_(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 seizes 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 flies from the room, past the whores at the
door.)_
BELLA: _(Screams.)_ After him!
_(The two whores rush to the halldoor. 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.)_ Here,
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 head 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 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 vicechancellor. You
don’t want a scandal.
BELLA: _(Angrily.)_ Trinity. Coming down here ragging after the
boatraces and paying nothing. Are you my commander here or? Where is
he? I’ll charge him! Disgrace him, I will! _(She shouts.)_ Zoe! Zoe!
BLOOM: _(Urgently.)_ And if it were your own son in Oxford?
_(Warningly.)_ I know.
BELLA: _(Almost speechless.)_ Who are. Incog!
ZOE: _(In the doorway.)_ There’s a row on.
BLOOM: What? Where? _(He throws a shilling on the table and starts.)_
That’s for the chimney. Where? I need mountain air.
_(He hurries out through the hall. The whores point. Florry follows,
spilling water from her tilted tumbler. On the doorstep all the whores
clustered talk volubly, pointing to the right where the fog has cleared
off. From the left arrives a jingling hackney car. It slows to in front
of the house. Bloom at the halldoor perceives Corny Kelleher who is
about to dismount from the car with two silent lechers. He averts his
face. Bella from within the hall urges on her whores. They blow
ickylickysticky yumyum kisses. Corny Kelleher replies with a ghastly
lewd smile. The silent lechers turn to pay the jarvey. Zoe and Kitty
still point right. Bloom, parting them swiftly, draws his caliph’s hood
and poncho and hurries down the steps with sideways face. Incog Haroun
al Raschid he flits behind the silent lechers and hastens on by the
railings with fleet step of a pard strewing the drag behind him, torn
envelopes drenched in aniseed. The ashplant marks his stride. A pack of
bloodhounds, led by Hornblower of Trinity brandishing a dogwhip in
tallyho cap and an old pair of grey trousers, follows from far, picking
up the scent, nearer, baying, panting, at fault, breaking away,
throwing their tongues, biting his heels, leaping at his tail. He
walks, runs, zigzags, gallops, lugs laid back. He is pelted with
gravel, cabbagestumps, biscuitboxes, eggs, potatoes, dead codfish,
woman’s slipperslappers. After him freshfound the hue and cry zigzag
gallops in hot pursuit of follow my leader: 65 C, 66 C, night watch,
John Henry Menton, Wisdom Hely, V. B. Dillon, Councillor Nannetti,
Alexander Keyes, Larry O’Rourke, Joe Cuffe, Mrs O’Dowd, Pisser Burke,
The Nameless One, Mrs Riordan, The Citizen, Garryowen, Whodoyoucallhim,
Strangeface, Fellowthatsolike, Sawhimbefore, Chapwithawen, Chris
Callinan, sir Charles Cameron, Benjamin Dollard, Lenehan, Bartell
d’Arcy, Joe Hynes, red Murray, editor Brayden, T. M. Healy, Mr Justice
Fitzgibbon, John Howard Parnell, the reverend Tinned Salmon, Professor
Joly, Mrs Breen, Denis Breen, Theodore Purefoy, Mina Purefoy, the
Westland Row postmistress, C. P. M’Coy, friend of Lyons, Hoppy Holohan,
maninthestreet, othermaninthestreet, Footballboots, pugnosed driver,
rich protestant lady, Davy Byrne, Mrs Ellen M’Guinness, Mrs Joe
Gallaher, George Lidwell, Jimmy Henry on corns, Superintendent Laracy,
Father Cowley, Crofton out of the Collector-general’s, Dan Dawson,
dental surgeon Bloom with tweezers, Mrs Bob Doran, Mrs Kennefick, Mrs
Wyse Nolan, John Wyse Nolan,
handsomemarriedwomanrubbedagainstwidebehindinClonskea tram, the
bookseller of_ Sweets of Sin, _Miss Dubedatandshedidbedad, Mesdames
Gerald and Stanislaus Moran of Roebuck, the managing clerk of
Drimmie’s, Wetherup, colonel Hayes, Mastiansky, Citron, Penrose, Aaron
Figatner, Moses Herzog, Michael E Geraghty, Inspector Troy, Mrs
Galbraith, the constable off Eccles street corner, old doctor Brady
with stethoscope, the mystery man on the beach, a retriever, Mrs Miriam
Dandrade and all her lovers.)_
THE HUE AND CRY: _(Helterskelterpelterwelter.)_ He’s Bloom! Stop Bloom!
Stopabloom! Stopperrobber! Hi! Hi! Stophim on the corner!
_(At the corner of Beaver street beneath the scaffolding Bloom panting
stops on the fringe of the noisy quarrelling knot, a lot not knowing a
jot what hi! hi! row and wrangle round the whowhat brawlaltogether.)_
STEPHEN: _(With elaborate gestures, breathing deeply and slowly.)_ You
are my guests. Uninvited. By virtue of the fifth of George and seventh
of Edward. History to blame. Fabled by mothers of memory.
PRIVATE CARR: _(To Cissy Caffrey.)_ Was he insulting you?
STEPHEN: Addressed her in vocative feminine. Probably neuter.
Ungenitive.
VOICES: No, he didn’t. I seen him. The girl there. He was in Mrs
Cohen’s. What’s up? Soldier and civilian.
CISSY CAFFREY: I was in company with the soldiers and they left me to
do—you know, and the young man run up behind me. But I’m faithful to
the man that’s treating me though I’m only a shilling whore.
STEPHEN: _(Catches sight of Lynch’s and Kitty’s heads.)_ Hail,
Sisyphus. _(He points to himself and the others.)_ Poetic. Uropoetic.
VOICES: Shes faithfultheman.
