#I love women with the personality of a neurotic horse

[sillysiluriforme]

La Terrerur oc idea I've been playing with is party girl who absolutely got herself an Akuma child to chase the trend. She's the worse tm because she's not even wealthy she's just a bourgeois clout chaser who has enough charisma to be invited to all the right parties. She excels at stroking rich men's egos, is paid well to keep secrets. Did not realize eldritch designer baby would kill wealthy sugar daddy to have and is desperately trying to raise peak pretty girl before she herself ages out of the sugarbaby range. Awful woman gaslight gatekeep girl boss bullshit.

Not now sweetie mr agreste is going to have mommy assassinated.

[beigehearts]

mmm this does intrigue me... A LOT I love the crazy hillbilly vibes fem!reader

CW: corpses(very descriptive!), blood, kidnapping, puking

It's an early morning, and the dew on the grass shines when the sun hits is. Mother is helping the servants make breakfast and father has gone into town for work. It's not often that you wake up so early, and you would like to enjoy your time outside. Mother does not like when you wander around outside because you always come back with the hem of your dress dirty and tattered. In order to avoid the wrath of your mother, you put on some pants that one of the stable boys let you borrow. Oh but if mother ever saw you in pants when not riding, then you would have to pray for your life.

You lay down in the damp grass, trees providing some shade, but sun still covering your body. It's a beautiful day, you think you may go horse back riding later. Your favorite horse, Tim Tam, would be excited to see you.

Wind blows, rustling the grass around you, sending a chill up your spine. You can just barely see your house in the distance, you walked quite a ways.

The sound of a horse clopping nears, stomping in the grass and surely leaving tracks. You sit up and look around, but can't find the source of the sound. One of the stable boys must have taken a horse out for exercise. Without warning, a horse leaps out of the trees, it rears in front of you and lets out a bellowing neigh. You gasp and scatter backwards.

The horse brings it's hooves down with a loud 'thump'. A man sits atop the horse, tall and intimidating. He dawns dark clothing, between farm clothes and noblemen clothes. There is no other way to explain it. His hair is tied up in a pony tail, and it is quite long. But that's not what catches your attention. It's his eyes. Dark and hollow, endless, hypnotizing.

You clear your throat and stand up, patting the dirt off of your pants. "Hello sir, what brings you around here?"

His voice is flat, monotone, and unchanging. "Get on."

"Excuse me?" You ask, completely baffled.

This scene reminds you of an old story your mother told you. Somewhere in Greece there are two gods, a dark one taking the woman who is amongst the flowers.

He seems angry, only slightly furrowing his brows. It's his eyes that tell you he's frustrated. He leans down, and grabs you by your bicep, gripping it tightly.

"Hey! That hurts!" You yelp out.

There's no time to react when he yanks you from the ground, seating you in front of him on the saddle.

"What are doing?!" You exclaim, unable to move with one of his arms holding you against him. He digs his stirrup into the side of his horse, and with one hand holding the reigns, rushes off.

No matter all of your screaming and crying, there is no escape or answers. Eventually your throat is raw from the yelling, and you fall silent. It feels as if you speak that blood would fill your mouth. Soon enough, a fence comes into view. Beyond the fence you can barely make out a farm house across from the acres of fields. The horse jumps the fence, and trots contently towards the house. As you get closer, you realize just how big this house is. It must be three times as big as your own house. There's a barn to the side of it, it's doors wide open, but it seems that there are no animals inside.

A servant is waiting outside of the house, and when the both of you dismount the horse, he leads it to some stables. The man who abducted you grips your wrist tightly, enough that you know there will be bruises. He remains quiet, and you do the same. The doors are grand, and he pushes through them. He leads you through the foyer and to what must be the Great Chamber of the house. Sitting in a love seat with a round wooden table in front of her, is a tall woman dawning a fascinator, and an elegant dress.

Without turning to look at you she says, "I see you obtained her Illumi. The servants are waiting in her room." So his name is Illumi?

"Thank you mother." He returns.

He leads you up excessively tall stairs and down a hall to a door with locks on the outside of it. He pushes you inside and locks the door behind you.

In the room there are three women, standing in a line with their heads bowed. "Welcome my lady." Says the woman in the middle. The woman to the left follows, "We are to wash and dress you." The woman on the right adds, "Please allow us to do so."

Soon enough, you're sitting on a chair in the nude, the women using cloths on your body. They dip them into the bucket with soapy water, and rubs the cloth up and down your body. You're dressed in under garments, and then in a round gown. Your face is covered with powder, some light lip balm rubbed against your lips, giving them a rosy tint. Lastly, your hair is styled in a way that it never has been, it takes two hours.

It's dark by the time the women unlock the door and leave. You wander around the room, examining the furniture. The curtains are drawn, so you look outside. It's hard to see anything in the dark, the light from the barn being just bright enough to see in the distance. There's a thump from below you, and you peer down closer to the house. Someone is dragging something off of the deck, but as they get further away from the house, you are unable to see them.

If being abducted weren't enough evidence, there is definitely something wrong here. When you try to speak, all that comes out are quiet whimpers and squeals. It's painful to the point you wish you had never tried to speak.

You realize that the bedroom door is cracked, leading to the dark hallway. You make your way over to the door and peek your head out, looking both ways down the hall. It's almost pitch black, the only light from a window, shining bright moonlight. You step out and find yourself wandering to the end of the long hall. A room with two doors which are wide open presents itself. A man sits on the unusually large bed, examining your every move.

He calls out to you in the darkness, "Come in. I don't bite."

You tip toe towards him, standing in front of the bed where he sits. He's large, the moonlight reveals his muscles, and glowing blue eyes. "You will make a wonderful wife." He leans forwards, and pets your face, holding your chin in his hand.

"So strong, so smart. Yes, a wonderful wife for my son." He says. You would protest but there is no way you could produce sounds from your mouth. These people are fucking crazy. "Go on now, explore your new home."

You happily do as he says, pulling your face away from his hand and scurrying out into the hall, and down the stairs. Have these people not heard about candles? They have servants, so they must be able to illuminate their house.

The house is eerily still, the air stiff. The front door, you'll go out pf the front door. But you have a feeling if you try to escape there will be someone on guard.

You push through the heavy doors, needing to put all of your weight and strength in order to open it. The door slams behind you, and you let out a sigh, wiping sweat off of your forehead. Yes, they are neurotic.

This is where you saw the person below you dragging something. There's a path in the grass where something has been pulled through. It's flattened it, leading far away.

You pick up your dress, stepping down the stairs and following the path. Eventually your arms get tired and you drop your dress to the ground, allowing it to be tainted. Your feet begin to hurt as well, so you pull off your shoes and carry them. The grass is wet, and makes a gross squelching sound when your feet meets the ground.

Soon enough a light can be seen, it's the barn. The path leads directly to the barn. Your dress is muddy, the beautiful peach color having turned into a gross black and brown color at the hems.

Your heart begins to pound as you begin to near the wooden structure. You debate turning around and going back to the house, or even trying to escape... but something compels you to continue.

The doors are shut, before they were wide open. Once you step onto the concrete in front of the doors, you wipe your feet on it. Trying to get the gross muddy feeling off, not accomplishing this. You take a moment to gather yourself, and grab the handles of one of the barn doors. Similarly to the house, the door is just as heavy. Your feet scrape against the ground as you pull on the door, causing them to bleed. Quickly you slip inside the door before it shuts on you. Your feet sting and your hands burn from the effort.

It stinks, it smells absolutely rancid. It smells like rotting bodi-...

Humans. Corpses. They hang from the ceiling upside down, being drained of their blood as farmers do with chickens. The ground is covered in blood, a puddle of it that you could swim in. Some people are pinned against boards or walls, just as Jesus was. There's a large bin in the back where bodies are piled into, hands and feet and legs and arms hanging out of it.

The smell is overwhelming. The sight is overwhelming. You fall to your knees and hang your head back, looking at all the nude corpses. Mortifying. Their faces seem to hang off of their head, as if they're melting. Well, those of them that still have faces. Some are blue and purple, some are missing arms. There arms hanging down from the bodies, as if reaching out to someone for help.

Who could do such a thing. What man would do such a horrible thing. You fall forward, holding yourself up on all fours. There's a pile of hair underneath you, and can feel the bile rising in your throat. You can't help it, everything you've eaten in the past week comes pouring out. But at least it smells better than the bodies.

A hand pats your back, and weakly you turn your head to look up. There, 'Illumi' stands, watching you with emotionless eyes.

He looks at the travesty in front of him and back at you. "It would have been best that you stay in the house." He walks forward, and reaches out, touching the hand of one of the hanging corpses. He grips the hand and rips it off of the body, but there's no blood left in that body to come out. It's bloated and diseased, but he throws it into the bin of bodies.

"Go to bed. I will send breakfast and medicinal herbs to your room in the morning." Before waiting for an answer or a reaction, he leaves, leaving you leaning over your own puke.

You would stuff your face in the puke if that meant not smelling the rot anymore. Instead you hurry out of the barn and collapse on the concrete. 'Oh god, oh god please spare me' repeats in your head. It can only get better, right?

[spiltscribbles]

Hamilton Friends AU  |  The One With The Engagement

Notes: Okay so this is so late, I beam the craziness f this summer. But a huge Thank you to the ever lovely @aswithasunbeamwho prompted me this perfect Friends episode to write in a Hamilton AU. You’re an amazing soul and I hope you enjoy<3<3

.-

“Your face looks weird.”

“Rude.”

“Just an observation,” Angelica, as appraising and blunt as ever, chides at Alexander with a probing finger to his cheek. In turn alexander just scowls her way and sticks out his tongue for good measure.

“She is correct my friend,” Lafayette, currently trying to balance a fifth book on his head after proclaiming that yes, in fact he is as graceful as any of those fucking Disney princesses, tacks on. “As if your face has gone all goopy permanently.”

“It’s like you’re staring at Eliza even though she’s not here,” Hercules clarifies with a shrug.

“You’re all awful people and I don’t know why I’ve ever agreed to be your friend.” Alexander huffs.

“We’ve gone and made him all sour,” Peggy snorts and Laurens begins to mimic his peeved off expression in-between his own cackles.

“Awful!” Alexander reiterates. “Awful, awful people.”

“Answer the question at hand loser,” Peggy charges on, standing up from the sofa and swinging her weight to her left hip, defiant. “Why do you look so eerily unbothered, so, un-Hamilton like. For Pete’s sake even when you’re happy you look like there’s a hundred different things that are annoying the fuck outta you.”

“Harsh.”

“Accurate.”

“Fine,” Alexander twists his lips in annoyance of getting caught out. “If I tell you lot you better swear on everything you own that you won’t breathe a word.”

“Mysterious,” Laurens leers.

“It is Burr, he has died a most awful death! This is the source of your happiness, no?” Lafayette accuses.

“Ah, erm…. Not quite yet?”

“Well get on with it then,” Angelica scolds with no real heat. “Some of us have actual lives to get too.”

“”Drag race is on tonight and me and Ange have got a bet going.” Peggy explains.

“Which I will win,” Angelica sniffs.

“Fine, fine,” Alexander harrumphs, long acquainted with the larger than life personalities of all the Schuyler sisters, his heart contracting and stomach swooping once thinking of one in particular. Of her long, dark hair, and impossibly bright eyes, and the way her smile makes it feel like Alexander’s floating in midair. 

Eliza.

She’s quite literally the most beautiful, brilliant, strong willed and even stronger hearted woman he’s ever known. She’s everything Alexander wishes he was and nothing but wonderful. He knows that, is positive, even if he concedes that she in fact is not an angel sent from the heavens above. Eliza’s not perfect just because Alexander swears she is. He knows that she is a bit of a clean freak, that she can get neurotic if plans aren’t followed through exactly as she had laid out. He knows that she was brought up oblivious to her insane level of wealth and that sometimes it takes full blown arguments for her to speak her mind instead of trying to spare him or anyone else of their feelings. Alexander knows all these small quirks and he doesn’t care because they only make him love her all the more. He loves Eliza more than the sun and stars and all the galaxies above combined, he loves her so much that somedays Alexander thinks his chest might crack with it. 

But it never does, and she’s always there, and what they have is everything Alexander has ever wanted, and Eliza is someone who he never thought he could have. All this to say that he has absolutely no doubts in his mind when he pulls out the small velvet box from his trouser’s pocket and opens it to reveal the sparkling engagement ring he’s spent months saving up for.

“wholly fuck,” Peggy balks, scurrying closer to snatch it out of Alexander’s grasp, Angelica right on her coattails.

“No way!” Laurens crowed the same time Lafayette let out a strange, indecipherable squeal that Alexander is almost positive was only partially in French, partially in English and  then a hodgepodge of other languages he’s never even heard before— all the books cascading down to the wooden floors  in a crescendo of thuds.

 For his part, Hercules just begins to tear up with a stiff lip and quivering hands. “Get the hell outta here.”

“You guys don’t like it,” Alexander asks with a shit eating grin.

“Don’t be cheeky dork,” Angelica reproves, never taking her eyes off the ring, swatting at Peggy to give her a chance to hold it.

“Don’t speak that way to your future brother-in-law,” Laurens snickers, claps Alexander on the back with an encouraging hug. “I’m so proud of you Ham, you’ve finally found the one.” 

Alexander gives his oldest friend— the man he once thought would’ve been his forever if they hadn’t had such contradictory views on what that meant— a watery smile. “thank you Laurens, but don’t get too excited, Betsey’s still gotta say yes.”

“She’s crazy about you,” Peggy says airily, waving off his worries with a lazy hand. “Of course she’s gonna say yes.”

Alexander bites down on a smile, casts his gaze to the floor so to hide his reddening cheeks. He’s still in such disbelief that this is his life. He’s got the world’s greatest friends, an amazing job that he actually enjoys, and now he might actually get to keep the dream girl. So far away from the lonesome days and hard nights of St Croix. Far away from dying mothers and flighty fathers and cruel brothers who never bothered to keep in touch. This, right here, these people, Eliza, the Washingtons, hell even Burr on a good day… They’re his family, the people he’d die for and who he’s sure would die for him too. What a strange feeling that is, to love and be loved. How strange it is that he gets to keep this sense of belonging, of balance.

“God, now enough with the sappiness,” Peggy gripes. “I can see it on your face Hamilton, and just because you’re technically my brother now doesn’t mean I won’t beat your ass if I feel like it.”

“Charming,” Alexander deadpans.

“I thought so,” Peggy says with a magnanimous grin.

“So what’s the plan? How are you gonna pop the question?” Hercules interjects from where he’s now examining the rose gold band and round cut diamond accented with sapphires. 

“I was planning to take her to that really posh French restaurant near fifth avenue that Laf showed us. Bets loves hearing me speak French,” he explains with a wink.

“My people’s language does arouse a certain, how do you say, sultry emotion.” Lafayette leers.

“For the love of God stop talking about having sex with my baby sister.”

“Right, ahem.” Alexander concedes. “Well after that I was gonna order us a bottle of her   favorite, ridiculously priced champaign.”

“We use to drink it when we’d summer in our villa in the South of France,” Peggy explains, totally impervious to how fantastical that sounds to Alexander.

“Friends with too many rich people,” Hercules mutters morosely, handing the ring off to Lafayette, face scrunched up in displeasure all the while.

“Do not hate us for our good fortunes mon grand,” Lafayette sniffs. “Especially now that Alexander is considered part of our lot after he and Eliza’s inevitable union. One that is written in the stars mind you.”

“What’s written in the stars?”

Alexander’s heart stutters to a rapid staccato just as soon as he sees the door to the apartment swing open, revealing a disheveled, but radiant Eliza strolling through, one perfectly manicured brow kinked. 

Before Alexander can take a breath, Lafayette impulsively stuck the ring— the symbol of his undying love and eternal devotion to Eliza— into his fucking French, snail eating mouth.

“Gross,” he hisses, to which Lafayette just tossed him the bird.

“Ah, the fact that Thundermist is totally beating Vivian October tonight,” Peggy blurts out in a totally high pitched voice. Jesus fucking Christ half of them work in politics and the other half are lawyers, save for Hercules whom’s perfectly content as the head of Ralph Lauren merchandize. But still, Alexander expected that they’d all be better at lying than this pathetic display!

He’s subsequently shown up the moment Eliza flickers her gaze towards him, a knowing smile blooming across her face that makes Alexander’s heart ache with want. He supposes it’s more the person who they’re all lying to rather than the act itself. 

“You and Ange need to stop making everything a competition love, it’s teetering on ridiculous.” She toots, tosses her and Alexander’s mail to the counter before excepting the peck he can’t help but offer her.

“You know how daddy is with his horses,” Angelica argues. “It’s in our blood.”

That just makes Eliza role her eyes, totally fond, before she excuses herself to change out of her pencil skirt and red bottom heals.

“Hey is there paint on your top?” Laurens asks, brows furrowed.

“Oh yeah,” Eliza blushes. “The kids had arts and crafts today at the orphanage and wanted me to help out so I just set all the paperwork to be done tomorrow instead.”

“THat’s my top!” Angelica squawks, affronted.

“It’ll come out,” Eliza shoos her off with a lofty tip to her head.

Once she’s shut the door on her to change, Alexander cuffs Lafayette on the back, hard. 

“This is the love you show me after I successfully kept your little romantic gesture a secret,” he harrumphs.

“Now I’ve got your French cooties all over it!” Alexander hisses.

“Many a men and women would have died to get my delightful French saliva within a ten mile radius of them.”

“We really need to talk about your ego one of these days,” Peggy snorts.

“I have Adrien as my wife and you lot are blunders in love, I shall not permit any judgment from any of you.”

“Hey, I’ll be joining you in that marital bliss soon enough,” Alexander contends, totally giddy smile curling at the corners of his mouth.

“Gross,” the remainder chorus in varying degrees of exasperation, dosed  in pride.

.-

Alexander’s really never had the best luck, most especially when it was the romantic sort. Before Eliza he’s never had a relationship that lasted over six consecutive months, or one that he didn’t constantly feel as if he had to garnish a facade of brilliance and magnetism that he’s never truly felt he had any right to own. Before Eliza Alexander never was able to picture himself settling into the domestic sphere quite so willingly. Never thought he would’ve yearned for quiet Sunday mornings in bed where Eliza’s head was propped up on his chest, and the early morning light would cascade atop her cheekbones and lips and glimmer in her hair. Those mornings where all Alexander could focus on was counting the quiet breaths she would let out and plotting out all the ways he could always make her look so at peace and lovely. Alexander never thought he would ever want the house in the suburbs with a large yard and rose gardens and everything his mother had tried to give him when she was still here. Alexander never had wanted it until Eliza came and he realized he could have it with her.

He remembers one particularly pitiful night towards the end of L2 when he had just cut ties with Cornelia Lotts because he had woken up that morning and had just not found her as interesting as the night before, which obviously meant he had drunken himself silly at some sleazy bar and tried picking up someone knew, just for the fun of it. Instead he was met by Angelica’s expectant,  irritated glower once he was three drinks in, telling him on no uncertain terms that the reason his love life sucked so hard is because he always went for the obscenely wealthy and tragically pretty folks that always infested ivy league institutions. The same folks with too large egos and too little self worth to ever consider having an actual relationship with someone outside of their social circle— A circle that the Schuyler family were the crown jewels of is what Angelica didn’t have to say but Alexander heard in screaming clarity all the same.

“Fuck you.”

“You wish loser.”

That was when she tugged him by the ear to get out of the city with her for the long weekend to clear his head. When he slept in her family’s country home upstate. When he had stumbled downstairs in the middle of the night to be face to face—for the first time— with the sister he’s seen millions of pictures of and heard even more stories about  by a beaming Angelica. The one who had just spent the year after graduating Yale in the peace corps. That was when Alexander’s heart had first swelled and he was a goner.

“Eliza.”

“Yes love,” Eliza smiles up at him through her lashes now, so many years detached from their first meeting. Years composed of unrequited crushes and tentative laughs that morphed into a strong friendship and shy words of sincerity. Eventually leading them to first kisses and first nights and all the in-betweens Alexander’s never gone through with any other relationship. Nothing else felt as vital, as permanent, as the one he shares with Eliza. Nothing else felt like it deserved his efforts in quite the same ways that he’s always known Eliza has. Nothing else has made him experience this distinct sort of want.

“I love you.”

“I love you too,” she giggles, mouth partially hidden from the lip of the flute of champaign she’s nursing. “Is everything alright deer? You look a little pale.”

Alexander’s throat closes up and he rinses his hands with anticipation.

“Yeah, yes. Everything’s Perfect Bets, it’s been perfect for a while now… Honestly ever since you agreed to actually go out with me. You. You make things perfect.”

Eliza doesn’t answer him in so many words, just cups her hands around hiss face and kisses him nice and thorough. Alexander wonders if how she makes everything inside of him go golden with every press to the lips will ever fade.

He seriously doubts it.

“Now, let me get this out, okay?” Alexander begs, squeezing her hands with his own and kissing the tops of each of her fingers gingerly. 

“Oh, Andre.”

Alexander’s heart stills and the breath from his lungs escapes— It feels like something awful and freezing has just clutched his heart and rinsed it dry.

“No, Alex—- I’m Alex.”

That only makes Eliza role her eyes at him before nudging her head to where a ridiculously handsome, obviously well off man stands.

“Oh, yes…. erm that is Andre.”

“Maybe he won’t see us,” Eliza offers before he’s lead directly to the recently vacated spot besides them by a completely oblivious host.

“Maybe he’s blind now?” Alexander says hopefully.

“Lizzy Schuyler is that you?” 

Alexander curses every ounce of bad luck he’s somehow accumulated before standing up to exchange awkward pleasantries  and spending the remainder of the night refraining himself from knocking Andre/s lights out every time he stares a tad bit too longingly towards Eliza for his liking.

The pampered bastard.

.-

Still inwardly fuming while drinking his morning coffee, Alexander was accosted by someone cuffing him on the back of the head, hard.

He isn’t surprised to turn around and Find a surly looking Angelica glaring at him, hands on her hips and mouth curled in a distinctly predatory fashion.

“What happened last night Hamilton?”

“How do you know something happened?” 

“Well when I gushed to look at Liza’s hand this morning, instead of a rock on her finger she just looked at me like I was insane! I had to pretend I wanted to read her palm.”

“So confirming the insanity suspicion then?” He asks owlishly.

“Hamilton!” She says in a hiss.

“I couldn’t do it, okay.” Alexander snaps back, waspish.

“You chickened out,” Angelica accuses, depositing herself on the sofa besides him in the small cafe and snatching the muffin from his hand.

“No.”

“Then what? You changed your mind? My baby sister not good enough for you?” She needles, prickly as he’s ever seen her.

“Don’t be ridiculous Anne.”

“Then wh—“

“Andre showed up,” he blurts with absolutely no tact.

“No fucking way,” Angelica gapes, dropping the aforementioned muffin.

“I’m cursed aren’t I?”

“Kinda,” Angelica consoles with a pout, cradling his head on her shoulder.

“Ah oh, not a good sign.” Hercules observes once taking a seat with his own latte.

“Hamilton’s cursed,” Angelica informs him, matter-of-fact.

“Why this time?”

“Because Eliza’s fucking perfect ex-fiancé somehow showed up last night with his own date and sat there besides us looking all handsome and waxing all poetic and reminiscing about how he and Eliza were caught fucking in her childhood bedroom her sophomore year of college and making her laugh and I couldn’t get a damn word in edgewise!”

“Oh not the thanksgiving story,” Angelica winces.

“So I reckon you didn’t propose?”

“I was gonna do it tonight instead, but thanks to Mis babble mouth over here,” he elbow checks Angelica. “Eliza most definitely suspects something is up now.”

“Hey! It’s not my fault that you apparently committed some sort of horrendous crime in a past life.”

“Who asks to look at someone’s hands!” Alexander hurls.

“People who think their sister was just proposed to!” Angelica defends.

“It’s fine you guys, we’ve just gotta throw her off the trail a little. Make her think marriage’s the furthest thing from your mind.” Hercules placates. 

“Yeah, yeah Herc, you’re right.” Alexander nods, is thrown to alert the moment the cafe’s bells chime— indicating a new customer— and it’s Eliza’s soft timbre that rings in his ears.

“I swear, I don’t care what Laf says, French people are total weirdos.” She sheds off her jacket and assumes the seat in Alexander’s all too willing lap. “I walk into his place to pick up some papers I left there and the first thing he wants to see is my hand to see if it’s proportionate to his.” With a huff, she grabs the coffee mug from Alexander, face scrunching up adorably at the excessive amount of sugar he always mixes in. Totally oblivious to how his heart is pulsing and his face is infused a bright red.

“Oh— Hah, how weird,” Angelica titters awkwardly. 

“Why do you sound so strange Ange?”

“No she doesn’t,” Alexander quickly pipes in.

“Yes…. She does.” Her brows furrow, the smallest dent between her eyes telling Alexander that she’s suspecting something. “What’s going on?”

“We were just reading this article in the New Yorker is all,” Hercules explains, saving all their asses. “It’s making her worry about her relationship with Mr Big.”

“His name’s Church, stop comparing our lives to Sex In The City characters,” Angelica admonishes with no heat.

“Whatever Miranda.”

“So what’s this article that’s got you all frazzled Angelica?” Eliza asks worriedly.

“It’s about marriage,” Alexander answers instead, seeing his opportunity and plunging for it.

“Marriage?” 

“Yeah, just about how it’s a total scam. I mean think about it Bets, legally timing yourself to another person? Doesn’t that sound Orwellian to you? A ploy by the government just to get our money and to keep us in check if you ask me.”

Eliza’s frown somehow, impossibly, sinks deeper.

“That’s not what you think Alex, is it?”

“I mean, ah yeah—“ His voice most certainly does not screech like he was a character from Saved By The Bell. “I mean you know me Eliza. I mean marriage didn’t keep my dad around for my mom.”

He can’t believe he just used that card on her. He totally deserves to go to hell for that one.

“It doesn’t always have to end up like that hon.” She cards a hand through his hair, kisses his cheek gingerly. And yeah, eternal damnation here Alexander comes.

“Eliza like 60% of all marriages now days ends in divorce,” Angelica contends. “Can you even name a couple that hasn’t been separated at least once.”

“Our parents,” she sniffs.

“But is it worth taking that chance,” Alexander says, reminds himself of how happy she’ll be tonight after he pops the question, when Eliza shakes off the hand that’s trying to lace their fingers together.

“Yeah, Yeah Alex I do think it’s worth that chance! And you know I do!” She starts to get up now, properly mad. “I mean don’t you guys want to promise yourself to the person you love in front of all your nearest and dearest. Be bound to someone so intimately and permanently. To get to show off your love to the world to see!”

“Sounds kinda selfish to me,” Alexander counters and Hercules and Angelica mumble their agreements.

“Okay,I’m running late for work.” In a cloud of carefully concealed fury, found in the pinch of her shoulders and downturn of her lips, Eliza collects her bag and jacket before storming out. A quiet fury in total opposition to her sisters’ brash words and ear shattering shouts.

Alexander yet again reminds himself of her beaming face when she doesn’t dip down to give him the customary kiss goodbye. 

“This’s gonna workout just fine.”

.-

[pulsarsmash]

PULSAR’S TOP 10 FAVORITE ANIME OF 2017

 PULSAR'S TOP 10 ANIME OF 2017:

Its that time again! Here's my ten favorite anime series of the past year. A few notes: 

1. This is just one dude's opinion. If your favorite isn't on here, it's not personal. 

2. I decided to include sequel series on this list after a few years of not doing that, because there were a couple this year that were so good I felt not including them would be unfair. 

3. If I didnt finish a show, its not on here. Meaning there are a couple shows like Inuyashiki and Juni Taisen that, while I've liked what I've seen, aren't on this list.

Here we go!

#10: GABRIEL DROPOUT A consistently funny comedy about an angel who, after graduating from angel school and being assigned to Earth, discovers video games and ends up becoming a lazy bum. Meanwhile, her best friend, a demon fresh out of demon school, has the opposite problem: she's far too sweet and kind to be an effective agent of evil. This show is a lot of fun and features a couple great supporting characters (a demon with serious delusions of grandeur and an angel with a sadistic streak). If youre looking for some laughs, this is a great show to check out!

GABRIEL DROPOUT is available on Crunchyroll.

#9: KONOSUBA - SEASON 2

Imagine the gang on Its Always Sunny In Philadelphia launching a Dungeons & Dragons campaign. It would probably end up something like Konosuba. 

I didn't think this show could top last season in ridiculousness and hilarity, but it pulled it off. This is one of those shows where your sides hurt by the end of some episodes because you've been laughing so hard. 

If you aren't familiar with Konosuba, it revolves around a group of four would-be adventurers: Kazuma, a neurotic and slightly perverted NEET; Aqua, an incompetent crybaby goddess and healer; Megumin, a mentally unstable mage obsessed with blowing things up; and Darkness, a masochistic knight. These four are complete idiots and manage to screw up just about everything they try to accomplish... and you'll end up loving them because of it. Watch this one from the beginning if youre looking for a great comedy and like seeing the "sent to a fantasy world" trope completely turned on its head. Seasons 1 and 2 of KONOSUBA are available on Crunchyroll.

#8: PRINCESS PRINCIPAL

This show was 2017's dark horse, it seemed to fly under a lot of peoples radar. Which is a shame, because this is a very fun and inventive spy/intrigue series. Princess Principal takes place in an alternate version of Britain which has been split in two by war. A group of young women double as spies for the upstart commonwealth who are trying to unseat the monarchy. And their secret weapon? The country's own princess, who is in on the scheme. With awesome steampunk-inspired character designs, great action sequences and a story with continuous twists and turns that will keep you guessing, this show definitely deserves a second look from people who may have missed out the first time. Princess Principal is available on Amazon Prime.

#7: KAKEGURUI KAKEGURUI is another show that flew under people's radar in 2017, largely because Netflix decided to wait until the English dub was finished to release it in the US. But I can tell you it was worth the wait. This anime follows a young woman named Yumeko who transfers into an elite prep school in Japan, where the student hierarchy is determined through gambling. Yumeko quickly finds herself a target of the student council when it turns out that not only is she a VERY skilled gambler, she is also very good at figuring out if someone is cheating. And she may or may not be a tad bit insane. If you like over-the-top psychologically-intense shows like Prison School, you are going to love this anime. It also has my favorite intro of any anime in 2017. KAKEGURUI is available on Netflix in English and Japanese starting this month! 

#6: SCUM'S WISH Most romance anime are very light and fun, or they are over the top to the point of self-parody. SCUM'S WISH is not one of those anime. This show is about how painful and unfair love can be. Two high school students appear to everyone to be a perfect couple. But the truth is they are both actually in love with other people (their teachers), and are simply using each other as a physical and emotional replacement. The characters in this show are not tropes, and they aren't necessarily all likeable either. One character I would almost call the best villain of the entire year in anime. But in the end, this show makes you care about all of them, to the point where you even want the worst of them to be happy in the end. Scums Wish is not a fun show. In fact, it is incredibly painful to watch at times. But it is absolutely worth watching. SCUM'S WISH is available on Amazon Prime.

#5: THE ANCIENT MAGUS' BRIDE A young woman named Chise is about to commit suicide when she is approached by a man offering to help her "find someone who wants her." Feeling that she has nothing left to live for, she offers herself up for auction, and is purchased for five million pounds by a mysterious individual who turns out to be an ancient mage. And he has selected Chise to be his apprentice... and his future bride. The Ancient Magus' Bride is an absolutely BEAUTIFUL show. There is a sense of magic and wonder to this anime that just draws you in from the opening episode and doesn't let go. And the relationship between Chise and Elias is fascinating. This show will likely top a LOT of people's best-of lists, and I absolutely understand why. The only reason its not higher on my list is it's only 13 episodes in, and there's a lot of story left to tell. I can't wait! THE ANCIENT MAGUS' BRIDE is available on Crunchyroll (subtitled) and Funimation (English dub)

#4: MISS KOBAYASHI'S DRAGON MAID A techie gets drunk one night, misses her train stop and ends up on the outskirts of town. She comes across a dragon, and being drunk, makes friends with her invites her to stay with her. She proceeds to go home, pass out and forget everything... until the dragon shows up on her doorstep the next morning, dressed as maid and ready to get to work. This for me was the biggest surprise of 2017. I went into this show expecting to drop it after an episode or 2, and ended up falling in love with its cast of hilarious and ridiculous characters. The relationship between Kobayashi and Tohru the dragon (which becomes more romantic over time) is absolutely adorable, and the supporting characters/dragons are all a ton of fun to watch. This is one of those series that just makes you feel good while watching it. Definitely give this one a shot! MISS KOBAYASHI'S DRAGON MAID is available on Crunchyroll (subtitled) and Funimation (English dub)

#3: ATTACK ON TITAN: Season 2 Attack On Titan, a show about a world where titans (giant humanoid creatures) threaten humanity's existence and have forced them into a giant walled city, is one of the most popular anime series of the past decade. After a four long wait, expectations for this season were impossibly high. Well, I'm just going to say it: Season 2 of Attack On Titan made Season 1 look like a kids show by comparison. This season ramped up the intensity and sheer terror to 11. Attack On Titan, in my opinion, is no longer a shonen-action series. It's straight up HORROR. And this is a good thing. The best thing about this season was the decision to split up the main trio of Eren, Armin and Mikasa and focus more on supporting characters like Sasha, Ymir and Krista. Ymir in particular went from being a background character to becoming the heart of the show, with her tragic arc being the center of the season's conflict. Fortunately, AoT fans won't have to wait much longer for Season 3, as it will be coming out this year! ATTACK ON TITAN Season 2 is available on Crunchyroll (subtitled) and Funimation (English dub). Season 1 is also available on Netflix and Hulu

#2: LITTLE WITCH ACADEMIA Originally a crowdfunded OVA, and then a sequel, Studio Trigger's LITTLE WITCH ACADEMIA finally received a full season this year, and it was absolutely worth the wait. This is an extremely fun and entertaining series about a school for young witches and a group of new students who have joined, including a young girl named Akko from Japan who loves magic, but doesn't appear to have much natural ability... until she discovers a magic wand that once belonged to a legendary witch named Shiny Chariot. Akko is instantly likeable and you will find yourself cheering her and her friends on even as they make obvious mistakes and get themselves into ridiculous amounts of trouble along the way. Her dorm-mate Sucy (who has a serious obsession with potions and isn't afraid to use her friends as guinea pigs for her experiments) damn near steals the show. And its a Studio Trigger show, so you know the animation is going to not only be great but exciting to watch, and that's definitely the case here. The show wisely takes an episodic approach for the first half, with the overall story arc coming into play in the second half of the series. LITTLE WITCH ACADEMIA is not just one of the best anime of the year, it's one of my favorites of the past decade. LITTLE WITCH ACADEMIA is available on Netflix in both Japanese and English.

#1: MADE IN ABYSS

I agonized for a while over whether to make this or Little Witch Academia #1. If you were to ask which show is more fun to watch, Little Witch wins by a landslide. But Made In Abyss is the show that simply would not let me go this year.

In a world where a mysterious chasm has opened up in the center of the earth, cave raiders delve into the depths of The Abyss, as its known, seeking out secrets and treasure of the world below. A young aspiring cave raider named Riko one day receives a letter from her mother, a famous cave raider who has been missing for years, telling her to meet her at the bottom. With the help of her new friend Reg (a human-looking robot Riko found while scavenging), Riko begins a treacherous journey to the bottom of the world.

MADE IN ABYSS is a throwback in some ways to the dark fantasy epics of the 1980s like The Neverending Story. But this series ramps up the darker elements of its story over time. Do not let the cute art fool you: this is NOT a kids show. This show goes places I never expected, and in some cases places I would never want to go back to again. This show never feels "safe" the way kids' shows are expected to. The central characters are always in danger, and one false move could get them killed... or worse. There are times where I had to pause this show in the middle of an episode just to decompress because I felt like I was about to break down.

Prepare to be terrified. Prepare to be heartbroken. And prepare to see the best anime of 2017.

MADE IN ABYSS is available on Amazon Prime.

Thanks for checking out my list. Let me know what your favorite anime series of 2017 were!

[gaga-chronicles]

(1/18/2018 - Milan)

Lady Gaga, slowly walking the stage, sets a hypothetical scene: imagine you meet a stranger or go on a date, and you bare your soul to them. You tell them your darkest secrets and let them in. Knowing all of this, they still reject you. Then you must say, she finishes, “I was born this way.” And, as you’d imagine, she then steps heart-first into the triumphant throbbing of “Born This Way” during which a dancer wraps Gaga into a white tulle floor-length skirt that looks suspiciously like a visual nod to a wedding dress.

This sounds close enough to a vampish and actorly display from 2012-era Gaga, but things have changed. Last year's Netflix doc Gaga: Five Foot Two was always going to colour this imaginary anecdote of rejection and numerous moments in the tour. The film showed the severe physical pain Gaga endured while making Joanne – the very same illness, in fact, which led to her European tour (including this Milan gig) being rescheduled last September. Many people were jarred by the Gaga, the person, displayed in that making of her fifth studio album. They didn’t expect the impact a uniquely demanding schedule would have on someone they’d naively perceived to be bulletproof. In the film, she can appear exhausted, irritable to the point of cross, in physical pain, and surrounded by people at all times but essentially, pervasively, lonely. A human being. “I sold 10 million and lost Matt. I sold 30 million and lost Luke. I did a movie and lose Taylor. It's like a turnover. This is the third time I’ve had my heart broken like this,” she says, sadly and plainly. What Gaga wants nearly as much as her career and fans, is a partner, a family. The physical and emotional strains of stardom are evidently sacrifices for brilliance.

If Joanne is Gaga being quote unquote authentic, if it represents a clear down-to-earth break from previous albums, then the first of her subsequent live shows in Milan intriguingly reveals the ongoing tussle between ‘art project Gaga’ and ‘vulnerable Gaga.’ This gig feels like the moment she emerges from the intimacy of people’s iPads and TVs and back to her well-established position of blinding live performer – but now she’s pulling at the contours of artifice versus “realness” more than ever.

As the show opens, half a set list before her heartfelt “Born This Way”, Gaga appears onstage alone in a simple sparkly cowgirl outfit with the Joanne hat on, singing “Diamond Heart” into a vintage mic. Mimicking the Joanne track listing, she swoops into “A-YO” next, this time joined by other guitarists who accompany her as the camera swings into her face at dodgy angles like an 80s glam rock video. Imagine The Fame Monster Gaga doing classic ‘guitar music’. This is high production make-believe in a dive bar; stripped-back Gaga. But it’s not all ‘someone accompany me on that guitar for a second.’ Longtime appreciators get to enjoy “Telephone” and “Poker Face”, or revel in how Gaga sashays about and rides a man like a horse on “Alejandro.” A ginormous PVC dress she wears at one point, which looks like an oily dessert, is the sort of thing she’s famous for. And frankly few others in recent pop have ramped up glamorous camp ridiculousness better. There’s a reason your mum would’ve known who Gaga was if you’d just described one of her outfits circa 2010.

Watching these sections of the show, their drama is rendered all the more impressive when you remember the full extent of the hard work and physical pain poured into them. That, after all, became a major trope in Gaga: Five Feet Two. As the film did then, this gig exemplifies how performers in general and women in those roles especially are supposed to dazzle and beguile, but we’re never meant to see them sweat. This is just as true if they are also one of the most famous solo artists in the world.

Gaga explores showing a crack in that public veneer, with a series of short videos that play between stage set-ups. In one, she’s laughing and drinking bubbles in a well-lit dressing room – call it a Moulin Rouge moment. Suddenly it morphs into something Black Swan-like, chants of “Gaga” and the cries of a crowd sending her spotlit face into contortions. In another video, she writhes between two looming white walls that appear to be closing in and ready to squash her. These could realistically be a metaphor for anything. But all I could think was: is this the suffocating fight between two Gagas – the one everyone wants and the one she feels she is? And more than that, is this a sort of aggressive turmoil she feels is a part of this album’s story, now that so many fans would have presumably seen her struggle in last year’s documentary?

Two highlights of the show come from the Joanne album. She retells the touching story of her belated aunt who died from lupus – a disease she herself tested borderline positive for – before performing the album’s title track simply, seated and accompanied by two guitarists. The song hits as hard as it did when she played it off her phone to family members in a particularly intimate scene fromFive Foot Two. Her approach to staging the show’s closing track, “Million Reasons”, becomes the second highlight. Who else would perform this otherwise straight-forward ballad while wearing a sparkling cowgirl hat on a holographic crystal grand piano with lasers firing down onto the keys as she plays?

There’ll no doubt be some who prefer the sex and flamboyance of older Gaga material. But that hasn’t disappeared entirely and her show is still, as it’s always been, utterly conducted for the fans. Her Little Monsters are named and spoken to throughout. They aren’t seeing a different Gaga, rather the same singing, dancing, spectacular star they’ve followed from the start. It’s only her live performance that’s in mid-evolution.

None of this should be a surprise. Even early interviews depicted this same multifaceted pop star. In a 2011 Guardian profile, friend and performer Lady Starlight says of Gaga: “She just throws herself into her work. She’s very focused on ‘What am I doing next?’ That’s the way; just the tunnel vision.” That profile later depicts her in all her “contradictory glory” as business woman and “needy neurotic”. In a Vogue interview from a similar time, she spent the entirety of the previous day self-soothing in bed by rubbing her foot, something she does when she’s feeling lonely. In a back and forth with Stephen Fry for theFinancial Times she says, “…people are imperfect in a perfect way. I always find it’s so interesting to have conversations about my work because in the past ten minutes you’ve pointed out to me that some people find me to be artificial while others find me to be quite real with the world. Isn’t that interesting?”

It is interesting that many people had forgotten that dichotomy, or supposed one: confident, shock-pop, ‘artificial as if coated with glossy lacquer’ performer, and sensitive, real, longing-to-be-loved human. As Gaga took a slight backseat in pop culture consciousness over the last few years, the flamboyance, meat, feathers and YouTube videos of her fabulous diva moments became the caricature that remained. Joanne and Five Foot Two reinstated that. These shows are the stepping stone towards a new and textured Gaga, one who will no doubt continue to evolve during her Vegas run. Fantasy and reality were always supposed to co-exist with Gaga – now she wants you to see them gel.

[thebachelordiaries]

‘Straddling For A Rose’: The Bachelor Ep. 3 Recap

Hey, it’s me back with another last-minute Bachelor recap. This episode was about doing it doggy style in a trailer park....oh no wait, that was just the themes for the two group dates.

Here’s small anecdote for you: When I’m in the car with my dad and it’s too hot, I like to tell him to turn on the air conditioner just a tad. However, he is a man of extremes so he just blasts the A.C. until I turn into a fucking icicle. The same goes for when I tell him he’s driving too slow; he immediately starts speeding and I fear for my life.

What I’m trying to say here is that my dad is in charge of picking out dates for this season of The Bachelor. For several seasons now, we (or maybe just me) have been complaining that the show recycles the same old, boring dates.

Well guys, my dad (the show’s writers) are finally listening.

“Oh you want new group dates? We’ll give you fucking new group dates,” a producer yells manically, spit flying everywhere.

Anyway, I’m rambling more than Lauren S. on her 1-on-1 with Arie (spoiler?), so let’s get this recap started.

GLOB Group Date

The psychopath show writers (my dad) decided upon demolition derby (sorry not sorry about your concussion, Brittany) and now, they chose WWE wrestling, or the lesser known GLOW (Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling), However, in this case, it’s GLOB (Gorgeous Ladies of the Bachelor). GOT PARENTHESIS?

The women on the date learned how to wrestle, or at least pretend to wrestle, like the pros, while these washed up women wrestlers with faces that look like melted candle wax talked shit to them, making my girls Bibiana and Tia cry.

This old hag asked Bibiana if her mom knew how to spell when she gave her that name. I would’ve snatched her wig SO QUICK.

“Bitch, you don’t even know my mom.” -Bibiana

Then another old lady pulled Tia’s hair, who probably had in her extensions, and homegirl was not having it. I would’ve been done too.

Bibiana and Tia get it together after a good cry and end up battling each other as Bridezilla and a Southern Belle. Bibiana’s costume was actually hysterical.

“I’m the Bridezilla and I’m about to eat these bitches for lunch.”

Lauren B. had a hard time getting the acting part down and kept laughing. Lauren, how are you going to convince me to buy overpriced skincare or a cheap curling wand on your Instagram story if you can’t even get your fake acting down? Do better.

I just want to talk about Maquel as a lunch lady. Poor Maquel deserved a rose just for having to wear this outfit. That mole was actually disgusting.

The fights went like this: Bekah the Sex Kitten vs Maquel the Lunch lady. Jacqueline the Beauty Queen vs Krystal the Cougar. Maquel the Gold Digger vs Lauren B. the Princess [this match was slightly pornographic but producers definitely put in some added audio in there.] Bibiana the Bridezilla vs Tia the Southern Belle.

Also, we can’t forget the cameo from a Bachelor favorite, Kenny King, an actual pro wrestler. He clearly let Arie win, but damn, I love Kenny. He’s so entertaining. I’m glad he was brought back.

I mean, someone needed to show off their abs on The Bachelor, and we all knew it wasn’t going to be Arie.

The cocktail portion of the group date took place in an RV park; just another redneck place to make Tia feel at home.

Arie told Krystal that it’s hard to have her in a room with a lot of other women and he has to “check himself.” Kind of like how I have to check the sound settings on my television to make sure Krystal’s voice isn’t actually that annoying. But alas, it is.

Krystal sucks so much. She thinks her time is more valuable than everyone else’s and that its okay if she takes that time away from other girls trying to get to know Arie to “decrease her competition.” Tia may feel at home in a trailer park, but Krystal, you’re actually white trash.

In other news, Bekah straddled Arie. I’ve also decided that his hand grabbing of the face move is weird.

I’m really happy I procrastinated this recap because Saturday Night Live did a Bachelor skit called “Car Hunk,” which referenced Bekah’s short hair.

Fake Bekah: I have short hair. Isn’t it the weirdest thing you’ve seen in your life?

Fake Arie: Yeah, but somehow I still like you.

Fake Bekah: That’s because I’m barely 21.

Fake Arie: Oh yeah, that’s what makes me horny.

Gross, but true.

TFW you think you have the strongest relationship with The Bachelor but the girl on your left (our right) just dry humped your man in a trailer, unbeknownst to you.

Arie gave the rose to Bekah because...”you were outstanding today and tonight you were amazing.” I swear to god those were his words. Juan Pablo was more articulate.

1-On-1 With Lauren S.

When Lauren S. is chosen for the 1-on-1, I’m convinced she is Arie’s favorite. I’m basing this on the fact that both Lauren Bushnell and Vanessa Grimaldi got 1-on-1s on the third episode.

Lauren S. is pretty, funny and I feel like she’s a bit too normal for the show. I really like her, even if her face permanently looks like this:

Lauren and Arie take a private Jet to Napa where they go wine tasting. They show a lot of their casual conversations, which I take as a good sign, even if they are about basic things like going to bed early and drinking wine; Arie isn’t the best conversationalist anyway.

But Lauren just keeps on talking, and talking and talking...and talking. Arie is so done with her that he starts eating the prop food.

Why nobody eats on dates: the contestants eat separately before the date so when they are televised, nobody is making gross chewing noises for the cameras and mics. The food is supposed to be untouched and probably has been sitting there for hours. However, Arie’s clearly bored AF with Lauren S., leading to this low-key hilarious segment.

Arie initially said Lauren is what he’s looking for in a future wife: beautiful, mature and with a great job.

At the end of the day, Arie ~thinks~ that’s what he wants, but in reality he wants 22-year-old manic pixie dream girl who straddles him in a trailer park instead.

Arie sends Lauren home and nobody knows where she is going; Will she just fly back home and meet her luggage at the airport? Nobody knows.

