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 by 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 up 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 country 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 low 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 knifeblade. 

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 razor blade. 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 usa 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 harbour mouth of Kingstown. 

— Our mighty mother, Buck Mulligan said. 

He turned abruptly his great 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. ’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 coatsleeve. 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 

6 

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. Youll look spiffing in them. ’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. Eti- 
quette 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 Conolly Norman. Genera 
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 pcinting, Stephen said with bitterness : 

— It is a symbol of Irish art. The cracked lookingglass 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 
steel pen. 

— Cracked lookingglass of a servant. Tell that to the oxy chap down- 
stairs 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. Pale- 
faces : 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. 

8 

— 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 I went across the landing to 
get more hot water. Your mother and some visitor came out of the drawing 
room. 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 dissecting room. 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 : 

— Iam 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 or 
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 merg- 
ing their twining chords. Wavewhite wedded words shimmering on the dim 
tide. 

A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, shadowing the bay in deeper 
green. It lay behind him, a bowl of bitter waters. Fergus’ song : I sang it 
above 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 ? 

Io 

Her secrets : old feather fans, tassled 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 
pantomine 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 fr'endly 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, 

IT 

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 about the hearth to and fro, 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, 

12 

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. 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 : 

— Innomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sanctt. 

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. 

13 

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 teaand 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 doeswt care a damn. 
But, lising up her petticoats... 

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’sa 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 

14 

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 only 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. 

— Iam, ma'am, Buck Mulligan answered. 

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. 

— Trish, Buck Mulligan said. Is there Gaelic on you? 

— ] thought it was Irish, she said, by the sound of it. Are you from 
west, sir? 

— Iam 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 [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? 

15 

— 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, its seven mornings a pint at two 
pence is seven twos is a shilling and twopence over and these three mornings a 
quart at fourpence is three quarts is 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 upand 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. 

16 

— 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 : 

— lintend 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 money by it ? Stephen asked. 

Haines laughed and, as he took his soft grey hat from the holdfast of 
the hammock, said : 

— J 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 [ 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. 

17 

And putting on his stiff collar and rebellious tie, he spoke to them, chid- 
ing them, and to his dangling watchchain. His hands plunged and rummaged 
in his trunk while he called for a clean handkerchief. Agenbite of inwit. 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 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 aimiably. 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 ona blithe broadly smiling face. He looked at 
them, his wellshaped mouth open happily, his eyes, from which he had 
suddenly withrawn 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 ina 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. 

19 
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 birdlike 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 asmooth 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 

20 

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 aJl, 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 the 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 : ef 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 

21 

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 [m a Britisher, Haine’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 beb up, roll over to the sun a puffy face, salt white. 
Tiere l*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 gota card from Bannon. Says he found a sweet young 
thing down there. Photo girl he calls her. 

— Shapshot, 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 
this 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 
breastbone. 

22 

— Seymour’s back in town, the young man said, grasping again his 
spur of rock. Chucked medicine and going in for the army. 

— Ah, goto 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 rotten 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. rs 
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 He 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. 

23 

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. 
Jubilantium 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 fame. 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 
tissues 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 

25 

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 waves. A kind of 
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. 

— Oh, 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 history, sir ? 

— After, Stephen said. Go on, Talbot. 

A swatthy 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 shepherd, weep no more 
For Lycidas, your sorrow, 1s not dead, 
Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor... 

It must be a movement then, an actuality of the possible as possible. Aris- 
totle’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 ot 
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. Tranquillity 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 sen- 
tence 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 : 

27 
— 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 isit, 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 tangled 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 dampas 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. 

28 

— 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 tangled 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 under foot, 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 under foot 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 

29 
our hearts : secrets weary of their tyranny : tyrants willing to be dethroned. 

‘The sum was done. 

— Itis 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 desk. 

— 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 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 cried. 

— 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 sushine 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 strapping and 

30 

-— 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. 

— fago, 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. 
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 : history is to 
blame : on me and on my words, unhating. 

— That on his empire, Stephen said, the sun never sets. 

31 

— 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. 

Goood 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, Kohler, three guineas, Mrs McKernan, five weeks’ borard. 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 fillibegs : 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. 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. 

32 

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, some 
times 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 
asign. 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 
important 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. Even money Fair Rebel : 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. 1am 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 spear 
spikes baited with men’s bloodied guts. 

— Now then, Mr Deasy said, rising. 

He came to the table, pinning together his sheets. Stephen stood up. 

—lIhave put the matterintoa 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. 

33 

May I trespass on your valuable space. That doctrine of Jaissex 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 Miirzsteg, 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, if not dead by now. 

The harlot’s cry from street to street 
Shall weave old England’s winding sheet. 

His eyes open wide in vision stared sternly across the sunbeam in which 
he halted. 
3 

34 

— 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 bellied 
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 the 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 a you a back kick? 

— The ways of the Creator are not our ways, Mr Deasy said. All 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 a while 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 ot 
Breffni. A. woman too brought Parnell low. Many errors, many failures but 

35 

not the one sin. Iam 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 

36 

terrors. Still I will help him in his fight. Mulligan will dub mea 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 ifno 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 throught 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! IfI 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 end 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. Dominic Deasy kens them a’. 

Won't you come to Sandymount, 
Madeline the mare ? 

Rhythm begins, you see. I hear. A catalectic tetrameter of iambs march ing. 
No, agallop : deline the mare. 

38 

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 willsee 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, Frauenzim- 
mer : 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 Mac Cabe, 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 ever- 
lasting. 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 Jex eterna stays about 
Him. Is that then the divine substance wherein Father and Son are consub- 
stantial ? Where is poor dear Arius to try conclusions? Warring his life long 
on 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 around 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 

39 

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 put toit, 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. 

Allerta ! 

He drones bars of Ferrando’s aria di sortita. The grandest number, Stephen, 
in the whole opera. Listen. 

40 

His tuneful whistle sounds again, finely shaded, with rushes of the air, his 
fists big¢drumming 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, Lantern jaws. Abbas father, furious dean what offence laid 
fire to their brains? Paff ! Descende, calve, ut ne nimium decalveris. A garland ot 
grey hair on his comminated head see him me clambering down to the 
footpace (descende), clutching a monstrance, basliskeyed. Get down, bald poll! 
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 ina 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 st, 
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 ! 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 

4! 
F? O yes, but I prefer Q. Yes, but W is wonderful. O yes, W. Remember 

your epiphanies on green oval leaves, deeeply 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. 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. Ring- 
send : 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? 

— Crest le pigeon, Joseph. 

Patrice, home on furlough, lapped warm milk with me in the bar Mac- 
Mahon. Son of the wild goose, Kevin Egan of Paris. My father’s a bird, he 
lapped the sweet Jait 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 Jésus by M. Léo Taxil. Lent it to 
his friend. 

— Crest tordant, vous savex. Mot je suis socialiste. Je ne crois pas en Vexis- 
tence de Dien. Faut pas le dire a mon pere. 

— Il croit? 

— Mon pere, out. 

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’ Micl’, I 
used to. Yes, used to carry punched tickets to prove an alibi if they arrested 

42 

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, cest moi. You seem to have enjoyed 
yourself. 

Proudly walking. Whom were you trying to walk like? Forget : a dispos- 
sessed. 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. Fermé. 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, loudlatinlanghing : 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 tn 

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 hands. In Rodot’s Yvonne and Madeleine 
newmake there tumbled beauties, shattering with gold teeth chaussons of 
pastry, their mouths yellowed with the pus of flan bréton. Faces of Paris men 
go by, their well pleased pleasers, curled conquistadores. 

43 

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 sétier! A jet of coffee 
steam from the burnished caldron. She serves me at his beck. I] 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. To yoke me as his yokefellow, our crimes our common cause. 
Yow’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, Félix 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 tobacco 
shreds 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, 
Pll 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. Shatte- 
red 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-Cceur, 

44 

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 ot 
brightness. Here, Iam 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 dark- 
ness 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 ona stool of rock, resting his ashplant in a grike. 

A bloated carcase of a dog lay lolled on bladderwrack. Before him the gun- 
wale 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 
there, 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 

45 

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 blood- 
beaked 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. [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 ata 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. Natiirlich, 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. Jam 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 sands 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. 

46 

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 
carcase 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 his hindleg, pissed quick short at an unsmelt 
rock. The simple pleasures of the poor. His hindpaws then scattered 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 up 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. 

47 

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. A bout her windraw face her 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 rogue’s 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 1s. 
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 womb. 
Oomb, allwombing tomb. His mouth moulded issuing breath, unspeeched : 
ooeeehah : roar of cataractic planets, globed, blazing, roaring wayawayaway- 
awayawayaway. Paper. The banknotes, blast them. Old Deasy’s letter. Here. 
Thanking you for hospitality tear the blank end off. Turning his back to the 

48 

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 | 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 some one 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 pocket, his hat tilted 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. ; 

49 

And no more turn aside and brood. 

His gaze brooded on his broadtoed boots, a buck’s castofts 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. He now will leave me. And the blame? As Iam. AsI am. All 
or not at all. 

In long lassoes from the Cock lake the water flowed full, covering green- 
goldenly 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 wavespecch : 
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 foam- 
pool, 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, forth owing, 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 landward, a pace a pace a porpoise. There he is. Hook 
it quick. 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 

4 

50 

known to man. Old Father Ocean. Prix de Paris : beware of imitations. Just you 
give ita 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. 
Gia. For the old hag with the yellow teeth. And Monsieur Drumont, gentle- 
man journalist. Gid. 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. 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.

Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls.
He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver slices 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. 

— Mrkegnao! 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. Wonder 
what I look like to her. Height of a tower ? No, she can jump me. 

54 

— Afraid of the chickens she is, he said mockingly. Afraid of the chook- 
chooks. 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 am going round the corner. Be back ina 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 did not 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 ’ m proud of it. Still he had brains enough to make that corner 
in stamps. Now that was farseeing. 

59 

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 rhe 
threshhold, 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. Wander along all day. Might meet a robber or two. Well, meet 
him. Getting on to sundown. The shadows of the mosques along 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 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 
northwest. 

56 

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 cattle market to the quays 
value would go up like a shot. 

Bald head 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 
country Leitrim, rinsing empties and old man in the cellar. Then, lo and 
behold, they blossom out as Adam Findlaters or Dan Tallons. Then think 
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 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. Ten. Fifteen. He passed Saint 
Joseph’s, National school. Brats’ clamour. Windows open. Fresh air helps 
memory. Or a lilt. Ahbeesee defeegee kelomen opeecue rustyouvee double 
you. 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. Fifty multiplied by. The figures whitened in his 
mind unsolved : displeased, he let them fade. The shiny links packed with 

9) 

forcemeat fed his gaze and he breathed in tranquilly the lukewarm breath 
of cooked spicy pig’s 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 : washing soda. 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 up a page 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 catth 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 
cuddled her in Eccles’ Lane. They like them sizeable. Prime sausage. O 
please, Mr Policeman, I’m lost in the wood. 

— Threepence, please. 

58 

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 eight 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. Bleibtreu- 
strasse 34, Berlin, W, 15. 

Nothing doing. Still an idea behind it. 

He looked at the cattle, blurred in silver heat. Silvered powdered olive- 
trees. 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 alive 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 ltned up on the quayside at Jaffa, 
chap ticking them off in a book, nayvies handling them 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 wholly slowly wholly. Grey. Far. 

59 

No, not like that. A barren land, bare waste. Vulcanic lake, the dead sea : 
no fish, weedless, sunk deep in the earth. No wind would lift those waves, grey 
metal, poisonous foggy waters. Brimstone they called it raining down : the 
cities of the plain : Sodom, Gommorah, 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 ftesh. 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. 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 twentyeight. 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 ihe hallfloor. He stooped and gathered them. 
Mrs Marion Bloom. His quick 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. 

60 

— 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 water flow in. Having set it to draw, he took off the kettle and 
crushed the pan ffat 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 looking glass 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, 

61 

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 ? 

— Laci 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 : rum- 
pled, 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. 

62 

— 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 eye. 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 its flow sideways. 

Must get that Capel street library book renewed or they'll write to 
Kearney, my garantor. Reincarnation : that’s the word. 

—— Some people believe, he said, that we go on 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. Better 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 

63 

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 burned. 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 puta 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’m quite the belle in my new tam. I got mummy’s lovely 
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 aconcertin the 

64 

Greville Arms on Saturday. There is a young student comes here some eveni-— 
ings named Bannon his cousins or something are big swells he sings Boylan’s 
({ was on the pop of writing Blazes Boylan’s) song about those seaside girls. 
Tell him silly Milly sends my best respects. Must now close with fondest love. 

Your fond daughter, 
MILLy. 

P. S. Excuse bad writing, am in a 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. Lots 
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 pitying at the postscript. Excuse bad writing. Hurry. 
Piano downstairs. Coming out of her shell. Row with her in the XL Café 
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, 

65 

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 table drawer he found an old number of Titbits. He folded it un- 
der 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 

P) 

66 

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 
creens 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. Agenda 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 window. 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 anda half. Three pounds three. Three pounds 
thirteen and six. 

Quietly he read, restraining himself, the first colunin 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 

67 

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. 9.15. 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 stocking 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 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. A 
third. 
Poor Dignam!

By lorries along sir John Rogerson’s quay Mr Bloom walked soberly, past
Windmill lane, Leask’s the linseed crusher’s, 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’s. At eleven it is. Time enough. Daresay 
Corny Kelleher bagged that 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 whatyoumay call. 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 again : choice 

69 

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 around 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, 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. 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 postoflice. 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 and glanced rapidly at the typed envelope. 

Henry Flower, Esq, 
c/o P. O. Westland Row, 
City. 

70 

Answered anyhow. He slipped card and letter into his sidepocket, revie- 
wing 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. Grifth’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 postofhce 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 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. i 

— 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? J see yourre... 

— Ono, 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 

at 
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 fostering over that change for? Sees 
me looking. Eye out for other fellow always. Good fallback. Two strings to 
her bow. 

— Why? said. What's wrong with him? 1 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 tt Paddy Dignam? I said. I couldn’t believe it when I heard it. | 
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. 

72 

— 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 twentyfifth. 

—- 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. Cat furry black ball. Torn strip of envelope. 

Love's 

Old 

Sweet 

Song 

Comes lo-ve’s old... 

— It’sa 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. 

— Ovwwell, 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? 

gi) 

— [Il 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. Id 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 diffe- 
rence? 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 Bandman Palmer. 
Like to see her in that again. Hamlet she played last night. Male impersonator. 
Perhaps he was a woman. Why Ophelia committed suicide ? Poor papa ! How 
he used to talk about 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 the 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, 

‘4 

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 for- 
gotten 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 maitle 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. | 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. Iam 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 

1) 

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. 

76 

O, Mairy 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 the 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 or 
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. 

77 

He had reached the open backdoor or 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 and the African mission Save China’s millions. 
Wonder how they explain it to the heathen Chinee. Prefer an ounce of opium. 
Celestials. Rank heresy for them. Prayers for the conversion of Gladstone 
they had too when he was almost unconscious. The protestants the same. 
Convert Dt William. J. Walsh D.D. to the true religion. Buddha their god 
lying on his side in the museum. Taking it easy with hand under his cheek. 
Josssticks burning. Not like Ecce Home. Crown of thorns and cross. Clever 
idea Saint Patrick the shamrock. Chopsticks ? Conmee : Martin Cunningham 
knows him : distinguished looking. 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 whit 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 
thealtar rails. 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 : 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. Stupe- 
fies 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 

78 

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. [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. 1? 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. No, Peter Claver 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: show 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. 

79 

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 wbrato: fifty pounds a year they say he had in Gar- 
diner 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 is splendid. Mercadante : seven last words. 
Mozart’s twelfth mass : the Gloria in that. Those old popes were 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? Gloria 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, 

80 

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 the Fermanagh will case in the witness box. 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. Woman enjoy it. Annoyed if you don't. Why didn’t you tell me 
before. 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. 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 rhe 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, 

8i 

I changed a sovereign I remember. First ot 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 himselr 
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 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 orange- 
flower. Pure curd soap. Water is so fresh. Nice smell these soaps have. 
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 day. Funeral be rather glum. 

— Yes, sir, the chemist said. That was two and nine. Have you brought a 
bottle ? 

) 

82 

— No, Mr Bloom said. Make it up, please. i’il call later in the day and 
I'll take one of those 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’ 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 ot 
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. 

83 

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 Buller 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 tight till it shut tight. He passed an arm through the 
armstrap and looked seriously from the open carriage window at the lowered 
blinds of the avenue. One dragged aside : an old woman peeping. Nose white- 
flattened 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. Grow 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 ot 
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. 

85 

Other hoofs and creaking wheels started behind. The blinds ot the avenue 
passed and number ten 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 sawalithe young man, clad in mourning, 
a wide hat. 

— There’sa 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, aying : 

— 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 bottle- 
works. 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 

86 

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 what- 
ever 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 crust- 
crumbs from under his thighs. 

— What is this? he said, in the name of God 2? Crumbs ? 

— Someone seems to have been making a picnic party here lately, 
Mr Power said. 

All raised their thighs, 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? 

87 

— 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. 

— Imet 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 then 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. 

88 

— 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 waistcoat pocket. There all right. Dear Henry fled. 
Before my patience are exhausted. 

National school. Meade’s yard. The le 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 

89 

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 : 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? 

90 

— 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 chier 
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. Mz 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 o1 
Elvery's elephant house showed them a curved hand open on his spine. | 

9gI 

— 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 J. 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’ 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. 

92 

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 Matew. Foundation stone 
for Parnell. Breakdown. Heart. 

White horses with white frontlet plumes came round the Rotunda 
corner, galloping. A tinycoffin flashed by. In a hurry to bury. A mourning 
coach. Unmarried. Black for the married. Piebald for bachelors. Dun tor 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 the man. Better luck next 
time. 

93 

— 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 blinds. The coroner’s 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, 

94 

— Weare 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 Misericordiz. 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. Roast beef for old 
England. They buy up all the juicy ones. And then the fifth quarter is 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. 

— Ican’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 

95 

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 ina 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 
panse 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, 

96 

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 said. That’s the maxim ot 
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. 

If 

Cramped in this carriage. She mightn’t like me tocome 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 ata 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 

od 

i 

98 

dead weight. Felt heavier myself steping out of that bath. First the stitf : 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 berore 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 mort- 
gaged. 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. 

— Asad 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 out- 
lived 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 gunearriage. 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? 

a 

— 1 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'l 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 sleek combed hair and 
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 Bier 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 
praying desks. 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. 

100 

Father Coffey. I knew his name was like a coffin. Dominenamine. 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. Black edged 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 of up 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 Brown. 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 cofin. 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 business men, 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 

IO! 

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 coffin- 
cart wheeled off to the left. The metal wheels ground the gravel with a sharp 
grating cry and the pack of blunt boots followed the 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, secret searching eyes. 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 : 

102 

— Iam 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 AI, 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 Madam 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. She 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 tor ads. 

John Henry Menton’s large eyes stared ahead. 

103 

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 : 

— Iam come to pay you another visit. 

— My dear Simon, the caretaker answered ina 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 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 watch chain 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 good- 
heartedness : 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. Habeat 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 

104 

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 how 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 carcase of William 
Wilkinson, auditor and accountant, lately deceased, three pounds thirteen and 
six. With thanks. ; 

I daresay the soil would be quite fat with corpse manure, bones, flesh, 
nails, charnelhouses. Dreadful. Turning green and pink, decomposing. Rot 
quick in damp earth lean. The lean old ones tougher. Then a kind ofa tallowy 
kind of acheesy. Then begin to get 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. 

ou 

105 

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. rr 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 Cesar. 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 

106 

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 tur- 
ned 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 
eravetrestles. 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. Well cut 
frockcoat. Weighing them up perhaps to see which will go next. Well it isa 
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! 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 : top 
into a hole one after the other. 

107 

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 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 ofa 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’sns. 

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. 

— lam 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 ? 

108 

— M’ntosh, 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 
awhile 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 

109 

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. Hu! 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 dedic- 
ated 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 awfullygladaseeragain hellohello amarawf 
kopthsth, 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. 

110 * 

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 ot 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 fever pits 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 

aia 

III 

the bowling green because I sailed inside him. Pure fluke ot 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 it 
women are by. 

Got a dinge in the side ot 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 
ew 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, lettecards, 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. 

113 

— 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. 

— ll go through the printing works, 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 witha 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 stately 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. 

Jesus Mario with rougy cheeks, doublet and spindle legs. Hand on his 
heart. In Martha. 

Co-ome thou lost one, 
Co-ome thou dear one 

we 

Ti4 

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 the 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 Tinnachinch. To all 

115 

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 toa 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. 

— Mn, Mr Bloom said. Look sharp and you'll catch him. 

— Thanks, old man, Hynes said. 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 a while and nodded. 
— He wants it in for July, Mr Bloom said. 
He doesn’t hear it. Nannan. Iron nerves. 
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. 

116 

Hell of a racket they make. 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 hasatouch 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. High class 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. 

5) 

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 of a peeled pear under a cemetery 
wall. Silly, isn’t it? Cemetery put in of course on account of the symmetry. 

I could 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. 

Slit. 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 Tele- 
graph. 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. 

118 

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 Pd 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. man- 
giD. 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 tken catch him 
out perhaps. Better phone him up first. Number ? 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 these 
walls with matches ? Looks as if they did it for a bet. Heavy greasy smell there 
always isin 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. 

I19 

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, 
fanned by gentlest zephyrs tho’ quarelling with the stony obstacles, to the tumbling 
waters of Neptune’s blue domain, mid mossy banks, played on by the glorious sunlight 
or “neath the shadows cast oer 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 vice-chancellor 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’s, professor Mac Hugh 
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. 

121 

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 their 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. Hailfellow 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 onhigh, 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 shines forth to irradiate her silver effulgence. 

— O! Mr Dedalus cried, giving vent to to a hopeless groan, shite and 
onions! That'll do, Ned. Life is too short. 

He took off his silk hatand, 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. 

122 

WHAT WETHERUP SAID 

All very fine to jeer at it now in cold print but it goes down like hot cake 
that stuff. He wasin 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 blow out. 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. 

— Getououthat, you bloody old pedagogue ! the editor said in recognition. 

— Come, Ned, Mr Dedalus said, putting on his hat. 1 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. 

123 

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 amoment, 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. 

— Twenty eight... 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 Mac Hugh 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. 

124 

— 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. 

— Hin, sir. 

— Out of this with you, professor Mac Hugh 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, 

125 

leaning against the manteishelf, 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 cross 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 Mac Hugh said in a low voice. 

— Seems to be, J. J. O’Molloy said, taking out a cigarette case 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. 

126 

— 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 Mac Hugh 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 : Is it 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. Q’Molloy murmured. But we 
have also Roman law. 

— And Pontius Pilate is its prophet, professor MacHugh responded, 

127 

— 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. 

