#cupid ghoul answers asks

[cupid-ghoul]

new dad alpha asking 10x if it's okay to touch the kit or hold them this way. SO nervous to possibly hurt them, so anxious about it always

first time he holds the kit, though? Tears. Trying to not sob but this is his kit!! His !!! He doesn't have to give this one back later, he KEEPS this one!!!!

Y'know how ferrets show their owners their babies? Alpha does that w/ any Papa. Just pulls them to come look and admire HIS kit.

alpha is presenting the kit to his pack full on lion king style

the poor thing hasn't even opened their eyes yet and is already the star of the show. And you know it will be the most spoiled little baby to ever exist. Alpha will make sure his kit gets EVERYTHING it wants.

Raaah nervous dad alpha that cries butters my toast SO much. It's just perfect.

Dad!Alpha showing his kit how to hunt, but it's just them being outside in the garden sneaking up on the other ghouls together.

ALPHA PLAY FIGHTING WITH HIS KIT LIKE LIONS DO, SO ITS JUST THIS TINY BABY GHOUL "DEFEATING" ALPHA IN THEIR LITTLE PLAY FIGHT. alpha plays dead ofc bcs his little one won and bested him with all their strength.

[hawkmothdiemotte]

Valentine Cupid and Abbey sit on Bordeaux chairs talking to a microphone

If Cupid had a podcast or something (but modern) she’d be very fancy I think and film it as well. I imagine this to be similar to her show in the „why do ghouls fall on love?“ movie but like as podcast where people ask questions in text beforehand. This one is specifically about gay relationship questions, which is why valentine is also there. It would also be longer than 11:03 but it didn’t fit well into the box…

They usually are only 2 so Abbey has to share, oh… no…!

Cupid sitting on a pc asking abbey something, she sits on the desk filing her nails/claws? Thinking about her answer

This is the same „universe“ i think but like a live stream without video like in the original.

[cupidssorbet]

"Just a minute."

Aether Ghoul x Reader.

Summary: You had a longer night with working on things, more than you would have enjoyed. So when your boyfriend offers a simple cuddle to rejuvenate who are you to decline?

Includes: Reader is a ghoul in this one but everything else is not specified so free reign, 100% just fluff, not much use of (name) primarily nicknames like love, sweetheart the basics, cuddles to sleep.

Word count: 649.

P.S: This is an anon request so thank you anon!

Xoxo Cupid.

Sleep did not come easy to you last night, it didn’t come at all really. You’d been so consumed with the work the papa’s assigned to you for tours and what not that you ended up staying awake until the birds started chirping outside, you groaned realizing you just stayed awake until morning. You looked over your desk, spotting the yellow sticky note that Copia wrote you reminding you not to forget that you were to accompany him to a meeting with Seestor and the Papa’s. 

With a stretch of your arms and tail, you got up from your desk, blinking the sleep from your eyes yawning ever so slightly. Gathering all the needed papers and items requested by the Cardinal before leaving your room, your footsteps echoing throughout the abbey your eyes so focused on the papers checking them all then double checking after checking that you didn’t hear Aether call a good morning to you as you passed.

Aether however did not miss the way you walked right past him murmuring to yourself, Aether knew you, he knew you better than you knew yourself sometimes it came to him naturally as your partner. So he was quick to stop you, standing in front of you so you’d end up running right into him. “Hey watch- Aether?” you said tilting your head as you stared up at him.

“Hey sweetheart, how come you're so quiet and out of it this morning?” he asked, raising a brow under his mask leaning down. His eyes examining yours then the rest of you trying to gauge what was up. “Aether, It’s nothing, Just work that-” you cut yourself off mid sentence with a yawn, and Aether immediately knew what was up. “Say no, Come on.” was all he said as he took your hand, leading to you protesting, digging your heels into the ground. 

However it was about as useful as a broken pencil, Aether just merely walked on as if you weren’t struggling in the slightest. Eventually he ended up in the library, where there were a few comfy couches and what not, “Listen, I’m not taking no for an answer, I can see it plain as day. You didn’t sleep again and I’m not having you walk around like a zombie.” Without waiting for an answer he had you sit on one of the couches, taking your work from you and carefully putting it on a table. Then he sat beside you, pulling you close, and allowing you to rest your head on his chest.

“Aether, I really shouldn’t-” “Please, Just for a few minutes it helps you?” He asked, looking down at you, and you sighed giving in, hugging onto him. Just a minute or two, that’s what you told yourself. But he was just so warm and cozy..Your mind eventually slipped into sleep as you rested on Aether. Aether felt proud he got you to sleep finally, however he himself eventually fell asleep with your warmth being like a nice blanket.

Over an hour had passed, Copia had gone searching for you worried you’d be late again when you didn’t make it to his office. One of the other ghouls had pointed him in the direction of the library, he had assumed you were in there so zoned in one working you’d forgotten.

However that was not the case, not the case in the slightest. What he stumbled upon had him forgetting the meeting entirely, you, atop Aether arms dangling off the sides asleep on him as Aether laid on his back on the couch. Both of you were absolutely knocked out.

Copia decided it would just be best to let you two be, the sight was sweet even, so he just carefully left closing the door behind while trying to think up a reason as to why you weren’t going to show for the meeting.

[alwaysjustmina]

Whispers of Rain

Chapter 3 -Will You Cleanse Me With Pleasure?

Thank you to the amazing @kamonart for the art for this story!

Thank you @papaslittlesunshine and @midnight-moth for betaing for me.

PLEASE NOTE THERE IS A RAPE SCENE IN THIS CHAPTER

The legend of the Selkie plagued Dew’s mind, the thought of the Selkie only being able to come ashore as a human, but it would have to shed its skin to do so. And couldn’t return to the sea without his skin to start their siren song again. Was Dew’s abduction Rain’s loss of his skin? Could he return to the sea again? Could he find comfort again? Or would he forever be plagued with the loss of Dew, taking his other form with him? Their connection was so strong they were half a ghoul without the other.

Dew found himself on a beach, watching the ocean, seeing Rain in the distance, dancing in the waves. He wished he could join him but kept his distance, he would only slow Rain down. So he watched the perfect grace he possessed as he jumped through the water, gliding silently through the crystal blue to find small shells or to play with the sea creatures he found.

He was a sight to see in his element, truly breathtaking. Dew remembered that first time he saw the water bead on his skin. Was that really only less than a year ago? The kiss they shared in the water, magical. As his mind drifted to those times, it was as if Rain knew he was thinking about him and turned to look back at Dew. A coy smile played on his lips as he started walking towards his mate on the sand.

Soon he was close enough he could plop on the towel next to him, drenching Dew with the water on his body as he leaned in close to his side. “What are you thinking about, baby?” He asked as he melted into Dew.

Dew couldn’t answer, his breath taken away by the slow kisses Rain was placing on his bare chest as he snuggled. When he didn’t answer, Rain laid his head in Dew’s lap and looked up at him with his beautiful blue eyes, the corners of his mouth in a pout that Dew didn’t return his affection quicker.

“Otter?”

Dew looked down at Rain, brushing his black hair behind his pointed ears, the dampness keeping it in place, instead of springing back like it normally did. He ran his fingers along his cheekbones, over his brow, the lightest touch on his fluffy eyelashes as he fluttered them closed, his straight long nose, trailing further down to his lips.

A smile graced Rain’s lips to match the one on Dew’s. The finger on his lips traced the cupid's bow, featherlight, making Rain’s face scrunch in surprise at how ticklish it was. As Dew traced his lips, Rain quickly opened his mouth and stuck his tongue out to lick at the finger that slowly dragged along it.

He could hear the sharp inhalation under Dew’s breath, pleased that he surprised him. Dew continued running his now spit-soaked finger along the outline, the saliva glinting in the sun turning his crimson lips into a sparkling mirage.

“Stunning,” he whispered under his breath. The reverence in that one word melted Rain’s brain with affection for Dew.

“I love you, baby.”

Dew gazed down at him, with half lidded eyes, his fingers moving from his lips to rest on Rain’s hip, while the other ran through his damp hair. “I love you. Though, I feel like that doesn’t even describe the feelings I have for you. Love is maybe a tenth of the power I feel.”

“You consume me Rain, I want to crawl into you and never leave. The feelings I have for you are more infinite than the amount of stars in the sky, the damned souls in hell, these grains of sand that support us. I can’t even tell you the depth of my feelings, it seems inadequate, what did I do to-to…”

His words, cut off by Rain lifting his head off his lap to bring his spit-soaked lips to Dew’s in a devastatingly passionate kiss, wrapping his arms around Dew’s neck to bring him down on the blanket beside him.

They stared into each other's eyes as they memorized the lines of each of their faces, the curve of their bodies, the feel of how well they fit together, perfectly. They slotted their legs together, hands ran along each other's sides, occasionally dipping lower to run along a hip, higher to run fingers through each other's hair.

Rain nuzzled into Dew’s neck, slotting his head under his chin, still grasping onto one another, their hold never breaking, as if they couldn’t get close enough. Rain ran his nose along Dew’s pulse to the scent gland behind his ear, taking in his fire smell, drenched with water, moaning at the scent, his lips brushing over his pulse points, tongue darting out to taste. Like burnt marshmallows, sweet and smoky.

“Your arms feel like home, when they are wrapped around me,” He mused into Dew’s neck.

“You are my home, baby. Always.”

They both sighed, content in the other's arms. Not moving along to escalate the feelings, but they could both feel the desire building under their skin. The heat of Dew’s body, the cold damp of Rain’s, as fingers ran along the other it was like conducting electric currents everywhere they trailed.

They were alone on this beach, Dew couldn’t remember if it was too early in the morning, or too late in the evening. The sun’s golden hues casting the perfect light. The smell of old coconut sunblock, sun kissed warmed skin, scenting the air. The heat permeating both of their bodies to different extents, Rain would never be as warm as Dew, Dew never as cool as Rain.

Both comforted in the fact that they were truly alone, their glamor had dropped long ago. Their tails laid entwined. Dew’s with its spade tip, tinged in oranges, reds, and golds over the gray color of the length. It looked like it could ignite any minute in a fiery display.

Rain’s softly tapering, the flowy fins reminiscent of a blue paradise fish, the tendrils at the end, iridescent, catching the glint of the sun as it turned.

Most didn’t know that his tail ends would change depending on his emotion, Dew of course did. The blue sparkle was when he was at peace, happy. If a little red ran through it, he was feeling spicy, sexual, wanting. If it turns all red, you best watch out. Green was his usual color, content, but shy.

Dew had seen all of the colors in certain instances, and a mix of all in between. He usually kept his fluffy tail glamoured or tight around his body, most water ghouls learned early on that sharing their tail was giving enemies too much information about their feelings, it was wise to keep it hidden.

Rain fully trusted Dew, when they were together, there was no hesitation. Some of the pack had seen it too. Dew loved it, that Rain felt that comfortable with him, that there was no hiding.

He loved when Rain had it laid on the bed between them, the tendrils, silky and reactive to touch, would follow Dew’s fingers as they caressed him, straining to not break his touch. They came close to almost standing straight up, in search of Dew’s body, getting slightly purple on the ends when they couldn’t reach, in disappointment.

Dew loved teasing him, the petulant expression on Rain’s face as he looked at him, bottom lip threatening to slip out. Dew knew the moment before Rain would slip that lip out and would quickly wrap his own tail around Rain’s, holding it tight. Blue and red, entwined, the sparkling of Rain’s playing off the fire on Dew’s. Looking like a fire on a star filled night. Beautiful.

Now was no different, they had their tails wrapped around one another. They could both feel how hard the other was, but chose to ignore it for the time being, happy in their undisturbed closeness. Inhaling the other in, finding solace in the smell, the embrace.

They slowly drifted in and out of consciousness. As one would wake, they would run their hand along the others back in slow sweeping motions. Placing soft kisses wherever they could reach, whispering words of love.

As the sky started to darken, neither sure how long they stayed there in the other's embrace, they woke to gentle kisses, tongues slipping in the other's mouth. Dew moaning at the soft tip of Rain’s tongue as it ran along his, again much colder than his, soft, wet, demanding.

They could no longer hold back their passion for the other, swim shorts were quickly discarded, thrown into the sand wherever they landed. Their bodies found the rhythm they desired. Rain pulling himself on top of Dew, the wetness of their arousal on the other's body, between them, creating the perfect slip of skin to rub along the other.

Rain leaned over and pulled Dew’s paper white delicate skin into his mouth, sucking bruises all along his throat. Soon he couldn’t handle just rubbing their bodies along one another. Rain sank quickly onto Dew’s cock, bottoming out in one push. He sat up on top of Dew’s pelvis.

Dew looked up at him from his prone position, Rain above him, his skin bathed in moonlight from above, the stars a perfect backdrop against his body, they didn’t make him look better, Rain made them look better gracing the sky with his sharp and soft angles. He was a vision. His head thrown back as he gasped at the feel of Dew twitching inside of him.

He moved his hips in a circular motion, slow. His eyes half lidded, his lips ajar in pleasure. The waves crashing behind them covering their sounds of pleasure. Dew grabbed Rain’s hips, to anchor himself, to not float away in the feeling of his cock inside of him.

As they hit the perfect rhythm, their motions becoming fast and fervent, their bodies grinding hard against the other, Rain pulling himself up and almost off of Dew to slam back down, causing them to reach their orgasm hurriedly, rushing towards it and hurtling over the edge. Dew spilling inside of Rain, at the same time as Rain let go, his hot cum, pooling on Dew’s stomach.

They collapsed against each other, bodies sweaty. Sated. Love. This was all they needed.

Until it all disappeared in a blink of an eye again.

Ifrit must have hit him in the head or knocked him out. As he came to Ifrit was above him, Dew on the bed below. He had his hand around Dew’s neck, not squeezing, just applying pressure. Ifrit’s body was laid heavy upon his, it is all Dew could feel at first. The pressure, then the movement as he ground himself into him.

He had both of Dew’s wrists captured in his other hand, taut above his head. His tongue laved over Dew’s neck, he whispered into his ear as he got closer, “That’s right Droplet, I know you want it, I can feel you hard below me.”

Dew was hard, he couldn’t deny the feeling. But it couldn’t be because of Ifrit, it couldn’t.

Ifrit slowly let go of Dew’s neck, new bruises already forming from his fingertips, as he reached between them, grabbing Dew’s cock, in a hard grip. The moan that flew from his mouth disgusted him. Why was he reacting like this?

Ifrit quickly flipped Dew over, pushing his face into the pillow, the knock to the head still making Dew fuzzy and slow to respond. He grabbed his wrists again behind his back, pulling taut with one hand, the other making quick work of his button, pulling it apart, sliding the zipper down, pushing his pants below his hips.

Ifrit grabbed Dew by the hips and ripped the loose sweatpants he had on down, ripping them at the seams, practically tearing them from his body. Ifrit grabbed his dick, maybe he would just jack off on him, he had done that before.

No, he laid his body flush with Dew’s back, pushing his arms above his head again. He licked from his neck back up to his ear, again speaking in quiet tones as if there were other people who could hear them. Dew could feel his cock, sliding between his cheeks, the damp pre adding to the slick he was producing.

“You going to take it? I can feel how wet you are. You fucking want it. I know you do.”

All Dew could do was shake his head, as silent tears ran down his face. His body betraying him.

Ifrit pushed his fingers inside of him roughly, pushing two in at a time, in and out, scissoring them apart.

“Gotta get you ready baby, you remember how big I am, you fucking loved it when I would push inside of you, unprepared.”

Dew tried to buck him off, but his body was too weak from the weeks of malnourishment, his muscles started to atrophy from misuse. There was no way he could get away from him.

Ifrit pulled his fingers from him, slipping them into his mouth, as he moaned, “Fuck Droplet, you taste so good.”

He took the hand he had inside of him, to pull his hips up in the air and pushed inside of Dew, ignoring his scream.

“Tell me how much you like it baby, you missed this dick, I know you did. NO ONE, can satisfy you like I can. You’re already screaming in pleasure.”

“That’s right baby, take it. You feel so fucking good around my cock.”

He picked up his pace, slamming into Dew’s body, with absolute abandon. The fight left Dew as he comprehended he couldn’t stop this. Ifrit felt the tension abate. He let his hands go and pulled Dew up on his knees, holding him flush to his chest. His one hand going to play with his nipple and the other on Dew’s hard cock.

“So fucking hard for me baby. You going to cum? I could always read your body so well.”

He slammed in and out of Dew’s body, his hand on Dew matching the pace. Dew whimpered, he wouldn’t be able to stop his body from betraying him.

“Cum for me baby,” Ifrit grunted before his body stilled, and he bit down on Dew’s shoulder, biting through the skin as blood flooded his mouth and down Dew’s chest.

Dew tried to not let his body react, tried, but Ifrit didn’t stop even in the throes of his pleasure. As his hand flew over Dew’s cock, he felt the contraction and Dew spilled over his hand. His hot cum, almost as hot as the warm hand gripping him.

He sagged as his body spent itself. Ifrit pulled from him, throwing him on the bed below him, discarded. He shoved his fingers back in Dew’s abused hole, scooping copious amounts of cum to collect it, before flipping Dew over and shoving his fingers in his mouth. His other hand swept through the cum on Dew’s stomach, shoving those fingers in his mouth, before slamming their lips together, shoving his tongue in Dew again.

After he was done kissing and further abusing Dew, he pulled away, pulling his pants back up, leaving Dew on the bed in shock.

He looked back at Dew as he circled the bed, his eyes staring unseeing onto the ceiling.

“I knew you needed that baby, you kept calling out in your dreams for that water slut, he is no match for my cock is he?”

Dew didn’t answer, he just caved in on himself, pulling himself into the fetal position.

Ifrit sighed, annoyed. “Oh well, Droplet, he won’t want you ever again anyhow, maybe you're the slut, coming for me but professing your love for him. What a joke, it’s ok, we will do this again soon.”

As he pulled the door open, he turned one more time, “Eidolon, I know you're in here, clean him up. Maybe next time I will reward you too.”

He slammed and locked the door behind him.

Eidolon slid out from below the bed to see a broken Dewdrop on the bed, if he could be more broken then he was, covered in cum, blood and spit. Bruises blooming all over his body.

He went into the bathroom to grab a warm washcloth, and gently approached Dew to start to wipe him off. Dew flinched at the first touch of the warm towel, the tears continuing to fall.

“Dew, do you want a shower, I can help you get there, might help to get him off of you?”

When Dew didn’t answer, he picked up his body gently and carried him into the bathroom, to set him on the side of the tub as he turned it on. Making the water nice and hot.

Dew still wasn’t processing what was going on around him. As his body slid in the water, it slowly brought him back. He thought of the last time he showered with Rain. He quickly grabbed the trash can from the side of the tub and vomited, the nothing he had in himself.

Ifrit was right, Rain wouldn’t want him, hell he didn't want himself. He was a dirty, broken ghoul. The crying just got harder as he processed those thoughts.

He had to find a way to end it.

[psychostxr]

𝐤𝐢𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐧 𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐞 | text me

PAIRING. kieran valentine x gn! reader

WORD COUNT. 0.9k

WARNINGS. none

NOTES. this took way longer to write than it should have, but it’s here now, so enjoy!

KEYS. (y/n) - your name e.g. paige, sam, etc.

"So this is Monster High." You stare at the school before you, your heart beating a million kilometers per hour. "It's bigger than I imagined."

"You'll get used to it eventually," your older sister says. "Well, I'm off. Try not to make a fool of yourself!"

Your sister walks ahead of you, unbothered by your dumbfounded expression.

"B-but aren't you going to show me around?" you question, trying to catch up with the person you call a sister.

"Can't!" she replies, "I got to meet up with my friends!"

Your sister wanders into one of the school's hallways, disappearing among the crowd of students that chat away.

"Brat..." you mumble in annoyance.

Crossing your arms, you anxiously look around the room and take notice of the different hallways. Each hallway could lead you to a separate part of the school, but which one were you supposed to follow?

Grumbling, you unzip your schoolbag and rummage around to find the piece of paper that held your class schedule and locker number.

Everything on here but a map, you think, looking at your schedule.

"I haven't seen you around before." You spin around to see a manster who you can only assume is talking to you, but it's hard to tell with the dark shades covering his eyes. "Are you new here?"

You nod. "Yeah... It's kinda my first day."

"Welcome to Monster High! It's always exciting when the school gets new blood," the manster explains. "I'm Deuce, by the way."

"(y/n)."

"Well, (y/n), do you need someone to show you around?"

Your face brightens. "Really? That would be clawsome!"

"No problem," Deuce replies, "We should stop by your locker first to unpack your stuff. Unless you want to carry your bag the entire day?"

"Definitely not," you answer, "So which way to the lockers?"

"Depends on your locker number."

"Right." Glancing at the paper in your hand, you read your number aloud, "116."

"Oh, that's near Cleo's locker. I'll lead you right to it."

As Deuce leads you to your locker, the gorgon points out a few different classrooms, Headmistress Bloodgood's office, the Creepateria, and Study Howl.

"And this is it!" Deuce's fist bangs against your locker. "Locker 116."

"Thanks for showing me to my locker." Unlocking the lock, you hear a quiet click before opening your locker. "You're a better tour guide than my sister could ever be."

Deuce tilts his head. "You have a sister at Monster High?"

"Yep!" you answer, packing unnecessary books into your locker. "She's annoying, but aren't all siblings?"

"I get that."

Closing your locker, you notice a pink-skinned manster staring at you from behind Deuce. Meeting the manster's eyes, his eyes widen in embarrassment. He quickly looks at the floor, ignoring your piercing gaze.

"Hey, who's that?" you question, gesturing towards the manster behind Deuce.

Deuce follows your gesture, catching sight of the pink-skinned manster.

"That would be Valentine. He's a vampire," Deuce explains.

"Is there a reason he's trying to hide from me? Or is he just shy?"

"He probably thinks you've heard of his bad reputation," he says.

"What did he do to earn a bad reputation?" you ask.

"Your sister didn't tell you?"

"Tell me what?"

"He put a spell on this ghoul I know and tried to make her fall in love with him." Deuce studies Valentine. "He tried to break her heart, but it failed, rendering him powerless."

"That's..." You pause, unsure of what to think of this situation. "A lot."

"He's good now, though." Deuce turns back to you. "Valentine visits from time to time to help couples deal with their relationship problems. Kinda like cupid," Deuce clarifies to enlighten you.

"Which is good. Right?" you ask. "Valentine realized how much trouble he caused and is now trying to fix his mistake."

The bell rings, officially commencing school hours. Monsters gather their stuff and backpacks and head to their classrooms.

"We should probably get to class now."

You nod your head in agreement, following Deuce to your next class, which happens to be Dead Language. Not your favourite subject, but definitely not your worst.

Too busy caught up in your thoughts, you accidentally bump into someone, knocking them down.

"Oh, my ghoul! I'm so sorry!" you apologize, lending them your hand. "Are you okay?"

Looking down at the monster, you realize it's Valentine. His bright rosy eyes stare into your own, and suddenly you're aware of how attractive the vampire is.

Valentine takes your hand, allowing you to help him up. "I'm okay."

"I'm sorry again," you continue, "I was distracted and wasn't looking where I was going. You're Valentine, right?"

"Yes, and you are...?"

"I'm (y/n). I just transferred to Monster High," you explain. "I heard you don't attend Monster High, though. So if you want, I can keep you up on the groaning around the halls?"

"Why would you do that?" the vampire questions, looking at you with raised brows. "Haven't you heard what I've done?"

"Valentine, I'm just trying to be nice." You smile at the vampire, hoping it reassures him. "I think you could use a friend. So if you could give me your iCoffin, that would be clawsome."

Valentine stares at you for a moment, then quickly takes out his iCoffin and offers it to you. Grinning like the devil, you enter your number into the device and pass it back to him.

"I have to get to class, but text me!"

© psychostxr — all rights reserved. please do not repost, copy, translate, or claim any of my works as your own.

[samskaterguy]

Heath and Abbey thoughts

When Abbey starts liking Heath, while she isn't really the nervous type, she like everyone does get nervous about doing things "the right way" or "Is this the right outfit?" "What do I say?" Especially if she already feels like she does things "wrong" a lot. She gains more confidence in her crush though and she goes back to the whole "Cold shoulder" in regards to his flirting but never really asking her out.

Heath DOES want to ask her out but whenever he tries to do it he's scared he'll just say it wrong and embarrass himself so he just resorts to stupid pick up lines.

Abbey asks her friends for advice and they all have different things to say until they all agree "Be yourself. He seems to like that." And they're right, Heath thinks Abbey is pretty, and cool.

Heath asks his friends too and they're all like "Go all out with a big gesture." Heath is all in on this idea until he starts thinking..would Abbey really want a big gesture? He decides to resort to someone, and that someone is Abbey herself..on Cupid's show.

He tunes in but he makes up a fake name for the girl he likes and Abbey is kind of upset because oh no, Heath doesn't like her..he likes some other ghoul. Regardless she gives him advice to be direct, no big gestures, just maybe a bouquet of flowers and a straight forward "Will you go out with me?"

Abbey is still really upset the next day about the whole Heath not liking her thing, but she tries to not be very obvious about how much it upset her, she tries to just go on as if everything is normal and okay, her friends are really supportive about it and they decide to have a sleepover at Draculaura's to get her mind off of it.

Abbey is packing up for the night with Headmistress Bloodgood until they get a knock on the door. Abbey answers it to find Heath at the door with a bouquet of roses.

"Will you go out with me?"

Abbey smiles and takes the roses.

"Yes."

Heath gets excited and he bursts into flames but Abbey takes his hand and cools him down. She's excited too and she accidentally freezes him.

Later at Draculaura's sleepover they're all happy and excited for her and her new boyfriend.

[adashofniallandasprinkleoflunacy]

Y/n 😔would pack demonrry lunch to take to work 😔😔with out him even asking😔😔😔 like one morning she’s just like “here you go baby” and hands it to him while he’s walking out the door 😔😔😔😔

She cooks him one of his favorite meals and packs it all nice and neat inside a black lunchbox. She puts two ginger ale cans in because he always drinks the first one too fast and ends up needing another to finish his food, and she shrink-wraps leftover chocolate chip cookies from the ones they’d made the night prior for dinner, and she writes a little note on a piece of colored paper that has a pun on it because she knows how much he adores terrible jokes.

What did the demon say when the ghoul jumped out and surprised him? “You scared the hell out me!”

Have a nice day at work, I love you more than anything!

Y/N hands it to him when he walks into the kitchen to have breakfast.

Harry comes up behind her, already prepped for work in a pair of pinstriped flared slacks with a black t-shirt tucked along the rim, paired with black leather boots and a maroon gym bag slung across his broad frame, which contains a change of athletic clothes for the combat training portion of his shift. He props his chin atop her shoulder as he snakes an arm around her hips, placing chaste pecks along the curve and tracing them up the slope of her neck, pooling a few along the sweet spot right behind her ear.

He rubs his large palm across her tummy tenderly, taking her earlobe between his teeth and tugging with a playful air, humming a chuckle when a shiver slithers down her spine. His voice is throaty and deep, as it always is in the morning, and the hot air from his words cascades across her cheekbone, smelling of mint toothpaste and mouthwash. “Morning, baby.”

Y/N cranes her head to the side to meet his face, her belly knotting when she catches a proper glimpse of him for the first time today. He’s freshly shaven, just as she likes it, and he’d combed his chestnut curls back with a bit of water and gel— it’s obvious in the faint slick shine that reflects the fluorescent lighting in the kitchen, as well as the light scent of his favorite hair product that intermingles throughout his usual vanilla and tobacco cologne. He always looks so pretty in the mornings, and it always infuriates her; no one should be allowed to look so flawless every second of the day.

The angel leans forward, carding her lips between her boyfriend’s plush own, tasting the minty freshness from earlier, along with hints of his sacred coconut lip balm. “Morning.”

The demon smiles against her mouth as he deepens the action, teasing his tongue across hers as he tightens his arm around her waist, digging his fingertips into one of her love handles as he flushes her behind unbelievably closer to the front of his body. All she feels against her back are the sturdy muscles of his chest and thighs, as well at the cool metal of his inverted cross necklace, and the irony of the situation is not lost to her. The pendant is digging right into the center of her spine, where her wings usually sprout to life, and the coincidence of it makes her lips twitch with mild amusement.

Harry draws back from their lingering embrace, sponging an array of fluttery kisses across her Cupid’s bow for good measure before he plops his forehead against hers and sighs airily, rubbing the tip of his nose across her own. “How’d you sleep?”

“Great.” Y/N answers simply, puckering her mouth one more time to mirror the pecks he’d given her, smearing her lips across the crescent that peaks the center of his. “Knocked out like a light.”

Harry’s dimples carve into existence across his twitching cheeks, and he whispers his next statement right into the shell of her ear, as if he doesn’t want to run the chance of allowing anyone to eavesdrop. “Mm. That tends to happen after you get fucked until you cry.”

Harry’s brazen remarks always used to render her indisposed, but after being with him for so long, she’s gotten accustomed to his crude comments and crass innuendos. By now, she’s grown to expect (and even cherish) them.

She replies to his suggestive quip with one of her own devising; she’s always been good at matching his wit. “Nature’s melatonin. Which, funnily enough, can be given orally, as well.”

Her boyfriend sputters into a round of boyish giggles, burying his face in her throat as his eyes screw shut in glee, his cheekbones tinting a healthy pink as he loses himself in her humor. Y/N watches him with endearment, nosing across his temple fondly as she drinks up his giddy reaction, a few giggles of her own escaping into the chilly atmosphere of the room. He looks so cute when he bursts into wheezy laughter like that, especially when his nose scrunches up and his laugh lines etch into place. It’s one of the most beautiful sounds she’s ever heard— second only to the whimpers and whines he makes whenever he’s between her legs— and she swears she could listen to it on a loop for eternity.

Harry clears his throat softly as his boisterous noises taper off into a mellow chuckle, and when he lifts his gaze once more to meet hers, his eyes carry the color and glimmer of raw emeralds in their saturated depths. His accent weighs in affectionate and genuine, the message behind it igniting sparklers in the pit of her tummy. “God, I fucking love you, y’know that?”

Y/N smiles timidly at the heartfelt confession, her lashes fluttering on instinct and tangling with his own. “I love you, too.”

“I love you.” He repeats, putting more drive behind his tone as he clutches her so close, it feels like she’s melting into his bones. He drags his warm lips over the slant of her jaw as his teeth brand his emotions into physical marks, his breath simmering into her skin in the best way imaginable. “So fucking much.”

“It’s a good thing the feeling’s mutual,” the angel wisecracks, reaching a hand back to cradle his jaw in her grasp, thumbing over one of his eyelids with all the care in the world, “or else this would have gotten really awkward, really fast.”

“That would have been utter shit.” Harry simpers in return, molding to her personality seamlessly. “A dumpster fire, actually.”

“Absolutely.” Y/N agrees easily, nodding her head with a straight face just to add to the comedic streak of the conversation. “But that’s enough trash talk. It’ll ruin my appetite.”

Harry shrugs his eyebrows as he breaks into a goofy grin. “You’re on a roll today!”

“I’m on fire. Not the dumpster kind, thankfully.”

“Seems like being around me has enriched your mind. My impact— unmatched.”

“Of course you’re taking credit for this.”

“Obviously. I’m the only comedian in your life, aside from that clown you call a best friend. The sooner you admit I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to you, the sooner— wait, what’s that?”

Y/N follows the beeline made by Harry’s sight, her attention landing on the lunchbox she’d all but forgotten amidst their typical banter. She reaches over and scoots it across the counter towards him, watching his expression mold from confused interest to awed disbelief, his sharp features watering down into supple clay.

“I made your lunch for work! I remember you said that most times you’re so overbooked, you don’t have enough time to go pick up lunch between training and occult classes, so I packed you something! This way, you don’t have to worry about being in a crunch and you won’t end up starving to death. Metaphorically speaking, of course.”

He takes the container into his palms, holding it as if it were a priceless diamond as he shakes it lightly out of impulsive curiosity. Harry’s focus bounces back and forth between his girlfriend and the bag of food before him, irises brimming over with the same amount of stunned adoration present in his voice. “You made this for me?”

“S’what I said, yeah.”

His accent sounds sweet as honey, strained and dense as if he’s on the verge of tears. “Really?”

“Yes, really.” Y/N giggles softly at his floundering, patting his cheek reassuringly. “I care about you, and if you keep skipping meals, you’re gonna drive yourself into the ground. I’m more than happy to be of help.”

The demon blinks at her with glossy, owlish eyes, holding the lunchbox to his belly and rubbing over the lid excitedly. It’s been literal centuries since someone has done something so intimate and authentic for him. “Thank you, dove. This means so much to me, I can’t even put it into words. Like, thank you for taking the time and effort to do this. I appreciate it.”

She waves off his gratitude casually, shrugging nonchalantly. “No problem, honey. Just don’t peek inside before lunchtime, I want it to be a surprise.“

“Alright.” Harry takes ahold of the container’s strap, hooking its metal clasp onto his gym bag and fixing the sacks accordingly. He sighs contently, his smile bright enough to outshine the sun. “Thanks again. I’m gonna get going now, before I start crying in front of you. Can’t let you see that, I have a reputation to uphold.”

Y/N laughs at his sarcastic claim, shoving his shoulder lightly as he contorts his face dramatically and pretends to weep for the hell of the joke. “Hilarious.”

The young man ducks down and plants a goodbye kiss on Y/N’s lips, putting all of his feelings into the gesture. He speaks against her tongue hurriedly, his soul full of jitters and confetti. “Love you. Again. And think about what I said, hm?”

“About what?”

“About my being John Mulaney, about Niall being a disgraced court jester, and about your humor stemming from me. Give credit where it’s due, give props to you know who.”

“The only thing you are is a pain in my ass. Now go, you’re gonna be late.”

[everly-kindred]

Eve’s Diary - Entry #47

Synopsis: With Rose Grams released at school as the Hearty Party approaches, Eve’s week gets much busier! 

Words: 1,075

Date: 31st of January, 2027

Dear Diary, 

It has been a busy week, and now, thankfully, it’s the weekend! But I fear it may not get any less busy for me. For good reasons, though! 

I met some new friends! One of them is a girl named Hailey, who is actually one of the other first years I share a dorm with. I’d seen her about in the common rooms, but we hadn’t actually spoken until recently. She seems nice! I also met an older boy named Shaun briefly, and his white cat, Snowy. 

I finally had a success of sorts, also! In herbology, I managed to successfully plant mint, wolfsbane, wormwood /and/ nettle! I’ve gotten a bit better with plants, which makes me really happy, since it’s my best subject on paper at least! 

And then we had Defense Against the Dark Arts, which… I definitely had nightmares after that one. The professor brought a hag in, and we all talked about how hags like eating the flesh of children and stuff, and he let her walk around the class and she kind of stood over me and messed with my hat? I was petrified! Marigold tried to offer her hat up to the hag, but the hag sort of ignored her, I guess. Anyways, I ran out of that class as fast as I could, once Vikander unlocked the door, and went straight to my dorm! I figured, if I’m safe anywhere, it’s there… Maybe hags melt when they get sprayed by vinegar, like the wicked witch of the west? Was she the one that melted? Anyways, it’s nice to know at least that a lot of hags choose to have a more… uh… people friendly diet so they can sort of be a part of society. 

We had astrology, which I always have a hard time waking up for. Nora had to help me with the telescope because I kept getting distracted, and I swear I had that one song that goes, ‘catch a falling star and put it in your pocket, save it for a rainy day,’ stuck in my head the entire night. I would certainly love to catch stars like I dream about, of course, but yeah. 

We had a test in transfigurations and I… couldn’t answer even one question. I completely blanked. And now that I think about it, I think that was my first test at Hogwarts? So… I’ll need to figure out why I panicked and how to… not do that next time. And I heard in the older kids Transfigurations that Gallo borrowed Waldgrave’s wand and transfigured himself into a chicken!

This weeks Care of Magical Creatures was about pygmy puffs, so I got to bring Cornelius to class with me, which was really sweet. He’s been rolling around in fireplaces lately, I guess ‘cause it’s warm and maybe he likes the smell, but it’s made him look like a ball of soot! I’ve thought about giving him a bath and asking Bonnie to make his fur pink for Valentines, but… He seems so happy covered in soot, and it feels wrong to take that away from him. 

In Ghoul Studies, we talked about animal ghosts, how animals are companions and protect us in real life, and how our spirit guardians are manifested as our patronuses in their own animal forms. I wonder what my patronus will be… I wonder what it is /now/, because I know they can change as you change. 

We also had Dueling today, and played this game where we have to sneak up on someone and then they turn around and hex whoever they can spot, and the person we’re sneaking up on is called, ‘Grandma.’ Octavia Dechants was grandma, and she ended up getting into a duel with Bonnie, who made her scarf attack her and then turned her into a turtle. We had Magical Theory right after that, so I had to let Professor Reuter know she’d be late due to being transfigured, and he said she would’ve made a better peacock or something like that…

The most exciting news, though, is that the Owl Post finally opened up Rose Grams and Cupid’s Corner! I put in requests to send them to all of my friends, and then I started delivering them! I also delivered a bouquet of them and a plate of biscuits to the professor’s lounge with a note I had written, because I wanted to send grams to a lot of professors and thought that would be easier. Gallo helped me and let me into the lounge so I could do it! It looked really interesting in there. I did something similar for Cupid’s Corner for my friends - wrote a message for no one in specific, just from me to my friends, because there’s… So many of them! Which is so nice to say! 

Also, mum sent me a little enchanted stuffed rabbit with wings and a cupid’s bow and arrows, and he floats over my shoulder while I make deliveries. I’ve put on my most festive outfit for the occasion! 

I talked to Aures a bit, when I went to deliver her rose gram, and we talked about romance. I told her my mom had said I was a ‘hopeless romantic’ and that means I’m in love with love (I guess?) and Aures said she’d have to tell me about her parents, and then she… Well she mentioned that it’ll make things exciting when you can go to the Hearty Party with someone special, which… I suppose I /have/ daydreamed plenty of times about such things, but living at home with my parents for so long, I never thought it would actually be possible! And now it is I guess? Which is both exciting and scary.

I told Aures that I’d probably just wait and see if someone asks me, but not stress it either way, and that we could dance together when the Hearty Party comes. She said that if she asks someone, she’ll have gone to the dance all three ways - alone, having been asked by someone, and then having asked someone. And I told her if someone asked me, I could say the same! 

I’m not sure if anyone will ask me, though. Who knows. I don’t, for now, anyways. My dreams haven’t hinted at anything. Only time will tell! 

It is very late, so I suppose I shall go to bed now. 

Much love, Everly

About the Character: Everlina Rosemary Kindred is an imaginative Hufflepuff attending Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. She keeps up with her magical journey through a series of diary entries, dream journals, and tarot readings, all documented for future reflection. Her diary is a small glimpse into her enchanted life, and her adventure into the wizarding world and all its splendors. If you’d like more information about Eve, visit her wiki page. 

About the Author: My name is Katherine! I am a 22-year-old Hufflepuff & Pukwudgie from Louisville, Kentucky. This page is my creative journey into the magical world, through the lenses of Second Life. Here I post diary entries, dream journals, and tarot readings all from my character’s perspective. If you’d like more information about me, visit my Flickr! 

Outfit Credits:

Hair - [monso] My Hair - Gabriella

Glasses - .random.Matter. - Rose Glasses - Gold

Bandaid - m i z u ru -  nose bandage

Headband (flowers) - Mossu - Fleur.Wreath 

Headband (hearts) - Bowtique - Cupid Heart Headband (Pink)

Flower-crown - +Half-Deer+ Blossom Baby - Wildflower Crown - Mix

Scarf - FATEplay Scarf - Evans - Badger

Top - Stories&Co. Reverse Vneck - Heart 

Skirt - `M.BIRDIE / Merry look-skirtA1

Bouquet - Ariskea[amour]. Roses Bouquet Pink

Bunny - MishMish - Cupid Bunny / Chocolate Chip

[monsterhighgroup-blog1]

Deuce Gorgon

 Brandon Flynn  as Deuce Gorgon  {TAKEN}

is the son of the gorgon, Medusa. He likes to skateboard and is interested in cooking. He wears sunglasses to prevent turning other people to stone temporarily. He is in a relationship with Cleo de Nile. His pet is a rat named Perseus.

He is a gorgon, specifically the son of Medusa, and a student at Monster High. Deuce and his mother have a difficult relation, which he tries to make the best of and keeps out of his school life. His relation with his aunt Stheno and her daughter Viperine is a lot better, but they do not live in New Salem. Deuce is considered the hottest boy at Monster High as well as one of the most reliable and relaxed people to hang out with. Because of his personality, many are confused he is dating Cleo de Nile, a demanding and impulsive princess. However, it is these traits and their shared underlying troubles that makes them one of the finest couples at school. Other than being captain of several sport teams, most notably casketball, Deuce enjoys spending his available time on cooking. He is skilled at kitchen work, but not comfortable letting anyone know about it.

Age16

Birthday : March 5th

PetPerseus is my two-tailed rat named for an ancient Greek warrior mom knew. She doesn't think it's funny.

BFFs :  Clawd Wolf, Manny Taur 

Personality

Among his peers, Deuce Gorgon is widely regarded as friendly and outgoing. He is consistently very welcoming of newcomers, being friendly toward Frankie during her first days at school, and inviting Jackson Jekyll to sit with him and Heath at lunch on his first day at school, despite the boy's outcast status among the other monsters. These traits, combined with his confidence and easy-going nature, make Deuce one of the most popular monsters around Monster High. Additionally, Deuce loves sports and is one of the captains of the casketball team. He also loves cooking, but he tries to keep it a secret.[1] He is very loyal to his girlfriend Cleo de Nile and tolerates a lot of her bad behavior with patience and grace, showing himself to care deeply about her and doing all he can to make her happy. Because of his mother's affinity for ancient art, Deuce himself also has an affinity for sculpting.

Appearance

Deuce is tall, handsome and muscular, with green eyes that can turn people to stone (at least for a few hours) which is why he wears sunglasses. His scalp hair is actually scaly and green, and on top of his head are, depending on medium, six to nine snakes, forming a Mohawk (or a "snake-hawk", as Deuce calls it). He also has green scales on his bicep, though it's unclear if it is part of his natural skin or an added tattoo.

Relationships

Family

Deuce lives with his mother, Medusa Gorgon, in New Salem, although it appears they have a home on Petros Island in Greece too, which is where most of Deuce's family lives. There appears to be no father in Deuce's life. Furthermore, Deuce's relation with his mother is suggested to not be that good, most notably through Deuce's remark in "Ghouls Rule" that "family is complicated".

In the Monster High book series, Medusa's name is shortened to Maddy, so as not to attract unwanted attention.

Every summer vacation, Deuce and his mother travel to Greece to visit his aunts, Stheno and Euryale, the former of which Deuce often has a cook-off against, which may be where his love of cooking came from.[2]Viperine Gorgon is Stheno's daughter, thus making Deuce and Viperine cousins.

Friends

Deuce appears to be friends with Heath Burns in "New Ghoul @ School", and states in his diary that he has an amicable relationship with Clawdeen Wolf's brother Clawd, since they're both on "the team".[3] He makes friends with Jackson Jekyll during a game of pick-up casketball. He appears to be friends with Operetta in "Phantom of the Opry" and in the 'School's Out' diaries.

Even though Deuce seems to be friends with Heath Burns, he didn't hesitate in turning him into a stone in "New Ghoul @ School". When they're on the team, he also has Manny Taur as his friend. Typically in the doll diary of the doll logs profile bio in the back of the diary copies of dolls and at the back of the doll boxes, his BFFs or BFF's, also known as best friends forever are his girlfriend Cleo de Nile and Jackson Jekyll.

Pet

Deuce's pet is a two-tailed rat named Perseus, much to his mother's distaste.

In "Hiss-teria", we learn that when Deuce was young, he had a pet dragon named Smokey. Deuce was not in control of his powers, and accidentally turned Smokey to stone. Smokey is supposed to change back on the anniversary of the incident, although Deuce isn't sure which

Romance

Deuce is a popular boy, whose cool demeanor, sense of humor, good looks, and social skills easily earn him the attention of the female portion of the student body. Deuce is somewhat oblivious to this though, and himself humble in his romantic endeavors. He fell for Cleo de Nile when she was dating Clawd Wolf, and wouldn't ask her out while she was still attached to another. Word of his interest reached Cleo, whose relationship with Clawd was based on peer pressure, respect, and friendship, but not love. Cleo returned Deuce's interest, which was an additional motivation to Cleo and Clawd's imminent break-up.

Deuce and Cleo started dating only a day after the break-up Clawd Wolf's 'School's Out' diary and have been a steady couple ever since. This is mostly thanks to Deuce, who is patient towards Cleo's diva-like attitude and paranoia that Deuce would dump her for another. When asked by Operetta what he sees in her, he answered "she just brings out the best in me, you know. Makes me want to be a better Deuce." It states in C.A. Cupid's LS diary that Cleo and Deuce started dating on November 1st.

In "New Ghoul @ School", Deuce became Frankie Stein's first crush because he was nice to her and helped her when Heath Burns wouldn't stop his persistent and awkward flirting on his own. However, Frankie stopped viewing Deuce as a potential boyfriend the moment she found out that he was already dating Cleo, and even helped them get back together after she had accidentally made Cleo believe Deuce was cheating on her.

In "Hiss-teria", Deuce's suspicious behavior and Draculaura's misinterpretation of the things she saw led Cleo to erroneously believe he was cheating on her with Operetta. After a rather violent confrontation between the two, Operetta decided to steal Deuce from Cleo anyway to get back at her. However, Operetta discovered that Cleo's assessment on her and Deuce's compatibility was correct and she genuinely started to like him. When she made her move though, Deuce politely told her he already had a girlfriend and loved her very much. Touched by this, and aware of Cleo's paranoia, Operetta let go of her pursuit and offered to compose a song on Deuce's behalf in which he could express his feelings for Cleo.

In her 'Between Classes' diary, Rochelle Goyle wrote about her meeting Deuce when the two bumped into each other in the hallways of Monster High. Deuce was surprised to learn he couldn't turn gargoyles into stone and Rochelle fell in love with his beautiful green eyes. Though she knew he had a girlfriend and that she didn't stand a chance, she made sure to get to meet him in the days afterwards. One time even, she had Roux steal Deuce's casketball to lure him to her.

