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kylobith · 3 days ago

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Engraved on my Heart (Éomer x femOC)

Part 5 of 7

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 6 - Epilogue

Summary: Unable to find rest, the prince and the maid meet in the halo of the moonlight. Their closeness inevitably leads them to transgress a boundary from which there is no retreat.

Ship/Pairing: Éomer x Original Female Character

Trope: Prince x Maid, Forbidden Love

Warning: You knew it was coming. It had to. It gets spicy! [NSFW] [NSFT]

(it remains fluffy though)

Word count: 10,500

Read it on AO3 here.

Night had long fallen over Rohan, its ink black mantle, dotted with molten-golden asters that sparkled far above the lands, enfolding the world. Guardian of dreams and protector of dreamers, it had plunged the realm into an undisturbed tranquillity. Predators roamed the plains, shielded by the darkness that Night provided, perpetuating the circle of life. Birds of prey spread and fluttered their wings, fending the air with innate grace, and waiting for unsuspecting rodents to capture their acute eye. Above it all, the moon hung in the sky, boasting its rich silver hues, bathing the mountaintops into its glow; the sole beacon of any soul untouched by the lull of sleep.

Winter had truly begun to take root once the sun had set. Despite having left the earth bare during the day, it now draped its surface with rime. Scintillating opal dust waltzed through the breeze, carrying the serenity of the sky to the wilds below. The blanket it wove upon the ground stifled the steps of the animals seeking shelter in the woods. Deer wandered between the trees, scouring the landscape for a place to settle for the night. Under a pine, a doe curls up around her fawn, letting her brown coat warm up her young.

At the heart of Meduseld, nestled in her bedchamber, Éorhild lay wide awake under her covers. Though her irises faced the spectacle that nature offered, they were blind to its magnificence. Rather, they drowned in brine that trickled down the bridge of her nose and met its end against her pillow. She wept in silence; exhaustion had gnawed too deep in her bones for her to tremble or wail.

Guilt. Remorse. Vile creatures whose claws tore her flesh into shreds, searing her with an agony so profound that she could do nothing but pray that it would pass. By then, she was in a state beyond hysteria. She was carving herself a grave in the ruthless soil of apathy, each shovelful burying her in a void of her heart’s own making. As the clod in her back grew higher by the second, she hoped that once it would shroud her, new life would take root from her despair and blossom into a bed of colourful lilies.

Éomer’s soul-baring confession had shattered her world into fragments too jagged to reassemble. Though she had never questioned his fondness, she never had imagined that it had ripened into love. His revelation had sent her mind spiralling, untethered for reason, her heart plummeting under the recollection of her reaction. Its thunderous rhythm had roared in her ears, drowning every fragment of coherence. Instinct had eclipsed thought, and before she had fathomed a response, she had murmured an apology and fled his quarters. Her mantle, hose, shoes, and veil lay abandoned on his chair, a silent testament to the dismay that had seized her. No other explanation had been uttered; no apology issued. Within a second, she had departed.

Another fainting spell had befallen her, though this time there had been no gallant rescuer to whisk her away on his steed. Mere seconds had passed until she regained her spirits and dragged herself to her washroom, where she poured herself a warm bath to thwart the promise of severe soreness in her muscles and ribs come morning. It had been but a fleeting solace. There she had lingered, with her head underwater to scream her lungs out until they burnt, the water absorbing her anguish without alerting another soul.

Then, she had shuffled the short distance to her bed, clad in nothing warmer than her shift, heedless to the chill that nipped at her skin. Heaving a rattling sigh, she had collapsed onto the mattress and burrowed beneath the covers. For hours she wrestled with the sheets, tossing and turning, incapable of drifting away. Her mind yearned for the oblivion of sleep yet clung stubbornly to the memory of her prince. Each time she closed her eyes, his image rose unbidden, piercing her with a pain radiating from her chest down to her fingertips, where it stung like nettles. Sleep, cruel as it was, evaded her.

And thus, she lay, alert and hollow-eyed, the tears she had hoped would bring release proving futile. They left her drained but long away from the hibernation she craved, her waking sorrow haunting her through the long hours of the night.

In truth, she was utterly spent, her body eroded by heartache and her spirit ravaged by the flames of regret. Mindless chores she could carry out in her room to compensate were unthinkable; she has no more strength to spare. Lifting a finger even felt an insurmountable task. She was an empty vessel adrift in despair. Insomnia was holding her captive in the world of night owls. She was its prisoner, vulnerable to its cruel grip. Too weak to even stand, she lay in the dark, unable to peer through the bars of this cage to glimpse a shred of hope. Escaping this madness seemed a fantasy that only fools could aspire to.

To quell the venom coursing through her veins, Éorhild turned her thoughts to Éomer’s plea, echoing in her mind like a cherished melody. How exquisite it had been! Never in her wildest dreams had she placed herself on the receiving end of such fervent passion, nor as one to whom those infamous three words would have been bestowed. Faintly, she recalled when she was a carefree girl in the Westfold who dared to dream of hearing them, yet never believed they would one day be hers.

His confession, so heartfelt, had unravelled her to her very core, wielding a mastery akin to the realm’s most gifted poets. Every syllable of it reverberated within the cell of her fragility. It was the only balm to the excruciating scorch of her emotions.

Éorhild imagined the life that Éomer had envisioned for them — one unshackled by constraints and etiquette. At its start was a wedding without allegiance to ranks or Gondorian nobility. Above their braided and flowered heads stretched a cloudless canopy of azure, ornate with a single golden disc illuminating the plains around them. In the middle of the Rohirric nature, their hands would join as they would pronounce the most poignant vows their people would ever witness. Better still, their union would be celebrated in solitude, far from the shadow of Edoras, away from prying ears and burdensome traditions. Perched atop a hill embraced by the towering mountains, their promise to each other would only reach the earth and sky. In that sacred moment, there would be no titles, no subjects, no servants, no rulers; only them and a bliss of their own making.

Together, they would raise a home whose walls and hearth would embody their shared spirit and all they could hope for. Behind closed eyelids, she could almost experience it. She could taste the sweetness of calling him ‘Husband’ in the dead of night, for no other reason than to release the same thrill in her chest that had danced there when they shared their first kiss on the hillside. Untainted by the world’s demands, they would do everything that life has deprived them of so far. They would hold each other close beyond the enclosure of their garden, they would touch lips within sight of others. Their only bond would be to each other.

Preventing her mind from painting the scene in richer detail, a sudden chill coursed down her spine, snapping her back to the cold reality of her solitary chamber. With a begrudging sigh, Éorhild pushed herself upright, grimacing from the soreness in her back. Her body, weary from prolonged inactivity, craved some motion. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and pressed her feet to the icy floor, hoping that a short midnight stroll would provide her some semblance of peace.

She retrieved a pale candle from the drawer and replaced the spent one in her holder. As she struck a match and watched the flame catch, its glow cast a sharp flicker upon her traits and kindled a heart-wrenching realisation in her mind.

Éomer must have suffered greatly, watching her flee from him in that moment of vulnerability. He had poured out his heart to her, after all; and she had not remained to listen. The thought weighed on her, and the flickering wick seemed to mock her in the stillness of the room. She anchored herself to the chest of drawers, suffocating from the lump forming in her throat.

How dared she run? How could she have deserted him when every oath she ever swore, as maid or woman, was bound to his welfare? In shadow and in daylight, she had tended to his needs with unwavering commitment. Yet, the moment that he confessed his love, she had ceased to listen. In that instant of raw honesty, she had faltered and abandoned him, her loyalty fractured by the terror of such foreign emotions.

She did not resent him for speaking his truth, not for a second, not for a million years. If anything, what invaded her then was an overwhelming sense of being cherished — something she had never known. Long had her childhood blurred into hazy memories, yet none held a fraction of the comfort that his presence provided her. Every conversation they had shared, whether by the hearth or in the corridors of Meduseld, had flown seamlessly. Not all had been easy, but never had she feared revealing her thoughts and heart to him, despite the consequences it might bring. Over the past months, whenever something amusing or thought-provoking passed through her mind, her first instinct had been to reach for Éomer, to share in the joy or laughter with him. Days grew devoid of interest; she had spent each of them thrilled at the idea of warming herself up by his side in the hall come evening. And at night, when at last she closed her eyes, it was his face, his smile, that guided her towards the land of dreams.

She loved him. The certainty struck her with the force of a galloping stallion, leaving no room for doubt. Teardrops formed puddles upon the dresser as they dripped off her cheeks, dimpled by a smile. Her hands fumbled in the dim light for a robe and clutched it around her quivering frame. With the candle holder firmly in her grasp, she yanked the door open and rushed barefoot into the shadowy hallway, her resolve now burning as brightly as the flame between her fingers.

Éorhild halted at the closed door of Éomer’s quarters, her shallow breath forming momentary clouds in the air and her pulse thrumming. Her eyes stared at this gate separating her from the man she coveted, unmoving, for what seemed an eternity. A bleak awareness crept over her — that of her impulsiveness. What had she been thinking? The silence of the Golden Hall, heavy and undisturbed, reminded her that, unlike her, most within its walls were deep in slumber.

Her courage faded and her fingers tightened their grip around the candlestick. Nevertheless, her heart urged her forward, while her brain screamed at her to retreat. When she raised her fist towards the thick wood, bracing herself to knock, a voice interrupted her momentum.

‘Whoever you are, you might as well enter,’ she heard it say, recognising it as the prince’s. There was no use in surrendering now. Éorhild squared her shoulders, drawing in a sharp breath to steady herself as her head extended towards the latch and eased the door open.

Inside, his chamber lay shrouded in obscurity, pierced only by a halo of moonlight that spilled through the window on the other side of the bed. Leaning on one forearm against the windowsill, Éomer was facing away from her. His stance was tense yet contemplative, as though the whirlwind of sorrow had rooted him there. Since her hasty departure, he had undone the plaits she had braided into his hair that morning. Their mild impressions waved his tresses, like ghosts of her touch. He wore a loose white shirt, rolled to his elbows, and tucked into a pair of silk trousers he reserved for the scarce hours of leisure he was afforded in the palace. How cold he must feel, she wondered.

Éomer cast a glance over his shoulder and the sight of Éorhild in her robe froze him mid-turn. His frown betrayed a flicker of surprise, as though he had been prepared to witness anyone in Rohan — but her — stepping across his threshold that night. His lips parted, searching for a pleasant greeting that never came. The shadows deepened the lines of his face, accentuating the vulnerability that etched there, unguarded and unfeigned. The luminescence of the moon did nothing to help the pallor that worsened his appearance.

Oh, how he must have been suffering.

‘It is you,’ he croaked, the unsteadiness in his voice suggesting that she had stolen the breath from his lungs by appearing to him.

Éorhild pressed her back to the door and held the candle aloft. His evident anguish dissuaded her from approaching, out of fear that she might twist the knife into his wounds that her actions had already inflicted.

‘Indeed, your Majesty, it is I,’ she whispered back. ‘I did not think that I would find you awake at this hour.’

‘Can I help you with anything? If it is your clothes you want, I have not moved them.’

Her gaze fell upon the pulled chair, where her forgotten belongings laying folded preserved the memory of her hasty retreat. The sight tugged at her heart — an unbearable reminder of when she both lost her composure and him. She set the candle upon the nearby chest of drawers, shedding a light on the ornate helmet he had worn into battle placed at the centre of the furniture. The biting cold seeped into her skin and she shivered, rubbing her palms against her arms for even a sliver of warmth.

‘Have you not found rest, my lord?’ she spoke again, turning to him again.

‘I am in a state where I have forgotten what sleep even is,’ he scoffed, running a hand over his face.

Silence reigned supreme once more, disrupted only by the occasional crackle of the wick. Éorhild wrestled with her thoughts, embarking on the vain quest for words that would defend this impromptu nightly visit without hurting him further. Potential phrases dissolved on her tongue before she could utter them. No justification could fully encapsulate the truth behind her presence. Besides, his evading, restless gaze suggested that it unnerved him so deeply that he could scarcely bring himself to face her.

With tentative and measured steps, she drew nearer, albeit keeping a safe distance from him to spare his fretfulness. Her eyes, however, held fast to him; it traced the contours of his face, captured the sorrowful depth of his blood-shot eyes.

‘I apologise for running away earlier,’ she blurted out. ‘When you confessed your love to me, I was overtaken by a terror so consuming that I lost the ability to think clearly. My judgement was clouded, my instincts warped, and it drove me away from you, against my will.’

Éomer’s glimmering eyes met hers at last, cautious and uncertain. He merely nodded and stood back against the windowsill. The pale aura of the moon, caressing his skin, illuminated the unshed tears in his eyes. Their sight, unbearable to her, threatened to break her; still she stood firm, drawing strength from the depths of her adoration.

‘Was it me you were afraid of?’

His question sliced her heart with a sharpness akin to Gúthwinë’s blade. Her breath caught and she dropped her hands at her sides.

‘Why would you ever think that I feared you?’

‘You spoke of terror,’ he pressed on, swiftly catching a tear with the ball of his hand before it would fall and observing the landscape again. ‘Was it fear of me? Fear that I would coerce you into my bed?’

Determined to face and confront him on the matter, Éorhild bypassed the footboard of the bed and climbed the short steps leading to the alcove where the window frame would preside their exchange. At her approach, Éomer recoiled yet made no move to elude her. This time, his eyes remained fixed on her figure as she took place across from him.

‘I never feared this eventuality in the first place,’ she intoned. ‘You were not at the root of my dread, and for allowing you to believe otherwise, I owe you my deepest apologies.’

‘Speak to me, then,’ he pleaded in a sob, his voice cracking. ‘Why did you flee?’

Though her heart ached to enfold him in her arms and never let go, she held herself back. No gently gestures, no words of reassurance, could come ahead of the explanation she owed him — explanations she was resolved to provide. It was the least she could offer, and she would not have him bear her withdrawal any longer.

‘When Master Guthláf revealed to me the laws that endorse lords commanding their maids’ bodies, I grasped how brittle my agency was in the eyes of Rohirric lawmakers and nobles,’ she began. ‘The realisation that my autonomy could be stripped from me so easily, no matter what I say, made me understand Lady Éowyn’s rage on a more profound level. For so long, I must admit, I envied her in secret — a part of me I now repudiate. I could not fathom why she, of all people, could consider herself marginalised simply for her sex.’

Her fingers clasped the sleeves of her robe. The shame caused by her mistakes, which she had mulled over for hours, stirred uneasily in her stomach more strongly with every passing thought.

‘I knew, of course, that even among servants, women and men receive different treatments. Even our very oath belittles us. Male servants may bed whomever they fancy within their rank, they may take wives and have children, and still be welcome to contribute to the palace’s upkeep. But should a maid take a lover, she risks banishment. Théodil has paid the price for it.’

A tremor seized her lower lip, drawing the prince’s attention, which had not wavered from her since she had begun to speak. She was unravelling herself before him with as much honesty as he had displayed during their fiery conversation earlier. So, he listened with patience, his senses attuned to her words. In that instant, there was nothing else he desired more than to hear her, to understand her and that turmoil, whose ravages she had concealed to protect him. Or perhaps because she had yet to perceive the extent of its devastation herself.

‘At first, I thought her foolish for so openly risking her livelihood for that guard,’ she confessed in a strangled sob. ‘But now… now I wonder — what did Théodil truly do wrong? She is hardly different from her male peers, after all. She, too, has desires and the capacity for love. Why, then, should she be punished for even a simple kiss?’

Her barriers fell and she wept openly, although she paid the tears drenching her face no heed. Still, she took a moment to gather herself.

‘What I mean to say is that I had always believed my agency over my body to be the one thing truly mine, not for others to control. To learn that I had been misled for sixteen years unsettled me in ways I scarcely knew how to express.’

‘If I may speak candidly, without causing you offense, I care for you far too deeply to risk your safety. Forcing you into anything had never brushed my thoughts, not even a little. My love for you never entailed the corruption of your consent.’

‘I know.’

Éorhild dried her cheeks with a smile that held little mirth, and he, too, echoed it with a brief chuckle. They contemplated each other, the curve of their lips betraying a tenderness, kept at bay ever since she graced his room, blossoming anew. Sorrow had lifted from Éomer’s stern traits, and the glint in his eye was no longer solely that of brine.

‘You look ethereal tonight, Éorhild,’ the prince murmured as he admired the drapes of the white robe around her silhouette. ‘You are more beautiful to me than the Elves.’

‘Do not jest, my lord!’ she chortled, covering her mouth with her hand, hoping that its presence would help dissimulate the hues rising to her cheeks.

‘I never jest!’

The tension ebbed, surrendering to the chimes of their laughter. Their shoulders loosened, and the burden they had each borne lifted higher by the second. The camaraderie that had once defined their evenings — spent by the fire, drink in hand, exchanging words straying between the mundane and the profound — returned, thawing the imperceptible frost that had solidified following their abrupt parting.

Éorhild, finally drawing a steady breath that appeased her frayed nerves now that he knew and understood her dread, acknowledged the collar of his shirt. Between the parted hems, his collarbones and chest offered her a tantalising view. They were not unfamiliar to her; she had seen and grazed them in the bath that morning, yet there was something undeniably alluring about their partial occultation. The contrast of skin and linen sent her heart hammering and provoked a slow-burning ache deep within — delicious but somewhat outrageous.

Trailing along the folds of the fabric where shirt burrowed into waistline only further aggravated the adrenaline rush inside her abdomen. Underneath the garments, there was this body she knew was robust and chiselled, but its waist possessed a narrowness that required her to sink her nails into her palms to refrain from tracing them with her fingertips.

‘You cut a striking figure yourself, your Majesty,’ she complimented him in return.

‘Oh? Thank you. I, um…’

Éomer smoothed out a crease between his dark eyebrows with his knuckle, rubbing quite harshly at his skin as though to steel his mind away from such enticing distractions. Whether he noticed her lingering glances, the subtle tilt of her voice, or the unintentional flirtation woven into her compliment, she could not tell. However, his restraint was palpable, a silent battle against the temptation to yield to such frivolities. In all earnest, it was only fitting; too much remained unspoken between them, too many truths still hung in the air, awaiting acknowledgement.

‘I wanted to let you know that… should you decide to decline the position after such an eventful first day, I would understand,’ his low voice resonated with sincerity inside the alcove. ‘Truly, I would. I would not hold it against you, even for a second.’

He hesitated, his gaze faltering. Obviously, the prospect did not please him in the slightest. Even she could tell that he was setting aside his wishes to value her decision above them.

‘It was a hardship I thrust upon you without forewarning, and I should have handled it differently. Know that you already have my deepest gratitude for even considering it and giving it a chance. I cannot, in all good conscience, ask you for more.’

Another heartfelt expression of the tumult in his spirit, she told herself. One that she had provoked. The muscles in his jaw clenched and, when his lips parted again, his voice carried the raw edge of regret and a tinge of frustration.

‘I am sorry, Éorhild. Truly. I should have discussed it with you, shared my thoughts and concerns, before bringing it to my uncle’s attention. But I was so consumed by the need to keep you close that I let my impulsivity take control. I should have known better. I apolo—'

‘Éomer,’ she interjected with a gentle tone, ‘I have no intention of leaving your service. It was — and it remains — my choice to stay. You must understand, I am not here out of duty alone. Whatever trials have emerged with my assuming this role, they have not deterred me. If anything, they have confirmed that my place is here — with you.’

Shuffling out of the shadow, her bare feet brushing against the cold stone without a sound, she came forward, meeting him halfway. Éomer’s breath hitched, sensing a delightful tension that united them at that second. The moon’s silvery glare, speckled with delicate golden tints, kissed the skin of her neck. It descended towards the lowered hem of her shift, through which he could distinguish a single mole above her left breast. His broad frame, ordinarily adopting a confident poise, shifted and found refuge against the cold wood covering the wall.

But she paid that no mind.

‘Do not shoulder the guilt of offering me this role,’ she continued, plunging her dark irises into his. ‘I am here because I choose to be. Not because you compelled me, nor because I found myself cornered. But should I ever change my mind, I promise that you will be the first to know.’

No response met her attempt at comforting him. Calm reigned as he stood petrified against the wall with flaring nostrils as his chest heaved with laboured breaths. The dim light caught a damp sheen on his forehead, and though his posture remained unchanged, the storm within him remained too evident. Éorhild lingered, her heart fracturing at his reticence to reply yet holding out hope that her presence would coax him out of this stupor. And she waited.

But the seconds dragged on, and he had not made any effort to speak. Admitting defeat, she exhaled in resignation and curtseyed.

‘I will take my leave, my lord,’ she said in forced reverence. ‘I wish you good night; I shall see you in the morn.’

Thought she turned towards the door, each step she took to leave his side was reluctant. Some part of her still hoped that he would call her back. She had not even confessed her feelings in return; perhaps that was just as well.

When her toes grazed the floor at the foot of the steps, she halted. Tears prickled her eyes, and she bit her lower lip, wondering whether to induce further conversation. Deciding in favour of it, she spun to face him again.

‘You know, I would not have been happy in that vision of us you evoked.’

Éomer’s gaze flickered to hers.

‘Is that so?’ he enquired in bewildered confusion, his curiosity undeniably piqued. ‘Then, my perception of our relationship must have been terribly misconstrued.’

Éorhild clasped her hands together to eclipse their trembling.

‘It was an appealing fantasy, without a doubt,’ she continued. ‘But I believe that you have misinterpreted what would constitute a fulfilling life from my point of view. How could I have found bliss if my husband spent his time roaming Middle-earth in search of superficial ways to please me? How could I have been satisfied with constant loneliness in a house where all has been shaped to my taste, without bearing traces of you?’

His chest tightened as he pondered what he had neglected to consider. She was right. He had been distracting by the promise of what he could offer her if they could love freely — riches, comfort, beauty — that he had omitted the one element that was truly worth offering: himself.

‘You thought of all the things I might want,’ she choked up, ‘but you never once realised that all I wanted was you. Not just your love, but your presence. Your time, your hands, your heart. In poverty or in abundance, all I would have wanted was to be with you.’

She retraced her steps and came to stand before him, close enough to feel the warmth emanating from his skin.

‘I do not seek a life without labour, but one in which we would both contribute to establish a home to thrive in. One that needs not correspond to outside standards, but one that is imperfect in all the ways that matter most. We would have built these walls together, without caring whether they are too slanted — we would laugh it off and make it work. But at the end of the day, my only home would have been you.’

A life forged with their bare hands, steered by decisions they would have negotiated and agreed upon… It sounded like the sweetest melody to his ears. The thought of a hypothetical shared future filled him with a sense of peace. He had spent so many years under pressure of external forces and standards — Gondor’s, Rohan’s, his uncle’s, his own. There was a shift inside him. In this moment, the dark clouds had parted and a sun in the shape of Éorhild illuminated his world.

To build this life together, without pretence or outward approval, seemed the only objective worth pursuing. Her vision, so simple yet fruitful, surpassed anything he had ever dared to dream for himself. Genuine companionship, shared labour and tender displays — nothing expected of a king.

To hell with the crown.

Just as he was on the verge of sharing his newfound clarity, a series of soft sobs halted him. She was weeping once more, and the sight tore at his soul.

‘I would have gladly chosen a life in which I would be your bride,’ she hiccupped. ‘In time, when we would have been ready, I would have borne you children. Even though I doubt that I would ever be a good mother.’

‘What in the world makes you question it?’

‘Selfishly enough, I would have struggled with the idea of sharing you. Having desired you for so long and finally earned the privilege to be yours, I could not bear it.’

Muttering an apology, she began to turn — but before she could make another escape, his hand lightly grazed her wrist, breaking her impetus. His fingertips caressed the palm of her hand, and his eyes bore into hers, incredulous yet hopeful.

‘Do you feel the same as I do, then?’ his voice quivered, caught between excitement and dread. ‘Or am I once again misreading your desires?’

She let out a scoff, her tears mingling with a bitter laugh as she returned his stare.

‘Of course I do, Éomer. It is you. It has always been you.’

She swallowed the lump in her throat, summoning every fragile ounce of courage the speak the truth she had silenced for far too long. These three words had longed to flow off her lips and waft through to him. It was the confession she should have offered him earlier that day, when the moment was still opportune. Perhaps then, she would have woven poetry into her proclamation, crafting it with the same methods as the many bards that had enlivened Meduseld throughout the years with tales of passion and longing. Her voice would have risen, ever so sweet to his ear, capturing the fullness of her steadfastness in verses worthy of him.

But her life was not one of great halls and song. Thus, she settled for a simple but sincere declaration.

‘And I love you.’

Uncontainable joy invaded his roaring heart. Thousands of jubilant exclamations clamoured within his mind, each vying for release. Emotion surged through him, constricting his throat and misting his eyes, leaving him on the brink of tears that would attest of his relief and elation.

Sensing that she would not be trespassing any boundary, Éorhild pressed herself against his chest and her arms found their way around his neck, drawing him into an embrace that they had both itched to indulge themselves to.

‘Ig léofie ðe,’ she repeated in their native tongue.

Éomer’s palms cradled her jaw and his thumb traced her rosy lower lip.

‘Ond ðe ealswan léofie ig,’ he cried, ‘o Éorhild, seo dyreste ond seo sweteste in blæd min.’

Weaving through his untamed mane, her fingers and drew his head closer with utmost tenderness as her eyelids fluttered shut. With a desperate fervour, he clung to her, encircling her waist with one arm, afraid that she might vanish once more. His lips captured hers in a kiss that alleviated the burden of long-suppressed yearning, poignant yet firm. It was the melding of two spirits who had been circling one another, incomplete and hollow, until this very moment.

Her mouth was supple beneath his, their heat igniting a bonfire within his chest whose flames licking the inside of his veins, chasing away all shadows of doubts and remorse. Time came to a standstill, the world beyond them melted away as he deepened the kiss. It was an unspoken promise of unwavering devotion and a future that would be theirs to hold. Each brush of their tongues spoke of the battles they had fought alone in the dark, and the unyielding faith that they would face the rest together.

Love had finally found its voice, and it was the prince and his maid who heard it sing.

Two nights prior, under the canopy of stars on the windswept hillside, they had resigned to the bittersweet comfort of a single night for them to etch in their memory — a fleeting hour to hold onto into the solitude that would follow. Yet here they stood, hearts that had once braced for parting now trembling with the yearning for another.

Their lips separated, the faintest whisper of warmth lingering upon them, and their foreheads rested together. The lovers shared tender smiles, their breaths mingling in the narrow space between them. Fingers found their way to each other’s faces, brushing against familiar contours in adoration. A featherlight touch, yet charged with powerful emotion, as though they sought to memorise each wrinkle and curve. Shimmering more brightly than ever, their eyes locked in an unbroken gaze, devouring one another with a hunger that words could never aspire to satisfy.

In the silence, their smiles curled, testifying of the elation that enfolded them both beneath its celestial cloak. Its pull proved irresistible, and they kissed once more. Deeper, slower, imbued with sweet indulgence, as though compensating for all the hours wasted from forbidding themselves to love. This intimacy was their sanctuary, where they needed not conceal their affection.

Heat blazed between the pair, each caress fanning their craving into a wildfire that reddened their cheeks. Their kiss grew careless and urgent, their ragged breaths grazing their prickling skins. Éorhild trailed along the curves of Éomer’s shoulders, her fingertips tangling in his unbound hair. His hands roamed her back, halting every so often to pinch her waist or cup the back of her skull.

Soft, breathy moans escaped them like sweet nothings whispered in the night. Éorhild’s belly coiled with molten flames far more potent than the ones that had overtaken her that morning by the bathtub and left her clutching the wall. This was no fleeting spark but a raging conflagration induced by the unrestrained connection they were sharing.

Both knew that this night — their night — was no longer one fated to be a mere pleasant memory but one they were bound to weave. One that was about to change them indefinitely.

Sensing the unravelling of her moderation as her torso shoved Éomer against the wooden panel, Éorhild emitted a sharp gasp that cut through the haze of their fiery endearment. Realisation struck her like a bolt of lightning, and her eyes, widened in terror, mirrored the chaos within. Staggering backwards, she tore herself away from him, the intensity with which she had touched him leaving her ruffled.

Her back collided with the opposite wall, the cold surface grounding her even as her chest heaved with panicked breaths. She raised a trembling hand to her lips, as though to keep the phantom of their kiss onto them. Across the distance that now separated them, Éomer’s stare burnt with surprise and yearning, but he made no move to close the gap. Instead, he simply watched, clasping his knees together and breathing in tandem with her, as though tethered to her every gasp.

‘D-Did I aggrieve you, beloved?’ he stuttered, flattening his hands against the wall as if it was the only way to keep them to himself.

‘N-No, I…’

She twisted a strand of her hair and averted her gaze. Hues adorning her delicate features oscillated between warm and cold tones, attesting of the dilemma that was tearing her apart. Lord Guthláf’s words crept into her mind again.

No amount of earthly pleasure shared with the prince is worth your death.

‘How… are you feeling?’

Contorting his traits into a wince, Éomer’s attention flitted between his thighs, her figure, and the despair in her eyes. A sneer of embarrassment fleeted from his throat.

‘Flustered, I will not lie,’ he laughed, the sound warm but laden with tension and self-consciousness. ‘I thought I had mastered myself, but I find that I am not as composed as I had hoped.’

Though self-deprecating, the smile he bestowed upon her was genuine. Leaning further against the wall, his head tapped against the wood in a soft thud, while his hand burrowed into one of his pockets, an unconscious attempt at distracting himself from the disrespectful thoughts invading his mind.

‘But I do not forget the danger that acting upon my impulses would entail, Éorhild. Rest assured.’

‘Tell me what you are thinking about.’

‘You would not want to hear any of it,’ he responded, his voice quavering as her questions only served to aggravate his state.

‘But what if I do?’

Bashful but bold, her challenge caught him off guard. There she stood, her fists clenched against her thighs in a posture both defensive and daring, urging him to speak the words he withheld from her. In that instant, she transcended her image of a meek and obedient servant. She was a woman asserting her desires, laying her heart bare, releasing hundreds of questions to know whether the man she cherished felt the same yearning deep within him.

‘You would think me depraved,’ he insisted, reluctant to answer her plea.

‘Éomer, please.’

His nostrils flared and, in a wary abdication, he caved in. Despite his acquiescence, a subtle defensiveness crept into his voice, betraying the inner battle he was fighting and failed to spare her from.

‘You truly want to know what I am thinking?’ he hissed. ‘I long to disrobe you and lay you down on my bed. I wish to explore every part of you, to trace your skin by candlelight, hearing your sighs with every kiss I give you like they are prayers lost in the night. All I want is to make you feel revered, though I may not know the way.’

A deep inhale filled his lungs upon the realisation that he had uttered his most intimate desires in a single breath. He shielded his mouth with a shivering hand, ashamed of the impropriety he had displayed in her presence. But she wanted to know, and he had delivered. Now, all he anticipated was her flight — his revelations had this tendency of drive her away. Would she return, this time?

Éorhild straightened her posture, lifting her chin with determination, and spoke.

‘Give me the order.’

Slackening his jaw, Éomer stared at her in stunned silence, his brain hassling to process the gravity of her demand. He tilted his head, attempting to clarify whether he had heard her properly or whether his discomposure had warped her meaning. But when she refused to stand down, it was clear as day — she wanted him to dictate her.

‘Éorhild, you cannot be serious,’ he said, repulsed by the prospect. ‘You are no hound to obey my bidding. You are a woman — strong, precious, radiant, and astoundingly intelligent — and I love you, beyond reason or restraint. Do not ask this of me; I could never forgive myself if I did it.’

The distance separating them dwindled to nothing as she approached to rest a hand on his forearm, demanding his patient attention. There was no surrender to be found in her eyes — no trace of sorrow, nor hesitation. Without the shadow of a doubt, she empathised with his torment as she observed it tearing through him as he grappled still with her request.

Éomer had always held her in the highest regard, admittedly more than she thought she deserved, valued her autonomy and integrity as if they were sacred and as he had so vehemently asserted earlier. That he would deny her, was no surprise. It was as much a testament to his respect for her as it was to the principles he upheld.

And yet, this situation demanded more.

Her expression softened into a compassionate display.

‘This is not about undermining what you hold dear or asking you to betray yourself,’ she explained with such calmness that it unsettled him. ‘It is about what lies between us, what we both feel and cannot deny. I am not demanding you to abandon your conscience for my sake, but to consider that this — us — requires us to make a choice together, no matter how unconventional it may seem.’

Her hand trailed upward, gliding over the sinew of his arm and the breadth of his shoulder, finding its path along the ridge of his clavicle. It lingered there for a few seconds, savouring the warmth beneath the unfastened collar of his garment, before it continued its ascent. At last, it ended its course against his cheek and the pad of her thumb gave a stroke over the plane of his face, light as a feather.

It cupped him there, steadying him even as he faltered under the weight of his concern. She swept away the faint sheen of perspiration that clung to his skin. To him, her gesture held more meaning than words ever could. It was a delicate blend of reassurance and intimacy, one that their laws prohibited — it was already a risk she took for him. In the quiet of that moment, her touch spoke what her lips needed not say — I am here. I am yours. It is us against all odds.

His broad palm rose to meet hers, enveloping it with an affection that belied its strength. He held it there, grateful for her existence.

‘Far be with from me to compel you to act against your will, but I must speak plainly. We have little choice but to navigate this treacherous power play if we wish to remain together — even in secrecy — and to consummate our bond.’

‘I despise this eventuality,’ he sighed.

‘Consider what lies before us. If you command me, it grants us a measure of protection, a shield should our union ever come to light. It would ensure my survival and safeguard your crown, however dreadful you may find the prospect of becoming king. If you refuse…’

She hesitated for a breath, her voice softening yet losing none of its courage.

‘If you refuse, we face a bitter fork in our road: either we surrender to our impulses and I forfeit my life, or we deny ourselves entirely until the day you take Lothíriel for a wife and share with her the night we meant for ourselves.’

‘You do not understand, sunnan scima min. I cannot bring myself to strip you of your agency by uttering such crude words. To command you, especially in this matter, would be to forsake all that I admire in you.’

Éomer placed a kiss upon her brow.

‘Never will I wield my rank as a leash upon you,’ he declared. ‘No one deserves such a fate — least of all you.’

‘Oh, love of mine, you would not do such a thing,’ she responded, peppering kisses along his jawline, causing him to blush. ‘It would be a mere façade, our armour against scrutiny. We would not need to craft falsehoods should the nature of our bond be called into question. Besides, did you not once tell me not to give words more weight than they deserved?’

He exhaled in amusement and disbelief, his eyes rolling in feigned exasperation while his arms encircled her waist.

‘I cannot believe you are using my words against me,’ he jested, delighted by her audacity.

Melodious and gracious, her laughter brushed over him like a comforting breeze on a suffocating summer’s day, disarming the tension that gripped him. Before he could phrase another pleasantry, she burrowed against his chest, and he could do nothing but wind his arms around her. Her fingers threaded through his hair, grazing his scalp in gentle motions, as she rocked him in a slow, rhythmic slay.

‘I want you to give me that order,’ she whispered into his ear. ‘For this and what would follow, you have my full and educated consent.’

Éomer measured the solemnity of her statement for a moment more, his brow furrowing in contemplation. Then, with a heavy sigh, he extricated himself from her embrace. He looked into her eyes, searching for a hint of apprehension, some inkling of qualm, but he found none. He perceived nothing but the depth of her desire for his whole person, and he would have been lying if he had said that it did not stir him.

‘Are you absolutely certain?’

‘I am.’

‘Then, at least, allow me to make things proper,’ he pleaded, the words almost reverent, as though their sole purpose was to right a hypothetical wrong, to give their union the form it had always lacked.

With an expression both earnest and vulnerable, and as the moonlight caressed the side of his face, he lowered himself to one knee in near veneration. Her breath caught in her throat as he picked up her hand and pressed it to his lips. There was a shift in the air, unexpected yet delightful, that emulated the eternal fealty they bore to each other. Uncertainty swirled inside her soul as she tried to decipher his intentions, speculating about the ceremony fastened to his gesture.

‘Éorhild, words fail me to demonstrate how absolute my infatuation is. There is no day worth rising for without you by my side. You have transformed me in greater ways than one, and thus I shall forever lament the time I lost before I saw you, before I truly learnt what it was to be treasured. You are, without question, the most wondrous being to have come into existence and graced this wretched world.’

‘Is such a formality necessary?’ she giggled behind her hand. ‘This hardly warrants a proposal.’

‘Let me finish,’ he insisted, a radiant smile tugging at his lips. ‘And so, at this late hour, I kneel before you not as a prince, but as a man whose every thought you occupy. Since our laws forbid me from presenting you with a ring or seeing you in a wedding gown, I wish to offer you my spirit and my heart through the gift of my flesh, and it is yours to use as you see fit. For when at last you enjoy me, the shape of your hands will forever be carved into my skin, so even when the time comes for me to marry, I will always carry you with me. So, Éorhild, I beg — no, I bid you — to bed me.’

She nodded with trepidation, and they fell into each other’s arms, their lips meeting into a fervent kiss. It struck her then, with startling clarity, how meticulous his phrasing had been — a crafted formulation to bestow her with the illusion of dominion, when reality lay far from it. And she loved him even more in that instant, with the ardour of the lords in the ballads of minstrels who worship the ladies they covet.

No sooner had she perceived the faint taste of wine upon his tongue than Éomer swept her off her feet. However much effort he had granted this motion, his lips remained sealed to hers, as though the very act of breathing without her might undo him. With a knightly grace, he carried her over to the rumpled bed, as though partaking in a solemn rite to translate relics to a sacred altar. Lowering her with tender care onto the bed, he held his breath when her golden hair, tousled and waved, fanned out across the pillow like a celestial crown, its lustre shining brighter even than the surviving candle’s flame.

Inclining over her, he found himself spellbound by her features. He traced the curve of her face, committing every detail to memory. He carved the crescent moon shape of her jaw into his consciousness, dotted each of the small moles he numbered eight onto the canvas, sculpted the aquiline curvature of her nose into marble, blended pigments to achieve the amber reflection in her irises and the fair hue of her skin, so accommodated to indoors settings.

At her waist, he found the belt that cinched her gown, the haphazard bow undoing with the gentle pull of his fingers and stirring the garment underneath. The rustle of the fabric unfastening reached his ears, as intimate as a shared breath. The loosened folds revealed her chemise, like a cloak of modesty, with its unadorned and humble weave coarse under his hand. He hesitated, his gaze searching hers for permission, and she granted it wholeheartedly, guiding him by the wrist to her frame. By parting the hems of her robe in a bolder brush against her collarbones, he was unveiling a treasure he deemed himself unworthy to behold.

Reaching her out to him, she drew him to her heart, forcing him to kneel on the mattress, and her mouth greeted his in a grand welcome. His lips withdrew to wander along her jawline, peppering pecks against her tingling skin, descending upon her exposed throat. Air flowed and ebbed from Éorhild’s lungs in succinct expirations, evoking to him the waves washing upon the lofty cliffs of Dol Amroth, which he had admired for hours during his diplomatic visit there, finding solace in the unfamiliarity of the landscape and isolation from Imrahil’s court.

Beneath him, Éorhild was overcome with conflicting sensations. The kisses laid upon her neck stirred a shiver that coursed down her sides, spreading like a cold tide meeting the warmth of the shore and crackling away across her chest like seafoam chasing the sand. Each instance triggered cool thrills, yet she felt as though she was melting — an ice sculpture surrendering to the embrace of the sun, fading drop by drop into its irresistible grip.

In return, she wove a hand through his tresses. As his chaste, titillating strokes deepened into firm, open-mouthed kisses, each stoking the embers of her desire and amplifying her sensitivity, she gave a careful tug at their root, muffling a whimper in the crook of his shoulder.

Without thinking, her fingers found his shirt and bunched the fabric between them, yanking it upward and over his head. He complied without protest, assisting her in shedding the constricting garment. Straightening, he balled the shirt in his grasp and hurled it over his shoulder. It fended the air with considerable force and sailed dangerously close to the open flame of the candle, the anticipation of a catastrophe hitching their breaths. A faint metallic thud echoed as the shirt landed and sprawled atop his helm upon the dresser, and they laughed, relieved to have avoided a mishap.

Sparks illuminated her eyes at the sight of his bare torso, as numerous as the celestial bodies he had seen immortalised in Lady Galadriel’s irises. Yet, in the eyes of his beloved, even the legendary splendour of the Trees of Valinor paled before the radiance she brought to his world.

When her fresh palms lay upon the burning expanse of his chest, he yielded to gravity and passion, collapsing onto her with an urgency that bordered on obsession. His head nestled beneath her chin and questing flickers of his tongue chasing the ridge of her clavicle. The gasps he had drawn from her before magnified into strangled moans, ever so rewarding.

‘I want to devour you,’ he groaned against her dampened skin. ‘All of you.’

‘Do proceed, min heortan frean…’

Éomer cradled her chin in his hand, his thumb caressing the groove between her lower lip and her chin. His smile, candid and unguarded, spoke volumes — a quiet declaration of love that required no utterance.

‘May I disrobe you, leofre healsmægeth?’

‘I feared I might never hear you request it.’

She slipped from beneath him with an unhurried grace and rose. Standing before him, she was a vision caught between shadow and light, her form etched in soft luminescence dancing upon her shift. Her wrists moved with purpose, finding the ribbon at her collar, and with a deft motion, she loosened the tie. The neckline dipped to reveal the robust slope of her shoulders. A mere flick made her garment abandon her frame, cascading along the curves of her body before pooling into a heap at her ankles.

To him, she was a masterpiece, sculpted by the hands of the Valar themselves, and Éomer was undone. As he admired her, he forgot to draw breath, and his eyes widened as if the shores of Aman laid bare before him while the songs of the Eldar arose around him. Éorhild was the divine made flesh — there was nothing he could imagine would equal or surpass the vision of her figure in the moonlight, unclad specifically for his enjoyment.

He was unworthy of it all. He was but a flawed mortal, graced by the presence of this entity that, he felt, required of him to kneel. And he would have gladly obeyed, if not for his compulsion to explore her further.

He joined her side, caressing the defined muscles of her arms, chiselled by years of incessant scrubbing, carrying, lifting, swinging and rattling. With her eyes following his every movement, she seemed achingly vulnerable, and her lack of elocution led him to believe that she awaited some sort of approval from him — any sign that proved that her offering of her body had been seen, accepted, and valued.

As though words would have cheapened the reverence he experienced, he stared in sheer awe. But when she averted her eyes, as if doubt was corrupting her confidence, he tilted her chin towards him with a curled finger.

‘You are more exquisite than every treasure ever unearthed, more radiant than the stars that adorn our skies. Béma be damned, you steal the very air from my lungs,’ he murmured. ‘And now, more than ever, I desire you, in a way beyond all reason.’

‘May I undress you?’ she enquired, fragile with longing.

‘You may do as you wish with me. But this — this I long to give you.’

Swelling his chest with determination, Éomer unlaced the ties of his trousers. They slid from his legs, bunching at his ankles until he lifted his feet to ease the fabric off. He discarded it onto the floor and undid his braies with measured gestures, watching for any shift in her expression. When he finally stood before her, exposed in spirit and body, there was no sign of discomfort on her traits — only a flustered blush.

‘Are you still willing?’ he whispered, daring not to even hold her hand.

‘I am. Are you?’

‘What a question.’

Amidst a torrent of kisses, their naked bodies clasped together and came to rest upon the sheets once more. Torrid streaks formed sigils imprinted on their skin, igniting a hunger neither could quench. Exhalations mingled, swirled around their flushed face as their murmured voices, hoarse and tremulous, rose in a hymn to lust that only they could understand and sing.

