Liliata rutilantium te confessorum...
Iubilantium te virginum...
(From the top of a tower Buck Mulligan, in particoloured jester's dress of puce and yellow and clown's cap with curling bell, stands gaping at her, a smoking buttered split scone in his hand.)
BUCK MULLIGAN She's beastly dead. The pity of it! Mulligan meets the afflicted mother. (He upturns his eyes.) Mercurial Malachi.
THE MOTHER (With the subtle smile of death's madness.) I was once the beautiful May Goulding. I am dead.
STEPHEN (Horrorstruck.) Lemur, who are you? What bogey man's trick is this?
BUCK MULLIGAN (Shakes his curling capbell.) The mockery of it! Kinch killed her dogsbody bitchbody. She kicked the bucket. (Tears of molten butter fall from his eyes into the scone.) Our great sweet mother! Epi oinopa ponton.
THE MOTHER (Comes nearer, breathing upon him softly her breath of wetted ashes.) All must go through it, Stephen. More women than men in the world. You too. Time will come.
STEPHEN (Choking with fright, remorse and horror.) They said I killed you, mother. He offended your memory. Cancer did it, not I. Destiny.
THE MOTHER (A green rill of bile trickling from a side of her mouth.) You sang that song to me. Love's bitter mystery.
STEPHEN (Eagerly.) Tell me the word, mother, if you know now. The word known to all men.
THE MOTHER Who saved you the night you jumped into the train at Dalkey with Paddy Lee? Who had pity for you when you were sad among the strangers? Prayer is all powerful. Prayer for the suffering souls in the Ursuline manual, and forty days' indulgence. Repent, Stephen.
STEPHEN The ghoul! Hyena!
THE MOTHER I pray for you in my other world. Get Dilly to make you that boiled rice every night after your brain work. Years and years I loved you, O my son, my firstborn, when you lay in my womb.
ZOE (Fanning herself with the grate fan.) I'm melting!
FLORRY (Points to Stephen) Look! He's white.
BLOOM (Goes to the window to open it more.) Giddy.
THE MOTHER (With smouldering eyes.) Repent! O, the fire of hell!
STEPHEN (Panting.) The corpsechewer! Raw head and bloody bones!
THE MOTHER (Her face drawing near and nearer, sending out an ashen breath.) Beware! (She raises her blackened, withered right arm slowly towards Stephen's breast with outstretched fingers.) Beware! God's hand! (A green crab with malignant red eyes sticks deep its grinning claws in Stephen's heart.)
STEPHEN (Strangled with rage.) Shite! (His features grow drawn and grey and old.)
BLOOM (At the window.) What?
STEPHEN Ah non, par exemple! The intellectual imagination! With me all or not at all. Non serviam!
FLORRY Give him some cold water. Wait. (She rushes out.)
THE MOTHER (Wrings her hands slowly, moaning desperately.) O Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on him! Save him from hell, O divine Sacred Heart!
STEPHEN No! No! No! Break my spirit all of you if you can! I'll bring you all to heel!
THE MOTHER (In the agony of her deathrattle.) Have mercy on Stephen, Lord, for my sake! Inexpressible was my anguish when expiring with love, grief and agony on Mount Calvary.
STEPHEN Nothung!
(He hits 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 flees from the room past the whores at the door.)
BELLA (Screams.) After him!
(The two whores rush to the halldoors. 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.) There. 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 hand 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 a 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 vice-chancellor. You don't want a scandal.
BELLA (Angrily.) Trinity! Coming down here ragging after the boat races and paying nothing. Are you my commander here? 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 you incog?
ZOE (In the doorway.) There's a row on.
BLOOM What? Where? (He throws a shilling on the table and shouts.) 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 uses on her whores. They blow ickylickysticky yumyum kisses. Corny Kelleher replies with a ghostly 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 Baschid, 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, womans 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, Whatdoyoucallhim, Strangeface, Fellowthatslike, Sawhimbefore, Chapwith, 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, man in the street, other man in the street, 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 Generals, Dan Dawson, dental surgeon Bloom with tweezers, Mrs Bob Doran, Mrs Kennefick, Mrs Wyse Nolan, John Wyse Nolan, handsomemamedwomanrubbed againstwidebehindinClonskeatram, the bookseller of Sweets of Sin, Miss Dubedatandshedidbedad, Mesdames Gerald and Stanislaus Moran of Roebuck, the managing clerk of Drimmies 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 (Helterskelterelterwelter) He's Bloom! Stop Bloom! Stopabloom! Stopperrobber! Hi! Hi! Stop him 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. The 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. The girl's telling lies. He was in Mrs Cohen's. What's up? Soldiers and civilians.
CISSY CAFFREY I was in company with the soldiers and they left me to do - you know and the young man ran 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 Kitty's and Lynch's heads.) Hail, Sisyphus. (He points to himself and the others.) Poetic. Neopoetic.
VOICES She's 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 (In Union Jack blazer and cricket flannels, bareheaded, flowingbearded.) Their's 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 private.
STEPHEN (Amiably.) Why not? The bold soldier boy. In my opinion every lady for example...
PRIVATE CARR (His cap awry, advancing to Stephen.) Say, how would it be, governor, if I was to bash in your jaw?
STEPHEN (Looks up in the sky.) How? Very unpleasant. Noble art of self-pretence. 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 modern 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 much 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, Skinners' and Probyns' 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 plasterers 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 back.
(He shakes hands with Private Carr, Private Compton, Stephen, Bloom and Lynch. General applause. Edward the Seventh lifts the bucket graciously in acknowledgement.)
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 medicine. 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 don'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. Taking a little more than is good for him. Absinthe, the 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 boys hat signs to Stephen.)
KEVIN EGAN H'lo. Bonjour! The vieille ogresse with the dents jaunes.
(Patrice Egan peeps from behind, his rabbit face nibbling a quince leaf.)
PATRICE Socialiste!
DON EMILE PATRIZIO FRANZ RUPERT POPE HENNESSY (In medieval hauberk, two wild geese volant on his helm, with noble indignation points a mailed hand against the privates.) Were those eykes to footboden, big grand porcos of johnyellows todos covered of gravy!
BLOOM (To Stephen.) Come home. You'll get into trouble.
STEPHEN (Swaying.) I don't avoid it. He provokes my intelligence.
BIDDY THE CLAP One immediately observes that he is of patrician lineage.
THE VIRAGO Green above the red, says he. Wolfe Tone.
THE BAWD The red's as good as the green, and better. Up the soldiers! Up King Edward!
A ROUGH (Laughs.) Ay! Hands up to De Wet.
THE CITIZEN (With a huge emerald muffler and shillelagh, calls.)
May the God above
Send down a cove
With teeth as sharp as razors
To slit the throat
Of the English dogs
That hanged our Irish leaders.
THE CROPPY BOY (The rope noose round his neck, gripes in his issuing bowels with both hands.)
I bear no hate to a living thing,
But love my country beyond the king.
RUMBOLD, DEMON BARBER (Accompanied by two blackmasked assistants, advances with a gladstone bag which he opens.) Ladies and gents, cleaver purchased by Mrs Pearcy to slay Mogg. Knife with which Voisin dismembered the wife of a compatriot and hid remains in a sheet in the cellar, the unfortunate female's throat being cut from ear to ear. Phial containing arsenic retrieved from the body of Miss Barrow which sent Seddon to the gallows.
(He jerks the rope, the assistants leap at the victims legs and drag him downward, grunting: the croppy boys tongue protrudes violently.)
THE CROPPY BOY Horhot ho hray ho rhother's hest.
(He gives up the ghost. A violent erection of the hanged sends gouts of sperm spouting through his death clothes on to the cobblestones. Mrs Bellingham, Mrs Yelverton Barry and the Honourable Mrs Mervyn Talboys rush forward with their handkerchiefs to sop it up.)
RUMBOLD I'm near it myself. (He undoes the noose.) Rope which hanged the awful rebel. Ten shillings a time as applied to His Royal Highness. (He plunges his head into the gaping belly of the hanged and draws out his head again clotted with coiled and smoking entrails.) My painful duty has now been done. God save the king!
