by James Joyce
THE Mabbot street entrance of nighttown, before which stretches an uncobbled tramsiding set with skeleton tracks, red and green will-o’-the-wisps and danger signals. Rows of flimsy houses with gaping doors. Rare lamps with faint rainbow fans. Round Rabaiotti’s halted ice gondola stunted men and women squabble. They grab wafers between which are wedged lumps of coal and copper snow. Sucking, they scatter slowly. Children. The swancomb of the gondola, highreared, forges on through the murk, white and blue under a lighthouse. Whistles call and answer.
THE CALLS: Wait, my love, and I’ll be with you.
THE ANSWERS: Round behind the stable.
(A deafmute idiot with goggle eyes, his shapeless mouth dribbling, jerks past, shaken in Saint Vitus’ dance. A chain of children’s hands imprisons him.)
THE CHILDREN: Kithogue! Salute.
THE IDIOT: (Lifts a palsied left arm and gurgles) Grhahute!
THE CHILDREN: Where’s the great light?
THE IDIOT: (Gobbing) Ghaghahest.
(They release him. He jerks on. A pigmy woman swings on a rope slung between the railings, counting. A form sprawled against a dustbin and muffled by its arm and hat moves, groans, grinding growling teeth, and snores again. On a step a gnome totting among a rubbishtip crouches to shoulder a sack of rags and bones. A crone standing by with a smoky oil lamp rams the last bottle in the maw of his sack. He heaves his booty, tugs askew his peaked cap and hobbles off mutely. The crone makes back for her lair swaying her lamp. A bandy child, asquat on the doorstep with a papershuttlecock, crawls sidling after her in spurts, clutches her skirt, scrambles up. A drunken navvy grips with both hands the railings of an area, lurching heavily. At a corner two night watch in shoulder capes, their hands upon their staffholsters, loom tall. A plate crashes; a woman screams; a child wails. Oaths of a man roar, mutter, cease. Figures wander, lurk, peer from warrens. In a room lit by a candle stuck in a bottleneck a slut combs out the tatts from the hair of a scrofulous child. Cissy Caffrey’s voice, still young, sings shrill from a lane.)
CISSY CAFFREY:
I gave it to Molly
Because she was jolly.
The leg of the duck
The leg of the duck.
(Private Carr and Private Compton, swaggersticks tight in their oxters, as they march unsteadily rightaboutface and burst together from their mouths a volleyed fart. Laughter of men from the lane. A hoarse virago retorts.)
THE VIRAGO: Signs on you, hairy arse. More power the Cavan girl.
CISSY CAFFREY: More luck to me. Cavan, Cootehill and
Belturbet. (She sings)
I gave it to Nelly
To stick in her belly
The leg of the duck
The leg of the duck.
(Private Carr and Private Compton turn and counter-retort, their tunics bloodbright in a lampglow, black sockets of caps on their blond copper polls. Stephen Dedalus and Lynch pass through the crowd close to the redcoats.)
PRIVATE COMPTON: (Jerks his finger) Way for the parson.
PRIVATE CARR: (Turns and calls) What ho, parson!
CISSY CAFFREY: (Her voice soaring higher)
She has it, she got it,
Wherever she put it
The leg of the duck.
(Stephen, flourishing the ashplant in his left hand, chants with joy the introit for paschal time. Lynch, his jockey cap low on his brow, attends him, a sneer of discontent wrinkling his face.)
STEPHEN: Vidi aquam egredientem de templo a latere dextro. Alleluia.
(The famished snaggletusks of an elderly bawd protrude from a doorway)
THE BAWD: (Her voice whispering huskily) Sst! Come here till I tell you. Maidenhead inside. Sst.
STEPHEN: (Altius aliquantulum) Et omnes ad quos pervenit aqua ista.
THE BAWD: (Spits in their trail her jet of venom) Trinity medicals. Fallopian tube. All prick and no pence. (Edy Boardman, sniffling, crouched with Bertha Supple, draws her shawl across her nostrils)
EDY BOARDMAN: (Bickering) And say the one: I seen you up Faithful place with your squarepusher, the greaser off the railway, in his cometobed hat. Did you, says I. That’s not for you to say, says I. You never seen me in the mantrap with a married highlander, says I. The likes of her! Stag that one is. Stubborn as a mule! And her walking with two fellows the one time, Kildbride the engine-driver and lancecorporal Oliphant.