CISSY CAFFREY: Yes, to go with him. And me with a soldier friend.
PRIVATE COMPTON: He doesn’t half want a thick ear, the blighter. Biff
him one, Harry.
PRIVATE CARR: _(To Cissy.)_ Was he insulting you while me and him was
having a piss?
LORD TENNYSON: _(Gentleman poet in Union Jack blazer and cricket
flannels, bareheaded, flowingbearded.)_ Theirs not to reason why.
PRIVATE COMPTON: Biff him, Harry.
STEPHEN: _(To Private Compton.)_ I don’t know your name but you are
quite right. Doctor Swift says one man in armour will beat ten men in
their shirts. Shirt is synechdoche. Part for the whole.
CISSY CAFFREY: _(To the crowd.)_ No, I was with the privates.
STEPHEN: _(Amiably.)_ Why not? The bold soldier boy. In my opinion
every lady for example...
PRIVATE CARR: _(His cap awry, advances to Stephen.)_ Say, how would it
be, governor, if I was to bash in your jaw?
STEPHEN: _(Looks up to the sky.)_ How? Very unpleasant. Noble art of
selfpretence. Personally, I detest action. _(He waves his hand.)_ Hand
hurts me slightly. _Enfin ce sont vos oignons._ _(To Cissy Caffrey.)_
Some trouble is on here. What is it precisely?
DOLLY GRAY: _(From her balcony waves her handkerchief, giving the sign
of the heroine of Jericho.)_ Rahab. Cook’s son, goodbye. Safe home to
Dolly. Dream of the girl you left behind and she will dream of you.
_(The soldiers turn their swimming eyes.)_
BLOOM: _(Elbowing through the crowd, plucks Stephen’s sleeve
vigorously.)_ Come now, professor, that carman is waiting.
STEPHEN: _(Turns.)_ Eh? _(He disengages himself.)_ Why should I not
speak to him or to any human being who walks upright upon this oblate
orange? _(He points his finger.)_ I’m not afraid of what I can talk to
if I see his eye. Retaining the perpendicular.
_(He staggers a pace back.)_
BLOOM: _(Propping him.)_ Retain your own.
STEPHEN: _(Laughs emptily.)_ My centre of gravity is displaced. I have
forgotten the trick. Let us sit down somewhere and discuss. Struggle
for life is the law of existence but but human philirenists, notably
the tsar and the king of England, have invented arbitration. _(He taps
his brow.)_ But in here it is I must kill the priest and the king.
BIDDY THE CLAP: Did you hear what the professor said? He’s a professor
out of the college.
CUNTY KATE: I did. I heard that.
BIDDY THE CLAP: He expresses himself with such marked refinement of
phraseology.
CUNTY KATE: Indeed, yes. And at the same time with such apposite
trenchancy.
PRIVATE CARR: _(Pulls himself free and comes forward.)_ What’s that
you’re saying about my king?
_(Edward the Seventh appears in an archway. He wears a white jersey on
which an image of the Sacred Heart is stitched with the insignia of
Garter and Thistle, Golden Fleece, Elephant of Denmark, Skinner’s and
Probyn’s horse, Lincoln’s Inn bencher and ancient and honourable
artillery company of Massachusetts. He sucks a red jujube. He is robed
as a grand elect perfect and sublime mason with trowel and apron,
marked_ made in Germany. _In his left hand he holds a plasterer’s
bucket on which is printed_ Défense d’uriner. _A roar of welcome greets
him.)_
EDWARD THE SEVENTH: _(Slowly, solemnly but indistinctly.)_ Peace,
perfect peace. For identification, bucket in my hand. Cheerio, boys.
_(He turns to his subjects.)_ We have come here to witness a clean
straight fight and we heartily wish both men the best of good luck.
Mahak makar a bak.
_(He shakes hands with Private Carr, Private Compton, Stephen, Bloom
and Lynch. General applause. Edward the Seventh lifts his bucket
graciously in acknowledgment.)_
PRIVATE CARR: _(To Stephen.)_ Say it again.
STEPHEN: _(Nervous, friendly, pulls himself up.)_ I understand your
point of view though I have no king myself for the moment. This is the
age of patent medicines. A discussion is difficult down here. But this
is the point. You die for your country. Suppose. _(He places his arm on
Private Carr’s sleeve.)_ Not that I wish it for you. But I say: Let my
country die for me. Up to the present it has done so. I didn’t want it
to die. Damn death. Long live life!
EDWARD THE SEVENTH: _(Levitates over heaps of slain, in the garb and
with the halo of Joking Jesus, a white jujube in his phosphorescent
face.)_
My methods are new and are causing surprise.
To make the blind see I throw dust in their eyes.
STEPHEN: Kings and unicorns! _(He falls back a pace.)_ Come somewhere
and we’ll... What was that girl saying?...
PRIVATE COMPTON: Eh, Harry, give him a kick in the knackers. Stick one
into Jerry.
BLOOM: _(To the privates, softly.)_ He doesn’t know what he’s saying.
Taken a little more than is good for him. Absinthe. Greeneyed monster.
I know him. He’s a gentleman, a poet. It’s all right.
STEPHEN: _(Nods, smiling and laughing.)_ Gentleman, patriot, scholar
and judge of impostors.
PRIVATE CARR: I don’t give a bugger who he is.
PRIVATE COMPTON: We don’t give a bugger who he is.
STEPHEN: I seem to annoy them. Green rag to a bull.
_(Kevin Egan of Paris in black Spanish tasselled shirt and peep-o’-day
boy’s hat signs to Stephen.)_
KEVIN EGAN: H’lo! _Bonjour!_ The _vieille ogresse_ with the _dents
jaunes_.
_(Patrice Egan peeps from behind, his rabbitface nibbling a quince
leaf.)_