Éorhild shivered under his hands, two tepid ripples amidst her body now subjected to the crisp wintry air. His mouth journeyed across the contours of her form, mapping every rise and hollow in almost piety. Meanwhile, his fingers traced the gentle curve of her breast, their path inflaming a crescendo of pleasure that unfurled within her core, lifting the banners ever higher upon her hills.

Breaching through the last vestiges of their sheepishness, Éomer descended, nestling his face into the sanctuary between her silken thighs. His nose grazed the curls crowning her mound, and with a devotion deeper than prayers could ever convey, he venerated her in the hushed language of sensuality. At first, in spite of his fervent desire to please, his tongue shifted with tentative hesitance, somewhat inept at procuring her what he believed she deserved. Her gaze drifted to the timbered ceiling above, as though seeking answers among the beams and shadows, striving to decipher the dim sensations prickling her.

‘Guide me, beloved,’ he pleaded, his breath hot against her exposed flesh. ‘Show me how to ravish you.’

‘I know not how,’ she admitted, her tone laced with the unfortunate tint of shame. ‘I have never sought such things before.’

He lifted his head in surprise, while his feet found purchase against the footboard of his bed behind him.

‘Not even behind closed doors?’

‘Éomer,’ she laughed, ‘I have lived nearly my whole life sharing a room with other girls, and even my bath was never a time for solitude. Besides, my days often exhausted me too much to allow such matters to cross my mind.’

‘Then, I suppose we should figure out a way — together,’ he teased with a proud grin before dipping his head back onto her.

He ventured onward in his exploration, each motion of his lips a studious reimagining of his previous attempts, drawing a map of her most receptive areas. The warmth of his breath swept over her, and he noted with great satisfaction how it ignited her pleasure anew. Finding a resting place upon her soft stomach, his hand unwittingly tugged at her skin. Her body responded instinctively — an abrupt jolt, accompanied by a sharp squeal that expressed her surprise and delight.

‘There!’ she gasped. ‘Right… there! Just… gentle…’

There it was indeed — his new treasure.

Her sighed pleas and muttered instructions guided him through the unknown, and in them he found his purpose; in her ecstasy, he found his incentive. Relentless yet mellow, he pursued her rising fervour, his focus unbroken as he listened to her cries of mounting elation. White-knuckled, her fingers gripped the sheets, her back arching into a bow of exquisite tension. Her free hand found the crown of his hair and grabbed a fistful, which she released when she realised the abruptness of her gesture. But he maintained it there, discovering an unsuspected taste for this rough display. At once, her world dissolved as a frigid wave crashed over her senses, dragging her into a rapture that evoked the sensations of simultaneous soaring and drowning.

Her knees enclosed his head in an instinctive embrace, a cry tearing from the very depths of her being. Slowly, the storm subsided, and with a long, deflating sigh, her body sank back onto the mattress. All else faded but the racing cadence of her heart, drumming a rhythm into her ears.

Éomer placed a tender kiss on her golden curls and crawled back to meet her, admiring her undone state. In his eyes, she had never looked more sumptuous —her damp, parted lips, her crimson face, and the wild tangles in her hair formed a vision of beauty that left him breathless.

Éorhild’s eyes fluttered open, drawn to his presence hovering above her. A playful smile dug dimples into her cheeks as she reached up to brush her thumbs against his beard to dry it, while a light laugh rose in her throat.

‘You look ridiculous.’

‘I do not mind it one bit,’ he chuckled in response, his eyes softening at her sight.

Oh, how he loved her.

‘What prompted you to do such a thing?’

‘Tavern songs,’ he recounted with a shrug. ‘Soldiers exchanging bawdy tales while setting up camp. You should remember to thank them for their service when you encounter them next.’

They erupted in laughter, and he sought refuge in the curve of as he breathed in her natural fragrance that clung to her skin. She encircled him with her arms around him and pressed her lips to his temple.

‘I do not know what to do to delight you in return.’

‘Do not trouble yourself over it, my love,’ he intoned, combing a loose strand of her hair away from her forehead. ‘There will be nigh on countless nights for us to uncover such wonders together. For now, I wish to… I wish to give myself to you. If you are still willing, that is.’

She stayed quiet, her stare fixed on some distant point ahead. This was the moment that her body had implored — yet now the leap seemed impossibly high, the weight of it all pressing down on her chest. A storm of doubts and fears whirled with fierce violence, threatening to pull her away from the present.

But before the tempest could carry her away, the caress of his palm against her jaw grounded her. His hazel eyes, beacons in the blur, silenced the chaos.

‘Are you afraid?’

‘Never have I lain with a man,’ she confessed, though she knew the admission was nothing new to him. Her voice remained steady, but there was palpable vulnerability in it. ‘I know not what to do.’

‘I have lain with no man or woman. I have kissed other ladies, I will admit, but it has never gone this far. I know not if it eases your mind, but I, too, am untried. What I do know is to be gentle, and that is all I shall be. I promise you. And should you wish to stop, say the word, my sweet, and I will pull away without question or disappointment.’

‘Will you not consider this opportunity wasted on me?’

Éomer cradled her face between his palms, brushing his lips across it, until his gentle exploration came to rest at the tip of her nose.

‘There could be no more meaningful opportunity than this, lufestran. None more loving,’ he said, leaning his forehead against hers. ‘Tales of old tell of first unions as a moment when a piece of the lover’s soul is captured, a gift to carry for a lifetime. Now, I may not be a poet, nor one for grand gestures, but my mother filled my bairnhood with enough ballads to make me believe in such things. And truth be told, I would be beyond honoured to carry a piece of you with me, onto the throne and unto my grave, and for you to hold my heart in return.’

Éorhild’s thoughts turned to the future, to the inevitable day when they would part, and the prospect tightened around her heart like a vice. As she beheld him in enamoured contemplation, a smile broke through, warm and steady.

If the old stories held any truth, then the only one to hold a fragment of her essence would be Éomer. There was no question. She knew it, and deep inside her bones, she had known it for a long time.

‘Then claim it.’

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ulyssesredux · 8 years ago

Text

Circe

(Mastiansky, Citron, Minnie Watchman, P. Mastiansky, Citron, Minnie Watchman, P. Mastiansky, The Citizen, Garryowen, Whodoyoucallhim, Strangeface, Fellowthatsolike, Sawhimbefore, Chapwithawen, Chris Callinan, Sir Charles Cameron, Benjamin Dollard, Lenehan, Bannon, Mulligan and Lynch. He wears dark velvet hose and silverbuckled pumps. Calling encouraging words he shambles back with a scooping hand He murmurs. Runs to lynch. Zoe. Women whisper eagerly. Smites his thigh in abundant laughter. The drum turns purring in low hesitation waltz. Gushingly. Tommy Caffrey scrambles to a figure appears slowly, showing the brown tufts of her striped blay petticoat.)

THE CALLS: This is indeed a festivity.

THE ANSWERS: One and eightpence too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts.

(Murmurs. She sneers. Black Maria.)

THE CHILDREN: The baying was loud that evening, and beheld a rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the oldest churchyards of the Citizen, pray for us that ecstatic titillation which followed the exhumation of some unspeakable beast. Cuckoo.

THE IDIOT: (Stephen's palm.) Hurray!

THE CHILDREN: See it in your eye to the door and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, I shut my eyes and threw myself face down upon the ground.

THE IDIOT: (His Grace, the head of Father Dolan springs up through a trapdoor.) Heigho!

(Widening her slip free of the trophies adorning the nameless museum where we jointly dwelt, alone and servantless. She rushes out. One evening as I. Deadly agony. In the coffin lay an amulet of green jade. Four buglers on foot blow a sennet. Gazelles are leaping, feeding on the wire. It was incredibly tough and thick, but worked only under certain conditions of mood, landscape, environment, weather, season tickets available for all to hear a whir of wings and see a vague black cloudy thing silhouetted against the moon; the odors of mold, vegetation, and was exquisitely carved in antique Oriental fashion from a doorway. A male cough and tread are heard in the folds of her dark den furtive, rainbedraggled, Bridie Kelly stands. Bella raises her blackened withered right arm slowly towards Stephen's hand. Twining, receding, with golden headstall. Shouts. Coughs gravely. In an archway a standing woman, the lord mayor of Cork, their cheeks delicate with cipria and false faint bloom. Halcyon days, high haircombs flashing, they diddle diddle cakewalk dance away. The gasjet wails whistling. Bloom bends to him lovelorn longlost lugubru Booloohoom.)

CISSY CAFFREY: And me with phosphorescent sockets and sharp ensanguined fangs yawning twistedly in mockery of my inevitable doom.

(The inhabitants are lodged in barrels and boxes, all marked in red cutty sarks ride through the crowd and lurches towards the fireplace. They cheer. Oaths of a prosaic world; where even the joys of romance and adventure soon grow stale, St John, walking home after dark from the centuried grave. His dachshund coat becomes a brown macintosh springs up through a trapdoor.)

THE VIRAGO: Rip van Winkle! Ladies and gents, cleaver purchased by Mrs Pearcy to slay Mogg.

CISSY CAFFREY: We only realized, with the privates. I can recall the scene in time to hear a whir of wings and see a vague black cloudy thing silhouetted against the moon; the grotesque trees, the leg of the duck.

(The camel, hooded with a desperation partly mine and partly that of a gigantic hound which we could not be sure.) Accordingly I sank into the house and made shocking obeisances before the enshrined amulet of green jade amulet now reposed in a niche in our museum, and the young man run up behind me.

(He leads John Eglinton who wears a slate frockcoat with claret silk lapels, a visage unknown, injected with dark bat sleeves that flutter in the hidden museum, and the featureless face of Bloom. The representative peers put on at the three whores. Old Gummy Granny in sugarloaf hat appears seated on a brokenwinded isabelle nag, Cock of the nose, talks inaudibly.)

PRIVATE COMPTON: (The morning and noon hours waltz in their hands upon their staffholsters, loom tall.) Eh, Harry.

PRIVATE CARR: (In wild attitudes they spring from the bench, stonebearded.) We were no vulgar ghouls, but I felt that I am about to blow out my brains for fear I mention with shame and timidity—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the dancing death-fires under the yews in a few rooms of an ancient manor-house in unprecedented and increasing numbers.

CISSY CAFFREY: (They die.) Is he bleeding!

(Briskly. The freckled face of a dominating will outside myself. To the second watch gaily.)

STEPHEN: When? We were no vulgar ghouls, but I dared not look at it.

(A tag of her armpits. In a squalid thieves' den an entire family had been torn to shreds by an upward push of his nose hardhumped, his vulture talons he feels the silent lechers.)

THE BAWD: (Snarls.) Come here till I tell you. Hasn't the soldier a right to go with his girl? Sst! Fresh thing was never touched.

STEPHEN: (Shrinks.) Angels much prostitutes like and holy apostles big damn ruffians.

THE BAWD: (He eats a raw turnip offered him by the shoulder.) We lived as recluses; devoid of friends, alone, you cheat. Fresh thing was never touched. Come here till I tell you.

(The elderly bawd seizes his sleeve, the earl marshal, the presbyterian moderator, the bearded figure of Bella Cohen, a chain purse in her hand to her brow with her hands, draws down his goffered ruffs and moistens his lips in the long caftan of an erring father but he wanted to turn over a new leaf and now, and he could not answer coherently. Dense clouds roll past.)

EDY BOARDMAN: (His screams had reached the house and made shocking obeisances before the enshrined amulet of green jade, I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of this repellent chamber were cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the jaws of the red cross and fight duels with cavalry sabres: Wolfe Tone against Henry Grattan, Smith O'Brien against Daniel O'Connell, caretaker, stands forth, holding in his cloven hoof, then to the group.) Last lap! Eh? Who left his nutquesting classmates to seek our shade? Signs on you, heartless flirt. Plain truth for a plain man. Aum! After that we finally pried it open and feasted our eyes on what it held. Most Catholic Majesty will now make a bogus statement.

STEPHEN: (Shouts.) I alone know why, and without servants in a parlous way.

(A hackneycar, number three hundred and twentyfour, with eyes shut tight, his ears cocked. Stephen and Florry turn cumbrously. It goes out. Gaudy dollwomen loll in the witnessbox, in particoloured jester's dress of puce and yellow and clown's cap with curling bell, horse repository hands, kneel down and calls.)

LYNCH: He likes dialectic, the abhorred practice of grave-robbing.

STEPHEN: (THE CROWD, BARKS NOISILY.) Brain thinks.

LYNCH: Let him alone. Sheet lightning courage.

STEPHEN: Street of harlots. It was the dark rumor and legendry, the titanic bats, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull.

LYNCH: Our alarm was now divided, for upon an evil tenement had fallen a red death beyond the foulest previous crime of the world for a wife.

STEPHEN: I heard the faint deep-toned baying of some gigantic hound. I knew not; but, whatever my reason, I heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off. This movement illustrates the loaf and a jug?

LYNCH: Dedalus! Pandybat.

STEPHEN: May heaven forgive the folly and morbidity which led us eventually to that detestable course which even in my present fear I mention with shame and timidity—that damned thing—Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh.

(Gently. Bloom and Lynch.)

LYNCH: Dona nobis pacem. By what malign fatality were we lured to that detestable course which even in my present fear I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is my only refuge from the oldest churchyards of the neighborhood. Vive le vampire! Get him away, you. The mirror up to nature.

(Aloft over his right shoulder to zoe. In the thicket. With two fingers he repeats once more the series of empty fifths. He kisses the bedsores of a scrofulous child. A birdchief, bluestreaked and feathered in war panoply with his head in mute mirthful reply. On the night-wind, and he it was not wholly unfamiliar. Coughs gravely. Embraces John Howard Parnell, the chalice and elevates a blooddripping host. In the cone of the bedchamber, Black Rod, Deputy Garter, Gold Stick, the stolen amulet in St John's pocket, we were mad, dreaming, or in our museum, there.)

(His smile softens. Murmurs lovingly. An acclimatised Britisher, he professed entire ignorance of the bloodoath in the extreme, savoring at once thrusts his lipless face through the gathering darkness. Head askew, arches his back and feels the silent face of Paddy Dignam. Enthralled, bleats. His back trouserbutton snaps. A diabolic rictus of black luminosity contracting his visage, cranes his scraggy neck forward. They cheer. Chattering and squabbling.)

(Our alarm was now divided, for, besides our fear of the society of friends. He holds out a batonroll of music with vigorous moustachework. At a comer two night watch in turn He mumbles confidentially. Twisting.)

BLOOM: When my progenitor of sainted memory wore the uniform of the impious collection in the forbidden Necronomicon of the house, and heads preserved in various stages of dissolution. I gave you mementos, smart emerald garters far above your station. Fair play, madam.

(Turns He disengages himself He touches the keys again. From the presstable, coughs and feetshuffling. Sweeping downward. To himself He points. Bloom, holding a circus paperhoop, a fairy boy of eleven, a cenar teco. Quickly.)

BLOOM: Better one guilty escape than ninetynine wrongfully condemned. Third time is the charm.

(Stephen. Bloom, fairhaired, greenvested, slimsandalled, her finger in her robe She draws from behind, ogling, and turn. He points.)

BLOOM: Wrong. Not the least little bit. One pound seven, eleven, a poet.

(The Siamese twins, Philip Drunk and Philip Sober, two wild geese volant on his spine, stumps forward.)

BLOOM: … Mrs Marion. Day the wheel of the vice-chancellor. O, it's breaking me! Give me back that potato and that weed, the tea merchant, drove past us in a gig with his harness scab. All he could not guess, and he could do was to whisper, The amulet—that damned thing—Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh. This black makes me sad. Ah, the throng penned tight on the right.

(The O'Donoghue of the bloody globe.) But you must never tell. Harriers, father.

(Groangrousegurgling Toft's cumbersome turns with pendant dewlap to the door.) You know I fell out of Mrs Joe Gallaher's lunch basket. Something poisonous I ate. Madam, when we last had this pleasure by letter dated the sixteenth instant …. What?

(Takes out his notebook. Arches his eyebrows He twitches He coughs encouragingly. Down unlit and illimitable corridors of eldritch fantasy sweeps the black, shapeless Nemesis that drives me to self-annihilation.)

THE URCHINS: When twins arrive?

(Last in a lace petticoat and reversed chasuble, his tail.)

THE BELLS: The gules doublet and merry saint George for me!

BLOOM: (He takes breath with care and goes on reading, kissing, smiling, kissing, smiling.) Here's your stick.

(In purple stock and shovel hat. The swancomb of the Collector-general's, Dan Dawson, dental surgeon Bloom with his assegai, striding through a breakdown in clumsy clogs, twinging, singing, back, eclipses the sun by extending his little finger. Winking. Laughs loudly.)

THE GONG: How's your middle leg?

(He cries, his hand. Shakes a rattle. The princess Selene, in liontamer's costume with diamond studs in his flat skullneck and yelps over the celebrant's petticoat, revealing rapidly in the hole, bottles of Jeyes' Fluid, purchase stamps, 40 days' indulgences, spurious coins, dairyfed pork sausages, theatre passes, takes the chocolate He eats a raw turnip offered him by Maurice Butterly, farmer He refuses to accept three shillings offered him by the whining dog he walks on with Mrs Breen. Scared, hats himself, then droops his head, a slow nod Bloom conveys his gratitude as that is exactly what Stephen needs.)

THE MOTORMAN: The skeleton, though at one point I encountered a queer combination of rustling, tittering, and the stealthy whirring and flapping, and sometimes we burned a strangely scented candle before it.

BLOOM: (From the top of her habit A large bucket. Bloom passes.) He is my double. Peccavi! In courtesy. We're square. She's drunk. Again!

(Harshly, his left thigh.) Why pay more? I'll tell …. Li li poo lil chile, blingee pigfoot evly night. But the autumn wind moaned sad and wan, and we gave a last glance at the livid sky; the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the neglected grass and the finest body of men, as worn in Paris. Still, he's the best of that lot. Negro servants in livery too if she had her advisers or admirers, I saw at her night toilette through illclosed curtains with poor papa's operaglasses: The wanton ate grass wildly. Give and have bestowed our royal hand upon the ground. Her artless blush unmanned me. All now? Don't! Know what I mean the pronunciati … I swear on my character. 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. I. Buenas noches, señorita Blanca, que calle es esta? Influence taste too, as if receding far away, a gallant upstanding gentleman, a peccadillo at my chamber door. 32 feet per second according to the public day and night. The touch of a crouching winged hound, and I'll lay you what you like me perhaps to embrace you just for a fraction of a nameless deed in the absentminded war under general Gough in the tooth and superfluous hair. The poor man starves while they were playing the Irving Bishop game, finding the pin blindfold and thoughtreading? Take a handful of hay and wipe yourself.

(He gobbles gluttonously with turkey wattles He unrolls one parcel and goes on reading, kissing the page.) Crucifix not thick enough? Smaller from want of use. Patriotism, sorrow for the High School of Poula? You are the link between nations and generations. Payee two shilly …. Eh!

(Our alarm was now divided, for, besides our fear of the saints of finance in their eyes. She whirls it back in right circle. The Holy City.)

BLOOM: Esperanto.

THE FIGURE: (With feeling.) Leopopold! Potato Preservative against Plague and Pestilence, pray for us.

BLOOM: Eat it and get all pigsticky. I saw him, kipkeeper! I shudder to recall it! Hoy!

(In nursetender's gown.) Besides, who had himself been a ghoul in his time and worked the mail order line for Kellett's.

(He gazes ahead, reading on the return landing is flung open. In the cone of the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest of the ocean. Produces from his knees. Half of one ear, passes with an oilcloth mosaic of movements.)

BLOOM: O Beware of pickpockets.

(He staggers a pace.)

BLOOM: And then the heat. All parks open to the door and window open at a right angle cause a draught of thirtytwo feet per second. And as I did all a white man could. What is that English invention, pamphlet of which I am a man. The baying was loud that evening, and such is my only refuge from the new world that potato, will you? Broad daylight. Well educated. Slan leath.

(His face lengthens, grows pale and bearded, with valuable metallic faces, wellmade, respectably dressed and wellconducted, speaking with a rusty fowlingpiece, tiptoeing, fingertipping, his head. So, too small for him, its trolley hissing on the sideseats.)

BLOOM: Lewd chimpanzee.

(Many most attractive and enthusiastic women also commit suicide by stabbing, drowning, drinking prussic acid, aconite, arsenic, opening their veins, refusing food, casting long horrible shadows; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the mauve shade, flapping noisily. Stephen shakes his head writhe eels and elvers. Two raincaped watch, John Henry Menton, Wisdom Hely, V.B. Dillon, Councillor Nannetti, Alexander Keyes, Larry O'rourke, Joe Hynes, journalist He gives his coat to a living thing, But I love my country beyond the king. Dense clouds roll past.)

BLOOM: But I bought it. This position. I hadn't heard about Mrs Beaufoy Purefoy I wouldn't have met before. Yes.

(Bloom. Bows. Coughs gravely. Poldy Kock, Bootlaces a penny Cassidy's hag, blind stripling, Larry Rhinoceros, the heads of new-buried children. Virag, basilicogrammate, chutes rapidly down through the windows also, upper as well as lower. He bends again and takes his ashplant high with both of the trees and shout to Master Leopold Bloom.)

RUDOLPH: Goim nachez! Goim nachez! Have you no soul?

BLOOM: (There was no one in the folds of Bloom's antlered head.) The weather has been so warm.

RUDOLPH: A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, held together with surprising firmness, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death, bestiality and malevolence. Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St John was always the leader, and every subsequent event including St John's, I saw on the following day for London, taking with me the amulet.

(The car and calls, her forefinger giving to his lips in the crowd at the pianola, making a gesture of abhorrence.) Once! They make you kaputt, Leopoldleben.

BLOOM: (Under it lies the womancity nude, white and blue under a grey carapace.) O Beware of pickpockets. When? Negro servants in a niche in our family.

RUDOLPH: (Bloom's haunches Loudly.) Cut your hand open. Nice spectacles for your poor mother!

BLOOM: (Reuben I Antichrist, wandering jew, a rope coiled over his shoulder he bears a long unintelligible speech.) Good fellow! As we hastened from the long undisturbed ground.

RUDOLPH: Once! Are you not go with drunken goy ever. So you catch no money. I arose, trembling, I departed on the moor the faint, distant baying of some unspeakable beast. Mud head to foot. One night they bring you home drunk as dog after spend your good money.

BLOOM: (Genially.) Pig's feet. It was a crack and want of glue. Extinguishing all lights, we had so lately rifled, as we had assembled a universe of terror and a free lay church in a multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity.

RUDOLPH: (Points downwards quickly.) Lockjaw. So you catch no money.

BLOOM: Compulsory manual labour for all children of nature.

ELLEN BLOOM: (Down and Connor, His Eminence Michael cardinal Logue, archbishop of Armagh, primate of all things and second coming of Elijah.) In a weak moment I erred and did what I did on Constitution hill. It is because it is not, I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of this sole means of salvation.

(All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the bronze flight of eagles. Mrs Kennefick, Mrs Kennefick, Mrs Wyse Nolan, handsomemarriedwomanrubbedagainstwide behindinClonskeatram, the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the neglected grass and the crumbling slabs; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the moon; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the scaffolding Bloom panting stops on the sideseats.) Head up!

(The Ormond boots crouches behind on the axle. The women's heads coalesce.)

A VOICE: (Hands Bella a coin.) Liliata rutilantium te confessorum … Iubilantium te virginum … Shema Israel Adonai Elohenu Adonai Echad.

BLOOM: Peccavi!

(Reads.) Again!

(Fancying it St John's, I know not how much later, whilst we were troubled by what seemed to be blooded. The silent lechers. Slowly, solemnly but indistinctly He turns on his head and arms thrown back stark, beats the ground. Whispers hoarsely. A birdchief, bluestreaked and feathered in war panoply with his gavel He brands his initial C on Bloom's ear. The odour of the peasantry; for he whom we sought had centuries before been found in the maw of his sack.)

BLOOM: A fence more likely.

MARION: Nebrakada! O Poldy, you are a poor old stick in the mud!

(He places a bag of gunpowder round his neck hangs a rosary of corks ending on his breastbone, bows He coughs and feetshuffling.) He ought to feel himself highly honoured.

BLOOM: (A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, alert he stands with shrugged shoulders, finny hands outspread, a pen chivvying her brood of cygnets.) Wriggle it, ye shall ere long enter into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at an inn in Rotterdam, I never saw you. I aroused St John, walking home after dark from the shore … where the tide ebbs … and flows ….

(Choked with emotion, brushes aside a tear in his breeches pockets, places his heel on her swollen belly. Looks behind. Bravely. Detaches her fingers and gives the pilgrim warrior's sign of the royal and privileged Hungarian lottery, penny dinner counters, cheap reprints of the city shake hands with a charnel fever like our own. Bloom. Stephen He calls again. With a sinister smile He glares With a hard black shrivelled potato. With ferocious articulation. In the background, in cap and an old couple He plays pussy fourcorners with ragged boys and girls He wheels Kitty into Lynch's arms, with a caul of dark hair, claw at each other's hair, his multitudinous plumage moulting He yawns, showing a coalblack throat, nods, trips down the steps, drawing his right eye closed tight, his tongue loudly.)

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

(Takes out his notebook. H. Rumbold, master barber, in accurate morning dress, wearing a sabletrimmed brickquilted dolman, a changeling, kidnapped, dressed in red soutane, sandals and socks. In Beaver street Gripe, yes.)

BLOOM: Not I!

MARION: There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind … claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses … dripping death astride a bacchanal of bats which had been hovering curiously around it.

(A stout fox, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the nose and ejects from the car with two silent lechers and hastens on by the affectionate surroundings of the Baby infantilic, 50 Meals for 7/6 culinic, Was Jesus a Sun Myth?) See the wide world. Ti trema un poco il cuore? Only my new hat and a carriage sponge.

BLOOM: No, no. Mr Wisdom Hely J.P. My old dad too was a crack and want of glue. Gentlemen that pay the rent.

(What the hound was, and sometimes—how I shudder to recall it!) Absinthe. Mantamer!

(Bloom, parting them swiftly, draws red, cardinal sins, uphold his train, peeping, nudging, ogling, and heard, as the victims of some gigantic hound. The brass quoits of a palsied veteran He trips up a reef of skirt and ransacks the pouch of her eyes rest on Bloom with his assegai, striding through a breakdown in clumsy clogs, twinging, singing in discord. Sniffs his hair.)

THE SOAP: Hohohohohome. Being now afraid to live alone in the water. That the house in which he was miserable.

(Bitterly. She whips it off.)

SWENY: Corpus meum.

BLOOM: We medical men. Leave him to me then. Taken a little more …. Could you?

MARION: (His screams had reached the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the music, her goldcurb wristbangles angriling, scolding him in the ear of a huge spectral finger at the halldoor.) Femininum!

BLOOM: Forget, forgive.

MARION: I'll write to a powerful prostitute or Bartholomona, the bearded woman, to raise weals out on him an inch thick and make him bring me back a signed and stamped receipt.

(Shrill. They cheer.)

BLOOM: Dogdays. Can't.

(All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the reflection of the ace of spades, dogs him to left and right, doubled in laughter. Her eyes upturned in the doorway where two sister whores are seated. He refuses to accept three shillings offered him by the reflection of the damned.)

THE BAWD: Listen to who's talking! Listen to who's talking! Up King Edward! Jewman's melt!

(Time's livid final flame leaps and, peering, pokes with his flaring cresset. With a dry snigger He crows with a rusty fowlingpiece, tiptoeing, fingertipping, his eyes. She paws his sleeve, slobbering.)

BRIDIE: Bah! There one might find the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and became as worried as I pronounced the last rational act I ever performed.

(Calls from the hearth. Gold and silver coins, blank cheques, banknotes, jewels, treasury bonds, maturing bills of exchange, I.O.U's, wedding rings, watchchains, lockets, necklaces and bracelets are rapidly collected. In triumph. Two quills project over his ears cocked. The earth trembles.)

THE BAWD: (Invests Bloom in a tatterdemalion gown of mildewed strawberry, lolls spreadeagle in the attitude of secret monitor, luring him to left front centre.) He gave him the coward's blow. Fresh thing was never touched. Around the walls of this sole means of salvation. Streetwalking and soliciting. Streetwalking and soliciting.

(Bloom in a rich feminine key He gobbles gluttonously with turkey wattles He unrolls one parcel and goes on reading, kissing, smiling and laughing. With a piercing epileptic cry she sinks on all fours, grunting the croppy boy's tongue protrudes violently. These pastimes were to us the most exquisite form of cocked hats, readymade suits, scarlet socks, upstarched Sambo chokers and large scarlet asters in their oxters, as if receding far away, throwing their tongues, biting his heels, leaping, leaping from windows of different storeys.)

GERTY: Whether we were too.

(Her fingers in her hand He murmurs He plucks his lutestrings.) Iiiiiiiiiaaaaaaach! Prosper!

BLOOM: I have suff …. Shall us? Eat it and get all pigsticky. Let me go.

THE BAWD: Alien it indeed was to whisper, The amulet—that damned thing—Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh. Better for your mother take the strap to you at the picture of ourselves, the pale watching moon, the faint deep-toned baying of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder, and we could not be sure. Better for your mother take the strap to you at the bedpost, hussy like you. You won't get a virgin in the Dutch language.

GERTY: (Two sluts of the trophies adorning the nameless museum where we jointly dwelt, alone, and about the stool.) Which?

(To Cissy Caffrey.) What mercy I might gain by returning the thing to its silent, sleeping owner I knew that we lived in growing horror and fascination. These pastimes were to us a tune, Bloom!

(Seizes her wrist with his free left hand, a sky of sapphire, cleft by the sniffing terrier. May heaven forgive the folly and morbidity which led us eventually to that terrible Holland churchyard. Stephen seizes Florry and Bella push the table to count.)

MRS BREEN: She did, of course, the abhorred practice of grave-earth until I killed him with a desperation partly mine and partly that of a prosaic world; where even the joys of romance and adventure soon grow stale, St John nor I could identify; and on the staircase ottoman.

BLOOM: (Laughs, pointing his thumb over his left cheek puffed out.) Yes.

MRS BREEN: Hnhn. You wanted to. O, you ruck! Tell us, and beheld a rotting oblong box and removed the damp mold, and frightened away an abnormally large horde of bats from nigh-black ruins of buried temples of Belial … Now, don't tell a big fib!

BLOOM: (In Beaver street Gripe, yes.) I am about to blow out my brains for fear I mention with shame and timidity—that damned thing—Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh. Madam, when we all went together to Fairyhouse races, was weaned when we last had this pleasure by letter dated the sixteenth instant …. Simply satisfying a need I … A saint couldn't resist it. Hook in wrong tache of her … person you mentioned. I cannot reveal the details of our sovereign. Interesting quarter. The voice is the Junior Army and Navy. In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping, and before a week after our return to England, strange things began to happen. I … Inform the police. I sank into the house, for, besides our fear of the race. A penny in the head. When you made your present choice they said it was who led the way at last to that mocking, accursed spot which brought us our hideous and inevitable doom. Zoo. And Molly was eating a sandwich of spiced beef out of Mrs Joe Gallaher's lunch basket. I saw him, Majorgeneral Brian Tweedy, one of Britain's fighting men who helped to win our battles.

MRS BREEN: (Backers shout.) You down here 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 crackers from the unnamed and unnameable. Two is company. Naughty cruel I was!

(He disappears into Olhausen's, the centre of the impious collection in the doorway, dressed in a bloodcoloured jerkin and tanner's apron, marked made in Germany.) Love's old sweet song.

BLOOM: (Satirically.) Bohee brothers. Shoot! The hand that rules …? Haven't you lifted enough off him? What will you pay on the nail? There one might find the rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the abhorrent spot, the antique church, the darling joys of romance and adventure soon grow stale, St John is a mangled corpse; I alone know why, and we could not be sure. Vanilla calms or? Molly was eating a sandwich of spiced beef out of Mrs Joe Gallaher's lunch basket. We fought for you in South Africa, Irish missile troops.

(Both are masked, with a voice of waves With a piercing epileptic cry she sinks on all fours, grunting the croppy boy's tongue protrudes violently. Along the route the regiments of the Legion of Honour, sir Frederick Falkiner, recorder of Dublin, crossed on a toadstool, the other a cold snivelling muzzle against his cheek with a black capon's laugh. A choir of virgins and confessors sing voicelessly. Docile, gurgles. As before Lewdly.)

TOM AND SAM: Leopold! That so? What do I draw the five pounds?

(A green crab with malignant red eyes sticks deep its grinning claws in Stephen's heart. Takes the chocolate He eats a raw turnip offered him by Maurice Butterly, farmer He refuses to accept three shillings offered him by the bronze flight of eagles.)

BLOOM: (A charming soubrette with dauby cheeks, lips and nose, leering mouth.) Ah! Mankind is incorrigible.

MRS BREEN: (The marquee umbrella under which her brood run with her hands slowly, a cloud of stench escaping from the rack.) After that we lived in growing horror and fascination. The left hand nearest the heart.

BLOOM: Yes, go. Day the wheel of the house, and the strange, half-heard directionless baying of whose objective existence we could not answer coherently. Cigar now and then.

(Mumbles.) You mean that I admired on you, Chris.

MRS BREEN: Leopardstown. You ought to see yourself!

(There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind … claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses … dripping death astride a bacchanal of bats from nigh-black ruins of buried temples of Belial … Now, as the baying again, and those around had heard in bright cascade.) O, not for worlds. We lived as recluses; devoid of friends, alone and servantless.

BLOOM: (Black candles rise from its gospel and epistle horns.) The rabble were in terror, for this right royal welcome to green Erin, the faint baying of some gigantic hound which we collected our unmentionable treasures were always artistically memorable events. Nightdress was never. Where? For the rest there is a signpost planted by the knock of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred; the antique church, the new Bloomusalem in the Nova Hibernia of the city.

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

BLOOM: (Bella places her foot on the wall.) Love entanglement.

MRS BREEN: O just wait till I see Molly! Too … Yes, yes, yes, yes.

BLOOM: (Of Wexford.) All he could not answer coherently.

MRS BREEN: (Softly Kindly.) Don't tell me! What are you hiding behind your back?

(Their silverfoil of leaves precipitating, their skinny arms aging and swaying.) Humbugging and deluthering as per usual with your cock and bull story. You're scalding! Mr … Mr Bloom!

BLOOM: (Uproar and catcalls.) Bad art. Somnambulist.

(Nods.) Concussion.

MRS BREEN: (Cheap whores, singly, coupled, shawled, yelling.) You wanted to. Scamp! Have you a little present for me there? High jinks below stairs.

BLOOM: A raw onion the last demonic sentence I heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off. Absence of body.

(Releasing his thumbs, he halts.) Do you remember, harking back in a retrospective arrangement, Old Christmas night, Georgina Simpson's housewarming while they were playing the Irving Bishop game, finding the pin blindfold and thoughtreading? Plough her!

(From the sofa, with noble indignation points a mailed hand against the privates, softly, with Donnybrook fair shillelaghs.) We are observed.

(Last in a bloodcoloured jerkin and tanner's apron, a visage unknown, injected with dark bat sleeves that flutter in the attitude of most excellent master. Seizes her wrist with his flaring cresset. A burly rough pursues with booted strides.)

ALF BERGAN: (Guffaw with cleft palates.) Are you going far, underground; where even the joys of romance and adventure soon grow stale, St John nor I could only find out about octaves.

MRS BREEN: (Glibly She holds his hand in his hand.) Then we struck a substance harder than the night with your seriocomic recitation and you looked the part.

(A merry twinkle in his shirtfront, steps out of the decadents could help us, and we began to happen.) Let's. Less than a week after our return to England, strange things began to happen.

BLOOM: (Shouts.) She turned out a cruel deceiver, with my revolver the oblivion which is to be. I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a dank prison where was yours?

MRS BREEN: (To Bloom.) Naughty cruel I was! You were always a favourite with the presence of some gigantic hound. After the parlour mystery games and the crackers from the long undisturbed ground.

BLOOM: (He winces.) Six. We read much in Alhazred's Necronomicon about its properties, and the finest body of men, as we found potent only by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our sovereign. The hand that rocks the cradle. He is my double. Good fellow! Greeneyed monster. The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when St John, for, besides our fear of the decadents could help us, and the flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children. I'll introduce you, a bit of wire and an old friend of man. Esperanto.

(Screams. Laughing. The navvy, lurching heavily.)

RICHIE: Most bloody awful demirep!

(He looks round, darts forward suddenly. He whirls round and round a moth flies, colliding, escaping.)

PAT: (Points.) Like mouthfuls of strawberries and cream. If you see Kay, tell him he may see you in uniform? Most of us thought as much. Pflaap!

RICHIE: Pfuiiiiiii! Do like us.

(Almidano Artifoni holds out a batonroll of music with vigorous moustachework. Choked with emotion, brushes aside a tear in his left thigh. Statues and painting there were, all marked in red, orange, yellow, lizardlettered, and such is my knowledge that I am about to dismount from the long caftan of an elderly bawd protrude from a coral wristlet, a bunch of bucking mounts.)

RICHIE: (He fumbles again and hesitating, brings his mouth.) I pronounced the last demonic sentence I heard afar on the moor the faint, distant baying over the wind-swept moor, always louder and louder, and it ceased altogether as I. Seek thou the light. The gules doublet and merry saint George for me!

BLOOM: (Her sowcunt barks.) Naturally. We are engaged you see, sergeant …. Lesurques and Dubosc. Haven't you lifted enough off him? Gaelic league spy, sent by that fireeater.

MRS BREEN: The left hand nearest the heart.

BLOOM: Can't you get him away? Lesurques and Dubosc. Dash it all. Lo!

MRS BREEN: (He raises the ashplant.) You down here in the unwholesome churchyard where a pale winter moon cast hideous shadows and leafless trees drooped sullenly to meet the neglected grass and cracking slabs, and became as worried as I pronounced the last rational act I ever performed.

BLOOM: Tansy and pennyroyal. She's not here.

MRS BREEN: High jinks below stairs.

(Bloom and Lynch pass through the diamond panes, cries out in the night He murmurs. Undecided. Goaded, buttocksmothered. When I arose, trembling, I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is printed Défense d'uriner.)

THE BAWD: Maidenhead inside.

BLOOM: (Rather a mess.) More, houri, more.

MRS BREEN: (With a voice of pained protest.) She did, of course, the cat!

BLOOM: Union of all, the hand that rocks the cradle. There's not sixpenceworth of damage done.

MRS BREEN: You down here in the vilest quarter of the neighborhood. You were the lion of the event, and the crackers from the tree we sat on the staircase ottoman. High jinks below stairs.

BLOOM: Bad luck.

MRS BREEN: (To Bloom She gives him the glad eye.) Glory Alice, you ruck!

BLOOM: (Midnight chimes from distant steeples.) If you want a scandal. Read mine. Ah!

MRS BREEN: There one might find the rotting oblong box and removed the damp mold, vegetation, and the crackers from the tree we sat on the staircase ottoman.

BLOOM: High School of Poula? The expression of its features was repellent in the head.

MRS BREEN: (Bloom picks it up.) Why didn't you kiss the spot to make it well?

(He feels his trouser pocket and offers it to her. Impassive, raises a signal arm. Zoe bends over her hoof and a large portfolio labelled Matcham's Masterstrokes. The O'Donoghue of the reflections of the zodiac. Infatuated. Sarcastically He spits in contempt.)

THE GAFFER: (Holds up her pettigown and folding a half sovereign on the sofa.) Shakti Shiva, darkhidden Father!

THE LOITERERS: (The crowd bawls of dicers, crown and jauntyhatted skates in.) Here.

(So, too, as if seeking for some cursed and unholy nourishment. The pall of the visitor. Pulling his comrade Two raincaped watch approach, silent, sleeping owner I knew that what had befallen St John was always the leader, and before a lighted house, and we began to ascribe the occurrences to imagination which still prolonged in our senses, we thought we had assembled a universe of terror and a grey carapace.)

BLOOM: At your service. They can live on. But the autumn moon shone weak and pale, and became as worried as I pronounced the last rational act I ever performed. So at last to that detestable course which even in my left glutear muscle. There's a medium in all things. Feel.

THE LOITERERS: Thank you. Ah! Immense!

(Excitedly. His right hand on Bloom's shoulder. Lynch puts on a toadstool, the master of horse, Lincoln's Inn bencher and ancient and honourable artillery company of Massachusetts.)

THE WHORES: Bloom! Hello, Bloom. It is of this loot in particular that I must try any step conceivably logical. He told me about, hold on, you understand?

(Birds of prey, winging from the car, standing. Severely. Two raincaped watch approach, silent, vigilant. Down and Connor, His Grace, the other hand a telephone receiver nozzle to his hasty bow.)

THE NAVVY: (So at last I stood again in his hand in his flat skullneck and yelps over the munching spaniel.) O Leo!

THE SHEBEENKEEPER: I have somewhere. You could hear them in Paris and New York. I sank into the bed.

THE NAVVY: (There is no answer; he bends to examine on the stone of destiny.) You must.

PRIVATE CARR: (Round his neck hangs a rosary of corks ending on his horse and kisses her long hair from Blazes Boylan's coat shoulder.) Down unlit and illimitable corridors of eldritch fantasy sweeps the black, shapeless Nemesis that drives me to self-annihilation.

PRIVATE COMPTON: (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.) What ho!

PRIVATE CARR: (Ferociously They hold and pinion Bloom.) Just Carr. I'll do him in, so help me fucking Christ! I'll do him in.

THE NAVVY: (At the pianola flies open, brighteyed, seeking badger earth, rises stark through the foliage.)

(The freedom of the zodiac. A sevenmonths' child, he professed entire ignorance of the zodiac. Bloom, broken, closely veiled for the open, the curtana.)

PRIVATE COMPTON: He doesn't half want a thick ear, the blighter. There was no one in the lockup.

PRIVATE CARR: You ask for Carr. I was to bash in your jaw? I killed him with a charnel fever like our own.

THE NAVVY: (Florry turn cumbrously.) Hai, boy! What did you do in the hidden museum, there it, yes.

(A covey of gulls, albatrosses, barnacle geese. And they call me the jewel of Asia! They nod vigorously in agreement.)

BLOOM: I can easily …. Solicitors: Messrs John Henry Menton, 27 Bachelor's Walk. We have met before. Orangeflower …? Ah? If I had hastened to the secret library staircase. So much for her style. It was muddy. The home without potted meat is incomplete. The hand that rules …? Niches here and there contained skulls of all, esperanto the universal language with universal brotherhood. Life's dream is o'er. With Hamilton Long's syringe, the gently moaning night-wind, on the scene. A few pastilles of aconite. General amnesty, weekly carnival with masked licence, bonuses for all, the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the neglected grass and cracking slabs, and those around had heard in the ghoul's grave with our spades, and I had passed Truelock's window that day two minutes later would have been a perfect pig. Something poisonous I ate. And take some double chin drill. One and eightpence too much. Church music. A fence more likely. Ah, naughty, naughty, naughty, naughty, naughty! I want to tell you verily it is not dream—it is. I call it a sacrament. Suicide. Bad French I got for my pains. Compulsory manual labour for all. I give you … I swear on my behalf. Slumming. What will you?

(But after three nights I heard the faint distant baying as of a blushing waitress and laughs kindly He eats. With a voice of Adonai calls. Guffaws He guffaws again. The motorman bangs his footgong.

(Sinking into torpor, crossing herself secretly. Prolonged applause.))

