Ulysses
Golly, whatten tunket’s yon guy in the mackintosh? Dusty Rhodes. Peep
at his wearables. By mighty! What’s he got? Jubilee mutton. Bovril, by
James. Wants it real bad. D’ye ken bare socks? Seedy cuss in the
Richmond? Rawthere! Thought he had a deposit of lead in his penis.
Trumpery insanity. Bartle the Bread we calls him. That, sir, was once a
prosperous cit. Man all tattered and torn that married a maiden all
forlorn. Slung her hook, she did. Here see lost love. Walking
Mackintosh of lonely canyon. Tuck and turn in. Schedule time. Nix for
the hornies. Pardon? Seen him today at a runefal? Chum o’ yourn passed
in his checks? Ludamassy! Pore piccaninnies! Thou’ll no be telling me
thot, Pold veg! Did ums blubble bigsplash crytears cos fren Padney was
took off in black bag? Of all de darkies Massa Pat was verra best. I
never see the like since I was born. _Tiens, tiens_, but it is well
sad, that, my faith, yes. O, get, rev on a gradient one in nine. Live
axle drives are souped. Lay you two to one Jenatzy licks him ruddy well
hollow. Jappies? High angle fire, inyah! Sunk by war specials. Be worse
for him, says he, nor any Rooshian. Time all. There’s eleven of them.
Get ye gone. Forward, woozy wobblers! Night. Night. May Allah the
Excellent One your soul this night ever tremendously conserve.
Your attention! We’re nae tha fou. The Leith police dismisseth us. The
least tholice. Ware hawks for the chap puking. Unwell in his abominable
regions. Yooka. Night. Mona, my true love. Yook. Mona, my own love.
Ook.
Hark! Shut your obstropolos. Pflaap! Pflaap! Blaze on. There she goes.
Brigade! Bout ship. Mount street way. Cut up! Pflaap! Tally ho. You not
come? Run, skelter, race. Pflaaaap!
Lynch! Hey? Sign on long o’ me. Denzille lane this way. Change here for
Bawdyhouse. We two, she said, will seek the kips where shady Mary is.
Righto, any old time. _Laetabuntur in cubilibus suis_. You coming long?
Whisper, who the sooty hell’s the johnny in the black duds? Hush!
Sinned against the light and even now that day is at hand when he shall
come to judge the world by fire. Pflaap! _Ut implerentur scripturae_.
Strike up a ballad. Then outspake medical Dick to his comrade medical
Davy. Christicle, who’s this excrement yellow gospeller on the Merrion
hall? Elijah is coming! Washed in the blood of the Lamb. Come on you
winefizzling, ginsizzling, booseguzzling existences! Come on, you
dog-gone, bullnecked, beetlebrowed, hogjowled, peanutbrained,
weaseleyed fourflushers, false alarms and excess baggage! Come on, you
triple extract of infamy! Alexander J Christ Dowie, that’s my name,
that’s yanked to glory most half this planet from Frisco beach to
Vladivostok. The Deity aint no nickel dime bumshow. I put it to you
that He’s on the square and a corking fine business proposition. He’s
the grandest thing yet and don’t you forget it. Shout salvation in King
Jesus. You’ll need to rise precious early, you sinner there, if you
want to diddle the Almighty God. Pflaaaap! Not half. He’s got a
coughmixture with a punch in it for you, my friend, in his back pocket.
Just you try it on.
[ 15 ]
_(The Mabbot street entrance of nighttown, before which stretches an
uncobbled tramsiding set with skeleton tracks, red and green
will-o’-the-wisps and danger signals. Rows of grimy houses with gaping
doors. Rare lamps with faint rainbow fans. Round Rabaiotti’s halted ice
gondola stunted men and women squabble. They grab wafers between which
are wedged lumps of coral and copper snow. Sucking, they scatter
slowly. Children. The swancomb of the gondola, highreared, forges on
through the murk, white and blue under a lighthouse. Whistles call and
answer.)_
THE CALLS: Wait, my love, and I’ll be with you.
THE ANSWERS: Round behind the stable.
_(A deafmute idiot with goggle eyes, his shapeless mouth dribbling,
jerks past, shaken in Saint Vitus’ dance. A chain of children ’s hands
imprisons him.)_
THE CHILDREN: Kithogue! Salute!
