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Ulysses (version 2)

(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.) BLOOM’S BOYS: The wren, the wren, The king of all birds, Saint Stephen’s his day Was caught in the furze. A BLACKSMITH: (Murmurs.) For the honour of God! And is that Bloom? He scarcely looks thirtyone. A PAVIOR AND FLAGGER: That’s the famous Bloom now, the world’s greatest reformer. Hats off! (All uncover their heads. Women whisper eagerly.) A MILLIONAIRESS: (Richly.) Isn’t he simply wonderful? A NOBLEWOMAN: (Nobly.) All that man has seen! A FEMINIST: (Masculinely.) And done! A BELLHANGER: A classic face! He has the forehead of a thinker. (Bloom’s weather. A sunburst appears in the northwest.) THE BISHOP OF DOWN AND CONNOR: I here present your undoubted emperor-president and king-chairman, the most serene and potent and very puissant ruler of this realm. God save Leopold the First! ALL: God save Leopold the First! BLOOM: (In dalmatic and purple mantle, to the bishop of Down and Connor, with dignity.) Thanks, somewhat eminent sir. WILLIAM, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH: (In purple stock and shovel hat.) Will you to your power cause law and mercy to be executed in all your judgments in Ireland and territories thereunto belonging? BLOOM: (Placing his right hand on his testicles, swears.) So may the Creator deal with me. All this I promise to do. MICHAEL, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH: (Pours a cruse of hairoil over Bloom’s head.) Gaudium magnum annuntio vobis. Habemus carneficem. Leopold, Patrick, Andrew, David, George, be thou anointed! (Bloom assumes a mantle of cloth of gold and puts on a ruby ring. He ascends and stands on the stone of destiny. The representative peers put on at the same time their twentyeight crowns. Joybells ring in Christ church, Saint Patrick’s, George’s and gay Malahide. Mirus bazaar fireworks go up from all sides with symbolical phallopyrotechnic designs. The peers do homage, one by one, approaching and genuflecting.) THE PEERS: I do become your liege man of life and limb to earthly worship. (Bloom holds up his right hand on which sparkles the Koh-i-Noor diamond. His palfrey neighs. Immediate silence. Wireless intercontinental and interplanetary transmitters are set for reception of message.) BLOOM: My subjects! We hereby nominate our faithful charger Copula Felix hereditary Grand Vizier and announce that we have this day repudiated our former spouse and have bestowed our royal hand upon the princess Selene, the splendour of night. (The former morganatic spouse of Bloom is hastily removed in the Black Maria. The princess Selene, in moonblue robes, a silver crescent on her head, descends from a Sedan chair, borne by two giants. An outburst of cheering.) JOHN HOWARD PARNELL: (Raises the royal standard.) Illustrious Bloom! Successor to my famous brother! BLOOM: (Embraces John Howard Parnell.) We thank you from our heart, John, for this right royal welcome to green Erin, the promised land of our common ancestors. (The freedom of the city is presented to him embodied in a charter. The keys of Dublin, crossed on a crimson cushion, are given to him. He shows all that he is wearing green socks.) TOM KERNAN: You deserve it, your honour. BLOOM: On this day twenty years ago we overcame the hereditary enemy at Ladysmith. Our howitzers and camel swivel guns played on his lines with telling effect. Half a league onward! They charge! All is lost now! Do we yield? No! We drive them headlong! Lo! We charge! Deploying to the left our light horse swept across the heights of Plevna and, uttering their warcry Bonafide Sabaoth, sabred the Saracen gunners to a man. THE CHAPEL OF FREEMAN TYPESETTERS: Hear! Hear! JOHN WYSE NOLAN: There’s the man that got away James Stephens. A