— l escort a suppliant, M. 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. 

ine 

Lenehan said to all : 

— Silence! What opera resembles a railway line? 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 knew his wife too. The 
bloodiest old tartar God ever made. By Jesus, she had the foot and mouth 

128 

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 hea 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 
Tirconnel 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. 

— [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 

129 

of the spirit, not an imperium, that went under with the Athenian fleets at 
/Egospotami. 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 Mac Hugh 
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. Vl 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 railway line ? 

— Opera? Mr O’Madden Burke’s sphinx face reriddled. 

Lenehan announced gladly : 

— The Rose of Castiile. 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 pane across Stephen’s 
and Mr O’Madden Burke’s iees8 ties. 

— Paris, past and present, he said. You look like communards. 

— Like fellows who had blown up the Bastille, 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. 

2 

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 
coldin the park. The gate was open. 

« YOU CAN DO IT! » 

The editor laid a nervous hand on Stephen’s shoulder. 

— [ 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 metanl 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 

—— Youcan 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 ? [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. 

131 

— Look at here, he said, turning. The New York World cabled for a special. 
Remember that time ? 

Professor Mac Hugh 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 Holehan ? 

— 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 he ? 

— 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 ? [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 

— [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... 
BES; <2 

— F to Pis 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. 

132 

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 Burke’s public 

house, see ? 

CLEVER, VERY 

— Clever, Lenehan said. Very. 

— Gave it to them ona hotplate, 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. Thee 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... 

— Oyes, 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. 

133 

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! 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. 

CAMB Ba Re Ah OAS la tua pace 
reais (te bo Cotto ea PALE che parlar ti piace 
. . mentreche 1] 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, 
in gold of oriflamme, di rimirar fe pin 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 gua profession but your Cork Jegs 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 gutter sheet 
not to mention Paddy Kelly’s Budget, Pue’s Occurrences and our watchful friend 
The Skibereen Eagle. Why bring in a master of forensic eloquence like 
Whiteside ? Sufficient for the day is the newspaper thereof. 

134 

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. OMolloy said, of Roman 
justice as contrasted with the earlier Mosaic code, the Jex talionis. And he cited 
the Moses of Michelangelo in the Vatican. 

— Ha. 

— A few wellchosen words, Lenehan prefaced. Silence! 

Pause. J. J. O’Mollooy too kout his cigarette case. 

False lull. Something quite ordinary. 

Messenger took out his match box 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 prophecy which, if aught 

135 
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 cigarettesas 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 master mystic? 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 isa 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 cigarette case 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 withim T Healy, J. J. O’Molloy said, rumour has it, 
on the Trinity college estates commission. 

— He is sitting with a sweet thing ina child’s frock, Myles Crawford said. 
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 

136 

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 sick bed. 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 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 Ican 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 senned 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 Itke 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. 

Sy) 

— 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, tireme 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 aud 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 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 said. 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. 

138 

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 who 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, slapping 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 night. 

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! 

139 

Dublin. I have much, much to learn. 

They turned to the left along Abbey street. 

— [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. 

Damp night reeking of hungry dough. Against the wall. Face glistening 
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 in tenpence a red tin letterbox moneybox. They shake 
out the threepenny bits and a sixpence 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 tor fear it may come ~ 
on to rain. 

— Wise virgins, protessor Mac Hugh said. 

LIFE ON THE RAW 

— They buy one and fourpenceworth of brawn and four slices of panloaf at 
the north city dining rooms 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 Kearnsand Florence Mac Cabe. Anne Kearns has the 
lumbago for which she rubs on Lourdes water given her by a lady who gota 

140 

bottleful from a passionist father. Florence Mac Cabe 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, scampering 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. OMolloy. 

— 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 spécial ! 

— 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 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 youtell him he can kiss my arse ? Myles Crawford said, throwing 
out his arm for emphasis. Tell him that straight from the stable. 

141 

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 Dedalusthe 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 adI think. ’ll tell him... 

K. M. R. 1. A. 

— Hecan 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. You must take the will for the deed. 
Sorry, Jack. With a heart and a half if I could raise the wind anyhow. 

J. J. O’Molloy pulled a loug 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... 

142 

THOSE SLIGHTLY RAMBUNCTIOUS FEMALES 

— Easy all, Myles Crawford said, no poetic licence. We’re in the archdio- 
cese 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 1S 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, Kingstown, 

143 

Blackrock 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 hxc otia fecit. 

— No, Stephen said, I call it A Pisgah Sight of Palestine or The Parable 
of The Plums. , 

— Isee, the professor said. 

He laughed richly. 

— Isee, 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 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, 1s 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. 

Phosphorous 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. 

145 
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, | 
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 asa 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 
quay walls, gulls. Rough weather outside. If I threw myself down? Reuben 
Js 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 bridge piers. 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. 

146 

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 ora 
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 fishy flesh they have to, all sea 
birds, 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 acaw. They spread foot and mouth 
disease too. If you cram a turkey, say, on chestnut meal 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 it 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 green- 
houses. 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. Fly by night. Just the place too. posr No BILLS. POST IIO PILLS. 
some chap with a dose burning him. 

147 

It che... 

O! 

Ebte 

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. Time ball on the ballast office 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 pikehoses she called it till I told her about the transmigration. O rocks ! 

Mr Bloom smiled O rocks at two windows of the ballast office. 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 halfas witty as calling him base barreltone. 
Appetite like an albatross. Get outside of a baron of beef. Powerful man he was 
at storing away number one Bass. Barrel of Bass. See ? It all works out. 

A procession of whitesmocked men 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 achunk 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 show cart with two smart girls 
sitting inside writing letters, copybooks, envelopes, blotting paper. 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 

148 

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 2? Sister ? I am sure she was crossed in love by her eyes. Very hard to 
bargain with that sort of 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 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 hom’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. Alterman 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 selcovered buttons. She didn’t like it because I 
sprained my ankle first day she wore choir picnic at the Sugarloaf. As ifthat. 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, shoulder and hips. Just beginning 
to plump it out well. Rabbit pie 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 daguerrotype 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 its years ago. Noise of the trams probably. Well, if he couldn’t 
remember the dayfather’s name that he sees every day. 

149 

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 supper room 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 herself 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, ina 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. 

150 

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 
erating, 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 ? Ave 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.? 

E51 

— 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 ot 
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. 

152 

A bony form strode along the curbstone from the river, staring with a 
rapt gaze into the sunlight through a heavy stringed 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. Good bye. 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 stick, umbrella, dustcoat. 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 lying there. 
Like to answer them all. Good system forcriminals. 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. Vell 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 

153 

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. Scavening 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. Eating with a stopwatch, 
thirtytwo chews to the minute. 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. 

T54 

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. Twilightsleep idea : queen Victoria was given that. Nine she 
had. A good layer. Old woman that lived in a shoe she hadso 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 toa 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 after all of a sudden! Peaceful eyes. Weight off their minds. 
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 nyumyum. 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. Goose step. 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 into groups and scattered, saluting towards 

155 

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 horse 
policeman the day Joe Chamberlain was given his degree in Trinity he got arun 
for his money. My word he did! His horse’s hoofs clattering after us down 
Abbey street. Luck I had the presenee 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 Duffin 
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 plain clothes 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 

156 

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, get along with your great times coming. 

Barmaids too. Tobacco shopgirls. 

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. Turkney’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 square- 
headed fellow but he has no go in him for the mob. Want to 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. Home 
Rule 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 
matching 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, 

157 

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. 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 silver ware in 
Walter Sexton’s window opposite 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 Boulger 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 like 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. 

158 

And there he is too. Now that’s really a coincidence : secondtime. 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. Wind and watery 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 surpised 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 oer the waters dull. 

He crossed at Nassau street corner and stood before the window of Yeates 
and Son, pricing the field glasses. 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 cloak rooms. What do they 
be thinking about? Women too. Incredible. Last year travelling to Ennis had 
to pick up that farmer’s daughter’s bag 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. 

159 

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. 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 again to his side. 

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 anew 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, quick breathing, slowlier walking, passed Adam court. 

With a keep guiet relief, his eyes took note : this is street here middle or 
the day 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 as sober as a 
judge. 

Yes, Thought so. Sloping into the Empire. Gone. Plain soda would dg 

160 

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 ina 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 1? 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, 
silk,dames 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. Country bred 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 ot 
bloodhued poplin : lustrous blood. The huguenots brought that here. La causa 
é santa! Tara tara. Great chorus that. Tara. Must be washed in rainwater. 
Meyerbeer. Tara: bom bom bom. 

Pincushions. I'm a long time threatening to buy one. Stick 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. Junejuly 
augseptember 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, silk webs, 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. 

Re 

161 

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 or: the Burton restaurant. Stink 
gripped his trembling breath : pungent meatjuice, slop of greens. See the 
animals feed. 

Men, men, men. 

Perched on high stools by the bar, hats shoved back, at the tables calling 
tor 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 : 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. 

If 

162 

— Two stouts here. 

— One corned and cabbage. 

That fellow ramming a knifeful or 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 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 ef news-papet. 
Other chap telling him something with his mouth full. Sympathetic listener. Table 
talk.  munched hum un thu Unchster Bunck 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 soup 
pot as big as the Phoenix Park. Harpooning flitches and hindquarters out of it. 
Hate people all round you. City Arms hotel table d’héte she called it. Soup, joint 
and sweet. Never know whose thoughts you're chewing. Then who'd wash up 

163 
all the plates and forks? Might be all teeding on tabloids that time. Teeth 
getting worse and worse. 

After all there’s a lot in that vegetarian fine flavour or things from the 
earth garlic, of course, it stinks 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 
wobble 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, smoking hot, thick sugary. Famished ghosts. 

Ah, ['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 Mac Trigger. 
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. Mighty cheese. 

— Have you a cheese sandwich? 

164 

— Yes, sir. 

Like a few olives too if they had them. Italian I prefer. Good glass or 
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 Mac Trigger. 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 hauched 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. 

165 

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 
boxing match 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 
mes, 

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 shirt sleeves, 
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? 

— Im off that, Mr Flynn, Davy Byrne answered. | never put anything on 
a horse. 

— Youre 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... 

166 

He went towards the window and, taking up the petty cash book, scanned 
its pages. 

— I could, faith, Nosey Flynn said snuffling. That was a rare bit ot 
horseflesh. Saint Frusquin was hersire. She won inathunderstorm, 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 numskull. 
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 
dogeybowwowsywowsy ! 

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 ortwo. 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, pertwinkles 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 
oyster old fish at table. Perhaps he young flesh in bed No. June has no ar no 
oysters. But there are people like 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? 

167 

Or who was it used to eat the scrutt oft 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. Créme de la créme. 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 a 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 1 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 first, finger in fishes’ gills, can’t write his 
name ona 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 sweet and sour with 
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. 

168 

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 seen 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 
woman 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 
au engine. They have no. Never looked. I'll look today. Keeper won’t see. 
Bend down let something fall 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. Youre 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 

169 

yesterday and he coming out of that Irish tarm 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. 
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: 

— There was one woman, Nosey Flynn said, hid herself in a clock to tind 
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 has 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. 

— Iknow, Davy Byrne said. 

170 

— Nothing in black and white, Nosey Flynn said. 

Paddy Leonard and Bantam Lyons came in. Tom Rochford followed, 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. 

171 

— 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 
Réntgen rays searchlight you could. 

At Duke lane a ravenous terrier choked up a sick knuckly cud on the 
cobble stones and lapped it with new zest. Surfeit. Returned with thanks having 
tully 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 ofhis. 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. 

172 

Keyes : two months irc I get Nannetti to. That'll be two pounds ten, 
about two pounds eight. Three Hynes owes me. Two eleven. Presscott’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 watering places? 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 kunckle. 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 ? Bird’s 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 stripliag did not answer. His wall face 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! 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. 

173 

Stains on his coat. Slobbers his tood 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 foreheads perhaps. Kind of sense of 
volume. Weight 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. 
Work basket I could buy 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 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, 
temperature 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, 

174 

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 public house he slid his hand between waistcoat and 
trousers and, pulling aside his shirt gently, felt a slack fold of his belly. But I 
know it’s whiteyellow. 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 pikehoses. 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 straw- 
calling. 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 1? Too 
heady. Yes, it is. The walk. Not see. Not see. Get on, 

175 

Making for the museum gate with long windy strides 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 forthin 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 for. 

He thrust back quickly Agendath. 

Afternoon she said. 

I am looking for that. Yes, that. Try all pockets. Handker. Freeman. 
Where did 1? Ah, yes. Trousers. Purse. Potato. Where did I? 

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! 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... 

177 

— 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. Godspeed. 
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. Clergy- 
men’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 mind 
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. 

12 

178 

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. | 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 en 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 ! Pfucteufel ! 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 undram- 
atic 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. 

179 
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 anexploitable ground but the living mother. The rarefied 
air of the academy and the arena produce the sixshilling novel, the music- 
hall song, France produces the finest flower of corruption in Mallarmé but the 
desirable life is revealed only to the poor of heart, the life of Homer's 
Pheeacians. 

From these words Mr Best turned an unoffending face to Stephen. 

— Mallarmé, 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 proméne, lisant au livre de lui-méme, 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 
Piéce de Shakespeare 

He repeated to John Eglinton’s newgathered frown : 

— Piéce 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. 

180 

— 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 palm. 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. 
Lasts ste O nist 

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 ! 

181 

— 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 dispossesed 
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 I’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 Mac Lir..... 

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. 

182 

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 ever- 
changing forms. 

I that sinned and prayed and fasted. 

A child Conmee saved from pandies. 

hal and aA. 

AXE IOs: 

— Do you mean to fly in the face of the tradition or 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 or genius makes no mistakes. His 
errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery. 

Portals of discovery opened to let in the quaker librarian, softcreakrooted, 
bald, eared and assiduous. 

— A shrew, John Eglinton said shrewdly, is not a useful portal os 
discovery, one should imagine. What useful discovery did Socrates learn from 
Xanthippe ? 

183 

— Dialectic, Stephen answered : and trom 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 rorgetfully. Yes, we 
seem to be forgetting her as Shakespeare nimself 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, guitless 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 bechamber of every light-of-love in London. Is Katharine the shrew 
illfavoured ? Hortensio calls her young and beautiful. Do you think the writer 
of Aniony 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. 

184 

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. 

— [ don’t know ifI 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 ithe 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 ashplant- 
handle 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: 4s in. wild earth a Grecian vase. Did he? 

185 

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 goin. 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. 

186 

Rest suddenly possessed the discreet vaulted cell, rest ot warm and 
brooding air. 

A vestal’s lamp. 

Here he ponders things that were not: what Czsar 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 or 
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 o1 
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 imo 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 ot miscreant eyes, glinting stern under 
wrinkled brows. A basilisk. E quando vede T'uomo lattosca. 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, 1 may see 

187 

myselr 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 casttheir 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. 

— Achild, a girl placed in his arms, Marina. 

— The leaning of sophists towards the bypaths ot 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 innames : A. E, eon : Magee, John Eglinton. East of the sun, west 
ofthe moon : Tir na n-og. Booted the twain and staved. 

How many mules 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. 

188 

My dearest wife, Pericles says, was like this maid. Willany man love the daughter 
if he has not loved the mother? 

— The art of being a grandfather, Mr Best gan murmur. L’art d’étre grand... 

— 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 repeat himself. 

The benign forehead of the quaker librarian enkindled rosily with hope. 

—Thope 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 is 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 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 

189 

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! 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 —= 

190 

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, Pll 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. 

— Icame through the museum, Buck Mulligan said. Was he here ? 

— The bard’s fellowcountrymen, John Eglinton answered, are rather 
tired perhaps of our brilliancies ot 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. Ot 
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 taces lightly as he smiled, a blond ephebe. Tame 
essence of Wilde. 

You're darned witty. Three drams ot 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. 

191 

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 shake 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 
debiorship 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 
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, '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 

192 

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. 
Crest 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 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 and 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. 1 found him over in the 
museum when 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 

193 

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 every 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. 

i3 

194 

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. 

—— Asan 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. Ir 
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 whilé 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. 
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. 

195 

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 
Second best 
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 countrygentleman, Stephen said, with a coat of arms 
and landed estate at Stratford anda house in Ireland yard, a capitalist share- 
holder, 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, 

196 

— 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 ofa 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 Sydney’s. As for fay Elizabeth, 
otherwise carrotty Bess, the gross virgin who inspired Ihe 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. 

.* 

97 

-— 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 amicttia 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! t'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. 

198 
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 at New Place and drank a quart of sack 
the town 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 and 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 Wittemberg then you must hold that his 
seventyyear old mother is the lustful queen. No. The corpse of John Shakes- 
peare does not walk the night. From hour to hour it rots and rots. He rests, 

199 

disarmed ot 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 isa 
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 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. 

200 

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 Cortolanus. 
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 nay sake. 

(Laughter.) 

201 

Buck MULLIGAN 

(Piano, diminuendo.) 

Then outspoke medical Dick 
To his comrade medical Davy... 

STEPHEN 

In his trinity of black Wills, the villain shakebags, Iago, Richard Crook- 
back, 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 of arms he toadied for, on a bend sable a spear or steeled argent, honorifi- 
cabilitudinitatibus, 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, 

202 

And from her arms. 

Wait to be wooed and won. Ay, meacock. Who will woo you ? 

Read the skies. Autontimerumenos. Bous Stephanoumenos. Where’s your 
configuration ? Stephen, Stephen, cut the bread even. S. D: sua donna. Gia: 
di lui. Gelindo risolve di non amar 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 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 

203 

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. 

Iam 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 ina 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 
voulex-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 is not, always with him. The note of banishment, banishment from 
the heart, banishment from home, sounds uninterruptedly from The Two 
Gentleman 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 

204 

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 José 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 pére ?) 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 pére 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 looklong 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 

205 

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 ina stride John Eglinton’s 
desk. 

— MayTI? 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 area 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 Eclection 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: 

206 

— 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 /Engus 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 
thoughts. 

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 polysyliables. 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, 

207 
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 public 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. 

Phe ljust eh... wanted:-. lforgot-.. hes 

— 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. 

208 

— Longworth is awfully sick, he said, after what you wrote about that old 
hake Gregory. O you inquisitional drunken jew jesuit! She gets you a job on 
the paper and then you goand 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 : 

Tosy Tostorr (a ruined Pole). 
Cras (a bushranger). 
Mepicav Dick © 
and (two birds with one stone). 
Mepicat Davy 
MoTHER GROGAN (a watercarrier). 
FresH NELLY 
and 
RosA.ig (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: 
— QO, the night in the Camden hall when the daughters of Erin had to lift 

<< eS 

209 

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. Engus 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 blessd 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 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 onlegged 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 had served my king He would not have abandoned me in my 
old days. He walked by the treeshade of sunnywinking leaves and towards him 
come 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. 

21% 

Father Conmee was very glad to see the wife of Mr David Sheehy M. P. 
looking so well and he begged to be remembered to Mr David Sheedy M.P. Yes, 
he would certainly call. 

— Good afternoon, Mrs Sheehy. 

Father Conmee doffed his silk hat, 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 stropped 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. 

— QO, 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 frock coat 
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 

212 
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 smelled 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 spe 
nobleman. And now it was an office or something. 

Father Conmee began to walk along the North ‘Srna road and was saluted 
by Mr William Gallagher who stood in rie doorway of his shop. Father Conmee 
saluted Mr William Gallagher and perceived the odours that came from bacon- 
flitches 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, lying 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 

213 

turf to be in bogs where 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 grinned with thick niggerlips at 
Father Conmee. 

Father Conmee thought of the souls of black and brown and yellow men 
and of his sermon of saint Peter Claver S. J. and the African mission and of 

214 

the propagation of the faith and or 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 
Elus, 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 men’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 ot 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 homely and just word. 

215 

Father Conmee, reading his office, watched a flock ot 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 institie tue. 

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 hat 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. 

Phe 

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 57 C, 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. 

216 

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 and 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 A partments 
slipped fromi 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. 

217 

ay 

Katey and Boody Dedalus shoved in the door of the close steaming 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. 

— MGuinness’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 : 

218 

— 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 2 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 shame- 
faced 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 Merchant’s arch scanned books on the hawker’s 
car. 

— 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. 

219 

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 
frankly the handrests. Pale faces. 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. 

— Anclrio ho avuto di queste idee, Almidano Artifoni said quand’ ero giovine 
come Lei. Eppoi mi sono convinto che il mondo é una bestia. E peccato. Perché 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 retia a 
me. Ci refletia. 

By the stern stone hand of Grattan, bidding halt, an Inchicore tram 
unloaded straggling Highland soldiers of a band. 

— Ci rifletterd, 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 ct 
benst. Addio, caro. 

— Arrivederla, maestro, Stephen said, raising his hat when his hand was 
freed. E grazie. 

220 

— Di che? Almidano Artifano 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 listlessy lolling, scribbled on the jotter sixteens and capital esses. Mustard 
hair and dauby cheeks. She’s not nicelooking, is she? The way she is 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. 

221 

Phar 

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 ona 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. 

222 

His 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 palm nut 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 
atter he set fire to Cashel cathedral. You know that one? I’m bloody sorry I 
didit, 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 a while. Hold hard. 

With gaping mouth and head tar 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... this morning... poor little... what do you call him... Chow]... 
Mother of Moses! 

ax 

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, 

223 

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. 

224 

— 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 is 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. 

— [ll tell you a damn good one about comet’s tails, he said. Come over 
in the sun. 

They crossed to the metal bridge and went along Wellington quay by the 
river wall. 

Master Patrick Aloysius Dignam came out of Mangan’s, late Fehrenbach’s, 
carrying a pound and a half of porksteaks. 

— There was a big 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. 

225 

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 curacoa 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. 

15 

226 

ae 

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, Heres ry. 

— Her mouth glued on his in a luscious voluptuous kiss while his hands felt for 
the opulent curves inside her deshabille. 

Yes. Take’ this)’ [he 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 

By seu 

224 
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! Crished ! 
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, spat 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 : 

— [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. 

x 

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, listening 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. 

228 

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 shoulders ? 
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. 

229 

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, that’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, 1 looked all along the gutter in O’Connell street. 
Pll 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 : 

— The little nuns! Nice little things! O, sure they wouldn’t do 
anything! O, sure they wouldn’t really ! Is it little sister Monica! 

* 
* OK 

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 are 
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, 

230 

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 are talking 
straight, Mr Crimmins. You know why ? Palmoil. 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 ferry- 
wash, Elijah is coming. 

Mr Kernan glanced in farewell at his image. High colour, of course. 
Grizzled moustache. Returned Indian officier. Bravely he bore his stumpy body 
forward on spatted feet, squaring his shoulders. Is that Lambert’s brother over 
the way, Sam? What? Yes. He’s as like itas damn it. No, The windscreen of 
that motorcar in the sun there. Justa 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. 

231 

Dogs licking the blood off the street when the lord lieutenant’s wife drove by 
in her noddy. 