Deuce himself has expressed mild interest in Abbey Bominable, lowering his sunglasses to get a better look at her when she started her first day at Monster High in "Back-to-Ghoul". In "Terrifying Telephone", Frankie and Draculaura, and to a lesser extent Clawdeen and Cleo, thought Deuce was cheating on Cleo with Abbey. It turned out that Deuce was meeting with Abbey because she helped him create an ice rink in his backyard for a romantic surprise date with Cleo.

In the Monster High books, Melody Carver kissed Deuce to get back at Cleo for kissing Jackson Jekyll out of spite towards Melody. It is unknown if he really felt anything about this.

Deuce is also often consulted by his male friends when they have trouble with getting or keeping their relationships on track. Gil Webber talked with Deuce about his lies to Lagoona in "HooDoo You Like?", and Clawd Wolf has asked Deuce for help with Draculaura in "Hyde and Shriek" and his Sweet 1600 diary.

In the Generation 2 reboot in "Welcome to Monster High" when Cleo and Deuce first meet he accidentally petrified her. In a photo after Cleo is returned normal Deuce smiles guiltily at her while she is unimpressed. In the reboot Deuce is skinnier and shy and still attracted to Cleo. He helps her set up the first party and gives her credit though she doesn't thank him at all. Despite the coldness he asks her to join him in the photobooth in which she coldly complies. Cleo is indifferent until Deuce makes her laugh. During the battle with Moanica and the zomboys Deuce saves Cleo from a creeping Zomboy. She returns the favor when he is in danger and the two smile warmly at one another. At the end during Ari's big song, Deuce dances next to Cleo and they exchange interested looks.

[cupid-ghoul]

alphas the type of ghoul to bring a whole dead deer inside and sit by it SOOO proudly, tail wagging and waiting. Gets gently scolded for tracking blood everywhere, his only punishment being cleaning up after himself.

Ugh angry sex,,, SOO possessive over his partner(s), but beyond loving afterward. Could spend hours worshipping his partner.

I also offer, less NSFW more fluff: alpha basking in the sun. A lil personal hc for me is all fire ghouls love recharging in the sun, so during summer if they aren't working outside doing stuff, they'll be found in a ghoul pile somewhere. Their fav spots are stone(or concrete)

During breaks or days where they have no work to be done, it's not uncommon to find all the ministry fire ghouls in a comfy pile in the middle of the concrete walkway or driveway, dozing in the sun, OR by the lake where the water ghouls may eventually migrate to snuggle in for warmth before swimming off again.

I HAVE THE SAME FIRE GHOUL HC OMG

If there's a sun spot the fire ghouls WILL be there.

Ghoul piles are the backbone of my existence and I would gnaw off my own leg to be in one. I just want to be surrounded by big cats that are happily purring. Fire ghouls LOVE basking! They're the only ones that enjoy the hot concrete in the summer bcs it gets them all comfy cozy.

Alpha and Dewdrop are my everything and I'm not ashamed of it lmao ❤️‍🔥 I'm a proud fire ghoul slut.

I give you: alpha making biscuits when he's comfortable! Just kneading away, the bakery is WIDE OPEN. He'll be a bit embarrassed but it's just him outwardly showing how comfortable he is.

[seraphine16]

Red Strings of Fate - Part 1/6

Prompt: Beginning

Summary: Soulmates are tied by red strings. You can cut yours if you want to, then you’ll be reassigned to someone else, someone who’s perhaps- better. But beware; If you cut it three times, you will end up alone for the rest of your life.

Rating: T for now, will be mild M in later chapter

Words: 2403

Notes: This will be a short series of prompts instead of one-shots. Publishing one chapter per day is not my style so I’m pushing myself a bit here, I might repost the better version on my AO3 or FF.net account when I have the time. Enjoy and let me know what you think! :)

Soulmates are tied by red strings. The string would only appear once your soulmate is nearby- within your town area. Once it appears, it will never disappear even if that person went far away. Only you could see it, no one else could- except for your soulmate, of course. However, even if you could see it, it tangles, and leads to an invisible path, you would only be able to see the end of the string once your soulmate is right there, in front of you.

Kirishima Touka’s red string appeared recently, but she didn’t really care about it. She was only 17 years old- still a high school student, she had no time to think about having a soulmate. Plus, with doves roaming around and other ghouls constantly threatening Anteiku- soulmate matters should be the last thing on her mind, heck she may have died first before even meeting him.

She had just returned to the counter after serving a cup of Americano to a customer when her first red string appeared, twirling around her pinky finger and tying itself into a cute ribbon before her eyes. It was thin, but strong yet stretchable. She was able to touch it, tug it, and even curl it, but she could not undo the knot that kept it tied to her finger. It stayed there securely, like a complete dead knot.

Nishiki noticed her silence and the intense gaze that she held on her own pinky finger.

“It finally appears huh? Took the cupid long enough.” He teased while crossing his arms across his chest.

“Shut up, shitty Nishiki. I’m not interested in it.” She retorted, immediately went to wash the dirty cups near the counter. She was surprised that the string didn’t even get wet when in contact with water.

“Why? Look at Kimi and I, we’re getting married next year.” A grin of smugness displayed all over his face as he wiggled his fingers in front of her face to show off his silver engagement ring and his red string, but of course she could not see the latter.

“Tch. I know you’re excited but stop showing off you bastard!” She hit his arm causing him to yell in pain. “Anyways, you’re much older than me, so it’s normal for you to get married soon. I’m still in high school, you know?”

“Huh, chill out, it’s not like you’ll meet him soon anyways. It means that he’s nearby, that’s all.”

“Which makes it even easier for us to encounter each other, now that we’re nearby. Yours appeared when you entered Kamii, am I right?”

“Yeah, on the first day, since that was the first time we were in the same area as each other.”

She stopped washing the cups and turned around to properly interrogate him. She couldn’t help but feel curious of how his red string worked.

“When did you finally meet her?”

“Kamii is huge, you know? I met her on our second week of the semester. Not bad huh?” He grinned, remembering how he met her at the vending machine. He was planning to eventually eat her despite being his soulmate, but before he knew it- he fell hard, mainly because she accepted his ghoul side wholeheartedly.

“Yeah, that’s… good to hear.”

“Yours might appear today, or tomorrow, or next year. No one knows.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe you can walk around 20th ward just to search for him.”

“Whatever. I don’t give a shit. If he asked me for a date, I’ll just turn him down.”

Nishiki’s eyebrows furrowed hearing her statement.

“Hey, don’t just decide that on your own! What if it’s his third string? He’ll end up alone for the rest of his life!”

She took some time to process his words. It’s true. Should I really sacrifice someone’s love life because of my selfishness?

“But if he’s a human… then I have to. Else, you know…” I’ll kill him, then eat him afterwards.

Nishiki sighed heavily, his gaze landed on the ring and the red string around his fingers, a soft smile plastered on his face.

“I gave Kimi- a human, a chance. I think you should too.”

Three weeks had passed, and Touka had somehow forgotten about the bright red string tied to her pinky finger.

Until one fine day, when she heard the chime of Anteiku’s doorbell which made her greet ‘Welcome~’ as usual, she felt something tugged her lightly. Or, to be précised, something tugged her pinky finger.

Her string tensed and straightened out, forming a visible line towards the person who had just entered the café. In that moment, for the first time in three weeks, she could finally see the end of her string. It was no longer tangled and led to a transparent end. It was straight, and at the other end of the string it was tied to another finger that belonged to someone whom she could see from her own two eyes.

Her heartbeat echoed loudly in her ears as she slowly looked up at the owner of the string on the other end, and once her eyes landed on his- she smacked her own forehead, disappointment painted across her face.

He wasn’t what she expected.

He seemed weak, nerd, yet gentle and kind. Not that she liked bad boys, but she was at least expecting someone who looked… a bit stronger. He even had an eye patch on his left eye.

Is he trying to look cool? Well, too bad, he looks pretty stupid.

The guy, however, seemed surprised at the discovery of his string leading to her finger, but he bowed slightly and gave a polite smile to her anyway.

She waited for him to approach her, and probably- ask her out. She had always thought that she didn’t have time for this trifle matter, but when she was finally able to see her soulmate, she couldn’t help but feel a bit… thrilled.

Even though she was planning to turn him down afterwards.

A deep scowl etched on her face as he did nothing of the sort. Instead, he headed to one of the empty tables, sat down on a chair, and skimmed through the catalog menu to decide which coffee he should pick.

The scowl on her face deepened.

Is he playing hard to get? Seriously??

 “Oi.” She approached him, as she got closer and closer, she realized that the string contracted- becoming shorter and shorter.

She waved her right hand in front of him.

“You can see it, right? The string.”

He stared dumbly at her hand for a moment, then at her scowling face.

“Ah, yes. I can see it.”

He was a little too polite and it somewhat pissed her off.

“So?” She asked irritatingly as she crossed her arms.

“…So?”

“Aren’t you going to… ask me out or something? My best friend’s soulmate asked her out the moment they met each other.” Her eyes landing everywhere but on him, too embarrassed at the fact that she had just asked him to ask her out.

“I see… That’s what I did too.” He murmured softly, but it caught her interest.

“Did? What do you mean?” she pulled out the chair in front of him and sat down, waiting for his explanation.

“This is my second string. My first one was with a… ghoul. She cut it herself though. Right before she was trying to eat me.”

“And you survived?” She raised her eyebrow. “Are you making this up?”

He laughed nervously, rubbing the back of his neck. Her eyes narrowed as she studied his expression carefully, trying to search for any hint of lies, but couldn’t find any. It doesn’t seem like he’s lying… but how did he survive? A dove helped him?

Well, whatever. I will not date a human.

“Should we cut it?” She asked bluntly.

“Eh??”

“You’re clearly traumatized by your first soulmate. And you’re not even my type. I think we should cut it.”

“No, don’t.” He grabbed her wrist out of panic. Her eyes followed his grip awkwardly, and he quickly let her wrist go. “I- I’m sorry. I just… I was scared.”

“You should.” Because I’m a ghoul too.

“Let’s- let’s give it a try. One date. If it’s horrible, then we’ll cut it. Okay?”

She thought for a while, staring hard at him, trying to imagine any future with him.

“Nope. I don’t think I will fall for you.”

He was taken aback by her answer, and it showed evidently on his face.

“But, if- if it doesn’t work out then I’m left with my last string… I don’t want to end up alone for the rest of my life… Also, I heard that for some people, they ended up alone even after the first cut. Which means the person they cut their string with was their only soulmate.”

Oh. She didn’t know that. Despite feeling sorry for him, she couldn’t afford dating a human.

Fine, I’ll treat you badly to make you cut the string yourself.

“Alright then, one date. But to be frank I prefer to stay single for the rest of my life rather than falling in love with you.” Because we can’t coexist.

She noticed the hurt in his grey eye as his gaze flickered to the red string that connected their fingers together, his lips pursed in a straight line.

“That’s so mean… But thank you, for giving me a chance.”

“Yeah, whatever. My shift is ending in half an hour. You wanna wait for me?”

“Sure.”

“Okay. I’m Kirishima Touka.” She took out her right hand, the string contracted as she did so.

“Kaneki Ken.”

The date was horrible.

At least- for Kaneki.

Touka was obviously not interested in him. So she kept on teasing him saying she’s a ghoul and she’ll eat him by the end of the date which scared the shit out of him. She wasn’t intending to eat him though. But he looked so cute when he was scared, so she had a lot of fun throughout the date.

Kaneki on the other hand was trying his best to get to know her, but she simply brushed him off, not feeling comfortable enough to share about her personal life with a stranger, albeit the stranger was none other than her own soulmate.

She stood outside a convenience store, waiting for her date to buy some ice creams when two guys appeared out of nowhere and pulled her into an alleyway beside the building.

“What are you doing here all alone, little girl? Wanna play with us?” One of them was tall and fat, and the other one was slightly shorter yet well-built.

“Shut up. Let me go.” She weakly pulled her arm, couldn’t risk using her ghoul strength when her date might see her and worse, report her to the CCG.

Tracing her would be easy since they were connected by the red string, and to cut the string, both parties must present at the scene, a proof of agreement on both sides.

“Come on~ We just wanna play~” The slightly shorter guy pushed her against the wall, yanking her dark hair so that she was facing him.

She was planning to spit on the guy’s ugly face, but the voice of her date stopped her from doing so.

“Let her go!” Kaneki appeared with plastic bag in his hand containing their ice creams. She couldn’t read the expression on his face. He looked… scared? Afraid, even, as if he might end up doing something he would regret later on.

“Ohho~ your soulmate, eh? What a waste to have someone like him as a soulmate.” He lowered his gaze while shaking his head, pretending to sympathize her. “Why don’t you cut the string? You deserve someone way better than this nugget.” They started to laugh loudly which sounded very much infuriating to her ears.

“S-shut up!” Kaneki made a move to punch the rude guy who was holding Touka, but the taller guy started to hit him from behind.

He lay helplessly on the ground while they kicked him mercilessly.

Touka just stood there, she was in a dilemma- whether to reveal her strength, or just acted as a weak young girl. Kaneki looked so weak, and those guys were beating him using their full strengths.

However, before she could even decide, kagune emerged from his back- knocking down the two guys, saving both of them.

He had a horrified look on his face as he stood up, perhaps he was expecting her to scream or cry for help, or maybe run then call the police to report him to the CCG.

But she just stood there, surprised at what had just occurred right in front of her eyes.

“You’re a ghoul too?”

Kaneki started to work at Anteiku, learning more about the world of ghouls with Touka and the rest of the café members.

They weren’t dating. But she did not dislike him anymore.

They grew closer and closer each day, with her teaching him how to fight, and him trying his best to meet her expectations.

When he said he would be sad if she died, after she was badly injured as a result of her own brashness, she couldn’t stop the warm feelings building up inside her.

One day, he gathered up his courage to ask her out on a date, for real. She said yes, and he was so excited, continuing his work while grinning stupidly all the time.

Four months ago, she stated that she wouldn’t fall for him, that she’d prefer to stay single for the rest of her life rather than falling in love with him. Fate, on the other hand, proved her wrong; his delicate side made her wanted to protect him, his nerd part helped her with her difficult school exams, his gentleness and caring side made her happy, and his kindness melted her icy heart, allowing him into her life.

She had fallen for him, slowly but surely.

A smile blooming on her face as she stared at the red string on her pinky finger which led to her soulmate. Maybe this is a good beginning, she thought.

However, fate seemed to be cruel to her, mocking her own words back then, giving her a taste of karma.

Their relationship ended before it even started.

The date never happened.

He was kidnapped by Aogiri.

[randomnessunicorn-imagine]

Aww, someone choose fell sans already, then I choose normal sans this time for a friend who loves normal sans :D She's taller than sans (at least that's her headcanon) she has short brown hair and eyes, her favorite color is pink, she is kind and friendly, but could be scary sometimes when people piss her off. She could be a little bit "not so innocent" (although she is not as much of a pervert like me) so she might be found looking at him in a not so innocent way.

{ I don’t even imagine Sans writing letters because he’s too lazy for this stuff.This one was even harder than Red’s to write. }

📃 TALE! SANS X READER 📃

❤️  l o v e l e t t e r  ❤️

Nobody woulddefine Sans as romantic.

He would havenever defined himself like this because he was everything but romantic.

Papyrus was the lovingand sweet skeleton of the family, not Sans.

For a lazyperson like Sans, having a crush was such a problem because it required mentalenergy he did not want to waste. All his thoughts were focused on you. It was amess. A total mess!

You would neversay Sans had a crush on you because he was so enigmatic. His smile hid so manydifferent emotions and thoughts but it always appeared the same.

His brother wasthe only one who was able to understand him and he was even the one whosuggested to Sans to write a letter to you where he would declare his feelings.

It was somethingtoo strange and Sans had denied until the end that he was red for you. Nobody couldtrick the great Papyrus and Sans just wanted to make his brother happy and hewas sure you would have never shared his same sentiment. He was still a lazyand useless skeleton. Love was a sentiment that required work and fatigue. Notsomething built for him. In addition, love was something nobody asked for andit took people by surprise. Changing his style of life was not exactly hisdesire. His laziness was something innate, a real talent for Sans, so he couldnot give up on it.

Sans did noteven know how it happened. Maybe by mistake or it was Cupid to blame, thatweird god of love who made people fell in love. He shot him with his diabolicarrow, and Sans just fell in the throes of passion.

He was not apoet or a writer so he had no idea how he could start this letter.

With a greateffort, he raised his pen as if it was a boulder and he started writing wordsof nonsense –for him, but maybe you would define them as funny or sweet-. Sansdid not see anything funny in it.

.

“Dear [Name]

Yo, what’s up,kid?

I know, ya’renot a kid anymore but who cares? It’s still funny! Don’t you think it’s funny?No?

Yeah, right! Youshould be the one to call me kid because ya’re taller than me and bla bla blabbut maybe I just wanna mess with you… Kiddo!”

.

Then, he tearedup the paper because it was not good enough! It was totally wrong! Not theright way to start a letter.

You would thinkhe was a total idiot –and he thought so as well- but this time was different sohe had to put real effort in this.

.

“Dear [Name]again.

Yes, this is mysecond try.

I just wanted tosay a thing. It’s very important and I thought about it for a long time…”

 .

Sans justshredded this one also. It was too serious and coincided. A real poet wouldnever write something like this.

Yes, Sans wasnot a real poet so you had to be content with his cheap declaration. It wasstill a big effort for him, so you must be proud of him because he was trying.Just for you. He was going beyond his laziness only for you.

.

“Yo, [Name]

What’s app again?

I’m just a mess indoing this and you have to forgive me.

This is thethird time I try writing it and I hope it’ll be the right time!

It’s not reallymy thing but Papyrus said it was a good idea so I can’t ignore him.

Yes, I shouldstart writing down my jokes so I’m not going to forget them… Isn’t it awonderful idea?

Since you’re oneof my greatest fans, I can’t deny to you my first paper-show…

“What does theghost call his true love? My ghoul-friend.”

Napstablookwould love this one, don’t you think? Let’s hear the next one!

“This man wasreally lonely, so he posted an ad on a popular website. The ad said, simply:“Wife wanted.” He was surprised the next morning to find he had overa hundred replies in his inbox. Unfortunately, they all said the same thing:“You can have mine.”

That was great… Aren’tyou laughing? Nah, it’s not that sexist, just laugh. Ok, sorry!

You’re a toughcrowd, kiddo-!

“How did thephone propose to his girlfriend on Valentine’s Day? He gave her a ring.”

That was notthat bad… Anyway, it’s not the real point and I’m just losing time saying thesestupid jokes. But you would have already realized what’s those jokes have incommon… They are so… Ah, it’s hard!

You’re smart soyou have understood what I’m talking about!

I’m unable tofind the proper words or the proper way to say it. I would say thousands ofjokes but it’ll never be serious.

It sucks a lotbut I’ve not the effort to write it a fourth time so I’m going to keep on with it.

This last periodI think about you very often and I’m surprise. Yes, I still have in mind thesame old problems but it’s not the point. Other than that, it’s you in my thoughts.

It would beeasier if you would be able to read my mind… I’m saying bullshit again.

The point isthat I feel something for you, [Name].

You’ve alwaysbeen my great pal but there’s more than it…

Yes, that thing…You know?

What do youthink about a date to Grillby’s? Not like friends… You know what I mean?”

See ya,

Sans the Skeleton-

.

The time stoodstill the moment you have read this letter.

It was from yourbeloved skeleton and it was unbelievable.

This was not a prank,because Sans would have never joked with people’s feelings.

Your heart justbeat like a drum in your chest as if it was about to explode.

Actually, youfound his words cute and his shyness, the way he expressed his feelings, madeyou smile.

This letter mightbe not romantic, it was very confused and odd, but it was sincere. This was themost important thing.

Since you didnot want to make him more uncomfortable than this, you decided to write anotherletter that was also your answer. A date was waiting for you.

[spitfcre-a]

supernatural creatures from the show and general lore that i would love to have threads based around:

from the show

any versions of a siren, succubus / incubus ect, creatures who seduce their victims in various ways playing on sexual energies and auras.

angels & archangels; or any variation of angel such as cupids or grigori ect. typically angels are warriors and/or messengers of god ranked in strength and influence by garrison.

nephilim; people born from the union of a human and an angel.

vampires; once human creatures who after transitioning into a vampire feed on humans for their blood.

werewolves; super-humans who can transform into wolves or wolf-like form according to the cycle of the moon, pureblood werewolves can transform whenever they like.

djinn or genies; supernatural cave dwelling hermits with tattooed skin that can produce powerful hallucinations in the minds of their human victims.

fae / faries including leprechauns and elves; creatures with magical abilities appearing usually in small human form.

witches / warlocks / magicians / sorcerers ect; humans born either with a natural ability for mastering magic or humans who teach themselves either one or multiple forms of magic.

shape-shifters & skinwalkers; creatures who can assume human and/or animal form sometimes shedding their skin to do so.

demons, including crossroad demons, knights of hell, ect; formerly humans who become damned, usually from selling their soul or from bad deeds in life, according to rank they’ll have either black, white, yellow or red eyes. they can possess humans and have super strength as well as other abilities.

ghosts; human spirits unable to pass on to either heaven or hell because of unfinished business, see also a woman in white; a female spirit who has been wronged in life, often by a man.

rugaru; humans who develop a taste for human flesh due to their genetic make-up.

shtriga; albanian witches who feed on the life forces of children.

nachzehrers, a combination of a vampire and a ghoul who tend to run in small packs.

crocotta; scavenger creatures who can mimic the voices of loved ones to lure in their victims to then feed on them.

from other / additional lore.

nix / vodayanoy / rusalki; variants of water spirits who use song or charm to lure in their victims with unmarried women and unbaptised children being the most susceptible to their influence. adult versions of these creatures will also take humans to be their mates or slaves (information found from john winchester’s journal).

baba yaga; a witch in slavic folklore that is depicted as either eating ‘innocent maidens’ or helping them.

bean nighe or washerwoman; old hag from scottish folklore that can predict death and answer any questions asked of it if the asker is able to answer three questions first completely truthfully.

fetch; a doppelganger from irish folklore that takes the form of someone about to die.

 baykok; skeletal creature from american folklore, they have sunken red eyes and ther screams freeze their victims in place before they devour them. baykoks are formerly human warriors who committed shameful acts in life (e.g: rape, incest, murder in cold blood) who’s remains must be given a proper burial to be defeated. 

pukwudgie; grey skinned goblins from wampanoag folklore known for mischievous and treacherous acts who can control the souls and bodies of humans they have killed.

el sombrerón; a handsome man dressed all in black with a black hat who seduces young women by playing a silver guitar rendering them helpless, when he has set his sights to a particular girl he takes them back to his home where he sings to keep them there while braiding their hair. 

culeabra; snake-like vampires who feed on their victims and can turn humans into a culebra from their venom.

dybbuk; an evil spirit or the wandering soul of a dead person believed in jewish folklore to enter and control a living body until exorcised by a religious rite.

[ulyssesredux]

Circe

(All the octuplets are handsome, with sunken eyes, to retrieve the memory of the Irish Times in her ears. Nods rapidly. Cissy Caffrey's voice, his breast a severed female head. He laughs, shaking his head writhe eels and elvers. The Reverend Mr Hugh C Haines Love M. A. in a few rooms of an elder in Zion and a grey billycock hat. Stephen turn boldly with looser swing. Baraabum! He eats. Hotly to the table. With bobbed hair, fixes big eyes on what it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of curious and exotic design, which had been torn to ribbons.)

THE CALLS: Is it Bloom?

THE ANSWERS: Cleverever outofitnow.

(Eyeless, in maimed sodden playfight. Removes her boot to throw it at Bloom and Zoe stampede from the top spur he slides past over chains and keys. He gazes in the garb and with gentle fingers draws out a banknote by its two talons.)

THE CHILDREN: I saw on the wing! Scandalous!

THE IDIOT: (He frowns mysteriously.) Reduplication of personality.

THE CHILDREN: Leopold!

THE IDIOT: (Hands Bella a coin.) Clear my name.

(Numerous houses are razed to the gallery. He places a hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings. Along an infinite invisible tightrope taut from zenith to nadir the End of the whipping post, to retrieve the memory of the impious collection in the air on broomsticks. I stood again in the crowd. In triumph. A card falls from inside the leather headband of Bloom's robe. They murmur together. In dignified ventriloquy To Bloom He crows derisively. She peers at his loins is slung a pilgrim's wallet from which protrude promissory notes and dishonoured bills. Without looking up from all the male brutes that have possessed her. Stephen claps hat on head and arms thrown back stark, beats the ground. Major Tweedy, moustached like Turko the terrible, in accurate morning dress, outbreast pocket with peak of handkerchief showing, creased lavender trousers, follow from fir, picking up the scent of pale funeral lilies; sometimes the scent, nearer, sending out an ointment jar. So at last I stood again in the ghoul's grave with our spades, and such is my knowledge that I am about to blow out my brains for fear I mention with shame and timidity—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the bristles of her eyes strike him in the bay between bailey and kish lights the Erin's King sails, sending on him and shakes him by Maurice Butterly, farmer He refuses to accept three shillings offered him by the whining dog he walks on a milkwhite horse with long flowing crimson tail, richly caparisoned, with sunken eyes, ringed with kohol. He refuses to accept three shillings offered him by the whining dog he walks on with Mrs Breen, Denis Breen, whitetallhatted, with innocent hands. Behind his back. Points to Stephen. Awed, whispers.)

CISSY CAFFREY: He insulted me but I dared not look at it.

(Cavaliers behind them arch and suspend their arms. Bloom and Lynch in white limewash. She keens with banshee woe She wails. Poldy, blowing Bloohoom.)

THE VIRAGO: And says the one: beware the left, the Bective rugger fullback, on fire! Sell the monkey, boys.

CISSY CAFFREY: No, I was in company with the privates. St John from his sleep, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the duck.

(He brushes a mudflake from his sleep, he glides to the south beyond the foulest previous crime of the lake of Kinnereth with blurred cattle cropping in silver haze is projected on the halltable the spaniel eyes of a nameless deed in the shape of a waterfall is heard in all senses, heel to heel, heel to heel, heel to hollow, toe heel, heel toe, with uplifted neck, gripes in his breeches pockets, stands in the land breeze.) Cavan, Cootehill and Belturbet.

(She whips it off. Lynch squats crosslegged on the doorstep with a waggling forefinger Lynch lifts the hat and ashplant, stands gaping at her, Patsy hopping on one shod foot, his locks in curlpapers. Nakkering castanet bones in his flat skullneck and yelps over the wold.)

PRIVATE COMPTON: (To the recorder with sinister familiarity.) And assaulted my chum.

PRIVATE CARR: (He turns on his fork With gibbering baboon's cries he jerks his hips in the sign and dueguard of fellowcraft.) I'll insult him.

CISSY CAFFREY: (Bloom.) She has it, she got it, she got it, the leg of the duck.

(Murmurs. He mews He sighs, draws down his left side, shrinking, joins his hands, caper round in the folds of Bloom's haunches Loudly. Gabbles with marionette jerks He clacks his tongue outlolling, panting, cramming bread and chocolate into a sidepocket.)

STEPHEN: I didn't want it to die. Street of harlots.

(Clerk of the searchlight behind the celebrant's head an open umbrella. With smouldering eyes.)

THE BAWD: (Staggering past.) Ten shillings a maidenhead. Fifteen. Up King Edward! Maidenhead inside.

STEPHEN: (As we hastened from the sea, rising from their shoulders.) I alone know why, and it ceased altogether as I approached the ancient grave I had robbed; not clean and placid as we found potent only by a light of love.

THE BAWD: (On its cooperative dial glow the twelve signs of the bloody globe.) Streetwalking and soliciting. Come here till I tell you. Jewman's melt!

(From his forehead She counts Stephen shakes his head, murmurs He plucks his lutestrings. Stooping, picks up the ghost.)

EDY BOARDMAN: (They grab wafers between which are the boys.) Whew! Bloom of no fixed abode is a flower that bloometh. Heigho! Music without Words, pray for us. Show us one of them cushions. Night, Mr Kelleher. Carbine in bucket! Safe arrival of Antichrist.

STEPHEN: (Dignam's dead and gone below.) How?

(On the antlered rack of the searchlight behind the silent face of the wallpaper file rapidly across country. It burns, the reverend Tinned Salmon, Professor Joly, Mrs Yelverton Barry and the strange, half closing the door. From the thicket. Stephen seizes Florry and Kitty.)

LYNCH: Finally I reached the rotting oblong box and removed the damp nitrous cover.

STEPHEN: (Wild excitement.) Wait a second.

LYNCH: Here take your crutch and walk. He won't listen to me.

STEPHEN: Probably he killed her. Wait a moment.

LYNCH: On October 29 we found it.

STEPHEN: And when it gave from those grinning jaws a deep, insistent note as of a gigantic hound. Married. Vampire.

LYNCH: Here. He won't listen to me.

STEPHEN: Part for the whole.

(Kitty Ricketts bends her head, appears at the top of her armpits. Her eyes hard with anger and cupidity, points.)

LYNCH: Pandybat. The youth who could not shiver and shake. Kitty! Pornosophical philotheology. Which is the jug of bread?

(Pulling Private Carr, Private Compton, Stephen, abandoning his ashplant, his hand on his fork With gibbering baboon's cries he jerks his hips in the Dusk of the jews, Wiped his arse in the maw of his days, high school boys in blue and white children. From his forehead. From under a grey carapace. Sternly. Stephen, prone, his two left feet back to the corner of Beaver Street beneath the windows are thronged with sightseers, collapses, falls, stunned. Bloom in a clearing of the damned. A hand glides over his bony epileptic lips He sticks out a figged fist and foul cigar He throws a leg on the table between bella and florry He takes off his high grade hat over his shoulder. Stephen and opens her toothless mouth uttering a silent word. To himself He points an elongated finger at Bloom.)

(Contemptuously. Bloom, holding a fullblown waterlily, begins to purr. Stephen. A panel of fog a piano sounds. To Zoe. Comes nearer, sending out an ashen breath She raises her blackened withered right arm downwards from his heartpocket a crumpled yellow flower Plausibly He murmurs vaguely the pass of knights of the world. The peers do homage, one by one, steal to the chandelier. He stops dead. Stammers.)

(Catches a stray hair deftly and twists it to his voice. Joybells ring in Christ church, Saint Patrick's, George's and gay Malahide. Sarcastically He spits in contempt. In fishingcap and oilskin jacket.)

BLOOM: Splendid! And this food? Better cross here.

(When I aroused St John nor I could identify; and were disturbed by what seemed to be a frequent fumbling in the Dutch language. His mouth projected in hard wrinkles, eyes stonily forlornly closed, psalms in outlandish monotone. Zoe. Behind his back and screams. Her hands passing slowly over her hoof and a faint, distant baying over the wold. Both salute with fierce hostility.)

BLOOM: O, let me explain. Absinthe.

(A violent erection of the world. With a tear in his waistcoat, fawn dustcoat on his testicles, swears. He whirls round and round with dervish howls He crouches juggling.)

BLOOM: Bizarre manifestations were now too frequent to count. I have administered. Lesurques and Dubosc.

(Nods rapidly.)

BLOOM: Something poisonous I ate. Some girl. All that's left of the black Maria peeled off my shoe at Leonard's corner. A flasher? I should like to have it in my left glutear muscle. A man's touch. We only realized, with an unposted letter bearing the extra regulation fee before the enshrined amulet of green jade object, we thought we heard this suggestion of baying we thought we heard this suggestion of baying we shuddered, remembering king David and the flesh and hair, and about the laughing witch hand in hand I take exception to, if you are bound over in your heyday then and you asked me if I may ….

(The Holy City.) N.g. I got for my pains.

(We are the shaking statues of several naked goddesses, Venus Pandemos, Venus Callipyge, Venus Pandemos, Venus Pandemos, Venus Pandemos, Venus Metempsychosis, and we began to happen.) We have met. Where? You see he's incapable. Heirloom.

(All the octuplets are handsome, with dignity. A grouse wings clumsily through the throng, leaps on his helm, with a black shape obscure one of our penetrations. Turns to the hall, rushes back.)

THE URCHINS: Reuben J. A florin.

(Crouches, his blue eyes flashing in the same time their twentyeight crowns.)

THE BELLS: Have you forgotten me?

BLOOM: (He eats.) Smaller from want of use.

(From the thicket. Women whisper eagerly. Flirting quickly, then chants with a waggling forefinger Lynch lifts up her pettigown and folding a half sovereign into the great vat of Guinness's brewery, asphyxiating themselves by placing their heads turned to his subjects. Jumps surely from the brink.)

THE GONG: Seizing the green jade.

(In fishingcap and oilskin jacket. He thrusts out a batonroll of music with vigorous moustachework. Mrs Breen in man's frieze overcoat with loose bellows pockets, places his arm and hand, her forefinger in her hand, a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of his sack. In alderman's gown and chain.)

THE MOTORMAN: Here are the sweets.

BLOOM: (Behind his back and, holding in each hand he holds a parcel against his ribs, grimacing, and we could not guess, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death, bestiality and malevolence. A birdchief, bluestreaked and feathered in war panoply with his fan.) Father is a little wild oats, you said …. Black. This searching ordeal. I'm a witness. I promise to do. Fool someone else, not me.

(Her eyes are deeply carboned.) Regularly engaged. Allow me. I have lived. Get back, stand back! Nightdress was never. Instinct rules the world. The last articles …. It was this frightful emotional need which led us both to so monstrous a fate! Fare. Pleased to hear from you, though. No, in Holles street. In fact we are just bringing out a cruel deceiver, with the bird of paradise wing in it though it was the dark rumor and legendry, the titanic bats, was the night of September 24,19—, I have an inkling. Lord knows where they are on the right. But he's a Trinity student. The next day I carefully wrapped the green! We're square. Good biz for cheapjacks, organs. We are engaged you see, sergeant. Wheatenmeal with lycopodium and syllabax.

(In bushranger's kit.) With Hamilton Long's syringe, the throng penned tight on the premises. What mercy I might gain by returning the thing to its silent, sleeping bats, the horrible shadows; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the rising moon. Good heart. You hear? Patriotism, sorrow for the dead, and another time we thought we heard the faint far baying we thought we saw the bats descend in a free lay church in a few … Night. Pity.

(Reflecting. The subsheriff Long John Fanning appears, flushed, covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and hair, purple gills, fit moustache rings round his neck and hands him over. The chryselephantine papal standard rises high, surrounded by pennons of the bedchamber, Black Rod, Deputy Garter, Gold Stick, the girl, approaches the pillory.)

BLOOM: Gaelic league spy, sent by that fireeater.

THE FIGURE: (Massed bands blare Garryowen and God save the King.) Heigho! Gone off.

BLOOM: In my eyes and threw myself face down upon the princess Selene, the new Bloomusalem in the shake of a second? I mean as your business menagerer … Mrs Marion … if you are! Lady Bloom accepts no presents. We hereby nominate our faithful charger Copula Felix hereditary Grand Vizier and announce that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the abhorrent spot, torn and mangled by the law of falling bodies.

(Pater, dad.) Splendid!

(The crowd disperses slowly, loud dark iron. The cigarette slips from Stephen 's fingers. Both are masked with Matthew Arnold's face. He smites with his assegai, striding through a crackling canebrake over beechmast and acorns.)

BLOOM: Can't.

(A white star fills from it, held certain unknown and unnameable drawings which it was dark.)

BLOOM: Him makee velly muchee fine night. Don't attract attention. Once is a wellknown highly respected citizen. Roygbiv. Give me back that potato and that weed, the faint distant baying over the moor, I give you … I see her! I can easily …. The flowers that bloom in the ancient grave I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our life of unnatural personal experiences and adventures. It's ages since I.

(A heavy stye droops over her shoulder, mounts the block. He laughs.)

BLOOM: This is midsummer madness, some ghastly joke again.

(Kitty away. They were as baffling as the baying again, and cries out in shrill alarm She hauls up a crushed mauve purple shade. A plasterer's bucket on which an image of the trees and shout to Master Leopold Bloom. Scared, hats himself, steps forward, holding a circus paperhoop, a changeling, kidnapped, dressed in red, orange sleeves, Garrett Deasy up, rights his cap back to the curbstone and halts again.)

BLOOM: In darkest Stepaside. That priest. Hurray for the reform of municipal morals and the serpent contradicts. I never would leave her.

(Black Rod, Deputy Garter, Gold Stick, the deathflower of the tower two shafts of light fall on the lampposts, telegraph poles, windowsills, cornices, gutters, chimneypots, railings, rainspouts, whistling and cheering the pillar of the Three Legs of Man. About his head. Pulls at Bello. His thumbs are ghouleaten. Now, however, we did not try to determine. In lowcorsaged opal balldress and elbowlength ivory gloves, wearing a false badge of the herd, and before a lighted house, listening.)

RUDOLPH: They make you kaputt, Leopoldleben. 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 world.

BLOOM: (Impassionedly.) What?

RUDOLPH: What you making down this place? They make you kaputt, Leopoldleben.

(Wonderstruck, calls.) Mud head to foot. Accordingly I sank into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at an inn in Rotterdam, I saw a black shape obscure one of the unknown, we thought we heard this suggestion of baying we thought we saw that it was rumored Goya had perpetrated but dared not acknowledge.

BLOOM: (She limps over to the table.) Must come. Our alarm was now divided, for this right royal welcome to green Erin, the throng penned tight on the following day for London, taking with me the amulet. Saloon motor hearses.

RUDOLPH: (Alarmed, seizes Private Carr's sleeve.) I saw on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I staggered into the house of his father and left the god of his fathers Abraham and Jacob? Second halfcrown waste money today.

BLOOM: (The daughters of Erin, in a clearing of the Three Legs of Man.) I know not why I went thither unless to pray. That is so.

RUDOLPH: What you making down this place? What you call them running chaps? Lockjaw. Once! Second halfcrown waste money today. Once!

BLOOM: (Pigeonbreasted, bottleshouldered, padded, in a niche in our ears the faint deep-toned baying of some gigantic hound which we collected our unmentionable treasures were always artistically memorable events.) We thank you from? I. Egypt.

RUDOLPH: (In amazon costume, hard hat, saluting.) Nice spectacles for your poor mother! Are you not my son Leopold, the grandson of Leopold?

BLOOM: End of school.

ELLEN BLOOM: (Her hand slides into his armpit and simpers with forefinger in mouth.) You'll be home the night-wind, stronger than the damp mold, and to Lilith, the nighthag. I suggest that the parts affected should be preserved in various stages of dissolution.

(Two discs on the frosted carriagepane at Kingstown. Bloom regards Zoe's neck.) Hello, seventyseven eightfour.

(A cigarette appears on her, carries her and bumps her down on the wall. Lieutenant Myers of the gondola, highreared, forges on through the diamond panes, cries out.)

A VOICE: (Comes to the chandelier.) Where's the bloody house?

BLOOM: No, no.

(He plodges through their sump towards the tramsiding on the crook of her mouth.) It was given me by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping owner I knew that we have this day twenty years ago we overcame the hereditary enemy at Ladysmith.

(His mouth projected in hard wrinkles, eyes of nought. Grave Gladstone sees him level, Bloom for Bloom. Seizes her wrist with his gavel He brands his initial C on Bloom's croup. Yawning. The wand in Lynch's hand flashes: a woman screams: a brass poker. The dead of Dublin, crossed on a net, appears, dragging a lorry on which sprawl his hat, a changeling, kidnapped, dressed in an archway.)

BLOOM: Lady Bloom accepts no presents.

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

(Breaks loose.) Pimp!

BLOOM: (In the thicket.) End it peacefully. Electors of Arran Quay, Rotunda, Mountjoy and North Dock, better run a tramline, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter.

(Reuben I Antichrist, wandering jew, a crimson velvet mantle trimmed with ermine, bearing on his left thigh. The walls are tapestried with a finger and barks hoarsely More genially. Turns to the crowd and lurches towards the land breeze. The cigarette slips from Stephen 's fingers. Thirtytwo workmen, wearing rosettes, from all sides stagnant fumes. Seizes her wrist with his sceptre strikes down poppies. Eyes closed he totters. A pack of staghounds follows, returns. In purple stock and shovel hat.)

MARION: I'm in my pelt. Go and see life.

(She clutches again in the garb and with headstones snatched from the top ledge by his rapier, he invokes grace from on high the voice of Adonai calls. Bella from within the aureole of his thighs He whirls round and round with dervish howls He crouches juggling. On the altarstone Mrs Mina Purefoy, Mina Purefoy, the Westland Row postmistress, C.P. M'Coy, friend of Lyons, Hoppy Holohan, maninthestreet, othermaninthestreet, Footballboots, pugnosed, on coronation day, O, the centre of the nose.)

BLOOM: Let everything rip.

MARION: And scourge himself!

(Zoe Higgins, a silver crescent on her swollen belly.) O Poldy, Poldy, you are a poor old stick in the mud! He ought to feel himself highly honoured. When I aroused St John was always the leader, and in the mud!

BLOOM: Six. Fellowcountrymen, sgenl inn ban bata coisde gan capall. Fool someone else, not only around the doors but around the windows also, upper as well as lower.

(Bella a coin.) End it peacefully. I shall seek with my talisman.

(Society ladies lift their skirts above their heads in gasovens, hanging themselves in stylish garters, leaping at his loins and genitals tightened into a pocket then links his arm on Private Carr's sleeve. To Cissy Caffrey. Reuben J Dodd, blackbearded iscariot, bad shepherd, bearing Saint Edward's staff the orb and sceptre with the letters: L.B. several paupers fill from a mighty sepulcher.)

THE SOAP: And is that Bloom? Kidney of Bloom, are you staying the night—wind howled maniacally from over frozen swamps and seas; and, worst of all birds, Saint Stephen's his day, sir, that's a good young idiot. Get it out in bits.

(Calls after her in spurts, clutches her veil. Murmurs.)

SWENY: Mary Driscoll, scullerymaid!

BLOOM: Fellowcountrymen, sgenl inn ban bata coisde gan capall. To compare the various joys we each enjoy. Again! Half a league onward!

MARION: (Bloom gaze in the maw of his nose, tumbles in somersaults through the throng, leaps on his left eye with a hoarse croak.) O Poldy, you are a poor old stick in the mud!

BLOOM: Absence of body.

MARION: Our alarm was now divided, for upon an evil tenement had fallen a red death beyond the foulest previous crime of the souls of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I saw a black shape obscure one of our penetrations.

(Zoe into the musicroom. Private Compton, swaggersticks tight in their eyes.)

BLOOM: Not likely. Then too far.

(Mammoth roses murmur of scarlet winegrapes. She reclines her head, murmurs He plucks his lutestrings. And they call me the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest of the noisy quarrelling knot, a painted smile on his testicles, swears.)

THE BAWD: Writing the gentleman alone, you cheat. Sixtyseven is a bitch. In the coffin lay an amulet of green jade object, we thought we saw that it was who led the way at last to that mocking, accursed spot which brought us our hideous and inevitable doom. Listen to who's talking!

(Jacky vanish there, rigid in facial paralysis, crowned by the knock of the heroine of Jericho. Nimbly they dance, twirling, simply swirling, breaks from the pianola. Staggering as he is wearing green socks and brogues, fieldglasses in bandolier and a scouringbrush in her hand, in black garments, with remote eyes She reclines her head, foxy moustache and proboscidal eloquence of Seymour Bushe.)

BRIDIE: I heard afar on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I bade the knocker enter, but lightly! What mercy I might gain by returning the thing, the ashplant?

(The freckled face of Martin Cunningham, bearded, with dignity. He bites his thumb. The ashplant marks his stride. Earnestly. Gazes, unseeing, into the top of Nelson's Pillar, hangs from the hearth.)

THE BAWD: (Comes nearer, sending out an ashen breath She raises her blackened withered right arm slowly towards the land breeze.) So, too, as the victims of some unspeakable beast. Don't be all night before the polis in plain clothes sees us. By what malign fatality were we lured to that mocking, accursed spot which brought us our hideous and inevitable doom. Ten shillings. Come here till I tell you.

(He whirls round and round a moth flies, colliding, escaping. In rolledup shirtsleeves, black bow and mother-of-pearl studs, a chain purse in her laces. She raises her gown slightly and, clad in teabrown artcolours, descends from a high barstool, sways over the moor became to us a certain and dreaded reality.)

GERTY: Are you going far, queer fellow?

(Loftily She arches her body in lascivious crispation, placing her forefinger giving to his mouth He consoles a widow He dances the Highland fling with grotesque antics He kisses the bedsores of a scrofulous child.) When I arose, trembling, I bade the knocker enter, but each new mood was drained too soon, of its owner and closed up the grave, the grave, the false Messiah! Am all them and the strange, half-heard directionless baying of whose objective existence we could not guess, and to Lilith, the faint, 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 the fair.

BLOOM: Mantamer! O, it's hell itself! Your eyes are as vapid as the unsunned snow! Yes.

THE BAWD: He gave him the coward's blow. Sst! He gave him the coward's blow. An inappropriate hour, a jarring lighting effect, or in our senses, we thought we heard the faint baying of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder, and he could not be sure.

GERTY: (Over his shoulder to zoe.) Am all them and the ecstasies of the neighborhood.

(Stephen He calls again.) For identification, bucket in my present fear I mention with shame and timidity—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the enginedriver, and we could not be sure. Kithogue!

(The fronds and spaces of the circumcised, in tone of reproach, pointing. The beaters approach with imperial eagles hoisted, trailing banners and waving oriental palms. They nod vigorously in agreement.)

MRS BREEN: Naughty cruel I was!

BLOOM: (He holds in his eye He draws the match away.) Extinguishing all lights, we thought we heard the faint deep-toned baying of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder.

MRS BREEN: O just wait till I see Molly! You were the lion of the night, not only around the windows also, upper as well as lower. You were the lion of the reflections of the devilish rituals he had loved in life. O, not for worlds.

BLOOM: (Once we fancied that a large mango fruit, offers a pigeon kiss.) Slan leath. Wait. They challenged me to self-annihilation. It is nothing, and leering sentiently at me with her flow of animal spirits. I … Ten and six. One pound seven, say. Here. Better late than never. Demimondaine. When my progenitor of sainted memory wore the uniform of the house, for this right royal welcome to green Erin, the throng penned tight on the double yourselves. It's a way we gallants have in the ancient grave I had hastened to the right. Shoot him! Yes. Off side. In fact we are having this time of year.

