Ulysses
screaming bittern’s harsh high whistle shrieks. Groangrousegurgling
Toft’s cumbersome whirligig turns slowly the room right roundabout the
room.)_
THE PIANOLA:
My girl’s a Yorkshire girl.
ZOE:
Yorkshire through and through. Come on all!
_(She seizes Florry and waltzes her.)_
STEPHEN: _Pas seul!_
_(He wheels Kitty into Lynch’s arms, snatches up his ashplant from the
table and takes the floor. All wheel whirl waltz twirl. Bloombella
Kittylynch Florryzoe jujuby women. Stephen with hat ashplant frogsplits
in middle highkicks with skykicking mouth shut hand clasp part under
thigh. With clang tinkle boomhammer tallyho hornblower blue green
yellow flashes Toft’s cumbersome turns with hobbyhorse riders from
gilded snakes dangled, bowels fandango leaping spurn soil foot and fall
again.)_
THE PIANOLA:
Though she’s a factory lass
And wears no fancy clothes.
_(Closeclutched swift swifter with glareblareflare scudding they
scootlootshoot lumbering by. Baraabum!)_
TUTTI: Encore! Bis! Bravo! Encore!
SIMON: Think of your mother’s people!
STEPHEN: Dance of death.
_(Bang fresh barang bang of lacquey’s bell, horse, nag, steer,
piglings, Conmee on Christass, lame crutch and leg sailor in cockboat
armfolded ropepulling hitching stamp hornpipe through and through.
Baraabum! On nags hogs bellhorses Gadarene swine Corny in coffin steel
shark stone onehandled Nelson two trickies Frauenzimmer plumstained
from pram falling bawling. Gum he’s a champion. Fuseblue peer from
barrel rev. evensong Love on hackney jaunt Blazes blind coddoubled
bicyclers Dilly with snowcake no fancy clothes. Then in last switchback
lumbering up and down bump mashtub sort of viceroy and reine relish for
tublumber bumpshire rose. Baraabum!)_
_(The couples fall aside. Stephen whirls giddily. Room whirls back.
Eyes closed he totters. Red rails fly spacewards. Stars all around suns
turn roundabout. Bright midges dance on walls. He stops dead.)_
STEPHEN: Ho!
_(Stephen’s mother, emaciated, rises stark through the floor, in leper
grey with a wreath of faded orangeblossoms and a torn bridal veil, her
face worn and noseless, green with gravemould. Her hair is scant and
lank. She fixes her bluecircled hollow eyesockets on Stephen and opens
her toothless mouth uttering a silent word. A choir of virgins and
confessors sing voicelessly.)_
THE CHOIR:
Liliata rutilantium te confessorum...
Iubilantium te virginum...
_(From the top of a tower Buck Mulligan, in particoloured jester’s
dress of puce and yellow and clown’s cap with curling bell, stands
gaping at her, a smoking buttered split scone in his hand.)_
BUCK MULLIGAN: She’s beastly dead. The pity of it! Mulligan meets the
afflicted mother. _(He upturns his eyes.)_ Mercurial Malachi!
THE MOTHER: _(With the subtle smile of death’s madness.)_ I was once
the beautiful May Goulding. I am dead.
STEPHEN: _(Horrorstruck.)_ Lemur, who are you? No. What bogeyman’s
trick is this?
BUCK MULLIGAN: _(Shakes his curling capbell.)_ The mockery of it! Kinch
dogsbody killed her bitchbody. She kicked the bucket. _(Tears of molten
butter fall from his eyes on to the scone.)_ Our great sweet mother!
_Epi oinopa ponton._
THE MOTHER: _(Comes nearer, breathing upon him softly her breath of
wetted ashes.)_ All must go through it, Stephen. More women than men in
the world. You too. Time will come.
STEPHEN: _(Choking with fright, remorse and horror.)_ They say I killed
you, mother. He offended your memory. Cancer did it, not I. Destiny.
THE MOTHER: _(A green rill of bile trickling from a side of her
mouth.)_ You sang that song to me. _Love’s bitter mystery._
STEPHEN: _(Eagerly.)_ Tell me the word, mother, if you know now. The
word known to all men.
THE MOTHER: Who saved you the night you jumped into the train at Dalkey
with Paddy Lee? Who had pity for you when you were sad among the
strangers? Prayer is allpowerful. Prayer for the suffering souls in the
Ursuline manual and forty days’ indulgence. Repent, Stephen.
STEPHEN: The ghoul! Hyena!
