ead</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, Bootlaces a penny, cassidy's hag, blind  stripling,
Larry Rhinoceros, the girl, the woman, the whore, the other the</i>... )
     BLOOM Don't ask me. Our mutual faith. Pleasants street. I  only thought
the half of the... I swear on my sacred oath...
     BELLO (<i>Peremptorily</i>.) Answer.  Repugnant  wretch! I insist on  knowing.
Tell me something to amuse me, smut or a bloody good-ghoststory or a line of
poetry, quick, quick, quick!  Where? How?  What time? With how many?  I give
you just three seconds. One! Two! Thr... !
     BLOOM (<i>Docile, gurgles</i>.) I rererepugnosed in rerererepugnant...
     BELLO (<i>Imperiously</i>.) O get out, you skunk! Hold your tongue! Speak when
you're spoken to.
     BLOOM (<i>Bows</i>.) Master! Mistress! Mantamer!
     (<i>He lifts his arms. His bangle bracelets fall</i>.)
     BELLO  (Satirically.)  By  day  you  will souse  and bat  our  smelling
underclothes, also when we ladies are unwell, and swab out our latrines with
dress  pinned up and a dishclout tied to your tail. Won't  that be nice? (<i>He
places a ruby ring on her finger</i>.) And there now! With this ring I thee own.
Say, thank you, mistress.
     BLOOM Thank you, mistress.
     BELLO  You will make the beds, get my tub ready,  empty the pisspots in
the different rooms, including old Mrs Keogh's the cook's, a sandy one.  Ay,
and rinse  the seven  of them well, mind, or lap it up like champagne. Drink
me piping hot. Hop! you will dance attendance or  I'll lecture  you on  your
misdeeds,  Miss Ruby, and spank your bare  bot  right well,  miss, with  the
hairbrush.  You'll  be  taught  the  error  of  your  ways.  At  night  your
wellcreamed  braceleted hands  will wear fortythreebutton gloves newpowdered
with talc and having delicately scented fingertips. For such favours knights
of old laid down their lives. (<i>He chuckles</i>.)  My boys will be no end charmed
to see you  so ladylike, the  colonel,  above  all. When they come here  the
night before the wedding to fondle my new attraction in gilded heels. First,
I'll have a go at you myself. A man I know on the turf named Charles Alberta
Marsh (I  was  in  bed with him  just now and  another  gentleman out of the
Hanaper and Petty Bag office) is on the  lookout for a maid of all work at a
short  knock.  Swell  the bust.  Smile.  Droop shoulders. What  offers?  (<i>He
points</i>.) For that lot trained  by owner to fetch and carry, basket in mouth.
(<i>He bares  his arm and plunges it elbowdeep in Bloom's vulva</i>.)  There's fine
depth for  you!  What, boys? That give you a hardon? (<i>He shoves his arm in a
bidder's face</i>.) Here, wet the deck and wipe it round!
     A BIDDER A florin!
     (<i>Dillon's lacquey rings his handbell</i>.)
     A VOICE One and eightpence too much.
     THE LACQUEY Barang!
     CHARLES ALBERTA MARSH Must be virgin. Good breath. Clean.
     BELLO  (<i>Gives  a rap with his gavel</i>.)  Two  bar. Rockbottom figure  and
cheap  at  the  price.  Fourteen  hands high. Touch and  examine his points.
Handle him. This downy skin, these soft muscles, this tender flesh. If I had
only my gold piercer here! And quite  easy to  milk. Three newlaid gallons a
day. A pure stock getter, due to lay within the hour. His sire's milk record
was a thousand gallons of whole milk in forty weeks. Whoa, my jewel! Beg up!
Whoa! (<i>He  brands his initial Con Bloom's croup</i>.) So! Warranted  Cohen! What
advance on two bob, gentlemen?
     A DARKVISAGED MAN (<i>In disguised accent</i>.) Hoondert punt sterlink.
     VOICES (<i>Subdued</i>.) For the Caliph Haroun