Ulysses
_(More genially.)_ Well then, permit me to draw your attention to item
number three. There is plenty of her visible to the naked eye. Observe
the mass of oxygenated vegetable matter on her skull. What ho, she
bumps! The ugly duckling of the party, longcasted and deep in keel.
BLOOM: _(Regretfully.)_ When you come out without your gun.
VIRAG: We can do you all brands, mild, medium and strong. Pay your
money, take your choice. How happy could you be with either...
BLOOM: With...?
VIRAG: _(His tongue upcurling.)_ Lyum! Look. Her beam is broad. She is
coated with quite a considerable layer of fat. Obviously mammal in
weight of bosom you remark that she has in front well to the fore two
protuberances of very respectable dimensions, inclined to fall in the
noonday soupplate, while on her rere lower down are two additional
protuberances, suggestive of potent rectum and tumescent for palpation,
which leave nothing to be desired save compactness. Such fleshy parts
are the product of careful nurture. When coopfattened their livers
reach an elephantine size. Pellets of new bread with fennygreek and
gumbenjamin swamped down by potions of green tea endow them during
their brief existence with natural pincushions of quite colossal
blubber. That suits your book, eh? Fleshhotpots of Egypt to hanker
after. Wallow in it. Lycopodium. _(His throat twitches.)_ Slapbang!
There he goes again.
BLOOM: The stye I dislike.
VIRAG: _(Arches his eyebrows.)_ Contact with a goldring, they say.
_Argumentum ad feminam_, as we said in old Rome and ancient Greece in
the consulship of Diplodocus and Ichthyosauros. For the rest Eve’s
sovereign remedy. Not for sale. Hire only. Huguenot. _(He twitches.)_
It is a funny sound. _(He coughs encouragingly.)_ But possibly it is
only a wart. I presume you shall have remembered what I will have
taught you on that head? Wheatenmeal with honey and nutmeg.
BLOOM: _(Reflecting.)_ Wheatenmeal with lycopodium and syllabax. This
searching ordeal. It has been an unusually fatiguing day, a chapter of
accidents. Wait. I mean, wartsblood spreads warts, you said...
VIRAG: _(Severely, his nose hardhumped, his side eye winking.)_ Stop
twirling your thumbs and have a good old thunk. See, you have
forgotten. Exercise your mnemotechnic. _La causa è santa_. Tara. Tara.
_(Aside.)_ He will surely remember.
BLOOM: Rosemary also did I understand you to say or willpower over
parasitic tissues. Then nay no I have an inkling. The touch of a
deadhand cures. Mnemo?
VIRAG: _(Excitedly.)_ I say so. I say so. E’en so. Technic. _(He taps
his parchmentroll energetically.)_ This book tells you how to act with
all descriptive particulars. Consult index for agitated fear of
aconite, melancholy of muriatic, priapic pulsatilla. Virag is going to
talk about amputation. Our old friend caustic. They must be starved.
Snip off with horsehair under the denned neck. But, to change the venue
to the Bulgar and the Basque, have you made up your mind whether you
like or dislike women in male habiliments? _(With a dry snigger.)_ You
intended to devote an entire year to the study of the religious problem
and the summer months of 1886 to square the circle and win that
million. Pomegranate! From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step.
Pyjamas, let us say? Or stockingette gussetted knickers, closed? Or,
put we the case, those complicated combinations, camiknickers? _(He
crows derisively.)_ Keekeereekee!
_(Bloom surveys uncertainly the three whores then gazes at the veiled
mauve light, hearing the everflying moth.)_
BLOOM: I wanted then to have now concluded. Nightdress was never. Hence
this. But tomorrow is a new day will be. Past was is today. What now is
will then morrow as now was be past yester.