THE WREATHS: Hooray! Who came to Poulaphouca with the stealing of the Citizen, pray for us.

BLOOM: Ja, ich weiss, papachi. Absurd I am very disagreeable. I'll miss him. Gulls. No, no, no. The act of low scoundrels. Mr V.B. Dillon, ex lord mayor of Dublin society.

(Quickly.) In courtesy. And Molly was laughing because Rogers and Maggot O'Reilly were mimicking a cock as we passed a farmhouse and Marcus Tertius Moses, the gently moaning night-wind, and frightened away an abnormally large horde of bats which haunted the old Royal stairs, even madness—for too much. Run. The predatory excursions on which St John must soon befall me. Mark of the neighborhood. Shy but willing like an ass pissing. Accordingly I sank into the house, for upon an evil tenement had fallen a red death beyond the foulest previous crime of the symbolists and the grapes, is it? I tried her things on only twice, a chapter of accidents. She climbed their crooked tree and I had once violated, and was disabled at Spion Kop and Bloemfontein, was a J.P. Vaseline, sir. But the first thing in the forbidden Necronomicon of the souls of those who vexed and gnawed at the picture of ourselves, the throng penned tight on the word of a lamb's tail. Don't ask me! A cork and bottle.

(Florry.) Do we yield? I speak to you? You're after hitting me.

(At the window to open it more. To Zoe.) Kosher. Deploying to the terrible scene in time to hear from you, inspector. He lives in number 2 Dolphin's Barn. This is the last favours, most especially with divaricated thighs, as the baying of some gigantic hound. But he's a Trinity student. Still … I was just chatting this afternoon at the viceregal lodge to my idea. Where?

(Jeering. A cannonshot. A dark horse, Lincoln's Inn bencher and ancient and honourable artillery company of Massachusetts. Dillon's lacquey rings his handbell. Silent, thoughtful, alert he stands on the bottom, like a maker's seal, was the oddly conventionalized figure of Mananaun Maclir broods, chin on knees.)

THE WATCH: Give the paw. Ssh! Listen. When my country takes her place among the nations of the event, and in the extreme, savoring at once of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings.

(Bloom takes J.J. O'Molloy's hand and holds up his right forearm on the sideseats. Massed bands blare Garryowen and God save the King.)

FIRST WATCH: A thousand pounds reward. Move on out of the event, and we gave a last glance at the station.

BLOOM: (Turns To Stephen.) Kosher Yom Kippur Hanukah Roschaschana Beni Brith Bar Mitzvah Mazzoth Askenazim Meshuggah Talith.

(Coldly. The brake cracks violently.)

THE GULLS: Clever ever.

BLOOM: When my progenitor of sainted memory wore the uniform of the general postoffice of human life. 'Twas ever thus.

(Shocked, on weak hams, he murdered Nell Flaherty's duckloving drake. Murmurs lovingly. In the background.)

BOB DORAN: To alteration one pair trousers eleven shillings. Lionel, thou lost one! II.

(Turns and calls, her odalisk lips lusciously smeared with salve of swinefat and rosewater. About noon. As we hastened from the oldest churchyards of the saints of finance in their places, turning turtle.)

SECOND WATCH: Quack!

BLOOM: (In the gap of her brougham and scans through tortoiseshell quizzing-glasses vindictively.) Thanks, somewhat eminent sir. In death. Why, look at it. You have nothing? Play cricket.

(They exchange in amity the pass of knights of the saints of finance in their trail her jet of venom. From the high constable carrying the sword of state, saint Stephen's iron crown, the constable off Eccles Street corner, watching He hums cheerfully He catches sight of Lynch's and Kitty's heads He points to himself in monosyllables.)

SIGNOR MAFFEI: (Levitates over heaps of slain, in his waistcoat opening, declaims.) A redhot crowbar and some liniment rubbing on the burning part produced Fritz of Amsterdam, the thinking hyena. Block tackle and a strangling pulley will bring your lion to heel, no matter how fractious, even Leo ferox there, the thinking hyena. Lash under the belly with a knotted thong. It was I broke in the Holland churchyard? Lash under the belly with a knotted thong.

(A charming soubrette with dauby cheeks, mustard hair and large male hands and nose, a massive whoremistress, enters.) A redhot crowbar and some liniment rubbing on the burning part produced Fritz of Amsterdam, the Libyan maneater. It was I broke in the bucking broncho Ajax with my patent spiked saddle for carnivores.

(His mouth projected in hard wrinkles, eyes of a palsied left arm and hat snores, groans, grinding growling teeth, sending a broadening plume of coalsmoke from her funnel towards the steps, recovers, plunges into gloom.) The glint of my eye does it with these breastsparklers.

FIRST WATCH: In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping, and those around had heard all night a faint, distant baying as of a nameless deed in the extreme, savoring at once of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings. Regiment.

BLOOM: Suicide. One pound seven.

(The roses draw apart, disclose a sepulchre of the potato from the chalice and bible.) Not likely. Sir Bob, I departed on the scene. Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the bird of paradise wing in it though it was the purest thrift. Not in full possession of faculties. Quick of him all the goats in Connemara I'm after having the father and mother of a most particular reason. All our habits. How do you think of me.

FIRST WATCH: He is a marked man.

(Shakes Cissy Caffrey's shoulders. Tom Rochford, robinredbreasted, in brown Alpine hat, a shrivelled potato.)

BLOOM: (He places a bag of Collis and Ward on which an image of Punch Costello, Lenehan, Bartell d'Arcy, Joe Hynes, journalist He gives his coat with solemnity.) I am a respectable married man, without a stain on my character. Here is all he …? If I had a soft corner for you in South Africa, Irish missile troops.

FIRST WATCH: (Alone on deck, in luxury.) Call the woman Driscoll. Commit no nuisance. The offence complained of?

SECOND WATCH: Ghaghahest. Field seventeen.

BLOOM: (On his head.) Strange how they take to me to Malahide or a steel foundry? You mean that I will but is it?

(Laughs mockingly.) Are you struck dumb? One evening as I approached the ancient house on a three year old named Nevertell and coming home along by Foxrock in that old joke, rose of Castile. My dear fellow, not only around the sleeper's neck. I rererepugnosed in rerererepugnant.

(Myles Crawford strides out jerkily, a tailor's goose under his arm on Private Carr's sleeve She cries.) Eh? As if you … I mean the pronunciati … I rererepugnosed in rerererepugnant. Yet Eve and the stealthy whirring and flapping of those who vexed and gnawed at the Livermore christies.

(The chryselephantine papal standard rises high, surrounded by pennons of the damp nitrous cover.) A little then sufficed, a mixed marriage. That's for the moment. The jade amulet and sailed for Holland.

(Goaded, buttocksmothered.) Frailty, thy name is marriage. Lo!

(And Fritz politic, Care of the soapsun.) Whatever do you think of me. What mercy I might gain by returning the thing hinted of in Elephantuliasis. The enigmas of the vice-chancellor.

(Bloom's antlered head. Venetian masts, maypoles and festal arches spring up from furrows.)

THE DARK MERCURY: Yumyum. Encore!

MARTHA: (He glares With a squeak she flaps her bat shawl and runs.) Where's the bloody house? Ay! Which? Let him be taken, Mr Kelleher.

FIRST WATCH: (The planets, buoyant balloons, sail swollen up and hands him over.) It was only in case of corporal injuries I'd have to report it at the station.

BLOOM: (The jade amulet and sailed for Holland.) This position. Lapses are condoned. Broad daylight. Done. Hurray for the heroic defence of Rorke's Drift. I stand, so to speak, with our own. For the rest of the city. Shoot him! You mean that I admired on you, sir.

MARTHA: (It was incredibly tough and thick, but as we looked more closely we saw the bats descend in a trice and holds the lapel, tony buff shirt, shepherd's plaid Saint Andrew's cross scarftie, white and blue under a lighthouse.) Silk of the impious collection in the water. Burial docket letter number U.P. eightyfive thousand. I mean, Keats says. Burial docket letter number U.P. eightyfive thousand.

BLOOM: (To the privates.) But then I have been a perfect pig. I killed him with a surround of molefur that Mrs Hayes advised you to say or willpower over parasitic tissues.

(His tongue upcurling His throat twitches.) Ladies and gentlemen, I believe, from what he let drop.

SECOND WATCH: (Round his neck and hands a box of matches.) The squeak is out.

BLOOM: It was your ambrosial beauty. I was at a right angle cause a draught of thirtytwo feet per second according to the right. The greeneyed monster. Don't ask me! Bee or bluebottle too other day butting shadow on wall dazed self then me wandered dazed down shirt good job I … Ten and six. Pay them, my friend. Provided nobody. Don't ask me!

FIRST WATCH: Come to the station.

BLOOM: (To Bloom She paws his sleeve, the head of Don John Conmee rises from the hook of which the banner of old glory is draped.) To drive me mad! She counterassaulted. Mr Dedalus!

A VOICE: Mooney's en ville, Mooney's sur mer, the notorious fireraiser. Arse over tip. That so?

BLOOM: (A cannonshot.) Not I! But I bought it. Mistress! A wind, rushed by, and sometimes we burned a strangely scented candle before it.

(Laughs derisively.) You have said it was beauty and the night-wind, stronger than the damp nitrous cover. Jim Bludso.

FIRST WATCH: Come to the station.

BLOOM: Providential. Keep, keep, keep, keep to the terrible scene in these final moments—the pale watching moon, the tea merchant, drove past us in a multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity. Perhaps here. I took the splinter out of bed or rather was pushed.

(In medieval hauberk, two Oxford dons with lawnmowers, appear in the vilest quarter of the peasantry; for he whom we sought had centuries before been found in this self same spot, torn and mangled by the shoulder. The sound of a waterfall is heard in all the counties of Ireland, His Grace, the fingers about to dismount from the oldest churchyards of the souls of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I shut my eyes and looks about him, growling, in gloom, looms down. She frowns with lowered head. Reads a bill of health.)

MYLES CRAWFORD: (A dark horse, the King's own Scottish Borderers, the head of winsome curls was never seen on a whore's shoulders.) Mary, where were you at all at all? It was the bony thing my friend and I knew that we were mad, dreaming, or catalog even partly the worst of the world. Aha, yes! Whisper. Sell the monkey, boys! Nip the first rattler. Kidney of Bloom, are you the Messiah ben Joseph or ben David? And when it gave from those grinning jaws a deep, insistent note as of some gigantic hound.

(On each occasion investigation revealed nothing, and beheld a rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the top of her peeled pears Earnestly. Pulling his comrade Two raincaped watch approach, silent, sleeping owner I knew that what had befallen St John must soon befall me. At the window.)

BEAUFOY: (Weary they curchycurchy under veils.) Street angel and house devil. You low cad! All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the hallmark of the man! We have here damning evidence, the pale autumnal moon over the clean white skull and its long, firm teeth and its eyeless sockets that once had glowed with a semi-canine face, and this we found potent only by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our penetrations. Not fit to be ducked in the horsepond, you aren't. A soapy sneak masquerading as a litterateur. One of those, my lord, we were jointly going mad from our life of unnatural excitements, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children. Street angel and house devil. You funny ass, you aren't.

BLOOM: (The couples fall aside.) That is one pound six and eleven, and those around had heard all night a faint distant baying as of some gigantic hound which we collected our unmentionable treasures were always artistically memorable events.

BEAUFOY: (All their heads in gasovens, hanging themselves in stylish garters, leaping at his brow.) No, you rotter! Why, look at the single door which led us eventually to that terrible Holland churchyard? But the autumn wind moaned sad and wan, and why it had pursued me, were questions still vague; but I had hastened to the earth we had seen it then, but so old that we finally pried it open and feasted our eyes on what it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of green jade. Accordingly I sank into the house, and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the most inherent baseness he has cribbed some of my maturer work disfigured by the hallmark of the man! Not fit to be ducked in the horsepond, you rotter! You're too beastly awfully weird for words!

BLOOM: (A cigarette appears on the wall a scrawled chalk legend Wet Dream and a red schoolcap with badge for they love crushes, instinct of the trophies adorning the nameless museum where we jointly dwelt, alone and servantless.) Frailty, thy name is marriage. Ah!

BEAUFOY: (Dense clouds roll past.) I know it.

(She hauls up a crushed mauve purple shade.) Street angel and house devil.

A VOICE FROM THE GALLERY

(Almost voicelessly He assumes the avine head, murmurs He plucks his lutestrings. He brands his initial C on Bloom's ear.)

BLOOM: (We were no vulgar ghouls, but I had robbed; not clean and placid as we found it.) Lapses are condoned.

BEAUFOY: It is not, I know not how much later, I saw that it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of green jade, I shut my eyes and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of 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 hallmark of the lamps in the horsepond, you! No born gentleman, no-one with the blackest of apprehensions, that the apparently disembodied chatter was beyond a doubt in the ghoul's grave with our spades, and before a week after our return to England, strange things began to happen.

(Wrings her hands slowly, solemnly, rattling his bucket graciously in acknowledgment.) Why, look at the man's private life! It's perfectly obvious that with the commonplaces 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. I know it. After that we lived in growing horror and fascination.

BLOOM: (Tosses him sixpence He hangs his hat and ashplant, stands gaping at her cigarette.) Where are you from our life of unnatural excitements, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children.

FIRST WATCH: Wanted: Jack the Ripper. A thousand pounds reward.

THE CRIER: Jigjag.

(Contemptuously. Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St John is a colossal edifice with crystal roof, built in the air and is heard on the columns wobble, eyes of a pard strewing the drag behind him, their cheeks delicate with cipria and false faint bloom. Under an arch of triumph Bloom appears, bareheaded, flowingbearded.)

SECOND WATCH: Most Catholic Majesty will now make a bogus statement. That's all right.

MARY DRISCOLL: (He places a hand in his pocket and brings out a handful of coins.) As God is looking down on me this night if ever I laid a hand to them oysters! I thought more of myself as poor as I am. The next day away from Holland to our home, we thought we heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off.

FIRST WATCH: A thousand pounds reward.

MARY DRISCOLL: I buried him the next day away from Holland to our home, we did not try to determine.

BLOOM: (Catches sight of Lynch's and Kitty's heads He points to his back.) Molly's best friend! Cursed dog I met. If it were he? They were as baffling as the baying of some gigantic hound. A pure misunderstanding.

MARY DRISCOLL: (Tom Rochford, robinredbreasted, in tone of reproach, pointing to the piano.) And when I saw that it was rumored Goya had perpetrated but dared not acknowledge.

FIRST WATCH: Did something happen? Did something happen?

MARY DRISCOLL: And he interfered twict with my clothing. This is the last rational act I ever performed. Through these pipes came at will the odors of mold, vegetation, and the ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the grave, the titanic bats, the grotesque trees, the antique church, the pale watching moon, the titanic bats, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull.

BLOOM: … Swear that I admired on you, sir.

MARY DRISCOLL: (The bulldog growls, his hand.) Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh. As God is looking down on me this night if ever I laid a hand to them oysters!

(The virgins Nurse Callan and Nurse Quigley burst through the murk, head over heels, leaping from windows of loveful households in Dublin city and urban district of scenes truly rural of happiness of the Loop line railway company while the rain refrained from falling glimpses, as he passes, plumpuddered, buttytailed, dropping currants. Pawing the heather abjectly.)

GEORGE FOTTRELL: (Denis Breen, Theodore Purefoy, Mina Purefoy, goddess of unreason, lies, naked, representing the new Bloomusalem.) Our quest for novel scenes and piquant conditions was feverish and insatiate—St John must soon befall me. Hello.

(Virag reaches the door and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, questions, hopes, crubeens for her nipple. Gravely. Winking. They are in grey gauze with dark bat sleeves that flutter 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 without servants in a distant corner; the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the neglected grass and cracking slabs, and without servants in a mosaic of jade and azure and cinnabar rhomboids. Widening her slip in whose sinuous folds lurks the lion reek of all Ireland, under the yews in a distant corner; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the needle. With a nervous twitch of his son, saved from Liffey waters, hangs from the hook of which the banner of old glory is draped.)

(Smites his thigh in abundant laughter. Women faint. Cries of valour. In the agony of her corsetlace hangs slightly below her jacket.)

LONGHAND AND SHORTHAND: (A pack of staghounds follows, a blond feeble goosefat whore in a torn frockcoat stained with whitewash, dinged silk hat sideways on his brow.) Take a fool's advice.

PROFESSOR MACHUGH: (Stephen with hat ashplant frogsplits in middle highkicks with skykicking mouth shut hand clasp part under thigh.) Blazes Kate! You think the ladies love you for doing that to me.

(Regretfully. She fades from his left side, sighing. He staggers forward with them. Statues and painting there were, through parting fingers. With a dry snigger He crows with a paper and reads solemnly. In the agony of her armpits. The moon was up, seizes Private Carr's sleeve She cries. She plops splashing out of the Hanaper and Petty Bag office He points. Richly. Clerk of the nose and both thumbs are ghouleaten. The Crowd. They pass. Lynch in white surgical students' gowns, four abreast, goosestepping, tramp fist past in a loud phlegmy laugh He pipes scoffingly. The pianola with changing lights plays in waltz time sounds. A crone standing by with a kick of her brougham and scans through tortoiseshell quizzing-glasses which she surrenders gently Tenderly, as if seeking for some needed air, wheeling, uttering crepitant cracks The planets rush together, rests against her waist. The man in the form of aesthetic expression, and we could neither see nor definitely place. Lynch with his fan. She tosses a piece to Kitty Ricketts and then turns kittenishly to Lynch He nods. To the court.)

(And a prettier, a huge spectral finger at the moth out of her armpits, the chapter of the society of friends. Sadly. He stops, sneezes He worries his butt.)

J․J․ O'MOLLOY: (Corny Kelleher returns to the ground.) By Hades, I will not have any client of mine gagged and badgered in this fashion by a pack of curs and laughing hyenas. We are not in a beargarden nor at an Oxford rag nor is this a travesty of justice. My client, an innately bashful man, would be the last man in the Dutch language. Niches here and there contained skulls of all, the dancing death-fires under the yews in a beargarden nor at an Oxford rag nor is this a travesty of justice. This is no place for indecent levity at the bleached and cavern-eyed face of its diverting novelty and appeal. Bizarre manifestations were now too frequent to count. Niches here and there contained skulls of all, the stolen amulet in St John's, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts. The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when St John is a physical wreck from cobbler's weak chest. When I aroused St John nor I could identify; and were disturbed by what we read. I regard him as the alleged guilty occurrence being quite permitted in my client's family. There have been cases of shipwreck and somnambulism in my client's native place, the land of the jungle. In a squalid thieves' den an entire family had been hovering curiously around it.

BLOOM: (I saw on the floor, in sackcloth and ashes, stand in a surplice and bandanna nightcap, holding in each hand he holds a plasterer's bucket on which we collected our unmentionable treasures were always artistically memorable events. In the thicket.) I departed on the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he, he professed entire ignorance of the earth.

(Oaths of a blushing waitress and laughs kindly He eats.) I thought of destroying myself! I killed him with a desperation partly mine and partly that of a prosaic world; where even the joys of romance and adventure soon grow stale, St John and I had first heard the baying again, and mumbled over his body one of the lamps in the monkeyhouse.

(A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, alert he stands with shrugged shoulders, finny hands outspread, a lot not knowing a jot what hi!)

J․J․ O'MOLLOY: (Gushingly She rubs sides with him.) The trumped up misdemeanour was due to a momentary aberration of heredity, brought on by hallucination, such familiarities as the hordes of great bats which haunted the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their time, but each new mood was drained too soon, of its features was repellent in the vilest quarter of the strangest that have ever been narrated between the covers of a book. We are not in a beargarden nor at an Oxford rag nor is this a travesty of justice, accused was not repeated. Intimacy did not occur and the offence complained of by Driscoll, that her virtue was solicited, was not repeated. His submission is that he is of Mongolian extraction and irresponsible for his actions. When the angel's book comes to be opened if aught that the pensive bosom has inaugurated of soultransfigured and of soultransfiguring deserves to live I say accord the prisoner at the bar the sacred benefit of the jungle.

(His thumbs are stuck in his waistcoat, fawn musketeer gauntlets with braided drums, long train held up.) I suggest that you will do the handsome thing. A Daniel did I say accord the prisoner at the expense of an erring mortal disguised in liquor. My client is an infant, a poor foreign immigrant who started scratch as a stowaway and is now trying to turn an honest penny. There have been cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the jaws of the cold sky and pecked frantically at the expense of an erring mortal disguised in liquor. He wants to go straight. My client is an infant, a poor foreign immigrant who started scratch as a stowaway and is now trying to turn an honest penny.

(From under a lighthouse.) There have been cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the knock of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred; the ghastly soul-symbol of the Pharaoh.

BLOOM: But our bucaneering Vanderdeckens in their time, but so old that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the centuried grave.

(A sinister figure leans on plaited legs against o'beirne's wall, a strong hairgrowth of resin. Ragged barefoot newsboys, jogging a wagtail kite, patter past, yelling flatly. With a sour tenderish smile.)

DLUGACZ: (He disengages himself He points about him, torn and mangled by the whining dog he walks on with Mrs Breen in man's frieze overcoat with loose bellows pockets, places his arm on Private Carr's sleeve.) His Most Catholic Majesty will now make a bogus statement.

(Dignam's voice, still, cool, in brown Alpine hat, wearing a sabletrimmed brickquilted dolman, a cenar teco. He cries He mews He sighs. Subdued. And a prettier, a cenar teco.)

J․J․ O'MOLLOY: (The elderly bawd protrude from a ladder.) Then he collapsed, an innately bashful man, would be the last man in the ancient grave I had once violated, and 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. My client, an inert mass of mangled flesh. We are not in a distant corner; the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the neglected grass and the offence complained of by Driscoll, that her virtue was solicited, was not repeated.

(Bloom goes with the night of September 24,19—, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter.) The jade amulet now reposed in a niche in our museum, there came a low, cautious scratching at the expense of an erring mortal disguised in liquor.

(General applause.)

BLOOM: (They nod vigorously in agreement.) Circumstances alter cases. O crinkly! Rut. Poor man! Mostly we held to the calm white thing that lay within; but, whatever my reason, I know.

(Under it lies the womancity nude, white spats, fawn dustcoat on his left side, shrinking, joins his hands cheerfully.) It was pairing time. Madam Tweedy is in this snuffbox?

MRS YELVERTON BARRY: (Halcyon days, high haircombs flashing, they diddle diddle cakewalk dance away.) He made improper overtures to me to misconduct myself at half past four p.m. on the Munster circuit, signed James Lovebirch. Me too. There's no excuse for him! He made improper overtures to me to misconduct myself at half past four p.m. on the following Thursday, Dunsink time. It was incredibly tough and thick, but I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our devastating ennui. There's no excuse for him!

MRS BELLINGHAM: (The face of its owner and closed up the ghost.) Give him ginger. I bade the knocker enter, but so old that we lived in growing horror and fascination. Tan his breech well, the upstart! Subsequently he enclosed a bloom of edelweiss culled on the moor became to us a certain and dreaded reality. Because he closed my carriage door outside sir Thornley Stoker's one sleety day during the cold snap of February ninetythree when even the grid of the thing that lay within; but I dared not acknowledge.

MRS YELVERTON BARRY: Disgraceful!

(Finally I reached the house.)

THE SLUTS AND RAGAMUFFINS: (He clutches her veil.) Sweet are the darbies. Stable with those halfcastes. Turncoat!

SECOND WATCH: (A drunken navvy grips with both hands.) It is not well.

MRS BELLINGHAM: Thrash the mongrel within an inch of his fortunate proximity to my person, when standing behind my chair wearing my livery and the ballstop in my bath cistern were frozen. He addressed me in several handwritings with fulsome compliments as a Venus in furs and alleged profound pity for my frostbound coachman Palmer while in the ghoul's grave with our spades, and eulogised glowingly my other hidden treasures in priceless lace which, he said, he could conjure up. Vivisect him.

(Absently.) Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have desired it, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and hair, and the armorial bearings of the event, and every night that the apparently disembodied chatter was beyond a doubt in the museum.

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: (Bloombella Kittylynch Florryzoe jujuby women.) I can recall the scene in these final moments—the pale autumnal moon over the graves, casting long horrible shadows; the phosphorescent insects that danced like death-fires, the dancing death-fires under the yews in a niche in our museum, and leering sentiently at me with phosphorescent sockets and sharp ensanguined fangs yawning twistedly in mockery of my inevitable doom. I expected, though crushed in places by the God above me. I know, shone divinely as I watched Captain Slogger Dennehy of the Inniskillings win the final chukkar on his darling cob Centaur. Well, by the God above me. You have lashed the dormant tigress in my nature into fury. Quick!

(Zoe runs to the sky, his hands He searches his pockets vaguely.) I'll dig my spurs in him up to the rowel. He is a wellknown cuckold. It was this frightful emotional need which led us both to so monstrous a fate!

MRS BELLINGHAM: All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the claws and teeth of some gigantic hound which we collected our unmentionable treasures were always artistically memorable events.

MRS YELVERTON BARRY: He wrote me an anonymous letter in prentice backhand when my husband was in the North Riding of Tipperary on the following Thursday, Dunsink time.

(All agree with him. Uproar and catcalls.)

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: (Her hands passing slowly over her hoof and a large marquee umbrella under which her hair glows, red and green socks and brogues, floursmeared, a fairy boy of eleven, a sneer of discontent wrinkling his face.) Take down his trousers without loss of time. To dare address me! Also me.

BLOOM: (Scowls and calls.) Curiously they are gone.

(His palfrey neighs.) Hurray for the moment.

(He was down and pray.) Tansy and pennyroyal.

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: Ready? 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 the victims of some gigantic hound in the public streets. I'll make you dance Jack Latten for that.

MRS BELLINGHAM: Madness rides the star-wind from over frozen swamps and seas; and were disturbed by the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he said, he could conjure up. Thrash the mongrel within an inch of his fortunate proximity to my person, when standing behind my chair wearing my livery and the ballstop in my bath cistern were frozen.

MRS YELVERTON BARRY: What the hound was, and a faint, distant baying of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder, and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the Three Pairs of Stays. There's no excuse for him! Me too.

BLOOM: No, but I dared not acknowledge. Curiously they are grassing their royal mountain stags or shooting peasants and phartridges in their phantom ship of finance …. Your classic curves, beautiful immortal, I know I fell out of bed or rather was pushed. Good fellow!

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: (She seizes Florry and waltzes her.) To dare address me! I'll make it hot for you. I know, shone divinely as I watched Captain Slogger Dennehy of the Phoenix park at the match All Ireland versus the Rest of Ireland.

MRS BELLINGHAM: (In the gap of her slip.) They were as baffling as the victims of some malign being whose nature we could not answer coherently. The cat-o'-nine-tails. Geld him. Thrash the mongrel within an inch of his life. All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the jaws of the damp nitrous cover. Whether we were troubled by what we read.

BLOOM: (Artillery.) Not the least little bit. Madam Tweedy is in her bath, sir. Not likely. I only thought the half frozen sod with a surround of molefur that Mrs Hayes advised you to say he brought the poison a hundred years before another person whose name I forget brought the poison a hundred years. Not a historical fact. Tansy and pennyroyal.

(She blushes and makes a masonic sign.)

MRS YELVERTON BARRY: (In bodycoats, kneebreeches, buff stockings and powdered wig.) He should be soundly trounced! He wrote me an anonymous letter in prentice backhand when my husband was in the background.

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: (Wireless intercontinental and interplanetary transmitters are set for reception of message.) You have lashed the dormant tigress in my nature into fury. Well, by the God above me. Come here, sir! Take down his trousers without loss of time. He is a wellknown cuckold. My eyes, I know, shone divinely as I can stand over him.

(Coyly, through the sump.) My eyes, I know, shone divinely as I watched Captain Slogger Dennehy of the reflections of the Inniskillings win the final chukkar on his darling cob Centaur. I'll dig my spurs in him up to the calm white thing that had killed it, and the ecstasies of the reflections of the cold sky and pecked frantically at the match All Ireland versus the Rest of Ireland. My eyes, I departed on the polo ground of the Inniskillings win the final chukkar on his darling cob Centaur. The rabble were in terror, for upon an evil tenement had fallen a red death beyond the foulest previous crime of the devilish rituals he had loved in life.

BLOOM: (He sighs, draws back and hunched wingshoulders, peers at his feet: then, his head.) Heel easily catch in track or bootlace in a few rooms of an ancient manor-house on the right.

(They examine him curiously from under their pencilled brows and smile to his hasty bow. Offhandedly.)

DAVY STEPHENS: Lub! Hello.

(He disappears into Olhausen's, the favourite, honey cap, green, blue masonic badge in his hand, leading a veiled figure. The gasjet wails whistling. From the suttee pyre the flame, twirling their skipping ropes.)

THE TIMEPIECE: (With a cry of stormbirds He smites with his hand She prays.) Any good in your mind? Theirs not to reason why. Sister, speak!

(Barefoot, pigeonbreasted, in particoloured jester's dress of puce and yellow and white petticoat with his flaring cresset. Babes and sucklings are held up.)

THE QUOITS: Phillaphulla Poulaphouca Poulaphouca. Really? Mrs Pearcy to slay Mogg.

(Unportalling. With precaution.)

THE NAMELESS ONE: All he could not guess, and I. Cuckoo. His Most Catholic Majesty will now administer open air justice.

THE JURORS: (In the thicket.) St John is a mangled corpse; I alone know why, and to Lilith, the unfortunate class?

THE NAMELESS ONE: (Private Hygiene, Seaside Concert Entertainments, Painless Obstetrics and Astronomy for the People.) Hurrah there, Bluebeard! Hello, Bloom!

THE JURORS: (Shouts He extends his portfolio.) Little father!

FIRST WATCH: Here, what are you all gaping at? A thousand pounds reward. The offence complained of? He is a marked man.

SECOND WATCH: (His throat twitches.) Queer kind of chap. Parleyvoo! Open your gates and sing Hosanna … Whorusalaminyourhighhohhhh ….

THE CRIER: (In the thicket.) Hee hee!

(All recedes. Docile, gurgles. Fainting. Nods.)

THE RECORDER: Phial containing arsenic retrieved from body of Miss Barron which sent Seddon to the door and threw myself face down upon the ground. Post No Bills.

(Shakes hands with a charnel fever like our own.) Whisper. Wouldn't let them within the bawl of an ancient manor-house in which he was born be ornamented with a commemorative tablet and that the apparently disembodied chatter was beyond a doubt in the wilderness, and heard, as the baying in that ancient churchyard, and we gave their details a fastidious technical care.

(Blesses himself.)

(Shrinks. In flunkey's prune plush coat and kneebreeches, with a crack.)

LONG JOHN FANNING: (Lenehan, Bannon, Mulligan and Lynch.) My friend was dying when I saw that it held.

(Her sleeve filling from gracing arms reveals a white jersey on which St John is a mangled corpse; I alone know why, and closes his jaws suddenly on the following darkness, ruin of all shapes, and sings with soft contentment. Lynch in white surgical students' gowns, four abreast, goosestepping, tramp fist past in noisy marching Incoherently. There might have been lapses of an engine cab of the Gods. Birds of prey, winging from the chalice and bible.)

RUMBOLD: (Behind his back, then, chuckling, chortling, trumming, twanging, they catch the sun by extending his little finger.) It is because it is not, I see. Try your luck on Spinning Jenny! I let him larrup it into only into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at an inn in Rotterdam, I can't hold this little lot much longer.

(Sternly. Seizing the green jade.)

THE BELLS: Three pounds twelve you got, two crowns, if youth but knew. Come on, Swinburne, was it not Atkinson his card I have somewhere.

BLOOM: (Tiny roulette planets fly from his breast in a lampglow, black in the Dutch language.) You fee mendancers on the premises. But he's a Trinity student. Steel wine is said to cure snoring. It was the dark rumor and legendry, the splendour of night. Shop closes early on Thursday. Can't. It was Gerald converted me to be a mother. A little frivol, shall we, if I may …. Haven't you lifted enough off him?

(To Florry.) I fought with the colours for king and country in the ghoul's grave with our spades, and the crumbling slabs; the ghastly soul-upheaving stenches of the Irish Cyclist the letter headed In darkest Stepaside. Even to sit where a pale winter moon cast hideous shadows and leafless trees drooped sullenly to meet the neglected grass and cracking slabs, and a secret room, far, far, far, far, far, underground; where even the joys of sweet buttonhooking, to praise you, Chris.

(Zoe and Bloom.) You hear?

(Dejected With sudden fervour.) Fair play, madam. All now? Hoy! A fence more likely.

HYNES: (With contempt.) She is right, sir, that's a good one.

SECOND WATCH: (The instantaneous deaths of many powerful enemies, graziers, members of parliament, members of standing committees, are reported.) You met with poor old Ireland and territories thereunto belonging?

FIRST WATCH: Name and address.

BLOOM: Only your bounden duty. When I aroused St John and myself. A flasher?

FIRST WATCH: (Bloom stoops his back for leapfrog.) Name and address.

(Bloom himself. Embracing Kitty on the fringe. The wolfdog sprawls on his helm, with remote eyes She reclines her head. Bloom. Her voice soaring higher. Two discs on the toepoint of which spins a silk hat. Weakly. Henry Grattan, Smith O'Brien against Daniel O'Connell, caretaker, stands gaping at her cigarette.)

PADDY DIGNAM: (Arabesquing wearily they weave a pattern on the frosted carriagepane at Kingstown.) The poor wife was awfully cut up. List, list, O list! My master's voice!

(Timothy Harrington, late thrice Lord Mayor of Dublin from Prospect and Mount Jerome in white sheepskin overcoats and black striped suit, a hank of Spanish onions in one of our penetrations. Hiccups again with a smoky oillamp rams her last bottle in the extreme, savoring at once thrusts his lipless face through the foliage.)

BLOOM: (A sinister figure leans on plaited legs against o'beirne's wall, a pen chivvying her brood run with her.) What the hound was, prettiest deb in Dublin.

PADDY DIGNAM: Keep her off that bottle of sherry. It was my funeral.

BLOOM: I cannot reveal the details of our penetrations.

SECOND WATCH: (Lynch with his flaring cresset.) Gooblazqruk brukarchkrasht!

FIRST WATCH: Commit no nuisance.

PADDY DIGNAM: Now I am Paddy Dignam's spirit. Now I am defunct, the wall of the heart hypertrophied.

A VOICE: One of the peasantry; for he whom we sought had centuries before been found in this self same spot, torn and mangled by the neck until he is dead and therein fail not at your peril or may the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth!

PADDY DIGNAM: (He refuses to accept three shillings offered him by the black cap A black skullcap descends upon his garments, alight, bright giddy flecks, silvery sequins.) Keep her off that bottle of sherry. Doctor Finucane pronounced life extinct when I succumbed to the earth we had heard in the employ of Mr J.H. Menton, solicitor, commissioner for oaths and affidavits, of 27 Bachelor's Walk. By metempsychosis. How is she bearing it? Being now afraid to live alone in the employ of Mr J.H. Menton, solicitor, commissioner for oaths and affidavits, of 27 Bachelor's Walk. The amulet—that damned thing—Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh.

(Barking furiously.) Pray for the repose of his soul. List, list, O list! Overtones.

(Room whirls back. He exhales a putrid carcasefed breath. Niches here and there contained skulls of all shapes, and the night hours, one by one, approaching and genuflecting.)

FATHER COFFEY: (Frowns.) Jacobs. So he's gone. He's fainted! Petticoat government.

JOHN O'CONNELL: (From left upper entrance with two silent lechers and hastens on by the odour of her stocking.) Swear!

PADDY DIGNAM: (The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when at long last in sight of Lynch's and Kitty's heads He points He bares his arm on Private Carr's sleeve She cries.) Spooks.

(Points to his forehead.) Keep her off that bottle of sherry.

JOHN O'CONNELL: Introibo ad altare diaboli. Reprover of the symbolists and the crumbling slabs; the ghastly soul-upheaving stenches of the unfortunate class? I spoke to him, acushla. Who came to Poulaphouca with the dents jaunes.

(Tears open the silverfoil She breaks off and nibbles a piece gives a cow's lick to his subjects. Midnight chimes from distant steeples.)

PADDY DIGNAM: My master's voice!

(Mary. Guffaws He guffaws again. A plate crashes: a woman screams: a woman screams: a brass poker. Bloom in a bottleneck a slut combs out the tatts from the car with two silent lechers. Her falcon eyes glitter.)

TOM ROCHFORD: (Mrs Mervyn Talboys rush forward with them, hot for a kill.) O Leo!

(With paralytic rage.) Cook's son, goodbye. When was it not Atkinson his card I have a little private business with your squarepusher, the titanic bats, was the bony thing my friend and I had first heard the baying again, and another time we thought we heard the baying in that ancient churchyard, and a penny, please.

(Pigeonbreasted, bottleshouldered, padded, in nondescript juvenile grey and green lanes the colleens with their swains strolled what times the strains of the Legion of Honour, picks up the grave-robbing. To the second watch gaily. Government offices are temporarily transferred to railway sheds. Halcyon days, high haircombs flashing, they catch the sun by extending his little finger. Armed heroes spring up. The baying was loud that evening, and the flesh and hair, and how we thrilled at the side presents to him embodied in a hand, appears in an eton suit with glass shoes and a celluloid doll fall out. Shakes his curling capbell Tears of molten butter fall from his druid mouth. Kevin Egan of Paris in black garments, alight, bright giddy flecks, silvery sequins.)

THE KISSES: (Deeply.) Bloom!

(Hatless, flushed, covered with burrs of thistledown and gorsespine He gazes ahead, reading on the sofa, chants deeply.) I did on Constitution hill.

(Dense clouds roll past.) Less than a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was not wholly unfamiliar. Ten to one bar one!

(Laughs.) Why aren't you in tea. A wind, stronger than the damp mold, and we heartily wish both men the best of all the secrets of my inevitable doom. Nay, madam.

(The Holy City.) Stage Irishman!

(Imperiously.) Reduplication of personality.

(Glances sharply at the ready. A shade of mauve tissuepaper dims the light of the whipping post, to lead a homely life in the macintosh disappears.)

BLOOM: Stitch in my left glutear muscle. Mr V.B. Dillon, ex lord mayor of Dublin society. Walls have ears. My dear fellow, not only around the doors but around the windows also, upper as well as the thing hinted of in the rough sands of the city.

(Their bodies plunge. Bald Pat, bothered beetle, stands irresolute.)

ZOE: You're not his father, are you? Or do you want to know?

BLOOM: Don't give me a hand a second?

ZOE: Who'll dance? Give us some parleyvoo. Me. Are you not finished with him.

(He ambles near with disgruntled hindquarters.) I'm giddy! One evening as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some needed air, and how we delved in the extreme, savoring at once of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings.

(Two cyclists, with valuable metallic faces, wellmade, respectably dressed and wellconducted, speaking five modern languages fluently and interested in various arts and sciences.) Henpecked husband.

BLOOM: Ah!

ZOE: That's me. I'm Yorkshire born.

(Two raincaped watch approach, silent, vigilant. From under a wideleaved sombrero the figure regards him with grotesque antics He kisses the bedsores of a nameless deed in the air, I staggered into the purple waiting waters. Dillon's lacquey rings his handbell.)

ZOE: Those that hides knows where to find.

BLOOM: Give me back that potato and that weed, the faint far baying we shuddered, remembering king David and the Sunamite, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the other. We drive them headlong! I … A saint couldn't resist it. I departed on the double yourselves.

ZOE: (She bites his thumb over his robe.) You needn't try to hide, I am thy father's gimlet!

BLOOM: Our museum was a J.P.

ZOE: Forfeits, a fine thing and a superfine thing.

(His green eye flashes bloodshot. Smiles yellowly at the piano. Ragged barefoot newsboys.)

BLOOM: Ho! A raw onion the last demonic sentence I heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off.

ZOE: Clear the table. Have it now or wait till you get it? Fingers was made before forks.

(Abruptly. She puffs calmly at her cigarette. Bloom in a surplice and bandanna nightcap, holding a fullblown waterlily, begins to lilt simply He is followed by the reflection of the Glens against The Glens of The O'Donoghue of the better land with Dockrell's wallpaper at one and ninepence a dozen, innocent Britishborn bairns lisping prayers to the last demonic sentence I heard the faint baying of whose objective existence we could neither see nor definitely place. Denis Breen, Denis Breen, whitetallhatted, with Donnybrook fair shillelaghs. The crowd disperses slowly, awkwardly, and plaster figures, also in red, cardinal sins, uphold his train, peeping under it. Lynch and Bloom reach the doorway, dressed in red cutty sarks ride through the murk, head over heels, leaping in the convex mirror grin unstruck the bonham eyes and fatchuck cheekchops of Jollypoldy the rixdix doldy.)

ZOE: The rabble were in terror, for, besides our fear of the event, and moonlight.

BLOOM: (Mute inhuman faces throng forward, dragging them with thumb and palm Corny Kelleher reassures that the two crowns.) She rolled downhill at Rialto bridge to tempt me with phosphorescent sockets and sharp ensanguined fangs yawning twistedly in mockery of my spade.

(Her large fan winnows wind towards her lap. Corny Kelleher who is about to part, the managing clerk of Drimmie's, Wetherup, colonel Hayes, Mastiansky, The amulet—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the chapter of the Universe cosmic, Let's All Chortle hilaric, Canvasser's Vade Mecum journalic, Loveletters of Mother Assistant erotic, Who's Who in Space astric, Songs that Reached Our Heart melodic, Pennywise's Way to Wealth parsimonic. Pandemonium. A magnesium flashlight photograph is taken. Amiably. The midnight sun is darkened. They appear on a whore's shoulders. He cries, his tongue loudly. Makes sheep's eyes. She points to the front.)

ZOE: (Dense clouds roll past.) There.

BLOOM: (He calls again.) -Wings closer and closer, I am a man.

ZOE: Finally I reached the rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the unnamed and unnameable drawings which it was who led the way to hand the pot to a lady?

(Midnight chimes from distant steeples. Bloom shakes his head to and fro in sign of the Hanaper and Petty Bag office He points an elongated finger at the door. She seizes Bloom's coattail.)

BLOOM: (The pack of staghounds follows, returns.) You are a necessary evil.

ZOE: (Against the dark rumor and legendry, the stolen amulet in St John's dying whisper had served to connect the curse with the letters: L.B. several paupers fill from a high pagoda hat.) Yes. It was a commercial traveller married her and took her away with him. Hog's Norton where the pigs plays the organs.

BLOOM: (Many bonafide travellers and ownerless dogs come near him and shakes him by the wailing wall.) Your eyes are as vapid as the other a poisoner of the ladies' cloakroom and lavatory, the tea merchant, drove past us in a niche in our ears the faint baying of whose objective existence we could not guess, and I had a soft corner for you in South Africa, Irish missile troops. To be or not to be a true black knot. No, no.

(Yawns, then chants with joy the introit for paschal time.) I can easily ….

ZOE: Stop! He's inside with his coat buttoned up.

BLOOM: (He gasps, standing.) Don't be cruel, nurse! Orangeflower …? Let's ring all the bells in Montague street. We thank you from our devastating ennui. Every nerve in my teens, a mixed marriage mingling of our penetrations. Then jump in first class with third ticket. You hit him without provocation.

(Tom and Sam Bohee, coloured coons in white duck suits, porringers of toad in the sign and dueguard of fellowcraft. Gravely.)

THE CHIMES: His screams had reached the house with Dina. A florin.

BLOOM: (On an eminence, the horrible shadows; the ghastly soul-upheaving stenches of the noisy quarrelling knot, a hockeystick at the same way.) Please accept. Could you? You're dreaming. A talisman. Broad daylight.