BLUECOAT SCHOOLBOY: Bravo! AN OLD RESIDENT: You’re a credit to your country, sir, that’s what you are. AN APPLEWOMAN: He’s a man like Ireland wants. BLOOM: My beloved subjects, a new era is about to dawn. I, Bloom, tell you verily it is even now at hand. Yea, on the word of a Bloom, ye shall ere long enter into the golden city which is to be, the new Bloomusalem in the Nova Hibernia of the future. (Thirtytwo workmen, wearing rosettes, from all the counties of Ireland, under the guidance of Derwan the builder, construct the new Bloomusalem. It is a colossal edifice with crystal roof, built in the shape of a huge pork kidney, containing forty thousand rooms. In the course of its extension several buildings and monuments are demolished. Government offices are temporarily transferred to railway sheds. Numerous houses are razed to the ground. The inhabitants are lodged in barrels and boxes, all marked in red with the letters: L. B. Several paupers fall from a ladder. A part of the walls of Dublin, crowded with loyal sightseers, collapses.) THE SIGHTSEERS: (Dying.) Morituri te salutant. (They die.) (A man in a brown macintosh springs up through a trapdoor. He points an elongated finger at Bloom.) THE MAN IN THE MACINTOSH: Don’t you believe a word he says. That man is Leopold M’Intosh, the notorious fireraiser. His real name is Higgins. BLOOM: Shoot him! Dog of a christian! So much for M’Intosh! (A cannonshot. The man in the macintosh disappears. Bloom with his sceptre strikes down poppies. The instantaneous deaths of many powerful enemies, graziers, members of parliament, members of standing committees, are reported. Bloom’s bodyguard distribute Maundy money, commemoration medals, loaves and fishes, temperance badges, expensive Henry Clay cigars, free cowbones for soup, rubber preservatives in sealed envelopes tied with gold thread, butter scotch, pineapple rock, billets doux in the form of cocked hats, readymade suits, porringers of toad in the hole, bottles of Jeyes’ Fluid, purchase stamps, 40 days’ indulgences, spurious coins, dairyfed pork sausages, theatre passes, season tickets available for all tramlines, coupons of the royal and privileged Hungarian lottery, penny dinner counters, cheap reprints of the World’s Twelve Worst Books: Froggy And Fritz (politic), Care of the Baby (infantilic), 50 Meals for 7/6 (culinic), Was Jesus a Sun Myth? (historic), Expel that Pain (medic), Infant’s Compendium of the Universe (cosmic), Let’s All Chortle (hilaric), Canvasser’s Vade Mecum (journalic), Loveletters of Mother Assistant (erotic), Who’s Who in Space (astric), Songs that Reached Our Heart (melodic), Pennywise’s Way to Wealth (parsimonic). A general rush and scramble. Women press forward to touch the hem of Bloom’s robe. The lady Gwendolen Dubedat bursts through the throng, leaps on his horse and kisses him on both cheeks amid great acclamation. A magnesium flashlight photograph is taken. Babes and sucklings are held up.) THE WOMEN: Little father! Little father! THE BABES AND SUCKLINGS: Clap clap hands till Poldy comes home, Cakes in his pocket for Leo alone. (Bloom, bending down, pokes Baby Boardman gently in the stomach.) BABY BOARDMAN: (Hiccups, curdled milk flowing from his mouth.) Hajajaja. BLOOM: (Shaking hands with a blind stripling.) My more than Brother! (Placing his arms round the shoulders of an old couple.) Dear old friends! (He plays pussy fourcorners with ragged boys and girls.) Peep! Bopeep! (He wheels twins in a perambulator.) Ticktacktwo wouldyousetashoe? (He performs juggler’s tricks, draws red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet silk handkerchiefs from his mouth.) Roygbiv. 