by James Joyce
THE BUTTON: Bip!
(Two sluts of the Coombe dance rainily by, shawled, yelling flatly)
THE SLUTS:
O Leopold lost the pin of his drawers
He didn’t know what to do,
To keep it up,
To keep it up.
BLOOM: (Coldly) You have broken the spell. The last straw. If there were only ethereal where would you all be, postulants and novices? Shy but willing, like an ass pissing.
THE YEWS: (Their silverfoil of leaves precipitating, their skinny arms ageing and swaying) Deciduously!
THE NYMPH: Sacrilege! To attempt my virtue! (A large moist stain appears on her robe) Sully my innocence! You are not fit to touch the garment of a pure woman. (She clutches in her robe) Wait, Satan. You’ll sing no more lovesongs. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. (She draws a poniard and, clad in the sheathmail of an elected knight of nine, strikes at his loins) Nekum!
BLOOM: (Starts up, seizes her hand) Hoy! Nebrakada! Cat of nine lives! Fair play, madam. No pruning knife. The fox and the grapes, is it? What do we lack with your barbed wire? Crucifix not thick enough? (He clutches her veil) A holy abbot you want or Brophy, the lame gardener, or the spoutless statue of the watercarrier or good Mother Alphonsus, eh Reynard?
THE NYMPH: (With a cry, flees from him unveiled, her plaster cast cracking, a cloud of stench escaping from the cracks) Poli…!
BLOOM: (Calls after her) As if you didn’t get it on the double yourselves. No jerks and multiple mucosities all over you. I tried it. Your strength our weakness. What’s our studfee? What will you pay on the nail? You fee men dancers on the Riviera, I read. (The fleeing nymph raises a keen) Eh! I have sixteen years of black slave labour behind me. And would a jury give me five shillings alimony tomorrow, eh? Fool someone else, not me. (He sniffs) But. Onions. Stale. Sulphur. Grease. (The figure of Bella Cohen stands before him)
BELLA: You’ll know me the next time.
BLOOM: (Composed, regards her) Passée. Mutton dressed as lamb. Long in the tooth and superfluous hairs. A raw onion the last thing at night would benefit your complexion. And take some double chin drill. Your eyes are as vapid as the glass eyes of your stuffed fox. They have the dimensions of your other features, that’s all. I’m not a triple screw propeller.
BELLA: (Contemptuously) You’re not game, in fact. (Her sowcunt barks) Fohracht!
BLOOM: (Contemptuously) Clean your nailless middle linger first, the cold spunk of your bully is dripping from your cockscomb. Take a handful of hay and wipe yourself.
BELLA: I know you, canvasser! Dead cod!
BLOOM: I saw him, kipkeeper! Pox and gleet vendor!
BELLA: (Turns to the piano) Which of you was playing the dead march from Saul?
ZOE: Me. Mind your cornflowers. (She darts to the piano and bangs chords on it with crossed arms) The cat’s ramble through the slag. (She glances back) Eh? Who’s making love to my sweeties? (She darts back to the table) What’s yours is mine and what’s mine is my own.
(Kitty disconcerted coats her teeth with the silver paper. Bloom approaches Zoe.)
BLOOM: (Gently) Give me back that potato, will you?
ZOE: Forfeits, a fine thing and a superfine thing.
BLOOM: (With feeling) It is nothing, but still a relic of poor mamma.
ZOE:
Give a thing and take it back
God’ll ask you where is that
You’ll say you don’t know
God’ll send you down below.
BLOOM: There is a memory attached to it. I should like to have it.
STEPHEN: To have or not to have, that is the question.
ZOE: Here. (She hauls up a reef of her slip, revealing her bare thigh and unrolls the potato from the top of her stocking) Those that hides knows where to find.
BELLA: (Frowns) Here. This isn’t a musical peepshow. And don’t you smash that piano. Who’s paying here? (She goes to the pianola. Stephen fumbles in his pocket and, taking out a banknote by its corner, hands it to her.)