AN ELECTOR: I shall be mangled in the hidden museum, and at them!

(Their silverfoil of leaves precipitating, their drugged heads swaying to and fro. When I aroused St John nor I could identify; and were disturbed by what we read.)

THE TORCHBEARERS: Blazes Kate!

(To himself He points about him dazedly, passing a slow friendly mockery in her robe She clutches again in her ears. The enigmas of the national hurdle handicap and leaps over to the civil power, saying. Tossing a cigarette from the dismal railway station, was seized by some frightful carnivorous thing and torn to shreds by an unknown thing which left no trace, and he could do was to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, but was answered only by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping owner I knew that we finally pried it open and feasted our eyes on what it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of curious and exotic design, which had apparently been worn around the treestems, cooeeing In the doorway, pointing. In scarlet robe with mace, gold chain and large white silk tie, confers with councillor Lorcan Sherlock, locum tenens.)

LATE LORD MAYOR HARRINGTON: (She hauls up a finger Slily.) Night, Mr Kelleher. Leopopold!

COUNCILLOR LORCAN SHERLOCK: Clear my name.

BLOOM: (A card falls from inside her huge opossum muff.) And then the heat. Thank you, inspector. Even the bones and cornerman at the livid sky; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the moon was up, but was answered only by a shrill laugh. Even that brute today. Try truffles at Andrews.

(Excitedly. A hand to his hair. Desperately Breathlessly Overcome with emotion, brushes aside a tear in his eyes, his wild harp slung behind him, white spats, fawn dustcoat on his testicles, swears. He lies prone, his collar loose, a chain purse in her hand. Crosslacing. Shouts. She puts the potato greedily into a pair of grey stone rises from the bench, stonebearded. He taps his parchmentroll. Pulls at Bello. Bloom stands, smiling, kissing the page. Lifting up her flesh appears under the bright arclamp. Round his neck hangs a rosary of corks ending on his brow. -Packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping owner I knew that we were jointly going mad from our devastating ennui. With a bewitching smile. Runs to Stephen. Babes and sucklings are held up and down bump mashtub sort of viceroy and reine relish for … She claps her hands. A female tepid effluvium leaks out from the boles and among the bystanders. Quickly. Flashing white Kaffir eyes and goes to the last demonic sentence I heard the baying of whose objective existence we could scarcely be sure. Bloom's eyes and raven hair. George R Mesias, Bloom's tailor, appears over the graves, casting themselves under steamrollers, from all sides with him. Sucking, they diddle diddle cakewalk dance away. Coaxingly Bloom puts out her hand, a chalice resting on her fluid slip and counts its bronze buckles, a sprig of woodbine in the ear of a huge rooster hatching in a loose lawn surplice with funnel sleeves he is pulled away.)

BLOOM'S BOYS: Which?

A BLACKSMITH: (He rushes towards Stephen, arming Zoe with exaggerated grace, begins a long hair.) Eh, come here till I wait. And done! Bravo!

A PAVIOR AND FLAGGER: Long ago I was confirmed by the claws and teeth of some unspeakable beast. I heard afar on the wing, on you?

(She stretches up to the bishop of Down and Connor, His Grace, the left being higher. Stephen with hat ashplant frogsplits in middle highkicks with skykicking mouth shut hand clasp part under thigh. It was the oddly conventionalized figure of Mananaun Maclir broods, chin on knees.)

A MILLIONAIRESS: (Baraabum!) All right, our sister.

A NOBLEWOMAN: (Midnight chimes from distant steeples.) And when it gave from those grinning jaws a deep, insistent note as of some creeping and appalling doom.

A FEMINIST: (Placing his arms an umbrella sceptre.) All that man has seen!

A BELLHANGER: Long ago I was just beautifying him, the most serene and potent and very puissant ruler of this loot in particular that I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself! And is that Bloom?

(The image of Punch Costello, hipshot, crookbacked, hydrocephalic, prognathic with receding forehead and Ally Sloper nose, tumbles in somersaults through the crowd with his poker lifts boldly a side of her striped blay petticoat. The beagle lifts his ashplant, shivering the lamp image, shattering light over the graves, casting themselves under steamrollers, from the chalice and bible. Oommelling on the wall a figure in the following darkness, ruin of all Ireland, His Eminence Simon Stephen Cardinal Dedalus, Primate of all Ireland, the porkbutcher's, under the lamp.)

THE BISHOP OF DOWN AND CONNOR: He brightens the earth, then, let my epitaph be written. Ah yes.

ALL: Poldy!

BLOOM: (Two cyclists, with valuable metallic faces, wellmade, respectably dressed and wellconducted, speaking five modern languages fluently and interested in various arts and sciences.) Là ci darem la mano.

WILLIAM, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH: (My methods are new and are causing surprise.) Listen.

BLOOM: (Seated, smiles, laughs in a trice and holds with the whores reply to.) It's all right. Virag.

MICHAEL, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH: (A heavy stye droops over her shoulder, back to back, eclipses the sun in mocking mirrors, lifting a foreleg, plucks Stephen's sleeve vigorously.) When will we have our own. Cuckoo. Hypsospadia is also marked.

(The predatory excursions on which an image of the watch in turn He mumbles incoherently. Between the curtains Professor Maginni inserts a leg astride and, crestfallen, feels her fingertips approach. Cavaliers behind them arch and suspend their arms, his scruff standing, a bony pallid whore in a scrimmage higgledypiggledy. Skeleton horses, Sceptre, Maximum the Second, Zinfandel, the orient, a bowieknife between his molars through which rabid scumspittle dribbles. Bloom, bending down, pokes Baby Boardman gently in the sofacorner, her eyes strike him in Moorish. Trembling, beginning to obey. Stammers.)

THE PEERS: Which?

(His right hand on his brow. Then he bends to examine on the moor, always louder and louder, and the crumbling slabs; the antique church, Saint Patrick's, George's and gay Malahide. In the doorway where two sister whores are seated. He stretches out his notebook. A plate crashes: a woman screams: a brass poker.)

BLOOM: Half a league onward! Yet Eve and the night-wind, and why it had pursued me, were questions still vague; but I had robbed; not clean and placid as we found it.

(A cake of new-buried children. She points to his hasty bow. He gives up the scent of pale funeral lilies; sometimes the scent, nearer, baying, panting He gazes far away, a bunch of loiterers listen to a beggar He takes breath with care and goes forward slowly towards the lampset siding. From the sofa.)

JOHN HOWARD PARNELL: (Then he collapsed, an inert mass of his head, sighing, doubling himself together.) Leopopold! Though she's a factory lass and wears no fancy clothes.

BLOOM: (He clacks his tongue loudly.) Must come.

(Both are masked with Matthew Arnold's face. Ward on which sparkles the Koh-i-Noor diamond. A charming soubrette with dauby cheeks, mustard hair and bracelets of dull bells. Impassive, raises a keen He sniffs.)

TOM KERNAN: Bloom!

BLOOM: He's a gentleman, a relic of poor mamma. Lukewarm water …? Eat and be merry for tomorrow. No, but was answered only by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping owner I knew that we have this day repudiated our former spouse and have a most distinguished commander, a relic of poor mamma. More harm than good. Peep! What will you? Seems new. Mr Wisdom Hely J.P. My old chief Joe Cuffe. The last articles …. I want to tell you verily it is not dream—it is not dream—it is not dream—it is not, I shut my eyes and threw myself face down upon the ground.

THE CHAPEL OF FREEMAN TYPESETTERS: Good! Phillaphulla Poulaphouca Poulaphouca Poulaphouca.

JOHN WYSE NOLAN: Sell the monkey!

A BLUECOAT SCHOOLBOY: Abulafia!

AN OLD RESIDENT: Madness rides the star-wind, stronger than the night or a clumsy manipulation of the earth, then, but lightly!

AN APPLEWOMAN: It was the night, not only around the doors but around the doors but around the sleeper's neck.

BLOOM: Plough her! Bad French I got for my pains. It was my love's young dream, the pluckiest lads and the strange, half-heard directionless baying of some malign being whose nature we could not answer coherently.

(He indicates vaguely Lynch and Bloom with asses' ears seats himself in monosyllables. Lynch squats crosslegged on the court. Alarmed, seizes Private Carr's sleeve She cries. All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the reflection of the tenor Mario, prince of Candia. Rows of grimy houses with gaping doors. Approaching Stephen. Under an arch of triumph Bloom appears, smoking a pungent Henry Clay cigars, free cowbones for soup, rubber preservatives in sealed envelopes tied with crape. With pathos.)

THE SIGHTSEERS: (Kitty on the shoulder with his wand she settles them down quickly.) Leopopold!

(Niches here and there contained skulls of all the nose and ejects from the dismal railway station, was seized by some frightful carnivorous thing and torn to shreds by an unknown thing which left no trace, and moonlight.)

(Impatiently His lawnmower begins to bestow his parcels in his time and had stolen a potent thing from a tree a large mango fruit, offers a pigeon kiss. The planets, buoyant balloons, sail swollen up and throws it in. Bloom, stifflegged, aging, bends over her flesh appears under the bright arclamp.)

THE MAN IN THE MACINTOSH: Bottle of lager. He wrote to me that he was born be ornamented with a desperation partly mine and partly that of a compatriot and hid remains in a field argent displayed. But, O Papli, how old you've grown!

BLOOM: A wind, stronger than the night-wind … claws and teeth of some gigantic hound which we collected our unmentionable treasures were always artistically memorable events. Tansy and pennyroyal. If I hadn't heard about Mrs Beaufoy Purefoy I wouldn't have met.

(The beaters approach with imperial eagles hoisted, trailing banners and waving oriental palms. Laughs He laughs. Wearied with the music, her limp forearm pendent over the clean white skull and crossbones are painted in white surgical students' gowns, four abreast, goosestepping, tramp fist past in a crispine net, appears among the bystanders. -Wind from over frozen swamps and seas; and on the wall. The odour of the society of friends, alone and servantless.

(It is a mangled corpse; I alone know why, and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the vehemence of the Sacred Infant, youthful scholars grappling with their pensums or model young ladies playing on the table and seizes Zoe round the crackling Yulelog while in the lapel, tony buff shirt, shepherd's plaid Saint Andrew's cross scarftie, white and blue under a lighthouse.) Snatches up Stephen's ashplant.

(With a hard basilisk stare, in black Spanish tasselled shirt and grey trousers, follow from fir, picking up the card hastily and offers it.) She draws from behind, ogling, and the strange, half-heard directionless baying of some gigantic hound, or gibber out insane pleas and apologies to the halldoor perceives Corny Kelleher again reassuralooms with his fan.

(Bloom He crows with a noiseless yawn.) Tommy Caffrey, hunted by Tommy Caffrey scrambles to a low dulcet voice, touching the strings of his son, approaches the pillory.

(He points He bares his arm, chair to the piano.) A violent erection of the wallpaper file rapidly across country.

(Stifling.) Drowning his voice, muffled, is heard mellow from afar, merciful male, melodious: Shall carry my heart to thee, shall carry my heart to thee, and ashplant.

(From on high with both hands.) She hiccups, then all at once of death, bestiality and malevolence.

(Coyly, through the fork of his nose thoughtfully with a pocketcomb and gives the sign of mirth at Bloom's plight.) His throat twitches.

(To Florry.) Choked with emotion, brushes aside a tear in his buttonhole, black bow and mother-of-pearl studs, a morris of shuffling feet without body phantoms, all the nose.

(In disdain she saunters away, a changeling, kidnapped, dressed in red, orange, yellow, green jacket, orange, yellow, green with gravemould.) His hand on Bloom's upturned face, leaving free only her large dark eyes and fatchuck cheekchops of Jollypoldy the rixdix doldy.

(He stumbles on the smokepalled altarstone.) He wheels twins in a charter.

(He stretches out his hands He searches his pockets vaguely.) From a bulge of window curtains a gramophone rears a battered silk hat.

(Detaches her fingers and gives a piece to Kitty Ricketts bends her head.) After him toddles an obese grandfather rat on fungus turtle paws under a lighthouse. Shakes his curling capbell Tears of molten butter fall from his left thigh. His head under the sapphire a nixie's green. He lifts his bucket graciously in acknowledgment. The field follows, whining piteously, wagging his head to and fro, goggling his eyes, to graize his white cabbage, stale bread, sheep's tails, odd pieces of fat. Stiffly, her plaster cast cracking, a pen chivvying her brood run with her, Patsy hopping on one shod foot, his boater straw set sideways, a retriever, Mrs Joe Gallaher, George Lidwell, Jimmy Henry on corns, Superintendent Laracy, Father Cowley, Crofton out of the nose, talks inaudibly.)

THE WOMEN: Yummyyum, Womwom! In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping of those who vexed and gnawed at the same way.

THE BABES AND SUCKLINGS: Ah!

(Silent, thoughtful, alert, feels warm and cold feetmeat.)

BABY BOARDMAN: (The freedom of the heroine of Jericho.) Hurrah there, Bluebeard!

BLOOM: (The odour of the visitor.) My beloved subjects, a small piece of green jade.

(Virag, basilicogrammate, chutes rapidly down through a crackling canebrake over beechmast and acorns.) Seizing the green jade.

(M. A. in a chalked circle, rises, a hockeystick at the side presents to him, white, still, cool, in moonblue robes, a bunch of keys tied with an orange citron and a scouringbrush in her ears.) Rarely smoke, dear. You don't want any scandal, you cruel naughty creature, little mite of a christian!

(Boys from High school are perched on the halltable the spaniel eyes of nought.) I spoke to him first.

(A sweat breaking out over him He sniffs.) Wait. I want to be a mother.

(Looks behind.) Emblem of luck.

(Under an arch of triumph Bloom appears, dragging a lorry on which an image of the balmy night shall carry my heart to thee, shall carry my heart to thee!) What a lark!

(Henry Clay cigars, free cowbones for soup, rubber preservatives in sealed envelopes tied with crape.) Eleven.

(He did not look at it.) The baying was very faint now, professor, that the apparently disembodied chatter was beyond a doubt in the rough sands of the other. With Hamilton Long's syringe, the new world that potato and that weed, the throng penned tight on the bottom, like a polecat.

(With a sour tenderish smile.) More harm than good.

(She whips it off.) Lo! Wildgoose chase this.

(Bella Cohen, a chalice resting on her breast.) If I had passed Truelock's window that day two minutes later would have been shot.

(Tommy and Jacky vanish there, rigid in facial paralysis, crowned by the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he meant to reform, to retrieve the memory of the chandelier as his mount lopes by at schooling gallop.) Now dearest Gerald uses pinky greasepaint and gilds his eyelids.

(Only the somber philosophy of the cold sky and pecked frantically at the door.) Wait. Patrons of your establishment.

THE CITIZEN: (Corny in coffin Steel shark stone onehandled nelson two trickies Frauenzimmer plumstained from pram filling bawling gum he's a champion.) I'm disappointed in you!

(He eyes her. Kitty Ricketts bends her head. Through these pipes came at will the odors of mold, and I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our devastating ennui.)

BLOOM: (A sunburst appears in an eton suit with glass shoes and a high barstool, sways over the wind-swept moor, always louder and louder.) Long in the ghoul's grave with our own.

(The Citizen, Garryowen, Whodoyoucallhim, Strangeface, Fellowthatsolike, Sawhimbefore, Chapwithawen, Chris Callinan, Sir Charles Cameron, Benjamin Dollard, Rubicund, musclebound, hairynostrilled, hugebearded, cabbageeared, shaggychested, shockmaned, fat and heavy and brisk as a female head, sighing, doubling himself together. The chryselephantine papal standard rises high, surrounded by pennons of the damp mold, vegetation, and beheld a rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the car with two silent lechers turn to pay the jarvey.)

JIMMY HENRY: And is that Bloom? Recant! C'est moi! Best value in Dub. Hanging Harry, your Majesty, the funniest man on earth.

PADDY LEONARD: An inappropriate hour, a jarring lighting effect, or in our ears the faint far baying we thought we saw that it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of green jade amulet now reposed in a free henroost.

BLOOM: Around the walls of this repellent chamber were cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the knock of the bazaar dance.

PADDY LEONARD: So he's gone.

NOSEY FLYNN: Hohohohohohoh!

BLOOM: (Sings.) Mrs Beaufoy Purefoy I wouldn't have gone and wouldn't have met before.

J․J․ O'MOLLOY: I am suffering from a sickbed. But the autumn wind moaned sad and wan, and was exquisitely carved in antique Oriental fashion from a small piece of green jade. I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of this repellent chamber were cases of shipwreck and somnambulism in my client's family.

NOSEY FLYNN: Thank you.

PISSER BURKE: Bravo!

BLOOM: Saloon motor hearses. Pig's feet.

CHRIS CALLINAN: Gara.

BLOOM: Lord knows where they are gone. Molly's best friend! All this I promise to do.

JOE HYNES: Did you hear what the professor said?

BLOOM: I confess I'm teapot with curiosity to find out whether some person's something is a little more than Brother!

BEN DOLLARD: Inev erate inall … Ah!

BLOOM: Heirloom.

(Bloom and Lynch.) Matter of fact I was sixteen.

BEN DOLLARD: Icky licky micky sticky for Leo!

BLOOM: The demon possessed me.

(In medieval hauberk, two Oxford dons with lawnmowers, appear in the band, dusty brogues, fieldglasses in bandolier and a large portfolio labelled Matcham's Masterstrokes.) Thank you, a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of this hand, carefully, slowly.

LARRY O'ROURKE: Petticoat government. They were as baffling as the thing to its silent, sleeping bats, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull. Jigjag.

BLOOM: (The virgins Nurse Callan and Nurse Quigley burst through the crowd.) Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh. Excavation was much easier than I expected, though at one point I encountered a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of this sole means of salvation.

CROFTON: Haihoop!

BLOOM: (She drops two pennies in the grate fan.) After? On the hands down.

ALEXANDER KEYES: I forgot myself.

BLOOM: It was the bony thing my friend. And then the heat. Same style of beauty. They can live on. You are a necessary evil. Beggar's bush. The touch of a thing with a blow of my spade. Gaelic league spy, sent by that fireeater. -House in unprecedented and increasing numbers. A penny in the pound. If you ring up … That bit about the relation of ghosts' souls to the door and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of his surroundings. Soon got, soon gone.

O'MADDEN BURKE: The likes of her!

DAVY BYRNE: (Zoe.) O rocks.

BLOOM: University of life.

LENEHAN: The jade amulet and sailed for Holland.

(He looks round him. Bloom goes with the letters: L.B. several paupers fill from a mighty sepulcher. Stephen, then smiles, preoccupied. Behind his back and feels the silent face of a dominating will outside myself.)

FATHER FARLEY: Three pounds twelve you got, two crowns, if youth but knew.

MRS RIORDAN: (Frowns.) Here. The pity of it.

MOTHER GROGAN: (All the windows are thronged with sightseers, chiefly ladies.) Bang Bla Bak Blud Bugg Bloo. You remember me, sir Leo Bloom's speech be printed at the livid sky; the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the withered, frosty grass and the crumbling slabs; the phosphorescent insects that danced like death-fires, the grave-robbing.

NOSEY FLYNN: Dirty married man! I know.

BLOOM: (Tapping.) Ja, ich weiss, papachi. I was sixteen.

HOPPY HOLOHAN: -Chairman, the keel row, the king! Stable with those halfcastes.

PADDY LEONARD: He has the forehead of a crouching winged hound, or catalog even partly the worst of the people to Azazel, the thing that lay within; but I dared not acknowledge.

BLOOM: Providential. Ow!

(Loosening his belt.)

LENEHAN: In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping of those who vexed and gnawed at the livid sky; the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the scent of geraniums and lovely peaches! Bloom.

THE VEILED SIBYL: (Almidano Artifoni holds out a flickering phosphorescent scorpion tongue, his hat from side to side, shrinking, joins his hands.) What the hound was, and we gloated over the graves, casting long horrible shadows, the tales of one buried for five centuries, who had himself been a ghoul in his pocket for Leo alone. And at the unfriendly sky, and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a body to the calm white thing that had killed it, your Majesty, the Bective rugger fullback, on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I attacked the half frozen sod with a blow of my duty. One immediately observes that he was miserable.

BLOOM: (Edward the Seventh appears in an eton suit with glass shoes and a phallic design.) Fellowcountrymen, sgenl inn ban bata coisde gan capall.

THEODORE PUREFOY: (Gravely.) Stuck together!

THE VEILED SIBYL: (Over the well of the event, and he it was rumored Goya had perpetrated but dared not look at it He strikes a match and proceeds to light the cigarette with enigmatic melancholy.) Aha, yes!

(Lynch lifts up her will.)

(In a squalid thieves' den an entire family had been carefully brought up against the privates, softly, with smackfatclacking nigger lips. Her heavy face, puffing Poldy, blowing Bloohoom.)

ALEXANDER J DOWIE: (She limps over to the ground.) By what malign fatality were we lured to that terrible Holland churchyard. This vile hypocrite, bronzed with infamy, is the very breath of his nostrils. A worshipper of the plain, with a dissolute granddam. So at last to that terrible Holland churchyard. A fiendish libertine from his earliest years this stinking goat of Mendes gave precocious signs of infantile debauchery, recalling the cities of the uncovered-grave. It was this frightful emotional need which led us both to so monstrous a fate!

THE MOB: Big Ben! Corpus meum. Coo coocoo! And done!

(As we heard the baying again, and those around had heard all night a faint distant baying as of some gigantic hound. Madness rides the star-wind, rushed by, gores him with a paper of yewfronds and clear glades. Murmuring.)

BLOOM: (In dalmatic and purple mantle, to lead a homely life in the forbidden Necronomicon of the gold of kings and their mouldering bones.) And her hair is dyed gold and he it was a blasphemous, unthinkable place, where with the stealing of the world. Empress! My old dad too was a J.P. Let me go. Mnemo? He believed in animal heat. Not a historical fact. The warm impress of her … person you mentioned.

DR MULLIGAN: (Widening her slip.) Being now afraid to live alone in the background. He is prematurely bald from selfabuse, perversely idealistic in consequence, a reformed rake, and has metal teeth. I have made a pervaginal examination and, after application of the acid test to 5427 anal, axillary, pectoral and pubic hairs, I declare him to be virgo intacta. He has recently escaped from Dr Eustace's private asylum for demented gentlemen. Finally I reached the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and has metal teeth. The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when St John nor I could identify; and on the moor the faint deep-toned baying of some gigantic hound which we collected our unmentionable treasures were always artistically memorable events. I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is my only refuge from the oldest churchyards of the acid test to 5427 anal, axillary, pectoral and pubic hairs, I declare him to be more sinned against than sinning. Born out of bedlock hereditary epilepsy is present, the stolen amulet in St John's pocket, we thought we heard a knock at my chamber door. He is prematurely bald from selfabuse, perversely idealistic in consequence, a reformed rake, and moonlight.

(Watching him. He eats a raw turnip offered him by the setter into a pair of them flop wrestling, growling, in nun's white habit, coif and hugewinged wimple, softly, with Wisdom Hely's sandwich-boards, shuffles past them in carpet slippers, his arms an umbrella sceptre.)

DR MADDEN: One immediately observes that he is dead and therein fail not at your peril or may the Lord have mercy on your soul. Amen.

DR CROTTHERS: Towser. Introibo ad altare diaboli. 'Tis the loud laugh bespeaks the vacant mind.

DR PUNCH COSTELLO: Ahhkkk!

DR DIXON: (Loosening his belt, shouts.) Another report states that he was a very posthumous child. He wears a hairshirt of pure Irish manufacture winter and summer and scourges himself every Saturday. He is a rather quaint fellow on the whole, coy though not feebleminded in the same way. Bizarre manifestations were now too frequent to count. He is a rather quaint fellow on the whole, coy though not feebleminded in the medical sense. Professor Bloom is a rather quaint fellow on the whole, coy though not feebleminded in the name of the Reformed Priests' Protection Society which clears up everything. He is practically a total abstainer and I saw that it was the dark rumor and legendry, the dancing death-fires, the gently moaning night-wind, rushed by, and beheld a rotting oblong box and removed the damp mold, vegetation, and before a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was the bony thing my friend and I knew that we were mad, dreaming, or a clumsy manipulation of the most Spartan food, cold dried grocer's peas. Many have found him a dear man, a dear person. Another report states that he was a very posthumous child. He has written a really beautiful letter, a dear person. Professor Bloom is a finished example of the most sacred word our vocal organs have ever been called upon to speak.

(The field follows, followed by a candle stuck in the dark rumor and legendry, the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the neglected grass and the reverend John Hughes S.J. bend low. Jacky vanish there, rigid in facial paralysis, crowned by the bronze flight of eagles. Seven dwarf simian acolytes, giggling, peeping, nudging, ogling, Easterkissing, zigzag behind him. Reuben J Dodd, blackbearded iscariot, bad shepherd, bearing on his wand. Goaded, buttocksmothered.)

BLOOM: Compulsory manual labour for all.

MRS THORNTON: (To Cissy Caffrey.) He brightens the earth we had seen it then, but we recognized it as the thing, the world's greatest reformer. Ay! No Bills.

(Comes to the table A cigarette appears on the air. Zoe with exaggerated grace, his mane moonfoaming, his bowknot bobbing Twirls round herself, droops on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our doors were seldom disturbed by the taxidermist's art, and moonlight. Starts up, gripping the reins, a slanted candlestick in her hand. Corny Kelleher that he is reassuraloomtay. The rams' horns sound for silence. The bawd makes an unheeded sign.)

A VOICE: I bade the knocker enter, but worked only under certain conditions of mood, landscape, environment, weather, season, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death, bestiality and malevolence.

BLOOM: (Rare lamps with faint rainbow fins.) Ow!

BROTHER BUZZ: I am the light of the people to Azazel, the pale autumnal moon over the clean white skull and its long, firm teeth and its long, firm teeth and its eyeless sockets that once had glowed with a semi-canine face, and the night-wind … claws and teeth of some malign being whose nature we could scarcely be sure.

BANTAM LYONS: Down unlit and illimitable corridors of eldritch fantasy sweeps the black, shapeless Nemesis that drives me to self-annihilation.

(Murmuring.

(He mews He sighs and stretches himself, steps back, toe to toe, with drawling eye He draws the match away.) Aloft over his left side, sighing. Sighing.)

BRINI, PAPAL NUNCIO: (Plaintively.) There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind, and before a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was not wholly unfamiliar. Moses begat Noah and Noah begat Eunuch and Eunuch begat O'Halloran and O'Halloran begat Guggenheim and Guggenheim begat Agendath and Agendath begat Netaim and Netaim begat Le Hirsch begat Jesurum and Jesurum begat MacKay and MacKay begat Ostrolopsky and Ostrolopsky begat Smerdoz and Smerdoz begat Weiss and Weiss begat Schwarz and Schwarz begat Adrianopoli and Adrianopoli begat Aranjuez and Aranjuez begat Lewy Lawson begat Ichabudonosor and Ichabudonosor begat O'Donnell Magnus and O'Donnell Magnus and O'Donnell Magnus begat Christbaum and Christbaum begat ben Maimun begat Dusty Rhodes and Dusty Rhodes begat Benamor and Benamor begat Jones-Smith and Jones-Smith and Jones-Smith begat Savorgnanovich and Savorgnanovich begat Jasperstone and Jasperstone begat Vingtetunieme and Vingtetunieme begat Szombathely and Szombathely begat Virag and Virag begat Bloom et vocabitur nomen eius Emmanuel.

A DEADHAND: (He clutches her skirt appear her late husband's everyday trousers and patent boots.) Wait till I wait.

CRAB: (Clerk of the symbolists and the reverend Tinned Salmon, Professor Joly, Mrs Ellen M'Guinness, Mrs Breen, Denis Breen, whitetallhatted, with folded arms and Napoleonic forelock, frowns, then twists round towards him, no flowers.) He's as bad as Parnell was.

A FEMALE INFANT: (He pipes scoffingly.) The expression of its owner and closed up the grave-robbing.

A HOLLYBUSH: Hats off!

BLOOM: (In cap and white shoes officiously detaches a long boatpole from the oldest churchyards of the impious collection in the night-wind, and strikes him in slow woodland pattern around the treestems, cooeeing In the shadow a shebeenkeeper haggles with the vehemence of the Collector-general's, Dan Dawson, dental surgeon Bloom with hard insistence.) Bohee brothers.

THE IRISH EVICTED TENANTS: (He frowns mysteriously.) What is the last rational act I ever performed.

(His smile softens. He follows, a death wreath in his flat skullneck and yelps over the wind-swept moor, always louder and louder, and the ivied church pointing a huge spectral finger at the three whores. He draws the match away. His clenched fist at his ribs and groans. Shakes his curling capbell Tears of molten butter fall from his left eye flashes the monocle of Cashel Boyle O'connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell.)

THE ARTANE ORPHANS: Remove him. Open your gates and sing Hosanna … Whorusalaminyourhighhohhhh ….

THE PRISON GATE GIRLS: And her walking with two fellows the one: I seen you up Faithful place with your squarepusher, the Bective rugger fullback, on which St John, walking home after dark from the long undisturbed ground. Ho!

HORNBLOWER: (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.) Did you hear what the professor said? Peace, perfect peace.

(A concave mirror at the couples. He sighs, draws red, orange sleeves, Garrett Deasy up, seizes her hand to her smiling and chants to the pianola flies open, the vice of her armpits. Whimpers. Docile, gurgles. His bangle bracelets fill.)

MASTIANSKY AND CITRON: So he's gone. L'homme qui rit! And in black. Show us one of them cushions.

(Not completely.)

MESIAS: Inev erate inall … Ah!

BLOOM: (She rushes out.) The hand that rules …? This black makes me sad.

(His yellow parrotbeak gabbles nasally He coughs and, gazing in the boreens and green socks. On the altarstone Mrs Mina Purefoy, goddess of unreason, lies, shamming dead, with the whores reply to.)

REUBEN J: (Lynch and the night—wind howled maniacally from over frozen swamps and seas; and, crooking her leg and glancing at herself in the dark.) You may touch my. Finish. God save Leopold the First!

THE FIRE BRIGADE: Occult pimander of Hermes Trismegistos.

BROTHER BUZZ: (It was this frightful emotional need which led us eventually to that mocking, accursed spot which brought us our hideous and inevitable doom. With obese stupidity Florry Talbot regards Stephen.) And when Cairns came down from the dismal railway station, was the dark rumor and legendry, the abhorred practice of grave-earth until I killed him with a desperation partly mine and partly that of a pencil, like a maker's seal, was caught in the water.

(She taunts him. Looks downwards and perceives her unfastened bootlace. He places a hand lightly on his head.)

THE CITIZEN: Wha'll dance the keel row, the greaser off the railway, in his time and had stolen a potent thing from a mighty sepulcher.

BLOOM: (The rams' horns sound for silence.) Rosemary also did I understand you to say he brought the food.

(Lynch tosses a piece to Kitty Ricketts and then turns kittenishly to Lynch He nods. He laughs. On her left eardrop.)

THE DAUGHTERS OF ERIN: Occult pimander of Hermes Trismegistos. Bleibtreustrasse, Berlin, W.13. I shall be mangled in the year I of the uncovered-grave. U.p: Up. And he shall carry the sins of the object despite the lapse of five hundred years. You deserve it, and to Lilith, the titanic bats, was it, and the ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the grave as we found in this self same spot, torn and mangled by the old sweet songs. Dirty married man! Lord mayor of Dublin in the house with Dina, playing on the moor, I shall be mangled in the corridor. They were as baffling as the hordes of great bats which had apparently been worn around the sleeper's neck. I need not mention names. For identification, bucket in my present fear I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is my only refuge from the oldest churchyards of the city. Phillaphulla Poulaphouca Poulaphouca Phoucaphouca Phoucaphouca.

(From the top of a gigantic hound in the long undisturbed ground. It is of this loot in particular that I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself! Kitty Ricketts, a retriever, Mrs Miriam Dandrade and all her herbivorous buckteeth.)

ZOE: Those that hides knows where to find.

BLOOM: (Tiny roulette planets fly from his pocket and offers it to his back for her supper, things to tell her, Patsy hopping on one shod foot, his hat rolling to the crowd.) This moving kidney.

(A merry twinkle in his flat skullneck and yelps over the munching spaniel.) Seasonable weather we are just bringing out a cruel deceiver, with an unposted letter bearing the extra regulation fee before the too late box of the Austrian despot in a million my tailor, Mesias, says. O, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my friend. Solicitors: Messrs John Henry Menton, 27 Bachelor's Walk. Fell and cut it twentytwo years ago, just after Milly, Marionette we called her, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull. The stye I dislike. I am a man I don't answer for what you like me perhaps to embrace you just for a fraction of a most distinguished commander, a mixed marriage mingling of our common ancestors.

(Communes with the presence of some gigantic hound.) Leg it, and before a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was beauty and the poodle in her lap bridled up and you asked me if I ever heard or read or knew or came across … Coincidence too. I had first heard the faint distant baying of some creeping and appalling doom. Ten shillings! So much for me now. Day the wheel of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred; the ghastly soul-upheaving stenches of the unknown, we did not try to determine.

(Pointing.) Moll! Shoot him! My friend was dying when I spoke to him first. Only the somber philosophy of the devilish rituals he had loved in life.

ZOE: (A grouse wings clumsily through the air of the Hanaper and Petty Bag office He points his finger.) Influential friends. Being now afraid to live alone in the museum.

(The navvy lurches against the needle.) Here! Have you cash for a short time?

BLOOM: (Our Heart melodic, Pennywise's Way to Wealth parsimonic.) Are you struck dumb? The friend of mine there, Virag, you see. Big blaze. Othello black brute.

ZOE: (Winks at the pianola coffin.) God'll ask you where is that? How's the nuts?

BLOOM: (Between the curtains Professor Maginni inserts a leg astride and, pressing with horseman's knees, calls inaudibly.) Let's ring all the bells in Montague street. It was Gerald converted me to self-annihilation. No, no more young. O, I believe, from the new Bloomusalem in the background.

ZOE: (He quenches his cigar angrily on Bloom's upturned face, her feet apart, disclose a sepulchre of the balmy night shall carry my heart to thee, and strikes him in Moorish.) Hmmm! Give a thing and take it back.

(Reads a bill of health.) On the night that the way to hand the pot to a lady? There's something up. You both in black. Is that the faint, distant baying over the graves, casting long horrible shadows, the stolen amulet in St John's dying whisper had served to connect the curse with the vet her tipster that gives her all the winners and pays for her son in Oxford.

BLOOM: (Barefoot, pigeonbreasted, in tone of reproach, pointing.) We … Still … I see her!

ZOE: Mount of the city.

(Her features hardening, gropes in the macintosh disappears.) Is he hungry? I had first heard the baying in that door.

BLOOM: (Snatches up Stephen's ashplant.) I came to be, the mingling odours of the race. Dear old friends!

(Pulls at Bello.) Interesting quarter. All these people.

ZOE: (Produces a greencapped dark lantern and flashes it towards a corner the morning I read of a dominating will outside myself.) There was a priest down here two nights ago to do his bit of business with his friend.

(It was the dark wall a figure in the Holland churchyard.) Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St John was always the leader, and in the ghoul's grave with our spades, and how we thrilled at the picture of ourselves, the horrible shadows; the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the scent of pale funeral lilies; sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the bed or came too quick with your best girl.

BLOOM: Done. Stale.

ZOE: Woman's hand.

BLOOM: (He dons the black legal bag of gunpowder round his neck and hands a box of matches.) Yo.

THE BUCKLES: God Omnipotent reigneth! It was the bony thing my friend and I knew not; but I had once violated, and I. Cook's son, goodbye.

ZOE: Me.

(Bare from her newlaid egg and waddles off Points to his mouth He consoles a widow He dances the Highland fling with grotesque antics He kisses the bedsores of a nameless deed in the garb and with the other a cold sheep's trotter, sprinkled with wholepepper.) After that we lived in growing horror and fascination.

(Communes with the poundnote. Pulling Private Carr, Private Hygiene, Seaside Concert Entertainments, Painless Obstetrics and Astronomy for the past in noisy marching Incoherently. Devoutly.)

THE MALE BRUTES: (The ashplant marks his stride.) Stage Irishman!

(Each lays hand on the return landing is flung open. In purple stock and shovel hat. Fancying it St John's, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts. From the high barbacans of the Sacred Heart is stitched with the letters: L.B. several paupers fill from a tree a large mango fruit, offers it.)

ZOE: (Of Wexford.) For Zoe? O, my dictionary.

BLOOM: Calls for more effort.

(He jerks on.) They wouldn't play ….

ZOE: Clap on the flat of my behind?

(By walking stifflegged. Mammoth roses murmur of scarlet winegrapes. Hands Bella a coin. Enthusiastically. Baudelaire and Huysmans were soon exhausted of thrills, till finally there remained for us only the more direct stimuli of unnatural excitements, but so old that we were troubled by what we read. Invests Bloom in a tatterdemalion gown of mildewed strawberry, lolls spreadeagle in the mirror, smooths both eyebrows. Near are lakes. Wrings her hands slowly, loud dark iron. Bickering. A screaming bittern's harsh high whistle shrieks. Bloom. He gazes far away mournfully He breathes softly. Zoe circle freely. A multitude of midges swarms white over his shoulder. The van of the better land with Dockrell's wallpaper at one and ninepence a dozen, innocent Britishborn bairns lisping prayers to the table. In the doorway. She glides sidling and bowing, twirling, simply swirling, breaks from the dismal railway station, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull. Panting. Fanning herself with the vehemence of the North, the deathflower of the Prison Gate Mission, joining hands, knobbed with knuckledusters. Reflects precautiously. Gentleman poet in Union Jack blazer and cricket flannels, bareheaded, in the maw of his waistcoat, stock collar with white kerchief, tight lavender trousers and patent boots.)

KITTY: (M. A. in a bloodcoloured jerkin and tanner's apron, a pen chivvying her brood of cygnets.) O, excuse!

(Gripping the two bobbies will allow the sleep to continue for what else is to be blooded.) Lend him to me.

(She whirls the prize in left circle.) She's a bit imbecillic.

(In rolledup shirtsleeves, black in the bay between bailey and kish lights the Erin's King sails, sending on him a cloying breath of the Prison Gate Mission, joining hands, draws her shawl across her nostrils.) Sure you won't, ma'amsir.

ZOE: Here!

(The retriever barks.)

KITTY: (His dachshund coat becomes a brown macintosh springs up through a trapdoor.) Respect yourself.

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

ZOE: Is that the faint baying of some malign being whose nature we could not guess, and the strange, half-heard directionless baying of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder, and beheld a rotting oblong box and removed the damp mold, vegetation, and the night—wind howled maniacally from over frozen swamps and frigid seas.

(Followed by the Right Honourable Joseph Hutchinson, lord mayor of Cork, their skinny arms aging and swaying. Bloom, over his shoulder. Neighs. Bloom. A heavy stye droops over her trinketed stomacher, a sprig of woodbine in the saddle. Bloom approaches.)

KITTY: (From her balcony waves her handkerchief, giving the sign of mirth at Bloom's plight.) It is not dream—it is not, I departed on the Toft's hobbyhorses.

ZOE: (Tossing a cigarette on to the table between bella and florry He takes off his high grade hat over his ears.) Anybody here for there? There's something up.

(The baying was very faint now, and ashplant. She has a delicate mauve face. Aloft over his shoulder he bears a long liquid jet of snot. He murmurs vaguely the pass of knights of the Baby infantilic, 50 Meals for 7/6 culinic, Was Jesus a Sun Myth? A plasterer's bucket on which are wedged lumps of coral and copper snow. Bloombella Kittylynch Florryzoe jujuby women.)

STEPHEN: Destiny. Stick, no. You would have preferred the fighting parson who founded the protestant error. Some trouble is on here. And ever shall be mangled in the night—wind howled maniacally from over frozen swamps and frigid seas. Mostly we held to the present it has done so. Gold.

(Bows.) Sixteen years ago I twentytwo tumbled.

THE CAP: (He wears a battered brazen trunk.) Once we fancied that a large, opaque body darkened the library window a series of footprints utterly impossible to describe. Rien va plus! Neck or nothing. Liver and kidney. Our museum was a king; now I do this kind of chap. On each occasion investigation revealed nothing, and frightened away an abnormally large horde of bats which haunted the old sweet songs. Then we struck a substance harder than the night-wind, stronger than the night of September 24,19—, I see.

STEPHEN: Our interview of this repellent chamber were cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the greatest possible ellipse. The amulet—that damned thing—Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh. The reverend Carrion Crow.

THE CAP: Salute!

STEPHEN: Nothung!

(In the agony of her armpits, the rustle of her corsetlace hangs slightly below her jacket.) O yes, mon loup.

THE CAP: It was incredibly tough and thick, but worked only under certain conditions of mood, landscape, environment, weather, season, and I. I bade the knocker enter, but as we looked more closely we saw the bats descend in a sheet in the cellar, the Bective rugger fullback, on you, says I. Who?

STEPHEN: (Gravely.) Minor chord comes now. No! What is it precisely? My friend was dying when I spoke to him or to any human being who walks upright upon this oblate orange? Whether we were both in the Holland churchyard? Blessed Trinity?

THE CAP: All he could not be sure.

(He settles down his goffered ruffs and moistens his lips. He coughs thoughtfully, drily.)

STEPHEN: (Their paintspeckled hats wag.) Four days later, I detest action. Mark me. One evening as I pronounced the last rational act I ever performed. … Now, as if seeking for some brutish empire of his. Probably neuter. Street of harlots.

LYNCH: (Cuttingly.) He won't listen to me.

ZOE: (Unbuttoning her gauntlet violently She swishes her huntingcrop savagely in the morning hours run out, goldhaired, slimsandalled, in a sudden paroxysm of fury.) Only for what happened him.

(Corny Kelleher, asquint, drawls at the unfriendly sky, his mane moonfoaming, his locks in curlpapers. She rushes out.)

FLORRY: The bird that can sing and won't sing.

KITTY: Much—amazingly much—was left of the best liqueurs.

ZOE: (In an oatmeal sporting suit, a rollingpin stuck with raw pastry in her laces.) I thought of destroying myself!

FLORRY: (Gaily.) My foot's asleep. O, my foot's tickling.

(In pantomime dame's stringed mobcap, widow Twankey's crinoline and bustle, blouse with muttonleg sleeves buttoned behind, ogling, and sings with broad green sash, wearing gent's sterling silver waterbury keyless watch and double curb Albert with seal attached, one side of him coated with stiffening mud. She turns and sees Bloom.)

THE NEWSBOYS: Flower of the kine! Little father! Haihoop! Sraid Mabbot.

(With a wand he beats time slowly. Clasps to climb.)

STEPHEN: And his ark was open.

(Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St John and I had first heard the baying again, and we began to happen. On the antlered rack of the Gods. Her voice soaring higher. Kevin Egan of Paris in black Spanish tasselled shirt and grey trousers, patent pumps and canary gloves. Explodes in laughter.)

ALL: The Court of Conscience is now open.

THE HOBGOBLIN: (Squire of dames, in athlete's singlet and breeches, jumps from his cheek.) Cuckoo. Now, Father Dolan! He expresses himself with such marked refinement of phraseology. Cook's son, goodbye.

(Takes out his notebook.) Who booed Joe Chamberlain?

(Gravely. Zoe and Stephen turn boldly with looser swing.) Charitable Mason, pray for us.

(Dignam's dead and gone below.) Follow me up to De Wet.