STEPHEN: (Triumphaliter) Salvi facti i sunt.
(He flourishes his ashplant shivering the lamp image, shattering light over the world. A liver and white spaniel on the prowl slinks after him, growling. Lynch scares it with a kick.)
LYNCH: So that?
STEPHEN: (Looks behind) So that gesture, not music, not odours, would be a universal language, the gift of tongues rendering visible not the lay sense but the first entelechy, the structural rhythm.
LYNCH: Pornosophical philotheology. Metaphysics in Mecklenburg street!
STEPHEN: We have shrewridden Shakespeare and henpecked Socrates. Even the allwisest stagyrite was bitted, bridled and mounted by a light of love.
LYNCH: Ba!
STEPHEN: Anyway, who wants two gestures to illustrate a loaf and a jug? This movement illustrates the loaf and jug of bread and wine in Omar. Hold my stick.
LYNCH: Damn your yellow stick. Where are we going?
STEPHEN: Lecherous lynx, to la belle dame sans merci, Georgina Johnson, ad deam qui laetificat juventutem meam.
(Stephen thrusts the ashplant on him and slowly holds out his hands, his head going back till both hands are a span from his breast, down turned in planes intersecting, the fingers about to part, the left being higher.)
LYNCH: Which is the jug of bread? It skills not. That or the customhouse. Illustrate thou. Here take your crutch and walk.
(They pass. Tommy Caffrey scrambles to a gaslamp and, clasping, climbs in spasms. From the top spur he slides down. Jacky Caffrey clasps to climb. The navvy lurches against the lamp. The twins scuttle off in the dark. The navvy, swaying, presses a forefinger against a wing of his nose and ejects from the farther nostril a long liquid jet of snot. Shouldering the lamp he staggers away through the crowd with his flaring cresset.
Snakes of river fog creep slowly. From drains, clefts, cesspools, middens arise on all sides stagnant fumes. A glow leaps in the south beyond the seaward reaches of the river. The navvy staggering forward cleaves the crowd and lurches towards the tramsiding. On the farther side under the railway bridge Bloom appears flushed, panting, cramming bread and chocolate into a side pocket. From Gillen’s hairdresser’s window a composite portrait shows him gallant Nelson’s image. A concave mirror at the side presents to him lovelorn longlost lugubru Booloohoom. Grave Gladstone sees him level, Bloom for Bloom. He passes, struck by the stare of truculent Wellington but in the convex mirror grin unstruck the bonham eyes and fatchuck cheekchops of Jollypoldy the rixdix doldy.
At Antonio Rabaiotti’s door Bloom halts, sweated under the bright arclamps. He disappears. In a moment he reappears and hurries on.)
BLOOM: Fish and taters. N. g. Ah!
(He disappears into Olhousen’s, the pork butcher’s, under the downcoming rollshutter. A few moments later he emerges from under the shutter, puffing Poldy, blowing Bloohoom. In each hand he holds a parcel, one containing a lukewarm pig’s crubeen, the other a cold sheep’s trotter, sprinkled with wholepepper. He gasps, standing upright. Then bending to one side he presses a parcel against his rib and groans)
BLOOM: Stitch in my side. Why did I run? (He takes breath with care and goes forward slowly towards the lampset siding. The glow leaps again.)
BLOOM: What is that? A flasher? Searchlight. (He stands at Cormack’s corner, watching)
BLOOM: Aurora borealis or a steel foundry? Ah, the brigade, of course. South side anyhow. Big blaze. Might be his house. Beggar’s bush. We’re safe. (He hums cheerfully) London’s burning, London’s burning! On fire, on fire! (He catches sight of the navvy lurching through the crowd at the farther side of Talbot street.) I’ll miss him. Run. Quick.
Better cross here. (He darts to cross the road. Urchins shout.)
THE URCHINS: Mind out, mister! (Two cyclists, with lighted paper lanterns aswing, swim by him, grazing him, their bells rattling.)
THE BELLS: Haltyaltyaltyall.
BLOOM: (Halts erect stung by a spasm) Ow.
(He looks round, darts forward suddenly. Through rising fog a dragon sandstrewer, travelling at caution, slews heavily down upon him, its huge red headlight winking, its trolley kissing on the wire. The motorman bangs his foot-gong)
THE GONG: Bang Bang Bla Bak Blud Bugg Bloo.
