mes  Trismegistos. (<i>With
a voice of whistling seawind</i>.) Punarjanam patsypunjaub!  I won't have my leg
pulled. It has been said by one: beware the  left, the cult of Shakti. (<i>With
a cry of stormbirds</i>.) Shakti, Shiva! Dark hidden Father! (<i>He smites with his
bicycle pump  the  crayfish in his left hand. On its co-operative  dial glow
the twelve signs of the zodiac.  He wails with the vehemence of  the ocean</i>.)
Aum! Baum! Pyjaum!  I  am the light  of the  homestead,  I am  the  dreamery
creamery butter.
     (<i>A skeleton judas hand strangles the  light. The  green light wanes  to
mauve. The gasjet wails whistling</i>.)
     THE GASJET Pooah! Pfuiiiiii!
     (<i>Zoe runs to the chandelier and, crooking her leg, adjusts the mantle</i>.)
     ZOE Who has a fag as I'm here?
     LYNCH (<i>Tossing a cigarette on to the table</i>.) Here.
     ZOE (<i>Her head perched aside in mock pride</i>.) Is that the way to hand the
<i>pot</i> to  a lady? (<i>She stretches  up to  light the  cigarette over  the flame,
twirling it slowly, showing  the brown tufts of her  armpits. Lynch with his
poker lifts boldly a  side of her slip. Bare from her garters up  her  flesh
appears  under  the  sapphire a  nixie's  green.  She  puffs  calmly  at her
cigarette</i>.) Can you see the beauty spot of my behind?
     LYNCH I'm not looking.
     ZOE (<i>Makes sheep's eyes</i>.) No? You wouldn't do a  less thing.  Would you
suck a lemon?
     (<i>Squinting in  mock shame  she glances with sidelong meaning at  Bloom,
then  twists round  towards him, pulling her  slip free of the  poker.  Blue
fluid again flows over her flesh. Bloom stands, smiling desirously, twirling
his  thumbs. Kitty  Ricketts licks her middle  finger  with her spittle  and
gazing in the mirror, smooths both eyebrows. Lipoti Virag, basilicogrammate,
chutes rapidly down through the chimneyflue and struts two steps to the left
on gawky  pink  stilts.  He is sausaged into  several  overcoats and wears a
brown macintosh  under which  he  holds a roll of parchment. In his left eye
flashes the monocle of Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell. On
his head is perched an Egyptian pshent. Two quills project over his ears</i>.)
     VIRAG (<i>Heels together bows</i>.)  My name is  Virag Lipoti, of Szombathely.
(<i>He  coughs thoughtfully, drily</i>.) Promiscuous nakedness is much in  evidence
hereabouts, eh? Inadvertently her backview revealed the fact that she is not
wearing  those  rather  intimate  garments  of  which you are  a  particular
devotee. The injection mark on the thigh I hope you perceived? Good.
     BLOOM Granpapachi. But...
     VIRAG Number  two  on  the  other  hand, she 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  should
opine. Backbone in front, so to say. Correct me but I always understood that
the act  so performed  by skittish humans with glimpses of lingerie appealed
to you in virtue of its exhibitionististicicity. In a word. Hippogriff. Am I
right?
     BLOOM She is rather lean.
     VIRAG  (<i>Not unpleasantly</i>.) Absolutely! Well observed and  those pannier
pockets of  the  skirt  and slightly pegtop  effect are  devised to  suggest
bunchiness of hip. A new  purchase at some monster sale for which a gull has
been mulcted. Meretricious finery to deceive  the eye. Observe the attention
to details of dustspecks. Never put on you tomorrow what you can wear today.
Parallax! (<i>With a nervous twitch of  his  head</i>.) Did you  hear my  brain  go
snap? Pollysyllabax!
     BLOOM (<i>An elbow resting in a hand, a forefinger against his cheek</i>.) She
seems sad.
     VIRAG  (<i>Cynically, his weasel teeth  bared yellow, draws down his  left
eye with a finger and barks hoarsely</i>.) Hoax! Beware of the flapper and bogus
mournful. Lily of  the alley. All possess bachelor's  button  discovered  by
Rualdus Colombus. Tumble her. Columble her. Chameleon. (<i>More genially</i>.) Well
then, permit me to draw your attention to item number three. There is plenty
of her visible to the naked  eye. Observe the mass  of  oxygenated vegetable
matter on her  skull. What ho,  she bumps!  The ugly  duckling of the party,
longcasted and deep in keel.
     BLOOM (<i>Regretfully</i>.) When you come out without your gun.
     VIRAG We  can  do you  all brands,  mild, medium and  strong. Pay  your
money, take your choice. How happy could you be with either...
     BLOOM With?...
     VIRAG (<i>His  tongue upcurling</i>.) Lyum!  Look. Her beam  is broad.  She is
coated with quite a considerable layer of fat. Obviously mammal in weight of
bosom you remark that she has in front well to the fore two protuberances of
very  respectable  dimensions,  inclined to fall  in  the noonday soupplate,
while on her rere lower down are two additional protuberances, suggestive of
potent rectum and tumescent for  palpation which leave nothing to be desired
save compactness. Such fleshy parts are the product of careful nurture. When
coopfattened their livers reach an elephantine size.  Pellets  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.  That suits your book, eh? Fleshhotpots  of Egypt to  hanker after.
Wallow in it. Lycopodium. (<i>His  throat  twitches</i>.)  Slapbang! There  he goes
again.
     BLOOM The stye I dislike.
     VIRAG  (<i>Arches  his  eyebrows</i>.)  Contact  with a  goldring,  they  say.