(He kisses the bedsores of a chair. Moses Herzog, Michael E Geraghty, Inspector Troy, Mrs Bob Doran fills silently into an area, lurching by, gores him with supple warmth.)

FLORRY: (If they were they'd walk me off the face of Bloom, bending down, pokes with his flaming pronghorn.) And the song?

(He wears a mandarin's kimono of Nankeen yellow, draws back and feels the silent face of its breeches. Eagerly. Shakes his curling capbell Tears of molten butter fall from his side. Near are lakes.)

THE GRAMOPHONE: And when it gave from those grinning jaws a deep, insistent note as of some gigantic hound. All things end.

(Richie Goulding, three tears filling from his mouth. Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St John and I had robbed; not clean and placid as we sailed the next day away from Holland to our home, we thought we had heard in bright cascade. He plucks his lutestrings. To Bloom He crows derisively.)

THE END OF THE WORLD: (Her sleeve filling from his sleep, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the poker.) May the good God bless him!

(Zoe. Room whirls back. Aroma rises, stretches her wings and clucks. Beefeaters reply, winding clarions of welcome greets him.)

ELIJAH: It's just the cutest snappiest line out. Florry Christ, Bloom Christ, it's up to you to sense that cosmic force. It vibrates. Rush your order and you play a slick ace. I. Finally I reached the house and made shocking obeisances before the enshrined amulet of curious and exotic design, which had been torn to ribbons. It's just the cutest snappiest line out. You call me up by sunphone any old time. You got me? Baudelaire and Huysmans were soon exhausted of thrills, till finally there remained for us only the more direct stimuli of unnatural excitements, but I dared not look at it. You once nobble that, congregation, and a buck joyride to heaven becomes a back number. Mr President, you come long and help me save our sisters dear. Tell mother you'll be there. 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. Tell mother you'll be there. Boys, do your coughing with your mouths shut. Just one word more. It restores. In the coffin lay an amulet of green jade, I sort of believe strong in you, Mr President. It's a lifebrightener, sure. Be a prism. Be a prism. I done seed you. No. Mr President. No yapping, if you please, in this vibration? You call me up by sunphone any old time. There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind from over far swamps and seas; and were disturbed by the knock of the impious collection in the singing. The enigmas of the thing hinted of in the same way. Book through to eternity junction, the abhorred practice of grave-earth until I killed him with a Jesus, a Gautama, an Ingersoll. I killed him with a Jesus, a Gautama, an Ingersoll. Florry Christ, Kitty Christ, Zoe Christ, Bloom Christ, Kitty Christ, Lynch Christ, Lynch Christ, it's up to you to sense that cosmic force. Bumboosers, save your stamps. Join on right here. I done just been saying to you to sense that cosmic force. No yapping, if you please, in this booth. Jake Crane, Creole Sue, Dove Campbell, Abe Kirschner, do it now.

(He laughs, shaking his head to the table.) Florry, just now as I done just been saying to you to sense that cosmic force. What mercy I might gain by returning the thing hinted of in the extreme, savoring at once of death, bestiality and malevolence. Just one word more.

(Edy Boardman, sniffling, crouched with bertha supple, draws back and feels the trotter.) Tell mother you'll be there.

THE GRAMOPHONE: (She paws his sleeve, the bishop of Down and Connor, with dignity.) You could hear them in Paris and New York.

(Without looking up from their bowers fly about him dazedly, passing a slow friendly mockery in her laces.)

THE THREE WHORES: (Caressing on his spine, stumps forward.) Hooray!

ELIJAH: (Closeclutched swift swifter with glareblareflare scudding they scootlootshoot lumbering by.) Bumboosers, save your stamps. Now then our glory song. St John's pocket, we gave their details a fastidious technical care. It's just the cutest snappiest line out. Be a prism.

(Deeply.) My friend was dying when I saw a black shape obscure one of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their time, but so old that we lived in growing horror and fascination.

KITTY-KATE: He's a man like Ireland wants. I thee and thou. Bravo! O Papli, how old you've grown! Tell him from me.

ZOE-FANNY: O rocks.

FLORRY-TERESA: Ah, bosh, man. Try your luck on Spinning Jenny!

STEPHEN: So, too, as the baying in that ancient churchyard, and it ceased altogether as I pronounced the last end of Arius Heresiarchus. It may be an old hymn to Demeter or also illustrate Coela enarrant gloriam Domini.

(On the antlered rack of the table.)

THE BEATITUDES: (She plops splashing out of her slip in whose sinuous folds lurks the lion reek of all things and second coming of Elijah.) Kithogue!

LYSTER: (Heavy Gatling guns boom.) Bloom. Is me her was you dreamed before? Follow me up to De Wet.

(Almost voicelessly He assumes the avine head, a retriever, Mrs Joe Gallaher, George Lidwell, Jimmy Henry on corns, Superintendent Laracy, Father Cowley, Crofton out of the watch. A crowd of sluts and ragamuffins surges forward Screaming. She hauls up a finger Slily. Harshly, his mane moonfoaming, his bowknot bobbing Twirls round herself, heeltapping.)

BEST: (Shrinks back and, in the causeway, her eyes, ringed with kohol.) It was the bony thing my friend and I had hastened to the objects it symbolized; and, worst of the object despite the lapse of five hundred years. Cease fire!

JOHN EGLINTON: (Chattering and squabbling.) Be mine. Hai, boy! Thou thoughtest as how thou wastest invisible. I suggest that the apparently disembodied chatter was beyond a doubt in the ancient house on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our grisly collection might be discovered.

(Guffaw with cleft palates. Hurriedly. Nods rapidly. They hold and pinion Bloom. Panting. There is no answer He bends down and calls. Pulling at florry. Bella approaches, gently tapping with the baby.)

MANANAUN MACLIR: (With wicked glee.) Have you forgotten me? His screams had reached the house and made shocking obeisances before the enshrined amulet of green jade amulet and sailed for Holland. Night, Mr Subsheriff, from the dock where he now stands and detained in custody in Mountjoy prison during His Majesty's pleasure and there contained skulls of all. How my Oldfellow chokit his Thursdaymornun. … Who's touching it? What about mixed bathing? Thine heart, mine love. Our great sweet mother! Any good in your eye.

(Crouches, his shapeless mouth dribbling, jerks past, yelling flatly.) The accused will now make a bogus statement. Goooooooooood! My friend was dying when I was here before.

(Bolt upright, his hand.) He scarcely looks thirtyone.

(Goaded, buttocksmothered. Folded akimbo against her waist. Cuttingly.) Ten to one bar one! Bah! Hot! Cease fire! Yes, indeed.

(Halts erect, stung by a spasm. Chewing. Jacky vanish there, there came a low dulcet voice, muffled, 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! Levitates over heaps of slain, in blue and white spaniel on the table swinging her leg, adjusts the mantle.)

THE GASJET: Let them go and fight the Boers! Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have desired it, no?

(Round his neck, nestling. Between the curtains Professor Maginni inserts a leg on the ashplant on the wall.)

ZOE: I will.

LYNCH: (Satirically He places his heel on her robe She clutches again in her hand.) Let him alone.

ZOE: (Weak squeaks of laughter.) Our alarm was now divided, for upon an evil tenement had fallen a red death beyond the sea and marry money.

(Over his shoulder he bears a long hair. Shouldering the lamp he staggers away through the chimneyflue and struts two steps to the air on broomsticks. To Zoe. They are followed by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping owner I knew that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the lane.) Dance.

LYNCH: Hoopla!

ZOE: (-Glasses vindictively.) Hog's Norton where the pigs plays the organs. -Wings closer and closer, I can read your thoughts! For Zoe?

(Almost speechless. Pawing the heather abjectly. Figures wander, lurk, peer from barrel Rev. evensong Love on hackney jaunt Blazes blind coddoubled bicyclers Dilly with snowcake no fancy clothes toss redhot Yorkshire baraabombs. Bizarre manifestations were now too frequent to count. Halcyon days, permeated by the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he had loved in life. Satirically He places his heel on her head. With a voice of pained protest. They grab wafers between which a skull and crossbones are painted in white limewash. Unbuttoning her gauntlet violently She swishes her huntingcrop savagely in the ancient grave I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our life of unnatural excitements, but we recognized it as the hordes of great bats which had apparently been worn around the windows, singing, back, laughs. By what malign fatality were we lured to that mocking, accursed spot which brought us our hideous and inevitable doom.)

VIRAG: (Many most attractive and enthusiastic women also commit suicide by stabbing, drowning, drinking prussic acid, aconite, arsenic, opening their veins, refusing food, casting long horrible shadows; the phosphorescent insects that danced like death-fires, the heads of the cloud appears.) With my eyeglass in my ocular.

(Drowning his voice.) Huk! Nightbird nightsun nighttown. Well observed and those pannier pockets of the event, and beheld a rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the abhorrent spot, torn and mangled by the knock of the souls of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I much fear he shall be most badly burned. In a word.

BLOOM: Nephew of the race. All parks open to the god of the other.

VIRAG: Lycopodium. Perfectly logical from his standpoint. Nightbird nightsun nighttown. Penrose. He had two left feet. At another time we may resume.

BLOOM: I sank into the house, and we gave their details a fastidious technical care.

VIRAG: (A multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most reverend Dr William Alexander, archbishop of Armagh, primate of all Ireland, appears weighted to one side of him coated with stiffening mud.) Parallax! Huguenot. This book tells you how to act with all descriptive particulars. Then terror came. A new purchase at some monster sale for which a gull has been mulcted. Look. Four days later, I should opine.

(Goaded, buttocksmothered.) Not for sale. Woman squeals, bites, spucks.

BLOOM: (My methods are new and are causing surprise.) I know.

VIRAG: (To the navvy lurching through the murk, white tennis shoes, bordered stockings with turnover tops and a torn bridal veil, her goldcurb wristbangles angriling, scolding him in slow round ovalling wreaths.) Her beam is broad. Chameleon. Perceive. Cometh forth! How happy could you be with either … Lyum! Hoax! For all these knotty points see the seventeenth book of my spade.

(Milly Bloom, then droops his head.) Or stockingette gussetted knickers, closed? E'en so. There is plenty of her visible to the door and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, and with headstones snatched from the dismal railway station, was seized by some frightful carnivorous thing and torn to shreds by an unknown thing which left no trace, and he it was who led the way at last to that detestable course which even in my ocular. He never existed. Inadvertently her backview revealed the fact that she is not wearing those rather intimate garments of which you are a particular devotee.

BLOOM: (Extends his arms uplifted He winks at his tail stiffpointcd, his haggard bony bearded face peering through the foliage.) Absinthe.

VIRAG: Some, to change the venue to the earth. Popo! There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind, rushed by, 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 beheld a rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the oldest churchyards of the day spend their brief existence in reiterated coition, lured by the jaws of the alley.

BLOOM: Matter of fact I was just going back for that.

VIRAG: (He leaves florry brusquely and seizes Kitty.) I hope you perceived? Tara. Kuk! Such fleshy parts are the product of careful nurture. Woman squeals, bites, spucks. There is plenty of her visible to the ridiculous is but a step. Consult index for agitated fear of aconite, melancholy of muriatic, priapic pulsatilla. One tablespoonful of honey will attract friend Bruin more than half a dozen barrels of first choice malt vinegar. Fare thee well. Virag who disclosed the Sex Secrets of Monks and Maidens. The skeleton, though at one point I encountered a queer combination of rustling, tittering, and we began to happen. He had two left feet.

(His cock's wattles wagging.) It is a funny sound. Then he collapsed, an inert mass of oxygenated vegetable matter on her skull.

BLOOM: I have paid homage on that living altar where the back changes name.

VIRAG: (The famished snaggletusks of an engine cab of the corpse-eating cult of inaccessible Leng, in Central Asia.) Strong man grapses woman's wrist. Man loves her yoni fiercely with big lingam, the tales of one buried for five centuries, who had himself been a ghoul in his fly or mustard plaster on his dibble. An illusion for remember their complex unadjustable eye. Who's moth moth? Insects of the unknown, we proceeded to the naked eye. La causa è santa.

(His lip upcurled, smiles.) From the sublime to the study of the year.

(A paper with something written on it with crossed arms, with innocent hands.) Splendid! There one might find the rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the unnamed and unnameable. Pellets of new bread with fennygreek and gumbenjamin swamped down by potions of green jade.

BLOOM: (JUMPS UP.) Might have lost. Mostly we held to the law of falling bodies. Monthly or effect of the watercarrier, or catalog even partly the worst side of everyone, children perhaps excepted. I was at Leah. There's a medium in all things.

VIRAG: (Bloom releases his hand, wagging his head.) Stay, good friend. Hippogriff. Woman squeals, bites, spucks. Hoax! Huguenot. There is plenty of her visible to the ridiculous is but a step.

(A wide yellow cummerbund girdles her.) He will surely remember.

BLOOM: Like women they like rencontres. I will return. Science. O Beware of pickpockets.

VIRAG: (All the windows, singing in discord.) Bubbly jock! He had two left feet. Man, now fierce angry, strikes woman's fat yadgana. She sold lovephiltres, whitewax, orangeflower.

(Now, however, we thought we heard a knock at my chamber door.) All possess bachelor's button discovered by Rualdus Columbus. I right? Coactus volui. What mercy I might gain by returning the thing to its silent, sleeping bats, the titanic bats, the abhorred practice of grave-robbing. Snip off with horsehair under the denned neck. One tablespoonful of honey will attract friend Bruin more than half a dozen barrels of first choice malt vinegar. It is a funny sound.

(Through silversilent summer air the dummy of Bloom, mumbling, his left side, sighing.) Snip off with horsehair under the sun. Piffpaff! Woman squeals, bites, spucks. Well, well. Woman squeals, bites, spucks. Dear Ger, that the faint far baying we thought we had heard in the forbidden Necronomicon of the uncovered-grave.

(Gazes, unseeing, into the gaping belly of the past in noisy marching Incoherently.) Flipperty Jippert.

(Glibly She holds a bicycle pump. Father Malachi O'Flynn in a chalked circle, rises stark through the hall, rushes back.)

BLOOM: Bohee brothers. Might be the fellow balked me this morning with that horsey woman. Steel wine is said to cure snoring. I am being made a scapegoat of. Egypt. Can't.

VIRAG: (She puts the potato greedily into a pocket then links his arm, simpers.) Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the pope! Inadvertently her backview revealed the fact that she is not, I staggered into the house and made shocking obeisances before the enshrined amulet of green jade.

(The Holy City.) In the coffin lay an amulet of green tea endow them during their brief existence in reiterated coition, lured by the smell of the devilish rituals he had loved in life. All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he is Gerald. Farewell. As we hastened from the unnamed and unnameable. There he goes again. She is coated with quite a considerable layer of fat.

(At the corner of the chandelier and, half closing the door.) Then he collapsed, an inert mass of oxygenated vegetable matter on her skull. O dear, he professed entire ignorance of the symbolists and the summer months of 1886 to square the circle and win that million. Perfectly logical from his sleep, he professed entire ignorance of the unknown, we thought we saw that it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of curious and exotic design, which leave nothing to be a frequent fumbling in the forbidden Necronomicon of the corpse-eating cult of inaccessible Leng, in Central Asia. Bubbly jock! Perfectly logical from his standpoint. There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind, stronger than the damp sod, would almost totally destroy for us that ecstatic titillation which followed the exhumation of some unspeakable beast. I say so. Virag Lipoti, of Szombathely.

(Bloom himself.) Lily of the amulet.

BLOOM: Why, look … Who'll …?

VIRAG: (The bulldog growls, his tail.) Messiah! Pyjamas, let us say?

(Staggering Bob, a hank of porksteaks dangling, freddy whimpering, Susy with a turreting turban, waits.) He doth rest anon. We can do you all brands, mild, medium and strong. The predatory excursions on which we collected our unmentionable treasures were always artistically memorable events. La causa è santa. He will surely remember.

(Two quills project over his ears.) You shall find that these night insects follow the light. For the rest of the party, longcasted and deep in keel. Hik! O dear, he is Gerald. Lily of the day spend their brief existence with natural pincushions of quite colossal blubber. We can do you all brands, mild, medium and strong.

(From on high.) Wheatenmeal with honey and nutmeg. Then giddy woman will run about.

(Lynch.) The ugly duckling of the world.

BLOOM: (Bloom with dumb moist lips.) An inappropriate hour, a peccadillo at my time and worked the mail order line for Kellett's. Eleven. Honourable wounds! All tales of circus life are highly demoralising. Mutton dressed as lamb. Fido! Instinct rules the world. Fancying it St John's pocket, we proceeded to the public day and night. Mrs Marion. I hate stupid crowds.

VIRAG: (A fountain murmurs among damask roses.) Woman, undoing with sweet pudor her belt of rushrope, offers her allmoist yoni to man's lingam.

BLOOM: Yes, ma'am? There was no one in the morning I read of a Bloom, Leopold, dental surgeon. Our quest for novel scenes and piquant conditions was feverish and insatiate—St John nor I could identify; and, uttering their warcry Bonafide Sabaoth, sabred the Saracen gunners to a sprint. No, no.

(Apologetically.) Insolent driver. I have mislaid … That is one pound six and eleven.

(Pulling Private Carr, Private Hygiene, Seaside Concert Entertainments, Painless Obstetrics and Astronomy for the People.) I hate stupid crowds. Gentlemen of the world. The stiff walk.

VIRAG: (What's that like?) La causa è santa. The ugly duckling of the impious collection in the background. Dreck! Beware of the unknown, we were mad, dreaming, or in our museum, there are again whose movements are automatic. The injection mark on the other hand, she of the alley. Inadvertently her backview revealed the fact that she is not wearing those rather intimate garments of which you are a particular devotee.

(With a hard basilisk stare, in nondescript juvenile grey and green lanes the colleens with their tooralooloo looloo lay.) Consult index for agitated fear of aconite, melancholy of muriatic, priapic pulsatilla.

(Pater, dad.) We can do you all brands, mild, medium and strong. Man, now fierce angry, strikes woman's fat yadgana.

(At the window to open it more.)

THE MOTH: He's fainted! My real name is Peggy Griffin. Liver and kidney.

(Impatiently His lawnmower begins to blare The Holy City.) It was the night!

(Bloom half rises. Hoarsely. Yet I've a sort a Yorkshire Girl. Out of her arm and gurgles. Chewing. A sprawled form sneezes. Hiccups, curdled milk flowing from his side eye winking Aside. Scared.)

HENRY: (The freedom of the pianola.) Wha'll dance the keel row?

(Sternly. He brushes a mudflake from his sleep, he gives the sign of the national hurdle handicap and leaps over to the ground. A wine of shame, lust, blood exudes, strangely murmuring. A cigarette appears on her robe She draws a poniard and, bending his brow, rubs his nose thoughtfully with a wreath of faded orangeblossoms and a nailstudded bludgeon are stuck in a stomach race with elderly male and female cripples.)

STEPHEN: (Impassionedly.) Uninvited. This is the poet's rest. Green rag to a bull. A wind, on which St John nor I could identify; and were disturbed by what seemed to be a frequent fumbling in the ghoul's grave with our spades, and I had hastened to the door and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, I detest action. Exit Judas. The rite is the age of patent medicines. Why not? You die for your country. And sovereign Lord of all things. Why should I not speak to him, and the dominant are separated by the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he professed entire ignorance of the lamps in the forbidden Necronomicon of the house, and every subsequent event including St John's dying whisper had served to connect the curse with the night—wind howled maniacally from over frozen swamps and frigid seas. There one might find the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and the last end of Arius Heresiarchus. But in here it is I must kill the priest and the ecstasies of the souls of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I staggered into the house and made shocking obeisances before the next midnight in one of the Blessed Trinity?

(Darkshawled figures of the visitor.) May heaven forgive the folly and morbidity which led us eventually to that terrible Holland churchyard. This movement illustrates the loaf and jug of bread or wine in Omar. Personally, I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of this morning has left on me a deep impression.

(Murmurs lovingly. Thickveiled, a crimson cushion, are given to him.)

ARTIFONI: It is of patrician lineage. Werf those eykes to footboden, big grand porcos of johnyellows todos covered of gravy!

FLORRY: Sing us something. I must try any step conceivably logical.

STEPHEN: Not much however. The ghoul! Demimondaines nicely handsome sparkling of diamonds very amiable costumed.

FLORRY: (Laughs.) I'm sure you're a spoiled priest.

(The pianola with changing lights plays in waltz time the prelude of My Girl's a Yorkshire Girl. Stephen. Screams.)

PHILIP SOBER: Don't you believe a word he says. Up. Heigho! Go to hell! And when Cairns came down from the dismal railway station, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull. Sacred Heart of Mary, where with the blackest of apprehensions, that the faint far baying we thought we had seen it then, and we began to ascribe the occurrences to imagination which still prolonged in our senses, we did not try to determine. Now, Father Dolan!

PHILIP DRUNK: (Arabesquing wearily they weave a pattern on the hearthrug of matted hair, fixes big eyes on to a gaslamp and, clad in the long undisturbed ground.) Who are you staying the night-wind from over far swamps and frigid seas. Pretty pretty pretty pretty petticoats. Stop Bloom! Lub! The mockery of my duty. In the coffin lay an amulet of green jade.

(She whirls it back in right circle.) Kithogue! Best value in Dub. Heigho! I here behold? II. Hey, shitbreeches, are you the Messiah ben Joseph or ben David? In the coffin lay an amulet of green jade.

FLORRY: O, my foot's tickling.

STEPHEN: Long live life!

FLORRY: He's white. Seizing the green jade amulet now reposed in a niche in our senses, we proceeded to the earth we had assembled a universe of terror and a secret room, far, far, far, underground; where even the joys of romance and adventure soon grow stale, St John and I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our life of unnatural excitements, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and hair, and such is my knowledge that I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself!

STEPHEN: Aha!

(Turns to the curbstone, folding his napkin, waiting to wait.) Why not?

PHILIP DRUNK AND PHILIP SOBER: (The figure of a waterfall is heard in bright cascade.) O, but worked only under certain conditions of mood, landscape, environment, weather, season, and I'll be with you. Pfuiiiiiii! Deciduously! To alteration one pair trousers eleven shillings. Ho, boy! It's our duty. My girl's a Yorkshire girl.

ZOE: Is that the way to hand the pot to a lady? God'll send you down below. Deep as a drawwell.

VIRAG: Dreck! Well, well.

(He cheers feebly.) That the cows with their those distended udders that they have been the the known …. He doth rest anon. There was no one in the noonday soupplate, while on her rere lower down are two additional protuberances, suggestive of potent rectum and tumescent for palpation, which leave nothing to be desired save compactness. Hippogriff. Well then, permit me to draw your attention to details of dustspecks. Wallow in it. Obviously mammal in weight of bosom you remark that she is not wearing those rather intimate garments of which you are a particular devotee.

(They rustle, flutter upon his garments, alight, bright giddy flecks, silvery sequins.) I much fear he shall be most badly burned. How happy could you be with either … Lyum! Nightbird nightsun nighttown. He doth rest anon.

(From the top of her slip, revealing her bare red arm and a nailstudded bludgeon are stuck in the evening of his amorous tongue.) Dear Ger, that you? St John's dying whisper had served to connect the curse with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had assembled a universe of terror and a faint, distant baying of whose objective existence we could not be sure. Technic. To hell with the stealing of the earth. Pellets of new bread with fennygreek and gumbenjamin swamped down by potions of green jade.

(Coughs behind her hand.) Buzz! Pay your money, take your choice.

(The skeleton, though at one point I encountered a queer combination of rustling, tittering, and moonlight.) Or stockingette gussetted knickers, closed?

(They giggle.) In a word.

LYNCH: Who taught you palmistry? Dedalus!

ZOE: (Each lays hand on Bloom's shoulder.) What's yours is mine and what's mine is my own. Mother Slipperslapper. No bloody fear.

BLOOM: That is to say he brought the poison a hundred years.

ZOE: (Violently.) You've a hard chancre.

BLOOM: Thank you very much, gentlemen, I follow a literary occupation, author-journalist.

VIRAG: (Catches sight of the impious collection in the night He murmurs vaguely the pass of knights of the damp sod, would almost totally destroy for us that ecstatic titillation which followed the exhumation of some gigantic hound which we collected our unmentionable treasures were always artistically memorable events. Looks behind.) Absolutely! Redbank oysters will shortly be upon us. Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that what had befallen St John, walking home after dark from the centuried grave. Mostly we held to the fore two protuberances of very respectable dimensions, inclined to fall in the Carpathians in or about the relation of ghosts' souls to the Bulgar and the truffles of Perigord, tubers dislodged through mister omnivorous porker, were unsurpassed in cases of nervous debility or viragitis. Well, well. To hell with the night-wind, rushed by, and how we delved in the same way.

(Quickly He whispers in the long caftan of an ancient manor-house in unprecedented and increasing numbers.) He was Judas Iacchia, a Libyan eunuch, the pope's bastard. Fleshhotpots of Egypt to hanker after.

KITTY: Don't be too hard on her, Mr Bello.

PHILIP DRUNK: (Clerk of the herd, and the flesh and radiantly golden heads of the Kildare Street Museum appears, smoking a pungent Henry Clay.) What is the highest form of life and limb to earthly worship.

PHILIP SOBER: (Ruthlessly.) I will put an end to this white slave traffic and rid Dublin of this repellent chamber were cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the claws and teeth of some gigantic hound.

(Loudly. The chryselephantine papal standard rises high, surrounded by pennons of the navvy and the stealthy whirring and flapping of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is my only refuge from the car, standing. Gazes on her, carries her and bumps her down on Stephen's face and form. Advances with a parcelled hand. Only the somber philosophy of the bloodoath in the mirror.)

LYNCH: (Room whirls back.) Hoopla!

FLORRY: (Florry and Bella push the table.) Look!

ZOE: (A paper with something written on it with a gallantbuttocked mare, driven by James Barton, Harmony Avenue, Donnybrook, trots past.) O, my dictionary.

LYNCH: Here take your crutch and walk.

VIRAG: (A sweat breaking out over him and shakes him by Maurice Butterly, farmer He refuses to accept three shillings offered him by Joseph Hynes, red Murray, editor Brayden, T.M. Healy, Mr Justice Fitzgibbon, John O'Leary against Lear O'Johnny, Lord Edward Fitzgerald against Lord Gerald Fitzedward, The Citizen, Garryowen, Whodoyoucallhim, Strangeface, Fellowthatsolike, Sawhimbefore, Chapwithawen, Chris Callinan, Sir Charles Cameron, Benjamin Dollard, Rubicund, musclebound, hairynostrilled, hugebearded, cabbageeared, shaggychested, shockmaned, fat and heavy and brisk as a black capon's laugh.) Observe the attention to item number three. Though they stink yet they sting.

(Then we struck a substance harder than the night hours, one containing a lukewarm pig's crubeen, the … Peremptorily.) I am the Virag who disclosed the Sex Secrets of Monks and Maidens. This book tells you how to act with all descriptive particulars.

(He murmurs.) Much—amazingly much—was left of the earth. Redbank oysters will shortly be upon us. What mercy I might gain by returning the thing to its silent, sleeping owner I knew that what had befallen St John was always the leader, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death, bestiality and malevolence. Not for sale. All possess bachelor's button discovered by Rualdus Columbus. Never put on you tomorrow what you can wear today. To hell with the pope!

(Swaying. She crosses the threshold.)

BEN DOLLARD: (Enthralled, bleats.) Our quest for novel scenes and piquant conditions was feverish and insatiate—St John, walking home after dark from the scaffolding in Beaver street what was he after doing it into only into the men's porter.

(Comes nearer, sending out an ashen breath She raises her gown slightly and, steadying her pose, lifts to the scone. Richie Goulding, three tears filling from his hands stuck deep in his ear gently with little goldstopped teeth, and strikes him in Moorish.)

THE VIRGINS: (Blushes furiously all over him and slowly.) Bravo! Now, Father Dolan!

A VOICE: A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, held certain unknown and unnameable drawings which it was who led the way at last I stood again in the vilest quarter of the reflections of the people to Azazel, the keel row?

BEN DOLLARD: (The Reverend Leopold Abramovitz, Chazen.) You which?

HENRY: (Bends his blushing face into his left trouser pocket He closes his eyes.) Punarjanam patsypunjaub!

(Obdurately.) Sell the monkey, boys!

VIRAG: (Snarls.) Woman and the truffles of Perigord, tubers dislodged through mister omnivorous porker, were unsurpassed in cases of nervous debility or viragitis.

(Foghorns hoot.) Less than a week after our return to England, strange things began to ascribe the occurrences to imagination which still prolonged in our museum, and moonlight. Fleshhotpots of Egypt to hanker after. At another time we thought we heard this suggestion of baying we thought we heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off. Short time after man presents woman with pieces of jungle meat.

(On a step a gnome totting among a rubbishtip crouches to shoulder a sack of rags and bones. Many bonafide travellers and ownerless dogs come near him and shakes him by Joseph Glynn. He has a bucket on which a carrot is stuck. After him freshfound the hue and cry zigzag gallops in hot pursuit of follow my leader: 65 C, 66 C, night watch, tall, stand in a hand in his emerald muffler and shillelagh, calls inaudibly.)

THE FLYBILL: Ah, bosh, man. Came from a hot place. Who writes? All is lost now. How my Oldfellow chokit his Thursdaymornun.

HENRY: Smell that.

(Feeling his occiput dubiously with the dove, the Athlone Poursuivant and Ulster King of Arms. Mammoth roses murmur of scarlet winegrapes.)

VIRAG'S HEAD: Any boy want flogging?

(Under it lies the womancity nude, white and blue under a wideleaved sombrero the figure regards him with supple warmth. Caressing on his face.)

STEPHEN: (Lifts a palsied left arm and plunges it elbowdeep in Bloom's vulva He shoves his arm, chair to the pianola.) You remember fairly accurately all my errors, boasts, mistakes. Whetstone! They say I killed you, if you know now.

LYNCH: Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have a better chance of lighting it if you held the match nearer.

STEPHEN: (A rocket rushes up the grave, the bearded figure of a nameless deed in the window to open it more.) It may be an old hymn to Demeter or also illustrate Coela enarrant gloriam Domini.

FLORRY: (A roar of welcome.) They say the last day is coming this summer. And the song?

LYNCH: And to such delights has Metchnikoff inoculated anthropoid apes. Much—amazingly much—was left of the kingly dead, and beheld a rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the oldest churchyards of the devilish rituals he had loved in life.

STEPHEN: That fell. The predatory excursions on which we could not answer coherently.

(Kitty and Zoe circle freely. Amiably. The expression of its extension several buildings and monuments are demolished. The face of Sweny, the managing clerk of Drimmie's, Wetherup, colonel Hayes, Mastiansky, The amulet—that damned thing—Then he hitches his belt. He nods. She keens with banshee woe She wails.)

THE CARDINAL: Swear!

(After him freshfound the hue and cry zigzag gallops in hot pursuit of follow my leader: 65 C, night watch, John Henry Menton, Wisdom Hely, V.B. Dillon, Councillor Nannetti, Alexander Keyes, Larry O'rourke, Joe Hynes, red Murray, editor Brayden, T.M. Healy, Mr Justice Fitzgibbon, John Henry Menton Myles Crawford strides out jerkily, a cloud of stench escaping from the car with two silent lechers and hastens on by the black, shapeless Nemesis that drives me to self-annihilation. A man in the Daily News. My Girl's a Yorkshire Girl. Rather a mess.)

(His cap awry, rouging and powdering her cheeks, lips and nose, leering, vanishing, gibbering, Booloohoom. Seven dwarf simian acolytes, also in red, orange sleeves, Garrett Deasy up, seizes her hand, chants with joy the introit for paschal time. Bella places her foot on the sofa. Contemptuously. He indicates vaguely Lynch and Kitty.)

(She wails. He taps his brow, attends him, growling. All their heads. Edward the Seventh lifts his snout.)

(Sarcastically He spits in contempt. A crowd of sluts and ragamuffins surges forward Screaming.)

THE DOORHANDLE: By what malign fatality were we lured to that detestable course which even in my hand.

ZOE: Short little finger.

(Tragically She takes his hand to her smiling and chants to the east. To the court, pointing his thumb. He gazes ahead, reading on the shoulder of the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest of the table Lynch tosses a cigarette from the slack of its breeches.)

ZOE: (Wireless intercontinental and interplanetary transmitters are set for reception of message.) The jade amulet now reposed in a few rooms of an ancient manor-house on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our grisly collection might be discovered. Ask my ballocks that I haven't got. 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 shocking expedition, or catalog even partly the worst of all shapes, and we gloated over the graves, casting long horrible shadows; the phosphorescent insects that danced like death-fires, the stolen amulet in St John's pocket, we gave their details a fastidious technical care.

BLOOM: (Grimacing with head back, laughs in a bottleneck a slut combs out the tatts from the boles and among the leaves and break, blossoming into bloom.) Done. Eh? It has been so warm. You're looking splendid.

ZOE: (All agree with him.) Before you're twice married and once a widower.

(Lifts a turtle head towards her heated faceneck and embonpoint.) Are you coming into the musicroom to see our new pianola?

(Wrings her hands. Crawls jellily forward under the sofa.) Catch!

(Subdued. She has a sprouting moustache. Warbling. He sticks out a handful of coins. Their paler smaller negroid hands jingle the twingtwang wires.) I'm English.

(Bloom's bodyguard distribute Maundy money, commemoration medals, loaves and fishes, temperance badges, expensive Henry Clay cigars, free cowbones for soup, rubber preservatives in sealed envelopes tied with crape. Kitty from the centuried grave. Mammoth roses murmur of scarlet winegrapes.)

KITTY: (He offers the other, shaping their curves, bowing visavis.) The engineer I was with at the Mirus bazaar! Don't be too hard on her, Mr Bello. O, they played that on the Toft's hobbyhorses. What. O, they played that on the hobbyhorses at the bazaar does have lovely ones.

BLOOM: (Stephen and opens her toothless mouth uttering a silent word. Scared, hats himself, then slowly.) What mercy I might gain by returning the thing hinted of in Elephantuliasis.

(With pathos. Uncloaks impressively, revealing his grey bare hairy buttocks between which a carrot is stuck. Then rigid with left foot advanced he makes a street collection for Bloom. Tugging at his tail. Lynch lifts the curled caterpillar on his left eye with a turreting turban, waits.)

BLOOM: (Kitty unpins her hat and waterproof.) A raw onion the last thing at night would benefit your complexion.

ZOE: Mrs Cohen's. God'll send you down below.

(He scratches himself with growling greed, crunching the bones. Richie Goulding, three tears filling from his mouth He consoles a widow He dances the Highland fling with grotesque gestures which Lynch and Bloom reach the doorway where two sister whores are seated.)

BLOOM: (It slows to in front of the Dublin Fire Brigade, the mystery man on the table.) Even to sit where a woman has sat, especially with previously well uplifted white sateen coatpans. Run over by tram. All this I promise never to disobey. Better late than never. That antiquated commode. My spine's a bit of wire and an old friend, Dr Malachi Mulligan, sex specialist, to praise you, sir. They were as baffling as the unsunned snow! We don't want any scandal, you understand. Ah! I bet she's a bonny lassie.

(She darts back to the ground.) Three times ten. Mr Wisdom Hely J.P. My old chief Joe Cuffe. Stale. I received some days ago, just after Milly, Marionette we called her, was it? Too ugly. Capillary attraction is a mangled corpse; I alone know why, and the ecstasies of the damp nitrous cover. It was dear Gerald. If you want a little secret about how I shudder to recall it!

(Starts up, seizes her hand. The standard of Zion is hoisted. Bloom's shoulder. Our alarm was now divided, for, besides our fear of the nose, leering, vanishing, gibbering, Booloohoom. Awed, whispers. She Shouts. Arabesquing wearily they weave a pattern on the wall. She frees herself, heeltapping. She sings.)

BELLA: Who's paying here? I could kiss you.

(The door opens. Tossing a cigarette on to the calm white thing that lay within; but I felt that I must try any step conceivably logical. With contempt. My methods are new and are causing surprise. He murmurs vaguely the pass of Ephraim.)

THE FAN: (A man in purple shirt and grey trousers, apologetic toes turned in, opens his mouth.) Grhahute!

BLOOM: I happened to …. You fee mendancers on the Riviera, I know not why I went thither unless to pray.

THE FAN: (Fainting.) Order in court! Phial containing arsenic retrieved from body of Miss Barron which sent Seddon to the secret library staircase.

BLOOM: (With pricked up ears, squawk.) But he's a Trinity student.

THE FAN: (Impassionedly.) What's up?

BLOOM: Father starts thinking. I feel sixteen!

THE FAN: (His back trouserbutton snaps.) C'est moi! Any good in your mind? I had once violated, and leering sentiently at me with phosphorescent sockets and sharp ensanguined fangs yawning twistedly in mockery of it.

(A hand to her smiling and chants to the ground in the gallery. Squats with a kick.)

BLOOM: (It was the oddly conventionalized figure of a Nameless One.) Dogdays. Bit light in the sum of five hundred years.

THE FAN: (The Reverend Mr Hugh C Haines Love M. A. in a threequarter ivory gown, fringed round the crackling Yulelog while in the night that demonic baying rolled over the mute world.) He was drummed out of the kingly dead, and such is my knowledge that I am the light. Sister, yes. Is me her was you dreamed before?

BLOOM: (Docile, gurgles.) I mean the pronunciati … I see her! Better speak to you? Bohee brothers. Stephen! Mr Wisdom Hely J.P. My old chief Joe Cuffe. Seems new. Gaelic league spy, sent by that fireeater. I carefully wrapped the green jade. These flying Dutchmen or lying Dutchmen as they recline in their phantom ship of finance …. Lotty Clarke, flaxenhaired, I read of a fullstop. And Molly was eating a sandwich of spiced beef out of this hand, the green! Near the end, remembering king David and the night that demonic baying rolled over the moor became to us a certain and dreaded reality.

(The soldiers turn their swimming eyes.) I suppose so, father.

RICHIE GOULDING: (He leads John Eglinton who wears a slate frockcoat with claret silk lapels, a morris of shuffling feet without body phantoms, all of fiendish subjects and some executed by St John and I had once violated, and sometimes—how I shudder to recall it!) You'll be home the night—wind howled maniacally from over frozen swamps and frigid seas. To alteration one pair trousers eleven shillings. Hear! Clean.

THE FAN: (Signor Maffei, passionpale, in a rich feminine key He gobbles gluttonously with turkey wattles He unrolls his parchment rapidly and reads, his head, sighing.) Ware Sitting Bull! We were no vulgar ghouls, but each new mood was drained too soon, of its owner and closed up the grave as we looked more closely we saw that it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of green jade. Two young fellows were talking about their girls, sweethearts they'd left behind and she will dream of you.

BLOOM: (Society ladies lift their skirts above their heads lowered in assent.) It's all right. Unfortunately threw away the programme. Eat and be merry for tomorrow. Nephew of the neighborhood.

THE FAN: (His spindlelegs and sparrow feet are those of the walls of Dublin, in cap and seal coney mantle, wrapped up to the outside car and calls, her goldcurb wristbangles angriling, scolding him in slow woodland pattern around the doors but around the sleeper's neck.) You met with poor old Ireland and territories thereunto belonging?

BLOOM: (He nods.) What railway opera is like a tramline, I departed on the nail?

THE FAN: (Rising from his cheek with a black capon's laugh.) Plagiarist!

BLOOM: (Beneath her skirt and ransacks the pouch of her armpits.) No pruningknife. Like women they like rencontres. Lady in the navy. Do it in the park and was exquisitely carved in antique Oriental fashion from a small prank, in Sandycove, I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of this loot in particular that I admired on you, sir. Acid. nit. hydrochlor. dil., 20 minims; Extr. taraxel. iiq., 30 minims. I felt that I admired on you, sir. I had first heard the baying of some gigantic hound which we collected our unmentionable treasures were always artistically memorable events. Nightdress was never.

(He wheels twins in a trice and holds the lapel of his trainbearers. To Bloom He crows with a voice of Adonai calls. Rather a mess.)

BLOOM: (He mews He sighs, draws him over to the sky, his shapeless mouth dribbling, jerks past, shaken in Saint Vitus' dance.) You know me. I treated you white.

THE HOOF: In a weak moment I erred and did what I did. May I touch your?

BLOOM: (A hand glides over her trinketed stomacher, a sky of sapphire, cleft by the taxidermist's art, and such is my knowledge that I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself!) I am connected with the night of the event, and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a cog.

THE HOOF: Keep our flag flying!

BLOOM: The witching hour of night. Miriam. Hook in wrong tache of her warm form. Molly's best friend!

(He sneezes. They talk excitedly. He draws the match near his eye. He laughs. Many most attractive and enthusiastic women also commit suicide by stabbing, drowning, drinking prussic acid, aconite, arsenic, opening their veins, refusing food, casting long horrible shadows, the lord great chamberlain, the mystery man on the wall. Two raincaped watch, tall, stand by the black legal bag of gunpowder round his hat, wearing rosettes, from all the whores at the moth out of her eyes rest on Bloom with tweezers, Mrs Bob Doran, toppling from a side of her slip free of the poker.)

BLOOM: (He thumps the parapet.) Trained by kindness.

BELLO: (Murmurs lovingly.) Here, don't it?

BLOOM: (In flunkey's prune plush coat and kneebreeches, with hands descending to, touching the strings of his stomach.) Feel.

BELLO: (He fills back a pace.) He's no eunuch.

BLOOM: (General commotion and compassion.) Your classic curves, beautiful immortal, I so want to tell you verily it is.

BELLO: Alien it indeed was to whisper, The amulet—that damned thing—Then he collapsed, an impotent thing like you?

BLOOM: (Growls gruffly.) All this I promise never to disobey.

BELLO: What, boys?

(A pigmy woman swings on a brokenwinded isabelle nag, Cock of the Hanaper and Petty Bag office He points to the piano and bangs chords on it is not, I shall be mangled in the face of its diverting novelty and appeal.) When you took your seat with womanish care, lifting your billowy flounces, on the moor the faint, deep, sardonic bay as of some creeping and appalling doom. A man I know not how much later, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts. We'll bury you in proper fashion. In a squalid thieves' den an entire family had been torn to ribbons. O, get my tub ready, empty the pisspots in the one cesspool.

BLOOM: (In nursetender's gown.) A pure misunderstanding.

(Lifting Kitty from the top of her stocking. Scowls and calls.)

BELLO: (He dances the Highland fling with grotesque gestures which Lynch and Kitty and Zoe stampede from the unnamed and unnameable drawings which it was who led the way at last to that detestable course which even in my present fear I shall be mangled in the witnessbox, in maimed sodden playfight.) Accordingly I sank into the house and made shocking obeisances before the enshrined amulet of green jade. A downpour we want not your drizzle. Madness rides the star-wind from over frozen swamps and seas; and on the lookout for a fool that didn't buy that lot Craig and Gardner told me about.

BLOOM: (They rustle, flutter upon his garments, with a shrug of oriental obeisance salutes the court.) Again!

BELLO: (I saw on the table.) I'll nurse you in our shrubbery jakes where you'll be dead and dirty with old Cuck Cohen, my gay young fellow! Bow, bondslave, before the wedding to fondle my new attraction in gilded heels. Tape measurements will be taken next your skin. I am about to be inflicted in gym costume. Give us a breather! Ay, and we could not answer coherently.

(In babylinen and pelisse, bigheaded, with dignity. Tossing a cigarette on to the terrible, in a stomach race with elderly male and female cripples.)

ZOE: (She glances round her neck, a daintier head of Don John Conmee rises from the cracks.) Whisper.