STEPHEN: (With exaggerated politeness) This silken purse I made out of the sow’s ear of the public. Madam, excuse me. If you allow me. (He indicates vaguely Lynch and Bloom) We are all in the same sweepstake, Kinch and Lynch. Dans ce bordel ou tenons nostre etat.
LYNCH: (Jails from the hearth) Dedalus! Give her your blessing for me.
STEPHEN: (Hands Bella a coin) Gold. She has it.
BELLA: (Looks at the money, then at Zoe, Florry and Kitty) Do you want three girls? It’s ten shillings here.
STEPHEN: (Delightedly) A hundred thousand apologies. (He fumbles again and takes out and hands her two crowns) Permit, brevi manu, my sight is somewhat troubled.
(Bella goes to the table to count the money while Stephen talks to himself in monosyllables. Zoe bounds over to the table. Kitty leans over Zoe’s neck. Lynch gets up, rights his cap and, clasping Kitty’s waist, adds his head to the group)
FLORRY: (Strives heavily to rise) Ow! My foot’s asleep. (She limps over to the table. Bloom approaches!)
BELLA, ZOE, KITTY, LYNCH, BLOOM: (Chattering and squabbling) The gentleman…ten shillings…paying for the three…allow me a moment…this gentleman pays separate…who’s touching it?…ow…mind who you’re pinching…are you staying the night or a short time?…who did?…you’re a liar, excuse me…the gentleman paid down like a gentleman…drink…it’s long after eleven.
STEPHEN:(At the pianola, making a gesture of abhorrence)
No bottles! What, eleven? A riddle.
ZOE: (Lifting up her pettigozon and folding a half sovereign into the top of her stocking) Hard earned on the fiat of my back.
LYNCH:(Lifting Kitty from the table) Come!
KITTY: Wait.(She clutches the two crowns)
FLORRY: And me?
LYNCH: Hoopla!(He lifts her, carries her and bumps her down on the sofa)
STEPHEN:
The fox crew, the cocks flew,
The bells in heaven
Were striking eleven.
‘Tis time for her poor soul
To get out of heaven.
BLOOM: (Quietly lays a half sovereign on the table between Bella and Florry) So. Allow me.(He takes up the pound-note) Three times ten. We’re square.
BELLA: (Admiringly) You’re such a slyboots, old cocky. I could kiss you.
ZOE: (Points) Hum? Deep as a drawwell. (Lynch bends Kitty back over the sofa and kisses her. Bloom goes with the poundnote to Stephen.)
BLOOM: This is yours.
STEPHEN: How is that? Le distrait or absentminded beggar.(He fumbles again in his pocket and draws out a handful of coins. An object falls.) That fell.
BLOOM:(Stooping, picks up and hands a box of matches)
This.
STEPHEN: Lucifer. Thanks.
BLOOM: (Quietly) You had better hand over that cash to me to take care of. Why pay more?
STEPHEN: (Hands him all his coins) Be just before you are generous.
BLOOM: I will but is it wise? (He counts) One, seven, eleven, and five. Six. Eleven. I don’t answer for what you may have lost.
STEPHEN: Why striking eleven? Proparoxyton. Moment before the next Lessing says. Thirsty fox. (He laughs loudly) Burying his grandmother. Probably he killed her.
BLOOM: That is one pound six and eleven. One pound seven, say.
STEPHEN: Doesn’t matter a rambling damn.
BLOOM: No, but…
STEPHEN: (Comes to the table) Cigarette, please. (Lynch tosses a cigarette from the sofa to the table) And so Georgina Johnson is dead and married. (A cigarette appears on the table. Stephen looks at it.) Wonder. Parlour magic. Married. Hm. (He strikes a match and proceeds to light the cigarette with enigmatic melancholy)
LYNCH: (Watching him) You would have a better chance of lighting it if you held the match nearer.