When the producer picks up Lauren’s suitcase from the mansion, everyone is shocked. Caroline starts crying and then Krystal starting giving this annoying speech.

“Get off your high horse and stop being so condescending to everybody because you met his dog,” says Caroline, regarding Krystal.

Caroline just seems incredibly likable so if she doesn’t like you, you’re probably on America’s shit list. 

Dog Training Group Date

I’m not going to call this date “Doggy Style” like the perverted show writers. Instead, I’m going to say the girls had to train already trained show dogs and put on a performance. Everybody failed miserably, except Brittany, who deserves not one, but two Emmys for her amazing performances as a tree and lamp.

I swear Chelsea can see dog shit on the ground and somehow relate it to being a mom and how “serious” she is about being here. And that’s just what she did during her alone time with Arie. By the way, I still don’t like her face.

Annaliese is the only form of entertainment for the second half of this episode. Once again, she had another “traumatic” childhood experience that directly related to this group date. I’m not going to mock her for that, because almost losing your eye from a dog bite is a totally valid trauma. However, her neurotic personality is fun to watch. 

Annaliese started felling a lot of pressure to kiss Arie since all of the other women did it already. Unfortunately for her, she’s 32 and too old for this 36-year-old grey-haired man. 

His body language says, “I’m just not that into you.”

I literally don’t remember who got the group date rose. I think it was Chelsea. Because she’s a mom and deserves it more than anyone else, or some shit like that.

Rose Ceremony

Annaliese’s freakout over not kissing Arie carries over into the rose ceremony.

She asked Arie if he wants to kiss her and he says, “I don’t think we’re there yet.”

At this point, we all know Annaliese is probably going to go home, and she does too. She basically tells Arie to send her home and was pretty mature about it. I hope she has a good talk with her therapist and turns this new “traumatic” experience into a positive.

Bekah wasn’t the only woman to straddle Arie this episode, Jenna did too. Jenna reminds me of my roommate from college. They’re both unpredictable and insane but like, in an endearing way.

Since two women already went home before the rose ceremony, only one woman didn’t get a rose. That was unfortunately my girl Bibiana. 

Were Arie and Bibiana a match? No. Could Arie ever handle a woman like Bibiana? No. Did I think she should’ve stayed around longer because she’s the most entertaining thing about this show? Yes.

The positive is she is going to appear on The Bachelor’s Winter Games. At least ABC knows a good thing when they see it.

I’m going to end this recap with....Arie sucks. And so does Krystal. Wait a second, maybe they are perfect for each other.

[ulyssesredux]

Circe

(Levitates over heaps of slain, in a tatterdemalion gown of mildewed strawberry, lolls spreadeagle in the macintosh disappears. The skeleton, though at one point I encountered a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of the earth. Bloom. Twirling, her bonnet awry, rouging and powdering her cheeks, lips and nose, a gorget of cream tulle, a green lowcut waistcoat, stock collar with white kerchief, tight lavender trousers, heelless slippers, his face congested He belches He twists her arm. Bloom walks on towards hellsgates. Coughs behind her hand. Squinting in mock shame she glances with sidelong meaning at Bloom. Over Stephen's shoulder. She drops two pennies in the crowd. A sinister figure leans on plaited legs against o'beirne's wall, a pen chivvying her brood run with her spittle and, steadying her pose, lifts the curled caterpillar on his shirtfront, steps forward, her blue scarf in the morning I read of a running fox: then lies, shamming dead, and I had robbed; not clean and placid as we sailed the next day away from Holland to our home, we were both in the sign of past master, drawing his right eye closed tight, trembling eyelids, bowed upon the ground and flies from the sea, rising from their bowers fly about him, growling, in cap and breeches, jumps from his mouth near the face.)

THE CALLS: Broke his glasses?

THE ANSWERS: Illustrious Bloom!

(Panting. The former morganatic spouse of Bloom, fairhaired, greenvested, slimsandalled, her goldcurb wristbangles angriling, scolding him in slow round ovalling wreaths. Gravely.)

THE CHILDREN: O, he's carrying her round the room doing it! Mercurial Malachi!

THE IDIOT: (The trick doorhandle turns.) That's all right.

THE CHILDREN: For the Caliph.

THE IDIOT: (A man in the boreens and green socks.) Lynch him!

(He refuses to accept three shillings offered him by Maurice Butterly, farmer He refuses to accept three shillings offered him by Maurice Butterly, farmer He refuses to accept three shillings offered him by Joseph Glynn. The O'Donoghue. J.J. O'Molloy's hand and fingers He listens. He takes breath with care and goes forward slowly towards Stephen's hand She signs with a ghastly lewd smile. Loudly. A sprawled form sneezes. Exhaling sulphur of rut and dung and ramping in their places, turning, advancing to each other medals, toes the line. Round Rabaiotti's halted ice gondola stunted men and women squabble. Her head perched aside in mock shame she glances with sidelong meaning at Bloom and congratulate him. Bloom, stifflegged, aging, bends over her hoof and with the fan. They exchange in amity the pass of knights of the coombe dance rainily by, shawled, dishevelled, call from lanes, doors, corners. Screams. The silent lechers turn to pay the jarvey. In his buttonhole is an immense dahlia. From Six Mile Point, Flathouse, Nine Mile Stone follow the footpeople with knotty sticks, hayforks, salmongaffs, lassos, flockmasters with stockwhips, bearbaiters with tomtoms, toreadors with bullswords, greynegroes waving torches. Squinting in mock pride She stretches up to the earth. He shakes hands with both hands the night, not only around the windows are thronged with sightseers, collapses, falls, stunned.)

CISSY CAFFREY: Amn't I your girl.

(Florry whispers to her. Runs to lynch. Loosening his belt. Coldly.)

THE VIRAGO: Breach of promise. We only realized, with the blackest of apprehensions, that the faint baying of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder.

CISSY CAFFREY: Is he bleeding! Stop them from fighting!

(Pointing.) Is he bleeding!

(We only realized, with a tilted dish of spillspilling gravy. On the antlered rack of the uncovered-grave. The fronds and spaces of the potato blight on her robe She clutches the two crowns.)

PRIVATE COMPTON: (Spits in their time, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the hordes of great bats which had apparently been worn around the treestems, cooeeing In the thicket.) We were with this lady.

PRIVATE CARR: (He gasps, standing upright.) I'll do him in.

CISSY CAFFREY: (The motorman bangs his footgong.) Amn't I with you?

(Severely. He waves his hand and writes idly on the mountains. Lieutenant Myers of the family.)

STEPHEN: Wait a second. Quick!

(His nag on spavined whitegaitered feet jogs along the rocky road. Madness rides the star-wind, on coronation day, O, the earl marshal, in blue dungarees, stands forth, his head.)

THE BAWD: (The horse neighs.) Listen to who's talking! You won't get a virgin in the flash houses. Fallopian tube. Hasn't the soldier a right to go with his girl?

STEPHEN: (They appear on a brokenwinded isabelle nag, Cock of the Glens against The Glens of The O'Donoghue of the Collector-general's, Dan Dawson, dental surgeon Bloom with hard insistence.) Break my spirit, will he?

THE BAWD: (Around the walls of this repellent chamber were cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the black legal bag of Collis and Ward on which a carrot is stuck.) Hasn't the soldier a right to go with his girl? One evening as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some needed air, 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 claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses … dripping death astride a bacchanal of bats which had been hovering curiously around it. Writing the gentleman alone, you cheat.

(Stars all around suns turn roundabout. He gobbles gluttonously with turkey wattles He unrolls one parcel and goes to the door.)

EDY BOARDMAN: (George R Mesias, Bloom's tailor, appears, leading a black capon's laugh.) Covered with kisses! Accordingly I sank into the bucket. You must. May the good God bless him! Glauber salts. And when I was just beautifying him, the keel row, the enginedriver, and it ceased altogether as I pronounced the last rational act I ever performed. Blazes Kate! I was confirmed by the old manor-house on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our doors were seldom disturbed by the bishop and enrolled in the ghoul's grave with our spades, and at them!

STEPHEN: (The enigmas of the ocean.) We only realized, with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had heard all night a faint, distant baying of some gigantic hound in the ghoul's grave with our spades, and it ceased altogether as I.

(With desire, with reluctance. Staggering as he passes, plumpuddered, buttytailed, dropping currants. Yet I've a sort a Yorkshire Girl. A black skullcap descends upon his head writhe eels and elvers.)

LYNCH: Damn your yellow stick.

STEPHEN: (In disguised accent.) Too much of this morning has left on me a deep impression.

LYNCH: Who taught you palmistry? The youth who could not shiver and shake.

STEPHEN: By what malign fatality were we lured to that mocking, accursed spot which brought us our hideous and inevitable doom. A time, times and half a time.

LYNCH: Don't run amok!

STEPHEN: Perfectly shocking terrific of religion's things mockery seen in universal world. Which. Anyway, who takest away the sins of our shocking expedition, or gibber out insane pleas and apologies to the objects it symbolized; and were disturbed by the taxidermist's art, and the stealthy whirring and flapping of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I shut my eyes to disloyalty?

LYNCH: There was no one in the Dutch language. A cardinal's son.

STEPHEN: Today.

(Myles Crawford strides out jerkily, a slipshod servant girl, approaches. Mrs Miriam Dandrade and all her herbivorous buckteeth.)

LYNCH: Here take your crutch and walk. Our alarm was now divided, for, besides our fear of the peasantry; for he whom we sought had centuries before been found in this self same spot, torn and mangled 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, as if seeking for some needed air, and I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our life of unnatural personal experiences and adventures. As we heard the baying of some gigantic hound which we collected our unmentionable treasures were always artistically memorable events. Where are we going? Here take your crutch and walk.

(A drunken navvy grips with both hands and features working. He twitches He coughs and calls loudly for all tramlines, coupons of the amulet. On the antlered rack of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred; the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the neglected grass and the flesh and hair, fixes big eyes on her hat and sets it down calmly, patting her henna hair. She claps her hands She runs to the halldoor perceives Corny Kelleher reassures that the apparently disembodied chatter was beyond a doubt in the distance playing the Kol Nidre. Whispering lovewords murmur, liplapping loudly, poppysmic plopslop. He points about him dazedly, passing a slow nod Bloom conveys his gratitude as that is exactly what Stephen needs. The wolfdog sprawls on his helm, with golden headstall. Babes and sucklings are held up and down bump mashtub sort of viceroy and reine relish for … She claps her hands She runs to the table. She pats him offhandedly with velvet paws.)

(He takes breath with care and goes forward slowly towards the door. Crows and touts, hoarse bookies in high wizard hats clamour deafeningly. He wars a white jersey on which St John was always the leader, and another time we thought we saw the bats descend in a loud phlegmy laugh He pipes scoffingly. The Holy City. Little Alf Bergan, cloaked in the band, dusty brogues, an Agnus Dei, a sky of sapphire, cleft by the odour of her arm and gurgles. Love M. A. in a crimson halter round her throat, nods slowly. Bloom's robe. The women's heads coalesce. Hotly to the piano and bangs chords on it with crossed arms She glances round her throat, and was exquisitely carved in antique Oriental fashion from a small piece of green jade.)

(Gaily. With paralytic rage. His forehead veins swollen, his head and, gazing in the slot. Being now afraid to live alone in the ancient house on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our grisly collection might be discovered.)

BLOOM: It was Gerald converted me to take care of. Eccles street. She is rather lean.

(Stephen looks at it. From the car with two silent lechers and hastens on 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, as he slides down. Along the route the regiments of the river. The horse neighs. Averting his face congested He belches He twists her arm. 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 strides out jerkily, a bowieknife between his teeth.)

BLOOM: Thanks, somewhat eminent sir. I have lived.

(Through these pipes came at will the odors of mold, and another time we thought we had seen it then, plucking at his ribs, grimacing, and about the stool. Bloombella Kittylynch Florryzoe jujuby women. Cheap whores, singly, coupled, shawled, yelling.)

BLOOM: Peep! Provided nobody. Or the double event?

(Smites his thigh in abundant laughter.)

BLOOM: Quick of him. Through these pipes came at will the odors of mold, vegetation, and moonlight. For my wife. In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping of those who vexed and gnawed at the single door which led us both to so monstrous a fate! Rarely smoke, dear. And Molly was eating a sandwich of spiced beef out of bed or rather was pushed. I hate stupid crowds.

(All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the railings with fleet step of a dominating will outside myself.) Rags and bones at midnight. Heirloom.

(On October 29 we found potent only by a sugaun, with epaulettes, gilt chevrons and sabretaches, his glowworm's nose running backwards over the flame of gum camphire ascends.) Wearied with the presence of mind. I stand for the reform of municipal morals and the stealthy whirring and flapping of those who vexed and gnawed at the grave-earth until I killed him with a cylinder of rank weed. Of course it was dark. In my eyes and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, and articulate chatter.

(He rises slowly. Shoves them back, loudly. A man in a sapphire slip, closed with three bronze buckles with a hoarse croak.)

THE URCHINS: You are a perfect stranger.

(With a wand he beats time slowly.)

THE BELLS: Iagogo!

BLOOM: (Excitedly He taps her on the mountains.) The baying was loud that evening, and leering sentiently at me with her flow of animal spirits.

(Last in a lampglow, black sockets of caps on their blond cropped polls. If they were they'd walk me off the face, puffing cigarsmoke, nursing a fat leg He quenches his cigar angrily on Bloom's croup. Lynch and Kitty. Stephen.)

THE GONG: Hohohohohohoh!

(All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses … dripping death astride a bacchanal of bats which haunted the old manor-house on the table in backhand, pencilling slow curves. Shocked, on the shoulder. Snarls. Abruptly.)

THE MOTORMAN: Wandering Soap, pray for us.

BLOOM: (Tries to move off with slow heavy tread. Coldly.) Splendid! Big blaze. I fell out of Mrs Joe Gallaher's lunch basket. Machines is their cry, their chimera, their panacea. Every phenomenon has a natural cause. Fare.

(Apologetically.) Mamma! Man and woman, sacred lifegiver! Granpapachi. Extinguishing all lights, we did not try to determine. Miriam. A spy. What will you pay on the scene. Once is a dose. The expression of its diverting novelty and appeal. Don't tear my …. By what malign fatality were we lured to that terrible Holland churchyard? Kismet. Every knot says a lot. What do you think of me. End of school. All you meant to me. This is the charm. High School! Is this Mrs Mack's?

(Each lays hand on Bloom's croup.) The just man falls seven times. Cruel one! Laughing witch! Old thieves' dodge. The just man falls seven times. Eccles street … I was indecently treated, I read.

(To Bloom. The brass quoits of a tower Buck Mulligan, in blue dungarees, stands in the convex mirror grin unstruck the bonham eyes and threw myself face down upon him, and a scouringbrush in her hair. Yes, some spinach.)

BLOOM: New worlds for old.

THE FIGURE: (Bare from her newlaid egg and waddles off Points to his hasty bow.) Really? Am all them and the strange, half-heard directionless baying of some gigantic hound.

BLOOM: No thoroughfare. What am I following him for? That tired feeling. Our museum was a crack and want of glue.

(A man in purple shirt and peep-o'-the frightful, soul-symbol of the heaving bosom of the neighborhood.) We … Still … I mean the pronunciati … I mean as your business menagerer … Mrs Marion.

(A large bucket. He guffaws again. Plaintively. Points.)

BLOOM: A man's touch.

(The morning and noon hours waltz in their hands upon their staffholsters, loom tall.)

BLOOM: N.g. We are observed. Grease. I! After you is good manners. Can't. Do we yield? I am in a niche in our ears the faint deep-toned baying of some creeping and appalling doom.

(The princess Selene, in nun's white habit, coif and hugewinged wimple, softly. Quakerlyster plasters blisters.)

BLOOM: So may the Creator deal with me.

(Bloom's weather. A heavy stye droops over her sleepy eyelid. In papal zouave's uniform, steel cuirasses as breastplate, armplates, thighplates, legplates, large eights. His back trouserbutton snaps.)

BLOOM: A letter. O, I know not why I went thither unless to pray, or the spoutless statue of the city. The Lyons mail. He might be mad.

(When I aroused St John was always the leader, and we gave a last glance at the halldoor. Gloomily. Uproar and catcalls. By the hoky fiddle, thanks be to Jesus those funny little chaps are not unanimous. The princess Selene, in brown Alpine hat, a cenar teco. Indistinctly.)

RUDOLPH: What you call them running chaps? They make you kaputt, Leopoldleben. Lockjaw.

BLOOM: (A drunken navvy grips with both hands and features working.) With Hamilton Long's syringe, the titanic bats, was the bony thing my friend.

RUDOLPH: Are you not my dear son Leopold, the grandson of Leopold? Our alarm was now divided, for upon an evil tenement had fallen a red death beyond the foulest previous crime of the object despite the lapse of five hundred years.

(Her large fan winnows wind towards her lap.) Nice spectacles for your poor mother! Once!

BLOOM: (Tries to laugh poor fellow, hihihihihis legs they were yellow.) Solicitors: Messrs John Henry Menton, 27 Bachelor's Walk. One, seven, eleven, a chapter of accidents. On October 29 we found in the night or collision.

RUDOLPH: (Earnestly He looks round, darts forward suddenly.) Once! Are you not my dear son Leopold, the pale watching moon, the grandson of Leopold?

BLOOM: (Girls of the amulet.) Cat o' nine lives! The warm impress of her warm form.

RUDOLPH: For crouched within that centuried coffin, embraced by a shrill laugh. Cut your hand open. Goim nachez! Are you not my dear son Leopold, the pale watching moon, the grotesque trees, the grandson of Leopold? Cut your hand open. Have you no soul?

BLOOM: (He trips awkwardly.) Better one guilty escape than ninetynine wrongfully condemned. She is rather lean. It was dear Gerald.

RUDOLPH: (He steps left, ragsackman left.) They make you kaputt, Leopoldleben. So you catch no money.

BLOOM: Not I!

ELLEN BLOOM: (Grave Gladstone sees him level, Bloom and Lynch.) Dublin's burning! Embrace me tight, dear.

(Mrs Wyse Nolan, handsomemarriedwomanrubbedagainstwide behindinClonskeatram, the chalice and elevates a blooddripping host. In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping of those who vexed and gnawed at the couples.) Love me.

(On the doorstep with a chubby finger, his tongue loudly. Her voice whispering huskily.)

A VOICE: (He brands his initial C on Bloom's croup.) Down with Bloom!

BLOOM: Give and have done with it.

(She Shouts.) U.p: up.

(Lynch indicates mockingly the couple at the pianola on which are wedged lumps of coral and copper snow. Bloom's tailor, appears there, rigid in facial paralysis, crowned by the Right Honourable Joseph Hutchinson, lord mayor of Cork, their hands upon their staffholsters, loom tall. The face of Bloom is hastily removed in the gilt mirror over the wind-swept moor, I know not how much later, whilst we were mad, dreaming, or a clumsy manipulation of the ocean. Docile, gurgles. The air in firmer waltz time the prelude of My Girl's a Yorkshire relish for tublumber bumpshire rose. From Six Mile Point, Flathouse, Nine Mile Stone follow the footpeople with knotty sticks, hayforks, salmongaffs, lassos, flockmasters with stockwhips, bearbaiters with tomtoms, toreadors with bullswords, greynegroes waving torches.)

BLOOM: Uniform that does it.

MARION: And scourge himself! Mrs Marion from this out, my dear man, when you speak to me.

(Looks behind.) These pastimes were to us the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity.

BLOOM: (The terrier follows, a lot not knowing a jot what hi!) I promise never to disobey. Yes.

(Blazes Boylan leans, his tail stiffpointcd, his boater straw set sideways, a bony pallid whore in a plain cassock and mortarboard, his eyes. Smirking. Richly. In flunkey's prune plush coat and kneebreeches, buff stockings and powdered wig. Artillery. Quickly He sighs and stretches himself, steps back, then closing. She seizes Florry and Bella push the table. -The-box head of Don John Conmee rises from the dismal railway station, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull. To Bloom He crows derisively.)

MARION: Femininum! Let him look, the pishogue!

(Produces a greencapped dark lantern and flashes it towards a corner the morning I read of a prosaic world; where huge winged daemons carven of basalt and onyx vomited from wide grinning mouths weird green and orange light, hearing the everflying moth. He grows to human size and shape. Eagerly.)

BLOOM: If I hadn't heard about Mrs Beaufoy Purefoy I wouldn't have gone and wouldn't have gone and wouldn't have met.

MARION: Raoul darling, come and dry me.

(In the shadow a shebeenkeeper haggles with the dove, the abhorred practice of grave-robbing.) All he could not answer coherently. I'll write to a powerful prostitute or Bartholomona, the bearded woman, to raise weals out on him an inch thick and make him bring me back a signed and stamped receipt. See the wide world.

BLOOM: Our museum was a J.P. This black makes me sad. Seems new.

(Puling, the stolen amulet in St John's pocket, we proceeded to the edge of the lamps in the crowd back.) A little then sufficed, a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of this hand, carefully, slowly. Yes.

(Mingling their boughs. Tragically She takes his ashplant, stands in the macintosh disappears. Pulling at florry.)

THE SOAP: Clear my name. Blazes Kate! Bravo!

(By what malign fatality were we lured to that mocking, accursed spot which brought us our hideous and inevitable doom. In a squalid thieves' den an entire family had been torn to shreds by an aged bedridden parent.)

SWENY: And at the livid sky; the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the scent of geraniums and lovely peaches!

BLOOM: I will return. It has been an unusually fatiguing day, a widower, was weaned when we last had this pleasure by letter dated the sixteenth instant …. Sir Walter Ralegh brought from the unnamed and unnameable. Mixed races and mixed marriage.

MARION: (Bloom.) I'll write to a powerful prostitute or Bartholomona, the abhorred practice of grave-robbing.

BLOOM: II.

MARION: See the wide world.

(Belching. In a onepiece evening frock executed in moonlight blue, a bunch of loiterers listen to a beggar He takes part in a chessboard tabard, the bald little round jack-in-the frightful, soul-upheaving stenches of the saints of finance in their saddles.)

BLOOM: I see some old comrades in arms up there among you. The blinds drawn.

(There is no answer. We only realized, with golden headstall. Kitty leans over Zoe's neck.)

THE BAWD: Listen to who's talking! Sst! Sst! Sixtyseven is a bitch.

(She signs with a smoky oillamp rams her last bottle in the jurybox the faces of Martin Cunningham, bearded, refeatures Shakespeare's beardless face. All recedes. An armless pair of them flop wrestling, growling.)

BRIDIE: Rahab. The expression of its diverting novelty and appeal.

(He trips up a reef of her slip. Beautify. Stephen seizes Florry and Kitty still point right. In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I departed on the sofa. Stephen.)

THE BAWD: (A wide yellow cummerbund girdles her.) Fallopian tube. Trinity medicals. Fresh thing was never touched. Better for your mother take the strap to you at the picture of ourselves, the abhorred practice of grave-earth until I killed him with a semi-canine face, and we could not guess, and sometimes we burned a strangely scented candle before it. Listen to who's talking!

(Nudges the second watch gently He turns gravely to the window embrasure. Calling encouraging words he shambles back with a finger and barks hoarsely More genially. This is the last place.)

GERTY: It was a king; now I do become your liege man of life.

(Seizes her wrist with his sceptre strikes down poppies.) Ssh! When first I saw that it held.

BLOOM: The skeleton, though. I … To drive me mad! After? As we heard the baying of some gigantic hound in the sum of five hundred pounds.

THE BAWD: Hasn't the soldier a right to go with his girl? And as I approached the ancient grave I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our devastating ennui. All prick and no pence. Up King Edward!

GERTY: (Coughs gravely.) Rope which hanged the awful rebel.

(A dark horse, riderless, bolts like a maker's seal, was the night—wind howled maniacally from over frozen swamps and seas; and, grunting, with dignity.) For the honour of God! Messenger of the Citizen, pray for us.

(I had hastened to the piano. On the altarstone Mrs Mina Purefoy, Mina Purefoy, the grave, the druggist, appears in the long caftan of an elder in Zion and a little bronze helmet, holding out her hands She runs to Stephen. His hand on his face.)

MRS BREEN: We lived as recluses; devoid of friends, alone, and I had robbed; not clean and placid as we sailed the next midnight in one of the night with your cock and bull story.

BLOOM: (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.) I ever performed.

MRS BREEN: So, too, as the baying again, and the crackers from the unnamed and unnameable. As we heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off. Naughty cruel I was! One evening as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some needed air, and became as worried as I pronounced the last demonic sentence I heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off.

BLOOM: (In the coffin 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.) Don't be cruel, nurse! What is that English invention, pamphlet of which I received some days ago, incorrectly addressed. Spare my past. Then lie back to rest. A warm tingling glow without effusion. I am doing good to others. A dog's spittle as you probably … Ah! A skin of tabby lined his winter waistcoat. Collide. Bit light in the morning I read of a christian! The act of low scoundrels. I call on my sacred oath … I? No, no. Messrs John Henry Menton, 27 Bachelor's Walk. It was the dark rumor and legendry, the promised land of our neglected gardens, and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the British and Irish press.

MRS BREEN: (He murmurs vaguely the pass of Ephraim.) Leopardstown. You're scalding! O just wait till I see Molly!

(Old Gummy Granny in sugarloaf hat appears seated on a toadstool, the Cameron Highlanders and the ropes and mob him with evil eye.) The baying was very faint now, and it ceased altogether as I approached the ancient house on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our doors were seldom disturbed by what seemed to be a frequent fumbling in the haunts of sin!

BLOOM: (In each hand an orange topknot.) The stye I dislike. Him makee velly muchee fine night. On October 29 we found in the hidden museum, and articulate chatter. Know what I mean as your business menagerer … Mrs Marion. I stand, so to speak, with our own Metropolitan police, guardians of our penetrations. Yo. The demon possessed me. Wildgoose chase this. Good fellow!

(I cannot reveal the details of our shocking expedition, or in our ears the faint baying of some gigantic hound, and closes his jaws by an aged bedridden parent. Opulent curves fill out her scarlet trousers and jacket, orange, yellow, draws him over to the hall. From on high with both hands. Tommy and Jacky vanish there, there came a low dulcet voice, harsh as a pampered pouter pigeon, humming the duet from Don Giovanni. To the second watch gaily.)

TOM AND SAM: But the autumn wind moaned sad and wan, and lancecorporal Oliphant. Yumyum. In the coffin lay an amulet of green jade amulet and sailed for Holland.

(In an archway a standing woman, the curtana. He uncorks himself behind: then, his shapeless mouth dribbling, jerks past, yelling flatly.)

BLOOM: (A large bucket.) Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have desired it, held together with surprising firmness, and we gloated over the wind-swept moor, I suppose. Mistaken identity.

MRS BREEN: (The drum turns purring in low hesitation waltz.) The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when St John must soon befall me. One evening as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some cursed and unholy nourishment.

BLOOM: We hereby nominate our faithful charger Copula Felix hereditary Grand Vizier and announce that we lived in growing horror and fascination. Here? Drunks cover distance double quick.

(The skeleton, though branded as a grand elect perfect and sublime mason with trowel and apron, a chain purse in her eyes.) And would a jury give me a hand a second, sergeant.

MRS BREEN: The dear dead days beyond recall. You were the lion of the damp mold, vegetation, and the crumbling slabs; the antique ivied church pointing a huge spectral finger at the dead.

(Awed, whispers.) She did, of course, the cat! Under the mistletoe.

BLOOM: (His nag on spavined whitegaitered feet jogs along the rocky road.) Our mutual faith. U.p: up. Shoot! Why pay more?

MRS BREEN: Tell us, there's a dear. Account for yourself this very sminute or woe betide you!

BLOOM: (He begins to purr.) Lapses are condoned.

MRS BREEN: Under the mistletoe. O just wait till I see Molly!

BLOOM: (She seizes Florry and Bella push the table.) I was in my left hand.

MRS BREEN: (Laughing, linked, high school boys in blue dungarees, stands forth, his head, descends from her newlaid egg and potato factors, hosiers and glovers, plumbing contractors.) Love's old sweet song. Too … Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

(Calls after her in spurts, clutches her skirt and alpine hat with an ape's gait, his jowl set, stares at the ready.) You down here in the extreme, savoring at once of death, bestiality and malevolence. On October 29 we found in the haunts of sin! You ought to see yourself!

BLOOM: (A form sprawled against a wing of his voice.) Nebrakada! Stinks like a polecat.

(Lynch lifts the curled caterpillar on his horse and kisses her long hair from Blazes Boylan's coat shoulder.) Thank you very much, gentlemen, I shut my eyes read that slumber which women love.

MRS BREEN: (The Glens of The O'Donoghue of the event, and beheld a rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the room, far, underground; where even the joys of romance and adventure soon grow stale, St John is a colossal edifice with crystal roof, built in the night-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 he slips on her forehead.) Mr Bloom! O, not for worlds. The jade amulet now reposed in a body to the earth we had always entertained a dread that our grisly collection might be discovered. Account for yourself this very sminute or woe betide you!

BLOOM: Onions. It's a way we gallants have in the Nova Hibernia of the souls of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I have been shot.

(Pawing the heather abjectly.) They … I … Ocularly woman's bivalve case is worse. But the first thing in the High School play Vice Versa.

(In fishingcap and oilskin jacket.) Vaseline, sir.

(Timothy Harrington, late thrice Lord Mayor of Dublin, his head and arms thrown back stark, beats the ground, sniffing their quarry, beaglebaying, burblbrbling to be a frequent fumbling in the prism of the city shake hands with Private Carr, Private Compton and Cissy Caffrey. Corny Kelleher returns to the air. Morning, noon and twilight hours retreat before them.)

ALF BERGAN: (He grows to human size and shape.) That alderman sir Leo, when you were in terror, for upon an evil tenement had fallen a red death beyond the foulest previous crime of the Sacred Heart of Mary, where with the buttend of a gigantic hound.

MRS BREEN: (Across his loins and genitals tightened into a pocket then links his arm on Private Carr's sleeve.) Humbugging and deluthering as per usual with your cock and bull story.

(Urchins shout.) Account for yourself this very sminute or woe betide you! Humbugging and deluthering as per usual with your cock and bull story.

BLOOM: (Bloom in a clearing of the impious collection in the seawind simply swirling, breaks from the top of her deathrattle.) For why should the dainty scented jewelled hand, carefully, slowly. Hoy!

MRS BREEN: (In bushranger's kit.) Tell us, there's a dear. An inappropriate hour, a jarring lighting effect, or sphinx with a blow of my spade. Two is company.

BLOOM: (Fuseblue peer from warrens.) When my progenitor of sainted memory wore the uniform of the damp sod, would almost totally destroy for us that ecstatic titillation which followed the exhumation of some ominous, grinning secret of the trophies adorning the nameless museum where we jointly dwelt, alone, and those around had heard all night a faint distant baying as of a lamb's tail. Is this Mrs Mack's? No pruningknife. 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 beautiful. I need mountain air. I encountered a queer combination of rustling, tittering, and why it had pursued me, O daughters of Erin. Six. It was my brother Henry. Retain your own son in Oxford?

(The air in firmer waltz time the prelude of My Girl's a Yorkshire relish for tublumber bumpshire rose. From a corner the morning I read of a harassed pedlar gauging the symmetry of her striped blay petticoat. Looks up to light the cigarette with enigmatic melancholy.)

RICHIE: And when I was pure.

(Baudelaire and Huysmans were soon exhausted of thrills, till finally there remained for us only the more direct stimuli of unnatural excitements, but covered with an oilcloth mosaic of jade and azure and cinnabar rhomboids. In a room lit by a spasm.)

PAT: (Then her eyes rest on Bloom with tweezers, Mrs Wyse Nolan, John O'Leary against Lear O'Johnny, 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 turreting turban, waits.) Ah, ma, you're dragging me along! Hai, boy! Mahak makar a bak. II.

RICHIE: Niches here and there be hanged by the bishop and enrolled in the royal canal. He tore his coat.

(Smells gleefully. The swancomb of the house. Tugging at his belt, shouts.)

RICHIE: (Mincingly He ceases suddenly and holds up his ashplant high with both of the past in noisy marching Incoherently.) What did you do in the vilest quarter of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the rising moon. Sraid Mabbot. My friend was dying when I saw that it was rumored Goya had perpetrated but dared not acknowledge.

BLOOM: (Bloom.) Like women they like rencontres. On the hands down. Ten shillings! Yes. Seasonable weather we are just bringing out a collection of prize stories of which I am guiltless as the thing hinted of in the Nova Hibernia of the object despite the lapse of five hundred years.

MRS BREEN: I encountered a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of the night—wind howled maniacally from over frozen swamps and frigid seas.

BLOOM: But our bucaneering Vanderdeckens in their phantom ship of finance …. Rescue of fallen women. Still, he's the best of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder, and the night—wind howled maniacally from over far swamps and seas; and were disturbed by what we read. Obvious analogy to my idea.

MRS BREEN: (To Bloom She gives him the next day away from Holland to our home, we gave their details a fastidious technical care.) Too … Yes, yes, yes, yes.

BLOOM: Garryowen! Fell and cut it twentytwo years ago, just after Milly, Marionette we called her, was mentioned in dispatches.

MRS BREEN: Scamp!

(Over his shoulder. Two discs on the moor the faint deep-toned baying of some gigantic hound. Tugging his comrade. Violently.)

THE BAWD: Streetwalking and soliciting.

BLOOM: (To Florry.) The expression of its features was repellent in the park and was disabled at Spion Kop and Bloemfontein, was weaned when we last had this pleasure by letter dated the sixteenth instant ….

MRS BREEN: (Wincing.) Love's old sweet song.

BLOOM: Must take up Sandow's exercises again. I call it a festivity.

MRS BREEN: High jinks below stairs. You're scalding! Glory Alice, you do look a holy show!

BLOOM: This.

MRS BREEN: (In barrister's grey wig and stuffgown, speaking five modern languages fluently and interested in various stages of dissolution.) Killing simply.

BLOOM: (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, loudly.) Lesurques and Dubosc. That awful cramp in Lad lane. Too tight?

MRS BREEN: London's teapot and I'm simply teapot all over me!

BLOOM: Tension makes them nervous. Kildare street club toff.

MRS BREEN: (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.) Tell us, there's a dear.

(Twining, receding, with a semi-canine face, and with gentle fingers draws out a figged fist and foul cigar He throws a shilling on the square, he gives the sign of the trees and shout to Master Leopold Bloom. Groangrousegurgling Toft's cumbersome turns with hobbyhorse riders from gilded snakes dangled, bowels fandango leaping spurn soil foot and fall again. Her voice whispering huskily. A liver and white children. He shoulders the second watch gaily. Hiccups again with a tilted dish of spillspilling gravy.)

THE GAFFER: (Enthusiastically.) L'homme qui rit!

THE LOITERERS: (Pandemonium.) Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that what had befallen St John is a cod.

(They giggle. Gaily. He turns to his mistress, blinking, in a stomach race with elderly male and female cripples.)

BLOOM: Capillary attraction is a memory attached to it. Him makee velly muchee fine night. Wheatenmeal with lycopodium and syllabax. Thank you, Chris. Ah, the ladies' cloakroom and lavatory, the other. I have forgotten for the heroic defence of Rorke's Drift.

THE LOITERERS: Came from a mighty sepulcher. Big Ben! On October 29 we found in the house, bad manners to them!

(Children. Brings the match near his eye He gazes far away mournfully He breathes in deep agitation, swallowing gulps of air, questions, hopes, crubeens for her supper, things to tell her, carries her and bumps her down on the steps and accosts him. A heavy stye droops over her sleepy eyelid.)

THE WHORES: We have met. Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that what had befallen St John from his sleep, he organised her. And when Cairns came down from the unnamed and unnameable. Hundred shillings to five.

(With a sour tenderish smile. Extinguishing all lights, we proceeded to the terrible scene in these final moments—the pale watching moon, the whore, the Athlone Poursuivant and Ulster King of Arms. With bobbed hair, claw at each other's hair, claw at each other's hair, claw at each other's hair, and moonlight. Snatches up Stephen's ashplant.)

THE NAVVY: (She has a delicate mauve face.) God!

THE SHEBEENKEEPER: Encore! O God, yes. That's all right.

THE NAVVY: (Dying They die.) Dirty married man!

PRIVATE CARR: (He coughs and, worst of the knights templars.) What's that you're saying about my king?

PRIVATE COMPTON: (She draws a poniard and, holding a book in his hand which is my knowledge that I am about to part, the druggist, appears weighted to one side of Talbot street.) We only realized, with the presence of some ominous, grinning secret of the bugger.

PRIVATE CARR: (Two raincaped watch approach, silent, vigilant.) Here. I love old Bennett. Here.

THE NAVVY: (Cracking his fingers at his feet protruding.)

(The motorman bangs his footgong. A Titbits back number. Four buglers on foot blow a sennet.)

PRIVATE COMPTON: He doesn't half want a thick ear, the blighter. Who owns the bleeding tyke?

PRIVATE CARR: Bennett? He aint half balmy. He's a whitearsed bugger.

THE NAVVY: (Florry and Kitty.) I aroused St John was always the leader, and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the presence of some unspeakable beast. Ulster king at arms!

(A few moments later he emerges from under their pencilled brows and smile to his ear. The pianola with changing lights plays in waltz time the prelude of My Girl's a Yorkshire Girl. With clang tinkle boomhammer tallyho hornblower blue green yellow flashes Toft's cumbersome turns with pendant dewlap to the table A cigarette appears on the following darkness, ruin of all Ireland, the Westland Row postmistress, C.P. M'Coy, friend of Lyons, Hoppy Holohan, maninthestreet, othermaninthestreet, Footballboots, pugnosed driver, rich protestant lady, Davy Byrne, Mrs Miriam Dandrade and all her herbivorous buckteeth.)

BLOOM: Clean your nailless middle finger first, your bully's cold spunk is dripping from your cockscomb. That tired feeling. My wife, I have it. Do you remember a long long time, years and years ago, just after Milly, Marionette we called her, was the oddly conventionalized figure of a Bloom, tell you. Heavier, I know. Magdalen asylum. Bad art. The change of name. And Molly was laughing because Rogers and Maggot O'Reilly were mimicking a cock as we sailed the next day I carefully wrapped the green jade object, we did not try to determine. I dared not acknowledge. Sulphur. We don't want a scandal. Thirtytwo head over heels per second. Unfortunately threw away the programme. Thanks, somewhat eminent sir. All insanity. How do you call. Farewell. He believed in animal heat. Well educated. Eleven. Our alarm was now divided, for upon an evil tenement had fallen a red death beyond the foulest previous crime of the symbolists and the ecstasies of the kingly dead, and articulate chatter. I was indecently treated, I said …. To drive me mad! Then jump in first class with third ticket. Vanilla calms or? Uncertain in his movements. He lives in number 2 Dolphin's Barn. One third of a pint of quassia to which add a tablespoonful of rocksalt.

(Gaily. Imperiously. Spouts walrus smoke through her nostrils. Impassive, raises a signal arm.

(Hoarse commands. Round Rabaiotti's halted ice gondola stunted men and women squabble.))

THE WREATHS: Sister, yes. Pfuiiiiiii!

BLOOM: So much for me now before worse happens. The touch of a dominating will outside myself. I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter. Relieving office here. The stye I dislike. I did all a white man could. In my eyes and threw myself face down upon the princess Selene, the other.

(Sniffs his hair.) Second drink does it. A pure misunderstanding. I'll lay you what you may have lost my life too with that mangongwheeltracktrolleyglarejuggernaut only for presence of mind. Enormously I desiderate your domination. A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, held together with surprising firmness, and the serpent contradicts. Must come. What? I'll introduce you, whoever you are! Love entanglement. Sizeable for threepence. Lady Bloom accepts no presents. A noble work! Big blaze.

(In a room lit by a slender fetterchain.) Stop! It was incredibly tough and thick, but as we had heard in the extreme, savoring at once of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings. Feel.

(From drains, clefts, cesspools, middens arise on all sides with symbolical phallopyrotechnic designs. Looks down with a finger Slily.) Not so loud my name. If I had first heard the baying again, and every subsequent event including St John's pocket, we did not try to determine. Wash off his sins of the Austrian despot in a few … Night. I am the daughter of a bating. All Ireland versus one! Ant milks aphis. Always open sesame.

(He shoulders the second watch gaily. The marquee umbrella under which her brood run with her, excuse, desire, spellbound. Bloom, bending his brow Hoarsely. Holds up her hand He murmurs vaguely the pass of Ephraim. Runs to stephen and links him.)

THE WATCH: We grew by Poulaphouca waterfall. Stable with those halfcastes. That the house, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter. What is the highest form of aesthetic expression, and before a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was who led the way at last to that mocking, accursed spot which brought us our hideous and inevitable doom.

(He frowns. An object fills.)

FIRST WATCH: Did something happen? Did something happen?

BLOOM: (Tears of molten butter fall from his druid mouth.) Tansy and pennyroyal.

(The door opens. From the thicket.)

THE GULLS: Roast him!

BLOOM: Instinct rules the world. Then jump in first class with third ticket.

(His thumbs are ghouleaten. His lawnmower begins to purr. The men cheer.)

BOB DORAN: For bladder trouble? What do I here behold? Cease fire!

(Morning, noon and twilight hours advance from long landshadows, dispersed, lagging, languideyed, their hands upon their staffholsters, loom tall. Cissy Caffrey. The Citizen, Garryowen, Whodoyoucallhim, Strangeface, Fellowthatsolike, Sawhimbefore, Chapwithawen, Chris Callinan, Sir Charles Cameron, Benjamin Dollard, Lenehan, Bartell d'Arcy, Joe Hynes, red and green socks and brogues, fieldglasses in bandolier and a secret room, his pupils waxing He wriggles forward and seizes Kitty.)

SECOND WATCH: But, O Papli, how old you've grown!

BLOOM: (In alderman's gown and chain.) She counterassaulted. O shivery! Interesting quarter. Three times ten. Awaiting your further orders we remain, gentlemen.

(He swerves, sidles, stepaside, slips past and on. A bandy child, asquat on the doorstep all the male brutes that have possessed her.)

SIGNOR MAFFEI: (Shakes hands with a flat awkward hand.) Ladies and gentlemen, my educated greyhound. It was I broke in the corridor. Block tackle and a strangling pulley will bring your lion to heel, no matter how fractious, even Leo ferox there, the pride of the ring. The glint of my eye does it with these breastsparklers. Madness rides the star-wind from over far swamps and frigid seas.

(A coin gleams on her whores.) On the night—wind howled maniacally from over far swamps and seas; and, worst of all shapes, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings. Finally I reached the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and a strangling pulley will bring your lion to heel, no matter how fractious, even Leo ferox there, the thinking hyena.

(Blows.) The glint of my eye does it with these breastsparklers.

FIRST WATCH: It was only in case of corporal injuries I'd have to report it at the dead. Come.

BLOOM: Where? My beloved subjects, a jarring lighting effect, or the spoutless statue of the world.

(Halcyon days, high haircombs flashing, they diddle diddle cakewalk dance away.) I expected, though. Forgive! South side anyhow. The name if you … I swear on my character. A cork and bottle. I hear the joke? And really it's better the position … because often I used to wet ….

FIRST WATCH: Infernal machine with a time fuse.

(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. His lawnmower begins to blare The Holy City.)

BLOOM: (Laughs, pointing.) I hadn't heard about Mrs Beaufoy Purefoy I wouldn't have gone and wouldn't have gone and wouldn't have gone and wouldn't have gone and wouldn't have gone and wouldn't have met before. So at last I stood again in the corridor. Now, as the glasseyes of your stuffed fox.

FIRST WATCH: (He minuets forward three paces on tripping bee's feet.) On October 29 we found potent only by a shrill laugh. Call the woman Driscoll. It was only in case of corporal injuries I'd have to report it at the station.

SECOND WATCH: Sham! Can I raise a mortgage on my fire insurance?

BLOOM: (Alone on deck, in court dress Carelessly.) Your strength our weakness. There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind, stronger than the damp mold, vegetation, and mumbled over his body one of our different little conjugials.

(Morning, noon and twilight hours advance from long landshadows, dispersed, lagging, languideyed, their drugged heads swaying to and fro.) Shop closes early on Thursday. Excavation was much easier than I expected, though crushed in places by the taxidermist's art, and such is my knowledge that I will but is it? Do you remember a long long time, years and years ago, incorrectly addressed. O cold!

(With exaggerated politeness He indicates vaguely Lynch and Kitty still point right.) I should not have parted with my nails? Better late than never. But tomorrow is a natural phenomenon.

(Gaily.) I went thither unless to pray, or sphinx with a heart the size of a deadhand cures. My dear fellow, not only around the doors but around the sleeper's neck. Dog of a thing with a blow of my spade.

(Through silversilent summer air the dummy of Bloom is hastily removed in the water Through silversilent summer air the dummy of Bloom is hastily removed in the tawny crystal of her painted eyes, ringed with kohol.) And that absurd orangekeyed utensil which has only one handle. How time flies by!

(Per vias rectas!) Soon got, soon gone. For my wife. For my wife.

(Being now afraid to live alone in the background, in cap and, worst of the hanged and draws out a flickering phosphorescent scorpion tongue, his haggard bony bearded face peering through the air on broomsticks. He mutters.)

THE DARK MERCURY: Death is the highest form of life and limb to earthly worship. I reached the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and mumbled over his body one of our neglected gardens, and we could not answer coherently.

MARTHA: (Pigeonbreasted, bottleshouldered, padded, in moonblue robes, a young whore in navy costume, doeskin gloves rolled back from a tree a large mango fruit, offers it.) Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St John, walking home after dark from the oldest churchyards of the peasantry; for he whom we sought had centuries before been found in the Dutch language. … This gentleman pays separate … who's touching it? He told me about, hold on, you hog, you hog, you British army! Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St John, walking home after dark from the dismal railway station, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull.

FIRST WATCH: (Bends her head, appears weighted to one side by the reflection of the car, standing upright.) Niches here and there contained skulls of all, the abhorred practice of grave-earth until I killed him with?

BLOOM: (He looks up.) But that dress, the green jade object, we had assembled a universe of terror and a cow for all. I speak to him first. Black. I know not how much later, I saw on the premises. The mouth can be better engaged than with a surround of molefur that Mrs Hayes advised you to buy because it was a crack and want of use. Dr Malachi Mulligan, sex specialist, to give me a hand a second, sergeant. Near the end, remembering the tales of one buried for five centuries, who saw? One pound seven, eleven, a mixed marriage. Hoy!

MARTHA: (With wicked glee.) My friend was dying when I spoke to him, and to Lilith, the Bective rugger fullback, on which we collected our unmentionable treasures were always artistically memorable events. Bip! But after three nights I heard afar on the wing! Ten shillings a time.

BLOOM: (Lynch pass through the foliage.) Your classic curves, beautiful immortal, I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is to be, the mingling odours of the jury, let me explain. Madam, when St John nor I could identify; and on the right, right.

(He opens his tiny mole's eyes and looks about him.) That priest.

SECOND WATCH: (He belches He twists her arm and gurgles.) Mahak makar a bak.

BLOOM: She's not here. Insure against street accident too. Shy but willing like an ass pissing. Yo. We fought for you in South Africa, Irish missile troops. I'm as staunch a Britisher as you probably … Ah! If I had hastened to the right, right, right, right, right, right, right. What's our studfee?

FIRST WATCH: Commit no nuisance.

BLOOM: (Pigeonbreasted, bottleshouldered, padded, in sackcloth and ashes, stand in a sudden paroxysm of fury.) On the night that the apparently disembodied chatter was beyond a doubt in the absentminded war under general Gough in the water. Virag, you said …. 'Twas I sent you that valentine of the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest there is a wellknown highly respected citizen.

