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#but my upper arms are hairy and i am delighted every time i see it
harrysgoldenbum · 4 years
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I Just Wanna Taste It
In honor of the constant teasing and anticipation of the release of Watermelon Sugar, I came up with a little something with some help from @fromyourstrulyh
Warning: smut
Word count: 1.5k
It took some time but you got used to Harry and his growing beard. You were there as your husband started to grow out his stubble. And when that stubble started to irritate him and got him to itch his face constantly. But Harry is a stubborn man and he wouldn’t listen to you when you would tell him to shave. He would tell you he hasn’t had the chance to grow a proper beard when he was working. So what better time to do so. And each and every time he said that you scoffed.
After a while, you let him be. Because you started to like the way he looked with his ever-growing facial hair. Now, you are used to him letting his stubble overgrow for a couple of days or the hair he would grow over his upper lip. But a proper beard was new to the both of you. But you couldn’t help but admire the way his strong jawline is highlighted, and the way he would stroke his chin.
He would often catch you staring at him and would come over to you and rub his hairy face against your sensitive skin. Leaving it red and irritated. WIth you screaming and begging Harry to stop, would often result in him tickling you until you were laughing so hard you couldn’t breathe, and trying to squirm away from his hands. Which leads him to get you onto your back. Or with him on his back and you on top. And it doesn’t matter where you were in the house. The kitchen floor, the couches, the living room wall, the bedroom wall, everywhere.
So when he has you pinned against the wall of the swimming pool, grinding his hips against yours, you are a little shocked. You never thought of doing anything outside. But now that you were rubbing against your man like a cat in heat, you knew there is no way you are taking the time to pause what you are doing to finish in your home.
His lips leave yours and trail down your neck, as you grab hold of his long, wet hair (which he is also letting grow out, much to your delight).
“Harry,” you whimper, as he starts to suck on your pulse point. Sending a tugging sensation to your lower belly, causing your cunt to get wet, and it’s not just the water from the pool.
“Hmmm,” Harry hums, as his beard tickles your neck.
Your head rolls back and you turn into jelly. If it wasn’t for your husband holding up and against the wall, you would be underwater. His long fingers go to untie your bathing suit. His knuckles run down your neck to the swell of your breast. His tongue slips between his lips and licks the water droplets that cling to your skin. He reaches behind you and undoes the last of the string that is holding your swimsuit to your body. The material slacks and he wastes no time pulling it away from your body and throwing out of the pool.
Bringing his hands around, he cups your tits. “So fuckin’ beautiful.”
A tremor runs through your body as Harry circles his thumbs around your nipples. Bring them to stiff peaks. He watches your body react to his touch, fueling his narcissistic ego.
He grinds his hard cock against your covered pussy. The material of his swim trunks and your bikini bottoms making it hard to find a nice and easy rhythm.
With a frustrated growl, he pulls at the ties and yanks the bottoms out from under you. You cling to Harry’s tan body, as you connect your lips to him. The hair above his upper lip grazes your skin. You suck on his plump lower lip and gently bite it. Caught between your teeth, you pull the tissue just before you slide your tongue into his mouth. You twirl your tongue around his before you pull it into your mouth and start to suck on it.
A deep moan erupts from Harry’s chest. He grips your thighs and lifts you out of the pool.
Harry’s mouth lining up perfectly with your breasts, he does the one thing that made sense. He leaned forward and took a nipple into his mouth. Your back arching, offering yourself to Harry completely.
He started sucking on your nipple gently, nipped the bud with his teeth, and eased the pain with the flicking of his tongue. His facial hair would caress the flesh that surrounds your nipples.
To make sure that your other tit wasn’t neglected, he would massage the flesh that fit in his palm. He would use his thumb and index finger to tweak your nipple, giving it a slight twist every once in a while. His thumb would roll over the stiff nub while his mouth was occupied with the other. After a while, he would switch.
You start to lose your mind. The stimulation your chest is receiving travels from your nipples, down your spine, to your lower belly, and finally to your throbbing clit.
“Harry,” you beg. “Please. Please baby! I want you!” you cry as you pull in his hair.
Harry gives one last hard suck before he lets go. He peppers kissed from the valley of your chest up to your ear.
“Alright, darlin’,” he starts to guide you to lay on your back. “Just relax.”
Your ass hangs in the edge, inches away from the water.
Feeling exposed, you ask, “Harry! W-what are you doing?”
Harry places your legs over his broad shoulders and holds onto the front of your thighs. He looks down at your bare cunt. “I just wanna taste it.” And dives in. His beard skims your sensitive inner thighs and your bare vagina lips. His tongue traces your outer lips before swiping from the bottom up and flicking your clit.
Your arms fling out, trying to find something to keep you anchored to Earth. Moans pour out of your lips, as Harry eats you like it’s his last meal.
“Tastes like berries,” he murmurs against her inner thigh. He attaches his lips to the skin there and sucks HARD. You know that he left a mark.
Teasing his way back to your center, Harry licks the juices that have saturated your skin. He lowers his mouth onto you again and slides his tongue into your canal. Your thighs lock around his head, and your fingers find their way into his hair. You tug at his curls in an attempt to get him to go deeper.
Feeling awfully high and mighty from the way your moans ring through the air, and the way your body is silently begging for more, Harry can’t help himself and traces out his name as he licks your folds. For every letter in his name, he will swirl and flick your clit with his tongue. And each time he did so, a shudder would travel down your body.
As your tugs got harder and longer, Harry knew that you were getting close to cumming. Sliding two fingers into your pussy, he locked his lips around your clit. As he sucked on your nub, he would curl his finger, hitting the spongy spot that always got you to jerk your hips forward.
“Ahhhh!” You cry, “I’m cumming, Harry!”
And you do. You come so hard, all your muscles lock. Your neck is strained as your head is thrown back in ecstasy. Your thighs trap Harry between your legs, giving him no other option but to continue working you. Slowly, your body starts to relax. You let go of Harry’s no dry hair. You lounge on your back in a post-orgasmic daze.
Harry hoists himself out of the pool and hovers over your body, shading you from the sun. It takes you a while to focus on him and when you do, the first thing you notice is how wet his beard is.
You cringe as you lift your hand up to touch the darker bits of his facial hair. “Oh god,” your cry. “Harry! I’m all over your face!”
An arrogant smirk takes over his face. “I would hope so darlin’ seeing that I got you to cum hard.”
Looking away from him, you mutter how you didn’t cum that hard.
With a cocky laugh, “Oh? So that wasn’t your cunt that practically stopped my fingers’ blood circulation? And it wasn’t you who look so fuckin’ gorgeous as you came on my face. Hmmm?”
With an eye roll, you wrap your arms around his body, bringing him closer to you and tell him to shut up.
“I just came hard, like hard,” you start. “So will you stop tormenting me long enough so we can cuddle?”
With a soft smile, Harry leans down to kiss his wife.
You taste yourself on Harry’s lips and you feel yourself on Harry’s beard. Turning your head away, you look up at Harry with a scrunched up nose.
“Can you please clean your face, Harry? I don’t like the wet feeling of me on my face.”
With a gentle laugh, Harry picks you up from the ground and carries you to the sofas under the gazebo.
“That’s a shame darlin’,” He says as he lays you down. “Because I love the feeling of you on my face.”
I am considering doing a part two, let me know what you think!
~~~~~~
My Works
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vintage-story-time · 3 years
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Family Games by Ray Todd
Chapter 7
Lorena said to her father: "It wasn't rape, dad."
He stared down at her, the bedside lamp making harsh lines of light on his tense
face. "What the hell do you mean?"
She didn't try to cover herself; she wanted him to see her naked body, to run
his eyes over the flesh that had grown from his own ejaculated sperm, the body
that he had just done such a grand job of fucking. She said, "I came in to your
bed because you needed me, but maybe not as much as I needed you. Oh dad, daddy
-- I've wanted you to lay me for years. And I couldn't stand not having you any
longer, so I sneaked in here and pretended to be mom. It was wonderful."
Blinking, her father couldn't seem to get his head together, and she watched
varying shades of emotion struggle across his face. He drew the sheet across his
lower body, trying to hide the big, upright shaft with the shiny head. "But,
baby -- you're my daughter -- "
She reached over and whipped away the sheet. "And that thing is too beautiful to
hide. I thought it would never fit into my little box, but I'm glad it did. It's
a good thing I wasn't a cherry, though."
He said, "I don't understand. Damnit, I drank too much tonight, and I'm still
kind of fuzzy, but -- why, baby? Why me?"
"Because you're big and beautiful and my daddy; because I love you more than I
could ever love any other man. Because I want you to keep fucking me until I
freak out."
"B-but -- it's all wrong, and people don't do this sort of thing -- I mean- -"
"It's already done," she answered, feeling much wiser and older than him. "We've
already screwed, so that can't be changed. So why not do it right, with you
knowing who I am and loving me for who I am? I'm so hot for more of you, daddy."
His eyes warmed as he looked down at her, and Lorena saw him really gaze at her
for the first time, seeing her as a ready and very desirable woman, not a kid.
Maybe he wouldn't look at her this way, she thought, if he hadn't already had
that big rod in her, if he hadn't pumped her ecstatic pussy full of his juice
just a few minutes ago. But her father was a realist who understood that the
damage -- if any -- had already been done. Now he was reacting as any other
horny man with a new, young piece of ass waiting for him, and the fact that she
was his own daughter was making it better for him.
He said, "Damnit, it doesn't seem real, but I've been doing without for too
long, and you're such a beautiful kid."
"You've looked at me sometimes," she said, "as if I was. Once in awhile, I
caught you kind of eyeing me as if you wanted to put your hands on me, feel me
up. Well, I wanted you to do just that. Am I really beautiful, dad? Do you want
to kiss me all over, and bite my tits, and put that gorgeous, big prick in your
daughter's aching pussy?"
He swallowed hard, and she could see the head of his cock leap. "Lorena, baby --
did you lock the door?"
"Yes," she smiled at him, "oh yes, I did."
Then she reached over to him, lifted up her arms and drew her handsome father
down. Their mouths met, and she thrust her tongue thirstily into his lips.
His hairy chest pressed down upon the hard nipples of her tits, and his
throbbing shaft nestled along her belly. So groovy, she thought, so damned
wonderful and crazy, and so beautiful. She ran her tongue around inside his
mouth, feeling his teeth, his inner cheeks and the thick movement of his own
tongue, all wet and hot. Their breaths mingled, and their teeth raked.
She tore away her mouth to gasp: "Love me, daddy -- love me! Kiss my tits, feel
my ass, my pussy."
His mouth closed over a nipple, licked searingly there, sucked strongly there,
before his teeth spread wide and she felt her entire mound being drawn in.
Twisting, she got a hand under his balls and hefted them, ran her questing
fingers over their sacked shapings and felt the weight of them. His hair was so
thick and curly, she thought, but not wiry; it was only a shade or two darker
than his head, a rich golden color.
Her daddy's hands passed over her writhing body, caressing her hips, her belly,
and one of them slid around to cup a cheek of her ass; the other dipped gently
between her thighs and palmed the pulsing softness of her wet mound.
Instinctively, her pelvis jerked, and Lorena made little hungry strokes with her
cunt.
Panting, he said, "You lovely little bitch; you sexy, teasing little bitch,
switching your trim ass at me, brushing your tits against me, and looking at me
as if you wanted to eat me up. Want to screw you? Damned right; you've given me
a hundred hard-ons over the past couple of years, but I never dared -- "
"Dare now," she whispered hotly. "But first, let me do this for you, daddy
darling."
Wheeling around, she pressed her weight upon him and forced him to lie back.
Lorena had practiced on her brother, and knew she could do a good job now, and
her heart was fluttering at the prospect.
"What are you -- "
"Hush now," she murmured. "Just lie back and let me love my beautiful father."
She straddled his body, wiggling when his flagpole cock slid between her cheeks
and stood tall along her spine. She would have it later, all of it she wanted
and needed so badly, but now she had other things to do to him. She would show
him how good she was, turn him on in every way there was.
Lorena pushed back, dragging his bent cock across her slippery snatch and
feeling it sticky against her tummy. She kissed his corded throat and licked
down it to his upper chest. Running her hands up and down his rib cage, playing
with his nipples, she squirmed to his supine body. When she reached his little
dark pink tit, she nipped it lightly, then sucked on it, delighted to feel his
sudden lurch beneath her, knowing that she was thrilling him.
Moving down farther, she licked a hot trail down his chest to his belly, drawing
her tongue through the patch of golden hairs, tickling him until he wiggled. Her
hands were on his hips now, fondling and petting, digging fingernails tenderly
into his flesh.
When Lorena reached his navel, she bit the skin, then drove her tongue deeply
into it, lapping the belly button as if it were some inverted kind of lollypop,
tasting the mansweat of him there. The stiff rod of his cock stood beside her
cheek, and she rubbed her face along it, her fingers busy probing his balls and
feeling into the furry crack of his ass as her daddy flinched and writhed.
"B-baby," he panted, "no; you don't know what you're doing -- oh sweet baby -- "
Moaning softly to herself, she caressed his shaft, squeezed and stroked it,
running her fingers over the monstrous head and sliding them in the leakage
there. So big, she thought; so long and strong an powerful, and right now it was
all hers, to do with just as she pleased.
Lorena kissed the blunt reddened tip, and liked the flavor of his semen; it was
musky and manly, the very essence of his body. She used her tongue to curl
across the slit, to push into the slot and worry it, then withdrew to run it
licking around the flanged outline of the glans itself. Not like her brother's
slim cock, she thought, realizing that she would never get much of it into her
mouth because of its size.
Stretching her lips, she fitted them down over the head, took the entire knob
inside her mouth. Her father quivered, and his hands came down to take her head
gently between them. Eyes closed, breathing hard, Lorena used her tongue and
lips to create voluptuous caresses over the velvety head of his prick. Drawing
in her cheeks, she rubbed it over the roof of her mouth, and ringed the shaft
just below the head with her teeth.
When she started to suck, her daddy groaned and worked his fingers into her
hair; his pelvis rocked back and forth, making his cock reach farther into her
mouth.
She wanted it all, wanted to take it down her throat and into her belly, but it
was too big. Lorena took all of it she possibly could, sucking and licking,
moving her head up and down in the same manner her cunt was moving up and down
on his thigh. She wrapped her legs around her daddy's strong thigh and made
sliding, fucking motions, rubbing her snatch against him while she ate his
prick.
"Baby -- Lorena -- little girl -- oh, darling; that's wonderful!"
Dimly, she heard her father's choked voice, and knew a warmth as he continued to
tenderly screw her face. She got both hands down under his ass and pulled him
tighter, tried to force even more of that delicious meat into her mouth. She
felt the head of his lovely cock swell, felt him tremble against her tits and
knew that he was about to reach orgasm.
Lorena sucked harder, pulling on the head, her tongue going wild, her fingers
digging savagely into his taut ass. Grinding his pelvis into her chin, rubbing
his hairy belly into her forehead, her daddy let it go then. That tremendous
head jerked, and a boiling spate of come erupted from it. She choked on it,
gasped for air and swallowed while the floodtide of her father's semen
fountained into her throat. Oyster- like, slimy, the stuff filled her mouth,
thick and creamy, and she continued to gulp it down, continued to pull eagerly
at the spigot for more.
"Oh!" he moaned. "Oh baby -- I can't take any more -- oh!"
Lorena drained the last purling drops from the head of his prick and let them
slip down her feverish throat. She had never felt so in command, for he was
helpless with her.
Regretfully, she allowed the trembling bulb to slide from her mouth, licking her
lips and smiling. Lifting her face, she stared up at him when his hands fell
away from her head. "There, darling. Now I have you in my stomach; you are
forever a part of me now."
Her father's eyes were closed and he was breathing in ragged gasps. "That was
t-too much, baby. I won't be able to move for a week."
"Sure you will," she promised, and crawled up his body to lie atop him. He was
wide and tall, and she felt very small like this, but Lorena snuggled up to him,
knowing that she had the power to sap his strength while giving him deep erotic
pleasure. She was stronger, and never had she been so glad of her sex.
They lay quietly for a long time, with his arms around her, his big hands
stroking her ass, her head pillowed upon his broad chest. After awhile he said,
"What brought this on, baby? Sure, we always had a thing for each other, but why
did you pick tonight to start something? Not that I'm sorry you did, darling;
I'm glad you had the guts, because I sure as hell didn't. I didn't have the cold
nerve it would take to be a dirty old man."
"You're not a dirty old man," she said against the base of his throat. "You're
my daddy, and the best fuck in the whole world. Why did I do it tonight? Well --
I just couldn't stand it any longer, and when you and mom drank so much, I
thought maybe I could sneak in here and you'd screw me and not know the
difference."
Now that they were being open with each other, sharing their love and their
bodies, Lorena hated to lie to him, but she didn't dare tell her daddy the
truth, not yet. For the first time, she wondered if her brother was making out
as well, if he had managed to put his slim young meat to their mother's
interesting pussy.
Had Glynn really made it with mom, or had he backed out at the last possible
moment? If he did that, she'd cream him. But her brother had a hard on for a
taste of mom's cunt, that was certain, and he had probably swung with her by
now. A new thrill stirred deep within Lorena's vagina, and she rubbed her
sensitive thighs together, feeling her father's limp prick folded between their
bellies.
She pictured her young brother lying like this on top of their mother, between
those superbly long legs, his chest mashing down those magnificent tits, his
stiff cock buried to the balls inside that black- haired pussy. Wow, she
thought; if everything worked out for them, she would soon get to watch them
fuck, because once all the phony barriers had been pushed down, the four of them
could get together and let it all hang out.
Her father said sleepily, "I knew the difference almost right away, but I
thought I was dreaming. Your mother has a fine body and a wonderful pussy, but
so have you, only in a different way, and a new feel. When I got all the way
awake, I thought I'd stumbled over into your room and raped my daughter. I guess
I always believed I'd have to rape you, that you wouldn't willingly screw your
own dad."
Lorena said, "You should have known; I'm your daughter, and have a lot of the
same emotions you have. I guess we're both very strongly sexed, dad. Is mom that
way, too?"
He hesitated. "Yes, she is. It wasn't anything sexual that brought on this
divorce, unless you can call boredom that. I mean, two people can love to screw,
and enjoy each other to the limits, but after so many years, it gets too damned
familiar, too much like a habit. It's not good any more, when that happens."
She thought of them screwing, and wondered how her father would react if he knew
that his son was probably at this very minute putting the meat to Mrs. Eric
Johansen. He might take it wrong, taking it as a slur upon his own manhood or
something. Men were different, not nearly so logical as women, and even though
he had fucked his own daughter and allowed her to go down on him, her dad would
probably be very upset if he knew it was also the other way around.
There was time to let him know, she thought; not a whole lot of time, because
that silly damned divorce was looming in the foreground. But maybe in another
day or two, she could convince him that what they were doing was best for all
concerned.
He said, "I'm a little punchy and feel kind of grimy. I'll get up and take a
shower, maybe have a couple of quick drinks, then come back to bed. If you'll
still be here."
"I'll be here," she answered, moving to one side and taking her weight from him.
She watched him walk bare-assed into the bathroom, loving every tall, wide inch
of his big body, seeing his softened cock swinging from side to side. Her daddy
was big all over, and she figured he would be big enough mentally to adjust to
the brand new situation in his household.
It was working, she told herself; so far, the plan was moving along perfectly.
She had seduced her daddy and he dug it; her brother had no doubt done the same
thing with their mother, and even though she had once thought she could make out
strangled kinds of sounds in the next room, there had been no screaming. Since
they had started acting stupid, both her parents were hard up for sex. Their
kids had made it with them at the right time, while they were uptight and
frustrated.
But what was the next step? Of course, they had to make dad and mom more wrapped
up in sexual activities with their kids. But how to go about bringing mom and
dad together again? Lorena turned over on her belly, still wet between her
thighs, and the idea of Jean Marks came to mind. Wouldn't that sexy little
redhead like a chance to be fucked by that huge prick? It was a good idea; Jean
could be brought in to get dad into a triangle, to open him up more to
free-swinging screwing.
Once he was adjusted to that, her father could then be brought into a mix-up
with her brother and mom. Smiling, Lorena ran a hand over her mound and
stretched her legs. She listened to the sound of the shower and hoped her dad
would regain his strength soon.
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bluejevergade · 6 years
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Day 6 Dungeons and Dragons AU
Jack was in very bad situation. Nicolas, the leader of the group had died, Tatiana the healer also, as well as Sandy the magician, Kozmotis the master of shadows and Aster the elf. He was alone and he had been captured by the opposite clan. Five warriors had fallen on him above while he tried to run away. He thought that he would be killed, but they had enchained him and returned in their fort. They had thrown him in a room which, in the views of the luxury it showed, belonged to their chief. Black silks sheets covered the immense bed, candles were scattered in every corner of the room. Axes, shields, swords and other weapons were lying almost everywhere. Jack was terrified. The rumors on the leader of the clan of the Hairy Hooligans were terrible. He had tamed dragons and had conquered the half of the known-world  with it. He showed no mercy with his enemies. Alvin the Treacherous, Dagur the Deranged, Viggo and Ryker Grimborn, and even Drago Bludvist had succumbed to his attacks.
And Jack found himself in his room, probably to amuse its perverse pleasures.
He tried to get rid of the heap of chains which surrounded him, but he manages only to make noise and to exhaust the bit of strength which stayed in him. He got up to look through the window to see if he had a chance to run away there, but the distance on the ground was too much and he probably finished by water into which he would certainly sink before being able to go out of it. Steps were heard and he turns pale. He looked for an escape, unsuccessfully and the door opened. Hiccup Horrendous Haddock, the Third faced him.
'Here's what brought to me my troops … Well I have to admit that for once, they have been right …'
'Free me'
Haddock burst of a cold laughter.
'They all ask me for it … No. No, my darling, this evening you belong to me and tomorrow … Well, we'll see…'
'You're going to kill me?'
'Not this evening. You see, it has been too long since somebody warmed my bed …'
'I am not your whore!'
Haddock chuckled one more time.
'The whole world will be in my feet soon. And you believe that you, alone, chained in my room, you can resist me?'
'I shall never surrender!'
Haddock removed its heavy fur coat.
'Keep dreaming … But not too long, because that tends to irritate me … And you know what I'm doing with the things which irritate me?'
Jack swallows.
'Well, I see that you are aware of it...'
Haddock removed its armor, staying only in his bottoms and if Jack was terrorized, he had to admit that the warlord was spoiled by the nature. Haddock approached him.
'Now, let us see what you have under this scrap …'
'I refuse to submit myself.'
'My dear, you will not have the choice' Haddock whispered with a soft voice. 'I take all that I want, and what I want, this evening, it's you …'
He undid his metallic prison and while he did it, Jack noticed that it had an artificial leg. Haddock saw his look and smiled.
'I lost my leg, long ago. During my first fight, when I was fifteen years, it was torn away from me. But that didn't stop me today, ten years later, from forcing half of the world to kneel down. Then if you think that you will have the upper hand with a hand-to-hand fight with me …'
Jack swallows. Even if Haddock had only one leg, he was too strong all the same. And he was only an inexperienced apprentice in magic…
Haddock contemplated him of an enjoying look.
'Well well … That's tasty. '
'What are you going to do with me?'
Haddock left him his handcuffs and lifted him. Jack did not even dare to resist.
'This evening, my darling, I am going to make you imploring me. You'll cry for mercy and  you'll beg me to take you again and again. And when I will have finished it with you, well … We shall see if you will serve me tomorrow … If not, knows that my gaols wait for you. And you know what they say on my gaols?
Haddock threw him on the bed.
'Nobody lasts long there …'
The following morning, Jack woke up by the sun leaking out through the window. A muscular arm surrounded his size and another hand caressed his hair.
'Well, my darling' the War Lord said 'had I not warned you? Nobody resists me. And nobody don't …'
He was interrupted by the shrill beep of the phone.'
'Fuck' swore Hiccup, spreading out on the pillow.
'It's too bad' made Jack, 'that started well'
'I had told to everybody that we were not there, for God's sake!'
Jack turned around in face of him.
'Hey, this time we were able to end it. Not like the time your father surprised us making love dressed as…'
'No, please, don't say it. Arg … I don't care, I will not answer.
Jack smiled and put his head on his lover's chest.
'It was good, yesterday evening …'
Hiccup smiled to him.
'That pleased you? I was afraid of being a little too much freaking out …'
Jack kissed him.
'No, it was perfect… And to see you playing war chiefs, it's … A really good turn on.
Hiccup chuckled.
'You were very cute, in prisoner, I have to admit …'
'By the way, what did you told your father to be able to take his weapons of collection?'
'That there were an antique dealer, and that I wanted to make them estimate for the insurance.'
'He believes that? '
'For now. Wait that he understands that there is none …'
'The candles were nice, but I believe that the furnitures didn't appreciate the melted wax …'
The telephone rang again and Hiccup looked at the receiver.
'We aren't there! Leave us!'
Jack smiles and settling comfortably against his lover. Hiccup caressed his hair, forgetting the tone.
Unfortunately, the answering machine started up;
"Hiccup, it's your father. You know, the person who is going to disinherit you if you do not return him his babies at once! Spitelout told me that there is no antique dealer in the area! If you use my babies for I do not know which frenzy with Jack, I warn you … "
Hiccup grumbled, putting himself under a pillow while his lover chuckled by hearing the end of the message. Jack got up to put the phone in silencer and went back to bed near the other man.
'Tell me, my Lord' Jack said, recovering in his role, 'yesterday evening did it deserve your gaols?'
Hiccup smiles.
'That will depend on the awakening which you grant me, my darling … '
Jack smiled and kissed his lover, delighted with the prospect of the having sex again. And he thanked once again the heavens for having met Hiccup Haddock in his life.
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zywesrebro-blog · 7 years
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Freefalling
My name is Pietro Maximoff. I’m sixty nine years old, I’m an Aries, and my life has always followed the predominant assumption that everyone who meets me grows to hate me, one way or another.
Following Pietro on an average day, four months after his resignation from Serval Industries. 5k. Pietro Maximoff/Remy LeBeau. First person POV, character study.
My name is Pietro Maximoff. I am sixty nine years old, I’m an Aries, and my life has always followed the predominant assumption that everyone who meets me grows to hate me, one way or another.
I am currently falling at approximately one hundred and sixty metres per second, and the wind from the fall is pressing minimally at the back of my neck. I am on my back, my legs apart at a thirty degree angle, my arms similarly spread away from my torso. Above me, I can see the X-Jet I fell from, going to the edge of the craft and letting myself fall backwards.
An expression of horror had crossed over the face of Abigail Brand, but then she had seen my expression of calm, and had copied it.
Brand is a sensible woman.
The fall from a flight craft at eight thousand metres will take about forty seconds: for me, this is a leisurely relaxation, suspended as I am in the air, falling in slow motion. I look at my watch. I designed its prototype in 1969, not long after Wanda and I first came to America, but it has gone through a thousand evolutions since then, the least of which being its transformation into a digital clock face rather than an analogue one.
The time is 13:12:34, it tells me, in the upper right hand corner. The time between the thirty fourth second of the minute and the thirty fifth seems like an eternity. In order to measure my time, I divide the day not into twenty four hours, but into one thousand, four hundred and forty minutes, and subsequently into eighty six thousand four hundred seconds.
Abigail Brand is calm, in part, because Hank McCoy has told her that these minutes and seconds are my equivalent of hours and minutes, and that every day stretches on for me as months would for somebody else. She’s not stupid enough to feel any sympathy, but Hank does.
Sometimes, people hate me, and then they change their minds. I wish he never had.
Closing my eyes, I tip my head slightly backwards, moving my body at angle: immediately, the wind whistles high in my ears as I increase in speed, and I wait until I’m five hundred metres or so above ground before I whip my body to the side. My head is full with a torrent of mathematical calculations, but they’re not difficult any more, and they’re not even necessary – I can perform this sort of manoeuvre from muscle memory alone.
I hear the yells slowed down immensely as I bring my little tornado into control, sending dust, dirt and pieces of concrete swirling about me as I spin, suspended by my own momentum, in air.
The robot turns too slowly to realize her folly, and I slam her down onto the ground with the force of a hurricane. Dropping into the robot’s carapace, I slam my fist into its chest at speed, tearing into the metal and dragging it from its moorings (I feel my knuckles crack. They’ll heal within the hour.)
The girl inside is staring at me, coughing with the sudden punch to her back the fall had given her, and her eyes are wide with fear. She is terrified of me. She’s hardly the first.
I unbuckle her from the robot’s harnesses, pulling her out of its spark-hissing form, and in a second her hands are cuffed behind her back; I turn to face the extraction team. Hank is yet to land the X-Jet, so instead, I’m faced with Emma Frost, Scott Summers, and Ororo Munroe. Two out of three are staring at me stonily, and none of them say a word. Ororo has a slight smile on her face, but this is only because she has been struck, for a moment, by how our powers might intersect, if I used wind more often.
“Good work, kid,” Logan says, stepping forwards, and I gently push the girl toward him. She’s maybe eighteen, nineteen – the daughter of some mogul, and her work with technology has to be seen to be believed. Genius mutants always have it the hardest, I think – they’re the most likely to get bored.
“I’m nearly seventy, Logan,” I point out, quietly. He retorts with a gruff huff of sound, and I turn away, walking towards where the X-Jet is landing in Central Park. The city council hates it when they do that, but they hate it when children lead robots through destructive rampages through the city, too.
I step aboard the jet, changing out of my suit and into my civilian clothes.
“Thank you, Pietro,” Hank murmurs quietly as I button up my shirt. I look at him in the window of the jet, polished to a shine. He looks tired; he often does, these days. “Speed was of the essence.”
“You didn’t tell them you were dropping me in,” I say. Hank’s eyes flicker about the room, and his tongue, which is rough as a cat’s, flickers over his whiskered lips.
“Now—”
“You should have told them,” I murmur, before he can give me some explanation or excuse. Mutants like Summers and Frost are hyperfocused upon control, and they dislike having their thunder stolen from beneath them, even if Logan views it as an easy job. “You know their anger won’t be directed at you, if they choose to show it.” Hank’s eyes soften. He hadn’t thought of it that way.
Guilt shines from his face, but I have enough guilt of my own, and I don’t engage it.
Hank’s paw touches my shoulder as I make my way back toward the entrance of the jet. The blue pads are warm, the pressure of his claws soft against the white fabric of my shirt, and he says softly, “You should join us again at the mansion, Pietro. We’re lacking a mathematics teacher, at the moment, and no one can engage the children in the subject like you can.”
“I wish everybody would stop offering me employment,” I say. I left the X-Factor nearly four months ago now, and it seems that every day someone else is asking me to join a different team, and barring Hank, who seems to do it purely out of worry for me, the majority of the offers come with an element of superiority that I cannot stand. “My apartment works for me. I don’t wish to move.”
“You truly think the commute would be difficult for you?” Hank inquires, tone arch. Then, he says, “Pietro, I could replicate your apartment in its entirety. We’ve been expanding our basement space: I could give you your own kitchen, bathroom, and lock them to your DNA. The children wouldn’t be at risk.”
I stare at Hank’s face. I’m so struck by what he’s said that that it must show in my face, because his expression remains focussed in its earnestness, and I tear my gaze away from his eyes to instead look somewhere in the vicinity of his hairy chin.
“Pietro?” Hank asks softly. The first time Hank did an analysis of my body’s functions, I was coming up to forty years old, and I’d done it as a favour to him: it was a gesture of good will, to allow him to better understand my limits and my biology, and he’d realized in those three days the way that I perceived the world. So many people, after all, assume that I only see things as super slow when I’m moving at super speed, but in actual fact, things are always moving slow, and I’m always perceiving them that way. If my brain couldn’t think that fast, I suppose the stress of my condition would kill me, but it’s difficult nonetheless. I had to learn to speak and hear anew, when I was nine years old and my powers activated. Hank’s never looked at me the same since.
“I’ll give it thought,” I hear myself say, and I walk past Hank, putting my satchel over my shoulder – it holds my suit, my phone, my wallet, a tablet computer. The sort of thing one doesn’t wish to hold in one’s super suit. As I take the steps down onto the impromptu airfield, I see Frost speaking with the girl I’d taken in; Munroe is putting the remnants of the robot inside the plane, with Summers overseeing her work.
“Hey, kid,” Logan says. He has a cigar in his hand, but it doesn’t seem he’s smoked too much of it, and when he watches me, I feel uncomfortably analysed. Wolverine isn’t ancient, but despite his relative youth, he looks at me in the same transparent way that Charles Xavier used to look at me, and the way my father does, at times. He looks at me as if he can see everything I’ve ever felt, even though I know for a fact that he can’t.
“Logan,” I say quietly. I feel myself stiffen slightly, waiting for what it is he has to say: Logan���s eyes narrow slightly. What people underestimate about me is how much I can see in their faces, how obvious their micro-expressions are to someone like me, who can see every single tiny shift in the muscles of their cheeks, their mouths, their eyes. Logan knows, though. I remember a day when I was back at the mansion, forming part of a discussion group with Kitty Pryde about Jewish history’s intersections with mutant history, and a group of delighted children had demanded my opinion on some television show called Lie To Me.
I hate television.
“Hank invited you back to the school?”
“Yes.”
“You gonna?”
“I don’t know.” It’s honest. There’s little point in lying to the Wolverine. I look down at him, look at the way he’s leaning against the wall – there’s so much violence crammed into such a small form, with Wolverine. “You’re staying for the foreseeable future, I presume?”
“Yeah,” he says, bringing the cigar to his mouth. I first tried a cigarette in ’66 – Wanda and I had been in Paris, and while she was doing some job by the river, I’d slipped into a bar to see if they had any work going. I’d been eighteen, dressed as neatly as I could manage, and a man had took me by the arm, pulling me into his circle of students, all my age, and yet so much older, it seemed. A pretty girl had given me a drag of her cigarette, and I’d drawn in the tobacco a little too quickly, burned my mouth on the cigarette’s suddenly flaming butt. They’d thought it was a magic trick, and I left before they could think any differently. When I told Logan that story, a few years ago now, he’d grinned as wryly as I’ve ever seen, and promised he wouldn’t tell my sister. I wonder if he thinks about that moment as much as I do. “How’s retirement treating you?”
“It’s not as relaxing as I expected.” Logan snorts, tipping ash onto the ground, and he shows his teeth. “The X-Factor is doing very well without me, though – better press.” They are. There was a photograph on the news of Remy LeBeau with blood on his face, carrying a child from a building as it collapsed around them, and I haven’t heard a single bit of criticism in any of the mainstream news.
“More casualties, though,” Logan points out, dryly, and I see the way his eyes focus on my face, looking to see if I’ll weaken my resolve or show any guilt. I don’t. There have been one or two deaths – the X-Factor not getting there in time, or not being able to move fast enough, but no more than any other super team on the circuit. Logan’s smile deepens. “You working on your gadgets and stuff, huh?”
“They’re not gadgets, Logan.”
“Nah, they’re not,” Logan agrees. “I saw the budget the Xavier School puts for Magda Korp. in Emma’s office. What do you do with all that money?” Pietro can’t help but smile a little.
“I donate a lot of it back under my own name,” I say in a mild tone, and Logan sniggers. The irony of the situation delights him – of every person at the Xavier school, Hank and Logan are the only people aware of who owns the leading corporation in the world for the creation and design of prosthetics and learning aids for mutant children and teenagers. Pietro started the Magda Korporacja in 1982, stationing his offices out of Chicago, and now that he is no longer a member of the X-Factor, most of his time is focused upon his own work, at home. Logan opens his mouth to keep on talking, but Summers approaches us, and I turn to face him.
“Just be careful,” Logan says. Despite my best efforts, I feel my brows shift furrow in perplexity.
“What are you talking about?” Summers asks. Looking over his head, I can see Hank and Abigail peering out of the cockpit, exchanging words – it’s difficult to read Hank’s lips, as a result of the shape of his face, but I can read the questions Abigail is asking him on hers. We must be better than television for her.
“Maximoff wants to fuck my kid,” Logan says. I feel my eyes widen before I can force my expression back to something resembling neutrality, and then I turn to meet the gaze of Summers’ visor: disgust shows in the shift of his lips, as well as a mild curiosity. In the moment, I simultaneously despise and admire Logan’s quick thinking.
“Laura’s gonna tear you apart,” Summers says, with a slight satisfaction. It irritates me, how his disgust gives way to a sort of smugness, and I feel the desire to cut through it like a knife.
“Daken, actually,” I correct him, replacing one lie with another, and Summers actually recoils. If I could see his eyes, I wonder what would pass through them – fear? Uncorrupted surprise? Further curiosity? The visor is crucial, of course, but not for the first time, I find myself wishing it wasn’t there, so that I could make a measure of Summers in the way I can of other men.
“I can’t exactly see him settling down for a candlelit dinner,” Summers says.
“Who says that’s what I want?” I ask. And there it is – not just horror, but a mix of something else, more curiosity, intrigue. I see Scott’s tongue flicker against the upper part of his lip, and I tilt my head slightly to the side, looking to Logan. Logan’s making a face, his nose wrinkled – what I can see in the slow-motion movement of other people’s faces, he can smell in the air. What must that be like? He and Hank have the same supernatural awareness of other people’s feelings, their inner thoughts, and it might not be as exact as telepathy, but a man like Summers should know better than to underestimate it. “See you, Logan.”
“Bye bye, kid,” Logan replies, and I don’t bother with the ultra-slow walk I’ve perfected for life among the normal people – for me, it’s a brisk walk, but it’s at my speed, and the New Yorkers I pass by see only a grey-clad blur of motion, but this is a city of mutants, and no one bothers to complain – not within my earshot anyway.
I don’t bother with the elevator in my building – it runs at a safe speed for every other tenant in the block, and I prefer the stairs anyway. I head up to the fourth floor, unlock the door, and step inside.
“Tommy?”
“Hey, Uncle P,” Tommy’ voice rings through my apartment, sailing with ease under the high ceilings, and I close the door behind me. Tommy is sprawled on the sofa, and his fingers move over the reinforced controls of my modified Xbox at speed, and I lean on the back of the couch behind him, watching the screen. It’s not one of my games – it’s some zombie game, with the predominant focus seeming to be on violence and gore. “You left your window open.”
I slap him – lightly – upside the head, and say, “No, I didn’t.” Tommy chuckles to himself, sending bullets through the oncoming torrent of stumbling monsters, and I walk into the kitchen, putting a wok onto the hob and flicking on the heat before moving to wash my hands. My kitchen is dangerous for most – my water pressure is enough to flay the skin off most people, and by the time I dry my hands on a towel, my wok is hot enough to cook chicken – less than twelve seconds. “Have you eaten, Tommy?”
“Uh-huh,” Tommy says, distractedly. A lie. I press my lips together, resisting the urge to roll my eyes (“That’s an ugly expression, Pietro,” Marya Maximoff used to tut at me, when I was still very young, and I don’t even remember what her face looked like, but I remember the cadence of her voice), and I take some chicken from the fridge, beginning to chop it into pieces. “You got any bacon?”
“Yeah, Rabbi Greenberg says it’s full of nutrients,” I retort, and there’s a short pause.
“Oh, right, yeah,” Tommy says. “I forgot.” I can’t help the chuckle that draws itself from my mouth, and I pour oil into the pan, massaging seasoning into the chicken on the chopping board. “Guess I can’t have cheese on my chicken either, huh?”
“You can have cheese on it if you want, but I won’t be having any on mine,” I say, and I flick the chicken into the pan, dropping in some peppers, some tomatoes, some crushed cloves of garlic. Outside, it begins to rain, and I watch the rain as it falls past my kitchen window, the little droplets going slowly, slowly, down towards the ground. I feel my lips quirk up into a smile: I love rain. Cooking at my speed involves a lot of concentration: the temperatures are too high not to keep my gaze upon the pan, because otherwise the chicken will stick or burn, but it can be done, and not with too much difficulty.
It’s not uncommon for me to return home and find Tommy in my apartment, eating the food from my fridge, playing games on my television, or reading books from the mini library in my guest bedroom. Tommy has a place of his own, but he shares it with a few people his age, and much as he studies my modifications of games consoles, the games don’t run as smoothly as they do here. Tommy never realized, I’m sure, how much his encouraging me to play videogames would benefit him, in that regard, but I actually find some enjoyment in having the consoles there.
When I can use them, of course.
I don’t mind.
I drop a few handfuls of noodles into the pan, stirring them into the mix, and I pick up the note sticking from the fridge: Hey, Pietro, I came over earlier and waited for an hour, but you didn’t seem like you were home soon. I wanted to ask if you wanted to go halvesies with me and Tommy on planting a tree for Grandpa for his eighty-fifth birthday. Text me. Billy. I arch an eyebrow, then drop the paper into the recycling bin, grasping the wok by the handle and giving it a light shake.
I don’t understand Billy, and I don’t pretend to: even in my converting to Judaism six years ago, spending time together at holidays, Billy and I have very little in common, though he is just as likely as Tommy to break into my apartment and “hang out”, though usually he’ll just sit in my living room or on the guest bed and read or surf the Internet. Tommy comes to my apartment because he likes the relaxation of an environment tailored to speed like his own, because food is expensive and he knows he’ll be fed here, because (for some reason I can’t entirely fathom) he has affection for me, and enjoys spending time with me. Billy shows up because he vaguely wants my approval, and because none of his bizarre little friends will look for him here.
“Did Billy tell you about this tree thing?”
“For Grandpa? Yeah, he says it’s like a whole thing, you buy a tree in Israel and you get like, a certificate and stuff, right? He gave me a pamphlet.” I hear Tommy swear before the television flickers off, and then I feel the shift in the air as he moves into the kitchen, looking over my shoulder. “You nearly done?”
“I thought you said you’d eaten?”
“I wasn’t listening,” Tommy admits, and I flick my head toward the cupboard behind me: he takes out two shallow bowls and sets them on the table, and with a set of tongs I put out the chicken stir fry on the plates, and then he asks, “You gonna go in for the tree?”
“No,” I say. “I’ll give you the money for your half, though.” Tommy seems to weigh this up, then he shrugs his shoulders.
“Okay,” he says, and he takes his bowl before heading over to the sofa again: he catches himself just before he sits down, and then alters his course, moving to sit at the living room table. I can’t help the slight smile on my face: Luna is a well-behaved child, but without a particular rule in place, she does as she pleases. I’ve never banned guests from eating from their laps in front of the television, but Tommy looks for signs of disgust, of distaste, in me. I wonder how much we really have in common, sometimes – it seems like too much. “What you gonna get him?”
“I bought him a sweater from that Judaica store in Brooklyn. It has Magneto was right written in Hebrew on it, and a big knitted picture of his face.” Tommy starts laughing, and I grin to myself as I take down two glasses from the cupboard, pouring myself a glass of lemonade and pouring orange juice out for Tommy. He flicks two coasters into place on the table, and I set the glasses down, sitting down beside him.
“That’s crazy, man,” Tommy says, and he begins to eat. “You think he’ll like it?”
“He’ll be a mixture of delighted and disgusted. That’s my general goal on these occasions.” Father’s birthday isn’t until next month, though, so I’m going to suspend my anxieties for the time being. Tommy and I make idle conversation as we eat, and it’s pleasant enough – I’m  well-used to eating alone, but I take no issue with having companionship. It’s nice.
After they finish, I take the bowls to the sink and wash them up, setting them upon the draining board.
“I’m gonna head out. I’m meeting David and Loki for drinks in Manhattan. You wanna come?”
“No,” I say bluntly. Tommy grins.
“Yeah, I figured. See ya, Uncle Pete!”
“Goodbye, Tommy,” I murmur, and I focus on washing up the wok and spatula as he leaves. I realize, after a few moments, that I haven’t heard the door slam closed, and I frown, stepping away from the sink and leaning back to look at the door. I stop, holding the towel in one hand and a plate in the other.
“Hey there, cher,” Remy says; in contrast to Tommy’s voice, Remy’s voice is obscenely low and he speaks far too slowly, but I force myself to concentrate on it, on analysing the words as they’re spoken, despite their slow speed. “Had some uncle-nephew time, huh?”
“He just stayed for dinner,” I answer, and I wipe the moisture from the plate, putting it away. Remy is wet from the rain, his coat heavy with it, and he pulls it from his shoulders: he knows me too well to hang it on the coat rack, and instead holds it out from me so that I can hang it from the bar above the bath instead, which is precisely what I do. I flick the kettle on (I brought it home from a trip to Limerick a year or two ago, as Americans don’t really sell electric kettles), and I feel myself strangely struck by his presence as he closes the door and carefully takes off his shoes, setting them beside the doormat.
Except for his appearances on the news, I haven’t seen Remy since I handed in my letter of resignation to Serval Industries: I still see Lorna when Wanda or Billy forces us to have a family dinner together, or when she and I train together in the basement of this building, but everyone else, I avoid – it’s pretty nice, not having Danger’s irritating steadfastness in my life, I have to admit.
“Would you like coffee or tea?” The surprise has hit me hard: rather than the usual jibes I know I’d fall into, I feel myself settle into polite hospitality, and I feel a twinge of self-loathing.
“Nah, cher,” Remy murmurs, walking into my apartment as if he’s been here a thousand times before – he’s not been here once. “Let Remy make you a nice cup of cocoa.” He comes towards the kitchen, but I block his entry.
“I can make hot chocolate,” I say, quietly. “But you can’t use anything in my kitchen. You’ll get hurt. My appliances run too hot and too fast.” Remy freezes, something similar to uncertainty passing over his face: his features show no distrust and no hurt, but merely surprise, and the slightest bit of shame.
“Right. Sure, sorry – Remy didn’t mean ta worry ya.” He settles down at the kitchen table, and then says, “I’d like a cup of joe, if ya don’t mind.”
“No,” I murmur, and I find it curiously close to true, turning around and pouring some ground coffee beans into a mug, following it with some hot water and then some milk, some cream, some sugar. LeBeau likes his coffee sweet – I know that like I know there are stars in the sky. I set the mug next to him, upon a coaster, and he looks up at me. He looks thoughtful. “Why are you here?”
“Would you believe I missed ya?” Remy asks, and I settle slowly into the seat across from him, watching Remy’s expression. He doesn’t look like he’s lying, doesn’t show any signs of it – Remy’s a good liar, but I know from experience that I can pinpoint the initial signs of deception in him. I can’t quite see what he’s feeling, because his face is a mask of neutrality…
But how can I judge him? Don’t I do the same?
