miss Douce said:
—Most aggravating that young brat is. If he doesn't conduct himself I'll wring
his ear for him a yard long.
Ladylike in exquisite contrast.
—Take no notice, miss Kennedy rejoined.
She poured in a teacup tea, then back in the teapot tea. They cowered under
their reef of counter, waiting on footstools, crates upturned, waiting for their teas
to draw. They pawed their blouses, both of black satin, two and nine a yard,
waiting for their teas to draw, and two and seven.
Yes, bronze from anear, by gold from afar, heard steel from anear, hoofs ring
from afar, and heard steelhoofs ringhoof ringsteel.
—Am I awfully sunburnt?
Miss bronze unbloused her neck.
—No, said miss Kennedy. It gets brown after. Did you try the borax with the
cherry laurel water?
Miss Douce halfstood to see her skin askance in the barmirror gildedlettered
where hock and claret glasses shimmered and in their midst a shell.
—And leave it to my hands, she said.
—Try it with the glycerine, miss Kennedy advised.
Bidding her neck and hands adieu miss Douce
—Those things only bring out a rash, replied, reseated. I asked that old fogey in
Boyd's for something for my skin.
Miss Kennedy, pouring now a fulldrawn tea, grimaced and prayed:
—O, don't remind me of him for mercy' sake!
—But wait till I tell you, miss Douce entreated.
Sweet tea miss Kennedy having poured with milk plugged both two ears with
little fingers.
—No, don't, she cried.
—I won't listen, she cried.
But Bloom?
 Miss Douce grunted in snuffy fogey's tone:
—For your what? says he.
Miss Kennedy unplugged her ears to hear, to speak: but said, but prayed again:
—Don't let me think of him or I'll expire. The hideous old wretch! That night in
the Antient Concert Rooms.
She sipped distastefully her brew, hot tea, a sip, sipped, sweet tea.
—Here he was, miss Douce said, cocking her bronze head three quarters,
ruffling her nosewings. Hufa! Hufa!
Shrill shriek of laughter sprang from miss Kennedy's throat. Miss Douce huffed
and snorted down her nostrils that quivered imperthnthn like a snout in quest.
—O! shrieking, miss Kennedy cried. Will you ever forget his goggle eye?
Miss Douce chimed in in deep bronze laughter, shouting:
—And your other eye!
Bloowhose dark eye read Aaron Figatner's name. Why do I always think
Figather? Gathering figs, I think. And Prosper Lore's huguenot name. By Bassi's
blessed virgins Bloom's dark eyes went by. Bluerobed, white under, come to me.
God they believe she is: or goddess. Those today. I could not see. That fellow
spoke. A student. After with Dedalus' son. He might be Mulligan. All comely
virgins. That brings those rakes of fellows in: her white.
By went his eyes. The sweets of sin. Sweet are the sweets.
Of sin.
In a giggling peal young goldbronze voices blended, Douce with Kennedy your
other eye. They threw young heads back, bronze gigglegold, to let freefly their
laughter, screaming, your other, signals to each other, high piercing notes.
Ah, panting, sighing, sighing, ah, fordone, their mirth died down.
Miss Kennedy lipped her cup again, raised, drank a sip and gigglegiggled. Miss
Douce, bending over the teatray, ruffled again her nose and rolled droll fattened
eyes. Again Kennygiggles, stooping, her fair pinnacles of hair, stooping, her
tortoise napecomb showed, spluttered out of her mouth her tea, choking in tea
and laughter, coughing with choking, crying:
—O greasy eyes! Imagine being married to a man like that! she cried. With his
bit of beard!
Douce gave full vent to a splendid yell, a full yell of full woman, delight, joy,
indignation.
—Married to the greasy nose! she yelled.
 Shrill, with deep laughter, after, gold after bronze, they urged each each to peal
after peal, ringing in changes, bronzegold, goldbronze, shrilldeep, to laughter after
laughter. And then laughed more. Greasy I knows. Exhausted, breathless, their
shaken heads they laid, braided and pinnacled by glossycombed, against the
counterledge. All flushed (O!), panting, sweating (O!), all breathless.
Married to Bloom, to greaseabloom.
—O saints above! miss Douce said, sighed above her jumping rose. I wished
I hadn't laughed so much. I feel all wet.
—O, miss Douce! miss Kennedy protested. You horrid thing!
And flushed yet more (you horrid!), more goldenly.
By Cantwell's offices roved Greaseabloom, by Ceppi's virgins, bright of their
oils. Nannetti's father hawked those things about, wheedling at doors as I.
Religion pays. Must see him for that par. Eat first. I want. Not yet. At four, she
said. Time ever passing. Clockhands turning. On. Where eat? The Clarence,
Dolphin. On. For Raoul. Eat. If I net five guineas with those ads. The violet silk
petticoats. Not yet. The sweets of sin.
Flushed less, still less, goldenly paled.
Into their bar strolled Mr Dedalus. Chips, picking chips off one of his rocky
thumbnails. Chips. He strolled.
—O, welcome back, miss Douce.
He held her hand. Enjoyed her holidays?
—Tiptop.
He hoped she had nice weather in Rostrevor.
—Gorgeous, she said. Look at the holy show I am. Lying out on the strand all
day.
Bronze whiteness.
—That was exceedingly naughty of you, Mr Dedalus told her and pressed her
hand indulgently. Tempting poor simple males.
Miss Douce of satin douced her arm away.
—O go away! she said. You're very simple, I don't think.
He was.
—Well now I am, he mused. I looked so simple in the cradle they christened me
simple Simon.
—You must have been a doaty, miss Douce made answer. And what did the
doctor order today?
 —Well now, he mused, whatever you say yourself. I think I'll trouble you for
some fresh water and a half glass of whisky.
Jingle.
—With the greatest alacrity, miss Douce agreed.
With grace of alacrity towards the mirror gilt Cantrell and Cochrane's she turned
herself. With grace she tapped a measure of gold whisky from her crystal keg.
Forth from the skirt of his coat Mr Dedalus brought pouch and pipe. Alacrity she
served. He blew through the flue two husky fifenotes.
—By Jove, he mused, I often wanted to see the Mourne mountains. Must be a
great tonic in the air down there. But a long threatening comes at last, they say.
Yes. Yes.
Yes. He fingered shreds of hair, her maidenhair, her mermaid's, into the bowl.
Chips. Shreds. Musing. Mute.
None nought said nothing. Yes.
Gaily miss Douce polished a tumbler, trilling:
—O, Idolores, queen of the eastern seas!
—Was Mr Lidwell in today?
In came Lenehan. Round him peered Lenehan. Mr Bloom reached Essex bridge.
Yes, Mr Bloom crossed bridge of Yessex. To Martha I must write. Buy paper.
Daly's. Girl there civil. Bloom. Old Bloom. Blue bloom is on the rye.
—He was in at lunchtime, miss Douce said.
Lenehan came forward.
—Was Mr Boylan looking for me?
He asked. She answered:
—Miss Kennedy, was Mr Boylan in while I was upstairs?
She asked. Miss voice of Kennedy answered, a second teacup poised, her gaze
upon a page:
—No. He was not.
Miss gaze of Kennedy, heard, not seen, read on. Lenehan round the
sandwichbell wound his round body round.
—Peep! Who's in the corner?
No glance of Kennedy rewarding him he yet made overtures. To mind her stops.
To read only the black ones: round o and crooked ess.
Jingle jaunty jingle.
 Girlgold she read and did not glance. Take no notice. She took no notice while
he read by rote a solfa fable for her, plappering flatly:
—Ah fox met ah stork. Said thee fox too thee stork: Will you put your bill down
inn my troath and pull upp ah bone?
He droned in vain. Miss Douce turned to her tea aside.
He sighed aside:
—Ah me! O my!
He greeted Mr Dedalus and got a nod.
—Greetings from the famous son of a famous father.
—Who may he be? Mr Dedalus asked.
Lenehan opened most genial arms. Who?
—Who may he be? he asked. Can you ask? Stephen, the youthful bard.
Dry.
Mr Dedalus, famous father, laid by his dry filled pipe.
—I see, he said. I didn't recognise him for the moment. I hear he is keeping very
select company. Have you seen him lately?
He had.
—I quaffed the nectarbowl with him this very day, said Lenehan. In Mooney's
en ville and in Mooney's sur mer. He had received the rhino for the labour of his
muse.
He smiled at bronze's teabathed lips, at listening lips and eyes:
—The élite of Erin hung upon his lips. The ponderous pundit, Hugh
MacHugh, Dublin's most brilliant scribe and editor and that minstrel boy of the
wild wet west who is known by the euphonious appellation of the O'Madden
Burke.
After an interval Mr Dedalus raised his grog and
—That must have been highly diverting, said he. I see.
He see. He drank. With faraway mourning mountain eye. Set down his glass.
He looked towards the saloon door.
—I see you have moved the piano.
—The tuner was in today, miss Douce replied, tuning it for the smoking concert
and I never heard such an exquisite player.
 —Is that a fact?
—Didn't he, miss Kennedy? The real classical, you know. And blind too, poor
fellow. Not twenty I'm sure he was.
—Is that a fact? Mr Dedalus said.
He drank and strayed away.
—So sad to look at his face, miss Douce condoled.
God's curse on bitch's bastard.
Tink to her pity cried a diner's bell. To the door of the bar and diningroom came
bald Pat, came bothered Pat, came Pat, waiter of Ormond. Lager for diner. Lager
without alacrity she served.
With patience Lenehan waited for Boylan with impatience, for jinglejaunty
blazes boy.
Upholding the lid he (who?) gazed in the coffin (coffin?) at the oblique triple
(piano!) wires. He pressed (the same who pressed indulgently her hand), soft
pedalling, a triple of keys to see the thicknesses of felt advancing, to hear the
muffled hammerfall in action.
Two sheets cream vellum paper one reserve two envelopes when I was in
Wisdom Hely's wise Bloom in Daly's Henry Flower bought. Are you not happy in
your home? Flower to console me and a pin cuts lo. Means something, language of
flow. Was it a daisy? Innocence that is. Respectable girl meet after mass. Thanks
awfully muchly. Wise Bloom eyed on the door a poster, a swaying mermaid
smoking mid nice waves. Smoke mermaids, coolest whiff of all. Hair streaming:
lovelorn. For some man. For Raoul. He eyed and saw afar on Essex bridge a gay
hat riding on a jaunting car. It is. Again. Third time. Coincidence.
Jingling on supple rubbers it jaunted from the bridge to Ormond quay. Follow.
Risk it. Go quick. At four. Near now. Out.
—Twopence, sir, the shopgirl dared to say.
—Aha... I was forgetting... Excuse...
—And four.
At four she. Winsomely she on Bloohimwhom smiled. Bloo smi qui go. Ternoon.
Think you're the only pebble on the beach? Does that to all.
For men.
In drowsy silence gold bent on her page.
From the saloon a call came, long in dying. That was a tuningfork the tuner had
that he forgot that he now struck. A call again. That he now poised that it now
throbbed. You hear? It throbbed, pure, purer, softly and softlier, its buzzing
prongs. Longer in dying call.
 Pat paid for diner's popcorked bottle: and over tumbler, tray and popcorked
bottle ere he went he whispered, bald and bothered, with miss
Douce.
—The bright stars fade...
A voiceless song sang from within, singing:
—... the morn is breaking.
A duodene of birdnotes chirruped bright treble answer under sensitive hands.
Brightly the keys, all twinkling, linked, all harpsichording, called to a voice to sing
the strain of dewy morn, of youth, of love's leavetaking, life's, love's morn.
—The dewdrops pearl...
Lenehan's lips over the counter lisped a low whistle of decoy.
—But look this way, he said, rose of Castile.
Jingle jaunted by the curb and stopped.
She rose and closed her reading, rose of Castile: fretted, forlorn, dreamily rose.
—Did she fall or was she pushed? he asked her.
She answered, slighting:
—Ask no questions and you'll hear no lies.
Like lady, ladylike.
Blazes Boylan's smart tan shoes creaked on the barfloor where he strode. Yes,
gold from anear by bronze from afar. Lenehan heard and knew and hailed him:
—See the conquering hero comes.
Between the car and window, warily walking, went Bloom, unconquered hero.
See me he might. The seat he sat on: warm. Black wary hecat walked towards
Richie Goulding's legal bag, lifted aloft, saluting.
—And I from thee...
—I heard you were round, said Blazes Boylan.
He touched to fair miss Kennedy a rim of his slanted straw. She smiled on him.
But sister bronze outsmiled her, preening for him her richer hair, a bosom and a
rose.
Smart Boylan bespoke potions.
—What's your cry? Glass of bitter? Glass of bitter, please, and a sloegin for me.
Wire in yet?
Not yet. At four she. Who said four?
 Cowley's red lugs and bulging apple in the door of the sheriff's office.
Avoid. Goulding a chance. What is he doing in the Ormond? Car waiting.
Wait.
Hello. Where off to? Something to eat? I too was just. In here. What, Ormond?
Best value in Dublin. Is that so? Diningroom. Sit tight there. See, not be seen. I
think I'll join you. Come on. Richie led on. Bloom followed bag. Dinner fit for a
prince.
Miss Douce reached high to take a flagon, stretching her satin arm, her bust,
that all but burst, so high.
—O! O! jerked Lenehan, gasping at each stretch. O!
But easily she seized her prey and led it low in triumph.
—Why don't you grow? asked Blazes Boylan.
Shebronze, dealing from her oblique jar thick syrupy liquor for his lips, looked
as it flowed (flower in his coat: who gave him?), and syrupped with her voice:
—Fine goods in small parcels.
That is to say she. Neatly she poured slowsyrupy sloe.
—Here's fortune, Blazes said.
He pitched a broad coin down. Coin rang.
—Hold on, said Lenehan, till I...
—Fortune, he wished, lifting his bubbled ale.
—Sceptre will win in a canter, he said.
—I plunged a bit, said Boylan winking and drinking. Not on my own, you know.
Fancy of a friend of mine.
Lenehan still drank and grinned at his tilted ale and at miss Douce's lips that all
but hummed, not shut, the oceansong her lips had trilled.
Idolores. The eastern seas.
Clock whirred. Miss Kennedy passed their way (flower, wonder who gave),
bearing away teatray. Clock clacked.
Miss Douce took Boylan's coin, struck boldly the cashregister. It clanged. Clock
clacked. Fair one of Egypt teased and sorted in the till and hummed and handed
coins in change. Look to the west. A clack. For me.
—What time is that? asked Blazes Boylan. Four?
O'clock.
 Lenehan, small eyes ahunger on her humming, bust ahumming, tugged Blazes
Boylan's elbowsleeve.
—Let's hear the time, he said.
The bag of Goulding, Collis, Ward led Bloom by ryebloom flowered tables.
Aimless he chose with agitated aim, bald Pat attending, a table near the door. Be
near. At four. Has he forgotten? Perhaps a trick. Not come: whet appetite. I
couldn't do. Wait, wait. Pat, waiter, waited.
Sparkling bronze azure eyed Blazure's skyblue bow and eyes.
—Go on, pressed Lenehan. There's no-one. He never heard.
—... to Flora's lips did hie.
High, a high note pealed in the treble clear.
Bronzedouce communing with her rose that sank and rose sought
Blazes Boylan's flower and eyes.
—Please, please.
He pleaded over returning phrases of avowal.
—I could not leave thee...
—Afterwits, miss Douce promised coyly.
—No, now, urged Lenehan. Sonnezlacloche! O do! There's no-one.
She looked. Quick. Miss Kenn out of earshot. Sudden bent. Two kindling faces
watched her bend.
Quavering the chords strayed from the air, found it again, lost chord, and lost
and found it, faltering.
—Go on! Do! Sonnez!
Bending, she nipped a peak of skirt above her knee. Delayed. Taunted them
still, bending, suspending, with wilful eyes.
—Sonnez!
Smack. She set free sudden in rebound her nipped elastic garter smackwarm
against her smackable a woman's warmhosed thigh.
—La Cloche! cried gleeful Lenehan. Trained by owner. No sawdust there.
She smilesmirked supercilious (wept! aren't men?), but, lightward gliding, mild
she smiled on Boylan.
—You're the essence of vulgarity, she in gliding said.
 Boylan, eyed, eyed. Tossed to fat lips his chalice, drank off his chalice tiny,
sucking the last fat violet syrupy drops. His spellbound eyes went after, after her
gliding head as it went down the bar by mirrors, gilded arch for ginger ale, hock
and claret glasses shimmering, a spiky shell, where it concerted, mirrored, bronze
with sunnier bronze.
Yes, bronze from anearby.
—... Sweetheart, goodbye!
—I'm off, said Boylan with impatience.
He slid his chalice brisk away, grasped his change.
—Wait a shake, begged Lenehan, drinking quickly. I wanted to tell you.
Tom Rochford...
—Come on to blazes, said Blazes Boylan, going.
Lenehan gulped to go.
—Got the horn or what? he said. Wait. I'm coming.
He followed the hasty creaking shoes but stood by nimbly by the threshold,
saluting forms, a bulky with a slender.
—How do you do, Mr Dollard?
—Eh? How do? How do? Ben Dollard's vague bass answered, turning an instant
from Father Cowley's woe. He won't give you any trouble, Bob. Alf Bergan will
speak to the long fellow. We'll put a barleystraw in that Judas Iscariot's ear this
time.
Sighing Mr Dedalus came through the saloon, a finger soothing an eyelid.
—Hoho, we will, Ben Dollard yodled jollily. Come on, Simon. Give us a ditty.
We heard the piano.
Bald Pat, bothered waiter, waited for drink orders. Power for Richie. And
Bloom? Let me see. Not make him walk twice. His corns. Four now. How warm
this black is. Course nerves a bit. Refracts (is it?) heat. Let me see. Cider. Yes,
bottle of cider.
—What's that? Mr Dedalus said. I was only vamping, man.
—Come on, come on, Ben Dollard called. Begone dull care. Come, Bob.
He ambled Dollard, bulky slops, before them (hold that fellow with the: hold
him now) into the saloon. He plumped him Dollard on the stool. His gouty paws
plumped chords. Plumped, stopped abrupt.
Bald Pat in the doorway met tealess gold returning. Bothered, he wanted Power
and cider. Bronze by the window, watched, bronze from afar.
 Jingle a tinkle jaunted.
Bloom heard a jing, a little sound. He's off. Light sob of breath Bloom sighed on
the silent bluehued flowers. Jingling. He's gone. Jingle. Hear.
—Love and War, Ben, Mr Dedalus said. God be with old times.
Miss Douce's brave eyes, unregarded, turned from the crossblind, smitten by
sunlight. Gone. Pensive (who knows?), smitten (the smiting light), she lowered the
dropblind with a sliding cord. She drew down pensive (why did he go so quick
when I?) about her bronze, over the bar where bald stood by sister gold,
inexquisite contrast, contrast inexquisite nonexquisite, slow cool dim seagreen
sliding depth of shadow, eau de Nil.
—Poor old Goodwin was the pianist that night, Father Cowley reminded them.
There was a slight difference of opinion between himself and the Collard grand.
There was.
—A symposium all his own, Mr Dedalus said. The devil wouldn't stop him. He
was a crotchety old fellow in the primary stage of drink.
—God, do you remember? Ben bulky Dollard said, turning from the punished
keyboard. And by Japers I had no wedding garment.
They laughed all three. He had no wed. All trio laughed. No wedding garment.
—Our friend Bloom turned in handy that night, Mr Dedalus said. Where's my
pipe, by the way?
He wandered back to the bar to the lost chord pipe. Bald Pat carried two diners'
drinks, Richie and Poldy. And Father Cowley laughed again.
—I saved the situation, Ben, I think.
—You did, averred Ben Dollard. I remember those tight trousers too. That was a
brilliant idea, Bob.
Father Cowley blushed to his brilliant purply lobes. He saved the situa. Tight
trou. Brilliant ide.
—I knew he was on the rocks, he said. The wife was playing the piano in the
coffee palace on Saturdays for a very trifling consideration and who was it gave
me the wheeze she was doing the other business? Do you remember? We had to
search all Holles street to find them till the chap in Keogh's gave us the number.
Remember? Ben remembered, his broad visage wondering.
—By God, she had some luxurious operacloaks and things there.
Mr Dedalus wandered back, pipe in hand.
—Merrion square style. Balldresses, by God, and court dresses. He wouldn't
take any money either. What? Any God's quantity of cocked hats and boleros and
trunkhose. What?
 —Ay, ay, Mr Dedalus nodded. Mrs Marion Bloom has left off clothes of all
descriptions.
Jingle jaunted down the quays. Blazes sprawled on bounding tyres.
Liver and bacon. Steak and kidney pie. Right, sir. Right, Pat.
Mrs Marion. Met him pike hoses. Smell of burn. Of Paul de Kock. Nice name
he.
—What's this her name was? A buxom lassy. Marion...
—Tweedy.
—Yes. Is she alive?
—And kicking.
—She was a daughter of...
—Daughter of the regiment.
—Yes, begad. I remember the old drummajor.
Mr Dedalus struck, whizzed, lit, puffed savoury puff after
—Irish? I don't know, faith. Is she, Simon?
Puff after stiff, a puff, strong, savoury, crackling.
—Buccinator muscle is... What?... Bit rusty... O, she is... My Irish Molly, O.
He puffed a pungent plumy blast.
—From the rock of Gibraltar... all the way.
They pined in depth of ocean shadow, gold by the beerpull, bronze by
maraschino, thoughtful all two. Mina Kennedy, 4 Lismore terrace, Drumcondra
with Idolores, a queen, Dolores, silent.
Pat served, uncovered dishes. Leopold cut liverslices. As said before he ate with
relish the inner organs, nutty gizzards, fried cods' roes while Richie Goulding,
Collis, Ward ate steak and kidney, steak then kidney, bite by bite of pie he ate
Bloom ate they ate.
Bloom with Goulding, married in silence, ate. Dinners fit for princes.
By Bachelor's walk jogjaunty jingled Blazes Boylan, bachelor, in sun in heat,
mare's glossy rump atrot, with flick of whip, on bounding tyres: sprawled,
warmseated, Boylan impatience, ardentbold. Horn. Have you the? Horn. Have you
the? Haw haw horn.
Over their voices Dollard bassooned attack, booming over bombarding chords:
—When love absorbs my ardent soul...
 Roll of Bensoulbenjamin rolled to the quivery loveshivery roofpanes.
—War! War! cried Father Cowley. You're the warrior.
—So I am, Ben Warrior laughed. I was thinking of your landlord. Love or
money.
He stopped. He wagged huge beard, huge face over his blunder huge.
—Sure, you'd burst the tympanum of her ear, man, Mr Dedalus said through
smoke aroma, with an organ like yours.
In bearded abundant laughter Dollard shook upon the keyboard. He would.
—Not to mention another membrane, Father Cowley added. Half time, Ben.
Amoroso ma non troppo. Let me there.
Miss Kennedy served two gentlemen with tankards of cool stout. She passed a
remark. It was indeed, first gentleman said, beautiful weather. They drank cool
stout. Did she know where the lord lieutenant was going? And heard steelhoofs
ringhoof ring. No, she couldn't say. But it would be in the paper. O, she need not
trouble. No trouble. She waved about her outspread Independent, searching, the
lord lieutenant, her pinnacles of hair slowmoving, lord lieuten. Too much trouble,
first gentleman said. O, not in the least. Way he looked that. Lord lieutenant.
Gold by bronze heard iron steel.

—............ my ardent soul

I care not foror the morrow.
In liver gravy Bloom mashed mashed potatoes. Love and War someone is. Ben
Dollard's famous. Night he ran round to us to borrow a dress suit for that concert.
Trousers tight as a drum on him. Musical porkers. Molly did laugh when he went
out. Threw herself back across the bed, screaming, kicking. With all his belongings
on show. O saints above, I'm drenched! O, the women in the front row! O, I never
laughed so many! Well, of course that's what gives him the base barreltone. For
instance eunuchs. Wonder who's playing. Nice touch. Must be Cowley. Musical.
Knows whatever note you play. Bad breath he has, poor chap. Stopped.
Miss Douce, engaging, Lydia Douce, bowed to suave solicitor, George Lidwell,
gentleman, entering. Good afternoon. She gave her moist (a lady's) hand to his
firm clasp. Afternoon. Yes, she was back. To the old dingdong again.
—Your friends are inside, Mr Lidwell.
George Lidwell, suave, solicited, held a lydiahand.
Bloom ate liv as said before. Clean here at least. That chap in the Burton,
gummy with gristle. No-one here: Goulding and I. Clean tables, flowers, mitres of
napkins. Pat to and fro. Bald Pat. Nothing to do. Best value in Dub.
Piano again. Cowley it is. Way he sits in to it, like one together, mutual
understanding. Tiresome shapers scraping fiddles, eye on the bowend, sawing the
cello, remind you of toothache. Her high long snore. Night we were in the box.
Trombone under blowing like a grampus, between the acts, other brass chap
unscrewing, emptying spittle. Conductor's legs too, bagstrousers, jiggedy jiggedy.
Do right to hide them.
Jiggedy jingle jaunty jaunty.
Only the harp. Lovely. Gold glowering light. Girl touched it. Poop of a lovely.
Gravy's rather good fit for a. Golden ship. Erin. The harp that once or twice. Cool
hands. Ben Howth, the rhododendrons. We are their harps. I. He. Old. Young.
—Ah, I couldn't, man, Mr Dedalus said, shy, listless.
Strongly.
—Go on, blast you! Ben Dollard growled. Get it out in bits.
—M'appari, Simon, Father Cowley said.
Down stage he strode some paces, grave, tall in affliction, his long arms
outheld. Hoarsely the apple of his throat hoarsed softly. Softly he sang to a dusty
seascape there: A Last Farewell. A headland, a ship, a sail upon the billows.
Farewell. A lovely girl, her veil awave upon the wind upon the headland, wind
around her.
Cowley sang:

—M'appari tutt'amor:
Il mio sguardo l'incontr...
She waved, unhearing Cowley, her veil, to one departing, dear one, to wind,
love, speeding sail, return.
—Go on, Simon.
—Ah, sure, my dancing days are done, Ben... Well...
Mr Dedalus laid his pipe to rest beside the tuningfork and, sitting, touched the
obedient keys.
—No, Simon, Father Cowley turned. Play it in the original. One flat.
The keys, obedient, rose higher, told, faltered, confessed, confused.
Up stage strode Father Cowley.
—Here, Simon, I'll accompany you, he said. Get up.
By Graham Lemon's pineapple rock, by Elvery's elephant jingly jogged. Steak,
kidney, liver, mashed, at meat fit for princes sat princes Bloom and Goulding.
Princes at meat they raised and drank, Power and cider.
 Most beautiful tenor air ever written, Richie said: Sonnambula. He heard Joe
Maas sing that one night. Ah, what M'Guckin! Yes. In his way. Choirboy style.
Maas was the boy. Massboy. A lyrical tenor if you like. Never forget it. Never.
Tenderly Bloom over liverless bacon saw the tightened features strain. Backache
he. Bright's bright eye. Next item on the programme. Paying the piper. Pills,
pounded bread, worth a guinea a box. Stave it off awhile. Sings too: Down among
the dead men. Appropriate. Kidney pie. Sweets to the. Not making much hand of
it. Best value in. Characteristic of him. Power. Particular about his drink. Flaw in
the glass, fresh Vartry water. Fecking matches from counters to save. Then
squander a sovereign in dribs and drabs. And when he's wanted not a farthing.
Screwed refusing to pay his fare. Curious types.
Never would Richie forget that night. As long as he lived: never. In the gods of
the old Royal with little Peake. And when the first note.
Speech paused on Richie's lips.
Coming out with a whopper now. Rhapsodies about damn all.
Believes his own lies. Does really. Wonderful liar. But want a good memory.
—Which air is that? asked Leopold Bloom.
—All is lost now.
Richie cocked his lips apout. A low incipient note sweet banshee murmured: all.
A thrush. A throstle. His breath, birdsweet, good teeth he's proud of, fluted with
plaintive woe. Is lost. Rich sound. Two notes in one there. Blackbird I heard in the
hawthorn valley. Taking my motives he twined and turned them. All most too new
call is lost in all. Echo. How sweet the answer. How is that done? All lost now.
Mournful he whistled. Fall, surrender, lost.
Bloom bent leopold ear, turning a fringe of doyley down under the vase. Order.
Yes, I remember. Lovely air. In sleep she went to him. Innocence in the moon.
Brave. Don't know their danger. Still hold her back. Call name. Touch water.
Jingle jaunty. Too late. She longed to go. That's why. Woman. As easy stop the
sea. Yes: all is lost.
—A beautiful air, said Bloom lost Leopold. I know it well.
Never in all his life had Richie Goulding.
He knows it well too. Or he feels. Still harping on his daughter. Wise child that
knows her father, Dedalus said. Me?
Bloom askance over liverless saw. Face of the all is lost. Rollicking Richie once.
Jokes old stale now. Wagging his ear. Napkinring in his eye. Now begging letters
he sends his son with. Crosseyed Walter sir I did sir. Wouldn't trouble only I was
expecting some money. Apologise.
Piano again. Sounds better than last time I heard. Tuned probably. Stopped
again.
 Dollard and Cowley still urged the lingering singer out with it.
—With it, Simon.
—It, Simon.
—Ladies and gentlemen, I am most deeply obliged by your kind solicitations.
—It, Simon.
—I have no money but if you will lend me your attention I shall endeavour to
sing to you of a heart bowed down.
By the sandwichbell in screening shadow Lydia, her bronze and rose, a lady's
grace, gave and withheld: as in cool glaucous eau de Nil Mina to tankards two her
pinnacles of gold.
The harping chords of prelude closed. A chord, longdrawn, expectant, drew a
voice away.
—When first I saw that form endearing...
Richie turned.
—Si Dedalus' voice, he said.
Braintipped, cheek touched with flame, they listened feeling that flow endearing
flow over skin limbs human heart soul spine. Bloom signed to Pat, bald Pat is a
waiter hard of hearing, to set ajar the door of the bar. The door of the bar. So.
That will do. Pat, waiter, waited, waiting to hear, for he was hard of hear by the
door.
—Sorrow from me seemed to depart.
Through the hush of air a voice sang to them, low, not rain, not leaves in
murmur, like no voice of strings or reeds or whatdoyoucallthem dulcimers
touching their still ears with words, still hearts of their each his remembered lives.
Good, good to hear: sorrow from them each seemed to from both depart when
first they heard. When first they saw, lost Richie Poldy, mercy of beauty, heard
from a person wouldn't expect it in the least, her first merciful lovesoft oftloved
word.
Love that is singing: love's old sweet song. Bloom unwound slowly the elastic
band of his packet. Love's old sweet sonnez la gold. Bloom wound a skein round
four forkfingers, stretched it, relaxed, and wound it round his troubled double,
fourfold, in octave, gyved them fast.
—Full of hope and all delighted...
Tenors get women by the score. Increase their flow. Throw flower at his feet.
When will we meet? My head it simply. Jingle all delighted. He can't sing for tall
hats. Your head it simply swurls. Perfumed for him. What perfume does your
wife? I want to know. Jing. Stop. Knock. Last look at mirror always before she
answers the door. The hall. There? How do you? I do well. There? What? Or?
Phial of cachous, kissing comfits, in her satchel. Yes? Hands felt for the opulent.
Alas the voice rose, sighing, changed: loud, full, shining, proud.
—But alas, 'twas idle dreaming...
Glorious tone he has still. Cork air softer also their brogue. Silly man! Could
have made oceans of money. Singing wrong words. Wore out his wife: now sings.
But hard to tell. Only the two themselves. If he doesn't break down. Keep a trot
for the avenue. His hands and feet sing too. Drink. Nerves overstrung. Must be
abstemious to sing. Jenny Lind soup: stock, sage, raw eggs, half pint of cream. For
creamy dreamy.
Tenderness it welled: slow, swelling, full it throbbed. That's the chat. Ha, give!
Take! Throb, a throb, a pulsing proud erect.
Words? Music? No: it's what's behind.
Bloom looped, unlooped, noded, disnoded.
Bloom. Flood of warm jamjam lickitup secretness flowed to flow in music out, in
desire, dark to lick flow invading. Tipping her tepping her tapping her topping
her. Tup. Pores to dilate dilating. Tup. The joy the feel the warm the. Tup. To
pour o'er sluices pouring gushes. Flood, gush, flow, joygush, tupthrob. Now!
Language of love.
—... ray of hope is...
Beaming. Lydia for Lidwell squeak scarcely hear so ladylike the muse
unsqueaked a ray of hopk.
Martha it is. Coincidence. Just going to write. Lionel's song. Lovely name you
have. Can't write. Accept my little pres. Play on her heartstrings pursestrings too.
She's a. I called you naughty boy. Still the name: Martha. How strange! Today.
The voice of Lionel returned, weaker but unwearied. It sang again to Richie
Poldy Lydia Lidwell also sang to Pat open mouth ear waiting to wait. How first he
saw that form endearing, how sorrow seemed to part, how look, form, word
charmed him Gould Lidwell, won Pat Bloom's heart.
Wish I could see his face, though. Explain better. Why the barber in Drago's
always looked my face when I spoke his face in the glass. Still hear it better here
than in the bar though farther.
—Each graceful look...
First night when first I saw her at Mat Dillon's in Terenure. Yellow, black lace
she wore. Musical chairs. We two the last. Fate. After her. Fate.
Round and round slow. Quick round. We two. All looked. Halt. Down she sat.
All ousted looked. Lips laughing. Yellow knees.
 —Charmed my eye...
Singing. Waiting she sang. I turned her music. Full voice of perfume of what
perfume does your lilactrees. Bosom I saw, both full, throat warbling. First I saw.
She thanked me. Why did she me? Fate. Spanishy eyes. Under a peartree alone
patio this hour in old Madrid one side in shadow Dolores shedolores. At me.
Luring. Ah, alluring.
—Martha! Ah, Martha!
Quitting all languor Lionel cried in grief, in cry of passion dominant to love to
return with deepening yet with rising chords of harmony. In cry of lionel
loneliness that she should know, must martha feel. For only her he waited.
Where? Here there try there here all try where. Somewhere.

—Co-ome, thou lost one!

Co-ome, thou dear one!
Alone. One love. One hope. One comfort me. Martha, chestnote, return!
—Come!
It soared, a bird, it held its flight, a swift pure cry, soar silver orb it leaped
serene, speeding, sustained, to come, don't spin it out too long long breath he
breath long life, soaring high, high resplendent, aflame, crowned, high in the
effulgence symbolistic, high, of the etherial bosom, high, of the high vast
irradiation everywhere all soaring all around about the all, the
endlessnessnessness...
—To me!
Siopold!
Consumed.
Come. Well sung. All clapped. She ought to. Come. To me, to him, to her, you
too, me, us.
—Bravo! Clapclap. Good man, Simon. Clappyclapclap. Encore! Clapclipclap
clap. Sound as a bell. Bravo, Simon! Clapclopclap. Encore, enclap, said, cried,
clapped all, Ben Dollard, Lydia Douce, George Lidwell, Pat, Mina Kennedy, two
gentlemen with two tankards, Cowley, first gent with tank and bronze miss Douce
and gold MJiss Mina.
Blazes Boylan's smart tan shoes creaked on the barfloor, said before. Jingle by
monuments of sir John Gray, Horatio onehandled Nelson, reverend father
Theobald Mathew, jaunted, as said before just now. Atrot, in heat, heatseated.
Cloche. Sonnez la. Cloche. Sonnez la. Slower the mare went up the hill by the
Rotunda, Rutland square. Too slow for Boylan, blazes Boylan, impatience Boylan,
joggled the mare.
An afterclang of Cowley's chords closed, died on the air made richer.
 And Richie Goulding drank his Power and Leopold Bloom his cider drank,
Lidwell his Guinness, second gentleman said they would partake of two more
tankards if she did not mind. Miss Kennedy smirked, disserving, coral lips, at
first, at second. She did not mind.
—Seven days in jail, Ben Dollard said, on bread and water. Then you'd sing,
Simon, like a garden thrush.
Lionel Simon, singer, laughed. Father Bob Cowley played. Mina Kennedy
served. Second gentleman paid. Tom Kernan strutted in. Lydia, admired, admired.
But Bloom sang dumb.
Admiring.
Richie, admiring, descanted on that man's glorious voice. He remembered one
night long ago. Never forget that night. Si sang 'Twas rank and fame: in Ned
Lambert's 'twas. Good God he never heard in all his life a note like that he never
did then false one we had better part so clear so God he never heard since love lives
not a clinking voice lives not ask Lambert he can tell you too.
Goulding, a flush struggling in his pale, told Mr Bloom, face of the night, Si in
Ned Lambert's, Dedalus house, sang 'Twas rank and fame.
He, Mr Bloom, listened while he, Richie Goulding, told him, Mr Bloom, of the
night he, Richie, heard him, Si Dedalus, sing 'TWAS RANK AND FAME in his, Ned
Lambert's, house.
Brothers-in-law: relations. We never speak as we pass by. Rift in the lute I
think. Treats him with scorn. See. He admires him all the more. The night Si sang.
The human voice, two tiny silky chords, wonderful, more than all others.
That voice was a lamentation. Calmer now. It's in the silence after you feel you
hear. Vibrations. Now silent air.
Bloom ungyved his crisscrossed hands and with slack fingers plucked the
slender catgut thong. He drew and plucked. It buzz, it twanged. While Goulding
talked of Barraclough's voice production, while Tom Kernan, harking back in a
retrospective sort of arrangement talked to listening Father Cowley, who played a
voluntary, who nodded as he played. While big Ben Dollard talked with Simon
Dedalus, lighting, who nodded as he smoked, who smoked.
Thou lost one. All songs on that theme. Yet more Bloom stretched his string.
Cruel it seems. Let people get fond of each other: lure them on. Then tear
asunder. Death. Explos. Knock on the head. Outtohelloutofthat. Human life.
Dignam. Ugh, that rat's tail wriggling! Five bob I gave. Corpus paradisum.
Corncrake croaker: belly like a poisoned pup. Gone. They sing. Forgotten. I too;
And one day she with. Leave her: get tired. Suffer then. Snivel. Big spanishy eyes
goggling at nothing. Her wavyavyeavyheavyeavyevyevyhair un comb:'d.
Yet too much happy bores. He stretched more, more. Are you not happy in
your? Twang. It snapped.
 Jingle into Dorset street.
Miss Douce withdrew her satiny arm, reproachful, pleased.
—Don't make half so free, said she, till we are better acquainted.
George Lidwell told her really and truly: but she did not believe.
First gentleman told Mina that was so. She asked him was that so. And second
tankard told her so. That that was so.
Miss Douce, miss Lydia, did not believe: miss Kennedy, Mina, did not believe:
George Lidwell, no: miss Dou did not: the first, the first: gent with the tank:
believe, no, no: did not, miss Kenn: Lidlydiawell: the tank.
Better write it here. Quills in the postoffice chewed and twisted.
Bald Pat at a sign drew nigh. A pen and ink. He went. A pad. He went. A pad to
blot. He heard, deaf Pat.
—Yes, Mr Bloom said, teasing the curling catgut line. It certainly is. Few lines
will do. My present. All that Italian florid music is. Who is this wrote? Know the
name you know better. Take out sheet notepaper, envelope: unconcerned. It's so
characteristic.
—Grandest number in the whole opera, Goulding said.
—It is, Bloom said.
Numbers it is. All music when you come to think. Two multiplied by two
divided by half is twice one. Vibrations: chords those are. One plus two plus six is
seven. Do anything you like with figures juggling. Always find out this equal to
that. Symmetry under a cemetery wall. He doesn't see my mourning. Callous: all
for his own gut. Musemathematics. And you think you're listening to the etherial.
But suppose you said it like: Martha, seven times nine minus x is thirtyfive
thousand. Fall quite flat. It's on account of the sounds it is.
Instance he's playing now. Improvising. Might be what you like, till you hear
the words. Want to listen sharp. Hard. Begin all right: then hear chords a bit off:
feel lost a bit. In and out of sacks, over barrels, through wirefences, obstacle race.
Time makes the tune. Question of mood you're in. Still always nice to hear. Except
scales up and down, girls learning. Two together nextdoor neighbours. Ought to
invent dummy pianos for that. Blumenlied I bought for her. The name. Playing it
slow, a girl, night I came home, the girl. Door of the stables near Cecilia street.
Milly no taste. Queer because we both, I mean.
Bald deaf Pat brought quite flat pad ink. Pat set with ink pen quite flat pad. Pat
took plate dish knife fork. Pat went.
It was the only language Mr Dedalus said to Ben. He heard them as a boy in
Ringabella, Crosshaven, Ringabella, singing their barcaroles. Queenstown harbour
full of Italian ships. Walking, you know, Ben, in the moonlight with those
earthquake hats. Blending their voices. God, such music, Ben. Heard as a boy.
Cross Ringabella haven mooncarole.
Sour pipe removed he held a shield of hand beside his lips that cooed a
moonlight nightcall, clear from anear, a call from afar, replying.
Down the edge of his Freeman baton ranged Bloom's, your other eye, scanning
for where did I see that. Callan, Coleman, Dignam Patrick. Heigho! Heigho!
Fawcett. Aha! Just I was looking...
Hope he's not looking, cute as a rat. He held unfurled his Freeman. Can't see
now. Remember write Greek ees. Bloom dipped, Bloo mur: dear sir. Dear Henry
wrote: dear Mady. Got your lett and flow. Hell did I put? Some pock or oth. It is
utterl imposs. Underline imposs. To write today.
Bore this. Bored Bloom tambourined gently with I am just reflecting fingers on
flat pad Pat brought.
On. Know what I mean. No, change that ee. Accep my poor litt pres enclos. Ask
her no answ. Hold on. Five Dig. Two about here. Penny the gulls. Elijah is com.
Seven Davy Byrne's. Is eight about. Say half a crown. My poor little pres: p. o.
two and six. Write me a long. Do you despise? Jingle, have you the? So excited.
Why do you call me naught? You naughty too? O, Mairy lost the string of her. Bye
for today. Yes, yes, will tell you. Want to. To keep it up. Call me that other. Other
world she wrote. My patience are exhaust. To keep it up. You must believe.
Believe. The tank. It. Is. True.
Folly am I writing? Husbands don't. That's marriage does, their wives. Because
I'm away from. Suppose. But how? She must. Keep young. If she found out. Card
in my high grade ha. No, not tell all. Useless pain. If they don't see. Woman.
Sauce for the gander.
A hackney car, number three hundred and twentyfour, driver Barton James of
number one Harmony avenue, Donnybrook, on which sat a fare, a young
gentleman, stylishly dressed in an indigoblue serge suit made by George Robert
Mesias, tailor and cutter, of number five Eden quay, and wearing a straw hat very
dressy, bought of John Plasto of number one Great Brunswick street, hatter. Eh?
This is the jingle that joggled and jingled. By Dlugacz' porkshop bright tubes of
Agendath trotted a gallantbuttocked mare.
—Answering an ad? keen Richie's eyes asked Bloom.
—Yes, Mr Bloom said. Town traveller. Nothing doing, I expect.
Bloom mur: best references. But Henry wrote: it will excite me. You know how.
In haste. Henry. Greek ee. Better add postscript. What is he playing now?
Improvising. Intermezzo. P. S. The rum tum tum. How will you pun? You punish
me? Crooked skirt swinging, whack by. Tell me I want to. Know. O. Course if I
didn't I wouldn't ask. La la la ree. Trails off there sad in minor. Why minor sad?
Sign H. They like sad tail at end. P. P. S. La la la ree. I feel so sad today. La ree.
So lonely. Dee.
 He blotted quick on pad of Pat. Envel. Address. Just copy out of paper.
Murmured: Messrs Callan, Coleman and Co, limited. Henry wrote:
Miss Martha Clifford c/o P. O. Dolphin's Barn Lane Dublin
Blot over the other so he can't read. There. Right. Idea prize titbit. Something
detective read off blottingpad. Payment at the rate of guinea per col. Matcham
often thinks the laughing witch. Poor Mrs Purefoy. U. P: up.
Too poetical that about the sad. Music did that. Music hath charms.
Shakespeare said. Quotations every day in the year. To be or not to be. Wisdom
while you wait.
In Gerard's rosery of Fetter lane he walks, greyedauburn. One life is all. One
body. Do. But do.
Done anyhow. Postal order, stamp. Postoffice lower down. Walk now. Enough.
Barney Kiernan's I promised to meet them. Dislike that job.
House of mourning. Walk. Pat! Doesn't hear. Deaf beetle he is.
Car near there now. Talk. Talk. Pat! Doesn't. Settling those napkins. Lot of
ground he must cover in the day. Paint face behind on him then he'd be two. Wish
they'd sing more. Keep my mind off.
Bald Pat who is bothered mitred the napkins. Pat is a waiter hard of his hearing.
Pat is a waiter who waits while you wait. Hee hee hee hee. He waits while you
wait. Hee hee. A waiter is he. Hee hee hee hee. He waits while you wait. While
you wait if you wait he will wait while you wait. Hee hee hee hee. Hoh. Wait
while you wait.
Douce now. Douce Lydia. Bronze and rose.
She had a gorgeous, simply gorgeous, time. And look at the lovely shell she
brought.
To the end of the bar to him she bore lightly the spiked and winding seahorn
that he, George Lidwell, solicitor, might hear.
—Listen! she bade him.
Under Tom Kernan's ginhot words the accompanist wove music slow. Authentic
fact. How Walter Bapty lost his voice. Well, sir, the husband took him by the
throat. Scoundrel, said he, You'll sing no more lovesongs. He did, faith, sir Tom.
Bob Cowley wove. Tenors get wom. Cowley lay back.
Ah, now he heard, she holding it to his ear. Hear! He heard.
Wonderful. She held it to her own. And through the sifted light pale gold in
contrast glided. To hear.
Tap.
 Bloom through the bardoor saw a shell held at their ears. He heard more faintly
that that they heard, each for herself alone, then each for other, hearing the plash
of waves, loudly, a silent roar.
Bronze by a weary gold, anear, afar, they listened.
Her ear too is a shell, the peeping lobe there. Been to the seaside. Lovely seaside
girls. Skin tanned raw. Should have put on coldcream first make it brown.
Buttered toast. O and that lotion mustn't forget. Fever near her mouth. Your head
it simply. Hair braided over: shell with seaweed. Why do they hide their ears with
seaweed hair? And Turks the mouth, why? Her eyes over the sheet. Yashmak.
Find the way in. A cave. No admittance except on business.
The sea they think they hear. Singing. A roar. The blood it is. Souse in the ear
sometimes. Well, it's a sea. Corpuscle islands.
Wonderful really. So distinct. Again. George Lidwell held its murmur, hearing:
then laid it by, gently.
—What are the wild waves saying? he asked her, smiled.
Charming, seasmiling and unanswering Lydia on Lidwell smiled.
Tap.
By Larry O'Rourke's, by Larry, bold Larry O', Boylan swayed and Boylan turned.
From the forsaken shell miss Mina glided to her tankards waiting. No, she was
not so lonely archly miss Douce's head let Mr Lidwell know. Walks in the
moonlight by the sea. No, not alone. With whom? She nobly answered: with a
gentleman friend.
Bob Cowley's twinkling fingers in the treble played again. The landlord has the
prior. A little time. Long John. Big Ben. Lightly he played a light bright tinkling
measure for tripping ladies, arch and smiling, and for their gallants, gentlemen
friends. One: one, one, one, one, one: two, one, three, four.
Sea, wind, leaves, thunder, waters, cows lowing, the cattlemarket, cocks, hens
don't crow, snakes hissss. There's music everywhere. Ruttledge's door: ee creaking.
No, that's noise. Minuet of Don Giovanni he's playing now. Court dresses of all
descriptions in castle chambers dancing. Misery. Peasants outside. Green starving
faces eating dockleaves. Nice that is. Look: look, look, look, look, look: you look
at us.
That's joyful I can feel. Never have written it. Why? My joy is other joy. But
both are joys. Yes, joy it must be. Mere fact of music shows you are. Often
thought she was in the dumps till she began to lilt. Then know.
M'Coy valise. My wife and your wife. Squealing cat. Like tearing silk. Tongue
when she talks like the clapper of a bellows. They can't manage men's intervals.
Gap in their voices too. Fill me. I'm warm, dark, open. Molly in quis est homo:
Mercadante. My ear against the wall to hear. Want a woman who can deliver the
goods.
Jog jig jogged stopped. Dandy tan shoe of dandy Boylan socks skyblue clocks
came light to earth.
O, look we are so! Chamber music. Could make a kind of pun on that. It is a
kind of music I often thought when she. Acoustics that is. Tinkling. Empty vessels
make most noise. Because the acoustics, the resonance changes according as the
weight of the water is equal to the law of falling water. Like those rhapsodies of
Liszt's, Hungarian, gipsyeyed. Pearls. Drops. Rain. Diddleiddle addleaddle
ooddleooddle. Hissss. Now. Maybe now. Before.
One rapped on a door, one tapped with a knock, did he knock Paul de Kock
with a loud proud knocker with a cock carracarracarra cock. Cockcock.
Tap.
—Qui sdegno, Ben, said Father Cowley.
—No, Ben, Tom Kernan interfered. The Croppy Boy. Our native Doric.
—Ay do, Ben, Mr Dedalus said. Good men and true.
—Do, do, they begged in one.
I'll go. Here, Pat, return. Come. He came, he came, he did not stay. To me. How
much?
—What key? Six sharps?
—F sharp major, Ben Dollard said.
Bob Cowley's outstretched talons griped the black deepsounding chords.
Must go prince Bloom told Richie prince. No, Richie said. Yes, must. Got money
somewhere. He's on for a razzle backache spree. Much? He seehears lipspeech.
One and nine. Penny for yourself. Here. Give him twopence tip. Deaf, bothered.
But perhaps he has wife and family waiting, waiting Patty come home. Hee hee
hee hee. Deaf wait while they wait.
But wait. But hear. Chords dark. Lugugugubrious. Low. In a cave of the dark
middle earth. Embedded ore. Lumpmusic.
The voice of dark age, of unlove, earth's fatigue made grave approach and
painful, come from afar, from hoary mountains, called on good men and true. The
priest he sought. With him would he speak a word.
Tap.
Ben Dollard's voice. Base barreltone. Doing his level best to say it. Croak of vast
manless moonless womoonless marsh. Other comedown. Big ships' chandler's
business he did once. Remember: rosiny ropes, ships' lanterns. Failed to the tune
of ten thousand pounds. Now in the Iveagh home. Cubicle number so and so.
Number one Bass did that for him.
The priest's at home. A false priest's servant bade him welcome. Step in. The
holy father. With bows a traitor servant. Curlycues of chords.
Ruin them. Wreck their lives. Then build them cubicles to end their days in.
Hushaby. Lullaby. Die, dog. Little dog, die.
The voice of warning, solemn warning, told them the youth had entered a lonely
hall, told them how solemn fell his footsteps there, told them the gloomy chamber,
the vested priest sitting to shrive.
Decent soul. Bit addled now. Thinks he'll win in Answers, poets' picture puzzle.
We hand you crisp five pound note. Bird sitting hatching in a nest. Lay of the last
minstrel he thought it was. See blank tee what domestic animal? Tee dash ar most
courageous mariner. Good voice he has still. No eunuch yet with all his
belongings.
Listen. Bloom listened. Richie Goulding listened. And by the door deaf Pat, bald
Pat, tipped Pat, listened. The chords harped slower.
The voice of penance and of grief came slow, embellished, tremulous. Ben's
contrite beard confessed. in nomine Domini, in God's name he knelt. He beat his
hand upon his breast, confessing: mea culpa.
Latin again. That holds them like birdlime. Priest with the communion corpus
for those women. Chap in the mortuary, coffin or coffey, corpusnomine. Wonder
where that rat is by now. Scrape.
Tap.
They listened. Tankards and miss Kennedy. George Lidwell, eyelid well
expressive, fullbusted satin. Kernan. Si.
The sighing voice of sorrow sang. His sins. Since Easter he had cursed three
times. You bitch's bast. And once at masstime he had gone to play. Once by the
churchyard he had passed and for his mother's rest he had not prayed. A boy. A
croppy boy.
Bronze, listening, by the beerpull gazed far away. Soulfully. Doesn't half know
I'm. Molly great dab at seeing anyone looking.
Bronze gazed far sideways. Mirror there. Is that best side of her face? They
always know. Knock at the door. Last tip to titivate.
Cockcarracarra.
What do they think when they hear music? Way to catch rattlesnakes. Night
Michael Gunn gave us the box. Tuning up. Shah of Persia liked that best. Remind
him of home sweet home. Wiped his nose in curtain too. Custom his country
perhaps. That's music too. Not as bad as it sounds. Tootling. Brasses braying asses
through uptrunks. Doublebasses helpless, gashes in their sides. Woodwinds
mooing cows. Semigrand open crocodile music hath jaws. Woodwind like
Goodwin's name.
She looked fine. Her crocus dress she wore lowcut, belongings on show. Clove
her breath was always in theatre when she bent to ask a question. Told her what
Spinoza says in that book of poor papa's. Hypnotised, listening. Eyes like that. She
bent. Chap in dresscircle staring down into her with his operaglass for all he was
worth. Beauty of music you must hear twice. Nature woman half a look. God
made the country man the tune. Met him pike hoses. Philosophy. O rocks!
All gone. All fallen. At the siege of Ross his father, at Gorey all his brothers fell.
To Wexford, we are the boys of Wexford, he would. Last of his name and race.
I too. Last of my race. Milly young student. Well, my fault perhaps. No son.
Rudy. Too late now. Or if not? If not? If still?
He bore no hate.
Hate. Love. Those are names. Rudy. Soon I am old. Big Ben his voice unfolded.
Great voice Richie Goulding said, a flush struggling in his pale, to Bloom soon old.
But when was young?
Ireland comes now. My country above the king. She listens. Who fears to speak
of nineteen four? Time to be shoving. Looked enough.
—Bless me, father, Dollard the croppy cried. Bless me and let me go.
Tap.
Bloom looked, unblessed to go. Got up to kill: on eighteen bob a week. Fellows
shell out the dibs. Want to keep your weathereye open. Those girls, those lovely.
By the sad sea waves. Chorusgirl's romance. Letters read out for breach of
promise. From Chickabiddy's owny Mumpsypum. Laughter in court. Henry. I
never signed it. The lovely name you.
Low sank the music, air and words. Then hastened. The false priest rustling
soldier from his cassock. A yeoman captain. They know it all by heart. The thrill
they itch for. Yeoman cap.
Tap. Tap.
Thrilled she listened, bending in sympathy to hear.
Blank face. Virgin should say: or fingered only. Write something on it: page. If
not what becomes of them? Decline, despair. Keeps them young. Even admire
themselves. See. Play on her. Lip blow. Body of white woman, a flute alive. Blow
gentle. Loud. Three holes, all women. Goddess I didn't see. They want it. Not too
much polite. That's why he gets them. Gold in your pocket, brass in your face. Say
something. Make her hear. With look to look. Songs without words. Molly, that
hurdygurdy boy. She knew he meant the monkey was sick. Or because so like the
Spanish. Understand animals too that way. Solomon did. Gift of nature.
Ventriloquise. My lips closed. Think in my stom. What?
 Will? You? I. Want. You. To.
With hoarse rude fury the yeoman cursed, swelling in apoplectic bitch's bastard.
A good thought, boy, to come. One hour's your time to live, your last.
Tap. Tap.
Thrill now. Pity they feel. To wipe away a tear for martyrs that want to, dying
to, die. For all things dying, for all things born. Poor Mrs Purefoy. Hope she's
over. Because their wombs.
A liquid of womb of woman eyeball gazed under a fence of lashes, calmly,
hearing. See real beauty of the eye when she not speaks. On yonder river. At each
slow satiny heaving bosom's wave (her heaving embon) red rose rose slowly sank
red rose. Heartbeats: her breath: breath that is life. And all the tiny tiny fernfoils
trembled of maidenhair.
But look. The bright stars fade. O rose! Castile. The morn. Ha. Lidwell. For him
then not for. Infatuated. I like that? See her from here though. Popped corks,
splashes of beerfroth, stacks of empties.
On the smooth jutting beerpull laid Lydia hand, lightly, plumply, leave it to my
hands. All lost in pity for croppy. Fro, to: to, fro: over the polished knob (she
knows his eyes, my eyes, her eyes) her thumb and finger passed in pity: passed,
reposed and, gently touching, then slid so smoothly, slowly down, a cool firm
white enamel baton protruding through their sliding ring.
With a cock with a carra.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I hold this house. Amen. He gnashed in fury. Traitors swing.
The chords consented. Very sad thing. But had to be. Get out before the end.
Thanks, that was heavenly. Where's my hat. Pass by her. Can leave that Freeman.
Letter I have. Suppose she were the? No. Walk, walk, walk. Like Cashel Boylo
Connoro Coylo Tisdall Maurice Tisntdall Farrell. Waaaaaaalk.
Well, I must be. Are you off? Yrfmstbyes. Blmstup. O'er ryehigh blue. Ow.
Bloom stood up. Soap feeling rather sticky behind. Must have sweated: music.
That lotion, remember. Well, so long. High grade. Card inside. Yes.
By deaf Pat in the doorway straining ear Bloom passed.
At Geneva barrack that young man died. At Passage was his body laid. Dolor!
O, he dolores! The voice of the mournful chanter called to dolorous prayer.
By rose, by satiny bosom, by the fondling hand, by slops, by empties, by
popped corks, greeting in going, past eyes and maidenhair, bronze and faint gold
in deepseashadow, went Bloom, soft Bloom, I feel so lonely Bloom.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
 Pray for him, prayed the bass of Dollard. You who hear in peace. Breathe a
prayer, drop a tear, good men, good people. He was the croppy boy.
Scaring eavesdropping boots croppy bootsboy Bloom in the Ormond hallway
heard the growls and roars of bravo, fat backslapping, their boots all treading,
boots not the boots the boy. General chorus off for a swill to wash it down. Glad I
avoided.
—Come on, Ben, Simon Dedalus cried. By God, you're as good as ever you
were.
—Better, said Tomgin Kernan. Most trenchant rendition of that ballad, upon my
soul and honour It is.
—Lablache, said Father Cowley.
Ben Dollard bulkily cachuchad towards the bar, mightily praisefed and all big
roseate, on heavyfooted feet, his gouty fingers nakkering castagnettes in the air.
Big Benaben Dollard. Big Benben. Big Benben.
Rrr.
And deepmoved all, Simon trumping compassion from foghorn nose, all
laughing they brought him forth, Ben Dollard, in right good cheer.
—You're looking rubicund, George Lidwell said.
Miss Douce composed her rose to wait.
—Ben machree, said Mr Dedalus, clapping Ben's fat back shoulderblade. Fit as a
fiddle only he has a lot of adipose tissue concealed about his person.
Rrrrrrrsss.
—Fat of death, Simon, Ben Dollard growled.
Richie rift in the lute alone sat: Goulding, Collis, Ward. Uncertainly he waited.
Unpaid Pat too.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Miss Mina Kennedy brought near her lips to ear of tankard one.
—Mr Dollard, they murmured low.
—Dollard, murmured tankard.
Tank one believed: miss Kenn when she: that doll he was: she doll: the tank.
He murmured that he knew the name. The name was familiar to him, that is to
say. That was to say he had heard the name of. Dollard, was it? Dollard, yes.
 Yes, her lips said more loudly, Mr Dollard. He sang that song lovely, murmured
Mina. Mr Dollard. And The last rose of summer was a lovely song. Mina loved that
song. Tankard loved the song that Mina.
'Tis the last rose of summer dollard left bloom felt wind wound round inside.
Gassy thing that cider: binding too. Wait. Postoffice near Reuben J's one and
eightpence too. Get shut of it. Dodge round by Greek street. Wish I hadn't
promised to meet. Freer in air. Music. Gets on your nerves. Beerpull. Her hand
that rocks the cradle rules the. Ben Howth. That rules the world.
Far. Far. Far. Far.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Up the quay went Lionelleopold, naughty Henry with letter for Mady, with
sweets of sin with frillies for Raoul with met him pike hoses went Poldy on.
Tap blind walked tapping by the tap the curbstone tapping, tap by tap.
Cowley, he stuns himself with it: kind of drunkenness. Better give way only half
way the way of a man with a maid. Instance enthusiasts. All ears. Not lose a
demisemiquaver. Eyes shut. Head nodding in time. Dotty. You daren't budge.
Thinking strictly prohibited. Always talking shop. Fiddlefaddle about notes.
All a kind of attempt to talk. Unpleasant when it stops because you never know
exac. Organ in Gardiner street. Old Glynn fifty quid a year. Queer up there in the
cockloft, alone, with stops and locks and keys. Seated all day at the organ.
Maunder on for hours, talking to himself or the other fellow blowing the bellows.
Growl angry, then shriek cursing (want to have wadding or something in his no
don't she cried), then all of a soft sudden wee little wee little pipy wind.
Pwee! A wee little wind piped eeee. In Bloom's little wee.
—Was he? Mr Dedalus said, returning with fetched pipe. I was with him this
morning at poor little Paddy Dignam's...
—Ay, the Lord have mercy on him.
—By the bye there's a tuningfork in there on the...
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
—The wife has a fine voice. Or had. What? Lidwell asked.
—O, that must be the tuner, Lydia said to Simonlionel first I saw, forgot it
when he was here.
Blind he was she told George Lidwell second I saw. And played so exquisitely,
treat to hear. Exquisite contrast: bronzelid, minagold.
—Shout! Ben Dollard shouted, pouring. Sing out!
—'lldo! cried Father Cowley.
 Rrrrrr.
I feel I want...
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap
—Very, Mr Dedalus said, staring hard at a headless sardine.
Under the sandwichbell lay on a bier of bread one last, one lonely, last sardine
of summer. Bloom alone.
—Very, he stared. The lower register, for choice.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Bloom went by Barry's. Wish I could. Wait. That wonderworker if I had.
Twentyfour solicitors in that one house. Counted them. Litigation. Love one
another. Piles of parchment. Messrs Pick and Pocket have power of attorney.
Goulding, Collis, Ward.
But for example the chap that wallops the big drum. His vocation: Mickey
Rooney's band. Wonder how it first struck him. Sitting at home after pig's cheek
and cabbage nursing it in the armchair. Rehearsing his band part. Pom. Pompedy.
Jolly for the wife. Asses' skins. Welt them through life, then wallop after death.
Pom. Wallop. Seems to be what you call yashmak or I mean kismet. Fate.
Tap. Tap. A stripling, blind, with a tapping cane came taptaptapping by Daly's
window where a mermaid hair all streaming (but he couldn't see) blew whiffs of a
mermaid (blind couldn't), mermaid, coolest whiff of all.
Instruments. A blade of grass, shell of her hands, then blow. Even comb and
tissuepaper you can knock a tune out of. Molly in her shift in Lombard street
west, hair down. I suppose each kind of trade made its own, don't you see?
Hunter with a horn. Haw. Have you the? Cloche. Sonnez la. Shepherd his pipe.
Pwee little wee. Policeman a whistle. Locks and keys! Sweep! Four o'clock's all's
well! Sleep! All is lost now. Drum? Pompedy. Wait. I know. Towncrier, bumbailiff.
Long John. Waken the dead. Pom. Dignam. Poor little nominedomine. Pom. It is
music. I mean of course it's all pom pom pom very much what they call da capo.
Still you can hear. As we march, we march along, march along. Pom.
I must really. Fff. Now if I did that at a banquet. Just a question of custom shah
of Persia. Breathe a prayer, drop a tear. All the same he must have been a bit of a
natural not to see it was a yeoman cap. Muffled up. Wonder who was that chap at
the grave in the brown macin. O, the whore of the lane!
A frowsy whore with black straw sailor hat askew came glazily in the day along
the quay towards Mr Bloom. When first he saw that form endearing? Yes, it is. I
feel so lonely. Wet night in the lane. Horn. Who had the? Heehaw shesaw. Off her
beat here. What is she? Hope she. Psst! Any chance of your wash. Knew Molly.
Had me decked. Stout lady does be with you in the brown costume. Put you off
your stroke, that. Appointment we made knowing we'd never, well hardly ever.
Too dear too near to home sweet home. Sees me, does she? Looks a fright in the
day. Face like dip. Damn her. O, well, she has to live like the rest. Look in here.
In Lionel Marks's antique saleshop window haughty Henry Lionel Leopold dear
Henry Flower earnestly Mr Leopold Bloom envisaged battered candlesticks
melodeon oozing maggoty blowbags. Bargain: six bob. Might learn to play. Cheap.
Let her pass. Course everything is dear if you don't want it. That's what good
salesman is. Make you buy what he wants to sell. Chap sold me the Swedish razor
he shaved me with. Wanted to charge me for the edge he gave it. She's passing
now. Six bob.
Must be the cider or perhaps the burgund.
Near bronze from anear near gold from afar they chinked their clinking glasses
all, brighteyed and gallant, before bronze Lydia's tempting last rose of summer,
rose of Castile. First Lid, De, Cow, Ker, Doll, a fifth: Lidwell, Si Dedalus, Bob
Cowley, Kernan and big Ben Dollard.
Tap. A youth entered a lonely Ormond hall.
Bloom viewed a gallant pictured hero in Lionel Marks's window. Robert Emmet's
last words. Seven last words. Of Meyerbeer that is.
—True men like you men.
—Ay, ay, Ben.
—Will lift your glass with us.
They lifted.
Tschink. Tschunk.
Tip. An unseeing stripling stood in the door. He saw not bronze. He saw not
gold. Nor Ben nor Bob nor Tom nor Si nor George nor tanks nor Richie nor Pat.
Hee hee hee hee. He did not see.
Seabloom, greaseabloom viewed last words. Softly. When my country takes her
place among.
Prrprr.
Must be the bur.
Fff! Oo. Rrpr.
Nations of the earth. No-one behind. She's passed. Then and not till then. Tram
kran kran kran. Good oppor. Coming. Krandlkrankran. I'm sure it's the burgund.
Yes. One, two. Let my epitaph be. Kraaaaaa. Written. I have.
Pprrpffrrppffff.
Done.
 I was just passing the time of day with old Troy of the D. M. P. at the corner of
Arbour hill there and be damned but a bloody sweep came along and he near
drove his gear into my eye. I turned around to let him have the weight of my
tongue when who should I see dodging along Stony Batter only Joe Hynes.
—Lo, Joe, says I. How are you blowing? Did you see that bloody chimneysweep
near shove my eye out with his brush?
—Soot's luck, says Joe. Who's the old ballocks you were talking to?
—Old Troy, says I, was in the force. I'm on two minds not to give that fellow in
charge for obstructing the thoroughfare with his brooms and ladders.
—What are you doing round those parts? says Joe.
—Devil a much, says I. There's a bloody big foxy thief beyond by the garrison
church at the corner of Chicken lane—old Troy was just giving me a wrinkle about
him—lifted any God's quantity of tea and sugar to pay three bob a week said he
had a farm in the county Down off a hop-of-my-thumb by the name of Moses
Herzog over there near Heytesbury street.
—Circumcised? says Joe.
—Ay, says I. A bit off the top. An old plumber named Geraghty. I'm hanging on
to his taw now for the past fortnight and I can't get a penny out of him.
—That the lay you're on now? says Joe.
—Ay, says I. How are the mighty fallen! Collector of bad and doubtful debts.
But that's the most notorious bloody robber you'd meet in a day's walk and the
face on him all pockmarks would hold a shower of rain. Tell him, says he, I dare
him, says he, and I doubledare him to send you round here again or if he does, says
he, I'll have him summonsed up before the court, so I will, for trading without a
licence. And he after stuffing himself till he's fit to burst. Jesus, I had to laugh at
the little jewy getting his shirt out. He drink me my teas. He eat me my sugars.
Because he no pay me my moneys?
For nonperishable goods bought of Moses Herzog, of 13 Saint Kevin's parade in
the city of Dublin, Wood quay ward, merchant, hereinafter called the vendor, and
sold and delivered to Michael E. Geraghty, esquire, of 29 Arbour hill in the city of
Dublin, Arran quay ward, gentleman, hereinafter called the purchaser, videlicet,
five pounds avoirdupois of first choice tea at three shillings and no pence per
pound avoirdupois and three stone avoirdupois of sugar, crushed crystal, at
threepence per pound avoirdupois, the said purchaser debtor to the said vendor of
one pound five shillings and sixpence sterling for value received which amount
shall be paid by said purchaser to said vendor in weekly instalments every seven
calendar days of three shillings and no pence sterling: and the said nonperishable
goods shall not be pawned or pledged or sold or otherwise alienated by the said
purchaser but shall be and remain and be held to be the sole and exclusive
property of the said vendor to be disposed of at his good will and pleasure until
the said amount shall have been duly paid by the said purchaser to the said
vendor in the manner herein set forth as this day hereby agreed between the said
vendor, his heirs, successors, trustees and assigns of the one part and the said
purchaser, his heirs, successors, trustees and assigns of the other part.
—Are you a strict t.t.? says Joe.
—Not taking anything between drinks, says I.
—What about paying our respects to our friend? says Joe.
—Who? says I. Sure, he's out in John of God's off his head, poor man.
—Drinking his own stuff? says Joe.
—Ay, says I. Whisky and water on the brain.
—Come around to Barney Kiernan's, says Joe. I want to see the citizen.
—Barney mavourneen's be it, says I. Anything strange or wonderful, Joe?
—Not a word, says Joe. I was up at that meeting in the City Arms.
—-What was that, Joe? says I.
—Cattle traders, says Joe, about the foot and mouth disease. I want to give the
citizen the hard word about it.
So we went around by the Linenhall barracks and the back of the courthouse
talking of one thing or another. Decent fellow Joe when he has it but sure like that
he never has it. Jesus, I couldn't get over that bloody foxy Geraghty, the daylight
robber. For trading without a licence, says he.
In Inisfail the fair there lies a land, the land of holy Michan. There rises a
watchtower beheld of men afar. There sleep the mighty dead as in life they slept,
warriors and princes of high renown. A pleasant land it is in sooth of murmuring
waters, fishful streams where sport the gurnard, the plaice, the roach, the halibut,
the gibbed haddock, the grilse, the dab, the brill, the flounder, the pollock, the
mixed coarse fish generally and other denizens of the aqueous kingdom too
numerous to be enumerated. In the mild breezes of the west and of the east the
lofty trees wave in different directions their firstclass foliage, the wafty sycamore,
the Lebanonian cedar, the exalted planetree, the eugenic eucalyptus and other
ornaments of the arboreal world with which that region is thoroughly well
supplied. Lovely maidens sit in close proximity to the roots of the lovely trees
singing the most lovely songs while they play with all kinds of lovely objects as for
example golden ingots, silvery fishes, crans of herrings, drafts of eels, codlings,
creels of fingerlings, purple seagems and playful insects. And heroes voyage from
afar to woo them, from Eblana to Slievemargy, the peerless princes of unfettered
Munster and of Connacht the just and of smooth sleek Leinster and of Cruahan's
land and of Armagh the splendid and of the noble district of Boyle, princes, the
sons of kings.
And there rises a shining palace whose crystal glittering roof is seen by mariners
who traverse the extensive sea in barks built expressly for that purpose, and
thither come all herds and fatlings and firstfruits of that land for O'Connell
Fitzsimon takes toll of them, a chieftain descended from chieftains. Thither the
extremely large wains bring foison of the fields, flaskets of cauliflowers, floats of
spinach, pineapple chunks, Rangoon beans, strikes of tomatoes, drums of figs,
drills of Swedes, spherical potatoes and tallies of iridescent kale, York and Savoy,
and trays of onions, pearls of the earth, and punnets of mushrooms and custard
marrows and fat vetches and bere and rape and red green yellow brown russet
sweet big bitter ripe pomellated apples and chips of strawberries and sieves of
gooseberries, pulpy and pelurious, and strawberries fit for princes and raspberries
from their canes.
I dare him, says he, and I doubledare him. Come out here, Geraghty, you
notorious bloody hill and dale robber!
And by that way wend the herds innumerable of bellwethers and flushed ewes
and shearling rams and lambs and stubble geese and medium steers and roaring
mares and polled calves and longwoods and storesheep and Cuffe's prime
springers and culls and sowpigs and baconhogs and the various different varieties
of highly distinguished swine and Angus heifers and polly bulllocks of immaculate
pedigree together with prime premiated milchcows and beeves: and there is ever
heard a trampling, cackling, roaring, lowing, bleating, bellowing, rumbling,
grunting, champing, chewing, of sheep and pigs and heavyhooved kine from
pasturelands of Lusk and Rush and Carrickmines and from the streamy vales of
Thomond, from the M'Gillicuddy's reeks the inaccessible and lordly Shannon the
unfathomable, and from the gentle declivities of the place of the race of Kiar, their
udders distended with superabundance of milk and butts of butter and rennets of
cheese and farmer's firkins and targets of lamb and crannocks of corn and oblong
eggs in great hundreds, various in size, the agate with this dun.
So we turned into Barney Kiernan's and there, sure enough, was the citizen up
in the corner having a great confab with himself and that bloody mangy mongrel,
Garryowen, and he waiting for what the sky would drop in the way of drink.
—There he is, says I, in his gloryhole, with his cruiskeen lawn and his load of
papers, working for the cause.
The bloody mongrel let a grouse out of him would give you the creeps. Be a
corporal work of mercy if someone would take the life of that bloody dog. I'm told
for a fact he ate a good part of the breeches off a constabulary man in Santry that
came round one time with a blue paper about a licence.
—Stand and deliver, says he.
—That's all right, citizen, says Joe. Friends here.
—Pass, friends, says he.
Then he rubs his hand in his eye and says he:
—What's your opinion of the times?
 Doing the rapparee and Rory of the hill. But, begob, Joe was equal to the
occasion.
—I think the markets are on a rise, says he, sliding his hand down his fork.
So begob the citizen claps his paw on his knee and he says:
—Foreign wars is the cause of it.
And says Joe, sticking his thumb in his pocket:
—It's the Russians wish to tyrannise.
—Arrah, give over your bloody codding, Joe, says I. I've a thirst on me I
wouldn't sell for half a crown.
—Give it a name, citizen, says Joe.
—Wine of the country, says he.
—What's yours? says Joe.
—Ditto MacAnaspey, says I.
—Three pints, Terry, says Joe. And how's the old heart, citizen? says he.
—Never better, a chara, says he. What Garry? Are we going to win? Eh?
And with that he took the bloody old towser by the scruff of the neck and, by
Jesus, he near throttled him.
The figure seated on a large boulder at the foot of a round tower was that of a
broadshouldered deepchested stronglimbed frankeyed redhaired freelyfreckled
shaggybearded widemouthed largenosed longheaded deepvoiced barekneed
brawnyhanded hairylegged ruddyfaced sinewyarmed hero. From shoulder to
shoulder he measured several ells and his rocklike mountainous knees were
covered, as was likewise the rest of his body wherever visible, with a strong
growth of tawny prickly hair in hue and toughness similar to the mountain gorse
(Ulex Europeus). The widewinged nostrils, from which bristles of the same tawny
hue projected, were of such capaciousness that within their cavernous obscurity
the fieldlark might easily have lodged her nest. The eyes in which a tear and a
smile strove ever for the mastery were of the dimensions of a goodsized
cauliflower. A powerful current of warm breath issued at regular intervals from
the profound cavity of his mouth while in rhythmic resonance the loud strong hale
reverberations of his formidable heart thundered rumblingly causing the ground,
the summit of the lofty tower and the still loftier walls of the cave to vibrate and
tremble.
He wore a long unsleeved garment of recently flayed oxhide reaching to the
knees in a loose kilt and this was bound about his middle by a girdle of plaited
straw and rushes. Beneath this he wore trews of deerskin, roughly stitched with
gut. His nether extremities were encased in high Balbriggan buskins dyed in lichen
purple, the feet being shod with brogues of salted cowhide laced with the
windpipe of the same beast. From his girdle hung a row of seastones which
jangled at every movement of his portentous frame and on these were graven with
rude yet striking art the tribal images of many Irish heroes and heroines of
antiquity, Cuchulin, Conn of hundred battles, Niall of nine hostages, Brian of
Kincora, the ardri Malachi, Art MacMurragh, Shane O'Neill, Father John Murphy,
Owen Roe, Patrick Sarsfield, Red Hugh O'Donnell, Red Jim MacDermott, Soggarth
Eoghan O'Growney, Michael Dwyer, Francy Higgins, Henry Joy M'Cracken,
Goliath, Horace Wheatley, Thomas Conneff, Peg Woffington, the Village
Blacksmith, Captain Moonlight, Captain Boycott, Dante Alighieri, Christopher
Columbus, S. Fursa, S. Brendan, Marshal MacMahon, Charlemagne, Theobald
Wolfe Tone, the Mother of the Maccabees, the Last of the Mohicans, the Rose of
Castile, the Man for Galway, The Man that Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo, The
Man in the Gap, The Woman Who Didn't, Benjamin Franklin, Napoleon
Bonaparte, John L. Sullivan, Cleopatra, Savourneen Deelish, Julius Caesar,
Paracelsus, sir Thomas Lipton, William Tell, Michelangelo Hayes, Muhammad, the
Bride of Lammermoor, Peter the Hermit, Peter the Packer, Dark Rosaleen, Patrick
W. Shakespeare, Brian Confucius, Murtagh Gutenberg, Patricio Velasquez, Captain
Nemo, Tristan and Isolde, the first Prince of Wales, Thomas Cook and Son, the
Bold Soldier Boy, Arrah na Pogue, Dick Turpin, Ludwig Beethoven, the Colleen
Bawn, Waddler Healy, Angus the Culdee, Dolly Mount, Sidney Parade, Ben
Howth, Valentine Greatrakes, Adam and Eve, Arthur Wellesley, Boss Croker,
Herodotus, Jack the Giantkiller, Gautama Buddha, Lady Godiva, The Lily of
Killarney, Balor of the Evil Eye, the Queen of Sheba, Acky Nagle, Joe Nagle,
Alessandro Volta, Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa, Don Philip O'Sullivan Beare. A
couched spear of acuminated granite rested by him while at his feet reposed a
savage animal of the canine tribe whose stertorous gasps announced that he was
sunk in uneasy slumber, a supposition confirmed by hoarse growls and spasmodic
movements which his master repressed from time to time by tranquilising blows of
a mighty cudgel rudely fashioned out of paleolithic stone.
So anyhow Terry brought the three pints Joe was standing and begob the sight
nearly left my eyes when I saw him land out a quid O, as true as I'm telling you. A
goodlooking sovereign.
—And there's more where that came from, says he.
—Were you robbing the poorbox, Joe? says I.
—Sweat of my brow, says Joe. 'Twas the prudent member gave me the wheeze.
—I saw him before I met you, says I, sloping around by Pill lane and Greek
street with his cod's eye counting up all the guts of the fish.
Who comes through Michan's land, bedight in sable armour? O'Bloom, the son
of Rory: it is he. Impervious to fear is Rory's son: he of the prudent soul.
—For the old woman of Prince's street, says the citizen, the subsidised organ.
The pledgebound party on the floor of the house. And look at this blasted rag,
says he. Look at this, says he. The Irish Independent, if you please, founded by
Parnell to be the workingman's friend. Listen to the births and deaths in the Irish
all for Ireland Independent, and I'll thank you and the marriages.
And he starts reading them out:
—Gordon, Barnfield crescent, Exeter; Redmayne of Iffley, Saint Anne's on Sea:
the wife of William T Redmayne of a son. How's that, eh? Wright and Flint,
Vincent and Gillett to Rotha Marion daughter of Rosa and the late George Alfred
Gillett, 179 Clapham road, Stockwell, Playwood and Ridsdale at Saint Jude's,
Kensington by the very reverend Dr Forrest, dean of Worcester. Eh? Deaths.
Bristow, at Whitehall lane, London: Carr, Stoke Newington, of gastritis and heart
disease: Cockburn, at the Moat house, Chepstow...
—I know that fellow, says Joe, from bitter experience.
—Cockburn. Dimsey, wife of David Dimsey, late of the admiralty: Miller,
Tottenham, aged eightyfive: Welsh, June 12, at 35 Canning street, Liverpool,
Isabella Helen. How's that for a national press, eh, my brown son! How's that for
Martin Murphy, the Bantry jobber?
—Ah, well, says Joe, handing round the boose. Thanks be to God they had the
start of us. Drink that, citizen.
—I will, says he, honourable person.
—Health, Joe, says I. And all down the form.
Ah! Ow! Don't be talking! I was blue mouldy for the want of that pint. Declare
to God I could hear it hit the pit of my stomach with a click.
And lo, as they quaffed their cup of joy, a godlike messenger came swiftly in,
radiant as the eye of heaven, a comely youth and behind him there passed an
elder of noble gait and countenance, bearing the sacred scrolls of law and with
him his lady wife a dame of peerless lineage, fairest of her race.
Little Alf Bergan popped in round the door and hid behind Barney's snug,
squeezed up with the laughing. And who was sitting up there in the corner that I
hadn't seen snoring drunk blind to the world only Bob Doran. I didn't know what
was up and Alf kept making signs out of the door. And begob what was it only
that bloody old pantaloon Denis Breen in his bathslippers with two bloody big
books tucked under his oxter and the wife hotfoot after him, unfortunate wretched
woman, trotting like a poodle. I thought Alf would split.
—Look at him, says he. Breen. He's traipsing all round Dublin with a postcard
someone sent him with U. p: up on it to take a li...
And he doubled up.
—Take a what? says I.
—Libel action, says he, for ten thousand pounds.
—O hell! says I.
 The bloody mongrel began to growl that'd put the fear of God in you seeing
something was up but the citizen gave him a kick in the ribs.
—Bi i dho husht, says he.
—Who? says Joe.
—Breen, says Alf. He was in John Henry Menton's and then he went round to
Collis and Ward's and then Tom Rochford met him and sent him round to the
subsheriff's for a lark. O God, I've a pain laughing. U. p: up. The long fellow gave
him an eye as good as a process and now the bloody old lunatic is gone round to
Green street to look for a G man.
—When is long John going to hang that fellow in Mountjoy? says Joe.
—Bergan, says Bob Doran, waking up. Is that Alf Bergan?
—Yes, says Alf. Hanging? Wait till I show you. Here, Terry, give us a pony.
That bloody old fool! Ten thousand pounds. You should have seen long John's eye.
U. p...
And he started laughing.
—Who are you laughing at? says Bob Doran. Is that Bergan?
—Hurry up, Terry boy, says Alf.
Terence O'Ryan heard him and straightway brought him a crystal cup full of the
foamy ebon ale which the noble twin brothers Bungiveagh and Bungardilaun brew
ever in their divine alevats, cunning as the sons of deathless Leda. For they garner
the succulent berries of the hop and mass and sift and bruise and brew them and
they mix therewith sour juices and bring the must to the sacred fire and cease not
night or day from their toil, those cunning brothers, lords of the vat.
Then did you, chivalrous Terence, hand forth, as to the manner born, that
nectarous beverage and you offered the crystal cup to him that thirsted, the soul
of chivalry, in beauty akin to the immortals.
But he, the young chief of the O'Bergan's, could ill brook to be outdone in
generous deeds but gave therefor with gracious gesture a testoon of costliest
bronze. Thereon embossed in excellent smithwork was seen the image of a queen
of regal port, scion of the house of Brunswick, Victoria her name, Her Most
Excellent Majesty, by grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Ireland and of the British dominions beyond the sea, queen, defender of the faith,
Empress of India, even she, who bore rule, a victress over many peoples, the
wellbeloved, for they knew and loved her from the rising of the sun to the going
down thereof, the pale, the dark, the ruddy and the ethiop.
—What's that bloody freemason doing, says the citizen, prowling up and down
outside?
—What's that? says Joe.
 —Here you are, says Alf, chucking out the rhino. Talking about hanging, I'll
show you something you never saw. Hangmen's letters. Look at here.
So he took a bundle of wisps of letters and envelopes out of his pocket.
—Are you codding? says I.
—Honest injun, says Alf. Read them.
So Joe took up the letters.
—Who are you laughing at? says Bob Doran.
So I saw there was going to be a bit of a dust Bob's a queer chap when the
porter's up in him so says I just to make talk:
—How's Willy Murray those times, Alf?
—I don't know, says Alf I saw him just now in Capel street with Paddy Dignam.
Only I was running after that...
—You what? says Joe, throwing down the letters. With who?
—With Dignam, says Alf.
—Is it Paddy? says Joe.
—Yes, says Alf. Why?
—Don't you know he's dead? says Joe.
—Paddy Dignam dead! says Alf.
—Ay, says Joe.
—Sure I'm after seeing him not five minutes ago, says Alf, as plain as a
pikestaff.
—Who's dead? says Bob Doran.
—You saw his ghost then, says Joe, God between us and harm.
—What? says Alf. Good Christ, only five... What?... And Willy Murray with
him, the two of them there near whatdoyoucallhim's... What? Dignam dead?
—What about Dignam? says Bob Doran. Who's talking about...?
—Dead! says Alf. He's no more dead than you are.
—Maybe so, says Joe. They took the liberty of burying him this morning
anyhow.
—Paddy? says Alf.
—Ay, says Joe. He paid the debt of nature, God be merciful to him.
—Good Christ! says Alf.
 Begob he was what you might call flabbergasted.
In the darkness spirit hands were felt to flutter and when prayer by tantras had
been directed to the proper quarter a faint but increasing luminosity of ruby light
became gradually visible, the apparition of the etheric double being particularly
lifelike owing to the discharge of jivic rays from the crown of the head and face.
Communication was effected through the pituitary body and also by means of the
orangefiery and scarlet rays emanating from the sacral region and solar plexus.
Questioned by his earthname as to his whereabouts in the heavenworld he stated
that he was now on the path of pr l ya or return but was still submitted to trial at
the hands of certain bloodthirsty entities on the lower astral levels. In reply to a
question as to his first sensations in the great divide beyond he stated that
previously he had seen as in a glass darkly but that those who had passed over
had summit possibilities of atmic development opened up to them. Interrogated as
to whether life there resembled our experience in the flesh he stated that he had
heard from more favoured beings now in the spirit that their abodes were
equipped with every modern home comfort such as talafana, alavatar, hatakalda,
wataklasat and that the highest adepts were steeped in waves of volupcy of the
very purest nature. Having requested a quart of buttermilk this was brought and
evidently afforded relief. Asked if he had any message for the living he exhorted
all who were still at the wrong side of Maya to acknowledge the true path for it
was reported in devanic circles that Mars and Jupiter were out for mischief on the
eastern angle where the ram has power. It was then queried whether there were
any special desires on the part of the defunct and the reply was: We greet you,
friends of earth, who are still in the body. Mind C. K. doesn't pile it on. It was
ascertained that the reference was to Mr Cornelius Kelleher, manager of Messrs H.
J. O'Neill's popular funeral establishment, a personal friend of the defunct, who
had been responsible for the carrying out of the interment arrangements. Before
departing he requested that it should be told to his dear son Patsy that the other
boot which he had been looking for was at present under the commode in the
return room and that the pair should be sent to Cullen's to be soled only as the
heels were still good. He stated that this had greatly perturbed his peace of mind
in the other region and earnestly requested that his desire should be made known.
Assurances were given that the matter would be attended to and it was
intimated that this had given satisfaction.
He is gone from mortal haunts: O'Dignam, sun of our morning. Fleet was his
foot on the bracken: Patrick of the beamy brow. Wail, Banba, with your wind: and
wail, O ocean, with your whirlwind.
—There he is again, says the citizen, staring out.
—Who? says I.
—Bloom, says he. He's on point duty up and down there for the last ten
minutes.
And, begob, I saw his physog do a peep in and then slidder off again.
 Little Alf was knocked bawways. Faith, he was.
—Good Christ! says he. I could have sworn it was him.
And says Bob Doran, with the hat on the back of his poll, lowest blackguard in
Dublin when he's under the influence:
—Who said Christ is good?
—I beg your parsnips, says Alf.
—Is that a good Christ, says Bob Doran, to take away poor little Willy Dignam?
—Ah, well, says Alf, trying to pass it off. He's over all his troubles.
But Bob Doran shouts out of him.
—He's a bloody ruffian, I say, to take away poor little Willy Dignam.
Terry came down and tipped him the wink to keep quiet, that they didn't want
that kind of talk in a respectable licensed premises. And Bob Doran starts doing
the weeps about Paddy Dignam, true as you're there.
—The finest man, says he, snivelling, the finest purest character.
The tear is bloody near your eye. Talking through his bloody hat. Fitter for him
go home to the little sleepwalking bitch he married, Mooney, the bumbailiff's
daughter, mother kept a kip in Hardwicke street, that used to be stravaging about
the landings Bantam Lyons told me that was stopping there at two in the morning
without a stitch on her, exposing her person, open to all comers, fair field and no
favour.
—The noblest, the truest, says he. And he's gone, poor little Willy, poor little
Paddy Dignam.
And mournful and with a heavy heart he bewept the extinction of that beam of
heaven.
Old Garryowen started growling again at Bloom that was skeezing round the
door.
—Come in, come on, he won't eat you, says the citizen.
So Bloom slopes in with his cod's eye on the dog and he asks Terry was Martin
Cunningham there.
—O, Christ M'Keown, says Joe, reading one of the letters. Listen to this, will
you?
And he starts reading out one.
7 Hunter Street, Liverpool. To the High Sheriff of Dublin, Dublin.
Honoured sir i beg to offer my services in the abovementioned painful case i
hanged Joe Gann in Bootle jail on the 12 of Febuary 1900 and i hanged...
 —Show us, Joe, says I.
—... private Arthur Chace for fowl murder of Jessie Tilsit in Pentonville prison and
i was assistant when...
—Jesus, says I.
—... Billington executed the awful murderer Toad Smith...
The citizen made a grab at the letter.
—Hold hard, says Joe, i have a special nack of putting the noose once in he can't
get out hoping to be favoured i remain, honoured sir, my terms is five ginnees.
H. RUMBOLD, MASTER BARBER.
—And a barbarous bloody barbarian he is too, says the citizen.
—And the dirty scrawl of the wretch, says Joe. Here, says he, take them to hell
out of my sight, Alf. Hello, Bloom, says he, what will you have?
So they started arguing about the point, Bloom saying he wouldn't and he
couldn't and excuse him no offence and all to that and then he said well he'd just
take a cigar. Gob, he's a prudent member and no mistake.
—Give us one of your prime stinkers, Terry, says Joe.
And Alf was telling us there was one chap sent in a mourning card with a black
border round it.
—They're all barbers, says he, from the black country that would hang their
own fathers for five quid down and travelling expenses.
And he was telling us there's two fellows waiting below to pull his heels down
when he gets the drop and choke him properly and then they chop up the rope
after and sell the bits for a few bob a skull.
In the dark land they bide, the vengeful knights of the razor. Their deadly coil
they grasp: yea, and therein they lead to Erebus whatsoever wight hath done a
deed of blood for I will on nowise suffer it even so saith the Lord.
So they started talking about capital punishment and of course Bloom comes out
with the why and the wherefore and all the codology of the business and the old
dog smelling him all the time I'm told those jewies does have a sort of a queer
odour coming off them for dogs about I don't know what all deterrent effect and
so forth and so on.
—There's one thing it hasn't a deterrent effect on, says Alf.
—What's that? says Joe.
—The poor bugger's tool that's being hanged, says Alf.
—That so? says Joe.
 —God's truth, says Alf. I heard that from the head warder that was in
Kilmainham when they hanged Joe Brady, the invincible. He told me when they
cut him down after the drop it was standing up in their faces like a poker.
—Ruling passion strong in death, says Joe, as someone said.
—That can be explained by science, says Bloom. It's only a natural
phenomenon, don't you see, because on account of the...
And then he starts with his jawbreakers about phenomenon and science and this
phenomenon and the other phenomenon.
The distinguished scientist Herr Professor Luitpold Blumenduft tendered
medical evidence to the effect that the instantaneous fracture of the cervical
vertebrae and consequent scission of the spinal cord would, according to the best
approved tradition of medical science, be calculated to inevitably produce in the
human subject a violent ganglionic stimulus of the nerve centres of the genital
apparatus, thereby causing the elastic pores of the corpora cavernosa to rapidly
dilate in such a way as to instantaneously facilitate the flow of blood to that part
of the human anatomy known as the penis or male organ resulting in the
phenomenon which has been denominated by the faculty a morbid upwards and
outwards philoprogenitive erection in articulo mortis per diminutionem capitis.
So of course the citizen was only waiting for the wink of the word and he starts
gassing out of him about the invincibles and the old guard and the men of
sixtyseven and who fears to speak of ninetyeight and Joe with him about all the
fellows that were hanged, drawn and transported for the cause by drumhead
courtmartial and a new Ireland and new this, that and the other. Talking about
new Ireland he ought to go and get a new dog so he ought. Mangy ravenous brute
sniffing and sneezing all round the place and scratching his scabs. And round he
goes to Bob Doran that was standing Alf a half one sucking up for what he could
get. So of course Bob Doran starts doing the bloody fool with him:
—Give us the paw! Give the paw, doggy! Good old doggy! Give the paw here!
Give us the paw!
Arrah, bloody end to the paw he'd paw and Alf trying to keep him from
tumbling off the bloody stool atop of the bloody old dog and he talking all kinds
of drivel about training by kindness and thoroughbred dog and intelligent dog:
give you the bloody pip. Then he starts scraping a few bits of old biscuit out of the
bottom of a Jacobs' tin he told Terry to bring. Gob, he golloped it down like old
boots and his tongue hanging out of him a yard long for more. Near ate the tin
and all, hungry bloody mongrel.
And the citizen and Bloom having an argument about the point, the brothers
Sheares and Wolfe Tone beyond on Arbour Hill and Robert Emmet and die for
your country, the Tommy Moore touch about Sara Curran and she's far from the
land. And Bloom, of course, with his knockmedown cigar putting on swank with
his lardy face. Phenomenon! The fat heap he married is a nice old phenomenon
with a back on her like a ballalley. Time they were stopping up in the City Arms
pisser Burke told me there was an old one there with a cracked loodheramaun of a
nephew and Bloom trying to get the soft side of her doing the mollycoddle playing
bézique to come in for a bit of the wampum in her will and not eating meat of a
Friday because the old one was always thumping her craw and taking the lout out
for a walk. And one time he led him the rounds of Dublin and, by the holy farmer,
he never cried crack till he brought him home as drunk as a boiled owl and he
said he did it to teach him the evils of alcohol and by herrings, if the three women
didn't near roast him, it's a queer story, the old one, Bloom's wife and Mrs
O'Dowd that kept the hotel. Jesus, I had to laugh at pisser Burke taking them off
chewing the fat. And Bloom with his but don't you see? and but on the other hand.
And sure, more be token, the lout I'm told was in Power's after, the blender's,
round in Cope street going home footless in a cab five times in the week after
drinking his way through all the samples in the bloody establishment.
Phenomenon!
—The memory of the dead, says the citizen taking up his pintglass and glaring
at Bloom.
—Ay, ay, says Joe.
—You don't grasp my point, says Bloom. What I mean is...
—Sinn Fein! says the citizen. Sinn Fein amhain! The friends we love are by our
side and the foes we hate before us.
The last farewell was affecting in the extreme. From the belfries far and near the
funereal deathbell tolled unceasingly while all around the gloomy precincts rolled
the ominous warning of a hundred muffled drums punctuated by the hollow
booming of pieces of ordnance. The deafening claps of thunder and the dazzling
flashes of lightning which lit up the ghastly scene testified that the artillery of
heaven had lent its supernatural pomp to the already gruesome spectacle. A
torrential rain poured down from the floodgates of the angry heavens upon the
bared heads of the assembled multitude which numbered at the lowest
computation five hundred thousand persons. A posse of Dublin Metropolitan
police superintended by the Chief Commissioner in person maintained order in the
vast throng for whom the York street brass and reed band whiled away the
intervening time by admirably rendering on their blackdraped instruments the
matchless melody endeared to us from the cradle by Speranza's plaintive muse.
Special quick excursion trains and upholstered charabancs had been provided for
the comfort of our country cousins of whom there were large contingents.
Considerable amusement was caused by the favourite Dublin streetsingers L-n-h-n
and M-ll-g-n who sang The Night before Larry was stretched in their usual mirth-
provoking fashion. Our two inimitable drolls did a roaring trade with their
broadsheets among lovers of the comedy element and nobody who has a corner in
his heart for real Irish fun without vulgarity will grudge them their hardearned
pennies. The children of the Male and Female Foundling Hospital who thronged
the windows overlooking the scene were delighted with this unexpected addition
to the day's entertainment and a word of praise is due to the Little Sisters of the
Poor for their excellent idea of affording the poor fatherless and motherless
children a genuinely instructive treat. The viceregal houseparty which included
many wellknown ladies was chaperoned by Their Excellencies to the most
favourable positions on the grandstand while the picturesque foreign delegation
known as the Friends of the Emerald Isle was accommodated on a tribune directly
opposite. The delegation, present in full force, consisted of Commendatore
Bacibaci Beninobenone (the semiparalysed doyen of the party who had to be
assisted to his seat by the aid of a powerful steam crane), Monsieur Pierrepaul
Petitépatant, the Grandjoker Vladinmire Pokethankertscheff, the Archjoker
Leopold Rudolph von Schwanzenbad-Hodenthaler, Countess Marha Virága
Kisászony Putrápesthi, Hiram Y. Bomboost, Count Athanatos Karamelopulos, Ali
Baba Backsheesh Rahat Lokum Effendi, Senor Hidalgo Caballero Don Pecadillo y
Palabras y Paternoster de la Malora de la Malaria, Hokopoko Harakiri, Hi Hung
Chang, Olaf Kobberkeddelsen, Mynheer Trik van Trumps, Pan Poleaxe
Paddyrisky, Goosepond Prhklstr Kratchinabritchisitch, Borus Hupinkoff, Herr
Hurhausdirektorpresident Hans Chuechli-Steuerli,
Nationalgymnasiummuseumsanatoriumandsuspensoriumsordinaryprivatdocent -
generalhistoryspecialprofessordoctor Kriegfried Ueberallgemein. All the delegates
without exception expressed themselves in the strongest possible heterogeneous
terms concerning the nameless barbarity which they had been called upon to
witness. An animated altercation (in which all took part) ensued among the F. O.
T. E. I. as to whether the eighth or the ninth of March was the correct date of the
birth of Ireland's patron saint. In the course of the argument cannonballs,
scimitars, boomerangs, blunderbusses, stinkpots, meatchoppers, umbrellas,
catapults, knuckledusters, sandbags, lumps of pig iron were resorted to and blows
were freely exchanged. The baby policeman, Constable MacFadden, summoned by
special courier from Booterstown, quickly restored order and with lightning
promptitude proposed the seventeenth of the month as a solution equally
honourable for both contending parties. The readywitted ninefooter's suggestion at
once appealed to all and was unanimously accepted. Constable MacFadden was
heartily congratulated by all the F.O.T.E.I., several of whom were bleeding
profusely. Commendatore Beninobenone having been extricated from underneath
the presidential armchair, it was explained by his legal adviser Avvocato Pagamimi
that the various articles secreted in his thirtytwo pockets had been abstracted by
him during the affray from the pockets of his junior colleagues in the hope of
bringing them to their senses. The objects (which included several hundred ladies'
and gentlemen's gold and silver watches) were promptly restored to their rightful
owners and general harmony reigned supreme.
Quietly, unassumingly Rumbold stepped on to the scaffold in faultless morning
dress and wearing his favourite flower, the Gladiolus Cruentus. He announced his
presence by that gentle Rumboldian cough which so many have tried
(unsuccessfully) to imitate—short, painstaking yet withal so characteristic of the
man. The arrival of the worldrenowned headsman was greeted by a roar of
acclamation from the huge concourse, the viceregal ladies waving their
handkerchiefs in their excitement while the even more excitable foreign delegates
cheered vociferously in a medley of cries, hoch, banzai, eljen, zivio, chinchin, polla
kronia, hiphip, vive, Allah, amid which the ringing evviva of the delegate of the
land of song (a high double F recalling those piercingly lovely notes with which the
eunuch Catalani beglamoured our greatgreatgrandmothers) was easily
distinguishable. It was exactly seventeen o'clock. The signal for prayer was then
promptly given by megaphone and in an instant all heads were bared, the
commendatore's patriarchal sombrero, which has been in the possession of his
family since the revolution of Rienzi, being removed by his medical adviser in
attendance, Dr Pippi. The learned prelate who administered the last comforts of
holy religion to the hero martyr when about to pay the death penalty knelt in a
most christian spirit in a pool of rainwater, his cassock above his hoary head, and
offered up to the throne of grace fervent prayers of supplication. Hand by the
block stood the grim figure of the executioner, his visage being concealed in a
tengallon pot with two circular perforated apertures through which his eyes
glowered furiously. As he awaited the fatal signal he tested the edge of his horrible
weapon by honing it upon his brawny forearm or decapitated in rapid succession a
flock of sheep which had been provided by the admirers of his fell but necessary
office. On a handsome mahogany table near him were neatly arranged the
quartering knife, the various finely tempered disembowelling appliances (specially
supplied by the worldfamous firm of cutlers, Messrs John Round and Sons,
Sheffield), a terra cotta saucepan for the reception of the duodenum, colon, blind
intestine and appendix etc when successfully extracted and two commodious
milkjugs destined to receive the most precious blood of the most precious victim.
The housesteward of the amalgamated cats' and dogs' home was in attendance to
convey these vessels when replenished to that beneficent institution. Quite an
excellent repast consisting of rashers and eggs, fried steak and onions, done to a
nicety, delicious hot breakfast rolls and invigorating tea had been considerately
provided by the authorities for the consumption of the central figure of the
tragedy who was in capital spirits when prepared for death and evinced the
keenest interest in the proceedings from beginning to end but he, with an
abnegation rare in these our times, rose nobly to the occasion and expressed the
dying wish (immediately acceded to) that the meal should be divided in aliquot
parts among the members of the sick and indigent roomkeepers' association as a
token of his regard and esteem. The nec and non plus ultra of emotion were
reached when the blushing bride elect burst her way through the serried ranks of
the bystanders and flung herself upon the muscular bosom of him who was about
to be launched into eternity for her sake. The hero folded her willowy form in a
loving embrace murmuring fondly Sheila, my own. Encouraged by this use of her
christian name she kissed passionately all the various suitable areas of his person
which the decencies of prison garb permitted her ardour to reach. She swore to
him as they mingled the salt streams of their tears that she would ever cherish his
memory, that she would never forget her hero boy who went to his death with a
song on his lips as if he were but going to a hurling match in Clonturk park. She
brought back to his recollection the happy days of blissful childhood together on
the banks of Anna Liffey when they had indulged in the innocent pastimes of the
young and, oblivious of the dreadful present, they both laughed heartily, all the
spectators, including the venerable pastor, joining in the general merriment. That
monster audience simply rocked with delight. But anon they were overcome with
grief and clasped their hands for the last time. A fresh torrent of tears burst from
their lachrymal ducts and the vast concourse of people, touched to the inmost
core, broke into heartrending sobs, not the least affected being the aged
prebendary himself. Big strong men, officers of the peace and genial giants of the
royal Irish constabulary, were making frank use of their handkerchiefs and it is
safe to say that there was not a dry eye in that record assemblage. A most
romantic incident occurred when a handsome young Oxford graduate, noted for
his chivalry towards the fair sex, stepped forward and, presenting his visiting
card, bankbook and genealogical tree, solicited the hand of the hapless young
lady, requesting her to name the day, and was accepted on the spot. Every lady in
the audience was presented with a tasteful souvenir of the occasion in the shape
of a skull and crossbones brooch, a timely and generous act which evoked a fresh
outburst of emotion: and when the gallant young Oxonian (the bearer, by the way,
of one of the most timehonoured names in Albion's history) placed on the finger of
his blushing fiancée an expensive engagement ring with emeralds set in the form of
a fourleaved shamrock the excitement knew no bounds. Nay, even the ster
provostmarshal, lieutenantcolonel Tomkin-Maxwell ffrenchmullan Tomlinson, who
presided on the sad occasion, he who had blown a considerable number of sepoys
from the cannonmouth without flinching, could not now restrain his natural
emotion. With his mailed gauntlet he brushed away a furtive tear and was
overheard, by those privileged burghers who happened to be in his immediate
entourage, to murmur to himself in a faltering undertone:
—God blimey if she aint a clinker, that there bleeding tart. Blimey it makes me
kind of bleeding cry, straight, it does, when I sees her cause I thinks of my old
mashtub what's waiting for me down Limehouse way.
So then the citizen begins talking about the Irish language and the corporation
meeting and all to that and the shoneens that can't speak their own language and
Joe chipping in because he stuck someone for a quid and Bloom putting in his old
goo with his twopenny stump that he cadged off of Joe and talking about the
Gaelic league and the antitreating league and drink, the curse of Ireland.
Antitreating is about the size of it. Gob, he'd let you pour all manner of drink
down his throat till the Lord would call him before you'd ever see the froth of his
pint. And one night I went in with a fellow into one of their musical evenings,
song and dance about she could get up on a truss of hay she could my Maureen
Lay and there was a fellow with a Ballyhooly blue ribbon badge spiffing out of him
in Irish and a lot of colleen bawns going about with temperance beverages and
selling medals and oranges and lemonade and a few old dry buns, gob, flahoolagh
entertainment, don't be talking. Ireland sober is Ireland free. And then an old
fellow starts blowing into his bagpipes and all the gougers shuffling their feet to
the tune the old cow died of. And one or two sky pilots having an eye around that
there was no goings on with the females, hitting below the belt.
So howandever, as I was saying, the old dog seeing the tin was empty starts
mousing around by Joe and me. I'd train him by kindness, so I would, if he was
my dog. Give him a rousing fine kick now and again where it wouldn't blind him.
—Afraid he'll bite you? says the citizen, jeering.
—No, says I. But he might take my leg for a lamppost.
 So he calls the old dog over.
—What's on you, Garry? says he.
Then he starts hauling and mauling and talking to him in Irish and the old
towser growling, letting on to answer, like a duet in the opera. Such growling you
never heard as they let off between them. Someone that has nothing better to do
ought to write a letter pro bono publico to the papers about the muzzling order for
a dog the like of that. Growling and grousing and his eye all bloodshot from the
drouth is in it and the hydrophobia dropping out of his jaws.
All those who are interested in the spread of human culture among the lower
animals (and their name is legion) should make a point of not missing the really
marvellous exhibition of cynanthropy given by the famous old Irish red setter
wolfdog formerly known by the sobriquet of Garryowen and recently rechristened
by his large circle of friends and acquaintances Owen Garry. The exhibition,
which is the result of years of training by kindness and a carefully thoughtout
dietary system, comprises, among other achievements, the recitation of verse. Our
greatest living phonetic expert (wild horses shall not drag it from us!) has left no
stone unturned in his efforts to delucidate and compare the verse recited and has
found it bears a striking resemblance (the italics are ours) to the ranns of ancient
Celtic bards. We are not speaking so much of those delightful lovesongs with
which the writer who conceals his identity under the graceful pseudonym of the
Little Sweet Branch has familiarised the bookloving world but rather (as a
contributor D. O. C. points out in an interesting communication published by an
evening contemporary) of the harsher and more personal note which is found in
the satirical effusions of the famous Raftery and of Donal MacConsidine to say
nothing of a more modern lyrist at present very much in the public eye. We
subjoin a specimen which has been rendered into English by an eminent scholar
whose name for the moment we are not at liberty to disclose though we believe
that our readers will find the topical allusion rather more than an indication. The
metrical system of the canine original, which recalls the intricate alliterative and
isosyllabic rules of the Welsh englyn, is infinitely more complicated but we believe
our readers will agree that the spirit has been well caught. Perhaps it should be
added that the effect is greatly increased if Owen's verse be spoken somewhat
slowly and indistinctly in a tone suggestive of suppressed rancour.