EDWARD THE SEVENTH (Dances slowly, solemnly, rattling his bucket and sings with soft contentment.)
On coronation day, on coronation day,
O, Won't We have a merry time,
Drinking whisky, beer and wine!
PRIVATE CARR Here. What are you saying about my king?
STEPHEN (Throws up his hands.) O, this is too monotonous! Nothing. He wants my money and my life, though want must be his master, for some brutish empire of his. Money I haven't. (He searches his pockets vaguely.) Gave it to someone.
PRIVATE CARR Who wants your bleeding money?
STEPHEN (Tries to move off.) Will some one tell me where I am least likely to meet these necessary evils? ?a se voit aussi à Paris. Not that I... But by Saint Patrick!...
(The women's heads coalesce. Old Gummy Granny in sugarloaf hat appears seated on a toadstool, the deathflower of the potato blight on her breast.)
STEPHEN Aha! I know you, grammer! Hamlet, revenge! The old sow that eats her farrow!
OLD GUMMY GRANNY (Rocking to and fro.) Ireland's sweetheart, the king of Spain's daughter, alanna. Strangers in my house, bad manners to them! (She keens with banshee woe.) Ochone! Ochone! Silk of the kine! (She wails.) You met with poor old Ireland and how does she stand?
STEPHEN How do I stand you? The hat trick! Where's the third person of the Blessed Trinity? Soggarth Aroon? The reverend Carrion Crow.
CISSY CAFFREY (Shrill.) Stop them from fighting!
A ROUGH Our men retreated.
PRIVATE CARR (Tugging at his belt.) I'll wring the neck of any bugger says a word against my fucking king.
BLOOM (Terrified.) He said nothing. Not a word. A pure misunderstanding.
THE CITIZEN Erin go bragh!
(Major Tweedy and the Citizen exhibit to each other medals, decorations, trophies of war wounds. Both salute with fierce hostility.)
PRIVATE COMPTON Go it, Harry. Do him one in the eye. He's a proboer.
STEPHEN Did I? When?
BLOOM (To the redcoats.) We fought for you in South Africa, Irish missile troops. Isn't that history? Royal Dublin Fusiliers. Honoured by our monarch.
THE NAVVY (Staggering past.) O, yes. O, God, yes! O, make the kwawr a krowawr! O! Bo!
(Casqued halberdiers in armour thrust forward a pentice of gutted spear points. Major Tweedy, moustached like Turko the terrible, in bearskin cap with hackle plume and accoutrements, with epaulette, gilt chevrons and sabretache, his breast bright with medals, toes the line. He gives the pilgrim warrior's sign of the knights templars.)
MAJOR TWEEDY (Growls gruffly.) Rorke's Drift! Up, guards, and at them! Mahal shalal hashbaz.
PRIVATE CARR I'll do him in.
PRIVATE COMPTON (Waves the crowd back.) Fair play, here. Make a bleeding butcher's shop of the bugger.
(Massed bands blare Garryowen and God save the king.)
CISSY CAFFREY They're going to fight. For me!
CUNTY KATE The brave and the fair.
BIDDY THE CLAP Methinks yon sable knight will joust it with the best.
CUNTY KATE (Blushing deeply.) Nay, Madam. The gules doublet and merry Saint George for me!
STEPHEN The harlot's cry from street to street Shall weave old Ireland's windingsheet.
PRIVATE CARR (Loosening his belt, shouts.) I'll wring the neck of any fucking bastard says a word against my bleeding fucking king.
BLOOM (Shakes Cissy Caffrey's shoulders.) Speak, you! Are you struck dumb? You are the link between nations and generations. Speak, woman, sacred lifegiver.
CISSY CAFFREY (Alarmed seizes Private Carr's sleeve.) Amn't I with you? Amn't I your girl? Cissy's your girl. (She cries.) Police!
STEPHEN (Ecstatically, to Cissy Caffrey.)
White thy fambles, red thy gan
And thy quarrons dainty is.
VOICES Police!
DISTANT VOICES Dublin's burning! Dublin's burning! On fire, on fire!
(Brimstone fires spring up. Dense clouds roll past. Heavy Gatling guns boom. Pandemonium. Troops deploy. Gallop of hoofs. Artillery. Hoarse commands. Bells clang. Backers shout. Drunkards bawl. Whores screech. Foghorns hoot. Cries of valour. Shrieks of dying. Pikes clash on cuirasses. Thieves rob the slain. Birds of prey, winging from the sea, rising from marsh lands, swooping from eyries, hover screaming, gannets, connorants, vultures, goshawks, climbing woodcocks, peregrines, merlin, blackgrouse, sea eagles, gulls, albatrosses, barnacle geese. The midnight sun is darkened. The earth trembles. The dead of Dublin from Prospect and Mount Jerome in white sheepskin overcoats and black goat-fell cloaks arise and appear to many. A chasm opens with a noiseless yawn. Tom Rochford, winner in athletes singlet and breeches, arrives at the head of the national hurdle handicap and leaps into the void. He is followed by a race of runners and leapers. In wild attitudes they spring from the brink. Their bodies plunge. Factory lasses with fancy clothes toss redhot Yorkshire baraabombs. Society ladies lift their skirts above their heads to protect themselves. laughing witches in red cutty sarks ride through the air on broomsticks. Quakerlyster plasters blisters. It rains dragon's teeth. Armed heroes spring up from furrows. They exchange in amity the pass of knights of the red cross and fight duels with cavalry sabres: Wolfe Tone against Henry Grattan, Smith O'Brien against Daniel O'Connell, Michael Davitt against Isaac Butt, Justin M'Carthy against Parnell, Arthur Griffith against John Redmond John O'Leary against liar O'Johnny, lord Edward Fitzgerald against lord Gerald Fitzedward, The O'Donoghue of the Glens against The Glens of The Donoghue. On an eminence, the centre of the earth, rises the field altar of Saint Barbara. Black candles rise from its gospel and epistle horns. From the high barbicans of the tower two shafts of light fall on the smokepalled altarstone. On the altarstone Mrs Mina Purefoy, goddess of unreason, lies naked, fettered, a chalice resting on her swollen belly. Father Malachi O'Flynn, in a long petticoat and reversed chasuble, his two left feet back to the front, celebrates camp mash. The Reverend Mr Hugh C. Haines love MA. in a plain cassock and mortar board, his head and collar back to the front, holds over the celebrants head an open umbrella.)
FATHER MALACHI O'FLYNN Introibo ad altare diaboli.
THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE To the devil which hath made glad my young days.
FATHER MALACHI O'FLYNN (Takes from the chalice and elevates a blooddripping host.) Corpus Meum.
THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE (Raises high behind the celebrant's petticoats, revealing his grey bare hairy buttocks between which a carrot is stuck.) My body.
THE VOICE OF ALL THE DAMNED Htengier Tnetopinmo Dog Drol eht rot, Aiulella!
(From on high the voice of Adonai calls.)
ADONAI Dooooooooooog!
THE VOICE OF ALL THE BLESSED Alleluia, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth!
(From on high the voice of Adonai calls.)
ADONAI Goooooooooood!
(In strident discord peasants and townsmen of mange and Green factions sing Kick the Pope and Daily, daily sing to Mary.)
PRIVATE CARR (With ferocious articulation.) I'll do him in, so help me fucking Christ! I'll wring the bastard fucker's bleeding blasted fucking windpipe!
OLD GUMMY GRANNY (Thrusts a dagger towards Stephen's hand.) Remove him, acushla. At 8.35 a.m. you will be in heaven and Ireland will be free. (She prays.) O good God, take him!
BLOOM (Runs to Lynch.) Can't you get him away?
LYNCH He likes dialectic, the universal language. Kitty! (To Bloom.) Get him away, you. He won't listen to me. (He drags Kitty away.)
STEPHEN (Points.) Exit Judas. Et laqueo se suspendit.