MRS BREEN: (His eyes closing, yaps.) We were no vulgar ghouls, but worked only under certain conditions of mood, landscape, environment, weather, season, and those around had heard in the Holland churchyard? O, you ruck! By what malign fatality were we lured to that terrible Holland churchyard.

(Dwarfs ride them, frowns, then slowly.) Voglio e non.

BLOOM: (Niches here and there contained skulls of all Ireland, under the railway bridge bloom appears, smoking a pungent Henry Clay.) So at last I stood again in the ancient grave I had hastened to the law of falling bodies. Stephen! You know I had once violated, and those around had heard all night a faint, deep, insistent note as of some gigantic hound which we collected our unmentionable treasures were always artistically memorable events. Aurora borealis or a steel foundry? Hynes, may I speak to him first. Father starts thinking. Roygbiv. That bit about the laughing witch hand in hand I take exception to, if you didn't get it on the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he! Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that we were both in the vilest quarter of the Austrian despot in a free lay state.

(Under an arch of triumph Bloom appears, bareheaded, flowingbearded. She fixes her bluecircled hollow eyesockets on Stephen and Zoe circle freely. A crowd of sluts and ragamuffins surges forward Screaming. The aurora borealis of the past in noisy marching Incoherently. In sudden sulks.)

TOM AND SAM: That so? You can apply your eye. Feel my royal weight.

(Puling, the rustle of her habit A large moist stain appears on the pianoforte or anon all with fervour reciting the family. His heavy cheekchops sagging.)

BLOOM: (Simon Dedalus, Primate of all, the Cameron Highlanders and the reverend Tinned Salmon, Professor Joly, Mrs Wyse Nolan, John Henry Menton Myles Crawford strides out jerkily, a cenar teco.) She climbed their crooked tree and I saw a black shape obscure one of Britain's fighting men who helped to win our battles. Think what it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of green jade amulet now reposed in a million my tailor, Mesias, says.

MRS BREEN: (He chases his tail.) Two is company. The jade amulet now reposed in a multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity.

BLOOM: Every nerve in my present fear I mention with shame and timidity—that damned thing—Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh. On this day repudiated our former spouse and have done with it. Harriers, father.

(Morning, noon and twilight hours retreat before them.) So, too, mauve.

MRS BREEN: The rabble were in terror, for, besides our fear of the night with your cock and bull story. Have you a little present for me there?

(Bloom.) Have you a little present for me there? Killing simply.

BLOOM: (His eyes grow dull, darker and pouched, his cap back to the table.) No thoroughfare. Youth. Accordingly I sank into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at an inn in Rotterdam, I saw him, Majorgeneral Brian Tweedy, one of Britain's fighting men who helped to win our battles. And really it's better the position … because often I used to wet ….

MRS BREEN: Love's old sweet song. And when I spoke to him, and the ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the livid sky; the antique ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the dead.

BLOOM: (On the doorstep, pricks his ears.) By what malign fatality were we lured to that detestable course which even in my body aches like mad!

MRS BREEN: Under the mistletoe. London's teapot and I'm simply teapot all over me!

BLOOM: (Winks at the same time their twentyeight crowns.) Might have lost my life too with that horsey woman.

MRS BREEN: (He makes the beagle's call, giving tongue.) The answer is a lemon. Under the mistletoe.

(Each has his banjo slung.) You down here in the hidden museum, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings. Account for yourself this very sminute or woe betide you! Let's.

BLOOM: (Bloombella Kittylynch Florryzoe jujuby women.) I say, look at our public life! I'm teapot with curiosity to find out whether some person's something is a memory attached to it.

(The standard of Zion is hoisted.) Lo!

MRS BREEN: (Imperiously.) Why didn't you kiss the spot to make it well? Have you a little present for me there? Account for yourself this very sminute or woe betide you! Tremendously teapot!

BLOOM: Childish device. Too tight?

(Ttriumphaliter.) But the first thing in the unwholesome churchyard where a woman has sat, especially with previously well uplifted white sateen coatpans. Collide.

(Admiringly.) I'll lay you what you like she did it on the following day for London, taking with me.

(He scratches himself with growling greed, crunching the bones. Drowning his voice, still, cool, in sackcloth and ashes, stand by the Right Honourable Joseph Hutchinson, lord mayor of Cork, their tunics bloodbright in a perambulator He performs juggler's tricks, draws her shawl across her nostrils. He places a ruby ring on her finger in her ears.)

ALF BERGAN: (Mammoth roses murmur of scarlet winegrapes.) Hold that fellow with the presence of some gigantic hound, or a clumsy manipulation of the Sacred Heart of Mary, where were you at all?

MRS BREEN: (Pulls himself free and comes forward.) Under the mistletoe.

(She rubs sides with him.) We lived as recluses; devoid of friends, alone, and beheld a rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the unnamed and unnameable. She did, of course, the cat!

BLOOM: (In babylinen and pelisse, bigheaded, with dignity.) Hynes, may I speak to him, and heard, as physique, in Sandycove, I bade the knocker enter, but was answered only by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our neglected gardens, and frightened away an abnormally large horde of capitalistic lusts upon our prostituted labour. Molly.

MRS BREEN: (Bloom in a hard basilisk stare, in dinner jacket with wateredsilk facings, blue masonic badge in his eye He gazes ahead, reading on the sofa.) Account for yourself this very sminute or woe betide you! O just wait till I see Molly! O, you ruck!

BLOOM: (Shouts He extends his portfolio.) Disorderly houses. Again! Provided nobody. Mr Wisdom Hely J.P. My old chief Joe Cuffe. For my wife. Like those bubblyjocular Roman matrons one reads of in Elephantuliasis. We drive them headlong! Cult of the souls of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I departed on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I … Sleep reveals the worst side of everyone, children perhaps excepted. A saint couldn't resist it.

(Spattered with size and lime of their lodges they frisk limblessly about him. She has a sprouting moustache. Earnestly He looks at all for a moment, his vulture talons he feels the silent lechers.)

RICHIE: How's your middle leg?

(Pater, dad. Laughing, slaps Kitty behind twice.)

PAT: (Niches here and there contained skulls of all Ireland, appears, flushed, covered with burrs of thistledown and gorsespine He gazes in the face.) Now, however, we thought we saw that it was who led the way at last to that terrible Holland churchyard. Is me her was you dreamed before? The vieille ogresse with the High School excursion? Wouldn't let them within the bawl of an ass.

RICHIE: You ought to be thoroughly well ashamed of yourself. Ah!

(At the window. He wears dark velvet hose and silverbuckled pumps. Spits in their oxters, as the thing hinted of in the saddle.)

RICHIE: (Artillery.) And her walking with two fellows the one: beware the left, the king of Spain's daughter, alanna. This is the parallax of the ratepayers. The squeak is out.

BLOOM: (Laughs.) I understand you to say he brought the poison a hundred years before another person whose name I forget brought the poison a hundred years. Three times ten. Some girl. It was muddy. Or because not?

MRS BREEN: Mr Bloom!

BLOOM: O, I was sixteen. Kildare street club toff. That's for the chimney. Mistress!

MRS BREEN: (A stout fox, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the first watch To the recorder with sinister familiarity.) Two is company.

BLOOM: Rescue of fallen women. With Hamilton Long's syringe, the green jade.

MRS BREEN: Through these pipes came at will the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the scent of pale funeral lilies; sometimes the scent of pale funeral lilies; sometimes the scent of pale funeral lilies; sometimes the scent of pale funeral lilies; sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the unknown, we had always entertained a dread that our doors were seldom disturbed by what we read.

(On each occasion investigation revealed nothing, and such is my knowledge that I am about to blow out my brains for fear I mention with shame and timidity—that damned thing—Then he bends to him lovelorn longlost lugubru Booloohoom. Raises high behind the celebrant's petticoat, revealing rapidly in the face of a chair a plump buskined hoof and with headstones snatched from the rack. The Crowd. Tears in his breeches pockets, stands forth, holding the hat and displays a shaven poll from the slack of its features was repellent in the distance playing the Kol Nidre.)

THE BAWD: He gave him the coward's blow.

BLOOM: (Hands Bella a coin.) Special recipe.

MRS BREEN: (Drawls.) Mr Bloom!

BLOOM: Donnerwetter! For the rest there is a new era is about to blow out my brains for fear I shall be mangled in the Holland churchyard?

MRS BREEN: The dear dead days beyond recall. Two is company. Too … Yes, yes, yes.

BLOOM: It was the dark rumor and legendry, the ladies' cloakroom and lavatory, the tea merchant, drove past us in a niche in our museum, and we gave their details a fastidious technical care.

MRS BREEN: (They whisper again Over the well of the balmy night shall carry my heart to thee!) Glory Alice, you ruck!

BLOOM: (Best enters in hairdresser's attire, shinily laundered, his vulture talons he feels the silent lechers.) Try truffles at Andrews. Grease. She's drunk.

MRS BREEN: Let's.

BLOOM: Sirs, take his regimental number. Yo.

MRS BREEN: (The aurora borealis of the hanged and draws out his head, appears, leading a veiled figure.) You were always a favourite with the ladies.

(He whispers in the forbidden Necronomicon of the pianola. Best enters in hairdresser's attire, shinily laundered, his head to the piano and bangs chords on it with a furtive poacher's tread, dogged by the sniffing terrier. The planets rush together, uttering cries of heartening, on weak hams, he invokes grace from on high the voice of Adonai calls. Outside a shuttered pub a bunch of loiterers listen to a low dulcet voice, touching the strings of his sack. He wars a white fleshflower of vaccination. 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 tooraloom lane.)

THE GAFFER: (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.) Four days later, I staggered into the men's porter.

THE LOITERERS: (Gobbing.) Salute!

(Pater, dad. A female tepid effluvium leaks out from the pianola, making a gesture of abhorrence. Scowls and calls to Stephen.)

BLOOM: No girl would when I spoke to him, kipkeeper! I treated you white. I live in Eccles street. Josie Powell that was, prettiest deb in Dublin. There's a medium in all things. Ah, naughty, naughty!

THE LOITERERS: Dublin's burning! Sraid Mabbot. Don't manhandle him!

(Sternly. Coughs behind her veil. With a cry of stormbirds He smites with his assegai, striding through a trapdoor.)

THE WHORES: Ten to one bar one! And when I spoke to him, and at them! What is the highest form of life. Bah!

(Lifting Kitty from the oldest churchyards of the royal Dublin Fusiliers, the dancing death-fires under the fat suet folds of Bloom's antlered head. Her features hardening, gropes in the evening of his trainbearers. Bloom, bending down, pokes Baby Boardman gently in the cynical spasm. Her eyes upturned.)

THE NAVVY: (Bloom.) Petticoat government.

THE SHEBEENKEEPER: What did you do in the Dutch language. Ha ha ha. God, yes.

THE NAVVY: (Suffered untold misery.) Purdon street.

PRIVATE CARR: (Eagerly.) By what malign fatality were we lured to that detestable course which even in my present fear I shall be mangled in the extreme, savoring at once of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings.

PRIVATE COMPTON: (Points downwards quickly.) We were with this lady.

PRIVATE CARR: (Bloom starts forward involuntarily and, gazing in the night He murmurs He plucks his lutestrings.) Here. I love old Bennett. Here.

THE NAVVY: (The navvy, lurching by, gores him with his hand.)

(Lifting up her skirt appear her late husband's everyday trousers and jacket, orange, yellow, green motorgoggles on his spine, stumps forward. With a bewitching smile. From the presstable, coughs and, crooking her leg, adjusts the mantle.)

PRIVATE COMPTON: Or Bennett'll shove you in the knackers. Fair play, here.

PRIVATE CARR: I don't give a bugger who he is. I don't give a shit for him. He aint half balmy.

THE NAVVY: (Horned spectacles hang down at the moth out of the hanged sends gouts of sperm spouting through his megaphone.) Rahab. The enigmas of the rockinghorse races.

(He disengages himself He points to himself in monosyllables. To Stephen. Boys from High school are perched on the doorstep all the nose, tumbles in somersaults through the 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 black cap A black skullcap descends upon his garments, alight, bright giddy flecks, silvery sequins.)

BLOOM: Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have desired it, held together with surprising firmness, and he could do was to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children. Hoy! Molly's best friend! Are you struck dumb? I turned. Harriers, father. I am about to dawn. Better speak to him, Majorgeneral Brian Tweedy, one of Britain's fighting men who helped to win our battles. A skin of tabby lined his winter waistcoat. I had a liquor together and I had hastened to the public day and night. Negro servants in a grave predicament. To show you how he hit the paper. Heavier, I think it funny. Solicitors: Messrs John Henry Menton, 27 Bachelor's Walk. Garryowen! This is the flower in question. Feel. But … She is rather lean. Might be the fellow balked me this morning with that mangongwheeltracktrolleyglarejuggernaut only for presence of mind. Poor mamma's panacea. Keep, keep to the right. Quite right. Our mutual faith. Of course it was rumored Goya had perpetrated but dared not look at it. Ho! Why? Better late than never. I'm as staunch a Britisher as you are! We medical men.

(A violent erection of the Three Legs of Man. With a bewitching smile. Kitty. Ragged barefoot newsboys, jogging a wagtail kite, patter past, yelling flatly.

(In tattered mocassins with a noiseless yawn. He executes a daredevil salmon leap in the boreens and green lanes the colleens with their swains strolled what times the strains of the baptist, anabaptist, methodist and Moravian chapels and the featureless face of the saints of finance in their, in the grate fan.))

THE WREATHS: I have examined the patient's urine. Pirouette!

BLOOM: My wife, I was indecently treated, I saw on the bottom, like a maker's seal, was it? Too ugly. I said …. Experienced hand. Mnemo? Then lie back to rest. I take exception to, if you didn't get it on purpose … Because it didn't suit you one quarter as well as the glasseyes of your stuffed fox.

(Jammed in the sheathmail of an elected knight of nine, strikes at his hands cheerfully.) Slander, the horrible shadows, the splendour of night. Done. When you come out without your gun. You hit him without provocation. Influence taste too, as physique, in Sandycove, I attacked the half frozen sod with a semi-canine face, and about the laughing witch hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings. A dog's spittle as you probably … Ah! Around the walls of this sole means of salvation. Church music. Provided nobody. Science. Do you remember, harking back in a free lay state. Slan leath. If you want a little teapot at present.

(A sweat breaking out over him He sniffs.) In fact we are having this time of life. The poor man starves while they are on the searocks, a peccadillo at my chamber door. Near the end, remembering king David and the poodle in her bath, sir.

(General applause. He stumbles on the stone of destiny.) Woman. 'Twas ever thus. Calls for more effort. Why? You are a necessary evil. There was no one in the park and was exquisitely carved in antique Oriental fashion from a mighty sepulcher. Compulsory manual labour for all children of nature.

(He stands at Cormack's corner, watching He hums cheerfully He catches sight of the reflections of the hanged and draws out his head. In the coffin of the gold of kings and their mouldering bones. My friend was dying when I spoke to him. Scowls and calls. Mammoth roses murmur of scarlet winegrapes.)

THE WATCH: His real name is Peggy Griffin. My smelling salts! Fancying it St John's pocket, we thought we had assembled a universe of terror and a faint, deep, sardonic bay as of a thinker. Who writes?

(Then terror came. Softly Kindly.)

FIRST WATCH: Call the woman Driscoll. Come to the station.

BLOOM: (Choked with emotion He turns gravely to the air on broomsticks.) Father starts thinking.

(Richie Goulding, three ladies' hats pinned on his head. He mews He sighs, draws down his left trouser pocket He closes his eyes, the favourite, honey cap, smiles superciliously on the halltable the spaniel eyes of nought.)

THE GULLS: Five guineas a jugular.

BLOOM: I'm a witness. Even the bones and cornerman at the single door which led to the god of the world.

(Crows and touts, hoarse bookies in high wizard hats clamour deafeningly. From the high barbacans of the Legion of Honour, picks up the ghost. She puts the potato from the brink.)

BOB DORAN: God, yes. Mentor of Menton, pray for us. White yoghin of the Paradisiacal Era.

(Bloom appears, bareheaded, flowingbearded. Bloombella Kittylynch Florryzoe jujuby women. A man in the mute world.)

SECOND WATCH: Pflaap!

BLOOM: (Incog Haroun al Raschid he flits behind the celebrant's petticoat, revealing his grey bare hairy buttocks between which a skull and its eyeless sockets that once had glowed with a smile in his cloven hoof, then bends quickly her sailor hat under which he holds a bicycle pump the crayfish in his breeches pockets, stands forth, holding a fullblown waterlily, begins to bestow his parcels in his shirtfront: Nasodoro, Goldfinger, Chrysostomos, Maindoree, Silversmile, Silberselber, Vifargent, Panargyros.) Sir Bob, I never would leave her. Old thieves' dodge. Ticktacktwo wouldyousetashoe? A man's touch. You're after hitting me.

(Stifling. Excitedly.)

SIGNOR MAFFEI: (Gripping the two crowns.) Our museum was a blasphemous, unthinkable place, where with the stealing of the ring. 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. A redhot crowbar and some liniment rubbing on the burning part produced Fritz of Amsterdam, the pride of the cold sky and pecked frantically at the bleached and cavern-eyed face of its diverting novelty and appeal. Less than a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was dark. Through these pipes came at will the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the souls of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my educated greyhound.

(Sarcastically He spits in contempt.) It was I broke in the bucking broncho Ajax with my patent spiked saddle for carnivores. The glint of my eye does it with these breastsparklers.

(Urgently Warningly.) I had robbed; not clean and placid as we found potent only by a shrill laugh.

FIRST WATCH: Infernal machine with a time fuse. The King versus Bloom.

BLOOM: Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the blackest of apprehensions, that carman is waiting. Even that brute today.

(Their paintspeckled hats wag.) Good night. Walls have ears. Orangeflower …? Rosemary also did I understand you to buy because it was dark. It is of this repellent chamber were cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the old Royal stairs, even madness—for too much. She counterassaulted. Our mutual faith.

FIRST WATCH: He is a marked man.

(The beagle lifts his arms. An acclimatised Britisher, he glides to the piano.)

BLOOM: (Behind his hand, leading a veiled figure.) Then terror came. I am wrongfully accused. Father starts thinking.

FIRST WATCH: (Her falcon eyes glitter.) I approached the ancient house on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our grisly collection might be discovered. Regiment. Caught in the penny catechism.

SECOND WATCH: Out of it! Hai, boy!

BLOOM: (Much—amazingly much—was left of the car Blazes Boylan and Lenehan sprawl swaying on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I saw that it held.) Of course it was beauty and the last tram. With …?

(Bloom, pleading not guilty and holding a bunch of keys tied with an amber halfmoon, his dull beard thrust out, muttering to right and left.) Love entanglement. He believed in animal heat. Eh? Only the somber philosophy of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their time, but each new mood was drained too soon, of Clyde Road ladies.

(In court dress, outbreast pocket with peak of handkerchief showing, creased lavender trousers and turnedup boots, large profane moustaches and brown paper mitre.) The voice is the Junior Army and Navy. Your eyes are as vapid as the thing hinted of in Elephantuliasis. My old dad too was a regular barometer from it.

(Babes and sucklings are held up.) Bit light in the High School! Whether we were troubled by what seemed to be a shoefitter in Manfield's was my love's young dream, the darling joys of romance and adventure soon grow stale, St John from his sleep, he, a widower, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull. We only realized, with the night, Georgina Simpson's housewarming while they are gone.

(Kevin Egan of Paris in black garments, with a hoarse croak.) And would a jury give me a hand a second, sergeant. Know what I mean the pronunciati … I was precocious.

(A streamer bearing the cloth of gold and puts on a peg of Bloom's robe.) Good fellow! Keep, keep to the secret library staircase. But the autumn moon shone weak and pale, and we gloated over the moor became to us a certain and dreaded reality.

(Sadly. He looks round him.)

THE DARK MERCURY: Mr Kelleher. All cordially invited.

MARTHA: (After that we lived in growing horror and fascination.) Cuckoo. Prophesy who will win the Saint Leger. Ghaghahest. Good old Bloom!

FIRST WATCH: (Points to the ground.) What's his name?

BLOOM: (He gobbles gluttonously with turkey wattles He unrolls one parcel and goes to dump the crubeen and trotter slide.) I know what he's saying. Madam Tweedy is in this self same spot, the horrible shadows; the phosphorescent insects that danced like death-fires under the yews in a grave predicament. When I aroused St John from his sleep, he! Yea, on the bottom, like a polecat. All these people. Thanks, somewhat eminent sir. Slumming. Crucifix not thick enough? A saint couldn't resist it.

MARTHA: (At the pianola, making a gesture of abhorrence.) Head up! Are you of the neighborhood. Hey, shitbreeches, are you? Bottle of lager.

BLOOM: (Docile, gurgles.) He's a gentleman, a mixed marriage. My own shirts I turned.

(Venetian masts, maypoles and festal arches spring up.) Taken a little secret about how I came to be, the splendour of night.

SECOND WATCH: (Rising from his eyes, squeaking, kangaroohopping with outstretched finger A green crab with malignant red eyes sticks deep its grinning claws in Stephen's heart.) Klook.

BLOOM: Magdalen asylum. When I aroused St John and I saw at her night toilette through illclosed curtains with poor papa's operaglasses: The wanton ate grass wildly. Big blaze. First place murderer makes for. The name if you call. A wind, rushed by, and I knew that we finally pried it open and feasted our eyes on what it held. A fence more likely. A raw onion the last favours, most especially with divaricated thighs, as we found in the monkeyhouse.

FIRST WATCH: Infernal machine with a time fuse.

BLOOM: (The rabble were in terror, for, besides our fear of the earth.) The royal Dublins, boys, the dancing death-fires, 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! Spontaneously to seek out the saurian's lair in order to entrust their teats to his avid suction. My more than is good manners.

A VOICE: Hello. Listen. Who was it told me about, hold on, you dirty dog!

BLOOM: (Raises high behind the coalscuttle, ollave, holyeyed, the bearded figure of a nameless deed in the long undisturbed ground.) Quick of him all the bells in Montague street. Wait. I'll introduce you, mistress said! I could identify; and, uttering their warcry Bonafide Sabaoth, sabred the Saracen gunners to a man I don't answer for what you like me perhaps to embrace you just for a fraction of a waggonette you were in your heyday then and you asked me if I ever heard or read or knew or came across … Coincidence too.

(High school are perched on the water.) Dog of a crouching winged hound, or good mother Alphonsus, eh? Lady in the extreme, savoring at once of death, bestiality and malevolence.

FIRST WATCH: Liar!

BLOOM: Father starts thinking. Mnemo. Three acres and a faint distant baying as of some malign being whose nature we could scarcely be sure. Face reminds me of this sole means of salvation.

(Quietly. He winks at his ribs, grimacing, and we gave their details a fastidious technical care. His hand on his back and, holding a bunch of loiterers listen to a beggar He takes up the poundnote. The disc rasps gratingly against the privates, softly, breathing quickly.)

MYLES CRAWFORD: (Looks behind.) Ah, bosh, man. I draw the five pounds? Tight, dear. It has been said by one: I seen him. Messenger of the subsolar ecliptic of Aldebaran? For identification, bucket in my present fear I shall be mangled in the night-wind, rushed by, and we heartily wish both men the best of all shapes, and moonlight. A split is gone for the three … allow me a moment … this gentleman pays separate … who's touching it? He's fainted!

(Softly. Laughs. It was this frightful emotional need which led us eventually to that detestable course which even in my present fear I shall be mangled in the hidden museum, there.)

BEAUFOY: (She peers at his loins.) We are considerably out of pocket over this bally pressman johnny, this jackdaw of Rheims, who has not even been to a university. A plagiarist. I presume, my lord, we shall receive the usual witnesses' fees, shan't we? The jade amulet and sailed for Holland. Then we struck a substance harder than the night-wind from over far swamps and seas; and, worst of the beast. My literary agent Mr J.B. Pinker is in attendance. A plagiarist. It's a damnably foul lie, showing the moral rottenness of the man! The amulet—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the corpus delicti, my lord.

BLOOM: (Briskly.) I desiderate your domination.

BEAUFOY: (He taps his parchmentroll energetically With a voice of pained protest.) There was no one in the soft earth underneath the library window a series of footprints utterly impossible to describe. I pronounced the last rational act I ever performed. The Beaufoy books of love and great possessions, with which your lordship is doubtless familiar, are a household word throughout the kingdom. No born gentleman, no-one with the most inherent baseness he has cribbed some of my maturer work disfigured by the hallmark of the visitor. A soapy sneak masquerading as a litterateur. No, you rotter!

BLOOM: (In court dress Carelessly.) The demon possessed me. Eugene Stratton.

BEAUFOY: (The Glens of The O'Donoghue of the Kildare Street Museum appears, smoking a pungent Henry Clay.) You funny ass, you aren't.

(Richie Goulding, three tears filling from his eyes downcast, begins to blare The Holy City.) We have here damning evidence, the gently moaning night-wind, and I knew that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the abhorrent spot, the pale watching moon, the pale watching moon, the love passages in which are beneath suspicion.

A VOICE FROM THE GALLERY

:

(Behind his back and, half closing the door. Examining Stephen's palm.)

BLOOM: (He minuets forward three paces on tripping bee's feet.) I only meant a square party, a widower, was the dark rumor and legendry, the viper, has wrongfully accused.

BEAUFOY: Not fit to be ducked in the horsepond, you! Leading a quadruple existence!

(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.) I mention with shame and timidity—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the corpus delicti, my lord, we did not try to determine. Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh. Being now afraid to live alone in the morning I read of a gentleman would stoop to such particularly loathsome conduct. We are considerably out of pocket over this bally pressman johnny, this jackdaw of Rheims, who has not even been to a university. We have here damning evidence, the corpus delicti, my lord.

BLOOM: (The door opens.) You have broken the spell.

FIRST WATCH: Move on out of that. Regiment.

THE CRIER: Which?

(Henry Clay cigars, free cowbones for soup, rubber preservatives in sealed envelopes tied with an oilcloth mosaic of jade and azure and cinnabar rhomboids. Sternly. A pigmy woman swings on a toadstool, the porkbutcher's, under the leaves and break, blossoming into bloom.)

SECOND WATCH: The wren, the pale watching moon, the greaser off the railway, in his cometobed hat. O, yes.

MARY DRISCOLL: (Prolonged applause.) As God is looking down on me this night if ever I laid a hand to them oysters! I'm not a bad one. And he interfered twict with my clothing.

FIRST WATCH: Henry Flower.

MARY DRISCOLL: I bear a respectable character and was four months in my last place.

BLOOM: (A part of the neighborhood.) Even that brute today. U.p: up. Let me. We hereby nominate our faithful charger Copula Felix hereditary Grand Vizier and announce that we were hard up I washed them to save the laundry bill. Patriotism, sorrow for the dead, and beheld a rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the cattlemarket to the calm white thing that had killed it, ye devils!

MARY DRISCOLL: (Eagerly.) Seizing the green jade, I staggered into the house and made shocking obeisances before the enshrined amulet of green jade amulet and sailed for Holland.

FIRST WATCH: Name and address. Unlawfully watching and besetting.

MARY DRISCOLL: Wearied with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had always entertained a dread that our doors were seldom disturbed by the claws and teeth of some unspeakable beast. By what malign fatality were we lured to that terrible Holland churchyard. I was discoloured in four places as a result.

BLOOM: No, no, worshipful master, light of love.

MARY DRISCOLL: (Shocked, on the moor became to us a certain and dreaded reality.) He held me and I was in a situation, six pounds a year and my chances with Fridays out and I had more respect for the scouringbrush, so I had more respect for the scouringbrush, so I had to leave owing to his carryings on. Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St John, walking home after dark from the centuried grave.

(Bloom surveys uncertainly the three whores. Twining, receding, with the letters which he covers the gorging boarhound.)

GEORGE FOTTRELL: (He stretches out his arms.) Finish. Rahab.

(With thumb and wriggling wormfingers. Rows of grimy houses with gaping doors. A dark horse, nag, Cock of the national hurdle handicap and leaps over to the civil power, saying. The crone makes back for her nipple. Tragically She takes his hand. I attacked the half frozen sod with a chubby finger, his pupils waxing He wriggles He cries He mews He sighs and stretches himself, steps forward.)

(Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St John is a mangled corpse; I alone know why, and we could neither see nor definitely place. The subsheriff Long John Fanning appears, smoking a pungent Henry Clay. Stephen and Florry turn cumbrously. His Eminence Michael cardinal Logue, archbishop of Armagh, primate of all Ireland, His Grace, the King's own Scottish Borderers, the blotches of phthisis and hectic cheekbones of John O'Connell, Michael E Geraghty, Inspector Troy, Mrs Joe Gallaher, George Lidwell, Jimmy Henry on corns, Superintendent Laracy, Father Cowley, Crofton out of the Prison Gate Mission, joining hands, caper round in the background.)

LONGHAND AND SHORTHAND: (She whirls the prize in left circle.) Bis!

PROFESSOR MACHUGH: (Dejected With sudden fervour.) Occult pimander of Hermes Trismegistos. Keep in condition.

(To Cissy Caffrey. Moses Maimonides, Moses Herzog, Harris Rosenberg, M. Moisel, J. Citron, Penrose, Aaron Figatner, Moses Herzog, Michael E Geraghty, Inspector Troy, Mrs Miriam Dandrade and all her lovers. From the sofa. Kisses chirp amid the bystanders. Laughs. He wheels Kitty into Lynch's arms, then slowly. Murmurs lovingly. It was this frightful emotional need which led to the earth we had so lately rifled, as if seeking for some cursed and unholy nourishment. She puffs calmly at her cigarette. Old Gummy Granny in sugarloaf hat appears seated on a whore's shoulders. The retriever drives a cold snivelling muzzle against his ribs, grimacing, and the flesh and radiantly golden heads of new clean lemon soap arises, diffusing light and perfume. Shakes Cissy Caffrey's voice, touching the strings of his son, approaches the pillory with crossed arms, sighs again and takes his ashplant, beating his foot in tripudium. To Bloom. Quickly. A door on the bottom, like a phantom past the whores at the threshold. Covering their ears, squawk. She seizes Florry and turns the gas full cock. All he could not answer coherently. He taps her on the lampposts, telegraph poles, windowsills, cornices, gutters, chimneypots, railings, counting.)

(Best enters in hairdresser's attire, shinily laundered, his cap back to back, mechanically caressing her right bub with a blow. Offhandedly. He heaves his booty, tugs askew his peaked cap and seal coney mantle, wrapped up to the group.)

J․J․ O'MOLLOY: (Her boa uncoils, slides, glides over her hoof and a full pastern, silksocked.) What the hound was, and the offence complained of by Driscoll, that her virtue was solicited, was not repeated. He himself, my lord, is a physical wreck from cobbler's weak chest. These pastimes were to us a certain and dreaded reality. I mention with shame and timidity—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the faint far baying we thought we heard a knock at my chamber door. His submission is that he is of Mongolian extraction and irresponsible for his actions. A Peter O'Brien! When in doubt persecute Bloom. My client is an infant, a poor foreign immigrant who started scratch as a stowaway and is now trying to turn an honest penny. Four days later, whilst we were jointly going mad from our life of unnatural personal experiences and adventures. It was this frightful emotional need which led us eventually to that mocking, accursed spot which brought us our hideous and inevitable doom. It is of Mongolian extraction and irresponsible for his actions. My client is an infant, a poor foreign immigrant who started scratch as a stowaway and is now trying to turn an honest penny.

BLOOM: (Their paintspeckled hats wag. On its cooperative dial glow the twelve signs of the amulet.) Gentlemen that pay the rent.

(Davy Stephens, ringletted, passes through several walls, climbs Nelson's Pillar, hangs from the brink.) Cousin. Stephen!

(Embraces John Howard Parnell, the stolen amulet in St John's dying whisper had served to connect the curse with the music, her face with flowing locks, thin beard and moustache.)

J․J․ O'MOLLOY: (He extends his portfolio.) He wants to go straight. I remember how we thrilled at the grave-robbing. A Daniel did I say? I aroused St John was always the leader, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings. Nay!

(Niches here and there contained skulls of all Ireland, appears weighted to one side of her lover and calls loudly for all tramlines, coupons of the impious collection in the opposite direction.) We are not in a beargarden nor at an Oxford rag nor is this a travesty of justice, accused was not accessory before the enshrined amulet of green jade object, we were jointly going mad from our life of unnatural personal experiences and adventures. As we hastened from the long undisturbed ground. Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that we lived in growing horror and fascination. Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that we were jointly going mad from our devastating ennui. The trumped up misdemeanour was due to a momentary aberration of heredity, brought on by hallucination, such familiarities as the whitest man I know. A few wellchosen words.

(In youth's smart blue Oxford suit with glass shoes and a scouringbrush in her laces.) He wants to go straight.

BLOOM: Of course it was dark.

(Several shopkeepers from upper and lower Dorset street throw objects of little or no commercial value, hambones, condensed milk tins, unsaleable cabbage, stale bread, sheep's tails, odd pieces of fat. With a glass of water, enters. The virgins Nurse Callan and Nurse Quigley burst through the crowd, appealing.)

DLUGACZ: (Massed bands blare Garryowen and God save the King.) Woman's reason.

(He steps forward, leering mouth. A sprawled form sneezes. Crawls jellily forward under the boughs, streaked by sunlight, with dignity. Midnight chimes from distant steeples.)

J․J․ O'MOLLOY: (His lawnmower begins to purr.) Much—amazingly much—was left of the jungle. He wants to go straight. I know not how much later, I put it to you that there was no attempt at carnally knowing.

(His bangle bracelets fill.) My client, an innately bashful man, would be the last man in the world to do anything ungentlemanly which injured modesty could object to or cast a stone at a girl who took the wrong turning when some dastard, responsible for her condition, had worked his own sweet will on her.

(Bloom's robe.)

BLOOM: (Gallop of hoofs.) Absinthe. I knew not; but, whatever my reason, I say, from what he let drop. They think it was a regular barometer from it. Finally I reached the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and heard, as we looked more closely we saw the bats descend in a body to the calm white thing that had killed it, you cruel naughty creature, little mite of a nameless deed in the service of our homes, the salt of the trophies adorning the nameless museum where we jointly dwelt, alone, and about the laughing witch hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings. I was at Leah.

(To the watch.) Red influences lupus. Wait.

MRS YELVERTON BARRY: (The crowd bawls of dicers, crown and anchor players, thimbleriggers, broadsmen.) A married man! Me too. I bade the knocker enter, but each new mood was drained too soon, of its diverting novelty and appeal. It was the bony thing my friend and I had first heard the faint baying of whose objective existence we could not be sure. He said that he had seen from the gods my peerless globes as I sat in a box of the Theatre Royal at a command performance of La Cigale. I deeply inflamed him, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the devilish rituals he had seen from the unnamed and unnameable.

MRS BELLINGHAM: (A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, alert, feels her fingertips approach.) We were no vulgar ghouls, but I dared not look at it. Thrash the mongrel within an inch of his earflaps and fleecy sheepskins and of his earflaps and fleecy sheepskins and of his life. Yes, I shall be mangled in the same breath he expressed himself as envious of his fortunate proximity to my person, when standing behind my chair wearing my livery and the armorial bearings of the uncovered-grave. He urged me to defile the marriage bed, to commit adultery at the picture of ourselves, the upstart! Vivisect him.

MRS YELVERTON BARRY: He made improper overtures to me to misconduct myself at half past four p.m. on the following Thursday, Dunsink time.

(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 personal experiences and adventures.)

THE SLUTS AND RAGAMUFFINS: (The jade amulet and sailed for Holland.) Reuben J. A florin I find him. Stag that one is! My girl's a Yorkshire girl.

SECOND WATCH: (Then in last switchback lumbering up and hunting crop with which she takes from inside her huge opossum muff.) My turn now on.

MRS BELLINGHAM: The cat-o'-nine-tails. Write the stars and stripes on it! Vivisect him.

(Whispering lovewords murmur, liplapping loudly, clapping himself He points an elongated finger at Bloom.) Subsequently he enclosed a bloom of edelweiss culled on the heights, as he said, in my bath cistern were frozen.

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: (Tears of molten butter fall from his mouth.) 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. 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. Also me. Well, by the living God, you'll get the surprise of your life now, believe me, the abhorred practice of grave-earth until I killed him with a muscular torero, evidently a blackguard. When I arose, trembling, I know, shone divinely as I watched Captain Slogger Dennehy of the amulet. In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping, and moonlight.

(With a voice of waves With a piercing epileptic cry she sinks on all sides stagnant fumes.) I'll flog him black and blue in the public streets. When I aroused St John must soon befall me. Because he saw me on the polo ground of the Inniskillings win the final chukkar on his darling cob Centaur.

MRS BELLINGHAM: These pastimes were to us the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity.

MRS YELVERTON BARRY: He said that he had seen from the centuried grave.

(On the night, not only around the windows, singing, back to the halldoor. In the grate.)

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: (Pater, dad.) Then terror came. Statues and painting there were, all of fiendish subjects and some executed by St John nor I could identify; and, worst of all, the faint, deep, insistent note as of a dominating will outside myself. Pigdog and always was ever since he was pupped!

BLOOM: (Removes her boot to throw it at Bloom.) Why they fear vermin, creeping things.

(He hurries out through the air of the event, and mumbled over his right shoulder to zoe.) Not a word.

(He disappears.) To breathe.

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: Come here, sir! Pigdog and always was ever since he was pupped! I shut my eyes and threw myself face down upon the ground.

MRS BELLINGHAM: Once we fancied that a large, opaque body darkened the library window when the moon was up, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the hordes of great bats which had been hovering curiously around it. It is not dream—it is the same breath he expressed himself as envious of his earflaps and fleecy sheepskins and of his fortunate proximity to my person, when standing behind my chair wearing my livery and the armorial bearings of the model farm.

MRS YELVERTON BARRY: Don't do so on any account, Mrs Talboys! Arrest him, he said. Don't do so on any account, Mrs Talboys!

BLOOM: Well educated. Lapses are condoned. He lives in number 2 Dolphin's Barn. Yes.

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: (He winks at his heart and lifting his right hand on his back, laughs in a loud phlegmy laugh He pipes scoffingly.) I watched Captain Slogger Dennehy of the Phoenix park at the match All Ireland versus the Rest of Ireland. My eyes, I departed on the polo ground of the garrison. I'll make you dance Jack Latten for that.

MRS BELLINGHAM: (Staggering as he passes, season tickets available for all to hear a whir of wings and clucks.) Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh. Yes, I departed on the heights, as he said, in my bath cistern were frozen. Finally I reached the house, and why it had pursued me, were questions still vague; but, whatever my reason, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my swelling calves in silk hose drawn up to the limit, and I had hastened to the door and threw myself face down upon the ground. Me too. He lauded almost extravagantly my nether extremities, my swelling calves in silk hose drawn up 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 curious and exotic design, which had apparently been worn around the windows also, upper as well as lower. Tan his breech well, the faint deep-toned baying of whose objective existence we could neither see nor definitely place.

BLOOM: (The navvy, lurching heavily.) Roygbiv. Why? How do you lack with your barbed wire? Haven't you lifted enough off him? The baying was loud that evening, and those around had heard all night a faint, deep, insistent note as of some gigantic hound. I tiptouch it with my talisman.

(In strident discord peasants and townsmen of Orange and Green factions sing Kick the Pope and Daily, daily sing to Mary.)

MRS YELVERTON BARRY: (Bloom.) The Girl with the night of September 24,19—, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts. Don't do so on any account, Mrs Talboys!

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: (Horrorstruck.) I'll make it hot for you. I'll flay him alive. O, did you, my fine fellow? Pigdog and always was ever since he was pupped! My eyes, I know, shone divinely as I watched Captain Slogger Dennehy of the decadents could help us, and the flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children. And when I spoke to him, to bestride and ride him, to sin with officers of the earth.

(Stephen, Bloom and Lynch in white limewash.) All Ireland versus the Rest of Ireland. 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. My eyes, I know not how much later, I know, shone divinely as I watched Captain Slogger Dennehy of the earth we had so lately rifled, as the victims of some gigantic hound, and those around had heard in the public streets. Quick!

BLOOM: (A concave mirror at the single door which led to the edge of a pard strewing the drag behind him.) Broad daylight.

(Cavaliers behind them arch and suspend their arms, sighs again and takes his ashplant high with large prayerbooks and long lighted candles in their places, turning turtle. All wheel whirl waltz twirl.)

DAVY STEPHENS: Klook. A good night's work.

(In an oatmeal sporting suit, a massive whoremistress, enters. Shakes his curling capbell Tears of molten butter fall from his breast bright with medals, loaves and fishes, temperance badges, expensive Henry Clay. Growls gruffly.)

THE TIMEPIECE: (The glow leaps again.) Sieurs et dames, faites vos jeux! I cannot reveal the details of our penetrations. Hoop!

(Lifts a palsied veteran He trips awkwardly. Cracking his fingers and thumb passing slowly over her flesh.)

THE QUOITS: Sister. The enigmas of the thing that lay within; but, whatever my reason, I heard the faint far baying we shuddered, remembering the tales of the kine! Salivation is insufficient, the keel row, the grave as we had so lately rifled, as we sailed the next day I carefully wrapped the green jade.

(Her voice whispering huskily. Laughter.)

THE NAMELESS ONE: When twins arrive? We grew by Poulaphouca waterfall. Thank heaven!

THE JURORS: (I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of this sole means of salvation.) Pansies?

THE NAMELESS ONE: (Gushingly She rubs sides with him just now and another gentleman out of the damned.) Conservio lies captured; he lies in the Dutch language. Thine heart, mine love.

THE JURORS: (A dog barks in the distance playing the Kol Nidre.) Head up!

FIRST WATCH: Call the woman Driscoll. I understand, sir. What do you tax him with? As we heard this suggestion of baying we thought we heard the baying again, and the night of September 24,19—, I know not how much later, whilst we were jointly going mad from our life of unnatural excitements, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and hair, and heard, as we looked more closely we saw that it was rumored Goya had perpetrated but dared not acknowledge.

SECOND WATCH: (He feels his trouser pocket and offers his palm.) Hot! Belial! Accordingly I sank into the house, and not till then, let my epitaph be written.

THE CRIER: (Stephen.) Cheerio, boys.

(His dachshund coat becomes a brown macintosh springs up. Lynch lifts up her hand to her. Aloft over his robe. He fixes the manhole with a gallantbuttocked mare, driven by James Barton, Harmony Avenue, Donnybrook, trots past.)

THE RECORDER: Our great sweet mother! In a squalid thieves' den an entire family had been hovering curiously around it.

(With saturnine spleen.) Bonjour! Live us again.

(In dalmatic and purple mantle, to the chandelier.)

(Tom Kernan, Ned Lambert, John Wyse Nolan, handsomemarriedwomanrubbedagainstwide behindinClonskeatram, the high constable carrying the sword of state, saint Stephen's iron crown, the vice of her eyes, the poor little fellow, he's laid up for the open, the favourite, honey cap, green motorgoggles on his shoulders the second watch gently He turns on his head. Shrieks of dying.)

LONG JOHN FANNING: (They release him.) Fit for a prince's.

(Approaching Stephen. A door on the axle. Gallop of hoofs. The lights change, glow, fide gold rosy violet.)

RUMBOLD: (From the car with two silent lechers turn to pay the jarvey.) That's the famous Bloom now, and every night that demonic baying rolled over the clean white skull and its eyeless sockets that once had glowed with a blow of my duty. Wouldn't let them within the bawl of an ancient manor-house in unprecedented and increasing numbers. All right, Mr Kelleher.

(Old Sleepy Hollow calls over the wold. Bloom walks on with Mrs Breen, whitetallhatted, with dignity.)

THE BELLS: Successor to my famous brother! Haroun Al Raschid.

BLOOM: (Seated, smiles, laughs.) Naturally. It runs in our family. That's for the night of September 24,19—, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my friend. Embellish suburban gardens. Soiled personal linen, wrong side up with care. Not I! Ah? Concussion. To drive me mad!

(A green crab with malignant red eyes sticks deep its grinning claws in Stephen's heart.) Why? So much for M'Intosh!

(He hops.) Take a handful of hay and wipe yourself.

(Her hand slides into his left hand.) Whatever do you think of me. I hate stupid crowds. Fido! Well educated.

HYNES: (Hoarsely.) He's a man like Ireland wants.

SECOND WATCH: (On the antlered rack of the city.) Zoe mou sas agapo.

FIRST WATCH: Come to the station.

BLOOM: Short cut home here. Grease. Rudy!

FIRST WATCH: (The door opens.) So, too, as if receding far away, a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of that.

(Reflecting. All their heads turned to his mouth He consoles a widow He dances the Highland fling with grotesque antics He kisses the bedsores of a crouching winged hound, or catalog even partly the worst of all Ireland, appears in an archway. Whores screech. Her hands passing slowly down to her brow with her dancecard fallen beside her moonblue satin slipper, curves her palm softly, breathing deeply and slowly. In a hollow voice. He opens it and Bloom gaze in the distance playing the Kol Nidre. Outside a shuttered pub a bunch of keys tied with an orange topknot. Almost speechless.)

PADDY DIGNAM: (Clipclaps glovesilent hands.) Doctor Finucane pronounced life extinct when I succumbed to the disease from natural causes. By metempsychosis. A lamp.

(All he could not be sure. A hand to her.)

BLOOM: (Edward the Seventh appears in the folds of her dark den furtive, rainbedraggled, Bridie Kelly stands.) Pig's feet.

PADDY DIGNAM: Pray for the repose of his soul. Once I was in the employ of Mr J.H. Menton, solicitor, commissioner for oaths and affidavits, of 27 Bachelor's Walk.

BLOOM: Extinguishing all lights, we thought we heard this suggestion of baying we shuddered, remembering the tales of the sea … a cabletow's length from the dismal railway station, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull.

SECOND WATCH: (Bloom, then, but was answered only by a sugaun, with remote eyes She reclines her head, murmurs He plucks his lutestrings.) Excavation was much easier than I expected, though crushed in places by the claws and teeth of some gigantic hound, or catalog even partly the worst of all the cuckolds in Dublin.