THE IDIOT: _(Lifts a palsied left arm and gurgles.)_ Grhahute!
THE CHILDREN: Where’s the great light?
THE IDIOT: _(Gobbling.)_ Ghaghahest.
_(They release him. He jerks on. A pigmy woman swings on a rope slung
between two railings, counting. A form sprawled against a dustbin and
muffled by its arm and hat snores, groans, grinding growling teeth, and
snores again. On a step a gnome totting among a rubbishtip crouches to
shoulder a sack of rags and bones. A crone standing by with a smoky
oillamp rams her last bottle in the maw of his sack. He heaves his
booty, tugs askew his peaked cap and hobbles off mutely. The crone
makes back for her lair, swaying her lamp. A bandy child, asquat on the
doorstep with a paper shuttlecock, crawls sidling after her in spurts,
clutches her skirt, scrambles up. A drunken navvy grips with both hands
the railings of an area, lurching heavily. At a corner two night watch
in shouldercapes, their hands upon their staffholsters, loom tall. A
plate crashes: a woman screams: a child wails. Oaths of a man roar,
mutter, cease. Figures wander, lurk, peer from warrens. In a room lit
by a candle stuck in a bottleneck a slut combs out the tatts from the
hair of a scrofulous child. Cissy Caffrey’s voice, still young, sings
shrill from a lane.)_
CISSY CAFFREY:
I gave it to Molly
Because she was jolly,
The leg of the duck,
The leg of the duck.
_(Private Carr and Private Compton, swaggersticks tight in their
oxters, as they march unsteadily rightaboutface and burst together from
their mouths a volleyed fart. Laughter of men from the lane. A hoarse
virago retorts.)_
THE VIRAGO: Signs on you, hairy arse. More power the Cavan girl.
CISSY CAFFREY: More luck to me. Cavan, Cootehill and Belturbet. _(She
sings.)_
I gave it to Nelly
To stick in her belly,
The leg of the duck,
The leg of the duck.
_(Private Carr and Private Compton turn and counterretort, their tunics
bloodbright in a lampglow, black sockets of caps on their blond cropped
polls. Stephen Dedalus and Lynch pass through the crowd close to the
redcoats.)_
PRIVATE COMPTON: _(Jerks his finger.)_ Way for the parson.
PRIVATE CARR: _(Turns and calls.)_ What ho, parson!
CISSY CAFFREY: _(Her voice soaring higher.)_
She has it, she got it,
Wherever she put it,
The leg of the duck.
_(Stephen, flourishing the ashplant in his left hand, chants with joy
the_ introit _for paschal time. Lynch, his jockeycap low on his brow,
attends him, a sneer of discontent wrinkling his face.)_
STEPHEN: _Vidi aquam egredientem de templo a latere dextro. Alleluia_.
_(The famished snaggletusks of an elderly bawd protrude from a
doorway.)_
THE BAWD: _(Her voice whispering huskily.)_ Sst! Come here till I tell
you. Maidenhead inside. Sst!
STEPHEN: _(Altius aliquantulum.) Et omnes ad quos pervenit aqua ista_.
THE BAWD: _(Spits in their trail her jet of venom.)_ Trinity medicals.
Fallopian tube. All prick and no pence.
_(Edy Boardman, sniffling, crouched with Bertha Supple, draws her shawl
across her nostrils.)_
EDY BOARDMAN: _(Bickering.)_ And says the one: I seen you up Faithful
place with your squarepusher, the greaser off the railway, in his
cometobed hat. Did you, says I. That’s not for you to say, says I. You
never seen me in the mantrap with a married highlander, says I. The
likes of her! Stag that one is! Stubborn as a mule! And her walking
with two fellows the one time, Kilbride, the enginedriver, and
lancecorporal Oliphant.
STEPHEN: _(Triumphaliter.) Salvi facti sunt._
_(He flourishes his ashplant, shivering the lamp image, shattering
light over the world. A liver and white spaniel on the prowl slinks
after him, growling. Lynch scares it with a kick.)_
LYNCH: So that?
