Ulysses
_(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
Higgins.)_ 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.)_
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 his 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, prognathic 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, then
all at once thrusts his lipless face through the fork of his thighs.)
Il vient! C’est moi! L’homme qui rit! L’homme primigène! (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 va plus! (The planets, buoyant balloons, sail swollen up
and away. He springs off into vacuum.)_
FLORRY: _(Sinking into torpor, crossing 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 possing 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, Dove Campbell, Abe Kirschner, do your coughing with your mouths
shut. Say, I 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. 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 becomes a 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.)_ Ahhkkk!
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 aint
saying nothing.
KITTY-KATE: I forgot myself. In a weak moment I erred and did what I
did on Constitution hill. I was confirmed by the bishop and enrolled in
the brown scapular. 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 star. 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: _(Incoherently.)_ Beer beef 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’s 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 carping accent.)_ Esthetics and cosmetics are
for the boudoir. I am out for truth. 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 Mananaun MacLir broods, chin on knees.
He rises slowly. A cold seawind blows from his druid mouth. 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 its two talons.)_
MANANAUN MACLIR: _(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, darkhidden Father! _(He smites with his bicycle pump the
crayfish in his left hand. On its cooperative dial glow the twelve
signs of the zodiac. He wails with the vehemence of the ocean.)_ Aum!
Baum! Pyjaum! I am the light of the homestead! I am the dreamery
creamery butter.
_(A skeleton judashand strangles the light. The green light wanes to
mauve. The gasjet wails whistling.)_
THE GASJET: Pooah! Pfuiiiiiii!
_(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_ to a 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 beautyspot of my
behind?
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. Lipoti Virag,
basilicogrammate, chutes rapidly down through the chimneyflue and
struts two steps to the left on gawky pink stilts. He is 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 is perched an
Egyptian pshent. Two quills project over his ears.)_
VIRAG: _(Heels together, bows.)_ My name is 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.
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 put on you
tomorrow what you can wear today. Parallax! _(With a nervous twitch of
his head.)_ Did you hear my brain go snap? Pollysyllabax!
BLOOM: _(An elbow resting in a hand, a forefinger against his cheek.)_
She seems sad.
VIRAG: _(Cynically, his weasel teeth bared yellow, draws down his left
eye with 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.