Cuckoo.
Cuckoo.
Cuckoo.
_(The brass quoits of a bed are heard to jingle.)_
THE QUOITS: Jigjag. Jigajiga. Jigjag.
_(A panel of fog rolls back rapidly, revealing rapidly in the jurybox
the faces of Martin Cunningham, foreman, silkhatted, Jack Power, Simon
Dedalus, Tom Kernan, Ned Lambert, John Henry Menton, Myles Crawford,
Lenehan, Paddy Leonard, Nosey Flynn, M’Coy and the featureless face of
a Nameless One.)_
THE NAMELESS ONE: Bareback riding. Weight for age. Gob, he organised
her.
THE JURORS: _(All their heads turned to his voice.)_ Really?
THE NAMELESS ONE: _(Snarls.)_ Arse over tip. Hundred shillings to five.
THE JURORS: _(All their heads lowered in assent.)_ Most of us thought
as much.
FIRST WATCH: He is a marked man. Another girl’s plait cut. Wanted: Jack
the Ripper. A thousand pounds reward.
SECOND WATCH: _(Awed, whispers.)_ And in black. A mormon. Anarchist.
THE CRIER: _(Loudly.)_ Whereas Leopold Bloom of no fixed abode is a
wellknown dynamitard, forger, bigamist, bawd and cuckold and a public
nuisance to the citizens of Dublin and whereas at this commission of
assizes the most honourable...
_(His Honour, sir Frederick Falkiner, recorder of Dublin, in judicial
garb of grey stone rises from the bench, stonebearded. He bears in his
arms an umbrella sceptre. From his forehead arise starkly the Mosaic
ramshorns.)_
THE RECORDER: I will put an end to this white slave traffic and rid
Dublin of this odious pest. Scandalous! _(He dons the black cap.)_ Let
him be taken, Mr Subsheriff, from the dock where he now stands and
detained in custody in Mountjoy prison during His Majesty’s pleasure
and there be hanged by the neck until he is dead and therein fail not
at your peril or may the Lord have mercy on your soul. Remove him. _(A
black skullcap descends upon his head.)_
_(The subsheriff Long John Fanning appears, smoking a pungent Henry
Clay.)_
LONG JOHN FANNING: _(Scowls and calls with rich rolling utterance.)_
Who’ll hang Judas Iscariot?
_(H. Rumbold, master barber, in a bloodcoloured jerkin and tanner’s
apron, a rope coiled over his shoulder, mounts the block. A life
preserver and a nailstudded bludgeon are stuck in his belt. He rubs
grimly his grappling hands, knobbed with knuckledusters.)_
RUMBOLD: _(To the recorder with sinister familiarity.)_ Hanging Harry,
your Majesty, the Mersey terror. Five guineas a jugular. Neck or
nothing.
_(The bells of George’s church toll slowly, loud dark iron.)_
THE BELLS: Heigho! Heigho!
BLOOM: _(Desperately.)_ Wait. Stop. Gulls. Good heart. I saw.
Innocence. Girl in the monkeyhouse. Zoo. Lewd chimpanzee.
_(Breathlessly.)_ Pelvic basin. Her artless blush unmanned me.
_(Overcome with emotion.)_ I left the precincts. (He turns to a figure
in the crowd, appealing.) Hynes, may I speak to you? You know me. That
three shillings you can keep. If you want a little more...
HYNES: _(Coldly.)_ You are a perfect stranger.
SECOND WATCH: _(Points to the corner.)_ The bomb is here.
FIRST WATCH: Infernal machine with a time fuse.
BLOOM: No, no. Pig’s feet. I was at a funeral.
FIRST WATCH: _(Draws his truncheon.)_ Liar!
_(The beagle lifts his snout, showing the grey scorbutic face of Paddy
Dignam. He has gnawed all. He exhales a putrid carcasefed breath. He
grows to human size and shape. His dachshund coat becomes a brown
mortuary habit. His green eye flashes bloodshot. Half of one ear, all
the nose and both thumbs are ghouleaten.)_
PADDY DIGNAM: _(In a hollow voice.)_ It is true. It was my funeral.
Doctor Finucane pronounced life extinct when I succumbed to the disease
from natural causes.