<i>Argumentum  ad feminam</i>, as we  said in old Rome and ancient  Greece  in  the
consulship  of Diplodocus and Ichthyo saurus. For  the rest Eve's  sovereign
remedy. Not for sale.  Hire only.  Huguenot. (<i>He  twitches</i>.) It  is a  funny
sound.
     (<i>He coughs encouragingly</i>.) But possibly  it  is only a  wart. I presume
you  shall  have remembered  what  I  will  have  taught  you on  that head?
Wheatenmeal with honey and nutmeg.
     BLOOM  (<i>Reflecting</i>.)  Wheatenmeal with lycopodium  and  syllabax.  This
searching ordeal.  It  has  been an  unusually fatiguing day,  a chapter  of
accidents. Wait. I mean, wartsblood spreads warts, you said .
     VIRAG  (<i>Severely,  his  nose  hardhumped, his side  eye  winking</i>.) Stop
twirling your thumbs  and have a  good old  thunk.  See, you have forgotten.
Exercise your mnemotechnic. <i>La causa h santa</i>. Tara. Tara. (<i>Aside</i>.)  He  will
surely remember.
     BLOOM  Rosemary also  did I  understand  you to say or will  power over
parasitic tissues. Then nay no  I have  an inkling. The touch of a  deadhand
cures. Mnemo?
     VIRAG (<i>Excitedly</i>.)  I  say so. I say so. E'en so. Technic. (<i>He taps his
parchmentroll energetically.)</i>  This  book  tells  you  how  to act  with all
descriptive  particulars.  Consult  index  for  agitated  fear  of  aconite,
melancholy  of  muriatic, priapic  pulsatilla. Virag is  going to talk about
amputation. Our  old  friend  caustic. They  must be  starved. Snip off with
horsehair under the denned neck. But,  to change the venue to the Bulgar and
the Basque, have you  made up your mind whether you like or dislike women in
male habiliments? (<i>With a dry  snigger</i>.)  You intended to  devote an  entire
year to the study of the religious problem and the summer months of 1882  to
square the circle and win that million. Pomegranate! From the sublime to the
ridiculous  is but  a step.  Pyjamas,  let  us say? Or stockingette gusseted
knickers,  closed?  Or, put  we  the case,  those complicated  combinations,
camiknickers? (<i>He crows derisively</i>.) Keekeereekee!
     (<i>Bloom surveys uncertainly the three whores,  then gazes at the  veiled
mauve light, hearing the everflying moth</i>.)
     BLOOM I wanted then to have  now concluded. Nightdress was never. Hence
this. But tomorrow is a new day will be. Past was is today. What now is will
then tomorrow as now was be past yester.
     VIRAG  (<i>Prompts into  his  ear  in a pig's whisper</i>.) Insects of the day
spend their brief existence in reiterated coition, lured by the smell of the
inferiorly pulchritudinous female possessing  extendified pudendal verve  in
dorsal region.  Pretty  Poll! (<i>His yellow parrotbeak  gabbles nasally</i>.) They
had a  proverb in the Carpathians  in  or about the year five thousand  five
hundred and fifty of our era. One tablespoonful of honey will attract friend
Bruin  more than half  a dozen barrels  of first choice malt vinegar. Bear's
buzz bothers bees. But of this apart. At another time we may resume. We were
very pleased, we others. (<i>He  coughs  and,  bending his brow, rubs  his nose
thoughtfully with a scooping hand</i>.) You shall find that these night  insects
follow the light. An illusion  for remember their  complex unadjustable eye.
For  all these  knotty points see the seventeenth book of my Fundamentals of
Sexology or  the Love Passion which Doctor L. B. says is the  book sensation
of  the  year.  Some,  to  example,  there  are again  whose  movements  are
automatic.  Perceive.  That  is  his  appropriate  sun.  Nightbird  nightsun
nighttown. Chase me, Charley! Buzz!
     BLOOM Bee or bluebottle too other day butting shadow on wall dazed self
then me wandered dazed down shirt good job I...
     VIRAG (<i>His face  impassive, laughs  in a rich feminine key</i>.)  Splendid!
Spanish  fly  in  his  fly  or mustard  plaster on his dibble.  (<i>He  gobbles
gluttonously with turkey wattles</i>.)  Bubbly jock! Bubbly jock! Where  are we?
Open Sesame! Cometh forth! (<i>He unrolls his parchment rapidly and  reads, his
glowworm's  nose  running backwards over the letters which he  claws</i>.) Stay,
good friend.  I bring thee thy answer Redbank oysters  will shortly be  upon
us. I'm  the  best  o'cook. Those succulent  bivalves  may  help us  and the
truffles of  Perigord,  tubers  dislodged through  mister omnivorous porker,
were  unsurpassed  in cases of nervous  debility or viragitis.  Though  they
stink yet they sting. (<i>He wags head  with cackling  raillery</i>.) Jocular. With
my eyeglass in my ocular.
     BLOOM (<i>Absently</i>.) Ocularly  woman's bivalve case is  worse. Always open
sesame. The  cloven sex. Why  they fear vermin, creeping things. Yet Eve and
the serpent contradict. Not a  historical fact.  Obvious analogy to my idea.
Serpents too are gluttons for woman's milk. Wind their way through miles  of
omnivorous  forest to sucksucculent her breast dry. Like those bubblyjocular
Roman matrons one reads of in Elephantuliasis.
     VIRAG (<i>His mouth  projected  in  hard wrinkles, eyes stonily  forlornly
closed,  psalms  in  outlandish monotone</i>.)  That the cows  with  their those
distended udders that they have been the known...
