regions. Yooka. Night. Mona, my thrue love. Yook. Mona, my own love. Ook.
     Hark! Shut your obstropolos. Pflaap! Pflaap! Blaze on. There she  goes.
Brigade!  Bout ship. Mount street way. Cut up.  Pflaap!  Tally ho.  You  not
come? Run, skelter, race. Pflaaaap!
     Lynch! Hey?  Sign on long o me. Denzille lane this way. Change here for
Bawdyhouse. We  two, she said,  will seek  the  kips  there  shady  Mary is.
Righto,  any  old time.  <i>Laetabuntur  in  cubilibus  suis</i>. You  coming long?
Whisper, who  the sooty hell's the  johnny in  the  black duds? Hush! Sinned
against the light and even now that  day  is  at hand when he shall come  to
judge the world  by fire. Pflaap!  <i>Ut  implerentur  scripturae</i>. Strike  up a
ballad. Then outspake medical Dick to his comrade medical Davy.  Christicle,
who's this excrement yellow gospeller  on the Merrion hall? Elijah is coming
washed  in the Blood of  the  Lamb.  Come  on, you winefizzling  ginsizzling
booseguzzling existences! Come on, you  dog-gone,  bullnecked, beetlebrowed,
hogjowled, peanutbrained, weaseleyed four flushers, false alarms and  excess
baggage! Come  on, you triple extract of infamy! Alexander J.  Christ Dowie,
that's  yanked  to  glory most  half  this  planet  from  'Frisco  Beach  to
Vladivostok. The Deity ain't  no nickel  dime bumshow. I put it to you  that
he's on  the  square and  a  corking  fine  business proposition.  He's  the
grandest  thing yet and don't you forget it.  Shout salvation in King Jesus.
You'll need to rise  precious early, you sinner there, if you want to diddle
the Almighty God.  Pflaaaap! Not half. He's got  a coughmixture with a punch
in it for you, my friend, In his backpocket. Just you try it on.
     <b>Circe</b>
     <i>The Mabbot  street  entrance of  nighttown,  before which  stretches an
uncobbled   transiding   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</i>.
     THE CALLS Wait, my love, and I'll be with you.
     THE ANSWERS Round behind the stable.
     (<i>A deaf mute  idiot with  goggle  eyes, his shapeless  mouth dribbling,
jerks  past,  shaken in  Saint  Vitus' dance.  A chain of  children's  hands
imprisons him</i>.)
     THE CHILDREN Kithoguel Salute.
     THE IDIOT (<i>Lifts a palsied left arm and gurgles.</i>) Grhahute!
     THE CHILDREN Where's the great light?
     THE IDIOT (<i>Gobbing.</i>) Ghaghahest.
     (<i>They  release him. He  jerks on. A pygmy  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 rubbish tip 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 ups 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</i>.)
     CISSY CAFFREY
     I gave it to Molly
     Because she was jolly,
     The leg of the duck
     The leg of the duck.
     (<i>Private Cart 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</i>.)
     THE VIRAGO Signs on you, hairy arse. More power the Cavan girl.
     CISSY CAFFREY More luck to me. Cavan, Cootehill and Belturbet.
     (<i>She sings</i>.)
     I gave it to Nelly
     To stick in her belly
     The leg of the duck
     The leg of the duck.
     (<i>Private Cart and  Private Compton turn and counterretort, 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</i>.)
     PRIVATE COMPTON (<i>Jerks his finger.</i>) Way for the parson.
     PRIVATE CARR (<i>Turns and calls.</i>) What ho, parson!
     CISSY CAFFREY (<i>Her voice soaring higher</i>.)
     She has it, she got it,
     Wherever she put it
     The leg of the duck.
     (<i>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</i>.)
     STEPHEN <i>Vidi aquam egredientem de templo a latere dextro. Alleluia.</i>
     (<i>The famished snaggletusks of an elderly bawd protrude from a doorway</i>.)
     THE BAWD  (<i>Her voice whispering  huskily.</i>)  Sst!  Come here till I tell
you. Maidenhead inside. Sst.
     STEPHEN (<i>Altius aliqantulum) Et omnes ad quos pervenit acqua ista</i>.
     THE BAWD (<i>Spits  in  their  trail her jet of venom.</i>) Trinity  medicals.
Fallopian tube. All prick and no pence.
     (<i>Edy Boardman, sniffling,  crouched with Bertha Supple, draws her shawl
across her nostrils</i>.)
