Ulysses
BLOOM: _(Docile, gurgles.)_ I rererepugnosed in rerererepugnant...
BELLO: _(Imperiously.)_ O, get out, you skunk! Hold your tongue! Speak
when you’re spoken to.
BLOOM: _(Bows.)_ Master! Mistress! Mantamer!
_(He lifts his arms. His bangle bracelets fall.)_
BELLO: _(Satirically.)_ By day you will souse and bat our smelling
underclothes also when we ladies are unwell, and swab out our latrines
with dress pinned up and a dishclout tied to your tail. Won’t that be
nice? _(He places a ruby ring on her finger.)_ And there now! With this
ring I thee own. Say, thank you, mistress.
BLOOM: Thank you, mistress.
BELLO: You will make the beds, get my tub ready, empty the pisspots in
the different rooms, including old Mrs Keogh’s the cook’s, a sandy one.
Ay, and rinse the seven of them well, mind, or lap it up like
champagne. Drink me piping hot. Hop! You will dance attendance or I’ll
lecture you on your misdeeds, Miss Ruby, and spank your bare bot right
well, miss, with the hairbrush. You’ll be taught the error of your
ways. At night your wellcreamed braceletted hands will wear
fortythreebutton gloves newpowdered with talc and having delicately
scented fingertips. For such favours knights of old laid down their
lives. _(He chuckles.)_ My boys will be no end charmed to see you so
ladylike, the colonel, above all, when they come here the night before
the wedding to fondle my new attraction in gilded heels. First I’ll
have a go at you myself. A man I know on the turf named Charles Alberta
Marsh (I was in bed with him just now and another gentleman out of the
Hanaper and Petty Bag office) is on the lookout for a maid of all work
at a short knock. Swell the bust. Smile. Droop shoulders. What offers?
_(He points.)_ For that lot. Trained by owner to fetch and carry,
basket in mouth. _(He bares his arm and plunges it elbowdeep in Bloom’s
vulva.)_ There’s fine depth for you! What, boys? That give you a
hardon? _(He shoves his arm in a bidder’s face.)_ Here wet the deck and
wipe it round!
A BIDDER: A florin.
_(Dillon’s lacquey rings his handbell.)_
THE LACQUEY: Barang!
A VOICE: One and eightpence too much.
CHARLES ALBERTA MARSH: Must be virgin. Good breath. Clean.
BELLO: _(Gives a rap with his gavel.)_ Two bar. Rockbottom figure and
cheap at the price. Fourteen hands high. Touch and examine shis points.
Handle hrim. This downy skin, these soft muscles, this tender flesh. If
I had only my gold piercer here! And quite easy to milk. Three newlaid
gallons a day. A pure stockgetter, due to lay within the hour. His
sire’s milk record was a thousand gallons of whole milk in forty weeks.
Whoa, my jewel! Beg up! Whoa! _(He brands his initial C on Bloom’s
croup.)_ So! Warranted Cohen! What advance on two bob, gentlemen?
A DARKVISAGED MAN: _(In disguised accent.)_ Hoondert punt sterlink.
VOICES: _(Subdued.)_ For the Caliph. Haroun Al Raschid.
BELLO: _(Gaily.)_ Right. Let them all come. The scanty, daringly short
skirt, riding up at the knee to show a peep of white pantalette, is a
potent weapon and transparent stockings, emeraldgartered, with the long
straight seam trailing up beyond the knee, appeal to the better
instincts of the _blasé_ man about town. Learn the smooth mincing walk
on four inch Louis Quinze heels, the Grecian bend with provoking croup,
the thighs fluescent, knees modestly kissing. Bring all your powers of
fascination to bear on them. Pander to their Gomorrahan vices.
BLOOM: _(Bends his blushing face into his armpit and simpers with
forefinger in mouth.)_ O, I know what you’re hinting at now!
BELLO: What else are you good for, an impotent thing like you? _(He
stoops and, peering, pokes with his fan rudely under the fat suet folds
of Bloom’s haunches.)_ Up! Up! Manx cat! What have we here? Where’s
your curly teapot gone to or who docked it on you, cockyolly? Sing,
birdy, sing. It’s as limp as a boy of six’s doing his pooly behind a
cart. Buy a bucket or sell your pump. _(Loudly.)_ Can you do a man’s
job?