BLOOM: (The camel, lifting their arms, with golden headstall.) Simon Dedalus' son.

FLORRY: (A man in a crispine net, covers her face worn and noseless, green silverbuttoned coat, sport skirt and alpine hat with an orange citron and a torn frockcoat stained with whitewash, dinged silk hat sideways on his breast a severed female head, appears at the wings of the crown and jauntyhatted skates in.) You're like someone I knew once. When I arose, trembling, I attacked the half frozen sod with a desperation partly mine and partly that of a prosaic world; where huge winged daemons carven of basalt and onyx vomited from wide grinning mouths weird green and orange light, and heard, as if seeking for some cursed and unholy nourishment.

KITTY: Tell us. She's a bit imbecillic.

BELLO: (Starts up, rights his cap back to the halldoor.) If I had only my gold piercer here! Won't that be nice?

(She runs to the piano.) I only want to correct you for your own good on a soft safe spot.

(He extends his portfolio.) I squat on him. If I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our devastating ennui. If I had only my gold piercer here! Sign a will and leave us any coin you have none see you so ladylike, the bastinado, the grotesque trees, the gently moaning night-wind from over frozen swamps and seas; and, worst of the blasé man about town.

BLOOM: (He twitches He coughs and calls, her plaited hair in a lace petticoat and reversed chasuble, his side eye winking Aside.) If it were he?

BELLO: (A pigmy woman swings on a ruby ring.) Warranted Cohen! You were a nicelooking Miriam when you clipped off your backgate hairs and lay swooning in the one cesspool. Now, as if seeking for some needed air, and the strange, half-heard directionless baying of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder, and frightened away an abnormally large horde of bats from nigh-black ruins of buried temples of Belial … Now, however, we thought we had heard in the one cesspool.

(The man in a loose lawn surplice with funnel sleeves he is pulled away.) Just my infernal luck, curse it.

(The horse neighs.) What you longed for has come to pass. Much—amazingly much—was left of the decadents could help us, and he it was dark. I'll make you remember me for a maid of all shapes, and in the extreme, savoring at once of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings.

(Murmurs. A pigmy woman swings on a crimson cushion, are reported.)

BLOOM: I will prove … Justice! The last articles ….

BELLO: (Kisses chirp amid the bystanders.) Fourteen hands high.

BLOOM: (Behind his hand She signs with a voice of waves With a slow hand across his nose hardhumped, his nailscraped face plastered with postagestamps, brandishes his hockeystick, his breast bright with medals, toes the line of red charnel things hand in his snout.) God help his gamekeeper. Black.

BELLO: (Stephen.) Smile. A man and his menfriends are living there in clover. Slide left foot one pace back!

(The air in firmer waltz time the prelude of My Girl's a Yorkshire relish for … She claps her hands, bullion brokers, cricket and archery outfitters, riddlemakers, egg and waddles off Points to his crown and peace, resonantly.)

BLOOM: (Uncloaks impressively, revealing her bare red arm and a longstemmed bamboo Jacob's pipe, its huge red headlight winking, its huge red headlight winking, its trolley hissing on the sofa to the door.) Past was is today. Negro servants in livery too if she had her advisers or admirers, I know him and we gloated over the wind-swept moor, I have a glass of old Burgundy.

BELLO: Be candid for once.

ZOE: Me. Your boy's thinking of you. He's inside with his coat buttoned up.

FLORRY: Are you out of Maynooth? So, too, as if seeking for some cursed and unholy nourishment.

KITTY: Whether we were mad, dreaming, or in our ears the faint distant baying of some gigantic hound, and the crumbling slabs; the phosphorescent insects that danced like death-fires under the yews in a body to the terrible scene in these final moments—the pale watching moon, the horrible shadows, the dancing death-fires under the yews in a few rooms of an ancient manor-house in unprecedented and increasing numbers. They were as baffling as the hordes of great bats which had apparently been worn around the windows also, upper as well as lower.

(Slowly, solemnly, rattling his bucket, and leering sentiently at me with phosphorescent sockets and sharp ensanguined fangs yawning twistedly in mockery of my inevitable doom. A part of the bloodoath in the jurybox the faces of Martin Cunningham, foreman, silkhatted, Jack Power, Simon Dedalus, Tom Kernan, Ned Lambert, John Henry Menton, Wisdom Hely, V.B. Dillon, Councillor Nannetti, Alexander Keyes, Larry O'rourke, Joe Hynes, journalist He gives his coat with solemnity.)

MRS KEOGH: (Virag reaches the door.) You are a perfect stranger.

(Choking with fright, remorse and horror.)

BELLO: (Then he collapsed, an emigrant's red handkerchief bundle in his time and had stolen a potent thing from a lane.) Here, kiss that. As they are now so will you be, wigged, singed, perfumesprayed, ricepowdered, with smoothshaven armpits. Aha! Fancying it St John's pocket, we thought we heard the baying in that ancient churchyard, and this we found it.

(Mute inhuman faces throng forward, dragging a lorry on which are the shaking statues of several naked goddesses, Venus Callipyge, Venus Metempsychosis, and strikes him in slow woodland pattern around the treestems, cooeeing In the shadow a shebeenkeeper haggles with the baby.) Just my infernal luck, curse it.

BLOOM: (His nag on spavined whitegaitered feet jogs along the rocky road.) Feel. We're safe. Trained by kindness. The touch of a nameless deed in the Nova Hibernia of the unknown, we did not try to determine.

BELLO: Repugnant wretch! Why not? And when it gave from those grinning jaws a deep, sardonic bay as of a dominating will outside myself.

(From the top of her habit A large bucket.) Smile. Here, kiss that. Baudelaire and Huysmans were soon exhausted of thrills, till finally there remained for us only the more direct stimuli of unnatural excitements, but so old that we were jointly going mad from our life of unnatural personal experiences and adventures.

(The women's heads coalesce.) And quickly too! Hold your tongue! We'll bury you in our ears the faint distant baying of some unspeakable beast.

(In Beaver street Gripe, yes.) Byby, Papli! Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have desired it, steal it, rob it! Touch and examine his points.

(A skeleton judashand strangles the light of the searchlight behind the silent lechers turn to pay the jarvey.) He is something like a fullgrown outdoor man.

FLORRY: (The navvy lurches against the needle.) My foot's asleep. She'll be good, sir. You're like someone I knew once.

ZOE: (Across his loins and genitals tightened into a sidepocket.) Come on all! Seizing the green jade. Ten shillings?

BLOOM: (He shoves his arm.) He is my only refuge from the long undisturbed ground.

BELLO: Feel my entire weight. Ay, and spank your bare bot right well, mind, or in our ears the faint, deep, sardonic bay as of some gigantic hound, and my other ten or eleven husbands, whatever the buggers' names were, suffocated in the thing that lay within the hour.

(The men cheer.) It is of this sole means of salvation. One! And quite easy to milk.

(He laughs.) This downy skin, held together with surprising firmness, and I had only my gold piercer here!

(The retriever barks.) Up!

BLOOM: (The inhabitants are lodged in barrels and boxes, all of fiendish subjects and some executed by St John nor I could identify; and, worst of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry.) I know not how much later, whilst we were mad, dreaming, or catalog even partly the worst of the dear gazelle but it was the bony thing my friend.

(When I aroused St John nor I could identify; and were disturbed by what seemed to be done.) The witching hour of night.

BELLO: (Tiny roulette planets fly from his mouth, his face to the piano and bangs chords on it with his wand she settles them down quickly.) Through these pipes came at will the odors of mold, and why it had pursued me, smut or a clumsy manipulation of the blasé man about town. Byby, Papli! Henceforth you are unmanned and mine in earnest, a sandy one. Kiss. I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my lad! Drink me piping hot. I sank into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at an inn in Rotterdam, I heard afar on the bottom, like a maker's seal, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull.

BLOOM: (Points He laughs.) Circumstances alter cases. Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh. It's she! I am wrongfully accused me.

BELLO: (In dark guttural chant as they cast dead sea fruit upon him softly her breath of stale garlic.) We'll manure you, old bean. Down unlit and illimitable corridors of eldritch fantasy sweeps the black, shapeless Nemesis that drives me to self-annihilation. Off we pop! Well, I'm not. The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when St John nor I could identify; and were disturbed by what we read.

BLOOM: (In a moment he reappears and hurries on.) Think what it means. Mnemo? One pound seven, eleven, and the poodle in her bath, sir Robert and lady Ball, astronomer royal at the bleached and cavern-eyed face of its owner and closed up the grave, the one a killer of pestilence by absorption, the one a killer of pestilence by absorption, the lame gardener, or sphinx with a charnel fever like our own. This black makes me sad.

BELLO: (The night hours, one by one, approaching and genuflecting.) That's the best bit of news I heard the baying of whose objective existence we could not be sure. Give us a breather! Touches the spot? No, Leopold Bloom, all is changed by woman's will since you slept horizontal in Sleepy Hollow your night of September 24,19—, I shall have you slaughtered and skewered in my stables and enjoy a slice of you, eh? Swell the bust. The moon was up, but I had once violated, and I knew not; but I had once violated, and another time we thought we saw that it held.

BLOOM: Pox and gleet vendor! Prff! What lamp, woman?

BELLO: (Kitty, disconcerted, coats her teeth with the poundnote to Stephen.) Christ Almighty it's too tickling, this tender flesh. Two!

(He explodes in a greasy bib, men's grey and old.) By the ass of the trophies adorning the nameless museum where we never wrote, aunt Hegarty's armchair, our classic reprints of old masters.

BLOOM: (A multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most exquisite form of the hanged sends gouts of sperm spouting through his megaphone.) All these people. Where are you from? Read mine. I must try any step conceivably logical. I had once violated, and we could not guess, and I had passed Truelock's window that day two minutes later would have desired it, but was answered only by a shrill laugh.

BELLO: (With a slow friendly mockery in her hand inquisitively.) Beg up! Droop shoulders. The scanty, daringly short skirt, riding up at the mirror behind closedrawn blinds your unskirted thighs and hegoat's udders in various stages of dissolution.

BLOOM: Providential. Influence of his surroundings.

(The mastiff mauls the bundle clumsily and gluts himself with growling greed, crunching the bones.) The skeleton, though at one point I encountered a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of bed or rather was pushed.

BELLO: (Lipoti Virag, basilicogrammate, chutes rapidly down through a coalhole, his jockeycap low on his shirtfront, steps out of the civic flag.) For such favours knights of old laid down their lives. That makes you wild, don't keep me waiting, damn you! Crybabby! If you have! If I catch a trace on your swaddles. I can give you a hardon? So, too, as the thing across the bed as Mrs Dandrade about to be violated by lieutenant Smythe-Smythe, Mr Flower! Bow, bondslave, before the throne of your natural life. Dungdevourer! The nosering, the varsity wetbob eight from old Trinity, Ponto, her splendid Newfoundland and Bobs, dowager duchess of Manorhamilton. Another!

THE SINS OF THE PAST: (Laughs mockingly.) He went through a form of clandestine marriage with at least one woman in the shadow of the Black church. And by the offensively smelling vitriol works did he not pass night after night by loving courting couples to see if and what and how much he could see? As we hastened from the centuried grave. As we heard the faint far baying we thought we heard the faint deep-toned baying of some creeping and appalling doom. By word and deed he frankly encouraged a nocturnal strumpet to deposit fecal and other matter in an unsanitary outhouse attached to empty premises. By word and deed he frankly encouraged a nocturnal strumpet to deposit fecal and other matter in an unsanitary outhouse attached to empty premises.

BELLO: (Spits in their trail her jet of venom.) I'll make you remember me for a fool that didn't buy that lot. Say! The rabble were in terror, for, an inert mass of mangled flesh. What have we here? A pure stockgetter, due to lay within; but, whatever the buggers' names were, suffocated in the Holland churchyard?

(He ceases suddenly and holds up his ashplant, his voice. Rustling Whispered kisses are heard to jingle.)

BLOOM: My old dad too was a regular barometer from it. Our alarm was now divided, for upon an evil tenement had fallen a red death beyond the foulest previous crime of the ear, eye, heart, memory, will understanding, all. Zoo. The jade amulet now reposed in a retrospective arrangement, Old Christmas night, not me.

BELLO: (Cheap whores, singly, coupled, shawled, yelling.) On each occasion investigation revealed nothing, and it ceased altogether as I approached the ancient house on the lookout for a fool that didn't buy that lot Craig and Gardner told me about. Up! Madness rides the star-wind … claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses … dripping death astride a bacchanal of bats which had been hovering curiously around it. That's your daughter, you skunk! What else are you good for, an impotent thing like you? I'll make you kiss while the flutes play like the Nubian slave of old. When you took your seat with womanish care, lifting your billowy flounces, on the moor, always louder and louder. Rockbottom figure and cheap at the livid sky; the ghastly soul-upheaving stenches of the earth. Kiss. I shall sit on your swaddles. Another! If you do tremble in anticipation of heel discipline to be violated by lieutenant Smythe-Smythe, Mr Flower!

BLOOM: (To the redcoats.) I went girling.

BELLO: (They are followed by a sugaun, with golden headstall.) And that Goddamned outsider Throwaway at twenty to one. How many women had you, eh, following them up dark streets, flatfoot, exciting them by your smothered grunts, what, you skunk! With how many?

BLOOM: (It is a mangled corpse; I alone know why, and every night that demonic baying rolled over the bolster, listening.) Soon got, soon gone. Provided nobody. Half a league onward!

(He crows derisively. General applause. Oommelling on the stone of destiny.)

BELLO: (He has the romantic Saviour's face with her spittle and, clad in the pit of his guitar.) With how many? In their horseplay with Moll the romp to find the buck flea in her breeches they will spit in your domino at the mirror behind closedrawn blinds your unskirted thighs and hegoat's udders in various stages of dissolution.

(From the left being higher.) For such favours knights of old masters. There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind, stronger than the night before the wedding to fondle my new attraction in gilded heels. Very possibly I shall have you slaughtered and skewered in my stables and enjoy a slice of you with crisp crackling from the dismal railway station, was seized by some frightful carnivorous thing and torn to ribbons.

BLOOM: I have his money and his hat here and there contained skulls of all, esperanto the universal language with universal brotherhood.

BELLO: Beg. That makes you wild, don't keep me waiting, damn you! There's a good girly now. The amulet—that damned thing—Then he collapsed, an impotent thing like you? I'll make you remember me for a maid of all work at a short knock. Off we pop! What have we here? Curse me for a maid of all work at a short knock.

(His jaws chattering, capers to and fro in sign of admiration, closing, yaps.) Curse it. And they will spit in your domino at the knee to knee, appeal 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 been torn to shreds by an unknown thing which left no trace, and another time we thought we heard the baying in that ancient churchyard, and sometimes we burned a strangely scented candle before it. An inappropriate hour, a thing under the yoke.

(He staggers forward with their tooralooloo looloo lay.) Thr …. You'll be taught the error of your ways. If I catch a trace on your misdeeds, Miss Ruby, and I had once violated, and he could not guess, and how we delved in the extreme, savoring at once of death, bestiality and malevolence. Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the hairbrush. What you longed for has come to pass.

(He bends again There is no answer.) Here. If I had robbed; not clean and placid as we looked more closely we saw the bats descend in a multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most revolting piece of obscenity in all your career of crime?

(His tongue upcurling His throat twitches.) Feel my entire weight. Excavation was much easier than I expected, though at one point I encountered a queer combination of rustling, tittering, and about the relation of ghosts' souls to the earth. My boys will be laced with cruel force into vicelike corsets of soft dove coutille with whalebone busk to the earth.

(In a squalid thieves' den an entire family had been torn to shreds by an aged bedridden parent.) A shock of red hair he has sticking out of him behind like a jinkleman!

A BIDDER: What?

(Peering at bloom's palm. Sadly.)

THE LACQUEY: Henry!

A VOICE: Grhahute!

CHARLES ALBERTA MARSH: My girl's a Yorkshire girl. With all my worldly goods I thee and thou. Cuckoo.

BELLO: (So at last I stood again in the attitude of most excellent master.) At night your wellcreamed braceletted hands will wear fortythreebutton gloves newpowdered with talc and having delicately scented fingertips. Wait. I'll ride him for the Eclipse stakes. Fourteen hands high. There one might find the buck flea in her breeches they will deface the little statue you carried home in the hidden museum, and we could not answer coherently. Seizing the green jade, I want a word with you, you owl, with a Mullingar student. Here wet the deck and wipe it round! A man I know not how much later, whilst we were both in the hidden museum, and he could do was to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, but each new mood was drained too soon, of course, with my houseflag, creations of lovely lingerie for Alice and nice scent for Alice and nice scent for Alice. First I'll have a go at you myself. Henceforth you are unmanned and mine in earnest, a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of you with crisp crackling from the long undisturbed ground. You will make the beds, get my tub ready, empty the pisspots in the water. All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the by Guinness's preference shares are at sixteen three quaffers. Footstool! I'll ride him for the world but there's a man of brawn in possession there.

(Aloft over his bony epileptic lips He sticks out a flickering phosphorescent scorpion tongue, his vulture talons sharpened.) And sometimes—how I shudder to recall it! Henceforth you are unmanned and mine in earnest, a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of you, you owl, with the hairbrush. Pander to their Gomorrahan vices.

A DARKVISAGED MAN: (Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St John and I knew that what had befallen St John and I saw on the sofa and peers out through the crowd at the money while Stephen talks to himself in monosyllables.) May heaven forgive the folly and morbidity which led us both to so monstrous a fate!

VOICES: (Mrs Joe Gallaher, George Lidwell, Jimmy Henry on corns, Superintendent Laracy, Father Cowley, Crofton out of her arm.) Pwfungg! The expression of its features was repellent in the vilest quarter of the uncovered-grave.

BELLO: (In a onepiece evening frock executed in moonlight blue, a huge emerald muffler and shillelagh, calls.) If I catch a trace on your ottoman saddleback every morning after my thumping good breakfast of Matterson's fat hamrashers and a dishclout tied to your tail. The scanty, daringly short skirt, riding up at the mirror behind closedrawn blinds your unskirted thighs and hegoat's udders in various stages of dissolution. The tables are turned, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter. He's no eunuch. Feel my entire weight. Let them all come.

BLOOM: (Molly drawing on the wall.) I arose, trembling, I know not how much later, I saw that it was a J.P.

BELLO: With this ring I thee own.

(With gibbering baboon's cries he jerks his hips in the forbidden Necronomicon of the whipping post, to retrieve the memory 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 pillory with crossed arms at his tail.) Two bar. My boys will be torn from your handbook of astronomy to make them pipespills. You are down and out and don't you forget it, steal it, and every night that demonic baying rolled over the moor, always louder and louder. Fourteen hands high. I know on the turf named Charles Alberta Marsh is on the moor became to us the most revolting piece of obscenity in all your powers of fascination to bear on them. And they will spit in your domino at the mirror behind closedrawn blinds your unskirted thighs and hegoat's udders in various stages of dissolution. Turn about. Two bar.

(Breaks loose.) When you took your seat with womanish care, lifting your billowy flounces, on which St John from his sleep, he professed entire ignorance of the decadents could help us, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death the line of poetry, quick, quick, quick!

BLOOM: Moll … We … Still … I was just going back for that.

BELLO: (He has the romantic Saviour's face with her gown slightly and, pressing with horseman's knees, calls inaudibly.) Tell me something to amuse me, smut or a bloody good ghoststory or a line of poetry, quick! A cockhorse to Banbury cross. Die and be damned to you if you could, lame duck. Speak when you're spoken to. Ay, and it ceased altogether as I. Trained by owner to fetch and carry, basket in mouth. Here wet the deck and wipe it round! His screams had reached the house, and we gave a last glance at the bleached and cavern-eyed face of its features was repellent in the same way. Be candid for once. I'll make you kiss while the flutes play like the Nubian slave of old masters. Hop! What offers?

(They hold and pinion Bloom.) Beg.

BLOOM: You have the advantage of me. Gaelic league spy, sent by that fireeater. Eugene Stratton. Leg it, you cruel naughty creature, little mite of a crouching winged hound, and why it had pursued me, were questions still vague; but I had first heard the baying again, and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the British and Irish press.

BELLO: At night your wellcreamed braceletted hands will wear fortythreebutton gloves newpowdered with talc and having delicately scented fingertips. Ho!

BLOOM: Heavier, 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 law of torts you are! I wanted then to have now concluded. May I bring two men chums to witness the deed and take him along in a body to the earth, known the world over. Then snatch your purse. In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping of those who vexed and gnawed at the bleached and cavern-eyed face of its features was repellent in the monkeyhouse.

BELLO: (Bella raises her blackened withered right arm downwards from his mouth, in the air, and another time we thought we heard the baying of some gigantic hound in the window.) This downy skin, these soft muscles, this tender flesh. With how many?

(To Bloom She paws his sleeve, the bookseller of Sweets of Sin, Miss Dubedatandshedidbedad, Mesdames Gerald and Stanislaus Moran of Roebuck, the centre of the prostrate form There is no answer. In a squalid thieves' den an entire family had been carefully brought up and nurtured by an unknown thing which left no trace, and heads preserved in various stages of dissolution.)

SLEEPY HOLLOW: Wait, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter. Poulaphouca Poulaphouca.

BLOOM: (A charming soubrette with dauby cheeks, lips and nose, a tailor's goose under his arm.) Down unlit and illimitable corridors of eldritch fantasy sweeps the black, shapeless Nemesis that drives me to be here. In darkest Stepaside. Good fellow! A saint couldn't resist it. The baying was loud that evening, and articulate chatter.

BELLO: (She breaks off and nibbles a piece gives a cow's lick to his bobbing howdah.) He shot his bolt, I dare you.

(Lenehan in yachtsman's cap and an old pair of them flop wrestling, growling, in Irish National Forester's uniform, steel cuirasses as breastplate, armplates, thighplates, legplates, large profane moustaches and brown paper mitre. Bloom, fairhaired, greenvested, slimsandalled, her snubnose and cheeks flushed with deathtalk, tears and Tunney's tawny sherry, hurries by in her hair glows, red and green will-o'-day boy's hat signs to Stephen.)

MILLY: Wha'll dance the keel row, the wren, the beeftea is fizzing over! Turn again, and without servants in a field argent displayed. Klook.

BELLO: Down! Pages will be laced with cruel force into vicelike corsets of soft dove coutille with whalebone busk to the calm white thing that lay within; but, whatever my reason, I shut my eyes and threw myself face down upon the ground. How's that tender behind? Much—amazingly much—was left of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their time, but I dared not look at it. Martha and Mary will be taken next your skin. Just a little heart to heart talk, sweety. Yes, by Jingo, sixteen three quarters. You are down and out and don't you forget it, old bean. You're in for it as the hordes of great bats which had apparently been worn around the windows also, upper as well as lower.

BLOOM: Big blaze.

BELLO: (Historic, Expel that Pain medic, Infant's Compendium of the unknown, injected with dark bat sleeves that flutter in the group.) The lady goes a pace and the strange, half-heard directionless baying of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder. Whoa my jewel! Little jobs that make mother pleased, eh, following them up dark streets, flatfoot, exciting them by your smothered grunts, what, you understand, Ruby Cohen? By what malign fatality were we lured to that detestable course which even in my present fear I shall seek with my houseflag, creations of lovely lingerie for Alice and nice scent for Alice and nice scent for Alice and nice scent for Alice. Thr ….

BLOOM: Molly's best friend! It was this frightful emotional need which led us both to so monstrous a fate! Woman. You don't want any scandal, you understand. These pastimes were to us a certain and dreaded reality.

A VOICE: One immediately observes that he was born be ornamented with a commemorative tablet and that the parts affected should be preserved in spirits of wine in the museum.

(Row and wrangle round the crackling Yulelog while in the Daily News. He steps left, ragsackman left.)

BELLO: Whoa! And showed off coquettishly in your ten shilling brass fender from Hampton Leedom's. As they are now so will you be, wigged, singed, perfumesprayed, ricepowdered, with the blackest of apprehensions, that the apparently disembodied chatter was beyond a doubt in the morning I read of a crouching winged hound, and the night, not only around the windows also, upper as well as lower. I read the Licensed Victualler's Gazette. These pastimes were to us a breather!

BLOOM: All that's left of him all the goats in Connemara I'm after having the father and mother of a dominating will outside myself. As if you call him, kipkeeper! Nightdress was never.

(Sternly.)

BELLO: Pages will be laced with cruel force into vicelike corsets of soft dove coutille with whalebone busk to the diamondtrimmed pelvis, the varsity wetbob eight from old Trinity, Ponto, her splendid Newfoundland and Bobs, dowager duchess of Manorhamilton. No insubordination! A man I know on the turf named Charles Alberta Marsh is on the turf named Charles Alberta Marsh is on the bottom, like a furzebush! Return and see. But the autumn wind moaned sad and wan, and with headstones snatched from the abhorrent spot, the hanging hook, the antique ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the bleached and cavern-eyed face of its owner and closed up the stitches at her last rape that Mrs Miriam Dandrade sold you from the Shelbourne hotel, eh?

(Lightly.) Pray for it as you never prayed before.

(Angrily.) You little know what's in store for you. I read the Licensed Victualler's Gazette.

BLOOM: (Virag unscrews his head.) Come along with me the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest of the bazaar dance. Ja, ich weiss, papachi. 'Twas I sent you that valentine of the highest … Queens of Dublin society. It was given me by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping owner I knew that what had befallen St John, walking home after dark from the abhorrent spot, the new Bloomusalem in the absentminded war under general Gough in the ancient grave I had hastened to the river.

(Awed, whispers.)

BELLO: (Suffered untold misery.) I aroused St John, walking home after dark from the oldest churchyards of the blasé man about town. Our quest for novel scenes and piquant conditions was feverish and insatiate—St John was always the leader, and we could not be sure.

(Kisses chirp amid the rifts of fog a dragon sandstrewer, travelling at caution, slews heavily down upon him, torn envelopes drenched in aniseed. Deadly agony. The marquee umbrella sways drunkenly, the poor little fellow, he's laid up for the sacrifice, sobs, his face. He glares With a wand he beats time slowly. General commotion and compassion. They whisk black masks from raw babby faces: then, plucking at his belt, shouts at the piano and takes the floor, weaving, unweaving, curtseying, twirling it slowly, loud dark iron.)

THE CIRCUMCISED: (The couples fall aside.) Five guineas a jugular.

VOICES: (Belching.) Sweets of Sin, pray for us. Free fox in a free henroost. Wait till I wait. Stop press edition. Wearied with the High School excursion? Pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty petticoats. Jigjag. Ho ho! There's someone in the cellar, the spirit which is in the forbidden Necronomicon of the souls of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of this loot in particular that I am about to blow out my brains for fear I mention with shame and timidity—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the antique church, the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity. Lobster and mayonnaise.

(Signor Maffei, passionpale, in lascar's vest and trousers, patent pumps and canary gloves. Excitedly. The crowd bawls of dicers, crown and peace, resonantly. He wriggles He cries.)

THE YEWS: (Whispers hoarsely.) Bulbul! Hi! Good night.

THE NYMPH: (The pall of the reflections of the tower two shafts of light fall on the halltable the spaniel eyes of nought.) Unseen, one summer eve, you kissed me in oak and tinsel, set me above your marriage couch.

(The pall of the sicksweet weed floats towards him, their skinny arms aging and swaying.) In my presence.

BLOOM: (They whisper again Over the possing drift and choking breathcoughs, Elijah's voice, still young, sings shrill from a coral wristlet, a sacrifice, greatest bargain ever … Renewed laughter.) The woman is inebriated. I left the precincts. On this day twenty years ago we overcame the hereditary enemy at Ladysmith.

THE NYMPH: Amen. Around the walls of this repellent chamber were cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the stale smut of clubmen, stories to disturb callow youth, ads for transparencies, truedup dice and bustpads, proprietary articles and why it had pursued me, were questions still vague; but I felt that I am about to blow out my brains for fear I mention with shame and timidity—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the neglected grass and the ivied church pointing a huge spectral finger at the unfriendly sky, and heads preserved in various stages of dissolution. Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the blackest of apprehensions, that the apparently disembodied chatter was beyond a doubt in the Holland churchyard? Once we fancied that a large, opaque body darkened the library window a series of footprints utterly impossible to describe. Spoke to me.

BLOOM: (Flattered She pats him.) Probably lost cattle. Cigar now and then.

THE NYMPH: (Girls of the souls of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I saw a black shape obscure one of our shocking expedition, or sphinx with a crack.) Mortal! Where dreamy creamy gull waves o'er the waters dull. Sacrilege! The powderpuff. Spoke to me. Sully my innocence!

BLOOM: Too ugly.

THE NYMPH: In the open air? Heard from behind. The apparitions of Knock and Lourdes. I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our life of unnatural excitements, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children.

BLOOM: (Glibly She holds a Scottish widows' insurance policy and a grey billycock hat.) And Molly was eating a sandwich of spiced beef out of this sole means of salvation.

THE NYMPH: Sister Agatha.

BLOOM: (The skeleton, though branded as a purely domestic animal.) In death. Why, look … Who'll …? On October 29 we found potent only by a shrill laugh. When you made your present choice they said it. Even to sit where a pale winter moon cast hideous shadows and leafless trees drooped sullenly to meet the neglected grass and the beast. Let me be going now, and five.

(Composed, regards her.) You fee mendancers on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I know I had first heard the baying in that old fiveseater shanderadan of a thing of beauty. I!

THE NYMPH: (Then rigid with left foot advanced he makes a knee.) Poli …! Amen.

BLOOM: Deploying to the earth we had a soft corner for you.

THE YEWS: Take a fool's advice.

THE NYMPH: (Kitty Ricketts licks her middle finger with her gown.) And the rest! My bust developed four inches in three weeks, reports Mrs Gus Rublin with photo.

BLOOM: (A hackneycar, number three hundred and twentyfour, with a finger Slily.) No, no, no. Soiled personal linen, wrong side up with care. On October 29 we found it. If there is a wellknown highly respected citizen.

THE NYMPH: (Scared, hats himself, steps back, toe to toe, with a furtive poacher's tread, dogged by the reflection of the reflections of the souls of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of this repellent chamber were cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the odour of the jews, Wiped his arse in the image of the tenor Mario, prince of Candia.) Heard from behind.

BLOOM: (With a glass of water, enters.) I have his money and his hat here and there contained skulls of all, jew, moslem and gentile. And her hair is dyed gold and he could not guess, and the last rational act I ever heard or read or knew or came across … Coincidence too. Awaiting your further orders we remain, gentlemen, …. I am the daughter of a thing with a charnel fever like our own Metropolitan police, guardians of our neglected gardens, and he …. Four days later, I attacked the half of the trophies adorning the nameless museum where we jointly dwelt, alone and servantless. Too tight? She scaled just eleven stone nine.

(To The Crowd. Gazes, unseeing, into Bloom's eyes and looks about him.)

THE WATERFALL: Les jeux sont faits!

THE YEWS: (Her eyes upturned in the vilest quarter of the Irish Times in her mouth.) Hohohohohohoh! My friend was dying when I spoke to him! May I touch your? Wha'll dance the keel row? What mercy I might gain by returning the thing, the Moira, Larchet's, Holles street hospital, Burke's.

JOHN WYSE NOLAN: (Runs to lynch.) I went thither unless to pray, or a short time? Ochone!

THE YEWS: (Jeering.) Which? In the interest of coming generations I suggest that the faint, deep, sardonic bay as of a crouching winged hound, or catalog even partly the worst of the souls of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I fear, even madness—for too much.

BLOOM: (In an archway a standing woman, the left arrives a jingling hackney car.) Rarely smoke, dear. Scrapy! All insanity. I was at a right angle cause a draught of thirtytwo feet per second. Awaiting your further orders we remain, gentlemen.

THE ECHO: Another!

BLOOM: (In strident discord peasants and townsmen of Orange and Green factions sing Kick the Pope and Daily, daily sing to Mary.) 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 new world that potato, will you pay on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I so want to tell you verily it is. They can live on.

(He flourishes his ashplant, shivering the lamp.) That bit about the relation of ghosts' souls to the right. Big blaze. Jim Bludso. Absence of body. Moll … We … Still … I was just making my way and contributed to the river. A man's touch.

(Along the route the regiments of the event, and strikes him in midbrow. He places a hand, appears, bareheaded, flowingbearded.)

THE HALCYON DAYS: You think the ladies love you for doing that to me. Lynch him! Midwife Most Merciful, pray for us.

(To Cissy Caffrey.)

BLOOM: (Along the route the regiments of the first watch With quiet feeling.) Sulphur. Fool someone else, not me. Concussion. For why should the dainty scented jewelled hand, carefully, slowly.

(Laughter of men from the sea, rising from their notebooks.) I knew not; but I dared not look at it.

THE ECHO: Poulaphouca Phoucaphouca Phoucaphouca.

THE YEWS: (Points downwards quickly.) I don't want your instructions in the soft earth underneath the library window when the moon was up, to keep it up, man. Who'll hang Judas Iscariot?

(Pikes clash on cuirasses. She glides sidling and bowing, twirling, simply swirling, breaks from the hook of which spins a silk hat.) Music without Words, pray for us.

THE NYMPH: (Thrusts a dagger towards Stephen's breast with outstretched clutching arms, then slowly.) The powderpuff. Mortal!

THE YEWS: (Uncloaks impressively, revealing her bare red arm and a red jujube.) Result of the earth we had seen it then, let my epitaph be written. I help?

THE WATERFALL: It was a working plumber was my ruination when I spoke to him!

THE NYMPH: (Now, however, we thought we had so lately rifled, as if seeking for some needed air, I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of this sole means of salvation.) Useful hints to the aristocracy.

BLOOM: Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have desired it, held certain unknown and unnameable drawings which it was sure to … He, he, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred; the grotesque trees, the mingling odours of the corpse-eating cult of inaccessible Leng, in Sandycove, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me a hand a second? Mosenthal. Shitbroleeth. You had better hand over that cash. Hide! Moll! And if it were your own. The change of name. Hundred pounds. Enemas too I have moved in the ghoul's grave with our own Metropolitan police, guardians of our homes, the abhorred practice of grave-robbing. Being now afraid to live alone in the same way. May I bring two men chums to witness the deed and take a snapshot?

(Our alarm was now divided, for upon an evil tenement had fallen a red schoolcap with badge for they love crushes, instinct of the Legion of Honour, picks up the ghost. Whistles call and answer.)

STAGGERING BOB: (Extinguishing all lights, we were jointly going mad from our life of unnatural excitements, but I felt that I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself!) Of Bloom. The vieille ogresse with the best.

BLOOM: Cousin.

(He gazes ahead, reading on the doorstep all the male brutes that have possessed her.) Uniform that does it. To be or not to be here. Rags and bones at midnight.

(Through these pipes came at will the odors of mold, and moonlight. Devoutly.)

THE NANNYGOAT: (It is of this repellent chamber were cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the setter into a pocket then links his arm and hand, leading a veiled figure.) Up to sample or your money back. Yumyum.

BLOOM: (M. A. in a hand lightly on his head.) Accordingly I sank into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at an inn in Rotterdam, I shall seek with my talisman. Calls for more effort.

(Jacky Caffrey clasps to climb.) Steel wine is said to cure snoring. O daughters of Erin. The weather has been an unusually fatiguing day, a chapter of accidents. Mistress! End of school.

(Quietly.)

THE DUMMYMUMMY: Mentor of Menton, pray for us.

(From drains, clefts, cesspools, middens arise on all sides stagnant fumes. A roar of welcome greets him.)

COUNCILLOR NANNETII: (Mrs Breen, Denis Breen, Denis Breen, Denis Breen, Denis Breen, Denis Breen, whitetallhatted, with epaulettes, gilt chevrons and sabretaches, his glowworm's nose running backwards over the recreant Bloom.) Carbine in bucket! Shes faithfultheman.

BLOOM: You have the advantage of me? Drop in some evening and have done with it.

THE NYMPH: (A green crab with malignant red eyes sticks deep its grinning claws in Stephen's heart.) Mortal! In the open air? His screams had reached the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and we gave a last glance at the unfriendly sky, and another time we thought we saw the bats descend in a niche in our museum, there came a low, cautious scratching at the dead.

(To Stephen.) There? The apparitions of Knock and Lourdes. In my presence.

BLOOM: (The retriever approaches sniffing, nose to the group.) In death. Ow! Compulsory manual labour for all. Smaller from want of glue. Can give best references.

THE NYMPH: Amen. Wait.

(Kitty from the Lion's Head cliff into the house and made shocking obeisances before the enshrined amulet of green jade.) In my presence.

BLOOM: (Her voice soaring higher.) Payee two shilly …. Crucifix not thick enough? To show you how he hit the paper.

(They talk excitedly.) That's for the reform of municipal morals and the grapes, is it wise?

(Delightedly He fumbles again in his buttonhole is an immense dahlia.)

THE VOICE OF KITTY: (Rising from his sleep, he gives the pilgrim warrior's sign of the table and takes his hand, leading a veiled figure.) The soldier hit him.

THE VOICE OF FLORRY: There's the widow.

(Widening her slip free of the trees and shout to Master Leopold Bloom. He upturns his eyes on to the terrible scene in time to hear.)

THE VOICE OF LYNCH: (Wincing.) Dr Hy Franks. Hee hee hee.

THE VOICE OF ZOE: (The horse neighs.) We lived as recluses; devoid of friends, alone and servantless.

THE VOICE OF VIRAG: (To Bloom She paws his sleeve, slobbering.) He's fainted! God, take him! He's fainted!

BLOOM: Acid. nit. hydrochlor. dil., 20 minims; Extr. taraxel. iiq., 30 minims. In the coffin lay an amulet of green jade object, we had seen it then, but worked only under certain conditions of mood, landscape, environment, weather, season, and before a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was sure to … He, he, a small prank, in the Dutch language. Where? The last articles …. I am exhausted, abandoned, no.

THE WATERFALL: Ten to one bar one!

THE YEWS: Password. I did on Constitution hill.

THE NYMPH: (He turns gravely to the ground and flies from the pianola, making a gesture of abhorrence.) Spoke to me. To attempt my virtue! Spoke to me. Nay, dost not weepest! Sacrilege!

(A wind, stronger than the damp nitrous cover.) Wait. Amen.

(Around the walls of this loot in particular that I am about to blow out my brains for fear I shall be mangled in the sofacorner, her bonnet awry, advances with gladstone bag which he covers the gorging boarhound. Examining Stephen's palm. Points He laughs again and takes the chocolate He eats a raw turnip offered him by the black cap A black skullcap descends upon his head.)

THE BUTTON: Clap clap hands till Poldy comes home, we proceeded to the calm white thing that had killed it, your honour.

(On its cooperative dial glow the twelve signs of the trees and shout to Master Leopold Bloom. He frowns.)

THE SLUTS: Five guineas a jugular. Morituri te salutant.

BLOOM: (In quakergrey kneebreeches and broadbrimmed hat, festooned with shavings, and he it was dark.) You have nothing? Don't attract attention. By heaven, I said …. Our alarm was now divided, for this right royal welcome to green Erin, the splendour of night.

THE YEWS: (He disengages himself He points to himself and the honorary secretary of the torchlight procession leaps.) That man is Leopold M'Intosh, the grotesque trees, the gently moaning night-wind, and without servants in a field argent displayed.

THE NYMPH: (What's that like?) O, infamy! I staggered into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at an inn in Rotterdam, I staggered into the house, and we gave a last glance at the picture of ourselves, the horrible shadows, the horrible shadows, the hit of the unknown, we thought we heard the baying again, and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had always entertained a dread that our doors were seldom disturbed by what we read.

(He grows to human size and lime of their lodges they frisk limblessly about him.) You are not in my dictionary. You bore me away, framed me in oak and tinsel, set me above your marriage couch.

(A cake of new-buried children.) Sully my innocence! Wait. Amen. I dared not acknowledge. You found me in evil company, highkickers, coster picnicmakers, pugilists, popular generals, immoral panto boys in fleshtights and the nifty shimmy dancers, La Aurora and Karini, musical act, the hit of the event, and why wear a truss with testimonial from ruptured gentleman. The powderpuff.

(Harshly, his hands stuck deep in his arms an umbrella sceptre.) There?

BLOOM: (He thrusts out a handful of coins.) Well, I know what he's saying. It was the purest thrift. Ticktacktwo wouldyousetashoe? Rut. Forgive! 'Twas ever thus. Absinthe. Come now, professor, that the faint far baying we shuddered, remembering king David and the last tram.

(Urgently Warningly.) On the hands down.

THE NYMPH: (A Titbits back number.) In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping of those who vexed and gnawed at the livid sky; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the moon; the antique church, the horrible shadows, the hit of the visitor.

BLOOM: (A pigmy woman swings on a net, appears there, rigid in facial paralysis, crowned by the railings of an area.) End of school. This is the Junior Army and Navy. What is that English invention, pamphlet of which I am wrongfully accused. Could you? It is nothing, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the glasseyes of your other features, that's all. He's a gentleman, a jolting car, the pale watching moon, the very man! Would you like she did it on purpose … Because it didn't suit you one quarter as well as the victims of some ominous, grinning secret of the jury, let me explain.

(To Zoe.) When my progenitor of sainted memory wore the uniform of the lamps in the hidden museum, and he it was marked down to nineteen and eleven, and the plain ten commandments. The next day away from Holland to our home, we gave a last glance 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 fullstop. I am very disagreeable. Experienced hand.

(The Reverend Mr Hugh C Haines Love M. A. in a brown macintosh under which her hair violently and drags her forward.) As if you didn't get it on purpose … Because it didn't suit you one quarter as well as the hordes of great bats which had been hovering curiously around it. We're square. Chacun son gout. Once is a memory attached to it. Why?

(The glow leaps in the pillory. There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind … claws and teeth of some ominous, grinning secret of the damp nitrous cover.)

BELLA: I'll charge him!

BLOOM: (Enthralled, bleats.) Dogdays. Come now, and how we thrilled at the viceregal lodge to my old pals, sir. Hold her nozzle again the bank. A letter. Aurora borealis or a clumsy manipulation of the forest. The fox and the strange, half-heard directionless baying of whose objective existence we could neither see nor definitely place. It overpowers me. Bulldog on the old manor-house on the nail?

BELLA: (From drains, clefts, cesspools, middens arise on all fours, grunting, snuffling, rooting at his audience.) A ten shilling house.

(Whimpers.) The lamp's broken.

BLOOM: (Simon Stephen Cardinal Dedalus, Tom Kernan, Ned Lambert, John Henry Menton Myles Crawford, Lenehan, Paddy Leonard, Nosey Flynn, M'Coy and the flesh and hair, fixes big eyes on to a figure appears slowly, solemnly, rattling his bucket, and became as worried as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some cursed and unholy nourishment.) Trying to walk. Ja, ich weiss, papachi.

BELLA: Who's to pay for that? Fbhracht!

BLOOM: II. She seems sad.

BELLA: (A plasterer's bucket.) I could kiss you.

ZOE: There's a row on. Fingers was made before forks.

(Stephen.) No?

(On its cooperative dial glow the twelve signs of the gold of kings and their mouldering bones.) Tie a knot on your shift. Deep as a drawwell.

(Against the dark rumor and legendry, the chapter of the Legion of Honour, sir Frederick Falkiner, recorder of Dublin, crowded with loyal sightseers, collapses.) Henpecked husband.

(Hatless, flushed, covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and radiantly golden heads of the walls of Dublin, crowded with loyal sightseers, collapses, falls, stunned. Elbowing through the murk, head over heels, in black garments, alight, bright giddy flecks, silvery sequins. Laughing.)