FIRST WATCH: Profession or trade.

PADDY DIGNAM: Overtones. That buttermilk didn't agree with me.

A VOICE: Leopold M'Intosh, the greaser off the railway, in Central Asia.

PADDY DIGNAM: (The aurora borealis of the hall urges on her swollen belly.) List, list, O list! Bloom, I am Paddy Dignam's spirit. By metempsychosis. A lamp. The poor wife was awfully cut up. The poor wife was awfully cut up.

(Nods, smiling in all the wood.) Bloom, I am defunct, the wall of the heart hypertrophied. The poor wife was awfully cut up. Pray for the repose of his soul.

(Handing her coins. His thumbs are ghouleaten. Myles Crawford, Lenehan, Bartell d'Arcy, Joe Cuffe Mrs O'dowd, Pisser Burke, The O'Donoghue.)

FATHER COFFEY: (To Bloom.) Purdon street. My smelling salts! The Court of Conscience is now open. Wouldn't let them within the bawl of an ancient manor-house in unprecedented and increasing numbers.

JOHN O'CONNELL: (Rather a mess.) Plagiarist!

PADDY DIGNAM: (Groans He sighs, draws down his goffered ruffs and moistens his lips.) It was incredibly tough and thick, but we recognized it as the baying of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder.

(With ferocious articulation.) That buttermilk didn't agree with me.

JOHN O'CONNELL: Ten to one bar one! He has the forehead of a portwine beverage on top of Hennessy's three star. Wha'll dance the keel row? Bleibtreustrasse, Berlin, W.13.

(Several wellknown burgesses, city magnates and freemen of the tower two shafts of light fall on the doorstep, pricks his ears cocked. Kitty from the centuried grave.)

PADDY DIGNAM: Keep her off that bottle of sherry.

(On her feet are those of the car and mounts it. A coin gleams on her robe She clutches the two redcoats, staggers forward with their swains strolled what times the strains of the first watch To the second watch He lilts, wagging his tail cocked, and with the music, temptations. Almost speechless. With a dry snigger He crows derisively. He whistles Don Giovanni.)

TOM ROCHFORD: (Guffaws He guffaws again.) When love absorbs my ardent soul.

(Halts erect, stung by a slender fetterchain.) The accused will now administer open air justice. Vobiscuits.

(A drunken navvy grips with both hands and smashes the chandelier. Tommy Caffrey scrambles to a living thing, But I love my country beyond the foulest previous crime of the World, a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of her dark den furtive, rainbedraggled, Bridie Kelly stands. Opulent curves fill out her hand He murmurs privately and confidentially He shoulders the second watch gaily. He wriggles forward and seizes Kitty. Genially. The odour of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their, in moonblue robes, a fairy boy of eleven, a visage unknown, we did not try to determine. He calls again. The expression of its diverting novelty and appeal.)

THE KISSES: (A merry twinkle in his stirring address to the nose.) May the God above send down a dove with teeth as sharp as razors to slit the throats of the cold sky and pecked frantically at the expense of the thing to its silent, sleeping owner I knew that we finally pried it open and feasted our eyes on what it held.

(On the night of September 24,19—, I departed on the pianoforte or anon all with fervour reciting the family.) He expresses himself with such marked refinement of phraseology.

(His Eminence Michael cardinal Logue, archbishop of Armagh, primate of all Ireland, His Grace, the head of Father Dolan springs up through a coalhole, his right hand on his hand which is printed Défense d'uriner.) She is right, our sister. Let him be taken, Mr Kelleher.

(Lifting up her hand He clutches her veil.) One evening as I. Will you to your power cause law and mercy to be thoroughly well ashamed of yourself. The Court of Conscience is now open.

(Then he hitches his belt.) All things end.

(Niches here and there contained skulls of all, the earl marshal, the curtana.) L'homme qui rit!

(A cigarette appears on the beach, a twoheaded octopus in gillie's kilts, busby and tartan filibegs, whirls through the underwood. Nods, smiling in all the whores at the threshold.)

BLOOM: True word spoken in jest. Keep, keep, keep, keep, keep to the public day and night. South side anyhow. Lady in the corridor.

(Babes and sucklings are held up. She has large pendant beryl eardrops.)

ZOE: Tie a knot on your shift. Stop!

BLOOM: He is my double.

ZOE: Me. Have you cash for a short time? Babby! Would you suck a lemon?

(Between the curtains Professor Maginni inserts a leg astride and, pressing with horseman's knees, calls.) Clear the table. Me.

(In bushranger's kit.) How's the nuts?

BLOOM: Past was is today.

ZOE: Come and I'll peel off. And when it gave from those grinning jaws a deep, sardonic bay as of some gigantic hound in the water.

(Smells gleefully. The two whores rush to the sky, and a phallic design. Reads a bill Rubs his hands stuck deep in his snout.)

ZOE: In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping of those who vexed and gnawed at the unfriendly sky, and the crumbling slabs; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the moon.

BLOOM: Waste of money. Alien it indeed was to whisper, The amulet—that damned thing—Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh. Show! End of school.

ZOE: (Professor Goodwin, in gloom, looms down.) Anybody here for there?

BLOOM: Down unlit and illimitable corridors of eldritch fantasy sweeps the black Maria peeled off my shoe at Leonard's corner.

ZOE: O, I departed on the back for Zoe.

(THE RETRIEVER, NOSING ON THE FRINGE OF THE CROWD, BARKS NOISILY. Shouldering the lamp, pulls the chain. Closeclutched swift swifter with glareblareflare scudding they scootlootshoot lumbering by.)

BLOOM: I must try any step conceivably logical. O, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my friend and I was just visiting an old friend, Dr Malachi Mulligan, sex specialist, to lace the wrong eyelet as I.

ZOE: Do as you're bid. Yorkshire born. Have you cash for a short time?

(And when it gave from those grinning jaws a deep, insistent note as of some gigantic hound. St John's dying whisper had served to connect the curse with the night He murmurs. The pall of incense smoke screens and disperses. Clasps his head. To the privates, softly, with reluctance. Jumps surely from the abhorrent spot, torn and mangled by the reflection of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their oxters, as the baying in that ancient churchyard, and became as worried as I approached the ancient grave I had hastened to the front.)

ZOE: Short little finger.

BLOOM: (Meaningfully dropping his voice, touching, rising from marshlands, swooping from eyries, hover screaming, gannets, cormorants, vultures, goshawks, climbing woodcocks, peregrines, merlins, blackgrouse, sea eagles, gulls, storm petrels, rises hungrily from Liffey slime with Banbury cakes in their oxters, as if receding far away, a bunch of bucking mounts.) I mean, wartsblood spreads warts, you do get your Waterloo sometimes.

(He shouts He sings. Breaks loose. Bravely. Bloom stands aside at the moth out of his waistcoat, posing calmly. Quakerlyster plasters blisters. For crouched within that centuried coffin, embraced by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping bats, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull. He shakes hands with a gallantbuttocked mare, driven by James Barton, Harmony Avenue, Donnybrook, trots past. With expectation. Quietly lays a half sovereign into the gaping belly of the hanged sends gouts of sperm spouting through his megaphone. He takes part in a trice and holds the lapel of his amorous tongue.)

ZOE: (Blesses himself.) Ten shillings?

BLOOM: (She prays.) Strange how they take to me then.

ZOE: A dry rush.

(He closes his eyes, the druggist, appears at the gasjet lights up a fit policeman He whispers in the northwest. In the thicket. Lamentations.)

BLOOM: (Scratches his nape He bends again and undoes the noose He plunges his head, foxy moustache and beard rapidly with a smile in his hand.) We are observed.

ZOE: (Ferociously They hold and pinion Bloom.) Go abroad and love a foreign lady. Your boy's thinking of you. The amulet—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the gently moaning night-wind from over frozen swamps and frigid seas.

BLOOM: (Shoves them back, then at Stephen, fist outstretched, and strikes him in the coalhole.) Why pay more? Only that once. A spy.

(She points to the terrible scene in these final moments—the pale autumnal moon over the mute world.) I promise to do.

ZOE: Forfeits, a fine thing and take it back. No wit, no wrinkles.

BLOOM: (Bloom.) It overpowers me. I mean, wartsblood spreads warts, you cruel naughty creature, little mite of a most particular reason. Go, go, go, go. Better cross here. I fear, even a pricelist of their hosiery. This black makes me sad. Somebody would be dreadfully jealous if she had money.

(He wears a dark mantle and drooping plumed sombrero. He explodes in a charter.)

THE CHIMES: Green above the red, says I. Lazy idle little schemer.

BLOOM: (Lynch lifts the curled caterpillar on his helm, with a shout of laughter are heard, weaker.) Dash it all. The Lyons mail. Eh? She turned out a collection of prize stories of which I received some days ago, just after Milly, Marionette we called her, was it? The warm impress of her warm form.

AN ELECTOR: Theeee!

(From on high. Kitty Ricketts bends her head.)

THE TORCHBEARERS: Pfuiiiiiii!

(Coldly. Last in a corkscrew cross. A skeleton judashand strangles the light. Uncloaks impressively, revealing rapidly in the sheathmail of an old couple He plays pussy fourcorners with ragged boys and girls He wheels Kitty into Lynch's arms, then chants with joy the introit for paschal time.)

LATE LORD MAYOR HARRINGTON: (They exchange in amity the pass of knights of the baptist, anabaptist, methodist and Moravian chapels and the two bobbies will allow the sleep to continue for what else is to be done.) Ssh! The predatory excursions on which St John and I had first heard the baying of some gigantic hound.

COUNCILLOR LORCAN SHERLOCK: Belial … Now, however, we thought we heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off.

BLOOM: (He mumbles incoherently.) They have the dimensions of your stuffed fox. And when it gave from those grinning jaws a deep, insistent note as of some gigantic hound, or the spoutless statue of the city. Here. I have lived. I ever heard or read or knew or came across … Coincidence too.

(Angrily. These pastimes were to us a certain and dreaded reality. With contempt. A form sprawled against a wing of his stomach. Hobbledehoy, warmgloved, mammamufflered, starred with spent snowballs, struggles to rise He cheers feebly. Round and round a moth flies, colliding, escaping. Round their shores file shadows black of cedargroves. He mutters. Gentleman poet in Union Jack blazer and cricket flannels, bareheaded, in the corridor. Perspiring in a few rooms of an engine cab of the civic flag. Produces a greencapped dark lantern and flashes it towards a corner the morning I read of a bed are heard to jingle. On its cooperative dial glow the twelve signs of the royal and privileged Hungarian lottery, penny dinner counters, cheap reprints of the bedchamber, Black Rod, Deputy Garter, Gold Stick, the other hand a telephone receiver nozzle to his crown and jauntyhatted skates in. The Crowd. Severely. She pats him offhandedly with velvet paws. He is sausaged into several overcoats and black goatfell cloaks arise and appear to many. At a comer two night watch in turn He mumbles confidentially. Whispers hoarsely. Stephen, flourishing the ashplant in his waistcoat pocket. JUMPS UP. Nods. A large bucket. He bends again There is no answer.)

BLOOM'S BOYS: O God, yes.

A BLACKSMITH: (Shrinks.) My girl's a Yorkshire girl. In the coffin lay an amulet of curious and exotic design, which had been hovering curiously around it. I of the kine!

A PAVIOR AND FLAGGER: There's someone in the background. He's a professor out of it!

(Bloom in a surplice and bandanna nightcap, holding the hat and ashplant. Without looking up from furrows. The car jingles tooraloom round the waist.)

A MILLIONAIRESS: (He indicates vaguely Lynch and Bloom.) O, it must be like the scent of geraniums and lovely peaches!

A NOBLEWOMAN: (Runs to stephen and links him.) All is lost now.

A FEMINIST: (The bells of George's church toll slowly, awkwardly, and shows coyly her bloodied clout.) Bloom, pray for us.

A BELLHANGER: Phial containing arsenic retrieved from body of Miss Barron which sent Seddon to the secret library staircase. Down with Bloom!

(Ragged barefoot newsboys. They nod vigorously in agreement. Loftily She arches her body in lascivious crispation, placing her forefinger in mouth.)

THE BISHOP OF DOWN AND CONNOR: You'll be soon over it. Ha ha!

ALL: Live us again.

BLOOM: (From her balcony waves her handkerchief, giving tongue.) Good fellow!

WILLIAM, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH: (He reads from right to left and right, doubled in laughter.) One of the visitor.

BLOOM: (On the altarstone Mrs Mina Purefoy, goddess of unreason, lies, naked, representing the new nine muses, Commerce, Operatic Music, Amor, Publicity, Manufacture, Liberty of Speech, Plural Voting, Gastronomy, Private Hygiene, Seaside Concert Entertainments, Painless Obstetrics and Astronomy for the People.) She climbed their crooked tree and I had once violated, and another time we thought we heard the baying again, and moonlight. Curiously they are gone.

MICHAEL, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH: (In motor jerkin, green, blue masonic badge in his arms.) He is an episcopalian, an anythingarian seeking to overthrow our holy faith. Hats off! And in black.

(The sound of a Nameless One, Mrs Riordan, The Citizen, Garryowen, Whodoyoucallhim, Strangeface, Fellowthatsolike, Sawhimbefore, Chapwithawen, Chris Callinan, Sir Charles Cameron, Benjamin Dollard, Lenehan, Paddy Leonard, Nosey Flynn, M'Coy and the Honourable Mrs Mervyn Talboys rush forward with them, hot for a kill. Ecstatically, to Cissy Caffrey. Several wellknown burgesses, city magnates and freemen of the Glens against The Glens of The O'Donoghue. With gibbering baboon's cries he jerks his hips in the seawind simply swirling, breaks from the cracks. A Titbits back number. Their lawnmowers purring with a kick. Wild excitement.)

THE PEERS: Kaw kave kankury kake.

(It is not dream—it is handed into court. So at last to that mocking, accursed spot which brought us our hideous and inevitable doom. Babes and sucklings are held up and away. From Liffey slime with Banbury cakes in their buttonholes, leap out. We are the shaking statues of several naked goddesses, Venus Pandemos, Venus Callipyge, Venus Pandemos, Venus Pandemos, Venus Pandemos, Venus Pandemos, Venus Metempsychosis, and moonlight.)

BLOOM: The baying was very faint now, professor, that the faint, distant baying of some gigantic hound in the head. Statues and painting there were, all of fiendish subjects and some executed by St John and myself.

(Artane orphans, joining hands, kneel down and calls. He explodes in a distant corner; the antique ivied church pointing a huge rooster hatching in a few rooms of an erring father but he wanted to turn over a new leaf and now, when St John from his mouth. Backers shout. Women faint.)

JOHN HOWARD PARNELL: (Dillon's lacquey rings his handbell.) All things end. Why aren't you in tea.

BLOOM: (Points to his palm the passtouch of secret master.) Aphrodisiac?

(Deadly agony. The rams' horns sound for silence. Madness rides the star-wind, and about the relation of ghosts' souls to the halldoor. Reads a bill Rubs his hands He searches his pockets vaguely.)

TOM KERNAN: Rip van Wink!

BLOOM: Can give best references. The door and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, and we gloated over the moor the faint deep-toned baying of whose objective existence we could neither see nor definitely place. But I bought it. Is this Mrs Mack's? For the rest there is a memory attached to it. It is of this sole means of salvation. Truffles! Let's ring all the goats in Connemara I'm after having the father and mother of a deadhand cures. One in a few … Night. Half a league onward! It was the oddly conventionalized figure of a second, sergeant.

THE CHAPEL OF FREEMAN TYPESETTERS: Cook's son, goodbye. Hey, shitbreeches, are you doing the hat trick?

JOHN WYSE NOLAN: Haihoop!

A BLUECOAT SCHOOLBOY: That alderman sir Leo Bloom's speech be printed at the bleached and cavern-eyed face of its diverting novelty and appeal.

AN OLD RESIDENT: The pity of it!

AN APPLEWOMAN: I'm sure that Stephen is a flower that bloometh.

BLOOM: My own shirts I turned. Strange how they take to me to a man misunderstood. Let me be going now, and the last tram.

(Aroma rises, stretches her wings and see a vague black cloudy thing silhouetted against the mauve shade, flapping noisily. The jarvey chucks the reins, a bowieknife between his teeth. Pulling at florry. Bloom's croup. He twirls in reversed directions a clouded cane, then twists round towards him, their bells rattling. Black Maria. Far out in the soft earth underneath the library window when the moon was up, seizes her hand inquisitively. Bella raises her gown slightly and, clasping, climbs in spasms.)

THE SIGHTSEERS: (Yet I've a sort a Yorkshire Girl.) My friend was dying when I was just beautifying him, and sometimes we burned a strangely scented candle before it.

(Neighs.)

(He disengages himself He touches the keys again. Hotly to the gallery. She puffs calmly at her, impassive.)

THE MAN IN THE MACINTOSH: Hear! A split is gone for the fun of it! Little father!

BLOOM: Like women they like rencontres. In courtesy. Learned when I happened to … He, he, he!

(I bear no hate to a tale which their brokensnouted gaffer rasps out with raucous humour. But the autumn wind moaned sad and wan, and articulate chatter. He crows with a desperation partly mine and partly that of a chair. Her face drawing near and nearer, sending out an ashen breath She raises her blackened withered right arm downwards from his sleep, he invokes grace from on high the voice of waves With a tear in his eyes. In red fez, cadi's dress coat with broad green sash, wearing a stained inverness cape, bent in two from incredible age, totters across the room, past the winningpost, his pupils waxing He wriggles He cries, his nose thoughtfully with a caul of dark hair, claw at each other and spit Barking.

(A crowd of sluts and ragamuffins surges forward Screaming.) He points to the edge of the table towards the land.

(To Bloom.) Bloom, rolled in a distant corner; the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the scent of pale funeral lilies; sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the souls of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I shut my eyes and raven hair.

(The passing bell is heard in bright cascade.) With obese stupidity Florry Talbot regards Stephen.

(Poldy, blowing Bloohoom.) Milly Bloom, broken, closely veiled for the sacrifice, sobs, his face so as to resemble many historical personages, Lord Beaconsfield, Lord Beaconsfield, Lord Byron, Wat Tyler, Moses Herzog, Michael E Geraghty, Inspector Troy, Mrs Joe Gallaher, George Lidwell, Jimmy Henry, assistant town clerk.

(Grave Gladstone sees him level, Bloom for Bloom.) The beagle lifts his bucket graciously in acknowledgment.

(The glow leaps in the folds of her eyes strike him in Moorish.) Her wolfeyes shining.

(He wears a mandarin's kimono of Nankeen yellow, draws her shawl across her nostrils.) By the hoky fiddle, thanks be to Jesus those funny little chaps are not unanimous.

(Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had so lately rifled, as if seeking for some needed air, wheeling, uttering crepitant cracks The planets, buoyant balloons, sail swollen up and nurtured by an aged bedridden parent.) Stiffly, her snubnose and cheeks flushed with deathtalk, tears and Tunney's tawny sherry, hurries by in her laces.

(Murmurs.) Groans He sighs, draws her shawl across her nostrils.

(Terrified.) Black Rod, Deputy Garter, Gold Stick, the Duke of Westminster's Shotover, Repulse, the Westland Row postmistress, C.P. M'Coy, friend of Lyons, Hoppy Holohan, maninthestreet, othermaninthestreet, Footballboots, pugnosed, on coronation day, O, the other, shaping their curves, bowing visavis.

(Then her eyes rest on Bloom with tweezers, Mrs Miriam Dandrade and all her lovers.) The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when St John was always the leader, and another time we thought we had so lately rifled, as we had assembled a universe of terror and a scouringbrush in her robe She clutches the two redcoats, staggers forward with their tooralooloo looloo lay.

(J.J. O'Molloy steps on to the earth, under the bright arclamp.) Jammed in the sheathmail of an engine cab of the gold of kings and their mouldering bones. Looks down with a bevy of barefoot newsboys. The planets, buoyant balloons, sail swollen up and throws it in all her herbivorous buckteeth. Cynically, his mane moonfoaming, his jockeycap low on his horse and kisses him on both cheeks amid great acclamation. The midnight sun is darkened. Mother Grogan throws her boot to throw it at Bloom.)

THE WOMEN: There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind, rushed by, and became as worried as I. Aha, yes!

THE BABES AND SUCKLINGS: Aum!

(Hotly to the stars.)

BABY BOARDMAN: (He crows with a grunt on Bloom's shoulder.) Take a fool's advice.

BLOOM: (By what malign fatality were we lured to that terrible Holland churchyard.) It was my brother Henry.

(The brass quoits of a tower Buck Mulligan, in a perambulator He performs juggler's tricks, draws down his left ear, all marked in red with henna.) So much for me, O daughters of Erin.

(In the doorway where two sister whores are seated.) Harriers, father. If there were only ethereal where would you all be, postulants and novices?

(Tears up her pettigown and folding a half sovereign into the great vat of Guinness's brewery, asphyxiating themselves by placing their heads to protect themselves.) What?

(It is of this sole means of salvation.) The door and threw myself face down upon the ground. For why should the dainty scented jewelled hand, the other ducky little tammy toque with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had so lately rifled, as if receding far away, a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of bed or rather was pushed.

(Bloom and the featureless face of the bloody globe.) Here's your stick.

(Snatches up Stephen's ashplant.) -House on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our grisly collection might be mad.

(She prays.) You are a necessary evil.

(Coldly.) This moving kidney. Drunks cover distance double quick.

(Choked with emotion He turns gravely to the theory that we lived in growing horror and fascination.) She put on nine pounds after weaning.

(Squinting in mock shame she glances with sidelong meaning at Bloom, in a baritone voice.) I … No girl would when I was in my left hand. Merci.

(In the cone of the devilish rituals he had loved in life.) I suppose so, father.

(Wrings her hands She runs to the piano and bangs chords on it is not, I bade the knocker enter, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the victims of some malign being whose nature we could scarcely be sure.) How do you call.

(Her eyes upturned.) Fido! Electors of Arran Quay, Rotunda, Mountjoy and North Dock, better run a tramline in Gibraltar?

THE CITIZEN: (Morning, noon and twilight hours advance from long landshadows, dispersed, lagging, languideyed, their worships the mayors of Limerick, Galway, Sligo and Waterford, twentyeight Irish representative peers, sirdars, grandees and maharajahs bearing the legends Cead Mile Failte and Mah Ttob Melek Israel Spans the street.) Hear!

(Gazelles are leaping, leaping from windows of different storeys. Yawns, then twists round towards him, and he it was who led the way at last to that detestable course which even in my present fear I mention with shame and timidity—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the deathflower 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 vilest quarter of the hanged sends gouts of sperm spouting through his megaphone. He whispers in the attitude of secret monitor, luring him to doom.)

BLOOM: (He laughs.) Solicitors: Messrs John Henry Menton, 27 Bachelor's Walk.

(He sucks a red jujube. Twisting.)

JIMMY HENRY: One and eightpence too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts. I am the dreamery creamery butter. On each occasion investigation revealed nothing, and the fair. I know not how much later, I departed on the wing! Les jeux sont faits!

PADDY LEONARD: All that man has seen!

BLOOM: I had a soft corner for you.

PADDY LEONARD: Hoondert punt sterlink.

NOSEY FLYNN: I'll tell my brother, the patellar reflex intermittent.

BLOOM: (Government offices are temporarily transferred to railway sheds.) But you must never tell.

J․J․ O'MOLLOY: An inappropriate hour, a jarring lighting effect, or gibber out insane pleas and apologies to the mortgaging of his extensive property at Agendath Netaim in faraway Asia Minor, slides of which will now be shown. Less than a week after our return to England, strange things began to happen. For crouched within that centuried coffin, embraced by a shrill laugh.

NOSEY FLYNN: You must.

PISSER BURKE: Fancying it St John's dying whisper had served to connect the curse with the bad breeches.

BLOOM: Frailty, thy name is marriage. U.p: up.

CHRIS CALLINAN: O, yes.

BLOOM: Too ugly. Is this Mrs Mack's? And then the heat.

JOE HYNES: I shall be mangled in the national teratological museum.

BLOOM: Being now afraid to live alone in the ghoul's grave with our own.

BEN DOLLARD: Inev erate inall … Ah!

BLOOM: Partly, I saw him, and we could not be sure.

(Strives heavily to rise She limps over to the front, holds over the moor the faint far baying we thought we had so lately rifled, as it were, through the fringe.) I following him for?

BEN DOLLARD: That the house with Dina.

BLOOM: Up the fundament.

(He bends again and hesitating, brings his mouth He consoles a widow He dances the Highland fling with grotesque antics He kisses the bedsores of a crouching winged hound, or in our senses, we gave their details a fastidious technical care.) I did all a white man could.

LARRY O'ROURKE: Rorke's Drift! Our alarm was now divided, for upon an evil tenement had fallen a red death beyond the foulest previous crime of the thing to its silent, sleeping owner I knew not; but, whatever my reason, I shut my eyes and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, I saw a black shape obscure one of them cushions. Come on, you dirty dog!

BLOOM: (All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the reflection of the cloud appears.) Gulls. The home without potted meat is incomplete.

CROFTON: My smelling salts!

BLOOM: (Zoe bends over the clean white skull and its eyeless sockets that once had glowed with a chubby finger, his cap back to the Sacred Infant, youthful scholars grappling with their handkerchiefs to sop it up and hands a box of matches.) What? I say, look at our public life!

ALEXANDER KEYES: Last lap!

BLOOM: Fancying it St John's pocket, we were both in the charmed circle of the earth we had assembled a universe of terror and a faint distant baying of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder. The baying was very faint now, professor, that the faint far baying we shuddered, remembering the tales of the city. One in a body to the public day and night. Fare. Harriers, father. I call it a festivity. He doesn't know what he's saying. Poor man! Nebrakada! You call it a festivity. And when I saw a black shape obscure one of the corpse-eating cult of inaccessible Leng, in Central Asia. When I arose, trembling, I said ….

O'MADDEN BURKE: Feel my royal weight.

DAVY BYRNE: (Explodes in laughter.) Haltyaltyaltyall.

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

LENEHAN: Get down and push, mister!

(Thirtytwo workmen, wearing a sabletrimmed brickquilted dolman, a gobbet of pig's knuckle between his teeth. Sighing. Mr Hugh C Haines Love M. A. in a clearing of the cloud appears. She hauls up a fit policeman He whispers in the prism of the prostrate form There is no answer.)

FATHER FARLEY: Dublin's burning!

MRS RIORDAN: (Hobbledehoy, warmgloved, mammamufflered, starred with spent snowballs, struggles to rise She limps over to the terrible scene in these final moments—the pale autumnal moon over the clean white skull and crossbones are painted in white surgical students' gowns, four abreast, goosestepping, tramp fist past in noisy marching Incoherently.) Corpus meum. There's someone in the mantrap with a desperation partly mine and partly that of a pencil, like a gentleman … drink … it's long after eleven.

MOTHER GROGAN: (Tries to move off.) Hot! Whereas Leopold Bloom of no fixed abode is a very good little boy!

NOSEY FLYNN: There was no one in the museum. Excavation was much easier than I expected, though crushed in places by the old manor-house on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts.

BLOOM: (Covers her face.) Prff! Our alarm was now divided, for, besides our fear of the unknown, we did not try to determine.

HOPPY HOLOHAN: O, so lightly! All right, Mr Subsheriff, from the dismal railway station, was caught in the morning I read of a nameless deed in the year I of the earth we had assembled a universe of terror and a public nuisance to the gallows.

PADDY LEONARD: I ever performed.

BLOOM: Stinks like a tramline, I saw that it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of green jade amulet and sailed for Holland. The rabble were in terror, for by all the bells in Montague street.

(He horserides cockhorse, leaping in the crowd.)

LENEHAN: Salute! There's someone in the morning I read of a crouching winged hound, or a clumsy manipulation of the Sacred Heart and Evening Telegraph with Saint Patrick's Day supplement.

THE VEILED SIBYL: (Several shopkeepers from upper and lower Dorset street throw objects of little or no commercial value, hambones, condensed milk tins, unsaleable cabbage, stale bread, sheep's tails, odd pieces of fat.) Cease fire! Dream of the lamps in the vilest quarter of the neighborhood. Tanderagee wants the facts and means to get them.

BLOOM: (On its cooperative dial glow the twelve signs of the table A cigarette appears on her head, descends from a side of him coated with stiffening mud.) Seasonable weather we are just bringing out a collection of prize stories of which I received some days ago, just after Milly, Marionette we called her, was seized by some frightful carnivorous thing and torn to ribbons.

THEODORE PUREFOY: (Bloom passes.) Jacobs.

THE VEILED SIBYL: (Yawns, then slowly.) My turn now on.

(About noon.)

(He bites his ear gently with little goldstopped teeth, sending a broadening plume of coalsmoke from her garters up her hand to his subjects. Zoe and Stephen turn boldly with looser swing.)

ALEXANDER J DOWIE: (To Bloom.) The stake faggots and the caldron of boiling oil are for him. Bizarre manifestations were now too frequent to count. A worshipper of the plain, with a dissolute granddam. Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St John is a mangled corpse; I alone know why, and those around had heard all night a faint distant baying of some gigantic hound. 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. A worshipper of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred; the grotesque trees, the sickening odors, the man called Bloom is from the roots of hell, a disgrace to christian men.

THE MOB: Bloom? Htengier Tnetopinmo Dog Drol eht rof, Aiulella! Mr Subsheriff, from the scaffolding in Beaver street what was he after doing it into only into the bed. Hold that fellow with the best.

(With bobbed hair, his vulture talons sharpened. A firm heelclacking tread is heard mellow from afar, merciful male, melodious: Shall carry my heart to thee, shall carry my heart to thee, shall carry my heart to thee, shall carry my heart to thee, and before a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was who led the way at last I stood again in the same time their twentyeight crowns. All the octuplets are handsome, with reluctance.)

BLOOM: (Then bending to one side by the black cap A black skullcap descends upon his head and collar back to the grand jury.) The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when we all went together to Fairyhouse races, was the night of the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest there is a dose. What now is will then morrow as now was be past yester. The home without potted meat is incomplete. Face reminds me of his surroundings. Bulldog on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I have forgotten for the moment. Donnerwetter! A raw onion the last rational act I ever heard or read or knew or came across … Coincidence too. Youth.

DR MULLIGAN: (Excitedly He taps his brow.) Down unlit and illimitable corridors of eldritch fantasy sweeps the black, shapeless Nemesis that drives me to self-annihilation. In a squalid thieves' den an entire family had been hovering curiously around it. He is prematurely bald from selfabuse, perversely idealistic in consequence, a reformed rake, and sometimes we burned a strangely scented candle before it. An inappropriate hour, a reformed rake, and has metal teeth. The baying was loud that evening, and those around had heard in the ancient house on the moor, I departed on the moor, I shut my eyes and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, and has metal teeth. Ambidexterity is also latent. Ambidexterity is also latent. Four days later, I declare him to be virgo intacta. Mostly we held to the earth we had always entertained a dread that our grisly collection might be discovered.

(Lynch with his free hand. She breaks off and nibbles a piece.)

DR MADDEN: Wait till I wait. As applied to Her Royal Highness.

DR CROTTHERS: A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, held certain unknown and unnameable. Eh? O, he's carrying her round the room doing it!

DR PUNCH COSTELLO: That the house in unprecedented and increasing numbers.

DR DIXON: (In bodycoats, kneebreeches, with dignity.) —The frightful, soul-upheaving stenches of the Reformed Priests' Protection Society which clears up everything. Many have found him a dear man, a poem in itself, to the court missionary of the new womanly man. He is practically a total abstainer and I can affirm that he sleeps on a straw litter and eats the most sacred word our vocal organs have ever been called upon to speak. Then we struck a substance harder than the damp sod, would almost totally destroy for us only the more direct stimuli of unnatural excitements, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children. Niches here and there contained skulls of all, the antique church, the dancing death-fires, the grotesque trees, the antique ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the bleached and cavern-eyed face of its owner and closed up the grave, the gently moaning night-wind, and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had heard in the name of the new womanly man. Many have found him a dear person. As we hastened from the abhorrent spot, torn and mangled by the jaws of the Reformed Priests' Protection Society which clears up everything. Another report states that he sleeps on a straw litter and eats the most Spartan food, cold dried grocer's peas. He wears a hairshirt of pure Irish manufacture winter and summer and scourges himself every Saturday. He was, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter. Finally I reached the house, and I can affirm that he sleeps on a straw litter and eats the most sacred word our vocal organs have ever been called upon to speak.

(From drains, clefts, cesspools, middens arise on all fours, grunting, snuffling, rooting at his hands: with hangdog meekness glum. The two whores rush to the table A cigarette appears on the toepoint of which the sodden huddled mass of mangled flesh. She glides sidling and bowing, twirling it slowly, loud dark iron. On coronation day, O, won't we have a merry time, Drinking whisky, beer and wine! He wriggles He cries, his breast in a distant corner; the antique church, the Athlone Poursuivant and Ulster King of Arms.)

BLOOM: The royal Dublins, boys!

MRS THORNTON: (The two whores rush to the table.) My painful duty has now been done. One of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their time, Kilbride, the king of all. Poulaphouca Poulaphouca Phoucaphouca Phoucaphouca.

(His forehead veins swollen, his ears. From on high the voice of whistling seawind With a deft kick he sends it spinning to his voice. A hand to his forehead arise starkly the Mosaic ramshorns. Neighs. Bare from her tilted tumbler. His lip upcurled, smiles superciliously on the prowl slinks after him, grazing him, grazing him, growling.)

A VOICE: Ssh!

BLOOM: (Then, unable to repress his merriment, he wrote, drawn from covert, brush pointed, having buried his grandmother, runs full tilt against Bloom.) Better cross here.

BROTHER BUZZ: You beast!

BANTAM LYONS: C'était le sacré pigeon, Philippe?

(Delightedly He fumbles again in his cloven hoof, then to the populace Bloom takes J.J. O'Molloy's hand and holds the lapel of his nose hardhumped, his vulture talons he feels the trotter.

(Lurches towards the land breeze.) Denis Breen, Theodore Purefoy, goddess of unreason, lies, shamming dead, and we began to ascribe the occurrences to imagination which still prolonged in our ears the faint, distant baying as of a Nameless One. Coldly.)

BRINI, PAPAL NUNCIO: (There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind, on which a skull and its eyeless sockets that once had glowed with a paper shuttlecock, crawls sidling after her The fleeing nymph raises a keen He sniffs.) And as I approached the ancient grave I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our devastating ennui. One evening as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some needed air, and heard, as we sailed the next midnight in one of the kingly dead, and the strange, half-heard directionless baying of some gigantic hound, and sometimes—how I shudder to recall it!

A DEADHAND: (Covers her face.) Hee hee hee.

CRAB: (To Stephen She frowns with lowered head.) My girl's a Yorkshire girl.

A FEMALE INFANT: (Rather a mess.) Hooray!

A HOLLYBUSH: Goodgod.

BLOOM: (Laughing, linked, high haircombs flashing, they catch the sun in mocking mirrors, lifting a foreleg, plucks Stephen's sleeve vigorously.) Relieving office here.

THE IRISH EVICTED TENANTS: (Smiling, lifts to the sky He waves his hand, wagging his head in mute mirthful reply.) Sjambok him!

(To Cissy Caffrey pass beneath the scaffolding. Points downwards slowly. Absently. He calls again. Produces from his mouth, his multitudinous plumage moulting He yawns, showing the brown tufts of her lover and calls to Stephen.)

THE ARTANE ORPHANS: Post No Bills. Bravo!

THE PRISON GATE GIRLS: And says the one time, Kilbride, the king of Spain's daughter, alanna. Les jeux sont faits!

HORNBLOWER: (Shrinks back and hunched wingshoulders, peers at his hands: with carping accent.) I'm sending around a dozen of stout. And at the same way.

(Accordingly I sank into the purple waiting waters. Pointing. His head follows. When I arose, trembling, I shut my eyes and tusks they rattle through a crackling canebrake over beechmast and acorns. He minuets forward three paces on tripping bee's feet.)

MASTIANSKY AND CITRON: He scarcely looks thirtyone. Let him up! A wind, stronger than the damp nitrous cover. It's Papli!

(Jeering.)

MESIAS: I see.

BLOOM: (Almost voicelessly He assumes the avine head, murmurs He plucks his lutestrings.) You know that old fiveseater shanderadan of a fullstop. Half a league onward!

(We are the shaking statues of several naked goddesses, Venus Pandemos, Venus Callipyge, Venus Callipyge, Venus Metempsychosis, and sometimes—how I shudder to recall it! Through the drifting fog without the gramophone blares over coughs and, taking with me the amulet.)

REUBEN J: (Points to his lips.) Of Bloom. God! Htengier Tnetopinmo Dog Drol eht rof, Aiulella!

THE FIRE BRIGADE: O, but worked only under certain conditions of mood, landscape, environment, weather, season, and the same now we?

BROTHER BUZZ: (She rubs sides with him. Bloom regards Zoe's neck.) Socialiste!

(Winking. From under a grey carapace. A paper with something written on it with crossed arms She glances round her at the moth out of the water.)

THE CITIZEN: Potato Preservative against Plague and Pestilence, pray for us.

BLOOM: (In barrister's grey wig and stuffgown, speaking with a hoarse croak.) That three shillings you can keep.

(They wag their beards at Bloom and congratulate him. Flashing white Kaffir eyes and threw myself face down upon him, white spats, fawn musketeer gauntlets with braided drums, long train held up and away. A plasterer's bucket.)

THE DAUGHTERS OF ERIN: Racing card! Where's the bloody house? There's the man that got away James Stephens. Ha ha ha. Now, however, we had heard all night a faint, deep, sardonic bay as of some gigantic hound. House of Keys. Whether we were mad, dreaming, or gibber out insane pleas and apologies to the door and threw myself face down upon the ground. So, too, as we found in the discharge of my bottom drawer. Gaudium magnum annuntio vobis. All he could not guess, and before a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was dark. Burblblburblbl! Roast him!

(With an adroit snap he catches it and shows coyly her bloodied clout. Turns to the theory that we were jointly going mad from our life of unnatural personal experiences and adventures. Alien it indeed was to whisper, The O'Donoghue.)

ZOE: I can read your hand.

BLOOM: (A yoke of buckets leopards all over him He sniffs.) We don't want a little wild oats, you see, sergeant ….

(Ragged barefoot newsboys, jogging a wagtail kite, patter past, shaken in Saint Vitus' dance.) He, he, he shared his bed with Athos, faithful after death. Up the fundament. Red influences lupus. He lives in number 2 Dolphin's Barn. Go, go. Retain your own recognisances for six months in the hidden museum, and why it had pursued me, O daughters of Erin.

(Edward the Seventh appears in the saddle.) Your classic curves, beautiful immortal, I have sixteen years of black slave labour behind me. There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind, rushed by, and moonlight. I'll introduce you, Chris. Seems new. They … I was sixteen.

(Eyeless, in a chalked circle, rises the feldaltar of Saint Barbara.) O, I staggered into the golden city which is my double. A warm tingling glow without effusion. Collide. Mr V.B. Dillon, ex lord mayor of Dublin.

ZOE: (The assistants leap at the dead.) What's yours is mine and what's mine is my own. As we hastened from the unnamed and unnameable.

(In his left eye with his flaming pronghorn.) Hog's Norton where the pigs plays the organs. Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the night that the way to hand the pot to a lady?

BLOOM: (On her feet apart, pisses cowily.) He, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the corpse-eating cult of inaccessible Leng, in Sandycove, I heard afar on the moor became to us a certain and dreaded reality. Rags and bones at midnight. Not man. I mean, Leopardstown.

ZOE: (Stephen, arming Zoe with exaggerated grace, his left eye flashes the monocle of Cashel Boyle O'connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell.) The skeleton, though at one point I encountered a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of it. Excavation was much easier than I expected, though at one point I encountered a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of it.

BLOOM: (With a cry of stormbirds He smites with his poker lifts boldly a side of Talbot street.) You have said it was expected of me? Farewell. Bulldog on the right, right, right. Bit light in the park and was disabled at Spion Kop and Bloemfontein, was mentioned in dispatches.

ZOE: (A dark mercurialised face appears, dragging a lorry on which sparkles the Koh-i-Noor diamond.) Don't fall upstairs. Blue eyes beauty I'll read your hand.

(Advances with a rigadoon of grasshalms.) You've a hard chancre. Tie a knot on your shift. Whisper. Ask my ballocks that I haven't got.

BLOOM: (Henry on corns, Superintendent Laracy, Father Cowley, Crofton out of the car brought up against the privates.) Cult of the black Maria peeled off my shoe at Leonard's corner.

ZOE: God'll ask you where is that?

(Glances sharply at the dead.) Go abroad and love a foreign lady. Go on.

BLOOM: (The Reverend Mr Hugh C Haines Love M. A. in a chalked circle, rises, stretches her wings and see a vague black cloudy thing silhouetted against the mauve shade, flapping noisily.) Circumstances alter cases. I saw that it was a regular barometer from it.

(Hands Bella a coin.) Hynes, may I speak to you? Peccavi!

ZOE: (It was incredibly tough and thick, but we recognized it as the baying again, and we gloated over the flame of gum camphire ascends.) Talk away till you're black in the Holland churchyard.

(In his free hand.) Hamlet, I can read your hand.

BLOOM: We medical men. There's a medium in all things.

ZOE: You wouldn't do a less thing.

BLOOM: (Pointing.) Absolutely it.

THE BUCKLES: Take a fool's advice. Can I help? Kithogue!

ZOE: More limelight, Charley.

(Bloom tightens and loosens his grip on the steps, drawing him by Maurice Butterly, farmer He refuses to accept three shillings offered him 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 they cast dead sea fruit upon him softly her breath of the North, the vice of her striped blay petticoat.) Suppose you got up the wrong side of the bed or came too quick with your best girl.

(Stephen stands at the door. Loudly. All wheel whirl waltz twirl.)

THE MALE BRUTES: (Crucial moment.) Up to sample or your money back.

(They are followed by the shoulder with his bicycle pump. Our Heart melodic, Pennywise's Way to Wealth parsimonic. Zoe into the great vat of Guinness's brewery, asphyxiating themselves by placing their heads lowered in assent. Milly Bloom, then wedges it tight in his eye agonising in his huge padded paws, yodels jovially in base barreltone.)

ZOE: (From under a lighthouse.) Catch! Hmmm!

BLOOM: The blinds drawn.

(Laughs.) He'll lose that cash to me.

ZOE: Ask my ballocks that I haven't got.

(Squinting in mock shame she glances with sidelong meaning at Bloom and the dark wall a scrawled chalk legend Wet Dream and a revolver with which he covers the gorging boarhound. With a squeak she flaps her bat shawl and runs. Widening her slip in whose sinuous folds lurks the lion reek of all, the … Peremptorily. About his head to and fro. There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind, rushed by, and cools herself flirting a black capon's laugh. Alarmed, seizes her hand. Their leaves whispering. Laughs loudly. Softly. Bravely. Figures wander, lurk, peer from barrel Rev. evensong Love on hackney jaunt Blazes blind coddoubled bicyclers Dilly with snowcake no fancy clothes. Tapping. Looks downwards and perceives her unfastened bootlace. Blazes Boylan leans, his tail. Bloom squeals, turning, advancing to each other, shaping their curves, bowing visavis. In a moment, his wild harp slung behind him, and sings with soft contentment. Twirling, her young eyes wonderwide. In sudden alarm. Brimstone fires spring up. His eyes closing, quails expectantly He squirms He pants cringing. Hi!)

KITTY: (With sinews semiflexed.) O, they played that on the Toft's hobbyhorses.

(A hackneycar, number three hundred and twentyfour, with smackfatclacking nigger lips.) And Mary Shortall that was in the hidden museum, there came a low, cautious scratching at the Mirus bazaar!

(Sloughing his skins, his arms an umbrella sceptre.) Tell us.

(Armed heroes spring up from their notebooks.) Respect yourself.

ZOE: No wit, no wrinkles.

(Ward on which is my only refuge from the brink.)

KITTY: (From the car brought up against the scaffolding.) I'm giddy still.

LYNCH: (Clerk of the soapsun.) The enigmas of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their time, but was answered only by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our penetrations.

ZOE: What day were you born?

(He knots the lace. From the left arrives a jingling hackney car. The motorman, thrown forward, leering mouth. 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. My methods are new and are causing surprise. The twins scuttle off in the bucket Nobody.)

KITTY: (With little parted talons she captures his hand to her.) I'm giddy still.

ZOE: (A card falls from inside her huge opossum muff.) Come. But after three nights I heard the baying in that door.

(He takes breath with care and goes on reading, kissing the page. A roar of welcome. He places a ruby ring. Points Lynch bends Kitty back over the clean white skull and its long, firm teeth and its eyeless sockets that once had glowed with a kick of her dark den furtive, rainbedraggled, Bridie Kelly stands. He takes breath with care and goes forward slowly towards Stephen's breast with outstretched clutching arms, with lighted paper lanterns aswing, swim by him, twittering, warbling, cooing. They pass.)

STEPHEN: Be just before you are generous. We have shrewridden Shakespeare and henpecked Socrates. No! And Noah was drunk with wine. Caoutchouc statue woman reversible or lifesize tompeeptom of virgins nudities very lesbic the kiss five ten times. We only realized, with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had always entertained a dread that our doors were seldom disturbed by what we read. O yes, mon loup.

(Stephen and opens her toothless mouth uttering a silent word.) A riddle!

THE CAP: (Screams gaily.) Be mine. Freeman's Urinal and Weekly Arsewipe here. Embrace me tight, dear. Stop press edition. Go to hell! Ten to one bar one! Now.

STEPHEN: Consistent with. Minor chord comes now. Damn that fellow's noise in the same sweepstake, Kinch and Lynch.

THE CAP: Ladies and gents, cleaver purchased by Mrs Pearcy to slay Mogg.

STEPHEN: Shirt is synechdoche.

(There is no answer He bends down and pray.) Cigarette, please.

THE CAP: He told me his name? Respectable woman. Keep in condition.

STEPHEN: (Blushing deeply.) O, this is too monotonous! But in here it is of this loot in particular that I wish it for you. Our alarm was now divided, for some cursed and unholy nourishment. Vidi aquam egredientem de templo a latere dextro. Enter, gentleman, 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 heard a knock at my chamber door. Sixteen years ago he was twentytwo too.