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 ina 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 ear 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 reminis- 
cences of sir Jonah Barrington. When you look back on it all now in akind 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 

232 

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 burns 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 umbrella, one with a 
midwife’s bag in which eleven cockles rolled. 

The whirr of flapping leathern bands and hum of dynamos from the power- 
house 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 light 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. 

v 

233 

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 ! 

234 

Pa 

— 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 sald. 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 Fathes 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. 

235 

— 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 Fitmaurice 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. 

— Comealong 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. 

— Fora 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. 

236 

— Filberts I believe they were, Mr Dedalus said, as he dropped his glasses 
on his coatfront, following them. 

an 

— 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 Ja 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 

237 

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 Wise 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 Vanning’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, 

238 

— Rather lowsized, Dignam of Menton’s office that was, Martin Cunning- 
ham 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 stair- 
case. 

— The lord lieutenant general 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. 

239 

— I'm sorry, he said. Shakespeare is the happy hunting ground 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 Erenter 

— You should see him, he said, when his body loses its balance. 
Wandering Angus I call him. 

— I am sure he has an idée fixe, Haines said, pinching his chin thought- 
fully with thumb and forefinger. How 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 beliet. 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 

240 

Benson's ferry, and by the threemasted schooner Rosevean from Bridgewater 
with bricks. 

* 

Almidano Artifoni walked past Holles street, past Sewell’s yard. Behind 
him Cashel Boyle O’Connor Fiztmaurice Tisdall Farrell with stickumbrelladust- 
coat 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 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 volut. 

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 Mac 
Dowell 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 fruit cake jawing the whole blooming time and sighing. 

After Wicklow lane the window of Madame Doyle, court dress milliner, 
stopped him He stood looking in at the two puckers stripped to their pelts 

241 

and putting up their propse From the sidemirrors two mourning Masters 
Dignam gaped silently. Myler Keogh, Dublin’s pet lamb, will meet sergeant 
major Bennett, the Portobello bruiser, ror 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. 1 could 
easy do a bunk on ma. Master Dignam on his lett 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 ot 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 
tor strength was Fitzsimons. One puck in the wind from that fellow would knock 
you into the middle ot 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 ina 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. ’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 

10 

242 
trying to say it better. Poor pa. That was Mr Dignam, my father. I hope he is in 
purgatory now because he went to confession to father Conroy on Saturday night. 

# x 

William Humble, earl of Dudley, and Lady Dudley, accompanied by 
lieutenantcolonel Hesseltine, 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 greated 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 
costsbag 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 repre- 
sentative 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 Cahiil’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 Mac Dowell, carrying the 
Catesby’s cork lino letters for her father who was laid up, knew by the style 

243 
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. Hesseltine 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 tanned shoes and socks with skyblue clocks to 
the retrain 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 
‘adies the bold admiration of his eyes and the red flower between his lips. As 

244 

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 coriége : 

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. Thrift, 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 Landsdowne 
roads His Excellency acknowledged punctually salutes from rare male walkers, 
the salute of two small schoolboys at the garden gate ot 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 

Gold pinnacled hair. 

A jumping rose on satiny breasts 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. O rose! Notes 
chirruping answer. 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! 

Clapclop. Clipclap. Clappyclap. 

246 

Goodgod henev erheard inall 

Deaf bald Pat brought pad knife took up. 

A moonlit nighteall : 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. 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. 

Ff! Oo! 

Where bronze from anear ? Where gold from afar ? Where hoofs ? 
Rrrpr. Kraa. Kraandl. 

Then, not till then. My eppripfitaph. Be pfrwritt. 

Done. 

Begin ! 

Bronze by gold, Miss Douce’s head by Miss Kennedy’s head, over the 

247 

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 ot 
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 Jeau, is it? 

A haughty bronze replied : 

— [ll complain to Mrs de Massey on you if I hear any more ot your 
impertinent insolence. 

— Imperthnthn thnthnthn, bootsnout sniffed rudely, as he retreated as 
she threatened as he had come. 

248 

Bloom. 

On her flower frowning Miss Douce said : 

— Most aggravating that young brat is. If he doesn’t conduct himself Pll 
wring his ear tor 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 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, 

249 

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 shout 
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 Loré’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 gigelegiggled. 
Miss Douce, bending again 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 bronze in gold, 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 greaseaseabloom. 

250 

— 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 about Keyes’s 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. 

25% 

- — By Jove, he mused. I often wanted to see the Mourne moutains. 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 not 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 : 

— Ahme! Omy! 

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? 

252 

— 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 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 jingle ~ 
jaunty 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 sees the thicknesses of felt advancing, to hear 
the muffled hammerfall in action. 

253 

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. Tanks 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 jauntingcar. It is. 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 ts 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 : 

254 

— 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. 

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 he. All said four. 

Cowley’s red lugs and Adam’s 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 [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 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... 

255 

— Fortune, he wished, lifting his bubbled ale. 

— Sceptre will win in a canter, he said. 

— I plunged a bit, said Boylan winking aud 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 Kennnedy 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, Colles, 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 Ine. 

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. Sonnez la cloche! 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. 

— Goon! Do! Sonnez! 

256 

Bending, she nipped a peak of skirt above her knee. Delayed. Taunted 
them still, bending, suspending, with wilful eyes. 

— Sonnez ! 

Smack. She let 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, drankoff his tiny, 
chalice, sucking the last fat violet syrupy drops. His spellbound eyes went 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. 

257 

— 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. 

— | 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 

a7, 

258 

in the coffee palace on Saturdays for a yery 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 Marrion 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. 

259 

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 Iam, 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 needn’t 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. 

oS ie aes Oued a ike 2 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. 

260 

Miss Douce, engaging, Lydia Douce, bowed to suave solicitor, George 
Lidwell, gentleman, entering. Good afternoom. 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. 

— Mappari, 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 : 

— Mappari tutt’amor : 

Il mio sguardo Tincontr... 

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. 

261 

— 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 jingle 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 : Sonambula. 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. Still hold her back. Brave, don’t know their danger. Call name. 

262 

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. 

— Ihave no money but if you will lend me your attention I shall endea- 
vour 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 of reeds or whatdoyoucallthem dulcimers, 
touching their still ears with words, still hearts of their each his remembered 

263 

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 ii 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 jimjam 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, 
tupthrop. Now! Language of love. 

— ... ray of hope... 

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 

264 

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 alway’s 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 langour Lionel cried in grief, in cry of passion dominant to 
love to return with deepening yet with rising chords of harmony. In cry or 
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-me, thou lost one! 
Co-me 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 

265 

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. Goodman, Simon. Clappyclapclap. Encore ! 
Clapclipclap. Sound as a bell. Bravo, Simon! Clapclopclap. Encore, enclap, 
said, cried, clapped all, Ben Dollard, Lydia Douce, George Lidwell, Pat, Mina, 
two gentlemen with two tankards, Cowley, first gent with tank and bronze 
Miss Douce and gold Miss 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 Matthew, jaunted as said before just now. Atrot, in heat, heatseated. 
Cloche. Sonnex la. Cloche. Sonnex la. Slower the mare went up the hill by the 
Rotunda, Rutland square. Too slow for Boylan, blazes Boylan, impatience 
Boylan, joggled tbe 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 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, 

266 

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 cords. Wonderful, more than all 
the others. 

That voice was a lamentation. Calmer now. It’s in the silence 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 wavyavyeavyheavyeavyevyevy hair 
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. 

267 

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 tolisten 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 1 bought for 
her. The name. Playing it slow, a girl, night 1 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. 

268 

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. Accept my poor little 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 pin 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 now. In haste. Henry. Greek ee. Better add postcript. 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 
CAO). 
Dolphin’s barn lane 
Dublin. 

269 

Blot over the other so he can’t read. 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, 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. 
i oshear. 

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. 

270 

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 their mouth, why ? Her eyes over the 
sheet, a yashmak. Find the way in. Acave. 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. Corpuscule 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. 

Lap. 

By Larry O’Rourke’s, by Larry, bold Larry O’, Boylan swayed and Boylan 
turned. 

From the forsaken shell Miss Mina glided to her tankard 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 : two, one, three, four. 

Sea, wind, leaves, thunder, waters, cows lowing, the cattle market, 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. 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. 

a7 

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. Diddle 
iddle addle addle oodle oodle. Hiss. 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 fora 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. Ina 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. 

278 

The priest's at home. A false priest’s servant bade him welcome. Step in. 
The holy father. Curlycues of chords. 

Ruin them. Wreck their lives. Then build them cubicles to end their days 
jn. 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 footstep 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. 

273 

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 net? 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 own Mumpsypum. Laughter in court. 
Henry. I never signed it. The lovely name you. 

Low sank the music, airand 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. 

Lap. wap. 

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. 

18 

274 

They want it : not too much polite. That’s why he gets them. Gold in your 
pocket, brass in your face. 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. 

sapvelap. 

Thrill now. Pity they feel. To wipe away a tear for martyrs. For all things 
dying, want to, dying to, die. For that 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, repassed 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. 

lapreapelap: 

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. 
Bloom stood up. Ow. Soap feeling rather sticky behind. Must have sweated : 
music, That lotion, remember. Well, so long. High grade. Card inside, yes. 

275 

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. 

Lape lap. Lap: 

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 growls and roars of bravo, fat blackslapping, 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 said. 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. 

Riv. 

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. 

Rrrrrrsss. 

— Fat of death, Simon, Ben Dollard growled. 

Richie rift in the lute alone sat : Goulding, Collis, Ward. Uncertainly he 
waited. Unpaid Pat too. 

Pape Lapmbapeebap. 

Miss Mina Kennedy brought near her lips to ear of tankard one. 

— Mr Dollard, they murmured low. 

276 

— 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. 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. 

lech darby. derby) Je bo 

Taps ilap..lap.yl aps 

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. Ajways 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. 

277 

— 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 ! 

— 'Ildo! cried Father Cowley. 

Reerrr. 

I feel I want... 

Daprelaps Dap) Tap. lap: 

— 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. 

tapelapebkaps lapvap.sTapalapa Pap: 

Bloom went by Barry’s. Wish I could. Wait. That wonderworker if I had. 
Twentyfour solicitors in that one house. 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 : Micky 
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. 
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 nomuinedomine. Pom. 

278 

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 ata 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 candlestick 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, 

279 

Seabloom, greaseabloom viewed last words. Softly. When my country takes 
her place among. 

Prrprr. 

Must be the bur. 

17..Oo0. 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. Kraaaaaaaa. Written. I have. 

Pprrpfirrppfif. 

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 taking to? 

— Old Troy, says I, was in the force. [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 1. There is 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 

281 

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, 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 per pound 
avoirdupois and three stone avoirdupois of sugar, crushed crystal, at three 
pence per pound avoirdupois, the said purchaser debtor to the said vendor of 
one pound five shillings and six pence 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 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, saysI. Anything strange or wonderful, Joe? 

— Nota 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 Linenhalt barracks and the back of the court- 
house 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. 

282 

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 gunnard, the plaice, the 
roach, the halibut, the gibbed haddock, the grilse, the dab, the brill, the 
flounder, 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 first class 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 Cruachan’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 first fruits 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 irridescent kale, York 
and Savoy, and trays of onions, pearls of the earth, and pumets 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, andI doubledare him. Come out here, Geraghty, you 
notarious 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 longwools 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 bullocks of immaculate 

283 

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 Lush and Rush and Carrickmines and from the streamy vales 
of Thomond, from 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 the 
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 arise, say 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. 

284 

— Ditto Mac Anaspey, 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 
freely freckled shaggybearded widemouthed largenosed longheaded deep- 
voiced 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 
dangled at every movement of his portentous frame and on these were graven 
with rude yet striking art the tribal images ot many Irish heroes and 
heroines of antiquity, Cuchulin, Conn of hundred battles, Niall of nine hostages, 
Brian of Kincora, the Ardri Malachi, Art Mac Murragh, Shane O'Neill, Father 
John Murphy, Owen Roe, Patrick Sarsfield, Red Hugh O’Donnell, Red Jim 
Mac Dermott, 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 Mac 
Mahon, Charlemagne, Theobald Wolfe Tone, the Mother of the Maccabees, 

285 

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? say I? 

— Sweat of my brow, says Joe. "Iwas 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: itis 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 Yl thank you and the 
matriages. 

And he starts reading them out: 

286 

— 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 ! Iwas 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 aud 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 bath slippers 
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. 

287 

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 foaming 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. 

288 

— What’s that bloody freemason doing, says the citizens, prowling up and 
down outside ? 

— What’s that? says Joe. 

— Here you are, says Alf, chucking out the rhino. Talking about hanging. 
Pll show you something you never saw. Hangmens’ letters. Look at here. 

So he took a bundle of wisps of letters and envelopes out of his pocket. 

— Are you codding ? say 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 asa 
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 is 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. 

289 

in the darkness spirit hands were felt to flutter and wien 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 pralaya 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. doesw’t pile tt 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. 

Me 

290 

— 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 thata 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’sa 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 to 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 ? 

Prd 

291 
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 
1 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, 7 have a special nack of putting the noose once in he 
cant 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 
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. 

— There 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 traditions of medical science, be calculated to inevitably produce 
in the human subject a violent ganglionic stimulus of the nerve centres, 
causing the 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 
philoprogenetive 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 be 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 : 

293 

— Give us the paw! Give the paw, doggy! Good old doggy. Give us 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 Jacob’s 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 fora 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 [ 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 

294 

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 mirthprovoking 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 
grand stand 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 Viraga 
Kisaszony Putrapesthi, 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, 

295 

Herr Hurhausdirektorpresident Hans Chuechli-Steuerli, Nationalgymnasium- 
museumsanatoriumandsuspensoriumsordinaryprivatdocentgeneralhistoryspecial- 
professordoctor 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 Mac Fadden, 
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 Mac Fadden was heartily congratulated by all the F. O. T. E. L, 
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 evuiva 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, 

296 

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. 
Hard 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 terracotta 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 cherish his memory. that she would never 

2 

-—— 

297 

forget her hero boy who went to his death with a song on his lips as if he 
were but going toa 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 
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 excitement knew no 
bounds. Nay, even the stern 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 

298 

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 ona 
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, sneering. 

— 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 fora 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 wolfdog setter formerly known by the sobriguet 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 

299 

(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 Donald 
Mac Considine 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 ? 

300 

-—— 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 the 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. 

301 

— 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 L, 14 A. 
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 lopas, 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 

302 

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 sometimes 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-Etreann. 

Mr Cowe Conacre (Multifarnham. Nat.) : Arising out of the question of 
my honourable friend, the member for Shillelagh, may I ask the right honour- 
able 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 

303 
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. Do you not know that? 

So off they started about Irish sport and shoneen games the like of the 
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 
this 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, 

304 
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 Mac Cool, as calculated to revive the best traditions of manly strength 
and powers 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 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 amongst 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 rtrev. Gerald) Molloy, D.. D.; the rev. P. J. Kavanagh, GiSvSpee 
the rev. T. Waters, C. C.; the rev. John M:; Ivers, P. P.;the rev. Pi). Ghearys 
O.S. F.; the rev. L. J. Hickey, O. P.; the very rev. Fr. Nicholas, O.SSF.@ee 
the: very rev. B. Gorman, O..D. C.; the rev. T. Maher. S.°J.; the very rem 
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. SisAG 
the rev. J. Flavin, C.C.; the rev.. M: A. Hackett, C. C.; the rev W ita ae 
C. C., the rt rev. Mgr M’Manus; V. G.; the rev. B: Ri Slattery, OuMaly 
the very rev. M. D. Scally,’P. P.5 the rev. F. T.. Purcell, OP. 3 the tweryinens 
Timothy canon Gorman, P. P.; the rev. J..Flanagan, C. C.; The laity included 
PicRayyplveQuirke pee testmetes 

— 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 : 

305 

— What I meant about tennis, for example, is the agility and training of 
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 

20 

306 

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 ? say 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 nite 
cocoanut and aides: of hair on the animal’s chest. Blazes doing the tootle on 
the flute. Concert tour. Dirty Dan the dodgers’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. "I'wixt me and you Caddereesh. 

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. 

307 

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, drinking 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 these 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... 

— Halfand halfI 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 explained he meant 

308 

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 pew opener to the pope. Picture of him on the wall with 
his smashall sweeney’s moustaches. The signor 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 al 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 passed, 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 asa lion, says Ned. Tell him a tale of woe about arrears 

309° 

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 a wife with typhoid fever ! Scandalous! Leave the court 
immediately, sir. No, sir, Pll 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 claims 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 
Jar, 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 Jar, and they swore by the name.of Him who is 

310 

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 Tm sure that will be all right, Hynes, says Bloom. It’s just that | 
Keyes, you see. 

— Consider that done, says Joe. 

— Very kind ofyou, says Bloom. 

— The strangers, says the citizen. Our own fault. We let them come in. We 
brought them. The adulteress and her paramour brought the Saxon robbers 
here. 

— Decree nist, 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 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 fancy man feeling for her tickles and Norman W. Tupper 

311 

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 cityhall 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 un 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... 

— There’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 : 

~— Conspuex les Anglais ! Perfide Albion! 

312 

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, 

51D 

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 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, MissO 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 gioaming 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 

314 

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 or 
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 Moily 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 ? 

— Animperial 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 

= 

315 

bloody skulls, one chap going for the other with his head down like a bull at 
a gate. Andanother one : Black Beast Burned in Omaha. Ga. A lot of Deadwood 
Dicks in slouch hats and they firing at a sambo strung up on 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 ? 

— [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 
tor his ma, and they tie him down on the buttend of a gun. 

— Arump and dozen, says the citizen, was what that old ruffian sir John 
Beresford called if 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 ot 
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 ° 

316 

Didn't I tell you? As true as ’'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... 

— Weare 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 Francais, 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. 

317 

— 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. 

— Butdo 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 a laugh at Bloom and says he, trying to muck 
out of it : 

— Oralso 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. 

318 

— 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 Mac Donogh, 
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 
off in Morocco like slaves or cattle. 

-~ Are you talking about the new Jerusalem ? says the citizen. 

— I’m talking about injustice, says Bloom. 

319 

— 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 
neighbours. 

— 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 14 A loves 
Mary Kelly. Gerty Mac Dowell 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 ? 

320 

— 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 
emphasized 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 an 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. 

— ]s that by Grifhth ? 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. 

327 

— 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 to 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 idea 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 usa 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 Mac Hale’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. 

21 

322 

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 (Gold 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. 

323 

— 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 hea 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. 

— We don’t want him, says Crofter the Orangeman or presbyterian. 

— Who is Junius? says J. J. 

— 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 ot 
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 mére, 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. 

324 

— 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 cruciter 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, Premonstratesians, 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 

325 

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, Jamps, 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 beed 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 for 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. 

326 

— Qui fecit celum 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 ets secundum legem et voluntatem Tuam cum 
gratiarum actione usus fuerit per invocationem sanctissimi nominis Tui corports 
sanitatem et anime 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 round 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’sa 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 

327 

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 be 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 aslut 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 wasa jew. Christ was 
a jew like me. 

Gob, the citizen made a plunge back into the shop. 

— By Jesus, says he, Ill 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 

328 

Nagyasagos uram Lipoti Virag, late of Messis 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 on 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 Rakéczsy’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. Visszontlatasra, kedvués bardtom ! 
Visszontlatasra ! 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. G. 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 

329 

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 
tuins 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 ot headgear since ascertained to belong to the much respected clerk ot 
the crown and peace Mr George Fottrell and a silk umbrella with gold handle 
with the engraved initials, 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 ot 
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. & 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..G.505.: 0, Dy M, F..H.,M.iR. iT. Ajapeeee 
Mus, Doc., P..L.'G., Fe T..C. D.,-F. R.U. 1. 3F Re G: Pe Lande 
Seth 

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 [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: dbba! 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 ofall 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 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. 

332 

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 was as good as gold, a 
perfect little dote in his new fancy bib. None of your spoilt beauties, Flora Mac 
Flimsy 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 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 
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? 

Ape} 

— 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 gentlemen 
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 lemon 
juice 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 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 wasan 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 

334 

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 silkilyseductive. 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 a while 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 lover’s quarrel. As per usual 
somebody's nose was out of joint about the boy that had the bicycle always 
riding up and down in front of her window. Only now his father kept him in 
the evenings studying hard to get an exhibition in the intermediate that was on 
and he was going 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 

5353). 
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 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 strideshowed 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 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 at 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 the lucky colour too for a bride to have a bit of blue somewhere on 

336 

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’ meetings if you put those things on inside out 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 feelings. Though not too much 
because she knew how tocry nicely before the mirror. You are lovely, Gerty, it 
said. The paly light of evening falls upon a face infinitely sad and wistful. Gerty 
Mac Dowell yearns in vain. Yes, she had known from the 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 Stoers’ (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 Mac Dowell 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 

337 
his little wife to be. Then they could talk about her till they went blue in the 
face, Bertha Supple too, and Edy, the 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 
tich 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 fora quiet life, laughed Ciss. 

And she tickled tiny tot’s two cheeks to make him forget and played here’s 

22 

338 

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 hin getting him own way like that from everyone 
always petting him. 

— Id like to give him something, she said, so I would, where I won't 
Saye 

— On the beeoteetom, laughed Cissy merrily. 

Gerty Mac Dowell 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 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 ot 
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 

339 
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 cast 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 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, wrapt 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 anyway 
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 
hear. 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 on 
the menthol cone on her forehead but Gerty though she didn’t like her mother 
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 

340 

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 balla 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. 

341 

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 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 piece O0 were ever 
abandoned by her. 

The twins were now playing again right merrily for the troubles ot 
childhood are but as fleeting summer showers. Cissy 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 

342 

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 matinée 
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 wasa 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 

343 

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 canary bird 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 off 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 

344 

got a fine tumble. Tableau! That would have been a very charming exposé 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 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 Ceorge’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 flush 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 : 

345 

— A penny tor 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 baby 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 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 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 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 ‘vas 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 Tantuwm 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, 

346 

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 Mac Dowell, 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 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 there 

347 

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 on to his brandnew dribbling bib. 

— Omy ! 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 him 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 ot 
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, jwith 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 treasures 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 beautift! thoughts written init in violet ink that she bought in Hely’s 

348 

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 
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 
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. 

349 

— 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 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 shouted to look, look there it was and she leaned back ever so far 
to see the fireworks and something queer was flying about through the air, a 
soft thing to and fro, dark. And she saw a long Roman candle going up over 

350 

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 tohim 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 so 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, ohe of love’s little ruses. She slipped a hand into her 

351 
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. 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. | 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 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 smal! 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 

392 

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 toa 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 coif 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 Ill 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 ot 
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 I. 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 

353 
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 
jittle limping devil. Begins to feel cold and clammy. After effect 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 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 of you don’t know 
how to end the conversation. Ask them a question they ask you another. 
Good idea if 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 

23 

354 

button and the bird will squeak. Wish she hadn’t called me sit. 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 the 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 high class 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. Or 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 

a 

355 

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 Presscott’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 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 and the address. Dolphin’s barn a blind. 