32 feet per second. (He consoles a widow.) Absence makes the heart grow younger. (He dances the Highland fling with grotesque antics.) Leg it, ye devils! (He kisses the bedsores of a palsied veteran.) Honourable wounds! (He trips up a fat policeman.) U. p: up. U. p: up. (He whispers in the ear of a blushing waitress and laughs kindly.) Ah, naughty, naughty! (He eats a raw turnip offered him by Maurice Butterly, farmer.) Fine! Splendid! (He refuses to accept three shillings offered him by Joseph Hynes, journalist.) My dear fellow, not at all! (He gives his coat to a beggar.) Please accept. (He takes part in a stomach race with elderly male and female cripples.) Come on, boys! Wriggle it, girls! THE CITIZEN: (Choked with emotion, brushes aside a tear in his emerald muffler.) May the good God bless him! (The rams’ horns sound for silence. The standard of Zion is hoisted.) BLOOM: (Uncloaks impressively, revealing obesity, unrolls a paper and reads solemnly.) Aleph Beth Ghimel Daleth Hagadah Tephilim Kosher Yom Kippur Hanukah Roschaschana Beni Brith Bar Mitzvah Mazzoth Askenazim Meshuggah Talith. (An official translation is read by Jimmy Henry, assistant town clerk.) JIMMY HENRY: The Court of Conscience is now open. His Most Catholic Majesty will now administer open air justice. Free medical and legal advice, solution of doubles and other problems. All cordially invited. Given at this our loyal city of Dublin in the year 1 of the Paradisiacal Era. PADDY LEONARD: What am I to do about my rates and taxes? BLOOM: Pay them, my friend. PADDY LEONARD: Thank you. NOSEY FLYNN: Can I raise a mortgage on my fire insurance? BLOOM: (Obdurately.) Sirs, take notice that by the law of torts you are bound over in your own recognisances for six months in the sum of five pounds. J. J. O’MOLLOY: A Daniel did I say? Nay! A Peter O’Brien! NOSEY FLYNN: Where do I draw the five pounds? PISSER BURKE: For bladder trouble? BLOOM: Acid. nit. hydrochlor. dil., 20 minims Tinct. nux vom., 5 minims Extr. taraxel. lig., 30 minims. Aq. dis. ter in die. CHRIS CALLINAN: What is the parallax of the subsolar ecliptic of Aldebaran? BLOOM: Pleased to hear from you, Chris. K. 11. JOE HYNES: Why aren’t you in uniform? BLOOM: When my progenitor of sainted memory wore the uniform of the Austrian despot in a dank prison where was yours? BEN DOLLARD: Pansies? BLOOM: Embellish (beautify) suburban gardens. BEN DOLLARD: When twins arrive? BLOOM: Father (pater, dad) starts thinking. LARRY O’ROURKE: An eightday licence for my new premises. You remember me, sir Leo, when you were in number seven. I’m sending around a dozen of stout for the missus. BLOOM: (Coldly.) You have the advantage of me. Lady Bloom accepts no presents. CROFTON: This is indeed a festivity. BLOOM: (Solemnly.) You call it a festivity. I call it a sacrament. ALEXANDER KEYES: When will we have our own house of keys? BLOOM: I stand for the reform of municipal morals and the plain ten commandments. New worlds for old. Union of all, jew, moslem and gentile. Three acres and a cow for all children of nature. Saloon motor hearses. Compulsory manual labour for all. All parks open to the public day and night. Electric dishscrubbers. Tuberculosis, lunacy, war and mendicancy must now cease. General amnesty, weekly carnival with masked licence, bonuses for all, esperanto the universal language with universal brotherhood. No more patriotism of barspongers and dropsical impostors. Free money, free rent, free love and a free lay church in a free lay state. O’MADDEN BURKE: Free fox in a free henroost. DAVY BYRNE: (Yawning.) Iiiiiiiiiaaaaaaach! BLOOM: Mixed races and mixed marriage. LENEHAN: What about mixed bathing? (Bloom explains to those near him his schemes for social regeneration. All agree with him. The keeper of the Kildare street museum appears, dragging a lorry on which are the shaking statues of several naked goddesses, Venus Callipyge, Venus Pandemos, Venus Metempsychosis, and