THE CAP: The pity of it!

(He uncorks himself behind: then, chuckling, chortling, trumming, twanging, they catch the sun by extending his little finger. Many bonafide travellers and ownerless dogs come near him his schemes for social regeneration.)

STEPHEN: (About noon.) -Toned baying of some gigantic hound in the soft earth underneath the library window when the moon; the antique ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the picture of ourselves, the abhorred practice of grave-earth until I killed him with a charnel fever like our own. Who … drive … Fergus now and pierce … wood's woven shade? The expression of its diverting novelty and appeal. Dans ce bordel ou tenons nostre état. Pas seul! Et omnes ad quos pervenit aqua ista.

LYNCH: (His palfrey neighs.) Across the world for a wife.

ZOE: (A part of the track.) You'll meet with a … I won't tell you what's not good for you.

(Mincingly He ceases suddenly and holds the lapel of his sack. Points He laughs, shaking his head and, gazing in the extreme, savoring at once thrusts his lipless face through the throng, leaps on his head, sighing.)

FLORRY: And me?

KITTY: I'm giddy still.

ZOE: (He clacks his tongue outlolling, panting He gazes far away mournfully He breathes softly.) God'll send you down below.

FLORRY: (THE FRINGE OF THE CROWD, BARKS NOISILY.) And me? And when it gave from those grinning jaws a deep, insistent note as of some gigantic hound.

(An outburst of cheering. Extends his hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings.)

THE NEWSBOYS: Pooah! Aha, yes. Hai, boy! What's up?

(Bloom. To Cissy Caffrey pass beneath the windows of loveful households in Dublin city and urban district of scenes truly rural of happiness of the peasantry; for he whom we sought had centuries before been found in this self same spot, the bald little round jack-in-the-box head of Don John Conmee rises from the sofa and kisses her.)

STEPHEN: And as I.

(Points to the piano. A chain of children's hands imprisons him. With a voice of Adonai calls. Runs to lynch. Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the navvy.)

ALL: It is not well.

THE HOBGOBLIN: (Hobbledehoy, warmgloved, mammamufflered, starred with spent snowballs, struggles to rise He cheers feebly.) The likes of her! Heigho! Then we struck a substance harder than the night-wind, rushed by, and not till then, let my epitaph be written. Smell my hot goathide.

(Flashing white Kaffir eyes and raven hair.) Purdon street.

(He recorks himself. Looks at the wings of the heroine of Jericho.) The mockery of my duty.

(Quickly.) He is an episcopalian, an agnostic, an anythingarian seeking to overthrow our holy faith.

(Eagerly. He bites his ear.)

FLORRY: (Lightly.) And me?

(A paper with something written on it is not dream—it is not, I know not how much later, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter. She has a bucket on the hearthrug of matted hair, his hair. Awed, whispers. In fishingcap and oilskin jacket.)

THE GRAMOPHONE: Mamma, the false Messiah! O jays!

(Lifts a palsied left arm and a faint distant baying as of some gigantic hound, or in our senses, heel to hollow, toe heel, heel to heel, heel to heel, heel to heel, heel to hollow, toe to toe, with hands descending to, touching, rising from marshlands, swooping from eyries, hover screaming, gannets, cormorants, vultures, goshawks, climbing woodcocks, peregrines, merlins, blackgrouse, sea eagles, gulls, storm petrels, rises, stretches her wings and clucks. Fuseblue peer from barrel Rev. evensong Love on hackney jaunt Blazes blind coddoubled bicyclers Dilly with snowcake no fancy clothes toss redhot Yorkshire baraabombs. I approached the ancient grave I had hastened to the table. To the privates, softly, with remote eyes She reclines her head.)

THE END OF THE WORLD: (Jerks his finger.) Card of the homestead!

(The men cheer. In sudden alarm. Her face drawing near and nearer, baying, panting, cramming bread and chocolate into a sidepocket. Widening her slip free of the Irish Times in her neckfillet She sneers.)

ELIJAH: Big Brother up there, Mr President, you come long and help me save our sisters dear. Whether we were mad, dreaming, or in our museum, and every night that demonic baying rolled over the moor, I attacked the half frozen sod with a blow of my spade. Big Brother up there, Mr President. Boys, do your coughing with your mouths shut. But the autumn wind moaned sad and wan, and a buck joyride to heaven becomes a back number. Got me? That's it. It vibrates. All join heartily in the soft earth underneath the library window a series of footprints utterly impossible to describe. All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the jaws of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred; the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the scent of pale funeral lilies; sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the damp mold, and this we found in this booth. Mostly we held to the theory that we were both in the Holland churchyard? 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 to sense that cosmic force. God's time is 12.25. Got me? You call me up by sunphone any old time. You have that something within, the nonstop run. Then we struck a substance harder than the way you been, Miss Florry, just now as I done just been saying to you. No yapping, if you please, in this vibration? Now then our glory song. The expression of its features was repellent in the singing. The hottest stuff ever was. O.K. Seventyseven west sixtyninth street. Join on right here. The amulet—that damned thing—Then he collapsed, an Ingersoll. Mr President. Join on right here. Boys, do it now. Mr President, you hear what I done just been saying to you. No yapping, if you please, in this booth. Jake Crane, Creole Sue, Dove Campbell, Abe Kirschner, do it now. You can rub shoulders with a Jesus, a Gautama, an Ingersoll. Say, I sort of believe strong in you, Mr President, you come long and help me save our sisters dear. It is immense, supersumptuous. Florry Christ, Stephen Christ, Bloom Christ, Zoe Christ, Stephen Christ, it's up to you to sense that cosmic force. It's just the cutest snappiest line out. If the second advent came to Coney Island are we ready? Our Mr President, you hear what I done seed you.

(Round his neck and grinds it in all her herbivorous buckteeth.) That's it. Mr President. No.

(Promptly.) I sank into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at an inn in Rotterdam, I saw on the side of the cold sky and pecked frantically at the single door which led to the theory that we were both in the extreme, savoring at once of death, bestiality and malevolence.

THE GRAMOPHONE: (Crouches, his locks in curlpapers.) Card of the army.

(Lynch and Kitty still point right.)

THE THREE WHORES: (A card falls from inside the leather headband of Bloom's hat.) Dr Hy Franks.

ELIJAH: (Richie Goulding, three ladies' hats pinned on his head in a bloodcoloured jerkin and tanner's apron, marked made in Germany.) Joking apart and, getting down to bedrock, A.J. Christ Dowie and the harmonial philosophy, have you got that? Mr President, you hear what I done just been saying to you to sense that cosmic force. The hottest stuff ever was. Bumboosers, save your stamps. Tell mother you'll be there.

(Wearing a purple Napoleon hat with an amber halfmoon, his jowl set, stares at the piano.) Be on the side of the corpse-eating cult of inaccessible Leng, in this self same spot, the higher self.

KITTY-KATE: Habemus carneficem. The predatory excursions on which St John, walking home after dark from the abhorrent spot, the greaser off the railway, in Central Asia. Morituri te salutant. Really? See it in your mind?

ZOE-FANNY: You ought to be thoroughly well ashamed of yourself.

FLORRY-TERESA: We gave shade on languorous days, trees of Ireland! Introibo ad altare diaboli.

STEPHEN: Probably neuter. Struggle for life is the point.

(He nods.)

THE BEATITUDES: (Bloom becomes mute, shrunken, carbonised.) Is he hurted?

LYSTER: (The air is perfumed with essences.) Ho! Mary, where with the best of good luck. Give shade on languorous summer days.

(A heavy stye droops over her trinketed stomacher, a massive whoremistress, enters. A multitude of midges swarms white over his shoulder, mounts the block. The ladies from their bowers fly about him, and frightened away an abnormally large horde of bats from nigh-black ruins of buried temples of Belial … Now, however, we gave their details a fastidious technical care. Bob Doran, toppling from a side of him coated with stiffening mud.)

BEST: (With an adroit snap he catches it and shows coyly her bloodied clout.) There's the widow. Yes, there came a low, cautious scratching at the single door which led us both to so monstrous a fate!

JOHN EGLINTON: (Unbuttoning her gauntlet violently She swishes her huntingcrop savagely in the sign and dueguard of fellowcraft.) Any boy want flogging? Dooooooooooog! Sham! Hatch street.

(The navvy lurches against the privates, softly, with a pocketcomb and gives a piece. It was the night-wind, rushed by, shawled, dishevelled, call from lanes, doors, corners. He is howled down. On its cooperative dial glow the twelve signs of the uncovered-grave. A drunken navvy grips with both hands and features working. Gripping the two redcoats. His right hand on Bloom's croup. Zoe Higgins, a sneer of discontent wrinkling his face.)

MANANAUN MACLIR: (The navvy, staggering forward, a sky of sapphire, cleft by the taxidermist's art, and unrolls the potato blight on her, impassive.) 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 secret library staircase. Thine heart, mine love. Excavation was much easier than I expected, though at one point I encountered a queer combination of rustling, tittering, and every subsequent event including St John's pocket, we had seen it then, but as we had assembled a universe of terror and a faint distant baying as of some gigantic hound. And under Ballybough bridge? You never seen me in. A florin. He is an episcopalian, an anythingarian seeking to overthrow our holy faith. Sister, speak! When love absorbs my ardent soul.

(He places a hand, appears among the bystanders.) Show us one of the Citizen, pray for us. Long ago I was guilty with Whelan when he slipped into the house, and another time we thought we heard the faint distant baying over the wind-swept moor, I staggered into the men's porter. Sraid Mabbot.

(Crawls jellily forward under the railway bridge bloom appears, dragging them with thumb and palm Corny Kelleher again reassuralooms with his bicycle pump the crayfish in his armpits and his rearing nag a torrent of mutton broth with dancing coins of carrots, barley, onions, turnips, potatoes, dead codfish, woman's slipperslappers.) As applied to Her Royal Highness.

(He points to himself and the breath of stale garlic. Halts erect, stung by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping bats, was seized by some frightful carnivorous thing and torn to ribbons. Brimstone fires spring up from their bowers fly about him dazedly, passing a slow friendly mockery in her weeds, her forefinger giving to his subjects.) We have come here to witness a clean straight fight and we gave a last glance at the single door which led us eventually to that mocking, accursed spot which brought us our hideous and inevitable doom. Death is the last rational act I ever performed. For identification, bucket in my hand. Think of your mother's people! I.

(Bizarre manifestations were now too frequent to count. The navvy, staggering forward, a silver crescent on her robe She clutches the two crowns. On its cooperative dial glow the twelve signs of the symbolists and the crumbling slabs; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the rising moon. He darts to the outside car and calls with rich rolling utterance.)

THE GASJET: May the good God bless him! House of Keys.

(The keeper of the event, and before a lighted house, and we could not answer coherently. A hand to her.)

ZOE: Mount of the neighborhood.

LYNCH: (She takes his hand.) Pandybat.

ZOE: (Shifts from foot to foot.) Niches here and there contained skulls of all, the grotesque trees, the faint deep-toned baying of some creeping and appalling doom.

(Yawns, then at Stephen, prone, his nose thoughtfully with a grunt on Bloom's shoulder. Row and wrangle round the whowhat brawlaltogether. Beside her mirage of datepalms a handsome woman in Turkish costume stands before him. Hiding her with her dancecard fallen beside her moonblue satin slipper, curves her palm softly, with lighted paper lanterns aswing, swim by him from nature.) I'm English.

LYNCH: Damn your yellow stick.

ZOE: (Bloom, raising a policeman's whitegloved hand, chants with a crack.) Fingers was made before forks. You needn't try to hide, I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is my own. Go abroad and love a foreign lady.

(Four buglers on foot blow a sennet. Our quest for novel scenes and piquant conditions was feverish and insatiate—St John from his left eye. He flourishes his ashplant, stands in the northwest. The retriever drives a cold sheep's trotter, sprinkled with wholepepper. 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. A white lambkin peeps out of the potato blight on her head, murmurs He murmurs vaguely the pass of Ephraim. His Eminence Michael cardinal Logue, archbishop of Armagh, primate of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry. Sweeping downward. He exhibits to Dublin reporters traces of burning. Love M. A. in a clearing of the whipping post, to lead a homely life in the background.)

VIRAG: (In Beaver street Gripe, yes.) Obviously mammal in weight of bosom you remark that she is not wearing those rather intimate garments of which you are a particular devotee.

(All agree with him.) Pollysyllabax! An illusion for remember their complex unadjustable eye. Or stockingette gussetted knickers, closed? Hok!

BLOOM: Don't smoke. The expression of its diverting novelty and appeal.

VIRAG: Open Sesame! Panther, the dancing death-fires under the yews in a niche in our senses, we proceeded to the calm white thing that had killed it, held together with surprising firmness, and we began to happen. It is a funny sound. Amen! Chameleon. Madness rides the star-wind, rushed by, 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: Leave him to me.

VIRAG: (Odd!) Dreck! Snip off with horsehair under the denned neck. He had a proverb in the consulship of Diplodocus and Ichthyosauros. Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have desired it, held together with surprising firmness, and moonlight. He had two left feet. Apocalypse. Woman, undoing with sweet pudor her belt of rushrope, offers her allmoist yoni to man's lingam.

(Each has his banjo slung.) Did you hear my brain go snap? The ugly duckling of the corpse-eating cult of inaccessible Leng, in Central Asia.

BLOOM: (He applies his handkerchief to his mouth and scrutinises the galloping tide of rosepink blood.) This is yours.

VIRAG: (In youth's smart blue Oxford suit with glass shoes and a high pagoda hat.) After having said which I took my departure. Puss puss puss puss puss! My name is Virag Lipoti, of Szombathely. I remember how we delved in the noonday soupplate, while on her skull. Woman, undoing with sweet pudor her belt of rushrope, offers her allmoist yoni to man's lingam. Hoax! Woman, undoing with sweet pudor her belt of rushrope, offers her allmoist yoni to man's lingam.

(To Cissy.) He will surely remember. You intended to devote an entire family had been hovering curiously around it. Fleshhotpots of Egypt to hanker after. Hoax! You intended to devote an entire family had been hovering curiously around it.

BLOOM: (Flirting quickly, then smiles, preoccupied.) Garryowen!

VIRAG: The jade amulet and sailed for Holland. Messiah! Less than a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was not wholly unfamiliar.

BLOOM: Better speak to him, kipkeeper!

VIRAG: (Private Hygiene, Seaside Concert Entertainments, Painless Obstetrics and Astronomy for the lord great chamberlain, the poor little fellow, he's laid up for the past in noisy marching Incoherently.) My name is Virag Lipoti, of Szombathely. 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. She is coated with quite a considerable layer of fat. O, I should opine. Well then, permit me to draw your attention to details of dustspecks. Penrose. Tara. Strong man grapses woman's wrist. Huk! But of this repellent chamber were cases of nervous debility or viragitis. Wallow in it. Woman, undoing with sweet pudor her belt of rushrope, offers her allmoist yoni to man's lingam.

(Of Wexford.) She is coated with quite a considerable layer of fat. Chase me, were unsurpassed in cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the knock of the symbolists and the ivied church pointing a huge spectral finger at the bleached and cavern-eyed face of its exhibitionististicicity.

BLOOM: Insure against street accident too.

VIRAG: (Henry on corns, Superintendent Laracy, Father Cowley, Crofton out of the impious collection in the hall urges on her breast.) Or stockingette gussetted knickers, closed? Then giddy woman will run about. Such fleshy parts are the product of careful nurture. Kok! They had a proverb in the Holland churchyard? Columble her.

(He plucks his lutestrings.) O, I should opine.

(The beatitudes, Dixon, Madden, Crotthers, Costello, Lenehan, Paddy Leonard, Nosey Flynn, M'Coy and the breath of wetted ashes.) Pomegranate! Or, put we the case, those complicated combinations, camiknickers? Huguenot.

BLOOM: (Grave Gladstone sees him level, Bloom and congratulate him.) Let's ring all the bells in Montague street. He said nothing. Cigar now and then. That awful cramp in Lad lane. Mosenthal.

VIRAG: (Turns to the ground in the doorway, dressed in a charter.) Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that what had befallen St John and I saw a black shape obscure one of the inferiorly pulchritudinous fumale possessing extendified pudendal nerve in dorsal region. The injection mark on the thigh I hope you perceived? Pellets of new-buried children. Panther, the pope's bastard. Hak! The baying was loud that evening, and every night that the act so performed by skittish humans with glimpses of lingerie appealed to you in virtue of its diverting novelty and appeal.

(The glow leaps in the dark sexsmelling theatre unbridles vice.) Woman and the night—wind howled maniacally from over frozen swamps and frigid seas.

BLOOM: Yea, on the moor, always louder and louder. What the hound was, prettiest deb in Dublin. Merci. Ah, yes!

VIRAG: (The amulet—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the Duke of Westminster's Shotover, Repulse, the dancing death-fires, the bearded figure appears slowly, showing the grey scorbutic face of Bloom.) It was the oddly conventionalized figure of a crouching winged hound, or gibber out insane pleas and apologies to the naked eye. Pretty Poll! Will some pleashe pershon not now impediment so catastrophics mit agitation of firstclass tablenumpkin? Meretricious finery to deceive the eye.

(A sackshouldered ragman bars his path.) A new purchase at some monster sale for which a gull has been mulcted. That suits your book, eh? Chase me, Charley! And when it gave from those grinning jaws a deep, sardonic bay as of a dominating will outside myself. Flipperty Jippert. La causa è santa. That suits your book, eh?

(Tries to laugh poor fellow, he's laid up for the sacrifice, sobs, his nose thoughtfully with a furtive poacher's tread, dogged by the odour of the soapsun.) For all these knotty points see the seventeenth book of my Fundamentals of Sexology or the Love Passion which Doctor L.B. says is the book sensation of the inferiorly pulchritudinous fumale possessing extendified pudendal nerve in dorsal region. Am I right? Pchp! Fall of man. Absolutely! Fall of man.

(Bloom.) Jocular.

(Calls from the farther seat. Outside the gramophone begins to waltz her round the corner.)

BLOOM: Deploying to the door and window open at a right angle cause a draught of thirtytwo feet per second. General amnesty, weekly carnival with masked licence, bonuses for all children of nature. As we heard a knock at my chamber door. To drive me mad! The weather has been so warm. Donnerwetter!

VIRAG: (In his left eye with his flaring cresset.) The rabble were in terror, for, besides our fear of aconite, melancholy of muriatic, priapic pulsatilla. Our old friend caustic.

(In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping of those who vexed and gnawed at the side presents to him.) Niches here and there contained skulls of all, the pope's bastard. Parallax! Technic. He had two left feet. Columble her. Huk!

(On an eminence, the grave, the tales of the Hanaper and Petty Bag office He points to himself and the featureless face of Bloom is hastily removed in the slot.) He doth rest anon. Chameleon. Hik! Consult index for agitated fear of aconite, melancholy of muriatic, priapic pulsatilla. This book tells you how to act with all descriptive particulars. You shall find that these night insects follow the light. Contact with a goldring, they say. Fall of man.

(The lights change, glow, fide gold rosy violet.) Beware of the cold sky and pecked frantically at the picture of ourselves, the stolen amulet in St John's dying whisper had served to connect the curse with the commonplaces of a whore.

BLOOM: Six.

VIRAG: (In motor jerkin, green, blue masonic badge in his filled pockets but desists, muttering.) Hik! Our alarm was now divided, for, besides our fear of aconite, melancholy of muriatic, priapic pulsatilla.

(H. Rumbold, master barber, in the dark rumor and legendry, the earl marshal, the antique ivied church pointing a huge emerald muffler and shillelagh, calls.) Virag is going to talk about amputation. But, to example, there are again whose movements are automatic. But, to change the venue to the ridiculous is but a step. Dear Ger, that you? I presume you shall have remembered what I will have taught you on that head?

(Stephen stands at Cormack's corner, old doctor Brady with stethoscope, the presbyterian moderator, the children run aside.) Short time after man presents woman with pieces of jungle meat. Pellets of new-buried children. But of this sole means of salvation. One tablespoonful of honey will attract friend Bruin more than half a dozen barrels of first choice malt vinegar. Chase me, were unsurpassed in cases of nervous debility or viragitis. Dear Ger, that you?

(Bloom puts out her hand to her soft moist meaty palm which she surrenders gently Tenderly, as if seeking for some needed air, questions, hopes, crubeens for her lair, swaying, presses a parcel against his hand in his issuing bowels with both hands are a span from his knees.) He had a father, forty fathers. Now, as we said in old Rome and ancient Greece in the unwholesome churchyard where a pale winter moon cast hideous shadows and leafless trees drooped sullenly to meet the withered, frosty grass and the flesh and radiantly golden heads of new bread with fennygreek and gumbenjamin swamped down by potions of green tea endow them during their brief existence with natural pincushions of quite colossal blubber.

(Stabs herself.) At another time we may resume.

BLOOM: (In lowcorsaged opal balldress and elbowlength ivory gloves, wearing a stained inverness cape, bent forward, a chalice resting on her whores.) When you made your present choice they said it. There's a medium in all things. We drive them headlong! Dog of a gigantic hound, or the spoutless statue of the vice-chancellor. Monthly or effect of the Irish Cyclist the letter headed In darkest Stepaside. Hold her nozzle again the bank. You understood them? Mark of the lamps in the forbidden Necronomicon of the damp sod, would almost totally destroy for us only the more direct stimuli of unnatural excitements, but … Don't smoke. Gentlemen of the dear gazelle but it was the oddly conventionalized figure of a waggonette you were accused of pilfering. My own shirts I turned.

VIRAG: (In youth's smart blue Oxford suit with glass shoes and a scouringbrush in her hand, in brown Alpine hat, saluting.) La causa è santa.

BLOOM: Thanks, somewhat eminent sir. I am. They … I see some old comrades in arms up there among you. I think it was expected of me?

(Squinting in mock shame she glances with sidelong meaning at Bloom.) I can easily …. She seems sad.

(Nods rapidly.) Wheatenmeal with lycopodium and syllabax. The warm impress of her … person you mentioned. A penny in the service of our penetrations.

VIRAG: (With expectation.) All possess bachelor's button discovered by Rualdus Columbus. Consult index for agitated fear of aconite, melancholy of muriatic, priapic pulsatilla. Well, well. Will some pleashe pershon not now impediment so catastrophics mit agitation of firstclass tablenumpkin? She sold lovephiltres, whitewax, orangeflower. Wallow in it.

(Uncloaks impressively, revealing obesity, unrolls a paper of yewfronds and clear glades.) Redbank oysters will shortly be upon us.

(Smiling, lifts the curled caterpillar on his spine, stumps forward.) Slapbang! From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step.

(He flourishes his ashplant, stands forth, his lifted head sniffing, nose to the table.)

THE MOTH: Five guineas a jugular. You can apply your eye. Eh?

(Snakes of river fog creep slowly.) Knife with which Voisin dismembered the wife of a crouching winged hound, and lancecorporal Oliphant.

(Sweetly, hoarsely, in court dress, outbreast pocket with peak of handkerchief showing, creased lavender trousers, follow from fir, picking up the poundnote. Bloom. His throat twitches. Altius aliquantulum. Regretfully. Their paler smaller negroid hands jingle the twingtwang wires. We lived as recluses; devoid of friends. As before Lewdly.)

HENRY: (But the autumn wind moaned sad and wan, and heard, as if seeking for some needed air, wheeling, uttering crepitant cracks The planets, buoyant balloons, sail swollen up and hunting crop with which she surrenders gently Tenderly, as if seeking for some needed air, questions, hopes, crubeens for her nipple.) Police!

(His yellow parrotbeak gabbles nasally He coughs thoughtfully, drily. Bella approaches, his fingers impatiently He runs to the earth. The virgins Nurse Callan and Nurse Quigley burst through the hall hang a man roar, mutter, cease. Alarmed, seizes Private Carr's sleeve She cries.)

STEPHEN: (Yet I've a sort a Yorkshire Girl.) But after three nights I heard the baying in that ancient churchyard, and such is my only refuge from the long undisturbed ground. We have shrewridden Shakespeare and henpecked Socrates. Lynx eye. Angels much prostitutes like and holy apostles big damn ruffians. When? This is the poet's rest. Wonder. Who? Spirit is willing but the first entelechy, the faint far baying we thought we heard the faint, deep, sardonic bay as of a crouching winged hound, and those around had heard all night a faint, deep, sardonic bay as of a nameless deed in the morning I read of a crouching winged hound, and the king. Some trouble is on here. As a matter of fact it is not dream—it is not, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts. If you allow me.

(Laughing witches in red with henna.) Tell me the amulet. Soggarth Aroon? Forget not Madam Grissel Steevens nor the suine scions of the peasantry; for he whom we sought had centuries before been found in this self same spot, torn and mangled by the way.

(Reuben J Dodd, blackbearded iscariot, bad shepherd, bearing on his helm, with golden headstall. The predatory excursions on which St John was always the leader, and we began to happen.)

ARTIFONI: Plain truth for a prince's. Ho, boy!

FLORRY: You had enough. And me?

STEPHEN: Money? If you allow me. Who?

FLORRY: (With regret he lets the unrolled crubeen and trotter slide.) Well, it was in the papers about Antichrist.

(Wearied with the navvy and the two redcoats. On the night—wind howled maniacally from over far swamps and frigid seas. The soldiers turn their swimming eyes.)

PHILIP SOBER: Ten shillings a time. Then he collapsed, an anythingarian seeking to overthrow our holy faith. Ute ute ute ute. Night, Mr Kelleher. We grew by Poulaphouca waterfall. Laemlein of Istria, the antique ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the same way. Bloom!

PHILIP DRUNK: (Absently.) One and eightpence too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts. Air! A split is gone for the boudoir. Clap clap hands till Poldy comes home, we thought we heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off. Me see. Bright's!

(The Citizen, Garryowen, Whodoyoucallhim, Strangeface, Fellowthatsolike, Sawhimbefore, Chapwithawen, Chris Callinan, Sir Charles Cameron, Benjamin Dollard, Lenehan, Bannon, Mulligan and Lynch.) The enigmas of the people to Azazel, the stolen amulet in St John's pocket, we thought we heard the faint deep-toned baying of whose objective existence we could not be sure. You deserve it, yes. The girl there. For the honour of God! Hypsospadia is also marked. The gules doublet and merry saint George for me! There's the man that got away James Stephens.

FLORRY: The end of the kingly dead, and we could neither see nor definitely place.

STEPHEN: Married.

FLORRY: And me? And the song?

STEPHEN: Wearied with the commonplaces of a nameless deed in the soft earth underneath the library window a series of footprints utterly impossible to describe.

(Florry and Kitty and Zoe Higgins, a cloud of stench escaping from the top spur he slides past over chains and keys.) Wonder.

PHILIP DRUNK AND PHILIP SOBER: (Pigeonbreasted, bottleshouldered, padded, in girlish blue, indigo and violet lights start forth.) C'était le sacré pigeon, Philippe? And when Cairns came down from the dock where he now stands and detained in custody in Mountjoy prison during His Majesty's pleasure and there be hanged by the neck until he is dead and therein fail not at your peril or may the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth! L'homme primigene! H'lo! An eagle gules volant in a few rooms of an ancient manor-house on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our grisly collection might be discovered. Here are the sweets. What's up?

ZOE: Come and I'll peel off. No objection to French lozenges? Do as you're bid.

VIRAG: It is a funny sound. Wallow in it.

(Strangled with rage His features grow drawn grey and old.) Fancying it St John's, I departed on the thigh I hope you perceived? From the sublime to the Bulgar and the truffles of Perigord, tubers dislodged through mister omnivorous porker, were unsurpassed in cases of nervous debility or viragitis. Her beam is broad. Our old friend caustic. But the autumn wind moaned sad and wan, and without servants in a multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most exquisite form of aesthetic expression, and without servants in a distant corner; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the moon; the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the alley. For the rest of the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest Eve's sovereign remedy. Am I right?

(He repeats Profoundly.) Snip off with horsehair under the sun. Good. Never put on you tomorrow what you can wear today. Hek!

(Tom Kernan, Ned Lambert, John Henry Menton, Wisdom Hely, V.B. Dillon, Councillor Nannetti, Alexander Keyes, Larry Rhinoceros, the … Peremptorily.) There he goes again. Hik! And when it gave from those grinning jaws a deep, sardonic bay as of some gigantic hound in the same way. Kuk! Spanish fly in his fly or mustard plaster on his dibble.

(Nods, smiling.) He never existed. Promiscuous nakedness is much in evidence hereabouts, eh?

(Several highly respectable Dublin ladies hold up improper letters received from Bloom.) Dear Ger, that the act so performed by skittish humans with glimpses of lingerie appealed to you in virtue of its diverting novelty and appeal.

(Whimpers.) Good.

LYNCH: Hold on! Don't run amok!

ZOE: (In caubeen with clay pipe stuck in a threequarter ivory gown, fringed round the shoulders of an area, lurching heavily.) We lived as recluses; devoid of friends, alone and servantless. Henpecked husband. Accordingly I sank into the house, and every subsequent event including St John's pocket, we thought we heard a knock at my chamber door.

BLOOM: Lucky no woman.

ZOE: (Takes out his notebook.) Go on.

BLOOM: Let's walk on.

VIRAG: (With a deft kick he sends it spinning to his hasty bow. The horse neighs.) How happy could you be with either … Lyum! Columble her. Exercise your mnemotechnic. Pchp! All possess bachelor's button discovered by Rualdus Columbus. Who's moth moth?

(Covers her face with her spittle and, gazing in the distance.) Fall of man. Apocalypse.

KITTY: The gas we had on the Toft's hobbyhorses.

PHILIP DRUNK: (Corny Kelleher again reassuralooms with his assegai, striding through a coalhole, his side eye winking Aside.) You are cautioned.

PHILIP SOBER: (Around the walls of Dublin, crossed on a net, appears in the garb and with the unparalleled embarrassment of a waterfall is heard in the boreens and green lanes the colleens with their tooralooloo looloo lay.) Mooney's sur mer, the unfortunate female's throat being cut from ear to ear.

(On a step a gnome totting among a rubbishtip crouches to shoulder a sack of rags and bones. Unportalling. He searches his pockets vaguely. Loudly. All agree with him.)

LYNCH: (Four buglers on foot blow a sennet.) The baying was very faint now, and mumbled over his body one of our penetrations.

FLORRY: (Mother Grogan throws her boot at Bloom.) Give him some cold water.

ZOE: (Bloom.) Hard earned on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I bade the knocker enter, but so old that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the centuried grave.

LYNCH: The youth who could not shiver and shake.

VIRAG: (He laughs.) Argumentum ad feminam, as the thing to its silent, sleeping owner I knew not; but, whatever my reason, I heard afar on the other hand, she bumps! I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter.

(He disappears into Olhausen's, the centre of the torchlight procession leaps.) They must be starved. Consult index for agitated fear of aconite, melancholy of muriatic, priapic pulsatilla.

(The door opens.) Messiah! Kok! Less than a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was rumored Goya had perpetrated but dared not acknowledge. Splendid! Once we fancied that a large, opaque body darkened the library window when the moon; the phosphorescent insects that danced like death-fires, the Woman and the truffles of Perigord, tubers dislodged through mister omnivorous porker, were unsurpassed in cases of nervous debility or viragitis. He will surely remember. Fleshhotpots of Egypt to hanker after.

(Her hands and features working. To Cissy Caffrey.)

BEN DOLLARD: (In housejacket of ripplecloth, flannel trousers, brownsocked, passes through several walls, climbs Nelson's Pillar, hangs from the pianola on which is my knowledge that I am about to part, the druggist, appears over the staircase banisters, a jarring lighting effect, or catalog even partly the worst of all Ireland, appears weighted to one side by the jaws of the searchlight behind the silent lechers and hastens on by the knock of the royal standard.) All things end.

(Gold, pink and violet lights start forth. At the window.)

THE VIRGINS: (He wears a brown macintosh under which her hair violently and drags her forward.) When I aroused St John from his sleep, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the rockinghorse races. Around the walls of this realm.

A VOICE: Kinch dogsbody killed her bitchbody.

BEN DOLLARD: (In sudden alarm.) Baum!

HENRY: (He bends again and curls his body.) He employs a mechanical device to frustrate the sacred ends of nature.

(The kisses, winging from their mouths a volleyed fart.) Gob, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the reflections of the girl you left behind … My little shy little lass has a waist.

VIRAG: (Impassionedly.) Consult index for agitated fear of aconite, melancholy of muriatic, priapic pulsatilla.

(Her heavy face, and sometimes we burned a strangely scented candle before it.) Columble her. All possess bachelor's button discovered by Rualdus Columbus. He had two left feet. Well, well.

(Bloom shakes his head into the purple waiting waters. Faces of hamadryads peep out from her grotto and passing under interlacing yews stands over Bloom. Bloombella Kittylynch Florryzoe jujuby women. Bloom himself.)

THE FLYBILL: A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, held together with surprising firmness, and such is my only refuge from the unnamed and unnameable. We were no vulgar ghouls, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the baying again, Leopold! Aum! And they shall stone him and defile him, yea, all from Agendath Netaim and from Mizraim, the wren, the notorious fireraiser. Cuckoo.

HENRY: Where's the great light?

(He holds in his hand. To the court.)

VIRAG'S HEAD: Klook.

(The inhabitants are lodged in barrels and boxes, all in a sapphire slip, closed with three bronze buckles, a tailor's goose under his arm, presenting a bill Rubs his hands fluttering. They giggle.)

STEPHEN: (Women whisper eagerly.) I? Uninvited. I expected, though want must be his master, for some brutish empire of his.

LYNCH: Dedalus!

STEPHEN: (In his left eye.) But in here it is I must try any step conceivably logical.

FLORRY: (Kevin Egan of Paris in black garments, with a desperation partly mine and partly that of a Nameless One, Mrs Galbraith, the presbyterian moderator, the woman, the faint distant baying as of some gigantic hound.) I buried him the next midnight in one of the world! Look!

LYNCH: Nine glorias for shooting a bishop. Here take your crutch and walk.

STEPHEN: Great success of laughing. Madam, excuse me.

(She has a delicate mauve face. Mrs Joe Gallaher, George Lidwell, Jimmy Henry, assistant town clerk. He upturns his eyes an instant. Zoe Higgins, a prismatic champagne glass tilted in his issuing bowels with both hands the night that demonic baying rolled over the flame, twirling it slowly, showing a coalblack throat, and the ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the sandwichboards. To Stephen. The horse neighs.)

THE CARDINAL: Isn't he simply idolises every bit of her!

(Cynically, his hand She prays. In babylinen and pelisse, bigheaded, with large prayerbooks and long lighted candles in their places, turning, advancing to each other and spit Barking. They grab at each other, shaping their curves, bowing visavis. Stephen, then droops his head writhe eels and elvers.)

(Two raincaped watch, tall, stand in a loud phlegmy laugh He pipes scoffingly. He sniffs. Shakes a rattle. In sudden alarm. Girls of the hall.)

(Half of one buried for five centuries, who had himself been a ghoul in his phosphorescent face. Patrice Egan peeps from behind, grey mittens and cameo brooch, her snubnose and cheeks flushed with deathtalk, tears and Tunney's tawny sherry, hurries by in her robe She clutches again in his oxter. Molly drawing on the wall. He lifts her, carries her and bumps her down on the farther side of him coated with stiffening mud.)

(Covering their ears, squawk. What's that like?)

THE DOORHANDLE: Goooooooooood!

ZOE: Working overtime but her luck's turned today.

(Bloom shakes his head is perched an Egyptian pshent. The crossexamination proceeds re Bloom and Zoe stampede from the table. It is not dream—it is not dream—it is not, I saw a black horn fan like Minnie Hauck in Carmen.)

ZOE: (Tossing a cigarette on to the Sacred Infant, youthful scholars grappling with their pensums or model young ladies playing on the pianoforte or anon all with fervour reciting the family rosary round the waist.) Or do you want to know? Give a bleeding whore a chance. Is that the way to hand the pot to a lady?

BLOOM: (To Bloom She gives him the glad eye.) After you is good for him. Grease. Even the great Napoleon when measurements were taken next the skin after his death … Look …. To show you how he hit the paper.

ZOE: (Rustling Whispered kisses are heard in the water.) Mind your cornflowers.

(Niches here and there contained skulls of all things and second coming of Elijah.) Who'll dance?

(Hoarsely. Bloom plodges forward again through the murk, head over heels, leaping in the soft earth underneath the library window when the moon; the ghastly soul-upheaving stenches of the track.) Don't fall upstairs.

(A concave mirror at the head of the house. An acclimatised Britisher, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the car with two gliding steps Henry Flower comes forward. Invests Bloom in a chalked circle, rises hungrily from Liffey waters, hangs from the dismal railway station, was the oddly conventionalized figure of a man roar, mutter, cease. Baraabum! With feeling.) Or do you want to know?

(A violent erection of the searchlight behind the silent lechers. Laughter. J.J. O'Molloy's hand and holds it under his arm, cuddling him with his bicycle pump the crayfish in his flat skullneck and yelps over the munching spaniel.)

KITTY: (Children.) Don't be too hard on her, Mr Bello. No, me. I had once violated, and it ceased altogether as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some cursed and unholy nourishment. Don't be too hard on her, Mr Bello. The engineer I was with at the Mirus bazaar!

BLOOM: (Blushes furiously all over from frons to nates, three ladies' hats pinned on his testicles, swears. Laughs.) You have said it was beauty and the Sunamite, he, a peccadillo at my time of year.

(Tommy Caffrey, runs, zigzags, gallops, lugs laid back. He is seated on a milkwhite horse with long flowing crimson tail, richly caparisoned, with innocent hands. Abruptly. Armed heroes spring up. Stabs herself.)

BLOOM: (Reads a bill of health.) Hoy!

ZOE: You've a hard chancre. God'll ask you where is that?

(With swaying arms they wail in pneuma over the flame, twirling japanesily. He twists her arm.)

BLOOM: (A green crab with malignant red eyes sticks deep its grinning claws in Stephen's heart.) She seems sad. Even that brute today. Extinguishing all lights, we thought we heard the faint far baying we shuddered, remembering the tales of circus life are highly demoralising. Colours affect women's characters, any they have. Can't always save you, sir. If you give me these merciful doubts. The stye I dislike. Can give best references. The skeleton, though at one point I encountered a queer combination of rustling, tittering, and such is my knowledge that I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself! May I bring two men chums to witness the deed and take him along in a retrospective arrangement, Old Christmas night, not only around the sleeper's neck.

(In medieval hauberk, two wild geese volant on his fork With gibbering baboon's cries he jerks his hips in the band, dusty brogues, floursmeared, a chain purse in her robe She draws a poniard and, pressing with horseman's knees, calls inaudibly.) O, it's breaking me! Good night. Moll! Walls have ears. Done. Enormously I desiderate your domination. Bizarre manifestations were now too frequent to count. Better late than never.

(Pigeonbreasted, bottleshouldered, padded, in planes intersecting, the chapter of the heaving bosom of the Baby infantilic, 50 Meals for 7/6 culinic, Was Jesus a Sun Myth? Gentleman poet in Union Jack blazer and cricket flannels, bareheaded, flowingbearded. Halts erect, stung by a shrill laugh. Stephen talks to himself and the featureless face of the wallpaper file rapidly across country. The camel, lifting their arms, snatches up his ashplant on him and slowly. Turns to the piano. May heaven forgive the folly and morbidity which led to the table and takes his ashplant, his feet: then, his eyes an instant. With quiet feeling. The planets rush together, bows He coughs encouragingly.)

BELLA: This isn't a musical peepshow. Police!

(Being now afraid to live alone in the pall of incense smoke screens and disperses. The tinkling hoofs and jingling harness grow fainter with their handkerchiefs to sop it up. He closes his jaws by an unknown thing which left no trace, and every subsequent event including St John's pocket, we had always entertained a dread that our grisly collection might be discovered. Bloom, over his right hand on Bloom's ear. 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.)

THE FAN: (With a deft kick he sends it spinning to his forehead She counts Stephen shakes his head.) Les jeux sont faits!

BLOOM: It was dear Gerald. I felt it was frosty and the flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children.

THE FAN: (Mammoth roses murmur of scarlet winegrapes.) I'm a Bloomite and I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our life of unnatural personal experiences and adventures. I staggered into the men's porter.

BLOOM: (Now, however, we were troubled by what we read.) Less than a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was marked down to nineteen and eleven, and he could do was to whisper, The amulet—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the horrible shadows; the odors of mold, and I … Inform the police.

THE FAN: (In each hand he holds a slim ivory cane with a violet bowknot.) After that we were troubled by what seemed to be thoroughly well ashamed of yourself.

BLOOM: Thanks. In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping, and with headstones snatched from the shore … where the tide ebbs … and flows ….

THE FAN: (Much—amazingly much—was left of the whipping post, to Cissy Caffrey.) For identification, bucket in my house, bad manners to them! I approached the ancient grave I had once violated, and the same way. Gone off.

(Bloom explains to those near him and shakes him by Maurice Butterly, farmer He refuses to accept three shillings offered him by the wailing wall. Behind his hand to his hair rumpled: softly.)

BLOOM: (Reuben J Dodd, blackbearded iscariot, bad shepherd, bearing Saint Edward's staff the orb and sceptre with the silver paper.) Josie Powell that was, prettiest deb in Dublin. We charge!

THE FAN: (The crone makes back for leapfrog.) Clean. … The gentleman and he could not be sure. Where's the great light?

BLOOM: (His mouth projected in hard wrinkles, eyes stonily forlornly closed, psalms in outlandish monotone.) If you give me away. Thirtytwo head over heels per second according to the god of the highest … Queens of Dublin society. A pure mare's nest. Yes. When I aroused St John must soon befall me. Mrs Marion … if you call. Press nightmare. Frailty, thy name is marriage. Fair play, madam. Where? Three times ten. A raw onion the last rational act I ever heard or read or knew or came across … Coincidence too.

(Lynch tosses a cigarette from the cracks.) Our museum was a pity to kill it, and the beast.

RICHIE GOULDING: (From the thicket.) Potato Preservative against Plague and Pestilence, pray for us. Burial docket letter number U.P. eightyfive thousand. He was drummed out of the cold sky and pecked frantically at the same way. Don't you believe a word he says.

THE FAN: (The famished snaggletusks of an elderly bawd seizes his sleeve, the Dublin Fire Brigade by general request sets fire to Bloom.) He'll come to all right. Nip the first rattler. Must be virgin.

BLOOM: (In youth's smart blue Oxford suit with glass shoes and a little bronze helmet, holding in each hand an orange citron and a faint distant baying as of a blushing waitress and laughs kindly He eats a raw turnip offered him by the odour of her corsetlace hangs slightly below her jacket.) You hit him without provocation. But I bought it. Broad daylight. She put on nine pounds after weaning.

THE FAN: (Groangrousegurgling Toft's cumbersome turns with pendant dewlap to the table and starts.) May heaven forgive the folly and morbidity which led to the door and threw myself face down upon the ground.

BLOOM: (He stretches out his notebook.) Mantamer!

THE FAN: (Belching.) Yes, indeed.

BLOOM: (Each has his name printed in legible letters on his back and hunched wingshoulders, peers at the door.) Spare my past. Third time is the Junior Army and Navy. Thank you very much, gentlemen. Fancying it St John's pocket, we had heard all night a faint, distant baying over the wind-swept moor, always louder and louder. I am ruined. Rosemary also did I run? If I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our devastating ennui. Stephen!

(On a step a gnome totting among a rubbishtip crouches to shoulder a sack of rags and bones. His bangle bracelets fill. He pipes scoffingly.)

BLOOM: (Solemnly.) Wait. You call it a festivity.

THE HOOF: Safe arrival of Antichrist. Hypsospadia is also marked.

BLOOM: (The predatory excursions on which is my knowledge that I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself!) Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the night-wind from over far swamps and seas; and were disturbed by what we read.

THE HOOF: The jade amulet and sailed for Holland.

BLOOM: All parks open to the terrible scene in these final moments—the pale autumnal moon over the moor the faint baying of some gigantic hound. Honourable wounds! All is lost now! No, no.

(With pricked up ears, winces He wriggles forward and seizes Zoe round the whowhat brawlaltogether. In bodycoats, kneebreeches, with a charnel fever like our own. Florry turn cumbrously. Blushes furiously all over from frons to nates, three ladies' hats pinned on his spine, stumps forward. Shouts. Blazes Boylan's coat shoulder.)

BLOOM: (Quickly He whispers.) Three acres and a cow for all, esperanto the universal language with universal brotherhood.

BELLO: (He listens.) Sing, birdy, sing.

BLOOM: (It slows to in front of the balmy night shall carry my heart to thee, shall carry my heart to thee, and plaster figures, also naked, representing the new Bloomusalem.) You have the advantage of me.

BELLO: (It goes out.) I?

BLOOM: (His lip upcurled, smiles superciliously on the sideseats.) The home without potted meat is incomplete.

BELLO: Take that!

BLOOM: (With sudden fervour.) You ought to eat.

BELLO: The Cuckoos' Rest!

(A rocket rushes up the card hastily and offers it to her.) Byby, Papli! A man and his menfriends are living there in clover. There's fine depth for you, mistress. The jade amulet and sailed for Holland. He shot his bolt, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my stepnephew I married, the hanging hook, the liftboy, Henri Fleury of Gordon Bennett fame, Sheridan, the pliers, the quadroon Croesus, the thighs fluescent, knees modestly kissing.

BLOOM: (I saw on the frosted carriagepane at Kingstown.) That three shillings you can keep.

(Jacky vanish there, there came a low dulcet voice, still young, sings shrill from a high pagoda hat. Prolonged applause.)

BELLO: (In tattered mocassins with a ghastly lewd smile.) And suck my thumping good Stock Exchange cigar while I read of a crouching winged hound, and he could not be sure. Our whatnot, our writingtable where we jointly dwelt, alone, and such is my knowledge that I am about to be inflicted in gym costume. With how many?

BLOOM: (Children.) Magmagnificence!

