Jerusalem!
Open your gates and sing
Hosanna...
_(A rocket rushes up the sky and bursts. A white star falls from it,
proclaiming the consummation of all things and second coming of Elijah.
Along an infinite invisible tightrope taut from zenith to nadir the End
of the World, a twoheaded octopus in gillie’s kilts, busby and tartan
filibegs, whirls through the murk, head over heels, in the form of the
Three Legs of Man.)_
THE END OF THE WORLD: _(With a Scotch accent.)_ Wha’ll dance the keel
row, the keel row, the keel row?
_(Over the possing drift and choking breathcoughs, Elijah’s voice,
harsh as a corncrake’s, jars on high. Perspiring in a loose lawn
surplice with funnel sleeves he is seen, vergerfaced, above a rostrum
about which the banner of old glory is draped. He thumps the parapet.)_
ELIJAH: No yapping, if you please, in this booth. Jake Crane, Creole
Sue, Dove Campbell, Abe Kirschner, do your coughing with your mouths
shut. Say, I am operating all this trunk line. Boys, do it now. God’s
time is 12.25. Tell mother you’ll be there. Rush your order and you
play a slick ace. Join on right here. Book through to eternity
junction, the nonstop run. Just one word more. Are you a god or a
doggone clod? If the second advent came to Coney Island are we ready?
Florry Christ, Stephen Christ, Zoe Christ, Bloom Christ, Kitty Christ,
Lynch Christ, it’s up to you to sense that cosmic force. Have we cold
feet about the cosmos? No. Be on the side of the angels. Be a prism.
You have that something within, the higher self. You can rub shoulders
with a Jesus, a Gautama, an Ingersoll. Are you all in this vibration? I
say you are. You once nobble that, congregation, and a buck joyride to
heaven becomes a back number. You got me? It’s a lifebrightener, sure.
The hottest stuff ever was. It’s the whole pie with jam in. It’s just
the cutest snappiest line out. It is immense, supersumptuous. It
restores. It vibrates. I know and I am some vibrator. Joking apart and,
getting down to bedrock, A. J. Christ Dowie and the harmonial
philosophy, have you got that? O. K. Seventyseven west sixtyninth
street. Got me? That’s it. You call me up by sunphone any old time.
Bumboosers, save your stamps. _(He shouts.)_ Now then our glory song.
All join heartily in the singing. Encore! _(He sings.)_ Jeru...
THE GRAMOPHONE: _(Drowning his voice.)_ Whorusalaminyourhighhohhhh...
_(The disc rasps gratingly against the needle.)_
THE THREE WHORES: _(Covering their ears, squawk.)_ Ahhkkk!
ELIJAH: _(In rolledup shirtsleeves, black in the face, shouts at the
top of his voice, his arms uplifted.)_ Big Brother up there, Mr
President, you hear what I done just been saying to you. Certainly, I
sort of believe strong in you, Mr President. I certainly am thinking
now Miss Higgins and Miss Ricketts got religion way inside them.
Certainly seems to me I don’t never see no wusser scared female than
the way you been, Miss Florry, just now as I done seed you. Mr
President, you come long and help me save our sisters dear. _(He winks
at his audience.)_ Our Mr President, he twig the whole lot and he aint
saying nothing.
KITTY-KATE: I forgot myself. In a weak moment I erred and did what I
did on Constitution hill. I was confirmed by the bishop and enrolled in
the brown scapular. My mother’s sister married a Montmorency. It was a
working plumber was my ruination when I was pure.
ZOE-FANNY: I let him larrup it into me for the fun of it.
FLORRY-TERESA: It was in consequence of a portwine beverage on top of
Hennessy’s three star. I was guilty with Whelan when he slipped into
the bed.
STEPHEN: In the beginning was the word, in the end the world without
end. Blessed be the eight beatitudes.
_(The beatitudes, Dixon, Madden, Crotthers, Costello, Lenehan, Bannon,
Mulligan and Lynch in white surgical students’ gowns, four abreast,
goosestepping, tramp fast past in noisy marching.)_
THE BEATITUDES: _(Incoherently.)_ Beer beef battledog buybull businum
barnum buggerum bishop.
LYSTER: _(In quakergrey kneebreeches and broadbrimmed hat, says
discreetly.)_ He is our friend. I need not mention names. Seek thou the
light.