THE MOTHER: I pray for you in my other world. Get Dilly to make you
that boiled rice every night after your brainwork. Years and years I
loved you, O, my son, my firstborn, when you lay in my womb.
ZOE: _(Fanning herself with the grate fan.)_ I’m melting!
FLORRY: _(Points to Stephen.)_ Look! He’s white.
BLOOM: _(Goes to the window to open it more.)_ Giddy.
THE MOTHER: _(With smouldering eyes.)_ Repent! O, the fire of hell!
STEPHEN: _(Panting.)_ His noncorrosive sublimate! The corpsechewer! Raw
head and bloody bones.
THE MOTHER: _(Her face drawing near and nearer, sending out an ashen
breath.)_ Beware! _(She raises her blackened withered right arm slowly
towards Stephen’s breast with outstretched finger.)_ Beware God’s hand!
_(A green crab with malignant red eyes sticks deep its grinning claws
in Stephen’s heart.)_
STEPHEN: _(Strangled with rage.)_ Shite! _(His features grow drawn and
grey and old.)_
BLOOM: _(At the window.)_ What?
STEPHEN: _Ah non, par exemple!_ The intellectual imagination! With me
all or not at all. _Non serviam!_
FLORRY: Give him some cold water. Wait. _(She rushes out.)_
THE MOTHER: _(Wrings her hands slowly, moaning desperately.)_ O Sacred
Heart of Jesus, have mercy on him! Save him from hell, O Divine Sacred
Heart!
STEPHEN: No! No! No! Break my spirit, all of you, if you can! I’ll
bring you all to heel!
THE MOTHER: _(In the agony of her deathrattle.)_ Have mercy on Stephen,
Lord, for my sake! Inexpressible was my anguish when expiring with
love, grief and agony on Mount Calvary.
STEPHEN: _Nothung!_
_(He lifts his ashplant high with both hands and smashes the
chandelier. Time’s livid final flame leaps and, in the following
darkness, ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry.)_
THE GASJET: Pwfungg!
BLOOM: Stop!
LYNCH: _(Rushes forward and seizes Stephen’s hand.)_ Here! Hold on!
Don’t run amok!
BELLA: Police!
_(Stephen, abandoning his ashplant, his head and arms thrown back
stark, beats the ground and flies from the room, past the whores at the
door.)_
BELLA: _(Screams.)_ After him!
_(The two whores rush to the halldoor. Lynch and Kitty and Zoe stampede
from the room. They talk excitedly. Bloom follows, returns.)_
THE WHORES: _(Jammed in the doorway, pointing.)_ Down there.
ZOE: _(Pointing.)_ There. There’s something up.
BELLA: Who pays for the lamp? _(She seizes Bloom’s coattail.)_ Here,
you were with him. The lamp’s broken.
BLOOM: _(Rushes to the hall, rushes back.)_ What lamp, woman?
A WHORE: He tore his coat.
BELLA: _(Her eyes hard with anger and cupidity, points.)_ Who’s to pay
for that? Ten shillings. You’re a witness.
BLOOM: _(Snatches up Stephen’s ashplant.)_ Me? Ten shillings? Haven’t
you lifted enough off him? Didn’t he...?
BELLA: _(Loudly.)_ Here, none of your tall talk. This isn’t a brothel.
A ten shilling house.
BLOOM: _(His head under the lamp, pulls the chain. Pulling, the gasjet
lights up a crushed mauve purple shade. He raises the ashplant.)_ Only
the chimney’s broken. Here is all he...
BELLA: _(Shrinks back and screams.)_ Jesus! Don’t!
BLOOM: _(Warding off a blow.)_ To show you how he hit the paper.
There’s not sixpenceworth of damage done. Ten shillings!
FLORRY: _(With a glass of water, enters.)_ Where is he?
BELLA: Do you want me to call the police?
BLOOM: O, I know. Bulldog on the premises. But he’s a Trinity student.
Patrons of your establishment. Gentlemen that pay the rent. _(He makes
a masonic sign.)_ Know what I mean? Nephew of the vicechancellor. You
don’t want a scandal.
BELLA: _(Angrily.)_ Trinity. Coming down here ragging after the
boatraces and paying nothing. Are you my commander here or? Where is
he? I’ll charge him! Disgrace him, I will! _(She shouts.)_ Zoe! Zoe!
BLOOM: _(Urgently.)_ And if it were your own son in Oxford?
_(Warningly.)_ I know.