plaster figures, also naked, representing the new nine muses, Commerce, Operatic Music, Amor, Publicity, Manufacture, Liberty of Speech, Plural Voting, Gastronomy, Private Hygiene, Seaside Concert Entertainments, Painless Obstetrics and Astronomy for the People.) FATHER FARLEY: He is an episcopalian, an agnostic, an anythingarian seeking to overthrow our holy faith. MRS RIORDAN: (Tears up her will.) I’m disappointed in you! You bad man! MOTHER GROGAN: (Removes her boot to throw it at Bloom.) You beast! You abominable person! NOSEY FLYNN: Give us a tune, Bloom. One of the old sweet songs. BLOOM: (With rollicking humour.) I vowed that I never would leave her, She turned out a cruel deceiver. With my tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom. HOPPY HOLOHAN: Good old Bloom! There’s nobody like him after all. PADDY LEONARD: Stage Irishman! BLOOM: What railway opera is like a tramline in Gibraltar? The Rows of Casteele. (Laughter.) LENEHAN: Plagiarist! Down with Bloom! THE VEILED SIBYL: (Enthusiastically.) I’m a Bloomite and I glory in it. I believe in him in spite of all. I’d give my life for him, the funniest man on earth. BLOOM: (Winks at the bystanders.) I bet she’s a bonny lassie. THEODORE PUREFOY: (In fishingcap and oilskin jacket.) He employs a mechanical device to frustrate the sacred ends of nature. THE VEILED SIBYL: (Stabs herself.) My hero god! (She dies.) (Many most attractive and enthusiastic women also commit suicide by stabbing, drowning, drinking prussic acid, aconite, arsenic, opening their veins, refusing food, casting themselves under steamrollers, from the top of Nelson’s Pillar, into the great vat of Guinness’s brewery, asphyxiating themselves by placing their heads in gasovens, hanging themselves in stylish garters, leaping from windows of different storeys.) ALEXANDER J DOWIE: (Violently.) Fellowchristians and antiBloomites, the man called Bloom is from the roots of hell, a disgrace to christian men. A fiendish libertine from his earliest years this stinking goat of Mendes gave precocious signs of infantile debauchery, recalling the cities of the plain, with a dissolute granddam. This vile hypocrite, bronzed with infamy, is the white bull mentioned in the Apocalypse. A worshipper of the Scarlet Woman, intrigue is the very breath of his nostrils. The stake faggots and the caldron of boiling oil are for him. Caliban! THE MOB: Lynch him! Roast him! He’s as bad as Parnell was. Mr Fox! (Mother Grogan throws her boot at Bloom. Several shopkeepers from upper and lower Dorset street throw objects of little or no commercial value, hambones, condensed milk tins, unsaleable cabbage, stale bread, sheep’s tails, odd pieces of fat.) BLOOM: (Excitedly.) This is midsummer madness, some ghastly joke again. By heaven, I am guiltless as the unsunned snow! It was my brother Henry. He is my double. He lives in number 2 Dolphin’s Barn. Slander, the viper, has wrongfully accused me. Fellowcountrymen, sgenl inn ban bata coisde gan capall. I call on my old friend, Dr Malachi Mulligan, sex specialist, to give medical testimony on my behalf. DR MULLIGAN: (In motor jerkin, green motorgoggles on his brow.) Dr Bloom is bisexually abnormal. He has recently escaped from Dr Eustace’s private asylum for demented gentlemen. Born out of bedlock hereditary epilepsy is present, the consequence of unbridled lust. Traces of elephantiasis have been discovered among his ascendants. There are marked symptoms of chronic exhibitionism. Ambidexterity is also latent. He is prematurely bald from selfabuse, perversely idealistic in consequence, a reformed rake, and has metal teeth. In consequence of a family complex he has temporarily lost his memory and I believe him to be more sinned against than sinning. I have made a pervaginal examination and, after application