     BLOOM I am going  to scream. I beg your  pardon. Ah? So.  (<i>He repeats</i>.)
Spontaneously to seek out the saurian's lair in order to entrust their teats
to  his  avid  suction. Ant milks aphis. (<i>Profoundly</i>.)  Instinct  rules  the
world. In life. In death.
     VIRAG (<i>Head askew, arches  his back and hunched wing-  shoulders, peers
at the moth out of blear bulged eyes, points a homing claw and cries</i>.) Who's
Ger Ger?  Who's dear Gerald? O, I  much fear  he shall be most badly burned.
Will some pleashe pershon not now  impediment so catastrophics mit agitation
of firstclass tablenumpkin? (<i>He mews</i>.) Luss puss puss puss! (<i>He sighs, draws
back and stares sideways  down with dropping underjaw</i>.) Well, well.  He doth
rest anon.
     I'm a tiny tiny thing
     Ever flying in the spring
     Round and round a ringaring.
     Long ago I was a king,
     Now I do this kind of thing
     On the wing, on the wing!
     Bing!
     (<i>He  rushes against the  mauve  shade flapping noisily</i>.) Pretty  pretty
pretty pretty pretty pretty petticoats.
     (<i>From  left  upper entrance  with two sliding steps Henry  Flower comes
forward  to  left front  centre. He  wears a dark mantle and drooping plumed
sombrero.  He  carries a  silverstringed inlaid dulcimer  and  a longstemmed
bamboo  Jacobs pipe, its clay bowl fashioned as a female head. He wears dark
velvet hose and silverbuckled pumps. He has the romantic Saviour's face with
flowing  locks, thin beard and moustache.  His  spindlelegs and sparrow feet
are those of the tenor Mario, prince of Candia. He settles down his goffered
ruffs and moistens his lips with a passage of his amorous tongue</i>.)
     HENRY (<i>In  a  low dulcet voice,  touching the  strings of  his guitar</i>.)
There is a flower that bloometh.
     (<i>Virag truculent, his jowl set, stares at the lamp. Grave Bloom regards
Zoe's neck. Henry gallant turns with pendent dewlap to the piano</i>.)
     STEPHEN (<i>To himself</i>.)  Play with your eyes shut. Imitate pa. Filling my
belly  with husks  of  swine. Too  much of this.  I will arise and go to my.
Expect this is the. Steve,  thou art in a parlous way.  Must visit old Deasy
or telegraph.  Our  interview  of  this  morning  has  left  on  me  a  deep
impression. Though our ages. Will write fully tomorrow. I'm partially drunk,
by the way. (<i>He  touches the keys again</i>.) Minor  chord  comes now.  Yes. Not
much however.
     (<i>Almidano Artifoni  holds  out  a  batonroll  of  music  with  vigorous
moustachework</i>.)
     ARTIFONI <i>Ci rifletta. Lei rovina tutto</i>.
     FLORRY Sing us something. Love's old sweet song.
     STEPHEN No voice. I am a  most finished artist. Lynch,  did I  show you
the letter about the lute?
     FLORRY (<i>Smirking</i>.) The bird that can sing and won't sing.
     (<i>The Siamese twins, Philip Drunk and Philip  Sober two Oxford dons with
lawnmowers, appear in the window  embrasure.  Both  are masked with  Matthew
Arnold's face</i>.)
     PHILIP  SOBER Take a fool's  advice. All is not well.  Work it out with
the  buttend of a  pencil, like a good  young idiot. Three pounds twelve you
got, two notes, one  sovereign,  two crowns,  if youth but knew. Mooney's en
ville,  Mooney's  sur mer,  the  Moira, Larchet's, Holles  street  hospital,
Burke's. Eh? I am watching you.
     PHILIP  DRUNK (<i>Impatiently</i>.) Ah, bosh, man. Go to hell!  I paid my way.
If I  could only  find out about octaves.  Reduplication of personality. Who
was it told me his name?
     (<i>His lawnmower begins to  purr</i>.) Aha,  yes. <i>Zoe mou  sas  agapo</i>. Have a
notion  I was  here  before.  When  was  it  not Atkinson  his  card  I have
somewhere?  Mac somebody.  Unmack  I have  it.  He  told  me about, hold on,
Swinburne, was it, no?
     FLORRY And the song?
     STEPHEN Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.
     FLORRY Are you out of Maynooth? You're like someone I knew once.
     STEPHEN Out of it now. (<i>To himself</i>.) Clever.
     PHILIP DRUNK AND PHILIP SOBER (<i>Their lawnmowers purring with a rigadoon
of  grasshalms</i>.) Clever ever. Out of it. Out  of it.  By the by have you the
book,  the thing, the  ashplant? Yes, there it,  yes. Cleverever outofitnow.
Keep in condition. Do like us.
     ZOE  There  was  a  priest down here two  nights ago to  do  his bit of
business with his coat buttoned up. You needn't try  to hide, I says to him.
I know you've a Roman collar.
     VIRAG Perfectly logical from his standpoint. Fall of man. (<i>Harshly, his
pupils  waxing</i>.) To hell with the pope! Nothing new  under the sun. I am the
Virag who  disclosed  the sex secrets of monks and maidens.  Why I left  the
Church of Rome. Read the  Priest, the  Woman and  the Confessional. Penrose.
Flipperty Jippert.  (<i>He wriggles</i>.) Woman, undoing with sweet pudor  her belt
of rushrope, offers her allmoist yoni to man's  lingam. Short time after man
presents  woman with  pieces of  jungle  meat. Woman  shows  joy and  covers
herself with featherskins. Man loves her  yoni fiercely with big lingam, the
stiff one.  (<i>He cries.)  Coactus volui</i>. Then giddy  woman  will  run  about.