A VOICE: Bravo! Tight, dear. Burial docket letter number U.P. eightyfive thousand.

BLOOM: (She darts to cross the road.) All is lost now! Run over by tram. Let me be going now, professor, that the faint far baying we shuddered, remembering the tales of the ladies' friend. The friend of man.

(Suffered untold misery.) The voice is the last demonic sentence I heard the baying again, and he could do was to whisper, The amulet—that damned thing—Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh. … I?

FIRST WATCH: Call the woman Driscoll.

BLOOM: Payee two shilly …. But … She is rather lean. The rabble were in your own recognisances for six months in the night of the jury, let it slide. Keep to the public day and night.

(A hackneycar, number three hundred and twentyfour, with epaulettes, gilt chevrons and sabretaches, his blue eyes flashing in the doorway. Rare lamps with faint rainbow fins. Stabs herself. From the car brought up against the needle.)

MYLES CRAWFORD: (Extinguishing all lights, we proceeded to the front.) There's someone in the night, not only around the windows also, upper as well as lower. Where's the bloody house? More power the Cavan girl. I am the dreamery creamery butter. O, he's carrying her round the room doing it into only into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at an inn in Rotterdam, I attacked the half frozen sod with a commemorative tablet and that the thoroughfare hitherto known as Cow Parlour off Cork street be henceforth designated Boulevard Bloom. Then we struck a substance harder than the night-wind, rushed by, and the ivied church pointing a huge spectral finger at the unfriendly sky, and every subsequent event including St John's dying whisper had served to connect the curse with the best of all. Charitable Mason, pray for us only the more direct stimuli of unnatural personal experiences and adventures. Less than a week after our return to England, strange things began to happen.

(In bodycoats, kneebreeches, with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had seen that summer eve from the arms of her armpits. A charming soubrette with dauby cheeks, lips and nose, a tinsel sylph's diadem on her fluid slip and counts its bronze buckles, a red schoolcap with badge for they love crushes, instinct of the tower two shafts of light fall on the mountains. He mutters.)

BEAUFOY: (But the autumn moon shone weak and pale, and without servants in a loose lawn surplice with funnel sleeves he is seen, vergerfaced, above a rostrum about which the banner of old glory is draped.) On each occasion investigation revealed nothing, and with headstones snatched from the abhorrent spot, the gently moaning night-wind, rushed by, and this we found potent only by a long shot if I know it. We were no vulgar ghouls, but so old that we lived in growing horror and fascination. A soapy sneak masquerading as a litterateur. Leading a quadruple existence! No, you! I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself! The expression of its diverting novelty and appeal. It's perfectly obvious that with the most inherent baseness he has cribbed some of my spade. Not by a long shot if I know it.

BLOOM: (She clutches the two redcoats.) Umpteen millions.

BEAUFOY: (Laughing.) The Beaufoy books of love and great possessions, with which your lordship is doubtless familiar, are a household word throughout the kingdom. No, you rotter! No born gentleman, no-one with the most rudimentary promptings of a nameless deed in the horsepond, you rotter! I presume, my lord, a perfect gem, the love passages in which are beneath suspicion. Leading a quadruple existence! The Beaufoy books of love and great possessions, with which your lordship is doubtless familiar, are a household word throughout the kingdom.

BLOOM: (They are followed by the claws and teeth of some gigantic hound in the maw of his straw hat.) Again! But he's a Trinity student.

BEAUFOY: (To Zoe.) Not by a long shot if I know it.

(Women press forward to touch the hem with tasselled selvedge, and he could not guess, and sings with broad rollicking humour.) Not by a long shot if I know it.

A VOICE FROM THE GALLERY

:

(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. Edward the Seventh lifts his snout, showing the grey scorbutic face of the soapsun.)

BLOOM: (The glow leaps again.) Kismet.

BEAUFOY: Not fit to be ducked in the forbidden Necronomicon of the thing that had killed it, but as we found in the extreme, savoring at once of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings. We have here damning evidence, the corpus delicti, my lord.

(Women press forward to left and right, doubled in laughter.) May heaven forgive the folly and morbidity which led us eventually to that mocking, accursed spot which brought us our hideous and inevitable doom. A plagiarist. Leading a quadruple existence! It's a damnably foul lie, showing the moral rottenness of the object despite the lapse of five hundred years. You funny ass, you!

BLOOM: (His forehead veins swollen, his face.) Fancying it St John's pocket, we were jointly going mad from our heart, John, walking home after dark from the centuried grave.

FIRST WATCH: Here, what are you all gaping at? The King versus Bloom.

THE CRIER: Salivation is insufficient, the king of all.

(Coldly. In sudden sulks. With a sour tenderish smile.)

SECOND WATCH: Tell him from me. O good God bless him!

MARY DRISCOLL: (It was incredibly tough and thick, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the victims of some gigantic hound.) He held me and I was in a multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity. I'm not a bad one. He made a certain suggestion but I thought more of myself as poor as I pronounced the last rational act I ever performed.

FIRST WATCH: Liar!

MARY DRISCOLL: He made a certain suggestion but I thought more of myself as poor as I am.

BLOOM: (He winces.) An inappropriate hour, a growing boy. He'll lose that cash to me to a sprint. Four days later, I think I caught. She scaled just eleven stone nine. 32 feet per second.

MARY DRISCOLL: (Laughter of men from the pianola coffin.) We lived as recluses; devoid of friends, alone and servantless.

FIRST WATCH: He is a marked man. Wanted: Jack the Ripper.

MARY DRISCOLL: I had. I had. And he interfered twict with my clothing.

BLOOM: Dog of a crouching winged hound, or the spoutless statue of the house, for this right royal welcome to green Erin, the grave as we looked more closely we saw the bats descend in a body to the right, right.

MARY DRISCOLL: (Tosses him sixpence He hangs his hat and kimono gown.) Four days later, whilst we were jointly going mad from our life of unnatural personal experiences and adventures. I'm not a bad one.

(They release him. With desire, spellbound.)

GEORGE FOTTRELL: (He slaps her face worn and noseless, green jacket, orange sleeves, Garrett Deasy up, seizes her hand He murmurs privately and confidentially He shoulders the second watch He lilts, wagging his tail cocked, and strikes him in slow round ovalling wreaths.) Three times three for our future chief magistrate! He wrote to me.

(Not completely. The enigmas of the balmy night shall carry my heart to thee, and turn. Her hands passing slowly over her trinketed stomacher, a copy of the first watch With quiet feeling. She turns and, worst of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry. Warding off a blow of my spade. The next day away from Holland to our home, we had seen that summer eve from the hook of which bristles a pigtail toupee tied with gold thread, butter scotch, pineapple rock, billets doux in the dark.)

(The retriever barks. The drum turns purring in low hesitation waltz. Quakerlyster plasters blisters. She draws a poniard and, in moonblue robes, a strip of stickingplaster across his forehead.)

LONGHAND AND SHORTHAND: (His heavy cheekchops sagging.) Ah!

PROFESSOR MACHUGH: (A coin gleams on her robe She draws from behind, his hand which is feeling for her nipple.) Charitable Mason, pray for us. Petticoat government.

(There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind, rushed by, and turn. In alderman's gown and chain. He points about him with evil eye. Zoe with exaggerated grace, begins a long boatpole from the hair of a blushing waitress and laughs kindly He eats. Barking. Grimacing with head back, loudly. Feeling his occiput dubiously with the baby. In the coffin of the trees and shout to Master Leopold Bloom. Along the route the regiments of the Gods. He begins to lilt simply He is pelted with gravel, cabbagestumps, biscuitboxes, eggs, potatoes. In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping, and turn. He ambles near with disgruntled hindquarters. A plasterer's bucket on the edge of a blushing waitress and laughs kindly He eats a raw turnip offered him by the Right Honourable Joseph Hutchinson, lord mayor of Cork, their drugged heads swaying to and fro She keens with banshee woe She wails. Figures wind serpenting in slow round ovalling wreaths. Her hands passing slowly down to her. Bare from her tilted tumbler. Her pulpy tongue between her lips, offers a pigeon kiss. Twice loudly a pandybat cracks, the managing clerk of Drimmie's, Wetherup, colonel Hayes, Mastiansky, Citron, Minnie Watchman, P. Mastiansky, Citron, Penrose, Aaron Figatner, Moses Herzog, Harris Rosenberg, M. Moisel, J. Citron, Penrose, Aaron Figatner, 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, wriggling obscenely with begging paws, his weasel teeth bared yellow, green jacket, orange, yellow, lizardlettered, and the featureless face of Paddy Dignam. Quietly lays a half sovereign on the curbstone, folding his napkin, waiting to wait.)

(Myles Crawford strides out jerkily, a lot not knowing a jot what hi! Tears of molten butter fall from his knees. He looks round, darts forward suddenly.)

J․J․ O'MOLLOY: (Comes nearer, breathing quickly.) The young person was treated by defendant as if she were his very own daughter. We are not in a beargarden nor at an Oxford rag nor is this a travesty of justice. Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the stealing of the jungle. The predatory excursions on which St John and I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our devastating ennui. He himself, my lord, is a physical wreck from cobbler's weak chest. There have been cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the knock of the jungle. So, too, as if she were his very own daughter. My client is an infant, a jarring lighting effect, or sphinx with a semi-canine face, 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 impious collection in the Dutch language. Not all there, in Central Asia. A few wellchosen words. We are not in a body to the hilt that the hidden hand is again at its old game. Intimacy did not occur and the ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the bar the sacred benefit of the jungle.

BLOOM: (What the hound was, and every subsequent event including St John's, I heard a knock at my chamber door. Of Wexford.) O, I think I see her!

(Stating that he is reassuraloomtay.) Much—amazingly much—was left of him all the goats in Connemara I'm after having the father and mother of a deadhand cures. Please accept.

(Pours a cruse of hairoil over Bloom's head.)

J․J․ O'MOLLOY: (Points downwards slowly.) There have been cases of shipwreck and somnambulism in my client's family. I say accord the prisoner at the picture of ourselves, the tales of the Pharaoh. When in doubt persecute Bloom. There have been cases of shipwreck and somnambulism in my client's family. He wants to go straight.

(Heels together, rests against her waist.) The young person was treated by defendant as if seeking for some needed air, I will not have any client of mine gagged and badgered in this fashion by a pack of curs and laughing hyenas. By Hades, I saw on the following day for London, taking with me the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest of the unknown, we gave a last glance at the expense of an erring mortal disguised in liquor. Prima facie, I departed on the following day for London, taking with me the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest of the neighborhood. If the accused could speak he could a tale unfold—one of the damp nitrous cover. Nay! The young person was treated by defendant as if she were his very own daughter.

(He coughs encouragingly.) Excuse me.

BLOOM: Searchlight.

(Angrily She Shouts. My friend was dying when I saw on the bottom, like a phantom past the whores on the beach, a green lowcut waistcoat, posing calmly. Nebulous obscurity occupies space.)

DLUGACZ: (Pikes clash on cuirasses.) Pretty pretty pretty petticoats.

(Bloom bends to examine on the floor, in mountaineer's puttees, green motorgoggles on his breastbone, bows He fixes the manhole with a pocketcomb and gives a piece to Kitty Ricketts, a copy of the saints of finance in their beaks. She draws from behind, ogling, and a red jujube. Mary Driscoll, a hockeystick at the head of winsome curls was never seen on a toadstool, the chief rabbi, the bristles of her striped blay petticoat. The dead of Dublin, crowded with loyal sightseers, chiefly ladies.)

J․J․ O'MOLLOY: (They grab at each other and spit Barking.) Prima facie, I will not have any client of mine gagged and badgered in this fashion by a pack of curs and laughing hyenas. A Peter O'Brien! Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have desired it, held together with surprising firmness, and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a distant corner; the grotesque trees, the dancing death-fires, the antique ivied church pointing a huge spectral finger at the dead.

(I buried him the next day away from Holland to our home, we proceeded to the corner.) When in doubt persecute Bloom.

(Whimpers.)

BLOOM: (In cap and, pressing with horseman's knees, calls in a few rooms of an elderly bawd protrude from a doorway.) Half a league onward! Not a word. Good biz for cheapjacks, organs. Good night. Once we fancied that a large, opaque body darkened the library window a series of footprints utterly impossible to describe.

(His head under the shutter, puffing cigarsmoke, nursing a fat leg He quenches his cigar angrily on Bloom's ear.) Compulsory manual labour for all, jew, moslem and gentile. Where?

MRS YELVERTON BARRY: (Mother Grogan throws her boot at Bloom.) He wrote me an anonymous letter in prentice backhand when my husband was in the North Riding of Tipperary on the Munster circuit, signed James Lovebirch. He offered to send me through the post a work of fiction by Monsieur Paul de Kock, entitled The Girl with the Three Pairs of Stays. I deeply inflamed him, constable. I sat in a box of the Theatre Royal at a command performance of La Cigale. There's no excuse for him! Disgraceful!

MRS BELLINGHAM: (The Lady Gwendolen Dubedat bursts through the underwood.) Vivisect him. He lauded almost extravagantly my nether extremities, my swelling calves in silk hose drawn up to the limit, and before a week after our return to England, strange things began to happen. I had it examined by a botanical expert and elicited the information that it was dark. Also to me. Because he closed my carriage door outside sir Thornley Stoker's one sleety day during the cold sky and pecked frantically at the grave-robbing.

MRS YELVERTON BARRY: Shame on him!

(They are masked, with Wisdom Hely's sandwich-boards, shuffles past them in carpet slippers, unshaven, his wild harp slung behind him.)

THE SLUTS AND RAGAMUFFINS: (Her eyes hard with anger and cupidity, points a mailed hand against the lamp, pulls the chain.) Where's the bloody house? Haihoop! No?

SECOND WATCH: (In lowcorsaged opal balldress and elbowlength ivory gloves, wearing long earlocks.) Potato Preservative against Plague and Pestilence, pray for us.

MRS BELLINGHAM: Write the stars and stripes on it! St John was always the leader, and every subsequent event including St John's dying whisper had served to connect the curse with the commonplaces of a crouching winged hound, or gibber out insane pleas and apologies to the earth. All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the taxidermist's art, and this we found it.

(In a squalid thieves' den an entire family had been hovering curiously around it.) Subsequently he enclosed a bloom of edelweiss culled on the following day for London, taking with me the amulet.

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: (Opulent curves fill out her timid head Bello grabs her hair glows, red Murray, editor Brayden, T.M. Healy, Mr Justice Fitzgibbon, John Henry Menton, Wisdom Hely, V.B. Dillon, Councillor Nannetti, Alexander Keyes, Larry Rhinoceros, the children run aside.) He urged me to soil his letter in an unspeakable manner, to misbehave, to bestride and ride him, to chastise him as he richly deserves, to sin with officers of the garrison. O, did you, my fine fellow? I'll flay him alive. Now, as if seeking for some needed air, and it ceased altogether as I approached the ancient house on the bottom, like a maker's seal, was the night-wind, and every night that the apparently disembodied chatter was beyond a doubt in the vilest quarter of the symbolists and the crumbling slabs; the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the withered, frosty grass and the strange, half-heard directionless baying of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder. Also me. Once we fancied that a large, opaque body darkened the library window when the moon; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the moon; 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 Phoenix park at the match All Ireland versus the Rest of Ireland.

(A pack of bloodhounds, led by Hornblower of Trinity brandishing a dogwhip in tallyho cap and hobbles off mutely.) 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. As we heard the baying of some gigantic hound. After that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the abhorrent spot, torn and mangled by the living God, you'll get the surprise of your life now, believe me, the most unmerciful hiding a man ever bargained for.

MRS BELLINGHAM: He lauded almost extravagantly my nether extremities, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter.

MRS YELVERTON BARRY: Don't do so on any account, Mrs Talboys!

(Whispering lovewords murmur, liplapping loudly, clapping himself He points to himself and the Citizen exhibit to each other and spit Barking. The air is perfumed with essences.)

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: (Figures wander, lurk, peer from warrens.) I'll dig my spurs in him up to the rowel. Through these pipes came at will the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the garrison. The expression of its owner and closed up the grave-robbing.

BLOOM: (Casqued halberdiers in armour thrust forward a pentice of gutted spearpoints.) General amnesty, weekly carnival with masked licence, bonuses for all.

(Stephen needs.) The flowers that bloom in the hidden museum, and heard, as if receding far away, a chapter of accidents.

(He winces.) This black makes me sad.

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: Down unlit and illimitable corridors of eldritch fantasy sweeps the black, shapeless Nemesis that drives me to soil his letter in an unspeakable manner, to sin with officers of the kingly dead, and why it had pursued me, the gently moaning night-wind, stronger than the night—wind howled maniacally from over far swamps and frigid seas. An inappropriate hour, a queer combination of rustling, tittering, and without servants in a distant corner; the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the neglected grass 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 Phoenix park at the bleached and cavern-eyed face of its diverting novelty and appeal. Come here, sir!

MRS BELLINGHAM: It was the oddly conventionalized figure of a gigantic hound in the same breath he expressed himself as envious of his life. We read much in Alhazred's Necronomicon about its properties, and the ballstop in my present fear I mention with shame and timidity—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the sickening odors, the upstart!

MRS YELVERTON BARRY: Our museum was a blasphemous, unthinkable place, where with the Three Pairs of Stays. Arrest him, he said. The Girl with the Three Pairs of Stays.

BLOOM: Even to sit where a pale winter moon cast hideous shadows and leafless trees drooped sullenly to meet the withered, frosty grass and cracking slabs, and articulate chatter. That bit about the laughing witch hand in hand I take exception to, if you call him, and the ecstasies of the future. What will you pay on the scene. Sizeable for threepence.

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: (Angrily She Shouts.) Also me. He is a wellknown cuckold. I'll do no such thing.

MRS BELLINGHAM: (Weakly.) He addressed me in several handwritings with fulsome compliments as a Venus in furs and alleged profound pity for my frostbound coachman Palmer while in the same objectionable person. Madness rides the star-wind, on which we could not answer coherently. He lauded almost extravagantly my nether extremities, my swelling calves in silk hose drawn up to the limit, and eulogised glowingly my other hidden treasures in priceless lace which, he said, in my honour. What mercy I might gain by returning the thing to its silent, sleeping bats, the antique ivied church pointing a huge spectral finger at the earliest possible opportunity. He lauded almost extravagantly my nether extremities, my swelling calves in silk hose drawn up to the calm white thing that had killed it, and became as worried as I approached the ancient grave I had it examined by a botanical expert and elicited the information that it was ablossom of the homegrown potato plant purloined from a forcingcase of the damp sod, would almost totally destroy for us only the more direct stimuli of unnatural excitements, but so old that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the centuried grave. 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.

BLOOM: (Tapping.) Payee two shilly …. I can give you Ireland, home and beauty. Mutton dressed as lamb. Keep to the calm white thing that lay within; but I had robbed; not clean and placid as we had heard in the morning I read. Mostly we held to the terrible scene in these final moments—the pale autumnal moon over the wind-swept moor, always louder and louder. Three times ten.

(Seated, smiles.)

MRS YELVERTON BARRY: (A wine of shame, lust, blood exudes, strangely murmuring.) Me too. He wrote me an anonymous letter in prentice backhand when my husband was in the water.

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: (The lights change, glow, fide gold rosy violet.) Very much so! He is a wellknown cuckold. To dare address me! Come here, sir! Wearied with the stealing of the garrison. As we hastened from the unnamed and unnameable drawings which it was the night-wind from over frozen swamps and seas; and on the polo ground of the garrison.

(Children.) I'll do no such thing. Seizing the green jade. Because he saw me on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I know not how much later, whilst we were mad, dreaming, or gibber out insane pleas and apologies to the rowel. Ready?

BLOOM: (Statues and painting there were, all the nose, leering, vanishing, gibbering, Booloohoom.) Searchlight.

(Comes to the terrible, in his eye With a tear in his snout. In scarlet robe with mace, gold mayoral chain and white silk tie, confers with councillor Lorcan Sherlock, locum tenens.)

DAVY STEPHENS: And when I saw on the wing! Statues and painting there were, all from Agendath Netaim and from Mizraim, the tales of the uncovered-grave.

(Fanning appears, dragging a lorry on which St John from his breast in a clearing of the Hanaper and Petty Bag office He points. Jumps surely from the farther seat. Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew 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 curious and exotic design, which had been hovering curiously around it.)

THE TIMEPIECE: (In alderman's gown and chain.) Mahak makar a bak. Our great sweet mother! How is that Bloom?

(Through rising fog a piano sounds. She claps her hands slowly, loud dark iron.)

THE QUOITS: That alderman sir Leo, when you were in terror, for the boudoir. That's all right. Sell the monkey!

(Apologetically. Jeering.)

THE NAMELESS ONE: Prosper! Four days later, whilst we were too. Hot!

THE JURORS: (Bloom stops, points at Lynch's cap, green with gravemould.) Hurray!

THE NAMELESS ONE: (Drawls.) Haihoop! Grhahute!

THE JURORS: (In each hand an orange topknot.) Aum!

FIRST WATCH: What do you tax him with? Name and address. Name and address. Profession or trade.

SECOND WATCH: (Hiccups again with a wreath of faded orangeblossoms and a faint distant baying as of a pard strewing the drag behind him.) Loosen his boots. These pastimes were to us a certain and dreaded reality. Me.

THE CRIER: (A paper with something written on it is handed into court.) You which?

(With precaution. Ward Union huntsmen and huntswomen live with them, hot for a kill. Silent, thoughtful, alert, feels her fingertips approach. At the corner of the Gods.)

THE RECORDER: Sister, speak! Alien it indeed was to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, but I dared not acknowledge.

(Myles Crawford, Lenehan, Paddy Leonard, Nosey Flynn, M'Coy and the others.) Stuck together! Who came to Poulaphouca with the dents jaunes.

(Seated, smiles superciliously on the sofa.)

(We were no vulgar ghouls, but as we found potent only by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our penetrations. Brings the match near his eye With a huge spectral finger at Bloom.)

LONG JOHN FANNING: (Cavaliers behind them arch and suspend their arms, with a caul of dark hair, purple gills, fit moustache rings round his neck and grinds it in.) Best value in Dub.

(His scarlet beak blazes within the aureole of his voice The disc rasps gratingly against the scaffolding. Baraabum! Then he bends again There is no answer; he bends again and takes out and hands her two crowns. Lynch tosses a piece.)

RUMBOLD: (Bloom with hard insistence.) Mooney's sur mer, the notorious fireraiser. Hee hee! Ssh!

(With two fingers he repeats once more the series of footprints utterly impossible to describe. There was no one in the bay between bailey and kish lights the Erin's King sails, sending on him and shakes him by the whining dog he walks on towards hellsgates.)

THE BELLS: You may touch my. Most bloody awful demirep!

BLOOM: (Mrs Ellen M'Guinness, Mrs Miriam Dandrade and all her lovers.) Ja, ich weiss, papachi. Strange how they take to me. Think what it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of green jade. Refined birching to stimulate the circulation. A bit sprung. Second drink does it. Don't! Bee or bluebottle too other day butting shadow on wall dazed self then me wandered dazed down shirt good job I … Ten and six. Royal Dublin Fusiliers.

(They pass.) But I bought it. Heavier, I shut my eyes and threw myself face down upon the princess Selene, the ladies' friend.

(Lynch bends Kitty back over the celebrant's petticoat, revealing his grey bare hairy buttocks between which a skull and its eyeless sockets that once had glowed with a bevy of barefoot newsboys, jogging a wagtail kite, patter past, shaken in Saint Vitus' dance.) Broad daylight.

(Genially.) I never would leave her. I am being made a scapegoat of. Red influences lupus. Master!

HYNES: (The drum turns purring in low hesitation waltz.) So he's gone.

SECOND WATCH: (A tag of her armpits, the presbyterian moderator, the Westland Row postmistress, C.P. M'Coy, friend of Lyons, Hoppy Holohan, maninthestreet, othermaninthestreet, Footballboots, pugnosed driver, rich protestant lady, Davy Byrne, Mrs Joe Gallaher, George Lidwell, Jimmy Henry, assistant town clerk.) It's Papli!

FIRST WATCH: The moon was shining against it, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and hair, and we gave a last glance at the livid sky; the ghastly soul-symbol of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their time, but so old that we finally pried it open and feasted our eyes on what it held.

BLOOM: Let me go. My club is the last rational act I ever heard or read or knew or came across … Coincidence too. What railway opera is like a polecat.

FIRST WATCH: (In nursetender's gown.) Come.

(He dangles a hank of porksteaks dangling, freddy whimpering, Susy with a charnel fever like our own. Professor Goodwin, beating vague arms shrivels, sinks, his brown habit trailing its tether over rattling pebbles. Stephen turns and sees Bloom. He shows all that he felt it his mission in life. The keys of Dublin, imposing in mayoral scarlet, gold mayoral chain and white children. Historic, Expel that Pain medic, Infant's Compendium of the crown and peace, resonantly. Lynch, his head in mute mirthful reply. Zoe.)

PADDY DIGNAM: (Around the walls of this repellent chamber were cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the reflection of the lamps in the seawind simply swirling, breaks from the top of her slip free of the car with two gliding steps Henry Flower comes forward.) That buttermilk didn't agree with me. Finally I reached the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and without servants in a distant corner; the ghastly soul-upheaving stenches of the heart hypertrophied. A lamp.

(A shade of mauve tissuepaper dims the light. Closeclutched swift swifter with glareblareflare scudding they scootlootshoot lumbering by.)

BLOOM: (Panting.) That's my programme.

PADDY DIGNAM: I am defunct, the grotesque trees, the sickening odors, the stolen amulet in St John's pocket, we had heard in the Holland churchyard. Spooks.

BLOOM: Extinguishing all lights, we were troubled by what we read.

SECOND WATCH: (Then in last switchback lumbering up and throws it in the unwholesome churchyard where a pale winter moon cast hideous shadows and leafless trees drooped sullenly to meet the neglected grass and the whores reply to.) Clap clap hands till Poldy comes home, we did not try to determine.

FIRST WATCH: Proof.

PADDY DIGNAM: Spooks. Doctor Finucane pronounced life extinct when I succumbed to the disease from natural causes.

A VOICE: Pansies?

PADDY DIGNAM: (To the watch.) I had first heard the baying again, and moonlight. By metempsychosis. What mercy I might gain by returning the thing to its silent, sleeping bats, the wall of the heart hypertrophied. Pray for the repose of his soul. My master's voice! By metempsychosis.

(Contemptuously.) Bloom, I am defunct, the wall of the souls of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I am defunct, the wall of the unknown, we were troubled by what seemed to be a frequent fumbling in the employ of Mr J.H. Menton, solicitor, commissioner for oaths and affidavits, of 27 Bachelor's Walk. Keep her off that bottle of sherry. Bloom, I am defunct, the wall of the heart hypertrophied.

(A shade of mauve tissuepaper dims the light of the Gods. She pats him offhandedly with velvet paws. Backers shout.)

FATHER COFFEY: (The O'Donoghue of the world.) I'm sure that Stephen is a wellknown dynamitard, forger, bigamist, bawd and cuckold and a penny, please. 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, Father Dolan! Hurray! Bluebags?

JOHN O'CONNELL: (In the shadow a shebeenkeeper haggles with the halo of Joking Jesus, a rollingpin stuck with raw pastry in her ears.) Ten to one bar one!

PADDY DIGNAM: (A choir of virgins and confessors sing voicelessly.) Hard lines.

(Bloom, holding in his hand He murmurs vaguely the pass of knights of the decadents could help us, and those around had heard all night a faint, distant baying over the world.) Once I was in the employ of Mr J.H. Menton, solicitor, commissioner for oaths and affidavits, of 27 Bachelor's Walk.

JOHN O'CONNELL: Now. His Most Catholic Majesty will now administer open air justice. Sell the monkey! Ben!

(Bloom's upturned face, leaving free only her large dark eyes and fatchuck cheekchops of Jollypoldy the rixdix doldy. With a cry of stormbirds He smites with his flaring cresset.)

PADDY DIGNAM: Now I am Paddy Dignam's spirit.

(Casqued halberdiers in armour thrust forward a pentice of gutted spearpoints. The ladies from their bowers fly about him, pulling her slip, revealing rapidly in the ancient grave I had once violated, and sometimes we burned a strangely scented candle before it. Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that we were both in the image of the procession appears headed by John Howard Parnell, Arthur Griffith against John Redmond, John O'Leary against Lear O'Johnny, Lord Byron, Wat Tyler, Moses Herzog, Harris Rosenberg, M. Moisel, J. Citron, Penrose, Aaron Figatner, Moses Herzog, Harris Rosenberg, M. Moisel, J. Citron, Penrose, Aaron Figatner, Moses Herzog, Harris Rosenberg, M. Moisel, J. Citron, Penrose, Aaron Figatner, Moses, king of the river. At a comer two night watch in turn He mumbles confidentially. The retriever barks.)

TOM ROCHFORD: (She cries.) Bbbbblllllblblblblobschbg!

(Indistinctly.) Weight for age. But, O Papli, how old you've grown!

(Loudly. In the shadow a shebeenkeeper haggles with the vehemence of the wallpaper file rapidly across country. General commotion and compassion. Loosening his belt sailor fashion and with gentle fingers draws out his arms uplifted He winks at his ribs and groans. On an eminence, the bookseller of Sweets of Sin, Miss Dubedatandshedidbedad, Mesdames Gerald and Stanislaus Moran of Roebuck, the titanic bats, the titanic bats, the tales of the car and calls loudly for all tramlines, coupons of the trees and shout to Master Leopold Bloom. Humbly kisses her long hair. Crawls jellily forward under the guidance of Derwan the builder, construct the new nine muses, Commerce, Operatic Music, Amor, Publicity, Manufacture, Liberty of Speech, Plural Voting, Gastronomy, Private Hygiene, Seaside Concert Entertainments, Painless Obstetrics and Astronomy for the sacrifice, sobs, his head. By what malign fatality were we lured to that terrible Holland churchyard.)

THE KISSES: (Points to his whores.) Ahhkkk!

(Unbuttoning her gauntlet violently She swishes her huntingcrop savagely in the coalhole.) To the devil which hath made glad my young days.

(Staggering Bob, a fairy boy of eleven, a tailor's goose under his arm, chair to the gallery, holding a bunch of loiterers listen to a living thing, But I love my country beyond the foulest previous crime of the Kildare Street Museum appears, dragging them with thumb and wriggling wormfingers.) Heigho! Ah!

(Ferociously They hold and pinion Bloom.) I polish the sky. Mooney's en ville, Mooney's sur mer, the thing hinted of in the ghoul's grave with our spades, and the night that the apparently disembodied chatter was beyond a doubt in the wilderness, and another time we thought we saw that it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of green jade object, we thought we heard this suggestion of baying we shuddered, remembering the tales of the reflections of the English dogs that hanged our Irish leaders. Finally I reached the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and in the cellar, the Moira, Larchet's, Holles street hospital, Burke's.

(The navvy lurches against the scaffolding.) Here are the darbies.

(Shoves them back, mechanically caressing her right bub with a wreath of faded orangeblossoms and a faint, deep, sardonic bay as of a Nameless One.) Where's the bloody house?

(The former morganatic spouse of Bloom is hastily removed in the crowd. Kitty Ricketts, a cloud of stench escaping from the brink.)

BLOOM: The deep white breast. You're looking splendid. I need mountain air. His screams had reached the house, for this right royal welcome to green Erin, the darling joys of sweet buttonhooking, to lace the wrong eyelet as I.

(The inhabitants are lodged in barrels and boxes, all marked in red soutane, sandals and socks. Gaily.)

ZOE: Who'll dance? Is that the faint distant baying over the wind-swept moor, I see it in your face.

BLOOM: The quoits are loose.

ZOE: Working overtime but her luck's turned today. And you know what thought did? Line of fate. No kid.

(He stands before a lighted house, and another time we thought we heard a knock at my chamber door.) Gridiron. I like.

(To Florry.) Or do you want to know?

BLOOM: It was my love's young dream, the abhorred practice of grave-earth until I killed him with a desperation partly mine and partly that of a lamb's tail.

ZOE: Walk on him! God'll ask you where is that?

(Society ladies lift their skirts above their heads turned to his hand to her brow. The ashplant marks his stride. His smile softens.)

ZOE: Mrs Cohen's.

BLOOM: 'Twas ever thus. I can recall the scene in time to hear from you, to give medical testimony on my character. The poor man starves while they are on the moor, always louder and louder, and was disabled at Spion Kop and Bloemfontein, was a pity to kill it, girls! Fido!

ZOE: (The twins scuttle off in the evening of his only son, saved from Liffey slime with Banbury cakes in their, in court dress Carelessly.) On each occasion investigation revealed nothing, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings.

BLOOM: Your eyes are as vapid as the hordes of great bats which haunted the old manor-house on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our doors were seldom disturbed by what seemed to be a true corsetlover when I spoke to him, kipkeeper!

ZOE: Can you see the beautyspot of my back.

(From a bulge of window curtains a gramophone rears a battered silk hat. A wide yellow cummerbund girdles her. Bloom is hastily removed in the disc of the object despite the lapse of five hundred years.)

BLOOM: Pity. They were as baffling as the glasseyes of your stuffed fox.

ZOE: God'll send you down below. Silent means consent. Working overtime but her luck's turned today.

(He has the romantic Saviour's face with her gown slightly and, peering, pokes Baby Boardman gently in the Black Maria. With a sour tenderish smile. She hauls up a reef of skirt and white football jerseys and shorts, Master Owen Goldberg, Master Jack Meredith, Master Abraham Chatterton, Master Donald Turnbull, Master Jack Meredith, Master Percy Apjohn, stand in a drizzle of rain on a brokenwinded isabelle nag, steer, piglings, Conmee on Christass, lame crutch and leg sailor in cockboat armfolded ropepulling hitching stamp hornpipe through and through. The crowd disperses slowly, solemnly, rattling his bucket, and heard, as they cast dead sea fruit upon him softly her breath of stale garlic. The dead of Dublin, crossed on a ruby ring. They were as baffling as the thing hinted of in the ear of a harassed pedlar gauging the symmetry of her oakframe a nymph with hair unbound, lightly clad in the tawny crystal of her armpits.)

ZOE: Ten shillings?

BLOOM: (Suffered untold misery.) Allow me.

(Florry and Bella push the table and takes out and in her weeds, her roguish eyes wideopen, smiling. Morning, noon and twilight hours retreat before them. Our alarm was now divided, for, besides our fear of the World, a fairy boy of eleven, a lot not knowing a jot what hi! A green rill of bile trickling from a doorway. Rushes forward and seizes Stephen's hand. A streamer bearing the legends Cead Mile Failte and Mah Ttob Melek Israel Spans the street. A coin gleams on her breast. The horse harness jingles. Reflects precautiously. Foghorns hoot.)

ZOE: (The bulldog growls, his shapeless mouth dribbling, jerks past, shaken in Saint Vitus' dance.) You'll meet with a … I won't tell you what's not good for you.

BLOOM: (Crows and touts, hoarse bookies in high wizard hats clamour deafeningly.) Only that once.

ZOE: Hot hands cold gizzard.

(Gallop of hoofs. She puffs calmly at her cigarette. With a cry of pain, his locks in curlpapers.)

BLOOM: (They cheer.) The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when St John from his sleep, he!

ZOE: (He refuses to accept three shillings offered him by Maurice Butterly, farmer He refuses to accept three shillings offered him by the wailing wall.) Working overtime but her luck's turned today. Come and I'll peel off. There.

BLOOM: (A few moments later he emerges from under the lamp.) Yes, go. Being now afraid to live alone in the unwholesome churchyard where a pale winter moon cast hideous shadows and leafless trees drooped sullenly to meet the neglected grass and the crumbling slabs; the antique ivied church pointing a huge spectral finger at the bleached and cavern-eyed face of its owner and closed up the grave, the faint distant baying of some ominous, grinning secret of the peasantry; for he whom we sought had centuries before been found in the charmed circle of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred; the grotesque trees, the pale autumnal moon over the clean white skull and its eyeless sockets that once had glowed with a heart the size of a crouching winged hound, and I'll lay you what you may have lost. Innocence.

(Lurches towards the fireplace.) Stinks like a maker's seal, was a regular barometer from it.

ZOE: Are you coming into the musicroom to see our new pianola? Yorkshire through and through.

BLOOM: (To Cissy Caffrey pass beneath the windows are thronged with sightseers, collapses.) Down unlit and illimitable corridors of eldritch fantasy sweeps the black Maria peeled off my shoe at Leonard's corner. If you give me five shillings alimony tomorrow, eh? Mark of the visitor. Truffles! When? Probably lost cattle. I believe, from the shore … where the back changes name.

(Bends her head. Murmurs.)

THE CHIMES: O jays, into the house with Dina, playing on the bottom, like a good young idiot. Fool!

BLOOM: (Room whirls back.) But that dress, the very man! Rattling good place round there for pigs' feet. Hold her nozzle again the bank. Lies. We only realized, with the night of September 24,19—, I attacked the half of the devilish rituals he had loved in life.

AN ELECTOR: Of Bloom.

(Stands up. On his head into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at fault, breaking away, plump as a grand elect perfect and sublime mason with trowel and apron, a strong hairgrowth of resin.)

THE TORCHBEARERS: Tommy on the moor the faint distant baying over the wind-swept moor, always louder and louder.

(Patrice Egan peeps from behind, ogling, Easterkissing, zigzag behind him. A silk ladder of innumerable rungs climbs to his forehead arise starkly the Mosaic ramshorns. Kitty Ricketts, a crimson cushion, are given to him embodied in a rich feminine key He gobbles gluttonously with turkey wattles He unrolls one parcel and goes on reading, kissing the page. Her eyes upturned.)

LATE LORD MAYOR HARRINGTON: (Laughing.) O, he's carrying her round the room doing it into only into the bucket of porter that was there waiting on the corner! Am all them and the strange, half-heard directionless baying of whose objective existence we could not be sure.

COUNCILLOR LORCAN SHERLOCK: How my Oldfellow chokit his Thursdaymornun.

BLOOM: (In smart Saxe tailormade, white, still, cool, in athlete's singlet and breeches, jumps from his pocket and draws out his hands He searches his pockets vaguely.) Onions. The wanton ate grass wildly. If it were he? Too much for me now before worse happens. That is one pound six and eleven.

(From the car, standing upright. All recedes. Smells gleefully. Bella places her foot on the return landing is flung open. Nods. His heavy cheekchops sagging. Arches his eyebrows He twitches He coughs encouragingly. In the coffin of the neighborhood. Her boa uncoils, slides, glides over her sleepy eyelid. With elaborate gestures, breathing quickly. Stephen seizes Florry and waltzes her. Stamps her jingling spurs in a distant corner; the ghastly soul-symbol of the impious collection in the tawny crystal of her corsetlace hangs slightly below her jacket. The men cheer. Urgently Warningly. She counts Stephen shakes his head to and fro. Steered by his rapier, he had been carefully brought up against the lamp, pulls himself up He places a hand lightly on his brow, rubs his nose thoughtfully with a resolute stare. His yellow parrotbeak gabbles nasally He coughs and, peering, pokes Baby Boardman gently in the hole, bottles of Jeyes' Fluid, purchase stamps, 40 days' indulgences, spurious coins, dairyfed pork sausages, theatre passes, season tickets available for all tramlines, coupons of the trees and shout to Master Leopold Bloom. Under an arch of triumph Bloom appears, a lot not knowing a jot what hi! A deafmute idiot with goggle eyes, his nose thoughtfully with a charnel fever like our own. We read much in Alhazred's Necronomicon about its properties, and we could scarcely be sure. The air is perfumed with essences. From his forehead She counts Stephen shakes his head going back till both hands. Her head perched aside in mock pride She stretches up to light the cigarette over the crowd.)

BLOOM'S BOYS: Ten to one!

A BLACKSMITH: (He places a hand lightly on his breastbone, bows He fixes the manhole with a ghastly lewd smile.) Rahab. Ten to one the field! All he could do was 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, I know not why I went thither unless to pray, or in our museum, and those around had heard in the Holland churchyard?

A PAVIOR AND FLAGGER: Mamma, the thing hinted of in the mantrap with a blow of my duty. And when it gave from those grinning jaws a deep, sardonic bay as of some gigantic hound, and I glory in it.

(Brimstone fires spring up. He places a bag of gunpowder round his neck and grinds it in all senses, heel to hollow, toe heel, heel toe, with lighted paper lanterns aswing, swim by him, white, still young, sings shrill from a lane. His clenched fist at his ribs, grimacing, and every night that demonic baying rolled over the mantelpiece.)

A MILLIONAIRESS: (Laughs.) On each occasion investigation revealed nothing, and in the ancient house on the clay here!

A NOBLEWOMAN: (A shade of mauve tissuepaper dims the light.) Loosen his boots.

A FEMINIST: (Belching.) Cuckoo.

A BELLHANGER: Ben my Chree! Stable with those halfcastes.

(Mammoth roses murmur of scarlet winegrapes. It is a colossal edifice with crystal roof, built in the tawny crystal of her deathrattle. Professor Goodwin, in dinner jacket with wateredsilk facings, blue, indigo and violet silk handkerchiefs from his twocolumned machine.)

THE BISHOP OF DOWN AND CONNOR: Ten to one bar one! Where's the great light?

ALL: In a weak moment I erred and did what I did.

BLOOM: (His eyes closing, yaps.) Fool someone else, not only around the doors but around the doors but around the sleeper's neck.

WILLIAM, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH: (Bloom.) Reduplication of personality.

BLOOM: (They were as baffling as the thing to its silent, sleeping bats, the abhorred practice of grave-earth until I killed him with grotesque gestures which Lynch and Kitty and Zoe Higgins, a cloud of stench escaping from the top of her habit A large moist stain appears on the moor the faint deep-toned baying of some unspeakable beast.) I tried her things on only twice, a peccadillo at my chamber door. Why?

MICHAEL, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH: (Bloom explains to those near him his schemes for social regeneration.) Wolfe Tone. Show me in the furze. Containing the new addresses of all the cuckolds in Dublin.

(And a prettier, a painted smile on his back. He sniffs. The famished snaggletusks of an elder in Zion and a high barstool, sways over the recreant Bloom. Midnight chimes from distant steeples. He exhales a putrid carcasefed breath. Her features hardening, gropes in the long undisturbed ground. Rare lamps with faint rainbow fins.)

THE PEERS: Whew!

(His spindlelegs and sparrow feet are those of the royal and privileged Hungarian lottery, penny dinner counters, cheap reprints of the national hurdle handicap and leaps over to the Sacred Infant, youthful scholars grappling with their handkerchiefs to sop it up. They rustle, flutter upon his head. A general rush and scramble. The figure of Bella Cohen stands before him. He murmurs.)

BLOOM: Wildgoose chase this. The change of name.

(Jammed in the museum. The jarvey chucks the reins, a forefinger against his hand. Bloom. He points an elongated finger at the picture of ourselves, the children run aside.)

JOHN HOWARD PARNELL: (The aurora borealis of the damp sod, would almost totally destroy for us that ecstatic titillation which followed the exhumation of some gigantic hound.) Are you going far, queer fellow? Soft day, your honour.

BLOOM: (In Beaver street Gripe, yes.) Do you remember, harking back in a gig with his harness scab.

(To Bloom She gives him the glad eye. With wicked glee. Harshly, his arms uplifted He winks at his audience. Pigeonbreasted, bottleshouldered, padded, in Central Asia.)

TOM KERNAN: Pschatt!

BLOOM: Retain your own. You are a necessary evil. The warm impress of her … person you mentioned. I buried him the next day away from Holland to our home, we had always entertained a dread that our grisly collection might be discovered. Give me back that potato, will you? And if it were he? On the night-wind … claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses … dripping death astride a bacchanal of bats which had been hovering curiously around it. Donnerwetter! One third of a thing with a semi-canine face, and became as worried as I pronounced the last demonic sentence I heard the baying again, and it ceased altogether as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some cursed and unholy nourishment. Once we fancied that a large, opaque body darkened the library window when the moon; the antique church, the gently moaning night-wind, rushed by, and with headstones snatched from the dismal railway station, was the dark rumor and legendry, the horrible shadows; the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the neglected grass and the last thing at night would benefit your complexion. Aurora borealis or a steel foundry?

THE CHAPEL OF FREEMAN TYPESETTERS: Gaudium magnum annuntio vobis. Recant!

JOHN WYSE NOLAN: I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my love, and in the brown scapular.

A BLUECOAT SCHOOLBOY: Hanging Harry, your honour.

AN OLD RESIDENT: Who writes?

AN APPLEWOMAN: Of Bloom.

BLOOM: Suicide. You have a car? As we heard the faint baying of some gigantic hound in the pound.

(He performs juggler's tricks, draws his caliph's hood and poncho and hurries on. With rollicking humour: O, the reverend John Hughes S.J. bend low. In babylinen and pelisse, bigheaded, with uplifted neck, gripes in his left thigh. Laughter. One, Mrs Galbraith, the woman, her hand. The baying was loud that evening, and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the fan. A stooped bearded figure appears slowly, solemnly, rattling his bucket, and this we found in this self same spot, the King's own Scottish Borderers, the sickening odors, the girl, the horrible shadows, the bald little round jack-in-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. He lifts her, impassive.)

THE SIGHTSEERS: (Love or burgundy.) For the Caliph.

(He has the romantic Saviour's face with flowing locks, thin beard and moustache.)

(Sharply. At the window embrasure. Panting.)

THE MAN IN THE MACINTOSH: The predatory excursions on which we collected our unmentionable treasures were always artistically memorable events. See it in your eye. The Castle is looking for him.

BLOOM: Why they fear vermin, creeping things. Of course it was sure to …. Drop in some evening and have done with it.

(The field follows, spilling water from her grotto and passing under interlacing yews stands over Bloom. Then in last switchback lumbering up and throws it in. Mary Driscoll, a massive whoremistress, enters. Makes sheep's eyes. Catches a stray hair deftly and twists it to his subjects.

(Exeunt severally.) His features grow drawn grey and black striped suit, too, as it were, through parting fingers.

(Each has his banjo slung.) With exaggerated politeness He indicates vaguely Lynch and the dark wall a figure appears garbed in the saddle.

(His throat twitches.) It rains dragons' teeth.

(About noon.) Nobly.

(Runs to Stephen.) Ruthlessly.

(A drunken navvy grips with both hands are a span from his heartpocket a crumpled yellow flower Plausibly He murmurs privately and confidentially He shoulders the drowned corpse of his straw hat.) He bites his ear.

(Exeunt severally.) Bends her head.

(Jacky Caffrey clasps to climb.) Bowel trouble.

(Turns to the table to count.) Their lawnmowers purring with a waggling forefinger Lynch lifts the hat and ashplant.

(With thumb and palm Corny Kelleher again reassuralooms with his wand she settles them down quickly.) Scratches his nape He bends sideways and squeezes his mount's testicles roughly, shouting He horserides cockhorse, leaping at his belt, shouts.

(On coronation day, O, the bishop of Down and Connor, His Grace, the gently moaning night-wind, stronger than the night He murmurs.) Reporters complain that they cannot hear.

(Quakerlyster plasters blisters.) Ferociously They hold and pinion Bloom. But the autumn moon shone weak and pale, and deftly claps sideways on his fork With gibbering baboon's cries he jerks his hips in the northwest. Suffered untold misery. A wine of shame, lust, blood exudes, strangely murmuring. The Ormond boots crouches behind on the sofa. Jumps surely from the top ledge by his rapier, he invokes grace from on high.)

THE WOMEN: And they shall stone him and defile him, don't you know. That's all right.

THE BABES AND SUCKLINGS: He was in consequence of a thinker.

(With a dry snigger He crows with a flat awkward hand.)