VIRAG: _(Prompts in a pig’s whisper.)_ Insects of the day spend their
brief existence in reiterated coition, lured by the smell of the
inferiorly pulchritudinous female possessing extendified pudendal nerve
in dorsal region. Pretty Poll! _(His yellow parrotbeak gabbles
nasally.)_ They had a proverb in the Carpathians in or about the year
five thousand five hundred and fifty of our era. One tablespoonful of
honey will attract friend Bruin more than half a dozen barrels of first
choice malt vinegar. Bear’s buzz bothers bees. But of this apart. At
another time we may resume. We were very pleased, we others. _(He
coughs and, bending his brow, rubs his nose thoughtfully with a
scooping hand.)_ You shall find that these night insects follow the
light. An illusion for remember their complex unadjustable eye. For all
these knotty points see the seventeenth book of my Fundamentals of
Sexology or the Love Passion which Doctor L. B. says is the book
sensation of the year. Some, to example, there are again whose
movements are automatic. Perceive. That is his appropriate sun.
Nightbird nightsun nighttown. Chase me, Charley! _(He blows into
Bloom’s ear.)_ Buzz!
BLOOM: Bee or bluebottle too other day butting shadow on wall dazed
self then me wandered dazed down shirt good job I...
VIRAG: _(His face impassive, laughs in a rich feminine key.)_ Splendid!
Spanish fly in his fly or mustard plaster on his dibble. _(He gobbles
gluttonously with turkey wattles.)_ Bubbly jock! Bubbly jock! Where are
we? Open Sesame! Cometh forth! _(He unrolls his parchment rapidly and
reads, his glowworm’s nose running backwards over the letters which he
claws.)_ Stay, good friend. I bring thee thy answer. Redbank oysters
will shortly be upon us. I’m the best o’cook. Those succulent bivalves
may help us and the truffles of Perigord, tubers dislodged through
mister omnivorous porker, were unsurpassed in cases of nervous debility
or viragitis. Though they stink yet they sting. _(He wags his head with
cackling raillery.)_ Jocular. With my eyeglass in my ocular. _(He
sneezes.)_ Amen!
BLOOM: _(Absently.)_ Ocularly woman’s bivalve case is worse. Always
open sesame. The cloven sex. Why they fear vermin, creeping things. Yet
Eve and the serpent contradicts. Not a historical fact. Obvious analogy
to my idea. Serpents too are gluttons for woman’s milk. Wind their way
through miles of omnivorous forest to sucksucculent her breast dry.
Like those bubblyjocular Roman matrons one reads of in Elephantuliasis.
VIRAG: _(His mouth projected in hard wrinkles, eyes stonily forlornly
closed, psalms in outlandish monotone.)_ That the cows with their those
distended udders that they have been the the known...
BLOOM: I am going to scream. I beg your pardon. Ah? So. _(He repeats.)_
Spontaneously to seek out the saurian’s lair in order to entrust their
teats to his avid suction. Ant milks aphis. _(Profoundly.)_ Instinct
rules the world. In life. In death.
VIRAG: _(Head askew, arches his back and hunched wingshoulders, peers
at the moth out of blear bulged eyes, points a horning claw and
cries.)_ Who’s moth moth? Who’s dear Gerald? Dear Ger, that you? O
dear, he is Gerald. O, I much fear he shall be most badly burned. Will
some pleashe pershon not now impediment so catastrophics mit agitation
of firstclass tablenumpkin? _(He mews.)_ Puss puss puss puss! _(He
sighs, draws back and stares sideways down with dropping underjaw.)_
Well, well. He doth rest anon. (He snaps his jaws suddenly on the air.)
THE MOTH:
I’m a tiny tiny thing
Ever flying in the spring
Round and round a ringaring.
Long ago I was a king
Now I do this kind of thing
On the wing, on the wing!
Bing!
_(He rushes against the mauve shade, flapping noisily.)_ Pretty pretty
pretty pretty pretty pretty petticoats.
_(From left upper entrance with two gliding steps Henry Flower comes
forward to left front centre. He wears a dark mantle and drooping
plumed sombrero. He carries a silverstringed inlaid dulcimer and a
longstemmed bamboo Jacob’s pipe, its clay bowl fashioned as a female
head. He wears dark velvet hose and silverbuckled pumps. He has the
romantic Saviour’s face with flowing locks, thin beard and moustache.