     EDY BOARDMAN (<i>Bickering.</i>) 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 enginedriver and lancecorporal Oliphant.
     STEPHEN (<i>Triumphaliter</i>.) <i>Salvi facti i sunt</i>.
     (<i>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 scar's it with a kick.</i>)
     LYNCH So that?
     STEPHEN (<i>Looks behind</i>.)  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 <i>la belle dame sans  merci</i>, Georgina Johnson,
<i>ad deam qui laetificat juventutem meam</i>.
     (<i>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</i>.)
     LYNCH  Which  is  the  jug  of  bread?  It  skills  not.  That  or  the
customhouse. Illustrate thou. Here take your crutch and walk.
     (<i>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 Gillens hairdressers  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 con vex mirror grin unstruck the bonham eyes and fatchuck  cheekchops
of Jollypoldy the rixdix doldy.
     At  Antonio Babaiotti's  door  Bloom halts,  sweated  under the  bright
arclamps. He disappears. In a moment he reappears and hurries on</i>.)
     BLOOM Fish and taters. N. g. Ah!
     (<i>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</i>.)
     BLOOM Stitch in my side. Why did I run?
     (<i>He takes breath with care  and goes forward slowly towards the lampset
siding. The glow leaps again</i>.)
     BLOOM What is that? A flasher? Searchlight.
     (<i>He stands at Cormack's corner watching</i>.)
     BLOOM <i>Aurora  borealis</i> or  a steel foundry? Ah, the brigade, of course.
South side anyhow. Big blaze. Might be his house. Beggar's bush. We're safe.
(<i>He hums cheerfully</i>.)  London's burning, London's burning! On fire, on fire!
(<i>He catches sight of the navvy lurching  through  the  crowd at the  farther
side of Talbot street</i>.) I'll miss him. Run. Quick. Better cross here.
     (<i>He darts to cross the road. Urchins shout</i>.)
     THE  URCHINS Mind  out,  mister!  (<i>Two  cyclists,  with  lighted  paper
lanterns aswing, swim by him, grazing him, their bells rattling</i>.)
     THE BELLS Haltyaltyaltyall.
     BLOOM (<i>Halts erect stung by a spasm</i>.) Ow.
     (<i>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 hissing on the wire. The motorman bangs
his footgong</i>.)
     THE GONG Bang Bang Bla Bak Blud Bugg Bloo.
     (<i>The brake  cracks  violently. Bloom, raising a policeman's whitegloved
hand, blunders stifflegged,  out of the track. The motorman  thrown forward,
pugnosed, on the guidewheel, yells as he slides past over chains and keys</i>.)
     THE MOTORMAN Hey, shitbreeches, are you doing the hattrick?
     BLOOM (<i>Bloom trickleaps to the curbstone and halts again.  He brushes a
mudflake from his cheek with a parcelled hand</i>.) 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. (<i>He feels
his trouser pocket</i>.) 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. (<i>He closes his eyes an instant</i>.) Bit light in the
head. Monthly or effect of the other. Brainfogfag. That tired  feeling.  Too
much for me now. Ow!
     (<i>A  sinister  figure  leans on plaited legs against O'Beirnes  wall,  a
visage unknown, injected with dark mercury. From under a wideleaved sombrero
the figure regards him with evil eye</i>.)
     BLOOM <i>Buenos noches, seÿorita Blanca, que calle es esta?</i>
     THE FIGURE (<i>Impassive, raises a signal arm</i>.) Password. <i>Sraid Mabbot</i>.
     BLOOM Haha. <i>Merci</i>. Esperanto. <i>Slan  leath. (He mutters</i>.)  Gaelic league
spy, sent by that fireeater.
     (<i>He steps forward.  A  sackshouldered ragman  bars his  path. He  steps
left, ragsackman left</i>.)
     BLOOM I beg. (<i>He swerves, sidles, stepsaside, slips past and on</i>.)
     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  <i>Irish Cyclist</i>  the  letter
headed, In <i>darkest Stepaside</i>. 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.
     (<i>Jacky Caffrey, hunted by Tommy Caffrey, runs full tilt against Bloom</i>.)
     BLOOM O!
     (<i>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</i>.)
     BLOOM Beware of pickpockets. Old  thieves'  dodge. Collide. Then snatch
your purse.
     (<i>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</i>.)
     RUDOLPH  Second halfcrown waste  money today.  I  told you  not go with
drunken goy ever. So. You catch no money.