BLOOM (Runs to Stephen.) Come along with me now before worse happens. Here's your stick.
STEPHEN Stick, no. Reason. This feast of pure reason.
CISSY CAFFREY (Pulling Private Carr.) Come on, you're boosed. He insulted me but I forgive him. (Shouting in his ear.) I forgive him for insulting me.
BLOOM (Over Stephen's shoulder.) Yes, go. You see he's incapable.
PRIVATE CARR (Breaks loose.) I'll insult him.
(He rushes towards Stephen, fists outstretched, and strikes him in the face. Stephen totters, collapses, falls stunned. He lies prone, his face to the sky, his hat rolling to the wall. Bloom follows and picks it up.)
MAJOR TWEEDY (Loudly.) Carbine in bucket! cease fire! Salute!
THE RETRIEVER (Barking furiously.) Ute ute ute ute ute ute uteute.
THE CROWD Let him up! Don't strike him when he's down! Air! Who? The soldier hit him. He's a professor. Is he hurted? Don't manhandle him! He's fainted!
(The retriever, nosing on the fringe of the crowd, barks noisily.)
What call had the redcoat to strike the gentleman and he under the influence? Let them go and fight the Boers!
THE BAWD Listen to who's talking! Hasn't the soldier a right to go with his girl? He gave him the coward's blow.
(They grab at each other's hair, claw at each other and spit.)
THE RETRIEVER (Barking.) Wow wow wow.
BLOOM (Shoves them back, loudly.) Get back, stand back!
PRIVATE COMPTON (Tugging his comrade.) Here bugger off, Harry. There's the cops!
(Two raincaped watch, tall, stand in the group)
FIRST WATCH What's wrong here?
PRIVATE COMPTON We were with this lady and he insulted us and assaulted my chum. (The retriever barks.) Who owns the bleeding tyke?
CISSY CAFFREY (With expectation.) Is he bleeding?
A MAN (Rising from his knees.) No. Gone off. He'll come to all right.
BLOOM (Glances sharply at the man.) Leave him to me. I can easily...
SECOND WATCH Who are you? Do you know him?
PRIVATE CARR (Lurches towards the watch.) He insulted my lady friend.
BLOOM (Angrily.) You hit him without provocation. I'm a witness. Constable, take his regimental number.
SECOND WATCH I don't want your instructions in the discharge of my duty. PRIVATE COMPTON (Pulling his comrade.) Here, bugger off, Harry. Or Bennett'll have you in the lockup.
PRIVATE CARR (Staggering as he is pulled away.) God fuck old Bennett! He's a whitearsed bugger. I don't give a shit for him.
FIRST WATCH (Taking out his notebook.) What's his name?
BLOOM (Peering over the crowd.) I just see a car there. If you give me a hand a second, sergeant.
FIRST WATCH Name and address.
(Corny Kelleher weepers round his hat, a death wreath in his hand, appears among the bystanders.)
BLOOM (Quickly.) O, the very man! (He whispers.) Simon Dedalus' son. A bit sprung. Get those policemen to move those loafers back.
SECOND WATCH Night, Mr Kelleher.
CORNY KELLEHER (To the watch, with drawling eye.) That's all right. I know him. Won a bit on the races. Gold cup. Throwaway. (He laughs.) Twenty to one. Do you follow me?
FIRST WATCH (Turns to the crowd.) Here, what are you all gaping at? Move on out of that.
(The crowd disperses slowly, muttering, down the lane.)
CORNY KELLEHER Leave it to me, sergeant. That'll be all right. (He laughs, shaking his head.) We were often as bad ourselves, ay or worse. What? Eh, what?
FIRST WATCH (Laughs.) I suppose so.
CORNY KELLEHER (Nudges the second watch.) Come and wipe your name off the slate. (He lilts, wagging his head.) With my tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom. What, eh, do you follow me?
SECOND WATCH (Genially.) Ah, sure we were too.
CORNY KELLEHER (Winking.) Boys will be boys. I've a car round there.
SECOND WATCH All right, Mr Kelleher. Good night.
CORNY KELLEHER I'll see to that.
BLOOM (Shakes hands with both of the watch in turn.) Thank you very much gentlemen, thank you. (He mumbles confidentially.) We don't want any scandal, you understand. Father is a well known, highly respected citizen. Just a little wild oats, you understand.
FIRST WATCH O, I understand, sir.
SECOND WATCH That's all right, Sir.
FIRST WATCH It was only in case of corporal injuries I'd have had to report it at the station.
BLOOM (Nods rapidly.) Naturally. Quite right. Only your bounden duty.
SECOND WATCH It's our duty.
CORNY KELLEHER Good night, men.
THE WATCH (Saluting together.) Night, gentlemen. (They move off with slow heavy tread.)
BLOOM (Blows.) Providential you came on the scene. You have a car?.
CORNY KELLEHER (Laughs, pointing his thumb over his right shoulder to the car brought up against the scaffolding.) Two commercials that were standing fizz in Jammet's. Like princes, faith. One of them lost two quid on the race. Drowning his grief and were on for a go with the jolly girls. So I landed them up on Behan's car and down to nighttown.
BLOOM I was just going home by Gardiner street when I happened to...
CORNY KELLEHER (Laughs.) Sure they wanted me to join in with the mots. No, by God, says I. Not for old stagers like myself and yourself. (He laughs again and leers with lacklustre eye.) Thanks be to God we have it in the house what, eh, do you follow me? Hah! hah! hah!
BLOOM (Tries to laugh.) He, he, he! Yes. Matter of fact I was just visiting an old friend of mine there, Virag, you don't know him (poor fellow he's laid up for the past week) and we had a liquor together and I was just making my way home...
(The horse neighs.)
THE HORSE Hohohohohohoh! Hohohohome!
CORNY KELLEHER Sure it was Behan, our jarvey there, that told me after we left the two commercials in Mrs Cohen's and I told him to pull up and got off to see. (He laughs.) Sober hearsedrivers a specialty. Will I give him a lift home? Where does he hang out? Somewhere in Cabra, what?
BLOOM No, in Sandycove, I believe, from what he let drop.
(Stephen, prone, breathes to the stars. Corny Kelleher asquint, drawls at the horse. Bloom in gloom, looms down.)
CORNY KELLEHER (Scratches his nape.) Sandycove! (He bends down and calls to Stephen.) Eh! (He calls again.) Eh! He's covered with shavings anyhow. Take care they didn't lift anything off him.
BLOOM No, no, no. I have his money and his hat here and stick.
CORNY KELLEHER Ah well, he'll get over it. No bones broken. Well, I'll shove along. (He laughs.) I've a rendezvous in the morning. Burying the dead. Safe home!
THE HORSE (Neighs.) Hohohohohome.
BLOOM Good night. I'll just wait and take him along in a few...
(Corny Kelleher returns to the outside car and mounts it. The horse harness jingles.)
CORNY KELLEHER (From the car, standing.) Night.
BLOOM Night.
(The jarvey chucks the reins and raises his whip encouragingly. The car and horse back slowly, awkwardly and turn. Corny Kelleher on the sideseat sways his head to and fro in sign of mirth at Blooms plight. The jarvey joins in the mute pantomimic merriment nodding from the farther seat. Bloom shakes his head in mute mirthful reply. With thumb and palm Corny Kelleher reassures that the two bobbies will allow the sleep to continue for what else is to be done. With a slow nod Bloom conveys his gratitude as that is exactly what Stephen needs. The car jingles tooraloom round the corner of the tooraloom lane. Corny Kelleher again reassuralooms with his hand. Bloom with his hand assuralooms Corny Kelleher that he is reassuraloomtay. The tinkling hoofs and jingling harness grow fainter with their tooralooloolooloo lay. Bloom, holding in his hand Stephens hat festooned with shavings and ashplant, stands irresolute. Then he bends to him and shakes him by the shoulder.)
BLOOM Eh! Ho! (There is no answer he bends again.) Mr Dedalus! (There is no answer.) The name if you call. Somnambulist. (He bends again and, hesitating, brings his mouth near the face of the prostrate form.) Stephen! (There is no answer. He calls again.) Stephen!
