Ulysses

  (Mute inhuman faces throng forward, leering, vanishing, gibbering, Booloohoom. Poldy Koch, 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 goodghoststory 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 rererepugnosedinrerererepug-nant…

  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 fall.)

  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 brace-leted hands will wear fortythreebutton gloves newpow-dered with talc and having delicately scented fingertips. For such favours knights of old laid down their lives. (He chuckles) My boys wnl 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)

  A VOICE: One and eightpence too much.

  THE LACQUEY: Barang!

  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 I And quite easy to milk. Three new-laid gallons a day. A pure stockgetter, due to lay within the hour. His sire’s muk 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 blase man about town. Learn the smooth mincing walk on four inch Louis XV heels, the Grecian bend with provoking croup, the thighs fluescent, knees modestly kissing. Bring all your power 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 I 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 Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!

  BLOOM: (In tattered moccasins 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 wonder-wide)

  MILLY: My! It’s Papli! But. O Papli, how old you’ve grown!

  BELLO: Changed, eh? Our whatnot, our writing table where we never wrote, Aunt Hegarty’s armchair, our classic reprints of old masters. A man and his men-friends are living there in clover. The Cuckoos’ Rest! Why not? How many women had you, say? 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’s sake. They will violate the secrets of your bottom drawer. Pages will be torn from your handbook of astronomy to make them pipe-spills. 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 bowk knife 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 bu
ggers’ 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 will power! Memory! I have sinned! I have suff…

  (He weeps tearlessly)

  BELLO: (Sneers) Crybabby I 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, O. Mastiansky, the Reverend Leopold Abramovitz, Chazen. With swaying arms they wail in pneuma over the recreant Bloom)

  THE CIRCUMCISED: (In a 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 oak frame a nymph with hair unbound, lightly clad in teabrown art colours, 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 forwardunder 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 picnic makers, pugilists, popular generals, immoral panto boys in flesh tights 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 my 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 hand) 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: (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 school cap 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, instincts 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, mammamujflered, stunned 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 fauns. I sacrificed to the god of die forest. The flowers that bloom in die 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 whitepdled calf, thrusts a ruminating head with humid nostrils through the foliage)

  STAGGERING BOB: Me. Me see.

  BLOOM: Simply satisfying a need. (Withpathos) No girl would when I went girling. Too ugly. They wouldn’t play…

  (High on Ben Howth through rhododendrons a nannygoat passes, plumpuddered, huttytailed, dropping currants)

  THE NANNYGOAT: (Bleats) Megegaggegg! Nannannanny!

  BLOOM: (Hatless, flushed, covered with burrs of thistledown and gorsepine) 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 rotatingly from the Lion’s Head cliff into the purple waiting waters)

  THE DUMMYMUMMY: Bbbbblllllbbblblodschbg?

  (Far out in the bay between Bailey and Kish lights the Erin’s King sails, sending a broadening plume of coalsmohe from her funnel towards the land)

  COUNCILLOR NANNETTI: (Alone on deck, in dark alpaca, yellow kitefaced, his hand in his waistcoat opening, declaims) When my country takes her place among the nations of the ear
th, 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: (Pacing 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 rock-salt. 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:

  Poulaphouca Poulaphouca

  Poulaphouca Poulaphouca.

  THE YEWS: Ssh! Sister, speak!

  THE NYMPH: (Eyeless, in nun’s white habit, coif and huge winged 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 trousers’ button snaps.)