     BLOOM  (<i>Hides the crubeen and trotter behind his back and, crestfallen,
feels warm and cold feetmeat) Ja, ich weiss, papachi</i>.
     RUDOLPH What you making down this place? Have you no soul? (<i>With feeble
vulture  talons he  feels the  silent face of  Bloom</i>)  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  (<i>With  precaution</i>.) I suppose so,  father. Mosenthal. All that's
left of him.
     RUDOLPH (<i>Severely</i>.) One  night they bring you home  drunk as  dog after
spend your good money. What you call them running chaps?
     BLOOM  (<i>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</i>.) 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 (<i>Weakly</i>.)  They  challenged  me  to  a  sprint.  It was muddy.  I
slipped.
     RUDOLPH (<i>With  contempt) Ooim nachez</i>.  Nice  spectacles for  your  poor
mother!
     BLOOM Mamma!
     ELLEN BLOOM (<i>In pantomime dame's stringed mobcap, crinoline and bustle,
widow Twankey's blouse with muttonleg sleeves buttoned  behind, grey mittens
and cameo brooch,  her  hairplaited  in  a crisping  net,  appears over  the
staircase  banisters, a slanted candlestick in  her hand  and  cries out  in
shrill alarm</i>.) O blessed Redeemer, what have  they done  to him! My smelling
salts! (<i>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</i>.) Sacred Heart of Mary, where were you at all, at all?
     (<i>Bloom, mumbling,  his  eyes downcast, begins to bestow  his parcels in
his filled pockets but desists, muttering</i>.)
     A VOICE (<i>Sharply</i>.) Poldy!
     BLOOM Who? (<i>He ducks and wards off a blow clumsily</i>.) At your service.
     (<i>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 yells  cummerbund girdles her.
A white  yashmak violet in the night, covers her face, leaving free only her
lace dark eyes and raven hair</i>.)
     BLOOM Molly!
     MARION Welly?  Mrs Marion from this out, my dear man, when you speak to
me. (<i>Satirically</i>.) Has poor little hubby cold feet waiting so long?
     BLOOM (<i>Shifts from foot to foot</i>.) No, no. Not the least little bit.
     (<i>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</i>.)
     MARION Nebrakada! Feminimum.
     (<i>The  camel,  lifting a foreleg, plucks from a tree a lace 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</i>.)
     BLOOM I can give you... I mean as your business menagerer Mrs Marion...
if you...
     MARION So  you  notice some change? (<i>Her  hands passing slowly over her
trinketed  stomacher. A slow friendly mockery in her eyes</i>.) 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.
(<i>He pats divers pockets</i>.) This moving kidney. Ah!
     (<i>He  points to the south, then to the east.  A cake of new  clean lemon
soap arises, diffusing light and perfume</i>.)
     THE SOAP
     We're a capital couple are Bloom and I;
     He brightens the earth, I polish the sky.
     (<i>The freckled face of  Sweny, the  druggist, appeals in the disc of the
soapsun</i>.)
     SWENY Three and a penny, please.
     BLOOM Yes. For my wife, Mrs Marion. Special recipe.
     MARION (<i>Softly</i>.) Poldy!
     BLOOM Yes, ma'am?
     MARION <i>Ti trema un poco il cuore?</i>
     (<i>In  disdain she saunters  away,  plump  as  a  pampered pouter pigeon,
humming the duet from Don Giovanni</i>)
     BLOOM Are you sure about that <i>Voglio?</i> I mean the pronunciati...
     (<i>He follows, followed by the sniffing terrier. The  elderly bawd seizes
his sleeve, the bristles of her chinmole glittering</i>.)
     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.
     (<i>She points.  In the gap of her dark den furtive, rainbedraggled Bridie
Kelly stands</i>.)
     BRIDIE Hatch street. Any good in your mind?
     (<i>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</i>.)
     THE  BAWD (<i>Her wolfeyes shining</i>.) 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.
     (<i>Leering Gerty MacDowell limps  forward. She draws from  behind ogling,
and shows coyly her bloodied clout</i>.)
     GERTY With all my worldly goods I thee and thou. (<i>She murmurs</i>.) You did
that. I hate you.
     BLOOM I? When? You're dreaming. I never saw you.
     THE BAWD Leave the gentleman  alone, you  cheat.  Writing the gentleman
false letters. Streetwalking and soliciting. Better for your mother take the
strap to you at the bedpost, hussy like you.
     GERTY (<i>To  Bloom</i>.)  When you saw all the  secrets  of my bottom drawer.
