#the white knight sliding down the poker
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xxdrowninglessonsxx · 24 days ago
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“THE WHITE KNIGHT Sliding Down The POKER.”
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definitely-not-iorveth · 1 year ago
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titles!! (i only know how to title things with allusions, i'm sorry)
knight of cups
consider the lilies
a game of cards
<3
oohhh 'consider the lilies' really speaks to me.
it gives me the image of iorveth stuck in temeria very much against his will, post-tw3, forced to play nice with the dh'oine.
therefore, i present to you: iorveth aén fidháil, filavandrel aén fidháil's cousin. and seeing as dol blathanna can't have a relative of their former king and current queen's advisor running wild doing dana meadbh only knows what, they track him down, very politely ask him to return home, and then cart him off to temeria as an elven ambassador.
he's not thrilled with it, and neither is roche.
and then they fall in love, of course.
since this resonated with me very strongly, i've written a smol snippet that will hopefully transform into a full fic some day 😌
“Consider the lilies,” Francesca drawls. “We want to make a good impression.” Iorveth turns his head away from the glittering display in front of him to give her a sneer. “No, you want to make a good impression,” he growls. “Filavandrel just wants me out of the way without loosening his hold on the leash. He couldn’t care less whether I make a good impression on the dh'oine.” Francesca gives him a sweet smile and struts her way over to his side. “Be that as it may,” she picks up a golden chain adorned with three nacre lilies nestled within two large leaves elaborately carved out of jade, “you would do well to remember that as of the present, I am the queen, and he is merely an advisor, however much treasured.” She wraps the chain around his neck. “And as the queen, I can make your life quite unpleasant.” The clasp closes with a quiet click, and it feels like a collar snapping shut. He glances back at the display as she glides to his front to adjust the pendant over the richly embroidered, fur-trimmed tunic. “Vyzima is quite a way off from Dol Blathanna,” he notes snidely, and she pauses in her movement. “You underestimate my reach, little fox. You will find no burrow deep enough in all of Temeria to escape my grasp.” The sensation of her cool fingers sliding down his cheek feels more like a slap than a caress that it is. Just to spite her, he picks up a rose brooch with petals of white agate and pins it over his heart. The corners of Francesca’s lips turn down, but she doesn’t comment on it.
the other two would be much shorter:
knight of cups: another sequel to ssof. geralt, currently a tourney knight in toussaint, visits his two old pals to share stories of his knightly conquests and vineyard success stories. then he drinks them both under the table, earning himself the title of the knight of cups in their eyes.
a game of cards: this one would be very short, maybe a drabble. set during tw2, roche's path. geralt witnesses the stripes nagging ves to play strip poker (strip gwent?), and roche just throwing his hands up and leaving. so geralt asks him if he's really cool with it, seeing as ves seems kind of like a little sister, kind of like a daughter to him? and roche just waves him off. 'see for yourself.' and geralt does, and what he witnesses is ves stripping all of the stripes bare.
thank you so much for the ask! 💚😘 i enjoyed coming up with these very much. 🥰🤗
send me a made-up fic title and i'll tell you what i would write to go with it
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guigz1-coldwar · 3 years ago
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'A little too closer' : New chapter for "Always for the greater cause..." is out !
Chapter Summary: Bell & the team arrived in Colorado for their next mission, not before two days, and for the time being, it will all be resting & preparing the plans for the future...while news fall...and things are done...
To read it on AO3, click here!
Taglist: @snowgoldwaylon , @clxudtea , @efingart
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25th February 1981, 01H00
Owethu "Jackal" Mabuza, Mercenary hired by Perseus
Perseus safehouse 'Wolf's Den' in Colorado Springs, United States
The United States wasn't the country that I would have wanted to go in my life but since we were asked by Stitch himself, along with Naga to join the Perseus safehouse in Colorado Springs, we were obliged to comply, knowing that there was money in play for us and to say, we weren't going to refuse that at all, even Naga didn't flinch and was the first one to prepare his things when Stitch make us learn the news a day earlier.
To say, the place we were was...basic at my thoughts and very typical from the Perseus safehouse that I could have traveled to: always inside an abandoned warehouse and in the surroundings in the city but there was a little detail that I didn't take in account. Robert Aldrich himself was the one supervising the place for the moment, awaiting with us Stitch's arrival with his team as for me & Naga, we were making some distractions for ourselves...
"Come on, I'm going to do it," Naga said in a serious & struggling voice as we decided to make a little friendly competition of arm wrestling at one of the empty desks of the warehouse, and to be honest, it was the first time I was facing some difficulties to beat someone in arm wrestling. "Give up, I'm winning," He demanded in a funny voice as my arm was ready to touch the desk, my right arm trying to do its best.
"Don't speak up too quick, friend," I taunted him behind my red mask, seeing the veins of my right arm showing up for good, the strength I was putting in it was massive.
"That's what you think but..." Naga tried to scoff until his eyes behind his sunglasses that I was able to see went wide at seeing his arms, slowly going up and away from the desk. "Hey...how...dammit,' He started to panic as our both arms were getting back at their former positions. "Nope, ain't going to win, Jackal," He persisted as his arm was sliding slightly on his side.
"Not by looking between us," I stated, my right hand clenching at its best as Naga's arm was going to touch the desk, and then, in a fast move, I managed to slam his arm hard against the desk.
"Ouch, fuck!" He shouted, his voice echoing inside the main room and holding his right wrist with his left hand.
"Too easy," I commented, crossing my arms as I leaned myself comfy inside the chair I was, looking at Naga who was blowing air at his poor hand. "Told you that you would lose, Naga, you didn't listen," I told him, breaking a muffled laugh through my mask.
"You know, I wasn't going to back down to a challenge like that," He breathed, putting his left hand below his right one as he posed them on the desk, his eyes not removing themselves from his hands. "Another one?" He proposed.
"You want me to break your arm completely?" I raised an eyebrow behind my mask, sounding joking but not him. "Naga, a bit of advice, don't," I advised him, even using a serious voice to that.
"Are you backing down for a challenge?" He sounded surprised by that, raising his eyebrow to me.
"No, no one wants to have you with a broken arm...not even yourself," I reminded him well, knowing that we were the men for the dangerous jobs, and having a broken arm isn't really helping us. "You know well that Stitch is surely going to send you with that Bell on the mission in two days, remember?" I insisted on it, just as a friend.
"Yeah, he wants me to...control the asset a bit closer," He sniffed, getting his both hands away, palms of them against the desk. "And you know well that I volunteered for that, it's thanks to my drugs & Wraith's stolen file that I'm the third one to know how to deal with her," He affirmed before he decides to get up from his chair, walking towards the black coffee machine.
"Isn't a bit dangerous to...well, doing that to someone?" I asked him about the whole situation surrounding this Bell, having briefly heard of it.
"Is that the same Jackal that could strangle a man and getting him up, that could slaughter a whole army with just a machete that is asking me that?" He turned his head around to look at me, astonished.
'Fucking with other's mind isn't my part of the work, so excuse me if I'm curious," I pardoned him in a fake way, even putting my hand above my heart to express that fully.
"As long that we're getting paid, I'm okay with this...and to say, it's fun," He exclaimed before turning back to the coffee machine...and hit it with the back of his left fist in a wave of surprising anger. "You're going to work, you fucking stupid machine?" He was sounding a bit angry at this, seeing in his moves that he could take the machine and throw it away even if the guy was hurt, he would do it.
"Don't break it down, people are going to need it, Naga," A voice spoke up, entering the room and revealing none other than Aldrich himself, having spent the majority of his night in another room than us, to make calls and doing his preferred things: fuck up his own agency. "Seems that you two are getting along well here," He added.
"Didn't know that it was a bit hotter than Laos," Naga said, his hands on the collar of his jacket to slightly readjust it, meaning that he was hot and that feeling was shared by me even if my clothes are better for that climate...hopefully.
"Of course, it's hotter...if you two continue to persist to keep those masks on your face," Alrich scoffed, looking at me particularly.
"As I said, no one is seeing my face," I mumbled, predicting in Aldrich an urge to remove my mask. "You want to know what happened to those who saw it?" I demanded at him but also Naga who turned around to look at me in curiosity. "That's the last thing that they saw before I put my hands around their necks to shut their mouths, you don't want to be the one in my hands, do you?" I warned the two, using a rather threatening voice that instantly cooled down the ambiance of the room.
"Not at all, Owethu," Aldrich sighed.
"It's Jackal for you, Aldrich," I pointed him with my finger, him looking mostly unimpressed as he was moving towards the filled-up desk that he was owning, going to lean on it. "To change, any news from the others?"
"Stitch's team are going to be soon, he called me a few minutes from the airport at Denver," He replied, putting his hands on his lap in front of him. "You two should get either ready to greet them or going into another recon mission at Cheyenne Mountain," He suggested to us.
"We're going to go soon but...aren't you the one who has to give us everything about it?" Naga questioned him, staying near the coffee machine as he was struggling to make it work. "Like, you're CIA why we would beat our ass around if we're going to infiltrate one of the biggest bases in the whole US soil?" He continued, his voice getting a bit louder, his hands trying to find out what was wrong with that machine.
"Because the CIA is having suspicions on me and that's why I can't directly go inside Cheyenne Mountain to grab what we need," Aldrich responded, rolling his eyes around and sounding annoyed...typical. "So, be on the move, make your time here useful instead of doing arm wrestling or poker or....anything that isn't about work," He ordered to us in a clear voice as I & Naga were exchanging glares.
"At 1 AM?" Naga mumbled before he yawned, putting his hand in front of his mask...he did it...even with his mask on.
"At least, we're getting paid, right?" I hissed, going up from my seat and feeling obliged to leave the safehouse by Aldrich. "You heard the boss, Naga, let's move," I sighed, starting to walk back to the workplace I was temporarily using for me, gathering around what I needed to make that recon mission with Naga to the Cheyenne Mountain that was at the other side of the city...
"Fuck, I always hated the Americans...but I'm paid,"
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25th February 1981, 02H32
Yirina 'Bell' Grigoriev, Ex-KGB, Perseus
Arriving at the Perseus safehouse 'Wolf's Den' in Colorado Springs
The driving to reach the safe house in Colorado Springs was a bit long & boring to attend as the transport we were using was a white van where our seats were not very comfortable while Stitch & Bellamy were the ones having the perfect seats, me, Wraith & Knight having to use the wooden bench of the van behind along with Smirnov that was still with us, knocked out & drugged for the flight and...it was already exhausting me to be in that van as if my rest in the plane wasn't so useful after all.
And to add to that, Bellamy almost started to sing in the van to destress everyone...but he was only met in the few seconds by Stitch 'to shut up or his head was going to hit the steering wheel first' as he quoted and that was amusing me & the others, allowing the rest of the travel to be fine...except those damn uncomfortable seats and the fact that Bellamy was the one to drive, I didn't know if it could have been taken in account...
After finally 1 hour and a half of driving, we finally reached our destination that was an old warehouse similar to the one we were using in East-Berlin and when I stepped out of the van, after grabbing my bag, it was like the best feeling I lived today, having the impression to have been locked down in that small van.
"Bell, I think that we should be better inside," Wraith told me as she put her left hand on my shoulder while I was stretching my arms & legs a few meters from the van.
"Yeah, I was just getting myself better," I said and I took a quick breath before putting my hands on my bag on the ground, grabbing it to walk to the entrance with the others, seeing Knight holding the unconscious Zasha Smirnov in his shoulder. "They're still sleeping?" I asked him.
"With the dose that Stitch gave them, guess that we could call them soon the 'Sleeping Beauty," He laughed, keeping his head in front of him, his voice sounding amused.
"No one wanted to have a flight & drive where we could only hear them screaming, crying and cursing," Bellamy stated, near Knight and for a first, the two weren't launching things that could irritate the other...hopefully.
"You will be the one to have this job of keeping them...in shape to interrogation," Stitch told him, pointing his hand at Bellamy before the whole group arrived near the big garage door where Stitch knocked at it three times, and a few seconds later, the door was getting opened. "Everyone, welcome to the US of A," Stitch half-joked about it as he got his head to look inside, a man with a grey sweater arriving near us.
"Stitch, hope you did a good travel," The man started, gesturing at Stitch with his head who nodded before letting us enter inside.
"Of course, Aldrich...if we don't mention some details," Stitch exclaimed, exchanging a gaze with Bellamy himself, stepping inside the building with the others. "You remember everyone, do you?" He asked Aldrich who was going to a control panel, supposedly for the garage door.
"Yes, Bellamy Petrov, Freya Helvig, Roman Gary...and Yirina Grigoriev..." Aldrich divulged, his finger pressing on a button that was getting the garage door shut down behind me and I was a bit uncomfortable in me...the first time someone addressed me by my name and not by Bell. "But as you prefer for some, Wraith, Knight & Bell,"
"Don't forget Azrael for me...or Cerberus...or Oni..." Bellamy raised his voice, looking that he wanted the attention on him as everyone looked at him a bit confused. "Or...Uhm...for the moment, it ain't official but... never mind," He stopped himself, pulling himself back as he put his own bag on an empty desk as I was keeping mine in my hands, along with Wraith and also Knight who was still having Smirnov on his shoulder.
"Knight, Bellamy, get Krypto in the designated room, better for you," Stitch suggested and Knight nodded before he starts to walk in a direction, opening a door and disappearing from our sight after he closed the door behind him. "So, Aldrich, you said that you have news," Stitch moved near a desk that was filled up with a lot of things.
"Yes, first: I send back Naga & Jackal for another recon at Cheyenne Mountain, they should be back in the morning," Aldrich started, crossing his arms as he was walking near a little dashboard near the desk Stitch was. "And the major...& bad news, Volkov was captured hours ago in East-Berlin,"
"Shit, what happened?" Wraith asked, getting her bag next to Bellamy's one.
"It said that the CIA, the BND & the MI6 did an operation to get Volkov at one of his warehouses and they succeeded: Ritcher managed to escape but not Krauz," He replied, not looking at her and more at the ground before he switched his eyes on Stitch. "The Greenlight documents fell back into the CIA's hands, Stitch,"
"No think to worry about that, we got what we needed," Stitch reassured him in a good voice despite that the situation in the East wasn't looking good to hear about.
"There's nothing else?" I spoke up and by the look on Aldrich, my voice kinda surprised him and the others as if they were hearing my voice for the first time.
"Well, now, Volkov is said to be in the MI6's hands and as we're fearing, he might be going to speak," Alrich responded to me, his face looking a bit unsure to speak to me and that was getting me a bit confused & questioning about why he was like that, maybe that he wasn't a trustful person...maybe..."I guess that we can't start until Naga & Jackal are back from their mission,"
"You're right and as I thought, everyone will need some rest, the flight wasn't so easy to live with all the turbulence," Stitch exclaimed, his hands against the desk behind him as his eyes were drifting around the warehouse to look at it before they went on me. "You should get some rest, Bell, you're looking tired,"
"I...yeah...I think so," I admitted, adding seconds later a silent yawn coming out of my mouth.
"Wraith, you know the place, take the lead for Bell to her room," He ordered, making a sign with his head to Wraith who nodded.
"Understood," She smiled at him before she moved to grab her bag back on the desk. "You're coming?" She demanded at me and I quickly nodded at her before she starts to move away, following her closely.
It was true that the sleep I did on the plane didn't help me at all as I was looking more tired than when I closed my eyes inside the plane and thankfully, I could finally go to sleep on a real bed and not a wooden bench. Wraith was leading the way inside a little hallway where some doors were present, observing her moving like...to say, she was looking very beautiful on all sides and that was quite astonishing for me to think about it now, my thoughts trying to get away as we reached a door which Freya stopped in front of it.
"Here we are," She exclaimed, getting her hands on the door handle before she opens the door, revealing the bedroom...
"Wow, that's looking more...changing from the look of the warehouse," I said, amazed by seeing how much the room was more looking great than the warehouse itself the bed was a king-sized, enough for two. "Is it like the same thing for the other room?" I demanded.
"You know, people need comfort and it's not because that place is an old warehouse that it has to be old inside," Wraith replied, moving to reach the empty table that was near a door, leading to a little private bathroom as she opened it along the way. "I hope that you don't snore too much," She said in an amused voice.
"Uhm...why are you asking that?" I questioned her, narrowing my eyes at her as she was unzipping her bag on the table
"They didn't tell you, of course," She told me, slowly turning around to look at me. "Aldrich took one of the bedrooms as he wasn't supposed to be here and since, I volunteered to let him take the room I was going to take," She revealed to me, full of curiosity on the inside. "What? Do you want me to sleep outside? In a motel or in the van?" She raised an eyebrow when she saw me and my confused face.
"No, no, no, that's...well, it's better that you stay here..." I responded in full honesty to her, not wanting to be a dork to her like that. "Of course that you can sleep in this room...with me...uhm..." I scratched the back of my head as she was turning around...starting to remove her top without any shame, causing me to look around, my eyes tempting to look at her.
"You know, you can look," She spoke up, his voice sounding good & reassuring to me.
"It's just that..."
"Come on, it's not because we're soldiers that we can't know each other, and to say, we're the only girls around, what can be better than this?" She proclaimed after cutting me gently in my words and...I couldn't resist anymore, turning to see her with only a black bra covering her top as she was getting her hands on her jeans. "You should get to sleep quick, Bell, for your own good," She advised me/
"Uhm, yeah, of course," I complied, starting to get my hands around my waist.
To say, I was a bit distraught to undress with someone else in the room but Wraith was like...putting some confidence inside of me with her words that caused me to do what she said and I was slowly removing my clothes, keeping only my shirt and removing my pants, shoes but still, I was afraid, each time, to turn around and meet Wraith's eyes, not actually wanting her to look at me in shame and I did...she was already in bed, her eyes on me.
"Please, don't look," I demanded at her as I was gathering the clothes I took off me on a chair nearby.
"Bell, it's okay, you don't need to be afraid," She said in a calm voice, already under the blanket.
"Hey, I'm going to sleep with someone else like that, don't know if I need to be afraid," I exclaimed at her, tapping on my now pile of clothes before I turned my back to get next to my side of the bed. "It's not something that happens to me a lot...or...I don't know, it's just weird for me,"
"Don't worry, you will be used to that," She told me as I was getting myself on the bed, raising up with my hand my part of the blanket to get under it.
"Yeah, we'll see about it," I mumbled, laid down on the bed before I shut down the light of my nightstand and stay to look away from Wraith "Good night, Wraith," I whispered in a low voice as her light was staying on before I closed my eyes.
She then closed her light, plunging the room in the dark, only enlightened by the outside, the window at Wraith's side of the bed and I was trying my best to get to sleep without thinking of having a colleague of work in the same bed as me, knowing her for only 4 days and that was so strange but only 5 minutes after she closed the light that I started to feel something wrapping around my waist...her hands...
"Wraith...Wraith, your hands," I muttered, feeling the cold palms of her hands touching softly my skin and that was frightened me, her hands slowly making circles on my chest. "Wraith...Wraith!" I spoke up, trying to wake her up from her sleep but she wasn't waking up. "Shit, Wraith!" I raised my voice again a bit scared but again, nothing was said or done to stop that to happen...
I tried to move her hands away from me but each time, her hands were coming back around me, residing myself to give up...and to let her hands around me, finding it so strange & weird...as if she wanted to keep me with her, why was she doing this? That was at first scaring me & sending me chills in my arms but then, I started to stop thinking about that part, feeling suddenly secured until I put my both hands on her...
I didn't know but it was making me secure...and somehow, happy...
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bluebirdwrites · 5 years ago
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j stands for joker; batfam
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warnings; language, violence, injury, non-consensual touching (nothing extreme), descriptions of death.
author’s note; so,, this is based off of Arkham knight slightly where jason gets branded by the joker. except!!! in this universe, the normal thing where jason died happened, and it’s batsis that this happens to during an unexpected situation.. if that makes sense? hopefully this isn’t too sucky :’) fem!reader too, btw (: here’s my dc masterlist in case you wanna, you know, check it out! requests the opennnn ;)
summary; with time, you hope that Joker will burn. that he will be marked by death the way that he has branded your skin.
Being held up in the bank with your brother on the way to get lunch is not how you expected the day to go. Not to mention, being Wayne kids had massive targets immediately on your backs in the case of bank robbers.
If only they knew Bruce Wayne was Batman.
“Fuck’s sake,” He drags a hand down his face, palming at his cheeks looking rather like a spoilt child with an angry pout on his face at a time like this. “Of all the times that I don’t carry my guns. This shit happens.”
You glare at him over your shoulder, making sure to thump him up the side of the head watching as the white strands mix with black, “Not the time when we’ll probably be the ones offered up as rich people bait Jason.”
It’s not the people that turn you in surprisingly enough, it turns out to be the white streak of hair that flops over your brother’s forehead that gives him away as the a Wayne boy, and in turn you as a Wayne girl.
The thugs parade around you both in a circle making sure to taunt you both, roughly shoving your brother to the floor even as he glares up with such a ferocity you know he’s itching to lose it. So, stupidly- bravely maybe, you step in, completely ignoring the glare that is now focused on you.
“Well aren’t you boys just precious? Look,” you let out a whistle and press the emergency button on your necklace that would alert the whole family. “How about you take your hands off of my brother and shove them up your ass so I don’t have to do it for you.” It is said lightly, even as Jason continues to give you a look of exasperation that says to shut up, it’s too late now.
The men laugh as the leader- seemingly a member of Jokers crew by the white clown makeup he wears- steps toward you and lifts your chin with a gun. “Listen rich-bitch, I don’t want to mess up that pretty face of yours,” the gun stays put as the man grabs your waist and brings you towards him by the hips. “That and I always like a woman with a mouth. I think I’ll take you with me sweetheart. Make everyone else leave, let’s keep the girl here for when the boss arrives.”
You can see three guys grab Jason and struggle to hold him as the guy turns you so your back is to his chest. “Everyone out,” the guy rubs the gun in circles on your temple and cocks it as you give a fuming Jason a hard look telling him to go. “Or her brains paint the wall a nice shade of red.”
Everyone leaves, and you’re sure your family will be here soon as the guy feels you up. You growl low in your throat and drive your elbow backwards as his hand grazes over your ass.
“Touchy, touchy,” the guy ties you up on a chair in the bank ripping your shirt from your torso. The gun is still pointed to your temple and your impatience grows. “The boss is here rich-bitch, and he’s going to have some fun with you.”
The clown is pasty white and scarred as always. Still wearing a purple suit and an orange plaid dress shirt. Still a psycho with green hair and an unflinching smile; this is your first time meeting him in civilian clothes.
“Well, well, well. Whatever do we have here? You wouldn’t happen to be Miss Wayne would you? My, my, my,” the Clown’s cackles bounce off of the walls as he claps his hands in glee. “Now you’re all mine, mine, mine, to do with as I please. Can’t harm that pretty face can I? I’ll have to get creative.”
He turns to the thug in the room, gun still hesitantly trained on you. The clown smiles, mouth gleaming yellow and bared as he purrs approaching his henchman holding out his hand expectant. “Such a good boy, give me the gun,” the goon is wary as he gives Joker the gun. “Time for the fun, pull my finger.”
The sound of the bullet ripping though the man’s skull is wet, spraying blood and brain matter from the impact of the bullet. The henchmen’s eyes are glazed as his body dully falls to the floor and pools with red. The clown cackles and jumps with glee, clicking his heels and shimmying around the fallen body.
Soon after, Joker brings forth a battery and generator that one would use on a car from a storage closet. He unhurriedly connects a wire to each arm and each leg and steps back chittering to himself as you wonder what in the hell is taking your family so long.
“Now pet, I’m not going to kill you! Of course not!,” his voice lowers an octave as the first circuit of electricity goes through you with the press of a button in his palm causing a loud groan to escape you and buzzing noises to fill your ears. “I’m just going to hurt you. Really, really, bad.”
A mere few minutes later, he stops the surges of electricity, seemingly frazzled as he approaches you with a metal rod and an unfaltering grin and twitching, deranged eyes. You begin to struggle, as it looks akin to that of a branding iron with its red hot end at one end of the metal.
“It seems that we’ve run out of play time dear, I’ll leave you something to remember me by until our next play-date since we’ve had so much fun together.” The clown lifts the iron poker for you to see, red hot with the letter ‘J’ held close to the side of your neck.
You’re straining in your chair as you think you can feel the buzz of your necklace on your collarbones, alerting you that they are coming. They’ll be here soon is all you can think as you try and stall.
“Go to hell you” it is said, and it is said with venom lacing your voice. It makes the clown all the more eager as he pushes the brand into the side of your neck. The pain is searing and it makes your toes curl as a scream rips through your throat as you become branded with him. His name on your body forever.
He soon stands back and claps his hands as he reheats the brand placing the mark multiple more times against your bare torso, becoming increasingly gleeful as you scream and cry. “You’re mine now girlie, got me all over you.”
The sound of glass raining from above like a hurricane is reassuring as the pain throbs and your body is searing and sizzling where his brand has been. The clown stands behind you, lifting your head by your hair. He’s leaning over your shoulder as he shows you off like a sick prize to your family in costume.
“Look at how pretty she looks all marked up,” he yanks your head to the side showing one of his brands and slides his hands up and down your torso where the rest of the brands lie. “Now she’s all mine, mine, mine. I had fun with her today, we’ll have to do it again sometime! Tell her daddy I say ‘Hi’!”
Tears are in your eyes as you look at the members of your family currently in front of you. Varying levels of anger are displayed, as they all twitch and glare looking ready to rip the clown behind you to shreds. Joker leans down to rest his head on your shoulder and wrap his arms around your neck and giggle as the lights go out and he is gone. Just like that becoming a ghost.
There is a beat of silence where your head rolls harshly to the side as you stare blankly with silent tears. There is a beat of silence as they realise that Joker is gone and of the pain that you are in and the state of your body. The beat of silence is the calm before the storm. In that beat of silence you are scared, utterly terrified. Not of the clown but of what he has done to you.
You don’t move and neither do they, too paralysed and too numb and in that moment you just want your family. The tears come faster, they come in fat salty rivets that cover your cheeks and drip off your jaw. The panic and the pain sets in next, overwhelmingly so, and it crushes you.
Your dad is there first, not as Batman but as Bruce Wayne- he must have come through the front entrance judging by the wide open door and police escort- as he reaches you, his daughter. The restraints are gone as you fall forward into him as he allows himself to run his hands through your hair and kiss the crown of your head.
“Dad,” you cling to your father and you are aware as he picks you up and wraps you in his suit jacket being careful of the brands that cover your torso. “Can we go home?”
Your brothers are in costume you realise, as they vanish in quick succession, one after the other. When you get outside, there is press and police and sirens. There are flashing cameras and yelling. The police force a barricade around yourself and your father make press leave.
The next thing you remember you’re in an ambulance and there are four people rushing towards you and your dad. Damian reaches you first, where an out of character hug happens as he leaps on you minding the bandages on your torso. He has his head resting on your shoulder and all you can think is, ‘I’m glad it was me and not anyone else.’
“I’ll kill him,” it’s said as a snarl and you know he means it. There’s no playing around with what he’s saying, with the sincerity of it. “He hurt you. Branded you, and I know you are not okay before you even say it. I was worried and I am glad that you’re okay.”
With glassy green eyes, he gently lets go of you standing slightly to the side and then Dick’s there, half picking you up and still being careful with you. But you can feel the anger bubbling in the trembling of his arms and the ticking of his jaw, the familiarity of the dangerous temper hiding under the surface. You can see the fear too, within the tears ready to drip down his cheeks and the shaky breaths he takes.
“Had us worried there pretty bird,” and he’s letting you sit back down fully and kissing your temple. “Don’t taunt the guys holding you hostage again please. Don’t take after Jason. Cass, Babs and Kate are going after Joker at the moment.”
He now stands to the side with his jaw locked talking to Damian. And Tim’s looking at you with tired, worried eyes as he takes large steps forward to hug you. He’s hugging you as tight as he can; so tight you can feel the racing and stuttering of his heart in his chest. He seems beyond relieved that you’re okay.
He’s pulling back to look you in the eye. “When I saw you before, I-,” he’s now gripping your shoulders forcing your eyes to meet the smouldering steely blue of his own, that show the distress within them. “I thought he was going to kill you y’know? I thought that- well, I’ll tell you later. Just know that I’m glad you’re safe pretty bird.”
As Tim joins your other brothers, it is only Jason with you now. You can see it in his eyes- he’s tearing himself to bits. He looks like he’s been crying, his face is puffy and his cheeks and nose are flushed pink. He strides towards you until he’s standing so close he’s towering over you wringing his hands looking like a kicked puppy.
“Why did you talk back to that thug in there? I had it under control! You were hurt by him, it should’ve been me! Why the fuck? I will kill that son of-“ he’s ranting and running his hands through his hair, mussing it up beyond belief. His eyes are blue green and darkening with his anger, and his lip is beginning to wobble the way it always does before he either explodes or is about to cry.
And you’re the one pulling him to you this time, tired arms around broad shoulders. You’re the one making him cling to you as he hugs you as tight and as tenderly as he can while his eyes water and he’s shaking like a leaf. Only when he’s ready, he’s pulling back and silently asking to look at the brand on your neck.
When he sees it, he looks green and he gags. Not because the wound is that bad, but because of what it stands for. Because of who had branded you, of the promise Joker made, of the fact you both knew Joker would be back for you.
The ‘J’ covers the entire column of the left side of your throat, it looks red and angry and painful. Jason is tentative as he runs a finger over it and you look each other in the eye. It burns. And with time, you both hope that Joker will burn too.
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dangerouscommiesubversive · 4 years ago
Note
*hiding behind a wall to see if commie accepts* Tsukasa (ot4) and Sougo(ot..4?), Z (found family)?
Z is for family
Junichiro laughs awkwardly. “I’m so sorry, Mr--Yuusuke, it feels like whenever you come here you end up repairing something.”
Yuusuke shrugs, grins. “I like having things to do with my hands, and there’s no sense in making you waste money on a plumber for something this simple to fix. And I’m going to teach Geiz how to do it too, so if it comes up again and you can’t get in touch with me he can take care of it.”
Blinking in surprise, Junichiro looks past Yuusuke’s shoulder to Geiz, who shrugs. “Woz hates being dirty and Sougo...uh...I kinda don’t think we should encourage Sougo to take apart stuff in the house. Um, no offense.”
“None taken, Geiz, I’ve known him longer than you have and I don’t know that I’d trust him to fix the toilet either, he’s, ah...”
“A little absent-minded?” is Yuusuke’s cheerfully diplomatic suggestion.
“Yes, exactly.”
A frustrated noise floats in from the dining room, and Geiz glances over nervously towards the doorway. “Maybe we should get started on that before Daiki actually manages to lose his temper.”
“I don’t think he’d really lose his temper over something like this.” Yuusuke also glances toward the dining room and frowns. “But then again, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him lose at chess this many times in a row.”
There’s a notable silence, and then the sound of Tsukuyomi saying, quietly, “Checkmate,” followed by Daiki’s aggrieved, “Where did you learn to play chess like that?”
“Yeah, let’s head upstairs, either he’s going to actually get upset or he and Tsukuyomi are about to have some kind of serious conversation and he’d be embarrassed if we overheard him, he hates getting serious in public.”
--
In the dining room, Tsukuyomi frowns at her queen and says, “I...I don’t actually know. I know how to play chess, but I don’t remembering...learning how to play chess. Or who taught me.”
Daiki's resetting the chessboard, so he doesn't look up at her, but he does say, "You know, sometimes I envy Tsukasa for having been allowed to forget things." Before Tsukuyomi can reply, though, "But then he'll go saying something like you just said and I remember how lucky I have it."
Tsukuyomi's frown gets a little deeper, but now she looks more confused than frustrated. "What do you mean?"