Her maiden name was Jemima Brown 
And she lived with her mother in Irishtown. 

356 

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 fullers’ 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 is 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. [remember looking in Pill lane. Also that now is magnetism. 

354 
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, 
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 

358 

you get it out of all holes and corners. Hyacinth perfume made of oil ot 
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 for 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. 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 

359 

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. 
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. My youth. Never again. Only once it comes. 

360 

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 : breadyan 
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 drew. 

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 ata 
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 

as 

361 

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 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 snuffat 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 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. Not my 
fault, old cockalorum. 

A lost long 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 races! 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 yamyum rhododerdrons (he was old) and felt 

362 

gladly the night breeze lift, ruflle 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 gentleman with a private yacht. Buenas 
noches, senorita. El hombre ama la muchaha 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 keys, 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. 

363 

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 is 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 flanelette 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? 

364 

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 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 ‘J 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 to perfume your wife black hair heave under embon 
senorita young eyes Mulvey plump years 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 

365 
tea and sodabread and butter and fried mutton chops with catsup and talking 
about 

Cuckoo. 
Cuckoo. 
Cuckoo. 

Because it was a little canarybird bird that came out of its little house to 
tell the time that Gerty Mac Dowell noticed the time she was there because 
she was as quick as anything about a thing like that, was Gerty Mac Dowell, 
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 omnipollent 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 
inilluminated 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 

367 
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 
allhardest 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 having 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 babe bliss 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 

368 

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 twey 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 dread 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 

— 
ea 
. as 
« 

369 

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 into 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 ina 
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 forth all 
to him 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 young 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 learning knight 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 learning knight 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 into 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 subtle. Also the lady was of 
his avis and reproved the learning knight though she trowed well that the 
traveller had said thing that was false for his subtility. But the learning knight 
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 sometimes 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 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 

24 

370 

air by a warlock with his breath that he blares into 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 ot 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 olive press. And also it was a marvel to see 
in that castle how by magic they make a compost out of fecund wheat kidneys 
out of Chaldee that by aid of certain angry spirits that they do into it swells 
up wondrously like to a vast moutain. 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 his 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 | 

371 

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 
langour 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 when he 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 

372 

had these words following, Murmut, sirs, is eke oft among lay folk. Both babe 
and parent now glorify their Maker, the one in limbo gloom, the other in purge 
fire. 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 spoke 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 Virgillius 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 bring forth 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 seldom seen 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 

373 

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 a 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 
goldsmiths’ 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 

t/a 

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 parce que M. Leo 
Taxil nous a dit que qui Vavait mise dans cette fichue position cétait le sacré pigeon, 
ventre de Dieu! Entweder transsubstantiality 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 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 with menace of blandishments 
others whiles all-chode with him, a murrain seize the dolt, what a devil he 
would be at, thou chuff, thou puny, thou got in the 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 

a7 

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 
broughtest 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 the 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 fora merchant of jalaps and didst deny me 
to the Roman and 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 

376 

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 isan 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 accords 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 water 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 pale 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 

377 

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 indifferentand 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’ 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 not 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 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 
and 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 

378 

(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 word 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 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 thelr 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 
running 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 

ih, 

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, Vin. 
Lynch, a Scots fellow, Will. Madden, T. Lenehan, very sad for a racinghorse 
he fancied and Stephen D. Leop. Bloom there for a langour he had but was 
now better, he 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 to search and was bidden to sit near by which he did 
mighty brisk. He was a kind or sport gentleman that went for a merryandrew 

380 

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 ata 
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 brandy shipper 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 foot it on the roads with the Romany folk, 
kidnapping a squire’s heir by favour of moonlight or fecking maids’ linen or 
choking chickens 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 
wools 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 

381 

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 cattle breeder 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, acoat of gold and asweet 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 quarters 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 

382 

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 ora husbandman in Sligo that was 
sowing as much as a handful of mustard or a bag of rapeseed out he 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. ’'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 wondertul 
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 
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 
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 up on what took his fancy, the side of 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 anda 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, ot 
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 

383 

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 on 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 proclivites 
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 for the vilest bonzes, who hide their flambeau under a bushel 
in a 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 

384 

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 Malligan’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 matres familiarum nostrae lasctvas 
cujuslibet seniviri 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 his 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 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 lady, 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 

385 

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 storms 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 breading had not achieved so nice a gesture) to which was 
united an equivalent but contrary balance of the head asked the narrator as 
plainly as was ever done in words if he might treat him with a cup of it. Mais 
bien sir, 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 feast day as she told me) 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 
greatand 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 

20 

386 

indeed, sir, I wander from the point. How mingled and imperfect are all our 
sublunary joys. Maledicity! Would to God that foresight had 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 Fécondateur, 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 heart 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 ! 
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 

387 
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 immodest squirmings of his body, how you do tease a body! Drat the man! 
Bless me, I’m all of a wibblywobbly. 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 ain’tin 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 ot 
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 | 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 born with being the fruits of 
that age upon which it is commonly charged that it knows not pity. The young 

388 

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 scrupuluosly 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 teethed and feet first into the world, which the dint of 
the surgeon’s pliers in his skill lent indeed a colour to, so as it 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 a 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 be 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 ausspicated 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, 

389 

clapping on the table so as to evoke a resonant comment of emphasis, old Glory 
Allelujerum 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, Pl 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 civil 
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 

390 

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 a ploughshare ? A habit reprehensible 
at puberty is second nature and an opprobium 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 
usages 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 officer 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 restrain. The moment was too propitious for the display of that 
discursiveness which seemed the only band 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 and dissimulated, 
acardiac foetus in foetu, aprosopia due to a congestion, the agnatia of certain 
chinless Chinamen (cited by Mr Candidate Mulligan) in consequence of 

391 

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 prolungation 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 
multigeminal, twikindled and monstruous 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 country stile 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 primafacie and natural hypothetical 
explanation of 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 in the event of one Siamese twin predeceasing the other, 

392 

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 ghastly 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 Mannanaun ! 
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 

393 

reminiscence, that staid agent of publicity and holder of a modest substance in 
the funds. He is young Leopold, 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 Clambrassil 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, 
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 ofall 
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 

394 

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, sim 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 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 ? IfI 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 

395 

you. All desire to see you bring forth the work you meditate. 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 fora whim of the rider’s name : Lenehan as much more. 
He told them of the race. The flag felland, huuh, off, scamper, the mare ran out 
freshly with O. 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 Periplepomenos 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 too! Mad romp that it 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, 1 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 

- 

396 

underwood clung there for the very trees adore her. When Conmee had passed 
she glanced at her lovely echo in the 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 orangetiery 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 exibit 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 
involontarily determined to help him himself and so he accordingly took hold 
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, however, a considerable degree of attentiveness in order not to 
upset any of the beer that was in it about the place. 

397 

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 
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 accomodated 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 
d'shonour, but from whose steadfast and constant heart no lure or peril or threat 
or cegradation could ever efface the image of that voluptuous loveliness which 
the ‘nspired 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 questons 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 

398 

(one ofnature’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 alleges, and the revolting 
spectacles offered by our streets, hideous publicity posters, religious ministers of 
all denominations, mutilated soldiers and sailors, exposed scorbutic cardrivers, 
the suspened 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 ina 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 ot 
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 
balk 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 

399 

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 femoules 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 lower class 
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 esthetic 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 

400 

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 Cif 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 othce, 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 
tranquillity of the evening or at the feast at midnight when he is now hlled 
with wine. Not to insult over him will the vision come as over one that lies 

AOI 

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 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 vergdngliche) 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 

26 

402 

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 come the storkbird for thee ? 

The air without is impregnated with raindew moisture, life essence 
celestial, glistering 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 or 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, sayI! 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 ilis, 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, 

a 

403 

and didst charge to cover like the transpontine bison. How saith Zarathusthra ? 
Deine Kuh Truebsal melkest Du. Nun trinkst Du die suesse Mtlch 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 guzzlingden, 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 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 this bunch. En avant, mes 
enfants! Fire away number one on the gun. 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 mere ma 
mariée. British Beatitudes! Retamplan Digidi Boum Boum. 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. Szlentium / 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. Beerbeef 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 damunall. 
Declare misery. Bet to the ropes. Me nantee saltee. Nota red at me this week 
gone. Yours ? Mead of our fathers for the Uebermensch. Dittoh. Five number 
ones. You, sir? Ginger cordial. Chase me, the cabby’s caudle, Stimulate the 

404 

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 wool. 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 pepper, 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. Anda pull alltogether. 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 the fou. Au reservoir, 
Mossoo. Tanks you. 

405 

"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. Comeahome, 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, 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 will yu help, yung man 
hoose frend tuk bungalo kee to find plais whear to lay crown off 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! Nota pite of sheeses? Thrust syphilis down to 
hell and with him those other licensed spirits. Time. Who wander through the 
world. Health all. 4 la vitre! 

406 

Golly, whatten tunket’s you 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 hada 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? See him today at a runefal ? 
Chum o yourn passed in his checks ? Ludamassy! Pore piccanninies! Thou'll 
no be telling me thot, Pold veg! Did ums blubble bigsplash crytears cos frien 
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 the fou. The Leith police dismisseth us. The 
least tholice. Ware hawks tor the chap puking. Unwell in his abominable 
regions. Yooka. Night. Mona, my thrue love. Yook. Mona, my own love. 
Ook. 

Hark! Shut your obstropolos. Pflaap! Pflaap! Blase 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 yanked to glory most 

407 
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 propostion. 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, 
it 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 backpocket. 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 flimsy houses with gaping doors. Rare lamps 
with faint rainbow fans. Round Rabaiotti’s halted ice gondola stunted 
men and women squabble. They grab wafers between which are wedged 
lumps of coal 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 ? 

409 
THE IDIOT 
(Gobbling.) Ghaghahest. 

(They release him. He jerks on. A pigmy woman swings on a rope slung 
between the railings, counting. A form sprawled against a dustbin and 
muffled by its arm and hat moves, 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 
oil lamp rams the 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 papershutilecock, 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 corner two 
night watch in shoulder capes, 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 scrufulous 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.) 

410 

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, thetr 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 

CJerks 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 jockey cap 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 protude 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. 

All 
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, Kildbride the 
enginedriver, and lancecorporal Oliphant. 

STEPHEN 

(Triumphaliter.) Salvi facti i sunt. 

(He flourishes his ashplant shivering the lamp image, shattering light over 
the world. A liver and white spaniel on the prowl slinks after lim, 
growling. Lynch scares it with a kick.) 

LYNCH 
So that ? 

STEPHEN 
(Looks behind.) So that gesture, not music not odours, would bea universal 
language, the gift of tongues rendering visible not the lay sense but the first 
entelechy, the structural rhythm. 
LYNCH 

Pornosophical philotheology. Metaphysics in Mecklenburg street ! 

STEPHEN 

We have shrewridden Shakespeare and henpecked Socrates. Even the 
allwisest stagyrite was bitted, bridled and mounted by a light of love. 

412 

LYNCH 
Ba ! 

STEPHEN 

Anyway, who wants two gestures to illustrate a loaf anda jug ! This 
movement illustrates the loaf and jug of bread and 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 juventutem 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 eects from the farther nostril a long liquid jet of snot. 
Shoulderiug 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 side pocket. From Gillen’s hairdresser’s window a 
composite portrait shows him gallant Nelson’s image. A concave mirror 

413 
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 Rabaiotti’s door Bloom halts, sweated under the bright arclamps. 
He disappears. In a moment he reappears and hurries on.) 

BLOOM 
Fish and taters. N. g. Ah! 

(He disappears into Olhousen’s, the pork butcher'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 rib 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.) 

4l4 

THE URCHINS 
Mind out, mister! 
(Two cyclists, with lighted paper lanterns awsing, sum by him, grazing 
hin, 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, tts 
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 hattrick ? 

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 exerciser 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 tracks 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 

ATS 

be the fellow balked me this morning with that horsey woman. Same style of 
beauty. Quick of him all he 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, senorita 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 fingerpost 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 
darkset 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.) 

= 
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416 

BLOOM 
O. 

(Shocked, on weak hams, he halts. Tommy and Jacky vanish there, there. 
Bloom pats with parceled hands watch, fobpocket, bookpocket, pursepoke, 
sweets of sin, potato soap.) 

BLOOM 

Beware of pickpockets. Old thieves dodge. Collide. Then snatch your 
purse. 

(The retriever approches sniffling, 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 smoking cap 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 grand 
son 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.) 1 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 cali them running chaps? 

417 

BLOOM 
(In youth's smart blue Oxford suit with white vestshps, 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 stifening mud.) Harriers, 
father. Only that once. 

RUDOLPH 
Once! Mud head to foot. Cut your hand open. Lockjaw. They make you 
kaput, 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, crinoline and bustle, widow Twankey’s 
blouse with muttonleg sleeves buttoned behind, grey mittens and cameo brooch, 
her hair platted 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 

ay 

418 

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, excuses, 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! Feminimum ! 

(The camel, lifting a foreleg, plucks from a tree a large mango fruit, offers 
it to Its mistress, blinking, in lis 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.) OQ Poldy, Poldy, you are a poor 
old stick in the mud ! Go and see life. See the wide world. 

; 

419 
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? 

Cn 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.) 

420 

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 Mac Dowell 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 slides away crookedly. Mrs Breen in man’s friexe overcoat with loose 

= 
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421 

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 me? Don’t 
give me away. Walls have hears. 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! (Sily.) Account for yourself this very 
sminute or woe betide you ! 

BLOOM 

(Looks behind.) She often said she’d like to visit. Summing. The exotic, 
you see. Negro servants too in livery 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 negrotd 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.) 

422 
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 asquare party, a mixed marriage mingling 
of our different little conjugials. You know I had a soft corner for yous 
(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. 

423 
BLOOM 

(Squire of dames, in dinner jacket with watered silkfacings, blue masonic badge 
in lis buttonhole, black bow and mother-of-pear 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.) La 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, whitetallhatied, with Wisdom Hely’s sandwichboard, shuffles 
past them in carpet slippers, his dull beard thrust out, muttering to 

424 
right and left. Little Alf Bergan, cloaked in the pail of the ace of 
spades dogs him to left and right, doubled in laughter.) 
ALF BERGAN 

(Points jeering at the sandwich boards.) 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 alemon. 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 Leab, Mrs. Bandman Palmer. Trenchant exponent of 
Shakespeare. Unfortunately threw away the programme. Rattling good place 
round there for pig’s 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. 

425 
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 

(Points 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 pileously, 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 

426 

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 creature,. little mite of a thing with a heart the size of a fullstop. 

MRS BREEN 

(Squeezes lis 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 
LOO a. 
BLOOM 

Yes. And Molly was laughing because Rogers and Maggot O'Reilly were 

427 

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 toa tale which their broken snouted 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.) 

428 
THE WHORES 

Are you going far, queer fellow? 
How’s your middle leg? 

Got a match on you? 

Eh, come her 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 ? 

429 
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 approches, 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 mangong- 
wheeltracktrolleyglarejuggernaut 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 sicksewet 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 

430 

pigsticky. Absurd I am. Waste of money. One and eight pence 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 godt. He 
might be mad. Fido. Uncertain in his movements. Good fellow ! Garryowen! 
(The wolfdog sprawls on his back, wriggling obscenely with begging paws, his long 
black tongue lolling owt.) 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 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.) 1am 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 scumspitile dribbles. Bob Doran falls 
stlently into an area.) 

SECOND WATCH 

Prevention of cruelty to animals. 

BLOOM 

(Enthustastically.) 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, passion pale, in liontamer’s costume with diamonds studs 
in his shirtfront steps forward, holding a circus paper hoop, 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 pully 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 Bloom 
Pasha. Umpteen millions. Donnerwetier! Owns half Austria. Egypt. Cousin. 

432 

FIRST WATCH 
Proof. 

(A card falls from inside the leather headband of Bloom’s hat.) 

BLOOM 

(In red fex, 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.) ll introduce you, inspector. She’s game. Do it in the shake of a lamb’s 
tail. 

(4 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, tn tone of reproach, pointing.) Henry ! Leopold! Leopold ! Lionel, thou 
lost one ! Clear my name. 

433 
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 past of Ephraim.) Shitbroleeth. 

SECOND WATCH 

(Tears in his eyes, to Bloom.) You ought to be thoroughly well ashamed ot 
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. Iam a respectable married man, 
without a stain on my character. I live in Eccles street. My wife, Iam 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 
28 

434 

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 wasa J. P. Pm 
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 
alla 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 Iam the inventor, something 
that is an entirely new departure. 1 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 Arsewiper 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 porifolio 
labelled Matcham’s Masterstrokes.) 

435 
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 literateur. It’s 
perfectly obvious that with the most inherent baseness he has cribbed some of 
my bestselling books, 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.) 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 ! 
Youre 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. 

436 
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 
arch conspirator 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 
CIndignantly.) Ym not a bad one. I bear a respectable character and was 
four months in my Jast 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 butI thought more of myself as poor as Jam. 

BLOOM 

(In housejacket of ripplecloth flannel trousers, heelless slippers, unshaven, his 
hair rumpled softly.) I treated you white. I gave you mementos, smart emerald 

437 
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 it ever I laid a 
hand to them oylsters ! 

FIRST WATCH 

The offence complained ot ? 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.) 

GEORGES 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 grandjury. He was down and out but, 
through 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 seven months 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 

438 

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 betier 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, model young ladies playing on the 
pianoforte or anon all with fervour reciting the family rosary round 
ihe crackling Yulelog while in the boreens and green lanes the colleens 
with their swains strolled what times the strains of the organtoned 
melodeon Brittania 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 cat calls. 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 atan Oxford rag nor is this 

- 

439 
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, 1 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 

440 

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 mirage of the lake of Kinnereth with blurred cattle cropping in stlver 
haze is projected ou 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 1s 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, 
sit Robert and lady Ball, astronomer royal, at the levee. Sir Bob, I said... 

44t 
MRS YELVERTON BARRY 

(In lowcorsaged opal balldress and elbowlength ivory gloves, wearing a 
sabletrimmed brick quilted 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 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 a blossom 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 

442 

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 
ffeecy 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 
senorita, frail and lovely (his wife as he solemnly assured me, taken by him 
from nature) practising illicit intercourse with a muscular torero, evidently a 
blackguard. He urged me to do likewise, to misbehave, to sin with officers of 
the garrison. He implored me to soil his letter in an unspeakable manner, to 
chastise him as he richly deserves, to bestride and ride him, to give him a most 
vicious horsewhipping. 

MRS BELLINGHAM 

Me too. 

MRS YELVERTON BARRY 

Me too. 

_ (Several highly respectable Dublin ladies hold up improper letters received 
from Bloom.) 

443 
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS 
(Stamps her jingling spurs in a sudden paroxysm of sudden fury.) 1 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. 

a 

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! Ill make it hot for you. Pll make you dance Jack Latten 
for that. 

MRS BELLINGHAM 

Tan his breech well, the upstart ! Write the stars and stripes on it! 

MRS YELUERTON 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.) 

444 

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.) V1 do nosuch thing. Pig dog and always 
was ever since he was pupped ! To dare address me! I'll flog him black and blue 
in the public streets. I'll dig my spurs in him up to the rowel. He is a wellknown 
cuckold. (She swishes her 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.) 

445 
THE NAMELESS ONE 

Bareback riding. Weight for age. Gob, he organised her. 

THE JURORS 
(All their heads turned to his veice.) 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 

446 
is dead and therein fail not at your peril or may the Lord have mercy on 
your soul. Remove him. (4 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 chimpanzees. (Breathlessly.) Pelvic basin. Her 
artless blush unmanned me. (Overcome with emotion.) I left the precincts. (He 
turns to a figure in the crowd, appealing.) Hynes, may I speak to you ? You 
know me. That three shillings you can keep. If you want a little more... 

HYNES 

(Coldly.) You are a perfect stranger. 

SECOND WATCH 
(Points to the corner.) The bomb is here. 

FIRST WATCH 

Infernal machine with a time fuse. 

447 

BLOOM 

No, no. ’s feet. I was at a funeral. 

FIRST WATCH 
(Draws Ixtruncheon.) Liar! 
( Theeagle lift his snout, showing the grey scorbutic face of Paddy Dignam. 
Te has gnawed all. He exhales a putrid carcasefed breath. He grows 
ihuman size and shape. His dachshund coat becomes a brown mortuary 
obit. His green eye flashes bloodshot. Half of one ear, all the nose and 
ith thumbs are ghouleaten.) 
PADDY DIGNAM 

(In a holla voice.) It is true. it was my funeral. Doctor Finucane 
pronounced lifesxtinct when I succumbed to the disease from natural causes. 

(He lis his mutilated ashen face moonwards and bays lugubriously.) 
BLOOM 
(In triumph} You hear ? 
PADDY DIGNAM 
Bloom, I an Paddy Dignam’s spirit. List, list, O list ! 
BLOOM 

The voice ishe voice of Esau. 

SECOND WATCH 
(Blesses ims.) How is that possible ? 
FIRST WATCH 
It is not in tacpenny catechism. 
PADDY DIGNAM 
: By metempsyhosis. Spooks. 
A VOICE 
O rocks. 

. | 
Ve 
os 
" 
E+! 

448 
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 of 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, 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 stiffpointed, 
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. 
fom Rochford, robinredbreasted, in cap and breeches, jumps from his 
twocolumned machine. ) 

449 
TOM ROCHFORD 

(A hand to his breastbone, bows.) Reuben J. A florin I find him. (He fixes 
the manhole with a resolute stare.) My turn now on. Follow me up to Carlow. 

(He executes a daredevil salmon leap in the air and is engulfed in the 
coalhole. Two discs on the columns wobble eyes of nought. All recedes. 
Bloom plodges forward again. He stands before alighted house, listening. 
The kisses, winging from their bowers fly about him, twittering, 
warbling, cooing.) 

THE KISSES 

(Warbling.) Leo ! ( Twittering.) Icky licky micky sticky for Leo ! (Cooing.) 
Coo coocoo! Yummyumm 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? 

20 

450 
BLOOM 
Not I! 
ZOE 
You both in black. Has little mousey any tickles tonight ? 

(His skin, alert, feels her fingertips approach. A hand slides over Ins 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.) | 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. ’'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. 

452 
ZOE 

Go on. Make a stump speech out of it. 

BLOOM 

(In workman’s corduroy overalls, black gansy with red floating tie and apache 
cap.) Mankind is incorrigible. Sir Walter Raleigh brought from the new world 
that potato and that weed, the one a killer of pestilence by absorption, the other 
a poisoner of the ear, eye, heart, memory, will, understanding, all. That is to 
say, he brought the poison a hundred years before another person whose 
name I forget brought the food. Suicide. Lies. All our habits. Why, look at our 
public life ! 

(Midnight chimes from distant steeples.) 

THE CHIMES 

Turn again, Leopold ! Lord mayor of Dublin ! 