BLOOM: Eccles street...
BELLO: _(Sarcastically.)_ I wouldn’t hurt your feelings for the world
but there’s a man of brawn in possession there. The tables are turned,
my gay young fellow! He is something like a fullgrown outdoor man. Well
for you, you muff, if you had that weapon with knobs and lumps and
warts all over it. He shot his bolt, I can tell you! Foot to foot, knee
to knee, belly to belly, bubs to breast! He’s no eunuch. A shock of red
hair he has sticking out of him behind like a furzebush! Wait for nine
months, my lad! Holy ginger, it’s kicking and coughing up and down in
her guts already! That makes you wild, don’t it? Touches the spot? _(He
spits in contempt.)_ Spittoon!
BLOOM: I was indecently treated, I... Inform the police. Hundred
pounds. Unmentionable. I...
BELLO: Would if you could, lame duck. A downpour we want not your
drizzle.
BLOOM: To drive me mad! Moll! I forgot! Forgive! Moll... We... Still...
BELLO: _(Ruthlessly.)_ No, Leopold Bloom, all is changed by woman’s
will since you slept horizontal in Sleepy Hollow your night of twenty
years. Return and see.
_(Old Sleepy Hollow calls over the wold.)_
SLEEPY HOLLOW: Rip van Wink! Rip van Winkle!
BLOOM: _(In tattered mocassins with a rusty fowlingpiece, tiptoeing,
fingertipping, his haggard bony bearded face peering through the
diamond panes, cries out.)_ I see her! It’s she! The first night at Mat
Dillon’s! But that dress, the green! And her hair is dyed gold and
he...
BELLO: _(Laughs mockingly.)_ That’s your daughter, you owl, with a
Mullingar student.
_(Milly Bloom, fairhaired, greenvested, slimsandalled, her blue scarf
in the seawind simply swirling, breaks from the arms of her lover and
calls, her young eyes wonderwide.)_
MILLY: My! It’s Papli! But, O Papli, how old you’ve grown!
BELLO: Changed, eh? Our whatnot, our writingtable where we never wrote,
aunt Hegarty’s armchair, our classic reprints of old masters. A man and
his menfriends are living there in clover. The _Cuckoos’ Rest!_ Why
not? How many women had you, eh, following them up dark streets,
flatfoot, exciting them by your smothered grunts, what, you male
prostitute? Blameless dames with parcels of groceries. Turn about.
Sauce for the goose, my gander O.
BLOOM: They... I...
BELLO: _(Cuttingly.)_ Their heelmarks will stamp the Brusselette carpet
you bought at Wren’s auction. In their horseplay with Moll the romp to
find the buck flea in her breeches they will deface the little statue
you carried home in the rain for art for art’s sake. They will violate
the secrets of your bottom drawer. Pages will be torn from your
handbook of astronomy to make them pipespills. And they will spit in
your ten shilling brass fender from Hampton Leedom’s.
BLOOM: Ten and six. The act of low scoundrels. Let me go. I will
return. I will prove...
A VOICE: Swear!
_(Bloom clenches his fists and crawls forward, a bowieknife between his
teeth.)_
BELLO: As a paying guest or a kept man? Too late. You have made your
secondbest bed and others must lie in it. Your epitaph is written. You
are down and out and don’t you forget it, old bean.
BLOOM: Justice! All Ireland versus one! Has nobody...? _(He bites his
thumb.)_
BELLO: Die and be damned to you if you have any sense of decency or
grace about you. I can give you a rare old wine that’ll send you
skipping to hell and back. Sign a will and leave us any coin you have!
If you have none see you damn well get it, steal it, rob it! We’ll bury
you in our shrubbery jakes where you’ll be dead and dirty with old Cuck
Cohen, my stepnephew I married, the bloody old gouty procurator and
sodomite with a crick in his neck, and my other ten or eleven husbands,
whatever the buggers’ names were, suffocated in the one cesspool. _(He
explodes in a loud phlegmy laugh.)_ We’ll manure you, Mr Flower! _(He
pipes scoffingly.)_ Byby, Poldy! Byby, Papli!
BLOOM: _(Clasps his head.)_ My willpower! Memory! I have sinned! I have
suff...