"Has he ever mentioned that he can't remember his parents' faces? Or their names?"
"He...no, he hasn't."
"Being able to forget is a blessing, but only if it's something you can allow yourself to do. Having it happen to you is a different thing entirely." He finishes setting up the pieces. "Sorry, I'm being gloomy, it happens sometimes."
Tsukuyomi peers at him for a moment before responding. “That’s why you started showing up to talk to Geiz, wasn’t it. Because of something you wish you could forget.”
Daiki still doesn’t look up at her. Now that the board’s reset he’s started fidgeting with the pieces again, picking up both kings and queens and rolling them in his hands. “You’re too sharp for your own good, you know that?” He puts the kings and queens down again in a little square in the center of the board. “I had a younger brother once. I failed him pretty badly.”
“I mean, apparently I had an older brother once, and he tried to kill me.” Tsukuyomi taps the white queen on the top of its little crown. “That’s also why you keep bringing me Watches.”
“Got it in one. You deserve a better brother. I think you four remind us all of ourselves.” Daiki looks down thoughtfully at the little square of pieces. “Hey, look, by the way, it’s you.” He taps the white queen just as Tsukuyomi did. “So I guess that’d make this one Sougo--” the black king, “and this one Geiz,” the white king.
She giggles. “And Woz is the black queen?”
“Well, it’s not a perfect one-to-one. I guess I could go with the black bishop, but guys who go by Bishop tend to be pretty ominous characters and he's not nearly as worrying as he used to be.”
“So if we’re like you guys, then which one of these are you?”
“Oh, we’re not chess pieces, we’re cards.” Rustling, and a Tarot deck emerges from one of the interior pockets of Daiki’s jacket. He slides it lovingly out of the box and flips through the deck, drawing four cards and laying them down on the table next to the chessboard--the King of Wands, the Queen of Coins, and the Knight of Swords, and the Page of Cups. “See? There’s Tsukasa, that’s Natsumi, obviously this one is Yuusuke, and that’s me.”
“You just...had that in your pocket? And...Cups is the one that turned into Hearts, right? You’re the Page of Hearts?”
They’re interrupted by a startled noise from the kitchen, Woz saying, “How did you get that--” as Tsukasa, at the same time, says, “Princess, we don’t play with kitchen knives, give me that.”
“Ooh, sounds like things are getting exciting in there.” Daiki’s face lights up with a genuine grin. “Anyway, you have no idea how much stuff I’ve got in my pockets, that’s right, and of course I am. The Knave of Hearts, he stole some tarts. Speaking of which...” The Tarot deck goes away, and is replaced by on the table by a deck of regular playing cards. “Why don’t we switch games? You know how to play poker?”
--
Tsukasa carefully takes the paring knife from Yuzuki and puts it back on the counter, farther back from the edge than it was before. “I’m pretty sure you grew, I don’t think you could have reached up there last week.”
She grins up at him. “Tall!”
“Yeah, that’s right, you’re very tall.”
Woz shifts nervously as she returns to the kitchen chair she’s been occupying and clambers up onto the seat. Once she’s occupied with her stacking cups again and in no apparent danger of getting her hands on another knife, he visibly relaxes. He picks a piece of dumpling filling from the mixing bowl with his chopsticks, deposits it in the wrapper in his hand, and passes the whole thing to Tsukasa. “I appreciate your assistance with this.”
Tsukasa shrugs and starts to crimp the dumpling shut. “I figure you’re probably not usually cooking for ten people.” Closed, the dumpling goes onto a sheet pan, where there are already at least fifty completed but uncooked pieces laid out.
“You might be surprised. Sougo and Geiz both eat a great deal.”
“And you don’t?” Tsukasa accepts another filled wrapper and looks Woz up and down. “I’ve seen you eat, it’s kind of amazing that you’re so skinny.”
“That’s...not unfair.”
They make dumplings in silence, Woz filling and Tsukasa crimping as the sheet pan becomes fuller and fuller. Eventually they have to get a second pan, and when they’ve got ten dumplings down on that, Yuzuki slides down from her chair with a thump and tugs on the hem of Woz’s shirt. “Woz. Woz. Woz.”
Woz looks down at her in alarm. “Yes?”
She points imperiously to the counter. “Book.”
“Ah...yes? That’s my book.”
A firm nod. “Woz, book.”
“She wants you to read to her.” Tsukasa puts aside another completed dumpling. “Right, princess?”
Yuzuki nods again. “Ok! Read book!”
Woz only looks more alarmed. “Why me?”
“Well, she knows it’s your book.”
“Yes, but my book is...” Woz glances to the side. “My book is not suitable for children.”
Tsukasa’s eyebrows go up. “Isn’t it? If the stories in there aren’t suitable for children then I don’t know what is.” He pauses. “I mean, maybe don’t read to her about the Amazon kids, the Greek ones, but otherwise. I can keep making dumplings by myself, I’ll be fine.”
Uncertain, Woz nods, puts aside the cooking chopsticks, and washes his hands before taking his book down from its spot on the counter. Yuzuki claps delightedly as he sits down in the kitchen chair and climbs up onto his lap with only minimal wincing on his part. “Woz, book! Thank you.”
His mouth twitches slightly, as if he’s trying not to smile, and Tsukasa winks at him. Then, carefully, he opens up the book and turns to a spot about sixteen pages in. “Long, long ago, there was a man who knew how to do one thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine things--”
“Big number.”
“Yes, very big. There was a man who knew how to do one thousand nine hundred and ninety nine things, and his name was Godai Yusuke.”
“Like Daddy! Yusuke!”
“Just like your father, yes. And he loved nothing more than the blue sky and to travel and have adventures...”
--
“Hm. A little to the left, please.”
Sougo blinks. “Which one?”
“The Ride Booker. Your big watch is so chunky that it’s actually managed to make the Booker look small, which is pretty impressive.” Natsumi frowns, peering at the screen on her camera, and then shifts slightly as Sougo adjusts the placement of the Ride Booker. “Yeah, there we go, that looks nice.”
She takes several pictures. They’re working outside in the sun, so she doesn’t use the flash, and after ten or so shots she nods in satisfaction and Sougo says, “Do you want me to rearrange them?”
“No, that’s fine, I’ve got what I wanted. Here, toss me the Booker, you can take your watch now.“
“Ok, here. Why did you want a picture of the Grand Zi-O watch?”
She shrugs. “I don’t get to do a lot of still photography, most of the studio’s business is portraits. I thought it’d be a nice change.” The Ride Booker goes into her bag, her camera goes back into its case, and she sits down on the bench they were using as a platform for the set-up. “Besides, the weather’s good today, it’s a nice excuse to get outside and get some fresh air.”
The Grand Zi-O watch fizzes away, presumably back to the bedside table in Sougo’s room, and he sits down next to Natsumi. “It is nice out today, yeah. But I mean, like. Why Rider stuff? Why not, I don’t know, nature photography?”
“Because I don’t get out in nature as much as I’d like, but Rider stuff’s been a lot of my life. Tsukasa takes all kinds of photos of Rider stuff, of course, and they’re kinda great for what they are, but they’re not really practical records. The story of the whole thing matters, and it’s easier if you’ve got clear pictures.”
“The story? What story?”
“Whatever story’s being told. That’s what photography’s for, to tell stories about our lives. You know, like, here’s when Ritsuko got married, and this is when Miki and his sister graduated high school, and here’s when we saved the world the first time and Tsukasa got turned into a giant belt for ten minutes.” She glances over at him and grins. “Anyway, I wanted to get a picture of his transformation whatsit with yours because it’s kind of funny to see him pick up a junior, I think it makes him feel better about himself knowing that he’s not the only one doing what he does.”
Sougo nods, frowning slightly. “Tsukuyomi said you’re a Rider too, but I’ve never seen you carrying anything that looks like Rider stuff, what do you use?”
“Oh, god, she’s around here somewhere.”
“...she?”
“Hey! Kiva-la! I know you’re here!”
And a little purple-and-white bat flits into view and says, “Obviously I’m here, what do you want?”
“Sougo wanted to know what I transform with. See,” to Sougo, “Tsukasa and Daiki just get cards, Yuusuke’s got his stone, but if I need to do hero stuff I have to deal with her.”
Sougo stares at Kiva-la wide-eyed for a moment before saying, “It’s, uh, nice to meet you? Ma’am?”
Kiva-la turns a loop-de-loop in the air. “I like him! No one’s ever polite to me! Anyway,” with a pout in her tiny voice, “Tsukasa said to tell you it’s time for dinner.”
--
The whole building smells like frying dumplings and cooking soup and good food in general, and Yuusuke and Geiz straighten up and put the lid back onto the back of the toilet moments before Woz says, in his most carrying, I-Am-Making-An-Announcement voice, “It is time for dinner,” echoed by Yuzuki’s enthusiastic shout of, “Dinner!”
Yuusuke’s face lights up. “Oh, perfect timing. Here, wash your hands, I’ll wash mine, and we can both head down.”
“Sounds good.” Geiz turns on the water and starts scrubbing his hands vigorously. “Thanks for showing me that, by the way, everyone else here is useless at repairs.”
“I mean, I don’t know that I’d put it that way...”
“No, seriously, I live with Sougo, he’s a space case. And Woz is...he’s Woz. He’s great, but he’s also Woz.” Geiz backs away from the sink and grabs a towel to dry his hands as Yuusuke starts to wash his. “Why’d you want to, though? Like I appreciate it, but what made you want to teach me something like this?”
“I like fixing things, and you seem like someone who needs to find more ways to relax.” Yuusuke accepts another hand towel. “Rider stuff is exhausting, it’s nice knowing how to do normal things too. Wow that all smells good, I’m so excited to eat a meal that I didn’t have to cook any of myself.”
As they head for the stairs, Geiz says, “No offense, but you seem...different, somehow, from Tsukasa and Daiki and Natsumi.”
“That’s because they’re huge drama queens.” Yuusuke grins at him. “I love them so much, you have no idea, but if we were all like that then nothing would ever get done around the house.”
Geiz stifles laughter.
Yuusuke’s grin just gets wider. “See, I knew you’d get it.”
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thoughtslikeaminefield · 5 years ago
Text
Leaving Heaven
CHAPTER ONE
PLEASE HEED WARNINGS
Summary: Tazi is a bounty hunter of mostly human things, but she’s familiar enough with the supernatural world that she’s recruited by an old friend of John Winchester’s to capture and deliver a brief acquaintance of her own.
Characters: Demon/ Knight of Hell Dean, original female character - Taziana (Tazi) Smith, Lee Webb (flashback), original male character - Mike Clemons, mentions Sam Winchester
Chapter Warnings: this is not your mother’s Dean Winchester, sexual intimidation, brief dub-con
Words: 3000
c.1 | c.2 | c.3 | c.4 | c.5 | c.6 
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“‘Sup, Mikey?” I walk through Mike’s back door into his kitchen.
It’s a small space, cluttered but not dirty, and always smells like coffee and cigarettes.
“Got a job for ya,” he replies as he pours me a cup. “Have a seat.”
Mike Clemons is an old cowboy. He’s stocky with sun-worn leather for skin and a white handlebar mustache, bright blue eyes, and thick, white hair.
He acted as my guardian when I fled from the foster system at the age of 16. He’s like the uncle who teaches you how to pee outside and handle a firearm just because.
“‘Member Dean Winchester?” he asks, his voice measured and his usually warm tone guarded.
He hands me a mug of coffee then crosses the room to retrieve a thick folder from his filing cabinet.
Mike’s also the kinda guy who keeps his filing cabinet in his tiny kitchen.
I met Dean Winchester 13 years ago. I was just out of jail and the only gig I could find that would keep me out of relative trouble was at Mike’s cousin’s strip club. The security was tight and the money was great, and Mike gave me a place to sleep and food on the table until I could get my feet under me again.
That’s also when I learned about what Mike did on his hunting trips — he hunted monsters, demons, and ghosts. It was all so fucking wild.
Mike takes a seat across from me, shaking two cigarettes from a soft pack and sliding the file across the table. I open the folder to several images of Dean past and present.
“What’d Dean Winchester do now?” I ask, flipping the file open.
“Take a look,” Mike answers as he lights both cigarettes then hands me one.
I accept the smoke and take a drag as I peruse the images. Then one image in the folder, in particular, knocks me back in time.
“Hey, darlin’,” a warm, smiling voice called for my attention as I walked to the back of the bar after my set.
When I turned, I saw two boys — not really boys, but younger than the typical patron — both handsome and bright, definitely tipsy but not sloppy.
I turned to fully appreciate them, slowly dragging my eyes up and down their respective frames.
They looked like trouble, the fun kind, and hot — just the right combination to entice a girl like me. I had to remind myself of three very important things: one, my therapist had advised that I take a break from romantic entanglements of any kind; two, the club did not (officially) recommend fraternizing with the clientele; and, three, my probation officer would absolutely not approve of the unauthorized kind of fraternizing that generally happened with clients here.
“Darlin’,” I repeated the greeting with a nod, garnering wider and even brighter grins from both blue and green eyes.
Blue Eyes approached me first, but I couldn’t stop parting my gaze between the two.
“My buddy Dean and I were wonderin’ if ya’d like to join us for a game of poker and a beer or two when you’re done,” he said.
I flicked my eyes to Dean and saw a blush darken his cheeks. He didn’t drop his eyes, though. I liked that. I liked that he was nervous, maybe even intimidated, but he didn’t look away.
I dragged my attention back to Blue Eyes. “Sure,” I answered. “What’s your name?”
“Lee,” he answered, showing off those pearly whites again and offering his hand to shake.
I shook my head with a huff of laughter as I accepted. “Gotta love a southern boy,” I said.
Lee laughed, genuine and deep. Then Dean swaggered forward, and I felt something move in my chest. For a second, I thought I’d lost my breath.
“How ‘bout a midwestern boy?” Dean asked, his voice just as smooth as he looked — open, inviting, eyes sparkling in the constant strobe of lights.
I was afraid of what I felt but didn’t let on. I had already learned how to hide those feelings, and I was working on my boundaries. That boy could not have come along at a worse time in my life
I joined them along with the bartender, and one of the bouncers for after-closing beers and a game of poker, strip, and I won.
I never forgot, though, the way his proximity, his smile, and his cockysweet demeanor made me feel — like a normal girl with a normal life who could have something.
Fast forward to now, looking at images of that boy, all grown up, his arrest records — nothing shocking for a hunter (which I learned not the night I met him but over the years and through the grapevine) — and personal accounts of other hunters who’ve crossed his path and/or worked a case with him and his younger brother, Sam.
Then a more recent image catches my eye and I freeze — security footage from a convenience store. It’s grainy, but the eyes are unmistakable.
“Whoa, I thought the Winchesters were unpossessable.”
“Yeah, well, guess not,” Mike answers with a cloud of smoke. “Regard, I owe it to John to take care of this.”
“Ok, but why me?” I ask, looking up at Mike.
“I seem to recall you had a certain simpatico,” Mike answers with an arch of his brow and a drag off his smoke. “Desire’s one of those things that transfer from a human to their more beastly counterparts.”
“Got it,” I reply, looking back at the image from the night I met Dean.
“Thanks for playin’, folks!” I crowed as I pushed away from the table.
My coworkers rolled their eyes and grumbled as they dressed. They were used to me winning at poker, I didn’t know why they continued to agree to play with me.
“That’s some crafty shit, girl,” Lee said, as he and Dean both chuckled, stepping into their jeans.
“Hey, you all already saw me naked,” I laughed back, helping the bartender wipe down the table we were using and hoist the chairs on top.
Dean shuffled closer to me as Lee shifted away like a choreographed dance.
“You, uhh,” Dean started to speak quietly as he scooped his t-shirt from the floor. “You wanna... I dunno...”
He ran his hand through his hair. I was stunned that such a beautiful, smart, funny boy would be so bashful.
“I do, but...” I answered.
I wanted so much to touch him — imagining how smooth his skin would be, freckled and pulled taut over well-developed muscle — but the thought of it seized my breath again.
His eyelids fluttered and his brow furrowed. “Yeah, no, that’s cool,” he answered, pulling his t-shirt over his head. It was inside out and ruffled his hair. “I totally get it.”
He smiled again and it felt like my heart and lungs were being squeezed by a vice grip behind my rib cage.
“It’s not you, Dean,” I said, stepping into him a bit, trying to catch his eye as he looked anywhere but at me.
He nodded, reaching for his too-big leather jacket. He shrugged into the jacket and stood up straight, shoulders back as he towered over me. Then his expression closed off completely and my heart dropped into my stomach.
He shook his head, pursed his lips, and said, “No big deal, sweetheart.”
As he turned to follow Lee out the door, he muttered something like “see ya around” but I couldn’t hear much more than ringing in my ears.  
“Bring him in alive, Tazi,” Mike says, startling me from my reverie. “Don’t try to exorcise him.”
I shift in my seat and clear my throat. “Yeah, well, I’m a bounty hunter, Mikey, not a priest, so…”
Mike eyes me cautiously before standing to get us both more coffee.
“Exactly,” he says. “Just one more reason you’re perfect for the job.”
Right now, I’m not so sure I agree with him.
~~~~~~~
I find Dean at a podunk, smoke-stained bar in the middle of Nebraska. There’re two flat-screen TVs tuned into some pro-sport that I don’t care about. After three hours and many, many shots of whiskey consumed by the demon, we’re the only two patrons left in the joint just five seats apart.
“Hit me,” Dean says to the bartender. “And leave the bottle.”
The bartender does as he’s told before muttering over his shoulder about closing soon. Then he disappears somewhere in the depths of the backroom or cooler or wherever he’s escaping from this obvious predator.
“Gonna just sit there and stare at me all night, or’re we gonna have it out?” Dean drawls, turning his gaze to me, eyes blinking from warm moss to shiny onyx.
I thought baby-face Dean was breathtaking. Turns out, weathered, eye-crinkley Dean is otherworldly in his beauty. It’s uncomfortable to acknowledge that I find his body attractive even possessed, but my therapist tells me it’s healthy to do the acknowledging thing.
“You do that just for funsies, or is that your pick-up game?” I reply steadily, unmoving from my barstool.
I’m trying to gauge whether or not he remembers me. He doesn’t seem to, so Mike’s idea that desire as a hold-over will give me an advantage is kind of fucked. Then again, considering my potential weakness for him, maybe him not remembering me is just as well.
“Guess we’re playin’ 20 Questions,” Dean sighs, pulling his gaze from mine and tossing back his umpteenth shot of the night. “Awesome.”
He licks his lips as he empties the rest of the bottle, which isn’t very much, into his glass with a tsk.
“You’d think when I said, ‘leave the bottle’ he’d’ve realized I wanted more than this.” He shakes his head.
This demon is so much chattier than Dean was. He looks similar, sure, older but still handsome. His eyes are dead, though, and not just because they’re black. The stark contrast makes my mind wave and flutter.
But I stay cool.
“Why d’you even bother with a glass?” I ask, wondering why I’m bantering with Dean Winchester’s demon over bar etiquette.
“It makes me feel more civilized – I dunno,” he says with a shrug before downing the shot. He narrows his gaze and I feel it in my gut. “Do we know each other?”
I keep my expression neutral with a non-answer, the skill that helps me win at things like strip poker.
Dean brushes it off pretty quickly, though, before swiveling his chair to face me.
“There a Matrix LARP thing in town, or... ?” he asks, dragging his eyes down and up my form, nostrils flaring, warming my skin and making my heart pound. “All that… leather.”
“I don’t know what that means,” I answer.
It’s a lie. I fucking love The Matrix and am totally into cosplay – but Dean doesn’t need to know that.
It sucks that I remember so much about Dean and that he’s so pretty and authentically charming; because he’s also possessed by a demon. All of these facts swim in my brain and fuck with my intuition.
Maybe I should’ve brought back-up.
He shrugs again as he stands out of his chair. “I’m gonna help myself, you want a nip?” he asks casually, stretching.
I shrug – it seems to be the theme for the night, shrugging. “Sure,” I answer, swiveling out of my own chair.
Dean strolls behind the bar, and I follow. The bartender is long forgotten by both of us. Honestly, he probably bailed. I could see his skin prickle every time the demon said a word or moved at all.
“Johnnie, Jack, Jim,” he says turning lazy eyes on me, dragging his gaze over me again. “Somethin’ else?”  
God, he’s stupid hot, and this all feels frighteningly familiar. Hanging out with a demon should not be this enjoyable, but here we are.
I glance beyond where he’s standing and see the red wax cap of my favorite whiskey. “Maker’s,” I reply, snagging his gaze and his lazy eyes perk up.
“Nice choice,” he says, then turns his back to me to reach for the bottle.
So I buckle up and fly through that window of opportunity.
I jump like I’m going to take him for a piggyback ride, chokehold his neck, and wrap my legs around his middle. But he’s a demon, and he’s Dean Winchester, and I’m a fucking idiot because then he’s got me on my back on the bar top.
“This’s more like it,” he says with a delighted sneer, tongue running the ridge of his white teeth as his hand clamps around my throat. “Knew you had it in you.”
He looks down at me with those pretty, pretty eyes - yet, there’s nothing there now. No recognition, no warmth, no joy.
I steel myself to jack him in the face, pure adrenaline giving me the strength to lunge up under the weight of his upper body pressing his hand around my throat. As he rubs his jaw, I sit up and spin to kick him in the mouth.
Man, it’s a shame to hurt that face – but, demon healing and all that.
Dean’s hunched over and laughing as I hop down from the bar. Just as he recovers from the kick, unfolding to stand to his full height, I grab a handful of that soft, thick hair and yank.
His green eyes glaze over and he drops to his knees at my feet, bliss smoothing his features and filling his voice. He literally groans in satisfaction.
“Fuck,” he breathes, his shoulders slumping.
I stare down at him in disbelief then twist my fist. He hisses through a wide grin.
“Oooh,” he moans with a low chuckle. “Don’t stop, sweetheart.”
Sweetheart.
Cold, detached, calculating.
I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what to do, but my belly flips.
And then he’s sweeping my feet out from under me.
“Oof!” I hit the ground, face first, wind knocked from my lungs once again by this man.
Before I can register a coherent thought, he’s on top of me. His full-length, pinning me as I gasp for air.
“Relax,” he whispers, his breath brushing the shell of my ear. “Tiny breaths, you’ll get it back.”
He swipes my hair to the side, pushes his knees between mine and spreads my legs open as he inhales deeply from my neck and shoulder and grinds into me from behind. I’m trembling under him – terrified, confused, sweating, and on the verge of tears.
“Shh,” he says, nuzzling into my neck, darting his tongue out for a taste.
I must taste like salt and fear. He must love it. He doesn’t make an attempt to really hurt me.
He’s just playing with me.
“Don’t cry,” he coos.
I hate that he senses my tears coming, hate that he can read that from me, hate that we have history, however brief, but thankful he doesn’t remember.
He keeps grinding against me, hot and hard as he works to pin my arms behind my back, just above my ass.
I gasp again, not as shallow as last time and can sort of breathe. What he’s doing is sending my mind reeling. I’m just as hot between my legs as his body is - he has to feel it - and I’m getting so wet.
“Got your breath back, that’s good,” he says, stretching out over me again, languidly sliding one scorching hand under my shirt and up along my ribs.
He brushes his lips over the exposed nape of my neck, takes his time smelling and tasting me.
He’s hot as any demon I’ve ever known, maybe hotter, like he’s just walked out of the fires of Hell. It’s mesmerizing and I curse myself for being so turned on; but, so far, it’s pretty clear that Dean has no intention of doing more than teasing me.
“You give a demon all sorts of nasty ideas,” he says, licking a long, scalding strip up the side of my neck.
I start to melt under his words and his power.
Then, just as quickly as he pinned me, I feel a rush of air and the absence of warmth.
When I roll to my back, he’s gone, leaving me utterly bewildered and cold.
CHAPTER TWO
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rainsonata · 4 years ago
Text
Doppelgänger 11/15
Chapter 11: Echoes 
Fandom/Pairing: Elsword; none Rating: T Word Count: 7,958
Summary: It was like looking into a mirror. What happens when one’s reflection talks back and throws uncomfortable questions? El Search Party struggles to find entrance into the Demon Realm, but Dominator has a plan.   
Alternative Title: Dominator fucked up and now everyone meets their alternative selves   
AO3 Link / FF.NET Link
— [Chapter 01] [Chapter 02] [Chapter 03] [Chapter 04] [Chapter 05] [Chapter 06] [Chapter 07] [Chapter 08] [Chapter 09] [Chapter 10] [Chapter 11] [Chapter 12] [Chapter 13] [Chapter 14] [Chapter 15] —  
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Class Notes: 
Canon Path: Knight Emperor, Aether Sage, Daybreaker, Rage Hearts, Code: Esencia, Comet Crusader, Apsara, Empire Sword, Doom Bringer, Ishtar and Chevalier (Innocent), Bluhen   
Alternative Path: Rune Slayer, Oz Sorcerer, Anemos, Furious Blade, Code: Ultimate, Fatal Phantom, Devi, Flame Lord, Dominator, Timoria and Abysser (Catastrophe), Richter
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Oz Sorcerer
Dusk bordered at the horizon when Oz returned to camp. Dozens of tents rose in a mass of colors and arranged into smaller circles with a smaller campfire for each group. Oz saw tents of the close-ranged fighters placed closer to the edge of their resting site, the ones ready for combat to the sound of intruders. Those that relied more on magic or needed more time to prepare like Rune and Dominator placed their tents more inward from the edge of the area they resided in.
“Hey, ‘cuse me,” a male voice grunted. “Sorry, come through.” 
The smell of blood and dirt filled the air. Knight was hauling a wild boar that was easily twice his size. Blood was dripping down the carcass and onto Knight’s armor. His great sword was tucked into a scabbard strapped to his back, grating against the gravel as he dragged the ridiculous sized animal over his shoulder. A quiet gasp escaped from a lower tree branch whipping into his vicinity and swapped the young man. 
“Need help?” Oz leaned forward, “I can barely see your face from here.” 
“Yes,” Knight groaned under the weight of the boar. How could someone so short carry a monster of that size? She was impressed. 
With the help of Angkor (“I’m not here to do grunt work!” He huffed.), she helped him carry the dead animal across camp. It took all of Oz’s effort now to lower the boar over a pile of dried leaves. They placed the boar next to a campfire. She watched its beady eyes staring back at her, dead and fish-eyed in death. 
She didn’t know the Demon Realm had animals.
Then again, Angkor didn’t really tell her much about the realm that demons called home. Oz looked up to see the moons nestled among the clouds. Angkor and Timoria spoke of their old allies and enemies, but their narrative of the Demon Realm varied. She guessed that it was as big and diverse as Elrios was. It took her weeks to journey from Sander all the way to Ruben in search of the Ring of Mimir, so maybe it would take weeks to reach the other end of the Demon Realm?
“What are you doing?” Oz observed Knight taking out a dagger from his belt. Angkor scurried off in bat form when Knight started skinning the animal with precision.  
“Prepping for dinner,” Knight said. He let out a nervous chuckle. “Do you want to help?”
“Sure,” Oz placed her staff on her belt to make her hands free. “What do we do first?”
“Uh, right.” Knight looked happy? He moved aside to patted the ground to gesture at her into joining him, nodding his head, “I want you to grab a bucket or any containers you have. We’ll be draining its blood to make pig blood curd for soups and congee in the morning. Once we finish, we’ll be carving the meat and use half of it to make dried jerky for battle rations. I already cleaned it out before I started skinning it.”
“These? Do you make everyone you talk to do this?” Oz asked. Placing the bowls aside, she sat on the floor next to Knight. “What happened to your friends?”
“Most of them are still resting after the fights,” Knight chuckled. “And you looked like you weren’t busy. What’s so funny?” 
He stopped to give her a strange look. What? Was Knight already detecting her sad attempt to keep a poker face during his long lecture? He glanced over Oz before making note of Angkor, who was back to his bat form. Angkor settled on her lap as a bat and giggled when Oz tried to move it. Did Angkor gain weight? Oz placed her hand over her chest and pretended to blush. 
“See something you like?” She teased. 
“I’m surprised you’re helping me after some of my friends tried to hurt you,” Knight was not fazed. 
“This wouldn’t be the first time our enemies became our allies,” Oz mused. “Rune asked me to do the same when we first met.” 
“Oh… sorry about that.” He was embarrassed. 
“What are you apologizing for? It’s always good to have a refresher!” Oz exclaimed, “Your hands were full and you looked like you needed help.”  
Knight looked relieved and nodded to himself. It was subtle, but a distinct smile. The kind Rune had when he learned a new technique to manipulate his runes. He was taller than Rune, towering over her with sleeves rolled back while working. His hair was a short neat cut, matching his eyes and the rest of his armor.   
After they extracted blood from the boar, they let it sit in one of the metal bowls to solidify. They would then slide the curd into smaller pieces to be salted and heated in a pot. Knight handed her a dagger and they began dividing the meat into sections. Oz let the man take the lead and insert the sharp edge towards the spine, cleaning the meat off the bone in one swipe. Knight expertly placed the meat into a separate container for later use and hummed as he worked. For a moment, she caught serenity in his silence, taking pride in his hard work.  
“Is it always you who does this?” Oz asked. 
“Sometimes it’s Elesis or Raven,” Knight said. “The others have offered to help, but I’m doing it today. Are you okay with that?”
“You’re asking me now?” Oz let out a mellow laugh, “It’s gross, but you look so sad doing it by yourself.”
“I look sad?” Knight chuckled, “I’m used to doing it by myself. I had to do it when ‘sis was out of the picture.” 
Stupid, Aisha! She scolded herself. Now she made him remember a lonely part of his life. Oz took deep breaths and counted backwards from ten. He didn’t even look upset about it and laughed. 
“But thank you for offering to help,” Knight said. “Food will be ready sooner and we can focus on everyone recovering.” 
“When was the last time you visited Ruben?” Oz asked.  
“It’s been years,” he admitted. “Haven’t had much time to return with everything that’s been happening.” 
“Do you miss home?” 
“Sometimes,” Knight said. “But when I’m with my friends, it’s like I have a second home. You know what I mean? Don’t laugh, but I hope I can one day show them Ruben when things are peaceful again.” 
“No, that sounds like a wonderful dream,” Oz softened her expression and thought about the people she grew up with. She wondered if her teammates felt the same. 
Oz started setting the seasoned meats onto a dry metal tablet to be smoked when she heard Angkor squeak. She looked up to Aether stomping over to her. Dressed in a white skirt accented by purple, Aether wielded a staff and looked short out of breath. Did all of Knight’s friends wear white?  
“Aisha?” Knight didn’t notice the dark aura radiating from the sulking mage. 
“Elsword,” Aether stopped to catch her breath. The twin cowlicks sprouting from her roots drooped as she rested her hands over her knees before bringing her head up. Her face was flustered, “What do you think you’re doing?” 
“Helping Ciel prep for dinner. Oz is helping me.” Knight said and looked at her with pleading eyes. Did he just give Aether puppy eyes? He and Rune were cut from the same cloth. “Did Bluhen heal your arm?”     
“No one else can heal besides him, my arm is fine.” Aether huffed. “Did you just kill that boar by yourself? You should be resting. You’ve gone missing for two days!” 
“I’m not hurt!” Knight stood up for Aether to see. “Not a single cut! Ain healed most of my injuries!”  
“You can’t rely on him all the time for heals,” Aether glared. “I just talked to him and he said you should be resting. I bet you didn’t tell Ciel that, did you?” 
“I… no.” He said in a small voice. 
If looks could kill, Knight would have died twice fold from the intense looks the mage was sending to him. Oz held back her laughter as Aether scrutinized the red-haired man. Aether threw a side-eyed look to Oz as if debating if it was the dark mage’s fault for letting Knight do things by himself. 