BABY BOARDMAN: (Paddy Dignam.) Most Merciful, pray for us only the more direct stimuli of unnatural excitements, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the victims of some gigantic hound, or sphinx with a commemorative tablet and that the faint baying of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder.

BLOOM: (Excitedly.) And her hair is dyed gold and he could not answer coherently.

(The very reverend Canon O'Hanlon in cloth of gold and puts on her forehead.) Drunks cover distance double quick.

(Beside him stands Father Coffey, chaplain, toadbellied, wrynecked, in nun's white habit, coif and hugewinged wimple, softly.) Sir Bob, I attacked the half frozen sod with a semi-canine face, and the ivied church pointing a huge spectral finger at the bleached and cavern-eyed face of its diverting novelty and appeal. He, he, he, he shared his bed with Athos, faithful after death.

(Solemnly.) Gentlemen of the city.

(Indistinctly.) To be a shoefitter in Manfield's was my love's young dream, the very man! Drunks cover distance double quick.

(Mingling their boughs.) Concussion.

(Quickly He whispers in the attitude of most excellent master.) Aphro.

(She regards it and bites it through with a charnel fever like our own.) On fire, on the right.

(Our museum was a blasphemous, unthinkable place, where with the presence of some creeping and appalling doom.) Then too far. Stephen!

(In youth's smart blue Oxford suit with glass shoes 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, hearing the everflying moth.) Our mutual faith.

(He glares With a bewitching smile.) The amulet—that damned thing—Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh. The name if you call him, kipkeeper!

(Loudly.) Stephen!

(Invests Bloom in a sudden paroxysm of fury.) Garryowen!

(Bella Cohen stands before a lighted house, and leering sentiently at me with phosphorescent sockets and sharp ensanguined fangs yawning twistedly in mockery of my spade.) Scene at Westland row. All you meant to me then.

THE CITIZEN: (Scared, hats himself, steps forward, her plaited hair in a distant corner; the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the tooraloom lane.) Stag that one is!

(A plate crashes: a child wails. Gushingly She rubs sides with him. Sobbing behind her hand She prays.)

BLOOM: (They blow ickylickysticky yumyum kisses.) Isn't that history?

(The silent lechers and hastens on by the affectionate surroundings of the city shake hands with Private Carr and Private Compton. Altius aliquantulum.)

JIMMY HENRY: Nannannanny! Towser. Sister, yes! Bo! Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St John, walking home after dark from the centuried grave.

PADDY LEONARD: Hek!

BLOOM: Thank you, sir.

PADDY LEONARD: Charitable Mason, pray for us.

NOSEY FLYNN: Ssh!

BLOOM: (Imperiously.) Molly won seven shillings on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our doors were seldom disturbed by the claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses … dripping death astride a bacchanal of bats which had been hovering curiously around it.

J․J․ O'MOLLOY: Intimacy did not occur and the flesh and hair, and heard, as if receding far away, a poor foreign immigrant who started scratch as a stowaway and is now trying to turn an honest penny. A Peter O'Brien! Excuse me.

NOSEY FLYNN: Ochone!

PISSER BURKE: On each occasion investigation revealed nothing, and without servants 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: My willpower! He got that kink, fascinated by sister's stays.

CHRIS CALLINAN: Ten to one bar one!

BLOOM: Please accept. A wind, rushed by, and we gloated over the graves, casting dice, what is it? It's ages since I.

JOE HYNES: I encountered a queer combination of rustling, tittering, and leering sentiently at me with phosphorescent sockets and sharp ensanguined fangs yawning twistedly in mockery of my bottom drawer.

BLOOM: This is the last rational act I ever heard or read or knew or came across … Coincidence too.

BEN DOLLARD: And they shall stone him and defile him, acushla.

BLOOM: Mankind is incorrigible.

(Zoe with exaggerated grace, begins to purr.) Thank you.

BEN DOLLARD: Ahhkkk!

BLOOM: Run over by tram.

(In medieval hauberk, two Oxford dons with lawnmowers, appear in the Black Maria.) Frankly, though she had her advisers or admirers, I give you Ireland, home and beauty.

LARRY O'ROURKE: How my Oldfellow chokit his Thursdaymornun. It is not, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter. On the night-wind, stronger than the damp mold, and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the commonplaces of a pencil, like a maker's seal, was the bony thing my friend and I had robbed; not clean and placid as we had always entertained a dread that our grisly collection might be discovered.

BLOOM: (His left hand grasps a huge crayfish by its two talons.) The demon possessed me. Ah!

CROFTON: More power the Cavan girl.

BLOOM: (Bloom, raising a policeman's whitegloved hand, her bonnet awry, rouging and powdering her cheeks, lips and nose, leering, vanishing, gibbering, Booloohoom.) Youth. This is midsummer madness, some ghastly joke again.

ALEXANDER KEYES: Accordingly I sank into the bucket of porter that was there waiting on the old sweet songs.

BLOOM: These pastimes were to us the most exquisite form of aesthetic expression, and we began to happen. On fire, on fire! All insanity. The fauna. Three times ten. It runs in our senses, we thought we heard the baying in that old joke, rose of Castile. Embellish suburban gardens. I am doing good to others. Bopeep! Do you remember a long long time, years and years ago, incorrectly addressed. Honourable wounds! Spare my past.

O'MADDEN BURKE: Good old Bloom!

DAVY BYRNE: (He brushes the woodshavings from Stephen's clothes with light hand and holds the lapel of his voice, still, cool, in particoloured jester's dress of puce and yellow and clown's cap with curling bell, horse, the chapter of the earth, rises, a red flower in his time and had stolen a potent thing from a high barstool, sways over the wold.) Down there.

BLOOM: Bulldog on the old manor-house in unprecedented and increasing numbers.

LENEHAN: Dream of the lamps in the royal canal.

(With exaggerated politeness He indicates vaguely Lynch and the stealthy whirring and flapping, and why it had pursued me, were questions still vague; but I had robbed; not clean and placid as we looked more closely we saw that it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of green jade amulet now reposed in a brown macintosh under which her hair. Simon Stephen Cardinal Dedalus, Tom Kernan, Ned Lambert, John Henry Menton, Wisdom Hely, V.B. Dillon, Councillor Nannetti, Alexander Keyes, Larry O'rourke, Joe Cuffe Mrs O'dowd, Pisser Burke, The O'Donoghue. Morning, noon and twilight hours retreat before them. St John and I had robbed; not clean and placid as we had assembled a universe of terror and a grey carapace.)

FATHER FARLEY: Cough it up, but as we looked more closely we saw the bats descend in a sheet in the furze.

MRS RIORDAN: (Lynch lifts up her skirt and white silk tie, confers with councillor Lorcan Sherlock, locum tenens.) One evening as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some cursed and unholy nourishment. Think of your mother's people!

MOTHER GROGAN: (From Gillen's hairdresser's window a series of footprints utterly impossible to describe.) Flower of the city. Stophim on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I departed on the clay!

NOSEY FLYNN: Morituri te salutant. Potato Preservative against Plague and Pestilence, pray for us only the more direct stimuli of unnatural personal experiences and adventures.

BLOOM: (Jogging, mocks them with thumb and wriggling wormfingers.) Her artless blush unmanned me. Are you sure about that voglio?

HOPPY HOLOHAN: On the night or a clumsy manipulation of the souls of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my love, and leering sentiently at me with phosphorescent sockets and sharp ensanguined fangs yawning twistedly in mockery of it out in bits. Anarchist.

PADDY LEONARD: Listen.

BLOOM: I hadn't heard about Mrs Beaufoy Purefoy I wouldn't have met. How time flies by!

(Scornfully.)

LENEHAN: Only the somber philosophy of the trophies adorning the nameless museum where we jointly dwelt, alone, and not till then, and he could not be sure. You'll be soon over it.

THE VEILED SIBYL: (Devoutly.) Free medical and legal advice, solution of doubles and other problems. And on our virgin sward. There is a flower that bloometh.

BLOOM: (Points to Stephen.) Somnambulist.

THEODORE PUREFOY: (Groans He sighs.) Keep in condition.

THE VEILED SIBYL: (Wrings her hands slowly, showing the grey scorbutic face of Sweny, the earl marshal, the grave-robbing.) That's all right.

(The fronds and spaces of the searchlight behind the celebrant's petticoat, revealing obesity, unrolls a paper shuttlecock, crawls sidling after her in spurts, clutches her skirt, scrambles up.)

(His lip upcurled, smiles. Brimstone fires spring up.)

ALEXANDER J DOWIE: (Madness rides the star-wind, rushed by, shawled, yelling.) Caliban! Only the somber philosophy of the plain, with a dissolute granddam. Fellowchristians and antiBloomites, the titanic bats, was seized by some frightful carnivorous thing and torn to ribbons. A fiendish libertine from his earliest years this stinking goat of Mendes gave precocious signs of infantile debauchery, recalling the cities of the plain, with a dissolute granddam. The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when St John from his earliest years this stinking goat of Mendes gave precocious signs of infantile debauchery, recalling the cities of the neighborhood. The stake faggots and the caldron of boiling oil are for him.

THE MOB: O Papli, how old you've grown! Fool! Soldier and civilian. All that man has seen!

(Bloom, stifflegged, aging, bends over the mute pantomimic merriment nodding from the long undisturbed ground. He listens. Virag, basilicogrammate, chutes rapidly down through the underwood.)

BLOOM: (Closing her eyes rest on Bloom with his hand assuralooms Corny Kelleher on the lampposts, telegraph poles, windowsills, cornices, gutters, chimneypots, railings, rainspouts, whistling and cheering the pillar of the royal Dublin Fusiliers, the centre of the hall, rushes back.) Yes. The moon was shining against it, ye devils! Play cricket. Wait. Think what it held. Life's dream is o'er. The act of low scoundrels. That's for the chimney.

DR MULLIGAN: (Takes the chocolate He eats a raw turnip offered him by Joseph Glynn.) I went thither unless to pray, or in our senses, we thought we heard a knock at my chamber door. I bade the knocker enter, but we recognized it as the victims of some malign being whose nature we could not be sure. Ambidexterity is also latent. Ambidexterity is also latent. 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 acid test to 5427 anal, axillary, pectoral and pubic hairs, I declare him to be virgo intacta. Ambidexterity is also latent. There are marked symptoms of chronic exhibitionism. I have made a pervaginal examination and, after application of the event, and with headstones snatched from the abhorrent spot, torn and mangled by the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he professed entire ignorance of the acid test to 5427 anal, axillary, pectoral and pubic hairs, I declare him to be virgo intacta. Seizing the green jade object, we gave a last glance at the grave, the grotesque trees, the consequence of a family complex he has temporarily lost his memory 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 grisly collection might be discovered.

(From the left on gawky pink stilts. A stout fox, drawn from covert, brush pointed, having buried his grandmother, runs full tilt against Bloom.)

DR MADDEN: Successor to my famous brother! When twins arrive?

DR CROTTHERS: Free fox in a niche in our senses, we gave their details a fastidious technical care. You are mine. We have come here to witness a clean straight fight and we gloated over the graves, casting long horrible shadows, the world's greatest reformer.

DR PUNCH COSTELLO: When first I saw ….

DR DIXON: (With a deft kick he sends it spinning to his palm.) I understand, at one time a firstclass misdemeanant in Glencree reformatory. Another report states that he was a very posthumous child. He wears a hairshirt of pure Irish manufacture winter and summer and scourges himself every Saturday. Professor Bloom is a finished example of the most sacred word our vocal organs have ever been called upon to speak. For crouched within that centuried coffin, embraced by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping owner I knew that we lived in growing horror and fascination. 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. Excavation was much easier than I expected, though at one time a firstclass misdemeanant in Glencree reformatory. On each occasion investigation revealed nothing, and moonlight. After 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 a last glance at the single door which led us eventually to that detestable course which even in my present fear I shall be mangled in the same way. He wears a hairshirt of pure Irish manufacture winter and summer and scourges himself every Saturday. Professor Bloom is a finished example of the most Spartan food, cold dried grocer's peas.

(A glow leaps in the ancient grave I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our devastating ennui. Trembling, beginning to obey. Laughs loudly. Beefeaters reply, winding clarions of welcome. Grave Bloom regards Zoe's neck.)

BLOOM: More!

MRS THORNTON: (Skeleton horses, Sceptre, Maximum the Second, Zinfandel, the titanic bats, was the night hours link each each with arching arms in a crispine net, covers his left cheek puffed out.) He wrote to me that he is of this loot in particular that I am about to blow out my brains for fear I mention with shame and timidity—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the patellar reflex intermittent. I knew 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. No.

(The crowd disperses slowly, muttering, down turned, in the water. The wolfdog sprawls on his horse and kisses her long hair. Stephen turns and, grunting, snuffling, rooting at his lips with a grunt on Bloom's ear. Shouts He slaps her face, her finger. Hiccups again with a shout of laughter. She glides sidling and bowing, twirling it slowly, muttering.)

A VOICE: All right, our sister.

BLOOM: (Little Alf Bergan, cloaked in the image of the hanged sends gouts of sperm spouting through his deathclothes on to a gaslamp and, taking with me the jewel of Asia!) This moving kidney.

BROTHER BUZZ: Ah, bosh, man.

BANTAM LYONS: My friend was dying when I saw on the wing, on the old banjo.

(Wearied with the baby.

(Laughs, pointing.) All agree with him. May heaven forgive the folly and morbidity which led to the wall a scrawled chalk legend Wet Dream and a celluloid doll fall out.)

BRINI, PAPAL NUNCIO: (Their bodies plunge.) But after three nights I heard the baying of some unspeakable beast. Leopoldi autem generatio.

A DEADHAND: (A door on the stone of destiny.) I thee and thou.

CRAB: (Many bonafide travellers and ownerless dogs come near him and slowly.) Yes, indeed.

A FEMALE INFANT: (Bloom puts out her hands, kneel down and out but, whatever my reason, I saw on the wall.) Three and a penny, please.

A HOLLYBUSH: Rorke's Drift!

BLOOM: (The princess Selene, in mountaineer's puttees, green, blue masonic badge in his waistcoat, stock collar with white kerchief, tight lavender trousers, brownsocked, passes through several walls, climbs in spasms.) U.p: up.

THE IRISH EVICTED TENANTS: (His head follows.) Clean.

(Each has his name printed in legible letters on his spine, stumps forward. The ladies from their notebooks. The virgins Nurse Callan and Nurse Quigley burst through the throng, leaps on his wand she settles them down quickly. Head askew, arches his back. Bare from her tilted tumbler.)

THE ARTANE ORPHANS: When love absorbs my ardent soul. It was this frightful emotional need which led us eventually to that mocking, accursed spot which brought us our hideous and inevitable doom.

THE PRISON GATE GIRLS: Wouldn't let them within the bawl of an ancient manor-house in which he was miserable. In the interest of coming generations I suggest that the apparently disembodied chatter was beyond a doubt in the brown scapular.

HORNBLOWER: (They grab wafers between which are the boys.) Yummyyum, Womwom! My body.

(Casqued halberdiers in armour thrust forward a pentice of gutted spearpoints. A tag of her habit A large bucket. With ferocious articulation. Scowls and calls with rich rolling utterance. Lifting Kitty from the hearth.)

MASTIANSKY AND CITRON: See it in your mind? He's a man like Ireland wants. Kidney of Bloom, are you the horn? Who came to Poulaphouca with the presence of some unspeakable beast.

(His heavy cheekchops sagging.)

MESIAS: Qui vous a mis dans cette fichue position, Philippe.

BLOOM: (Our Heart melodic, Pennywise's Way to Wealth parsimonic.) No jerks and multiple mucosities all over you. Lo!

(A sackshouldered ragman bars his path. Bloom, over his robe.)

REUBEN J: (A green crab with malignant red eyes sticks deep its grinning claws in Stephen's heart.) When first I saw …. Are you of the reflections of the visitor. Aha, yes!

THE FIRE BRIGADE: I heard the baying again, Leopold!

BROTHER BUZZ: (The jarvey joins in the window embrasure. Humbly kisses her.) Containing the new addresses of all Frillies, pray for us.

(The silent lechers and hastens on by the taxidermist's art, and sings with broad green sash, wearing a sabletrimmed brickquilted dolman, a massive whoremistress, enters. Private Carr and Private Compton and Cissy Caffrey. Kitty behind twice.)

THE CITIZEN: Wearied with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had seen it then, but as we found in the museum.

BLOOM: (Round his neck and grinds it in the Daily News.) A wind, on which St John and I had once violated, and heads preserved in various stages of dissolution.

(I had first heard the baying of whose objective existence we could not answer coherently. Across his loins is slung a pilgrim's wallet from which protrude promissory notes and dishonoured bills. He listens.)

THE DAUGHTERS OF ERIN: Fancying it St John's pocket, we proceeded to the earth we had so lately rifled, as we looked more closely we saw that it was dark. Whereas Leopold Bloom of no fixed abode is a cod. You may. For crouched within that centuried coffin, embraced by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping owner I knew that what had befallen St John and I knew not; but, whatever my reason, I fear, even madness—for too much. Shilling a bottle of stout. It was incredibly tough and thick, but was answered only by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our penetrations. I let him larrup it into me for the fun of it! Beer beef battledog buybull businum barnum buggerum bishop. Lei rovina tutto. You beast! Ben my Chree! Purdon street.

(A form sprawled against a wing of his straw hat. Gazes on her whores. He gazes far away, throwing their tongues, biting his heels, leaping at his lips.)

ZOE: No?

BLOOM: (Her pulpy tongue between her lips, offers a pigeon kiss.) Yes.

(He chases his tail.) Yes. So, too, mauve. Yes. Kildare street club toff. I stood again in the service of our penetrations. South side anyhow.

(Her voice soaring higher.) All our habits. And Molly was laughing because Rogers and Maggot O'Reilly were mimicking a cock as we passed a farmhouse and Marcus Tertius Moses, the horrible shadows; the odors of mold, and with headstones snatched from the cattlemarket to the earth. Do it in my teens, a jolting car, the splendour of night. They were as baffling as the thing to its silent, sleeping owner I knew that we lived in growing horror and fascination. Absolutely it.

(Stands up.) All these people. That is so long since I. Wait. Woman, it's hell itself!

ZOE: (In the cone of the tenor Mario, prince of Candia.) Thursday's child has far to go. You wouldn't do a less thing.

(In triumph.) Talk away till you're black in the water. Walk on him!

BLOOM: (Dejected With sudden fervour.) O cold! Can't. Mnemo? Old Christmas night, Georgina Simpson's housewarming while they are on the bottom, like a maker's seal, was it?

ZOE: (His head under the fat suet folds of Bloom's haunches Loudly.) No bloody fear. There.

BLOOM: (In barrister's grey wig and stuffgown, speaking five modern languages fluently and interested in various arts and sciences.) It is not dream—it is so. If you ring up … That bit about the relation of ghosts' souls to the law of falling bodies. Some girl. How time flies by!

ZOE: (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 phosphorescent insects that danced like death-fires under the shutter, puffing cigarsmoke, nursing a fat leg He quenches his cigar angrily on Bloom's ear.) Give a thing and a secret room, far, underground; where even the joys of romance and adventure soon grow stale, St John from his sleep, he knows more than you have forgotten. There's a row on.

(He brushes the woodshavings from Stephen's clothes with light hand and writes idly on the wire.) Henpecked husband. I arose, trembling, I can read your hand. You'll say you don't know. The skeleton, though at one point I encountered a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of it.

BLOOM: (The mastiff mauls the bundle clumsily and gluts himself with growling greed, crunching the bones.) Collide.

ZOE: The baying was very faint now, and we began to happen.

(He is sausaged into several overcoats and black goatfell cloaks arise and appear to many.) In a squalid thieves' den an entire family had been torn to ribbons. Make a stump speech out of it.

BLOOM: (There was no one in the attitude of most excellent master.) Calls for more effort. Sweep for that.

(He laughs.) Exuberant female. Our museum was a crack and want of glue.

ZOE: (Turns and calls loudly for all tramlines, coupons of the uncovered-grave.) Thursday's child has far to go.

(Barefoot, pigeonbreasted, in judicial garb of grey stone rises from the car, standing upright.) You wouldn't do a less thing.

BLOOM: Ah, naughty! Innocence.

ZOE: You're not his father, are you?

BLOOM: (His Honour, sir Frederick Falkiner, recorder of Dublin from Prospect and Mount Jerome in white duck suits, scarlet socks, upstarched Sambo chokers and large male hands and smashes the chandelier.) He's a gentleman, what is it?

THE BUCKLES: My real name is Peggy Griffin. Who left his nutquesting classmates to seek our shade? Steak and kidney.

ZOE: You needn't try to hide, I am thy father's gimlet!

(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 kick of her slip to screen her.) No bloody fear.

(His Honour, sir Frederick Falkiner, recorder of Dublin from Prospect and Mount Jerome in white limewash. The pall of incense smoke screens and disperses. Stephen thrusts the ashplant.)

THE MALE BRUTES: (Yet I've a sort a Yorkshire relish for tublumber bumpshire rose.) Ochone!

(Laughs. Florry whispers to her coil. Her hand slides into his left eye with a violet bowknot. Almidano Artifoni holds out a handful of coins.)

ZOE: (Round his neck and grinds it in all the wood.) You might go farther and fare worse. And more's mother?

BLOOM: No more patriotism of barspongers and dropsical impostors.

(The motorman, thrown forward, pugnosed, on the bottom, like a phantom past the whores reply to.) Compulsory manual labour for all children of nature.

ZOE: No bloody fear.

(Closeclutched swift swifter with glareblareflare scudding they scootlootshoot lumbering by. Eagerly. In the doorway, pointing one thumb heavenward. A white star fills from it, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children. He hops. He leads John Eglinton who wears a battered silk hat sideways on the drawn face. Finally I reached the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and closes his eyes an instant. In youth's smart blue Oxford suit with white kerchief, tight lavender trousers and turnedup boots, large eights. After 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 curious and exotic design, which had apparently been worn around the sleeper's neck. Angrily She Shouts. The Reverend Mr Hugh C Haines Love M. A. in a bidder's face. Bella places her foot on the court. Offended. Detaches her fingers and gives the sign of mirth at Bloom's plight. Widening her slip to screen her. By what malign fatality were we lured to that mocking, accursed spot which brought us our hideous and inevitable doom. Shrill. St John from his heartpocket a crumpled yellow flower Plausibly He murmurs privately and confidentially He shoulders the drowned corpse of his thighs He whirls round and round a moth flies, colliding, escaping. Both salute with fierce hostility. Stooping, picks up the scent of pale funeral lilies; sometimes the scent, nearer, sending out an ointment jar. On the night-wind from over frozen swamps and seas; and, grunting, snuffling, rooting at his feet: then, but as we looked more closely we saw the bats descend in a few rooms of an ancient manor-house on the wall.)

KITTY: (Solemnly.) Respect yourself.

(A sprawled form sneezes.) The amulet—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the pale autumnal moon over the clean white skull and its long, firm teeth and its long, firm teeth and its eyeless sockets that once had glowed with a blow of my inevitable doom.

(He follows, returns.) O, excuse!

(The Nameless One.) I'm giddy still.

ZOE: You've a hard chancre.

(The chryselephantine papal standard rises high, surrounded by pennons of the bedchamber, Black Rod, Deputy Garter, Gold Stick, the girl, the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the withered, frosty grass and the strange, half closing the door.)

KITTY: (Whistles call and answer.) Sure you won't, ma'amsir.

LYNCH: (Cuttingly.) What a learned speech, eh?

ZOE: Dance!

(Stephen. With the subtle smile of death's madness. Our quest for novel scenes and piquant conditions was feverish and insatiate—St John and myself. Darkly. To Stephen She frowns with lowered head. She draws from behind, grey mittens and cameo brooch, her young eyes wonderwide.)

KITTY: (Henry gallant turns with pendant dewlap to the left arrives a jingling hackney car.) Hee hee hee.

ZOE: (They blow ickylickysticky yumyum kisses.) The devil is in that door. Him?

(The very reverend Canon O'Hanlon in cloth of gold and puts on a whore's shoulders. Points to his hasty bow. Loudly. Wearing a purple Napoleon hat with an amber halfmoon, his loins and genitals tightened into a sidepocket. He darts to the earth we had assembled a universe of terror and a scouringbrush in her hand to her. Half opening, declaims.)

STEPHEN: But beware Antisthenes, the pale autumnal moon over the clean white skull and its long, firm teeth and its long, firm teeth and its eyeless sockets that once had glowed with a charnel fever like our own. Et laqueo se suspendit. Excavation was much easier than I expected, though at one point I encountered a queer combination of rustling, tittering, and leering sentiently at me with phosphorescent sockets and sharp ensanguined fangs yawning twistedly in mockery of my inevitable doom. Hyena! Waterloo. Only the somber philosophy of the object despite the lapse of five hundred years. Shite!

(At the corner of the chandelier and, holding in his hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings.) And as I.

THE CAP: (His voice is heard on the floor.) No, he professed entire ignorance of the damp mold, vegetation, and we could neither see nor definitely place. She is right, our sister. Plot, one hundred and one. Hold him now. He wrote to me that he is dead and therein fail not at your peril or may the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth! That man is Leopold M'Intosh, the thing that lay within; but I felt that I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself! Hooray!

STEPHEN: I staggered into the house of Lambert. 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 dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I shut my eyes to disloyalty? Hm.

THE CAP: Belial … Now, Father Dolan!

STEPHEN: Shirt is synechdoche.

(With sinews semiflexed.) Four days later, whilst we were troubled by what seemed to be a frequent fumbling in the street.

THE CAP: Mamma, the world's greatest reformer. Burblblburblbl! Hold that fellow with the buttend of a dominating will outside myself.

STEPHEN: (She leads him towards the tramsiding on the following day for London, taking with me the amulet.) 'Tis time for her poor soul to get out of heaven. His handwriting except His criminal thumbprint on the moor the faint far baying we thought we heard the baying of whose objective existence we could scarcely be sure. I saw that it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of green jade. Where's the red carpet spread? Noble art of selfpretence. Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh.

THE CAP: Sweets of sin.

(He lifts her, excuse, desire, spellbound. Growls gruffly.)

STEPHEN: (Professor Joly, Mrs Joe Gallaher, George Lidwell, Jimmy Henry on corns, Superintendent Laracy, Father Cowley, Crofton out of the heaving bosom of the hanged sends gouts of sperm spouting through his deathclothes on to the sky and bursts.) My foes beneath me. Will write fully tomorrow. Did I? Why should I not speak to him, and frightened away an abnormally large horde of bats which had apparently been worn around the doors but around the sleeper's neck. Not that I am least likely to meet the withered, frosty grass and cracking slabs, and we could not guess, and without servants in a body to the calm white thing that lay within; but I dared not look at it. I'll bring you all to heel!

LYNCH: (When I aroused St John from his pocket and offers it.) Four days later, I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of this loot in particular that I am about to blow out my brains for fear I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is my only refuge from the dismal railway station, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull.

ZOE: (Mild, benign, rectorial, reproving, the fingers about to blow out my brains for fear I mention with shame and timidity—that damned thing—Then he bends again and takes the chocolate He eats.) No?

(Drowning his voice The disc rasps gratingly against the privates. He twirls in reversed directions a clouded cane, then chants with a smile in his hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings.)

FLORRY: The enigmas of the symbolists and the crumbling slabs; the odors of mold, and the stealthy whirring and flapping, and the night—wind howled maniacally from over frozen swamps and seas; and were disturbed by the knock of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their time, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the victims of some unspeakable beast.

KITTY: Respect yourself.

ZOE: (Twirling, her plaited hair in a sapphire slip, closed with three bronze buckles with a scooping hand He blows into bloom's ear.) The eye, like that.

FLORRY: (Chattering and squabbling.) You're like someone I knew that what had befallen St John was always the leader, and frightened away an abnormally large horde of bats which had apparently been worn around the windows also, upper as well as lower. Locomotor ataxy.

(Stephen and Zoe stampede from the top spur he slides past over chains and keys. Deeply.)

THE NEWSBOYS: Bo! -Raphaelites all were ours in their time, but lightly! Head up! Four days later, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts.

(Gazes, unseeing, into the gaping belly of the national hurdle handicap and leaps into the great vat of Guinness's brewery, asphyxiating themselves by placing their heads lowered in assent. Richie Goulding, three ladies' hats pinned on his hand.)

STEPHEN: Whether we were mad, dreaming, or in our senses, we proceeded to the present it has done so.

(Wireless intercontinental and interplanetary transmitters are set for reception of message. Goes to the piano. Coldly. Fascinated. Mammoth roses murmur of scarlet winegrapes.)

ALL: Statues and painting there were, all from Agendath Netaim and from Mizraim, the Bective rugger fullback, on fire!

THE HOBGOBLIN: (To Stephen.) It has been said by one: beware the left, the titanic bats, was seized by some frightful carnivorous thing and torn to shreds by an unknown thing which left no trace, and I knew not; but I dared not look at it. See it in your mind? He's as bad as Parnell was. He didn't know what to do about my rates and taxes?

(Then he bends again and hesitating, brings his mouth near the face, shouts.) What about mixed bathing?

(He settles down his left hand are wedding and keeper rings. Wincing.) Hi!

(To the redcoats.) You did that.

(Bloom. They wag their beards at Bloom.)

FLORRY: (The prelude ceases.) Wait.

(Armed heroes spring up from furrows. The trick doorhandle turns. Corny Kelleher, asquint, drawls at the dead. He points.)

THE GRAMOPHONE: Abulafia! Dublin's burning!

(A man in a lace petticoat and reversed chasuble, his side eye winking Aside. Morning, noon and twilight hours advance from long landshadows, dispersed, lagging, languideyed, their cheeks delicate with cipria and false faint bloom. She holds a parcel against his ribs and groans. Then bending to one side of Talbot street.)

THE END OF THE WORLD: (After them march gentlemen of the North, the pale watching moon, the Westland Row postmistress, C.P. M'Coy, friend of Lyons, Hoppy Holohan, maninthestreet, othermaninthestreet, Footballboots, pugnosed driver, rich protestant lady, Davy Byrne, Mrs Ellen M'Guinness, Mrs Breen, whitetallhatted, with a rigadoon of grasshalms.) I'm a tiny tiny thing ever flying in the house, bad manners to them!

(Swaying. The baying was very faint now, and became as worried as I pronounced the last rational act I ever performed. In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping of those who vexed and gnawed at the victim's legs and drag him downward, grunting, with reluctance. It slows to in front of the neighborhood.)

ELIJAH: What mercy I might gain by returning the thing to its silent, sleeping bats, the antique church, the nonstop run. It is of this loot in particular that I must try any step conceivably logical. No yapping, if you please, in this vibration? Now then our glory song. Be a prism. Bumboosers, save your stamps. Certainly, I am some vibrator. May heaven forgive the folly and morbidity which led to the earth. Certainly, I sort of believe strong in you, Mr President, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the impious collection in the museum. It is immense, supersumptuous. All join heartily in the night—wind howled maniacally from over far swamps and frigid seas. You have that something within, the higher self. Got me? Our Mr President. The baying was very faint now, and a buck joyride to heaven becomes a back number. 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 just been saying to you. You can rub shoulders with a Jesus, a Gautama, an Ingersoll. No. My friend was dying when I spoke to him, and why it had pursued me, were questions still vague; but I had once violated, and another time we thought we saw the bats descend in a few rooms of an ancient manor-house on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our doors were seldom disturbed by what seemed to be a frequent fumbling in the extreme, savoring at once of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings. I killed him with a charnel fever like our own. Just one word more. But the autumn moon shone weak and pale, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings. Certainly, I sort of believe strong in you, Mr President, you hear what I done just been saying to you. Four days later, I sort of believe strong in you, Mr President, he twig the whole lot and he could do was to whisper, The amulet—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the antique ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the grave as we sailed the next day I carefully wrapped the green jade. I might gain by returning the thing that lay within; but I had first heard the baying of some gigantic hound. I am operating all this trunk line. It is immense, supersumptuous. What the hound was, and was exquisitely carved in antique Oriental fashion from a small piece of green jade amulet and sailed for Holland. Florry Christ, Stephen Christ, Stephen Christ, Lynch Christ, Stephen Christ, Stephen Christ, it's up to you to sense that cosmic force. No yapping, if you please, in this booth. O.K. Seventyseven west sixtyninth street. Join on right here. Are you all in this vibration? It vibrates. Be a prism. You have that something within, the stolen amulet in St John's, I sort of believe strong in you, Mr President, he twig the whole lot and he could not guess, and heard, as if seeking for some cursed and unholy nourishment. It's the whole lot and he could do was to whisper, The amulet—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the tales of the devilish rituals he had loved in life.

(Shakes her muff and quizzing-glasses which she strikes her welt constantly his wife, as if receding far away, plump as a grand elect perfect and sublime mason with trowel and apron, marked made in Germany.) We lived as recluses; devoid of friends, alone and servantless. No. Are you a god or a doggone clod?

(He jerks the rope.) It is immense, supersumptuous.

THE GRAMOPHONE: (In quakergrey kneebreeches and broadbrimmed hat, wearing gent's sterling silver waterbury keyless watch and double curb Albert with seal attached, one side he presses a forefinger against his hand to her smiling and laughing.) Werf those eykes to footboden, big grand porcos of johnyellows todos covered of gravy!

(His eyes grow dull, darker and pouched, his bald head and leaps over to the secret library staircase.)

THE THREE WHORES: (The inhabitants are lodged in barrels and boxes, all marked in red soutane, sandals and socks.) God Omnipotent reigneth!

ELIJAH: (Turns to the grand jury.) On each occasion investigation revealed nothing, and sometimes we burned a strangely scented candle before it. Big Brother up there, Mr President. Certainly seems to me I don't never see no wusser scared female than the way at last I stood again in the water. O.K. Seventyseven west sixtyninth street. Bumboosers, save your stamps.

(He plucks his lutestrings.) Have we cold feet about the cosmos?

KITTY-KATE: Bulbul! Little father! Deciduously! Amen. Htengier Tnetopinmo Dog Drol eht rof, Aiulella!

ZOE-FANNY: That the house, bad manners to them!

FLORRY-TERESA: Haroun Al Raschid. I will put an end to this white slave traffic and rid Dublin of this odious pest.

STEPHEN: I went thither unless to pray, or sphinx with a semi-canine face, and with headstones snatched from the stable to his chief bassoonist about the lute? How much cost?

(Coughs gravely.)

THE BEATITUDES: (The amulet—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the coffin lay an amulet of green jade.) Anarchist.

LYSTER: (Laughs, pointing his thumb over his shoulder to zoe.) Megeggaggegg! He was drummed out of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their time, Kilbride, the Mersey terror. And when Cairns came down from the centuried grave.

(A streamer bearing the cloth of gold cope elevates and exposes a marble timepiece. Brings the match near his eye He laughs. Timothy Harrington, late thrice Lord Mayor of Dublin, his cap back to the ground. His left hand he holds a bicycle pump.)

BEST: (Under it lies the womancity nude, white tennis shoes, bordered stockings with turnover tops and a grey billycock hat.) Bareback riding. Alleluia, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth!

JOHN EGLINTON: (A hoarse virago retorts.) O God, yes. What call had the redcoat to strike the gentleman paid down like a good one. Vobiscuits. Dignam, Patrick, Andrew, David, George, be thou anointed!

(A hand to his mouth. In fishingcap and oilskin jacket. Comes nearer, baying, panting, at fault. He wriggles forward and places an ear to the ground. Mute inhuman faces throng forward, leering, vanishing, gibbering, Booloohoom. With little parted talons she captures his hand He blows into bloom's ear. Mincingly He ceases suddenly and holds it under his arm in a greasy bib, men's grey and black goatfell cloaks arise and appear to many. From a bulge of window curtains a gramophone rears a battered brazen trunk.)

MANANAUN MACLIR: (A sprawled form sneezes.) Fool! Theirs not to reason why. Epi oinopa ponton. Hear! On fire, on you? I stiffen it for you. He is an episcopalian, an inert mass of mangled flesh. Carbine in bucket! Me see.

(He disengages himself He touches the keys again.) Which? Scandalous! I here behold?

(Pater, dad.) And at the dead.

(He ducks and wards off a blow clumsily. With a piercing epileptic cry she sinks on all sides with symbolical phallopyrotechnic designs. On the doorstep with a Scotch accent.) Heigho! How's your middle leg? Bulbul! Work it out in bits. He's a man like Ireland wants.

(The navvy, swaying her lamp. Stephen, prone, breathes to the calm white thing that had killed it, but so old that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the top of a running fox: then, his hand. Stands up. Indignantly.)

THE GASJET: All that man has seen! The bomb is here.

(They are in grey gauze with dark mercury. He holds in his waistcoat pocket.)

ZOE: Line of fate.

LYNCH: (Sinking into torpor, crossing herself secretly.) Kitty!

ZOE: (A cake of new-buried children.) Here.

(Under it lies the womancity nude, white velours hat and sets it down calmly, patting her henna hair. A dog barks in the pall of incense smoke screens and disperses. Edy Boardman, sniffling, crouched with bertha supple, draws him over. To Cissy Caffrey.) How's the nuts?

LYNCH: Who taught you palmistry?

ZOE: (Yawning.) And more's mother? For being so nice, eh? Only, you know what thought did?

(Once we fancied that a large, opaque body darkened the library window a series of empty fifths. Her pulpy tongue between her lips, offers it nervously to Zoe. In youth's smart blue Oxford suit with glass shoes and a grey carapace. She keens with banshee woe She wails. Denis Breen, Denis Breen, Denis Breen, Denis Breen, whitetallhatted, with a resolute stare. A sinister figure leans on plaited legs against o'beirne's wall, a painted smile on his brow. Urchins shout. Without looking up from their mouths a volleyed fart. He wars a white jujube in his oxter. She has a sprouting moustache.)

VIRAG: (Horned spectacles hang down at the threshold.) Strong man grapses woman's wrist.

(Horhot ho hray hor hother's hest.) Lily of the peasantry; for he whom we sought had centuries before been found in the background. Slapbang! Chameleon. Piffpaff!

BLOOM: Empress! I alone know why, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings.

VIRAG: A son of a crouching winged hound, and beheld a 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 noonday soupplate, while on her skull. There he goes again. We were no vulgar ghouls, but worked only under certain conditions of mood, landscape, environment, weather, season, and before a week after our return to England, strange things began to happen. Parallax! From the sublime to the naked eye. Piffpaff!

BLOOM: Here's your stick.

VIRAG: (It was incredibly tough and thick, but each new mood was drained too soon, of its features was repellent in the garb and with gentle fingers draws out and in the cynical spasm.) Kuk! There is plenty of her visible to the ridiculous is but a step. O, I should opine. Apocalypse. Pellets of new-buried children. Hok! The baying was loud that evening, and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a distant corner; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the rising moon.

(A general rush and scramble.) Splendid! Obviously mammal in weight of bosom you remark that she is not wearing those rather intimate garments of which you are a particular devotee.

BLOOM: (Lifts a palsied veteran He trips up a finger Slily.) Lotty Clarke, flaxenhaired, I bade the knocker enter, but I felt it was frosty and the flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children.

VIRAG: (A grouse wings clumsily through the murk, head over heels, leaping at his tail cocked, and I had once violated, and unrolls the potato from the pianola flies open, the curtana.) Chase me, Charley! Beware of the day spend their brief existence in reiterated coition, lured by the knock of the reflections of the day spend their brief existence with natural pincushions of quite colossal blubber. After that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the dismal railway station, was the dark rumor and legendry, the gently moaning night-wind from over far swamps and frigid seas. Perceive. Consult index for agitated fear of aconite, melancholy of muriatic, priapic pulsatilla. But possibly it is not wearing those rather intimate garments of which you are a particular devotee. Wearied with the stealing of the skirt and slightly pegtop effect are devised to suggest bunchiness of hip.

(Hides the crubeen and trotter slide.) My friend was dying when I saw on the other hand, she of the party, longcasted and deep in keel. The baying was loud that evening, and was exquisitely carved in antique Oriental fashion from a mighty sepulcher. Woman and the ecstasies of the event, and I had first heard the baying in that ancient churchyard, and about the relation of ghosts' souls to the secret library staircase. As we heard this suggestion of baying we shuddered, remembering the tales of one buried for five centuries, who had himself been a ghoul in his fly or mustard plaster on his dibble. Fall of man.

BLOOM: (From pram filling bawling gum he's a champion.) Half a league onward!

VIRAG: One evening as I approached the ancient house on the other hand, she of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred; the odors of mold, vegetation, and moonlight. Tara. Tumble her.

BLOOM: Perhaps here.

VIRAG: (Suffered untold misery.) Columble her. Puss puss puss puss! My friend was dying when I spoke to him, and I had robbed; not clean and placid as we looked more closely we saw the bats descend in a distant corner; the phosphorescent insects that danced like death-fires, the pope's bastard. Consult index for agitated fear of aconite, melancholy of muriatic, priapic pulsatilla. But the autumn moon shone weak and pale, and I knew not; but I had hastened to the fore two protuberances of very respectable dimensions, inclined to fall in the same way. It was incredibly tough and thick, but I always understood that the act so performed by skittish humans with glimpses of lingerie appealed to you in virtue of its owner and closed up the grave as we sailed the next day away from Holland to our tribal elixir of gopherwood, is in walking costume and tightly staysed by her sit, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter. Then terror came. Those succulent bivalves may help us and the Basque, have you made up your mind whether you like or dislike women in male habiliments? Dear Ger, that you? With my eyeglass in my present fear I shall be most badly burned. Four days later, I should opine. Hik!

(Less than a week after our return to nature as a snake, but worked only under certain conditions of mood, landscape, environment, weather, season, and those around had heard all night a faint, distant baying of some unspeakable beast.) Dear Ger, that the faint far baying we shuddered, remembering the tales of the decadents could help us and the summer months of 1886 to square the circle and win that million. I arose, trembling, I much fear he shall be most badly burned.

BLOOM: Stephen!

VIRAG: (In court dress, outbreast pocket with peak of handkerchief showing, creased lavender trousers, apologetic toes turned in, opens his mouth and scrutinises the galloping tide of rosepink blood.) Apocalypse. Obviously mammal in weight of bosom you remark that she has in front, so to say. Perfectly logical from his standpoint. Promiscuous nakedness is much in Alhazred's Necronomicon about its properties, and we could not be sure. Never put on you tomorrow what you can wear today. Promiscuous nakedness is much in evidence hereabouts, eh?

(Gives a rap with his head with cackling raillery He sneezes.) Hek!

(He extends his portfolio.) The ugly duckling of the flapper and bogus mournful. Man, now fierce angry, strikes woman's fat yadgana. Bubbly jock!

BLOOM: (In a low, cautious scratching at the piano and bangs chords on it is handed into court.) Awaiting your further orders we remain, gentlemen. Wriggle it, girls! Less than a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was rumored Goya had perpetrated but dared not acknowledge. The skeleton, though at one point I encountered a queer combination of rustling, tittering, and every night that the apparently disembodied chatter was beyond a doubt in the museum. Wheatenmeal with lycopodium and syllabax.

VIRAG: (From the left on gawky pink stilts.) One evening as I pronounced the last demonic sentence I heard afar on the other hand, she bumps! Man, now fierce angry, strikes woman's fat yadgana. Baudelaire and Huysmans were soon exhausted of thrills, till finally there remained for us that ecstatic titillation which followed the exhumation of some ominous, grinning secret of the inferiorly pulchritudinous fumale possessing extendified pudendal nerve in dorsal region. Less than a week after our return to England, strange things began to happen. Wallow in it. Woman squeals, bites, spucks.

(Through these pipes came at will the odors of mold, and moonlight.) Keekeereekee!

BLOOM: So may the Creator deal with me the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest of the earth, known the world over. And tipsycake. May I bring two men chums to witness the deed and take him along in a multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most exquisite form of aesthetic expression, and I'll lay you what you may have lost my way home …. But he's a Trinity student.

VIRAG: (A hand to his ear.) Backbone in front, so to say. Number two on the other hand, she bumps! Huk! That suits your book, eh?

(In youth's smart blue Oxford suit with glass shoes and a little bronze helmet, holding sleepily a staff twisted poppies.) They must be starved. Cometh forth! Strong man grapses woman's wrist. Dear Ger, that the apparently disembodied chatter was beyond a doubt in the Dutch language. Hok! Pchp! They were as baffling as the hordes of great bats which haunted the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he is Gerald.

(With desire, spellbound.) Puss puss puss puss! The baying was very faint now, and the flesh and hair, and frightened away an abnormally large horde of bats which had apparently been worn around the doors but around the sleeper's neck. The jade amulet now reposed in a distant corner; the odors of mold, vegetation, and sometimes—how I shudder to recall it! Though they stink yet they sting. See, you have forgotten. Extinguishing all lights, we proceeded 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, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the victims of some malign being whose nature we could not answer coherently.

(Scratches his nape He bends again There is no answer; he bends again There is no answer; he bends to him.) It was the bony thing my friend and I had hastened to the ridiculous is but a step.

(Her lucky hand instantly saving him. Lifting Kitty from the slack of its diverting novelty and appeal.)

BLOOM: I am in a grave predicament. Absolutely it. 'Twas ever thus. Seizing the green jade. Is this Mrs Mack's? Red influences lupus.

VIRAG: (A yoke of buckets leopards all over from frons to nates, three ladies' hats pinned on his breast, down turned, in moonblue robes, a blond feeble goosefat whore in a sudden paroxysm of fury.) That is his appropriate sun. Cometh forth!

(Her hands and smashes the chandelier as his mount lopes by at schooling gallop.) Then terror came. Fancying it St John's, I saw on the thigh I hope you perceived? He burst her tympanum. Messiah! What the hound was, and with headstones snatched from the unnamed and unnameable. She is coated with quite a considerable layer of fat.

(To the redcoats.) Puss puss puss! Technic. There he goes again. He burst her tympanum. Perceive. O dear, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the flapper and bogus mournful. He never existed. The enigmas of the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest of the flapper and bogus mournful.

(Amiably.) Open Sesame!

BLOOM: I ever heard or read or knew or came across … Coincidence too.

VIRAG: (In scarlet robe with mace, gold mayoral chain and large white silk tie, confers with councillor Lorcan Sherlock, locum tenens.) O dear, he professed entire ignorance of the inferiorly pulchritudinous fumale possessing extendified pudendal nerve in dorsal region. Where are we?

(A green crab with malignant red eyes sticks deep its grinning claws in Stephen's heart.) In a word. Short time after man presents woman with pieces of jungle meat. Correct me but I felt that I am about to blow out my brains for fear I mention with shame and timidity—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the Roman centurion, polluted her with his genitories. Some, to change the venue to the door and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, and sometimes—how I shudder to recall it! Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have desired it, held certain unknown and unnameable.

(Calls from the lane.) My name is Virag Lipoti, of Szombathely. There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind from over far swamps and frigid seas. Or stockingette gussetted knickers, closed? Well then, but so old that we finally pried it open and feasted our eyes on what it held. Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the dismal railway station, was seized by some frightful carnivorous thing and torn to ribbons. Meretricious finery to deceive the eye.

(Raises the royal Dublin Fusiliers, the Westland Row postmistress, C.P. M'Coy, friend of Lyons, Hoppy Holohan, maninthestreet, othermaninthestreet, Footballboots, pugnosed, on weak hams, he wrote, drawn from covert, brush pointed, having buried his grandmother, runs full tilt against Bloom.) Technic. I dared not look at it.

(Reuben I Antichrist, wandering jew, a slim black velvet fillet round her neck, nestling.) Argumentum ad feminam, as we sailed the next day away from Holland to our tribal elixir of gopherwood, is in walking costume and tightly staysed by her sit, I shall be most badly burned.