STEPHEN (Groans.) Who? Black panther vampire. (He sighs and stretches himself then murmurs thickly with prolonged vowels.) Who... drive... Fergus now. And pierce... wood's woven shade?...
(He turns on his left side, sighing, doubling himself together.)
BLOOM Poetry. Well educated. Pity. (He bends again and undoes the buttons of Stephen's waistcoat.) To breathe. (He brushes the wood shavings from Stephen's clothes with light hands and fingers.) One pound seven. Not hurt anyhow. (He listens.) What!
(Murmurs.)
... shadows... the woods
... white breast... dim...
(He stretches out his arms, sighs again and curls his body. Bloom holding his hat and ashplant stands erect. A dog barks in the distance. Bloom tightens and loosens his grip on the ashplant. He looks down on Stephen's face and form.)
BLOOM (Communes with the night.) Face reminds me of his poor mother. In the shady wood. The deep white breast. Ferguson, I think I caught. A girl. Some girl. Best thing could happen him... (He murmurs.)... swear that I will always hail, ever conceal, never reveal, any part or parts, art or arts... (He murmurs.) in the rough sands of the sea. a cabletow's length from the shore... where the tide ebbs ... and flows...
(Silent, thoughtful, alert, he stands on guard, his fingers at his lips in the attitude of secret master. Against the dark wall a figure appears slowly, a fairy boy of eleven, a changeling, kidnapped, dressed in an Eton suit with glass shoes and a little bronze helmet, holding a book in his hand. He reads from right to left inaudibly, smiling, kissing the page.)
BLOOM (Wonderstruck, calls inaudibly.) Rudy!
RUDY (Gazes unseeing into Bloom's eyes and goes on reading, kissing, smiling. He has a delicate mauveface. On his suit he has diamond and ruby buttons. In his free left hand he holds a slim ivory cane with a violet howknot. A white lambkin peeps out of his waistcoat pocket.)
Eumaeus
PREPARATORY TO ANYTHING ELSE MR BLOOM BRUSHED OFF THE GREATER bulk of the shavings and handed Stephen the hat and ashplant and bucked him up generally in orthodox Samaritan fashion, which he very badly needed. His (Stephen's) mind was not exactly what you would call wandering but a bit unsteady and on his expressed desire for some beverage to drink Mr Bloom, in view of the hour it was and there being no pumps of Vartry water available for their ablutions, let alone drinking purposes, hit upon an expedient by suggesting, off the reel, the propriety of the cabman's shelter, as it was called, hardly a stonesthrow away near Butt Bridge, where they might hit upon some drinkables in the shape of a milk and soda or a mineral. But how to get there was the rub. For the nonce he was rather nonplussed but inasmuch as the duty plainly devolved upon him to take some measures on the subject he pondered suitable ways and means during which Stephen repeatedly yawned. So far as he could see he was rather pale in the face so that it occurred to him as highly advisable to get a conveyance of some description which would answer in their then condition, both of them being e. d. ed, particularly Stephen, always assuming that there was such a thing to be found. Accordingly, after a few such preliminaries, as, in spite of his having forgotten to take up his rather soapsuddy handkerchief after it had done yeoman service in the shaving line, brushing, they both walked together along Beaver street, or, more properly, lane, as far as the farrier's and the distinctly fetid atmosphere of the livery stables at the corner of Montgomery street where they made tracks to the left from thence debouching into Amiens Street round by the corner of Dan Bergin's. But, as he confidently anticipated, there was not a sign of a Jehu plying for hire anywhere to be seen except a fourwheeler, probably engaged by some fellows inside on the spree, outside the North Star Hotel and there was no symptom of its budging a quarter of an inch when Mr Bloom, who was anything but a professional whistler, endeavoured to hail it by emitting a kind of a whistle, holding his arms arched over his head, twice.
This was a quandary but, bringing commonsense to bear on it, evidently there was nothing for it but put a good face on the matter and foot it which they accordingly did. So, bevelling around by Mullet's and the Signal House, which they shortly reached, they proceeded perforce in the direction of Amiens street railway terminus, Mr Bloom being handicapped by the circumstance that one of the back buttons of his trousers had, to vary the timehonoured adage, gone the way of all buttons, though, entering thoroughly into the spirit of the thing, he heroically made light of the mischance. So, as neither of them were particularly pressed for time, as it happened, and the temperature refreshing since it cleared up after the recent visitation of Jupiter Pluvius, they dandered along past by where the empty vehicle was waiting without a fare or a jarvey. As it so happened a Dublin United Tramways Company's sandstrewer happening to be returning the elder man recounted to his companion à propos of the incident his own truly miraculous escape of some little while back. They passed the main entrance of the Great Northern railway station, the starting point for Belfast, where of course all traffic was suspended at that late hour, and, passing the back door of the morgue (a not very enticing locality, not to say gruesome to a degree, more especially at night), ultimately gained the Dock Tavern and in due course turned into Store street, famous for its C division police station. Between this point and the high, at present unlit, warehouses of Beresford Place Stephen thought to think of Ibsen, associated with Baird's, the stonecutter's, in his mind somehow in Talbot Place, first turning on the right, while the other, who was acting as his fidus Achates, inhaled with internal satisfaction the smell of James Rourke's city bakery, situated quite close to where they were, the very palatable odour indeed of our daily bread, of all commodities of the public the primary and most indispensable. Bread, the staff of life, earn your bread, O tell me where is fancy bread? At Rourke's the baker's, it is said.
En route, to his taciturn, and, not to put too fine a point on it, not yet perfectly sober companion, Mr Bloom, who at all events, was in complete possession of his faculties, never more so, in fact disgustingly sober, spoke a word of caution re the dangers of nighttown, women of ill fame and swell mobsmen, which, barely permissible once in a while, though not as a habitual practice, was of the nature of a regular deathtrap for young fellows of his age particularly if they had acquired drinking habits under the influence of liquor unless you knew a little juijitsu for every contingency as even a fellow on the broad of his back could administer a nasty kick if you didn't look out. Highly providential was the appearance on the scene of Corny Kelleher when Stephen was blissfully unconscious that, but for that man in the gap turning up at the eleventh hour, the finis might have been that he might have been a candidate for the accident ward, or, failing that, the Bridewell and an appearance in the court next day before Mr Tobias, or, he being the solicitor, rather old Wall, he meant to say, or Malony which simply spelt ruin for a chap when it got bruited about. The reason he mentioned the fact was that a lot of those policemen, whom he cordially disliked, were admittedly unscrupulous in the service of the Crown and, as Mr Bloom put it, recalling a case or two in the A Division in Clanbrassil street, prepared to swear a hole through a ten gallon pot. Never on the spot when wanted but in quiet parts of the City, Pembroke Road, for example, the guardians of the law were well in evidence, the obvious reason being they were paid to protect the upper classes. Another thing he commented on was equipping soldiers with firearms or sidearms of any description, liable to go off at any time, which was tantamount to inciting them against civilians should by any chance they fall nut over anything. You frittered away your time, he very sensibly maintained, and health and also character besides which the squandermania of the thing, fast women of the demimonde ran away with a lot of #. s. d. into the bargain and the greatest danger of all was who you got drunk with though, touching the much vexed question of stimulants, he relished a glass of choice old wine in season as both nourishing and blood-making and possessing aperient virtues (notably a good burgundy which he was a staunch believer in) still never beyond a certain point where he invariably drew the line as it simply led to trouble all round to say nothing of your being at the tender mercy of others practically. Most of all he commented adversely on the desertion of Stephen by all his pubhunting confrères but one, a most glaring piece of ratting on the part of his brother medicos under all the circs.
-- And that one was Judas, said Stephen, who up to then had said nothing whatsoever of any kind.