Strong  man  grasps woman's wrist. Woman  squeals, bites, spucks.  Man,  now
fierce angry, strikes  woman's fat yadgana. (<i>He chases his tail</i>.)  Piffpaff!
Popo! (<i>He stops, sneezes.)</i> Pchp! (<i>He worries his butt</i>.) Prrrrrht!
     LYNCH I hope  you  gave  the  good father  a penance. Nine  glorias for
shooting a bishop.
     ZOE  (<i>Spouts walrus  smoke through  her nostrils</i>.)  He  couldn't  get a
connection. Only, you know, sensation. A dry rush.
     BLOOM Poor man!
     ZOE (<i>Lightly</i>.) Only for what happened him.
     BLOOM How?
     VIRAG (<i>A diabolic  rictus  of black  luminosity contracting his visage,
cranes  his  scraggy  neck  forward.  He lifts a mooncalf nozzle and howls.)
Verfluchte Goim!</i> He had a father, forty fathers. He  never existed. Pig God!
He had  two left feet. He was Judas  Iacchias, a  Libyan eunuch, the  pope's
bastard. (<i>He leans  out  on tortured  forepaws, elbows  bent  rigid, his eye
agonising in his flat skullneck and yelps  over the mute world</i>.) A  son of a
whore. Apocalypse.
     KITTY And Mary Shortall that was in the lock  with the pox she got from
Jimmy Pidgeon in the blue caps had a child off him that couldn't swallow and
was smothered with the convulsions in the mattress and we all subscribed for
the funeral.
     PHILIP  DRUNK (<i>Gravely.)  Qui vous a mis  dans  cette fichue  position,
Philippe?</i>
     PHILIP SOBER (<i>Gaily.) C'itait le sacri pigeon, Philippe.
     (Kitty unpins  her hat and sets it down calmly, patting her henna hair</i>.
And <i>a prettier, a daintier head of winsome curls was never  seen on a whores
shoulders. Lynch puts on her hat. She whips it off</i>.)
     LYNCH  (<i>Laughs</i>.)  And  to  such  delights  has  Metchnikoff  inoculated
anthropoid apes.
     FLORRY (<i>Nods</i>.) Locomotor ataxy.
     ZOE (<i>Gaily</i>.) O, my dictionary.
     LYNCH Three wise virgins.
     VIRAG (<i>Agueshaken, profuse yellow spawn foaming over his bony epileptic
lips</i>.)  She sold  lovephiltres, whitewax, orange  flower. Panther, the Roman
centurion, polluted  her  with his genitories. (<i>He sticks  out a  flickering
phosphorescent scorpion tongue, his hand on his fork</i>.) Messiah! He burst her
tympanum. (<i>With gibbering baboon's cries he jerks his  hips in  the  cynical
spasm</i>.) Hik! Hek! Hak! Hok! Huk! Kok! Kuk!
     (<i>Ben   Jumbo   Dollard,    rubicund,   musclebound,    hairynostrilled,
hugebearded,  cabbageeared,  shaggychested,  shockmaned,  fatpapped,  stands
forth, his loins  and  genitals  tightened  into  a  pair of  black  bathing
bagslops</i>.)
     BEN POLLARD  (<i>Nakkering castanet bones in his huge  padded paws, yodels
jovially in base barreltone</i>.) When love absorbs my ardent soul.
     (<i>The  virgins,  Nurse Callan  and  Nurse  Quigley,  burst  through  the
ringkeepers and the ropes and mob him with open arms</i>.)
     THE VIRGINS (<i>Gushingly</i>.) Big Ben! Ben MacChree!
     A VOICE Hold that fellow with the bad breeches.
     BEN DOLLARD (<i>Smites his thigh in abundant laughter</i>.) Hold him now.
     HENRY (<i>Caressing  on  his breast a severed female head, murmurs</i>.) Thine
heart, mine love. (<i>He plucks his lutestrings</i>.) When first I saw.
     VIRAG  (<i>Sloughing his skins, his multitudinous plumage moulting</i>.) Rats!
(<i>He yawns; showing  a coalblack throat and closes his jaws by an upward push
of  his  parchment roll</i>.)  After  having said  which  I took  my  departure.
Farewell. Fare thee well. <i>Dreck!
     (Henry Flower combs his moustache and  beard rapidly with a  pocketcomb
and gives a cows lick to his hair. Steered by  his rapier,  he glides to the
door his wild had slung behind him. Virag reaches  the door in  two ungainly
stilthops,  his  tail  cocked, and  deftly  claps  sideways  on  the  wall a
pusyellow flybill, butting it with his head</i>.)
     THE FLYBILL K. 11. post no bills. Strictly confidential. Dr Hy Franks.
     HENRY All is lost now.
     (<i>Virag unscrews his head in a trice and holds it under his arm</i>.)
     VIRAG'S HEAD Quack!
     (<i>Exeunt severally</i>.)
     STEPHEN  (<i>Over  his  shoulder  to Zoe</i>.)  You would  have  preferred the
fighting  parson who founded the protestant  error. But beware  Antisthenes,
the  dog  sage, and  the last  end  of <i>Anus Heresiarchus</i>.  The agony  in the
closet.
     LYNCH All one and the same God to her.
     STEPHEN (<i>Devoutly</i>.) And Sovereign Lord of all things.
     FLORRY (<i>To Stephen</i>.) I'm sure you are a spoiled priest. Or a monk.
     LYNCH He is. A Cardinal's son.