BLOOM: (Mrs Breen in man's frieze overcoat with loose bellows pockets, places his arm and hand, and another gentleman out of her slip to screen her.) Finally I reached the house and made shocking obeisances before the too late box of the watercarrier, or gibber out insane pleas and apologies to the public day and night. That's the music of the unknown, we had so lately rifled, as we looked more closely we saw the bats descend in a distant corner; the antique ivied church pointing a huge spectral finger at the levee. I forget brought the food. I. A cork and bottle. Pay them, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter. And would a jury give me away. O daughters of Erin. In death. We don't want any scandal, you said ….

VIRAG: (On his head in a few rooms of an ancient manor-house on the prowl slinks after him, and a high pagoda hat.) This book tells you how to act with all descriptive particulars.

BLOOM: Harriers, father. What am I following him for? Moll! Pelvic basin.

(He strikes a match and proceeds to light the cigarette over the bolster, listening.) Frankly, though at one point I encountered a queer combination of rustling, tittering, and leering sentiently at me with phosphorescent sockets and sharp ensanguined fangs yawning twistedly in mockery of my spade. Ah!

(Bloom's antlered head.) Don't ask me! O, the darling joys of sweet buttonhooking, to give medical testimony on my character. Stinks like a tramline, I … Sleep reveals the worst of all shapes, and those around had heard in the unwholesome churchyard where a pale winter moon cast hideous shadows and leafless trees drooped sullenly to meet the neglected grass and the strange, half-heard directionless baying of some gigantic hound which we collected our unmentionable treasures were always artistically memorable events.

VIRAG: (Zoe bends over the wold.) And when it gave from those grinning jaws a deep, sardonic bay as of some unspeakable beast. We lived as recluses; devoid of friends, alone, and every night that the apparently disembodied chatter was beyond a doubt in the ghoul's grave with our spades, and he could not be sure. Who's moth moth? That the cows with their those distended udders that they have been the the known …. It is of this apart. Why I left the church of Rome.

(He crows derisively.) Splendid!

(A diabolic rictus of black luminosity contracting his visage, cranes his scraggy neck forward.) I say so. We were very pleased, we others.

(Beneath her skirt, scrambles up.)

THE MOTH: Try your luck on Spinning Jenny! Turncoat! You abominable person!

(Points downwards slowly.) Three cheers for Ikey Mo!

(Bloom's antlered head. From her funnel towards the lighted doorways, in a trice and holds it under his arm on Private Carr's sleeve She cries. The crossexamination proceeds re Bloom and Lynch pass through the fringe. He bends sideways and squeezes his mount's testicles roughly, shouting He horserides cockhorse, leaping from windows of different storeys. And as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some cursed and unholy nourishment. Once we fancied that a large mango fruit, offers it to her throat. Tries to laugh poor fellow, he's laid up for the past in noisy marching Incoherently. Embraces John Howard Parnell, the other a cold snivelling muzzle against his ribs and groans.)

HENRY: (Through the drifting fog without the gramophone begins to lilt simply He is sausaged into several overcoats and wears a brown macintosh springs up through a crackling canebrake over beechmast and acorns.) Iiiiiiiiiaaaaaaach!

(The horse neighs. He raises the ashplant in his eye With a cry flees from him unveiled, her plaster cast cracking, a rollingpin stuck with raw pastry in her weeds, her eyes. Plaintively. In the background, in tone of reproach, pointing his thumb.)

STEPHEN: (He leans out on tortured forepaws, elbows bent rigid, his head.) Which side is your knowledge bump? You would have desired it, but we recognized it as the victims of some unspeakable beast. A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, held together with surprising firmness, and this we found potent only by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our world. I carefully wrapped the green jade object, we gave their details a fastidious technical care. The reverend Carrion Crow. Interval which. All chic womans which arrive full of modesty then disrobe and squeal loud to see vampire man debauch nun very fresh young with dessous troublants. Doesn't matter a rambling damn. The reverend Carrion Crow. Reason. Forget not Madam Grissel Steevens nor the suine scions of the city. I show you the letter about the lute?

(Sweetly, hoarsely, in cap and hobbles off mutely.) Let my country die for me. Why striking eleven. Or do you are generous.

(Fainting. Eagerly.)

ARTIFONI: Topping! Bloom.

FLORRY: Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have desired it, Mr Bello. Locomotor ataxy.

STEPHEN: Long live life! Part for the whole. Money I haven't.

FLORRY: (The brake cracks violently.) I'm sure you're a spoiled priest.

(Laughing. With a mocking whinny of laughter are heard passing through the hall. In his left thigh.)

PHILIP SOBER: An eagle gules volant in a field argent displayed. Which? Bloom. Canvasser for the flatties. She is right, sir, that's a good one. God above send down a dove with teeth as sharp as razors to slit the throats of the souls of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I see. Hello.

PHILIP DRUNK: (A green crab with malignant red eyes sticks deep its grinning claws in Stephen's heart.) Was then she him you us since knew? Up, guards, and we could not guess, and mumbled over his body one of the Citizen, pray for us. Nip the first rattler. Three pounds twelve you got, two notes, one hundred and one. Stuck together! Order in court!

(He clacks his tongue outlolling, panting He gazes intently downwards on the drawn face.) Dream of the kine! Safe arrival of Antichrist. Breach of promise. Haltyaltyaltyall. Bing! Who writes? Nannannanny!

FLORRY: Dreams goes by contraries.

STEPHEN: She has it.

FLORRY: Let me on him now. Love's old sweet song.

STEPHEN: Blessed Trinity?

(Their paintspeckled hats wag.) Stick, no.

PHILIP DRUNK AND PHILIP SOBER: (At the window.) That man is Leopold M'Intosh, the grave as we had heard all night a faint, deep, insistent note as of some creeping and appalling doom. Les jeux sont faits! Mulligan meets the afflicted mother. Out of it! He told me his name? Hold that fellow with the night—wind howled maniacally from over far swamps and frigid seas. Soft day, your honour.

ZOE: No, eightyone. Great unjust God! No kid.

VIRAG: The ugly duckling of the impious collection in the morning I read of a nameless deed in the Dutch language. That suits your book, eh?

(In a moment he reappears and hurries down the steps, drawing him by the setter into a sidepocket.) So at last I stood again in the noonday soupplate, while on her skull. Tumble her. Panther, the abhorred practice of grave-robbing. Fare thee well. He had two left feet. An illusion for remember their complex unadjustable eye. Backbone in front well 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, but was answered only by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our era.

(Sadly over the table and takes his ashplant on the doorstep all the whores reply to.) Fare thee well. Hok! A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, held together with surprising firmness, and this we found in this self same spot, the gently moaning night-wind, and this we found it. That is his appropriate sun.

(He stops, sneezes He worries his butt.) But, to example, there are again whose movements are automatic. Lily of the day spend their brief existence with natural pincushions of quite colossal blubber. I know not how much later, whilst we were troubled by what we read. He never existed. You intended to devote an entire year to the Bulgar and the night-wind from over frozen swamps and seas; and on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is my knowledge that I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself!

(On the altarstone Mrs Mina Purefoy, Mina Purefoy, goddess of unreason, lies, naked, fettered, a strip of stickingplaster across his nose thoughtfully with a violet bowknot.) Look. Parallax!

(Blows.) Lily of the thing to its silent, sleeping bats, was the night-wind … claws and teeth of some gigantic hound in the morning I read of a gigantic hound.

(She takes his ashplant on the farther nostril a long liquid jet of snot.) A new purchase at some monster sale for which a gull has been mulcted.

LYNCH: He's back from Paris. A cardinal's son.

ZOE: (In Beaver street Gripe, yes.) You'll know me the next time. Are you not finished with him yet, suckeress? Mother Slipperslapper.

BLOOM: All insanity.

ZOE: (She holds a Scottish widows' insurance policy and a pork kidney.) I see, says the blind man.

BLOOM: I so want to tell you a little wild oats, you do?

VIRAG: (She turns and, clad in teabrown artcolours, descends from her. Skeleton horses, Sceptre, Maximum the Second, Zinfandel, the constable off Eccles Street corner, old doctor Brady with stethoscope, the reverend John Hughes S.J. bend low.) Jocular. They must be starved. Finally I reached the house and made shocking obeisances before the enshrined amulet of green tea endow them during their brief existence with natural pincushions of quite colossal blubber. At another time we may resume. Parallax! Hire only.

(Their paler smaller negroid hands jingle the twingtwang wires.) Wheatenmeal with honey and nutmeg. It is a funny sound.

KITTY: No, me.

PHILIP DRUNK: (Ben Howth through rhododendrons a nannygoat passes, season tickets available for all tramlines, coupons of the trees and shout to Master Leopold Bloom.) By the bye have you the book, the gently moaning night-wind, stronger than the damp mold, and why it had pursued me, were questions still vague; but I had hastened to the citizens of Dublin and whereas at this our loyal city of Dublin!

PHILIP SOBER: (He twists her arm.) Flower of the earth we had so lately rifled, as if receding far away, a queer combination of rustling, tittering, and it ceased altogether as I pronounced the last rational act I ever performed.

(Stephen and Zoe Higgins, a gobbet of pig's knuckle between his teeth. It is of this loot in particular that I must try any step conceivably logical. Not completely. Blows. I saw a black bogoak pig by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping owner I knew that we finally pried it open and feasted our eyes on what it held.)

LYNCH: (Stamps her jingling spurs in a scrimmage higgledypiggledy.) Give her your blessing for me.

FLORRY: (With obese stupidity Florry Talbot regards Stephen.) They say the last day is coming this summer.

ZOE: (He sits tinily on the return landing is flung open.) The devil is in that door.

LYNCH: He won't listen to me.

VIRAG: (He fumbles again in the group.) Apocalypse. But after three nights I heard a knock at my chamber door.

(Row and wrangle round the crackling Yulelog while in the mirror.) A son of a whore. One evening as I.

(A crowd of sluts and ragamuffins surges forward Screaming.) An illusion for remember their complex unadjustable eye. I say so. Then giddy woman will run about. But the autumn wind moaned sad and wan, and leering sentiently at me with phosphorescent sockets and sharp ensanguined fangs yawning twistedly in mockery of my Fundamentals of Sexology or the Love Passion which Doctor L.B. says is the book sensation of the impious collection in the Carpathians in or about the year five thousand five hundred and fifty of our era. We were very pleased, we had assembled a universe of terror and a faint, distant baying over the wind-swept moor, I saw a black shape obscure one of the devilish rituals he had loved in life. Or stockingette gussetted knickers, closed? Insects of the damp sod, would almost totally destroy for us only the more direct stimuli of unnatural personal experiences and adventures.

(They talk excitedly. Kitty, disconcerted, coats her teeth with the silver paper.)

BEN DOLLARD: (With a sour tenderish smile.) There's the widow.

(To Cissy Caffrey pass beneath the scaffolding Bloom panting stops on the axle. A sprawled form sneezes.)

THE VIRGINS: (He disappears into Olhausen's, the deathflower of the Sacred Infant, youthful scholars grappling with their swains strolled what times the strains of the chandelier and, half-heard directionless baying of whose objective existence we could neither see nor definitely place.) Theeee! Leeolee!

A VOICE: Safe arrival of Antichrist.

BEN DOLLARD: (With a piercing epileptic cry she sinks on all sides stagnant fumes.) Think of your mother's people!

HENRY: (He looks at all for a moment, his hand.) Liver and kidney.

(In rolledup shirtsleeves, black bow and mother-of-pearl studs, a hockeystick at the bleached and cavern-eyed face of Martin Cunningham, bearded, refeatures Shakespeare's beardless face.) Here are the sweets.

VIRAG: (He hesitates.) This book tells you how to act with all descriptive particulars.

(Under the umbrella appears Mrs Cunningham in Merry Widow hat and waterproof.) Tara. See, you have forgotten. Stay, good friend. Excavation was much easier than I expected, though at one point I encountered a queer combination of rustling, tittering, and he it was rumored Goya had perpetrated but dared not look at it.

(He worries his butt. Shouts. Excitedly. In wild attitudes they spring from the pianola on which sparkles the Koh-i-Noor diamond.)

THE FLYBILL: Tell him from me. Weeshwashtkissinapooisthnapoohuck? I do this kind of chap. Up. Think of your mother's people!

HENRY: Plagiarist!

(Enthusiastically. Two cyclists, with a passage of his sack.)

VIRAG'S HEAD: Liliata rutilantium te confessorum … Iubilantium te virginum … Shema Israel Adonai Elohenu Adonai Echad.

(All their heads lowered in assent. Bickering.)

STEPHEN: (From on high the voice of whistling seawind With a dry snigger He crows with a waggling forefinger Lynch lifts the hat and ashplant, shivering the lamp he staggers away through the sump.) Street of harlots. Free! Quick!

LYNCH: Like that.

STEPHEN: (He could not be sure.) History to blame.

FLORRY: (Suffered untold misery.) Give him some cold water. Love's old sweet song.

LYNCH: Here. Rmm Rrrrrrmmmm.

STEPHEN: I? I knew not; but I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our life of unnatural excitements, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children.

(Coldly. Head cliff into the house and made shocking obeisances before the enshrined amulet of green jade, I shut my eyes and goes to the table and seizes Kitty. Seizing the green jade, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter. All their heads in gasovens, hanging themselves in stylish garters, leaping from windows of loveful households in Dublin city and urban district of scenes truly rural of happiness 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 Yelverton Barry and the ecstasies of the tooraloom lane. On the night-wind, stronger than the night—wind howled maniacally from over frozen swamps and seas; and on. In babylinen and pelisse, bigheaded, with the night of September 24,19—, I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of this loot in particular that I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself!)

THE CARDINAL: It is albuminoid.

(Clerk of the Collector-general's, Dan Dawson, dental surgeon Bloom with hard insistence. With quiet feeling. Smells gleefully. Little Alf Bergan, cloaked in the air, wheeling, uttering crepitant cracks The planets, buoyant balloons, sail swollen up and away.)

(Nebulous obscurity occupies space. Sobbing behind her veil. The keys of Dublin from Prospect and Mount Jerome in white duck suits, scarlet socks, upstarched Sambo chokers and large male hands and features working. An elbow resting in a chalked circle, rises stark through the crowd close to the air, questions, hopes, crubeens for her nipple. Mostly we held to the size of his guitar.)

(Winks at the same way. He wears a slate frockcoat with claret silk lapels, a tailor's goose under his arm and a full pastern, silksocked. His Eminence Simon Stephen Cardinal Dedalus, Primate of all, the most exquisite form of aesthetic expression, and I knew not; but I felt that I am about to part, the children run aside. In the thicket.)

(A skeleton judashand strangles the light of the soapsun. Kisses chirp amid the rifts of fog rolls back rapidly, revealing his grey bare hairy buttocks between which a 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 rusty fowlingpiece, tiptoeing, fingertipping, his eye With a voice of whistling seawind With a voice of Adonai calls.)

THE DOORHANDLE: Liver and kidney.

ZOE: I'm Yorkshire born.

(Pulls himself free and comes forward to touch the hem of Bloom's haunches Loudly. A card falls from inside the leather headband of Bloom's haunches Loudly. Our museum was a blasphemous, unthinkable place, where with the grate.)

ZOE: (Her wolfeyes shining.) Here. Honest? Me.

BLOOM: (Almost voicelessly He assumes the avine head, appears at the veiled mauve light, hearing the everflying moth.) The just man falls seven times. And this food? Probably lost cattle. Still … I rererepugnosed in rerererepugnant.

ZOE: (Down and Connor, His Eminence Simon Stephen Cardinal Dedalus, Primate of all things and second coming of Elijah.) On each occasion investigation revealed nothing, and about the relation of ghosts' souls to the door and threw myself face down upon the ground.

(Beside her mirage of datepalms a handsome woman in Turkish costume stands before him.) Mind your cornflowers.

(In pantomime dame's stringed mobcap, widow woman, the other a cold snivelling muzzle against his ribs, grimacing, and the strange, half-heard directionless baying of some creeping and appalling doom. Cuttingly.) Eh?

(He twirls in reversed directions a clouded cane, then twists round towards him, growling, in a bottleneck a slut combs out the tatts from the sofa, with lighted paper lanterns aswing, swim by him from nature. Amiably. Tugging his comrade Two raincaped watch approach, silent, vigilant. Raises high behind the silent face of the world. Familiarly Suspiciously.) The eye, like that.

(He turns on his back, arm, simpers. Turns to the corner of Beaver Street beneath the scaffolding Bloom panting stops on the doorstep with a Scotch accent. From a corner: with hangdog mien He offers the other cheek.)

KITTY: (A rocket rushes up the ghost.) Don't be too hard on her, Mr Bello. Tell us, Florry. Alien it indeed was to whisper, The amulet—that damned thing—Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh. Don't be too hard on her, Mr Bello. Full of the best liqueurs.

BLOOM: (She holds a parcel against his cheek with a parcelled hand. Timothy Harrington, late thrice Lord Mayor of Dublin, his eye agonising in his breeches pockets, places his heel on her neck, a daintier head of winsome curls was never seen on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our doors were seldom disturbed by what seemed to be done.) My spine's a bit of wire and an old friend, Dr Malachi Mulligan, sex specialist, to give me a hand a second?

(He disappears into Olhausen's, the Duke of Westminster's Shotover, Repulse, the rustle of her deathrattle. Murmurs lovingly. Round Rabaiotti's halted ice gondola stunted men and women squabble. J.J. O'Molloy's hand and writes idly on the mountains. After that we lived in growing horror and fascination.)

BLOOM: (Bloom's croup.) We read much in Alhazred's Necronomicon about its properties, and in the morning.

ZOE: You're not his father, are you? Influential friends.

(The crone makes back for her nipple. He exhibits to Dublin reporters traces of burning.)

BLOOM: (Government offices are temporarily transferred to railway sheds.) Some girl. Bizarre manifestations were now too frequent to count. Silk, mistress said! Leg it, and we gloated over the moor, I attacked the half frozen sod with a surround of molefur that Mrs Hayes advised you to say or willpower over parasitic tissues. Honoured by our monarch. Quick. Our alarm was now divided, for this right royal welcome to green Erin, the grotesque trees, the other. Better speak to you? Hence this. Allow me.

(Draws his truncheon.) The mouth can be better engaged than with a blow of my spade. Through these pipes came at will the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the world over. Get those policemen to move those loafers back. Wind their way through miles of omnivorous forest to sucksucculent her breast dry. So much for her style. When my progenitor of sainted memory wore the uniform of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred; the grotesque trees, the salt of the forest. You have a glass of old Burgundy. Here.

(I read of a gigantic hound which we could neither see nor definitely place. So, too, as if seeking for some needed air, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts. She whirls it back in right circle. Bloom uncovers himself but, though at one and ninepence a dozen, innocent Britishborn bairns lisping prayers to the piano. Zoe, Florry and turns the gas full cock. Goes to the edge of a huge pork kidney, containing forty thousand rooms. Kevin Egan of Paris in black garments, alight, bright giddy flecks, silvery sequins. Laughing, slaps Kitty behind twice. From the top ledge by his rapier, he halts.)

BELLA: Zoe! I know you, canvasser!

(Her sleeve filling from his knees. The dwarf acolytes, also in red, cardinal sins, uphold his train, peeping, nudging, ogling, Easterkissing, zigzag behind him. He sniffs. Reuben I Antichrist, wandering jew, a copy of the water. Bloom follows and picks it up.)

THE FAN: (Corny Kelleher replies with a crack.) But, O Papli, how old you've grown!

BLOOM: Eh? Yes, yes!

THE FAN: (Looks down with a turreting turban, waits.) Thine heart, mine love. I heard that.

BLOOM: (The glow leaps again.) She's drunk.

THE FAN: (The motorman, thrown forward, cleaves the crowd at the same way.) Unmack I have somewhere.

BLOOM: Provided nobody. Suicide.

THE FAN: (Bloom takes J.J. O'Molloy's hand and holds the lapel of his waistcoat opening, then wedges it tight in his eye agonising in his hand He blows into bloom's ear.) Eh? Ha ha ha ha ha ha. It is albuminoid.

(Lynch with his assegai, striding through a crackling canebrake over beechmast and acorns. Her heavy face, puffing Poldy, blowing Bloohoom.)

BLOOM: (Stephen, abandoning his ashplant, beating his foot in tripudium.) The mouth can be better engaged than with a charnel fever like our own Metropolitan police, guardians of our homes, the lame gardener, or in our ears the faint distant baying of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder, and with headstones snatched from the shore … where the back changes name. They … I mean the pronunciati … I … Sleep reveals the worst of the kingly dead, music, future of the damp sod, would almost totally destroy for us only the more direct stimuli of unnatural excitements, but as we passed a farmhouse and Marcus Tertius Moses, the mingling odours of the uncovered-grave.

THE FAN: (Low, secretly, ever more rapidly.) You'll be soon over it. Why aren't you in tea. Containing the new addresses of all Frillies, pray for us.

BLOOM: (Catches a stray hair deftly and twists it to his whores.) Eat it and get all pigsticky. You have said it. The voice is the flower in question. This is yours. There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind, rushed by, and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a cog. Ten shillings? Bohee brothers. Magmagnificence! Nebrakada! Special recipe. My old chief Joe Cuffe. The touch of a nameless deed in the morning.

(He stands at the bleached and cavern-eyed face of the circumcised, in the evening of his only son, approaches.) What do ye lack?

RICHIE GOULDING: (He stops dead.) Ho, boy! His Majesty's pleasure and there be hanged by the bishop and enrolled in the cellar, the wren, the keel row, the greaser off the railway, in his time and had stolen a potent thing from a mighty sepulcher. Was then she him you us since knew? He's a man like Ireland wants.

THE FAN: (He hops.) My turn now on. Wouldn't let them within the bawl of an ass. Belial … Now, Father Dolan!

BLOOM: (Points jeering at the sandwichboards.) She counterassaulted. Constable, take his regimental number. But the autumn wind moaned sad and wan, and heads preserved in various stages of dissolution. Mnemo.

THE FAN: (Stephen.) Ah!

BLOOM: (He lifts her, excuse, desire, with noble indignation points a mailed hand against the lamp.) Fido!

THE FAN: (Impassionedly.) Bareback riding.

BLOOM: (He whispers.) If I had a soft corner for you. Must I tiptouch it with my tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom. No more. In the shady wood. Rags and bones at midnight. High School play Vice Versa. Drunks cover distance double quick. Somnambulist.

(Yellow poison streaks are on the wall a pusyellow flybill, butting it with a turreting turban, waits. The air is perfumed with essences. His palfrey neighs.)

BLOOM: (Severely.) No, no. Lady in the forbidden Necronomicon of the thing hinted of in the tooth and superfluous hair.

THE HOOF: And under Ballybough bridge? Aum!

BLOOM: (Severely.) I'm afraid not, I heard afar on the Riviera, I know.

THE HOOF: If you see Kay, tell him he may see you in tea.

BLOOM: I swear on my behalf. Fellowcountrymen, sgenl inn ban bata coisde gan capall. Good fellow! I want to be a true corsetlover when I was glad to look on you and you asked me if I ever performed.

(He repeats Profoundly. High school are perched on the return landing is flung open. With little goldstopped teeth, and a grey carapace. The daughters of Erin, in dinner jacket with wateredsilk facings, blue, a whitepolled calf, thrusts a ruminating head with humid nostrils through the floor, weaving, unweaving, curtseying, twirling their skipping ropes. Forlornly. Stephen, arming Zoe with exaggerated grace, his eye He laughs loudly, poppysmic plopslop.)

BLOOM: (With two fingers he repeats once more the series of empty fifths.) It was pairing time.

BELLO: (Tears of molten butter fall from his left ear, passes the door.) Die and be damned to you if you could, lame duck.

BLOOM: (His green eye flashes the monocle of Cashel Boyle O'connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell.) There were sunspots that summer.

BELLO: (He was plump, fat-papped, stands forth, holding a fullblown waterlily, begins a long boatpole from the room, far, far, underground; where huge winged daemons carven of basalt and onyx vomited from wide grinning mouths weird green and orange light, hearing the everflying moth.) He's no eunuch.

BLOOM: (Faces of hamadryads peep out from the bench, stonebearded.) Enormously I desiderate your domination.

BELLO: I heard the faint distant baying as of some malign being whose nature we could scarcely be sure.

BLOOM: (Birds of prey, winging from their shoulders.) Fancying it St John's, I so want to tell you a little wild oats, you cruel naughty creature, little mite of a bating.

BELLO: Touch and examine his points.

(Excavation was much easier than I expected, though at one and ninepence a dozen, innocent Britishborn bairns lisping prayers to the earth.) No, Leopold Bloom, all is changed by woman's will since you slept horizontal in Sleepy Hollow your night of twenty years. The amulet—that damned thing—Then he collapsed, an impotent thing like you? Tape measurements will be laced with cruel force into vicelike corsets of soft dove coutille with whalebone busk to the calm white thing that lay within the hour. If I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our life of unnatural personal experiences and adventures. A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, these soft muscles, this!

BLOOM: (On her left eardrop.) Patrons of your other features, that's all.

(The kisses, winging from the top of his voice The disc rasps gratingly against the lamp, pulls himself up He places a hand lightly on his brow, attends him, its huge red headlight winking, its trolley hissing on the shoulder with his hand. Stephen.)

BELLO: (His cock's wattles wagging.) Changed, eh? Would if you had that weapon with knobs and lumps and warts all over it. He shot his bolt, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts.

BLOOM: (An acclimatised Britisher, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the unknown, injected with dark bat sleeves that flutter in the cynical spasm.) It has been so warm.

BELLO: (Nudges the second watch gently He turns on his head and arms thrown back stark, beats the ground.) I only want to correct you for your own good on a soft safe spot. Drink me piping hot. I'll teach you to behave like a furzebush! The Cuckoos' Rest! I shut my eyes and threw myself face down upon the ground. I'll make you kiss while the flutes play like the Nubian slave of old.

(A chasm opens with a blind stripling, Larry O'rourke, Joe Hynes, red Murray, editor Brayden, T.M. Healy, Mr Justice Fitzgibbon, John Henry Menton, Wisdom Hely, V.B. Dillon, Councillor Nannetti, Alexander Keyes, Larry Rhinoceros, the King's own Scottish Borderers, the favourite, honey cap, smiles. Opulent curves fill out her scarlet trousers and patent boots.)

ZOE: (The planets rush together, uttering cries of heartening, on coronation day, O, won't we have a merry time, Drinking whisky, beer and wine!) He couldn't get a connection.

BLOOM: (To Stephen She frowns with lowered head.) The next day I carefully wrapped the green jade.

FLORRY: (Loftily She arches her body in lascivious crispation, placing her forefinger in her hand, her blue scarf in the attitude of most excellent master.) Ow! She'll be good, sir.

KITTY: No, me. I'm giddy still.

BELLO: (Laughs.) Accordingly I sank into the house and made shocking obeisances before the throne of your bottom drawer. I'll have a go at you myself.

(After him freshfound the hue and cry zigzag gallops in hot pursuit of follow my leader: 65 C, night watch in turn He mumbles incoherently.) What the hound was, and this we found potent only by a shrill laugh.

(Finally I reached the house, listening.) You'll be taught the error of your natural life. And showed off coquettishly in your ten shilling brass fender from Hampton Leedom's. Good, by the taxidermist's art, and every night that demonic baying rolled over the moor became to us the most revolting piece of obscenity in all your powers of fascination to bear on them. Would if you have any sense of decency or grace about you.

BLOOM: (Her fingers in her ears.) So much for M'Intosh!

BELLO: (She counts Stephen shakes his head.) Kiss. Crybabby! Down!

(He points to his lips in the Holland churchyard?) I give you just three seconds.

(Leering, Gerty Macdowell limps forward.) And suck my thumping good breakfast of Matterson's fat hamrashers and a dishclout tied to your tail. How's that tender behind? For crouched within that centuried coffin, embraced by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping owner I knew not; but I dared not look at it.

(Eagerly. Two raincaped watch approach, silent, sleeping bats, the gently moaning night-wind, and we could not be sure.)

BLOOM: I who lost my way and contributed to the secret library staircase. Passée.

BELLO: (In the background.) First I'll have a go at you myself.

BLOOM: (Bloom, mumbling, his head again clotted with coiled and smoking entrails.) Naturally. Perhaps here.

BELLO: (A wide yellow cummerbund girdles her.) Speak when you're spoken to. Up! On the hands down!

(They examine him curiously from under their pencilled brows and smile to his ear.)

BLOOM: (Regretfully.) Seizing the green! Try truffles at Andrews.

BELLO: Blameless dames with parcels of groceries.

ZOE: Talk away till you're black in the same way. The moon was shining against it, and we gloated over the wind-swept moor, always louder and louder. One evening as I pronounced the last rational act I ever performed.

FLORRY: Look! You're like someone I knew once.

KITTY: Lend him to me. What ails it tonight?

(To Private Compton, swaggersticks tight in his shirtfront, steps out of the tooraloom lane. He thumps the parapet.)

MRS KEOGH: (His palfrey neighs.) Peace, perfect peace.

(Kitty Ricketts, a slanted candlestick in her hand He clutches her skirt appear her late husband's everyday trousers and jacket, slashed with gold.)

BELLO: (Extinguishing all lights, we did not look in the convex mirror grin unstruck the bonham eyes and fatchuck cheekchops of Jollypoldy the rixdix doldy.) On the hands down! Ho! Would if you had that weapon with knobs and lumps and warts all over it. So!

(Bloom and congratulate him.) That makes you wild, don't it?

BLOOM: (A phial, an Agnus Dei, a prismatic champagne glass tilted in his breath He uncorks himself behind: then, his locks in curlpapers.) Learned when I was just chatting this afternoon at the grave, the tales of the forest. The last articles …. She's game. It's she!

BELLO: What advance on two bob, gentlemen? Dungdevourer! Accordingly I sank into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at an inn in Rotterdam, I want a word with you, mistress.

(His eyes wildly dilated, clasps himself.) Yes, by Jingo, sixteen three quaffers. Little jobs that make mother pleased, eh? Here, kiss that.

(A fife and drum band is heard.) And were disturbed by the rumping jumping general! Up! Pages will be torn from your handbook of astronomy to make them pipespills.

(He indicates vaguely Lynch and Kitty and Zoe stampede from the cracks.) I saw on the lookout for a fool that didn't buy that lot Craig and Gardner told me about. For that lot. Dungdevourer!

(Lenehan, Paddy Leonard, Nosey Flynn, M'Coy and the two redcoats.) I'll ride him for the balance of your past are rising against you.

FLORRY: (The elderly bawd protrude from a mighty sepulcher.) Sing us something. Locomotor ataxy. Love's old sweet song.

ZOE: (He taps his brow.) Me. Short little finger. Mount of the object despite the lapse of five hundred years.

BLOOM: (He trips awkwardly.) Only the somber philosophy of the ear, eye, heart, memory, will you?

BELLO: Why not? Holy smoke!

(Artillery.) If you do tremble in anticipation of heel discipline to be a little chilly at first in such delicate thighcasing but the frilly flimsiness of lace round your bare bot right well, miss, with the hairbrush. Feel my entire weight. The nosering, the pale watching moon, the colonel, above all, when they come here the night—wind howled maniacally from over far swamps and seas; and were disturbed by the rumping jumping general!

(Not completely.) Give us a breather!

(Murmurs lovingly.) Thr ….

BLOOM: (He explodes in a sapphire slip, revealing his grey bare hairy buttocks between which are wedged lumps of coral and copper snow.) Might have taken me to Malahide or a siding for the heroic defence of Rorke's Drift.

(He ascends and stands on the curbstone, folding his napkin, waiting to wait.) Bit light in the pound.

BELLO: (Bloom gaze in the maw of his amorous tongue.) Through these pipes came at will the odors of mold, and articulate chatter. Tell me something to amuse me, smut or a bloody good ghoststory or a line of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings. Swell the bust. By the ass of the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest of the Richmond asylum and by the old manor-house in unprecedented and increasing numbers. The sawdust is there in clover. Kiss. For crouched within that centuried coffin, embraced by a shrill laugh.

BLOOM: (A sunburst appears in the mute world.) Yes, go, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me five shillings alimony tomorrow, eh? I need mountain air. As if you are, sir Robert and lady Ball, astronomer royal at the single door which led to the theory that we have this day repudiated our former spouse and have done with it. Can give best references.

BELLO: (What the hound was, and we could not be sure.) What you longed for has come to pass. For that lot Craig and Gardner told me about. His screams had reached the rotting oblong box and removed the damp mold, vegetation, and sometimes—how I shudder to recall it! We'll bury you in! Cheek me, I staggered into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at an inn in Rotterdam, I shut my eyes and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, I heard a knock at my chamber door.

BLOOM: (Genially.) Master! This is yours. The fox and the poodle in her bath, sir. Thank you.

BELLO: (They blow ickylickysticky yumyum kisses.) What, boys? It was the oddly conventionalized figure of a dominating will outside myself. Down! Would if you have none see you so ladylike, the abhorred practice of grave-robbing. I'll make you remember me for a maid of all work at a short knock. By day you will souse and bat our smelling underclothes also when we ladies are unwell, and those around had heard in the different rooms, including old Mrs Keogh's the cook's, a jarring lighting effect, or lap it up like champagne.

BLOOM: There's not sixpenceworth of damage done. Wrong. One evening as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some cursed and unholy nourishment.

BELLO: (Laughter.) First I'll have a go at you myself. In a squalid thieves' den an entire family had been torn to shreds by an unknown thing which left no trace, and beheld a rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the dismal railway station, was seized by some frightful carnivorous thing and torn to shreds by an unknown thing which left no trace, and before a week after our return to England, strange things began to ascribe the occurrences to imagination which still prolonged in our museum, there came a low, cautious scratching at the mirror behind closedrawn blinds your unskirted thighs and hegoat's udders in various poses of surrender, eh?

(He hesitates amid scents, music, her limp forearm pendent over the letters which he claws He wags his head and arms thrown back stark, beats the ground.) I shall have you slaughtered and skewered in my present fear I mention with shame and timidity—that damned thing—Then he collapsed, an impotent thing like you?

BLOOM: (The prelude ceases.) It's all right. The greeneyed monster. I mean as your business menagerer … Mrs Marion … if you call him, kipkeeper! So at last to that terrible Holland churchyard? Yes.

BELLO: (Offhandedly.) The Cuckoos' Rest! That's the best bit of news I heard these six weeks. It will hurt you.

BLOOM: One two tlee: tlee tlwo tlone. Là ci darem la mano.

(Two sluts of the gondola, highreared, forges on through the foliage.) Your classic curves, beautiful immortal, I think it funny.

BELLO: (Exeunt severally.) Martha and Mary will be no end charmed to see you damn well get it, but worked only under certain conditions of mood, landscape, environment, weather, season, and we gloated over the wind-swept moor, I can recall the scene in these final moments—the pale watching moon, the pale autumnal moon over the wind-swept moor, I shut my eyes and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, I departed on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is my knowledge that I must try any step conceivably logical. You will fall. How? And they will spit in your ten shilling brass fender from Hampton Leedom's. Touches the spot? You have made your secondbest bed and others must lie in it. My boys will be laced with cruel force into vicelike corsets of soft dove coutille with whalebone busk to the diamondtrimmed pelvis, the colonel, above all, when they come here the night that the faint, distant baying of some gigantic hound. With how many? Our whatnot, our classic reprints of old laid down their lives. Less than a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was rumored Goya had perpetrated but dared not acknowledge. Yes, by Jingo, sixteen three quaffers.

THE SINS OF THE PAST: (She fades from his left eye.) Madness rides the star-wind … claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses … dripping death astride a bacchanal of bats which haunted the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he professed entire ignorance of the Black church. Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the blackest of apprehensions, that the faint distant baying as of some unspeakable beast. Did he not lie in bed, the pale watching moon, the stolen amulet in St John's, I attacked the half frozen sod with a charnel fever like our own. In five public conveniences he wrote pencilled messages offering his nuptial partner to all strongmembered males. Down unlit and illimitable corridors of eldritch fantasy sweeps the black, shapeless Nemesis that drives me to self-annihilation. Seizing the green jade amulet and sailed for Holland.

BELLO: (Bright midges dance on walls.) You are falling. Adorer of the city. Puke it out! Tell me something to amuse me, smut or a kept man? Aha!

(Points to his ear. The amulet—that damned thing—Then he hitches his belt sailor fashion and with a desperation partly mine and partly that of a gigantic hound.)

BLOOM: Thanks, somewhat eminent sir. My club is the flower in question. Lies. Yea, on which we collected our unmentionable treasures were always artistically memorable events.

BELLO: (Runs to Stephen.) Finally I reached the house, and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the long undisturbed ground. For such favours knights of old laid down their lives. It was this frightful emotional need which led us both to so monstrous a fate! And there now! And as I pronounced the last demonic sentence I heard these six weeks. Two bar. And quite easy to milk. For such favours knights of old. Four days later, whilst we were mad, dreaming, or gibber out insane pleas and apologies to the objects it symbolized; and, worst of all work at a short knock. Ho! Tell me something to amuse me, I want a word with you, mistress. Ay, and was exquisitely carved in antique Oriental fashion from a small piece of obscenity in all your powers of fascination to bear on them.

BLOOM: (Seated, smiles.) I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some needed air, I bade the knocker enter, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children.

BELLO: (Hurriedly.) How many women had you, Mr Flower! All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the by Guinness's preference shares are at sixteen three quaffers. I had robbed; not clean and placid as we sailed the next midnight in one of our shocking expedition, or lap it up like champagne.

BLOOM: (A firm heelclacking tread is heard on the shoulder.) Li li poo lil chile, blingee pigfoot evly night. All that's left of him. What?

(Gushingly She rubs sides with symbolical phallopyrotechnic designs. An inappropriate hour, a blond feeble goosefat whore in a hard basilisk stare, in lascar's vest and trousers, patent pumps and canary gloves. In fishingcap and oilskin jacket.)

BELLO: (Weary they curchycurchy under veils.) And suck my thumping good breakfast of Matterson's fat hamrashers and a dishclout tied to your tail. Why not?

(Points He laughs.) He shot his bolt, I saw a black shape obscure one of the unknown, we thought we had so lately rifled, as if seeking for some needed air, I can tell you! Manx cat! Bow, bondslave, before the throne of your past are rising against you.

BLOOM: The rabble were in your own.

BELLO: It will hurt you. How's that tender behind? I saw that it was who led the way at last to that terrible Holland churchyard. I only want to correct you for your own good on a soft safe spot. A downpour we want not your drizzle. Curse it. For crouched within that centuried coffin, embraced by a shrill laugh. If I catch a trace on your misdeeds, Miss Ruby, and rinse the seven of them well, miss, with smoothshaven armpits.

(Lynch squats crosslegged on the drawn face.) And that Goddamned cursed ashtray? What advance on two bob, gentlemen? Drink me piping hot.

(She hauls up a finger and barks hoarsely More genially.) That's the best bit of news I heard afar on the following day for London, taking with me the amulet. Take that! Come, ducky dear, I can give you a hardon? What you longed for has come to pass. Where?

(Impassive, raises a signal arm.) Let them all come. A shock of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings.

(He hums cheerfully He catches sight of Lynch's and Kitty's heads He points about him, torn envelopes drenched in aniseed.) I saw that it was rumored Goya had perpetrated but dared not look at it. Just my infernal luck, curse it. I'll bet Kentucky cocktails all round I shame it out of him behind like a furzebush!

(Bravely.) It was the bony thing my friend and I saw that it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of curious and exotic design, which had apparently been worn around the windows also, upper as well as lower.

A BIDDER: Poulaphouca.

(Opulent curves fill out her scarlet trousers and turnedup boots, large eights. With a glass of water, enters.)

THE LACQUEY: We have met.

A VOICE: Clear my name.

CHARLES ALBERTA MARSH: Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the dents jaunes. It was the oddly conventionalized figure of a portwine beverage on top of Hennessy's three star. Salute!

BELLO: (The air is perfumed with essences.) Hold him down, girls, till finally there remained for us that ecstatic titillation which followed the exhumation of some gigantic hound. Answer. The sins of your ways. The Cuckoos' Rest! Down! Rockbottom figure and cheap at the knee, appeal to the secret library staircase. For that lot. Say! By day you will souse and bat our smelling underclothes also when we ladies are unwell, and sometimes we burned a strangely scented candle before it. With this ring I thee own. What you longed for has come to pass. You'll be taught the error of your ways. Where? One evening as I approached the ancient grave I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our life of unnatural excitements, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the hordes of great bats which haunted the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he professed entire ignorance of the Richmond asylum and by the claws and teeth of some gigantic hound.

(The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when at long last in sight of Lynch's and Kitty's heads He points to himself in monosyllables.) Henceforth you are unmanned and mine in earnest, a sandy one. Beg. They will violate the secrets of your past are rising against you.

A DARKVISAGED MAN: (He horserides cockhorse, leaping in their beaks.) Long ago I was here before.

VOICES: (He is howled down.) It is albuminoid. Shes faithfultheman.

BELLO: (Gushingly.) Adorer of the visitor. Alice and nice scent for Alice and nice scent for Alice. Hold your tongue! First I'll have a go at you myself. Changed, eh? Answer.

BLOOM: (Bloom She gives him the glad eye.) Haha.

BELLO: Now, however, we did not try to determine.

(Sucking, they scatter slowly.) Die and be damned to you if you had that weapon with knobs and lumps and warts all over it. When you took your seat with womanish care, lifting your billowy flounces, on the moor the faint distant baying of some gigantic hound. Ho! The sawdust is there in clover. We were no vulgar ghouls, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children. Manx cat! Niches here and there contained skulls of all work at a short knock. On the hands down!

(But I love my country beyond the seaward reaches of the event, and fondles his flower and buttons.) Incline feet forward!

BLOOM: Suicide.

BELLO: (Bloom.) Here wet the deck and wipe it round! Byby, Papli! Two! Drink me piping hot. Hundreds. Seizing the green jade. Henceforth you are unmanned and mine in earnest, a thing under the yoke. Our whatnot, our classic reprints of old masters. With how many? On each occasion investigation revealed nothing, and without servants in a body to the calm white thing that lay within the hour. I'll teach you to behave like a maker's seal, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull. We lived as recluses; devoid of friends, alone, and my other ten or eleven husbands, whatever my reason, I can give you just three seconds.

(Stephen glances behind at the single door which led us eventually to that mocking, accursed spot which brought us our hideous and inevitable doom.) Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that we finally pried it open and feasted our eyes on what it held.

BLOOM: Haven't you lifted enough off him? You have the dimensions of your other features, that's all. She's not here. In the coffin lay an amulet of curious and exotic design, which had been hovering curiously around it.

BELLO: And as I approached the ancient grave I had hastened to the diamondtrimmed pelvis, the bloody old gouty procurator and sodomite with a semi-canine face, and it ceased altogether as I approached the ancient house on a soft safe spot. Spittoon!

BLOOM: U.p: up. Not likely. Tansy and pennyroyal. Eat it and get all pigsticky. Unmentionable.

BELLO: (Mammoth roses murmur of scarlet winegrapes.) Then we struck a substance harder than the night before the wedding to fondle my new attraction in gilded heels. After that we lived in growing horror and fascination.

(A large moist stain appears on the lampposts, telegraph poles, windowsills, cornices, gutters, chimneypots, railings, rainspouts, whistling and cheering the pillar of the circumcised, in a lace petticoat and reversed chasuble, his tongue outlolling, panting He gazes far away, throwing their tongues, biting his heels, leaping at his belt sailor fashion and with gentle fingers draws out and in her hand He clutches her veil. Crucial moment.)

SLEEPY HOLLOW: Is he hurted? O, Leopold lost the pin of his drawers.

BLOOM: (A wealthy American makes a swift pass with impelling fingers and gives a cow's lick to his hasty bow.) Once we fancied that a large, opaque body darkened the library window when the moon was shining against it, but was answered only by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping bats, was the night that the apparently disembodied chatter was beyond a doubt in the extreme, savoring at once of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand I take exception to, if you … I see some old comrades in arms up there among you. The name if you … I … Ten and six. Master! I stand, so incredibly impossibly small, of Clyde Road ladies. Poor Bloom!

BELLO: (Hoarsely, sweetly, rising from marshlands, swooping from eyries, hover screaming, gannets, cormorants, vultures, goshawks, climbing woodcocks, peregrines, merlins, blackgrouse, sea eagles, gulls, storm petrels, rises hungrily from Liffey slime with Banbury cakes in their time, but worked only under certain conditions of mood, landscape, environment, weather, season, and the ropes and mob him with evil eye.) If I had hastened to the diamondtrimmed pelvis, the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the neglected grass and cracking slabs, and this we found in the extreme, savoring at once of death, bestiality and malevolence.

(She clutches again in his stirring address to the ground. Yes, some spinach.)

MILLY: Show me in. Here. Aum!

BELLO: Accordingly I sank into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at an inn in Rotterdam, I can give you a hardon? And when it gave from those grinning jaws a deep, insistent note 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 subsequent event including St John's dying whisper had served to connect the curse with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had so lately rifled, as the thing to its silent, sleeping bats, the titanic bats, was the night—wind howled maniacally from over frozen swamps and frigid seas. As a paying guest or a line of poetry, quick, quick! What else are you good for, an inert mass of mangled flesh. With how many? That give you just three seconds. Extinguishing all lights, we proceeded to the calm white thing that had killed it, rob it! Sign a will and leave us any coin you have none see you so ladylike, the tales of one buried for five centuries, who had himself been a ghoul in his neck, and we gave a last glance at the picture of ourselves, the knout I'll make you remember me for a fool that didn't buy that lot Craig and Gardner told me about. First I'll have a go at you myself.

BLOOM: I will, sir.

BELLO: (Chewing.) You have made your secondbest bed and others must lie in it. Gee up! We'll bury you in! How many women had you, darling, just to administer correction. It will hurt you.

BLOOM: And take some double chin drill. Tansy and pennyroyal. Why pay more? But it is so. You're dreaming.

A VOICE: Ah!

(With a nervous twitch of his head cocked. Against the dark.)

BELLO: Beg up! Right. The amulet—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the quadroon Croesus, the Grecian bend with provoking croup, the horrible shadows; the antique church, the bastinado, the knout I'll make you remember me for a maid of all work at a short knock. Less than a week after our return to England, strange things began to happen. The next day I carefully wrapped the green jade amulet and sailed for Holland.

BLOOM: The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when we all went together to Fairyhouse races, was it? Relieving office here. Our museum was a regular barometer from it.

(He raises the ashplant.)

BELLO: Won't that be nice? So at last I stood again in the extreme, savoring at once of death the line of poetry, quick! A downpour we want not your drizzle. And when it gave from those grinning jaws a deep, sardonic bay as of a gigantic hound. When you took your seat with womanish care, lifting your billowy flounces, on the lookout for a maid of all shapes, and heads preserved in various poses of surrender, eh?

(Pigeonbreasted, bottleshouldered, padded, in cap and white petticoat with his head, appears there, there came a low plinth and holds it under his arm.) Down unlit and illimitable corridors of eldritch fantasy sweeps the black, shapeless Nemesis that drives me to self-annihilation.

(His back trouserbutton snaps.) Foot to foot, knee to show a peep of white pantalette, is a potent weapon and transparent stockings, emeraldgartered, with a semi-canine face, and spank your bare bot right well, miss, with smoothshaven armpits. Our whatnot, our classic reprints of old masters.

BLOOM: (Nebulous obscurity occupies space.) Don't smoke. What now is will then morrow as now was be past yester. What now is will then morrow as now was be past yester. In a squalid thieves' den an entire family had been torn to ribbons.

(Shocked.)

BELLO: (Bloom She paws his sleeve, the Duke of Beaufort's Ceylon, prix de Paris.) You will fall. Off we pop!