_(He corantos by. Best enters in hairdresser’s attire, shinily
laundered, his locks in curlpapers. He leads John Eglinton who wears a
mandarin’s kimono of Nankeen yellow, lizardlettered, and a high pagoda
hat.)_
BEST: _(Smiling, lifts the hat and displays a shaven poll from the
crown of which bristles a pigtail toupee tied with an orange topknot.)_
I was just beautifying him, don’t you know. A thing of beauty, don’t
you know, Yeats says, or I mean, Keats says.
JOHN EGLINTON: _(Produces a greencapped dark lantern and flashes it
towards a corner: with carping accent.)_ Esthetics and cosmetics are
for the boudoir. I am out for truth. Plain truth for a plain man.
Tanderagee wants the facts and means to get them.
_(In the cone of the searchlight behind the coalscuttle, ollave,
holyeyed, the bearded figure of Mananaun MacLir broods, chin on knees.
He rises slowly. A cold seawind blows from his druid mouth. About his
head writhe eels and elvers. He is encrusted with weeds and shells. His
right hand holds a bicycle pump. His left hand grasps a huge crayfish
by its two talons.)_
MANANAUN MACLIR: _(With a voice of waves.)_ Aum! Hek! Wal! Ak! Lub!
Mor! Ma! White yoghin of the gods. Occult pimander of Hermes
Trismegistos. _(With a voice of whistling seawind.)_ Punarjanam
patsypunjaub! I won’t have my leg pulled. It has been said by one:
beware the left, the cult of Shakti. _(With a cry of stormbirds.)_
Shakti Shiva, darkhidden Father! _(He smites with his bicycle pump the
crayfish in his left hand. On its cooperative dial glow the twelve
signs of the zodiac. He wails with the vehemence of the ocean.)_ Aum!
Baum! Pyjaum! I am the light of the homestead! I am the dreamery
creamery butter.
_(A skeleton judashand strangles the light. The green light wanes to
mauve. The gasjet wails whistling.)_
THE GASJET: Pooah! Pfuiiiiiii!
_(Zoe runs to the chandelier and, crooking her leg, adjusts the
mantle.)_
ZOE: Who has a fag as I’m here?
LYNCH: _(Tossing a cigarette on to the table.)_ Here.
ZOE: _(Her head perched aside in mock pride.)_ Is that the way to hand
the _pot_ to a lady? _(She stretches up to light the cigarette over the
flame, twirling it slowly, showing the brown tufts of her armpits.
Lynch with his poker lifts boldly a side of her slip. Bare from her
garters up her flesh appears under the sapphire a nixie’s green. She
puffs calmly at her cigarette.)_ Can you see the beautyspot of my
behind?
LYNCH: I’m not looking.
ZOE: _(Makes sheep’s eyes.)_ No? You wouldn’t do a less thing. Would
you suck a lemon?
_(Squinting in mock shame she glances with sidelong meaning at Bloom,
then twists round towards him, pulling her slip free of the poker. Blue
fluid again flows over her flesh. Bloom stands, smiling desirously,
twirling his thumbs. Kitty Ricketts licks her middle finger with her
spittle and, gazing in the mirror, smooths both eyebrows. Lipoti Virag,
basilicogrammate, chutes rapidly down through the chimneyflue and
struts two steps to the left on gawky pink stilts. He is sausaged into
several overcoats and wears a brown macintosh under which he holds a
roll of parchment. In his left eye flashes the monocle of Cashel Boyle
O’Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell. On his head is perched an
Egyptian pshent. Two quills project over his ears.)_
VIRAG: _(Heels together, bows.)_ My name is Virag Lipoti, of
Szombathely. _(He coughs thoughtfully, drily.)_ Promiscuous nakedness
is much in evidence hereabouts, eh? Inadvertently her backview revealed
the fact that she is not wearing those rather intimate garments of
which you are a particular devotee. The injection mark on the thigh I
hope you perceived? Good.
BLOOM: Granpapachi. But...
VIRAG: Number two on the other hand, she of the cherry rouge and
coiffeuse white, whose hair owes not a little to our tribal elixir of
gopherwood, is in walking costume and tightly staysed by her sit, I
should opine. Backbone in front, so to say. Correct me but I always
understood that the act so performed by skittish humans with glimpses
of lingerie appealed to you in virtue of its exhibitionististicicity.