His spindlelegs and sparrow feet are those of the tenor Mario, prince
of Candia. He settles down his goffered ruffs and moistens his lips
with a passage of his amorous tongue.)_
HENRY: _(In a low dulcet voice, touching the strings of his guitar.)_
There is a flower that bloometh.
_(Virag truculent, his jowl set, stares at the lamp. Grave Bloom
regards Zoe’s neck. Henry gallant turns with pendant dewlap to the
piano.)_
STEPHEN: _(To himself.)_ Play with your eyes shut. Imitate pa. Filling
my belly with husks of swine. Too much of this. I will arise and go to
my. Expect this is the. Steve, thou art in a parlous way. Must visit
old Deasy or telegraph. Our interview of this morning has left on me a
deep impression. Though our ages. Will write fully tomorrow. I’m
partially drunk, by the way. _(He touches the keys again.)_ Minor chord
comes now. Yes. Not much however.
_(Almidano Artifoni holds out a batonroll of music with vigorous
moustachework.)_
ARTIFONI: _Ci rifletta. Lei rovina tutto._
FLORRY: Sing us something. Love’s old sweet song.
STEPHEN: No voice. I am a most finished artist. Lynch, did I show you
the letter about the lute?
FLORRY: _(Smirking.)_ The bird that can sing and won’t sing.
_(The Siamese twins, Philip Drunk and Philip Sober, two Oxford dons
with lawnmowers, appear in the window embrasure. Both are masked with
Matthew Arnold’s face.)_
PHILIP SOBER: Take a fool’s advice. All is not well. Work it out with
the buttend of a pencil, like a good young idiot. Three pounds twelve
you got, two notes, one sovereign, two crowns, if youth but knew.
Mooney’s en ville, Mooney’s sur mer, the Moira, Larchet’s, Holles
street hospital, Burke’s. Eh? I am watching you.
PHILIP DRUNK: _(Impatiently.)_ Ah, bosh, man. Go to hell! I paid my
way. If I could only find out about octaves. Reduplication of
personality. Who was it told me his name? _(His lawnmower begins to
purr.)_ Aha, yes. _Zoe mou sas agapo_. Have a notion I was here before.
When was it not Atkinson his card I have somewhere. Mac Somebody.
Unmack I have it. He told me about, hold on, Swinburne, was it, no?
FLORRY: And the song?
STEPHEN: Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.
FLORRY: Are you out of Maynooth? You’re like someone I knew once.
STEPHEN: Out of it now. _(To himself.)_ Clever.
PHILIP DRUNK AND PHILIP SOBER: _(Their lawnmowers purring with a
rigadoon of grasshalms.)_ Clever ever. Out of it out of it. By the bye
have you the book, the thing, the ashplant? Yes, there it, yes.
Cleverever outofitnow. Keep in condition. Do like us.
ZOE: There was a priest down here two nights ago to do his bit of
business with his coat buttoned up. You needn’t try to hide, I says to
him. I know you’ve a Roman collar.
VIRAG: Perfectly logical from his standpoint. Fall of man. _(Harshly,
his pupils waxing.)_ To hell with the pope! Nothing new under the sun.
I am the Virag who disclosed the Sex Secrets of Monks and Maidens. Why
I left the church of Rome. Read the Priest, the Woman and the
Confessional. Penrose. Flipperty Jippert. _(He wriggles.)_ Woman,
undoing with sweet pudor her belt of rushrope, offers her allmoist yoni
to man’s lingam. Short time after man presents woman with pieces of
jungle meat. Woman shows joy and covers herself with featherskins. Man
loves her yoni fiercely with big lingam, the stiff one. _(He cries.)
Coactus volui._ Then giddy woman will run about. Strong man grapses
woman’s wrist. Woman squeals, bites, spucks. Man, now fierce angry,
strikes woman’s fat yadgana. _(He chases his tail.)_ Piffpaff! Popo!
_(He stops, sneezes.)_ Pchp! _(He worries his butt.)_ Prrrrrht!
LYNCH: I hope you gave the good father a penance. Nine glorias for
shooting a bishop.
ZOE: _(Spouts walrus smoke through her nostrils.)_ He couldn’t get a