_(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 odour, 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 Mecklenburgh 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 or 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 iuventutem 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 sidepocket. 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
arclamp. He disappears. In a moment he reappears and hurries on.)_
BLOOM: Fish and taters. N. g. Ah!
_(He disappears into Olhausen’s, the porkbutcher’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 ribs
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 hissing on the wire. The
motorman bangs his footgong.)_
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 guidewheel, yells as he slides past over
chains and keys.)_
THE MOTORMAN: Hey, shitbreeches, are you doing the hat trick?
_(Bloom trickleaps to the curbstone and halts again. He brushes a
mudflake from his cheek with a parcelled hand.)_
BLOOM: 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 track 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.)_