(The brake cracks violently. Bloom, raising a policeman’s whitegloved hand, blunders stifflegged, out of the track. The motorman thrown forward, pugnosed, on the guide-wheel, yells as he slides past over chains and keys.)
THE MOTORMAN: Hey, shitbreeches, are you doing the hattrick?
BLOOM: (Bloom trickleaps to the curbstone and halts again. He brushes a mudflake from his cheek with a parcelled hand.) No thoroughfare. Close shave that but cured the stitch. Must take up Sandow’s exercises again. On the hands down. Insure against street accident too. The Providential. (He feels his trouser pocket) Poor mamma’s panacea. Heel easily catch in tracks or bootlace in a cog. Day the wheel of the black Maria peeled off my shoe at Leonard’s corner. Third time is the charm. Shoe trick. Insolent driver. I ought to report him. Tension makes them nervous. Might be the fellow balked me this morning with that horsey woman. Same style of beauty. Quick of him all the same. The stiff walk. True word spoken in jest. That awful cramp in Lad lane. Something poisonous I ate. Emblem of luck. Why? Probably lost cattle. Mark of the beast. (He closes his eyes an instant) Bit light in the head. Monthly or effect of the other. Brainfogfag. That tired feeling. Too much for me now. Ow!
(A sinister figure leans on plaited legs against O’Beirne’s wall, a visage unknown, injected with dark mercury. From under a wideleaved sombrero the figure regards him with evil eye.)
BLOOM: Buenas noches, señorita Blanca, que calle es esta?
THE FIGURE: (Impassive, raises a signal arm) Password. Sraid Mabbot.
BLOOM: Haha. Merci. Esperanto. Slan leath. (He mutters) Gaelic league spy, sent by that fireeater. (He steps forward. A sackskouldered ragman bars his path. He steps left, ragsackman left.)
BLOOM: I beg. (He swerves, sidles, stepsaside, slips past and on.)
BLOOM: Keep to the right, right, right. If there is a fingerpost planted by the Touring Club at Stepaside who procured that public boon? I who lost my way and contributed to the columns of the Irish Cyclist the letter headed, In darkest Stepaside. Keep, keep, keep to the right. Rags and bones, at midnight. A fence more likely. First place murderer makes for. Wash off his sins of the world.
(Jacky Caffrey, hunted by Tommy Caffrey, runs full tilt against Bloom.)
BLOOM: O!
(Shocked, on weak hams, he halts. Tommy and Jacky vanish there, there. Bloom pats with parcelled hands watch, fobpocket, bookpocket, pursepocket, sweets of sin, potato soap.)
BLOOM: Beware of pickpockets. Old thieves’ dodge. Collide. Then snatch your purse.
(The retriever approaches sniffling, nose to the ground. A sprawled form sneezes. A stooped bearded figure appears garbed in the long caftan of an elder in Zion and a smoking cap with magenta tassels. Horned spectacles hang down at the wings of the nose. Yellow poison streaks are on the drawn face)
RUDOLPH: Second halfcrown waste money today. I told you not go with drunken goy ever. So. You catch no money.
BLOOM: (Hides the crubeen and trotter behind his back and, crestfallen, feels warm and cold feetmeat) Ja, ich weiss, papachi.
RUDOLPH: What you making down this place? Have you no soul? (With feeble vulture talons he feels the silent face of Bloom) Are you not my son Leopold, the grandson of Leopold? Are you not my dear son Leopold who left the house of his father and left the god of his fathers Abraham and Jacob?
BLOOM: (With precaution) I suppose so, father. Mosenthal. All that’s left of him.
RUDOLPH: (Severely) One night they bring you home drunk as dog after spend your good money. What you call them running chaps?
BLOOM: (In youth’s smart blue Oxford suit with white vestslips, narrowshouldered, in brown Alpine hat, wearing gent’s sterling silver waterbury keyless watch and double curb Albert with seal attached, one side of him coated with stiffening mud) Harriers, father. Only that once.
RUDOLPH: Once! Mud head to foot. Cut your hand open. Lockjaw. They make you kaput, Leopoldleben. You watch them chaps.
BLOOM: (Weakly) They challenged me to a sprint. It was muddy. I slipped.
RUDOLPH: (With contempt) Goim nachez. Nice spectacles for your poor mother!
BLOOM: Mamma!