Discussing these and kindred topics they made a beeline across the back of the Customhouse and passed under the Loop Line bridge when a brazier of coke burning in front of a sentrybox, or something like one, attracted their rather lagging footsteps. Stephen of his own accord stopped for no special reason to look at the heap of barren cobblestones and by the light emanating from the brazier he could just make out the darker figure of the corporation watchman inside the gloom of the sentrybox. He began to remember that this had happened, or had been mentioned as having happened, before but it cost him no small effort before he remembered that he recognised in the sentry a quondam friend of his father's Gumley. To avoid a meeting be drew nearer to the pillars of the railway bridge.
-- Someone saluted you, Mr Bloom said.
A figure of middle height on the prowl, evidently, under the arches saluted again, calling: Night! Stephen, of course, started rather dizzily and stopped to return the compliment. Mr Bloom, actuated by motives of inherent delicacy, inasmuch as he always believed in minding his own business, moved off but nevertheless remained on the qui vive with just a shade of anxiety though not funkyish in the least. Although unusual in the Dublin area, he knew that it was not by any means unknown for desperadoes who had next to nothing to live on to be about waylaying and generally terrorising peaceable pedestrians by placing a pistol at their head in some secluded spot outside the city proper, famished loiterers of the Thames embankment category they might be hanging about there or simply marauders ready to decamp with whatever boodle they could in one fell swoop at a moments notice, your money or your life, leaving you there to point a moral, gagged and garotted.
Stephen, that is when the accosting figure came to close quarters, though he was not in any over sober state himself, recognised Corley's breath redolent of rotten cornjuice. Lord John Corley, some called him, and his genealogy came about in this wise. He was the eldest son of Inspector Corley of the G Division, lately deceased, who had married a certain Katherine Brophy, the daughter of a Louth farmer. His grandfather, Patrick Michael Corley, of New Ross, had married the widow of a publican there whose maiden name had been Katherine (also) Talbot. Rumour had it, though not proved, that she descended from the house of the Lords Talbot de Malahide in whose mansion, really an unquestionably fine residence of its kind and well worth seeing, his mother or aunt or some relative had enjoyed the distinction of being in service in the washkitchen. This, therefore, was the reason why the still comparatively young though dissolute man who now addressed Stephen was spoken of by some with facetious proclivities as Lord John Corley.
Taking Stephen on one side he had the customary doleful ditty to tell. Not as much as a farthing to purchase a night's lodgings. His friends had all deserted him. Furthermore, he had a row with Lenehan and called him to Stephen a mean bloody swab with a sprinkling of other uncalled-for expressions. He was out of a job and implored of Stephen to tell him where on God's earth he could get something, anything at all to do. No, it was the daughter of the mother in the washkitchen that was fostersister to the heir of the house or else they were connected through the mother in some way, both occurrences happening at the same time if the whole thing wasn't a complete fabrication from start to finish. Anyhow, he was ill in.
-- I wouldn't ask you, only, pursued he, on my solemn oath and God knows I'm on the rocks.
-- There'll be a job tomorrow or the next day, Stephen told him, in a boys' school at Dalkey for a gentleman usher. Mr Garret Deasy. Try it. You may mention my name.
-- Ah, God, Corley replied, sure I couldn't teach in a school, man. I was never one of your bright ones, he added with a half laugh. Got stuck twice in the junior at the Christian Brothers.
-- I have no place to sleep myself, Stephen informed him.
Corley, at the first go-off, was inclined to suspect it was something to do with Stephen being fired out of his digs for bringing in a bloody tart off the street. There was a dosshouse in Marlborough street, Mrs Maloney's, but it was only a tanner touch and full of undesirables but M'Conachie told him you got a decent enough do in the Brazen Head over in Winetavern street (which was distantly suggestive to the person addressed of friar Bacon) for a bob. He was starving too though he hadn't said a word about it.
Though this sort of thing went on every other night or very near it still Stephen's feelings got the better of him in a sense though he knew that Corley's brandnew rigmarole, on a par with the others, was hardly deserving of much credence. However, haud ignarus malorum miseris succurrere disco, etcetera, as the Latin poet remarks, especially as luck would have it he got paid his screw after every middle of the month on the sixteenth which was the date of the month as a matter of fact though a good bit of the wherewithal was demolished. But the cream of the joke was nothing would get it Out of Corley's head that he was living in affluence and hadn't a thing to do but hand out the needful - whereas. He put his hand in a pocket anyhow, not with the idea of finding any food there, but thinking he might lend him anything up to a bob or so in lieu so that he might endeavour at all events and get sufficient to eat. But the result was in the negative for, to his chagrin, he found his cash missing. A few broken biscuits were all the result of his investigation. He tried his hardest to recollect for the moment whether he had lost, as well he might have, or left, because in that contingency it was not a pleasant lookout, very much the reverse, in fact. He was altogether too fagged out to institute a thorough search though he tried to recollect about biscuits he dimly remembered. Who now exactly gave them, or where was, or did he buy? However, in another pocket he came across what he surmised in the dark were pennies, erroneously, however, as it turned out.
-- Those are halfcrowns, man, Corley corrected him.
And so in point of fact they turned out to be. Stephen lent him one of them.
-- Thanks, Corley answered. You're a gentleman. I'll pay you back some time. Who's that with you? I saw him a few times in the Bleeding Horse in Camden street with Boylan the billsticker. You might put in a good word for us to get me taken on there. I'd carry a sandwichboard only the girl in the office told me they're full up for the next three weeks, man. God, you've to book ahead, man, you'd think it was for the Carl Rosa. I don't give a shite anyway so long as I get a job even as a crossing sweeper.
Subsequently, being not quite so down in the mouth after the two-and-six he got, he informed Stephen about a fellow by the name of Bags Comisky that he said Stephen knew well out of Fullam's, the shipchandler's bookkeeper there, that used to be often round in Nagle's back with O'Mara and a little chap with a stutter the name of Tighe. Anyhow, he was lagged the night before last and fined ten bob for a drunk and disorderly and refusing to go with the constable.
Mr Bloom in the meanwhile kept dodging about in the vicinity of the cobblestones near the brazier of coke in front of the corporation watchman's sentrybox, who, evidently a glutton for work, it struck him, was having a quiet forty winks for all intents and purposes on his own private account while Dublin slept. He threw an odd eye at the same time now and then at Stephen's anything but immaculately attired interlocutor as if he had seen that nobleman somewhere or other though where he was not in a position to truthfully state nor had he the remotest idea when. Being a levelheaded individual who could give points to not a few in point of shrewd observation, he also remarked on his very dilapidated hat and slouchy wearing apparel generally, testifying to a chronic impecuniosity. Probably he was one of his hangerson but for the matter of that it was merely a question of one preying on his next door neighbour all round, in every deep, so to put it, a deeper depth and for the matter of that if the man in the street chanced to be in the dock himself penal servitude, with or without the option of a fine, would be a very rara avis altogether. In any case he had a consummate amount of cool assurance intercepting people at that hour of the night or morning. Pretty thick that was certainly.
The pair parted company and Stephen rejoined Mr Bloom, who, with his practised eye, was not without perceiving that he had succumbed to the blandiloquence of the other parasite. Alluding to the encounter he said, laughingly, Stephen, that is:
-- He's down on his luck. He asked me to ask you to ask somebody named Boylan, a billsticker, to give him a job as a sandwichman.
At this intelligence, in which he seemingly evinced little interest, Mr Bloom gazed abstractedly for the space of a half a second or so in the direction of a bucket dredger, rejoicing in the farfamed name of Eblana, moored alongside Customhouse Quay and quite possibly Out of repair, whereupon he observed evasively:
-- Everybody gets their own ration of luck, they say. Now you mention it his face was familiar to me. But leaving that for the moment, how much did you part with, he queried, if I am not too inquisitive?
-- Half-a-crown, Stephen responded. I daresay he needs it to sleep somewhere.
-- Needs, Mr Bloom ejaculated, professing not the least surprise at the intelligence, I can quite credit the assertion and I guarantee he invariably does. Everyone according to his needs and everyone according to his deeds. But talking about things in general, where, added he with a smile, will you sleep yourself? Walking to Sandycove is Out of the question and, even supposing you did, you won't get in after what occurred at Westland Row station. Simply fag out there for nothing. I don't mean to presume to dictate to you in the slightest degree but why did you leave your father's house?