(<i>She paws his  sleeve,  slobbering</i>.) Dirty married man! I love you for doing
that to me.
     (<i>She slides away crookedly.  Mrs  Breen  in man's frieze overcoat  with
loose bellows pockets,  stands in the  causeway, her roguish  eyes wideopen,
smiling in all her herbivorous buckteeth</i>.)
     MRS BREEN Mr.
     BLOOM (<i>Coughs gravely</i>.) Madam, when we last had this pleasure by letter
dated the sixteenth instant .
     MRS BREEN  Mr Bloom! You down here in  the  haunts of sin! I caught you
nicely! Scamp!
     BLOOM (<i>Hurriedly</i>.) Not so loud my name. Whatever do you think me? Don't
give me away. Walls  have hears. How  do  you do? It's ages  since I. You're
looking splendid. Absolutely it. Seasonable weather we  are having this time
of  year. Black refracts  heat. Short  cut  home  here. Interesting quarter.
Rescue of fallen women Magdalen asylum. I am the secretary...
     MRS  BREEN  (<i>Holds up a  finger</i>.)  Now don't tell  a  big  fib! I  know
somebody won't like that. O just wait till I see Molly! (<i>Slily</i>.) Account for
yourself this very minute or woe betide you!
     BLOOM (<i>Looks behind</i>.) She often said she'd like to visit. Slumming. The
exotic,  you  see. Negro servants  too  in  livery if she had money. Othello
black brute.  Eugene Stratton. Even the bones and cornerman at the Livermore
christies. Bohee brothers. Sweep for that matter.
     (<i>Tom and Sam Bohee, coloured coons in white duck suits,  scarlet socks,
upstarched  Sambo chokers and lace scarlet asters in their buttonholes  leap
out. Each has his banjo slung. Their paler smaller negroid hands jingle  the
twingtwang wires. Flashing white Kaffir eyes and tusks they rattle through a
breakdown in clumsy  clogs, twinging, singing, back  to back, toe heel, heel
toe, with smackfatclacking nigger lips</i>.)
     There's someone in the house with Dina
     There's someone in the house, I know,
     There's someone in the house with Dina
     Playing on the old banjo.
     (<i>They  whisk  black  masks  from  raw  babby  faces:  then,  chuckling,
chortling, trumming, twanging they diddle diddle cakewalk dance away</i>.)
     BLOOM (<i>With a sour tenderish smile</i>.) A little frivol, shall we,  if you
are  so  inclined? Would  you  like me  perhaps to  embrace you just  for  a
fraction of a second?
     MRS BREEN (<i>Screams gaily</i>.) O, you ruck! You ought to see yourself!
     BLOOM For old sake'sake. I only meant a square party, a mixed  marriage
mingling of our different little  conjugials. You  know  I had a soft corner
for you. (<i>Gloomily</i>.) 'Twas I sent you that valentine of the dear gazelle.
     MRS BREEN Glory Alice,  you do look a holy show!  Killing  simply. (<i>She
puts out her hand inquisitively</i>.) What are you hiding behind your back? Tell
us, there's a dear.
     BLOOM (<i>Seizes her wrist  with his free  hand</i>.)  Josie Powell  that was,
prettiest deb in Dublin. How time flies by! Do you remember, harking back in
a  retrospective  arrangement,  Old   Christmas  night   Georgina  Simpson's
housewarming while they were playing the Irving Bishop game, finding the pin
blindfold and thoughtreading? Subject, what is in this snuff box?
     MRS  BREEN  You  were  the  lion  of  the  night  with  your seriocomic
recitation and you  looked  the part.  You were  always a favourite with the
ladies.
     BLOOM (<i>Squire of dames, in dinner  jacket,  with watered-silk  facings,
blue masonic badge in his buttonhole, black bow and mother-of-pearl studs, a
prismatic champagne  glass tilted in his hand</i>.) Ladies and gentlemen, I give
you Ireland, home and beauty.
     MRS BREEN The dear dead days beyond recall. Love's old sweet song.
     BLOOM (<i>Meaningfully  dropping  his voice</i>.) I confess  I'm  teapot  with
curiosity to find out whether some person's something is a little  teapot at
present.
     MRS BREEN (<i>Gushingly</i>.) Tremendously  teapot! London's tea pot  and  I'm
simply teapot all  over me. (<i>She rubs  sides with  him</i>.)  After  the parlour
mystery games  and  the  crackers from  the  tree  we  sat  on the staircase
ottoman. Under the mistletoe. Two is company.