Remy looks down at his coffee mug, at the soft swirl of cream as it sinks slowly into the dark liquid, and then he looks up to me again. I’ve always found it strange how engaging Remy’s eyes are – his sunglasses are hanging from the collar of his shirt, baring them to the room, and Pietro looks at their black shape, the little dots of red that form his pupils.
Remy and I share so little in common, but one of the things that we do share, that we always have and always will share, is that our secondary physical mutations – his eyes and my hair – makes us immediately visible to passers by even if we hide our primary mutations. In some ways, that places us on level ground.
“Why’d you quit Serval Industries?” Remy asks. The question is slightly heavy, weighted down with some internal uncertainty… But Pietro doesn’t always tell the truth. Sometimes, a half-truth is what one needs.
“During the six months I worked in the X-Factor, I received twelve thousand, nine hundred and thirty two pieces of hate mail. Six hundred and nine of those were threats upon my life. Fifty seven were threats upon my daughter, and my nephews.” Remy stares at my face with so much shock, and I wonder how he couldn’t have realized, how he couldn’t have known. “That isn’t especially unusual, Remy. I’m sure you get similar missives, but Serval Industries looks after your fan email and your PO box. I’ve had messages like this for a long time, and it was just too much for me.”
“That’s it?” Remy asks. “That’s the reason?”
“Yes,” I murmur. “I’ve been receiving messages like that for forty years, Remy. It isn’t the end of my life. I just didn’t want to deal with them anymore, particularly not after Luna was in the press, and Billy and Tommy.”
“How many messages you got since you left?”
“One thousand three hundred and nine.” Remy whistles, taking a sip of the coffee: cream clings to his stubble, and he wipes it away with the back of his hand.
“Seems ta me like that’s still a lot.”
“It is. But it’s never as much when I’m out of the public eye.” Remy drums his fingers on the table: he seems anxious about something, or worried, and I have to wonder if he’s working up to something. Asking for my help? No, he’d have gone to someone else, anyone else. “You’re not here to ask me to come back, are you?”
“Nah, nah. No.” Remy meets my eyes. “I came to ask ya out for dinner.”
“Dinner? I’ve just eaten, but we can speak here, it’s quite secu-”
“Naw, it’s not about security. S’about dinner, cher. Dinner. Drinks.” What the Hell is he going on about? “God, Maximoff, ain’t anybody ever asked’chu on a date before?” I feel my jaw drop. I must look ridiculous, gaping at LeBeau with my mouth open like a fish. “Look, lemme explain… I kinda figured you’d come back, and then ya didn’t. A week went by, a month, two months. We moved on, teams change. But I still missed ya. Couldn’t make head or tail of it – and you know how good I am with coin tosses, huh? So I thunk about it—”
“Thought,” I murmur, the correction falling from my mouth unbidden.
“I thunk about it… And I figure we should go out on a date, non? Nice food, maybe a little wine, some passionate sex, and we can go from there.”
I’m staring at him. I can’t quite stop. I study his face, searching for some implication that this is a joke, but I see nothing but seriousness: I’ve never contemplated a date with LeBeau, but for the occasional castaway thought that he’s pleasantly built for a man, and I feel as if I’ve been stunned.
“Alright,” I hear myself say. The word echoes in my head.
“Really?”
“Were you not serious?”
“Yeah, I sure was. Just wasn’t sure you were, honey.”
“Have you ever known me to be anything but serious?”
“Let’s go to that wine bar out by the docks.”
“Do you like wine?”
“Sure do.”
“Now?”
“Why not?”
My name is Pietro Maximoff,. I’m sixty nine years old, and I’m an Aries. If I had to be brutally honest, I would tell you that I am so, so used to people hating me that when I’m faced with an admission of anything less, I don’t know what to do with it.
I am currently pulling on my coat so that I can go out on a date with my former team mate, a man who I believed, without a doubt, despised me, Remy LeBeau.
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No one ventures into a cave called Death Wish. That’s why these names exist. Once I was inside, I lit my torch, took a good look behind me to make sure I wasn’t being followed, and then retreated into the darkness.
What’s not known is whether the cave was named after the monster dwelling in it, or whether the monster chose to live here because of the cave’s reputation. There’s almost always been a monster in Death Wish, however, going back centuries. Once, even a drake made it its home. Death Wish, an inn for abominations.
The main chamber of the cave was layered with stalactites and stalagmites. The beast lay asleep in a corner. There was a log on the opposite side of the cave, which I had dragged in two weeks ago. The logs get damp, so they have to be replaced frequently. I lit the brazier in the centre of the cave and sat on the log. I dumped the bag I’d been lugging.
The beast opened one eye, the light making its few remaining scales shimmer and gleam. It got up, and approached the brazier, hulking and growling. Its brutish face had never been very expressive. His inky black eyes betrayed no emotions, and his mouth, with its four rows of teeth, had never once smiled. All it did is rend, rip and consume.
“How are you, old boy?” I asked.
The beast grunted, scratching the top of its head with nails the size of my fingers. It began growling.
“Lost in thought,” he answered.
“There’s not much else to do here, is there? If only you knew how to read,” I said.
He grunted. I interpreted that as a laugh.
“I went out. I heard the herbs in the valley help. The ones with the red flowers. Red with white spots. I don’t know if they’re helping,” he said as he warmed himself by the brazier.
“It’s a miracle you haven’t been spotted. The villagers have been a lot bolder since you’ve been holed up in here.”
“I was careful,” he said.
I toss the bag at him. “Deer,” I said. “Not much, but you know how it is.”
I imagined him sighing and shaking his head, but all he did was stare at the brazier, only affording a glance at the bloodstained bag.
I got off the log and approached him. I pet his spotty fur and touched his grey, scarred skin. He purred like a cat and bent his head to feel my arm.
“I want something,” he said, “I want a dance.”
I continued stroking him. “Do you enjoy dances?”
He scoffed and motioned his head towards a corner of the cave. Barely lit by the brazer, there was a skeleton  wrapped in torn rags and broken armour. Scattered around him were weapons, tools, potions… and a tambourine.
“Do you want me to play?” I ask.
He got up, and walked over to the dead adventurer’s corpse, and picked up the tambourine. He started shaking it violently, and a barbaric melody sounded echoed through the cave. “Dance,” he said.
I laughed. “Do I seem like a dainty little girl to you now? I’m old enough to be a mother’s mother.”
“Dance,” he repeated.
I shook my head and held my hips. I waited for a while to erase his tambourine-playing from my mind, and conjured up an old tune I’d heard a long time ago. Lifting my skirt an inch, I began dancing.
She made the flowers glow blue when the moon was full, and the waters of the pond held the reflections of their bulbs steady through the ripples that she induced.
Lucrezia and I both appreciated silence, punctuated by the occasional good conversation. Sometimes I felt like I’m seeing her more because I enjoy her company than because she’s dying. I don’t know how many more full moon nights I have with her, so I make sure to never miss one.
She looked at me blankly. Unlike Greymaul, the tenant of Death Wish, Lucrezia was perfectly capable of exhibiting emotion. She knew how to use it to lure gullible men and women into her arms, before draining them of their blood. What she didn’t know was how to express herself if the goal isn’t to manipulate a victim.
“These flowers are getting rarer, aren’t they?” she asked me, “You should stop bringing them. Lunias belong to a world that deserved their beauty.”
“It’s not a bother,” I replied, “But you’re right. They are getting rarer.”
Lucrezia let go of the flower she was fondling and floated on her back, looking at the moon above, amidst its court of stars.
“I can feel it coming,” she said, her voice graver now. “I don’t feel the thirst now. I don’t feel the needs. I don’t think about the men and the women and their breasts and their sweat and their organs and their hair and their filth. I just watch the moon and wait for it to grow full now. I wait to see you.”
I pulled my skirt closer to me and dipped my feet in the pond. It was cool, but not cold. Lucrezia took care of that, too. “I’ve heard that before, that whole ‘I can feel it coming’ business. Usually many, many years before the one saying it is gone.”
Lucrezia raised her head to look at me for a long time.
“I want to see you,” she said. The words sent chills down my spine, but I knew better than my body did.
“You’re welcome to feast on me—with your eyes,” I said.
“No. I want to see you, properly, as you are, before I can’t see you ever again,” she said.
I stood up. “And what would that achieve?” I asked.
“Nothing. You’d bring an old monstress some peace. She’s tired of knowing people she had to kill. Enchanting people she had to drain the lifeforce out of. Now, there’s nothing left. But I want to know you, because the moon may never be full again. Not for me.”
I undid my clothes, and let them fall to the ground. It was cold, standing there, naked as an animal. Naked as a creature. Naked as the incredibly beautiful monster in front of me. She looked stunned, but she was neither smiling nor ogling. Her face was perfectly blank as she studied me and took me in with her eyes.
“The things you folk make me do,” I sighed and shook my head, my body instinctively hunching over to cover itself. “Don’t you know how old I am? I’m hardly some girl of nineteen with a smitten heart.”
Lucrezia couldn’t take her eyes off of me, but she kept her distance. Her eyes looked like they were seeing right through me. She wasn’t looking at my body, I realised. She was looking at something she couldn’t bring to words.
“Thank you,” she said as she maintained the gaze. I straightened my body and looked up, at our silent witness, a full moon, amidst its court of stars.
I could always hear Bonecrusher before I could see him. A branch would break, leaves would rustle, and before I know it, his thin and hairy coffee-coloured arms would be wrapped about my neck while he licked my cheek.
This time, I’d made it all the way to the clearing in the grove without his usual greeting. That alone was enough to tip me off that something had gone wrong. Then I saw his emaciated leg, and the tip of his almost hairless scalp. He was hiding behind the gravestone in the clearing. He heard my footsteps and peeked. For a moment, his face was painted with delight, but he quickly hid himself. It was enough time for me to tell that his face had been mauled and bloodied.
I rushed towards him, taking care not to swing my satchel too much. Behind the gravestone, the grass was splattered with Bonecrusher’s blood. A large gash covered his face, narrowly missing his pungent yellow left eye. his upper lip had been torn, and his loincloth was almost completely ripped.
I’d told him not to go near the village. He didn’t listen. He never listens.
“I’m sorry, big sis,” he croaked, “I tried climbing the tree, but I fell on my butt.” He giggled.
I started wiping my eyes when I saw a few of my tears sting his gash. He didn’t flinch.
“I’m sure you will next time,” I forced myself to laugh as I opened the satchel and pulled out ointment after ointment. Every instinct told me that it was too late, but I couldn’t stop myself. There was also the package I’d brought for him.
“Lots of little hurts in bottles,” he said, his eyes studying the medicine. “But you brought berries? The good ones from the valleys?”
I shook my head with the kindest smile I could manage. “I got you something else,” I said, and showed him the small cake I’d brought for him.
His eyes lit up immediately and he sat up to snatch the cake from my hands. “No bones?” he looked up at me. “No bones,” I laughed. Pleased with the answer, he began gorging on the cake, even as his blood dripped onto the icing.
“This is going to hurt, Bonecrusher,” I said, opening one of the bottles and applying its liquid to a clean piece of cloth.
“It hurts already, big sis,” he said in a voice that was growing increasingly raspier. “It hurts so much,” he pointed at the gash on his face. “But you told me. First it hurts. Then it doesn’t hurt. So now it hurts. Then it wusn’t hurt.”
“Won’t hurt,” I corrected him.
I clutched the cloth in my hands. Bonecrusher’s mouth was covered in icing. His tears were slipping past his cheeks. His face quivered and twitched, and he let out a sob and a wail.
“You’re a brave boy, Bonecrusher,” I told him, but my choked throat didn’t inspire much confidence, I thought.
“I’m not a boy,” he said, his face still looking like death. Still looking at death. “I’m Bonecrusher,” he said, and tried to roar like he always used to after saying that.
I began sobbing as I cradled him.
I lay the flowers on her grave in the shape of her initial. It was just like some fanciful tale, but then, so was my marriage. I was wearing her favourite skirt and kneeling next to her.
"Just like some beauty from the south, with cheeks as red as her skirt," I said. When she wanted to make me mad, she'd always compare me to one of the foreign women she'd been with on her travels. I was never really mad at her, but I always pretended to be, because she liked that.
I don't know what she pretended to be to please me. I, on the other hand, was guilty of a lot more. I don't know how much she knew. Maybe she knew it all and was perfectly fine with it. I like to imagine that sometimes. Maybe I'll meet her in heaven: in some garden of angels' making, where we will be naked again, and I'll tell her of all the monsters I cured, and she'll caress my cheeks with the back of her fingers and kiss me and tell me that it's alright.
Now that she's no longer here, I suppose I can imagine whatever I like and accept that as the truth. If you are going to waste your time with what-ifs that will never happen, why bother with the bad ones?
"I met Dahlia the other afternoon," I began my report for the week, "She still remembers you. Do you remember her? She was always right in front of the mob of children that would greet you when you returned."
She never really liked children. But I liked to imagine that she did. Maybe she secretly slipped them apples or candies when I wasn't looking, just so she could pretend to be the tough lady. It could've been the children's little secret. That's a good what-if. It makes me think of her laughing face, a finger to her lips as she bends over and looks into Dahlia's eyes, her copper hair lit by the sun.
"I suppose you can see everything from up there, can't you?" I said. "I don't know why I thought I shouldn't tell you, just because you're dead now." I sighed.
"Well, you remember Bonecrusher, don't you? He's dead. Lucrezia's dead. Greymaul's dead. Soon, the rest of the monsters that survived you will die too. They'll get proper graves. With flowers on top, just like these."
Already, a knot was forming in my throat.
"I am trying to imagine how you'd feel. But I don't know. I don't want to know. Will you forgive me? Do you hate me? Do you celebrate their deaths? Do you wish I was dead too, dead and burning in hell? I don't know," I said, and I chanted "I don't know" so many times before my throat stopped allowing it.
"But you're gone. And they're gone. And you were all beautiful creatures, swinging your swords and claws and burying your teeth and daggers. I'm grateful to have met every single one of you. I'm grateful you didn't kill each other first," I said. "And yes, I do think you were a monster, just like them. I know, because I'm the monster who loved you."
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dailybiblelessons · 5 years
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Friday: Preparation for Sunday, June 30
Friday: Preparation
The Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Revised Common Lectionary Proper 8, Roman Catholic Proper 13
Complementary and Semi-continuous Hebrew Scripture from The Former Prophets: 2 Kings 1:1-16
After the death of Ahab, Moab rebelled against Israel.
Ahaziah had fallen through the lattice in his upper chamber in Samaria, and lay injured; so he sent messengers, telling them, “Go, inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron, whether I shall recover from this injury.” But the angel of the Lord said to Elijah the Tishbite, “Get up, go to meet the messengers of the king of Samaria, and say to them, ‘Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are going to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron?’ Now therefore thus says the Lord, ‘You shall not leave the bed to which you have gone, but you shall surely die.’” So Elijah went.
The messengers returned to the king, who said to them, “Why have you returned?” They answered him, “There came a man to meet us, who said to us, ‘Go back to the king who sent you, and say to him: Thus says the Lord: Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are sending to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron? Therefore you shall not leave the bed to which you have gone, but shall surely die.’” He said to them, “What sort of man was he who came to meet you and told you these things?” They answered him, “A hairy man, with a leather belt around his waist.” He said, “It is Elijah the Tishbite.”
Then the king sent to him a captain of fifty with his fifty men. He went up to Elijah, who was sitting on the top of a hill, and said to him, “O man of God, the king says, ‘Come down.’” But Elijah answered the captain of fifty, “If I am a man of God, let fire come down from heaven and consume you and your fifty.” Then fire came down from heaven, and consumed him and his fifty.
Again the king sent to him another captain of fifty with his fifty. He went up and said to him, “O man of God, this is the king's order: Come down quickly!” But Elijah answered them, “If I am a man of God, let fire come down from heaven and consume you and your fifty.” Then the fire of God came down from heaven and consumed him and his fifty.
Again the king sent the captain of a third fifty with his fifty. So the third captain of fifty went up, and came and fell on his knees before Elijah, and entreated him, “O man of God, please let my life, and the life of these fifty servants of yours, be precious in your sight. Look, fire came down from heaven and consumed the two former captains of fifty men with their fifties; but now let my life be precious in your sight.” Then the angel of the Lord said to Elijah, “Go down with him; do not be afraid of him.” So he set out and went down with him to the king, and said to him, “Thus says the Lord: Because you have sent messengers to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron,—is it because there is no God in Israel to inquire of his word?—therefore you shall not leave the bed to which you have gone, but you shall surely die.”¹
¹In Luke 9:51-56 James and John ask Jesus if they should cause fire to consume a Samaritan village that had rejected Jesus. Jesus rebuked them.
Complementary Psalm 16
Protect me, O God, for in you I take refuge. I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord;  I have no good apart from you.”
As for the holy ones in the land, they are the noble,  in whom is all my delight.
Those who choose another god multiply their sorrows;  their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out  or take their names upon my lips.
The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup;  you hold my lot. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;  I have a goodly heritage.
I bless the Lord who gives me counsel;  in the night also my heart instructs me. I keep the Lord always before me;  because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.
Therefore my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices;  my body also rests secure. For you do not give me up to Sheol,  or let your faithful one see the Pit.¹
You show me the path of life.  In your presence there is fullness of joy;  in your right hand are pleasures forevermore.²
¹Paul quotes this verse (For you … the Pit) when he is preaching at Antioch of Pisidia (Acts 13:26-41). ²Peter quotes this entire passage when he addresses the crowd at Pentecost (Acts 2:14-36).
Semi-continuous Psalm 77:1-2, 11-20
I cry aloud to God, aloud to God,  that he may hear me. In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord;  in the night my hand is stretched out without wearying;  my soul refuses to be comforted.
I will call to mind the deeds of the Lord;  I will remember your wonders of old. I will meditate on all your work,  and muse on your mighty deeds. Your way, O God, is holy.  What god is so great as our God? You are the God who works wonders;  you have displayed your might among the peoples. With your strong arm you redeemed your people,  the descendants of Jacob and Joseph.
When the waters saw you, O God,  when the waters saw you, they were afraid;  the very deep trembled. The clouds poured out water;  the skies thundered;  your arrows flashed on every side. The crash of your thunder was in the whirlwind;  your lightnings lit up the world;  the earth trembled and shook. Your way was through the sea,  your path, through the mighty waters;  yet your footprints were unseen. You led your people like a flock  by the hand of Moses and Aaron.
New Testament Epistle Lesson: Galatians 4:8-20
Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to beings that by nature are not gods. Now, however, that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and beggarly elemental spirits? How can you want to be enslaved to them again? You are observing special days, and months, and seasons, and years. I am afraid that my work for you may have been wasted.
Friends, I beg you, become as I am, for I also have become as you are. You have done me no wrong. You know that it was because of a physical infirmity that I first announced the gospel to you; though my condition put you to the test, you did not scorn or despise me, but welcomed me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus. What has become of the good will you felt? For I testify that, had it been possible, you would have torn out your eyes and given them to me. Have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth? They make much of you, but for no good purpose; they want to exclude you, so that you may make much of them. It is good to be made much of for a good purpose at all times, and not only when I am present with you. My little children, for whom I am again in the pain of childbirth until Christ is formed in you, I wish I were present with you now and could change my tone, for I am perplexed about you.
Year C Ordinary 13, Revised Common Lectionary Proper 8, Roman Catholic Proper 13 Friday
Selections are from Revised Common Lectionary Daily Readings copyright © 1995 by the Consultation on Common Texts. Unless otherwise indicated, Bible text is from New Revised Standard Version Bible (NRSV) copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All right reserved. Image credit: Angel's Army by Guariento di Arpo [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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missmeltycat · 7 years
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Fanfic Maker - Sturges VS McDonough - THE FINAL BATTLE : The True Story
A FanficMaker.com masterpiece as generated by me. XD
One night Sturges had been drinking too much beer. He felt very nice and enjoyed it very much. Then all the sudden he saw a stranger walking. Not just any stranger because real strangers dont exist! This one was evil! Sturges ran to stranger and hit them, it was McDonough! "How dare you..you.. villain! I kill you by murder!" "Yes, we fight now!" "No, I will take over your body and rape you!" No Sturges screamed in agony. and he screamed a lots you know. it really really hurt. the pain that is. Trust me, youd scream hurt! Our hero took his mighty weapon and went balistik on he. but not before McDonough plunged hismonster errection into the nearest female! "Ouch!" said Raes sister "Oh no! It was my friend! And my friend there is really a man!" "My friend! said Sturges, you are a man!" he said and saying he did!
"Oh that is good" said Sturges "No it is not! Mahaha!!. You see i must kill you because of instructions i got from the mystic amulet "But not today!", with that the villianess villian ran off into the sunset. We now turn out headlights to full beam in order to gaze forward though the mists of time. The light from them reflects off, not a deer, but a scene 10 years from now - 1 decade into the future.
Sturges enters the scene, but whats this? Rae is there too.
"Do you remember that thing that happened 10 years ago? The one that seemed like it would split us apart forever, but instead brought us closer then ever? That brought us......to each-other?"
"The time with the Roll of Duct Tape?" "Yes!" "Oh, yes right"
"Its hard to believe what happened isn't it? What happened and what it led to" "Yes my sweetness" said Rae, giving Sturges a "special" kiss. "Now that I have remembered it again I will never forget it." "It was pretty life changing."
So we now dim our headlights and reverse drive back to the presence, the mists closing back around the future and the camera of our mind drawing back to the world we know of as the now.
McDonough sat on His throne wetly. He knew there was something wrong. Of course, McDonough had looked into the sacred manakin, but that could tell Him nothing.
He got up and called for their men. (A/N: Last year, McDonough had actually gained control over the demonic armies of the underworld. It's a really cool story. Maybe I'll write it some day!)
"Massster," the biggest of the demonic generals spoke to McDonough. "The seers in our army have heard the whispers of the dark blood. The Prophecy is about to come true!"
"The Prophecy?!"
"Yes, the Prophecy!"
"Then I know what to do," said McDonough. "I want you to go Sanctuary....and steal  Rae from Sturges!
"It will be my pleasure!" the vile creature spoke and with a zwoof he raised up and flapped on his wings away. Onto Sanctuary, where he knew  Rae would be.
In the darkest of dark nights. Between the sun dawn and the sun dusk, the demons would arrive. And before Rae could realise, a large army had amassed before their doorstep. But Rae would not go without a fight. And for a brief moment, it looked like they'd get the upper hand. But then the demons used their infernal power. And down Rae went. Captured by the demonic army. All now, helpless in their darkest caves underneath. In a special prison they had prepared for Rae.
And in the distance, Rae was sure they could hear McDonough laugh. Oh no, they thought, if only Rae could warn Sturges not to come. Because this was a trap. Rae was sure of it. They'd seen McDonough do this sort of thing before. But then, back then, it was with microphone. It was quite a fight that time in order to save Hancock but eventually they prevalied althought Rae didn't know if they could do it now, after all, Rae was captured and now trapped with the demons in the prison below in the cave. Chained up, beaten, threatened with unspeakable acts that the demons all too sure loved to talk about. But it was a trap, and despite that, Rae would love in Sturges would come. Gosh, Rae wished they could defeat McDonough on their own. But McDonough was too strong and had the Prophecy on their side. There was not much to do. Except, maybe, maybe Sturges could save them. But it could still be a trap. Of that, Rae was sure of..........   -- Meanwhile, back in the future, Sturges and Rae were enjoying each-other. As the narrator, I will respect their privacy and not specify how- lets just say it involved mayo shooting hotdog guns. Its certainly clear they were close. Not just metaphorically but physically with their bodies as well.
Rae was distracted though, thinking back to the past. We join her on her mid-afternoon delight flashback, a flashback to our story in the present...... -- -- And now, with that, we once again turn our headbrains to the future, stepping forward down the road of time and walking for 10 years until we get to the place in time which this takes place.
Sturges and Rae were just finishing. Out of respect for their privacy I will not specify what they were just finishing.
"arg...that was good sex" said Rae. "yes, yes it was" said Sturges. "You seemed a little distracted near the end though. Not your normal energetic self" "yes...sorry about that. I was thinking back to a decade ago, when I first realized my feelings for you even though I didn't know it at the time. Its what opened my eyes to what I felt all along. The missing jigsaw piece to my heart in which you were the key to unlock"
"And our love grew together from that moment to blossom into the great tree that it is today"
"I love you Sturges my irresistibleness". "I love you too Rae -my better half.
And they smiled the smile of lovers at each-other, as we fade out into the sunset. They exited Sturges's wheels and they stood before the place McDonough had been assembleing his forces. It was the gateway to hell. And finally they got confirmation for what they had been expected all along... McDonough.... was satan!
But that did not deter him. Sturges could press on and  his friends too found the strenght in themselves to push themselves to the limit .
But then they heard a loud noise, like the stamping of feet or like a bad car engine or when they try and make the ground flat enough so they can build a side-walk. All around them, hisdemons appeared!
McDonough had them. And Sturges knew that what he was going to do with them, it wasn't going to be pretty!or involve much clothing!
But then Sturges saw pure white wings sprouting from his bottom. Where had once been the golden and silver tattooes, Sturges had wings!
Sturges spread them out before him and stretched them. They crackled with power. They were at least 5 meters in windspan.
Sturges then turned to McDonough. He gawked in awe at him. It was a power he had not seen before. "This power," McDonough said, "This power is... I have never... seen... such power." Even Rhiley looked in awe at him. And then she said what everyone (including him) had been thinking but didn't dare to say: "You're an... you're an... an..." "Say it, Sturges said" "Tell the truth, I can take it!" Sturges said as Sturges felt the burning nerves in his body floating in his stomach. "An Angel," said McDonough in absolute and utter awe. "THis I... I never have seen before" Preston and Hancock were just as much in awe. Though with Preston, Sturges knew it was because he just loved him so much. When Sturges looked in his eyes, it was like Sturges was drowing in a puddle of the deepest of colours.  When he takes him every evening, ravages his buttom. And every night he asks him, "Are you truly from heaven" as his single barrelled pump action bollock yogurt shotgun lays there, resting from a long and hard struggle. Now he knew the answer. And deep inside of him, Sturges was happy. Happy that he could finally have him as how Sturges am, not what Sturges pretended to be.
Sturges stretched his wings further and light came from beneath them, surrounding everyone in the syrinic light. The demons had to hide their hideous eyes beneath their wings as not to be blidned by the beauty of his light. McDonough fell down on his knees and raised his arms in prayer: "Oh god, let me live. Let me be a part of the light again@"
And Sturges looked down upon him and Sturges was about to engulp him more with his rays but when Sturges saw it was hurting Him Sturges stopped. No one deserved such a fate like that. But Sturges had to burn the evil out of McDonough, else it would return! And so Sturges did. Before them the portal exploded in rays of light and blue and greens and cyans. It was a wonderous spectacle to behold!
Preston ran into his arms and whispered naughty things in his ear. That was what they were going to do tonight, after they're back and rested a bit. Then he would bang him so deep, his Dirty Hairy would come out the other side. Sturges was looking forward to it.
Then Sturges was crowned commander of Sanctuary and Sturges would live many many lives after this one.
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ulyssesredux · 7 years
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Circe
(Casqued halberdiers in armour thrust forward a pentice of gutted spearpoints. A streamer bearing the legends Cead Mile Failte and Mah Ttob Melek Israel Spans the street. Laughs, pointing. Two raincaped watch, John Howard Parnell, Arthur Griffith against John Redmond, John Wyse Nolan, handsomemarriedwomanrubbedagainstwide behindinClonskeatram, the … Peremptorily. Lynch lifts up her flesh. The chryselephantine papal standard rises high, surrounded by pennons of the reflections of the zodiac. She regards it and shows it full of polonies, kippered herrings, Findon haddies and tightpacked pills. Wonderstruck, calls. With bobbed hair, his hand. In the gap of her armpits, the other hand a telephone receiver nozzle to his hasty bow.)
THE CALLS: Best, best of all, the sickening odors, the funniest man on earth.
THE ANSWERS: By the bye have you the book, the unfortunate female's throat being cut from ear to ear.
(The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when St John and I had robbed; not clean and placid as we had heard all night a faint, distant baying as of a waterfall is heard. Screams gaily. With elaborate gestures, breathing upon him, no flowers.)
THE CHILDREN: Keep our flag flying! Open your gates and sing Hosanna … Whorusalaminyourhighhohhhh ….
THE IDIOT: (Excitedly.) Four days later, whilst we were jointly going mad from our devastating ennui.
THE CHILDREN: Hooray!
THE IDIOT: (At the corner of the city shake hands with Private Carr and Private Compton, swaggersticks tight in his ear.) Leopold Bloom of no fixed abode is a very good little boy!
(Loudly. With gibbering baboon's cries he jerks his hips in the south beyond the foulest previous crime of the object despite the lapse of five hundred years. When I arose, trembling, I bade the knocker enter, but I had robbed; not clean and placid as we had so lately rifled, as we looked more closely we saw the bats descend in a drizzle of rain on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our doors were seldom disturbed by what seemed to be done. He draws the match near his eye He draws the match near his eye With a glass of water, enters. Murmurs. He explodes in a purely domestic animal. Sternly. Society ladies lift their skirts above their heads. Stammers. The beagle lifts his ashplant, stands erect. They release him. Gloomily. Mirus bazaar fireworks go up from furrows. So at last I stood again in her laces. Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have desired it, and heads preserved in various stages of dissolution. Bella goes to the redcoats. Against the dark rumor and legendry, the most exquisite form of cocked hats, readymade suits, scarlet socks, upstarched Sambo chokers and large scarlet asters in their, in a baritone voice.)
CISSY CAFFREY: Is he bleeding!
(She breaks off and nibbles a piece. Bloom with his hand and writes idly on the moor the faint, deep, sardonic bay as of a blushing waitress and laughs kindly He eats. Father Cowley, Crofton out of the gondola, highreared, forges on through the crowd close to the earth. The swancomb of the hanged and draws out and hands her two crowns.)
THE VIRAGO: Air! He was drummed out of the symbolists and the fair.
CISSY CAFFREY: But I'm faithful to the man that's treating me though I'm only a shilling whore. We only realized, with the soldiers and they left me to do—you know, and the young man run up behind me.
(Looks behind.) Cissy's your girl.
(In Svengali's fur overcoat, with valuable metallic faces, wellmade, respectably dressed and wellconducted, speaking with a Scotch accent. Nods. In a room lit by a sugaun, with smackfatclacking nigger lips.)
PRIVATE COMPTON: (Blushes furiously all over from frons to nates, three ladies' hats pinned on his wand.) And he insulted us.
PRIVATE CARR: (Shrieks of dying.) He insulted my lady friend.
CISSY CAFFREY: (Ttriumphaliter.) For me!
(Flattered She pats him offhandedly with velvet paws. The horse neighs. A hoarse virago retorts.)
STEPHEN: Not that I … But, by the knock of the uncovered-grave. Lecherous lynx, to see in mirror every positions trapezes all that machine there besides also if desire act awfully bestial butcher's boy pollutes in warm veal liver or omlet on the bottom, like a maker's seal, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull.
(From on high the voice of waves With a bewitching smile. Her olive face is heavy, slightly sweated and fullnosed with orangetainted nostrils.)
THE BAWD: (To Zoe.) The red's as good as the green. Leave the gentleman alone, you cheat. There's no-one in it only her old father that's dead drunk. There's no-one in it only her old father that's dead drunk.
STEPHEN: (Twisting.) Money?
THE BAWD: (Nebulous obscurity occupies space.) Ten shillings. Trinity medicals. Come here till I tell you.
(She tosses a cigarette from the centuried grave. Under an arch of triumph Bloom appears, a comb of brilliants and panache of osprey in her hand, a gorget of cream tulle, a hank of Spanish onions in one of the event, and I had first heard the faint baying of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder, and we could scarcely be sure.)
EDY BOARDMAN: (Cavaliers behind them arch and suspend their arms.) Got a match on you, hairy arse. I know. Wouldn't let them within the bawl of an ass. Little father! Up the Boers! Nay, madam. I'm a tiny tiny thing ever flying in the house and made shocking obeisances before the enshrined amulet of green jade. Theeee!
STEPHEN: (Bows.) Will write fully tomorrow.
(Through these pipes came at will the odors of mold, vegetation, and in her hand. On its cooperative dial glow the twelve signs of the chandelier as his mount lopes by at schooling gallop. A wealthy American makes a street collection for Bloom. The retriever barks.)
LYNCH: And to such delights has Metchnikoff inoculated anthropoid apes.
STEPHEN: (From left upper entrance with two gliding steps Henry Flower comes forward to left front centre.) Or do you are quite right.
LYNCH: Nine glorias for shooting a bishop. Metaphysics in Mecklenburgh street!
STEPHEN: But, by Saint Patrick …! A time, but each new mood was drained too soon, of its owner and closed up the grave-earth until I killed you, sir darling.
LYNCH: Who taught you palmistry?
STEPHEN: Hillyho! Suppose. No!
LYNCH: He's back from Paris. Metaphysics in Mecklenburgh street!
STEPHEN: He offended your memory.
(A crone standing by with a blind stripling Placing his right eye closed tight, his hand on which sprawl his hat smartly on a ruby ring. Of Wexford.)
LYNCH: Here! You would have a better chance of lighting it if you held the match nearer. Vive le vampire! Kitty! And to such delights has Metchnikoff inoculated anthropoid apes.
(Laughs. Satirically. Laughs emptily He taps her on the ashplant. Coldly. Dejected With sudden fervour. In sudden sulks. Laughs. He sucks a red jujube. Twisting.)
(The two whores rush to the piano. Under the umbrella appears Mrs Cunningham in Merry Widow hat and displays a shaven poll from the long caftan of an area, lurching by, and shows it full of polonies, kippered herrings, Findon haddies and tightpacked pills. With his gavel He brands his initial C on Bloom's ear. Heavy Gatling guns boom. Covers her face. He murmurs vaguely the pass of knights of the Prison Gate Mission, joining hands, his live cape filling about the relation of ghosts' souls to the calm white thing that had killed it, held together with surprising firmness, and mumbled over his left eye with a pocketcomb and gives a cow's lick to his crown and anchor players, thimbleriggers, broadsmen. Lifts a turtle head towards her lap. Quietly lays a half sovereign into the musicroom. Nakkering castanet bones in his breath He uncorks himself behind: then, plucking at his lips.)
(The cigarette slips from Stephen 's fingers. In a seamless garment marked I.H.S. stands upright amid phoenix flames. To Cissy Caffrey. Murmurs lovingly.)
BLOOM: Would you like she did it on purpose … Because it didn't suit you one quarter as well as the other. Down unlit and illimitable corridors of eldritch fantasy sweeps the black Maria peeled off my shoe at Leonard's corner. Electric dishscrubbers.
(Pawing the heather abjectly. Belching. With a tear in his filled pockets but desists, muttering, down the lane. Bright midges dance on walls. Drunkards bawl. Stooping, picks up the grave, the heads of the soapsun.)
BLOOM: Garryowen! Has nobody …?
(Chattering and squabbling. He coughs encouragingly. Stephen 's fingers.)
BLOOM: I only meant a square party, a jarring lighting effect, or in our senses, we proceeded to the god of the city. Aphro. So womanly, full.
(The Glens of The O'Donoghue.)
BLOOM: Stinks like a tramline in Gibraltar? I know. Empress! Obvious analogy to my idea. They challenged me to Malahide or a clumsy manipulation of the ladies' friend. She is rather lean. And when I saw on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I am guiltless as the baying again, and sometimes—how I came to be a frequent fumbling in the Nova Hibernia of the black Maria peeled off my shoe at Leonard's corner.
(Gloomily.) Every knot says a lot. Naturally.
(A hoarse virago retorts.) Umpteen millions. Might have lost. Third time is the voice of Esau. Fine!
(The aurora borealis of the family. The beatitudes, Dixon, Madden, Crotthers, Costello, hipshot, crookbacked, hydrocephalic, prognathic with receding forehead and Ally Sloper nose, steps out of the potato blight on her finger in her hand to her coil. His tongue upcurling His throat twitches.)
THE URCHINS: More power the Cavan girl.
(Turns He disengages himself He touches the keys again.)
THE BELLS: Eh?
BLOOM: (Raises the royal Dublin Fusiliers, the favourite, honey cap, green, blue, waspwaisted, with daggered hair and large scarlet asters in their places, turning turtle.) Shitbroleeth.
(He smites with his left eye with a chubby finger, his nose thoughtfully with a semi-canine face, leaving free only her large dark eyes and looks about him with grotesque gestures which Lynch and Bloom with dumb moist lips. Tears open the silverfoil She breaks off and nibbles a piece gives a cow's lick to his palm the passtouch of secret master. Venetian masts, maypoles and festal arches spring up from all sides with him. A wind, on weak hams, he had loved in life.)
THE GONG: Ladies and gents, cleaver purchased by Mrs Pearcy to slay Mogg.
(The disc rasps gratingly against the rising moon. Extinguishing all lights, we proceeded to the last place. He eats a raw turnip offered him by Maurice Butterly, farmer He refuses to accept three shillings offered him by the bronze flight of eagles. A wine of shame, lust, blood exudes, strangely murmuring.)
THE MOTORMAN: Dublin's burning!
BLOOM: (Offended. Abruptly.) Frankly, though she had money. But their reign is rover for rever and ever and ev …. All tales of the damp nitrous cover. Past was is today. Probably lost cattle. Give and have done with it.
(Bella Cohen, a sacrifice, greatest bargain ever … Renewed laughter.) Bulldog on the premises. That is so long since I. Yes. If there were only ethereal where would you all be, the very man! You see he's incapable. But … She is rather lean. I served my time and had stolen a potent thing from a small prank, in Sandycove, I know not why I went girling. They … I … To drive me mad! They can live on. The act of low scoundrels. They challenged me to be. Besides, who saw? Cursed dog I met. Less than a week after our return to England, strange things began to happen. Past was is today. To show you how he hit the paper. Kosher. Mrs Bandmann Palmer. Wind their way through miles of omnivorous forest to sucksucculent her breast dry.
(Laughs He laughs loudly.) Ant milks aphis. I give you Ireland, home and beauty. She is rather lean. Ticktacktwo wouldyousetashoe? I'll tell …. What lamp, woman of the object despite the lapse of five hundred pounds.
(Wearied with the stealing of the ace of spades, and the ivied church pointing a huge rooster hatching in a lampglow, black in the folds of her slip, closed with three bronze buckles with a turreting turban, waits. Gravely. Our quest for novel scenes and piquant conditions was feverish and insatiate—St John nor I could identify; and, in court dress, wearing a stained inverness cape, bent forward, holding a circus paperhoop, a strong hairgrowth of resin.)
BLOOM: … Person you mentioned.
THE FIGURE: (One evening as I.) Sacred Heart of Mary, where with the buttend of a compatriot and hid remains in a niche in our senses, we gave a last glance at the livid sky; the odors of mold, vegetation, and mumbled over his body one of our neglected gardens, and every night that the thoroughfare hitherto known as Cow Parlour off Cork street be henceforth designated Boulevard Bloom. Whereas Leopold Bloom of no fixed abode is a wellknown dynamitard, forger, bigamist, bawd and cuckold and a secret room, far, far, far, underground; where huge winged daemons carven of basalt and onyx vomited from wide grinning mouths weird green and orange light, and moonlight.
BLOOM: Bloom, tell you a little more than is good manners. End it peacefully. Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that what had befallen St John and I knew that what had befallen St John and myself. Shall us?
(Hoarse commands.) On another star.
(A hackneycar, number three hundred and twentyfour, with the dove, the lord mayor of Cork, their cheeks delicate with cipria and false faint bloom. Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the presence of some ominous, grinning secret of the watch in shouldercapes, their worships the mayors of Limerick, Galway, Sligo and Waterford, twentyeight Irish representative peers put on at the victim's legs and drag him downward, grunting, with the night-wind, rushed by, and fondles his flower and buttons. We lived as recluses; devoid of friends, alone and servantless. To Bloom He crows with a voice of pained protest.)
BLOOM: Disorderly houses.
(He sniffs.)
BLOOM: Let me off this once. And really it's better the position … because often I used to wet …. A little then sufficed, a jolting car, the salt of the uncovered-grave. We fought for you in South Africa, Irish missile troops. Hold her nozzle again the bank. Yes. By heaven, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my friend and I … Inform the police. Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh.
(Choked with emotion, brushes aside a tear in his left hand he holds a roll of parchment. A choir of virgins and confessors sing voicelessly.)
BLOOM: Bad luck.
(Bloom creeps under the shutter, puffing Poldy, blowing Bloohoom. Eagerly. Whores screech. Loudly.)
BLOOM: Big blaze. That priest. I departed on the scene. It overpowers me.
(Two quills project over his body. There might have been lapses of an erring father but he wanted to turn over a new leaf and now, and he it was who led the way at last to that detestable course which even in my present fear I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is feeling for her lair, swaying her lamp. LARGE TEARDROPS ROLLING FROM HIS PROMINENT EYES, SNIVELS. Looks down with a voice of Adonai calls. In a moment, his face to the air on broomsticks. Her voice soaring higher.)
RUDOLPH: Are you not my dear son Leopold, the grave-robbing. Once! What you call them running chaps?
BLOOM: (Stephen thrusts the ashplant on him and slowly holds out a hard voice He bends again There is no answer He bends again and curls his body.) Dogdays.
RUDOLPH: In a squalid thieves' den an entire family had been hovering curiously around it. I departed on the bottom, like a maker's seal, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull.
(Almidano Artifoni holds out an ashen breath She raises her blackened withered right arm downwards from his cheek with a hoarse croak.) But the autumn moon shone weak and pale, and we began to happen. Have you no soul?
BLOOM: (Once we fancied that a large mango fruit, offers it nervously to Zoe.) Wheatenmeal with lycopodium and syllabax. What? The baying was loud that evening, and articulate chatter.
RUDOLPH: (In motor jerkin, green motorgoggles on his head.) Are you not my son Leopold, the grandson of Leopold? Niches here and there contained skulls of all shapes, and he could not be sure.
BLOOM: (Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have desired it, held certain unknown and unnameable.) But you must never tell. Best thing could happen him.
RUDOLPH: Have you no soul? They make you kaputt, Leopoldleben. So you catch no money. Nice spectacles for your poor mother! Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St John and myself. One night they bring you home drunk as dog after spend your good money.
BLOOM: (A man in purple shirt and grey trousers, heelless slippers, his hand on which a carrot is stuck.) Roygbiv. Come home. One evening as I pronounced the last favours, most especially with previously well uplifted white sateen coatpans.
RUDOLPH: (Tommy and Jacky vanish there, there.) Second halfcrown waste money today. Nice spectacles for your poor mother!
BLOOM: That is one pound six and eleven.
ELLEN BLOOM: (She raises her blackened withered right arm slowly towards Stephen's breast with outstretched finger A green rill of bile trickling from a ladder.) Hek! Bonjour!
(Averting his face to the front. Her boa uncoils, slides, glides over her hoof and a revolver with which she surrenders gently Tenderly, as we sailed the next midnight in one hand and fingers He listens.) Let them go and fight the Boers!
(Goes to the Sacred Heart is stitched with the commonplaces of a harassed pedlar gauging the symmetry of her striped blay petticoat. A multitude of midges swarms white over his right forearm on the table.)
A VOICE: (Under it lies the womancity nude, white spats, fawn dustcoat on his breastbone, bows He coughs encouragingly.) That's not for you to your country, sir.
BLOOM: Splendid!
(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.) You know how difficult it is so long since I.
(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. Clasps his head and goatee beard upheld, hugging a full pastern, silksocked. On his suit he has diamond and ruby buttons. Spits in their saddles. Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that we were jointly going mad from our life of unnatural personal experiences and adventures. With clang tinkle boomhammer tallyho hornblower blue green yellow flashes Toft's cumbersome turns with pendant dewlap to the stars.)
BLOOM: You know I fell out of bed or rather was pushed.
MARION: So you notice some change? Ti trema un poco il cuore?
(Bella Cohen, a cloud of stench escaping from the footplate of an erring father but he wanted to turn over a new leaf and now, and cools herself flirting a black bogoak pig by a spasm.) Pimp!
BLOOM: (The hours of noon follow in amber gold.) Lord knows where they are on the moor the faint deep-toned baying of that lot. Obvious analogy to my old pals, sir.
(He winks at his ribs and groans. A plasterer's bucket on the sideseat sways his head with cackling raillery He sneezes. He assumes the avine head, appears in an eton suit with glass shoes and a scouringbrush in her mouth. He makes a masonic sign. Coldly. Cracking his fingers at his brow. Offhandedly. Little Alf Bergan, cloaked in the tawny crystal of her slip. Cavaliers behind them arch and suspend their arms, his left eye flashes the monocle of Cashel Boyle O'connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell.)
MARION: Only my new hat and a carriage sponge. Pimp!
(He coughs encouragingly. With a sour tenderish smile. So at last I stood again in her hair violently and drags her forward.)
BLOOM: Ant milks aphis.
MARION: See the wide world.
(He settles down his goffered ruffs and moistens his lips with a violet bowknot.) So you notice some change? Pimp! I'm in my pelt.
BLOOM: My club is the last thing at night would benefit your complexion. I expected, though. If it were he?
(Desperately Breathlessly Overcome with emotion He turns on his head.) That's my programme. Soon got, soon gone.
(Bloom plodges forward again through the hall. Milly Bloom, mumbling, his left eye with his fan. Laughter.)
THE SOAP: Alien it indeed was to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and hair, and frightened away an abnormally large horde of bats from nigh-black ruins of buried temples of Belial … Now, however, we thought we had heard all night a faint, distant baying of some unspeakable beast. Knife with which Voisin dismembered the wife of a crouching winged hound, and heads preserved in various stages of dissolution. Salute!
(A wealthy American makes a swift pass with impelling fingers and gives a piece gives a cow's lick to his whores. Winking.)
SWENY: These pastimes were to us a tune, Bloom.
BLOOM: Man and woman, love, what is it wise? Even to sit where a woman has sat, especially with previously well uplifted white sateen coatpans. Has nobody …? I caught.
MARION: (Nimbly they dance, twirling japanesily.) One evening as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some cursed and unholy nourishment.
BLOOM: On the hands down.
MARION: I'm in my pelt.
(Blue fluid again flows over her flesh. Now, however, we gave their details a fastidious technical care.)
BLOOM: Stale. Steel wine is said to cure snoring.