-- To seek misfortune, was Stephen's answer.
-- I met your respected father on a recent occasion, Mr Bloom diplomatically returned. Today, in fact, or, to be strictly accurate, on yesterday. Where does he live at present? I gathered in the course of conversation that he had moved.
-- I believe he is in Dublin somewhere, Stephen answered unconcernedly. Why?
-- A gifted man, Mr Bloom said of Mr Dedalus senior, in more respects than one and a born raconteur if ever there was one. He takes great pride, quite legitimately, Out of you. You could go back, perhaps, he hazarded, still thinking of the very unpleasant scene at Westland Row terminus when it was perfectly evident that the other two, Mulligan, that is, and that English tourist friend of his, who eventually euchred their third companion, were patently trying, as if the whole bally station belonged to them, to give Stephen the slip in the confusion.
There was no response forthcoming to the suggestion, however, such as it was, Stephen's mind's eye being too busily engaged in repicturing his family hearth the last time he saw it, with his sister, Dilly, sitting by the ingle, her hair hanging down, waiting for some weak Trinidad shell cocoa that was in the sootcoated kettle to be done so that she and he could drink it with the oatmeal water for milk after the Friday herrings they had eaten at two a penny, with an egg apiece for Maggy, Boody and Katey, the cat meanwhile under the mangle devouring a mess of eggshells and charred fish heads and bones on a square of brown paper in accordance with the third precept of the church to fast and abstain on the days commanded, it being quarter tense or, if not, ember days or something like that.
-- No, Mr Bloom repeated again, I wouldn't personally repose much trust in that boon companion of yours who contributes the humorous element, Dr Mulligan, as a guide, philosopher, and friend, if I were in your shoes. He knows which side his bread is buttered on though in all probability he never realised what it is to be without regular meals. Of course you didn't notice as much as I did but it wouldn't occasion me the least surprise to learn that a pinch of tobacco or some narcotic was put in your drink for some ulterior object.
He understood, however, from all he heard, that Dr Mulligan was a versatile allround man, by no means confined to medicine only, who was rapidly coming to the fore in his line and, if the report was verified, bade fair to enjoy a flourishing practice in the not too distant future as a tony medical practitioner drawing a handsome fee for his services in addition to which professional status his rescue of that man from certain drowning by artificial respiration and what they call first aid at Skerries, or Malahide was it? was, he was bound to admit, an exceedingly plucky deed which he could not too highly praise, so that frankly he was utterly at a loss to fathom what earthly reason could be at the back of it except he put it down to sheer cussedness or jealousy, pure and simple.
-- Except it simply amounts to one thing and he is what they call picking your brains, he ventured to throw out.
The guarded glance of half solicitude, half curiosity, augmented by friendliness, which he gave at Stephen's at present morose expression of features did not throw a flood of light, none at all in fact, on the problem as to whether he had let himself be badly bamboozled, to judge by two or three low spirited remarks he let drop, or, the other way about, saw through the affair, and, for some reason or other best known to himself, allowed matters to more or less... Grinding poverty did have that effect and he more than conjectured that, high educational abilities though he possessed, he experienced no little difficulty in making both ends meet.
Adjacent to the men's public urinal he perceived an icecream car round which a group of presumably Italians in heated altercation were getting rid of voluble expressions in their vivacious language in a particularly animated way, there being some little differences between the parties.
-- Putana madonna, che ci dia i quattrini! Ho ragione? Culo rotto!
-- Intendiamoci. Mezzo sovrano più
-- Dice lui, pero.
-- Farabutto! Mortacci sui!
Mr Bloom and Stephen entered the cabman's shelter, an unpretentious wooden structure, where, prior to then, he had rarely, if ever, been before; the former having previously whispered to the latter a few hints anent the keeper of it, said to be the once famous Skin-the-Goat, Fitzharris, the invincible, though he wouldn't vouch for the actual facts, which quite possibly there was not one vestige of truth in. A few moments later saw our two noctambules safely seated in a discreet corner, only to be greeted by stares from the decidedly miscellaneous collection of waifs and strays and other nondescript specimens of the genus homo, already there engaged in eating and drinking, diversified by conversation, for whom they seemingly formed an object of marked curiosity.
-- Now touching a cup of coffee, Mr Bloom ventured to plausibly suggest to break the ice, it occurs to me you ought to sample something in the shape of solid food, say a roll of some description.
Accordingly his first act was with characteristic sangfroid to order these commodities quietly. The hoi polloi of jarvies or stevedores, or whatever they were, after a cursory examination, turned their eyes, apparently dissatisfied, away, though one redbearded bibulous individual, a portion of whose hair was greyish, a sailor, probably, still stared for some appreciable time before transferring his rapt attention to the floor.
Mr Bloom, availing himself of the right of free speech, he having just a bowing acquaintance with the language in dispute though, to be sure, rather in a quandary over voglio, remarked to his protégé in an audible tone of voice, apropos of the battle royal in the street which was still raging fast and furious:
-- Beautiful language. I mean for singing purposes. Why do you not write your poetry in that language? Bella Poetria! it is so melodious and full. Belladonna voglio.
Stephen, who was trying his dead best to yawn, if he could, suffering from dead lassitude generally, replied:
-- To fill the ear of a cow elephant. They were haggling over money.
-- Is that so? Mr Bloom asked. Of course, he subjoined pensively, at the inward reflection of there being more languages to start with than were absolutely necessary, it may be only the southern glamour that surrounds it.
The keeper of the shelter in the middle of this tête-à-tête put a boiling swimming cup of a choice concoction labelled coffee on the table and a rather antediluvian specimen of a bun, or so it seemed, after which he beat a retreat to his counter. Mr Bloom determining to have a good square look at him later on so as not to appear to... for which reason he encouraged Stephen to proceed with his eyes while he did the honours by surreptitiously pushing the cup of what was temporarily supposed to be called coffee gradually nearer him.
-- Sounds are impostures, Stephen said after a pause of some little time. Like names, Cicero, Podmore, Napoleon, Mr Goodbody, Jesus, Mr Doyle. Shakespeares were as common as Murphies. What's in a name?
-- Yes, to be sure, Mr Bloom unaffectedly concurred. Of course. Our name was changed too, he added, pushing the socalled roll across.
The redbearded sailor, who had his weather eye on the newcomers, boarded Stephen, whom he had singled out for attention in particular, squarely by asking:
-- And what might your name be?
Just in the nick of time Mr Bloom touched his companion's boot but Stephen, apparently disregarding the warm pressure, from an unexpected quarter, answered:
-- Dedalus.
The sailor stared at him heavily from a pair of drowsy baggy eyes, rather bunged up from excessive use of boose, preferably good old Hollands and water.
-- You know Simon Dedalus? he asked at length.
-- I've heard of him, Stephen said.
Mr Bloom was all at sea for a moment, seeing the others evidently eavesdropping too.
-- He's Irish, the seaman bold affirmed, staring still in much the same way and nodding. All Irish.
-- All too Irish, Stephen rejoined.
As for Mr Bloom he could neither make head or tail of the whole business and he was just asking himself what possible connection when the sailor, of his own accord, turned to the other Occupants of the shelter with the remark: I seen him shoot two eggs off two bottles at fifty yards over his shoulder. The left hand dead shot.
Though he was slightly hampered by an occasional stammer and his gestures being also clumsy as it was still he did his best to explain.
-- Bottle Out there, say. Fifty yards measured. Eggs on the bottles. Cocks his gun over his shoulder. Aims.
He turned his body half round, shut up his right eye completely, then he screwed his features up some way sideways and glared out into the night with an unprepossessing cast of countenance.
-- Pom, he then shouted once.
The entire audience waited, anticipating an additional detonation, there being still a further egg.
-- Pom, he shouted twice.