     BLOOM  (<i>Wearing  a purple  Napoleon  hat with  an amber  halfmoon,  his
fingers  and thumbs  passing slowly down to her soft  moist meaty palm which
she surrenders gently</i>.) The witching hour of night. I took  the splinter out
of this hand, carefully, slowly. (<i>Tenderly, as he slips on her finger a ruby
ring.) Lþ ci darem la mano</i>.
     MRS BREEN  (<i>In a  onepiece eveningfrock executed  in  moonlight blue, a
tinsel sylph's diadem  on her  brow with  her  dancecard fallen  beside  her
moonblue satin slipper curves her palm  softly, breathing quickly.) Voglio e
non</i>. You're hot! You're scalding! The left hand nearest the heart.
     BLOOM When you made your present choice they said it was beauty and the
beast.  I can never forgive you for that. (<i>His clenched fist at  his  brow</i>.)
Think  what it means. All you  meant to  me then.  (<i>Hoarsely</i>.)  Woman,  it's
breaking me!  (<i>Dennis  Breen, whitetallhatted, with Wisdom  Hely's  sandwich
board, shuffles past them in  cadet  slippers, his  dull  beard thrust  out,
muttering to right  and left. Little  Alf Bergan, cloaked in the pall of the
ace of spaces, dogs him to left and right, doubled in laughter</i>.)
     ALF BERGAN (<i>Points jeering at the sandwich boards</i>.) U.p.: Up.
     MRS BREEN (<i>To Bloom</i>.) High jinks below stairs. (<i>She gives him  the glad
eye</i>.) Why didn't you kiss the spot to make it well? You wanted to.
     BLOOM (<i>Shocked</i>.) Molly's best friend! Could you?
     MRS BREEN (<i>Her  pulpy tongue between  her lips,  offers a pigeon kiss</i>.)
Hnhn. The answer is a lemon. Have you a little present for me there?
     BLOOM  (<i>Off  handedly</i>.)  Kosher. A snack for supper.  The home  without
potted meat is  incomplete.  I was at <i>Leah</i>.  Mrs  Bandman Palmer.  Trenchant
exponent of Shakespeare. Unfortunately  threw  away the  programme. Rattling
good place round there for pig's feet. Feel.
     (<i>Richie  Goulding,  three  ladies'  hats pinned  on his  head,  appears
weighted to one  side by the black legal bag  of Collis  and Ward on which a
skull  and crossbones are painted in white limewash. He  ins it and shows it
full of polonies, kippered, herrings, Findon haddies and tightpacked pills</i>.)
     RICHIE Best value in Dub.
     (<i>Bald  Pat,  bothered beetle,  stands  on  the curbstone,  folding  his
napkin, waiting to wait</i>.)
     PAT (<i>Advances with a tilted dish  of  spillspilling  gravy</i>.)  Steak and
kidney. Bottle of lager. Hee hee hee. Wait till I wait.
     RICHIE Goodgod. Inev erate inall...
     (<i>With hanging head he marches doggedly forward. The navvy, lurching by,
gores him with his flaming pronghorn</i>.)
     RICHIE (<i>With a cry of pain, his hand to his back</i>) Ah! Bright's! Lights!
     BLOOM  (<i>Points to  the  navvy</i>.) A spy. Don't attract attention. I  hate
stupid crowds. I am not on pleasure bent. I am in a grave predicament.
     MRS BREEN Humbugging and  delutbering as  per usual with  your cock and
bull story.
     BLOOM  I want to tell you a little secret about how  I came to be here.
But you must never tell. Not even Molly. I have a most particular reason.
     MRS BREEN (<i>All agog</i>.) O, not for worlds.
     BLOOM Let's walk on. Shall us?
     MRS BREEN Let's.
     (<i>The  bawd makes an unheeded sign.  Bloom walks on with Mrs Breen.  The
terrier follows, whining piteously, wagging his tail</i>.)
     THE BAWD Jewman's melt!
     BLOOM  (<i>In an oatmeal sporting suit,  a sprig of woodbine in the lapel,
tony  buff  shirt, shepherd's  plaid  Saint  Andrew's cross scarftie,  white
spats,  fawn  dustcoat  on  his  arm,  tawny  red  brogues, fieldglasses  in
bandolier and a grey billycock hat</i>.) Do you remember a long long time, years
and  years ago, just after Milly,  Marionette we called her, was weaned when
we all went together to Fairyhouse races, was it?
