Though she’s a factory lass
And wears no fancy clothes.
_(Closeclutched swift swifter with glareblareflare scudding they
scootlootshoot 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, Conmee on Christass, lame crutch and leg sailor in cockboat
armfolded ropepulling hitching stamp hornpipe through and through.
Baraabum! On nags hogs bellhorses 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 switchback
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 walls. He stops dead.)_
STEPHEN: Ho!
_(Stephen’s mother, emaciated, rises stark through the floor, in leper
grey with a wreath of faded orangeblossoms and a torn bridal veil, her
face worn and noseless, green with gravemould. 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.)_