by James Joyce
LYNCH: Vive le vampire!
THE WHORES: Bravo! Parleyvoo !
STEPHEN: (Grimacing with head back, laughs loudly, clapping himself) Great success of laughing. Angels much Drostitutes like and holy apostles big damn ruffians. Demimondaines nicely handsome sparkling of diamonds very amiable costumed. Or do you are fond better what belongs they moderns pleasure turpitude of old mans? (He points about him with grotesque gestures which Lynch and the whores reply to) Caoutchouc statue woman reversible or lifesize tompeeptoms virgins nudities very lesbic the kiss five ten times. Enter gentlemen to see in mirrors every positions trapezes all that machine there besides also if desire act awfully bestial butcher’s boy pollutes in warm veal liver or omelette on the belly pièce de Shakespeare.
BELLA: (flapping her belly, sinks back on the sofa with a shout of laughter) An omelette on the…Ho! ho! ho! ho!…Omelette on the…
STEPHEN: (Mincingly) I love you, Sir darling. Speak you englishman tongue for double entente cordiale. O yes, man loup. How much cost? Waterloo. Watercloset. (He ceases suddenly and holds up a forefinger)
BELLA: (Laughing) Omelette…
THE WHORES: (Laughing)Encore! Encore!
STEPHEN: Mark me. I dreamt of a watermelon.
ZOE: Go abroad and love a foreign lady.
LYNCH: Across the world for a wife.
FLORRY: Dreams go by contraries.
STEPHEN: (Extending his arms) It was here. Street of harlots. In Serpentine Avenue Beelzebub showed me her, a fubsy widow. Where’s the red carpet spread?
BLOOM: (Approaching Stephen) Look…
STEPHEN: No, I flew. My foes beneath me. And ever shall be. World without end. (He cries) Pater ! Free!
BLOOM: I say, look…
STEPHEN: Break my spirit, will he? O merde alors ! (He cries, his vulture talons sharpened) Hola! Hillyho!
(Simon Dedalus’ voice hilloes in answer, somewhat sleepy but ready)
SIMON: That’s all right. (He swoops uncertainly through the air, wheeling, uttering cries of heartening, on strong ponderous buzzard wings) Ho, boy! Are you going to win? Hoop! Pschatt! Stable with those halfcastes. Wouldn’t let them within the bawl of an ass. Head up! Keep our flag flying! An eagle gules volant in a field argent displayed. Ulster king at arms! hai hoop! (He makes the beagle’s call giving tongue) Bulbul! Burblblbrurblbl! Hai, boy! (The fronds and spaces of the wallpaper file rapidly across country. A stout fox drawn from covert, brush pointed, having buried his grandmother, runs swift for the open, brigkteyed, seeking badger earth, under the leaves. The pack of staghounds follows, nose to the ground, sniffing their quarry, beaglebayitig, burblbrbling to be blooded. Ward Union huntsmen and huntswomen live with them, hot for a kill. From Six Mile Point, Flathouse, Nine Mile Stone follow the footpeople with knotty sticks, salmongaffs, lassos, flockmasters with stockwhips, bearbaiters with tomtoms, toreadors with bullswords, grey negroes waving torches. The crowd bawls of dicers, crown and anchor players, thimbleriggers, broadsmen. Crows and touts, hoarse bookies in high wizard hats clamour deafeningly.)
THE CROWD:
Card of the races. Racing card!
Ten to one the field!
Tommy on the clay here! Tommy on the day!
Ten to one bar one. Ten to one bar one.
Try your luck on spinning Jenny!
Ten to one bar one!
Sell the monkey, boys! Sell the monkey!
I’ll give ten to one!
Ten to one bar one!