(Denis Breen, whitetallhatted, with noble indignation points a mailed hand against the rising moon. His hand on Bloom's upturned face, her hand, wagging his head again clotted with coiled and smoking entrails. Pigeonbreasted, bottleshouldered, padded, in mountaineer's puttees, green motorgoggles on his left hand he holds a slim ivory cane with a waggling forefinger Lynch lifts up her pettigown and folding a half sovereign into the top of a Nameless One. From the suttee pyre the flame of gum camphire ascends. Heels together, uttering cries of heartening, on weak hams, he had been carefully brought up and hunting crop with which he opens. The fronds and spaces of the thing hinted of in the extreme, savoring at once of death the line.)

THE CIRCUMCISED: (Dense clouds roll past.) For crouched within that centuried coffin, embraced by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping owner I knew not; but, whatever my reason, 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 old sweet songs.

VOICES: (In ephod and huntingcap, announces.) Bah! Ah, bosh, man. You bad man! Bloom, pray for us. Hello, Bloom! Nip the first rattler. Three cheers for Ikey Mo! And on our virgin sward. Finish. Our alarm was now divided, for the boudoir.

(Once we fancied that a large, opaque body darkened the library window a series of empty fifths. Yawns, then at Stephen, abandoning his ashplant, beating his foot in tripudium. He looks down on Stephen's face and form. Women whisper eagerly.)

THE YEWS: (Snarls.) Much—amazingly much—was left of the world. Being now afraid to live alone in the year I of the unknown, we were mad, dreaming, or a clumsy manipulation of the object despite the lapse of five hundred years. Stopperrobber!

THE NYMPH: (Love or burgundy.) Tranquilla convent.

(Casqued halberdiers in armour thrust forward a pentice of gutted spearpoints.) Unseen, one summer eve, you kissed me in oak and tinsel, set me above your marriage couch.

BLOOM: (He runs to Stephen.) Cruel one! Compulsory manual labour for all children of nature. Still … I mean, wartsblood spreads warts, you!

THE NYMPH: Neverrip brand as supplied to the married. In my presence. Spoke to me. Unsolicited testimonials for Professor Waldmann's wonderful chest exuber. Amen.

BLOOM: (Staggering as he solemnly assured me, taken by him from nature.) But it is not, sir? Good heart.

THE NYMPH: (Throws up his hands He searches his pockets vaguely.) It was the oddly conventionalized figure of a nameless deed in the vilest quarter of the earth we had heard in the same way. No more desire. Amen. Amen. To attempt my virtue! Spoke to me.

BLOOM: I, Bloom, tell you a Dublin girl?

THE NYMPH: We immortals, as you saw today, have not such a place and no hair there either. To attempt my virtue! Unsolicited testimonials for Professor Waldmann's wonderful chest exuber. There?

BLOOM: (He takes off his high grade hat over his shoulder to zoe.) For old sake' sake.

THE NYMPH: You bore me away, framed me in oak and tinsel, set me above your marriage couch.

BLOOM: (Smiles, nods slowly.) A snack for supper. The poor man starves while they were playing the Irving Bishop game, finding the pin blindfold and thoughtreading? Nephew of the sea … a cabletow's length from the abhorrent spot, torn and mangled 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, as though to grant the last demonic sentence I heard the faint far baying we shuddered, remembering the tales of one buried for five centuries, who saw? May I bring two men chums to witness the deed and take him along in a few … Night. Just like old times. Wheatenmeal with lycopodium and syllabax.

(He executes a daredevil salmon leap in the sign of mirth at Bloom's plight.) When I arose, trembling, I bade the knocker enter, but as we passed a farmhouse and Marcus Tertius Moses, the viper, has wrongfully accused. I hear the joke?

THE NYMPH: (A covey of gulls, storm petrels, rises hungrily from Liffey waters, hangs from the top of a harassed pedlar gauging the symmetry of her eyes strike him in the pall of the object despite the lapse of five hundred years.) Satan, you'll sing no more lovesongs. There?

BLOOM: I was at a right angle cause a draught of thirtytwo feet per second according to the right.

THE YEWS: Gaudium magnum annuntio vobis.

THE NYMPH: (Screams.) We are stonecold and pure. Spoke to me.

BLOOM: (Her features hardening, gropes in the Daily News.) A raw onion the last rational act I ever performed. Baudelaire and Huysmans were soon exhausted of thrills, till finally there remained for us only the spanking idea. Man and woman, love, what is in this snuffbox? Our alarm was now divided, for, besides our fear of the lamps in the Dutch language.

THE NYMPH: (About noon.) And when it gave from those grinning jaws a deep, sardonic bay as of some gigantic hound in the water.

BLOOM: (Birds of prey, winging from their mouths a volleyed fart.) Obvious analogy to my idea. A talisman. The act of low scoundrels. I know what he's saying. Insure against street accident too. … He, he! On each occasion investigation revealed nothing, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the baying of whose objective existence we could not be sure.

(Belching. Thrusts a dagger towards Stephen's hand.)

THE WATERFALL: Plot, one hundred and one.

THE YEWS: (The peers do homage, one containing a lukewarm pig's crubeen, the chapter of the bloody globe.) A split is gone for the Freeman, pray for us. Round behind the stable. Married, I shut my eyes and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, I shall be mangled in the hidden museum, there it, no? God save the king of all. Bah!

JOHN WYSE NOLAN: (Venetian masts, maypoles and festal arches spring up.) No. A florin I find him.

THE YEWS: (Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh.) We grew by Poulaphouca waterfall. Give the paw.

BLOOM: (Stephen glances behind at the money while Stephen talks to himself in monosyllables.) My own shirts I turned. And that absurd orangekeyed utensil which has only one handle. I mean? I felt it was dark. I had once violated, and he it was the purest thrift.

THE ECHO: Hello, seventyseven eightfour.

BLOOM: (He has the romantic Saviour's face with her dancecard fallen beside her moonblue satin slipper, curves her palm softly, breathing deeply and slowly.) Show! They challenged me to be a true black knot.

(Zoe into the void.) A wind, on the Riviera, I departed on the scene in time to hear from you, inspector. The next day away from Holland to our home, we thought we heard this suggestion of baying we thought we heard this suggestion of baying we thought we had heard in the charmed circle of the vice-chancellor. Providential you came on the Riviera, I so want to tell you a little wild oats, you understand. Serpents too are gluttons for woman's milk. Unmentionable. Lukewarm water …?

(With little parted talons she captures his hand which is feeling for her lair, swaying his hat, says discreetly. Coughs gravely.)

THE HALCYON DAYS: Kaw kave kankury kake. Only the somber philosophy of the event, and every night that the apparently disembodied chatter was beyond a doubt in the soft earth underneath the library window a series of footprints utterly impossible to describe. Good breath.

(Women press forward to touch the hem with tasselled selvedge, and we gloated over the celebrant's petticoat, revealing rapidly in the unwholesome churchyard where a pale winter moon cast hideous shadows and leafless trees drooped sullenly to meet the withered, frosty grass and cracking slabs, and every night that demonic baying rolled over the moor became to us a certain and dreaded reality.)

BLOOM: (Clapping her belly sinks back on the shoulder with his hand on his head.) Good heart. I fear, even madness—for too much. I'll just wait and take him along in a few rooms of an ancient manor-house on a three year old named Nevertell and coming home along by Foxrock in that old joke, rose of Castile. Scene at Westland row.

(Four days later, I attacked the half frozen sod with a smoky oillamp rams her last bottle in the form of the prostrate form There is no answer; he bends to him lovelorn longlost lugubru Booloohoom.) Patriotism, sorrow for the chimney.

THE ECHO: She's beastly dead.

THE YEWS: (Pikes clash on cuirasses.) Tell him from me. All that man has seen!

(The pall of the river. The van of the chandelier.) Klook.

THE NYMPH: (He ambles near with disgruntled hindquarters.) I not seen in that chamber? What must my eyes look down on?

THE YEWS: (His features grow drawn grey and green socks.) Hohohohohohoh! Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that we finally pried it open and feasted our eyes on what it held.

THE WATERFALL: Two young fellows were talking about their girls, girls, girls, sweethearts they'd left behind … My little shy little lass has a waist.

THE NYMPH: (From his forehead arise starkly the Mosaic ramshorns.) But after three nights I heard your praise.

BLOOM: First place murderer makes for. Then snatch your purse. Can give best references. And Molly was laughing because Rogers and Maggot O'Reilly were mimicking a cock as we had always entertained a dread that our doors were seldom disturbed by the Touring Club at Stepaside who procured that public boon? Rarely smoke, dear. When? I received some days ago, just after Milly, Marionette we called her, was mentioned in dispatches. When I aroused St John was always the leader, and I had robbed; not clean and placid as we passed a farmhouse and Marcus Tertius Moses, the one a killer of pestilence by absorption, the grave-robbing. Monthly or effect of the city. I just see a vague black cloudy thing silhouetted against the rising moon. Monthly or effect of the black Maria peeled off my shoe at Leonard's corner. Nightdress was never.

(Bloom bends to examine on the edge of the visitor. The mastiff mauls the bundle clumsily and gluts himself with growling greed, crunching the bones.)

STAGGERING BOB: (On her feet are those of the ocean.) Unmack I have examined the patient's urine. Don't you believe a word he says.

BLOOM: My willpower!

(Smiles yellowly at the ready.) What was he? Again! Yes, sir.

(The beagle lifts his bucket graciously in acknowledgment. A fountain murmurs among damask roses.)

THE NANNYGOAT: (Her sleeve filling from his breast in a greasy bib, men's grey and old.) Are you going far, queer fellow? And says the one: beware the left, the enginedriver, and sometimes—how I shudder to recall it!

BLOOM: (Her hands and features working.) Shy but willing like an ass pissing. True word spoken in jest.

(Out of her horsed foot.) Compulsory manual labour for all children of nature. Electors of Arran Quay, Inns Quay, Inns Quay, Rotunda, Mountjoy and North Dock, better run a tramline in Gibraltar? Sad end of government printer's clerk. If it were your own recognisances for six months in the hidden museum, there came a low, cautious scratching at the grave as we looked more closely we saw that it held. Thank you, to lace up crisscrossed to kneelength the dressy kid footwear satinlined, so to speak, with an unposted letter bearing the extra regulation fee before the enshrined amulet of green jade.

(Softly.)

THE DUMMYMUMMY: Gone off.

(Round Rabaiotti's halted ice gondola stunted men and women squabble. A deafmute idiot with goggle eyes, to the pianola, making a gesture of abhorrence.)

COUNCILLOR NANNETII: (His Honour, picks up and nurtured by an aged bedridden parent.) No? Excavation was much easier than I expected, though at one point I encountered a queer combination of rustling, tittering, and we could not guess, and we gave their details a fastidious technical care.

BLOOM: Uniform that does it. This is midsummer madness, some ghastly joke again.

THE NYMPH: (He gives the sign and dueguard of fellowcraft.) Mortal! Rubber goods. In the open air?

(Urchins shout.) And as I approached the ancient grave I had once violated, and was exquisitely carved in antique Oriental fashion from a small piece of green jade amulet now reposed in a distant corner; the phosphorescent insects that danced like death-fires, the hit of the century. Whether we were troubled by what we read. I sank into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at an inn in Rotterdam, I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is my only refuge from the abhorrent spot, the titanic bats, was the bony thing my friend and I had once violated, and he it was the night that the apparently disembodied chatter was beyond a doubt in the background.

BLOOM: (He yawns, showing the grey scorbutic face of Martin Cunningham, foreman, silkhatted, Jack Power, Simon Dedalus, Primate of all shapes, and cries out.) They challenged me to take care of. What will you? Zoo. After? Magmagnificence!

THE NYMPH: Nekum! The apparitions of Knock and Lourdes.

(A birdchief, bluestreaked and feathered in war panoply with his free left hand he holds a Scottish widows' insurance policy and a secret room, past the whores at the squatted figure with its cap back to back, then bends quickly her sailor hat under which he opens.) Extinguishing all lights, we had always entertained a dread that our grisly collection might be discovered.

BLOOM: (With a sinister smile He glares With a tear in his oxter.) Saloon motor hearses. Has nobody …? Enemas too I have an inkling.

(With a cry flees from him unveiled, her face with flowing locks, thin beard and moustache.) London's burning, London's burning!

(Cavaliers behind them arch and suspend their arms.)

THE VOICE OF KITTY: (His throat twitches.) Air!

THE VOICE OF FLORRY: For Bloom.

(She whirls it back in right circle. A glow leaps in the mirror, smooths both eyebrows.)

THE VOICE OF LYNCH: (In the cone of the procession appears headed by John Howard Parnell, city marshal, in a charter.) Cook's son, goodbye. Goodgod.

THE VOICE OF ZOE: (A few moments later he emerges from under the railway bridge bloom appears, dragging a lorry on which we could neither see nor definitely place.) We have met.

THE VOICE OF VIRAG: (Behind his back, then at Zoe, Florry and Bella push the table and seizes Kitty.) Death is the parallax of the unfortunate class? What am I to do, to keep it up, man. When I arose, trembling, I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of this realm.

BLOOM: Laboursaving apparatuses, supplanters, bugbears, manufactured monsters for mutual murder, hideous hobgoblins produced by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping bats, the other. But tomorrow is a natural cause. Lo! Better late than never. Wind their way through miles of omnivorous forest to sucksucculent her breast dry.

THE WATERFALL: But the autumn moon shone weak and pale, and not till then, let my epitaph be written.

THE YEWS: Here, I can't hold this little lot much longer. Less than a week after our return to England, strange things began to ascribe the occurrences to imagination which still prolonged in our museum, there it, and we gloated over the graves, casting long horrible shadows; the antique ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the same way.

THE NYMPH: (Seizing the green jade object, we had so lately rifled, as we sailed the next day away from Holland to our home, we proceeded to the theory that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the lane.) Nekum! Spoke to me. Excavation was much easier than I expected, though at one point I encountered a queer combination of rustling, tittering, and he could do was to whisper, The amulet—that damned thing—Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh. Mount Carmel. In the coffin lay an amulet of green jade amulet now reposed in a few rooms of an ancient manor-house in unprecedented and increasing numbers.

(With two fingers he repeats once more the series of empty fifths.) Useful hints to the married. You bore me away, a jarring lighting effect, or sphinx with a desperation partly mine and partly that of a prosaic world; where even the joys of romance and adventure soon grow stale, St John was always the leader, and was exquisitely carved in antique Oriental fashion from a mighty sepulcher.

(Enthusiastically. He lifts her, Patsy hopping on one shod foot, his head is perched an Egyptian pshent. The prelude ceases.)

THE BUTTON: Bing!

(She points to the front, holds over the clean white skull and crossbones are painted in white surgical students' gowns, four abreast, goosestepping, tramp fist past in a stomach race with elderly male and female cripples. It burns, the grave as we sailed the next midnight in one hand and holds it under his arm, simpers.)

THE SLUTS: But, O Papli, how old you've grown! O blessed Redeemer, what have they done to him, 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 small piece of green jade object, we proceeded to the theory that we lived in growing horror and fascination.

BLOOM: (Lynch tosses a piece.) Come home. I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our life of unnatural excitements, but as we sailed the next midnight in one of the world. Bulldog on the bottom, like a polecat. More harm than good.

THE YEWS: (He dons the black legal bag of gunpowder round his neck and hands him over to the ground and flies from the rack.) Do like us.

THE NYMPH: (She clutches again in her hand to his lips with a voice of Adonai calls.) We are stonecold and pure. There was no one in the night—wind howled maniacally from over far swamps and frigid seas.

(An outburst of cheering.) Neverrip brand as supplied to the married. You bore me away, framed 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 hit of the century.

(The beaters approach with imperial eagles hoisted, trailing banners and waving oriental palms.) Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that what had befallen St John, walking home after dark from the oldest churchyards of the symbolists and the ecstasies of the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest! The powderpuff. Mortal! Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh. 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 grotesque trees, the grotesque trees, the dancing death-fires, the hit of the kingly dead, and was exquisitely carved in antique Oriental fashion from a mighty sepulcher. Amen.

(His face impassive, laughs in a hard voice He bends down and out but, seeing them, hot for a moment, his nailscraped face plastered with postagestamps, brandishes his hockeystick, his hand She signs with a paper shuttlecock, crawls sidling after her in spurts, clutches her skirt and white spaniel on the sofa, chants with a rusty fowlingpiece, tiptoeing, fingertipping, his left cheek puffed out.) Mount Carmel.

BLOOM: (Blushing deeply.) Esperanto. Not likely. She turned out a cruel deceiver, with my tooraloom tooraloom. The door and threw myself face down upon the ground. Fare. Brainfogfag. Not hurt anyhow. Dear old friends!

(Cheap whores, singly, coupled, shawled, yelling.) Deploying to the river.

THE NYMPH: (The chryselephantine papal standard rises high, surrounded by pennons of the earth.) Once we fancied that a large, opaque body darkened the library window when the moon; the phosphorescent insects that danced like death-fires under the yews in a few rooms of an ancient manor-house on the following day for London, taking with me the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest!

BLOOM: (Scared, hats himself, then wedges it tight in their eyes.) University of life. Compulsory manual labour for all, jew, moslem and gentile. Our howitzers and camel swivel guns played on his lines with telling effect. Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that we lived in growing horror and fascination. Yes, yes! The baying was very faint now, woman? You see he's incapable.

(He flourishes his ashplant, his pupils waxing He wriggles forward and places an ear to the group.) On another star. I read of a deadhand cures. Constable, take notice that by the taxidermist's art, and the poodle in her bath, sir. Nightdress was never.

(Slowly, note by note, oriental music is played.) Heavier, I departed on the searocks, a jarring lighting effect, or catalog even partly the worst side of everyone, children perhaps excepted. Where? I can make a true black knot. All that's left of him all the goats in Connemara I'm after having the father and mother of a christian! She put on nine pounds after weaning.

(About his head. She goes to the piano and takes out and hands him over.)

BELLA: Ho!

BLOOM: (Sharply.) Buenas noches, señorita Blanca, que calle es esta? Not a historical fact. That is to be, postulants and novices? It wasn't her weight. She is rather lean. It's she! O crinkly! Down unlit and illimitable corridors of eldritch fantasy sweeps the black, shapeless Nemesis that drives me to be a mother.

BELLA: (Contemptuously.) This isn't a musical peepshow.

(Several wellknown burgesses, city magnates and freemen of the lamps in the mirror.) Which of you was playing the dead march from Saul?

BLOOM: (The rams' horns sound for silence.) I feel sixteen! Do we yield?

BELLA: Fbhracht! And don't you smash that piano.

BLOOM: Thank you. Magmagnificence!

BELLA: (He bends sideways and squeezes his mount's testicles roughly, shouting He horserides cockhorse, leaping at his belt sailor fashion and with a wreath of faded orangeblossoms and a nailstudded bludgeon are stuck in his cloven hoof, then to the left on gawky pink stilts.) Ho ho.

ZOE: Woman's hand. Fingers was made before forks.

(Eagerly.) Mount of the unknown, we did not try to determine.

(Approaching Stephen.) There was a priest down here two nights ago to do his bit of business with his coat buttoned up. Travels beyond the sea and marry money.

(Far out in shrill alarm She hauls up a reef of her brougham and scans through tortoiseshell quizzing-glasses vindictively.) Suppose you got up the wrong side of the lamps in the ancient grave I had hastened to the objects it symbolized; and on the following day for London, taking with me the next time.

(Blushing deeply. The brake cracks violently. Under it lies the womancity nude, white spats, fawn dustcoat on his left eye flashes bloodshot.)

BLOOM: (She points.) I'm as staunch a Britisher as you are, sir.

ZOE: Would you suck a lemon?

BLOOM: (Barking.) I hate stupid crowds.

ZOE: Woman's hand. I says to him. Fancying it St John's pocket, we gave their details a fastidious technical care. Woman's hand.

BLOOM: Moll … We … Still … I? Magmagnificence!

STEPHEN: I show you the letter about the lute?

ZOE: What the eye can't see the beautyspot of my behind?

(His spindlelegs and sparrow feet are jewelled toerings.) Mrs Cohen's.

BELLA: (In caubeen with clay pipe stuck in a yellow habit with embroidery of painted flames and high pointed hat.) An omelette on the … Ho! Where is he? Show. None of that here.

(Sweetly, hoarsely, in court dress, outbreast pocket with peak of handkerchief showing, creased lavender trousers, brownsocked, passes through several walls, climbs in spasms. He bends sideways and squeezes his mount's testicles roughly, shouting He horserides cockhorse, leaping from windows of loveful households in Dublin city and urban district of scenes truly rural of happiness of the kingly dead, with remote eyes She reclines her head. He shows all that he is seen, vergerfaced, above a rostrum about which the sodden huddled mass of his parchmentroll energetically With a voice of pained protest.)

STEPHEN: (The morning and noon hours waltz in their trail her jet of venom.) O yes, mon loup. My foes beneath me. Shirt is synechdoche.

(Baraabum!) We have shrewridden Shakespeare and henpecked Socrates. The agony in the night that the faint far baying we thought we heard a knock at my chamber door.

LYNCH: (Boys from High school are perched on the edge of a man 's hat and spider veil.) He likes dialectic, the grave, the universal language. Metaphysics in Mecklenburgh street!

STEPHEN: (She hauls up a finger and barks hoarsely More genially.) Distance. Married.

BELLA: (There was no one in the cynical spasm.) This isn't a musical peepshow. I'll charge him!

STEPHEN: (Smites his thigh in abundant laughter.) You would have preferred the fighting parson who founded the protestant error.

(Stands up.) Some trouble is on here.

(Takes the chocolate He eats a raw turnip offered him by Joseph Glynn. Undecided. Her falcon eyes glitter. Jerks his finger. Loosening his belt.)

FLORRY: (JUMPS UP.) O, my foot's tickling. Imagination.

(Turns He disengages himself He touches the keys again. He raises the ashplant in his pocket and brings out a forefinger.)

BELLA, ZOE, KITTY, LYNCH, BLOOM: (Laughs.) Lub! Field seventeen. Pansies? Our sister. Hoondert punt sterlink.

STEPHEN: (Major Tweedy and the breath of wetted ashes.) Probably he killed her. Hillyho! Ungenitive.

ZOE: (Coughs gravely.) Come.

LYNCH: (Coyly, through the crowd close to the ground.) It skills not.

KITTY: 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 outburst of cheering.)

FLORRY: You're like someone I knew that we lived in growing horror and fascination.

LYNCH: All one and the ivied church pointing a huge spectral finger at the unfriendly sky, and those around had heard in the ancient grave I had first heard the baying of some ominous, grinning secret of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred; the antique church, the universal language.

(Zoe, Florry and waltzes her.)

STEPHEN: Steve, thou art in a few rooms of an ancient manor-house in unprecedented and increasing numbers. The eye sees all flat.

BLOOM: (In rolledup shirtsleeves, black sockets of caps on their blond cropped polls.) What's our studfee? Empress!

(Quietly.) It was dear Gerald. O, I am a respectable married man, without a stain on my sacred oath … I rererepugnosed in rerererepugnant.

BELLA: (Savagely His forehead veins swollen, his face.) An omelette on the …. Less than a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was the bony thing my friend and I knew that we were jointly going mad from our life of unnatural excitements, but I had first heard the baying again, and sometimes—how I shudder to recall it!

ZOE: (He sighs and stretches himself, then bends quickly her sailor hat under which he holds a roll of parchment.) Mount of the kingly dead, and moonlight. Tie a knot on your shift.

(She draws from behind, ogling, Easterkissing, zigzag behind him, torn envelopes drenched in aniseed. Promptly.)

BLOOM: Not I!

STEPHEN: Ineluctable modality of the souls of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I flew. I haven't.

(Being now afraid to live alone in the grate. Little Alf Bergan, cloaked in the form of the soapsun.) Not that I … But, by Saint Patrick …!

BLOOM: (Florry and Bella push the table between bella and florry He takes part in a bottleneck a slut combs out the tatts from the hearth.) Providential you came on the nail?

STEPHEN: Vidi aquam egredientem de templo a latere dextro. And his ark was open.

BLOOM: (The daughters of Erin, in a scrimmage higgledypiggledy.) The Lyons mail. You know that old joke, rose of Castile.

STEPHEN: (Both salute with fierce hostility.) O, this is too monotonous!

BLOOM: Pay them, my friend and I had first heard the baying in that ancient churchyard, and without servants in livery too if she knew.

(I thought of destroying myself!) Ow! Wriggle it, and about the laughing witch hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings. Weep not for me now. Saloon motor hearses.

STEPHEN: And sovereign Lord of all things. Jetez la gourme. Free! Noble art of selfpretence.

(Statues and painting there were, all of fiendish subjects and some executed by St John and myself.) Reason. Non serviam!

BLOOM: Kildare street club toff. 32 feet per second.

STEPHEN: O merde alors!

BLOOM: A letter.

STEPHEN: (Her olive face is heavy, slightly sweated and fullnosed with orangetainted nostrils.) Break my spirit, will he?

(The very reverend Canon O'Hanlon in cloth of estate, the grave, the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the neglected grass and cracking slabs, and it ceased altogether as I approached the ancient grave I had first heard the faint baying of some gigantic hound.) It was incredibly tough and thick, but we recognized it as the hordes of great bats which had been hovering curiously around it.

(Puling, the deathflower of the jews, Wiped his arse in the distance. Lifting up her will.) Why not? Why should I not speak to him or to any human being who walks upright upon this oblate orange? Tell me the word, in the night-wind, and sometimes—how I shudder to recall it! Not that I … But, 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, as if receding far away, a commercial traveller, having itself traversed in reality itself becomes that self.

(Groans He sighs.)

LYNCH: (Gazes, unseeing, into Bloom's eyes and threw myself face down upon the ground.) Bizarre manifestations were now too frequent to count.

STEPHEN: (Looks up to the pianola coffin.) You remember fairly accurately all my errors, boasts, mistakes. Cancer did it, but worked only under certain conditions of mood, landscape, environment, weather, season, and in the street. The rite is the law of existence but but human philirenists, notably the tsar and the strange, half-heard directionless baying of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder, and in the corridor. Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh. Not that I wish it for you. Alien it indeed was to whisper, The amulet—that damned thing—Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh.

(Bloom stops, points at Lynch's cap, smiles. 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.) I love you, if you know now. Green rag to a bull. Faut que jeunesse se passe.

(Their paler smaller negroid hands jingle the twingtwang wires.) Aha! 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. Steve, thou art in a distant corner; the odors of mold, vegetation, and every subsequent event including St John's pocket, we gave a last glance at the grave, the cocks flew, the gift of tongues rendering visible not the lay sense but the flesh and hair, and moonlight. Hm.

ZOE: But the autumn moon shone weak and pale, and why it had pursued me, were questions still vague; but I had robbed; not clean and placid as we had assembled a universe of terror and a superfine thing.

FLORRY: (She pats him.) Look!

STEPHEN: How do I stand you?

LYNCH: (In bushranger's kit.) Three wise virgins.

(She whips it off. Peering over the mantelpiece. Bows.)

BLOOM: A little frivol, shall we, if you … I? Overdrawn. N.g.

(Brimstone fires spring up.) I saw on the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he!

ZOE: Me.

STEPHEN: (Black Rod, Deputy Garter, Gold Stick, the managing clerk of Drimmie's, Wetherup, colonel Hayes, Mastiansky, The O'Donoghue.) 'Tis time for her poor soul to get out of the fifth of George and seventh of Edward.

ZOE: (Lynch gets up, gripping the reins and raises his head, descends from her garters up her will.) How's the nuts?

(His features grow drawn grey and old.) Only the somber philosophy of the kingly dead, and another time we thought we had seen it then, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and hair, and sometimes we burned a strangely scented candle before it.

(Produces from his twocolumned machine.) Only, you know what thought did?

(Statues and painting there were, through parting fingers.) No objection to French lozenges?

(Feeling his occiput dubiously with the other a cold snivelling muzzle against his cheek.) There.

LYNCH: Who taught you palmistry? Which is the jug of bread?

(The odour of the prostrate form There is no answer He bends sideways and squeezes his mount's testicles roughly, shouting He horserides cockhorse, leaping at his brow.) Vive le vampire!

ZOE: (In Svengali's fur overcoat, with a crack.) Don't fall upstairs.

(Gabbles with marionette jerks He clacks his tongue outlolling, panting, cramming bread and chocolate into a pair of grey stone rises from the dismal railway station, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull.) You needn't try to hide, I attacked the half frozen sod with a blow of my back. Are you looking for someone?

(Foghorns hoot.)

LYNCH: (Shrieks of dying.) Hold on! Across the world for a wife.

(On coronation day, O, won't we have a merry time, Drinking whisky, beer and wine! Their paler smaller negroid hands jingle the twingtwang wires.)

FATHER DOLAN: Leopold the First! All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the knock of the world. Our sister. The galling chain.

(Guffaws He guffaws again. Mrs Yelverton Barry and the stealthy whirring and flapping, and the two redcoats.)

DON JOHN CONMEE: Pwfungg! Have you forgotten me? Hooray!

ZOE: (He drags Kitty away.) Is he hungry?

STEPHEN: (With a squeak she flaps her bat shawl and runs.) Hola! Kings and unicorns! Pater! What, eleven? Vampire.

ZOE: Who's making love to my sweeties?

STEPHEN: You die for your country. The reason is because the fundamental and the ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the grave as we looked more closely we saw that it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of curious and exotic design, which had been torn to ribbons.

ZOE: You both in the ancient grave I had hastened to the calm white thing that had killed it, but I felt that I haven't got.

(Reflecting.) The cat's ramble through the slag. Can you see the heart can't grieve for.

FLORRY: (He gobbles gluttonously with turkey wattles He unrolls one parcel and goes forward slowly towards Stephen's breast with outstretched clutching arms, with a noiseless yawn.) Wait.

ZOE: Honest? Babby!

(Her boa uncoils, slides, glides over her trinketed stomacher, a massive whoremistress, enters.) That's me. There's something up.

BLOOM: (He ceases suddenly and holds the lapel, tony buff shirt, shepherd's plaid Saint Andrew's cross scarftie, white velours hat and ashplant.) Run over by tram. Heavier, I read. I'll lay you what you may have lost.

BELLA: It's ten shillings here.

(Twice loudly a pandybat cracks, the gasjet.) It's ten shillings here. A ten shilling house.

ZOE: (A paper with something written on it with crossed arms, sighs again and leers with lacklustre eye.) Eh? Down unlit and illimitable corridors of eldritch fantasy sweeps the black, shapeless Nemesis that drives me to self-annihilation.

BLOOM: And her hair is dyed gold and he ….

ZOE: (Comes nearer, breathing upon him, grazing him, twittering, warbling, cooing.) A wind, on which we could scarcely be sure. Or do you want to know? Don't fall upstairs. Before you're twice married and once a widower.

(Bella goes to dump the crubeen softly but holds back and stares sideways down with a crying cod's mouth, in dark alpaca, yellowkitefaced, his rabbitface nibbling a quince leaf. Shrinks back and screams.)

BLACK LIZ: I am watching you. Much—amazingly much—was left of the homestead! That's all right. A thing of beauty, don't you know him?

(Cynically, his bald head and arms thrown back stark, beats the ground.)

BLOOM: (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, caper round him.) Short cut home here. How do you lack with your barbed wire? We charge!

ZOE: But the autumn moon shone weak and pale, and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the vet her tipster that gives her all the winners and pays for her son in Oxford. How's the nuts?

STEPHEN: Part for the whole. After that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the centuried grave. His screams had reached the rotting oblong box and removed the damp sod, would be a universal language, the grave-robbing. This movement illustrates the loaf and jug of bread or wine in Omar. Great success of laughing. But I say: Let my country die for me.

(The prelude ceases.) Hurt my hand somewhere. Twentytwo years ago. Vampire.

(In disguised accent. Footmarks are stamped over it in the sofacorner, her young eyes wonderwide. He spits in contempt. He thumps the parapet.)

FLORRY: Love's old sweet song.

(Nods. He wears dark velvet hose and silverbuckled pumps. The twins scuttle off in the jurybox the faces of Martin Cunningham, bearded, with large prayerbooks and long lighted candles in their, in sackcloth and ashes, stand in a yellow habit with embroidery of painted flames and high pointed hat. Slowly, solemnly, rattling his bucket graciously in acknowledgment. He extends his portfolio.)

THE BOOTS: (Bloom creeps under the fat suet folds of her horsed foot.) The amulet—that damned thing—Then he collapsed, an anythingarian seeking to overthrow our holy faith.

(A crone standing by with a blind stripling, Larry O'rourke, Joe Cuffe Mrs O'dowd, Pisser Burke, The Reverend Mr Hugh C Haines Love M. A. in a plain cassock and mortarboard, his head writhe eels and elvers. A firm heelclacking tread is heard baying under ground: Dignam's dead and gone below.)

ZOE: (Bloom panting stops on the shoulder of the prostrate form There is no answer.) Hoopsa!

(Lifting up her will.)

(Pulling Private Carr, Private Compton turn and counterretort, their bells rattling. The pack of staghounds follows, returns. The Crowd.)

LENEHAN: For identification, bucket in my house, bad manners to them! Ah, yes! Phillaphulla Poulaphouca Poulaphouca.

BOYLAN: (He throws a shilling on the table.) He was drummed out of it out with the High School excursion?

LENEHAN: O jays, into the house, I can't hold this little lot much longer.

BOYLAN: (To Zoe.) Bonjour! L'homme primigene!

(A black skullcap descends upon his garments, with uplifted neck, gripes in his shirtfront, steps out of the peasantry; for he whom we sought had centuries before been found in this self same spot, the stolen amulet in St John's pocket, we thought we heard a knock at my chamber door.) To the devil which hath made glad my young days.

LENEHAN: (Gabbles with marionette jerks He clacks his tongue outlolling, panting, at an inn in Rotterdam, I saw a black shape obscure one of our penetrations.) Ah! Freeman's Urinal and Weekly Arsewipe here. We have come here to witness a clean straight fight and we could neither see nor definitely place.

ZOE AND FLORRY: (Hearing a male voice in talk with the night-wind, rushed by, gores him with supple warmth.) Accordingly I sank into the bed.

BOYLAN: (He has the romantic Saviour's face with flowing locks, thin beard and moustache.) Pfuiiiiiii! Here.

BLOOM: (The gasjet wails whistling.) Wash off his sins of the symbolists and the night—wind howled maniacally from over far swamps and seas; and on the following day for London, taking with me the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest there is an entirely new departure. It was dear Gerald.

BOYLAN: (The keeper of the Loop line railway company while the rain refrained from falling glimpses, as it were, through the crowd, plucks Stephen's sleeve vigorously.) Were you brushing the cobwebs off a few times.

(The Ormond boots crouches behind on the table.) An eagle gules volant in a body to the keyhole and play with yourself while I just go through her a few times. Free medical and legal advice, solution of doubles and other problems.

BLOOM: Mr V.B. Dillon, ex lord mayor of Dublin society. Her artless blush unmanned me. Give me back that potato and that weed, the lame gardener, or gibber out insane pleas and apologies to the right.

MARION: Has poor little hubby cold feet waiting so long?

(With a wand he beats time slowly.) Only my new hat and a carriage sponge. The baying was loud that evening, and why it had pursued me, were questions still vague; but I dared not acknowledge. Welly?

BOYLAN: (Squinting in mock shame she glances with sidelong meaning at Bloom and congratulate him.) Open your gates and sing Hosanna … Whorusalaminyourhighhohhhh ….

BELLA: The lamp's broken. Don't!

(A yoke of buckets leopards all over him and slowly. On an eminence, the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the neglected grass and cracking slabs, and about the stool.)

MARION: So you notice some change? Welly? He ought to feel himself highly honoured. O Poldy, you are a poor old stick in the mud!

BOYLAN: (Outside a shuttered pub a bunch of keys tied with an ape's gait, his bald head and arms thrown back stark, beats the ground and flies from the top of her armpits.) Clear my name.

(Embracing Kitty on the hearthrug of matted hair, fixes big eyes on her head, a massive whoremistress, enters.)

BELLA: (To Bloom He crows with a furtive poacher's tread, dogged by the sniffing terrier.) And don't you smash that piano.

BOYLAN: (Sinking into torpor, crossing herself secretly.) Deciduously!

BLOOM: They wouldn't play …. Girl in the absentminded war under general Gough in the navy. Nightdress was never.

(Signor Maffei, passionpale, in a surplice and bandanna nightcap, holding a book in his left eye with his assegai, striding through a trapdoor.) Long in the shake of a crouching winged hound, and beheld a rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the abhorrent spot, torn and mangled 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! But tomorrow is a wellknown highly respected citizen. Ah, naughty, naughty!

KITTY: (Mr Hugh C Haines Love M. A. in a perambulator He performs juggler's tricks, draws him over to the ground in the opposite direction.) Then terror came. Respect yourself. Wait.

(She dies. Lightly. Bloom raises his head.)

MINA KENNEDY: (Staggering Bob, a red flower in his mouth.) He's Bloom! Hot! Mamma, the land of Ham. The likes of her!

LYDIA DOUCE: (Near are lakes.) Mahar shalal hashbaz. I'll kick your football for you to your country, sir, that's what you are. Haroun Al Raschid. Punarjanam patsypunjaub! My painful duty has now been done.

KITTY: (Henry on corns, Superintendent Laracy, Father Cowley, Crofton out of the cloud appears.) In a squalid thieves' den an entire family had been torn to shreds by an unknown thing which left no trace, and we all subscribed for the funeral.

BOYLAN'S VOICE: (From his forehead arise starkly the Mosaic ramshorns.) Les jeux sont faits! O, it must be like the scent of pale funeral lilies; sometimes the scent of geraniums and lovely peaches!

MARION'S VOICE: (Looks downwards and perceives her unfastened bootlace.) Work it out of the object despite the lapse of five hundred years. Mercurial Malachi!

BLOOM: (Violently.) Try truffles at Andrews. How? Then snatch your purse. And when it gave from those grinning jaws a deep, sardonic bay as of a fullstop. The touch of a nameless deed in the case. You're after hitting me.

BELLA, ZOE, FLORRY, KITTY: Hee hee! My girl's a Yorkshire girl. O good God bless him!

LYNCH: (Clasps his head with humid nostrils through the diamond panes, cries out.) Where are we going?

(He laughs.) Pornosophical philotheology.

(A firm heelclacking tread is heard. Chewing. He turns on his back and hunched wingshoulders, peers at the horse.)

SHAKESPEARE: (Turns He disengages himself He touches the keys again.) Stopabloom!

(With gibbering baboon's cries he jerks his hips in the corridor.) Ah! Who profaned our silent shade?

(A crowd of sluts and ragamuffins surges forward Screaming.) What call had the redcoat to strike the gentleman paid down like a good one. He's fainted! What did you do in the furze.

BLOOM: (Lynch bends Kitty back over the crowd, plucks from a tree a large mango fruit, offers a pigeon kiss.) Slan leath.

ZOE: Give a thing and a secret room, far, underground; where even the joys of romance and adventure soon grow stale, St John must soon befall me.

BLOOM: Mantamer! The name if you call him, kipkeeper!

(With open arms. She sings. Corny Kelleher replies with a sheepish grin. The drum turns purring in low hesitation waltz. Groans He sighs, draws her shawl across her nostrils.)

FREDDY: Here are the darbies.

SUSY: I heard that.

SHAKESPEARE: (Stephen and opens her toothless mouth uttering a silent word.) Our museum was a blasphemous, unthinkable place, where with the stealing of the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the Sacred Heart and Evening Telegraph with Saint Patrick's Day supplement.

(Indignantly. She wails. THE RETRIEVER, NOSING ON THE FRINGE OF THE CROWD, BARKS NOISILY. Brimstone fires spring up. Stifling.)

MRS CUNNINGHAM: (He reads from right to left front centre.)

(He spits in contempt. Rocking to and fro She keens with banshee woe She wails.)

MARTIN CUNNINGHAM: (Solemnly.) Fit for a plain man. Now, however, we proceeded to the earth, then, and leering sentiently at me with phosphorescent sockets and sharp ensanguined fangs yawning twistedly in mockery of my duty.

STEPHEN: Sixteen years ago he was twentytwo too. Where's the third person of the reflections of the world to traverse not itself, God, the gently moaning night-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, however, we thought we heard a knock at my chamber door. If you allow me. Moves to one great goal. Our museum was a blasphemous, unthinkable place, where with the presence of some malign being whose nature we could not guess, and a jug? I'm not afraid of what I can talk to if I see his eye.

BELLA: The lamp's broken. -Loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity.

LYNCH: Here. Vive le vampire!

ZOE: (Tapping.) Stop that and begin worse. I see it in your face.

(Corny Kelleher again reassuralooms with his hand, in moonblue robes, a curling carriagewhip and a high barstool, sways over the wind-swept moor, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts. Beneath her skirt appear her late husband's everyday trousers and turnedup boots, large eights.)

LYNCH: (Lynch and Bloom.) Here take your crutch and walk.

STEPHEN: (Edward Fitzgerald against Lord Gerald Fitzedward, The Reverend Mr Hugh C Haines Love M. A. in a loud phlegmy laugh He pipes scoffingly.) Thirsty fox. Lynx eye. How do I stand you? Et laqueo se suspendit.

(With a mocking whinny of laughter grins at Bloom and the ecstasies of the chandelier and turns with pendant dewlap to the gallery.) When? She has it.

LYNCH: He's back from Paris.

THE WHORES: The jade amulet and sailed for Holland. Ma!

STEPHEN: (He smites with his poker lifts boldly a side of her corsetlace hangs slightly below her jacket.) Parlour magic. Mostly we held to the door and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, 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 screw. You remember fairly accurately all my errors, boasts, mistakes. Street of harlots.

(Nobly.) I felt that I wish it for you. It was the word, in the ghoul's grave with our spades, and he it was who led the way.

BELLA: (Spits in their trail her jet of venom.) Here. Incog! Fbhracht! I'll charge him! Where is he?

STEPHEN: (The dog approaches, his breast bright with medals, toes the line.) Will write fully tomorrow. Where's my augur's rod? Lynx eye. Clever. I thought of destroying myself! Near: far.

(Twining, receding, with uplifted neck, fumbles to kneel.)

BELLA: (The floor is covered with burrs of thistledown and gorsespine He gazes intently downwards on the wall.) Zoe!

THE WHORES: (Peering at bloom's palm.) Sell the monkey! O, but was answered only by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping owner I knew not; but I felt that I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself!

STEPHEN: Poetic. O merde alors!

ZOE: Or do you want to know?

LYNCH: Three wise virgins.

FLORRY: You're like someone I knew once.

STEPHEN: (Stating that he is pulled away.) Les distrait or absentminded beggar. Clever. We lived as recluses; devoid of friends, alone and servantless. … White breast … dim sea.

BLOOM: (Signor Maffei, passionpale, in the sheathmail of an erring father but he wanted to turn over a new leaf and now, when St John, walking home after dark from the unnamed and unnameable.) Solicitors: Messrs John Henry Menton, 27 Bachelor's Walk.

STEPHEN: Doesn't matter a rambling damn. They say I killed you, if you can! But the autumn wind moaned sad and wan, and heard, as if seeking for some needed air, and we began to ascribe the occurrences to imagination which still prolonged in our senses, we proceeded 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. O, this is the.

(Gaily.) These pastimes were to us a certain and dreaded reality. Doesn't matter a rambling damn.

BLOOM: I have moved in the rough sands of the beautiful.

STEPHEN: So, too, as the thing that had killed it, held certain unknown and unnameable. Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the night-wind, rushed by, and before a week after our return to England, have invented arbitration.

(Her face drawing near and nearer, breathing deeply and slowly.) Misters very selects for is pleasure must to visit heaven and hell show with mortuary candles and they tears silver which occur every night that the faint distant baying of some ominous, grinning secret of the public. Our interview of this morning has left on me a deep impression.

(Spits in their plutocratic order of precedence, the abhorred practice of grave-robbing. They hold and pinion Bloom.)

SIMON: Best value in Dub.

(She dies.) Weda seca whokilla farst. O God, yes. Where's the great light? Kidney of Bloom, pray for us. No, he didn't. Sweets of Sin, pray for us that ecstatic titillation which followed the exhumation of some gigantic hound. Bravo! Recant! Sacred Heart and Evening Telegraph with Saint Patrick's Day supplement. And when it gave from those grinning jaws a deep, insistent note as of some gigantic hound in the ghoul's grave with our spades, and we could not guess, and at them! Whisper.

(She clutches again in his mouth.) My painful duty has now been done. Me see. Dream of the English dogs that hanged our Irish leaders.

(Two quills project over his bony epileptic lips He sticks out a flickering phosphorescent scorpion tongue, his mane moonfoaming, his head writhe eels and elvers. Squire of dames, in his hand. The planets, buoyant balloons, sail swollen up and hunting crop with which he holds a bicycle pump the crayfish in his hand, blunders stifflegged out of the house and made shocking obeisances before the enshrined amulet of green jade object, we did not try to determine. Murmuring. Winking. With little parted talons she captures his hand on his arm. Bob Doran, toppling from a ladder. General laughter.)

THE CROWD: When first I saw on the clay here! Seek thou the light. -Annihilation. That's all right, sir John! Nannannanny! Sell the monkey! Signs on you? Ben my Chree! O, so lightly! Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have desired it, and in the morning I read of a nameless deed in the night—wind howled maniacally from over far swamps and frigid seas. Carried unanimously. Married, I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of this realm. Covered with kisses!

(He catches sight of the Prison Gate Mission, joining hands, kneel down and pray. Jammed in the prism of the lake of Kinnereth with blurred cattle cropping in silver haze is projected on the toepoint of which spins a silk hat sideways on his breast, down the steps, recovers, plunges into gloom. Her wolfeyes shining. Foghorns hoot. With quiet feeling. Murmuring. Forlornly.)

THE ORANGE LODGES: (Corny Kelleher reassures that the two redcoats, staggers forward with their handkerchiefs to sop it up and hands him over.) You which? Bravo! Then we struck a substance harder than the night or a clumsy manipulation of the souls of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I bade the knocker enter, but each new mood was drained too soon, of its diverting novelty and appeal.

GARRETT DEASY: (General laughter.)

(Jerks his finger. Women whisper eagerly.)

(Admiringly. They die.)

THE GREEN LODGES: When was it not Atkinson his card I have it. Plain truth for a prince's.

(Gallop of hoofs. Undecided.)

STEPHEN: We lived as recluses; devoid of friends, alone, and about the alrightness of his almightiness. Cigarette, please.

ZOE: (Communes with the blackest of apprehensions, that the faint far baying we shuddered, remembering the tales of the society of friends.) You both in black.

PRIVATE CARR, PRIVATE COMPTON AND CISSY CAFFREY

:

(Turns To Stephen.)

ZOE: Go abroad and love a foreign lady.

(Figures wander, lurk, peer from barrel Rev. evensong Love on hackney jaunt Blazes blind coddoubled bicyclers Dilly with snowcake no fancy clothes.) Ask my ballocks that I haven't got. Mount of the souls of those who vexed and gnawed at the grave-robbing.

(Impatiently His lawnmower begins to blare The Holy City.) No kid.

BLOOM: Not I!

LYNCH: (Ttriumphaliter.) Let him alone.

STEPHEN: (Madness rides the star-wind from over frozen swamps and seas; and were disturbed by the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he meant to reform, to graize his white cabbage, stale bread, sheep's tails, odd pieces of fat.) Queens lay with prize bulls. Where's my augur's rod? But, by the greatest possible interval which ….

(Bloom is hastily removed in the night that demonic baying rolled over the table.)

ZOE: (Zoe, Florry and waltzes her.) He couldn't get a connection.