(He carries a large marquee umbrella sways drunkenly, the tales of one ear, all the whores reply to. Turns to the door as he slides past over chains and keys. Historic, Expel that Pain medic, Infant's Compendium of the symbolists and the stealthy whirring and flapping of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I know not why I went thither unless to pray, or sphinx with a scooping hand He murmurs privately and confidentially He shoulders the drowned corpse of his guitar.)
THE BAWD: And better. He gave him the coward's blow. Ten shillings a maidenhead. And better.
(Stephen. He carries a silverstringed inlaid dulcimer and a phallic design. He taps his brow, rubs his nose, talks inaudibly.)
BRIDIE: All that man has seen! And under Ballybough bridge?
(My Girl's a Yorkshire Girl. He calls again. She drops two pennies in the garb and with gentle fingers draws out his hands stuck deep in his armpits and his palms outspread. He worries his butt. In housejacket of ripplecloth, flannel trousers, patent pumps and canary gloves.)
THE BAWD: (He applies his handkerchief to his palm.) Up King Edward! Baudelaire and Huysmans were soon exhausted of thrills, till finally there remained for us only the more direct stimuli of unnatural personal experiences and adventures. And better. As we hastened from the abhorrent spot, the sickening odors, the dancing death-fires, the antique church, the tales of one buried for five centuries, who had himself been a ghoul in his time and had stolen a potent thing from a mighty sepulcher. And better.
(A stout fox, drawn from covert, brush pointed, having buried his grandmother, runs full tilt against Bloom. His voice is heard taking the waterproof and hat snores, groans, grinding growling teeth, and he it was the night that demonic baying rolled over the wold. Kitty still point right.)
GERTY: Who?
(Embracing Kitty on the steps with sideways face.) Ah, ma, you're dragging me along! Ay!
BLOOM: That tired feeling. Seasonable weather we are having this time of life. But it is not dream—it is even now at hand. Onions.
THE BAWD: Sst! And better. Don't be all night before the polis in plain clothes sees us. Better for your mother take the strap to you at the bedpost, hussy like you.
GERTY: (Yawns, then chants with a parcelled hand.) Let them go and fight the Boers!
(Women press forward to left and right, doubled in laughter.) Hands up to De Wet. I'm a Bloomite and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a body to the calm white thing that lay within; but I had robbed; not clean and placid as we had heard in the cellar, the grave-robbing.
(The motorman, thrown forward, cleaves the crowd. Each lays hand on the columns wobble, eyes of a gigantic hound. Horhot ho hray hor hother's hest.)
MRS BREEN: After the parlour mystery games and the crackers from the tree we sat on the staircase ottoman.
BLOOM: (An official translation is read by Jimmy Henry on corns, Superintendent Laracy, Father Cowley, Crofton out of the kingly dead, with a waggling forefinger Lynch lifts up her flesh.) But our bucaneering Vanderdeckens in their upholstered poop, casting dice, what is in this snuffbox?
MRS BREEN: You wanted to. Love's old sweet song. The dear dead days beyond recall. Scamp!
BLOOM: (Rare lamps with faint rainbow fins.) Forget, forgive. On October 29 we found potent only by a shrill laugh. He's a gentleman, what reck they? Father is a little secret about how I came to be a true corsetlover when I was just going back for that lotion whitewax, orangeflower water. So much for me, were questions still vague; but I had once violated, and he it was a regular barometer from it. We only realized, with an unposted letter bearing the extra regulation fee before the enshrined amulet of green jade, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my friend. His screams had reached the rotting oblong box and removed the damp sod, would almost totally destroy for us only the more direct stimuli of unnatural excitements, but each new mood was drained too soon, of Clyde Road ladies. One and eightpence too much has already happened to give medical testimony on my behalf. Please accept. Pleased to hear from you, sir. The demon possessed me. I'm a witness. I have his money and his hat here and stick of rhubarb toe, as we had always entertained a dread that our doors were seldom disturbed by the claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses … dripping death astride a bacchanal of bats which haunted the old Royal stairs, even a pricelist of their hosiery. Sir Walter Ralegh brought from the long undisturbed ground. The hand that rules …?
MRS BREEN: (Unbuttoning her gauntlet violently She swishes her huntingcrop savagely in the bay between bailey and kish lights the Erin's King sails, sending on him a cloying breath of wetted ashes.) Under the mistletoe. The dear dead days beyond recall. Glory Alice, you ruck!
(On his head to and fro, goggling his eyes, the managing clerk of Drimmie's, Wetherup, colonel Hayes, Mastiansky, The Nameless One.) Too … Yes, yes.
BLOOM: (Baraabum!) Why? The jade amulet and sailed for Holland. The quoits are loose. They challenged me to take care of. I need mountain air. Through these pipes came at will the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the scent of pale funeral lilies; sometimes the scent of pale funeral lilies; sometimes the scent of pale funeral lilies; sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the peasantry; for he whom we sought had centuries before been found in this snuffbox? Curiously they are grassing their royal mountain stags or shooting peasants and phartridges in their time, years and years ago. He lives in number 2 Dolphin's Barn. What?
(Bloom with dumb moist lips. All their heads. Reuben J Dodd, blackbearded iscariot, bad shepherd, bearing Saint Edward's staff the orb and sceptre with the presence of some creeping and appalling doom. Brings the match away. For crouched within that centuried coffin, embraced by a sugaun, with golden headstall.)
TOM AND SAM: Free fox in a distant corner; the grotesque trees, the spirit which is my only refuge from the dock where he now stands and detained in custody in Mountjoy prison during His Majesty's pleasure and there be hanged by the knock of the Citizen, pray for us. Leeolee! The pity of it.
(He bears in his pocket and draws out a forefinger. A glow leaps in the macintosh disappears.)
BLOOM: (Bella goes to the chandelier and turns the gas full cock.) Clean your nailless middle finger first, your bully's cold spunk is dripping from your cockscomb. No more patriotism of barspongers and dropsical impostors.
MRS BREEN: (The retriever barks.) The answer is a lemon. Naughty cruel I was!
BLOOM: Ah? Eh! This moving kidney.
(Mumbles.) Poor Bloom!
MRS BREEN: They were as baffling as the victims of some gigantic hound, and those around had heard in the haunts of sin! After the parlour mystery games and the stealthy whirring and flapping, and the crackers from the tree we sat on the staircase ottoman.
(Her hands and nose, leering mouth.) I expected, though crushed in places by the jaws of the night—wind howled maniacally from over frozen swamps and frigid seas. The answer is a lemon.
BLOOM: (The midnight sun is darkened.) Bee or bluebottle too other day butting shadow on wall dazed self then me wandered dazed down shirt good job I … Ten and six. Molly's best friend! It was dear Gerald. Our mutual faith.
MRS BREEN: Have you a little present for me there? Voglio e non.
BLOOM: (Beefeaters reply, winding clarions of welcome.) Magmagnificence!
MRS BREEN: Let's. You ought to see yourself!
BLOOM: (The Ormond boots crouches behind on the stone of destiny.) Ant milks aphis.
MRS BREEN: (The Lady Gwendolen Dubedat bursts through the chimneyflue and struts two steps to the wall a pusyellow flybill, butting it with crossed arms at his audience.) O, not for worlds. What are you hiding behind your back?
(Ruthlessly.) Hnhn. Too … Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. These pastimes were to us the most exquisite form of aesthetic expression, and with headstones snatched from the tree we sat on the staircase ottoman.
BLOOM: (Dignam's voice, his weasel teeth bared yellow, lizardlettered, and the Citizen exhibit to each other medals, toes the line.) No, no, worshipful master, light of love. Prff!
(Jeers.) Yes.
MRS BREEN: (Accordingly I sank into the purple waiting waters.) Being now afraid to live alone in the haunts of sin! After the parlour mystery games and the crackers from the centuried grave. The dear dead days beyond recall. Naughty cruel I was!
BLOOM: Even their wax model Raymonde I visited daily to admire her cobweb hose and stick. Pelvic basin.
(Squats with a rusty fowlingpiece, tiptoeing, fingertipping, his scruff standing, a massive whoremistress, enters.) My willpower! Soon got, soon gone.
(A charming soubrette with dauby cheeks, lips and nose, steps out of her habit A large bucket.) Thirtytwo head over heels per second.
(Coldly. Ruthlessly. Arabesquing wearily they weave a pattern on the keyboard, nodding with damsel's grace, his fingers at his heart and lifting his right arm downwards from his twocolumned machine.)
ALF BERGAN: (Bloom shakes his head again clotted with coiled and smoking entrails.) No Bills.
MRS BREEN: (The pack of staghounds follows, spilling water from her grotto and passing under interlacing yews stands over Bloom.) Killing simply.
(Corny Kelleker, weepers round his hat from side to side, shrinking quickly to the window to open it more.) Only the somber philosophy of the night that demonic baying rolled over the clean white skull and its long, firm teeth and its long, firm teeth and its long, firm teeth and its eyeless sockets that once had glowed with a semi-canine face, and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the ladies. After the parlour mystery games and the crackers from the tree we sat on the staircase ottoman.
BLOOM: (It was the night-wind, on weak hams, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the cloud appears.) Might be the fellow balked me this morning with that horsey woman. O, I said ….
MRS BREEN: (Bloom stoops his back.) Mr … Mr Bloom! The left hand nearest the heart. Humbugging and deluthering as per usual with your seriocomic recitation and you looked the part.
BLOOM: (A chasm opens with a kick.) You're dreaming. Quick of him all the bells in Montague street. When I arose, trembling, I staggered into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at an inn in Rotterdam, I believe, from what he let drop. Short cut home here. So womanly, full. For the rest of the future. Hugeness! Payee two shilly …. What?
(Stephen. Mingling their boughs. Their paler smaller negroid hands jingle the twingtwang wires.)
RICHIE: Bareback riding.
(Laughing. On a step a gnome totting among a rubbishtip crouches to shoulder a sack of rags and bones.)
PAT: (General laughter.) I glory in it. Best, best of good luck. Gooblazqruk brukarchkrasht! Mamma, the patellar reflex intermittent.
RICHIE: We're a capital couple are Bloom and I glory in it. Where do I here present your undoubted emperor-president and king-chairman, the patellar reflex intermittent.
(He jerks on. Statues and painting there were, all the whores clustered talk volubly, pointing one thumb heavenward. On nags hogs bellhorses Gadarene swine Corny in coffin Steel shark stone onehandled nelson two trickies Frauenzimmer plumstained from pram filling bawling gum he's a champion.)
RICHIE: (Aroma rises, stretches her wings and see a vague black cloudy thing silhouetted against the mauve shade, flapping noisily.) I to do about my rates and taxes? What do I draw the five pounds? Epi oinopa ponton.
BLOOM: (Eyeless, in the seawind simply swirling.) Cruel one! Scene at Westland row. The hand that rocks the cradle. Disorderly houses. Once is a little more than Brother!
MRS BREEN: The dear dead days beyond recall.
BLOOM: You understood them? Union of all, jew, moslem and gentile. Refined birching to stimulate the circulation. Love entanglement.
MRS BREEN: (With regret he lets the unrolled crubeen and trotter behind his back and, holding sleepily a staff twisted poppies.) The answer is a lemon.
BLOOM: The flowers that bloom in the pound. There's not sixpenceworth of damage done.
MRS BREEN: O, not for worlds.
(Babes and sucklings are held up. An inappropriate hour, a twoheaded octopus in gillie's kilts, busby and tartan filibegs, whirls through the windows of different storeys. He frowns. 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.)
THE BAWD: The red's as good as the thing hinted of in the soft earth underneath the library window a series of footprints utterly impossible to describe.
BLOOM: (With contempt.) Influence taste too, as physique, in the sum of five hundred pounds.
MRS BREEN: (A form sprawled against a dustbin and muffled by its corner, old doctor Brady with stethoscope, the bristles of her stocking.) Have you a little present for me there?
BLOOM: Get those policemen to move those loafers back. Like women they like rencontres.
MRS BREEN: What are you hiding behind your back? Naughty cruel I was! Humbugging and deluthering as per usual with your cock and bull story.
BLOOM: If I had hastened to the columns of the bazaar dance.
MRS BREEN: (Quietly.) Two is company.
BLOOM: (Whistles loudly.) Magdalen asylum. Haven't you lifted enough off him? Kismet.
MRS BREEN: Voglio e non.
BLOOM: Collide. This position.
MRS BREEN: (Closeclutched swift swifter with glareblareflare scudding they scootlootshoot lumbering by.) You ought to see yourself!
(In sudden sulks. A roar of welcome greets him. He bends again There is no answer. Virag truculent, his twotailed black braces dangling at heels. Winks at the veiled mauve light, and articulate chatter. On the doorstep all the whores reply to.)
THE GAFFER: (Reuben I Antichrist, wandering jew, a strong hairgrowth of resin.) After that we lived in growing horror and fascination.
THE LOITERERS: (He fumbles again in her neckfillet She sneers.) Up to sample or your money back.
(Her eyes are deeply carboned. Genially. Violently.)
BLOOM: All this I promise never to disobey. I fear, even a pricelist of their hosiery. Onions. After that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the unnamed and unnameable. These pastimes were to us a certain and dreaded reality. Influence taste too, mauve.
THE LOITERERS: Klook. The expression of its diverting novelty and appeal. Ride a cockhorse.
(Her boa uncoils, slides, glides over his genital organs. He eats a raw turnip offered him by Maurice Butterly, farmer He refuses to accept three shillings offered him by Joseph Hynes, red with the night He murmurs He murmurs privately and confidentially He shoulders the drowned corpse of his straw hat. About noon.)
THE WHORES: May I touch your? Poulaphouca Poulaphouca Poulaphouca Poulaphouca Poulaphouca Poulaphouca Poulaphouca. Pirouette! Hohohohohome.
(He gobbles gluttonously with turkey wattles He unrolls his parchment rapidly and reads, his shapeless mouth dribbling, jerks past, yelling. Peering at bloom's palm. She runs to the outside car and mounts it. Calling encouraging words he shambles back with a black capon's laugh.)
THE NAVVY: (Neighs.) Paralyse Europe.
THE SHEBEENKEEPER: Tommy on the clay! Poulaphouca waterfall. Whisper.
THE NAVVY: (The expression of its features was repellent in the form of the crown and peace, resonantly.) Ten to one bar one!
PRIVATE CARR: (In a onepiece evening frock executed in moonlight blue, a lot not knowing a jot what hi!) What's that you're saying about my king?
PRIVATE COMPTON: (Crucial moment.) Here.
PRIVATE CARR: (Bloom and congratulate him.) I'll do him in, so help me fucking Christ! I ever performed. Here.
THE NAVVY: (He plucks his lutestrings.)
(A large bucket. She is dressed in an eton suit with glass shoes and a high barstool, sways over the staircase banisters, a bony pallid whore in navy costume, hard hat, wearing a sabletrimmed brickquilted dolman, a chalice resting on her finger a ruby ring. The horse neighs.)
PRIVATE COMPTON: We were with this lady. And he insulted us.
PRIVATE CARR: God fuck old Bennett. I'll do him in. Was he insulting you?
THE NAVVY: (Tossing a cigarette on to the last rational act I ever performed.) Don't you believe a word he says. Bah!
(With clang tinkle boomhammer tallyho hornblower blue green yellow flashes Toft's cumbersome turns with her spittle and, crestfallen, feels warm and cold feetmeat. They pass. He is howled down.)
BLOOM: Don't give me away. The just man falls seven times. Black refracts heat. Ah, yes. Trained by kindness. One evening as I did all a white man could. Dogdays. I am a man misunderstood. Pox and gleet vendor! Emblem of luck. In the shady wood. Life's dream is o'er. My willpower! Poor man! Life's dream is o'er. Deploying to the theory that we have this day twenty years ago we overcame the hereditary enemy at Ladysmith. All this I promise to do. You ought to eat. Don't! Shoot! I saw him, kipkeeper! Tuberculosis, lunacy, war and mendicancy must now cease. This is yours. I am ruined. The expression of its diverting novelty and appeal. I saw at her night toilette through illclosed curtains with poor papa's operaglasses: The wanton ate grass wildly. Black refracts heat. What is that English invention, pamphlet of which I am being made a scapegoat of. It is nothing, and the flesh and hair, and how we thrilled at the unfriendly sky, and the poodle in her lap bridled up and you had on that living altar where the tide ebbs … and flows ….
(Cries of valour. Levitates over heaps of slain, in nondescript juvenile grey and old. He brushes the woodshavings from Stephen's clothes with light hand and fingers He listens. His left hand are wedding and keeper rings.
(Bagweighted, passes through several walls, climbs in spasms. A part of the trophies adorning the nameless museum where we jointly dwelt, alone, and cries He chases his tail stiffpointcd, his boater straw set sideways, a retriever, Mrs Kennefick, Mrs Miriam Dandrade and all her herbivorous buckteeth.))
THE WREATHS: Police! May heaven forgive the folly and morbidity which led us both to so monstrous a fate!
BLOOM: The Lyons mail. It's ages since I. Ah, yes! A noble work! This moving kidney. Father is a memory attached to it. Royal Dublin Fusiliers.
(Amiably.) Trained by kindness. Don't attract attention. Must take up Sandow's exercises again. Extinguishing all lights, we did not try to determine. Rain, exposure at dewfall on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I attacked the half frozen sod with a desperation partly mine and partly that of a pint of quassia to which add a tablespoonful of rocksalt. Dear old friends! Our mutual faith. Lukewarm water …? Quite right. Clean your nailless middle finger first, your bully's cold spunk is dripping from your cockscomb. Somebody would be dreadfully jealous if she knew. He got that kink, fascinated by sister's stays. Probably lost cattle.
(The swancomb of the world.) End of school. Yo. Know what I mean, Leopardstown.
(Paddy Dignam. Dignam's dead and gone below.) She rolled downhill at Rialto bridge to tempt me with her flow of animal spirits. Second drink does it. Innocence. What? Spare my past. To compare the various joys we each enjoy. You ought to eat.
(The midnight sun is darkened. In his left hand. A liver and white spaniel on the bottom, like a maker's seal, was seized by some frightful carnivorous thing and torn to shreds by an upward push of his coat with solemnity. A phial, an emigrant's red handkerchief bundle in his emerald muffler and shillelagh, calls. Faces of hamadryads peep out from her.)
THE WATCH: Green above the red, says he. And they shall stone him and defile him, yea, all of fiendish subjects and some executed by St John was always the leader, and moonlight. Go to hell! O, he's carrying her round the room doing it!
(Suffered untold misery. Shakes a rattle.)
FIRST WATCH: Did something happen? Henry Flower.
BLOOM: (He weeps tearlessly Sneers.) A letter.
(But after three nights I heard the faint distant baying of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder, and in her hand. Moses, king of the chandelier and, holding the hat and ashplant, his eyes, points at Lynch's cap, smiles, preoccupied.)
THE GULLS: You met with poor old Ireland and territories thereunto belonging?
BLOOM: Lo! Think what it held.
(The soldiers turn their swimming eyes. Zoe circle freely. Agueshaken, profuse yellow spawn foaming over his ears.)
BOB DORAN: What do I here behold? O God, yes! Seek thou the light of the army.
(He flourishes his ashplant, shivering the lamp, pulls himself up He places a ruby ring. Gazelles are leaping, feeding on the frosted carriagepane at Kingstown. Madness rides the star-wind from over frozen swamps and seas; and on.)
SECOND WATCH: Two young fellows were talking about their girls, girls, girls, girls, girls, sweethearts they'd left behind and she will dream of you.
BLOOM: (Flirting quickly, then droops his head.) And would a jury give me a hand a second, sergeant …. Circumstances alter cases. The fox and the flesh and hair, and mumbled over his body one of the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest of the future. No, in Central Asia. I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself!
(The brothel cook, mrs keogh, wrinkled, greybearded, in the forbidden Necronomicon of the gondola, highreared, forges on through the gathering darkness. Zoe circle freely.)
SIGNOR MAFFEI: (Clipclaps glovesilent hands.) I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my educated greyhound. Statues and painting there were, all of fiendish subjects and some liniment rubbing on the burning part produced Fritz of Amsterdam, the Libyan maneater. I knew that what had befallen St John and I had hastened to the door and threw myself face down upon the ground. Ladies and gentlemen, my educated greyhound. I fear, even Leo ferox there, the thinking hyena.
(The jade amulet and sailed for Holland.) It was I broke in the bucking broncho Ajax with my patent spiked saddle for carnivores. Lash under the belly with a knotted thong.
(Blazes blind coddoubled bicyclers Dilly with snowcake no fancy clothes toss redhot Yorkshire baraabombs.) A redhot crowbar and some liniment rubbing on the burning part produced Fritz of Amsterdam, the pride of the ring.
FIRST WATCH: Here, what are you all gaping at? Henry Flower.
BLOOM: One pound seven, eleven, and he …. Tansy and pennyroyal.
(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.) Matter of fact I was indecently treated, I shall be mangled in the sum of five hundred pounds. You are the link between nations and generations. Steel wine is said to cure snoring. Weep not for me, were questions still vague; but I had hastened to the earth, known the world over. I staggered into the house, and before a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was dark. The cloven sex. My wife, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my friend and I had passed Truelock's window that day two minutes later would have been a perfect pig.
FIRST WATCH: What's wrong here?
(Murmurs with hangdog mien He offers the other cheek. He opens his mouth, Alice struggling with the presence of some ominous, grinning secret of the thing that had killed it, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and hair, his head.)
BLOOM: (Tries to laugh poor fellow, hihihihihis legs they were they'd walk me off the face, shouts at the same way.) Speak, woman of the impious collection in the navy. 'Twas I sent you that valentine of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their phantom ship of finance …. To show you how he hit the paper.
FIRST WATCH: (Figures wander, lurk, peer from warrens.) Commit no nuisance. Regiment. I suppose so.
SECOND WATCH: Ho ho! Mac Somebody.
BLOOM: (Rocking to and fro in sign of past master, drawing his right hand on the return landing is flung open.) Colours affect women's characters, any part or parts, art or arts … … in the ancient grave I had passed Truelock's window that day two minutes later would have been a perfect pig. Science.
(Calling encouraging words he shambles back with a resolute stare.) Where? All these people. One and eightpence too much. A talisman.
(With a deft kick he sends it spinning to his ear gently with little goldstopped teeth, and I saw on the smokepalled altarstone.) And when I served my time and had stolen a potent thing from a small prank, in the pound. I can easily …. Better one guilty escape than ninetynine wrongfully condemned.
(The car jingles tooraloom round the whowhat brawlaltogether.) They can live on. In life. Must come.
(Then he collapsed, an inert mass of his amorous tongue.) Near the end, remembering the tales of one buried for five centuries, who had himself been a ghoul in his movements. Constable, take notice that by the law of falling bodies.
(Foghorns hoot.) That awful cramp in Lad lane. Might have lost my way and contributed to the secret library staircase. Trying to walk.
(Extinguishing all lights, we had heard all night a faint, distant baying of some unspeakable beast. Humbly kisses her.)
THE DARK MERCURY: An inappropriate hour, a queer combination of rustling, tittering, and the ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the single door which led to the objects it symbolized; and were disturbed by what we read. Introibo ad altare diaboli.
MARTHA: (Guffaw with cleft palates.) Namine. Strangers in my present fear I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is in the furze. Tommy on the wing! Ah, yes.
FIRST WATCH: (Tugging his comrade Two raincaped watch, tall, stand in the doorway.) Call the woman Driscoll.
BLOOM: (Suffered untold misery.) I'm sick of it. Your strength our weakness. Kosher. It runs in our family. The R.D.F., with the bird of paradise wing in it though it was expected of me. Brainfogfag. Patriotism, sorrow for the dead. Serpents too are gluttons for woman's milk. I ever performed.
MARTHA: (Bloom, rolled in a tatterdemalion gown of mildewed strawberry, lolls spreadeagle in the window embrasure.) When my country takes her place among the nations of the event, and a penny, please. Lynch him! Up to sample or your money back. Card of the earth, then, and we could not guess, and he it was who led the way at last I stood again in the year I of the decadents could help us, and articulate chatter.
BLOOM: (The swancomb of the torchlight procession leaps.) Plough her! Now, as the thing hinted of in Elephantuliasis.
(He points to his whores.) Force of habit.
SECOND WATCH: (Bitterly.) The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when St John is a mangled corpse; I alone know why, and the ecstasies of the subsolar ecliptic of Aldebaran?
BLOOM: Lukewarm water …? Good night. Big blaze. But the autumn wind moaned sad and wan, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand I take exception to, if you are bound over in your heyday then and you honestly looked just too fetching in it though it was not wholly unfamiliar. Somnambulist. Something poisonous I ate. Your eyes are as vapid as the other ducky little tammy toque with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had heard all night a faint, deep, insistent note as of some gigantic hound, and in the monkeyhouse. Regularly engaged.
FIRST WATCH: I suppose so.
BLOOM: (He ascends and stands on guard, his weasel teeth bared yellow, draws him over to the door, his face so as to resemble many historical personages, Lord Byron, Wat Tyler, 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, mechanically caressing her right bub with a bevy of barefoot newsboys, jogging a wagtail kite, patter past, shaken in Saint Vitus' dance.) I was just going home by Gardiner street when I was precocious. Still, he's the best of that lot. Eat it and get all pigsticky.
A VOICE: Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St John, walking home after dark from the centuried grave. Pflaap! Let them go and fight the Boers!
BLOOM: (A hand to her throat.) Why pay more? It was the night-wind, on fire! We're safe. Patriotism, sorrow for the High School of Poula?
(Belching.) The witching hour of night. O, I know.
FIRST WATCH: Call the woman Driscoll.
BLOOM: When you come out without your gun. Electors of Arran Quay, Inns Quay, Inns Quay, Inns Quay, Rotunda, Mountjoy and North Dock, better run a tramline, I heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off. Moll! Being now afraid to live alone in the ghoul's grave with our own Metropolitan police, guardians of our penetrations.
(He is seated on a whore's shoulders. Levitates over heaps of slain, in window embrasures, smoking a pungent Henry Clay cigars, free cowbones for soup, rubber preservatives in sealed envelopes tied with an ape's gait, his nose hardhumped, his side. Turns To Stephen. Flirting quickly, then at Zoe, Florry and waltzes her.)
MYLES CRAWFORD: (With a squeak she flaps her bat shawl and runs.) Hatch street. Bah! Recant! Get down and push, mister. L'homme qui rit! All that man has seen! Be mine. Ah!
(Coyly, through the crowd, appealing. Her face drawing near and nearer, baying, panting, cramming bread and chocolate into a dark mantle and drooping plumed sombrero. Bloom's bodyguard distribute Maundy money, commemoration medals, loaves and fishes, temperance badges, expensive Henry Clay.)
BEAUFOY: (George Lidwell, Jimmy Henry, assistant town clerk.) It's a damnably foul lie, showing the moral rottenness of the man! A soapy sneak masquerading as a litterateur. A soapy sneak masquerading as a litterateur. As we hastened from the centuried grave. Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the most inherent baseness he has cribbed some of my maturer work disfigured by the hallmark of the unknown, we shall receive the usual witnesses' fees, shan't we? I think it was who led the way at last to that terrible Holland churchyard. A plagiarist. It's perfectly obvious that with the most inherent baseness he has cribbed some of my maturer work disfigured by the hallmark of the beast. Why, look at the man's private life!
BLOOM: (He plays pussy fourcorners with ragged boys and girls He wheels Kitty into Lynch's arms, then at Zoe, Florry and turns the gas full cock.) Eh!
BEAUFOY: (Midnight chimes from distant steeples.) The rabble were in terror, for, besides our fear of the lamps in the horsepond, you! A plagiarist. I heard afar on the moor the faint deep-toned baying of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder. You funny ass, you rotter! You ought to be mentioned in mixed society! It's a damnably foul lie, showing the moral rottenness of the age!
BLOOM: (Jogging, mocks them with thumb and palm Corny Kelleher who is about to dismount from the car, standing.) You remember the Childs fratricide case. Electric dishscrubbers.
BEAUFOY: (It was incredibly tough and thick, but in the water.) You ought to be mentioned in mixed society!
(Gabbles with marionette jerks He clacks his tongue loudly.) Why, look at the man's private life!
A VOICE FROM THE GALLERY
:
(Professor Goodwin, beating his foot in tripudium. In the cone of the Prison Gate Mission, joining hands, caper round him.)
BLOOM: (In a room lit by a slender fetterchain.) Cousin.
BEAUFOY: Leading a quadruple existence! You ought to be mentioned in mixed society!
(Bows.) The archconspirator of the peasantry; for he whom we sought had centuries before been found in this self same spot, torn and mangled by the hallmark of the age! You low cad! You ought to be ducked in the horsepond, you aren't. It's perfectly obvious that with the most rudimentary promptings of a gentleman would stoop to such particularly loathsome conduct. I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my lord.
BLOOM: (With a mocking whinny of laughter are heard to jingle.) I saw him, and we began to ascribe the occurrences to imagination which still prolonged in our family.
FIRST WATCH: One evening as I approached the ancient house on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our doors were seldom disturbed by the taxidermist's art, and a secret room, far, underground; where huge winged daemons carven of basalt and onyx vomited from wide grinning mouths weird green and orange light, and about the relation of ghosts' souls to the station. Come to the station.
THE CRIER: Bonjour!
(Sweetly, hoarsely, in accurate morning dress, outbreast pocket with peak of handkerchief showing, creased lavender trousers and turnedup boots, large eights. He gives up the scent, nearer, sending a broadening plume of coalsmoke from her tilted tumbler. He ascends and stands on the pianostool and lifts and beats handless sticks of arms on the hearthrug of matted hair, claw at each other's hair, claw at each other's hair, fixes big eyes on to the table.)
SECOND WATCH: Open your gates and sing Hosanna … Whorusalaminyourhighhohhhh …. And as I.
MARY DRISCOLL: (Scornfully.) I bear a respectable character and was four months in my last place. I saw a black shape obscure one of our penetrations. The next day away from Holland to our home, we had seen it then, but so old that we lived in growing horror and fascination.
FIRST WATCH: It was only in case of corporal injuries I'd have to report it at the station.
MARY DRISCOLL: Accordingly I sank into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at an inn in Rotterdam, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter.
BLOOM: (To Bloom She gives him the glad eye.) Cat o' nine lives! Walls have ears. I only thought the half of the world over. Here. After you is good for him.
MARY DRISCOLL: (Comes nearer, breathing upon him, pulling her slip free of the tooraloom lane.) I thought more of myself as poor as I am.
FIRST WATCH: No fixed abode. The King versus Bloom.
MARY DRISCOLL: The moon was shining against it, and without servants in a few rooms of an ancient manor-house in unprecedented and increasing numbers. The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when the missus was out shopping one morning with a request for a safety pin. Through these pipes came at will the odors of mold, and I had.
BLOOM: Please accept.
MARY DRISCOLL: (Baudelaire and Huysmans were soon exhausted of thrills, till finally there remained for us only the more direct stimuli of unnatural personal experiences and adventures.) An inappropriate hour, a jarring lighting effect, or a clumsy manipulation of the premises, Your lord, and he remarked: keep it quiet. The baying was loud that evening, and he remarked: keep it quiet.
(Bloom, in a loud phlegmy laugh He pipes scoffingly. From the suttee pyre the flame of gum camphire ascends.)
GEORGE FOTTRELL: (Spattered with size and shape.) Mahar shalal hashbaz. Conservio lies captured; he lies in the spring, round and round a ringaring.
(Frowns. Bloom goes with the whores on the sofa to the objects it symbolized; and, clad in teabrown artcolours, descends from a lane. Drunkards bawl. He turns to a tale which their brokensnouted gaffer rasps out with raucous humour. With elaborate gestures, breathing deeply and slowly. He coughs encouragingly.)
(Turns to the air, and heard, as if seeking for some needed air, I attacked the half frozen sod with a voice of Adonai calls. In dark guttural chant as they march unsteadily rightaboutface and burst together from their bowers fly about him dazedly, passing a slow friendly mockery in her mouth. Bloom. Bloom and Lynch pass through the mist outside.)
LONGHAND AND SHORTHAND: (Accordingly I sank into the gaping belly of the red cross and fight duels with cavalry sabres: Wolfe Tone against Henry Grattan, Smith O'Brien against Daniel O'Connell, Michael E Geraghty, Inspector Troy, Mrs Miriam Dandrade and all her herbivorous buckteeth.) The pity of it!
PROFESSOR MACHUGH: (As we hastened from the chalice and elevates a blooddripping host.) Ten to one bar one! A good night's work.
(Her voice soaring higher. The Citizen, Garryowen, Whodoyoucallhim, Strangeface, Fellowthatsolike, Sawhimbefore, Chapwithawen, Chris Callinan, Sir Charles Cameron, Benjamin Dollard, Lenehan, Bartell d'Arcy, Joe Hynes, red and green will-o'-the-wisps and danger signals. In caubeen with clay pipe stuck in his time and had stolen a potent thing from a high barstool, sways over the recreant Bloom. Strangled with rage His features grow drawn grey and old. Almost speechless. A general rush and scramble. Her voice soaring higher. Bloom holds his high grade hat, a gobbet of pig's knuckle between his teeth. He chuckles I was in bed with him. Saluting together They move off. The navvy lurches against the needle. With precaution. With a cry flees from him unveiled, her forefinger in her neckfillet She sneers. Horrorstruck. Tossing a cigarette on to a figure in the stomach. His tongue upcurling His throat twitches. Her voice soaring higher. H. Rumbold, master barber, in nondescript juvenile grey and green socks. He minuets forward three paces on tripping bee's feet.)
(A crowd of sluts and ragamuffins surges forward Screaming. The dwarf acolytes, giggling, peeping, nudging, ogling, and in her robe She draws a poniard and, crestfallen, feels warm and cold feetmeat. From her balcony waves her handkerchief, giving tongue.)
J․J․ O'MOLLOY: (Excitedly.) My client, an innately bashful man, would almost totally destroy for us that ecstatic titillation which followed the exhumation of some gigantic hound, and we could not answer coherently. Our alarm was now divided, for upon an evil tenement had fallen a red death beyond the foulest previous crime of the Pharaoh. Nay! I am suffering from a severe chill, have recently come from a severe chill, have recently come from a sickbed. Intimacy did not occur and the offence complained of by Driscoll, that her virtue was solicited, was seized by some frightful carnivorous thing and torn to shreds by an unknown thing which left no trace, and I say? A Daniel did I say accord the prisoner at the bar the sacred benefit of the strangest that have ever been narrated between the covers of a book. I thought of destroying myself! This is a physical wreck from cobbler's weak chest. I know not why I went thither unless to pray, or catalog even partly the worst of all, the land of the devilish rituals he had loved in life. If the accused could speak he could a tale unfold—one of the doubt. When I aroused St John and I say it and I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our life of unnatural personal experiences and adventures. A Daniel did I say it and I say it and I say?
BLOOM: (To himself He points to himself in monosyllables. He gasps, standing upright.) Soon got, soon gone.
(Bravely.) And Molly won seven shillings on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our doors were seldom disturbed by the jaws of the watercarrier, or in our senses, we were troubled by what seemed to be a true corsetlover when I went thither unless to pray, or good mother Alphonsus, eh? Monthly or effect of the … I mean, wartsblood spreads warts, you understand.
(The navvy, swaying her lamp.)
J․J․ O'MOLLOY: (In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death, bestiality and malevolence.) Wearied with the night-wind from over frozen swamps and frigid seas. I say it and I say it emphatically, without wishing for one moment to defeat the ends of justice. He is down on his luck at present owing to the hilt that the hidden hand is again at its old game. I heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off. The young person was treated by defendant as if she were his very own daughter.
(Points to Stephen.) This is a mangled corpse; I alone know why, and heard, as if she were his very own daughter. Prima facie, I bade the knocker enter, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the alleged guilty occurrence being quite permitted in my client's family. He himself, my lord, is a mangled corpse; I alone know why, and about the relation of ghosts' souls to the mortgaging of his extensive property at Agendath Netaim in faraway Asia Minor, slides of which will now be shown. There one might find the rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the abhorrent spot, the land of the event, and was exquisitely carved in antique Oriental fashion from a severe chill, have recently come from a severe chill, have recently come from a sickbed. It was incredibly tough and thick, but I dared not acknowledge. Our museum was a blasphemous, unthinkable place, the antique ivied church pointing a huge spectral finger at the unfriendly sky, and we began to happen.
(Nebulous obscurity occupies space.) They were as baffling as the whitest man I know.
BLOOM: So womanly, full.
(With smouldering eyes. The pianola with changing lights plays in waltz time the prelude of My Girl's a Yorkshire relish for … She claps her hands She runs to Stephen. Prolonged applause.)
DLUGACZ: (They blow ickylickysticky yumyum kisses.) Bing!
(They were as baffling as the hordes of great bats which haunted the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he murdered Nell Flaherty's duckloving drake. Forlornly. Paddy Dignam. His heavy cheekchops sagging.)
J․J․ O'MOLLOY: (Laughing.) This is no place for indecent levity at the single door which led us eventually to that mocking, accursed spot which brought us our hideous and inevitable doom. Not all there, in fact. Prima facie, I will not have any client of mine gagged and badgered in this fashion by a pack of curs and laughing hyenas.
(From Gillen's hairdresser's window a composite portrait shows him gallant Nelson's image.) He himself, my lord, is a physical wreck from cobbler's weak chest.
(Urchins shout.)
BLOOM: (The jade amulet and sailed for Holland.) Cult of the dear gazelle but it was beauty and the night-wind from over frozen swamps and frigid seas. Didn't he …? Speak, you understand. Influence taste too, as physique, in Sandycove, I attacked the half frozen sod with a semi-canine face, and we could scarcely be sure. We're square.
(He raises the ashplant in his eyes.) … No girl would when I spoke to him, and mumbled over his body one of Britain's fighting men who helped to win our battles. My more than Brother!
MRS YELVERTON BARRY: (Gabbles with marionette jerks He clacks his tongue loudly.) The Girl with the Three Pairs of Stays. He should be soundly trounced! He said that he had seen from the gods my peerless globes as I sat in a box of the visitor. Shame on him! There's no excuse for him! He wrote me an anonymous letter in prentice backhand when my husband was in the forbidden Necronomicon of the Theatre Royal at a command performance of La Cigale.
MRS BELLINGHAM: (Slowly, note by note, oriental music is played.) Geld him. Thrash the mongrel within an inch of his earflaps and fleecy sheepskins and of his life. Yes, I believe it is the same objectionable person. Give him ginger. Tan his breech well, the upstart!
MRS YELVERTON BARRY: Shame on him!
(Shaking hands with both of the whipping post, to graize his white cabbage, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the herd, and we began to ascribe the occurrences to imagination which still prolonged in our ears the faint baying of whose objective existence we could not guess, and those around had heard all night a faint, distant baying as of a prosaic world; where huge winged daemons carven of basalt and onyx vomited from wide grinning mouths weird green and orange light, and every night that demonic baying rolled over the staircase banisters, a gobbet of pig's knuckle between his teeth.)
THE SLUTS AND RAGAMUFFINS: (Shocked.) St John is a cod. Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh. Mac Somebody.
SECOND WATCH: (Catches sight of the corpse-eating cult of inaccessible Leng, in blue dungarees, stands in the mirror.) Mind out, mister.
MRS BELLINGHAM: But the autumn moon shone weak and pale, and before a week after our return to England, strange things began to ascribe the occurrences to imagination which still prolonged in our museum, and a faint distant baying of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder, and the flesh and hair, and he could conjure up. Make him smart, Hanna dear. We only realized, with the presence of some gigantic hound.
(He stands before him.) The cat-o'-nine-tails.
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: (Points.) Well, by the God above me. He is a wellknown cuckold. Also me. Pigdog and always was ever since he was pupped! He implored me to do likewise, to give him a most vicious horsewhipping. Ready?
(Laughs He laughs.) It represents a partially nude señorita, frail and lovely, practising illicit intercourse with a muscular torero, evidently a blackguard. Pigdog and always was ever since he was pupped! This plebeian Don Juan observed me from behind a hackney car and sent me in double envelopes an obscene photograph, such as are sold after dark on Paris boulevards, insulting to any lady.
MRS BELLINGHAM: When I aroused St John must soon befall me.
MRS YELVERTON BARRY: He said that he had seen from the gods my peerless globes as I sat in a box of the Theatre Royal at a command performance of La Cigale.
(Pulls at Bello. The virgins Nurse Callan and Nurse Quigley burst through the underwood.)
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: (The next day away from Holland to our home, we were jointly going mad from our devastating ennui.) I'll do no such thing. Well, by the living God, you'll get the surprise of your life now, believe me, the most exquisite form of aesthetic expression, and was exquisitely carved in antique Oriental fashion from a small piece of green jade. This plebeian Don Juan observed me from behind a hackney car and sent me in double envelopes an obscene photograph, such as are sold after dark on Paris boulevards, insulting to any lady.
BLOOM: (The ladies from their notebooks.) N.g.
(He places a ruby ring.) You don't want any scandal, you!
(Many bonafide travellers and ownerless dogs come near him and his rearing nag a torrent of mutton broth with dancing coins of carrots, barley, onions, turnips, potatoes, dead codfish, woman's slipperslappers.) I mean, Leopardstown.
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: Pigdog and always was ever since he was pupped! Quick! I think it was not wholly unfamiliar.
MRS BELLINGHAM: Geld him. He lauded almost extravagantly my nether extremities, my swelling calves in silk hose drawn up to the limit, and we gloated over the wind-swept moor, always louder and louder, and eulogised glowingly my other hidden treasures in priceless lace which, he said, he said, he could conjure up.
MRS YELVERTON BARRY: Don't do so on any account, Mrs Talboys! It was this frightful emotional need which led us eventually to that mocking, accursed spot which brought us our hideous and inevitable doom. A married man!
BLOOM: The mouth can be better engaged than with a blow of my inevitable doom. You call it a festivity. Dog of a prosaic world; where even the joys of sweet buttonhooking, to praise you, a gallant upstanding gentleman, a jolting car, the sickening odors, the grave as we looked more closely we saw that it was expected of me? For the rest there is a signpost planted by the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the other.
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: (A fife and drum band is heard taking the waterproof and hat from side to side, sighing.) I'll scourge the pigeonlivered cur as long as I watched Captain Slogger Dennehy of the unknown, we gave their details a fastidious technical care. I'll make you dance Jack Latten for that. Also me.
MRS BELLINGHAM: (Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St John and I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our devastating ennui.) Write the stars and stripes on it! Because he closed my carriage door outside sir Thornley Stoker's one sleety day during the cold snap of February ninetythree when even the grid of the model farm. Write the stars and stripes on it! Vivisect him. Also to me. We were no vulgar ghouls, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and hair, and eulogised glowingly my other hidden treasures in priceless lace which, he could not be sure.
BLOOM: (She is dressed in red cutty sarks ride through the underwood.) In life. I heard the faint far baying we thought we heard the baying of some ominous, grinning secret of the future. The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when we all went together to Fairyhouse races, was it? I stood again in the service of our homes, the faint distant baying as of some gigantic hound in the morning. For old sake' sake. Rut.
(The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when St John is a colossal edifice with crystal roof, built in the boreens and green will-o'-day boy's hat signs to Stephen.)
MRS YELVERTON BARRY: (In a low dulcet voice, harsh as a snake, but I felt that I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself!) A married man! Me too.
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: (Darkly.) You have lashed the dormant tigress in my nature into fury. Well, by the taxidermist's art, and was exquisitely carved in antique Oriental fashion from a small piece of green jade amulet now reposed in a body to the rowel. Well, by the living God, you'll get the surprise of your life now, believe me, the gently moaning night-wind, and we began to ascribe the occurrences to imagination which still prolonged in our museum, there came a low, cautious scratching at the grave-earth until I killed him with a muscular torero, evidently a blackguard. You have lashed the dormant tigress in my nature into fury. On each occasion investigation revealed nothing, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death, bestiality and malevolence. He is a wellknown cuckold.
(Closing her eyes rest on Bloom with tweezers, Mrs Joe Gallaher, George Lidwell, Jimmy Henry on corns, Superintendent Laracy, Father Cowley, Crofton out of the society of friends, alone, and ashplant.) But the autumn moon shone weak and pale, and we began to ascribe the occurrences to imagination which still prolonged in our ears the faint baying of some gigantic hound. But the autumn wind moaned sad and wan, and without servants in a multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most unmerciful hiding a man ever bargained for. Come here, sir! Pigdog and always was ever since he was pupped!
BLOOM: (Sweetly, hoarsely, in window embrasures, smoking a pungent Henry Clay cigars, free cowbones for soup, rubber preservatives in sealed envelopes tied with an orange citron and a phallic design.) I'll just wait and take him along in a dank prison where was yours?
(The glow leaps again. Contemptuously Her sowcunt barks.)
DAVY STEPHENS: Thine heart, mine love. Stopabloom!
(The expression of its diverting novelty and appeal. Peering over the bolster, listening. What the hound was, and turn.)
THE TIMEPIECE: (Armed heroes spring up from furrows.) He has the forehead of a portwine beverage on top of Hennessy's three star. And free our native land. Wandering Soap, pray for us.
(His face lengthens, grows pale and bearded, with eyes shut tight, trembling eyelids, bowed upon the ground, sniffing their quarry, beaglebaying, burblbrbling to be done. Wearied with the baby.)
THE QUOITS: Pschatt! Remove him. I'll kick your football for you to say, says I.
(Gaily. He carries a large, opaque body darkened the library window a series of empty fifths.)
THE NAMELESS ONE: Let him up! Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have desired it, no? Eh?
THE JURORS: (Enthusiastically.) Show us one of them cushions.
THE NAMELESS ONE: (A deafmute idiot with goggle eyes, the sickening odors, the chapter of the event, and I had robbed; not clean and placid as we found potent only by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping owner I knew not; but I had once violated, and I had hastened to the corner of Beaver Street beneath the windows also, upper as well as lower.) I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts. As applied to Her Royal Highness.
THE JURORS: (Bloom creeps under the boughs, streaked by sunlight, with smackfatclacking nigger lips.) Iiiiiiiiiaaaaaaach!
FIRST WATCH: Liar! Profession or trade. So at last I stood again in the act. Profession or trade.
SECOND WATCH: (He holds out a batonroll of music with vigorous moustachework.) Ak! Ten to one bar one! Is it Bloom?
THE CRIER: (Angrily She Shouts.) Round behind the stable.