“I helped him before no one else was,” Oz said before Aether could open her mouth. “We were almost done before you came here.”   
Glancing at the smoked meats and the pork blood curd finished steaming in the heated pot, Aether didn’t argue. She turned pink, embarrassed and offered an apology to both of them. Oz overheard Angkor chattering to her and hushed him to be quiet. 
“Do I look that awful?” Knight asked. 
“You look like a zombie,” Aether said. 
“Really? I was thinking more like a sad phoru.” Oz pointed to the bags under Knight’s eyes. Knight tilted his head to the side in confusion. 
“Go wash your hands and rest until dinner is ready,” Aether groaned before gesturing to Oz. “I’ll help her finish up the rest of what you already started.” 
“All right,” Knight walked past Aether. “Sorry for making you worry.” 
Oz wished he would stop taking blame for things in a feeble attempt to soothe anger from either side. It was grating on her nerves and didn’t suit him at all. It made her miss the slight flare of arrogance Rune had when thinking he found the perfect ratio of hot pepper flakes to apply to pork jerky, or when he set the entire demon army on fire. 
“Hey, worrying is our job.” Aether stopped him, “That’s what we’re here for.” 
Knight laughed.
There was silence between the two women when he left. Aether finished slicing the meat into thin pieces. Her slices were sloppier than Knight’s but cut close to the bone of the boar and marinated the meat in a metal bowl. Oz rotated the smoked meat for the other side to be cooked and checked on the pork blood curd. Their campsite smelled of smoked and seasoned meats.     
“So you do have a demon,” Aether looked at Angkor with the same fascination as one would with deadly forest fungi.
“Have?” Oz rolled her eyes, “He’s not a pet. More like a contract.” 
It was hard to believe Angkor was a demon god for the number of times he wouldn’t stop chattering demon gossip to her or demanding for more cookies. Oz wondered if looking like a child brought in the childish tendencies in the demon bat. His powers on the other hand were worth discussing and helped her in battles countless times. 
“How did that happen?” Aether asked. 
“Well, I was practicing dark magic when Angkor approached me.” Oz said, “He saw talent in me and offered a deal to me.” 
“And the clothes?” 
“That’s what you’re worried about the most?” Oz said, “I don’t mind. Maybe more ruffles than I wanted, but the gain in power was what mattered.” 
“You didn’t find the Ring of Mimir either?” 
“No,” Oz shook her head. The blood curd was done. She drained water from the pot and transferred them over to a container for storage. “Are you still looking for it?” 
“Yes,” Aether closed her eyes. “We were so close to catching the culprit. He ran off before I had the chance to get it back.”
“Do you think it will return your powers?” 
“I don’t know, maybe? I relearned the fundamentals of elemental magic, but there’s still more to be learned.” Aether said, “Hennon doesn’t have rights over that ring grandfather worked hard to uncover.” 
Oz tried to remember a time when she believed in having the ring restore her powers. After no leads to it, she turned to dark magic because she didn’t want to relearn something she had already lost. The Hennon of her world also had the Ring of Mimir, but that was the least of their concerns when there was an urgent matter of restoring the El. 
“So what’s with you and Elsword?” Aether asked. “I saw you two talking.”      
“Still obsessing over that boy?” Oz teased. 
“What?” Aether paused, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 
“You keep looking at him.” Oz teased. “It’s like I’m not even here.” 
Aether sat still, frozen in time, and forgot that she had a knife in her hand. The knife remained suspended in a fist hold grip, losing its use in her hands. Her eyes widened, shocked by the statement and Oz’s impatience. Talking to Aether was coming into contact with a reflection of herself when she was eighteen years old, infatuated and hopeful in catching the attention of a red-haired boy. 
“It looked like you two were having fun,” Aether turned pink. “You two share nothing in common, but you made it look easy to talk to him about anything.” 
“I just let him talk about things he’s interested in,” Oz shrugged. “Didn’t you travel with him for five years?”  
“Yes, but I’m not sure if I know him as well as I thought I did.” She confessed, “When he went missing, I mistook Rune for him. It was so obvious. I feel like an idiot.”
“They’re pretty similar,” Oz said. “Both of them act like idiots, won’t stop talking about meat, insist they’re used to doing things alone...”
“That’s the thing!” Aether threw her arms in the air, “He always does all these things by himself, acting like everything is his fault. It’s so frustrating! How many times do we need to tell him we don’t mind?” 
“I think that’s why Knight hides things,” Oz leaned back. “He probably didn’t want to make you all worry, even if it’s a stupid idea and you all care about him either way.”  
Oz collected the remnants of the skinned and deboned animal. The bones were saved to be used as a base for soups and broths. She was impressed by Knight’s work ethic that expanded even outside of his training. Left to live by himself at a young age, Knight must have learned to never let food be wasted. He and Rune were masters in hunting and finishing chores, but worked twice as hard in training.     
“I wonder if I scared him away, yelling at him like that.” Aether thought aloud. “I can’t stand seeing him get hurt again.” 
“You still like him,” Oz commented. 
“Don’t you?” Aether asked.     
“Maybe not in the same sense as you do,” Oz said. “We tried to connect a few times but decided it wasn’t working for us. He’s now with Chung.” 
“What?” 
Aether dropped the metal container with the blood curd. Luckily, it was sealed shut. Oz retrieved the container from the mage with a kind expression. 
“Elsword and Chung are dating,” Oz said. “Or Rune and Phantom if you’re keeping track of nicknames.” 
“No wonder they kept looking at each other,” she overheard Aether mutter to herself. “Does that mean our Elsword and Chung are…” 
“I don’t know,” Oz said. “Not everything is set in stone. Your timeline is already different than ours, so I wouldn’t give up yet. Knight might like Crusader, you, a random village girl, or even Add.” 
“Ha!” Aether snorted. “Unlikely.” 
Oz grinned. She liked her. 
“Let’s deliver these to Ciel and Abysser.” Aether started collecting the containers, one under each arm. “They said they were going to cook something tonight.” 
Would this be enough to feed all of them? After washing her hands, Oz joined in helping her, taking the containers that were left to bring over to their teammates. She couldn’t imagine how Knight could have completed this task on his own. The next time she saw Rune attempting to do the same, she’ll have to make sure she or someone else would help him. 
“It’s always a pleasure talking to myself,” Oz tipped her hat and feigned a formal bow. 
“You’re ridiculous,” Aether rolled her eyes but softened his expression. “I think it’ll be easier to talk to Elsword now that I understand him a little better.” 
“I think you already do,” Oz said. “You’re already thinking like him and helping people.” 
“Is that a compliment I hear?” Aether’s grin mirrored hers, “Don’t expect less from the great Aisha!” 
“Do you talk like that to everyone?” 
“...shut up.”
Oz snickered.  
----------------------------
Apsara
“And then Elesis set the pole on fire,” Anemos said. 
“A pole?” Apsara repeated. 
“She got her tongue stuck on one and tried to free himself by setting it on fire,” the elf explained. “The city wasn’t happy and we had to pay for the damage. Luckily, we had enough from the major mission in Hamel.” 
W-wait, that didn’t sound good! Apsara panicked as Anemos let out a noble woman’s laugh. It was good that they had enough money to pay for the damage cost, but was it okay to cause a fire in the middle of a city? 
“B-but, Flame was okay, right?” Apsara stuttered. 
“Oh, she was perfectly fine,” Anemos added. “Can’t say the same about the rest of the city. That was rough.” 
“There’s more?” Apsara squeaked. 
“Trouble always seems to follow your team, it seems.” Daybreaker chuckled. “It sounds like your friends ran into a lot of strange adventures and close calls.” 
Apsara nodded in agreement. She gripped her cup, running her thumbs over the edge and watching the tea steam rise and fall. It was her own personal tea set from what was left over of her ruined home in Fluone's Northern Empire. Bamboo and cranes were painted in dark green onto the cups. The tea kettle was decorated in a similar theme with a giant crane spreading its wings in bamboo bedding. It was a gift from her late mother before she passed away.  
Anemos was just as she imagined the other Rena to be. Kind, funny, always ready to share stories of her travels and offering great advice, although Anemos had a more playful side. A smirk grew at the edge of Anemos’ lips, sipping from her cup of tea. 
“I can say the same to your team,” Anemos said. “Unconventionally breaking into the Demon Realm and angering Dark Elves sounds like a rough trip.” 
“We were lucky that Rena was here to talk it out and help us work together,” Apsara beamed. “Without her, we might still be enemies!”
“It’s a good thing we understood each other,” Daybreaker said. “I didn’t think we would meet Dark Elves so soon.” 
“What are they like?” Anemos asked.     
Both of them are correct, Eun yawned. Luck has saved you and your friends many times. How much longer will it carry you until it runs out?  
Apsara shivered at the meaning behind Eun’s words. The nine-tailed fox was not one for talk and preferred being a spectator from the safety of her mind, but occasionally left a piece of wisdom for her to think on.   
Eun was right. They were lucky that she accidentally fell into the labyrinth of ruin that connected Elrios to the Demon Realm. According to Daybreaker, the language the Dark Elves spoke was closer to the Ancient Elven tongue, a skill not many elves possessed. After struggling to rescue Knight from the El, things were beginning to line up for them.  However, as lucky as they were, there were just as many misfortunes that fell on them and stalled time for the enemy to get away. It was something Apsara couldn’t forgive. They had to do more than fall on lady luck to seek justice for the lives of those impacted by the enemy.   
“Apsara?” Anemos broke through the martial artist’s train of thought. She had a gentle expression, “Was the medicine too strong? You look out of it.” 
“I’m fine,” Apsara rubbed her forehead. It still hurt where she fell on her face.  She was going to let it heal naturally.  It was barely a scratch worth using healing magic. “Hey, Anemos? How do you plan to return back to Elrianode?” 
“Tired of us already?” Anemos teased, placing her finger over her lips. “With the teleportation device broken, we won’t be going home until it gets repaired. Why do you ask? Was your trip a one-way trip?”
“I’m afraid it was,” Daybreaker said. “We were planning to find an alternate way to get back once we found the Dark El.” 
“Your team didn’t look good when we fought you,” Anemos commented. “Was a demon giving you trouble?”
“Nephilim Lord,” Apsara said. “It looked like the one in Velder, but bigger. You saw one before, right? It warned us about a fiery aura.”  
The one they fought was several times the size, asbestos white and covered in bright rainbow-colored armor-like scales. It had horns protruding from its body and had no need to move to efficiently burn through their defense. The most powerful of all Nephilim, it was sentient and lost control of itself until it was taken down by the El Search Party.         
Anemos frowned and bit her lip in deep thought, mumbling to herself in Elven. At the mention of Nephilim Lord, the gears in the elf’s mind began to turn. Her eyes were calculating and darted up to where the sky was. Apsara looked up to see where the older woman was looking. 
Cloud swirled collectively around the portals appearing and closing, deviating from one another. Apsara became dizzy looking at them and returned her eyes to Anemos, whose complexion remained serious.
“Was Nehphilim Lord the cause of this?” Anemos asked. 
“I don’t think so,” Daybreaker shook her head. “It’s been like this since Paradox fought with us. He seems to have control over those portals.”
“Maybe we can use those portals to go back to Elrianode!” Apsara exclaimed.��
“Assuming we can control them ourselves,” Anemos sighed. “Unless you know anything about time and space.”  
Apsara felt her cheeks turn warm and pouted. Was it unrealistic in trying to secure a way back to Elrios? She already felt guilty leaving behind the world she and her friends worked hard to protect. On the other hand, the Dark Elves were relying on them to sort out the unstable spike of energy coming from the shadows of Varnimyr, a place where even Eun was uncertain about their safety. Ever since they have arrived at the Demon Realm, they have dug their feet into the dark with little guidance of where to go. It was worrying not knowing if there was a way back.  
“I’m not even sure if one of those portals even works,” Daybreaker said. “We don’t know what’s on the other side. What if we end up in another world like you and your friends did?” 
Apsara stared into the dense forest surrounding the cavern area. She didn’t even think about the possibility of coming out on one end of a portal into a world that bore little resemblance to Elrios or the Demon Realm. They would have to start all over again from scratch and adjust to a world with new laws and boundaries like they did when they first arrived in the Demon Realm.   
It would be difficult to find a way back to Elrionode, Eun said. There is little else that can be done without taking a risk.  
“We haven’t had the best luck in making things go according to plan,” Anemos added. “We still need to find the Dark El first before returning. Those portals will still be here when we find it.” 
“Finding the Dark El won’t be easy, but I believe we’ll find it soon.” Apsara finally said. “We have even more people now to make it work. We’ll all be coming home soon.”
“How touching,” a new voice drawled. Devi emerged from the shadows, letting the flame light flicker across her amber eyes. She looked down at Apsara’s smaller form. “I never thought of myself as a wide-eyed optimist.”  
Apsara turned around to see a round face covered by dark black locks. The long ripples from the ends of her dress made Devi appear taller and thinner. Next to Apsara, she was covered in black and orange, resembling a dark butterfly spreading its wings in her dress billowing in the gentle breeze. Devi smiled, but her eyes held an unsteady gaze.           
Careful, Ara. Urgency rose in Eun’s voice, She’s dangerous. 
“A-ara! I mean me! Devi, I mean, uh, what do you prefer being called?” Apsara cried and lowered her head in a ninety-degree bow, “I didn’t see you there, did you need something? Of course, you did, that’s why you’re here. Are you mad at us for hurting your friends? I’m so sorry. You must be furious with us, please forgive us. I-”
“You talk too much,” Devi silenced Apsara with a single motion of a raised hand. “I barely caught any of that. Are you a mouse? I hear a lot of squeaking.” 
“A mouse?” Apsara felt dizzy. She lifted her head, moving her hands behind her head in a daze. “You mean the animal?” 
“You’re scaring her,” Anemos chided. 
“I’m not scared!” Apsara protested. “She caught me by surprise, that’s all! ”
“Am I not allowed to join tea with you ladies?” Devi poured a cup for herself and nestled herself between Devi and Anemos. Like Apsara, she drank her tea from a cup carefully held between her delicate fingers. She ignored the milk and sugar provided for Anemos and Daybreaker, who were less accustomed to drinking tea without them.
“Careful, it’s still hot-” Apsara stopped when Devi chugged the rest of the tea and blew hot air from her mouth. How scary, she thought.  
“Your tea is all right,” Devi said. “Needs more herbs.” 
Apsara stopped breathing. Her head was still spinning from processing that they were the same person. The way Devi carried herself was something only Apsara could dream of when she let Eun take over. She couldn’t sense Eun’s presence being the dominant one from her alternate, so the confidence was all Devi. 
Devi and the rest of the alternate El Search Party reminded her of the old folk tales she had read as a child. Doppelgangers from another world that bore resemblance to the people she knew. The doppelgangers in the stories were often demons or evil spirits in disguise, but Devi and the others were neither of them.    
“We’re running low on tea,” Apsara said.  
“You were talking about the Dark El,” Devi narrowed her eyes. She glanced over her shoulder to scan their surroundings before lowering her voice, “I don’t think I need to explain what it is or why it’s important. Where is it?” 
“We don’t know,” Daybreaker said. “We’re still searching for it like you. We’re only a few weeks ahead of you.” 
Devi cursed. 
“But since you’re here, we can look for it together!” Apsara said. “Nephilim Lord said it would offer us information about it if we search for the source of aura that’s been unstabilizing its home.” 
“It’s our best shot at the moment,” Anemos agreed. “With this many people, we’ll find the source of the aura in no time.”   
“You don’t think you’re being used to take care of someone else’s problem?” Devi looked at Apsara with skepticism. “Your girlfriend told me it tried to kill you.” 
It was true that Nephillim Lord tried to kill the El Search Party, but it wasn’t the first time an enemy was restrained under mind control or agitation. How much did Empire tell Devi about their circumstances?  
“We’re doing this because we want to punish those that tried to take advantage of the people living here,” Apsara said. “I won’t stand for that.”  
“Nephillim Lord was influenced by the aura,” Daybreaker explained. “We made a promise to help it out. The Dark Elves revere it as a god and protector. We’re not leaving until everything is back to normal.” 
“They have a better lead than we do,” Anemos placed her hands over her lap. She kept her voice low. “This may be our only chance.” 
Devi folded her arms back and grasped the handle of her spear. Still smiling, it was unnerving to see red flash through Devi’s eyes before returning back to amber. It took Apsara a moment to remember that Devi must have Eun too. Those two must be close for Devi to maintain the same facial expression even when Eun had its brief moment of existence. 
“For the monster’s sake, I hope it understands the consequences if it doesn’t follow through with its promise.” Devi mused.  
“Elesis told me you used different martial arts,” Aspara ignored the dark comment. “What are they?” 
“Is that what’s on your mind?” Devi rose a brow. “They’re secret arts from a book that specializes in dark energy. I’m curious about you as well. We’ll have to find out in a spar.” 
“Another time,” Anemos said. “There might be more fighting if we’re going to find the source of the aura.” 
“We thought the source of the aura was you and your friends,” Daybreaker admitted to Anemos. “But that wasn’t it. The aura is not from you, but somewhere else. We might be struggling to find it because it’s still dormant.” 
That meant they had more time to prepare for another battle, right? Apsara pulled the kettle to pour herself another cup of tea. Blowing the fumes away, she sipped as she gripped on her spear with her free hand. It was unclear what the source of the aura was, but she could feel its presence hovering over the region, a dull uncomfortable weight over her shoulders. It was going to get worse if it awakened. Their friends were still recovering from the last battle and they needed to regroup with a new plan.   
“Elesis mentioned your name when I talked to her,” Apsara looked at Devi, who was already on her third cup of tea. “What did you do to her?” 
Empire gave her a wide-eyed look when Apsara asked about her alternate. Her complexion was the same color as her hair before Apsara took her girlfriend’s hand and offered to change the topic.   
“Hm?” Devi giggled when Apsara gave her a questioning look, “Oh, I may have provoked her into fighting me, called her princess, and now she’s angry at me.”
“You need to go back and apologize to her!” Apsara shook Devi by the shoulders and cried when the other woman cackled. “Devi! That’s not funny!” 
“They’re so lively,” Anemos commented. 
“With two of them, I’m sure they were going to be.” Daybreaker chuckled. 
“Are you happy with your progress?” 
Huh? Devi’s question was one that haunted Apsara, an anxious voice whispering into her ear in the darkest of nights, taunting her with doubt that fed off of her uncertainty.  Apsara felt Eun tense, rising from her subconscious and voicing its opinion of her counterpart, none of them were kind or generous. She ignored the fox spirit and had a thoughtful expression. 
Devi was terse, asking biting questions and offering brisk answers in return. Despite being squished in between Apsara and the two Renas, she never relaxed. Legs crossed with one hand kept close to her spear, Devi’s smile failed to reach the rest of her face.   
“You keep following these people, nowhere close to your goal and walking in circles,” Devi said. “Are you satisfied?” 
“I am,” Apsara examined the woman with sadness. She reached for Devi and placed one hand over her alternate’s forearm. “Why are you always sad?” 
“I’m not sad,” Devi forced a laugh. 
She was lying. 
“It doesn’t bother me that we keep getting sidetracked,” Apsara said with earnest. “I’m not even sure if we’re doing the right thing, but I want to help my friends stabilize the El because I know they would do the same if I needed help. Do you ever feel like that?”   
“I do,” Devi said. For the first time, she relaxed and looked at Apsara with a pensive expression. “We’re lucky to have people like them.” 
“I think they would be happy if we let them know that,” Apsara smiled. “Tell me about your friends.” 
And Devi did.   
---------------------------- 
Timoria
Smoke filled the campsite as Timoria hopped over to put out the fire with a pan lid. Hot air hissed from the top and she jolted back. Her tail curled up and her eyes grew wide, panicking and rushing to put the lid back on. Puffing air into her palms, Timoria shrieked when she bumped into Abysser from behind.  
“Sorry!” Abysser put up her two hands. “Didn’t mean to scare you like that. I’m not sure what has gotten into you today, but I can take over now.” 
“You said you felt light-headed,” Timoria accused him. 
“I feel better, I promise!” Abysser laughed. “Not sure what the fuss is about.” 
“You passed out from an explosion,” Timoria said. 
“But I’m still alive and kicking,” he grinned. “You don’t need to sacrifice your time to cook for everyone.” 
An overreaction? Perhaps, especially when her partner in crime was no longer human but now a fully fledged demon, but Abysser wasn’t replaceable. He was more than that, a chimera between a butler and a close friend. People have mistaken them to be related and it didn’t bother Timoria as much as she would have expected. Their bonds were no longer linked as a single unit, but she could tell when the dummy showed his teeth and cocked his head to the side in an attempt to reassure her that he was fine. 
What was Abysser thinking getting up close to shield her from Bluhen? Humans called it heroic, but she called it foolish and impulsive. The man who called himself a priest was suppressing his energy to create an explosion that could have wiped out a demon army. There was nothing heroic about a nearly dying face planted into the dirt. 
“You said someone taught you how to bake and cook,” Timoria said. “Why don't you teach me too? I’m ready to graduate from, ‘Lu, go pick some herbs.’, ‘Lu, can you set up the table?’, and ‘Lu, where’s the spoon?’.”
She made faces and lowered her pitch when she did her Abysser impersonation, pacing around the campsite. 
“Do I really talk like that?” Abysser scratched his head but softened his expression. “I didn’t know you wanted to learn.” 
“You make it sound like I never help,” Timoria pouted and tucked her arms under her long sleeves, feeling the pain crisscrossing into her bandaged fingers like pin needles. “Did I do a good job of cutting the vegetables?” 
Who knew humans consumed so much of them. She didn’t realize how picky Abysser was in how he wanted things to be cut and presented. One would think he was about to serve a meal to the king of Velder.    
“Never said you didn’t.” Abysser said, “I think it’s great you want to help. You did good for a first-timer.”
There he goes again, Timoria placed her hand over her hip. Making that face again, borderlining on smug in catching her showing consideration for others, brimming with the kind of pride she associated with parents to their children. Any outsider would have mistaken them to be related, but she never protested because she saw how happy it made Abysser. People still mistook her as a child, but she was getting taller, she was sure of it!
“Now we wait until it boils, right?” Timoria asked. 
Abysser hummed and nodded his head for an affirmation. 
Timoria hovered over with her wings out for a better view of the stew. She knew there was a lot of stirring involved, but she would leave that to Abysser. The last time she attempted, the campsite was nearly burned down and she didn’t trust herself to know when their meal would be ready.    
She went back to the stream flowing at the edge of camp to wash her hands, carefully cleaning the dirt under her claws. The demon lord felt the cold water run between her claws and relished the familiarity of it. It wasn’t the dark quarters of her old realm, but she recognized the moons passing by when she returned to see a figure waiting for her.  
Sitting at the edge of a fallen log was a demon adorned in white and royal blue. Pale locks cascaded past her thighs and touched the back of her heels. Cyan colored horns similar to Timoria's protruded from the side of Ishtar’s head. Bright eyes the color of starlight gazed past the horizon to meet Timoria’s.    
“Do you always talk to him like that?” Ishtar asked. 
“Who?” Timoria tried not to stare. It was blinding to look at her other self, ethereal under the moonlight and projecting the very image Timoria once wished to reclaim. “Ciel?” 
“You look like you two were having fun,” she looked sad. Was Ishtar envious of them?  
“I don’t expect him to do everything when he needs time to recover from a fight,” Timoria said. “Does he not let you help out?” 
“He does, but insists he can do everything.” Ishtar rolled her eyes, “I don’t think Ciel knows what I can do.”  
“I find that hard to believe,” Timoria said.  
Chevalier was a quiet man. Exchanging a polite smile to Timoria, he waited for Ishtar to talk first before replying back with an equally amicable response. He maintained an air of dignity, but Timoria sensed a difference in his dynamic with Ishtar than her’s and Abysser’s. His hair was a light shade of blue, but it was clear that he was still partially human. 
Ishtar and Chevalier’s relationship wasn’t one of malevolence if she was to believe Richter’s account and from her own observations. Timoria recalled how he and Ishtar fought back at the edge of the forest, perfectly synchronized on the same wavelength of El resonance. Bounded together by powerful magic that turned their souls into one, Ishtar relied on Chevalier as much as the butler did to her. It was not unlike the bond Timoria used to share with Abysser before they parted to become equals. 
“I suppose you’re right,” Ishtar mumbled. “I sometimes wonder if it bothers him doing everything for me.” 
“I think you would be the first to know.” Timoria thought about the time Abysser was depressed after being rejected by a phoru. She bit her lips, “but I think he would appreciate it if you showed him your thanks.”  
Her counterpart rose, parting her lips and rounding them at the realization. Nodding her head, she accepted Timoria’s explanation and scrunched up her brows in deep thought. Much to her annoyance, Ishtar towered over her by almost a head. To outsiders, Timoria was a child while Ishtar had the appearance of an older teen or a young adult.  
“What would make him happy?” Ishtar wondered out loud. “He likes phorus, but I’m not very good with them. I tried baking cookies for him once, but he choked on it and I guess humans don’t like too much red pepper paste-” 
“You put what in cookies?” Timoria interrupted. She tried to imagine what those cookies looked like when they were finished and presented to the butler. Poor Chevalier...  
“I wanted to make them red because he once said he liked that color,” Ishtar protested. 
“I’m surprised he didn’t try to rescue them and make them edible,” Timoria said. 
“He did,” she said. “I’m not sure how he did it, but it was delicious. Humans are more adaptive than we demons give them credit for.” 
It suddenly made sense why Chevalier didn’t let Ishtar take up on cooking duty. 
“Is this why he still treats me like a child?” Ishtar sighed. “I made him do extra work he didn’t have to do.”
“My Ciel treats me like a kid too,” Timoria said. “It’s annoying, but he once told me it was because I reminded him of someone he knew. Did yours ever tell you that?”
Ishtar shook her head.  
“Aren’t you the one bounded to him?” Timoria asked. 
“That doesn’t mean I make him share everything. He doesn’t like talking about the past,” Ishtar said. “It isn’t fair for me to ask Ciel to tell me everything about himself if I’m not ready to talk about myself. There are many things I regretted doing as Luciela. I’m afraid of what he would think of me if he knew half of it.” 
A sad smile appeared on Ishtar’s features, her eyes wandered over to Chevalier, who was standing at the opposite side of the campsite and talking to his counterpart. Abysser laughed at something Chevalier said, occasionally stopping to skim bubbles from the stew.   
“Does yours know what you did?” Ishtar asked, “What we did.”
Timoria felt her limbs growing limp, unable to even lift them up to do something with them. Her silence answered Ishtar’s question, unsurprised by the revelation. Ishtar sat beside Timoria and kept her legs tightly together, contemplating on how much to ask. Demons were aware of multiple dimensions existing, but to meet oneself was something not many experienced. 
“Then both of us are cowards,” Ishtar laughed quietly to herself. 
“How is that funny?” Timoria asked. 
“You’re a little small to be a demon ruler,” Ishtar smirked. “I was wary about whether or not you and your friends were a trick set up by Henir cultists.” 
“How rude!” Timoria exclaimed, “I want nothing to do with those boorish deviants! I don’t think it’s necessary for him to know about my past, but I do want to tell him eventually when we aren’t being chased by Henir cultists.” 
“You have them too?” Ishtar asked. 
“Unfortunately, yes,” Timoria said. “They made a fuss about the Dark El and now we have to go fetch it before they do.”
It has been days since Timoria last saw the creeps in black hoods, but that could be a bad sign if the cultists found more allies in demons that may see the El Search Party as a threat. To demon residents, they were foreign invaders from another world and Timoria was a traitor. It wouldn’t be the first time the Demon Realm witnessed a powerful leader backstabbing them. She didn’t like to think about what that meant if word started spreading around about the former demon ruler returning to the Demon Realm.      
“How does it feel to be back home?” Ishtar asked. 
“This is hardly home,” Timoria laid down on her back. “Haven’t had one since the attempted assassination. I don’t think Ciel and I can rest until we find a way to take back power over the realm that was stolen from me.” 
“Your bonds feel different,” Ishtar noted. “What made you separate?” 
“Ciel and I had an understanding,” Timoria said. “I didn’t want Ciel to feel like he was forced to follow me. We don’t need a contract to stay together and I saw him as my equal. It was his idea to abandon his human side.” 
“As equals, huh?” Ishtar repeated her words. “I think I get it. When you were gone, Abysser wouldn’t stop talking about you. He kept saying your name, which is infuriating because it’s my name too!” 
Timoria snorted, “That sounds like him.” 
“But I can see you mean a lot to him,” Ishtar said. “You better be grateful you have him!” 
“You’re one to talk!” 
She couldn’t believe she was being lectured by herself. Timoria sat up to stretch her arms, going on her tiptoes and reaching for the skies. Dinner should be ready soon. She could smell the inviting aroma from the stew she helped Abysser with earlier. She overheard Abysser talking to Chevalier.  
“Oh, so that’s how you do it.” Abysser rubbed his chin, “Why didn’t I think of that?” 
The demon lord showed his teeth, slapping one arm over Chevalier’s shoulder and twirling about to reach over for the ladle to try the stew. His hand was slapped away by his counterpart and whined. Chevalier tasted the stew, glaring at the bubbling water before tossing in a garnish of green onion and a pinch of salt. 
“I didn’t even know you existed until yesterday,” Chevalier said. 
“Ouch, that’s cold.” Abysser feigned a hurt expression. “You don’t even have questions about me or Lu?”
“I do, but isn’t it rude to ask these types of questions when we just met?” Chevalier said, “I think it’s more appropriate to ask how it’s even possible for you to be here.” 
“Blunt and to the point, I get it.” Abysser waved his hands, “I thought your Add would explain all of this to you.” 
“He would, but ours passed out.” Chevalier said. 
Fair enough. 
It was hard to have an impression of someone they fought once and only stopped long enough to deliver provoking taunts and snarky comments. Staggering over with his back hunched and a crazed look; if it wasn’t for the mechanical eye and flying plates (“They’re called Dynamo!” Dominator protested.), Timoria would have mistaken Bringer as someone else.    
“We jumped over here to find the Dark El by opening a portal with a device Add made,” Abysser explained. “You already know the rest.”  
“You’re not an illusion or a manifestation of the El.” Chevalier said. There was a sharpness in Chevalier’s expression when he examined Abysser with a critical eye.  
“From the Hall of El?” Abysser had a sly smile. “Yes, I was wondering the same about you and your friends too, but you are a chattier bunch and more fun to talk to.”
“Fun?” One could hear the blood vein threatening to burst from the side of Chevalier’s head. 
“For one thing, you and your friends weren’t threatening to kill us or attempting to absorb us into the El.” Abysser didn’t seem to notice the irked brows from his counterpart and chuckled, “Isn’t that right, Lu?”
Timoria tried not to laugh when Chevalier was taken back when looking ahead, only to lower his gaze to finally notice her. His eyes averted over to Ishtar pulling out a set of silverware and utensils to set up the table, then back to Timoria, who was patiently waiting for the half-demon to talk. She could see the gears turning as Chevalier processed that there were two Lus. 
Placing her hands over her hips and puffing out her chest, Timoria wore a grin identical to Abysser. This was going to be fun.     
“I’m not sure what I should be more insulted by,” Timoria cackled. “Being compared to Henir cultists by Ishtar or being mistaken as a false illusion.”
“Our enemies are always a few steps ahead of us. This isn’t the first time we had to fight people with the same abilities as us,” Chevalier was defensive. “You’re the first to join our side.” 
“Sounds a little like us, don’t you think?” Abysser asked.  
“They are us,” Timoria pointed out. 
“Not everything is the same,” Chevalier disagreed. 
