Ulysses
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.)_
THE NAMELESS ONE: Bareback riding. Weight for age. Gob, he organised
her.
THE JURORS: _(All their heads turned to his voice.)_ 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 is dead and therein fail not
at your peril or may the Lord have mercy on your soul. Remove him. _(A
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 chimpanzee.
_(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.
BLOOM: No, no. Pig’s feet. I was at a funeral.
FIRST WATCH: _(Draws his truncheon.)_ Liar!
_(The beagle lifts his snout, showing the grey scorbutic face of Paddy
Dignam. He has gnawed all. He exhales a putrid carcasefed breath. He
grows to human size and shape. His dachshund coat becomes a brown
mortuary habit. His green eye flashes bloodshot. Half of one ear, all
the nose and both thumbs are ghouleaten.)_
PADDY DIGNAM: _(In a hollow voice.)_ It is true. It was my funeral.
Doctor Finucane pronounced life extinct when I succumbed to the disease
from natural causes.
_(He lifts his mutilated ashen face moonwards and bays lugubriously.)_
BLOOM: _(In triumph.)_ You hear?
PADDY DIGNAM: Bloom, I am Paddy Dignam’s spirit. List, list, O list!
BLOOM: The voice is the voice of Esau.
SECOND WATCH: _(Blesses himself.)_ How is that possible?
FIRST WATCH: It is not in the penny catechism.
PADDY DIGNAM: By metempsychosis. Spooks.
A VOICE: O rocks.
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 and 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. _Tom
Rochford, robinredbreasted, in cap and breeches, jumps from his
twocolumned machine.)_
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 through the sump. Kisses chirp amid the
rifts of fog. A piano sounds. He stands before a lighted 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! Yummyyum, 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?
BLOOM: Not I!
ZOE: You both in black. Has little mousey any tickles tonight?
_(His skin, alert, feels her fingertips approach. A hand glides over
his 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.)_ I 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. I’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.
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 Ralegh
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.)_
LATE LORD MAYOR HARRINGTON: _(In 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.