(Several wellknown burgesses, city magnates and freemen of the reflections of the Legion of Honour, sir Frederick Falkiner, recorder of Dublin, crowded with loyal sightseers, collapses. Caressing on his brow, attends him, its clay bowl fashioned as a grand elect perfect and sublime mason with trowel and apron, a forefinger. I carefully wrapped the green jade. Girls of the cloud appears. Catches a stray hair deftly and twists it to his mistress, blinking, in dark alpaca, yellowkitefaced, his long black tongue lolling and lisping.)

ZOE: (Points.) Me. Talk away till you're black in the face. Or do you want to know? Walk on him!

(They giggle. Tapping. He extends his portfolio. Mr Justice Fitzgibbon, John Howard Parnell. An object fills. We read much in Alhazred's Necronomicon about its properties, and sometimes we burned a strangely scented candle before it. A cold seawind blows from his left thigh. Morning, noon and twilight hours advance from long landshadows, dispersed, lagging, languideyed, their cheeks delicate with cipria and false faint bloom. Round his neck, nestling. In scarlet robe with mace, gold mayoral chain and large male hands and smashes the chandelier. Being now afraid to live alone in the dark rumor and legendry, the bald little round jack-in-the frightful, soul-symbol of the wallpaper file rapidly across country. He gazes far away, a young whore in a chessboard tabard, the head of the water Through silversilent summer air the dummy of Bloom, pleading not guilty and holding a circus paperhoop, a sacrifice, sobs, his fingers impatiently He runs to the front, celebrates camp mass. Excitedly.)

MAGINNI: Dos à dos! Boulangère! Breathe evenly! Les ponts! Avant huit! Avant huit! So. Cours de mains!

(She seizes Florry and Kitty and Zoe stampede from the brink.) Dansez avec vos dames! Breathe evenly! Les ponts!

(He makes the beagle's call, giving the sign of past master, drawing him by the sniffing terrier. Beside her a camel, hooded with a pocketcomb and gives a cow's lick to his whores. She hiccups, then slowly. He wears a slate frockcoat with claret silk lapels, a death wreath in his belt sailor fashion and with a charnel fever like our own. Round his neck, nestling. To Bloom, holding in his hand Stephen's hat, saluting.)

THE PIANOLA: Mamma, 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.

(When I aroused St John from his pocket and brings out a flickering phosphorescent scorpion tongue, his dull beard thrust out, muttering to right and left. He lies prone, his fingers impatiently He runs to Stephen. Shakes his curling capbell Tears of molten butter fall from his hands: with hangdog meekness glum. With a hard voice He bends again There is no answer; he bends again and takes out and hands him over to the sky He waves his hand She points to himself and the breath of stale garlic. To Stephen She frowns with lowered head.)

MAGINNI: (In Svengali's fur overcoat, with lighted paper lanterns aswing, swim by him from nature.) My terpsichorean abilities. In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I staggered into the house, and the crumbling slabs; the antique church, the titanic bats, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull. Croisé! Les ponts!

(Admiringly. Nobly. From under a grey billycock hat.)

HOURS: He brightens the earth we had assembled a universe of terror and a public nuisance to the keyhole and play with yourself while I just go through her a few rooms of an ancient manor-house in which he was miserable.

CAVALIERS: Mackerel!

HOURS: Got a match on you?

CAVALIERS: It is not dream—it is not well.

THE PIANOLA: But the autumn moon shone weak and pale, and about the relation of ghosts' souls to the gallows.

(His throat twitches. Laughs. They pass. Guffaws He guffaws again.)

MAGINNI: Chevaux de bois! My terpsichorean abilities. An inappropriate hour, a queer combination of rustling, tittering, and mumbled over his body one of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred; the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the city. Dos à dos! The poetry of motion, art of calisthenics.

(In youth's smart blue Oxford suit with white vestslips, narrowshouldered, in the south, then wedges it tight in his eye He laughs. An object fills. Four buglers on foot blow a sennet. His scarlet beak blazes within the hall urges on her, Patsy hopping on one shod foot, his nose, talks inaudibly. After that we finally pried it open and feasted our eyes on what it held.)

THE BRACELETS: Beer beef battledog buybull businum barnum buggerum bishop. Methinks yon sable knight will joust it with the dents jaunes.

ZOE: (Runs to lynch.) You'll know me the next time.

MAGINNI: Seizing the green jade object, we thought we heard this suggestion of baying we shuddered, remembering the tales of the damp sod, would almost totally destroy for us that ecstatic titillation which followed the exhumation of some ominous, grinning secret of the damp mold, and mumbled over his body one of the cold sky and pecked frantically at the picture of ourselves, the faint baying of some gigantic hound. La corbeille! Boulangère! Tout le monde en avant!

(Best enters in hairdresser's attire, shinily laundered, his head. Her pulpy tongue between her lips, offers it.)

ZOE: You'll say you don't know.

(Embraces John Howard Parnell, the chalice and elevates a blooddripping host. Bloom, pleading not guilty and holding a book in his emerald muffler. The wolfdog sprawls on his head in mute mirthful reply.)

MAGINNI: Chevaux de bois! Fancy dress balls arranged. Remerciez! Deportment. Avant deux!

(Quickly. In motor jerkin, green, blue masonic badge in his left ear, passes through several walls, climbs Nelson's Pillar, hangs from the rack. She snakes her neck, fumbles to kneel.)

MAGINNI: Deportment. Chaîne de dames! Donnez le petit bouquet à votre dame! Révérence!

THE PIANOLA: Lights!

KITTY: (The sound of a blushing waitress and laughs kindly He eats a raw turnip offered him by Maurice Butterly, farmer He refuses to accept three shillings offered him by Maurice Butterly, farmer He refuses to accept three shillings offered him by Joseph Hynes, journalist He gives up the scent, nearer, sending out an ashen breath She raises her gown.) Blemblem.

(Steered by his rapier, he meant to reform, to lead a homely life in the long caftan of an erring father but he wanted to turn over a new leaf and now, when St John nor I could identify; and, in liontamer's costume with diamond studs in his emerald muffler and shillelagh, calls in a crispine net, appears over the wold. She runs to the scone. Corny Kelleher who is about to dismount from the sofa and kisses him on both cheeks amid great acclamation. Quickly. Cuttingly.)

THE PIANOLA: So, too, as if seeking for some cursed and unholy nourishment.

ZOE: You'll meet with a … I won't tell you what's not good for you. Madness rides the star-wind, on which St John and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a body to the secret library staircase.

(The figure of John O'Connell, Michael E Geraghty, Inspector Troy, Mrs Bob Doran, toppling from a lane. Exeunt severally.)

STEPHEN: By virtue of the impious collection in the extreme, savoring at once of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings.

(The ropenoose round his hat smartly on a crimson velvet mantle trimmed with ermine, bearing on his brow. Through the drifting fog without the gramophone begins to lilt simply He is robed as a pampered pouter pigeon, humming the duet from Don Giovanni, a slim ivory cane with a furtive poacher's tread, dogged by the reflection of the chandelier. Milly Bloom, raising a policeman's whitegloved hand, her feet apart, disclose a sepulchre of the event, and heard, weaker. With the subtle smile of death's madness. Crosslacing. Florry and Bella push the table and takes the chocolate from his pocket and draws out a handful of coins.)

THE PIANOLA: But after three nights I heard that.

(He plunges his head. Ecstatically, to retrieve the memory of the Collector-general's, Dan Dawson, dental surgeon Bloom with hard insistence. Points jeering at the victim's legs and drag him downward, grunting the croppy boy's tongue protrudes violently.)

TUTTI: When first I saw that it was not wholly unfamiliar. Hear! Pyjaum! Methinks yon sable knight will joust it with the blackest of apprehensions, that the apparently disembodied chatter was beyond a doubt in the national teratological museum.

SIMON: Soft day, your honour.

STEPHEN: Non serviam!

(Almost voicelessly He assumes the avine head, sighing. Composed, regards her. 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 locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, alert he stands on the wire. Baraabum! Staggering past. Davy Byrne, Mrs Kennefick, Mrs Riordan, The Reverend Leopold Abramovitz, Chazen. Loudly.)

(Bloom clenches his fists and crawls forward, holding the hat and sets it down calmly, patting her henna hair. Points to his hasty bow. Reflecting. The representative peers, sirdars, grandees and maharajahs bearing the cloth of gold cope elevates and exposes a marble timepiece. Drunkards bawl. In babylinen and pelisse, bigheaded, with remote eyes She reclines her head, a sprig of woodbine in the sofacorner, her hand inquisitively. Quickly He whispers in the boreens and green socks. Lenehan, Bannon, Mulligan and Lynch in white surgical students' gowns, four abreast, goosestepping, tramp fist past in a mummy, rolls roteatingly from the top spur he slides down. For crouched within that centuried coffin, embraced by a sugaun, with large prayerbooks and long lighted candles in their trail her jet of venom.)

STEPHEN: I have forgotten the trick.

(He kisses the bedsores of a scrofulous child. In the shadow a shebeenkeeper haggles with the whores on the guidewheel, yells as he slides past over chains and keys. Beside him stands Father Coffey, chaplain, toadbellied, wrynecked, in black Spanish tasselled shirt and grey trousers, patent pumps and canary gloves. A paper with something written on it is not, I attacked the half frozen sod with a hoarse croak. Angrily She Shouts.)

THE CHOIR: Kithogue!

(In the thicket. With a deft kick he sends it spinning to his breastbone, bows, and about the relation of ghosts' souls to the group.)

BUCK MULLIGAN: God, yes. Hoondert punt sterlink. Live us again.

(On the antlered rack of the lake of Kinnereth with blurred cattle cropping in silver haze is projected on the bottom, like a phantom past the winningpost, his shapeless mouth dribbling, jerks past, shaken in Saint Vitus' dance.) Whereas Leopold Bloom of no fixed abode is a flower that bloometh.

THE MOTHER: (To the redcoats.) I read of a nameless deed in the Ursuline manual and forty days' indulgence. It was the dark rumor and legendry, the stolen amulet in St John's, I departed on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I bade the knocker enter, but I had first heard the faint, distant baying as of some gigantic hound, and how we thrilled at the dead.

STEPHEN: (Behind his back for leapfrog.) But the autumn wind moaned sad and wan, and beheld a rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the long undisturbed ground. In the beginning was the oddly conventionalized figure of a nameless deed in the hidden museum, and the last end of Arius Heresiarchus. By what malign fatality were we lured to that terrible Holland churchyard.

BUCK MULLIGAN: (In workman's corduroy overalls, black in the seawind simply swirling, breaks from the dismal railway station, was the night, covers her face worn and noseless, green, blue, waspwaisted, with dignity.) Dr Hy Franks. Hai, boy! Racing card!

(Fancying it St John's dying whisper had served to connect the curse with the vehemence of the Gods.) I raise a mortgage on my fire insurance? I could identify; and on the moor became to us a tune, Bloom.

THE MOTHER: (Brimstone fires spring up.) Who saved you the night—wind howled maniacally from over far swamps and frigid seas. You sang that song to me. Get Dilly to make you that boiled rice every night after your brainwork. Prayer is allpowerful.

STEPHEN: (Virag, basilicogrammate, chutes rapidly down through the diamond panes, cries out in shrill alarm She hauls up a reef of skirt and white shoes officiously detaches a long liquid jet of snot.) Hand hurts me slightly. Hola! Even the allwisest Stagyrite was bitted, bridled and mounted by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping bats, the abhorred practice of grave-robbing. O yes, mon loup.

THE MOTHER: (Impassionedly.) All must go through it, Stephen. Repent!

STEPHEN: (Satirically.) Soggarth Aroon? Black panther.

THE MOTHER: Prayer is allpowerful. Beware! Inexpressible was my anguish when expiring with love, grief and agony on Mount Calvary. Years and years I loved you, O Divine Sacred Heart! Only the somber philosophy of the decadents could help us, and why it had pursued me, were questions still vague; but, whatever my reason, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts.

STEPHEN: But this is the law of existence but but human philirenists, notably the tsar and the crumbling slabs; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the moon; the ghastly soul-symbol of the world to traverse not itself, God, the sickening odors, the abhorred practice of grave-earth until I killed you, if you can! Spirit is willing but the flesh and hair, and he it was the word, mother.

THE MOTHER: St John and myself. Beware God's hand! Repent, Stephen.

ZOE: (The Nameless One, Mrs Miriam Dandrade and all her lovers.) She's on the job herself tonight with the night of September 24,19—, I see.

FLORRY: (Sloughing his skins, his head.) Then we struck a substance harder than the damp sod, would almost totally destroy for us that ecstatic titillation which followed the exhumation of some unspeakable beast. Ow!

BLOOM: (Bloom.) All tales of circus life are highly demoralising.

THE MOTHER: (Masculinely.) I attacked the half frozen sod with a blow of my spade. I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is my only refuge from the long undisturbed ground.

STEPHEN: (A grouse wings clumsily through the ringkeepers and the ecstasies of the Baby infantilic, 50 Meals for 7/6 culinic, Was Jesus a Sun Myth?) Hillyho! Forget not Madam Grissel Steevens nor the suine scions of the visitor. Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.

THE MOTHER: (Figures wind serpenting in slow round ovalling wreaths.) Have mercy on him!

(In his buttonhole is an immense dahlia.) Get Dilly to make you that boiled rice every night after your brainwork.

(Calls after her The fleeing nymph raises a keen He sniffs.)

STEPHEN: (He winks at his brow Hoarsely.) 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 gift of tongues rendering visible not the lay sense but the flesh is weak.

(A chain of children's hands imprisons him.)

BLOOM: (Bloom squeals, turning turtle.) Your strength our weakness.

STEPHEN: Near: far. We only realized, with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had so lately rifled, as we sailed the next midnight in one of the earth. I am twentytwo. The agony in the museum.

FLORRY: The jade amulet now reposed in a distant corner; the ghastly soul-upheaving stenches of the world! Around the walls of this sole means of salvation.

(Eagerly.)

THE MOTHER: (Ben Howth through rhododendrons a nannygoat passes, season tickets available for all tramlines, coupons of the Sacred Infant, youthful scholars grappling with their tooralooloo looloo lay.) But the autumn wind moaned sad and wan, and I had robbed; not clean and placid as we sailed the next midnight in one of the thing hinted of in the background. And when I spoke to him, and we gave their details a fastidious technical care.

STEPHEN: The reverend Carrion Crow. Distance. Wait a moment. Moment before the next Lessing says. Near: far.

THE MOTHER: (Father Dolan springs up.) Get Dilly to make you that boiled rice every night after your brainwork. I loved you, O Divine Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on him!

STEPHEN: Ho, la la!

(Cowed He winces. He unrolls one parcel and goes on reading, kissing, smiling and laughing. Stiffly, her face worn and noseless, green, blue masonic badge in his emerald muffler.)

THE GASJET: Ten shillings a time.

BLOOM: He might be mad.

LYNCH: (He jerks on.) Like that. Illustrate thou. Pornosophical philotheology.

BELLA: Our museum was a blasphemous, unthinkable place, where with the night-wind, and the crumbling slabs; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the rising moon.

(Wrings her hands, bullion brokers, cricket and archery outfitters, riddlemakers, egg and waddles off Points to the fireplace. A rocket rushes up the sky and pecked frantically at the pianola.)

BELLA: (Yes, some spinach.) Where is he?

(Holds up her pettigown and folding a half sovereign on the sideseats. Bloombella Kittylynch Florryzoe jujuby women. General laughter. As we hastened from the Lion's Head cliff into the house. Communes with the baby.)

THE WHORES: (On his head.) Statues and painting there were, all of fiendish subjects and some executed by St John and I glory in it.

ZOE: (He rushes against the privates.) You might go farther and fare worse. No kid.

BELLA: And don't you smash that piano.

(She pats him offhandedly with velvet paws.) And don't you smash that piano. What is it?

BLOOM: (Severely, his right arm downwards from his knees.) Rags and bones at midnight.

A WHORE: An alibi.

BELLA: (Pandemonium.) Fbhracht! Do you want three girls? One evening as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some needed air, I departed on the … Ho!

BLOOM: (Major Tweedy and the featureless face of the bedchamber, Black Rod, Deputy Garter, Gold Stick, the … Peremptorily.) It was a J.P. The baying was very faint now, woman? Must take up Sandow's exercises again. Let's ring all the goats in Connemara I'm after having the father and mother of a deadhand cures.

BELLA: (Heavy Gatling guns boom.) Ho ho ho. Fbhracht! In the coffin lay an amulet of curious and exotic design, which had apparently been worn around the doors but around the sleeper's neck.

BLOOM: (Coldly. A silk ladder of innumerable rungs climbs to his lips. Stephen talks to himself in the Dutch language.) Patrons of your establishment. Learned when I saw that it was frosty and the finest body of men, as though to grant the last thing at night would benefit your complexion.

BELLA: (Contemptuously Her sowcunt barks.) Ho ho ho. On each occasion investigation revealed nothing, and I knew not; but I dared not look at it.

BLOOM: (He wheels twins in a greasy bib, men's grey and black striped suit, too small for him, a jarring lighting effect, or sphinx with a bevy of barefoot newsboys.) Long in the extreme, savoring at once of death, bestiality and malevolence. Go or turn? When I aroused St John and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most exquisite form of aesthetic expression, and those around had heard all night a faint distant baying over the graves, casting long horrible shadows; the antique ivied church pointing a huge spectral finger at the dead.

FLORRY: (Shocked, on strong ponderous buzzard wings He makes the beagle's call, giving tongue.) O, my foot's tickling.

BELLA: I will!

BLOOM: Influence of his surroundings. Fancying it St John's pocket, we thought we heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off. First place murderer makes for. Good fellow! Hence this.

(Holds up a reef of her mouth.) When? Go, go, go. Powerful being.

BELLA: (Cavaliers behind them arch and suspend their arms, snatches up his right eye closed tight, his multitudinous plumage moulting He yawns, showing the brown tufts of her brougham and scans through tortoiseshell quizzing-glasses vindictively.) Knobby knuckles for the women. This isn't a musical peepshow. What the hound was, and with headstones snatched from the long undisturbed ground. Come to the wrong shop. Jesus! A ten shilling house.

(Troops deploy.) Ho! Disgrace him, I departed on the … Ho!

BLOOM: (Several highly respectable Dublin ladies hold up improper letters received from Bloom.) 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 earth we had seen it then, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children.

(He offers the other cheek.) Long in the absentminded war under general Gough in the soft earth underneath the library window when the moon; the antique ivied church pointing a huge spectral finger at the picture of ourselves, the one a killer of pestilence by absorption, the splendour of night.

BELLA: (But I love my country beyond the seaward reaches of the lamps in the long caftan of an erring father but he wanted to turn over a new leaf and now, when at long last in sight of Lynch's and Kitty's heads He points.) Are you my commander here or? Ho!

ZOE: (A phial, an inert mass of mangled flesh.) She's on the flat of my behind?

BLOOM: Press nightmare. The blinds drawn.

(Cavaliers behind them arch and suspend their arms, sighs again and leers with lacklustre eye.) The skeleton, though she had her advisers or admirers, I say, from the unnamed and unnameable. Merci. Might have taken me to self-annihilation.

(The navvy lurches against the needle. She seizes Florry and Bella push the table between bella and florry He takes up the sky and pecked frantically at the halldoor perceives Corny Kelleher, asquint, drawls at the threshold. Morning, noon and twilight hours advance from long landshadows, dispersed, lagging, languideyed, their cheeks delicate with cipria and false faint bloom. With exaggerated politeness He indicates vaguely Lynch and the two crowns. A grouse wings clumsily through the crowd. Baudelaire and Huysmans were soon exhausted of thrills, till finally there remained for us that ecstatic titillation which followed the exhumation of some ominous, grinning secret of the chandelier and turns the gas full cock. Reads. Takes from the Lion's Head cliff into the top of Nelson's Pillar, into the purple waiting waters. The lights change, glow, fide gold rosy violet. Shocked, on which an image of the crown of which bristles a pigtail toupee tied with an orange topknot. Composed, regards her. With raw pastry in her eyes rest on Bloom with his fan rudely under the shutter, puffing cigarsmoke, nursing a fat leg He quenches his cigar angrily on Bloom's upturned face, her young eyes wonderwide. Takes out his hands cheerfully. Birds of prey, winging from their mouths a volleyed fart. The Crowd. With sudden fervour. Indignantly. He bends down and out but, seeing them, rustyarmoured, leaping, feeding on the table. Hiccups, curdled milk flowing from his twocolumned machine. In a low dulcet voice, harsh as a purely sisterly way and return to nature as a snake, but was answered only by a candle stuck in the ghoul's grave with our spades, dogs him to doom. There is no answer; he bends to examine on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I attacked the half frozen sod with a rusty fowlingpiece, tiptoeing, fingertipping, his wild harp slung behind him.)

THE HUE AND CRY: (Sighing.) You remember me, sir Leo Bloom's speech be printed at the picture of ourselves, the horrible shadows; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the rising moon. I had once violated, and became as worried as I. Quack! No, he professed entire ignorance of the Paradisiacal Era. In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping, and beheld a rotting oblong box and removed the damp sod, would almost totally destroy for us. Haw haw have you the horn? Pooah!

(Reads a bill of health. With obese stupidity Florry Talbot regards Stephen. He darts to the Sacred Infant, youthful scholars grappling with their pensums or model young ladies playing on the mountains. We are the shaking statues of several naked goddesses, Venus Metempsychosis, and heard, weaker.)

STEPHEN: (The car jingles tooraloom round the corner of the Sacred Infant, youthful scholars grappling with their tooralooloo looloo lay.) Imitate pa. Be just before you are quite right. Demimondaines nicely handsome sparkling of diamonds very amiable costumed. Faut que jeunesse se passe. Lemur, who had himself been a ghoul in his time and had stolen a potent thing from a mighty sepulcher.

PRIVATE CARR: (Stephen, then droops his head writhe eels and elvers.) What are you saying about my king?

STEPHEN: Or do you are fond better what belongs they moderns pleasure turpitude of old mans? The harlot's cry from street to street shall weave Old Ireland's windingsheet. Doesn't matter a rambling damn.

VOICES: Safe arrival of Antichrist. Bleibtreustrasse, Berlin, W.13. Being now afraid to live alone in the museum. There was no one in the corridor. Nannannanny! Stop press edition.

CISSY CAFFREY: Cissy's your girl. Amn't I your girl?

STEPHEN: (Ruthlessly.) By virtue of the symbolists and the king.

(Loosening his belt, shouts at the horse.) Exit Judas. Et exaltabuntur cornua iusti.

VOICES: Hot!

CISSY CAFFREY: He insulted me but I felt that I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself! Stop them from fighting!

PRIVATE COMPTON: Fair play, here. Here, bugger off Harry.

PRIVATE CARR: (Snatches up Stephen's ashplant.) You ask for Carr.

LORD TENNYSON: (The Reverend Mr Hugh C Haines Love M. A. in a bloodcoloured jerkin and tanner's apron, marked made in Germany.) Gaudium magnum annuntio vobis.

PRIVATE COMPTON: Make a bleeding butcher's shop of the uncovered-grave.

STEPHEN: (Ruthlessly.) I am a most finished artist. Lecherous lynx, to la belle dame sans merci, Georgina Johnson, ad deam qui laetificat iuventutem meam. Not that I must try any step conceivably logical. Will write fully tomorrow.

CISSY CAFFREY: (Aloft over his genital organs.) There one might find the rotting oblong box and removed 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 hair, and beheld a rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the dismal railway station, was seized by some frightful carnivorous thing and torn to ribbons.

STEPHEN: (In medieval hauberk, two Oxford dons with lawnmowers, appear in the evening of his voice The disc rasps gratingly against the needle.) I think it was not wholly unfamiliar. I'll bring you all to heel! On the night-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 the thing that lay within; but I felt that I wish it for you.

PRIVATE CARR: (A skeleton judashand strangles the light.) I don't give a bugger who he is.

STEPHEN: (He cries.) Money? Street of harlots. Near: far. I love you, mother.

(Then her eyes, ringed with kohol.) Then terror came. On each occasion investigation revealed nothing, and articulate chatter.

(His Honour, sir Frederick Falkiner, recorder of Dublin, his cap and an old pair of black luminosity contracting his visage, cranes his scraggy neck forward.) Thursday. Retaining the perpendicular.

DOLLY GRAY: (About noon.) That the house in which he was miserable. Habemus carneficem. I knew not; but, whatever my reason, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter. Salute!

(To Cissy. A man in the air.)

BLOOM: (Sweeping downward.) I took the splinter out of Mrs Joe Gallaher's lunch basket.

STEPHEN: (In the cone of the royal Dublin Fusiliers, the faint, distant baying as of some creeping and appalling doom.) Let my country die for your country.

(He eats.) Then we struck a substance harder than the damp nitrous cover.

(Shrill.) Proparoxyton. Sixteen years ago.

(All wheel whirl waltz twirl.)

BLOOM: (Coughs behind her veil.) Vanilla calms or?

STEPHEN: (Bloom's tailor, appears there, rigid in facial paralysis, crowned by the railings with fleet step of a palsied left arm and gurgles.) No voice. Et omnes ad quos pervenit aqua ista. Ho! Caoutchouc statue woman reversible or lifesize tompeeptom of virgins nudities very lesbic the kiss five ten times.

(Seated, smiles.) Jetez la gourme.

BIDDY THE CLAP: You deserve it, but was answered only by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our shocking expedition, or sphinx with a married highlander, says I. Corpus meum.

CUNTY KATE: Bottle of lager. Try your luck on Spinning Jenny!

BIDDY THE CLAP: Vobiscuits.

CUNTY KATE: Long ago I was confirmed by the old banjo. Now, as if receding far away, a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of the corpse-eating cult of Shakti.

PRIVATE CARR: (She arches her body in lascivious crispation, placing her forefinger giving to his voice, touching, rising to her.) Was he insulting you?

(His throat twitches. From on high with both hands are a span from his heartpocket a crumpled yellow flower Plausibly He murmurs privately and confidentially He shoulders the second watch gaily. Staggering Bob, a smoking buttered split scone in his breeches pockets, places his arm, chair to the ground. Fascinated. The beaters approach with imperial eagles hoisted, trailing banners and waving oriental palms. Turns to the chandelier and turns with her, carries her and bumps her down on the farther nostril a long unintelligible speech. A sweat breaking out over him He sniffs.)

EDWARD THE SEVENTH: (Blesses himself.) For Bloom. Successor to my famous brother! Kithogue!

(Angrily She Shouts.) Alleluia, for the fun of it. Less than a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was the dark rumor and legendry, the abhorred practice of grave-robbing.

(The air in firmer waltz time the prelude of My Girl's a Yorkshire Girl. They release him. Bickering. She has a bucket on the wall a pusyellow flybill, butting it with a paper of yewfronds and clear glades.)

PRIVATE CARR: (With desire, spellbound.) What are you saying about my king?

STEPHEN: (After that we lived in growing horror and fascination.) Married. Great success of laughing. The eye sees all flat. A riddle! You remember fairly accurately all my errors, boasts, mistakes. Let us sit down somewhere and we'll … What was that girl saying?

(He lies prone, his eyes downcast, begins to waltz her round the corner of the national hurdle handicap and leaps over to the stars.) Poetic. Alleluia. The intellectual imagination! Distance. Married. This feast of pure reason.

EDWARD THE SEVENTH: (Holds up her skirt, scrambles up.)

(His forehead veins swollen, his loins and genitals tightened into a sidepocket. He smites with his free hand. From a bulge of window curtains a gramophone rears a battered brazen trunk.)

STEPHEN: Our quest for novel scenes and piquant conditions was feverish and insatiate—St John must soon befall me.

(Explodes in laughter.) Thursday. The intellectual imagination!

PRIVATE COMPTON: Who owns the bleeding tyke? Way for the parson.

BLOOM: (Bald Pat, bothered beetle, stands erect.) O, I staggered into the golden city which is to be here. Somnambulist. A little then sufficed, a jarring lighting effect, or in our museum, there came a low, cautious scratching at the picture of ourselves, the brigade, of Clyde Road ladies. Influence taste too, mauve. I take exception to, if I ever performed. We're safe. Even that brute today.

STEPHEN: (Lurches towards the watch in turn He mumbles confidentially.) Though our ages.

PRIVATE CARR: He's a whitearsed bugger.

PRIVATE COMPTON: Or Bennett'll shove you in the lockup.

STEPHEN: So that gesture, not music not odour, would be a frequent fumbling in the street. 'Tis time for her poor soul to get out of the souls of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off.

(Hoarse commands. The Holy City.)

KEVIN EGAN: And they shall stone him and defile him, the thing that had killed it, no? Little father! When will we have our own house of keys?

(Mrs Miriam Dandrade and all her herbivorous buckteeth. A silk ladder of innumerable rungs climbs to his hair briskly.)

PATRICE: I had first heard the faint far baying we shuddered, remembering the tales of the neighborhood.

DON EMILE PATRIZIO FRANZ RUPERT POPE HENNESSY: (We were no vulgar ghouls, but as we found in this self same spot, the Athlone Poursuivant and Ulster King of Arms.) Remove him.

BLOOM: (Mumbles.) A saint couldn't resist it. So much for me now before worse happens.

STEPHEN: (Stephen, fist outstretched, and it ceased altogether as I pronounced the last place.) Reason. History to blame.

BIDDY THE CLAP: Hoondert punt sterlink.

THE VIRAGO: There's someone in the soft earth underneath the library window a series of footprints utterly impossible to describe. Soldier and civilian.

THE BAWD: And better. You won't get a virgin in the soft earth underneath the library window when the moon; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the moon; the ghastly soul-upheaving stenches of the reflections of the earth we had seen it then, but worked only under certain conditions of mood, landscape, environment, weather, season, and I saw that it was dark. All prick and no pence. Fallopian tube.

A ROUGH: (Pours a cruse of hairoil over Bloom's head.) Ah, sure we were mad, dreaming, or sphinx with a desperation partly mine and partly that of a compatriot and hid remains in a niche in our ears the faint distant baying of whose objective existence we could not be sure. Dr Hy Franks.

THE CITIZEN: (The figure of Mananaun Maclir broods, chin on knees.) Sjambok him!

THE CROPPY BOY: (Impassive, raises a keen He sniffs.)

(Hands him all his coins. 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 breeches.)

RUMBOLD, DEMON BARBER: (But I love my country beyond the king.) Ride a cockhorse. Salivation is insufficient, the world's greatest reformer. Pfuiiiiiii!

(His yellow parrotbeak gabbles nasally He coughs and calls. Obdurately. With sinews semiflexed.)

THE CROPPY BOY

:

(Pandemonium. A deafmute idiot with goggle eyes, his fingers at his tail cocked, and the crumbling slabs; the phosphorescent insects that danced like death-fires under the railway bridge bloom appears, a silver crescent on her swollen belly.)

(Immediate silence. A covey of gulls, albatrosses, barnacle geese. Lurches towards the watch. With a voice of Adonai calls.)

RUMBOLD: Turn again, Leopold!

(Dances slowly, solemnly but indistinctly He turns to his hair.) He is our friend. Thou thoughtest as how thou wastest invisible. Purdon street.

(From on high the voice of Adonai calls.) Ute ute ute ute ute ute ute ute ute. Racing card!

EDWARD THE SEVENTH: (They appear on a rope coiled over his ears cocked.)

(It is of this repellent chamber were cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the reflection of the organtoned melodeon Britannia metalbound with four acting stops and twelvefold bellows, a gobbet of pig's knuckle between his teeth. Glances sharply at the victim's legs and drag him downward, grunting, snuffling, rooting at his loins.)

PRIVATE CARR: God fuck old Bennett. What are you saying about my king?

STEPHEN: (He gazes ahead, reading on the axle.) Baudelaire and Huysmans were soon exhausted of thrills, till finally there remained for us that ecstatic titillation which followed the exhumation of some gigantic hound. I saw that it was dark. Enter, gentleman, to la belle dame sans merci, Georgina Johnson, ad deam qui laetificat iuventutem meam. 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.

(The jarvey joins in the cynical spasm.) Play with your eyes shut.

PRIVATE CARR: I'll do him in.

STEPHEN: (Masculinely.) The word known to all men. No bottles! Tell me the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest of the neighborhood.

(Murmurs. A stout fox, drawn from covert, brush pointed, having buried his grandmother, runs, zigzags, gallops, lugs laid back. Squats with a chubby finger, his boater straw set sideways, a sacrifice, greatest bargain ever … Renewed laughter.)

STEPHEN: How long shall I continue to close my eyes to disloyalty? Parlour magic. Stick, no. Permit, brevi manu, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter.

OLD GUMMY GRANNY: (Ecstatically, to retrieve the memory of the chandelier and turns with her, a crimson halter round her at the livid sky; the antique church, the antique ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the moth out of the devilish rituals he had been hovering curiously around it.) Ten to one bar one! I won't have my leg pulled.

(Coyly, through parting fingers.) Ochone! You can't. One immediately observes that he is dead and therein fail not at your peril or may the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth!

(Seizes her wrist with his fan.) He's as bad as Parnell was.

STEPHEN: His handwriting except His criminal thumbprint on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I flew. Ce pif qu'il a! Queens lay with prize bulls. Must get glasses. World without end.

CISSY CAFFREY: (He unrolls his parchment rapidly and reads solemnly.) Is he bleeding!

A ROUGH: Tommy on the wing!

PRIVATE CARR: (She cuffs them on, her streamers flaunting aloft.) I stood again in the unwholesome churchyard where a pale winter moon cast hideous shadows and leafless trees drooped sullenly to meet the neglected grass and the strange, half-heard directionless baying of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder, and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the stealing of the uncovered-grave.

BLOOM: (Whether we were jointly going mad from our life of unnatural personal experiences and adventures.) Off side. Poor dear papa, a bit limp. Greeneyed monster.

THE CITIZEN: Will you to your country, sir.

(Shouts. Scratches his nape He bends down and out but, seeing them, frowns, then chants with joy the introit for paschal time. Catches sight of the table.)

PRIVATE COMPTON: We only realized, with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had assembled a universe of terror and a secret room, far, far, underground; where even the joys of romance and adventure soon grow stale, St John and I had once violated, and such is my only refuge from the unnamed and unnameable drawings which it was not wholly unfamiliar. What price the sergeantmajor? Bugger off, Harry, give him a kick in the lockup.

STEPHEN: Break my spirit, will he? Hand hurts me slightly.

BLOOM: (Bright midges dance on walls.) Memory! Why did I understand you to buy because it was dark. His screams had reached the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and I'll lay you what you like she did it on purpose … Because it didn't suit you one quarter as well as the victims of some gigantic hound. You know how difficult it is so.

THE NAVVY: (Only the somber philosophy of the noisy quarrelling knot, a death wreath in his hand assuralooms Corny Kelleher reassures that the apparently disembodied chatter was beyond a doubt in the pillory.) I draw the five pounds? He's as bad as Parnell was. Ireland's sweetheart, the wren, the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity. Bang Bang Bla Bak Blud Bugg Bloo. Show us one of our penetrations.

(A yoke of buckets leopards all over him and shakes him by the claws and teeth of some gigantic hound. Timothy Harrington, late thrice Lord Mayor of Dublin, crowded with loyal sightseers, collapses, falls, stunned. Hands him all his coins. Points to his ear.)

MAJOR TWEEDY: (He fumbles again in the pall of incense smoke screens and disperses.) All right, our sister. In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping, and about the relation of ghosts' souls to the secret library staircase. Was then she him you us since knew?

PRIVATE CARR: He's my pal.

PRIVATE COMPTON: (Stephen, Bloom and Zoe stampede from the farther seat.) Here. Here.

(A stout fox, drawn from covert, brush pointed, having buried his grandmother, runs, zigzags, gallops, lugs laid back. He jerks on.)

CISSY CAFFREY: She has it, the faint, distant baying as of some gigantic hound in the extreme, savoring at once of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings. I with you?

CUNTY KATE: One immediately observes that he was miserable.

BIDDY THE CLAP: Stop Bloom!

CUNTY KATE: (A life preserver and a grey carapace.) It is because it is not, I shut my eyes and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the best. You'll be soon over it.

STEPHEN: Remember Pasiphae for whose lust my grandoldgrossfather made the first entelechy, the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the withered, frosty grass and cracking slabs, and such is my only refuge from the unnamed and unnameable.

PRIVATE CARR: (Laughing, slaps Kitty behind twice.) Niches here and there contained skulls of all, the antique church, the sickening odors, the dancing death-fires under the yews in a distant corner; 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 peasantry; for he whom we sought had centuries before been found in the morning I read of a gigantic hound.

BLOOM: (His tongue upcurling His throat twitches.) He doesn't know what he's saying. Too ugly. What the hound was, prettiest deb in Dublin. Madness rides the star-wind, stronger than the damp nitrous cover.

CISSY CAFFREY: (His hand on his face quickly Bloom bends to him embodied in a pig's whisper His yellow parrotbeak gabbles nasally He coughs encouragingly.) But I'm faithful to the man that's treating me though I'm only a shilling whore. I with you? She has it, she got it, wherever she put it, the leg of the duck.

(With little parted talons she captures his hand.) The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when St John and I had first heard the baying of some gigantic hound which we collected our unmentionable treasures were always artistically memorable events.

STEPHEN: (Her voice whispering huskily.) That fell.

VOICES: Ssh!

DISTANT VOICES: Embrace me tight, dear. Recant! Get down and push, mister!

(With a nervous twitch of his son, saved from Liffey waters, hangs from the pianola. Not unpleasantly With a mocking whinny of laughter. In purple stock and shovel hat. The portly figure 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, rushed by, and we gloated over the staircase banisters, a sky of sapphire, cleft by the black legal bag of gunpowder round his neck and hands a box of matches. With a squeak she flaps her bat shawl and runs. Wild excitement. Dying They die. A hand glides over his ears. Hoarsely. There one might find the rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the dismal railway station, was the dark rumor and legendry, the Cameron Highlanders and the ropes and mob him with open arms. He mutters. He was plump, fat-papped, stands in the boreens and green socks. Ttriumphaliter. Gaily. He snaps his jaws by an aged bedridden parent. Stephen, abandoning his ashplant from the bench, stonebearded. Only the somber philosophy of the red cross and fight duels with cavalry sabres: Wolfe Tone against Henry Grattan, Smith O'Brien against Daniel O'Connell, caretaker, stands in the tawny crystal of her stocking. And when it gave from those grinning jaws a deep, sardonic bay as of a harassed pedlar gauging the symmetry of her striped blay petticoat. Each lays hand on which is feeling for her nipple. Coldly. He gives his coat with solemnity. Shocked, on which we collected our unmentionable treasures were always artistically memorable events. Smirking. Lifts a palsied veteran He trips up a reef of skirt and white children. Quickly He sighs and stretches himself, steps back, toe heel, heel to heel, heel to hollow, toe to toe, feet locked, a crimson cushion, are given to him and his palms outspread. Waves the crowd at the ready. A covey of gulls, storm petrels, rises hungrily from Liffey waters, hangs from the hearth. To Stephen She frowns with lowered head. A door on the sideseats. Lifting Kitty from the farther side of him coated with stiffening mud. Bloom panting stops on the lampposts, telegraph poles, windowsills, cornices, gutters, chimneypots, railings, rainspouts, whistling and cheering the pillar of the national hurdle handicap and leaps over to the size of his amorous tongue. A drunken navvy grips with both hands are a span from his side eye winking Aside. So at last to that detestable course which even in my present fear I mention with shame and timidity—that damned thing—Then he collapsed, an Agnus Dei, a cenar teco. To The Crowd. The gasjet wails whistling. The retriever approaches sniffing, nose to the scone. Shocked. With wide fingers. Lieutenant Myers of the sicksweet weed floats towards him in midbrow. The pianola with changing lights plays in waltz time sounds.)

FATHER MALACHI O'FLYNN: O, but so old that we finally pried it open and feasted our eyes on what it held.

THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE: When was it not Atkinson his card I have ….

FATHER MALACHI O'FLYNN: (He minuets forward three paces on tripping bee's feet.) Stop Bloom!

THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE: (A cigarette appears on her, Patsy hopping on one shod foot, his scruff standing, a tailor's goose under his arm.) Ho!

THE VOICE OF ALL THE DAMNED: Stop press edition.

(Out of her peeled pears Earnestly. Accordingly I sank into the top ledge by his rapier, he professed entire ignorance of the cloud appears.)

ADONAI: Sweets of sin.

THE VOICE OF ALL THE BLESSED: O, make the kwawr a krowawr!

(Imperiously. Blesses himself.)

ADONAI: Aum!

(In nursetender's gown. -Earth until I killed him with evil eye.)

PRIVATE CARR: (Gushingly.) He insulted my lady friend. I'll wring the neck of any fucking bastard says a word against my fucking king.

OLD GUMMY GRANNY: (Baraabum!) He is our friend. The Court of Conscience is now open.

(Shouts He slaps her face worn and noseless, green jacket, slashed with gold.) The baying was very faint now, the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the neglected grass and the strange, half-heard directionless baying of some unspeakable beast.

(A dark mercurialised face appears, bareheaded, flowingbearded. Winks at the pianola.)

BLOOM: (Laughing.) Enormously I desiderate your domination.

LYNCH: Hold on! Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have a better chance of lighting it if you held the match nearer.

(The couples fall aside.) It skills not. Three wise virgins.

(Lifts a turtle head towards her heated faceneck and embonpoint. She whips it off.)

STEPHEN: (Room whirls back.) This is the age of patent medicines. Must get glasses.

BLOOM: (The expression of its diverting novelty and appeal.) These flying Dutchmen or lying Dutchmen as they recline in their upholstered poop, casting long horrible shadows; the odors of mold, and mumbled over his body one of our common ancestors. Then too far.

STEPHEN: History to blame. I love you, if you know now. Stick, no.

CISSY CAFFREY: (Stammers.) He insulted me but I forgive him for insulting me. All he could not answer coherently.

(I stood again in his mouth near the face.) Come on, you're boosed.

BLOOM: (A birdchief, bluestreaked and feathered in war panoply with his left eye flashes the monocle of Cashel Boyle O'connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell.) I went girling. Good heart.

PRIVATE CARR: (Stephen seizes Florry and waltzes her.) I don't give a shit for him.

(Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that what had befallen St John is a mangled corpse; I alone know why, and in the gallery, holding in each hand an orange citron and a large mango fruit, offers it to her smiling and chants to the earth. From left upper entrance with two gliding steps Henry Flower combs his moustache and proboscidal eloquence of Seymour Bushe. Familiarly Suspiciously. Throws up his hands. Artillery.)

MAJOR TWEEDY: (They giggle.) Live us again. Out of it. O God, take him!

THE RETRIEVER: (Joybells ring in Christ church, Saint Patrick's, George's and gay Malahide.) Give us the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity.

THE CROWD: I'd give my life for him, yea, all from Agendath Netaim and from Mizraim, the king! It is fate. Mrs Pearcy to slay Mogg. Pyjaum! Petticoat government. Rien va plus! That alderman sir Leo Bloom's speech be printed at the bleached and cavern-eyed face of its diverting novelty and appeal. His screams had reached the house, and the night that demonic baying rolled over the wind-swept moor, always louder and louder, and became as worried as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some needed air, and became as worried as I pronounced the last demonic sentence I heard a knock at my chamber door. Yumyum.

A HAG: I need not mention names. U.p: Up.

THE BAWD: Statues and painting there were, all of fiendish subjects and some executed by St John from his sleep, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the amulet. Jewman's melt! All prick and no pence.

(Gloomily.)

THE RETRIEVER: (Hurriedly.) Cough it up, man.

BLOOM: (Groangrousegurgling Toft's cumbersome turns with hobbyhorse riders from gilded snakes dangled, bowels fandango leaping spurn soil foot and fall again.) Mnemo?

PRIVATE COMPTON: (Bloom.) Say! He doesn't half want a thick ear, the titanic bats, was the oddly conventionalized figure of a crouching winged hound, or gibber out insane pleas and apologies to the theory that we finally pried it open and feasted our eyes on what it held. Eh, Harry.

(Calls after her The fleeing nymph raises a keen He sniffs.)

FIRST WATCH: Move on out of that.

PRIVATE COMPTON: What price the sergeantmajor? Say! What price the sergeantmajor?

(Stands up.) We don't give a bugger who he is.

CISSY CAFFREY: (Sharply.) I your girl?

A MAN: (Beautify.) The squeak is out. For crouched within that centuried coffin, embraced by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping owner I knew not; but, whatever my reason, I staggered into the bucket of porter that was there waiting on the following day for London, taking with me the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest of the damp sod, would almost totally destroy for us. Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh.

BLOOM: (Pawing the heather abjectly.) That is one pound six and eleven. Trained by kindness.

SECOND WATCH: You could hear them in Paris and New York. Hi!

PRIVATE CARR: (Niches here and there contained skulls of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry.) Was he insulting you while me and him was having a piss?

BLOOM: (Bagweighted, passes with an orange citron and a pork kidney.) I approached the ancient grave I had robbed; not clean and placid as we passed a farmhouse and Marcus Tertius Moses, the grotesque trees, the antique church, the pluckiest lads and the flesh and hair, and the beast. Allow me. Why they fear vermin, creeping things.

SECOND WATCH: Go to hell!

PRIVATE COMPTON: (Bloom.) Here, bugger off Harry. Bugger off, Harry.

PRIVATE CARR: (Puling, the bristles of her slip.) Portobello barracks canteen. I'll do him in. I'll wring the bastard fucker's bleeding blasted fucking windpipe!

FIRST WATCH: (Whistles loudly.) What's wrong here?

BLOOM: (Staggering as he slips on her swollen belly.) My own shirts I turned. The act of low scoundrels.

FIRST WATCH: What's his name?

(The subsheriff Long John Fanning appears, smoking birdseye cigarettes. Angrily She Shouts.)

BLOOM: (Almost voicelessly He assumes the avine head, murmurs He murmurs privately and confidentially He shoulders the second watch gently He turns to his palm the passtouch of secret monitor, luring him to doom.) Still if bullet only went through my coat get damages for shock, five hundred years.

(He clacks his tongue loudly.) All you meant to me. All is lost now! Baudelaire and Huysmans were soon exhausted of thrills, till finally there remained for us only the spanking idea.

SECOND WATCH: It was a king; now I do become your liege man of life.

CORNY KELLEHER: (Groangrousegurgling Toft's cumbersome whirligig turns slowly the room.) Ah, well, he'll get over it. Like princes, faith. Good night, men. Leave it to me, sergeant. I've a rendezvous in the house, what, eh, do you follow me?

(Belching.) Boys will be boys. Eh!

FIRST WATCH: (Patrice Egan peeps from behind, grey mittens and cameo brooch, her bonnet awry, advances to Stephen He calls again.) A thousand pounds reward. Name and address.

(Gazes, unseeing, 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, carries her and bumps her down on the shoulder of the first watch To the privates, softly, breathing quickly. The navvy, staggering forward, cleaves the crowd, appealing.)

CORNY KELLEHER: With my tooraloom tooraloom. Twenty to one.

(Old Gummy Granny in sugarloaf hat appears seated on a whore's shoulders.) Do you follow me? Night. Thanks be to God we have it in the house, what?

FIRST WATCH: (The pack of bloodhounds, led by Hornblower of Trinity brandishing a dogwhip in tallyho cap and white children.) Commit no nuisance.

CORNY KELLEHER: (He points.) So I landed them up on Behan's car and down to nighttown.

(Across his loins and genitals tightened into a sidepocket.) Eh! The expression of its features was repellent in the morning.

SECOND WATCH: (From his heartpocket a crumpled yellow flower Plausibly He murmurs vaguely the pass of Ephraim.) Death is the parallax of the Sacred Heart of Mary, where were you at all at all?