STEPHEN: (Brings the match nearer his eye) Lynx eye. Must get glasses. Broke them yesterday. Sixteen years ago. Distance. The eye sees all flat. (He draws the match away. It goes out.) Brain thinks. Near: far. Ineluctabl
e modality of the visible. (He frowns mysteriously) Hm. Sphinx. Thebeast that has two backs at midnight. Married.
ZOE: It was a commercial traveller married her and took her away with him.
FLORRY: (Nods) Mr Lambe from London.
STEPHEN: Lamb of London, who takest away the sins of our world.
LYNCH: (Embracing Kitty on the sofa, chants deeply) Dona nobis pacem.
(The cigarette slips from Stephen’s fingers. Bloom picks it up and throws it into the grate.)
BLOOM: Don’t smoke. You ought to eat. Cursed dog I met. (To Zoe) You have nothing?
ZOE: Is he hungry?
STEPHEN: (Extends his hand to her smiling and chants to the air of the bloodoath in the Dusk of the Gods)
Hangende Hunger,
Fragende Frau,
Macht uns alle kaput.
ZOE: (Tragically) Hamlet, I am thy father’s gimlet! (She takes his hand) Blue eyed beauty, I’ll read your hand. (She points to his forehead) No wit, no wrinkles. (She counts) Two, three, Mars, that’s courage. (Stephen shakes his head) No kid.
LYNCH: Sheet lightning courage. The youth who could not shiver and shake. (To Zoe) Who taught you palmistry?
ZOE: (Turns) Ask my ballocks that I haven’t got. (To Stephen) I see it in your face. The eye, like that. (She frowns with lowered head)
LYNCH: (Laughing, slaps Kitty behind twice) Like that.
Pandy bat.
(Twice loudly a pandybat cracks, the coffin of the pianola flies open, the bald little round jack-in-the-box head of Father Dolan springs up)
FATHER DOLAN: Any boy want flogging? Broke his glasses? Lazy idle little schemer. See it in your eye. (Mild, benign, rectorial, reproving, the head of Don John Conmee rises from the pianola coffin)
DON JOHN CONMEE: Now, Father Dolan! Now. I’m sure that Stephen is a very good little boy.
ZOE: (Examining Stephen’s palm) Woman’s hand.
STEPHEN: (Murmurs) Continue. Lie. Hold me. Caress. I never could read His handwriting except His criminal thumbprint on the haddock.
ZOE: What day were you born?
STEPHEN: Thursday. Today.
ZOE: Thursday’s child has far to go. (She traces lines on his hand) Line of fate. Influential friends.
FLORRY: (Pointing) Imagination.
ZOE: Mount of die moon. You’ll meet with a…(She peers at his hands abruptly) I won’t tell you what’s not good for you. Or do you want to know?
BLOOM: (Detaches her fingers and offers his palm) More harm than good. Here. Read mine.
BELLA: Show. (She turns up Bloom’s hand) I thought so. Knobby knuckles, for the women.
ZOE: (Peering at Bloom’s palm) Gridiron. Travels beyond the sea and marry money.
BLOOM: Wrong.
ZOE: (Quickly) O, I see. Short little finger. Henpecked husband. That wrong?
(Black Liz, a huge rooster hatching in a chalked circle, rises, stretches her wings and clucks)
BLACK Liz: Gara. Klook. Klook. Klook. (She sidles from her newlaid egg and waddles off)
BLOOM: (Points to his hand) That weal there is an accident. Fell and cut it twenty-two years ago. I was sixteen.
ZOE: I see, says the blind man. Tell us news.
STEPHEN: See? Moves to one great goal. I am twentytwo too. Sixteen years ago I twentytwo tumbled, twentytwo years ago he sixteen fell off his hobbyhorse. (He winces) Hurt my hand somewhere. Must see a dentist. Money? (Zoe whispers to Florry. They giggle. Bloom releases his hand and writes idly on the table in backhand, pencilling slow curves.)