BLOOM 

(In alderman’s gown and chain.) Electors of Arran Quay, Inns Quay, 
Rotunda, Mountjoy and North Dock better run a tramline, I say, from the 
cattlemarket to the river. That’s the music of the future. That’s my programme. 
Cui bono? But our 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.) 

Sa 

453 
LATE LORD MAYOR HARRINGTON 

Cn 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 hy John Howard Parnell, city marshal, in a chessboard tabard, 
the Athlone Poursuivant and Ulster King of Arms. They are followed 
by the Right Honourable Joseph Hutchinson, lord mayor of Dublin, the 
lord mayor of Cork, their worships the mayors of Limerick, Galway, 

454 

Sligo and Waterford, twentyeight Irish represertative 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, methodtst 
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, chimney 
sweeps, lard refiners, tabinet and poplin weavers, farriers, Italian 
warehousemen, church decorators, bootjack manufacturers, understakers, 
silk mercers, lapidartes, 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 cisalice 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 mantletrimmed 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 
p2parisoned, 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. 

455 
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 

[ 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 ? 

= 

456 
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.) Gaudiwn 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 Malalde. 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, 

457 

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 Dudlin, 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 thier 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. 

(Thirty two workmen wearing rosettes, from all the counties of Ireland, 

458 

under ihe 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 inhahitants are 
lodged in barrels and boxes, all marked in red with the letters : L. B. 
Several paupers fall from a ladder. A part of the walls of Dublin 
crowded with loyal sightseers, collapses.) 

THE SIGHTSEERS 

(Dying.) Morituri te salutant. (They die.) 

(4 man in a brown macintosh springs up through a trapdoor. He points 

an elongated figure 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 disppears. Bloom with his sceptre 

strikes down poppies. The instantaneous deaths of many powerful 
enemies, graziers, members of parliament, members of standing 
committees, are reported. Bloom’s bodyguard distribute Maundy money, 
commemoration medals, loaves and fishes, temperance badges, expensive 
Henry Clay cigars, free cowbones for soup, rubber preservatives, in 
sealed envelopes tied with gold thread, butter scotch, pineapple rock, 
billets doux in the form of cocked hats, readymade suits, porringers of 
toad in the hole, bottles of Jeyes’ Fluid, purchase stamps, 40 days’ 
indulgences, spurious coins, dairyfed pork sausages, theatre passes, season 
tickets available for all tram lines, coupons of the royal and prvileged 
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 

7 
may 
wat 
2 

459 

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 playes 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 haudherchiefs from his 
mouth.) Roygbiv. 32 feet per second. (He consoles a widow.) Absence makes the 
heart grow younger. (He dances the Highland fling with grotesque antics.) 
Leg it, ye devils! (He kisses the bedsores of a palsied veteran.) Honourable 
wounds! (He trips up a fat policeman.) U.p: up. U. p: up. (He whispers in the 
ear of a blushing waitress and laughs kindly.) Ah, naughty, naughty ! (He eats a 
raw turnip offered him by Maurice Butterly, farmer.) Fine! Splendid! (He refuses 
to accept three shillings offered him by Joseph Hynes, journalist.) My dear fellow, 
not at all! (He gives his coat to a beggar.) Please accept. (He takes part in a 
stomach race with elderly male and female cripples.) Come on, boys! Wriggle it, 
girls ! . 

460 

THE CITIZEN 

(Choked with emotion, brushes aside a tear in his emerald muffler.) May the 
good God bless him ! 

(The ram’s horns sound for silence. The standard of Zion is hoisted.) 

BLOOM 

(Uncloaks impressively, revealing obesity, unrolls a paper and reads solemuly.) 
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 1 of the Paradisiacal Era. 

PADDY LEONARD 

What am I to do about my rates and taxes? 

BLOOM 
Pay them, my friend. 

PADDY LEONARD 
Thank vou. 
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? 

46 

PISSER BURKE 
For bladder trouble ? 

BLOOM 

Acid. nit. hydrochlor dil, 20 minims 
Tinct. mix. vom, 5 minims 
Extr. taraxel, lig. 30 minims. 
Aq. dis. ter in die. 
CHRIS CALLINAN 

What is the parallax of the subsolar ecliptic of Aldebaran ? 

BLOOM 

Pleased to hear from you, Chris. K. 11. 

JOE HYNES 

Why aren’t you in uniform ? 

BLOOM 

When my progenitor of sainted memory wore the uniform of the Austrian 
despot in a dank prison where was yours ? 
BEN DOLLARD 

Pansies ? 

BLOOM 

Embellish (beautify) suburban gardens. 

BEN DOLLARD 
When twins arrive ? 
BLOOM 
Father (pater, dad) starts thinking. 
LARRY O’ ROURKE 

An eight day licence for my new premises. You remember me, sir Leo, 
when you were in number seven. I’m sending around a dozen of stout for 
the missus. 

462 

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 forall children of nature. Saloon motor hearses. Compulsory manual 
labour for all. All parks open to the public day and night. Electric 
dishscrubbers. Tuberculosis, lunacy, war and mendicancy must now cease. 
General amnesty, weekly carnival, with masked licence, bonuses for all, 
esperanto the universal brotherhood. No more patriotism of barspongers and 
dropsical impostors. Free money, free love and a free lay church in a free lay 
state. 

O’ MADDEN BURKE 

Free fox in a free henroost. 

DAVY BYRNE 

BLOOM 

Mixed races and mixed marriage. 
LENEHAN 
What about mixed bathing ? 

(Bloom explains to those near lim 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 

463 

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.) Pm 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! 

464 
THE VEILED SIBYL 

(Enthusiastically.) ’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 commut suicide by 
stabbing, drowning, drinking prussic acid, aconite, arsenic, opening 
their veins, refusing food, casting themselves under steamrollers, from 
the top of Nelson’s Pillar, into the great vat of Guinness’s brewery, 
asphyxiating themselves by placing their heads in gas ovens, hanging 
themselves in stylish garters, leaping from windows of different storeys.) 

ALEXANDER J. DOWIE 

( Violently.) Fellowchristians and antiBloomites, the man called Bloom is 
from the roots of hell, a disgrace to christian men. A fiendish libertine from 
his earliest years this stinking goat of Mendes gave precocious signs of infantile 
debauchery recalling the cities of the plain, with a dissolute granddam. This 
vile hypocrite, bronzed with infamy, is the white bull mentioned in the 
Apocalypse. A worshipper of the Scarlet Woman, intrigue is the very breath of 
hisnostrils. The stake faggots and the caldron of boiling oil are for him. Caliban! 

THE MOB 
Lynch him! Roast him! He’s as bad as Parnell was. Mr. Fox! 
(Mother Grogan throws her boot at Bloom. Several shopkeepers from 
upper and lower Dorset street throw objects of little or no commercial 

value, hambones, condensed milk tins, unsaleable cabbage, stale bread, 
sheeps’tails, odd pieces of fat.) 

465 

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. 

Tcall 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 wirgo 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 
30 

466 

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 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, Iso want to be a mother. 

MRS THORNTON 

(In nursetender’s gown.) Embrace me tight, dear. You’ll be soon over it. 

Tight, dear. 

(Bloom embraces her tightly and bears eight male yellow and white children. 
They appear on a redcarpeted staircase adorned with expensive plants. 
All are handsome, with valuable metallic faces, wellmade, respectably 
dressed and wellconducted, speaking five modern languages fluently 
and interested 1n various arts and sciences. Each has his name 
printed in legible letters on kis shirtfront : Nasodoro, Goldfinger, 
Chrysostomos, Maindorée, 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, 
vice chairmen of hotel syndicates.) 

A VOICE 

Bloom, are you the Messiah ben Joseph or ben David ? 

467 
BLOOM 
(Darkly.) You have said it. 

BROTHER BUZZ 
Then perform a miracle. 
BANTAM LYONS 
Prophesy who will win the Saint Leger. 

(Bloom walks on a net, covers his left eye with his left ear, passes 
through several walls, climbs Nelson’s Pillar, hangs from the 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. 

468 

A DEADHAND 

(Writes on the wail.) Bloom is a cod. 

CRAB 

Cn bushranger’s kit.) What did you do in the cattlecreep behind Kilbarrack ? 

A FEMALE INFANT 
(Shakes a rattle.) And under Ballybough bridget 

A HOLLYBUSH 

And in the devil’s glen? 

BLOOM 
(Blushes furiously all over from frons to nates, three tears falling from hts left 
eye.) Spare my past. 
THE IRISH EVICTED TENANTS 

(In bodycoats, kneebreeches, with Donnybrook fair shillelaghs.) Sjambok him ! 

(Bloom with asses’ ears seuts himself in the pillory with crossed arms, his 
feet protruding. He whistles Don Giovanni, a cenar teco. Artane 
orphans, joining hands, caper round lnm. 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 

469 

nighthag. And they shall stone him and defile him, yea, all from Agendath 
Netaim and from Mizraim, the land of Ham. 

(All the people cast soft pantomime stones at Bloom. Many bonafide 
travellers and ownerless dogs come near him and defile him. 
Mastiansky and Citron approach in gaberdines, wearing long earlocks, 
They wag their beards at Bloom.) 

MASTIANSKY AND CITRON 
Belial! Laemlein of Istria ! the false Messiah! Abulafia ! 

(George S. Mesias, Bloom’s tailor, appears, a tailor’s goose under his arm, 
presenting a bill.) 

MESIAS 

To alteration one pair trousers eleven shillings. 

BLOOM 

(Rubs his hands cheerfully.) Just like old times. Poor Bloom ! 

(Reuben J. Dodd, 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, sayping.) Forgive him his trespasses. 

(Lieutenant Myers of the Dublin Fire Brigade by general request sets fire 
to Bloom. Lamentations.) 

THE CITIZEN 
Thank heaven! 

470 
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 Mr Vincent O’Brien, sings 
the Alleluia chorus, accompanied on the organ by Joseph Glynn. 
Bloom becomes mute, shrunken, carbonised.) 

ZOE 

Talk away till you’re black in the face. 

BLOOM 

CIn caubeen with clay pipe stuck in the band, dsuty 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. 

~~ 

471 
ZOE 
(Stiffly, her finger in her neckfilict.) 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. 
ZOR 
Cn sudden sulks.) 1 hate a rotter that’s insincere. Give a bleeding whore a 
chance. 
BLOOM 
(Repentantly.) 1am very disagreable. You are a necessary evil. Where are 
you from? Londone 
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 pais 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. 

472 
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 passicuch 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 1n 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 lim 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, 

473 

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 1s thrown 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, Ins 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 otlcloth 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 ts 
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 mantlepiece. A tag 
of her corset lace hangs slightly below her jacket. Lynch indicates 
mockingly the couple at the piano.) 

KITTY 

(Coughs behind her hand.) She’s a bit imbecillic. (She signs with a waggling 
forefinger.) Blemblem. (Lynch lifts up her skirt and white petticoat with the wand. 
She settles them down quickly.) Respect yourself. (She hiccups, then bends quickly 
her sailor hat under which her hair glows, red with henna.) O, excuse! 

ZOE 
More limelight, Charley. (She goes to the chandelier and turns the gas full cock.) 
KITTY 

(Peers at the gasjet.) What ails it tonight ? 

~& 

474 

LYNCH 
(Deeply.) Enter a ghost and hobgoblins. 

ZOE 
Clap on the back for Zoe. 

(The wand in Lynch's hand flashes : a brass poker. Stephen stands at the 
pianola on which sprawl his hat and ashplant. With two fingers he 
repeats once more the series of empty fifths. Florry Talbot, a blond 
feeble goosefat whore in a tatterdemalion gown of mildewed strawberry 
lolls spreadeagle in the sofa corner, her limp forearm pendent over the 
bolster, listening. A heavy stye droops over her sleepy eyelid.) 

KITTY 
(Hiccups again with a kick of her horsed foot.) O, excuse ! 

ZOE 
(Promptly.) Your boy’s thinking of you. Tie a knot on your shift. 

(Kitty Ricketts bends her head. Her boa uncoils, slides, glides over her 
shoulder, back, arm, chair to the ground. Lynch lifts the curled 
catterpillar on kis 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 Cala 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 alrightiness of his almightiness. Mais, nom de nom, that is another pair of 
trousers. Jetex 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 ! 

475 
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 elipse. 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 Figgins.) 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.) 

476 
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 J. Antichrist, wandering jew, a clutching hand open on his spine, 
stumps forward. Across Ins 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, prognatic 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 ihen all at once thrusts his 
lipless face through the fork of his thighs.) I] vient! C’est moi! L’homme qui rit ! 

477 

Lhomme primigéne! (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 1’va plus. (The planets, buoyant balloons, sail swollen up and away. He 
springs off into vacuum.) 

FLOKRY 
(Sinking into torpor, crosses herself secretly.) The end of the world ! 

(A female tepid effluvium leaks out from her. Nebulous obscurity occupies 
space. Through the drifting fog without the gramophone blares over 
coughs and feetshuffling.) 

THE GRAMOPHONE 

Jerusalem ! 
Open your gates and sing 
Hosanna... 

(A rocket rushes up the sky and bursts. A white star falls from it, 
proclaiming the consummation of all things and second coming of 
Elijah. Along an infinite invisible 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 passing 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, Dave 
Campbell, Abe Kirschner, do your coughing with your mouths shut. Say, J 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 ! 

478 

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 becomesa 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.) Abhkkk ! 

ELIJAH 

(In rolledup shirtsleeves, black in the face, shouts at the top of his voice, his arms 
uplifted.) Big Brother up there, Mr President, you hear what I done just been 
saying to you. Certainly, I sort of believe strong in you, Mr President. I 
certainly am thinking now Miss Higgins and Miss Ricketts got religion way 
inside them. Certainly seems to me I don’t never see no wusser scared female 
than the way you been, Miss Florry, just now as I done seed you. Mr President, 
you come long and help me save our sisters dear. (He winks at his audience.) 
Our Mr President, he twig the whole lot and he ain’t saying nothing. 

KITTY-KATE 

I forgot myself. In a weak moment I erred and did what I did on 

479 

Constitution hill. I was confirmed by the bishop. My mother’s sister married 

a Montmorency. It was a working plumber was my ruination when I was pure. 
ZOE-FANNY 

I let him larrup it into me for the fun of it. 

FLORRY-TERESA 
It was in consequence of a portwine beverage on top of Hennessy’s three 
stars. I was guilty with Whelan when he slipped into the bed. 
STEPHEN 

In the beginning was the word, in the end the world without end. Blessed 
be the eight beatitudes. 

(The beatitudes, Dixon, Madden, Crotthers, Costello, Lenehan, Bannon, 
Mulligan and Lynch in white surgical students’ gowns, four abreast, 
goosestepping, tramp fast past in noisy marching.) 

THE BEATITUDES 
CIncoherently.) Beer veef battledog buybull businum barnum buggerum 
bishop. 
LYSTER 

(In quakergrey kneebreeches and broadbrimmed hat, says discreetly.) He is our 
friend. I need not mention names. Seek thou the light. 

(He corantos by. Best enters in hairdresser attire, shinily laundered, his 
locks in curlpapers. He leads John Eglinton who wears a mandarin’s 
kimono of Nankeen yellow, 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 car- 
ping accent.) Esthetics and cosmetics are for the boudoir. I am out for truth. 

480 

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 Mananann Mac Lir broods, chin on knees. He 
rises slowly. A cold seawind blows from his druid mantle. About his 
head writhe eels and elvers. He is encrusted with weeds and shells. 
His right hand holds a bicycle pump. His left hand grasps a huge 
crayfish by ats two talons.) 

MHANANANN MAC LIR 

(With a voice of waves.) Aum! Hek! Wal! Ak! Lub! Mor! Ma! White 
yoghin of the Gods. Occult pimander of Hermes Trismegistos. (With a voice 
of whistling seawind.) Punarjanam patsypunjaub! I won’t have my leg pulled. 
It has been said by one : beware the left, the cult of Shakti. (With a cry of 
stormbirds.) Shakti, Shiva! Dark hidden Father! (He smites with his bicycle pump the 
crayfish in Ins left hand. On its cooperative dial glow the twelve signs of the zodiac. 
He wails with the vehemence of the ocean.) Aum! Baum! Pyjaum! Iam the light 
of the homestead, Iam the dreamery creamery butter. 

(A skeleton judashand strangles the light. The green light wanes to mauve. 
The gasjet wails whistling.) 

THE GASJET 

(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 toa 
lady ? (She stretches up to light the cigarette over the flame, twirling it slowly, showing 
the brown tufts of her armpits. Lynch with his poker lifts boldly a side of her slip. 
Bare from her garters up her flesh appears under the sapphire a nixie’s green. She puffs 
calmly at her cigarette.) Can you see the beauty spot of my behind ? 

481 

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. 
Lipott Virag, basilicogrammate, chutes rapidly down through the 
chimneyflue and struts two steps lo the left on gawky pink stilis. He 
1s 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 1s perched an Egyptian pshent. Two quills project over his ears.) 

VIRAG 

(Heels together, bows.) My nameis 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. 

482 

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 puton you tomorrow what you can wear today Parallax! (With 
a nervous twitch of bis head.) Did you hear my brain go snap? Pollysyllabax ! 

BLOOM 

(dn elbow resting in a hand, a forefinger against Ins cheek.) She seems sad. 

VIRAG 

(Cynically, lis weasel teeth bared yellow, draws down his left eye wilh 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 mlld, medium and strong. Pay your ‘money, 
take your choice. How happy caould you be with either... 

BLOOM 
With ?... 

VIRAG 

(His tongue upcurling.) Lyum! Look. Her beam is broad. Sbe 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. 

483 

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 Ichthyosaurus. 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 é 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 parchment 
roll energetically.) This book tells you how to act with all descriptive particulars. 

Consult index for agitated fear ot aconite, melancholy of muriatic, priapic 
pulsatilla. Virag is going to talk about amputation. Our old friend caustic. 

484 

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 snizger.) 
You intended to devote an entire year to the study of the religious problem and 
the summer months of 1882 to square the circle and win that million. 
Pomegranate! From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step. Pyjamas, let 
us say? Or stockingette gussetted knickers, closed? Or, put we the case, those 
complicated combinations, camiknickers ? (He crows derisively.) Keekeereekee ! 

(Bloom surveys incertainly the three whores then gazes at the veiled mauve 
light, hearing the everflying moth.) 

BLOOM 

I wanted then to have now concluded. Nightdress was never. Hence this. 
But tomorrow is a new day will be. Past was is today. What now is will then 
tomorrow as now was be past yester. 

VIRAG 

(Prompts into his ear in a pig’s whisper.) Insects of the day spend their 
brief existence in reiterated coition, lured by the smell of the inferiorly 
pulchritudinous fumale possessing extendified pudendal verve in dorsal region. 
Pretty Poll! (His yellow parrotbeak gabbles nasally.) They had a proverb in 
the Carpathians in or about the year five thousand five hundred and fifty of 
our era. One tablespoonful of honey will attract friend Bruin more than half 
a dozen barrels of first choice malt vinegar. Bear’s buzz bothers bees. But of | 
this apart. At another time we may resume. We were very pleased, we others. 
(He coughs and, bending his brow, rubs his nose thoughtfully with a scooping hand.) 
You shall find that these night insects follow the light. An illusion for 
remember their complex unadjustable eye. For all these knotty points see the 
seventeenth book of my Fundamentals of Sexology or the Love Passion 
which Doctor L. B. says is the book sensation of the year. Some, to example, 
there are again whose movements are automatic. Perceive. That is his 
appropriate sun. Nightbird nightsun nighttown. Chase me, Charley! Buzz! 

BLOOM 

Bee or bluebottle too other day butting shadow on wall dazed self then 
me wandered dazed down shirt good job L... 

485 
VIRAG 

(His face impassive, laughs in a rich feminine key.) Splendid! Spanish fly 
in his fly or mustard plaster on his dibble. (He gabbles 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. 

BLOOM 

(Absently ) Ocularly woman’s bivalve case is worse. Always open sesame. 
The cloven sex. Why they fear vermin, creeping things. Yet Eve and the 
serpent contradict. Not a historical fact. Obvious analogy to my idea. Serpents 
too are gluttons for woman’s milk. Wind their way through miles of omnivorous 
forest to sucksucculent her breast dry. Like those bubblyjocular Roman matrons 
one reads of in Elephantuliasis. 

VIRAG 

(His mouth projected in hard wrinkles, eyes stonily forlornly closed, psalms in 
outlandish monolone.) That the cows with their those distended udders that they 
have been the known... 

BLOOM 

I am going to scream. I beg your pardon. Ah? So. (He repeats.) 
Spontaneously to seek out the saurian’s lair in order to entrust their teats to 
his avid suction. Ant milks aphis. (Profowndly.) 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 Ger Ger? Who's 
dear Gerald ? O, I much fear he shall be most badly burned. Will some pleashe 
pershon not now impediment so catastrophics mit agitation of firstclass 
tablenumpkin ? (He mews.) Luss puss puss puss! (He sighs, draws back and 
stares sideways down with dropping underjaw.) Well, well. He doth rest anon. 

486 
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 sliding steps Henry Flower comes 
forward to left front centre. He wears a dark mantle and drooping 
plumed sombrero. He carries a silverstringed inlaid dulcimer and a 
longstemmed bamboo 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 
motstens his lips with a passage of his amorous tongue.) 

HENRY 

Cn 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. [mitate 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 ina 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. ) 

487 
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 Arnola’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 Icould 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. 

Q 

488 

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! 

489 
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 Gorm! He had a 
father, forty fathers. He never existed. Pig God! He had two left feet. He was 
Judas Iacchias, a Lybian 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 suscribed 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. 

490 

LYNCH 
Three wise virgins. 

VIRAG 

(Agueschaken, profuse yellow spawn foaming over bis bony epileptic lips.) 
She sold lovephiltres, whitewax, orange flower. Panther, the Roman centurion, 
polluted her with his genitories. (He sticks out a flickering phosphorescent scorpion 
tongue, his hand on his fork.) Messiah! He burst her tympanum. (With gibbering 

baboon’s cries he jerks his hips in the cynical spasm.) Hik! Hek! Hak! Hok! Huk! 
Kok! Kuk! 

(Ben Jumbo Dollard, rubicund, musclebound, hairynostrilled, hugebearded, 
catbageeared, shaggychested, shockmaned, fatpapped, 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 Mac 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 pluks his lutestrings.) When first I saw... 
VIRAG 

(Sloughing his skins, his multitudinous plumage moulting.) Rats! (He yawns, 
showing a coalblack throat and closes his jaws by an upward push of his parchment 

491 

roll.) After having said which I took my departure. Farewell. Fare thee well. 
Dreck ! 

(Henry Flower combs his moustache and beard rapidly with a pocketcomb 
and gives a 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. 11. post no bills. Strictly confidential. Dr Hy Franks. 

HENRY 

All is lost now. 

(Virag unscrews his head in a trice and holds it under his arm.) 

VIRAG’S HEAD 
Quack ! 
(Exeunt severally.) 