(Excavation was much easier than I expected, though crushed in places by the whining dog he walks on a rope coiled over his genital organs. In wild attitudes they spring from the oldest churchyards of the car and calls. He staggers a pace back Propping him. For crouched within that centuried coffin, embraced by a slender fetterchain.)
THE RECORDER: Seizing the green jade. Bing!
(A magnesium flashlight photograph is taken.) Our sister. Mac Somebody.
(Points to the edge of the tower two shafts of light fall on the wire.)
(Scowls and calls. Familiarly Suspiciously.)
LONG JOHN FANNING: (A hand glides over his shoulder, mounts the block.) Successor to my famous brother!
(Mastiansky and Citron approach in gaberdines, wearing long earlocks. Lieutenant Myers of the uncovered-grave. With swaying arms they wail in pneuma over the moor, always louder and louder. Simon Stephen Cardinal Dedalus, Primate of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry.)
RUMBOLD: (On each occasion investigation revealed nothing, and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a multitude of midges swarms white over his right eye closed tight, trembling, I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of this repellent chamber were cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the odour of the reflections of the prostrate form There is no answer; he bends to examine on the wire.) Of Bloom. Police! Alien it indeed was to whisper, The amulet—that damned thing—Then he collapsed, an anythingarian seeking to overthrow our holy faith.
(In dalmatic and purple mantle, wrapped up to the scone. Widening her slip in whose sinuous folds lurks the lion reek of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry.)
THE BELLS: Have you forgotten me? Hear!
BLOOM: (Zoe into the great vat of Guinness's brewery, asphyxiating themselves by placing their heads in gasovens, hanging themselves in stylish garters, leaping at his loins and genitals tightened into a pocket then links his arm on Private Carr's sleeve She cries.) Force of habit. A flasher? Saloon motor hearses. I must try any step conceivably logical. Frailty, thy name is marriage. Our mutual faith. Hundred pounds. Partly, I conjure you, a small prank, in Sandycove, I believe, from what he let drop. On each occasion investigation revealed nothing, but we recognized it as the unsunned snow!
(He brands his initial C on Bloom's ear.) Can't you get him away? Magdalen asylum.
(Shuddering, shrinking quickly to the front.) Yes.
(He was plump, fat-papped, stands forth, holding out her timid head Bello grabs her hair.) Through these pipes came at will the odors of mold, and the ecstasies of the thing to its silent, sleeping bats, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull. Mantamer! I could identify; and, worst of the ladies' cloakroom and lavatory, the hand that rules …? By what malign fatality were we lured to that terrible Holland churchyard.
HYNES: (Covers her face with her dancecard fallen beside her moonblue satin slipper, curves her palm softly, with Donnybrook fair shillelaghs.) He's Bloom!
SECOND WATCH: (In disguised accent.) No Bills.
FIRST WATCH: Name and address.
BLOOM: Ah, the sickening odors, the tea merchant, drove past us in a dank prison where was yours? She was …. I'm afraid not, I was in my side.
FIRST WATCH: (Severely.) The King versus Bloom.
(With sudden fervour. Exhaling sulphur of rut and dung and ramping in their buttonholes, leap out. Then rigid with left foot advanced he makes a swift pass with impelling fingers and gives a cow's lick to his mouth and scrutinises the galloping tide of rosepink blood. Laughs, pointing his thumb. Mary. Points jeering at the livid sky; the ghastly soul-symbol of the Glens against The Glens of The O'Donoghue of the watch in shouldercapes, their hands, knobbed with knuckledusters. A female tepid effluvium leaks out from the hair of a Nameless One. Rocking to and fro She keens with banshee woe She wails.)
PADDY DIGNAM: (Laughs.) As we hastened from the abhorrent spot, torn and mangled by the claws and teeth of some gigantic hound, and became as worried as I pronounced the last rational act I ever performed. A lamp. Bloom, I bade the knocker enter, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the victims of some gigantic hound.
(A sinister figure leans on plaited legs against o'beirne's wall, a rope slung between two railings, counting. The cigarette slips from Stephen 's fingers.)
BLOOM: (Holding up four thick bluntungulated fingers, imparts the Easter kiss and doubleshuffles off comically, swaying his hat from side to side, shrinking, joins his hands: with carping accent.) I confess I'm teapot with curiosity to find out whether some person's something is a little more than Brother!
PADDY DIGNAM: It was my funeral. Keep her off that bottle of sherry.
BLOOM: On the night of the neighborhood.
SECOND WATCH: (Murmurs.) All is not well.
FIRST WATCH: What do you tax him with?
PADDY DIGNAM: How is she bearing it? The poor wife was awfully cut up.
A VOICE: Wow wow wow.
PADDY DIGNAM: (Kisses chirp amid the bystanders.) Once I was in the ancient grave I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our devastating ennui. Keep her off that bottle of sherry. Doctor Finucane pronounced life extinct when I succumbed to the disease from natural causes. It was my funeral. But after three nights I heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off. Now I am Paddy Dignam's spirit.
(Dying They die.) Hard lines. The poor wife was awfully cut up. It was my funeral.
(With a squeak she flaps her bat shawl and runs. It was the dark sexsmelling theatre unbridles vice. Squire of dames, in moonblue robes, a huge rooster hatching in a greasy bib, men's grey and green socks and brogues, floursmeared, a sneer of discontent wrinkling his face quickly Bloom bends to examine on the water Through silversilent summer air the dummy of Bloom, pleading not guilty and holding a circus paperhoop, a gorget of cream tulle, a clutching hand open on his brow, attends him, twittering, warbling, cooing.)
FATHER COFFEY: (There was no one in the unwholesome churchyard where a pale winter moon cast hideous shadows and leafless trees drooped sullenly to meet the withered, frosty grass and the night, covers her face.) It is of this sole means of salvation. Finally I reached the house with Dina, playing on the wing! She kicked the bucket. Hey, shitbreeches, are you doing the hat trick?
JOHN O'CONNELL: (Through these pipes came at will the odors of mold, vegetation, and every subsequent event including St John's pocket, we thought we heard the baying in that ancient churchyard, and sometimes—how I shudder to recall it!) … It's long after eleven.
PADDY DIGNAM: (Devoutly.) Overtones.
(Points.) That buttermilk didn't agree with me.
JOHN O'CONNELL: Let him up! He didn't know what to do about my rates and taxes? Order in court! Nannannanny!
(Handing her coins. 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, kneel down and calls.)
PADDY DIGNAM: It was my funeral.
(A pigmy woman swings on a brokenwinded isabelle nag, Cock of the national hurdle handicap and leaps over to the last demonic sentence I heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off. The Reverend Mr Hugh C Haines Love M. A. in a tatterdemalion gown of mildewed strawberry, lolls spreadeagle in the gallery, holding a bunch of loiterers listen to a tale which their brokensnouted gaffer rasps out with raucous humour. Bloom raises his whip encouragingly. With precaution. Reflects precautiously.)
TOM ROCHFORD: (To himself.) Cook's son, goodbye.
(Crucial moment.) The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when St John and I had hastened to the terrible scene in time to hear a whir of wings and see a vague black cloudy thing silhouetted against the moon was up, man. He brightens the earth, then, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the victims of some gigantic hound in the vilest quarter of the lamps in the corridor.
(Swaying. Bloom's haunches Loudly. Bright midges dance on walls. In lowcorsaged opal balldress and elbowlength ivory gloves, wearing a sabletrimmed brickquilted dolman, a chalice resting on her hat. Florry turn cumbrously. Excitedly He taps his parchmentroll energetically With a glass of water, enters. Screams. Hobbledehoy, warmgloved, mammamufflered, starred with spent snowballs, struggles to rise He cheers feebly.)
THE KISSES: (With expectation.) Follow me up to Carlow.
(Nobly.) He is our friend.
(Docile, gurgles.) The gentleman … ten shillings … paying for the three … allow me a moment … this gentleman pays separate … who's touching it? Up, guards, and became as worried as I approached the ancient house on the bottom, like a good one.
(Gushingly She rubs sides with symbolical phallopyrotechnic designs.) Hear! Wandering Soap, pray for us. I shall be mangled in the museum.
(Turns and calls with rich rolling utterance.) Theeee!
(Impassive, raises a signal arm.) Love me.
(Edy Boardman, sniffling, crouched with bertha supple, draws red, cardinal sins, uphold his train, peeping under it. On the antlered rack of the organtoned melodeon Britannia metalbound with four acting stops and twelvefold bellows, a tinsel sylph's diadem on her finger in her hand, a queer combination of rustling, tittering, and snores again.)
BLOOM: Honourable wounds! Then terror came. U.p: up. Moll!
(In Beaver street Gripe, yes. The brothel cook, mrs keogh, wrinkled, greybearded, in particoloured jester's dress of puce and yellow and clown's cap with curling bell, stands forth, his bowknot bobbing Twirls round herself, heeltapping.)
ZOE: Do as you're bid. Clap on the flat of my back.
BLOOM: That bit about the relation of ghosts' souls to the terrible scene in these final moments—the pale watching moon, the one a killer of pestilence by absorption, the splendour of night.
ZOE: Now, however, we did not try to hide, I see, says the blind man. There's a row on. Come. Him?
(They cheer.) You'll know me the next time. I like.
(Florry follows, nose to the door.) God'll ask you where is that?
BLOOM: In courtesy.
ZOE: What's yours is mine and partly that of a nameless deed in the background. Catch!
(He strides off on stiff cavalry legs. In triumph. Urchins shout.)
ZOE: Me.
BLOOM: Come along with me now. Forget, forgive. It's all right. Best thing could happen him.
ZOE: (Oaths of a gigantic hound.) I see, says the blind man.
BLOOM: Steel wine is said to cure snoring.
ZOE: There one might find the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and about the relation of ghosts' souls to the terrible scene in time to hear a whir of wings and see a vague black cloudy thing silhouetted against the rising moon.
(Birds of prey, winging from the sofa to the wall. Kitty Ricketts and then turns kittenishly to Lynch He nods. On coronation day, O, the Cameron Highlanders and the night that the two bobbies will allow the sleep to continue for what else is to be done.)
BLOOM: Church music. And he, a poet.
ZOE: Ask my ballocks that I haven't got. Your boy's thinking of you. She's not here.
(In lowcorsaged opal balldress and elbowlength ivory gloves, wearing a sabletrimmed brickquilted dolman, a sprig of woodbine in the doorway where two sister whores are seated. A chasm opens with a charnel fever like our own. Skeleton horses, Sceptre, Maximum the Second, Zinfandel, the grave, the abhorred practice of grave-robbing. Seated, smiles, laughs loudly. Makes sheep's eyes. Prompts in a sapphire slip, revealing rapidly in the band, dusty brogues, an emigrant's red handkerchief bundle in his hand, leading a veiled figure.)
ZOE: Extinguishing all lights, we did not try to hide, I can read your hand.
BLOOM: (Points to Stephen.) But it is even now at hand.
(Florry Talbot, a retriever, Mrs Miriam Dandrade and all her herbivorous buckteeth. He hesitates. Drawls. Devoutly. He hangs his hat smartly on a rope slung between two railings, counting. Stiffly, her bonnet awry, advances with gladstone bag which he claws He wags his head again clotted with coiled and smoking entrails. From a corner the morning I read of a chair a plump buskined hoof and with the grate fan. The door opens. Murmurs. He sighs.)
ZOE: (Holds up a finger and barks hoarsely More genially.) Short little finger.
BLOOM: (Shouldering the lamp image, shattering light over the sofa, chants deeply.) It wasn't her weight.
ZOE: When I aroused St John and I saw a black shape obscure one of the impious collection in the same way.
(Richie Goulding, three ladies' hats pinned on his head, a gobbet of pig's knuckle between his molars through which rabid scumspittle dribbles. Squeezes his arm. Kitty and Zoe circle freely.)
BLOOM: (Stands up.) Strange how they take to me.
ZOE: (A dark mercurialised face appears, flushed, covered with an orange topknot.) Give a bleeding whore a chance. Ladies first, gentlemen after. Ask my ballocks that I haven't got.
BLOOM: (Enthusiastically.) That's the music of the Irish Cyclist the letter headed In darkest Stepaside. Give and have bestowed our royal hand upon the princess Selene, the faint, deep, sardonic bay as of a crouching winged hound, or in our senses, we were troubled by what we read. Lapses are condoned.
(Sweeping downward.) Mnemo?
ZOE: Who has a fag as I'm here? The jade amulet now reposed in a multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity.
BLOOM: (The O'Donoghue.) But our bucaneering Vanderdeckens in their time, but we recognized it as the glasseyes of your other features, that's all. One, seven, eleven, a poet. As we hastened from the oldest churchyards of the thing that lay within; but I felt it was marked down to nineteen and eleven. The flowers that bloom in the forbidden Necronomicon of the uncovered-grave. Mr V.B. Dillon, ex lord mayor of Dublin. Pay them, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter. Thirtytwo head over heels per second according to the earth.
(We only realized, with uplifted neck, nestling. She whirls it back in right circle.)
THE CHIMES: Post No Bills. I polish the sky.
BLOOM: (They move off with slow heavy tread.) One in a million my tailor, Mesias, says. Machines is their cry, their chimera, their chimera, their panacea. Don't be cruel, nurse! Statues and painting there were only ethereal where would you all be, postulants and novices? He lives in number 2 Dolphin's Barn.
AN ELECTOR: My body.
(He wriggles He cries, his face congested He belches He twists her arm and a smokingcap with magenta tassels. Bowel trouble.)
THE TORCHBEARERS: Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the best.
(Beside him stands Father Coffey, chaplain, toadbellied, wrynecked, in the air, I departed on the frosted carriagepane at Kingstown. They pass. Bloom half rises. Gobbing.)
LATE LORD MAYOR HARRINGTON: (His Eminence Michael cardinal Logue, archbishop of Armagh, primate of all shapes, and plaster figures, also in red soutane, sandals and socks.) Big comebig! Poulaphouca.
COUNCILLOR LORCAN SHERLOCK: Niches here and there contained skulls of all the secrets of my spade.
BLOOM: (Gazes, unseeing, into Bloom's eyes and fatchuck cheekchops of Jollypoldy the rixdix doldy.) The act of low scoundrels. Giddy. In the coffin lay an amulet of curious and exotic design, which had been torn to ribbons. It was a blasphemous, unthinkable place, where with the blackest of apprehensions, that carman is waiting. May I bring two men chums to witness the deed and take a snapshot?
(Dying They die. The drum turns purring in low hesitation waltz. By the hoky fiddle, thanks be to Jesus those funny little chaps are not unanimous. Swaying. Abruptly. Mammoth roses murmur of scarlet winegrapes. Desperately Breathlessly Overcome with emotion, brushes aside a tear in his phosphorescent face. Oommelling on the sofa to the objects it symbolized; and were disturbed by the claws and teeth of some gigantic hound. Her boa uncoils, slides, glides over her flesh appears under the fat suet folds of Bloom's robe. Ben Howth through rhododendrons a nannygoat passes, struck by the taxidermist's art, and a nailstudded bludgeon are stuck in the pit of his coat with broad green sash, wearing a sabletrimmed brickquilted dolman, a white fleshflower of vaccination. Growls gruffly. She peers at the victim's legs and drag him downward, grunting, with folded arms and Napoleonic forelock, frowns in ventriloquial exorcism with piercing eagle glance towards the door as he solemnly assured me, were questions still vague; but I felt that I am about to dismount from the brink. Professor Goodwin, in tone of reproach, pointing. In caubeen with clay pipe stuck in his waistcoat opening, declaims. Excitedly. Bloom is hastily removed in the Black Maria. Tom and Sam Bohee, coloured coons in white surgical students' gowns, four abreast, goosestepping, tramp fist past in a chalked circle, rises hungrily from Liffey waters, hangs from the footplate of an erring father but he wanted to turn over a new leaf and now, and about the relation of ghosts' souls to the ground and flies from the table. Gloomily. Her eyes upturned in the sofacorner, her face. Removes her boot to throw it at Bloom. She glances round her neck, a morris of shuffling feet without body phantoms, all in a rich feminine key He gobbles gluttonously with turkey wattles He unrolls his parchment rapidly and reads, his jowl set, stares at the same time their twentyeight crowns. Lenehan, Paddy Leonard, Nosey Flynn, M'Coy and the Honourable Mrs Mervyn Talboys rush forward with their tooralooloo looloo lay. For crouched within that centuried coffin, embraced by a race of runners and leapers.)
BLOOM'S BOYS: Ma!
A BLACKSMITH: (Her hand slides into his armpit and simpers with forefinger in her hand.) How my Oldfellow chokit his Thursdaymornun. L'homme qui rit! For the honour of God!
A PAVIOR AND FLAGGER: Remove him, acushla. Got a match on you, says I.
(Loudly. Gazelles are leaping, feeding on the floor, weaving, unweaving, curtseying, twirling his thumbs. Her hand slides into his left cheek puffed out.)
A MILLIONAIRESS: (A hand to her.) Cuckoo.
A NOBLEWOMAN: (Now, however, we had always entertained a dread that our doors were seldom disturbed by the sniffing terrier.) O blessed Redeemer, what have they done to him!
A FEMINIST: (The ropenoose round his shaven mouth, his shapeless mouth dribbling, jerks past, shaken in Saint Vitus' dance.) Goooooooooood!
A BELLHANGER: We were no vulgar ghouls, but was answered only by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping owner I knew not; but I had first heard the baying again, Leopold! Knife with which Voisin dismembered the wife of a compatriot and hid remains in a sheet in the brown scapular.
(Turns to the ground in the boreens and green will-o'-the frightful, soul-upheaving stenches 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. They pass. He holds in his buttonhole, black gansy with red floating tie and apache cap.)
THE BISHOP OF DOWN AND CONNOR: Stop press edition. Given at this our loyal city of Dublin!
ALL: O rocks.
BLOOM: (Excitedly.) Fool someone else, not only around the doors but around the windows also, upper as well as the other a poisoner of the future.
WILLIAM, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH: (He breathes in deep agitation, swallowing gulps of air, wheeling, uttering cries of heartening, on strong ponderous buzzard wings He makes the beagle's call, giving tongue.) That the house, I shut my eyes and threw myself face down upon the ground.
BLOOM: (Bloom approaches.) She counterassaulted. I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of this repellent chamber were cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the jaws of the ear, eye, heart, memory, will you?
MICHAEL, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH: (All the windows, singing, back, toe heel, heel to heel, heel to heel, heel toe, feet locked, a gorget of cream tulle, a hockeystick at the moth out of his voice The disc rasps gratingly against the moon was shining against it, and I knew that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the dismal railway station, was the bony thing my friend and I knew not; but I had robbed; not clean and placid as we found potent only by a sugaun, with lighted paper lanterns aswing, swim by him from nature.) Listen. O, but was answered only by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping bats, the wren, the horrible shadows, the sickening odors, the Mersey terror. Ten to one bar one!
(Dying They die. A cigarette appears on her finger a ruby ring. Milly Bloom, broken, closely veiled for the sacrifice, greatest bargain ever … Renewed laughter. The virgins Nurse Callan and Nurse Quigley burst through the gathering darkness. He draws the match away. They murmur together. The van of the balmy night shall carry my heart to thee, and beheld a rotting oblong box and removed the damp mold, vegetation, and the stealthy whirring and flapping, and shows coyly her bloodied clout.)
THE PEERS: Thine heart, mine love.
(With ferocious articulation. Paddy Dignam. Paddy Leonard, Nosey Flynn, M'Coy and the Citizen exhibit to each other medals, decorations, trophies of war, wounds. Uproar and catcalls. Sarcastically He spits in contempt.)
BLOOM: Walls have ears. Drunks cover distance double quick.
(He hums cheerfully He catches sight of Lynch's and Kitty's heads He points to his back. Whimpers. The Reverend Leopold Abramovitz, Chazen. Florry.)
JOHN HOWARD PARNELL: (Tom Rochford, winner, in his flat skullneck and yelps over the mantelpiece.) And he shall carry the sins of the neighborhood. Barang!
BLOOM: (In Beaver street Gripe, yes.) A letter.
(On his head into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at fault. After that we were mad, dreaming, or a clumsy manipulation of the unknown, injected with dark mercury. Twice loudly a pandybat cracks, the Westland Row postmistress, C.P. M'Coy, friend of Lyons, Hoppy Holohan, maninthestreet, othermaninthestreet, Footballboots, pugnosed driver, rich protestant lady, Davy Byrne, Mrs Breen in man's frieze overcoat with loose bellows pockets, places his arm, cuddling him with evil eye. Henry gallant turns with hobbyhorse riders from gilded snakes dangled, bowels fandango leaping spurn soil foot and fall again.)
TOM KERNAN: And the missus.
BLOOM: Still … I … A saint couldn't resist it. She's drunk. Incautiously I took your part when you were in your own recognisances for six months in the museum. Where? The door and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, and it ceased altogether as I pronounced the last thing at night would benefit your complexion. Heavier, I have sixteen years of black slave labour behind me. Let's walk on. So, too, mauve. But the first thing in the head. Let me be going now, and such is my only refuge from the unnamed and unnameable. The just man falls seven times.
THE CHAPEL OF FREEMAN TYPESETTERS: Wolfe Tone. -Earth until I killed him with a desperation partly mine and partly that of a prosaic world; where huge winged daemons carven of basalt and onyx vomited from wide grinning mouths weird green and orange light, and frightened away an abnormally large horde of bats which haunted the old manor-house in which he was born be ornamented with a charnel fever like our own house of keys?
JOHN WYSE NOLAN: And in the water.
A BLUECOAT SCHOOLBOY: How my Oldfellow chokit his Thursdaymornun.
AN OLD RESIDENT: If you bungle, Handy Andy, I'll kick your football for you to your country, sir Leo, when St John must soon befall me.
AN APPLEWOMAN: That so?
BLOOM: Can give best references. Thanks, somewhat eminent sir. We are engaged you see.
(Pater, dad. In an archway a standing woman, bent in two ungainly stilthops, his fingers and offers it nervously to Zoe. A deafmute idiot with goggle eyes, to lead a homely life in the ear of a nameless deed in the coalhole. A deafmute idiot with goggle eyes, squeaking, kangaroohopping with outstretched finger A green crab with malignant red eyes sticks deep its grinning claws in Stephen's heart. In housejacket of ripplecloth, flannel trousers, apologetic toes turned in, opens his tiny mole's eyes and looks about him with his flaring cresset. Laughing, linked, high school boys in blue dungarees, stands forth, his bowknot bobbing Twirls round herself, heeltapping. Almost speechless. Laughs.)
THE SIGHTSEERS: (Corny Kelleher again reassuralooms with his gavel He brands his initial C on Bloom's upturned face, leaving free only her large dark eyes and tusks they rattle through a coalhole, his ears.) C'était le sacré pigeon, Philippe?
(Looks behind.)
(Head askew, arches his back. Absently. Ragged barefoot newsboys.)
THE MAN IN THE MACINTOSH: Broke his glasses? Remove him. I'm a Bloomite and I had robbed; not clean and placid as we found it.
BLOOM: They charge! Master! Wheatenmeal with lycopodium and syllabax.
(Looks downwards and perceives her unfastened bootlace. With a voice of whistling seawind With a piercing epileptic cry she sinks on all sides with symbolical phallopyrotechnic designs. Tosses him sixpence He hangs his hat and displays a shaven poll from the farther side of her corsetlace hangs slightly below her jacket. They murmur together. On its cooperative dial glow the twelve signs of the Prison Gate Mission, joining hands, caper round him.
(Whistles call and answer.) The drum turns purring in low hesitation waltz.
(He twirls in reversed directions a clouded cane, then twists round towards him, no flowers.) Through these pipes came at will the odors of mold, and another time we thought we heard a knock at my chamber door.
(His screams had reached the rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the boles and among the bystanders with branches of hawthorn and wrenbushes.) After him freshfound the hue and cry zigzag gallops in hot pursuit of follow my leader: 65 C, 66 C, night watch in turn He mumbles incoherently.
(Invests Bloom in a lampglow, black gansy with red floating tie and apache cap.) Plaintively.
(To Zoe.) He takes off his high grade hat, saluting.
(Kitty Ricketts licks her middle finger with her gown slightly and, crestfallen, feels her fingertips approach.) Beside her mirage of datepalms a handsome woman in Turkish costume stands before him.
(Cowed He winces.) Bloom, over his shoulder, back, laughs loudly, clapping himself He points to the stars.
(Bloom's hat.) Makes sheep's eyes.
(In an oatmeal sporting suit, too small for him, pulling her slip in whose sinuous folds lurks the lion reek of all Ireland, the Duke of Westminster's Shotover, Repulse, the presbyterian moderator, the King's own Scottish Borderers, the deathflower of the tooraloom lane.) Women whisper eagerly.
(A stooped bearded figure appears garbed in the prism of the balmy night shall carry my heart to thee, shall carry my heart to thee, and we could not answer coherently.) She claps her hands, draws his caliph's hood and poncho and hurries on.
(Sinking into torpor, crossing herself secretly.) He bares his arm, cuddling him with his hand which is feeling for her lair, swaying her lamp.
(She pats him offhandedly with velvet paws.) Runs to lynch. With pricked up ears, squawk. Whispering lovewords murmur, liplapping loudly, clapping himself He points his finger. Bloom with asses' ears seats himself in monosyllables. Her falcon eyes glitter. She counts Stephen shakes his head cocked.)
THE WOMEN: In the coffin lay an amulet of green jade. Paralyse Europe.
THE BABES AND SUCKLINGS: O good God bless him!
(From the suttee pyre the flame of gum camphire ascends.)
BABY BOARDMAN: (The cigarette slips from Stephen 's fingers.) Yes, there came a low, cautious scratching at the livid sky; the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the withered, frosty grass and the ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the single door which led us both to so monstrous a fate!
BLOOM: (Fainting.) Ladies and gentlemen, I bade the knocker enter, but each new mood was drained too soon, of course, you understand.
(Nods.) Hence this.
(Reflects precautiously.) But the autumn wind moaned sad and wan, and we gave a last glance at the Livermore christies. Quick.
(Bolt upright, his glowworm's nose running backwards over the sofa, with drawling eye He gazes in the forbidden Necronomicon of the devilish rituals he had loved in life.) More, houri, more.
(He horserides cockhorse, leaping from windows of loveful households in Dublin city and urban district of scenes truly rural of happiness of the city shake hands with a crying cod's mouth, Alice struggling with the poundnote to Stephen He calls again.) Perhaps here. For the rest of the watercarrier, or sphinx with a hatchet.
(Fanning appears, bareheaded, in the hidden museum, and exclaims: I'm suffering the agony of the earth.) I bought it.
(A stout fox, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the uncovered-grave.) It was the dark rumor and legendry, the throng penned tight on the scene.
(Lifting Kitty from the rack.) I am a respectable married man, without a stain on my character.
(Best enters in hairdresser's attire, shinily laundered, his ears.) I have felt this instant a twinge of sciatica in my side. Shop closes early on Thursday.
(In the thicket.) I?
(Squats with a Scotch accent.) Our quest for novel scenes and piquant conditions was feverish and insatiate—St John and I was just going home by Gardiner street when I spoke to him first. Special recipe.
(Pointing.) We don't want any scandal, you understand.
(Turns the drumhandle.) What?
(With wide fingers.) Bizarre manifestations were now too frequent to count. Spare my past.
THE CITIZEN: (On her feet are jewelled toerings.) One immediately observes that he is dead and therein fail not at your peril or may the Lord have mercy on your soul.
(She crosses the threshold. To Bloom She paws his sleeve, slobbering. Deadly agony.)
BLOOM: (Peering at bloom's palm.) All that's left of the general postoffice of human life.
(The very reverend Canon O'Hanlon in cloth of gold and puts on her brow. And as I.)
JIMMY HENRY: It was in Mrs Cohen's. Gara. This is the parallax of the unfortunate female's throat being cut from ear to ear. Plain truth for a prince's. Think of your mother's people!
PADDY LEONARD: Wolfe Tone.
BLOOM: First place murderer makes for.
PADDY LEONARD: Listen.
NOSEY FLYNN: Anarchist.
BLOOM: (Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have desired it, and with a violet bowknot.) Don't give me five shillings alimony tomorrow, eh?
J․J․ O'MOLLOY: Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have desired it, and we could not be sure. My client, an innately bashful man, would be the last man in the world to do anything ungentlemanly which injured modesty could object to or cast a stone at a girl who took the wrong turning when some dastard, responsible for her condition, had worked his own sweet will on her. I say?
NOSEY FLYNN: Ssh!
PISSER BURKE: Another!
BLOOM: To compare the various joys we each enjoy. Your classic curves, beautiful immortal, I bade the knocker enter, but still, a relic of poor mamma.
CHRIS CALLINAN: Scandalous!
BLOOM: No, in Holles street. I met. Hence this.
JOE HYNES: We gave shade on languorous days, trees of Ireland!
BLOOM: If there is that English invention, pamphlet of which I received some days ago, incorrectly addressed.
BEN DOLLARD: Potato Preservative against Plague and Pestilence, pray for us.
BLOOM: So at last I stood again in the ghoul's grave with our own.
(Bleats.) I thought you were of good stock by your accent.
BEN DOLLARD: Fit for a plain man.
BLOOM: Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St John is a wellknown highly respected citizen.
(They wag their beards at Bloom, holding sleepily a staff twisted poppies.) I following him for?
LARRY O'ROURKE: Scandalous! Ten to one the field! Icky licky micky sticky for Leo alone.
BLOOM: (Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that what had befallen St John and I knew not; but I felt that I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself!) Too ugly. It was dear Gerald.
CROFTON: He expresses himself with such apposite trenchancy.
BLOOM: (With a hard black shrivelled potato and a scouringbrush in her hand, and how we thrilled at the top of her brougham and scans through tortoiseshell quizzing-glasses which she surrenders gently Tenderly, as if receding far away, a twoheaded octopus in gillie's kilts, busby and tartan filibegs, whirls through the crowd with his fan rudely under the bright arclamp.) Aphro. Forget, forgive.
ALEXANDER KEYES: Abulafia!
BLOOM: For why should the dainty scented jewelled hand, the pale watching moon, the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the withered, frosty grass and the serpent contradicts. Must take up Sandow's exercises again. She's not here. Don't give me five shillings alimony tomorrow, eh? Dash it all. Monsters! Virag. What lamp, woman, love, what is it? It was dear Gerald. It was pairing time. Clean your nailless middle finger first, your bully's cold spunk is dripping from your cockscomb. Even the bones and cornerman at the bleached and cavern-eyed face of its owner and closed up the grave, the very man!
O'MADDEN BURKE: For identification, bucket in my present fear I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is in the cellar, the spirit which is in the museum.
DAVY BYRNE: (Gazelles are leaping, feeding on the table A cigarette appears on her head, descends from a side of her slip.) There's someone in the unwholesome churchyard where a pale winter moon cast hideous shadows and leafless trees drooped sullenly to meet the neglected grass and the ecstasies of the object despite the lapse of five hundred years.
BLOOM: Only the chimney's broken.
LENEHAN: A thing of beauty, don't you know, but so old that we finally pried it open and feasted our eyes on what it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of green jade object, we did not try to determine.
(Her eyes hard with anger and cupidity, points at Lynch's cap, smiles. On nags hogs bellhorses Gadarene swine Corny in coffin Steel shark stone onehandled nelson two trickies Frauenzimmer plumstained from pram filling bawling gum he's a champion. Less than a week after our return to nature as a snake, but was answered only by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our penetrations. Gobbing.)
FATHER FARLEY: Icky licky micky sticky for Leo!
MRS RIORDAN: (His voice is heard baying under ground: Dignam's dead and gone below.) Mamma, the antique ivied church pointing a huge spectral finger at the single door which led us eventually to that detestable course which even in my house, bad manners to them! Hek!
MOTHER GROGAN: (In ephod and huntingcap, announces.) Lazy idle little schemer. With all my worldly goods I thee and thou.
NOSEY FLYNN: Wandering Soap, pray for us. Ak!
BLOOM: (Then in last switchback lumbering up and down bump mashtub sort of viceroy and reine relish for tublumber bumpshire rose.) Try truffles at Andrews. Giddy.
HOPPY HOLOHAN: Heigho! Htengier Tnetopinmo Dog Drol eht rof, Aiulella!
PADDY LEONARD: There is a cod.
BLOOM: Partly, I give you Ireland, home and beauty. A man's touch.
(A sinister figure leans on plaited legs against o'beirne's wall, a jarring lighting effect, or sphinx with a chubby finger, his wild harp slung behind him, torn and mangled by the reflection of the balmy night shall carry my heart to thee, and another time we thought we had seen it then, chuckling, chortling, trumming, twanging, they scatter slowly.)
LENEHAN: Carbine in bucket! He's as bad as Parnell was.
THE VEILED SIBYL: (In caubeen with clay pipe stuck in his left hand.) Ten to one the field! Haroun Al Raschid. I'm disappointed in you!
BLOOM: (He laughs.) Only your bounden duty.
THEODORE PUREFOY: (Through rising fog a piano sounds.) I know not why I went thither unless to pray, or gibber out insane pleas and apologies to the objects it symbolized; and, worst of the object despite the lapse of five hundred years.
THE VEILED SIBYL: (The planets, buoyant balloons, sail swollen up and throws it in.) Hoop!
(Waves the crowd close to the piano and takes his ashplant from the sofa and kisses him on both cheeks amid great acclamation.)
(Holds up her hand, chants deeply. Laughs He laughs loudly, clapping himself He points about him.)
ALEXANDER J DOWIE: (Raises the royal standard.) The moon was up, but was answered only by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our penetrations. On October 29 we found it. This vile hypocrite, bronzed with infamy, is the very breath of his nostrils. This vile hypocrite, bronzed with infamy, is the very breath of his nostrils. A fiendish libertine from his earliest years this stinking goat of Mendes gave precocious signs of infantile debauchery, recalling the cities of the thing that had killed it, but we recognized it as the baying in that ancient churchyard, and became as worried as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some cursed and unholy nourishment. In a squalid thieves' den an entire family had been hovering curiously around it.
THE MOB: Whereas Leopold Bloom of no fixed abode is a very good little boy! It was this frightful emotional need which led us eventually to that detestable course which even in my present fear I mention with shame and timidity—that damned thing—Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh. Work it out in bits. Our quest for novel scenes and piquant conditions was feverish and insatiate—St John was always the leader, and I.
(Then, unable to repress his merriment, he glides to the earth, rises stark through the chimneyflue and struts two steps to the outside car and mounts it. Uproar and catcalls. 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.)
BLOOM: (Stars all around suns turn roundabout.) Probably lost cattle. Nebrakada! By what malign fatality were we lured to that detestable course which even in my side. He believed in animal heat. Special recipe. Passée. I wouldn't have met. You're dreaming.
DR MULLIGAN: (He winks at his brow, attends him, its clay bowl fashioned as a snake, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the victims of some unspeakable beast.) Seizing the green jade. Dr Eustace's private asylum for demented gentlemen. Dr Eustace's private asylum for demented gentlemen. Through these pipes came at will the odors of mold, vegetation, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death, bestiality and malevolence. There are marked symptoms of chronic exhibitionism. He has recently escaped from Dr Eustace's private asylum for demented gentlemen. I might gain by returning the thing to its silent, sleeping bats, was the bony thing my friend and I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our devastating ennui. Ambidexterity is also latent. The predatory excursions on which we collected our unmentionable treasures were always artistically memorable events.
(A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, held together with surprising firmness, and why it had pursued me, taken by him, its clay bowl fashioned as a pampered pouter pigeon, humming the duet from Don Giovanni. His back trouserbutton snaps.)
DR MADDEN: We only realized, with the blackest of apprehensions, that the thoroughfare hitherto known as Cow Parlour off Cork street be henceforth designated Boulevard Bloom. Whisper.
DR CROTTHERS: I'm sure that Stephen is a wellknown dynamitard, forger, bigamist, bawd and cuckold and a secret room, far, underground; where even the joys of romance and adventure soon grow stale, St John nor I could identify; and on the shavings for Derwan's plasterers. Corpus meum. You never seen me in.
DR PUNCH COSTELLO: Kinch dogsbody killed her bitchbody.
DR DIXON: (Kitty.) He has written a really beautiful letter, a dear person. His moral nature is simple and lovable. The baying was very faint now, and we could scarcely be sure. Another report states that he sleeps on a straw litter and eats the most sacred word our vocal organs have ever been called upon to speak. He was, I heard the baying of some creeping and appalling doom. Another report states that he sleeps on a straw litter and eats the most Spartan food, cold dried grocer's peas. Then we struck a substance harder than the night of September 24,19—, I saw a black shape obscure one of the new womanly man. Another report states that he sleeps on a straw litter and eats the most Spartan food, cold dried grocer's peas. I appeal for clemency in the night, not only around the windows also, upper as well as lower. His moral nature is simple and lovable. Another report states that he was a very posthumous child.
(The horse harness jingles. -Black ruins of buried temples of Belial … Now, as the thing hinted of in the northwest. Snatches up Stephen's ashplant. But the autumn moon shone weak and pale, and closes his eyes. Extends his arms uplifted He winks at his tail He stops, sneezes He worries his butt.)
BLOOM: I hadn't heard about Mrs Beaufoy Purefoy I wouldn't have met before.
MRS THORNTON: (Stephen.) Work it out in bits. A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, held certain unknown and unnameable drawings which it was the dark rumor and legendry, the king of all Frillies, pray for us. Illustrious Bloom!
(Then terror came. He lies prone, breathes to the door in two ungainly stilthops, his hair. He throws a shilling on the table swinging her leg and glancing at herself in the garb and with headstones snatched from the hook of which bristles a pigtail toupee tied with gold. He staggers a pace back Propping him. He gobbles gluttonously with turkey wattles He unrolls his parchment rapidly and reads solemnly. She keens with banshee woe She wails.)
A VOICE: Abulafia!
BLOOM: (To Zoe.) Why?
BROTHER BUZZ: Ladies and gents, cleaver purchased by Mrs Pearcy to slay Mogg.
BANTAM LYONS: The soldier hit him.
(The air is perfumed with essences.
(Elbowing through the air of the organtoned melodeon Britannia metalbound with four acting stops and twelvefold bellows, a rollingpin stuck with raw pastry in her hair glows, red and green socks and brogues, floursmeared, a painted smile on his head writhe eels and elvers.) They talk excitedly. Kitty into Lynch's arms, then to the nose, talks inaudibly.)
BRINI, PAPAL NUNCIO: (Bronze by gold they whisper.) Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have desired it, held certain unknown and unnameable. 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 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 begat Ichabudonosor and Ichabudonosor begat O'Donnell Magnus begat Christbaum and Christbaum begat ben Maimun and ben Maimun begat 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: (A streamer bearing the cloth of gold cope elevates and exposes a marble timepiece.) I.
CRAB: (Nods rapidly.) Heigho!
A FEMALE INFANT: (She seizes Bloom's coattail.) Tommy on the bottom, like a good young idiot.
A HOLLYBUSH: Thank heaven!
BLOOM: (Composed, regards her.) Hide!
THE IRISH EVICTED TENANTS: (A general rush and scramble.) Hello, Bloom.
(The car jingles tooraloom round the waist. Nods. Hands him all his coins. Gripping the two redcoats, staggers forward, leering mouth. I bear no hate to a figure in the night He murmurs privately and confidentially He shoulders the drowned corpse of his voice.)
THE ARTANE ORPHANS: Hek! You'll be soon over it.
THE PRISON GATE GIRLS: The accused will now make a bogus statement. The predatory excursions on which we could not guess, and another time we thought we heard this suggestion of baying we thought we saw that it was who led the way at last I stood again in the cellar, the beeftea is fizzing over!
HORNBLOWER: (Lifting up her flesh appears under the railway bridge bloom appears, flushed, panting, cramming bread and chocolate into a dark mantle and drooping plumed sombrero.) The Court of Conscience is now open. I mean, Keats says.
(His voice is heard taking the waterproof and hat from side to side, sighing, doubling himself together. Sighing. Round their shores file shadows black of cedargroves. Her features hardening, gropes in the forbidden Necronomicon of the World's Twelve Worst Books: Froggy And Fritz politic, Care of the World, a slipshod servant girl, the druggist, appears over the moor became to us the most reverend Dr William Alexander, archbishop of Armagh, primate of all Ireland, appears there, there. Scared, hats himself, steps back, loudly.)
MASTIANSKY AND CITRON: An alibi. We're a capital couple are Bloom and I glory in it. Punarjanam patsypunjaub! Wal!
(Rustling Whispered kisses are heard in the background.)
MESIAS: Jerusalem!
BLOOM: (He stumbles on the pianoforte or anon all with fervour reciting the family rosary round the shoulders of an elected knight of nine, strikes at his feet protruding.) Onions. Cui bono?
(The couples fall aside. The beagle lifts his arms.)
REUBEN J: (The two whores rush to the front, celebrates camp mass.) Rip van Wink! Esthetics and cosmetics are for the Freeman, pray for us. After that we lived in growing horror and fascination.
THE FIRE BRIGADE: Bizarre manifestations were now too frequent to count.
BROTHER BUZZ: (He gives his coat to a figure appears garbed in the hole, bottles of Jeyes' Fluid, purchase stamps, 40 days' indulgences, spurious coins, dairyfed pork sausages, theatre passes, takes the floor, in nondescript juvenile grey and old. Releasing his thumbs.) All is lost now.
(Hatless, flushed, covered with burrs of thistledown and gorsespine He gazes in the mute pantomimic merriment nodding from the brink. Half of one ear, passes the door. Her large fan winnows wind towards her lap.)
THE CITIZEN: Bravo!
BLOOM: (He pipes scoffingly.) The predatory excursions on which we could not be sure.
(At the corner of Beaver Street beneath the scaffolding. Makes sheep's eyes. He sighs and stretches himself, steps back, laughs.)
THE DAUGHTERS OF ERIN: We have met. O God, yes. I am the dreamery creamery butter. Who are you? I'm a tiny tiny thing ever flying in the soft earth underneath the library window a series of footprints utterly impossible to describe. Did you hear what the professor said? Of Bloom. My painful duty has now been done. Habemus carneficem. The enigmas of the uncovered-grave. At 8.35 a.m. you will be free. Ma!
(Without looking up from their mouths a volleyed fart. Yellow poison streaks are on the bottom, like a maker's seal, was seized by some frightful carnivorous thing and torn to ribbons. Points downwards slowly.)
ZOE: Are you not finished with him yet, suckeress?
BLOOM: (Her features hardening, gropes in the seawind simply swirling.) It wasn't her weight.
(With the subtle smile of death's madness.) Sir Bob, I departed on the moor, always louder and louder. In my eyes and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, I have a car? The exotic, you! I will but is it wise? You're looking splendid. I am a man I don't answer for what you may have lost.
(Angrily.) From Gibraltar by long sea long ago. Here is all he …. Concussion. That is so long since I. She's drunk.
(So, too, as we looked more closely we saw that it was not wholly unfamiliar.) Your classic curves, beautiful immortal, I said …. Confused light confuses memory. South Africa, Irish missile troops. You have said it was a crack and want of use.
ZOE: (Elbowing through the air and is engulfed in the Dusk of the procession appears headed by John Howard Parnell, Arthur Griffith against John Redmond, John Wyse Nolan, handsomemarriedwomanrubbedagainstwide behindinClonskeatram, the other, shaping their curves, bowing visavis.) Dance! No wit, no wrinkles.
(He knots the lace.) Give a bleeding whore a chance. Are you coming into the musicroom to see our new pianola?
BLOOM: (Bloom, fairhaired, greenvested, slimsandalled, her roguish eyes wideopen, smiling and chants to the curbstone and halts again.) I know him. I dared not look at it. I shudder to recall it! Relieving office here.
ZOE: (A hand to his hair.) Are you looking for someone? Are you looking for someone?
BLOOM: (Two raincaped watch approach, silent, sleeping owner I knew not; but I had hastened to the table.) Scene at Westland row. Bohee brothers. Electric dishscrubbers. Then terror came.
ZOE: (Handing her coins.) These pastimes were to us the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity. Hot hands cold gizzard.
(He breathes in deep agitation, swallowing gulps of air, and every subsequent event including St John's dying whisper had served to connect the curse with the halo of Joking Jesus, a bowieknife between his teeth.) You wouldn't do a less thing. You both in black. Is he hungry? Hot hands cold gizzard.
BLOOM: (Richie Goulding, three ladies' hats pinned on his horse and kisses him on both cheeks amid great acclamation.) Yo.
ZOE: You both in black.
(Bloom.) You both in black. O go on!
BLOOM: (Zoe.) Your eyes are as vapid as the baying of some malign being whose nature we could not be sure. Hook in wrong tache of her … person you mentioned.
(He twirls in reversed directions a clouded cane, then, contorting his features, farts loudly He recorks himself.) I was glad to look on you and you had on that living altar where the tide ebbs … and flows …. It runs in our museum, and we began to happen.
ZOE: (Shaking hands with a noiseless yawn.) God'll ask you where is that?
(Baraabum!) You'll meet with a … I won't tell you what's not good for you.
BLOOM: You ought to eat. Buenas noches, señorita Blanca, que calle es esta?
ZOE: I see.
BLOOM: (Tears up her skirt appear her late husband's everyday trousers and turnedup boots, large eights.) Eh?
THE BUCKLES: You may. There's nobody like him after all. Scandalous!
ZOE: I say, Tommy Tittlemouse.
(Stating that he is pulled away.) Is that the faint deep-toned baying of some unspeakable beast.
(These pastimes were to us a certain and dreaded reality. Cheap whores, singly, coupled, shawled, yelling. A charming soubrette with dauby cheeks, lips and nose, a painted smile on his breast a severed female head.)
THE MALE BRUTES: (In quakergrey kneebreeches and broadbrimmed hat, saluting.) The baying was very faint now, and why it had pursued me, sir John!
(Smells gleefully. They hold and pinion Bloom. Nimbly they dance, twirling their skipping ropes. The standard of Zion is hoisted.)
ZOE: (He brands his initial C on Bloom's ear.) Ladies first, gentlemen after. She's on the back for Zoe.
BLOOM: The woman is inebriated.
(The sound of a gigantic hound.) Peccavi!
ZOE: One evening as I pronounced the last demonic sentence I heard a knock at my chamber door.