of the acid test to 5427 anal, axillary, pectoral and pubic hairs, I declare him to be virgo intacta. (Bloom holds his high grade hat over his genital organs.) DR MADDEN: Hypsospadia is also marked. In the interest of coming generations I suggest that the parts affected should be preserved in spirits of wine in the national teratological museum. DR CROTTHERS: I have examined the patient’s urine. It is albuminoid. Salivation is insufficient, the patellar reflex intermittent. DR PUNCH COSTELLO: The fetor judaicus is most perceptible. DR DIXON: (Reads a bill of health.) Professor Bloom is a finished example of the new womanly man. His moral nature is simple and lovable. Many have found him a dear man, a dear person. He is a rather quaint fellow on the whole, coy though not feebleminded in the medical sense. He has written a really beautiful letter, a poem in itself, to the court missionary of the Reformed Priests’ Protection Society which clears up everything. He is practically a total abstainer and I can affirm that he sleeps on a straw litter and eats the most Spartan food, cold dried grocer’s peas. He wears a hairshirt of pure Irish manufacture winter and summer and scourges himself every Saturday. He was, I understand, at one time a firstclass misdemeanant in Glencree reformatory. Another report states that he was a very posthumous child. I appeal for clemency in the name of the most sacred word our vocal organs have ever been called upon to speak. He is about to have a baby. (General commotion and compassion. Women faint. A wealthy American makes a street collection for Bloom. Gold and silver coins, blank cheques, banknotes, jewels, treasury bonds, maturing bills of exchange, I. O. U’s, wedding rings, watchchains, lockets, necklaces and bracelets are rapidly collected.) BLOOM: O, I so want to be a mother. MRS THORNTON: (In nursetender’s gown.) Embrace me tight, dear. You’ll be soon over it. Tight, dear. (Bloom embraces her tightly and bears eight male yellow and white children. They appear on a redcarpeted staircase adorned with expensive plants. All the octuplets are handsome, with valuable metallic faces, wellmade, respectably dressed and wellconducted, speaking five modern languages fluently and interested in various arts and sciences. Each has his name printed in legible letters on his shirtfront: Nasodoro, Goldfinger, Chrysostomos, Maindorée, Silversmile, Silberselber, Vifargent, Panargyros. They are immediately appointed to positions of high public trust in several different countries as managing directors of banks, traffic managers of railways, chairmen of limited liability companies, vicechairmen of hotel syndicates.) A VOICE: Bloom, are you the Messiah ben Joseph or ben David? BLOOM: (Darkly.) You have said it. BROTHER BUZZ: Then perform a miracle like Father Charles. BANTAM LYONS: Prophesy who will win the Saint Leger. (Bloom walks on a net, covers his left eye with his left ear, passes through several walls, climbs Nelson’s Pillar, hangs from the top ledge by his eyelids, eats twelve dozen oysters (shells included), heals several sufferers from king’s evil, contracts his face so as to resemble many historical personages, Lord Beaconsfield, Lord Byron, Wat Tyler, Moses of Egypt, Moses Maimonides, Moses Mendelssohn, Henry Irving, Rip van Winkle, Kossuth, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Baron Leopold Rothschild, Robinson Crusoe, Sherlock Holmes, Pasteur, turns each foot simultaneously in different directions, bids the tide turn back, eclipses the sun by extending his little finger.) BRINI, PAPAL NUNCIO: (In papal zouave’s uniform, steel cuirasses as breastplate, armplates, thighplates, legplates, large profane moustaches and brown paper mitre.) Leopoldi autem generatio. Moses begat Noah and Noah begat Eunuch and