Ulysses
flat. It was a knockout clean and clever. Amid tense expectation the
Portobello bruiser was being counted out when Bennett’s second Ole
Pfotts Wettstein threw in the towel and the Santry boy was declared
victor to the frenzied cheers of the public who broke through the
ringropes and fairly mobbed him with delight.
—He knows which side his bread is buttered, says Alf. I hear he’s
running a concert tour now up in the north.
—He is, says Joe. Isn’t he?
—Who? says Bloom. Ah, yes. That’s quite true. Yes, a kind of summer
tour, you see. Just a holiday.
—Mrs B. is the bright particular star, isn’t she? says Joe.
—My wife? says Bloom. She’s singing, yes. I think it will be a success
too. He’s an excellent man to organise. Excellent.
Hoho begob says I to myself says I. That explains the milk in the
cocoanut and absence of hair on the animal’s chest. Blazes doing the
tootle on the flute. Concert tour. Dirty Dan the dodger’s son off
Island bridge that sold the same horses twice over to the government to
fight the Boers. Old Whatwhat. I called about the poor and water rate,
Mr Boylan. You what? The water rate, Mr Boylan. You whatwhat? That’s
the bucko that’ll organise her, take my tip. ’Twixt me and you
Caddareesh.
Pride of Calpe’s rocky mount, the ravenhaired daughter of Tweedy. There
grew she to peerless beauty where loquat and almond scent the air. The
gardens of Alameda knew her step: the garths of olives knew and bowed.
The chaste spouse of Leopold is she: Marion of the bountiful bosoms.
And lo, there entered one of the clan of the O’Molloy’s, a comely hero
of white face yet withal somewhat ruddy, his majesty’s counsel learned
in the law, and with him the prince and heir of the noble line of
Lambert.
—Hello, Ned.
—Hello, Alf.
—Hello, Jack.
—Hello, Joe.
—God save you, says the citizen.
—Save you kindly, says J. J. What’ll it be, Ned?
—Half one, says Ned.
So J. J. ordered the drinks.
—Were you round at the court? says Joe.
—Yes, says J. J. He’ll square that, Ned, says he.
—Hope so, says Ned.
Now what were those two at? J. J. getting him off the grand jury list
and the other give him a leg over the stile. With his name in Stubbs’s.
Playing cards, hobnobbing with flash toffs with a swank glass in their
eye, adrinking fizz and he half smothered in writs and garnishee
orders. Pawning his gold watch in Cummins of Francis street where
no-one would know him in the private office when I was there with
Pisser releasing his boots out of the pop. What’s your name, sir?
Dunne, says he. Ay, and done says I. Gob, he’ll come home by weeping
cross one of those days, I’m thinking.
—Did you see that bloody lunatic Breen round there? says Alf. U. p: up.
—Yes, says J. J. Looking for a private detective.
—Ay, says Ned. And he wanted right go wrong to address the court only
Corny Kelleher got round him telling him to get the handwriting
examined first.
—Ten thousand pounds, says Alf, laughing. God, I’d give anything to
hear him before a judge and jury.
—Was it you did it, Alf? says Joe. The truth, the whole truth and
nothing but the truth, so help you Jimmy Johnson.
—Me? says Alf. Don’t cast your nasturtiums on my character.
—Whatever statement you make, says Joe, will be taken down in evidence
against you.
—Of course an action would lie, says J. J. It implies that he is not
_compos mentis_. U. p: up.
_—Compos_ your eye! says Alf, laughing. Do you know that he’s balmy?
Look at his head. Do you know that some mornings he has to get his hat
on with a shoehorn.
—Yes, says J. J., but the truth of a libel is no defence to an
indictment for publishing it in the eyes of the law.
—Ha ha, Alf, says Joe.
—Still, says Bloom, on account of the poor woman, I mean his wife.
—Pity about her, says the citizen. Or any other woman marries a half
and half.
—How half and half? says Bloom. Do you mean he...
—Half and half I mean, says the citizen. A fellow that’s neither fish
nor flesh.
—Nor good red herring, says Joe.
—That what’s I mean, says the citizen. A pishogue, if you know what
that is.
Begob I saw there was trouble coming. And Bloom explaining he meant on
account of it being cruel for the wife having to go round after the old
stuttering fool. Cruelty to animals so it is to let that bloody
povertystricken Breen out on grass with his beard out tripping him,
bringing down the rain. And she with her nose cockahoop after she
married him because a cousin of his old fellow’s was pewopener to the
pope. Picture of him on the wall with his Smashall Sweeney’s
moustaches, the signior Brini from Summerhill, the eyetallyano, papal
Zouave to the Holy Father, has left the quay and gone to Moss street.
And who was he, tell us? A nobody, two pair back and passages, at seven
shillings a week, and he covered with all kinds of breastplates bidding
defiance to the world.
—And moreover, says J. J., a postcard is publication. It was held to be
sufficient evidence of malice in the testcase Sadgrove v. Hole. In my
opinion an action might lie.
Six and eightpence, please. Who wants your opinion? Let us drink our
pints in peace. Gob, we won’t be let even do that much itself.
—Well, good health, Jack, says Ned.
—Good health, Ned, says J. J.
—-There he is again, says Joe.
—Where? says Alf.
And begob there he was passing the door with his books under his oxter
and the wife beside him and Corny Kelleher with his wall eye looking in
as they went past, talking to him like a father, trying to sell him a
secondhand coffin.
—How did that Canada swindle case go off? says Joe.
—Remanded, says J. J.