The curse of my curses

Seven days every day
And seven dry Thursdays
On you, Barney Kiernan,
Has no sup of water
To cool my courage,
And my guts red roaring
After Lowry's lights.
So he told Terry to bring some water for the dog and, gob, you could hear him
lapping it up a mile off. And Joe asked him would he have another.
 —I will, says he, a chara, to show there's no ill feeling.
Gob, he's not as green as he's cabbagelooking. Arsing around from one pub to
another, leaving it to your own honour, with old Giltrap's dog and getting fed up
by the ratepayers and corporators. Entertainment for man and beast. And says
Joe:
—Could you make a hole in another pint?
—Could a swim duck? says I.
—Same again, Terry, says Joe. Are you sure you won't have anything in the way
of liquid refreshment? says he.
—Thank you, no, says Bloom. As a matter of fact I just wanted to meet Martin
Cunningham, don't you see, about this insurance of poor Dignam's. Martin asked
me to go to the house. You see, he, Dignam, I mean, didn't serve any notice of the
assignment on the company at the time and nominally under the act the
mortgagee can't recover on the policy.
—Holy Wars, says Joe, laughing, that's a good one if old Shylock is landed. So
the wife comes out top dog, what?
—Well, that's a point, says Bloom, for the wife's admirers.
—Whose admirers? says Joe.
—The wife's advisers, I mean, says Bloom.
Then he starts all confused mucking it up about mortgagor under the act like
the lord chancellor giving it out on the bench and for the benefit of the wife and
that a trust is created but on the other hand that Dignam owed Bridgeman the
money and if now the wife or the widow contested the mortgagee's right till he
near had the head of me addled with his mortgagor under the act. He was bloody
safe he wasn't run in himself under the act that time as a rogue and vagabond only
he had a friend in court. Selling bazaar tickets or what do you call it royal
Hungarian privileged lottery. True as you're there. O, commend me to an israelite!
Royal and privileged Hungarian robbery.
So Bob Doran comes lurching around asking Bloom to tell Mrs Dignam he was
sorry for her trouble and he was very sorry about the funeral and to tell her that
he said and everyone who knew him said that there was never a truer, a finer than
poor little Willy that's dead to tell her. Choking with bloody foolery. And shaking
Bloom's hand doing the tragic to tell her that. Shake hands, brother. You're a
rogue and I'm another.
—Let me, said he, so far presume upon our acquaintance which, however slight
it may appear if judged by the standard of mere time, is founded, as I hope and
believe, on a sentiment of mutual esteem as to request of you this favour. But,
should I have overstepped the limits of reserve let the sincerity of my feelings be
the excuse for my boldness.
 —No, rejoined the other, I appreciate to the full the motives which actuate your
conduct and I shall discharge the office you entrust to me consoled by the
reflection that, though the errand be one of sorrow, this proof of your confidence
sweetens in some measure the bitterness of the cup.
—Then suffer me to take your hand, said he. The goodness of your heart, I feel
sure, will dictate to you better than my inadequate words the expressions which
are most suitable to convey an emotion whose poignancy, were I to give vent to
my feelings, would deprive me even of speech.
And off with him and out trying to walk straight. Boosed at five o'clock. Night
he was near being lagged only Paddy Leonard knew the bobby, 14A. Blind to the
world up in a shebeen in Bride street after closing time, fornicating with two
shawls and a bully on guard, drinking porter out of teacups. And calling himself a
Frenchy for the shawls, Joseph Manuo, and talking against the Catholic religion,
and he serving mass in Adam and Eve's when he was young with his eyes shut,
who wrote the new testament, and the old testament, and hugging and smugging.
And the two shawls killed with the laughing, picking his pockets, the bloody fool
and he spilling the porter all over the bed and the two shawls screeching laughing
at one another. How is your testament? Have you got an old testament? Only
Paddy was passing there, I tell you what. Then see him of a Sunday with his little
concubine of a wife, and she wagging her tail up the aisle of the chapel with her
patent boots on her, no less, and her violets, nice as pie, doing the little lady. Jack
Mooney's sister. And the old prostitute of a mother procuring rooms to street
couples. Gob, Jack made him toe the line. Told him if he didn't patch up the pot,
Jesus, he'd kick the shite out of him.
So Terry brought the three pints.
—Here, says Joe, doing the honours. Here, citizen.
—Slan leat, says he.
—Fortune, Joe, says I. Good health, citizen.
Gob, he had his mouth half way down the tumbler already. Want a small
fortune to keep him in drinks.
—Who is the long fellow running for the mayoralty, Alf? says Joe.
—Friend of yours, says Alf.
—Nannan? says Joe. The mimber?
—I won't mention any names, says Alf.
—I thought so, says Joe. I saw him up at that meeting now with William Field,
M. P., the cattle traders.
—Hairy Iopas, says the citizen, that exploded volcano, the darling of all
countries and the idol of his own.
 So Joe starts telling the citizen about the foot and mouth disease and the cattle
traders and taking action in the matter and the citizen sending them all to the
rightabout and Bloom coming out with his sheepdip for the scab and a hoose
drench for coughing calves and the guaranteed remedy for timber tongue. Because
he was up one time in a knacker's yard. Walking about with his book and pencil
here's my head and my heels are coming till Joe Cuffe gave him the order of the
boot for giving lip to a grazier. Mister Knowall. Teach your grandmother how to
milk ducks. Pisser Burke was telling me in the hotel the wife used to be in rivers
of tears some times with Mrs O'Dowd crying her eyes out with her eight inches of
fat all over her. Couldn't loosen her farting strings but old cod's eye was waltzing
around her showing her how to do it. What's your programme today? Ay. Humane
methods. Because the poor animals suffer and experts say and the best known
remedy that doesn't cause pain to the animal and on the sore spot administer
gently. Gob, he'd have a soft hand under a hen.
Ga Ga Gara. Klook Klook Klook. Black Liz is our hen. She lays eggs for us.
When she lays her egg she is so glad. Gara. Klook Klook Klook. Then comes good
uncle Leo. He puts his hand under black Liz and takes her fresh egg. Ga ga ga ga
Gara. Klook Klook Klook.
—Anyhow, says Joe, Field and Nannetti are going over tonight to London to ask
about it on the floor of the house of commons.
—Are you sure, says Bloom, the councillor is going? I wanted to see him, as it
happens.
—Well, he's going off by the mailboat, says Joe, tonight.
—That's too bad, says Bloom. I wanted particularly. Perhaps only Mr Field is
going. I couldn't phone. No. You're sure?
—Nannan's going too, says Joe. The league told him to ask a question tomorrow
about the commissioner of police forbidding Irish games in the park. What do you
think of that, citizen? The Sluagh na h-Eireann.
Mr Cowe Conacre (Multifarnham. Nat.): Arising out of the question of my
honourable friend, the member for Shillelagh, may I ask the right honourable
gentleman whether the government has issued orders that these animals shall be
slaughtered though no medical evidence is forthcoming as to their pathological
condition?
Mr Allfours (Tamoshant. Con.): Honourable members are already in possession
of the evidence produced before a committee of the whole house. I feel I cannot
usefully add anything to that. The answer to the honourable member's question is
in the affirmative.
Mr Orelli O'Reilly (Montenotte. Nat.): Have similar orders been issued for the
slaughter of human animals who dare to play Irish games in the Phoenix park?
Mr Allfours: The answer is in the negative.
 Mr Cowe Conacre: Has the right honourable gentleman's famous Mitchelstown
telegram inspired the policy of gentlemen on the Treasury bench? (O! O!)
Mr Allfours: I must have notice of that question.
Mr Staylewit (Buncombe. Ind.): Don't hesitate to shoot.
(Ironical opposition cheers.)
The speaker: Order! Order!
(The house rises. Cheers.)
—There's the man, says Joe, that made the Gaelic sports revival. There he is
sitting there. The man that got away James Stephens. The champion of all Ireland
at putting the sixteen pound shot. What was your best throw, citizen?
—Na bacleis, says the citizen, letting on to be modest. There was a time I was
as good as the next fellow anyhow.
—Put it there, citizen, says Joe. You were and a bloody sight better.
—Is that really a fact? says Alf.
—Yes, says Bloom. That's well known. Did you not know that?
So off they started about Irish sports and shoneen games the like of lawn tennis
and about hurley and putting the stone and racy of the soil and building up a
nation once again and all to that. And of course Bloom had to have his say too
about if a fellow had a rower's heart violent exercise was bad. I declare to my
antimacassar if you took up a straw from the bloody floor and if you said to
Bloom: Look at, Bloom. Do you see that straw? That's a straw. Declare to my aunt
he'd talk about it for an hour so he would and talk steady.
A most interesting discussion took place in the ancient hall of Brian O'ciarnain's
in Sraid na Bretaine Bheag, under the auspices of Sluagh na h-Eireann, on the
revival of ancient Gaelic sports and the importance of physical culture, as
understood in ancient Greece and ancient Rome and ancient Ireland, for the
development of the race. The venerable president of the noble order was in the
chair and the attendance was of large dimensions. After an instructive discourse
by the chairman, a magnificent oration eloquently and forcibly expressed, a most
interesting and instructive discussion of the usual high standard of excellence
ensued as to the desirability of the revivability of the ancient games and sports of
our ancient Panceltic forefathers. The wellknown and highly respected worker in
the cause of our old tongue, Mr Joseph M'Carthy Hynes, made an eloquent appeal
for the resuscitation of the ancient Gaelic sports and pastimes, practised morning
and evening by Finn MacCool, as calculated to revive the best traditions of manly
strength and prowess handed down to us from ancient ages. L. Bloom, who met
with a mixed reception of applause and hisses, having espoused the negative the
vocalist chairman brought the discussion to a close, in response to repeated
requests and hearty plaudits from all parts of a bumper house, by a remarkably
noteworthy rendering of the immortal Thomas Osborne Davis' evergreen verses
(happily too familiar to need recalling here) A nation once again in the execution of
which the veteran patriot champion may be said without fear of contradiction to
have fairly excelled himself. The Irish Caruso-Garibaldi was in superlative form
and his stentorian notes were heard to the greatest advantage in the timehonoured
anthem sung as only our citizen can sing it. His superb highclass vocalism, which
by its superquality greatly enhanced his already international reputation, was
vociferously applauded by the large audience among which were to be noticed
many prominent members of the clergy as well as representatives of the press and
the bar and the other learned professions. The proceedings then terminated.
Amongst the clergy present were the very rev. William Delany, S. J., L. L. D.;
the rt rev. Gerald Molloy, D. D.; the rev. P. J. Kavanagh, C. S. Sp.; the rev. T.
Waters, C. C.; the rev. John M. Ivers, P. P.; the rev. P. J. Cleary, O. S. F.; the rev.
L. J. Hickey, O. P.; the very rev. Fr. Nicholas, O. S. F. C.; the very rev. B.
Gorman, O. D. C.; the rev. T. Maher, S. J.; the very rev. James Murphy, S. J.; the
rev. John Lavery, V. F.; the very rev. William Doherty, D. D.; the rev. Peter Fagan,
O. M.; the rev. T. Brangan, O. S. A.; the rev. J. Flavin, C. C.; the rev. M. A.
Hackett, C. C.; the rev. W. Hurley, C. C.; the rt rev. Mgr M'Manus, V. G.; the rev.
B. R. Slattery, O. M. I.; the very rev. M. D. Scally, P. P.; the rev. F. T. Purcell, O.
P.; the very rev. Timothy canon Gorman, P. P.; the rev. J. Flanagan, C. C. The
laity included P. Fay, T. Quirke, etc., etc.
—Talking about violent exercise, says Alf, were you at that Keogh-Bennett
match?
—No, says Joe.
—I heard So and So made a cool hundred quid over it, says Alf.
—Who? Blazes? says Joe.
And says Bloom:
—What I meant about tennis, for example, is the agility and training the eye.
—Ay, Blazes, says Alf. He let out that Myler was on the beer to run up the odds
and he swatting all the time.
—We know him, says the citizen. The traitor's son. We know what put English
gold in his pocket.
—-True for you, says Joe.
And Bloom cuts in again about lawn tennis and the circulation of the blood,
asking Alf:
—Now, don't you think, Bergan?
—Myler dusted the floor with him, says Alf. Heenan and Sayers was only a
bloody fool to it. Handed him the father and mother of a beating. See the little
kipper not up to his navel and the big fellow swiping. God, he gave him one last
puck in the wind, Queensberry rules and all, made him puke what he never ate.
 It was a historic and a hefty battle when Myler and Percy were scheduled to
don the gloves for the purse of fifty sovereigns. Handicapped as he was by lack of
poundage, Dublin's pet lamb made up for it by superlative skill in ringcraft. The
final bout of fireworks was a gruelling for both champions. The welterweight
sergeantmajor had tapped some lively claret in the previous mixup during which
Keogh had been receivergeneral of rights and lefts, the artilleryman putting in
some neat work on the pet's nose, and Myler came on looking groggy. The soldier
got to business, leading off with a powerful left jab to which the Irish gladiator
retaliated by shooting out a stiff one flush to the point of Bennett's jaw. The
redcoat ducked but the Dubliner lifted him with a left hook, the body punch being
a fine one. The men came to handigrips. Myler quickly became busy and got his
man under, the bout ending with the bulkier man on the ropes, Myler punishing
him. The Englishman, whose right eye was nearly closed, took his corner where he
was liberally drenched with water and when the bell went came on gamey and
brimful of pluck, confident of knocking out the fistic Eblanite in jigtime. It was a
fight to a finish and the best man for it. The two fought like tigers and excitement
ran fever high. The referee twice cautioned Pucking Percy for holding but the pet
was tricky and his footwork a treat to watch. After a brisk exchange of courtesies
during which a smart upper cut of the military man brought blood freely from his
opponent's mouth the lamb suddenly waded in all over his man and landed a
terrific left to Battling Bennett's stomach, flooring him flat. It was a knockout
clean and clever. Amid tense expectation the Portobello bruiser was being counted
out when Bennett's second Ole Pfotts Wettstein threw in the towel and the Santry
boy was declared victor to the frenzied cheers of the public who broke through the
ringropes and fairly mobbed him with delight.
—He knows which side his bread is buttered, says Alf. I hear he's running a
concert tour now up in the north.
—He is, says Joe. Isn't he?
—Who? says Bloom. Ah, yes. That's quite true. Yes, a kind of summer tour, you
see. Just a holiday.
—Mrs B. is the bright particular star, isn't she? says Joe.
—My wife? says Bloom. She's singing, yes. I think it will be a success too.
He's an excellent man to organise. Excellent.
Hoho begob says I to myself says I. That explains the milk in the cocoanut and
absence of hair on the animal's chest. Blazes doing the tootle on the flute. Concert
tour. Dirty Dan the dodger's son off Island bridge that sold the same horses twice
over to the government to fight the Boers. Old Whatwhat. I called about the poor
and water rate, Mr Boylan. You what? The water rate, Mr Boylan. You whatwhat?
That's the bucko that'll organise her, take my tip. 'Twixt me and you Caddareesh.
Pride of Calpe's rocky mount, the ravenhaired daughter of Tweedy. There grew
she to peerless beauty where loquat and almond scent the air. The gardens of
Alameda knew her step: the garths of olives knew and bowed. The chaste spouse
of Leopold is she: Marion of the bountiful bosoms.
And lo, there entered one of the clan of the O'Molloy's, a comely hero of white
face yet withal somewhat ruddy, his majesty's counsel learned in the law, and
with him the prince and heir of the noble line of Lambert.
—Hello, Ned.
—Hello, Alf.
—Hello, Jack.
—Hello, Joe.
—God save you, says the citizen.
—Save you kindly, says J. J. What'll it be, Ned?
—Half one, says Ned.
So J. J. ordered the drinks.
—Were you round at the court? says Joe.
—Yes, says J. J. He'll square that, Ned, says he.
—Hope so, says Ned.
Now what were those two at? J. J. getting him off the grand jury list and the
other give him a leg over the stile. With his name in Stubbs's. Playing cards,
hobnobbing with flash toffs with a swank glass in their eye, adrinking fizz and he
half smothered in writs and garnishee orders. Pawning his gold watch in Cummins
of Francis street where no-one would know him in the private office when I was
there with Pisser releasing his boots out of the pop. What's your name, sir?
Dunne, says he. Ay, and done says I. Gob, he'll come home by weeping cross one
of those days, I'm thinking.
—Did you see that bloody lunatic Breen round there? says Alf. U. p: up.
—Yes, says J. J. Looking for a private detective.
—Ay, says Ned. And he wanted right go wrong to address the court only Corny
Kelleher got round him telling him to get the handwriting examined first.
—Ten thousand pounds, says Alf, laughing. God, I'd give anything to hear him
before a judge and jury.
—Was it you did it, Alf? says Joe. The truth, the whole truth and nothing but
the truth, so help you Jimmy Johnson.
—Me? says Alf. Don't cast your nasturtiums on my character.
—Whatever statement you make, says Joe, will be taken down in evidence
against you.
 —Of course an action would lie, says J. J. It implies that he is not compos
mentis. U. p: up.
—Compos your eye! says Alf, laughing. Do you know that he's balmy? Look at
his head. Do you know that some mornings he has to get his hat on with a
shoehorn.
—Yes, says J. J., but the truth of a libel is no defence to an indictment for
publishing it in the eyes of the law.
—Ha ha, Alf, says Joe.
—Still, says Bloom, on account of the poor woman, I mean his wife.
—Pity about her, says the citizen. Or any other woman marries a half and half.
—How half and half? says Bloom. Do you mean he...
—Half and half I mean, says the citizen. A fellow that's neither fish nor flesh.
—Nor good red herring, says Joe.
—That what's I mean, says the citizen. A pishogue, if you know what that is.
Begob I saw there was trouble coming. And Bloom explaining he meant on
account of it being cruel for the wife having to go round after the old stuttering
fool. Cruelty to animals so it is to let that bloody povertystricken Breen out on
grass with his beard out tripping him, bringing down the rain. And she with her
nose cockahoop after she married him because a cousin of his old fellow's was
pewopener to the pope. Picture of him on the wall with his Smashall Sweeney's
moustaches, the signior Brini from Summerhill, the eyetallyano, papal Zouave to
the Holy Father, has left the quay and gone to Moss street. And who was he, tell
us? A nobody, two pair back and passages, at seven shillings a week, and he
covered with all kinds of breastplates bidding defiance to the world.
—And moreover, says J. J., a postcard is publication. It was held to be sufficient
evidence of malice in the testcase Sadgrove v. Hole. In my opinion an action might
lie.
Six and eightpence, please. Who wants your opinion? Let us drink our pints in
peace. Gob, we won't be let even do that much itself.
—Well, good health, Jack, says Ned.
—Good health, Ned, says J. J.
—-There he is again, says Joe.
—Where? says Alf.
And begob there he was passing the door with his books under his oxter and the
wife beside him and Corny Kelleher with his wall eye looking in as they went past,
talking to him like a father, trying to sell him a secondhand coffin.
 —How did that Canada swindle case go off? says Joe.
—Remanded, says J. J.
One of the bottlenosed fraternity it was went by the name of James Wought
alias Saphiro alias Spark and Spiro, put an ad in the papers saying he'd give a
passage to Canada for twenty bob. What? Do you see any green in the white of my
eye? Course it was a bloody barney. What? Swindled them all, skivvies and
badhachs from the county Meath, ay, and his own kidney too. J. J. was telling us
there was an ancient Hebrew Zaretsky or something weeping in the witnessbox
with his hat on him, swearing by the holy Moses he was stuck for two quid.
—Who tried the case? says Joe.
—Recorder, says Ned.
—Poor old sir Frederick, says Alf, you can cod him up to the two eyes.
—Heart as big as a lion, says Ned. Tell him a tale of woe about arrears of rent
and a sick wife and a squad of kids and, faith, he'll dissolve in tears on the bench.
—Ay, says Alf. Reuben J was bloody lucky he didn't clap him in the dock the
other day for suing poor little Gumley that's minding stones, for the corporation
there near Butt bridge.
And he starts taking off the old recorder letting on to cry:
—A most scandalous thing! This poor hardworking man! How many children?
Ten, did you say?
—Yes, your worship. And my wife has the typhoid.
—And the wife with typhoid fever! Scandalous! Leave the court immediately,
sir. No, sir, I'll make no order for payment. How dare you, sir, come up before me
and ask me to make an order! A poor hardworking industrious man! I dismiss the
case.
And whereas on the sixteenth day of the month of the oxeyed goddess and in
the third week after the feastday of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, the daughter
of the skies, the virgin moon being then in her first quarter, it came to pass that
those learned judges repaired them to the halls of law. There master Courtenay,
sitting in his own chamber, gave his rede and master Justice Andrews, sitting
without a jury in the probate court, weighed well and pondered the claim of the
first chargeant upon the property in the matter of the will propounded and final
testamentary disposition in re the real and personal estate of the late lamented
Jacob Halliday, vintner, deceased, versus Livingstone, an infant, of unsound mind,
and another. And to the solemn court of Green street there came sir Frederick the
Falconer. And he sat him there about the hour of five o'clock to administer the law
of the brehons at the commission for all that and those parts to be holden in and
for the county of the city of Dublin. And there sat with him the high sinhedrim of
the twelve tribes of Iar, for every tribe one man, of the tribe of Patrick and of the
tribe of Hugh and of the tribe of Owen and of the tribe of Conn and of the tribe of
Oscar and of the tribe of Fergus and of the tribe of Finn and of the tribe of
Dermot and of the tribe of Cormac and of the tribe of Kevin and of the tribe of
Caolte and of the tribe of Ossian, there being in all twelve good men and true.
And he conjured them by Him who died on rood that they should well and truly
try and true deliverance make in the issue joined between their sovereign lord the
king and the prisoner at the bar and true verdict give according to the evidence so
help them God and kiss the book. And they rose in their seats, those twelve of Iar,
and they swore by the name of Him Who is from everlasting that they would do
His rightwiseness. And straightway the minions of the law led forth from their
donjon keep one whom the sleuthhounds of justice had apprehended in
consequence of information received. And they shackled him hand and foot and
would take of him ne bail ne mainprise but preferred a charge against him for he
was a malefactor.
—Those are nice things, says the citizen, coming over here to Ireland filling the
country with bugs.
So Bloom lets on he heard nothing and he starts talking with Joe, telling him he
needn't trouble about that little matter till the first but if he would just say a word
to Mr Crawford. And so Joe swore high and holy by this and by that he'd do the
devil and all.
—Because, you see, says Bloom, for an advertisement you must have repetition.
That's the whole secret.
—Rely on me, says Joe.
—Swindling the peasants, says the citizen, and the poor of Ireland. We want no
more strangers in our house.
—O, I'm sure that will be all right, Hynes, says Bloom. It's just that Keyes, you
see.
—Consider that done, says Joe.
—Very kind of you, says Bloom.
—The strangers, says the citizen. Our own fault. We let them come in. We
brought them in. The adulteress and her paramour brought the Saxon robbers
here.
—Decree nisi, says J. J.
And Bloom letting on to be awfully deeply interested in nothing, a spider's web
in the corner behind the barrel, and the citizen scowling after him and the old dog
at his feet looking up to know who to bite and when.
—A dishonoured wife, says the citizen, that's what's the cause of all our
misfortunes.
—And here she is, says Alf, that was giggling over the Police Gazette with Terry
on the counter, in all her warpaint.
 —Give us a squint at her, says I.
And what was it only one of the smutty yankee pictures Terry borrows off of
Corny Kelleher. Secrets for enlarging your private parts. Misconduct of society
belle. Norman W. Tupper, wealthy Chicago contractor, finds pretty but faithless
wife in lap of officer Taylor. Belle in her bloomers misconducting herself, and her
fancyman feeling for her tickles and Norman W. Tupper bouncing in with his
peashooter just in time to be late after she doing the trick of the loop with officer
Taylor.
—O jakers, Jenny, says Joe, how short your shirt is!
—There's hair, Joe, says I. Get a queer old tailend of corned beef off of that one,
what?
So anyhow in came John Wyse Nolan and Lenehan with him with a face on him
as long as a late breakfast.
—Well, says the citizen, what's the latest from the scene of action? What did
those tinkers in the city hall at their caucus meeting decide about the Irish
language?
O'Nolan, clad in shining armour, low bending made obeisance to the puissant
and high and mighty chief of all Erin and did him to wit of that which had
befallen, how that the grave elders of the most obedient city, second of the realm,
had met them in the tholsel, and there, after due prayers to the gods who dwell in
ether supernal, had taken solemn counsel whereby they might, if so be it might
be, bring once more into honour among mortal men the winged speech of the
seadivided Gael.
—It's on the march, says the citizen. To hell with the bloody brutal Sassenachs
and their patois.
So J. J. puts in a word, doing the toff about one story was good till you heard
another and blinking facts and the Nelson policy, putting your blind eye to the
telescope and drawing up a bill of attainder to impeach a nation, and Bloom trying
to back him up moderation and botheration and their colonies and their
civilisation.
—Their syphilisation, you mean, says the citizen. To hell with them! The curse
of a goodfornothing God light sideways on the bloody thicklugged sons of whores'
gets! No music and no art and no literature worthy of the name. Any civilisation
they have they stole from us. Tonguetied sons of bastards' ghosts.
—The European family, says J. J....
—They're not European, says the citizen. I was in Europe with Kevin Egan of
Paris. You wouldn't see a trace of them or their language anywhere in Europe
except in a cabinet d'aisance.
And says John Wyse:
 —Full many a flower is born to blush unseen.
And says Lenehan that knows a bit of the lingo:
—Conspuez les Anglais! Perfide Albion!
He said and then lifted he in his rude great brawny strengthy hands the medher
of dark strong foamy ale and, uttering his tribal slogan Lamh Dearg Abu, he drank
to the undoing of his foes, a race of mighty valorous heroes, rulers of the waves,
who sit on thrones of alabaster silent as the deathless gods.
—What's up with you, says I to Lenehan. You look like a fellow that had lost a
bob and found a tanner.
—Gold cup, says he.
—Who won, Mr Lenehan? says Terry.
—Throwaway, says he, at twenty to one. A rank outsider. And the rest
nowhere.
—And Bass's mare? says Terry.
—Still running, says he. We're all in a cart. Boylan plunged two quid on my tip
Sceptre for himself and a lady friend.
—I had half a crown myself, says Terry, on Zinfandel that Mr Flynn gave me.
Lord Howard de Walden's.
—Twenty to one, says Lenehan. Such is life in an outhouse. Throwaway, says
he. Takes the biscuit, and talking about bunions. Frailty, thy name is Sceptre.
So he went over to the biscuit tin Bob Doran left to see if there was anything he
could lift on the nod, the old cur after him backing his luck with his mangy snout
up. Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard.
—Not there, my child, says he.
—Keep your pecker up, says Joe. She'd have won the money only for the other
dog.
And J. J. and the citizen arguing about law and history with Bloom sticking in
an odd word.
—Some people, says Bloom, can see the mote in others' eyes but they can't see
the beam in their own.
—Raimeis, says the citizen. There's no-one as blind as the fellow that won't see,
if you know what that means. Where are our missing twenty millions of Irish
should be here today instead of four, our lost tribes? And our potteries and
textiles, the finest in the whole world! And our wool that was sold in Rome in the
time of Juvenal and our flax and our damask from the looms of Antrim and our
Limerick lace, our tanneries and our white flint glass down there by Ballybough
and our Huguenot poplin that we have since Jacquard de Lyon and our woven silk
and our Foxford tweeds and ivory raised point from the Carmelite convent in New
Ross, nothing like it in the whole wide world. Where are the Greek merchants that
came through the pillars of Hercules, the Gibraltar now grabbed by the foe of
mankind, with gold and Tyrian purple to sell in Wexford at the fair of Carmen?
Read Tacitus and Ptolemy, even Giraldus Cambrensis. Wine, peltries, Connemara
marble, silver from Tipperary, second to none, our farfamed horses even today,
the Irish hobbies, with king Philip of Spain offering to pay customs duties for the
right to fish in our waters. What do the yellowjohns of Anglia owe us for our
ruined trade and our ruined hearths? And the beds of the Barrow and Shannon
they won't deepen with millions of acres of marsh and bog to make us all die of
consumption?
—As treeless as Portugal we'll be soon, says John Wyse, or Heligoland with its
one tree if something is not done to reafforest the land. Larches, firs, all the trees
of the conifer family are going fast. I was reading a report of lord Castletown's...
—Save them, says the citizen, the giant ash of Galway and the chieftain elm of
Kildare with a fortyfoot bole and an acre of foliage. Save the trees of Ireland for
the future men of Ireland on the fair hills of Eire, O.
—Europe has its eyes on you, says Lenehan.
The fashionable international world attended EN MASSE this afternoon at the
wedding of the chevalier Jean Wyse de Neaulan, grand high chief ranger of the
Irish National Foresters, with Miss Fir Conifer of Pine Valley. Lady Sylvester
Elmshade, Mrs Barbara Lovebirch, Mrs Poll Ash, Mrs Holly Hazeleyes, Miss
Daphne Bays, Miss Dorothy Canebrake, Mrs Clyde Twelvetrees, Mrs Rowan
Greene, Mrs Helen Vinegadding, Miss Virginia Creeper, Miss Gladys Beech, Miss
Olive Garth, Miss Blanche Maple, Mrs Maud Mahogany, Miss Myra Myrtle, Miss
Priscilla Elderflower, Miss Bee Honeysuckle, Miss Grace Poplar, Miss O Mimosa
San, Miss Rachel Cedarfrond, the Misses Lilian and Viola Lilac, Miss Timidity
Aspenall, Mrs Kitty Dewey-Mosse, Miss May Hawthorne, Mrs Gloriana Palme,
Mrs Liana Forrest, Mrs Arabella Blackwood and Mrs Norma Holyoake of
Oakholme Regis graced the ceremony by their presence. The bride who was given
away by her father, the M'Conifer of the Glands, looked exquisitely charming in a
creation carried out in green mercerised silk, moulded on an underslip of gloaming
grey, sashed with a yoke of broad emerald and finished with a triple flounce of
darkerhued fringe, the scheme being relieved by bretelles and hip insertions of
acorn bronze. The maids of honour, Miss Larch Conifer and Miss Spruce Conifer,
sisters of the bride, wore very becoming costumes in the same tone, a dainty motif
of plume rose being worked into the pleats in a pinstripe and repeated
capriciously in the jadegreen toques in the form of heron feathers of paletinted
coral. Senhor Enrique Flor presided at the organ with his wellknown ability and,
in addition to the prescribed numbers of the nuptial mass, played a new and
striking arrangement of Woodman, spare that tree at the conclusion of the service.
On leaving the church of Saint Fiacre in Horto after the papal blessing the happy
pair were subjected to a playful crossfire of hazelnuts, beechmast, bayleaves,
catkins of willow, ivytod, hollyberries, mistletoe sprigs and quicken shoots. Mr
and Mrs Wyse Conifer Neaulan will spend a quiet honeymoon in the Black Forest.
 —And our eyes are on Europe, says the citizen. We had our trade with Spain
and the French and with the Flemings before those mongrels were pupped,
Spanish ale in Galway, the winebark on the winedark waterway.
—And will again, says Joe.
—And with the help of the holy mother of God we will again, says the citizen,
clapping his thigh, our harbours that are empty will be full again, Queenstown,
Kinsale, Galway, Blacksod Bay, Ventry in the kingdom of Kerry, Killybegs, the
third largest harbour in the wide world with a fleet of masts of the Galway
Lynches and the Cavan O'Reillys and the O'Kennedys of Dublin when the earl of
Desmond could make a treaty with the emperor Charles the Fifth himself. And
will again, says he, when the first Irish battleship is seen breasting the waves with
our own flag to the fore, none of your Henry Tudor's harps, no, the oldest flag
afloat, the flag of the province of Desmond and Thomond, three crowns on a blue
field, the three sons of Milesius.
And he took the last swig out of the pint. Moya. All wind and piss like a
tanyard cat. Cows in Connacht have long horns. As much as his bloody life is
worth to go down and address his tall talk to the assembled multitude in
Shanagolden where he daren't show his nose with the Molly Maguires looking for
him to let daylight through him for grabbing the holding of an evicted tenant.
—Hear, hear to that, says John Wyse. What will you have?
—An imperial yeomanry, says Lenehan, to celebrate the occasion.
—Half one, Terry, says John Wyse, and a hands up. Terry! Are you asleep?
—Yes, sir, says Terry. Small whisky and bottle of Allsop. Right, sir.
Hanging over the bloody paper with Alf looking for spicy bits instead of
attending to the general public. Picture of a butting match, trying to crack their
bloody skulls, one chap going for the other with his head down like a bull at a
gate. And another one: Black Beast Burned in Omaha, Ga. A lot of Deadwood
Dicks in slouch hats and they firing at a Sambo strung up in a tree with his tongue
out and a bonfire under him. Gob, they ought to drown him in the sea after and
electrocute and crucify him to make sure of their job.
—But what about the fighting navy, says Ned, that keeps our foes at bay?
—I'll tell you what about it, says the citizen. Hell upon earth it is. Read the
revelations that's going on in the papers about flogging on the training ships at
Portsmouth. A fellow writes that calls himself Disgusted One.
So he starts telling us about corporal punishment and about the crew of tars and
officers and rearadmirals drawn up in cocked hats and the parson with his
protestant bible to witness punishment and a young lad brought out, howling for
his ma, and they tie him down on the buttend of a gun.
—A rump and dozen, says the citizen, was what that old ruffian sir John
Beresford called it but the modern God's Englishman calls it caning on the breech.
 And says John Wyse:
—'Tis a custom more honoured in the breach than in the observance.
Then he was telling us the master at arms comes along with a long cane and he
draws out and he flogs the bloody backside off of the poor lad till he yells meila
murder.
—That's your glorious British navy, says the citizen, that bosses the earth.
The fellows that never will be slaves, with the only hereditary chamber on the
face of God's earth and their land in the hands of a dozen gamehogs and
cottonball barons. That's the great empire they boast about of drudges and
whipped serfs.
—On which the sun never rises, says Joe.
—And the tragedy of it is, says the citizen, they believe it. The unfortunate
yahoos believe it.
They believe in rod, the scourger almighty, creator of hell upon earth, and in
Jacky Tar, the son of a gun, who was conceived of unholy boast, born of the
fighting navy, suffered under rump and dozen, was scarified, flayed and curried,
yelled like bloody hell, the third day he arose again from the bed, steered into
haven, sitteth on his beamend till further orders whence he shall come to drudge
for a living and be paid.
—But, says Bloom, isn't discipline the same everywhere. I mean wouldn't it be
the same here if you put force against force?
Didn't I tell you? As true as I'm drinking this porter if he was at his last gasp
he'd try to downface you that dying was living.
—We'll put force against force, says the citizen. We have our greater Ireland
beyond the sea. They were driven out of house and home in the black 47. Their
mudcabins and their shielings by the roadside were laid low by the batteringram
and the Times rubbed its hands and told the whitelivered Saxons there would soon
be as few Irish in Ireland as redskins in America. Even the Grand Turk sent us his
piastres. But the Sassenach tried to starve the nation at home while the land was
full of crops that the British hyenas bought and sold in Rio de Janeiro. Ay, they
drove out the peasants in hordes. Twenty thousand of them died in the
coffinships. But those that came to the land of the free remember the land of
bondage. And they will come again and with a vengeance, no cravens, the sons of
Granuaile, the champions of Kathleen ni Houlihan.
—Perfectly true, says Bloom. But my point was...
—We are a long time waiting for that day, citizen, says Ned. Since the poor old
woman told us that the French were on the sea and landed at Killala.
—Ay, says John Wyse. We fought for the royal Stuarts that reneged us against
the Williamites and they betrayed us. Remember Limerick and the broken
treatystone. We gave our best blood to France and Spain, the wild geese.
Fontenoy, eh? And Sarsfield and O'Donnell, duke of Tetuan in Spain, and Ulysses
Browne of Camus that was fieldmarshal to Maria Teresa. But what did we ever get
for it?
—The French! says the citizen. Set of dancing masters! Do you know what it is?
They were never worth a roasted fart to Ireland. Aren't they trying to make an
Entente cordiale now at Tay Pay's dinnerparty with perfidious Albion? Firebrands
of Europe and they always were.
—Conspuez les Français, says Lenehan, nobbling his beer.
—And as for the Prooshians and the Hanoverians, says Joe, haven't we had
enough of those sausageeating bastards on the throne from George the elector
down to the German lad and the flatulent old bitch that's dead?
Jesus, I had to laugh at the way he came out with that about the old one with
the winkers on her, blind drunk in her royal palace every night of God, old Vic,
with her jorum of mountain dew and her coachman carting her up body and bones
to roll into bed and she pulling him by the whiskers and singing him old bits of
songs about Ehren on the Rhine and come where the boose is cheaper.
—Well, says J. J. We have Edward the peacemaker now.
—Tell that to a fool, says the citizen. There's a bloody sight more pox than pax
about that boyo. Edward Guelph-Wettin!
—And what do you think, says Joe, of the holy boys, the priests and bishops of
Ireland doing up his room in Maynooth in His Satanic Majesty's racing colours
and sticking up pictures of all the horses his jockeys rode. The earl of Dublin, no
less.
—They ought to have stuck up all the women he rode himself, says little Alf.
And says J. J.:
—Considerations of space influenced their lordships' decision.
—Will you try another, citizen? says Joe.
—Yes, sir, says he. I will.
—You? says Joe.
—Beholden to you, Joe, says I. May your shadow never grow less.
—Repeat that dose, says Joe.
Bloom was talking and talking with John Wyse and he quite excited with his
dunducketymudcoloured mug on him and his old plumeyes rolling about.
—Persecution, says he, all the history of the world is full of it. Perpetuating
national hatred among nations.
 —But do you know what a nation means? says John Wyse.
—Yes, says Bloom.
—What is it? says John Wyse.
—A nation? says Bloom. A nation is the same people living in the same place.
—By God, then, says Ned, laughing, if that's so I'm a nation for I'm living in the
same place for the past five years.
So of course everyone had the laugh at Bloom and says he, trying to muck out
of it:
—Or also living in different places.
—That covers my case, says Joe.
—What is your nation if I may ask? says the citizen.
—Ireland, says Bloom. I was born here. Ireland.
The citizen said nothing only cleared the spit out of his gullet and, gob, he spat
a Red bank oyster out of him right in the corner.
—After you with the push, Joe, says he, taking out his handkerchief to swab
himself dry.
—Here you are, citizen, says Joe. Take that in your right hand and repeat after
me the following words.
The muchtreasured and intricately embroidered ancient Irish facecloth
attributed to Solomon of Droma and Manus Tomaltach og MacDonogh, authors of
the Book of Ballymote, was then carefully produced and called forth prolonged
admiration. No need to dwell on the legendary beauty of the cornerpieces, the
acme of art, wherein one can distinctly discern each of the four evangelists in turn
presenting to each of the four masters his evangelical symbol, a bogoak sceptre, a
North American puma (a far nobler king of beasts than the British article, be it
said in passing), a Kerry calf and a golden eagle from Carrantuohill. The scenes
depicted on the emunctory field, showing our ancient duns and raths and
cromlechs and grianauns and seats of learning and maledictive stones, are as
wonderfully beautiful and the pigments as delicate as when the Sligo illuminators
gave free rein to their artistic fantasy long long ago in the time of the Barmecides.
Glendalough, the lovely lakes of Killarney, the ruins of Clonmacnois, Cong Abbey,
Glen Inagh and the Twelve Pins, Ireland's Eye, the Green Hills of Tallaght, Croagh
Patrick, the brewery of Messrs Arthur Guinness, Son and Company (Limited),
Lough Neagh's banks, the vale of Ovoca, Isolde's tower, the Mapas obelisk, Sir
Patrick Dun's hospital, Cape Clear, the glen of Aherlow, Lynch's castle, the Scotch
house, Rathdown Union Workhouse at Loughlinstown, Tullamore jail,
Castleconnel rapids, Kilballymacshonakill, the cross at Monasterboice, Jury's
Hotel, S. Patrick's Purgatory, the Salmon Leap, Maynooth college refectory,
Curley's hole, the three birthplaces of the first duke of Wellington, the rock of
Cashel, the bog of Allen, the Henry Street Warehouse, Fingal's Cave—all these
moving scenes are still there for us today rendered more beautiful still by the
waters of sorrow which have passed over them and by the rich incrustations of
time.
—Show us over the drink, says I. Which is which?
—That's mine, says Joe, as the devil said to the dead policeman.
—And I belong to a race too, says Bloom, that is hated and persecuted. Also
now. This very moment. This very instant.
Gob, he near burnt his fingers with the butt of his old cigar.
—Robbed, says he. Plundered. Insulted. Persecuted. Taking what belongs to us
by right. At this very moment, says he, putting up his fist, sold by auction in
Morocco like slaves or cattle.
—Are you talking about the new Jerusalem? says the citizen.
—I'm talking about injustice, says Bloom.
—Right, says John Wyse. Stand up to it then with force like men.
That's an almanac picture for you. Mark for a softnosed bullet. Old lardyface
standing up to the business end of a gun. Gob, he'd adorn a sweepingbrush, so he
would, if he only had a nurse's apron on him. And then he collapses all of a
sudden, twisting around all the opposite, as limp as a wet rag.
—But it's no use, says he. Force, hatred, history, all that. That's not life for men
and women, insult and hatred. And everybody knows that it's the very opposite of
that that is really life.
—What? says Alf.
—Love, says Bloom. I mean the opposite of hatred. I must go now, says he to
John Wyse. Just round to the court a moment to see if Martin is there. If he comes
just say I'll be back in a second. Just a moment.
Who's hindering you? And off he pops like greased lightning.
—A new apostle to the gentiles, says the citizen. Universal love.
—Well, says John Wyse. Isn't that what we're told. Love your neighbour.
—That chap? says the citizen. Beggar my neighbour is his motto. Love, moya!
He's a nice pattern of a Romeo and Juliet.
Love loves to love love. Nurse loves the new chemist. Constable 14A loves Mary
Kelly. Gerty MacDowell loves the boy that has the bicycle. M. B. loves a fair
gentleman. Li Chi Han lovey up kissy Cha Pu Chow. Jumbo, the elephant, loves
Alice, the elephant. Old Mr Verschoyle with the ear trumpet loves old Mrs
Verschoyle with the turnedin eye. The man in the brown macintosh loves a lady
who is dead. His Majesty the King loves Her Majesty the Queen. Mrs Norman W.
Tupper loves officer Taylor. You love a certain person. And this person loves that
other person because everybody loves somebody but God loves everybody.
—Well, Joe, says I, your very good health and song. More power, citizen.
—Hurrah, there, says Joe.
—The blessing of God and Mary and Patrick on you, says the citizen.
And he ups with his pint to wet his whistle.
—We know those canters, says he, preaching and picking your pocket. What
about sanctimonious Cromwell and his ironsides that put the women and children
of Drogheda to the sword with the bible text God is love pasted round the mouth
of his cannon? The bible! Did you read that skit in the United Irishman today
about that Zulu chief that's visiting England?
—What's that? says Joe.
So the citizen takes up one of his paraphernalia papers and he starts reading
out:
—A delegation of the chief cotton magnates of Manchester was presented
yesterday to His Majesty the Alaki of Abeakuta by Gold Stick in Waiting, Lord
Walkup of Walkup on Eggs, to tender to His Majesty the heartfelt thanks of British
traders for the facilities afforded them in his dominions. The delegation partook of
luncheon at the conclusion of which the dusky potentate, in the course of a happy
speech, freely translated by the British chaplain, the reverend Ananias Praisegod
Barebones, tendered his best thanks to Massa Walkup and emphasised the cordial
relations existing between Abeakuta and the British empire, stating that he
treasured as one of his dearest possessions an illuminated bible, the volume of the
word of God and the secret of England's greatness, graciously presented to him by
the white chief woman, the great squaw Victoria, with a personal dedication from
the august hand of the Royal Donor. The Alaki then drank a lovingcup of firstshot
usquebaugh to the toast Black and White from the skull of his immediate
predecessor in the dynasty Kakachakachak, surnamed Forty Warts, after which he
visited the chief factory of Cottonopolis and signed his mark in the visitors' book,
subsequently executing a charming old Abeakutic wardance, in the course of
which he swallowed several knives and forks, amid hilarious applause from the
girl hands.
—Widow woman, says Ned. I wouldn't doubt her. Wonder did he put that bible
to the same use as I would.
—Same only more so, says Lenehan. And thereafter in that fruitful land the
broadleaved mango flourished exceedingly.
—Is that by Griffith? says John Wyse.
—No, says the citizen. It's not signed Shanganagh. It's only initialled: P.
—And a very good initial too, says Joe.
 —That's how it's worked, says the citizen. Trade follows the flag.
—Well, says J. J., if they're any worse than those Belgians in the Congo Free
State they must be bad. Did you read that report by a man what's this his name
is?
—Casement, says the citizen. He's an Irishman.
—Yes, that's the man, says J. J. Raping the women and girls and flogging the
natives on the belly to squeeze all the red rubber they can out of them.
—I know where he's gone, says Lenehan, cracking his fingers.
—Who? says I.
—Bloom, says he. The courthouse is a blind. He had a few bob on Throwaway
and he's gone to gather in the shekels.
—Is it that whiteeyed kaffir? says the citizen, that never backed a horse in
anger in his life?
—That's where he's gone, says Lenehan. I met Bantam Lyons going to back that
horse only I put him off it and he told me Bloom gave him the tip. Bet you what
you like he has a hundred shillings to five on. He's the only man in Dublin has it.
A dark horse.
—He's a bloody dark horse himself, says Joe.
—Mind, Joe, says I. Show us the entrance out.
—There you are, says Terry.
Goodbye Ireland I'm going to Gort. So I just went round the back of the yard to
pumpship and begob (hundred shillings to five) while I was letting off my
(Throwaway twenty to) letting off my load gob says I to myself I knew he was
uneasy in his (two pints off of Joe and one in Slattery's off) in his mind to get off
the mark to (hundred shillings is five quid) and when they were in the (dark horse)
pisser Burke was telling me card party and letting on the child was sick (gob, must
have done about a gallon) flabbyarse of a wife speaking down the tube she's better
or she's (ow!) all a plan so he could vamoose with the pool if he won or (Jesus, full
up I was) trading without a licence (ow!) Ireland my nation says he (hoik!
phthook!) never be up to those bloody (there's the last of it) Jerusalem (ah!)
cuckoos.
So anyhow when I got back they were at it dingdong, John Wyse saying it was
Bloom gave the ideas for Sinn Fein to Griffith to put in his paper all kinds of
jerrymandering, packed juries and swindling the taxes off of the government and
appointing consuls all over the world to walk about selling Irish industries.
Robbing Peter to pay Paul. Gob, that puts the bloody kybosh on it if old sloppy
eyes is mucking up the show. Give us a bloody chance. God save Ireland from the
likes of that bloody mouseabout. Mr Bloom with his argol bargol. And his old
fellow before him perpetrating frauds, old Methusalem Bloom, the robbing
bagman, that poisoned himself with the prussic acid after he swamping the
country with his baubles and his penny diamonds. Loans by post on easy terms.
Any amount of money advanced on note of hand. Distance no object. No security.
Gob, he's like Lanty MacHale's goat that'd go a piece of the road with every one.
—Well, it's a fact, says John Wyse. And there's the man now that'll tell you all
about it, Martin Cunningham.
Sure enough the castle car drove up with Martin on it and Jack Power with him
and a fellow named Crofter or Crofton, pensioner out of the collector general's, an
orangeman Blackburn does have on the registration and he drawing his pay or
Crawford gallivanting around the country at the king's expense.
Our travellers reached the rustic hostelry and alighted from their palfreys.
—Ho, varlet! cried he, who by his mien seemed the leader of the party. Saucy
knave! To us!
So saying he knocked loudly with his swordhilt upon the open lattice.
Mine host came forth at the summons, girding him with his tabard.
—Give you good den, my masters, said he with an obsequious bow.
—Bestir thyself, sirrah! cried he who had knocked. Look to our steeds. And for
ourselves give us of your best for ifaith we need it.
—Lackaday, good masters, said the host, my poor house has but a bare larder. I
know not what to offer your lordships.
—How now, fellow? cried the second of the party, a man of pleasant
countenance, So servest thou the king's messengers, master Taptun?
An instantaneous change overspread the landlord's visage.
—Cry you mercy, gentlemen, he said humbly. An you be the king's messengers
(God shield His Majesty!) you shall not want for aught. The king's friends (God
bless His Majesty!) shall not go afasting in my house I warrant me.
—Then about! cried the traveller who had not spoken, a lusty trencherman by
his aspect. Hast aught to give us?
Mine host bowed again as he made answer:
—What say you, good masters, to a squab pigeon pasty, some collops of
venison, a saddle of veal, widgeon with crisp hog's bacon, a boar's head with
pistachios, a bason of jolly custard, a medlar tansy and a flagon of old Rhenish?
—Gadzooks! cried the last speaker. That likes me well. Pistachios!
—Aha! cried he of the pleasant countenance. A poor house and a bare larder,
quotha! 'Tis a merry rogue.
So in comes Martin asking where was Bloom.
 —Where is he? says Lenehan. Defrauding widows and orphans.
—Isn't that a fact, says John Wyse, what I was telling the citizen about Bloom
and the Sinn Fein?
—That's so, says Martin. Or so they allege.
—Who made those allegations? says Alf.
—I, says Joe. I'm the alligator.
—And after all, says John Wyse, why can't a jew love his country like the next
fellow?
—Why not? says J. J., when he's quite sure which country it is.
—Is he a jew or a gentile or a holy Roman or a swaddler or what the hell is he?
says Ned. Or who is he? No offence, Crofton.
—Who is Junius? says J. J.
—We don't want him, says Crofter the Orangeman or presbyterian.
—He's a perverted jew, says Martin, from a place in Hungary and it was he
drew up all the plans according to the Hungarian system. We know that in the
castle.
—Isn't he a cousin of Bloom the dentist? says Jack Power.
—Not at all, says Martin. Only namesakes. His name was Virag, the father's
name that poisoned himself. He changed it by deedpoll, the father did.
—That's the new Messiah for Ireland! says the citizen. Island of saints and
sages!
—Well, they're still waiting for their redeemer, says Martin. For that matter so
are we.
—Yes, says J. J., and every male that's born they think it may be their Messiah.
And every jew is in a tall state of excitement, I believe, till he knows if he's a
father or a mother.
—Expecting every moment will be his next, says Lenehan.
—O, by God, says Ned, you should have seen Bloom before that son of his that
died was born. I met him one day in the south city markets buying a tin of
Neave's food six weeks before the wife was delivered.
—En ventre sa mère, says J. J.
—Do you call that a man? says the citizen.
—I wonder did he ever put it out of sight, says Joe.
—Well, there were two children born anyhow, says Jack Power.
 —And who does he suspect? says the citizen.
Gob, there's many a true word spoken in jest. One of those mixed middlings he
is. Lying up in the hotel Pisser was telling me once a month with headache like a
totty with her courses. Do you know what I'm telling you? It'd be an act of God to
take a hold of a fellow the like of that and throw him in the bloody sea. Justifiable
homicide, so it would. Then sloping off with his five quid without putting up a
pint of stuff like a man. Give us your blessing. Not as much as would blind your
eye.
—Charity to the neighbour, says Martin. But where is he? We can't wait.
—A wolf in sheep's clothing, says the citizen. That's what he is. Virag from
Hungary! Ahasuerus I call him. Cursed by God.
—Have you time for a brief libation, Martin? says Ned.
—Only one, says Martin. We must be quick. J. J. and S.
—You, Jack? Crofton? Three half ones, Terry.
—Saint Patrick would want to land again at Ballykinlar and convert us, says the
citizen, after allowing things like that to contaminate our shores.
—Well, says Martin, rapping for his glass. God bless all here is my prayer.
—Amen, says the citizen.
—And I'm sure He will, says Joe.
And at the sound of the sacring bell, headed by a crucifer with acolytes,
thurifers, boatbearers, readers, ostiarii, deacons and subdeacons, the blessed
company drew nigh of mitred abbots and priors and guardians and monks and
friars: the monks of Benedict of Spoleto, Carthusians and Camaldolesi, Cistercians
and Olivetans, Oratorians and Vallombrosans, and the friars of Augustine,
Brigittines, Premonstratensians, Servi, Trinitarians, and the children of Peter
Nolasco: and therewith from Carmel mount the children of Elijah prophet led by
Albert bishop and by Teresa of Avila, calced and other: and friars, brown and
grey, sons of poor Francis, capuchins, cordeliers, minimes and observants and the
daughters of Clara: and the sons of Dominic, the friars preachers, and the sons of
Vincent: and the monks of S. Wolstan: and Ignatius his children: and the
confraternity of the christian brothers led by the reverend brother Edmund
Ignatius Rice. And after came all saints and martyrs, virgins and confessors: S. Cyr
and S. Isidore Arator and S. James the Less and S. Phocas of Sinope and S. Julian
Hospitator and S. Felix de Cantalice and S. Simon Stylites and S. Stephen
Protomartyr and S. John of God and S. Ferreol and S. Leugarde and S. Theodotus
and S. Vulmar and S. Richard and S. Vincent de Paul and S. Martin of Todi and S.
Martin of Tours and S. Alfred and S. Joseph and S. Denis and S. Cornelius and S.
Leopold and S. Bernard and S. Terence and S. Edward and S. Owen Caniculus and
S. Anonymous and S. Eponymous and S. Pseudonymous and S. Homonymous and
S. Paronymous and S. Synonymous and S. Laurence O'Toole and S. James of
Dingle and Compostella and S. Columcille and S. Columba and S. Celestine and S.
Colman and S. Kevin and S. Brendan and S. Frigidian and S. Senan and S. Fachtna
and S. Columbanus and S. Gall and S. Fursey and S. Fintan and S. Fiacre and S.
John Nepomuc and S. Thomas Aquinas and S. Ives of Brittany and S. Michan and
S. Herman-Joseph and the three patrons of holy youth S. Aloysius Gonzaga and S.
Stanislaus Kostka and S. John Berchmans and the saints Gervasius, Servasius and
Bonifacius and S. Bride and S. Kieran and S. Canice of Kilkenny and S. Jarlath of
Tuam and S. Finbarr and S. Pappin of Ballymun and Brother Aloysius Pacificus
and Brother Louis Bellicosus and the saints Rose of Lima and of Viterbo and S.
Martha of Bethany and S. Mary of Egypt and S. Lucy and S. Brigid and S. Attracta
and S. Dympna and S. Ita and S. Marion Calpensis and the Blessed Sister Teresa
of the Child Jesus and S. Barbara and S. Scholastica and S. Ursula with eleven
thousand virgins. And all came with nimbi and aureoles and gloriae, bearing
palms and harps and swords and olive crowns, in robes whereon were woven the
blessed symbols of their efficacies, inkhorns, arrows, loaves, cruses, fetters, axes,
trees, bridges, babes in a bathtub, shells, wallets, shears, keys, dragons, lilies,
buckshot, beards, hogs, lamps, bellows, beehives, soupladles, stars, snakes,
anvils, boxes of vaseline, bells, crutches, forceps, stags' horns, watertight boots,
hawks, millstones, eyes on a dish, wax candles, aspergills, unicorns. And as they
wended their way by Nelson's Pillar, Henry street, Mary street, Capel street, Little
Britain street chanting the introit in Epiphania Domini which beginneth Surge,
illuminare and thereafter most sweetly the gradual Omnes which saith de Saba
venient they did divers wonders such as casting out devils, raising the dead to life,
multiplying fishes, healing the halt and the blind, discovering various articles
which had been mislaid, interpreting and fulfilling the scriptures, blessing and
prophesying. And last, beneath a canopy of cloth of gold came the reverend Father
O'Flynn attended by Malachi and Patrick. And when the good fathers had reached
the appointed place, the house of Bernard Kiernan and Co, limited, 8, 9 and 10
little Britain street, wholesale grocers, wine and brandy shippers, licensed fo the
sale of beer, wine and spirits for consumption on the premises, the celebrant
blessed the house and censed the mullioned windows and the groynes and the
vaults and the arrises and the capitals and the pediments and the cornices and the
engrailed arches and the spires and the cupolas and sprinkled the lintels thereof
with blessed water and prayed that God might bless that house as he had blessed
the house of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and make the angels of His light to
inhabit therein. And entering he blessed the viands and the beverages and the
company of all the blessed answered his prayers.
—Adiutorium nostrum in nomine Domini.
—Qui fecit coelum et terram.
—Dominus vobiscum.
—Et cum spiritu tuo.
And he laid his hands upon that he blessed and gave thanks and he prayed and
they all with him prayed:
 —Deus, cuius verbo sanctificantur omnia, benedictionem tuam effunde super
creaturas istas: et praesta ut quisquis eis secundum legem et voluntatem Tuam cum
gratiarum actione usus fuerit per invocationem sanctissimi nominis Tui corporis
sanitatem et animae tutelam Te auctore percipiat per Christum Dominum nostrum.
—And so say all of us, says Jack.
—Thousand a year, Lambert, says Crofton or Crawford.
—Right, says Ned, taking up his John Jameson. And butter for fish.
I was just looking around to see who the happy thought would strike when be
damned but in he comes again letting on to be in a hell of a hurry.
—I was just round at the courthouse, says he, looking for you. I hope I'm not...
—No, says Martin, we're ready.
Courthouse my eye and your pockets hanging down with gold and silver. Mean
bloody scut. Stand us a drink itself. Devil a sweet fear! There's a jew for you! All
for number one. Cute as a shithouse rat. Hundred to five.
—Don't tell anyone, says the citizen,
—Beg your pardon, says he.
—Come on boys, says Martin, seeing it was looking blue. Come along now.
—Don't tell anyone, says the citizen, letting a bawl out of him. It's a secret.
And the bloody dog woke up and let a growl.
—Bye bye all, says Martin.
And he got them out as quick as he could, Jack Power and Crofton or whatever
you call him and him in the middle of them letting on to be all at sea and up with
them on the bloody jaunting car.
—-Off with you, says
Martin to the jarvey.
The milkwhite dolphin tossed his mane and, rising in the golden poop the
helmsman spread the bellying sail upon the wind and stood off forward with all
sail set, the spinnaker to larboard. A many comely nymphs drew nigh to starboard
and to larboard and, clinging to the sides of the noble bark, they linked their
shining forms as doth the cunning wheelwright when he fashions about the heart
of his wheel the equidistant rays whereof each one is sister to another and he
binds them all with an outer ring and giveth speed to the feet of men whenas they
ride to a hosting or contend for the smile of ladies fair. Even so did they come and
set them, those willing nymphs, the undying sisters. And they laughed, sporting in
a circle of their foam: and the bark clave the waves.
 But begob I was just lowering the heel of the pint when I saw the citizen getting
up to waddle to the door, puffing and blowing with the dropsy, and he cursing the
curse of Cromwell on him, bell, book and candle in Irish, spitting and spatting out
of him and Joe and little Alf round him like a leprechaun trying to peacify him.
—Let me alone, says he.
And begob he got as far as the door and they holding him and he bawls out of
him:
—Three cheers for Israel!
Arrah, sit down on the parliamentary side of your arse for Christ' sake and don't
be making a public exhibition of yourself. Jesus, there's always some bloody clown
or other kicking up a bloody murder about bloody nothing. Gob, it'd turn the
porter sour in your guts, so it would.
And all the ragamuffins and sluts of the nation round the door and Martin
telling the jarvey to drive ahead and the citizen bawling and Alf and Joe at him to
whisht and he on his high horse about the jews and the loafers calling for a speech
and Jack Power trying to get him to sit down on the car and hold his bloody jaw
and a loafer with a patch over his eye starts singing If the man in the moon was a
jew, jew, jew and a slut shouts out of her:
—Eh, mister! Your fly is open, mister!
And says he:
—Mendelssohn was a jew and Karl Marx and Mercadante and Spinoza. And the
Saviour was a jew and his father was a jew. Your God.
—He had no father, says Martin. That'll do now. Drive ahead.
—Whose God? says the citizen.
—Well, his uncle was a jew, says he. Your God was a jew. Christ was a jew like
me.
Gob, the citizen made a plunge back into the shop.
—By Jesus, says he, I'll brain that bloody jewman for using the holy name.
By Jesus, I'll crucify him so I will. Give us that biscuitbox here.
—Stop! Stop! says Joe.
A large and appreciative gathering of friends and acquaintances from the
metropolis and greater Dublin assembled in their thousands to bid farewell to
Nagyasagos uram Lipoti Virag, late of Messrs Alexander Thom's, printers to His
Majesty, on the occasion of his departure for the distant clime of
Szazharminczbrojugulyas-Dugulas (Meadow of Murmuring Waters). The ceremony
which went off with great éclat was characterised by the most affecting cordiality.
An illuminated scroll of ancient Irish vellum, the work of Irish artists, was
presented to the distinguished phenomenologist on behalf of a large section of the
community and was accompanied by the gift of a silver casket, tastefully executed
in the style of ancient Celtic ornament, a work which reflects every credit on the
makers, Messrs Jacob agus Jacob. The departing guest was the recipient of a
hearty ovation, many of those who were present being visibly moved when the
select orchestra of Irish pipes struck up the wellknown strains of Come back to
Erin, followed immediately by Rakoczsy's March. Tarbarrels and bonfires were
lighted along the coastline of the four seas on the summits of the Hill of Howth,
Three Rock Mountain, Sugarloaf, Bray Head, the mountains of Mourne, the
Galtees, the Ox and Donegal and Sperrin peaks, the Nagles and the Bograghs, the
Connemara hills, the reeks of M Gillicuddy, Slieve Aughty, Slieve Bernagh and
Slieve Bloom. Amid cheers that rent the welkin, responded to by answering cheers
from a big muster of henchmen on the distant Cambrian and Caledonian hills, the
mastodontic pleasureship slowly moved away saluted by a final floral tribute from
the representatives of the fair sex who were present in large numbers while, as it
proceeded down the river, escorted by a flotilla of barges, the flags of the Ballast
office and Custom House were dipped in salute as were also those of the electrical
power station at the Pigeonhouse and the Poolbeg Light. Visszontlátásra, kedves
baráton! Visszontlátásra! Gone but not forgotten.
Gob, the devil wouldn't stop him till he got hold of the bloody tin anyhow and
out with him and little Alf hanging on to his elbow and he shouting like a stuck
pig, as good as any bloody play in the Queen's royal theatre:
—Where is he till I murder him?
And Ned and J. J. paralysed with the laughing.
—Bloody wars, says I, I'll be in for the last gospel.
But as luck would have it the jarvey got the nag's head round the other way and
off with him.
—Hold on, citizen, says Joe. Stop!
Begob he drew his hand and made a swipe and let fly. Mercy of God the sun
was in his eyes or he'd have left him for dead. Gob, he near sent it into the county
Longford. The bloody nag took fright and the old mongrel after the car like bloody
hell and all the populace shouting and laughing and the old tinbox clattering along
the street.
The catastrophe was terrific and instantaneous in its effect. The observatory of
Dunsink registered in all eleven shocks, all of the fifth grade of Mercalli's scale,
and there is no record extant of a similar seismic disturbance in our island since
the earthquake of 1534, the year of the rebellion of Silken Thomas. The epicentre
appears to have been that part of the metropolis which constitutes the Inn's Quay
ward and parish of Saint Michan covering a surface of fortyone acres, two roods
and one square pole or perch. All the lordly residences in the vicinity of the palace
of justice were demolished and that noble edifice itself, in which at the time of the
catastrophe important legal debates were in progress, is literally a mass of ruins
beneath which it is to be feared all the occupants have been buried alive. From the
reports of eyewitnesses it transpires that the seismic waves were accompanied by
a violent atmospheric perturbation of cyclonic character. An article of headgear
since ascertained to belong to the much respected clerk of the crown and peace
Mr George Fottrell and a silk umbrella with gold handle with the engraved initials,
crest, coat of arms and house number of the erudite and worshipful chairman of
quarter sessions sir Frederick Falkiner, recorder of Dublin, have been discovered
by search parties in remote parts of the island respectively, the former on the
third basaltic ridge of the giant's causeway, the latter embedded to the extent of
one foot three inches in the sandy beach of Holeopen bay near the old head of
Kinsale. Other eyewitnesses depose that they observed an incandescent object of
enormous proportions hurtling through the atmosphere at a terrifying velocity in a
trajectory directed southwest by west. Messages of condolence and sympathy are
being hourly received from all parts of the different continents and the sovereign
pontiff has been graciously pleased to decree that a special missa pro defunctis
shall be celebrated simultaneously by the ordinaries of each and every cathedral
church of all the episcopal dioceses subject to the spiritual authority of the Holy
See in suffrage of the souls of those faithful departed who have been so
unexpectedly called away from our midst. The work of salvage, removal of débris,
human remains etc has been entrusted to Messrs Michael Meade and Son, 159
Great Brunswick street, and Messrs T. and C. Martin, 77, 78, 79 and 80 North
Wall, assisted by the men and officers of the Duke of Cornwall's light infantry
under the general supervision of H. R. H., rear admiral, the right honourable sir
Hercules Hannibal Habeas Corpus Anderson, K. G., K. P., K. T., P. C., K. C. B.,
M. P, J. P., M. B., D. S. O., S. O. D., M. F. H., M. R. I. A., B. L., Mus. Doc., P.
L. G., F. T. C. D., F. R. U. I., F. R. C. P. I. and F. R. C. S. I.
You never saw the like of it in all your born puff. Gob, if he got that lottery
ticket on the side of his poll he'd remember the gold cup, he would so, but begob
the citizen would have been lagged for assault and battery and Joe for aiding and
abetting. The jarvey saved his life by furious driving as sure as God made Moses.
What? O, Jesus, he did. And he let a volley of oaths after him.
—Did I kill him, says he, or what?
And he shouting to the bloody dog:
—After him, Garry! After him, boy!
And the last we saw was the bloody car rounding the corner and old sheepsface
on it gesticulating and the bloody mongrel after it with his lugs back for all he was
bloody well worth to tear him limb from limb. Hundred to five! Jesus, he took the
value of it out of him, I promise you.
When, lo, there came about them all a great brightness and they beheld the
chariot wherein He stood ascend to heaven. And they beheld Him in the chariot,
clothed upon in the glory of the brightness, having raiment as of the sun, fair as
the moon and terrible that for awe they durst not look upon Him. And there came
a voice out of heaven, calling: Elijah! Elijah! And He answered with a main cry:
Abba! Adonai! And they beheld Him even Him, ben Bloom Elijah, amid clouds of
angels ascend to the glory of the brightness at an angle of fortyfive degrees over
Donohoe's in Little Green street like a shot off a shovel.
The summer evening had begun to fold the world in its mysterious embrace. Far
away in the west the sun was setting and the last glow of all too fleeting day
lingered lovingly on sea and strand, on the proud promontory of dear old Howth
guarding as ever the waters of the bay, on the weedgrown rocks along
Sandymount shore and, last but not least, on the quiet church whence there
streamed forth at times upon the stillness the voice of prayer to her who is in her
pure radiance a beacon ever to the stormtossed heart of man, Mary, star of the
sea.
The three girl friends were seated on the rocks, enjoying the evening scene and
the air which was fresh but not too chilly. Many a time and oft were they wont to
come there to that favourite nook to have a cosy chat beside the sparkling waves
and discuss matters feminine, Cissy Caffrey and Edy Boardman with the baby in
the pushcar and Tommy and Jacky Caffrey, two little curlyheaded boys, dressed in
sailor suits with caps to match and the name H.M.S. Belleisle printed on both. For
Tommy and Jacky Caffrey were twins, scarce four years old and very noisy and
spoiled twins sometimes but for all that darling little fellows with bright merry
faces and endearing ways about them. They were dabbling in the sand with their
spades and buckets, building castles as children do, or playing with their big
coloured ball, happy as the day was long. And Edy Boardman was rocking the
chubby baby to and fro in the pushcar while that young gentleman fairly chuckled
with delight. He was but eleven months and nine days old and, though still a tiny
toddler, was just beginning to lisp his first babyish words. Cissy Caffrey bent over
to him to tease his fat little plucks and the dainty dimple in his chin.
—Now, baby, Cissy Caffrey said. Say out big, big. I want a drink of water.
And baby prattled after her:
—A jink a jink a jawbo.
Cissy Caffrey cuddled the wee chap for she was awfully fond of children, so
patient with little sufferers and Tommy Caffrey could never be got to take his
castor oil unless it was Cissy Caffrey that held his nose and promised him the
scatty heel of the loaf or brown bread with golden syrup on. What a persuasive
power that girl had! But to be sure baby Boardman was as good as gold, a perfect
little dote in his new fancy bib. None of your spoilt beauties, Flora MacFlimsy
sort, was Cissy Caffrey. A truerhearted lass never drew the breath of life, always
with a laugh in her gipsylike eyes and a frolicsome word on her cherryripe red
lips, a girl lovable in the extreme. And Edy Boardman laughed too at the quaint
language of little brother.
But just then there was a slight altercation between Master Tommy and Master
Jacky. Boys will be boys and our two twins were no exception to this golden rule.
The apple of discord was a certain castle of sand which Master Jacky had built
and Master Tommy would have it right go wrong that it was to be architecturally
improved by a frontdoor like the Martello tower had. But if Master Tommy was
headstrong Master Jacky was selfwilled too and, true to the maxim that every little
Irishman's house is his castle, he fell upon his hated rival and to such purpose
that the wouldbe assailant came to grief and (alas to relate!) the coveted castle
too. Needless to say the cries of discomfited Master Tommy drew the attention of
the girl friends.
—Come here, Tommy, his sister called imperatively. At once! And you, Jacky,
for shame to throw poor Tommy in the dirty sand. Wait till I catch you for that.
His eyes misty with unshed tears Master Tommy came at her call for their big
sister's word was law with the twins. And in a sad plight he was too after his
misadventure. His little man-o'-war top and unmentionables were full of sand but
Cissy was a past mistress in the art of smoothing over life's tiny troubles and very
quickly not one speck of sand was to be seen on his smart little suit. Still the blue
eyes were glistening with hot tears that would well up so she kissed away the
hurtness and shook her hand at Master Jacky the culprit and said if she was near
him she wouldn't be far from him, her eyes dancing in admonition.
—Nasty bold Jacky! she cried.
She put an arm round the little mariner and coaxed winningly:
—What's your name? Butter and cream?
—Tell us who is your sweetheart, spoke Edy Boardman. Is Cissy your
sweetheart?
—Nao, tearful Tommy said.
—Is Edy Boardman your sweetheart? Cissy queried.
—Nao, Tommy said.
—I know, Edy Boardman said none too amiably with an arch glance from her
shortsighted eyes. I know who is Tommy's sweetheart. Gerty is Tommy's
sweetheart.
—Nao, Tommy said on the verge of tears.
Cissy's quick motherwit guessed what was amiss and she whispered to Edy
Boardman to take him there behind the pushcar where the gentleman couldn't see
and to mind he didn't wet his new tan shoes.
But who was Gerty?
Gerty MacDowell who was seated near her companions, lost in thought, gazing
far away into the distance was, in very truth, as fair a specimen of winsome Irish
girlhood as one could wish to see. She was pronounced beautiful by all who knew
her though, as folks often said, she was more a Giltrap than a MacDowell. Her
figure was slight and graceful, inclining even to fragility but those iron jelloids she
had been taking of late had done her a world of good much better than the Widow
Welch's female pills and she was much better of those discharges she used to get
and that tired feeling. The waxen pallor of her face was almost spiritual in its
ivorylike purity though her rosebud mouth was a genuine Cupid's bow, Greekly
perfect. Her hands were of finely veined alabaster with tapering fingers and as
white as lemonjuice and queen of ointments could make them though it was not
true that she used to wear kid gloves in bed or take a milk footbath either. Bertha
Supple told that once to Edy Boardman, a deliberate lie, when she was black out
at daggers drawn with Gerty (the girl chums had of course their little tiffs from
time to time like the rest of mortals) and she told her not to let on whatever she
did that it was her that told her or she'd never speak to her again. No. Honour
where honour is due. There was an innate refinement, a languid queenly hauteur
about Gerty which was unmistakably evidenced in her delicate hands and
higharched instep. Had kind fate but willed her to be born a gentlewoman of high
degree in her own right and had she only received the benefit of a good education
Gerty MacDowell might easily have held her own beside any lady in the land and
have seen herself exquisitely gowned with jewels on her brow and patrician suitors
at her feet vying with one another to pay their devoirs to her. Mayhap it was this,
the love that might have been, that lent to her softlyfeatured face at whiles a look,
tense with suppressed meaning, that imparted a strange yearning tendency to the
beautiful eyes, a charm few could resist. Why have women such eyes of witchery?
Gerty's were of the bluest Irish blue, set off by lustrous lashes and dark expressive
brows. Time was when those brows were not so silkily seductive. It was Madame
Vera Verity, directress of the Woman Beautiful page of the Princess Novelette,
who had first advised her to try eyebrowleine which gave that haunting expression
to the eyes, so becoming in leaders of fashion, and she had never regretted it.
Then there was blushing scientifically cured and how to be tall increase your
height and you have a beautiful face but your nose? That would suit Mrs Dignam
because she had a button one. But Gerty's crowning glory was her wealth of
wonderful hair. It was dark brown with a natural wave in it. She had cut it that
very morning on account of the new moon and it nestled about her pretty head in
a profusion of luxuriant clusters and pared her nails too, Thursday for wealth.
And just now at Edy's words as a telltale flush, delicate as the faintest rosebloom,
crept into her cheeks she looked so lovely in her sweet girlish shyness that of a
surety God's fair land of Ireland did not hold her equal.
For an instant she was silent with rather sad downcast eyes. She was about to
retort but something checked the words on her tongue. Inclination prompted her
to speak out: dignity told her to be silent. The pretty lips pouted awhile but then
she glanced up and broke out into a joyous little laugh which had in it all the
freshness of a young May morning. She knew right well, no-one better, what made
squinty Edy say that because of him cooling in his attentions when it was simply a
lovers' quarrel. As per usual somebody's nose was out of joint about the boy that
had the bicycle off the London bridge road always riding up and down in front of
her window. Only now his father kept him in in the evenings studying hard to get
an exhibition in the intermediate that was on and he was going to go to Trinity
college to study for a doctor when he left the high school like his brother W. E.
Wylie who was racing in the bicycle races in Trinity college university. Little
recked he perhaps for what she felt, that dull aching void in her heart sometimes,
piercing to the core. Yet he was young and perchance he might learn to love her in
time. They were protestants in his family and of course Gerty knew Who came
first and after Him the Blessed Virgin and then Saint Joseph. But he was
undeniably handsome with an exquisite nose and he was what he looked, every
inch a gentleman, the shape of his head too at the back without his cap on that
she would know anywhere something off the common and the way he turned the
bicycle at the lamp with his hands off the bars and also the nice perfume of those
good cigarettes and besides they were both of a size too he and she and that was
why Edy Boardman thought she was so frightfully clever because he didn't go and
ride up and down in front of her bit of a garden.
Gerty was dressed simply but with the instinctive taste of a votary of Dame
Fashion for she felt that there was just a might that he might be out. A neat
blouse of electric blue selftinted by dolly dyes (because it was expected in the
Lady's Pictorial that electric blue would be worn) with a smart vee opening down
to the division and kerchief pocket (in which she always kept a piece of
cottonwool scented with her favourite perfume because the handkerchief spoiled
the sit) and a navy threequarter skirt cut to the stride showed off her slim graceful
figure to perfection. She wore a coquettish little love of a hat of wideleaved nigger
straw contrast trimmed with an underbrim of eggblue chenille and at the side a
butterfly bow of silk to tone. All Tuesday week afternoon she was hunting to
match that chenille but at last she found what she wanted at Clery's summer sales,
the very it, slightly shopsoiled but you would never notice, seven fingers two and
a penny. She did it up all by herself and what joy was hers when she tried it on
then, smiling at the lovely reflection which the mirror gave back to her! And when
she put it on the waterjug to keep the shape she knew that that would take the
shine out of some people she knew. Her shoes were the newest thing in footwear
(Edy Boardman prided herself that she was very petite but she never had a foot
like Gerty MacDowell, a five, and never would ash, oak or elm) with patent
toecaps and just one smart buckle over her higharched instep. Her wellturned
ankle displayed its perfect proportions beneath her skirt and just the proper
amount and no more of her shapely limbs encased in finespun hose with
highspliced heels and wide garter tops. As for undies they were Gerty's chief care
and who that knows the fluttering hopes and fears of sweet seventeen (though
Gerty would never see seventeen again) can find it in his heart to blame her? She
had four dinky sets with awfully pretty stitchery, three garments and nighties
extra, and each set slotted with different coloured ribbons, rosepink, pale blue,
mauve and peagreen, and she aired them herself and blued them when they came
home from the wash and ironed them and she had a brickbat to keep the iron on
because she wouldn't trust those washerwomen as far as she'd see them scorching
the things. She was wearing the blue for luck, hoping against hope, her own
colour and lucky too for a bride to have a bit of blue somewhere on her because
the green she wore that day week brought grief because his father brought him in
to study for the intermediate exhibition and because she thought perhaps he might
be out because when she was dressing that morning she nearly slipped up the old
pair on her inside out and that was for luck and lovers' meeting if you put those
things on inside out or if they got untied that he was thinking about you so long
as it wasn't of a Friday.
 And yet and yet! That strained look on her face! A gnawing sorrow is there all
the time. Her very soul is in her eyes and she would give worlds to be in the
privacy of her own familiar chamber where, giving way to tears, she could have a
good cry and relieve her pentup feelingsthough not too much because she knew
how to cry nicely before the mirror. You are lovely, Gerty, it said. The paly light
of evening falls upon a face infinitely sad and wistful. Gerty MacDowell yearns in
vain. Yes, she had known from the very first that her daydream of a marriage has
been arranged and the weddingbells ringing for Mrs Reggy Wylie T. C. D. (because
the one who married the elder brother would be Mrs Wylie) and in the fashionable
intelligence Mrs Gertrude Wylie was wearing a sumptuous confection of grey
trimmed with expensive blue fox was not to be. He was too young to understand.
He would not believe in love, a woman's birthright. The night of the party long
ago in Stoer's (he was still in short trousers) when they were alone and he stole an
arm round her waist she went white to the very lips. He called her little one in a
strangely husky voice and snatched a half kiss (the first!) but it was only the end
of her nose and then he hastened from the room with a remark about
refreshments. Impetuous fellow! Strength of character had never been Reggy
Wylie's strong point and he who would woo and win Gerty MacDowell must be a
man among men. But waiting, always waiting to be asked and it was leap year too
and would soon be over. No prince charming is her beau ideal to lay a rare and
wondrous love at her feet but rather a manly man with a strong quiet face who
had not found his ideal, perhaps his hair slightly flecked with grey, and who
would understand, take her in his sheltering arms, strain her to him in all the
strength of his deep passionate nature and comfort her with a long long kiss. It
would be like heaven. For such a one she yearns this balmy summer eve. With all
the heart of her she longs to be his only, his affianced bride for riches for poor, in
sickness in health, till death us two part, from this to this day forward.
And while Edy Boardman was with little Tommy behind the pushcar she was
just thinking would the day ever come when she could call herself his little wife to
be. Then they could talk about her till they went blue in the face, Bertha Supple
too, and Edy, little spitfire, because she would be twentytwo in November. She
would care for him with creature comforts too for Gerty was womanly wise and
knew that a mere man liked that feeling of hominess. Her griddlecakes done to a
goldenbrown hue and queen Ann's pudding of delightful creaminess had won
golden opinions from all because she had a lucky hand also for lighting a fire,
dredge in the fine selfraising flour and always stir in the same direction, then
cream the milk and sugar and whisk well the white of eggs though she didn't like
the eating part when there were any people that made her shy and often she
wondered why you couldn't eat something poetical like violets or roses and they
would have a beautifully appointed drawingroom with pictures and engravings
and the photograph of grandpapa Giltrap's lovely dog Garryowen that almost
talked it was so human and chintz covers for the chairs and that silver toastrack
in Clery's summer jumble sales like they have in rich houses. He would be tall
with broad shoulders (she had always admired tall men for a husband) with
glistening white teeth under his carefully trimmed sweeping moustache and they
would go on the continent for their honeymoon (three wonderful weeks!) and
then, when they settled down in a nice snug and cosy little homely house, every
morning they would both have brekky, simple but perfectly served, for their own
two selves and before he went out to business he would give his dear little wifey a
good hearty hug and gaze for a moment deep down into her eyes.
Edy Boardman asked Tommy Caffrey was he done and he said yes so then she
buttoned up his little knickerbockers for him and told him to run off and play
with Jacky and to be good now and not to fight. But Tommy said he wanted the
ball and Edy told him no that baby was playing with the ball and if he took it
there'd be wigs on the green but Tommy said it was his ball and he wanted his
ball and he pranced on the ground, if you please. The temper of him! O, he was a
man already was little Tommy Caffrey since he was out of pinnies. Edy told him
no, no and to be off now with him and she told Cissy Caffrey not to give in to
him.
—You're not my sister, naughty Tommy said. It's my ball.
But Cissy Caffrey told baby Boardman to look up, look up high at her finger and
she snatched the ball quickly and threw it along the sand and Tommy after it in
full career, having won the day.
—Anything for a quiet life, laughed Ciss.
And she tickled tiny tot's two cheeks to make him forget and played here's the
lord mayor, here's his two horses, here's his gingerbread carriage and here he
walks in, chinchopper, chinchopper, chinchopper chin. But Edy got as cross as
two sticks about him getting his own way like that from everyone always petting
him.
—I'd like to give him something, she said, so I would, where I won't say.
—On the beeoteetom, laughed Cissy merrily.
Gerty MacDowell bent down her head and crimsoned at the idea of Cissy saying
an unladylike thing like that out loud she'd be ashamed of her life to say, flushing
a deep rosy red, and Edy Boardman said she was sure the gentleman opposite
heard what she said. But not a pin cared Ciss.
—Let him! she said with a pert toss of her head and a piquant tilt of her nose.
Give it to him too on the same place as quick as I'd look at him.
Madcap Ciss with her golliwog curls. You had to laugh at her sometimes. For
instance when she asked you would you have some more Chinese tea and
jaspberry ram and when she drew the jugs too and the men's faces on her nails
with red ink make you split your sides or when she wanted to go where you know
she said she wanted to run and pay a visit to the Miss White. That was just like
Cissycums. O, and will you ever forget her the evening she dressed up in her
father's suit and hat and the burned cork moustache and walked down Tritonville
road, smoking a cigarette. There was none to come up to her for fun. But she was
sincerity itself, one of the bravest and truest hearts heaven ever made, not one of
your twofaced things, too sweet to be wholesome.
 And then there came out upon the air the sound of voices and the pealing
anthem of the organ. It was the men's temperance retreat conducted by the
missioner, the reverend John Hughes S. J., rosary, sermon and benediction of the
Most Blessed Sacrament. They were there gathered together without distinction of
social class (and a most edifying spectacle it was to see) in that simple fane beside
the waves, after the storms of this weary world, kneeling before the feet of the
immaculate, reciting the litany of Our Lady of Loreto, beseeching her to intercede
for them, the old familiar words, holy Mary, holy virgin of virgins. How sad to
poor Gerty's ears! Had her father only avoided the clutches of the demon drink, by
taking the pledge or those powders the drink habit cured in Pearson's Weekly, she
might now be rolling in her carriage, second to none. Over and over had she told
herself that as she mused by the dying embers in a brown study without the lamp
because she hated two lights or oftentimes gazing out of the window dreamily by
the hour at the rain falling on the rusty bucket, thinking. But that vile decoction
which has ruined so many hearths and homes had cist its shadow over her
childhood days. Nay, she had even witnessed in the home circle deeds of violence
caused by intemperance and had seen her own father, a prey to the fumes of
intoxication, forget himself completely for if there was one thing of all things that
Gerty knew it was that the man who lifts his hand to a woman save in the way of
kindness, deserves to be branded as the lowest of the low.
And still the voices sang in supplication to the Virgin most powerful, Virgin
most merciful. And Gerty, rapt in thought, scarce saw or heard her companions or
the twins at their boyish gambols or the gentleman off Sandymount green that
Cissy Caffrey called the man that was so like himself passing along the strand
taking a short walk. You never saw him any way screwed but still and for all that
she would not like him for a father because he was too old or something or on
account of his face (it was a palpable case of Doctor Fell) or his carbuncly nose
with the pimples on it and his sandy moustache a bit white under his nose. Poor
father! With all his faults she loved him still when he sang Tell me, Mary, how to
woo thee or My love and cottage near Rochelle and they had stewed cockles and
lettuce with Lazenby's salad dressing for supper and when he sang The moon hath
raised with Mr Dignam that died suddenly and was buried, God have mercy on
him, from a stroke. Her mother's birthday that was and Charley was home on his
holidays and Tom and Mr Dignam and Mrs and Patsy and Freddy Dignam and
they were to have had a group taken. No-one would have thought the end was so
near. Now he was laid to rest. And her mother said to him to let that be a warning
to him for the rest of his days and he couldn't even go to the funeral on account of
the gout and she had to go into town to bring him the letters and samples from his
office about Catesby's cork lino, artistic, standard designs, fit for a palace, gives
tiptop wear and always bright and cheery in the home.
A sterling good daughter was Gerty just like a second mother in the house, a
ministering angel too with a little heart worth its weight in gold. And when her
mother had those raging splitting headaches who was it rubbed the menthol cone
on her forehead but Gerty though she didn't like her mother's taking pinches of
snuff and that was the only single thing they ever had words about, taking snuff.
Everyone thought the world of her for her gentle ways. It was Gerty who turned
off the gas at the main every night and it was Gerty who tacked up on the wall of
that place where she never forgot every fortnight the chlorate of lime Mr Tunney
the grocer's christmas almanac, the picture of halcyon days where a young
gentleman in the costume they used to wear then with a threecornered hat was
offering a bunch of flowers to his ladylove with oldtime chivalry through her
lattice window. You could see there was a story behind it. The colours were done
something lovely. She was in a soft clinging white in a studied attitude and the
gentleman was in chocolate and he looked a thorough aristocrat. She often looked
at them dreamily when she went there for a certain purpose and felt her own arms
that were white and soft just like hers with the sleeves back and thought about
those times because she had found out in Walker's pronouncing dictionary that
belonged to grandpapa Giltrap about the halcyon days what they meant.
The twins were now playing in the most approved brotherly fashion till at last
Master Jacky who was really as bold as brass there was no getting behind that
deliberately kicked the ball as hard as ever he could down towards the seaweedy
rocks. Needless to say poor Tommy was not slow to voice his dismay but luckily
the gentleman in black who was sitting there by himself came gallantly to the
rescue and intercepted the ball. Our two champions claimed their plaything with
lusty cries and to avoid trouble Cissy Caffrey called to the gentleman to throw it
to her please. The gentleman aimed the ball once or twice and then threw it up
the strand towards Cissy Caffrey but it rolled down the slope and stopped right
under Gerty's skirt near the little pool by the rock. The twins clamoured again for
it and Cissy told her to kick it away and let them fight for it so Gerty drew back
her foot but she wished their stupid ball hadn't come rolling down to her and she
gave a kick but she missed and Edy and Cissy laughed.
—If you fail try again, Edy Boardman said.
Gerty smiled assent and bit her lip. A delicate pink crept into her pretty cheek
but she was determined to let them see so she just lifted her skirt a little but just
enough and took good aim and gave the ball a jolly good kick and it went ever so
far and the two twins after it down towards the shingle. Pure jealousy of course it
was nothing else to draw attention on account of the gentleman opposite looking.
She felt the warm flush, a danger signal always with Gerty MacDowell, surging
and flaming into her cheeks. Till then they had only exchanged glances of the
most casual but now under the brim of her new hat she ventured a look at him
and the face that met her gaze there in the twilight, wan and strangely drawn,
seemed to her the saddest she had ever seen.
Through the open window of the church the fragrant incense was wafted and
with it the fragrant names of her who was conceived without stain of original sin,
spiritual vessel, pray for us, honourable vessel, pray for us, vessel of singular
devotion, pray for us, mystical rose. And careworn hearts were there and toilers
for their daily bread and many who had erred and wandered, their eyes wet with
contrition but for all that bright with hope for the reverend father Father Hughes
had told them what the great saint Bernard said in his famous prayer of Mary, the
most pious Virgin's intercessory power that it was not recorded in any age that
those who implored her powerful protection were ever abandoned by her.
 The twins were now playing again right merrily for the troubles of childhood are
but as fleeting summer showers. Cissy Caffrey played with baby Boardman till he
crowed with glee, clapping baby hands in air. Peep she cried behind the hood of
the pushcar and Edy asked where was Cissy gone and then Cissy popped up her
head and cried ah! and, my word, didn't the little chap enjoy that! And then she
told him to say papa.
—Say papa, baby. Say pa pa pa pa pa pa pa.
And baby did his level best to say it for he was very intelligent for eleven
months everyone said and big for his age and the picture of health, a perfect little
bunch of love, and he would certainly turn out to be something great, they said.
—Haja ja ja haja.
Cissy wiped his little mouth with the dribbling bib and wanted him to sit up
properly and say pa pa pa but when she undid the strap she cried out, holy saint
Denis, that he was possing wet and to double the half blanket the other way
under him. Of course his infant majesty was most obstreperous at such toilet
formalities and he let everyone know it:
—Habaa baaaahabaaa baaaa.
And two great big lovely big tears coursing down his cheeks. It was all no use
soothering him with no, nono, baby, no and telling him about the geegee and
where was the puffpuff but Ciss, always readywitted, gave him in his mouth the
teat of the suckingbottle and the young heathen was quickly appeased.
Gerty wished to goodness they would take their squalling baby home out of that
and not get on her nerves, no hour to be out, and the little brats of twins. She
gazed out towards the distant sea. It was like the paintings that man used to do
on the pavement with all the coloured chalks and such a pity too leaving them
there to be all blotted out, the evening and the clouds coming out and the Bailey
light on Howth and to hear the music like that and the perfume of those incense
they burned in the church like a kind of waft. And while she gazed her heart went
pitapat. Yes, it was her he was looking at, and there was meaning in his look. His
eyes burned into her as though they would search her through and through, read
her very soul. Wonderful eyes they were, superbly expressive, but could you trust
them? People were so queer. She could see at once by his dark eyes and his pale
intellectual face that he was a foreigner, the image of the photo she had of Martin
Harvey, the matinee idol, only for the moustache which she preferred because she
wasn't stagestruck like Winny Rippingham that wanted they two to always dress
the same on account of a play but she could not see whether he had an aquiline
nose or a slightly retroussé from where he was sitting. He was in deep mourning,
she could see that, and the story of a haunting sorrow was written on his face.
She would have given worlds to know what it was. He was looking up so intently,
so still, and he saw her kick the ball and perhaps he could see the bright steel
buckles of her shoes if she swung them like that thoughtfully with the toes down.
She was glad that something told her to put on the transparent stockings thinking
Reggy Wylie might be out but that was far away. Here was that of which she had
so often dreamed. It was he who mattered and there was joy on her face because
she wanted him because she felt instinctively that he was like no-one else. The
very heart of the girlwoman went out to him, her dreamhusband, because she
knew on the instant it was him. If he had suffered, more sinned against than
sinning, or even, even, if he had been himself a sinner, a wicked man, she cared
not. Even if he was a protestant or methodist she could convert him easily if he
truly loved her. There were wounds that wanted healing with heartbalm. She was
a womanly woman not like other flighty girls unfeminine he had known, those
cyclists showing off what they hadn't got and she just yearned to know all, to
forgive all if she could make him fall in love with her, make him forget the
memory of the past. Then mayhap he would embrace her gently, like a real man,
crushing her soft body to him, and love her, his ownest girlie, for herself alone.
Refuge of sinners. Comfortress of the afflicted. Ora pro nobis. Well has it been
said that whosoever prays to her with faith and constancy can never be lost or
cast away: and fitly is she too a haven of refuge for the afflicted because of the
seven dolours which transpierced her own heart. Gerty could picture the whole
scene in the church, the stained glass windows lighted up, the candles, the flowers
and the blue banners of the blessed Virgin's sodality and Father Conroy was
helping Canon O'Hanlon at the altar, carrying things in and out with his eyes cast
down. He looked almost a saint and his confessionbox was so quiet and clean and
dark and his hands were just like white wax and if ever she became a Dominican
nun in their white habit perhaps he might come to the convent for the novena of
Saint Dominic. He told her that time when she told him about that in confession,
crimsoning up to the roots of her hair for fear he could see, not to be troubled
because that was only the voice of nature and we were all subject to nature's laws,
he said, in this life and that that was no sin because that came from the nature of
woman instituted by God, he said, and that Our Blessed Lady herself said to the
archangel Gabriel be it done unto me according to Thy Word. He was so kind and
holy and often and often she thought and thought could she work a ruched
teacosy with embroidered floral design for him as a present or a clock but they
had a clock she noticed on the mantelpiece white and gold with a canarybird that
came out of a little house to tell the time the day she went there about the flowers
for the forty hours' adoration because it was hard to know what sort of a present
to give or perhaps an album of illuminated views of Dublin or some place.
The exasperating little brats of twins began to quarrel again and Jacky threw the
ball out towards the sea and they both ran after it. Little monkeys common as
ditchwater. Someone ought to take them and give them a good hiding for
themselves to keep them in their places, the both of them. And Cissy and Edy
shouted after them to come back because they were afraid the tide might come in
on them and be drowned.
—Jacky! Tommy!
Not they! What a great notion they had! So Cissy said it was the very last time
she'd ever bring them out. She jumped up and called them and she ran down the
slope past him, tossing her hair behind her which had a good enough colour if
there had been more of it but with all the thingamerry she was always rubbing
into it she couldn't get it to grow long because it wasn't natural so she could just
go and throw her hat at it. She ran with long gandery strides it was a wonder she
didn't rip up her skirt at the side that was too tight on her because there was a lot
of the tomboy about Cissy Caffrey and she was a forward piece whenever she
thought she had a good opportunity to show and just because she was a good
runner she ran like that so that he could see all the end of her petticoat running
and her skinny shanks up as far as possible. It would have served her just right if
she had tripped up over something accidentally on purpose with her high crooked
French heels on her to make her look tall and got a fine tumble. Tableau! That
would have been a very charming expose for a gentleman like that to witness.
Queen of angels, queen of patriarchs, queen of prophets, of all saints, they
prayed, queen of the most holy rosary and then Father Conroy handed the thurible
to Canon O'Hanlon and he put in the incense and censed the Blessed Sacrament
and Cissy Caffrey caught the two twins and she was itching to give them a ringing
good clip on the ear but she didn't because she thought he might be watching but
she never made a bigger mistake in all her life because Gerty could see without
looking that he never took his eyes off of her and then Canon O'Hanlon handed
the thurible back to Father Conroy and knelt down looking up at the Blessed
Sacrament and the choir began to sing the Tantum ergo and she just swung her
foot in and out in time as the music rose and fell to the Tantumer gosa cramen
tum. Three and eleven she paid for those stockings in Sparrow's of George's street
on the Tuesday, no the Monday before Easter and there wasn't a brack on them
and that was what he was looking at, transparent, and not at her insignificant
ones that had neither shape nor form (the cheek of her!) because he had eyes in
his head to see the difference for himself.
Cissy came up along the strand with the two twins and their ball with her hat
anyhow on her to one side after her run and she did look a streel tugging the two
kids along with the flimsy blouse she bought only a fortnight before like a rag on
her back and a bit of her petticoat hanging like a caricature. Gerty just took off
her hat for a moment to settle her hair and a prettier, a daintier head of nutbrown
tresses was never seen on a girl's shoulders—a radiant little vision, in sooth,
almost maddening in its sweetness. You would have to travel many a long mile
before you found a head of hair the like of that. She could almost see the swift
answering flash of admiration in his eyes that set her tingling in every nerve. She
put on her hat so that she could see from underneath the brim and swung her
buckled shoe faster for her breath caught as she caught the expression in his eyes.
He was eying her as a snake eyes its prey. Her woman's instinct told her that she
had raised the devil in him and at the thought a burning scarlet swept from throat
to brow till the lovely colour of her face became a glorious rose.
Edy Boardman was noticing it too because she was squinting at Gerty, half
smiling, with her specs like an old maid, pretending to nurse the baby. Irritable
little gnat she was and always would be and that was why no-one could get on
with her poking her nose into what was no concern of hers. And she said to Gerty:
—A penny for your thoughts.
 —What? replied Gerty with a smile reinforced by the whitest of teeth. I was
only wondering was it late.
Because she wished to goodness they'd take the snottynosed twins and their
babby home to the mischief out of that so that was why she just gave a gentle hint
about its being late. And when Cissy came up Edy asked her the time and Miss
Cissy, as glib as you like, said it was half past kissing time, time to kiss again. But
Edy wanted to know because they were told to be in early.
—Wait, said Cissy, I'll run ask my uncle Peter over there what's the time by his
conundrum.
So over she went and when he saw her coming she could see him take his hand
out of his pocket, getting nervous, and beginning to play with his watchchain,
looking up at the church. Passionate nature though he was Gerty could see that he
had enormous control over himself. One moment he had been there, fascinated by
a loveliness that made him gaze, and the next moment it was the quiet gravefaced
gentleman, selfcontrol expressed in every line of his distinguishedlooking figure.
Cissy said to excuse her would he mind please telling her what was the right
time and Gerty could see him taking out his watch, listening to it and looking up
and clearing his throat and he said he was very sorry his watch was stopped but
he thought it must be after eight because the sun was set. His voice had a cultured
ring in it and though he spoke in measured accents there was a suspicion of a
quiver in the mellow tones. Cissy said thanks and came back with her tongue out
and said uncle said his waterworks were out of order.
Then they sang the second verse of the Tantum ergo and Canon O'Hanlon got up
again and censed the Blessed Sacrament and knelt down and he told Father
Conroy that one of the candles was just going to set fire to the flowers and Father
Conroy got up and settled it all right and she could see the gentleman winding his
watch and listening to the works and she swung her leg more in and out in time.
It was getting darker but he could see and he was looking all the time that he was
winding the watch or whatever he was doing to it and then he put it back and put
his hands back into his pockets. She felt a kind of a sensation rushing all over her
and she knew by the feel of her scalp and that irritation against her stays that that
thing must be coming on because the last time too was when she clipped her hair
on account of the moon. His dark eyes fixed themselves on her again drinking in
her every contour, literally worshipping at her shrine. If ever there was
undisguised admiration in a man's passionate gaze it was there plain to be seen on
that man's face. It is for you, Gertrude MacDowell, and you know it.
Edy began to get ready to go and it was high time for her and Gerty noticed that
that little hint she gave had had the desired effect because it was a long way along
the strand to where there was the place to push up the pushcar and Cissy took off
the twins' caps and tidied their hair to make herself attractive of course and
Canon O'Hanlon stood up with his cope poking up at his neck and Father Conroy
handed him the card to read off and he read out Panem de coelo praestitisti eis and
Edy and Cissy were talking about the time all the time and asking her but Gerty
could pay them back in their own coin and she just answered with scathing
politeness when Edy asked her was she heartbroken about her best boy throwing
her over. Gerty winced sharply. A brief cold blaze shone from her eyes that spoke
volumes of scorn immeasurable. It hurt—O yes, it cut deep because Edy had her
own quiet way of saying things like that she knew would wound like the
confounded little cat she was. Gerty's lips parted swiftly to frame the word but
she fought back the sob that rose to her throat, so slim, so flawless, so beautifully
moulded it seemed one an artist might have dreamed of. She had loved him better
than he knew. Lighthearted deceiver and fickle like all his sex he would never
understand what he had meant to her and for an instant there was in the blue
eyes a quick stinging of tears. Their eyes were probing her mercilessly but with a
brave effort she sparkled back in sympathy as she glanced at her new conquest for
them to see.
—O, responded Gerty, quick as lightning, laughing, and the proud head flashed
up. I can throw my cap at who I like because it's leap year.
Her words rang out crystalclear, more musical than the cooing of the ringdove,
but they cut the silence icily. There was that in her young voice that told that she
was not a one to be lightly trifled with. As for Mr Reggy with his swank and his
bit of money she could just chuck him aside as if he was so much filth and never
again would she cast as much as a second thought on him and tear his silly
postcard into a dozen pieces. And if ever after he dared to presume she could give
him one look of measured scorn that would make him shrivel up on the spot. Miss
puny little Edy's countenance fell to no slight extent and Gerty could see by her
looking as black as thunder that she was simply in a towering rage though she hid
it, the little kinnatt, because that shaft had struck home for her petty jealousy and
they both knew that she was something aloof, apart, in another sphere, that she
was not of them and never would be and there was somebody else too that knew
it and saw it so they could put that in their pipe and smoke it.
Edy straightened up baby Boardman to get ready to go and Cissy tucked in the
ball and the spades and buckets and it was high time too because the sandman
was on his way for Master Boardman junior. And Cissy told him too that billy
winks was coming and that baby was to go deedaw and baby looked just too
ducky, laughing up out of his gleeful eyes, and Cissy poked him like that out of
fun in his wee fat tummy and baby, without as much as by your leave, sent up his
compliments to all and sundry on to his brandnew dribbling bib.
—O my! Puddeny pie! protested Ciss. He has his bib destroyed.
The slight contretemps claimed her attention but in two twos she set that little
matter to rights.
Gerty stifled a smothered exclamation and gave a nervous cough and Edy asked
what and she was just going to tell her to catch it while it was flying but she was
ever ladylike in her deportment so she simply passed it off with consummate tact
by saying that that was the benediction because just then the bell rang out from
the steeple over the quiet seashore because Canon O'Hanlon was up on the altar
with the veil that Father Conroy put round his shoulders giving the benediction
with the Blessed Sacrament in his hands.
How moving the scene there in the gathering twilight, the last glimpse of Erin,
the touching chime of those evening bells and at the same time a bat flew forth
from the ivied belfry through the dusk, hither, thither, with a tiny lost cry. And
she could see far away the lights of the lighthouses so picturesque she would have
loved to do with a box of paints because it was easier than to make a man and
soon the lamplighter would be going his rounds past the presbyterian church
grounds and along by shady Tritonville avenue where the couples walked and
lighting the lamp near her window where Reggy Wylie used to turn his freewheel
like she read in that book The Lamplighter by Miss Cummins, author of Mabel
Vaughan and other tales. For Gerty had her dreams that no-one knew of. She
loved to read poetry and when she got a keepsake from Bertha Supple of that
lovely confession album with the coralpink cover to write her thoughts in she laid
it in the drawer of her toilettable which, though it did not err on the side of
luxury, was scrupulously neat and clean. It was there she kept her girlish treasure
trove, the tortoiseshell combs, her child of Mary badge, the whiterose scent, the
eyebrowleine, her alabaster pouncetbox and the ribbons to change when her
things came home from the wash and there were some beautiful thoughts written
in it in violet ink that she bought in Hely's of Dame Street for she felt that she too
could write poetry if she could only express herself like that poem that appealed
to her so deeply that she had copied out of the newspaper she found one evening
round the potherbs. Art thou real, my ideal? it was called by Louis J Walsh,
Magherafelt, and after there was something about twilight, wilt thou ever? and
ofttimes the beauty of poetry, so sad in its transient loveliness, had misted her
eyes with silent tears for she felt that the years were slipping by for her, one by
one, and but for that one shortcoming she knew she need fear no competition and
that was an accident coming down Dalkey hill and she always tried to conceal it.
But it must end, she felt. If she saw that magic lure in his eyes there would be no
holding back for her. Love laughs at locksmiths. She would make the great
sacrifice. Her every effort would be to share his thoughts. Dearer than the whole
world would she be to him and gild his days with happiness. There was the
allimportant question and she was dying to know was he a married man or a
widower who had lost his wife or some tragedy like the nobleman with the foreign
name from the land of song had to have her put into a madhouse, cruel only to be
kind. But even if—what then? Would it make a very great difference? From
everything in the least indelicate her finebred nature instinctively recoiled. She
loathed that sort of person, the fallen women off the accommodation walk beside
the Dodder that went with the soldiers and coarse men with no respect for a girl's
honour, degrading the sex and being taken up to the police station. No, no: not
that. They would be just good friends like a big brother and sister without all that
other in spite of the conventions of Society with a big ess. Perhaps it was an old
flame he was in mourning for from the days beyond recall. She thought she
understood. She would try to understand him because men were so different. The
old love was waiting, waiting with little white hands stretched out, with blue
appealing eyes. Heart of mine! She would follow, her dream of love, the dictates
of her heart that told her he was her all in all, the only man in all the world for
her for love was the master guide. Nothing else mattered. Come what might she
would be wild, untrammelled, free.
Canon O'Hanlon put the Blessed Sacrament back into the tabernacle and
genuflected and the choir sang Laudate Dominum omnes gentes and then he
locked the tabernacle door because the benediction was over and Father Conroy
handed him his hat to put on and crosscat Edy asked wasn't she coming but Jacky
Caffrey called out:
—O, look, Cissy!
And they all looked was it sheet lightning but Tommy saw it too over the trees
beside the church, blue and then green and purple.
—It's fireworks, Cissy Caffrey said.
And they all ran down the strand to see over the houses and the church,
helterskelter, Edy with the pushcar with baby Boardman in it and Cissy holding
Tommy and Jacky by the hand so they wouldn't fall running.
—Come on, Gerty, Cissy called. It's the bazaar fireworks.
But Gerty was adamant. She had no intention of being at their beck and call. If
they could run like rossies she could sit so she said she could see from where she
was. The eyes that were fastened upon her set her pulses tingling. She looked at
him a moment, meeting his glance, and a light broke in upon her. Whitehot
passion was in that face, passion silent as the grave, and it had made her his. At
last they were left alone without the others to pry and pass remarks and she knew
he could be trusted to the death, steadfast, a sterling man, a man of inflexible
honour to his fingertips. His hands and face were working and a tremour went
over her. She leaned back far to look up where the fireworks were and she caught
her knee in her hands so as not to fall back looking up and there was no-one to
see only him and her when she revealed all her graceful beautifully shaped legs
like that, supply soft and delicately rounded, and she seemed to hear the panting
of his heart, his hoarse breathing, because she knew too about the passion of men
like that, hotblooded, because Bertha Supple told her once in dead secret and
made her swear she'd never about the gentleman lodger that was staying with
them out of the Congested Districts Board that had pictures cut out of papers of
those skirtdancers and highkickers and she said he used to do something not very
nice that you could imagine sometimes in the bed. But this was altogether
different from a thing like that because there was all the difference because she
could almost feel him draw her face to his and the first quick hot touch of his
handsome lips. Besides there was absolution so long as you didn't do the other
thing before being married and there ought to be women priests that would
understand without your telling out and Cissy Caffrey too sometimes had that
dreamy kind of dreamy look in her eyes so that she too, my dear, and Winny
Rippingham so mad about actors' photographs and besides it was on account of
that other thing coming on the way it did.
 And Jacky Caffrey shouted to look, there was another and she leaned back and
the garters were blue to match on account of the transparent and they all saw it
and they all shouted to look, look, there it was and she leaned back ever so far to
see the fireworks and something queer was flying through the air, a soft thing, to
and fro, dark. And she saw a long Roman candle going up over the trees, up, up,
and, in the tense hush, they were all breathless with excitement as it went higher
and higher and she had to lean back more and more to look up after it, high, high,
almost out of sight, and her face was suffused with a divine, an entrancing blush
from straining back and he could see her other things too, nainsook knickers, the
fabric that caresses the skin, better than those other pettiwidth, the green, four
and eleven, on account of being white and she let him and she saw that he saw
and then it went so high it went out of sight a moment and she was trembling in
every limb from being bent so far back that he had a full view high up above her
knee where no-one ever not even on the swing or wading and she wasn't ashamed
and he wasn't either to look in that immodest way like that because he couldn't
resist the sight of the wondrous revealment half offered like those skirtdancers
behaving so immodest before gentlemen looking and he kept on looking, looking.
She would fain have cried to him chokingly, held out her snowy slender arms to
him to come, to feel his lips laid on her white brow, the cry of a young girl's love,
a little strangled cry, wrung from her, that cry that has rung through the ages.
And then a rocket sprang and bang shot blind blank and O! then the Roman
candle burst and it was like a sigh of O! and everyone cried O! O! in raptures and
it gushed out of it a stream of rain gold hair threads and they shed and ah! they
were all greeny dewy stars falling with golden, O so lovely, O, soft, sweet, soft!
Then all melted away dewily in the grey air: all was silent. Ah! She glanced at
him as she bent forward quickly, a pathetic little glance of piteous protest, of shy
reproach under which he coloured like a girl He was leaning back against the rock
behind. Leopold Bloom (for it is he) stands silent, with bowed head before those
young guileless eyes. What a brute he had been! At it again? A fair unsullied soul
had called to him and, wretch that he was, how had he answered? An utter cad he
had been! He of all men! But there was an infinite store of mercy in those eyes, for
him too a word of pardon even though he had erred and sinned and wandered.
Should a girl tell? No, a thousand times no. That was their secret, only theirs,
alone in the hiding twilight and there was none to know or tell save the little bat
that flew so softly through the evening to and fro and little bats don't tell.
Cissy Caffrey whistled, imitating the boys in the football field to show what a
great person she was: and then she cried:
—Gerty! Gerty! We're going. Come on. We can see from farther up.
Gerty had an idea, one of love's little ruses. She slipped a hand into her kerchief
pocket and took out the wadding and waved in reply of course without letting him
and then slipped it back. Wonder if he's too far to. She rose. Was it goodbye? No.
She had to go but they would meet again, there, and she would dream of that till
then, tomorrow, of her dream of yester eve. She drew herself up to her full height.
Their souls met in a last lingering glance and the eyes that reached her heart, full
of a strange shining, hung enraptured on her sweet flowerlike face. She half smiled
at him wanly, a sweet forgiving smile, a smile that verged on tears, and then they
parted.
Slowly, without looking back she went down the uneven strand to Cissy, to Edy
to Jacky and Tommy Caffrey, to little baby Boardman. It was darker now and
there were stones and bits of wood on the strand and slippy seaweed. She walked
with a certain quiet dignity characteristic of her but with care and very slowly
because—because Gerty MacDowell was...
Tight boots? No. She's lame! O!
Mr Bloom watched her as she limped away. Poor girl! That's why she's left on
the shelf and the others did a sprint. Thought something was wrong by the cut of
her jib. Jilted beauty. A defect is ten times worse in a woman. But makes them
polite. Glad I didn't know it when she was on show. Hot little devil all the same. I
wouldn't mind. Curiosity like a nun or a negress or a girl with glasses. That
squinty one is delicate. Near her monthlies, I expect, makes them feel ticklish. I
have such a bad headache today. Where did I put the letter? Yes, all right. All
kinds of crazy longings. Licking pennies. Girl in Tranquilla convent that nun told
me liked to smell rock oil. Virgins go mad in the end I suppose. Sister? How many
women in Dublin have it today? Martha, she. Something in the air. That's the
moon. But then why don't all women menstruate at the same time with the same
moon, I mean? Depends on the time they were born I suppose. Or all start scratch
then get out of step. Sometimes Molly and Milly together. Anyhow I got the best
of that. Damned glad I didn't do it in the bath this morning over her silly I will
punish you letter. Made up for that tramdriver this morning. That gouger M'Coy
stopping me to say nothing. And his wife engagement in the country valise, voice
like a pickaxe. Thankful for small mercies. Cheap too. Yours for the asking.
Because they want it themselves. Their natural craving. Shoals of them every
evening poured out of offices. Reserve better. Don't want it they throw it at you.
Catch em alive, O. Pity they can't see themselves. A dream of wellfilled hose.
Where was that? Ah, yes. Mutoscope pictures in Capel street: for men only.
Peeping Tom. Willy's hat and what the girls did with it. Do they snapshot those
girls or is it all a fake? Lingerie does it. Felt for the curves inside her deshabillé.
Excites them also when they're. I'm all clean come and dirty me. And they like
dressing one another for the sacrifice. Milly delighted with Molly's new blouse. At
first. Put them all on to take them all off. Molly. Why I bought her the violet
garters. Us too: the tie he wore, his lovely socks and turnedup trousers. He wore a
pair of gaiters the night that first we met. His lovely shirt was shining beneath his
what? of jet. Say a woman loses a charm with every pin she takes out. Pinned
together. O, Mairy lost the pin of her. Dressed up to the nines for somebody.
Fashion part of their charm. Just changes when you're on the track of the secret.
Except the east: Mary, Martha: now as then. No reasonable offer refused. She
wasn't in a hurry either. Always off to a fellow when they are. They never forget
an appointment. Out on spec probably. They believe in chance because like
themselves. And the others inclined to give her an odd dig. Girl friends at school,
arms round each other's necks or with ten fingers locked, kissing and whispering
secrets about nothing in the convent garden. Nuns with whitewashed faces, cool
coifs and their rosaries going up and down, vindictive too for what they can't get.
Barbed wire. Be sure now and write to me. And I'll write to you. Now won't you?
Molly and Josie Powell. Till Mr Right comes along, then meet once in a blue
moon. Tableau! O, look who it is for the love of God! How are you at all? What
have you been doing with yourself? Kiss and delighted to, kiss, to see you. Picking
holes in each other's appearance. You're looking splendid. Sister souls. Showing
their teeth at one another. How many have you left? Wouldn't lend each other a
pinch of salt.
Ah!
Devils they are when that's coming on them. Dark devilish appearance. Molly
often told me feel things a ton weight. Scratch the sole of my foot. O that way! O,
that's exquisite! Feel it myself too. Good to rest once in a way. Wonder if it's bad
to go with them then. Safe in one way. Turns milk, makes fiddlestrings snap.
Something about withering plants I read in a garden. Besides they say if the flower
withers she wears she's a flirt. All are. Daresay she felt 1. When you feel like that
you often meet what you feel. Liked me or what? Dress they look at. Always know
a fellow courting: collars and cuffs. Well cocks and lions do the same and stags.
Same time might prefer a tie undone or something. Trousers? Suppose I when I
was? No. Gently does it. Dislike rough and tumble. Kiss in the dark and never
tell. Saw something in me. Wonder what. Sooner have me as I am than some poet
chap with bearsgrease plastery hair, lovelock over his dexter optic. To aid
gentleman in literary. Ought to attend to my appearance my age. Didn't let her see
me in profile. Still, you never know. Pretty girls and ugly men marrying. Beauty
and the beast. Besides I can't be so if Molly. Took off her hat to show her hair.
Wide brim. Bought to hide her face, meeting someone might know her, bend down
or carry a bunch of flowers to smell. Hair strong in rut. Ten bob I got for Molly's
combings when we were on the rocks in Holles street. Why not? Suppose he gave
her money. Why not? All a prejudice. She's worth ten, fifteen, more, a pound.
What? I think so. All that for nothing. Bold hand: Mrs Marion. Did I forget to
write address on that letter like the postcard I sent to Flynn? And the day I went
to Drimmie's without a necktie. Wrangle with Molly it was put me off. No, I
remember. Richie Goulding: he's another. Weighs on his mind. Funny my watch
stopped at half past four. Dust. Shark liver oil they use to clean. Could do it
myself. Save. Was that just when he, she?
O, he did. Into her. She did. Done.
Ah!
Mr Bloom with careful hand recomposed his wet shirt. O Lord, that little
limping devil. Begins to feel cold and clammy. Aftereffect not pleasant. Still you
have to get rid of it someway. They don't care. Complimented perhaps. Go home
to nicey bread and milky and say night prayers with the kiddies. Well, aren't they?
See her as she is spoil all. Must have the stage setting, the rouge, costume,
position, music. The name too. Amours of actresses. Nell Gwynn, Mrs Bracegirdle,
Maud Branscombe. Curtain up. Moonlight silver effulgence. Maiden discovered
with pensive bosom. Little sweetheart come and kiss me. Still, I feel. The strength
it gives a man. That's the secret of it. Good job I let off there behind the wall
coming out of Dignam's. Cider that was. Otherwise I couldn't have. Makes you
want to sing after. Lacaus esant taratara. Suppose I spoke to her. What about?
Bad plan however if you don't know how to end the conversation. Ask them a
question they ask you another. Good idea if you're stuck. Gain time. But then
you're in a cart. Wonderful of course if you say: good evening, and you see she's
on for it: good evening. O but the dark evening in the Appian way I nearly spoke
to Mrs Clinch O thinking she was. Whew! Girl in Meath street that night. All the
dirty things I made her say. All wrong of course. My arks she called it. It's so hard
to find one who. Aho! If you don't answer when they solicit must be horrible for
them till they harden. And kissed my hand when I gave her the extra two
shillings. Parrots. Press the button and the bird will squeak. Wish she hadn't
called me sir. O, her mouth in the dark! And you a married man with a single girl!
That's what they enjoy. Taking a man from another woman. Or even hear of it.
Different with me. Glad to get away from other chap's wife. Eating off his cold
plate. Chap in the Burton today spitting back gumchewed gristle. French letter
still in my pocketbook. Cause of half the trouble. But might happen sometime, I
don't think. Come in, all is prepared. I dreamt. What? Worst is beginning. How
they change the venue when it's not what they like. Ask you do you like
mushrooms because she once knew a gentleman who. Or ask you what someone
was going to say when he changed his mind and stopped. Yet if I went the whole
hog, say: I want to, something like that. Because I did. She too. Offend her. Then
make it up. Pretend to want something awfully, then cry off for her sake. Flatters
them. She must have been thinking of someone else all the time. What harm?
Must since she came to the use of reason, he, he and he. First kiss does the trick.
The propitious moment. Something inside them goes pop. Mushy like, tell by their
eye, on the sly. First thoughts are best. Remember that till their dying day. Molly,
lieutenant Mulvey that kissed her under the Moorish wall beside the gardens.
Fifteen she told me. But her breasts were developed. Fell asleep then. After
Glencree dinner that was when we drove home. Featherbed mountain. Gnashing
her teeth in sleep. Lord mayor had his eye on her too. Val Dillon. Apoplectic.
There she is with them down there for the fireworks. My fireworks. Up like a
rocket, down like a stick. And the children, twins they must be, waiting for
something to happen. Want to be grownups. Dressing in mother's clothes. Time
enough, understand all the ways of the world. And the dark one with the mop
head and the nigger mouth. I knew she could whistle. Mouth made for that. Like
Molly. Why that highclass whore in Jammet's wore her veil only to her nose.
Would you mind, please, telling me the right time? I'll tell you the right time up a
dark lane. Say prunes and prisms forty times every morning, cure for fat lips.
Caressing the little boy too. Onlookers see most of the game. Of course they
understand birds, animals, babies. In their line.
Didn't look back when she was going down the strand. Wouldn't give that
satisfaction. Those girls, those girls, those lovely seaside girls. Fine eyes she had,
clear. It's the white of the eye brings that out not so much the pupil. Did she
know what I? Course. Like a cat sitting beyond a dog's jump. Women never meet
one like that Wilkins in the high school drawing a picture of Venus with all his
belongings on show. Call that innocence? Poor idiot! His wife has her work cut
out for her. Never see them sit on a bench marked Wet Paint. Eyes all over them.
Look under the bed for what's not there. Longing to get the fright of their lives.
Sharp as needles they are. When I said to Molly the man at the corner of Cuffe
street was goodlooking, thought she might like, twigged at once he had a false
arm. Had, too. Where do they get that? Typist going up Roger Greene's stairs two
at a time to show her understandings. Handed down from father to, mother to
daughter, I mean. Bred in the bone. Milly for example drying her handkerchief on
the mirror to save the ironing. Best place for an ad to catch a woman's eye on a
mirror. And when I sent her for Molly's Paisley shawl to Prescott's by the way that
ad I must, carrying home the change in her stocking! Clever little minx. I never
told her. Neat way she carries parcels too. Attract men, small thing like that.
Holding up her hand, shaking it, to let the blood flow back when it was red. Who
did you learn that from? Nobody. Something the nurse taught me. O, don't they
know! Three years old she was in front of Molly's dressingtable, just before we left
Lombard street west. Me have a nice pace. Mullingar. Who knows? Ways of the
world. Young student. Straight on her pins anyway not like the other. Still she
was game. Lord, I am wet. Devil you are. Swell of her calf. Transparent stockings,
stretched to breaking point. Not like that frump today. A. E. Rumpled stockings.
Or the one in Grafton street. White. Wow! Beef to the heel.
A monkey puzzle rocket burst, spluttering in darting crackles. Zrads and zrads,
zrads, zrads. And Cissy and Tommy and Jacky ran out to see and Edy after with
the pushcar and then Gerty beyond the curve of the rocks. Will she? Watch!
Watch! See! Looked round. She smelt an onion. Darling, I saw, your. I saw all.
Lord!
Did me good all the same. Off colour after Kiernan's, Dignam's. For this relief
much thanks. In Hamlet, that is. Lord! It was all things combined. Excitement.
When she leaned back, felt an ache at the butt of my tongue. Your head it simply
swirls. He's right. Might have made a worse fool of myself however. Instead of
talking about nothing. Then I will tell you all. Still it was a kind of language
between us. It couldn't be? No, Gerty they called her. Might be false name
however like my name and the address Dolphin's barn a blind.
Her maiden name was Jemina Brown And she lived with her mother in Irishtown.
Place made me think of that I suppose. All tarred with the same brush Wiping
pens in their stockings. But the ball rolled down to her as if it understood. Every
bullet has its billet. Course I never could throw anything straight at school.
Crooked as a ram's horn. Sad however because it lasts only a few years till they
settle down to potwalloping and papa's pants will soon fit Willy and fuller's earth
for the baby when they hold him out to do ah ah. No soft job. Saves them. Keeps
them out of harm's way. Nature. Washing child, washing corpse. Dignam.
Children's hands always round them. Cocoanut skulls, monkeys, not even closed
at first, sour milk in their swaddles and tainted curds. Oughtn't to have given that
child an empty teat to suck. Fill it up with wind. Mrs Beaufoy, Purefoy. Must call
to the hospital. Wonder is nurse Callan there still. She used to look over some
nights when Molly was in the Coffee Palace. That young doctor O'Hare I noticed
her brushing his coat. And Mrs Breen and Mrs Dignam once like that too,
marriageable. Worst of all at night Mrs Duggan told me in the City Arms.
Husband rolling in drunk, stink of pub off him like a polecat. Have that in your
nose in the dark, whiff of stale boose. Then ask in the morning: was I drunk last
night? Bad policy however to fault the husband. Chickens come home to roost.
They stick by one another like glue. Maybe the women's fault also. That's where
Molly can knock spots off them. It's the blood of the south. Moorish. Also the
form, the figure. Hands felt for the opulent. Just compare for instance those
others. Wife locked up at home, skeleton in the cupboard. Allow me to introduce
my. Then they trot you out some kind of a nondescript, wouldn't know what to
call her. Always see a fellow's weak point in his wife. Still there's destiny in it,
falling in love. Have their own secrets between them. Chaps that would go to the
dogs if some woman didn't take them in hand. Then little chits of girls, height of a
shilling in coppers, with little hubbies. As God made them he matched them.
Sometimes children turn out well enough. Twice nought makes one. Or old rich
chap of seventy and blushing bride. Marry in May and repent in December. This
wet is very unpleasant. Stuck. Well the foreskin is not back. Better detach.
Ow!
Other hand a sixfooter with a wifey up to his watchpocket. Long and the short
of it. Big he and little she. Very strange about my watch. Wristwatches are always
going wrong. Wonder is there any magnetic influence between the person because
that was about the time he. Yes, I suppose, at once. Cat's away, the mice will
play. I remember looking in Pill lane. Also that now is magnetism. Back of
everything magnetism. Earth for instance pulling this and being pulled. That
causes movement. And time, well that's the time the movement takes. Then if one
thing stopped the whole ghesabo would stop bit by bit. Because it's all arranged.
Magnetic needle tells you what's going on in the sun, the stars. Little piece of steel
iron. When you hold out the fork. Come. Come. Tip. Woman and man that is.
Fork and steel. Molly, he. Dress up and look and suggest and let you see and see
more and defy you if you're a man to see that and, like a sneeze coming, legs,
look, look and if you have any guts in you. Tip. Have to let fly.
Wonder how is she feeling in that region. Shame all put on before third person.
More put out about a hole in her stocking. Molly, her underjaw stuck out, head
back, about the farmer in the ridingboots and spurs at the horse show. And when
the painters were in Lombard street west. Fine voice that fellow had. How
Giuglini began. Smell that I did. Like flowers. It was too. Violets. Came from the
turpentine probably in the paint. Make their own use of everything. Same time
doing it scraped her slipper on the floor so they wouldn't hear. But lots of them
can't kick the beam, I think. Keep that thing up for hours. Kind of a general all
round over me and half down my back.
Wait. Hm. Hm. Yes. That's her perfume. Why she waved her hand. I leave you
this to think of me when I'm far away on the pillow. What is it? Heliotrope? No.
Hyacinth? Hm. Roses, I think. She'd like scent of that kind. Sweet and cheap:
soon sour. Why Molly likes opoponax. Suits her, with a little jessamine mixed. Her
high notes and her low notes. At the dance night she met him, dance of the hours.
Heat brought it out. She was wearing her black and it had the perfume of the time
before. Good conductor, is it? Or bad? Light too. Suppose there's some
connection. For instance if you go into a cellar where it's dark. Mysterious thing
too. Why did I smell it only now? Took its time in coming like herself, slow but
sure. Suppose it's ever so many millions of tiny grains blown across. Yes, it is.
Because those spice islands, Cinghalese this morning, smell them leagues off. Tell
you what it is. It's like a fine fine veil or web they have all over the skin, fine like
what do you call it gossamer, and they're always spinning it out of them, fine as
anything, like rainbow colours without knowing it. Clings to everything she takes
off. Vamp of her stockings. Warm shoe. Stays. Drawers: little kick, taking them
off. Byby till next time. Also the cat likes to sniff in her shift on the bed. Know her
smell in a thousand. Bathwater too. Reminds me of strawberries and cream.
Wonder where it is really. There or the armpits or under the neck. Because you get
it out of all holes and corners. Hyacinth perfume made of oil of ether or
something. Muskrat. Bag under their tails. One grain pour off odour for years.
Dogs at each other behind. Good evening. Evening. How do you sniff? Hm. Hm.
Very well, thank you. Animals go by that. Yes now, look at it that way. We're the
same. Some women, instance, warn you off when they have their period. Come
near. Then get a hogo you could hang your hat on. Like what? Potted herrings
gone stale or. Boof! Please keep off the grass.
Perhaps they get a man smell off us. What though? Cigary gloves long John had
on his desk the other day. Breath? What you eat and drink gives that. No.
Mansmell, I mean. Must be connected with that because priests that are supposed
to be are different. Women buzz round it like flies round treacle. Railed off the
altar get on to it at any cost. The tree of forbidden priest. O, father, will you? Let
me be the first to. That diffuses itself all through the body, permeates. Source of
life. And it's extremely curious the smell. Celery sauce. Let me.
Mr Bloom inserted his nose. Hm. Into the. Hm. Opening of his waistcoat.
Almonds or. No. Lemons it is. Ah no, that's the soap.
O by the by that lotion. I knew there was something on my mind. Never went
back and the soap not paid. Dislike carrying bottles like that hag this morning.
Hynes might have paid me that three shillings. I could mention Meagher's just to
remind him. Still if he works that paragraph. Two and nine. Bad opinion of me
he'll have. Call tomorrow. How much do I owe you? Three and nine? Two and
nine, sir. Ah. Might stop him giving credit another time. Lose your customers that
way. Pubs do. Fellows run up a bill on the slate and then slinking around the back
streets into somewhere else.
Here's this nobleman passed before. Blown in from the bay. Just went as far as
turn back. Always at home at dinnertime. Looks mangled out: had a good tuck in.
Enjoying nature now. Grace after meals. After supper walk a mile. Sure he has a
small bank balance somewhere, government sit. Walk after him now make him
awkward like those newsboys me today. Still you learn something. See ourselves
as others see us. So long as women don't mock what matter? That's the way to
find out. Ask yourself who is he now. The Mystery Man on the Beach, prize titbit
story by Mr Leopold Bloom. Payment at the rate of one guinea per column. And
that fellow today at the graveside in the brown macintosh. Corns on his kismet
however. Healthy perhaps absorb all the. Whistle brings rain they say. Must be
some somewhere. Salt in the Ormond damp. The body feels the atmosphere. Old
Betty's joints are on the rack. Mother Shipton's prophecy that is about ships
around they fly in the twinkling. No. Signs of rain it is. The royal reader. And
distant hills seem coming nigh.
Howth. Bailey light. Two, four, six, eight, nine. See. Has to change or they
might think it a house. Wreckers. Grace Darling. People afraid of the dark. Also
glowworms, cyclists: lightingup time. Jewels diamonds flash better. Women. Light
is a kind of reassuring. Not going to hurt you. Better now of course than long ago.
Country roads. Run you through the small guts for nothing. Still two types there
are you bob against. Scowl or smile. Pardon! Not at all. Best time to spray plants
too in the shade after the sun. Some light still. Red rays are longest. Roygbiv
Vance taught us: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. A star I see.
Venus? Can't tell yet. Two. When three it's night. Were those nightclouds there all
the time? Looks like a phantom ship. No. Wait. Trees are they? An optical
illusion. Mirage. Land of the setting sun this. Homerule sun setting in the
southeast. My native land, goodnight.
Dew falling. Bad for you, dear, to sit on that stone. Brings on white fluxions.
Never have little baby then less he was big strong fight his way up through. Might
get piles myself. Sticks too like a summer cold, sore on the mouth. Cut with grass
or paper worst. Friction of the position. Like to be that rock she sat on. O sweet
little, you don't know how nice you looked. I begin to like them at that age. Green
apples. Grab at all that offer. Suppose it's the only time we cross legs, seated. Also
the library today: those girl graduates. Happy chairs under them. But it's the
evening influence. They feel all that. Open like flowers, know their hours,
sunflowers, Jerusalem artichokes, in ballrooms, chandeliers, avenues under the
lamps. Nightstock in Mat Dillon's garden where I kissed her shoulder. Wish I had
a full length oilpainting of her then. June that was too I wooed. The year returns.
History repeats itself. Ye crags and peaks I'm with you once again. Life, love,
voyage round your own little world. And now? Sad about her lame of course but
must be on your guard not to feel too much pity. They take advantage.
All quiet on Howth now. The distant hills seem. Where we. The rhododendrons.
I am a fool perhaps. He gets the plums, and I the plumstones. Where I come in.
All that old hill has seen. Names change: that's all. Lovers: yum yum.
Tired I feel now. Will I get up? O wait. Drained all the manhood out of me,
little wretch. She kissed me. Never again. My youth. Only once it comes. Or hers.
Take the train there tomorrow. No. Returning not the same. Like kids your second
visit to a house. The new I want. Nothing new under the sun. Care of P. O.
Dolphin's Barn. Are you not happy in your? Naughty darling. At Dolphin's barn
charades in Luke Doyle's house. Mat Dillon and his bevy of daughters: Tiny, Atty,
Floey, Maimy, Louy, Hetty. Molly too. Eightyseven that was. Year before we. And
the old major, partial to his drop of spirits. Curious she an only child, I an only
child. So it returns. Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way
round is the shortest way home. And just when he and she. Circus horse walking
in a ring. Rip van Winkle we played. Rip: tear in Henny Doyle's overcoat. Van:
breadvan delivering. Winkle: cockles and periwinkles. Then I did Rip van Winkle
coming back. She leaned on the sideboard watching. Moorish eyes. Twenty years
asleep in Sleepy Hollow. All changed. Forgotten. The young are old. His gun rusty
from the dew.
Ba. What is that flying about? Swallow? Bat probably. Thinks I'm a tree, so
blind. Have birds no smell? Metempsychosis. They believed you could be changed
into a tree from grief. Weeping willow. Ba. There he goes. Funny little beggar.
Wonder where he lives. Belfry up there. Very likely. Hanging by his heels in the
odour of sanctity. Bell scared him out, I suppose. Mass seems to be over. Could
hear them all at it. Pray for us. And pray for us. And pray for us. Good idea the
repetition. Same thing with ads. Buy from us. And buy from us. Yes, there's the
light in the priest's house. Their frugal meal. Remember about the mistake in the
valuation when I was in Thom's. Twentyeight it is. Two houses they have. Gabriel
Conroy's brother is curate. Ba. Again. Wonder why they come out at night like
mice. They're a mixed breed. Birds are like hopping mice. What frightens them,
light or noise? Better sit still. All instinct like the bird in drouth got water out of
the end of a jar by throwing in pebbles. Like a little man in a cloak he is with tiny
hands. Weeny bones. Almost see them shimmering, kind of a bluey white. Colours
depend on the light you see. Stare the sun for example like the eagle then look at a
shoe see a blotch blob yellowish. Wants to stamp his trademark on everything.
Instance, that cat this morning on the staircase. Colour of brown turf. Say you
never see them with three colours. Not true. That half tabbywhite tortoiseshell in
the City Arms with the letter em on her forehead. Body fifty different colours.
Howth a while ago amethyst. Glass flashing. That's how that wise man what's his
name with the burning glass. Then the heather goes on fire. It can't be tourists'
matches. What? Perhaps the sticks dry rub together in the wind and light. Or
broken bottles in the furze act as a burning glass in the sun. Archimedes. I have it!
My memory's not so bad.
Ba. Who knows what they're always flying for. Insects? That bee last week got
into the room playing with his shadow on the ceiling. Might be the one bit me,
come back to see. Birds too. Never find out. Or what they say. Like our small talk.
And says she and says he. Nerve they have to fly over the ocean and back. Lots
must be killed in storms, telegraph wires. Dreadful life sailors have too. Big brutes
of oceangoing steamers floundering along in the dark, lowing out like seacows.
Faugh a Ballagh! Out of that, bloody curse to you! Others in vessels, bit of a
handkerchief sail, pitched about like snuff at a wake when the stormy winds do
blow. Married too. Sometimes away for years at the ends of the earth somewhere.
No ends really because it's round. Wife in every port they say. She has a good job
if she minds it till Johnny comes marching home again. If ever he does. Smelling
the tail end of ports. How can they like the sea? Yet they do. The anchor's
weighed. Off he sails with a scapular or a medal on him for luck. Well. And the
tephilim no what's this they call it poor papa's father had on his door to touch.
That brought us out of the land of Egypt and into the house of bondage.
Something in all those superstitions because when you go out never know what
dangers. Hanging on to a plank or astride of a beam for grim life, lifebelt round
him, gulping salt water, and that's the last of his nibs till the sharks catch hold of
him. Do fish ever get seasick?
Then you have a beautiful calm without a cloud, smooth sea, placid, crew and
cargo in smithereens, Davy Jones' locker, moon looking down so peaceful. Not my
fault, old cockalorum.
A last lonely candle wandered up the sky from Mirus bazaar in search of funds
for Mercer's hospital and broke, drooping, and shed a cluster of violet but one
white stars. They floated, fell: they faded. The shepherd's hour: the hour of
folding: hour of tryst. From house to house, giving his everwelcome double knock,
went the nine o'clock postman, the glowworm's lamp at his belt gleaming here and
there through the laurel hedges. And among the five young trees a hoisted
lintstock lit the lamp at Leahy's terrace. By screens of lighted windows, by equal
gardens a shrill voice went crying, wailing: Evening Telegraph, stop press edition!
Result of the Gold Cup race! and from the door of Dignam's house a boy ran out
and called. Twittering the bat flew here, flew there. Far out over the sands the
coming surf crept, grey. Howth settled for slumber, tired of long days, of yumyum
rhododendrons (he was old) and felt gladly the night breeze lift, ruffle his fell of
ferns. He lay but opened a red eye unsleeping, deep and slowly breathing,
slumberous but awake. And far on Kish bank the anchored lightship twinkled,
winked at Mr Bloom.
Life those chaps out there must have, stuck in the same spot. Irish Lights board.
Penance for their sins. Coastguards too. Rocket and breeches buoy and lifeboat.
Day we went out for the pleasure cruise in the Erin's King, throwing them the sack
of old papers. Bears in the zoo. Filthy trip. Drunkards out to shake up their livers.
Puking overboard to feed the herrings. Nausea. And the women, fear of God in
their faces. Milly, no sign of funk. Her blue scarf loose, laughing. Don't know
what death is at that age. And then their stomachs clean. But being lost they fear.
When we hid behind the tree at Crumlin. I didn't want to. Mamma! Mamma!
Babes in the wood. Frightening them with masks too. Throwing them up in the air
to catch them. I'll murder you. Is it only half fun? Or children playing battle.
Whole earnest. How can people aim guns at each other. Sometimes they go off.
Poor kids! Only troubles wildfire and nettlerash. Calomel purge I got her for that.
After getting better asleep with Molly. Very same teeth she has. What do they
love? Another themselves? But the morning she chased her with the umbrella.
Perhaps so as not to hurt. I felt her pulse. Ticking. Little hand it was: now big.
Dearest Papli. All that the hand says when you touch. Loved to count my
waistcoat buttons. Her first stays I remember. Made me laugh to see. Little paps
to begin with. Left one is more sensitive, I think. Mine too. Nearer the heart?
Padding themselves out if fat is in fashion. Her growing pains at night, calling,
wakening me. Frightened she was when her nature came on her first. Poor child!
Strange moment for the mother too. Brings back her girlhood. Gibraltar. Looking
from Buena Vista. O'Hara's tower. The seabirds screaming. Old Barbary ape that
gobbled all his family. Sundown, gunfire for the men to cross the lines. Looking
out over the sea she told me. Evening like this, but clear, no clouds. I always
thought I'd marry a lord or a rich gentleman coming with a private yacht. Buenas
noches, señorita. El hombre ama la muchacha hermosa. Why me? Because you
were so foreign from the others.
Better not stick here all night like a limpet. This weather makes you dull. Must
be getting on for nine by the light. Go home. Too late for Leah, Lily of Killarney.
No. Might be still up. Call to the hospital to see. Hope she's over. Long day I've
had. Martha, the bath, funeral, house of Keyes, museum with those goddesses,
Dedalus' song. Then that bawler in Barney Kiernan's. Got my own back there.
Drunken ranters what I said about his God made him wince. Mistake to hit back.
Or? No. Ought to go home and laugh at themselves. Always want to be swilling in
company. Afraid to be alone like a child of two. Suppose he hit me. Look at it
other way round. Not so bad then. Perhaps not to hurt he meant. Three cheers for
Israel. Three cheers for the sister-in-law he hawked about, three fangs in her
mouth. Same style of beauty. Particularly nice old party for a cup of tea. The
sister of the wife of the wild man of Borneo has just come to town. Imagine that in
the early morning at close range. Everyone to his taste as Morris said when he
kissed the cow. But Dignam's put the boots on it. Houses of mourning so
depressing because you never know. Anyhow she wants the money. Must call to
those Scottish Widows as I promised. Strange name. Takes it for granted we're
going to pop off first. That widow on Monday was it outside Cramer's that looked
at me. Buried the poor husband but progressing favourably on the premium. Her
widow's mite. Well? What do you expect her to do? Must wheedle her way along.
Widower I hate to see. Looks so forlorn. Poor man O'Connor wife and five children
poisoned by mussels here. The sewage. Hopeless. Some good matronly woman in a
porkpie hat to mother him. Take him in tow, platter face and a large apron.
Ladies' grey flannelette bloomers, three shillings a pair, astonishing bargain. Plain
and loved, loved for ever, they say. Ugly: no woman thinks she is. Love, lie and
be handsome for tomorrow we die. See him sometimes walking about trying to
find out who played the trick. U. p: up. Fate that is. He, not me. Also a shop
often noticed. Curse seems to dog it. Dreamt last night? Wait. Something
confused. She had red slippers on. Turkish. Wore the breeches. Suppose she does?
Would I like her in pyjamas? Damned hard to answer. Nannetti's gone. Mailboat.
Near Holyhead by now. Must nail that ad of Keyes's. Work Hynes and Crawford.
Petticoats for Molly. She has something to put in them. What's that? Might be
money.
Mr Bloom stooped and turned over a piece of paper on the strand. He brought it
near his eyes and peered. Letter? No. Can't read. Better go. Better. I'm tired to
move. Page of an old copybook. All those holes and pebbles. Who could count
them? Never know what you find. Bottle with story of a treasure in it, thrown
from a wreck. Parcels post. Children always want to throw things in the sea.
Trust? Bread cast on the waters. What's this? Bit of stick.
O! Exhausted that female has me. Not so young now. Will she come here
tomorrow? Wait for her somewhere for ever. Must come back. Murderers do. Will
I?
 Mr Bloom with his stick gently vexed the thick sand at his foot. Write a message
for her. Might remain. What?
I.
Some flatfoot tramp on it in the morning. Useless. Washed away. Tide comes
here. Saw a pool near her foot. Bend, see my face there, dark mirror, breathe on
it, stirs. All these rocks with lines and scars and letters. O, those transparent!
Besides they don't know. What is the meaning of that other world. I called you
naughty boy because I do not like.
AM. A.
No room. Let it go.
Mr Bloom effaced the letters with his slow boot. Hopeless thing sand. Nothing
grows in it. All fades. No fear of big vessels coming up here. Except Guinness's
barges. Round the Kish in eighty days. Done half by design.
He flung his wooden pen away. The stick fell in silted sand, stuck. Now if you
were trying to do that for a week on end you couldn't. Chance. We'll never meet
again. But it was lovely. Goodbye, dear. Thanks. Made me feel so young.
Short snooze now if I had. Must be near nine. Liverpool boat long gone.. Not
even the smoke. And she can do the other. Did too. And Belfast. I won't go. Race
there, race back to Ennis. Let him. Just close my eyes a moment. Won't sleep,
though. Half dream. It never comes the same. Bat again. No harm in him. Just a
few.
O sweety all your little girlwhite up I saw dirty bracegirdle made me do love
sticky we two naughty Grace darling she him half past the bed met him pike hoses
frillies for Raoul de perfume your wife black hair heave under embon señorita
young eyes Mulvey plump bubs me breadvan Winkle red slippers she rusty sleep
wander years of dreams return tail end Agendath swoony lovey showed me her
next year in drawers return next in her next her next.
A bat flew. Here. There. Here. Far in the grey a bell chimed. Mr Bloom with
open mouth, his left boot sanded sideways, leaned, breathed. Just for a few