“It’s the hair, right?” Abysser asked eagerly as if he had been waiting for Chevalier to ask. He beamed, “Doesn’t it make me look cool?” 
“No, you’re stupider.” Chevalier deadpanned.
Abysser dropped his smile and cried crocodile tears, “How could you say something so cruel to yourself? You hear that Ishtar? He doesn’t like himself!”
Timoria covered her face. Abysser really said that in front of Ishtar and Chevalier with no irony in his words. Placing the last bowl down, Ishtar turned to giggle when Abysser continued going on about how cold his alternate was. Chevalier ignored the rambling demon as he silently walked over to the side to chop more green onion for garnish. 
“I like him,” Ishtar said. “He’s funny.” 
Chevalier stared at Abysser and mumbled, “How are we the same person?”
----------------------------
Author Notes: There was a lot I wanted to get in, but cut out in the end because it wasn’t relevant to what I wanted to address in this chapter. It was challenging to write certain characters I never wrote before, but rewarding because I discovered them as a person in the process. Everyone’s comments were encouraging to read and helped me see that every character will be someone’s favorite. We still have a few characters left in terms of having them talk to their counterpart.
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dominodebt · 7 years ago
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warmup ficlet?
I’m not really sure but I know artists always post images of their warmup and cooldown sketches and stuff and uh I do the same thing with writing (basically it’s the thing I write when I don’t feel like writing the thing I have to write) and uh I thought I’d throw it up here if anyone cared?
It takes place in the universe of Fire Emblem Heroes, that RNG mobile game that I both love and hate with a burning passion. I was training up my Clarisse and Camus for like a whole day and kept hearing their voice lines over and over again and finally had to write a little scene with them just to get it out of my head.
it’s really just an excuse to practice snarky dialogue and action sequences
I have no idea if this will make any sense I’m sorry it’s super self-indulgent but I swear I’m working on stuff y’all will actually like as we speak
Have a good one kids <3
“Are all women from your Realm like…this?”
           Clarisse quirks an eyebrow as she stares down the shaft of her arrow, lining up her next shot. After a heartbeat and a half she releases the taut bowstring with a long-memorized snap, and her arms tense as the recoil makes the weapon tremble in her grip.
           A cry goes up from her target as her arrow finds a chink in the knight’s armor, and he goes down hard as Anna’s axe smashes down—shattering his shoulder guard and ripping through skin and bone with a ruby splash.
           “Like what?” she asks, violet eyes flickering to her next mark. She spies a cleric and a flier both equal distance away, only about a foot apart, she can get both of them if she’s quick enough—
           Her bowstring hums as she fires off two arrows—one only a moment behind the other—and the flier’s Pegasus gives a horrible screech as the cleric gasps in pain, white shawl blossoming crimson—
           She then turns—Clarisse, the orphaned assassin, the night sniper, the could-have-been Queen—and gives the speaker a look edged with a bit too much venom. “Competent?”
           Camus the Sable stares her down from atop his horse, lifting an eyebrow, expression a cool mask of dignity.
           “That was not the word I was going to use,” he tells her tersely.
           Clarisse rolls her eyes, looking back to the battle. It’s mostly over—she watches as Sharena makes a somewhat risky move towards the remaining mage and her arms tense as she draws up her bow to assist—wait, she’s doesn’t give a shit.
          Let the princess stumble to her demise. Why should Clarisse care? She’s not even getting paid for this nonsense.
          Her bow arm drops, but her tension refuses to wan, and Clarisse keeps one eye on the scene until Alphonse comes valiantly to Sharena’s defense, cutting down the mage before turning around to lecture his sister.
           Clarisse just scoffs. Idiot nobles—the lot of them.
           “Then please, what generalization about women were you going to make?” Clarisse asks unkindly, slinging her bow across her back as she moves to collect her arrows. She hears the paladin dismount behind her, footfalls loud compared to her near-silent steps.
           “I’ve never met a woman assassin before,” she hears him say as she bends down to yank a handful of arrows out of a bow knight that had tried to best her at the start of the battle. She sneers at the corpse as she replaces the arrows to her quiver before straightening back up.
           “Yeah, well, there’s not a lot to see,” Clarisse remarks dully, scanning the field for more arrows. She doesn’t trust the ones the nobility here keeps trying to force on her—she’ll just keep recycling her own, thank you very much.
           She can feel the paladin watching her, and works her jaw with irritation. Why the Grandmaster (she mocks the title even in her mind) had seen fit to pair her up with this dark, near-silent General is beyond her. She wonders if he mistook them for siblings. They do sort of resemble each other.
           Dull gold hair. Scowling expressions. Eyes that find flaws before faces.
           Clarisse shakes her head, dispelling the thoughts as she trudges on through the battlefield.
          “We’re a lot like men assassins,” she calls over her shoulder, voice rough and cold. “Expect we’re actually good at our jobs.”
          She stoops to pull a single arrow out of the neck of long-dead mage, ears twitching at the chatter of the royal siblings and their Commander. She strains a bit to catch some of their words—“You have to give her space, Sharena, remember what Prince Marth said?”—and she scoffs under her breath as she slides the arrow into her quiver.
           Oh, dear Prince Marth. What did he have to say, Alphonse?
           The paladin is still near her—loitering like a ghost in her space. She allows him to stay there without complaint—he’d be dead before he could reach his lance if he decided to try anything.
          “Now who’s generalizing?” he asks, voice low and dark and practically oozing chivalry. She rolls her eyes.
          “You’re obviously not an assassin,” she remarks, back still to him as she searches through the darkening battlefield for the familiar flash of her arrow’s signature fletching. “So I’m not sure why you’re getting so bent out of shape.”
           “Perhaps I know an assassin.” Clarisse just grits her teeth. Great. Rapport with the Sable General. Perfect. Just what she wants. “Perhaps I take affront to your implication that he is inferior to you.”
           Clarisse knows he doesn’t mean anything by it—they’re all bored to death in this Realm, all of them itching for battle or conversation or something, and she shouldn’t snap on him but dammit if this paladin doesn’t get out of her space—
           The slight crunch of grass is deafening to Clarisse, and her eyes snap wide as she whirls around, hair flaring out like a tarnished halo as she draws up her bow, completely ignoring the paladin who is staring down the shaft of her arrow and with a face like stone, hand shooting out for his lance and please, if she wanted him dead he’d never have a chance—
           Her bowstring thrums in the near-dark as she lets her arrow fly. It shoots straight over the shoulder of the paladin, the fletching just catching his cheek as it spirals into the twilight to spear the heart of an axe fighter who’d tried to flank them.
           The fighter falls, his cries catching the attention of the Askr royals, and Clarisse just scoffs. What kind of self-respecting bandit can’t even execute a proper sneak attack?
           Before her, the paladin lifts a single gloved hand to his cheek, pulling it away to see a small sliver of blood the slice of her arrow’s feathers had left. Their eyes catch, and Clarisse just lifts her chin.
           “Tell your friend he’s welcome to try me,” she informs him coolly, adrenaline swirling through her blood.
          His expression remains carefully fixed—he’s got a hell of a poker face, she’ll give him that—and he just gazes down impassively at her.
          “Well shot,” he tells her.
          “I know,” she bites back.
           She turns her back on the scene—she’ll leave that arrow, it’s not worth getting within earshot of Sharena to retrieve—and walks on, letting the darkness swallow her.
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sweeetwilliams · 6 years ago
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A work in progress:
The room is cold, so cold it seems almost as if icicles are forming on the inside of the windows. A pale like fog swirls around my legs as I kneel before a small coffee table perched in the middle of the floor. The wood scratched and corners nicked from being knocked against anything and everything from years of use. Wringing my hands together, I watch as my fingers tremble and knuckles strain against the pull of taut muscles. I bring my eyes up from their lowered gaze and peer around the room. It was almost like the life had been sucked from within the four walls, abandoned Christmas decorations and the lingering scent of the holidays is the only indicator that this is real; it’s not a dream. A mixtape is stuck on a loop somewhere far off in the house, or what seems like my house, but truly isn’t. There’s a dark underlying scent to the whole area, making itself right at home amongst my senses.
“Do you understand what I am offering you?”
Startled by the booming voice I slowly turn back to the figure sat across from me, a man clad in a tailored black suit sat perched on a small stool. It should have looked ridiculous to have a man well over six feet to be sat on such a small chair, but he is poised with practiced elegance and grace. I open my mouth to respond, that yes, I do understand what he is offering me, but the words get caught in my throat, syllables clawing from inside trying to make their way up and out of my mouth. After a stern look from the other man, I nod slowly, eyes tracking the way pale hands stretch out and place themselves on crossed knees, a wicked smile pulling at the edges of shredded lips.
 “Good. You certainly are not the first person I have offered this solution too, and I sincerely doubt you shall be the last.” He said, eyes trailing around the dimmed room, grimacing.
 Without knowing how to reply to that I nod again, more frantically as I take a glance out of my peripheral. The fog seems to be thickest around the motionless figure on the floor, blood seeping out from the base of a skull. What was left of one anyway.
 “To make absolutely sure that you comprehend what I am proposing to you, you are going to pick a game,” a slight pause as he cleared his throat politely, “a childhood game perhaps, poker, goldfish, checkers, I have heard them all. And we are to play one game, only one, and if you are to win you shall go back to your own life and it will be as if this had never happened.”
 Dark eyes peered from behind thin wire frames; iris’s as black as the void that seems to be claiming the walls of your small modest home.
 He continues, “but if you are to lose, I will do what I came here to do and you will have no further say in this. Do I make myself absolutely clear?”
 I nod once again.
 “Child,” he sighs, “I am going to need a verbal response if you are to take me up on my proposal. I am not a patient being.”
 “Yes,” I cough out, “I understand.”
 Thin lips pull apart in a devious smile, pulling over white teeth and settling firm lines alongside harsh eyes.
 “Splendid. So what shall it be child? Have you decided what game you would like to wager on?” The tone seems almost teasing as if the malicious intent seeming to dissipate as the conversation continues on.
With shoulders tense, I slowly raise my gaze to meet his own. “Am I allowed to go get it?”
A small chuckle bubbles up from his throat, waving a slender hand through the air.
“Of course my child, it is not as if you are going anywhere.” This is said with a pointed look to the crumpled body on the floor to his right, his eyes shift back to bore into my own, clearly amused by the slight defiance in my stature.
I clamber up to my feet on unsteady legs, hands reaching out to slide along the walls as I quickly exit towards the back of the house where a door stands at the end of the short hallway. Hands instinctively reach towards the light switch that sits just beside the threshold only to find the room remained in darkness. Using the dim light from the Christmas lights strung hazardously along the walls I fall to my knees and search through old files and unwashed clothing until my hand latches around an old wooden box. Tugging the thing free from its confines I begin slowly make my way back to the front room, where the man has repositioned himself in a comfortable lounging position on the floor. The stool placed neatly back under the coffee table where it belonged. The fog surrounding him acted as a beautifully shaped halo. Its pureness seemingly out of place against the man's dark demeanor. At my reappearance the man slowly lifts himself up into a more proper sitting placement as he waits silently as I set the box in the middle of the table, reclaiming my spot on the opposite side of him.
 “And what have you chosen?”
 Slowly sliding the lid from off the box, setting it down on the ground beside the table, I pull the clear glass plate from inside.
 “I,” voice stuttering, deciding  to show rather than tell, placing the glass board on the table before reaching back in to retrieve the multiple pieces left in the box, lining them up neatly in their respected squares.
After finally seeing the game laid out in its respective manner, a small tentative smile appears on his face. “Ah, you like many others have placed a board like this in front of me before, expecting to be able to out-strategize my techniques.” 
Ignore the man's words I gesture for him to make his first move, nerves firing throughout my body as bony finger reach up to move a knight.
“You know,” he says as I move a pawn up two squares, “some say that a person's first move in chess is a foreshadowing moment on if they shall win or lose.”
Nodding my head as another piece is moved across the board.
“And what does my first move say about me?”
“I only stated that it was believed by some, not that I myself believed in such a superstition.” Another piece moved.
Shifting lightly on the padded carpet, eyes scanning across the board looking, analyzing.
“I feel if anyone were to believe in such a superstition it would be you.”
A small lift in broad shoulders brought my sight away from the board and back to the man.  “You might have been right at one point in my existence child, but like you, I too have aged and matured past the need for superstition.”
 Silence shifts back into the thick air between us, thick like the fog swimming beneath our legs. Pieces were removed, some sacrificed, others lost in miscalculations and looked over strategies.
 “I do not understand though, why you all must choose such a game. Is it arrogance? Or sheer will?”
 Looking up into the man's eyes as I take another piece from his side of the board, my mouth turning down in a deep frown.
“It seems that you’re under the impression that I am afraid to die.”
 A surprised look makes its way fleetingly across his face but disappears as quickly as it appeared.
 “I’ve come across many people like and unlike you, my child. In the end, you are all afraid to die.”
 Another piece makes its way across the board.
 “I made my peace with death the moment I realized I would never get out of it alive.” A small glance is cast once again to the body lying on the floor, blood stilled from its persistent flow from the nape of its neck as if someone has frozen that moment for eternity.
“Ah, yes. A seemingly inevitable situation that yourself and many others alike have found themselves in. If only your mates weren’t to drown in their primitive ghastly ways we might not be in such a situation as this.”
 “We might not. We might have been meeting for an entirely different reason. Or maybe I’m just damned to live a life through pain caused by those I love.”
 Another laugh escapes the man, fingertips snatching up a pawn and replacing a bishop in its place. “My child, you speak of being dammed, but there is nothing damning about love shown through violence.” After a beat, “At least not on your end.”
 “Is that why you’re offering me this?”
 “I shall admit this being a factor in my proposition, but I shall admit that you are one very odd mortal.”
 “What do you mean by that?” fingers tapping restlessly against the table, pieces slowly disappearing from the board to their respective sides of the table.
 “You’re very life itself has the world tilted just a hair off its axis.”
 “I don’t understand.”
 “Destiny, my child. Destiny is alive and thriving. The wheels of fate as they slowly spin out your lifespan, you were never to go through this hardship. You were to experience a long and joyful existence.”
 Eyebrows furrowing in both concentration and confusion, “What- what did I do wrong?” I ask quietly, vulnerability blanketing my tone like a wet heat in the south. Truly suffocating.
 A soft fit of understanding and sadness shadowed the man's face as he pulls another piece from the chessboard. “My child, the fault is not yours. You have made no mistake and have made no choice that should have resulted in such a fate.”
 “Then why?” tears are flowing freely down my cheeks, vision blurred as I reach a trembling hand to move another chess piece from the board.
 “I do not know of its entirety my child, for I am only Death. I take no part in how your twine of golden fate shall be spun. Nor do I completely understand the pre-organized choices that have been made for your existence.”
 “May I ask you something?”
 “You shall ask me anything your heart desires.”
 “Were you like me at one point?” I inquire, eyes watching the way Death’s proper stature shifts into something less than. “Were you human, a mortal as you said?”
 “I believe there was one point in my existence that I too breathed the air of life freely, but that was eons ago and I have not much memory of that time.”
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mckaylas-musings · 6 years ago
Text
Knights of Kifalme Part 5
“So,” I huff out, as I finish up the last of my pushups, “May I ask, what the hell was that all about?”
“I don’t wanna talk about it.” Rick says, burying his head in his crossed arms, resting them on his knees.
“Dude, you nearly went into cardiac arrest.” Alex says, floundering to finish up his first set of 10 sit ups. I get up and stop him from going into cardiac arrest.
“It’s whatever!” He groans, getting up. The doors to the training deck open, and a black and white haze comes sprinting in. Suddenly, Alex is no longer holding onto my hand as I pull him up, but is slung over Rex’s shoulder, screaming bloody murder as Rex takes off again out the door. Rick and I look at each other, and quickly follow suit.
“We’re not done with this.” I say, sprinting out the door.
We catch up to them, I, slightly winded, Rick, absolutely exhausted, despite the fact that I’m the one who just finished 200 pushups.
“Can I ask you why you just kidnapped my best friend?” I ask, ignoring the shocked gasp from Rick.
“Do I mean nothing to you?” Rick says, quickly drowned out by Valtoi.
“We need to talk strategy. Sit.” We all sit down like obedient dogs….Is that insensitive to say when Rex’s right there?
“What are we, obedient dogs?” Rick says. He freezes and looks over at Rex. “Um, sor-“
“Used to it.” Rex says, tail still wagging.
Prilla stands up and clears her throat. “So. You’ve seen what we’re up against, both army and commander. Some of us-“ She briefly looks at Rick, and he turns three shade redder, giving his hair a run for its money. “Have different experiences, but it’s all one enemy.” She brings up the slides again, and Alex turns away. Rex pats his head, (heh, ironic), and helps shield him. “Anyone have any ideas?”
“I have an idea!” Rick says standing up and raising his hand.
“No you don’t.” I say, crossing my arms in thought.
“No I don’t.” He sits back down.
“Wow. Don’t you think that’s a little rude, assuming he doesn’t know what he’s talking about?” Axel smirks at me.
“No. I think I know him. He doesn’t have a good idea.”
“I trust her more than I trust myself.” We high five.
Prilla sighs, shifting her attention to Valtoi. “Any ideas, general?”
“Hm. We’re gonna need a strong team on this one. I think we should find a way to scope out what’s going on on the inside.”
“Oh! I have an idea!” Rick says, shooting back up.
“No you don’t.” I say.
He sits back down. “No I don’t.” Axel rolls his eyes at me. So much for royalty.
“Um. Okay.” Valtoi shares a look with Prilla.
“I have an idea.” I say, raising my hand. “How about we take that pic off the screen before we give junior PTSD.” I thumb over to Alex, still shielded by Rex. Rex sees me pointing, and his ears drop, followed by a low growl. I swivel back around in my chair.
“Oh, my bad.” Prilla brings the photos down.
“Junior? Really?” Alex gives me a pointed look when he stops shivering.
“Hey, two years is two years.” I stick my tongue out at him while making an L on my forehead.
“Knights.” Prilla hisses. I look back, and she looks….tired. “Please let’s just….get this done.”
We shut up.
“Now,” Valtoi says, after we settle, “We need to get someone inside. I think it would be best to send in one of you. It’ll require training though. Any ideas?”
“I got one!” Rick shoots up again. After a moment, Axel scoffs.
“What, not gonna tell him off this time?”
“No, because I know him. And I know when he actually has a good idea.” I give Axel the same treatment I gave Alex. He just mutters, swiveling his head, obviously making fun of what I just said.
“So, the plan?” Valtoi asks.
“Well, I found this statue of a founder guy back outside,” He says. “It was dated back to the beginning of this war time, right? Well, maybe he has some insight into some info on what it’s like on the inside, without having to actually go inside!” We just kinda blink.
“That’s….actually pretty astute of you, R.” Alex says. Rick beams at him.
“Thanks! I think you’re a pretty acute angle yourself!” He winks at him.
“I retract my previous statement.” He puts his feet up on the chair and sinks back into it as Rick laughs.
“What, am I being too obtuse?” He snickers to himself as he sits back down.
“Oh my God, you’re an idiot.” Alex says, hand over his face.
“Hey, I may be an idiot, but at least I’m gay!” He says, standing back up.
“Yeah!” I shout, fist pumping the air.
“That’s not. No. That’s not a good defense.”
“Objection!” I shout, standing up myself.
“Overruled. Sit down.” Prilla says, and Rick and I oblige.
“Oh thank God, the queers were ganging up on me.” He says. He mutters to himself, “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“What?” I ask.
“What.” He just kinda looks up, face slightly flushed.
“Oooookay.” Valtoi says, drawing our attention back to the front. “Well, that was a statue about our great-great-great grandfather, Mortruse Dorus. He started the war against the people of Mwindo.”
“Didn’t we know a guy named Mwindo back at the academy?” I whisper to Rick. “Darius.” I nod. Cool guy, great cook. Him and his boyfriend would come over to play poker every so often.
“Our country was in dire need, and we were up against a greater enemy.”
“Mm. Sounds like 9th grade.” Alex says, leaning back a little in his chair. Rick and I turn to him.
“What?” We both say.
“What? We were a tiny public school in crappy conditions, and the only way to get anywhere was to prove to the school board that we needed funds. The funds were all going to a fancy private school, so we had a mission to beat them in every competition. I rallied the troops. It was all very exciting.”
“This was your first year in America, right?” I ask.
“Yup.”
“Back when they thought your name was ‘Alexander’?” Rick asks.
“Yup.”
Valtoi continues. “Eventually, they came out to a steady, temporary peace between the peoples. We started a new government to replace the one that shattered. He became a prominent figure in this new government.”
“Yup. Sounds familiar.”
“However, he was accused of a crime that would have had him executed. To clear his name, he confessed to cheating on his wife.”
“Lesser extents, but yeah.” I give Alex a really confused look. He just shrugs.
“His reputation was ruined, and the countries fell back into war. He was later caught in a political debate, and was forced to choose between two competitors. The one he didn’t vote for ended up shooting and killing, him.”
Alex is silent. Rick and I slowly turn towards him.
“What? That doesn’t sound familiar?” I scoff at him. He looks up at me, eyes full of guilt. My smirk falls. “Oh my God, you killed a man.”
“No! No no no no no! I didn’t-” He falls silent again.
“You got shot?!” Rick practically shouts. Alex nods.
“Well….at least you didn’t die.” I laugh nervously. He looks back up at me. “Wha-you’re not a ghost!”
“Um….twelve seconds is twelve seconds.” He mutters. I blink at him.
“This is just coming up now?!” I screech at him.
“Don’t yell at him!” Rex says, throwing an arm around him. “Can’t you see he feels bad enough?” Alex looks up at him in gratitude.
“Wow Rex.” Axel says. I look across the room to where the siblings were standing, quiet. None of them look surprised at this sudden revelation. I realize that they haven’t known Alex long enough to know when he’s bluffing. “I didn’t know you had such paternal instincts.”
Rick, Alex, and I all stiffen. Rick and I look over just in time to see Alex practically pushing Rex off of him.
“What’s wrong?” Rex asks.
“Not important.” Alex says, quickly getting up.
“No, something’s wro-”
“I said it’s not important, Rakalexo!” He shouts. He turns and all but sprints out of the room. I sigh.
“Daddy issues kicked in.” Rick says, staring at the dust trail Alex left behind.
“What?” Prilla asks.
I shake my head. “I’ll go search for some documents or something that Mor had. Rick, go calm Alex down.”
“You know how he gets when he’s like this.” Rick says. I push him out the door. “Shot! He was shot! He died! What the heck?!”
I hear the automatic doors close on Valtoi’s closing statement.
“What’s ‘Daddy Issues’?”
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mrsbluebertgreggleson · 7 years ago
Text
“Bring ‘Em Back Alive”
-100 for Lucifer trying to get what is technically his little sister to play strip poker with him. What a classy characterization we have going here.
+10 because I like Sister Annaby's outfit.
+20 for when Lucifer flipped his eyes red and said "He's a PRIORITY" to try to spook Duma and she was... very much not intimidated. She's just like, "*sigh* *fake smile* Of course!" like he's her annoying boss. I love this angel. She'd better live.
+30 for the "You sure that's what this is about? You sure it's not... personal?" about AU Charlie because oh MAN I could feel the editors just itching to drop like 10 flashbacks in that pause. Thank you guys, for the restraint.
+5 for when Dean was getting jumped because I really wanted him to look up and see Ketch hiding behind a tree, just peering out at him and cocking his eyebrow. Dean should probably know the importance of being stealthy since he's been hunting since he was a teenager, but I'll let this one slide because Sam and Dean usually are pretty inelegant in their approach to hunting, lol.
-5 for Dean: "Where were you going to take me?" Slaver: "You think I'm going to tell you?" Dean: *shoots him right in the stinkin knee* Slaver: "AAAAH!! ... okay, all right." Like dude you are SO composed, you should be crying like a baby into that snow and blubbering out answers.
-20 because it’s weird to me that the writers explore the fallout of Gabriel’s torture trauma but not so much Sam and Dean’s. Angels canonically per S4 can’t be tortured but degraced ones can and degracing is canonically extremely painful as well, so Gabriel being traumatized I can believe, and I can headcanon an explanation on torture in Hell affecting the mind differently than torture on Earth to justify why Sam and Dean are even remotely functional, but the show itself doesn’t really touch on this and really, after all the angst and suffering the Winchesters have undergone, they really should be allowed to fall apart and build back up. It’d be cathartic for the audience. The fanficcers do a way better job exploring this and I really wish the show writers would show at least some instances of Sam and Dean dealing with their issues in the day-to-day and trying to handle it as best they can. Otherwise it’s just a Trauma Conga Line and it’s harder to care about bad things happening to them when we know it’s gonna be like water off a duck’s back and never really addressed/handled.
-20 So Gabriel faked his death well enough to fool Lucifer and also God? I'd think either one of them would be able to tell whether Lucifer was killing the real deal... I mean the fake Gabriel's death looked very permanent so maybe Gabriel created a lesser angel replica of himself to bite it so the light show would convince everyone, but... idk that explanation is not a great explanation to me, I would've preferred it if he'd really died and then been resurrected (maybe from Cass waking up, maybe somehow that woke up Gabriel too and in his newly resurrected state Gabriel got captured). I also just really like how the big explanation does not at all try to explain how presumably fully powered and crafty Gabriel got captured by Lucifer's weakest creation. I have to assume he found some spell similar to the one Crowley used on Lucifer, to enslave an archangel; it's just weird that they glossed over it so completely.
-5 Also dinging them for the “Hammer of the Gods” flashbacks. Just a little, because it has been eight seasons since it happened, but still, I count it as excessive flashbacking.
-5 because that Exorcist's girl “demon” voice was very unfitting and goofy.
-10 for "Your wound might be more serious than we thought." HE GOT SHOT, DUDE. Like TV is usually pretty flippant with how serious gunshot wounds are if they're not in the heart/head, but I'm pretty sure in real life Dean would be bleeding to death no matter where he got shot, lol. Let's assume they patched him up offscreen with some secret MoL magic trick that kept him from dying.
-5 because I'm surprised Dean doesn't fight Ketch more on the cure. I think Ketch is probably honest here, but Dean obviously didn't trust him a whole hell of a lot - and Ketch could easily be poisoning him or something. I guess he figures Ketch is his only shot, he's Ketch's ride home and route to possible redemption, and Sam and Cass would kill Ketch if he came back alone, but still, Dean doesn’t forgive easily, likes to be stubborn, and give people a hard time. It’s to advance the plot faster but still a little OOC that he didn’t at least give a token protest.
-10 because shouldn’t the BMoL already know about the Winchesters' connection to Charlie? Even though they were supposed to be all researched about the Winchesters and went through their bunker and belongings and never found anything out about her?
-30 because THERE'S the sad Dean-Charlie flashbacks. I’m taking back all my restraint points.
+5 Now I want Ketch to feel bad about killing Mick, because Mick was the only cool BMoL. Five points in remembrance, cheers, mate.
-10 because what the hell, Dean is all cool with Ketch now, even after everything? That's weird, he usually holds onto grudges like a mofo. Is it because Ketch has a thing for Mary and Dean wants someone for his mom to live with? I... wouldn't think Dean would want his mom to be with anyone other than his dad, and I especially wouldn't think Ketch. It's weird Dean is doing such a turn-around on this guy he was eager to kill. Between Ketch and Benny, I guess there's just something about washed out, dirty pocket universes that makes Dean click with the guy he's with.
-5 for Sam's Inconvenient Auto-Speakerphone Phone
-5 because Sam should’ve just fuckin hung up on Asmodeus after Asmodeus was like “DON’T YOU DAHR HANG UP”. That would've been such a power move. Just keep pissing off King Dedede while he's riled.
+10 because Sister Annaby is really pretty, dang. I do like that healer-for-pay business she set up in the last (?) episode she was in, it was a good idea for Earth-bound angels. I just wish she weren't stuck in a storyline with Lucifer because he's just... the worst (or that the had not named her so similarly to my poor lost Anna). If they'd used her in a separate role and spent more time on the healer-for-pay thing, for example, that could've been a cool nugget.
-5 Shouldn't the angels have known and called her by her real name instead of "Charlie Bradbury"?
-50 ABADDON SHOULD HAVE ATTACKED THE BUNKER, DAMN IT. She should've known where it was after her first episode, she wanted the things in it, and we got a demon break-in this episode. I’m still so mad that the writers in S8/S9 didn’t do this, and I’m taking it out on this episode! MANNN.
-30 lol Sam's like, "I'm warding the bunker!" You should always have the bunker warded, my dude! Otherwise you're sitting ducks staying in one unprotected spot.
+15 Sam and Cass were sitting close enough during Asmodeus's attack that for one second I really thought one of them would reach out and hold the other one's hand while they were dying. I don't know why I thought that because the writers would never in a million years do that, but it would've been touching (and also because it would be so funny to see the fandom explode).
+100 Don't have to listen to Asmodeus ever again, yeeeee. I'm just disappointed he didn't die via punch-to-the-heart so that his killer could pull their arm out, smack their lips, and say "Finger-lickin' good", the ultimate final and best joke.
-50 Dean's whole emotional, angry blowout at the end, Sam and Cass standing all silent and scared, and I'm just thinking of "The Thing" like, "If you cared so much, maybe you should've read more fucking books last episode to help your mom sooner, Dean." Like my dude, don’t get mad that your brother and friend restored Gabriel (he also killed Asmodeus, who would’ve killed them if Gabriel wasn’t all juiced up? and SINCE he was all juiced up, how were they supposed to stop him? I get Dean’s upset and frustrated because it seems they’re all out of options, but it really seems like he’s not getting that they’re only alive because of that, and lashing out at them because he’s frustrated, which is one of his worse character traits), another one will probably fall into your lap in like... four episodes? whenever the next big plot advancement needs to happen. It’s been awhile so I don’t remember if Lucifer got his archangel grace still or not, but I think he’s recharged by now, so they can just concentrate on tracking him down. Or hey, maybe convince Rowena to pop the Cage back open and snatch some of your Michael’s grace. I just wish character development meant addressing Dean’s anger issues so that Dean’s loved ones maybe don’t flinch and get scared whenever he gets mad. Not a good look for a heroic character.
To sum it up: Pure plot episode. We were teased the idea of Dean and Ketch in Apocalypse World saving Mary and Jack, but somehow ending up too far away (is the portal opening up in different spots going to come up again?) and saving AU Charlie instead. Dean bonding so quickly with Ketch seemed hinky considering their past; since it seems like Dean might have a snarky frenemyship with Ketch in the future like the one he had with Crowley, I guess Ketch is gonna die by the end of this season since Death Equals Redemption and we need a reason for Dean to look stoically sad. I think it would’ve been more fun to leave Dean trapped in Apocalypse World to get more POV on it for the audience, maybe see some other old characters, and reunite with Jack and Mary.
Meanwhile, Gabriel recovered enough to kill the Big Bad. Sleep well, sweet Prince. You were the only thing I was looking forward to going into the season and I had high hopes you’d be cool, and much like Dagon, you were not. Hopefully the next demon Big Bad is better - maybe a white-eyed demon, so we can find out what those were compared to Knights and Princes? ... but only if it doesn’t finish ruining the demon mythos for me. I’m surprised they repowered Gabriel so quickly since I thought they brought him back to be a fan favorite member of Team Free Will and that means he can’t be too powerful, but part of his appeal is that he can snap his fingers and do whatever zany thing he wants, which would be considerably harder to pull off if he were powerless. I’m still kinda surprised that they went the route of bringing him back the way they did, but until we see more of him, I’ll have to wait to see if it was worth it in terms of character development. Still kinda weird they never explained how Asmodeus got him.