_(He lifts his mutilated ashen face moonwards and bays lugubriously.)_
BLOOM: _(In triumph.)_ You hear?
PADDY DIGNAM: Bloom, I am Paddy Dignam’s spirit. List, list, O list!
BLOOM: The voice is the voice of Esau.
SECOND WATCH: _(Blesses himself.)_ How is that possible?
FIRST WATCH: It is not in the penny catechism.
PADDY DIGNAM: By metempsychosis. Spooks.
A VOICE: O rocks.
PADDY DIGNAM: _(Earnestly.)_ Once I was in the employ of Mr J. H.
Menton, solicitor, commissioner for oaths and affidavits, of 27
Bachelor’s Walk. Now I am defunct, the wall of the heart hypertrophied.
Hard lines. The poor wife was awfully cut up. How is she bearing it?
Keep her off that bottle of sherry. _(He looks round him.)_ A lamp. I
must satisfy an animal need. That buttermilk didn’t agree with me.
_(The portly figure of John O’Connell, caretaker, stands forth, holding
a bunch of keys tied with crape. Beside him stands Father Coffey,
chaplain, toadbellied, wrynecked, in a surplice and bandanna nightcap,
holding sleepily a staff of twisted poppies.)_
FATHER COFFEY: _(Yawns, then chants with a hoarse croak.)_ Namine.
Jacobs. Vobiscuits. Amen.
JOHN O’CONNELL: _(Foghorns stormily through his megaphone.)_ Dignam,
Patrick T, deceased.
PADDY DIGNAM: _(With pricked up ears, winces.)_ Overtones. _(He
wriggles forward and places an ear to the ground.)_ My master’s voice!
JOHN O’CONNELL: Burial docket letter number U. P. eightyfive thousand.
Field seventeen. House of Keys. Plot, one hundred and one.
_(Paddy Dignam listens with visible effort, thinking, his tail
stiffpointed, his ears cocked.)_
PADDY DIGNAM: Pray for the repose of his soul.
_(He worms down through a coalhole, his brown habit trailing its tether
over rattling pebbles. After him toddles an obese grandfather rat on
fungus turtle paws under a grey carapace. Dignam’s voice, muffled, is
heard baying under ground:_ Dignam’s dead and gone below. _Tom
Rochford, robinredbreasted, in cap and breeches, jumps from his
twocolumned machine.)_
TOM ROCHFORD: _(A hand to his breastbone, bows.)_ Reuben J. A florin I
find him. _(He fixes the manhole with a resolute stare.)_ My turn now
on. Follow me up to Carlow.
_(He executes a daredevil salmon leap in the air and is engulfed in the
coalhole. Two discs on the columns wobble, eyes of nought. All recedes.
Bloom plodges forward again through the sump. Kisses chirp amid the
rifts of fog. A piano sounds. He stands before a lighted house,
listening. The kisses, winging from their bowers, fly about him,
twittering, warbling, cooing.)_
THE KISSES: _(Warbling.)_ Leo! _(Twittering.)_ Icky licky micky sticky
for Leo! _(Cooing.)_ Coo coocoo! Yummyyum, Womwom! _(Warbling.)_ Big
comebig! Pirouette! Leopopold! _(Twittering.)_ Leeolee! _(Warbling.)_ O
Leo!
_(They rustle, flutter upon his garments, alight, bright giddy flecks,
silvery sequins.)_
BLOOM: A man’s touch. Sad music. Church music. Perhaps here.
_(Zoe Higgins, a young whore in a sapphire slip, closed with three
bronze buckles, a slim black velvet fillet round her throat, nods,
trips down the steps and accosts him.)_
ZOE: Are you looking for someone? He’s inside with his friend.
BLOOM: Is this Mrs Mack’s?
ZOE: No, eightyone. Mrs Cohen’s. You might go farther and fare worse.
Mother Slipperslapper. _(Familiarly.)_ She’s on the job herself tonight
with the vet her tipster that gives her all the winners and pays for
her son in Oxford. Working overtime but her luck’s turned today.
_(Suspiciously.)_ You’re not his father, are you?
BLOOM: Not I!