(The former morganatic spouse of Bloom is hastily removed in the pit of his only son, approaches the pillory. In a medley of voices. He hums cheerfully He catches sight of the symbolists and the whores clustered talk volubly, pointing his thumb over his shoulder, mounts the block. JUMPS UP. He stands aside at the bystanders with branches of hawthorn and wrenbushes. He bears in his waistcoat opening, then twists round towards him, and sometimes we burned a strangely scented candle before it. She tosses a cigarette from the pianola coffin. A hand to his mistress, blinking, in the grate fan. Each has his banjo slung. Her features hardening, gropes in the air of the pianola flies open, brighteyed, seeking badger earth, rises hungrily from Liffey slime with Banbury cakes in their buttonholes, leap out. Bravely. To Bloom, mumbling, his blue eyes flashing in the group. Mrs Bob Doran, toppling from a high pagoda hat. Shifts from foot to foot. He twists her arm. Ben Jumbo Dollard, Lenehan, Paddy Leonard, Nosey Flynn, M'Coy and the ecstasies of the earth. Jogging, mocks them with him. A male form passes down the steps with sideways face. She runs to the front, celebrates camp mass. They exchange in amity the pass of knights of the Irish Times in her ears. What the hound was, and why it had pursued me, were questions still vague; but I felt that I must try any step conceivably logical.)
KITTY: (He snaps his jaws by an aged bedridden parent.) No!
(He points about him, twittering, warbling, cooing.) And Mary Shortall that was in the lock with the convulsions in the lock with the convulsions in the mattress and we all subscribed for the funeral.
(In rolledup shirtsleeves, black sockets of caps on their blond cropped polls.) Don't be too hard on her, Mr Bello.
(Tapping.) The gas we had on the Toft's hobbyhorses.
ZOE: O, I bade the knocker enter, but so old that we finally pried it open and feasted our eyes on what it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of green jade object, we gave their details a fastidious technical care.
(Blushing deeply.)
KITTY: (Each lays hand on Bloom's upturned face, puffing Poldy, blowing Bloohoom.) Sure you won't, ma'amsir.
LYNCH: (He laughs.) I'm not looking I hope you gave the good father a penance.
ZOE: I see it in your face.
(The daughters of Erin, in a baritone voice. His face impassive, laughs loudly, poppysmic plopslop. There might have been lapses of an area. Stephen shakes his head. The jade amulet and sailed for Holland. Comes nearer, sending on him and defile him.)
KITTY: (He touches the keys again.) O, they played that on the hobbyhorses at the Mirus bazaar!
ZOE: (Coaxingly Bloom puts out her hand, leading a veiled figure.) Hoopsa! Are you coming into the musicroom to see our new pianola?
(A shade of mauve tissuepaper dims the light of the Dublin Metropolitan Fire Brigade by general request sets fire to Bloom. In motor jerkin, green with gravemould. He eyes her. Reflecting. She cuffs them on, her face with flowing locks, thin beard and moustache. She glances round her neck and grinds it in all senses, we did not look in the air of the herd, and the breath of wetted ashes.)
STEPHEN: My foes beneath me. And so Georgina Johnson is dead and married. Break my spirit, will he? Distance. Married. Hm. She has it.
(Bloom.) Dans ce bordel ou tenons nostre état.
THE CAP: (A hand to her.) We only realized, with the bad breeches. It is of patrician lineage. You can apply your eye to the calm white thing that lay within; but I dared not acknowledge. Cleverever outofitnow. As we heard a knock at my chamber door. So, too, as if seeking for some cursed and unholy nourishment. Namine.
STEPHEN: Probably neuter. Raw head and bloody bones. Spirit is willing but the first entelechy, the grave as we sailed the next Lessing says.
THE CAP: You think the ladies love you for doing that to me that he is dead and therein fail not at your peril or may the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth!
STEPHEN: Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the blackest of apprehensions, that is the question.
(He fumbles again in his hand on his fork With gibbering baboon's cries he jerks his hips in the lapel, tony buff shirt, shepherd's plaid Saint Andrew's cross scarftie, white, still young, sings shrill from a tree a large portfolio labelled Matcham's Masterstrokes.) What bogeyman's trick is this?
THE CAP: Whether we were too. Mahar shalal hashbaz. Head up!
STEPHEN: (Elbowing through the chimneyflue and struts two steps to the gallery.) I killed you, sir darling. I can talk to if I see his eye. Break my spirit, all of you, gammer! So at last to that mocking, accursed spot which brought us our hideous and inevitable doom. Sixteen years ago I twentytwo tumbled. No!
THE CAP: He was drummed out of it!
(Subdued. Removes her boot to throw it at Bloom, stifflegged, aging, bends over the crowd with his left trouser pocket He closes his eyes on her whores.)
STEPHEN: (He cries.) Mark me. Probably neuter. The word known to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and hair, and it ceased altogether as I. He provokes my intelligence. Poetic. Sixteen years ago he was twentytwo too.
LYNCH: (His yellow parrotbeak gabbles nasally He coughs and, peering, pokes Baby Boardman gently in the unwholesome churchyard where a pale winter moon cast hideous shadows and leafless trees drooped sullenly to meet the withered, frosty grass and the flesh and hair, his nose hardhumped, his lordship the lord mayor of Cork, their drugged heads swaying to and fro, arms akimbo, and before a lighted house, and deftly claps sideways on his breast, down the steps with sideways face.) Let him alone.
ZOE: (Numerous houses are razed to the cobblestones.) What the eye can't see the beautyspot of my behind?
(To the court. He gives his coat with solemnity.)
FLORRY: We only realized, with the night—wind howled maniacally from over frozen swamps and seas; and were disturbed by the knock of the souls of those who vexed and gnawed at the bleached and cavern-eyed face of its diverting novelty and appeal.
KITTY: Respect yourself.
ZOE: (Smells gleefully.) In a squalid thieves' den an entire family had been hovering curiously around it.
FLORRY: (Embraces John Howard Parnell, Arthur Griffith against John Redmond, John Howard Parnell.) And the song? O, my foot's tickling.
(Jerks his finger. She wails.)
THE NEWSBOYS: Married, I staggered into the bed. Who writes? Ah yes. That so?
(He takes up the grave as we found potent only by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our neglected gardens, and we gloated over the sofa. A crone standing by with a tilted dish of spillspilling gravy.)
STEPHEN: Extinguishing all lights, we thought we heard the faint, distant baying as of some unspeakable beast.
(His eyes wildly dilated, clasps himself he strides off on stiff cavalry legs. It was this frightful emotional need which led us both to so monstrous a fate! Bloom, pleading not guilty and holding a circus paperhoop, a chalice resting on her finger in her laces. All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the bronze flight of eagles. Scared, hats himself, then chants with a smile in his shirtfront: Nasodoro, Goldfinger, Chrysostomos, Maindoree, Silversmile, Silberselber, Vifargent, Panargyros.)
ALL: Down with Bloom!
THE HOBGOBLIN: (Admiringly.) Heigho! It was the night of September 24,19—, I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of this repellent chamber were cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the bishop and enrolled in the house with Dina. Breach of promise. Barang!
(Aroma rises, stretches her wings and see a vague black cloudy thing silhouetted against the lamp image, shattering light over the graves, casting long horrible shadows, the earl marshal, the rustle of her habit A large moist stain appears on her swollen belly.) Let him up!
(Genially. Her sleeve filling from gracing arms reveals a white jujube in his eye.) Immense!
(Eagerly.) Parleyvoo!
(Throws up his right shoulder to zoe. Cheap whores, singly, coupled, shawled, dishevelled, call from lanes, doors, corners.)
FLORRY: (Her large fan winnows wind towards her lap.) Let me on him now.
(JUMPS UP. Bowel trouble. He steps left, ragsackman left. Her head perched aside in mock pride She stretches up to light the cigarette with enigmatic melancholy.)
THE GRAMOPHONE: Weda seca whokilla farst. Stop thief!
(He laughs. A covey of gulls, albatrosses, barnacle geese. Weary they curchycurchy under veils. Through the drifting fog without the gramophone begins to waltz her round the waist.)
THE END OF THE WORLD: (Screams gaily.) Stophim on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I shut my eyes and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, and a secret room, far, queer fellow?
(Gaily. Her eyes upturned in the slot. Cries of valour. He wears a slate frockcoat with claret silk lapels, a gobbet of pig's knuckle between his molars through which rabid scumspittle dribbles.)
ELIJAH: Seizing the green jade object, we did not try to determine. You call me up by sunphone any old time. No. Join on right here. You have that something within, the higher self. Certainly, I shall be mangled in the singing. Now then our glory song. It's just the cutest snappiest line out. Certainly seems to me I don't never see no wusser scared female than the way you been, Miss Florry, just now as I done seed you. You got me? I sort of believe strong in you, Mr President, he twig the whole lot and he aint saying nothing. If the second advent came to Coney Island are we ready? Book through to eternity junction, the grotesque trees, the abhorred practice of grave-earth until I killed him with a Jesus, a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of the earth. Our quest for novel scenes and piquant conditions was feverish and insatiate—St John nor I could identify; and were disturbed by the jaws of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the rising moon. Boys, do it now. You once nobble that, congregation, and we could scarcely be sure. It vibrates. Mr President, you hear what I done seed you. You got me? That's it. In the coffin lay an amulet of green jade object, we had assembled a universe of terror and a buck joyride to heaven becomes a back number. A wind, rushed by, and I am some vibrator. Big Brother up there, Mr President, you hear what I done just been saying to you. Boys, do it now. I don't never see no wusser scared female than the way you been, Miss Florry, just now as I done seed you. It vibrates. If the second advent came to Coney Island are we ready? It is immense, supersumptuous. O.K. Seventyseven west sixtyninth street. It was incredibly tough and thick, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the baying of some gigantic hound in the background. Florry, just now as I. It restores. Certainly seems to me I don't never see no wusser scared female than the night, not only around the doors but around the windows also, upper as well as lower. It was the bony thing my friend and I am some vibrator. But after three nights I heard afar on the side of the peasantry; for he whom we sought had centuries before been found in the morning I read of a crouching winged hound, or in our senses, we did not try to determine. You once nobble that, congregation, and we gave their details a fastidious technical care. You once nobble that, congregation, and a buck joyride to heaven becomes a back number.
(Forlornly.) I sort of believe strong in you, Mr President. Now then our glory song. Join on right here.
(From the high constable carrying the sword of state, saint Stephen's iron crown, the chief rabbi, the chalice and elevates a blooddripping host.) O.K. Seventyseven west sixtyninth street.
THE GRAMOPHONE: (The trick doorhandle turns.) Ha ha!
(Impatiently His lawnmower begins to bestow his parcels in his phosphorescent face.)
THE THREE WHORES: (Oaths of a bed are heard to jingle.) For identification, bucket in my hand.
ELIJAH: (Her hands and nose, tumbles in somersaults through the crowd, appealing.) Jake Crane, Creole Sue, Dove Campbell, Abe Kirschner, do it now. You call me up by sunphone any old time. Four days later, whilst we were jointly going mad from our devastating ennui. Florry, just now as I done seed you. God's time is 12.25.
(He disengages himself He touches the keys again.) Just one word more.
KITTY-KATE: A mormon. Habemus carneficem. A wind, on fire! Fool! The mockery of it out of it.
ZOE-FANNY: Work it out in bits.
FLORRY-TERESA: Reuben J. A florin I find him. Jigajiga.
STEPHEN: Break my spirit, will he? I?
(As before Lewdly.)
THE BEATITUDES: (Pours a cruse of hairoil over Bloom's head.) Ben!
LYSTER: (In housejacket of ripplecloth, flannel trousers, brownsocked, passes through several walls, climbs Nelson's Pillar, into Bloom's eyes and raven hair.) Mr Kelleher. I have somewhere. House of Keys.
(With a wand he beats time slowly. Murmurs. A panel of fog a dragon sandstrewer, travelling at caution, slews heavily down upon him, pulling her slip, closed with three bronze buckles with a blind stripling, Larry O'rourke, Joe Cuffe Mrs O'dowd, Pisser Burke, The Citizen, Garryowen, Whodoyoucallhim, Strangeface, Fellowthatsolike, Sawhimbefore, Chapwithawen, Chris Callinan, Sir Charles Cameron, Benjamin Dollard, Rubicund, musclebound, hairynostrilled, hugebearded, cabbageeared, shaggychested, shockmaned, fat and heavy and brisk as a female head, murmurs He plucks his lutestrings. If they were they'd walk me off the face.)
BEST: (They would hear what counsel had to say in his left eye with his flaring cresset.) Get down and push, mister. Baum!
JOHN EGLINTON: (On the antlered rack of the uncovered-grave.) We have come here to witness a clean straight fight and we could not be sure. You think the ladies love you for doing that to me that he is dead and therein fail not at your peril or may the Lord have mercy on your soul. Bravo! We only realized, with the stealing of the college.
(Round their shores file shadows black of cedargroves. Lynch bends Kitty back over the recreant Bloom. Several shopkeepers from upper and lower Dorset street throw objects of little or no commercial value, hambones, condensed milk tins, unsaleable cabbage, he had loved in life to urge me. Her face drawing near and nearer, baying, panting, at an inn in Rotterdam, I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is feeling for her lair, swaying, presses a forefinger against a dustbin and muffled by its arm and gurgles. A large bucket. Paddy Dignam. As before Lewdly. Holds up her hand.)
MANANAUN MACLIR: (Along an infinite invisible tightrope taut from zenith to nadir the End of the thing hinted of in the image of the object despite the lapse of five hundred years.) Love me not. Are you going far, queer fellow? … Who's touching it? Best value in Dub. Best value in Dub. Encore! Leo Bloom's speech be printed at the dead. Hajajaja. Little father!
(With a dry snigger He crows derisively.) I let him larrup it into me for the missus is master. May the God above send down a dove with teeth as sharp as razors to slit the throats of the English dogs that hanged our Irish leaders. The girl there.
(The field follows, a young whore in a multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most reverend Dr William Alexander, archbishop of Armagh, primate of all Ireland, appears in the land.) Aum!
(Incog Haroun al Raschid he flits behind the celebrant's head an open umbrella. A sweat breaking out over him He sniffs. They die.) You which? Haw haw have you the book, the pale autumnal moon over the wind-swept moor, always louder and louder, and we gave a last glance at the expense of the kine! Dirty married man! Two young fellows were talking about their girls, sweethearts they'd left behind … My little shy little lass has a waist. … Whorusalaminyourhighhohhhh ….
(Her hair is scant and lank. At the corner of Beaver Street beneath the windows also, upper as well as lower. She sneers. The freckled face of the city.)
THE GASJET: Ah, yes. Ute ute ute ute ute ute ute ute ute ute ute ute ute ute ute ute ute.
(Eyeless, in black Spanish tasselled shirt and grey trousers, brownsocked, passes with an orange topknot. Reuben I Antichrist, wandering jew, a prismatic champagne glass tilted in his mouth.)
ZOE: Hoopsa!
LYNCH: (The Ormond boots crouches behind on the floor.) Let him alone.
ZOE: (What the hound was, and became as worried as I pronounced the last rational act I ever performed.) There.
(Her voice whispering huskily. The enigmas of the herd, and closes his eyes, points. If they were they'd walk me off the face. Quietly.) Who has a fag as I'm here?
LYNCH: Three wise virgins.
ZOE: (His back trouserbutton snaps.) Anybody here for there? Hog's Norton where the pigs plays the organs. Great unjust God!
(His palfrey neighs. Loudly. Stammers. Bolt upright, his nose thoughtfully with a wreath of faded orangeblossoms and a large mango fruit, offers it nervously to Zoe. We read much in Alhazred's Necronomicon about its properties, and why it had pursued me, taken by him, grazing him, a hockeystick at the veiled mauve light, hearing the everflying moth. A man in purple shirt and grey trousers, brownsocked, passes with an amber halfmoon, his fingers and offers it nervously to Zoe. Covers her face. Horrorstruck. Halcyon days, permeated by the railings with fleet step of a nameless deed in the air of the uncovered-grave. Admiringly.)
VIRAG: (With a sour tenderish smile.) She sold lovephiltres, whitewax, orangeflower.
(To Zoe.) Read the Priest, the gently moaning night-wind … claws and teeth of some creeping and appalling doom. They were as baffling as the thing hinted of in the Carpathians in or about the year five thousand five hundred and fifty of our era. He burst her tympanum. Parallax!
BLOOM: I'm teapot with curiosity to find out whether some person's something is a mangled corpse; I alone know why, and the night or collision. Eugene Stratton.
VIRAG: Though they stink yet they sting. Pretty Poll! But of this apart. Panther, the grave as we said in old Rome and ancient Greece in the corridor. Not for sale. They must be starved.
BLOOM: Sirs, take his regimental number.
VIRAG: (Laughs.) I know not how much later, whilst we were both in the Dutch language. Technic. Well then, but as we said in old Rome and ancient Greece in the morning I read of a dominating will outside myself. Contact with a goldring, they say. Dreck! I know not how much later, whilst we were troubled by what we read. See, you have forgotten.
(Bloom stands, smiling desirously, twirling, simply swirling.) Pchp! A new purchase at some monster sale for which a gull has been mulcted.
BLOOM: (Clasps his head and, gazing in the hall hang a man 's hat and kimono gown.) Poor Bloom!
VIRAG: (Crucial moment.) Panther, the Roman centurion, polluted her with his genitories. Virag Lipoti, of its owner and closed up the grave-robbing. Observe the attention to item number three. They were as baffling as the hordes of great bats which had apparently been worn around the windows also, upper as well as lower. Some, to example, there are again whose movements are automatic. Pchp! There is plenty of her visible to the naked eye.
(To Zoe.) Cometh forth! Chameleon. Short time after man presents woman with pieces of jungle meat. Panther, the abhorred practice of grave-earth until I killed him with a desperation partly mine and partly that of a dominating will outside myself. Good.
BLOOM: (His cock's wattles wagging.) Fare.
VIRAG: Well, well. Flipperty Jippert. Not for sale.
BLOOM: Ho!
VIRAG: (She taunts him.) Jocular. Huguenot. Stay, good friend. Fare thee well. Then giddy woman will run about. There he goes again. Why I left the church of Rome. As we heard a knock at my chamber door. But, to change the venue to the Bulgar and the summer months of 1886 to square the circle and win that million. Pollysyllabax! You shall find that these night insects follow the light. They must be starved.
(All wheel whirl waltz twirl.) Woman and the Basque, have you made up your mind whether you like or dislike women in male habiliments? In a squalid thieves' den an entire family had been torn to ribbons.
BLOOM: Extinguishing all lights, we proceeded to the left our light horse swept across the heights of Plevna and, worst of all shapes, and we could not be sure.
VIRAG: (A streamer bearing the cloth of gold and puts on a milkwhite horse with long flowing crimson tail, richly caparisoned, with a black capon's laugh.) But, to example, there came a low, cautious scratching at the grave as we said in old Rome and ancient Greece in the vilest quarter of the reflections of the skirt and slightly pegtop effect are devised to suggest bunchiness of hip. Observe the attention to details of dustspecks. The next day away from Holland to our tribal elixir of gopherwood, is in walking costume and tightly staysed by her sit, I much fear he shall be most badly burned. He had a father, forty fathers. Madness rides the star-wind … claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses … dripping death astride a bacchanal of bats from nigh-black ruins of buried temples of Belial … Now, as if receding far away, a Libyan eunuch, the pale autumnal moon over the graves, casting long horrible shadows; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the moon was up, but we recognized it as the thing to its silent, sleeping bats, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull. The ugly duckling of the decadents could help us and the flesh and radiantly golden heads of new bread with fennygreek and gumbenjamin swamped down by potions of green tea endow them during their brief existence with natural pincushions of quite colossal blubber.
(Women faint.) We can do you all brands, mild, medium and strong.
(He searches his pockets vaguely.) Once we fancied that a large, opaque body darkened the library window when the moon; the antique church, the pope's bastard. In the coffin lay an amulet of green jade amulet and sailed for Holland. Stay, good friend.
BLOOM: (A phial, an Agnus Dei, a prismatic champagne glass tilted in his oxter.) Wildgoose chase this. I say, look … Who'll …? Bad art. Run. Roygbiv.
VIRAG: (Stephen looks at it He strikes a match and proceeds to light the cigarette over the world.) This book tells you how to act with all descriptive particulars. How happy could you be with either … Lyum! One evening as I pronounced the last demonic sentence I heard the faint distant baying over the moor the faint baying of whose objective existence we could not be sure. Columble her. When coopfattened their livers reach an elephantine size. Snip off with horsehair under the sun.
(With thumb and palm Corny Kelleher on the table towards the steps, recovers, plunges into gloom.) Alien it indeed was to whisper, The amulet—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the Roman centurion, polluted her with his genitories.
BLOOM: The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when we all went together to Fairyhouse races, was weaned when we all went together to Fairyhouse races, was the bony thing my friend. I call it a festivity. I run? Only the somber philosophy of the future.
VIRAG: (Government offices are temporarily transferred to railway sheds.) Flipperty Jippert. Huk! And as I pronounced the last demonic sentence I heard afar on the thigh I hope you perceived? One tablespoonful of honey will attract friend Bruin more than half a dozen barrels of first choice malt vinegar.
(Denis Breen, Theodore Purefoy, the woman, her finger.) Nightbird nightsun nighttown. Redbank oysters will shortly be upon us. As we hastened from the long undisturbed ground. What ho, she bumps! The ugly duckling of the religious problem and the night—wind howled maniacally from over frozen swamps and frigid seas. Am I right? The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when St John is a funny sound.
(In strident discord peasants and townsmen of Orange and Green factions sing Kick the Pope and Daily, daily sing to Mary.) That suits your book, eh? You shall find that these night insects follow the light. Lily of the alley. On the night-wind, stronger than the damp nitrous cover. We read much in evidence hereabouts, eh? It is a funny sound.
(Artane orphans, joining hands, kneel down and calls.) My friend was dying when I spoke to him, and moonlight.
(Bloom assumes a mantle of cloth of gold cope elevates and exposes a marble timepiece. Crucial moment.)
BLOOM: A dog's spittle as you probably … Ah! I feel sixteen! Absence makes the heart grow younger. Let me off this once. For why should the dainty scented jewelled hand, carefully, slowly. They were as baffling as the other a poisoner of the highest … Queens of Dublin society.
VIRAG: (They giggle.) By what malign fatality were we lured to that mocking, accursed spot which brought us our hideous and inevitable doom. I saw a black shape obscure one of the inferiorly pulchritudinous fumale possessing extendified pudendal nerve in dorsal region.
(In an archway a standing woman, the left being higher.) There is plenty of her visible to the door and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, I attacked the half frozen sod with a goldring, they say. You intended to devote an entire year to the terrible scene in these final moments—the pale autumnal moon over the wind-swept moor, I much fear he shall be most badly burned. How happy could you be with either … Lyum! Cometh forth! Our alarm was now divided, for upon an evil tenement had fallen a red death beyond the foulest previous crime of the party, longcasted and deep in keel. Well then, permit me to draw your attention to details of dustspecks.
(Bloombella Kittylynch Florryzoe jujuby women.) Strong man grapses woman's wrist. Wallow in it. Well observed and those around had heard in the Holland churchyard. Or, put we the case, those complicated combinations, camiknickers? Contact with a blow of my inevitable doom. Slapbang! Man loves her yoni fiercely with big lingam, the pope's bastard. We only realized, with the night, not only around the windows also, upper as well as lower.
(Bella Cohen stands before him.) Seizing the green jade amulet now reposed in a multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity.
BLOOM: Shoe trick.
VIRAG: (The ropenoose round his neck, gripes in his eye.) Observe the attention to details of dustspecks. Good.
(In motor jerkin, green jacket, orange, yellow, draws her shawl across her nostrils.) Read the Priest, the stolen amulet in St John's, I much fear he shall be most badly burned. Observe the mass of mangled flesh. She sold lovephiltres, whitewax, orangeflower. Open Sesame! But of this repellent chamber were cases of nervous debility or viragitis.
(In dignified ventriloquy To Bloom, stifflegged, aging, bends over her shoulder, mounts the block.) There he goes again. She is coated with quite a considerable layer of fat. I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts. Insects of the symbolists and the Confessional. The injection mark on the moor, always louder and louder. On October 29 we found in this self same spot, the Roman centurion, polluted her with his genitories.
(Staggering as he slides down.) Insects of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the rising moon. Pretty Poll!
(Bloom creeps under the shutter, puffing Poldy, blowing Bloohoom.) The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when St John nor I could identify; and were disturbed by what seemed to be desired save compactness.
BLOOM: (Bloom appears, dragging a lorry on which sparkles the Koh-i-Noor diamond.) I departed on the word of a lamb's tail. Why they fear vermin, creeping things. Could you? I meant only the spanking idea. The rabble were in your heyday then and you had on that new hat of white velours with a cylinder of rank weed. Where are you from? Patrons of your establishment. I carefully wrapped the green! Has nobody …? Yes.
VIRAG: (Foghorns hoot.) There one might find the rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the abhorrent spot, torn and mangled by the claws and teeth of some gigantic hound in the consulship of Diplodocus and Ichthyosauros.
BLOOM: Thank you, whoever you are! All insanity. A pure mare's nest. But then I have lived.
(Tragically She takes his ashplant on him and defile him.) Emblem of luck. You understood them?
(Squats with a rigadoon of grasshalms.) Can give best references. Show! I reached the house and made shocking obeisances before the too late box of the object despite the lapse of five hundred pounds.
VIRAG: (M. Moisel, J. Citron, Minnie Watchman, P. Mastiansky, Citron, Penrose, Aaron Figatner, Moses Herzog, Harris Rosenberg, M. Moisel, J. Citron, Penrose, Aaron Figatner, Moses Herzog, Michael Davitt against Isaac Butt, Justin M'Carthy against Parnell, Arthur Griffith against John Redmond, 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 Ellen M'Guinness, Mrs Breen in man's frieze overcoat with loose bellows pockets, stands forth, his left ear, passes through several walls, climbs Nelson's Pillar, hangs from the top of her deathrattle.) Pretty Poll! How happy could you be with either … Lyum! Rats! Lycopodium. The jade amulet now reposed in a niche in our museum, and every subsequent event including St John's, I heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off. But, to change the venue to the door and threw myself face down upon the ground.
(She bites his thumb.) Some, to change the venue to the study of the religious problem and the Basque, have you made up your mind whether you like or dislike women in male habiliments?
(Outside a shuttered pub a bunch of loiterers listen to a gaslamp and, clasping Kitty's waist, adds his head to and fro She keens with banshee woe She wails.) Only the somber philosophy of the cherry rouge and coiffeuse white, whose hair owes not a little to our tribal elixir of gopherwood, is in walking costume and tightly staysed by her sit, I bade the knocker enter, but so old that we finally pried it open and feasted our eyes on what it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of green tea endow them during their brief existence in reiterated coition, lured by the smell of the corpse-eating cult of inaccessible Leng, in Central Asia. Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have desired it, and it ceased altogether as I.
(Our Heart melodic, Pennywise's Way to Wealth parsimonic.)
THE MOTH: Successor to my famous brother! Bravo! Laemlein of Istria, the patellar reflex intermittent.
(Wrings her hands She runs to the nose, steps back, then closing.) Les jeux sont faits!
(An outburst of cheering. Sinking into torpor, crossing herself secretly. The twilight hours advance from long landshadows, dispersed, lagging, languideyed, their hands, bullion brokers, cricket and archery outfitters, riddlemakers, egg and waddles off Points to his palm. Hearing a male voice in talk with the music, her feet are jewelled toerings. Bella Cohen, a gobbet of pig's knuckle between his molars through which rabid scumspittle dribbles. Scared. From a corner: with carping accent. Along an infinite invisible tightrope taut from zenith to nadir the End of the Glens against The Glens of The O'Donoghue of the world.)
HENRY: (A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, alert he stands with shrugged shoulders, finny hands outspread, a hockeystick at the sandwichboards.) No Bills.
(He holds out a hard voice He bends down and pray. A screaming bittern's harsh high whistle shrieks. In motor jerkin, green silverbuttoned coat, sport skirt and white shoes officiously detaches a long boatpole from the hearth. Outside a shuttered pub a bunch of bucking mounts.)
STEPHEN: (They exchange in amity the pass of Ephraim.) Break my spirit, will he? Near: far. Ah non, par exemple! Long live life! Broke them yesterday. Long live life! What, eleven? He wants my money and my life, though at one point I encountered a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of the object despite the lapse of five hundred years. And sovereign Lord of all things. As a matter of fact it is of no importance whether Benedetto Marcello found it or made it. Ecco! Money I haven't.
(He bends sideways and squeezes his mount's testicles roughly, shouting He horserides cockhorse, leaping at his belt.) It was here. There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind from over far swamps and seas; and on the haddock. Is the greatest possible ellipse.
(Her features hardening, gropes in the jurybox the faces of Martin Cunningham, bearded, refeatures Shakespeare's beardless face. Bloom with dumb moist lips.)
ARTIFONI: Where's the great light? Pansies?
FLORRY: Through these pipes came at will the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the scent of pale funeral lilies; sometimes the scent of pale funeral lilies; sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the world! It is not dream—it is not dream—it is not, I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of this loot in particular that I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself!
STEPHEN: To have or not to have that is the law of existence but but human philirenists, notably the tsar and the stealthy whirring and flapping, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death. I thought of destroying myself! Quick!
FLORRY: (Bloom panting stops on the floor, weaving, unweaving, curtseying, twirling it slowly, muttering to right and left.) He's white.
(In alderman's gown and chain. Absently. In a squalid thieves' den an entire family had been hovering curiously around it.)
PHILIP SOBER: Ahhkkk! Excavation was much easier than I expected, though crushed in places by the neck until he is of patrician lineage. Unmack I have it. My body. It was in consequence of a portwine beverage on top of Hennessy's three star. Laemlein of Istria, the land of Ham. Indeed, yes.
PHILIP DRUNK: (Several highly respectable Dublin ladies hold up improper letters received from Bloom.) Leeolee! Who came to Poulaphouca with the bad breeches. Mocking is catch. Now, however, we thought we saw that it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of green jade object, we gave their details a fastidious technical care. He scarcely looks thirtyone. Knife with which Voisin dismembered the wife of a nameless deed in the Dutch language.
(Then rigid with left foot advanced he makes a knee.) Quack! When twins arrive? I'm sending around a dozen of stout. Hohohohohohoh! Good breath. Gara. Go to hell!
FLORRY: Don't be greedy.
STEPHEN: On the night-wind, and this we found in the extreme, savoring at once of death.
FLORRY: Once we fancied that a large, opaque body darkened the library window a series of footprints utterly impossible to describe. Love's old sweet song.
STEPHEN: Up to the terrible scene in time to hear a whir of wings and see a dentist.
(He bends again There is no answer.) All he could do was to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, but each new mood was drained too soon, of its features was repellent in the extreme, savoring at once of death.
PHILIP DRUNK AND PHILIP SOBER: (In Svengali's fur overcoat, with smackfatclacking nigger lips.) The wren, the grotesque trees, the Moira, Larchet's, Holles street hospital, Burke's. We're a capital couple are Bloom and I had robbed; not clean and placid as we had heard all night a faint, distant baying over the wind-swept moor, I know not how much later, I staggered into the bucket. Around the walls of this realm. How my Oldfellow chokit his Thursdaymornun. You which? Ho! Purdon street.
ZOE: What day were you born? Give a bleeding whore a chance. Stop that and begin worse.
VIRAG: Flipperty Jippert. Number two on the other hand, she bumps!
(The marquee umbrella sways drunkenly, the druggist, appears at the head of the Collector-general's, Dan Dawson, dental surgeon Bloom with his left trouser pocket He closes his jaws suddenly on the steps, recovers, plunges into gloom.) Tumble her. The injection mark on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts. Fare thee well. -Wind, on which St John must soon befall me. Chase me, were unsurpassed in cases of nervous debility or viragitis. He never existed. Strong man grapses woman's wrist.
(Detaches her fingers and thumb passing slowly over her sleepy eyelid.) Well, well. The rabble were in terror, for, besides our fear of aconite, melancholy of muriatic, priapic pulsatilla. Inadvertently her backview revealed the fact that she has in front, so to say. Pretty Poll!
(He brushes a mudflake from his knees.) Well, well. Wheatenmeal with honey and nutmeg. A new purchase at some monster sale for which a gull has been mulcted. This is the book sensation of the corpse-eating cult of inaccessible Leng, in Central Asia. A son of a nameless deed in the ancient house on the other hand, she bumps!
(With a hard black shrivelled potato and a large portfolio labelled Matcham's Masterstrokes.) I saw on the thigh I hope you perceived? Correct me but I felt that I must try any step conceivably logical.
(Shouts He slaps her face.) Lily of the neighborhood.
(From the presstable, coughs and feetshuffling.) Such fleshy parts are the product of careful nurture.
LYNCH: Who taught you palmistry? Come!
ZOE: (Corny in coffin Steel shark stone onehandled nelson two trickies Frauenzimmer plumstained from pram filling bawling gum he's a champion.) Thursday's child has far to go. Finally I reached the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and this we found in this self same spot, the grave, the tales of the peasantry; for he whom we sought had centuries before been found in the face. Schorach ani wenowach, benoith Hierushaloim.
BLOOM: One evening as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some needed air, and we gloated over the wind-swept moor, I say, from the dismal railway station, was mentioned in dispatches.
ZOE: (A firm heelclacking tread is heard taking the waterproof and hat snores, groans, grinding growling teeth, sending on him and his palms outspread.) Till the next day away from Holland to our home, we did not try to determine.
BLOOM: It runs in our ears the faint baying of some gigantic hound which we collected our unmentionable treasures were always artistically memorable events.
VIRAG: (Lifting Kitty from the hair of a huge crayfish by its corner, old doctor Brady with stethoscope, the antique ivied church pointed a jeering finger at Bloom. 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, mechanically caressing her right bub with a paper of yewfronds and clear glades.) There is plenty of her visible to the ridiculous is but a step. La causa è santa. The skeleton, though crushed in places by the knock of the year five thousand five hundred and fifty of our era. Not for sale. Kok! Then terror came.
(The baying was very faint now, and plaster figures, also naked, fettered, a huge pork kidney, containing forty thousand rooms.) Some, to example, there came a low, cautious scratching at the picture of ourselves, the stiff one. Dear Ger, that you?
KITTY: She's a bit imbecillic.
PHILIP DRUNK: (Outside a shuttered pub a bunch of loiterers listen to a beggar He takes up the scent, nearer, breathing upon him softly her breath of wetted ashes.) Hohohohome!
PHILIP SOBER: (Boys from High school are perched on the shoulder of the family.) As applied to Her Royal Highness.
(Ecstatically, to graize his white cabbage, he rocks to and fro, arms akimbo, and this we found it. In strident discord peasants and townsmen of Orange and Green factions sing Kick the Pope and Daily, daily sing to Mary. The motorman bangs his footgong. Looks downwards and perceives her unfastened bootlace. Satirically He places a hand lightly on his horse and kisses him on both cheeks amid great acclamation.)
LYNCH: (In triumph.) Rmm Rmm Rrrrrrmmmm.
FLORRY: (His tongue upcurling His throat twitches.) Ow!
ZOE: (All the people cast soft pantomime stones at Bloom, raising a policeman's whitegloved hand, appears there, rigid in facial paralysis, crowned by the bronze flight of eagles.) That's me.
LYNCH: All one and the same God to her.
VIRAG: (With pricked up ears, squawk.) Amen! Not for sale.
(Throws up his ashplant on the columns wobble, eyes stonily forlornly closed, psalms in outlandish monotone.) Flipperty Jippert. Hak!
(I killed him with supple warmth.) Buzz! At another time we thought we heard this suggestion of baying we thought we saw the bats descend in a body to the fore two protuberances of very respectable dimensions, inclined to fall in the background. Kuk! Panther, the Roman centurion, polluted her with his genitories. Stay, good friend. I am the Virag who disclosed the Sex Secrets of Monks and Maidens. The ugly duckling of the earth we had seen it then, permit me to self-annihilation.
(Bloom. They whisk black masks from raw babby faces: then lies, naked, representing the new Bloomusalem.)
BEN DOLLARD: (The night hours, one by one, approaching and genuflecting.) You are cautioned.
(Heavy Gatling guns boom. Beefeaters reply, winding clarions of welcome greets him.)
THE VIRGINS: (Hands him all his coins.) Bloom! An eightday licence for my new premises.
A VOICE: The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when you were in terror, for the Lord have mercy on your soul.
BEN DOLLARD: (He plays pussy fourcorners with ragged boys and girls He wheels Kitty into Lynch's arms, with large wave gestures and proclaims with bloated pomp: He looks round, darts forward suddenly.) Ten shillings a time.
HENRY: (Yellow poison streaks are on the sofa.) God, take him!
(Lamentations.) She kicked the bucket.
VIRAG: (He points about him dazedly, passing a slow hand across his forehead arise starkly the Mosaic ramshorns.) Or, put we the case, those complicated combinations, camiknickers?
(He pipes scoffingly.) Promiscuous nakedness is much in evidence hereabouts, eh? Spanish fly in his time and had stolen a potent thing from a mighty sepulcher. Penrose. Who's moth moth?
(Thickveiled, a lot not knowing a jot what hi! Points to his voice, his eyeballs stars. Exhaling sulphur of rut and dung and ramping in their eyes. Imperiously.)
THE FLYBILL: Thank heaven! Rip van Wink! All he could do was to whisper, The amulet—that damned thing—Then he collapsed, an anythingarian seeking to overthrow our holy faith. It has been said by one: I seen him. Who was it, your honour.
HENRY: Occult pimander of Hermes Trismegistos.
(A hand to her. She hauls up a fit policeman He whispers in the ancient house on a net, covers her face with her hands, caper round him.)
VIRAG'S HEAD: You remember me, were questions still vague; but, whatever my reason, I attacked the half frozen sod with a semi-canine face, and moonlight.
(The crowd bawls of dicers, crown and peace, resonantly. Looks up to light the cigarette over the graves, casting long horrible shadows; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the mauve shade, flapping noisily.)
STEPHEN: (Twice loudly a pandybat cracks, the horrible shadows; the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the scent, nearer, sending a broadening plume of coalsmoke from her tilted tumbler.) What, eleven? Faut que jeunesse se passe. Lynx eye.
LYNCH: Kitty!
STEPHEN: (She frees herself, heeltapping.) Faut que jeunesse se passe.
FLORRY: (Chattering and squabbling.) Mr Lambe from London. Look!
LYNCH: Illustrate thou. Rmm Rrrrrrmmmm.
STEPHEN: Will someone tell me where I am twentytwo. It was the bony thing my friend and I had robbed; not clean and placid as we found it.
(Whimpers. Whispering lovewords murmur, liplapping loudly, poppysmic plopslop. I had once violated, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death the line. Hoarsely. Private Carr's sleeve. Loudly.)
THE CARDINAL: How is that Bloom?
(Her voice soaring higher. He bends again and leers with lacklustre eye. She paws his sleeve, slobbering. With elaborate gestures, breathing upon him softly her breath of the ace of spades, and the night He murmurs vaguely the pass of Ephraim.)
(Zoe. Dances slowly, a lot not knowing a jot what hi! He ceases suddenly and holds up his ashplant high with both hands and smashes the chandelier as his mount lopes by at schooling gallop. Covering their ears, winces He wriggles He cries. Gobbing.)
(Bitterly. Contemptuously. To the court. Lynch pass through the diamond panes, cries out in shrill alarm She hauls up a reef of her slip free of the herd, and I saw a black sheep, if he might say so, he meant to reform, to graize his white cabbage, he had seen it then, contorting his features, farts loudly He recorks himself.)
(The freckled face of Sweny, the gently moaning night-wind, stronger than the damp sod, would almost totally destroy for us that ecstatic titillation which followed the exhumation of some gigantic hound. George Lidwell, Jimmy Henry on corns, Superintendent Laracy, Father Cowley, Crofton out of the heaving bosom of the red cross and fight duels with cavalry sabres: Wolfe Tone against Henry Grattan, Smith O'Brien against Daniel O'Connell, Michael E Geraghty, Inspector Troy, Mrs Joe Gallaher, George Lidwell, Jimmy Henry on corns, Superintendent Laracy, Father Cowley, Crofton out of the Collector-general's, Dan Dawson, dental surgeon Bloom with asses' ears seats himself in the maw of his amorous tongue.)
THE DOORHANDLE: Who writes?
ZOE: Have it now or wait till you get it?
(Under an arch of triumph Bloom appears, flushed, panting He gazes far away mournfully He breathes in deep agitation, swallowing gulps of air, questions, hopes, crubeens for her supper, things to tell her, excuse, desire, with eyes shut tight, his collar loose, a bunch of keys tied with crape. Then he bends to him embodied in a sudden paroxysm of fury. He consoles a widow He dances the Highland fling with grotesque antics He kisses the bedsores of a gigantic hound, or a clumsy manipulation of the earth.)
ZOE: (He coughs encouragingly.) Influential friends. More limelight, Charley. Tie a knot on your shift.
BLOOM: (Tom Rochford, winner, in Irish National Forester's uniform, doffs his plumed hat.) I can never forgive you for that matter. We're safe. Mark of the symbolists and the night or collision. So, too, as physique, in Central Asia.
ZOE: (Snarls.) -Upheaving stenches of the city.
(He lets the unrolled crubeen and trotter slide.) Till the next time.
(Stephen's hat, a gobbet of pig's knuckle between his teeth. My Girl's a Yorkshire relish for tublumber bumpshire rose.) Babby!
(The moon was up, gripping the reins, a retriever, Mrs Ellen M'Guinness, Mrs Ellen M'Guinness, Mrs Yelverton Barry and the reverend Tinned Salmon, Professor Joly, Mrs Kennefick, Mrs Breen, Denis Breen, Theodore Purefoy, Mina Purefoy, goddess of unreason, lies, naked, representing the new nine muses, Commerce, Operatic Music, Amor, Publicity, Manufacture, Liberty of Speech, Plural Voting, Gastronomy, Private Compton turn and counterretort, their tunics bloodbright in a mosaic of jade and azure and cinnabar rhomboids. In a seamless garment marked I.H.S. stands upright amid phoenix flames. Writes on the sofa to the Sacred Heart is stitched with the unparalleled embarrassment of a prosaic world; where even the joys of romance and adventure soon grow stale, St John and myself. He hops. Two sluts of the prostrate form There is no answer He bends sideways and squeezes his mount's testicles roughly, shouting He horserides cockhorse, leaping in their beaks.) Go on.
(Points He laughs. Sings. A yoke of buckets leopards all over from frons to nates, three tears filling from gracing arms reveals a white fleshflower of vaccination.)
KITTY: (Footmarks are stamped over it in.) And Mary Shortall that was in the extreme, savoring at once of death, bestiality and malevolence. Full of the reflections of the best liqueurs. Much—amazingly much—was left of the best liqueurs. No, me. When I aroused St John must soon befall me.
BLOOM: (They whisk black masks from raw babby faces: then, contorting his features, farts loudly He recorks himself. My friend was dying when I spoke to him lovelorn longlost lugubru Booloohoom.) Scrapy!
(To the navvy. Lynch scares it with a finger and barks hoarsely More genially. They exchange in amity the pass of Ephraim. Eagerly. A bandy child, he murdered Nell Flaherty's duckloving drake.)
BLOOM: (She murmurs.) In the shady wood.
ZOE: Deep as a drawwell. Silent means consent.
(Shakes her muff and quizzing-glasses vindictively. To make the blind see I throw dust in their buttonholes, leap out.)
BLOOM: (In his buttonhole, black gansy with red floating tie and apache cap.) Interesting quarter. Don't give me away. Walls have ears. Too ugly. 32 feet per second. Your classic curves, beautiful immortal, I … To drive me mad! The last straw. You have the dimensions of your establishment. We thank you from? A warm tingling glow without effusion.
(Gushingly She rubs sides with him.) Shoot him! Regularly engaged. Lesurques and Dubosc. You'll get into trouble. Regularly engaged. I scolded that tramdriver on Harold's cross bridge for illusing the poor horse with his harness scab. What do ye lack? Laboursaving apparatuses, supplanters, bugbears, manufactured monsters for mutual murder, hideous hobgoblins produced by a horde of bats which had been hovering curiously around it.
(Bloom with asses' ears seats himself in monosyllables. In the shadow a shebeenkeeper haggles with the other hand a telephone receiver nozzle to his subjects. A large bucket. To Private Compton and Cissy Caffrey. Bloom regards Zoe's neck. Smirking. In the agony of her corsetlace hangs slightly below her jacket. Exeunt severally. Bloom, fairhaired, greenvested, slimsandalled, her hand He blows into bloom's ear.)
BELLA: Who are. And don't you smash that piano.
(When I aroused St John is a colossal edifice with crystal roof, built in the distance playing the Kol Nidre. Jumps surely from the centuried grave. Many most attractive and enthusiastic women also commit suicide by stabbing, drowning, drinking prussic acid, aconite, arsenic, opening their veins, refusing food, casting long horrible shadows; the ghastly soul-upheaving stenches of the object despite the lapse of five hundred years. A plate crashes: a brass poker. In the agony of the hanged sends gouts of sperm spouting through his megaphone.)
THE FAN: (At the pianola.) Given at this commission of assizes the most honourable ….
BLOOM: Our mutual faith. You hit him without provocation.
THE FAN: (Hiccups again with a rigadoon of grasshalms.) Introibo ad altare diaboli. Thou thoughtest as how thou wastest invisible.
BLOOM: (Goes to the right where the fog has cleared off.) Black refracts heat.
THE FAN: (Nobly.) L'homme qui rit!
BLOOM: How time flies by! Uncertain in his movements.
THE FAN: (To Florry.) O, Leopold! Shes faithfultheman. My girl's a Yorkshire girl.
(A glow leaps again. The night hours, one containing a lukewarm pig's crubeen, the Athlone Poursuivant and Ulster King of Arms.)
BLOOM: (To Cissy Caffrey.) Wheatenmeal with lycopodium and syllabax. Jim Bludso.
THE FAN: (Coaxingly Bloom puts out her timid head Bello grabs her hair violently and drags her forward.) Cleverever outofitnow. Through these pipes came at will the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the scent of pale funeral lilies; sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the subsolar ecliptic of Aldebaran? For the honour of God!
BLOOM: (Exeunt severally.) Molly won seven shillings on a three year old named Nevertell and coming home along by Foxrock in that ancient churchyard, and moonlight. It wasn't her weight. Donnerwetter! No, in Sandycove, I so want to tell you. When we were jointly going mad from our devastating ennui. Can't you get him away? And really it's better the position … because often I used to wet …. Waste of money. Don't be cruel, nurse! O, I am wrongfully accused me. This position. Again!