Cuckoo
Cuckoo
Cuckoo.
The clock on the mantelpiece in the priest's house cooed where Canon O'Hanlon
and Father Conroy and the reverend John Hughes S. J. were taking tea and
sodabread and butter and fried mutton chops with catsup and talking about

Cuckoo
Cuckoo
Cuckoo.
 Because it was a little canarybird that came out of its little house to tell the time
that Gerty MacDowell noticed the time she was there because she was as quick as
anything about a thing like that, was Gerty MacDowell, and she noticed at once
that that foreign gentleman that was sitting on the rocks looking was

Cuckoo
Cuckoo
Cuckoo.
Deshil Holles Eamus. Deshil Holles Eamus. Deshil Holles Eamus.
Send us bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit. Send us
bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit. Send us bright one,
light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit.
Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa! Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa! Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa!
Universally that person's acumen is esteemed very little perceptive concerning
whatsoever matters are being held as most profitably by mortals with sapience
endowed to be studied who is ignorant of that which the most in doctrine erudite
and certainly by reason of that in them high mind's ornament deserving of
veneration constantly maintain when by general consent they affirm that other
circumstances being equal by no exterior splendour is the prosperity of a nation
more efficaciously asserted than by the measure of how far forward may have
progressed the tribute of its solicitude for that proliferent continuance which of
evils the original if it be absent when fortunately present constitutes the certain
sign of omnipotent nature's incorrupted benefaction. For who is there who
anything of some significance has apprehended but is conscious that that exterior
splendour may be the surface of a downwardtending lutulent reality or on the
contrary anyone so is there unilluminated as not to perceive that as no nature's
boon can contend against the bounty of increase so it behoves every most just
citizen to become the exhortator and admonisher of his semblables and to tremble
lest what had in the past been by the nation excellently commenced might be in
the future not with similar excellence accomplished if an inverecund habit shall
have gradually traduced the honourable by ancestors transmitted customs to that
thither of profundity that that one was audacious excessively who would have the
hardihood to rise affirming that no more odious offence can for anyone be than to
oblivious neglect to consign that evangel simultaneously command and promise
which on all mortals with prophecy of abundance or with diminution's menace
that exalted of reiteratedly procreating function ever irrevocably enjoined?
It is not why therefore we shall wonder if, as the best historians relate, among
the Celts, who nothing that was not in its nature admirable admired, the art of
medicine shall have been highly honoured. Not to speak of hostels, leperyards,
sweating chambers, plaguegraves, their greatest doctors, the O'Shiels, the
O'Hickeys, the O'Lees, have sedulously set down the divers methods by which the
sick and the relapsed found again health whether the malady had been the
trembling withering or loose boyconnell flux. Certainly in every public work which
in it anything of gravity contains preparation should be with importance
commensurate and therefore a plan was by them adopted (whether by having
preconsidered or as the maturation of experience it is difficult in being said which
the discrepant opinions of subsequent inquirers are not up to the present
congrued to render manifest) whereby maternity was so far from all accident
possibility removed that whatever care the patient in that all hardest of woman
hour chiefly required and not solely for the copiously opulent but also for her who
not being sufficiently moneyed scarcely and often not even scarcely could subsist
valiantly and for an inconsiderable emolument was provided.
To her nothing already then and thenceforward was anyway able to be molestful
for this chiefly felt all citizens except with proliferent mothers prosperity at all not
to can be and as they had received eternity gods mortals generation to befit them
her beholding, when the case was so hoving itself, parturient in vehicle thereward
carrying desire immense among all one another was impelling on of her to be
received into that domicile. O thing of prudent nation not merely in being seen
but also even in being related worthy of being praised that they her by
anticipation went seeing mother, that she by them suddenly to be about to be
cherished had been begun she felt!
Before born bliss babe had. Within womb won he worship. Whatever in that one
case done commodiously done was. A couch by midwives attended with
wholesome food reposeful, cleanest swaddles as though forthbringing were now
done and by wise foresight set: but to this no less of what drugs there is need and
surgical implements which are pertaining to her case not omitting aspect of all
very distracting spectacles in various latitudes by our terrestrial orb offered
together with images, divine and human, the cogitation of which by sejunct
females is to tumescence conducive or eases issue in the high sunbright wellbuilt
fair home of mothers when, ostensibly far gone and reproductitive, it is come by
her thereto to lie in, her term up.
Some man that wayfaring was stood by housedoor at night's oncoming. Of
Israel's folk was that man that on earth wandering far had fared. Stark ruth of
man his errand that him lone led till that house.
Of that house A. Horne is lord. Seventy beds keeps he there teeming mothers
are wont that they lie for to thole and bring forth bairns hale so God's angel to
Mary quoth. Watchers tway there walk, white sisters in ward sleepless. Smarts
they still, sickness soothing: in twelve moons thrice an hundred. Truest bedthanes
they twain are, for Horne holding wariest ward.
In ward wary the watcher hearing come that man mildhearted eft rising with
swire ywimpled to him her gate wide undid. Lo, levin leaping lightens in eyeblink
Ireland's westward welkin. Full she drad that God the Wreaker all mankind would
fordo with water for his evil sins. Christ's rood made she on breastbone and him
drew that he would rathe infare under her thatch. That man her will wotting
worthful went in Horne's house.
 Loth to irk in Horne's hall hat holding the seeker stood. On her stow he ere was
living with dear wife and lovesome daughter that then over land and seafloor nine
years had long outwandered. Once her in townhithe meeting he to her bow had
not doffed. Her to forgive now he craved with good ground of her allowed that
that of him swiftseen face, hers, so young then had looked. Light swift her eyes
kindled, bloom of blushes his word winning.
As her eyes then ongot his weeds swart therefor sorrow she feared. Glad after
she was that ere adread was. Her he asked if O'Hare Doctor tidings sent from far
coast and she with grameful sigh him answered that O'Hare Doctor in heaven was.
Sad was the man that word to hear that him so heavied in bowels ruthful. All she
there told him, ruing death for friend so young, algate sore unwilling God's
rightwiseness to withsay. She said that he had a fair sweet death through God His
goodness with masspriest to be shriven, holy housel and sick men's oil to his
limbs. The man then right earnest asked the nun of which death the dead man
was died and the nun answered him and said that he was died in Mona Island
through bellycrab three year agone come Childermas and she prayed to God the
Allruthful to have his dear soul in his undeathliness. He heard her sad words, in
held hat sad staring. So stood they there both awhile in wanhope sorrowing one
with other.
Therefore, everyman, look to that last end that is thy death and the dust that
gripeth on every man that is born of woman for as he came naked forth from his
mother's womb so naked shall he wend him at the last for to go as he came.
The man that was come in to the house then spoke to the nursingwoman and he
asked her how it fared with the woman that lay there in childbed. The
nursingwoman answered him and said that that woman was in throes now full
three days and that it would be a hard birth unneth to bear but that now in a little
it would be. She said thereto that she had seen many births of women but never
was none so hard as was that woman's birth. Then she set it all forth to him for
because she knew the man that time was had lived nigh that house. The man
hearkened to her words for he felt with wonder women's woe in the travail that
they have of motherhood and he wondered to look on her face that was a fair face
for any man to see but yet was she left after long years a handmaid. Nine twelve
bloodflows chiding her childless.
And whiles they spake the door of the castle was opened and there nighed them
a mickle noise as of many that sat there at meat. And there came against the place
as they stood a young learningknight yclept Dixon. And the traveller Leopold was
couth to him sithen it had happed that they had had ado each with other in the
house of misericord where this learningknight lay by cause the traveller Leopold
came there to be healed for he was sore wounded in his breast by a spear
wherewith a horrible and dreadful dragon was smitten him for which he did do
make a salve of volatile salt and chrism as much as he might suffice. And he said
now that he should go in to that castle for to make merry with them that were
there. And the traveller Leopold said that he should go otherwhither for he was a
man of cautels and a subtile. Also the lady was of his avis and repreved the
learningknight though she trowed well that the traveller had said thing that was
false for his subtility. But the learningknight would not hear say nay nor do her
mandement ne have him in aught contrarious to his list and he said how it was a
marvellous castle. And the traveller Leopold went into the castle for to rest him
for a space being sore of limb after many marches environing in divers lands and
sometime venery.
And in the castle was set a board that was of the birchwood of Finlandy and it
was upheld by four dwarfmen of that country but they durst not move more for
enchantment. And on this board were frightful swords and knives that are made
in a great cavern by swinking demons out of white flames that they fix then in the
horns of buffalos and stags that there abound marvellously. And there were
vessels that are wrought by magic of Mahound out of seasand and the air by a
warlock with his breath that he blases in to them like to bubbles. And full fair
cheer and rich was on the board that no wight could devise a fuller ne richer. And
there was a vat of silver that was moved by craft to open in the which lay strange
fishes withouten heads though misbelieving men nie that this be possible thing
without they see it natheless they are so. And these fishes lie in an oily water
brought there from Portugal land because of the fatness that therein is like to the
juices of the olivepress. And also it was a marvel to see in that castle how by
magic they make a compost out of fecund wheatkidneys out of Chaldee that by aid
of certain angry spirits that they do in to it swells up wondrously like to a vast
mountain. And they teach the serpents there to entwine themselves up on long
sticks out of the ground and of the scales of these serpents they brew out a
brewage like to mead.
And the learning knight let pour for childe Leopold a draught and halp thereto
the while all they that were there drank every each. And childe Leopold did up his
beaver for to pleasure him and took apertly somewhat in amity for he never drank
no manner of mead which he then put by and anon full privily he voided the more
part in his neighbour glass and his neighbour nist not of this wile. And he sat
down in that castle with them for to rest him there awhile. Thanked be Almighty
God.
This meanwhile this good sister stood by the door and begged them at the
reverence of Jesu our alther liege Lord to leave their wassailing for there was
above one quick with child, a gentle dame, whose time hied fast. Sir Leopold
heard on the upfloor cry on high and he wondered what cry that it was whether of
child or woman and I marvel, said he, that it be not come or now. Meseems it
dureth overlong. And he was ware and saw a franklin that hight Lenehan on that
side the table that was older than any of the tother and for that they both were
knights virtuous in the one emprise and eke by cause that he was elder he spoke
to him full gently. But, said he, or it be long too she will bring forth by God His
bounty and have joy of her childing for she hath waited marvellous long. And the
franklin that had drunken said, Expecting each moment to be her next. Also he
took the cup that stood tofore him for him needed never none asking nor desiring
of him to drink and, Now drink, said he, fully delectably, and he quaffed as far as
he might to their both's health for he was a passing good man of his lustiness. And
sir Leopold that was the goodliest guest that ever sat in scholars' hall and that was
the meekest man and the kindest that ever laid husbandly hand under hen and
that was the very truest knight of the world one that ever did minion service to
lady gentle pledged him courtly in the cup. Woman's woe with wonder pondering.
Now let us speak of that fellowship that was there to the intent to be drunken
an they might. There was a sort of scholars along either side the board, that is to
wit, Dixon yclept junior of saint Mary Merciable's with other his fellows Lynch
and Madden, scholars of medicine, and the franklin that hight Lenehan and one
from Alba Longa, one Crotthers, and young Stephen that had mien of a frere that
was at head of the board and Costello that men clepen Punch Costello all long of a
mastery of him erewhile gested (and of all them, reserved young Stephen, he was
the most drunken that demanded still of more mead) and beside the meek sir
Leopold. But on young Malachi they waited for that he promised to have come
and such as intended to no goodness said how he had broke his avow. And sir
Leopold sat with them for he bore fast friendship to sir Simon and to this his son
young Stephen and for that his languor becalmed him there after longest
wanderings insomuch as they feasted him for that time in the honourablest
manner. Ruth red him, love led on with will to wander, loth to leave.
For they were right witty scholars. And he heard their aresouns each gen other
as touching birth and righteousness, young Madden maintaining that put such
case it were hard the wife to die (for so it had fallen out a matter of some year
agone with a woman of Eblana in Horne's house that now was trespassed out of
this world and the self night next before her death all leeches and pothecaries had
taken counsel of her case). And they said farther she should live because in the
beginning, they said, the woman should bring forth in pain and wherefore they
that were of this imagination affirmed how young Madden had said truth for he
had conscience to let her die. And not few and of these was young Lynch were in
doubt that the world was now right evil governed as it was never other howbeit
the mean people believed it otherwise but the law nor his judges did provide no
remedy. A redress God grant. This was scant said but all cried with one acclaim
nay, by our Virgin Mother, the wife should live and the babe to die. In colour
whereof they waxed hot upon that head what with argument and what for their
drinking but the franklin Lenehan was prompt each when to pour them ale so that
at the least way mirth might not lack. Then young Madden showed all the whole
affair and said how that she was dead and how for holy religion sake by rede of
palmer and bedesman and for a vow he had made to Saint Ultan of Arbraccan her
goodman husband would not let her death whereby they were all wondrous
grieved. To whom young Stephen had these words following: Murmur, sirs, is eke
oft among lay folk. Both babe and parent now glorify their Maker, the one in
limbo gloom, the other in purgefire. But, gramercy, what of those Godpossibled
souls that we nightly impossibilise, which is the sin against the Holy Ghost, Very
God, Lord and Giver of Life? For, sirs, he said, our lust is brief. We are means to
those small creatures within us and nature has other ends than we. Then said
Dixon junior to Punch Costello wist he what ends. But he had overmuch drunken
and the best word he could have of him was that he would ever dishonest a
woman whoso she were or wife or maid or leman if it so fortuned him to be
delivered of his spleen of lustihead. Whereat Crotthers of Alba Longa sang young
Malachi's praise of that beast the unicorn how once in the millennium he cometh
by his horn, the other all this while, pricked forward with their jibes wherewith
they did malice him, witnessing all and several by saint Foutinus his engines that
he was able to do any manner of thing that lay in man to do. Thereat laughed they
all right jocundly only young Stephen and sir Leopold which never durst laugh too
open by reason of a strange humour which he would not bewray and also for that
he rued for her that bare whoso she might be or wheresoever. Then spake young
Stephen orgulous of mother Church that would cast him out of her bosom, of law
of canons, of Lilith, patron of abortions, of bigness wrought by wind of seeds of
brightness or by potency of vampires mouth to mouth or, as Virgilius saith, by the
influence of the occident or by the reek of moonflower or an she lie with a woman
which her man has but lain with, effectu secuto, or peradventure in her bath
according to the opinions of Averroes and Moses Maimonides. He said also how at
the end of the second month a human soul was infused and how in all our holy
mother foldeth ever souls for God's greater glory whereas that earthly mother
which was but a dam to bear beastly should die by canon for so saith he that
holdeth the fisherman's seal, even that blessed Peter on which rock was holy
church for all ages founded. All they bachelors then asked of sir Leopold would he
in like case so jeopard her person as risk life to save life. A wariness of mind he
would answer as fitted all and, laying hand to jaw, he said dissembling, as his
wont was, that as it was informed him, who had ever loved the art of physic as
might a layman, and agreeing also with his experience of so seldomseen an
accident it was good for that mother Church belike at one blow had birth and
death pence and in such sort deliverly he scaped their questions. That is truth,
pardy, said Dixon, and, or I err, a pregnant word. Which hearing young Stephen
was a marvellous glad man and he averred that he who stealeth from the poor
lendeth to the Lord for he was of a wild manner when he was drunken and that he
was now in that taking it appeared eftsoons.
But sir Leopold was passing grave maugre his word by cause he still had pity of
the terrorcausing shrieking of shrill women in their labour and as he was minded
of his good lady Marion that had borne him an only manchild which on his
eleventh day on live had died and no man of art could save so dark is destiny.
And she was wondrous stricken of heart for that evil hap and for his burial did
him on a fair corselet of lamb's wool, the flower of the flock, lest he might perish
utterly and lie akeled (for it was then about the midst of the winter) and now Sir
Leopold that had of his body no manchild for an heir looked upon him his friend's
son and was shut up in sorrow for his forepassed happiness and as sad as he was
that him failed a son of such gentle courage (for all accounted him of real parts) so
grieved he also in no less measure for young Stephen for that he lived riotously
with those wastrels and murdered his goods with whores.
About that present time young Stephen filled all cups that stood empty so as
there remained but little mo if the prudenter had not shadowed their approach
from him that still plied it very busily who, praying for the intentions of the
sovereign pontiff, he gave them for a pledge the vicar of Christ which also as he
said is vicar of Bray. Now drink we, quod he, of this mazer and quaff ye this mead
which is not indeed parcel of my body but my soul's bodiment. Leave ye fraction
of bread to them that live by bread alone. Be not afeard neither for any want for
this will comfort more than the other will dismay. See ye here. And he showed
them glistering coins of the tribute and goldsmith notes the worth of two pound
nineteen shilling that he had, he said, for a song which he writ. They all admired
to see the foresaid riches in such dearth of money as was herebefore. His words
were then these as followeth: Know all men, he said, time's ruins build eternity's
mansions. What means this? Desire's wind blasts the thorntree but after it
becomes from a bramblebush to be a rose upon the rood of time. Mark me now.
In woman's womb word is made flesh but in the spirit of the maker all flesh that
passes becomes the word that shall not pass away. This is the postcreation. Omnis
caro ad te veniet. No question but her name is puissant who aventried the dear
corse of our Agenbuyer, Healer and Herd, our mighty mother and mother most
venerable and Bernardus saith aptly that She hath an omnipotentiam deiparae
supplicem, that is to wit, an almightiness of petition because she is the second Eve
and she won us, saith Augustine too, whereas that other, our grandam, which we
are linked up with by successive anastomosis of navelcords sold us all, seed, breed
and generation, for a penny pippin. But here is the matter now. Or she knew him,
that second I say, and was but creature of her creature, vergine madre, figlia di tuo
figlio, or she knew him not and then stands she in the one denial or ignorancy
with Peter Piscator who lives in the house that Jack built and with Joseph the
joiner patron of the happy demise of all unhappy marriages, parceque M. Léo Taxil
nous a dit que qui l'avait mise dans cette fichue position c'était le sacre pigeon,
ventre de Dieu! Entweder transubstantiality ODER consubstantiality but in no case
subsubstantiality. And all cried out upon it for a very scurvy word. A pregnancy
without joy, he said, a birth without pangs, a body without blemish, a belly
without bigness. Let the lewd with faith and fervour worship. With will will we
withstand, withsay.
Hereupon Punch Costello dinged with his fist upon the board and would sing a
bawdy catch Staboo Stabella about a wench that was put in pod of a jolly
swashbuckler in Almany which he did straightways now attack: The first three
months she was not well, Staboo, when here nurse Quigley from the door angerly
bid them hist ye should shame you nor was it not meet as she remembered them
being her mind was to have all orderly against lord Andrew came for because she
was jealous that no gasteful turmoil might shorten the honour of her guard. It was
an ancient and a sad matron of a sedate look and christian walking, in habit dun
beseeming her megrims and wrinkled visage, nor did her hortative want of it effect
for incontinently Punch Costello was of them all embraided and they reclaimed the
churl with civil rudeness some and shaked him with menace of blandishments
others whiles they all chode with him, a murrain seize the dolt, what a devil he
would be at, thou chuff, thou puny, thou got in peasestraw, thou losel, thou
chitterling, thou spawn of a rebel, thou dykedropt, thou abortion thou, to shut up
his drunken drool out of that like a curse of God ape, the good sir Leopold that
had for his cognisance the flower of quiet, margerain gentle, advising also the
time's occasion as most sacred and most worthy to be most sacred. In Horne's
house rest should reign.
 To be short this passage was scarce by when Master Dixon of Mary in Eccles,
goodly grinning, asked young Stephen what was the reason why he had not cided
to take friar's vows and he answered him obedience in the womb, chastity in the
tomb but involuntary poverty all his days. Master Lenehan at this made return
that he had heard of those nefarious deeds and how, as he heard hereof counted,
he had besmirched the lily virtue of a confiding female which was corruption of
minors and they all intershowed it too, waxing merry and toasting to his
fathership. But he said very entirely it was clean contrary to their suppose for he
was the eternal son and ever virgin. Thereat mirth grew in them the more and
they rehearsed to him his curious rite of wedlock for the disrobing and
deflowering of spouses, as the priests use in Madagascar island, she to be in guise
of white and saffron, her groom in white and grain, with burning of nard and
tapers, on a bridebed while clerks sung kyries and the anthem Ut novetur sexus
omnis corporis mysterium till she was there unmaided. He gave them then a much
admirable hymen minim by those delicate poets Master John Fletcher and Master
Francis Beaumont that is in their Maid's Tragedy that was writ for a like twining
of lovers: To bed, to bed was the burden of it to be played with accompanable
concent upon the virginals. An exquisite dulcet epithalame of most mollificative
suadency for juveniles amatory whom the odoriferous flambeaus of the
paranymphs have escorted to the quadrupedal proscenium of connubial
communion. Well met they were, said Master Dixon, joyed, but, harkee, young sir,
better were they named Beau Mount and Lecher for, by my troth, of such a
mingling much might come. Young Stephen said indeed to his best remembrance
they had but the one doxy between them and she of the stews to make shift with
in delights amorous for life ran very high in those days and the custom of the
country approved with it. Greater love than this, he said, no man hath that a man
lay down his wife for his friend. Go thou and do likewise. Thus, or words to that
effect, saith Zarathustra, sometime regius professor of French letters to the
university of Oxtail nor breathed there ever that man to whom mankind was more
beholden. Bring a stranger within thy tower it will go hard but thou wilt have the
secondbest bed. Orate, fratres, pro memetipso. And all the people shall say, Amen.
Remember, Erin, thy generations and thy days of old, how thou settedst little by
me and by my word and broughtedst in a stranger to my gates to commit
fornication in my sight and to wax fat and kick like Jeshurum. Therefore hast thou
sinned against my light and hast made me, thy lord, to be the slave of servants.
Return, return, Clan Milly: forget me not, O Milesian. Why hast thou done this
abomination before me that thou didst spurn me for a merchant of jalaps and
didst deny me to the Roman and to the Indian of dark speech with whom thy
daughters did lie luxuriously? Look forth now, my people, upon the land of
behest, even from Horeb and from Nebo and from Pisgah and from the Horns of
Hatten unto a land flowing with milk and money. But thou hast suckled me with a
bitter milk: my moon and my sun thou hast quenched for ever. And thou hast left
me alone for ever in the dark ways of my bitterness: and with a kiss of ashes hast
thou kissed my mouth. This tenebrosity of the interior, he proceeded to say, hath
not been illumined by the wit of the septuagint nor so much as mentioned for the
Orient from on high Which brake hell's gates visited a darkness that was
foraneous. Assuefaction minorates atrocities (as Tully saith of his darling Stoics)
and Hamlet his father showeth the prince no blister of combustion. The adiaphane
in the noon of life is an Egypt's plague which in the nights of prenativity and
postmortemity is their most proper ubi and quomodo. And as the ends and
ultimates of all things accord in some mean and measure with their inceptions and
originals, that same multiplicit concordance which leads forth growth from birth
accomplishing by a retrogressive metamorphosis that minishing and ablation
towards the final which is agreeable unto nature so is it with our subsolar being.
The aged sisters draw us into life: we wail, batten, sport, clip, clasp, sunder,
dwindle, die: over us dead they bend. First, saved from waters of old Nile, among
bulrushes, a bed of fasciated wattles: at last the cavity of a mountain, an occulted
sepulchre amid the conclamation of the hillcat and the ossifrage. And as no man
knows the ubicity of his tumulus nor to what processes we shall thereby be
ushered nor whether to Tophet or to Edenville in the like way is all hidden when
we would backward see from what region of remoteness the whatness of our
whoness hath fetched his whenceness.
Thereto Punch Costello roared out mainly Etienne chanson but he loudly bid
them, lo, wisdom hath built herself a house, this vast majestic longstablished
vault, the crystal palace of the Creator, all in applepie order, a penny for him who
finds the pea.

Behold the mansion reared by dedal Jack

See the malt stored in many a refluent sack,
In the proud cirque of Jackjohn's bivouac.
A black crack of noise in the street here, alack, bawled back. Loud on left Thor
thundered: in anger awful the hammerhurler. Came now the storm that hist his
heart. And Master Lynch bade him have a care to flout and witwanton as the god
self was angered for his hellprate and paganry. And he that had erst challenged to
be so doughty waxed wan as they might all mark and shrank together and his
pitch that was before so haught uplift was now of a sudden quite plucked down
and his heart shook within the cage of his breast as he tasted the rumour of that
storm. Then did some mock and some jeer and Punch Costello fell hard again to
his yale which Master Lenehan vowed he would do after and he was indeed but a
word and a blow on any the least colour. But the braggart boaster cried that an
old Nobodaddy was in his cups it was muchwhat indifferent and he would not lag
behind his lead. But this was only to dye his desperation as cowed he crouched in
Horne's hall. He drank indeed at one draught to pluck up a heart of any grace for
it thundered long rumblingly over all the heavens so that Master Madden, being
godly certain whiles, knocked him on his ribs upon that crack of doom and Master
Bloom, at the braggart's side, spoke to him calming words to slumber his great
fear, advertising how it was no other thing but a hubbub noise that he heard, the
discharge of fluid from the thunderhead, look you, having taken place, and all of
the order of a natural phenomenon.
But was young Boasthard's fear vanquished by Calmer's words? No, for he had
in his bosom a spike named Bitterness which could not by words be done away.
And was he then neither calm like the one nor godly like the other? He was
neither as much as he would have liked to be either. But could he not have
endeavoured to have found again as in his youth the bottle Holiness that then he
lived withal? Indeed no for Grace was not there to find that bottle. Heard he then
in that clap the voice of the god Bringforth or, what Calmer said, a hubbub of
Phenomenon? Heard? Why, he could not but hear unless he had plugged him up
the tube Understanding (which he had not done). For through that tube he saw
that he was in the land of Phenomenon where he must for a certain one day die as
he was like the rest too a passing show. And would he not accept to die like the
rest and pass away? By no means would he though he must nor would he make
more shows according as men do with wives which Phenomenon has commanded
them to do by the book Law. Then wotted he nought of that other land which is
called Believe-on-Me, that is the land of promise which behoves to the king
Delightful and shall be for ever where there is no death and no birth neither
wiving nor mothering at which all shall come as many as believe on it? Yes, Pious
had told him of that land and Chaste had pointed him to the way but the reason
was that in the way he fell in with a certain whore of an eyepleasing exterior
whose name, she said, is Bird-in-the-Hand and she beguiled him wrongways from
the true path by her flatteries that she said to him as, Ho, you pretty man, turn
aside hither and I will show you a brave place, and she lay at him so flatteringly
that she had him in her grot which is named Two-in-the-Bush or, by some learned,
Carnal Concupiscence.
This was it what all that company that sat there at commons in Manse of
Mothers the most lusted after and if they met with this whore Bird-in-the-Hand
(which was within all foul plagues, monsters and a wicked devil) they would strain
the last but they would make at her and know her. For regarding Believe-on-Me
they said it was nought else but notion and they could conceive no thought of it
for, first, Two-in-the-Bush whither she ticed them was the very goodliest grot and
in it were four pillows on which were four tickets with these words printed on
them, Pickaback and Topsyturvy and Shameface and Cheek by Jowl and, second,
for that foul plague Allpox and the monsters they cared not for them for
Preservative had given them a stout shield of oxengut and, third, that they might
take no hurt neither from Offspring that was that wicked devil by virtue of this
same shield which was named Killchild. So were they all in their blind fancy, Mr
Cavil and Mr Sometimes Godly, Mr Ape Swillale, Mr False Franklin, Mr Dainty
Dixon, Young Boasthard and Mr Cautious Calmer. Wherein, O wretched company,
were ye all deceived for that was the voice of the god that was in a very grievous
rage that he would presently lift his arm up and spill their souls for their abuses
and their spillings done by them contrariwise to his word which forth to bring
brenningly biddeth.
So Thursday sixteenth June Patk. Dignam laid in clay of an apoplexy and after
hard drought, please God, rained, a bargeman coming in by water a fifty mile or
thereabout with turf saying the seed won't sprout, fields athirst, very sadcoloured
and stunk mightily, the quags and tofts too. Hard to breathe and all the young
quicks clean consumed without sprinkle this long while back as no man
remembered to be without. The rosy buds all gone brown and spread out blobs
and on the hills nought but dry flag and faggots that would catch at first fire. All
the world saying, for aught they knew, the big wind of last February a year that
did havoc the land so pitifully a small thing beside this barrenness. But by and by,
as said, this evening after sundown, the wind sitting in the west, biggish swollen
clouds to be seen as the night increased and the weatherwise poring up at them
and some sheet lightnings at first and after, past ten of the clock, one great stroke
with a long thunder and in a brace of shakes all scamper pellmell within door for
the smoking shower, the men making shelter for their straws with a clout or
kerchief, womenfolk skipping off with kirtles catched up soon as the pour came.
In Ely place, Baggot street, Duke's lawn, thence through Merrion green up to
Holles street a swash of water flowing that was before bonedry and not one chair
or coach or fiacre seen about but no more crack after that first. Over against the
Rt. Hon. Mr Justice Fitzgibbon's door (that is to sit with Mr Healy the lawyer upon
the college lands) Mal. Mulligan a gentleman's gentleman that had but come from
Mr Moore's the writer's (that was a papish but is now, folk say, a good Williamite)
chanced against Alec. Bannon in a cut bob (which are now in with dance cloaks of
Kendal green) that was new got to town from Mullingar with the stage where his
coz and Mal M's brother will stay a month yet till Saint Swithin and asks what in
the earth he does there, he bound home and he to Andrew Horne's being stayed
for to crush a cup of wine, so he said, but would tell him of a skittish heifer, big
of her age and beef to the heel, and all this while poured with rain and so both
together on to Horne's. There Leop. Bloom of Crawford's journal sitting snug with
a covey of wags, likely brangling fellows, Dixon jun., scholar of my lady of
Mercy's, Vin. Lynch, a Scots fellow, Will. Madden, T. Lenehan, very sad about a
racer he fancied and Stephen D. Leop. Bloom there for a languor he had but was
now better, be having dreamed tonight a strange fancy of his dame Mrs Moll with
red slippers on in a pair of Turkey trunks which is thought by those in ken to be
for a change and Mistress Purefoy there, that got in through pleading her belly,
and now on the stools, poor body, two days past her term, the midwives sore put
to it and can't deliver, she queasy for a bowl of riceslop that is a shrewd drier up
of the insides and her breath very heavy more than good and should be a bullyboy
from the knocks, they say, but God give her soon issue. 'Tis her ninth chick to
live, I hear, and Lady day bit off her last chick's nails that was then a
twelvemonth and with other three all breastfed that died written out in a fair hand
in the king's bible. Her hub fifty odd and a methodist but takes the sacrament and
is to be seen any fair sabbath with a pair of his boys off Bullock harbour dapping
on the sound with a heavybraked reel or in a punt he has trailing for flounder and
pollock and catches a fine bag, I hear. In sum an infinite great fall of rain and all
refreshed and will much increase the harvest yet those in ken say after wind and
water fire shall come for a prognostication of Malachi's almanac (and I hear that
Mr Russell has done a prophetical charm of the same gist out of the Hindustanish
for his farmer's gazette) to have three things in all but this a mere fetch without
bottom of reason for old crones and bairns yet sometimes they are found in the
right guess with their queerities no telling how.
With this came up Lenehan to the feet of the table to say how the letter was in
that night's gazette and he made a show to find it about him (for he swore with an
oath that he had been at pains about it) but on Stephen's persuasion he gave over
the search and was bidden to sit near by which he did mighty brisk. He was a
kind of sport gentleman that went for a merryandrew or honest pickle and what
belonged of women, horseflesh or hot scandal he had it pat. To tell the truth he
was mean in fortunes and for the most part hankered about the coffeehouses and
low taverns with crimps, ostlers, bookies, Paul's men, runners, flatcaps,
waistcoateers, ladies of the bagnio and other rogues of the game or with a
chanceable catchpole or a tipstaff often at nights till broad day of whom he picked
up between his sackpossets much loose gossip. He took his ordinary at a
boilingcook's and if he had but gotten into him a mess of broken victuals or a
platter of tripes with a bare tester in his purse he could always bring himself off
with his tongue, some randy quip he had from a punk or whatnot that every
mother's son of them would burst their sides. The other, Costello that is, hearing
this talk asked was it poetry or a tale. Faith, no, he says, Frank (that was his
name), 'tis all about Kerry cows that are to be butchered along of the plague. But
they can go hang, says he with a wink, for me with their bully beef, a pox on it.
There's as good fish in this tin as ever came out of it and very friendly he offered
to take of some salty sprats that stood by which he had eyed wishly in the
meantime and found the place which was indeed the chief design of his embassy
as he was sharpset. Mort aux vaches, says Frank then in the French language that
had been indentured to a brandyshipper that has a winelodge in Bordeaux and he
spoke French like a gentleman too. From a child this Frank had been a donought
that his father, a headborough, who could ill keep him to school to learn his
letters and the use of the globes, matriculated at the university to study the
mechanics but he took the bit between his teeth like a raw colt and was more
familiar with the justiciary and the parish beadle than with his volumes. One time
he would be a playactor, then a sutler or a welsher, then nought would keep him
from the bearpit and the cocking main, then he was for the ocean sea or to hoof it
on the roads with the romany folk, kidnapping a squire's heir by favour of
moonlight or fecking maids' linen or choking chicken behind a hedge. He had been
off as many times as a cat has lives and back again with naked pockets as many
more to his father the headborough who shed a pint of tears as often as he saw
him. What, says Mr Leopold with his hands across, that was earnest to know the
drift of it, will they slaughter all? I protest I saw them but this day morning going
to the Liverpool boats, says he. I can scarce believe 'tis so bad, says he. And he
had experience of the like brood beasts and of springers, greasy hoggets and
wether wool, having been some years before actuary for Mr Joseph Cuffe, a
worthy salesmaster that drove his trade for live stock and meadow auctions hard
by Mr Gavin Low's yard in Prussia street. I question with you there, says he. More
like 'tis the hoose or the timber tongue. Mr Stephen, a little moved but very
handsomely told him no such matter and that he had dispatches from the
emperor's chief tailtickler thanking him for the hospitality, that was sending over
Doctor Rinderpest, the bestquoted cowcatcher in all Muscovy, with a bolus or two
of physic to take the bull by the horns. Come, come, says Mr Vincent, plain
dealing. He'll find himself on the horns of a dilemma if he meddles with a bull
that's Irish, says he. Irish by name and irish by nature, says Mr Stephen, and he
sent the ale purling about, an Irish bull in an English chinashop. I conceive you,
says Mr Dixon. It is that same bull that was sent to our island by farmer Nicholas,
the bravest cattlebreeder of them all, with an emerald ring in his nose. True for
you, says Mr Vincent cross the table, and a bullseye into the bargain, says he, and
a plumper and a portlier bull, says he, never shit on shamrock. He had horns
galore, a coat of cloth of gold and a sweet smoky breath coming out of his nostrils
so that the women of our island, leaving doughballs and rollingpins, followed after
him hanging his bulliness in daisychains. What for that, says Mr Dixon, but before
he came over farmer Nicholas that was a eunuch had him properly gelded by a
college of doctors who were no better off than himself. So be off now, says he,
and do all my cousin german the lord Harry tells you and take a farmer's blessing,
and with that he slapped his posteriors very soundly. But the slap and the blessing
stood him friend, says Mr Vincent, for to make up he taught him a trick worth
two of the other so that maid, wife, abbess and widow to this day affirm that they
would rather any time of the month whisper in his ear in the dark of a cowhouse
or get a lick on the nape from his long holy tongue than lie with the finest
strapping young ravisher in the four fields of all Ireland. Another then put in his
word: And they dressed him, says he, in a point shift and petticoat with a tippet
and girdle and ruffles on his wrists and clipped his forelock and rubbed him all
over with spermacetic oil and built stables for him at every turn of the road with a
gold manger in each full of the best hay in the market so that he could doss and
dung to his heart's content. By this time the father of the faithful (for so they
called him) was grown so heavy that he could scarce walk to pasture. To remedy
which our cozening dames and damsels brought him his fodder in their apronlaps
and as soon as his belly was full he would rear up on his hind uarters to show
their ladyships a mystery and roar and bellow out of him in bulls' language and
they all after him. Ay, says another, and so pampered was he that he would suffer
nought to grow in all the land but green grass for himself (for that was the only
colour to his mind) and there was a board put up on a hillock in the middle of the
island with a printed notice, saying: By the Lord Harry, Green is the grass that
grows on the ground. And, says Mr Dixon, if ever he got scent of a cattleraider in
Roscommon or the wilds of Connemara or a husbandman in Sligo that was sowing
as much as a handful of mustard or a bag of rapeseed out he'd run amok over half
the countryside rooting up with his horns whatever was planted and all by lord
Harry's orders. There was bad blood between them at first, says Mr Vincent, and
the lord Harry called farmer Nicholas all the old Nicks in the world and an old
whoremaster that kept seven trulls in his house and I'll meddle in his matters,
says he. I'll make that animal smell hell, says he, with the help of that good pizzle
my father left me. But one evening, says Mr Dixon, when the lord Harry was
cleaning his royal pelt to go to dinner after winning a boatrace (he had spade oars
for himself but the first rule of the course was that the others were to row with
pitchforks) he discovered in himself a wonderful likeness to a bull and on picking
up a blackthumbed chapbook that he kept in the pantry he found sure enough
that he was a lefthanded descendant of the famous champion bull of the Romans,
Bos Bovum, which is good bog Latin for boss of the show. After that, says Mr
Vincent, the lord Harry put his head into a cow's drinkingtrough in the presence of
all his courtiers and pulling it out again told them all his new name. Then, with
the water running off him, he got into an old smock and skirt that had belonged to
his grandmother and bought a grammar of the bulls' language to study but he
could never learn a word of it except the first personal pronoun which he copied
out big and got off by heart and if ever he went out for a walk he filled his
pockets with chalk to write it upon what took his fancy, the side of a rock or a
teahouse table or a bale of cotton or a corkfloat. In short, he and the bull of
Ireland were soon as fast friends as an arse and a shirt. They were, says Mr
Stephen, and the end was that the men of the island seeing no help was toward,
as the ungrate women were all of one mind, made a wherry raft, loaded
themselves and their bundles of chattels on shipboard, set all masts erect, manned
the yards, sprang their luff, heaved to, spread three sheets in the wind, put her
head between wind and water, weighed anchor, ported her helm, ran up the jolly
Roger, gave three times three, let the bullgine run, pushed off in their bumboat
and put to sea to recover the main of America. Which was the occasion, says Mr
Vincent, of the composing by a boatswain of that rollicking chanty:

—Pope Peter's but a pissabed.