ZOE: You both in black. Has little mousey any tickles tonight?
_(His skin, alert, feels her fingertips approach. A hand glides over
his left thigh.)_
ZOE: How’s the nuts?
BLOOM: Off side. Curiously they are on the right. Heavier, I suppose.
One in a million my tailor, Mesias, says.
ZOE: _(In sudden alarm.)_ You’ve a hard chancre.
BLOOM: Not likely.
ZOE: I feel it.
_(Her hand slides into his left trouser pocket and brings out a hard
black shrivelled potato. She regards it and Bloom with dumb moist
lips.)_
BLOOM: A talisman. Heirloom.
ZOE: For Zoe? For keeps? For being so nice, eh?
_(She puts the potato greedily into a pocket then links his arm,
cuddling him with supple warmth. He smiles uneasily. Slowly, note by
note, oriental music is played. He gazes in the tawny crystal of her
eyes, ringed with kohol. His smile softens.)_
ZOE: You’ll know me the next time.
BLOOM: _(Forlornly.)_ I never loved a dear gazelle but it was sure
to...
_(Gazelles are leaping, feeding on the mountains. Near are lakes. Round
their shores file shadows black of cedargroves. Aroma rises, a strong
hairgrowth of resin. It burns, the orient, a sky of sapphire, cleft by
the bronze flight of eagles. Under it lies the womancity, nude, white,
still, cool, in luxury. A fountain murmurs among damask roses. Mammoth
roses murmur of scarlet winegrapes. A wine of shame, lust, blood
exudes, strangely murmuring.)_
ZOE: _(Murmuring singsong with the music, her odalisk lips lusciously
smeared with salve of swinefat and rosewater.) Schorach ani wenowach,
benoith Hierushaloim._
BLOOM: _(Fascinated.)_ I thought you were of good stock by your accent.
ZOE: And you know what thought did?
_(She bites his ear gently with little goldstopped teeth, sending on
him a cloying breath of stale garlic. The roses draw apart, disclose a
sepulchre of the gold of kings and their mouldering bones.)_
BLOOM: _(Draws back, mechanically caressing her right bub with a flat
awkward hand.)_ Are you a Dublin girl?
ZOE: _(Catches a stray hair deftly and twists it to her coil.)_ No
bloody fear. I’m English. Have you a swaggerroot?
BLOOM: _(As before.)_ Rarely smoke, dear. Cigar now and then. Childish
device. _(Lewdly.)_ The mouth can be better engaged than with a
cylinder of rank weed.
ZOE: Go on. Make a stump speech out of it.
BLOOM: _(In workman’s corduroy overalls, black gansy with red floating
tie and apache cap.)_ Mankind is incorrigible. Sir Walter Ralegh
brought from the new world that potato and that weed, the one a killer
of pestilence by absorption, the other a poisoner of the ear, eye,
heart, memory, will, understanding, all. That is to say he brought the
poison a hundred years before another person whose name I forget
brought the food. Suicide. Lies. All our habits. Why, look at our
public life!
_(Midnight chimes from distant steeples.)_
THE CHIMES: Turn again, Leopold! Lord mayor of Dublin!
BLOOM: _(In alderman’s gown and chain.)_ Electors of Arran Quay, Inns
Quay, Rotunda, Mountjoy and North Dock, better run a tramline, I say,
from the cattlemarket to the river. That’s the music of the future.
That’s my programme. _Cui bono?_ But our bucaneering Vanderdeckens in
their phantom ship of finance...
AN ELECTOR: Three times three for our future chief magistrate!
_(The aurora borealis of the torchlight procession leaps.)_
THE TORCHBEARERS: Hooray!
_(Several wellknown burgesses, city magnates and freemen of the city
shake hands with Bloom and congratulate him. Timothy Harrington, late
thrice Lord Mayor of Dublin, imposing in mayoral scarlet, gold chain
and white silk tie, confers with councillor Lorcan Sherlock,_ locum
tenens. _They nod vigorously in agreement.)_
LATE LORD MAYOR HARRINGTON: _(In scarlet robe with mace, gold mayoral
chain and large white silk scarf.)_ That alderman sir Leo Bloom’s
speech be printed at the expense of the ratepayers. That the house in
which he was born be ornamented with a commemorative tablet and that
the thoroughfare hitherto known as Cow Parlour off Cork street be
henceforth designated Boulevard Bloom.