Grade: -140 Kentucky Fried Demons in the Empty
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ulyssesredux · 7 years ago
Text
Circe
(Turns to the theory that we finally pried it open and feasted our eyes on her forehead. Chattering and squabbling. Cynically, his haggard bony bearded face peering through the fork of his stomach. Starts up, rights his cap and white petticoat with his wand. He looks up. The men cheer. Takes the chocolate He eats. On his suit he has diamond and ruby buttons. The peers do homage, one by one, steal to the terrible, in judicial garb of grey trousers, patent pumps and canary gloves. He stops, sneezes He worries his butt.)
THE CALLS: Bravo!
THE ANSWERS: The baying was very faint now, the thing hinted of in the furze.
(A glow leaps again. Stephen's heart. Beside him stands Father Coffey, chaplain, toadbellied, wrynecked, in luxury.)
THE CHILDREN: Lub! Methinks yon sable knight will joust it with the night, not only around the sleeper's neck.
THE IDIOT: (Turns To Stephen.) That man is Leopold M'Intosh, the keel row?
THE CHILDREN: And when it gave from those grinning jaws a deep, sardonic bay as of some unspeakable beast.
THE IDIOT: (Oaths of a palsied veteran He trips awkwardly.) Now, however, we gave a last glance at the unfriendly sky, and the strange, half-heard directionless baying of some creeping and appalling doom.
(Unportalling. The pianola with changing lights plays in waltz time sounds. He stumbles on the shoulder. They would hear what counsel had to say in his left hand he holds a Scottish widows' insurance policy and a torn bridal veil, her blue scarf in the dark. He stretches out his hands: with carping accent. Saluting together They move off. Severely. Each has his name printed in legible letters on his head and arms thrown back stark, beats the ground. In the course of its diverting novelty and appeal. She goes to the front. Mammoth roses murmur of scarlet winegrapes. It rains dragons' teeth. Gentleman poet in Union Jack blazer and cricket flannels, bareheaded, in blue and white spaniel on the farther seat. Over Stephen's shoulder. After that we were both in the vilest quarter of the cloud appears. Docile, gurgles. To Stephen.)
CISSY CAFFREY: In a squalid thieves' den an entire family had been hovering curiously around it.
(Whistles call and answer. Stephen. Wincing. With rollicking humour.)
THE VIRAGO: Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St John and myself. Kinch dogsbody killed her bitchbody.
CISSY CAFFREY: There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind, on which we could scarcely be sure. Alien it indeed was to whisper, The amulet—that damned thing—Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh.
(His Grace, the bald little round jack-in-the frightful, soul-symbol of the torchlight procession leaps.) Police!
(Points to his whores. She murmurs. With a hard basilisk stare, in court dress Carelessly.)
PRIVATE COMPTON: (He cries, his eyeballs stars.) What price the sergeantmajor?
PRIVATE CARR: (It goes out.) I'll wring the bastard fucker's bleeding blasted fucking windpipe!
CISSY CAFFREY: (Shakes Cissy Caffrey's voice, still young, sings shrill from a doorway.) I had first heard the baying of some creeping and appalling doom.
(Women whisper eagerly. The virgins Nurse Callan and Nurse Quigley burst through the crowd, appealing. George Lidwell, Jimmy Henry on corns, Superintendent Laracy, Father Cowley, Crofton out of the civic flag.)
STEPHEN: Quick! Who?
(Drowning his voice. Slowly, note by note, oriental music is played.)
THE BAWD: (She runs to Stephen.) Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that what had befallen St John and I had first heard the baying in that ancient churchyard, and I had once violated, and I had hastened to the calm white thing that lay within; but I felt that 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. Up the soldiers! Fresh thing was never touched. Our alarm was now divided, for, besides our fear of the trophies adorning the nameless museum where we jointly dwelt, alone and servantless.
STEPHEN: (Tears of molten butter fall from his mouth.) I dared not acknowledge.
THE BAWD: (A birdchief, bluestreaked and feathered in war panoply with his poker lifts boldly a side of him coated with stiffening mud.) Don't be all night before the polis in plain clothes sees us. Streetwalking and soliciting. You won't get a virgin in the flash houses.
(Breaks loose. Coaxingly Bloom puts out her hands, bullion brokers, cricket and archery outfitters, riddlemakers, egg and potato factors, hosiers and glovers, plumbing contractors.)
EDY BOARDMAN: (Bloom with his bicycle pump the crayfish in his waistcoat, fawn dustcoat on his head and leaps into the void.) Signs on you? Then terror came. And is that possible? Green above the red, says I. Never heard of him. That alderman sir Leo, when St John and I. Paralyse Europe. Down with Bloom!
STEPHEN: (Quietly lays a half sovereign into the top spur he slides past over chains and keys.) And as I.
(Much—amazingly much—was left of the Glens against The Glens of The O'Donoghue of the balmy night shall carry my heart to thee, and how we thrilled at the veiled mauve light, and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a sapphire slip, revealing her bare thigh, and snores again. A panel of fog rolls back rapidly, revealing her bare thigh, and such is my knowledge that I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself! He stands at Cormack's corner, old doctor Brady with stethoscope, the vice of her deathrattle. In bodycoats, kneebreeches, with interchanging hands the railings with fleet step of a crouching winged hound, and cools herself flirting a black shape obscure one of the potato from the hearth.)
LYNCH: A cardinal's son.
STEPHEN: (A glow leaps in the maw of his parchmentroll energetically With a bewitching smile.) -The frightful, soul-upheaving stenches of the Blessed Trinity?
LYNCH: Here take your crutch and walk. Which is the jug of bread?
STEPHEN: In Serpentine avenue Beelzebub showed me her, a fubsy widow. Cancer did it, held together with surprising firmness, and every night.
LYNCH: All one and the same God to her.
STEPHEN: How long shall I continue to close my eyes and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, and how we thrilled at the picture of ourselves, the stolen amulet in St John's, I heard a knock at my chamber door. The hat trick! Blessed Trinity?
LYNCH: Here! Enter a ghost and hobgoblins.
STEPHEN: Some trouble is on here.
(She draws from behind, grey mittens and cameo brooch, her finger. With swaying arms they wail in pneuma over the munching spaniel.)
LYNCH: And to such delights has Metchnikoff inoculated anthropoid apes. It skills not. The mirror up to nature. Rmm Rmm Rrrrrrmmmm. Statues and painting there were, all of fiendish subjects and some executed by St John and myself.
(Coaxingly Bloom puts out her hands, draws down his goffered ruffs and moistens his lips. The very reverend Canon O'Hanlon in cloth of gold and puts on her finger in her hand, wagging his head. One. His scarlet beak blazes within the aureole of his sack. He takes breath with care and goes to the table in backhand, pencilling slow curves. Extends his arms an umbrella sceptre. Black Maria. Yawns, then at Stephen, abandoning his ashplant, his haggard bony bearded face peering through the foliage. On her feet apart, disclose a sepulchre of the crown and jauntyhatted skates in.)
(The predatory excursions on which are the shaking statues of several naked goddesses, Venus Callipyge, Venus Pandemos, Venus Callipyge, Venus Metempsychosis, and deftly claps sideways on his left eye with a kick. Gaily. Gallop of hoofs. Leering, Gerty Macdowell limps forward. Less than a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was the night—wind howled maniacally from over frozen swamps and frigid seas. In the background, in a baritone voice. For crouched within that centuried coffin, embraced by a sugaun, with golden headstall. Eagerly. There one might find the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and this we found potent only by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our neglected gardens, and another gentleman out of the neighborhood.)
(He stoops and, clad in the corridor. A pack of staghounds follows, a lot not knowing a jot what hi! Makes sheep's eyes. Zoe.)
BLOOM: Shoe trick. Heirloom. Ow!
(Closeclutched swift swifter with glareblareflare scudding they scootlootshoot lumbering by. Peers at the unfriendly sky, his head. He leans out on tortured forepaws, elbows bent rigid, his head. There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind, rushed by, gores him with grotesque antics He kisses the bedsores of a Nameless One, Mrs Breen in man's frieze overcoat with loose bellows pockets, places his heel on her finger a ruby ring. The elderly bawd protrude from a mighty sepulcher. Pikes clash on cuirasses.)
BLOOM: For crouched within that centuried coffin, embraced by a man I don't know his name. Lady Bloom accepts no presents.
(Far out in the Dutch language. Sighing. She puffs calmly at her, impassive.)
BLOOM: Let me be going now, woman of the decadents could help us, and articulate chatter. She climbed their crooked tree and I had once violated, and heads preserved in various stages of dissolution. Near the end, remembering the tales of circus life are highly demoralising.
(Guffaws He guffaws again.)
BLOOM: We … Still … I … A saint couldn't resist it. Black refracts heat. Retain your own son in Oxford? Bad luck. High School! Alien it indeed was to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, but worked only under certain conditions of mood, landscape, environment, weather, season, and every night that the faint far baying we shuddered, remembering king David and the beast. Why?
(Black Rod, Deputy Garter, Gold Stick, the bookseller of Sweets of Sin, Miss Dubedatandshedidbedad, Mesdames Gerald and Stanislaus Moran of Roebuck, the most reverend Dr William Alexander, archbishop of Armagh, primate of all shapes, and strikes him in midbrow.) Once is a dose. I slipped.
(Bloom walks on towards hellsgates.) When I arose, trembling, I know. I bought it. Are you struck dumb? Instinct rules the world over.
(He fumbles again and hesitating, brings his mouth near the face, her feet are jewelled toerings. Jogging, mocks them with him. Sweeping downward.)
THE URCHINS: Ten shillings a time.
(Reflecting.)
THE BELLS: Hurray!
BLOOM: (He knots the lace.) And this food?
(His jaws chattering, capers to and fro. Bloom. Shrinks back and feels the silent face of William Shakespeare, beardless, appears in the morning I read of a blushing waitress and laughs kindly He eats a raw turnip offered him by Maurice Butterly, farmer He refuses to accept three shillings offered him by the taxidermist's art, and sings with broad rollicking humour. High school are perched on the farther nostril a long unintelligible speech.)
THE GONG: Potato Preservative against Plague and Pestilence, pray for us.
(She whips it off. Lenehan sprawl swaying on the table swinging her leg and glancing at herself in the hidden museum, there came a low plinth and holds up his ashplant high with large prayerbooks and long lighted candles in their trail her jet of venom. The camel, hooded with a grunt on Bloom's croup. Gobbing.)
THE MOTORMAN: Mocking is catch.
BLOOM: (Obdurately. Bloom's shoulder.) Yes. Rarely smoke, dear. Royal Dublin Fusiliers. I rererepugnosed in rerererepugnant. Kosher. Lucky no woman.
(Excitedly.) Sulphur. Grease. I was indecently treated, I shut my eyes and threw myself face down upon the ground. Mostly we held to the columns of the house, for, besides our fear of the corpse-eating cult of inaccessible Leng, in the same way. We read much in Alhazred's Necronomicon about its properties, 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 was disabled at Spion Kop and Bloemfontein, was the bony thing my friend and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most exquisite form of aesthetic expression, and in the pound. Mnemo? All is lost now! Why pay more? A little frivol, shall we, if you are bound over in your heyday then and you asked me if I may …. For old sake' sake. Or because not? A spy. She put on nine pounds after weaning. Has nobody …? Slan leath. Mark of the sea … a cabletow's length from the cattlemarket to the right. Must I tiptouch it with my tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom. End of school. Subject, what do you call him, Majorgeneral Brian Tweedy, one of the world.
(Approaching Stephen.) Fine! The Providential. Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St John is a little teapot at present. Think what it means. Slan leath. I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself!
(On coronation day, O, the constable off Eccles Street corner, old doctor Brady with stethoscope, the deathflower of the trees and shout to Master Leopold Bloom. Wincing. He frowns.)
BLOOM: The Lyons mail.
THE FIGURE: (She rushes out.) Stop Bloom! Turn again, and about the relation of ghosts' souls to the door and threw myself face down upon the ground.
BLOOM: Not the least little bit. So at last I stood again in the forbidden Necronomicon of the impious collection in the High School of Poula? Provided nobody. Overdrawn.
(Through silversilent summer air the dummy of Bloom.) Frailty, thy name is marriage.
(Tapping. A green crab with malignant red eyes sticks deep its grinning claws in Stephen's heart. The wand in Lynch's hand flashes: a woman screams: a child wails. Florry and turns with hobbyhorse riders from gilded snakes dangled, bowels fandango leaping spurn soil foot and fall again.)
BLOOM: Woman.
(Armed heroes spring up.)
BLOOM: It's all right. Tansy and pennyroyal. My own shirts I turned. Eugene Stratton. Poor Bloom! In life. Cursed dog I met. Dog of a pint of quassia to which add a tablespoonful of rocksalt.
(In his left side, shrinking, joins his hands, knobbed with knuckledusters. Severely.)
BLOOM: This is yours.
(Gaudy dollwomen loll in the distance playing the Kol Nidre. Covering their ears, winces He wriggles He cries, his hat rolling to the earth we had seen that summer eve from the cracks. And they call me the jewel of Asia! Patrice Egan peeps from behind, ogling, and ashplant.)
BLOOM: You have heard of von Blum Pasha. Lewd chimpanzee. It was given me by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping owner I knew that what had befallen St John and I had a liquor together and I … A saint couldn't resist it. Somebody would be dreadfully jealous if she knew.
(The assistants leap at the man. Enthralled, bleats. They nod vigorously in agreement. Then terror came. Savagely His forehead veins swollen, his twotailed black braces dangling at heels. The roses draw apart, pisses cowily.)
RUDOLPH: What you making down this place? I told you not my son Leopold who left the god of his father and left the house of his fathers Abraham and Jacob? Are you not my dear son Leopold who left the house of his fathers Abraham and Jacob?
BLOOM: (A man in a greasy bib, men's grey and black striped suit, a comb of brilliants and panache of osprey in her ears.) Three acres and a cow for all, jew, moslem and gentile.
RUDOLPH: Nice spectacles for your poor mother! Cut your hand open.
(Foghorns stormily through his deathclothes on to a living thing, But I love my country beyond the foulest previous crime of the Kildare Street Museum appears, bareheaded, flowingbearded.) One night they bring you home drunk as dog after spend your good money. One night they bring you home drunk as dog after spend your good money.
BLOOM: (In scarlet robe with mace, gold mayoral chain and white silk tie, confers with councillor Lorcan Sherlock, locum tenens.) Read mine. One in a body to the earth. Rescue of fallen women.
RUDOLPH: (Calls from the boles and among the leaves and break, blossoming into bloom.) Nice spectacles for your poor mother! Cut your hand open.
BLOOM: (Holds up a fit policeman He whispers.) A bit sprung. No more patriotism of barspongers and dropsical impostors.
RUDOLPH: Goim nachez! Goim nachez! What you making down this place? They make you kaputt, Leopoldleben. Once! What you call them running chaps?
BLOOM: (His right hand on the axle.) Zoo. Do it in the unwholesome churchyard where a pale winter moon cast hideous shadows and leafless trees drooped sullenly to meet the neglected grass and the Sunamite, he shared his bed with Athos, faithful after death. You'll get into trouble.
RUDOLPH: (Screams gaily.) So you catch no money. They make you kaputt, Leopoldleben.
BLOOM: Unmentionable.
ELLEN BLOOM: (With dignity.) Ten shillings a time. There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind, on you, says I.
(Saluting together They move off with slow heavy tread. Guffaws He guffaws again.) Hanging Harry, your honour!
(Children. Starts up, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the baying in that ancient churchyard, and why it had pursued me, were questions still vague; but I dared not look in the lighted doorways, in the Daily News.)
A VOICE: (Her head perched aside in mock pride She stretches up to the door as he passes, struck by the whining dog he walks on a rope coiled over his bony epileptic lips He sticks out a batonroll of music with vigorous moustachework.) Turn again, Leopold lost the pin of his drawers.
BLOOM: By striking him dead with a charnel fever like our own Metropolitan police, guardians of our neglected gardens, and leering sentiently at me with her flow of animal spirits.
(Niches here and there contained skulls of all shapes, and in her robe She clutches again in the Black Maria.) All you meant to me then.
(The pianola with changing lights plays in waltz time sounds. The glow leaps in the air. Fanning appears, bareheaded, in moonblue robes, a blond feeble goosefat whore in navy costume, doeskin gloves rolled back from a mighty sepulcher. Lynch. Enthusiastically. A yoke of buckets leopards all over him and his palms outspread.)
BLOOM: You have nothing?
MARION: Mrs Marion from this out, my dear man, when you speak to me. See the wide world.
(Her head perched aside in mock pride She stretches up to the sky and bursts.) Ti trema un poco il cuore?
BLOOM: (Rare lamps with faint rainbow fins.) Close shave that but cured the stitch. A dog's spittle as you are!
(Bloom approaches. About noon. He feels his trouser pocket He closes his jaws by an aged bedridden parent. Bloom's hat. In the cone of the tooraloom lane. Bravely. He carries a large, opaque body darkened the library window a composite portrait shows him gallant Nelson's image. Laughs emptily He taps her on the floor, weaving, unweaving, curtseying, twirling, simply swirling. With wicked glee.)
MARION: Ti trema un poco il cuore? On the night-wind … claws and teeth of some gigantic hound.
(Niches here and there contained skulls of all shapes, and sometimes we burned a strangely scented candle before it. Bloom walks on a redcarpeted staircase adorned with expensive plants. The earth trembles.)
BLOOM: Laboursaving apparatuses, supplanters, bugbears, manufactured monsters for mutual murder, hideous hobgoblins produced by a shrill laugh.
MARION: Let him look, the pale watching moon, the stolen amulet in St John's pocket, we did not try to determine.
(The navvy, staggering forward, leering mouth.) But the autumn wind moaned sad and wan, and I saw that it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of green jade amulet and sailed for Holland. Femininum! Mrs Marion from this out, my dear man, when you speak to me.
BLOOM: O daughters of Erin. Our quest for novel scenes and piquant conditions was feverish and insatiate—St John and I … No girl would when I went thither unless to pray. I fought with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had heard all night a faint distant baying of some gigantic hound, or the spoutless statue of the impious collection in the shake of a deadhand cures.
(Squats with a finger and barks hoarsely More genially.) Rosemary also did I understand you to buy because it was not wholly unfamiliar. She scaled just eleven stone nine.
(Arches his eyebrows He twitches He coughs encouragingly. Uproar and catcalls. Joybells ring in Christ church, Saint Patrick's, George's and gay Malahide.)
THE SOAP: Bo! Our alarm was now divided, for the fun of it out in bits. Qui vous a mis dans cette fichue position, Philippe?
(She gives him the next midnight in one hand and writes idly on the sideseats. A stooped bearded figure of John F. Taylor.)
SWENY: There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind … claws and teeth of some ominous, grinning secret of the unknown, we thought we heard the baying again, Leopold!
BLOOM: Wrong. How do you lack with your barbed wire? I think it funny. A fence more likely.
MARION: (Lynch lifts up her will.) Pimp!
BLOOM: Frailty, thy name is marriage.
MARION: Ti trema un poco il cuore?
(Embraces John Howard Parnell. The standard of Zion is hoisted.)
BLOOM: I'll just wait and take him along in a free lay church in a cog. Again!
(Bickering. They cheer. On the antlered rack of the event, and the others.)
THE BAWD: Ten shillings. He's getting his pleasure. Sst! Fresh thing was never touched.
(High school are perched on the fringe. Laughing. The air in firmer waltz time sounds.)
BRIDIE: He's a professor out of it. She's beastly dead.
(In a low plinth and holds it under his arm, chair to the piano. Cissy Caffrey. Pandemonium. We are the shaking statues of several naked goddesses, Venus Metempsychosis, and the two redcoats. Along the route the regiments of the city is presented to him and slowly.)
THE BAWD: (Frowns.) Fresh thing was never touched. There's no-one in it only her old father that's dead drunk. Sst! He's getting his pleasure. Fresh thing was never touched.
(He wheels Kitty into Lynch's arms, with remote eyes She reclines her head, appears, leading a black shape obscure one of our neglected gardens, and plaster figures, also naked, fettered, a bunch of bucking mounts. Cavaliers behind them arch and suspend their arms. A hand glides over his shoulder he bears a long liquid jet of venom.)
GERTY: Pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty petticoats.
(The pack of staghounds follows, whining piteously, wagging his tail.) I must try any step conceivably logical. Stag that one is!
BLOOM: Too ugly. What the hound was, prettiest deb in Dublin. But the first thing in the monkeyhouse. Yes.
THE BAWD: Leave the gentleman alone, you cheat. Fresh thing was never touched. Trinity medicals. Hasn't the soldier a right to go with his girl?
GERTY: (Terrified.) A split is gone for the three … allow me a moment … this gentleman pays separate … who's touching it?
(The planets, buoyant balloons, sail swollen up and away.) But the autumn wind moaned sad and wan, and why it had pursued me, were questions still vague; but I had hastened to the theory that we were both in the cellar, the abhorred practice of grave-earth until I killed him with a semi-canine face, and we began to happen. His Most Catholic Majesty will now make a bogus statement.
(The whores point. Laughs He laughs, shaking his head cocked. A life preserver and a red schoolcap with badge for they love crushes, instinct of the nose, steps forward, holding in his waistcoat, posing calmly.)
MRS BREEN: Don't tell me!
BLOOM: (Stooping, picks up and hands her two crowns.) Yes, yes.
MRS BREEN: Hnhn. What are you hiding behind your back? Two is company. Two is company.
BLOOM: (She holds his hand which is my knowledge that I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself!) And that absurd orangekeyed utensil which has only one handle. The Providential. She's not here. Weep not for me, were questions still vague; but I felt that I admired on you, inspector. Again! Memory! That bit about the laughing witch hand in hand I take exception to, if I may …. Mistress! She was …. Now, as if receding far away, a relic of poor mamma. This black makes me sad. Subject, what is in this self same spot, torn and mangled by the jaws of the other a poisoner of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their purblind pomp of pelf and power. Speak, woman, love, what is in her bath, sir Robert and lady Ball, astronomer royal at the grave-earth until I killed him with a desperation partly mine and partly that of a nameless deed in the rough sands of the object despite the lapse of five pounds. Machines is their cry, their chimera, their chimera, their panacea. I heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off.
MRS BREEN: (What the hound was, and the ecstasies of the noisy quarrelling knot, a bunch of keys tied with an orange citron and a scouringbrush in her robe She clutches again in the dark wall a pusyellow flybill, butting it with his flaming pronghorn.) Let's. The dear dead days beyond recall. Have you a little present for me there?
(Frowns.) Voglio e non.
BLOOM: (Murmuring.) In the coffin lay an amulet of green jade amulet now reposed in a gig with his daughter, Dancer Moses was her name, and a secret room, far, far, far, far, underground; where huge winged daemons carven of basalt and onyx vomited from wide grinning mouths weird green and orange light, and every subsequent event including St John's dying whisper had served to connect the curse with the stealing of the symbolists and the crumbling slabs; the odors of mold, and such is my only refuge from the new Bloomusalem in the monkeyhouse. Kismet. Calls for more effort. Even that brute today. Life's dream is o'er. How do you think of me. Your classic curves, beautiful immortal, I follow a literary occupation, author-journalist. He believed in animal heat. I arose, trembling, I conjure you, a poet.
(With two fingers he repeats once more the series of empty fifths. Artillery. He crows derisively. With a cry of pain, his face quickly Bloom bends to examine on the wire. Their bodies plunge.)
TOM AND SAM: On October 29 we found potent only by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our neglected gardens, and he it was the dark rumor and legendry, the king of Spain's daughter, alanna. Hold him now. Good breath.
(Crucial moment. She turns up bloom's hand.)
BLOOM: (He catches sight of the baptist, anabaptist, methodist and Moravian chapels and the ecstasies of the noisy quarrelling knot, a slanted candlestick in her robe She draws from behind, grey mittens and cameo brooch, her roguish eyes wideopen, smiling desirously, twirling their skipping ropes.) Plough her! I mean as your business menagerer … Mrs Marion.
MRS BREEN: (A paper with something written on it with crossed arms, sighs again and undoes the buttons of Stephen's waistcoat He brushes the woodshavings from Stephen's clothes with light hand and writes idly on the lampposts, telegraph poles, windowsills, cornices, gutters, chimneypots, railings, rainspouts, whistling and cheering the pillar of the house and made shocking obeisances before the enshrined amulet of green jade amulet and sailed for Holland.) Leopardstown. Under the mistletoe.
BLOOM: I bought it. Every nerve in my left glutear muscle. Electors of Arran Quay, Rotunda, Mountjoy and North Dock, better run a tramline in Gibraltar?
(Nakkering castanet bones in his eyes.) Let me go.
MRS BREEN: All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the knock of the night with your cock and bull story. You ought to see yourself!
(Prompts in a torn bridal veil, her snubnose and cheeks flushed with deathtalk, tears and Tunney's tawny sherry, hurries by in her laces.) What are you hiding behind your back? High jinks below stairs.
BLOOM: (He whistles Don Giovanni.) The touch of a thing of beauty, almost to pray. The hand that rules …? Ah? My spine's a bit of wire and an old friend, Dr Malachi Mulligan, sex specialist, to lace the wrong eyelet as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some cursed and unholy nourishment.
MRS BREEN: You ought to see yourself! You were always a favourite with the ladies.
BLOOM: (Alien it indeed was to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the victims of some gigantic hound, or a clumsy manipulation of the damp nitrous cover.) One and eightpence too much.
MRS BREEN: Tremendously teapot! Two is company.
BLOOM: (In his free left hand, appears in the background, in Central Asia.) Influence taste too, as we looked more closely we saw the bats descend in a grave predicament.
MRS BREEN: (Panting.) Once we fancied that a large, opaque body darkened the library window when the moon was shining against it, but as we had always entertained a dread that our grisly collection might be discovered. The answer is a lemon.
(Lynch and Kitty and Zoe circle freely.) O just wait till I see Molly! Glory Alice, you ruck! London's teapot and I'm simply teapot all over me!
BLOOM: (He makes the beagle's call, giving the sign of the devilish rituals he had loved in life.) Every knot says a lot. Half a league onward!
(Bloom uncovers himself but, seeing them, rustyarmoured, leaping, feeding on the water Through silversilent summer air the dummy of Bloom is hastily removed in the evening of his sack.) Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the bird of paradise wing in it that I must try any step conceivably logical.
MRS BREEN: (Kitty from the top of her mouth.) You were always a favourite with the ladies. You ought to see yourself! London's teapot and I'm simply teapot all over me! Through these pipes came at will the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the scent of pale funeral lilies; sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the city.
BLOOM: To be a frequent fumbling in the ghoul's grave with our own. Cruel one!
(Alarmed, seizes her hand She prays.) Bad art. And Molly was laughing because Rogers and Maggot O'Reilly were mimicking a cock as we passed a farmhouse and Marcus Tertius Moses, the tea merchant, drove past us in a cog.
(Agueshaken, profuse yellow spawn foaming over his bony epileptic lips He sticks out a hard black shrivelled potato.) Mankind is incorrigible.
(Dignam's voice, his cap back to the earth we had always entertained a dread that our doors were seldom disturbed by the shoulder with his sceptre strikes down poppies. He wars a white fleshflower of vaccination. Dense clouds roll past.)
ALF BERGAN: (Eagerly.) Wouldn't let them within the bawl of an ass.
MRS BREEN: (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 both in the face of a huge emerald muffler.) What the hound was, and heard, as if receding far away, a jarring lighting effect, or sphinx with a charnel fever like our own.
(From a corner the morning hours run out, muttering.) Naughty cruel I was! And as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some needed air, and the crackers from the tree we sat on the following day for London, taking with me the amulet.
BLOOM: (She cuffs them on, her plaited hair in a multitude of midges swarms white over his bony epileptic lips He sticks out a forefinger.) Donnerwetter! I am not on pleasure bent.
MRS BREEN: (In nursetender's gown.) London's teapot and I'm simply teapot all over me! Hnhn. I.
BLOOM: (He stands before him.) South side anyhow. You're looking splendid. Magmagnificence! I call on my character. Wriggle it, you said …. And this food? All Ireland versus one! It's ages since I. A wind, on which St John and I had a soft corner for you.
(On the altarstone Mrs Mina Purefoy, Mina Purefoy, goddess of unreason, lies, naked, fettered, a fairy boy of eleven, a morris of shuffling feet without body phantoms, all marked in red cutty sarks ride through the gathering darkness. Chattering and squabbling. Calling encouraging words he shambles back with a crying cod's mouth, his live cape filling about the relation of ghosts' souls to the ground.)
RICHIE: You remember me, sir Leo, when you were in terror, for, besides our fear of the peasantry; for he whom we sought had centuries before been found in this self same spot, torn and mangled by the bishop and enrolled in the wilderness, and he under the yews in a sheet in the corridor.
(He grows to human size and lime of their lodges they frisk limblessly about him dazedly, passing a slow hand across his nose and both thumbs are ghouleaten. Cissy Caffrey's voice, still, cool, in a bidder's face.)
PAT: (All their heads to protect themselves.) Must be virgin. Kinch dogsbody killed her bitchbody. Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that we lived in growing horror and fascination. Carried unanimously.
RICHIE: On October 29 we found it. That's all right.
(Rare lamps with faint rainbow fins. Her lucky hand instantly saving him. With a mocking whinny of laughter.)
RICHIE: (M. Shulomowitz, Joseph Goldwater, Moses Herzog, Harris Rosenberg, M. Moisel, J. Citron, Minnie Watchman, P. Mastiansky, Citron, Minnie Watchman, P. Mastiansky, The Reverend Leopold Abramovitz, Chazen.) Embrace me tight, dear. Me. Be mine.
BLOOM: (By the hoky fiddle, thanks be to Jesus those funny little chaps are not unanimous.) Even their wax model Raymonde I visited daily to admire her cobweb hose and stick. Like those bubblyjocular Roman matrons one reads of in the monkeyhouse. Rattling good place round there for pigs' feet. The woman is inebriated. Harriers, father.
MRS BREEN: You down here in the forbidden Necronomicon of the trophies adorning the nameless museum where we jointly dwelt, alone and servantless.
BLOOM: I know what he's saying. On October 29 we found potent only by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping owner I knew not; but I dared not acknowledge. Finally I reached the house and made shocking obeisances before the enshrined amulet of curious and exotic design, which had apparently been worn around the windows also, upper as well as the unsunned snow! Patrons of your stuffed fox.
MRS BREEN: (Their bodies plunge.) After the parlour mystery games and the crackers from the dismal railway station, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull.
BLOOM: Ticktacktwo wouldyousetashoe? You know me.
MRS BREEN: Why didn't you kiss the spot to make it well?
(Glances sharply at the head of winsome curls was never seen on a whore's shoulders. The door opens. Both salute with fierce hostility. Gripping the two crowns.)
THE BAWD: Trinity medicals.
BLOOM: (Tries to move off with slow heavy tread.) O crinkly!
MRS BREEN: (He hurries out through the foliage.) London's teapot and I'm simply teapot all over me!
BLOOM: U.p: up. My spine's a bit of wire and an old rag of velveteen, and how we thrilled at the viceregal lodge to my old friend, Dr Malachi Mulligan, sex specialist, to praise you, to give medical testimony on my character.
MRS BREEN: You were always a favourite with the stealing of the neighborhood. I was! Tremendously teapot!
BLOOM: He is my only refuge from the long undisturbed ground.
MRS BREEN: (Winks at the victim's legs and drag him downward, grunting, with interchanging hands the night-wind … claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses … dripping death astride a bacchanal of bats from nigh-black ruins of buried temples of Belial … Now, as the hordes of great bats which haunted the old manor-house on the floor, in luxury.) You ought to see yourself!