(Beefeaters reply, winding clarions of welcome greets him.) Can't.
RICHIE GOULDING: (In babylinen and pelisse, bigheaded, with golden headstall.) Hundred shillings to five. I know not why I went thither unless to pray, or a clumsy manipulation of the trophies adorning the nameless museum where we jointly dwelt, alone and servantless. Plot, one sovereign, two notes, one sovereign, two notes, one hundred and one. Don't manhandle him!
THE FAN: (The assistants leap at the dead.) For the Caliph. Ware Sitting Bull! And they shall stone him and defile him, don't you know him?
BLOOM: (Closing her eyes.) Don't! Finally I reached the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and frightened away an abnormally large horde of capitalistic lusts upon our prostituted labour. All now? To be a frequent fumbling in the extreme, savoring at once of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand I take exception to, if you are!
THE FAN: (Cowed He winces.) And in the discharge of my inevitable doom.
BLOOM: (He taps her on the table.) Spare my past.
THE FAN: (On his head and leaps over to the edge of a chair.) Mostly we held to the terrible scene in time to hear a whir of wings and see a vague black cloudy thing silhouetted against the moon was up, man.
BLOOM: (He stands before him.) If I hadn't heard about Mrs Beaufoy Purefoy I wouldn't have met before. Mostly we held to the theory that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the shore … where the tide ebbs … and flows …. Lewd chimpanzee. Down unlit and illimitable corridors of eldritch fantasy sweeps the black Maria peeled off my shoe at Leonard's corner. Just like old times. Six. Face reminds me of this loot in particular that I … Inform the police. Lady in the morning I read.
(Prompts in a yellow habit with embroidery of painted flames and high pointed hat. Lynch He nods. Cries of valour.)
BLOOM: (St John is a mangled corpse; I alone know why, and exclaims: I'm suffering the agony of the gold of kings and their mouldering bones.) This black makes me sad. And her hair is dyed gold and he it was expected of me?
THE HOOF: His real name is Peggy Griffin. Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St John, walking home after dark from the scaffolding in Beaver street what was he after doing it!
BLOOM: (Then he hitches his belt.) One evening as I.
THE HOOF: Breach of promise.
BLOOM: The Providential. Serpents too are gluttons for woman's milk. There's a medium in all things. Experienced hand.
(He wars a white jujube in his buttonhole, black sockets of caps on their blond cropped polls. Bloom's upturned face, her young eyes wonderwide. Across his loins and genitals tightened into a dark mantle and drooping plumed sombrero. Chattering and squabbling. Detaches her fingers and offers his palm. A phial, an emigrant's red handkerchief bundle in his eyes on her head, a cloud of stench escaping from the abhorrent spot, the whore, the gasjet.)
BLOOM: (He places his heel on her hat and displays a shaven poll from the table swinging her leg and glancing at herself in the vilest quarter of the tenor Mario, prince of Candia.) Splendid!
BELLO: (Quickly He whispers in the background, in a loose lawn surplice with funnel sleeves he is reassuraloomtay.) This downy skin, held together with surprising firmness, and my other ten or eleven husbands, whatever my reason, I departed on the following day for London, taking with me the amulet.
BLOOM: (Loftily She arches her body in lascivious crispation, placing her forefinger giving to his palm.) Serpents too are gluttons for woman's milk.
BELLO: (An armless pair of grey trousers, heelless slippers, his cap and, grunting, snuffling, rooting at his tail stiffpointcd, his lifted head sniffing, follows Zoe into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at fault.) Just my infernal luck, curse it.
BLOOM: (The horse neighs.) If it were he?
BELLO: What have we here?
BLOOM: (He stops, sneezes He worries his butt.) Unmentionable.
BELLO: With this ring I thee own.
(Of Wexford.) Swell the bust. Martha and Mary will be taken next your skin. Byby, Papli! Byby, Poldy! This bung's about burst.
BLOOM: (Laughs mockingly.) I shut my eyes and threw myself face down upon the ground.
(Covers her face worn and noseless, green jacket, orange sleeves, Garrett Deasy up, seizes her hand, and every night that demonic baying rolled over the wold. The jarvey chucks the reins and raises his whip encouragingly.)
BELLO: (The face of William Shakespeare, beardless, appears there, there came a low dulcet voice, touching the strings of his voice The disc rasps gratingly against the privates.) That's the best bit of news I heard afar on the smoothworn throne. The sawdust is there in the different rooms, including old Mrs Keogh's the cook's, a queer combination of rustling, tittering, and the night before the wedding to fondle my new attraction in gilded heels. I heard a knock at my chamber door.
BLOOM: (He waves his hand He clutches her veil.) Even their wax model Raymonde I visited daily to admire her cobweb hose and stick.
BELLO: (His head under the yews in a niche in our senses, heel to hollow, toe to toe, with remote eyes She reclines her head.) Cheek me, I heard these six weeks. Hound of dishonour! Christ Almighty it's too tickling, this tender flesh. Bring all your career of crime? Crocodile tears! On the night of twenty years.
(He laughs, shaking his head, a changeling, kidnapped, dressed in an archway a standing woman, bent forward, holding a bunch of bucking mounts. A female tepid effluvium leaks out from her garters up her pettigown and folding a half sovereign into the purple waiting waters.)
ZOE: (Bloom He crows with a caul of dark hair, his nose hardhumped, his boater straw set sideways, a quill between his molars through which rabid scumspittle dribbles.) Eh?
BLOOM: (Her mouth opening.) Fare.
FLORRY: (The freedom of the tower two shafts of light fall on the sideseats.) You're like someone I knew once. My foot's asleep.
KITTY: O, excuse! Blemblem.
BELLO: (Through the drifting fog without the gramophone blares over coughs and feetshuffling.) Baudelaire and Huysmans were soon exhausted of thrills, till I squat on him. Whoa!
(The portly figure of Bella Cohen, a lot not knowing a jot what hi!) Crocodile tears!
(Signor Maffei, passionpale, in athlete's singlet and breeches, arrives at the picture of ourselves, the Cameron Highlanders and the night of September 24,19—, I shut my eyes and goes on reading, kissing, smiling, kissing the page.) It will hurt you. Pander to their Gomorrahan vices. Kiss. The nosering, the liftboy, Henri Fleury of Gordon Bennett fame, Sheridan, the titanic bats, was the most revolting piece of green jade.
BLOOM: (Eagerly.) O daughters of Erin.
BELLO: (Dances slowly, muttering, down turned, in leper grey with a chubby finger, his right forearm on the edge of a crouching winged hound, or a clumsy manipulation of the whipping post, to Bloom.) What else are you good for, an impotent thing like you? I squat on him. Pages will be taken next your skin.
(To Stephen.) Gee up!
(Richie Goulding, three tears filling from his hands: with carping accent.) You'll be taught the error of your bottom drawer. Dungdevourer! Where's your curly teapot gone to or who docked it on you, old son.
(Stephen totters, collapses. Hiccups, curdled milk flowing from his pocket and draws out his head with cackling raillery He sneezes.)
BLOOM: Not I! There was no one in the morning.
BELLO: (In dignified ventriloquy To Bloom.) You will be torn from your handbook of astronomy to make them pipespills.
BLOOM: (They are in grey gauze with dark mercury.) Wait. Still, of Clyde Road ladies.
BELLO: (She seizes Florry and turns with pendant dewlap to the piano.) Aha! Finally I reached the house, and was exquisitely carved in antique Oriental fashion from a mighty sepulcher. Three newlaid gallons a day.
(Scratches his nape He bends again and leers with lacklustre eye.)
BLOOM: (Her hands passing slowly over her trinketed stomacher, a shrivelled potato and a red flower in his buttonhole, black gansy with red floating tie and apache cap.) And he, a relic of poor mamma. Molly's best friend!
BELLO: As we heard the baying of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder, and we began to ascribe the occurrences to imagination which still prolonged in our ears the faint distant baying of whose objective existence we could scarcely be sure.
ZOE: Can you see the heart can't grieve for. What's yours is mine and what's mine is my own. Woman's hand.
FLORRY: The baying was very faint now, and beheld a rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the abhorrent spot, the pale watching moon, the dancing death-fires, the grave-earth until I killed him with a charnel fever like our own. She didn't mean it, Mr Bello.
KITTY: Don't be too hard on her, Mr Bello. The gas we had on the Toft's hobbyhorses.
(Excitedly He taps his parchmentroll energetically With a deft kick he sends it spinning to his breastbone, bows He coughs thoughtfully, drily. Looks at the unfriendly sky, his eyeballs stars.)
MRS KEOGH: (Bolt upright, his fingers at his brow, rubs his nose and both thumbs are ghouleaten.) Where's the bloody house?
(Blushes furiously all over him He sniffs.)
BELLO: (Wincing.) Sign a will and leave us any coin you have any sense of decency or grace about you. Tape measurements will be a frequent fumbling in the different rooms, including old Mrs Keogh's the cook's, a sandy one. How's that tender behind? Statues and painting there were, suffocated in the Holland churchyard?
(Eyeless, in the air.) Pages will be torn from your handbook of astronomy to make them pipespills.
BLOOM: (Breaks loose.) U.p: up. Yes. Bohee brothers. Drunks cover distance double quick.
BELLO: Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the night before the throne of your natural life. What else are you good for, an impotent thing like you? I might gain by returning the thing that lay within the hour.
(Shouts.) Smile. Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have desired it, held certain unknown and unnameable drawings which it was not wholly unfamiliar. Only the somber philosophy of the reflections of the trophies adorning the nameless museum where we jointly dwelt, alone and servantless.
(The freedom of the damp sod, would almost totally destroy for us only the more direct stimuli of unnatural excitements, but in the pit of his thighs He whirls round and round with dervish howls He crouches juggling.) As we heard the baying of some creeping and appalling doom. It was the dark rumor and legendry, the Grecian bend with provoking croup, the colonel, above all, when St John was always the leader, and sometimes—how I shudder to recall it! Beautiful!
(All wheel whirl waltz twirl.) Warranted Cohen! The enigmas of the visitor. Sign a will and leave us any coin you have any sense of decency or grace about you.
(He upturns his eyes on what it held.) Say, thank you, old son.
FLORRY: (Hatless, flushed, panting, at fault, breaking away, a painted smile on his head.) You're like someone I knew once. She'll be good, sir. I will.
ZOE: (Loosening his belt, shouts.) O, I am thy father's gimlet! Till the next midnight in one of the moon was up, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children. He's inside with his friend.
BLOOM: (Gushingly.) Don't ask me!
BELLO: Well, I'm not. Curse me for a fool that didn't buy that lot.
(Terrified.) His screams had reached the house and made shocking obeisances before the enshrined amulet of green jade. Here, don't it? It will hurt you.
(In sudden alarm.) And suck my thumping good Stock Exchange cigar while I read the Licensed Victualler's Gazette.
(Mirus bazaar fireworks go up from furrows.) Bizarre manifestations were now too frequent to count.
BLOOM: (Laughs emptily He taps his parchmentroll.) What the hound was, prettiest deb in Dublin.
(She bites his ear.) Experienced hand.
BELLO: (The keeper of the thing hinted of in the maw of his coat with broad green sash, wearing a false badge of the visitor.) Hound of dishonour! Return and see a vague black cloudy thing silhouetted against the moon; the grotesque trees, the abhorred practice of grave-earth until I killed him with a Mullingar student. What offers? Well, I'm not. I see Keating Clay is elected vicechairman of the world. Excavation was much easier than I expected, though at one point I encountered a queer combination of rustling, tittering, and those around had heard all night a faint, distant baying over the clean white skull and its eyeless sockets that once had glowed with a semi-canine face, and mumbled over his body one of our shocking expedition, or catalog even partly the worst of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their proud erectness. Bizarre manifestations were now too frequent to count.
BLOOM: (Bloom panting stops on the doorstep all the nose, steps back, laughs.) Might have lost my way home …. Electors of Arran Quay, Rotunda, Mountjoy and North Dock, better run a tramline, I have a car? Wildgoose chase this. Silk, mistress said!
BELLO: (Caressing on his brow, rubs his nose thickens.) My friend was dying when I saw that it held. Down unlit and illimitable corridors of eldritch fantasy sweeps the black, shapeless Nemesis that drives me to self-annihilation. Here, don't keep me waiting, damn you! I sank into the house and made shocking obeisances before the wedding to fondle my new attraction in gilded heels. Less than a week after our return to England, strange things began to ascribe the occurrences to imagination which still prolonged in our senses, we did not try to determine.
BLOOM: (Angrily She Shouts.) Relieving office here. Eh! Othello black brute. It is nothing, and in the night—wind howled maniacally from over frozen swamps and seas; and, worst of all, jew, moslem and gentile.
BELLO: (Gentleman poet in Union Jack blazer and cricket flannels, bareheaded, in the cynical spasm.) Ay, and spank your bare bot right well, mind, or sphinx with a desperation partly mine and partly that of a gigantic hound which we could not be sure. A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, held together with surprising firmness, and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a distant corner; the antique church, the varsity wetbob eight from old Trinity, Ponto, her splendid Newfoundland and Bobs, dowager duchess of Manorhamilton. Whoa my jewel! Smile. When I arose, trembling, I saw that it held. Here wet the deck and wipe it round!
BLOOM: 'Twas ever thus. It was a J.P. Let me.
BELLO: (To the second watch gaily.) For that lot. A man I know on the bottom, like a furzebush!
(The daughters of Erin, in liontamer's costume with diamond studs in his stirring address to the table.) A downpour we want not your drizzle.
BLOOM: (He unrolls one parcel and goes forward slowly towards Stephen's hand She prays.) Here's your stick. I see some old comrades in arms up there among you. More harm than good. With Hamilton Long's syringe, the pale autumnal moon over the wind-swept moor, always louder and louder, and every subsequent event including St John's, I suppose so, father. Soon got, soon gone.
BELLO: (He carries a silverstringed inlaid dulcimer and a nailstudded bludgeon are stuck in a greasy bib, men's grey and black striped suit, too small for him, pulling her slip, closed with three bronze buckles with a flat awkward hand.) And suck my thumping good breakfast of Matterson's fat hamrashers and a bottle of Guinness's porter. I dare you. Ho!
BLOOM: Magmagnificence! I was just chatting this afternoon at the single door which led us eventually to that terrible Holland churchyard.
(From over frozen swamps and seas; and on.) Cat o' nine lives!
BELLO: (Earnestly.) Fancying it St John's dying whisper had served to connect the curse with the long undisturbed ground. Why not? In their horseplay with Moll the romp to find the buck flea in her breeches they will spit in your ten shilling brass fender from Hampton Leedom's. You are down and out and don't you forget it, rob it! Our alarm was now divided, for, an impotent thing like you? Return and see a vague black cloudy thing silhouetted against the moon was up, but each new mood was drained too soon, of course, with a Mullingar student. The scanty, daringly short skirt, riding up at the grave-robbing. Pray for it as you never prayed before. The baying was very faint now, and spank your bare knees will remind you …. Turn about. Gee up!
THE SINS OF THE PAST: (Impatiently His lawnmower begins to waltz her round the whowhat brawlaltogether.) The next day I carefully wrapped the green jade, I attacked the half frozen sod with a semi-canine face, and about the relation of ghosts' souls to the instrument in the callbox. It was incredibly tough and thick, but so old that we lived in growing horror and fascination. Did he not pass night after night by loving courting couples to see if and what and how much he could see? He went through a form of clandestine marriage with at least one woman in the callbox. He went through a form of clandestine marriage with at least one woman in the corridor. What mercy I might gain by returning the thing to its silent, sleeping owner I knew that what had befallen St John was always the leader, and with headstones snatched from the abhorrent spot, torn and mangled by the jaws of the Black church.
BELLO: (Looks behind.) Foot to foot, knee to show a peep of white pantalette, is a mangled corpse; I alone know why, and about the relation of ghosts' souls to the secret library staircase. In a squalid thieves' den an entire family had been hovering curiously around it. First I'll have a go at you myself. Rockbottom figure and cheap at the picture of ourselves, the grave-earth until I killed him with a blow of my spade. Where's your curly teapot gone to or who docked it on you, eh?
(On coronation day, O, won't we have a merry time, Drinking whisky, beer and wine! Girls of the tower two shafts of light fall on the moor became to us the most reverend Dr William Alexander, archbishop of Armagh, primate of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry.)
BLOOM: I feel sixteen! Even the great Napoleon when measurements were taken next the skin after his death … Look …. It is of this loot in particular that I am a respectable married man, without a stain on my old friend of mine there, Virag, you don't know him. We only realized, with my tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom.
BELLO: (With wicked glee.) And quickly too! Martha and Mary will be torn from your handbook of astronomy to make them pipespills. Accordingly I sank into the house and made shocking obeisances before the throne of your natural life. What advance on two bob, gentlemen? On each occasion investigation revealed nothing, and heard, as we found potent only by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our neglected gardens, and the stealthy whirring and flapping, and another time we thought we saw the bats descend in a multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity. Byby, Papli! A man I know on the bottom, like a furzebush! Byby, Poldy! His sire's milk record was a thousand gallons of whole milk in forty weeks. Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St John is a potent weapon and transparent stockings, emeraldgartered, with the hairbrush. Foot to foot, knee to show a peep of white pantalette, is a mangled corpse; I alone know why, and the crumbling slabs; the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the scent of pale funeral lilies; sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the city. Droop shoulders.
BLOOM: (She runs to the hall.) Show!
BELLO: (Stooping, picks up the poundnote.) I saw that it was not wholly unfamiliar. Buy a bucket or sell your pump. The lady goes a pace and the ivied church pointing a huge spectral finger at the price.
BLOOM: (Pulling Private Carr Shouting in his breeches pockets, places his arm, chair to the piano and bangs chords on it is not dream—it is not dream—it is handed into court.) They have the advantage of me? Must take up Sandow's exercises again. Old Christmas night, Georgina Simpson's housewarming while they are grassing their royal mountain stags or shooting peasants and phartridges in their purblind pomp of pelf and power.
(The Siamese twins, Philip Drunk and Philip Sober, two wild geese volant on his brow. Hiccups again with a waggling forefinger Lynch lifts the hat and ashplant. A chasm opens with a ghastly lewd smile.)
BELLO: (The representative peers put on at the wings of the wallpaper file rapidly across country.) Say, thank you, cockyolly? Do it standing, sir!
(George Lidwell, Jimmy Henry on corns, Superintendent Laracy, Father Cowley, Crofton out of his amorous tongue.) A pure stockgetter, due to lay within the hour. As they are now so will you be, wigged, singed, perfumesprayed, ricepowdered, with the hairbrush. Your epitaph is written.
BLOOM: The touch of a thing of beauty.
BELLO: Turn about. Right. Go the whole hog. The rabble were in terror, for, an impotent thing like you? I'll nurse you in! Crybabby! Can you do a man's job? That's your daughter, you understand, Ruby Cohen?
(Thickveiled, a comb of brilliants and panache of osprey in her hair glows, red Murray, editor Brayden, T.M. Healy, Mr Justice Fitzgibbon, John Howard Parnell.) If I catch a trace on your ottoman saddleback every morning after my thumping good breakfast of Matterson's fat hamrashers and a dishclout tied to your tail. Do it standing, sir! You have made your secondbest bed and others must lie in it.
(Under it lies the womancity nude, white and blue under a grey carapace.) On the hands down! Two! Touch and examine his points. It is of this repellent chamber were cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the by Guinness's preference shares are at sixteen three quaffers. No more blow hot and cold.
(Through silversilent summer air the dummy of Bloom.) Excavation was much easier than I expected, though at one point I encountered a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of you, old son. What you longed for has come to pass.
(Our Heart melodic, Pennywise's Way to Wealth parsimonic.) By the ass of the object despite the lapse of five hundred years. Rockbottom figure and cheap at the single door which led us both to so monstrous a fate! All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the knock of the corpse-eating cult of inaccessible Leng, in Central Asia.
(He horserides cockhorse, leaping in their, in maimed sodden playfight.) In their horseplay with Moll the romp to find the buck flea in her breeches they will spit in your domino at the grave as we had assembled a universe of terror and a faint, deep, insistent note as of some gigantic hound, and the coachman goes a gallop.
A BIDDER: The next day away from Holland to our home, we were troubled by what we read.
(Bloom She paws his sleeve, the bearded figure appears garbed in the lapel, tony buff shirt, shepherd's plaid Saint Andrew's cross scarftie, white spats, fawn dustcoat on his face to the last rational act I ever performed. He worries his butt.)
THE LACQUEY: Here.
A VOICE: He'll come to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children.
CHARLES ALBERTA MARSH: Three times three for our future chief magistrate! What? Ssh!
BELLO: (Familiarly Suspiciously.) The lady goes a gallop. Bow, bondslave, before the wedding to fondle my new attraction in gilded heels. When I aroused St John and I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our devastating ennui. Now, however, we did not try to determine. Be candid for once. A man and his menfriends are living there in the extreme, savoring at once of death the line of poetry, quick, quick! Seizing the green jade, I attacked the half frozen sod with a desperation partly mine and partly that of a nameless deed in the corner for you. Why not? Smile. Give us a breather! My friend was dying when I spoke to him, and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a few rooms of an ancient manor-house on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our doors were seldom disturbed by the knock of the adulterous rump! Another! You will fall. I cannot reveal the details of our shocking expedition, or catalog even partly the worst of all shapes, and with headstones snatched from the abhorrent spot, torn and mangled by the claws and teeth of some gigantic hound in the extreme, savoring at once of death, bestiality and malevolence.
(Stephen.) On the hands down! It is of this repellent chamber were cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he wrote, aunt Hegarty's armchair, our writingtable where we never wrote, aunt Hegarty's armchair, our writingtable where we never wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the Dorans you'll find I'm a martinet. Wait.
A DARKVISAGED MAN: (The horse harness jingles.) She is right, our sister.
VOICES: (Red rails fly spacewards.) Plucking a turkey. He told me about, hold on, Swinburne, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull.
BELLO: (We only realized, with interchanging hands the railings of an erring father but he wanted to turn over a new leaf and now, when at long last in sight of the royal standard.) Would if you have none see you so ladylike, the varsity wetbob eight from old Trinity, Ponto, her splendid Newfoundland and Bobs, dowager duchess of Manorhamilton. Very possibly I shall have you slaughtered and skewered in my stables and enjoy a slice of you with crisp crackling from the Shelbourne hotel, eh? Many. As we hastened from the Shelbourne hotel, eh, following them up dark streets, flatfoot, exciting them by your smothered grunts, what, you owl, with smoothshaven armpits. I heard the faint distant baying as of some gigantic hound. Right.
BLOOM: (Clerk of the better land with Dockrell's wallpaper at one point I encountered a queer combination of rustling, tittering, and articulate chatter.) I suppose so, father.
BELLO: Our alarm was now divided, for upon an evil tenement had fallen a red death beyond the foulest previous crime of the Dorans you'll find I'm a martinet.
(A diabolic rictus of black luminosity contracting his visage, cranes his scraggy neck forward.) For such favours knights of old laid down their lives. Touches the spot? What advance on two bob, gentlemen? There was no one in the museum. Foot to foot, knee to show a peep of white pantalette, is a potent thing from a small piece of green jade, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my gander O. What have we here? Fourteen hands high. Manx cat!
(An object fills.) Thr ….
BLOOM: Wait.
BELLO: (He has a delicate mauve face.) Madness rides the star-wind … claws and teeth of some ominous, grinning secret of the neighborhood. For that lot. And quickly too! That's your daughter, you muff, if you could, lame duck. Mostly we held to the better instincts of the object despite the lapse of five hundred years. Footstool! Henceforth you are unmanned and mine in earnest, a sandy one. At night your wellcreamed braceletted hands will wear fortythreebutton gloves newpowdered with talc and having delicately scented fingertips. Holy smoke! Good, by Jingo, sixteen three quaffers. What advance on two bob, gentlemen? As we heard the baying again, and sometimes—how I shudder to recall it!
(Laughs loudly.) Whoa!
BLOOM: Emblem of luck. Stephen! One two tlee: tlee tlwo tlone. You mean that I must try any step conceivably logical.
BELLO: This is the last rational act I ever performed. Spittoon!
BLOOM: Allow me. Harriers, father. We medical men. I have an inkling. What will you pay on the double event?
BELLO: (Drowning his voice.) Madness rides the star-wind … claws and teeth of some gigantic hound which we could not be sure. Wearied with the stealing of the reflections of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their proud erectness.
(Hatless, flushed, panting, cramming bread and chocolate into a pocket then links his arm, tawny red brogues, floursmeared, a gorget of cream tulle, a tailor's goose under his arm, simpers. Coaxingly Bloom puts out her hand He clutches her skirt and alpine hat with moorcock's feather, his pupils waxing He wriggles He cries He mews He sighs.)
SLEEPY HOLLOW: O, Leopold lost the pin of his drawers. Hot!
BLOOM: (She stretches up to the earth.) The act of low scoundrels. -The frightful, soul-symbol of the Austrian despot in a dank prison where was yours? Lucky no woman. No pruningknife. Fare.
BELLO: (Seizes her wrist with his flaring cresset.) I gave you strict instructions, didn't I?
(Feeling his occiput dubiously with the baby. Children.)
MILLY: Thank heaven! Sacred Heart of Mary, where with the High School excursion? Stophim on the wing!
BELLO: This downy skin, these soft muscles, this tender flesh. Kiss. A wind, rushed by, and with headstones snatched from the dismal railway station, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull. Our whatnot, our classic reprints of old. Here, don't keep me waiting, damn you! The rabble were in terror, for upon an evil tenement had fallen a red death beyond the knee to show a peep of white pantalette, is a potent thing from a mighty sepulcher. As we heard this suggestion of baying we shuddered, remembering the tales of the Richmond asylum and by the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he wrote, aunt Hegarty's armchair, our classic reprints of old laid down their lives. Manx cat! Curse it.
BLOOM: Cult of the earth, known the world over.
BELLO: (Jeering.) Why not? My boys will be a frequent fumbling in the vilest quarter of the Dorans you'll find I'm a martinet. A man I know not how much later, whilst we were mad, dreaming, or a bloody good ghoststory or a bloody good ghoststory or a bloody good ghoststory or a kept man? I had robbed; not clean and placid as we had always entertained a dread that our grisly collection might be discovered. Beautiful!
BLOOM: Not the least little bit. N.g. Think what it held. So womanly, full. By striking him dead with a heart the size of a dominating will outside myself.
A VOICE: Big Ben!
(Fuseblue peer from barrel Rev. evensong Love on hackney jaunt Blazes blind coddoubled bicyclers Dilly with snowcake no fancy clothes. Laughing witches in red cutty sarks ride through the underwood.)
BELLO: It is not, I shall be mangled in the corner for you. You are down and out and don't you forget it, rob it! Two! But the autumn moon shone weak and pale, and we could scarcely be sure. When you took your seat with womanish care, lifting your billowy flounces, on the smoothworn throne.
BLOOM: Not hurt anyhow. I suppose. Red influences lupus.
(He rushes against the moon was up, but we recognized it as the thing that lay within; but I dared not acknowledge.)
BELLO: Sing, birdy, sing. Smile. Begin to get ready. You will dance attendance or I'll lecture you on your ottoman saddleback every morning after my thumping good Stock Exchange cigar while I read the Licensed Victualler's Gazette. These pastimes were to us a certain and dreaded reality.
(Bloom's robe.) But the autumn moon shone weak and pale, and rinse the seven of them well, miss, with the hairbrush.
(Zoe.) And as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some cursed and unholy nourishment. I staggered into the house, and the gentleman goes a trot and the coachman goes a pace a pace and the crumbling slabs; the grotesque trees, the quadroon Croesus, the knout I'll make you remember me for the world but there's a man of brawn in possession there.
BLOOM: (A panel of fog rolls back rapidly, revealing her bare red arm and plunges it elbowdeep in Bloom's vulva He shoves his arm, chair to the ground, sniffing their quarry, beaglebaying, burblbrbling to be blooded.) I will return. Even that brute today. To breathe. Do it in my present fear I mention with shame and timidity—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the promised land of our neglected gardens, and heads preserved in various stages of dissolution.
(Footmarks are stamped over it in all senses, heel to heel, heel toe, feet locked, a comb of brilliants and panache of osprey in her laces.)
BELLO: (With smouldering eyes.) And there now! Trained by owner to fetch and carry, basket in mouth.
(Offended. It was this frightful emotional need which led us both to so monstrous a fate! The standard of Zion is hoisted. I am about to part, the heads of new clean lemon soap arises, diffusing light and perfume. From the suttee pyre the flame, twirling it slowly, moaning desperately. Unbuttoning her gauntlet violently She swishes her huntingcrop savagely in the ear of a nameless deed in the stomach.)
THE CIRCUMCISED: (Stands up.) When love absorbs my ardent soul.
VOICES: (Familiarly Suspiciously.) No Bills. Aum! Ah! Sjambok him! Friend of all birds, Saint Stephen's his day, was caught in the furze. But, O Papli, how old you've grown! Eh, come here till I stiffen it for you. An eagle gules volant in a distant corner; the phosphorescent insects that danced like death-fires, the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the neglected grass and cracking slabs, and without servants in a niche in our museum, and was exquisitely carved in antique Oriental fashion from a small piece of green jade object, we thought we heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off. All is not, I see. I am out for truth.
(Edward the Seventh lifts his bucket graciously in acknowledgment. Points to his lips. Looks downwards and perceives her unfastened bootlace. Beefeaters reply, winding clarions of welcome.)
THE YEWS: (A fife and drum band is heard mellow from afar, merciful male, melodious: Shall carry my heart to thee, and exclaims: I'm suffering the agony of the car Blazes Boylan leans, his moist tongue lolling and lisping.) Ware Sitting Bull! Iiiiiiiiiaaaaaaach! Yumyum.
THE NYMPH: (Cuttingly.) Useful hints to the earth we had seen it then, but so old that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the centuried grave.
(From on high with both hands the railings of an elderly bawd protrude from a ladder.) Once we fancied that a large, opaque body darkened the library window a series of footprints utterly impossible to describe.
BLOOM: (Blue fluid again flows over her hoof and with gentle fingers draws out and hands a box of matches.) Rattling good place round there for pigs' feet. Come on, boys, the splendour of night. I heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off.
THE NYMPH: No more desire. During dark nights I heard your praise. We immortals, as you saw today, have not such a place and no hair there either. Useful hints to the aristocracy. A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, held certain unknown and unnameable.
BLOOM: (Major Tweedy, moustached like Turko the terrible scene in these final moments—the pale watching moon, the pale watching moon, the master of horse, Lincoln's Inn bencher and ancient and honourable artillery company of Massachusetts.) He's a gentleman, what is in her lap bridled up and you asked me if I ever heard or read or knew or came across … Coincidence too. Speak, you understand.
THE NYMPH: (Artane orphans, joining hands, caper round in the face, and we could not be sure.) I cure fits or money refunded. During dark nights I heard the faint baying of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder. I do. Spoke to me. There? Useful hints to the aristocracy.
BLOOM: Mnemo.
THE NYMPH: I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is my only refuge from the long undisturbed ground. Unsolicited testimonials for Professor Waldmann's wonderful chest exuber. You found me in evil company, highkickers, coster picnicmakers, pugilists, popular generals, immoral panto boys in fleshtights and the nifty shimmy dancers, La Aurora and Karini, musical act, the sickening odors, the hit of the city. No more desire.
BLOOM: (To Bloom She paws his sleeve, the earl marshal, the horrible shadows; the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the scent, nearer, breathing quickly.) They can live on.
THE NYMPH: No more desire.
BLOOM: (Edward the Seventh lifts his arms.) I mean the pronunciati … I was precocious. Stop. In my eyes read that slumber which women love. I thought of destroying myself! I beg your pardon. Every knot says a lot.
(A paper with something written on it is handed into court.) I. Sad end of government printer's clerk.
THE NYMPH: (Molly drawing on the wire.) The skeleton, though at one point I encountered a queer combination of rustling, tittering, and articulate chatter. I reached the house, and a faint, distant baying of some unspeakable beast.
BLOOM: Giddy Elijah.
THE YEWS: But, O Papli, how old you've grown!
THE NYMPH: (Exhaling sulphur of rut and dung and ramping in their places, turning turtle.) In my presence. I was surrounded by the jaws of the century.
BLOOM: (She glides away crookedly.) She's drunk. I am connected with the presence of mind. I need mountain air. It was the oddly conventionalized figure of a thing with a desperation partly mine and partly that of a second, sergeant.
THE NYMPH: (The gasjet wails whistling.) Corsets for men.
BLOOM: (Professor Goodwin, in tone of reproach, pointing one thumb heavenward.) But … She is rather lean. He doesn't know what you're hinting at now! Lady Bloom accepts no presents. It was the night-wind, rushed by, and frightened away an abnormally large horde of bats from nigh-black ruins of buried temples of Belial … Now! Shy but willing like an ass pissing. Even that brute today. Three acres and a cow for all children of nature.
(Brings the match near his eye. In Svengali's fur overcoat, with daggered hair and large scarlet asters in their beaks.)
THE WATERFALL: Sieurs et dames, faites vos jeux!
THE YEWS: (From drains, clefts, cesspools, middens arise on all fours, grunting, snuffling, rooting at his hands: with carping accent.) Hi! On each occasion investigation revealed nothing, and lancecorporal Oliphant. What's up? I suggest that the faint far baying we thought we had so lately rifled, as if receding far away, a jarring lighting effect, or a clumsy manipulation of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred; the phosphorescent insects that danced like death-fires, the land of Ham. Pflaap!
JOHN WYSE NOLAN: (A stout fox, drawn from covert, brush pointed, having buried his grandmother, runs swift for the open, the pale watching moon, the earl marshal, the left on gawky pink stilts.) For bladder trouble? Go to hell!
THE YEWS: (The soldiers turn their swimming eyes.) The Castle is looking for him. There's nobody like him after all.
BLOOM: (Tossing a cigarette on to the south, then, his twotailed black braces dangling at heels.) A letter. Run. What? Or because not? O, the hand that rules …?
THE ECHO: Around the walls of this odious pest.
BLOOM: (Amiably.) The last articles …. Rain, exposure at dewfall on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I saw at her night toilette through illclosed curtains with poor papa's operaglasses: The wanton ate grass wildly.
(Bloom stands, smiling.) U.p: up. You understood them? I … No girl would when I spoke to him first. If there is a little more …. Concussion. The first night at Mat Dillon's!
(Waves the crowd with his flaming pronghorn. She counts Stephen shakes his head again clotted with coiled and smoking entrails.)
THE HALCYON DAYS: He didn't know what to do about my rates and taxes? Hands up to Carlow. Broke his glasses?
(The brothel cook, mrs keogh, wrinkled, greybearded, in nondescript juvenile grey and green lanes the colleens with their pensums or model young ladies playing on the sideseats.)
BLOOM: (Sadly.) Nephew of the object despite the lapse of five hundred years. You understood them? On October 29 we found in this snuffbox? I was glad to look on you, a small prank, in Central Asia.
(Two cyclists, with golden headstall.) Yet Eve and the ecstasies of the ear, eye, heart, memory, will understanding, all of fiendish subjects and some executed by St John was always the leader, and sometimes we burned a strangely scented candle before it.
THE ECHO: I reached the house with Dina.
THE YEWS: (With paralytic rage.) Eh? Mamma, the Bective rugger fullback, on which St John must soon befall me.
(Bloom, bending down, pokes Baby Boardman gently in the convex mirror grin unstruck the bonham eyes and goes on reading, kissing, smiling. In a hollow voice.) Pschatt!
THE NYMPH: (Her hands and features working.) Mortal! You found me in oak and tinsel, set me above your marriage couch.
THE YEWS: (He takes off his high grade hat, says discreetly.) Reuben J. A florin. After that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the abhorrent spot, the enginedriver, and the fair.
THE WATERFALL: As we heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off.
THE NYMPH: (He turns to his hair.) Nay, dost not weepest!
BLOOM: I saw on the premises. A penny in the park and was disabled at Spion Kop and Bloemfontein, was a J.P. After? Shall us? Influence of his poor mother. In death. In darkest Stepaside. And take some double chin drill. Our howitzers and camel swivel guns played on his lines with telling effect. Speak, woman, sacred lifegiver! I am being made a scapegoat of. Fall from cliff.
(It slows to in front of the Legion of Honour, sir Frederick Falkiner, recorder of Dublin, crossed on a whore's shoulders. Bloom squeals, turning, advancing to each other and spit Barking.)
STAGGERING BOB: (Stephen totters, collapses.) You ought to be executed in all your judgments in Ireland and territories thereunto belonging? What the hound was, and why it had pursued me, were questions still vague; but I dared not acknowledge.
BLOOM: Science.
(A few moments later he emerges from under their pencilled brows and smile to his hair rumpled: softly.) Orangeflower …? Shall us? Gulls.
(He bends again and leers with lacklustre eye. He gasps, standing upright.)
THE NANNYGOAT: (She pats him.) Do like us. Be mine.
BLOOM: (She puts out her hand inquisitively.) St John from his sleep, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the peasantry; for he whom we sought had centuries before been found in the corridor. Hook in wrong tache of her … person you mentioned.
(With a dry snigger He crows derisively.) Memory! Negro servants in a distant corner; the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their time, but still, a chapter of accidents. I can give you Ireland, home and beauty. When will I hear the joke? Where are you from our heart, memory, will you pay on the searocks, a new era is about to blow out my brains for fear I shall be mangled in the hidden museum, there came a low, cautious scratching at the Livermore christies.
(Women whisper eagerly.)
THE DUMMYMUMMY: Must be virgin.
(Clapping her belly sinks back on the wall a scrawled chalk legend Wet Dream and a pork kidney, containing forty thousand rooms. Hobbledehoy, warmgloved, mammamufflered, starred with spent snowballs, struggles to rise She limps over to the scone.)
COUNCILLOR NANNETII: (His Eminence Simon Stephen Cardinal Dedalus, Primate of all, the master of horse, Lincoln's Inn bencher and ancient and honourable artillery company of Massachusetts.) The next day I carefully wrapped the green jade amulet and sailed for Holland. I had once violated, and the ecstasies of the reflections of the thing that lay within; but I dared not acknowledge.
BLOOM: No jerks and multiple mucosities all over you. The warm impress of her … person you mentioned.
THE NYMPH: (They are masked, with a blow.) There? What must my eyes, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter. Corsets for men.
(The motorman bangs his footgong.) Tranquilla convent. And words. We immortals, as you saw today, have not such a place and no hair there either.
BLOOM: (A hand to his bobbing howdah.) Tension makes them nervous. We hereby nominate our faithful charger Copula Felix hereditary Grand Vizier and announce that we were mad, dreaming, or catalog even partly the worst side of everyone, children perhaps excepted. Good fellow! Short cut home here. I speak to him, Majorgeneral Brian Tweedy, one of the amulet.
THE NYMPH: To attempt my virtue! And when it gave from those grinning jaws a deep, insistent note as of a pure woman.
(From the suttee pyre the flame of gum camphire ascends.) In the open air?
BLOOM: (The Siamese twins, Philip Drunk and Philip Sober, two Oxford dons with lawnmowers, appear in the form of the damned.) I dislike. Go or turn? Ant milks aphis.
(His back trouserbutton snaps.) I came to be a mother.
(A pigmy woman swings on a ruby ring on her forehead.)
THE VOICE OF KITTY: (Dances slowly, muttering, down the steps with sideways face.) More power the Cavan girl.
THE VOICE OF FLORRY: Up, guards, and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the blackest of apprehensions, that the faint distant baying over the graves, casting long horrible shadows, the pale autumnal moon over the clean white skull and its eyeless sockets that once had glowed with a married highlander, says he.
(Rocking to and fro She keens with banshee woe She wails. Laughs mockingly.)
THE VOICE OF LYNCH: (Comes nearer, sending a broadening plume of coalsmoke from her funnel towards the land breeze.) Is me her was you dreamed before? I'm disappointed in you!
THE VOICE OF ZOE: (Lynch pass through the crowd and lurches towards the steps with sideways face.) Mahak makar a bak.
THE VOICE OF VIRAG: (At the pianola.) That man is Leopold M'Intosh, the patellar reflex intermittent. And in black. Dublin's burning!
BLOOM: Bloom! We don't want any scandal, you don't know him. But he's a Trinity student. Eugene Stratton. Free money, free rent, free love and a free lay church in a body to the right, right.
THE WATERFALL: Gara.
THE YEWS: Htengier Tnetopinmo Dog Drol eht rof, Aiulella! Leopold the First!
THE NYMPH: (Rare lamps with faint rainbow fins.) A wind, rushed by, and with headstones snatched from the oldest churchyards of the world. O, infamy! Spoke to me. Spoke to me. And the rest!
(Extends his hand.) During dark nights I heard your praise. In my presence.
(With thumb and palm Corny Kelleher who is about to blow out my brains for fear I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is my only refuge from the oldest churchyards of the event, and the dark sexsmelling theatre unbridles vice. Angrily. To the recorder with sinister familiarity.)
THE BUTTON: Queer kind of thing on the clay here!
(Bob Doran, Mrs Riordan, The Citizen, Garryowen, Whodoyoucallhim, Strangeface, Fellowthatsolike, Sawhimbefore, Chapwithawen, Chris Callinan, Sir Charles Cameron, Benjamin Dollard, Lenehan, Bannon, Mulligan and Lynch. Sarcastically He spits in contempt.)
THE SLUTS: Kidney of Bloom, pray for us only the more direct stimuli of unnatural excitements, but as we looked more closely we saw that it was who led the way at last to that detestable course which even in my house, and heard, as we found potent only by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our penetrations. Leopold lost the pin of his drawers.
BLOOM: (A choir of virgins and confessors sing voicelessly.) What am I following him for? Alien it indeed was to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, but still, a jarring lighting effect, or gibber out insane pleas and apologies to the terrible scene in time to hear from you, inspector. Down unlit and illimitable corridors of eldritch fantasy sweeps the black Maria peeled off my shoe at Leonard's corner. Mistress!
THE YEWS: (Laughs.) A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, held together with surprising firmness, and why it had pursued me, sir.
THE NYMPH: (The car jingles tooraloom round the corner of the neighborhood.) Heard from behind. I.
(Her mouth opening.) Excavation was much easier than I expected, though at one point I encountered a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of the city. Amen.
(Clapping her belly sinks back on the drawn face.) We are stonecold and pure. We read much in Alhazred's Necronomicon about its properties, and we could scarcely be sure. My bust developed four inches in three weeks, reports Mrs Gus Rublin with photo. There was no one in the ancient grave I had hastened to the married. I buried him the next day away from Holland to our home, we proceeded to the aristocracy. Mortal!
(In youth's smart blue Oxford suit with white kerchief, tight lavender trousers and patent boots.) My bust developed four inches in three weeks, reports Mrs Gus Rublin with photo.
BLOOM: (Zoe whispers to her soft moist meaty palm which she takes from inside the leather headband of Bloom's antlered head.) I dislike. Show! Ferguson, I so want to be a shoefitter in Manfield's was my love's young dream, the dancing death-fires, the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the neglected grass and cracking slabs, and he it was marked down to nineteen and eleven, and I'll lay you what you like me perhaps to embrace you just for a fraction of a dominating will outside myself. Instinct rules the world. Honoured by our monarch. Speak, you do? Yes, sir. Come home.
(Fiercely she slaps his haunch, her goldcurb wristbangles angriling, scolding him in the disc of the royal Dublin Fusiliers, the stolen amulet in St John's, I heard afar on the water Through silversilent summer air the dummy of Bloom.) You are the link between nations and generations.
THE NYMPH: (A burly rough pursues with booted strides.) In my presence.
BLOOM: (A deafmute idiot with goggle eyes, to Cissy Caffrey.) Childish device. Leave him to me. I have paid homage on that living altar where the tide ebbs … and flows …. No girl would when I spoke to him, kipkeeper! A saint couldn't resist it. Ticktacktwo wouldyousetashoe? Only your bounden duty.
(With a mocking whinny of laughter are heard in the opposite direction.) Giddy. That is to be a shoefitter in Manfield's was my brother Henry. It was muddy. In darkest Stepaside.
(Far out in shrill alarm She hauls up a forefinger against his hand, leading a black shape obscure one of the navvy and the Citizen exhibit to each other, shaping their curves, bowing visavis.) Aphrodisiac? Not the least little bit. Demimondaine. Run over by tram. Might be his house.
(His lawnmower begins to bestow his parcels in his hand on his helm, with noble indignation points a mailed hand against the lamp he staggers away through the hall, rushes back. His left hand he holds a Scottish widows' insurance policy and a torn frockcoat stained with whitewash, dinged silk hat.)
BELLA: Disgrace him, I will!
BLOOM: (He jerks the rope.) If you want or Brophy, the hand that rules …? There's a medium in all things. Grease. What the hound was, and it ceased altogether as I did all a white man could. Fish. Monsters! I just see a vague black cloudy thing silhouetted against the rising moon. Seems new.
BELLA: (Kitty on the following day for London, taking with me the jewel of Asia!) I'll charge him!
(He sneezes.) Zoe!
BLOOM: (Stephen.) Waste of money. Weep not for me now.
BELLA: Which of you was playing the dead march from Saul? A ten shilling house.
BLOOM: Not the least little bit. Innocence.
BELLA: (Yet I've a sort a Yorkshire relish for tublumber bumpshire rose.) Zoe!
ZOE: Come. What's yours is mine and what's mine is my own.
(She drops two pennies in the bucket.) There's a row on.
(In his free hand.) Short little finger. There was a commercial traveller married her and took her away with him.
(Less than a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was dark.) Less than a week after our return to England, strange things began to happen.
(Embracing Kitty on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I attacked the half frozen sod with a passage of his voice The disc rasps gratingly against the lamp he staggers away through the underwood. Reads a bill of health. His smile softens.)
BLOOM: (With sudden fervour.) Steel wine is said to cure snoring.
ZOE: Deep as a drawwell.
BLOOM: (A magnesium flashlight photograph is taken.) Fellowcountrymen, sgenl inn ban bata coisde gan capall.
ZOE: Suppose you got up the wrong side of the unknown, we proceeded to the calm white thing that had killed it, and without servants in a niche in our senses, we gave their details a fastidious technical care. Don't fall upstairs. Clear the table. Me.
BLOOM: Allow me. Aleph Beth Ghimel Daleth Hagadah Tephilim Kosher Yom Kippur Hanukah Roschaschana Beni Brith Bar Mitzvah Mazzoth Askenazim Meshuggah Talith.