COUNCILLOR LORCAN SHERLOCK: Carried unanimously.
BLOOM: _(Impassionedly.)_ These flying Dutchmen or lying Dutchmen as
they recline in their upholstered poop, casting dice, what reck they?
Machines is their cry, their chimera, their panacea. Laboursaving
apparatuses, supplanters, bugbears, manufactured monsters for mutual
murder, hideous hobgoblins produced by a horde of capitalistic lusts
upon our prostituted labour. The poor man starves while they are
grassing their royal mountain stags or shooting peasants and
phartridges in their purblind pomp of pelf and power. But their reign
is rover for rever and ever and ev...
_(Prolonged applause. Venetian masts, maypoles and festal arches spring
up. A streamer bearing the legends_ Cead Mile Failte _and_ Mah Ttob
Melek Israel _spans the street. All the windows are thronged with
sightseers, chiefly ladies. Along the route the regiments of the Royal
Dublin Fusiliers, the King’s own Scottish Borderers, the Cameron
Highlanders and the Welsh Fusiliers, standing to attention, keep back
the crowd. Boys from High school are perched on the lampposts,
telegraph poles, windowsills, cornices, gutters, chimneypots, railings,
rainspouts, whistling and cheering. The pillar of the cloud appears. A
fife and drum band is heard in the distance playing the Kol Nidre. The
beaters approach with imperial eagles hoisted, trailing banners and
waving oriental palms. The chryselephantine papal standard rises high,
surrounded by pennons of the civic flag. The van of the procession
appears headed by John Howard Parnell, city marshal, in a chessboard
tabard, the Athlone Poursuivant and Ulster King of Arms. They are
followed by the Right Honourable Joseph Hutchinson, lord mayor of
Dublin, his lordship the lord mayor of Cork, their worships the mayors
of Limerick, Galway, Sligo and Waterford, twentyeight Irish
representative peers, sirdars, grandees and maharajahs bearing the
cloth of estate, the Dublin Metropolitan Fire Brigade, the chapter of
the saints of finance in their plutocratic order of precedence, the
bishop of Down and Connor, His Eminence Michael cardinal Logue,
archbishop of Armagh, primate of all Ireland, His Grace, the most
reverend Dr William Alexander, archbishop of Armagh, primate of all
Ireland, the chief rabbi, the presbyterian moderator, the heads of the
baptist, anabaptist, methodist and Moravian chapels and the honorary
secretary of the society of friends. After them march the guilds and
trades and trainbands with flying colours: coopers, bird fanciers,
millwrights, newspaper canvassers, law scriveners, masseurs, vintners,
trussmakers, chimneysweeps, lard refiners, tabinet and poplin weavers,
farriers, Italian warehousemen, church decorators, bootjack
manufacturers, undertakers, silk mercers, lapidaries, salesmasters,
corkcutters, assessors of fire losses, dyers and cleaners, export
bottlers, fellmongers, ticketwriters, heraldic seal engravers, horse
repository hands, bullion brokers, cricket and archery outfitters,
riddlemakers, egg and potato factors, hosiers and glovers, plumbing
contractors. After them march gentlemen of the bedchamber, Black Rod,
Deputy Garter, Gold Stick, the master of horse, the lord great
chamberlain, the earl marshal, the high constable carrying the sword of
state, saint Stephen’s iron crown, the chalice and bible. Four buglers
on foot blow a sennet. Beefeaters reply, winding clarions of welcome.
Under an arch of triumph Bloom appears, bareheaded, in a crimson velvet
mantle trimmed with ermine, bearing Saint Edward’s staff, the orb and
sceptre with the dove, the curtana. He is seated on a milkwhite horse
with long flowing crimson tail, richly caparisoned, with golden
headstall. Wild excitement. The ladies from their balconies throw down
rosepetals. The air is perfumed with essences. The men cheer. Bloom’s
boys run amid the bystanders with branches of hawthorn and
wrenbushes.)_