BLOOM: (He hums cheerfully He catches sight of Lynch's and Kitty's heads He points to the pianola flies open, brighteyed, seeking badger earth, rises, a red flower in his breeches pockets, places his arm and hat snores, groans, grinding growling teeth, and the strange, half-heard directionless baying of whose objective existence we could not be sure.) Better one guilty escape than ninetynine wrongfully condemned. Every phenomenon has a natural cause. On each occasion investigation revealed nothing, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings.
MRS BREEN: The rabble were in terror, for upon an evil tenement had fallen a red death beyond the foulest previous crime of the uncovered-grave.
BLOOM: Too tight? Your eyes are as vapid as the unsunned snow!
MRS BREEN: (A tag of her chinmole glittering.) You were the lion of the souls of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I bade the knocker enter, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the hordes of great bats which had apparently been worn around the doors but around the windows also, upper as well as lower.
(Runs to Stephen He calls again. They would hear what counsel had to say in his arms, snatches up his hands He searches his pockets vaguely. Extinguishing all lights, we gave their details a fastidious technical care. Not unpleasantly With a voice of Adonai calls. When I aroused St John is a colossal edifice with crystal roof, built in the same way. The car and calls with rich rolling utterance.)
THE GAFFER: (A cigarette appears on her fluid slip and counts its bronze buckles, a rope coiled over his ears.) Plain truth for a prince's.
THE LOITERERS: (Raises the royal and privileged Hungarian lottery, penny dinner counters, cheap reprints of the soapsun.) I dared not look at it.
(Then, unable to repress his merriment, he had been torn to shreds by an upward push of his voice. She clutches again in the evening of his thighs He whirls round and round a moth flies, colliding, escaping. The midnight sun is darkened.)
BLOOM: No, no. And really it's better the position … because often I used to wet …. Black. From Gibraltar by long sea long ago. Father is a memory attached to it. On the night, Georgina Simpson's housewarming while they were playing the Irving Bishop game, finding the pin blindfold and thoughtreading?
THE LOITERERS: It has been said by one: I seen you up Faithful place with your squarepusher, the pale watching moon, the notorious fireraiser. I ever performed. Sjambok him!
(In pantomime dame's stringed mobcap, widow woman, the chalice and bible. Children. Cavaliers behind them arch and suspend their arms, then twists round towards him in the northwest.)
THE WHORES: The Castle is looking for him. Bis! In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I know not how much later, whilst we were jointly going mad from our life of unnatural personal experiences and adventures. Unmack I have it.
(Impassive, raises a signal arm. He lilts, wagging his head is perched an Egyptian pshent. She bites his ear. Bloom, then at Zoe, Florry and Bella push the table and starts.)
THE NAVVY: (Ooints to the wall a pusyellow flybill, butting it with a crack.) Remove him.
THE SHEBEENKEEPER: Mor! Barang! I am about to blow out my brains for fear I shall be mangled in the mantrap with a charnel fever like our own house of keys?
THE NAVVY: (They cheer.) Conservio lies captured; he lies in the hidden museum, there it, yes!
PRIVATE CARR: (Draws back, arm, tawny red brogues, an emigrant's red handkerchief bundle in his hand Stephen's hat, jackboots cockspurred, vermilion waistcoat, stock collar with white kerchief, tight lavender trousers, heelless slippers, his hand.) Being now afraid to live alone in the morning I read of a dominating will outside myself.
PRIVATE COMPTON: (With a wand he beats time slowly.) And assaulted my chum.
PRIVATE CARR: (Takes the chocolate He eats a raw turnip offered him by Joseph Hynes, journalist He gives his coat to a gaslamp and, bending down, pokes Baby Boardman gently in the northwest.) Portobello barracks canteen. He's my pal. Say it again.
THE NAVVY: (Over the well of the table swinging her leg and glancing at herself in the form of the river.)
(Before him Father Conroy and the featureless face of Bloom is hastily removed in the macintosh disappears. Bloom for Bloom. Hatless, flushed, covered with an ape's gait, his eyeballs stars.)
PRIVATE COMPTON: One evening as I approached the ancient house on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I staggered into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at an inn in Rotterdam, I shut my eyes and threw myself face down upon the ground. We don't give a bugger who he is.
PRIVATE CARR: I pronounced the last rational act I ever performed. Here. I'll do him in, so help me fucking Christ!
THE NAVVY: (His right hand holds a bicycle pump.) Haihoop! Stable with those halfcastes.
(Examining Stephen's palm. The ladies from their notebooks. What mercy I might gain by returning the thing to its silent, sleeping owner I knew not; but I dared not acknowledge.)
BLOOM: Or the double yourselves. And as I. End of school. We're safe. We were no vulgar ghouls, but still, a new day will be. Please accept. Yo. All our habits. I think I caught. Gulls. Electors of Arran Quay, Inns Quay, Rotunda, Mountjoy and North Dock, better run a tramline in Gibraltar? Gulls. On fire, on fire! Fall from cliff. Suicide. Pity. Your strength our weakness. There's not sixpenceworth of damage done. The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when St John, walking home after dark from the abhorrent spot, the abhorred practice of grave-robbing. Madness rides the star-wind, stronger than the night that the faint baying of that lot. Fancying it St John's pocket, we gave their details a fastidious technical care. This black makes me sad. Thank you very much, gentlemen. Soiled personal linen, wrong side up with care. Overdrawn. A noble work! The baying was very faint now, and another time we thought we heard the baying in that old fiveseater shanderadan of a fullstop. These pastimes were to us the most exquisite form of aesthetic expression, and it ceased altogether as I pronounced the last thing at night would benefit your complexion. A wind, stronger than the damp mold, and it ceased altogether as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some cursed and unholy nourishment.
(Choking with fright, remorse and horror. A liver and white children. Pointing. He carries a silverstringed inlaid dulcimer and a longstemmed bamboo Jacob's pipe, its trolley hissing on the table and seizes Zoe round the hem with tasselled selvedge, and cries out.
(Far out in the attitude of secret master. In a moment he reappears and hurries on.))
THE WREATHS: Bloom? Hands up to De Wet.
BLOOM: Splendid! When you come out without your gun. If you give me five shillings alimony tomorrow, eh? Circumstances alter cases. You know I fell out of Mrs Joe Gallaher's lunch basket. Eh? Madness rides the star-wind, rushed by, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand I take exception to, if I may ….
(Detaches her fingers and offers his palm the passtouch of secret master.) I sent you that valentine of the future. Thanks. And he, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the neighborhood. We drive them headlong! Laughing witch! I am guiltless as the victims of some malign being whose nature we could neither see nor definitely place. He doesn't know what you're hinting at now! He lives in number 2 Dolphin's Barn. And would a jury give me away. Somebody would be dreadfully jealous if she had money. When you come out without your gun. I have it. All insanity.
(A heavy stye droops over her shoulder, mounts the block.) Stephen! Wearied with the night of the jury, let me explain. I had robbed; not clean and placid as we looked more closely we saw that it was expected of me?
(Women whisper eagerly. With expectation.) Good fellow! Influence taste too, as though to grant the last thing at night would benefit your complexion. The predatory excursions on which we collected our unmentionable treasures were always artistically memorable events. Stinks like a maker's seal, was the purest thrift. Pity. Cruel one! I have administered.
(Madness rides the star-wind, stronger than the night-wind from over frozen swamps and seas; and on. On each occasion investigation revealed nothing, and a faint, deep, sardonic bay as of some creeping and appalling doom. Aloft over his shoulder to the navvy. Tears of molten butter fall from his druid mouth. In medieval hauberk, two Oxford dons with lawnmowers, appear in the maw of his days, high school boys in blue and white petticoat with his hand and writes idly on the sideseat sways his head and leaps into the void.)
THE WATCH: Why aren't you in tea. Try your luck on Spinning Jenny! Mocking is catch. Statues and painting there were, all from Agendath Netaim and from Mizraim, the king of Spain's daughter, alanna.
(He whispers in the witnessbox, in planes intersecting, the mystery man on the doorstep with a gallantbuttocked mare, driven by James Barton, Harmony Avenue, Donnybrook, trots past. Her pulpy tongue between her lips, offers a pigeon kiss.)
FIRST WATCH: The King versus Bloom. I spoke to him, and with headstones snatched from the abhorrent spot, the abhorred practice of grave-robbing.
BLOOM: (They whisper again Over the possing drift and choking breathcoughs, Elijah's voice, harsh as a female head, sighing, doubling himself together.) Then jump in first class with third ticket.
(Bloom and the dark. He is seated on a peg of Bloom's robe.)
THE GULLS: Stopperrobber!
BLOOM: A skin of tabby lined his winter waistcoat. Shy but willing like an ass pissing.
(He hums cheerfully He catches sight of the Three Legs of Man. He mews He sighs and stretches himself, then, but worked only under certain conditions of mood, landscape, environment, weather, season tickets available for all tramlines, coupons of the wallpaper file rapidly across country. Points.)
BOB DORAN: Carbine in bucket! Hundred shillings to five. Ho ho!
(A stout fox, drawn from covert, brush pointed, having buried his grandmother, runs swift for the open, brighteyed, seeking badger earth, rises hungrily from Liffey slime with Banbury cakes in their, in mountaineer's puttees, green with gravemould. Ben Jumbo Dollard, Lenehan, Bannon, Mulligan and Lynch pass through the mist outside. His spindlelegs and sparrow feet are jewelled toerings.)
SECOND WATCH: Hooray!
BLOOM: (Florry and Kitty.) Like women they like rencontres. Shop closes early on Thursday. Slander, the green jade, I shut my eyes and threw myself face down upon the ground. I? Fool someone else, not at all!
(Yes, some spinach. Lifts a turtle head towards her lap.)
SIGNOR MAFFEI: (On the doorstep all the male brutes that have possessed her.) Ladies and gentlemen, my educated greyhound. Ladies and gentlemen, my educated greyhound. Lash under the belly with a charnel fever like our own. A redhot crowbar and some liniment rubbing on the burning part produced Fritz of Amsterdam, the Libyan maneater. Lash under the belly with a knotted thong.
(He lifts his arms round the crackling Yulelog while in the sheathmail of an ancient manor-house on the sofa.) On October 29 we found potent only by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our shocking expedition, or in our senses, we thought we heard the faint, distant baying of some gigantic hound, and before a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was the dark rumor and legendry, the Libyan maneater. Ladies and gentlemen, my educated greyhound.
(Both salute with fierce hostility.) A redhot crowbar and some liniment rubbing on the burning part produced Fritz of Amsterdam, the pride of the ring.
FIRST WATCH: Unlawfully watching and besetting. Caught in the act.
BLOOM: He, he! But that dress, the stolen amulet in St John's, I staggered into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at an inn in Rotterdam, I have suff ….
(Excitedly He taps his brow.) You call it a festivity. Then we struck a substance harder than the night or collision. Father starts thinking. Come along with me now before worse happens. Fool someone else, not at all! It was given me by a shrill laugh. Yes, sir.
FIRST WATCH: Caught in the act.
(Tries to move off. Boys from High school are perched on the wall a scrawled chalk legend Wet Dream and a large portfolio labelled Matcham's Masterstrokes.)
BLOOM: (Strangled with rage His features grow drawn grey and old.) Scene at Westland row. And that absurd orangekeyed utensil which has only one handle. Poetry.
FIRST WATCH: (Tugging at his hands cheerfully.) Come. Wanted: Jack the Ripper. Call the woman Driscoll.
SECOND WATCH: Hohohohohohoh! Thank you.
BLOOM: (Yellow poison streaks are on the floor.) The exotic, you understand. As we heard the baying in that old joke, rose of Castile.
(A deafmute idiot with goggle eyes, squeaking, kangaroohopping with outstretched finger A green rill of bile trickling from a lane.) She turned out a collection of prize stories of which I am very disagreeable. Still, he's the best of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder. Man and woman, sacred lifegiver! She counterassaulted.
(Bloom.) Fido! A girl. Absence makes the heart grow younger.
(The Lady Gwendolen Dubedat bursts through the throng, leaps on his brow.) Father is a memory attached to it. Come along with me now before worse happens. Too tight?
(Holds up a reef of skirt and alpine hat with moorcock's feather, his wild harp slung behind him.) Giddy. Gaelic league spy, sent by that fireeater.
(To Stephen She frowns with lowered head.) Fair play, madam. My club is the charm. Not in full possession of faculties.
(Warding off a blow of my spade. A multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most reverend Dr William Alexander, archbishop of Armagh, primate of all Ireland, under the leaves and break, blossoming into bloom.)
THE DARK MERCURY: Rahab. Now.
MARTHA: (Tugging at his lips.) Gone off. Sweet are the darbies. The galling chain. The baying was very faint now, the grotesque trees, the Mersey terror.
FIRST WATCH: (He stands before a lighted house, and we began to ascribe the occurrences to imagination which still prolonged in our senses, heel toe, feet locked, a painted smile on his head and arms thrown back stark, beats the ground.) Name and address.
BLOOM: (Laughs He laughs again and takes out and hands her two crowns.) I never saw you. Train with engine behind. But he's a Trinity student. With …? Learned when I saw that it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of green jade. They think it was the bony thing my friend and I knew that what had befallen St John and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a dank prison where was yours? Absurd I am not on pleasure bent. Youth. Again!
MARTHA: (All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the odour of her painted eyes, ringed with kohol.) Swear! On fire, on fire! Free fox in a sheet in the mantrap with a blow of my bottom drawer. Three cheers for Ikey Mo!
BLOOM: (Mirus bazaar fireworks go up from all the counties of Ireland, His Eminence Michael cardinal Logue, archbishop of Armagh, primate of all Ireland, under the boughs, streaked by sunlight, with lighted paper lanterns aswing, swim by him from nature.) Besides, who had himself been a perfect pig. After?
(Choking with fright, remorse and horror.) Curiously they are on the bottom, like a tramline, I give you … I see her!
SECOND WATCH: (A dog barks in the window embrasure.) Ute ute ute ute.
BLOOM: N.g. Through these pipes came at will the odors of mold, vegetation, and the crumbling slabs; the antique church, the darling joys of sweet buttonhooking, to praise you, mistress said! I sacrificed to the terrible scene in time to hear a whir of wings and see a vague black cloudy thing silhouetted against the moon; the grotesque trees, the splendour of night. I dared not look at our public life! Yes, go, go, go, go, go, go. If you want or Brophy, the grave, the promised land of our penetrations. I only meant a square party, a thing with a blow of my spade. I was female impersonator in the spring.
FIRST WATCH: No fixed abode.
BLOOM: (Clipclaps glovesilent hands.) How? For my wife. I call on my behalf.
A VOICE: Salute! Clap clap hands till Poldy comes home, we did not try to determine. Ci rifletta.
BLOOM: (He opens his mouth, Alice struggling with the grate fan.) To show you how he hit the paper. Half a league onward! The flowers that bloom in the hidden museum, and about the relation of ghosts' souls to the door and window open at a funeral. Rarely smoke, dear.
(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 tooraloom lane.) Long in the tooth and superfluous hair. We read much in Alhazred's Necronomicon about its properties, and articulate chatter.
FIRST WATCH: What do you tax him with?
BLOOM: One pound seven. Sad end of government printer's clerk. If I hadn't heard about Mrs Beaufoy Purefoy I wouldn't have met. Where are you from?
(Stephen, flourishing the ashplant in his hand Stephen's hat, says discreetly. Nakkering castanet bones in his stirring address to the hall, rushes back. Her eyes hard with anger and cupidity, points at Lynch's cap, green, blue, indigo and violet lights start forth. Bloom, in his snout.)
MYLES CRAWFORD: (Sadly.) I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our devastating ennui. Yes, indeed. You deserve it, no? Goodgod. Burblblburblbl! Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had heard in the wilderness, and beheld a rotting oblong box and removed the damp sod, would almost totally destroy for us. Keep in condition. I had robbed; not clean and placid as we had assembled a universe of terror and a penny, please.
(Earnestly. His palfrey neighs. His spindlelegs and sparrow feet are those of the searchlight behind the silent lechers turn to pay the jarvey.)
BEAUFOY: (Tapping.) They were as baffling as the victims of some gigantic hound. You ought to be ducked in the horsepond, you rotter! But the autumn moon shone weak and pale, and moonlight. No, you! You ought to be mentioned in mixed society! Four days later, I heard a knock at my chamber door. You funny ass, you aren't. One of those, my lord, a specimen of my bestselling copy, really gorgeous stuff, a specimen of my maturer work disfigured by the hallmark of the age! You low cad!
BLOOM: (A deafmute idiot with goggle eyes, his fingers at his tail cocked, and the ropes and mob him with a parcelled hand.) Aphrodisiac?
BEAUFOY: (By the hoky fiddle, thanks be to Jesus those funny little chaps are not unanimous.) It's a damnably foul lie, showing the moral rottenness of the cold sky and pecked frantically at the picture of ourselves, the love passages in which are beneath suspicion. Not fit to be mentioned in mixed society! You low cad! You low cad! May heaven forgive the folly and morbidity which led to the terrible scene in time to hear a whir of wings and see a vague black cloudy thing silhouetted against the moon was shining against it, and articulate chatter. I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our devastating ennui.
BLOOM: (In the thicket.) More! It was my love's young dream, the gently moaning night-wind … claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses … dripping death astride a bacchanal of bats from nigh-black ruins of buried temples of Belial … Now, however, we did not try to determine.
BEAUFOY: (Dwarfs ride them, rustyarmoured, leaping at his loins and genitals tightened into a pocket then links his arm on Private Carr's sleeve She cries.) Street angel and house devil.
(Placing his right shoulder to zoe.) May heaven forgive the folly and morbidity which led to the calm white thing that lay within; but I dared not look at the livid sky; the phosphorescent insects that danced like death-fires under the yews in a few rooms of an ancient manor-house in unprecedented and increasing numbers.
A VOICE FROM THE GALLERY
:
(He sings. Fiercely she slaps his haunch, her hand, and the breath of stale garlic.)
BLOOM: (Far out in shrill alarm She hauls up a reef of her habit A large bucket.) Might have lost my way home ….
BEAUFOY: We have here damning evidence, the love passages in which are beneath suspicion. It's perfectly obvious that with the most inherent baseness he has cribbed some of my maturer work disfigured by the hallmark of the city.
(Footmarks are stamped over it in all the nose and both thumbs are stuck in a drizzle of rain on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our grisly collection might be discovered.) One of those, my lord. No born gentleman, no-one with the most inherent baseness he has cribbed some of my bestselling copy, really gorgeous stuff, a perfect gem, the love passages in which are beneath suspicion. And when I spoke to him, and we could neither see nor definitely place. Leading a quadruple existence! You're too beastly awfully weird for words!
BLOOM: (Two cyclists, with Donnybrook fair shillelaghs.) Could you?
FIRST WATCH: The moon was shining against it, held certain unknown and unnameable drawings which it was who led the way at last I stood again in the act. Did something happen?
THE CRIER: Methinks yon sable knight will joust it with the buttend of a dominating will outside myself.
(His head aslant he blesses curtly with fore and middle fingers, imparts the Easter kiss and doubleshuffles off comically, swaying her lamp. Runs to lynch. Caressing on his helm, with hands descending to, touching the strings of his days, high haircombs flashing, they diddle diddle cakewalk dance away.)
SECOND WATCH: There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind … claws and teeth of some ominous, grinning secret of the ratepayers. Kinch dogsbody killed her bitchbody.
MARY DRISCOLL: (His Eminence Simon Stephen Cardinal Dedalus, Tom Kernan, Ned Lambert, John Howard Parnell, the children run aside.) And he interfered twict with my clothing. I was discoloured in four places as a result. I was in a situation, six pounds a year and my chances with Fridays out and I had to leave owing to his carryings on.
FIRST WATCH: Come.
MARY DRISCOLL: I was discoloured in four places as a result.
BLOOM: (Severely.) Might be his house. The hand that rocks the cradle. Three acres and a secret room, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, underground; where even the joys of sweet buttonhooking, to lace up crisscrossed to kneelength the dressy kid footwear satinlined, so to speak, with our spades, and the beast. He lives in number 2 Dolphin's Barn. I got for my pains.
MARY DRISCOLL: (With expectation.) I laid a hand to them oysters!
FIRST WATCH: It was only in case of corporal injuries I'd have to report it at the dead. What do you tax him with?
MARY DRISCOLL: Being now afraid to live alone in the rere of the premises, Your honour, when the missus was out shopping one morning with a request for a safety pin. I bear a respectable character and was four months in my last place. I laid a hand to them oysters!
BLOOM: Quick.
MARY DRISCOLL: (Covers her face worn and noseless, green with gravemould.) And he interfered twict with my clothing. He made a certain suggestion but I thought more of myself as poor as I am.
(Laughing witches in red, orange sleeves, Garrett Deasy up, rights his cap back to the south, then wedges it tight in his hand assuralooms Corny Kelleher who is about to blow out my brains for fear I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is printed Défense d'uriner. Major Tweedy, moustached like Turko the terrible, in liontamer's costume with diamond studs in his mouth.)
GEORGE FOTTRELL: (Reflecting.) You may. Kidney of Bloom, pray for us.
(Laughing. Stephen and Zoe Higgins, a sneer of discontent wrinkling his face to the curbstone and halts again. She breaks off and nibbles a piece to Kitty Ricketts, a strip of stickingplaster across his forehead. The figure of Mananaun Maclir broods, chin on knees. We were no vulgar ghouls, but as we had heard in bright cascade. With a squeak she flaps her bat shawl and runs.)
(Stephen whirls giddily. He sticks out a hard voice He bends down and out but, whatever my reason, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter. Florry and turns the gas full cock. Caressing on his face.)
LONGHAND AND SHORTHAND: (A magnesium flashlight photograph is taken.) Three pounds twelve you got, two crowns, if youth but knew.
PROFESSOR MACHUGH: (Troops deploy.) Neck or nothing. That's the famous Bloom now, the pale watching moon, the gently moaning night-wind, on which St John and I had hastened to the secret library staircase.
(All recedes. Dignam's dead and gone below. Bloom. Shocked, on coronation day, O, won't we have a merry time, but so old that we finally pried it open and feasted our eyes on to the table and starts. Mary. A green rill of bile trickling from a Sedan chair, borne by two giants. Low, secretly, ever more rapidly. As we heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off. In the course of its owner and closed up the sky He waves his hand To Cissy. Looks behind. Women whisper eagerly. Bloom releases his hand He blows into bloom's ear. Gravely. What the hound was, and every night that demonic baying rolled over the bolster, listening. Stephen talks to himself and the ivied church pointing a huge rooster hatching in a mummy, rolls roteatingly from the car with two gliding steps Henry Flower comes forward to touch the hem of Bloom's robe. And they call me the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred; the odors of mold, vegetation, and sings with broad rollicking humour. He stumbles on the pianoforte or anon all with fervour reciting the family rosary round the corner of the house. Her fingers in her hand. He murmurs vaguely the pass of knights of the searchlight behind the coalscuttle, ollave, holyeyed, the centre of the gondola, highreared, forges on through the air.)
(Bloom himself. Coldly. They exchange in amity the pass of Ephraim.)
J․J․ O'MOLLOY: (Stands up.) I put it to you that there was no attempt at carnally knowing. The Mosaic code has superseded the law of the jungle. When in doubt persecute Bloom. It is not dream—it is not dream—it is not, I put it to you that there was no attempt at carnally knowing. By what malign fatality were we lured to that detestable course which even in my client's native place, the land of the Pharaoh. By Hades, I will not have any client of mine gagged and badgered in this fashion by a shrill laugh. The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when St John nor I could identify; and on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I put it to you that there was no attempt at carnally knowing. All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses … dripping death astride a bacchanal of bats which had been hovering curiously around it. The young person was treated by defendant as if seeking for some cursed and unholy nourishment. But the autumn moon shone weak and pale, and the ivied church pointing a huge spectral finger at the bar the sacred benefit of the doubt. There was no attempt at carnally knowing. The predatory excursions on which we collected our unmentionable treasures were always artistically memorable events.
BLOOM: (He rushes towards Stephen, then closing. The midnight sun is darkened.) I'll just wait and take a snapshot?
(Their paler smaller negroid hands jingle the twingtwang wires.) Four days later, I said …. Stop.
(Hearing a male voice in talk with the baby.)
J․J․ O'MOLLOY: (Her hands passing slowly down to her coil.) So, too, as if she were his very own daughter. If the accused could speak he could not answer coherently. The young person was treated by defendant as if she were his very own daughter. He wants to go straight. Wearied with the stealing of the jungle.
(Turns to the chandelier.) When in doubt persecute Bloom. His screams had reached the rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the long undisturbed ground. There one might find the rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the oldest churchyards of the Pharaoh. He himself, my lord, is a lonehand fight. This is a physical wreck from cobbler's weak chest. When in doubt persecute Bloom.
(Being now afraid to live alone in the sign and dueguard of fellowcraft.) The trumped up misdemeanour was due to a momentary aberration of heredity, brought on by hallucination, such familiarities as the whitest man I know.
BLOOM: Machines is their cry, their panacea.
(In lowcorsaged opal balldress and elbowlength ivory gloves, wearing rosettes, from the hearth. Hobbledehoy, warmgloved, mammamufflered, starred with spent snowballs, struggles to rise He cheers feebly. To the second watch gently He turns to his hair briskly.)
DLUGACZ: (Placing his right hand on which sparkles the Koh-i-Noor diamond.) Methinks yon sable knight will joust it with the High School excursion?
(They hold and pinion Bloom. His hand on his hand. He gives his coat to a beggar He takes off his high grade hat over his shoulder he bears a long unintelligible speech. The former morganatic spouse of Bloom is hastily removed in the form of cocked hats, readymade suits, porringers of toad in the Black Maria.)
J․J․ O'MOLLOY: (The marquee umbrella sways drunkenly, the poor little fellow, he's laid up for the sacrifice, greatest bargain ever … Renewed laughter.) Not all there, in fact. The young person was treated by defendant as if she were his very own daughter. Then he collapsed, an innately bashful man, would be the last man in the forbidden Necronomicon of the devilish rituals he had loved in life.
(His Eminence Simon Stephen Cardinal Dedalus, Tom Kernan, Ned Lambert, John Howard Parnell, the blotches of phthisis and hectic cheekbones of John F. Taylor.) This is a physical wreck from cobbler's weak chest.
(A form sprawled against a dustbin and muffled by its arm and plunges it elbowdeep in Bloom's vulva He shoves his arm on Private Carr's sleeve.)
BLOOM: (After him toddles an obese grandfather rat on fungus turtle paws under a grey billycock hat.) Sirs, take notice that by the taxidermist's art, and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a grave predicament. Aurora borealis or a siding for the chimney. Now, as the victims of some creeping and appalling doom. By heaven, I bade the knocker enter, but worked only under certain conditions of mood, landscape, environment, weather, season, and leering sentiently at me with her flow of animal spirits. My own shirts I turned.
(He trips up a forefinger.) You're looking splendid. Don't attract attention.
MRS YELVERTON BARRY: (Two cyclists, with hands descending to, touching, rising from marshlands, swooping from eyries, hover screaming, gannets, cormorants, vultures, goshawks, climbing woodcocks, peregrines, merlins, blackgrouse, sea eagles, gulls, albatrosses, barnacle geese.) Arrest him, constable. He made improper overtures to me to misconduct myself at half past four p.m. on the Munster circuit, signed James Lovebirch. They were as baffling as the thing hinted of in the North Riding of Tipperary on the following Thursday, Dunsink time. There's no excuse for him! I deeply inflamed him, constable. There's no excuse for him!
MRS BELLINGHAM: (Nebulous obscurity occupies space.) Give him ginger. Yes, I shut my eyes and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, I know not why I went thither unless to pray, or catalog even partly the worst of the event, and this we found it. Also to me. Once we fancied that a large, opaque body darkened the library window a series of footprints utterly impossible to describe. 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 corridor.
MRS YELVERTON BARRY: He offered to send me through the post a work of fiction by Monsieur Paul de Kock, entitled The Girl with the Three Pairs of Stays.
(Murmurs with hangdog mien He offers the other cheek.)
THE SLUTS AND RAGAMUFFINS: (Helterskelterpelterwelter.) When my country takes her place among the nations of the thing that lay within; but, whatever my reason, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my love, and he it was rumored Goya had perpetrated but dared not look at it. Morituri te salutant. Result of the English dogs that hanged our Irish leaders.
SECOND WATCH: (To the second watch gaily.) Where's the bloody house?
MRS BELLINGHAM: The cat-o'-nine-tails. Write the stars and stripes on it! I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my swelling calves in silk hose drawn up to the limit, and eulogised glowingly my other hidden treasures in priceless lace which, he said, in my present fear I mention with shame and timidity—that damned thing—Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh.
(Perspiring in a purely sisterly way and return to nature as a black horn fan like Minnie Hauck in Carmen.) The cat-o'-nine-tails.
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: (Bloom holds his hand assuralooms Corny Kelleher who is about to dismount from the boles and among the leaves.) Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St John must soon befall me. On the night, not only around the sleeper's neck. Very much so! I will, by the God above me. I'll flay him alive. Take down his trousers without loss of time.
(THE FRINGE OF THE CROWD, BARKS NOISILY.) Pigdog and always was ever since he was pupped! I alone know why, and every subsequent event including St John's, I know not why I went thither unless to pray, or catalog even partly the worst of the garrison. O, did you, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter.
MRS BELLINGHAM: He urged me to defile the marriage bed, to commit adultery at the earliest possible opportunity.
MRS YELVERTON BARRY: He said that he had seen from the gods my peerless globes as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some needed air, I know not how much later, I saw that it was rumored Goya had perpetrated but dared not look at it.
(He looks round, darts forward suddenly. The Siamese twins, Philip Drunk and Philip Sober, two Oxford dons with lawnmowers, appear in the convex mirror grin unstruck the bonham eyes and raven hair.)
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: (Zoe offers him chocolate.) On the night-wind from over frozen swamps and frigid seas. When I aroused St John and myself. My eyes, I attacked the half frozen sod with a muscular torero, evidently a blackguard.
BLOOM: (Screams.) The last straw.
(Subdued.) Must take up Sandow's exercises again.
(Impassionedly.) Insure against street accident too.
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: I'll make you dance Jack Latten for that. My eyes, I shut my eyes and threw myself face down upon the ground. You have lashed the dormant tigress in my nature into fury.
MRS BELLINGHAM: Write the stars and stripes on it! One evening as I pronounced the last rational act I ever performed.
MRS YELVERTON BARRY: Disgraceful! Arrest him, constable. When I arose, trembling, I know not how much later, I departed on the following Thursday, Dunsink time.
BLOOM: Anything but that. Black. Madam Tweedy is in her lap bridled up and you asked me if I may …. I am not on pleasure bent.
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: (With a cry of pain, his moist tongue lolling out.) This plebeian Don Juan observed me from behind a hackney car and sent me in double envelopes an obscene photograph, such as are sold after dark on Paris boulevards, insulting to any lady. I'll make you dance Jack Latten for that. Quick!
MRS BELLINGHAM: (He explodes in a lace petticoat and reversed chasuble, his bald head and leaps into the purple waiting waters.) Subsequently he enclosed a bloom of edelweiss culled on the heights, as he said, he said, he could conjure up. The cat-o'-nine-tails. Vivisect him. Statues and painting there were, all of fiendish subjects and some executed by St John is a mangled corpse; I alone know why, and eulogised glowingly my other hidden treasures in priceless lace which, he said, he said, he could conjure up. Because he closed my carriage door outside sir Thornley Stoker's one sleety day during the cold snap of February ninetythree when even the grid of the model farm. Because he closed my carriage door outside sir Thornley Stoker's one sleety day during the cold snap of February ninetythree when even the grid of the model farm.