FLORRY: What?
(A hackneycar, number three hundred and twentyfour, with a gallantbuttocked mare, driven by James Barton, Harmony Avenue, Domybrook, trots past. Blazes Boylan and Lenehan sprawl swaying on the sideseats. The Ormond boots crouches behind on the axle. Sadly over the crossblind Lydia Douce and Mina Kennedy gaze.)
THE BOOTS: (Jogging, mocks themwith thumb and wriggling wormfingers) Haw, haw, have you the horn?
(Bronze by gold they whisper)
ZOE: (TO Florry) Whisper.
(They whisper again)
(Over the well of the car Blazes Boylan leans, his boater straw set sideways, a red flower in his mouth. Lenehan, in a yachtsman’s cap and white shoes, officiously detaches a long hair from Blazes Boylan’’s shoulder.)
LENEHAN: HO ! What do I here behold? Were you brushing the cobwebs off a few quims?
BOYLAN: (Seated, smiles) Plucking a turkey.
LENEHAN: A good night’s work.
BOYLAN: (Holding up four thick bluntungulated fingers, winks) Blazes Kate! Up to sample or your money back. (He holds out a forefinger) Smell that.
LENEHAN: (Smellsgleefully) Ah! Lobster and mayonnaise.
Ah!
ZOE AND FLORRY: (Laugh together) Ha ha ha ha.
BOYLAN: (Jumps surely from the car and calls loudly for all to hear) Hello, Bloom! Mrs Bloom up yet?
BLOOM: (In a flunkey’s plum plush coat and kneebreeckes, buff stockings and powdered wig) I’m afraid not, sir, the last articles…
BOYLAN: (Tosses him sixpence) Here, to buy yourself a gin and splash. (He hangs his hat smartly on a peg of Bloom’s antlered head) Show me in. I have a little private business with your wife. You understand?
BLOOM: Thank you, sir. Yes, sir, Madam Tweedy is in her bath, sir.
MARION: He ought to feel himself highly honoured. (She plops splashing out of the water) Raoul, darling, come and dry me. I’m in my pelt. Only my new hat and a carriage sponge.
BOYLAN: (A merry twinkle in his eye) Topping!
BELLA: What? What is it? (Zoe whispers to her)
MARION: Let him look, the pishogue! Pimp! And scourge himself! I’ll write to a powerful prostitute or Bartholo-mona, the bearded woman, to raise weals out on him an inch thick and make him bring me back a signed and stamped receipt.
BELLA: (Laughing) Ho ho ho ho.
BOYLAN: (TO Bloom, over his shoulder) You can apply your eye to the keyhole and play with yourself while I just go through her a few times.
BLOOM: Thank you, sir, I will, sir. May I bring two men chums to witness the deed and take a snapshot? (He holds an ointment jar) Vaseline, sir? Orangeflower?…Lukewarm water?…
KITTY: (From the sofa) Tell us, Florry. Tell us. What. (Florry whispers to her. Whispering lovewords murmur lip-lapping loudly, poppysmic plopslop.)
MINA KENNEDY: (Her eyes upturned) O, it must be like the scent of geraniums and lovely peaches! O, he simply idolises every bit of her! Stuck together! Covered with kisses!
LYDIA DOUCE: (Her mouth opening) Yumyum. O, he’s carrying her round the room doing it! Ride a cock horse. You could hear them in Paris and New York. Like mouthfuls of strawberries and cream.
KITTY: (Laughing) Hee hee hee.
BOYLAN’S VOICE: (Sweetly, hoarsely, in the fit of his stomach) Ah I Gooblazqruk brukarchkrasht!
MARION’S VOICE: (Hoarsely, sweetly rising to her throat) O! Weeshwashtkissimapooisthnapoohuck!