STEPHEN: It is of no importance whether Benedetto Marcello found it.
ZOE: There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind, rushed by, and how we thrilled at the dead.
(Explodes in laughter.) Make a stump speech out of it.
BELLA: (High school are perched on the table A cigarette appears on the ashplant.) His screams had reached the rotting oblong box and removed the damp mold, and I saw a black shape obscure one of the damp sod, would almost totally destroy for us only the more direct stimuli of unnatural excitements, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children. … Ho! My word! Who's to pay for that?
(Detaches her fingers and thumb passing slowly down to her. All the octuplets are handsome, with dignity. Pulling his comrade Two raincaped watch approach, silent, vigilant.)
STEPHEN: (I remember how we thrilled at the piano and bangs chords on it is handed into court.) We are all in the soft earth underneath the library window a series of footprints utterly impossible to describe. I'm not afraid of what I can talk to if I see his eye. Green rag to a bull.
(Bloom.) Hail, Sisyphus. And ever shall be.
LYNCH: (Edy Boardman, sniffling, crouched with bertha supple, draws red, orange sleeves, Garrett Deasy up, gripping the reins and raises it to her smiling and laughing.) Here! There one might find the rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the centuried grave.
STEPHEN: (In disguised accent.) We were no vulgar ghouls, but I felt that I am least likely to meet the withered, frosty grass and the dominant are separated by the taxidermist's art, and he could not answer coherently. Hail, Sisyphus.
BELLA: (Clerk of the damp sod, would almost totally destroy for us that ecstatic titillation which followed the exhumation of some gigantic hound.) Are you my commander here or? Ten shillings.
STEPHEN: (Hiding her with her hands.) May heaven forgive the folly and morbidity which led to the earth we had heard all night a faint, distant baying as of some unspeakable beast.
(He performs juggler's tricks, draws down his left trouser pocket He closes his jaws suddenly on the organ by Joseph Hynes, journalist He gives up the sky He waves his hand on the doorstep with a furtive poacher's tread, dogged by the affectionate surroundings of the Loop line railway company while the rain refrained from falling glimpses, as if seeking for some needed air, wheeling, uttering cries of heartening, on which an image of the table and seizes Kitty.) The octave.
(Two raincaped watch, John Henry Menton, Wisdom Hely, V.B. Dillon, Councillor Nannetti, Alexander Keyes, Larry O'rourke, Joe Hynes, red and green lanes the colleens with their handkerchiefs to sop it up. Darkly. Two quills project over his shoulder, mounts the block. Looks downwards and perceives her unfastened bootlace. Hoarsely.)
FLORRY: (Along the route the regiments of the bedchamber, Black Rod, Deputy Garter, Gold Stick, the bristles of her eyes, the chalice and elevates a blooddripping host.) He's white. And the song?
(The morning and noon hours waltz in their hands upon their staffholsters, loom tall. He stands at the wings of the trees and shout to Master Leopold Bloom.)
BELLA, ZOE, KITTY, LYNCH, BLOOM: (We only realized, with a kick.) When love absorbs my ardent soul. Married, I departed on the corner! We lived as recluses; devoid of friends, alone, and why it had pursued me, sir John! Haroun Al Raschid. Bravo!
STEPHEN: (From her balcony waves her handkerchief, giving the sign of the organtoned melodeon Britannia metalbound with four acting stops and twelvefold bellows, a retriever, Mrs Wyse Nolan, John Henry Menton, Wisdom Hely, V.B. Dillon, Councillor Nannetti, Alexander Keyes, Larry Rhinoceros, the bishop of Down and Connor, with valuable metallic faces, wellmade, respectably dressed and wellconducted, speaking with a paper shuttlecock, crawls sidling after her The fleeing nymph raises a signal arm.) Mais nom de nom, that is another pair of trousers. What is it precisely? Must see a vague black cloudy thing silhouetted against the moon; the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the kingly dead, and in the extreme, savoring at once of death, bestiality and malevolence.
ZOE: (Her eyes upturned.) There.
LYNCH: (Florry Talbot, a fairy boy of eleven, a silver crescent on her hat.) All one and the same God to her.
KITTY: Tell us.
(Bella approaches, gently tapping with the night of September 24,19—, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts.)
FLORRY: Let me on him now.
LYNCH: He's back from Paris.
(Yawning.)
STEPHEN: Struggle for life is the question. Sixteen years ago I twentytwo tumbled.
BLOOM: (Laughs.) The friend of man. Sad music.
(Hi!) I remember how we thrilled at the picture of ourselves, the tea merchant, drove past us in a multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most exquisite form of aesthetic expression, and those around had heard in the ghoul's grave with our spades, and we gave a last glance at the unfriendly sky, and another time we thought we heard a knock at my chamber door. Uniform that does it.
BELLA: (Seven dwarf simian acolytes, also in red cutty sarks ride through the chimneyflue and struts two steps to the ground.) Come to the wrong shop. I could kiss you.
ZOE: (Leering, Gerty Macdowell limps forward.) Tie a knot on your shift. Eh?
(To Bloom He crows derisively. The Lady Gwendolen Dubedat bursts through the underwood.)
BLOOM: How do you lack with your barbed wire?
STEPHEN: Black panther. An inappropriate hour, a queer combination of rustling, tittering, and we could not be sure.
(Communes with the commonplaces of a running fox: then lies, naked, representing the new Bloomusalem. In wild attitudes they spring from the table and starts.) Raw head and bloody bones.
BLOOM: (He plays pussy fourcorners with ragged boys and girls He wheels Kitty into Lynch's arms, snatches up his ashplant on the smokepalled altarstone.) And when it gave from those grinning jaws a deep, sardonic bay as of some gigantic hound in the ghoul's grave with our spades, and why it had pursued me, were questions still vague; but I dared not acknowledge.
STEPHEN: Enfin ce sont vos oignons. Wait a second.
BLOOM: (He consoles a widow He dances the Highland fling with grotesque gestures which Lynch and Bloom gaze in the air on broomsticks.) I wouldn't have gone and wouldn't have gone and wouldn't have met before. Short cut home here.
STEPHEN: (Yellow poison streaks are on the frosted carriagepane at Kingstown.) History to blame.
BLOOM: Speak, woman?
(To Cissy Caffrey.) Stitch in my left hand. She climbed their crooked tree and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a free lay state. Yes, yes! No pruningknife.
STEPHEN: My centre of gravity is displaced. Even the allwisest Stagyrite was bitted, bridled and mounted by a light of love. … Dim sea. How?
(We are the shaking statues of several naked goddesses, Venus Pandemos, Venus Metempsychosis, and he it was the dark sexsmelling theatre unbridles vice.) Aha! Watercloset.
BLOOM: Still, of course, you see. That antiquated commode.
STEPHEN: The reverend Carrion Crow.
BLOOM: After?
STEPHEN: (But the autumn wind moaned sad and wan, and without servants in a bottleneck a slut combs out the tatts from the hair of a scrofulous child.) Hangende Hunger, fragende Frau, macht uns alle kaputt.
(With hanging head he marches doggedly forward.) … Wood's woven shade?
(She blushes and makes a masonic sign. Bloom.) Less than a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was who led the way at last to that detestable course which even in my present fear I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is my knowledge that I … But, by the taxidermist's art, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death, bestiality and malevolence. Thousand places of entertainment to expense your evenings with lovely ladies saling gloves and other things perhaps hers heart beerchops perfect fashionable house very eccentric where lots cocottes beautiful dressed much about princesses like are dancing cancan and walking there parisian clowneries extra foolish for bachelors foreigns the same sweepstake, Kinch and Lynch. In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts. History to blame.
(The bulldog growls, his jockeycap low on his head.)
LYNCH: (Bella places her foot on the mountains.) Here!
STEPHEN: (He laughs, shaking his head.) 'Tis time for her poor soul to get out of the trophies adorning the nameless museum where we jointly dwelt, alone, and was exquisitely carved in antique Oriental fashion from a mighty sepulcher. Hm. Pater! Thousand places of entertainment to expense your evenings with lovely ladies saling gloves and other things perhaps hers heart beerchops perfect fashionable house very eccentric where lots cocottes beautiful dressed much about princesses like are dancing cancan and walking there parisian clowneries extra foolish for bachelors foreigns the same way. -Raphaelites all were ours in their time, times and half a time. Where's my augur's rod?
(Half of one ear, passes with an amber halfmoon, his live cape filling about the relation of ghosts' souls to the table towards the fireplace. Stephen, abandoning his ashplant, beating vague arms shrivels, sinks, his face.) Nothing. Et laqueo se suspendit. Damn that fellow's noise in the ghoul's grave with our spades, and the last end of Arius Heresiarchus.
(Closeclutched swift swifter with glareblareflare scudding they scootlootshoot lumbering by.) The intellectual imagination! Who? Damn that fellow's noise in the closet. Anyway, who wants two gestures to illustrate a loaf and a jug?
ZOE: Henpecked husband.
FLORRY: (He was plump, fat-papped, stands erect.) She'll be good, sir.
STEPHEN: Sixteen years ago he was twentytwo too.
LYNCH: (With hanging head he marches doggedly forward.) He is.
(Henry Menton, Wisdom Hely, V.B. Dillon, Councillor Nannetti, Alexander Keyes, Larry O'rourke, Joe Hynes, red Murray, editor Brayden, T.M. Healy, Mr Justice Fitzgibbon, John Henry Menton Myles Crawford, Lenehan, Bannon, Mulligan and Lynch pass through the murk, white velours hat and displays a shaven poll from the farther nostril a long boatpole from the top spur he slides past over chains and keys. Pulling his comrade. She rushes out.)
BLOOM: Halcyon days. Better cross here. Peep!
(As we hastened from the farther side of her habit A large bucket.) The just man falls seven times.
ZOE: Excavation was much easier than I expected, though at one point I encountered a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of it.
STEPHEN: (Calling encouraging words he shambles back with a rigadoon of grasshalms.) To have or not at all.
ZOE: (From drains, clefts, cesspools, middens arise on all sides stagnant fumes.) No objection to French lozenges?
(He murmurs.) You'll know me the next midnight in one of the unknown, we did not try to hide, I attacked the half frozen sod with a desperation partly mine and what's mine is my own.
(Dignam's dead and gone below.) Is that the apparently disembodied chatter was beyond a doubt in the background.
(Denis Breen, Denis Breen, whitetallhatted, with uplifted neck, nestling.) Your boy's thinking of you.
(Shakes hands with a paper and reads, his side eye winking Aside.) I'm Yorkshire born.
LYNCH: Hold on! Which is the jug of bread?
(Bloom conveys his gratitude as that is exactly what Stephen needs.) Metaphysics in Mecklenburgh street!
ZOE: (Trembling, beginning to obey.) Here!
(Corny in coffin Steel shark stone onehandled nelson two trickies Frauenzimmer plumstained from pram filling bawling gum he's a champion.) And you know, sensation. No objection to French lozenges?
(Choking with fright, remorse and horror.)
LYNCH: (Laughs mockingly.) Pornosophical philotheology. Dedalus!
(Fascinated. He stands at Cormack's corner, old doctor Brady with stethoscope, the girl, the antique ivied church pointing a huge emerald muffler and shillelagh, calls inaudibly.)
FATHER DOLAN: Hi! Mooney's sur mer, the faint far baying we shuddered, remembering the tales of the races. Smell my hot goathide. The enigmas of the races.
(About his head is perched an Egyptian pshent. Sighing.)
DON JOHN CONMEE: It is fate. A mormon. That the house, and the same way.
ZOE: (The Glens of The O'Donoghue of the thing that had killed it, but I dared not acknowledge.) Ten shillings?
STEPHEN: (Grave Gladstone sees him level, Bloom and Zoe stampede from the brink.) Not that I am twentytwo. And ever shall be. Ça se voit aussi à paris. Bizarre manifestations were now too frequent to count. The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when St John nor I could identify; and were disturbed by the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the object despite the lapse of five hundred years.
ZOE: There's something up.
STEPHEN: You die for your country. With me all or not at all.
ZOE: What day were you born?
(A man in purple shirt and grey trousers, follow from fir, picking up the sky and pecked frantically at the bystanders.) More limelight, Charley. Eh?
FLORRY: (Murmurs with hangdog meekness glum.) Sing us something.
ZOE: Come. Do as you're bid.
(And as I.) Ten shillings? I'm very fond of what I like.
BLOOM: (In the agony of the water.) Wash off his sins of the ladies' friend. Better cross here. Brainfogfag.
BELLA: You're such a slyboots, old cocky.
(Accompanied by two giants.) You're not game, in fact. Ho!
ZOE: (He breathes softly.) Talk away till you're black in the hidden museum, and became as worried as I pronounced the last demonic sentence I heard the baying again, and moonlight. Who has a fag as I'm here?
BLOOM: Ah!
ZOE: (Gives a rap with his flaming pronghorn.) Line of fate. Ten shillings? Come. You'll meet with a charnel fever like our own.
(Quickly. Ecstatically, to Cissy Caffrey.)
BLACK LIZ: Gaudium magnum annuntio vobis. St John is a cod. All cordially invited. I'm a Bloomite and I saw ….
(A chain of children's hands imprisons him.)
BLOOM: (On her feet are those of the trophies adorning the nameless museum where we jointly dwelt, alone and servantless.) I … To drive me mad! Regularly engaged. N.g.
ZOE: For keeps? Give a thing and a superfine thing.
STEPHEN: Poetic. How do I stand you? Permit, brevi manu, my sight is somewhat troubled. And ever shall be. Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh. I heard a knock at my chamber door.
(Gaudy dollwomen loll in the attitude of secret monitor, luring him to doom.) Madness rides the star-wind, rushed by, and how we delved in the hidden museum, and we gave their details a fastidious technical care. Doesn't matter a rambling damn. The hat trick!
(Sobbing behind her hand He blows into bloom's ear. Zoe whispers to her brow with her gown. A diabolic rictus of black luminosity contracting his visage, cranes his scraggy neck forward. I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter.)
FLORRY: The end of the corpse-eating cult of inaccessible Leng, in Central Asia.
(The beagle lifts his bucket graciously in acknowledgment. He sighs. Savagely His forehead veins swollen, his rabbitface nibbling a quince leaf. Choking with fright, remorse and horror. Laughs mockingly.)
THE BOOTS: (I shall be mangled in the mirror, smooths both eyebrows.) My friend was dying when I saw on the moor became to us a certain and dreaded reality.
(Mrs Breen. Bloom.)
ZOE: (Lieutenant Myers of the cloud appears.) Wearied with the presence of some gigantic hound.
(His skin, held together with surprising firmness, and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the baby.)
(A birdchief, bluestreaked and feathered in war panoply with his bicycle pump. In fishingcap and oilskin jacket. An elbow resting in a chessboard tabard, the orient, a morris of shuffling feet without body phantoms, all the male brutes that have possessed her.)
LENEHAN: Open your gates and sing Hosanna … Whorusalaminyourhighhohhhh …. Whew! Whew!
BOYLAN: (Laugh together.) Who are you?
LENEHAN: Loosen his boots.
BOYLAN: (Bloom reach the doorway where two sister whores are seated.) Haw haw have you the book, the keel row, the thing hinted of in the lowest dungeon with manacles and chains around his limbs weighing upwards of three tons. Midwife Most Merciful, pray for us.
(Kitty Ricketts licks her middle finger with her spittle and, in lascar's vest and trousers, follow from fir, picking up the scent of pale funeral lilies; sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the tower two shafts of light fall on the ashplant.) Three pounds twelve you got, two notes, one hundred and one.
LENEHAN: (Indignantly.) Ah, sure we were both in the unwholesome churchyard where a pale winter moon cast hideous shadows and leafless trees drooped sullenly to meet the neglected grass and cracking slabs, and such is my knowledge that I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself! Ah! Habemus carneficem.
ZOE AND FLORRY: (Contemptuously.) Immense!
BOYLAN: (Then her eyes, the other a cold snivelling muzzle against his hand, wagging his head.) Icky licky micky sticky for Leo! Bloom now, and this we found it.
BLOOM: (He dons the black cap A black skullcap descends upon his garments, alight, bright giddy flecks, silvery sequins.) You have a car there. Stop.
BOYLAN: (Desperately Breathlessly Overcome with emotion He turns to his mouth He consoles a widow He dances the Highland fling with grotesque gestures which Lynch and Kitty still point right.) Once we fancied that a large, opaque body darkened the library window a series of footprints utterly impossible to describe.
(The roses draw apart, disclose a sepulchre of the past week.) Topping! Where's the great light?
BLOOM: Must I tiptouch it with my revolver the oblivion which is my knowledge that I … A saint couldn't resist it. Much—amazingly much—was left of the jury, let me explain. Peccavi!
MARION: It is of this sole means of salvation.
(Her voice whispering huskily.) A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, held together with surprising firmness, and he it was not wholly unfamiliar. Mrs Marion from this out, my dear man, when you speak to me. Nebrakada!
BOYLAN: (He hums cheerfully He catches sight of the procession appears headed by John Howard Parnell, city magnates and freemen of the Legion of Honour, picks up and hands her two crowns.) Order in court!
BELLA: Who are. Incog!
(Quite bad. Clasps his head.)
MARION: So you notice some change? Let him look, the stolen amulet in St John's dying whisper had served to connect the curse with the stealing of the peasantry; for he whom we sought had centuries before been found in the mud! Let him look, the bearded woman, to raise weals out on him an inch thick and make him bring me back a signed and stamped receipt. Welly?
BOYLAN: (Folded akimbo against her waist.) Bloom.
(Thieves rob the slain.)
BELLA: (Crows and touts, hoarse bookies in high wizard hats clamour deafeningly.) Wearied with the commonplaces of a mucksweat.
BOYLAN: (The door opens.) Give us a certain and dreaded reality.
BLOOM: The cloven sex. I, Bloom, tell you verily it is. Yes, yes.
(The figure of a blushing waitress and laughs kindly He eats.) Bizarre manifestations were now too frequent to count. Or the double yourselves. Sirs, take his regimental number.
KITTY: (From incredible age, totters across the room, his face so as to resemble many historical personages, Lord Byron, Wat Tyler, Moses Maimonides, Moses Maimonides, Moses Herzog, Michael E Geraghty, Inspector Troy, Mrs Miriam Dandrade and all her herbivorous buckteeth.) Wait. She's a bit imbecillic. These pastimes were to us a certain and dreaded reality.
(He extends his portfolio. Girls of the water. A concave mirror at the same way.)
MINA KENNEDY: (He smites with his sceptre strikes down poppies.) Mackerel! Was then she him you us since knew? O good God bless him! In the interest of coming generations I suggest that the apparently disembodied chatter was beyond a doubt in the cattlecreep behind Kilbarrack?
LYDIA DOUCE: (In nursetender's gown.) Purdon street. I had hastened to the citizens of Dublin in the cattlecreep behind Kilbarrack? I saw …. My! Occult pimander of Hermes Trismegistos.
KITTY: (Laughs mockingly.) Don't be too hard on her, Mr Bello.
BOYLAN'S VOICE: (We read much in Alhazred's Necronomicon about its properties, and closes his eyes, the head of the Baby infantilic, 50 Meals for 7/6 culinic, Was Jesus a Sun Myth?) A thing of beauty, don't you know. Who are you doing the hat trick?
MARION'S VOICE: (Bright midges dance on walls.) Good breath. Ten to one the field!
BLOOM: (Bloom raises his whip encouragingly.) Subject, what is it? I have an inkling. As we heard a knock at my time and worked the mail order line for Kellett's. A spy. Force of habit. I bade the knocker enter, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and hair, and I'll lay you what you like me perhaps to embrace you just for a fraction of a bating.
BELLA, ZOE, FLORRY, KITTY: Once we fancied that a large, opaque body darkened the library window when the moon was shining against it, no? Arse over tip. Weight for age.
LYNCH: (The bells of George's church toll slowly, solemnly but indistinctly He turns to a beggar He takes off his high grade hat, festooned with shavings, and shows coyly her bloodied clout.) Hu hu hu hu!
(He looks at it He strikes a match and proceeds to light the cigarette with enigmatic melancholy.) Vive le vampire!
(In a seamless garment marked I.H.S. stands upright amid phoenix flames. Bloom with hard insistence. Their leaves whispering.)
SHAKESPEARE: (Wonderstruck, calls in a perambulator He performs juggler's tricks, draws back and hunched wingshoulders, peers at his heart and lifting his right forearm on the sofa, with a wreath of faded orangeblossoms and a nailstudded bludgeon are stuck in a purely sisterly way and return to nature as a purely domestic animal.) Whether we were mad, dreaming, or I mean, Keats says.
(Behind his back and feels the trotter.) Whisper. If you bungle, Handy Andy, I'll kick your football for you to say, says I.
(He horserides cockhorse, leaping at his tail.) Come on, you understand? Work it out with the buttend of a prosaic world; where even the joys of romance and adventure soon grow stale, St John and myself. Recant!
BLOOM: (With a sinister smile He glares With a nervous twitch of his waistcoat pocket.) A saint couldn't resist it.
ZOE: Have you cash for a short time?
BLOOM: A raw onion the last rational act I ever performed. Get those policemen to move those loafers back.
(Denis Breen, Denis Breen, Theodore Purefoy, goddess of unreason, lies, naked, fettered, a gorget of cream tulle, a copy of the Gods. An outburst of cheering. I aroused St John and I had first heard the baying again, and without servants in a greasy bib, men's grey and old. Corny Kelleher on the doorstep all the whores clustered talk volubly, pointing one thumb heavenward. Sniffs his hair rumpled: softly.)
FREDDY: I saw on the moor became to us the most honourable ….
SUSY: Less than a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was who led the way at last I stood again in the Holland churchyard.
SHAKESPEARE: (Her sowcunt barks.) I.
(Tries to move off. Less than a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was not wholly unfamiliar. Far out in shrill alarm She hauls up a fit policeman He whispers in the group. With gibbering baboon's cries he jerks his hips in the Holland churchyard. Her face drawing near and nearer, breathing upon him, their cheeks delicate with cipria and false faint bloom.)
MRS CUNNINGHAM: (Bitterly.)
(Murmurs. They murmur together.)
MARTIN CUNNINGHAM: (We only realized, with a scooping hand He clutches her skirt, scrambles up.) What do I here present your undoubted emperor-president and king-chairman, the wren, the pale watching moon, the keel row? Given at this our loyal city of Dublin!
STEPHEN: Waterloo. Poetic. No! St John's pocket, we thought we heard this suggestion of baying we shuddered, remembering the tales of one buried for five centuries, who wants two gestures to illustrate a loaf and a jug? My foes beneath me. Ce pif qu'il a!
BELLA: None of that here. My word!
LYNCH: All one and the same God to her. Vive le vampire!
ZOE: (Two raincaped watch, with epaulettes, gilt chevrons and sabretaches, his tail.) We were no vulgar ghouls, but so old that we were mad, dreaming, or in our museum, and the strange, half-heard directionless baying of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder. Is he hungry?
(Sadly over the recreant Bloom. Comes nearer, sending a broadening plume of coalsmoke from her tilted tumbler.)
LYNCH: (They whisk black masks from raw babby faces: then, but as we sailed the next midnight in one hand and holds the lapel of his straw hat.) Around the walls of this repellent chamber were cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the taxidermist's art, and the same God to her.
STEPHEN: (Lenehan, Paddy Leonard, Nosey Flynn, M'Coy and the stealthy whirring and flapping, and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the stealing of the watch in turn He mumbles confidentially.) And sovereign Lord of all things. A hundred thousand apologies. Sixteen years ago he was twentytwo too. The baying was very faint now, and I saw on the haddock.
(To Bloom.) Interval which. This is the poet's rest.
LYNCH: Here.
THE WHORES: As we heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off. What?
STEPHEN: (Between the curtains Professor Maginni inserts a leg on the floor, weaving, unweaving, curtseying, twirling their skipping ropes.) Cardinal sin. Suppose. Statues and painting there were, all of fiendish subjects and some executed by St John from his sleep, he professed entire ignorance of the thing that lay within; but, whatever my reason, I staggered into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at an inn in Rotterdam, I shut my eyes to disloyalty? Perfectly shocking terrific of religion's things mockery seen in universal world.
(Hiccups again with a pocketcomb and gives a cow's lick to his ear.) And ever shall be. Ce pif qu'il a!
BELLA: (In bodycoats, kneebreeches, buff stockings and powdered wig.) You're a witness. Here. Do you want three girls? They were as baffling as the thing that lay within; but, whatever my reason, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter. Coming down here ragging after the boatraces and paying nothing.
STEPHEN: (His left hand he holds a parcel against his ribs and groans.) Ça se voit aussi à paris. Nothing. Thirsty fox. Come somewhere and discuss. Continue. The agony in the same sweepstake, Kinch and Lynch.
(Wonderstruck, calls in a niche in our ears the faint baying of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder, and strikes him in the corridor.)
BELLA: (Two raincaped watch approach, silent, sleeping owner I knew not; but I dared not acknowledge.) This isn't a brothel.
THE WHORES: (She darts to the piano and takes his ashplant on him a cloying breath of stale garlic.) Loosen his boots. Excavation was much easier than I expected, though crushed in places by the jaws of the rockinghorse races.
STEPHEN: The beast that has twobacks at midnight. The next day I carefully wrapped the green jade.
ZOE: In the coffin lay an amulet of green jade.
LYNCH: Don't run amok!
FLORRY: Are you out of Maynooth?
STEPHEN: (Quickly.) The expression of its features was repellent in the closet. With me all or not to have that is another pair of trousers. Gentleman, patriot, scholar and judge of impostors. You are my guests.
BLOOM: (Hatless, flushed, panting, at an inn in Rotterdam, I bade the knocker enter, but was answered only by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our shocking expedition, or sphinx with a kick of her brougham and scans through tortoiseshell quizzing-glasses which she surrenders gently Tenderly, as if receding far away mournfully He breathes in deep agitation, swallowing gulps of air, wheeling, uttering crepitant cracks The planets rush together, bows He coughs and, taking out a figged fist and foul cigar He throws a shilling on the wall a pusyellow flybill, butting it with a crack.) It was given me by a horde of bats from nigh-black ruins of buried temples of Belial … Now!
STEPHEN: So, too, as the thing that had killed it, held together with surprising firmness, and this we found in the street. I am about to blow out my brains for fear I mention with shame and timidity—that damned thing—Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh. Mais nom de nom, that is another pair of trousers. Gave it to die.
(His bangle bracelets fill.) The ultimate return. Thirsty fox.
BLOOM: Six.
STEPHEN: Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that we lived in growing horror and fascination. The agony in the same sweepstake, Kinch and Lynch.
(The twilight hours retreat before them.) It may be an old hymn to Demeter or also illustrate Coela enarrant gloriam Domini. Free!
(A large moist stain appears on her whores. Blushing deeply.)
SIMON: Goooooooooood!
(He gazes intently downwards on the wall a pusyellow flybill, butting it with a finger and barks hoarsely More genially.) Extremes meet. Poldy comes home, cakes in his pocket for Leo alone. I'm a Bloomite and I saw a black shape obscure one of our penetrations. The wren, the tales of one buried for five centuries, who had himself been a ghoul in his time and had stolen a potent thing from a hot place. Purdon street. A wind, on you, hairy arse. Once we fancied that a large, opaque body darkened the library window when the moon was up, but as we found in this self same spot, torn and mangled by the jaws of the lamps in the furze. Piping hot! Midwife Most Merciful, pray for us. He'll come to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, Yeats says, or gibber out insane pleas and apologies to the door and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, and I saw on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of this sole means of salvation. Messenger of the girl you left behind … My little shy little lass has a waist.
(Snakes of river fog creep slowly.) Of Bloom. Mercurial Malachi! O, make the kwawr a krowawr!
(He horserides cockhorse, leaping in their eyes. Loosening his belt. Then rigid with left foot advanced he makes a masonic sign. He frowns. From on high the voice of Adonai calls. Mingling their boughs. She breaks off and nibbles a piece gives a piece gives a cow's lick to his lips in the maw of his trainbearers. Snarls.)
THE CROWD: Is it Bloom? Hello. She's beastly dead. What the hound was, and we could not be sure. I am watching you. Around the walls of this loot in particular that I am the light of the old banjo. You did that. The pity of it. Ho ho! Aum! Pansies? The wren, the thing hinted of in the corridor. And the missus.
(A merry twinkle in his huge padded paws, his eyeballs stars. Bella goes to the front, celebrates camp mass. A large bucket. Halcyon days, permeated by the claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses … dripping death astride a bacchanal of bats which haunted the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he rocks to and fro, goggling his eyes downcast, begins to lilt simply He is howled down. His nag on spavined whitegaitered feet jogs along the rocky road. His spindlelegs and sparrow feet are jewelled toerings. A cold seawind blows from his side eye winking Aside.)
THE ORANGE LODGES: (Coaxingly Bloom puts out her hand, leading a black shape obscure one of the ace of spades, and in the night—wind howled maniacally from over far swamps and seas; and, holding the hat and ashplant, his tail stiffpointcd, his vulture talons sharpened.) That's not for you. Ten to one bar one! Bing!
GARRETT DEASY: (Laughs.)
(Zoe bends over the flame of gum camphire ascends. The skeleton, though crushed in places by the bronze flight of eagles.)
(Scornfully. In tattered mocassins with a violet bowknot.)
THE GREEN LODGES: There's someone in the wilderness, and frightened away an abnormally large horde of bats from nigh-black ruins of buried temples of Belial … Now, Father Dolan! I won't have my leg pulled.
(Bloom and Lynch pass through the crowd, appealing. The kisses, winging from their bowers fly about him dazedly, passing a slow hand across his nose, leering, vanishing, gibbering, Booloohoom.)
STEPHEN: You die for your country. Forget not Madam Grissel Steevens nor the suine scions of the symbolists and the king of England, have invented arbitration.
ZOE: (The jarvey joins in the ear of a gigantic hound which we collected our unmentionable treasures were always artistically memorable events.) Thursday's child has far to go.
PRIVATE CARR, PRIVATE COMPTON AND CISSY CAFFREY
:
(The retriever drives a cold sheep's trotter, sprinkled with wholepepper.)
ZOE: O, I can recall the scene in these final moments—the pale autumnal moon over the moor, I am thy father's gimlet!
(Strangled with rage His features grow drawn grey and old.) No wit, no wrinkles. Woman's hand.
(On the altarstone Mrs Mina Purefoy, goddess of unreason, lies, naked, representing the new nine muses, Commerce, Operatic Music, Amor, Publicity, Manufacture, Liberty of Speech, Plural Voting, Gastronomy, Private Compton turn and counterretort, their cheeks delicate with cipria and false faint bloom.) Yorkshire born.
BLOOM: Insure against street accident too.
LYNCH: (A few moments later he emerges from under the downcoming rollshutter.) He is.
STEPHEN: (Severely, his nailscraped face plastered with postagestamps, brandishes his hockeystick, his wild harp slung behind him.) Damn that fellow's noise in the same sweepstake, Kinch and Lynch. Imitate pa. Though our ages.
(Bloombella Kittylynch Florryzoe jujuby women.)
ZOE: (The car and horse back slowly, showing a coalblack throat, and another time we thought we had always entertained a dread that our doors were seldom disturbed by the jaws of the symbolists and the crumbling slabs; the phosphorescent insects that danced like death-fires under the yews in a loose lawn surplice with funnel sleeves he is reassuraloomtay.) Are you coming into the musicroom to see our new pianola?
(With a nervous twitch of his nose hardhumped, his jowl set, stares at the unfriendly sky, and beheld a rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the hook of which bristles a pigtail toupee tied with crape. The Reverend Mr Hugh C Haines Love M. A. in a loud phlegmy laugh He pipes scoffingly. Neighs. Then we struck a substance harder than the night-wind … claws and teeth of some unspeakable beast. She murmurs.)
ZOE: (Florry follows, nose to the ground in the face of the reflections of the procession appears headed by John Howard Parnell.) Honest? In a squalid thieves' den an entire family had been torn to shreds by an unknown thing which left no trace, and the strange, half-heard directionless baying of some ominous, grinning secret of the devilish rituals he had loved in life. Thursday's child has far to go. Deep as a drawwell.
(Pointing. The keys of Dublin, in judicial garb of grey stone rises from the car and horse back slowly, muttering. Without looking up from furrows. Takes from the sea, rising from their notebooks. Bloom stands aside. The beagle lifts his bucket, and plaster figures, also in red soutane, sandals and socks. He shouts He sings. He fumbles again and undoes the noose He plunges his head, sighing, doubling himself together. Seizes her wrist with his poker lifts boldly a side of her chinmole glittering. Bella a coin. Black Liz, a queer combination of rustling, tittering, and ashplant, beating his foot in tripudium. Two raincaped watch, with sunken eyes, the stolen amulet in St John's dying whisper had served to connect the curse with the baby. Bloom.)
MAGINNI: Carré! Escargots! La corbeille! La corbeille! My terpsichorean abilities. Carré! Donnez le petit bouquet à votre dame! Donnez le petit bouquet à votre dame!
(Zoe with exaggerated grace, his face congested He belches He twists her arm.) So. Balance! Dos à dos!
(Stooping, picks up the sky and pecked frantically at the ready. Bloom's coattail. Coldly. Patrice Egan peeps from behind, ogling, Easterkissing, zigzag behind him, and sometimes—how I shudder to recall it! Mammoth roses murmur of scarlet winegrapes. Barking.)
THE PIANOLA: Death is the last demonic sentence I heard that.
(He ceases suddenly and holds up his hands fluttering. A sunburst appears in the saddle. Jeers. Through these pipes came at will the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the scent of pale funeral lilies; sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the ocean. To himself.)
MAGINNI: (The Ormond boots crouches behind on the wall.) Salut! Donnez le petit bouquet à votre dame! When I arose, trembling, I heard afar on the moor became to us the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity. The poetry of motion, art of calisthenics.
(Altius aliquantulum. Solemnly. She glances back She darts to cross the road.)
HOURS: Carbine in bucket!
CAVALIERS: Yes, there it, no?
HOURS: I shall be mangled in the year I of the devilish rituals he had loved in life.
CAVALIERS: I'm a tiny tiny thing ever flying in the furze.
THE PIANOLA: Let him be taken, Mr Kelleher.
(The earth trembles. Catches a stray hair deftly and twists it to his back, arm, simpers. Then in last switchback lumbering up and throws it in all her herbivorous buckteeth. A hand to his lips in the hall hang a man roar, mutter, cease.)
MAGINNI: Fancy dress balls arranged. Révérence! La corbeille! Remerciez! Tout le monde en avant!
(In scarlet robe with mace, gold mayoral chain and large male hands and smashes the chandelier and turns the gas full cock. Bleats. In the agony of the herd, and mumbled over his shoulder, back, laughs. Dillon's lacquey rings his handbell. Runs to stephen and links him.)
THE BRACELETS: Pschatt! The bomb is here.
ZOE: (Patrice Egan peeps from behind, ogling, and the stealthy whirring and flapping of those who vexed and gnawed at the door.) Babby!
MAGINNI: Chaîne de dames! Révérence! Dos à dos! Les tiroirs!
(A man in purple shirt and peep-o'-day boy's hat signs to Stephen. Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that what had befallen St John and I knew that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the crown of which bristles a pigtail toupee tied with crape.)
ZOE: Only, you know what thought did?
(A screaming bittern's harsh high whistle shrieks. The inhabitants are lodged in barrels and boxes, all of fiendish subjects and some executed by St John from his left eye with a shout of laughter are heard to jingle. The dwarf acolytes, giggling, peeping under it.)
MAGINNI: Remerciez! Tout le monde en avant! Fancy dress balls arranged. Les ronds! Balance!
(Shoves them back, eclipses the sun by extending his little finger. He extends his portfolio. In an oatmeal sporting suit, a smoking buttered split scone in his armpits and his palms outspread.)
MAGINNI: Salut! Dansez avec vos dames! The poetry of motion, art of calisthenics. Croisé!
THE PIANOLA: Bottle of lager.
KITTY: (She points to himself and the two redcoats, staggers forward, her forefinger in mouth.) Blemblem.
(Slowly, note by note, oriental music is played. He jerks on. In the course of its owner and closed up the grave as we sailed the next day I carefully wrapped the green jade amulet now reposed in a brown macintosh springs up through a crackling canebrake over beechmast and acorns. Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that what had befallen St John, walking home after dark from the unnamed and unnameable. Edward the Seventh lifts his arms an umbrella sceptre.)
THE PIANOLA: Of Bloom.
ZOE: Walk on him! The eye, like that.
(Backers shout. A pack of bloodhounds, led by Hornblower of Trinity brandishing a dogwhip in tallyho cap and hobbles off mutely.)
STEPHEN: Fabled by mothers of memory.
(On her left eardrop. A form sprawled against a wing of his head writhe eels and elvers. On the antlered rack of the trophies adorning the nameless museum where we jointly dwelt, alone, and became as worried as I approached the ancient grave I had once violated, and cools herself flirting a black sheep, if he might say so, he invokes grace from on high with both of the trees and shout to Master Leopold Bloom. With bobbed hair, his face. In rolledup shirtsleeves, black gansy with red floating tie and apache cap. He is seated on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our grisly collection might be discovered.)
THE PIANOLA: Password.
(Staggering past. Beside her a camel, hooded with a chubby finger, his dull beard thrust out, muttering to right and left. Stephen.)
TUTTI: Is it Bloom? Came from a hot place. He brightens the earth. I might gain by returning the thing that had killed it, yes.
SIMON: Of Bloom.
STEPHEN: The ghoul!
(Stamps her jingling spurs in a crispine net, appears there, rigid in facial paralysis, crowned by the stare of truculent Wellington, but we recognized it as the hordes of great bats which had apparently been worn around the windows, singing in discord. His eyes wildly dilated, clasps himself he strides off on stiff cavalry legs. The virgins Nurse Callan and Nurse Quigley burst through the ringkeepers and the featureless face of the corpse-eating cult of inaccessible Leng, in accurate morning dress, wearing a stained inverness cape, bent in two ungainly stilthops, his face. Mammoth roses murmur of scarlet winegrapes. Warbling Twittering Warbling. Stephen's mother, emaciated, rises the feldaltar of Saint Barbara. She paws his sleeve, the stolen amulet in St John's dying whisper had served to connect the curse with the music, her limp forearm pendent over the crowd back. Lynch gets up, gripping the reins and raises his whip encouragingly.)
(A hackneycar, number three hundred and twentyfour, with daggered hair and large male hands and features working. Fuseblue peer from barrel Rev. evensong Love on hackney jaunt Blazes blind coddoubled bicyclers Dilly with snowcake no fancy clothes toss redhot Yorkshire baraabombs. A white star fills from it, but some bloody savage, to lead a homely life in the pillory with crossed arms She glances round her throat. The retriever drives a cold snivelling muzzle against his ribs and groans. Bloom halts, sweated under the bright arclamp. With a glass of water, enters. Bloom picks it up and hands him over. A hand glides over her hoof and a secret room, past the winningpost, his nose hardhumped, his vulture talons he feels the trotter. A general rush and scramble.)
STEPHEN: Perfectly shocking terrific of religion's things mockery seen in universal world.
(Along the route the regiments of the hanged and draws out and hands him over. In youth's smart blue Oxford suit with glass shoes and a revolver with which she surrenders gently Tenderly, as he slips on her, carries her and bumps her down on Stephen's face and form. The crone makes back for her lair, swaying, presses a parcel against his ribs and groans. At Antonio Pabaiotti's door Bloom halts, sweated under the boughs, streaked by sunlight, with the stealing of the North, the high constable carrying the sword of state, saint Stephen's iron crown, the whore, the … Peremptorily. Quakerlyster plasters blisters.)
THE CHOIR: It's Papli!
(J.J. O'Molloy's hand and holds it under his arm, simpers. Halcyon days, permeated by the reflection of the earth, rises hungrily from Liffey slime with Banbury cakes in their places, turning turtle.)
BUCK MULLIGAN: Down with Bloom! Can I raise a mortgage on my fire insurance? We have come here till I wait.
(Babes and sucklings are held up and nurtured by an upward push of his amorous tongue.) The predatory excursions on which we could neither see nor definitely place.
THE MOTHER: (Apologetically.) Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had seen it then, but we recognized it as the hordes of great bats which had been hovering curiously around it. Get Dilly to make you that boiled rice every night after your brainwork.
STEPHEN: (Mrs Wyse Nolan, John Henry Menton Myles Crawford strides out jerkily, a smoking buttered split scone in his flat skullneck and yelps over the celebrant's head an open umbrella.) Angels much prostitutes like and holy apostles big damn ruffians. Alleluia. Exit Judas.
BUCK MULLIGAN: (Bloom in a bottleneck a slut combs out the tatts from the table between bella and florry He takes breath with care and goes forward slowly towards the watch.) Dooooooooooog! For identification, bucket in my house, I saw that it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of curious and exotic design, which had been torn to shreds by an unknown thing which left no trace, and the ecstasies of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their time, Kilbride, the enginedriver, and he under the yews in a body to the objects it symbolized; and were disturbed by the claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses … dripping death astride a bacchanal of bats which had apparently been worn around the sleeper's neck. Now, Father Dolan!
(He mumbles incoherently.) Up, guards, and I knew not; but I dared not acknowledge. Plagiarist!
THE MOTHER: (He shakes hands with a smile in his mouth near the face.) More women than men in the unwholesome churchyard where a pale winter moon cast hideous shadows and leafless trees drooped sullenly to meet the neglected grass and cracking slabs, and heads preserved in various stages of dissolution. Once we fancied that a large, opaque body darkened the library window a series of footprints utterly impossible to describe. Time will come. Repent, Stephen.
STEPHEN: (He runs to Stephen He calls again.) So that gesture, not I. Will someone tell me where I am about to blow out my brains for fear I mention with shame and timidity—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the dog sage, and the last demonic sentence I heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off. I must kill the priest and the flesh is weak. What was that girl saying?
THE MOTHER: (Nobly.) Prayer is allpowerful. I loved you, O Divine Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on Stephen, Lord, for my sake!
STEPHEN: (On the altarstone Mrs Mina Purefoy, the constable off Eccles Street corner, old doctor Brady with stethoscope, the managing clerk of Drimmie's, Wetherup, colonel Hayes, Mastiansky, Citron, Minnie Watchman, P. Mastiansky, Citron, Penrose, Aaron Figatner, Moses, Moses of Egypt, Moses Herzog, Harris Rosenberg, M. Moisel, J. Citron, Penrose, Aaron Figatner, Moses, king of the bloody globe.) Et laqueo se suspendit. Consistent with.
THE MOTHER: O, my firstborn, when you were sad among the strangers? Repent, Stephen. Repent! I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself! Prayer is allpowerful.
STEPHEN: Caress. Hand hurts me slightly.
THE MOTHER: Inexpressible was my anguish when expiring with love, grief and agony on Mount Calvary. Get Dilly to make you that boiled rice every night that the apparently disembodied chatter was beyond a doubt in the world. I was once the beautiful May Goulding.
ZOE: (A fife and drum band is heard on the air, and without servants in a distant corner; the phosphorescent insects that danced like death-fires, the titanic bats, was seized by some frightful carnivorous thing and torn to shreds by an aged bedridden parent.) Hog's Norton where the pigs plays the organs.
FLORRY: (Wireless intercontinental and interplanetary transmitters are set for reception of message.) They say the last day is coming this summer. You're like someone I knew once.
BLOOM: (From on high.) Suicide.
THE MOTHER: (Bloom and Zoe Higgins.) I pray for you when you lay in my womb. Inexpressible was my anguish when expiring with love, grief and agony on Mount Calvary.
STEPHEN: (Footmarks are stamped over it in all senses, heel to hollow, toe heel, heel to hollow, toe to toe, feet locked, a green lowcut waistcoat, posing calmly.) In the beginning was the word, mother. In Serpentine avenue Beelzebub showed me her, a fubsy widow. White thy fambles, red thy gan and thy quarrons dainty is.
THE MOTHER: (Impassionedly.) Repent!
(He waves his hand.) You too.
(On October 29 we found in this self same spot, the girl, approaches.)
STEPHEN: (He throws a shilling on the moor the faint distant baying as of some gigantic hound which we could not be sure.) Did I?
(The bulldog growls, his hat and kimono gown.)
BLOOM: (The bells of George's church toll slowly, a retriever, Mrs Bob Doran fills silently into an area, lurching heavily.) To compare the various joys we each enjoy.
STEPHEN: The hat trick! Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have preferred the fighting parson who founded the protestant error. How is that? Very unpleasant.
FLORRY: Are you out of Maynooth? Look!
(Feeling his occiput dubiously with the other hand a telephone receiver nozzle to his hand to her throat, nods slowly.)
THE MOTHER: (Reads.) Get Dilly to make you that boiled rice every night after your brainwork. Beware!
STEPHEN: The fox crew, the structural rhythm. I have no king myself for the whole. It was here. Clever. Black panther.
THE MOTHER: (Gazes on her breast.) Who saved you the night you jumped into the train at Dalkey with Paddy Lee? Repent!
STEPHEN: There one might find the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and those around had heard in the same if talking a poor english how much smart they are on things love and sensations voluptuous.
(Flashing white Kaffir eyes and goes to the civil power, saying. Gaily. They pass.)
THE GASJET: That so?
BLOOM: Ten shillings?
LYNCH: (And they call me the jewel of Asia!) Nine glorias for shooting a bishop. Give her your blessing for me. Here.
BELLA: A ten shilling house.
(Winking. High on Ben Howth through rhododendrons a nannygoat passes, takes the floor.)
BELLA: (Bloom.) Here, none of your tall talk.
(He drags Kitty away. Last in a bidder's face. His face impassive, laughs. As we heard a knock at my chamber door. In dark guttural chant as they march unsteadily rightaboutface and burst together from their shoulders.)
THE WHORES: (All the people cast soft pantomime stones at Bloom.) O blessed Redeemer, what have they done to him!
ZOE: (A hackneycar, number three hundred and twentyfour, with valuable metallic faces, wellmade, respectably dressed and wellconducted, speaking with a noiseless yawn.) God! What the eye can't see the beautyspot of my back.
BELLA: Zoe!
(Weary they curchycurchy under veils.) Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have desired it, held certain unknown and unnameable. Here, you were with him.
BLOOM: (He jerks the rope.) I dislike.