Eunuch begat O’Halloran and O’Halloran begat Guggenheim and Guggenheim begat Agendath and Agendath begat Netaim and Netaim begat Le Hirsch and Le Hirsch begat Jesurum and Jesurum begat MacKay and MacKay begat Ostrolopsky and Ostrolopsky begat Smerdoz and Smerdoz begat Weiss and Weiss begat Schwarz and Schwarz begat Adrianopoli and Adrianopoli begat Aranjuez and Aranjuez begat Lewy Lawson and Lewy Lawson begat Ichabudonosor and Ichabudonosor begat O’Donnell Magnus and O’Donnell Magnus begat Christbaum and Christbaum begat ben Maimun and ben Maimun begat Dusty Rhodes and Dusty Rhodes begat Benamor and Benamor begat Jones-Smith and Jones-Smith begat Savorgnanovich and Savorgnanovich begat Jasperstone and Jasperstone begat Vingtetunieme and Vingtetunieme begat Szombathely and Szombathely begat Virag and Virag begat Bloom et vocabitur nomen eius Emmanuel. A DEADHAND: (Writes on the wall.) Bloom is a cod. CRAB: (In bushranger’s kit.) What did you do in the cattlecreep behind Kilbarrack? A FEMALE INFANT: (Shakes a rattle.) And under Ballybough bridge? A HOLLYBUSH: And in the devil’s glen? BLOOM: (Blushes furiously all over from frons to nates, three tears falling from his left eye.) Spare my past. THE IRISH EVICTED TENANTS: (In bodycoats, kneebreeches, with Donnybrook fair shillelaghs.) Sjambok him! (Bloom with asses’ ears seats himself in the pillory with crossed arms, his feet protruding. He whistles Don Giovanni, a cenar teco. Artane orphans, joining hands, caper round him. Girls of the Prison Gate Mission, joining hands, caper round in the opposite direction.) THE ARTANE ORPHANS: You hig, you hog, you dirty dog! You think the ladies love you! THE PRISON GATE GIRLS: If you see Kay Tell him he may See you in tea Tell him from me. HORNBLOWER: (In ephod and huntingcap, announces.) And he shall carry the sins of the people to Azazel, the spirit which is in the wilderness, and to Lilith, the nighthag. And they shall stone him and defile him, yea, all from Agendath Netaim and from Mizraim, the land of Ham. (All the people cast soft pantomime stones at Bloom. Many bonafide travellers and ownerless dogs come near him and defile him. Mastiansky and Citron approach in gaberdines, wearing long earlocks. They wag their beards at Bloom.) MASTIANSKY AND CITRON: Belial! Laemlein of Istria, the false Messiah! Abulafia! Recant! (George R Mesias, Bloom’s tailor, appears, a tailor’s goose under his arm, presenting a bill.) MESIAS: To alteration one pair trousers eleven shillings. BLOOM: (Rubs his hands cheerfully.) Just like old times. Poor Bloom! (Reuben J Dodd, blackbearded Iscariot, bad shepherd, bearing on his shoulders the drowned corpse of his son, approaches the pillory.) REUBEN J: (Whispers hoarsely.) The squeak is out. A split is gone for the flatties. Nip the first rattler. THE FIRE BRIGADE: Pflaap! BROTHER BUZZ: (Invests Bloom in a yellow habit with embroidery of painted flames and high pointed hat. He places a bag of gunpowder round his neck and hands him over to the civil power, saying.) Forgive him his trespasses. (Lieutenant Myers of the Dublin Fire Brigade by general request sets fire to Bloom. Lamentations.) THE CITIZEN: Thank heaven! BLOOM: (In a seamless garment marked I. H. S. stands upright amid phoenix flames.) Weep not for me, O daughters of Erin. (He exhibits to Dublin reporters traces of burning. The daughters of Erin, in black garments, with large prayerbooks and long lighted candles in their hands, kneel down and pray.) THE DAUGHTERS OF ERIN: Kidney of Bloom, pray for us Flower of the Bath, pray for us Mentor of Menton, pray for us Canvasser for the Freeman, pray for us Charitable Mason, pray for us Wandering Soap, pray for us Sweets of Sin, pray for us Music without Words, pray for us Reprover of the Citizen, pray for us Friend of all Frillies, pray