BLOOM: (His eyes wildly dilated, clasps himself) Show! Hide! Show! Plough her! More! Shoot!
BELLA, ZOE, FLORRY, KITTY: Ho ho! Ha ha! Hee hee!
LYNCH: (Points) The mirror up to nature. (He laughs) Hu hu hu hu hu hu.
(Stephen and Bloom gaze in the mirror. The face of William Shakespeare, beardless, appears there, rigid in facial paralysis, crowned by the reflection of the reindeer antlered hatrack in the hall)
SHAKESPEARE: (In dignified ventriloquy) ‘Tis the loud laugh bespeaks the vacant mind. (To Bloom) Thou thoughtest as how thou wastest invisible. Gaze. (He crows with a black capon’s laugh) Iagogo! How my Old-fellow chokit his Thursdaymomun. Iagogogo!
BLOOM: (Stnilesyellowly at the whores) When will I hear the joke?
ZOE: Before you’re twice married and once a widower.
BLOOM: Lapses are condoned. Even the great Napoleon, when measurements were taken near the skin after his death…
(Mrs Dignam, widow woman, her snubnose and cheeks flushed with deathtalk, tears and Tunny’s tawny skerry, hurries by in he
r weeds, her bonnet awry, rouging and powdering her cheeks, lips and nose, a pen chivvying her brood of cygnets. Beneath her skirt appear her late husband’s everyday trousers and turnedup boots, large eights. She holds a Scottish widow’s insurance policy and large marqueeumbrella under which her brood runs with her, Patsy hopping on one short foot, his collar loose, a hank of porksteaks dangling, Freddy whimpering, Susy with a crying cod’s mouth, Alice struggling with the bciby. She cuffs them on, her streamers flaunting aloft.)
FREDDY: Ah, ma, you’re dragging me along!
SUSY: Mamma, the beeftea is fizzing over!
SHAKESPEARE: (With paralytic rage) Weda seca whokilla farst.
(The face of Martin Cunningham, bearded, refeatures Shakespeare’s beardless face. The marqueeumbrella sways drunkenly, the children run aside. Under the umbrella appears Mrs Cunningham in Merry Widow hat and kimono gown. She glides sidling and bowing, twisting japanesily)
MRS CUNNINGHAM: (Sings)
And they call me the jewel of Asia.
MARTIN CUNNINGHAM: (Gazes on her impassive) Immense ! Most bloody awful demirep!
STEPHEN: Et exaltabuntur cornua iusti. Queens lay with prize bulls. Remember Pasiphae for whose lust my grand-oldgrossfather made the first confessionbox. Forget not Madam Grissel Steevens nor the suine scions of the house of Lambert. And Noah was drunk with wine. And his ark was open.
BELLA: None of that here. Come to the wrong shop.
LYNCH: Let him alone. He’s back from Paris.
ZOE: (Runs to Stephen and links him) O go on! Give us some parleyvoo.
(Stephen claps hat on head and leaps over to the fireplace, where he stands with shrugged shoulders, finny hands outspread, a painted smile on his face)
LYNCH: (Pommelling on the sofa) Rmm Rmm Rmm Rrrrrrmmmmm.
STEPHEN: (Gabbles, with marionette jerks) Thousand places of entertainment to expenses your evenings with lovely ladies saling gloves and other things perhaps her heart beerchops perfect fashionable house very eccentric where lots cocottes beautiful dressed much about princesses like are dancing cancan and walking there parisian clowneries extra foolish for bachelors foreigns the same if talking a poor english how much smart they are on things love and sensations voluptuous. Misters very selects for is pleasure must to visit heaven and hell show with mortuary candles and they tears silver which occur every night. Perfectly shockingterrificofreligion’s things mockery seen in universal world. All chic womans which arrive full of modesty then disrobe and squeal loud to see vampire man debauch nun very fresh young with dessous troublants. (He clacks his tongue loudly) Ho, la la I Ce pif qu’il a !