One of the bottlenosed fraternity it was went by the name of James
Wought alias Saphiro alias Spark and Spiro, put an ad in the papers
saying he’d give a passage to Canada for twenty bob. What? Do you see
any green in the white of my eye? Course it was a bloody barney. What?
Swindled them all, skivvies and badhachs from the county Meath, ay, and
his own kidney too. J. J. was telling us there was an ancient Hebrew
Zaretsky or something weeping in the witnessbox with his hat on him,
swearing by the holy Moses he was stuck for two quid.
—Who tried the case? says Joe.
—Recorder, says Ned.
—Poor old sir Frederick, says Alf, you can cod him up to the two eyes.
—Heart as big as a lion, says Ned. Tell him a tale of woe about arrears
of rent and a sick wife and a squad of kids and, faith, he’ll dissolve
in tears on the bench.
—Ay, says Alf. Reuben J was bloody lucky he didn’t clap him in the dock
the other day for suing poor little Gumley that’s minding stones, for
the corporation there near Butt bridge.
And he starts taking off the old recorder letting on to cry:
—A most scandalous thing! This poor hardworking man! How many children?
Ten, did you say?
—Yes, your worship. And my wife has the typhoid.
—And the wife with typhoid fever! Scandalous! Leave the court
immediately, sir. No, sir, I’ll make no order for payment. How dare
you, sir, come up before me and ask me to make an order! A poor
hardworking industrious man! I dismiss the case.
And whereas on the sixteenth day of the month of the oxeyed goddess and
in the third week after the feastday of the Holy and Undivided Trinity,
the daughter of the skies, the virgin moon being then in her first
quarter, it came to pass that those learned judges repaired them to the
halls of law. There master Courtenay, sitting in his own chamber, gave
his rede and master Justice Andrews, sitting without a jury in the
probate court, weighed well and pondered the claim of the first
chargeant upon the property in the matter of the will propounded and
final testamentary disposition _in re_ the real and personal estate of
the late lamented Jacob Halliday, vintner, deceased, versus
Livingstone, an infant, of unsound mind, and another. And to the solemn
court of Green street there came sir Frederick the Falconer. And he sat
him there about the hour of five o’clock to administer the law of the
brehons at the commission for all that and those parts to be holden in
and for the county of the city of Dublin. And there sat with him the
high sinhedrim of the twelve tribes of Iar, for every tribe one man, of
the tribe of Patrick and of the tribe of Hugh and of the tribe of Owen
and of the tribe of Conn and of the tribe of Oscar and of the tribe of
Fergus and of the tribe of Finn and of the tribe of Dermot and of the
tribe of Cormac and of the tribe of Kevin and of the tribe of Caolte
and of the tribe of Ossian, there being in all twelve good men and
true. And he conjured them by Him who died on rood that they should
well and truly try and true deliverance make in the issue joined
between their sovereign lord the king and the prisoner at the bar and
true verdict give according to the evidence so help them God and kiss
the book. And they rose in their seats, those twelve of Iar, and they
swore by the name of Him Who is from everlasting that they would do His
rightwiseness. And straightway the minions of the law led forth from
their donjon keep one whom the sleuthhounds of justice had apprehended
in consequence of information received. And they shackled him hand and
foot and would take of him ne bail ne mainprise but preferred a charge
against him for he was a malefactor.
—Those are nice things, says the citizen, coming over here to Ireland
filling the country with bugs.
So Bloom lets on he heard nothing and he starts talking with Joe,
telling him he needn’t trouble about that little matter till the first
but if he would just say a word to Mr Crawford. And so Joe swore high
and holy by this and by that he’d do the devil and all.
—Because, you see, says Bloom, for an advertisement you must have
repetition. That’s the whole secret.
—Rely on me, says Joe.
—Swindling the peasants, says the citizen, and the poor of Ireland. We
want no more strangers in our house.
—O, I’m sure that will be all right, Hynes, says Bloom. It’s just that
Keyes, you see.
—Consider that done, says Joe.
—Very kind of you, says Bloom.
—The strangers, says the citizen. Our own fault. We let them come in.
We brought them in. The adulteress and her paramour brought the Saxon
robbers here.
—Decree _nisi,_ says J. J.
And Bloom letting on to be awfully deeply interested in nothing, a
spider’s web in the corner behind the barrel, and the citizen scowling
after him and the old dog at his feet looking up to know who to bite
and when.
—A dishonoured wife, says the citizen, that’s what’s the cause of all
our misfortunes.
—And here she is, says Alf, that was giggling over the _Police Gazette_
with Terry on the counter, in all her warpaint.
—Give us a squint at her, says I.
And what was it only one of the smutty yankee pictures Terry borrows
off of Corny Kelleher. Secrets for enlarging your private parts.
Misconduct of society belle. Norman W. Tupper, wealthy Chicago
contractor, finds pretty but faithless wife in lap of officer Taylor.
Belle in her bloomers misconducting herself, and her fancyman feeling
for her tickles and Norman W. Tupper bouncing in with his peashooter
just in time to be late after she doing the trick of the loop with
officer Taylor.
—O jakers, Jenny, says Joe, how short your shirt is!
—There’s hair, Joe, says I. Get a queer old tailend of corned beef off
of that one, what?
So anyhow in came John Wyse Nolan and Lenehan with him with a face on
him as long as a late breakfast.
—Well, says the citizen, what’s the latest from the scene of action?
What did those tinkers in the city hall at their caucus meeting decide
about the Irish language?
O’Nolan, clad in shining armour, low bending made obeisance to the
puissant and high and mighty chief of all Erin and did him to wit of