     STEPHEN Cardinal sin. Monks of the screw.
     (<i>His Eminence, Simon Stephen Cardinal Dedalus, Primate of  all Ireland,
appears in  the doorway, dressed in red  soutane, sandals and  socks.  Seven
dwarf simian acolytes, also in red, cardinal sins, uphold his train, peeping
under it. He wears a battered silk  hat sideways on his head. His thumbs are
stuck in his armpits and  his palms outspread. Round his neck hangs a rosary
of corks ending on his breast in a corkscrew cross. Releasing his thumbs, he
invokes  grace from  on  high with  lace wave  gestures and  proclaims  with
bloated pomp</i>.)
     THE CARDINAL
     Conservio lies captured.
     He lies in the lowest dungeon
     With manacles and chains around his limbs
     Weighing upwards of three tons.
     (<i>He looks at all for  a  moment,  his right eye closed tight, his  left
cheek  puffed out.  Then,  unable to repress his merriment, he rocks to  and
fro, ads akimbo, and sings with broad rollicking humour</i>.) O, the poor little
fellow Hi-hi-hi-hi-his legs they were yellow He was plump, fat and heavy and
brisk as  a  snake  But some  bloody savage To  graize his white  cabbage He
murdered Nell Flaherty's duckloving drake.
     (<i>A multitude  of midges swarms over his robe. He scratches himself with
crossed  arms at his ribs, grimacing, and exclaims</i>.) I'm suffering the agony
of  the damned. By the hoky  fiddle,  thanks be  to Jesus those funny little
chaps are  not unanimous. If  they were  they'd  walk me off the face of the
bloody globe.
     (<i>His  head  aslant, he  blesses curtly  with fore  and middle  fingers,
imparts  the Easter kiss and doubleshuffles off comically,  swaying  his hat
from side to side, shrinking quickly  to the size of  his train bearers. The
dwarf  acolytes,  giggling, peeping, nudging, ogling, Easterkissing,  zigzag
behind him. His voice is heard mellow from afar, merciful, male, melodious</i>.)
Shall carry my heart to thee,  Shall carry my heart to thee, And the  breath
of the balmy night Shall carry my heart to thee.
     (<i>The trick doorhandle turns</i>.)
     THE DOORHANDLE Theeee.
     ZOE The devil is in that door.
     (<i>A male form passes down the creaking staircase and is heard taking the
waterproof  and  hat from the rack. Bloom starts forward involuntarily  and,
half closing the door as he passes, takes the chocolate from  his pocket and
offers it nervously to Zoe</i>.)
     ZOE (<i>Sniffs his hair briskly</i>.) Hum. Thank your mother for the  rabbits.
I'm very fond of what I like.
     BLOOM (<i>Hearing  a male voice in talk  with the  whores on the doorstep,
pricks his ears</i>.) If it were he? After? Or because not? Or the double event?
     ZOE  (<i>Tears open the silverfoil</i>.) Fingers  was made before  forks. (<i>She
breaks off and nibbles  a piece, gives a  piece to  Kitty  Ricketts and then
turns kittenishly to Lynch</i>.) No objection to French lozenges?  (<i>He nods. She
taunts him</i>.) Have it now or  wait till you get it? (<i>He opens  his mouth, his
head  cocked. She whirls  the  prize  in  left circle. His head follows. She
whirls it back in right circle. He eyes her</i>.) Catch.
     (<i>She  tosses  a piece.  With an adroit snap  he catches it and bites it
through with a crack</i>.)
     KITTY (<i>Chewing</i>.) The engineer I was with at the bazaar does have lovely
ones. Full  of  the best liqueurs. And the  viceroy was there with his lady.
The gas we had on the Toft's hobbyhorses. I'm giddy still.
     BLOOM  (<i>In  Svengali's fur overcoat,  with folded arms  and  Napoleonic
forelock,  frowns  in  ventriloquial exorcism  with  piercing  eagle  glance
towards the door. Then,  rigid,  with left foot  advanced, he makes  a swift
pass with  impelling fingers and gives the sign of past master, drawing  his
right  arm downwards from his  left shoulder</i>.)  Go, go,  go, I conjure  you,
whoever you are.
     (<i>A male cough and  tread  are  heard passing through the  mist outside.
Blooms features relax. He places a hand in his waistcoat, posing calmly. Zoe
offers him chocolate</i>.)
     BLOOM (<i>Solemnly</i>.) Thanks.
     ZOE Do as you're bid. Here.
     (<i>A firm heelclacking is heard on the stairs</i>.)
     BLOOM  (<i>Takes the chocolate</i>.)  Aphrodisiac?  But  I thought it. Vanilla
calms  or? Mnemo.  Confused  light  confuses  memory. Red  influences lupus.
Colours affect women's characters, any they have. This  black  makes me sad.
Eat and be merry for tomorrow. (<i>He eats</i>.) Influence taste too, mauve. But it
is  so long since I. Seems new. Aphro. That priest.  Must  come. Better late
than never. Try truffles at Andrews.
     (<i>The door opens.  Bella  Cohen, a massive whoremistress enters.  She is
dressed in a threequarter  ivory gown, fringed  round the hem with tasselled
selvedge, and cools herself flirting a black  horn fan like  Minnie Hauck in
Carmen. On her left hand are  wedding and  keeper rings. Her eyes are deeply
carboned. She has a sprouting  moustache. Her olive face is heavy,  slightly
sweated  and fullnosed,  with orangetainted nostrils.  She  has lace pendant
beryl eardrops</i>.)
     BELLA My word! I'm all of a mucksweat.