A man's a man for a' that.
Our worthy acquaintance Mr Malachi Mulligan now appeared in the doorway as
the students were finishing their apologue accompanied with a friend whom he
had just rencountered, a young gentleman, his name Alec Bannon, who had late
come to town, it being his intention to buy a colour or a cornetcy in the fencibles
and list for the wars. Mr Mulligan was civil enough to express some relish of it all
the more as it jumped with a project of his own for the cure of the very evil that
had been touched on. Whereat he handed round to the company a set of
pasteboard cards which he had had printed that day at Mr Quinnell's bearing a
legend printed in fair italics: Mr Malachi Mulligan. Fertiliser and Incubator.
Lambay Island. His project, as he went on to expound, was to withdraw from the
round of idle pleasures such as form the chief business of sir Fopling Popinjay and
sir Milksop Quidnunc in town and to devote himself to the noblest task for which
our bodily organism has been framed. Well, let us hear of it, good my friend, said
Mr Dixon. I make no doubt it smacks of wenching. Come, be seated, both. 'Tis as
cheap sitting as standing. Mr Mulligan accepted of the invitation and, expatiating
upon his design, told his hearers that he had been led into this thought by a
consideration of the causes of sterility, both the inhibitory and the prohibitory,
whether the inhibition in its turn were due to conjugal vexations or to a parsimony
of the balance as well as whether the prohibition proceeded from defects
congenital or from proclivities acquired. It grieved him plaguily, he said, to see the
nuptial couch defrauded of its dearest pledges: and to reflect upon so many
agreeable females with rich jointures, a prey to the vilest bonzes, who hide their
flambeau under a bushel in an uncongenial cloister or lose their womanly bloom in
the embraces of some unaccountable muskin when they might multiply the inlets
of happiness, sacrificing the inestimable jewel of their sex when a hundred pretty
fellows were at hand to caress, this, he assured them, made his heart weep. To
curb this inconvenient (which he concluded due to a suppression of latent heat),
having advised with certain counsellors of worth and inspected into this matter,
he had resolved to purchase in fee simple for ever the freehold of Lambay island
from its holder, lord Talbot de Malahide, a Tory gentleman of note much in favour
with our ascendancy party. He proposed to set up there a national fertilising farm
to be named Omphalos with an obelisk hewn and erected after the fashion of
Egypt and to offer his dutiful yeoman services for the fecundation of any female of
what grade of life soever who should there direct to him with the desire of
fulfilling the functions of her natural. Money was no object, he said, nor would he
take a penny for his pains. The poorest kitchenwench no less than the opulent
lady of fashion, if so be their constructions and their tempers were warm
persuaders for their petitions, would find in him their man. For his nutriment he
shewed how he would feed himself exclusively upon a diet of savoury tubercles
and fish and coneys there, the flesh of these latter prolific rodents being highly
recommended for his purpose, both broiled and stewed with a blade of mace and
a pod or two of capsicum chillies. After this homily which he delivered with much
warmth of asseveration Mr Mulligan in a trice put off from his hat a kerchief with
which he had shielded it. They both, it seems, had been overtaken by the rain and
for all their mending their pace had taken water, as might be observed by Mr
Mulligan's smallclothes of a hodden grey which was now somewhat piebald. His
project meanwhile was very favourably entertained by his auditors and won hearty
eulogies from all though Mr Dixon of Mary's excepted to it, asking with a finicking
air did he purpose also to carry coals to Newcastle. Mr Mulligan however made
court to the scholarly by an apt quotation from the classics which, as it dwelt
upon his memory, seemed to him a sound and tasteful support of his contention:
Talis ac tanta depravatio hujus seculi, O quirites, ut matresfamiliarum nostrae
lascivas cujuslibet semiviri libici titillationes testibus ponderosis atque excelsis
erectionibus centurionum Romanorum magnopere anteponunt, while for those of
ruder wit he drove home his point by analogies of the animal kingdom more
suitable to their stomach, the buck and doe of the forest glade, the farmyard drake
and duck.
Valuing himself not a little upon his elegance, being indeed a proper man of
person, this talkative now applied himself to his dress with animadversions of
some heat upon the sudden whimsy of the atmospherics while the company
lavished their encomiums upon the project he had advanced. The young
gentleman, his friend, overjoyed as he was at a passage that had late befallen him,
could not forbear to tell it his nearest neighbour. Mr Mulligan, now perceiving the
table, asked for whom were those loaves and fishes and, seeing the stranger, he
made him a civil bow and said, Pray, sir, was you in need of any professional
assistance we could give? Who, upon his offer, thanked him very heartily, though
preserving his proper distance, and replied that he was come there about a lady,
now an inmate of Horne's house, that was in an interesting condition, poor body,
from woman's woe (and here he fetched a deep sigh) to know if her happiness had
yet taken place. Mr Dixon, to turn the table, took on to ask of Mr Mulligan
himself whether his incipient ventripotence, upon which he rallied him, betokened
an ovoblastic gestation in the prostatic utricle or male womb or was due, as with
the noted physician, Mr Austin Meldon, to a wolf in the stomach. For answer Mr
Mulligan, in a gale of laughter at his smalls, smote himself bravely below the
diaphragm, exclaiming with an admirable droll mimic of Mother Grogan (the most
excellent creature of her sex though 'tis pity she's a trollop): There's a belly that
never bore a bastard. This was so happy a conceit that it renewed the storm of
mirth and threw the whole room into the most violent agitations of delight. The
spry rattle had run on in the same vein of mimicry but for some larum in the
antechamber.
Here the listener who was none other than the Scotch student, a little fume of a
fellow, blond as tow, congratulated in the liveliest fashion with the young
gentleman and, interrupting the narrative at a salient point, having desired his
visavis with a polite beck to have the obligingness to pass him a flagon of cordial
waters at the same time by a questioning poise of the head (a whole century of
polite breeding had not achieved so nice a gesture) to which was united an
equivalent but contrary balance of the bottle asked the narrator as plainly as was
ever done in words if he might treat him with a cup of it. Mais bien sûr, noble
stranger, said he cheerily, et mille compliments. That you may and very
opportunely. There wanted nothing but this cup to crown my felicity. But,
gracious heaven, was I left with but a crust in my wallet and a cupful of water
from the well, my God, I would accept of them and find it in my heart to kneel
down upon the ground and give thanks to the powers above for the happiness
vouchsafed me by the Giver of good things. With these words he approached the
goblet to his lips, took a complacent draught of the cordial, slicked his hair and,
opening his bosom, out popped a locket that hung from a silk riband, that very
picture which he had cherished ever since her hand had wrote therein. Gazing
upon those features with a world of tenderness, Ah, Monsieur, he said, had you
but beheld her as I did with these eyes at that affecting instant with her dainty
tucker and her new coquette cap (a gift for her feastday as she told me prettily) in
such an artless disorder, of so melting a tenderness, 'pon my conscience, even you,
Monsieur, had been impelled by generous nature to deliver yourself wholly into
the hands of such an enemy or to quit the field for ever. I declare, I was never so
touched in all my life. God, I thank thee, as the Author of my days! Thrice happy
will he be whom so amiable a creature will bless with her favours. A sigh of
affection gave eloquence to these words and, having replaced the locket in his
bosom, he wiped his eye and sighed again. Beneficent Disseminator of blessings to
all Thy creatures, how great and universal must be that sweetest of Thy tyrannies
which can hold in thrall the free and the bond, the simple swain and the polished
coxcomb, the lover in the heyday of reckless passion and the husband of maturer
years. But indeed, sir, I wander from the point. How mingled and imperfect are all
our sublunary joys. Maledicity! he exclaimed in anguish. Would to God that
foresight had but remembered me to take my cloak along! I could weep to think of
it. Then, though it had poured seven showers, we were neither of us a penny the
worse. But beshrew me, he cried, clapping hand to his forehead, tomorrow will be
a new day and, thousand thunders, I know of a marchand de capotes, Monsieur
Poyntz, from whom I can have for a livre as snug a cloak of the French fashion as
ever kept a lady from wetting. Tut, tut! cries Le Fecondateur, tripping in, my
friend Monsieur Moore, that most accomplished traveller (I have just cracked a
half bottle AVEC LUI in a circle of the best wits of the town), is my authority that
in Cape Horn, ventre biche, they have a rain that will wet through any, even the
stoutest cloak. A drenching of that violence, he tells me, sans blague, has sent
more than one luckless fellow in good earnest posthaste to another world. Pooh! A
livre! cries Monsieur Lynch. The clumsy things are dear at a sou. One umbrella,
were it no bigger than a fairy mushroom, is worth ten such stopgaps. No woman
of any wit would wear one. My dear Kitty told me today that she would dance in
a deluge before ever she would starve in such an ark of salvation for, as she
reminded me (blushing piquantly and whispering in my ear though there was none
to snap her words but giddy butterflies), dame Nature, by the divine blessing, has
implanted it in our hearts and it has become a household word that il y a deux
choses for which the innocence of our original garb, in other circumstances a
breach of the proprieties, is the fittest, nay, the only garment. The first, said she
(and here my pretty philosopher, as I handed her to her tilbury, to fix my
attention, gently tipped with her tongue the outer chamber of my ear), the first is
a bath... But at this point a bell tinkling in the hall cut short a discourse which
promised so bravely for the enrichment of our store of knowledge.
Amid the general vacant hilarity of the assembly a bell rang and, while all were
conjecturing what might be the cause, Miss Callan entered and, having spoken a
few words in a low tone to young Mr Dixon, retired with a profound bow to the
company. The presence even for a moment among a party of debauchees of a
woman endued with every quality of modesty and not less severe than beautiful
refrained the humourous sallies even of the most licentious but her departure was
the signal for an outbreak of ribaldry. Strike me silly, said Costello, a low fellow
who was fuddled. A monstrous fine bit of cowflesh! I'll be sworn she has
rendezvoused you. What, you dog? Have you a way with them? Gad's bud,
immensely so, said Mr Lynch. The bedside manner it is that they use in the Mater
hospice. Demme, does not Doctor O'Gargle chuck the nuns there under the chin.
As I look to be saved I had it from my Kitty who has been wardmaid there any
time these seven months. Lawksamercy, doctor, cried the young blood in the
primrose vest, feigning a womanish simper and with immodest squirmings of his
body, how you do tease a body! Drat the man! Bless me, I'm all of a wibbly
wobbly. Why, you're as bad as dear little Father Cantekissem, that you are! May
this pot of four half choke me, cried Costello, if she aint in the family way. I
knows a lady what's got a white swelling quick as I claps eyes on her. The young
surgeon, however, rose and begged the company to excuse his retreat as the nurse
had just then informed him that he was needed in the ward. Merciful providence
had been pleased to put a period to the sufferings of the lady who was enceinte
which she had borne with a laudable fortitude and she had given birth to a
bouncing boy. I want patience, said he, with those who, without wit to enliven or
learning to instruct, revile an ennobling profession which, saving the reverence
due to the Deity, is the greatest power for happiness upon the earth. I am positive
when I say that if need were I could produce a cloud of witnesses to the excellence
of her noble exercitations which, so far from being a byword, should be a glorious
incentive in the human breast. I cannot away with them. What? Malign such an
one, the amiable Miss Callan, who is the lustre of her own sex and the
astonishment of ours? And at an instant the most momentous that can befall a
puny child of clay? Perish the thought! I shudder to think of the future of a race
where the seeds of such malice have been sown and where no right reverence is
rendered to mother and maid in house of Horne. Having delivered himself of this
rebuke he saluted those present on the by and repaired to the door. A murmur of
approval arose from all and some were for ejecting the low soaker without more
ado, a design which would have been effected nor would he have received more
than his bare deserts had he not abridged his transgression by affirming with a
horrid imprecation (for he swore a round hand) that he was as good a son of the
true fold as ever drew breath. Stap my vitals, said he, them was always the
sentiments of honest Frank Costello which I was bred up most particular to
honour thy father and thy mother that had the best hand to a rolypoly or a hasty
pudding as you ever see what I always looks back on with a loving heart.
To revert to Mr Bloom who, after his first entry, had been conscious of some
impudent mocks which he however had borne with as being the fruits of that age
upon which it is commonly charged that it knows not pity. The young sparks, it is
true, were as full of extravagancies as overgrown children: the words of their
tumultuary discussions were difficultly understood and not often nice: their
testiness and outrageous mots were such that his intellects resiled from: nor were
they scrupulously sensible of the proprieties though their fund of strong animal
spirits spoke in their behalf. But the word of Mr Costello was an unwelcome
language for him for he nauseated the wretch that seemed to him a cropeared
creature of a misshapen gibbosity, born out of wedlock and thrust like a
crookback toothed and feet first into the world, which the dint of the surgeon's
pliers in his skull lent indeed a colour to, so as to put him in thought of that
missing link of creation's chain desiderated by the late ingenious Mr Darwin. It
was now for more than the middle span of our allotted years that he had passed
through the thousand vicissitudes of existence and, being of a wary ascendancy
and self a man of rare forecast, he had enjoined his heart to repress all motions of
a rising choler and, by intercepting them with the readiest precaution, foster
within his breast that plenitude of sufferance which base minds jeer at, rash
judgers scorn and all find tolerable and but tolerable. To those who create
themselves wits at the cost of feminine delicacy (a habit of mind which he never
did hold with) to them he would concede neither to bear the name nor to herit the
tradition of a proper breeding: while for such that, having lost all forbearance, can
lose no more, there remained the sharp antidote of experience to cause their
insolency to beat a precipitate and inglorious retreat. Not but what he could feel
with mettlesome youth which, caring nought for the mows of dotards or the
gruntlings of the severe, is ever (as the chaste fancy of the Holy Writer expresses
it) for eating of the tree forbid it yet not so far forth as to pretermit humanity
upon any condition soever towards a gentlewoman when she was about her lawful
occasions. To conclude, while from the sister's words he had reckoned upon a
speedy delivery he was, however, it must be owned, not a little alleviated by the
intelligence that the issue so auspicated after an ordeal of such duress now
testified once more to the mercy as well as to the bounty of the Supreme Being.
Accordingly he broke his mind to his neighbour, saying that, to express his
notion of the thing, his opinion (who ought not perchance to express one) was that
one must have a cold constitution and a frigid genius not to be rejoiced by this
freshest news of the fruition of her confinement since she had been in such pain
through no fault of hers. The dressy young blade said it was her husband's that
put her in that expectation or at least it ought to be unless she were another
Ephesian matron. I must acquaint you, said Mr Crotthers, clapping on the table so
as to evoke a resonant comment of emphasis, old Glory Allelujurum was round
again today, an elderly man with dundrearies, preferring through his nose a
request to have word of Wilhelmina, my life, as he calls her. I bade him hold
himself in readiness for that the event would burst anon. 'Slife, I'll be round with
you. I cannot but extol the virile potency of the old bucko that could still knock
another child out of her. All fell to praising of it, each after his own fashion,
though the same young blade held with his former view that another than her
conjugial had been the man in the gap, a clerk in orders, a linkboy (virtuous) or an
itinerant vendor of articles needed in every household. Singular, communed the
guest with himself, the wonderfully unequal faculty of metempsychosis possessed
by them, that the puerperal dormitory and the dissecting theatre should be the
seminaries of such frivolity, that the mere acquisition of academic titles should
suffice to transform in a pinch of time these votaries of levity into exemplary
practitioners of an art which most men anywise eminent have esteemed the
noblest. But, he further added, it is mayhap to relieve the pentup feelings that in
common oppress them for I have more than once observed that birds of a feather
laugh together.
But with what fitness, let it be asked of the noble lord, his patron, has this
alien, whom the concession of a gracious prince has admitted to civic rights,
constituted himself the lord paramount of our internal polity? Where is now that
gratitude which loyalty should have counselled? During the recent war whenever
the enemy had a temporary advantage with his granados did this traitor to his
kind not seize that moment to discharge his piece against the empire of which he
is a tenant at will while he trembled for the security of his four per cents? Has he
forgotten this as he forgets all benefits received? Or is it that from being a deluder
of others he has become at last his own dupe as he is, if report belie him not, his
own and his only enjoyer? Far be it from candour to violate the bedchamber of a
respectable lady, the daughter of a gallant major, or to cast the most distant
reflections upon her virtue but if he challenges attention there (as it was indeed
highly his interest not to have done) then be it so. Unhappy woman, she has been
too long and too persistently denied her legitimate prerogative to listen to his
objurgations with any other feeling than the derision of the desperate. He says
this, a censor of morals, a very pelican in his piety, who did not scruple, oblivious
of the ties of nature, to attempt illicit intercourse with a female domestic drawn
from the lowest strata of society! Nay, had the hussy's scouringbrush not been her
tutelary angel, it had gone with her as hard as with Hagar, the Egyptian! In the
question of the grazing lands his peevish asperity is notorious and in Mr Cuffe's
hearing brought upon him from an indignant rancher a scathing retort couched in
terms as straightforward as they were bucolic. It ill becomes him to preach that
gospel. Has he not nearer home a seedfield that lies fallow for the want of the
ploughshare? A habit reprehensible at puberty is second nature and an
opprobrium in middle life. If he must dispense his balm of Gilead in nostrums and
apothegms of dubious taste to restore to health a generation of unfledged
profligates let his practice consist better with the doctrines that now engross him.
His marital breast is the repository of secrets which decorum is reluctant to
adduce. The lewd suggestions of some faded beauty may console him for a consort
neglected and debauched but this new exponent of morals and healer of ills is at
his best an exotic tree which, when rooted in its native orient, throve and
flourished and was abundant in balm but, transplanted to a clime more temperate,
its roots have lost their quondam vigour while the stuff that comes away from it is
stagnant, acid and inoperative.
The news was imparted with a circumspection recalling the ceremonial usage of
the Sublime Porte by the second female infirmarian to the junior medical officer in
residence, who in his turn announced to the delegation that an heir had been
born, When he had betaken himself to the women's apartment to assist at the
prescribed ceremony of the afterbirth in the presence of the secretary of state for
domestic affairs and the members of the privy council, silent in unanimous
exhaustion and approbation the delegates, chafing under the length and solemnity
of their vigil and hoping that the joyful occurrence would palliate a licence which
the simultaneous absence of abigail and obstetrician rendered the easier, broke out
at once into a strife of tongues. In vain the voice of Mr Canvasser Bloom was
heard endeavouring to urge, to mollify, to refrain. The moment was too propitious
for the display of that discursiveness which seemed the only bond of union among
tempers so divergent. Every phase of the situation was successively eviscerated:
the prenatal repugnance of uterine brothers, the Caesarean section, posthumity
with respect to the father and, that rarer form, with respect to the mother, the
fratricidal case known as the Childs Murder and rendered memorable by the
impassioned plea of Mr Advocate Bushe which secured the acquittal of the
wrongfully accused, the rights of primogeniture and king's bounty touching twins
and triplets, miscarriages and infanticides, simulated or dissimulated, the acardiac
foetus in foetu and aprosopia due to a congestion, the agnathia of certain chinless
Chinamen (cited by Mr Candidate Mulligan) in consequence of defective reunion
of the maxillary knobs along the medial line so that (as he said) one ear could hear
what the other spoke, the benefits of anesthesia or twilight sleep, the prolongation
of labour pains in advanced gravidancy by reason of pressure on the vein, the
premature relentment of the amniotic fluid (as exemplified in the actual case) with
consequent peril of sepsis to the matrix, artificial insemination by means of
syringes, involution of the womb consequent upon the menopause, the problem of
the perpetration of the species in the case of females impregnated by delinquent
rape, that distressing manner of delivery called by the Brandenburghers
Sturzgeburt, the recorded instances of multiseminal, twikindled and monstrous
births conceived during the catamenic period or of consanguineous parents—in a
word all the cases of human nativity which Aristotle has classified in his
masterpiece with chromolithographic illustrations. The gravest problems of
obstetrics and forensic medicine were examined with as much animation as the
most popular beliefs on the state of pregnancy such as the forbidding to a gravid
woman to step over a countrystile lest, by her movement, the navelcord should
strangle her creature and the injunction upon her in the event of a yearning,
ardently and ineffectually entertained, to place her hand against that part of her
person which long usage has consecrated as the seat of castigation. The
abnormalities of harelip, breastmole, supernumerary digits, negro's inkle,
strawberry mark and portwine stain were alleged by one as a prima facie and
natural hypothetical explanation of those swineheaded (the case of Madame
Grissel Steevens was not forgotten) or doghaired infants occasionally born. The
hypothesis of a plasmic memory, advanced by the Caledonian envoy and worthy
of the metaphysical traditions of the land he stood for, envisaged in such cases an
arrest of embryonic development at some stage antecedent to the human. An
outlandish delegate sustained against both these views, with such heat as almost
carried conviction, the theory of copulation between women and the males of
brutes, his authority being his own avouchment in support of fables such as that
of the Minotaur which the genius of the elegant Latin poet has handed down to us
in the pages of his Metamorphoses. The impression made by his words was
immediate but shortlived. It was effaced as easily as it had been evoked by an
allocution from Mr Candidate Mulligan in that vein of pleasantry which none
better than he knew how to affect, postulating as the supremest object of desire a
nice clean old man. Contemporaneously, a heated argument having arisen between
Mr Delegate Madden and Mr Candidate Lynch regarding the juridical and
theological dilemma created in the event of one Siamese twin predeceasing the
other, the difficulty by mutual consent was referred to Mr Canvasser Bloom for
instant submittal to Mr Coadjutor Deacon Dedalus. Hitherto silent, whether the
better to show by preternatural gravity that curious dignity of the garb with which
he was invested or in obedience to an inward voice, he delivered briefly and, as
some thought, perfunctorily the ecclesiastical ordinance forbidding man to put
asunder what God has joined.
But Malachias' tale began to freeze them with horror. He conjured up the scene
before them. The secret panel beside the chimney slid back and in the recess
appeared... Haines! Which of us did not feel his flesh creep! He had a portfolio full
of Celtic literature in one hand, in the other a phial marked Poison. Surprise,
horror, loathing were depicted on all faces while he eyed them with a ghostly grin.
I anticipated some such reception, he began with an eldritch laugh, for which, it
seems, history is to blame. Yes, it is true. I am the murderer of Samuel Childs.
And how I am punished! The inferno has no terrors for me. This is the appearance
is on me. Tare and ages, what way would I be resting at all, he muttered thickly,
and I tramping Dublin this while back with my share of songs and himself after
me the like of a soulth or a bullawurrus? My hell, and Ireland's, is in this life. It is
what I tried to obliterate my crime. Distractions, rookshooting, the Erse language
(he recited some), laudanum (he raised the phial to his lips), camping out. In vain!
His spectre stalks me. Dope is my only hope... Ah! Destruction! The black
panther! With a cry he suddenly vanished and the panel slid back. An instant later
his head appeared in the door opposite and said: Meet me at Westland Row
station at ten past eleven. He was gone. Tears gushed from the eyes of the
dissipated host. The seer raised his hand to heaven, murmuring: The vendetta of
Mananaun! The sage repeated: Lex talionis. The sentimentalist is he who would
enjoy without incurring the immense debtorship for a thing done. Malachias,
overcome by emotion, ceased. The mystery was unveiled. Haines was the third
brother. His real name was Childs. The black panther was himself the ghost of his
own father. He drank drugs to obliterate. For this relief much thanks. The lonely
house by the graveyard is uninhabited. No soul will live there. The spider pitches
her web in the solitude. The nocturnal rat peers from his hole. A curse is on it. It
is haunted. Murderer's ground.
 What is the age of the soul of man? As she hath the virtue of the chameleon to
change her hue at every new approach, to be gay with the merry and mournful
with the downcast, so too is her age changeable as her mood. No longer is
Leopold, as he sits there, ruminating, chewing the cud of reminiscence, that staid
agent of publicity and holder of a modest substance in the funds. A score of years
are blown away. He is young Leopold. There, as in a retrospective arrangement, a
mirror within a mirror (hey, presto!), he beholdeth himself. That young figure of
then is seen, precociously manly, walking on a nipping morning from the old
house in Clanbrassil street to the high school, his booksatchel on him
bandolierwise, and in it a goodly hunk of wheaten loaf, a mother's thought. Or it
is the same figure, a year or so gone over, in his first hard hat (ah, that was a
day!), already on the road, a fullfledged traveller for the family firm, equipped
with an orderbook, a scented handkerchief (not for show only), his case of bright
trinketware (alas! a thing now of the past!) and a quiverful of compliant smiles for
this or that halfwon housewife reckoning it out upon her fingertips or for a
budding virgin, shyly acknowledging (but the heart? tell me!) his studied
baisemoins. The scent, the smile, but, more than these, the dark eyes and
oleaginous address, brought home at duskfall many a commission to the head of
the firm, seated with Jacob's pipe after like labours in the paternal ingle (a meal of
noodles, you may be sure, is aheating), reading through round horned spectacles
some paper from the Europe of a month before. But hey, presto, the mirror is
breathed on and the young knighterrant recedes, shrivels, dwindles to a tiny speck
within the mist. Now he is himself paternal and these about him might be his
sons. Who can say? The wise father knows his own child. He thinks of a drizzling
night in Hatch street, hard by the bonded stores there, the first. Together (she is a
poor waif, a child of shame, yours and mine and of all for a bare shilling and her
luckpenny), together they hear the heavy tread of the watch as two raincaped
shadows pass the new royal university. Bridie! Bridie Kelly! He will never forget
the name, ever remember the night: first night, the bridenight. They are entwined
in nethermost darkness, the willer with the willed, and in an instant (fiat!) light
shall flood the world. Did heart leap to heart? Nay, fair reader. In a breath 'twas
done but—hold! Back! It must not be! In terror the poor girl flees away through
the murk. She is the bride of darkness, a daughter of night. She dare not bear the
sunnygolden babe of day. No, Leopold. Name and memory solace thee not. That
youthful illusion of thy strength was taken from thee—and in vain. No son of thy
loins is by thee. There is none now to be for Leopold, what Leopold was for
Rudolph.
The voices blend and fuse in clouded silence: silence that is the infinite of
space: and swiftly, silently the soul is wafted over regions of cycles of generations
that have lived. A region where grey twilight ever descends, never falls on wide
sagegreen pasturefields, shedding her dusk, scattering a perennial dew of stars.
She follows her mother with ungainly steps, a mare leading her fillyfoal. Twilight
phantoms are they, yet moulded in prophetic grace of structure, slim shapely
haunches, a supple tendonous neck, the meek apprehensive skull. They fade, sad
phantoms: all is gone. Agendath is a waste land, a home of screechowls and the
sandblind upupa. Netaim, the golden, is no more. And on the highway of the
clouds they come, muttering thunder of rebellion, the ghosts of beasts. Huuh!
Hark! Huuh! Parallax stalks behind and goads them, the lancinating lightnings of
whose brow are scorpions. Elk and yak, the bulls of Bashan and of Babylon,
mammoth and mastodon, they come trooping to the sunken sea, Lacus Mortis.
Ominous revengeful zodiacal host! They moan, passing upon the clouds, horned
and capricorned, the trumpeted with the tusked, the lionmaned, the giantantlered,
snouter and crawler, rodent, ruminant and pachyderm, all their moving moaning
multitude, murderers of the sun.
Onward to the dead sea they tramp to drink, unslaked and with horrible
gulpings, the salt somnolent inexhaustible flood. And the equine portent grows
again, magnified in the deserted heavens, nay to heaven's own magnitude, till it
looms, vast, over the house of Virgo. And lo, wonder of metempsychosis, it is she,
the everlasting bride, harbinger of the daystar, the bride, ever virgin. It is she,
Martha, thou lost one, Millicent, the young, the dear, the radiant. How serene
does she now arise, a queen among the Pleiades, in the penultimate antelucan
hour, shod in sandals of bright gold, coifed with a veil of what do you call it
gossamer. It floats, it flows about her starborn flesh and loose it streams, emerald,
sapphire, mauve and heliotrope, sustained on currents of the cold interstellar
wind, winding, coiling, simply swirling, writhing in the skies a mysterious writing
till, after a myriad metamorphoses of symbol, it blazes, Alpha, a ruby and
triangled sign upon the forehead of Taurus.
Francis was reminding Stephen of years before when they had been at school
together in Conmee's time. He asked about Glaucon, Alcibiades, Pisistratus. Where
were they now? Neither knew. You have spoken of the past and its phantoms,
Stephen said. Why think of them? If I call them into life across the waters of Lethe
will not the poor ghosts troop to my call? Who supposes it? I, Bous
Stephanoumenos, bullockbefriending bard, am lord and giver of their life. He
encircled his gadding hair with a coronal of vineleaves, smiling at Vincent. That
answer and those leaves, Vincent said to him, will adorn you more fitly when
something more, and greatly more, than a capful of light odes can call your genius
father. All who wish you well hope this for you. All desire to see you bring forth
the work you meditate, to acclaim you Stephaneforos. I heartily wish you may not
fail them. O no, Vincent Lenehan said, laying a hand on the shoulder near him.
Have no fear. He could not leave his mother an orphan. The young man's face
grew dark. All could see how hard it was for him to be reminded of his promise
and of his recent loss. He would have withdrawn from the feast had not the noise
of voices allayed the smart. Madden had lost five drachmas on Sceptre for a whim
of the rider's name: Lenehan as much more. He told them of the race. The flag fell
and, huuh! off, scamper, the mare ran out freshly with 0. Madden up. She was
leading the field. All hearts were beating. Even Phyllis could not contain herself.
She waved her scarf and cried: Huzzah! Sceptre wins! But in the straight on the
run home when all were in close order the dark horse Throwaway drew level,
reached, outstripped her. All was lost now. Phyllis was silent: her eyes were sad
anemones. Juno, she cried, I am undone. But her lover consoled her and brought
her a bright casket of gold in which lay some oval sugarplums which she partook.
A tear fell: one only. A whacking fine whip, said Lenehan, is W. Lane. Four
winners yesterday and three today. What rider is like him? Mount him on the
camel or the boisterous buffalo the victory in a hack canter is still his. But let us
bear it as was the ancient wont. Mercy on the luckless! Poor Sceptre! he said with
a light sigh. She is not the filly that she was. Never, by this hand, shall we behold
such another. By gad, sir, a queen of them. Do you remember her, Vincent? I wish
you could have seen my queen today, Vincent said. How young she was and
radiant (Lalage were scarce fair beside her) in her yellow shoes and frock of
muslin, I do not know the right name of it. The chestnuts that shaded us were in
bloom: the air drooped with their persuasive odour and with pollen floating by us.
In the sunny patches one might easily have cooked on a stone a batch of those
buns with Corinth fruit in them that Periplipomenes sells in his booth near the
bridge. But she had nought for her teeth but the arm with which I held her and in
that she nibbled mischievously when I pressed too close. A week ago she lay ill,
four days on the couch, but today she was free, blithe, mocked at peril. She is
more taking then. Her posies tool Mad romp that she is, she had pulled her fill as
we reclined together. And in your ear, my friend, you will not think who met us as
we left the field. Conmee himself! He was walking by the hedge, reading, I think a
brevier book with, I doubt not, a witty letter in it from Glycera or Chloe to keep
the page. The sweet creature turned all colours in her confusion, feigning to
reprove a slight disorder in her dress: a slip of underwood clung there for the very
trees adore her. When Conmee had passed she glanced at her lovely echo in that
little mirror she carries. But he had been kind. In going by he had blessed us. The
gods too are ever kind, Lenehan said. If I had poor luck with Bass's mare perhaps
this draught of his may serve me more propensely. He was laying his hand upon a
winejar: Malachi saw it and withheld his act, pointing to the stranger and to the
scarlet label. Warily, Malachi whispered, preserve a druid silence. His soul is far
away. It is as painful perhaps to be awakened from a vision as to be born. Any
object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access to the incorruptible eon of the
gods. Do you not think it, Stephen? Theosophos told me so, Stephen answered,
whom in a previous existence Egyptian priests initiated into the mysteries of
karmic law. The lords of the moon, Theosophos told me, an orangefiery shipload
from planet Alpha of the lunar chain would not assume the etheric doubles and
these were therefore incarnated by the rubycoloured egos from the second
constellation.
However, as a matter of fact though, the preposterous surmise about him being
in some description of a doldrums or other or mesmerised which was entirely due
to a misconception of the shallowest character, was not the case at all. The
individual whose visual organs while the above was going on were at this juncture
commencing to exhibit symptoms of animation was as astute if not astuter than
any man living and anybody that conjectured the contrary would have found
themselves pretty speedily in the wrong shop. During the past four minutes or
thereabouts he had been staring hard at a certain amount of number one Bass
bottled by Messrs Bass and Co at Burton-on-Trent which happened to be situated
amongst a lot of others right opposite to where he was and which was certainly
calculated to attract anyone's remark on account of its scarlet appearance. He was
simply and solely, as it subsequently transpired for reasons best known to himself,
which put quite an altogether different complexion on the proceedings, after the
moment before's observations about boyhood days and the turf, recollecting two
or three private transactions of his own which the other two were as mutually
innocent of as the babe unborn. Eventually, however, both their eyes met and as
soon as it began to dawn on him that the other was endeavouring to help himself
to the thing he involuntarily determined to help him himself and so he accordingly
took hold of the neck of the mediumsized glass recipient which contained the fluid
sought after and made a capacious hole in it by pouring a lot of it out with, also at
the same time, however, a considerable degree of attentiveness in order not to
upset any of the beer that was in it about the place.
The debate which ensued was in its scope and progress an epitome of the course
of life. Neither place nor council was lacking in dignity. The debaters were the
keenest in the land, the theme they were engaged on the loftiest and most vital.
The high hall of Horne's house had never beheld an assembly so representative
and so varied nor had the old rafters of that establishment ever listened to a
language so encyclopaedic. A gallant scene in truth it made. Crotthers was there at
the foot of the table in his striking Highland garb, his face glowing from the briny
airs of the Mull of Galloway. There too, opposite to him, was Lynch whose
countenance bore already the stigmata of early depravity and premature wisdom.
Next the Scotchman was the place assigned to Costello, the eccentric, while at his
side was seated in stolid repose the squat form of Madden. The chair of the
resident indeed stood vacant before the hearth but on either flank of it the figure
of Bannon in explorer's kit of tweed shorts and salted cowhide brogues contrasted
sharply with the primrose elegance and townbred manners of Malachi Roland St
John Mulligan. Lastly at the head of the board was the young poet who found a
refuge from his labours of pedagogy and metaphysical inquisition in the convivial
atmosphere of Socratic discussion, while to right and left of him were
accommodated the flippant prognosticator, fresh from the hippodrome, and that
vigilant wanderer, soiled by the dust of travel and combat and stained by the mire
of an indelible dishonour, but from whose steadfast and constant heart no lure or
peril or threat or degradation could ever efface the image of that voluptuous
loveliness which the inspired pencil of Lafayette has limned for ages yet to come.
It had better be stated here and now at the outset that the perverted
transcendentalism to which Mr S. Dedalus' (Div. Scep.) contentions would appear
to prove him pretty badly addicted runs directly counter to accepted scientific
methods. Science, it cannot be too often repeated, deals with tangible phenomena.
The man of science like the man in the street has to face hardheaded facts that
cannot be blinked and explain them as best he can. There may be, it is true, some
questions which science cannot answer—at present—such as the first problem
submitted by Mr L. Bloom (Pubb. Canv.) regarding the future determination of
sex. Must we accept the view of Empedocles of Trinacria that the right ovary (the
postmenstrual period, assert others) is responsible for the birth of males or are the
too long neglected spermatozoa or nemasperms the differentiating factors or is it,
as most embryologists incline to opine, such as Culpepper, Spallanzani,
Blumenbach, Lusk, Hertwig, Leopold and Valenti, a mixture of both? This would
be tantamount to a cooperation (one of nature's favourite devices) between the
nisus formativus of the nemasperm on the one hand and on the other a happily
chosen position, succubitus felix of the passive element. The other problem raised
by the same inquirer is scarcely less vital: infant mortality. It is interesting
because, as he pertinently remarks, we are all born in the same way but we all die
in different ways. Mr M. Mulligan (Hyg. et Eug. Doc.) blames the sanitary
conditions in which our greylunged citizens contract adenoids, pulmonary
complaints etc. by inhaling the bacteria which lurk in dust. These factors, he
alleged, and the revolting spectacles offered by our streets, hideous publicity
posters, religious ministers of all denominations, mutilated soldiers and sailors,
exposed scorbutic cardrivers, the suspended carcases of dead animals, paranoic
bachelors and unfructified duennas—these, he said, were accountable for any and
every fallingoff in the calibre of the race. Kalipedia, he prophesied, would soon be
generally adopted and all the graces of life, genuinely good music, agreeable
literature, light philosophy, instructive pictures, plastercast reproductions of the
classical statues such as Venus and Apollo, artistic coloured photographs of prize
babies, all these little attentions would enable ladies who were in a particular
condition to pass the intervening months in a most enjoyable manner. Mr J.
Crotthers (Disc. Bacc.) attributes some of these demises to abdominal trauma in
the case of women workers subjected to heavy labours in the workshop and to
marital discipline in the home but by far the vast majority to neglect, private or
official, culminating in the exposure of newborn infants, the practice of criminal
abortion or in the atrocious crime of infanticide. Although the former (we are
thinking of neglect) is undoubtedly only too true the case he cites of nurses
forgetting to count the sponges in the peritoneal cavity is too rare to be normative.
In fact when one comes to look into it the wonder is that so many pregnancies and
deliveries go off so well as they do, all things considered and in spite of our
human shortcomings which often baulk nature in her intentions. An ingenious
suggestion is that thrown out by Mr V. Lynch (Bacc. Arith.) that both natality and
mortality, as well as all other phenomena of evolution, tidal movements, lunar
phases, blood temperatures, diseases in general, everything, in fine, in nature's
vast workshop from the extinction of some remote sun to the blossoming of one of
the countless flowers which beautify our public parks is subject to a law of
numeration as yet unascertained. Still the plain straightforward question why a
child of normally healthy parents and seemingly a healthy child and properly
looked after succumbs unaccountably in early childhood (though other children of
the same marriage do not) must certainly, in the poet's words, give us pause.
Nature, we may rest assured, has her own good and cogent reasons for whatever
she does and in all probability such deaths are due to some law of anticipation by
which organisms in which morbous germs have taken up their residence (modern
science has conclusively shown that only the plasmic substance can be said to be
immortal) tend to disappear at an increasingly earlier stage of development, an
arrangement which, though productive of pain to some of our feelings (notably the
maternal), is nevertheless, some of us think, in the long run beneficial to the race
in general in securing thereby the survival of the fittest. Mr S. Dedalus' (Div.
Scep.) remark (or should it be called an interruption?) that an omnivorous being
which can masticate, deglute, digest and apparently pass through the ordinary
channel with pluterperfect imperturbability such multifarious aliments as
cancrenous females emaciated by parturition, corpulent professional gentlemen,
not to speak of jaundiced politicians and chlorotic nuns, might possibly find
gastric relief in an innocent collation of staggering bob, reveals as nought else
could and in a very unsavoury light the tendency above alluded to. For the
enlightenment of those who are not so intimately acquainted with the minutiae of
the municipal abattoir as this morbidminded esthete and embryo philosopher who
for all his overweening bumptiousness in things scientific can scarcely distinguish
an acid from an alkali prides himself on being, it should perhaps be stated that
staggering bob in the vile parlance of our lowerclass licensed victuallers signifies
the cookable and eatable flesh of a calf newly dropped from its mother. In a recent
public controversy with Mr L. Bloom (Pubb. Canv.) which took place in the
commons' hall of the National Maternity Hospital, 29, 30 and 31 Holles street, of
which, as is well known, Dr A. Horne (Lic. in Midw., F. K. Q. C. P. I.) is the able
and popular master, he is reported by eyewitnesses as having stated that once a
woman has let the cat into the bag (an esthete's allusion, presumably, to one of
the most complicated and marvellous of all nature's processes—the act of sexual
congress) she must let it out again or give it life, as he phrased it, to save her own.
At the risk of her own, was the telling rejoinder of his interlocutor, none the less
effective for the moderate and measured tone in which it was delivered.
Meanwhile the skill and patience of the physician had brought about a happy
accouchement. It had been a weary weary while both for patient and doctor. All
that surgical skill could do was done and the brave woman had manfully helped.
She had. She had fought the good fight and now she was very very happy. Those
who have passed on, who have gone before, are happy too as they gaze down and
smile upon the touching scene. Reverently look at her as she reclines there with
the motherlight in her eyes, that longing hunger for baby fingers (a pretty sight it
is to see), in the first bloom of her new motherhood, breathing a silent prayer of
thanksgiving to One above, the Universal Husband. And as her loving eyes behold
her babe she wishes only one blessing more, to have her dear Doady there with
her to share her joy, to lay in his arms that mite of God's clay, the fruit of their
lawful embraces. He is older now (you and I may whisper it) and a trifle stooped
in the shoulders yet in the whirligig of years a grave dignity has come to the
conscientious second accountant of the Ulster bank, College Green branch. O
Doady, loved one of old, faithful lifemate now, it may never be again, that faroff
time of the roses! With the old shake of her pretty head she recalls those days.
God! How beautiful now across the mist of years! But their children are grouped
in her imagination about the bedside, hers and his, Charley, Mary Alice, Frederick
Albert (if he had lived), Mamy, Budgy (Victoria Frances), Tom, Violet Constance
Louisa, darling little Bobsy (called after our famous hero of the South African war,
lord Bobs of Waterford and Candahar) and now this last pledge of their union, a
Purefoy if ever there was one, with the true Purefoy nose. Young hopeful will be
christened Mortimer Edward after the influential third cousin of Mr Purefoy in the
Treasury Remembrancer's office, Dublin Castle. And so time wags on: but father
Cronion has dealt lightly here. No, let no sigh break from that bosom, dear gentle
Mina. And Doady, knock the ashes from your pipe, the seasoned briar you still
fancy when the curfew rings for you (may it be the distant day!) and dout the light
whereby you read in the Sacred Book for the oil too has run low, and so with a
tranquil heart to bed, to rest. He knows and will call in His own good time. You
too have fought the good fight and played loyally your man's part. Sir, to you my
hand. Well done, thou good and faithful servant!
There are sins or (let us call them as the world calls them) evil memories which
are hidden away by man in the darkest places of the heart but they abide there
and wait. He may suffer their memory to grow dim, let them be as though they
had not been and all but persuade himself that they were not or at least were
otherwise. Yet a chance word will call them forth suddenly and they will rise up
to confront him in the most various circumstances, a vision or a dream, or while
timbrel and harp soothe his senses or amid the cool silver tranquility of the
evening or at the feast, at midnight, when he is now filled with wine. Not to insult
over him will the vision come as over one that lies under her wrath, not for
vengeance to cut him off from the living but shrouded in the piteous vesture of the
past, silent, remote, reproachful.
The stranger still regarded on the face before him a slow recession of that false
calm there, imposed, as it seemed, by habit or some studied trick, upon words so
embittered as to accuse in their speaker an unhealthiness, a flair, for the cruder
things of life. A scene disengages itself in the observer's memory, evoked, it would
seem, by a word of so natural a homeliness as if those days were really present
there (as some thought) with their immediate pleasures. A shaven space of lawn
one soft May evening, the wellremembered grove of lilacs at Roundtown, purple
and white, fragrant slender spectators of the game but with much real interest in
the pellets as they run slowly forward over the sward or collide and stop, one by
its fellow, with a brief alert shock. And yonder about that grey urn where the
water moves at times in thoughtful irrigation you saw another as fragrant
sisterhood, Floey, Atty, Tiny and their darker friend with I know not what of
arresting in her pose then, Our Lady of the Cherries, a comely brace of them
pendent from an ear, bringing out the foreign warmth of the skin so daintily
against the cool ardent fruit. A lad of four or five in linseywoolsey (blossomtime
but there will be cheer in the kindly hearth when ere long the bowls are gathered
and hutched) is standing on the urn secured by that circle of girlish fond hands.
He frowns a little just as this young man does now with a perhaps too conscious
enjoyment of the danger but must needs glance at whiles towards where his
mother watches from the PIAZZETTA giving upon the flowerclose with a faint
shadow of remoteness or of reproach (alles Vergangliche) in her glad look.
Mark this farther and remember. The end comes suddenly. Enter that
antechamber of birth where the studious are assembled and note their faces.
Nothing, as it seems, there of rash or violent. Quietude of custody, rather,
befitting their station in that house, the vigilant watch of shepherds and of angels
about a crib in Bethlehem of Juda long ago. But as before the lightning the serried
stormclouds, heavy with preponderant excess of moisture, in swollen masses
turgidly distended, compass earth and sky in one vast slumber, impending above
parched field and drowsy oxen and blighted growth of shrub and verdure till in an
instant a flash rives their centres and with the reverberation of the thunder the
cloudburst pours its torrent, so and not otherwise was the transformation, violent
and instantaneous, upon the utterance of the word.
 Burke's! outflings my lord Stephen, giving the cry, and a tag and bobtail of all
them after, cockerel, jackanapes, welsher, pilldoctor, punctual Bloom at heels with
a universal grabbing at headgear, ashplants, bilbos, Panama hats and scabbards,
Zermatt alpenstocks and what not. A dedale of lusty youth, noble every student
there. Nurse Callan taken aback in the hallway cannot stay them nor smiling
surgeon coming downstairs with news of placentation ended, a full pound if a
milligramme. They hark him on. The door! It is open? Ha! They are out,
tumultuously, off for a minute's race, all bravely legging it, Burke's of Denzille and
Holles their ulterior goal. Dixon follows giving them sharp language but raps out
an oath, he too, and on. Bloom stays with nurse a thought to send a kind word to
happy mother and nurseling up there. Doctor Diet and Doctor Quiet. Looks she
too not other now? Ward of watching in Horne's house has told its tale in that
washedout pallor. Then all being gone, a glance of motherwit helping, he whispers
close in going: Madam, when comes the storkbird for thee?
The air without is impregnated with raindew moisture, life essence celestial,
glistening on Dublin stone there under starshiny coelum. God's air, the Allfather's
air, scintillant circumambient cessile air. Breathe it deep into thee. By heaven,
Theodore Purefoy, thou hast done a doughty deed and no botch! Thou art, I vow,
the remarkablest progenitor barring none in this chaffering allincluding most
farraginous chronicle. Astounding! In her lay a Godframed Godgiven preformed
possibility which thou hast fructified with thy modicum of man's work. Cleave to
her! Serve! Toil on, labour like a very bandog and let scholarment and all
Malthusiasts go hang. Thou art all their daddies, Theodore. Art drooping under
thy load, bemoiled with butcher's bills at home and ingots (not thine!) in the
countinghouse? Head up! For every newbegotten thou shalt gather thy homer of
ripe wheat. See, thy fleece is drenched. Dost envy Darby Dullman there with his
Joan? A canting jay and a rheumeyed curdog is all their progeny. Pshaw, I tell
thee! He is a mule, a dead gasteropod, without vim or stamina, not worth a
cracked kreutzer. Copulation without population! No, say I! Herod's slaughter of
the innocents were the truer name. Vegetables, forsooth, and sterile cohabitation!
Give her beefsteaks, red, raw, bleeding! She is a hoary pandemonium of ills,
enlarged glands, mumps, quinsy, bunions, hayfever, bedsores, ringworm, floating
kidney, Derbyshire neck, warts, bilious attacks, gallstones, cold feet, varicose
veins. A truce to threnes and trentals and jeremies and all such congenital
defunctive music! Twenty years of it, regret them not. With thee it was not as
with many that will and would and wait and never—do. Thou sawest thy America,
thy lifetask, and didst charge to cover like the transpontine bison. How saith
Zarathustra? Deine Kuh Trübsal melkest Du. Nun Trinkst Du die süsse Milch des
Euters. See! it displodes for thee in abundance. Drink, man, an udderful! Mother's
milk, Purefoy, the milk of human kin, milk too of those burgeoning stars overhead
rutilant in thin rainvapour, punch milk, such as those rioters will quaff in their
guzzling den, milk of madness, the honeymilk of Canaan's land. Thy cow's dug
was tough, what? Ay, but her milk is hot and sweet and fattening. No dollop this
but thick rich bonnyclaber. To her, old patriarch! Pap! Per deam Partulam et
Pertundam nunc est bibendum!
 All off for a buster, armstrong, hollering down the street. Bonafides. Where you
slep las nigh? Timothy of the battered naggin. Like ole Billyo. Any brollies or
gumboots in the fambly? Where the Henry Nevil's sawbones and ole clo? Sorra one
o' me knows. Hurrah there, Dix! Forward to the ribbon counter. Where's Punch?
All serene. Jay, look at the drunken minister coming out of the maternity hospal!
Benedicat vos omnipotens Deus, Pater et Filius. A make, mister. The Denzille lane
boys. Hell, blast ye! Scoot. Righto, Isaacs, shove em out of the bleeding limelight.
Yous join uz, dear sir? No hentrusion in life. Lou heap good man. Allee samee dis
bunch. En avant, mes enfants! Fire away number one on the gun. Burke's! Burke's!
Thence they advanced five parasangs. Slattery's mounted foot. Where's that
bleeding awfur? Parson Steve, apostates' creed! No, no, Mulligan! Abaft there!
Shove ahead. Keep a watch on the clock. Chuckingout time. Mullee! What's on
you? Ma mère m'a mariée. British Beatitudes! Retamplatan Digidi Boumboum.
Ayes have it. To be printed and bound at the Druiddrum press by two designing
females. Calf covers of pissedon green. Last word in art shades. Most beautiful
book come out of Ireland my time. Silentium! Get a spurt on. Tention. Proceed to
nearest canteen and there annex liquor stores. March! Tramp, tramp, tramp, the
boys are (atitudes!) parching. Beer, beef, business, bibles, bulldogs battleships,
buggery and bishops. Whether on the scaffold high. Beer, beef, trample the bibles.
When for Irelandear. Trample the trampellers. Thunderation! Keep the durned
millingtary step. We fall. Bishops boosebox. Halt! Heave to. Rugger. Scrum in. No
touch kicking. Wow, my tootsies! You hurt? Most amazingly sorry!
Query. Who's astanding this here do? Proud possessor of damnall. Declare
misery. Bet to the ropes. Me nantee saltee. Not a red at me this week gone.
Yours? Mead of our fathers for the Übermensch. Dittoh. Five number ones. You,
sir? Ginger cordial. Chase me, the cabby's caudle. Stimulate the caloric. Winding
of his ticker. Stopped short never to go again when the old. Absinthe for me,
savvy? Caramba! Have an eggnog or a prairie oyster. Enemy? Avuncular's got my
timepiece. Ten to. Obligated awful. Don't mention it. Got a pectoral trauma, eh,
Dix? Pos fact. Got bet be a boomblebee whenever he wus settin sleepin in hes bit
garten. Digs up near the Mater. Buckled he is. Know his dona? Yup, sartin I do.
Full of a dure. See her in her dishybilly. Peels off a credit. Lovey lovekin. None of
your lean kine, not much. Pull down the blind, love. Two Ardilauns. Same here.
Look slippery. If you fall don't wait to get up. Five, seven, nine. Fine! Got a prime
pair of mincepies, no kid. And her take me to rests and her anker of rum. Must be
seen to be believed. Your starving eyes and allbeplastered neck you stole my
heart, O gluepot. Sir? Spud again the rheumatiz? All poppycock, you'll scuse me
saying. For the hoi polloi. I vear thee beest a gert vool. Well, doc? Back fro
Lapland? Your corporosity sagaciating O K? How's the squaws and papooses?
Womanbody after going on the straw? Stand and deliver. Password. There's hair.
Ours the white death and the ruddy birth. Hi! Spit in your own eye, boss!
Mummer's wire. Cribbed out of Meredith. Jesified, orchidised, polycimical jesuit!
Aunty mine's writing Pa Kinch. Baddybad Stephen lead astray goodygood Malachi.
Hurroo! Collar the leather, youngun. Roun wi the nappy. Here, Jock braw
Hielentman's your barleybree. Lang may your lum reek and your kailpot boil! My
tipple. Merci. Here's to us. How's that? Leg before wicket. Don't stain my
brandnew sitinems. Give's a shake of peppe, you there. Catch aholt. Caraway seed
to carry away. Twig? Shrieks of silence. Every cove to his gentry mort. Venus
Pandemos. Les petites femmes. Bold bad girl from the town of Mullingar. Tell her I
was axing at her. Hauding Sara by the wame. On the road to Malahide. Me? If she
who seduced me had left but the name. What do you want for ninepence?
Machree, macruiskeen. Smutty Moll for a mattress jig. And a pull all together. Ex!
Waiting, guvnor? Most deciduously. Bet your boots on. Stunned like, seeing as
how no shiners is acoming. Underconstumble? He've got the chink ad lib. Seed
near free poun on un a spell ago a said war hisn. Us come right in on your invite,
see? Up to you, matey. Out with the oof. Two bar and a wing. You larn that go off
of they there Frenchy bilks? Won't wash here for nuts nohow. Lil chile velly solly.
Ise de cutest colour coon down our side. Gawds teruth, Chawley. We are nae fou.
We're nae tha fou. Au reservoir, mossoo. Tanks you.
'Tis, sure. What say? In the speakeasy. Tight. I shee you, shir. Bantam, two
days teetee. Bowsing nowt but claretwine. Garn! Have a glint, do. Gum, I'm
jiggered. And been to barber he have. Too full for words. With a railway bloke.
How come you so? Opera he'd like? Rose of Castile. Rows of cast. Police! Some
H2O for a gent fainted. Look at Bantam's flowers. Gemini. He's going to holler.
The colleen bawn. My colleen bawn. O, cheese it! Shut his blurry Dutch oven with
a firm hand. Had the winner today till I tipped him a dead cert. The ruffin cly the
nab of Stephen Hand as give me the jady coppaleen. He strike a telegramboy
paddock wire big bug Bass to the depot. Shove him a joey and grahamise. Mare on
form hot order. Guinea to a goosegog. Tell a cram, that. Gospeltrue. Criminal
diversion? I think that yes. Sure thing. Land him in chokeechokee if the harman
beck copped the game. Madden back Madden's a maddening back. O lust our
refuge and our strength. Decamping. Must you go? Off to mammy. Stand by. Hide
my blushes someone. All in if he spots me. Come ahome, our Bantam. Horryvar,
mong vioo. Dinna forget the cowslips for hersel. Cornfide. Wha gev ye thon colt?
Pal to pal. Jannock. Of John Thomas, her spouse. No fake, old man Leo. S'elp me,
honest injun. Shiver my timbers if I had. There's a great big holy friar. Vyfor you
no me tell? Vel, I ses, if that aint a sheeny nachez, vel, I vil get misha mishinnah.
Through yerd our lord, Amen.
You move a motion? Steve boy, you're going it some. More bluggy drunkables?
Will immensely splendiferous stander permit one stooder of most extreme poverty
and one largesize grandacious thirst to terminate one expensive inaugurated
libation? Give's a breather. Landlord, landlord, have you good wine, staboo?
Hoots, mon, a wee drap to pree. Cut and come again. Right. Boniface! Absinthe
the lot. Nos omnes biberimus viridum toxicum diabolus capiat posterioria nostria.
Closingtime, gents. Eh? Rome boose for the Bloom toff. I hear you say onions?
Bloo? Cadges ads. Photo's papli, by all that's gorgeous. Play low, pardner. Slide.
Bonsoir la compagnie. And snares of the poxfiend. Where's the buck and Namby
Amby? Skunked? Leg bail. Aweel, ye maun e'en gang yer gates. Checkmate. King
to tower. Kind Kristyann wil yu help yung man hoose frend tuk bungellow kee tu
find plais whear tu lay crown of his hed 2 night. Crickey, I'm about sprung.
Tarnally dog gone my shins if this beent the bestest puttiest longbreak yet. Item,
curate, couple of cookies for this child. Cot's plood and prandypalls, none! Not a
pite of sheeses? Thrust syphilis down to hell and with him those other licensed
spirits. Time, gents! Who wander through the world. Health all! a la vôtre!
Golly, whatten tunket's yon guy in the mackintosh? Dusty Rhodes. Peep at his
wearables. By mighty! What's he got? Jubilee mutton. Bovril, by James. Wants it
real bad. D'ye ken bare socks? Seedy cuss in the Richmond? Rawthere! Thought
he had a deposit of lead in his penis. Trumpery insanity. Bartle the Bread we calls
him. That, sir, was once a prosperous cit. Man all tattered and torn that married a
maiden all forlorn. Slung her hook, she did. Here see lost love. Walking
Mackintosh of lonely canyon. Tuck and turn in. Schedule time. Nix for the
hornies. Pardon? Seen him today at a runefal? Chum o' yourn passed in his
checks? Ludamassy! Pore piccaninnies! Thou'll no be telling me thot, Pold veg!
Did ums blubble bigsplash crytears cos fren Padney was took off in black bag? Of
all de darkies Massa Pat was verra best. I never see the like since I was born.
Tiens, tiens, but it is well sad, that, my faith, yes. O, get, rev on a gradient one in
nine. Live axle drives are souped. Lay you two to one Jenatzy licks him ruddy well
hollow. Jappies? High angle fire, inyah! Sunk by war specials. Be worse for him,
says he, nor any Rooshian. Time all. There's eleven of them. Get ye gone.
Forward, woozy wobblers! Night. Night. May Allah the Excellent One your soul
this night ever tremendously conserve.
Your attention! We're nae tha fou. The Leith police dismisseth us. The least
tholice. Ware hawks for the chap puking. Unwell in his abominable regions.
Yooka. Night. Mona, my true love. Yook. Mona, my own love. Ook.
Hark! Shut your obstropolos. Pflaap! Pflaap! Blaze on. There she goes. Brigade!
Bout ship. Mount street way. Cut up! Pflaap! Tally ho. You not come? Run,
skelter, race. Pflaaaap!
Lynch! Hey? Sign on long o' me. Denzille lane this way. Change here for
Bawdyhouse. We two, she said, will seek the kips where shady Mary is. Righto,
any old time. Laetabuntur in cubilibus suis. You coming long? Whisper, who the
sooty hell's the johnny in the black duds? Hush! Sinned against the light and even
now that day is at hand when he shall come to judge the world by fire. Pflaap! Ut
implerentur scripturae. Strike up a ballad. Then outspake medical Dick to his
comrade medical Davy. Christicle, who's this excrement yellow gospeller on the
Merrion hall? Elijah is coming! Washed in the blood of the Lamb. Come on you
winefizzling, ginsizzling, booseguzzling existences! Come on, you dog-gone,
bullnecked, beetlebrowed, hogjowled, peanutbrained, weaseleyed fourflushers,
false alarms and excess baggage! Come on, you triple extract of infamy! Alexander
J Christ Dowie, that's my name, that's yanked to glory most half this planet from
Frisco beach to Vladivostok. The Deity aint no nickel dime bumshow. I put it to
you that He's on the square and a corking fine business proposition. He's the
grandest thing yet and don't you forget it. Shout salvation in King Jesus. You'll
need to rise precious early you sinner there, if you want to diddle the Almighty
God. Pflaaaap! Not half. He's got a coughmixture with a punch in it for you, my
friend, in his back pocket. Just you try it on.
 The Mabbot street entrance of nighttown, before which stretches an uncobbled
tramsiding set with skeleton tracks, red and green will-o'-the-wisps and danger
signals. Rows of grimy houses with gaping doors. Rare lamps with faint rainbow
fins. Round Rabaiotti's halted ice gondola stunted men and women squabble. They
grab wafers between which are wedged lumps of coral and copper snow. Sucking,
they scatter slowly. Children. The swancomb of the gondola, highreared, forges on
through the murk, white and blue under a lighthouse. Whistles call and answer.
THE CALLS: Wait, my love, and I'll be with you.
THE ANSWERS: Round behind the stable.
(A deafmute idiot with goggle eyes, his shapeless mouth dribbling, jerks past,
shaken in Saint Vitus' dance. A chain of children 's hands imprisons him.)
THE CHILDREN: Kithogue! Salute!
THE IDIOT: (Lifts a palsied left arm and gurgles) Grhahute!
THE CHILDREN: Where's the great light?
THE IDIOT: (Gobbing) Ghaghahest.
(They release him. He jerks on. A pigmy woman swings on a rope slung between
two railings, counting. A form sprawled against a dustbin and muffled by its arm
and hat snores, groans, grinding growling teeth, and snores again. On a step a
gnome totting among a rubbishtip crouches to shoulder a sack of rags and bones. A
crone standing by with a smoky oillamp rams her last bottle in the maw of his sack.
He heaves his booty, tugs askew his peaked cap and hobbles off mutely. The crone
makes back for her lair, swaying her lamp. A bandy child, asquat on the doorstep
with a paper shuttlecock, crawls sidling after her in spurts, clutches her skirt,
scrambles up. A drunken navvy grips with both hands the railings of an area,
lurching heavily. At a comer two night watch in shouldercapes, their hands upon
their staffholsters, loom tall. A plate crashes: a woman screams: a child wails. Oaths
of a man roar, mutter, cease. Figures wander, lurk, peer from warrens. In a room lit
by a candle stuck in a bottleneck a slut combs out the tatts from the hair of a
scrofulous child. Cissy Caffrey's voice, still young, sings shrill from a lane.)
CISSY CAFFREY:

I gave it to Molly
Because she was jolly,
The leg of the duck,
The leg of the duck.
(Private Carr and Private Compton, swaggersticks tight in their oxters, as they
march unsteadily rightaboutface and burst together from their mouths a volleyed
fart. Laughter of men from the lane. A hoarse virago retorts.)
THE VIRAGO: Signs on you, hairy arse. More power the Cavan girl.
CISSY CAFFREY: More luck to me. Cavan, Cootehill and Belturbet. (She sings)
 I gave it to Nelly
To stick in her belly,
The leg of the duck,
The leg of the duck.
(Private Carr and Private Compton turn and counterretort, their tunics bloodbright
in a lampglow, black sockets of caps on their blond cropped polls. Stephen Dedalus
and Lynch pass through the crowd close to the redcoats.)
PRIVATE COMPTON: (Jerks his finger) Way for the parson.
PRIVATE CARR: (Turns and calls) What ho, parson!
CISSY CAFFREY: (Her voice soaring higher)

She has it, she got it,

Wherever she put it,
The leg of the duck.
(Stephen, flourishing the ashplant in his left hand, chants with joy the introit for
paschal time. Lynch, his jockeycap low on his brow, attends him, a sneer of
discontent wrinkling his face.)
STEPHEN: Vidi aquam egredientem de templo a latere dextro. Alleluia.
(The famished snaggletusks of an elderly bawd protrude from a doorway.)
THE BAWD: (Her voice whispering huskily) Sst! Come here till I tell you.
Maidenhead inside. Sst!
STEPHEN: (Altius aliquantulum) Et omnes ad quos pervenit aqua ista.
THE BAWD: (Spits in their trail her jet of venom) Trinity medicals. Fallopian
tube. All prick and no pence.
(Edy Boardman, sniffling, crouched with bertha supple, draws her shawl across
her nostrils.)
EDY BOARDMAN: (Bickering) And says the one: I seen you up Faithful place
with your squarepusher, the greaser off the railway, in his cometobed hat. Did
you, says I. That's not for you to say, says I. You never seen me in the mantrap
with a married highlander, says I. The likes of her! Stag that one is! Stubborn as a
mule! And her walking with two fellows the one time, Kilbride, the enginedriver,
and lancecorporal Oliphant.
STEPHEN: (Ttriumphaliter) Salvi facti sunt.
(He flourishes his ashplant, shivering the lamp image, shattering light over the
world. A liver and white spaniel on the prowl slinks after him, growling. Lynch
scares it with a kick.)
LYNCH: So that?
 STEPHEN: (Looks behind) So that gesture, not music not odour, would be a
universal language, the gift of tongues rendering visible not the lay sense but the
first entelechy, the structural rhythm.
LYNCH: Pornosophical philotheology. Metaphysics in Mecklenburgh street!
STEPHEN: We have shrewridden Shakespeare and henpecked Socrates. Even the
allwisest Stagyrite was bitted, bridled and mounted by a light of love.
LYNCH: Ba!
STEPHEN: Anyway, who wants two gestures to illustrate a loaf and a jug? This
movement illustrates the loaf and jug of bread or wine in Omar. Hold my stick.
LYNCH: Damn your yellow stick. Where are we going?
STEPHEN: Lecherous lynx, to la belle dame sans merci, Georgina Johnson, ad
deam qui laetificat iuventutem meam.
(Stephen thrusts the ashplant on him and slowly holds out his hands, his head
going back till both hands are a span from his breast, down turned, in planes
intersecting, the fingers about to part, the left being higher.)
LYNCH: Which is the jug of bread? It skills not. That or the customhouse.
Illustrate thou. Here take your crutch and walk.
(They pass. Tommy Caffrey scrambles to a gaslamp and, clasping, climbs in
spasms. From the top spur he slides down. Jacky Caffrey clasps to climb. The navvy
lurches against the lamp. The twins scuttle off in the dark. The navvy, swaying,
presses a forefinger against a wing of his nose and ejects from the farther nostril a
long liquid jet of snot. Shouldering the lamp he staggers away through the crowd
with his flaring cresset.
Snakes of river fog creep slowly. From drains, clefts, cesspools, middens arise on
all sides stagnant fumes. A glow leaps in the south beyond the seaward reaches of
the river. The navvy, staggering forward, cleaves the crowd and lurches towards the
tramsiding on the farther side under the railway bridge bloom appears, flushed,
panting, cramming bread and chocolate into a sidepocket. From Gillen's hairdresser's
window a composite portrait shows him gallant Nelson's image. A concave mirror at
the side presents to him lovelorn longlost lugubru Booloohoom. Grave Gladstone sees
him level, Bloom for Bloom. he passes, struck by the stare of truculent Wellington,
but in the convex mirror grin unstruck the bonham eyes and fatchuck cheekchops of
Jollypoldy the rixdix doldy.
At Antonio Pabaiotti's door Bloom halts, sweated under the bright arclamp. He
disappears. In a moment he reappears and hurries on.)
BLOOM: Fish and taters. N. g. Ah!
(He disappears into Olhausen's, the porkbutcher's, under the downcoming
rollshutter. A few moments later he emerges from under the shutter, puffing Poldy,
blowing Bloohoom. In each hand he holds a parcel, one containing a lukewarm pig's
crubeen, the other a cold sheep's trotter, sprinkled with wholepepper. He gasps,
standing upright. Then bending to one side he presses a parcel against his ribs and
groans.)
BLOOM: Stitch in my side. Why did I run?
(He takes breath with care and goes forward slowly towards the lampset siding.
The glow leaps again.)
BLOOM: What is that? A flasher? Searchlight.
(He stands at Cormack's corner, watching)
BLOOM: Aurora borealis or a steel foundry? Ah, the brigade, of course. South
side anyhow. Big blaze. Might be his house. Beggar's bush. We're safe. (He hums
cheerfully) London's burning, London's burning! On fire, on fire! (He catches sight
of the navvy lurching through the crowd at the farther side of Talbot street) I'll miss
him. Run. Quick. Better cross here.
(He darts to cross the road. Urchins shout.)
THE URCHINS: Mind out, mister! (Two cyclists, with lighted paper lanterns
aswing, swim by him, grazing him, their bells rattling)
THE BELLS: Haltyaltyaltyall.
BLOOM: (Halts erect, stung by a spasm) Ow!
(He looks round, darts forward suddenly. Through rising fog a dragon
sandstrewer, travelling at caution, slews heavily down upon him, its huge red
headlight winking, its trolley hissing on the wire. The motorman bangs his footgong.)
THE GONG: Bang Bang Bla Bak Blud Bugg Bloo.
(The brake cracks violently. Bloom, raising a policeman's whitegloved hand,
blunders stifflegged out of the track. The motorman, thrown forward, pugnosed, on
the guidewheel, yells as he slides past over chains and keys.)
THE MOTORMAN: Hey, shitbreeches, are you doing the hat trick?
BLOOM: (Bloom trickleaps to the curbstone and halts again. He brushes a
mudflake from his cheek with a parcelled hand.) No thoroughfare. Close shave that
but cured the stitch. Must take up Sandow's exercises again. On the hands down.
Insure against street accident too. The Providential. (He feels his trouser pocket)
Poor mamma's panacea. Heel easily catch in track or bootlace in a cog. Day the
wheel of the black Maria peeled off my shoe at Leonard's corner. Third time is the
charm. Shoe trick. Insolent driver. I ought to report him. Tension makes them
nervous. Might be the fellow balked me this morning with that horsey woman.
Same style of beauty. Quick of him all the same. The stiff walk. True word spoken
in jest. That awful cramp in Lad lane. Something poisonous I ate. Emblem of luck.
Why? Probably lost cattle. Mark of the beast. (He closes his eyes an instant) Bit
light in the head. Monthly or effect of the other. Brainfogfag. That tired feeling.
Too much for me now. Ow!
 (A sinister figure leans on plaited legs against o'beirne's wall, a visage unknown,
injected with dark mercury. From under a wideleaved sombrero the figure regards
him with evil eye.)
BLOOM: Buenas noches, señorita Blanca, que calle es esta?
THE FIGURE: (Impassive, raises a signal arm) Password. Sraid Mabbot.
BLOOM: Haha. Merci. Esperanto. Slan leath. (He mutters) Gaelic league spy,
sent by that fireeater.
(He steps forward. A sackshouldered ragman bars his path. He steps left,
ragsackman left.)
BLOOM: I beg. (He swerves, sidles, stepaside, slips past and on.)
BLOOM: Keep to the right, right, right. If there is a signpost planted by the
Touring Club at Stepaside who procured that public boon? I who lost my way and
contributed to the columns of the Irish Cyclist the letter headed In darkest
Stepaside. Keep, keep, keep to the right. Rags and bones at midnight. A fence
more likely. First place murderer makes for. Wash off his sins of the world.
(Jacky Caffrey, hunted by Tommy Caffrey, runs full tilt against Bloom.)
BLOOM: O
(Shocked, on weak hams, he halts. Tommy and Jacky vanish there, there. Bloom
pats with parcelled hands watch fobpocket, bookpocket, pursepoket, sweets of sin,
potato soap.)
BLOOM: Beware of pickpockets. Old thieves' dodge. Collide. Then snatch your
purse.
(The retriever approaches sniffing, nose to the ground. A sprawled form sneezes. A
stooped bearded figure appears garbed in the long caftan of an elder in Zion and a
smokingcap with magenta tassels. Horned spectacles hang down at the wings of the
nose. Yellow poison streaks are on the drawn face.)
RUDOLPH: Second halfcrown waste money today. I told you not go with
drunken goy ever. So you catch no money.
BLOOM: (Hides the crubeen and trotter behind his back and, crestfallen, feels
warm and cold feetmeat) Ja, ich weiss, papachi.
RUDOLPH: What you making down this place? Have you no soul? (with feeble
vulture talons he feels the silent face of Bloom) Are you not my son Leopold, the
grandson of Leopold? Are you not my dear son Leopold who left the house of his
father and left the god of his fathers Abraham and Jacob?
BLOOM: (With precaution) I suppose so, father. Mosenthal. All that's left of
him.
 RUDOLPH: (Severely) One night they bring you home drunk as dog after spend
your good money. What you call them running chaps?
BLOOM: (In youth's smart blue Oxford suit with white vestslips,
narrowshouldered, in brown Alpine hat, wearing gent's sterling silver waterbury
keyless watch and double curb Albert with seal attached, one side of him coated
with stiffening mud) Harriers, father. Only that once.
RUDOLPH: Once! Mud head to foot. Cut your hand open. Lockjaw. They make
you kaputt, Leopoldleben. You watch them chaps.
BLOOM: (Weakly) They challenged me to a sprint. It was muddy. I slipped.
RUDOLPH: (With contempt) Goim nachez! Nice spectacles for your poor mother!
BLOOM: Mamma!
ELLEN BLOOM: (In pantomime dame's stringed mobcap, widow Twankey's
crinoline and bustle, blouse with muttonleg sleeves buttoned behind, grey mittens
and cameo brooch, her plaited hair in a crispine net, appears over the staircase
banisters, a slanted candlestick in her hand, and cries out in shrill alarm) O blessed
Redeemer, what have they done to him! My smelling salts! (She hauls up a reef of
skirt and ransacks the pouch of her striped blay petticoat. A phial, an Agnus Dei, a
shrivelled potato and a celluloid doll fall out) Sacred Heart of Mary, where were you
at all at all?
(Bloom, mumbling, his eyes downcast, begins to bestow his parcels in his filled
pockets but desists, muttering.)
A VOICE: (Sharply) Poldy!
BLOOM: Who? (He ducks and wards off a blow clumsily) At your service.
(He looks up. Beside her mirage of datepalms a handsome woman in Turkish
costume stands before him. Opulent curves fill out her scarlet trousers and jacket,
slashed with gold. A wide yellow cummerbund girdles her. A white yashmak, violet
in the night, covers her face, leaving free only her large dark eyes and raven hair.)
BLOOM: Molly!
MARION: Welly? Mrs Marion from this out, my dear man, when you speak to
me. (Satirically) Has poor little hubby cold feet waiting so long?
BLOOM: (Shifts from foot to foot) No, no. Not the least little bit.
(He breathes in deep agitation, swallowing gulps of air, questions, hopes, crubeens
for her supper, things to tell her, excuse, desire, spellbound. A coin gleams on her
forehead. On her feet are jewelled toerings. Her ankles are linked by a slender
fetterchain. Beside her a camel, hooded with a turreting turban, waits. A silk ladder
of innumerable rungs climbs to his bobbing howdah. He ambles near with
disgruntled hindquarters. Fiercely she slaps his haunch, her goldcurb wristbangles
angriling, scolding him in Moorish.)
 MARION: Nebrakada! Femininum!
(The camel, lifting a foreleg, plucks from a tree a large mango fruit, offers it to his
mistress, blinking, in his cloven hoof, then droops his head and, grunting, with
uplifted neck, fumbles to kneel. Bloom stoops his back for leapfrog.)
BLOOM: I can give you... I mean as your business menagerer... Mrs Marion... if
you...
MARION: So you notice some change? (Her hands passing slowly over her
trinketed stomacher, a slow friendly mockery in her eyes) O Poldy, Poldy, you are a
poor old stick in the mud! Go and see life. See the wide world.
BLOOM: I was just going back for that lotion whitewax, orangeflower water.
Shop closes early on Thursday. But the first thing in the morning. (He pats divers
pockets) This moving kidney. Ah!
(He points to the south, then to the east. A cake of new clean lemon soap arises,
diffusing light and perfume.)
THE SOAP: We're a capital couple are Bloom and I. He brightens the earth. I
polish the sky.
(The freckled face of Sweny, the druggist, appears in the disc of the soapsun.)
SWENY: Three and a penny, please.
BLOOM: Yes. For my wife. Mrs Marion. Special recipe.
MARION: (Softly) Poldy!
BLOOM: Yes, ma'am?
MARION: ti trema un poco il cuore?
(In disdain she saunters away, plump as a pampered pouter pigeon, humming the
duet from Don Giovanni.)
BLOOM: Are you sure about that voglio? I mean the pronunciati...
(He follows, followed by the sniffing terrier. The elderly bawd seizes his sleeve, the
bristles of her chinmole glittering.)
THE BAWD: Ten shillings a maidenhead. Fresh thing was never touched.
Fifteen. There's no-one in it only her old father that's dead drunk.
(She points. In the gap of her dark den furtive, rainbedraggled, Bridie Kelly
stands.)
BRIDIE: Hatch street. Any good in your mind?
(With a squeak she flaps her bat shawl and runs. A burly rough pursues with
booted strides. He stumbles on the steps, recovers, plunges into gloom. Weak
squeaks of laughter are heard, weaker.)
 THE BAWD: (Her wolfeyes shining) He's getting his pleasure. You won't get a
virgin in the flash houses. Ten shillings. Don't be all night before the polis in plain
clothes sees us. Sixtyseven is a bitch.
(Leering, Gerty Macdowell limps forward. She draws from behind, ogling, and
shows coyly her bloodied clout.)
GERTY: With all my worldly goods I thee and thou. (She murmurs) You did
that. I hate you.
BLOOM: I? When? You're dreaming. I never saw you.
THE BAWD: Leave the gentleman alone, you cheat. Writing the gentleman false
letters. Streetwalking and soliciting. Better for your mother take the strap to you
at the bedpost, hussy like you.
GERTY: (To Bloom) When you saw all the secrets of my bottom drawer. (She
paws his sleeve, slobbering) Dirty married man! I love you for doing that to me.
(She glides away crookedly. Mrs Breen in man's frieze overcoat with loose bellows
pockets, stands in the causeway, her roguish eyes wideopen, smiling in all her
herbivorous buckteeth.)
MRS BREEN: Mr...
BLOOM: (Coughs gravely) Madam, when we last had this pleasure by letter
dated the sixteenth instant...
MRS BREEN: Mr Bloom! You down here in the haunts of sin! I caught you
nicely! Scamp!
BLOOM: (Hurriedly) Not so loud my name. Whatever do you think of me? Don't
give me away. Walls have ears. How do you do? It's ages since I. You're looking
splendid. Absolutely it. Seasonable weather we are having this time of year. Black
refracts heat. Short cut home here. Interesting quarter. Rescue of fallen women.
Magdalen asylum. I am the secretary...
MRS BREEN: (Holds up a finger) Now, don't tell a big fib! I know somebody
won't like that. O just wait till I see Molly! (Slily) Account for yourself this very
sminute or woe betide you!
BLOOM: (Looks behind) She often said she'd like to visit. Slumming. The exotic,
you see. Negro servants in livery too if she had money. Othello black brute.
Eugene Stratton. Even the bones and cornerman at the Livermore christies. Bohee
brothers. Sweep for that matter.
(Tom and Sam Bohee, coloured coons in white duck suits, scarlet socks,
upstarched Sambo chokers and large scarlet asters in their buttonholes, leap out.
Each has his banjo slung. Their paler smaller negroid hands jingle the twingtwang
wires. Flashing white Kaffir eyes and tusks they rattle through a breakdown in
clumsy clogs, twinging, singing, back to back, toe heel, heel toe, with
smackfatclacking nigger lips.)
 TOM AND SAM:

There's someone in the house with Dina

There's someone in the house, I know,
There's someone in the house with Dina
Playing on the old banjo.
(They whisk black masks from raw babby faces: then, chuckling, chortling,
trumming, twanging, they diddle diddle cakewalk dance away.)
BLOOM: (With a sour tenderish smile) A little frivol, shall we, if you are so
inclined? Would you like me perhaps to embrace you just for a fraction of a
second?
MRS BREEN: (Screams gaily) O, you ruck! You ought to see yourself!
BLOOM: For old sake' sake. I only meant a square party, a mixed marriage
mingling of our different little conjugials. You know I had a soft corner for you.
(Gloomily) 'Twas I sent you that valentine of the dear gazelle.
MRS BREEN: Glory Alice, you do look a holy show! Killing simply. (She puts out
her hand inquisitively) What are you hiding behind your back? Tell us, there's a
dear.
BLOOM: (Seizes her wrist with his free hand) Josie Powell that was, prettiest deb
in Dublin. How time flies by! Do you remember, harking back in a retrospective
arrangement, Old Christmas night, Georgina Simpson's housewarming while they
were playing the Irving Bishop game, finding the pin blindfold and
thoughtreading? Subject, what is in this snuffbox?
MRS BREEN: You were the lion of the night with your seriocomic recitation and
you looked the part. You were always a favourite with the ladies.
BLOOM: (Squire of dames, in dinner jacket with wateredsilk facings, blue
masonic badge in his buttonhole, black bow and mother-of-pearl studs, a prismatic
champagne glass tilted in his hand) Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Ireland, home
and beauty.
MRS BREEN: The dear dead days beyond recall. Love's old sweet song.
BLOOM: (Meaningfully dropping his voice) I confess I'm teapot with curiosity to
find out whether some person's something is a little teapot at present.
MRS BREEN: (Gushingly) Tremendously teapot! London's teapot and I'm simply
teapot all over me! (She rubs sides with him) After the parlour mystery games and
the crackers from the tree we sat on the staircase ottoman. Under the mistletoe.
Two is company.
BLOOM: (Wearing a purple Napoleon hat with an amber halfmoon, his fingers
and thumb passing slowly down to her soft moist meaty palm which she surrenders
gently) The witching hour of night. I took the splinter out of this hand, carefully,
slowly. (Tenderly, as he slips on her finger a ruby ring) Là ci darem la mano.
 MRS BREEN: (In a onepiece evening frock executed in moonlight blue, a tinsel
sylph's diadem on her brow with her dancecard fallen beside her moonblue satin
slipper, curves her palm softly, breathing quickly) Voglio e non. You're hot! You're
scalding! The left hand nearest the heart.
BLOOM: When you made your present choice they said it was beauty and the
beast. I can never forgive you for that. (His clenched fist at his brow) Think what it
means. All you meant to me then. (Hoarsely) Woman, it's breaking me!
(Denis Breen, whitetallhatted, with Wisdom Hely's sandwich-boards, shuffles past
them in carpet slippers, his dull beard thrust out, muttering to right and left. Little
Alf Bergan, cloaked in the pall of the ace of spades, dogs him to left and right,
doubled in laughter.)
ALF BERGAN: (Points jeering at the sandwichboards) U. p: Up.
MRS BREEN: (To Bloom) High jinks below stairs. (She gives him the glad eye)
Why didn't you kiss the spot to make it well? You wanted to.
BLOOM: (Shocked) Molly's best friend! Could you?
MRS BREEN: (Her pulpy tongue between her lips, offers a pigeon kiss) Hnhn. The
answer is a lemon. Have you a little present for me there?
BLOOM: (Offhandedly) Kosher. A snack for supper. The home without potted
meat is incomplete. I was at Leah. Mrs Bandmann Palmer. Trenchant exponent of
Shakespeare. Unfortunately threw away the programme. Rattling good place round
there for pigs' feet. Feel.
(Richie Goulding, three ladies' hats pinned on his head, appears weighted to one
side by the black legal bag of Collis and Ward on which a skull and crossbones are
painted in white limewash. He opens it and shows it full of polonies, kippered
herrings, Findon haddies and tightpacked pills.)
RICHIE: Best value in Dub.
(Bald Pat, bothered beetle, stands on the curbstone, folding his napkin, waiting to
wait.)
PAT: (Advances with a tilted dish of spillspilling gravy) Steak and kidney. Bottle
of lager. Hee hee hee. Wait till I wait.
RICHIE: Goodgod. Inev erate inall...
(With hanging head he marches doggedly forward. The navvy, lurching by, gores
him with his flaming pronghorn.)
RICHIE: (With a cry of pain, his hand to his back) Ah! Bright's! Lights!
BLOOM: (Ooints to the navvy) A spy. Don't attract attention. I hate stupid
crowds. I am not on pleasure bent. I am in a grave predicament.
 MRS BREEN: Humbugging and deluthering as per usual with your cock and bull
story.
BLOOM: I want to tell you a little secret about how I came to be here. But you
must never tell. Not even Molly. I have a most particular reason.
MRS BREEN: (All agog) O, not for worlds.
BLOOM: Let's walk on. Shall us?
MRS BREEN: Let's.
(The bawd makes an unheeded sign. Bloom walks on with Mrs Breen. The terrier
follows, whining piteously, wagging his tail.)
THE BAWD: Jewman's melt!
BLOOM: (In an oatmeal sporting suit, a sprig of woodbine in the lapel, tony buff
shirt, shepherd's plaid Saint Andrew's cross scarftie, white spats, fawn dustcoat on
his arm, tawny red brogues, fieldglasses in bandolier and a grey billycock hat) Do
you remember a long long time, years and years ago, just after Milly, Marionette
we called her, was weaned when we all went together to Fairyhouse races, was it?
MRS BREEN: (In smart Saxe tailormade, white velours hat and spider veil)
Leopardstown.
BLOOM: I mean, Leopardstown. And Molly won seven shillings on a three year
old named Nevertell and coming home along by Foxrock in that old fiveseater
shanderadan of a waggonette you were in your heyday then and you had on that
new hat of white velours with a surround of molefur that Mrs Hayes advised you
to buy because it was marked down to nineteen and eleven, a bit of wire and an
old rag of velveteen, and I'll lay you what you like she did it on purpose...
MRS BREEN: She did, of course, the cat! Don't tell me! Nice adviser!
BLOOM: Because it didn't suit you one quarter as well as the other ducky little
tammy toque with the bird of paradise wing in it that I admired on you and you
honestly looked just too fetching in it though it was a pity to kill it, you cruel
naughty creature, little mite of a thing with a heart the size of a fullstop.
MRS BREEN: (Squeezes his arm, simpers) Naughty cruel I was!
BLOOM: (Low, secretly, ever more rapidly) And Molly was eating a sandwich of
spiced beef out of Mrs Joe Gallaher's lunch basket. Frankly, though she had her
advisers or admirers, I never cared much for her style. She was...
MRS BREEN: Too...
BLOOM: Yes. And Molly was laughing because Rogers and Maggot O'Reilly
were mimicking a cock as we passed a farmhouse and Marcus Tertius Moses, the
tea merchant, drove past us in a gig with his daughter, Dancer Moses was her
name, and the poodle in her lap bridled up and you asked me if I ever heard or
read or knew or came across...
 MRS BREEN: (Eagerly) Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
(She fades from his side. Followed by the whining dog he walks on towards
hellsgates. In an archway a standing woman, bent forward, her feet apart, pisses
cowily. Outside a shuttered pub a bunch of loiterers listen to a tale which their
brokensnouted gaffer rasps out with raucous humour. An armless pair of them flop
wrestling, growling, in maimed sodden playfight.)
THE GAFFER: (Crouches, his voice twisted in his snout) And when Cairns came
down from the scaffolding in Beaver street what was he after doing it into only
into the bucket of porter that was there waiting on the shavings for Derwan's
plasterers.
THE LOITERERS: (Guffaw with cleft palates) O jays!
(Their paintspeckled hats wag. Spattered with size and lime of their lodges they
frisk limblessly about him.)
BLOOM: Coincidence too. They think it funny. Anything but that. Broad
daylight. Trying to walk. Lucky no woman.
THE LOITERERS: Jays, that's a good one. Glauber salts. O jays, into the men's
porter.
(Bloom passes. Cheap whores, singly, coupled, shawled, dishevelled, call from
lanes, doors, corners.)
THE WHORES:

Are you going far, queer fellow?

How's your middle leg?
Got a match on you?
Eh, come here till I stiffen it for you.
(He plodges through their sump towards the lighted street beyond. From a bulge of
window curtains a gramophone rears a battered brazen trunk. In the shadow a
shebeenkeeper haggles with the navvy and the two redcoats.)
THE NAVVY: (Belching) Where's the bloody house?
THE SHEBEENKEEPER: Purdon street. Shilling a bottle of stout. Respectable
woman.
THE NAVVY: (Gripping the two redcoats, staggers forward with them) Come on,
you British army!
PRIVATE CARR: (Behind his back) He aint half balmy.
PRIVATE COMPTON: (Laughs) What ho!
PRIVATE CARR: (To the navvy) Portobello barracks canteen. You ask for Carr.
Just Carr.
 THE NAVVY: (Shouts)
We are the boys. Of Wexford.
PRIVATE COMPTON: Say! What price the sergeantmajor?
PRIVATE CARR: Bennett? He's my pal. I love old Bennett.
THE NAVVY: (Shouts)

The galling chain.

And free our native land.
(He staggers forward, dragging them with him. Bloom stops, at fault. The dog
approaches, his tongue outlolling, panting)
BLOOM: Wildgoose chase this. Disorderly houses. Lord knows where they are
gone. Drunks cover distance double quick. Nice mixup. Scene at Westland row.
Then jump in first class with third ticket. Then too far. Train with engine behind.
Might have taken me to Malahide or a siding for the night or collision. Second
drink does it. Once is a dose. What am I following him for? Still, he's the best of
that lot. If I hadn't heard about Mrs Beaufoy Purefoy I wouldn't have gone and
wouldn't have met. Kismet. He'll lose that cash. Relieving office here. Good biz for
cheapjacks, organs. What do ye lack? Soon got, soon gone. Might have lost my life
too with that mangongwheeltracktrolleyglarejuggernaut only for presence of mind.
Can't always save you, though. If I had passed Truelock's window that day two
minutes later would have been shot. Absence of body. Still if bullet only went
through my coat get damages for shock, five hundred pounds. What was he?
Kildare street club toff. God help his gamekeeper.
(He gazes ahead, reading on the wall a scrawled chalk legend Wet Dream and a
phallic design.) Odd! Molly drawing on the frosted carriagepane at Kingstown.
What's that like? (Gaudy dollwomen loll in the lighted doorways, in window
embrasures, smoking birdseye cigarettes. The odour of the sicksweet weed floats
towards him in slow round ovalling wreaths.)
THE WREATHS: Sweet are the sweets. Sweets of sin.
BLOOM: My spine's a bit limp. Go or turn? And this food? Eat it and get all
pigsticky. Absurd I am. Waste of money. One and eightpence too much. (The
retriever drives a cold snivelling muzzle against his hand, wagging his tail.) Strange
how they take to me. Even that brute today. Better speak to him first. Like women
they like rencontres. Stinks like a polecat. Chacun son gout. He might be mad.
Dogdays. Uncertain in his movements. Good fellow! Fido! Good fellow!
Garryowen! (The wolfdog sprawls on his back, wriggling obscenely with begging
paws, his long black tongue lolling out.) Influence of his surroundings. Give and
have done with it. Provided nobody. (Calling encouraging words he shambles back
with a furtive poacher's tread, dogged by the setter into a dark stalestunk corner. He
unrolls one parcel and goes to dump the crubeen softly but holds back and feels the
trotter.) Sizeable for threepence. But then I have it in my left hand. Calls for more
effort. Why? Smaller from want of use. O, let it slide. Two and six.
(With regret he lets the unrolled crubeen and trotter slide. The mastiff mauls the
bundle clumsily and gluts himself with growling greed, crunching the bones. Two
raincaped watch approach, silent, vigilant. They murmur together.)
THE WATCH: Bloom. Of Bloom. For Bloom. Bloom.
(Each lays hand on Bloom's shoulder.)
FIRST WATCH: Caught in the act. Commit no nuisance.
BLOOM: (Stammers) I am doing good to others.
(A covey of gulls, storm petrels, rises hungrily from Liffey slime with Banbury
cakes in their beaks.)
THE GULLS: Kaw kave kankury kake.
BLOOM: The friend of man. Trained by kindness.
(He points. Bob Doran, toppling from a high barstool, sways over the munching
spaniel.)
BOB DORAN: Towser. Give us the paw. Give the paw.
(The bulldog growls, his scruff standing, a gobbet of pig's knuckle between his
molars through which rabid scumspittle dribbles. Bob Doran fills silently into an
area.)
SECOND WATCH: Prevention of cruelty to animals.
BLOOM: (Enthusiastically) A noble work! I scolded that tramdriver on Harold's
cross bridge for illusing the poor horse with his harness scab. Bad French I got for
my pains. Of course it was frosty and the last tram. All tales of circus life are
highly demoralising.
(Signor Maffei, passionpale, in liontamer's costume with diamond studs in his
shirtfront, steps forward, holding a circus paperhoop, a curling carriagewhip and a
revolver with which he covers the gorging boarhound.)
SIGNOR MAFFEI: (With a sinister smile) Ladies and gentlemen, my educated
greyhound. It was I broke in the bucking broncho Ajax with my patent spiked
saddle for carnivores. Lash under the belly with a knotted thong. Block tackle and
a strangling pulley will bring your lion to heel, no matter how fractious, even Leo
ferox there, the Libyan maneater. A redhot crowbar and some liniment rubbing on
the burning part produced Fritz of Amsterdam, the thinking hyena. (He glares) I
possess the Indian sign. The glint of my eye does it with these breastsparklers.
(With a bewitching smile) I now introduce Mademoiselle Ruby, the pride of the
ring.
FIRST WATCH: Come. Name and address.
 BLOOM: I have forgotten for the moment. Ah, yes! (He takes off his high grade
hat, saluting) Dr Bloom, Leopold, dental surgeon. You have heard of von Blum
Pasha. Umpteen millions. Donnerwetter! Owns half Austria. Egypt. Cousin.
FIRST WATCH: Proof.
(A card falls from inside the leather headband of Bloom's hat.)
BLOOM: (In red fez, cadi's dress coat with broad green sash, wearing a false
badge of the Legion of Honour, picks up the card hastily and offers it) Allow me. My
club is the Junior Army and Navy. Solicitors: Messrs John Henry Menton, 27
Bachelor's Walk.
FIRST WATCH: (Reads) Henry Flower. No fixed abode. Unlawfully watching and
besetting.
SECOND WATCH: An alibi. You are cautioned.
BLOOM: (Produces from his heartpocket a crumpled yellow flower) This is the
flower in question. It was given me by a man I don't know his name. (Plausibly)
You know that old joke, rose of Castile. Bloom. The change of name. Virag. (He
murmurs privately and confidentially) We are engaged you see, sergeant. Lady in
the case. Love entanglement. (He shoulders the second watch gently) Dash it all.
It's a way we gallants have in the navy. Uniform that does it. (He turns gravely to
the first watch) Still, of course, you do get your Waterloo sometimes. Drop in some
evening and have a glass of old Burgundy. (To the second watch gaily) I'll introduce
you, inspector. She's game. Do it in the shake of a lamb's tail.
(A dark mercurialised face appears, leading a veiled figure.)
THE DARK MERCURY: The Castle is looking for him. He was drummed out of
the army.
MARTHA: (Thickveiled, a crimson halter round her neck, a copy of the Irish
Times in her hand, in tone of reproach, pointing) Henry! Leopold! Lionel, thou lost
one! Clear my name.
FIRST WATCH: (Sternly) Come to the station.
BLOOM: (Scared, hats himself, steps back, then, plucking at his heart and lifting
his right forearm on the square, he gives the sign and dueguard of fellowcraft) No,
no, worshipful master, light of love. Mistaken identity. The Lyons mail. Lesurques
and Dubosc. You remember the Childs fratricide case. We medical men. By
striking him dead with a hatchet. I am wrongfully accused. Better one guilty
escape than ninetynine wrongfully condemned.
MARTHA: (Sobbing behind her veil) Breach of promise. My real name is Peggy
Griffin. He wrote to me that he was miserable. I'll tell my brother, the Bective
rugger fullback, on you, heartless flirt.
BLOOM: (Behind his hand) She's drunk. The woman is inebriated. (He murmurs
vaguely the pass of Ephraim) Shitbroleeth.
 SECOND WATCH: (Tears in his eyes, to Bloom) You ought to be thoroughly well
ashamed of yourself.
BLOOM: Gentlemen of the jury, let me explain. A pure mare's nest. I am a man
misunderstood. I am being made a scapegoat of. I am a respectable married man,
without a stain on my character. I live in Eccles street. My wife, I am the daughter
of a most distinguished commander, a gallant upstanding gentleman, what do you
call him, Majorgeneral Brian Tweedy, one of Britain's fighting men who helped to
win our battles. Got his majority for the heroic defence of Rorke's Drift.
FIRST WATCH: Regiment.
BLOOM: (Turns to the gallery) The royal Dublins, boys, the salt of the earth,
known the world over. I think I see some old comrades in arms up there among
you. The R. D. F., with our own Metropolitan police, guardians of our homes, the
pluckiest lads and the finest body of men, as physique, in the service of our
sovereign.
A VOICE: Turncoat! Up the Boers! Who booed Joe Chamberlain?
BLOOM: (His hand on the shoulder of the first watch) My old dad too was a J. P.
I'm as staunch a Britisher as you are, sir. I fought with the colours for king and
country in the absentminded war under general Gough in the park and was
disabled at Spion Kop and Bloemfontein, was mentioned in dispatches. I did all a
white man could. (With quiet feeling) Jim Bludso. Hold her nozzle again the bank.
FIRST WATCH: Profession or trade.
BLOOM: Well, I follow a literary occupation, author-journalist. In fact we are
just bringing out a collection of prize stories of which I am the inventor,
something that is an entirely new departure. I am connected with the British and
Irish press. If you ring up...
(Myles Crawford strides out jerkily, a quill between his teeth. His scarlet beak
blazes within the aureole of his straw hat. He dangles a hank of Spanish onions in
one hand and holds with the other hand a telephone receiver nozzle to his ear.)
MYLES CRAWFORD: (His cock's wattles wagging) Hello, seventyseven eightfour.
Hello. Freeman's Urinal and Weekly Arsewipe here. Paralyse Europe. You which?
Bluebags? Who writes? Is it Bloom?
(Mr Philip Beaufoy, palefaced, stands in the witnessbox, in accurate morning
dress, outbreast pocket with peak of handkerchief showing, creased lavender
trousers and patent boots. He carries a large portfolio labelled Matcham's
Masterstrokes.)
BEAUFOY: (Drawls) No, you aren't. Not by a long shot if I know it. I don't see it
that's all. No born gentleman, no-one with the most rudimentary promptings of a
gentleman would stoop to such particularly loathsome conduct. One of those, my
lord. A plagiarist. A soapy sneak masquerading as a litterateur. It's perfectly
obvious that with the most inherent baseness he has cribbed some of my
bestselling copy, really gorgeous stuff, a perfect gem, the love passages in which
are beneath suspicion. The Beaufoy books of love and great possessions, with
which your lordship is doubtless familiar, are a household word throughout the
kingdom.
BLOOM: (Murmurs with hangdog meekness glum) That bit about the laughing
witch hand in hand I take exception to, if I may...
BEAUFOY: (His lip upcurled, smiles superciliously on the court) You funny ass,
you! You're too beastly awfully weird for words! I don't think you need over
excessively disincommodate yourself in that regard. My literary agent Mr J. B.
Pinker is in attendance. I presume, my lord, we shall receive the usual witnesses'
fees, shan't we? We are considerably out of pocket over this bally pressman
johnny, this jackdaw of Rheims, who has not even been to a university.
BLOOM: (Indistinctly) University of life. Bad art.
BEAUFOY: (Shouts) It's a damnably foul lie, showing the moral rottenness of the
man! (He extends his portfolio) We have here damning evidence, the corpus delicti,
my lord, a specimen of my maturer work disfigured by the hallmark of the beast.
A VOICE FROM THE GALLERY:
Moses, Moses, king of the jews, Wiped his arse in the Daily News.
BLOOM: (Bravely) Overdrawn.
BEAUFOY: You low cad! You ought to be ducked in the horsepond, you rotter!
(To the court) Why, look at the man's private life! Leading a quadruple existence!
Street angel and house devil. Not fit to be mentioned in mixed society! The
archconspirator of the age!
BLOOM: (To the court) And he, a bachelor, how...
FIRST WATCH: The King versus Bloom. Call the woman Driscoll.
THE CRIER: Mary Driscoll, scullerymaid!
(Mary Driscoll, a slipshod servant girl, approaches. She has a bucket on the crook
of her arm and a scouringbrush in her hand.)
SECOND WATCH: Another! Are you of the unfortunate class?
MARY DRISCOLL: (Indignantly) I'm not a bad one. I bear a respectable
character and was four months in my last place. I was in a situation, six pounds a
year and my chances with Fridays out and I had to leave owing to his carryings
on.
FIRST WATCH: What do you tax him with?
MARY DRISCOLL: He made a certain suggestion but I thought more of myself
as poor as I am.
 BLOOM: (In housejacket of ripplecloth, flannel trousers, heelless slippers,
unshaven, his hair rumpled: softly) I treated you white. I gave you mementos,
smart emerald garters far above your station. Incautiously I took your part when
you were accused of pilfering. There's a medium in all things. Play cricket.
MARY DRISCOLL: (Excitedly) As God is looking down on me this night if ever I
laid a hand to them oysters!
FIRST WATCH: The offence complained of? Did something happen?
MARY DRISCOLL: He surprised me in the rere of the premises, Your honour,
when the missus was out shopping one morning with a request for a safety pin.
He held me and I was discoloured in four places as a result. And he interfered
twict with my clothing.
BLOOM: She counterassaulted.
MARY DRISCOLL: (Scornfully) I had more respect for the scouringbrush, so I
had. I remonstrated with him, Your lord, and he remarked: keep it quiet.
(General laughter.)
GEORGE FOTTRELL: (Clerk of the crown and peace, resonantly) Order in court!
The accused will now make a bogus statement.
(Bloom, pleading not guilty and holding a fullblown waterlily, begins a long
unintelligible speech. They would hear what counsel had to say in his stirring
address to the grand jury. He was down and out but, though branded as a black
sheep, if he might say so, he meant to reform, to retrieve the memory of the past in a
purely sisterly way and return to nature as a purely domestic animal. A
sevenmonths' child, he had been carefully brought up and nurtured by an aged
bedridden parent. There might have been lapses of an erring father but he wanted to
turn over a new leaf and now, when at long last in sight of the whipping post, to
lead a homely life in the evening of his days, permeated by the affectionate
surroundings of the heaving bosom of the family. An acclimatised Britisher, he had
seen that summer eve from the footplate of an engine cab of the Loop line railway
company while the rain refrained from falling glimpses, as it were, through the
windows of loveful households in Dublin city and urban district of scenes truly rural
of happiness of the better land with Dockrell's wallpaper at one and ninepence a
dozen, innocent Britishborn bairns lisping prayers to the Sacred Infant, youthful
scholars grappling with their pensums or model young ladies playing on the
pianoforte or anon all with fervour reciting the family rosary round the crackling
Yulelog while in the boreens and green lanes the colleens with their swains strolled
what times the strains of the organtoned melodeon Britannia metalbound with four
acting stops and twelvefold bellows, a sacrifice, greatest bargain ever...
(Renewed laughter. He mumbles incoherently. Reporters complain that they
cannot hear.)
LONGHAND AND SHORTHAND: (Without looking up from their notebooks)
Loosen his boots.
 PROFESSOR MACHUGH: (From the presstable, coughs and calls) Cough it up,
man. Get it out in bits.
(The crossexamination proceeds re Bloom and the bucket. A large bucket. Bloom
himself. Bowel trouble. In Beaver street Gripe, yes. Quite bad. A plasterer's bucket.
By walking stifflegged. Suffered untold misery. Deadly agony. About noon. Love or
burgundy. Yes, some spinach. Crucial moment. He did not look in the bucket
Nobody. Rather a mess. Not completely. A Titbits back number.)
(Uproar and catcalls. Bloom in a torn frockcoat stained with whitewash, dinged
silk hat sideways on his head, a strip of stickingplaster across his nose, talks
inaudibly.)
J. J. O'MOLLOY: (In barrister's grey wig and stuffgown, speaking with a voice of
pained protest) This is no place for indecent levity at the expense of an erring
mortal disguised in liquor. We are not in a beargarden nor at an Oxford rag nor is
this a travesty of justice. My client is an infant, a poor foreign immigrant who
started scratch as a stowaway and is now trying to turn an honest penny. The
trumped up misdemeanour was due to a momentary aberration of heredity,
brought on by hallucination, such familiarities as the alleged guilty occurrence
being quite permitted in my client's native place, the land of the Pharaoh. Prima
facie, I put it to you that there was no attempt at carnally knowing. Intimacy did
not occur and the offence complained of by Driscoll, that her virtue was solicited,
was not repeated. I would deal in especial with atavism. There have been cases of
shipwreck and somnambulism in my client's family. If the accused could speak he
could a tale unfold—one of the strangest that have ever been narrated between the
covers of a book. He himself, my lord, is a physical wreck from cobbler's weak
chest. His submission is that he is of Mongolian extraction and irresponsible for
his actions. Not all there, in fact.
BLOOM: (Barefoot, pigeonbreasted, in lascar's vest and trousers, apologetic toes
turned in, opens his tiny mole's eyes and looks about him dazedly, passing a slow
hand across his forehead. Then he hitches his belt sailor fashion and with a shrug of
oriental obeisance salutes the court, pointing one thumb heavenward.) Him makee
velly muchee fine night. (He begins to lilt simply)

Li li poo lil chile

Blingee pigfoot evly night
Payee two shilly...
(He is howled down.)
J. J. O'MOLLOY: (Hotly to the populace) This is a lonehand fight. By Hades, I
will not have any client of mine gagged and badgered in this fashion by a pack of
curs and laughing hyenas. The Mosaic code has superseded the law of the jungle. I
say it and I say it emphatically, without wishing for one moment to defeat the
ends of justice, accused was not accessory before the act and prosecutrix has not
been tampered with. The young person was treated by defendant as if she were
his very own daughter. (Bloom takes J. J. O'Molloy's hand and raises it to his lips.) I
shall call rebutting evidence to prove up to the hilt that the hidden hand is again
at its old game. When in doubt persecute Bloom. My client, an innately bashful
man, would be the last man in the world to do anything ungentlemanly which
injured modesty could object to or cast a stone at a girl who took the wrong
turning when some dastard, responsible for her condition, had worked his own
sweet will on her. He wants to go straight. I regard him as the whitest man I
know. He is down on his luck at present owing to the mortgaging of his extensive
property at Agendath Netaim in faraway Asia Minor, slides of which will now be
shown. (To Bloom) I suggest that you will do the handsome thing.
BLOOM: A penny in the pound.
(The image of the lake of Kinnereth with blurred cattle cropping in silver haze is
projected on the wall. Moses Dlugacz, ferreteyed albino, in blue dungarees, stands
up in the gallery, holding in each hand an orange citron and a pork kidney.)
DLUGACZ: (Hoarsely) Bleibtreustrasse, Berlin, W.13.
(J. J. O'Molloy steps on to a low plinth and holds the lapel of his coat with
solemnity. His face lengthens, grows pale and bearded, with sunken eyes, the
blotches of phthisis and hectic cheekbones of John F. Taylor. He applies his
handkerchief to his mouth and scrutinises the galloping tide of rosepink blood.)
J.J.O'MOLLOY: (Almost voicelessly) Excuse me. I am suffering from a severe
chill, have recently come from a sickbed. A few wellchosen words. (He assumes
the avine head, foxy moustache and proboscidal eloquence of Seymour Bushe.) When
the angel's book comes to be opened if aught that the pensive bosom has
inaugurated of soultransfigured and of soultransfiguring deserves to live I say
accord the prisoner at the bar the sacred benefit of the doubt. (A paper with
something written on it is handed into court.)
BLOOM: (In court dress) Can give best references. Messrs Callan, Coleman. Mr
Wisdom Hely J. P. My old chief Joe Cuffe. Mr V. B. Dillon, ex lord mayor of
Dublin. I have moved in the charmed circle of the highest... Queens of Dublin
society. (Carelessly) I was just chatting this afternoon at the viceregal lodge to my
old pals, sir Robert and lady Ball, astronomer royal at the levee. Sir Bob, I said...
MRS YELVERTON BARRY: (In lowcorsaged opal balldress and elbowlength ivory
gloves, wearing a sabletrimmed brickquilted dolman, a comb of brilliants and
panache of osprey in her hair) Arrest him, constable. He wrote me an anonymous
letter in prentice backhand when my husband was in the North Riding of
Tipperary on the Munster circuit, signed James Lovebirch. He said that he had
seen from the gods my peerless globes as I sat in a box of the Theatre Royal at a
command performance of La Cigale. I deeply inflamed him, he said. He made
improper overtures to me to misconduct myself at half past four p.m. on the
following Thursday, Dunsink time. He offered to send me through the post a work
of fiction by Monsieur Paul de Kock, entitled The Girl with the Three Pairs of
Stays.
 MRS BELLINGHAM: (In cap and seal coney mantle, wrapped up to the nose,
steps out of her brougham and scans through tortoiseshell quizzing-glasses which she
takes from inside her huge opossum muff) Also to me. Yes, I believe it is the same
objectionable person. Because he closed my carriage door outside sir Thornley
Stoker's one sleety day during the cold snap of February ninetythree when even
the grid of the wastepipe and the ballstop in my bath cistern were frozen.
Subsequently he enclosed a bloom of edelweiss culled on the heights, as he said,
in my honour. I had it examined by a botanical expert and elicited the information
that it was ablossom of the homegrown potato plant purloined from a forcingcase
of the model farm.
MRS YELVERTON BARRY: Shame on him!
(A crowd of sluts and ragamuffins surges 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 Palmer 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 braided
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 Phoenix 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 señorita, 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 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. Pigdog 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
huntingcrop 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, ringletted, 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)

Cuckoo.
Cuckoo.
Cuckoo.
(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 wellknown
dynamitard, forger, bigamist, bawd and cuckold and 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 jerkin 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 grappling 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 chimpanzee. (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 eye flashes
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. How 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, toadbellied,
wrynecked, in a surplice and bandanna nightcap, holding sleepily a staff twisted
poppies.)
FATHER COFFEY: (Yawns, then chants with a hoarse croak) Namine. Jacobs.
Vobiscuits. Amen.
JOHN O'CONNELL: (Foghorns stormily through his megaphone) Dignam, Patrick
T, deceased.
PADDY DIGNAM: (With pricked up ears, winces) Overtones. (He wriggles
forward and places an ear to the ground) My master's 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 tail stiffpointcd, his ears
cocked.)
PADDY DIGNAM: Pray for the repose of his soul.
(He worms down through a coalhole, 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 twocolumned 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 through the sump. Kisses chirp amid the rifts of fog a piano sounds.
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! Yummyyum, Womwom! (Warbling) Big comebig! Pirouette!
Leopopold! (Twittering) Leeolee! (Warbling) O Leo!
 (They rustle, flutter upon his garments, alight, bright giddy flecks, 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 glides 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 Ralegh 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 bucaneering 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 TORCHBEARERS: 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 large white silk scarf) That alderman 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,
bugbears, 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 Mile 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 King's own Scottish Borderers,
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, his lordship the lord mayor of
Cork, their worships the mayors of Limerick, Galway, Sligo and Waterford,
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. After them march the guilds and trades and trainbands with
flying colours: coopers, bird fanciers, millwrights, newspaper canvassers, law
scriveners, masseurs, vintners, trussmakers, chimneysweeps, lard refiners, tabinet
and poplin weavers, farriers, Italian warehousemen, church decorators, bootjack
manufacturers, undertakers, silk mercers, lapidaries, salesmasters, corkcutters,
assessors of fire losses, dyers and cleaners, export bottlers, fellmongers, ticketwriters,
heraldic seal engravers, horse repository hands, bullion brokers, cricket and archery
outfitters, riddlemakers, egg and potato factors, hosiers and glovers, plumbing
contractors. After them march gentlemen of the bedchamber, Black Rod, Deputy
Garter, Gold Stick, the master of horse, 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. Beefeaters 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 horse with long
flowing crimson tail, richly caparisoned, with golden headstall. 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 BOYS:

The 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 undoubted
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 hairoil 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 moonblue 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 fill 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 trapdoor. 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
tramlines, 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), 50 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), Loveletters
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 SUCKLINGS:
 Clap 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 fit
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 Roschaschana 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'MOLLOY: A Daniel did I say? Nay! A Peter O'Brien!
NOSEY FLYNN: Where do I draw the five pounds?
 PISSER BURKE: For bladder trouble?
BLOOM:

Acid. nit. hydrochlor. dil., 20 minims

Tinct. nux vom., 5 minims
Extr. taraxel. iiq., 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 eightday 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 language with universal brotherhood. No more patriotism of
barspongers and dropsical impostors. Free money, free rent, 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 anythingarian 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 tooraloom 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 fishingcap 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
gasovens, 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, sheep's 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 motorgoggles 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 feebleminded 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 of pure Irish manufacture 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, blank cheques, banknotes, jewels,
treasury bonds, maturing bills of exchange, I. O. U's, wedding rings, watchchains,
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 the octuplets
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, Maindoree, Silversmile, Silberselber, Vifargent,
Panargyros. 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, vicechairmen 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 like Father Charles.
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 top ledge by his eyelids, eats twelve
dozen oysters (shells included), heals several sufferers from king's 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, Kossuth, 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 begat 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.
CRAB: (In bushranger'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 frons to nates, three tears filling 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 ORPHANS:

You hig, you hog, you dirty dog!

You think the ladies love you!
THE PRISON GATE GIRLS:

If you see Kay

Tell him he may
See you in tea
Tell 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! Recant!
(George R 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, blackbearded 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 large 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 Vincent O'brien, sings the chorus
from Handel's Messiah alleluia for the lord god omnipotent reigneth, 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. I'm sick
of it. Let everything rip.
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 plays 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 lolling 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 passtouch of secret monitor, luring him to doom.)
Hot hands cold gizzard.
(He hesitates amid scents, music, temptations. She leads him towards the steps,
drawing him by the odour of her armpits, the vice of her painted eyes, the rustle of
her slip in whose sinuous folds lurks the lion reek of all the male brutes that have
possessed her.)
THE MALE BRUTES: (Exhaling sulphur of rut and dung and ramping in their
loosebox, faintly roaring, their drugged heads swaying to and fro) Good!
(Zoe and Bloom reach the doorway where two sister whores are seated. They
examine him curiously from under their pencilled brows and smile to his hasty bow.
He trips awkwardly.)
ZOE: (Her lucky hand instantly saving him) Hoopsa! Don't fall upstairs.
BLOOM: The just man falls seven times. (He stands aside at the threshold) After
you is good manners.
ZOE: Ladies first, gentlemen after.
(She crosses the threshold. He hesitates. She turns and, holding out her hands,
draws him over. He hops. On the antlered rack of the hall hang a man 's hat and
waterproof. Bloom uncovers himself but, seeing them, frowns, then smiles,
preoccupied. A door on the return landing is flung open. A man in purple shirt and
grey trousers, brownsocked, passes with an ape's gait, his bald head and goatee
beard upheld, hugging a full waterjugjar, his twotailed black braces dangling at
heels. Averting his face quickly Bloom bends to examine on the halltable the spaniel
eyes of a running fox: then, his lifted head sniffing, follows Zoe into the musicroom.
A shade of mauve tissuepaper dims the light of the chandelier. Round and round a
moth flies, colliding, escaping. The floor is covered with an oilcloth mosaic of jade
and azure and cinnabar rhomboids. Footmarks are stamped over it in all senses,
heel to heel, heel to hollow, toe to toe, feet locked, a morris of shuffling feet without
body phantoms, all in a scrimmage higgledypiggledy. The walls are tapestried with a
paper of yewfronds and clear glades. In the grate is spread a screen of peacock
feathers. Lynch squats crosslegged on the hearthrug of matted hair, his cap back to
the front. With a wand he beats time slowly. Kitty Ricketts, a bony pallid whore in
navy costume, doeskin gloves rolled back from a coral wristlet, a chain purse in her
hand, sits perched on the edge of the table swinging her leg and glancing at herself in
the gilt mirror over the mantelpiece. A tag of her corsetlace hangs slightly below her
jacket. Lynch indicates mockingly the couple at the piano.)
KITTY: (Coughs behind her hand) She's a bit imbecillic. (She signs with a
waggling forefinger) Blemblem. (Lynch lifts up her skirt and white petticoat with his
wand she settles them down quickly.) Respect yourself. (She hiccups, then bends
quickly her sailor hat under which her hair glows, red with henna) O, excuse!
ZOE: More limelight, Charley. (She goes to the chandelier and turns the gas full
cock)
 KITTY: (Peers at the gasjet) What ails it tonight?
LYNCH: (Deeply) Enter a ghost and hobgoblins.
ZOE: Clap on the back for Zoe.
(The wand in Lynch's hand flashes: a brass poker. Stephen stands at the pianola
on which sprawl his hat and ashplant. With two fingers he repeats once more the
series of empty fifths. Florry Talbot, a blond feeble goosefat whore in a
tatterdemalion gown of mildewed strawberry, lolls spreadeagle in the sofacorner, her
limp forearm pendent over the bolster, listening. A heavy stye droops over her sleepy
eyelid.)
KITTY: (Hiccups again with a kick of her horsed foot) O, excuse!
ZOE: (Promptly) Your boy's thinking of you. Tie a knot on your shift.
(Kitty Ricketts bends her head. Her boa uncoils, slides, glides over her shoulder,
back, arm, chair to the ground. Lynch lifts the curled caterpillar on his wand. She
snakes her neck, nestling. Stephen glances behind at the squatted figure with its cap
back to the front.)
STEPHEN: As a matter of fact it is of no importance whether Benedetto
Marcello found it or made it. The rite is the poet's rest. It may be an old hymn to
Demeter or also illustrate Coela enarrant gloriam Domini. It is susceptible of nodes
or modes as far apart as hyperphrygian and mixolydian and of texts so divergent
as priests haihooping round David's that is Circe's or what am I saying Ceres' altar
and David's tip from the stable to his chief bassoonist about the alrightness of his
almightiness. Mais nom de nom, that is another pair of trousers. Jetez la gourme.
Faut que jeunesse se passe. (He stops, points at Lynch's cap, smiles, laughs) Which
side is your knowledge bump?
THE CAP: (With saturnine spleen) Bah! It is because it is. Woman's reason.
Jewgreek is greekjew. Extremes meet. Death is the highest form of life. Bah!
STEPHEN: You remember fairly accurately all my errors, boasts, mistakes. How
long shall I continue to close my eyes to disloyalty? Whetstone!
THE CAP: Bah!
STEPHEN: Here's another for you. (He frowns) The reason is because the
fundamental and the dominant are separated by the greatest possible interval
which...
THE CAP: Which? Finish. You can't.
STEPHEN: (With an effort) Interval which. Is the greatest possible ellipse.
Consistent with. The ultimate return. The octave. Which.
THE CAP: Which?
(Outside the gramophone begins to blare The Holy City.)
 STEPHEN: (Abruptly) What went forth to the ends of the world to traverse not
itself, God, the sun, Shakespeare, a commercial traveller, having itself traversed in
reality itself becomes that self. Wait a moment. Wait a second. Damn that fellow's
noise in the street. Self which it itself was ineluctably preconditioned to become.
Ecco!
LYNCH: (With a mocking whinny of laughter grins at Bloom and Zoe Higgins)
What a learned speech, eh?
ZOE: (Briskly) God help your head, he knows more than you have forgotten.
(With obese stupidity Florry Talbot regards Stephen.)
FLORRY: They say the last day is coming this summer.
KITTY: No!
ZOE: (Explodes in laughter) Great unjust God!
FLORRY: (Offended) Well, it was in the papers about Antichrist. O, my foot's
tickling.
(Ragged barefoot newsboys, jogging a wagtail kite, patter past, yelling.)
THE NEWSBOYS: Stop press edition. Result of the rockinghorse races. Sea
serpent in the royal canal. Safe arrival of Antichrist.
(Stephen turns and sees Bloom.)
STEPHEN: A time, times and half a time.
(Reuben I Antichrist, wandering jew, a clutching hand open on his spine, stumps
forward. Across his loins is slung a pilgrim's wallet from which protrude promissory
notes and dishonoured bills. Aloft over his shoulder he bears a long boatpole from the
hook of which the sodden huddled mass of his only son, saved from Liffey waters,
hangs from the slack of its breeches. A hobgoblin in the image of Punch Costello,
hipshot, crookbacked, hydrocephalic, prognathic with receding forehead and Ally
Sloper nose, tumbles in somersaults through the gathering darkness.)
ALL: What?
THE HOBGOBLIN: (His jaws chattering, capers to and fro, goggling his eyes,
squeaking, kangaroohopping with outstretched clutching arms, then all at once
thrusts his lipless face through the fork of his thighs) Il vient! C'est moi! L'homme qui
rit! L'homme primigene! (He whirls round and round with dervish howls) Sieurs et
dames, faites vos jeux! (He crouches juggling. Tiny roulette planets fly from his
hands.) Les jeux sont faits! (The planets rush together, uttering crepitant cracks)
Rien va plus! (The planets, buoyant balloons, sail swollen up and away. He springs
off into vacuum.)
FLORRY: (Sinking into torpor, crossing herself secretly) The end of the world!
 (A female tepid effluvium leaks out from her. Nebulous obscurity occupies space.
Through the drifting fog without the gramophone blares over coughs and
feetshuffling.)
THE GRAMOPHONE: Jerusalem!
Open your gates and sing
Hosanna...
(A rocket rushes up the sky and bursts. A white star fills from it, proclaiming the
consummation of all things and second coming of Elijah. Along an infinite invisible
tightrope taut from zenith to nadir the End of the World, a twoheaded octopus in
gillie's kilts, busby and tartan filibegs, whirls through the murk, head over heels, in
the form of the Three Legs of Man.)
THE END OF THE WORLD: (with a Scotch accent) Wha'll dance the keel row,
the keel row, the keel row?
(Over the possing drift and choking breathcoughs, Elijah's voice, harsh as a
corncrake's, jars on high. Perspiring in a loose lawn surplice with funnel sleeves he
is seen, vergerfaced, above a rostrum about which the banner of old glory is draped.
He thumps the parapet.)
ELIJAH: No yapping, if you please, in this booth. Jake Crane, Creole Sue, Dove
Campbell, Abe Kirschner, do your coughing with your mouths shut. Say, I am
operating all this trunk line. Boys, do it now. God's time is 12.25. Tell mother
you'll be there. Rush your order and you play a slick ace. Join on right here. Book
through to eternity junction, the nonstop run. Just one word more. Are you a god
or a doggone clod? If the second advent came to Coney Island are we ready?
Florry Christ, Stephen Christ, Zoe Christ, Bloom Christ, Kitty Christ, Lynch Christ,
it's up to you to sense that cosmic force. Have we cold feet about the cosmos? No.
Be on the side of the angels. Be a prism. You have that something within, the
higher self. You can rub shoulders with a Jesus, a Gautama, an Ingersoll. Are you
all in this vibration? I say you are. You once nobble that, congregation, and a
buck joyride to heaven becomes a back number. You got me? It's a lifebrightener,
sure. The hottest stuff ever was. It's the whole pie with jam in. It's just the cutest
snappiest line out. It is immense, supersumptuous. It restores. It vibrates. I know
and I am some vibrator. Joking apart and, getting down to bedrock, A. J. Christ
Dowie and the harmonial philosophy, have you got that? O. K. Seventyseven west
sixtyninth street. Got me? That's it. You call me up by sunphone any old time.
Bumboosers, save your stamps. (He shouts) Now then our glory song. All join
heartily in the singing. Encore! (He sings) Jeru...
THE GRAMOPHONE: (Drowning his voice) Whorusalaminyourhighhohhhh...
(The disc rasps gratingly against the needle)
THE THREE WHORES: (Covering their ears, squawk) Ahhkkk!
ELIJAH: (In rolledup shirtsleeves, black in the face, shouts at the top of his voice,
his arms uplifted) Big Brother up there, Mr President, you hear what I done just
been saying to you. Certainly, I sort of believe strong in you, Mr President. I
certainly am thinking now Miss Higgins and Miss Ricketts got religion way inside
them. Certainly seems to me I don't never see no wusser scared female than the
way you been, Miss Florry, just now as I done seed you. Mr President, you come
long and help me save our sisters dear. (He winks at his audience) Our Mr
President, he twig the whole lot and he aint saying nothing.
KITTY-KATE: I forgot myself. In a weak moment I erred and did what I did on
Constitution hill. I was confirmed by the bishop and enrolled in the brown
scapular. My mother's sister married a Montmorency. It was a working plumber
was my ruination when I was pure.
ZOE-FANNY: I let him larrup it into me for the fun of it.
FLORRY-TERESA: It was in consequence of a portwine beverage on top of
Hennessy's three star. I was guilty with Whelan when he slipped into the bed.
STEPHEN: In the beginning was the word, in the end the world without end.
Blessed be the eight beatitudes.
(The beatitudes, Dixon, Madden, Crotthers, Costello, Lenehan, Bannon, Mulligan
and Lynch in white surgical students' gowns, four abreast, goosestepping, tramp fist
past in noisy marching)
THE BEATITUDES: (Incoherently) Beer beef battledog buybull businum barnum
buggerum bishop.
LYSTER: (In quakergrey kneebreeches and broadbrimmed hat, says discreetly) He
is our friend. I need not mention names. Seek thou the light.
(He corantos by. Best enters in hairdresser's attire, shinily laundered, his locks in
curlpapers. He leads John Eglinton who wears a mandarin's kimono of Nankeen
yellow, lizardlettered, and a high pagoda hat.)
BEST: (Smiling, lifts the hat and displays a shaven poll from the crown of which
bristles a pigtail toupee tied with an orange topknot) I was just beautifying him,
don't you know. A thing of beauty, don't you know, Yeats says, or I mean, Keats
says.
JOHN EGLINTON: (Produces a greencapped dark lantern and flashes it towards a
corner: with carping accent) Esthetics and cosmetics are for the boudoir. I am out
for truth. Plain truth for a plain man. Tanderagee wants the facts and means to
get them.
(In the cone of the searchlight behind the coalscuttle, ollave, holyeyed, the bearded
figure of Mananaun Maclir broods, chin on knees. He rises slowly. A cold seawind
blows from his druid mouth. About his head writhe eels and elvers. He is encrusted
with weeds and shells. His right hand holds a bicycle pump. His left hand grasps a
huge crayfish by its two talons.)
MANANAUN MACLIR: (With a voice of waves) Aum! Hek! Wal! Ak! Lub! Mor!
Ma! White yoghin of the gods. Occult pimander of Hermes Trismegistos. (With a
voice of whistling seawind) Punarjanam patsypunjaub! I won't have my leg pulled.
It has been said by one: beware the left, the cult of Shakti. (With a cry of
stormbirds) Shakti Shiva, darkhidden Father! (He smites with his bicycle pump the
crayfish in his left hand. On its cooperative dial glow the twelve signs of the zodiac.
He wails with the vehemence of the ocean.) Aum! Baum! Pyjaum! I am the light of
the homestead! I am the dreamery creamery butter.
(A skeleton judashand strangles the light. The green light wanes to mauve. The
gasjet wails whistling.)
THE GASJET: Pooah! Pfuiiiiiii!
(Zoe runs to the chandelier and, crooking her leg, adjusts the mantle.)
ZOE: Who has a fag as I'm here?
LYNCH: (Tossing a cigarette on to the table) Here.
ZOE: (Her head perched aside in mock pride) Is that the way to hand the pot to a
lady? (She stretches up to light the cigarette over the flame, twirling it slowly,
showing the brown tufts of her armpits. Lynch with his poker lifts boldly a side of
her slip. Bare from her garters up her flesh appears under the sapphire a nixie's
green. She puffs calmly at her cigarette.) Can you see the beautyspot of my behind?
LYNCH: I'm not looking
ZOE: (Makes sheep's eyes) No? You wouldn't do a less thing. Would you suck a
lemon?
(Squinting in mock shame she glances with sidelong meaning at Bloom, then
twists round towards him, pulling her slip free of the poker. Blue fluid again flows
over her flesh. Bloom stands, smiling desirously, twirling his thumbs. Kitty Ricketts
licks her middle finger with her spittle and, gazing in the mirror, smooths both
eyebrows. Lipoti Virag, basilicogrammate, chutes rapidly down through the
chimneyflue and struts two steps to the left on gawky pink stilts. He is sausaged into
several overcoats and wears a brown macintosh under which he holds a roll of
parchment. In his left eye flashes the monocle of Cashel Boyle O'connor Fitzmaurice
Tisdall Farrell. On his head is perched an Egyptian pshent. Two quills project over
his ears.)
VIRAG: (Heels together, bows) My name is Virag Lipoti, of Szombathely. (He
coughs thoughtfully, drily) Promiscuous nakedness is much in evidence hereabouts,
eh? Inadvertently her backview revealed the fact that she is not wearing those
rather intimate garments of which you are a particular devotee. The injection mark
on the thigh I hope you perceived? Good.
BLOOM: Granpapachi. But...
VIRAG: Number two on the other hand, she of the cherry rouge and coiffeuse
white, whose hair owes not a little to our tribal elixir of gopherwood, is in walking
costume and tightly staysed by her sit, I should opine. Backbone in front, so to
say. Correct me but I always understood that the act so performed by skittish
humans with glimpses of lingerie appealed to you in virtue of its
exhibitionististicicity. In a word. Hippogriff. Am I right?
BLOOM: She is rather lean.
VIRAG: (Not unpleasantly) Absolutely! Well observed and those pannier pockets
of the skirt and slightly pegtop effect are devised to suggest bunchiness of hip. A
new purchase at some monster sale for which a gull has been mulcted.
Meretricious finery to deceive the eye. Observe the attention to details of
dustspecks. Never put on you tomorrow what you can wear today. Parallax! (With
a nervous twitch of his head) Did you hear my brain go snap? Pollysyllabax!
BLOOM: (An elbow resting in a hand, a forefinger against his cheek) She seems
sad.
VIRAG: (Cynically, his weasel teeth bared yellow, draws down his left eye with a
finger and barks hoarsely) Hoax! Beware of the flapper and bogus mournful. Lily of
the alley. All possess bachelor's button discovered by Rualdus Columbus. Tumble
her. Columble her. Chameleon. (More genially) Well then, permit me to draw your
attention to item number three. There is plenty of her visible to the naked eye.
Observe the mass of oxygenated vegetable matter on her skull. What ho, she
bumps! The ugly duckling of the party, longcasted and deep in keel.
BLOOM: (Regretfully) When you come out without your gun.
VIRAG: We can do you all brands, mild, medium and strong. Pay your money,
take your choice. How happy could you be with either...
BLOOM: With...?
VIRAG: (His tongue upcurling) Lyum! Look. Her beam is broad. She is coated
with quite a considerable layer of fat. Obviously mammal in weight of bosom you
remark that she has in front well to the fore two protuberances of very respectable
dimensions, inclined to fall in the noonday soupplate, while on her rere lower
down are two additional protuberances, suggestive of potent rectum and
tumescent for palpation, which leave nothing to be desired save compactness.
Such fleshy parts are the product of careful nurture. When coopfattened their
livers reach an elephantine size. Pellets of new bread with fennygreek and
gumbenjamin swamped down by potions of green tea endow them during their
brief existence with natural pincushions of quite colossal blubber. That suits your
book, eh? Fleshhotpots of Egypt to hanker after. Wallow in it. Lycopodium. (His
throat twitches) Slapbang! There he goes again.
BLOOM: The stye I dislike.
VIRAG: (Arches his eyebrows) Contact with a goldring, they say. Argumentum
ad feminam, as we said in old Rome and ancient Greece in the consulship of
Diplodocus and Ichthyosauros. For the rest Eve's sovereign remedy. Not for sale.
Hire only. Huguenot. (He twitches) It is a funny sound. (He coughs encouragingly)
But possibly it is only a wart. I presume you shall have remembered what I will
have taught you on that head? Wheatenmeal with honey and nutmeg.
 BLOOM: (Reflecting) Wheatenmeal with lycopodium and syllabax. This
searching ordeal. It has been an unusually fatiguing day, a chapter of accidents.
Wait. I mean, wartsblood spreads warts, you said...
VIRAG: (Severely, his nose hardhumped, his side eye winking) Stop twirling your
thumbs and have a good old thunk. See, you have forgotten. Exercise your
mnemotechnic. La causa è santa. Tara. Tara. (Aside) He will surely remember.
BLOOM: Rosemary also did I understand you to say or willpower over parasitic
tissues. Then nay no I have an inkling. The touch of a deadhand cures. Mnemo?
VIRAG: (Excitedly) I say so. I say so. E'en so. Technic. (He taps his
parchmentroll energetically) This book tells you how to act with all descriptive
particulars. Consult index for agitated fear of aconite, melancholy of muriatic,
priapic pulsatilla. Virag is going to talk about amputation. Our old friend caustic.
They must be starved. Snip off with horsehair under the denned neck. But, to
change the venue to the Bulgar and the Basque, have you made up your mind
whether you like or dislike women in male habiliments? (With a dry snigger) You
intended to devote an entire year to the study of the religious problem and the
summer months of 1886 to square the circle and win that million. Pomegranate!
From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step. Pyjamas, let us say? Or
stockingette gussetted knickers, closed? Or, put we the case, those complicated
combinations, camiknickers? (He crows derisively) Keekeereekee!
(Bloom surveys uncertainly the three whores then gazes at the veiled mauve light,
hearing the everflying moth.)
BLOOM: I wanted then to have now concluded. Nightdress was never. Hence
this. But tomorrow is a new day will be. Past was is today. What now is will then
morrow as now was be past yester.
VIRAG: (Prompts in a pig's whisper) Insects of the day spend their brief
existence in reiterated coition, lured by the smell of the inferiorly pulchritudinous
fumale possessing extendified pudendal nerve in dorsal region. Pretty Poll! (His
yellow parrotbeak gabbles nasally) They had a proverb in the Carpathians in or
about the year five thousand five hundred and fifty of our era. One tablespoonful
of honey will attract friend Bruin more than half a dozen barrels of first choice
malt vinegar. Bear's buzz bothers bees. But of this apart. At another time we may
resume. We were very pleased, we others. (He coughs and, bending his brow, rubs
his nose thoughtfully with a scooping hand) You shall find that these night insects
follow the light. An illusion for remember their complex unadjustable eye. For all
these knotty points see the seventeenth book of my Fundamentals of Sexology or
the Love Passion which Doctor L.B. says is the book sensation of the year. Some,
to example, there are again whose movements are automatic. Perceive. That is his
appropriate sun. Nightbird nightsun nighttown. Chase me, Charley! (He blows into
bloom's ear) Buzz!
BLOOM: Bee or bluebottle too other day butting shadow on wall dazed self then
me wandered dazed down shirt good job I...
 VIRAG: (His face impassive, laughs in a rich feminine key) Splendid! Spanish fly
in his fly or mustard plaster on his dibble. (He gobbles gluttonously with turkey
wattles) Bubbly jock! Bubbly jock! Where are we? Open Sesame! Cometh forth!
(He unrolls his parchment rapidly and reads, his glowworm's nose running
backwards over the letters which he claws) Stay, good friend. I bring thee thy
answer. Redbank oysters will shortly be upon us. I'm the best o'cook. Those
succulent bivalves may help us and the truffles of Perigord, tubers dislodged
through mister omnivorous porker, were unsurpassed in cases of nervous debility
or viragitis. Though they stink yet they sting. (He wags his head with cackling
raillery) Jocular. With my eyeglass in my ocular. (He sneezes) Amen!
BLOOM: (Absently) Ocularly woman's bivalve case is worse. Always open
sesame. The cloven sex. Why they fear vermin, creeping things. Yet Eve and the
serpent contradicts. Not a historical fact. Obvious analogy to my idea. Serpents
too are gluttons for woman's milk. Wind their way through miles of omnivorous
forest to sucksucculent her breast dry. Like those bubblyjocular Roman matrons
one reads of in Elephantuliasis.
VIRAG: (His mouth projected in hard wrinkles, eyes stonily forlornly closed,
psalms in outlandish monotone) That the cows with their those distended udders
that they have been the the known...
BLOOM: I am going to scream. I beg your pardon. Ah? So. (He repeats)
Spontaneously to seek out the saurian's lair in order to entrust their teats to his
avid suction. Ant milks aphis. (Profoundly) Instinct rules the world. In life. In
death.
VIRAG: (Head askew, arches his back and hunched wingshoulders, peers at the
moth out of blear bulged eyes, points a horning claw and cries) Who's moth moth?
Who's dear Gerald? Dear Ger, that you? O dear, he is Gerald. O, I much fear he
shall be most badly burned. Will some pleashe pershon not now impediment so
catastrophics mit agitation of firstclass tablenumpkin? (He mews) Puss puss puss
puss! (He sighs, draws back and stares sideways down with dropping underjaw)
Well, well. He doth rest anon. (He snaps his jaws suddenly on the air)
THE MOTH:

I'm a tiny tiny thing

Ever flying in the spring
Round and round a ringaring.
Long ago I was a king
Now I do this kind of thing
On the wing, on the wing!
Bing!
(He rushes against the mauve shade, flapping noisily) Pretty pretty pretty pretty
pretty pretty petticoats.
(From left upper entrance with two gliding steps Henry Flower comes forward to
left front centre. He wears a dark mantle and drooping plumed sombrero. He carries
a silverstringed inlaid dulcimer and a longstemmed bamboo Jacob's pipe, its clay
bowl fashioned as a female head. He wears dark velvet hose and silverbuckled
pumps. He has the romantic Saviour's face with flowing locks, thin beard and
moustache. His spindlelegs and sparrow feet are those of the tenor Mario, prince of
Candia. He settles down his goffered ruffs and moistens his lips with a passage of
his amorous tongue.)
HENRY: (In a low dulcet voice, touching the strings of his guitar) There is a
flower that bloometh.
(Virag truculent, his jowl set, stares at the lamp. Grave Bloom regards Zoe's neck.
Henry gallant turns with pendant dewlap to the piano.)
STEPHEN: (To himself) Play with your eyes shut. Imitate pa. Filling my belly
with husks of swine. Too much of this. I will arise and go to my. Expect this is
the. Steve, thou art in a parlous way. Must visit old Deasy or telegraph. Our
interview of this morning has left on me a deep impression. Though our ages. Will
write fully tomorrow. I'm partially drunk, by the way. (He touches the keys again)
Minor chord comes now. Yes. Not much however.
(Almidano Artifoni holds out a batonroll of music with vigorous moustachework.)
ARTIFONI: Ci rifletta. Lei rovina tutto.
FLORRY: Sing us something. Love's old sweet song.
STEPHEN: No voice. I am a most finished artist. Lynch, did I show you the
letter about the lute?
FLORRY: (Smirking) The bird that can sing and won't sing.
(The Siamese twins, Philip Drunk and Philip Sober, two Oxford dons with
lawnmowers, appear in the window embrasure. Both are masked with Matthew
Arnold's face.)
PHILIP SOBER: Take a fool's advice. All is not well. Work it out with the
buttend of a pencil, like a good young idiot. Three pounds twelve you got, two
notes, one sovereign, two crowns, if youth but knew. Mooney's en ville, Mooney's
sur mer, the Moira, Larchet's, Holles street hospital, Burke's. Eh? I am watching
you.
PHILIP DRUNK: (Impatiently) Ah, bosh, man. Go to hell! I paid my way. If I
could only find out about octaves. Reduplication of personality. Who was it told
me his name? (His lawnmower begins to purr) Aha, yes. Zoe mou sas agapo. Have
a notion I was here before. When was it not Atkinson his card I have somewhere.
Mac Somebody. Unmack I have it. He told me about, hold on, Swinburne, was it,
no?
FLORRY: And the song?
STEPHEN: Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.
FLORRY: Are you out of Maynooth? You're like someone I knew once.
 STEPHEN: Out of it now. (To himself) Clever.
PHILIP DRUNK AND PHILIP SOBER: (Their lawnmowers purring with a
rigadoon of grasshalms) Clever ever. Out of it out of it. By the bye have you the
book, the thing, the ashplant? Yes, there it, yes. Cleverever outofitnow. Keep in
condition. Do like us.
ZOE: There was a priest down here two nights ago to do his bit of business with
his coat buttoned up. You needn't try to hide, I says to him. I know you've a
Roman collar.
VIRAG: Perfectly logical from his standpoint. Fall of man. (Harshly, his pupils
waxing) To hell with the pope! Nothing new under the sun. I am the Virag who
disclosed the Sex Secrets of Monks and Maidens. Why I left the church of Rome.
Read the Priest, the Woman and the Confessional. Penrose. Flipperty Jippert. (He
wriggles) Woman, undoing with sweet pudor her belt of rushrope, offers her
allmoist yoni to man's lingam. Short time after man presents woman with pieces of
jungle meat. Woman shows joy and covers herself with featherskins. Man loves
her yoni fiercely with big lingam, the stiff one. (He cries) Coactus volui. Then giddy
woman will run about. Strong man grapses woman's wrist. Woman squeals, bites,
spucks. Man, now fierce angry, strikes woman's fat yadgana. (He chases his tail)
Piffpaff! Popo! (He stops, sneezes) Pchp! (He worries his butt) Prrrrrht!
LYNCH: I hope you gave the good father a penance. Nine glorias for shooting a
bishop.
ZOE: (Spouts walrus smoke through her nostrils) He couldn't get a connection.
Only, you know, sensation. A dry rush.
BLOOM: Poor man!
ZOE: (Lightly) Only for what happened him.
BLOOM: How?
VIRAG: (A diabolic rictus of black luminosity contracting his visage, cranes his
scraggy neck forward. He lifts a mooncalf nozzle and howls.) Verfluchte Goim! He
had a father, forty fathers. He never existed. Pig God! He had two left feet. He
was Judas Iacchia, a Libyan eunuch, the pope's bastard. (He leans out on tortured
forepaws, elbows bent rigid, his eye agonising in his flat skullneck and yelps over
the mute world) A son of a whore. Apocalypse.
KITTY: And Mary Shortall that was in the lock with the pox she got from Jimmy
Pidgeon in the blue caps had a child off him that couldn't swallow and was
smothered with the convulsions in the mattress and we all subscribed for the
funeral.
PHILIP DRUNK: (Gravely) Qui vous a mis dans cette fichue position, Philippe?
PHILIP SOBER: (Gaily) c'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 whore's shoulders.
Lynch puts on her hat. She whips it off.)
LYNCH: (Laughs) And to such delights has Metchnikoff inoculated anthropoid
apes.
FLORRY: (Nods) Locomotor ataxy.
ZOE: (Gaily) O, my dictionary.
LYNCH: Three wise virgins.
VIRAG: (Agueshaken, profuse yellow spawn foaming over his bony epileptic lips)
She sold lovephiltres, whitewax, orangeflower. Panther, the Roman centurion,
polluted her with his genitories. (He sticks out a flickering phosphorescent scorpion
tongue, his hand on his fork) Messiah! He burst her tympanum. (With gibbering
baboon's cries he jerks his hips in the cynical spasm) Hik! Hek! Hak! Hok! Huk!
Kok! Kuk!
(Ben Jumbo Dollard, Rubicund, musclebound, hairynostrilled, hugebearded,
cabbageeared, shaggychested, shockmaned, fat-papped, stands forth, his loins and
genitals tightened into a pair of black bathing bagslops.)
BEN DOLLARD: (Nakkering castanet bones in his huge padded paws, yodels
jovially in base barreltone) When love absorbs my ardent soul.
(The virgins Nurse Callan and Nurse Quigley burst through the ringkeepers and
the ropes and mob him with open arms.)
THE VIRGINS: (Gushingly) Big Ben! Ben my Chree!
A VOICE: Hold that fellow with the bad breeches.
BEN DOLLARD: (Smites his thigh in abundant laughter) Hold him now.
HENRY: (Caressing on his breast a severed female head, murmurs) Thine heart,
mine love. (He plucks his lutestrings) When first I saw...
VIRAG: (Sloughing his skins, his multitudinous plumage moulting) Rats! (He
yawns, showing a coalblack throat, and closes his jaws by an upward push of his
parchmentroll) After having said which I took my departure. Farewell. Fare thee
well. Dreck!
(Henry Flower combs his moustache and beard rapidly with a pocketcomb and
gives a cow's lick to his hair. Steered by his rapier, he glides to the door, his wild
harp slung behind him. Virag reaches the door in two ungainly stilthops, his tail
cocked, and deftly claps sideways on the wall a pusyellow flybill, butting it with his
head.)
THE FLYBILL: K. II. Post No Bills. Strictly confidential. Dr Hy Franks.
HENRY: All is lost now.
 (Virag unscrews his head in a trice and holds it under his arm.)
VIRAG'S HEAD: Quack!
(Exeunt severally.)
STEPHEN: (Over his shoulder to zoe) You would have preferred the fighting
parson who founded the protestant error. But beware Antisthenes, the dog sage,
and the last end of Arius Heresiarchus. The agony in the closet.
LYNCH: All one and the same God to her.
STEPHEN: (Devoutly) And sovereign Lord of all things.
FLORRY: (To Stephen) I'm sure you're a spoiled priest. Or a monk.
LYNCH: He is. 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 large
wave gestures and proclaims with bloated pomp:)
THE CARDINAL:

Conservio lies captured

He lies in the lowest dungeon
With manacles and chains around his limbs
Weighing 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, arms akimbo, and sings
with broad rollicking humour:)

O, the poor little fellow

Hihihihihis 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 white 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 trainbearers. 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) Hmmm! 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. Bloom's
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 tread is heard on the stairs.)
BLOOM: (Takes the chocolate) Aphrodisiac? Tansy and pennyroyal. But I bought
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 large pendant beryl eardrops.)
BELLA: My word! I'm all of a mucksweat.
(She glances round her at the couples. Then her eyes rest on Bloom with hard
insistence. Her large fan winnows wind towards her heated faceneck 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 left eardrop) Have you forgotten
me?
BLOOM: Yes. Yo.
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 searocks, 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 Kellett'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, aging,
bends over her hoof and with gentle fingers draws out and in her laces.)
BLOOM: (Murmurs lovingly) To be a shoefitter in Manfield'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 impossibly 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. Hook 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 midbrow. 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) Magmagnificence!
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, yaps) 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, fit moustache rings round his shaven
mouth, in mountaineer's puttees, green silverbuttoned coat, sport skirt and alpine
hat with moorcock's feather, his hands stuck deep in his breeches pockets, places his
heel on her neck and grinds it in) Footstool! 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 hamrashers 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 squeals, 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!
BELLO: (Shouts) Good, by the rumping jumping general! That's the best bit of
news I heard these six weeks. Here, don't keep me waiting, damn you! (He slaps
her face)
BLOOM: (Whimpers) You're after hitting me. I'll tell...
BELLO: Hold him down, girls, till I squat on him.
ZOE: Yes. Walk on him! I will.
FLORRY: I will. Don't be greedy.
KITTY: No, me. Lend him to me.
(The brothel cook, mrs keogh, wrinkled, greybearded, in a greasy bib, men's grey
and green socks and brogues, floursmeared, a rollingpin stuck with raw pastry in
her bare red arm and hand, appears at the door.)
MRS KEOGH: (Ferociously) Can I help? (They hold and pinion Bloom.)
BELLO: (Squats with a grunt on Bloom's upturned face, puffing cigarsmoke,
nursing a fat leg) I see Keating Clay is elected vicechairman of the Richmond
asylum and by the by Guinness's preference shares are at sixteen three quaffers.
Curse me for a fool that didn't buy that lot Craig and Gardner told me about. Just
my infernal luck, curse it. And that Goddamned outsider Throwaway at twenty to
one. (He quenches his cigar angrily on Bloom's ear) Where's that Goddamned
cursed ashtray?
BLOOM: (Goaded, buttocksmothered) O! O! Monsters! Cruel one!
BELLO: Ask for that every ten minutes. Beg. Pray for it as you never prayed
before. (He thrusts out a figged fist and foul cigar) Here, kiss that. Both. Kiss. (He
throws a leg astride and, pressing with horseman's knees, calls in a hard voice) Gee
up! A cockhorse to Banbury cross. I'll ride him for the Eclipse stakes. (He bends
sideways and squeezes his mount's testicles roughly, shouting) Ho! Off we pop! I'll
nurse you in proper fashion. (He horserides cockhorse, leaping in the saddle) The
lady goes a pace a pace and the coachman goes a trot a trot and the gentleman
goes a gallop a gallop a gallop a gallop.
FLORRY: (Pulls at Bello) Let me on him now. You had enough. I asked before
you.
ZOE: (Pulling at florry) Me. Me. Are you not finished with him yet, suckeress?
BLOOM: (Stifling) Can't.
BELLO: Well, I'm not. Wait. (He holds in his breath) Curse it. Here. This bung's
about burst. (He uncorks himself behind: then, contorting his features, farts loudly)
Take that! (He recorks himself) Yes, by Jingo, sixteen three quarters.
BLOOM: (A sweat breaking out over him) Not man. (He sniffs) Woman.
BELLO: (Stands up) No more blow hot and cold. What you longed for has come
to pass. Henceforth you are unmanned and mine in earnest, a thing under the
yoke. Now for your punishment frock. You will shed your male garments, you
understand, Ruby Cohen? and don the shot silk luxuriously rustling over head and
shoulders. And quickly too!
BLOOM: (Shrinks) Silk, mistress said! O crinkly! scrapy! Must I tiptouch it with
my nails?
BELLO: (Points to his whores) As they are now so will you be, wigged, singed,
perfumesprayed, ricepowdered, with smoothshaven armpits. Tape measurements
will be taken next your skin. You will be laced with cruel force into vicelike
corsets of soft dove coutille with whalebone busk to the diamondtrimmed pelvis,
the absolute outside edge, while your figure, plumper than when at large, will be
restrained in nettight frocks, pretty two ounce petticoats and fringes and things
stamped, of course, with my houseflag, creations of lovely lingerie for Alice and
nice scent for Alice. Alice will feel the pullpull. Martha and Mary will be a little
chilly at first in such delicate thighcasing but the frilly flimsiness of lace round
your bare knees will remind you...
BLOOM: (A charming soubrette with dauby cheeks, mustard hair and large male
hands and nose, leering mouth) I tried her things on only twice, a small prank, in
Holles street. When we were hard up I washed them to save the laundry bill. My
own shirts I turned. It was the purest thrift.
BELLO: (Jeers) Little jobs that make mother pleased, eh? And showed off
coquettishly in your domino at the mirror behind closedrawn blinds your
unskirted thighs and hegoat's udders in various poses of surrender, eh? Ho! ho! I
have to laugh! That secondhand black operatop shift and short trunkleg naughties
all split up the stitches at her last rape that Mrs Miriam Dandrade sold you from
the Shelbourne hotel, eh?
BLOOM: Miriam. Black. Demimondaine.
BELLO: (Guffaws) Christ Almighty it's too tickling, this! You were a nicelooking
Miriam when you clipped off your backgate hairs and lay swooning in the thing
across the bed as Mrs Dandrade about to be violated by lieutenant Smythe-
Smythe, Mr Philip Augustus Blockwell M. P., signor Laci Daremo, the robust
tenor, blueeyed Bert, the liftboy, Henri Fleury of Gordon Bennett fame, Sheridan,
the quadroon Croesus, the varsity wetbob eight from old Trinity, Ponto, her
splendid Newfoundland and Bobs, dowager duchess of Manorhamilton. (He
guffaws again) Christ, wouldn't it make a Siamese cat laugh?
BLOOM: (Her hands and features working) It was Gerald converted me to be a
true corsetlover when I was female impersonator in the High School play Vice
Versa. It was dear Gerald. He got that kink, fascinated by sister's stays. Now
dearest Gerald uses pinky greasepaint and gilds his eyelids. Cult of the beautiful.
BELLO: (With wicked glee) Beautiful! Give us a breather! When you took your
seat with womanish care, lifting your billowy flounces, on the smoothworn throne.
BLOOM: Science. To compare the various joys we each enjoy. (Earnestly) And
really it's better the position... because often I used to wet...
BELLO: (Sternly) No insubordination! The sawdust is there in the corner for
you. I gave you strict instructions, didn't I? Do it standing, sir! I'll teach you to
behave like a jinkleman! If I catch a trace on your swaddles. Aha! By the ass of the
Dorans you'll find I'm a martinet. The sins of your past are rising against you.
Many. Hundreds.
THE SINS OF THE PAST: (In a medley of voices) He went through a form of
clandestine marriage with at least one woman in the shadow of the Black church.
Unspeakable messages he telephoned mentally to Miss Dunn at an address in
D'Olier street while he presented himself indecently to the instrument in the
callbox. By word and deed he frankly encouraged a nocturnal strumpet to deposit
fecal and other matter in an unsanitary outhouse attached to empty premises. In
five public conveniences he wrote pencilled messages offering his nuptial partner
to all strongmembered males. And by the offensively smelling vitriol works did he
not pass night after night by loving courting couples to see if and what and how
much he could see? Did he not lie in bed, the gross boar, gloating over a nauseous
fragment of wellused toilet paper presented to him by a nasty harlot, stimulated
by gingerbread and a postal order?
BELLO: (Whistles loudly) Say! What was the most revolting piece of obscenity in
all your career of crime? Go the whole hog. Puke it out! Be candid for once.
(Mute inhuman faces throng forward, leering, vanishing, gibbering, Booloohoom.
Poldy Kock, Bootlaces a penny Cassidy's hag, blind stripling, Larry Rhinoceros, the
girl, the woman, the whore, the other, the...)
BLOOM: Don't ask me! Our mutual faith. Pleasants street. I only thought the
half of the... I swear on my sacred oath...
BELLO: (Peremptorily) Answer. Repugnant wretch! I insist on knowing. Tell me
something to amuse me, smut or a bloody good ghoststory or a line of poetry,
quick, quick, quick! Where? How? What time? With how many? I give you just
three seconds. One! Two! Thr...
 BLOOM: (Docile, gurgles) I rererepugnosed in rerererepugnant
BELLO: (Imperiously) O, get out, you skunk! Hold your tongue! Speak when
you're spoken to.
BLOOM: (Bows) Master! Mistress! Mantamer!
(He lifts his arms. His bangle bracelets fill.)
BELLO: (Satirically) By day you will souse and bat our smelling underclothes
also when we ladies are unwell, and swab out our latrines with dress pinned up
and a dishclout tied to your tail. Won't that be nice? (He places a ruby ring on her
finger) And there now! With this ring I thee own. Say, thank you, mistress.
BLOOM: Thank you, mistress.
BELLO: You will make the beds, get my tub ready, empty the pisspots in the
different rooms, including old Mrs Keogh's the cook's, a sandy one. Ay, and rinse
the seven of them well, mind, or lap it up like champagne. Drink me piping hot.
Hop! You will dance attendance or I'll lecture you on your misdeeds, Miss Ruby,
and spank your bare bot right well, miss, with the hairbrush. You'll be taught the
error of your ways. At night your wellcreamed braceletted hands will wear
fortythreebutton gloves newpowdered with talc and having delicately scented
fingertips. For such favours knights of old laid down their lives. (He chuckles) My
boys will be no end charmed to see you so ladylike, the colonel, above all, when
they come here the night before the wedding to fondle my new attraction in gilded
heels. First I'll have a go at you myself. A man I know on the turf named Charles
Alberta Marsh (I was in bed with him just now and another gentleman out of the
Hanaper and Petty Bag office) is on the lookout for a maid of all work at a short
knock. Swell the bust. Smile. Droop shoulders. What offers? (He points) For that
lot. Trained by owner to fetch and carry, basket in mouth. (He bares his arm and
plunges it elbowdeep in Bloom's vulva) There's fine depth for you! What, boys?
That give you a hardon? (He shoves his arm in a bidder's face) Here wet the deck
and wipe it round!
A BIDDER: A florin.
(Dillon's lacquey rings his handbell.)
THE LACQUEY: Barang!
A VOICE: One and eightpence too much.
CHARLES ALBERTA MARSH: Must be virgin. Good breath. Clean.
BELLO: (Gives a rap with his gavel) Two bar. Rockbottom figure and cheap at
the price. Fourteen hands high. Touch and examine his points. Handle him. This
downy skin, these soft muscles, this tender flesh. If I had only my gold piercer
here! And quite easy to milk. Three newlaid gallons a day. A pure stockgetter, due
to lay within the hour. His sire's milk record was a thousand gallons of whole milk
in forty weeks. Whoa my jewel! Beg up! Whoa! (He brands his initial C on Bloom's
croup) So! Warranted Cohen! What advance on two bob, gentlemen?
 A DARKVISAGED MAN: (In disguised accent) Hoondert punt sterlink.
VOICES: (Subdued) For the Caliph. Haroun Al Raschid.
BELLO: (Gaily) Right. Let them all come. The scanty, daringly short skirt, riding
up at the knee to show a peep of white pantalette, is a potent weapon and
transparent stockings, emeraldgartered, with the long straight seam trailing up
beyond the knee, appeal to the better instincts of the blasé man about town. Learn
the smooth mincing walk on four inch Louis Quinze heels, the Grecian bend with
provoking croup, the thighs fluescent, knees modestly kissing. Bring all your
powers of fascination to bear on them. Pander to their Gomorrahan vices.
BLOOM: (Bends his blushing face into his armpit and simpers with forefinger in
mouth) O, I know what you're hinting at now!
BELLO: What else are you good for, an impotent thing like you? (He stoops and,
peering, pokes with his fan rudely under the fat suet folds of Bloom's haunches) Up!
Up! Manx cat! What have we here? Where's your curly teapot gone to or who
docked it on you, cockyolly? Sing, birdy, sing. It's as limp as a boy of six's doing
his pooly behind a cart. Buy a bucket or sell your pump. (Loudly) Can you do a
man's job?
BLOOM: Eccles street...
BELLO: (Sarcastically) I wouldn't hurt your feelings for the world but there's a
man of brawn in possession there. The tables are turned, my gay young fellow! He
is something like a fullgrown outdoor man. Well for you, you muff, if you had that
weapon with knobs and lumps and warts all over it. He shot his bolt, I can tell
you! Foot to foot, knee to knee, belly to belly, bubs to breast! He's no eunuch. A
shock of red hair he has sticking out of him behind like a furzebush! Wait for nine
months, my lad! Holy ginger, it's kicking and coughing up and down in her guts
already! That makes you wild, don't it? Touches the spot? (He spits in contempt)
Spittoon!
BLOOM: I was indecently treated, I... Inform the police. Hundred pounds.
Unmentionable. I...
BELLO: Would if you could, lame duck. A downpour we want not your drizzle.
BLOOM: To drive me mad! Moll! I forgot! Forgive! Moll... We... Still...
BELLO: (Ruthlessly) No, Leopold Bloom, all is changed by woman's will since
you slept horizontal in Sleepy Hollow your night of twenty years. Return and see.
(Old Sleepy Hollow calls over the wold.)
SLEEPY HOLLOW: Rip van Wink! Rip van Winkle!
BLOOM: (In tattered mocassins with a rusty fowlingpiece, tiptoeing, fingertipping,
his haggard bony bearded face peering through the diamond panes, cries out) I see
her! It's she! The first night at Mat Dillon's! But that dress, the green! And her
hair is dyed gold and he...
 BELLO: (Laughs mockingly) That's your daughter, you owl, with a Mullingar
student.
(Milly Bloom, fairhaired, greenvested, slimsandalled, her blue scarf in the seawind
simply swirling, breaks from the arms of her lover and calls, her young eyes
wonderwide.)
MILLY: My! It's Papli! But, O Papli, how old you've grown!
BELLO: Changed, eh? Our whatnot, our writingtable where we never wrote,
aunt Hegarty's armchair, our classic reprints of old masters. A man and his
menfriends are living there in clover. The Cuckoos' Rest! Why not? How many
women had you, eh, following them up dark streets, flatfoot, exciting them by
your smothered grunts, what, you male prostitute? Blameless dames with parcels
of groceries. Turn about. Sauce for the goose, my gander O.
BLOOM: They... I...
BELLO: (Cuttingly) Their heelmarks will stamp the Brusselette carpet you
bought at Wren's auction. In their horseplay with Moll the romp to find the buck
flea in her breeches they will deface the little statue you carried home in the rain
for art for art' sake. They will violate the secrets of your bottom drawer. Pages will
be torn from your handbook of astronomy to make them pipespills. And they will
spit in your ten shilling brass fender from Hampton Leedom's.
BLOOM: Ten and six. The act of low scoundrels. Let me go. I will return. I will
prove...
A VOICE: Swear!
(Bloom clenches his fists and crawls forward, a bowieknife between his teeth.)
BELLO: As a paying guest or a kept man? Too late. You have made your
secondbest bed and others must lie in it. Your epitaph is written. You are down
and out and don't you forget it, old bean.
BLOOM: Justice! All Ireland versus one! Has nobody...? (He bites his thumb)
BELLO: Die and be damned to you if you have any sense of decency or grace
about you. I can give you a rare old wine that'll send you skipping to hell and
back. Sign a will and leave us any coin you have! If you have none see you damn
well get it, steal it, rob it! We'll bury you in our shrubbery jakes where you'll be
dead and dirty with old Cuck Cohen, my stepnephew I married, the bloody old
gouty procurator and sodomite with a crick in his neck, and my other ten or
eleven husbands, whatever the buggers' names were, suffocated in the one
cesspool. (He explodes in a loud phlegmy laugh) We'll manure you, Mr Flower! (He
pipes scoffingly) Byby, Poldy! Byby, Papli!
BLOOM: (Clasps his head) My willpower! Memory! I have sinned! I have suff...
(He weeps tearlessly)
BELLO: (Sneers) Crybabby! Crocodile tears!
 (Bloom, broken, closely veiled for the sacrifice, sobs, his face to the earth. The
passing bell is heard. Darkshawled figures of the circumcised, in sackcloth and
ashes, stand by the wailing wall. M. Shulomowitz, Joseph Goldwater, Moses Herzog,
Harris Rosenberg, M. Moisel, J. Citron, Minnie Watchman, P. Mastiansky, The
Reverend Leopold Abramovitz, Chazen. With swaying arms they wail in pneuma
over the recreant Bloom.)
THE CIRCUMCISED: (In dark guttural chant as they cast dead sea fruit upon
him, no flowers) Shema Israel Adonai Elohenu Adonai Echad.
VOICES: (Sighing) So he's gone. Ah yes. Yes, indeed. Bloom? Never heard of
him. No? Queer kind of chap. There's the widow. That so? Ah, yes.
(From the suttee pyre the flame of gum camphire ascends. The pall of incense
smoke screens and disperses. Out of her oakframe a nymph with hair unbound,
lightly clad in teabrown artcolours, descends from her grotto and passing under
interlacing yews stands over Bloom.)
THE YEWS: (Their leaves whispering) Sister. Our sister. Ssh!
THE NYMPH: (Softly) Mortal! (Kindly) Nay, dost not weepest!
BLOOM: (Crawls jellily forward under the boughs, streaked by sunlight, with
dignity) This position. I felt it was expected of me. Force of habit.
THE NYMPH: Mortal! You found me in evil company, highkickers, coster
picnicmakers, pugilists, popular generals, immoral panto boys in fleshtights and
the nifty shimmy dancers, La Aurora and Karini, musical act, the hit of the
century. I was hidden in cheap pink paper that smelt of rock oil. I was surrounded
by the stale smut of clubmen, stories to disturb callow youth, ads for
transparencies, truedup dice and bustpads, proprietary articles and why wear a
truss with testimonial from ruptured gentleman. Useful hints to the married.
BLOOM: (Lifts a turtle head towards her lap) We have met before. On another
star.
THE NYMPH: (Sadly) Rubber goods. Neverrip brand as supplied to the
aristocracy. Corsets for men. I cure fits or money refunded. Unsolicited
testimonials for Professor Waldmann's wonderful chest exuber. My bust developed
four inches in three weeks, reports Mrs Gus Rublin with photo.
BLOOM: You mean Photo Bits?
THE NYMPH: I do. You bore me away, framed me in oak and tinsel, set me
above your marriage couch. Unseen, one summer eve, you kissed me in four
places. And with loving pencil you shaded my eyes, my bosom and my shame.
BLOOM: (Humbly kisses her long hair) Your classic curves, beautiful immortal, I
was glad to look on you, to praise you, a thing of beauty, almost to pray.
THE NYMPH: During dark nights I heard your praise.
 BLOOM: (Quickly) Yes, yes. You mean that I... Sleep reveals the worst side of
everyone, children perhaps excepted. I know I fell out of bed or rather was
pushed. Steel wine is said to cure snoring. For the rest there is that English
invention, pamphlet of which I received some days ago, incorrectly addressed. It
claims to afford a noiseless, inoffensive vent. (He sighs) 'Twas ever thus. Frailty,
thy name is marriage.
THE NYMPH: (Her fingers in her ears) And words. They are not in my
dictionary.
BLOOM: You understood them?
THE YEWS: Ssh!
THE NYMPH: (Covers her face with her hands) What have I not seen in that
chamber? What must my eyes look down on?
BLOOM: (Apologetically) I know. Soiled personal linen, wrong side up with care.
The quoits are loose. From Gibraltar by long sea long ago.
THE NYMPH: (Bends her head) Worse, worse!
BLOOM: (Reflects precautiously) That antiquated commode. It wasn't her
weight. She scaled just eleven stone nine. She put on nine pounds after weaning.
It was a crack and want of glue. Eh? And that absurd orangekeyed utensil which
has only one handle.
(The sound of a waterfall is heard in bright cascade.)
THE WATERFALL:

Poulaphouca Poulaphouca
Poulaphouca Poulaphouca.
THE YEWS: (Mingling their boughs) Listen. Whisper. She is right, our sister. We
grew by Poulaphouca waterfall. We gave shade on languorous summer days.
JOHN WYSE NOLAN: (In the background, in Irish National Forester's uniform,
doffs his plumed hat) Prosper! Give shade on languorous days, trees of Ireland!
THE YEWS: (Murmuring) Who came to Poulaphouca with the High School
excursion? Who left his nutquesting classmates to seek our shade?
BLOOM: (Scared) High School of Poula? Mnemo? Not in full possession of
faculties. Concussion. Run over by tram.
THE ECHO: Sham!
BLOOM: (Pigeonbreasted, bottleshouldered, padded, in nondescript juvenile grey
and black striped suit, too small for him, white tennis shoes, bordered stockings with
turnover tops and a red schoolcap with badge) I was in my teens, a growing boy. A
little then sufficed, a jolting car, the mingling odours of the ladies' cloakroom and
lavatory, the throng penned tight on the old Royal stairs (for they love crushes,
instinct of the herd, and the dark sexsmelling theatre unbridles vice), even a
pricelist of their hosiery. And then the heat. There were sunspots that summer.
End of school. And tipsycake. Halcyon days.
(Halcyon days, high school boys in blue and white football jerseys and shorts,
Master Donald Turnbull, Master Abraham Chatterton, Master Owen Goldberg,
Master Jack Meredith, Master Percy Apjohn, stand in a clearing of the trees and
shout to Master Leopold Bloom.)
THE HALCYON DAYS: Mackerel! Live us again. Hurray! (They cheer)
BLOOM: (Hobbledehoy, warmgloved, mammamufflered, starred with spent
snowballs, struggles to rise) Again! I feel sixteen! What a lark! Let's ring all the
bells in Montague street. (He cheers feebly) Hurray for the High School!
THE ECHO: Fool!
THE YEWS: (Rustling) She is right, our sister. Whisper. (Whispered kisses are
heard in all the wood. Faces of hamadryads peep out from the boles and among the
leaves and break, blossoming into bloom.) Who profaned our silent shade?
THE NYMPH: (Coyly, through parting fingers) There? In the open air?
THE YEWS: (Sweeping downward) Sister, yes. And on our virgin sward.
THE WATERFALL:

Poulaphouca Poulaphouca
Phoucaphouca Phoucaphouca.
THE NYMPH: (With wide fingers) O, infamy!
BLOOM: I was precocious. Youth. The fauna. I sacrificed to the god of the
forest. The flowers that bloom in the spring. It was pairing time. Capillary
attraction is a natural phenomenon. Lotty Clarke, flaxenhaired, I saw at her night
toilette through illclosed curtains with poor papa's operaglasses: The wanton ate
grass wildly. She rolled downhill at Rialto bridge to tempt me with her flow of
animal spirits. She climbed their crooked tree and I... A saint couldn't resist it.
The demon possessed me. Besides, who saw?
(Staggering Bob, a whitepolled calf, thrusts a ruminating head with humid nostrils
through the foliage.)
STAGGERING BOB: (LARGE TEARDROPS ROLLING FROM HIS PROMINENT
EYES, SNIVELS) Me. Me see.
BLOOM: Simply satisfying a need I... (With pathos) No girl would when I went
girling. Too ugly. They wouldn't play...
(High on Ben Howth through rhododendrons a nannygoat passes, plumpuddered,
buttytailed, dropping currants.)
THE NANNYGOAT: (Bleats) Megeggaggegg! Nannannanny!
 BLOOM: (Hatless, flushed, covered with burrs of thistledown and gorsespine)
Regularly engaged. Circumstances alter cases. (He gazes intently downwards on the
water) Thirtytwo head over heels per second. Press nightmare. Giddy Elijah. Fall
from cliff. Sad end of government printer's clerk. (Through silversilent summer air
the dummy of Bloom, rolled in a mummy, rolls roteatingly from the Lion's Head cliff
into the purple waiting waters.)
THE DUMMYMUMMY: Bbbbblllllblblblblobschbg!
(Far out in the bay between bailey and kish lights the Erin's King sails, sending a
broadening plume of coalsmoke from her funnel towards the land.)
COUNCILLOR NANNETII: (Alone on deck, in dark alpaca, yellowkitefaced, his
hand in his waistcoat opening, declaims) When my country takes her place among
the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written. I
have...
BLOOM: Done. Prff!
THE NYMPH: (Loftily) We immortals, as you saw today, have not such a place
and no hair there either. We are stonecold and pure. We eat electric light. (She
arches her body in lascivious crispation, placing her forefinger in her mouth) Spoke
to me. Heard from behind. How then could you...?
BLOOM: (Pawing the heather abjectly) O, I have been a perfect pig. Enemas too
I have administered. One third of a pint of quassia to which add a tablespoonful
of rocksalt. Up the fundament. With Hamilton Long's syringe, the ladies' friend.
THE NYMPH: In my presence. The powderpuff. (She blushes and makes a knee)
And the rest!
BLOOM: (Dejected) Yes. Peccavi! I have paid homage on that living altar where
the back changes name. (With sudden fervour) For why should the dainty scented
jewelled hand, the hand that rules...?
(Figures wind serpenting in slow woodland pattern around the treestems,
cooeeing)
THE VOICE OF KITTY: (In the thicket) Show us one of them cushions.
THE VOICE OF FLORRY: Here.
(A grouse wings clumsily through the underwood.)
THE VOICE OF LYNCH: (In the thicket) Whew! Piping hot!
THE VOICE OF ZOE: (From the thicket) Came from a hot place.
THE VOICE OF VIRAG: (A birdchief, bluestreaked and feathered in war panoply
with his assegai, striding through a crackling canebrake over beechmast and acorns)
Hot! Hot! Ware Sitting Bull!
 BLOOM: It overpowers me. The warm impress of her warm form. Even to sit
where a woman has sat, especially with divaricated thighs, as though to grant the
last favours, most especially with previously well uplifted white sateen coatpans.
So womanly, full. It fills me full.
THE WATERFALL:

Phillaphulla Poulaphouca
Poulaphouca Poulaphouca.
THE YEWS: Ssh! Sister, speak!
THE NYMPH: (Eyeless, in nun's white habit, coif and hugewinged wimple, softly,
with remote eyes) Tranquilla convent. Sister Agatha. Mount Carmel. The
apparitions of Knock and Lourdes. No more desire. (She reclines her head, sighing)
Only the ethereal. Where dreamy creamy gull waves o'er the waters dull.
(Bloom half rises. His back trouserbutton snaps.)
THE BUTTON: Bip!
(Two sluts of the coombe dance rainily by, shawled, yelling flatly.)
THE SLUTS:

O, Leopold lost the pin of his drawers

He didn't know what to do,
To keep it up,
To keep it up.
BLOOM: (Coldly) You have broken the spell. The last straw. If there were only
ethereal where would you all be, postulants and novices? Shy but willing like an
ass pissing.
THE YEWS: (Their silverfoil of leaves precipitating, their skinny arms aging and
swaying) Deciduously!
THE NYMPH: (Her features hardening, gropes in the folds of her habit) Sacrilege!
To attempt my virtue! (A large moist stain appears on her robe) Sully my
innocence! You are not fit to touch the garment of a pure woman. (She clutches
again in her robe) Wait. Satan, you'll sing no more lovesongs. Amen. Amen. Amen.
Amen. (She draws a poniard and, clad in the sheathmail of an elected knight of
nine, strikes at his loins) Nekum!
BLOOM: (Starts up, seizes her hand) Hoy! Nebrakada! Cat o' nine lives! Fair
play, madam. No pruningknife. The fox and the grapes, is it? What do you lack
with your barbed wire? Crucifix not thick enough? (He clutches her veil) A holy
abbot you want or Brophy, the lame gardener, or the spoutless statue of the
watercarrier, or good mother Alphonsus, eh Reynard?
THE NYMPH: (With a cry flees from him unveiled, her plaster cast cracking, a
cloud of stench escaping from the cracks) Poli...!
 BLOOM: (Calls after her) As if you didn't get it on the double yourselves. No
jerks and multiple mucosities all over you. I tried it. Your strength our weakness.
What's our studfee? What will you pay on the nail? You fee mendancers on the
Riviera, I read. (The fleeing nymph raises a keen) Eh? I have sixteen years of black
slave labour behind me. And would a jury give me five shillings alimony
tomorrow, eh? Fool someone else, not me. (He sniffs) Rut. Onions. Stale. Sulphur.
Grease.
(The figure of Bella Cohen stands before him.)
BELLA: You'll know me the next time.
BLOOM: (Composed, regards her) Passée. Mutton dressed as lamb. Long in the
tooth and superfluous hair. A raw onion the last thing at night would benefit your
complexion. And take some double chin drill. Your eyes are as vapid as the
glasseyes of your stuffed fox. They have the dimensions of your other features,
that's all. I'm not a triple screw propeller.
BELLA: (Contemptuously) You're not game, in fact. (Her sowcunt barks)
Fbhracht!
BLOOM: (Contemptuously) Clean your nailless middle finger first, your bully's
cold spunk is dripping from your cockscomb. Take a handful of hay and wipe
yourself.
BELLA: I know you, canvasser! Dead cod!
BLOOM: I saw him, kipkeeper! Pox and gleet vendor!
BELLA: (Turns to the piano) Which of you was playing the dead march from
Saul?
ZOE: Me. Mind your cornflowers. (She darts to the piano and bangs chords on it
with crossed arms) The cat's ramble through the slag. (She glances back) Eh? Who's
making love to my sweeties? (She darts back to the table) What's yours is mine and
what's mine is my own.
(Kitty, disconcerted, coats her teeth with the silver paper. Bloom approaches Zoe.)
BLOOM: (Gently) Give me back that potato, will you?
ZOE: Forfeits, a fine thing and a superfine thing.
BLOOM: (With feeling) It is nothing, but still, a relic of poor mamma.
ZOE:

Give a thing and take it back

God'll ask you where is that
You'll say you don't know
God'll send you down below.
BLOOM: There is a memory attached to it. I should like to have it.
 STEPHEN: To have or not to have that is the question.
ZOE: Here. (She hauls up a reef of her slip, revealing her bare thigh, and unrolls
the potato from the top of her stocking) Those that hides knows where to find.
BELLA: (Frowns) Here. This isn't a musical peepshow. And don't you smash that
piano. Who's paying here?
(She goes to the pianola. Stephen fumbles in his pocket and, taking out a banknote
by its corner, hands it to her.)
STEPHEN: (With exaggerated politeness) This silken purse I made out of the
sow's ear of the public. Madam, excuse me. If you allow me. (He indicates vaguely
Lynch and Bloom) We are all in the same sweepstake, Kinch and Lynch. Dans ce
bordel ou tenons nostre état.
LYNCH: (Calls from the hearth) Dedalus! Give her your blessing for me.
STEPHEN: (Hands Bella a coin) Gold. She has it.
BELLA: (Looks at the money, then at Stephen, then at Zoe, Florry and Kitty) Do
you want three girls? It's ten shillings here.
STEPHEN: (Delightedly) A hundred thousand apologies. (He fumbles again and
takes out and hands her two crowns) Permit, brevi manu, my sight is somewhat
troubled.
(Bella goes to the table to count the money while Stephen talks to himself in
monosyllables. Zoe bends over the table. Kitty leans over Zoe's neck. Lynch gets up,
rights his cap and, clasping Kitty's waist, adds his head to the group.)
FLORRY: (Strives heavily to rise) Ow! My foot's asleep. (She limps over to the
table. Bloom approaches.)
BELLA, ZOE, KITTY, LYNCH, BLOOM: (Chattering and squabbling) The
gentleman... ten shillings... paying for the three... allow me a moment... this
gentleman pays separate... who's touching it?... ow! ... mind who you're
pinching... are you staying the night or a short time?... who did?... you're a liar,
excuse me... the gentleman paid down like a gentleman... drink... it's long after
eleven.
STEPHEN: (At the pianola, making a gesture of abhorrence) No bottles! What,
eleven? A riddle!
ZOE: (Lifting up her pettigown and folding a half sovereign into the top of her
stocking) Hard earned on the flat of my back.
LYNCH: (Lifting Kitty from the table) Come!
KITTY: Wait. (She clutches the two crowns)
FLORRY: And me?
LYNCH: Hoopla! (He lifts her, carries her and bumps her down on the sofa.)
 STEPHEN:

The fox crew, the cocks flew,

The bells in heaven
Were striking eleven.
'Tis time for her poor soul
To get out of heaven.
BLOOM: (Quietly lays a half sovereign on the table between bella and florry) So.
Allow me. (He takes up the poundnote) Three times ten. We're square.
BELLA: (Admiringly) You're such a slyboots, old cocky. I could kiss you.
ZOE: (Points) Him? Deep as a drawwell. (Lynch bends Kitty back over the sofa
and kisses her. Bloom goes with the poundnote to Stephen.)
BLOOM: This is yours.
STEPHEN: How is that? Les distrait or absentminded beggar. (He fumbles again
in his pocket and draws out a handful of coins. An object fills.) That fell.
BLOOM: (Stooping, picks up and hands a box of matches) This.
STEPHEN: Lucifer. Thanks.
BLOOM: (Quietly) You had better hand over that cash to me to take care of.
Why pay more?
STEPHEN: (Hands him all his coins) Be just before you are generous.
BLOOM: I will but is it wise? (He counts) One, seven, eleven, and five. Six.
Eleven. I don't answer for what you may have lost.
STEPHEN: Why striking eleven? Proparoxyton. Moment before the next Lessing
says. Thirsty fox. (He laughs loudly) Burying his grandmother. Probably he killed
her.
BLOOM: That is one pound six and eleven. One pound seven, say.
STEPHEN: Doesn't matter a rambling damn.
BLOOM: No, but...
STEPHEN: (Comes to the table) Cigarette, please. (Lynch tosses a cigarette from
the sofa to the table) And so Georgina Johnson is dead and married. (A cigarette
appears on the table. Stephen looks at it) Wonder. Parlour magic. Married. Hm. (He
strikes a match and proceeds to light the cigarette with enigmatic melancholy)
LYNCH: (Watching him) You would have a better chance of lighting it if you
held the match nearer.
STEPHEN: (Brings the match near his eye) Lynx eye. Must get glasses. Broke
them yesterday. Sixteen years ago. Distance. The eye sees all flat. (He draws the
match away. It goes out.) Brain thinks. Near: far. Ineluctable modality of the
visible. (He frowns mysteriously) Hm. Sphinx. The beast that has twobacks at
midnight. Married.
ZOE: It was a commercial traveller married her and took her away with him.
FLORRY: (Nods) Mr Lambe from London.
STEPHEN: Lamb of London, who takest away the sins of our world.
LYNCH: (Embracing Kitty on the sofa, chants deeply) Dona nobis pacem.
(The cigarette slips from Stephen 's fingers. Bloom picks it up and throws it in the
grate.)
BLOOM: Don't smoke. You ought to eat. Cursed dog I met. (To Zoe) You have
nothing?
ZOE: Is he hungry?
STEPHEN: (Extends his hand to her smiling and chants to the air of the bloodoath
in the Dusk of the Gods)

Hangende Hunger,
Fragende Frau,
Macht uns alle kaputt.
ZOE: (Tragically) Hamlet, I am thy father's gimlet! (She takes his hand) Blue eyes
beauty I'll read your hand. (She points to his forehead) No wit, no wrinkles. (She
counts) Two, three, Mars, that's courage. (Stephen shakes his head) No kid.
LYNCH: Sheet lightning courage. The youth who could not shiver and shake.
(To Zoe) Who taught you palmistry?
ZOE: (Turns) Ask my ballocks that I haven't got. (To Stephen) I see it in your
face. The eye, like that. (She frowns with lowered head)
LYNCH: (Laughing, slaps Kitty behind twice) Like that. Pandybat.
(Twice loudly a pandybat cracks, the coffin of the pianola flies open, the bald little
round jack-in-the-box head of Father Dolan springs up.)
FATHER DOLAN: Any boy want flogging? Broke his glasses? Lazy idle little
schemer. See it in your eye.
(Mild, benign, rectorial, reproving, the head of Don John Conmee rises from the
pianola coffin.)
DON JOHN CONMEE: Now, Father Dolan! Now. I'm sure that Stephen is a very
good little boy!
ZOE: (Examining Stephen's palm) Woman's hand.
STEPHEN: (Murmurs) Continue. Lie. Hold me. Caress. I never could read His
handwriting except His criminal thumbprint on the haddock.
 ZOE: What day were you born?
STEPHEN: Thursday. Today.
ZOE: Thursday's child has far to go. (She traces lines on his hand) Line of fate.
Influential friends.
FLORRY: (Pointing) Imagination.
ZOE: Mount of the moon. You'll meet with a... (She peers at his hands abruptly)
I won't tell you what's not good for you. Or do you want to know?
BLOOM: (Detaches her fingers and offers his palm) More harm than good. Here.
Read mine.
BELLA: Show. (She turns up bloom's hand) I thought so. Knobby knuckles for
the women.
ZOE: (Peering at bloom's palm) Gridiron. Travels beyond the sea and marry
money.
BLOOM: Wrong.
ZOE: (Quickly) O, I see. Short little finger. Henpecked husband. That wrong?
(Black Liz, a huge rooster hatching in a chalked circle, rises, stretches her wings
and clucks.)
BLACK LIZ: Gara. Klook. Klook. Klook.
(She sidles from her newlaid egg and waddles off)
BLOOM: (Points to his hand) That weal there is an accident. Fell and cut it
twentytwo years ago. I was sixteen.
ZOE: I see, says the blind man. Tell us news.
STEPHEN: See? Moves to one great goal. I am twentytwo. Sixteen years ago he
was twentytwo too. Sixteen years ago I twentytwo tumbled. Twentytwo years ago
he sixteen fell off his hobbyhorse. (He winces) Hurt my hand somewhere. Must see
a dentist. Money?
(Zoe whispers to Florry. They giggle. Bloom releases his hand and writes idly on
the table in backhand, pencilling slow curves.)
FLORRY: What?
(A hackneycar, number three hundred and twentyfour, with a gallantbuttocked
mare, driven by James Barton, Harmony Avenue, Donnybrook, trots past. Blazes
Boylan and Lenehan sprawl swaying on the sideseats. The Ormond boots crouches
behind on the axle. Sadly over the crossblind Lydia Douce and Mina Kennedy gaze.)
THE BOOTS: (Jogging, mocks them with thumb and wriggling wormfingers) Haw
haw have you the horn?
 (Bronze by gold they whisper.)
ZOE: (To Florry) Whisper.
(They whisper again)
(Over the well of the car Blazes Boylan leans, his boater straw set sideways, a red
flower in his mouth. Lenehan in yachtsman's cap and white shoes officiously
detaches a long hair from Blazes Boylan's coat shoulder.)
LENEHAN: Ho! What do I here behold? Were you brushing the cobwebs off a
few quims?
BOYLAN: (Seated, smiles) Plucking a turkey.
LENEHAN: A good night's work.
BOYLAN: (Holding up four thick bluntungulated fingers, winks) Blazes Kate! Up
to sample or your money back. (He holds out a forefinger) Smell that.
LENEHAN: (Smells gleefully) Ah! Lobster and mayonnaise. Ah!
ZOE AND FLORRY: (Laugh together) Ha ha ha ha.
BOYLAN: (Jumps surely from the car and calls loudly for all to hear) Hello,
Bloom! Mrs Bloom dressed yet?
BLOOM: (In flunkey's prune plush coat and kneebreeches, buff stockings and
powdered wig) I'm afraid not, sir. The last articles...
BOYLAN: (Tosses him sixpence) Here, to buy yourself a gin and splash. (He
hangs his hat smartly on a peg of Bloom's antlered head) Show me in. I have a little
private business with your wife, you understand?
BLOOM: Thank you, sir. Yes, sir. Madam Tweedy is in her bath, sir.
MARION: He ought to feel himself highly honoured. (She plops splashing out of
the water) Raoul darling, come and dry me. I'm in my pelt. Only my new hat and a
carriage sponge.
BOYLAN: (A merry twinkle in his eye) Topping!
BELLA: What? What is it?
(Zoe whispers to her.)
MARION: Let him look, the pishogue! Pimp! And scourge himself! I'll write to a
powerful prostitute or Bartholomona, the bearded woman, to raise weals out on
him an inch thick and make him bring me back a signed and stamped receipt.
BOYLAN: (clasps himself) Here, I can't hold this little lot much longer. (he
strides off on stiff cavalry legs)
BELLA: (Laughing) Ho ho ho ho.
 BOYLAN: (To Bloom, over his shoulder) You can apply your eye to the keyhole
and play with yourself while I just go through her a few times.
BLOOM: Thank you, sir. I will, sir. May I bring two men chums to witness the
deed and take a snapshot? (He holds out an ointment jar) Vaseline, sir?
Orangeflower...? Lukewarm water...?
KITTY: (From the sofa) Tell us, Florry. Tell us. What.
(Florry whispers to her. Whispering lovewords murmur, liplapping loudly,
poppysmic plopslop.)
MINA KENNEDY: (Her eyes upturned) O, it must be like the scent of geraniums
and lovely peaches! O, he simply idolises every bit of her! Stuck together! Covered
with kisses!
LYDIA DOUCE: (Her mouth opening) Yumyum. O, he's carrying her round the
room doing it! Ride a cockhorse. You could hear them in Paris and New York.
Like mouthfuls of strawberries and cream.
KITTY: (Laughing) Hee hee hee.
BOYLAN'S VOICE: (Sweetly, hoarsely, in the pit of his stomach) Ah! Gooblazqruk
brukarchkrasht!
MARION'S VOICE: (Hoarsely, sweetly, rising to her throat) O!
Weeshwashtkissinapooisthnapoohuck?
BLOOM: (His eyes wildly dilated, clasps himself) Show! Hide! Show! Plough her!
More! Shoot!
BELLA, ZOE, FLORRY, KITTY: Ho ho! Ha ha! Hee hee!
LYNCH: (Points) The mirror up to nature. (He laughs) Hu hu hu hu hu!
(Stephen and Bloom gaze in the mirror. The face of William Shakespeare,
beardless, appears there, rigid in facial paralysis, crowned by the reflection of the
reindeer antlered hatrack in the hall.)
SHAKESPEARE: (In dignified ventriloquy) 'Tis the loud laugh bespeaks the
vacant mind. (To Bloom) Thou thoughtest as how thou wastest invisible. Gaze. (He
crows with a black capon's laugh) Iagogo! How my Oldfellow chokit his
Thursdaymornun. Iagogogo!
BLOOM: (Smiles yellowly at the three whores) When will I hear the joke?
ZOE: Before you're twice married and once a widower.
BLOOM: Lapses are condoned. Even the great Napoleon when measurements
were taken next the skin after his death...
(Mrs Dignam, widow woman, her snubnose and cheeks flushed with deathtalk,
tears and Tunney's tawny sherry, hurries by in her weeds, her bonnet awry,
rouging and powdering her cheeks, lips and nose, a pen chivvying her brood of
cygnets. Beneath her skirt appear her late husband's everyday trousers and
turnedup boots, large eights. She holds a Scottish widows' insurance policy and a
large marquee umbrella under which her brood run with her, Patsy hopping on one
shod foot, his collar loose, a hank of porksteaks dangling, freddy whimpering, Susy
with a crying cod's mouth, Alice struggling with the baby. She cuffs them on, her
streamers flaunting aloft.)
FREDDY: Ah, ma, you're dragging me along!
SUSY: Mamma, the beeftea is fizzing over!
SHAKESPEARE: (With paralytic rage) Weda seca whokilla farst.
(The face of Martin Cunningham, bearded, refeatures Shakespeare's beardless
face. The marquee umbrella sways drunkenly, the children run aside. Under the
umbrella appears Mrs Cunningham in Merry Widow hat and kimono gown. She
glides sidling and bowing, twirling japanesily.)
MRS CUNNINGHAM: (Sings)
And they call me the jewel of Asia!
MARTIN CUNNINGHAM: (Gazes on her, impassive) Immense! Most bloody
awful demirep!
STEPHEN: Et exaltabuntur cornua iusti. Queens lay with prize bulls. Remember
Pasiphae for whose lust my grandoldgrossfather made the first confessionbox.
Forget not Madam Grissel Steevens nor the suine scions of the house of Lambert.
And Noah was drunk with wine. And his ark was open.
BELLA: None of that here. Come to the wrong shop.
LYNCH: Let him alone. He's back from Paris.
ZOE: (Runs to stephen and links him) O go on! Give us some parleyvoo.
(Stephen claps hat on head and leaps over to the fireplace where he stands with
shrugged shoulders, finny hands outspread, a painted smile on his face.)
LYNCH: (Oommelling on the sofa) Rmm Rmm Rmm Rrrrrrmmmm.
STEPHEN: (Gabbles with marionette jerks) Thousand places of entertainment to
expense your evenings with lovely ladies saling gloves and other things perhaps
hers heart beerchops perfect fashionable house very eccentric where lots cocottes
beautiful dressed much about princesses like are dancing cancan and walking
there parisian clowneries extra foolish for bachelors foreigns the same if talking a
poor english how much smart they are on things love and sensations voluptuous.
Misters very selects for is pleasure must to visit heaven and hell show with
mortuary candles and they tears silver which occur every night. Perfectly shocking
terrific of religion's things mockery seen in universal world. All chic womans
which arrive full of modesty then disrobe and squeal loud to see vampire man
debauch nun very fresh young with dessous troublants. (He clacks his tongue
loudly) Ho, la la! Ce pif qu'il a!
 LYNCH: Vive le vampire!
THE WHORES: Bravo! Parleyvoo!
STEPHEN: (Grimacing with head back, laughs loudly, clapping himself) Great
success of laughing. Angels much prostitutes like and holy apostles big damn
ruffians. Demimondaines nicely handsome sparkling of diamonds very amiable
costumed. Or do you are fond better what belongs they moderns pleasure
turpitude of old mans? (He points about him with grotesque gestures which Lynch
and the whores reply to) Caoutchouc statue woman reversible or lifesize
tompeeptom of virgins nudities very lesbic the kiss five ten times. Enter,
gentleman, to see in mirror every positions trapezes all that machine there besides
also if desire act awfully bestial butcher's boy pollutes in warm veal liver or omlet
on the belly pièce de Shakespeare.
BELLA: (Clapping her belly sinks back on the sofa, with a shout of laughter) An
omelette on the... Ho! ho! ho! ho!... omelette on the...
STEPHEN: (Mincingly) I love you, sir darling. Speak you englishman tongue for
double entente cordiale. O yes, mon loup. How much cost? Waterloo. Watercloset.
(He ceases suddenly and holds up a forefinger)
BELLA: (Laughing) Omelette...
THE WHORES: (Laughing) Encore! Encore!
STEPHEN: Mark me. I dreamt of a watermelon.
ZOE: Go abroad and love a foreign lady.
LYNCH: Across the world for a wife.
FLORRY: Dreams goes by contraries.
STEPHEN: (Extends his arms) It was here. Street of harlots. In Serpentine
avenue Beelzebub showed me her, a fubsy widow. Where's the red carpet spread?
BLOOM: (Approaching Stephen) Look...
STEPHEN: No, I flew. My foes beneath me. And ever shall be. World without
end. (He cries) Pater! Free!
BLOOM: I say, look...
STEPHEN: Break my spirit, will he? O merde alors! (He cries, his vulture talons
sharpened) Hola! Hillyho!
(Simon Dedalus' voice hilloes in answer, somewhat sleepy but ready.)
SIMON: That's all right. (He swoops uncertainly through the air, wheeling,
uttering cries of heartening, on strong ponderous buzzard wings) Ho, boy! Are you
going to win? Hoop! Pschatt! Stable with those halfcastes. Wouldn't let them
within the bawl of an ass. Head up! Keep our flag flying! An eagle gules volant in
a field argent displayed. Ulster king at arms! Haihoop! (He makes the beagle's call,
giving tongue) Bulbul! Burblblburblbl! Hai, boy!
(The fronds and spaces of the wallpaper file rapidly across country. A stout fox,
drawn from covert, brush pointed, having buried his grandmother, runs swift for the
open, brighteyed, seeking badger earth, under the leaves. The pack of staghounds
follows, nose to the ground, sniffing their quarry, beaglebaying, burblbrbling to be
blooded. Ward Union huntsmen and huntswomen live with them, hot for a kill.
From Six Mile Point, Flathouse, Nine Mile Stone follow the footpeople with knotty
sticks, hayforks, salmongaffs, lassos, flockmasters with stockwhips, bearbaiters with
tomtoms, toreadors with bullswords, greynegroes waving torches. The crowd bawls
of dicers, crown and anchor players, thimbleriggers, broadsmen. Crows and touts,
hoarse bookies in high wizard hats clamour deafeningly.)
THE CROWD:

Card of the races. Racing card!

Ten to one the field!
Tommy on the clay here! Tommy on the clay!
Ten to one bar one! Ten to one bar one!
Try your luck on Spinning Jenny!
Ten to one bar one!
Sell the monkey, boys! Sell the monkey!
I'll give ten to one!
Ten to one bar one!
(A dark horse, riderless, bolts like a phantom past the winningpost, his mane
moonfoaming, his eyeballs stars. The field follows, a bunch of bucking mounts.
Skeleton horses, Sceptre, Maximum the Second, Zinfandel, the Duke of
Westminster's Shotover, Repulse, the Duke of Beaufort's Ceylon, prix de Paris.
Dwarfs ride them, rustyarmoured, leaping, leaping in their, in their saddles. Last in
a drizzle of rain on a brokenwinded isabelle nag, Cock of the North, the favourite,
honey cap, green jacket, orange sleeves, Garrett Deasy up, gripping the reins, a
hockeystick at the ready. His nag on spavined whitegaitered feet jogs along the rocky
road.)
THE ORANGE LODGES: (Jeering) Get down and push, mister. Last lap! You'll
be home the night!
GARRETT DEASY: (Bolt upright, his nailscraped face plastered with
postagestamps, brandishes his hockeystick, his blue eyes flashing in the prism of the
chandelier as his mount lopes by at schooling gallop)
Per vias rectas!
(A yoke of buckets leopards all over him and his rearing nag a torrent of mutton
broth with dancing coins of carrots, barley, onions, turnips, potatoes.)
THE GREEN LODGES: Soft day, sir John! Soft day, your honour!
 (Private Carr, Private Compton and Cissy Caffrey pass beneath the windows,
singing in discord.)
STEPHEN: Hark! Our friend noise in the street.
ZOE: (Holds up her hand) Stop!
PRIVATE CARR, PRIVATE COMPTON AND CISSY CAFFREY:
Yet I've a sort a Yorkshire relish for...
ZOE: That's me. (She claps her hands) Dance! Dance! (She runs to the pianola)
Who has twopence?
BLOOM: Who'll...?
LYNCH: (Handing her coins) Here.
STEPHEN: (Cracking his fingers impatiently) Quick! Quick! Where's my augur's
rod? (He runs to the piano and takes his ashplant, beating his foot in tripudium)
ZOE: (Turns the drumhandle) There.
(She drops two pennies in the slot. Gold, pink and violet lights start forth. The
drum turns purring in low hesitation waltz. Professor Goodwin, in a bowknotted
periwig, in court dress, wearing a stained inverness cape, bent in two from
incredible age, totters across the room, his hands fluttering. He sits tinily on the
pianostool and lifts and beats handless sticks of arms on the keyboard, nodding with
damsel's grace, his bowknot bobbing)
ZOE: (Twirls round herself, heeltapping) Dance. Anybody here for there? Who'll
dance? Clear the table.
(The pianola with changing lights plays in waltz time the prelude of My Girl's a
Yorkshire Girl. Stephen throws his ashplant on the table and seizes Zoe round the
waist. Florry and Bella push the table towards the fireplace. Stephen, arming Zoe
with exaggerated grace, begins to waltz her round the room. Bloom stands aside. Her
sleeve filling from gracing arms reveals a white fleshflower of vaccination. Between
the curtains Professor Maginni inserts a leg on the toepoint of which spins a silk hat.
With a deft kick he sends it spinning to his crown and jauntyhatted skates in. He
wears a slate frockcoat with claret silk lapels, a gorget of cream tulle, a green lowcut
waistcoat, stock collar with white kerchief, tight lavender trousers, patent pumps
and canary gloves. In his buttonhole is an immense dahlia. He twirls in reversed
directions a clouded cane, then wedges it tight in his oxter. He places a hand lightly
on his breastbone, bows, and fondles his flower and buttons.)
MAGINNI: The poetry of motion, art of calisthenics. No connection with
Madam Legget Byrne's or Levenston's. Fancy dress balls arranged. Deportment.
The Katty Lanner step. So. Watch me! My terpsichorean abilities. (He minuets
forward three paces on tripping bee's feet) Tout le monde en avant! Révérence! Tout
le monde en place!
 (The prelude ceases. Professor Goodwin, beating vague arms shrivels, sinks, his
live cape filling about the stool. The air in firmer waltz time sounds. Stephen and
Zoe circle freely. The lights change, glow, fide gold rosy violet.)
THE PIANOLA:
Two young fellows were talking about their girls, girls, girls, Sweethearts they'd
left behind...
(From a corner the morning hours run out, goldhaired, slimsandalled, in girlish
blue, waspwaisted, with innocent hands. Nimbly they dance, twirling their skipping
ropes. The hours of noon follow in amber gold. Laughing, linked, high haircombs
flashing, they catch the sun in mocking mirrors, lifting their arms.)
MAGINNI: (Clipclaps glovesilent hands) Carré! Avant deux! Breathe evenly!
Balance!
(The morning and noon hours waltz in their places, turning, advancing to each
other, shaping their curves, bowing visavis. Cavaliers behind them arch and
suspend their arms, with hands descending to, touching, rising from their
shoulders.)
HOURS: You may touch my.
CAVALIERS: May I touch your?
HOURS: O, but lightly!
CAVALIERS: O, so lightly!
THE PIANOLA:
My little shy little lass has a waist.
(Zoe and Stephen turn boldly with looser swing. The twilight hours advance from
long landshadows, dispersed, lagging, languideyed, their cheeks delicate with cipria
and false faint bloom. They are in grey gauze with dark bat sleeves that flutter in the
land breeze.)
MAGINNI: Avant huit! Traversé! Salut! Cours de mains! Croisé!
(The night hours, one by one, steal to the last place. Morning, noon and twilight
hours retreat before them. They are masked, with daggered hair and bracelets of dull
bells. Weary they curchycurchy under veils.)
THE BRACELETS: Heigho! Heigho!
ZOE: (Twirling, her hand to her brow) O!
MAGINNI: Les tiroirs! Chaîne de dames! La corbeille! Dos à dos!
(Arabesquing wearily they weave a pattern on the floor, weaving, unweaving,
curtseying, twirling, simply swirling.)
ZOE: I'm giddy!
 (She frees herself, droops on a chair. Stephen seizes Florry and turns with her.)
MAGINNI: Boulangère! Les ronds! Les ponts! Chevaux de bois! Escargots!
(Twining, receding, with interchanging hands the night hours link each each with
arching arms in a mosaic of movements. Stephen and Florry turn cumbrously.)
MAGINNI: Dansez avec vos dames! Changez de dames! Donnez le petit bouquet à
votre dame! Remerciez!
THE PIANOLA:

Best, best of all,

Baraabum!
KITTY: (JUMPS UP) O, they played that on the hobbyhorses at the Mirus
bazaar!
(She runs to Stephen. He leaves florry brusquely and seizes Kitty. A screaming
bittern's harsh high whistle shrieks. Groangrousegurgling Toft's cumbersome
whirligig turns slowly the room right roundabout the room.)
THE PIANOLA:

My girl's a Yorkshire girl.

ZOE:
Yorkshire through and through.
Come on all!
(She seizes Florry and waltzes her.)
STEPHEN: Pas seul!
(He wheels Kitty into Lynch's arms, snatches up his ashplant from the table and
takes the floor. All wheel whirl waltz twirl. Bloombella Kittylynch Florryzoe jujuby
women. Stephen with hat ashplant frogsplits in middle highkicks with skykicking
mouth shut hand clasp part under thigh. With clang tinkle boomhammer tallyho
hornblower blue green yellow flashes Toft's cumbersome turns with hobbyhorse
riders from gilded snakes dangled, bowels fandango leaping spurn soil foot and fall
again.)
THE PIANOLA:

Though she's a factory lass

And wears no fancy clothes.
(Closeclutched swift swifter with glareblareflare scudding they scootlootshoot
lumbering by. Baraabum!)
TUTTI: Encore! Bis! Bravo! Encore!
 SIMON: Think of your mother's people!
STEPHEN: Dance of death.
(Bang fresh barang bang of lacquey's bell, horse, nag, steer, piglings, Conmee on
Christass, lame crutch and leg sailor in cockboat armfolded ropepulling hitching
stamp hornpipe through and through. Baraabum! On nags hogs bellhorses Gadarene
swine Corny in coffin Steel shark stone onehandled nelson two trickies
Frauenzimmer plumstained from pram filling bawling gum he's a champion.
Fuseblue peer from barrel rev. evensong Love on hackney jaunt Blazes blind
coddoubled bicyclers Dilly with snowcake no fancy clothes. Then in last switchback
lumbering up and down bump mashtub sort of viceroy and reine relish for
tublumber bumpshire rose. Baraabum!)
(The couples fall aside. Stephen whirls giddily. Room whirls back. Eyes closed he
totters. Red rails fly spacewards. Stars all around suns turn roundabout. Bright
midges dance on walls. He stops dead.)
STEPHEN: Ho!
(Stephen's mother, emaciated, rises stark through the floor, in leper grey with a
wreath of faded orangeblossoms and a torn bridal veil, her face worn and noseless,
green with gravemould. Her hair is scant and lank. She fixes her bluecircled hollow
eyesockets on Stephen and opens her toothless mouth uttering a silent word. A choir
of virgins and confessors sing voicelessly.)
THE CHOIR:

Liliata rutilantium te confessorum...

Iubilantium te virginum...
(from the top of a tower Buck Mulligan, in particoloured jester's dress of puce and
yellow and clown's cap with curling bell, stands gaping at her, a smoking buttered
split scone in his hand.)
BUCK MULLIGAN: She's beastly dead. The pity of it! Mulligan meets the
afflicted mother. (He upturns his eyes) Mercurial Malachi!
THE MOTHER: (With the subtle smile of death's madness) I was once the
beautiful May Goulding. I am dead.
STEPHEN: (Horrorstruck) Lemur, who are you? No. What bogeyman's trick is
this?
BUCK MULLIGAN: (Shakes his curling capbell) The mockery of it! Kinch
dogsbody killed her bitchbody. She kicked the bucket. (Tears of molten butter fall
from his eyes on to the scone) Our great sweet mother! Epi oinopa ponton.
THE MOTHER: (Comes nearer, breathing upon him softly her breath of wetted
ashes) All must go through it, Stephen. More women than men in the world. You
too. Time will come.
 STEPHEN: (Choking with fright, remorse and horror) They say I killed you,
mother. He offended your memory. Cancer did it, not I. Destiny.
THE MOTHER: (A green rill of bile trickling from a side of her mouth) You sang
that song to me. Love's bitter mystery.
STEPHEN: (Eagerly) Tell me the word, mother, if you know now. The word
known to all men.
THE MOTHER: Who saved you the night you jumped into the train at Dalkey
with Paddy Lee? Who had pity for you when you were sad among the strangers?
Prayer is allpowerful. Prayer for the suffering souls in the Ursuline manual and
forty days' indulgence. Repent, Stephen.
STEPHEN: The ghoul! Hyena!
THE MOTHER: I pray for you in my other world. Get Dilly to make you that
boiled rice every night after your brainwork. Years and years I loved you, O, my
son, my firstborn, when you lay in my womb.
ZOE: (Fanning herself with the grate fan) I'm melting!
FLORRY: (Points to Stephen) Look! He's white.
BLOOM: (Goes to the window to open it more) Giddy.
THE MOTHER: (With smouldering eyes) Repent! O, the fire of hell!
STEPHEN: (Panting) His noncorrosive sublimate! The corpsechewer! Raw head
and bloody bones.
THE MOTHER: (Her face drawing near and nearer, sending out an ashen breath)
Beware! (She raises her blackened withered right arm slowly towards Stephen's
breast with outstretched finger) Beware God's hand! (A green crab with malignant
red eyes sticks deep its grinning claws in Stephen's heart.)
STEPHEN: (Strangled with rage) Shite! (His features grow drawn grey and old)
BLOOM: (At the window) What?
STEPHEN: Ah non, par exemple! The intellectual imagination! With me all or not
at all. Non serviam!
FLORRY: Give him some cold water. Wait. (She rushes out)
THE MOTHER: (Wrings her hands slowly, moaning desperately) O Sacred Heart
of Jesus, have mercy on him! Save him from hell, O Divine Sacred Heart!
STEPHEN: No! No! No! Break my spirit, all of you, if you can! I'll bring you all
to heel!
THE MOTHER: (In the agony of her deathrattle) Have mercy on Stephen, Lord,
for my sake! Inexpressible was my anguish when expiring with love, grief and
agony on Mount Calvary.
 STEPHEN: Nothung!
(He lifts his ashplant high with both hands and smashes the chandelier. Time's
livid final flame leaps and, in the following darkness, ruin of all space, shattered
glass and toppling masonry.)
THE GASJET: Pwfungg!
BLOOM: Stop!
LYNCH: (Rushes forward and seizes Stephen's hand) Here! Hold on! Don't run
amok!
BELLA: Police!
(Stephen, abandoning his ashplant, his head and arms thrown back stark, beats
the ground and flies from the room, past the whores at the door.)
BELLA: (Screams) After him!
(The two whores rush to the halldoor. Lynch and Kitty and Zoe stampede from the
room. They talk excitedly. Bloom follows, returns.)
THE WHORES: (Jammed in the doorway, pointing) Down there.
ZOE: (Pointing) There. There's something up.
BELLA: Who pays for the lamp? (She seizes Bloom's coattail) Here, you were with
him. The lamp's broken.
BLOOM: (Rushes to the hall, rushes back) What lamp, woman?
A WHORE: He tore his coat.
BELLA: (Her eyes hard with anger and cupidity, points) Who's to pay for that?
Ten shillings. You're a witness.
BLOOM: (Snatches up Stephen's ashplant) Me? Ten shillings? Haven't you lifted
enough off him? Didn't he...?
BELLA: (Loudly) Here, none of your tall talk. This isn't a brothel. A ten shilling
house.
BLOOM: (His head under the lamp, pulls the chain. Puling, the gasjet lights up a
crushed mauve purple shade. He raises the ashplant.) Only the chimney's broken.
Here is all he...
BELLA: (Shrinks back and screams) Jesus! Don't!
BLOOM: (Warding off a blow) To show you how he hit the paper. There's not
sixpenceworth of damage done. Ten shillings!
FLORRY: (With a glass of water, enters) Where is he?
BELLA: Do you want me to call the police?
 BLOOM: O, I know. Bulldog on the premises. But he's a Trinity student.
Patrons of your establishment. Gentlemen that pay the rent. (He makes a masonic
sign) Know what I mean? Nephew of the vice-chancellor. You don't want a
scandal.
BELLA: (Angrily) Trinity. Coming down here ragging after the boatraces and
paying nothing. Are you my commander here or? Where is he? I'll charge him!
Disgrace him, I will! (She Shouts) Zoe! Zoe!
BLOOM: (Urgently) And if it were your own son in Oxford? (Warningly) I know.
BELLA: (Almost speechless) Who are. Incog!
ZOE: (In the doorway) There's a row on.
BLOOM: What? Where? (He throws a shilling on the table and starts) That's for
the chimney. Where? I need mountain air.
(He hurries out through the hall. The whores point. Florry follows, spilling water
from her tilted tumbler. On the doorstep all the whores clustered talk volubly,
pointing to the right where the fog has cleared off. From the left arrives a jingling
hackney car. It slows to in front of the house. Bloom at the halldoor perceives Corny
Kelleher who is about to dismount from the car with two silent lechers. He averts his
face. Bella from within the hall urges on her whores. They blow ickylickysticky
yumyum kisses. Corny Kelleher replies with a ghastly lewd smile. The silent lechers
turn to pay the jarvey. Zoe and Kitty still point right. Bloom, parting them swiftly,
draws his caliph's hood and poncho and hurries down the steps with sideways face.
Incog Haroun al Raschid he flits behind the silent lechers and hastens on by the
railings with fleet step of a pard strewing the drag behind him, torn envelopes
drenched in aniseed. The ashplant marks his stride. A pack of bloodhounds, led by
Hornblower of Trinity brandishing a dogwhip in tallyho cap and an old pair of grey
trousers, follow from fir, picking up the scent, nearer, baying, panting, at fault,
breaking away, throwing their tongues, biting his heels, leaping at his tail. He
walks, runs, zigzags, gallops, lugs laid back. He is pelted with gravel,
cabbagestumps, biscuitboxes, eggs, potatoes, dead codfish, woman's slipperslappers.
After him freshfound the hue and cry zigzag gallops in hot pursuit of follow my
leader: 65 C, 66 C, night watch, John Henry Menton, Wisdom Hely, V. B. Dillon,
Councillor Nannetti, Alexander Keyes, Larry O'rourke, Joe Cuffe Mrs O'dowd, Pisser
Burke, The Nameless One, Mrs Riordan, The Citizen, Garryowen,
Whodoyoucallhim, Strangeface, Fellowthatsolike, Sawhimbefore, Chapwithawen,
Chris Callinan, Sir Charles Cameron, Benjamin Dollard, Lenehan, Bartell d'Arcy, Joe
Hynes, red Murray, editor Brayden, T. M. Healy, Mr Justice Fitzgibbon, John
Howard Parnell, the reverend Tinned Salmon, Professor Joly, Mrs Breen, Denis
Breen, Theodore Purefoy, Mina Purefoy, the Westland Row postmistress, C. P.
M'Coy, friend of Lyons, Hoppy Holohan, maninthestreet, othermaninthestreet,
Footballboots, pugnosed driver, rich protestant lady, Davy Byrne, Mrs Ellen
M'Guinness, Mrs Joe Gallaher, George Lidwell, Jimmy Henry on corns,
Superintendent Laracy, Father Cowley, Crofton out of the Collector-general's, Dan
Dawson, dental surgeon Bloom with tweezers, Mrs Bob Doran, Mrs Kennefick, Mrs
Wyse Nolan, John Wyse Nolan, handsomemarriedwomanrubbedagainstwide
behindinClonskeatram, the bookseller of Sweets of Sin, Miss
Dubedatandshedidbedad, Mesdames Gerald and Stanislaus Moran of Roebuck, the
managing clerk of Drimmie's, Wetherup, colonel Hayes, Mastiansky, Citron,
Penrose, Aaron Figatner, Moses Herzog, Michael E Geraghty, Inspector Troy, Mrs
Galbraith, the constable off Eccles Street corner, old doctor Brady with stethoscope,
the mystery man on the beach, a retriever, Mrs Miriam Dandrade and all her
lovers.)
THE HUE AND CRY: (Helterskelterpelterwelter) He's Bloom! Stop Bloom!
Stopabloom! Stopperrobber! Hi! Hi! Stophim on the corner!
(At the corner of Beaver Street beneath the scaffolding Bloom panting stops on the
fringe of the noisy quarrelling knot, a lot not knowing a jot what hi! hi! row and
wrangle round the whowhat brawlaltogether.)
STEPHEN: (With elaborate gestures, breathing deeply and slowly) You are my
guests. Uninvited. By virtue of the fifth of George and seventh of Edward. History
to blame. Fabled by mothers of memory.
PRIVATE CARR: (To Cissy Caffrey) Was he insulting you?
STEPHEN: Addressed her in vocative feminine. Probably neuter. Ungenitive.
VOICES: No, he didn't. I seen him. The girl there. He was in Mrs Cohen's.
What's up? Soldier and civilian.
CISSY CAFFREY: I was in company with the soldiers and they left me to do—
you know, and the young man run up behind me. But I'm faithful to the man
that's treating me though I'm only a shilling whore.
STEPHEN: (Catches sight of Lynch's and Kitty's heads) Hail, Sisyphus. (He points
to himself and the others) Poetic. Uropoetic.
VOICES: Shes faithfultheman.
CISSY CAFFREY: Yes, to go with him. And me with a soldier friend.
PRIVATE COMPTON: He doesn't half want a thick ear, the blighter. Biff him
one, Harry.
PRIVATE CARR: (To Cissy) Was he insulting you while me and him was having a
piss?
LORD TENNYSON: (Gentleman poet in Union Jack blazer and cricket flannels,
bareheaded, flowingbearded) Theirs not to reason why.
PRIVATE COMPTON: Biff him, Harry.
STEPHEN: (To Private Compton) I don't know your name but you are quite right.
Doctor Swift says one man in armour will beat ten men in their shirts. Shirt is
synechdoche. Part for the whole.
CISSY CAFFREY: (To The Crowd) No, I was with the privates.
 STEPHEN: (Amiably) Why not? The bold soldier boy. In my opinion every lady
for example...
PRIVATE CARR: (His cap awry, advances to Stephen) Say, how would it be,
governor, if I was to bash in your jaw?
STEPHEN: (Looks up to the sky) How? Very unpleasant. Noble art of
selfpretence. Personally, I detest action. (He waves his hand) Hand hurts me
slightly. Enfin ce sont vos oignons. (To Cissy Caffrey) Some trouble is on here.
What is it precisely?
DOLLY GRAY: (From her balcony waves her handkerchief, giving the sign of the
heroine of Jericho) Rahab. Cook's son, goodbye. Safe home to Dolly. Dream of the
girl you left behind and she will dream of you.
(The soldiers turn their swimming eyes.)
BLOOM: (Elbowing through the crowd, plucks Stephen's sleeve vigorously) Come
now, professor, that carman is waiting.
STEPHEN: (Turns) Eh? (He disengages himself) Why should I not speak to him
or to any human being who walks upright upon this oblate orange? (He points his
finger) I'm not afraid of what I can talk to if I see his eye. Retaining the
perpendicular.
(He staggers a pace back)
BLOOM: (Propping him) Retain your own.
STEPHEN: (Laughs emptily) My centre of gravity is displaced. I have forgotten
the trick. Let us sit down somewhere and discuss. Struggle for life is the law of
existence but but human philirenists, notably the tsar and the king of England,
have invented arbitration. (He taps his brow) But in here it is I must kill the priest
and the king.
BIDDY THE CLAP: Did you hear what the professor said? He's a professor out
of the college.
CUNTY KATE: I did. I heard that.
BIDDY THE CLAP: He expresses himself with such marked refinement of
phraseology.
CUNTY KATE: Indeed, yes. And at the same time with such apposite
trenchancy.
PRIVATE CARR: (Pulls himself free and comes forward) What's that you're saying
about my king?
(Edward the Seventh appears in an archway. He wars a white jersey on which an
image of the Sacred Heart is stitched with the insignia of Garter and Thistle, Golden
Fleece, Elephant of Denmark, Skinner's and Probyn's horse, Lincoln's Inn bencher
and ancient and honourable artillery company of Massachusetts. He sucks a red
jujube. He is robed as a grand elect perfect and sublime mason with trowel and
apron, marked made in Germany. In his left hand he holds a plasterer's bucket on
which is printed Défense d'uriner. A roar of welcome greets him.)
EDWARD THE SEVENTH: (Slowly, solemnly but indistinctly) Peace, perfect
peace. For identification, bucket in my hand. Cheerio, boys. (He turns to his
subjects) We have come here to witness a clean straight fight and we heartily wish
both men the best of good luck. Mahak makar a bak.
(He shakes hands with Private Carr, Private Compton, Stephen, Bloom and
Lynch. General applause. Edward the Seventh lifts his bucket graciously in
acknowledgment.)
PRIVATE CARR: (To Stephen) Say it again.
STEPHEN: (Nervous, friendly, pulls himself up) I understand your point of view
though I have no king myself for the moment. This is the age of patent medicines.
A discussion is difficult down here. But this is the point. You die for your country.
Suppose. (He places his arm on Private Carr's sleeve) Not that I wish it for you. But
I say: Let my country die for me. Up to the present it has done so. I didn't want it
to die. Damn death. Long live life!
EDWARD THE SEVENTH: (Levitates over heaps of slain, in the garb and with the
halo of Joking Jesus, a white jujube in his phosphorescent face)
My methods are new and are causing surprise. To make the blind see I throw
dust in their eyes.
STEPHEN: Kings and unicorns! (He fills back a pace) Come somewhere and
we'll... What was that girl saying?...
PRIVATE COMPTON: Eh, Harry, give him a kick in the knackers. Stick one into
Jerry.
BLOOM: (To the privates, softly) He doesn't know what he's saying. Taken a
little more than is good for him. Absinthe. Greeneyed monster. I know him. He's a
gentleman, a poet. It's all right.
STEPHEN: (Nods, smiling and laughing) Gentleman, patriot, scholar and judge
of impostors.
PRIVATE CARR: I don't give a bugger who he is.
PRIVATE COMPTON: We don't give a bugger who he is.
STEPHEN: I seem to annoy them. Green rag to a bull.
(Kevin Egan of Paris in black Spanish tasselled shirt and peep-o'-day boy's hat
signs to Stephen.)
KEVIN EGAN: H'lo! Bonjour! The vieille ogresse with the dents jaunes.
(Patrice Egan peeps from behind, his rabbitface nibbling a quince leaf.)
 PATRICE: Socialiste!
DON EMILE PATRIZIO FRANZ RUPERT POPE HENNESSY: (In medieval
hauberk, two wild geese volant on his helm, with noble indignation points a mailed
hand against the privates) Werf those eykes to footboden, big grand porcos of
johnyellows todos covered of gravy!
BLOOM: (To Stephen) Come home. You'll get into trouble.
STEPHEN: (Swaying) I don't avoid it. He provokes my intelligence.
BIDDY THE CLAP: One immediately observes that he is of patrician lineage.
THE VIRAGO: Green above the red, says he. Wolfe Tone.
THE BAWD: The red's as good as the green. And better. Up the soldiers! Up
King Edward!
A ROUGH: (Laughs) Ay! Hands up to De Wet.
THE CITIZEN: (With a huge emerald muffler and shillelagh, calls)

May the God above

Send down a dove
With teeth as sharp as razors
To slit the throats
Of the English dogs
That hanged our Irish leaders.
THE CROPPY BOY: (The ropenoose round his neck, gripes in his issuing bowels
with both hands)
I bear no hate to a living thing, But I love my country beyond the king.
RUMBOLD, DEMON BARBER: (Accompanied by two blackmasked assistants,
advances with gladstone bag which he opens) Ladies and gents, cleaver purchased
by Mrs Pearcy to slay Mogg. Knife with which Voisin dismembered the wife of a
compatriot and hid remains in a sheet in the cellar, the unfortunate female's throat
being cut from ear to ear. Phial containing arsenic retrieved from body of Miss
Barron which sent Seddon to the gallows.
(He jerks the rope. The assistants leap at the victim's legs and drag him
downward, grunting the croppy boy's tongue protrudes violently.)
THE CROPPY BOY:
Horhot ho hray hor hother's hest.
(He gives up the ghost. A violent erection of the hanged sends gouts of sperm
spouting through his deathclothes on to the cobblestones. Mrs Bellingham, Mrs
Yelverton Barry and the Honourable Mrs Mervyn Talboys rush forward with their
handkerchiefs to sop it up.)
 RUMBOLD: I'm near it myself. (He undoes the noose) Rope which hanged the
awful rebel. Ten shillings a time. As applied to Her Royal Highness. (He plunges
his head into the gaping belly of the hanged and draws out his head again clotted
with coiled and smoking entrails) My painful duty has now been done. God save
the king!
EDWARD THE SEVENTH: (Dances slowly, solemnly, rattling his bucket, and
sings with soft contentment)
On coronation day, on coronation day, O, won't we have a merry time, Drinking
whisky, beer and wine!
PRIVATE CARR: Here. What are you saying about my king?
STEPHEN: (Throws up his hands) O, this is too monotonous! Nothing. He wants
my money and my life, though want must be his master, for some brutish empire
of his. Money I haven't. (He searches his pockets vaguely) GAVE IT TO
SOMEONE.
PRIVATE CARR: Who wants your bleeding money?
STEPHEN: (Tries to move off) Will someone tell me where I am least likely to
meet these necessary evils? Ça se voit aussi à paris. Not that I... But, by Saint
Patrick...!
(The women's heads coalesce. Old Gummy Granny in sugarloaf hat appears
seated on a toadstool, the deathflower of the potato blight on her breast.)
STEPHEN: Aha! I know you, gammer! Hamlet, revenge! The old sow that eats
her farrow!
OLD GUMMY GRANNY: (Rocking to and fro) Ireland's sweetheart, the king of
Spain's daughter, alanna. Strangers in my house, bad manners to them! (She keens
with banshee woe) Ochone! Ochone! Silk of the kine! (She wails) You met with
poor old Ireland and how does she stand?
STEPHEN: How do I stand you? The hat trick! Where's the third person of the
Blessed Trinity? Soggarth Aroon? The reverend Carrion Crow.
CISSY CAFFREY: (Shrill) Stop them from fighting!
A ROUGH: Our men retreated.
PRIVATE CARR: (Tugging at his belt) I'll wring the neck of any fucker says a
word against my fucking king.
BLOOM: (Terrified) He said nothing. Not a word. A pure misunderstanding.
THE CITIZEN: Erin go bragh!
(Major Tweedy and the Citizen exhibit to each other medals, decorations, trophies
of war, wounds. Both salute with fierce hostility.)
PRIVATE COMPTON: Go it, Harry. Do him one in the eye. He's a proboer.
 STEPHEN: Did I? When?
BLOOM: (To the redcoats) We fought for you in South Africa, Irish missile
troops. Isn't that history? Royal Dublin Fusiliers. Honoured by our monarch.
THE NAVVY: (Staggering past) O, yes! O God, yes! O, make the kwawr a
krowawr! O! Bo!
(Casqued halberdiers in armour thrust forward a pentice of gutted spearpoints.
Major Tweedy, moustached like Turko the terrible, in bearskin cap with
hackleplume and accoutrements, with epaulettes, gilt chevrons and sabretaches, his
breast bright with medals, toes the line. He gives the pilgrim warrior's sign of the
knights templars.)
MAJOR TWEEDY: (Growls gruffly) Rorke's Drift! Up, guards, and at them!
Mahar shalal hashbaz.
PRIVATE CARR: I'll do him in.
PRIVATE COMPTON: (Waves the crowd back) Fair play, here. Make a bleeding
butcher's shop of the bugger.
(Massed bands blare Garryowen and God save the King.)
CISSY CAFFREY: They're going to fight. For me!
CUNTY KATE: The brave and the fair.
BIDDY THE CLAP: Methinks yon sable knight will joust it with the best.
CUNTY KATE: (Blushing deeply) Nay, madam. The gules doublet and merry
saint George for me!
STEPHEN:
The harlot's cry from street to street Shall weave Old Ireland's windingsheet.
PRIVATE CARR: (Loosening his belt, shouts) I'll wring the neck of any fucking
bastard says a word against my bleeding fucking king.
BLOOM: (Shakes Cissy Caffrey's shoulders) Speak, you! Are you struck dumb?
You are the link between nations and generations. Speak, woman, sacred lifegiver!
CISSY CAFFREY: (Alarmed, seizes Private Carr's sleeve) Amn't I with you? Amn't
I your girl? Cissy's your girl. (She cries) Police!
STEPHEN: (Ecstatically, to Cissy Caffrey)

White thy fambles, red thy gan

And thy quarrons dainty is.
VOICES: Police!
DISTANT VOICES: Dublin's burning! Dublin's burning! On fire, on fire!
 (Brimstone fires spring up. Dense clouds roll past. Heavy Gatling guns boom.
Pandemonium. Troops deploy. Gallop of hoofs. Artillery. Hoarse commands. Bells
clang. Backers shout. Drunkards bawl. Whores screech. Foghorns hoot. Cries of
valour. Shrieks of dying. Pikes clash on cuirasses. Thieves rob the slain. Birds of
prey, winging from the sea, rising from marshlands, swooping from eyries, hover
screaming, gannets, cormorants, vultures, goshawks, climbing woodcocks,
peregrines, merlins, blackgrouse, sea eagles, gulls, albatrosses, barnacle geese. The
midnight sun is darkened. The earth trembles. The dead of Dublin from Prospect
and Mount Jerome in white sheepskin overcoats and black goatfell cloaks arise and
appear to many. A chasm opens with a noiseless yawn. Tom Rochford, winner, in
athlete's singlet and breeches, arrives at the head of the national hurdle handicap
and leaps into the void. He is followed by a race of runners and leapers. In wild
attitudes they spring from the brink. Their bodies plunge. Factory lasses with fancy
clothes toss redhot Yorkshire baraabombs. Society ladies lift their skirts above their
heads to protect themselves. Laughing witches in red cutty sarks ride through the air
on broomsticks. Quakerlyster plasters blisters. It rains dragons' teeth. Armed heroes
spring up from furrows. They exchange in amity the pass of knights of the red cross
and fight duels with cavalry sabres: Wolfe Tone against Henry Grattan, Smith
O'Brien against Daniel O'Connell, Michael Davitt against Isaac Butt, Justin
M'Carthy against Parnell, Arthur Griffith against John Redmond, John O'Leary
against Lear O'Johnny, Lord Edward Fitzgerald against Lord Gerald Fitzedward, The
O'Donoghue of the Glens against The Glens of The O'Donoghue. On an eminence,
the centre of the earth, rises the feldaltar of Saint Barbara. Black candles rise from
its gospel and epistle horns. From the high barbacans of the tower two shafts of light
fall on the smokepalled altarstone. On the altarstone Mrs Mina Purefoy, goddess of
unreason, lies, naked, fettered, a chalice resting on her swollen belly. Father Malachi
O'Flynn in a lace petticoat and reversed chasuble, his two left feet back to the front,
celebrates camp mass. The Reverend Mr Hugh C Haines Love M. A. in a plain
cassock and mortarboard, his head and collar back to the front, holds over the
celebrant's head an open umbrella.)
FATHER MALACHI O'FLYNN: Introibo ad altare diaboli.
THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE: To the devil which hath made glad my
young days.
FATHER MALACHI O'FLYNN: (Takes from the chalice and elevates a
blooddripping host) Corpus meum.
THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE: (Raises high behind the celebrant's
petticoat, revealing his grey bare hairy buttocks between which a carrot is stuck) My
body.
THE VOICE OF ALL THE DAMNED: Htengier Tnetopinmo Dog Drol eht rof,
Aiulella!
(From on high the voice of Adonai calls.)
ADONAI: Dooooooooooog!
 THE VOICE OF ALL THE BLESSED: Alleluia, for the Lord God Omnipotent
reigneth!
(From on high the voice of Adonai calls.)
ADONAI: Goooooooooood!
(In strident discord peasants and townsmen of Orange and Green factions sing
Kick the Pope and Daily, daily sing to Mary.)
PRIVATE CARR: (With ferocious articulation) I'll do him in, so help me fucking
Christ! I'll wring the bastard fucker's bleeding blasted fucking windpipe!
OLD GUMMY GRANNY: (Thrusts a dagger towards Stephen's hand) Remove
him, acushla. At 8.35 a.m. you will be in heaven and Ireland will be free. (She
prays) O good God, take him!
(THE RETRIEVER, NOSING ON THE FRINGE OF THE CROWD, BARKS
NOISILY.)
BLOOM: (Runs to lynch) Can't you get him away?
LYNCH: He likes dialectic, the universal language. Kitty! (To Bloom) Get him
away, you. He won't listen to me.
(He drags Kitty away.)
STEPHEN: (Points) exit Judas. Et laqueo se suspendit.
BLOOM: (Runs to Stephen) Come along with me now before worse happens.
Here's your stick.
STEPHEN: Stick, no. Reason. This feast of pure reason.
CISSY CAFFREY: (Pulling Private Carr) Come on, you're boosed. He insulted me
but I forgive him. (Shouting in his ear) I forgive him for insulting me.
BLOOM: (Over Stephen's shoulder) Yes, go. You see he's incapable.
PRIVATE CARR: (Breaks loose) I'll insult him.
(He rushes towards Stephen, fist outstretched, and strikes him in the face.
Stephen totters, collapses, falls, stunned. He lies prone, his face to the sky, his hat
rolling to the wall. Bloom follows and picks it up.)
MAJOR TWEEDY: (Loudly) Carbine in bucket! Cease fire! Salute!
THE RETRIEVER: (Barking furiously) Ute ute ute ute ute ute ute ute.
THE CROWD: Let him up! Don't strike him when he's down! Air! Who? The
soldier hit him. He's a professor. Is he hurted? Don't manhandle him! He's fainted!
A HAG: What call had the redcoat to strike the gentleman and he under the
influence. Let them go and fight the Boers!
 THE BAWD: Listen to who's talking! Hasn't the soldier a right to go with his
girl? He gave him the coward's blow.
(They grab at each other's hair, claw at each other and spit)
THE RETRIEVER: (Barking) Wow wow wow.
BLOOM: (Shoves them back, loudly) Get back, stand back!
PRIVATE COMPTON: (Tugging his comrade) Here. Bugger off, Harry. Here's the
cops! (Two raincaped watch, tall, stand in the group.)
FIRST WATCH: What's wrong here?
PRIVATE COMPTON: We were with this lady. And he insulted us. And
assaulted my chum. (The retriever barks) Who owns the bleeding tyke?
CISSY CAFFREY: (With expectation) Is he bleeding!
A MAN: (Rising from his knees) No. Gone off. He'll come to all right.
BLOOM: (Glances sharply at the man) Leave him to me. I can easily...
SECOND WATCH: Who are you? Do you know him?
PRIVATE CARR: (Lurches towards the watch) He insulted my lady friend.
BLOOM: (Angrily) You hit him without provocation. I'm a witness. Constable,
take his regimental number.
SECOND WATCH: I don't want your instructions in the discharge of my duty.
PRIVATE COMPTON: (Pulling his comrade) Here, bugger off Harry. Or Bennett'll
shove you in the lockup.
PRIVATE CARR: (Staggering as he is pulled away) God fuck old Bennett. He's a
whitearsed bugger. I don't give a shit for him.
FIRST WATCH: (Takes out his notebook) What's his name?
BLOOM: (Peering over the crowd) I just see a car there. If you give me a hand a
second, sergeant...
FIRST WATCH: Name and address.
(Corny Kelleker, weepers round his hat, a death wreath in his hand, appears
among the bystanders.)
BLOOM: (Quickly) O, the very man! (He whispers) Simon Dedalus' son. A bit
sprung. Get those policemen to move those loafers back.
SECOND WATCH: Night, Mr Kelleher.
CORNY KELLEHER: (To the watch, with drawling eye) That's all right. I know
him. Won a bit on the races. Gold cup. Throwaway. (He laughs) Twenty to one.
Do you follow me?
 FIRST WATCH: (Turns to the crowd) Here, what are you all gaping at? Move on
out of that.
(The crowd disperses slowly, muttering, down the lane.)
CORNY KELLEHER: Leave it to me, sergeant. That'll be all right. (He laughs,
shaking his head) We were often as bad ourselves, ay or worse. What? Eh, what?
FIRST WATCH: (Laughs) I suppose so.
CORNY KELLEHER: (Nudges the second watch) Come and wipe your name off
the slate. (He lilts, wagging his head) With my tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom
tooraloom. What, eh, do you follow me?
SECOND WATCH: (Genially) Ah, sure we were too.
CORNY KELLEHER: (Winking) Boys will be boys. I've a car round there.
SECOND WATCH: All right, Mr Kelleher. Good night.
CORNY KELLEHER: I'll see to that.
BLOOM: (Shakes hands with both of the watch in turn) Thank you very much,
gentlemen. Thank you. (He mumbles confidentially) We don't want any scandal,
you understand. Father is a wellknown highly respected citizen. Just a little wild
oats, you understand.
FIRST WATCH: O. I understand, sir.
SECOND WATCH: That's all right, sir.
FIRST WATCH: It was only in case of corporal injuries I'd have to report it at
the station.
BLOOM: (Nods rapidly) Naturally. Quite right. Only your bounden duty.
SECOND WATCH: It's our duty.
CORNY KELLEHER: Good night, men.
THE WATCH: (Saluting together) Night, gentlemen. (They move off with slow
heavy tread)
BLOOM: (Blows) Providential you came on the scene. You have a car?...
CORNY KELLEHER: (Laughs, pointing his thumb over his right shoulder to the
car brought up against the scaffolding) Two commercials that were standing fizz in
Jammet's. Like princes, faith. One of them lost two quid on the race. Drowning his
grief. And were on for a go with the jolly girls. So I landed them up on Behan's car
and down to nighttown.
BLOOM: I was just going home by Gardiner street when I happened to...
CORNY KELLEHER: (Laughs) Sure they wanted me to join in with the mots. No,
by God, says I. Not for old stagers like myself and yourself. (He laughs again and
leers with lacklustre eye) Thanks be to God we have it in the house, what, eh, do
you follow me? Hah, hah, hah!
BLOOM: (Tries to laugh) He, he, he! Yes. Matter of fact I was just visiting an
old friend of mine there, Virag, you don't know him (poor fellow, he's laid up for
the past week) and we had a liquor together and I was just making my way
home...
(The horse neighs.)
THE HORSE: Hohohohohohoh! Hohohohome!
CORNY KELLEHER: Sure it was Behan our jarvey there that told me after we
left the two commercials in Mrs Cohen's and I told him to pull up and got off to
see. (He laughs) Sober hearsedrivers a speciality. Will I give him a lift home?
Where does he hang out? Somewhere in Cabra, what?
BLOOM: No, in Sandycove, I believe, from what he let drop.
(Stephen, prone, breathes to the stars. Corny Kelleher, asquint, drawls at the
horse. Bloom, in gloom, looms down.)
CORNY KELLEHER: (Scratches his nape) Sandycove! (He bends down and calls
to Stephen) Eh! (He calls again) Eh! He's covered with shavings anyhow. Take care
they didn't lift anything off him.
BLOOM: No, no, no. I have his money and his hat here and stick.
CORNY KELLEHER: Ah, well, he'll get over it. No bones broken. Well, I'll shove
along. (He laughs) I've a rendezvous in the morning. Burying the dead. Safe home!
THE HORSE: (Neighs) Hohohohohome.
BLOOM: Good night. I'll just wait and take him along in a few...
(Corny Kelleher returns to the outside car and mounts it. The horse harness
jingles.)
CORNY KELLEHER: (From the car, standing) Night.
BLOOM: Night.
(The jarvey chucks the reins and raises his whip encouragingly. The car and horse
back slowly, awkwardly, and turn. Corny Kelleher on the sideseat sways his head to
and fro in sign of mirth at Bloom's plight. The jarvey joins in the mute pantomimic
merriment nodding from the farther seat. Bloom shakes his head in mute mirthful
reply. With thumb and palm Corny Kelleher reassures that the two bobbies will
allow the sleep to continue for what else is to be done. With a slow nod Bloom
conveys his gratitude as that is exactly what Stephen needs. The car jingles
tooraloom round the corner of the tooraloom lane. Corny Kelleher again
reassuralooms with his hand. Bloom with his hand assuralooms Corny Kelleher that
he is reassuraloomtay. The tinkling hoofs and jingling harness grow fainter with
their tooralooloo looloo lay. Bloom, holding in his hand Stephen's hat, festooned with
shavings, and ashplant, stands irresolute. Then he bends to him and shakes him by
the shoulder.)
BLOOM: Eh! Ho! (There is no answer; he bends again) Mr Dedalus! (There is no
answer) The name if you call. Somnambulist. (He bends again and hesitating,
brings his mouth near the face of the prostrate form) Stephen! (There is no answer.
He calls again.) Stephen!
STEPHEN: (Groans) Who? Black panther. Vampire. (He sighs and stretches
himself, then murmurs thickly with prolonged vowels)

Who... drive... Fergus now

And pierce... wood's woven shade?...
(He turns on his left side, sighing, doubling himself together.)
BLOOM: Poetry. Well educated. Pity. (He bends again and undoes the buttons of
Stephen's waistcoat) To breathe. (He brushes the woodshavings from Stephen's
clothes with light hand and fingers) One pound seven. Not hurt anyhow. (He
listens) What?
STEPHEN: (Murmurs)