     MRS BREEN  (<i>In  smart  Saxe  tailormade, white  velours hat and  spider
veil</i>.) Leopardstown.
     BLOOM I mean,  Leopardstown. And Molly  won seven shillings  on a three
year  old named  Nevertell  and coming  home along  by  Foxrock in  that old
fiveseater shanderadan of a waggonette  you were in your heyday then and you
had on that  new hat of  white velours  with a  surround of molefur that Mrs
Hayes advised you to  buy because it was marked down to nineteen and eleven,
a bit of wire and an old  rag  of  velveteen, and I'll lay you what you like
she did it on purpose...
     MRS BREEN She did, of course, the cat! Don't tell me! Nice adviser!
     BLOOM Because it didn't suit you one quarter as well as the other ducky
little tammy  toque with the  bird of paradise wing in it that  I admired on
you and you honestly looked just too fetching in  it though it was a pity to
kill it, you cruel creature, little mite of a thing with a heart the size of
a fullstop.
     MRS BREEN (<i>Squeezes his arm, simpers</i>.) Naughty cruel I was.
     BLOOM  (<i>Low,  secretly, ever  more  rapidly</i>.)  And Molly was  eating  a
sandwich of spiced beef  out of  Mrs Joe Gallaher's lunch  basket.  Frankly,
though she had her advisers or admirers, I never  cared much for her  style.
She was .
     MRS BREEN Too.
     BLOOM Yes.  And Molly was  laughing because Rogers and Maggot  O'Reilly
were mimicking a cock as we passed a farmhouse and Marcus Tertius Moses, the
tea merchant, drove past us in a gig with his daughter, Dancer Moses was her
name, and the  poodle in her lap bridled up and you asked me if I ever heard
or read or knew or came across .
     MRS BREEN (<i>Eagerly</i>.) Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
     (<i>She  fades  from  his  side. Followed  by the whining dog  he walks on
towards hellsgates.  In an archway a standing  woman, bent forward, her feet
apart, pisses cowily. Outside a shuttered pub a bunch of loiterers listen to
a tale  which their broken snouted gaffer rasps  out with raucous humour. An
armless pair of them flop wrestling, growling, in maimed sodden playfight</i>.)
     THE GAFFER (<i>Crouches, his voice twisted in  his snout</i>.) And when Cairns
came down from the scaffolding  in Beaver Street what was  he after doing it
into  only into the  bucket of porter that was there waiting on the shavings
for Derwan's plasterers.
     THE LOITERERS (<i>Guffaw with cleft palates</i>.) O jays!
     (<i>Their paintspeckled hats  wag. Spattered  with size and lime  of their
lodges they frisk limblessly about him</i>.)
     BLOOM Coincidence too. They  think  it  funny. Anything but that. Broad
daylight. Trying to walk. Lucky no woman.
     THE LOITERERS Jays, that's a good one. Glauber salts. O jays, into  the
men's porter.
     (<i>Bloom  passes. Cheap  whores, singly, coupled,  shawled,  dishevelled,
call from lanes, doors, corners</i>.)
     THE WHORES Are you  going far, queer fellow? How's your middle leg? Got
a match on you? Eh, come here till I stiffen it for you.
     (<i>He plodges through their sump towards the lighted street beyond. >From
a bulge of window curtains a  gramophone  rears a battered brazen  trunk. In
the shadow a shebeenkeeper haggles with the navvy and the two redcoats</i>.)
     THE NAVVY (<i>Belching</i>.) Where's the bloody house?
     THE  SHEBEENKEEPER  Purdon  street.  Shilling   a  bottle   of   stout.
Respectable woman.
     THE NAVVY (<i>Gripping the two redcoats, staggers forward with them</i>.) Come
on, you British army!
     PRIVATE CARR (<i>Behind his back</i>.) He aint half balmy.
     PRIVATE COMPTON (<i>LAughs</i>.) What ho!
     PRIVATE CARR (<i>To the navvy</i>.) Portobello barracks canteen.  You ask  for
Carr. Just Carr.
     THE NAVVY (<i>Shouts</i>.)
     We are the boys. Of Wexford.
     PRIVATE COMPTON Say! What price the sergeantmajor?
     PRIVATE CARR Bennett? He's my pal. I love old Bennett.
     THENAVVY (<i>Shouts</i>.)
     The galling chain.
     And free our native land.
     (<i>He  staggers  forward, dragging  them with him. Bloom stops, at fault.
The dog approaches, his tongue outlolling, panting</i>.)