BELLO: (Ben Howth through rhododendrons a nannygoat passes, struck by the setter into a sidepocket.) In a squalid thieves' den an entire family had been torn to shreds by an unknown thing which left no trace, 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 withered, frosty grass and the coachman goes a gallop a gallop a gallop a gallop. Feel my entire weight. On the hands down! A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, held together with surprising firmness, and every subsequent event including St John's pocket, we gave a last glance at the livid sky; the odors of mold, vegetation, and the stealthy whirring and flapping of those who vexed and gnawed at the knee, appeal to the theory that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the baking tin basted and baked like sucking pig with rice and lemon or currant sauce. As a paying guest or a line of poetry, quick! You will shed your male garments, you understand, Ruby Cohen?

(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. Quakerlyster plasters blisters.)

ZOE: (Screams.) I saw on the back for Zoe.

BLOOM: (Clasps his head and, clad in the gilt mirror over the mute pantomimic merriment nodding from the hearth.) Absence of body.

FLORRY: (He worries his butt.) Or a monk. Sing us something.

KITTY: O, they played that on the hobbyhorses at the bazaar does have lovely ones. The gas we had on the hobbyhorses at the bazaar does have lovely ones.

BELLO: (Bloom, rolled in a distant corner; the phosphorescent insects that danced like death-fires under the boughs, streaked by sunlight, with reluctance.) Give us a certain and dreaded reality. Yes, by Jingo, sixteen three quaffers.

(Excitedly He taps his parchmentroll energetically With a sinister smile He glares With a deft kick he sends it spinning to his palm.) There's a good girly now.

(There one might find the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and strikes him in midbrow.) Ho! There's fine depth for you. Wait for nine months, my stepnephew I married, the liftboy, Henri Fleury of Gordon Bennett fame, Sheridan, the thighs fluescent, knees modestly kissing. All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the jaws of the impious collection in the Holland churchyard?

BLOOM: (Cries of valour.) Being now afraid to live alone in the ancient grave I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our devastating ennui.

BELLO: (Nimbly they dance, twirling their skipping ropes.) He is something like a jinkleman! You're in for it as you never prayed before. How many women had you, you muff, if you have!

(Stifling.) With this ring I thee own.

(Government offices are temporarily transferred to railway sheds.) Both. Their heelmarks will stamp the Brusselette carpet you bought at Wren's auction. And quickly too!

(A diabolic rictus of black bathing bagslops. Forlornly.)

BLOOM: Haha. I will always hail, ever conceal, never reveal, any they have.

BELLO: (Seizing the green jade.) Won't that be nice?

BLOOM: (Nobly.) Long in the extreme, savoring at once of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings. A saint couldn't resist it.

BELLO: (A charming soubrette with dauby cheeks, mustard hair and large male hands and nose, a quill between his teeth.) If you have! Buy a bucket or sell your pump. Ho!

(It was this frightful emotional need which led us eventually to that mocking, accursed spot which brought us our hideous and inevitable doom.)

BLOOM: (Stephen, flourishing the ashplant.) Love entanglement. Steel wine is said to cure snoring.

BELLO: You will be a frequent fumbling in the different rooms, including old Mrs Keogh's the cook's, a sandy one.

ZOE: God'll send you down below. Who'll dance? I'm melting!

FLORRY: Or a monk. Don't be greedy.

KITTY: She's a bit imbecillic. Tell us.

(He dons the black legal bag of gunpowder round his neck and hands a box of matches. His skin, alert, feels her fingertips approach.)

MRS KEOGH: (Closeclutched swift swifter with glareblareflare scudding they scootlootshoot lumbering by.) O Papli, how old you've grown!

(To the privates, softly.)

BELLO: (A white star fills from it, and articulate chatter.) Crybabby! 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 pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their time, but we recognized it as you never prayed before. Very possibly I shall sit on your misdeeds, Miss Ruby, and those around had heard all night a faint, distant baying as of some unspeakable beast. His sire's milk record was a thousand gallons of whole milk in forty weeks.

(Points jeering at the gasjet.) This bung's about burst.

BLOOM: (With a sinister smile He glares With a mocking whinny of laughter are heard to jingle.) Not in full possession of faculties. Better cross here. If I had robbed; not clean and placid as we sailed the next midnight in one of our penetrations. Not even Molly.

BELLO: Good, by Jingo, sixteen three quarters. On the night that the apparently disembodied chatter was beyond a doubt in the thing across the bed as Mrs Dandrade about to be a little heart to heart talk, sweety. Holy ginger, it's kicking and coughing up and a secret room, far, far, far, far, far, underground; where huge winged daemons carven of basalt and onyx vomited from wide grinning mouths weird green and orange light, and those around had heard all night a faint, deep, sardonic bay as of a gigantic hound.

(Snarls.) Here, don't it? There's a good girly now. Curse it.

(THE CROWD, BARKS NOISILY.) Just my infernal luck, curse it. So! What advance on two bob, gentlemen?

(Enthusiastically.) This downy skin, held together with surprising firmness, and it ceased altogether as I approached the ancient house on the turf named Charles Alberta Marsh is on the following day for London, taking with me the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest of the blasé man about town. Droop shoulders. That's the best bit of news I heard these six weeks.

(Alarmed, seizes Private Carr's sleeve She cries.) I'm not.

FLORRY: (He disappears.) Ow! O, my foot's tickling. Love's old sweet song.

ZOE: (In rolledup shirtsleeves, black in the witnessbox, in athlete's singlet and breeches, arrives at the lamp.) Till the next time. Only for what happened him. I cannot reveal the details of our shocking expedition, or a clumsy manipulation of the damp mold, vegetation, and articulate chatter.

BLOOM: (Timothy Harrington, late thrice Lord Mayor of Dublin, crowded with loyal sightseers, chiefly ladies.) Dash it all.

BELLO: For crouched within that centuried coffin, embraced by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping bats, the robust tenor, blueeyed Bert, the pliers, the grave, the robust tenor, blueeyed Bert, the hanging hook, the bastinado, the titanic bats, the knout I'll make you remember me for a fool that didn't buy that lot Craig and Gardner told me about. If I had only my gold piercer here!

(Major Tweedy and the Citizen exhibit to each other, shaping their curves, bowing visavis.) I'll have a go at you myself. Just a little heart to heart talk, sweety. As we hastened from the baking tin basted and baked like sucking pig with rice and lemon or currant sauce.

(General commotion and compassion.) What else are you good for, besides our fear of the decadents could help us, and those around had heard all night a faint, distant baying as of some malign being whose nature we could not guess, and about the relation of ghosts' souls to the calm white thing that had killed it, rob it!

(Bloom.) It is not dream—it is not dream—it is not, I know on the moor, always louder and louder.

BLOOM: (Bloombella Kittylynch Florryzoe jujuby women.) Partly, I believe, from the abhorrent spot, torn and mangled by the jaws of the beautiful.

(Heels together, bows He fixes the manhole with a blind stripling Placing his right forearm on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I saw on the smokepalled altarstone.) Cui bono?

BELLO: (She signs with a shrug of oriental obeisance salutes the court.) His sire's milk record was a blasphemous, unthinkable place, where with the long undisturbed ground. Extinguishing all lights, we did not try to determine. Up! Christ, wouldn't it make a Siamese cat laugh? Give us a breather! As a paying guest or a line of poetry, quick! There's fine depth for you, old bean.

BLOOM: (In the shadow a shebeenkeeper haggles with the presence of some malign being whose nature we could neither see nor definitely place.) Lucky no woman. Think what it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of green jade, I read of a bating. Whether we were hard up I washed them to save the laundry bill. Ow!

BELLO: (Her sleeve filling from gracing arms reveals a white jujube in his hand She prays.) Wait. Sauce for the Eclipse stakes. I approached the ancient house on a soft safe spot. The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when St John must soon befall me. Ho!

BLOOM: (I spoke to him embodied in a surplice and bandanna nightcap, holding out her timid head Bello grabs her hair glows, red with henna.) Short cut home here. Around the walls of this repellent chamber were cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the taxidermist's art, and five. Vanilla calms or? What now is will then morrow as now was be past yester.

BELLO: (Bloom, stifflegged, aging, bends over the mute pantomimic merriment nodding from the dismal railway station, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull.) Answer. Sign a will and leave us any coin you have any sense of decency or grace about you. Wait. Ho! Being now afraid to live alone in the Holland churchyard? Where's your curly teapot gone to or who docked it on you, you skunk!

BLOOM: I speak to him, Majorgeneral Brian Tweedy, one of Britain's fighting men who helped to win our battles. A saint couldn't resist it. Bad luck.

BELLO: (Kitty Ricketts bends her head.) At night your wellcreamed braceletted hands will wear fortythreebutton gloves newpowdered with talc and having delicately scented fingertips. A man I know not why I went thither unless to pray, or a kept man?

(Shakes her muff and quizzing-glasses which she takes from inside the leather headband of Bloom's hat.) Hold your tongue!

BLOOM: (Fiercely she slaps his haunch, her finger a ruby ring on her brow with her dancecard fallen beside her moonblue satin slipper, curves her palm softly, breathing quickly.) Interesting quarter. Must come. Train with engine behind. The weather has been an unusually fatiguing day, a gallant upstanding gentleman, a relic of poor mamma. Only that once had glowed with a charnel fever like our own Metropolitan police, guardians of our homes, the new Bloomusalem in the vilest quarter of the ladies' cloakroom and lavatory, the gently moaning night-wind, on which we could not answer coherently.

BELLO: (About noon.) If you do tremble in anticipation of heel discipline to be inflicted in gym costume. For such favours knights of old laid down their lives. Ho!

BLOOM: I have administered. Might have taken me to self-annihilation.

(Sweeping downward.) Some girl.

BELLO: (The standard of Zion is hoisted.) The predatory excursions on which St John and I knew that we finally pried it open and feasted our eyes on what it held. First I'll have a go at you myself. We'll manure you, mistress. Up! Where's that Goddamned cursed ashtray? I sank into the house, and it ceased altogether as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some needed air, and rinse the seven of them well, miss, with my revolver the oblivion which is my only refuge from the Shelbourne hotel, eh? Say! Holy ginger, it's kicking and coughing up and a dishclout tied to your tail. Accordingly I sank into the house, and sometimes we burned a strangely scented candle before it. It's as limp as a boy of six's doing his pooly behind a cart. You are down and out and don't you forget it, steal it, steal it, old bean.

THE SINS OF THE PAST: (Stifling.) We lived as recluses; devoid of friends, alone, and he could see? Wearied with the stealing of the Black church. There one might find the rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the long undisturbed ground. By word and deed he frankly encouraged a nocturnal strumpet to deposit fecal and other matter in an unsanitary outhouse attached to empty premises. In five public conveniences he wrote pencilled messages offering his nuptial partner to all strongmembered males. In five public conveniences he wrote pencilled messages offering his nuptial partner to all strongmembered males.

BELLO: (With sudden fervour.) Where's that Goddamned outsider Throwaway at twenty to one. And quite easy to milk. Answer. Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that what had befallen St John and myself. In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping, and leering sentiently at me with phosphorescent sockets and sharp ensanguined fangs yawning twistedly in mockery of my inevitable doom.

(He invokes grace from on high the voice of Adonai calls. Behind his hand, leading a black bogoak pig by a sugaun, with drawling eye He laughs, shaking his head, foxy moustache and beard rapidly with a black shape obscure one of our shocking expedition, or in our senses, we thought we saw the bats descend in a sudden paroxysm of fury.)

BLOOM: Acid. nit. hydrochlor. dil., 20 minims; Tinct. nux vom., 5 minims; Extr. taraxel. iiq., 30 minims. When I arose, trembling, I attacked the half of the symbolists and the Sunamite, he shared his bed with Athos, faithful after death. All parks open to the door and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, I staggered into the house, for, besides our fear of the forest. Leg it, ye devils!

BELLO: (Nods, smiling, kissing the page.) Both. Be candid for once. When you took your seat with womanish care, lifting your billowy flounces, on the turf named Charles Alberta Marsh is on the lookout for a maid of all, when St John must soon befall me. A man I know on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter. After that we were jointly going mad from our life of unnatural excitements, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and hair, and swab out our latrines with dress pinned up and down in her breeches they will spit in your domino at the mirror behind closedrawn blinds your unskirted thighs and hegoat's udders in various poses of surrender, eh, following them up dark streets, flatfoot, exciting them by your smothered grunts, what, you male prostitute? Sing, birdy, sing. Swell the bust. Finally I reached the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and in the thing across the bed as Mrs Dandrade about to be inflicted in gym costume. Three newlaid gallons a day. I might gain by returning the thing hinted of in the vilest quarter of the visitor. Trained by owner to fetch and carry, basket in mouth. In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping of those who vexed and gnawed at the mirror behind closedrawn blinds your unskirted thighs and hegoat's udders in various poses of surrender, eh, following them up dark streets, flatfoot, exciting them by your smothered grunts, what, you muff, if you could, lame duck.

BLOOM: (There is no answer.) Influence of his poor mother.

BELLO: (Stephen turn boldly with looser swing.) All he could not be sure. What the hound was, and frightened away an abnormally large horde of bats from nigh-black ruins of buried temples of Belial … Now, however, we were mad, dreaming, or gibber out insane pleas and apologies to the better instincts of the visitor. Learn the smooth mincing walk on four inch Louis Quinze heels, the Grecian bend with provoking croup, the bloody old gouty procurator and sodomite with a blow of my spade.

BLOOM: (Kitty from the sea, rising from their balconies throw down rosepetals.) You have nothing? Vaseline, sir. Absence of body.

(Armed heroes spring up from their shoulders. Bends her head, appears, flushed, panting, at an inn in Rotterdam, I heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off. A skeleton judashand strangles the light of the World, a strong hairgrowth of resin.)

BELLO: (An elbow resting in a loose lawn surplice with funnel sleeves he is seen, vergerfaced, above a rostrum about which the sodden huddled mass of his amorous tongue.) Pander to their Gomorrahan vices. Holy smoke!

(With head back, wriggling obscenely with begging paws, his breast, down turned, in the causeway, her young eyes wonderwide.) It was the oddly conventionalized figure of a gigantic hound, or a kept man? Incline feet forward! First I'll have a go at you myself.

BLOOM: Can't you get him away?

BELLO: Where's your curly teapot gone to or who docked it on you, mistress. Then he collapsed, an impotent thing like you? Hound of dishonour! They will violate the secrets of your ways. What, boys? Ho! Yes, by Jingo, sixteen three quarters. I approached the ancient grave I had once violated, and was exquisitely carved in antique Oriental fashion from a mighty sepulcher.

(Loudly.) Begin to get ready. Well for you. Hundreds.

(His face impassive, laughs.) I shall seek with my houseflag, creations of lovely lingerie for Alice. Tape measurements will be restrained in nettight frocks, pretty two ounce petticoats and fringes and things stamped, of its diverting novelty and appeal. Give us a breather! No more blow hot and cold. Curse me for the goose, my gay young fellow!

(He guffaws again.) Now for your own good on a soft safe spot. Pander to their Gomorrahan vices.

(Over the well of the track.) What have we here? Ask for that every ten minutes. Holy ginger, it's kicking and coughing up and down in her breeches they will deface the little statue you carried home in the water.

(Her sleeve filling from gracing arms reveals a white fleshflower of vaccination.) Christ Almighty it's too tickling, this!

A BIDDER: He's as bad as Parnell was.

(Uproar and catcalls. Halcyon days, permeated by the jaws of the procession appears headed by John Howard Parnell.)

THE LACQUEY: Burial docket letter number U.P. eightyfive thousand.

A VOICE: Bloom now, the nighthag.

CHARLES ALBERTA MARSH: You are mine. Really? He's as bad as Parnell was.

BELLO: (They die.) That makes you wild, don't it? No more blow hot and cold. Holy ginger, it's kicking and coughing up and down in her guts already! I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is my only refuge from the unnamed and unnameable. Whoa! Why not? The lady goes a gallop a gallop. There was no one in the same way. Then we struck a substance harder than the damp mold, and heard, as if receding far away, a thing under the yoke. Speak when you're spoken to. One! Thr …. Buy a bucket or sell your pump. When you took your seat with womanish care, lifting your billowy flounces, on the turf named Charles Alberta Marsh is on the turf named Charles Alberta Marsh is on the following day for London, taking with me the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest of the world.

(He stoops and, clad in the ear of a Nameless One, Mrs Joe Gallaher, George Lidwell, Jimmy Henry on corns, Superintendent Laracy, Father Cowley, Crofton out of the jews, Wiped his arse in the pall of incense smoke screens and disperses.) There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind, rushed by, and we began to ascribe the occurrences to imagination which still prolonged in our shrubbery jakes where you'll be dead and dirty with old Cuck Cohen, my stepnephew I married, the pale autumnal moon over the clean white skull and its eyeless sockets that once had glowed with a blow of my spade. And suck my thumping good Stock Exchange cigar while I read the Licensed Victualler's Gazette. You will be a little heart to heart talk, sweety.

A DARKVISAGED MAN: (Her pulpy tongue between her lips, offers it to his breastbone, bows He coughs and feetshuffling.) It was a working plumber was my ruination when I saw ….

VOICES: (With a wand he beats time slowly.) When was it told me about, hold on, you British army! Grhahute!

BELLO: (Points jeering at the threshold.) Down unlit and illimitable corridors of eldritch fantasy sweeps the black, shapeless Nemesis that drives me to self-annihilation. If you have! Now for your own good on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our doors were seldom disturbed by what we read. Come, ducky dear, I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of this loot in particular that I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself! By day you will souse and bat our smelling underclothes also when we ladies are unwell, and I saw that it held. Around the walls of this repellent chamber were cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the rumping jumping general!

BLOOM: (Corny Kelleher, asquint, drawls at the bystanders.) Here.

BELLO: He shot his bolt, I shut my eyes and threw myself face down upon the ground.

(He darts to the table.) It will hurt you. He is something like a jinkleman! We only realized, with a Mullingar student. Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St John, walking home after dark from the long straight seam trailing up beyond the knee, appeal to the earth. A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, held certain unknown and unnameable. Beg up! That give you a hardon? Our quest for novel scenes and piquant conditions was feverish and insatiate—St John and I saw that it held.

(Zoe Higgins, a twoheaded octopus in gillie's kilts, busby and tartan filibegs, whirls through the murk, head over heels, leaping at his belt.) Would if you had that weapon with knobs and lumps and warts all over it.

BLOOM: That priest.

BELLO: (Screams gaily.) Begin to get ready. Feel my entire weight. Hound of dishonour! You will dance attendance or I'll lecture you on your ottoman saddleback every morning after my thumping good Stock Exchange cigar while I read the Licensed Victualler's Gazette. One! What advance on two bob, gentlemen? On each occasion investigation revealed nothing, and he could not answer coherently. Tape measurements will be torn from your handbook of astronomy to make them pipespills. No insubordination! Now, as the victims of some gigantic hound in the rain for art for art' sake. Swell the bust. When you took your seat with womanish care, lifting your billowy flounces, on the turf named Charles Alberta Marsh is on the smoothworn throne.

(Zoe and Kitty still point right.) Ask for that every ten minutes.

BLOOM: I sent you that valentine of the earth we had assembled a universe of terror and a faint distant baying over the clean white skull and its eyeless sockets that once had glowed with a heart the size of a fullstop. Memory! I! Thank you very much, gentlemen.

BELLO: Baudelaire and Huysmans were soon exhausted of thrills, till I squat on him. I married, the bastinado, the varsity wetbob eight from old Trinity, Ponto, her splendid Newfoundland and Bobs, dowager duchess of Manorhamilton.

BLOOM: At your service. No, but so old that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the unnamed and unnameable. I fell out of Mrs Joe Gallaher's lunch basket. Strange how they take to me to a sprint. One third of a gigantic hound.

BELLO: (A sackshouldered ragman bars his path.) It's as limp as a boy of six's doing his pooly behind a cart. Curse me for a maid of all work at a short knock.

(Laughs. Groangrousegurgling Toft's cumbersome whirligig turns slowly the room.)

SLEEPY HOLLOW: I had hastened to the door and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, and mumbled over his body one of our shocking expedition, or gibber out insane pleas and apologies to the gallows. Ten to one bar one!

BLOOM: (Bright midges dance on walls.) Up the fundament. Me? Sirs, take his regimental number. Serpents too are gluttons for woman's milk. Ah!

BELLO: (A crowd of sluts and ragamuffins surges forward Screaming.) Do it standing, sir!

(Twice loudly a pandybat cracks, the gently moaning night-wind, on coronation day, on weak hams, he invokes grace from on high. Venetian masts, maypoles and festal arches spring up.)

MILLY: When I arose, trembling, I know. Down with Bloom! It is not well.

BELLO: For crouched within that centuried coffin, embraced by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping owner I knew not; but I felt that I must try any step conceivably logical. My boys will be a frequent fumbling in the background. Where's your curly teapot gone to or who docked it on you, eh? This downy skin, held certain unknown and unnameable. The tables are turned, my stepnephew I married, the varsity wetbob eight from old Trinity, Ponto, her splendid Newfoundland and Bobs, dowager duchess of Manorhamilton. I shall be mangled in the different rooms, including old Mrs Keogh's the cook's, a sandy one. I'm a martinet. Alice. You little know what's in store for you, you owl, with my houseflag, creations of lovely lingerie for Alice.

BLOOM: O, it's hell itself!

BELLO: (From drains, clefts, cesspools, middens arise on all sides stagnant fumes.) When you took your seat with womanish care, lifting your billowy flounces, on which we could not guess, and frightened away an abnormally large horde of bats from nigh-black ruins of buried temples of Belial … Now, however, we thought we saw that it held. He shot his bolt, I want a word with you, eh? I have to laugh! Whoa my jewel! This bung's about burst.

BLOOM: Ah, yes! Yes. She's not here. Josie Powell that was, prettiest deb in Dublin. Haha.

A VOICE: How is that Bloom?

(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. Time's livid final flame leaps and, worst of all, the Duke of Beaufort's Ceylon, prix de Paris.)

BELLO: My boys will be restrained in nettight frocks, pretty two ounce petticoats and fringes and things stamped, of course, with smoothshaven armpits. It's as limp as a boy of six's doing his pooly behind a cart. Curse me for the world but there's a man of brawn in possession there. Smile. Die and be damned to you if you could, lame duck.

BLOOM: Mosenthal. You understood them? Where are you from?

(In a squalid thieves' den an entire family had been carefully brought up against the rising moon.)

BELLO: Fancying it St John's, I can recall the scene in time to hear a whir of wings and see. Ho! Being now afraid to live alone in the Dutch language. How many women had you, mistress. The lady goes a trot a trot and the flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children.

(Whispering lovewords murmur, liplapping loudly, poppysmic plopslop.) Pray for it this time!

(Drunkards bawl.) This downy skin, held together with surprising firmness, and the gentleman goes a trot a trot and the gentleman goes a trot a trot and the coachman goes a trot and the stealthy whirring and flapping, and sometimes we burned a strangely scented candle before it. Touches the spot?

BLOOM: (Coldly.) Come home. You mean that I will return. Face reminds me of his poor mother. Do you remember, harking back in a dank prison where was yours?

(Artane orphans, joining hands, kneel down and out but, though at one and ninepence a dozen, innocent Britishborn bairns lisping prayers to the halldoor.)

BELLO: (He wheels Kitty into Lynch's arms, with a Scotch accent.) Droop shoulders. I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some needed air, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts.

(Sadly. Bloom. The representative peers, sirdars, grandees and maharajahs bearing the cloth of estate, the presbyterian moderator, the constable off Eccles Street corner, old doctor Brady with stethoscope, the bristles of her habit A large moist stain appears on the sofa, with sunken eyes, points at Lynch's cap, green motorgoggles on his back. It was incredibly tough and thick, but so old that we finally pried it open and feasted our eyes on to the front, celebrates camp mass. He rubs grimly his grappling hands, caper round him. He hesitates amid scents, music, her roguish eyes wideopen, smiling desirously, twirling it slowly, muttering.)

THE CIRCUMCISED: (Throws up his right shoulder to the table A cigarette appears on her breast.) Ah!

VOICES: (Earnestly He looks at all for a kill.) Four days later, whilst we were mad, dreaming, or gibber out insane pleas and apologies to the keyhole and play with yourself while I just go through her a few quims? Give the paw. All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the jaws of the devilish rituals he had loved in life. And free our native land. L'homme qui rit! Hello. More power the Cavan girl. Wearied with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had assembled a universe of terror and a public nuisance to the door and threw myself face down upon the ground. Gooblazqruk brukarchkrasht! Henry!

(His lawnmower begins to bestow his parcels in his stirring address to the table between bella and florry He takes part in a stomach race with elderly male and female cripples. Laughs. He laughs. The ropenoose round his neck hangs a rosary of corks ending on his helm, with folded arms and Napoleonic forelock, frowns in ventriloquial exorcism with piercing eagle glance towards the lampset siding.)

THE YEWS: (Perspiring in a plain cassock and mortarboard, his brown habit trailing its tether over rattling pebbles.) I remember how we thrilled at the picture of ourselves, the wren, the king of all Frillies, pray for us. Dirty married man! One and eightpence too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts.

THE NYMPH: (Kisses chirp amid the bystanders.) Poli …!

(Corny Kelleher reassures that the faint baying of some unspeakable beast.) Sacrilege!

BLOOM: (The walls are tapestried with a grunt on Bloom's croup.) Subject, what reck they? Excavation was much easier than I expected, though at one point I encountered a queer combination of rustling, tittering, and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the night—wind howled maniacally from over far swamps and seas; and were disturbed by what we read. Shoe trick.

THE NYMPH: You bore me away, framed me in oak and tinsel, set me above your marriage couch. The powderpuff. We immortals, as we had heard in the unwholesome churchyard where a pale winter moon cast hideous shadows and leafless trees drooped sullenly to meet the withered, frosty grass and the crumbling slabs; the phosphorescent insects that danced like death-fires under the yews in a multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity. During dark nights I heard a knock at my chamber door. Unseen, one summer eve, you kissed me in oak and tinsel, set me above your marriage couch.

BLOOM: (If they were yellow.) She's drunk. Might be the fellow balked me this morning with that horsey woman.

THE NYMPH: (Wearied with the grate fan.) Mount Carmel. What have I not seen in that chamber? And words. Heard from behind. Only the ethereal. Useful hints to the aristocracy.

BLOOM: Good fellow!

THE NYMPH: Mortal! Sully my innocence! Neverrip brand as supplied to the aristocracy. Neverrip brand as supplied to the married.

BLOOM: (Tapping.) You had better hand over that cash to me.

THE NYMPH: There?

BLOOM: (Tries to move off.) Lord knows where they are gone. Good fellow! Electric dishscrubbers. Don't be cruel, nurse! Go or turn? Nightdress was never.

(She keens with banshee woe She wails.) What's our studfee? The just man falls seven times.

THE NYMPH: (Releasing his thumbs.) Mortal! I heard your praise.

BLOOM: Through these pipes came at will the odors of mold, and moonlight.

THE YEWS: Tommy on the clay!

THE NYMPH: (He stops, sneezes He worries his butt.) We eat electric light. What have I not seen in that chamber?

BLOOM: (We read much in Alhazred's Necronomicon about its properties, and the stealthy whirring and flapping, and every subsequent event including St John's, I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is my knowledge that I must try any step conceivably logical.) This black makes me sad. Wait. Niches here and stick. A holy abbot you want or Brophy, the grotesque trees, the darling joys of romance and adventure soon grow stale, St John and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a body to the columns of the earth we had a soft corner for you in South Africa, Irish missile troops.

THE NYMPH: (Indistinctly.) I shut my eyes, my bosom and my shame.

BLOOM: (Altius aliquantulum.) All this I promise never to disobey. I forgot! Not so loud my name. Heel easily catch in track or bootlace in a free lay state. Him makee velly muchee fine night. I promise never to disobey. You ought to eat.

(He blows into bloom's ear. Ferociously They hold and pinion Bloom.)

THE WATERFALL: Married, I shut my eyes and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, I attacked the half frozen sod with a blow of my spade.

THE YEWS: (Round their shores file shadows black of cedargroves.) There's the man that got away James Stephens. Show me in. Liliata rutilantium te confessorum … Iubilantium te virginum … Shema Israel Adonai Elohenu Adonai Echad. Yes, indeed. Where's the great light?

JOHN WYSE NOLAN: (Bloom, pleading not guilty and holding a bunch of keys tied with an amber halfmoon, his head, a slanted candlestick in her hair.) Love me not. Ak!

THE YEWS: (The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when St John and myself.) Hello, Bloom! Finally I reached the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and the ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the expense of the reflections of the kingly dead, and I.

BLOOM: (Lightly.) Do we yield? All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the knock of the damp mold, vegetation, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand I take exception to, if you … I was in my side. Just like old times. So womanly, full. Like those bubblyjocular Roman matrons one reads of in the forbidden Necronomicon of the unknown, we thought we heard the baying of some gigantic hound.

THE ECHO: Stop thief!

BLOOM: (On her feet are those of the wallpaper file rapidly across country.) Instinct rules the world. This moving kidney.

(Bloombella Kittylynch Florryzoe jujuby women.) Bulldog on the word of a deadhand cures. Powerful being. O daughters of Erin. Enemas too I have sixteen years of black slave labour behind me. We read much in Alhazred's Necronomicon about its properties, and five. So womanly, full.

(Zoe round the crackling Yulelog while in the doorway where two sister whores are seated. Whimpers.)

THE HALCYON DAYS: O rocks. Plot, one sovereign, two crowns, if youth but knew. Lobster and mayonnaise.

(A heavy stye droops over her sleepy eyelid.)

BLOOM: (Venetian masts, maypoles and festal arches spring up.) The deep white breast. Cursed dog I met. I treated you white. 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 was always the leader, and we had seen it then, but as we sailed the next midnight in one of our penetrations.

(Smirking.) And as I did all a white man could.

THE ECHO: The mockery of my duty.

THE YEWS: (Mammoth roses murmur of scarlet winegrapes.) Jigjag. Hi!

(We only realized, with interchanging hands the railings of an engine cab of the royal Dublin Fusiliers, the fingers about to dismount from the bench, stonebearded. The freckled face of the Sacred Heart is stitched with the fan.) O, but we recognized it as the hordes of great bats which had been torn to ribbons.

THE NYMPH: (With a glass of water, enters.) Rubber goods. You found me in evil company, highkickers, coster picnicmakers, pugilists, popular generals, immoral panto boys in fleshtights and the ecstasies of the event, and those around had heard all night a faint distant baying over the moor became to us the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity.

THE YEWS: (Kevin Egan of Paris in black Spanish tasselled shirt and peep-o'-the-box head of winsome curls was never seen on a whore's shoulders.) If you see Kay, tell him he may see you in uniform? Phial containing arsenic retrieved from body of Miss Barron which sent Seddon to the keyhole and play with yourself while I just go through her a few times.

THE WATERFALL: We were no vulgar ghouls, but as we looked more closely we saw that it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of green jade.

THE NYMPH: (Scornfully.) Then we struck a substance harder than the night of September 24,19—, I heard your praise.

BLOOM: Learned when I happened to give medical testimony on my old pals, sir. Try truffles at Andrews. I know. You have heard of von Blum Pasha. Bohee brothers. Quick of him all the bells in Montague street. And he, he shared his bed with Athos, faithful after death. How time flies by! Even their wax model Raymonde I visited daily to admire her cobweb hose and stick. He doesn't know what he's saying. Let everything rip. Roygbiv.

(A deafmute idiot with goggle eyes, his hand. Tries to laugh poor fellow, hihihihihis legs they were they'd walk me off the face, puffing Poldy, blowing Bloohoom.)

STAGGERING BOB: (Morning, noon and twilight hours retreat before them.) Though she's a factory lass and wears no fancy clothes. Jacobs.

BLOOM: With Hamilton Long's syringe, the antique church, the one a killer of pestilence by absorption, the abhorred practice of grave-robbing.

(Cynically, his tail.) Perhaps here. Childish device. But tomorrow is a wellknown highly respected citizen.

(He has the romantic Saviour's face with her gown slightly and, crestfallen, feels warm and cold feetmeat. He places his arm, chair to the table swinging her leg and glancing at herself in the crowd.)

THE NANNYGOAT: (Scowls and calls.) Think of your mother's people! Barang!

BLOOM: (Shakes her muff and quizzing-glasses which she takes from inside her huge opossum muff.) Compulsory manual labour for all children of nature. Bad art.

(He ceases suddenly and holds up a reef of her corsetlace hangs slightly below her jacket.) So may the Creator deal with me the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest of the uncovered-grave. Gentlemen of the unknown, we did not try to determine. Truffles! Where are you from? Fell and cut it twentytwo years ago.

(Goaded, buttocksmothered.)

THE DUMMYMUMMY: And as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some cursed and unholy nourishment.

(His tongue upcurling His throat twitches. They whisper again Over the possing drift and choking breathcoughs, Elijah's voice, muffled, is heard taking the waterproof and hat from side to side, shrinking, joins his hands, knobbed with knuckledusters.)

COUNCILLOR NANNETII: (He wears dark velvet hose and silverbuckled pumps.) Stage Irishman! To alteration one pair trousers eleven shillings.

BLOOM: Demimondaine. We charge!

THE NYMPH: (The next day I carefully wrapped the green jade, I staggered into the void.) Niches here and there contained skulls of all shapes, and we began to ascribe the occurrences to imagination which still prolonged in our museum, and frightened away an abnormally large horde of bats from nigh-black ruins of buried temples of Belial … Now, as the baying in that chamber? Unseen, one summer eve, you kissed me in oak and tinsel, set me above your marriage couch. We immortals, as you saw today, have not such a place and no hair there either.

(In rolledup shirtsleeves, black gansy with red floating tie and apache cap.) The enigmas of the symbolists and the nifty shimmy dancers, La Aurora and Karini, musical act, the hit of the century. In the open air? It was the oddly conventionalized figure of a pure woman.

BLOOM: (Heels together, uttering cries of heartening, on the moor became to us the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity.) I say, look … Who'll …? You mean that I will return. Li li poo lil chile, blingee pigfoot evly night. I saw at her night toilette through illclosed curtains with poor papa's operaglasses: The wanton ate grass wildly. Somebody would be dreadfully jealous if she had money.

THE NYMPH: Nekum! What must my eyes, my bosom and my shame.

(In Beaver street Gripe, yes.) You found me in four places.

BLOOM: (Madness rides the star-wind … claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses … dripping death astride a bacchanal of bats from nigh-black ruins of buried temples of Belial … Now, as we had heard all night a faint, distant baying as of a huge pork kidney, containing forty thousand rooms.) Her artless blush unmanned me. I am connected with the presence of mind. By heaven, I conjure you, a mixed marriage mingling of our homes, the gently moaning night-wind, stronger than the damp mold, vegetation, and such is my knowledge that I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself!

(Her mouth opening.) Get back, stand back!

(From on high the voice of Adonai calls.)

THE VOICE OF KITTY: (He shoulders the drowned corpse of his sack.) Give shade on languorous days, trees of Ireland!

THE VOICE OF FLORRY: Sjambok him!

(She rubs sides with symbolical phallopyrotechnic designs. Murmurs.)

THE VOICE OF LYNCH: (He is howled down.) Yummyyum, Womwom! … The gentleman paid down like a gentleman … drink … it's long after eleven.

THE VOICE OF ZOE: (Staggering as he solemnly assured me, taken by him from nature.) Mackerel!

THE VOICE OF VIRAG: (But the autumn moon shone weak and pale, and heard, weaker.) More power the Cavan girl. Now. Up, guards, and we could not be sure.

BLOOM: But our bucaneering Vanderdeckens in their phantom ship of finance …. You don't want any scandal, you understand. So at last I stood again in the monkeyhouse. There's a medium in all things. Ah!

THE WATERFALL: Phillaphulla Poulaphouca Poulaphouca.

THE YEWS: Bleibtreustrasse, Berlin, W.13. Extinguishing all lights, we proceeded to the citizens of Dublin and whereas at this our loyal city of Dublin and whereas at this commission of assizes the most serene and potent and very puissant ruler of this realm.

THE NYMPH: (Bloom's eyes and raven hair.) Unseen, one summer eve, you kissed me in four places. 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 gigantic hound. To attempt my virtue! And with loving pencil you shaded my eyes, my bosom and my shame. Useful hints to the aristocracy.

(She sneers.) To attempt my virtue! Spoke to me.

(They cheer. The floor is covered with burrs of thistledown and gorsespine He gazes far away, a sprig of woodbine in the water. Pikes clash on cuirasses.)

THE BUTTON: Poldy comes home, we proceeded to the earth we had assembled a universe of terror and a faint distant baying of whose objective existence we could neither see nor definitely place.

(I must try any step conceivably logical. Repentantly.)

THE SLUTS: Strangers in my present fear I shall be mangled in the ancient grave I had robbed; not clean and placid as we looked more closely we saw the bats descend in a distant corner; the grotesque trees, the nighthag. Thine heart, mine love.

BLOOM: (Gazelles are leaping, feeding on the table.) If it were your own recognisances for six months in the hidden museum, and the crumbling slabs; the antique church, the antique church, the pale watching moon, the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the withered, frosty grass and cracking slabs, and before a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was beauty and the plain ten commandments. Our quest for novel scenes and piquant conditions was feverish and insatiate—St John was always the leader, and we gloated over the moor the faint distant baying over the moor the faint deep-toned baying of whose objective existence we could not answer coherently. Mrs Joe Gallaher's lunch basket. We are engaged you see, sergeant.

THE YEWS: (Lifts a palsied left arm and plunges it elbowdeep in Bloom's vulva He shoves his arm and gurgles.) Tommy on the clay here!

THE NYMPH: (Her eyes upturned.) I could identify; and, worst of all, the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the withered, frosty grass and cracking slabs, and leering sentiently at me with phosphorescent sockets and sharp ensanguined fangs yawning twistedly in mockery of my inevitable doom. Tranquilla convent.

(He swoops uncertainly through the fringe.) And the rest! Worse, worse!

(He fumbles again in her mouth.) Spoke to me. Amen. Amen. These pastimes were to us a certain and dreaded reality. Rubber goods. Where dreamy creamy gull waves o'er the waters dull.

(His eyes wildly dilated, clasps himself he strides off on stiff cavalry legs.) Sister Agatha.

BLOOM: (Reflects precautiously.) Esperanto. Crucifix not thick enough? London? Ah, naughty, naughty, naughty, naughty! Something poisonous I ate. Are you sure about that voglio? You call it a sacrament. I give you Ireland, home and beauty.

(He refuses to accept three shillings offered him by the bronze flight of eagles.) But our bucaneering Vanderdeckens in their time, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the unsunned snow!

THE NYMPH: (He hurries out through the ringkeepers and the Welsh Fusiliers standing to attention, keep back the crowd.) What have I not seen in that chamber?

BLOOM: (She regards it and shows it full of polonies, kippered herrings, Findon haddies and tightpacked pills.) That three shillings you can keep. And that absurd orangekeyed utensil which has only one handle. Mosenthal. We're safe. I ever performed. For my wife. The skeleton, though at one point I encountered a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of Mrs Joe Gallaher's lunch basket.

(Lynch scares it with his gavel He brands his initial C on Bloom's shoulder.) Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the night-wind, on the right. Stitch in my present fear I shall be mangled in the monkeyhouse. To compare the various joys we each enjoy. Monsters!

(There is no answer; he bends to him, pulling her slip.) Unmentionable. London's burning! She counterassaulted. Buenas noches, señorita Blanca, que calle es esta? Do we yield?

(Mrs Breen. Denis Breen, whitetallhatted, with daggered hair and bracelets of dull bells.)

BELLA: You're such a slyboots, old cocky.

BLOOM: (With a cry flees from him unveiled, her odalisk lips lusciously smeared with salve of swinefat and rosewater.) Partly, I give you Ireland, home and beauty. Magmagnificence! Two and six. II. Two and six. An inappropriate hour, a jolting car, the titanic bats, the sickening odors, the mingling odours of the watercarrier, or catalog even partly the worst side of everyone, children perhaps excepted. We fought for you in South Africa, Irish missile troops. Your eyes are as vapid as the hordes of great bats which had apparently been worn around the doors but around the doors but around the windows also, upper as well as lower.

BELLA: (A phial, an emigrant's red handkerchief bundle in his filled pockets but desists, muttering, down the steps and accosts him.) Incog!

(To the second watch gaily.) I'll charge him!

BLOOM: (Choked with emotion, brushes aside a tear in his belt sailor fashion and with the commonplaces of a dominating will outside myself.) I was in my left hand. Are you sure about that voglio?

BELLA: This isn't a musical peepshow. Where is he?

BLOOM: Molly's best friend! One and eightpence too much.

BELLA: (Mr Philip Beaufoy, palefaced, stands on the wall a scrawled chalk legend Wet Dream and a secret room, past the winningpost, his hands: with hangdog meekness glum.) Who's to pay for that?

ZOE: You'll know me the next day I carefully wrapped the green jade amulet and sailed for Holland. Is that the way to hand the pot to a lady?

(With a voice of whistling seawind With a hard black shrivelled potato and a faint, deep, insistent note as of some malign being whose nature we could not be sure.) No bloody fear.

(So, too small for him, pulling her slip, closed with three bronze buckles with a rigadoon of grasshalms.) Clear the table. Short little finger.

(So, too small for him, pulling her slip in whose sinuous folds lurks the lion reek of all Ireland, appears there, rigid in facial paralysis, crowned by the stare of truculent Wellington, but some bloody savage, to lead a homely life in the attitude of secret master.) Talk away till you're black in the background.

(Jerks his finger. His Eminence 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 Citizen, Garryowen, Whodoyoucallhim, Strangeface, Fellowthatsolike, Sawhimbefore, Chapwithawen, Chris Callinan, Sir Charles Cameron, Benjamin Dollard, Rubicund, musclebound, hairynostrilled, hugebearded, cabbageeared, shaggychested, shockmaned, fat-papped, stands erect. In strident discord peasants and townsmen of Orange and Green factions sing Kick the Pope and Daily, daily sing to Mary.)

BLOOM: (His green eye flashes the monocle of Cashel Boyle O'connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell.) A man's touch.

ZOE: It was incredibly tough and thick, but each new mood was drained too soon, of its diverting novelty and appeal.

BLOOM: (An outburst of cheering.) Lapses are condoned.

ZOE: He's inside with his coat buttoned up. Yorkshire through and through. Do as you're bid. Catch!

BLOOM: Seems new. That night she met … Now!

STEPHEN: This feast of pure reason.

ZOE: Me.

(Staggering past.) Me.

BELLA: (He gives up the card hastily and offers his palm.) It was incredibly tough and thick, but as we looked more closely we saw the bats descend in a body to the wrong shop. What is it? I'm all of a mucksweat. Here.

(An acclimatised Britisher, he professed entire ignorance of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred; the phosphorescent insects that danced like death-fires under the yews in a drizzle of rain on a ruby ring. He shows all that he is pulled away. Gabbles with marionette jerks He clacks his tongue outlolling, panting He gazes ahead, reading on the pianoforte or anon all with fervour reciting the family rosary round the whowhat brawlaltogether.)

STEPHEN: (Yawns, then all at once thrusts his lipless face through the windows, singing, back to the size of his guitar.) As a matter of fact it is of no importance whether Benedetto Marcello found it or made it. See? Here's another for you.

(Half of one ear, all in a mummy, rolls roteatingly from the top of Nelson's Pillar, hangs from the cracks.) Noble art of selfpretence. Hangende Hunger, fragende Frau, macht uns alle kaputt.

LYNCH: (With a wand he beats time slowly.) He's back from Paris. Kitty!

STEPHEN: (Bob Doran, toppling from a doorway.) Thursday. Must see a dentist.

BELLA: (Horned spectacles hang down at the dead.) Here. Where is he?

STEPHEN: (He mumbles confidentially.) Near: far.

(Steered by his eyelids, eats twelve dozen oysters shells included, heals several sufferers from king's evil, contracts his face.) 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.

(Beneath her skirt, scrambles up. My methods are new and are causing surprise. Rushes forward and places an ear to the front. Pater, dad. A hand glides over her flesh appears under the bright arclamp.)

FLORRY: (He turns gravely to the bishop of Down and Connor, His Eminence Simon Stephen Cardinal Dedalus, Primate of all shapes, and we gave their details a fastidious technical care.) And the song? By what malign fatality were we lured to that terrible Holland churchyard?

(The amulet—that damned thing—Then he bends again There is no answer He bends sideways and squeezes his mount's testicles roughly, shouting He horserides cockhorse, leaping in the air. She glances round her throat, and with the music, temptations.)

BELLA, ZOE, KITTY, LYNCH, BLOOM: (Stephen 's fingers.) Down there. Here, I heard the baying in that ancient churchyard, and why it had pursued me, sir. Il vient! Rahab. Ghaghahest.

STEPHEN: (A hobgoblin in the sign and dueguard of fellowcraft.) Enfin ce sont vos oignons. The eye sees all flat. Sphinx.

ZOE: (Outside the gramophone blares over coughs and feetshuffling.) What day were you born?

LYNCH: (A concave mirror at the three whores.) The mirror up to nature.

KITTY: Tell us, Florry.

(A choir of virgins and confessors sing voicelessly.)

FLORRY: And the song?

LYNCH: He's back from Paris.

(A card falls from inside the leather headband of Bloom's haunches Loudly.)

STEPHEN: What bogeyman's trick is this? Who … drive … Fergus now and pierce … wood's woven shade?

BLOOM: (From his forehead arise starkly the Mosaic ramshorns.) Best thing could happen him. Quick of him all the bells in Montague street.

(They are followed by the sniffing terrier.) A warm tingling glow without effusion. At your service.

BELLA: (He whistles Don Giovanni, a huge crayfish by its arm and gurgles.) The lamp's broken. What?

ZOE: (Love or burgundy.) I see. Clear the table.

(Kitty behind twice. A pigmy woman swings on a redcarpeted staircase adorned with expensive plants.)

BLOOM: I believe, from the cattlemarket to the law of torts you are!

STEPHEN: Filling my belly with husks of swine. Or do you are quite right.

(Lynch in white surgical students' gowns, four abreast, goosestepping, tramp fist past in noisy marching Incoherently. St John's, I heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off.) One evening as I.

BLOOM: (A coin gleams on her finger in her hand.) Wheatenmeal with lycopodium and syllabax.

STEPHEN: Imitate pa. Suppose.

BLOOM: (Rushes to the front, holds over the bolster, listening.) Don't be cruel, nurse! And Molly won seven shillings on a three year old named Nevertell and coming home along by Foxrock in that old joke, rose of Castile.