Egg two evidently demolished, he nodded and winked, adding bloodthirstily:
Buffalo Bill shoots to kill,
Never missed nor he never will.
A silence ensued till Mr Bloom for agreeableness' sake just felt like asking him whether it was for a marksmanship competition like the Bisley.
-- Beg pardon, the sailor said.
-- Long ago? Mr Bloom pursued without flinching a hairsbreadth.
-- Why, the sailor replied, relaxing to a certain extent under the magic influence of diamond cut diamond, it might be a matter of ten years. He toured the wide world with Hengler's Royal Circus. I seen him do that in Stockholm.
-- Curious coincidence, Mr Bloom confided to Stephen unobtrusively.
-- Murphy's my name, the sailor continued, W. B. Murphy, of Carrigaloe. Know where that is?
-- Queenstown Harbour, Stephen replied.
-- That's right, the sailor said. Fort Camden and Fort Carlisle. That's where I hails from. My little woman's down there. She's waiting for me, I know. For England, home and beauty. She's my own true wife I haven't seen for seven years now, sailing about.
Mr Bloom could easily picture his advent on this scene - the homecoming to the mariner's roadside shieling after having diddled Davy Jones - a rainy night with a blind moon. Across the world for a wife. Quite a number of stories there were on that particular Alice Ben Bolt topic, Enoch Arden and Rip van Winkle and does anybody hereabouts remember Caoc O'Leary, a favourite and most trying declamation piece, by the way, of poor John Casey and a bit of perfect poetry in its own small way? Never about the runaway wife coming back, however much devoted to the absentee. The face at the window! Judge of his astonishment when he finally did breast the tape and the awful truth dawned upon him anent his better half, wrecked in his affections. You little expected me but I've come to stay and make a fresh start. There she sits, a grass widow, at the selfsame fireside. Believes me dead. Rocked in the cradle of the deep. And there sits uncle Chubb or Tomkin, as the case might be, the publican of the Crown and Anchor, in shirtsleeves, eating rumpsteak and onions. No chair for father. Boo! The wind! Her brandnew arrival is on her knee, post mortem child. With a high ro! and a randy ro! and my galloping tearing tandy O! Bow to the inevitable. Grin and bear it. I remain with much love your brokenhearted husband, W. B. Murphy.
The sailor, who scarcely seemed to be a Dublin resident, turned to one of the jarvies with the request:
-- You don't happen to have such a thing as a spare chaw about you, do you?
The jarvey addressed, as it happened, had not but the keeper took a die of plug from his good jacket hanging on a nail and the desired object was passed from hand to hand.
-- Thank you, the sailor said.
He deposited the quid in his gob and, chewing, and with some slow stammers, proceeded:
-- We come up this morning eleven o'clock. The threemaster Rosevean from Bridgwater with bricks. I shipped to get over. Paid off this afternoon. There's my discharge. See? W. B. Murphy, A. B. S.
In confirmation of which statement he extricated from an inside pocket and handed to his neighbours a not very clean looking folded document.
-- You must have seen a fair share of the world, the keeper remarked, leaning on the counter.
-- Why, the sailor answered, upon reflection upon it, I've circumnavigated a bit since I first joined on. I was in the Red Sea. I was in China and North America and South America. I seen icebergs plenty, growlers. I was in Stockholm and the Black Sea, the Dardanelles, under Captain Dalton the best bloody man that ever scuttled a ship. I seen Russia. Gospodi pomilooy. That's how the Russians prays.
-- You seen queer sights, don't be talking, put in a jarvey.
-- Why, the sailor said, shifting his partially chewed plug, I seen queer things too, ups and downs. I seen a crocodile bite the fluke of an anchor same as I chew that quid.
He took out of his mouth the pulpy quid and, lodging it between his teeth, bit ferociously.
-- Khaan! Like that. And I seen maneaters in Peru that eats corpses and the livers of horses. Look here. Here they are. A friend of mine sent me.
He fumbled out a picture postcard from his inside pocket, which seemed to be in its way a species of repository, and pushed it along the table. The printed matter on it stated: Choza de Indios. Beni, Bolivia.
All focused their attention on the scene exhibited, at a group of savage women in striped loincloths, squatted, blinking, suckling, frowning, sleeping, amid a swarm of infants (there must have been quite a score of them) outside some primitive shanties of osier.
-- Chews coca all day long, the communicative tarpaulin added. Stomachs like breadgraters. Cuts off their diddies when they can't bear no more children. See them there stark ballocknaked eating a dead horse's liver raw.
His postcard proved a centre of attraction for Messrs the greenhorns for several minutes, if not more.
-- Know how to keep them off? he inquired genially.
Nobody volunteering a statement, he winked, saying:
-- Glass. That boggles 'em. Glass.
Mr Bloom, without evincing surprise, unostentatiously turned over the card to peruse the partially obliterated address and postmark. It ran as follows: Tarjeta Postal. Se?or A. Boudin, Galeria Becche, Santiago, Chile. There was no message evidently, as he took particular notice. Though not an implicit believer in the lurid story narrated (or the eggsniping transaction for that matter despite William Tell and the Lazarillo-Don Cesar de Bazan incident depicted in Maritana on which occasion the former's ball passed through the latter's hat), having detected a discrepancy between his name (assuming he was the person he represented himself to be and not sailing under false colours after having boxed the compass on the strict q.t. somewhere) and the fictitious addressee of the missive which made him nourish some suspicions of our friend's bona fides, nevertheless it reminded him in a way of a longcherished plan he meant to one day realise some Wednesday or Saturday of travelling to London via long sea not to say that he had ever travelled extensively to any great extent but he was at heart a born adventurer though by a trick of fate he had consistently remained a landlubber except you call going to Holyhead which was his longest. Martin Cunningham frequently said he would work a pass through Egan but some deuced hitch or other eternally cropped up with the net result that the scheme fell through. But even suppose it did come to planking down the needful and breaking Boyd's heart it was not so dear, purse permitting, a few guineas at the outside, considering the fare to Mullingar where he figured on going was five and six there and back. The trip would benefit health on account of the bracing ozone and be in every way thoroughly pleasurable, especially for a chap whose liver was out of order, seeing the different places along the route, Plymouth, Falmouth, Southampton and so on, culminating in an instructive tour of the sights of the great metropolis, the spectacle of our modern Babylon where doubtless he would see the greatest improvement tower, abbey, wealth of Park Lane to renew acquaintance with. Another thing just struck him as a by no means bad notion was he might have a gaze around on the spot to see about trying to make arrangements about a concert tour of summer music embracing the most prominent pleasure resorts, Margate with mixed bathing and firstrate hydros and spas, Eastbourne, Scarborough, Margate and so on, beautiful Bournemouth, the Channel islands and similar bijou spots, which might prove highly remunerative. Not, of course, with a hole and corner scratch company or local ladies on the job, witness Mrs C. P. M'Coy type - lend me your valise and I'll post you the ticket. No, something top notch, an all star Irish cast, the Tweedy-Flower grand opera company with its own legal consort as leading lady as a sort of counterblast to the Elster Grimes and Moody-Manners, perfectly simple matter and he was quite sanguine of success, providing puffs in the local papers could be managed by some fellow with a bit of bounce who could pull the indispensable wires and thus combine business with pleasure. But who? That was the rub.
Also, without being actually positive, it struck him a great field was to be opened up in the line of opening up new routes to keep pace with the times apropos of the Fishguard-Rosslare route which, it was mooted, was once more on the tapis in the Circumlocution departments with the usual quantity of red tape and dillydallying of effete fogeydom and dunderheads generally. A great opportunity there certainly was for push and enterprise to meet the travelling needs of the public at large, the average man, i.e. Brown, Robinson and Co.