     BLOOM  Wildgoose  chase  this. Disorderly houses. Lord knows where they
are gone. Drunks cover distance  double quick. Nice mixup. Scene at Westland
row. Then jump in first class  with third ticket. Then too  far.  Train with
engine behind. Might  have taken me to Malahide or a siding for the night or
collision. Second  drink does it. Once  is  a dose. What am I  following him
for? Still, he's the best of that  lot. If I hadn't heard about Mrs  Beaufoy
Purefoy I wouldn't have gone and  wouldn't have met. Kismet. He'll lose that
cash.  Relieving  office here. Good  biz for cheapjacks,  organs. What do ye
lack?  Soon  got,  soon  gone.  Might  have  lost  my  life  too  with  that
mangongwheeltracktrolleyglarejuggernaut  only  for presence of  mind.  Can't
always save  you, though. If I had  passed Truelock's  window that  day  two
minutes later would  have  been shot. Absence of body. Still if  bullet only
went  through my coat get damages for shock,  five  hundred pounds. What was
he? Kildare street club toff. God help his gamekeeper.
     (<i>He gazes ahead reading on  the wall a scrawled chalk legend</i>  Wet Dream
and <i>a phallic design</i>.)
     Odd!  Molly drawing  on  the  frosted carriagepane at Kingstown. What's
that like?  (<i>Gaudy  dollwomen  loll  in  the  lighted  doorways,  in  window
embrasures,  smoking  birdseye cigarettes. The odour of the  sicksweet  weed
floats towards him in slow round ovalling wreaths</i>.)
     THE WREATHS Sweet are the sweets. Sweets of sin.
     BLOOM My spine's a bit limp.  Go or turn? And this food? Eat it and get
all  pigsticky. Absurd I am. Waste  of money.  One and  eightpence too much.
(<i>The retriever drives a cold snivelling muzzle against his hand, wagging his
tail</i>.)  Strange how they take to me. Even that brute today.  Better speak to
him first.  Like women they like <i>rencontres</i>.  Stinks  like a polecat. <i>Chacun
son goøt</i>.  He might be  mad. Fido.  Uncertain in his movements. Good fellow!
Garryowen!  (<i>The  wolfdog  sprawls on  his  back,  wriggling  obscenely with
begging  paws,  his  long  black  tongue  lolling  out</i>.)  Influence  of  his
surroundings.  Give  and  have  done  with  it.  Provided  nobody.  (<i>Calling
encouraging words he shambles back with a furtive poacher's tread, dogged by
the setter into a dark stalestunk corner. He unrolls  one parcel and goes to
dump the crubeen softly but holds back  and feels the trotter</i>.) Sizeable for
threepence. But then I have it in my left hand. Calls for more effort.  Why?
Smaller from want of use. O, let it slide. Two and six.
     (<i>With regret he lets unrolled crubeen  and trotter  slide.  The mastiff
mauls  the bundle clumsily and gluts himself  with growling greed, crunching
the  bones. Two  raincaped  watch  approach,  silent, vigilant.  They murmur
together</i>.)
     THE WATCH Bloom. Of Bloom. For Bloom. Bloom.
     (<i>Each lays a hand on Blooms shoulder</i>.)
     FIRST WATCH Caught in the act. Commit no nuisance.
     BLOOM (<i>Stammers</i>.) I am doing good to others.
     (<i>A covey of gulls, storm petrels, rises hungrily from Liffey slime with
Banbury cakes in their beaks</i>.)
     THE GULLS Kaw kave kankury kake.
     BLOOM The friend of man. Trained by kindness.
     (<i>He points. Bob Doran,  toppling from a high  bars tool, sways over the
munching spaniel</i>.)
     BOB DORAN Towser. Give us the paw. Give the paw.
     (<i>The bulldog growls,  his  scruff standing,  a  gobbet of  pigs knuckle
between  his  molars  through  which rabid scrumspittle dribbles.  Bob Doran
falls silently into an area</i>.)
     SECOND WATCH Prevention of cruelty to animals.
     BLOOM (<i>Enthusiastically</i>.)  A  noble work! I  scolded that tramdriver on
Harold's cross bridge for illusing the poor horse with his harness scab. Bad
French  I got for my pains. Of course  it was frosty and the last  tram. All
tales of circus life are highly demoralising.
     (<i>Signor Maffei, passion pale, in liontamer's costume with diamond studs
in his shirtfront,  steps forward,  holding a circus paper hoop,  a  curling
carriagewhip and a revolver with which he covers the going boarhound</i>.)