STEPHEN 
(Over his shoulder to Zoe.) You would have preferred the fighting parson 
who founded the protestant error. But beware Antisthenes, the dog sage, and 
the last end of 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.) Pm sure you are a spoiled priest. Or a monk, 

LYNCH 

He is. A cardinal’s son. 

492 
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 

Hi-hi-hi-hi-his legs they were yellow 

He was plump, fat and heavy and brisk as a snake 
But some bloody savage 

To graize his white cabbage 

He murdered Nell Flaherty’s duckloving drake. 

(A multitude of midges swarms over his robe. He scratches himself with 
crossed arms at his ribs, grimacing, and exclaims.) 

I’m suffering the agony of the damned. By the hoky fiddle, thanks be to 
Jesus those funny little chaps are not unanimous. If they were they’d walk me 
off the face of the bloody globe. 

(His head aslant, he blesses curtly with fore and middle fingers, imparts 
the Easter kiss and doubleshuffles off comically, swaying lis hat 
from side to side, shrinking quickly to the size of his trainbearers. 
The dwarf acolytes, giggling, peeping, nudging, ogling, Easter- 

ee 

493 

kissing, zigzag behind lim. 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 
Shali carry my heart to thee. 

(The trick doorhandle turns.) 

THE DOORHANDLE 

Theeee. 

ZOE 

The devil is in that door. 

(A male form passes down the creaking staircase and is heard taking the 
waterproof and hat from the rack. Bloom starts forward involuntarily 
and, half closing the door as he passes, takes the chocolate from his 
pocket and offers it nervously to Zoe.) 

ZOE 

(Sniffs his hair briskly.) Hum. Thank your mother for the rabbits. I’m 
very fond of what I like. 

BLOOM 

(Hearing a male voice in talk with the whores on the doorstep, pricks his ears.) 
If it were he ? After ? Or because not ? Or the double event ? 

ZOE 

(Tears open the silverfoil.) Fingers was made before forks. (She breaks off 
and nibbles a piece, gives a piece to Kitty Ricketts and then turns kittenishly to Lynch.) 
No objection to French lozenges ? (He nods. She taunts him.) Have it now or 
wait till you get it ? (He opens his mouth, his head cocked. She whirls the prize 
in left circle. His head follows. She whirls it back in right circle. He eyes her.) 

Catch. 

(She tosses a piece. With an adroit snap he catches it and bites it through 
with a crack.) 

494 
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 thé 
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 youre bid. Here. 
(4 firm heelclacking is heard on the stairs.) 

BLOOM 

(Takes the chocolate.) Aphrodisiac ? 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 
metry for tomorrow. (fe eats.) Influence taste too, mauve. But it is so long 
since I. Seems new. Aphro. That priest. Mose come. Better late than never. 
Try truffles at Andrews. 

(The door opens. Bella Cohen, a massive whoremistress enters. She ts 
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 orangetatnted nostrils. She has large pendant beryl eardrops.) 

io ~ 
a 

Was 

love. 

495 
BELLA 
My word! I’m all of a mucksweat. 

(She glances around her at the couples. Then her eyes rest on Bloom with 
hard insistence. Her large fan winnows wind towards her heated face, 
neck and embonpoint. Her falcon eyes glitter.) 

THE FAN 
(Flirting quickly, then slowly.) Married, I see. 
BLOOM 

Mes, tattiy, I have muislaid;.. 

THE FAN 
(Half opening, then closing.) And the missus is master. Petticoat government. 

BLOOM 

(Looks down with a sheepish grin.) That is so. 
THE FAN 

(Folding together, rests against her eardrop.) Have you forgotten me ? 

BLOOM 
Nes. Yo. 

THE FAN 

(Folded akimbo against her waist.) Is me her was you dreamed before ? 
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 

THEOEAN 

( Tapping.) We have met. You are mine. It is fate. 

496 
BLOOM 

(Cowed.) Exuberant female. Enormously I desiderate your domination, I 
am exhausted, abandoned, no more young. I stand, so to speak, with an 
unposted letter bearing the extra regulation fee before the too late box of the 
general postoffice of human life. The door and window open at a right angle 
cause a draught of thirtytwo feet per second according to the law of falling 
bodies. I have felt this instant a twinge of sciatica in my left glutear muscle. It 
runs in our family. Poor dear papa, a widower, was a regular barometer from 
it. He believed in animal heat. A skin of tabby lined his winter waistcoat. 
Near the end, remembering king David and the Sunamite, he shared his bed 
with Athos, faithful after death. A dog’s spittle, as you probably... (He winces.) 
Ah! : 

RICHIE GOULDING 

(Bagweighted, passes the door.) Mocking is catch. Best value in Dub. Fit for 
a prince’s liver and kidney. 

THE FAN 

( Tapping.) All things end. Be mine. Now. 

BLOOM 
( Undecided.) All now ? I should not have parted with my talisman. Rain, 
exposure at dewfall on the sea rocks, a peccadillo at my time ot lite. 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 

497 
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 piump 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 Mansfield’s was my love’s young 
dream, the darling joys of sweet buttonhooking, to lace up crisscrossed to 
kneelength the dressy kid footwear satinlined, so incredibly small, of Clyde 
Road ladies. Even their wax model Raymonde I visited daily to admire her 
cobweb hose and stick of rhubarb toe, as worn in Paris. 

THE HOOF 
Smell my hot goathide. Feel my royal weight. 
BLOOM 
(Crosslacing.) Too tight ? 
THE HOOF 
If you bungle, Handy Andy, Ill kick your football for you. 
BLOOM 

Not to lace the wrong eyelet as I did the night of the bazaar dance. Bad 
luck. Nook in wrong tache of her... person you mentioned. That night she 

met... Now! 
(He knots the lace. Bella places her foot on the floor. Bloom raises his 
head. Her heavy face, her eyes strike him in 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 

CInfatuated.) Empress ! 
32 

498 
BELLO 

(His heavy cheekchops sagging.) Adorer of the adulterous rump ! 

BLOOM 
(Plaintively.) Hugeness ! 

BELLO 
Dungdevourer ! 

BLOOM 

(With sinews semiflexed.) Magnificence ! 

BELLO 

Down! (He taps her on the shoulder with his fan.) Incline feet forward! 
Slide left foot one pace back. You will fall. You are falling. On the hands down! 

BLOOM 
(Her eyes upturned in the sign of admiration, closing.) Truffles! 

(With a piercing epileptic cry she sinks on all fours, grunting, snuffling, 
rooting at his feet, then lies, shamming dead with eyes shut tight, 
trembling eyelids, bowed upon the ground in the attitude of most 
excellent master.) 

BELLO 
(With bobbed hair, purple gills, fat moustache rings ronnd his shaven mouth, in 
mountaincer’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.) Feel my entire weight. Bow, bondslave, before the 
throne of your despot’s glorious heels, so glistening in their proud erectness. 

BLOOM 

(Enthralled, bleats.) 1 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.) 

499 
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.) 1 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. Youre in for it this time. [’ll make you remember me for the balance of 
your natural life. (His forehead veins swollen, his face congested.) I shall sit on your 
ottomansaddleback every morning after my thumping good breakfast of 
Matterson’s fat ham rashers and a bottle of Guinness’s porter. (He belches.) And 
suck my thumping good Stock Exchange cigar while I read the Licensed 
Victualler’s Gazette. Very possibly I shall have you slaughtered and skewered 
in my stables and enjoy a slice of you with crisp crackling from the baking 
tin basted and baked like sucking pig with rice and lemon or currant sauce. 
It will hurt you. 

(He iwists her arm. Bloom squeaks, turning turtle.) 

BLOOM 

Don’t be cruel, nurse! Don’t! 

500 
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.) Yow’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 chairman of the Richmond Asylum and 
bytheby Guinness’s preference shares are at sixteen three quarters. Curse me 
for a fool that I didn’t buy that lot Craig and Gardner told me about. Just my 
infernal luck, curse it. And that Goddamned outsider Throwaway at twenty 

501 
to one. (He quenches his cigar angrily on Bloom’s ear.) Where’s that Goddamned 
cursed ashtray ? 

BLOOM 

(Goaded, buttocksmothered.) 0! 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. Pll 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, 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, ’'m not. Wait. (He holds in his breath.) Curse it. Here. This bung’s 
about burst. (He uncorks himself behind : then, contorting his feaiures, 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 diamond trimmed 
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 

(4 charming soubrette with dauby cheeks, mustard hair and large male hands 
and nose, leering mouth.) I tried her things on only once, a small prank, in 
Holles street. When we were hardup 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 trunk 
leg 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 

Do 

Smythe-Smythe, Mr Philip Augustus Blockwell, M. P., Signor Laci Daremo, 
the robust tenor, blueeyed Bert, the liftboy, Henry 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 variousjoys we each enjoy. (Earnestly.) and really 
it’s better the position... because often | 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! Pll 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 -THES 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 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 

304 
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 bya 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 halt 
of the... [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 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. 

595 
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.) 
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 shis points. Handle hrim. 
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 

506 

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 pantelette, 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 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 lis 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 a boy of six’s 
doing his pooly behind a cart. Buy a ple 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 

507 
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 upand 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 

Cn tattered mocassins with a rusty fowlingptece, tiptoing, 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... 

BELLA 

(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 ! 

508 

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 
menfriends 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 
Lheysaale: 
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 bowte 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 

) 09 

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 will power! Memory! I have sinned! I have suff... 
(He weeps tearlessly.) | 
BELLO 

(Sneers..) Crybabby ! Crocodile tears ! 

(Bloom, broken, closely veiled for the sacrifice, sobs, Is face to the earth. 
The passing bell is heard. Darkshawled figures of the circumcised, 
in sackcloth and ashes, stand by the wailing wall. M. Shulomowiiz, 
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. 

510 
THE NYMPH 
Softly.) Mortal ! (Kindly.) Nay, dost not weepest ! 
BLOOM 

(Crawls jellily forward under the bought, 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. 
{ 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, adsf or 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. 

51 
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 
(A pologetically.) 1 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 piune 
hat.) Prosper! Give shade on languorous days, trees of Ireland! 

THE YEWS 

er ear te: ) 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.) 1 was in my tens, 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 Goldterg, 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, 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 ? 

513 
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.) O1 Infamy ! 

BLOOM 

I was precocious. Youth. The fauns. 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 trough illclosed curtains, with poor papa’s operaglasses. The wauton 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 white polled calf, thrusts a ruminating head with 
humid nostrils through the foliage.) 

STAGGERING BOB 
Me. Me see. 

BLOOM 
Simply satisfying a need. (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, butiytailed, dropping currants.) 
THE NANNYGOAT 
(Bleats.) Megegaggegg ! Nannannanny ! 

BLOOM 

(Hatless, flushed, covered with burrs of thistledown and gorsepine.) Regularly 
33 

514 

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 

Bbbbblllllbbbbblblobschbg ! 

(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 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 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 

(Pacing the heather abjectly.) O, Ihave 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 

CSUs 
BLOOM 

(Dejected.) Yes. Peccavi! 1 have paid homage on that living altar where the 

515 
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 
Cn the thicket.) Show us one of them cushions. 
THE VOICE OF FLORRY 
Here. 

(A grouse wings clumsily through the underwood.) 

THE VOICE OF LYNCH 
CIn 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 huge winged wimple, softly, with remote 

516 

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.) 

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 silverfotl of leaves precipitating, their skinny arms aging and swaying.) 
Deciduously ! 

THE NYMPH 

Sacrilege! To attempt my virtue! (4 large moist stain appears on her robe.) 
Sully my innocence ! You are not fit to touch the garment of a pure woman. 
(She clutches 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 of nine lives! Fair 
play, madam. No pruning knife. The fox and the grapes, is it? What do we 
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 ? 

S17 
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 men 
dancers 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 to morrow, eh ? Fool someone else, not me. (He sniffs.) But, 
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 superflous 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 glass eyes of your stuffed fox. They have the dimensions of your other 
features, that’s all. ’m not a triple screw propeller. 

BELLA 

(Contemptuously.) Yow’re not game, in fact. (Her sowcunt barks). Fohracht ! 

BLOOM 

(Contemptuously.) Clean your nailless middle finger first, the cold spunk of 
your bully is dripping from your cockscomb. ‘ake a handful of hay and wipe 
yourself. 

BELLA 

I know you, canvasser ! Dead cod! 

BLOOM 

I saw him, kipkeeper ! Pox and gleet vendor ! 

518 
BELLA 

(Turns to the piano.) Which of you was playing the dead march from 
Saul 2 

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. 

519 
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 oui a 
banknote by its corner, hands it to her.) 

= 

STEPHEN 
(With exagerated 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 Zoe, Florrie 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 limself 
in monosyllabbes. Zoe bounds over to the table. Kitty leans over Zoe’s 
neck, Lynch gets up, rights his cap and clasping Kitty's waist, adds Ins 
head to the group.) 

- FLORRY 
(Strives heavily to rise.) Ow! My foot’s asleep. (She limps over to the table. 
Bloom approaches.) 
BELLA, ZOF, 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 2... ow ... mind who you're pinching... are you staying the night or a 

520 

short time ?... who did ?... you’rea 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 flewy 
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.) Yow’re such a slyboots, old cocky. I could kiss you. 

521 

ZOE 
(Points.) Hum ? 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 ? Le distrait or absentminded beggar. (He fumbles again in his 
pocket and draws out a handful of coins. An object falls.) 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 /aughs 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... 

522 

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 maich nearer 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 two backs 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 into the gate.) 

BLOOM 

Don’t smoke. You ought to eat. Cursed dog I met. (To Zoe.) You have 
nothing ? 

ZOE 

Is he hungry? 

923 
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 kaput. 
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. Pandy bat. 
(Twice loudly a pandybat cracks, the coffin of the pianola flies open, the 
bald tittle 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 Connee rises 
from the pianola coffin.) 
DON JOHN CONNEE 
Now, Father Dolan! Now. I’m sure that Stephen is a very good little 
boy. 

ZOE 

(Examining Stephen’s palm.) Woman’s hand. 

524 
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 bis palm.) More harm than good. Here. Read 
mine. 
. BELLA 
Show. (She turns up Bloom’s hand.) 1 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.) 

525 
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 twenty 
two years age. I was sixteen. 

ZOE 

I see, says the blind man. Tell us news. 

STEPHEN 

See ? Moves to one great goal. I am 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 gallant 
buttocked 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 7 

(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 a yachtsman’s cap and _ 

526 

white shoes, officiously detaches a long hair from Blazes Boylan’s 
shoulder.) 

LENEHAN 

Ho ! What do I here behold ? Were you brushing the cobwebs off a few 
quims ? 

BOYLAN 

(Sated, 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 up yet? 

BLOOM 

Cn a flunkey’s plum plush coat and kneebreeches, buff stockings and powdered 
wig.) Vm afraid not, sir, the last articles 

e@ete 

BOYLAN 

(Tosses him sixpence.) Here, to buy yourself a gin and splash. (He hangs his 
hat smartly on a peg of Blooi’s autlered 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. 

527 
MARION 

He ought to feel himself highly honoured. (She plops splashing out of the 
water.) Raoul, darling, come and dry me. ’'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 ! [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. 

BELLA 
(Laughing.) Ho ho ho ko. 
BOYLAN 
(To Eloom, over his shoulder.) You can apply your eye to the keyhole and 
play with yourself while I just gothrough 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 an oiniment 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 ! 

528 
LYDIA DOUCE 
(Her mouth opening.) Yamyum. O, he’s carrying her round the room doing 
it! Ride a cock horse. 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 ! Gooblazeqruk 
brukarchkrasht ! 
MARION’S VOICE 
(Hoarsely, sweetly rising to her throat.) O ! Weeshwashtkissimapooisth- 
napoohuck ! 
BLOOM 
(His eyes wildy 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.) lagogo ! How my Oldfellow chokit his Thursdaymomun. 
lagogogo ! 

BLOOM 

(Smiles yellowly at the 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 near the skin after his death... 

(Mrs Dignam, widow woman, her snubnose and cheeks flushed with 
deathtalk, fears and Tunny’s tawny sherry, hurries by in her weeds, 
her bonnet awry, rouging and powdering her cheeks, lips and nose a 
pen chivuying her brood of cygnets. Beneath her skirt appear her late 
husband’s everyday trousers and turnedup boots, large eights. She 
holds a Scottish widow's insurance policy and large marqueeumbrella 
under which her brood runs with her, Patsy, hopping on one short foot, 
his collar loose, a hank of porksteaks dangling, Freddy, whimpering, 
Susy with a crying cods’ 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 marqueeumbrella sways drunkenly, the children run aside. 
Under the umbrella appears Mrs Cunningham in Merry Widow hat 
and kimono gown. She glides sidling and bowing, twisting japanesily.) 

MvS CUNNINGHAM 
( Sings.) 
And they call me the jewel of Asia. 
MARTIN CUNNINGHAM 

(Gazes on her impassive.) Immense ! Most bloody awful demirep! 
34 

534 
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 hin.) 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 

(Pommelling on the sofa.) Rum Rmm Rmm Roetrrrmmmmm. 

STEPHEN 

(Gabbles, wiih marioneite jerks.) Thousand places of entertainment to 
expenses your evenings with lovely ladies saling gloves and other things perhap 
her 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 qwil a! 

LYNCH 
Vive le vampire! 

531 
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 tompeeptoms virgins 
nudities very lesbic the kiss five ten times. Enter gentlemen to see in mirrors 
every positions trapezes all that machine there besides also if desire act awfully 
bestial butcher’s boy pollutes in warm veal liver or omlette on the belly piece 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 fora wife. 

532 
FLORRY 
Dreams go by contraries. 

STEPHEN 

(Extending 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 hearkening, 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! hai hoop ! (He makes the beagle’s 
call giving tongue.) Bulbul! Burblblbrurblbl ! Hai, boy ! 

(The fronds and spaces of the wall paper 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, salmongaffs, lassos, flockmasters with stockwlips, 

533 

bearbaiters with tomtoms, toreadors with bullswords, grey negroes 
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 ! 

Pll 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, rusty armoured, leaping, 
leaping in their, in their saddles. Last in a drizzle of rain, on a broken- 
winded isabelle nag. Cock of the North, the favourite, honey cap, green 
jacket, orange sleeves, Garrett Deasy up, gripping the reins, a hockey 
stick at the ready. His nag, stumbling on whitegaitered feet, jogs 
along the rocky road.) 

THE ORANGE LODGES 
(Jeering.) Get down and push, mister. Last lap! You'll be home the 
night ! 
GANEIT DEARY 
(Bolt upright, his nailscraped face plastered with postage stamps, brandishes 
his hockeys:ick, his blue eyes flasling in the prism of the chandelier as 
his mount lopes by at schooling gallop.) 
Per vias rectas ! 
(A ycke of buckets leopards all over him and his rearing nag, a torrent of 

mutton broth with dancing coins of carrots, barley, onions, turnips, 
potatoes.) 

534 

THE GREEN LODGES 
Soft day, sir John! Soft day, your honour ! 

(Private Carr, Private Compton and Cissy Caffrey pass benexth 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 
9 Yorkshire relish for ... 

ZOE 

That’s me. (She claps her hands.) Dance! Dance! (She runs to the pianola.) 
Who has twopence ? 

BLOOM 
Who'll 2... 
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 piano stool and lifts and beats 
handless sticks of arms on the keyboard, nodding with damsel’s grace, 
his bowknot bobbing.) 

535 

ZOE 

(Twirls around herself, heeltapping.) Dance. Anybody here for there? 
Who'll dance ? 

(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 around the waist. Florry and Bella push the table towards 
the fireplace. Stephen, arming Zoe with exaggerated grace, begins to 
waltz her around the room. Her sleeve, falling from gracing arms, 
reveals a white fleshflower of vaccination. Bloom stands aside. 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 a dahlia. He twirls in reversed 
directions a clouded cane, then wedges it tight in his oxter. He places a 
hand limply 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 Levinstone’s. Fancy dress balls arranged. Deportment. The 
Katty Lanner steps. So. Watch me! My terpsichorean abilities. (He minuets 

forward three paces on tripping bee’s feet.) Tout le monde en avant ! Reverence ! Tout 
le monde en place ! 

(The prelude ceases. Professor Gooduin, beating vague arms, shrivels, 
shrinks, his live cape failing about the stool. The air, in firmer waliz 
time, pounds. Stephen aid Zoe circle freely. The lights change, glow, 
fade, gold, rose, 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, slim, in girlish 
blue, waspwaisted, with innocent hands. Nimbly ihey dance, twirling 
their skipping ropes. The hours of noon follow in amber gold. Laughing 

536 
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 vis avis. 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 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! 

5 oy. 

ZOE 

(Twisting, her hand to her brow.) O! 

MAGINNI 
Les tiroirs ! Chaine de dames! La corbeille! Dos a dos! 
(Arabesquing wearily, they weave a pattern on the floor, weaving, 
unweaving, curtseying, twisting, simply swirling.) 
ZOE 
I’m giddy. 
(She frees herself, droops on a chair, Stephen seizes Florry and turns with 
her.) 
MAGINNI 
Boulangere! Les ronds! Les ponts! Chevaux de bois ! Escargots! 

(Twining, receding, with interchanging hands, the night hours link, each 
with arching arms, i a imosaic of movements, Stephen and Florry 
turn cumbrously. ) 

MAGINNI 

Dansex avec vos dames! Changex de dames! Donnexz le petit bouquet a votre 
dane ! 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 biltern’s harsh ligh whistle shrieks. Groangrousegurgling . 
Toft’s cumbersome wiirligig 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 Ins ashplani from the 
table and takes the floor. All wheel, whirl, waltz, twirl. Bloombella, 
Kittylynch, Florryzoe, jujuby women. Stephen with hat ashplant 
frogsplits in middle kighkicks 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 scotlootshoot 
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 falling bawling. Gum, he’s a champion. Fuseblue peer 
from barrel rev. evensong Love on hackney jaunt Blazes blind 

532 

coddoubled bicyclers Dilly with snowcake no fancy clothes. Then wm 
last wiswitchback 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 wall. He stops dead.) 

STEPHEN 
Ho! 

(Stephen’s mother, emaciated, rises stark through the floor in leper grey with 
a wreath of faded orange blossoms and a torn bridal veil, her face 
worn and noseless, green with grave mould. Her hatr 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... 
Jubilantium 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.) 1 was once the beautiful May 
Goulding. I am dead. 

STEPHEN 
(Horrorstruck.) Lemur, who are you ? What bogeyman’s trick is this? 
BUCK MULLIGAN 
(Shakes his curling capbell.) The mockery of it! Kinch killed her dogsbody 

540 
bitchbody. She kicked the bucket. (Tears of molten butter fall from his eyes into 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 said 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 all powerful. 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 brain work. Years and years I loved you, O my son, my 
firstborn, when you lay in my womb. 

ZOE 
(Fanning herself with the grate fan.) ’m melting! 
FLORRY 

(Points to Stephen.) Look! He’s white. 

541 
BLOOM 

(Goes to the window to open it more.) Giddy. 