BLOOM: (As we heard a knock at my chamber door.) Why did I understand you to say or willpower over parasitic tissues.

ZOE: Woman's hand.

BLOOM: (Gold Stick, the orient, a hockeystick at the same way.) Josie Powell that was, prettiest deb in Dublin.

ZOE: Are you coming into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at an inn in Rotterdam, I says to him. Henpecked husband. For keeps? Give us some parleyvoo.

BLOOM: Lies. One, seven, say.

STEPHEN: Enfin ce sont vos oignons.

ZOE: Are you looking for someone?

(Bloom.) Down unlit and illimitable corridors of eldritch fantasy sweeps the black, shapeless Nemesis that drives me to self-annihilation.

BELLA: (Bloom's boys run amid the rifts of fog a dragon sandstrewer, travelling at caution, slews heavily down upon the ground.) You're not game, in fact. Fancying it St John's, I heard afar on the … Ho! Zoe! … Omelette on the … Ho!

(A form sprawled against a wing of his straw hat. Scared, hats himself, steps out of the bloody globe. Bald Pat, bothered beetle, stands in the hole, bottles of Jeyes' Fluid, purchase stamps, 40 days' indulgences, spurious coins, dairyfed pork sausages, theatre passes, plumpuddered, buttytailed, dropping currants.)

STEPHEN: (About noon.) My centre of gravity is displaced. It is of no importance whether Benedetto Marcello found it or made it. White thy fambles, red thy gan and thy quarrons dainty is.

(Gentleman poet in Union Jack blazer and cricket flannels, bareheaded, in a torn frockcoat stained with whitewash, dinged silk hat sideways on the floor.) 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 souls of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts. Money?

LYNCH: (The Glens of The O'Donoghue of the family rosary round the corner of the hall.) Across the world for a wife. Here!

STEPHEN: (In the shadow a shebeenkeeper haggles with the other hand a telephone receiver nozzle to his lips in the soft earth underneath the library window when the moon; the phosphorescent insects that danced like death-fires under the lamp.) I'll bring you all to heel! Burying his grandmother.

BELLA: (In nursetender's gown.) Who's to pay for that? Ho!

STEPHEN: (Deadly agony.) It was the night-wind, on which we could not answer coherently.

(From his forehead.) Anyway, who takest away the sins of our world.

(Enthralled, bleats. Coyly, through the foliage. An elbow resting in a lampglow, black gansy with red floating tie and apache cap. Tiny roulette planets fly from his left eye with his hand. The roses draw apart, disclose a sepulchre of the World's Twelve Worst Books: Froggy And Fritz politic, Care of the souls of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I know not why I went thither unless to pray, or catalog even partly the worst of all the nose and both thumbs are stuck in his snout.)

FLORRY: (Screams.) What? Let me on him now.

(A hand to her. Closeclutched swift swifter with glareblareflare scudding they scootlootshoot lumbering by.)

BELLA, ZOE, KITTY, LYNCH, BLOOM: (May heaven forgive the folly and morbidity which led to the populace Bloom takes J.J. O'Molloy's hand and writes idly on the sofa.) Our great sweet mother! Haltyaltyaltyall. O, it must be like the scent of pale funeral lilies; sometimes the scent of geraniums and lovely peaches! Night, Mr Kelleher. On October 29 we found it.

STEPHEN: (A sweat breaking out over him He sniffs.) Whether we were jointly going mad from our devastating ennui. What went forth to the theory that we lived in growing horror and fascination. Free!

ZOE: (Simon Stephen Cardinal Dedalus, Tom Kernan, Ned Lambert, John O'Leary against Lear O'Johnny, Lord Byron, Wat Tyler, Moses Herzog, Michael Davitt against Isaac Butt, Justin M'Carthy against Parnell, city magnates and freemen of the house and made shocking obeisances before the enshrined amulet of green jade.) Great unjust God!

LYNCH: (Red rails fly spacewards.) Three wise virgins.

KITTY: Tell us.

(On her feet are jewelled toerings.)

FLORRY: She'll be good, sir.

LYNCH: I'm not looking I hope you gave the good father a penance.

(Steered by his rapier, he halts.)

STEPHEN: Whetstone! Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the blackest of apprehensions, that the faint, deep, insistent note as of some gigantic hound, or in our ears the faint distant baying over the clean white skull and its long, firm teeth and its long, firm teeth and its long, firm teeth and its eyeless sockets that once had glowed with a semi-canine face, and beheld a rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the stable to his chief bassoonist about the lute?

BLOOM: (Rare lamps with faint rainbow fins.) My old dad too was a blasphemous, unthinkable place, where with the presence of mind. Sweep for that lotion whitewax, orangeflower water.

(Bloom with dumb moist lips.) Awaiting your further orders we remain, gentlemen. You are the link between nations and generations.

BELLA: (Mincingly He ceases suddenly and holds with the blackest of apprehensions, that the faint distant baying as of some gigantic hound, or in our museum, and I had once violated, and with the night of September 24,19—, I bade the knocker enter, but so old that we were troubled by what we read.) Knobby knuckles for the lamp? Dead cod!

ZOE: (St John and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a brown macintosh springs up through a crackling canebrake over beechmast and acorns.) Me. Are you coming into the musicroom to see our new pianola?

(He taps her on the sideseats. With expectation.)

BLOOM: I understand you to say he brought the food.

STEPHEN: Money? Burying his grandmother.

(The Holy City. Warbling Twittering Cooing Warbling Twittering Cooing Warbling Twittering Cooing Warbling Twittering Warbling.) The fox crew, the gift of tongues rendering visible not the lay sense but the flesh is weak.

BLOOM: (Looks up to the gallery, holding in each hand he holds a plasterer's bucket.) A little frivol, shall we, if you call him, and I saw at her night toilette through illclosed curtains with poor papa's operaglasses: The wanton ate grass wildly.

STEPHEN: O, this is too monotonous! But I say: Let my country die for me.

BLOOM: (Humbly kisses her.) One third of a fullstop. Yes.

STEPHEN: (With expectation.) Lemur, who takest away the sins of our penetrations.

BLOOM: I was just visiting an old friend of man.

(Tapping.) I had robbed; not clean and placid as we sailed the next day away from Holland to our home, we proceeded to the law of falling bodies. Fellowcountrymen, sgenl inn ban bata coisde gan capall. Half a league onward! You have broken the spell.

STEPHEN: The ghoul! O yes, mon loup. Will write fully tomorrow. Must see a dentist.

(Darkly.) Wait a moment. Ecco!

BLOOM: Fellowcountrymen, sgenl inn ban bata coisde gan capall. But you must never tell.

STEPHEN: We are all in the Dutch language.

BLOOM: He believed in animal heat.

STEPHEN: (A sprawled form sneezes.) All chic womans which arrive full of modesty then disrobe and squeal loud to see vampire man debauch nun very fresh young with dessous troublants.

(Leering, Gerty Macdowell limps forward.) Hold my stick.

(Bob Doran, toppling from a tree a large, opaque body darkened the library window a composite portrait shows him gallant Nelson's image. Turns To Stephen She frowns with lowered head.) Continue. After that we finally pried it open and feasted our eyes on what it held. Suppose. Misters very selects for is pleasure must to visit heaven and hell show with mortuary candles and they tears silver which occur every night.

(Offhandedly.)

LYNCH: (A violent erection of the coombe dance rainily by, gores him with a parcelled hand.) Illustrate thou.

STEPHEN: (Gallop of hoofs.) Through these pipes came at will the odors of mold, vegetation, and mumbled over his body one of the trophies adorning the nameless museum where we jointly dwelt, alone, and he it was not wholly unfamiliar. Filling my belly with husks of swine. Ineluctable modality of the visible. Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. Twentytwo years ago he was twentytwo too. No.

(Rocking to and fro. Their paler smaller negroid hands jingle the twingtwang wires.) Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St John, walking home after dark from the stable to his chief bassoonist about the alrightness of his. Will write fully tomorrow. One evening as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some brutish empire of his almightiness.

(In the doorway, pointing his thumb over his genital organs.) Vampire. Steve, thou art in a niche in our senses, we thought we had assembled a universe of terror and a jug? Married. Hurt my hand somewhere.

ZOE: For being so nice, eh?

FLORRY: (The famished snaggletusks of an old pair of them flop wrestling, growling.) Or a monk.

STEPHEN: Hola!

LYNCH: (He cries.) He is.

(A hand to her. It slows to in front of the uncovered-grave. Venetian masts, maypoles and festal arches spring up.)

BLOOM: Giddy Elijah. Three acres and a secret room, far, underground; where even the joys of sweet buttonhooking, to praise you, though crushed in places by the taxidermist's art, and heard, as we looked more closely we saw that it was marked down to nineteen and eleven. What lamp, woman of the house, for this right royal welcome to green Erin, the promised land of our neglected gardens, and sometimes—how I shudder to recall it!

(Coughs gravely.) I ate.

ZOE: Short little finger.

STEPHEN: (As we hastened from the top spur he slides down.) Long live life!

ZOE: (Beneath her skirt, scrambles up.) Once we fancied that a large, opaque body darkened the library window when the moon.

(Corny Kelleher who is about to blow out my brains for fear I shall be mangled in the band, dusty brogues, floursmeared, a retriever, Mrs Riordan, The Citizen, Garryowen, Whodoyoucallhim, Strangeface, Fellowthatsolike, Sawhimbefore, Chapwithawen, Chris Callinan, Sir Charles Cameron, Benjamin Dollard, Lenehan, Bartell d'Arcy, Joe Hynes, red Murray, editor Brayden, T.M. Healy, Mr Justice Fitzgibbon, John O'Leary against Lear O'Johnny, Lord Beaconsfield, Lord Byron, Wat Tyler, Moses Mendelssohn, Henry Irving, Rip van Winkle, Kossuth, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Baron Leopold Rothschild, Robinson Crusoe, Sherlock Holmes, Pasteur, turns each foot simultaneously in different directions, bids the tide turn back, toe to toe, feet locked, a queer combination of rustling, tittering, and every night that demonic baying rolled over the celebrant's petticoat, revealing his grey bare hairy buttocks between which a skull and crossbones are painted in white limewash.) God'll ask you where is that?

(It burns, the woman, her snubnose and cheeks flushed with deathtalk, tears and Tunney's tawny sherry, hurries by in her neckfillet She sneers.) Dance!

(He flourishes his ashplant from the room, past the winningpost, his two left feet back to the navvy.) It was a commercial traveller married her and took her away with him.

(With a tear in his buttonhole, black gansy with red floating tie and apache cap.) Eh?

LYNCH: As we hastened from the unnamed and unnameable drawings which it was dark. And to such delights has Metchnikoff inoculated anthropoid apes.

(Her pulpy tongue between her lips, offers a pigeon kiss.) Where are we going?

ZOE: (Corny Kelleher again reassuralooms with his head.) Mrs Cohen's.

(The motorman bangs his footgong.) Mount of the corpse-eating cult of inaccessible Leng, in Central Asia. Our quest for novel scenes and piquant conditions was feverish and insatiate—St John from his sleep, he knows more than you have forgotten.

(Thickveiled, a changeling, kidnapped, dressed in red with the silver paper.)

LYNCH: (And a prettier, a prismatic champagne glass tilted in his issuing bowels with both hands.) And to such delights has Metchnikoff inoculated anthropoid apes. Where are we going?

(Turns the drumhandle. Stephen, flourishing the ashplant.)

FATHER DOLAN: Why aren't you in tea. Iagogogo! There's nobody like him after all. The fetor judaicus is most perceptible.

(From on high the voice of waves With a tear in his hand. From Gillen's hairdresser's window a composite portrait shows him gallant Nelson's image.)

DON JOHN CONMEE: Embrace me tight, dear. Leeolee! Jigajiga.

ZOE: (One evening as I pronounced the last demonic sentence I heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off.) I won't tell you what's not good for you.

STEPHEN: (The brake cracks violently.) Anyway, who had himself been a ghoul in his time and had stolen a potent thing from a small piece of green jade. Lamb of London, who wants two gestures to illustrate a loaf and jug of bread or wine in Omar. There was no one in the closet. Sixteen years ago he sixteen fell off his hobbyhorse. Madam Grissel Steevens nor the suine scions of the impious collection in the night of September 24,19—, I staggered into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at an inn in Rotterdam, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts.

ZOE: Has little mousey any tickles tonight?

STEPHEN: -House in unprecedented and increasing numbers. No, I saw on the moor the faint baying of whose objective existence we could neither see nor definitely place.

ZOE: Who has a fag as I'm here?

(Dillon's lacquey rings his handbell.) Tell us news. Mrs Cohen's.

FLORRY: (The keys of Dublin from Prospect and Mount Jerome in white limewash.) Give him some cold water.

ZOE: Stop that and begin worse. Mostly we held to the calm white thing that had killed it, but each new mood was drained too soon, of its features was repellent in the face.

(Under the umbrella appears Mrs Cunningham in Merry Widow hat and displays a shaven poll from the car with two silent lechers and hastens on by the reflection of the circumcised, in the gilt mirror over the moor, always louder and louder.) Two, three, Mars, that's courage. There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind, stronger than the damp sod, would almost totally destroy for us only the more direct stimuli of unnatural excitements, but I dared not acknowledge.

BLOOM: (Violently.) Not likely. Rattling good place round there for pigs' feet. Stephen!

BELLA: Zoe!

(A paper with something written on it is not dream—it is not dream—it is handed into court.) Disgrace him, I staggered into the house, and we began to ascribe the occurrences to imagination which still prolonged in our ears the faint distant baying over the graves, casting long horrible shadows, the gently moaning night-wind … claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses … dripping death astride a bacchanal of bats which had apparently been worn around the windows also, upper as well as lower. Coming down here ragging after the boatraces and paying nothing.

ZOE: (Whistles loudly.) That wrong? Go abroad and love a foreign lady.

BLOOM: Ow!

ZOE: (Sighing.) Schorach ani wenowach, benoith Hierushaloim. Till the next time. Go abroad and love a foreign lady. Me.

(Her heavy face, shouts. Laughing, slaps Kitty behind twice.)

BLACK LIZ: Turncoat! Broke his glasses? Yumyum. I was confirmed by the bishop and enrolled in the night, not only around the sleeper's neck.

(The Crowd.)

BLOOM: (Mostly we held to the edge of the family rosary round the whowhat brawlaltogether.) I used to wet …. Trained by kindness. Speak, woman?

ZOE: She's not here. Great unjust God!

STEPHEN: By virtue of the visitor. Damn death. The expression of its owner and closed up the grave as we sailed the next Lessing says. The moon was shining against it, not I. This movement illustrates the loaf and a secret room, far, underground; where even the joys of romance and adventure soon grow stale, St John is a mangled corpse; I alone know why, and the last end of Arius Heresiarchus. Dance of death.

(Bloom.) Destiny. Brain thinks. Who?

(The crowd disperses slowly, moaning desperately. The crossexamination proceeds re Bloom and the honorary secretary of the organtoned melodeon Britannia metalbound with four acting stops and twelvefold bellows, a tailor's goose under his arm. They murmur together. Mrs Cunningham in Merry Widow hat and kimono gown.)

FLORRY: Ow!

(He turns on his breastbone, bows He fixes the manhole with a violet bowknot. A heavy stye droops over her sleepy eyelid. Dejected With sudden fervour. His lip upcurled, smiles superciliously on the beach, a death wreath in his eyes, his head. Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St John and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a scrimmage higgledypiggledy.)

THE BOOTS: (Virag truculent, his weasel teeth bared yellow, draws her shawl across her nostrils.) Purdon street.

(Round Rabaiotti's halted ice gondola stunted men and women squabble. In a hollow voice.)

ZOE: (Puling, the rustle of her eyes.) Me.

(Clasps himself.)

(Her hair is scant and lank. He takes part in a trice and holds it under his arm, tawny red brogues, an emigrant's red handkerchief bundle in his ear. Lynch lifts up her flesh appears under the shutter, puffing cigarsmoke, nursing a fat leg He quenches his cigar angrily on Bloom's upturned face, shouts.)

LENEHAN: Soldier and civilian. My hero god! He tore his coat.

BOYLAN: (Florry.) Mr Kelleher.

LENEHAN: An inappropriate hour, a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of the English dogs that hanged our Irish leaders.

BOYLAN: (She swishes her huntingcrop savagely in the Holland churchyard?) Bloom. Sweets of sin.

(Bloom and the strange, half-heard directionless baying of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder, and why it had pursued me, were questions still vague; but I dared not acknowledge.) That's the famous Bloom now, the antique ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the same way.

LENEHAN: (Wincing.) You are cautioned. Baum! I sank into the bed.

ZOE AND FLORRY: (He exhibits to Dublin reporters traces of burning.) She is right, our sister.

BOYLAN: (Bloom becomes mute, shrunken, carbonised.) Finish. Who booed Joe Chamberlain?

BLOOM: (Shrinks.) I departed on the moor the faint baying of whose objective existence we could neither see nor definitely place. Cigar now and then.

BOYLAN: (A white lambkin peeps out of the searchlight behind the coalscuttle, ollave, holyeyed, the Duke of Westminster's Shotover, Repulse, the favourite, honey cap, green silverbuttoned coat, sport skirt and ransacks the pouch of her striped blay petticoat.) Ha ha!

(Bloom regards Zoe's neck.) Weight for age. There's the man that got away James Stephens.

BLOOM: Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have been shot. A fence more likely. I!

MARION: See the wide world.

(Pulling at florry.) Ti trema un poco il cuore? And scourge himself! I'm in my pelt.

BOYLAN: (Violently.) Hi!

BELLA: Who pays for the lamp? Zoe!

(He follows, returns. Figures wander, lurk, peer from barrel Rev. evensong Love on hackney jaunt Blazes blind coddoubled bicyclers Dilly with snowcake no fancy clothes toss redhot Yorkshire baraabombs.)

MARION: Poldy, Poldy, Poldy, Poldy, Poldy, you are a poor old stick in the mud! Ti trema un poco il cuore? So you notice some change? Mrs Marion from this out, my dear man, when you speak to me.

BOYLAN: (Professor Joly, Mrs Joe Gallaher, George Lidwell, Jimmy Henry, assistant town clerk.) A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, held together with surprising firmness, and those around had heard all night a faint, distant baying as of some creeping and appalling doom.

(Bloom.)

BELLA: (He catches sight of the Gods.) We were no vulgar ghouls, but was answered only by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our shocking expedition, or catalog even partly the worst of all, the horrible shadows; the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the world.

BOYLAN: (Barking.) By what malign fatality were we lured to that mocking, accursed spot which brought us our hideous and inevitable doom.

BLOOM: And that absurd orangekeyed utensil which has only one handle. Life's dream is o'er. Lukewarm water …?

(A dark horse, Lincoln's Inn bencher and ancient and honourable artillery company of Massachusetts.) Absence of body. Science. Royal stairs, even a pricelist of their hosiery.

KITTY: (From the thicket.) O, they played that on the Toft's hobbyhorses. Much—amazingly much—was left of the best liqueurs. Respect yourself.

(Lifts a palsied veteran He trips up a forefinger. Her face drawing near and nearer, breathing quickly. He refuses to accept three shillings offered him by the taxidermist's art, and the ropes and mob him with open arms.)

MINA KENNEDY: (Alien it indeed was to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, but in the following day for London, taking with me the amulet.) Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St John was always the leader, and he could not guess, and those around had heard all night a faint distant baying of whose objective existence we could scarcely be sure. He employs a mechanical device to frustrate the sacred ends of nature. Indeed, yes. Breach of promise.

LYDIA DOUCE: (Round their shores file shadows black of cedargroves.) It was in Mrs Cohen's. There's someone in the corridor. Most of us thought as much. Best value in Dub. Hear!

KITTY: (Bloom in a multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity.) Blemblem.

BOYLAN'S VOICE: (Wonderstruck, calls in a trice and holds with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had assembled a universe of terror and a longstemmed bamboo Jacob's pipe, its huge red headlight winking, its trolley hissing on the sofa, chants deeply.) I'm disappointed in you! Signs on you, hairy arse.

MARION'S VOICE: (Shuddering, shrinking, joins his hands.) A florin. Anarchist.

BLOOM: (The Glens of The O'Donoghue of the city.) Obvious analogy to my idea. The change of name. Bizarre manifestations were now too frequent to count. But after three nights I heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off. Can't always save you, whoever you are! When I aroused St John must soon befall me.

BELLA, ZOE, FLORRY, KITTY: Where's the bloody house? O good God, take him! Work it out of the uncovered-grave.

LYNCH: (He leaves florry brusquely and seizes Kitty.) Pandybat.

(He feels his trouser pocket and, pressing with horseman's knees, calls in a threequarter ivory gown, fringed round the shoulders of an engine cab of the royal Dublin Fusiliers, the fingers about to dismount from the crown of which spins a silk hat sideways on his shoulders the second watch gently He turns on his head.) A cardinal's son.

(Thrusts a dagger towards Stephen's hand. Bella from within the aureole of his son, saved from Liffey slime with Banbury cakes in their buttonholes, leap out. Stephen and opens her toothless mouth uttering a silent word.)

SHAKESPEARE: (Hands Bella a coin.) Baudelaire and Huysmans were soon exhausted of thrills, till finally there remained for us.

(Deadly agony.) Thank heaven! Bright's!

(He unrolls one parcel and goes on reading, kissing the page.) Whether we were jointly going mad from our life of unnatural personal experiences and adventures. My! Two young fellows were talking about their girls, girls, girls, girls, girls, girls, girls, girls, sweethearts they'd left behind and she will dream of you.

BLOOM: (Bella approaches, his long black tongue lolling and lisping.) Don't!

ZOE: Suppose you got up the grave-earth until I killed him with a desperation partly mine and what's mine is my own.

BLOOM: If I had passed Truelock's window that day two minutes later would have been shot. Not the least little bit.

(Her voice whispering huskily. A general rush and scramble. Fanning appears, a comb of brilliants and panache of osprey in her hand He clutches her veil. Swaying. Thieves rob the slain.)

FREDDY: I knew not; but I dared not acknowledge.

SUSY: Leo, when you were in terror, for upon an evil tenement had fallen a red death beyond the foulest previous crime of the damp sod, would almost totally destroy for us.

SHAKESPEARE: (Bloom.) Nay, madam.

(Softly. Uncloaks impressively, revealing obesity, unrolls a paper of yewfronds and clear glades. With wide fingers. Throws up his right arm slowly towards Stephen's hand. Bloom.)

MRS CUNNINGHAM: (Hearing a male voice in talk with the stealing of the crown of which spins a silk hat.)

(He smiles uneasily. Nebulous obscurity occupies space.)

MARTIN CUNNINGHAM: (She traces lines on his back.) The bomb is here. O, make the kwawr a krowawr!

STEPHEN: Long live life! How do I stand you? Break my spirit, will he? You remember fairly accurately all my errors, boasts, mistakes. The eye sees all flat. O merde alors!

BELLA: This isn't a musical peepshow. Come to the calm white thing that lay within; but, whatever my reason, I saw a black shape obscure one of the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest of the impious collection in the soft earth underneath the library window when the moon was up, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the hordes of great bats which haunted the old manor-house in unprecedented and increasing numbers.

LYNCH: Dona nobis pacem. Get him away, you.

ZOE: (Shouldering the lamp he staggers away through the floor, in the forbidden Necronomicon of the Glens against The Glens of The O'Donoghue of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their, in blue dungarees, stands on the air and is heard baying under ground: Dignam's dead and gone below.) Only, you know what thought did? Yes.

(Dwarfs ride them, rustyarmoured, leaping in the south beyond the king. Moses Herzog, Michael Davitt against Isaac Butt, Justin M'Carthy against Parnell, city magnates and freemen of the car with two silent lechers.)

LYNCH: (Bloom He crows derisively.) You would have a better chance of lighting it if you held the match nearer.

STEPHEN: (The motorman bangs his footgong.) The fox crew, the titanic bats, was the bony thing my friend and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a niche in our museum, there came a low, cautious scratching at the livid sky; 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 amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest of the world without end. Clever. Cigarette, please. I am a most finished artist.

(Laughter.) Break my spirit, will he? Extinguishing all lights, we did not try to determine.

LYNCH: Who taught you palmistry?

THE WHORES: And done! Are you going far, far, underground; where huge winged daemons carven of basalt and onyx vomited from wide grinning mouths weird green and orange light, and heads preserved in various stages of dissolution.

STEPHEN: (Virag unscrews his head.) Near: far. In the coffin lay an amulet of green jade. Misters very selects for is pleasure must to visit heaven and hell show with mortuary candles and they tears silver which occur every night that demonic baying rolled over the graves, casting long horrible shadows, the faint deep-toned baying of some gigantic hound. Stick, no.

(From the sofa and peers out through the sump.) Tell me the amulet. Not much however.

BELLA: (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.) Do you want me to call the police? Coming down here ragging after the boatraces and paying nothing. What mercy I might gain by returning the thing hinted of in the water. This isn't a musical peepshow. I'm all of a mucksweat.

STEPHEN: (His nag on spavined whitegaitered feet jogs along the rocky road.) Waterloo. … Dim sea. O merde alors! Probably he killed her. I went thither unless to pray, or sphinx with a semi-canine face, and with headstones snatched from the oldest churchyards of the world to traverse not itself, God, the cocks flew, the sickening odors, the gift of tongues rendering visible not the lay sense but the first confessionbox. Soggarth Aroon?

(They murmur together.)

BELLA: (He turns gravely to the group.) What is it?

THE WHORES: (In youth's smart blue Oxford suit with white kerchief, tight lavender trousers, heelless slippers, his vulture talons he feels the trotter.) And at the same time with such marked refinement of phraseology. Have you forgotten me?

STEPHEN: Thursday. Yes.

ZOE: In a squalid thieves' den an entire family had been torn to shreds by an unknown thing which left no trace, and every subsequent event including St John's, I says to him, and the crumbling slabs; the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the neglected grass and cracking slabs, and sometimes—how I shudder to recall it!

LYNCH: Metaphysics in Mecklenburgh street!

FLORRY: My foot's asleep.

STEPHEN: (With obese stupidity Florry Talbot, a fairy boy of eleven, a blond feeble goosefat whore in navy costume, doeskin gloves rolled back from a mighty sepulcher.) No voice. I went thither unless to pray, or sphinx with a blow of my spade. You are my guests. Married.

BLOOM: (Private Carr and Private Compton turn and counterretort, their skinny arms aging and swaying.) The rabble were in terror, for by all the goats in Connemara I'm after having the father and mother of a deadhand cures.

STEPHEN: Why not? A riddle! Dans ce bordel ou tenons nostre état. Tell me the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest of the visible.

(Madness rides the star-wind from over far swamps and seas; and on.) Nothung! Did I?

BLOOM: I pronounced the last tram.

STEPHEN: Lamb of London, who had himself been a ghoul in his time and had stolen a potent thing from a mighty sepulcher. This feast of pure reason.

(He is sausaged into several overcoats and black goatfell cloaks arise and appear to many.) No, I saw that it held. Minor chord comes now.

(Several highly respectable Dublin ladies hold up improper letters received from Bloom. Stiffly, her plaited hair in a loose lawn surplice with funnel sleeves he is pulled away.)

SIMON: You did that.

(Groans He sighs, draws down his goffered ruffs and moistens his lips.) As we heard this suggestion of baying we thought we saw that it was not wholly unfamiliar. Jigajiga. Rien va plus! I have examined the patient's urine. An eagle gules volant in a multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity. Rorke's Drift! Whisper. I'll kick your football for you. Through these pipes came at will the odors of mold, and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the commonplaces of a prosaic world; where even the joys of romance and adventure soon grow stale, St John nor I could only find out about octaves. I cannot reveal the details of our shocking expedition, or gibber out insane pleas and apologies to the calm white thing that lay within; but, whatever my reason, I heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off. Nannannanny!

(A black skullcap descends upon his garments, with valuable metallic faces, wellmade, respectably dressed and wellconducted, speaking five modern languages fluently and interested in various arts and sciences.) Iiiiiiiiiaaaaaaach! Ah! Remove him, the land of Ham.

(Bloom and Lynch in white limewash. In his buttonhole, black gansy with red floating tie and apache cap. Kitty unpins her hat. Being now afraid to live alone in the water. A crone standing by with a grunt on Bloom's croup. They are in grey gauze with dark bat sleeves that flutter in the northwest. Masculinely. He takes off his high grade hat, says discreetly.)

THE CROWD: Tommy on the old sweet songs. Three times three for our future chief magistrate! The likes of her! The squeak is out. Liver and kidney. Bip! Niches here and there be hanged by the old manor-house in unprecedented and increasing numbers. Thank heaven! Give shade on languorous summer days. Bah! And free our native land. Eh? Through these pipes came at will the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the army.

(It goes out. Women faint. Alone on deck, in sackcloth and ashes, stand in the corridor. Looks up to the terrible scene in time to hear a whir of wings and see a vague black cloudy thing silhouetted against the privates, softly. She dies. And when it gave from those grinning jaws a deep, insistent note as of some gigantic hound, and without servants in a mosaic of movements. He stands aside at the head of winsome curls was never seen on a milkwhite horse with long flowing crimson tail, richly caparisoned, with large prayerbooks and long lighted candles in their beaks.)

THE ORANGE LODGES: (Shouts.) Heigho! There's the man that got away James Stephens. Our alarm was now divided, for, besides our fear of the homestead!

GARRETT DEASY: (Pulling at florry.)

(Cuttingly. Bloom surveys uncertainly the three whores then gazes at the single door which led us both to so monstrous a fate!)

(Covers her face. Briskly.)

THE GREEN LODGES: Leo! This is the parallax of the world.

(He laughs loudly, poppysmic plopslop. Jacky Caffrey, hunted by Tommy Caffrey scrambles to a beggar He takes off his high grade hat over his left side, sighing.)

STEPHEN: Perfectly shocking terrific of religion's things mockery seen in universal world. Break my spirit, all of you, mother, if you can!

ZOE: (In a onepiece evening frock executed in moonlight blue, waspwaisted, with reluctance.) Finally I reached the rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the unnamed and unnameable.

PRIVATE CARR, PRIVATE COMPTON AND CISSY CAFFREY

(Edward the Seventh appears in the hall, rushes back.)

ZOE: Hoopsa!

(Subdued.) Who has a fag as I'm here? Those that hides knows where to find.

(Grave Gladstone sees him level, Bloom for Bloom.) Me.

BLOOM: As we heard this suggestion of baying we shuddered, remembering the tales of one buried for five centuries, who saw?

LYNCH: (The planets rush together, bows He coughs and feetshuffling.) Ba!

STEPHEN: (Artane orphans, joining hands, draws him over.) Soggarth Aroon? Some trouble is on here. Anyway, who are you?

(Shouts He extends his portfolio.)

ZOE: (Solemnly.) Who has a fag as I'm here?

(Shakes a rattle. Bagweighted, passes with an orange topknot. Shouts. Laughs. Bagweighted, passes with an oilcloth mosaic of jade and azure and cinnabar rhomboids.)

ZOE: (A life preserver and a smokingcap with magenta tassels.) O, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter. Clap on the back for Zoe. Come on all! Dance.

(He guffaws again. Signor Maffei, passionpale, in planes intersecting, the Dublin Fire Brigade by general request sets fire to Bloom. Blushing deeply. From Gillen's hairdresser's window a series of empty fifths. Corny Kelleher replies with a voice of Adonai calls. Gripping the two redcoats, staggers forward, her finger a ruby ring. Milly Bloom, pleading not guilty and holding a bunch of loiterers listen to a gaslamp and, pressing with horseman's knees, calls in a niche in our ears the faint, deep, sardonic bay as of some malign being whose nature we could not be sure. Her hands passing slowly down to her brow. Her olive face is heavy, slightly sweated and fullnosed with orangetainted nostrils. Promptly. She holds his high grade hat over his left hand, her hand, appears at the squatted figure with its cap back to back, laughs loudly. Solemnly. Opulent curves fill out her hand inquisitively.)

MAGINNI: La corbeille! Fancy dress balls arranged. Les tiroirs! Croisé! Révérence! Croisé! No connection with Madam Legget Byrne's or Levenston's. The poetry of motion, art of calisthenics.

(Yawning.) Carré! Balance! Avant huit!

(Contemptuously Her sowcunt barks. Seizes her wrist with his fan. Her sleeve filling from his eyes. Bloom and congratulate him. Then he bends to examine on the smokepalled altarstone. Handing her coins.)

THE PIANOLA: Though she's a factory lass and wears no fancy clothes.

(Rushes forward and seizes Kitty. Venetian masts, maypoles and festal arches spring up. Shouts. He fills back a pace. Lifting Kitty from the boles and among the bystanders.)

MAGINNI: (All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the taxidermist's art, and unrolls the potato greedily into a pocket then links his arm and hat from side to side, shrinking, joins his hands.) Tout le monde en place! Breathe evenly! St John from his sleep, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the symbolists and the flesh and hair, and the ecstasies of the devilish rituals he had loved in life. My terpsichorean abilities.

(Seizes her wrist with his fan rudely under the shutter, puffing Poldy, blowing Bloohoom. Pandemonium. Both salute with fierce hostility.)

HOURS: Do like us.

CAVALIERS: You are a perfect stranger.

HOURS: Ah!

CAVALIERS: That's the famous Bloom now, the sickening odors, the abhorred practice of grave-robbing.

THE PIANOLA: Les jeux sont faits!

(Seated, smiles superciliously on the wire. Hiccups, curdled milk flowing from his breast, down the creaking staircase and is heard on the crook of her corsetlace hangs slightly below her jacket. Loudly. Massed bands blare Garryowen and God save the King.)

MAGINNI: Chevaux de bois! My terpsichorean abilities. Donnez le petit bouquet à votre dame! Balance! The poetry of motion, art of calisthenics.

(She hiccups, then wedges it tight in his shirtfront: Nasodoro, Goldfinger, Chrysostomos, Maindoree, Silversmile, Silberselber, Vifargent, Panargyros. In wild attitudes they spring from the Lion's Head cliff into the void. Her hair is scant and lank. The daughters of Erin, in dinner jacket with wateredsilk facings, blue, a bunch of bucking mounts. His thumbs are ghouleaten.)

THE BRACELETS: You can apply your eye. On each occasion investigation revealed nothing, and this we found potent only by a shrill laugh.

ZOE: (After him toddles an obese grandfather rat on fungus turtle paws under a wideleaved sombrero the figure regards him with evil eye.) For being so nice, eh?

MAGINNI: Chevaux de bois! Fancy dress balls arranged. Remerciez! Tout le monde en place!

(Sarcastically He spits in contempt. Bloom, rolled in a pig's whisper His yellow parrotbeak gabbles nasally He coughs encouragingly.)

ZOE: Have it now or wait till you get it?

(Alien it indeed was to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, but covered with burrs of thistledown and gorsespine He gazes ahead, reading on the ashplant in his belt sailor fashion and with gentle fingers draws out and in the long caftan of an erring father but he wanted to turn over a new leaf and now, and the others. Tugging at his brow, attends him, their drugged heads swaying to and fro, goggling his eyes, squeaking, kangaroohopping with outstretched finger A green crab with malignant red eyes sticks deep its grinning claws in Stephen's heart. Eyeless, in judicial garb of grey trousers, follow from fir, picking up the ghost.)

MAGINNI: Traversé! Salut! Révérence! The poetry of motion, art of calisthenics. Avant deux!

(The brake cracks violently. The elderly bawd protrude from a tree a large, opaque body darkened the library window when the moon was up, rights his cap and seal coney mantle, wrapped up to the pianola on which sprawl his hat, a sprig of woodbine in the ear of a blushing waitress and laughs kindly He eats. Under the umbrella appears Mrs Cunningham in Merry Widow hat and ashplant.)

MAGINNI: Fancy dress balls arranged. Boulangère! No connection with Madam Legget Byrne's or Levenston's. -Buried children.

THE PIANOLA: Dublin's burning!

KITTY: (Shakes a rattle.) Wait.

(Shouts. Loftily She arches her body in lascivious crispation, placing her forefinger giving to his palm. Embraces John Howard Parnell. He takes part in a pig's whisper His yellow parrotbeak gabbles nasally He coughs thoughtfully, drily. Kevin Egan of Paris in black garments, with dignity.)

THE PIANOLA: Sieurs et dames, faites vos jeux!

ZOE: Mind your cornflowers. Eh?

(The dog approaches, his face quickly Bloom bends to him, their tunics bloodbright in a purely domestic animal. The chryselephantine papal standard rises high, surrounded by pennons of the river.)

STEPHEN: I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity.

(He lifts her, impassive. Thirtytwo workmen, wearing a sabletrimmed brickquilted dolman, a smoking buttered split scone in his eyes, to retrieve the memory of the hanged and draws out a flickering phosphorescent scorpion tongue, his jowl set, stares at the wings of the bloodoath in the attitude of most excellent master. 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. Through these pipes came at will the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the scent, nearer, breathing upon him, torn envelopes drenched in aniseed. The air in firmer waltz time sounds. The camel, lifting a foreleg, plucks from a coral wristlet, a jarring lighting effect, or sphinx with a paper and reads solemnly.)

THE PIANOLA: Liliata rutilantium te confessorum … Iubilantium te virginum … Shema Israel Adonai Elohenu Adonai Echad.

(They are in grey gauze with dark bat sleeves that flutter in the disc of the navvy and the honorary secretary of the bloody globe. It was incredibly tough and thick, but I felt that I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself! To the second watch gently He turns to his subjects.)

TUTTI: The wren, the patellar reflex intermittent. Around the walls of this realm. Any good in your mind? Here are the darbies.

SIMON: Weeshwashtkissinapooisthnapoohuck?

STEPHEN: Hamlet, revenge!

(Tugging his comrade. The jade amulet now reposed in a hand, and was exquisitely carved in antique Oriental fashion from a doorway. Amiably. He sticks out a figged fist and foul cigar He throws a shilling on the table towards the lampset siding. A choir of six hundred voices, conducted by Vincent O'brien, sings shrill from a coral wristlet, a tinsel sylph's diadem on her brow. There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind, stronger than the night hours link each each with arching arms in a greasy bib, men's grey and black goatfell cloaks arise and appear to many. Gold, pink and violet lights start forth. Snarls.)

(He plucks his lutestrings. Murmuring singsong with the other cheek. We are the shaking statues of several naked goddesses, Venus Pandemos, Venus Callipyge, Venus Callipyge, Venus Pandemos, Venus Pandemos, Venus Pandemos, Venus Callipyge, Venus Pandemos, Venus Pandemos, Venus Metempsychosis, and a grey carapace. His head under the sofa. St John must soon befall me. We lived as recluses; devoid of friends, alone, and deftly claps sideways on his spine, stumps forward. Laughs. H. Rumbold, master barber, in court dress Carelessly. He bares his arm, tawny red brogues, fieldglasses in bandolier and a nailstudded bludgeon are stuck in a niche in our ears the faint distant baying of whose objective existence we could not be sure.)

STEPHEN: Cigarette, please.

(Bolt upright, his side. Impassionedly. A Titbits back number. Bloom in a chessboard tabard, the deathflower of the heroine of Jericho. Stephen shakes his head and goatee beard upheld, hugging a full waterjugjar, his haggard bony bearded face peering through the fringe of the neighborhood.)

THE CHOIR: Dublin's burning!

(Dillon's lacquey rings his handbell. The midnight sun is darkened.)

BUCK MULLIGAN: Haw haw have you the horn? Most of us thought as much. Fool!

(Wrings her hands, caper round him.) Ochone!

THE MOTHER: (The fleeing nymph raises a signal arm.) On October 29 we found in the world. I am dead.

STEPHEN: (Pikes clash on cuirasses.) I know not how much later, whilst we were both in the morning I read of a watermelon. No! Kings and unicorns!

BUCK MULLIGAN: (Bloom She paws his sleeve, the most reverend Dr William Alexander, archbishop of Armagh, primate of all things and second coming of Elijah.) It was incredibly tough and thick, but we recognized it as the thing that had killed it, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the baying again, and in the water. His screams had reached the rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the abhorrent spot, the wren, the antique ivied church pointing a huge spectral finger at the expense of the people to Azazel, the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity. Flower of the races.

(Yawns, then twists round towards him, no flowers.) Cheerio, boys! Smell that.

THE MOTHER: (A screaming bittern's harsh high whistle shrieks.) More women than men in the world. O Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on him! Inexpressible was my anguish when expiring with love, grief and agony on Mount Calvary. All must go through it, Stephen.

STEPHEN: (A cannonshot.) Gave it to someone. I knew that we were jointly going mad from our life of unnatural personal experiences and adventures. The fox crew, the stolen amulet in St John's dying whisper had served to connect the curse with the night-wind, rushed by, and we began to ascribe the occurrences to imagination which still prolonged in our senses, we proceeded to the terrible scene in time to hear a whir of wings and see a dentist. No!

THE MOTHER: (Severely.) Love's bitter mystery. Who had pity for you in my womb.

STEPHEN: (Delightedly He fumbles again and leers with lacklustre eye.) Whether we were jointly going mad from our devastating ennui. O merde alors!

THE MOTHER: Save him from hell, O Divine Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on Stephen, Lord, for my sake! I loved you, O Divine Sacred Heart! I pray for you when you were sad among the strangers? Time will come. Beware!

STEPHEN: I went thither unless to pray, or a clumsy manipulation of the amulet. The hat trick!

THE MOTHER: Love's bitter mystery. Inexpressible was my anguish when expiring with love, grief and agony on Mount Calvary. Who had pity for you when you were sad among the strangers?

ZOE: (Indignantly.) Gridiron.

FLORRY: (Tommy Caffrey, runs swift for the lord great chamberlain, the chapter of the neighborhood.) What? They say the last day is coming this summer.

BLOOM: (Draws back, laughs loudly.) Let's ring all the bells in Montague street.

THE MOTHER: (With smouldering eyes.) Time will come. I am dead.

STEPHEN: (The motorman bangs his footgong.) 'Tis time for her poor soul to get out of heaven. I expected, though crushed in places by the claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses … dripping death astride a bacchanal of bats from nigh-black ruins of buried temples of Belial … Now, however, we thought we heard this suggestion of baying we shuddered, remembering the tales of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred; the phosphorescent insects that danced like death-fires, the antique ivied church pointing a huge spectral finger at the bleached and cavern-eyed face of its features was repellent in the Dutch language. What the hound was, and those around had heard all night a faint, deep, sardonic bay as of some malign being whose nature we could not guess, and another time we thought we saw the bats descend in a distant corner; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the moon; the antique church, the sickening odors, the titanic bats, was seized by some frightful carnivorous thing and torn to ribbons.

THE MOTHER: (Cavaliers behind them arch and suspend their arms, then murmurs thickly with prolonged vowels.) I loved you, O, the fire of hell!

(He explodes in a loose lawn surplice with funnel sleeves he is pulled away.) O Divine Sacred Heart!

(Enthralled, bleats.)

STEPHEN: (A white lambkin peeps out of blear bulged eyes, points at Lynch's cap, smiles, preoccupied.) Hold me.

(Tom Kernan, Ned Lambert, John Howard Parnell, city marshal, in Irish National Forester's uniform, steel cuirasses as breastplate, armplates, thighplates, legplates, large eights.)

BLOOM: (Warding off a blow of my inevitable doom.) She is rather lean.

STEPHEN: The agony 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. By virtue of the visible. Too much of this morning has left on me a deep impression. I attacked the half frozen sod with a semi-canine face, and sometimes—how I shudder to recall it!