... shadows... the woods

... white breast... dim sea.
(He stretches out his arms, sighs again and curls his body. Bloom, holding the hat
and ashplant, stands erect. A dog barks in the distance. Bloom tightens and loosens
his grip on the ashplant. He looks down on Stephen's face and form.)
BLOOM: (Communes with the night) Face reminds me of his poor mother. In the
shady wood. The deep white breast. Ferguson, I think I caught. A girl. Some girl.
Best thing could happen him. (He murmurs)... swear that I will always hail, ever
conceal, never reveal, any part or parts, art or arts... (He murmurs)... in the rough
sands of the sea... a cabletow's length from the shore... where the tide ebbs... and
flows ...
(Silent, thoughtful, alert he stands on guard, his fingers at his lips in the attitude
of secret master. Against the dark wall a figure appears slowly, a fairy boy of eleven,
a changeling, kidnapped, dressed in an eton suit with glass shoes and a little bronze
helmet, holding a book in his hand. He reads from right to left inaudibly, smiling,
kissing the page.)
BLOOM: (Wonderstruck, calls inaudibly) Rudy!
RUDY: (Gazes, unseeing, into Bloom's eyes and goes on reading, kissing, smiling.
He has a delicate mauve face. On his suit he has diamond and ruby buttons. In his
free left hand he holds a slim ivory cane with a violet bowknot. A white lambkin
peeps out of his waistcoat pocket.)
 — III —
Preparatory to anything else Mr Bloom brushed off the greater bulk of the
shavings and handed Stephen the hat and ashplant and bucked him up generally
in orthodox Samaritan fashion which he very badly needed. His (Stephen's) mind
was not exactly what you would call wandering but a bit unsteady and on his
expressed desire for some beverage to drink Mr Bloom in view of the hour it was
and there being no pump of Vartry water available for their ablutions let alone
drinking purposes hit upon an expedient by suggesting, off the reel, the propriety
of the cabman's shelter, as it was called, hardly a stonesthrow away near Butt
bridge where they might hit upon some drinkables in the shape of a milk and soda
or a mineral. But how to get there was the rub. For the nonce he was rather
nonplussed but inasmuch as the duty plainly devolved upon him to take some
measures on the subject he pondered suitable ways and means during which
Stephen repeatedly yawned. So far as he could see he was rather pale in the face
so that it occurred to him as highly advisable to get a conveyance of some
description which would answer in their then condition, both of them being
e.d.ed, particularly Stephen, always assuming that there was such a thing to be
found. Accordingly after a few such preliminaries as brushing, in spite of his
having forgotten to take up his rather soapsuddy handkerchief after it had done
yeoman service in the shaving line, they both walked together along Beaver street
or, more properly, lane as far as the farrier's and the distinctly fetid atmosphere of
the livery stables at the corner of Montgomery street where they made tracks to
the left from thence debouching into Amiens street round by the corner of Dan
Bergin's. But as he confidently anticipated there was not a sign of a Jehu plying for
hire anywhere to be seen except a fourwheeler, probably engaged by some fellows
inside on the spree, outside the North Star hotel and there was no symptom of its
budging a quarter of an inch when Mr Bloom, who was anything but a
professional whistler, endeavoured to hail it by emitting a kind of a whistle,
holding his arms arched over his head, twice.
This was a quandary but, bringing common sense to bear on it, evidently there
was nothing for it but put a good face on the matter and foot it which they
accordingly did. So, bevelling around by Mullett's and the Signal House which
they shortly reached, they proceeded perforce in the direction of Amiens street
railway terminus, Mr Bloom being handicapped by the circumstance that one of
the back buttons of his trousers had, to vary the timehonoured adage, gone the
way of all buttons though, entering thoroughly into the spirit of the thing, he
heroically made light of the mischance. So as neither of them were particularly
pressed for time, as it happened, and the temperature refreshing since it cleared
up after the recent visitation of Jupiter Pluvius, they dandered along past by
where the empty vehicle was waiting without a fare or a jarvey. As it so happened
a Dublin United Tramways Company's sandstrewer happened to be returning and
the elder man recounted to his companion à propos of the incident his own truly
miraculous escape of some little while back. They passed the main entrance of the
Great Northern railway station, the starting point for Belfast, where of course all
traffic was suspended at that late hour and passing the backdoor of the morgue (a
not very enticing locality, not to say gruesome to a degree, more especially at
night) ultimately gained the Dock Tavern and in due course turned into Store
street, famous for its C division police station. Between this point and the high at
present unlit warehouses of Beresford place Stephen thought to think of Ibsen,
associated with Baird's the stonecutter's in his mind somehow in Talbot place, first
turning on the right, while the other who was acting as his fidus Achates inhaled
with internal satisfaction the smell of James Rourke's city bakery, situated quite
close to where they were, the very palatable odour indeed of our daily bread, of all
commodities of the public the primary and most indispensable. Bread, the staff of
life, earn your bread, O tell me where is fancy bread, at Rourke's the baker's it is
said.
En route to his taciturn and, not to put too fine a point on it, not yet perfectly
sober companion Mr Bloom who at all events was in complete possession of his
faculties, never more so, in fact disgustingly sober, spoke a word of caution re the
dangers of nighttown, women of ill fame and swell mobsmen, which, barely
permissible once in a while though not as a habitual practice, was of the nature of
a regular deathtrap for young fellows of his age particularly if they had acquired
drinking habits under the influence of liquor unless you knew a little jiujitsu for
every contingency as even a fellow on the broad of his back could administer a
nasty kick if you didn't look out. Highly providential was the appearance on the
scene of Corny Kelleher when Stephen was blissfully unconscious but for that man
in the gap turning up at the eleventh hour the finis might have been that he might
have been a candidate for the accident ward or, failing that, the bridewell and an
appearance in the court next day before Mr Tobias or, he being the solicitor
rather, old Wall, he meant to say, or Mahony which simply spelt ruin for a chap
when it got bruited about. The reason he mentioned the fact was that a lot of
those policemen, whom he cordially disliked, were admittedly unscrupulous in the
service of the Crown and, as Mr Bloom put it, recalling a case or two in the A
division in Clanbrassil street, prepared to swear a hole through a ten gallon pot.
Never on the spot when wanted but in quiet parts of the city, Pembroke road for
example, the
guardians of the law were well in evidence, the obvious reason being they were
paid to protect the upper classes. Another thing he commented on was equipping
soldiers with firearms or sidearms of any description liable to go off at any time
which was tantamount to inciting them against civilians should by any chance
they fall out over anything. You frittered away your time, he very sensibly
maintained, and health and also character besides which, the squandermania of
the thing, fast women of the demimonde ran away with a lot of l s. d. into the
bargain and the greatest danger of all was who you got drunk with though,
touching the much vexed question of stimulants, he relished a glass of choice old
wine in season as both
 nourishing and bloodmaking and possessing aperient virtues (notably a good
burgundy which he was a staunch believer in) still never beyond a certain point
where he invariably drew the line as it simply led to trouble all round to say
nothing of your being at the tender mercy of others practically. Most of all he
commented adversely on the desertion of Stephen by all his pubhunting confreres
but one, a most glaring piece of ratting on the part of his brother medicos under
all the circs.
—And that one was Judas, Stephen said, who up to then had said nothing
whatsoever of any kind.
Discussing these and kindred topics they made a beeline across the back of the
Customhouse and passed under the Loop Line bridge where a brazier of coke
burning in front of a sentrybox or something like one attracted their rather lagging
footsteps. Stephen of his own accord stopped for no special reason to look at the
heap of barren cobblestones and by the light emanating from the brazier he could
just make out the darker figure of the corporation watchman inside the gloom of
the sentrybox. He began to remember that this had happened or had been
mentioned as having happened before but it cost him no small effort before he
remembered that he recognised in the sentry a quondam friend of his father's,
Gumley. To avoid a meeting he drew nearer to the pillars of the railway bridge.
—Someone saluted you, Mr Bloom said.
A figure of middle height on the prowl evidently under the arches saluted again,
calling:
—Night!
Stephen of course started rather dizzily and stopped to return the compliment.
Mr Bloom actuated by motives of inherent delicacy inasmuch as he always
believed in minding his own business moved off but nevertheless remained on the
qui vive with just a shade of anxiety though not funkyish in the least. Though
unusual in the Dublin area he knew that it was not by any means unknown for
desperadoes who had next to nothing to live on to be abroad waylaying and
generally terrorising peaceable pedestrians by placing a pistol at their head in
some secluded spot outside the city proper, famished loiterers of the Thames
embankment category they might be hanging about there or simply marauders
ready to decamp with whatever boodle they could in one fell swoop at a moment's
notice, your money or your life, leaving you there to point a moral, gagged and
garrotted.
Stephen, that is when the accosting figure came to close quarters, though he
was not in an over sober state himself recognised Corley's breath redolent of
rotten cornjuice. Lord John Corley some called him and his genealogy came about
in this wise. He was the eldest son of inspector Corley of the G division, lately
deceased, who had married a certain Katherine Brophy, the daughter of a Louth
farmer. His grandfather Patrick Michael Corley of New Ross had married the
widow of a publican there whose maiden name had been Katherine (also) Talbot.
Rumour had it (though not proved) that she descended from the house of the lords
Talbot de Malahide in whose mansion, really an unquestionably fine residence of
its kind and well worth seeing, her mother or aunt or some relative, a woman, as
the tale went, of extreme beauty, had enjoyed the distinction of being in service in
the washkitchen. This therefore was the reason why the still comparatively young
though dissolute man who now addressed Stephen was spoken of by some with
facetious proclivities as Lord John Corley.
Taking Stephen on one side he had the customary doleful ditty to tell. Not as
much as a farthing to purchase a night's lodgings. His friends had all deserted
him. Furthermore he had a row with Lenehan and called him to Stephen a mean
bloody swab with a sprinkling of a number of other uncalledfor expressions. He
was out of a job and implored of Stephen to tell him where on God's earth he
could get something, anything at all, to do. No, it was the daughter of the mother
in the washkitchen that was fostersister to the heir of the house or else they were
connected through the mother in some way, both occurrences happening at the
same time if the whole thing wasn't a complete fabrication from start to finish.
Anyhow he was all in.
—I wouldn't ask you only, pursued he, on my solemn oath and God knows I'm
on the rocks.
—There'll be a job tomorrow or next day, Stephen told him, in a boys' school at
Dalkey for a gentleman usher. Mr Garrett Deasy. Try it. You may mention my
name.
—Ah, God, Corley replied, sure I couldn't teach in a school, man. I was never
one of your bright ones, he added with a half laugh. I got stuck twice in the junior
at the christian brothers.
—I have no place to sleep myself, Stephen informed him.
Corley at the first go-off was inclined to suspect it was something to do with
Stephen being fired out of his digs for bringing in a bloody tart off the street.
There was a dosshouse in Marlborough street, Mrs Maloney's, but it was only a
tanner touch and full of undesirables but M'Conachie told him you got a decent
enough do in the Brazen Head over in Winetavern street (which was distantly
suggestive to the person addressed of friar Bacon) for a bob. He was starving too
though he hadn't said a word about it.
Though this sort of thing went on every other night or very near it still
Stephen's feelings got the better of him in a sense though he knew that Corley's
brandnew rigmarole on a par with the others was hardly deserving of much
credence. However haud ignarus malorum miseris succurrere disco etcetera as the
Latin poet remarks especially as luck would have it he got paid his screw after
every middle of the month on the sixteenth which was the date of the month as a
matter of fact though a good bit of the wherewithal was demolished. But the
cream of the joke was nothing would get it out of Corley's head that he was living
in affluence and hadn't a thing to do but hand out the needful. Whereas. He put
his hand in a pocket anyhow not with the idea of finding any food there but
thinking he might lend him anything up to a bob or so in lieu so that he might
endeavour at all events and get sufficient to eat but the result was in the negative
for, to his chagrin, he found his cash missing. A few broken biscuits were all the
result of his investigation. He tried his hardest to recollect for the moment
whether he had lost as well he might have or left because in that contingency it
was not a pleasant lookout, very much the reverse in fact. He was altogether too
fagged out to institute a thorough search though he tried to recollect. About
biscuits he dimly remembered. Who now exactly gave them he wondered or where
was or did he buy. However in another pocket he came across what he surmised
in the dark were pennies, erroneously however, as it turned out.
—Those are halfcrowns, man, Corley corrected him.
And so in point of fact they turned out to be. Stephen anyhow lent him one of
them.
—Thanks, Corley answered, you're a gentleman. I'll pay you back one time.
Who's that with you? I saw him a few times in the Bleeding Horse in Camden
street with Boylan, the billsticker. You might put in a good word for us to get me
taken on there. I'd carry a sandwichboard only the girl in the office told me they're
full up for the next three weeks, man. God, you've to book ahead, man, you'd
think it was for the Carl Rosa. I don't give a shite anyway so long as I get a job,
even as a crossing sweeper.
Subsequently being not quite so down in the mouth after the two and six he got
he informed Stephen about a fellow by the name of Bags Comisky that he said
Stephen knew well out of Fullam's, the shipchandler's, bookkeeper there that used
to be often round in Nagle's back with O'Mara and a little chap with a stutter the
name of Tighe. Anyhow he was lagged the night before last and fined ten bob for a
drunk and disorderly and refusing to go with the constable.
210
Mr Bloom in the meanwhile kept dodging about in the vicinity of the
cobblestones near the brazier of coke in front of the corporation watchman's
sentrybox who evidently a glutton for work, it struck him, was having a quiet
forty winks for all intents and purposes on his own private account while Dublin
slept. He threw an odd eye at the same time now and then at Stephen's anything
but immaculately attired interlocutor as if he had seen that nobleman somewhere
or other though where he was not in a position to truthfully state nor had he the
remotest idea when. Being a levelheaded individual who could give points to not a
few in point of shrewd observation he also remarked on his very dilapidated hat
and slouchy wearing apparel generally testifying to a chronic impecuniosity.
Palpably he was one of his hangerson but for the matter of that it was merely a
question of one preying on his nextdoor neighbour all round, in every deep, so to
put it, a deeper depth and for the matter of that if the man in the street chanced
to be in the dock himself penal servitude with or without the option of a fine
would be a very rara avis altogether. In any case he had a consummate amount of
cool assurance intercepting people at that hour of the night or morning. Pretty
thick that was certainly.
 The pair parted company and Stephen rejoined Mr Bloom who, with his
practised eye, was not without perceiving that he had succumbed to the
blandiloquence of the other parasite. Alluding to the encounter he said,
laughingly, Stephen, that is:
—He is down on his luck. He asked me to ask you to ask somebody named
Boylan, a billsticker, to give him a job as a sandwichman.
At this intelligence, in which he seemingly evinced little interest, Mr Bloom
gazed abstractedly for the space of a half a second or so in the direction of a
bucketdredger, rejoicing in the farfamed name of Eblana, moored alongside
Customhouse quay and quite possibly out of repair, whereupon he observed
evasively:
—Everybody gets their own ration of luck, they say. Now you mention it his
face was familiar to me. But, leaving that for the moment, how much did you part
with, he queried, if I am not too inquisitive?
—Half a crown, Stephen responded. I daresay he needs it to sleep somewhere.
—Needs! Mr Bloom ejaculated, professing not the least surprise at the
intelligence, I can quite credit the assertion and I guarantee he invariably does.
Everyone according to his needs or everyone according to his deeds. But, talking
about things in general, where, added he with a smile, will you sleep yourself?
Walking to Sandycove is out of the question. And even supposing you did you
won't get in after what occurred at Westland Row station. Simply fag out there for
nothing. I don't mean to presume to dictate to you in the slightest degree but why
did you leave your father's house?
—To seek misfortune, was Stephen's answer.
—I met your respected father on a recent occasion, Mr Bloom diplomatically
returned, today in fact, or to be strictly accurate, on yesterday. Where does he live
at present? I gathered in the course of conversation that he had moved.
—I believe he is in Dublin somewhere, Stephen answered unconcernedly. Why?
—A gifted man, Mr Bloom said of Mr Dedalus senior, in more respects than one
and a born raconteur if ever there was one. He takes great pride, quite legitimate,
out of you. You could go back perhaps, he hasarded, still thinking of the very
unpleasant scene at Westland Row terminus when it was perfectly evident that the
other two, Mulligan, that is, and that English tourist friend of his, who eventually
euchred their third companion, were patently trying as if the whole bally station
belonged to them to give Stephen the slip in the confusion, which they did.
There was no response forthcoming to the suggestion however, such as it was,
Stephen's mind's eye being too busily engaged in repicturing his family hearth the
last time he saw it with his sister Dilly sitting by the ingle, her hair hanging down,
waiting for some weak Trinidad shell cocoa that was in the sootcoated kettle to be
done so that she and he could drink it with the oatmealwater for milk after the
Friday herrings they had eaten at two a penny with an egg apiece for Maggy,
Boody and Katey, the cat meanwhile under the mangle devouring a mess of
eggshells and charred fish heads and bones on a square of brown paper, in
accordance with the third precept of the church to fast and abstain on the days
commanded, it being quarter tense or if not, ember days or something like that.
—No, Mr Bloom repeated again, I wouldn't personally repose much trust in that
boon companion of yours who contributes the humorous element, Dr Mulligan, as
a guide, philosopher and friend if I were in your shoes. He knows which side his
bread is buttered on though in all probability he never realised what it is to be
without regular meals. Of course you didn't notice as much as I did. But it
wouldn't occasion me the least surprise to learn that a pinch of tobacco or some
narcotic was put in your drink for some ulterior object.
He understood however from all he heard that Dr Mulligan was a versatile
allround man, by no means confined to medicine only, who was rapidly coming to
the fore in his line and, if the report was verified, bade fair to enjoy a flourishing
practice in the not too distant future as a tony medical practitioner drawing a
handsome fee for his services in addition to which professional status his rescue of
that man from certain drowning by artificial respiration and what they call first
aid at Skerries, or Malahide was it?, was, he was bound to admit, an exceedingly
plucky deed which he could not too highly praise, so that frankly he was utterly at
a loss to fathom what earthly reason could be at the back of it except he put it
down to sheer cussedness or jealousy, pure and simple.
—Except it simply amounts to one thing and he is what they call picking your
brains, he ventured to throw out.
The guarded glance of half solicitude half curiosity augmented by friendliness
which he gave at Stephen's at present morose expression of features did not throw
a flood of light, none at all in fact on the problem as to whether he had let himself
be badly bamboozled to judge by two or three lowspirited remarks he let drop or
the other way about saw through the affair and for some reason or other best
known to himself allowed matters to more or less. Grinding poverty did have that
effect and he more than conjectured that, high educational abilities though he
possessed, he experienced no little difficulty in making both ends meet.
Adjacent to the men's public urinal they perceived an icecream car round which
a group of presumably Italians in heated altercation were getting rid of voluble
expressions in their vivacious language in a particularly animated way, there being
some little differences between the parties.
—Puttana madonna, che ci dia i quattrini! Ho ragione? Culo rotto!
—Intendiamoci. Mezzo sovrano piu...
—Dice lui, pero!
—Mezzo.
—Farabutto! Mortacci sui!
 —Ma ascolta! Cinque la testa piu...
Mr Bloom and Stephen entered the cabman's shelter, an unpretentious wooden
structure, where, prior to then, he had rarely if ever been before, the former
having previously whispered to the latter a few hints anent the keeper of it said to
be the once famous Skin-the-Goat Fitzharris, the invincible, though he could not
vouch for the actual facts which quite possibly there was not one vestige of truth
in. A few moments later saw our two noctambules safely seated in a discreet
corner only to be greeted by stares from the decidedly miscellaneous collection of
waifs and strays and other nondescript specimens of the genus homo already there
engaged in eating and drinking diversified by conversation for whom they
seemingly formed an object of marked curiosity.
—Now touching a cup of coffee, Mr Bloom ventured to plausibly suggest to
break the ice, it occurs to me you ought to sample something in the shape of solid
food, say, a roll of some description.
Accordingly his first act was with characteristic sangfroid to order these
commodities quietly. The hoi polloi of jarvies or stevedores or whatever they were
after a cursory examination turned their eyes apparently dissatisfied, away though
one redbearded bibulous individual portion of whose hair was greyish, a sailor
probably, still stared for some appreciable time before transferring his rapt
attention to the floor. Mr Bloom, availing himself of the right of free speech, he
having just a bowing acquaintance with the language in dispute, though, to be
sure, rather in a quandary over voglio, remarked to his protégé in an audible tone
of voice a propos of the battle royal in the street which was still raging fast and
furious:
—A beautiful language. I mean for singing purposes. Why do you not write your
poetry in that language? Bella Poetria! It is so melodious and full. Belladonna.
Voglio.
Stephen, who was trying his dead best to yawn if he could, suffering from
lassitude generally, replied:
—To fill the ear of a cow elephant. They were haggling over money.
—Is that so? Mr Bloom asked. Of course, he subjoined pensively, at the inward
reflection of there being more languages to start with than were absolutely
necessary, it may be only the southern glamour that surrounds it.
The keeper of the shelter in the middle of this tête-â-tête put a boiling swimming
cup of a choice concoction labelled coffee on the table and a rather antediluvian
specimen of a bun, or so it seemed. After which he beat a retreat to his counter,
Mr Bloom determining to have a good square look at him later on so as not to
appear to. For which reason he encouraged Stephen to proceed with his eyes while
he did the honours by surreptitiously pushing the cup of what was temporarily
supposed to be called coffee gradually nearer him.
 —Sounds are impostures, Stephen said after a pause of some little time, like
names. Cicero, Podmore. Napoleon, Mr Goodbody. Jesus, Mr Doyle. Shakespeares
were as common as Murphies. What's in a name?
—Yes, to be sure, Mr Bloom unaffectedly concurred. Of course. Our name was
changed too, he added, pushing the socalled roll across.
The redbearded sailor who had his weather eye on the newcomers boarded
Stephen, whom he had singled out for attention in particular, squarely by asking:
—And what might your name be?
Just in the nick of time Mr Bloom touched his companion's boot but Stephen,
apparently disregarding the warm pressure from an unexpected quarter, answered:
—Dedalus.
The sailor stared at him heavily from a pair of drowsy baggy eyes, rather
bunged up from excessive use of boose, preferably good old Hollands and water.
—You know Simon Dedalus? he asked at length.
—I've heard of him, Stephen said.
Mr Bloom was all at sea for a moment, seeing the others evidently
eavesdropping too.
—He's Irish, the seaman bold affirmed, staring still in much the same way and
nodding. All Irish.
—All too Irish, Stephen rejoined.
As for Mr Bloom he could neither make head or tail of the whole business and
he was just asking himself what possible connection when the sailor of his own
accord turned to the other occupants of the shelter with the remark:
—I seen him shoot two eggs off two bottles at fifty yards over his shoulder. The
lefthand dead shot.
Though he was slightly hampered by an occasional stammer and his gestures
being also clumsy as it was still he did his best to explain.
—Bottles out there, say. Fifty yards measured. Eggs on the bottles. Cocks his
gun over his shoulder. Aims.
He turned his body half round, shut up his right eye completely. Then he
screwed his features up someway sideways and glared out into the night with an
unprepossessing cast of countenance.
—Pom! he then shouted once.
The entire audience waited, anticipating an additional detonation, there being
still a further egg.
 —Pom! he shouted twice.
Egg two evidently demolished, he nodded and winked, adding bloodthirstily:
—Buffalo Bill shoots to kill, Never missed nor he never will.
A silence ensued till Mr Bloom for agreeableness' sake just felt like asking him
whether it was for a marksmanship competition like the Bisley.
—Beg pardon, the sailor said.
—Long ago? Mr Bloom pursued without flinching a hairsbreadth.
—Why, the sailor replied, relaxing to a certain extent under the magic influence
of diamond cut diamond, it might be a matter of ten years. He toured the wide
world with Hengler's Royal Circus. I seen him do that in Stockholm.
—Curious coincidence, Mr Bloom confided to Stephen unobtrusively.
—Murphy's my name, the sailor continued. D. B. Murphy of Carrigaloe. Know
where that is?
—Queenstown harbour, Stephen replied.
—That's right, the sailor said. Fort Camden and Fort Carlisle. That's where I
hails from. I belongs there. That's where I hails from. My little woman's down
there. She's waiting for me, I know. For England, home and beauty. She's my own
true wife I haven't seen for seven years now, sailing about.
Mr Bloom could easily picture his advent on this scene, the homecoming to the
mariner's roadside shieling after having diddled Davy Jones, a rainy night with a
blind moon. Across the world for a wife. Quite a number of stories there were on
that particular Alice Ben Bolt topic, Enoch Arden and Rip van Winkle and does
anybody hereabouts remember Caoc O'Leary, a favourite and most trying
declamation piece by the way of poor John Casey and a bit of perfect poetry in its
own small way. Never about the runaway wife coming back, however much
devoted to the absentee. The face at the window! Judge of his astonishment when
he finally did breast the tape and the awful truth dawned upon him anent his
better half, wrecked in his affections. You little expected me but I've come to stay
and make a fresh start. There she sits, a grasswidow, at the selfsame fireside.
Believes me dead, rocked in the cradle of the deep. And there sits uncle Chubb or
Tomkin, as the case might be, the publican of the Crown and Anchor, in
shirtsleeves, eating rumpsteak and onions. No chair for father. Broo! The wind!
Her brandnew arrival is on her knee, post mortem child. With a high ro! and a
randy ro! and my galloping tearing tandy, O! Bow to the inevitable. Grin and bear
it. I remain with much love your brokenhearted husband D B Murphy.
The sailor, who scarcely seemed to be a Dublin resident, turned to one of the
jarvies with the request:
—You don't happen to have such a thing as a spare chaw about you?
 The jarvey addressed as it happened had not but the keeper took a die of plug
from his good jacket hanging on a nail and the desired object was passed from
hand to hand.
—Thank you, the sailor said.
He deposited the quid in his gob and, chewing and with some slow stammers,
proceeded:
—We come up this morning eleven o'clock. The threemaster Rosevean from
Bridgwater with bricks. I shipped to get over. Paid off this afternoon. There's my
discharge. See? D. B. Murphy. A. B. S.
In confirmation of which statement he extricated from an inside pocket and
handed to his neighbour a not very cleanlooking folded document.
—You must have seen a fair share of the world, the keeper remarked, leaning
on the counter.
—Why, the sailor answered upon reflection upon it, I've circumnavigated a bit
since I first joined on. I was in the Red Sea. I was in China and North America
and South America. We was chased by pirates one voyage. I seen icebergs plenty,
growlers. I was in Stockholm and the Black Sea, the Dardanelles under Captain
Dalton, the best bloody man that ever scuttled a ship. I seen Russia. Gospodi
pomilyou. That's how the Russians prays.
—You seen queer sights, don't be talking, put in a jarvey.
—Why, the sailor said, shifting his partially chewed plug. I seen queer things
too, ups and downs. I seen a crocodile bite the fluke of an anchor same as I chew
that quid.
He took out of his mouth the pulpy quid and, lodging it between his teeth, bit
ferociously:
—Khaan! Like that. And I seen maneaters in Peru that eats corpses and the
livers of horses. Look here. Here they are. A friend of mine sent me.
He fumbled out a picture postcard from his inside pocket which seemed to be in
its way a species of repository and pushed it along the table. The printed matter
on it stated: Choza de Indios. Beni, Bolivia.
All focussed their attention at the scene exhibited, a group of savage women in
striped loincloths, squatted, blinking, suckling, frowning, sleeping amid a swarm
of infants (there must have been quite a score of them) outside some primitive
shanties of osier.
—Chews coca all day, the communicative tarpaulin added. Stomachs like
breadgraters. Cuts off their diddies when they can't bear no more children.
See them sitting there stark ballocknaked eating a dead horse's liver raw.
 His postcard proved a centre of attraction for Messrs the greenhorns for several
minutes if not more.
—Know how to keep them off? he inquired generally.
Nobody volunteering a statement he winked, saying:
—Glass. That boggles 'em. Glass.
Mr Bloom, without evincing surprise, unostentatiously turned over the card to
peruse the partially obliterated address and postmark. It ran as follows: Tarjeta
Postal, Señor A Boudin, Galeria Becche, Santiago, Chile. There was no message
evidently, as he took particular notice. Though not an implicit believer in the lurid
story narrated (or the eggsniping transaction for that matter despite William Tell
and the Lazarillo-Don Cesar de Bazan incident depicted in Maritana on which
occasion the former's ball passed through the latter's hat) having detected a
discrepancy between his name (assuming he was the person he represented
himself to be and not sailing under false colours after having boxed the compass
on the strict q.t. somewhere) and the fictitious addressee of the missive which
made him nourish some suspicions of our friend's bona fides nevertheless it
reminded him in a way of a longcherished plan he meant to one day realise some
Wednesday or Saturday of travelling to London via long sea not to say that he had
ever travelled extensively to any great extent but he was at heart a born
adventurer though by a trick of fate he had consistently remained a landlubber
except you call going to Holyhead which was his longest. Martin Cunningham
frequently said he would work a pass through Egan but some deuced hitch or
other eternally cropped up with the net result that the scheme fell through. But
even suppose it did come to planking down the needful and breaking Boyd's heart
it was not so dear, purse permitting, a few guineas at the outside considering the
fare to Mullingar where he figured on going was five and six, there and back. The
trip would benefit health on account of the bracing ozone and be in every way
thoroughly pleasurable, especially for a chap whose liver was out of order, seeing
the different places along the route, Plymouth, Falmouth, Southampton and so on
culminating in an instructive tour of the sights of the great metropolis, the
spectacle of our modern Babylon where doubtless he would see the greatest
improvement, tower, abbey, wealth of Park lane to renew acquaintance with.
Another thing just struck him as a by no means bad notion was he might have a
gaze around on the spot to see about trying to make arrangements about a concert
tour of summer music embracing the most prominent pleasure resorts, Margate
with mixed bathing and firstrate hydros and spas, Eastbourne, Scarborough,
Margate and so on, beautiful Bournemouth, the Channel islands and similar bijou
spots, which might prove highly remunerative. Not, of course, with a hole and
corner scratch company or local ladies on the job, witness Mrs C P M'Coy type
lend me your valise and I'll post you the ticket. No, something top notch, an all
star Irish caste, the Tweedy-Flower grand opera company with his own legal
consort as leading lady as a sort of counterblast to the Elster Grimes and Moody-
Manners, perfectly simple matter and he was quite sanguine of success, providing
puffs in the local papers could be managed by some fellow with a bit of bounce
who could pull the indispensable wires and thus combine business with pleasure.
But who? That was the rub. Also, without being actually positive, it struck him a
great field was to be opened up in the line of opening up new routes to keep pace
with the times apropos of the Fishguard-Rosslare route which, it was mooted, was
once more on the tapis in the circumlocution departments with the usual quantity
of red tape and dillydallying of effete fogeydom and dunderheads generally. A
great opportunity there certainly was for push and enterprise to meet the
travelling needs of the public at large, the average man, i.e. Brown, Robinson and
Co.
It was a subject of regret and absurd as well on the face of it and no small
blame to our vaunted society that the man in the street, when the system really
needed toning up, for the matter of a couple of paltry pounds was debarred from
seeing more of the world they lived in instead of being always and ever cooped up
since my old stick-in-the-mud took me for a wife. After all, hang it, they had their
eleven and more humdrum months of it and merited a radical change of venue
after the grind of city life in the summertime for choice when dame Nature is at
her spectacular best constituting nothing short of a new lease of life. There were
equally excellent opportunities for vacationists in the home island, delightful
sylvan spots for rejuvenation, offering a plethora of attractions as well as a
bracing tonic for the system in and around Dublin and its picturesque environs
even, Poulaphouca to which there was a steamtram, but also farther away from
the madding crowd in Wicklow, rightly termed the garden of Ireland, an ideal
neighbourhood for elderly wheelmen so long as it didn't come down, and in the
wilds of Donegal where if report spoke true the coup d'oeil was exceedingly grand
though the lastnamed locality was not easily getatable so that the influx of visitors
was not as yet all that it might be considering the signal benefits to be derived
from it while Howth with its historic associations and otherwise, Silken Thomas,
Grace O'Malley, George IV, rhododendrons several hundred feet above sealevel
was a favourite haunt with all sorts and conditions of men especially in the spring
when young men's fancy, though it had its own toll of deaths by falling off the
cliffs by design or accidentally, usually, by the way, on their left leg, it being only
about three quarters of an hour's run from the pillar. Because of course uptodate
tourist travelling was as yet merely in its infancy, so to speak, and the
accommodation left much to be desired. Interesting to fathom it seemed to him
from a motive of curiosity, pure and simple, was whether it was the traffic that
created the route or viceversa or the two sides in fact. He turned back the other
side of the card, picture, and passed it along to Stephen.
—I seen a Chinese one time, related the doughty narrator, that had little pills
like putty and he put them in the water and they opened and every pill was
something different. One was a ship, another was a house, another was a flower.
Cooks rats in your soup, he appetisingly added, the chinks does.
Possibly perceiving an expression of dubiosity on their faces the globetrotter
went on, adhering to his adventures.
—And I seen a man killed in Trieste by an Italian chap. Knife in his back. Knife
like that.
 Whilst speaking he produced a dangerouslooking claspknife quite in keeping
with his character and held it in the striking position.
—In a knockingshop it was count of a tryon between two smugglers. Fellow hid
behind a door, come up behind him. Like that. Prepare to meet your God, says he.
Chuk! It went into his back up to the butt.
His heavy glance drowsily roaming about kind of defied their further questions
even should they by any chance want to.
—That's a good bit of steel, repeated he, examining his formidable stiletto.
After which harrowing denouement sufficient to appal the stoutest he snapped
the blade to and stowed the weapon in question away as before in his chamber of
horrors, otherwise pocket.
—They're great for the cold steel, somebody who was evidently quite in the dark
said for the benefit of them all. That was why they thought the park murders of
the invincibles was done by foreigners on account of them using knives.
At this remark passed obviously in the spirit of where ignorance is bliss Mr B.
and Stephen, each in his own particular way, both instinctively exchanged
meaning glances, in a religious silence of the strictly entre nous variety however,
towards where Skin-the-Goat, alias the keeper, not turning a hair, was drawing
spurts of liquid from his boiler affair. His inscrutable face which was really a work
of art, a perfect study in itself, beggaring description, conveyed the impression
that he didn't understand one jot of what was going on. Funny, very!
There ensued a somewhat lengthy pause. One man was reading in fits and starts
a stained by coffee evening journal, another the card with the natives choza de,
another the seaman's discharge. Mr Bloom, so far as he was personally concerned,
was just pondering in pensive mood. He vividly recollected when the occurrence
alluded to took place as well as yesterday, roughly some score of years previously
in the days of the land troubles, when it took the civilised world by storm,
figuratively speaking, early in the eighties, eightyone to be correct, when he was
just turned fifteen.
—Ay, boss, the sailor broke in. Give us back them papers.
The request being complied with he clawed them up with a scrape.
—Have you seen the rock of Gibraltar? Mr Bloom inquired.
The sailor grimaced, chewing, in a way that might be read as yes, ay or no.
—Ah, you've touched there too, Mr Bloom said, Europa point, thinking he had,
in the hope that the rover might possibly by some reminiscences but he failed to
do so, simply letting spirt a jet of spew into the sawdust, and shook his head with
a sort of lazy scorn.
—What year would that be about? Mr B interrogated. Can you recall the boats?
Our soi-disant sailor munched heavily awhile hungrily before answering:
 —I'm tired of all them rocks in the sea, he said, and boats and ships. Salt junk
all the time.
Tired seemingly, he ceased. His questioner perceiving that he was not likely to
get a great deal of change out of such a wily old customer, fell to woolgathering on
the enormous dimensions of the water about the globe, suffice it to say that, as a
casual glance at the map revealed, it covered fully three fourths of it and he fully
realised accordingly what it meant to rule the waves. On more than one occasion,
a dozen at the lowest, near the North Bull at Dollymount he had remarked a
superannuated old salt, evidently derelict, seated habitually near the not
particularly redolent sea on the wall, staring quite obliviously at it and it at him,
dreaming of fresh woods and pastures new as someone somewhere sings. And it
left him wondering why. Possibly he had tried to find out the secret for himself,
floundering up and down the antipodes and all that sort of thing and over and
under, well, not exactly under, tempting the fates. And the odds were twenty to
nil there was really no secret about it at all. Nevertheless, without going into the
minutiae of the business, the eloquent fact remained that the sea was there in all
its glory and in the natural course of things somebody or other had to sail on it
and fly in the face of providence though it merely went to show how people
usually contrived to load that sort of onus on to the other fellow like the hell idea
and the lottery and insurance which were run on identically the same lines so that
for that very reason if no other lifeboat Sunday was a highly laudable institution
to which the public at large, no matter where living inland or seaside, as the case
might be, having it brought home to them like that should extend its gratitude also
to the harbourmasters and coastguard service who had to man the rigging and
push off and out amid the elements whatever the season when duty called Ireland
expects that every man and so on and sometimes had a terrible time of it in the
wintertime not forgetting the Irish lights, Kish and others, liable to capsize at any
moment, rounding which he once with his daughter had experienced some
remarkably choppy, not to say stormy, weather.
—There was a fellow sailed with me in the Rover, the old seadog, himself a
rover, proceeded, went ashore and took up a soft job as gentleman's valet at six
quid a month. Them are his trousers I've on me and he gave me an oilskin and
that jackknife. I'm game for that job, shaving and brushup. I hate roaming about.
There's my son now, Danny, run off to sea and his mother got him took in a
draper's in Cork where he could be drawing easy money.
—What age is he? queried one hearer who, by the way, seen from the side, bore
a distant resemblance to Henry Campbell, the townclerk, away from the carking
cares of office, unwashed of course and in a seedy getup and a strong suspicion of
nosepaint about the nasal appendage.
—Why, the sailor answered with a slow puzzled utterance, my son, Danny?
He'd be about eighteen now, way I figure it.
The Skibbereen father hereupon tore open his grey or unclean anyhow shirt with
his two hands and scratched away at his chest on which was to be seen an image
tattooed in blue Chinese ink intended to represent an anchor.
 —There was lice in that bunk in Bridgwater, he remarked, sure as nuts. I must
get a wash tomorrow or next day. It's them black lads I objects to. I hate those
buggers. Suck your blood dry, they does.
Seeing they were all looking at his chest he accommodatingly dragged his shirt
more open so that on top of the timehonoured symbol of the mariner's hope and
rest they had a full view of the figure 16 and a young man's sideface looking
frowningly rather.
—Tattoo, the exhibitor explained. That was done when we were Iying becalmed
off Odessa in the Black Sea under Captain Dalton. Fellow, the name of Antonio,
done that. There he is himself, a Greek.
—Did it hurt much doing it? one asked the sailor.
That worthy, however, was busily engaged in collecting round the. Someway in
his. Squeezing or.
—See here, he said, showing Antonio. There he is cursing the mate. And there
he is now, he added, the same fellow, pulling the skin with his fingers, some
special knack evidently, and he laughing at a yarn.
And in point of fact the young man named Antonio's livid face did actually look
like forced smiling and the curious effect excited the unreserved admiration of
everybody including Skin-the-Goat, who this time stretched over.
—Ay, ay, sighed the sailor, looking down on his manly chest. He's gone too. Ate
by sharks after. Ay, ay.
He let go of the skin so that the profile resumed the normal expression of
before.
—Neat bit of work, one longshoreman said.
—And what's the number for? loafer number two queried.
—Eaten alive? a third asked the sailor.
—Ay, ay, sighed again the latter personage, more cheerily this time with some
sort of a half smile for a brief duration only in the direction of the questioner
about the number. Ate. A Greek he was.
And then he added with rather gallowsbird humour considering his alleged end:
—As bad as old Antonio, For he left me on my ownio.
The face of a streetwalker glazed and haggard under a black straw hat peered
askew round the door of the shelter palpably reconnoitring on her own with the
object of bringing more grist to her mill. Mr Bloom, scarcely knowing which way
to look, turned away on the moment flusterfied but outwardly calm, and, picking
up from the table the pink sheet of the Abbey street organ which the jarvey, if
such he was, had laid aside, he picked it up and looked at the pink of the paper
though why pink. His reason for so doing was he recognised on the moment round
the door the same face he had caught a fleeting glimpse of that afternoon on
Ormond quay, the partially idiotic female, namely, of the lane who knew the lady
in the brown costume does be with you (Mrs B.) and begged the chance of his
washing. Also why washing which seemed rather vague than not, your washing.
Still candour compelled him to admit he had washed his wife's undergarments
when soiled in Holles street and women would and did too a man's similar
garments initialled with Bewley and Draper's marking ink (hers were, that is) if
they really loved him, that is to say, love me, love my dirty shirt. Still just then,
being on tenterhooks, he desired the female's room more than her company so it
came as a genuine relief when the keeper made her a rude sign to take herself off.
Round the side of the Evening Telegraph he just caught a fleeting glimpse of her
face round the side of the door with a kind of demented glassy grin showing that
she was not exactly all there, viewing with evident amusement the group of gazers
round skipper Murphy's nautical chest and then there was no more of her.
—The gunboat, the keeper said.
—It beats me, Mr Bloom confided to Stephen, medically I am speaking, how a
wretched creature like that from the Lock hospital reeking with disease can be
barefaced enough to solicit or how any man in his sober senses, if he values his
health in the least. Unfortunate creature! Of course I suppose some man is
ultimately responsible for her condition. Still no matter what the cause is from...
Stephen had not noticed her and shrugged his shoulders, merely remarking:
—In this country people sell much more than she ever had and do a roaring
trade. Fear not them that sell the body but have not power to buy the soul. She is
a bad merchant. She buys dear and sells cheap.
The elder man, though not by any manner of means an old maid or a prude,
said it was nothing short of a crying scandal that ought to be put a stop to
instanter to say that women of that stamp (quite apart from any oldmaidish
squeamishness on the subject), a necessary evil, w ere not licensed and medically
inspected by the proper authorities, a thing, he could truthfully state, he, as a
paterfamilias, was a stalwart advocate of from the very first start. Whoever
embarked on a policy of the sort, he said, and ventilated the matter thoroughly
would confer a lasting boon on everybody concerned.
—You as a good catholic, he observed, talking of body and soul, believe in the
soul. Or do you mean the intelligence, the brainpower as such, as distinct from
any outside object, the table, let us say, that cup. I believe in that myself because
it has been explained by competent men as the convolutions of the grey matter.
Otherwise we would never have such inventions as X rays, for instance. Do you?
Thus cornered, Stephen had to make a superhuman effort of memory to try and
concentrate and remember before he could say:
—They tell me on the best authority it is a simple substance and therefore
incorruptible. It would be immortal, I understand, but for the possibility of its
annihilation by its First Cause Who, from all I can hear, is quite capable of adding
that to the number of His other practical jokes, corruptio per se and corruptio per
accidens both being excluded by court etiquette.
Mr Bloom thoroughly acquiesced in the general gist of this though the mystical
finesse involved was a bit out of his sublunary depth still he felt bound to enter a
demurrer on the head of simple, promptly rejoining:
—Simple? I shouldn't think that is the proper word. Of course, I grant you, to
concede a point, you do knock across a simple soul once in a blue moon. But what
I am anxious to arrive at is it is one thing for instance to invent those rays
Rontgen did or the telescope like Edison, though I believe it was before his time
Galileo was the man, I mean, and the same applies to the laws, for example, of a
farreaching natural phenomenon such as electricity but it's a horse of quite
another colour to say you believe in the existence of a supernatural God.
—O that, Stephen expostulated, has been proved conclusively by several of the
bestknown passages in Holy Writ, apart from circumstantial evidence.
On this knotty point however the views of the pair, poles apart as they were
both in schooling and everything else with the marked difference in their
respective ages, clashed.
—Has been? the more experienced of the two objected, sticking to his original
point with a smile of unbelief. I'm not so sure about that. That's a matter for
everyman's opinion and, without dragging in the sectarian side of the business, I
beg to differ with you in toto there. My belief is, to tell you the candid truth, that
those bits were genuine forgeries all of them put in by monks most probably or it's
the big question of our national poet over again, who precisely wrote them like
Hamlet and Bacon, as, you who know your Shakespeare infinitely better than I, of
course I needn't tell you. Can't you drink that coffee, by the way? Let me stir it.
And take a piece of that bun. It's like one of our skipper's bricks disguised. Still
no-one can give what he hasn't got. Try a bit.
—Couldn't, Stephen contrived to get out, his mental organs for the moment
refusing to dictate further.
Faultfinding being a proverbially bad hat Mr Bloom thought well to stir or try to
the clotted sugar from the bottom and reflected with something approaching
acrimony on the Coffee Palace and its temperance (and lucrative) work. To be sure
it was a legitimate object and beyond yea or nay did a world of good, shelters
such as the present one they were in run on teetotal lines for vagrants at night,
concerts, dramatic evenings and useful lectures (admittance free) by qualified men
for the lower orders. On the other hand he had a distinct and painful recollection
they paid his wife, Madam Marion Tweedy who had been prominently associated
with it at one time, a very modest remuneration indeed for her pianoplaying. The
idea, he was strongly inclined to believe, was to do good and net a profit, there
being no competition to speak of. Sulphate of copper poison SO4 or something in
some dried peas he remembered reading of in a cheap eatinghouse somewhere but
he couldn't remember when it was or where. Anyhow inspection, medical
inspection, of all eatables seemed to him more than ever necessary which possibly
accounted for the vogue of Dr Tibble's Vi-Cocoa on account of the medical analysis
involved.
—Have a shot at it now, he ventured to say of the coffee after being stirred.
Thus prevailed on to at any rate taste it Stephen lifted the heavy mug from the
brown puddle it clopped out of when taken up by the handle and took a sip of the
offending beverage.
—Still it's solid food, his good genius urged, I'm a stickler for solid food, his one
and only reason being not gormandising in the least but regular meals as the sine
qua non for any kind of proper work, mental or manual. You ought to eat more
solid food. You would feel a different man.
—Liquids I can eat, Stephen said. But O, oblige me by taking away that knife. I
can't look at the point of it. It reminds me of Roman history.
Mr Bloom promptly did as suggested and removed the incriminated article, a
blunt hornhandled ordinary knife with nothing particularly Roman or antique
about it to the lay eye, observing that the point was the least conspicuous point
about it.
—Our mutual friend's stories are like himself, Mr Bloom apropos of knives
remarked to his confidante sotto voce. Do you think they are genuine? He could
spin those yarns for hours on end all night long and lie like old boots. Look at
him.
Yet still though his eyes were thick with sleep and sea air life was full of a host
of things and coincidences of a terrible nature and it was quite within the bounds
of possibility that it was not an entire fabrication though at first blush there was
not much inherent probability in all the spoof he got off his chest being strictly
accurate gospel.
He had been meantime taking stock of the individual in front of him and
Sherlockholmesing him up ever since he clapped eyes on him. Though a
wellpreserved man of no little stamina, if a trifle prone to baldness, there was
something spurious in the cut of his jib that suggested a jail delivery and it
required no violent stretch of imagination to associate such a weirdlooking
specimen with the oakum and treadmill fraternity. He might even have done for
his man supposing it was his own case he told, as people often did about others,
namely, that he killed him himself and had served his four or five goodlooking
years in durance vile to say nothing of the Antonio personage (no relation to the
dramatic personage of identical name who sprang from the pen of our national
poet) who expiated his crimes in the melodramatic manner above described. On
the other hand he might be only bluffing, a pardonable weakness because meeting
unmistakable mugs, Dublin residents, like those jarvies waiting news from abroad
would tempt any ancient mariner who sailed the ocean seas to draw the long bow
about the schooner Hesperus and etcetera. And when all was said and done the
lies a fellow told about himself couldn't probably hold a proverbial candle to the
wholesale whoppers other fellows coined about him.
 —Mind you, I'm not saying that it's all a pure invention, he resumed. Analogous
scenes are occasionally, if not often, met with. Giants, though that is rather a far
cry, you see once in a way, Marcella the midget queen. In those waxworks in
Henry street I myself saw some Aztecs, as they are called, sitting bowlegged, they
couldn't straighten their legs if you paid them because the muscles here, you see,
he proceeded, indicating on his companion the brief outline of the sinews or
whatever you like to call them behind the right knee, were utterly powerless from
sitting that way so long cramped up, being adored as gods. There's an example
again of simple souls.
However reverting to friend Sinbad and his horrifying adventures (who
reminded him a bit of Ludwig, alias Ledwidge, when he occupied the boards of
the Gaiety when Michael Gunn was identified with the management in the Flying
Dutchman, a stupendous success, and his host of admirers came in large numbers,
everyone simply flocking to hear him though ships of any sort, phantom or the
reverse, on the stage usually fell a bit flat as also did trains) there was nothing
intrinsically incompatible about it, he conceded. On the contrary that stab in the
back touch was quite in keeping with those italianos though candidly he was none
the less free to admit those icecreamers and friers in the fish way not to mention
the chip potato variety and so forth over in little Italy there near the Coombe were
sober thrifty hardworking fellows except perhaps a bit too given to pothunting the
harmless necessary animal of the feline persuasion of others at night so as to have
a good old succulent tuckin with garlic de rigueur off him or her next day on the
quiet and, he added, on the cheap.
—Spaniards, for instance, he continued, passionate temperaments like that,
impetuous as Old Nick, are given to taking the law into their own hands and give
you your quietus doublequick with those poignards they carry in the abdomen. It
comes from the great heat, climate generally. My wife is, so to speak, Spanish,
half that is. Point of fact she could actually claim Spanish nationality if she
wanted, having been born in (technically) Spain, i.e. Gibraltar. She has the
Spanish type. Quite dark, regular brunette, black. I for one certainly believe
climate accounts for character. That's why I asked you if you wrote your poetry in
Italian.
—The temperaments at the door, Stephen interposed with, were very passionate
about ten shillings. Roberto ruba roba sua.
—Quite so, Mr Bloom dittoed.
—Then, Stephen said staring and rambling on to himself or some unknown
listener somewhere, we have the impetuosity of Dante and the isosceles triangle
miss Portinari he fell in love with and Leonardo and san Tommaso Mastino.
—It's in the blood, Mr Bloom acceded at once. All are washed in the blood of
the sun. Coincidence I just happened to be in the Kildare street museum 890
today, shortly prior to our meeting if I can so call it, and I was just looking at
those antique statues there. The splendid proportions of hips, bosom. You simply
don't knock against those kind of women here. An exception here and there.
Handsome yes, pretty in a way you find but what I'm talking about is the female
form. Besides they have so little taste in dress, most of them, which greatly
enhances a woman's natural beauty, no matter what you say. Rumpled stockings,
it may be, possibly is, a foible of mine but still it's a thing I simply hate to see.
Interest, however, was starting to flag somewhat all round and then the others
got on to talking about accidents at sea, ships lost in a fog, goo collisions with
icebergs, all that sort of thing. Shipahoy of course had his own say to say. He had
doubled the cape a few odd times and weathered a monsoon, a kind of wind, in
the China seas and through all those perils of the deep there was one thing, he
declared, stood to him or words to that effect, a pious medal he had that saved
him.
So then after that they drifted on to the wreck off Daunt's rock, wreck of that
illfated Norwegian barque nobody could think of her name for the moment till the
jarvey who had really quite a look of Henry Campbell remembered it Palme on
Booterstown strand. That was the talk of the town that year (Albert William Quill
wrote a fine piece of original verse of 910 distinctive merit on the topic for the
Irish Times), breakers running over her and crowds and crowds on the shore in
commotion petrified with horror. Then someone said something about the case of
the s. s. Lady Cairns of Swansea run into by the Mona which was on an opposite
tack in rather muggyish weather and lost with all hands on deck. No aid was
given. Her master, the Mona's, said he was afraid his collision bulkhead would
give way. She had no water, it appears, in her hold.
At this stage an incident happened. It having become necessary for him to
unfurl a reef the sailor vacated his seat.
—Let me cross your bows mate, he said to his neighbour who was just gently
dropping off into a peaceful doze.
He made tracks heavily, slowly with a dumpy sort of a gait to the door, stepped
heavily down the one step there was out of the shelter and bore due left. While he
was in the act of getting his bearings Mr Bloom who noticed when he stood up
that he had two flasks of presumably ship's rum sticking one out of each pocket
for the private consumption of his burning interior, saw him produce a bottle and
uncork it or unscrew and, applying its nozz1e to his lips, take a good old
delectable swig out of it with a gurgling noise. The irrepressible Bloom, who also
had a shrewd suspicion that the old stager went out on a manoeuvre after the
counterattraction in the shape of a female who however had disappeared to all
intents and purposes, could by straining just perceive him, when duly refreshed by
his rum puncheon exploit, gaping up at the piers and girders of the Loop line
rather out of his depth as of course it was all radically altered since his last visit
and greatly improved. Some person or persons invisible directed him to the male
urinal erected by the cleansing committee all over the place for the purpose but
after a brief space of time during which silence reigned supreme the sailor,
evidently giving it a wide berth, eased himself closer at hand, the noise of his
bilgewater some little time subsequently splashing on the ground where it
apparently awoke a horse of the cabrank. A hoof scooped anyway for new
foothold after sleep and harness jingled. Slightly disturbed in his sentrybox by the
brazier of live coke the watcher of the corporation stones who, though now broken
down and fast breaking up, was none other in stern reality than the Gumley
aforesaid, now practically on the parish rates, given the temporary job by Pat
Tobin in all human probability from dictates of humanity knowing him before
shifted about and shuffled in his box before composing his limbs again in to the
arms of Morpheus, a truly amazing piece of hard lines in its most virulent form on
a fellow most respectably connected and familiarised with decent home comforts
all his life who came in for a cool 100 pounds a year at one time which of course
the doublebarrelled ass proceeded to make general ducks and drakes of. And there
he was at the end of his tether after having often painted the town tolerably pink
without a beggarly stiver. He drank needless to be told and it pointed only once
more a moral when he might quite easily be in a large way of business if—a big if,
however—he had contrived to cure himself of his particular partiality.
All meantime were loudly lamenting the falling off in Irish shipping, coastwise
and foreign as well, which was all part and parcel of the same thing. A Palgrave
Murphy boat was put off the ways at Alexandra basin, the only launch that year.
Right enough the harbours were there only no ships ever called.
There were wrecks and wreckers, the keeper said, who was evidently au fait.
What he wanted to ascertain was why that ship ran bang against the only rock
in Galway bay when the Galway harbour scheme was mooted by a Mr
Worthington or some name like that, eh? Ask the then captain, he advised them,
how much palmoil the British government gave him for that day's work, Captain
John Lever of the Lever Line.
—Am I right, skipper? he queried of the sailor, now returning after his private
potation and the rest of his exertions.
That worthy picking up the scent of the fagend of the song or words growled in
wouldbe music but with great vim some kind of chanty or other in seconds or
thirds. Mr Bloom's sharp ears heard him then expectorate the plug probably
(which it was), so that he must have lodged it for the time being in his fist while
he did the drinking and making water jobs and found it a bit sour after the liquid
fire in question. Anyhow in he rolled after his successful libation-cum-potation,
introducing an atmosphere of drink into the soirée, boisterously trolling, like a
veritable son of a seacook:

—The biscuits was as hard as brass

And the beef as salt as Lot's wife's arse.
O, Johnny Lever!
Johnny Lever, O!
After which effusion the redoubtable specimen duly arrived on the scene and
regaining his seat he sank rather than sat heavily on the form provided. Skin-the-
Goat, assuming he was he, evidently with an axe to grind, was airing his
grievances in a forcible-feeble philippic anent the natural resources of Ireland or
something of that sort which he described in his lengthy dissertation as the richest
country bar none on the face of God's earth, far and away superior to England,
with coal in large quantities, six million pounds worth of pork exported every
year, ten millions between butter and eggs and all the riches drained out of it by
England levying taxes on the poor people that paid through the nose always and
gobbling up the best meat in the market and a lot more surplus steam in the same
vein. Their conversation accordingly became general and all agreed that that was a
fact. You could grow any mortal thing in Irish soil, he stated, and there was that
colonel Everard down there in Navan growing tobacco. Where would you find
anywhere the like of Irish bacon? But a day of reckoning, he stated crescendo with
no uncertain voice, thoroughly monopolising all the conversation, was in store for
mighty England, despite her power of pelf on account of her crimes. There would
be a fall and the greatest fall in history. The Germans and the Japs were going to
have their little lookin, he affirmed. The Boers were the beginning of the end.
Brummagem England was toppling already and her downfall would be Ireland, her
Achilles heel, which he explained to them about the vulnerable point of Achilles,
the Greek hero, a point his auditors at once seized as he completely gripped their
attention by showing the tendon referred to on his boot. His advice to every
Irishman was: stay in the land of your birth and work for Ireland and live for
Ireland. Ireland, Parnell said, could not spare a single one of her sons.
Silence all round marked the termination of his finale. The impervious navigator
heard these lurid tidings, undismayed.
—Take a bit of doing, boss, retaliated that rough diamond palpably a bit peeved
in response to the foregoing truism.
To which cold douche referring to downfall and so on the keeper concurred but
nevertheless held to his main view.
—Who's the best troops in the army? the grizzled old veteran irately
interrogated. And the best jumpers and racers? And the best admirals and
generals we've got? Tell me that.
—The Irish, for choice, retorted the cabby like Campbell, facial blemishes apart.
—That's right, the old tarpaulin corroborated. The Irish catholic peasant. He's
the backbone of our empire. You know Jem Mullins?
While allowing him his individual opinions as everyman the keeper added he
cared nothing for any empire, ours or his, and considered no Irishman worthy of
his salt that served it. Then they began to have a few irascible words when it
waxed hotter, both, needless to say, appealing to the listeners who followed the
passage of arms with interest so long as they didn't indulge in recriminations and
come to blows.
From inside information extending over a series of years Mr Bloom was rather
inclined to poohpooh the suggestion as egregious balderdash for, pending that
consummation devoutly to be or not to be wished for, he was fully cognisant of
the fact that their neighbours across the channel, unless they were much bigger
fools than he took them for, rather concealed their strength than the opposite. It
was quite on a par with the quixotic idea in certain quarters that in a hundred
million years the coal seam of the sister island would be played out and if, as time
went on, that turned out to be how the cat jumped all he could personally say on
the matter was that as a host of contingencies, equally relevant to the issue, might
occur ere then it was highly advisable in the interim to try to make the most of
both countries even though poles apart. Another little interesting point, the
amours of whores and chummies, to put it in common parlance, reminded him
Irish soldiers had as often fought for England as against her, more so, in fact. And
now, why? So the scene between the pair of them, the licensee of the place
rumoured to be or have been Fitzharris, the famous invincible, and the other,
obviously bogus, reminded him forcibly as being on all fours with the confidence
trick, supposing, that is, it was prearranged as the lookeron, a student of the
human soul if anything, the others seeing least of the game. And as for the lessee
or keeper, who probably wasn't the other person at all, he (B.) couldn't help
feeling and most properly it was better to give people like that the goby unless you
were a blithering idiot altogether and refuse to have anything to do with them as a
golden rule in private life and their felonsetting, there always being the offchance
of a Dannyman coming forward and turning queen's evidence or king's now like
Denis or Peter Carey, an idea he utterly repudiated. Quite apart from that he
disliked those careers of wrongdoing and crime on principle. Yet, though such
criminal propensities had never been an inmate of his bosom in any shape or
form, he certainly did feel and no denying it (while inwardly remaining what he
was) a certain kind of admiration for a man who had actually brandished a knife,
cold steel, with the courage of his political convictions (though, personally, he
would never be a party to any such thing), off the same bat as those love
vendettas of the south, have her or swing for her, when the husband frequently,
after some words passed between the two concerning her relations with the other
lucky mortal (he having had the pair watched), inflicted fatal injuries on his
adored one as a result of an alternative postnuptial liaison by plunging his knife
into her, until it just struck him that Fitz, nicknamed Skin-the-Goat, merely drove
the car for the actual perpetrators of the outrage and so was not, if he was reliably
informed, actually party to the ambush which, in point of fact, was the plea some
legal luminary saved his skin on. In any case that was very ancient history by now
and as for our friend, the pseudo Skin-the-etcetera, he had transparently outlived
his welcome. He ought to have either died naturally or on the scaffold high. Like
actresses, always farewell positively last performance then come up smiling again.
Generous to a fault of course, temperamental, no economising or any idea of the
sort, always snapping at the bone for the shadow. So similarly he had a very
shrewd suspicion that Mr Johnny Lever got rid of some l s d. in the course of his
perambulations round the docks in the congenial atmosphere of the Old Ireland
tavern, come back to Erin and so on. Then as for the other he had heard not so
long before the same identical lingo as he told Stephen how he simply but
effectually silenced the offender.
—He took umbrage at something or other, that muchinjured but on the whole
eventempered person declared, I let slip. He called me a jew and in a heated
fashion offensively. So I without deviating from plain facts in the least told him
his God, I mean Christ, was a jew too and all his family like me though in reality
I'm not. That was one for him. A soft answer turns away wrath. He hadn't a word
to say for himself as everyone saw. Am I not right?
He turned a long you are wrong gaze on Stephen of timorous dark pride at the
soft impeachment with a glance also of entreaty for he seemed to glean in a kind
of a way that it wasn't all exactly.
—Ex quibus, Stephen mumbled in a noncommittal accent, their two or four eyes
conversing, Christus or Bloom his name is or after all any other, secundum
carnem.
—Of course, Mr B. proceeded to stipulate, you must look at both sides of the
question. It is hard to lay down any hard and fast rules as to right and wrong but
room for improvement all round there certainly is though every country, they say,
our own distressful included, has the government it deserves. But with a little
goodwill all round. It's all very fine to boast of mutual superiority but what about
mutual equality. I resent violence and intolerance in any shape or form. It never
reaches anything or stops anything. A revolution must come on the due
instalments plan. It's a patent absurdity on the face of it to hate people because
they live round the corner and speak another vernacular, in the next house so to
speak.
—Memorable bloody bridge battle and seven minutes' war, Stephen assented,
between Skinner's alley and Ormond market.
Yes, Mr Bloom thoroughly agreed, entirely endorsing the remark, that was
overwhelmingly right. And the whole world was full of that sort of thing.
—You just took the words out of my mouth, he said. A hocuspocus of
conflicting evidence that candidly you couldn't remotely...
All those wretched quarrels, in his humble opinion, stirring up bad blood, from
some bump of combativeness or gland of some kind, erroneously supposed to be
about a punctilio of honour and a flag, were very largely a question of the money
question which was at the back of everything greed and jealousy, people never
knowing when to stop.
—They accuse, remarked he audibly.
He turned away from the others who probably and spoke nearer to, so as the
others in case they.
—Jews, he softly imparted in an aside in Stephen's ear, are accused of ruining.
Not a vestige of truth in it, I can safely say. History, would you be surprised to
learn, proves up to the hilt Spain decayed when the inquisition hounded the jews
out and England prospered when Cromwell, an uncommonly able ruffian who in
other respects has much to answer for, imported them. Why? Because they are
imbued with the proper spirit. They are practical and are proved to be so. I don't
want to indulge in any because you know the standard works on the subject and
then orthodox as you are. But in the economic, not touching religion, domain the
priest spells poverty. Spain again, you saw in the war, compared with goahead
America. Turks. It's in the dogma. Because if they didn't believe they'd go straight
to heaven when they die they'd try to live better, at least so I think. That's the
juggle on which the p.p's raise the wind on false pretences. I'm, he resumed with
dramatic force, as good an Irishman as that rude person I told you about at the
outset and I want to see everyone, concluded he, all creeds and classes pro rata
having a comfortable tidysized income, in no niggard fashion either, something in
the neighbourhood of 300 pounds per annum. That's the vital issue at stake and
it's feasible and would be provocative of friendlier intercourse between man and
man. At least that's my idea for what it's worth. I call that patriotism. Ubi patria,
as we learned a smattering of in our classical days in Alma Mater, vita bene.
Where you can live well, the sense is, if you work.
Over his untastable apology for a cup of coffee, listening to this synopsis of
things in general, Stephen stared at nothing in particular. He could hear, of
course, all kinds of words changing colour like those crabs about Ringsend in the
morning burrowing quickly into all colours of different sorts of the same sand
where they had a home somewhere beneath or seemed to. Then he looked up and
saw the eyes that said or didn't say the words the voice he heard said, if you
work.
—Count me out, he managed to remark, meaning work.
The eyes were surprised at this observation because as he, the person who
owned them pro tem. observed or rather his voice speaking did, all must work,
have to, together.
—I mean, of course, the other hastened to affirm, work in the widest possible
sense. Also literary labour not merely for the kudos of the thing. Writing for the
newspapers which is the readiest channel nowadays. That's work too. Important
work. After all, from the little I know of you, after all the money expended on
your education you are entitled to recoup yourself and command your price. You
have every bit as much right to live by your pen in pursuit of your philosophy as
the peasant has. What? You both belong to Ireland, the brain and the brawn. Each
is equally important.
—You suspect, Stephen retorted with a sort of a half laugh, that I may be
important because I belong to the faubourg Saint Patrice called Ireland for short.
—I would go a step farther, Mr Bloom insinuated.
—But I suspect, Stephen interrupted, that Ireland must be important because it
belongs to me.
—What belongs, queried Mr Bloom bending, fancying he was perhaps under
some misapprehension. Excuse me. Unfortunately, I didn't catch the latter portion.
What was it you...?
Stephen, patently crosstempered, repeated and shoved aside his mug of coffee
or whatever you like to call it none too politely, adding: 1170
 —We can't change the country. Let us change the subject.
At this pertinent suggestion Mr Bloom, to change the subject, looked down but
in a quandary, as he couldn't tell exactly what construction to put on belongs to
which sounded rather a far cry. The rebuke of some kind was clearer than the
other part. Needless to say the fumes of his recent orgy spoke then with some
asperity in a curious bitter way foreign to his sober state. Probably the homelife to
which Mr B attached the utmost importance had not been all that was needful or
he hadn't been familiarised with the right sort of people. With a touch of fear for
the young man beside him whom he furtively scrutinised with an air of some
consternation remembering he had just come back from Paris, the eyes more
especially reminding him forcibly of father and sister, failing to throw much light
on the subject, however, he brought to mind instances of cultured fellows that
promised so brilliantly nipped in the bud of premature decay and nobody to blame
but themselves. For instance there was the case of O'Callaghan, for one, the
halfcrazy faddist, respectably connected though of inadequate means, with his
mad vagaries among whose other gay doings when rotto and making himself a
nuisance to everybody all round he was in the habit of ostentatiously sporting in
public a suit of brown paper (a fact). And then the usual denouement after the fun
had gone on fast and furious he got 1190 landed into hot water and had to be
spirited away by a few friends, after a strong hint to a blind horse from John
Mallon of Lower Castle Yard, so as not to be made amenable under section two of
the criminal law amendment act, certain names of those subpoenaed being handed
in but not divulged for reasons which will occur to anyone with a pick of brains.
Briefly, putting two and two together, six sixteen which he pointedly turned a deaf
ear to, Antonio and so forth, jockeys and esthetes and the tattoo which was all the
go in the seventies or thereabouts even in the house of lords because early in life
the occupant of the throne, then heir apparent, the other members of the upper
ten and other high personages simply following in the footsteps of the head of the
state, he reflected about the errors of notorieties and crowned heads running
counter to morality such as the Cornwall case a number of years before under
their veneer in a way scarcely intended by nature, a thing good Mrs Grundy, as
the law stands, was terribly down on though not for the reason they thought they
were probably whatever it was except women chiefly who were always fiddling
more or less at one another it being largely a matter of dress and all the rest of it.
Ladies who like distinctive underclothing should, and every welltailored man
must, trying to make the gap wider between them by innuendo and give more of a
genuine filip to acts of impropriety between the two, she unbuttoned his and then
he untied her, mind the pin, whereas savages in the cannibal islands, say, at
ninety degrees in the shade not caring a continental. However, reverting to the
original, there were on the other hand others who had forced their way to the top
from the lowest rung by the aid of their bootstraps. Sheer force of natural genius,
that. With brains, sir.
For which and further reasons he felt it was his interest and duty even to wait
on and profit by the unlookedfor occasion though why he could not exactly tell
being as it was already several shillings to the bad having in fact let himself in for
it. Still to cultivate the acquaintance of someone of no uncommon calibre who
could provide food for reflection would amply repay any small. Intellectual
stimulation, as such, was, he felt, from time to time a firstrate tonic for the mind.
Added to which was the coincidence of meeting, discussion, dance, row, old salt
of the here today and gone tomorrow type, night loafers, the whole galaxy of
events, all went to make up a miniature cameo of the world we live in especially
as the lives of the submerged tenth, viz. coalminers, divers, scavengers etc., were
very much under the microscope lately. To improve the shining hour he wondered
whether he might meet with anything approaching the same luck as Mr Philip
Beaufoy if taken down in writing suppose he were to pen something out of the
common groove (as he fully intended doing) at the rate of one guinea per column.
My Experiences, let us say, in a Cabman's Shelter.
The pink edition extra sporting of the Telegraph tell a graphic lie lay, as luck
would have it, beside his elbow and as he was just puzzling again, far from
satisfied, over a country belonging to him and the preceding rebus the vessel came
from Bridgwater and the postcard was addressed A. Boudin find the captain's age,
his eyes went aimlessly over the respective captions which came under his special
province the allembracing give us this day our daily press. First he got a bit of a
start but it turned out to be only something about somebody named H. du Boyes,
agent for typewriters or something like that. Great battle, Tokio. Lovemaking in
Irish, 200 pounds damages. Gordon Bennett. Emigration Swindle. Letter from His
Grace. William. Ascot meeting, the Gold Cup. Victory of outsider Throwaway
recalls Derby of '92 when Capt. Marshall's dark horse Sir Hugo captured the blue
ribband at long odds. New York disaster. Thousand lives lost. Foot and Mouth.
Funeral of the late Mr Patrick Dignam.
So to change the subject he read about Dignam R. I. P. which, he reflected, was
anything but a gay sendoff. Or a change of address anyway.
—This morning (Hynes put it in of course) the remains of the late Mr Patrick
Dignam were removed from his residence, no 9 Newbridge Avenue, Sandymount,
for interment in Glasnevin. The deceased gentleman was a most popular and genial
personality in city life and his demise after a brief illness came as a great shock to
citizens of all classes by whom he is deeply regretted. The obsequies, at which many
friends of the deceased were present, were carried out (certainly Hynes wrote it
with a nudge from Corny) by Messrs H. J. O'Neill and Son, 164 North Strand Road.
The mourners included: Patk. Dignam (son), Bernard Corrigan (brother-in-law), Jno.
Henry Menton, solr, Martin Cunningham, John Power, eatondph 1/8 ador dorador
douradora (must be where he called Monks the dayfather about Keyes's ad)
Thomas Kernan, Simon Dedalus, Stephen Dedalus B.,4., Edw. J. Lambert, Cornelius
T. Kelleher, Joseph M'C Hynes, L. Boom, CP M'Coy,—M'lntosh and several others.
Nettled not a little by L. Boom (as it incorrectly stated) and the line of bitched
type but tickled to death simultaneously by C. P. M'Coy and Stephen Dedalus B.
A. who were conspicuous, needless to say, by their total absence (to say nothing
of M'Intosh) L. Boom pointed it out to his companion B. A. engaged in stifling
another yawn, half nervousness, not forgetting the usual crop of nonsensical
howlers of misprints.
 —Is that first epistle to the Hebrews, he asked as soon as his bottom jaw would
let him, in? Text: open thy mouth and put thy foot in it.
—It is. Really, Mr Bloom said (though first he fancied he alluded to the
archbishop till he added about foot and mouth with which there could be no
possible connection) overjoyed to set his mind at rest and a bit flabbergasted at
Myles Crawford's after all managing to. There.
While the other was reading it on page two Boom (to give him for the nonce his
new misnomer) whiled away a few odd leisure moments in fits and starts with the
account of the third event at Ascot on page three, his side. Value 1000 sovs with
3000 sovs in specie added. For entire colts and fillies. Mr F. Alexander's
Throwaway, b. h. by Rightaway, 5 yrs, 9 st 4 lbs (W. Lane) 1, lord Howard de
Walden's Zinfandel (M. Cannon) z, Mr W. Bass's Sceptre 3. Betting 5 to 4 on
Zinfandel, 20 to 1 Throwaway (off). Sceptre a shade heavier, 5 to 4 on Zinfandel,
20 to 1 Throwaway (off). Throwaway and Zinfandel stood close order. It was
anybody's race then the rank outsider drew to the fore, got long lead, beating lord
Howard de Walden's chestnut colt and Mr W. Bass's bay filly Sceptre on a 2 1/2
mile course. Winner trained by Braime so that Lenehan's version of the business
was all pure buncombe. Secured the verdict cleverly by a length. 1000 sovs with
3000 in specie. Also ran: J de Bremond's (French horse Bantam Lyons was
anxiously inquiring after not in yet but expected any minute) Maximum II.
Different ways of bringing off a coup. Lovemaking damages. Though that
halfbaked Lyons ran off at a tangent in his impetuosity to get left. Of course
gambling eminently lent itself to that sort of thing though as the event turned out
the poor fool hadn't much reason to congratulate himself on his pick, the forlorn
hope. Guesswork it reduced itself to eventually.
—There was every indication they would arrive at that, he, Bloom, said.
—Who? the other, whose hand by the way was hurt, said.
One morning you would open the paper, the cabman affirmed, and read: Return
of Parnell. He bet them what they liked. A Dublin fusilier was in that shelter one
night and said he saw him in South Africa. Pride it was killed him. He ought to
have done away with himself or lain low for a time after committee room no 15
until he was his old self again with no-one to point a finger at him. Then they
would all to a man have gone down on their marrowbones to him to come back
when he had recovered his senses. Dead he wasn't. Simply absconded somewhere.
The coffin they brought over was full of stones. He changed his name to De Wet,
the Boer general. He made a mistake to fight the priests. And so forth and so on.
All the same Bloom (properly so dubbed) was rather surprised at their memories
for in nine cases out of ten it was a case of tarbarrels and not singly but in their
thousands and then complete oblivion because it was twenty odd years. Highly
unlikely of course there was even a shadow of truth in the stones and, even
supposing, he thought a return highly inadvisable, all things considered.
Something evidently riled them in his death. Either he petered out too tamely of
acute pneumonia just when his various different political arrangements were
nearing completion or whether it transpired he owed his death to his having
neglected to change his boots and clothes-after a wetting when a cold resulted and
failing to consult a specialist he being confined to his room till he eventually died
of it amid widespread regret before a fortnight was at an end or quite possibly
they were distressed to find the job was taken out of their hands. Of course
nobody being acquainted with his movements even before there was absolutely no
clue as to his whereabouts which were decidedly of the Alice, where art thou order
even prior to his starting to go under several aliases such as Fox and Stewart so
the remark which emanated from friend cabby might be within the bounds of
possibility. Naturally then it would prey on his mind as a born leader of men
which undoubtedly he was and a commanding figure, a sixfooter or at any rate
five feet ten or eleven in his stockinged feet, whereas Messrs So and So who,
though they weren't even a patch on the former man, ruled the roost after their
redeeming features were very few and far between. It certainly pointed a moral,
the idol with feet of clay, and then seventytwo of his trusty henchmen rounding
on him with mutual mudslinging. And the identical same with murderers. You had
to come back. That haunting sense kind of drew you. To show the understudy in
the title rôle how to. He saw him once on the auspicious occasion when they broke
up the type in the Insuppressible or was it United Ireland, a privilege he keenly
appreciated, and, in point of fact, handed him his silk hat when it was knocked
off and he said Thank you, excited as he undoubtedly was under his frigid exterior
notwithstanding the little misadventure mentioned between the cup and the lip:
what's bred in the bone. Still as regards return. You were a lucky dog if they didn't
set the terrier at you directly you got back. Then a lot of shillyshally usually
followed, Tom for and Dick and Harry against. And then, number one, you came
up against the man in possession and had to produce your credentials like the
claimant in the Tichborne case, Roger Charles Tichborne, Bella was the boat's
name to the best of his recollection he, the heir, went down in as the evidence
went to show and there was a tattoo mark too in Indian ink, lord Bellew was it, as
he might very easily have picked up the details from some pal on board ship and
then, when got up to tally with the description given, introduce himself with:
Excuse me, my name is So and So or some such commonplace remark. A more
prudent course, as Bloom said to the not over effusive, in fact like the
distinguished personage under discussion beside him, would have been to sound
the lie of the land first.
—That bitch, that English whore, did for him, the shebeen proprietor
commented. She put the first nail in his coffin.
—Fine lump of a woman all the same, the soi-disant townclerk Henry Campbell
remarked, and plenty of her. She loosened many a man's thighs. I seen her picture
in a barber's. The husband was a captain or an officer.
—Ay, Skin-the-Goat amusingly added, he was and a cottonball one.
This gratuitous contribution of a humorous character occasioned a fair amount
of laughter among his entourage. As regards Bloom he, without the faintest
suspicion of a smile, merely gazed in the direction of the door and reflected upon
the historic story which had aroused extraordinary interest at the time when the
facts, to make matters worse, were made public with the usual affectionate letters
that passed between them full of sweet nothings. First it was strictly Platonic till
nature intervened and an attachment sprang up between them till bit by bit
matters came to a climax and the matter became the talk of the town till the
staggering blow came as a welcome intelligence to not a few evildisposed,
however, who were resolved upon encompassing his downfall though the thing
was public property all along though not to anything like the sensational extent
that it subsequently blossomed into. Since their names were coupled, though,
since he was her declared favourite, where was the particular necessity to
proclaim it to the rank and file from the housetops, the fact, namely, that he had
shared her bedroom which came out in the witnessbox on oath when a thrill went
through the packed court literally electrifying everybody in the shape of witnesses
swearing to having witnessed him on such and such a particular date in the act of
scrambling out of an upstairs apartment with the assistance of a ladder in night
apparel, having gained admittance in the same fashion, a fact the weeklies,
addicted to the lubric a little, simply coined shoals of money out of. Whereas the
simple fact of the case was it was simply a case of the husband not being up to
the scratch, with nothing in common between them beyond the name, and then a
real man arriving on the scene, strong to the verge of weakness, falling a victim to
her siren charms and forgetting home ties, the usual sequel, to bask in the loved
one's smiles. The eternal question of the life connubial, needless to say, cropped
up. Can real love, supposing there happens to be another chap in the case, exist
between married folk? Poser. Though it was no concern of theirs absolutely if he
regarded her with affection, carried away by a wave of folly. A magnificent
specimen of manhood he was truly augmented obviously by gifts of a high order,
as compared with the other military supernumerary that is (who was just the usual
everyday farewell, my gallant captain kind of an individual in the light dragoons,
the 18th hussars to be accurate) and inflammable doubtless (the fallen leader, that
is, not the other) in his own peculiar way which she of course, woman, quickly
perceived as highly likely to carve his way to fame which he almost bid fair to do
till the priests and ministers of the gospel as a whole, his erstwhile staunch
adherents, and his beloved evicted tenants for whom he had done yeoman service
in the rural parts of the country by taking up the cudgels on their behalf in a way
that exceeded their most sanguine expectations, very effectually cooked his
matrimonial goose, thereby heaping coals of fire on his head much in the same
way as the fabled ass's kick. Looking back now in a retrospective kind of
arrangement all seemed a kind of dream. And then coming back was the worst
thing you ever did because it went without saying you would feel out of place as
things always moved with the times. Why, as he reflected, Irishtown strand, a
locality he had not been in for quite a number of years looked different somehow
since, as it happened, he went to reside on the north side. North or south,
however, it was just the wellknown case of hot passion, pure and simple,
upsetting the applecart with a vengeance and just bore out the very thing he was
saying as she also was Spanish or half so, types that wouldn't do things by halves,
passionate abandon of the south, casting every shred of decency to the winds.
—Just bears out what I was saying, he, with glowing bosom said to Stephen,
about blood and the sun. And, if I don't greatly mistake she was Spanish too.
 —The king of Spain's daughter, Stephen answered, adding something or other
rather muddled about farewell and adieu to you Spanish onions and the first land
called the Deadman and from Ramhead to Scilly was so and so many.
—Was she? Bloom ejaculated, surprised though not astonished by any means, I
never heard that rumour before. Possible, especially there, it was as she lived
there. So, Spain.
Carefully avoiding a book in his pocket Sweets of, which reminded him by the
by of that Cap l street library book out of date, he took out his pocketbook and,
turning over the various contents it contained rapidly finally he.
—Do you consider, by the by, he said, thoughtfully selecting a faded photo
which he laid on the table, that a Spanish type?
Stephen, obviously addressed, looked down on the photo showing a large sized
lady with her fleshy charms on evidence in an open fashion as she was in the full
bloom of womanhood in evening dress cut ostentatiously low for the occasion to
give a liberal display of bosom, with more than vision of breasts, her full lips
parted and some perfect teeth, standing near, ostensibly with gravity, a piano on
the rest of which was In Old Madrid, a ballad, pretty in its way, which was then
all the vogue. Her (the lady's) eyes, dark, large, looked at Stephen, about to smile
about something to be admired, Lafayette of Westmoreland street, Dublin's
premier photographic artist, being responsible for the esthetic execution.
—Mrs Bloom, my wife the prima donna Madam Marion Tweedy, Bloom
indicated. Taken a few years since. In or about ninety six. Very like her then.
Beside the young man he looked also at the photo of the lady now his 1440
legal wife who, he intimated, was the accomplished daughter of Major Brian
Tweedy and displayed at an early age remarkable proficiency as a singer having
even made her bow to the public when her years numbered barely sweet sixteen.
As for the face it was a speaking likeness in expression but it did not do justice to
her figure which came in for a lot of notice usually and which did not come out to
the best advantage in that getup. She could without difficulty, he said, have posed
for the ensemble, not to dwell on certain opulent curves of the. He dwelt, being a
bit of an artist in his spare time, on the female form in general developmentally
because, as it so happened, no later than that afternoon he had seen those Grecian
statues, 1450 perfectly developed as works of art, in the National Museum.
Marble could give the original, shoulders, back, all the symmetry, all the rest. Yes,
puritanisme, it does though Saint Joseph's sovereign thievery alors (Bandez!) Figne
toi trop. Whereas no photo could because it simply wasn't art in a word.
The spirit moving him he would much have liked to follow Jack Tar's good
example and leave the likeness there for a very few minutes to speak for itself on
the plea he so that the other could drink in the beauty for himself, her stage
presence being, frankly, a treat in itself which the camera could not at all do
justice to. But it was scarcely professional etiquette so. Though it was a warm
pleasant sort of a night now yet wonderfully cool for the season considering, for
sunshine after storm. And he did feel a kind of need there and then to follow suit
like a kind of inward voice and satisfy a possible need by moving a motion.
Nevertheless he sat tight just viewing the slightly soiled photo creased by opulent
curves, none the worse for wear however, and looked away thoughtfully with the
intention of not further increasing the other's possible embarrassment while
gauging her symmetry of heaving embonpoint. In fact the slight soiling was only an
added charm like the case of linen slightly soiled, good as new, much better in
fact with the starch out. Suppose she was gone when he? I looked for the lamp
which she told me came into his mind but merely as a passing fancy of his
because he then recollected the morning littered bed etcetera and the book about
Ruby with met him pike hoses (sic) in it which must have fell down sufficiently
appropriately beside the domestic chamberpot with apologies to Lindley Murray.
The vicinity of the young man he certainly relished, educated, distingué and
impulsive into the bargain, far and away the pick of the bunch though you
wouldn't think he had it in him yet you would. Besides he said the picture was
handsome which, say what you like, it was though at the moment she was
distinctly stouter. And why not? An awful lot of makebelieve went on about that
sort of thing involving a lifelong slur with the usual splash page of gutterpress
about the same old matrimonial tangle alleging misconduct with professional
golfer or the newest stage favourite instead of being honest and aboveboard about
the whole business. How they were fated to meet and an attachment sprang up
between the two so that their names were coupled in the public eye was told in
court with letters containing the habitual mushy and compromising expressions
leaving no loophole to show that they openly cohabited two or three times a week
at some wellknown seaside hotel and relations, when the thing ran its normal
course, became in due course intimate. Then the decree nisi and the King's proctor
tries to show cause why and, he failing to quash it, nisi was made absolute. But as
for that the two misdemeanants, wrapped up as they largely were in one another,
could safely afford to ignore it as they very largely did till the matter was put in
the hands of a solicitor who filed a petition for the party wronged in due course.
He, B, enjoyed the distinction of being close to Erin's uncrowned king in the flesh
when the thing occurred on the historic fracas when the fallen leader's, who
notoriously stuck to his guns to the last drop even when clothed in the mantle of
adultery, (leader's) trusty henchmen to the number of ten or a dozen or possibly
even more than that penetrated into the printing works of the Insuppressible or no
it was United Ireland (a by no means by the by appropriate appellative) and broke
up the typecases with hammers or something like that all on account of some
scurrilous effusions from the facile pens of the O'Brienite scribes at the usual
mudslinging occupation reflecting on the erstwhile tribune's private morals.
Though palpably a radically altered man he was still a commanding figure though
carelessly garbed as usual with that look of settled purpose which went a long way
with the shillyshallyers till they discovered to their vast discomfiture that their
idol had feet of clay after placing him upon a pedestal which she, however, was
the first to perceive. As those were particularly hot times in the general
hullaballoo Bloom sustained a minor injury from a nasty prod of some chap's
elbow in the crowd that of course congregated lodging some place about the pit of
the stomach, fortunately not of a grave character. His hat (Parnell's) a silk one was
inadvertently knocked off and, as a matter of strict history, Bloom was the man
who picked it up in the crush after witnessing the occurrence meaning to return it
to him (and return it to him he did with the utmost celerity) who panting and
hatless and whose thoughts were miles away from his hat at the time all the same
being a gentleman born with a stake in the country he, as a matter of fact, having
gone into it more for the kudos of the thing than anything else, what's bred in the
bone instilled into him in infancy at his mother's knee in the shape of knowing
what good form was came out at once because he turned round to the donor and
thanked him with perfect aplomb, saying: Thank you, sir, though in a very
different tone of voice from the ornament of the legal profession whose headgear
Bloom also set to rights earlier in the course of the day, history repeating itself
with a difference, after the burial of a mutual friend when they had left him alone
in his glory after the grim task of having committed his remains to the grave.
On the other hand what incensed him more inwardly was the blatant jokes of
the cabman and so on who passed it all off as a jest, laughing 1530
immoderately, pretending to understand everything, the why and the wherefore,
and in reality not knowing their own minds, it being a case for the two parties
themselves unless it ensued that the legitimate husband happened to be a party to
it owing to some anonymous letter from the usual boy Jones, who happened to
come across them at the crucial moment in a loving position locked in one
another's arms, drawing attention to their illicit proceedings and leading up to a
domestic rumpus and the erring fair one begging forgiveness of her lord and
master upon her knees and promising to sever the connection and not receive his
visits any more if only the aggrieved husband would overlook the matter and let
bygones be bygones with tears in her eyes though possibly with her tongue in her
fair cheek at the same time as quite possibly there were several others. He
personally, being of a sceptical bias, believed and didn't make the smallest bones
about saying so either that man or men in the plural were always hanging around
on the waiting list about a lady, even supposing she was the best wife in the world
and they got on fairly well together for the sake of argument, when, neglecting her
duties, she chose to be tired of wedded life and was on for a little flutter in polite
debauchery to press their attentions on her with improper intent, the upshot being
that her affections centred on another, the cause of many liaisons between still
attractive married women getting on for fair and forty and younger men, no doubt
as several famous cases of feminine infatuation proved up to the hilt.
It was a thousand pities a young fellow, blessed with an allowance of brains as
his neighbour obviously was, should waste his valuable time with profligate
women who might present him with a nice dose to last him his lifetime. In the
nature of single blessedness he would one day take unto himself a wife when Miss
Right came on the scene but in the interim ladies' society was a conditio sine qua
non though he had the gravest possible doubts, not that he wanted in the smallest
to pump Stephen about Miss Ferguson (who was very possibly the particular
lodestar who brought him down to Irishtown so early in the morning), as to
whether he would find much satisfaction basking in the boy and girl courtship
idea and the company of smirking misses without a penny to their names bi or
triweekly with the orthodox preliminary canter of complimentplaying and walking
out leading up to fond lovers' ways and flowers and chocs. To think of him house
and homeless, rooked by some landlady worse than any stepmother, was really
too bad at his age. The queer suddenly things he popped out with attracted the
elder man who was several years the other's senior or like his father but something
substantial he certainly ought to eat even were it only an eggflip made on
unadulterated maternal nutriment or, failing that, the homely Humpty Dumpty
boiled.
—At what o'clock did you dine? he questioned of the slim form and tired though
unwrinkled face.
—Some time yesterday, Stephen said.
—Yesterday! exclaimed Bloom till he remembered it was already tomorrow
Friday. Ah, you mean it's after twelve!
—The day before yesterday, Stephen said, improving on himself.
Literally astounded at this piece of intelligence Bloom reflected. Though they
didn't see eye to eye in everything a certain analogy there somehow was as if both
their minds were travelling, so to speak, in the one train of thought. At his age
when dabbling in politics roughly some score of years previously when he had
been a quasi aspirant to parliamentary honours in the Buckshot Foster days he too
recollected in retrospect (which was a source of keen satisfaction in itself) he had
a sneaking regard for those same ultra ideas. For instance when the evicted
tenants question, then at its first inception, bulked largely in people's mind
though, it goes without saying, not contributing a copper or pinning his faith
absolutely to its dictums, some of which wouldn't exactly hold water, he at the
outset in principle at all events was in thorough sympathy with peasant possession
as voicing the trend of modern opinion (a partiality, however, which, realising his
mistake, he was subsequently partially cured of) and even was twitted with going
a step farther than Michael Davitt in the striking views he at one time inculcated
as a backtothelander, which was one reason he strongly resented the innuendo put
upon him in so barefaced a fashion by our friend at the gathering of the clans in
Barney Kiernan's so that he, though often considerably misunderstood and the
least pugnacious of mortals, be it repeated, departed from his customary habit to
give him (metaphorically) one in the gizzard though, so far as politics themselves
were concerned, he was only too conscious of the casualties invariably resulting
from propaganda and displays of mutual animosity and the misery and suffering it
entailed as a foregone conclusion on fine young fellows, chiefly, destruction of the
fittest, in a word.
Anyhow upon weighing up the pros and cons, getting on for one, as it was, it
was high time to be retiring for the night. The crux was it was a bit risky to bring
him home as eventualities might possibly ensue (somebody having a temper of her
own sometimes) and spoil the hash altogether as on the night he misguidedly
brought home a dog (breed unknown) with a lame paw (not that the cases were
either identical or the reverse though he had hurt his hand too) to Ontario Terrace
as he very distinctly remembered, having been there, so to speak. On the other
hand it was altogether far and away too late for the Sandymount or Sandycove
suggestion so that he was in some perplexity as to which of the two alternatives.
Everything pointed to the fact that it behoved him to avail himself to the full of
the opportunity, all things considered. His initial impression was he was a shade
standoffish or not over effusive but it grew on him someway. For one thing he
mightn't what you call jump at the idea, if approached, and what mostly worried
him was he didn't know how to lead up to it or word it exactly, supposing he did
entertain the proposal, as it would afford him very great personal pleasure if he
would allow him to help to put coin in his way or some wardrobe, if found
suitable. At all events he wound up by concluding, eschewing for the nonce
hidebound precedent, a cup of Epps's cocoa and a shakedown for the night plus
the use of a rug or two and overcoat doubled into a pillow at least he would be in
safe hands and as warm as a toast on a trivet he failed to perceive any very vast
amount of harm in that always with the proviso no rumpus of any sort was kicked
up. A move had to be made because that merry old soul, the grasswidower in
question who appeared to be glued to the spot, didn't appear in any particular
hurry to wend his way home to his dearly beloved Queenstown and it was highly
likely some sponger's bawdyhouse of retired beauties where age was no bar off
Sheriff street lower would be the best clue to that equivocal character's
whereabouts for a few days to come, alternately racking their feelings (the
mermaids') with sixchamber revolver anecdotes verging on the tropical calculated
to freeze the marrow of anybody's bones and mauling their largesized charms
betweenwhiles with rough and tumble gusto to the accompaniment of large
potations of potheen and the usual blarney about himself for as to who he in
reality was let x equal my right name and address, as Mr Algebra remarks passim.
At the same time he inwardly chuckled over his gentle repartee to the blood and
ouns champion about his god being a jew. People could put up with being bitten
by a wolf but what properly riled them was a bite from a sheep. The most
vulnerable point too of tender Achilles. Your god was a jew. Because mostly they
appeared to imagine he came from Carrick-on-Shannon or somewhereabouts in the
county Sligo.
—I propose, our hero eventually suggested after mature reflection while
prudently pocketing her photo, as it's rather stuffy here you just come home with
me and talk things over. My diggings are quite close in the vicinity. You can't
drink that stuff. Do you like cocoa? Wait. I'll just pay this lot.
The best plan clearly being to clear out, the remainder being plain sailing, he
beckoned, while prudently pocketing the photo, to the keeper of the shanty who
didn't seem to.
—Yes, that's the best, he assured Stephen to whom for the matter of that Brazen
Head or him or anywhere else was all more or less.
All kinds of Utopian plans were flashing through his (B's) busy brain, education
(the genuine article), literature, journalism, prize titbits, up to date billing, concert
tours in English watering resorts packed with hydros and seaside theatres, turning
money away, duets in Italian with the accent perfectly true to nature and a
quantity of other things, no necessity, of course, to tell the world and his wife
from the housetops about it, and a slice of luck. An opening was all was wanted.
Because he more than suspected he had his father's voice to bank his hopes on
which it was quite on the cards he had so it would be just as well, by the way no
harm, to trail the conversation in the direction of that particular red herring just
to.
The cabby read out of the paper he had got hold of that the former viceroy, earl
Cadogan, had presided at the cabdrivers' association dinner in London somewhere.
Silence with a yawn or two accompanied this thrilling announcement. Then the
old specimen in the corner who appeared to have some spark of vitality left read
out that sir Anthony MacDonnell had left Euston for the chief secretary's lodge or
words to that effect. To which absorbing piece of intelligence echo answered why.
—Give us a squint at that literature, grandfather, the ancient mariner put in,
manifesting some natural impatience.
—And welcome, answered the elderly party thus addressed.
The sailor lugged out from a case he had a pair of greenish goggles which he
very slowly hooked over his nose and both ears.
—Are you bad in the eyes? the sympathetic personage like the townclerk
queried.
—Why, answered the seafarer with the tartan beard, who seemingly was a bit of
a literary cove in his own small way, staring out of seagreen portholes as you
might well describe them as, I uses goggles reading. Sand in the Red Sea done
that. One time I could read a book in the dark, manner of speaking. The Arabian
Nights Entertainment was my favourite and Red as a Rose is She.
Hereupon he pawed the journal open and pored upon Lord only knows what,
found drowned or the exploits of King Willow, Iremonger having made a hundred
and something second wicket not out for Notts, during which time (completely
regardless of Ire) the keeper was intensely occupied loosening an apparently new
or secondhand boot which manifestly pinched him as he muttered against whoever
it was sold it, all of them who were sufficiently awake enough to be picked out by
their facial expressions, that is to say, either simply looking on glumly or passing a
trivial remark.
To cut a long story short Bloom, grasping the situation, was the first to rise
from his seat so as not to outstay their welcome having first and foremost, being
as good as his word that he would foot the bill for the occasion, taken the wise
precaution to unobtrusively motion to mine host as a parting shot a scarcely
perceptible sign when the others were not looking to the effect that the amount
due was forthcoming, making a grand total of fourpence (the amount he deposited
unobtrusively in four coppers, literally the last of the Mohicans), he having
previously spotted on the printed pricelist for all who ran to read opposite him in
unmistakable figures, coffee 2d, confectionery do, and honestly well worth twice
the money once in a way, as Wetherup used to remark.
—Come, he counselled to close the séance.
 Seeing that the ruse worked and the coast was clear they left the shelter or
shanty together and the élite society of oilskin and company whom nothing short
of an earthquake would move out of their dolce far niente. Stephen, who confessed
to still feeling poorly and fagged out, paused at the, for a moment, the door.
—One thing I never understood, he said to be original on the spur of the
moment. Why they put tables upside down at night, I mean chairs upside down,
on the tables in cafes. To which impromptu the neverfailing Bloom replied without
a moment's hesitation, saying straight off:
—To sweep the floor in the morning.
So saying he skipped around, nimbly considering, frankly at the same time
apologetic to get on his companion's right, a habit of his, by the bye, his right side
being, in classical idiom, his tender Achilles. The night air was certainly now a
treat to breathe though Stephen was a bit weak on his pins.
—It will (the air) do you good, Bloom said, meaning also the walk, in a moment.
The only thing is to walk then you'll feel a different man. Come. It's not far. Lean
on me.
Accordingly he passed his left arm in Stephen's right and led him on
accordingly.
—Yes, Stephen said uncertainly because he thought he felt a strange kind of
flesh of a different man approach him, sinewless and wobbly and all that.
Anyhow they passed the sentrybox with stones, brazier etc. where the municipal
supernumerary, ex Gumley, was still to all intents and purposes wrapped in the
arms of Murphy, as the adage has it, dreaming of fresh fields and pastures new.
And apropos of coffin of stones the analogy was not at all bad as it was in fact a
stoning to death on the part of seventytwo out of eighty odd constituencies that
ratted at the time of the split and chiefly the belauded peasant class, probably the
selfsame evicted tenants he had put in their holdings.
So they turned on to chatting about music, a form of art for which Bloom, as a
pure amateur, possessed the greatest love, as they made tracks arm in arm across
Beresford place. Wagnerian music, though confessedly grand in its way, was a bit
too heavy for Bloom and hard to follow at the first go-off but the music of
Mercadante's Huguenots, Meyerbeer's Seven Last Words on the Cross and Mozart's
Twelfth Mass he simply revelled in, the Gloria in that being, to his mind, the acme
of first class music as such, literally knocking everything else into a cocked hat.
He infinitely preferred the sacred music of the catholic church to anything the
opposite shop could offer in that line such as those Moody and Sankey hymns or
Bid me to live and i will live thy protestant to be. He also yielded to none in his
admiration of Rossini's Stabat Mater, a work simply abounding in immortal
numbers, in which his wife, Madam Marion Tweedy, made a hit, a veritable
sensation, he might safely say, greatly adding to her other laureis and putting the
others totally in the shade, in the jesuit fathers' church in upper Gardiner street,
the sacred edifice being thronged to the doors to hear her with virtuosos, or
virtuosi rather. There was the unanimous opinion that there was none to come up
to her and suffice it to say in a place of worship for music of a sacred character
there was a generally voiced desire for an encore. On the whole though favouring
preferably light opera of the Don Giovanni description and Martha, a gem in its
line, he had a penchant, though with only a surface knowledge, for the severe
classical school such as Mendelssohn. And talking of that, taking it for granted he
knew all about the old favourites, he mentioned par excellence Lionel's air in
Martha, M'appari, which, curiously enough, he had heard or overheard, to be
more accurate, on yesterday, a privilege he keenly appreciated, from the lips of
Stephen's respected father, sung to perfection, a study of the number, in fact,
which made all the others take a back seat. Stephen, in reply to a politely put
query, said he didn't sing it but launched out into praises of Shakespeare's songs,
at least of in or about that period, the lutenist Dowland who lived in Fetter lane
near Gerard the herbalist, who anno ludendo hausi, Doulandus, an instrument he
was contemplating purchasing from Mr Arnold Dolmetsch, whom B. did not quite
recall though the name certainly sounded familiar, for sixtyfive guineas and
Farnaby and son with their dux and comes conceits and Byrd (William) who played
the virginals, he said, in the Queen's chapel or anywhere else he found them and
one Tomkins who made toys or airs and John Bull.
On the roadway which they were approaching whilst still speaking beyond the
swingchains a horse, dragging a sweeper, paced on the paven ground, brushing a
long swathe of mire up so that with the noise Bloom was not perfectly certain
whether he had caught aright the allusion to sixtyfive guineas and John Bull. He
inquired if it was John Bull the political celebrity of that ilk, as it struck him, the
two identical names, as a striking coincidence.
By the chains the horse slowly swerved to turn, which perceiving, Bloom, who
was keeping a sharp lookout as usual, plucked the other's sleeve gently, jocosely
remarking:
—Our lives are in peril tonight. Beware of the steamroller.
They thereupon stopped. Bloom looked at the head of a horse not worth
anything like sixtyfive guineas, suddenly in evidence in the dark quite near so that
it seemed new, a different grouping of bones and even flesh because palpably it
was a fourwalker, a hipshaker, a blackbuttocker, a taildangler, a headhanger
putting his hind foot foremost the while the lord of his creation sat on the perch,
busy with his thoughts. But such a good poor brute he was sorry he hadn't a lump
of sugar but, as he wisely reflected, you could scarcely be prepared for every
emergency that might crop up. He was just a big nervous foolish noodly kind of a
horse, without a second care in the world. But even a dog, he reflected, take that
mongrel in Barney Kiernan's, of the same size, would be a holy horror to face. But
it was no animal's fault in particular if he was built that way like the camel, ship
of the desert, distilling grapes into potheen in his hump. Nine tenths of them all
could be caged or trained, nothing beyond the art of man barring the bees. Whale
with a harpoon hairpin, alligator tickle the small of his back and he sees the joke,
chalk a circle for a rooster, tiger my eagle eye. These timely reflections anent the
brutes of the field occupied his mind somewhat distracted from Stephen's words
while the ship of the street was manoeuvring and Stephen went on about the
highly interesting old.
—What's this I was saying? Ah, yes! My wife, he intimated, plunging in medias
res, would have the greatest of pleasure in making your acquaintance as she is
passionately attached to music of any kind.
He looked sideways in a friendly fashion at the sideface of Stephen, image of his
mother, which was not quite the same as the usual handsome blackguard type
they unquestionably had an insatiable hankering after as he was perhaps not that
way built.
Still, supposing he had his father's gift as he more than suspected, it opened up
new vistas in his mind such as Lady Fingall's Irish industries, concert on the
preceding Monday, and aristocracy in general.
Exquisite variations he was now describing on an air Youth here has End by Jans
Pieter Sweelinck, a Dutchman of Amsterdam where the frows come from. Even
more he liked an old German song of Johannes Jeep about the clear sea and the
voices of sirens, sweet murderers of men, which boggled Bloom a bit:

Von der Sirenen Listigkeit

Tun die Poeten dichten.
These opening bars he sang and translated extempore. Bloom, nodding, said he
perfectly understood and begged him to go on by all means which he did.
A phenomenally beautiful tenor voice like that, the rarest of boons, which
Bloom appreciated at the very first note he got out, could easily, if properly
handled by some recognised authority on voice production such as Barraclough
and being able to read music into the bargain, command its own price where
baritones were ten a penny and procure for its fortunate possessor in the near
future an entrée into fashionable houses in the best residential quarters of
financial magnates in a large way of business and titled people where with his
university degree of B. A. (a huge ad in its way) and gentlemanly bearing to all the
more influence the good impression he would infallibly score a distinct success,
being blessed with brains which also could be utilised for the purpose and other
requisites, if his clothes were properly attended to so as to the better worm his
way into their good graces as he, a youthful tyro in—society's sartorial niceties,
hardly understood how a little thing like that could militate against you. It was in
fact only a matter of months and he could easily foresee him participating in their
musical and artistic conversaziones during the festivities of the Christmas season,
for choice, causing a slight flutter in the dovecotes of the fair sex and being made
a lot of by ladies out for sensation, cases of which, as he happened to know, were
on record—in fact, without giving the show away, he himself once upon a time, if
he cared to, could easily have. Added to which of course would be the pecuniary
emolument by no means to be sneezed at, going hand in hand with his tuition
fees. Not, he parenthesised, that for the sake of filthy lucre he need necessarily
embrace the lyric platform as a walk in life for any lengthy space of time. But a
step in the required direction it was beyond yea or nay and both monetarily and
mentally it contained no reflection on his dignity in the smallest and it often
turned in uncommonly handy to be handed a cheque at a muchneeded moment
when every little helped. Besides, though taste latterly had deteriorated to a
degree, original music like that, different from the conventional rut, would rapidly
have a great vogue as it would be a decided novelty for Dublin's musical world
after the usual hackneyed run of catchy tenor solos foisted on a confiding public
by Ivan St Austell and Hilton St Just and their genus omne. Yes, beyond a shadow
of a doubt he could with all the cards in his hand and he had a capital opening to
make a name for himself and win a high place in the city's esteem where he could
command a stiff figure and, booking ahead, give a grand concert for the patrons of
the King street house, given a backerup, if one were forthcoming to kick him
upstairs, so to speak, a big if, however, with some impetus of the goahead sort to
obviate the inevitable procrastination which often tripped-up a too much fêted
prince of good fellows. And it need not detract from the other by one iota as,
being his own master, he would have heaps of time to practise literature in his
spare moments when desirous of so doing without its clashing with his vocal
career or containing anything derogatory whatsoever as it was a matter for himself
alone. In fact, he had the ball at his feet and that was the very reason why the
other, possessed of a remarkably sharp nose for smelling a rat of any sort, hung
on to him at all.
The horse was just then. And later on at a propitious opportunity he purposed
(Bloom did), without anyway prying into his private affairs on the fools step in
where angels principle, advising him to sever his connection with a certain
budding practitioner who, he noticed, was prone to disparage and even to a slight
extent with some hilarious pretext when not present, deprecate him, or whatever
you like to call it which in Bloom's humble opinion threw a nasty sidelight on that
side of a person's character, no pun intended.
The horse having reached the end of his tether, so to speak, halted and, rearing
high a proud feathering tail, added his quota by letting fall on the floor which the
brush would soon brush up and polish, three smoking globes of turds. Slowly
three times, one after another, from a full crupper he mired. And humanely his
driver waited till he (or she) had ended, patient in his scythed car.
Side by side Bloom, profiting by the contretemps, with Stephen passed through
the gap of the chains, divided by the upright, and, stepping over a strand of mire,
went across towards Gardiner street lower, Stephen singing more boldly, but not
loudly, the end of the ballad.
Und alle Schiffe brücken.
The driver never said a word, good, bad or indifferent, but merely watched the
two figures, as he sat on his lowbacked car, both black, one full, one lean, walk
towards the railway bridge, to be married by Father Maher. As they walked they at
times stopped and walked again continuing their tête-à-tête (which, of course, he
was utterly out of) about sirens enemies of man's reason, mingled with a number
of other topics of the same category, usurpers, historical cases of the kind while
the man in the sweeper car or you might as well call it in the sleeper car who in
any case couldn't possibly hear because they were too far simply sat in his seat
near the end of lower Gardiner street and looked after their lowbacked car.
What parallel courses did Bloom and Stephen follow returning?
Starting united both at normal walking pace from Beresford place they followed
in the order named Lower and Middle Gardiner streets and Mountjoy square,
west: then, at reduced pace, each bearing left, Gardiner's place by an inadvertence
as far as the farther corner of Temple street: then, at reduced pace with
interruptions of halt, bearing right, Temple street, north, as far as Hardwicke
place. Approaching, disparate, at relaxed walking pace they crossed both the
circus before George's church diametrically, the chord in any circle being less than
the arc which it subtends.
Of what did the duumvirate deliberate during their itinerary?
Music, literature, Ireland, Dublin, Paris, friendship, woman, prostitution, diet,
the influence of gaslight or the light of arc and glowlamps on the growth of
adjoining paraheliotropic trees, exposed corporation emergency dustbuckets, the
Roman catholic church, ecclesiastical celibacy, the Irish nation, jesuit education,
careers, the study of medicine, the past day, the maleficent influence of the
presabbath, Stephen's collapse.
Did Bloom discover common factors of similarity between their respective like
and unlike reactions to experience?
Both were sensitive to artistic impressions, musical in preference to plastic or
pictorial. Both preferred a continental to an insular manner of life, a cisatlantic to
a transatlantic place of residence. Both indurated by early domestic training and
an inherited tenacity of heterodox resistance professed their disbelief in many
orthodox religious, national, social and ethical doctrines. Both admitted the
alternately stimulating and obtunding influence of heterosexual magnetism.
Were their views on some points divergent?
Stephen dissented openly from Bloom's views on the importance of dietary and
civic selfhelp while Bloom dissented tacitly from Stephen's views on the eternal
affirmation of the spirit of man in literature. Bloom assented covertly to Stephen's
rectification of the anachronism involved in assigning the date of the conversion of
the Irish nation to christianity from druidism by Patrick son of Calpornus, son of
Potitus, son of Odyssus, sent by pope Celestine I in the year 432 in the reign of
Leary to the year 260 or thereabouts in the reign of Cormac MacArt (died 266
A.D.), suffocated by imperfect deglutition of aliment at Sletty and interred at
Rossnaree. The collapse which Bloom ascribed to gastric inanition and certain
chemical compounds of varying degrees of adulteration and alcoholic strength,
accelerated by mental exertion and the velocity of rapid circular motion in a
relaxing atmosphere, Stephen attributed to the reapparition of a matutinal cloud
(perceived by both from two different points of observation Sandycove and
Dublin) at first no bigger than a woman's hand.
 Was there one point on which their views were equal and negative?
The influence of gaslight or electric light on the growth of adjoining
paraheliotropic trees.
Had Bloom discussed similar subjects during nocturnal perambulations in the
past?
In 1884 with Owen Goldberg and Cecil Turnbull at night on public
thoroughfares between Longwood avenue and Leonard's corner and Leonard's
corner and Synge street and Synge street and Bloomfield avenue.
In 1885 with Percy Apjohn in the evenings, reclined against the wall between
Gibraltar villa and Bloomfield house in Crumlin, barony of Uppercross. In 1886
occasionally with casual acquaintances and prospective purchasers on doorsteps,
in front parlours, in third class railway carriages of suburban lines. In 1888
frequently with major Brian Tweedy and his daughter Miss Marion Tweedy,
together and separately on the lounge in Matthew Dillon's house in Roundtown.
Once in 1892 and once in 1893 with Julius (Juda) Mastiansky, on both occasions
in the parlour of his (Bloom's) house in Lombard street, west.
What reflection concerning the irregular sequence of dates 1884, 1885, 1886,
1888, 1892, 1893, 1904 did Bloom make before their arrival at their
destination?
He reflected that the progressive extension of the field of individual
development and experience was regressively accompanied by a restriction of the
converse domain of interindividual relations.
As in what ways?
From inexistence to existence he came to many and was as one received:
existence with existence he was with any as any with any: from existence to
nonexistence gone he would be by all as none perceived.
What act did Bloom make on their arrival at their destination?
At the housesteps of the 4th Of the equidifferent uneven numbers, number 7
Eccles street, he inserted his hand mechanically into the back pocket of his
trousers to obtain his latchkey.
Was it there?
It was in the corresponding pocket of the trousers which he had worn on the
day but one preceding.
Why was he doubly irritated?
Because he had forgotten and because he remembered that he had reminded
himself twice not to forget.
What were then the alternatives before the, premeditatedly (respectively) and
inadvertently, keyless couple?
 To enter or not to enter. To knock or not to knock.
Bloom's decision?
A stratagem. Resting his feet on the dwarf wall, he climbed over the area
railings, compressed his hat on his head, grasped two points at the lower union of
rails and stiles, lowered his body gradually by its length of five feet nine inches
and a half to within two feet ten inches of the area pavement and allowed his
body to move freely in space by separating himself from the railings and crouching
in preparation for the impact of the fall.
Did he fall?
By his body's known weight of eleven stone and four pounds in avoirdupois
measure, as certified by the graduated machine for periodical selfweighing in the
premises of Francis Froedman, pharmaceutical chemist of 19 Frederick street,
north, on the last feast of the Ascension, to wit, the twelfth day of May of the
bissextile year one thousand nine hundred and four of the christian era (jewish era
five thousand six hundred and sixtyfour, mohammadan era one thousand three
hundred and twentytwo), golden number 5, epact 13, solar cycle 9, dominical
letters C B, Roman indiction 2, Julian period 6617, MCMIV.
Did he rise uninjured by concussion?
Regaining new stable equilibrium he rose uninjured though concussed by the
impact, raised the latch of the area door by the exertion of force at its freely
moving flange and by leverage of the first kind applied at its fulcrum, gained
retarded access to the kitchen through the subadjacent scullery, ignited a lucifer
match by friction, set free inflammable coal gas by turningon the ventcock, lit a
high flame which, by regulating, he reduced to quiescent candescence and lit
finally a portable candle.
What discrete succession of images did Stephen meanwhile perceive?
Reclined against the area railings he perceived through the transparent kitchen
panes a man regulating a gasflame of 14 CP, a man lighting a candle of 1 CP, a
man removing in turn each of his two boots, a man leaving the kitchen holding a
candle.
Did the man reappear elsewhere?
After a lapse of four minutes the glimmer of his candle was discernible through
the semitransparent semicircular glass fanlight over the halldoor. The halldoor
turned gradually on its hinges. In the open space of the doorway the man
reappeared without his hat, with his candle.
Did Stephen obey his sign?
Yes, entering softly, he helped to close and chain the door and followed softly
along the hallway the man's back and listed feet and lighted candle past a lighted
crevice of doorway on the left and carefully down a turning staircase of more than
five steps into the kitchen of Bloom's house.
 What did Bloom do?
He extinguished the candle by a sharp expiration of breath upon its flame, drew
two spoonseat deal chairs to the hearthstone, one for Stephen with its back to the
area window, the other for himself when necessary, knelt on one knee, composed
in the grate a pyre of crosslaid resintipped sticks and various coloured papers and
irregular polygons of best Abram coal at twentyone shillings a ton from the yard of
Messrs Flower and M'Donald of 14 D'Olier street, kindled it at three projecting
points of paper with one ignited lucifer match, thereby releasing the potential
energy contained in the fuel by allowing its carbon and hydrogen elements to enter
into free union with the oxygen of the air.
Of what similar apparitions did Stephen think?
Of others elsewhere in other times who, kneeling on one knee or on two, had
kindled fires for him, of Brother Michael in the infirmary of the college of the
Society of Jesus at Clongowes Wood, Sallins, in the county of Kildare: of his
father, Simon Dedalus, in an unfurnished room of his first residence in Dublin,
number thirteen Fitzgibbon street: of his godmother Miss Kate Morkan in the
house of her dying sister Miss Julia Morkan at 15 Usher's Island: of his aunt Sara,
wife of Richie (Richard) Goulding, in the kitchen of their lodgings at 62
Clanbrassil street: of his mother Mary, wife of Simon Dedalus, in the kitchen of
number twelve North Richmond street on the morning of the feast of Saint Francis
Xavier 1898: of the dean of studies, Father Butt, in the physics' theatre of
university College, 16 Stephen's Green, north: of his sister Dilly (Delia) in his
father's house in Cabra.
What did Stephen see on raising his gaze to the height of a yard from the fire
towards the opposite wall?
Under a row of five coiled spring housebells a curvilinear rope, stretched
between two holdfasts athwart across the recess beside the chimney pier, from
which hung four smallsized square handkerchiefs folded unattached consecutively
in adjacent rectangles and one pair of ladies' grey hose with Lisle suspender tops
and feet in their habitual position clamped by three erect wooden pegs two at
their outer extremities and the third at their point of junction.
What did Bloom see on the range?
On the right (smaller) hob a blue enamelled saucepan: on the left (larger) hob a
black iron kettle.
What did Bloom do at the range?
He removed the saucepan to the left hob, rose and carried the iron kettle to the
sink in order to tap the current by turning the faucet to let it flow.
Did it flow?
Yes. From Roundwood reservoir in county Wicklow of a cubic capacity of 2400
million gallons, percolating through a subterranean aqueduct of filter mains of
single and double pipeage constructed at an initial plant cost of 5 pounds per
linear yard by way of the Dargle, Rathdown, Glen of the Downs and Callowhill to
the 26 acre reservoir at Stillorgan, a distance of 22 statute miles, and thence,
through a system of relieving tanks, by a gradient of 250 feet to the city boundary
at Eustace bridge, upper Leeson street, though from prolonged summer drouth and
daily supply of 12 1/2 million gallons the water had fallen below the sill of the
overflow weir for which reason the borough surveyor and waterworks engineer,
Mr Spencer Harty, C. E., on the instructions of the waterworks committee had
prohibited the use of municipal water for purposes other than those of
consumption (envisaging the possibility of recourse being had to the impotable
water of the Grand and Royal canals as in 1893) particularly as the South Dublin
Guardians, notwithstanding their ration of 15 gallons per day per pauper supplied
through a 6 inch meter, had been convicted of a wastage of 20,000 gallons per
night by a reading of their meter on the affirmation of the law agent of the
corporation, Mr Ignatius Rice, solicitor, thereby acting to the detriment of another
section of the public, selfsupporting taxpayers, solvent, sound.
What in water did Bloom, waterlover, drawer of water, watercarrier, returning
to the range, admire?
Its universality: its democratic equality and constancy to its nature in seeking
its own level: its vastness in the ocean of Mercator's projection: its unplumbed
profundity in the Sundam trench of the Pacific exceeding 8000 fathoms: the
restlessness of its waves and surface particles visiting in turn all points of its
seaboard: the independence of its units: the variability of states of sea: its
hydrostatic quiescence in calm: its hydrokinetic turgidity in neap and spring tides:
its subsidence after devastation: its sterility in the circumpolar icecaps, arctic and
antarctic: its climatic and commercial significance: its preponderance of 3 to 1
over the dry land of the globe: its indisputable hegemony extending in square
leagues over all the region below the subequatorial tropic of Capricorn: the
multisecular stability of its primeval basin: its luteofulvous bed: its capacity to
dissolve and hold in solution all soluble substances including millions of tons of
the most precious metals: its slow erosions of peninsulas and islands, its
persistent formation of homothetic islands, peninsulas and downwardtending
promontories: its alluvial deposits: its weight and volume and density: its
imperturbability in lagoons and highland tarns: its gradation of colours in the
torrid and temperate and frigid zones: its vehicular ramifications in continental
lakecontained streams and confluent oceanflowing rivers with their tributaries and
transoceanic currents, gulfstream, north and south equatorial courses: its violence
in seaquakes, waterspouts, Artesian wells, eruptions, torrents, eddies, freshets,
spates, groundswells, watersheds, waterpartings, geysers, cataracts, whirlpools,
maelstroms, inundations, deluges, cloudbursts: its vast circumterrestrial
ahorizontal curve: its secrecy in springs and latent humidity, revealed by
rhabdomantic or hygrometric instruments and exemplified by the well by the hole
in the wall at Ashtown gate, saturation of air, distillation of dew: the simplicity of
its composition, two constituent parts of hydrogen with one constituent part of
oxygen: its healing virtues: its buoyancy in the waters of the Dead Sea: its
persevering penetrativeness in runnels, gullies, inadequate dams, leaks on
shipboard: its properties for cleansing, quenching thirst and fire, nourishing
vegetation: its infallibility as paradigm and paragon: its metamorphoses as vapour,
mist, cloud, rain, sleet, snow, hail: its strength in rigid hydrants: its variety of
forms in loughs and bays and gulfs and bights and guts and lagoons and atolls and
archipelagos and sounds and fjords and minches and tidal estuaries and arms of
sea: its solidity in glaciers, icebergs, icefloes: its docility in working hydraulic
millwheels, turbines, dynamos, electric power stations, bleachworks, tanneries,
scutchmills: its utility in canals, rivers, if navigable, floating and graving docks: its
potentiality derivable from harnessed tides or watercourses falling from level to
level: its submarine fauna and flora (anacoustic, photophobe), numerically, if not
literally, the inhabitants of the globe: its ubiquity as constituting 90 percent of the
human body: the noxiousness of its effluvia in lacustrine marshes, pestilential
fens, faded flowerwater, stagnant pools in the waning moon.
Having set the halffilled kettle on the now burning coals, why did he return to
the stillflowing tap?
To wash his soiled hands with a partially consumed tablet of Barrington's
lemonflavoured soap, to which paper still adhered, (bought thirteen hours
previously for fourpence and still unpaid for), in fresh cold neverchanging
everchanging water and dry them, face and hands, in a long redbordered holland
cloth passed over a wooden revolving roller.
What reason did Stephen give for declining Bloom's offer?
That he was hydrophobe, hating partial contact by immersion or total by
submersion in cold water, (his last bath having taken place in the month of
October of the preceding year), disliking the aqueous substances of glass and
crystal, distrusting aquacities of thought and language.
What impeded Bloom from giving Stephen counsels of hygiene and prophylactic
to which should be added suggestions concerning a preliminary wetting of the
head and contraction of the muscles with rapid splashing of the face and neck and
thoracic and epigastric region in case of sea or river bathing, the parts of the
human anatomy most sensitive to cold being the nape, stomach and thenar or sole
of foot?
The incompatibility of aquacity with the erratic originality of genius.
What additional didactic counsels did he similarly repress?
Dietary: concerning the respective percentage of protein and caloric energy in
bacon, salt ling and butter, the absence of the former in the lastnamed and the
abundance of the latter in the firstnamed.
Which seemed to the host to be the predominant qualities of his guest?
Confidence in himself, an equal and opposite power of abandonment and
recuperation.
 What concomitant phenomenon took place in the vessel of liquid by the agency
of fire?
The phenomenon of ebullition. Fanned by a constant updraught of ventilation
between the kitchen and the chimneyflue, ignition was communicated from the
faggots of precombustible fuel to polyhedral masses of bituminous coal, containing
in compressed mineral form the foliated fossilised decidua of primeval forests
which had in turn derived their vegetative existence from the sun, primal source of
heat (radiant), transmitted through omnipresent luminiferous diathermanous
ether. Heat (convected), a mode of motion developed by such combustion, was
constantly and increasingly conveyed from the source of calorification to the liquid
contained in the vessel, being radiated through the uneven unpolished dark
surface of the metal iron, in part reflected, in part absorbed, in part transmitted,
gradually raising the temperature of the water from normal to boiling point, a rise
in temperature expressible as the result of an expenditure of 72 thermal units
needed to raise 1 pound of water from 50 degrees to 212 degrees Fahrenheit.
What announced the accomplishment of this rise in temperature?
A double falciform ejection of water vapour from under the kettlelid at both
sides simultaneously.
For what personal purpose could Bloom have applied the water so boiled?
To shave himself.
What advantages attended shaving by night?
A softer beard: a softer brush if intentionally allowed to remain from shave to
shave in its agglutinated lather: a softer skin if unexpectedly encountering female
acquaintances in remote places at incustomary hours: quiet reflections upon the
course of the day: a cleaner sensation when awaking after a fresher sleep since
matutinal noises, premonitions and perturbations, a clattered milkcan, a
postman's double knock, a paper read, reread while lathering, relathering the same
spot, a shock, a shoot, with thought of aught he sought though fraught with
nought might cause a faster rate of shaving and a nick on which incision plaster
with precision cut and humected and applied adhered: which was to be done.
Why did absence of light disturb him less than presence of noise?
Because of the surety of the sense of touch in his firm full masculine feminine
passive active hand.
What quality did it (his hand) possess but with what counteracting influence?
The operative surgical quality but that he was reluctant to shed human blood
even when the end justified the means, preferring, in their natural order,
heliotherapy, psychophysicotherapeutics, osteopathic surgery.
What lay under exposure on the lower, middle and upper shelves of the kitchen
dresser, opened by Bloom?
 On the lower shelf five vertical breakfast plates, six horizontal breakfast saucers
on which rested inverted breakfast cups, a moustachecup, uninverted, and saucer
of Crown Derby, four white goldrimmed eggcups, an open shammy purse
displaying coins, mostly copper, and a phial of aromatic (violet) comfits. On the
middle shelf a chipped eggcup containing pepper, a drum of table salt, four
conglomerated black olives in oleaginous paper, an empty pot of Plumtree's potted
meat, an oval wicker basket bedded with fibre and containing one Jersey pear, a
halfempty bottle of William Gilbey and Co's white invalid port, half disrobed of its
swathe of coralpink tissue paper, a packet of Epps's soluble cocoa, five ounces of
Anne Lynch's choice tea at 2/- per lb in a crinkled leadpaper bag, a cylindrical
canister containing the best crystallised lump sugar, two onions, one, the larger,
Spanish, entire, the other, smaller, Irish, bisected with augmented surface and
more redolent, a jar of Irish Model Dairy's cream, a jug of brown crockery
containing a naggin and a quarter of soured adulterated milk, converted by heat
into water, acidulous serum and semisolidified curds, which added to the quantity
subtracted for Mr Bloom's and Mrs Fleming's breakfasts, made one imperial pint,
the total quantity originally delivered, two cloves, a halfpenny and a small dish
containing a slice of fresh ribsteak. On the upper shelf a battery of jamjars (empty)
of various sizes and proveniences.
What attracted his attention lying on the apron of the dresser?
Four polygonal fragments of two lacerated scarlet betting tickets, numbered 8
87, 88 6.
What reminiscences temporarily corrugated his brow?
Reminiscences of coincidences, truth stranger than fiction, preindicative of the
result of the Gold Cup flat handicap, the official and definitive result of which he
had read in the Evening Telegraph, late pink edition, in the cabman's shelter, at
Butt bridge.
Where had previous intimations of the result, effected or projected, been
received by him?
In Bernard Kiernan's licensed premises 8, 9 and 10 little Britain street: in David
Byrne's licensed premises, 14 Duke street: in O'Connell street lower, outside
Graham Lemon's when a dark man had placed in his hand a throwaway
(subsequently thrown away), advertising Elijah, restorer of the church in Zion: in
Lincoln place outside the premises of F. W. Sweny and Co (Limited), dispensing
chemists, when, when Frederick M. (Bantam) Lyons had rapidly and successively
requested, perused and restituted the copy of the current issue of the Freeman's
Journal and National Press which he had been about to throw away (subsequently
thrown away), he had proceeded towards the oriental edifice of the Turkish and
Warm Baths, 11 Leinster street, with the light of inspiration shining in his
countenance and bearing in his arms the secret of the race, graven in the language
of prediction.
What qualifying considerations allayed his perturbations?
 The difficulties of interpretation since the significance of any event followed its
occurrence as variably as the acoustic report followed the electrical discharge and
of counterestimating against an actual loss by failure to interpret the total sum of
possible losses proceeding originally from a successful interpretation.
His mood?
He had not risked, he did not expect, he had not been disappointed, he was
satisfied.
What satisfied him?
To have sustained no positive loss. To have brought a positive gain to others.
Light to the gentiles.
How did Bloom prepare a collation for a gentile?
He poured into two teacups two level spoonfuls, four in all, of Epps's soluble
cocoa and proceeded according to the directions for use printed on the label, to
each adding after sufficient time for infusion the prescribed ingredients for
diffusion in the manner and in the quantity prescribed.
What supererogatory marks of special hospitality did the host show his guest?
Relinquishing his symposiarchal right to the moustache cup of imitation Crown
Derby presented to him by his only daughter, Millicent (Milly), he substituted a
cup identical with that of his guest and served extraordinarily to his guest and, in
reduced measure, to himself the viscous cream ordinarily reserved for the
breakfast of his wife Marion (Molly).
Was the guest conscious of and did he acknowledge these marks of hospitality?
His attention was directed to them by his host jocosely, and he accepted them
seriously as they drank in jocoserious silence Epps's massproduct, the creature
cocoa.
Were there marks of hospitality which he contemplated but suppressed,
reserving them for another and for himself on future occasions to complete the act
begun?
The reparation of a fissure of the length of 1 1/2 inches in the right side of his
guest's jacket. A gift to his guest of one of the four lady's handkerchiefs, if and
when ascertained to be in a presentable condition.
Who drank more quickly?
Bloom, having the advantage of ten seconds at the initiation and taking, from
the concave surface of a spoon along the handle of which a steady flow of heat
was conducted, three sips to his opponent's one, six to two, nine to three.
What cerebration accompanied his frequentative act?
 Concluding by inspection but erroneously that his silent companion was
engaged in mental composition he reflected on the pleasures derived from
literature of instruction rather than of amusement as he himself had applied to the
works of William Shakespeare more than once for the solution of difficult
problems in imaginary or real life.
Had he found their solution?
In spite of careful and repeated reading of certain classical passages, aided by a
glossary, he had derived imperfect conviction from the text, the answers not
bearing in all points.
What lines concluded his first piece of original verse written by him, potential
poet, at the age of 11 in 1877 on the occasion of the offering of three prizes of
10/-, 5/- and 2/6 respectively for competition by the Shamrock, a weekly
newspaper?

An ambition to squint
At my verses in print
Makes me hope that for these you'll find room?.
If you so condescend
Then please place at the end
The name of yours truly, L. Bloom.
Did he find four separating forces between his temporary guest and him?
Name, age, race, creed.
What anagrams had he made on his name in youth?

Leopold Bloom
Ellpodbomool
Molldopeloob
Bollopedoom
Old Ollebo, M. P.
What acrostic upon the abbreviation of his first name had he (kinetic poet) sent
to Miss Marion (Molly) Tweedy on the 14 February 1888?

Poets oft have sung in rhyme

Of music sweet their praise divine.
Let them hymn it nine times nine.
Dearer far than song or wine.
You are mine. The world is mine.
What had prevented him from completing a topical song (music by R. G.
Johnston) on the events of the past, or fixtures for the actual, years, entitled If
Brian Boru could but come back and see old Dublin now, commissioned by Michael
Gunn, lessee of the Gaiety Theatre, 46, 47, 48, 49 South King street, and to be
introduced into the sixth scene, the valley of diamonds, of the second edition (30
January 1893) of the grand annual Christmas pantomime Sinbad the Sailor
(produced by R Shelton 26 December 1892, written by Greenleaf Whittier,
scenery by George A. Jackson and Cecil Hicks, costumes by Mrs and Miss Whelan
under the personal supervision of Mrs Michael Gunn, ballets by Jessie Noir,
harlequinade by Thomas Otto) and sung by Nelly Bouverist, principal girl?
Firstly, oscillation between events of imperial and of local interest, the
anticipated diamond jubilee of Queen Victoria (born 1820, acceded 1837) and
the posticipated opening of the new municipal fish market: secondly,
apprehension of opposition from extreme circles on the questions of the respective
visits of Their Royal Highnesses the duke and duchess of York (real) and of His
Majesty King Brian Boru (imaginary): thirdly, a conflict between professional
etiquette and professional emulation concerning the recent erections of the Grand
Lyric Hall on Burgh Quay and the Theatre Royal in Hawkins street: fourthly,
distraction resultant from compassion for Nelly Bouverist's non-intellectual, non-
political, non-topical expression of countenance and concupiscence caused by
Nelly Bouverist's revelations of white articles of non-intellectual, non-political,
non-topical underclothing while she (Nelly Bouverist) was in the articles: fifthly,
the difficulties of the selection of appropriate music and humorous allusions from
Everybody's Book of Jokes (1000 pages and a laugh in every one): sixthly, the
rhymes, homophonous and cacophonous, associated with the names of the new
lord mayor, Daniel Tallon, the new high sheriff, Thomas Pile and the new
solicitorgeneral, Dunbar Plunket Barton.
What relation existed between their ages?
16 years before in 1888 when Bloom was of Stephen's present age Stephen was
6. 16 years after in 1920 when Stephen would be of Bloom's present age Bloom
would be 54. In 1936 when Bloom would be 70 and Stephen 54 their ages
initially in the ratio of 16 to 0 would be as 17 1/2 to 13 1/2, the proportion
increasing and the disparity diminishing according as arbitrary future years were
added, for if the proportion existing in 1883 had continued immutable,
conceiving that to be possible, till then 1904 when Stephen was 22 Bloom would
be 374 and in 1920 when Stephen would be 38, as Bloom then was, Bloom
would be 646 while in 1952 when Stephen would have attained the maximum
postdiluvian age of 70 Bloom, being 1190 years alive having been born in the
year 714, would have surpassed by 221 years the maximum antediluvian age,
that of Methusalah, 969 years, while, if Stephen would continue to live until he
would attain that age in the year 3072 A.D., Bloom would have been obliged to
have been alive 83,300 years, having been obliged to have been born in the year
81,396 B.C.
What events might nullify these calculations?
The cessation of existence of both or either, the inauguration of a new era or
calendar, the annihilation of the world and consequent extermination of the
human species, inevitable but impredictable.
 How many previous encounters proved their preexisting acquaintance?
Two. The first in the lilacgarden of Matthew Dillon's house, Medina Villa,
Kimmage road, Roundtown, in 1887, in the company of Stephen's mother,
Stephen being then of the age of 5 and reluctant to give his hand in salutation.
The second in the coffeeroom of Breslin's hotel on a rainy Sunday in the January
of 1892, in the company of Stephen's father and Stephen's granduncle, Stephen
being then 5 years older.
Did Bloom accept the invitation to dinner given then by the son and afterwards
seconded by the father?
Very gratefully, with grateful appreciation, with sincere appreciative gratitude,
in appreciatively grateful sincerity of regret, he declined.
Did their conversation on the subject of these reminiscences reveal a third
connecting link between them?
Mrs Riordan (Dante), a widow of independent means, had resided in the house
of Stephen's parents from 1 September 1888 to 29 December 1891 and had also
resided during the years 1892, 1893 and 1894 in the City Arms Hotel owned by
Elizabeth O'Dowd of 54 Prussia street where, during parts of the years 1893 and
1894, she had been a constant informant of Bloom who resided also in the same
hotel, being at that time a clerk in the employment of Joseph Cuffe of 5 Smithfield
for the superintendence of sales in the adjacent Dublin Cattle market on the North
Circular road.
Had he performed any special corporal work of mercy for her?
He had sometimes propelled her on warm summer evenings, an infirm widow of
independent, if limited, means, in her convalescent bathchair with slow
revolutions of its wheels as far as the corner of the North Circular road opposite
Mr Gavin Low's place of business where she had remained for a certain time
scanning through his onelensed binocular fieldglasses unrecognisable citizens on
tramcars, roadster bicycles equipped with inflated pneumatic tyres, hackney
carriages, tandems, private and hired landaus, dogcarts, ponytraps and brakes
passing from the city to the Phoenix Park and vice versa.
Why could he then support that his vigil with the greater equanimity?
Because in middle youth he had often sat observing through a rondel of bossed
glass of a multicoloured pane the spectacle offered with continual changes of the
thoroughfare without, pedestrians, quadrupeds, velocipedes, vehicles, passing
slowly, quickly, evenly, round and round and round the rim of a round and round
precipitous globe.
What distinct different memories had each of her now eight years deceased?
The older, her bezique cards and counters, her Skye terrier, her suppositious
wealth, her lapses of responsiveness and incipient catarrhal deafness: the younger,
her lamp of colza oil before the statue of the Immaculate Conception, her green
and maroon brushes for Charles Stewart Parnell and for Michael Davitt, her tissue
papers.
Were there no means still remaining to him to achieve the rejuvenation which
these reminiscences divulged to a younger companion rendered the more
desirable?
The indoor exercises, formerly intermittently practised, subsequently
abandoned, prescribed in Eugen Sandow's Physical Strength and How to Obtain It
which, designed particularly for commercial men engaged in sedentary
occupations, were to be made with mental concentration in front of a mirror so as
to bring into play the various families of muscles and produce successively a
pleasant rigidity, a more pleasant relaxation and the most pleasant repristination
of juvenile agility.
Had any special agility been his in earlier youth?
Though ringweight lifting had been beyond his strength and the full circle
gyration beyond his courage yet as a High school scholar he had excelled in his
stable and protracted execution of the half lever movement on the parallel bars in
consequence of his abnormally developed abdominal muscles.
Did either openly allude to their racial difference?
Neither.
What, reduced to their simplest reciprocal form, were Bloom's thoughts about
Stephen's thoughts about Bloom and about Stephen's thoughts about Bloom's
thoughts about Stephen?
He thought that he thought that he was a jew whereas he knew that he knew
that he knew that he was not.
What, the enclosures of reticence removed, were their respective parentages?
Bloom, only born male transubstantial heir of Rudolf Virag (subsequently
Rudolph Bloom) of Szombathely, Vienna, Budapest, Milan, London and Dublin
and of Ellen Higgins, second daughter of Julius Higgins (born Karoly) and Fanny
Higgins (born Hegarty). Stephen, eldest surviving male consubstantial heir of
Simon Dedalus of Cork and Dublin and of Mary, daughter of Richard and
Christina Goulding (born Grier).
Had Bloom and Stephen been baptised, and where and by whom, cleric or
layman?
Bloom (three times), by the reverend Mr Gilmer Johnston M. A., alone, in the
protestant church of Saint Nicholas Without, Coombe, by James O'Connor, Philip
Gilligan and James Fitzpatrick, together, under a pump in the village of Swords,
and by the reverend Charles Malone C. C., in the church of the Three Patrons,
Rathgar. Stephen (once) by the reverend Charles Malone C. C., alone, in the
church of the Three Patrons, Rathgar.
 Did they find their educational careers similar?
Substituting Stephen for Bloom Stoom would have passed successively through a
dame's school and the high school. Substituting Bloom for Stephen Blephen would
have passed successively through the preparatory, junior, middle and senior
grades of the intermediate and through the matriculation, first arts, second arts
and arts degree courses of the royal university.
Why did Bloom refrain from stating that he had frequented the university of
life?
Because of his fluctuating incertitude as to whether this observation had or had
not been already made by him to Stephen or by Stephen to him.
What two temperaments did they individually represent?
The scientific. The artistic.
What proofs did Bloom adduce to prove that his tendency was towards applied,
rather than towards pure, science?
Certain possible inventions of which he had cogitated when reclining in a state
of supine repletion to aid digestion, stimulated by his appreciation of the
importance of inventions now common but once revolutionary, for example, the
aeronautic parachute, the reflecting telescope, the spiral corkscrew, the safety pin,
the mineral water siphon, the canal lock with winch and sluice, the suction pump.
Were these inventions principally intended for an improved scheme of
kindergarten?
Yes, rendering obsolete popguns, elastic airbladders, games of hazard, catapults.
They comprised astronomical kaleidoscopes exhibiting the twelve constellations of
the zodiac from Aries to Pisces, miniature mechanical orreries, arithmetical
gelatine lozenges, geometrical to correspond with zoological biscuits, globemap
playing balls, historically costumed dolls.
What also stimulated him in his cogitations?
The financial success achieved by Ephraim Marks and Charles A. James, the
former by his 1d bazaar at 42 George's street, south, the latter at his 6 1/2d shop
and world's fancy fair and waxwork exhibition at 30 Henry street, admission 2d,
children 1d: and the infinite possibilities hitherto unexploited of the modern art of
advertisement if condensed in triliteral monoideal symbols, vertically of maximum
visibility (divined), horizontally of maximum legibility (deciphered) and of
magnetising efficacy to arrest involuntary attention, to interest, to convince, to
decide.
Such as?
K. II. Kino's 11/- Trousers. House of Keys. Alexander J. Keyes.
Such as not?
 Look at this long candle. Calculate when it burns out and you receive gratis 1
pair of our special non-compo boots, guaranteed 1 candle power. Address: Barclay
and Cook, 18 Talbot street.
Bacilikil (Insect Powder). Veribest (Boot Blacking). Uwantit (Combined pocket
twoblade penknife with corkscrew, nailfile and pipecleaner).
Such as never?
What is home without Plumtree's Potted Meat?
Incomplete.
With it an abode of bliss.
Manufactured by George Plumtree, 23 Merchants' quay, Dublin, put up in 4 oz
pots, and inserted by Councillor Joseph P. Nannetti, M. P., Rotunda Ward, 19
Hardwicke street, under the obituary notices and anniversaries of deceases. The
name on the label is Plumtree. A plumtree in a meatpot, registered trade mark.
Beware of imitations. Peatmot. Trumplee. Moutpat. Plamtroo.
Which example did he adduce to induce Stephen to deduce that originality,
though producing its own reward, does not invariably conduce to success?
His own ideated and rejected project of an illuminated showcart, drawn by a
beast of burden, in which two smartly dressed girls were to be seated engaged in
writing.
What suggested scene was then constructed by Stephen?
Solitary hotel in mountain pass. Autumn. Twilight. Fire lit. In dark corner young
man seated. Young woman enters. Restless. Solitary. She sits. She goes to
window. She stands. She sits. Twilight. She thinks. On solitary hotel paper she
writes. She thinks. She writes. She sighs. Wheels and hoofs. She hurries out. He
comes from his dark corner. He seizes solitary paper. He holds it towards fire.
Twilight. He reads. Solitary.
What?
In sloping, upright and backhands: Queen's Hotel, Queen's Hotel, Queen's
Hotel. Queen's Ho...
What suggested scene was then reconstructed by Bloom?
The Queen's Hotel, Ennis, county Clare, where Rudolph Bloom (Rudolf Virag)
died on the evening of the 27 June 1886, at some hour unstated, in consequence
of an overdose of monkshood (aconite) selfadministered in the form of a neuralgic
liniment composed of 2 parts of aconite liniment to I of chloroform liniment
(purchased by him at 10.20 a.m. on the morning of 27 June 1886 at the medical
hall of Francis Dennehy, 17 Church street, Ennis) after having, though not in
consequence of having, purchased at 3.15 p.m. on the afternoon of 27 June 1886
a new boater straw hat, extra smart (after having, though not in consequence of
having, purchased at the hour and in the place aforesaid, the toxin aforesaid), at
the general drapery store of James Cullen, 4 Main street, Ennis.
Did he attribute this homonymity to information or coincidence or intuition?
Coincidence.
Did he depict the scene verbally for his guest to see?
He preferred himself to see another's face and listen to another's words by
which potential narration was realised and kinetic temperament relieved.
Did he see only a second coincidence in the second scene narrated to him,
described by the narrator as A Pisgah Sight of Palestine or The Parable of the
Plums?
It, with the preceding scene and with others unnarrated but existent by
implication, to which add essays on various subjects or moral apothegms (e.g. My
Favourite Hero or Procrastination is the Thief of Time) composed during
schoolyears, seemed to him to contain in itself and in conjunction with the
personal equation certain possibilities of financial, social, personal and sexual
success, whether specially collected and selected as model pedagogic themes (of
cent per cent merit) for the use of preparatory and junior grade students or
contributed in printed form, following the precedent of Philip Beaufoy or Doctor
Dick or Heblon's Studies in Blue, to a publication of certified circulation and
solvency or employed verbally as intellectual stimulation for sympathetic auditors,
tacitly appreciative of successful narrative and confidently augurative of successful
achievement, during the increasingly longer nights gradually following the summer
solstice on the day but three following, videlicet, Tuesday, 21 June (S. Aloysius
Gonzaga), sunrise 3.33 a.m., sunset 8.29 p.m.
Which domestic problem as much as, if not more than, any other frequently
engaged his mind?
What to do with our wives.
What had been his hypothetical singular solutions?
Parlour games (dominos, halma, tiddledywinks, spilikins, cup and ball, nap,
spoil five, bezique, twentyfive, beggar my neighbour, draughts, chess or
backgammon): embroidery, darning or knitting for the policeaided clothing
society: musical duets, mandoline and guitar, piano and flute, guitar and piano:
legal scrivenery or envelope addressing: biweekly visits to variety entertainments:
commercial activity as pleasantly commanding and pleasingly obeyed mistress
proprietress in a cool dairy shop or warm cigar divan: the clandestine satisfaction
of erotic irritation in masculine brothels, state inspected and medically controlled:
social visits, at regular infrequent prevented intervals and with regular frequent
preventive superintendence, to and from female acquaintances of recognised
respectability in the vicinity: courses of evening instruction specially designed to
render liberal instruction agreeable.
 What instances of deficient mental development in his wife inclined him in
favour of the lastmentioned (ninth) solution?
In disoccupied moments she had more than once covered a sheet of paper with
signs and hieroglyphics which she stated were Greek and Irish and Hebrew
characters. She had interrogated constantly at varying intervals as to the correct
method of writing the capital initial of the name of a city in Canada, Quebec. She
understood little of political complications, internal, or balance of power, external.
In calculating the addenda of bills she frequently had recourse to digital aid. After
completion of laconic epistolary compositions she abandoned the implement of
calligraphy in the encaustic pigment, exposed to the corrosive action of copperas,
green vitriol and nutgall. Unusual polysyllables of foreign origin she interpreted
phonetically or by false analogy or by both: metempsychosis (met him pike hoses),
alias (a mendacious person mentioned in sacred scripture).
What compensated in the false balance of her intelligence for these and such
deficiencies of judgment regarding persons, places and things?
The false apparent parallelism of all perpendicular arms of all balances, proved
true by construction. The counterbalance of her proficiency of judgment regarding
one person, proved true by experiment.
How had he attempted to remedy this state of comparative ignorance?
Variously. By leaving in a conspicuous place a certain book open at a certain
page: by assuming in her, when alluding explanatorily, latent knowledge: by open
ridicule in her presence of some absent other's ignorant lapse.
With what success had he attempted direct instruction?
She followed not all, a part of the whole, gave attention with interest
comprehended with surprise, with care repeated, with greater difficulty
remembered, forgot with ease, with misgiving reremembered, rerepeated with
error.
What system had proved more effective?
Indirect suggestion implicating selfinterest.
Example?
She disliked umbrella with rain, he liked woman with umbrella, she disliked
new hat with rain, he liked woman with new hat, he bought new hat with rain,
she carried umbrella with new hat.
Accepting the analogy implied in his guest's parable which examples of
postexilic eminence did he adduce?
Three seekers of the pure truth, Moses of Egypt, Moses Maimonides, author of
More Nebukim (Guide of the Perplexed) and Moses Mendelssohn of such eminence
that from Moses (of Egypt) to Moses (Mendelssohn) there arose none like Moses
(Maimonides).
 What statement was made, under correction, by Bloom concerning a fourth
seeker of pure truth, by name Aristotle, mentioned, with permission, by Stephen?
That the seeker mentioned had been a pupil of a rabbinical philosopher, name
uncertain.
Were other anapocryphal illustrious sons of the law and children of a selected or
rejected race mentioned?
Felix Bartholdy Mendelssohn (composer), Baruch Spinoza (philosopher),
Mendoza (pugilist), Ferdinand Lassalle (reformer, duellist).
What fragments of verse from the ancient Hebrew and ancient Irish languages
were cited with modulations of voice and translation of texts by guest to host and
by host to guest?
By Stephen: suil, suil, suil arun, suil go siocair agus suil go cuin (walk, walk,
walk your way, walk in safety, walk with care).
By Bloom: Kkifeloch, harimon rakatejch m'baad l'zamatejch (thy temple amid thy
hair is as a slice of pomegranate).
How was a glyphic comparison of the phonic symbols of both languages made in
substantiation of the oral comparison?
By juxtaposition. On the penultimate blank page of a book of inferior literary
style, entituled Sweets of Sin (produced by Bloom and so manipulated that its
front cover came in contact with the surface of the table) with a pencil (supplied
by Stephen) Stephen wrote the Irish characters for gee, eh, dee, em, simple and
modified, and Bloom in turn wrote the Hebrew characters ghimel, aleph, daleth
and (in the absence of mem) a substituted qoph, explaining their arithmetical
values as ordinal and cardinal numbers, videlicet 3, 1, 4, and 100.
Was the knowledge possessed by both of each of these languages, the extinct
and the revived, theoretical or practical?
Theoretical, being confined to certain grammatical rules of accidence and syntax
and practically excluding vocabulary.
What points of contact existed between these languages and between the
peoples who spoke them?
The presence of guttural sounds, diacritic aspirations, epenthetic and servile
letters in both languages: their antiquity, both having been taught on the plain of
Shinar 242 years after the deluge in the seminary instituted by Fenius Farsaigh,
descendant of Noah, progenitor of Israel, and ascendant of Heber and Heremon,
progenitors of Ireland: their archaeological, genealogical, hagiographical,
exegetical, homiletic, toponomastic, historical and religious literatures comprising
the works of rabbis and culdees, Torah, Talmud (Mischna and Ghemara), Massor,
Pentateuch, Book of the Dun Cow, Book of Ballymote, Garland of Howth, Book of
Kells: their dispersal, persecution, survival and revival: the isolation of their
synagogical and ecclesiastical rites in ghetto (S. Mary's Abbey) and masshouse
(Adam and Eve's tavern): the proscription of their national costumes in penal laws
and jewish dress acts: the restoration in Chanah David of Zion and the possibility
of Irish political autonomy or devolution.
What anthem did Bloom chant partially in anticipation of that multiple,
ethnically irreducible consummation?

Kolod balejwaw pnimah

Nefesch, jehudi, homijah.
Why was the chant arrested at the conclusion of this first distich?
In consequence of defective mnemotechnic.
How did the chanter compensate for this deficiency?
By a periphrastic version of the general text.
In what common study did their mutual reflections merge?
The increasing simplification traceable from the Egyptian epigraphic hieroglyphs
to the Greek and Roman alphabets and the anticipation of modern stenography
and telegraphic code in the cuneiform inscriptions (Semitic) and the virgular
quinquecostate ogham writing (Celtic). Did the guest comply with his host's
request?
Doubly, by appending his signature in Irish and Roman characters.
What was Stephen's auditive sensation?
He heard in a profound ancient male unfamiliar melody the accumulation of the
past.
What was Bloom's visual sensation?
He saw in a quick young male familiar form the predestination of a future.
What were Stephen's and Bloom's quasisimultaneous volitional quasisensations
of concealed identities?
Visually, Stephen's: The traditional figure of hypostasis, depicted by Johannes
Damascenus, Lentulus Romanus and Epiphanius Monachus as leucodermic,
sesquipedalian with winedark hair. Auditively, Bloom's: The traditional accent of
the ecstasy of catastrophe.
What future careers had been possible for Bloom in the past and with what
exemplars?
In the church, Roman, Anglican or Nonconformist: exemplars, the very reverend
John Conmee S. J., the reverend T. Salmon, D. D., provost of Trinity college, Dr
Alexander J. Dowie. At the bar, English or Irish: exemplars, Seymour Bushe, K. C.,
Rufus Isaacs, K. C. On the stage modern or Shakespearean: exemplars, Charles
Wyndham, high comedian Osmond Tearle (died 1901), exponent of Shakespeare.
 Did the host encourage his guest to chant in a modulated voice a strange legend
on an allied theme?
Reassuringly, their place, where none could hear them talk, being secluded,
reassured, the decocted beverages, allowing for subsolid residual sediment of a
mechanical mixture, water plus sugar plus cream plus cocoa, having been
consumed.
Recite the first (major) part of this chanted legend.

Little Harry Hughes and his schoolfellows all

Went out for to play ball.
And the very first ball little Harry Hughes played
He drove it o'er the jew's garden wall.
And the very second ball little Harry Hughes played
He broke the jew's windows all.
How did the son of Rudolph receive this first part?
With unmixed feeling. Smiling, a jew he heard with pleasure and saw the
unbroken kitchen window.
Recite the second part (minor) of the legend.

Then out there came the jew's daughter

And she all dressed in green.
"Come back, come back, you pretty little boy,
And play your ball again."

"I can't come back and I won't come back

Without my schoolfellows all.
For if my master he did hear
He'd make it a sorry ball."

She took him by the lilywhite hand

And led him along the hall
Until she led him to a room
Where none could hear him call.

She took a penknife out of her pocket

And cut off his little head.
And now he'll play his ball no more
For he lies among the dead.
How did the father of Millicent receive this second part?
With mixed feelings. Unsmiling, he heard and saw with wonder a jew's
daughter, all dressed in green.
 Condense Stephen's commentary.
One of all, the least of all, is the victim predestined. Once by inadvertence twice
by design he challenges his destiny. It comes when he is abandoned and
challenges him reluctant and, as an apparition of hope and youth, holds him
unresisting. It leads him to a strange habitation, to a secret infidel apartment, and
there, implacable, immolates him, consenting.
Why was the host (victim predestined) sad?
He wished that a tale of a deed should be told of a deed not by him should by
him not be told.
Why was the host (reluctant, unresisting) still?
In accordance with the law of the conservation of energy.
Why was the host (secret infidel) silent?
He weighed the possible evidences for and against ritual murder: the incitations
of the hierarchy, the superstition of the populace, the propagation of rumour in
continued fraction of veridicity, the envy of opulence, the influence of retaliation,
the sporadic reappearance of atavistic delinquency, the mitigating circumstances
of fanaticism, hypnotic suggestion and somnambulism.
From which (if any) of these mental or physical disorders was he not totally
immune?
From hypnotic suggestion: once, waking, he had not recognised his sleeping
apartment: more than once, waking, he had been for an indefinite time incapable
of moving or uttering sounds. From somnambulism: once, sleeping, his body had
risen, crouched and crawled in the direction of a heatless fire and, having attained
its destination, there, curled, unheated, in night attire had lain, sleeping.
Had this latter or any cognate phenomenon declared itself in any member of his
family?
Twice, in Holles street and in Ontario terrace, his daughter Millicent (Milly) at
the ages of 6 and 8 years had uttered in sleep an exclamation of terror and had
replied to the interrogations of two figures in night attire with a vacant mute
expression.
What other infantile memories had he of her?
15 June 1889. A querulous newborn female infant crying to cause and lessen
congestion. A child renamed Padney Socks she shook with shocks her moneybox:
counted his three free moneypenny buttons, one, tloo, tlee: a doll, a boy, a sailor
she cast away: blond, born of two dark, she had blond ancestry, remote, a
violation, Herr Hauptmann Hainau, Austrian army, proximate, a hallucination,
lieutenant Mulvey, British navy.
What endemic characteristics were present?
 Conversely the nasal and frontal formation was derived in a direct line of
lineage which, though interrupted, would continue at distant intervals to more
distant intervals to its most distant intervals.
What memories had he of her adolescence?
She relegated her hoop and skippingrope to a recess. On the duke's lawn,
entreated by an English visitor, she declined to permit him to make and take away
her photographic image (objection not stated). On the South Circular road in the
company of Elsa Potter, followed by an individual of sinister aspect, she went half
way down Stamer street and turned abruptly back (reason of change not stated).
On the vigil of the 15th anniversary of her birth she wrote a letter from
Mullingar, county Westmeath, making a brief allusion to a local student (faculty
and year not stated).
Did that first division, portending a second division, afflict him?
Less than he had imagined, more than he had hoped.
What second departure was contemporaneously perceived by him similarly, if
differently?
A temporary departure of his cat.
Why similarly, why differently?
Similarly, because actuated by a secret purpose the quest of a new male
(Mullingar student) or of a healing herb (valerian). Differently, because of
different possible returns to the inhabitants or to the habitation.
In other respects were their differences similar?
In passivity, in economy, in the instinct of tradition, in unexpectedness.
As?
Inasmuch as leaning she sustained her blond hair for him to ribbon it for her (cf
neckarching cat). Moreover, on the free surface of the lake in Stephen's green
amid inverted reflections of trees her uncommented spit, describing concentric
circles of waterrings, indicated by the constancy of its permanence the locus of a
somnolent prostrate fish (cf mousewatching cat).
Again, in order to remember the date, combatants, issue and consequences of a
famous military engagement she pulled a plait of her hair (cf earwashing cat).
Furthermore, silly Milly, she dreamed of having had an unspoken unremembered
conversation with a horse whose name had been Joseph to whom (which) she had
offered a tumblerful of lemonade which it (he) had appeared to have accepted (cf
hearthdreaming cat). Hence, in passivity, in economy, in the instinct of tradition,
in unexpectedness, their differences were similar.
In what way had he utilised gifts (1) an owl, (2) a clock, given as matrimonial
auguries, to interest and to instruct her?
 As object lessons to explain: 1) the nature and habits of oviparous animals, the
possibility of aerial flight, certain abnormalities of vision, the secular process of
imbalsamation: 2) the principle of the pendulum, exemplified in bob, wheelgear
and regulator, the translation in terms of human or social regulation of the various
positions of clockwise moveable indicators on an unmoving dial, the exactitude of
the recurrence per hour of an instant in each hour when the longer and the shorter
indicator were at the same angle of inclination, videlicet, 5 5/11 minutes past
each hour per hour in arithmetical progression.
In what manners did she reciprocate?
She remembered: on the 27th anniversary of his birth she presented to him a
breakfast moustachecup of imitation Crown Derby porcelain ware. She provided:
at quarter day or thereabouts if or when purchases had been made by him not for
her she showed herself attentive to his necessities, anticipating his desires. She
admired: a natural phenomenon having been explained by him to her she
expressed the immediate desire to possess without gradual acquisition a fraction
of his science, the moiety, the quarter, a thousandth part.
What proposal did Bloom, diambulist, father of Milly, somnambulist, make to
Stephen, noctambulist?
To pass in repose the hours intervening between Thursday (proper) and Friday
(normal) on an extemporised cubicle in the apartment immediately above the
kitchen and immediately adjacent to the sleeping apartment of his host and
hostess.
What various advantages would or might have resulted from a prolongation of
such an extemporisation?
For the guest: security of domicile and seclusion of study. For the host:
rejuvenation of intelligence, vicarious satisfaction. For the hostess: disintegration
of obsession, acquisition of correct Italian pronunciation.
Why might these several provisional contingencies between a guest and a
hostess not necessarily preclude or be precluded by a permanent eventuality of
reconciliatory union between a schoolfellow and a jew's daughter?
Because the way to daughter led through mother, the way to mother through
daughter.
To what inconsequent polysyllabic question of his host did the guest return a
monosyllabic negative answer?
If he had known the late Mrs Emily Sinico, accidentally killed at Sydney Parade
railway station, 14 October 1903.
What inchoate corollary statement was consequently suppressed by the host?
A statement explanatory of his absence on the occasion of the interment of Mrs
Mary Dedalus (born Goulding), 26 June 1903, vigil of the anniversary of the
decease of Rudolph Bloom (born Virag).
 Was the proposal of asylum accepted?
Promptly, inexplicably, with amicability, gratefully it was declined. What
exchange of money took place between host and guest?
The former returned to the latter, without interest, a sum of money (1-7-0), one
pound seven shillings sterling, advanced by the latter to the former.
What counterproposals were alternately advanced, accepted, modified, declined,
restated in other terms, reaccepted, ratified, reconfirmed?
To inaugurate a prearranged course of Italian instruction, place the residence of
the instructed. To inaugurate a course of vocal instruction, place the residence of
the instructress. To inaugurate a series of static semistatic and peripatetic
intellectual dialogues, places the residence of both speakers (if both speakers were
resident in the same place), the Ship hotel and tavern, 6 Lower Abbey street (W.
and E. Connery, proprietors), the National Library of Ireland, 10 Kildare street,
the National Maternity Hospital, 29, 30 and 31 Holles street, a public garden,
the vicinity of a place of worship, a conjunction of two or more public
thoroughfares, the point of bisection of a right line drawn between their
residences (if both speakers were resident in different places).
What rendered problematic for Bloom the realisation of these mutually
selfexcluding propositions?
The irreparability of the past: once at a performance of Albert Hengler's circus
in the Rotunda, Rutland square, Dublin, an intuitive particoloured clown in quest
of paternity had penetrated from the ring to a place in the auditorium where
Bloom, solitary, was seated and had publicly declared to an exhilarated audience
that he (Bloom) was his (the clown's) papa. The imprevidibility of the future: once
in the summer of 1898 he (Bloom) had marked a florin (2/-) with three notches
on the milled edge and tendered it m payment of an account due to and received
by J. and T. Davy, family grocers, 1 Charlemont Mall, Grand Canal, for
circulation on the waters of civic finance, for possible, circuitous or direct, return.
Was the clown Bloom's son?
No.
Had Bloom's coin returned?
Never.
Why would a recurrent frustration the more depress him?
Because at the critical turningpoint of human existence he desired to amend
many social conditions, the product of inequality and avarice and international
animosity. He believed then that human life was infinitely perfectible, eliminating
these conditions?
There remained the generic conditions imposed by natural, as distinct from
human law, as integral parts of the human whole: the necessity of destruction to
procure alimentary sustenance: the painful character of the ultimate functions of
separate existence, the agonies of birth and death: the monotonous menstruation
of simian and (particularly) human females extending from the age of puberty to
the menopause: inevitable accidents at sea, in mines and factories: certain very
painful maladies and their resultant surgical operations, innate lunacy and
congenital criminality, decimating epidemics: catastrophic cataclysms which make
terror the basis of human mentality: seismic upheavals the epicentres of which are
located in densely populated regions: the fact of vital growth, through convulsions
of metamorphosis, from infancy through maturity to decay.
Why did he desist from speculation?
Because it was a task for a superior intelligence to substitute other more
acceptable phenomena in the place of the less acceptable phenomena to be
removed.
Did Stephen participate in his dejection?
He affirmed his significance as a conscious rational animal proceeding
syllogistically from the known to the unknown and a conscious rational reagent
between a micro and a macrocosm ineluctably constructed upon the incertitude of
the void.
Was this affirmation apprehended by Bloom?
Not verbally. Substantially.
What comforted his misapprehension?
That as a competent keyless citizen he had proceeded energetically from the
unknown to the known through the incertitude of the void.
In what order of precedence, with what attendant ceremony was the exodus
from the house of bondage to the wilderness of inhabitation effected?
Lighted Candle in Stick borne by
BLOOM
Diaconal Hat on Ashplant borne by
STEPHEN:
With what intonation secreto of what commemorative psalm?
The 113th, modus peregrinus: In exitu Israel de Egypto: domus Jacob de populo
barbaro.
What did each do at the door of egress?
Bloom set the candlestick on the floor. Stephen put the hat on his head.
For what creature was the door of egress a door of ingress?
 For a cat.
What spectacle confronted them when they, first the host, then the guest,
emerged silently, doubly dark, from obscurity by a passage from the rere of the
house into the penumbra of the garden?
The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.
With what meditations did Bloom accompany his demonstration to his
companion of various constellations?
Meditations of evolution increasingly vaster: of the moon invisible in incipient
lunation, approaching perigee: of the infinite lattiginous scintillating uncondensed
milky way, discernible by daylight by an observer placed at the lower end of a
cylindrical vertical shaft 5000 ft deep sunk from the surface towards the centre of
the earth: of Sirius (alpha in Canis Maior) 10 lightyears (57,000,000,000,000
miles) distant and in volume 900 times the dimension of our planet: of Arcturus:
of the precession of equinoxes: of Orion with belt and sextuple sun theta and
nebula in which 100 of our solar systems could be contained: of moribund and of
nascent new stars such as Nova in 1901: of our system plunging towards the
constellation of Hercules: of the parallax or parallactic drift of socalled fixed stars,
in reality evermoving wanderers from immeasurably remote eons to infinitely
remote futures in comparison with which the years, threescore and ten, of allotted
human life formed a parenthesis of infinitesimal brevity.
Were there obverse meditations of involution increasingly less vast?
Of the eons of geological periods recorded in the stratifications of the earth: of
the myriad minute entomological organic existences concealed in cavities of the
earth, beneath removable stones, in hives and mounds, of microbes, germs,
bacteria, bacilli, spermatozoa: of the incalculable trillions of billions of millions of
imperceptible molecules contained by cohesion of molecular affinity in a single
pinhead: of the universe of human serum constellated with red and white bodies,
themselves universes of void space constellated with other bodies, each, in
continuity, its universe of divisible component bodies of which each was again
divisible in divisions of redivisible component bodies, dividends and divisors ever
diminishing without actual division till, if the progress were carried far enough,
nought nowhere was never reached.
Why did he not elaborate these calculations to a more precise result?
Because some years previously in 1886 when occupied with the problem of the
quadrature of the circle he had learned of the existence of a number computed to
a relative degree of accuracy to be of such magnitude and of so many places, e.g.,
the 9th power of the 9th power of 9, that, the result having been obtained, 33
closely printed volumes of 1000 pages each of innumerable quires and reams of
India paper would have to be requisitioned in order to contain the complete tale of
its printed integers of units, tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands,
hundreds of thousands, millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions, billions,
the nucleus of the nebula of every digit of every series containing succinctly the
potentiality of being raised to the utmost kinetic elaboration of any power of any
of its powers.
Did he find the problems of the inhabitability of the planets and their satellites
by a race, given in species, and of the possible social and moral redemption of
said race by a redeemer, easier of solution?
Of a different order of difficulty. Conscious that the human organism, normally
capable of sustaining an atmospheric pressure of 19 tons, when elevated to a
considerable altitude in the terrestrial atmosphere suffered with arithmetical
progression of intensity, according as the line of demarcation between troposphere
and stratosphere was approximated from nasal hemorrhage, impeded respiration
and vertigo, when proposing this problem for solution, he had conjectured as a
working hypothesis which could not be proved impossible that a more adaptable
and differently anatomically constructed race of beings might subsist otherwise
under Martian, Mercurial, Veneral, Jovian, Saturnian, Neptunian or Uranian
sufficient and equivalent conditions, though an apogean humanity of beings
created in varying forms with finite differences resulting similar to the whole and
to one another would probably there as here remain inalterably and inalienably
attached to vanities, to vanities of vanities and to all that is vanity.

And the problem of possible redemption?

The minor was proved by the major.
Which various features of the constellations were in turn considered?
The various colours significant of various degrees of vitality (white, yellow,
crimson, vermilion, cinnabar): their degrees of brilliancy: their magnitudes
revealed up to and including the 7th: their positions: the waggoner's star:
Walsingham way: the chariot of David: the annular cinctures of Saturn: the
condensation of spiral nebulae into suns: the interdependent gyrations of double
suns: the independent synchronous discoveries of Galileo, Simon Marius, Piazzi,
Le Verrier, Herschel, Galle: the systematisations attempted by Bode and Kepler of
cubes of distances and squares of times of revolution: the almost infinite
compressibility of hirsute comets and their vast elliptical egressive and reentrant
orbits from perihelion to aphelion: the sidereal origin of meteoric stones: the
Libyan floods on Mars about the period of the birth of the younger astroscopist:
the annual recurrence of meteoric showers about the period of the feast of S.
Lawrence (martyr, lo August): the monthly recurrence known as the new moon
with the old moon in her arms: the posited influence of celestial on human bodies:
the appearance of a star (1st magnitude) of exceeding brilliancy dominating by
night and day (a new luminous sun generated by the collision and amalgamation
in incandescence of two nonluminous exsuns) about the period of the birth of
William Shakespeare over delta in the recumbent neversetting constellation of
Cassiopeia and of a star (2nd magnitude) of similar origin but of lesser brilliancy
which had appeared in and disappeared from the constellation of the Corona
Septentrionalis about the period of the birth of Leopold Bloom and of other stars
of (presumably) similar origin which had (effectively or presumably) appeared in
and disappeared from the constellation of Andromeda about the period of the
birth of Stephen Dedalus, and in and from the constellation of Auriga some years
after the birth and death of Rudolph Bloom, junior, and in and from other
constellations some years before or after the birth or death of other persons: the
attendant phenomena of eclipses, solar and lunar, from immersion to emersion,
abatement of wind, transit of shadow, taciturnity of winged creatures, emergence
of nocturnal or crepuscular animals, persistence of infernal light, obscurity of
terrestrial waters, pallor of human beings.
His (Bloom's) logical conclusion, having weighed the matter and allowing for
possible error?
That it was not a heaventree, not a heavengrot, not a heavenbeast, not a
heavenman. That it was a Utopia, there being no known method from the known
to the unknown: an infinity renderable equally finite by the suppositious
apposition of one or more bodies equally of the same and of different magnitudes:
a mobility of illusory forms immobilised in space, remobilised in air: a past which
possibly had ceased to exist as a present before its probable spectators had
entered actual present existence.
Was he more convinced of the esthetic value of the spectacle?
Indubitably in consequence of the reiterated examples of poets in the delirium
of the frenzy of attachment or in the abasement of rejection invoking ardent
sympathetic constellations or the frigidity of the satellite of their planet.
Did he then accept as an article of belief the theory of astrological influences
upon sublunary disasters?
It seemed to him as possible of proof as of confutation and the nomenclature
employed in its selenographical charts as attributable to verifiable intuition as to
fallacious analogy: the lake of dreams, the sea of rains, the gulf of dews, the ocean
of fecundity.
What special affinities appeared to him to exist between the moon and woman?
Her antiquity in preceding and surviving successive tellurian generations: her
nocturnal predominance: her satellitic dependence: her luminary reflection: her
constancy under all her phases, rising and setting by her appointed times, waxing
and waning: the forced invariability of her aspect: her indeterminate response to
inaffirmative interrogation: her potency over effluent and refluent waters: her
power to enamour, to mortify, to invest with beauty, to render insane, to incite to
and aid delinquency: the tranquil inscrutability of her visage: the terribility of her
isolated dominant implacable resplendent propinquity: her omens of tempest and
of calm: the stimulation of her light, her motion and her presence: the admonition
of her craters, her arid seas, her silence: her splendour, when visible: her
attraction, when invisible.
What visible luminous sign attracted Bloom's, who attracted Stephen's, gaze?
 In the second storey (rere) of his (Bloom's) house the light of a paraffin oil lamp
with oblique shade projected on a screen of roller blind supplied by Frank O'Hara,
window blind, curtain pole and revolving shutter manufacturer, 16 Aungier street.
How did he elucidate the mystery of an invisible attractive person, his wife
Marion (Molly) Bloom, denoted by a visible splendid sign, a lamp?
With indirect and direct verbal allusions or affirmations: with subdued affection
and admiration: with description: with impediment: with suggestion.
Both then were silent?
Silent, each contemplating the other in both mirrors of the reciprocal flesh of
theirhisnothis fellowfaces.
Were they indefinitely inactive?
At Stephen's suggestion, at Bloom's instigation both, first Stephen, then Bloom,
in penumbra urinated, their sides contiguous, their organs of micturition
reciprocally rendered invisible by manual circumposition, their gazes, first
Bloom's, then Stephen's, elevated to the projected luminous and semiluminous
shadow.
Similarly?
The trajectories of their, first sequent, then simultaneous, urinations were
dissimilar: Bloom's longer, less irruent, in the incomplete form of the bifurcated
penultimate alphabetical letter, who in his ultimate year at High School (1880)
had been capable of attaining the point of greatest altitude against the whole
concurrent strength of the institution, 210 scholars: Stephen's higher, more
sibilant, who in the ultimate hours of the previous day had augmented by diuretic
consumption an insistent vesical pressure.
What different problems presented themselves to each concerning the invisible
audible collateral organ of the other?
To Bloom: the problems of irritability, tumescence, rigidity, reactivity,
dimension, sanitariness, pilosity.
To Stephen: the problem of the sacerdotal integrity of Jesus circumcised (I
January, holiday of obligation to hear mass and abstain from unnecessary servile
work) and the problem as to whether the divine prepuce, the carnal bridal ring of
the holy Roman catholic apostolic church, conserved in Calcata, were deserving of
simple hyperduly or of the fourth degree of latria accorded to the abscission of
such divine excrescences as hair and toenails.
What celestial sign was by both simultaneously observed?
A star precipitated with great apparent velocity across the firmament from Vega
in the Lyre above the zenith beyond the stargroup of the Tress of Berenice towards
the zodiacal sign of Leo.
How did the centripetal remainer afford egress to the centrifugal departer?
 By inserting the barrel of an arruginated male key in the hole of an unstable
female lock, obtaining a purchase on the bow of the key and turning its wards
from right to left, withdrawing a bolt from its staple, pulling inward spasmodically
an obsolescent unhinged door and revealing an aperture for free egress and free
ingress.
How did they take leave, one of the other, in separation?
Standing perpendicular at the same door and on different sides of its base, the
lines of their valedictory arms, meeting at any point and forming any angle less
than the sum of two right angles.
What sound accompanied the union of their tangent, the disunion of their
(respectively) centrifugal and centripetal hands?
The sound of the peal of the hour of the night by the chime of the bells in the
church of Saint George.
What echoes of that sound were by both and each heard?
By Stephen:
Liliata rutilantium. Turma circumdet. Iubilantium te virginum. Chorus excipiat.
By Bloom:

Heigho, heigho,
Heigho, heigho.
Where were the several members of the company which with Bloom that day at
the bidding of that peal had travelled from Sandymount in the south to Glasnevin
in the north?
Martin Cunningham (in bed), Jack Power (in bed), Simon Dedalus (in bed), Ned
Lambert (in bed), Tom Kernan (in bed), Joe Hynes (in bed), John Henry Menton (in
bed), Bernard Corrigan (in bed), Patsy Dignam (in bed), Paddy Dignam (in the
grave).
Alone, what did Bloom hear?
The double reverberation of retreating feet on the heavenborn earth, the double
vibration of a jew's harp in the resonant lane.
Alone, what did Bloom feel?
The cold of interstellar space, thousands of degrees below freezing point or the
absolute zero of Fahrenheit, Centigrade or Reaumur: the incipient intimations of
proximate dawn.
Of what did bellchime and handtouch and footstep and lonechill remind him?
Of companions now in various manners in different places defunct: Percy
Apjohn (killed in action, Modder River), Philip Gilligan (phthisis, Jervis Street
hospital), Matthew F. Kane (accidental drowning, Dublin Bay), Philip Moisel
(pyemia, Heytesbury street), Michael Hart (phthisis, Mater Misericordiae
hospital), Patrick Dignam (apoplexy, Sandymount).
What prospect of what phenomena inclined him to remain?
The disparition of three final stars, the diffusion of daybreak, the apparition of
a new solar disk.
Had he ever been a spectator of those phenomena?
Once, in 1887, after a protracted performance of charades in the house of Luke
Doyle, Kimmage, he had awaited with patience the apparition of the diurnal
phenomenon, seated on a wall, his gaze turned in the direction of Mizrach, the
east.
He remembered the initial paraphenomena?
More active air, a matutinal distant cock, ecclesiastical clocks at various points,
avine music, the isolated tread of an early wayfarer, the visible diffusion of the
light of an invisible luminous body, the first golden limb of the resurgent sun
perceptible low on the horizon.
Did he remain?
With deep inspiration he returned, retraversing the garden, reentering the
passage, reclosing the door. With brief suspiration he reassumed the candle,
reascended the stairs, reapproached the door of the front room, hallfloor, and
reentered.
What suddenly arrested his ingress?
The right temporal lobe of the hollow sphere of his cranium came into contact
with a solid timber angle where, an infinitesimal but sensible fraction of a second
later, a painful sensation was located in consequence of antecedent sensations
transmitted and registered.
Describe the alterations effected in the disposition of the articles of furniture.
A sofa upholstered in prune plush had been translocated from opposite the door
to the ingleside near the compactly furled Union Jack (an alteration which he had
frequently intended to execute): the blue and white checker inlaid majolicatopped
table had been placed opposite the door in the place vacated by the prune plush
sofa: the walnut sideboard (a projecting angle of which had momentarily arrested
his ingress) had been moved from its position beside the door to a more
advantageous but more perilous position in front of the door: two chairs had been
moved from right and left of the ingleside to the position originally occupied by
the blue and white checker inlaid majolicatopped table.
Describe them.
One: a squat stuffed easychair, with stout arms extended and back slanted to
the rere, which, repelled in recoil, had then upturned an irregular fringe of a
rectangular rug and now displayed on its amply upholstered seat a centralised
diffusing and diminishing discolouration. The other: a slender splayfoot chair of
glossy cane curves, placed directly opposite the former, its frame from top to seat
and from seat to base being varnished dark brown, its seat being a bright circle of
white plaited rush.
What significances attached to these two chairs?
Significances of similitude, of posture, of symbolism, of circumstantial evidence,
of testimonial supermanence.
What occupied the position originally occupied by the sideboard?
A vertical piano (Cadby) with exposed keyboard, its closed coffin supporting a
pair of long yellow ladies' gloves and an emerald ashtray containing four
consumed matches, a partly consumed cigarette and two discoloured ends of
cigarettes, its musicrest supporting the music in the key of G natural for voice and
piano of Love's Old Sweet Song (words by G. Clifton Bingham, composed by J. L.
Molloy, sung by Madam Antoinette Sterling) open at the last page with the final
indications ad libitum, forte, pedal, animato, sustained pedal, ritirando, close.
With what sensations did Bloom contemplate in rotation these objects?
With strain, elevating a candlestick: with pain, feeling on his right temple a
contused tumescence: with attention, focussing his gaze on a large dull passive
and a slender bright active: with solicitation, bending and downturning the
upturned rugfringe: with amusement, remembering Dr Malachi Mulligan's scheme
of colour containing the gradation of green: with pleasure, repeating the words
and antecedent act and perceiving through various channels of internal sensibility
the consequent and concomitant tepid pleasant diffusion of gradual
discolouration.
His next proceeding?
From an open box on the majolicatopped table he extracted a black diminutive
cone, one inch in height, placed it on its circular base on a small tin plate, placed
his candlestick on the right corner of the mantelpiece, produced from his
waistcoat a folded page of prospectus (illustrated) entitled Agendath Netaim,
unfolded the same, examined it superficially, rolled it into a thin cylinder, ignited
it in the candleflame, applied it when ignited to the apex of the cone till the latter
reached the stage of rutilance, placed the cylinder in the basin of the candlestick
disposing its unconsumed part in such a manner as to facilitate total combustion.
What followed this operation?
The truncated conical crater summit of the diminutive volcano emitted a vertical
and serpentine fume redolent of aromatic oriental incense.
What homothetic objects, other than the candlestick, stood on the mantelpiece?
A timepiece of striated Connemara marble, stopped at the hour of 4.46 a.m. on
the 21 March 1896, matrimonial gift of Matthew Dillon: a dwarf tree of glacial
arborescence under a transparent bellshade, matrimonial gift of Luke and Caroline
Doyle: an embalmed owl, matrimonial gift of Alderman John Hooper.
What interchanges of looks took place between these three objects and Bloom?
In the mirror of the giltbordered pierglass the undecorated back of the dwarf
tree regarded the upright back of the embalmed owl. Before the mirror the
matrimonial gift of Alderman John Hooper with a clear melancholy wise bright
motionless compassionate gaze regarded Bloom while Bloom with obscure tranquil
profound motionless compassionated gaze regarded the matrimonial gift of Luke
and Caroline Doyle.
What composite asymmetrical image in the mirror then attracted his attention?
The image of a solitary (ipsorelative) mutable (aliorelative) man.
Why solitary (ipsorelative)?
Brothers and sisters had he none. Yet that man's father was his grandfather's son.
Why mutable (aliorelative)?
From infancy to maturity he had resembled his maternal procreatrix. From
maturity to senility he would increasingly resemble his paternal procreator.
What final visual impression was communicated to him by the mirror?
The optical reflection of several inverted volumes improperly arranged and not
in the order of their common letters with scintillating titles on the two
bookshelves opposite.
Catalogue these books.
Thom's Dublin Post Office Directory, 1886. Denis Florence M'Carthy's Poetical
Works (copper beechleaf bookmark at p. 5). Shakespeare's Works (dark crimson
morocco, goldtooled).
The Useful Ready Reckoner (brown cloth).
The Secret History of the Court of Charles II (red cloth, tooled binding). The
Child's Guide (blue cloth).
The Beauties of Killarney (wrappers).
When We Were Boys by William O'Brien M. P. (green cloth, slightly faded,
envelope bookmark at p. 217).
Thoughts from Spinoza (maroon leather).
The Story of the Heavens by Sir Robert Ball (blue cloth). Ellis's Three Trips to
Madagascar (brown cloth, title obliterated).
 The Stark-Munro Letters by A. Conan Doyle, property of the City of Dublin
Public Library, 106 Capel street, lent 21 May (Whitsun Eve) 1904, due 4 June
1904, 13 days overdue (black cloth binding, bearing white letternumber ticket).
Voyages in China by "Viator" (recovered with brown paper, red ink title).
Philosophy of the Talmud (sewn pamphlet). Lockhart's Life of Napoleon (cover
wanting, marginal annotations, minimising victories, aggrandising defeats of the
protagonist).
Soll und Haben by Gustav Freytag (black boards, Gothic characters, cigarette
coupon bookmark at p. 24). Hozier's History of the Russo-Turkish War (brown
cloth, a volumes, with gummed label, Garrison Library, Governor's Parade,
Gibraltar, on verso of cover).
Laurence Bloomfield in Ireland by William Allingham (second edition, green
cloth, gilt trefoil design, previous owner's name on recto of flyleaf erased).
A Handbook of Astronomy (cover, brown leather, detached, S plates, antique
letterpress long primer, author's footnotes nonpareil, marginal clues brevier,
captions small pica).
The Hidden Life of Christ (black boards).
In the Track of the Sun (yellow cloth, titlepage missing, recurrent title
intestation).
Physical Strength and How to Obtain It by Eugen Sandow (red cloth).
Short but yet Plain Elements of Geometry written in French by F. Ignat. Pardies
and rendered into English by John Harris D. D. London, printed for R. Knaplock
at the Bifhop's Head, MDCCXI, with dedicatory epiftle to his worthy friend
Charles Cox, efquire, Member of Parliament for the burgh of Southwark and
having ink calligraphed statement on the flyleaf certifying that the book was the
property of Michael Gallagher, dated this 10th day of May 1822 and requefting
the perfon who should find it, if the book should be loft or go aftray, to reftore it
to Michael Gallagher, carpenter, Dufery Gate, Ennifcorthy, county Wicklow, the
fineft place in the world.
What reflections occupied his mind during the process of reversion of the
inverted volumes?
The necessity of order, a place for everything and everything in its place: the
deficient appreciation of literature possessed by females: the incongruity of an
apple incuneated in a tumbler and of an umbrella inclined in a closestool: the
insecurity of hiding any secret document behind, beneath or between the pages of
a book.
Which volume was the largest in bulk?
Hozier's History of the Russo-Turkish war.
What among other data did the second volume of the work in question contain?
 The name of a decisive battle (forgotten), frequently remembered by a decisive
officer, major Brian Cooper Tweedy (remembered).
Why, firstly and secondly, did he not consult the work in question?
Firstly, in order to exercise mnemotechnic: secondly, because after an interval of
amnesia, when, seated at the central table, about to consult the work in question,
he remembered by mnemotechnic the name of the military engagement, Plevna.
What caused him consolation in his sitting posture?
The candour, nudity, pose, tranquility, youth, grace, sex, counsel of a statue
erect in the centre of the table, an image of Narcissus purchased by auction from
P. A. Wren, 9 Bachelor's Walk.
What caused him irritation in his sitting posture? Inhibitory pressure of collar
(size 17) and waistcoat (5 buttons), two articles of clothing superfluous in the
costume of mature males and inelastic to alterations of mass by expansion.
How was the irritation allayed?
He removed his collar, with contained black necktie and collapsible stud, from
his neck to a position on the left of the table. He unbuttoned successively in
reversed direction waistcoat, trousers, shirt and vest along the medial line of
irregular incrispated black hairs extending in triangular convergence from the
pelvic basin over the circumference of the abdomen and umbilicular fossicle along
the medial line of nodes to the intersection of the sixth pectoral vertebrae, thence
produced both ways at right angles and terminating in circles described about two
equidistant points, right and left, on the summits of the mammary prominences.
He unbraced successively each of six minus one braced trouser buttons, arranged
in pairs, of which one incomplete.
What involuntary actions followed?
He compressed between 2 fingers the flesh circumjacent to a cicatrice in the left
infracostal region below the diaphragm resulting from a sting inflicted 2 weeks
and 3 days previously (23 May 1904) by a bee. He scratched imprecisely with his
right hand, though insensible of prurition, various points and surfaces of his
partly exposed, wholly abluted skin. He inserted his left hand into the left lower
pocket of his waistcoat and extracted and replaced a silver coin (I shilling), placed
there (presumably) on the occasion (17 October 1903) of the interment of Mrs
Emily Sinico, Sydney Parade.
Compile the budget for 16 June 1904. DEBIT

1 Pork Kidney
1 Copy FREEMAN'S JOURNAL
1 Bath And Gratification
Tramfare
1 In Memoriam Patrick Dignam
2 Banbury cakes
1 Lunch
1 Renewal fee for book
1 Packet Notepaper and Envelopes
1 Dinner and Gratification
1 Postal Order and Stamp
Tramfare
1 Pig's Foot
1 Sheep's Trotter
1 Cake Fry's Plain Chocolate
1 Square Soda Bread
1 Coffee and Bun
Loan (Stephen Dedalus) refunded
BALANCE

L. s. d.
0—0—3
0—0—1
0—1—6
0—0—1
0—5—0
0—0—1
0—0—7
0—1—0
0—0—2
0—2—0
0—2—8
0—0—1
0—0—4
0—0—3
0—0—1
0—0—4
0—0—4
1—7—0
0-17—5
2-19—3
CREDIT

Cash in hand
Commission recd. Freeman's Journal
Loan (Stephen Dedalus)