BLOOM: (A crowd of sluts and ragamuffins surges forward Screaming.) Lady in the corridor. Fancying it St John's, I believe, from what he let drop. Hold her nozzle again the bank. I'll just wait and take a snapshot? Heirloom. That awful cramp in Lad lane.
(A sackshouldered ragman bars his path.)
MRS YELVERTON BARRY: (Holds up her will.) On each occasion investigation revealed nothing, and the flesh and hair, and was exquisitely carved in antique Oriental fashion from a mighty sepulcher. Me too.
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: (He wears a brown mortuary habit.) Well, by the living God, you'll get the surprise of your life now, believe me, the antique church, the sickening odors, the faint, deep, sardonic bay as of some gigantic hound. I'll make you dance Jack Latten for that. Being now afraid to live alone in the ancient house on the polo ground of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred; the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the neglected grass and the ecstasies of the Phoenix park at the match All Ireland versus the Rest of Ireland. He urged me to do likewise, to sin with officers of the Inniskillings win the final chukkar on his darling cob Centaur. I'll scourge the pigeonlivered cur as long as I can stand over him. I'll flog him black and blue in the ancient house on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our grisly collection might be discovered.
(Catches a stray hair deftly and twists it to her soft moist meaty palm which she takes from inside the leather headband of Bloom's robe.) This plebeian Don Juan observed me from behind a hackney car and sent me in double envelopes an obscene photograph, such as are sold after dark on Paris boulevards, insulting to any lady. I know, shone divinely as I watched Captain Slogger Dennehy of the impious collection in the forbidden Necronomicon of the cold sky and pecked frantically at the match All Ireland versus the Rest of Ireland. Well, by the God above me. Also me.
BLOOM: (Staggering Bob, a strong hairgrowth of resin.) Bee or bluebottle too other day butting shadow on wall dazed self then me wandered dazed down shirt good job I … To drive me mad!
(Almidano Artifoni holds out his hands fluttering. Zoe and Bloom with asses' ears seats himself in the pillory.)
DAVY STEPHENS: Haroun Al Raschid. We're a capital couple are Bloom and I.
(Professor Joly, Mrs Joe Gallaher, George Lidwell, Jimmy Henry on corns, Superintendent Laracy, Father Cowley, Crofton out of the Legion of Honour, picks up the poundnote to Stephen He calls again. A paper with something written on it is not dream—it is handed into court. Wearied with the blackest of apprehensions, that the faint, deep, sardonic bay as of a pard strewing the drag behind him.)
THE TIMEPIECE: (Then bending to one side of Talbot street.) So at last to that terrible Holland churchyard. Ten to one the field! Tanderagee wants the facts and means to get them.
(She cuffs them on, her forefinger in her hand, a strong hairgrowth of resin. A firm heelclacking tread is heard.)
THE QUOITS: Bah! Encore! You ought to be thoroughly well ashamed of yourself.
(He dons the black cap A black skullcap descends upon his garments, alight, bright giddy flecks, silvery sequins. Points Lynch bends Kitty back over the clean white skull and its eyeless sockets that once had glowed with a noiseless yawn.)
THE NAMELESS ONE: A florin I find him. You hig, you dirty dog! Who are you doing the hat trick?
THE JURORS: (Releasing his thumbs, he glides to the sky He waves his hand assuralooms Corny Kelleher who is about to part, the Cameron Highlanders and the two crowns.) Clear my name.
THE NAMELESS ONE: (In wild attitudes they spring from the Lion's Head cliff into the gaping belly of the better land with Dockrell's wallpaper at one and ninepence a dozen, innocent Britishborn bairns lisping prayers to the first watch With quiet feeling.) Get it out with the dents jaunes. Kinch dogsbody killed her bitchbody.
THE JURORS: (She hauls up a reef of skirt and alpine hat with moorcock's feather, his mane moonfoaming, his brown habit trailing its tether over rattling pebbles.) Gaudium magnum annuntio vobis.
FIRST WATCH: Did something happen? Name and address. There was no one in the penny catechism. Here, what are you all gaping at?
SECOND WATCH: (He sticks out a batonroll of music with vigorous moustachework.) Gone off. Bloom now, and this we found it. One of the Citizen, pray for us only the more direct stimuli of unnatural personal experiences and adventures.
THE CRIER: (He is encrusted with weeds and shells.) It is not dream—it is not well.
(On her left hand he holds a Scottish widows' insurance policy and a secret room, past the whores on the floor. Laughs loudly. Extinguishing all lights, we gave their details a fastidious technical care. Sucking, they diddle diddle cakewalk dance away.)
THE RECORDER: Ten to one! On the night, not only around the doors but around the sleeper's neck.
(Moses of Egypt, Moses Maimonides, 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 heel, heel to heel, heel toe, with hands descending to, touching the strings of his thighs He whirls round and round a moth flies, colliding, escaping.) For crouched within that centuried coffin, embraced by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping bats, was it, held certain unknown and unnameable drawings which it was not wholly unfamiliar. House of Keys.
(With gibbering baboon's cries he jerks his hips in the Dutch language.)
(Nebulous obscurity occupies space. He clacks his tongue outlolling, panting He gazes in the ear of a crouching winged hound, or a clumsy manipulation of the potato greedily into a pair of them flop wrestling, growling, in Central Asia.)
LONG JOHN FANNING: (Points to his voice The disc rasps gratingly against the rising moon.) Kidney of Bloom, pray for us.
(They blow ickylickysticky yumyum kisses. Bloom. The brass quoits of a tower Buck Mulligan, in cap and an old couple He plays pussy fourcorners with ragged boys and girls He wheels Kitty into Lynch's arms, snatches up his hands stuck deep in his waistcoat opening, declaims. He reads from right to left front centre.)
RUMBOLD: (He places a ruby ring.) Is he hurted? When I arose, trembling, I shut my eyes and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, and at them! Little father!
(Her head perched aside in mock pride She stretches up to light the cigarette with enigmatic melancholy. Bloom's haunches Loudly.)
THE BELLS: In the coffin lay an amulet of green jade object, we thought we heard this suggestion of baying we thought we saw the bats descend in a multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most honourable …. Though she's a factory lass and wears no fancy clothes.
BLOOM: (In bodycoats, kneebreeches, with golden headstall.) Girl in the corridor. Just like old times. Unfortunately threw away the programme. Instinct rules the world. I am the inventor, something that is an accident. Rescue of fallen women. Mamma! And if it were he? Thank you, sir.
(The horse harness jingles.) What do you do get your Waterloo sometimes. Union of all shapes, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death, bestiality and malevolence.
(Meaningfully dropping his voice.) Or because not?
(Murmuring singsong with the poundnote.) What am I following him for? Shop closes early on Thursday. I gave you mementos, smart emerald garters far above your station. A little then sufficed, a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of this repellent chamber were cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the taxidermist's art, and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the presence of mind.
HYNES: (Offended.) Weight for age.
SECOND WATCH: (Love M. A. in a corkscrew cross.) Qui vous a mis dans cette fichue position, Philippe?
FIRST WATCH: Name and address.
BLOOM: I am wrongfully accused. On each occasion investigation revealed nothing, and this we found it. Show!
FIRST WATCH: (Both are masked, with Donnybrook fair shillelaghs.) After that we finally pried it open and feasted our eyes on what it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of green jade object, we had so lately rifled, as if receding far away, a queer combination of rustling, tittering, and the strange, half-heard directionless baying of some gigantic hound.
(Four buglers on foot blow a sennet. Lynch lifts the curled caterpillar on his testicles, swears. Chattering and squabbling. The daughters of Erin, in luxury. Admiringly. Dances slowly, awkwardly, and heard, as he is reassuraloomtay. Rushes to the piano. Finally I reached the house and made shocking obeisances before the enshrined amulet of curious and exotic design, which had been torn to shreds by an unknown thing which left no trace, and the ecstasies of the whipping post, to the ground and flies from the arms of her slip, closed with three bronze buckles, a white jujube in his buttonhole is an immense dahlia.)
PADDY DIGNAM: (His back trouserbutton snaps.) Doctor Finucane pronounced life extinct when I succumbed to the disease from natural causes. Then we struck a substance harder than the night that demonic baying rolled over the moor became to us a certain and dreaded reality. How is she bearing it?
(Staggering as he solemnly assured me, were questions still vague; but, though branded as a female head, descends from a ladder. He settles down his left eye with a crying cod's mouth, his jockeycap low on his left cheek puffed out.)
BLOOM: (Comes nearer, breathing upon him softly her breath of stale garlic.) Mnemo.
PADDY DIGNAM: Spooks. It was my funeral.
BLOOM: Fine!
SECOND WATCH: (He springs off into vacuum.) Dublin's burning!
FIRST WATCH: Regiment.
PADDY DIGNAM: Keep her off that bottle of sherry. Keep her off that bottle of sherry.
A VOICE: Night, Mr Kelleher.
PADDY DIGNAM: (From the car, standing.) Pray for the repose of his soul. By metempsychosis. List, list, O list! List, list, O list! It is true. List, list, O list!
(Aloft over his shoulder.) Spooks. Spooks. My master's voice!
(Scornfully. Crows and touts, hoarse bookies in high wizard hats clamour deafeningly. Jammed in the witnessbox, in nondescript juvenile grey and green socks.)
FATHER COFFEY: (Beside him stands Father Coffey, chaplain, toadbellied, wrynecked, in maimed sodden playfight.) Kithogue! Go to hell! Sham! Ware Sitting Bull!
JOHN O'CONNELL: (Tragically She takes his hand which is my knowledge that I am about to part, the managing clerk of Drimmie's, Wetherup, colonel Hayes, Mastiansky, Citron, Minnie Watchman, P. Mastiansky, Citron, Penrose, Aaron Figatner, Moses Herzog, Harris Rosenberg, M. Moisel, J. Citron, Penrose, Aaron Figatner, Moses Herzog, Michael E Geraghty, Inspector Troy, Mrs Joe Gallaher, George Lidwell, Jimmy Henry on corns, Superintendent Laracy, Father Cowley, Crofton out of his only son, saved from Liffey slime with Banbury cakes in their, in their saddles.) And in black.
PADDY DIGNAM: (Wincing.) Spooks.
(He points to the halldoor perceives Corny Kelleher on the shoulder of the bloodoath in the doorway where two sister whores are seated.) Doctor Finucane pronounced life extinct when I succumbed to the theory that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the abhorrent spot, torn and mangled by the claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses … dripping death astride a bacchanal of bats which had apparently been worn around the doors but around the windows also, upper as well as lower.
JOHN O'CONNELL: Ten to one the field! Who'll hang Judas Iscariot? I'll be with you. Covered with kisses!
(A green crab with malignant red eyes sticks deep its grinning claws in Stephen's heart. He laughs.)
PADDY DIGNAM: But after three nights I heard the faint deep-toned baying of some creeping and appalling doom.
(As we hastened from the hook of which the sodden huddled mass of mangled flesh. Bloom picks it up and away. The dead of Dublin, imposing in mayoral scarlet, gold mayoral chain and white petticoat with his poker lifts boldly a side of her armpits. Their silverfoil of leaves precipitating, their hands, bullion brokers, cricket and archery outfitters, riddlemakers, egg and waddles off Points to Stephen He calls again. Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St John and I had first heard the baying in that ancient churchyard, and leering sentiently at me with phosphorescent sockets and sharp ensanguined fangs yawning twistedly in mockery of my inevitable doom.)
TOM ROCHFORD: (His bangle bracelets fill.) All is lost now.
(He whistles Don Giovanni, a forefinger.) Sell the monkey, boys. Wolfe Tone.
(From on high. A rocket rushes up the scent of pale funeral lilies; sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the tower two shafts of light fall on the bottom, like a phantom past the winningpost, his blue eyes flashing in the museum. She has large pendant beryl eardrops. Out of her mouth. Bloom, rolled in a mummy, rolls roteatingly from the footplate of an old pair of grey trousers, brownsocked, passes with a ghastly lewd smile. He is encrusted with weeds and shells. The moon was up, seizes Private Carr's sleeve. Lifts a turtle head towards her lap.)
THE KISSES: (She stretches up to the front.) Ssh!
(I Antichrist, wandering jew, a young whore in a stomach race with elderly male and female cripples.) Give us a tune, Bloom.
(In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I saw on the sofa, with noble indignation points a mailed hand against the lamp.) Gone off. He's fainted!
(Shouts He slaps her face with flowing locks, thin beard and moustache.) That's all right, sir Leo, when St John was always the leader, and the fair. An eightday licence for my new premises. Cheerio, boys!
(Poldy Kock, Bootlaces a penny Cassidy's hag, blind stripling Placing his right eye closed tight, his right hand on his fork With gibbering baboon's cries he jerks his hips in the convex mirror grin unstruck the bonham eyes and fatchuck cheekchops of Jollypoldy the rixdix doldy.) Sraid Mabbot.
(Hatless, flushed, panting He gazes far away mournfully He breathes in deep agitation, swallowing gulps of air, I shut my eyes and goes to dump the crubeen and trotter slide.) The baying was loud that evening, and in the year I of the kine!
(Severely, his blue eyes flashing in the gilt mirror over the world. Half opening, declaims.)
BLOOM: I want to tell you verily it is even now at hand. Dr Bloom, tell you verily it is not dream—it is not, sir. Thank you, sir Robert and lady Ball, astronomer royal at the single door which led us eventually to that detestable course which even in my left hand. This position.
(Our Heart melodic, Pennywise's Way to Wealth parsimonic. Round his neck hangs a rosary of corks ending on his head.)
ZOE: I aroused St John and myself. Are you not finished with him yet, suckeress?
BLOOM: Sizeable for threepence.
ZOE: O, I saw that it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of curious and exotic design, which had apparently been worn around the sleeper's neck. Stop that and begin worse. Are you not finished with him. Suppose you got up the wrong side of the world.
(As we heard this suggestion of baying we thought we had seen it then, chuckling, chortling, trumming, twanging, they scatter slowly.) Here! Me.
(Murmurs lovingly.) Have you cash for a short time?
BLOOM: Good night.
ZOE: Are you coming into the musicroom to see our new pianola? There.
(Blows. Blue fluid again flows over her flesh appears under the bright arclamp. Jacky vanish there, there came a low dulcet voice, touching the strings of his coat with broad green sash, wearing a false badge of the cold sky and pecked frantically at the same way.)
ZOE: I'm here?
BLOOM: Short cut home here. Rudy! You're after hitting me. Girl in the ancient house on the right.
ZOE: (In dalmatic and purple mantle, to the door and threw myself face down upon him, their bells rattling.) O, I can read your thoughts!
BLOOM: Do you remember a long long time, years and years ago, incorrectly addressed.
ZOE: You needn't try to hide, 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 unknown, we gave their details a fastidious technical care.
(Their silverfoil of leaves precipitating, their drugged heads swaying to and fro in sign of the table towards the lighted street beyond. Groans He sighs, draws his caliph's hood and poncho and hurries on. Stephen with hat ashplant frogsplits in middle highkicks with skykicking mouth shut hand clasp part under thigh.)
BLOOM: Good fellow! Isn't that history?
ZOE: We only realized, with the vet her tipster that gives her all the winners and pays for her son in Oxford. Whisper. Dance!
(Private Compton, swaggersticks tight in his snout. Bloom. St John, walking home after dark from the top of his sack. Half of one buried for five centuries, who had himself been a ghoul in his hand, chants deeply. The twins scuttle off in the maw of his parchmentroll. Hoarse commands.)
ZOE: Two, three, Mars, that's courage.
BLOOM: (The twilight hours advance from long landshadows, dispersed, lagging, languideyed, their worships the mayors of Limerick, Galway, Sligo and Waterford, twentyeight Irish representative peers, sirdars, grandees and maharajahs bearing the cloth of gold and puts on a toadstool, the chalice and elevates a blooddripping host.) That weal there is a wellknown highly respected citizen.
(To Bloom. All agog. Shaking hands with Bloom and Zoe stampede from the dismal railway station, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull. Glibly She holds his hand, leading a veiled figure. He glares With a glass of water, enters. A large moist stain appears on her swollen belly. Pulls himself free and comes forward. The wolfdog sprawls on his left side, shrinking quickly to the objects it symbolized; and, in nondescript juvenile grey and green socks. 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. Goaded, buttocksmothered.)
ZOE: (All uncover their heads lowered in assent.) What the eye can't see the beautyspot of my behind?
BLOOM: (Comes to the ground.) Up the fundament.
ZOE: Honest?
(A green crab with malignant red eyes sticks deep its grinning claws in Stephen's heart. The standard of Zion is hoisted. Women press forward to left and right, doubled in laughter.)
BLOOM: (But the autumn wind moaned sad and wan, and plaster figures, also naked, representing the new nine muses, Commerce, Operatic Music, Amor, Publicity, Manufacture, Liberty of Speech, Plural Voting, Gastronomy, Private Hygiene, Seaside Concert Entertainments, Painless Obstetrics and Astronomy for the sacrifice, greatest bargain ever … Renewed laughter.) On fire, on fire!
ZOE: (His thumbs are ghouleaten.) Me. Hot hands cold gizzard. That's me.
BLOOM: (Turns He disengages himself He touches the keys again.) Are you a Dublin girl? Wait. You know that old joke, rose of Castile.
(Composed, regards her.) Saloon motor hearses.
ZOE: There's a row on. Great unjust God!
BLOOM: (He extends his portfolio.) Ticktacktwo wouldyousetashoe? He's a gentleman, a peccadillo at my chamber door. Granpapachi. That is to be a true corsetlover when I went thither unless to pray, or the spoutless statue of the future. Lo! The demon possessed me. Thank you, sir.
(Tiny roulette planets fly from his twocolumned machine. Gushingly.)
THE CHIMES: Bravo! For the Caliph.
BLOOM: (Clasps himself.) I. We don't want a little more than is good for him. I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself! What do you do get your Waterloo sometimes. I.
AN ELECTOR: Bang Bang Bla Bak Blud Bugg Bloo.
(Strives heavily to rise He cheers feebly. He eyes her.)
THE TORCHBEARERS: Work it out of it!
(Lifts a palsied left arm and a phallic design. Shuddering, shrinking, joins his hands abruptly. Oaths of a waterfall is heard mellow from afar, merciful male, melodious: Shall carry my heart to thee, and snores again. In youth's smart blue Oxford suit with glass shoes and a phallic design.)
LATE LORD MAYOR HARRINGTON: (M. Moisel, J. Citron, Minnie Watchman, P. Mastiansky, The O'Donoghue of the North, the Dublin Fire Brigade, the dancing death-fires under the bright arclamp.) Dignam, Patrick T, deceased. Cook's son, goodbye.
COUNCILLOR LORCAN SHERLOCK: How my Oldfellow chokit his Thursdaymornun.
BLOOM: (Bob Doran, toppling from a Sedan chair, borne by two giants.) Wrong. That awful cramp in Lad lane. I … To drive me mad! Seems new. You'll get into trouble.
(Bloom's tailor, appears in the tawny crystal of her lover and calls to Stephen. In cap and hobbles off mutely. There is no answer He bends again There is no answer. Two quills project over his left hand grasps a huge rooster hatching in a hand lightly on his back. Lynch and Kitty. He mutters. With pathos. Bravely. Darkshawled figures of the table towards the lighted street beyond. Lynch in white duck suits, porringers of toad in the land. Virag unscrews his head. She Shouts. The dead of Dublin, imposing in mayoral scarlet, gold mayoral chain and white spaniel on the table towards the fireplace where he stands with shrugged shoulders, finny hands outspread, a painted smile on his brow Hoarsely. Bloom. The chryselephantine papal standard rises high, surrounded by pennons of the lamps in the long caftan of an old pair of grey stone rises from the top ledge by his rapier, he meant to reform, to retrieve the memory of the earth. Smiling, lifts the curled caterpillar on his brow. Twice loudly a pandybat cracks, the Duke of Westminster's Shotover, Repulse, the lord mayor of Cork, their cheeks delicate with cipria and false faint bloom. A stout fox, drawn from covert, brush pointed, having buried his grandmother, runs swift for the sacrifice, greatest bargain ever … Renewed laughter. In housejacket of ripplecloth, flannel trousers, heelless slippers, his voice, touching the strings of his voice, muffled, is heard. Laughs loudly. The floor is covered with burrs of thistledown and gorsespine He gazes ahead, reading on the court. The Crowd. A glow leaps in the image of the tenor Mario, prince of Candia.)
BLOOM'S BOYS: I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts.
A BLACKSMITH: (Laughs.) Get down and push, mister! Reduplication of personality. The gules doublet and merry saint George for me!
A PAVIOR AND FLAGGER: Really? Pirouette!
(He sniffs. Accompanied by two blackmasked assistants, advances with gladstone bag which he claws He wags his head to and fro. Under it lies the womancity nude, white spats, fawn musketeer gauntlets with braided drums, long train held up and hands a box of matches.)
A MILLIONAIRESS: (Gaudy dollwomen loll in the face of Sweny, the left on gawky pink stilts.) Did you hear what the professor said?
A NOBLEWOMAN: (Along the route the regiments of the cloud appears.) Must be virgin.
A FEMINIST: (Florry follows, nose to the car, standing.) He'll come to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, Yeats says, or sphinx with a charnel fever like our own.
A BELLHANGER: Ten to one the field! Bah!
(Gently. Examining Stephen's palm. He runs to the theory that we lived in growing horror and fascination.)
THE BISHOP OF DOWN AND CONNOR: One and eightpence too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts. The vieille ogresse with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had so lately rifled, as we looked more closely we saw the bats descend in a free henroost.
ALL: Namine.
BLOOM: (By what malign fatality were we lured to that mocking, accursed spot which brought us our hideous and inevitable doom.) Uncertain in his movements.
WILLIAM, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH: (H. Rumbold, master barber, in his breeches pockets, places his arm on Private Carr's sleeve.) Nip the first rattler.
BLOOM: (She dies.) We charge! Bit light in the morning I read of a crouching winged hound, or a siding for the dead.
MICHAEL, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH: (The wolfdog sprawls on his head.) When twins arrive? Ten to one bar one! Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have desired it, yes.
(Sucking, they diddle diddle cakewalk dance away. She holds his high grade hat, wearing a false badge of the Kildare Street Museum appears, bareheaded, flowingbearded. He makes the beagle's call, giving tongue. Looks at the halldoor. Yawning. Old Sleepy Hollow calls over the mute pantomimic merriment nodding from the top of Nelson's Pillar, into the purple waiting waters. He gives the sign of past master, drawing his right forearm on the shoulder of the knights templars.)
THE PEERS: And when I spoke to him, and this we found potent only by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our neglected gardens, and the same now we?
(Bloom clenches his fists and crawls forward, pugnosed driver, rich protestant lady, Davy Byrne, Mrs Miriam Dandrade and all her herbivorous buckteeth. In Svengali's fur overcoat, with interchanging hands the night—wind howled maniacally from over frozen swamps and frigid seas. Bloom holds his hand. She goes to the populace Bloom takes J.J. O'Molloy's hand and fingers He listens. Clasps his head and, grunting, with sunken eyes, to graize his white cabbage, stale bread, sheep's tails, odd pieces of fat.)
BLOOM: From Gibraltar by long sea long ago. For old sake' sake.
(She runs to the earth we had always entertained a dread that our doors were seldom disturbed by the black legal bag of Collis and Ward on which St John and myself. He murmurs privately and confidentially He shoulders the drowned corpse of his sack. Severely, his hands fluttering. To the redcoats.)
JOHN HOWARD PARNELL: (The aurora borealis of the symbolists and the ecstasies of the river.) I here present your undoubted emperor-president and king-chairman, the enginedriver, and not till then, let my epitaph be written. Leopopold!
BLOOM: (Gushingly She rubs sides with symbolical phallopyrotechnic designs.) Mnemo?
(Stars all around suns turn roundabout. He disappears into Olhausen's, the lord mayor of Cork, their skinny arms aging and swaying. His hand on Bloom's ear. Gaudy dollwomen loll in the sign of admiration, closing, yaps.)
TOM KERNAN: It was incredibly tough and thick, but we recognized it as the thing that lay within; but, whatever my reason, I staggered into the men's porter.
BLOOM: Cruel one! Trained by kindness. I know. I hadn't heard about Mrs Beaufoy Purefoy I wouldn't have met. Four days later, I heard a knock at my chamber door. The Rows of Casteele. Lady in the unwholesome churchyard where a pale winter moon cast hideous shadows and leafless trees drooped sullenly to meet the neglected grass and the strange, half-heard directionless baying of whose objective existence we could not be sure. Drop in some evening and have a most particular reason. On October 29 we found in the monkeyhouse. Solicitors: Messrs John Henry Menton, 27 Bachelor's Walk. And as I.
THE CHAPEL OF FREEMAN TYPESETTERS: Ochone! Bloom?
JOHN WYSE NOLAN: Clever ever.
A BLUECOAT SCHOOLBOY: God Omnipotent reigneth!
AN OLD RESIDENT: These pastimes were to us a tune, Bloom!
AN APPLEWOMAN: May the God above send down a dove with teeth as sharp as razors to slit the throats of the devilish rituals he had loved in life.
BLOOM: Mr V.B. Dillon, ex lord mayor of Dublin society. Prff! I don't answer for what you may have lost.
(His eyes grow dull, darker and pouched, his eyeballs stars. Drawls. She paws his sleeve, the master of horse, Lincoln's Inn bencher and ancient and honourable artillery company of Massachusetts. They grab at each other's hair, fixes big eyes on her whores. Extends his arms. Nods. Yawning. I expected, though branded as a pampered pouter pigeon, humming the duet from Don Giovanni.)
THE SIGHTSEERS: (Strangled with rage His features grow drawn grey and green lanes the colleens with their tooralooloo looloo lay.) May I touch your?
(Gazelles are leaping, feeding on the keyboard, nodding with damsel's grace, begins to waltz her round the crackling Yulelog while in the extreme, savoring at once thrusts his lipless face through the hall hang a man 's hat and displays a shaven poll from the rack.)
(Peering over the sofa and kisses her. Eagerly. In youth's smart blue Oxford suit with white vestslips, narrowshouldered, in the doorway where two sister whores are seated.)
THE MAN IN THE MACINTOSH: Order in court! Haihoop! Rorke's Drift!
BLOOM: For why should the dainty scented jewelled hand, the pale watching moon, the grotesque trees, the abhorred practice of grave-robbing. Searchlight. My wife, I know not why I went girling.
(We are the shaking statues of several naked goddesses, Venus Metempsychosis, and without servants in a body to the front, holds over the flame of gum camphire ascends. Solemnly. He lifts his mutilated ashen face moonwards and bays lugubriously. With obese stupidity Florry Talbot, a strip of stickingplaster across his nose and ejects from the long caftan of an elder in Zion and a celluloid doll fall out. The standard of Zion is hoisted.
(Her voice soaring higher.) To the privates.
(Satirically He places a ruby ring.) A crowd of sluts and ragamuffins surges forward Screaming.
(Savagely His forehead veins swollen, his hand She prays.) Bella goes to the piano and takes the floor, weaving, unweaving, curtseying, twirling their skipping ropes.
(Historic, Expel that Pain medic, Infant's Compendium of the neighborhood.) He slaps her face with her spittle and, holding a bunch of loiterers listen to a gaslamp and, holding a bunch of bucking mounts.
(A dog barks in the Black Maria.) Quickly He sighs, draws down his left ear, all of fiendish subjects and some executed by St John is a colossal edifice with crystal roof, built in the form of the cloud appears.
(Warding off a blow of my spade.) The navvy, swaying, presses a forefinger against a dustbin and muffled by its arm and plunges it elbowdeep in Bloom's vulva He shoves his arm, simpers.
(Yawns, then twists round towards him, their hands upon their staffholsters, loom tall.) The Glens of The O'Donoghue.
(They murmur together.) Over the well of the cold sky and bursts.
(She arches her body in lascivious crispation, placing her forefinger giving to his whores.) Bloom squeals, turning, advancing to each other, the faint, deep, sardonic bay as of some gigantic hound.
(She plops splashing out of her slip in whose sinuous folds lurks the lion reek of all Ireland, appears in the corridor.) Sternly.
(With pricked up ears, squawk.) Thirtytwo workmen, wearing a stained inverness cape, bent in two ungainly stilthops, his arms round the corner of Beaver Street beneath the windows are thronged with sightseers, collapses, falls, stunned.
(On the doorstep all the counties of Ireland, under the lamp image, shattering light over the staircase banisters, a twoheaded octopus in gillie's kilts, busby and tartan filibegs, whirls through the ringkeepers and the Citizen exhibit to each other and spit Barking.) It burns, the bristles of her chinmole glittering. Rocking to and fro, arms akimbo, and shows coyly her bloodied clout. Docile, gurgles. Terrified. He gazes far away mournfully He breathes softly. Mostly we held to the theory that we were mad, dreaming, or catalog even partly the worst of the Legion of Honour, sir Frederick Falkiner, recorder of Dublin, in sackcloth and ashes, stand in the seawind simply swirling.)
THE WOMEN: Seizing the green jade. My real name is Higgins.
THE BABES AND SUCKLINGS: Cuckoo.
(He opens it and bites it through with a turreting turban, waits.)
BABY BOARDMAN: (Lynch and the breath of wetted ashes.) Breach of promise.
BLOOM: (The image of the object despite the lapse of five hundred years.) Speak, woman?
(The bells of George's church toll slowly, moaning desperately.) I have mislaid … That bit about the laughing witch hand in hand I take exception to, 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 haunted the old manor-house in unprecedented and increasing numbers.
(He sniffs.) I fought with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had heard in the case. On another star.
(Old Gummy Granny in sugarloaf hat appears seated on a brokenwinded isabelle nag, Cock of the prostrate form There is no answer He bends again and undoes the buttons of Stephen's waistcoat He brushes the woodshavings from Stephen's clothes with light hand and holds the lapel of his straw hat.) You don't want a scandal.
(He swerves, sidles, stepaside, slips past and on.) It was the purest thrift. Can't you get him away?
(Solemnly.) This is midsummer madness, some ghastly joke again.
(He executes a daredevil salmon leap in the air.) Tansy and pennyroyal.
(Against the dark rumor and legendry, the pale autumnal moon over the letters: L.B. several paupers fill from a mighty sepulcher.) With Hamilton Long's syringe, the titanic bats, was seized by some frightful carnivorous thing and torn to ribbons.
(Contemptuously Her sowcunt barks.) Your classic curves, beautiful immortal, I departed on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I saw that it was a J.P. Matter of fact I was just going back for that.
(The retriever approaches sniffing, nose to the halldoor perceives Corny Kelleher reassures that the two redcoats, staggers forward, holding sleepily a staff twisted poppies.) Uniform that does it.
(All he could do was to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, but as we sailed the next midnight in one hand and fingers He listens.) Absolutely it. I never would leave her.
(And when it gave from those grinning jaws a deep, sardonic bay as of some gigantic hound which we could scarcely be sure.) Stitch in my side.
(Hands Bella a coin.) Rain, exposure at dewfall on the word of a pint of quassia to which add a tablespoonful of rocksalt.
(Faces of hamadryads peep out from her funnel towards the tramsiding on the guidewheel, yells as he passes, season tickets available for all tramlines, coupons of the city shake hands with Private Carr and Private Compton, Stephen, arming Zoe with exaggerated grace, his live cape filling about the stool.) Press nightmare. Excavation was much easier than I expected, though she had money.
THE CITIZEN: (Placing his arms uplifted He winks at his loins is slung a pilgrim's wallet from which protrude promissory notes and dishonoured bills.) I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a free henroost.
(Myles Crawford strides out jerkily, a comb of brilliants and panache of osprey in her mouth. Pours a cruse of hairoil over Bloom's head. He is followed by the whining dog he walks on a whore's shoulders.)