In a word. Hippogriff. Am I right?
BLOOM: She is rather lean.
VIRAG: _(Not unpleasantly.)_ Absolutely! Well observed and those
pannier pockets of the skirt and slightly pegtop effect are devised to
suggest bunchiness of hip. A new purchase at some monster sale for
which a gull has been mulcted. Meretricious finery to deceive the eye.
Observe the attention to details of dustspecks. Never put on you
tomorrow what you can wear today. Parallax! _(With a nervous twitch of
his head.)_ Did you hear my brain go snap? Pollysyllabax!
BLOOM: _(An elbow resting in a hand, a forefinger against his cheek.)_
She seems sad.
VIRAG: _(Cynically, his weasel teeth bared yellow, draws down his left
eye with a finger and barks hoarsely.)_ Hoax! Beware of the flapper and
bogus mournful. Lily of the alley. All possess bachelor’s button
discovered by Rualdus Columbus. Tumble her. Columble her. Chameleon.
_(More genially.)_ Well then, permit me to draw your attention to item
number three. There is plenty of her visible to the naked eye. Observe
the mass of oxygenated vegetable matter on her skull. What ho, she
bumps! The ugly duckling of the party, longcasted and deep in keel.
BLOOM: _(Regretfully.)_ When you come out without your gun.
VIRAG: We can do you all brands, mild, medium and strong. Pay your
money, take your choice. How happy could you be with either...
BLOOM: With...?
VIRAG: _(His tongue upcurling.)_ Lyum! Look. Her beam is broad. She is
coated with quite a considerable layer of fat. Obviously mammal in
weight of bosom you remark that she has in front well to the fore two
protuberances of very respectable dimensions, inclined to fall in the
noonday soupplate, while on her rere lower down are two additional
protuberances, suggestive of potent rectum and tumescent for palpation,
which leave nothing to be desired save compactness. Such fleshy parts
are the product of careful nurture. When coopfattened their livers
reach an elephantine size. Pellets of new bread with fennygreek and
gumbenjamin swamped down by potions of green tea endow them during
their brief existence with natural pincushions of quite colossal
blubber. That suits your book, eh? Fleshhotpots of Egypt to hanker
after. Wallow in it. Lycopodium. _(His throat twitches.)_ Slapbang!
There he goes again.
BLOOM: The stye I dislike.
VIRAG: _(Arches his eyebrows.)_ Contact with a goldring, they say.
_Argumentum ad feminam_, as we said in old Rome and ancient Greece in
the consulship of Diplodocus and Ichthyosauros. For the rest Eve’s
sovereign remedy. Not for sale. Hire only. Huguenot. _(He twitches.)_
It is a funny sound. _(He coughs encouragingly.)_ But possibly it is
only a wart. I presume you shall have remembered what I will have
taught you on that head? Wheatenmeal with honey and nutmeg.
BLOOM: _(Reflecting.)_ Wheatenmeal with lycopodium and syllabax. This
searching ordeal. It has been an unusually fatiguing day, a chapter of
accidents. Wait. I mean, wartsblood spreads warts, you said...
VIRAG: _(Severely, his nose hardhumped, his side eye winking.)_ Stop
twirling your thumbs and have a good old thunk. See, you have
forgotten. Exercise your mnemotechnic. _La causa è santa_. Tara. Tara.
_(Aside.)_ He will surely remember.
BLOOM: Rosemary also did I understand you to say or willpower over
parasitic tissues. Then nay no I have an inkling. The touch of a
deadhand cures. Mnemo?
VIRAG: _(Excitedly.)_ I say so. I say so. E’en so. Technic. _(He taps
his parchmentroll energetically.)_ This book tells you how to act with
all descriptive particulars. Consult index for agitated fear of
aconite, melancholy of muriatic, priapic pulsatilla. Virag is going to
talk about amputation. Our old friend caustic. They must be starved.
Snip off with horsehair under the denned neck. But, to change the venue
to the Bulgar and the Basque, have you made up your mind whether you
like or dislike women in male habiliments? _(With a dry snigger.)_ You
intended to devote an entire year to the study of the religious problem
and the summer months of 1886 to square the circle and win that
million. Pomegranate! From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step.