L. s. d.
0—4—9
1—7—6
1—7—0
 2-19—3
Did the process of divestiture continue?
Sensible of a benignant persistent ache in his footsoles he extended his foot to
one side and observed the creases, protuberances and salient points caused by
foot pressure in the course of walking repeatedly in several different directions,
then, inclined, he disnoded the laceknots, unhooked and loosened the laces, took
off each of his two boots for the second time, detached the partially moistened
right sock through the fore part of which the nail of his great toe had again
effracted, raised his right foot and, having unhooked a purple elastic sock
suspender, took off his right sock, placed his unclothed right foot on the margin of
the seat of his chair, picked at and gently lacerated the protruding part of the
great toenail, raised the part lacerated to his nostrils and inhaled the odour of the
quick, then, with satisfaction, threw away the lacerated ungual fragment.
Why with satisfaction?
Because the odour inhaled corresponded to other odours inhaled of other ungual
fragments, picked and lacerated by Master Bloom, pupil of Mrs Ellis's juvenile
school, patiently each night in the act of brief genuflection and nocturnal prayer
and ambitious meditation.
In what ultimate ambition had all concurrent and consecutive ambitions now
coalesced?
Not to inherit by right of primogeniture, gavelkind or borough English, or
possess in perpetuity an extensive demesne of a sufficient number of acres, roods
and perches, statute land measure (valuation 42 pounds), of grazing turbary
surrounding a baronial hall with gatelodge and carriage drive nor, on the other
hand, a terracehouse or semidetached villa, described as Rus in Urbe or Qui si
sana, but to purchase by private treaty in fee simple a thatched bungalowshaped
2 storey dwellinghouse of southerly aspect, surmounted by vane and lightning
conductor, connected with the earth, with porch covered by parasitic plants (ivy
or Virginia creeper), halldoor, olive green, with smart carriage finish and neat
doorbrasses, stucco front with gilt tracery at eaves and gable, rising, if possible,
upon a gentle eminence with agreeable prospect from balcony with stone pillar
parapet over unoccupied and unoccupyable interjacent pastures and standing in 5
or 6 acres of its own ground, at such a distance from the nearest public
thoroughfare as to render its houselights visible at night above and through a
quickset hornbeam hedge of topiary cutting, situate at a given point not less than
1 statute mile from the periphery of the metropolis, within a time limit of not
more than 15 minutes from tram or train line (e.g., Dundrum, south, or Sutton,
north, both localities equally reported by trial to resemble the terrestrial poles in
being favourable climates for phthisical subjects), the premises to be held under
feefarm grant, lease 999 years, the messuage to consist of 1 drawingroom with
baywindow (2 lancets), thermometer affixed, 1 sittingroom, 4 bedrooms, 2
servants' rooms, tiled kitchen with close range and scullery, lounge hall fitted with
linen wallpresses, fumed oak sectional bookcase containing the Encyclopaedia
Britannica and New Century Dictionary, transverse obsolete medieval and oriental
weapons, dinner gong, alabaster lamp, bowl pendant, vulcanite automatic
telephone receiver with adjacent directory, handtufted Axminster carpet with
cream ground and trellis border, loo table with pillar and claw legs, hearth with
massive firebrasses and ormolu mantel chronometer clock, guaranteed timekeeper
with cathedral chime, barometer with hygrographic chart, comfortable lounge
settees and corner fitments, upholstered in ruby plush with good springing and
sunk centre, three banner Japanese screen and cuspidors (club style, rich
winecoloured leather, gloss renewable with a minimum of labour by use of linseed
oil and vinegar) and pyramidically prismatic central chandelier lustre, bentwood
perch with fingertame parrot (expurgated language), embossed mural paper at
10/- per dozen with transverse swags of carmine floral design and top crown
frieze, staircase, three continuous flights at successive right angles, of varnished
cleargrained oak, treads and risers, newel, balusters and handrail, with steppedup
panel dado, dressed with camphorated wax: bathroom, hot and cold supply,
reclining and shower: water closet on mezzanine provided with opaque singlepane
oblong window, tipup seat, bracket lamp, brass tierod and brace, armrests,
footstool and artistic oleograph on inner face of door: ditto, plain: servants'
apartments with separate sanitary and hygienic necessaries for cook, general and
betweenmaid (salary, rising by biennial unearned increments of 2 pounds, with
comprehensive fidelity insurance, annual bonus (1 pound) and retiring allowance
(based on the 65 system) after 30 years' service), pantry, buttery, larder,
refrigerator, outoffices, coal and wood cellarage with winebin (still and sparkling
vintages) for distinguished guests, if entertained to dinner (evening dress), carbon
monoxide gas supply throughout.
What additional attractions might the grounds contain?
As addenda, a tennis and fives court, a shrubbery, a glass summerhouse with
tropical palms, equipped in the best botanical manner, a rockery with waterspray,
a beehive arranged on humane principles, oval flowerbeds in rectangular
grassplots set with eccentric ellipses of scarlet and chrome tulips, blue scillas,
crocuses, polyanthus, sweet William, sweet pea, lily of the valley (bulbs obtainable
from sir James W. Mackey (Limited) wholesale and retail seed and bulb merchants
and nurserymen, agents for chemical manures, 23 Sackville street, upper), an
orchard, kitchen garden and vinery protected against illegal trespassers by
glasstopped mural enclosures, a lumbershed with padlock for various inventoried
implements.
As?
Eeltraps, lobsterpots, fishingrods, hatchet, steelyard, grindstone, clodcrusher,
swatheturner, carriagesack, telescope ladder, 10 tooth rake, washing clogs,
haytedder, tumbling rake, billhook, paintpot, brush, hoe and so on.
What improvements might be subsequently introduced?
A rabbitry and fowlrun, a dovecote, a botanical conservatory, 2 hammocks
(lady's and gentleman's), a sundial shaded and sheltered by laburnum or lilac
trees, an exotically harmonically accorded Japanese tinkle gatebell affixed to left
lateral gatepost, a capacious waterbutt, a lawnmower with side delivery and
grassbox, a lawnsprinkler with hydraulic hose.
What facilities of transit were desirable?
When citybound frequent connection by train or tram from their respective
intermediate station or terminal. When countrybound velocipedes, a chainless
freewheel roadster cycle with side basketcar attached, or draught conveyance, a
donkey with wicker trap or smart phaeton with good working solidungular cob
(roan gelding, 14 h).
What might be the name of this erigible or erected residence?
Bloom Cottage. Saint Leopold's. Flowerville.
Could Bloom of 7 Eccles street foresee Bloom of Flowerville?
In loose allwool garments with Harris tweed cap, price 8/6, and useful garden
boots with elastic gussets and wateringcan, planting aligned young firtrees,
syringing, pruning, staking, sowing hayseed, trundling a weedladen wheelbarrow
without excessive fatigue at sunset amid the scent of newmown hay, ameliorating
the soil, multiplying wisdom, achieving longevity.
What syllabus of intellectual pursuits was simultaneously possible?
Snapshot photography, comparative study of religions, folklore relative to
various amatory and superstitious practices, contemplation of the celestial
constellations.
What lighter recreations?
Outdoor: garden and fieldwork, cycling on level macadamised causeways
ascents of moderately high hills, natation in secluded fresh water and unmolested
river boating in secure wherry or light curricle with kedge anchor on reaches free
from weirs and rapids (period of estivation), vespertinal perambulation or
equestrian circumprocession with inspection of sterile landscape and contrastingly
agreeable cottagers' fires of smoking peat turves (period of hibernation). Indoor:
discussion in tepid security of unsolved historical and criminal problems: lecture
of unexpurgated exotic erotic masterpieces: house carpentry with toolbox
containing hammer, awl nails, screws, tintacks, gimlet, tweezers, bullnose plane
and turnscrew. Might he become a gentleman farmer of field produce and live
stock?
Not impossibly, with 1 or 2 stripper cows, 1 pike of upland hay and requisite
farming implements, e.g., an end-to-end churn, a turnip pulper etc.
What would be his civic functions and social status among the county families
and landed gentry?
Arranged successively in ascending powers of hierarchical order, that of
gardener, groundsman, cultivator, breeder, and at the zenith of his career,
resident magistrate or justice of the peace with a family crest and coat of arms and
appropriate classical motto (Semper paratus), duly recorded in the court directory
(Bloom, Leopold P., M. P., P. C., K. P., L. L. D. (honoris causa), Bloomville,
Dundrum) and mentioned in court and fashionable intelligence (Mr and Mrs
Leopold Bloom have left Kingstown for England).
What course of action did he outline for himself in such capacity?
A course that lay between undue clemency and excessive rigour: the
dispensation in a heterogeneous society of arbitrary classes, incessantly rearranged
in terms of greater and lesser social inequality, of unbiassed homogeneous
indisputable justice, tempered with mitigants of the widest possible latitude but
exactable to the uttermost farthing with confiscation of estate, real and personal,
to the crown. Loyal to the highest constituted power in the land, actuated by an
innate love of rectitude his aims would be the strict maintenance of public order,
the repression of many abuses though not of all simultaneously (every measure of
reform or retrenchment being a preliminary solution to be contained by fluxion in
the final solution), the upholding of the letter of the law (common, statute and law
merchant) against all traversers in covin and trespassers acting in contravention of
bylaws and regulations, all resuscitators (by trespass and petty larceny of
kindlings) of venville rights, obsolete by desuetude, all orotund instigators of
international persecution, all perpetuators of international animosities, all menial
molestors of domestic conviviality, all recalcitrant violators of domestic
connubiality.
Prove that he had loved rectitude from his earliest youth.
To Master Percy Apjohn at High School in 1880 he had divulged his disbelief in
the tenets of the Irish (protestant) church (to which his father Rudolf Virag (later
Rudolph Bloom) had been converted from the Israelitic faith and communion in
1865 by the Society for promoting Christianity among the jews) subsequently
abjured by him in favour of Roman catholicism at the epoch of and with a view to
his matrimony in 1888. To Daniel Magrane and Francis Wade in 1882 during a
juvenile friendship (terminated by the premature emigration of the former) he had
advocated during nocturnal perambulations the political theory of colonial (e.g.
Canadian) expansion and the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin, expounded
in The Descent of Man and The Origin of Species. In 1885 he had publicly
expressed his adherence to the collective and national economic programme
advocated by James Fintan Lalor, John Fisher Murray, John Mitchel, J. F. X.
O'Brien and others, the agrarian policy of Michael Davitt, the constitutional
agitation of Charles Stewart Parnell (M. P. for Cork City), the programme of peace,
retrenchment and reform of William Ewart Gladstone (M. P. for Midlothian, N. B.)
and, in support of his political convictions, had climbed up into a secure position
amid the ramifications of a tree on Northumberland road to see the entrance (2
February 1888) into the capital of a demonstrative torchlight procession of
20,000 torchbearers, divided into 120 trade corporations, bearing 2000 torches
in escort of the marquess of Ripon and (honest) John Morley.
How much and how did he propose to pay for this country residence?
 As per prospectus of the Industrious Foreign Acclimatised Nationalised Friendly
Stateaided Building Society (incorporated 1874), a maximum of 60 pounds per
annum, being 1/6 of an assured income, derived from giltedged securities,
representing at 5 % simple interest on capital of 1200 pounds (estimate of price
at 20 years' purchase), of which to be paid on acquisition and the balance in the
form of annual rent, viz. 800 pounds plus 2 1/2 % interest on the same,
repayable quarterly in equal annual instalments until extinction by amortisation of
loan advanced for purchase within a period of 20 years, amounting to an annual
rental of 64 pounds, headrent included, the titledeeds to remain in possession of
the lender or lenders with a saving clause envisaging forced sale, foreclosure and
mutual compensation in the event of protracted failure to pay the terms assigned,
otherwise the messuage to become the absolute property of the tenant occupier
upon expiry of the period of years stipulated.
What rapid but insecure means to opulence might facilitate immediate
purchase?
A private wireless telegraph which would transmit by dot and dash system the
result of a national equine handicap (flat or steeplechase) of I or more miles and
furlongs won by an outsider at odds of 50 to 1 at 3 hr 8 m p.m. at Ascot
(Greenwich time), the message being received and available for betting purposes in
Dublin at 2.59 p.m. (Dunsink time). The unexpected discovery of an object of
great monetary value (precious stone, valuable adhesive or impressed postage
stamps (7 schilling, mauve, imperforate, Hamburg, 1866: 4 pence, rose, blue
paper, perforate, Great Britain, 1855: 1 franc, stone, official, rouletted, diagonal
surcharge, Luxemburg, 1878), antique dynastical ring, unique relic) in unusual
repositories or by unusual means: from the air (dropped by an eagle in flight), by
fire (amid the carbonised remains of an incendiated edifice), in the sea (amid
flotsam, jetsam, lagan and derelict), on earth (in the gizzard of a comestible fowl).
A Spanish prisoner's donation of a distant treasure of valuables or specie or
bullion lodged with a solvent banking corporation loo years previously at 5%
compound interest of the collective worth of 5,000,000 pounds stg (five million
pounds sterling). A contract with an inconsiderate contractee for the delivery of
32 consignments of some given commodity in consideration of cash payment on
delivery per delivery at the initial rate of 1/4d to be increased constantly in the
geometrical progression of 2 (1/4d, 1/2d, 1d, 2d, 4d, 8d, 1s 4d, 2s 8d to 32
terms). A prepared scheme based on a study of the laws of probability to break
the bank at Monte Carlo. A solution of the secular problem of the quadrature of
the circle, government premium 1,000,000 pounds sterling.
Was vast wealth acquirable through industrial channels?
The reclamation of dunams of waste arenary soil, proposed in the prospectus of
Agendath Netaim, Bleibtreustrasse, Berlin, W. 15, by the cultivation of orange
plantations and melonfields and reafforestation. The utilisation of waste paper,
fells of sewer rodents, human excrement possessing chemical properties, in view
of the vast production of the first, vast number of the second and immense
quantity of the third, every normal human being of average vitality and appetite
producing annually, cancelling byproducts of water, a sum total of 80 lbs. (mixed
animal and vegetable diet), to be multiplied by 4,386,035, the total population of
Ireland according to census returns of 1901.
Were there schemes of wider scope?
A scheme to be formulated and submitted for approval to the harbour
commissioners for the exploitation of white coal (hydraulic power), obtained by
hydroelectric plant at peak of tide at Dublin bar or at head of water at
Poulaphouca or Powerscourt or catchment basins of main streams for the
economic production of 500,000 W. H. P. of electricity. A scheme to enclose the
peninsular delta of the North Bull at Dollymount and erect on the space of the
foreland, used for golf links and rifle ranges, an asphalted esplanade with casinos,
booths, shooting galleries, hotels, boardinghouses, readingrooms, establishments
for mixed bathing. A scheme for the use of dogvans and goatvans for the delivery
of early morning milk. A scheme for the development of Irish tourist traffic in and
around Dublin by means of petrolpropelled riverboats, plying in the fluvial
fairway between Island bridge and Ringsend, charabancs, narrow gauge local
railways, and pleasure steamers for coastwise navigation (10/- per person per day,
guide (trilingual) included). A scheme for the repristination of passenger and goods
traffics over Irish waterways, when freed from weedbeds. A scheme to connect by
tramline the Cattle Market (North Circular road and Prussia street) with the quays
(Sheriff street, lower, and East Wall), parallel with the Link line railway laid (in
conjunction with the Great Southern and Western railway line) between the cattle
park, Liffey junction, and terminus of Midland Great Western Railway 43 to 45
North
Wall, in proximity to the terminal stations or Dublin branches of Great Central
Railway, Midland Railway of England, City of Dublin Steam Packet Company,
Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Company, Dublin and Glasgow Steam Packet
Company, Glasgow, Dublin and Londonderry Steam Packet Company (Laird line),
British and Irish Steam Packet Company, Dublin and Morecambe Steamers,
London and North Western Railway Company, Dublin Port and Docks Board
Landing Sheds and transit sheds of Palgrave, Murphy and Company, steamship
owners, agents for steamers from Mediterranean, Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium
and Holland and for Liverpool Underwriters' Association, the cost of acquired
rolling stock for animal transport and of additional mileage operated by the
Dublin United Tramways Company, limited, to be covered by graziers' fees.
Positing what protasis would the contraction for such several schemes become a
natural and necessary apodosis?
Given a guarantee equal to the sum sought, the support, by deed of gift and
transfer vouchers during donor's lifetime or by bequest after donor's painless
extinction, of eminent financiers (Blum Pasha, Rothschild Guggenheim, Hirsch,
Montefiore, Morgan, Rockefeller) possessing fortunes in 6 figures, amassed during
a successful life, and joining capital with opportunity the thing required was done.
What eventuality would render him independent of such wealth?
The independent discovery of a goldseam of inexhaustible ore.
 For what reason did he meditate on schemes so difficult of realisation?
It was one of his axioms that similar meditations or the automatic relation to
himself of a narrative concerning himself or tranquil recollection of the past when
practised habitually before retiring for the night alleviated fatigue and produced as
a result sound repose and renovated vitality.
His justifications?
As a physicist he had learned that of the 70 years of complete human life at
least 2/7, viz. 20 years are passed in sleep. As a philosopher he knew that at the
termination of any allotted life only an infinitesimal part of any person's desires
has been realised. As a physiologist he believed in the artificial placation of
malignant agencies chiefly operative during somnolence.
What did he fear?
The committal of homicide or suicide during sleep by an aberration of the light
of reason, the incommensurable categorical intelligence situated in the cerebral
convolutions.
What were habitually his final meditations?
Of some one sole unique advertisement to cause passers to stop in wonder, a
poster novelty, with all extraneous accretions excluded, reduced to its simplest
and most efficient terms not exceeding the span of casual vision and congruous
with the velocity of modern life.
What did the first drawer unlocked contain?
A Vere Foster's handwriting copybook, property of Milly (Millicent) Bloom,
certain pages of which bore diagram drawings, marked Papli, which showed a
large globular head with 5 hairs erect, 2 eyes in profile, the trunk full front with 3
large buttons, 1 triangular foot: 2 fading photographs of queen Alexandra of
England and of Maud Branscombe, actress and professional beauty: a Yuletide
card, bearing on it a pictorial representation of a parasitic plant, the legend
Mizpah, the date Xmas 1892, the name of the senders: from Mr + Mrs M.
Comerford, the versicle: May this Yuletide bring to thee, Joy and peace and
welcome glee: a butt of red partly liquefied sealing wax, obtained from the stores
department of Messrs Hely's, Ltd., 89, 90, and 91 Dame street: a box containing
the remainder of a gross of gilt "J" pennibs, obtained from same department of
same firm: an old sandglass which rolled containing sand which rolled: a sealed
prophecy (never unsealed) written by Leopold Bloom in 1886 concerning the
consequences of the passing into law of William Ewart Gladstone's Home Rule bill
of 1886 (never passed into law): a bazaar ticket, no 2004, of S. Kevin's Charity
Fair, price 6d, 100 prizes: an infantile epistle, dated, small em monday, reading:
capital pee Papli comma capital aitch How are you note of interrogation capital
eye I am very well full stop new paragraph signature with flourishes capital em
Milly no stop: a cameo brooch, property of Ellen Bloom (born Higgins), deceased:
a cameo scarfpin, property of Rudolph Bloom (born Virag), deceased: 3
typewritten letters, addressee, Henry Flower, c/o. P. O. Westland Row, addresser,
Martha Clifford, c/o. P. O. Dolphin's Barn: the transliterated name and address of
the addresser of the 3 letters in reversed alphabetic boustrophedonic punctated
quadrilinear cryptogram (vowels suppressed) N. IGS./WI. UU. OX/W. OKS.
MH/Y. IM: a press cutting from an English weekly periodical Modern Society,
subject corporal chastisement in girls' schools: a pink ribbon which had festooned
an Easter egg in the year 1899: two partly uncoiled rubber preservatives with
reserve pockets, purchased by post from Box 32, P. O., Charing Cross, London,
W. C.: 1 pack of 1 dozen creamlaid envelopes and feintruled notepaper,
watermarked, now reduced by 3: some assorted Austrian-Hungarian coins: 2
coupons of the Royal and Privileged Hungarian Lottery: a lowpower magnifying
glass: 2 erotic photocards showing a) buccal coition between nude senorita (rere
presentation, superior position) and nude torero (fore presentation, inferior
position) b) anal violation by male religious (fully clothed, eyes abject) of female
religious (partly clothed, eyes direct), purchased by post from Box 32, P. O.,
Charing Cross, London, W. C.: a press cutting of recipe for renovation of old tan
boots: a Id adhesive stamp, lavender, of the reign of Queen Victoria: a chart of the
measurements of Leopold Bloom compiled before, during and after 2 months'
consecutive use of Sandow-Whiteley's pulley exerciser (men's 15/-, athlete's 20/-)
viz. chest 28 in and 29 1/2 in, biceps 9 in and 10 in, forearm 8 1/2 in and 9 in,
thigh 10 in and 12 in, calf 11 in and 12 in: 1 prospectus of The Wonderworker,
the world's greatest remedy for rectal complaints, direct from Wonderworker,
Coventry House, South Place, London E C, addressed (erroneously) to Mrs L.
Bloom with brief accompanying note commencing (erroneously): Dear Madam.
Quote the textual terms in which the prospectus claimed advantages for this
thaumaturgic remedy.
It heals and soothes while you sleep, in case of trouble in breaking wind, assists
nature in the most formidable way, insuring instant relief in discharge of gases,
keeping parts clean and free natural action, an initial outlay of 7/6 making a new
man of you and life worth living. Ladies find Wonderworker especially useful, a
pleasant surprise when they note delightful result like a cool drink of fresh spring
water on a sultry summer's day. Recommend it to your lady and gentlemen
friends, lasts a lifetime. Insert long round end. Wonderworker.
Were there testimonials?
Numerous. From clergyman, British naval officer, wellknown author, city man,
hospital nurse, lady, mother of five, absentminded beggar.
How did absentminded beggar's concluding testimonial conclude?
What a pity the government did not supply our men with wonderworkers during
the South African campaign! What a relief it would have been!
What object did Bloom add to this collection of objects?
A 4th typewritten letter received by Henry Flower (let H. F. be L. B.) from
Martha Clifford (find M. C.).
What pleasant reflection accompanied this action?
 The reflection that, apart from the letter in question, his magnetic face, form
and address had been favourably received during the course of the preceding day
by a wife (Mrs Josephine Breen, born Josie Powell), a nurse, Miss Callan (Christian
name unknown), a maid, Gertrude (Gerty, family name unknown).
What possibility suggested itself?
The possibility of exercising virile power of fascination in the not immediate
future after an expensive repast in a private apartment in the company of an
elegant courtesan, of corporal beauty, moderately mercenary, variously instructed,
a lady by origin.
What did the 2nd drawer contain?
Documents: the birth certificate of Leopold Paula Bloom: an endowment
assurance policy of 500 pounds in the Scottish Widows' Assurance Society,
intestated Millicent (Milly) Bloom, coming into force at 25 years as with profit
policy of 430 pounds, 462/10/0 and 500 pounds at 60 years or death, 65 years
or death and death, respectively, or with profit policy (paidup) of 299/10/0
together with cash payment of 133/10/0, at option: a bank passbook issued by
the Ulster Bank, College Green branch showing statement of a/c for halfyear
ending 31 December 1903, balance in depositor's favour: 18/14/6 (eighteen
pounds, fourteen shillings and sixpence, sterling), net personalty: certificate of
possession of 900 pounds, Canadian 4 percent (inscribed) government stock (free
of stamp duty): dockets of the Catholic Cemeteries' (Glasnevin) Committee,
relative to a graveplot purchased: a local press cutting concerning change of name
by deedpoll.
Quote the textual terms of this notice.
I, Rudolph Virag, now resident at no 52 Clanbrassil street, Dublin, formerly of
Szombathely in the kingdom of Hungary, hereby give notice that I have assumed
and intend henceforth upon all occasions and at all times to be known by the
name of Rudolph Bloom.
What other objects relative to Rudolph Bloom (born Virag) were in the 2nd
drawer?
An indistinct daguerreotype of Rudolf Virag and his father Leopold Virag
executed in the year 1852 in the portrait atelier of their (respectively) 1st and
2nd cousin, Stefan Virag of Szesfehervar, Hungary. An ancient haggadah book in
which a pair of hornrimmed convex spectacles inserted marked the passage of
thanksgiving in the ritual prayers for Pessach (Passover): a photocard of the
Queen's Hotel, Ennis, proprietor, Rudolph Bloom: an envelope addressed: To My
Dear Son Leopold.
What fractions of phrases did the lecture of those five whole words evoke?
Tomorrow will be a week that I received... it is no use Leopold to be ... with
your dear mother... that is not more to stand... to her... all for me is out... be kind
to Athos, Leopold... my dear son... always... of me... das Herz... Gott... dein...
 What reminiscences of a human subject suffering from progressive melancholia
did these objects evoke in Bloom?
An old man, widower, unkempt of hair, in bed, with head covered, sighing: an
infirm dog, Athos: aconite, resorted to by increasing doses of grains and scruples
as a palliative of recrudescent neuralgia: the face in death of a septuagenarian,
suicide by poison.
Why did Bloom experience a sentiment of remorse?
Because in immature impatience he had treated with disrespect certain beliefs
and practices.
As?
The prohibition of the use of fleshmeat and milk at one meal: the hebdomadary
symposium of incoordinately abstract, perfervidly concrete mercantile
coexreligionist excompatriots: the circumcision of male infants: the supernatural
character of Judaic scripture: the ineffability of the tetragrammaton: the sanctity
of the sabbath.
How did these beliefs and practices now appear to him?
Not more rational than they had then appeared, not less rational than other
beliefs and practices now appeared.
What first reminiscence had he of Rudolph Bloom (deceased)?
Rudolph Bloom (deceased) narrated to his son Leopold Bloom (aged 6) a
retrospective arrangement of migrations and settlements in and between Dublin,
London, Florence, Milan, Vienna, Budapest, Szombathely with statements of
satisfaction (his grandfather having seen Maria Theresia, empress of Austria,
queen of Hungary), with commercial advice (having taken care of pence, the
pounds having taken care of themselves). Leopold Bloom (aged 6) had
accompanied these narrations by constant consultation of a geographical map of
Europe (political) and by suggestions for the establishment of affiliated business
premises in the various centres mentioned.
Had time equally but differently obliterated the memory of these migrations in
narrator and listener?
In narrator by the access of years and in consequence of the use of narcotic
toxin: in listener by the access of years and in consequence of the action of
distraction upon vicarious experiences.
What idiosyncracies of the narrator were concomitant products of amnesia?
Occasionally he ate without having previously removed his hat. Occasionally he
drank voraciously the juice of gooseberry fool from an inclined plate. Occasionally
he removed from his lips the traces of food by means of a lacerated envelope or
other accessible fragment of paper.
What two phenomena of senescence were more frequent?
 The myopic digital calculation of coins, eructation consequent upon repletion.
What object offered partial consolation for these reminiscences?
The endowment policy, the bank passbook, the certificate of the possession of
scrip.
Reduce Bloom by cross multiplication of reverses of fortune, from which these
supports protected him, and by elimination of all positive values to a negligible
negative irrational unreal quantity.
Successively, in descending helotic order: Poverty: that of the outdoor hawker of
imitation jewellery, the dun for the recovery of bad and doubtful debts, the poor
rate and deputy cess collector. Mendicancy: that of the fraudulent bankrupt with
negligible assets paying 1s. 4d. in the pound, sandwichman, distributor of
throwaways, nocturnal vagrant, insinuating sycophant, maimed sailor, blind
stripling, superannuated bailiffs man, marfeast, lickplate, spoilsport, pickthank,
eccentric public laughingstock seated on bench of public park under discarded
perforated umbrella. Destitution: the inmate of Old Man's House (Royal Hospital)
Kilmainham, the inmate of Simpson's Hospital for reduced but respectable men
permanently disabled by gout or want of sight. Nadir of misery: the aged impotent
disfranchised ratesupported moribund lunatic pauper.
With which attendant indignities?
The unsympathetic indifference of previously amiable females, the contempt of
muscular males, the acceptance of fragments of bread, the simulated ignorance of
casual acquaintances, the latration of illegitimate unlicensed vagabond dogs, the
infantile discharge of decomposed vegetable missiles, worth little or nothing,
nothing or less than nothing.
By what could such a situation be precluded?
By decease (change of state): by departure (change of place).
Which preferably?
The latter, by the line of least resistance.
What considerations rendered departure not entirely undesirable?
Constant cohabitation impeding mutual toleration of personal defects. The habit
of independent purchase increasingly cultivated. The necessity to counteract by
impermanent sojourn the permanence of arrest.
What considerations rendered departure not irrational?
The parties concerned, uniting, had increased and multiplied, which being done,
offspring produced and educed to maturity, the parties, if not disunited were
obliged to reunite for increase and multiplication, which was absurd, to form by
reunion the original couple of uniting parties, which was impossible.
What considerations rendered departure desirable?
 The attractive character of certain localities in Ireland and abroad, as
represented in general geographical maps of polychrome design or in special
ordnance survey charts by employment of scale numerals and hachures.
In Ireland?
The cliffs of Moher, the windy wilds of Connemara, lough Neagh with
submerged petrified city, the Giant's Causeway, Fort Camden and Fort Carlisle,
the Golden Vale of Tipperary, the islands of Aran, the pastures of royal Meath,
Brigid's elm in Kildare, the Queen's Island shipyard in Belfast, the Salmon Leap,
the lakes of Killarney.
Abroad?
Ceylon (with spicegardens supplying tea to Thomas Kernan, agent for Pulbrook,
Robertson and Co, 2 Mincing Lane, London, E. C., 5 Dame street, Dublin),
Jerusalem, the holy city (with mosque of Omar and gate of Damascus, goal of
aspiration), the straits of Gibraltar (the unique birthplace of Marion Tweedy), the
Parthenon (containing statues of nude Grecian divinities), the Wall street money
market (which controlled international finance), the Plaza de Toros at La Linea,
Spain (where O'Hara of the Camerons had slain the bull), Niagara (over which no
human being had passed with impunity), the land of the Eskimos (eaters of soap),
the forbidden country of Thibet (from which no traveller returns), the bay of
Naples (to see which was to die), the Dead Sea.
Under what guidance, following what signs?
At sea, septentrional, by night the polestar, located at the point of intersection
of the right line from beta to alpha in Ursa Maior produced and divided externally
at omega and the hypotenuse of the rightangled triangle formed by the line alpha
omega so produced and the line alpha delta of Ursa Maior. On land, meridional, a
bispherical moon, revealed in imperfect varying phases of lunation through the
posterior interstice of the imperfectly occluded skirt of a carnose negligent
perambulating female, a pillar of the cloud by day.
What public advertisement would divulge the occultation of the departed?
5 pounds reward, lost, stolen or strayed from his residence 7 Eccles street,
missing gent about 40, answering to the name of Bloom, Leopold (Poldy), height 5
ft 9 1/2 inches, full build, olive complexion, may have since grown a beard, when
last seen was wearing a black suit. Above sum will be paid for information leading
to his discovery.
What universal binomial denominations would be his as entity and nonentity?
Assumed by any or known to none. Everyman or Noman.
What tributes his?
Honour and gifts of strangers, the friends of Everyman. A nymph immortal,
beauty, the bride of Noman.
 Would the departed never nowhere nohow reappear?
Ever he would wander, selfcompelled, to the extreme limit of his cometary orbit,
beyond the fixed stars and variable suns and telescopic planets, astronomical
waifs and strays, to the extreme boundary of space, passing from land to land,
among peoples, amid events. Somewhere imperceptibly he would hear and
somehow reluctantly, suncompelled, obey the summons of recall. Whence,
disappearing from the constellation of the Northern Crown he would somehow
reappear reborn above delta in the constellation of Cassiopeia and after
incalculable eons of peregrination return an estranged avenger, a wreaker of
justice on malefactors, a dark crusader, a sleeper awakened, with financial
resources (by supposition) surpassing those of Rothschild or the silver king.
What would render such return irrational?
An unsatisfactory equation between an exodus and return in time through
reversible space and an exodus and return in space through irreversible time.
What play of forces, inducing inertia, rendered departure undesirable?
The lateness of the hour, rendering procrastinatory: the obscurity of the night,
rendering invisible: the uncertainty of thoroughfares, rendering perilous: the
necessity for repose, obviating movement: the proximity of an occupied bed,
obviating research: the anticipation of warmth (human) tempered with coolness
(linen), obviating desire and rendering desirable: the statue of Narcissus, sound
without echo, desired desire.
What advantages were possessed by an occupied, as distinct from an
unoccupied bed?
The removal of nocturnal solitude, the superior quality of human (mature
female) to inhuman (hotwaterjar) calefaction, the stimulation of matutinal contact,
the economy of mangling done on the premises in the case of trousers accurately
folded and placed lengthwise between the spring mattress (striped) and the
woollen mattress (biscuit section).
What past consecutive causes, before rising preapprehended, of accumulated
fatigue did Bloom, before rising, silently recapitulate?
The preparation of breakfast (burnt offering): intestinal congestion and
premeditative defecation (holy of holies): the bath (rite of John): the funeral (rite
of Samuel): the advertisement of Alexander Keyes (Urim and Thummim): the
unsubstantial lunch (rite of Melchisedek): the visit to museum and national library
(holy place): the bookhunt along Bedford row, Merchants' Arch, Wellington Quay
(Simchath Torah): the music in the Ormond Hotel (Shira Shirim): the altercation
with a truculent troglodyte in Bernard Kiernan's premises (holocaust): a blank
period of time including a cardrive, a visit to a house of mourning, a leavetaking
(wilderness): the eroticism produced by feminine exhibitionism (rite of Onan): the
prolonged delivery of Mrs Mina Purefoy (heave offering): the visit to the
disorderly house of Mrs Bella Cohen, 82 Tyrone street, lower and subsequent
brawl and chance medley in Beaver street (Armageddon)—nocturnal
perambulation to and from the cabman's shelter, Butt Bridge (atonement).
What selfimposed enigma did Bloom about to rise in order to go so as to
conclude lest he should not conclude involuntarily apprehend?
The cause of a brief sharp unforeseen heard loud lone crack emitted by the
insentient material of a strainveined timber table.
What selfinvolved enigma did Bloom risen, going, gathering multicoloured
multiform multitudinous garments, voluntarily apprehending, not comprehend?
Who was M'Intosh?
What selfevident enigma pondered with desultory constancy during 30 years did
Bloom now, having effected natural obscurity by the extinction of artificial light,
silently suddenly comprehend?
Where was Moses when the candle went out?
What imperfections in a perfect day did Bloom, walking, charged with collected
articles of recently disvested male wearing apparel, silently, successively,
enumerate?
A provisional failure to obtain renewal of an advertisement: to obtain a certain
quantity of tea from Thomas Kernan (agent for Pulbrook, Robertson and Co, 5
Dame Street, Dublin, and 2 Mincing Lane, London E. C.): to certify the presence
or absence of posterior rectal orifice in the case of Hellenic female divinities: to
obtain admission (gratuitous or paid) to the performance of Leah by Mrs
Bandmann Palmer at the Gaiety Theatre, 46, 47, 48, 49 South King street.
What impression of an absent face did Bloom, arrested, silently recall?
The face of her father, the late Major Brian Cooper Tweedy, Royal Dublin
Fusiliers, of Gibraltar and Rehoboth, Dolphin's Barn.
What recurrent impressions of the same were possible by hypothesis?
Retreating, at the terminus of the Great Northern Railway, Amiens street, with
constant uniform acceleration, along parallel lines meeting at infinity, if produced:
along parallel lines, reproduced from infinity, with constant uniform retardation,
at the terminus of the Great Northern Railway, Amiens street, returning.
What miscellaneous effects of female personal wearing apparel were perceived
by him?
A pair of new inodorous halfsilk black ladies' hose, a pair of new violet garters,
a pair of outsize ladies' drawers of India mull, cut on generous lines, redolent of
opoponax, jessamine and Muratti's Turkish cigarettes and containing a long bright
steel safety pin, folded curvilinear, a camisole of batiste with thin lace border, an
accordion underskirt of blue silk moirette, all these objects being disposed
irregularly on the top of a rectangular trunk, quadruple battened, having capped
corners, with multicoloured labels, initialled on its fore side in white lettering B.
C. T. (Brian Cooper Tweedy).
What impersonal objects were perceived?
A commode, one leg fractured, totally covered by square cretonne cutting, apple
design, on which rested a lady's black straw hat. Orangekeyed ware, bought of
Henry Price, basket, fancy goods, chinaware and ironmongery manufacturer, 21,
22, 23 Moore street, disposed irregularly on the washstand and floor and
consisting of basin, soapdish and brushtray (on the washstand, together), pitcher
and night article (on the floor, separate).
Bloom's acts?
He deposited the articles of clothing on a chair, removed his remaining articles
of clothing, took from beneath the bolster at the head of the bed a folded long
white nightshirt, inserted his head and arms into the proper apertures of the
nightshirt, removed a pillow from the head to the foot of the bed, prepared the
bedlinen accordingly and entered the bed.
How?
With circumspection, as invariably when entering an abode (his own or not his
own): with solicitude, the snakespiral springs of the mattress being old, the brass
quoits and pendent viper radii loose and tremulous under stress and strain:
prudently, as entering a lair or ambush of lust or adders: lightly, the less to
disturb: reverently, the bed of conception and of birth, of consummation of
marriage and of breach of marriage, of sleep and of death.
What did his limbs, when gradually extended, encounter?
New clean bedlinen, additional odours, the presence of a human form, female,
hers, the imprint of a human form, male, not his, some crumbs, some flakes of
potted meat, recooked, which he removed.
If he had smiled why would he have smiled?
To reflect that each one who enters imagines himself to be the first to enter
whereas he is always the last term of a preceding series even if the first term of a
succeeding one, each imagining himself to be first, last, only and alone whereas he
is neither first nor last nor only nor alone in a series originating in and repeated to
infinity.
What preceding series?
Assuming Mulvey to be the first term of his series, Penrose, Bartell d'Arcy,
professor Goodwin, Julius Mastiansky, John Henry Menton, Father Bernard
Corrigan, a farmer at the Royal Dublin Society's Horse Show, Maggot O'Reilly,
Matthew Dillon, Valentine Blake Dillon (Lord Mayor of Dublin), Christopher
Callinan, Lenehan, an Italian organgrinder, an unknown gentleman in the Gaiety
Theatre, Benjamin Dollard, Simon Dedalus, Andrew (Pisser) Burke, Joseph Cuffe,
Wisdom Hely, Alderman John Hooper, Dr Francis Brady, Father Sebastian of
Mount Argus, a bootblack at the General Post Office, Hugh E. (Blazes) Boylan and
so each and so on to no last term.
What were his reflections concerning the last member of this series and late
occupant of the bed?
Reflections on his vigour (a bounder), corporal proportion (a billsticker),
commercial ability (a bester), impressionability (a boaster).
Why for the observer impressionability in addition to vigour, corporal
proportion and commercial ability?
Because he had observed with augmenting frequency in the preceding members
of the same series the same concupiscence, inflammably transmitted, first with
alarm, then with understanding, then with desire, finally with fatigue, with
alternating symptoms of epicene comprehension and apprehension.
With what antagonistic sentiments were his subsequent reflections affected?
Envy, jealousy, abnegation, equanimity.
Envy?
Of a bodily and mental male organism specially adapted for the superincumbent
posture of energetic human copulation and energetic piston and cylinder
movement necessary for the complete satisfaction of a constant but not acute
concupiscence resident in a bodily and mental female organism, passive but not
obtuse.
Jealousy?
Because a nature full and volatile in its free state, was alternately the agent and
reagent of attraction. Because attraction between agent(s) and reagent(s) at all
instants varied, with inverse proportion of increase and decrease, with incessant
circular extension and radial reentrance. Because the controlled contemplation of
the fluctuation of attraction produced, if desired, a fluctuation of pleasure.
Abnegation?
In virtue of a) acquaintance initiated in September 1903 in the establishment of
George Mesias, merchant tailor and outfitter, 5 Eden Quay, b) hospitality
extended and received in kind, reciprocated and reappropriated in person, c)
comparative youth subject to impulses of ambition and magnanimity, colleagual
altruism and amorous egoism, d) extraracial attraction, intraracial inhibition,
supraracial prerogative, e) an imminent provincial musical tour, common current
expenses, net proceeds divided.
Equanimity?
As as natural as any and every natural act of a nature expressed or understood
executed in natured nature by natural creatures in accordance with his, her and
their natured natures, of dissimilar similarity. As not so calamitous as a
cataclysmic annihilation of the planet in consequence of a collision with a dark
sun. As less reprehensible than theft, highway robbery, cruelty to children and
animals, obtaining money under false pretences, forgery, embezzlement,
misappropriation of public money, betrayal of public trust, malingering, mayhem,
corruption of minors, criminal libel, blackmail, contempt of court, arson, treason,
felony, mutiny on the high seas, trespass, burglary, jailbreaking, practice of
unnatural vice, desertion from armed forces in the field, perjury, poaching, usury,
intelligence with the king's enemies, impersonation, criminal assault,
manslaughter, wilful and premeditated murder. As not more abnormal than all
other parallel processes of adaptation to altered conditions of existence, resulting
in a reciprocal equilibrium between the bodily organism and its attendant
circumstances, foods, beverages, acquired habits, indulged inclinations, significant
disease. As more than inevitable, irreparable.
Why more abnegation than jealousy, less envy than equanimity?
From outrage (matrimony) to outrage (adultery) there arose nought but outrage
(copulation) yet the matrimonial violator of the matrimonially violated had not
been outraged by the adulterous violator of the adulterously violated.
What retribution, if any?
Assassination, never, as two wrongs did not make one right. Duel by combat,
no. Divorce, not now. Exposure by mechanical artifice (automatic bed) or
individual testimony (concealed ocular witnesses), not yet. Suit for damages by
legal influence or simulation of assault with evidence of injuries sustained
(selfinflicted), not impossibly. Hushmoney by moral influence possibly. If any,
positively, connivance, introduction of emulation (material, a prosperous rival
agency of publicity: moral, a successful rival agent of intimacy), depreciation,
alienation, humiliation, separation protecting the one separated from the other,
protecting the separator from both.
By what reflections did he, a conscious reactor against the void of incertitude,
justify to himself his sentiments?
The preordained frangibility of the hymen: the presupposed intangibility of the
thing in itself: the incongruity and disproportion between the selfprolonging
tension of the thing proposed to be done and the selfabbreviating relaxation of the
thing done; the fallaciously inferred debility of the female: the muscularity of the
male: the variations of ethical codes: the natural grammatical transition by
inversion involving no alteration of sense of an aorist preterite proposition (parsed
as masculine subject, monosyllabic onomatopoeic transitive verb with direct
feminine object) from the active voice into its correlative aorist preterite
proposition (parsed as feminine subject, auxiliary verb and quasimonosyllabic
onomatopoeic past participle with complementary masculine agent) in the passive
voice: the continued product of seminators by generation: the continual
production of semen by distillation: the futility of triumph or protest or
vindication: the inanity of extolled virtue: the lethargy of nescient matter: the
apathy of the stars.
 In what final satisfaction did these antagonistic sentiments and reflections,
reduced to their simplest forms, converge?
Satisfaction at the ubiquity in eastern and western terrestrial hemispheres, in all
habitable lands and islands explored or unexplored (the land of the midnight sun,
the islands of the blessed, the isles of Greece, the land of promise), of adipose
anterior and posterior female hemispheres, redolent of milk and honey and of
excretory sanguine and seminal warmth, reminiscent of secular families of curves
of amplitude, insusceptible of moods of impression or of contrarieties of
expression, expressive of mute immutable mature animality.
The visible signs of antesatisfaction?
An approximate erection: a solicitous adversion: a gradual elevation: a tentative
revelation: a silent contemplation.
Then?
He kissed the plump mellow yellow smellow melons of her rump, on each
plump melonous hemisphere, in their mellow yellow furrow, with obscure
prolonged provocative melonsmellonous osculation.
The visible signs of postsatisfaction?
A silent contemplation: a tentative velation: a gradual abasement: a solicitous
aversion: a proximate erection.
What followed this silent action?
Somnolent invocation, less somnolent recognition, incipient excitation,
catechetical interrogation.
With what modifications did the narrator reply to this interrogation?
Negative: he omitted to mention the clandestine correspondence between
Martha Clifford and Henry Flower, the public altercation at, in and in the vicinity
of the licensed premises of Bernard Kiernan and Co, Limited, 8, 9 and 10 Little
Britain street, the erotic provocation and response thereto caused by the
exhibitionism of Gertrude (Gerty), surname unknown. Positive: he included
mention of a performance by Mrs Bandmann Palmer of LEAH at the Gaiety
Theatre, 46, 47, 48, 49 South King street, an invitation to supper at Wynn's
(Murphy's) Hotel, 35, 36 and 37 Lower Abbey street, a volume of peccaminous
pornographical tendency entituled SWEETS OF SIN, anonymous author a
gentleman of fashion, a temporary concussion caused by a falsely calculated
movement in the course of a postcenal gymnastic display, the victim (since
completely recovered) being Stephen Dedalus, professor and author, eldest
surviving son of Simon Dedalus, of no fixed occupation, an aeronautical feat
executed by him (narrator) in the presence of a witness, the professor and author
aforesaid, with promptitude of decision and gymnastic flexibility.
Was the narration otherwise unaltered by modifications?
 Absolutely.
Which event or person emerged as the salient point of his narration?
Stephen Dedalus, professor and author.
What limitations of activity and inhibitions of conjugal rights were perceived by
listener and narrator concerning themselves during the course of this intermittent
and increasingly more laconic narration?
By the listener a limitation of fertility inasmuch as marriage had been celebrated
1 calendar month after the 18th anniversary of her birth (8 September 1870), viz.
8 October, and consummated on the same date with female issue born 15 June
1889, having been anticipatorily consummated on the lo September of the same
year and complete carnal intercourse, with ejaculation of semen within the natural
female organ, having last taken place 5 weeks previous, viz. 27 November 1893,
to the birth on 29 December 1893 of second (and only male) issue, deceased 9
January 1894, aged 11 days, there remained a period of 10 years, 5 months and
18 days during which carnal intercourse had been incomplete, without ejaculation
of semen within the natural female organ. By the narrator a limitation of activity,
mental and corporal, inasmuch as complete mental intercourse between himself
and the listener had not taken place since the consummation of puberty, indicated
by catamenic hemorrhage, of the female issue of narrator and listener, 15
September 1903, there remained a period of 9 months and 1 day during which,
in consequence of a preestablished natural comprehension in incomprehension
between the consummated females (listener and issue), complete corporal liberty
of action had been circumscribed.
How?
By various reiterated feminine interrogation concerning the masculine
destination whither, the place where, the time at which, the duration for which,
the object with which in the case of temporary absences, projected or effected.
What moved visibly above the listener's and the narrator's invisible thoughts?
The upcast reflection of a lamp and shade, an inconstant series of concentric
circles of varying gradations of light and shadow.
In what directions did listener and narrator lie?
Listener, S. E. by E.: Narrator, N. W. by W.: on the 53rd parallel of latitude, N.,
and 6th meridian of longitude, W.: at an angle of 45 degrees to the terrestrial
equator.
In what state of rest or motion?
At rest relatively to themselves and to each other. In motion being each and
both carried westward, forward and rereward respectively, by the proper
perpetual motion of the earth through everchanging tracks of neverchanging space.
In what posture?
 Listener: reclined semilaterally, left, left hand under head, right leg extended in
a straight line and resting on left leg, flexed, in the attitude of Gea-Tellus,
fulfilled, recumbent, big with seed. Narrator: reclined laterally, left, with right and
left legs flexed, the index finger and thumb of the right hand resting on the bridge
of the nose, in the attitude depicted in a snapshot photograph made by Percy
Apjohn, the childman weary, the manchild in the womb.
Womb? Weary?
He rests. He has travelled.
With?
Sinbad the Sailor and Tinbad the Tailor and Jinbad the Jailer and Whinbad the
Whaler and Ninbad the Nailer and Finbad the Failer and Binbad the Bailer and
Pinbad the Pailer and Minbad the Mailer and Hinbad the Hailer and Rinbad the
Railer and Dinbad the Kailer and Vinbad the Quailer and Linbad the Yailer and
Xinbad the Phthailer.
When?
Going to dark bed there was a square round Sinbad the Sailor roc's auk's egg in
the night of the bed of all the auks of the rocs of Darkinbad the Brightdayler.
Where?
Yes because he never did a thing like that before as ask to get his breakfast in
bed with a couple of eggs since the City Arms hotel when he used to be pretending
to be laid up with a sick voice doing his highness to make himself interesting for
that old faggot Mrs Riordan that he thought he had a great leg of and she never
left us a farthing all for masses for herself and her soul greatest miser ever was
actually afraid to lay out 4d for her methylated spirit telling me all her ailments
she had too much old chat in her about politics and earthquakes and the end of
the world let us have a bit of fun first God help the world if all the women were
her sort down on bathingsuits and lownecks of course nobody wanted her to wear
them I suppose she was pious because no man would look at her twice I hope Ill
never be like her a wonder she didnt want us to cover our faces but she was a
welleducated woman certainly and her gabby talk about Mr Riordan here and Mr
Riordan there I suppose he was glad to get shut of her and her dog smelling my
fur and always edging to get up under my petticoats especially then still I like that
in him polite to old women like that and waiters and beggars too hes not proud
out of nothing but not always if ever he got anything really serious the matter
with him its much better for them to go into a hospital where everything is clean
but I suppose Id have to dring it into him for a month yes and then wed have a
hospital nurse next thing on the carpet have him staying there till they throw him
out or a nun maybe like the smutty photo he has shes as much a nun as Im not
yes because theyre so weak and puling when theyre sick they want a woman to
get well if his nose bleeds youd think it was O tragic and that dyinglooking one off
the south circular when he sprained his foot at the choir party at the sugarloaf
Mountain the day I wore that dress Miss Stack bringing him flowers the worst old
ones she could find at the bottom of the basket anything at all to get into a mans
bedroom with her old maids voice trying to imagine he was dying on account of
her to never see thy face again though he looked more like a man with his beard a
bit grown in the bed father was the same besides I hate bandaging and dosing
when he cut his toe with the razor paring his corns afraid hed get bloodpoisoning
but if it was a thing I was sick then wed see what attention only of course the
woman hides it not to give all the trouble they do yes he came somewhere Im sure
by his appetite anyway love its not or hed be off his feed thinking of her so either
it was one of those night women if it was down there he was really and the hotel
story he made up a pack of lies to hide it planning it Hynes kept me who did I
meet ah yes I met do you remember Menton and who else who let me see that big
babbyface I saw him and he not long married flirting with a young girl at Pooles
Myriorama and turned my back on him when he slinked out looking quite
conscious what harm but he had the impudence to make up to me one time well
done to him mouth almighty and his boiled eyes of all the big stupoes I ever met
and thats called a solicitor only for I hate having a long wrangle in bed or else if
its not that its some little bitch or other he got in with somewhere or picked up on
the sly if they only knew him as well as I do yes because the day before yesterday
he was scribbling something a letter when I came into the front room to show him
Dignams death in the paper as if something told me and he covered it up with the
blottingpaper pretending to be thinking about business so very probably that was
it to somebody who thinks she has a softy in him because all men get a bit like
that at his age especially getting on to forty he is now so as to wheedle any money
she can out of him no fool like an old fool and then the usual kissing my bottom
was to hide it not that I care two straws now who he does it with or knew before
that way though Id like to find out so long as I dont have the two of them under
my nose all the time like that slut that Mary we had in Ontario terrace padding
out her false bottom to excite him bad enough to get the smell of those painted
women off him once or twice I had a suspicion by getting him to come near me
when I found the long hair on his coat without that one when I went into the
kitchen pretending he was drinking water 1 woman is not enough for them it was
all his fault of course ruining servants then proposing that she could eat at our
table on Christmas day if you please O no thank you not in my house stealing my
potatoes and the oysters 2/6 per doz going out to see her aunt if you please
common robbery so it was but I was sure he had something on with that one it
takes me to find out a thing like that he said you have no proof it was her proof O
yes her aunt was very fond of oysters but I told her what I thought of her
suggesting me to go out to be alone with her I wouldnt lower myself to spy on
them the garters I found in her room the Friday she was out that was enough for
me a little bit too much her face swelled up on her with temper when I gave her
her weeks notice I saw to that better do without them altogether do out the rooms
myself quicker only for the damn cooking and throwing out the dirt I gave it to
him anyhow either she or me leaves the house I couldnt even touch him if I
thought he was with a dirty barefaced liar and sloven like that one denying it up
to my face and singing about the place in the W C too because she knew she was
too well off yes because he couldnt possibly do without it that long so he must do
it somewhere and the last time he came on my bottom when was it the night
Boylan gave my hand a great squeeze going along by the Tolka in my hand there
steals another I just pressed the back of his like that with my thumb to squeeze
back singing the young May moon shes beaming love because he has an idea
about him and me hes not such a fool he said Im dining out and going to the
Gaiety though Im not going to give him the satisfaction in any case God knows
hes a change in a way not to be always and ever wearing the same old hat unless I
paid some nicelooking boy to do it since I cant do it myself a young boy would
like me Id confuse him a little alone with him if we were Id let him see my garters
the new ones and make him turn red looking at him seduce him I know what boys
feel with that down on their cheek doing that frigging drawing out the thing by the
hour question and answer would you do this that and the other with the coalman
yes with a bishop yes I would because I told him about some dean or bishop was
sitting beside me in the jews temples gardens when I was knitting that woollen
thing a stranger to Dublin what place was it and so on about the monuments and
he tired me out with statues encouraging him making him worse than he is who is
in your mind now tell me who are you thinking of who is it tell me his name who
tell me who the german Emperor is it yes imagine Im him think of him can you
feel him trying to make a whore of me what he never will he ought to give it up
now at this age of his life simply ruination for any woman and no satisfaction in it
pretending to like it till he comes and then finish it off myself anyway and it
makes your lips pale anyhow its done now once and for all with all the talk of the
world about it people make its only the first time after that its just the ordinary do
it and think no more about it why cant you kiss a man without going and
marrying him first you sometimes love to wildly when you feel that way so nice all
over you you cant help yourself I wish some man or other would take me
sometime when hes there and kiss me in his arms theres nothing like a kiss long
and hot down to your soul almost paralyses you then I hate that confession when
I used to go to Father Corrigan he touched me father and what harm if he did
where and I said on the canal bank like a fool but whereabouts on your person my
child on the leg behind high up was it yes rather high up was it where you sit
down yes O Lord couldnt he say bottom right out and have done with it what has
that got to do with it and did you whatever way he put it I forget no father and I
always think of the real father what did he want to know for when I already
confessed it to God he had a nice fat hand the palm moist always I wouldnt mind
feeling it neither would he Id say by the bullneck in his horsecollar I wonder did
he know me in the box I could see his face he couldnt see mine of course hed
never turn or let on still his eyes were red when his father died theyre lost for a
woman of course must be terrible when a man cries let alone them Id like to be
embraced by one in his vestments and the smell of incense off him like the pope
besides theres no danger with a priest if youre married hes too careful about
himself then give something to H H the pope for a penance I wonder was he
satisfied with me one thing I didnt like his slapping me behind going away so
familiarly in the hall though I laughed Im not a horse or an ass am I I suppose he
was thinking of his fathers I wonder is he awake thinking of me or dreaming am I
in it who gave him that flower he said he bought he smelt of some kind of drink
not whisky or stout or perhaps the sweety kind of paste they stick their bills up
with some liqueur Id like to sip those richlooking green and yellow expensive
drinks those stagedoor johnnies drink with the opera hats I tasted once with my
finger dipped out of that American that had the squirrel talking stamps with father
he had all he could do to keep himself from falling asleep after the last time after
we took the port and potted meat it had a fine salty taste yes because I felt lovely
and tired myself and fell asleep as sound as a top the moment I popped straight
into bed till that thunder woke me up God be merciful to us I thought the heavens
were coming down about us to punish us when I blessed myself and said a Hail
Mary like those awful thunderbolts in Gibraltar as if the world was coming to an
end and then they come and tell you theres no God what could you do if it was
running and rushing about nothing only make an act of contrition the candle I lit
that evening in Whitefriars street chapel for the month of May see it brought its
luck though hed scoff if he heard because he never goes to church mass or meeting
he says your soul you have no soul inside only grey matter because he doesnt
know what it is to have one yes when I lit the lamp because he must have come 3
or 4 times with that tremendous big red brute of a thing he has I thought the vein
or whatever the dickens they call it was going to burst though his nose is not so
big after I took off all my things with the blinds down after my hours dressing and
perfuming and combing it like iron or some kind of a thick crowbar standing all
the time he must have eaten oysters I think a few dozen he was in great singing
voice no I never in all my life felt anyone had one the size of that to make you feel
full up he must have eaten a whole sheep after whats the idea making us like that
with a big hole in the middle of us or like a Stallion driving it up into you because
thats all they want out of you with that determined vicious look in his eye I had to
halfshut my eyes still he hasnt such a tremendous amount of spunk in him when I
made him pull out and do it on me considering how big it is so much the better in
case any of it wasnt washed out properly the last time I let him finish it in me nice
invention they made for women for him to get all the pleasure but if someone gave
them a touch of it themselves theyd know what I went through with Milly nobody
would believe cutting her teeth too and Mina Purefoys husband give us a swing
out of your whiskers filling her up with a child or twins once a year as regular as
the clock always with a smell of children off her the one they called budgers or
something like a nigger with a shock of hair on it Jesusjack the child is a black the
last time I was there a squad of them falling over one another and bawling you
couldnt hear your ears supposed to be healthy not satisfied till they have us
swollen out like elephants or I dont know what supposing I risked having another
not off him though still if he was married Im sure hed have a fine strong child but
I dont know Poldy has more spunk in him yes thatd be awfully jolly I suppose it
was meeting Josie Powell and the funeral and thinking about me and Boylan set
him off well he can think what he likes now if thatll do him any good I know they
were spooning a bit when I came on the scene he was dancing and sitting out with
her the night of Georgina Simpsons housewarming and then he wanted to ram it
down my neck it was on account of not liking to see her a wallflower that was
why we had the standup row over politics he began it not me when he said about
Our Lord being a carpenter at last he made me cry of course a woman is so
sensitive about everything I was fuming with myself after for giving in only for I
knew he was gone on me and the first socialist he said He was he annoyed me so
much I couldnt put him into a temper still he knows a lot of mixedup things
especially about the body and the inside I often wanted to study up that myself
what we have inside us in that family physician I could always hear his voice
talking when the room was crowded and watch him after that I pretended I had a
coolness on with her over him because he used to be a bit on the jealous side
whenever he asked who are you going to and I said over to Floey and he made me
the present of Byron's poems and the three pairs of gloves so that finished that I
could quite easily get him to make it up any time I know how Id even supposing
he got in with her again and was going out to see her somewhere Id know if he
refused to eat the onions I know plenty of ways ask him to tuck down the collar of
my blouse or touch him with my veil and gloves on going out I kiss then would
send them all spinning however alright well see then let him go to her she of
course would only be too delighted to pretend shes mad in love with him that I
wouldnt so much mind Id just go to her and ask her do you love him and look her
square in the eyes she couldnt fool me but he might imagine he was and make a
declaration to her with his plabbery kind of a manner like he did to me though I
had the devils own job to get it out of him though I liked him for that it showed
he could hold in and wasnt to be got for the asking he was on the pop of asking
me too the night in the kitchen I was rolling the potato cake theres something I
want to say to you only for I put him off letting on I was in a temper with my
hands and arms full of pasty flour in any case I let out too much the night before
talking of dreams so I didnt want to let him know more than was good for him she
used to be always embracing me Josie whenever he was there meaning him of
course glauming me over and when I said I washed up and down as far as possible
asking me and did you wash possible the women are always egging on to that
putting it on thick when hes there they know by his sly eye blinking a bit putting
on the indifferent when they come out with something the kind he is what spoils
him I dont wonder in the least because he was very handsome at that time trying
to look like Lord Byron I said I liked though he was too beautiful for a man and he
was a little before we got engaged afterwards though she didnt like it so much the
day I was in fits of laughing with the giggles I couldnt stop about all my hairpins
falling out one after another with the mass of hair I had youre always in great
humour she said yes because it grigged her because she knew what it meant
because I used to tell her a good bit of what went on between us not all but just
enough to make her mouth water but that wasnt my fault she didnt darken the
door much after we were married I wonder what shes got like now after living
with that dotty husband of hers she had her face beginning to look drawn and run
down the last time I saw her she must have been just after a row with him
because I saw on the moment she was edging to draw down a conversation about
husbands and talk about him to run him down what was it she told me O yes that
sometimes he used to go to bed with his muddy boots on when the maggot takes
him just imagine having to get into bed with a thing like that that might murder
you any moment what a man well its not the one way everyone goes mad Poldy
anyhow whatever he does always wipes his feet on the mat when he comes in wet
or shine and always blacks his own boots too and he always takes off his hat
when he comes up in the street like then and now hes going about in his slippers
to look for 10000 pounds for a postcard U p up O sweetheart May wouldnt a
thing like that simply bore you stiff to extinction actually too stupid even to take
his boots off now what could you make of a man like that Id rather die 20 times
over than marry another of their sex of course hed never find another woman like
me to put up with him the way I do know me come sleep with me yes and he
knows that too at the bottom of his heart take that Mrs Maybrick that poisoned
her husband for what I wonder in love with some other man yes it was found out
on her wasnt she the downright villain to go and do a thing like that of course
some men can be dreadfully aggravating drive you mad and always the worst word
in the world what do they ask us to marry them for if were so bad as all that
comes to yes because they cant get on without us white Arsenic she put in his tea
off flypaper wasnt it I wonder why they call it that if I asked him hed say its from
the Greek leave us as wise as we were before she must have been madly in love
with the other fellow to run the chance of being hanged O she didnt care if that
was her nature what could she do besides theyre not brutes enough to go and
hang a woman surely are they
theyre all so different Boylan talking about the shape of my foot he noticed at
once even before he was introduced when I was in the D B C with Poldy laughing
and trying to listen I was waggling my foot we both ordered 2 teas and plain
bread and butter I saw him looking with his two old maids of sisters when I stood
up and asked the girl where it was what do I care with it dropping out of me and
that black closed breeches he made me buy takes you half an hour to let them
down wetting all myself always with some brandnew fad every other week such a
long one I did I forgot my suede gloves on the seat behind that I never got after
some robber of a woman and he wanted me to put it in the Irish times lost in the
ladies lavatory D B C Dame street finder return to Mrs Marion Bloom and I saw
his eyes on my feet going out through the turning door he was looking when I
looked back and I went there for tea 2 days after in the hope but he wasnt now
how did that excite him because I was crossing them when we were in the other
room first he meant the shoes that are too tight to walk in my hand is nice like
that if I only had a ring with the stone for my month a nice aquamarine Ill stick
him for one and a gold bracelet I dont like my foot so much still I made him spend
once with my foot the night after Goodwins botchup of a concert so cold and
windy it was well we had that rum in the house to mull and the fire wasnt black
out when he asked to take off my stockings lying on the hearthrug in Lombard
street west and another time it was my muddy boots hed like me to walk in all the
horses dung I could find but of course hes not natural like the rest of the world
that I what did he say I could give 9 points in 10 to Katty Lanner and beat her
what does that mean I asked him I forget what he said because the stoppress
edition just passed and the man with the curly hair in the Lucan dairy thats so
polite I think I saw his face before somewhere I noticed him when I was tasting
the butter so I took my time Bartell dArcy too that he used to make fun of when
he commenced kissing me on the choir stairs after I sang Gounods Ave Maria
what are we waiting for O my heart kiss me straight on the brow and part which
is my brown part he was pretty hot for all his tinny voice too my low notes he was
always raving about if you can believe him I liked the way he used his mouth
singing then he said wasnt it terrible to do that there in a place like that I dont see
anything so terrible about it Ill tell him about that some day not now and surprise
him ay and Ill take him there and show him the very place too we did it so now
there you are like it or lump it he thinks nothing can happen without him knowing
he hadnt an idea about my mother till we were engaged otherwise hed never have
got me so cheap as he did he was lo times worse himself anyhow begging me to
give him a tiny bit cut off my drawers that was the evening coming along
Kenilworth square he kissed me in the eye of my glove and I had to take it off
asking me questions is it permitted to enquire the shape of my bedroom so I let
him keep it as if I forgot it to think of me when I saw him slip it into his pocket of
course hes mad on the subject of drawers thats plain to be seen always skeezing at
those brazenfaced things on the bicycles with their skirts blowing up to their
navels even when Milly and I were out with him at the open air fete that one in
the cream muslin standing right against the sun so he could see every atom she
had on when he saw me from behind following in the rain I saw him before he
saw me however standing at the corner of the Harolds cross road with a new
raincoat on him with the muffler in the Zingari colours to show off his complexion
and the brown hat looking slyboots as usual what was he doing there where hed
no business they can go and get whatever they like from anything at all with a
skirt on it and were not to ask any questions but they want to know where were
you where are you going I could feel him coming along skulking after me his eyes
on my neck he had been keeping away from the house he felt it was getting too
warm for him so I halfturned and stopped then he pestered me to say yes till I
took off my glove slowly watching him he said my openwork sleeves were too cold
for the rain anything for an excuse to put his hand anear me drawers drawers the
whole blessed time till I promised to give him the pair off my doll to carry about
in his waistcoat pocket O Maria Santisima he did look a big fool dreeping in the
rain splendid set of teeth he had made me hungry to look at them and beseeched
of me to lift the orange petticoat I had on with the sunray pleats that there was
nobody he said hed kneel down in the wet if I didnt so persevering he would too
and ruin his new raincoat you never know what freak theyd take alone with you
theyre so savage for it if anyone was passing so I lifted them a bit and touched his
trousers outside the way I used to Gardner after with my ring hand to keep him
from doing worse where it was too public I was dying to find out was he
circumcised he was shaking like a jelly all over they want to do everything too
quick take all the pleasure out of it and father waiting all the time for his dinner
he told me to say I left my purse in the butchers and had to go back for it what a
Deceiver then he wrote me that letter with all those words in it how could he have
the face to any woman after his company manners making it so awkward after
when we met asking me have I offended you with my eyelids down of course he
saw I wasnt he had a few brains not like that other fool Henny Doyle he was
always breaking or tearing something in the charades I hate an unlucky man and if
I knew what it meant of course I had to say no for form sake dont understand you
I said and wasnt it natural so it is of course it used to be written up with a picture
of a womans on that wall in Gibraltar with that word I couldnt find anywhere
only for children seeing it too young then writing every morning a letter
sometimes twice a day I liked the way he made love then he knew the way to take
a woman when he sent me the 8 big poppies because mine was the 8th then I
wrote the night he kissed my heart at Dolphins barn I couldnt describe it simply it
makes you feel like nothing on earth but he never knew how to embrace well like
Gardner I hope hell come on Monday as he said at the same time four I hate
people who come at all hours answer the door you think its the vegetables then its
somebody and you all undressed or the door of the filthy sloppy kitchen blows
open the day old frostyface Goodwin called about the concert in Lombard street
and I just after dinner all flushed and tossed with boiling old stew dont look at me
professor I had to say Im a fright yes but he was a real old gent in his way it was
impossible to be more respectful nobody to say youre out you have to peep out
through the blind like the messengerboy today I thought it was a putoff first him
sending the port and the peaches first and I was just beginning to yawn with
nerves thinking he was trying to make a fool of me when I knew his tattarrattat at
the door he must have been a bit late because it was l/4 after 3 when I saw the 2
Dedalus girls coming from school I never know the time even that watch he gave
me never seems to go properly Id want to get it looked after when I threw the
penny to that lame sailor for England home and beauty when I was whistling there
is a charming girl I love and I hadnt even put on my clean shift or powdered
myself or a thing then this day week were to go to Belfast just as well he has to go
to Ennis his fathers anniversary the 27th it wouldnt be pleasant if he did suppose
our rooms at the hotel were beside each other and any fooling went on in the new
bed I couldnt tell him to stop and not bother me with him in the next room or
perhaps some protestant clergyman with a cough knocking on the wall then hed
never believe the next day we didnt do something its all very well a husband but
you cant fool a lover after me telling him we never did anything of course he didnt
believe me no its better hes going where he is besides something always happens
with him the time going to the Mallow concert at Maryborough ordering boiling
soup for the two of us then the bell rang out he walks down the platform with the
soup splashing about taking spoonfuls of it hadnt he the nerve and the waiter
after him making a holy show of us screeching and confusion for the engine to
start but he wouldnt pay till he finished it the two gentlemen in the 3rd class
carriage said he was quite right so he was too hes so pigheaded sometimes when
he gets a thing into his head a good job he was able to open the carriage door with
his knife or theyd have taken us on to Cork I suppose that was done out of
revenge on him O I love jaunting in a train or a car with lovely soft cushions I
wonder will he take a 1st class for me he might want to do it in the train by
tipping the guard well O I suppose therell be the usual idiots of men gaping at us
with their eyes as stupid as ever they can possibly be that was an exceptional man
that common workman that left us alone in the carriage that day going to Howth
Id like to find out something about him l or 2 tunnels perhaps then you have to
look out of the window all the nicer then coming back suppose I never came back
what would they say eloped with him that gets you on on the stage the last
concert I sang at where its over a year ago when was it St Teresas hall Clarendon
St little chits of missies they have now singing Kathleen Kearney and her like on
account of father being in the army and my singing the absentminded beggar and
wearing a brooch for Lord Roberts when I had the map of it all and Poldy not Irish
enough was it him managed it this time I wouldnt put it past him like he got me
on to sing in the Stabat Mater by going around saying he was putting Lead Kindly
Light to music I put him up to that till the jesuits found out he was a freemason
thumping the piano lead Thou me on copied from some old opera yes and he was
going about with some of them Sinner Fein lately or whatever they call themselves
talking his usual trash and nonsense he says that little man he showed me without
the neck is very intelligent the coming man Griffiths is he well he doesnt look it
thats all I can say still it must have been him he knew there was a boycott I hate
the mention of their politics after the war that Pretoria and Ladysmith and
Bloemfontein where Gardner lieut Stanley G 8th Bn 2nd East Lancs Rgt of enteric
fever he was a lovely fellow in khaki and just the right height over me Im sure he
was brave too he said I was lovely the evening we kissed goodbye at the canal lock
my Irish beauty he was pale with excitement about going away or wed be seen
from the road he couldnt stand properly and I so hot as I never felt they could
have made their peace in the beginning or old oom Paul and the rest of the other
old Krugers go and fight it out between them instead of dragging on for years
killing any finelooking men there were with their fever if he was even decently
shot it wouldnt have been so bad I love to see a regiment pass in review the first
time I saw the Spanish cavalry at La Roque it was lovely after looking across the
bay from Algeciras all the lights of the rock like fireflies or those sham battles on
the 15 acres the Black Watch with their kilts in time at the march past the 10th
hussars the prince of Wales own or the lancers O the lancers theyre grand or the
Dublins that won Tugela his father made his money over selling the horses for the
cavalry well he could buy me a nice present up in Belfast after what I gave him
theyve lovely linen up there or one of those nice kimono things I must buy a
mothball like I had before to keep in the drawer with them it would be exciting
going round with him shopping buying those things in a new city better leave this
ring behind want to keep turning and turning to get it over the knuckle there or
they might bell it round the town in their papers or tell the police on me but theyd
think were married O let them all go and smother themselves for the fat lot I care
he has plenty of money and hes not a marrying man so somebody better get it out
of him if I could find out whether he likes me I looked a bit washy of course when
I looked close in the handglass powdering a mirror never gives you the expression
besides scrooching down on me like that all the time with his big hipbones hes
heavy too with his hairy chest for this heat always having to lie down for them
better for him put it into me from behind the way Mrs Mastiansky told me her
husband made her like the dogs do it and stick out her tongue as far as ever she
could and he so quiet and mild with his tingating cither can you ever be up to
men the way it takes them lovely stuff in that blue suit he had on and stylish tie
and socks with the skyblue silk things on them hes certainly well off I know by
the cut his clothes have and his heavy watch but he was like a perfect devil for a
few minutes after he came back with the stoppress tearing up the tickets and
swearing blazes because he lost 20 quid he said he lost over that outsider that
won and half he put on for me on account of Lenehans tip cursing him to the
lowest pits that sponger he was making free with me after the Glencree dinner
coming back that long joult over the featherbed mountain after the lord Mayor
looking at me with his dirty eyes Val Dillon that big heathen I first noticed him at
dessert when I was cracking the nuts with my teeth I wished I could have picked
every morsel of that chicken out of my fingers it was so tasty and browned and as
tender as anything only for I didnt want to eat everything on my plate those forks
and fishslicers were hallmarked silver too I wish I had some I could easily have
slipped a couple into my muff when I was playing with them then always hanging
out of them for money in a restaurant for the bit you put down your throat we
have to be thankful for our mangy cup of tea itself as a great compliment to be
noticed the way the world is divided in any case if its going to go on I want at
least two other good chemises for one thing and but I dont know what kind of
drawers he likes none at all I think didnt he say yes and half the girls in Gibraltar
never wore them either naked as God made them that Andalusian singing her
Manola she didnt make much secret of what she hadnt yes and the second pair of
silkette stockings is laddered after one days wear I could have brought them back
to Lewers this morning and kicked up a row and made that one change them only
not to upset myself and run the risk of walking into him and ruining the whole
thing and one of those kidfitting corsets Id want advertised cheap in the
Gentlewoman with elastic gores on the hips he saved the one I have but thats no
good what did they say they give a delightful figure line 11/6 obviating that
unsightly broad appearance across the lower back to reduce flesh my belly is a bit
too big Ill have to knock off the stout at dinner or am I getting too fond of it the
last they sent from ORourkes was as flat as a pancake he makes his money easy
Larry they call him the old mangy parcel he sent at Xmas a cottage cake and a
bottle of hogwash he tried to palm off as claret that he couldnt get anyone to
drink God spare his spit for fear hed die of the drouth or I must do a few
breathing exercises I wonder is that antifat any good might overdo it the thin ones
are not so much the fashion now garters that much I have the violet pair I wore
today thats all he bought me out of the cheque he got on the first O no there was
the face lotion I finished the last of yesterday that made my skin like new I told
him over and over again get that made up in the same place and dont forget it
God only knows whether he did after all I said to him 111 know by the bottle
anyway if not I suppose 111 only have to wash in my piss like beeftea or
chickensoup with some of that opoponax and violet I thought it was beginning to
look coarse or old a bit the skin underneath is much finer where it peeled off there
on my finger after the burn its a pity it isnt all like that and the four paltry
handkerchiefs about 6/- in all sure you cant get on in this world without style all
going in food and rent when I get it Ill lash it around I tell you in fine style I
always want to throw a handful of tea into the pot measuring and mincing if I buy
a pair of old brogues itself do you like those new shoes yes how much were they
Ive no clothes at all the brown costume and the skirt and jacket and the one at the
cleaners 3 whats that for any woman cutting up this old hat and patching up the
other the men wont look at you and women try to walk on you because they know
youve no man then with all the things getting dearer every day for the 4 years
more I have of life up to 35 no Im what am I at all 111 be 33 in September will I
what O well look at that Mrs Galbraith shes much older than me I saw her when I
was out last week her beautys on the wane she was a lovely woman magnificent
head of hair on her down to her waist tossing it back like that like Kitty OShea in
Grantham street 1st thing I did every morning to look across see her combing it as
if she loved it and was full of it pity I only got to know her the day before we left
and that Mrs Langtry the jersey lily the prince of Wales was in love with I suppose
hes like the first man going the roads only for the name of a king theyre all made
the one way only a black mans Id like to try a beauty up to what was she 45 there
was some funny story about the jealous old husband what was it at all and an
oyster knife he went no he made her wear a kind of a tin thing round her and the
prince of Wales yes he had the oyster knife cant be true a thing like that like some
of those books he brings me the works of Master Francois Somebody supposed to
be a priest about a child born out of her ear because her bumgut fell out a nice
word for any priest to write and her a—e as if any fool wouldnt know what that
meant I hate that pretending of all things with that old blackguards face on him
anybody can see its not true and that Ruby and Fair Tyrants he brought me that
twice I remember when I came to page 5 o the part about where she hangs him up
out of a hook with a cord flagellate sure theres nothing for a woman in that all
invention made up about he drinking the champagne out of her slipper after the
ball was over like the infant Jesus in the crib at Inchicore in the Blessed Virgins
arms sure no woman could have a child that big taken out of her and I thought
first it came out of her side because how could she go to the chamber when she
wanted to and she a rich lady of course she felt honoured H R H he was in
Gibraltar the year I was born I bet he found lilies there too where he planted the
tree he planted more than that in his time he might have planted me too if hed
come a bit sooner then I wouldnt be here as I am he ought to chuck that Freeman
with the paltry few shillings he knocks out of it and go into an office or something
where hed get regular pay or a bank where they could put him up on a throne to
count the money all the day of course he prefers plottering about the house so you
cant stir with him any side whats your programme today I wish hed even smoke a
pipe like father to get the smell of a man or pretending to be mooching about for
advertisements when he could have been in Mr Cuffes still only for what he did
then sending me to try and patch it up I could have got him promoted there to be
the manager he gave me a great mirada once or twice first he was as stiff as the
mischief really and truly Mrs Bloom only I felt rotten simply with the old rubbishy
dress that I lost the leads out of the tails with no cut in it but theyre coming into
fashion again I bought it simply to please him I knew it was no good by the finish
pity I changed my mind of going to Todd and Bums as I said and not Lees it was
just like the shop itself rummage sale a lot of trash I hate those rich shops get on
your nerves nothing kills me altogether only he thinks he knows a great lot about
a womans dress and cooking mathering everything he can scour off the shelves
into it if I went by his advices every blessed hat I put on does that suit me yes
take that thats alright the one like a weddingcake standing up miles off my head
he said suited me or the dishcover one coming down on my backside on pins and
needles about the shopgirl in that place in Grafton street I had the misfortune to
bring him into and she as insolent as ever she could be with her smirk saying Im
afraid were giving you too much trouble what shes there for but I stared it out of
her yes he was awfully stiff and no wonder but he changed the second time he
looked Poldy pigheaded as usual like the soup but I could see him looking very
hard at my chest when he stood up to open the door for me it was nice of him to
show me out in any case Im extremely sorry Mrs Bloom believe me without
making it too marked the first time after him being insulted and me being
supposed to be his wife I just half smiled I know my chest was out that way at the
door when he said Im extremely sorry and Im sure you were
 yes I think he made them a bit firmer sucking them like that so long he made
me thirsty titties he calls them I had to laugh yes this one anyhow stiff the nipple
gets for the least thing Ill get him to keep that up and Ill take those eggs beaten up
with marsala fatten them out for him what are all those veins and things curious
the way its made 2 the same in case of twins theyre supposed to represent beauty
placed up there like those statues in the museum one of them pretending to hide it
with her hand are they so beautiful of course compared with what a man looks
like with his two bags full and his other thing hanging down out of him or sticking
up at you like a hatrack no wonder they hide it with a cabbageleaf that disgusting
Cameron highlander behind the meat market or that other wretch with the red
head behind the tree where the statue of the fish used to be when I was passing
pretending he was pissing standing out for me to see it with his babyclothes up to
one side the Queens own they were a nice lot its well the Surreys relieved them
theyre always trying to show it to you every time nearly I passed outside the mens
greenhouse near the Harcourt street station just to try some fellow or other trying
to catch my eye as if it was I of the 7 wonders of the world O and the stink of
those rotten places the night coming home with Poldy after the Comerfords party
oranges and lemonade to make you feel nice and watery I went into r of them it
was so biting cold I couldnt keep it when was that 93 the canal was frozen yes it
was a few months after a pity a couple of the Camerons werent there to see me
squatting in the mens place meadero I tried to draw a picture of it before I tore it
up like a sausage or something I wonder theyre not afraid going about of getting a
kick or a bang of something there the woman is beauty of course thats admitted
when he said I could pose for a picture naked to some rich fellow in Holles street
when he lost the job in Helys and I was selling the clothes and strumming in the
coffee palace would I be like that bath of the nymph with my hair down yes only
shes younger or Im a little like that dirty bitch in that Spanish photo he has
nymphs used they go about like that I asked him about her and that word met
something with hoses in it and he came out with some jawbreakers about the
incarnation he never can explain a thing simply the way a body can understand
then he goes and burns the bottom out of the pan all for his Kidney this one not
so much theres the mark of his teeth still where he tried to bite the nipple I had to
scream out arent they fearful trying to hurt you I had a great breast of milk with
Milly enough for two what was the reason of that he said I could have got a
pound a week as a wet nurse all swelled out the morning that delicate looking
student that stopped in no 28 with the Citrons Penrose nearly caught me washing
through the window only for I snapped up the towel to my face that was his
studenting hurt me they used to weaning her till he got doctor Brady to give me
the belladonna prescription I had to get him to suck them they were so hard he
said it was sweeter and thicker than cows then he wanted to milk me into the tea
well hes beyond everything I declare somebody ought to put him in the budget if I
only could remember the I half of the things and write a book out of it the works
of Master Poldy yes and its so much smoother the skin much an hour he was at
them Im sure by the clock like some kind of a big infant I had at me they want
everything in their mouth all the pleasure those men get out of a woman I can feel
his mouth O Lord I must stretch myself I wished he was here or somebody to let
myself go with and come again like that I feel all fire inside me or if I could dream
it when he made me spend the 2nd time tickling me behind with his finger I was
coming for about 5 minutes with my legs round him I had to hug him after O Lord
I wanted to shout out all sorts of things fuck or shit or anything at all only not to
look ugly or those lines from the strain who knows the way hed take it you want
to feel your way with a man theyre not all like him thank God some of them want
you to be so nice about it I noticed the contrast he does it and doesnt talk I gave
my eyes that look with my hair a bit loose from the tumbling and my tongue
between my lips up to him the savage brute Thursday Friday one Saturday two
Sunday three O Lord I cant wait till Monday
frseeeeeeeefronnnng train somewhere whistling the strength those engines have
in them like big giants and the water rolling all over and out of them all sides like
the end of Loves old sweeeetsonnnng the poor men that have to be out all the
night from their wives and families in those roasting engines stifling it was today
Im glad I burned the half of those old Freemans and Photo Bits leaving things like
that lying about hes getting very careless and threw the rest of them up in the W C
111 get him to cut them tomorrow for me instead of having them there for the
next year to get a few pence for them have him asking wheres last Januarys paper
and all those old overcoats I bundled out of the hall making the place hotter than
it is that rain was lovely and refreshing just after my beauty sleep I thought it was
going to get like Gibraltar my goodness the heat there before the levanter came on
black as night and the glare of the rock standing up in it like a big giant compared
with their 3 Rock mountain they think is so great with the red sentries here and
there the poplars and they all whitehot and the smell of the rainwater in those
tanks watching the sun all the time weltering down on you faded all that lovely
frock fathers friend Mrs Stanhope sent me from the B Marche paris what a shame
my dearest Doggerina she wrote on it she was very nice whats this her other name
was just a p c to tell you I sent the little present have just had a jolly warm bath
and feel a very clean dog now enjoyed it wogger she called him wogger wd give
anything to be back in Gib and hear you sing Waiting and in old Madrid Concone
is the name of those exercises he bought me one of those new some word I couldnt
make out shawls amusing things but tear for the least thing still there lovely I
think dont you will always think of the lovely teas we had together scrumptious
currant scones and raspberry wafers I adore well now dearest Doggerina be sure
and write soon kind she left out regards to your father also captain Grove with
love yrs affly Hester x x x x x she didnt look a bit married just like a girl he was
years older than her wogger he was awfully fond of me when he held down the
wire with his foot for me to step over at the bullfight at La Linea when that
matador Gomez was given the bulls ear these clothes we have to wear whoever
invented them expecting you to walk up Killiney hill then for example at that
picnic all staysed up you cant do a blessed thing in them in a crowd run or jump
out of the way thats why I was afraid when that other ferocious old Bull began to
charge the banderilleros with the sashes and the 2 things in their hats and the
brutes of men shouting bravo toro sure the women were as bad in their nice white
mantillas ripping all the whole insides out of those poor horses I never heard of
such a thing in all my life yes he used to break his heart at me taking off the dog
barking in bell lane poor brute and it sick what became of them ever I suppose
theyre dead long ago the 2 of them its like all through a mist makes you feel so
old I made the scones of course I had everything all to myself then a girl Hester
we used to compare our hair mine was thicker than hers she showed me how to
settle it at the back when I put it up and whats this else how to make a knot on a
thread with the one hand we were like cousins what age was I then the night of
the storm I slept in her bed she had her arms round me then we were fighting in
the morning with the pillow what fun he was watching me whenever he got an
opportunity at the band on the Alameda esplanade when I was with father and
captain Grove I looked up at the church first and then at the windows then down
and our eyes met I felt something go through me like all needles my eyes were
dancing I remember after when I looked at myself in the glass hardly recognised
myself the change he was attractive to a girl in spite of his being a little bald
intelligent looking disappointed and gay at the same time he was like Thomas in
the shadow of Ashlydyat I had a splendid skin from the sun and the excitement
like a rose I didnt get a wink of sleep it wouldnt have been nice on account of her
but I could have stopped it in time she gave me the Moonstone to read that was
the first I read of Wilkie Collins East Lynne I read and the shadow of Ashlydyat
Mrs Henry Wood Henry Dunbar by that other woman I lent him afterwards with
Mulveys photo in it so as he see I wasnt without and Lord Lytton Eugene Aram
Molly bawn she gave me by Mrs Hungerford on account of the name I dont like
books with a Molly in them like that one he brought me about the one from
Flanders a whore always shoplifting anything she could cloth and stuff and yards
of it O this blanket is too heavy on me thats better I havent even one decent
nightdress this thing gets all rolled under me besides him and his fooling thats
better I used to be weltering then in the heat my shift drenched with the sweat
stuck in the cheeks of my bottom on the chair when I stood up they were so
fattish and firm when I got up on the sofa cushions to see with my clothes up and
the bugs tons of them at night and the mosquito nets I couldnt read a line Lord
how long ago it seems centuries of course they never came back and she didnt put
her address right on it either she may have noticed her wogger people were always
going away and we never I remember that day with the waves and the boats with
their high heads rocking and the smell of ship those Officers uniforms on shore
leave made me seasick he didnt say anything he was very serious I had the high
buttoned boots on and my skirt was blowing she kissed me six or seven times
didnt I cry yes I believe I did or near it my lips were taittering when I said
goodbye she had a Gorgeous wrap of some special kind of blue colour on her for
the voyage made very peculiarly to one side like and it was extremely pretty it got
as dull as the devil after they went I was almost planning to run away mad out of
it somewhere were never easy where we are father or aunt or marriage waiting
always waiting to guiiiide him toooo me waiting nor speeeed his flying feet their
damn guns bursting and booming all over the shop especially the Queens birthday
and throwing everything down in all directions if you didnt open the windows
when general Ulysses Grant whoever he was or did supposed to be some great
fellow landed off the ship and old Sprague the consul that was there from before
the flood dressed up poor man and he in mourning for the son then the same old
bugles for reveille in the morning and drums rolling and the unfortunate poor
devils of soldiers walking about with messtins smelling the place more than the
old longbearded jews in their jellibees and levites assembly and sound clear and
gunfire for the men to cross the lines and the warden marching with his keys to
lock the gates and the bagpipes and only captain Groves and father talking about
Rorkes drift and Plevna and sir Garnet Wolseley and Gordon at Khartoum lighting
their pipes for them everytime they went out drunken old devil with his grog on
the windowsill catch him leaving any of it picking his nose trying to think of some
other dirty story to tell up in a corner but he never forgot himself when I was
there sending me out of the room on some blind excuse paying his compliments
the Bushmills whisky talking of course but hed do the same to the next woman
that came along I suppose he died of galloping drink ages ago the days like years
not a letter from a living soul except the odd few I posted to myself with bits of
paper in them so bored sometimes I could fight with my nails listening to that old
Arab with the one eye and his heass of an instrument singing his heah heah aheah
all my compriments on your hotchapotch of your heass as bad as now with the
hands hanging off me looking out of the window if there was a nice fellow even in
the opposite house that medical in Holles street the nurse was after when I put on
my gloves and hat at the window to show I was going out not a notion what I
meant arent they thick never understand what you say even youd want to print it
up on a big poster for them not even if you shake hands twice with the left he
didnt recognise me either when I half frowned at him outside Westland row chapel
where does their great intelligence come in Id like to know grey matter they have
it all in their tail if you ask me those country gougers up in the City Arms
intelligence they had a damn sight less than the bulls and cows they were selling
the meat and the coalmans bell that noisy bugger trying to swindle me with the
wrong bill he took out of his hat what a pair of paws and pots and pans and
kettles to mend any broken bottles for a poor man today and no visitors or post
ever except his cheques or some advertisement like that wonderworker they sent
him addressed dear Madam only his letter and the card from Milly this morning
see she wrote a letter to him who did I get the last letter from O Mrs Dwenn now
what possessed her to write from Canada after so many years to know the recipe I
had for pisto madrileno Floey Dillon since she wrote to say she was married to a
very rich architect if Im to believe all I hear with a villa and eight rooms her father
was an awfully nice man he was near seventy always goodhumoured well now
Miss Tweedy or Miss Gillespie theres the piannyer that was a solid silver coffee
service he had too on the mahogany sideboard then dying so far away I hate
people that have always their poor story to tell everybody has their own troubles
that poor Nancy Blake died a month ago of acute neumonia well I didnt know her
so well as all that she was Floeys friend more than mine poor Nancy its a bother
having to answer he always tells me the wrong things and no stops to say like
making a speech your sad bereavement symphathy I always make that mistake
and newphew with 2 double yous in I hope hell write me a longer letter the next
time if its a thing he really likes me O thanks be to the great God I got somebody
to give me what I badly wanted to put some heart up into me youve no chances at
all in this place like you used long ago I wish somebody would write me a
loveletter his wasnt much and I told him he could write what he liked yours ever
Hugh Boylan in old Madrid stuff silly women believe love is sighing I am dying
still if he wrote it I suppose thered be some truth in it true or no it fills up your
whole day and life always something to think about every moment and see it all
round you like a new world I could write the answer in bed to let him imagine me
short just a few words not those long crossed letters Atty Dillon used to write to
the fellow that was something in the four courts that jilted her after out of the
ladies letterwriter when I told her to say a few simple words he could twist how
he liked not acting with precipat precip itancy with equal candour the greatest
earthly happiness answer to a gentlemans proposal affirmatively my goodness
theres nothing else its all very fine for them but as for being a woman as soon as
youre old they might as well throw you out in the bottom of the ashpit.
Mulveys was the first when I was in bed that morning and Mrs Rubio brought it
in with the coffee she stood there standing when I asked her to hand me and I
pointing at them I couldnt think of the word a hairpin to open it with ah horquilla
disobliging old thing and it staring her in the face with her switch of false hair on
her and vain about her appearance ugly as she was near 80 or a loo her face a
mass of wrinkles with all her religion domineering because she never could get
over the Atlantic fleet coming in half the ships of the world and the Union Jack
flying with all her carabineros because 4 drunken English sailors took all the rock
from them and because I didnt run into mass often enough in Santa Maria to
please her with her shawl up on her except when there was a marriage on with all
her miracles of the saints and her black blessed virgin with the silver dress and
the sun dancing 3 times on Easter Sunday morning and when the priest was going
by with the bell bringing the vatican to the dying blessing herself for his Majestad
an admirer he signed it I near jumped out of my skin I wanted to pick him up
when I saw him following me along the Calle Real in the shop window then he
tipped me just in passing but I never thought hed write making an appointment I
had it inside my petticoat bodice all day reading it up in every hole and corner
while father was up at the drill instructing to find out by the handwriting or the
language of stamps singing I remember shall I wear a white rose and I wanted to
put on the old stupid clock to near the time he was the first man kissed me under
the Moorish wall my sweetheart when a boy it never entered my head what
kissing meant till he put his tongue in my mouth his mouth was sweetlike young I
put my knee up to him a few times to learn the way what did I tell him I was
engaged for for fun to the son of a Spanish nobleman named Don Miguel de la
Flora and he believed me that I was to be married to him in 3 years time theres
many a true word spoken in jest there is a flower that bloometh a few things I told
him true about myself just for him to be imagining the Spanish girls he didnt like I
suppose one of them wouldnt have him I got him excited he crushed all the
flowers on my bosom he brought me he couldnt count the pesetas and the
perragordas till I taught him Cappoquin he came from he said on the black water
but it was too short then the day before he left May yes it was May when the
infant king of Spain was born Im always like that in the spring Id like a new
fellow every year up on the tiptop under the rockgun near OHaras tower I told
him it was struck by lightning and all about the old Barbary apes they sent to
Clapham without a tail careering all over the show on each others back Mrs Rubio
said she was a regular old rock scorpion robbing the chickens out of Inces farm
and throw stones at you if you went anear he was looking at me I had that white
blouse on open in the front to encourage him as much as I could without too
openly they were just beginning to be plump I said I was tired we lay over the
firtree cove a wild place I suppose it must be the highest rock in existence the
galleries and casemates and those frightful rocks and Saint Michaels cave with the
icicles or whatever they call them hanging down and ladders all the mud plotching
my boots Im sure thats the way down the monkeys go under the sea to Africa
when they die the ships out far like chips that was the Malta boat passing yes the
sea and the sky you could do what you liked lie there for ever he caressed them
outside they love doing that its the roundness there I was leaning over him with
my white ricestraw hat to take the newness out of it the left side of my face the
best my blouse open for his last day transparent kind of shirt he had I could see
his chest pink he wanted to touch mine with his for a moment but I wouldnt lee
him he was awfully put out first for fear you never know consumption or leave me
with a child embarazada that old servant Ines told me that one drop even if it got
into you at all after I tried with the Banana but I was afraid it might break and get
lost up in me somewhere because they once took something down out of a woman
that was up there for years covered with limesalts theyre all mad to get in there
where they come out of youd think they could never go far enough up and then
theyre done with you in a way till the next time yes because theres a wonderful
feeling there so tender all the time how did we finish it off yes O yes I pulled him
off into my handkerchief pretending not to be excited but I opened my legs I
wouldnt let him touch me inside my petticoat because I had a skirt opening up the
side I tormented the life out of him first tickling him I loved rousing that dog in
the hotel rrrsssstt awokwokawok his eyes shut and a bird flying below us he was
shy all the same I liked him like that moaning I made him blush a little when I got
over him that way when I unbuttoned him and took his out and drew back the
skin it had a kind of eye in it theyre all Buttons men down the middle on the
wrong side of them Molly darling he called me what was his name Jack Joe Harry
Mulvey was it yes I think a lieutenant he was rather fair he had a laughing kind of
a voice so I went round to the whatyoucallit everything was whatyoucallit
moustache had he he said hed come back Lord its just like yesterday to me and if
I was married hed do it to me and I promised him yes faithfully Id let him block
me now flying perhaps hes dead or killed or a captain or admiral its nearly 20
years if I said firtree cove he would if he came up behind me and put his hands
over my eyes to guess who I might recognise him hes young still about 40 perhaps
hes married some girl on the black water and is quite changed they all do they
havent half the character a woman has she little knows what I did with her
beloved husband before he ever dreamt of her in broad daylight too in the sight of
the whole world you might say they could have put an article about it in the
Chronicle I was a bit wild after when I blew out the old bag the biscuits were in
from Benady Bros and exploded it Lord what a bang all the woodcocks and
pigeons screaming coming back the same way that we went over middle hill round
by the old guardhouse and the jews burialplace pretending to read out the Hebrew
on them I wanted to fire his pistol he said he hadnt one he didnt know what to
make of me with his peak cap on that he always wore crooked as often as I settled
it straight H M S Calypso swinging my hat that old Bishop that spoke off the altar
his long preach about womans higher functions about girls now riding the bicycle
and wearing peak caps and the new woman bloomers God send him sense and me
more money I suppose theyre called after him I never thought that would be my
name Bloom when I used to write it in print to see how it looked on a visiting card
or practising for the butcher and oblige M Bloom youre looking blooming Josie
used to say after I married him well its better than Breen or Briggs does brig or
those awful names with bottom in them Mrs Ramsbottom or some other kind of a
bottom Mulvey I wouldnt go mad about either or suppose I divorced him Mrs
Boylan my mother whoever she was might have given me a nicer name the Lord
knows after the lovely one she had Lunita Laredo the fun we had running along
Williss road to Europa point twisting in and out all round the other side of Jersey
they were shaking and dancing about in my blouse like Millys little ones now
when she runs up the stairs I loved looking down at them I was jumping up at the
pepper trees and the white poplars pulling the leaves off and throwing them at
him he went to India he was to write the voyages those men have to make to the
ends of the world and back its the least they might get a squeeze or two at a
woman while they can going out to be drowned or blown up somewhere I went up
Windmill hill to the flats that Sunday morning with captain Rubios that was dead
spyglass like the sentry had he said hed have one or two from on board I wore
that frock from the B Marche paris and the coral necklace the straits shining I
could see over to Morocco almost the bay of Tangier white and the Atlas mountain
with snow on it and the straits like a river so clear Harry Molly darling I was
thinking of him on the sea all the time after at mass when my petticoat began to
slip down at the elevation weeks and weeks I kept the handkerchief under my
pillow for the smell of him there was no decent perfume to be got in that Gibraltar
only that cheap peau dEspagne that faded and left a stink on you more than
anything else I wanted to give him a memento he gave me that clumsy Claddagh
ring for luck that I gave Gardner going to south Africa where those Boers killed
him with their war and fever but they were well beaten all the same as if it
brought its bad luck with it like an opal or pearl still it must have been pure 18
carrot gold because it was very heavy but what could you get in a place like that
the sandfrog shower from Africa and that derelict ship that came up to the
harbour Marie the Marie whatyoucallit no he hadnt a moustache that was Gardner
yes I can see his face cleanshaven Frseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeefrong that train again
weeping tone once in the dear deaead days beyondre call close my eyes breath my
lips forward kiss sad look eyes open piano ere oer the world the mists began I
hate that istsbeg comes loves sweet sooooooooooong Ill let that out full when I get
in front of the footlights again Kathleen Kearney and her lot of squealers Miss
This Miss That Miss Theother lot of sparrowfarts skitting around talking about
politics they know as much about as my backside anything in the world to make
themselves someway interesting Irish homemade beauties soldiers daughter am I
ay and whose are you bootmakers and publicans I beg your pardon coach I
thought you were a wheelbarrow theyd die down dead off their feet if ever they
got a chance of walking down the Alameda on an officers arm like me on the
bandnight my eyes flash my bust that they havent passion God help their poor
head I knew more about men and life when I was I S than theyll all know at 50
they dont know how to sing a song like that Gardner said no man could look at
my mouth and teeth smiling like that and not think of it I was afraid he mightnt
like my accent first he so English all father left me in spite of his stamps Ive my
mothers eyes and figure anyhow he always said theyre so snotty about themselves
some of those cads he wasnt a bit like that he was dead gone on my lips let them
get a husband first thats fit to be looked at and a daughter like mine or see if they
can excite a swell with money that can pick and choose whoever he wants like
Boylan to do it 4 or 5 times locked in each others arms or the voice either I could
have been a prima donna only I married him comes looooves old deep down chin
back not too much make it double My Ladys Bower is too long for an encore
about the moated grange at twilight and vaunted rooms yes Ill sing Winds that
blow from the south that he gave after the choirstairs performance Ill change that
lace on my black dress to show off my bubs and Ill yes by God Ill get that big fan
mended make them burst with envy my hole is itching me always when I think of
him I feel I want to I feel some wind in me better go easy not wake him have him
at it again slobbering after washing every bit of myself back belly and sides if we
had even a bath itself or my own room anyway I wish hed sleep in some bed by
himself with his cold feet on me give us room even to let a fart God or do the least
thing better yes hold them like that a bit on my side piano quietly sweeeee theres
that train far away pianissimo eeeee one more song
that was a relief wherever you be let your wind go free who knows if that pork
chop I took with my cup of tea after was quite good with the heat I couldnt smell
anything off it Im sure that queerlooking man in the porkbutchers is a great rogue
I hope that lamp is not smoking fill my nose up with smuts better than having him
leaving the gas on all night I couldnt rest easy in my bed in Gibraltar even getting
up to see why am I so damned nervous about that though I like it in the winter its
more company O Lord it was rotten cold too that winter when I was only about
ten was I yes I had the big doll with all the funny clothes dressing her up and
undressing that icy wind skeeting across from those mountains the something
Nevada sierra nevada standing at the fire with the little bit of a short shift I had
up to heat myself I loved dancing about in it then make a race back into bed Im
sure that fellow opposite used to be there the whole time watching with the lights
out in the summer and I in my skin hopping around I used to love myself then
stripped at the washstand dabbing and creaming only when it came to the
chamber performance I put out the light too so then there were 2 of us goodbye to
my sleep for this night anyhow I hope hes not going to get in with those medicals
leading him astray to imagine hes young again coming in at 4 in the morning it
must be if not more still he had the manners not to wake me what do they find to
gabber about all night squandering money and getting drunker and drunker
couldnt they drink water then he starts giving us his orders for eggs and tea and
Findon haddy and hot buttered toast I suppose well have him sitting up like the
king of the country pumping the wrong end of the spoon up and down in his egg
wherever he learned that from and I love to hear him falling up the stairs of a
morning with the cups rattling on the tray and then play with the cat she rubs up
against you for her own sake I wonder has she fleas shes as bad as a woman
always licking and lecking but I hate their claws I wonder do they see anything
that we cant staring like that when she sits at the top of the stairs so long and
listening as I wait always what a robber too that lovely fresh place I bought I
think Ill get a bit of fish tomorrow or today is it Friday yes I will with some
blancmange with black currant jam like long ago not those 2 lb pots of mixed
plum and apple from the London and Newcastle Williams and Woods goes twice
as far only for the bones I hate those eels cod yes Ill get a nice piece of cod Im
always getting enough for 3 forgetting anyway Im sick of that everlasting butchers
meat from Buckleys loin chops and leg beef and rib steak and scrag of mutton and
calfs pluck the very name is enough or a picnic suppose we all gave 5/- each and
or let him pay it and invite some other woman for him who Mrs Fleming and
drove out to the furry glen or the strawberry beds wed have him examining all the
horses toenails first like he does with the letters no not with Boylan there yes with
some cold veal and ham mixed sandwiches there are little houses down at the
bottom of the banks there on purpose but its as hot as blazes he says not a bank
holiday anyhow I hate those ruck of Mary Ann coalboxes out for the day Whit
Monday is a cursed day too no wonder that bee bit him better the seaside but Id
never again in this life get into a boat with him after him at Bray telling the
boatman he knew how to row if anyone asked could he ride the steeplechase for
the gold cup hed say yes then it came on to get rough the old thing crookeding
about and the weight all down my side telling me pull the right reins now pull the
left and the tide all swamping in floods in through the bottom and his oar slipping
out of the stirrup its a mercy we werent all drowned he can swim of course me no
theres no danger whatsoever keep yourself calm in his flannel trousers Id like to
have tattered them down off him before all the people and give him what that one
calls flagellate till he was black and blue do him all the good in the world only for
that longnosed chap I dont know who he is with that other beauty Burke out of
the City Arms hotel was there spying around as usual on the slip always where he
wasnt wanted if there was a row on youd vomit a better face there was no love
lost between us thats 1 consolation I wonder what kind is that book he brought
me Sweets of Sin by a gentleman of fashion some other Mr de Kock I suppose the
people gave him that nickname going about with his tube from one woman to
another I couldnt even change my new white shoes all ruined with the saltwater
and the hat I had with that feather all blowy and tossed on me how annoying and
provoking because the smell of the sea excited me of course the sardines and the
bream in Catalan bay round the back of the rock they were fine all silver in the
fishermens baskets old Luigi near a hundred they said came from Genoa and the
tall old chap with the earrings I dont like a man you have to climb up to to get at I
suppose theyre all dead and rotten long ago besides I dont like being alone in this
big barracks of a place at night I suppose Ill have to put up with it I never brought
a bit of salt in even when we moved in the confusion musical academy he was
going to make on the first floor drawingroom with a brassplate or Blooms private
hotel he suggested go and ruin himself altogether the way his father did down in
Ennis like all the things he told father he was going to do and me but I saw
through him telling me all the lovely places we could go for the honeymoon Venice
by moonlight with the gondolas and the lake of Como he had a picture cut out of
some paper of and mandolines and lanterns O how nice I said whatever I liked he
was going to do immediately if not sooner will you be my man will you carry my
can he ought to get a leather medal with a putty rim for all the plans he invents
then leaving us here all day youd never know what old beggar at the door for a
crust with his long story might be a tramp and put his foot in the way to prevent
me shutting it like that picture of that hardened criminal he was called in Lloyds
Weekly news 20 years in jail then he comes out and murders an old woman for
her money imagine his poor wife or mother or whoever she is such a face youd
run miles away from I couldnt rest easy till I bolted all the doors and windows to
make sure but its worse again being locked up like in a prison or a madhouse they
ought to be all shot or the cat of nine tails a big brute like that that would attack a
poor old woman to murder her in her bed Id cut them off him so I would not that
hed be much use still better than nothing the night I was sure I heard burglars in
the kitchen and he went down in his shirt with a candle and a poker as if he was
looking for a mouse as white as a sheet frightened out of his wits making as much
noise as he possibly could for the burglars benefit there isnt much to steal indeed
the Lord knows still its the feeling especially now with Milly away such an idea
for him to send the girl down there to learn to take photographs on account of his
grandfather instead of sending her to Skerrys academy where shed have to learn
not like me getting all IS at school only hed do a thing like that all the same on
account of me and Boylan thats why he did it Im certain the way he plots and
plans everything out I couldnt turn round with her in the place lately unless I
bolted the door first gave me the fidgets coming in without knocking first when I
put the chair against the door just as I was washing myself there below with the
glove get on your nerves then doing the loglady all day put her in a glasscase with
two at a time to look at her if he knew she broke off the hand off that little
gimcrack statue with her roughness and carelessness before she left that I got that
little Italian boy to mend so that you cant see the join for 2 shillings wouldnt even
teem the potatoes for you of course shes right not to ruin her hands I noticed he
was always talking to her lately at the table explaining things in the paper and she
pretending to understand sly of course that comes from his side of the house he
cant say I pretend things can he Im too honest as a matter of fact and helping her
into her coat but if there was anything wrong with her its me shed tell not him I
suppose he thinks Im finished out and laid on the shelf well Im not no nor
anything like it well see well see now shes well on for flirting too with Tom
Devans two sons imitating me whistling with those romps of Murray girls calling
for her can Milly come out please shes in great demand to pick what they can out
of her round in Nelson street riding Harry Devans bicycle at night its as well he
sent her where she is she was just getting out of bounds wanting to go on the
skatingrink and smoking their cigarettes through their nose I smelt it off her dress
when I was biting off the thread of the button I sewed on to the bottom of her
jacket she couldnt hide much from me I tell you only I oughtnt to have stitched it
and it on her it brings a parting and the last plumpudding too split in 2 halves see
it comes out no matter what they say her tongue is a bit too long for my taste your
blouse is open too low she says to me the pan calling the kettle blackbottom and I
had to tell her not to cock her legs up like that on show on the windowsill before
all the people passing they all look at her like me when I was her age of course
any old rag looks well on you then a great touchmenot too in her own way at the
Only Way in the Theatre royal take your foot away out of that I hate people
touching me afraid of her life Id crush her skirt with the pleats a lot of that
touching must go on in theatres in the crush in the dark theyre always trying to
wiggle up to you that fellow in the pit at the Gaiety for Beerbohm Tree in Trilby
the last time Ill ever go there to be squashed like that for any Trilby or her
barebum every two minutes tipping me there and looking away hes a bit daft I
think I saw him after trying to get near two stylishdressed ladies outside Switzers
window at the same little game I recognised him on the moment the face and
everything but he didnt remember me yes and she didnt even want me to kiss her
at the Broadstone going away well I hope shell get someone to dance attendance
on her the way I did when she was down with the mumps and her glands swollen
wheres this and wheres that of course she cant feel anything deep yet I never
came properly till I was what 22 or so it went into the wrong place always only
the usual girls nonsense and giggling that Conny Connolly writing to her in white
ink on black paper sealed with sealingwax though she clapped when the curtain
came down because he looked so handsome then we had Martin Harvey for
breakfast dinner and supper I thought to myself afterwards it must be real love if
a man gives up his life for her that way for nothing I suppose there are a few men
like that left its hard to believe in it though unless it really happened to me the
majority of them with not a particle of love in their natures to find two people like
that nowadays full up of each other that would feel the same way as you do theyre
usually a bit foolish in the head his father must have been a bit queer to go and
poison himself after her still poor old man I suppose he felt lost shes always
making love to my things too the few old rags I have wanting to put her hair up at
I S my powder too only ruin her skin on her shes time enough for that all her life
after of course shes restless knowing shes pretty with her lips so red a pity they
wont stay that way I was too but theres no use going to the fair with the thing
answering me like a fishwoman when I asked to go for a half a stone of potatoes
the day we met Mrs Joe Gallaher at the trottingmatches and she pretended not to
see us in her trap with Friery the solicitor we werent grand enough till I gave her
2 damn fine cracks across the ear for herself take that now for answering me like
that and that for your impudence she had me that exasperated of course
contradicting I was badtempered too because how was it there was a weed in the
tea or I didnt sleep the night before cheese I ate was it and I told her over and
over again not to leave knives crossed like that because she has nobody to
command her as she said herself well if he doesnt correct her faith I will that was
the last time she turned on the teartap I was just like that myself they darent
order me about the place its his fault of course having the two of us slaving here
instead of getting in a woman long ago am I ever going to have a proper servant
again of course then shed see him coming Id have to let her know or shed revenge
it arent they a nuisance that old Mrs Fleming you have to be walking round after
her putting the things into her hands sneezing and farting into the pots well of
course shes old she cant help it a good job I found that rotten old smelly dishcloth
that got lost behind the dresser I knew there was something and opened the area
window to let out the smell bringing in his friends to entertain them like the night
he walked home with a dog if you please that might have been mad especially
Simon Dedalus son his father such a criticiser with his glasses up with his tall hat
on him at the cricket match and a great big hole in his sock one thing laughing at
the other and his son that got all those prizes for whatever he won them in the
intermediate imagine climbing over the railings if anybody saw him that knew us I
wonder he didnt tear a big hole in his grand funeral trousers as if the one nature
gave wasnt enough for anybody hawking him down into the dirty old kitchen now
is he right in his head I ask pity it wasnt washing day my old pair of drawers
might have been hanging up too on the line on exhibition for all hed ever care
with the ironmould mark the stupid old bundle burned on them he might think
was something else and she never even rendered down the fat I told her and now
shes going such as she was on account of her paralysed husband getting worse
theres always something wrong with them disease or they have to go under an
operation or if its not that its drink and he beats her Ill have to hunt around again
for someone every day I get up theres some new thing on sweet God sweet God
well when Im stretched out dead in my grave I suppose 111 have some peace I
want to get up a minute if Im let wait O Jesus wait yes that thing has come on me
yes now wouldnt that afflict you of course all the poking and rooting and
ploughing he had up in me now what am I to do Friday Saturday Sunday wouldnt
that pester the soul out of a body unless he likes it some men do God knows
theres always something wrong with us 5 days every 3 or 4 weeks usual monthly
auction isnt it simply sickening that night it came on me like that the one and only
time we were in a box that Michael Gunn gave him to see Mrs Kendal and her
husband at the Gaiety something he did about insurance for him in Drimmies I
was fit to be tied though I wouldnt give in with that gentleman of fashion staring
down at me with his glasses and him the other side of me talking about Spinoza
and his soul thats dead I suppose millions of years ago I smiled the best I could all
in a swamp leaning forward as if I was interested having to sit it out then to the
last tag I wont forget that wife of Scarli in a hurry supposed to be a fast play
about adultery that idiot in the gallery hissing the woman adulteress he shouted I
suppose he went and had a woman in the next lane running round all the back
ways after to make up for it I wish he had what I had then hed boo I bet the cat
itself is better off than us have we too much blood up in us or what O patience
above its pouring out of me like the sea anyhow he didnt make me pregnant as big
as he is I dont want to ruin the clean sheets I just put on I suppose the clean linen
I wore brought it on too damn it damn it and they always want to see a stain on
the bed to know youre a virgin for them all thats troubling them theyre such fools
too you could be a widow or divorced 40 times over a daub of red ink would do
or blackberry juice no thats too purply O Jamesy let me up out of this pooh sweets
of sin whoever suggested that business for women what between clothes and
cooking and children this damned old bed too jingling like the dickens I suppose
they could hear us away over the other side of the park till I suggested to put the
quilt on the floor with the pillow under my bottom I wonder is it nicer in the day I
think it is easy I think Ill cut all this hair off me there scalding me I might look
like a young girl wouldnt he get the great suckin the next time he turned up my
clothes on me Id give anything to see his face wheres the chamber gone easy Ive a
holy horror of its breaking under me after that old commode I wonder was I too
heavy sitting on his knee I made him sit on the easychair purposely when I took
off only my blouse and skirt first in the other room he was so busy where he
oughtnt to be he never felt me I hope my breath was sweet after those kissing
comfits easy God I remember one time I could scout it out straight whistling like a
man almost easy O Lord how noisy I hope theyre bubbles on it for a wad of
money from some fellow 111 have to perfume it in the morning dont forget I bet
he never saw a better pair of thighs than that look how white they are the
smoothest place is right there between this bit here how soft like a peach easy
God I wouldnt mind being a man and get up on a lovely woman O Lord what a
row youre making like the jersey lily easy easy O how the waters come down at
Lahore
who knows is there anything the matter with my insides or have I something
growing in me getting that thing like that every week when was it last I Whit
Monday yes its only about 3 weeks I ought to go to the doctor only it would be
like before I married him when I had that white thing coming from me and Floey
made me go to that dry old stick Dr Collins for womens diseases on Pembroke
road your vagina he called it I suppose thats how he got all the gilt mirrors and
carpets getting round those rich ones off Stephens green running up to him for
every little fiddlefaddle her vagina and her cochinchina theyve money of course so
theyre all right I wouldnt marry him not if he was the last man in the world
besides theres something queer about their children always smelling around those
filthy bitches all sides asking me if what I did had an offensive odour what did he
want me to do but the one thing gold maybe what a question if I smathered it all
over his wrinkly old face for him with all my compriments I suppose hed know
then and could you pass it easily pass what I thought he was talking about the
rock of Gibraltar the way he put it thats a very nice invention too by the way only
I like letting myself down after in the hole as far as I can squeeze and pull the
chain then to flush it nice cool pins and needles still theres something in it I
suppose I always used to know by Millys when she was a child whether she had
worms or not still all the same paying him for that how much is that doctor one
guinea please and asking me had I frequent omissions where do those old fellows
get all the words they have omissions with his shortsighted eyes on me cocked
sideways I wouldnt trust him too far to give me chloroform or God knows what
else still I liked him when he sat down to write the thing out frowning so severe
his nose intelligent like that you be damned you lying strap O anything no matter
who except an idiot he was clever enough to spot that of course that was all
thinking of him and his mad crazy letters my Precious one everything connected
with your glorious Body everything underlined that comes from it is a thing of
beauty and of joy for ever something he got out of some nonsensical book that he
had me always at myself 4 and 5 times a day sometimes and I said I hadnt are
you sure O yes I said I am quite sure in a way that shut him up I knew what was
coming next only natural weakness it was he excited me I dont know how the first
night ever we met when I was living in Rehoboth terrace we stood staring at one
another for about lo minutes as if we met somewhere I suppose on account of my
being jewess looking after my mother he used to amuse me the things he said with
the half sloothering smile on him and all the Doyles said he was going to stand for
a member of Parliament O wasnt I the born fool to believe all his blather about
home rule and the land league sending me that long strool of a song out of the
Huguenots to sing in French to be more classy O beau pays de la Touraine that I
never even sang once explaining and rigmaroling about religion and persecution he
wont let you enjoy anything naturally then might he as a great favour the very 1st
opportunity he got a chance in Brighton square running into my bedroom
pretending the ink got on his hands to wash it off with the Albion milk and
sulphur soap I used to use and the gelatine still round it O I laughed myself sick
at him that day I better not make an alnight sitting on this affair they ought to
make chambers a natural size so that a woman could sit on it properly he kneels
down to do it I suppose there isnt in all creation another man with the habits he
has look at the way hes sleeping at the foot of the bed how can he without a hard
bolster its well he doesnt kick or he might knock out all my teeth breathing with
his hand on his nose like that Indian god he took me to show one wet Sunday in
the museum in Kildare street all yellow in a pinafore lying on his side on his hand
with his ten toes sticking out that he said was a bigger religion than the jews and
Our Lords both put together all over Asia imitating him as hes always imitating
everybody I suppose he used to sleep at the foot of the bed too with his big square
feet up in his wifes mouth damn this stinking thing anyway wheres this those
napkins are ah yes I know I hope the old press doesnt creak ah I knew it would
hes sleeping hard had a good time somewhere still she must have given him great
value for his money of course he has to pay for it from her O this nuisance of a
thing I hope theyll have something better for us in the other world tying ourselves
up God help us thats all right for tonight now the lumpy old jingly bed always
reminds me of old Cohen I suppose he scratched himself in it often enough and he
thinks father bought it from Lord Napier that I used to admire when I was a little
girl because I told him easy piano O I like my bed God here we are as bad as ever
after 16 years how many houses were we in at all Raymond terrace and Ontario
terrace and Lombard street and Holles street and he goes about whistling every
time were on the run again his huguenots or the frogs march pretending to help
the men with our 4 sticks of furniture and then the City Arms hotel worse and
worse says Warden Daly that charming place on the landing always somebody
inside praying then leaving all their stinks after them always know who was in
there last every time were just getting on right something happens or he puts his
big foot in it Thoms and Helys and Mr Cuffes and Drimmies either hes going to be
run into prison over his old lottery tickets that was to be all our salvations or he
goes and gives impudence well have him coming home with the sack soon out of
the Freeman too like the rest on account of those Sinner Fein or the freemasons
then well see if the little man he showed me dribbling along in the wet all by
himself round by Coadys lane will give him much consolation that he says is so
capable and sincerely Irish he is indeed judging by the sincerity of the trousers I
saw on him wait theres Georges church bells wait 3 quarters the hour l wait 2
oclock well thats a nice hour of the night for him to be coming home at to
anybody climbing down into the area if anybody saw him Ill knock him off that
little habit tomorrow first Ill look at his shirt to see or Ill see if he has that French
letter still in his pocketbook I suppose he thinks I dont know deceitful men all
their 20 pockets arent enough for their lies then why should we tell them even if
its the truth they dont believe you then tucked up in bed like those babies in the
Aristocrats Masterpiece he brought me another time as if we hadnt enough of that
in real life without some old Aristocrat or whatever his name is disgusting you
more with those rotten pictures children with two heads and no legs thats the
kind of villainy theyre always dreaming about with not another thing in their
empty heads they ought to get slow poison the half of them then tea and toast for
him buttered on both sides and newlaid eggs I suppose Im nothing any more when
I wouldnt let him lick me in Holles street one night man man tyrant as ever for
the one thing he slept on the floor half the night naked the way the jews used
when somebody dies belonged to them and wouldnt eat any breakfast or speak a
word wanting to be petted so I thought I stood out enough for one time and let
him he does it all wrong too thinking only of his own pleasure his tongue is too
flat or I dont know what he forgets that wethen I dont Ill make him do it again if
he doesnt mind himself and lock him down to sleep in the coalcellar with the
blackbeetles I wonder was it her Josie off her head with my castoffs hes such a
born liar too no hed never have the courage with a married woman thats why he
wants me and Boylan though as for her Denis as she calls him that forlornlooking
spectacle you couldnt call him a husband yes its some little bitch hes got in with
even when I was with him with Milly at the College races that Hornblower with
the childs bonnet on the top of his nob let us into by the back way he was
throwing his sheeps eyes at those two doing skirt duty up and down I tried to
wink at him first no use of course and thats the way his money goes this is the
fruits of Mr Paddy Dignam yes they were all in great style at the grand funeral in
the paper Boylan brought in if they saw a real officers funeral thatd be something
reversed arms muffled drums the poor horse walking behind in black L Boom and
Tom Kernan that drunken little barrelly man that bit his tongue off falling down
the mens W C drunk in some place or other and Martin Cunningham and the two
Dedaluses and Fanny MCoys husband white head of cabbage skinny thing with a
turn in her eye trying to sing my songs shed want to be born all over again and
her old green dress with the lowneck as she cant attract them any other way like
dabbling on a rainy day I see it all now plainly and they call that friendship killing
and then burying one another and they all with their wives and families at home
more especially Jack Power keeping that barmaid he does of course his wife is
always sick or going to be sick or just getting better of it and hes a goodlooking
man still though hes getting a bit grey over the ears theyre a nice lot all of them
well theyre not going to get my husband again into their clutches if I can help it
making fun of him then behind his back I know well when he goes on with his
idiotics because he has sense enough not to squander every penny piece he earns
down their gullets and looks after his wife and family goodfornothings poor Paddy
Dignam all the same Im sorry in a way for him what are his wife and 5 children
going to do unless he was insured comical little teetotum always stuck up in some
pub corner and her or her son waiting Bill Bailey wont you please come home her
widows weeds wont improve her appearance theyre awfully becoming though if
youre goodlooking what men wasnt he yes he was at the Glencree dinner and Ben
Dollard base barreltone the night he borrowed the swallowtail to sing out of in
Holles street squeezed and squashed into them and grinning all over his big Dolly
face like a wellwhipped childs botty didnt he look a balmy ballocks sure enough
that must have been a spectacle on the stage imagine paying 5/- in the preserved
seats for that to see him trotting off in his trowlers and Simon Dedalus too he was
always turning up half screwed singing the second verse first the old love is the
new was one of his so sweetly sang the maiden on the hawthorn bough he was
always on for flirtyfying too when I sang Maritana with him at Freddy Mayers
private opera he had a delicious glorious voice Phoebe dearest goodbye sweetheart
sweetheart he always sang it not like Bartell Darcy sweet tart goodbye of course
he had the gift of the voice so there was no art in it all over you like a warm
showerbath O Maritana wildwood flower we sang splendidly though it was a bit
too high for my register even transposed and he was married at the time to May
Goulding but then hed say or do something to knock the good out of it hes a
widower now I wonder what sort is his son he says hes an author and going to be
a university professor of Italian and Im to take lessons what is he driving at now
showing him my photo its not good of me I ought to have got it taken in drapery
that never looks out of fashion still I look young in it I wonder he didnt make him
a present of it altogether and me too after all why not I saw him driving down to
the Kingsbridge station with his father and mother I was in mourning thats 11
years ago now yes hed be 11 though what was the good in going into mourning
for what was neither one thing nor the other the first cry was enough for me I
heard the deathwatch too ticking in the wall of course he insisted hed go into
mourning for the cat I suppose hes a man now by this time he was an innocent
boy then and a darling little fellow in his lord Fauntleroy suit and curly hair like a
prince on the stage when I saw him at Mat Dillons he liked me too I remember
they all do wait by God yes wait yes hold on he was on the cards this morning
when I laid out the deck union with a young stranger neither dark nor fair you
met before I thought it meant him but hes no chicken nor a stranger either besides
my face was turned the other way what was the 7th card after that the 10 of
spades for a journey by land then there was a letter on its way and scandals too
the 3 queens and the 8 of diamonds for a rise in society yes wait it all came out
and 2 red 8s for new garments look at that and didnt I dream something too yes
there was something about poetry in it I hope he hasnt long greasy hair hanging
into his eyes or standing up like a red Indian what do they go about like that for
only getting themselves and their poetry laughed at I always liked poetry when I
was a girl first I thought he was a poet like lord Byron and not an ounce of it in
his composition I thought he was quite different I wonder is he too young hes
about wait 88 I was married 88 Milly is 15 yesterday 89 what age was he then at
Dillons 5 or 6 about 88 I suppose hes 20 or more Im not too old for him if hes
23 or 24 I hope hes not that stuckup university student sort no otherwise he
wouldnt go sitting down in the old kitchen with him taking Eppss cocoa and
talking of course he pretended to understand it all probably he told him he was
out of Trinity college hes very young to be a professor I hope hes not a professor
like Goodwin was he was a potent professor of John Jameson they all write about
some woman in their poetry well I suppose he wont find many like me where
softly sighs of love the light guitar where poetry is in the air the blue sea and the
moon shining so beautifully coming back on the nightboat from Tarifa the
lighthouse at Europa point the guitar that fellow played was so expressive will I
ever go back there again all new faces two glancing eyes a lattice hid Ill sing that
for him theyre my eyes if hes anything of a poet two eyes as darkly bright as loves
own star arent those beautiful words as loves young star itll be a change the Lord
knows to have an intelligent person to talk to about yourself not always listening
to him and Billy Prescotts ad and Keyess ad and Tom the Devils ad then if
anything goes wrong in their business we have to suffer Im sure hes very
distinguished Id like to meet a man like that God not those other ruck besides hes
young those fine young men I could see down in Margate strand bathingplace
from the side of the rock standing up in the sun naked like a God or something
and then plunging into the sea with them why arent all men like that thered be
some consolation for a woman like that lovely little statue he bought I could look
at him all day long curly head and his shoulders his finger up for you to listen
theres real beauty and poetry for you I often felt I wanted to kiss him all over also
his lovely young cock there so simple I wouldnt mind taking him in my mouth if
nobody was looking as if it was asking you to suck it so clean and white he looks
with his boyish face I would too in 1/2 a minute even if some of it went down
what its only like gruel or the dew theres no danger besides hed be so clean
compared with those pigs of men I suppose never dream of washing it from I years
end to the other the most of them only thats what gives the women the
moustaches Im sure itll be grand if I can only get in with a handsome young poet
at my age Ill throw them the 1st thing in the morning till I see if the wishcard
comes out or Ill try pairing the lady herself and see if he comes out Ill read and
study all I can find or learn a bit off by heart if I knew who he likes so he wont
think me stupid if he thinks all women are the same and I can teach him the other
part Ill make him feel all over him till he half faints under me then hell write
about me lover and mistress publicly too with our 2 photographs in all the papers
when he becomes famous O but then what am I going to do about him though
no thats no way for him has he no manners nor no refinement nor no nothing in
his nature slapping us behind like that on my bottom because I didnt call him
Hugh the ignoramus that doesnt know poetry from a cabbage thats what you get
for not keeping them in their proper place pulling off his shoes and trousers there
on the chair before me so barefaced without even asking permission and standing
out that vulgar way in the half of a shirt they wear to be admired like a priest or a
butcher or those old hypocrites in the time of Julius Caesar of course hes right
enough in his way to pass the time as a joke sure you might as well be in bed with
what with a lion God Im sure hed have something better to say for himself an old
Lion would O well I suppose its because they were so plump and tempting in my
short petticoat he couldnt resist they excite myself sometimes its well for men all
the amount of pleasure they get off a womans body were so round and white for
them always I wished I was one myself for a change just to try with that thing
they have swelling up on you so hard and at the same time so soft when you
touch it my uncle John has a thing long I heard those cornerboys saying passing
the comer of Marrowbone lane my aunt Mary has a thing hairy because it was
dark and they knew a girl was passing it didnt make me blush why should it
either its only nature and he puts his thing long into my aunt Marys hairy etcetera
and turns out to be you put the handle in a sweepingbrush men again all over they
can pick and choose what they please a married woman or a fast widow or a girl
for their different tastes like those houses round behind Irish street no but were to
be always chained up theyre not going to be chaining me up no damn fear once I
start I tell you for their stupid husbands jealousy why cant we all remain friends
over it instead of quarrelling her husband found it out what they did together well
naturally and if he did can he undo it hes coronado anyway whatever he does and
then he going to the other mad extreme about the wife in Fair Tyrants of course
the man never even casts a 2nd thought on the husband or wife either its the
woman he wants and he gets her what else were we given all those desires for Id
like to know I cant help it if Im young still can I its a wonder Im not an old
shrivelled hag before my time living with him so cold never embracing me except
sometimes when hes asleep the wrong end of me not knowing I suppose who he
has any man thatd kiss a womans bottom Id throw my hat at him after that hed
kiss anything unnatural where we havent I atom of any kind of expression in us
all of us the same 2 lumps of lard before ever Id do that to a man pfooh the dirty
brutes the mere thought is enough I kiss the feet of you senorita theres some sense
in that didnt he kiss our halldoor yes he did what a madman nobody understands
his cracked ideas but me still of course a woman wants to be embraced 20 times a
day almost to make her look young no matter by who so long as to be in love or
loved by somebody if the fellow you want isnt there sometimes by the Lord God I
was thinking would I go around by the quays there some dark evening where
nobodyd know me and pick up a sailor off the sea thatd be hot on for it and not
care a pin whose I was only do it off up in a gate somewhere or one of those
wildlooking gipsies in Rathfarnham had their camp pitched near the Bloomfield
laundry to try and steal our things if they could I only sent mine there a few times
for the name model laundry sending me back over and over some old ones odd
stockings that blackguardlooking fellow with the fine eyes peeling a switch attack
me in the dark and ride me up against the wall without a word or a murderer
anybody what they do themselves the fine gentlemen in their silk hats that K C
lives up somewhere this way coming out of Hardwicke lane the night he gave us
the fish supper on account of winning over the boxing match of course it was for
me he gave it I knew him by his gaiters and the walk and when I turned round a
minute after just to see there was a woman after coming out of it too some filthy
prostitute then he goes home to his wife after that only I suppose the half of those
sailors are rotten again with disease O move over your big carcass out of that for
the love of Mike listen to him the winds that waft my sighs to thee so well he may
sleep and sigh the great Suggester Don Poldo de la Flora if he knew how he came
out on the cards this morning hed have something to sigh for a dark man in some
perplexity between 2 7s too in prison for Lord knows what he does that I dont
know and Im to be slooching around down in the kitchen to get his lordship his
breakfast while hes rolled up like a mummy will I indeed did you ever see me
running Id just like to see myself at it show them attention and they treat you like
dirt I dont care what anybody says itd be much better for the world to be
governed by the women in it you wouldnt see women going and killing one
another and slaughtering when do you ever see women rolling around drunk like
they do or gambling every penny they have and losing it on horses yes because a
woman whatever she does she knows where to stop sure they wouldnt be in the
world at all only for us they dont know what it is to be a woman and a mother
how could they where would they all of them be if they hadnt all a mother to look
after them what I never had thats why I suppose hes running wild now out at
night away from his books and studies and not living at home on account of the
usual rowy house I suppose well its a poor case that those that have a fine son
like that theyre not satisfied and I none was he not able to make one it wasnt my
fault we came together when I was watching the two dogs up in her behind in the
middle of the naked street that disheartened me altogether I suppose I oughtnt to
have buried him in that little woolly jacket I knitted crying as I was but give it to
some poor child but I knew well Id never have another our 1st death too it was
we were never the same since O Im not going to think myself into the glooms
about that any more I wonder why he wouldnt stay the night I felt all the time it
was somebody strange he brought in instead of roving around the city meeting
God knows who nightwalkers and pickpockets his poor mother wouldnt like that
if she was alive ruining himself for life perhaps still its a lovely hour so silent I
used to love coming home after dances the air of the night they have friends they
can talk to weve none either he wants what he wont get or its some woman ready
to stick her knife in you I hate that in women no wonder they treat us the way
they do we are a dreadful lot of bitches I suppose its all the troubles we have
makes us so snappy Im not like that he could easy have slept in there on the sofa
in the other room I suppose he was as shy as a boy he being so young hardly 20
of me in the next room hed have heard me on the chamber arrah what harm
Dedalus I wonder its like those names in Gibraltar Delapaz Delagracia they had
the devils queer names there father Vilaplana of Santa Maria that gave me the
rosary Rosales y OReilly in the Calle las Siete Revueltas and Pisimbo and Mrs
Opisso in Governor street O what a name Id go and drown myself in the first river
if I had a name like her O my and all the bits of streets Paradise ramp and Bedlam
ramp and Rodgers ramp and Crutchetts ramp and the devils gap steps well small
blame to me if I am a harumscarum I know I am a bit I declare to God I dont feel
a day older than then I wonder could I get my tongue round any of the Spanish
como esta usted muy bien gracias y usted see I havent forgotten it all I thought I
had only for the grammar a noun is the name of any person place or thing pity I
never tried to read that novel cantankerous Mrs Rubio lent me by Valera with the
questions in it all upside down the two ways I always knew wed go away in the
end I can tell him the Spanish and he tell me the Italian then hell see Im not so
ignorant what a pity he didnt stay Im sure the poor fellow was dead tired and
wanted a good sleep badly I could have brought him in his breakfast in bed with a
bit of toast so long as I didnt do it on the knife for bad luck or if the woman was
going her rounds with the watercress and something nice and tasty there are a few
olives in the kitchen he might like I never could bear the look of them in Abrines I
could do the criada the room looks all right since I changed it the other way you
see something was telling me all the time Id have to introduce myself not knowing
me from Adam very funny wouldnt it Im his wife or pretend we were in Spain
with him half awake without a Gods notion where he is dos huevos estrellados
senor Lord the cracked things come into my head sometimes itd be great fun
supposing he stayed with us why not theres the room upstairs empty and Millys
bed in the back room he could do his writing and studies at the table in there for
all the scribbling he does at it and if he wants to read in bed in the morning like
me as hes making the breakfast for I he can make it for 2 Im sure Im not going to
take in lodgers off the street for him if he takes a gesabo of a house like this Id
love to have a long talk with an intelligent welleducated person Id have to get a
nice pair of red slippers like those Turks with the fez used to sell or yellow and a
nice semitransparent morning gown that I badly want or a peachblossom dressing
jacket like the one long ago in Walpoles only 8/6 or 18/6 Ill just give him one
more chance Ill get up early in the morning Im sick of Cohens old bed in any case
I might go over to the markets to see all the vegetables and cabbages and tomatoes
and carrots and all kinds of splendid fruits all coming in lovely and fresh who
knows whod be the 1st man Id meet theyre out looking for it in the morning
Mamy Dillon used to say they are and the night too that was her massgoing Id
love a big juicy pear now to melt in your mouth like when I used to be in the
longing way then Ill throw him up his eggs and tea in the moustachecup she gave
him to make his mouth bigger I suppose hed like my nice cream too I know what
Ill do Ill go about rather gay not too much singing a bit now and then mi fa pieta
Masetto then Ill start dressing myself to go out presto non son piu forte Ill put on
my best shift and drawers let him have a good eyeful out of that to make his
micky stand for him Ill let him know if thats what he wanted that his wife is I s l
o fucked yes and damn well fucked too up to my neck nearly not by him 5 or 6
times handrunning theres the mark of his spunk on the clean sheet I wouldnt
bother to even iron it out that ought to satisfy him if you dont believe me feel my
belly unless I made him stand there and put him into me Ive a mind to tell him
every scrap and make him do it out in front of me serve him right its all his own
fault if I am an adulteress as the thing in the gallery said O much about it if thats
all the harm ever we did in this vale of tears God knows its not much doesnt
everybody only they hide it I suppose thats what a woman is supposed to be there
for or He wouldnt have made us the way He did so attractive to men then if he
wants to kiss my bottom Ill drag open my drawers and bulge it right out in his
face as large as life he can stick his tongue 7 miles up my hole as hes there my
brown part then Ill tell him I want LI or perhaps 30/- Ill tell him I want to buy
underclothes then if he gives me that well he wont be too bad I dont want to soak
it all out of him like other women do I could often have written out a fine cheque
for myself and write his name on it for a couple of pounds a few times he forgot to
lock it up besides he wont spend it Ill let him do it off on me behind provided he
doesnt smear all my good drawers O I suppose that cant be helped Ill do the
indifferent l or 2 questions Ill know by the answers when hes like that he cant
keep a thing back I know every turn in him Ill tighten my bottom well and let out
a few smutty words smellrump or lick my shit or the first mad thing comes into
my head then Ill suggest about yes O wait now sonny my turn is coming Ill be
quite gay and friendly over it O but I was forgetting this bloody pest of a thing
pfooh you wouldnt know which to laugh or cry were such a mixture of plum and
apple no Ill have to wear the old things so much the better itll be more pointed
hell never know whether he did it or not there thats good enough for you any old
thing at all then Ill wipe him off me just like a business his omission then Ill go
out Ill have him eying up at the ceiling where is she gone now make him want me
thats the only way a quarter after what an unearthly hour I suppose theyre just
getting up in China now combing out their pigtails for the day well soon have the
nuns ringing the angelus theyve nobody coming in to spoil their sleep except an
odd priest or two for his night office or the alarmclock next door at cockshout
clattering the brains out of itself let me see if I can doze off 1 2 3 4 5 what kind
of flowers are those they invented like the stars the wallpaper in Lombard street
was much nicer the apron he gave me was like that something only I only wore it
twice better lower this lamp and try again so as I can get up early Ill go to Lambes
there beside Findlaters and get them to send us some flowers to put about the
place in case he brings him home tomorrow today I mean no no Fridays an
unlucky day first I want to do the place up someway the dust grows in it I think
while Im asleep then we can have music and cigarettes I can accompany him first
I must clean the keys of the piano with milk whatll I wear shall I wear a white
rose or those fairy cakes in Liptons I love the smell of a rich big shop at 7 1/2d a
lb or the other ones with the cherries in them and the pinky sugar I Id a couple of
lbs of those a nice plant for the middle of the table Id get that cheaper in wait
wheres this I saw them not long ago I love flowers Id love to have the whole place
swimming in roses God of heaven theres nothing like nature the wild mountains
then the sea and the waves rushing then the beautiful country with the fields of
oats and wheat and all kinds of things and all the fine cattle going about that
would do your heart good to see rivers and lakes and flowers all sorts of shapes
and smells and colours springing up even out of the ditches primroses and violets
nature it is as for them saying theres no God I wouldnt give a snap of my two
fingers for all their learning why dont they go and create something I often asked
him atheists or whatever they call themselves go and wash the cobbles off
themselves first then they go howling for the priest and they dying and why why
because theyre afraid of hell on account of their bad conscience ah yes I know
them well who was the first person in the universe before there was anybody that
made it all who ah that they dont know neither do I so there you are they might
as well try to stop the sun from rising tomorrow the sun shines for you he said the
day we were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head in the grey tweed
suit and his straw hat the day I got him to propose to me yes first I gave him the
bit of seedcake out of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years ago my
God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said I was a flower of the
mountain yes so we are flowers all a womans body yes that was one true thing he
said in his life and the sun shines for you today yes that was why I liked him
because I saw he understood or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always
get round him and I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked
me to say yes and I wouldnt answer first only looked out over the sea and the sky
I was thinking of so many things he didnt know of Mulvey and Mr Stanhope and
Hester and father and old captain Groves and the sailors playing all birds fly and I
say stoop and washing up dishes they called it on the pier and the sentry in front
of the governors house with the thing round his white helmet poor devil half
roasted and the Spanish girls laughing in their shawls and their tall combs and the
auctions in the morning the Greeks and the jews and the Arabs and the devil
knows who else from all the ends of Europe and Duke street and the fowl market
all clucking outside Larby Sharons and the poor donkeys slipping half asleep and
the vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the shade on the steps and the big wheels
of the carts of the bulls and the old castle thousands of years old yes and those
handsome Moors all in white and turbans like kings asking you to sit down in
their little bit of a shop and Ronda with the old windows of the posadas 2
glancing eyes a lattice hid for her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half
open at night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the
watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O
and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the
figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and the pink
and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums
and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes
when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red
yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him
as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked
me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him
yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his
heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.
Trieste-Zurich-Paris 1914-1921

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