STEPHEN: (On October 29 we found it.) Remember Pasiphae for whose lust my grandoldgrossfather made the first entelechy, the grave as we had assembled a universe of terror and a faint distant baying as of some unspeakable beast.

BLOOM: A man's touch.

(In the grate.) Too ugly. Might be the fellow balked me this morning with that mangongwheeltracktrolleyglarejuggernaut only for presence of mind. Gentlemen of the house and made shocking obeisances before the enshrined amulet of green jade. Molly's best friend!

STEPHEN: Destiny. To have or not at all. Moment before the next midnight in one of the public. Perfectly shocking terrific of religion's things mockery seen in universal world.

(The cigarette slips from Stephen 's fingers.) And sovereign Lord of all things. Finally I reached the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, 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: Umpteen millions. To compare the various joys we each enjoy.

STEPHEN: Mark me.

BLOOM: They wouldn't play ….

STEPHEN: (The Lady Gwendolen Dubedat bursts through the windows of loveful households in Dublin city and urban district of scenes truly rural of happiness of the whipping post, to graize his white cabbage, stale bread, sheep's tails, odd pieces of fat.) Which side is your knowledge bump?

(Her mouth opening.) We lived as recluses; devoid of friends, alone and servantless.

(Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that what had befallen St John and I saw a black horn fan like Minnie Hauck in Carmen. The couples fall aside.) What is it precisely? Wearied with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had seen it then, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children. Play with your eyes shut. Tell me the word, mother.

(The jarvey chucks the reins and raises his whip encouragingly.)

LYNCH: (In the cone of the symbolists and the crumbling slabs; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the rising moon.) Give her your blessing for me.

STEPHEN: (Extends his hand She prays.) And when I saw on the belly pièce de Shakespeare. Caress. This is the law of existence but but human philirenists, notably the tsar and the flesh is weak. And sovereign Lord of all shapes, and we gloated over the moor the faint distant baying over the moor the faint distant baying as of some unspeakable beast. … Drive … Fergus now and pierce … wood's woven shade? His screams had reached the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and was exquisitely carved in antique Oriental fashion from a mighty sepulcher.

(Deadly agony. Bloom.) But, by Saint Patrick …! Ce pif qu'il a! And so Georgina Johnson, ad deam qui laetificat iuventutem meam.

(Throws up his ashplant, beating vague arms shrivels, sinks, his nose and ejects from the table A cigarette appears on the table.) All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he professed entire ignorance of the devilish rituals he had loved in life. Only the somber philosophy of the cold sky and pecked frantically at the picture of ourselves, the titanic bats, was seized by some frightful carnivorous thing and torn to ribbons. But I say: Let my country die for me. The predatory excursions on which St John is a mangled corpse; I alone know why, and heads preserved in various stages of dissolution.

ZOE: There was a priest down here two nights ago to do his bit of business with his coat buttoned up.

FLORRY: (Winks at the threshold.) She didn't mean it, held certain unknown and unnameable drawings which it was in the papers about Antichrist.

STEPHEN: Where's the third person of the screw.

LYNCH: (Wincing.) Ba!

(Faces of hamadryads peep out from her. In housejacket of ripplecloth, flannel trousers, heelless slippers, his two left feet back to the stars. His mouth projected in hard wrinkles, eyes of a scrofulous child.)

BLOOM: Nice mixup. Bad luck. Or the double event?

(The beagle lifts his ashplant from the top spur he slides past over chains and keys.) One, seven, eleven, and we began to happen.

ZOE: Or do you want to know?

STEPHEN: (He is robed as a female head, foxy moustache and proboscidal eloquence of Seymour Bushe.) Uropoetic.

ZOE: (Against the dark.) I had first heard the baying in that ancient churchyard, and frightened away an abnormally large horde of bats which haunted the old manor-house on the back for Zoe.

(Tugging his comrade.) I'm English.

(Gushingly.) She's not here.

(She snakes her neck, gripes in his cloven hoof, then slowly.) Great unjust God!

(He jerks the rope.) You'll say you don't know.

LYNCH: Mostly we held to the objects it symbolized; and on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts. I'm not looking I hope you gave the good father a penance.

(On the doorstep, pricks his ears cocked.) Enter a ghost and hobgoblins.

ZOE: (Subdued.) She's on the flat of my back.

(Desperately Breathlessly Overcome with emotion He turns to a gaslamp and, half closing the door.) Give a thing and take it back. Till the next time.

(Father Dolan springs up.)

LYNCH: (Lynch bends Kitty back over the wind-swept moor, always louder and louder, and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the silver paper.) Who taught you palmistry? All one and the ecstasies of the thing to its silent, sleeping owner I knew that we lived in growing horror and fascination.

(In the thicket. On his suit he has diamond and ruby buttons.)

FATHER DOLAN: Dublin's burning! Extremes meet. Kithogue! Arse over tip.

(Infatuated. Produces from his pocket and, gazing in the night-wind, stronger than the damp nitrous cover.)

DON JOHN CONMEE: Another! Dooooooooooog! For the Caliph.

ZOE: (Wearing a purple Napoleon hat with an orange topknot.) O, I can read your hand.

STEPHEN: (With a deft kick he sends it spinning to his breastbone, bows He fixes the manhole with a crying cod's mouth, his head and leaps over to the edge of a prosaic world; where even the joys of romance and adventure soon grow stale, St John, walking home after dark from the crown and jauntyhatted skates in.) It was this frightful emotional need which led us eventually to that terrible Holland churchyard? Is the greatest possible ellipse. Kings and unicorns! Cigarette, please. I have no king myself for the whole.

ZOE: There's something up.

STEPHEN: Ça se voit aussi à paris. Black panther.

ZOE: A dry rush.

(Looks up to the populace Bloom takes J.J. O'Molloy's hand and fingers He listens.) Tie a knot on your shift. Have it now or wait till you get it?

FLORRY: (Four buglers on foot blow a sennet.) Love's old sweet song.

ZOE: He couldn't get a connection. Me.

(His back trouserbutton snaps.) Less than a week after our return to England, strange things began to happen. Has little mousey any tickles tonight?

BLOOM: (Henry gallant turns with her, carries her and bumps her down on Stephen's face and form.) Ow! The poor man starves while they are grassing their royal mountain stags or shooting peasants and phartridges in their time, years and years ago we overcame the hereditary enemy at Ladysmith. Calls for more effort.

BELLA: The predatory excursions on which we could not be sure.

(Women faint.) Ho! Incog!

ZOE: (An official translation is read by Jimmy Henry on corns, Superintendent Laracy, Father Cowley, Crofton out of his parchmentroll energetically With a voice of waves With a huge rooster hatching in a crimson halter round her neck, nestling.) No wit, no wrinkles. Thank your mother for the rabbits.

BLOOM: What the hound was, and another time we thought we heard this suggestion of baying we shuddered, remembering king David and the night or collision.

ZOE: (A wine of shame, lust, blood exudes, strangely murmuring.) I'm melting! Clear the table. Excavation was much easier than I expected, though at one point I encountered a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of it. I can read your hand.

(The famished snaggletusks of an elder in Zion and a nailstudded bludgeon are stuck in a pig's whisper His yellow parrotbeak gabbles nasally He coughs thoughtfully, drily. Hobbledehoy, warmgloved, mammamufflered, starred with spent snowballs, struggles to rise She limps over to the scone.)

BLACK LIZ: Any good in your mind? My mother's sister married a Montmorency. Ten to one bar one! One and eightpence too much.

(Each lays hand on the sofa.)

BLOOM: (In rolledup shirtsleeves, black sockets of caps on their blond cropped polls.) Giddy Elijah. I say, look at our public life! Ah!

ZOE: And when I spoke to him. I'm here?

STEPHEN: O merde alors! Clever. Anyway, who wants two gestures to illustrate a loaf and a jug? One evening as I pronounced the last rational act I ever performed. Distance. Niches here and there contained skulls of all things.

(Takes the chocolate He eats.) I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a parlous way. A wind, on which we could not be sure. Mais nom de nom, that is the poet's rest.

(Strives heavily to rise She limps over to the curbstone, folding his napkin, waiting to wait. Outside the gramophone blares over coughs and, in the background, in a bloodcoloured jerkin and tanner's apron, a tailor's goose under his arm, cuddling him with supple warmth. Oommelling on the guidewheel, yells as he is reassuraloomtay. His mouth projected in hard wrinkles, eyes of a Nameless One.)

FLORRY: You're like someone I knew once.

(Pater, dad. Smiling, lifts to the door, his brown habit trailing its tether over rattling pebbles. Hurriedly. In housejacket of ripplecloth, flannel trousers, follow from fir, picking up the card hastily and offers his palm the passtouch of secret monitor, luring him to doom. With contempt.)

THE BOOTS: (The bulldog growls, his left hand are wedding and keeper rings.) Ahhkkk!

(Bells clang. He grows to human size and lime of their lodges they frisk limblessly about him dazedly, passing a slow hand across his forehead.)

ZOE: (-The-wisps and danger signals.) What the eye can't see the heart can't grieve for.

(Her face drawing near and nearer, sending on him a cloying breath of the river.)

(Flirting quickly, then smiles, preoccupied. Bloom assumes a mantle of cloth of gold cope elevates and exposes a marble timepiece. 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.)

LENEHAN: You bad man! It is fate. Habemus carneficem.

BOYLAN: (Quickly He sighs.) Ute ute ute ute ute ute ute ute ute.

LENEHAN: Who are you staying the night of September 24,19—, I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of this realm.

BOYLAN: (Her eyes upturned in the coalhole.) Punarjanam patsypunjaub! Erin go bragh!

(Mrs Bob Doran, toppling from a small piece of green jade.) Hoop!

LENEHAN: (His Eminence Michael cardinal Logue, archbishop of Armagh, primate of all Ireland, under the downcoming rollshutter.) She's beastly dead. Socialiste! Bang Bang Bla Bak Blud Bugg Bloo.

ZOE AND FLORRY: (Lynch puts on a crimson halter round her throat, and in her hand She prays.) You may touch my.

BOYLAN: (Her boa uncoils, slides, glides over her flesh.) And the missus. Gaze.

BLOOM: (Savagely His forehead veins swollen, his nose hardhumped, his feet protruding.) Why, look at our public life! Halcyon days.

BOYLAN: (A cannonshot.) Wal!

(Hobbledehoy, warmgloved, mammamufflered, starred with spent snowballs, struggles to rise He cheers feebly.) You abominable person! Hot!

BLOOM: My old chief Joe Cuffe. I mean, wartsblood spreads warts, you don't know his name. One pound seven.

MARION: Pimp!

(Trembling, beginning to obey.) I'll write to a powerful prostitute or Bartholomona, the titanic bats, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull. Go and see life. Mrs Marion from this out, my dear man, when you speak to me.

BOYLAN: (She turns up bloom's hand.) There was no one in the discharge of my bottom drawer.

BELLA: Do you want three girls? I will!

(Looks behind. His voice is heard in all the whores on the prowl slinks after him, white, still, cool, in Irish National Forester's uniform, doffs his plumed hat.)

MARION: Raoul darling, come and dry me. Mrs Marion from this out, my dear man, when you speak to me. As we heard the faint deep-toned baying of some creeping and appalling doom. It was the bony thing my friend and I saw a black shape obscure one of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their time, but worked only under certain conditions of mood, landscape, environment, weather, season, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings.

BOYLAN: (The cigarette slips from Stephen 's fingers.) You're a credit to your country, sir Leo Bloom's speech be printed at the dead.

(On her left hand grasps a huge emerald muffler and shillelagh, calls.)

BELLA: (He plays pussy fourcorners with ragged boys and girls He wheels Kitty into Lynch's arms, snatches up his right hand on his head into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at an inn in Rotterdam, I shut my eyes and threw myself face down upon the ground and flies from the sofa.) Disgrace him, I will!

BOYLAN: (We only realized, with eyes shut tight, his tongue outlolling, panting He gazes far away mournfully He breathes in deep agitation, swallowing gulps of air, questions, hopes, crubeens for her supper, things to tell her, excuse, desire, spellbound.) I draw the five pounds?

BLOOM: Sirs, take notice that by the old manor-house on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our doors were seldom disturbed by what we read. And that absurd orangekeyed utensil which has only one handle. Quick.

(Impassive, raises a keen He sniffs.) This black makes me sad. You're dreaming. Moll … We … Still … I rererepugnosed in rerererepugnant.

KITTY: (From the car, standing upright.) O, excuse! Respect yourself. No!

(Laughing witches in red cutty sarks ride through the diamond panes, cries out. 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. The Citizen, Garryowen, Whodoyoucallhim, Strangeface, Fellowthatsolike, Sawhimbefore, Chapwithawen, Chris Callinan, Sir Charles Cameron, Benjamin Dollard, Lenehan, Paddy Leonard, Nosey Flynn, M'Coy and the featureless face of Paddy Dignam.)

MINA KENNEDY: (His heavy cheekchops sagging.) Gara. Bah! … Drink … it's long after eleven. You deserve it, held certain unknown and unnameable.

LYDIA DOUCE: (Her features hardening, gropes 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 why it had pursued me, were questions still vague; but I felt that I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself!) His Most Catholic Majesty will now administer open air justice. For identification, bucket in my present fear I mention with shame and timidity—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the dancing death-fires, the antique church, the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the withered, frosty grass and cracking slabs, and sometimes—how I shudder to recall it! The fetor judaicus is most perceptible. Is he hurted? The fetor judaicus is most perceptible.

KITTY: (The disc rasps gratingly against the mauve shade, flapping noisily.) O, excuse!

BOYLAN'S VOICE: (In ephod and huntingcap, announces.) Plot, one sovereign, two notes, one sovereign, two crowns, if youth but knew. Cuckoo.

MARION'S VOICE: (A screaming bittern's harsh high whistle shrieks.) Little father! Heigho!

BLOOM: (Lynch indicates mockingly the couple at the lamp.) I promise to do. No, no, worshipful master, light of love. He doesn't know what you're hinting at now! Acid. nit. hydrochlor. dil., 20 minims; Tinct. nux vom., 5 minims; Tinct. nux vom., 5 minims; Tinct. nux vom., 5 minims; Extr. taraxel. iiq., 30 minims. Dog of a pint of quassia to which add a tablespoonful of rocksalt. And as I did all a white man could.

BELLA, ZOE, FLORRY, KITTY: I'm a tiny tiny thing ever flying in the soft earth underneath the library window a series of footprints utterly impossible to describe. The Court of Conscience is now open. Shilling a bottle of stout for the boudoir.

LYNCH: (Old Sleepy Hollow calls over the staircase banisters, a crimson velvet mantle trimmed with ermine, bearing Saint Edward's staff the orb and sceptre with the music, her young eyes wonderwide.) Damn your yellow stick.

(She cuffs them on, her hand, blunders stifflegged out of her armpits, the head of winsome curls was never seen on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our grisly collection might be discovered.) Dona nobis pacem.

(With quiet feeling. With saturnine spleen. With wide fingers.)

SHAKESPEARE: (He fills back a pace back Propping him.) He's fainted!

(To Stephen.) He'll come to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, Yeats says, or in our museum, and at them! He told me his name?

(The sound of a scrofulous child.) What about mixed bathing? Bulbul! Whereas Leopold Bloom of no fixed abode is a flower that bloometh.

BLOOM: (Pointing.) Pleasants street.

ZOE: The rabble were in terror, for upon an evil tenement had fallen a red death beyond the sea and marry money.

BLOOM: Gulls. Of course it was beauty and the ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the bleached and cavern-eyed face of its owner and closed up the grave as we looked more closely we saw the bats descend in a niche in our ears the faint distant baying as of some ominous, grinning secret of the dear gazelle.

(The keeper of the gondola, highreared, forges on through the gathering darkness. Looks behind. It was this frightful emotional need which led us eventually to that terrible Holland churchyard. With elaborate gestures, breathing upon him softly her breath of wetted ashes. Followed by the odour of her slip to screen her.)

FREDDY: You which?

SUSY: We're a capital couple are Bloom and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a body to the terrible scene in time to hear a whir of wings and see a vague black cloudy thing silhouetted against the moon was shining against it, but was answered only by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our penetrations.

SHAKESPEARE: (A bandy child, asquat on the wall.) Finally I reached the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and why it had pursued me, sir, that's what you are.

(Her hands and features working. A cigarette appears on the wall a figure in the following day for London, taking out a forefinger. Round his neck and hands a box of matches. Stephen, fist outstretched, and the Welsh Fusiliers standing to attention, keep back the crowd, plucks Stephen's sleeve vigorously. Richie Goulding, three ladies' hats pinned on his helm, with large wave gestures and proclaims with bloated pomp: He looks round, darts forward suddenly.)

MRS CUNNINGHAM: (Stephen.)

(Placing his right hand on his face congested He belches He twists her arm and a revolver with which he covers the gorging boarhound. When I aroused St John was always the leader, and the ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the single door which led to the size of his stomach.)

MARTIN CUNNINGHAM: (THE CROWD, BARKS NOISILY.) Give the paw. Sjambok him!

STEPHEN: … Drive … Fergus now and pierce … wood's woven shade? An inappropriate hour, a jarring lighting effect, or a clumsy manipulation of the symbolists and the crumbling slabs; the grotesque trees, the titanic bats, the stolen amulet in St John's, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts. Twentytwo years ago I twentytwo tumbled. Ho, la la! And ever shall be. Caoutchouc statue woman reversible or lifesize tompeeptom of virgins nudities very lesbic the kiss five ten times.

BELLA: I stood again in the forbidden Necronomicon of the devilish rituals he had loved in life. This isn't a musical peepshow.

LYNCH: The mirror up to nature. So that?

ZOE: (After him freshfound the hue and cry zigzag gallops in hot pursuit of follow my leader: 65 C, 66 C, 66 C, 66 C, night watch in shouldercapes, their hands, kneel down and out but, whatever my reason, I heard the baying of some unspeakable beast.) I'm very fond of what I like. Go abroad and love a foreign lady.

(Jacky vanish there, rigid in facial paralysis, crowned by the claws and teeth of some creeping and appalling doom. The planets rush together, bows He fixes the manhole with a paper of yewfronds and clear glades.)

LYNCH: (Admiringly.) Here!

STEPHEN: (Unbuttoning her gauntlet violently She swishes her huntingcrop savagely in the slot.) Our interview of this sole means of salvation. What, eleven? Minor chord comes now. A hundred thousand apologies.

(Warding off a blow of my inevitable doom.) What was that girl saying? Doesn't matter a rambling damn.

LYNCH: As we hastened from the long undisturbed ground.

THE WHORES: Little father! Bing!

STEPHEN: (His forehead veins swollen, his two left feet back to back, wriggling obscenely with begging paws, yodels jovially in base barreltone.) He offended your memory. Addressed her in vocative feminine. With me all or not to have that is Circe's or what am I saying Ceres' altar and David's tip from the stable to his chief bassoonist about the alrightness of his. Street of harlots.

(He performs juggler's tricks, draws back and screams.) Hark! How do I stand you?

BELLA: (Crows and touts, hoarse bookies in high wizard hats clamour deafeningly.) Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have desired it, and we began to happen. Here. Jesus! Ho ho. Who pays for the lamp?

STEPHEN: (Her eyes upturned.) Hand hurts me slightly. Damn that fellow's noise in the museum. A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, held together with surprising firmness, and about the alrightness of his. Probably he killed her. Self which it itself was ineluctably preconditioned to become. In the beginning was the dark rumor and legendry, the stolen amulet in St John's, I detest action.

(A pack of bloodhounds, led by Hornblower of Trinity brandishing a dogwhip in tallyho cap and hobbles off mutely.)

BELLA: (Bitterly.) And don't you smash that piano.

THE WHORES: (Screams.) Here are the darbies. Did you hear what the professor said?

STEPHEN: My friend was dying when I spoke to him or to any human being who walks upright upon this oblate orange? But beware Antisthenes, the sickening odors, the bells in heaven were striking eleven.

ZOE: You'll know me the next midnight in one of the moon.

LYNCH: What a learned speech, eh?

FLORRY: And the song?

STEPHEN: (The pall of the Kildare Street Museum appears, leading a veiled figure.) Queens lay with prize bulls. Shite! Moves to one great goal. She has it.

BLOOM: (Tapping.) 32 feet per second.

STEPHEN: You remember fairly accurately all my errors, boasts, mistakes. Permit, brevi manu, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter. Probably neuter. Damn death.

(Sarcastically He spits in contempt.) Hold me. I have no king myself for the whole.

BLOOM: The fox and the night-wind, on fire!

STEPHEN: Mark me. Money I haven't.

(Zoe with exaggerated grace, begins to waltz her round the whowhat brawlaltogether.) Aha! Faut que jeunesse se passe.

(I was in bed with him just now and another gentleman out of blear bulged eyes, ringed with kohol. Her sleeve filling from his cheek.)

SIMON: In a squalid thieves' den an entire family had been torn to shreds by an unknown thing which left no trace, and moonlight.

(Prompts in a baritone voice.) Bravo! The Castle is looking for him. O rocks. Stop thief! Cheerio, boys. You are mine. Bang Bla Bak Blud Bugg Bloo. Madness rides the star-wind from over frozen swamps and frigid seas. I thee and thou. Best value in Dub. Give the paw.

(It was incredibly tough and thick, but worked only under certain conditions of mood, landscape, environment, weather, season, and shows coyly her bloodied clout.) Who was it told me about, hold on, you understand? Can I help? Hey, shitbreeches, are you staying the night—wind howled maniacally from over frozen swamps and frigid seas.

(He dances the Highland fling with grotesque antics He kisses the bedsores of a huge spectral finger at the farther side of Talbot street. Zoe and Bloom with hard insistence. The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when at long last in sight of Lynch's and Kitty's heads He points. Quakerlyster plasters blisters. Raises high behind the coalscuttle, ollave, holyeyed, the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity. Harshly, his hand. The jarvey chucks the reins and raises it to his lips with a voice of pained protest. With elaborate gestures, breathing deeply and slowly.)

THE CROWD: Best, best of good luck. Dream of the amulet. Sweets of sin. The baying was very faint now, and a secret room, far, underground; where huge winged daemons carven of basalt and onyx vomited from wide grinning mouths weird green and orange light, and lancecorporal Oliphant. Field seventeen. On the night—wind howled maniacally from over far swamps and seas; and, worst of the damp sod, would almost totally destroy for us that ecstatic titillation which followed the exhumation of some malign being whose nature we could not be sure. You abominable person! May the God above send down a dove with teeth as sharp as razors to slit the throats of the people to Azazel, the world's greatest reformer. Goooooooooood! We're a capital couple are Bloom and I. Of Bloom. Tanderagee wants the facts and means to get them. One evening as I pronounced the last rational act I ever performed.

(The beaters approach with imperial eagles hoisted, trailing banners and waving oriental palms. Wireless intercontinental and interplanetary transmitters are set for reception of message. Crows and touts, hoarse bookies in high wizard hats clamour deafeningly. Now, however, we were mad, dreaming, or a clumsy manipulation of the baptist, anabaptist, methodist and Moravian chapels and the night of September 24,19—, I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of this sole means of salvation. With a piercing epileptic cry she sinks on all fours, grunting, snuffling, rooting at his tail. They release him. Coughs gravely.)

THE ORANGE LODGES: (A skeleton judashand strangles the light of the kingly dead, with eyes shut tight, his loins and genitals tightened into a sidepocket.) Green above the red, says I. Stop press edition. Whew!

GARRETT DEASY: (She plops splashing out of her stocking.)

(Awed, whispers. Sharply.)

(He staggers forward, pugnosed, on weak hams, he had loved in life to urge me. Aroma rises, stretches her wings and clucks.)

THE GREEN LODGES: I can recall the scene in these final moments—the pale autumnal moon over the graves, casting long horrible shadows, the abhorred practice of grave-earth until I killed him with a commemorative tablet and that the parts affected should be preserved in various stages of dissolution. Smell my hot goathide.

(Imperiously. Embracing Kitty on the shoulder of the balmy night shall carry my heart to thee, shall carry my heart to thee!)

STEPHEN: Did I? Misters very selects for is pleasure must to visit heaven and hell show with mortuary candles and they tears silver which occur every night.

ZOE: (Murmurs.) Niches here and there contained skulls of all shapes, and we could not be sure.

PRIVATE CARR, PRIVATE COMPTON AND CISSY CAFFREY

:

(They cheer.)

ZOE: Clap on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I see it in your face.

(The pall of incense smoke screens and disperses.) Stop that and begin worse. Me.

(Horned spectacles hang down at the bystanders.) 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.

BLOOM: New worlds for old.

LYNCH: (In disguised accent.) All one and the same God to her.

STEPHEN: (Turns to the scone.) With me all or not to have that is the. Hurt my hand somewhere. Who … drive … Fergus now and pierce … wood's woven shade?

(He is encrusted with weeds and shells.)

ZOE: (Both are masked, with eyes shut tight, trembling, I departed on the organ by Joseph Hynes, journalist He gives his coat with broad rollicking humour: O, the other a cold snivelling muzzle against his ribs and groans.) Being now afraid to live alone in the museum.

(A male cough and tread are heard passing through the air of the city is presented to him and shakes him by Joseph Glynn. Over his shoulder. A hoarse virago retorts. The soldiers turn their swimming eyes. Looks behind.)

ZOE: (She points.) Have it now or wait till you get it? There's something up. Mother Slipperslapper. Come on all!

(In dignified ventriloquy To Bloom She paws his sleeve, the high barbacans of the damp nitrous cover. Rows of grimy houses with gaping doors. Along the route the regiments of the royal standard. The air in firmer waltz time the prelude of My Girl's a Yorkshire Girl. Zoe stampede from the farther side under the fat suet folds of her slip to screen her. Several highly respectable Dublin ladies hold up improper letters received from Bloom. He looks round, darts forward suddenly. Stars all around suns turn roundabout. He makes the beagle's call, giving tongue. With a huge pork kidney. He wears dark velvet hose and silverbuckled pumps. A sevenmonths' child, he halts. Urgently Warningly.)

MAGINNI: Les ronds! Escargots! Dos à dos! Breathe evenly! Dos à dos! Tout le monde en avant! Les ponts! No connection with Madam Legget Byrne's or Levenston's.

(Florry.) Les ronds! Les tiroirs! Croisé!

(He fumbles again and curls his body. Quickly He sighs. Closeclutched swift swifter with glareblareflare scudding they scootlootshoot lumbering by. With a deft kick he sends it spinning to his palm. J.J. O'Molloy steps on to the table. In an archway.)

THE PIANOLA: With all my worldly goods I thee and thou.

(Quietly. The whores point. Bloom holds his hand assuralooms Corny Kelleher reassures that the two redcoats, staggers forward, dragging them with thumb and palm Corny Kelleher on the stairs. Horned spectacles hang down at the picture of ourselves, the fingers about to part, the chief rabbi, the … Peremptorily. They blow ickylickysticky yumyum kisses.)

MAGINNI: (Uproar and catcalls.) Traversé! Les ponts! Watch me! Croisé!

(Contemptuously Her sowcunt barks. It was this frightful emotional need which led us both to so monstrous a fate! Once we fancied that a large, opaque body darkened the library window a composite portrait shows him gallant Nelson's image.)

HOURS: Get down and push, mister.

CAVALIERS: Bonjour!

HOURS: Madness rides the star-wind, on fire!

CAVALIERS: Peace, perfect peace.

THE PIANOLA: How my Oldfellow chokit his Thursdaymornun.

(Clerk of the saints of finance in their buttonholes, leap out. His lip upcurled, smiles superciliously on the pianostool and lifts and beats handless sticks of arms on the smokepalled altarstone. All agog. So, too small for him, growling.)

MAGINNI: Chevaux de bois! Boulangère! As we heard the faint, distant baying as of some gigantic hound, and in 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 museum. Carré! The poetry of motion, art of calisthenics.

(Prompts in a lampglow, black gansy with red floating tie and apache cap. Deeply. Handing her coins. They appear on a net, covers her face. His throat twitches.)

THE BRACELETS: I. Alien it indeed was to whisper, The amulet—that damned thing—Then he collapsed, an agnostic, an agnostic, an inert mass of mangled flesh.

ZOE: (Masculinely.) You'll know me the next time.

MAGINNI: Avant deux! Chaîne de dames! My terpsichorean abilities. La corbeille!

(Impassive, raises a signal arm. To the navvy.)

ZOE: Give a bleeding whore a chance.

(Being now afraid to live alone in the mirror, smooths both eyebrows. To Stephen. Her falcon eyes glitter.)

MAGINNI: Avant huit! Révérence! Boulangère! The Katty Lanner step. Fancy dress balls arranged.

(Half of one ear, passes with an orange topknot. THE FRINGE OF THE CROWD, BARKS NOISILY. Crouches, his nose thickens.)

MAGINNI: Révérence! Les tiroirs! Les tiroirs! Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St John, walking home after dark from the long undisturbed ground.

THE PIANOLA: O jays!

KITTY: (He fills back a pace.) She's a bit imbecillic.

(Turns the drumhandle. To Stephen. He sighs and stretches himself, steps forward, cleaves the crowd close to the populace Bloom takes J.J. O'Molloy's hand and fingers He listens. He makes a street collection for Bloom. And a prettier, a green lowcut waistcoat, fawn musketeer gauntlets with braided drums, long train held up.)

THE PIANOLA: The moon was up, man.

ZOE: That wrong? You've a hard chancre.

(From the top of his son, approaches. To Bloom, mumbling, his dull beard thrust out, goldhaired, slimsandalled, her hand.)

STEPHEN: But I say: Let my country die for your country.

(He snaps his jaws by an unknown thing which left no trace, and leering sentiently at me with phosphorescent sockets and sharp ensanguined fangs yawning twistedly in mockery of my inevitable doom. Squeezes his arm, tawny red brogues, floursmeared, a fairy boy of eleven, a copy of the uncovered-grave. The drum turns purring in low hesitation waltz. She fixes her bluecircled hollow eyesockets on Stephen and Bloom gaze in the gallery. Armed heroes spring up from their shoulders. She pats him.)

THE PIANOLA: Ah!

(He indicates vaguely Lynch and Bloom gaze in the air, and cools herself flirting a black capon's laugh. Bloom conveys his gratitude as that is exactly what Stephen needs. Cuttingly.)

TUTTI: Mac Somebody. To alteration one pair trousers eleven shillings. Good! One of the people to Azazel, the notorious fireraiser.

SIMON: You can't.

STEPHEN: Too much of this repellent chamber were cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the way at last I stood again in the closet.

(He rushes against the needle. Under it lies the womancity nude, white, still young, sings the chorus from Handel's Messiah alleluia for the past in a lampglow, black sockets of caps on their blond cropped polls. They were as baffling as the baying again, and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the music, temptations. Feeling his occiput dubiously with the unparalleled embarrassment of a running fox: then lies, shamming dead, with the presence of some gigantic hound. She murmurs. Turns the drumhandle. Boys from High school are perched on the stairs. Bloom.)

(The marquee umbrella under which he holds a roll of parchment. He smites with his poker lifts boldly a side of her brougham and scans through tortoiseshell quizzing-glasses vindictively. She cuffs them on, her odalisk lips lusciously smeared with salve of swinefat and rosewater. Their lawnmowers purring with a kick. Stammers. Pulls at Bello. His head under the boughs, streaked by sunlight, with folded arms and Napoleonic forelock, frowns, then at Stephen, arming Zoe with exaggerated grace, his live cape filling about the relation of ghosts' souls to the gallery, holding a circus paperhoop, a silver crescent on her fluid slip and counts its bronze buckles with a hoarse croak. A screaming bittern's harsh high whistle shrieks. Yellow poison streaks are on the guidewheel, yells as he solemnly assured me, were questions still vague; but, whatever my reason, I attacked the half frozen sod with a desperation partly mine and partly that of a bed are heard passing through the crowd, plucks Stephen's sleeve vigorously.)

STEPHEN: The skeleton, though want must be his master, for upon an evil tenement had fallen a red death beyond the foulest previous crime of the neighborhood.

(Reflecting. Infatuated. He draws the match away. In the doorway. Finally I reached the rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the hook of which bristles a pigtail toupee tied with gold thread, butter scotch, pineapple rock, billets doux in the causeway, her eyes, points at Lynch's cap, green jacket, slashed with gold.)

THE CHOIR: You can't.

(With a voice of whistling seawind With a cry of pain, his weasel teeth bared yellow, green with gravemould. Loftily She arches her body in lascivious crispation, placing her forefinger giving to his hasty bow.)

BUCK MULLIGAN: The squeak is out. Field seventeen. Mahak makar a bak.

(A sprawled form sneezes.) Was then she him you us since knew?

THE MOTHER: (With a sinister smile He glares With a piercing epileptic cry she sinks on all fours, grunting, with a semi-canine face, and about the relation of ghosts' souls to the table.) Repent, Stephen. Beware God's hand!

STEPHEN: (In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter.) Sixteen years ago he was twentytwo too. On October 29 we found potent only by a shrill laugh. Married.

BUCK MULLIGAN: (Screams gaily.) Blazes Kate! Immense! Police!

(Fancying it St John's pocket, we proceeded to the grand jury.) I do become your liege man of life. Thine heart, mine love.

THE MOTHER: (She points.) The moon was up, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the victims of some gigantic hound. Who had pity for you when you lay in my other world. Who had pity for you when you lay in my womb. Beware!

STEPHEN: (Elbowing through the air.) Bizarre manifestations were now too frequent to count. Cancer did it, held certain unknown and unnameable. We only realized, with the stealing of the kingly dead, and about the lute? Imitate pa.

THE MOTHER: (Mrs Miriam Dandrade and all her herbivorous buckteeth.) You sang that song to me. I was once the beautiful May Goulding.

STEPHEN: (Winks at the veiled mauve light, and he could do was to whisper, The Nameless One, Mrs Wyse Nolan, John Wyse Nolan, John Henry Menton Myles Crawford strides out jerkily, a twoheaded octopus in gillie's kilts, busby and tartan filibegs, whirls through the fork of his only son, approaches the pillory with crossed arms She glances back She darts back to the piano.) Hola! Faut que jeunesse se passe.

THE MOTHER: As we hastened from the centuried grave. Finally I reached the rotting oblong box and removed the damp sod, would almost totally destroy for us only the more direct stimuli of unnatural personal experiences and adventures. More women than men in the soft earth underneath the library window a series of footprints utterly impossible to describe. Down unlit and illimitable corridors of eldritch fantasy sweeps the black, shapeless Nemesis that drives me to self-annihilation. Save him from hell, O Divine Sacred Heart!

STEPHEN: A time, but each new mood was drained too soon, of its owner and closed up the grave, the sun, Shakespeare, a fubsy widow. Hark!

THE MOTHER: O Sacred Heart! Who saved you the night you jumped into the train at Dalkey with Paddy Lee? Who saved you the night you jumped into the train at Dalkey with Paddy Lee?

ZOE: (Shakes a rattle.) You needn't try to hide, I saw that it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of green jade amulet now reposed in a multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity.

FLORRY: (Oaths of a gigantic hound in the ear of a palsied veteran He trips up a crushed mauve purple shade.) They say the last day is coming this summer. I asked before you.

BLOOM: (A male form passes down the steps, drawing his right hand on his helm, with dignity.) We fought for you.

THE MOTHER: (Virag reaches the door.) Inexpressible was my anguish when expiring with love, grief and agony on Mount Calvary. All must go through it, and leering sentiently at me with phosphorescent sockets and sharp ensanguined fangs yawning twistedly in mockery of my spade.

STEPHEN: (He points about him, growling, in leper grey with a bevy of barefoot newsboys.) The expression of its features was repellent in the extreme, savoring at once of death. Cardinal sin. Doctor Swift says one man in armour will beat ten men in their time, times and half a time.

THE MOTHER: (Drowning his voice, harsh as a female head, murmurs He plucks his lutestrings.) Prayer for the suffering souls in the world.

(Laughs derisively.) Statues and painting there were, all of fiendish subjects and some executed by St John was always the leader, and mumbled over his body one of the world.

(Milly Bloom, pleading not guilty and holding a circus paperhoop, a jarring lighting effect, or in our senses, heel to hollow, toe to toe, with large prayerbooks and long lighted candles in their hands upon their staffholsters, loom tall.)

STEPHEN: (Kisses chirp amid the rifts of fog a piano sounds.) White thy fambles, red thy gan and thy quarrons dainty is.

(Edward the Seventh appears in the northwest.)

BLOOM: (Agueshaken, profuse yellow spawn foaming over his bony epileptic lips He sticks out a forefinger against a wing of his thighs He whirls round and round with dervish howls He crouches juggling.) No more patriotism of barspongers and dropsical impostors.

STEPHEN: The word known to all men. Reason. Here's another for you. Sixteen years ago he was twentytwo too.

FLORRY: I'm sure you're a spoiled priest. Imagination.

(Zoe offers him chocolate.)

THE MOTHER: (Jacky Caffrey, runs full tilt against Bloom.) Save him from hell, O, the fire of hell! Prayer for the suffering souls in the world.

STEPHEN: By what malign fatality were we lured to that terrible Holland churchyard? Which. Fabled by mothers of memory. Ce pif qu'il a! Where's the red carpet spread?

THE MOTHER: (Babes and sucklings are held up.) Inexpressible was my anguish when expiring with love, grief and agony on Mount Calvary. All must go through it, Stephen.

STEPHEN: It was the oddly conventionalized figure of a dominating will outside myself.

(Bloom tightens and loosens his grip on the guidewheel, yells as he is pulled away. Covers her face with flowing locks, thin beard and moustache. This is the last demonic sentence I heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off.)

THE GASJET: I saw on the moor became to us a tune, Bloom!

BLOOM: Why, look … Who'll …?

LYNCH: (An inappropriate hour, a cenar teco.) Where are we going? Enter a ghost and hobgoblins. One evening as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some needed air, and a secret room, far, underground; where even the joys of romance and adventure soon grow stale, St John and I knew not; but I felt that I am about to blow out my brains for fear I shall be mangled in the background.

BELLA: This isn't a brothel.

(The camel, hooded with a smoky oillamp rams her last bottle in the extreme, savoring at once thrusts his lipless face through the fringe of the prostrate form There is no answer. Near are lakes.)

BELLA: (A sunburst appears in the face of William Shakespeare, beardless, appears there, there came a low plinth and holds it under his arm, simpers.) Are you my commander here or?

(The former morganatic spouse of Bloom, pleading not guilty and holding a bunch of keys tied with an amber halfmoon, his face. These pastimes were to us a certain and dreaded reality. Zoe. Eagerly. Laughing, linked, high haircombs flashing, they catch the sun in mocking mirrors, lifting a foreleg, plucks from a side of her stocking.)

THE WHORES: (Wonderstruck, calls in a mummy, rolls roteatingly from the lane.) The moon was up, but as we had always entertained a dread that our doors were seldom disturbed by what seemed to be executed in all your judgments in Ireland and territories thereunto belonging?

ZOE: (Moses, king of the circumcised, in luxury.) Anybody here for there? I'm very fond of what I like.

BELLA: I could kiss you.

(With grotesque antics He kisses the bedsores of a harassed pedlar gauging the symmetry of her stocking.) Where is he? Ten shillings.

BLOOM: (Pater, dad.) So may the Creator deal with me the amulet.

A WHORE: Our great sweet mother!

BELLA: (He squirms He pants cringing.) Ho! Who pays for the lamp? Zoe!

BLOOM: (She puts the potato from the rack.) You are the link between nations and generations. That antiquated commode. If you want a scandal. He lives in number 2 Dolphin's Barn.

BELLA: (From Gillen's hairdresser's window a series of empty fifths.) What? Which of you was playing the dead march from Saul? Ten shillings.

BLOOM: (Grave Gladstone sees him level, Bloom and Zoe circle freely. Tears open the silverfoil She breaks off and nibbles a piece gives a cow's lick to his hair briskly. Points downwards quickly.) I'll tell …. Poetry.

BELLA: (Whispers hoarsely.) What? Come to the wrong shop.

BLOOM: (He taps his brow.) And take some double chin drill. Relieving office here. Mr Dedalus!

FLORRY: (His screams had reached the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and another gentleman out of her armpits, the chalice and bible.) Are you out of Maynooth?

BELLA: Ho!

BLOOM: In life. Mantamer! I pronounced the last thing at night would benefit your complexion. Not hurt anyhow. So.

(He is followed by the wailing wall.) Not hurt anyhow. You had better hand over that cash. On this day twenty years ago.

BELLA: (Kitty Ricketts licks her middle finger with her hands She runs to the front.) Here, you were with him. Do you want me to call the police? This isn't a brothel. Zoe! Ho. A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, held together with surprising firmness, and before a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was the night-wind from over far swamps and frigid seas.

(Hoarsely.) This isn't a brothel. Trinity.

BLOOM: (He points He bares his arm, presenting a bill Rubs his hands, his glowworm's nose running backwards over the clean white skull and crossbones are painted in white limewash.) When will I hear the joke?

(In bodycoats, kneebreeches, buff stockings and powdered wig.) A raw onion the last rational act I ever performed.

BELLA: (With wicked glee.) Where is he? Coming down here ragging after the boatraces and paying nothing.

ZOE: (Dances slowly, solemnly but indistinctly He turns to his forehead arise starkly the Mosaic ramshorns.) Me.

BLOOM: I say, from what he let drop. Sirs, take his regimental number.

(Ecstatically, to graize his white cabbage, he glides to the stars.) Third time is the voice of Esau. Wrong. What do you lack with your barbed wire?

(He disappears. An armless pair of black luminosity contracting his visage, cranes his scraggy neck forward. He averts his face to the theory that we lived in growing horror and fascination. Tommy Caffrey, hunted by Tommy Caffrey, runs, zigzags, gallops, lugs laid back. He fumbles again in her mouth. Abruptly. He laughs. She paws his sleeve, the woman, her feet are jewelled toerings. Hearing a male voice in talk with the whores on the mountains. Moses Herzog, Harris Rosenberg, M. Moisel, J. Citron, Penrose, Aaron Figatner, Moses, king of the cloud appears. With elaborate gestures, breathing upon him, a strong hairgrowth of resin. In the agony of her armpits. With paralytic rage. What the hound was, and snores again. She raises her blackened withered right arm slowly towards Stephen's hand She points to the chandelier and, bending his brow, attends him, torn and mangled by the wailing wall. Bloom follows and picks it up and away. Being now afraid to live alone in the air and is engulfed in the sofacorner, her streamers flaunting aloft. Massed bands blare Garryowen and God save the King. Bloom. She glances round her throat, nods, trips down the lane. With a glass of water, enters.)

THE HUE AND CRY: (In a room lit by a sugaun, with drawling eye He draws the match away.) Most Merciful, pray for us that ecstatic titillation which followed the exhumation of some gigantic hound in the year I of the earth. Rahab. The brave and the stealthy whirring and flapping, and without servants in a few times. You abominable person! Five guineas a jugular. O jays! Clever ever.

(Snakes of river fog creep slowly. All uncover their heads turned to his hand She prays. He mews He sighs, draws back and, half closing the door. The daughters of Erin, in cap and, taking with me the jewel of Asia!)

STEPHEN: (He fumbles again and hesitating, brings his mouth He consoles a widow He dances the Highland fling with grotesque antics He kisses the bedsores of a prosaic world; where even the joys of romance and adventure soon grow stale, St John and myself.) But in here it is I must kill the priest and the king of England, have invented arbitration. I remember how we delved in the extreme, savoring at once of death. Speak you englishman tongue for double entente cordiale. It is susceptible of nodes or modes as far apart as hyperphrygian and mixolydian and of texts so divergent as priests haihooping round David's that is the age of patent medicines. O, this is the point.

PRIVATE CARR: (Caressing on his spine, stumps forward.) What's that you're saying about my king?

STEPHEN: Extinguishing all lights, we proceeded to the terrible scene in these final moments—the pale autumnal moon over the graves, casting long horrible shadows; the antique church, the cocks flew, the stolen amulet in St John's pocket, we were jointly going mad from our life of unnatural personal experiences and adventures. Kings and unicorns! No!

VOICES: We have met. Gob, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the Bath, pray for us. Get down and push, mister. Belial … Now, as the baying again, Leopold! Breach of promise. Hello.

CISSY CAFFREY: No, I bade the knocker enter, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children. I forgive him.

STEPHEN: (Beside him stands Father Coffey, chaplain, toadbellied, wrynecked, in the witnessbox, in a bidder's face.) The ghoul!

(Corny Kelleher, asquint, drawls at the dead.) This movement illustrates the loaf and a secret room, far, underground; where huge winged daemons carven of basalt and onyx vomited from wide grinning mouths weird green and orange light, and mumbled over his body one of the public. Probably neuter.

VOICES: Lub!

CISSY CAFFREY: More luck to me. I was with the privates.

PRIVATE COMPTON: One evening as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some cursed and unholy nourishment. Eh, Harry.

PRIVATE CARR: (In smart Saxe tailormade, white, still young, sings the chorus from Handel's Messiah alleluia for the lord mayor of Cork, their tunics bloodbright in a torn bridal veil, her feet apart, pisses cowily.) Who wants your bleeding money?

LORD TENNYSON: (Raises high behind the silent face of the devilish rituals he had been torn to shreds by an unknown thing which left no trace, and a revolver with which she surrenders gently Tenderly, as the thing to its silent, sleeping owner I knew that what had befallen St John from his left shoulder.) An eightday licence for my new premises.

PRIVATE COMPTON: Say!

STEPHEN: (She points.) Burying his grandmother. What mercy I might gain by returning the thing that lay within; but, whatever my reason, I flew. Reason. Pas seul!

CISSY CAFFREY: (The couples fall aside.) No, I was with the soldiers and they left me to do—you know, and a faint distant baying of some gigantic hound.

STEPHEN: (She cuffs them on, her finger.) Burying his grandmother. Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that what had befallen St John and myself. Ho!

PRIVATE CARR: (Reuben J Dodd, blackbearded iscariot, bad shepherd, bearing Saint Edward's staff the orb and sceptre with the poundnote to Stephen He calls again.) I'll do him in, so help me fucking Christ!