     SIGNOR  MAFFEI  (<i>With  a  sinister  smile</i>.)  Ladies and  gentlemen,  my
educated greyhound. It  was I  broke  in the  bucking  broncho Ajax with  my
patent spiked saddle  for  carnivores.  Lash under the belly with a  knotted
thong. Block tackle and a strangling pully will  bring your lion to heel, no
matter how  fractious, even  <i>Leo ferox</i> there, the Libyan maneater. A  redhot
crowbar  and some  liniment  rubbing  on the burning part  produced Fritz of
Amsterdam, the thinking  hyena. (<i>He glares</i>.) I possess  the Indian sign. The
glint  of  my eye  does  it  with these  breastsparklers. (<i>With a bewitching
smile</i>.) I now introduce Mademoiselle Ruby, the pride of the ring.
     FIRST WATCH Come. Name and address.
     BLOOM  I have forgotten for the moment. Ah, yes! (<i>He takes off his high
grade hat, saluting</i>.) Dr Bloom, Leopold,  dental surgeon. You have heard  of
von Bloom Pasha. Umpteen  mil lions. <i>Donnerwetter</i>! Owns half Austria. Egypt.
Cousin.
     FIRST WATCH Proof.
     (<i>A card falls from inside the leather headband of Bloom's hat</i>.)
     BLOOM (<i>In red fez,  cadi's dress coat with broad green sash, wearing  a
false  badge of the Legion of Honour, picks up the  card  hastily and offers
it</i>.) Allow me. My club is the Junior  Army and Navy. Solicitors: Messrs John
Henry Menton, 27 Bachelor's Walk.
     FIRST WATCH (<i>Reads</i>.) Henry Flower. No fixed abode. Un lawfully watching
and besetting.
     SECOND WATCH An alibi. You are cautioned.
     BLOOM (<i>Produces from his heartpocket a crumpled yellow flower</i>.) This is
the  flower in question.  It  was given me by a  man I don't know  his name.
(<i>Plausibly</i>.) You know that old  joke, rose of Castille. Bloom. The change of
name Virag. (<i>He  murmurs privately  and confidentially</i>.)  We are engaged you
see, sergeant. Lady in the case. Love entanglement. (He <i>shoulders the second
watch gently</i>.) Dash it all. It's a way we gallants have in the navy. Uniform
that does  it. (<i>He turns gravely to  the first watch</i>.) Still, of course, you
do get your Waterloo sometimes. Drop in some evening and have a glass of old
Burgundy.  (<i>To the second watch gaily</i>.) I'll introduce you, inspector. She's
game. Do it in shake of a lamb's tail.
     (<i>A dark mercurialised face appears, leading a veiled figure</i>.)
     THE DARK  MERCURY The Castle  is looking for him. He was drummed out of
the army.
     MARTHA  (<i>Thickveiled,  a crimson  halter round her neck, a copy of  the
Irish Times  in  her hand, in tone of reproach, pointing</i>.)  Henry!  Leopold!
Leopold! Lionel, thou lost one! Clear my name.
     FIRST WATCH (<i>Sternly</i>.) Come to the station.
     BLOOM (<i>Scared, hats himself steps back, then, plucking at his heart and
lifting his right  forearm on  the square, he gives the sign and dueguard of
fellowcraft</i>.)  No, no, worshipful master, light of love.  Mistaken identity.
The  Lyons mail. Lesurques  and  Dubosc.  You remember the Childs fratricide
case. We  medical men. By striking him dead with  a hatchet. I am wrongfully
accused. Better one guilty escape than ninetynine wrongfully condemned.
     MARTHA (<i>Sobbing behind her veil</i>.) Breach  of promise. My  real  name is
Peggy Griffin. He wrote to me  that he was  miserable. I'll tell my brother,
the Bective rugger fullback, on you, heartless flirt.
     BLOOM  (<i>Behind  his  hand</i>.) She's drunk. The woman  is  inebriated. (<i>He
murmurs vaguely the past of Ephraim</i>.) Shitbroleeth.
     SECOND WATCH (<i>Tears in his eyes, to Bloom</i>.) You  ought to be thoroughly
well ashamed of yourself.
     BLOOM Gentleman of the jury, let me explain. A pure mare's nest. I am a
man  misunderstood. I  am being made a scapegoat  of.  I  am  a  respectable
married man,  without a stain on  my character.  I live in Eccles street. My
wife,  I  am  the daughter  of a  most distinguished  commander,  a  g