(A dark horse, riderless, bolts like a phantom past the winningpost, his mane moonfoaming, his eyeballs stars. The field follows, a bunch of bucking mounts. Skeleton horses: Sceptre, Maximum the Second, Zinfandel, the Duke of Westminster’s Shotover, Repulse, the Duke of Beaufort’s Ceylon, prix de Paris. Dwarfs ride them, rusty armoured, leaping, leaping in their saddles. Last in a drizzle of rain, on a broken-winded isabelle nag, Cock of the North, the favourite, honey cap, green jacket, orange sleeves, Garrett Deasy up, gripping the reins, a hockey stick at the ready. His nag, stumbling on whitegaitered feet, jogs along the rocky road.)
THE ORANGE LODGES: (Jeering) Get down and push, mister. Last lap! You’ll be home the night!
GARRETT DEASY: (Bolt upright, his nailscraped face plastered with postage stamps, brandishes his hockeystick, his blue eyes flashing in the prism of the chandelier as his mount lopes by at a schooling gallop)
Per vias rectos !
(A yoke of buckets leopards all over him and his rearing nag, a torrent of mutton broth with dancing coins of carrots, barley, onions, turnips, potatoes)
THE GREEN LODGES: Soft day, sir John! Soft day, your honour!
(Private Can, Private Compton and Cissy Caffrey pass beneath the windows, singing in discord)
STEPHEN: Hark! Our friend, noise in the street!
ZOE: (Holds up her hand) Stop!
PRIVATE CARR, PRIVATE COMPTON and CISSY CAFFREY:
Yet I’ve a sort a
Yorkshire relish for…
ZOE: That’s me. (She claps her hands) Dance! Dance! (She runs to the pianola) Who has twopence?
BLOOM: Who’ll…
LYNCH: (Handing her coins) Here.
STEPHEN: (Cracking his fingers impatiently) Quick! Quick!
Where’s my augur’s rod? (He runs to the piano and takes his ashplant, beating his foot in tripudium)
ZOE: (Turns the drumhandle) There.
(She drops two pennies in the slot. Gold pink and violet lights start forth. The drum turns purring in low hesitation waltz. Professor Goodwin, in a bowknotted periwig, in court dress, wearing a stained Inverness cape, bent in two from incredible age, totters across the room, his hands fluttering. He sits tinily on the piano stool and lifts and beats handless sticks of arms on the keyboard, nodding with damsel’s grace, his bowknot bobbing?)
ZOE: (Twirls around herself, heeltapping) Dance. Anybody here for there? Who’ll dance? (The pianola, with changing lights, plays in waltz time the prelude to My Girl’s a Yorkshire Girl. Stephen throws his ashplant on the table and seizes Zoe around the waist. Florry and Bella push the table towards the fireplace. Stephen, arming Zoe with exaggerated grace, begins to waltz her around the room. Her sleeve, falling from gracing arms, reveals a white fleshflower of vaccination. Bloom stands aside. Between the curtains, Professor Magvnni inserts a leg on the toepoint of which spins a silk hat. With a deft kick, he sends it spinning to his crown and jauntyhatted skates in. He wears a slate frockcoat with claret silk lapels, a gorget of cream tulle, a green lowcut waistcoat, stock collar with white kerchief, tight lavender trousers, patent pumps and canary gloves. In his buttonhole is a dahlia. He twirls in reversed directions a clouded cane, then wedges it tight in his oxter. He places a hand limply on his breastbone, bows and fondles his flower and buttons?)
MAGINNI: The poetry of motion, art of callisthenics. No connection with Madam Legget Byrne’s or Levinstone’s. Fancy dress balls arranged. Deportment. The Katty Lanner steps. So. Watch me! My terpsichorean abilities. (He minuets forward three paces on tripping bee’s feet) Tout le monde en avant! Reverence I Tout le monde en place !
(The prelude ceases. Professor Goodwin, beating vague arms, shrivels, shrinks, his live cape falling about the stool. The air, in firmer waltz time, pounds. Stephen and Zoe circle freely. The lights change, glow, fade, gold, rose, violet.)