BELLA: _(Almost speechless.)_ Who are. Incog!
ZOE: _(In the doorway.)_ There’s a row on.
BLOOM: What? Where? _(He throws a shilling on the table and starts.)_
That’s for the chimney. Where? I need mountain air.
_(He hurries out through the hall. The whores point. Florry follows,
spilling water from her tilted tumbler. On the doorstep all the whores
clustered talk volubly, pointing to the right where the fog has cleared
off. From the left arrives a jingling hackney car. It slows to in front
of the house. Bloom at the halldoor perceives Corny Kelleher who is
about to dismount from the car with two silent lechers. He averts his
face. Bella from within the hall urges on her whores. They blow
ickylickysticky yumyum kisses. Corny Kelleher replies with a ghastly
lewd smile. The silent lechers turn to pay the jarvey. Zoe and Kitty
still point right. Bloom, parting them swiftly, draws his caliph’s hood
and poncho and hurries down the steps with sideways face. Incog Haroun
al Raschid he flits behind the silent lechers and hastens on by the
railings with fleet step of a pard strewing the drag behind him, torn
envelopes drenched in aniseed. The ashplant marks his stride. A pack of
bloodhounds, led by Hornblower of Trinity brandishing a dogwhip in
tallyho cap and an old pair of grey trousers, follows from far, picking
up the scent, nearer, baying, panting, at fault, breaking away,
throwing their tongues, biting his heels, leaping at his tail. He
walks, runs, zigzags, gallops, lugs laid back. He is pelted with
gravel, cabbagestumps, biscuitboxes, eggs, potatoes, dead codfish,
woman’s slipperslappers. After him freshfound the hue and cry zigzag
gallops in hot pursuit of follow my leader: 65 C, 66 C, night watch,
John Henry Menton, Wisdom Hely, V. B. Dillon, Councillor Nannetti,
Alexander Keyes, Larry O’Rourke, Joe Cuffe, Mrs O’Dowd, Pisser Burke,
The Nameless One, Mrs Riordan, The Citizen, Garryowen, Whodoyoucallhim,
Strangeface, Fellowthatsolike, Sawhimbefore, Chapwithawen, Chris
Callinan, sir Charles Cameron, Benjamin Dollard, Lenehan, Bartell
d’Arcy, Joe Hynes, red Murray, editor Brayden, T. M. Healy, Mr Justice
Fitzgibbon, John Howard Parnell, the reverend Tinned Salmon, Professor
Joly, Mrs Breen, Denis Breen, Theodore Purefoy, Mina Purefoy, the
Westland Row postmistress, C. P. M’Coy, friend of Lyons, Hoppy Holohan,
maninthestreet, othermaninthestreet, Footballboots, pugnosed driver,
rich protestant lady, Davy Byrne, Mrs Ellen M’Guinness, Mrs Joe
Gallaher, George Lidwell, Jimmy Henry on corns, Superintendent Laracy,
Father Cowley, Crofton out of the Collector-general’s, Dan Dawson,
dental surgeon Bloom with tweezers, Mrs Bob Doran, Mrs Kennefick, Mrs
Wyse Nolan, John Wyse Nolan,
handsomemarriedwomanrubbedagainstwidebehindinClonskea tram, the
bookseller of_ Sweets of Sin, _Miss Dubedatandshedidbedad, Mesdames
Gerald and Stanislaus Moran of Roebuck, the managing clerk of
Drimmie’s, Wetherup, colonel Hayes, Mastiansky, Citron, Penrose, Aaron
Figatner, Moses Herzog, Michael E Geraghty, Inspector Troy, Mrs
Galbraith, the constable off Eccles street corner, old doctor Brady
with stethoscope, the mystery man on the beach, a retriever, Mrs Miriam
Dandrade and all her lovers.)_
THE HUE AND CRY: _(Helterskelterpelterwelter.)_ He’s Bloom! Stop Bloom!
Stopabloom! Stopperrobber! Hi! Hi! Stophim on the corner!
_(At the corner of Beaver street beneath the scaffolding Bloom panting
stops on the fringe of the noisy quarrelling knot, a lot not knowing a
jot what hi! hi! row and wrangle round the whowhat brawlaltogether.)_
STEPHEN: _(With elaborate gestures, breathing deeply and slowly.)_ You
are my guests. Uninvited. By virtue of the fifth of George and seventh
of Edward. History to blame. Fabled by mothers of memory.
PRIVATE CARR: _(To Cissy Caffrey.)_ Was he insulting you?