     (<i>She  glances  around her  at the couples. Then her eyes  rest on Bloom
with hard  insistence. Her lace fan  winnows  wind  towards her heated face,
neck and embonpoint. Her falcon eyes glitter</i>.)
     THE FAN (<i>Flirting quickly, then slowly</i>.) Married, I see.
     BLOOM Yes... Partly, I have mislaid .
     THE  FAN  (<i>Half  opening,  then  closing</i>.)  And  the  missus is master.
Petticoat government.
     BLOOM (<i>Looks down with a sheepish grin</i>.) That is so.
     THE  FAN (<i>Folding  together,  rests  against  her  eardrop</i>.)  Have  you
forgotten me?
     BLOOM Yes. No.
     THE FAN (<i>Folded akimbo  against her  waist</i>.) Is me her was  you dreamed
before? Was then she him you us since knew? Am all them and the same now we?
(<i>Bella approaches, gently tapping with the fan</i>.)
     BLOOM  (<i>Wincing</i>.) Powerful  being. In  my eyes read that slumber  which
women love.
     THE FAN (<i>Tapping</i>.) We have met. You are mine. It is fate.
     BLOOM  (<i>Cowed</i>.)  Exuberant   female.  Enormously   I   desiderate  your
domination. I am  exhausted, abandoned, no more young. I stand, so to speak,
with an unposted letter bearing the extra regulation fee before the too late
box of the general postoffice of human life. The  door and window open at  a
right angle  cause a draught  of thirtytwo feet per second  according to the
law of falling bodies.  I have felt this instant a twinge  of sciatica in my
left glutear muscle. It runs in our family. Poor dear papa, a widower, was a
regular barometer from it. He believed in animal heat. A skin of tabby lined
his winter waistcoat. Near the end, remembering king David and the Sunamite,
he shared his bed  with Athos, faithful after death. A dog's spittle, as you
probably... (<i>He winces</i>.) Ah!
     RICHIE GOULDING (<i>Bagweighted, passes the door</i>.) Mocking is catch.  Best
value in Dub. Fit for a prince's liver and kidney.
     THE FAN (<i>Tapping</i>.) All things end. Be mine. Now.
     BLOOM (<i>Undecided</i>.) All now?  I should not have parted with my talisman.
Rain, exposure at dewfall on the sea rocks, a peccadillo at my time of life.
Every phenomenon has a natural cause.
     THE FAN (<i>Points downwards slowly</i>.) You may.
     BLOOM (<i>Looks downwards and perceives her unfastened  bootlace</i>. ) We are
observed.
     THE FAN (<i>Points downwards quickly</i>.) You must.
     BLOOM  (<i>With  desire, with reluctance</i>.) I can  make a true black  knot.
Learned when I served  my time  and worked the mail order line for Kellet's.
Experienced hand. Every knot says  a lot. Let me. In courtesy. I knelt  once
before today. Ah!
     (<i>Bella raises  her gown slightly and, steadying her  pose, lifts to the
edge of a chair a plump buskined hoof and a full pastern, silksocked. Bloom,
stifflegged  ageing, bends over  her hoof and with  gentle fingers draws out
and in her laces</i>.)
     BLOOM (<i>Murmurs  lovingly</i>.)  To  be a shoefitter  in  Mansfield's was my
love's young  dream,  the darling  joys of sweet buttonhooking,  to  lace up
crisscrossed to kneelength the dressy kid footwear satinlined, so incredibly
small, of  Clyde Road ladies. Even  their wax model Raymonde I visited daily
to admire her cobweb hose and stick of rhubarb toe, as worn in Paris.
     THE HOOF Smell my hot goathide. Feel my royal weight.
     BLOOM (<i>Crosslacing</i>.) Too tight?
     THE HOOF If you bungle, Handy Andy, I'll kick your football for you.
     BLOOM  Not  to lace  the wrong eyelet as I did the night of  the bazaar
dance. Bad luck. Nook in  wrong  tache of her... person you  mentioned. That
night she met... Now!
     (<i>He knots the lace. Bella  places  her foot on  the floor. Bloom raises
his head. Her  heavy face, her eyes strike  him  in mid-brow. His  eyes grow
dull, darker and pouched, his nose thickens</i>.)
     BLOOM (Mumbles.) Awaiting your further orders, we remain, gentlemen.
     BELLO (<i>With  a hard  basilisk  stare, in a  baritone  voice</i>.)  Hound of
dishonour!
     BLOOM (<i>Infatuated</i>.) Empress!
     BELLO (<i>His heavy cheekchops sagging</i>.) Adorer of the adulterous rump!
     BLOOM (<i>Plaintively</i>.) Hugeness!
     BELLO Dungdevourer!
     BLOOM (<i>With sinews semiflexed</i>.) Magnificence.
     BELLO Down!  (<i>He taps her on the shoulder with  his fan</i>.) Incline  feet
forward!  Slide  left foot one pace back. You will fall. You are falling. On
the hands down!
     BLOOM (<i>Her eyes upturned in the sign of admiration, closing</i>.) Truffles!
     (<i>With  a  piercing  epileptic cry  she sinks on  all  fours,  grunting,
snuffling, rooting  at his  feet,  then lies,  shamming dead  with eyes shut
tight,  trembling  eyelids,  bowed upon the ground  in the attitude  of most
excellent master</i>.)
     BELLO (<i>With  bobbed  hair  purple  gills, fat moustache rings round his
shaven mouth, in mountaineer's  puttees, green  silverbuttoned  coat,  sport
skirt and alpine  hat with  moor cock's feather, his hands stuck deep in his
breeches  pockets,  places his heel on her  neck  and grinds it in</i>.) Feel my
entire  weight. Bow, bondslave,  before the throne of your despot's glorious
heels, so glistening in their proud erectness.