THE MOTHER 
(With smouldering eyes.) Repent! O, the fire of hell! 

STEPHEN 

(Panting.) 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 fingers.) Beware! God’s hand! (A green crab with malignant red eyes 
sticks decp its grinning claws in Stephen’s heart.) 

STEPHEN 

(Strangled with rage.) Shite! (His features grow drawn and 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 

542 
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 ! 
7 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 flees from the room past the whores at the door.) 

BELLA 
(Screams.) After him ! 

(The two whores rush to the halldoors. 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.) ‘There. You were 
with him. The lamp’s broken. 

543 
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 hand under the lamp, pulls the chain. Pulling, 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 a 
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 

544 

sign.) Know what I mean ? Nephew of the vicechancellor. You don’t want 
a scandal. 
BELLA 

(Angrily.) Trinity. Coming down here ragging after the boat races and 
paying nothing. Are you my commander here ? 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.) Iknow. 

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 tor 
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 calipl’s hood and poncho and hurries 
down the steps with sideways face. Incog Haroun al Raschid, he fits 
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, 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, 

345 

gallops, lugs laid back. He is pelted with gravel, cabbagestumps, 
biscuitboxes, eggs, potatoes, dead codfish, woman's slipperslappers. 
After lnm, 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, Sawhimbefore, Chapwith, 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. McCoy, friend of 
Lyons, Hoppy Holohan, man in the street, other man in the street, 
Footballboots, pugnosed driver, rich protestant lady, Davy Byrne, 
Mrs Ellen Mc 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, handsomemarriedwomanrubbedagainstwidebehindin- 
Clonskea tram, the bookseller of Sweets of Sin, Miss Dubedatandshe- 
didbedad, Mesdames Gerald and Stanislaus Moran of Roebuck, the 
managing clerk of Drimmie’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 

(Heiwskelterpelterwelter.) He’s Bloom! Stop Bloom ! Stopabloom! Stopper- 
robber! E! Hi! Stop him on the corner! 

At the corner of Beaver Street beneath the scaffolding Bloom panting stops 
on the fringe of the noisy quarelling knot, a lot not knowing a jot what 
hil bi! row and wrangle round the whowhat brawlaltogether.) 

STEPHEN 

(Wii elaborate gestures, breathing deeply and slowly.) You are my guests. 
oN) 

546 
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 

(Catches 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.) Theit’s 

not to reason why. 
| PRIVATE COMPTON 
Biff him, Harry. 

547 
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 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.) Ym not afraid of what I can talk to if I see his eye. Retaining the 

perpendicular. 
(He staggers a pace back.) 

548 
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 SKATE 

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 Inns’ bencher and ancient and 
honourable artillery company of Massachussets. 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 

a7 

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.) | 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 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 don’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 falls 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. 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 ot 
impostors. 

559° 

PRIVATE CARR 
I don’t give a bugger who he is. 
PRIVATE COMPTON 
We don’t give a bugger who he is. 
STEPHEN 
1 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 valant 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 ! 

55 
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 throat 

Of the English dogs 

That hanged our Irish leaders. 

THE CROPPYSBOY 

(The rope noose 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 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 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 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 Yelverton Barry and the Honourable Mrs 
Mervy 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 

552 
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 ns 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 some one tell me where I am least likely to meet 
these necessary evils? Ca se voit aussi a 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 im my house, bad manners to them! (She keens with banshee 

553 
woe.) Ochone! Ochone! Silk of the kine! (She wails.) You met with poor 
old Ireland and how does she stand ? 

STEPHEN 
How dol 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.) Tll 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 hragh! 

(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 spear 
points. Major Tweedy, moustached like Turko the terrible, in bearskin 

554 

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 
V1l do him in. 

PRIVATE COMPTON 

(Waves the crowd back.) Fair play, here. Make a bleeding butcher’s shop o: 
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.) Pll 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 

555 

are the link between nations and generations. Speak, woman, sacred life 
giver ! 

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 tbe 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 noisless 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 ts 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 

556 

the pass of knights of the red cross and fight duels with cavalry sabres ; 
Wolfe Tome against Henry Grattan, Smith O’Brien against Daniel 
O'Connell, Michael Davitt against Isaac Butt, Justin M’Carthy 
against Parnell, Arthur Griffith against Joln 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 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 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 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, lis 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 Iigh behind the celebrant’s petticoats, revealing his grey bare hairy 
buttocks between which a carrot is stuck.) My body. 
THE VOICE OF ALL THE DAMNED 

Htengier Lnetopinmo Dog Drol eht rof, Aiulella! 
(From on high the voice of Adonai calls.) 

ADONAI 

Doooooooco0og ! 

THE VOICE OF ALL THE BLESSED 
Alleluia, for the Lord God Onmnnipotent reigneth ! 
(From on high the voice of Adonai calls.) 

ADONAI 
Gooooooo00cod ! 

Cn 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.) [ll do him in, so help me fucking Christ ! 
li 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 ! 
BLOOM 

(Runs to Lynch.) Can’t you get him away ? 

LYNCH 

He likes dialectic, the universal language. Kitty ! (Zo 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. 

558 
BLOOM 

(Over Siephen’s shoulder.) Yes, go. You see he’s incapable. 

PRIVATE CARR 
(Breaks loose.) Yl insult him. 

(He rushes towards Stephen, fists 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 ! 

(The retriever, nosing on the fringe of the crowd, barks noisily.) 

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 cther and spit.) 
THE RETRIEVER 
(Barking.) Wow wow wow. 

BLOOM 
(Shoves them back, loudly.) Get back, stand back! 

559 
PRIVATE COMPTON 
(Tugging his comrade.) Here bugger off, Harry. There’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 oft, Harry. Or Bennett’ll have you in 
the lockup. 

560 

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 

(Taking 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 Kelleher, weepers round his hat, a death wreath in his hana, 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 ’Il 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. 

et ieee” 
ae 

561 

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 
Pll 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 well known, highly respected citizen. Just a little 
wild oats, you understand. 

FIRST WATCH 
O, I understand, sir. 

SECOND WATCH 
Thar’s all right, sir. 

FIRST WATCH 

It was only in case of corporal injuries ’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. 
36 

562 
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 specialty. 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.) ’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 toand froin 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 

e 
af yt 
— 

564 

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 1s reassuraloomtay. The 
tinkling hoofs and singling 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 lim 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 woodskavings from Stephen's clothes 
with light hands and fingers.) One pound seven. Not hurt anyhow. (He listens.) 
What ! 

STEPHEN 
(Murmurs.) 

...shadows... the woods. 
...white breast... dim... 

(He stretches out his arms, sighs again and curls his body. Bloom holding 
his 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.) ) 

565 
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, lis 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 lambskin peeps out of Ins waistcoat pocket.) 

*

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 pumps 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, in spite of his having 
forgotten to take up his rather soapsuddy handkerchief after it had done yeoman 
service in the shaving line, brushing 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. 

See 

This was a quandary but, bringing commonsense 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 Mullet’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 happening to be 
returning and the elder man recounted to his companion @ 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 back 
door 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 juijitsu 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 

571 

was blissfully unconscious that, 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 Malony 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 outover 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 £. 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 bioodmaking 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 pratically. Most of all 
he commented adversely on the desertion of Stephen by all his pubhunting 
confréeres but one, a most glaring piece of ratting on the part of his brother 
medicos under all the circs. 

— And that one was Judas, said Stephen, 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 when 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 

572 

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, 
inamsuch 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. Although 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 about waylaying and generally terrorising peaceable 
pedestrians by placing a pistol at their head in some secluded spot outside the 
city proper, famished loiterersof 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 any 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 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 Leneban and called him to 
Stephen a mean bloody swab with a sprinkling 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 

573 

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 to morrow or the 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, 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 invetiongstia. 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 nota pleasant lookout, very much the reverse, 
in fact. He was altogether too fagged out to institute a thorough search though 

574 

he tried to recollect about biscuits he dimly remembered. Who now exactly gave 
them, 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 lent him one of 
them. 

— Thanks, Corley answered. You’re a gentleman. I’ll pay you back some 
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. [’'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. | 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. 

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. Probably 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 

575 

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’s 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 halfa second or so in the direction of a 
bucket dredger, 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 and 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 legitimately, out of you. You could go back, perhaps, he hazarded, 
still thinking of the very unpleasant scene at Westland Row terminus when it 

576 

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 stationbelonged to them, to give Stephen 
the slip in the confusion. 

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 oatmeal 
water 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 ona 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 through 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 thata 
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 

S77 

-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 he 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. 

— Putanna madonna, che ci dia i quattrini ! Ho ragione? Culo rotto! 

— Intendiamoct. Mezzo sovrano pit... 

— Dice lut, pero. 

— Farabutto! Mortacci sui ! 

Mr Bloom and Stephen entered the cabman’s shelter, an unpretentious 
wooden structure, where, prior to then, he had rarely, it 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 wouldn’t 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 examinatiou, 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, 

37 

578 
apropos 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 isso melodious and full. 
Belladonna voglio. 

Stephen, who was trying his dead best to yawn, if he could, suffering from 
dead 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 téte-a-téte put a boiling 
swimming cup of a choice concoction labelled coffee on the table and a rather 
antediluvian specimen ofa bun, or soit 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, Stephens aid 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. 

42 

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 left hand 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. 

— Bottle 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 some way 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, W. B, Murphy, of 
Carrigaloe. Know where that is ? 

580 

— Queenstown Harbour, Stephen replied. 

— That’s right, the sailor said. Fort Camden and Fort Carlisle. 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 anda 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 finelly 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 grass widow, 
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. Boo! 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, W. 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 sucha thing asa spare chaw about you, do 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? W. B. Murphy, A. B. S. 

In confirmation of which statement he extricated from an inside pocket and 
handed to his neighbours a not very cleanlooking folded document. 

581 

— 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. 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 pomilooy. 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 : Chora de Indios. Bent, Bolivia. 

All focussed their attention on the scene exhibited, at 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 long, the communicative tarpaulin added. Stomachs 
like breadgraters. Cuts off their diddies when they can’t bear no more children. 
See them 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 howto keep them off ? he inquired genially. 

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. Senor 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 

582 

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 ouside, 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. 

583 

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 fapis 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 a matter of a couple of paltry pounds, was 
debarred from seeing more of the world they lived in instead of being 
always 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 attracticns as well as a bracing tonic for the system 
in and around Dublin and its picturesque environs, even, Poulaphouca, to 
which there was a steam tram, butalso 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’vil 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. 

584 

—I seen a Chinese one time, related the dougity 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 Chinese does. 

Possibly perceiving an expression of dubiosity on their faces, the globe- 
trotter 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 dangerous looking claspknife, quite in 
keeping with his character, and held it in the striking position. 

— Ina 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 dénouement 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 Bloom 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, 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 by 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, some score of years 
previously, in the days of the land troubles when it took the civilised world 

585 

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 spurt a jet of spew into the sawdust, and 
shook his head with a sort of lazy scorn. 

— What year would that be about? Mr Bloom interpolated. 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 
obviously 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 
sortof 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 very 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. 

586 

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 Jreland expects that every man and so on, and sometimes had a terrible 
time ot 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 ’'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 
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 Skibereen 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. Sucks your blood dry, they does. 

Seeing they were all looking at his chest, he accomodatingly 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 lying 
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. 

587 

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, longshoreman one 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. 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 that 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 

588 

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 that 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, were 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 ? 7 

Thus cornered, Stephen had to make a raierlinttie 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. 

589 

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 Réngten did, or the telescope like Edison, though I believe it was 
' before his time, Galileo was the man I mean. 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 best known 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. ['m not so sure about that. That’s a matter of every man’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 mentlal 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 

590 

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, S O, 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 ashotat 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 it 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 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. 

TE 

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, 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 ice creamers 
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 tuckink 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 

592 

that, impetuous as Old Nick, are given to taking the law into their own hands 
and give you your quietus double quick 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, 1. 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 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 the 
others got on to talking about accidents at sea, ships lost in a fog, 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 of 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 distinctive merit 

593 
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 
nozzle 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 manceuvre 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, gazing 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 close at 
hand, the noise of his bilgewater some little time subsequently splashing on the 
ground where it apparently woke 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, 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 the arms 

38 

594 

of Morpheus. A truly amazing piece of hard times 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 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 thesame 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 wrecks, 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 her 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 itfor 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 redoutable specimen duly arrived on the 

595 

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, anda 
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 Colonel Everard down there in Cavan 
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 ot 
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 fimale. 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. 

596 

— 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 every man, 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 isssue, 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 littleinteresting 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 (Bloom) 
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 coning 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 

7. 

S97 

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 man 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 £. 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 others, 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 eventempored person declared, [ let slip. He called me a jew, and in 
a heated fashion, offensively. Sol, 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 noncommital accent, their two or 
four eyes conversing. Christus or Bloom his name is, or, after all, any other, 
secundum carneni. 

— Of course, Mr Bloom 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 

598 

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 or 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, 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 overwhelmingly 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 
— 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 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, sol 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 

599 

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 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 
small smattering of in our classical day in Alma Mater, vita beni. Where you 
can live well, the sense is, if you work. 

Over his untasteable 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 to 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. 

— | 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: 

— We can’t change the country. Let us change the subject. 

600 

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 which some asperity in a curious bitter way, foreign to his sober state. 
Probably the home life, to which Mr Bloom attached the utmost importance, 
had not been all that was needful or he hadn’t been familiarised with the 
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 half crazy 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 dénouement after the fun had gone on fast and furious he got 
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 esthetesand 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 

ad 

601 

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, 
sit. 

For which and further reasons he felt it was 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 Shelier. 

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 to 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 damages. 
Gordon Bennett. Emigration swindle. Letter from His Grace William +. 
Ascot Throwaway recalls Derby of ’92 when Captain 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. 

602 

So to change the subject he read about Dignam, R. I. P., which, he 
reflected, was anything but a gay sendoff. 

— This morning (Hynes put in, of course), the remains of the late 
Mr Patrick Dignam were removed from his residence, n° 9 Newbridge Avenue, 
Sandymount, for interment in Glasnevin. The deceased gentleman was a most popular 
and genial personality in city life and lis demise, after a brief illness, came as 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 & Son, 164 North Strand 
road. The mourners included : Patk. Dignam (son), Bernard Corrigan (brother-in- 
law), John 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, B. A., Edward J. Lambert, 
Cornelius Kelleher, Joseph MC. Hynes, L. Bloom, C. P. M’Coy — M’Intosh, and 
several others. 

Nettled not a little by LZ. 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 
ual: crop of nonbthaieel 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 the thing, 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 
1,000 sovs., with 3,c00 sovs. in specie added for entire colts and _ fillies. 
Mr F. Alexander’s Throwaway, b. h. by Rightaway, 5 yrs, 9 st 4 lbs, Thrale 
(W. Lane) 1. Lord Howard de Walden’s Zinfandel (M. Cannon) 2. Mr W. 
Bass’s Sceptre, 3. Bettings 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 

— 

603 

trained by Braine so that Lenehan’s version of the business was all pure buncombe. 
Secured the verdict cleverly by a length. 1,000 sovs. with 300 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, Mr 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 n° 15 until he was his old self again with no-one to point a 
fiinger 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 fortinght 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 

604 

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 réle how to. He saw him once 
on the auspicious occasion when they broke up the type in the Insuppressible 
or was it United lreland, 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 expression 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, Mr 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. I seen her picture in a barber’s. Her 
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 ofa smile, merely gazed in the direction of the door and reflected 

605: 

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 
it 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 encouraging his downfal 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 favorite, 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 that 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 ? 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 18" 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 

606 

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 the 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, frishtown 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. 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 Capel street library book out of date, he took out his 
pocketbook and, turning over the various contents 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 ’96. Very like her then. 

607 

Beside the young man he looked also at the photo of the lady now his 
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 forthe 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, perfectly developed as works of art, in the National 
Museum. Marble could give the original, shoulders, back, all the symmetry. 
All the rest, yes, Puritanism. It does though, St Joseph’s sovereign... 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 ofa 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 thoughfully with the intention of not further increasing the other’s 
possible embarrassement 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 

608 

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 letterpress 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 to show cause why and, he failing 
to quash it, nist was made absolute. But as for that, the two misdemeanants, 
wrapped up as they largely were in one another, could safely afford to ignore 
jt 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, Bloom, 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 leaders — 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 prinitng worsk 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 occuaption, 
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 
tiat 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 tkat of course congregated lodging some place about 
the pit of the stomach, fortunately not of a grave character. His hat (Parnell’s), 
was inadvertently knocked off and, asa matter of strict history, Bloom was 
the man who picked it up in the crush after witnesssing the occurrence 
meaning to return it to him (and return it to him he did with the utmost 

609 
celerity) who, panting and hatless and whose thoughts were miles away 
from his hat at the time, being a gentleman born with a stake in the 
country, he, as a matter of fact roe 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 cabmen and so on, who passed it all off as a jest, laughing 
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 /iaisons 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 

39 

616 
the nature of single blessedness he would one day take unto himself a wife when 
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 tri-weekly with the orthodox preliminary canter 
of complimentpaying 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, 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 it 
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 further 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 

6ri 
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 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) witha 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 forthe 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 himselfto 
the full of the opportunity, all things considered. His initial impression was that 
he was a bit 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 pu 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 top erceive 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 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 between whiles with rough and tumble gusto to the 

612 

accompaniment of large potations of pottheen and the usual blarney about 
himself for as to who he in reality was let XX equal my right name and. 
address, as Mr Algebra remarks passim. At the same time he inwardly chuckled 
over his 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 somewhere abouts 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. Wait, Pll 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 (Bloom’s) busy brain. 
Education (the genuine article), literature, journalism, prize titbits, up to 
date billing, hydros and concert tours in English watering resorts packed with 
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 or 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. 

613 

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 town clerk 
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. 

Thereupon 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 feet 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 
to him in unmistakable figures, coffee 2d., confectionery d°, 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 to... 

— One thing I never understood, he said, to be original on the spur ot 
the moment, why they put tables upside down at night, I mean chairs upside 
down on the tables in cafés, 

614 

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 
the 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. 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 passed 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 laurels and putting the others totally in the 

615 

shade in the jesuit fathers’ church in Upper Gardiner Street, the sacred 
edifice being thronged to the doors to hear her with virtuosos, or virtuost 
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 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 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, Voulindus, an instrument he was contemplating purchasing from 
Mr Arnold Dolmetsch, whom Bloom 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 airsand John Bull. 

On the roadway which they were approaching whilst still speaking beyond 
the swing chain, 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 to night. 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 

616 

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 foolish nervous 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 blackguard type they 
unquestionably had an indubitable 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 a 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 

617 

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 
pecuniar y 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 backer-up, if one were forthcoming 
to kick him upstairs, so to speak, — a big z/, however —- with some impetus 

_ of the goahead sort to obviate the inevitable procrastination which often tripped 

up a too much féted prince of good fellows and it need not detract from the 

618 

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 what soever 
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 ot the ballad : 

Und alle Schiffe briicken. 

The driver never said a word, good, bad or indifferent. He 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 téte a téte (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 sest near the end of lower Gardiner 
street and looked after their lowbacked car. 

i

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, north : 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 duumyirate 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 ot 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 religions, national, social and ethical doctrines. Both 
admitted the alternately stimulating and obtunding influence of heterosexual 
magnetism. 

620 

Were their views on some points divergent ? 

Stephen dissented openly from Bloom’s views on the importance ot 
dietary and civic selfhelp while Bloom dissented tacitly from Stephen’s views 
on the eternal affirmation of the spirit of man in literature. Bloom assently 
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 
jn the reign of Cormac Mac Art (+ 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 ofa 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 occusionally 
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 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 ? 

a 
a Aen 

621 
He reflected that the progressive extension of the field of individua] 

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 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 

622 

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 indication 2, Julian period 6617, MxMIV. 

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 turning on 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 C P, a man lighting a candle, 
a man removing in turn each of his two boots, a man leaving the kitchen 
holding a candle of 1 C P. 

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 twentydéne 
shillings a ton from the yard of Messrs Flower and M’Donald of 14 D’Olier 

623 

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 
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 2.400 million gallons, percolating through a subterranean aqueduct of filtre 

624 

mains of single and double pipeage constructed at an initial plant cost of £ § 
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 canalsas 
in 1893) particulary 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 
umplumbed profundity in the Sundam trench of the Pacific exceeding 8.000 
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 luteosfulvous 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 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 

<a 

625 

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 circumter- 
restrial ahorizontal curve : its secrecy in springs, and latent humidity, revealed 
by rhabdomantic or hygrometric instruments and exemplified 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 infaillibility 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, ifnavigable, 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 °/, of the human body : the 
noxiousness of its efHluvia 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 
40 

626 

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 course 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° to 212° Fahrenheit. 

pla 

627 

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 dispaying 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 olivesin oleaginous paper, an empty pot of 

628 

Plumiree’s potted meat, an oval wicker basket bedded with fibre and containing 
one Jersey pear, a balfempty 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 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, 8 86. 

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 ro 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 or 
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 

le 

629 

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. 

630 

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 r1 in 1877 on the occasion of the offering of 
three prizes of 10/-, 5/- and 2/6 respectively 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. 

631 

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 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, ot 
the second edition (30 January 1893) of the grand annual Christmas pantomime 
Sinbad the Sailor (written by Greenleaf Whittier, scenery by George A. Jackson 
and Cecil Hicks, costumes by Mrs and Miss Whelan produced by R. Shelton 26 
December 1892 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 
anticipatep 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 

632 

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 
sollicitorgeneral, 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 o would be as 17 1/2 to 13 1/2, the proportion 
increasing and the disparity diminishing according arbitrary as 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 cofferoom 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. 

633 

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, 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 
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, 

634 

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 exercices, 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 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 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 
Rudolf 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). 

635 

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 Nicolas 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 

636 

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 rd. bazaar at 42 George’s Street, South, the latterat his 6 1/2d. 
shop and world’s fancy fair and waxwork exhihition 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. 11. 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 I 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 Merchant’s 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. Montpat, 
Plamtroo. 

637 
Which example did he adduce to induce Stephen to deduce that 
originality, though producing its own reward, does no: 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 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 1 
of chloroform liniment (purchased by him at ro. 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. 

638 

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 ? Pr 

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 pedagogie 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 ? 

i 

639 
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 attemped 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 self-interest. 

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. 

640 

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 thé 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 fragment 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 : swil, suil, suil arun, suil go siocair agus suil go cuin (walk, 
walk, walk your way, walk in safety, walk with care). 

By Bloom: Kifeloch, harimon rakatejch m’baad ’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 ? 

On the penultimate blank page of a book entituled of inferior literary 
style, 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 goph, explaining their 
arithmetical values as ordinal and cardinal numbers, videlicet 3, 1, 4 and 100, 

641 

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 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 archeological, genealogical, 
hagiographical, exegetical, homilectic, 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 Chanan 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). 