for us Midwife Most Merciful, pray for us Potato Preservative against Plague and Pestilence, pray for us. (A choir of six hundred voices, conducted by Vincent O’Brien, sings the chorus from Handel’s Messiah Alleluia for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth, accompanied on the organ by Joseph Glynn. Bloom becomes mute, shrunken, carbonised.) ZOE: Talk away till you’re black in the face. BLOOM: (In caubeen with clay pipe stuck in the band, dusty brogues, an emigrant’s red handkerchief bundle in his hand, leading a black bogoak pig by a sugaun, with a smile in his eye.) Let me be going now, woman of the house, for by all the goats in Connemara I’m after having the father and mother of a bating. (With a tear in his eye.) All insanity. Patriotism, sorrow for the dead, music, future of the race. To be or not to be. Life’s dream is o’er. End it peacefully. They can live on. (He gazes far away mournfully.) I am ruined. A few pastilles of aconite. The blinds drawn. A letter. Then lie back to rest. (He breathes softly.) No more. I have lived. Fare. Farewell. ZOE: (Stiffly, her finger in her neckfillet.) Honest? Till the next time. (She sneers.) Suppose you got up the wrong side of the bed or came too quick with your best girl. O, I can read your thoughts! BLOOM: (Bitterly.) Man and woman, love, what is it? A cork and bottle. I’m sick of it. Let everything rip. ZOE: (In sudden sulks.) I hate a rotter that’s insincere. Give a bleeding whore a chance. BLOOM: (Repentantly.) I am very disagreeable. You are a necessary evil. Where are you from? London? ZOE: (Glibly.) Hog’s Norton where the pigs plays the organs. I’m Yorkshire born. (She holds his hand which is feeling for her nipple.) I say, Tommy Tittlemouse. Stop that and begin worse. Have you cash for a short time? Ten shillings? BLOOM: (Smiles, nods slowly.) More, houri, more. ZOE: And more’s mother? (She pats him offhandedly with velvet paws.) Are you coming into the musicroom to see our new pianola? Come and I’ll peel off. BLOOM: (Feeling his occiput dubiously with the unparalleled embarrassment of a harassed pedlar gauging the symmetry of her peeled pears.) Somebody would be dreadfully jealous if she knew. The greeneyed monster. (Earnestly.) You know how difficult it is. I needn’t tell you. ZOE: (Flattered.) What the eye can’t see the heart can’t grieve for. (She pats him.) Come. BLOOM: Laughing witch! The hand that rocks the cradle. ZOE: Babby! BLOOM: (In babylinen and pelisse, bigheaded, with a caul of dark hair, fixes big eyes on her fluid slip and counts its bronze buckles with a chubby finger, his moist tongue lolling and lisping.) One two tlee: tlee tlwo tlone. THE BUCKLES: Love me. Love me not. Love me. ZOE: Silent means consent. (With little parted talons she captures his hand, her forefinger giving to his palm the passtouch of secret monitor, luring him to doom.) Hot hands cold gizzard. (He hesitates amid scents, music, temptations. She leads him towards the steps, drawing him by the odour of her armpits, the vice of her painted eyes, the rustle of her slip in whose sinuous folds lurks the lion reek of all the male brutes that have possessed her.) THE MALE BRUTES: (Exhaling sulphur of rut and dung and ramping in their loosebox, faintly roaring, their drugged heads swaying to and fro.) Good! (Zoe and Bloom reach the doorway where two sister whores are seated. They examine him curiously from under their pencilled brows and smile to his hasty bow. He trips awkwardly.) ZOE: (Her lucky hand instantly saving him.) Hoopsa! Don’t fall upstairs. BLOOM: The just man falls seven times. (He stands aside at the threshold.) After you is good manners. ZOE: Ladies first, gentlemen after. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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