Pyjamas, let us say? Or stockingette gussetted knickers, closed? Or,
put we the case, those complicated combinations, camiknickers? _(He
crows derisively.)_ Keekeereekee!
_(Bloom surveys uncertainly the three whores then gazes at the veiled
mauve light, hearing the everflying moth.)_
BLOOM: I wanted then to have now concluded. Nightdress was never. Hence
this. But tomorrow is a new day will be. Past was is today. What now is
will then morrow as now was be past yester.
VIRAG: _(Prompts in a pig’s whisper.)_ Insects of the day spend their
brief existence in reiterated coition, lured by the smell of the
inferiorly pulchritudinous female possessing extendified pudendal nerve
in dorsal region. Pretty Poll! _(His yellow parrotbeak gabbles
nasally.)_ They had a proverb in the Carpathians in or about the year
five thousand five hundred and fifty of our era. One tablespoonful of
honey will attract friend Bruin more than half a dozen barrels of first
choice malt vinegar. Bear’s buzz bothers bees. But of this apart. At
another time we may resume. We were very pleased, we others. _(He
coughs and, bending his brow, rubs his nose thoughtfully with a
scooping hand.)_ You shall find that these night insects follow the
light. An illusion for remember their complex unadjustable eye. For all
these knotty points see the seventeenth book of my Fundamentals of
Sexology or the Love Passion which Doctor L. B. says is the book
sensation of the year. Some, to example, there are again whose
movements are automatic. Perceive. That is his appropriate sun.
Nightbird nightsun nighttown. Chase me, Charley! _(He blows into
Bloom’s ear.)_ Buzz!
BLOOM: Bee or bluebottle too other day butting shadow on wall dazed
self then me wandered dazed down shirt good job I...
VIRAG: _(His face impassive, laughs in a rich feminine key.)_ Splendid!
Spanish fly in his fly or mustard plaster on his dibble. _(He gobbles
gluttonously with turkey wattles.)_ Bubbly jock! Bubbly jock! Where are
we? Open Sesame! Cometh forth! _(He unrolls his parchment rapidly and
reads, his glowworm’s nose running backwards over the letters which he
claws.)_ Stay, good friend. I bring thee thy answer. Redbank oysters
will shortly be upon us. I’m the best o’cook. Those succulent bivalves
may help us and the truffles of Perigord, tubers dislodged through
mister omnivorous porker, were unsurpassed in cases of nervous debility
or viragitis. Though they stink yet they sting. _(He wags his head with
cackling raillery.)_ Jocular. With my eyeglass in my ocular. _(He
sneezes.)_ Amen!
BLOOM: _(Absently.)_ Ocularly woman’s bivalve case is worse. Always
open sesame. The cloven sex. Why they fear vermin, creeping things. Yet
Eve and the serpent contradicts. Not a historical fact. Obvious analogy
to my idea. Serpents too are gluttons for woman’s milk. Wind their way
through miles of omnivorous forest to sucksucculent her breast dry.
Like those bubblyjocular Roman matrons one reads of in Elephantuliasis.
VIRAG: _(His mouth projected in hard wrinkles, eyes stonily forlornly
closed, psalms in outlandish monotone.)_ That the cows with their those
distended udders that they have been the the known...
BLOOM: I am going to scream. I beg your pardon. Ah? So. _(He repeats.)_
Spontaneously to seek out the saurian’s lair in order to entrust their
teats to his avid suction. Ant milks aphis. _(Profoundly.)_ Instinct
rules the world. In life. In death.
VIRAG: _(Head askew, arches his back and hunched wingshoulders, peers
at the moth out of blear bulged eyes, points a horning claw and
cries.)_ Who’s moth moth? Who’s dear Gerald? Dear Ger, that you? O
dear, he is Gerald. O, I much fear he shall be most badly burned. Will
some pleashe pershon not now impediment so catastrophics mit agitation
of firstclass tablenumpkin? _(He mews.)_ Puss puss puss puss! _(He
sighs, draws back and stares sideways down with dropping underjaw.)_
Well, well. He doth rest anon. (He snaps his jaws suddenly on the air.)