It was a subject of regret and absurd as well on the face of it and no small blame to our vaunted society that the man in the street, when the system really needed toning up, for a matter of a couple of paltry pounds, was debarred from seeing more of the world they lived in instead of being always cooped up since my old stick-in-the-mud took me for a wife. After all, hang it, they had their eleven and more humdrum months of it and merited a radical change of venue after the grind of city life in the summertime, for choice, when Dame Nature is at her spectacular best, constituting nothing short of a new lease of life. There were equally excellent opportunities for vacationists in the home island, delightful sylvan spots for rejuvenation, offering a plethora of attractions as well as a bracing tonic for the system in and around Dublin and its picturesque environs, even, Poulaphouca, to which there was a steam tram, but also farther away from the madding crowd, in Wicklow, rightly termed the garden of Ireland, an ideal neighbourhood for elderly wheelmen, so long as it didn't come down, and in the wilds of Donegal, where if report spoke true, the coup d'il was exceedingly grand, though the lastnamed locality was not easily getatable so that the influx of visitors was not as yet all that it might be considering the signal benefits to be derived from it, while Howth with its historic associations and otherwise, Silken Thomas, Grace O'Malley, George IV, rhododendrons several hundred feet above sealevel was a favourite haunt with all sorts and conditions of men, especially in the spring when young men s fancy, though it had its own toll of deaths by falling off the cliffs by design or accidentally, usually, by the way, on their left leg, it being only about three quarters of an hour's run from the pillar. Because of course uptodate tourist travelling was as yet merely in its infancy, so to speak, and the accommodation left much to be desired. Interesting to fathom, it seemed to him, from a motive of curiosity pure and simple, was whether it was the traffic that created the route or vice-versa or the two sides in fact. He turned back the other side of the card picture and passed it along to Stephen.
-- I seen a Chinese one time, related the doughty narrator, that had little pills like putty and he put them in the water and they opened, and every pill was something different. One was a ship, another was a house, another was a flower. Cooks rats in your soup, he appetisingly added, the Chinese does.
Possibly perceiving an expression of dubiosity on their faces, the globetrotter went on adhering to his adventures.
-- And I seen a man killed in Trieste by an Italian chap. Knife in his back. Knife like that.
Whilst speaking he produced a dangerous looking clasp knife, quite in keeping with his character, and held it in the striking position.
-- In a knockingshop it was count of a tryon between two smugglers. Fellow hid behind a door, come up behind him. Like that. Prepare to meet your God, says he. Chuck! It went into his back up to the butt.
His heavy glance, drowsily roaming about, kind of defied their further questions even should they by any chance want to. That's a good bit of steel, repeated he, examining his formidable stiletto.
After which harrowing dénouement sufficient to appal the stoutest he snapped the blade to and stowed the weapon in question away as before in his chamber of horrors, otherwise pocket.
-- They're great for the cold steel, somebody who was evidently quite in the dark said for the benefit of them all. That was why they thought the park murders of the invincibles was done by foreigners on account of them using knives.
At this remark, passed obviously in the spirit of where ignorance is bliss, Mr Bloom and Stephen, each in his own particular way, both instinctively exchanged meaning glances, in a religious silence of the strictly entre nous variety however, towards where Skin-the-Goat, alias the keeper, was drawing spurts of liquid from his boiler affair. His inscrutable face, which was really a work of art, a perfect study in itself, beggaring description, conveyed the impression that he didn't understand one jot of what was going on. Funny very.
There ensued a somewhat lengthy pause. One man was reading by fits and starts a stained by coffee evening journal; another, the card with the natives choza de; another, the seaman's discharge. Mr Bloom, so far as he was personally concerned, was just pondering in pensive mood. He vividly recollected when the occurrence alluded to took place as well as yesterday, some score of years previously, in the days of the land troubles when it took the civilised world by storm, figuratively speaking, early in the eighties, eightyone to be correct, when he was just turned fifteen.
-- Ay, boss, the sailor broke in. Give us back them papers.
The request being complied with, he clawed them up with a scrape.
-- Have you seen the Rock of Gibraltar? Mr Bloom inquired.
The sailor grimaced, chewing, in a way that might be read as yes, ay, or no.
-- Ah, you've touched there too, Mr Bloom said, Europa point, thinking he had, in the hope that the rover might possibly by some reminiscences but he failed to do so, simply letting spurt a jet of spew into the sawdust, and shook his head with a sort of lazy scorn.
-- What year would that be about? Mr Bloom interpolated. Can you recall the boats?
Our soi-disant sailor munched heavily awhile, hungrily, before answering.
-- I'm tired of all them rocks in the sea, he said, and boats and ships. Salt junk all the time.
Tired, seemingly, he ceased. His questioner, perceiving that he was not likely to get a great deal of change out of such a wily old customer, fell to woolgathering on the enormous dimensions of the water about the globe. Suffice it to say that, as a casual glance at the map revealed, it covered fully three fourths of it and he fully realised accordingly what it meant, to rule the waves. On more than one occasion - a dozen at the lowest - near the North Bull at Dollymount he had remarked a superannuated old salt, evidently derelict, seated habitually near the not particularly redolent sea on the wall, staring quite obliviously at it and it at him, dreaming of fresh woods and pastures new as someone somewhere sings. And it left him wondering why. Possibly he had tried to find out the secret for himself, floundering up and down the antipodes and all that sort of thing and over and under - well, not exactly under, tempting the fates. And the odds were twenty to nil there was really no secret about it at all. Nevertheless, without going into the minutiae of the business, the eloquent fact remained that the sea was there in all its glory and in the natural course of things somebody or other had to sail on it and fly in the face of providence though it merely went to show how people usually contrived to load that sort of onus on to the other fellow like the hell idea and the lottery and insurance, which were run on identically the same lines so that for that very reason, if no other, lifeboat Sunday was a very laudable institution to which the public at large, no matter where living, inland or seaside,-is the case might be, having it brought home to them like that, should extend its gratitude also to the harbourmasters and coastguard service who had to man the rigging and push off and out amid the elements, whatever the season, when duty called Ireland expects that every man and so on, and sometimes had a terrible time of it in the wintertime not forgetting the Irish lights, Kish and others, liable to capsize at any moment rounding which he once with his daughter had experienced some remarkably choppy, not to say stormy, weather.
-- There was a fellow sailed with me in the Rover, the old seadog, himself a rover, proceeded. Went ashore and took up a soft job as gentleman's valet at six quid a month. Them are his trousers I've on me and he gave me an oilskin and that jackknife. I'm game for that job, shaving and brushup. I hate roaming about. There's my son now, Danny, run off to sea and his mother got him took in a draper's in Cork where he could be drawing easy money.
-- What age is he? queried one hearer who, by the way, seen from the side, bore a distant resemblance to Henry Campbell, the townclerk, away from the carking cares of office, unwashed, of course, and in a seedy getup and a strong suspicion of nosepaint about the nasal appendage.
-- Why, the sailor answered with a slow puzzled utterance. My son Danny? He'd be about eighteen now, way I figure it.
The Skibbereen father hereupon tore open his grey or unclean anyhow shirt with his two hands and scratched away at his chest on which was to be seen an image tattooed in blue Chinese ink, intended to represent an anchor.
-- There was lice in that bunk in Bridgwater, he remarked. Sure as nuts. I must get a wash tomorrow or next day. It's them black lads I objects to. I hate those buggers. Sucks your blood dry, they does.
Seeing they were all looking at his chest, he accommodatingly dragged his shirt more open so that, on top of the time honoured symbol of the mariner's hope and rest, they had a full view of the figure 16 and a young man's sideface looking frowningly rather.
-- Tattoo, the exhibitor explained. That was done when we were lying becalmed off Odessa in the Black Sea under Captain Dalton Fellow the name of Antonio done that. There he is himself, a Greek.
-- Did it hurt much doing it? one asked the sailor.
That worthy, however, was busily engaged in collecting round the someway in his. Squeezing or...
-- See here, he said, showing Antonio. There he is, cursing the mate. And there he is now, he added. The same fellow, pulling the skin with his fingers, some special knack evidently, and he laughing at a yarn.
And in point of fact the young man named Antonio's livid face did actually look like forced smiling and the curious effect excited the unreserved admiration of everybody, including Skin-the-Goat who this time stretched over.

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