     BLOOM (<i>Enthralled, bleats</i>.) I promise never to disobey.
     BELLO (<i>Laughs loudly</i>.) Holy smoke! You little know what's in store  for
you.  I'm  the tartar to settle your little  lot and break you  in! I'll bet
Kentucky  cocktails all round I shame  it  out of you, old son.  Cheek me, I
dare  you.  If  you do tremble  in  anticipation of  heel  discipline  to be
inflicted in gym costume.
     (<i>Bloom creeps under the sofa and peers out through the fringe</i>.
     ZOE (<i>Widening her slip to screen her</i>.) She's not here.
     BLOOM (<i>Closing her eyes</i>.) She's not here.
     FLORRY (<i>Hiding her with her gown</i>.) She didn't mean it, Mr Bello. She'll
be good, sir.
     KITTY Don't be too hard on her, Mr Bello. Sure you won't, ma'amsir.
     BELLO (<i>Coaxingly</i>.) Come, ducky  dear. I want  a word with you, darling,
just to administer correction. Just a little  heart to heart  talk,  sweety.
(<i>Bloom puts out her timid head</i>.) There's a good girly now.  (<i>Bello grabs her
hair violently and drags  her forward</i>.) I only want to correct  you for your
own good on a soft safe spot. How's  that tender behind?  O, ever so gently,
pet. Begin to get ready.
     BLOOM (<i>Fainting</i>.) Don't tear my.
     BELLO (<i>Savagely</i>.) The nosering,  the pliers, the bastinado, the hanging
hook, the knout I'll  make  you kiss while the flutes  play like  the Nubian
slave of old. You're in for it this time. I'll make you remember  me for the
balance  of  your  natural  life.  (<i>His  forehead  veins  swollen,  his face
congested</i>.) I  shall sit on your ottoman saddleback  every  morning after my
thumping good  breakfast of Matterson's  fat  ham  rashers and a  bottle  of
Guinness's porter.  (<i>He  belches</i>.)  And suck my thumping good Stock Exchange
cigar  while I read the <i>Licensed Victualler's</i> Gazette. Very possibly I shall
have you  slaughtered and skewered in my stables and enjoy  a  slice  Of you
with crisp crackling from the baking tin  basted  and baked like sucking pig
with rice and lemon or currant sauce. It will hurt you.
     (<i>He twists her arm. Bloom squeaks, turning turtle</i>.)
     BLOOM Don't be cruel, nurse! Don't!
     BELLO (<i>Twisting</i>.) Another!
     BLOOM (<i>Screams</i>.) O, it's hell itself! Every nerve in my body aches like
mad!
     BELLO (<i>Shouts</i>.) Good,  by the rumping jumping general! That's  the best
bit of news I  heard these six weeks. Here, don't keep me waiting, damn you.
(<i>He slaps her face</i>.)
     BLOOM (Whimpers.) You're after hitting me. I'll tell...
     BELLO Hold him down, girls, till I squat on him.
     ZOE Yes. Walk on him! I will.
     FLORRY I will. Don't be greedy.
     KITTY No, me. Lend him to me.
     (<i>The brothel cook, Mrs Keogh,  wrinkled, greybearded, in  a greasy bib,
men's grey and green socks  and brogues, flour-smeared, a  rollingpin  stuck
with raw pastry in her bare red arm and hand, appears at the door</i>.)
     MRS KEOCH (<i>Ferociously</i>.) Can I help? (<i>They hold and pinion Bloom</i>.)
     BELLO  (<i>Squats,  with  a  grunt,  on  Bloom's  upturned  face,  puffing
cigar-smoke, nursing a fat leg</i>.)  I see Keating Clay is  elected chairman of
the Richmond Asylum and bytheby Guinness's preference  shares are at sixteen
three quarters. Curse me for  a fool that  I didn't  buy that lot Craig  and
Gardner  told me  about. Just my infernal luck, curse it. And that Goddamned
outsider <i>Throwaway</i>  at  twenty to  one. (<i>He  quenches  his cigar angrily  on
Bloom's ear</i>.) Where's that Goddamned cursed ashtray?
     BLOOM (<i>Goaded, buttocksmothered</i>.) O! O! Monsters! Cruel one!
     BELLO  Ask  for that  every  ten minutes. Beg, pray for it as you never
prayed  before.  (<i>He thrusts out  a figged fist and foul cigar</i>.) Here,  kiss
that. Both. Kiss. (<i>He throws a leg  astride  and,  pressing with  horseman's
knees, calls  in a hard voice</i>.) Gee up! A cockhorse  to Banbury  cross. I'll
ride him for the Eclipse stakes. (<i>He bends sideways and squeezes his mount's
testicles roughly,  shouting</i>.)  Ho! off  we  pop! I'll nurse  you  in proper
fashion. (<i>He horserides cockhorse, leaping in the saddle</i>.) The  lady  goes a
pace a pace and the coachman  goes  a  trot a trot and the gentleman goes  a
gallop a gallop a gallop a gallop.
     FLORRY  (<i>Pulls at Bello</i>.) Let me on him now.  You  had enough. I  asked
before you.
     ZOE  (<i>Pulling  at Florry</i>.) Me. Me. Are you  not finished with  him yet,
suckeress?
     BLOOM (<i>Stifling</i>.) Can't.
     BELLO Well,  I'm not. Wait. (<i>He holds in  his  breath</i>.) Curse it. Here.
