Ulysses
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 hat trick?
_(Bloom trickleaps to the curbstone and halts again. He brushes a
mudflake from his cheek with a parcelled hand.)_
BLOOM: No thoroughfare. Close shave that but cured the stitch. Must
take up Sandow’s exercises 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 track 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 be the fellow balked
me this morning with that horsey woman. Same style of beauty. Quick of
him all the 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, señorita 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 leaps right, sackragman right._)
BLOOM: I beg.
(_He swerves, sidles, stepaside, slips past and on._)
BLOOM: Keep to the right, right, right. If there is a signpost 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 darkest 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.)_
BLOOM: O.
_(Shocked, on weak hams, he halts. Tommy and Jacky vanish there, there.
Bloom pats with parcelled hands watch, fobpocket, bookpocket,
pursepoke, sweets of sin, potato soap.)_
BLOOM: Beware of pickpockets. Old thieves’ dodge. Collide. Then snatch
your purse.
_(The retriever approaches sniffing, 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 smokingcap 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 grandson 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.)_ I 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 call them running chaps?
BLOOM: _(In youth’s smart blue Oxford suit with white vestslips,
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 stiffening mud.)_ Harriers, father. Only that
once.
RUDOLPH: Once! Mud head to foot. Cut your hand open. Lockjaw. They make
you kaputt, 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, widow Twankey’s
crinoline and bustle, blouse with muttonleg sleeves buttoned behind,
grey mittens and cameo brooch, her plaited hair 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
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, excuse, 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! Femininum!
_(The camel, lifting a foreleg, plucks from a tree a large mango fruit,
offers it to his mistress, blinking, in his 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.)_ O Poldy,
Poldy, you are a poor old stick in the mud! Go and see life. See the
wide world.
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?_
_(In 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.)_
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 Macdowell 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 glides away crookedly. Mrs Breen in man’s frieze overcoat with
loose 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 of me?
Don’t give me away. Walls have ears. 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! _(Slily.)_
Account for yourself this very sminute or woe betide you!
BLOOM: _(Looks behind.)_ She often said she’d like to visit. Slumming.
The exotic, you see. Negro servants in livery too 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 negroid 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.)_
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 a square party, a mixed
marriage mingling of our different little conjugials. You know I had a
soft corner for you. _(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.