_(He weeps tearlessly.)_
BELLO: _(Sneers.)_ Crybabby! Crocodile tears!
_(Bloom, broken, closely veiled for the sacrifice, sobs, his face to
the earth. The passing bell is heard. Darkshawled figures of the
circumcised, in sackcloth and ashes, stand by the wailing wall. M.
Shulomowitz, Joseph Goldwater, Moses Herzog, Harris Rosenberg, M.
Moisel, J. Citron, Minnie Watchman, P. Mastiansky, The Reverend Leopold
Abramovitz, Chazen. With swaying arms they wail in pneuma over the
recreant Bloom.)_
THE CIRCUMCISED: _(In dark guttural chant as they cast dead sea fruit
upon him, no flowers.) Shema Israel Adonai Elohenu Adonai Echad._
VOICES: _(Sighing.)_ So he’s gone. Ah yes. Yes, indeed. Bloom? Never
heard of him. No? Queer kind of chap. There’s the widow. That so? Ah,
yes.
_(From the suttee pyre the flame of gum camphire ascends. The pall of
incense smoke screens and disperses. Out of her oakframe a nymph with
hair unbound, lightly clad in teabrown artcolours, descends from her
grotto and passing under interlacing yews stands over Bloom.)_
THE YEWS: _(Their leaves whispering.)_ Sister. Our sister. Ssh!
THE NYMPH: _(Softly.)_ Mortal! _(Kindly.)_ Nay, dost not weepest!
BLOOM: _(Crawls jellily forward under the boughs, streaked by sunlight,
with dignity.)_ This position. I felt it was expected of me. Force of
habit.
THE NYMPH: Mortal! You found me in evil company, highkickers, coster
picnicmakers, pugilists, popular generals, immoral panto boys in
fleshtights and the nifty shimmy dancers, La Aurora and Karini, musical
act, the hit of the century. I was hidden in cheap pink paper that
smelt of rock oil. I was surrounded by the stale smut of clubmen,
stories to disturb callow youth, ads for transparencies, truedup dice
and bustpads, proprietary articles and why wear a truss with
testimonial from ruptured gentleman. Useful hints to the married.
BLOOM: _(Lifts a turtle head towards her lap.)_ We have met before. On
another star.
THE NYMPH: _(Sadly.)_ Rubber goods. Neverrip brand as supplied to the
aristocracy. Corsets for men. I cure fits or money refunded.
Unsolicited testimonials for Professor Waldmann’s wonderful chest
exuber. My bust developed four inches in three weeks, reports Mrs Gus
Rublin with photo.
BLOOM: You mean _Photo Bits?_
THE NYMPH: I do. You bore me away, framed me in oak and tinsel, set me
above your marriage couch. Unseen, one summer eve, you kissed me in
four places. And with loving pencil you shaded my eyes, my bosom and my
shame.
BLOOM: _(Humbly kisses her long hair.)_ Your classic curves, beautiful
immortal, I was glad to look on you, to praise you, a thing of beauty,
almost to pray.
THE NYMPH: During dark nights I heard your praise.
BLOOM: _(Quickly.)_ Yes, yes. You mean that I... Sleep reveals the
worst side of everyone, children perhaps excepted. I know I fell out of
bed or rather was pushed. Steel wine is said to cure snoring. For the
rest there is that English invention, pamphlet of which I received some
days ago, incorrectly addressed. It claims to afford a noiseless,
inoffensive vent. _(He sighs.)_ ’Twas ever thus. Frailty, thy name is
marriage.
THE NYMPH: _(Her fingers in her ears.)_ And words. They are not in my
dictionary.
BLOOM: You understood them?
THE YEWS: Ssh!
THE NYMPH: _(Covers her face with her hands.)_ What have I not seen in
that chamber? What must my eyes look down on?
BLOOM: _(Apologetically.)_ I know. Soiled personal linen, wrong side up
with care. The quoits are loose. From Gibraltar by long sea long ago.
THE NYMPH: _(Bends her head.)_ Worse, worse!
BLOOM: _(Reflects precautiously.)_ That antiquated commode. It wasn’t
her weight. She scaled just eleven stone nine. She put on nine pounds
after weaning. It was a crack and want of glue. Eh? And that absurd