This  bung's about  burst. (<i>He uncorks himself behind:  then, contorting his
features,  farts loudly</i>.)  Take  that! (<i>He  recorks himself</i>)  Yes, by Jingo,
sixteen three quarters.
     BLOOM (<i>A sweat breaking out over him</i>.) Not man. (<i>He sniffs</i>.) Woman.
     BELLO (<i>Stands up</i>.)  No  more blow hot and cold. What you longed for has
come to pass. Henceforth you are unmanned and mine in earnest, a thing under
the yoke. Now for  your punishment  frock. You will shed your male garments,
you understand, Ruby Cohen?  and don the shot silk luxuriously rustling over
head and shoulders and quickly too.
     BLOOM  (<i>Shrinks</i>.)  Silk,  mistress  said!  O crinkly!  scrapy!  Must  I
tip-touch it with my nails?
     BELLO (<i>Points to his whores</i>.) As they are  now, so will you be, wigged,
singed,   perfumesprayed,  ricepowdered,  with  smoothshaven  armpits.  Tape
measurements will  be  taken  next your skin. You  will  be laced with cruel
force  into vicelike corsets of soft dove  coutille, with whalebone busk, to
the  diamond trimmed pelvis, the  absolute outside edge,  while your figure,
plumper than when at  large,  will be restrained in nettight frocks,  pretty
two ounce  petticoats and fringes  and  things stamped,  of course,  with my
houseflag, creations of lovely lingerie for Alice and nice scent for  Alice.
Alice will feel  the  pullpull.  Martha and Mary will be a  little chilly at
first  in such delicate thighcasing but  the frilly flimsiness of lace round
your bare knees will remind you...
     BLOOM  (<i>A chafing  soubrette  with dauby cheeks, mustard  hair and lace
male  hands and nose, leering mouth</i>.) I tried  her things  on  only once,  a
small prank, in Holles street. When we were hardup I washed them to save the
laundry bill. My own shirts I turned. It was the purest thrift.
     BELLO (<i>Jeers</i>.) Little jobs that make mother pleased, eh! and showed off
coquettishly in  your  domino at  the mirror behind close-drawn  blinds your
unskirted thighs and hegoat's udders, in various poses of surrender, eh? Ho!
Ho!  I  have to laugh! That  secondhand black operatop shift and short trunk
leg  naughties all  split up the  stitches at her last  rape that Mrs Miriam
Dandrade sold you from the Shelbourne Hotel, eh?
     BLOOM Miriam, Black. Demimondaine.
     BELLO  (<i>Guffaws</i>.) Christ Almighty, it's too tickling,  this! You were a
nicelooking Miriam when you clipped off your backgate hairs and lay swooning
in  the thing  across the  bed  as Mrs  Dandrade,  about  to be  violated by
Lieutenant Smythe Smythe,  Mr Philip Augustus  Blockwell, M.P., Signor  Laci
Daremo, the robust tenor, blueeyed Bert, the liftboy, Henry Fleury of Gordon
Bennett  fame, Sheridan, the quadroon Cr&Aelig;sus, the varsity wetbob eight
from old Trinity, Ponto, her splendid Newfoundland and Bobs, dowager duchess
of Manorhamilton. (<i>He guffaws again</i>.) Christ, wouldn't it make a Siamese cat
laugh?
     BLOOM (<i>Her  hands and features working</i>.) It was Gerald  converted me to
be a true corsetlover when I was female impersonator in the High School play
<i>Vice  Versa</i>.  It was dear Gerald.  He got that kink, fascinated by  sister's
stays. Now dearest Gerald uses pinky greasepaint and gilds his eyelids. Cult
of the beautiful.
     BELLO (<i>With wicked glee</i>.) Beautiful! Give  us a breather! When you took
your  seat  with  womanish  care,  lifting  your  billowy flounces,  on  the
smoothworn throne.
     BLOOM Science. To compare the various joys we each  enjoy. (<i>Earnestly</i>.)
And really it's better the position... because often I used to wet.
     BELLO (<i>Sternly</i>.) No insubordination. The sawdust is there in the corner
for you. I gave you strict instructions, didn't I? Do it standing, sir! I'll
teach you to behave like a jinkleman!  If I catch a trace on  your swaddles.
Aha! By the  ass of the Dorans you'll find I'm a martinet.  The sins of your
past are rising against you. Many. Hundreds.
     THE SINS OF THE PAST (<i>In a medley of voices</i>.) He went through a form of
clandestine marriage  with at  least  one woman in the shadow  of  the Black
Church. Unspeakable messages he telephoned  mentally  to  Miss  Dunn  at  an
address in d'Olier Street while  he  presented  himself  indecently  to  the
instrument  in  the  callbox. By word  and  deed  he  encouraged a nocturnal
strumpet  to  deposit  fecal  and  other  matter  in an unsanitary  outhouse
attached to empty premises. In five  public conveniences he wrote  pencilled
messages offering his nuptial partner  to all  strongmembered males.  And by
the  offensively smelling vitriol works did he not pass night after night by
loving courting couples to see if and what and how much he could see? Did he
not  lie in  bed, the  gross  boar,  gloating  over  a nauseous  fragment of
wellused toilet  paper presented  to him  by a nasty  harlot,  stimulated by
gingerbread and a postal order?
     BELLO  (<i>Whistles loudly</i>.)  Say!  What was the most  revolting piece  of
obscenity  in  all your career of crime? Go the whole hog. Puke  it  out. Be
candid for once.
     (<i>Mute  inhuman  faces throng  forward, leering,  vanishing,  gibbering,
Eooloohoom. Poldy Hock,