BLOOM: (Urgently) And if it were your own son in Oxford! (Warningly) I know.
BELLA: (Almost speechless) Who are you incog?
ZOE: (In the doorway) There’s a row on.
BLOOM: What? Where? (He throws a shilling on the table and shouts) 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 ghostly 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 dog-whip in tallyho cap and an old pair of grey trousers, follows from far, 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, cabbage-stumps, biscuitboxes, eggs, potatoes, dead codfish, woman’s slipper shippers. 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, Whatdoyoucallhim, Strangeface, Fellowthatslike, Saw-himbefore, Chapwith, Chris Callinan, sir Charles Cameron, Benjamin Dollard, Lenekan, Bar tell d’Arcy, Joe Hynes, red Murray, editor Bray den, T. M. Healy, Mr Justice Fitzgibbon, John Howard Parnell, the reverend Tinned Salmon, Professor Joly, Mrs Breen, Denis Breen, Theodore Pwrefoy, Mina Purefoy, the Westland Row postmistress, C. P. M’Coy, friend of Lyons, Hoppy Holohan, man in the street, other man in the street, Footballboots, pugnosed driver, rich protestant lady, Davy Byrne, Mrs Ellen AT 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, handsomemarriedwomanrubbedagainstwidebehindinClon-skeatram, the bookseller of Sweets of Sin, Miss Dubedat-andshedidbedad, Mesdames Gerald and Stanislaus Moron of Roebuck, the managing clerk ofDrimmie’s, 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! Stop him 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. The 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. The girl’s telling lies. He was in Mrs Cohen’s. What’s up? Soldiers and civilians.
CISSY CAFFREY: I was in company with the soldiers and they left me to do—you know and the young man ran up behind me. But I’m faithful to the man that’s treating me though I’m only a shilling whore.
STEPHEN: (patches sight of Kitty’s and Lynch’s heads) Hail, Sisyphus. (He points to himself and the others)
Poetic. Neopoetic.
VOICES: She’s 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: (In Union Jack blazer and cricket flannels, bareheaded, flowingbearded) Their’s 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 private.
STEPHEN: (Amiably) Why not? The bold soldier boy. In my opinion every lady for example…
PRIVATE CARR: (His cap awry, advancing to Stephen) Say, how would it be, governor, if I was to bash in your jaw?
STEPHEN: (Looks up in the sky) How? Very unpleasant. Noble art of self-pretence. 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 modern 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 RATE: I did. I heard that.
BIDDY THE CLAP: He expresses himself with much 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 wears 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 hit 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 back.
(He shakes hands with Private Carr, Private Compton, Stephen, Bloom and Lynch. General applause. Edward the Seventh lifts the bucket graciously in acknowledgement.)
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 medicine. A discussion is difficult down here
. But this is the point. You die for your country, suppose. (He places his arm on Private Can’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 don’t want it to die. Damn death. Long live life!
EDWARD THE SEVENTH: (Levitates over heaps of slam 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 falls back apace) 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. Taking a little more than is good for him. Absinthe, the 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 rabbit face 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 cove
With teeth as sharp as razors
To slit the throat
Of the English dogs
That hanged our Irish leaders.
THE CROPPY BOY: (The rope noose round his neck, gripes in his issuing bowels with both hands)
I bear no hate to a living thing,
But love my country beyond the king.
RUMBOLD, DEMON BARBER: (Accompanied by two black-masked assistants, advances with a 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 the body of Miss Barrow 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 ho rhother’s hest.
(He gives up the ghost. A violent erection of the hanged sends gouts of sperm spouting through his death clothes on to the cobblestones. Mrs Bellingham, Mrs Yeherton 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 His 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: (Dancesslowly, 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 some one 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 death-flower of the potato blight on her breast.)
STEPHEN: Aha! I know you, grammer! Hamlet, revenge! The old sow that eats her farrow!
OLD GUMMY GRANNY: (Rocking to and fro) Ireland’s sweetheart, theking 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 bugger 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: (Staggeringpast) O, yes. O, God, yes! O, make the kwawr a krowawr! O! Bo!
(Casqued halberdiers in armour thrust forward a pentice of gutted spear points. Major Tweedy, moustached like Turko the terrible, in bearskin cap with hackle plume and accoutrements, with epaulette, gilt chevrons and sabretache, 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! Mahal shalal hashbaz.
PRIVATE CARR: I’ll do him in.
PRIVATE COMPTON: (Waves the crowd back) Fair p 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 Can’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 front 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 dragon’s 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 McCarthy against Parnell, Arthur Griffith against John Redmond, John O’Leary against Lear OJohnny, Lord Edward Fitzgerald against Lord Gerald Fitzedward, The O’ Donoghue of the Glens against The Glens of The Donoghue. On an eminence, the centre of the earth, rises the field altar of Saint Barbara. Black candles rise from its gospel and epistle horns. From the high barbicans 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 long 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 mortar board, his head and collar back to the front, holds over the celebrant’s head an open umbrella?)