41 

642 

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 Traditionnal accent af 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 : examplars Charles Wyndham, high comedian, Osmond Tearle 
(+; 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 mechianacal mixture, water plus sugar plus cream plus cocoa, having been 
consumed. 

643 

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 ower the je’s garden wall. 

And the very second ball litile Harry Hughes played 
He broke the jew’s windows all. 

(eke Paes iD axa Ake . tle bloke The seats tude ote 

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. 

644 

Recite the second part (minor) of the legend. 

Then out 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 

Hed 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 our IKene © pee ee Qud she ak 

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. 

645 
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 
incitation 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 ofmovingor uttering sounds. Fromsomnambulism: 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. 

646 

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, 
ahallucination, 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 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 state.!). 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. 

647 
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, were 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 clockwise of 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 
not for her she expressed the immediate desire to possess without gradual 
acquisition a fraction of his science, the moiety, the quarter, a thousandth 
part. 

648 

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 immediateiy adjacent to the sleeping apartment of his 
host and hostess. 

What various advantages would or might have resulted from a 
prolungation of such 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 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 shilling, advanced by the latter to the former. 

649 

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. ‘Io 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, 
to 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, anintuitive 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 in 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. 

650 

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 
cataclyms 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 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 affimation 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. 

651 

With what intonation secreto of what commemorative psalm ? 
The 113 th, modus peregrinus : In exitu Israél de Egypto : domus Jacob de 
populo barbaro. 

What did each so 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 constellation ? 

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 5ooo ft deep sunk from the surface 
towards the centre of the earth: of Sirius ( alpha in Canis Maior) ro 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 from 
immeasurably remote eons to infinitely remote futures in comparison with 
which the years, threscore 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 aflinity in a single 

652 

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 problem of the inhabitability of the planets and their 
satellites by a race, given in species, and of ihe 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 statosphere 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 wiih finite différences 
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. 

ee 

De. 

653 
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 interdependant 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 
satroscopist : the annual recurrence of meteoric showers about the period of the 
feast of S. Lawrence (martyr, to 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 lesser brilliancy which had appeared in and dissapeared 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, persistance of infernal light, obscurity of terrestrial waters, pallor of 
human beings. 

654 

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 
probable 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 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. 

2 

655 

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 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 vescical 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, pelosity. To Stephen : the problem of the sacerdotal 
integrity of Jesus circumcised (1st January, holiday of obligation to hear mass 

656 

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. 
Jubilantium te virginum. Chorus excipiat. 
By Bloom : 
Heigho, heigho, 
Heigho, heigho. 

Sle Ne nie Mee On 58) NE TS 

657 

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 
Glasneyin in the north ? 

Martin Cunningham (in bed), Jack Power (in bed), Simon Dedalus (in 

bed), Tom Kernan (in bed), Ned Lambert (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 heayenborn 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 Réaumur: 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 Misericordiz 
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 

42 

658 

of the light of an invisible luminous body, the first golden limb of the resutgent 
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 anetcedent 
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 ot 
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. 

ee 

659 

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 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 tbe 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 ? 
That 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 ? 

660 

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 at ransparent 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. 

661 

Denis Florence M’Carthy’s Poetical Works (copper beechleaf bookmark 
auDs'§): 

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). 

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). 

Lockart’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 (bronw cloth, 2 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, 5 plates, 
antique letterpress long primer, author’s footnotes nonpareil, 
marginal clues brevier, captions small pica). 

The Hidden Life of Christ (black boards). 

662 

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 Engflih 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 roth 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-Iurkish 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 

663 

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, tranquillity, 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 (1 shilling), placed there (presumably) on the occasion (10 October 1903) 
of the interment of Mrs Emily Sinico, Sydney Parade. 

664 

Compile the budget for 16 June 1904. 

Debit Credit 
£95750. 2. Sag 
fePork. kidney ao. ma. be 0.0. 3, »Cash in-hand 5.) De .0 2 0. 4. 9 
1 Copy Freeman’s Journal... . ©. 0. 1 Commission recd. Freeman's 
1 Bath’and gratification’ =... 0.1. © Journal, . 66 1 eee eee 1. 7. 6 
Tramifares atk ost ree o. o. t Loan (Stephen Dedalus).... 1. 7. 0 
1 InMemoriamPatrickDignam. o. 5. 0 
2 Banbury cakes. 0.6.4.0. oO. 0. I 
1; LUNCH oe eee ee en ee 0,201.7 
1 Renewal'feefor ‘book ("7 2" 61." 0 
1 Packet notepaper and enve- 
l6 pest Be TOMA. STIR 029,12 
1 Dinner and gratification. .. 0. 2. 0 
1 Postal order and stamp... . o. 2. 8 
‘Tramiates sc. 5. key ce gee 0.0.1 
1: Pig's Hooths | £620 ce nae 0. 0. 4 
i. sheep sl nottert, ci. aiiaisan 0. 0. 3 
1 Cake Fry’s plain chocolate. . 0. 0. 1 
1. Square:soda bread ;...,... ; 0. 0. 4 
ip Colice rand in.) aos ae repay 
Loan (Stephen Dedalus) refun- 
re Us Fes BINA Rah ES cn PRO 
BAUANCE .0 222 8 0,102.0 
£, 2.19. 3 £. 2.19. 3 

Did the process of divestiture continue ? 

Sensible of a benignant persistant 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 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 unguial fragment. 

665 

Why with satisfaction ? 

Because the odour inhaled corresponded to other odours inhaled of other 
unguial 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), 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 
I statute mile from the periphery of the metropolis, within a time limit of not 
more than 5 minutes from tram or train line, (e. g. Dundrum, south, or Sutton, 
north, both localities equally reported by trial to ressemble the terrestrial poles in 
being favourable climates for phthisical subjects), the premises to be held under 
feefarmgrant, 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 
Brittanica 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, 

666 

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 a 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 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, with comprehensive fidelity insurance, annual 
bonus (£ 1) and retiring allowance (based on the 65 system) after 30 years’ 
service, pantry, buttery, larder, refrigerator, outoflices, 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 merchant and nurseryman, agent 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, lobster pots, fishingrods, hatchet, steelyard, grindstone, clodcrusher, 
swatheturner, carriagesack, telescope ladder, 10 tooth rake, washing clogs, 
haytedder, tumbling rake, billhook, paintpot, brush, hoe and so on. 

rd 
* 

PN ee ee ee ee ee ef 

Ve a 

Copa 

667 

What improvements might be subsquently 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, 14h). 

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 

668 

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 moto (Semper paraius), 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 ot 
the letter of the law (common, statute and law merchant) against all traversefs 
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, 

669 

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 Febuary 1888) into the capital of a demonstrative 
torchlight procession of 20.000 torchbearers, divided into 120 trade 

corporations, bearing 2.000 torches in escort of the marquess of Ripon and 
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 par annum, being 1/6 of an assured income, derived from giltedged 
securities, representing at 5 °/. simple interest on capital of £ 1.200 (estimate 
of price at 20 years purchase) of which 1/3 to be paid on acquisition and 
the balance in the form of annual rent, viz. £ 800 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, 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 

676 
the absolute property of the tenant o¢cupiet 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 1 or more 
miles and furlongs won by an outsider at odds of 50 to 1 at 3 hr. 8m. 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 
unpressed posrage stamps (7 shilling, 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 acommestible fowl). A Spanish prisonet’s 
donation of a distant treasure of valuables or specie or bullion lodged 
with a solvent banking corporation 100 years previously at 5 °/,. compound 
interest of the collective worth of £ 5.000.000 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 at the initial rate of 1/4 d. to be increased constantly in the 
geometrical progression of 2 (1/4,1/2,1d.,2 d.,4d.,38d.,1s.4d.,2 5.8 d. 
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 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 

671 

of water, a sum total of 80 Ibs. (mixed animal and vegetable diet), to be 

multiplied by 4.386.035 the total population of Ireland according the 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 vetween Island bridge and Ringsend, charabancs, 
narrow gauge local railways, and pleasure steamers for coastwise navigation 
[ro/- 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 
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. 

643 

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 eventually 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 allievated fatigue and 
produced as a result sound repose and renovated vitality. 

His justifications ? 

Asa physicist he had learned that of the 70 years of complete human life 
at least 2/7, viz., 20 years are passed in sleep. Asa 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 commital 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 wonders 
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. 

673 

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 
Mixpah, the date Xmas 1892, the name of the senders : from Mr and 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 N° 2004, of S. Kevin’s Charity Fair, price 6 d. 100 prizes: 
an infantile epistle, dated, small em monday, reading: capital pee Papli 
comma capital aitch How are you note of interrogation capital eye [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 : 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 boustrephodontic. 
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 FOE BOX 3 2a Faas Oey 
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 

43 

674 

of recipe for renovation of old tan boots: ard. ad hesive stamp, lavender, of the 
reign of Queen Victoria: a chart of measurements of Leopold Bloom compiled, 
before, during and after 2 months of 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 ro in, forearm 8 1/2 and 9g in, thigh 10 in and 12 in, calf, rr 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 to Mrs L. Bloom with brief accompanying note commencing: 

Dear Madam. 

Quote the textual terms in which the prospectus claimed advantages tor 
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 

unkown). 

675 

What possibility suggested itself 2 
The possibility of exercising virile power of fascination in the most 
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 in the Scottish Widow’s Assurance Society intestated 
Millcent (Milly) Bloom, coming into force at 25 years as with profit policy 
of £ 430, € 462-10-o0 and £ 500 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 depositors favour : £ 18-14-6 
(eighteen pounds, fourteen shillings and sixpence, sterling), net personalty : 
certificate of possession of £ 900, Canadian 4 °/, (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 n° 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 daguerrotype of Rudolph Virag and his father Leopold 
Virag executed in the year 1852 in the portrait atelier of their (respectively) 
ist and 2nd cousin, Stefan Virag of Szesfehervar, Hungary. An ancient hagadah 
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. 

676 

What fractions of phrases did the lecture of those four whole words 
evoke ? 

Tomorrow will be a week that I received... it is no use Leopold to be... 
wlth 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 
Tlerz., Gott: dein: 

What reminiscences of a human subject suffering from progressive 
melancholia did these objects evoke in Bloom ? 

An old man widower, unkempt 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 
tetragrammation : 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 

ae 

677 

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 grooseberry 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 1/4d in the £, sandwichman, distributor 
of throwaways, nocturnal vagrant, insinuating sycophant, maimed sailor, blind 
stripling, superannuated bailiff’s 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 

678 

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 it 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 it 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 it 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 Tiperrary, 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. 

679 

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, tbe 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, nude Grecian 
divinities) the Wall street money market (which controlled international 
finance), the Plaza de Toros at I.a 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 Major 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 
Major. On land, meridional, a. bispherical moon, reveated 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 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. 

680 

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 hea would her 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 batl (rite of John) : the funeral 
(rite of Samuel) : the advertisement of Alexander Keyes (Urim and 

j 
. 
| 

681 

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 mutitudinous 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, 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 C°, 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. 

682 

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 Nothern 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, a 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. 

; 
; 
2 
" 

683 

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). 

684 

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 agents and reagents 
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 natural as any and every natural act of a nature expressed or 
understood executed in natured nature by natural creatures in accordance with 

685 
his, her and their natured natures, of dissimilar similarity. As not as 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 altered 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. 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 
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 

686 

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 onoma- 
topoeic transitive verb with direct feminine object) from the active voice into 
its correlative aorist preterite proposition (parsed as feminine subject, auxiliary 
verb and quasimonosyllabic onomatopceic 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 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. 

687 
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 C°, 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 gentlemen 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 2 calendar months 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 10 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 1895, aged 11 days, there 
remained a period of ro 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 

688 

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 ofa 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° 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 indexfinger and thumb of the right hand resting 
on the bridge of the nose, in the attitude depicted on a snapshot photograph 
made by Percy Apjohn. the childman weary, the manchild in the womb, 

689 
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 
egein the night of the bed of all the auks of the rocs of Darkinbad the 
Brightdayler. 

Where ? 

44

Yes because he never dida thing like that before as ask to get his breakfast
in bed with a couple of eggs since the Ciiy Arms hotel when he used to be 
pretending to be laid up with a sick voice doing his highness to make himself 
interesting to 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 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 sugarloof 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 

691 
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 blood poisoning 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 Myriorana 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 for the matches 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 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 | found the long hair on his 
coat without that one when I went into the kitchen pretending he was drinking 
water I 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 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 

692 

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 
I saw to that her face swelled up on her with temper when I gave her her 
weeks notice 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 
{ thought he was with a dirty barefaced liar and sloven like that one deuying 
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 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 onesand 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 

a 

693 
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 HH 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 father 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 a drink not whisky or stout or perhaps the sweety kind 
of paste they stick their bills up with some liquor 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 himselt 
from falling asleep after the last time 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 as if the world was coming to an end God be 
merciful to us I thought the heavens were coming down about us to punish 
when I blessed myself and said a Hail Mary like those awful thunderbolts in 
Gibraltar 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 

694 

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 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 it 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 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 every thing 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 intoa temper still 
he knows a lot of mixed up things especially about the body and the insides 
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 [ pretended T had on a coolness with her over him 

695 

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 yes 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 
because he used to bea 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 lord Byrons 
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 : kiss then wouldsend 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 wouldntso 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 
with his plabbery kind ofa manner to her 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 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 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 month water but that wasnt my fault she didnt darken 
the door much after we were married I wonder what shes got like now 

696 

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 witha 
thing like that that might murder you any moment what a man well its not 
the one way everyone goes mad Poldy anyway 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 
that and now hes going about in his slippers to look for £ 10000 for a 
postcard up 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 of 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 

eis 
ages 

697 

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 mouth a nice aquamarine Ill stick him for one 
and a gold bracelet I dont like my foot so much still [ 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 well 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 ro 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 | 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 Jll 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 10 
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 | had to take it off asking me questions 
is it permitted to inquire the shape of my bedroom so I let him keep 
it as if I forgot it to think of me when | 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 qn 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 stending right against the 

698 

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 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 | 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 a letter every 
morning 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 

699 

was the 8" 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 [ 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 1/4 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 | 
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 27 th 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 he wouldnt believe 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 rst class for me he might want to do it 

700 

in the train by tipping the guard well O I suppose there'll 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 
1 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 bad the map of it 
all and Poldy not Irish enough was it him managed it this time 1 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 Griffith 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 politics after the war that Pretoria and Ladysmith and Bloemfontein 
where Gardner Lieut Stanley G 8th Bn 2nd East Lancs Regt 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 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 Jove 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 roth 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 

7O1 

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 around 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 welloff 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 stop press 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 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 itselfas a great compliment to be noticed the 
way the world is divided in any case if its going to go on [ 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 

402 

second pair of silkette stockings is laddered after one days wear I could have 
brought them back to Lewers this morning and kick 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 15/6 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 O Rourkes 
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 | must do a few breathing exercises 
I wonder is that antifat any good might overdo it 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 Il know by the bottle 
anyway if not I suppose Ill 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 handerchiefs about 6/- in all sure you cant 
get on in this world without style all going in food and rent when J 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 atall 
Ill 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 

703 
to look across see her combing it as if she loved it and was full of it pity 1 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 around 
her and the prince or 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 —- eas if any fool wouldnt know what that meant I hate that pretending of 
all things with the 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 50 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 [ 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 cantstir 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 

704 
Burns as [ said and not Lees it was just like the shop itself rummage sale 4 
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 wedding cake 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 shop girl 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 whats she 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 thema 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 III 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 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 the nymphs used they go about like 
that I asked him 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 

705 
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 or if it was 1 of the 7 wonders of the world O and the stink of those 
rotten places the night coming home with 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 1 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 | wonder theyre not afraid going about of getting a kick 
or a bang of something there 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 n® 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 eyerything I declare somebody 
ought to put him in the budget if I only could remember the one 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 | had to hug him after O Lord 
I wanted to shout out all sorts of things fuck or shit or anything atall only not 
to look ugly or those lines ftom 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 

4) 

706 

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 
frseeeeeceefronnnng 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 sweet sonnnng 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 around hes getting very careless and threw the 
rest of them up in the W CIll 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 f bundled out of 
the hall making the place hotter than it is the rain was lovely 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 mosquito nets 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 what 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 in old Madrid or Waiting 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 yes affly 
xxx xx 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 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 

707 
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 J then the night of the storm slept in her bed she had her arms 
round me then we were fighting in the morning with lhe 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 | 
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 
recognized myself the change 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 shopifting 
anything she could cloth and stuff and yards of it this blanket is too heavy on 
me thats better I havent even one decent nightdress this thing gets all rolled 
up 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 come 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 

708 

with their high heads rocking and the swell of the 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 of 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 codsul that was there from 
before the flood dressed up poor man and he in mourning for the son then the 
same old 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 £ supposed 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 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 

fies, 

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 whatever 
possessed her to write 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 good humour well now Miss 
Tweedy or Miss Gillespie theres the pyannyer that was a solid silver coffee 
service he had too on the mahogany sideboard then dying so far away | 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 pneumonia well 
I didnt know her so well as all that she was Floeys friend more than mine 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 likesme 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! told him he could write 
what he liked yours ever Hugh Boylan in Old Madrid silly women believe love is 
sighing Iam dying stillifhe wrote it ] suppose thered be some truth in it true or noit 
fills up your whole day and life always something to think about every moment 
and see it all around 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 precipit precipitancy 
with equal candour the greatest earthly happiness answer to a gentlemans 
proposal affirmatively my goodness theres nothing else its all very fine for them 

Jie 

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 100 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 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 fun to the son of a Spanish nobleman named Don 
Miguel de la Flora and he believed 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 Blackwater 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 féllow 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 

711 

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 at the front to encourage him 
as much as | 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 !own 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 
let him he was awfully put out first for fear your 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 yes 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 
get fat enough up and then theyre done with you in a way till the next time 
yes because theres a wonderful feeling there all the time so tender 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 I had a skirt opening up the side I tortured the life out of him first 
tickling him I loved rousing that dog in the hotel rrrsssst awokwokawok his 
eyes shut and a bird flying below us he was shy all the same I liked him like 
that morning 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 around 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 
matried hed do it to me and I promised him yes faithfully Id let him block 

712 

me now flying perhaps hes dead or killed or a ‘aptain 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 recognize 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 finrom 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 peaked 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 tho ught 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 Willis road to Europe 
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 

713 

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 
T kept the handerchief 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 must have been pure 16 carat gold because it was very heavy I 
can see his face clean shaven Frseeeeeeceeeeeeeeeeceefrong 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 ssooooooong Ill let that out full 
when I get in front of the footlights again Kathleen Kearney and her Jot 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 homenade 
beauties soldiers daughter am J ay and whose are you bootmakers and publicasn 
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 15 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 

7314 

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 sidep iano quietly sweeeee theres 
that train far away pianissimo eeeeeeee 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 myselt 
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 | used to love myself then stripped 
at the washstand dabbing and creaming only when it came to the chamber 
performance | put out the light too so then there were 2 of us Goodbye to 
my sleep for this night anyhow | 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 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 
1 wonder has she fleas shes as bad as a woman always licking and lecking but 
[ 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 

719 

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 |b 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 chopsand 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 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 [ 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 boatmen 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 to pull the 
right reins now pull the left and the tide all swamping in floods in through 
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 

716 

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 toid father he was going to do and me but 
Isaw 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 Lloyd’s 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 
[bolted all the doors and windows to make sure but its worse again being locked 
up like ina 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 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 | putthe 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 it 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 

717 

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 and helping her into her coat but if there was anything wrong with her 
its meshed tell not him he cant say I pretend things can he Im too honest as a 
matter of fact 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 [ 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 in 
theatres in the crush in the dark theyre always trying to wiggle up to you that 
fellow in the pit at 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 stylish dressed ladies outside Switzers 
window at the same little game I recognised him on the moment the face and 
everything but he didnt remember me 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 

718 

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 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 always making love to my things too the few old rags 
J have wanting to put her hair up at 15 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 Flemming 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 { knew there was something and opened the 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 

ciliee ae ce ee | eee 

719 
anybody saw him that knew us wonder he didnt tear a big hole in his grand 
funeral trousers as ir 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 Ill have some peace I want to get upa 
minute ifIm let wait O Jesus wait yes that thing has come on me yes now wouldnt 
that afflicty ou 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 sou! 
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 tim ewe 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 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 [ 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 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 

720 
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 Ill 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 ona lovely wcman 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 1 Whit 
Monday yes its only about 3 weeks | ought to goto the doctor only it would be like 
before [ 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 compriment 
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] suppose I always used to know by Millys when she wasa child 
whether she had worms or not still all the same paying him for that how much 

q2t 

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 or 
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 10 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 { 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 Ist 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 [ 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 

pin his wifes mouth damn this stinking thing anyway wheres this those napkins 

46 

722 

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 form 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 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 

733 

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 | 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 M Coys 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 
Ican 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 

724 

Bailey wont you please come home her widows weeds wont improve her 
appearance theyre awfully becoming though if youre goodloking 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 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 he always 
sang it not like Bartell D’Arcy 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 1 wonder he 
didnt make him a present of it altogether and me too after all why not I saw 
him driving down tothe 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 of course 
he insisted hed go into mourning for the cat [ 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 to of spades for a Journey by 
laud then there wasa 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 

725 

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 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 stuck up 
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 patent 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 1 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 j ourself 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 
bathing place 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 looked with his boyish face I would 
too in 1/2 a minute even ifsome 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 1 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 IIl throw them the 

726 

1st thing in the morning till I see if the wishcard come 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 nnder 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 upon 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 corner 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 
Ttell you for 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 

727 

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 1 
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 asto 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 to 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 whenI 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 haye 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] 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 

728 

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 2 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 ifthey hadntalla 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 rst death too it was we were never the 
same since O Im not going to think myself into the glooms about that any 
more [ 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 | wonder its like those 
names in Gibraltar Delapaz Delagracia they had the devils queer names there 
father Vial plana of Santa Maria that gave me the rosary Rosales y O’Reilly 
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 | 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 1am 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 | havent forgotten it all I 
thought I had only for the grammar a noun is the name of any person place 

729 

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 { 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 1 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 in the longing way then Ill throw 
him up his eggs and tea in the moustachecup she gave him to make his 
mouth bigger] 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 III start dressing myself to go out presto non son pit 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 fucked 

730° 

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 [ 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 in front of me serve him right its all his 
own fault if Iam 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 wouldn’t 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 III] tell him I want 
£ 1 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 Jet him do it off on me behind provided he doesnt 
smear all my good drawers O | suppose that cant be helped Ill do the indifferent 
I or 2 questions Ill know by the answers when hes like that he cant keep 
a thing back I know every turn in him III 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 IIl 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 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 

734 

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 Iwear shall I wear a white rose or those fairy 
cakes in Liptons | love the smell of a rich big shop at 7 1/2 da lb or the other 
ones with the cherries in them and the pinky sugar 11 d a couple of lbs of course a 
nice plant for the middle of the table Id get that cheaper in wait wheres this 
[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 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 

732 

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 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 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.