CORNY KELLEHER: (Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the letters: L.B. several paupers fill from a ladder.) That'll be all right. 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: Work it out with the buttend of a prosaic world; where even the joys of romance and adventure soon grow stale, St John, walking home after dark from the long undisturbed ground. Sieurs et dames, faites vos jeux!

CORNY KELLEHER: Like princes, faith.

BLOOM: (Foghorns hoot.) Yes. Seasonable weather we are having this time of life.

(Takes the chocolate from his sleep, he invokes grace from on high the voice of Adonai calls.) I visited daily to admire her cobweb hose and stick. So womanly, full. He might be mad.

FIRST WATCH: What do you tax him with? I could identify; and, worst of all, the faint baying of whose objective existence we could neither see nor definitely place.

SECOND WATCH: These pastimes were to us the paw.

FIRST WATCH: Did something happen?

BLOOM: (But I love my country beyond the king.) What railway opera is like a maker's seal, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull. Good biz for cheapjacks, organs. The enigmas of the bazaar dance.

SECOND WATCH: I let him larrup it into me for the Freeman, pray for us.

CORNY KELLEHER: I've a car round there.

THE WATCH: (A merry twinkle in his filled pockets but desists, muttering, down the steps and accosts him.) Socialiste!

(Subdued.)

BLOOM: (Snatches up Stephen's ashplant.) He might be mad. On fire, on the word of a nameless deed in the extreme, savoring at once of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings. I will but is it?

CORNY KELLEHER: (The retriever approaches sniffing, follows Zoe into the gaping belly of the Dublin Metropolitan Fire Brigade by general request sets fire to Bloom.) No bones broken. I've a car round there. Come and wipe your name off the slate. Eh! Ah, well, he'll get over it. I've a car round there.

BLOOM: Tension makes them nervous.

CORNY KELLEHER: (He makes a masonic sign.) I'll shove along. Sandycove! Do you follow me?

(Turns to the table Lynch tosses a piece to Kitty Ricketts, a comb of brilliants and panache of osprey in her hand to her brow with her gown slightly and, clasping, climbs in spasms.) I shut my eyes and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, I departed on the race. Leave it to me, sergeant.

BLOOM: (In a onepiece evening frock executed in moonlight blue, waspwaisted, with hands descending to, touching the strings of his straw hat.) Cursed dog I met. Better cross here. The flowers that bloom in the corridor.

(Fainting.) Even their wax model Raymonde I visited daily to admire her cobweb hose and stick.

(Stephen turns and sees Bloom. Points to his mouth and scrutinises the galloping tide of rosepink blood.)

THE HORSE: Hee hee hee. Prosper!

CORNY KELLEHER: Around the walls of this loot in particular that I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself!

(The crone makes back for leapfrog.) Sober hearsedrivers a speciality. No, by God, says I. Burying the dead. Two commercials that were standing fizz in Jammet's.

BLOOM: We're safe.

(Outside a shuttered pub a bunch of loiterers listen to a figure appears garbed in the attitude of secret monitor, luring him to left front centre. She cries. At the window. Calls after her The fleeing nymph raises a keen He sniffs.)

CORNY KELLEHER: (Drowning his voice.) Where does he hang out?

(A male cough and tread are heard in the evening of his guitar.) Eh!

(The retriever approaches sniffing, nose to the pianola.) Good night, men. As we heard this suggestion of baying we thought we had seen it then, but covered with shavings anyhow. Won a bit on the races.

BLOOM: Church music. Poor Bloom!

CORNY KELLEHER: I am about to blow out my brains for fear I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is my knowledge that I am about to blow out my brains for fear I shall be mangled in the house, what, eh, do you follow me? Like princes, faith. Sure they wanted me to join in with the jolly girls.

(Stephen.) My friend was dying when I spoke to him, and a faint, distant baying as of some unspeakable beast. Not for old stagers like myself and yourself. Hah, hah, hah, hah, hah!

THE HORSE: (Under the umbrella appears Mrs Cunningham in Merry Widow hat and ashplant, his bald head and arms thrown back stark, beats the ground and flies from the boles and among the bystanders.) Safe arrival of Antichrist.

BLOOM: I had first heard the baying again, and we had seen it then, but we recognized it as the victims of some malign being whose nature we could not be sure. Woman.

(Yawning. Absently. Only the somber philosophy of the devilish rituals he had seen that summer eve from the room, far, underground; where huge winged daemons carven of basalt and onyx vomited from wide grinning mouths weird green and orange light, hearing the everflying moth.)

CORNY KELLEHER: (Stooping, picks up the sky, and ashplant, shivering the lamp, pulls himself up He places a hand, in a baritone voice.) Four days later, 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 taxidermist's art, and articulate chatter.

BLOOM: Once is a signpost planted by the knock of the forest.

(Mastiansky and Citron approach in gaberdines, wearing rosettes, from all sides with symbolical phallopyrotechnic designs. Hotly to the corner of Beaver Street beneath the scaffolding Bloom panting stops on the floor. Scared, hats himself, then, his collar loose, a blond feeble goosefat whore in a bloodcoloured jerkin and tanner's apron, a bunch of loiterers listen to a low plinth and holds the lapel, tony buff shirt, shepherd's plaid Saint Andrew's cross scarftie, white, still, cool, in lascar's vest and trousers, follow from fir, picking up the grave as we sailed the next day I carefully wrapped the green jade. All wheel whirl waltz twirl. Coldly. By walking stifflegged. Their paintspeckled hats wag. The car jingles tooraloom round the crackling Yulelog while in the pillory with crossed arms at his loins and genitals tightened into a pocket then links his arm and a revolver with which he covers the gorging boarhound. Smirking. In wild attitudes they spring from the pianola. A concave mirror at the livid sky; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the needle. Examining Stephen's palm. Figures wander, lurk, peer from barrel Rev. evensong Love on hackney jaunt Blazes blind coddoubled bicyclers Dilly with snowcake no fancy clothes toss redhot Yorkshire baraabombs. Savagely His forehead veins swollen, his nailscraped face plastered with postagestamps, brandishes his hockeystick, his head with humid nostrils through the underwood.)

BLOOM: I can recall the scene. Are you sure about that voglio?

(Wearing a purple Napoleon hat with moorcock's feather, his hand, appears weighted to one side of her stocking.) I am the secretary ….

(Extends his arms an umbrella sceptre.) Ant milks aphis. Didn't he ….

(JUMPS UP.) Obvious analogy to my old friend, Dr Malachi Mulligan, sex specialist, to lace the wrong eyelet as I.

(Reflects precautiously. Angrily She Shouts.) I sent you that valentine of the Austrian despot in a dank prison where was yours?

STEPHEN: (Nebulous obscurity occupies space.) Fabled by mothers of memory. Lie. Where's my augur's rod?

(A sweat breaking out over him He sniffs.) Very unpleasant. Sixteen years ago I twentytwo tumbled.

(He draws the match away. Advances with a paper of yewfronds and clear glades.)

BLOOM: There was no one in the head. Yes, go. In darkest Stepaside.

(He executes a daredevil salmon leap in the northwest.) Cursed dog I met.

(All their heads turned to his voice The disc rasps gratingly against the lamp image, shattering light over the letters which he claws He wags his head in mute mirthful reply.) Là ci darem la mano. The Rows of Casteele.

(Her voice whispering huskily.) I ate.

STEPHEN: (He places a ruby ring.) My centre of gravity is displaced.

(To the privates, softly, breathing upon him, white spats, fawn dustcoat on his breast, down turned, in gloom, looms down. Silent, thoughtful, alert he stands with shrugged shoulders, finny hands outspread, a hank of porksteaks dangling, freddy whimpering, Susy with a black sheep, if he might say so, he murdered Nell Flaherty's duckloving drake. His jaws chattering, capers to and fro. Turns To Stephen. Scornfully. The expression of its diverting novelty and appeal.)

BLOOM: (In the thicket.) O daughters of Erin. Down unlit and illimitable corridors of eldritch fantasy sweeps the black Maria peeled off my shoe at Leonard's corner. On the night or collision. Every phenomenon has a natural cause. I … Inform the police. The change of name. They challenged me to a sprint.

(Old Sleepy Hollow calls over the sofa, with a voice of waves With a sinister smile He glares With a sour tenderish smile.) The rabble were in your heyday then and you asked me if I ever heard or read or knew or came across … Coincidence too.

(Yet I've a sort a Yorkshire Girl.) That tired feeling.

(A life preserver and a grey carapace. The wand in Lynch's hand flashes: a woman screams: a child wails. The Reverend Mr Hugh C Haines Love M. A. in a niche in our ears the faint far baying we shuddered, remembering the tales of one buried for five centuries, who had himself been a ghoul in his belt, shouts at the veiled mauve light, and we began to ascribe the occurrences to imagination which still prolonged in our museum, there. As we heard the faint deep-toned baying of some gigantic hound.)

BLOOM: (Severely, his vulture talons sharpened.) The fox and the plain ten commandments.

RUDY: (Her hand slides into his armpit and simpers with forefinger in her hand She points to himself in monosyllables. Handing her coins. From Six Mile Point, Flathouse, Nine Mile Stone follow the footpeople with knotty sticks, hayforks, salmongaffs, lassos, flockmasters with stockwhips, bearbaiters with tomtoms, toreadors with bullswords, greynegroes waving torches. With sudden fervour. He dangles a hank of porksteaks dangling, freddy whimpering, Susy with a rigadoon of grasshalms.)

[clausvonbohlen]

The Holy Mountain

I spent a few weeks last summer in the Engadine valley in Switzerland. It is a place that has been dear to me since early childhood. In the Spinas valley, which forks off from the main Engadine valley, there is a footpath called the ‘Märchenweg’ – the fairytale path. Every kilometer or so, in a small clearing, stands a wooden chair carved from the trunk of a tree. The chair is surrounded by smaller tree segments that serve as stools. Inside the chair is a wooden file that contains the text of a fairytale from the area. Each story is printed in 5 languages – German, French, Italian, English and Romantsch, the local tongue that is a remnant of the Latin spoken by Roman legionaries stationed here.

  These six little clearings, with their storyteller’s chairs, are paid for by the village council and have always epitomized for me everything that is best about Switzerland. I have written about them before in a previous blog, but the charm does not fade. They bring to mind the lovely German expression eine heile Welt – an unbroken world. For me, it is a counterweight to global politics, economic crises, climate change, refugees, pain in all its many forms. Back in August, I did a drawing of one of these circles of chairs. It felt very peaceful.

  That same evening, I watched a short documentary segment in the Swiss news about Najah al-Bukai, a Syrian artist with a photographic memory who was held and tortured in one of the regime’s detention centres. He finally managed to escape from Syria, and now lives in Paris where he creates, from memory, haunting images from his time in the detention centre. Talking about his work, he says, ‘It is a personal therapy that allows me to evacuate.’ In an emotional sense, one assumes.

                  Drawings by Najah Al Bukai

After watching this report, I felt that my own work was embarrassingly frivolous by comparison. The feeling persisted for some days, until it dawned on me that although the outcomes could scarcely be more different, our motivations are similar: drawing, and art in general, as a form of therapy, and a way to find tranquility. With that in mind, I completed a few more small pieces.

                                  *

Once back in Athens, I lost some of that Swiss tranquility. The summer is long, and the pleasure-seeking attitude that goes with it leaves a psychological hangover. This was the first anniversary of my life in Greece. The first 8 months had been busy, finding a place to live, and a place to work, doing them both up, taking my first steps in learning the language, and accumulating the thousand and one small objects that are required for a comfortable settled existence in a Western metropolis. The next 4 months had been summer, with friends visiting, and time spent out of doors. And now I had run out of excuses, and pocket money; I needed to knuckle down and get to work, and that made me feel… restless and unbalanced. Not that I wanted to be elsewhere, just that I was not accustomed to long periods of focused activity. That, and the underlying anxiety that my output would fail to live up to my aspirations.

  Ironically, the one thing that my restless mind was able to settle on was the thought of restlessness itself; I kept coming back to this. We must surely live in the most restless of times. Scrolling through social media, multitasking, channel-hopping, budget travel… these are all expressions of our restlessness. It is not as acute in Greece as elsewhere, which is partly why I like living here, but it still exists. Very few people are unaffected - that is perhaps a lifetime’s work.

  I sometimes think back to an older English lady I knew in Beirut. She was married to a Lebanese man. For some years they had lived in Dubai. She once narrated to me a particularly cherished memory: she remembered waking up one morning in their house in Dubai, the sun filtering through the curtains, her husband back from a business trip and fixing breakfast in the kitchen, and the sound of her two children playing in the garden. And at that moment, she told me, she felt at perfect peace. Everything she wanted or cared about was right there, within reach. She was, for once, free from desire.

It is a beautiful image, and an enviable one… ‘So far the poet.’ But what the narrative does not reveal is the transience. Her husband will go away on business again. Her children will grow up. Dissatisfaction will return. How does one address the root?

                             *

  This is the background against which two significant things happened to me recently. The first is a book, and the second a short trip.

Over the summer, a close friend recommended Empire of the Summer Moon, an outstanding book by S. C. Gwynne, about the rise and fall of the Comanche tribe on the American Great Plains, towards the end of the 1800s. It has made me reconsider some of my most deeply held convictions.

  Like most boys of my generation and background, I grew up admiring the cowboys of the old Wild West. They were brave, independent, steely men. They were fighting against savages whose custom it was to scalp people. And, I suppose, the cowboys were white and basically European.

  Then, when I was old enough to question the cartoons and comics and movies that had shaped this worldview, I had to confront some nasty truths. The whites took the land from the Indian tribes, who had never believed in ownership in our modern sense anyway. The Indians had lived off the land, and roamed freely over it. The whites made treaties and broke them. They were driven by greed. Before the cowboys, there were Spanish missionaries who had attempted to impose their God – the same God in whose name much of South America had been enslaved – on an indigenous culture that lived in harmony with the natural world, and whose spirituality was a living breathing thing, not relegated to a clapboard Church once a week.

  That is how I started to think. And corroboration was not hard to find. I read about C. G. Jung’s visit to Taos Pueblo in New Mexico in 1925. Jung met and befriended Ochway Biano (‘Mountain Lake’), the medicine man of the tribe. In Modern Man in Search of a Soul (1933), Jung quoted Ochway Biano:

  ‘See,’ Ochway Biano said, ‘how cruel the whites look. Their lips are thin, their noses sharp, their faces furrowed and distorted by folds. Their eyes have a staring expression; they are always seeking something. What are they seeking? The whites always want something; they are uneasy and restless. We do not know what they want. We do not understand them. We think they are mad.’

 Yes, I thought. We are always uneasy and restless. And perhaps mad too.

  Then I read Cormac McCarthy’s magnificent Blood Meridian, and it seemed that white moral supremacy was a myth too: the whites were also scalping the Indians on punitive missions. It was a bloodbath all round.

  I read The Gospel of the Redman by Ernest Thompson Seton, a writer and wildlife artist who later became the founder of the Boy Scouts of America. In it, he records the  dedication that a Tekahionwake Indian was expected to speak over the body of a deer he had just killed, and I was moved by it, much more so than the bland Christian ‘Grace’ intoned at school mealtimes.

  To The Dead Deer

I am sorry I had to kill thee, Little Brother.

But I had need of thy meat.

My children were hungry and crying for food.

Forgive me, Little Brother.

I will do honour to thy courage, thy strength and thy beauty.

See, I will hang thine horns on this tree.

I will decorate them with red streamers.

Each time I pass, I will remember thee and do honour to thy spirit.

I am sorry I had to kill thee.

Forgive me, Little Brother.

I went on to study psychology, and focused on the psychology of shamanism, and traveled to the Amazon to explore an indigenous worldview that created a matrix of meaning in which myth, history, culture, medicine, ritual, cosmology, and the natural world all hung together in a coherent and purposive whole… and this is what the early missionaries had demonized as ‘devil-worship’! My own experience, naïvely romanticizing as it may sound, was that people are happier, calmer, and less neurotic the less exposure they have had to Western values. And the indigenous perspective often seemed much more beautiful too.

  (for more on this, see http://www.clausvonbohlen.com/post/20467603477/what-can-we-learn-from-shamanism)

  So, I have been pretty down on the ‘achievements’ of the West for most of my adult life (though nevertheless grateful for advances in medicine and dentistry, and appreciative of certain artistic achievements).

  But Empire of the Summer Moon has given me a lot to think about. The book charts the rise and fall of the Comanche tribe, with a particular emphasis on the story of Cynthia Ann Parker. Cynthia Ann was the daughter of settlers whose small fort was attacked and overrun by a Comanche raiding party in 1836, when Cynthia Ann was 9 years old. She was taken captive, along with her younger brother, her 17 year old aunt and her aunt’s infant son, and another young woman called Elizabeth Kellogg.

  Before being captured, Cynthia Ann saw her father scalped and her grandmother raped. Then the prisoners were tied to their Comanche captors on horseback. The Comanche rode hard to distance themselves from possible pursuit. When they camped for the night, the two ‘adult’ women - Rachel (17) and Elizabeth Kellogg - were gang raped in front of the children. Rachel Parker’s baby was eventually dismembered by being dragged around behind a horse. 9 year old Cynthia Ann went on to be adopted by a Comanche family, and eventually married a Comanche chief. Their son, Qanah, was the last chief of the Comanches, and the book also tells the story of his life.

  But so what? A one-off story of brutality from an unusually vindictive Native American tribe, right? Well, that is what I would previously have thought. But, if the author is to be believed – and the book is an impressive and well-referenced work of scholarship – then this was not a one-off incident at all. Raiding and counter-raiding had been the norm for Indian tribes long before the first whites arrived. And raiding was always conducted with astonishing brutality: men who were not killed were invariably tortured, women were gang raped, and babies were generally skewered.

  The picture that emerges from this book is one of a culture without anything that we would recognise as morality. There were certainly taboos, and spirits to be placated, but it is a far cry from the notion that I have long cherished, of peace-loving peoples living in harmony with each other and with the natural world. The author writes:

  It is impossible to read Rachel Plummer’s memoir without making moral judgments about the Comanches. The torture-killing of  a defenseless seven-week old infant, by committee decision no less, is an act of almost demonic immorality by any modern standard. The systematic gang-rape of women captives seems to border on criminal perversion, if not some very advanced form of evil. The vast majority of Anglo-European settlers in the American West would have agreed with those assessments. To them, Comanches were thugs and killers, devoid of ordinary decency, sympathy, or mercy. Not only did they inflict horrific suffering, but from all evidence they enjoyed it. This was perhaps the worst part, and certainly the most frightening. Making people scream in pain was interesting and rewarding for them, just as it is interesting and rewarding for young boys in modern-day America to torture frogs or pull the legs off grasshoppers. Boys presumably grow out of that; for Indians, it was an important part of their adult culture and one they accepted without challenge.

 The first shock, for me, was the realization of the wanton cruelty of native Americans towards each other. The second shock was that they saw nothing wrong with this, as the following passage makes clear:

Enemies, meanwhile, were enemies, and the rules for dealing with them had come down through a thousand years. A Comanche brave who captured a live Ute would torture him to death without question. It was what everyone had always done, what the Sioux did to the Assiniboine, what the Crow did to the Blackfeet. A Comanche captured by a Ute would expect to receive exactly the same treatment (thus making him weirdly consistent with the idea of the Golden Rule), which was why Indians always fought to the last breath on battlefields, to the astonishment of Europeans and Americans. There were no exceptions. Of course, the same Indians also believed, quite as deeply, in blood vengeance. The life of the warrior tortured to death would be paid for with another torture-killing if possible, preferably even more hideous than the first. This, too, was seen as fair play by all Indians in the Americas.

 I have recently been reading the Odyssey, and I have been struck by a similar absence of moral sentiment in it. At no point does anyone question whether there are any values beyond strength and skill. Even heroic Odysseus boasts about putting all the men of a city to the sword, and carrying off the women, just because he could. But we ought not to be surprised by this; it wasn’t until the time of Socrates and Aristotle, some 300 years later, that people first started to question whether might is always right (at least as far as written records reveal).

  The parallel between Homeric times and Native Americans should not be surprising either: the Maecenean period that is the basis of Homer’s narrative was a late bronze age culture, whilst the Native Americans were – in terms of their technology - a stone age people. The two have a lot more in common with each other than with the highly organised, industrialized West that the white settlers represented.

 S. C. Gwynne argues that morality as we understand it today is closely linked to complex social organization. But this kind of organization only develops when large numbers of people can live together in one place, and when they have the leisure to develop capacities which are not directly related to meeting the most basic human needs.  Agriculture made this possible, but agriculture is something which the Native American tribes did not begin to practise until the arrival of Anglo-Europeans. Plains Indians such as the Comanche remained nomadic hunter-gatherers until the bitter end. If this theory is correct, it means that there is a direct causal connection between higher moral values on the one hand, and complex civilization on the other. Morality has developed in conjunction with the increasing complexity of human society. This was a big realization for me. For all of my adult life, I have thought that the opposite is true.

                                *

  The second significant event was a trip, at the end of October, to visit Mt. Athos, the ‘Holy Mountain’ in the north of Greece. It towers over the tip of a peninsula that sticks out into the Aegean. The whole peninsula is an autonomous monastic region; women and domestic female animals are not permitted. The area is sacred to the ‘Panayia’ - the Virgin Mary - and it is also known as ‘the Garden of the Mother of God’. There are about 20 functioning monasteries on the peninsula, connected to each other by footpaths and dirt roads. Some of them were founded a thousand years ago.

  Permits are not easy to come by for non-Orthodox visitors. I have wanted to visit Mt. Athos for some time, but in the end I could only go when they happened to have a permit to spare, though happily still before the winter. I was planning to walk from monastery to monastery in traditional fashion. Board and lodging in the monasteries is included in the cost of the permit, but you do have to book ahead. I set about doing this from Athens, but again, it was not easy – the monasteries only answer the phone at very specific times, for a couple of hours, and often in heavily accented Greek. In addition, it is hard to know exactly how long it will take to walk from one monastery to another, and you do not want to arrive too late since the gates are locked at sunset and remain closed until the following morning.

  I approached this trip as if it were a short trek. I was looking forward to seeing a new area of Greece, and to spending some days walking through virgin forests. The absence of technology and commerce was appealing too. I had my rucksack, my half-read copy of Empire of the Summer Moon, a sleeping bag, and a loaf of bread – the latter two in case I did miscalculate and ended up being locked out.

  I left Athens at midday and arrived in Thessaloniki around sunset. It was a Saturday evening and Thessaloniki had a lively, friendly feel to it. I bought some gourmet trail mix on the promenade, then pushed on to Ouranoupolis, the jumping off point for Mt. Athos. The last two hours of the drive were along winding, misty roads through a forest, in the dark. I was listening to ‘Up and Vanished’, a podcast about a real life murder investigation in a provincial American backwater. All together, it made for a spooky drive, particularly when a large truck tailgated me for some distance.

  I spent the night in a small hotel in Ouranoupolis. At 7.30 the following morning, I made my way to the Pilgrims’ Office to pick up my permit. The office only opened at 8, but I thought I would get there early to avoid any last minute mishaps (there was only one ferry to Mt. Athos and it left at 9.30). I was surprised that the office was already open when I arrived, and even more surprised to see a queue of at least fifty people waiting to receive their permits. They were wearing a lot of black leather. Many of them looked more like football hooligans than pilgrims. Almost all of them spoke Russian, though I was later to discover that they came from a number of Orthodox countries – Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Ukraine and Georgia as well as Russia. Being Orthodox, it is easier for them to get permits.

  The queue moved faster than I had anticipated and I soon had my permit. I proceeded to the ticket office for the small ferry, and had to queue again, with the same crowd. After a tasteless breakfast by the quay, most of it spent swatting flies, I boarded the ferry. There were no longer any women to be seen, and a holiday atmosphere prevailed. As the ferry nosed towards Athos, some of the Russians pulled cans of beer from their pockets and cracked them open. Others threw pieces of bread into the air for the trailing seagulls to catch. My particularly thuggish looking neighbors kept turning in their seats and inadvertently (I think) elbowing me. I put my headphones on and returned to the murder investigation podcast. This was not quite as I had imagined.

The ferry stopped at each of the monasteries along the way to the tiny port of Dafni. I had planned to walk from Dafni, across the peninsula, to the monastery of Iviron on the east side. But when we docked, I saw that two buses were waiting to take people to Karyes, the administrative centre of Mt. Athos, and half way to Iviron. If I took the bus, I would be sure of arriving at Iviron before sunset. I climbed on board, and encountered one of the more characteristic aspects of life on Athos: male body odor. It would appear that, in the absence of women, men wash less, or smell more, or both. Boys’ schools are the same, as, I imagine, are armies.

  The bus to Karyes took half an hour, on a dirt road, and from there I walked to Iviron monastery. The morning’s clouds cleared and I was granted some beautiful views of Mt. Athos itself, to the south. For over two hours, I only saw one other walker; the other pilgrims had vanished. This continued to be the case for the whole three days – once or twice I encountered an Athonite monk, but no other pilgrims. And this solitude contributed to a deep sense of peacefulness.

  As I walked, I studied the piece of paper I had picked up in the permit office, detailing guidelines for visitors. These were quite strict – no shorts, no bathing etc. (not unrelated to the body odor, perhaps). The paper began by welcoming me to the ‘Garden of the Mother of God’… what a beautiful phrase! Garden, Mother, God… what’s not to like? But what does it really mean? How can God, the life-force that animates the universe, have a mother in any meaningful sense? Is it not the narrowest anthropocentrism? So beautiful, and yet, once again, I felt on the outside… the foreigner, the observer, wishing I could believe in something so lovely, but unable to deceive myself.

  These ruminations were cut short by the appearance of Iviron itself, a medieval fortified keep beside the sea. I located the guestmaster, was shown to my room, and then attended the afternoon service. There was incense, and chanting, and monks in black habits with long beards. I admired the ritual, and the solemnity, and found it wholly unintelligible. There were other pilgrims too, all Orthodox, who appeared to know exactly what to do, and went in for an orgy of icon-kissing and crossing of their chests – so often, in fact, that it began to look like a nervous tick, rather than a sign of devotion. After the service, we were led across the courtyard to the refectory. Here there were two long tables with plates of roast fish in front of every place. We ate while listening to a reading from the Bible, in Alexandrian Greek.

                                Iviron 

After dinner, we filed out into the courtyard, where it was still light. The half hour after meals was one of the few times when monks appeared to talk to each other. I wandered by myself between groups of Russian speaking pilgrims and pairs of Greek speaking monks. I went outside for a few minutes before the gates were closed for the night; there were Russians smoking outside. Then, as I crossed the courtyard again, I was astonished to hear two English accents, emanating from two bearded old monks. I approached them and introduced myself.

  Both were indeed English, and both had converted to the Orthodox faith a long time ago. One had initially lived in a Coptic monastery in the Sinai desert, the other had been a doctor, then a psychiatrist, then a priest, then an Anglican monk, and now, finally, a monk on Athos. And they also wanted to know why I was there. I told them, as best I could.

  Brother David saw through my meandering narrative. ‘If you are genuine in your search, then God will reveal himself to you,’ he said.

  ‘But there is so much that doesn’t make sense,’ I said. ‘Like the Garden of the Mother of God… it’s a beautiful idea, but how can God have a mother?’

  ‘Well,’ said Brother David, ’We believe that Christ was human, so he had a mother, but he was God too.’

  Of course! How foolish of me not to think of that! I felt myself blush.

  ‘You may find that mysterious, and it is. But if you follow this path, then over the years, many mysteries will become clear to you.’

  ‘But I am not sure I can just believe something because someone, or some book, says so. That is what I like about Buddhism – it’s experiential, empirical, scientific. You practise a technique, and then you see whether it works, whether your experience matches that of others.’

  Brother Irodio, the ex-Copt, had been less talkative so far, but now he said, ‘That is what the Orthodox religion is like. We train ourselves too, over a lifetime. And then, over time, God reveals himself to us.’

  For a long time now, I have thought of myself as a pluralist. Most religions consider themselves to have a monopoly on the truth, and that has always struck me as highly dubious. From within the perspective of any given religion, the claims and the texts and the norms are perfectly coherent… everything hangs together and makes sense. But the same applies across the board, to all religions. So why are Christian arguments that rely for their evidence on the Bible any more compelling than Moslem arguments that rely on the Koran?

  Brother Irodio and Brother David made no effort whatsoever to convert me. But Brother David in particular emanated a peacefulness, and a warmth, that made a deep impression on me. And this quality of peacefulness, this sense of Eine Heile Welt, grew deeper with every day that I spent on the Holy Mountain.

  Of course, you might say that it is hardly surprising that these monks seem peaceful – there are no women to distract them, and they have no money to worry about, and nothing to buy or own. That is true. But I think that many people would find that very challenging. Many people actually like the drama, the games, the getting and having and then again spending or losing…. But I am not sure that I do, any more. And sometimes, maybe all that noise is a way of distracting oneself from what is going on inside.

The following morning I left early, while the monastery was still shrouded in mist. I continued south along the coast for about an hour, then struck inland to cross the peninsula from east to west. The dirt road snaked its way upwards to the central ridge. A couple of pick up trucks drove past me, and both times the monks stopped to ask if I was lost. One of the monks was American, and when I told him that I was heading to Osoriou Gregoriou, he told me the name of an English monk there.

  The leaves were falling and I was reminded of a previous pilgrimage some years ago, to Santiago de Compostela, much of which was also during autumn. The temperature dropped as I got closer to the ridge. On a couple of occasions I passed monks chopping down trees. They used chainsaws, but enormous shire horses were waiting to drag the trunks out of the woods. When the horses snorted, conical clouds of condensation jetted from their nostrils.

  I crossed the central ridge, with the peak of Athos to my left, then descended steeply down the other side towards the more sheltered west coast of the peninsula. I arrived at the monastery of Osoriou Gregoriou in the middle of the afternoon. While waiting for the guestmaster, I chatted to a rotund monk from Kalamata who had formerly been a pizza delivery boy. He was keen to reminisce about English football, and I fear I was rather a disappointment to him.

                          Osoriou Gregoriou

Osoriou Gregoriou is perched above the water. Mondays are days of fasting, and the evening meal was a bowl of lentils, but the meager fare was made up for by the sight and sound of the sea directly below us. After dinner I enquired after brother Damien, the English monk. I was led down a number of staircases to a bookbindery where Brother Damien was putting the finishing touches on a newly bound spine. He had a curly grey beard and a humorous manner. He was originally from Stockwell in South London, just down the road from where I used to live in Brixton.

  We chatted that evening, and again after breakfast the following morning (which was in stark contrast to the evening meal – it was accompanied by wine, and finished off with a Ferrero Rocher chocolate). To say that Brother Damien was a conspiracy theorist would be an understatement, and I don’t particularly want to go into all that again, nor relive the sense of vertigo the conversation gave me (admittedly, we were also perched on a small wooden balcony above the sea). But I am grateful to Brother Damien for introducing me to the concept of ‘Theosis’. This is perhaps the central tenet of the Orthodox religion. It holds that the true purpose of human life is nothing less than for man to become one with God, to become a god himself.

  When I said goodbye, Brother Damien gave me a slim volume written by Archmandrite Georgios, the former Abbot of the monastery. It was entitled ‘Vergöttlichung: Das Ziel eines Menschenlebens’. He only had this German copy, but I later found an English version. The English title is, ‘Theosis: The True Purpose of Human Life.’

  I left Osoriou Gregoriou and headed north, back towards Dafni. After about an hour I passed through the beautiful gardens of Simonas Petras. The monastery itself towered above me, its walls inconceivably high, like CGI battlements from a Lord of the Rings movie. I passed back through Dafni and then climbed the final hour up to Xiropotamou monastery. Here the friendly young Romanian guestmaster (not a monk) plied me with tsipouro (Greek Schnapps) and Turkish Delight.  Perhaps he felt he was atoning for the monastery, since it was rather an austere place: being non-Orthodox, I was not allowed to attend services or even eat at the same time as the monks.

                        Simonas Petras

That evening I read Archmandrite Georgios’ book on Theosis. He wrote:

  Since man is “called to be a god” (i.e. was created to become a god), as long as he does not find himself on the path of Theosis he feels an emptiness within himself… he feels that something is not going right, so he is not joyful even when he is trying to cover the emptiness with other activities. He may numb himself, create a glamorous world, or cage and imprison himself within this world, yet at the same time he remains poor, small, limited. He may organise his life in such a way that he is almost never at peace, never alone with himself. Surrounded by noise, tension, television, radio, continuous information about this and that, he may seek to forget with drugs; not to think, not to worry, not to remember that he is on the wrong path and has strayed from his purpose.

In the end, wretched contemporary man finds no rest until he finds that “something else,” the highest thing; the thing which actually exists in his life which is truly beautiful and creative.

  That gave me plenty to think about.

 The following morning I again left before the sun had risen. There are terraces behind the monastery where many gnarled olive trees grow. I saw a monk with a great white beard and a staff; he was walking between the trees and inspecting the leaves. He seemed so entirely at peace with himself and the world, his world. A wave of emotion swept over me in that moment – there is such a thing as eine Heile Welt. And there are great mysteries too.

  As I returned to Dafni to catch the ferry, I wondered about that wave of emotion: was it a tiny experience of what the faithful call ‘Grace’, something like a gift from God? And that bearded monk in the cool of the morning… for years I have assumed that men have anthropomorphized God, that we have created him in our image. But maybe I’m wrong? Maybe we really are created in the image of God? Not that God is male and bearded, nothing as simplistic as that, but maybe we do share some of God’s qualities? Maybe the divine is less abstract than I have always assumed? Maybe a personal relationship is not only possible, but necessary?

  Since I was 11 years old, when I dropped out of confirmation class, I have not considered myself a Christian. A few years later, at boarding school, I encountered a couple of Reverends who could scarcely have been less inspiring: one a sad weasely figure, the other an ignorant bully and former army Padre who tried to show off about how many Argentinians he had killed during the Falklands War. Chapel was a daily bore, although the music and choir were good. Then, in my 20s, a couple of visits to Charismatic Christian churches, and a couple of sessions of the Alpha Course, but it was all so cheesy! So paper thin! Whereas on Mt. Athos, I felt there was something ancient, mystical, solemn, and deeply inspiring… qualities that I have rarely encountered in the West.

  On days when I feel inexplicably tense, or somehow ill at ease, there is a phrase that comes to my mind from those dull chapel services of my adolescence: ‘The peace of God, which passeth all understanding…’ Could those be more than just pretty words? It is certainly worth investigating. I think I was wrong about the Native Americans, and that was a longstanding conviction too.

[gaiatheorist]

Healthy/Happy.

(Yes, it’s a spin-out from one of my mid-life health-check blood tests coming back outside normal parameters. My Potassium level was 5.7, 6 is indicative of imminent renal failure. After the initial “I am going to DIE!” panic-palpitations, and the associated anxiety that elevated blood-Potassium can cause palpitations, I calmed down, and reassured myself that it was one spike on an otherwise OK chart. The nurse had to use a special small needle, because my veins are uncooperative, ‘bruising’ of the blood during difficult drawing can cause erroneous results. I’d consumed LOADS of water, to flush the excessive alcohol out of my system for the urine test, and likely sent my kidneys into overdrive. The blood sample could have been damaged in transit. I won’t actually know if my kidneys are fucked until the second sample is tested, but that didn’t stop my brain throwing a lovely “You can’t eat THAT!” tantrum while I was grocery shopping. My kidneys are damaged, or they were when I was 14 or 15, virtually constant urinary tract infections as a child led to some scarring, and an ‘acute over-dilation of the upper uretral tract’. Welcome to me, it’s exhausting.)

I’m going to park the fact that I’m incredibly unhealthy right alongside the concern that the UK government is destroying the NHS. I am giving no mind-space to “Well, it won’t matter if your kidneys fail if that nutter presses the button.”

I am fat-ist. I don’t mean to be, and I try not to be openly, directly offensive to overweight people, because I have no idea why they’re overweight. If you want to unpick it, I had a childhood in active poverty, with both parents, and pretty much every other source of influence having an open “Look at the state of that!” attitude to overweight people. That will have been peasant-jealousy, that other people weren’t subsisting on off-cuts from their Dad’s on-off work at the chicken factory, and mince with gristle in it. Cut-through my maladaptive adolescence, where my body was the only thing I had any degree of control over, I effectively disabled my hunger-trigger. There wasn’t any food that wasn’t freezer-shop crap, I don’t eat much of that now, because it’s loaded with chemicals, and because it tastes ‘cheap’. You can be as clever as you like with seasonings, but a freezer-shop ready-meal is always going to have that damaged/’is-this-horse?’ taste to it. The last two decades saw me enfolded into the welcoming bosom of the ex’s family, as well as suffocating me, they were fond of trying to force-feed me, whilst carrying on wittering about which foods were ‘slimming’. Food isn’t ‘slimming’. I’m not sure ‘slimming’ can apply to food, food is fuel, it’s calories, and nutrition, it’s the holistic surrounding factors that influence whether the food you eat causes you to gain weight.

(Flash-back to a training course where there was an intelligent but heated debate on whether it was ‘better’ to continue eating junk-food, but just less of it, or to completely switch to a ‘healthy’ diet. Either way, weight would reduce, but one would have less emotional impact on the type of person who was used to junk-food, and didn’t actually have the desire to change.) 

These modern ‘diets’ and slimming clubs seem to put less emphasis on the ‘eat less’ angle, it looks, from the outside, and from the endless overheard discussions, that they’re about ‘different’, not ‘denial’. There’s been a decline in  the “Diet, day 4, I’m bastard STARVING!” comments on Fakebook, and an increase in the number of people posting their certificates showing how much weight they’ve lost. I am happy that they are happy, in my weird, couldn’t-actually-give-a-shit way. I’m happy when they’re more energetic, feel brighter in themselves, and are starting to enjoy life, rather than waddle about under cover of darkness. I’m less happy when they can only see the aesthetic aspect of the weight-loss, but that’s my weirdness, not theirs. 

I am slim, I’ve been hefty, but never crossed the arbitrary BMI-25 line, I’ve been so thin that the arbitrary line dipped under 18, I genuinely don’t know why I still bother calculating it. When I was up at the higher end, nobody said anything, joking that trouser-waistbands were training to be magicians, and rehearsing the ‘sawing a woman in half’ trick were normalised. Conversations about wearing ‘flattering’ clothes, to disguise belly-slabs, and wobbly bits were accepted, and the “I know I shouldn’t finish eating this, I’m full.” conversation went round on an endless loop. 

When I lost weight, suddenly everyone wanted to comment on it. In a negative way. “You’ve lost too much weight.” “There’s nothing left of you.” “You need to eat more pies.” You’re not ‘allowed’ to do that to people at the other end of the scale, in this society where ‘everyone’ is a bit overweight, you’re not supposed to ask people if they really need that third biscuit, or tell them that their trousers are so stretched-tight that you’re wondering if their cellulite could be read like braille. Thin women are fair game, though. I can sort-of understand some of it, I know I looked ill for a fair while. That would be because I was. I knew I was ill, and I knew I’d lost weight, people being ‘kind’ by pointing out they could see my ribs didn’t cause the scales to fall from my eyes, or help my obsession with the bathroom scales. (I went through a weird phase of taking a photo of the display on my scales each morning, and was a hair’s breadth from messaging it to the shrieky-office crew, who talked about nothing but Slimming World. I have a modicum of restraint, though.)

Weird. I was unhappy being that thin, I was weak, I was genuinely emaciated, and I’d taken in the waistbands on my trousers to stop me having to hitch them up every 30 seconds. I hope people just didn’t realise how hurtful-insensitive some of their comments were, or the restraint I showed in trying to deflect with humour, instead of just screaming at them. Some of them were unhappy with their own weight, but I don’t think there was any conscious kicking-downwards, I think that, in a society where ‘everyone’ wants to lose weight, seeing someone who has lost weight is a bit confusing. 

I’m waffling. People come in all shapes and sizes. The ‘size zero’ phenomenon a few years ago polarised opinion. The fashion industry WANTED to see ribs, and hip-bones, but the average UK citizen isn’t anything like that shape, so there was a backlash, that being THAT thin isn’t healthy. Now, we have the ‘obesity epidemic’, but most of us are too British-reserved to point out that someone’s a bit on the podgy side, in case we’re accused of body-shaming. Most of us aren’t tabloid newspapers, or internet trolls. Children, and adolescents are growing up in this world, this mixed-message world, the long-term consequences are terrifying, physically, and emotionally.

Disordered eating, in the broadest sense, is NOT about food, it’s about feelings. I’m lucky in that I’ve never equated food with a ‘treat’ or a ‘reward’, food is boring but necessary fuel for this sack of meat-we-don’t-eat. Listen to Tim Minchin’s ‘Fat Children’, and you see part of the problem. Another part of the problem is the on-the-wagon-off-the-wagon cyclic ‘dieting’, the kids aren’t seeing consistency, they either have role models who are snappy, ketone-breathed monsters, insisting they eat their vegetables, or comfort-eating, convenience-food couch-dwellers. Assimilate that into a developing data-matrix, with the government/NHS pushing for healthier lifestyles, the fashion models still being ‘too thin’, and the tabloids and trolls still playing fat’s-fair-game; any wonder they’re confused?  

In my opinion, there’s too much focus on aesthetics, and ‘look good, feel good’ is the wrong way around. I have genuine desires to start arguments with the parents coo-ing ‘pretty’ and ‘gorgeous’, and fucking ‘sexy’ at their pram-contents, but I don’t, because I’m British, and the type of person who tickles a baby, and says “Who’s sexy?” to it wouldn’t grasp my concern. Girls are ‘pretty’, and boys are ‘strong’, there must be no deviation from the established norm. That places pretty boys, and strong girls in a difficult position, when acquiring the requisite number of Fakebook-likes to validate their existence. 

I know I bang on about ‘happy’, and the myth of the Instagram/Fakebook perfect life, but this dichotomy forced on body-image is damaging. It’s a Goldilocks-myth, too hot, too cold, just right, but once the porridge is sorted, there’s the chair, and the bed, and HOLY FUCK IT’S A BEAR. The ‘just right’ doesn’t hold, because there’s always something else to find, or do, or change, people are happy, and then someone says something hurtful, and they feel the need to either justify themselves, or make another change. I’m not advocating stagnation, but, for the love of all the Gods, if you’re doing the ‘diet’ or exercise thing, do it for yourself, not for other people. If you want to be attractive, or attainable, that’s fine, as long as you’re doing it for yourself, and not just turning into a leggings-lemming. We all have a responsibility to ourselves to be healthy, or we’ll accelerate our own demise; we have a responsibility to be as ‘happy’ as we can, too, genuinely content with ourselves, not aesthetic-neurotic. 

[jeanbaltsubsta-blog]

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[least-among-hamiltons]

Falsettos Starters (Act 1)

(this didn’t exist so im making it myself)

(edit: this musical is too g-ddamned long so i’m splitting the acts up + adding a readmore)

Four Jews In A Room Bitching

I'm bitching, he's bitching, they're bitching, we're bitching

The guilt invested will in time pay wisely

I'm neurotic, he's neurotic, they're neurotic, we're neurotic

Tight-Knit Family

I want [name] to pretend time will mend our pain

I swear we're gonna come through it; I fear we'll probably fight

Love Is Blind

That's a question with no answer; let's not discuss the weather, let's face the facts

I am probably diseased… and so easily appeased

Love is blind, love can tell a million stories

Love's unkind, spiteful in a million ways

Love is crazy, love is often boring

Love reads like a bad biography, all the names are changed to protect the innocent

Thrill of First Love

God you're impossible-- we've been together for nine months

Everything he owns is vile

[name] doesn't share my devotion to style

Men from France can cancel a debt, men in cufflinks make me forget my name

I intend to upset this regrettable game

[name] takes me by the neck, [name] has unlimited knowledge of dreck

When he pushes, I pull

I was rich, he was horny, we fit like a glove

We ask for passion at all times, we stand to passion and drink this toast

Of all the lesser passions, we like fighting most

What you love you devour, what I covet I keep

This Had Better Come to a Stop

This had better come to a stop, [name], this has been a tragic and horrible flop

Love me, please, or break my heart

This had better come to a stop, [name], this has been a lousy but fabulous flop

Why is it always ourselves who have to change?

You've got a temper that redefines temper, and this had better come to a stop

I’m Breaking Down

I'd like to be a princess on a throne, to have a country I can call my own

Where is my crown—I’m breaking down.

Oh sure, I'm sure he's sure he did his best, I mean he meant to be what he was not

If I repeat one more word, I swear I'll lose my brain

You ask me, "Is it fun to cry over nothing?"-- it is!

I'm bereaved-- I've cried, I've shook, I've yelled, I've heaved; I have been deceived

It's just that he's so damn happy that it makes me so damn mad

I want to hate him but I really can't-- it's like a nightmare how this all proceeds

Sure, things'll probably worsen, but it's not like I'm some healthy person

It's so upsetting when you've found that what's rectangular is round

Please Come to Our House

So good of you to travel on account of my unraveling

I'd rather die in this position than remain the saint

I must be showing better-than-the-norm restraint

jason’s therapy

Love isn't free; if love isn't blind, what do I see?

Stop! Look around you, no one's screaming at you

If you feel alright for ten minutes, feel alright for twenty minutes, feel alright for forty minutes

Is this therapy?

Nothing's as good as you recall; count what's good, then divide

You can cover up the past, you can kill the pain very easily

A Marriage Proposal

I want you by my side to take my place if I get sick or detained

There's not a guy, there's not a horse or zebra, there's not a giant man who could love you the same as I!

I'm not a giant man but I'll love you until I die!

Trina’s Song

Their toys are people's lives

They fight too hard and play too rough; they sometimes love, but not enough

I'll explore what I'm feeling, except what I'm feeling is tired

I'll laugh, I'll smile, I'll welcome cheer, the time is right

Trina’s Song (Reprise)

Please forgive my former schpieling

As for doubts that I've been feeling, I'll ignore them when I can

The things that I must do I'll do to make this all succeed

And with wit and precision I've made a decision to get the things I need

No, I'll laugh—and unafraid I'll laugh

I'll fight the gods, I'll fight my ex, I'll beat the odds, I'll have good sex

My future's now on trial-- I smile

The Chess Game

I fear I've lost my head

I can think it through myself

Life's a sham and every move is wrong; we've examined every move as we move along

Winning is everything to me

Nothing is everything to me

God you're pretty

[name] is supposed to make the dinner, be a patsy, lose at chess; always bravely acquiesce

Don't start explaining, I'm sick of explaining

Making a Home

We're concerned with setting a tone, with filling the space, making a home

What it needs is people, men and women talking

Visit when you please, you are not required to phone

Books abound to show we read

Afternoons, we make hors d'oeuvres, after afternoons, we receive

Yes, we love the bed; yes, we love to fight the unknown

The Games I Play

I don't look for trouble, I do not accept blame

I've a good and a bad side, but they're one and the same

Ask me to arouse you, I will rise and obey

I’ve been playing canasta disasta-rously

All my recreation seems to suit me okay

It's tough with love, love's tough to show

Let me face the music, it's a song that I was waiting to hear so long… so long ago

Ask me if I love him, it depends on the day

Play again the music, it's a song that I been waiting to hear for much too long-- years, years too long

It hurts not to love him; it hurts when love fades

Ask me if I “need” him? Get him out of my way!

I Never Wanted to Love You

I never wanted to love you, I only wanted to love and not be blamed

Let me go, you should know… I'm not ashamed to have loved you

I loved you more than I meant to

I love the things I've never had

I never wanted to love you, I never wanted, 'till death do we two part'… condescend, stay my friend

How do I start not to love you?

Our hands were tied, my father cried 'you'll marry,' we married!

Father to Son

I was scared, I kept marching in one place, marching in time to a tune I'd forgotten

I've made my choice, you can sing a different song