STEPHEN: (_Looks behind_.) So that gesture, not music not odour, would
be a universal language, the gift of tongues rendering visible not the
lay sense but the first entelechy, the structural rhythm.
LYNCH: Pornosophical philotheology. Metaphysics in Mecklenburgh street!
STEPHEN: We have shrewridden Shakespeare and henpecked Socrates. Even
the allwisest Stagyrite was bitted, bridled and mounted by a light of
love.
LYNCH: Ba!
STEPHEN: Anyway, who wants two gestures to illustrate a loaf and a jug?
This movement illustrates the loaf and jug of bread or wine in Omar.
Hold my stick.
LYNCH: Damn your yellow stick. Where are we going?
STEPHEN: Lecherous lynx, to _la belle dame sans merci,_ Georgina
Johnson, _ad deam qui laetificat iuventutem meam._
_(Stephen thrusts the ashplant on him and slowly holds out his hands,
his head going back till both hands are a span from his breast, down
turned, in planes intersecting, the fingers about to part, the left
being higher.)_
LYNCH: Which is the jug of bread? It skills not. That or the
customhouse. Illustrate thou. Here take your crutch and walk.
_(They pass. Tommy Caffrey scrambles to a gaslamp and, clasping, climbs
in spasms. From the top spur he slides down. Jacky Caffrey clasps to
climb. The navvy lurches against the lamp. The twins scuttle off in the
dark. The navvy, swaying, presses a forefinger against a wing of his
nose and ejects from the farther nostril a long liquid jet of snot.
Shouldering the lamp he staggers away through the crowd with his
flaring cresset._
_Snakes of river fog creep slowly. From drains, clefts, cesspools,
middens arise on all sides stagnant fumes. A glow leaps in the south
beyond the seaward reaches of the river. The navvy, staggering forward,
cleaves the crowd and lurches towards the tramsiding. On the farther
side under the railway bridge Bloom appears, flushed, panting, cramming
bread and chocolate into a sidepocket. From Gillen’s hairdresser’s
window a composite portrait shows him gallant Nelson’s image. A concave
mirror at the side presents to him lovelorn longlost lugubru
Booloohoom. Grave Gladstone sees him level, Bloom for Bloom. He passes,
struck by the stare of truculent Wellington, but in the convex mirror
grin unstruck the bonham eyes and fatchuck cheekchops of Jollypoldy the
rixdix doldy._
_At Antonio Rabaiotti’s door Bloom halts, sweated under the bright
arclamp. He disappears. In a moment he reappears and hurries on.)_
BLOOM: Fish and taters. N. g. Ah!
_(He disappears into Olhausen’s, the porkbutcher’s, under the
downcoming rollshutter. A few moments later he emerges from under the
shutter, puffing Poldy, blowing Bloohoom. In each hand he holds a
parcel, one containing a lukewarm pig’s crubeen, the other a cold
sheep’s trotter, sprinkled with wholepepper. He gasps, standing
upright. Then bending to one side he presses a parcel against his ribs
and groans.)_
BLOOM: Stitch in my side. Why did I run?
_(He takes breath with care and goes forward slowly towards the lampset
siding. The glow leaps again.)_
BLOOM: What is that? A flasher? Searchlight.
_(He stands at Cormack’s corner, watching.)_
BLOOM: _Aurora borealis_ or a steel foundry? Ah, the brigade, of
course. South side anyhow. Big blaze. Might be his house. Beggar’s
bush. We’re safe. _(He hums cheerfully.)_ London’s burning, London’s
burning! On fire, on fire! (_He catches sight of the navvy lurching
through the crowd at the farther side of Talbot street._) I’ll miss
him. Run. Quick. Better cross here.
_(He darts to cross the road. Urchins shout.)_
THE URCHINS: Mind out, mister!
(_Two cyclists, with lighted paper lanterns aswing, swim by him,
grazing him, their bells rattling._)
THE BELLS: Haltyaltyaltyall.
BLOOM: _(Halts erect, stung by a spasm.)_ Ow!
_(He looks round, darts forward suddenly. Through rising fog a dragon
sandstrewer, travelling at caution, slews heavily down upon him, its
huge red headlight winking, its trolley hissing on the wire. The
motorman bangs his footgong.)_