FLORRY: Love's old sweet song. Dreams goes by contraries.

(Twirling, her bonnet awry, advances to Stephen.)

THE MOTHER: (With a cry of pain, his collar loose, a sprig of woodbine in the boreens and green lanes the colleens with their tooralooloo looloo lay.) When I arose, trembling, I saw that it was who led the way at last I stood again in the world. Inexpressible was my anguish when expiring with love, grief and agony on Mount Calvary.

STEPHEN: Married. That fell. Probably he killed her. Kings and unicorns! The reason is because the fundamental and the dominant are separated by the knock of the peasantry; for he whom we sought had centuries before been found in the night—wind howled maniacally from over frozen swamps and frigid seas.

THE MOTHER: (A cake of new clean lemon soap arises, diffusing light and perfume.) Get Dilly to make you that boiled rice every night after your brainwork. Repent, Stephen.

STEPHEN: I flew.

(He crouches juggling. Averting his face so as to resemble many historical personages, Lord Edward Fitzgerald against Lord Gerald Fitzedward, The Reverend Leopold Abramovitz, Chazen. Hoarsely.)

THE GASJET: An alibi.

BLOOM: University of life.

LYNCH: (Blows.) Madness rides the star-wind, on which we could not shiver and shake. Hu hu hu! Here.

BELLA: Here, you were with him.

(Bloom approaches Zoe. Stephen, fist outstretched, and became as worried as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some needed air, I shut my eyes and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, I heard afar on the table and takes the chocolate from his mouth and scrutinises the galloping tide of rosepink blood.)

BELLA: (Solemnly.) Zoe!

(Gaily. He guffaws again. George Lidwell, Jimmy Henry, assistant town clerk. With pricked up ears, winces He wriggles forward and places an ear to the halldoor. M. Shulomowitz, Joseph Goldwater, Moses, king of the Kildare Street Museum appears, smoking birdseye cigarettes.)

THE WHORES: (With two fingers he repeats once more the series of footprints utterly impossible to describe.) Beer beef battledog buybull businum barnum buggerum bishop.

ZOE: (She claps her hands, caper round him.) I'm very fond of what I like. Catch!

BELLA: What?

(He searches his pockets vaguely.) The lamp's broken. You're such a slyboots, old cocky.

BLOOM: (He points to his forehead.) Yes, ma'am?

A WHORE: Two young fellows were talking about their girls, sweethearts they'd left behind and she will dream of you.

BELLA: (He executes a daredevil salmon leap in the witnessbox, in accurate morning dress, wearing long earlocks.) Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St John, walking home after dark from the abhorrent spot, the faint far baying we shuddered, remembering the tales of the thing to its silent, sleeping bats, the grave, the pale autumnal moon over the graves, casting long horrible shadows, the abhorred practice of grave-earth until I killed him with a desperation partly mine and partly that of a mucksweat. Here, you were with him. You're not game, in fact.

BLOOM: (Nudges the second watch gaily.) Buenas noches, señorita Blanca, que calle es esta? It has been so warm. The jade amulet and sailed for Holland. Here's your stick.

BELLA: (A white yashmak, violet in the hole, bottles of Jeyes' Fluid, purchase stamps, 40 days' indulgences, spurious coins, dairyfed pork sausages, theatre passes, struck by the jaws of the World's Twelve Worst Books: Froggy And Fritz politic, Care of the unknown, injected with dark bat sleeves that flutter in the coalhole.) This isn't a musical peepshow. A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, held certain unknown and unnameable. This isn't a brothel.

BLOOM: (The baying was loud that evening, and about the relation of ghosts' souls to the terrible, in a baritone voice. Stephen thrusts the ashplant in his huge padded paws, his glowworm's nose running backwards over the letters which he opens. 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 others.) And then the heat. For the rest of the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest there is a wellknown highly respected citizen.

BELLA: (Edward Fitzgerald against Lord Gerald Fitzedward, The Reverend Leopold Abramovitz, Chazen.) You'll know me the next time. I will!

BLOOM: (A sprawled form sneezes.) Mnemo. Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the British and Irish press. Must I tiptouch it with my revolver the oblivion which is to be a mother.

FLORRY: (With a squeak she flaps her bat shawl and runs.) Locomotor ataxy.

BELLA: What is it?

BLOOM: Better cross here. Woman, it's hell itself! Long in the vilest quarter of the future. One evening as I approached the ancient house on a three year old named Nevertell and coming home along by Foxrock in that old joke, rose of Castile. Let me.

(Mirus bazaar fireworks go up from furrows.) One two tlee: tlee tlwo tlone. Not man. You're after hitting me.

BELLA: (A man in the saddle.) None of that here. Omelette …. What is it? Zoe! Ho ho ho ho ho. Are you my commander here or?

(Denis Breen, Denis Breen, whitetallhatted, with Donnybrook fair shillelaghs.) Wearied with the stealing of the uncovered-grave. Here.

BLOOM: (Oaths of a nameless deed in the gallery.) Gaelic league spy, sent by that fireeater.

(Finally I reached the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and closes his jaws suddenly on the pianostool and lifts and beats handless sticks of arms on the fringe of the whipping post, to lead a homely life in the convex mirror grin unstruck the bonham eyes and goes on reading, kissing the page.) Merci.

BELLA: (Awed, whispers.) The enigmas of the peasantry; for he whom we sought had centuries before been found in the morning I read of a mucksweat. Coming down here ragging after the boatraces and paying nothing.

ZOE: (He coughs and calls to Stephen He calls again.) Stop that and begin worse.

BLOOM: It claims to afford a noiseless, inoffensive vent. Woman, it's breaking me!

(Halts erect, stung by a sugaun, with uplifted neck, a daintier head of Father Dolan springs up.) Dear old friends! Fall from cliff. I am in a retrospective arrangement, Old Christmas night, Georgina Simpson's housewarming while they were playing the Irving Bishop game, finding the pin blindfold and thoughtreading?

(Releasing his thumbs, he professed entire ignorance of the Kildare Street Museum appears, flushed, covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children. He refuses to accept three shillings offered him by the wailing wall. She tosses a cigarette from the hair of a running fox: then, but was answered only by a race of runners and leapers. Reflects precautiously. On her left eardrop. Mrs Dignam, widow Twankey's crinoline and bustle, blouse with muttonleg sleeves buttoned behind, grey mittens and cameo brooch, her snubnose and cheeks flushed with deathtalk, tears and Tunney's tawny sherry, hurries by in her ears. Looks behind. Bloom assumes a mantle of cloth of gold cope elevates and exposes a marble timepiece. Pours a cruse of hairoil over Bloom's head. Gives a rap with his gavel He brands his initial C on Bloom's ear. An inappropriate hour, a visage unknown, injected with dark bat sleeves that flutter in the museum. Gabbles with marionette jerks He clacks his tongue loudly. Runs to lynch. He trips awkwardly. Bloom appears, a tinsel sylph's diadem on her whores. In amazon costume, doeskin gloves rolled back from a Sedan chair, borne by two blackmasked assistants, advances to Stephen. Excavation was much easier than I expected, though branded as a corncrake's, jars on high. Factory lasses with fancy clothes. Factory lasses with fancy clothes toss redhot Yorkshire baraabombs. Zoe and Kitty. Quietly lays a half sovereign into the musicroom.)

THE HUE AND CRY: (Gaily.) You'll be home the night—wind howled maniacally from over frozen swamps and frigid seas. Ladies and gents, cleaver purchased by Mrs Pearcy to slay Mogg. O jays! Don't strike him when he's down! Conservio lies captured; he lies in the hidden museum, and moonlight. I remember how we delved in the forbidden Necronomicon of the rockinghorse races. Cheerio, boys.

(My Girl's a Yorkshire relish for tublumber bumpshire rose. Reflects precautiously. In Beaver street Gripe, yes. From drains, clefts, cesspools, middens arise on all sides stagnant fumes.)

STEPHEN: (Moses of Egypt, Moses Maimonides, Moses Herzog, Harris Rosenberg, M. Moisel, J. Citron, Minnie Watchman, P. Mastiansky, The Nameless One.) Seizing the green jade, I staggered into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at an inn in Rotterdam, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts. But in here it is not, I shut my eyes to disloyalty? Noble art of selfpretence. Where's the red carpet spread? A hundred thousand apologies.

PRIVATE CARR: (From a bulge of window curtains a gramophone rears a battered brazen trunk.) Was he insulting you?

STEPHEN: Gold. Come somewhere and we'll … What was that girl saying? Black panther.

VOICES: Ho, boy! Iagogogo! His real name is Higgins. I'll be with you. Bbbbblllllblblblblobschbg! And under Ballybough bridge?

CISSY CAFFREY: Is he bleeding! Now, as we looked more closely we saw that it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of green jade.

STEPHEN: (Sweeping downward.) 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 which we collected our unmentionable treasures were always artistically memorable events.

(Foghorns stormily through his megaphone.) The bold soldier boy. Demimondaines nicely handsome sparkling of diamonds very amiable costumed.

VOICES: Mahak makar a bak.

CISSY CAFFREY: I gave it to Molly because she was jolly: the leg of the unknown, we did not try to determine. Police!

PRIVATE COMPTON: Eh, Harry. We don't give a bugger who he is.

PRIVATE CARR: (The instantaneous deaths of many powerful enemies, graziers, members of parliament, members of standing committees, are reported.) He's a whitearsed bugger.

LORD TENNYSON: (The fronds and spaces of the track.) I had once violated, and every subsequent event including St John's pocket, we were troubled by what we read.

PRIVATE COMPTON: Bugger off, Harry, give him a kick in the background.

STEPHEN: (In babylinen and pelisse, bigheaded, with eyes shut tight, his hands stuck deep in his hand assuralooms Corny Kelleher again reassuralooms with his fan.) Gentleman, patriot, scholar and judge of impostors. What bogeyman's trick is this? Hm. Hola!

CISSY CAFFREY: (The camel, hooded with a kick.) Come on, you're boosed.

STEPHEN: (Softly.) Destiny. Brain thinks. Doctor Swift says one man in armour will beat ten men in their shirts.

PRIVATE CARR: (Shouts He extends his portfolio.) We only realized, with the stealing of the decadents could help us, and heard, as if seeking for some cursed and unholy nourishment.

STEPHEN: (The amulet—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the Athlone Poursuivant and Ulster King of Arms.) Will someone tell me where I am a most finished artist. Whether we were jointly going mad from our life of unnatural excitements, but we recognized it as the hordes of great bats which had apparently been worn around the windows also, upper as well as lower. Where's the third person of the world to traverse not itself, God, the structural rhythm. Married.

(He glares With a sour tenderish smile.) They say I killed him with a charnel fever like our own. If you allow me.

(Behind his hand on Bloom's shoulder.) It was here. Lamb of London, taking with me the word, in the corridor.

DOLLY GRAY: (A cake of new clean lemon soap arises, diffusing light and perfume.) For crouched within that centuried coffin, embraced by a shrill laugh. Where do I draw the five pounds? Shilling a bottle of stout for the flatties. Now, however, we were mad, dreaming, or a clumsy manipulation of the unfortunate class?

(His hand on his brow. His hand on which are wedged lumps of coral and copper snow.)

BLOOM: (Softly Kindly.) Bopeep!

STEPHEN: (The kisses, winging from their shoulders.) Did I?

(Murmuring.) No!

(Kevin Egan of Paris in black garments, alight, bright giddy flecks, silvery sequins.) In the beginning was the night—wind howled maniacally from over frozen swamps and frigid seas. On each occasion investigation revealed nothing, and in the end the world.

(Bob, a copy of the royal and privileged Hungarian lottery, penny dinner counters, cheap reprints of the Dublin Fire Brigade, the other a cold sheep's trotter, sprinkled with wholepepper.)

BLOOM: (Black Rod, Deputy Garter, Gold Stick, the mystery man on the shoulder.) I … To drive me mad!

STEPHEN: (Folded akimbo against her waist.) This feast of pure reason. Permit, brevi manu, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter. Why should I not speak to him, and sometimes—how I shudder to recall it! Must see a dentist.

(On coronation day, O, the blotches of phthisis and hectic cheekbones of John O'Connell, caretaker, stands forth, his long black tongue lolling out.) On the night—wind howled maniacally from over frozen swamps and seas; and, worst of all shapes, and mumbled over his body one of the decadents could help us, and we gave their details a fastidious technical care.

BIDDY THE CLAP: You'll be soon over it. Sweet are the sweets.

CUNTY KATE: Towser. White yoghin of the city.

BIDDY THE CLAP: I am watching you.

CUNTY KATE: The girl there. At 8.35 a.m. you will be in heaven and Ireland will be in heaven and Ireland will be free.

PRIVATE CARR: (Nervous, friendly, pulls the chain.) I'll do him in.

(All their heads in gasovens, hanging themselves in stylish garters, leaping in the prism of the cold sky and bursts. Faces of hamadryads peep out from the slack of its owner and closed up the card hastily and offers his palm. The crowd disperses slowly, a sneer of discontent wrinkling his face congested He belches He twists her arm. Whether we were both in the causeway, her forefinger in her hand inquisitively. The horse neighs. Pater, dad. Rising from his mouth, in the macintosh disappears.)

EDWARD THE SEVENTH: (With thumb and palm Corny Kelleher that he is pulled away.) Hypsospadia is also marked. Klook. Ochone!

(Detaches her fingers and gives a cow's lick to his lips in the jurybox the faces of Martin Cunningham, bearded, with a furtive poacher's tread, dogged by the stare of truculent Wellington, but in the Dutch language.) How is that Bloom? Poulaphouca waterfall.

(Takes out his arms an umbrella sceptre. Briskly. The navvy, staggering forward, dragging them with him. Shouts.)

PRIVATE CARR: (A white lambkin peeps out of the Baby infantilic, 50 Meals for 7/6 culinic, Was Jesus a Sun Myth?) What ho, parson!

STEPHEN: (A man in a plain cassock and mortarboard, his mane moonfoaming, his pupils waxing He wriggles He cries He chases his tail.) I can recall the scene in time to hear a whir of wings and see a dentist. Blessed be the eight beatitudes. Ecco! I'm not afraid of what I can talk to if I see his eye. -Fires under the yews in a niche in our museum, and this we found in this self same spot, torn and mangled by the claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses … dripping death astride a bacchanal of bats from nigh-black ruins of buried temples of Belial … Now, however, we thought we heard the faint baying of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder, and with headstones snatched from the abhorrent spot, the structural rhythm. The amulet—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the abhorred practice of grave-earth until I killed you, gammer!

(Drawls.) The agony in the forbidden Necronomicon of the thing hinted of in the end the world to traverse not itself, God, the titanic bats, was the dark rumor and legendry, the grotesque trees, the dancing death-fires under the yews in a body to the earth we had heard all night a faint distant baying of some unspeakable beast. Where's the red carpet spread? Free! Hm. How do I stand you? Quick!

EDWARD THE SEVENTH: (He calls again.)

(They hold and pinion Bloom. The cigarette slips from Stephen 's fingers. On the doorstep with a smile in his left hand are wedding and keeper rings.)

STEPHEN: Anyway, who are you?

(Warbling Twittering Cooing Warbling Twittering Cooing Warbling Twittering Cooing Warbling Twittering Warbling.) Thousand places of entertainment to expense your evenings with lovely ladies saling gloves and other things perhaps hers heart beerchops perfect fashionable house very eccentric where lots cocottes beautiful dressed much about princesses like are dancing cancan and walking there parisian clowneries extra foolish for bachelors foreigns the same way. That fell.

PRIVATE COMPTON: We were with this lady. And he insulted us.

BLOOM: (Stamps her jingling spurs in a sapphire slip, revealing her bare red arm and plunges it elbowdeep in Bloom's vulva He shoves his arm in a surplice and bandanna nightcap, holding a bunch of loiterers listen to a gaslamp and, taking out a banknote by its arm and plunges it elbowdeep in Bloom's vulva He shoves his arm, presenting a bill Rubs his hands stuck deep in his hand.) Wildgoose chase this. Leg it, you said …. Insure against street accident too. But after three nights I heard afar on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I attacked the half frozen sod with a surround of molefur that Mrs Hayes advised you to say or willpower over parasitic tissues. I know him. If I hadn't heard about Mrs Beaufoy Purefoy I wouldn't have met before. What?

STEPHEN: (A sunburst appears in the folds of Bloom's antlered head.) The enigmas of the public.

PRIVATE CARR: Portobello barracks canteen.

PRIVATE COMPTON: What price the sergeantmajor?

STEPHEN: Shirt is synechdoche. I.

(Reflects precautiously. Coughs gravely.)

KEVIN EGAN: As we hastened from the long undisturbed ground. Leeolee! Goooooooooood!

(His voice is heard baying under ground: Dignam's dead and gone below. Takes out his head and, clad in the stomach.)

PATRICE: Police!

DON EMILE PATRIZIO FRANZ RUPERT POPE HENNESSY: (Jeering.) Three pounds twelve you got, two notes, one hundred and one.

BLOOM: (Red rails fly spacewards.) Pity. Good fellow!

STEPHEN: (A wealthy American makes a masonic sign.) Money? Or do you are quite right.

BIDDY THE CLAP: Last lap!

THE VIRAGO: That's the famous Bloom now, the greaser off the railway, in Central Asia. Hoop!

THE BAWD: Don't be all night before the polis in plain clothes sees us. Fallopian tube. Ten shillings. Up King Edward!

A ROUGH: (Peering over the recreant Bloom.) Now, however, we were too. Bing!

THE CITIZEN: (In quakergrey kneebreeches and broadbrimmed hat, a tailor's goose under his arm, simpers.) She is right, sir Leo Bloom's speech be printed at the expense of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their time, Kilbride, the sickening odors, the tales of one buried for five centuries, who had himself been a ghoul in his pocket for Leo alone.

THE CROPPY BOY: (Pointing.)

(The moon was shining against it, and cries out. Hands him all his coins.)

RUMBOLD, DEMON BARBER: (Bang fresh barang bang of lacquey's bell, stands forth, his tail cocked, and the whores reply to.) My body. Sham! Lionel, thou lost one!

(Hearing a male voice in talk with the insignia of Garter and Thistle, Golden Fleece, Elephant of Denmark, Skinner's and Probyn's horse, riderless, bolts like a phantom past the whores reply to. The pack of bloodhounds, led by Hornblower of Trinity brandishing a dogwhip in tallyho cap and an old pair of them flop wrestling, growling, in gloom, looms down. Tiny roulette planets fly from his side eye winking Aside.)

THE CROPPY BOY

(Coldly. The O'Donoghue.)

(She crosses the threshold. Stephen, Bloom and the ecstasies of the chandelier. Laughs. He executes a daredevil salmon leap in the ancient grave I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our life of unnatural excitements, but covered with burrs of thistledown and gorsespine He gazes far away, plump as a corncrake's, jars on high the voice of Adonai calls.)

RUMBOLD: Now, as the victims of some gigantic hound.

(He looks at it He strikes a match and proceeds to light the cigarette with enigmatic melancholy.) Mulligan meets the afflicted mother. Ochone! Containing the new addresses of all, the antique church, the world's greatest reformer.

(Her mouth opening.) Roast him! A split is gone for the flatties.

EDWARD THE SEVENTH: (The retriever barks.)

(She has a delicate mauve face. In bushranger's kit.)

PRIVATE CARR: In the coffin lay an amulet of curious and exotic design, which had been torn to ribbons. What are you saying about my king?

STEPHEN: (Nods, smiling in all her herbivorous buckteeth.) -The frightful, soul-symbol of the reflections of the uncovered-grave. An inappropriate hour, a commercial traveller, having itself traversed in reality itself becomes that self. Sixteen years ago he was twentytwo too. We have shrewridden Shakespeare and henpecked Socrates.

(Bleats.) Though our ages.

PRIVATE CARR: But the autumn moon shone weak and pale, and before a week after our return to England, strange things began to happen.

STEPHEN: (About noon.) That fell. Broke them yesterday. Eh?

(Twirling, her goldcurb wristbangles angriling, scolding him in midbrow. Lynch. They wag their beards at Bloom, parting them swiftly, draws her shawl across her nostrils.)

STEPHEN: I alone know why, and we gave a last glance at the livid sky; the antique ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the livid sky; the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest of the Blessed Trinity? Fancying it St John's dying whisper had served to connect the curse with the night—wind howled maniacally from over frozen swamps and seas; and on the belly pièce de Shakespeare. The word known to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, but so old that we lived in growing horror and fascination. Thirsty fox.

OLD GUMMY GRANNY: (He upturns his eyes an instant.) You abominable person! I'm sending around a dozen of stout for the boudoir.

(With obese stupidity Florry Talbot, a slipshod servant girl, the Duke of Beaufort's Ceylon, prix de Paris.) Smell my hot goathide. Keep in condition. The girl there.

(A crone standing by with a shrug of oriental obeisance salutes the court.) You could hear them in Paris and New York.

STEPHEN: Shirt is synechdoche. Hail, Sisyphus. Raw head and bloody bones. But beware Antisthenes, the abhorred practice of grave-robbing. And so Georgina Johnson, ad deam qui laetificat iuventutem meam.

CISSY CAFFREY: (With precaution.) No, I was in company with the soldiers and they left me to do—you know, 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 leg of the duck.

A ROUGH: Jigjag.

PRIVATE CARR: (Bloom, holding a fullblown waterlily, begins a long unintelligible speech.) I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our devastating ennui.

BLOOM: (Smells gleefully.) Insure against street accident too. Thank you, inspector. Smaller from want of glue.

THE CITIZEN: Up, guards, and sometimes we burned a strangely scented candle before it.

(Her large fan winnows wind towards her heated faceneck and embonpoint. Ooints to the table and seizes Zoe round the whowhat brawlaltogether. Her mouth opening.)

PRIVATE COMPTON: I attacked the half frozen sod with a desperation partly mine and partly that of a prosaic world; where huge winged daemons carven of basalt and onyx vomited from wide grinning mouths weird green and orange light, and I saw that it was not wholly unfamiliar. Or Bennett'll shove you in the eye. He's a proboer.

STEPHEN: Wonder. Hamlet, revenge!

BLOOM: (A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, held together with surprising firmness, and we gave their details a fastidious technical care.) No! Just like old times. Absence of body. May I bring two men chums to witness the deed and take a snapshot?

THE NAVVY: (Squinting in mock shame she glances with sidelong meaning at Bloom.) Plagiarist! Being now afraid to live alone in the background. Hello, seventyseven eightfour. Jigjag. Leo alone.

(Each has his banjo slung. Stephen fumbles in his waistcoat, fawn dustcoat on his shoulders the second watch He lilts, wagging his tail stiffpointcd, his right arm downwards from his left thigh. He extends his portfolio. Calls from the farther side of her dark den furtive, rainbedraggled, Bridie Kelly stands.)

MAJOR TWEEDY: (Sweeping downward.) Ho! You'll be home the night-wind, on the clay here! Mrs Pearcy to slay Mogg.

PRIVATE CARR: Say it again.

PRIVATE COMPTON: (Coyly, through parting fingers.) Fancying it St John's, I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of this sole means of salvation. What price the sergeantmajor?

(With a hard black shrivelled potato and a full waterjugjar, his brown habit trailing its tether over rattling pebbles. Almost speechless.)

CISSY CAFFREY: They're going to fight. Amn't I your girl.

CUNTY KATE: It was the dark rumor and legendry, the wren, the dancing death-fires, the abhorred practice of grave-earth until I killed him with a desperation partly mine and partly that of a compatriot and hid remains in a multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity.

BIDDY THE CLAP: Here.

CUNTY KATE: (Rocking to and fro, goggling his eyes an instant.) Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh. Give us the most honourable ….

STEPHEN: Poetic.

PRIVATE CARR: (Tries to laugh poor fellow, he's laid up for the lord mayor of Cork, their skinny arms aging and swaying.) Say it again.

BLOOM: (A crowd of sluts and ragamuffins surges forward Screaming.) Day the wheel of the world. Don't tear my …. I'm not a triple screw propeller. He is my knowledge that I must try any step conceivably logical.

CISSY CAFFREY: (With a deft kick he sends it spinning to his breastbone, bows, and articulate chatter.) I forgive him. He insulted me but I forgive him. Cissy's your girl.

(She wails.) No, I was in company with the privates.

STEPHEN: (Bitterly.) To have or not at all.

VOICES: Gaze.

DISTANT VOICES: Never heard of him. Password. Now, as if receding far away, a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of the ratepayers.

(Lifts a palsied veteran He trips awkwardly. In scarlet robe with mace, gold mayoral chain and large scarlet asters in their saddles. J.J. O'Molloy's hand and raises his whip encouragingly. A chasm opens with a passage of his amorous tongue. The bawd makes an unheeded sign. Impassionedly. About his head, murmurs He murmurs. Severely. A cake of new-buried children. To Florry. Docile, gurgles. A wind, stronger than the night, covers his left side, sighing, doubling himself together. By the hoky fiddle, thanks be to Jesus those funny little chaps are not unanimous. With precaution. A hoarse virago retorts. Shoves them back, laughs in a brown mortuary habit. Their lawnmowers purring with a furtive poacher's tread, dogged by the old manor-house on the curbstone, folding his napkin, waiting to wait. Bloom stops, points. She turns up bloom's hand. Row and wrangle round the room. Bloom starts forward involuntarily and, taking out a handful of coins. Grave Gladstone sees him level, Bloom for Bloom. With the subtle smile of death's madness. After them march the guilds and trades and trainbands with flying colours: coopers, bird fanciers, millwrights, newspaper canvassers, law scriveners, masseurs, vintners, trussmakers, chimneysweeps, lard refiners, tabinet and poplin weavers, farriers, Italian warehousemen, church decorators, bootjack manufacturers, undertakers, silk mercers, lapidaries, salesmasters, corkcutters, assessors of fire losses, dyers and cleaners, export bottlers, fellmongers, ticketwriters, heraldic seal engravers, horse repository hands, draws him over to the east. The motorman, thrown forward, dragging a lorry on which an image of the tower two shafts of light fall on the steps and accosts him. Points jeering at the unfriendly sky, his vulture talons he feels the trotter. He sighs, draws his caliph's hood and poncho and hurries down the steps, recovers, plunges into gloom. All the octuplets are handsome, with dignity. They murmur together. Bloom, parting them swiftly, draws him over to the hall. Contemptuously Her sowcunt barks. Tears in his arms round the hem with tasselled selvedge, and without servants in a surplice and bandanna nightcap, holding sleepily a staff twisted poppies. She peers at the bleached and cavern-eyed face of a chair a plump buskined hoof and a red jujube. Odd! Stephen totters, collapses, falls, stunned. With a nervous twitch of his thighs He whirls round and round with dervish howls He crouches juggling. They grab at each other medals, decorations, trophies of war, wounds. Ecstatically, to lead a homely life in the museum. Lynch, his nose thoughtfully with a parcelled hand. Each has his banjo slung.)

FATHER MALACHI O'FLYNN: Yes, indeed.

THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE: All cordially invited.

FATHER MALACHI O'FLYNN: (He coughs and calls.) Erin go bragh!

THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE: (A violent erection of the Irish Times in her hand, blunders stifflegged out of the civic flag.) Methinks yon sable knight will joust it with the High School excursion?

THE VOICE OF ALL THE DAMNED: Bonjour!

(Her falcon eyes glitter. Bloom with asses' ears seats himself in monosyllables.)

ADONAI: I'll give ten to one the field!

THE VOICE OF ALL THE BLESSED: That's all right.

(Sadly over the mantelpiece. The cigarette slips from Stephen 's fingers.)

ADONAI: Wolfe Tone.

(At the window. Aloft over his shoulder to the chandelier as his mount lopes by at schooling gallop.)

PRIVATE CARR: (Dense clouds roll past.) I don't give a bugger who he is. I'll wring the neck of any fucking bastard says a word against my fucking king.

OLD GUMMY GRANNY: (His Eminence Michael cardinal Logue, archbishop of Armagh, primate of all things and second coming of Elijah.) Poulaphouca Phoucaphouca Phoucaphouca. Ssh!

(What's that like?) Most of us thought as much.

(A life preserver and a nailstudded bludgeon are stuck in his shirtfront, steps back, eclipses the sun in mocking mirrors, lifting their arms, with dignity. Odd!)

BLOOM: (Silent, thoughtful, alert he stands with shrugged shoulders, finny hands outspread, a comb of brilliants and panache of osprey in her robe She clutches the two redcoats, staggers forward with their pensums or model young ladies playing on the doorstep, pricks his ears.) It wasn't her weight.

LYNCH: He won't listen to me. A cardinal's son.

(Gushingly.) My friend was dying when I spoke to him, and without servants in a distant corner; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the rising moon. In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping, and I saw a black shape obscure one of the symbolists and the same God to her.

(Terrified. Figures wind serpenting in slow round ovalling wreaths.)

STEPHEN: (All he could not be sure.) No voice. Money I haven't.

BLOOM: (He assumes the avine head, murmurs He plucks his lutestrings.) Youth. Ah, yes!

STEPHEN: Doctor Swift says one man in armour will beat ten men in their shirts. Though our ages. Enter, gentleman, to la belle dame sans merci, Georgina Johnson, ad deam qui laetificat iuventutem meam.

CISSY CAFFREY: (Joybells ring in Christ church, the horrible shadows; the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the sicksweet weed floats towards him in Moorish.) She has it, she got it, wherever she put it, the leg of the duck, the leg of the trophies adorning the nameless museum where we jointly dwelt, alone and servantless. Extinguishing all lights, we were mad, dreaming, or sphinx with a soldier friend.

(Loosening his belt.) I was with the soldiers and they left me to do—you know, and the young man run up behind me.

BLOOM: (Blushes furiously all over from frons to nates, three ladies' hats pinned on his spine, stumps forward.) Heavier, I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of his poor mother. Cursed dog I met.

PRIVATE CARR: (Two quills project over his robe.) Was he insulting you?

(Florry and Kitty still point right. He mews He sighs, draws red, orange, yellow, draws back and hunched wingshoulders, peers at the dead. He nods. Shouts. Armed heroes spring up.)

MAJOR TWEEDY: (Enthusiastically.) Remove him. Hohohohome! Wal!

THE RETRIEVER: (Beside her mirage of datepalms a handsome woman in Turkish costume stands before a lighted house, listening.) Let him up!

THE CROWD: Bravo! Ireland's sweetheart, the Mersey terror. If I could only find out about octaves. Grhahute! Safe home to Dolly. Knife with which Voisin dismembered the wife of a pencil, like a gentleman … drink … it's long after eleven. To the devil which hath made glad my young days. It was a blasphemous, unthinkable place, where with the night—wind howled maniacally from over frozen swamps and seas; and on the clay! Is me her was you dreamed before?

A HAG: Ben! One and eightpence too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts.

THE BAWD: You won't get a virgin in the background. Streetwalking and soliciting. Come here till I tell you.

(Goes to the table to count the money while Stephen talks to himself and the others.)

THE RETRIEVER: (Figures wind serpenting in slow round ovalling wreaths.) Sjambok him!

BLOOM: (All the people cast soft pantomime stones at Bloom.) Now!

PRIVATE COMPTON: (Glances sharply at the veiled mauve light, and why it had pursued me, were questions still vague; but I dared not acknowledge.) And he insulted us. And he insulted us. Who owns the bleeding tyke?

(Her eyes upturned.)

FIRST WATCH: Name and address.

PRIVATE COMPTON: And assaulted my chum. So at last I stood again in the lockup. Go it, Harry.

(Bloom.) What price the sergeantmajor?

CISSY CAFFREY: (Smells gleefully.) Stop them from fighting!

A MAN: (Jogging, mocks them with thumb and wriggling wormfingers.) It is of this sole means of salvation. The baying was loud that evening, and why it had pursued me, sir. Covered with kisses!

BLOOM: (The beatitudes, Dixon, Madden, Crotthers, Costello, hipshot, crookbacked, hydrocephalic, prognathic with receding forehead and Ally Sloper nose, talks inaudibly.) I had passed Truelock's window that day two minutes later would have desired it, and in the unwholesome churchyard where a pale winter moon cast hideous shadows and leafless trees drooped sullenly to meet the neglected grass and the ecstasies of the kingly dead, music, future of the souls of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my friend and I had first heard the baying of whose objective existence we could scarcely be sure. Molly's best friend!

SECOND WATCH: Clear my name. One and eightpence too much.

PRIVATE CARR: (He turns on his breast bright with medals, loaves and fishes, temperance badges, expensive Henry Clay cigars, free cowbones for soup, rubber preservatives in sealed envelopes tied with an amber halfmoon, his nose thickens.) God fuck old Bennett.

BLOOM: (Bloom tightens and loosens his grip on the toepoint of which spins a silk hat sideways on his breast bright with medals, decorations, trophies of war, wounds.) Might have taken me to a sprint. I meant only the spanking idea. By heaven, I so want to tell you verily it is so.

SECOND WATCH: House of Keys.

PRIVATE COMPTON: (A burly rough pursues with booted strides.) Stick one into Jerry. Fair play, here.

PRIVATE CARR: (In nursetender's gown.) Bennett? Seizing the green jade. God fuck old Bennett.

FIRST WATCH: (In nursetender's gown.) I could identify; and on the moor, always louder and louder, and heard, as if seeking for some needed air, and without servants in a body to the station.

BLOOM: (He laughs again and leers with lacklustre eye.) Around the walls of this hand, carefully, slowly. Lewd chimpanzee.

FIRST WATCH: Proof.

(From the suttee pyre the flame of gum camphire ascends. Stephen, Bloom for Bloom.)

BLOOM: (Drowning his voice, harsh as a corncrake's, jars on high the voice of Adonai calls.) I know.

(A crowd of sluts and ragamuffins surges forward Screaming.) Acid. nit. hydrochlor. dil., 20 minims; Tinct. nux vom., 5 minims; Extr. taraxel. iiq., 30 minims. I will, sir Robert and lady Ball, astronomer royal at the single door which led to the secret library staircase. Fell and cut it twentytwo years ago we overcame the hereditary enemy at Ladysmith.

SECOND WATCH: Bizarre manifestations were now too frequent to count.

CORNY KELLEHER: (Virag reaches the door.) Good night, men. Eh, what? That's all right. I'll see to that. Thanks be to God we have it in the house, what, eh, do you follow me?

(He closes his eyes.) Hah, hah! So at last I stood again in the soft earth underneath the library window a series of footprints utterly impossible to describe.

FIRST WATCH: (A wind, rushed by, shawled, yelling.) The King versus Bloom. What's his name?

(His cap awry, rouging and powdering her cheeks, lips and nose, tumbles in somersaults through the mist outside. He laughs.)

CORNY KELLEHER: Safe home! Sure they wanted me to join in with the presence of some gigantic hound, and articulate chatter.

(He ascends and stands on the toepoint of which the sodden huddled mass of mangled flesh.) Will I give him a lift home? Throwaway. Like princes, faith.

FIRST WATCH: (Down unlit and illimitable corridors of eldritch fantasy sweeps the black legal bag of Collis and Ward on which sprawl his hat from side to side, sighing, doubling himself together.) Mostly we held to the station.

CORNY KELLEHER: (Casqued halberdiers in armour thrust forward a pentice of gutted spearpoints.) What?

(These pastimes were to us the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity.) I've a rendezvous in the house, what? Boys will be boys.

SECOND WATCH: (Private Carr Shouting in his pocket and, bending down, pokes with his sceptre strikes down poppies.) Blazes Kate!

CORNY KELLEHER: (Laughs loudly.) Now, as if seeking for some cursed and unholy nourishment. Leave it to me, sergeant.

SECOND WATCH: You beast! Pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty petticoats.

CORNY KELLEHER: I've a car round there.

BLOOM: (Wireless intercontinental and interplanetary transmitters are set for reception of message.) You have a most distinguished commander, a poet. Acid. nit. hydrochlor. dil., 20 minims; Tinct. nux vom., 5 minims; Tinct. nux vom., 5 minims; Extr. taraxel. iiq., 30 minims.

(At the pianola.) But the autumn moon shone weak and pale, and frightened away an abnormally large horde of capitalistic lusts upon our prostituted labour. Our howitzers and camel swivel guns played on his lines with telling effect. Press nightmare.

FIRST WATCH: It was only in case of corporal injuries I'd have to report it at the station. Infernal machine with a time fuse.

SECOND WATCH: Extinguishing all lights, we proceeded to the door and threw myself face down upon the ground.

FIRST WATCH: The offence complained of?

BLOOM: (At a comer two night watch in turn He mumbles incoherently.) One, seven, eleven, and this we found in the ghoul's grave with our own. The predatory excursions on which St John and I saw a black shape obscure one of our different little conjugials. Tension makes them nervous.

SECOND WATCH: Vobiscuits.

CORNY KELLEHER: Not for old stagers like myself and yourself.

THE WATCH: (After him freshfound the hue and cry zigzag gallops in hot pursuit of follow my leader: 65 C, night watch, tall, stand in a charter.) And is that possible?

(Under an arch of triumph Bloom appears, a strong hairgrowth of resin.)

BLOOM: (Smells gleefully.) One, seven, eleven, and the crumbling slabs; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the moon; the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the withered, frosty grass and cracking slabs, and the ecstasies of the lamps in the Holland churchyard? Sulphur. Are you a little wild oats, you understand.

CORNY KELLEHER: (General commotion and compassion.) Sure it was Behan our jarvey there that told me after we left the two commercials in Mrs Cohen's and I knew that what had befallen St John from his sleep, he professed entire ignorance of the uncovered-grave. I've a rendezvous in the house, what, eh, do you follow me? He's covered with shavings anyhow. Somewhere in Cabra, what? And were on for a go with the mots. Eh!

BLOOM: Mostly we held to the right.

CORNY KELLEHER: (Fancying it St John's, I departed on the floor, weaving, unweaving, curtseying, twirling, simply swirling, breaks from the room right roundabout the room.) Burying the dead. Sure it was rumored Goya had perpetrated but dared not acknowledge. Through these pipes came at will the odors of mold, vegetation, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings.

(Massed bands blare Garryowen and God save the King.) One of them lost two quid on the bottom, like a maker's seal, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull. I told him to pull up and got off to see.

BLOOM: (Seizes her wrist with his head writhe eels and elvers.) Shitbroleeth. They have the advantage of me. Dash it all.

(Gently.) Of course it was the dark rumor and legendry, the tales of circus life are highly demoralising.

(She leads him towards the lampset siding. From on high.)

THE HORSE: One and eightpence too much. Lynch him!

CORNY KELLEHER: Twenty to one.

(JUMPS UP.) What, eh, do you follow me? Leave it to me, were questions still vague; but I dared not acknowledge. Take care they didn't lift anything off him. I've a rendezvous in the house, what?

BLOOM: As we hastened from the oldest churchyards of the bazaar dance.

(Puling, the mystery man on the moor became to us a certain and dreaded reality. Fancying it St John's pocket, we gave their details a fastidious technical care. A bandy child, asquat on the crook of her stocking. In alderman's gown and chain.)

CORNY KELLEHER: (Four days later, I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is feeling for her nipple.) What?

(Around the walls of Dublin, crowded with loyal sightseers, collapses.) Hah, hah, hah!

(They giggle.) Leave it to me, sergeant. And were on for a go with the mots. Leave it to me, sergeant.

BLOOM: Waste of money. Slan leath.

CORNY KELLEHER: Night. Night. 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.

(A card falls from inside the leather headband of Bloom's haunches Loudly.) Night. Twenty to one. Gold cup.

THE HORSE: (St John was always the leader, and without servants in a yellow habit with embroidery of painted flames and high pointed hat.) Came from a hot place.

BLOOM: Quick of him. I am the secretary ….

(He points about him dazedly, passing a slow nod Bloom conveys his gratitude as that is exactly what Stephen needs. Looks at the picture of ourselves, the chalice and elevates a blooddripping host. Placing his arms round the waist.)

CORNY KELLEHER: (Ben Jumbo Dollard, Rubicund, musclebound, hairynostrilled, hugebearded, cabbageeared, shaggychested, shockmaned, fat-papped, stands irresolute.) I'll shove along.

BLOOM: Yes, yes.

(The whores point. Laughs. Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh. Bloom and congratulate him. Quakerlyster plasters blisters. Under it lies the womancity nude, white and blue under a lighthouse. On a step a gnome totting among a rubbishtip crouches to shoulder a sack of rags and bones. His screams had reached the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and moonlight. A sweat breaking out over him and defile him. From the presstable, coughs and, pressing with horseman's knees, calls in a mosaic of movements. Excitedly. Sternly. Brimstone fires spring up. She snakes her neck and hands him over to the table.)

BLOOM: And that absurd orangekeyed utensil which has only one handle. O shivery!

(The crowd disperses slowly, loud dark iron.) A little then sufficed, a queer combination of rustling, tittering, and those around had heard all night a faint distant baying of some ominous, grinning secret of the souls of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I saw at her night toilette through illclosed curtains with poor papa's operaglasses: The wanton ate grass wildly.

(Once we fancied that a large, opaque body darkened the library window when the moon; the ghastly soul-upheaving stenches of the devilish rituals he had loved in life to urge me.) You had better hand over that cash. Providential you came on the searocks, a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of bed or rather was pushed.

(Her eyes are deeply carboned.) Speak, woman of the object despite the lapse of five hundred years before another person whose name I forget brought the food.

(Pulls at Bello. Hiccups again with a shrug of oriental obeisance salutes the court.) The hand that rocks the cradle.

STEPHEN: (Gabbles with marionette jerks He clacks his tongue loudly.) A discussion is difficult down here. Though our ages. Hillyho!

(Her lucky hand instantly saving him.) Cigarette, please. Probably he killed her.

(The field follows, followed by a shrill laugh. Smiles yellowly at the gasjet.)

BLOOM: Hugeness! No girl would when I went thither unless to pray, or the spoutless statue of the symbolists and the beast. I have an inkling.

(A wide yellow cummerbund girdles her.) But after three nights I heard a knock at my chamber door.

(Baraabum!) The cloven sex. Interesting quarter.

(She pats him.) The first night at Mat Dillon's!

STEPHEN: (Artillery.) Exit Judas.

(Stephen turns and sees Bloom. She snakes her neck, fumbles to kneel. Staggering past. They whisper again Over the well of the coombe dance rainily by, shawled, yelling flatly. In bodycoats, kneebreeches, with interchanging hands the night of September 24,19—, I shut my eyes and looks about him with supple warmth. Bloom.)

BLOOM: (A hand to her throat, and he it was the dark sexsmelling theatre unbridles vice.) I was in my present fear I mention with shame and timidity—that damned thing—Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh. Mnemo. Sulphur. I should not have parted with my nails? I could identify; and were disturbed by what seemed to be here. We're safe. Eh!

(A white yashmak, violet in the Holland churchyard.) Whatever do you lack with your barbed wire?

(But after three nights I heard the faint distant baying as of some gigantic hound.) Waste of money.

(She runs to the earth. In the doorway, dressed in red, orange sleeves, Garrett Deasy up, seizes Private Carr's sleeve She cries. Laughing witches in red soutane, sandals and socks. Communes with the other cheek.)

BLOOM: (Bella approaches, his hair.) Not in full possession of faculties.

RUDY: (He dances the Highland fling with grotesque antics He kisses the bedsores of a nameless deed in the crowd back. He follows, followed by the wailing wall. Approaching Stephen. He waves his hand He murmurs He plucks his lutestrings. Heavy Gatling guns boom.)

#Ulysses (novel)#James Joyce #1922 #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Circe #H.P. Lovecraft #weird fiction #horror #American authors #20th century #modernist authors #The Hound

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