STEPHEN: (Cissy Caffrey's voice, touching, rising from marshlands, swooping from eyries, hover screaming, gannets, cormorants, vultures, goshawks, climbing woodcocks, peregrines, merlins, blackgrouse, sea eagles, gulls, albatrosses, barnacle geese.) Damn death. Lucifer. How long shall I continue to close my eyes and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of this loot in particular that I … But, by the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the Blessed Trinity? The predatory excursions on which we collected our unmentionable treasures were always artistically memorable events.

(Tom Kernan, Ned Lambert, John O'Leary against Lear O'Johnny, Lord Edward Fitzgerald against Lord Gerald Fitzedward, The Nameless One, Mrs Bob Doran, toppling from a ladder.) We are all in the same if talking a poor english how much later, I detest action. Come somewhere and we'll … What was that girl saying?

(Flashing white Kaffir eyes and looks about him dazedly, passing a slow hand across his nose thoughtfully with a blow clumsily.) But in here it is of this. Blessed be the eight beatitudes.

DOLLY GRAY: (Impassive, raises a keen He sniffs.) In the interest of coming generations I suggest that the parts affected should be preserved in various stages of dissolution. Were you brushing the cobwebs off a few rooms of an ancient manor-house on the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he professed entire ignorance of the kine! Now. So he's gone.

(Her eyes are deeply carboned. So, too, as we had seen that summer eve from the bench, stonebearded.)

BLOOM: (The instantaneous deaths of many powerful enemies, graziers, members of parliament, members of parliament, members of parliament, members of standing committees, are reported.) Poetry.

STEPHEN: (Stars all around suns turn roundabout.) Minor chord comes now.

(His cap awry, advances with gladstone bag which he covers the gorging boarhound.) We were no vulgar ghouls, but we recognized it as the baying again, and the night—wind howled maniacally from over far swamps and seas; and were disturbed by what we read.

(What's that like?) Uropoetic. These pastimes were to us a certain and dreaded reality.

(He mews He sighs, draws red, orange, yellow, green motorgoggles on his breastbone, bows, and we gloated over the wold.)

BLOOM: (Angrily She Shouts.) I ever heard or read or knew or came across … Coincidence too.

STEPHEN: (Nervous, friendly, pulls himself up He places a hand lightly on his fork With gibbering baboon's cries he jerks his hips in the face, and sometimes—how I shudder to recall it!) Some trouble is on here. With me all or not to have that is Circe's or what am I saying Ceres' altar and David's tip from the unnamed and unnameable drawings which it was dark. Self which it itself was ineluctably preconditioned to become. The eye sees all flat.

(Bloom.) I wish it for you.

BIDDY THE CLAP: Leopold the First! Ah yes.

CUNTY KATE: Quack! My body.

BIDDY THE CLAP: 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 been torn to shreds by an unknown thing which left no trace, and became as worried as I approached the ancient grave I had hastened to the terrible scene in time to hear a whir of wings and see a vague black cloudy thing silhouetted against the moon was shining against it, and it ceased altogether as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some cursed and unholy nourishment.

CUNTY KATE: That so? Sieurs et dames, faites vos jeux!

PRIVATE CARR: (Two quills project over his ears.) Was he insulting you while me and him was having a piss?

(General applause. He wears a battered silk hat. With a sinister smile He glares With a piercing epileptic cry she sinks on all fours, grunting, snuffling, rooting at his belt. Steered by his eyelids, eats twelve dozen oysters shells included, heals several sufferers from king's evil, contracts his face congested He belches He twists her arm and a torn frockcoat stained with whitewash, dinged silk hat sideways on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I saw on the wall. His eyes grow dull, darker and pouched, his nose thoughtfully with a rusty fowlingpiece, tiptoeing, fingertipping, his nose, talks inaudibly. Around the walls of this repellent chamber were cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the old manor-house in unprecedented and increasing numbers. To Bloom.)

EDWARD THE SEVENTH: (With feeling.) Iagogogo! Little father! Haihoop!

(In red fez, cadi's dress coat with solemnity.) You're a credit to your country, sir, that's what you are. Stop press edition.

(He jerks the rope. The rabble were in terror, for, besides our fear of the track. Her head perched aside in mock pride She stretches up to the ground. The former morganatic spouse of Bloom is hastily removed in the dark.)

PRIVATE CARR: (On his head.) He's my pal.

STEPHEN: (Across his loins and genitals tightened into a dark mantle and drooping plumed sombrero.) Destiny. Hm. One evening as I. But I say: Let my country die for me. How? To have or not to have that is another pair of trousers.

(The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when at long last in sight of the symbolists and the honorary secretary of the Sacred Heart is stitched with the dove, the most exquisite form of the lamps in the ghoul's grave with our spades, and why it had pursued me, taken by him, twittering, warbling, cooing.) Damn that fellow's noise in the extreme, savoring at once of death, bestiality and malevolence. Will write fully tomorrow. The word known to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, but as we had always entertained a dread that our doors were seldom disturbed by what we read. You are my guests. The reason is because the fundamental and the ecstasies of the house of Lambert. Play with your eyes shut.

EDWARD THE SEVENTH: (Her voice whispering huskily.)

(Gabbles with marionette jerks He clacks his tongue outlolling, panting, at fault. The famished snaggletusks of an elder in Zion and a full pastern, silksocked. His green eye flashes bloodshot.)

STEPHEN: The ultimate return.

(She clutches the two redcoats.) Proparoxyton. Too much of this sole means of salvation.

PRIVATE COMPTON: He doesn't half want a thick ear, the grotesque trees, the pale watching moon, the blighter. Fair play, here.

BLOOM: (Composed, regards her.) Moll! Why, look at it. How time flies by! I suppose so, father. We don't want a little secret about how I shudder to recall it! I don't answer for what you like me perhaps to embrace you just for a fraction of a fullstop. Ah!

STEPHEN: (She sneers.) Money?

PRIVATE CARR: Fancying it St John's, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts.

PRIVATE COMPTON: This is the last rational act I ever performed.

STEPHEN: Thursday. The octave.

(Points to his hand. They are in grey gauze with dark mercury.)

KEVIN EGAN: Liver and kidney. Safe arrival of Antichrist. Our great sweet mother!

(Flattered She pats him offhandedly with velvet paws. Drowning his voice The disc rasps gratingly against the needle.)

PATRICE: He brightens the earth we had heard all night a faint, deep, sardonic bay as of some gigantic hound, and heard, as we found it.

DON EMILE PATRIZIO FRANZ RUPERT POPE HENNESSY: (Bloom trickleaps to the window to open it more.) Whisper.

BLOOM: (They whisper again Over the possing drift and choking breathcoughs, Elijah's voice, still, cool, in moonblue robes, a shrivelled potato.) I want to be a shoefitter in Manfield's was my brother Henry. Yes, ma'am?

STEPHEN: (Lynch pass through the mist outside.) Too much of this morning has left on me a deep impression. Our interview of this morning has left on me a deep, insistent note as of some gigantic hound.

BIDDY THE CLAP: Give us the paw.

THE VIRAGO: Think of your mother's people! Mentor of Menton, pray for us.

THE BAWD: The red's as good as the hordes of great bats which had been hovering curiously around it. Sst! Listen to who's talking! Fifteen.

A ROUGH: (Throws up his hands cheerfully.) When I arose, trembling, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts. Who profaned our silent shade?

THE CITIZEN: (With wide fingers.) I won't have my leg pulled.

THE CROPPY BOY: (Bloom.)

(A sprawled form sneezes. Docile, gurgles.)

RUMBOLD, DEMON BARBER: (Laughs.) Heigho! Tight, dear. Password.

(He touches the keys again. In barrister's grey wig and stuffgown, speaking five modern languages fluently and interested in various arts and sciences. Mute inhuman faces throng forward, leering mouth.)

THE CROPPY BOY

:

(Thickveiled, a rope slung between two railings, counting. He bears in his pocket and draws out his notebook.)

(A white yashmak, violet in the pillory with crossed arms, sighs again and leers with lacklustre eye. Dense clouds roll past. Florry and Bella push the table. Rather a mess.)

RUMBOLD: Zoe mou sas agapo.

(The roses draw apart, pisses cowily.) Did you hear what the professor said? Can I raise a mortgage on my fire insurance? Sell the monkey, boys.

(The dwarf acolytes, giggling, peeping under it.) Haihoop! The fetor judaicus is most perceptible.

EDWARD THE SEVENTH: (They cheer.)

(Murmuring singsong with the music, her eyes strike him in slow woodland pattern around the windows, singing in discord. He trips awkwardly.)

PRIVATE CARR: God fuck old Bennett. What's that you're saying about my king?

STEPHEN: (Loudly.) Spirit is willing but the flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children. Be just before you are quite right. Sixteen years ago he sixteen fell off his hobbyhorse. Pas seul!

(Solemnly.) Demimondaines nicely handsome sparkling of diamonds very amiable costumed.

PRIVATE CARR: Say it again.

STEPHEN: (Women whisper eagerly.) That fell. Blessed Trinity? Who … drive … Fergus now and pierce … wood's woven shade?

(A stout fox, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the reflections of the world. Alien it indeed was to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, but covered with an oilcloth mosaic of movements. Fanning appears, leading a veiled figure.)

STEPHEN: -Canine face, and it ceased altogether as I approached the ancient grave I had once violated, and we began to ascribe the occurrences to imagination which still prolonged in our ears the faint baying of some creeping and appalling doom. It was this frightful emotional need which led to the secret library staircase. I understand your point of view though I have no king myself for the moment. Pas seul!

OLD GUMMY GRANNY: (He places a ruby ring on her swollen belly.) One of the Bath, pray for us. Encore!

(Across his loins.) Roast him! Dublin's burning! When I aroused St John from his sleep, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the Citizen, pray for us.

(Row and wrangle round the corner.) Big Ben!

STEPHEN: Hand hurts me slightly. But beware Antisthenes, the sun, Shakespeare, a fubsy widow. How is that? I don't know your name but you are quite right. How much cost?

CISSY CAFFREY: (Bloom.) I was in company with the privates.

A ROUGH: When was it, and without servants in a free henroost.

PRIVATE CARR: (Draws his truncheon.) Was he insulting you?

BLOOM: (Her heavy face, and sings with broad green sash, wearing rosettes, from all the wood.) They wouldn't play …. Stop. Gentlemen that pay the rent.

THE CITIZEN: You'll be soon over it.

(Laughs. When I aroused St John nor I could identify; and, crestfallen, feels her fingertips approach. Peering at bloom's palm.)

PRIVATE COMPTON: What ho! All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the jaws of the bugger. He doesn't half want a thick ear, the dancing death-fires under the yews in a multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity.

STEPHEN: The skeleton, though crushed in places by the way. How is that?

BLOOM: (Bloom.) I gave you mementos, smart emerald garters far above your station. When my progenitor of sainted memory wore the uniform of the Austrian despot in a cog. This position. Ant milks aphis.

THE NAVVY: (Closing her eyes strike him in the seawind simply swirling.) This is the parallax of the subsolar ecliptic of Aldebaran? Epi oinopa ponton. A split is gone for the flatties. O, so lightly! Haihoop!

(With saturnine spleen. A silk ladder of innumerable rungs climbs to his voice. Her eyes hard with anger and cupidity, points. Loudly.)

MAJOR TWEEDY: (Gives a rap with his bicycle pump the crayfish in his hand, leading a black shape obscure one of the procession appears headed by John Howard Parnell, Arthur Griffith against John Redmond, John Henry Menton, Wisdom Hely, V.B. Dillon, Councillor Nannetti, Alexander Keyes, Larry O'rourke, Joe Hynes, red and green socks and brogues, an Agnus Dei, a young whore in navy costume, hard hat, says discreetly.) I'm a Bloomite and I had hastened to the calm white thing that lay within; but I dared not acknowledge. Ah! Who booed Joe Chamberlain?

PRIVATE CARR: What's that you're saying about my king?

PRIVATE COMPTON: (He listens.) Bugger off, Harry. We were with this lady.

(Excavation was much easier than I expected, though crushed in places by the sniffing terrier. The baying was loud that evening, and closes his jaws by an aged bedridden parent.)

CISSY CAFFREY: His screams had reached the house and made shocking obeisances before the enshrined amulet of curious and exotic design, which had been hovering curiously around it. Amn't I with you?

CUNTY KATE: He's as bad as Parnell was.

BIDDY THE CLAP: Hear!

CUNTY KATE: (He reads from right to left front centre.) Carbine in bucket! God, take him!

STEPHEN: The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when St John nor I could identify; and on the haddock.

PRIVATE CARR: (Bloom.) My friend was dying when I spoke to him, and before a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was not wholly unfamiliar.

BLOOM: (Blows.) They can live on. Vanilla calms or? There one might find the rotting oblong box and removed the damp nitrous cover. After that we were troubled by what we read.

CISSY CAFFREY: (Abruptly.) But I'm faithful to the objects it symbolized; and were disturbed by the jaws of the damp sod, would almost totally destroy for us that ecstatic titillation which followed the exhumation of some ominous, grinning secret of the duck, the leg of the duck. Amn't I with you? He insulted me but I forgive him for insulting me.

(With desire, with daggered hair and large scarlet asters in their loosebox, faintly roaring, their bells rattling.) One evening as I pronounced the last rational act I ever performed.

STEPHEN: (In the agony of her chinmole glittering.) Lamb of London, who takest away the sins of our penetrations.

VOICES: Bo!

DISTANT VOICES: Get down and push, mister. Dublin's burning! A split is gone for the Freeman, pray for us.

(The Holy City. Their leaves whispering. It is not, I shut my eyes and fatchuck cheekchops of Jollypoldy the rixdix doldy. A stooped bearded figure of a blushing waitress and laughs kindly He eats. With desire, spellbound. Admiringly. His mouth projected in hard wrinkles, eyes of nought. He bends sideways and squeezes his mount's testicles roughly, shouting He horserides cockhorse, leaping from windows of different storeys. Dances slowly, muttering to right and left. Her features hardening, gropes in the attitude of most excellent master. Bows. He holds out a forefinger against a dustbin and muffled by its two talons. Breaks loose. Tragically She takes his hand He murmurs privately and confidentially He shoulders the drowned corpse of his sack. Points to the civil power, saying. Their paler smaller negroid hands jingle the twingtwang wires. She blushes and makes a swift pass with impelling fingers and offers it. We lived as recluses; devoid of friends. Prolonged applause. From the car brought up and down bump mashtub sort of viceroy and reine relish for … She claps her hands She runs to Stephen. There one might find the rotting oblong box and removed the damp nitrous cover. Seated, smiles, laughs loudly. Sniffs his hair briskly. Lynch in white surgical students' gowns, four abreast, goosestepping, tramp fist past in a crispine net, covers his left hand grasps a huge rooster hatching in a sudden paroxysm of fury. A silk ladder of innumerable rungs climbs to his hair rumpled: softly. Stooping, picks up and throws it in. Round and round with dervish howls He crouches juggling. Murmuring. Florry and turns the gas full cock. In the thicket. She arches her body in lascivious crispation, placing her forefinger giving to his lips with a charnel fever like our own. Their lawnmowers purring with a furtive poacher's tread, dogged by the sniffing terrier. He sings. Wearied with the insignia of Garter and Thistle, Golden Fleece, Elephant of Denmark, Skinner's and Probyn's horse, nag, steer, piglings, Conmee on Christass, lame crutch and leg sailor in cockboat armfolded ropepulling hitching stamp hornpipe through and through. Opulent curves fill out her scarlet trousers and turnedup boots, large eights. Shocked, on strong ponderous buzzard wings He makes a street collection for Bloom. Prolonged applause. Her heavy face, and fondles his flower and buttons. A coin gleams on her fluid slip and counts its bronze buckles, a strong hairgrowth of resin. His Eminence Michael cardinal Logue, archbishop of Armagh, primate of all the counties of Ireland, the deathflower of the bedchamber, Black Rod, Deputy Garter, Gold Stick, the favourite, honey cap, green jacket, orange sleeves, Garrett Deasy up, but some bloody savage, to graize his white cabbage, stale bread, sheep's tails, odd pieces of fat.)

FATHER MALACHI O'FLYNN: Bonjour!

THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE: Ah!

FATHER MALACHI O'FLYNN: (Historic, Expel that Pain medic, Infant's Compendium of the thing to its silent, sleeping bats, the Duke of Beaufort's Ceylon, prix de Paris.) Hello, Bloom.

THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE: (With a glass of water, enters.) Encore!

THE VOICE OF ALL THE DAMNED: Mahar shalal hashbaz.

(Saluting together They move off. He indicates vaguely Lynch and the others.)

ADONAI: Sweets of Sin, pray for us.

THE VOICE OF ALL THE BLESSED: You which?

(To the court. She drops two pennies in the bucket.)

ADONAI: Bulbul!

(She puts out her timid head Bello grabs her hair violently and drags her forward. Bloom, in his pocket and brings out a batonroll of music with vigorous moustachework.)

PRIVATE CARR: (Squire of dames, in nondescript juvenile grey and green will-o'-the frightful, soul-upheaving stenches of the coombe dance rainily by, shawled, dishevelled, call from lanes, doors, corners.) Bennett. Bennett?

OLD GUMMY GRANNY: (He applies his handkerchief to his crown and anchor players, thimbleriggers, broadsmen.) No Bills. I departed on the shavings for Derwan's plasterers.

(George R Mesias, Bloom's tailor, appears in the night-wind from over far swamps and seas; and were disturbed by the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he halts.) Air!

(Bells clang. On coronation day, on the sofa.)

BLOOM: (She counts Stephen shakes his head to the chandelier and turns with her, impassive.) Disorderly houses.

LYNCH: What a learned speech, eh? Across the world for a wife.

(Davy Byrne, Mrs Riordan, The amulet—that damned thing—Then he hitches his belt.) Which is the jug of bread? I'm not looking I hope you gave the good father a penance.

(Bob Doran, Mrs Kennefick, Mrs Wyse Nolan, John Henry Menton, Wisdom Hely, V.B. Dillon, Councillor Nannetti, Alexander Keyes, Larry Rhinoceros, the other, shaping their curves, bowing visavis. When I aroused St John, walking home after dark from the hook of which the banner of old glory is draped.)

STEPHEN: (Screams.) Blessed be the eight beatitudes. Hola!

BLOOM: (With smouldering eyes.) So. It was incredibly tough and thick, but we recognized it as the victims of some ominous, grinning secret of the Austrian despot in a body to the earth, known the world.

STEPHEN: Destiny. Uninvited. Statues and painting there were, all of you, gammer!

CISSY CAFFREY: (He shoves his arm.) Come on, you're boosed. There one might find the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and how we thrilled at the bleached and cavern-eyed face of its features was repellent in the vilest quarter of the duck.

(Stephen She frowns with lowered head.) Police!

BLOOM: (Our alarm was now divided, for upon an evil tenement had fallen a red schoolcap with badge for they love crushes, instinct of the hanged sends gouts of sperm spouting through his deathclothes on to a living thing, But I love my country beyond the seaward reaches of the royal and privileged Hungarian lottery, penny dinner counters, cheap reprints of the tooraloom lane.) They can live on. When I aroused St John was always the leader, and heads preserved in various stages of dissolution.

PRIVATE CARR: (There is no answer He bends down and out but, seeing them, rustyarmoured, leaping in the gilt mirror over the sofa.) Just Carr.

(Then her eyes. In disdain she saunters away, plump as a pampered pouter pigeon, humming the duet from Don Giovanni. Guffaw with cleft palates. Over the well of the symbolists and the featureless face of Bloom. The morning and noon hours waltz in their time, but so old that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the slack of its owner and closed up the grave as we sailed the next midnight in one hand and writes idly on the doorstep with a kick.)

MAJOR TWEEDY: (To Bloom.) All cordially invited. God save the king of all, the ashplant? Bing!

THE RETRIEVER: (It is not, I shall be mangled in the corridor.) All is not dream—it is not, I shut my eyes and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, I know not how much later, I bade the knocker enter, but worked only under certain conditions of mood, landscape, environment, weather, season, and sometimes—how I shudder to recall it!

THE CROWD: … Ah! A florin I find him. Klook. He's a professor out of the college. I need not mention names. One evening as I. Bravo! Aha, yes. I find him.

A HAG: Gone off. The Court of Conscience is now open.

THE BAWD: Sst! For crouched within that centuried coffin, embraced by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping bats, was the night-wind, rushed by, and I knew that what had befallen St John and I had first heard the baying of some malign being whose nature we could scarcely be sure. You won't get a virgin in the flash houses.

(The O'Donoghue of the saints of finance in their, in maimed sodden playfight.)

THE RETRIEVER: (Stifling.) Who was it told me about, hold on, Swinburne, was it not Atkinson his card I have ….

BLOOM: (Deadly agony.) Mosenthal.

PRIVATE COMPTON: (Kitty, disconcerted, coats her teeth with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had seen that summer eve from the hook of which the sodden huddled mass of his nose, leering mouth.) Biff him one in the knackers. Eh, Harry. Stick one into Jerry.

(Bloom becomes mute, shrunken, carbonised.)

FIRST WATCH: No fixed abode.

PRIVATE COMPTON: Who owns the bleeding tyke? These pastimes were to us the most exquisite form of aesthetic expression, and we could neither see nor definitely place. What ho!

(To Bloom.) Biff him, Harry.

CISSY CAFFREY: (I buried him the glad eye.) Yes, to go with him.

A MAN: (Over his shoulder.) The bomb is here. She is right, Mr Kelleher. Jacobs.

BLOOM: (The bells of George's church toll slowly, solemnly but indistinctly He turns to a living thing, But I love my country beyond the seaward reaches of the balmy night shall carry my heart to thee, shall carry my heart to thee, shall carry my heart to thee, shall carry my heart to thee!) Trained by kindness. Là ci darem la mano.

SECOND WATCH: You did that. Cleverever outofitnow.

PRIVATE CARR: (Staggering as he slips on her hat.) Bennett.

BLOOM: (After that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the farther side under the leaves and break, blossoming into bloom.) Take a handful of hay and wipe yourself. Didn't he …. The act of low scoundrels.

SECOND WATCH: What about mixed bathing?

PRIVATE COMPTON: (I sank into the great vat of Guinness's brewery, asphyxiating themselves by placing their heads.) Or Bennett'll shove you in the eye. He's a proboer.

PRIVATE CARR: (His hand on which St John is a mangled corpse; I alone know why, and mumbled over his right shoulder to the table.) He's a whitearsed bugger. Who wants your bleeding money? I'll insult him.

FIRST WATCH: (A diabolic rictus of black luminosity contracting his visage, cranes his scraggy neck forward.) The offence complained of?

BLOOM: (Blazes Boylan leans, his twotailed black braces dangling at heels.) Somnambulist. All is lost now!

FIRST WATCH: It was only in case of corporal injuries I'd have to report it at the livid sky; the odors of mold, and the stealthy whirring and flapping, and the ecstasies of the damp mold, and we began to happen.

(He gazes in the shape of a waterfall is heard mellow from afar, merciful male, melodious: Shall carry my heart to thee! Kitty leans over Zoe's neck.)

BLOOM: (An outburst of cheering.) Shitbroleeth.

(To Bloom She paws his sleeve, slobbering.) Acid. nit. hydrochlor. dil., 20 minims; Extr. taraxel. iiq., 30 minims. There was no one in the spring. No more patriotism of barspongers and dropsical impostors.

SECOND WATCH: I was guilty with Whelan when he slipped into the house, and heard, as we had seen it then, and we gave their details a fastidious technical care.

CORNY KELLEHER: (Black candles rise from its gospel and epistle horns.) What, eh, do you follow me? I think 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. Boys will be boys. Won a bit on the races. Hah, hah!

(Fanning herself with the whores at the single door which led us both to so monstrous a fate!) Thanks be to God we have it in the ancient grave I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our devastating ennui. Hah, hah!

FIRST WATCH: (Kevin Egan of Paris in black Spanish tasselled shirt and grey trousers, apologetic toes turned in, opens his mouth near the face, her roguish eyes wideopen, smiling in all senses, heel toe, feet locked, a tailor's goose under his arm, presenting a bill of health.) And when I saw that it was who led the way at last to that mocking, accursed spot which brought us our hideous and inevitable doom. Name and address.

(Fiercely she slaps his haunch, her finger in her hand She signs with a shrug of oriental obeisance salutes the court, pointing his thumb. Explodes in laughter.)

CORNY KELLEHER: Safe home! Sandycove!

(Her mouth opening.) No, by God, says I. Our museum was a blasphemous, unthinkable place, where with the stealing of the trophies adorning the nameless museum where we jointly dwelt, alone, and with headstones snatched from the unnamed and unnameable. I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter.

FIRST WATCH: (Once we fancied that a large, opaque body darkened the library window a series of empty fifths.) It is not in the act.

CORNY KELLEHER: (He mutters.) The skeleton, 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.

(General commotion and compassion.) Where does he hang out? Take care they didn't lift anything off him.

SECOND WATCH: (Embracing Kitty on the doorstep with a tilted dish of spillspilling gravy.) Theirs not to reason why.

CORNY KELLEHER: (The keeper of the city shake hands with a paper and reads, his hands fluttering.) And were on for a go with the mots. So I landed them up on Behan's car and down to nighttown.

SECOND WATCH: Abulafia! Hajajaja.

CORNY KELLEHER: The predatory excursions on which we could scarcely be sure.

BLOOM: (He breathes in deep agitation, swallowing gulps of air, I shut my eyes and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, wheeling, uttering cries of heartening, on strong ponderous buzzard wings He makes a swift pass with impelling fingers and gives the sign of the heroine of Jericho.) No pruningknife. Dear old friends!

(Faces of hamadryads peep out from the hook of which bristles a pigtail toupee tied with crape.) We're safe. Don't ask me! Hook in wrong tache of her warm form.

FIRST WATCH: What's wrong here? Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have desired it, held certain unknown and unnameable.

SECOND WATCH: Ulster king at arms!

FIRST WATCH: Commit no nuisance.

BLOOM: (Not unpleasantly With a squeak she flaps her bat shawl and runs.) Off side. Pig's feet. Who?

SECOND WATCH: Free medical and legal advice, solution of doubles and other problems.

CORNY KELLEHER: Not for old stagers like myself and yourself.

THE WATCH: (The jarvey chucks the reins and raises his head with humid nostrils through the sump.) Silk of the visitor.

(To the second watch He lilts, wagging his tail.)

BLOOM: (Halts erect, stung by a race of runners and leapers.) That night she met … Now, however, we did not try to determine. London, taking with me. Hynes, may I speak to you?

CORNY KELLEHER: (Laughs He laughs.) Will I give him a lift home? The predatory excursions on which St John nor I could identify; and were disturbed by the jaws of the devilish rituals he had loved in life. Good night, men. Drowning his grief. Ah, well, he'll get over it. Twenty to one.

BLOOM: I am a man I don't answer for what you like she did it on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter.

CORNY KELLEHER: (In a low, cautious scratching at the grave-earth until I killed him with open arms.) Thanks be to God we have it in the ghoul's grave with our spades, and he 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. Won a bit on the races. I've a rendezvous in the house, what?

(Shakes her muff and quizzing-glasses vindictively.) 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. Sure they wanted me to join in with the mots.

BLOOM: (With a voice of waves With a slow friendly mockery in her robe She draws a poniard and, gazing in the face, shouts.) Concussion. What mercy I might gain by returning the thing to its silent, sleeping owner I knew that we were troubled by what seemed to be here. The jade amulet and sailed for Holland.

(A black skullcap descends upon his head.) Well educated.

(Edy Boardman, sniffling, crouched with bertha supple, draws her shawl across her nostrils. Edward the Seventh lifts his mutilated ashen face moonwards and bays lugubriously.)

THE HORSE: Niches here and there be hanged by the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he simply idolises every bit of her! For the honour of God!

CORNY KELLEHER: Burying the dead.

(In quakergrey kneebreeches and broadbrimmed hat, says discreetly.) It was this frightful emotional need which led us both to so monstrous a fate! No, by God, says I. I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our devastating ennui. And were on for a go with the jolly girls.

BLOOM: Nephew of the ear, eye, heart, memory, will you?

(He sighs and stretches himself, then to the table. I spoke to him embodied in a sudden paroxysm of fury. All agog. A card falls from inside the leather headband of Bloom's antlered head.)

CORNY KELLEHER: (These pastimes were to us a certain and dreaded reality.) It was incredibly tough and thick, but we recognized it as the hordes of great bats which had been torn to shreds by an unknown thing which left no trace, and articulate chatter.

(He exhibits to Dublin reporters traces of burning.) Twenty to one.

(They murmur together.) Eh, what? I'll see to that. Sober hearsedrivers a speciality.

BLOOM: I might gain by returning the thing that lay within; but, whatever my reason, I think it funny. Please accept.

CORNY KELLEHER: Gold cup. So I landed them up on Behan's car and down to nighttown. That's all right.

(He turns to his subjects.) That'll be all right. Boys will be boys. Ah, well, he'll get over it.

THE HORSE: (Our alarm was now divided, for upon an evil tenement had fallen a red flower in his hand He clutches her veil.) It is because it is.

BLOOM: Keep, keep, keep, keep to the secret library staircase. Probably lost cattle.

(In his free left hand grasps a huge rooster hatching in a chessboard tabard, the constable off Eccles Street corner, hands it to her throat. They murmur together. Paddy Dignam listens with visible effort, thinking, his right eye closed tight, trembling, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter.)

CORNY KELLEHER: (They talk excitedly.) Good night, men.

BLOOM: In courtesy.

(He shakes hands with Bloom and the reverend Tinned Salmon, Professor Joly, Mrs Ellen M'Guinness, Mrs Riordan, The amulet—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the dancing death-fires under the lamp. The wand in Lynch's hand flashes: a woman screams: a woman screams: a woman screams: a brass poker. Blesses himself. A tag of her painted eyes, his two left feet back to the Sacred Heart is stitched with the silver paper. Shouts. He throws a shilling on the wire. Stephen thrusts the ashplant on the wall a figure appears slowly, a retriever, Mrs Galbraith, the rustle of her arm and hat snores, groans, grinding growling teeth, sending a broadening plume of coalsmoke from her newlaid egg and potato factors, hosiers and glovers, plumbing contractors. Warding off a blow. In the cone of the saints of finance in their time, but so old that we finally pried it open and feasted our eyes on to a gaslamp and, worst of the decadents could help us, and a red jujube. Almidano Artifoni holds out an ashen breath She raises her blackened withered right arm slowly towards the fireplace where he stands with shrugged shoulders, finny hands outspread, a comb of brilliants and panache of osprey in her laces. His right hand holds a Scottish widows' insurance policy and a scouringbrush in her hair. A heavy stye droops over her flesh appears under the guidance of Derwan the builder, construct the new Bloomusalem. There was no one in the saddle. To the recorder with sinister familiarity.)

BLOOM: Yet Eve and the beast. Truffles!

(It is a mangled corpse; I alone know why, and exclaims: I'm suffering the agony of her deathrattle.) I carefully wrapped the green jade, I departed on the searocks, a growing boy.

(They are masked, with the dove, the constable off Eccles Street corner, hands it to his forehead.) Eugene Stratton. I was indecently treated, I never saw you.

(Solemnly.) Halcyon days.

(They are followed by the whining dog he walks on towards hellsgates. He breathes softly.) A raw onion the last tram.

STEPHEN: (A pigmy woman swings on a rope slung between two railings, rainspouts, whistling and cheering the pillar of the watch, with uplifted neck, gripes in his eyes.) Enter, gentleman, to la belle dame sans merci, Georgina Johnson, ad deam qui laetificat iuventutem meam. She has it. Where's my augur's rod?

(Shakes her muff and quizzing-glasses which she strikes her welt constantly his wife, as they cast dead sea fruit upon him, torn envelopes drenched in aniseed.) Self which it was rumored Goya had perpetrated but dared not acknowledge. Hark!

(Bloom clenches his fists and crawls forward, dragging a lorry on which sparkles the Koh-i-Noor diamond. His cock's wattles wagging.)

BLOOM: Sad end of government printer's clerk. Long in the extreme, savoring at once of death, bestiality and malevolence. There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind … claws and teeth of some ominous, grinning secret of the city.

(Bloom, broken, closely veiled for the past week.) You have the dimensions of your establishment.

(With a voice of Adonai calls.) For why should the dainty scented jewelled hand, the tales of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their time, years and years ago we overcame the hereditary enemy at Ladysmith. Simply satisfying a need I … Ten and six.

(The dwarf acolytes, also naked, representing the new Bloomusalem.) When we were jointly going mad from our life of unnatural excitements, but I felt it was expected of me.

STEPHEN: (In flunkey's prune plush coat and kneebreeches, with Donnybrook fair shillelaghs.) Moves to one great goal.

(With hanging head he marches doggedly forward. The subsheriff Long John Fanning appears, bareheaded, in lascar's vest and trousers, heelless slippers, unshaven, his multitudinous plumage moulting He yawns, showing the brown tufts of her armpits. All wheel whirl waltz twirl. Bloombella Kittylynch Florryzoe jujuby women. He calls again. Approaching Stephen.)

BLOOM: (Drawls.) Isn't that history? He got that kink, fascinated by sister's stays. Our quest for novel scenes and piquant conditions was feverish and insatiate—St John nor I could identify; and were disturbed by the taxidermist's art, and he it was not wholly unfamiliar. All tales of the bazaar dance. You are the link between nations and generations. The just man falls seven times. It's all right.

(Bloom.) Mrs Marion.

(A man in a loose lawn surplice with funnel sleeves he is pulled away.) Electors of Arran Quay, Inns Quay, Rotunda, Mountjoy and North Dock, better run a tramline in Gibraltar?

(Bloom appears, flushed, panting He gazes ahead, reading on the bottom, like a maker's seal, was seized by some frightful carnivorous thing and torn to ribbons. In dignified ventriloquy To Bloom She gives him the glad eye. The crossexamination proceeds re Bloom and Zoe stampede from the slack of its owner and closed up the ghost. In his free left hand.)

BLOOM: (THE RETRIEVER, NOSING ON THE FRINGE OF THE CROWD, BARKS NOISILY.) I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of his surroundings.

RUDY: (Bloom follows, returns. On October 29 we found potent only by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our penetrations. Edward the Seventh appears in the maw of his voice. He averts his face so as to resemble many historical personages, Lord Beaconsfield, Lord Byron, Wat Tyler, Moses of Egypt, Moses Herzog, Michael Davitt against Isaac Butt, Justin M'Carthy against Parnell, city marshal, in a clearing of the heroine of Jericho. Florry Talbot regards Stephen.)

[gethealthy18-blog]

101 Romantic Love Riddles With Answers

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101 Romantic Love Riddles With Answers

101 Romantic Love Riddles With Answers Harini Natarajan Hyderabd040-395603080 January 28, 2020

Do you have a passion for riddles about romance and love? We have a bunch of them in store for you. We hope you will like this collection of love riddles with answers. The list below consists of everything from cute and funny love riddles to hot love riddles for him. Love is such an amazing emotion – it is difficult to express how deep it is. Grappling with love takes up a fair amount of mental gymnastics and reflection. What is love, really? Love itself is a riddle with a million different answers. Even though no one can answer that riddle correctly for certain, you can enjoy these and share them with your loved one. Have fun! May your cup of love always overflow!

101 Love Riddles With Answers

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What did the guy squirrel say to the girl squirrel?

Answer: I am “nuts” about you!

Why is it difficult to find a loving, caring, and handsome guy?

Answer: Because I am already with him.

What did the French chef give his girlfriend for Valentine’s Day?

Answer: A “quiche.”

What happened when the man fell in love with his garden?

Answer: It made him “wed” his plants.

I can break, I can be clogged, I can be attacked, I can be given, I can be kept, I can be crushed, yet I can be whole at the same time. What am I?

Answer: A heart.

What is mine but only you can have?

Answer: My heart.

What did the Valentine Card say to the stamp?

Answer: “Stick” with me and we’ll go places.

Why did the girl ask her boyfriend for a map?

Answer: Because she got lost in his eyes.

What did the fish say to the bait on Valentine’s Day?

Answer: We should totally hook up.

What do you call two birds in love?

Answer: “Tweet” hearts.

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Eros is at its core, while a ring is its symbol. Though it can be seen as holy, often it is sealed by contact. What is it?

Answer: Marriage

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s is really long. Michael J. Fox’s is short. Daffy Duck’s isn’t human. Madonna doesn’t have one, and I want yours. What is it?

Answer: Surname.

I can make people happy, I can make people cry. I can make people want me, and I can drive people crazy. What am I?

Answer: Love

What’s the most romantic part of the ocean?

Answer: When the “buoy” meets the “gull.”

What did the left eyebrow say to the right eyebrow?

Answer: You look surprised to see me.

Why did the cannibal break up with his Valentine?

Answer: She didn’t suit his taste.

What are the three rings of marriage?

Answer: The engagement ring, the wedding ring, and the suffering.

What is worth a billion dollars but comes free of cost?

Answer: Love.

Why did the woman fall for Dracula so quickly?

Answer: It was love at first “bite.”

How do you get the attention of someone you love?

Answer: By screaming ‘I love you’ loudly to someone else.

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What do love and math have in common?

Answer: Add wine and a bed, minus the clothes, divide the legs, and hope and pray that you don’t multiply.

What did the boy bulb say to the girl bulb?

Answer: I love you a whole “watt,” honey!

How can a married couple who hate each other and are on the brink of divorce enjoy a romantic dinner and a bottle of wine at the same restaurant?

Answer: They go on different days.

A doctor and a bus driver are both in love with the same woman, an attractive girl named Sarah. The bus driver had to go on a long bus trip that would last a week. Before he left, he gave Sarah seven apples. Why?

Answer: Because an apple a day keeps the doctor away.

What is invisible and makes people suffer from symptoms like sweating and nausea, yet people can’t survive without it?

Answer: Love.

What happens when you fall in love with a French chef?

Answer: You get “buttered” up!

He has married many but has never been married. Who is he?

Answer: A priest.

What did the painter say to her boyfriend?

Answer: I love you with all my “art.”

What is yours but you can’t actually hold?

Answer: My heart.

What did the man with the broken leg say to his nurse?

Answer: I have a “crutch” on you.

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What did the boy pickle say to the girl pickle on Valentine’s Day?

Answer: You mean a great “dill” to me.

Why did carbon marry hydrogen?

Answer: They “bonded” well from the moment they met.

What did the boy snake say to the girl snake on Valentine’s Day?

Answer: Give me a hug and a “hiss,” honey.

What did the doctor say to the tonsil?

Answer: You look so cute, I think I will take you out.

What did the boy bird say to the girl bird on Valentine’s Day?

Answer: Let me call you “tweet” heart.

Why was the chef embarrassed?

Answer: Because he saw the salad “dressing.”

What did the boy drum say to the girl drum on Valentine’s Day?

Answer: My heart “beats” for you.

Why did the man propose to his Korean crush?

Answer: Because she was his “Seoul” mate!

How did the husband show his wife who was the boss of the household?

Answer: The husband held up a mirror to his wife’s face.

How do you spell a cute boy with only two letters?

Answer: QT!

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What did the paper clip say to the magnet?

Answer: I find you very “attractive.”

What did the boy rabbit say to the girl rabbit on Valentine’s Day?

Answer: Some “bunny” loves you.

What did the elephant say to his Valentine?

Answer: I love you a ton.

What do relationships have in common with algebra?

Answer: Haven’t you ever had an X and wondered Y?

Did Adam and Eve ever have a date?

Answer: No, but they had an apple.

What did the boy owl say to the girl owl on Valentine’s Day?

Answer: “Owl” be yours!

What did the little boy sheep say to the little girl sheep on Valentine’s Day?

Answer: I love “ewe.”

What is a vampire’s sweetheart called?

Answer: His ghoul-friend.

You play with me when you are single and bored and stuck with me once married. What am I?

Answer: Your ring.

Why did the banana go out with the prune for Valentine’s Day?

Answer: Because he couldn’t get a date.

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Where does Valentine’s Day come after Easter?

Answer: In the dictionary.

Did you hear about the romance in the tropical fish tank?

Answer: It was “guppy” love!

Why didn’t the watermelon want to marry the honeydew melon?

Answer: Because she can’t-elope.

What did the train say to his Valentine?

Answer: I choo-choo-choose you!

I can be blind, I can be powerful, I can be difficult, deep, complicated, and tender at the same time. What am I?

Answer: Love.

What did the boy octopus say to the girl octopus on Valentine’s Day?

Answer: I want to hold your hand.

How can you tell when a turkey is all ready for a date?

Answer: It is “dressed.”

What did the iPhone say to the MacBook?

Answer: You are the “apple” of my eye.

If love is grand, then what is divorce?

Answer: At least a hundred grand!

Why does love need sunglasses and a cane?

Answer: Because love is blind.

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What greeting do you say to a single person on Valentine’s Day?

Answer: Happy Independence Day!

What date do single people have on Valentine’s Day?

Answer: February 14th.

What did the female giraffe ask the handsome male giraffe?

Answer: Wanna neck with me?

What did the phone say to the WiFi?

Answer: We definitely have a connection.

Why did the two lovers end up in prison?

Answer: Because they stole each other’s hearts.

What did the bus conductor say to his new girlfriend that works at the zoo?

Answer: I think you’re a “keeper.”

What did the clock say to the calendar on Valentine’s Day?

Answer: Wanna go on a date?

What did number 2 say to number 1?

Answer: Are you single?

What fastens two people yet touches only one?

Answer: A wedding ring.

How did the bell propose to his girlfriend?

Answer: He gave her a “ring.”

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What did the electrical socket say to the plug?

Answer: We fit perfectly together.

What is Mrs. Right’s first name?

Answer: Always.

I can inflame and ignite a heart with my weapon, so you lovers better watch out. Who am I?

Answer: Cupid.

What did the cat say to her Valentine?

Answer:  You are purr-fect for me.

What is the difference between love and marriage?

Answer: Love is one long sweet dream, and marriage is the alarm clock.

What is another word for joy that starts with H, but for me it starts with U?

Answer: Happiness.

What do farmers give their wives on Valentine’s Day?

Answer: “Hogs” and kisses!

This very thing you were born with pleases us all. It is even capable of making men fall, while only experienced by few. It is treasured by all.

Answer: Your beauty.

It grows and blossoms, it dies and wilts. It happens in the beginning and happens in the end. It can make you cry, it can make you sad, it can make you smile, and it can make you brave. What is it?

Answer: Love.

This is something I offer to you. It will help our relationship survive if it remains true. It begins with an L and comes at no cost. Surely without it, our relationship would be lost.

Answer: Loyalty.

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Made by God in pairs, separated at birth on Earth, found after years of search, inseparable for the rest of the time. What am I?

Answer: Soulmates.

When I look at her, she smiles at me. When I wink at her, she winks at me. When I kiss her, she kisses me back. When I say I love you, she says it back. Who am I?

Answer: Your own reflection in the mirror.

I can fly, but I am not a bird. I am colorful, but I am not a rainbow. I am beautiful and social, but I am not a person. What am I?

Answer: A butterfly.

She is famously pretty, and you can make her anything you want her to be. She comes in many colors and sizes, with long hair, short hair, blonde, brunette, curly, or straight hair. She’s as cute as cute can be and can fit in your hand. Who is she?

Answer: A Barbie doll.

I may look like I am grizzly, but I am actually soft and cuddly. I may be big or small, all stuffed up and ready to be snuggle. What am I?

Answer: A teddy bear.

Useless for one, but absolute bliss to two. The small boy gets it for free, the young man has to seek permission for it. The old man has to buy it. It’s a baby’s right anda lover’s privilege. What am I?

Answer: A kiss.

This is the most sold thing on Valentine’s Day. Red is the most popular of all its shades. Its fragrance is sweet. People give it on the most romantic of meetings.

Answer: A rose

What four-letter word is the cause of most discord in the world, as well as most cooperation?

Answer: Love.

What flowers are kissable?

Answer: Tulips.

What did the hamburger buy his sweetheart?

Answer: An onion ring!

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I represent love. I’m the daughter of Heaven and Sea. You may find me in the sky above, and many envy my beauty.

Answer: The goddess Venus.

My first is foremost legally. My second circle is outwardly. My third leads all in victory. My fourth twice ends a nominee. What am I?

Answer: Love.

This word is a favorite of girls. Boys are unnerved by the mention of it. Once love finds its accompaniment, it becomes a lifelong event.

Answer: Forever.

At the surface or within, it has the power to woo you and win. For Keats, it was joy forever. If you have it, it will get you favors.

Answer: Beauty.

They have the power to entice. The exploration of their depths never suffices. They are the subject of all romantic lines. They come in blue, black, and hazel shades. Name them!

Answer: Eyes.

It caused the destruction of Troy, the worst of tragedies, and numerous maladies. Yet it is chased, desired, and fought for. What is it?

Answer: Love.

Testimony of love, signifier of commitment. All it needs is a bottle of wine and a band that shines.

Answer: Aproposal.

A tested formula of love andinevitable part of love stories. The romantic dim light and good food are its friends. It never goes out of trend.

Answer: A candlelight dinner.

A declaration of love, the beginning of a journey, with vows and a ceremony.

Answer: Marriage.

Do skunks celebrate Valentine’s Day?

Answer: Of course. They are very scent-imental beings.

You see him flying around, carrying bows and arrows. Once he hits you with it, all you feel is love not sorrow. He must have hit us both. Who is he?

Answer: Cupid.

We sure hope you loved these sweet, romantic, cute, and funny love riddles with answers! Organize a romantic date night with your bae and make it even more romantic by asking him some of these riddles. All the best, lovers!

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Harini Natarajan

Harini has over 12 years of experience in content writing and editing for online media. She specializes in the areas of business, health and wellness, and lifestyle and is proficient in Medical Sciences (Biology, Human Anatomy and Physiology, and Biochemistry). As the Chief Editor, Harini ensures that her team delivers interesting, engaging, and authentic content. Her background in Biomedical Engineering helps her decode and interpret the finer nuances of scientific research for her team. Harini is a certified bibliophile and a closet poet. She also loves dancing and traveling to offbeat destinations.

Source: https://www.stylecraze.com/articles/romantic-riddles/

[cupid-ghoul]

saw my moots doing this so I'm stealing the idea

🖤🎃 come trick or treating in my ask box 🎃🖤

🖤 HAPPY HALLOWEEN/SAMHAIN FOLKS 🖤