ELLEN BLOOM: (In pantomime dame’s stringed mobcap, crinoline and bustle, widow Twankey’s blouse with mutton-leg sleeves buttoned behind, grey mittens and cameo brooch, her hair plaited in a crispine net, appears over the staircase banisters, a slanted candlestick in her hand and cries out in shrill alarm) O blessed Redeemer, what have they done to him! My smelling salts! (She hauls up a reef of skirt and ransacks the pouch of her striped blay petticoat. A phial, an Agnus Dei, a shrivelled potato and a celluloid doll fall out.) Sacred Heart of Mary, where were you at all, at all? (Bloom, mumbling, his eyes downcast, begins to bestow his parcels in his filled pockets but desists, muttering?)
A VOICE: (Sharply) Poldy!
BLOOM: Who? (He ducks and wards off a blow clumsily) At your service.
(He looks up. Beside her mirage of datepalms a handsome woman in Turkish costume stands before him. Opulent curves fill out her scarlet trousers and jacket slashed with gold. A wide yellow cummerbund girdles her. A white yashmak violet in the night, covers her face, leaving free only her large dark eyes and raven hair!)
BLOOM: Molly!
MARION: Welly? Mrs Marion from this out, my dear man, when you speak to me. (Satirically) Has poor little hubby cold feet waiting so long?
BLOOM: (Shifts from foot to foot) No, no. Not the least little bit.
(He breathes in deep agitation, swallowing gulps of air, questions, hopes, crubeens for her supper, things to tell her, excuses, desire, spellbound. A coin gleams on her forehead. On her feet are jewelled toerings. Her ankles are linked by a slender fetterchain. Beside her a camel, hooded with a turreting turban, waits. A silk ladder of innumerable rungs climbs to his bobbing howdah. He ambles near with disgruntled hindquarters. Fiercely she slaps his haunch, her goldcurb wristbangles angriling, scolding him in Moorish.)
MARION: Nebrakada! Feminimum.
(The camel, lifting a foreleg, plucks from a tree a large mango fruit, offers it to his mistress, blinking, in his cloven hoof, then droops his head and, grunting, with uplifted neck, fumbles to kneel. Bloom stoops his back for leapfrog.)
BLOOM: I can give you … I mean as your business menagerer … Mrs Marion … if you …
MARION: So you notice some change? (Her hands passing slowly over her trinketed stomacher. A slow friendly mockery in her eyes.) O Poldy, Poldy, you are a poor old stick in the mud! Go and see life. See the wide world.
BLOOM: I was just going back for that lotion whitewax, orangeflower water. Shop closes early on Thursday. But the first thing in the morning. (He pats divers pockets) This moving kidney. Ah!
(He points to the south, then to the east. A cake of new clean lemon soap arises, diffusing light and perfume!)
THE SOAP:
We’re a capital couple are Bloom and I;
He brightens the earth, I polish the sky.
(The freckled face of Sweny, the druggist, appears in the disc of the soapsun.)
SWENY: Three and a penny, please.
BLOOM: Yes. For my wife, Mrs Marion. Special recipe.
MARION: (Softly) Poldy!
BLOOM: Yes, ma’am?
MARION: Ti trema un poco il cuore?
(In disdain she saunters away, plump as a pampered pouter pigeon, humming the duet from Don Giovanni.)
BLOOM: Are you sure about that Voglio? I mea
n the
pronunciati …
(He follows, followed by the sniffing terrier. The elderly bawd seizes his sleeve, the bristles of her chinmole glittering.)
THE BAWD: Ten shillings a maidenhead. Fresh thing was never touched. Fifteen. There’s no-one in it only her old father that’s dead drunk.
(She points. In the gap of her dark den furtive, rain-bedraggled Bridie Kelly stands.)
BRIDIE: Hatch street. Any good in your mind?
(With a squeak she flaps her bat shawl and runs. A burly rough pursues with booted strides. He stumbles on the steps, recovers, plunges into gloom. Weak squeaks of laughter are heard, weaker?)
THE BAWD: (Her wolfeyes shining) He’s getting his pleasure. You won’t get a virgin in the flash houses. Ten shillings. Don’t be all night before the polis in plain clothes sees us. Sixtyseven is a bitch.
(Leering, Gerty MacDowell limps forward. She draws from behind ogling, and shows coyly her bloodied clout.)
GERTY: With all my worldly goods I thee and thou. (She murmurs) You did that. I hate you.
BLOOM: I? When? You’re dreaming. I never saw you.