THE PIANOLA:
Two young fellows were talking about their girls, girls,
girls,
Sweethearts they’d left behind…
(From a corner the morning hours run out, goldhaired, slim, in girlish blue, waspwaisted, with innocent hands. Nimbly they dance, twirling their skipping ropes. The hours of noon follow in amber gold. Laughing linked, high hair combs flashing, they catch the sun in mocking mirrors, lifting their arms!)
MAGINNI: (Clipclaps glovesilent hands) Carré! Avant deux ! Breathe evenly! Balance !
(The morning and noon hours waltz in their places, turning, advancing to each other, shaping their curves, bowing vis à vis. Cavaliers behin
d them arch and suspend their arms, with hands descending to, touching, rising from their shoulders.)
HOURS: You may touch my…
CAVALIERS: May I touch your?
HOURS: O, but lightly!
CAVALIERS: O, so lightly!
THE PIANOLA:
My little shy little lass has a waist.
(Zoe and Stephen turn boldly with looser swing. The twilight hours advance, from long landshadows, dispersed, lagging, languideyed, their cheeks delicate with cipria and false faint bloom. They are in grey gauze with dark bat sleeves that flutter in the land breeze!)
MAGINNI: Avant! huit! Traverse! Salut! Corns de mains! Croisé!
(The night hours steal to the last place. Morning, noon and twilight hours retreat before them. They are masked, with daggered hair and bracelets of dull bells. Weary, they curchycurchy under veils.)
THE BRACELETS: Heigho! Heigho!
ZOE: (Twisting, her hand to her brow) O!
MAGINNI: Les tiroirs ! Chatne de dames ! La corbeille ! Dos à dos!
(Arabesquing wearily, they weave a pattern on the floor, weaving, unweaving, curtseying, twisting, simply swirling)
ZOE: I’m giddy.
(She frees herself, droops on a chair, Stephen seizes Florry and turns with her)
MAGINNI: Boulangère ! Les ronds I Lesponts ! Chevaux de bois ! Escargots !
(Twining, receding, with interchanging hands, the night hours link, each with arching arms, in a mosaic of movements. Stephen and Florry turn cumbrously.)
MAGINNI: Dansez avec vos dames! Changez de dames! Dormez le petit bouquet à votre dame ! Remerdez !
THE PIANOLA:
Best, best of all,
Baraabum!
KITTY: (Jumps up) O, they played that on the hobbyhorses at the Minis bazaar !
(She runs to Stephen. He leaves Florry brusquely and seizes Kitty. A 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 ash-plant 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 homblower 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 scotlootshoot 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, Conntee on Christass lame crutch and leg sailor in cockboat armfolded ropepulling hitching stamp through and through, Baraabum! On nags, hogs, horses, 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 wiswitchback 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 wall. He stops dead.)
STEPHEN: Ho!
(Stephen’s mother, emaciated, rises stark through the floor in leper grey with a wreath of faded orange blossoms and a torn bridal veil, her face worn and noseless, green with grave mould. 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) Iwas once the beautiful May Goulding. I am dead.
STEPHEN: (Horrorstruck) Lemur, who are you? What bogeyman’s trick is this?
BUCK MULLIGAN:(Shakes his curling capbell) Themockery of it! Kinch killed her dogsbody bitchbody. She kicked the bucket.(Tears of molten butter fall from his eyes into 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) Theysaid 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 all powerful. 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 brain work. Years and years I loved you, O my son, my firstborn, when you lay in my womb.
ZOE: (Farming 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) The corpsechewer! Raw head and bloody bones!
THE MOTHER: (Herface drawing near and nearer, sending out an ashen breath) Beware! (She raises her blackened, withered right arm slowly towards Stephen’s breast with outstretched fingers) 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 seises 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 flees from the room past the whores at the door)
BELLA: (Screams) After him!
(The two whores rush to the halldoors. 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) There. 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 hand 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 a 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 vice-chancellor. You don’t want a scandal.
BELLA: (Angrily) Trinity! Coming down here ragging after the boat races and paying nothing. Are you my commander here? Where is he? I’ll charge him. Disgrace him, I will. (She shouts) Zoe! Zoe!