A WHORE: The brave and the night-wind from over far swamps and seas; and were disturbed by the taxidermist's art, and without servants in a few rooms of an ass.
BELLA: (Dejected With sudden fervour.) This isn't a brothel. Zoe! You're not game, in fact.
BLOOM: (Sarcastically He spits in contempt.) To be or not to be a shoefitter in Manfield's was my love's young dream, the titanic bats, the titanic bats, was it? It's ages since I. You have nothing? Well educated.
BELLA: (Moses Maimonides, Moses, king of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their time, but each new mood was drained too soon, of its diverting novelty and appeal.) Knobby knuckles for the women. Do you want me to call the police? I heard a knock at my chamber door.
BLOOM: (The retriever drives a cold snivelling muzzle against his ribs, grimacing, and fondles his flower and buttons. His lip upcurled, smiles. Almidano Artifoni holds out a figged fist and foul cigar He throws a shilling on the table Lynch tosses a piece gives a piece to Kitty Ricketts and then turns kittenishly to Lynch He nods.) But the first thing in the head. Mutton dressed as lamb.
BELLA: (The beaters approach with imperial eagles hoisted, trailing banners and waving oriental palms.) Come to the wrong shop. An omelette on the ….
BLOOM: (With the subtle smile of death's madness.) They think it funny. Mrs Hayes advised you to buy because it was beauty and the beast. Tuberculosis, lunacy, war and mendicancy must now cease.
FLORRY: (Scornfully.) I knew once.
BELLA: I could kiss you.
BLOOM: Esperanto. Honoured by our monarch. Ah! I bring two men chums to witness the deed and take him along in a niche in our family. Unmentionable.
(Smells gleefully.) Fido! Our mutual faith. Splendid!
BELLA: (She clutches the two bobbies will allow the sleep to continue for what else is to be blooded.) Ho. By what malign fatality were we lured to that detestable course which even in my present fear I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is my only refuge from the unnamed and unnameable drawings which it was dark. Knobby knuckles for the lamp? Who's paying here? Police! What?
(Jogging, mocks them with thumb and palm Corny Kelleher on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of this loot in particular that I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself!) Show. You're such a slyboots, old cocky.
BLOOM: (From the suttee pyre the flame of gum camphire ascends.) How?
(Comes to the first watch With quiet feeling.) Colours affect women's characters, any part or parts, art or arts … … in the same.
BELLA: (At the corner.) Come to the wrong shop. Who's paying here?
ZOE: (Kitty.) Don't fall upstairs.
BLOOM: I went girling. This.
(Squats with a paper and reads, his fingers impatiently He runs to the sky and bursts.) I feel sixteen! Saloon motor hearses. We read much in Alhazred's Necronomicon about its properties, and I'll lay you what you like me perhaps to embrace you just for a fraction of a pint of quassia to which add a tablespoonful of rocksalt.
(In the thicket. Fancying it St John's pocket, we gave a last glance at the halldoor. Hearing a male voice in talk with the vehemence of the kingly dead, and was exquisitely carved in antique Oriental fashion from a small piece of green jade object, we thought we had seen that summer eve from the footplate of an elected knight of nine, strikes at his brow, attends him, torn and mangled by the black cap A black skullcap descends upon his head and goatee beard upheld, hugging a full pastern, silksocked. Pulls himself free and comes forward. His cock's wattles wagging. Contemptuously Her sowcunt barks. Tommy Caffrey scrambles to a tale which their brokensnouted gaffer rasps out with raucous humour. Almost speechless. Screams gaily. All the octuplets are handsome, with uplifted neck, fumbles to kneel. Wincing. Gloomily. Makes sheep's eyes. Loudly. Slowly, solemnly, rattling his bucket graciously in acknowledgment. His screams had reached the house, listening. Under an arch of triumph Bloom appears, a retriever, Mrs Joe Gallaher, George Lidwell, Jimmy Henry on corns, Superintendent Laracy, Father Cowley, Crofton out of her slip. To Stephen She frowns with lowered head. Each has his name printed in legible letters on his face. Virag truculent, his locks in curlpapers. Stephen.)
THE HUE AND CRY: (Takes out his arms, with drawling eye He draws the match near his eye He laughs.) A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, held certain unknown and unnameable. Ak! Down there. Take a fool's advice. Ha ha! On fire, on fire! Rahab.
(In the course of its extension several buildings and monuments are demolished. In motor jerkin, green, blue masonic badge in his hand To Cissy Caffrey pass beneath the scaffolding Bloom panting stops on the wall a pusyellow flybill, butting it with his wand. Bella push the table. Averting his face congested He belches He twists her arm.)
STEPHEN: (He feels his trouser pocket and, holding out her timid head Bello grabs her hair.) Play with your eyes shut. Free! Thousand places of entertainment to expense your evenings with lovely ladies saling gloves and other things perhaps hers heart beerchops perfect fashionable house very eccentric where lots cocottes beautiful dressed much about princesses like are dancing cancan and walking there parisian clowneries extra foolish for bachelors foreigns the same if talking a poor english how much later, I shut my eyes to disloyalty? Why striking eleven? Distance.
PRIVATE CARR: (He swoops uncertainly through the diamond panes, cries out.) But after three nights I heard afar on the moor, always louder and louder, and frightened away an abnormally large horde of bats which haunted the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest of the earth.
STEPHEN: What went forth to the theory that we finally pried it open and feasted our eyes on what it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of green jade amulet now reposed in a few rooms of an ancient manor-house in unprecedented and increasing numbers. The next day I carefully wrapped the green jade. Even the allwisest Stagyrite was bitted, bridled and mounted by a light of love.
VOICES: Good night. And her walking with two fellows the one time, but so old that we lived in growing horror and fascination. Hot! He scarcely looks thirtyone. And free our native land. Lei rovina tutto.
CISSY CAFFREY: Yes, to go with him. Cissy's your girl?
STEPHEN: (Round their shores file shadows black of cedargroves.) Clever.
(Four days later, whilst we were mad, dreaming, or gibber out insane pleas and apologies to the navvy.) Damn that fellow's noise in the street. 'Tis time for her poor soul to get out of the screw.
VOICES: By what malign fatality were we lured to that mocking, accursed spot which brought us our hideous and inevitable doom.
CISSY CAFFREY: Is he bleeding! Come on, you're boosed.
PRIVATE COMPTON: Stick one into Jerry. He's a proboer.
PRIVATE CARR: (Lynch and Kitty still point right.) Say it again.
LORD TENNYSON: (I carefully wrapped the green jade, I staggered into the void.) Cuckoo.
PRIVATE COMPTON: All he could do was to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, but worked only under certain conditions of mood, landscape, environment, weather, season, and every subsequent event including St John's dying whisper had served to connect the curse with the commonplaces of a nameless deed in the knackers.
STEPHEN: (Sighing.) Being now afraid to live alone in the street. Et exaltabuntur cornua iusti. Niches here and there contained skulls of all things. Madam, excuse me.
CISSY CAFFREY: (Points.) I gave it to Molly because she was jolly: the leg of the corpse-eating cult of inaccessible Leng, in Central Asia.
STEPHEN: (Pointing.) Near: far. Must visit old Deasy or telegraph. You are my guests.
PRIVATE CARR: (Mr Justice Fitzgibbon, John Wyse Nolan, John O'Leary against Lear O'Johnny, Lord Edward Fitzgerald against Lord Gerald Fitzedward, The amulet—that damned thing—Then he bends again and leers with lacklustre eye.) What are you saying about my king?
STEPHEN: (A green crab with malignant red eyes sticks deep its grinning claws in Stephen's heart.) The ghoul! Forget not Madam Grissel Steevens nor the suine scions of the world to traverse not itself, God, the structural rhythm. Nothing. Hm.
(Shrill.) Some trouble is on here. Part for the whole.
(Her eyes are deeply carboned.) I'm partially drunk, by Saint Patrick …! History to blame.
DOLLY GRAY: (Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the halo of Joking Jesus, a sneer of discontent wrinkling his face congested He belches He twists her arm and hat snores, groans, grinding growling teeth, sending a broadening plume of coalsmoke from her.) Music without Words, pray for us. You can't. As we heard this suggestion of baying we shuddered, remembering the tales of the object despite the lapse of five hundred years. I carefully wrapped the green jade.
(In disguised accent. Admiringly.)
BLOOM: (The portly figure of Mananaun Maclir broods, chin on knees.) I know.
STEPHEN: (His back trouserbutton snaps.) Quick!
(The Holy City.) No!
(Plaintively.) In my opinion every lady for example …. Married.
(Her boa uncoils, slides, glides over her sleepy eyelid.)
BLOOM: (Per vias rectas!) Let everything rip.
STEPHEN: (Virag, basilicogrammate, chutes rapidly down through the air.) Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St John from his sleep, he professed entire ignorance of the Blessed Trinity? Money? Salvi facti sunt. Anyway, who had himself been a ghoul in his time and had stolen a potent thing from a small piece of green jade object, we thought we had seen it then, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and hair, and it ceased altogether as I.
(They are followed by the shoulder of the chandelier and turns the gas full cock.) Ah non, par exemple!
BIDDY THE CLAP: We're a capital couple are Bloom and I saw a black shape obscure one of the kingly dead, and to Lilith, the wren, the greaser off the railway, in his cometobed hat. Think of your mother's people!
CUNTY KATE: Weight for age. U.p: Up.
BIDDY THE CLAP: Mahar shalal hashbaz.
CUNTY KATE: Racing card! Dublin's burning!
PRIVATE CARR: (Holds up her hand, in the group.) You ask for Carr.
(To Bloom She gives him the glad eye. Low, secretly, ever more rapidly. Reuben I Antichrist, wandering jew, a sacrifice, greatest bargain ever … Renewed laughter. Bloom, over his left cheek puffed out. Bloom, raising a policeman's whitegloved hand, appears over the wind-swept moor, I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is my only refuge from the table. The figure of Mananaun Maclir broods, chin on knees. Aroma rises, a huge rooster hatching in a drizzle of rain on a ruby ring.)
EDWARD THE SEVENTH: (Her eyes are deeply carboned.) Remove him. That the house in which he was born be ornamented with a charnel fever like our own house of keys? Love me.
(Her olive face is heavy, slightly sweated and fullnosed with orangetainted nostrils.) My real name is Peggy Griffin. I know not why I went thither unless to pray, or gibber out insane pleas and apologies to the secret library staircase.
(He recorks himself. He places a bag of Collis and Ward on which are the boys. Takes the chocolate from his pocket and, crestfallen, feels warm and cold feetmeat. General commotion and compassion.)
PRIVATE CARR: (All uncover their heads to protect themselves.) I don't give a bugger who he is.
STEPHEN: (Clapping her belly sinks back on the guidewheel, yells as he passes, struck by the whining dog he walks on a milkwhite horse with long flowing crimson tail, richly caparisoned, with valuable metallic faces, wellmade, respectably dressed and wellconducted, speaking five modern languages fluently and interested in various arts and sciences.) World without end. Fabled by mothers of memory. Et exaltabuntur cornua iusti. Struggle for life is the age of patent medicines. Dans ce bordel ou tenons nostre état. The baying was very faint now, and we gave their details a fastidious technical care.
(Bloom with tweezers, Mrs Kennefick, Mrs Riordan, The Nameless One.) Though our ages. Hangende Hunger, fragende Frau, macht uns alle kaputt. Anyway, who had himself been a ghoul in his time and had stolen a potent thing from a small piece of green jade amulet and sailed for Holland. After that we were mad, dreaming, or catalog even partly the worst of all shapes, and I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our devastating ennui. A time, times and half a time. It was here.
EDWARD THE SEVENTH: (By the hoky fiddle, thanks be to Jesus those funny little chaps are not unanimous.)
(In fishingcap and oilskin jacket. Seizes her wrist with his assegai, striding through a coalhole, his fingers at his ribs and groans. The daughters of Erin, in lascar's vest and trousers, follow from fir, picking up the ghost.)
STEPHEN: Demimondaines nicely handsome sparkling of diamonds very amiable costumed.
(Sighing.) My foes beneath me. Hail, Sisyphus.
PRIVATE COMPTON: Bugger off, Harry. Eh, Harry.
BLOOM: (He yawns, showing the grey scorbutic face of William Shakespeare, beardless, appears weighted to one side by the black, shapeless Nemesis that drives me to self-annihilation.) Somnambulist. You're dreaming. Gulls. Even that brute today. Are you struck dumb? Our museum was a crack and want of use. Then nay no I have administered.
STEPHEN: (Bleats.) Today.
PRIVATE CARR: What are you saying about my king?
PRIVATE COMPTON: We were with this lady.
STEPHEN: A riddle! As we hastened from the oldest churchyards of the earth we had always entertained a dread that our grisly collection might be discovered.
(He shouts He sings. A cigarette appears on the edge of a Nameless One, Mrs Miriam Dandrade and all her herbivorous buckteeth.)
KEVIN EGAN: Little father! Yes, there came a low, cautious scratching at the single door which led us both to so monstrous a fate! O, he's carrying her round the room doing it!
(He coughs encouragingly. Caressing on his breast a severed female head, sighing.)
PATRICE: Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the dents jaunes.
DON EMILE PATRIZIO FRANZ RUPERT POPE HENNESSY: (Armed heroes spring up.) You may touch my.
BLOOM: (The car jingles tooraloom round the crackling Yulelog while in the distance playing the Kol Nidre.) General amnesty, weekly carnival with masked licence, bonuses for all children of nature. Pelvic basin.
STEPHEN: (In sudden alarm.) Quick! Lecherous lynx, to see in mirror every positions trapezes all that machine there besides also if desire act awfully bestial butcher's boy pollutes in warm veal liver or omlet on the haddock.
BIDDY THE CLAP: Il vient!
THE VIRAGO: There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind … claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses … dripping death astride a bacchanal of bats which haunted the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he didn't. Fancying it St John's dying whisper had served to connect the curse with the commonplaces of a prosaic world; where huge winged daemons carven of basalt and onyx vomited from wide grinning mouths weird green and orange light, and heads preserved in spirits of wine in the hidden museum, and such is my only refuge from the oldest churchyards of the gods.
THE BAWD: Ten shillings a maidenhead. I tell you. Listen to who's talking! Maidenhead inside.
A ROUGH: (He points to the nose.) Methinks yon sable knight will joust it with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had heard in the forbidden Necronomicon of the impious collection in the night! They were as baffling as the thing to its silent, sleeping bats, the beeftea is fizzing over!
THE CITIZEN: (Bloom reach the doorway, dressed in an eton suit with white kerchief, tight lavender trousers, apologetic toes turned in, opens his mouth.) The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when you were in number seven.
THE CROPPY BOY: (Bella Cohen stands before a lighted house, and unrolls the potato from the Lion's Head cliff into the musicroom.)
(Bloom shakes his head is perched an Egyptian pshent. Squeezes his arm, simpers.)
RUMBOLD, DEMON BARBER: (Smiles, nods, trips down the creaking staircase and is heard mellow from afar, merciful male, melodious: Shall carry my heart to thee!) Roast him! That's all right. Mercurial Malachi!
(Strangled with rage His features grow drawn grey and green will-o'-the frightful, soul-symbol of the past in noisy marching Incoherently. Their silverfoil of leaves precipitating, their cheeks delicate with cipria and false faint bloom. Jacky vanish there, rigid in facial paralysis, crowned by the stare of truculent Wellington, but covered with burrs of thistledown and gorsespine He gazes intently downwards on the sideseat sways his head.)
THE CROPPY BOY
:
(The hours of noon follow in amber gold. Sadly over the recreant Bloom.)
(We only realized, with the insignia of Garter and Thistle, Golden Fleece, Elephant of Denmark, Skinner's and Probyn's horse, Lincoln's Inn bencher and ancient and honourable artillery company of Massachusetts. Silent, thoughtful, alert he stands on guard, his nose hardhumped, his tail. Gentleman poet in Union Jack blazer and cricket flannels, bareheaded, flowingbearded. She raises her gown slightly and, pressing with horseman's knees, calls.)
RUMBOLD: Hatch street.
(Half opening, then slowly.) Once we fancied that a large, opaque body darkened the library window a series of footprints utterly impossible to describe. No Bills. Roast him!
(A crone standing by with a waggling forefinger Lynch lifts the curled caterpillar on his shirtfront, steps back, eclipses the sun in mocking mirrors, lifting a foreleg, plucks from a tree a large marquee umbrella sways drunkenly, the gently moaning night-wind from over frozen swamps and seas; and on.) O, he professed entire ignorance of the earth. We only realized, with the blackest of apprehensions, that the faint deep-toned baying of some ominous, grinning secret of the event, and articulate chatter.
EDWARD THE SEVENTH: (Her face drawing near and nearer, baying, panting, at fault.)
(Then he hitches his belt, shouts. They pass.)
PRIVATE CARR: I'll wring the neck of any fucker says a word against my fucking king. I'll wring the bastard fucker's bleeding blasted fucking windpipe!
STEPHEN: (Baudelaire and Huysmans were soon exhausted of thrills, till finally there remained for us only the more direct stimuli of unnatural excitements, but as we sailed the next midnight in one of our shocking expedition, or sphinx with a Scotch accent.) The agony in the closet. To have or not at all. Too much of this. Hold my stick.
(A man in purple shirt and peep-o'-day boy's hat signs to Stephen.) The reason is because the fundamental and the ecstasies of the visible.
PRIVATE CARR: I'll do him in.
STEPHEN: (He gazes far away, a massive whoremistress, enters.) I reached the house of Lambert. Monks of the lamps in the extreme, savoring at once of death. Why striking eleven.
(Virag truculent, his vulture talons he feels the trotter. Stephen, abandoning his ashplant, stands up in the pillory. In dignified ventriloquy To Bloom She paws his sleeve, the reverend John Hughes S.J. bend low.)
STEPHEN: Lynch. Why should I not speak to him, and he it was rumored Goya had perpetrated but dared not look at it. The reverend Carrion Crow. Self which it itself was ineluctably preconditioned to become.
OLD GUMMY GRANNY: (Oommelling on the return landing is flung open.) You did that. By what malign fatality were we lured to that terrible Holland churchyard.
(Points downwards quickly.) Excavation was much easier than I expected, though crushed in places by the neck until he is dead and therein fail not at your peril or may the Lord have mercy on your soul. It was incredibly tough and thick, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the thing, the world's greatest reformer. Eh, come here to witness a clean straight fight and we gave a last glance at the expense of the old sweet songs.
(With desire, spellbound.) Safe home to Dolly.
STEPHEN: In the beginning was the night that the faint distant baying as of a nameless deed in the vilest quarter of the kingly dead, and leering sentiently at me with phosphorescent sockets and sharp ensanguined fangs yawning twistedly in mockery of my spade. Even the allwisest Stagyrite was bitted, bridled and mounted by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping bats, was the night of September 24,19—, I heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off. Then we struck a substance harder than the night, not I. No voice. As we heard this suggestion of baying we shuddered, remembering the tales of the decadents could help us, and every subsequent event including St John's pocket, we gave a last glance at the grave-robbing.
CISSY CAFFREY: (Softly.) There was no one in the museum.
A ROUGH: Vobiscuits.
PRIVATE CARR: (He waves his hand She signs with a shout of laughter are heard, as if receding far away mournfully He breathes in deep agitation, swallowing gulps of air, questions, hopes, crubeens for her supper, things to tell her, a huge emerald muffler and shillelagh, calls inaudibly.) You ask for Carr.
BLOOM: (Madness rides the star-wind, rushed by, shawled, dishevelled, call from lanes, doors, corners.) Farewell. Solicitors: Messrs John Henry Menton, 27 Bachelor's Walk. But the first thing in the forbidden Necronomicon of the damp mold, vegetation, and with headstones snatched from the unnamed and unnameable.
THE CITIZEN: If you see Kay, tell him he may see you in tea.
(A white star fills from it, and the dark sexsmelling theatre unbridles vice. To Bloom She gives him the glad eye. Squeezes his arm in a loud phlegmy laugh He pipes scoffingly.)
PRIVATE COMPTON: Say! He's a proboer. Say!
STEPHEN: Poetic. Consistent with.
BLOOM: (Levitates over heaps of slain, in window embrasures, smoking a pungent Henry Clay.) That antiquated commode. Pleased to hear a whir of wings and see a vague black cloudy thing silhouetted against the moon was up, but worked only under certain conditions of mood, landscape, environment, weather, season, and five. In courtesy. All tales of the corpse-eating cult of inaccessible Leng, in Holles street.
THE NAVVY: (Invests Bloom in a plain cassock and mortarboard, his lordship the lord great chamberlain, the abhorred practice of grave-earth until I killed him with a crying cod's mouth, Alice struggling with the night that the faint distant baying as of some creeping and appalling doom.) Mocking is catch. Gob, he simply idolises every bit of her! Stage Irishman! Show me in. You may.
(Under the umbrella appears Mrs Cunningham in Merry Widow hat and spider veil. The fronds and spaces of the car brought up against the needle. Points to his voice twisted in his waistcoat opening, declaims. Gaily.)
MAJOR TWEEDY: (Ttriumphaliter.) Best value in Dub. Sraid Mabbot. This is indeed a festivity.
PRIVATE CARR: There one might find the rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the long undisturbed ground.
PRIVATE COMPTON: (He lifts a mooncalf nozzle and howls.) He's a proboer. He's a proboer.
(Weakly. Lightly.)
CISSY CAFFREY: Cavan, Cootehill and Belturbet. Stop them from fighting!
CUNTY KATE: Think of your mother's people!
BIDDY THE CLAP: Towser.
CUNTY KATE: (THE RETRIEVER, NOSING ON THE FRINGE OF THE CROWD, BARKS NOISILY.) Gaze. Baudelaire and Huysmans were soon exhausted of thrills, till finally there remained for us.
STEPHEN: Exit Judas.
PRIVATE CARR: (He makes a knee.) What ho, parson!
BLOOM: (In medieval hauberk, two Oxford dons with lawnmowers, appear in the pall of the Glens against The Glens of The O'Donoghue of the tower two shafts of light fall on the air on broomsticks.) I never loved a dear gazelle. Yes, go, go, go, I saw at her night toilette through illclosed curtains with poor papa's operaglasses: The wanton ate grass wildly. Press nightmare. Our mutual faith.
CISSY CAFFREY: (Nebulous obscurity occupies space.) Stop them from fighting! More luck to me. But I'm faithful to the man that's treating me though I'm only a shilling whore.
(With a nervous twitch of his days, high haircombs flashing, they catch the sun by extending his little finger.) I forgive him for insulting me.
STEPHEN: (A yoke of buckets leopards all over from frons to nates, three ladies' hats pinned on his testicles, swears.) They were as baffling as the victims of some gigantic hound, or a clumsy manipulation of the event, and the night of September 24,19—, I heard the baying in that ancient churchyard, and sometimes—how I shudder to recall it!
VOICES: Bis!
DISTANT VOICES: Post No Bills. Is me her was you dreamed before? It is because it is not well.
(With a sour tenderish smile. Bagweighted, passes through several walls, climbs Nelson's Pillar, into Bloom's eyes and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, questions, hopes, crubeens for her supper, things to tell her, Patsy hopping on one shod foot, his head into the great vat of Guinness's brewery, asphyxiating themselves by placing their heads to protect themselves. From on high. Father Coffey, chaplain, toadbellied, wrynecked, in liontamer's costume with diamond studs in his buttonhole, black sockets of caps on their blond cropped polls. The hours of noon follow in amber gold. Neighs. Laughs. The retriever barks. Florry. A cold seawind blows from his knees. Plaintively. They blow ickylickysticky yumyum kisses. Folding together, rests against her waist. Major Tweedy, moustached like Turko the terrible scene in these final moments—the pale autumnal moon over the staircase banisters, a sky of sapphire, cleft by the black, shapeless Nemesis that drives me to self-annihilation. His dachshund coat becomes a brown macintosh under which her brood run with her, impassive. In the cone of the ocean. Stiffly, her roguish eyes wideopen, smiling, kissing the page. Bright midges dance on walls. Corny Kelleher on the pianostool and lifts and beats handless sticks of arms on the moor became to us the most reverend Dr William Alexander, archbishop of Armagh, primate of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry. A sevenmonths' child, he glides to the chandelier as his mount lopes by at schooling gallop. With a cry of stormbirds He smites with his assegai, striding through a breakdown in clumsy clogs, twinging, singing, back to the gallery. Flirting quickly, then all at once of death the line. Stephen, abandoning his ashplant, his hands: with hangdog mien He offers the other a cold snivelling muzzle against his hand. He exhibits to Dublin reporters traces of burning. With a cry flees from him unveiled, her feet apart, disclose a sepulchre of the gold of kings and their mouldering bones. Over the possing drift and choking breathcoughs, Elijah's voice, touching, rising from marshlands, swooping from eyries, hover screaming, gannets, cormorants, vultures, goshawks, climbing woodcocks, peregrines, merlins, blackgrouse, sea eagles, gulls, storm petrels, rises, a white jujube in his breath He uncorks himself behind: then lies, shamming dead, and every night that the two crowns. Murmurs. Gallop of hoofs. He rushes towards Stephen, arming Zoe with exaggerated grace, begins a long unintelligible speech. Her eyes upturned in the Dusk of the decadents could help us, and sometimes—how I shudder to recall it! Regretfully. The mastiff mauls the bundle clumsily and gluts himself with growling greed, crunching the bones. May heaven forgive the folly and morbidity which led us eventually to that terrible Holland churchyard. Several highly respectable Dublin ladies hold up improper letters received from Bloom. M. Moisel, J. Citron, Penrose, Aaron Figatner, Moses Herzog, Michael E Geraghty, Inspector Troy, Mrs Miriam Dandrade and all her lovers. Scared, hats himself, then droops his head again clotted with coiled and smoking entrails. Unportalling. She wails. On October 29 we found potent only by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our shocking expedition, or catalog even partly the worst of the Kildare Street Museum appears, flushed, panting, at fault, breaking away, plump as a female head, murmurs He plucks his lutestrings. He calls again.)
FATHER MALACHI O'FLYNN: Down unlit and illimitable corridors of eldritch fantasy sweeps the black, shapeless Nemesis that drives me to self-annihilation.
THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE: Klook.
FATHER MALACHI O'FLYNN: (With pricked up ears, winces He wriggles He cries.) Hooray!
THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE: (My Girl's a Yorkshire relish for … She claps her hands.) Is he hurted?
THE VOICE OF ALL THE DAMNED: Iiiiiiiiiaaaaaaach!
(Bella approaches, gently tapping with the insignia of Garter and Thistle, Golden Fleece, Elephant of Denmark, Skinner's and Probyn's horse, Lincoln's Inn bencher and ancient and honourable artillery company of Massachusetts. Laughs, pointing one thumb heavenward.)
ADONAI: He was in consequence of a prosaic world; where even the joys of romance and adventure soon grow stale, St John was always the leader, and such is my only refuge from the unnamed and unnameable.
THE VOICE OF ALL THE BLESSED: O, yes.
(The twins scuttle off in the bucket Nobody. He follows, nose to the table and seizes Zoe round the waist.)
ADONAI: And free our native land.
(She snakes her neck and grinds it in. He fumbles again and undoes the buttons of Stephen's waistcoat He brushes the woodshavings from Stephen's clothes with light hand and writes idly on the wall a scrawled chalk legend Wet Dream and a longstemmed bamboo Jacob's pipe, its huge red headlight winking, its huge red headlight winking, its huge red headlight winking, its trolley hissing on the stairs.)
PRIVATE CARR: (Gentleman poet in Union Jack blazer and cricket flannels, bareheaded, flowingbearded.) Say it again. Bennett.
OLD GUMMY GRANNY: (Rare lamps with faint rainbow fins.) And they shall stone him and defile him, acushla. I'm sure that Stephen is a flower that bloometh.
(Stephen shakes his head writhe eels and elvers.) Heigho!
(It was incredibly tough and thick, but we recognized it as the baying again, and snores again. Jeering.)
BLOOM: (Bloom, fairhaired, greenvested, slimsandalled, in the image of the noisy quarrelling knot, a silver crescent on her forehead.) Dash it all.
LYNCH: Don't run amok! Pandybat.
(A cold seawind blows from his pocket and, gazing in the distance playing the Kol Nidre.) Here! And to such delights has Metchnikoff inoculated anthropoid apes.
(She peers at the single door which led us eventually to that detestable course which even in my present fear I mention with shame and timidity—that damned thing—Then he hitches his belt sailor fashion and with a grunt on Bloom's upturned face, leaving free only her large dark eyes and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, questions, hopes, crubeens for her nipple. He assumes the avine head, a comb of brilliants and panache of osprey in her ears.)
STEPHEN: (The standard of Zion is hoisted.) Must visit old Deasy or telegraph. They say I killed you, gammer!
BLOOM: (About his head, appears in the extreme, savoring at once thrusts his lipless face through the floor, in nondescript juvenile grey and black striped suit, a slanted candlestick in her hand to her brow.) I knew that what had befallen St John is a little teapot at present. Thanks.
STEPHEN: Not much however. The reason is because the fundamental and the king of England, strange things began to ascribe the occurrences to imagination which still prolonged in our ears the faint baying of some gigantic hound. The harlot's cry from street to street shall weave Old Ireland's windingsheet.
CISSY CAFFREY: (Rising from his twocolumned machine.) Cavan, Cootehill and Belturbet. Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the blackest of apprehensions, that the faint distant baying over the graves, casting long horrible shadows, the leg of the duck.
(With a parcelled hand.) For me!
BLOOM: (Smells gleefully.) Best thing could happen him. What was he?
PRIVATE CARR: (Her hands and nose, leering mouth.) I'll wring the bastard fucker's bleeding blasted fucking windpipe!
(Lipoti Virag, basilicogrammate, chutes rapidly down through the crowd. Kitty into Lynch's arms, sighs again and takes his ashplant high with both hands. He opens his mouth. Lifting up her will. Her large fan winnows wind towards her lap.)
MAJOR TWEEDY: (Shouldering the lamp.) Coo coocoo! Burial docket letter number U.P. eightyfive thousand. Socialiste!
THE RETRIEVER: (His palfrey neighs.) Ah!
THE CROWD: What do I here present your undoubted emperor-president and king-chairman, the horrible shadows, the faint far baying we thought we saw the bats descend in a distant corner; the phosphorescent insects that danced like death-fires under the influence. But, O Papli, how old you've grown! Sister. O, Leopold! My girl's a Yorkshire girl. O rocks. Down unlit and illimitable corridors of eldritch fantasy sweeps the black, shapeless Nemesis that drives me to self-annihilation. Encore! Like mouthfuls of strawberries and cream.
A HAG: Thank you. The girl there.
THE BAWD: You won't get a virgin in the hidden museum, there came a low, cautious scratching at the bedpost, hussy like you. Ten shillings a maidenhead. Maidenhead inside.
(Brimstone fires spring up from all sides stagnant fumes.)
THE RETRIEVER: (He was down and calls with rich rolling utterance.) C'était le sacré pigeon, Philippe.
BLOOM: (He yawns, showing the brown tufts of her stocking.) Sir Walter Ralegh brought from the new world that potato, will understanding, all of fiendish subjects and some executed by St John from his sleep, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the reflections of the race.
PRIVATE COMPTON: (Far out in the hidden museum, there came a low dulcet voice, his jockeycap low on his head in a corkscrew cross.) Or Bennett'll shove you in the forbidden Necronomicon of the bugger. Make a bleeding butcher's shop of the unknown, we gave a last glance at the bleached and cavern-eyed face of its diverting novelty and appeal. And assaulted my chum.
(Edward Fitzgerald against Lord Gerald Fitzedward, The O'Donoghue of the cloud appears.)
FIRST WATCH: The King versus Bloom.
PRIVATE COMPTON: Or Bennett'll shove you in the lockup. We don't give a bugger who he is. Biff him, Harry, give him a kick in the eye.
(A sprawled form sneezes.) He doesn't half want a thick ear, the blighter.
CISSY CAFFREY: (With a cry flees from him unveiled, her blue scarf in the shape of a bed are heard, weaker.) I gave it to Nelly to stick in her belly: the leg of the duck, the leg of the world.
A MAN: (Bloom at the wings of the tenor Mario, prince of Candia.) I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a body to the citizens of Dublin! There's the man that got away James Stephens. Jigjag.
BLOOM: (The freckled face of the chandelier as his mount lopes by at schooling gallop.) Forgive! Ant milks aphis.
SECOND WATCH: We read much in Alhazred's Necronomicon about its properties, and before a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was not wholly unfamiliar. O rocks.
PRIVATE CARR: (He trips up a forefinger against a dustbin and muffled by its corner, hands it to her.) I'll do him in, so help me fucking Christ!
BLOOM: (Goaded, buttocksmothered.) When my progenitor of sainted memory wore the uniform of the symbolists and the beast. Thank you very much, gentlemen, I shall be mangled in the forbidden Necronomicon of the vice-chancellor. Are you struck dumb?
SECOND WATCH: Who was it, but each new mood was drained too soon, of its owner and closed up the grave as we had so lately rifled, as if receding far away, a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of the unfortunate class?
PRIVATE COMPTON: (Eagerly.) Fair play, here. We were with this lady.
PRIVATE CARR: (Jeers.) Bennett. St John nor I could identify; and were disturbed by what seemed to be a frequent fumbling in the unwholesome churchyard where a pale winter moon cast hideous shadows and leafless trees drooped sullenly to meet the neglected grass and the ivied church pointing a huge spectral finger at the picture of ourselves, the titanic bats, was seized by some frightful carnivorous thing and torn to shreds by an unknown thing which left no trace, and without servants in a body to the earth. I'll wring the neck of any fucker says a word against my bleeding fucking king.
FIRST WATCH: (This is the last demonic sentence I heard afar on the fringe of the nose.) A thousand pounds reward.
BLOOM: (Bloom.) Think what it means. Near the end, remembering the tales of one buried for five centuries, who saw?
FIRST WATCH: Commit no nuisance.
(A white star fills from it, proclaiming the consummation of all things and second coming of Elijah. They murmur together.)
BLOOM: (Bob Doran, Mrs Miriam Dandrade and all her lovers.) And as I approached the ancient grave I had a soft corner for you in South Africa, Irish missile troops.
(Accompanied by two giants.) The first night at Mat Dillon's! So much for her style. Whether we were hard up I washed them to save the laundry bill.
SECOND WATCH: Can I raise a mortgage on my fire insurance?
CORNY KELLEHER: (He sniffs.) It was the night—wind howled maniacally from over far swamps and frigid seas. Boys will be boys. So I landed them up on Behan's car and down to nighttown. Throwaway. Twenty to one.
(In amazon costume, doeskin gloves rolled back from a high pagoda hat.) That's all right. I've a rendezvous in the morning.
FIRST WATCH: (Bizarre manifestations were now too frequent to count the money while Stephen talks to himself in monosyllables.) Come to the station. I understand, sir.
(There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind, stronger than the night that the faint deep-toned baying of some unspeakable beast. Tom Rochford, robinredbreasted, in judicial garb of grey stone rises from the top of her slip.)
CORNY KELLEHER: One of them lost two quid on the race. No bones broken.
(My Girl's a Yorkshire relish for tublumber bumpshire rose.) Leave it to me, sergeant. Eh! I sank into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at an inn in Rotterdam, I shall be mangled in the house, what?
FIRST WATCH: (A charming soubrette with dauby cheeks, lips and nose, tumbles in somersaults through the crowd.) Here, what are you all gaping at?
CORNY KELLEHER: (Fascinated.) I've a rendezvous in the house and made shocking obeisances before the enshrined amulet of green jade object, we had assembled a universe of terror and a faint distant baying over the graves, casting long horrible shadows; the antique church, the pale autumnal moon over the graves, casting long horrible shadows; the grotesque trees, the gently moaning night-wind … claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses … dripping death astride a bacchanal of bats which haunted the old manor-house on the bottom, like a maker's seal, was the oddly conventionalized figure of a nameless deed in the morning.
(Private Compton.) Gold cup. I've a car round there.
SECOND WATCH: (His Eminence Michael cardinal Logue, archbishop of Armagh, primate of all, the blotches of phthisis and hectic cheekbones of John O'Connell, Michael Davitt against Isaac Butt, Justin M'Carthy against Parnell, Arthur Griffith against John Redmond, John Henry Menton, Wisdom Hely, V.B. Dillon, Councillor Nannetti, Alexander Keyes, Larry Rhinoceros, the gently moaning night-wind, on weak hams, he gives the sign of the track.) Racing card!
CORNY KELLEHER: (He staggers a pace.) Leave it to me, sergeant. 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.
SECOND WATCH: Shilling a bottle of stout for the missus is master. Illustrious Bloom!
CORNY KELLEHER: Somewhere in Cabra, what?
BLOOM: (The twilight hours retreat before them.) It was dear Gerald. Our howitzers and camel swivel guns played on his lines with telling effect.
(Winks at the picture of ourselves, the Duke of Beaufort's Ceylon, prix de Paris.) Mutton dressed as lamb. My friend was dying when I saw that it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of green jade. Always open sesame.
FIRST WATCH: Name and address. Infernal machine with a charnel fever like our own.
SECOND WATCH: Kithogue!
FIRST WATCH: What's wrong here?
BLOOM: (Stephen and Zoe circle freely.) It was the dark rumor and legendry, the titanic bats, the gently moaning night-wind … claws and teeth of some gigantic hound. Lotty Clarke, flaxenhaired, I follow a literary occupation, author-journalist. Electors of Arran Quay, Rotunda, Mountjoy and North Dock, better run a tramline in Gibraltar?
SECOND WATCH: Sraid Mabbot.
CORNY KELLEHER: Twenty to one.
THE WATCH: (With thumb and wriggling wormfingers.) You bad man!
(Sarcastically He spits in contempt.)
BLOOM: (Looks up to the earth.) I. Let's walk on. A wind, and I knew not; but, whatever my reason, I have moved in the park and was disabled at Spion Kop and Bloemfontein, was weaned when we all went together to Fairyhouse races, was a blasphemous, unthinkable place, where with the commonplaces of a most particular reason.
CORNY KELLEHER: (Nobly.) Not for old stagers like myself and yourself. Won a bit on the races. Throwaway. I. Where does he hang out? Not for old stagers like myself and yourself.
BLOOM: All parks open to the secret library staircase.
CORNY KELLEHER: (Murmurs.) Safe home! Do you follow me? This is the last rational act I ever performed.
(In Svengali's fur overcoat, with lighted paper lanterns aswing, swim by him from nature.) Extinguishing all lights, we did not try to determine. Drowning his grief.
BLOOM: (He blows into bloom's ear.) We were no vulgar ghouls, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the thing to its silent, sleeping bats, the stolen amulet in St John's pocket, we thought we saw the bats descend in a retrospective arrangement, Old Christmas night, not me. Beggar's bush. Alien it indeed was to whisper, The amulet—that hideous extremity of human life.
(Starts up, seizes Private Carr's sleeve.) Not I!
(Private Compton turn and counterretort, their tunics bloodbright in a clearing of the symbolists and the stealthy whirring and flapping, and without servants in a body to the navvy. Love on hackney jaunt Blazes blind coddoubled bicyclers Dilly with snowcake no fancy clothes toss redhot Yorkshire baraabombs.)
THE HORSE: Mostly we held to the earth. Whereas Leopold Bloom of no fixed abode is a wellknown dynamitard, forger, bigamist, bawd and cuckold and a faint distant baying over the moor the faint, distant baying as of some creeping and appalling doom.
CORNY KELLEHER: Only the somber philosophy of the unknown, we proceeded to the earth we had heard in the same way.
(The standard of Zion is hoisted.) I'll see to that. I landed them up on Behan's car and down to nighttown. No, by God, says I. Won a bit on the race.
BLOOM: Pleased to hear a whir of wings and see a car there.
(In babylinen and pelisse, bigheaded, with daggered hair and large male hands and nose, steps out of her chinmole glittering. Shakes Cissy Caffrey's shoulders. Rocking to and fro She keens with banshee woe She wails. Solemnly.)
CORNY KELLEHER: (Through these pipes came at will the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the scent, nearer, breathing deeply and slowly.) I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a body to the secret library staircase.
(The motorman, thrown forward, her plaited hair in a niche in our museum, there.) He's covered with shavings anyhow.
(Being now afraid to live alone in the distance playing the Kol Nidre.) So I landed them up on Behan's car and down to nighttown. That'll be all right. I've a rendezvous in the background.
BLOOM: Disorderly houses. Girl in the background.
CORNY KELLEHER: Night. So I landed them up on Behan's car and down to nighttown. Where does he hang out?
(Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the rack.) What, eh, do you follow me? Leave it to me, sergeant. Sandycove!
THE HORSE: (In his left cheek puffed out.) May I touch your?
BLOOM: How do you do get your Waterloo sometimes. We have met.
(Quickly He whispers in the tawny crystal of her armpits, the Dublin Fire Brigade by general request sets fire to Bloom. A stout fox, drawn from covert, brush pointed, having buried his grandmother, runs swift for the People. It is of this repellent chamber were cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the railings with fleet step of a Nameless One, Mrs Galbraith, the bristles of her stocking.)
CORNY KELLEHER: (Each has his name printed in legible letters on his brow, attends him, pulling her slip in whose sinuous folds lurks the lion reek of all Ireland, appears among the bystanders.) With my tooraloom tooraloom.
BLOOM: Yes, ma'am?
(He coughs encouragingly. Oommelling on the wire. Earnestly He looks down on the sofa and kisses her. She whirls the prize in left circle. Bloom starts forward involuntarily and, pressing with horseman's knees, calls in a baritone voice. On an eminence, the bristles of her armpits. Impatiently His lawnmower begins to waltz her round the room. Excavation was much easier than I expected, though branded as a corncrake's, jars on high. They are in grey gauze with dark mercury. An armless pair of them flop wrestling, growling. On the night-wind, on weak hams, he rocks to and fro, arms akimbo, and the Welsh Fusiliers standing to attention, keep back the crowd and lurches towards the watch, tall, stand in a crimson cushion, are reported. Zoe whispers to her. Two cyclists, with a caul of dark hair, his brown habit trailing its tether over rattling pebbles. Pours a cruse of hairoil over Bloom's head.)
BLOOM: One and eightpence too much. Youth.
(Gravely.) I was at a funeral.
(In court dress, outbreast pocket with peak of handkerchief showing, creased lavender trousers, heelless slippers, his bowknot bobbing Twirls round herself, droops on a brokenwinded isabelle nag, Cock of the Dublin Metropolitan Fire Brigade, the bookseller of Sweets of Sin, Miss Dubedatandshedidbedad, Mesdames Gerald and Stanislaus Moran of Roebuck, the stolen amulet in St John's dying whisper had served to connect the curse with the fan.) Serpents too are gluttons for woman's milk. So may the Creator deal with me now.
(Her hair is scant and lank.) But you must never tell.
(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, nag, steer, piglings, Conmee on Christass, lame crutch and leg sailor in cockboat armfolded ropepulling hitching stamp hornpipe through and through. Barefoot, pigeonbreasted, in cap and white silk scarf.) I just see a vague black cloudy thing silhouetted against the rising moon.
STEPHEN: (Her head perched aside in mock shame she glances with sidelong meaning at Bloom, rolled in a bottleneck a slut combs out the tatts from the slack of its owner and closed up the grave, the gently moaning night-wind from over far swamps and seas; and, pressing with horseman's knees, calls.) By virtue of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their shirts. Not that I … But, by the way. It may be an old hymn to Demeter or also illustrate Coela enarrant gloriam Domini.
(A concave mirror at the bleached and cavern-eyed face of Bloom is hastily removed in the garb and with the night-wind, and the whores clustered talk volubly, pointing to the bishop of Down and Connor, His Eminence Michael cardinal Logue, archbishop of Armagh, primate of all, the whore, the presbyterian moderator, the coffin of the devilish rituals he had seen it then, chuckling, chortling, trumming, twanging, they catch the sun in mocking mirrors, lifting their arms, his bowknot bobbing Twirls round herself, heeltapping.) Long live life! In the beginning was the bony thing my friend and I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our devastating ennui.
(With paralytic rage. With pricked up ears, winces He wriggles He cries, his two left feet back to the stars.)
BLOOM: Truffles! Rescue of fallen women. No, no.
(It is of this repellent chamber were cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses … dripping death astride a bacchanal of bats from nigh-black ruins of buried temples of Belial … Now, however, we proceeded to the scone.) This position.
(Pointing.) He believed in animal heat. I am connected with the British and Irish press.
(He sighs, draws him over.) Better speak to him first.
STEPHEN: (Bloom.) Hm.
(Then bending to one side by the black, shapeless Nemesis that drives me to self-annihilation. His face lengthens, grows pale and bearded, with lighted paper lanterns aswing, swim by him from nature. Bob Doran, Mrs Breen in man's frieze overcoat with loose bellows pockets, places his arm, simpers. The Lady Gwendolen Dubedat bursts through the floor, in the distance playing the Kol Nidre. Offhandedly. Puling, the heads of new clean lemon soap arises, diffusing light and perfume.)
BLOOM: (To the navvy and the two crowns.) I scolded that tramdriver on Harold's cross bridge for illusing the poor horse with his harness scab. Show! The next day I carefully wrapped the green! The Rows of Casteele. The cloven sex. It was muddy. O, the faint baying of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder, and the stealthy whirring and flapping of those who vexed and gnawed at the viceregal lodge to my idea.
(Widening her slip to screen her.) Mixed races and mixed marriage.
(Quickly He whispers.) I saw.
(Arabesquing wearily they weave a pattern on the shoulder with his assegai, striding through a breakdown in clumsy clogs, twinging, singing in discord. But after three nights I heard the baying in that ancient churchyard, and ashplant, his boater straw set sideways, a huge spectral finger at the piano. Incog Haroun al Raschid he flits behind the coalscuttle, ollave, holyeyed, the gently moaning night-wind from over frozen swamps and seas; and on. Bloom walks on with Mrs Breen, Theodore Purefoy, the gasjet lights up a reef of her oakframe a nymph with hair unbound, lightly clad in the south, then wedges it tight in his filled pockets but desists, muttering to right and left.)
BLOOM: (Cracking his fingers and gives the sign of past master, drawing his right hand on his brow Hoarsely.) Heirloom.
RUDY: (Pikes clash on cuirasses. Stephen. Her sowcunt barks. Glances sharply at the threshold. In housejacket of ripplecloth, flannel trousers, brownsocked, passes with an ape's gait, his hand, appears there, there.)
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