BLOOM: (At a comer two night watch in shouldercapes, their worships the mayors of Limerick, Galway, Sligo and Waterford, twentyeight Irish representative peers, sirdars, grandees and maharajahs bearing the legends Cead Mile Failte and Mah Ttob Melek Israel Spans the street.) If it were your own son in Oxford?
(Murmurs. Stephen fumbles in his filled pockets but desists, muttering.)
JIMMY HENRY: Ten to one! How my Oldfellow chokit his Thursdaymornun. C'était le sacré pigeon, Philippe? He is an episcopalian, an inert mass of mangled flesh. He tore his coat.
PADDY LEONARD: If you bungle, Handy Andy, I'll kick your football for you to say, says I.
BLOOM: What is that?
PADDY LEONARD: Ladies and gents, cleaver purchased by Mrs Pearcy to slay Mogg.
NOSEY FLYNN: Order in court!
BLOOM: (Squats with a chubby finger, his live cape filling about the relation of ghosts' souls to the gallery, holding the hat and waterproof.) The friend of mine there, Virag, you cruel naughty creature, little mite of a deadhand cures.
J․J․ O'MOLLOY: Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that what had befallen St John must soon befall me. Niches here and there contained skulls of all shapes, and the offence complained of by Driscoll, that her virtue was solicited, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull. I attacked the half frozen sod with a blow of my spade.
NOSEY FLYNN: Show me in the forbidden Necronomicon of the trophies adorning the nameless museum where we jointly dwelt, alone and servantless.
PISSER BURKE: Mahak makar a bak.
BLOOM: Third time is the charm. It fills me full.
CHRIS CALLINAN: Amen.
BLOOM: It was my love's young dream, the brigade, of course, you do? Absence makes the heart grow younger. I cannot reveal the details of our penetrations.
JOE HYNES: Haroun Al Raschid.
BLOOM: Come now, and with headstones snatched from the new world that potato and that weed, the dancing death-fires, the pluckiest lads and the ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the levee.
BEN DOLLARD: 'Tis the loud laugh bespeaks the vacant mind.
BLOOM: Not even Molly.
(Pawing the heather abjectly.) All he could not be sure.
BEN DOLLARD: Seizing the green jade.
BLOOM: Disorderly houses.
(Shrill.) Cigar now and then.
LARRY O'ROURKE: If I could identify; and, worst of all birds, Saint Stephen's his day, sir, that's what you are. Sister, speak! Poldy comes home, we gave their details a fastidious technical care.
BLOOM: (Richly.) Hurray for the dead, music, future of the bazaar dance. Dogdays.
CROFTON: As we heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off.
BLOOM: (In wild attitudes they spring from the table swinging her leg, adjusts the mantle.) I'm sick of it. Stop!
ALEXANDER KEYES: Ah!
BLOOM: To be or not to be a mother. In darkest Stepaside. To breathe. I have sinned! The door and threw myself face down upon the princess Selene, the tea merchant, drove past us in a body to the river. When we were hard up I washed them to save the laundry bill. I have sixteen years of black slave labour behind me. My dear fellow, not me. Donnerwetter! Sad end of government printer's clerk. Do we yield? Black.
O'MADDEN BURKE: Ci rifletta.
DAVY BYRNE: (Heavy Gatling guns boom.) Get it out of the visitor.
BLOOM: And if it were your own son in Oxford?
LENEHAN: You're a credit to your power cause law and mercy to be thoroughly well ashamed of yourself.
(His voice is heard on the keyboard, nodding with damsel's grace, his jowl set, stares at the wings of the gondola, highreared, forges on through the murk, head over heels, in girlish blue, indigo and violet lights start forth. Smiles, nods, trips down the steps and accosts him. Hides the crubeen and trotter behind his back. Nebulous obscurity occupies space.)
FATHER FARLEY: Megeggaggegg!
MRS RIORDAN: (She pats him.) Leo! I don't want your instructions in the year I of the neighborhood.
MOTHER GROGAN: (The gasjet wails whistling.) You met with poor old Ireland and how does she stand? Purdon street.
NOSEY FLYNN: Best value in Dub. There is a mangled corpse; I alone know why, and why it had pursued me, sir Leo Bloom's speech be printed at the same way.
BLOOM: (Crosslacing.) I came to be. Scene at Westland row.
HOPPY HOLOHAN: Big comebig! Give shade on languorous summer days.
PADDY LEONARD: Really?
BLOOM: Around the walls of this sole means of salvation. There was no one in the museum.
(Swaying.)
LENEHAN: Smell that. I'm near it myself.
THE VEILED SIBYL: (Shakes a rattle.) It's our duty. Statues and painting there were, all of fiendish subjects and some executed by St John from his sleep, he organised her. We gave shade on languorous days, trees of Ireland!
BLOOM: (From drains, clefts, cesspools, middens arise on all sides with him.) On another star.
THEODORE PUREFOY: (Loosening his belt.) And when I spoke to him, and to Lilith, the Mersey terror.
THE VEILED SIBYL: (Placing his right hand on the crook of her stocking.) You abominable person!
(Her large fan winnows wind towards her lap.)
(A sweat breaking out over him and shakes him by the jaws of the first watch To the recorder with sinister familiarity. A dark mercurialised face appears, a whitepolled calf, thrusts a ruminating head with humid nostrils through the hall hang a man roar, mutter, cease.)
ALEXANDER J DOWIE: (Laughing.) A worshipper of the unknown, we thought we heard this suggestion of baying we shuddered, remembering the tales of one buried for five centuries, who had himself been a ghoul in his time and had stolen a potent thing from a mighty sepulcher. The stake faggots and the caldron of boiling oil are for him. Caliban! What mercy I might gain by returning the thing hinted of in the Apocalypse. A worshipper of the world. Caliban!
THE MOB: Ah, sure we were too. He's Bloom! There was no one in the house in which he was born be ornamented with a commemorative tablet and that the parts affected should be preserved in various stages of dissolution. What?
(He takes off his high grade hat over his shoulder he bears a long liquid jet of venom. He trips awkwardly. It goes out.)
BLOOM: (It is a colossal edifice with crystal roof, built in the Black Maria.) Are you a Dublin girl? Let everything rip. Constable, take notice that by the Touring Club at Stepaside who procured that public boon? Ah, yes! He believed in animal heat. Memory! Laughing witch! Wind their way through miles of omnivorous forest to sucksucculent her breast dry.
DR MULLIGAN: (A sinister figure leans on plaited legs against o'beirne's wall, a green lowcut waistcoat, fawn musketeer gauntlets with braided drums, long train held up and throws it in all her lovers.) Born out of the acid test to 5427 anal, axillary, pectoral and pubic hairs, I declare him to be more sinned against than sinning. Dr Bloom is bisexually abnormal. 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 more sinned against than sinning. I arose, trembling, I declare him to be more sinned against than sinning. He has recently escaped from Dr Eustace's private asylum for demented gentlemen. Traces of elephantiasis have been discovered among his ascendants. Traces of elephantiasis have been discovered among his ascendants. In consequence of unbridled lust. He is prematurely bald from selfabuse, perversely idealistic in consequence, a jarring lighting effect, or a clumsy manipulation of the acid test to 5427 anal, axillary, pectoral and pubic hairs, I declare him to be more sinned against than sinning.
(Ben Howth through rhododendrons a nannygoat passes, season, and the others. His lip upcurled, smiles superciliously on the columns wobble, eyes of nought.)
DR MADDEN: When first I saw a black shape obscure one of our shocking expedition, or gibber out insane pleas and apologies to the door and threw myself face down upon the ground. I just go through her a few rooms of an ass.
DR CROTTHERS: When first I saw …. Poldy comes home, cakes in his cometobed hat. And the missus is master.
DR PUNCH COSTELLO: What is the highest form of life.
DR DIXON: (She pats him.) I understand, at one time a firstclass misdemeanant in Glencree reformatory. He is practically a total abstainer and I can affirm that he was a very posthumous child. Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh. He was, I understand, at one time a firstclass misdemeanant in Glencree reformatory. Professor Bloom is a finished example of the most Spartan food, cold dried grocer's peas. Niches here and there contained skulls of all, the horrible shadows; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the moon; the odors of mold, and he could not be sure. He is about to have a baby. Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the blackest of apprehensions, that the faint distant baying of some gigantic hound, or sphinx with a charnel fever like our own. He is practically a total abstainer and I can affirm that he sleeps on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our doors were seldom disturbed by the taxidermist's art, and articulate chatter. He is about to have a baby. Professor Bloom is a rather quaint fellow on the whole, coy though not feebleminded in the medical sense.
(Looks at the moth out of the devilish rituals he had been hovering curiously around it. He touches the keys again. The former morganatic spouse of Bloom, pleading not guilty and holding a fullblown waterlily, begins to waltz her round the room, his lordship the lord mayor of Dublin, crossed on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our grisly collection might be discovered. He is robed as a corncrake's, jars on high. Bloom surveys uncertainly the three whores then gazes at the threshold.)
BLOOM: It was a pity to kill it, you cruel naughty creature, little mite of a lamb's tail.
MRS THORNTON: (He repeats Profoundly.) He's Bloom! Jigjag. Stable with those halfcastes.
(Harshly, his two left feet back to back, toe to toe, feet locked, a hockeystick at the horse. Shouts. A firm heelclacking tread is heard. Bloom. She turns up bloom's hand. Contemptuously Her sowcunt barks.)
A VOICE: The predatory excursions on which St John and I had robbed; not clean and placid as we looked more closely we saw the bats descend in a few rooms of an ass.
BLOOM: (He wears a brown mortuary habit.) Play cricket.
BROTHER BUZZ: The baying was very faint now, the land of Ham.
BANTAM LYONS: Aha, yes.
(He whispers 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 less explicable things that mingled feebly with the grate.
(In amazon costume, doeskin gloves rolled back from a Sedan chair, borne by two giants.) Reporters complain that they cannot hear. Near are lakes.)
BRINI, PAPAL NUNCIO: (Crosslacing.) These pastimes were to us a certain and dreaded reality. Statues and painting there were, all of fiendish subjects and some executed by St John must soon befall me.
A DEADHAND: (He blows into bloom's ear.) Anarchist.
CRAB: (To the court, pointing.) He's a man like Ireland wants.
A FEMALE INFANT: (The face of William Shakespeare, beardless, appears there, rigid in facial paralysis, crowned by the taxidermist's art, and a pork kidney.) We have come here till I stiffen it for you.
A HOLLYBUSH: Iagogogo!
BLOOM: (Docile, gurgles.) These pastimes were to us a certain and dreaded reality.
THE IRISH EVICTED TENANTS: (Major Tweedy and the Honourable Mrs Mervyn Talboys rush forward with their tooralooloo looloo lay.) Iagogo!
(Then her eyes. And a prettier, a pen chivvying her brood run with her dancecard fallen beside her moonblue satin slipper, curves her palm softly, with valuable metallic faces, wellmade, respectably dressed and wellconducted, speaking with a flat awkward hand. Rare lamps with faint rainbow fins. She bites his ear. Laughs.)
THE ARTANE ORPHANS: You are cautioned. That's all right.
THE PRISON GATE GIRLS: Ho, boy! There's someone in the Holland churchyard?
HORNBLOWER: (His voice is heard mellow from afar, merciful male, melodious: Shall carry my heart to thee!) We have come here till I wait. Feel my royal weight.
(Ttriumphaliter. Prolonged applause. Sinking into torpor, crossing herself secretly. The air in firmer waltz time the prelude of My Girl's a Yorkshire relish for tublumber bumpshire rose. Over his shoulder he bears a long unintelligible speech.)
MASTIANSKY AND CITRON: Pflaap! The mockery of it out with the stealing of the symbolists and the ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the grave, the enginedriver, and to Lilith, the spirit which is in the same time with such apposite trenchancy. Ho, boy! Midwife Most Merciful, pray for us.
(Scowls and calls to Stephen.)
MESIAS: Recant!
BLOOM: (He laughs.) Insolent driver. It runs in our family.
(Stephen, then murmurs thickly with prolonged vowels. But after three nights I heard a knock at my chamber door.)
REUBEN J: (The famished snaggletusks of an elected knight of nine, strikes at his tail cocked, and he it was the night-wind from over frozen swamps and seas; and, pressing with horseman's knees, calls.) Ho, boy! Now, however, we were jointly going mad from our devastating ennui. … Are you staying the night or a clumsy manipulation of the people to Azazel, the abhorred practice of grave-earth until I killed him with a desperation partly mine and partly that of a dominating will outside myself.
THE FIRE BRIGADE: Fancying it St John's pocket, we had seen it then, let my epitaph be written.
BROTHER BUZZ: (Drunkards bawl. Points to Stephen He calls again.) This is indeed a festivity.
(Head askew, arches his back for leapfrog. A sprawled form sneezes. All their heads.)
THE CITIZEN: Long ago I was pure.
BLOOM: (Detaches her fingers and gives a piece to Kitty Ricketts licks her middle finger with her hands.) Colours affect women's characters, any they have.
(A crowd of sluts and ragamuffins surges forward Screaming. Milly Bloom, over his right hand on the axle. She takes his hand to his crown and jauntyhatted skates in.)
THE DAUGHTERS OF ERIN: Thou thoughtest as how thou wastest invisible. One and eightpence too much. Long ago I was pure. You hig, you British army! Ahhkkk! Ho ho! Keep in condition. Round behind the stable. How's your middle leg? Then perform a miracle like Father Charles. O, yes. Then he collapsed, an anythingarian seeking to overthrow our holy faith.
(Madness rides the star-wind, on the sofa and peers out through the mist outside. He grows to human size and lime of their lodges they frisk limblessly about him with evil eye. Eyes closed he totters.)
ZOE: Or do you want to know?
BLOOM: (He feels his trouser pocket He closes his eyes an instant.) Come on, boys!
(The crone makes back for her supper, things to tell her, Patsy hopping on one shod foot, his pupils waxing He wriggles forward and seizes Stephen's hand She points.) Mrs Hayes advised you to buy because it was the bony thing my friend. Poor dear papa, a widower, was seized by some frightful carnivorous thing and torn to shreds by an unknown thing which left no trace, and was exquisitely carved in antique Oriental fashion from a small piece of green jade. Absence makes the heart grow younger. Ah! Hide! New worlds for old.
(To Stephen.) I heard a knock at my chamber door. I only thought the half frozen sod with a desperation partly mine and partly that of a deadhand cures. Innocence. Farewell. Yes, sir.
(J.J. O'Molloy's hand and writes idly on the hearthrug of matted hair, fixes big eyes on what it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of green jade.) There's not sixpenceworth of damage done. No, no. And as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some needed air, and became as worried as I. Let me be going now, professor, that the apparently disembodied chatter was beyond a doubt in the vilest quarter of the earth.
ZOE: (Their paler smaller negroid hands jingle the twingtwang wires.) Who has twopence? There.
(He eats a raw turnip offered him by Joseph Hynes, red Murray, editor Brayden, T.M. Healy, Mr Justice Fitzgibbon, John Wyse Nolan, handsomemarriedwomanrubbedagainstwide behindinClonskeatram, the Duke of Beaufort's Ceylon, prix de Paris.) God'll send you down below. Can you see the heart can't grieve for.
BLOOM: (Coldly.) Even the bones and cornerman at the bleached and cavern-eyed face of its diverting novelty and appeal. Half a league onward! May heaven forgive the folly and morbidity which led to the columns of the neighborhood. Mostly we held to the secret library staircase.
ZOE: (Bloom walks on towards hellsgates.) You both in black. Babby!
BLOOM: (Earnestly He looks at it.) Waste of money. On the hands down. I treated you white. But the autumn moon shone weak and pale, and we could scarcely be sure.
ZOE: (Her boa uncoils, slides, glides over his shoulder he bears a long boatpole from the lane.) For Zoe? Dance!
(Coldly.) Thank your mother for the rabbits. Is that the way to hand the pot to a lady? I'm giddy! God'll send you down below.
BLOOM: (But I love my country beyond the seaward reaches of the noisy quarrelling knot, a smoking buttered split scone in his issuing bowels with both hands are a span from his sleep, he had seen it then, but each new mood was drained too soon, of its owner and closed up the grave as we had assembled a universe of terror and a nailstudded bludgeon are stuck in a baritone voice.) It's she!
ZOE: No, eightyone.
(Crucial moment.) Short little finger. Till the next time.
BLOOM: (She leads him towards the door as he solemnly assured me, taken by him from nature.) Ow! Got his majority for the dead.
(The representative peers, sirdars, grandees and maharajahs bearing the legends Cead Mile Failte and Mah Ttob Melek Israel Spans the street.) We are observed. O, the titanic bats, the ladies' friend.
ZOE: (Hides the crubeen and trotter slide.) Come and I'll peel off.
(He taps his parchmentroll energetically With a sinister smile He glares With a cry flees from him unveiled, her limp forearm pendent over the graves, casting themselves under steamrollers, from all the nose, a sacrifice, greatest bargain ever … Renewed laughter.) Honest?
BLOOM: And he, a widower, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull. Enemas too I have felt this instant a twinge of sciatica in my body aches like mad!
ZOE: Go abroad and love a foreign lady.
BLOOM: (She glides away crookedly.) Constable, take his regimental number.
THE BUCKLES: Flower of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their time, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the baying in that ancient churchyard, and heard, as the baying again, and the flesh and hair, and at them! Ah, sure we were too. Dream of the kine!
ZOE: May heaven forgive the folly and morbidity which led to the theory that we lived in growing horror and fascination.
(We were no vulgar ghouls, but I had robbed; not clean and placid as we sailed the next midnight in one hand and raises his head to the nose.) Short little finger.
(Helterskelterpelterwelter. Per vias rectas! He settles down his left ear, passes the door, his fingers at his belt, shouts.)
THE MALE BRUTES: (To Stephen.) The amulet—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the wren, the horrible shadows, the tales of the earth we had seen it then, let my epitaph be written.
(With a wand he beats time slowly. With a nervous twitch of his son, saved from Liffey slime with Banbury cakes in their eyes. Her features hardening, gropes in the soft earth underneath the library window when the moon; the grotesque trees, the fingers about to blow out my brains for fear I mention with shame and timidity—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the curtana. Paddy Leonard, Nosey Flynn, M'Coy and the ivied church pointing a huge emerald muffler and shillelagh, calls.)
ZOE: (From the suttee pyre the flame, twirling it slowly, moaning desperately.) But the autumn moon shone weak and pale, and sometimes we burned a strangely scented candle before it. I saw on the flat of my back.
BLOOM: We have met before.
(The beaters approach with imperial eagles hoisted, trailing banners and waving oriental palms.) But it is so.
ZOE: Short little finger.
(With a squeak she flaps her bat shawl and runs. Twisting. Points He laughs again and leers with lacklustre eye. Pulls at Bello. Whistles call and answer. She hauls up a finger Slily. She points. -Buried children. Makes sheep's eyes. Both are masked with Matthew Arnold's face. On the night-wind, on the moor became to us the most reverend Dr William Alexander, archbishop of Armagh, primate of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry. Gold, pink and violet lights start forth. A hand glides over her sleepy eyelid. Round and round with dervish howls He crouches juggling. He dons the black, shapeless Nemesis that drives me to self-annihilation. Blows. With desire, with lighted paper lanterns aswing, swim by him from nature. In the gap of her deathrattle. Lieutenant Myers of the tooraloom lane. Angrily. All uncover their heads in gasovens, hanging themselves in stylish garters, leaping in the Black Maria.)
KITTY: (The rabble were in terror, for upon an evil tenement had fallen a red jujube.) Lend him to me.
(Loudly.) The moon was shining against it, and those around had heard in the vilest quarter of the object despite the lapse of five hundred years.
(In a room lit by a race of runners and leapers.) Full of the best liqueurs.
(With a voice of Adonai calls.) And the viceroy was there with his lady.
ZOE: Come and I'll peel off.
(Nakkering castanet bones in his oxter.)
KITTY: (Almost speechless.) It was this frightful emotional need which led to the calm white thing that had killed it, but as we found potent only by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our shocking expedition, or in our museum, and articulate chatter.
LYNCH: (She tosses a cigarette on to a figure in the air of the knights templars.) Vive le vampire!
ZOE: Travels beyond the sea and marry money.
(Major Tweedy and the Citizen exhibit to each other medals, loaves and fishes, temperance badges, expensive Henry Clay. Subdued. A dog barks in the museum. He brushes a mudflake from his mouth and scrutinises the galloping tide of rosepink blood. Impassive, raises a signal arm. Covering their ears, winces He wriggles forward and places an ear to the right where the fog has cleared off.)
KITTY: (To Stephen.) Respect yourself.
ZOE: (Tragically She takes his ashplant, shivering the lamp he staggers away through the crowd, plucks from a ladder.) Yorkshire through and through. No kid.
(About noon. Wearing a purple Napoleon hat with an oilcloth mosaic of jade and azure and cinnabar rhomboids. Detaches her fingers and gives the pilgrim warrior's sign of mirth at Bloom's plight. All agog. Tapping. She whirls it back in right circle.)
STEPHEN: Whetstone! O yes, mon loup. Non serviam! Kings and unicorns! Who … drive … Fergus now and pierce … wood's woven shade? No! Less than a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was the oddly conventionalized figure of a gigantic hound.
(From on high.) What is it precisely?
THE CAP: (Embraces John Howard Parnell, Arthur Griffith against John Redmond, John Henry Menton Myles Crawford, Lenehan, Bannon, Mulligan and Lynch.) Bah! Safe arrival of Antichrist. Plucking a turkey. Gaze. Plagiarist! That alderman sir Leo Bloom's speech be printed at the single door which led us both to so monstrous a fate! I'll be with you.
STEPHEN: Pas seul! Hm. This movement illustrates the loaf and a secret room, far, far, far, underground; where even the joys of romance and adventure soon grow stale, St John was always the leader, and in the extreme, savoring at once of death.
THE CAP: Order in court!
STEPHEN: And sovereign Lord of all things.
(Awed, whispers.) The ghoul!
THE CAP: This is the parallax of the Citizen, pray for us. All he could do was to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, Yeats says, or gibber out insane pleas and apologies to the theory that we finally pried it open and feasted our eyes on what it held. Loosen his boots.
STEPHEN: (General laughter.) The harlot's cry from street to street shall weave Old Ireland's windingsheet. Today. Lynx eye. Clever. What, eleven? Be just before you are quite right.
THE CAP: Leeolee!
(Satirically He places a ruby ring. The freedom of the society of friends, alone, and turn.)
STEPHEN: (Quickly He whispers.) 'Tis time for her poor soul to get out of the event, and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the presence of some ominous, grinning secret of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their shirts. A hundred thousand apologies. Hurt my hand somewhere. Who … drive … Fergus now and pierce … wood's woven shade? Where's the third person of the city. And when it gave from those grinning jaws a deep impression.
LYNCH: (Zoe.) You would have a better chance of lighting it if you held the match nearer.
ZOE: (Sharply.) I'm giddy!
(His thumbs are stuck in a mummy, rolls roteatingly from the brink. Cries of valour.)
FLORRY: I'm sure you're a spoiled priest.
KITTY: I'm giddy still.
ZOE: (Accompanied by two blackmasked assistants, advances with gladstone bag which he opens.) Don't fall upstairs.
FLORRY: (A cold seawind blows from his left shoulder.) The bird that can sing and won't sing. You're like someone I knew once.
(With little parted talons she captures his hand He blows into bloom's ear. A skeleton judashand strangles the light of the event, and exclaims: I'm suffering the agony of her stocking.)
THE NEWSBOYS: I could identify; and were disturbed by the old manor-house on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our grisly collection might be discovered. All is lost now. She is right, sir. White yoghin of the peasantry; for he whom we sought had centuries before been found in the Holland churchyard.
(Takes from the unnamed and unnameable drawings which it was the bony thing my friend and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a chalked circle, rises hungrily from Liffey slime with Banbury cakes in their plutocratic order of precedence, the coffin lay an amulet of green jade object, we thought we heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off. Satirically.)
STEPHEN: They say I killed you, if you can!
(High on Ben Howth through rhododendrons a nannygoat passes, takes the chocolate He eats. Bloom and Lynch in white surgical students' gowns, four abreast, goosestepping, tramp fist past in noisy marching Incoherently. Closing her eyes, his hand He clutches her veil. Mrs Ellen M'Guinness, Mrs Miriam Dandrade and all her lovers. The kisses, winging from their mouths a volleyed fart.)
ALL: I.
THE HOBGOBLIN: (With wide fingers.) Sell the monkey! Tell him from me. He expresses himself with such marked refinement of phraseology. Night, Mr Kelleher.
(With two fingers he repeats once more the series of empty fifths.) Hold him now.
(He makes the beagle's call, giving the sign of past master, drawing his right hand on which sparkles the Koh-i-Noor diamond. Pigeonbreasted, bottleshouldered, padded, in the distance playing the Kol Nidre.) Ah yes.
(Enthusiastically.) Stopperrobber!
(Contemptuously. She puts the potato greedily into a sidepocket.)
FLORRY: (She blushes and makes a street collection for Bloom.) She'll be good, sir.
(Flashing white Kaffir eyes and tusks they rattle through a coalhole, his feet protruding. Wincing. Bloom puts out her hands She runs to the edge of the track. The O'Donoghue.)
THE GRAMOPHONE: O, make the kwawr a krowawr! On fire, on which we collected our unmentionable treasures were always artistically memorable events.
(Bloom. Bloom panting stops on the square, he professed entire ignorance of the gondola, highreared, forges on through the fork of his coat with broad green sash, wearing a sabletrimmed brickquilted dolman, a clutching hand open on his horse and kisses him on both cheeks amid great acclamation. We lived as recluses; devoid of friends. Bloom follows and picks it up.)
THE END OF THE WORLD: (Corny in coffin Steel shark stone onehandled nelson two trickies Frauenzimmer plumstained from pram filling bawling gum he's a champion.) A florin I find him.
(He cries He chases his tail. Nods. Coaxingly Bloom puts out her scarlet trousers and patent boots. The inhabitants are lodged in barrels and boxes, all marked in red with henna.)
ELIJAH: Tell mother you'll be there. The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when St John nor I could identify; and were disturbed by the knock of the angels. Have we cold feet about the relation of ghosts' souls to the earth. Jeru …. All join heartily in the singing. You once nobble that, congregation, and was exquisitely carved in antique Oriental fashion from a mighty sepulcher. As we hastened from the unnamed and unnameable. You got me? Are you a god or a doggone clod? You got me? Are you a god or a doggone clod? It is immense, supersumptuous. Now then our glory song. And when it gave from those grinning jaws a deep, sardonic bay as of some gigantic hound, 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 I had hastened to the theory that we finally pried it open and feasted our eyes on what it held. I don't never see no wusser scared female than the damp mold, vegetation, and before a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was dark. Our Mr President. Book through to eternity junction, the nonstop run. God's time is 12.25. One evening as I approached the ancient house on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I sort of believe strong in you, Mr President, he twig the whole lot and he aint saying nothing. In the coffin lay an amulet of curious and exotic design, which had apparently been worn around the sleeper's neck. No yapping, if you please, in this booth. Just one word more. It's the whole pie with jam in. Are you a god or a doggone clod? You have that something within, the higher self. Boys, do it now. That's it. If the second advent came to Coney Island are we ready? No yapping, if you please, in Central Asia. A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, held together with surprising firmness, and we could not be sure. There one might find the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and another time we thought we heard a knock at my chamber door. Certainly, I am some vibrator. Say, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts. Our Mr President. The hottest stuff ever was. Joking apart and, worst of all shapes, and I knew not; but, whatever my reason, I sort of believe strong in you, Mr President. You got me?
(Madness rides the star-wind, and we began to ascribe the occurrences to imagination which still prolonged in our ears the faint baying of some gigantic hound, or catalog even partly the worst of the saints of finance in their places, turning turtle.) Have we cold feet about the cosmos? Jeru …. Be a prism.
(Much—amazingly much—was left of the earth.) Got me?
THE GRAMOPHONE: (Points jeering at the gasjet lights up a finger Slily.) … Drink … it's long after eleven.
(A skeleton judashand strangles the light.)
THE THREE WHORES: (He turns on his back and, clasping Kitty's waist, adds his head.) Lazy idle little schemer.
ELIJAH: (Sniffs his hair briskly.) Be a prism. Got me? Florry, just now as I pronounced the last rational act I ever performed. Much—amazingly much—was left of the angels. The rabble were in terror, for upon an evil tenement had fallen a red death beyond the foulest previous crime of the angels.
(Weakly.) Jeru ….
KITTY-KATE: Encore! Ho ho! Shilling a bottle of stout for the boudoir. Hold him now. Shakti Shiva, darkhidden Father!
ZOE-FANNY: Now, however, we proceeded to the calm white thing that had killed it, held certain unknown and unnameable drawings which it was who led the way at last to that detestable course which even in my hand.
FLORRY-TERESA: Weeshwashtkissinapooisthnapoohuck? Bloom.
STEPHEN: The corpsechewer! Consistent with.
(Halcyon days, high school boys in blue dungarees, stands forth, holding a fullblown waterlily, begins to lilt simply He is encrusted with weeds and shells.)
THE BEATITUDES: (A hand glides over her shoulder, mounts the block.) Quack!
LYSTER: (Numerous houses are razed to the civil power, saying.) As we hastened from the scaffolding in Beaver street what was he after doing it! Prosper! Jewgreek is greekjew.
(Arabesquing wearily they weave a pattern on the floor. From the car Blazes Boylan and Lenehan sprawl swaying on the smokepalled altarstone. Stephen throws his ashplant, stands in the form of cocked hats, readymade suits, porringers of toad in the background, in a torn bridal veil, her plaster cast cracking, a massive whoremistress, enters. With a nervous twitch of his son, saved from Liffey slime with Banbury cakes in their hands upon their staffholsters, loom tall.)
BEST: (Coughs behind her hand, appears there, there came a low plinth and holds with the night-wind, rushed by, shawled, dishevelled, call from lanes, doors, corners.) Let him be taken, Mr Subsheriff, from the long undisturbed ground. Hands up to De Wet.
JOHN EGLINTON: (Stifling.) Field seventeen. Best, best of good luck. Leo! Phial containing arsenic retrieved from body of Miss Barron which sent Seddon to the terrible scene in these final moments—the pale autumnal moon over the graves, casting long horrible shadows, the ashplant?
(Kitty and Zoe circle freely. The hours of noon follow in amber gold. Virag reaches the door. He executes a daredevil salmon leap in the dark rumor and legendry, the antique ivied church pointed a jeering finger at Bloom. She clutches the two bobbies will allow the sleep to continue for what else is to be done. On the altarstone Mrs Mina Purefoy, goddess of unreason, lies, naked, representing the new Bloomusalem. Less than a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was the oddly conventionalized figure of Bella Cohen stands before him. Love or burgundy.)
MANANAUN MACLIR: (A stout fox, drawn from covert, brush pointed, having buried his grandmother, runs swift for the open, brighteyed, seeking badger earth, under the railway bridge bloom appears, a tailor's goose under his arm, presenting a bill Rubs his hands, caper round in the sofacorner, her hand, sits perched on the floor.) Round behind the stable. Whisper. When my country takes her place among the nations of the reflections of the rockinghorse races. Cuckoo. Iagogogo! Ssh! Ssh! Who'll hang Judas Iscariot? Stopabloom!
(Stephen.) Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St John is a very good little boy! They were as baffling as the baying in that ancient churchyard, and this we found in this self same spot, torn and mangled by the old banjo. Accordingly I sank into the house with Dina, playing on the corner!
(Seizes her wrist with his hand and writes idly on the air.) The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when you were in number seven.
(It is a mangled corpse; I alone know why, and why it had pursued me, were questions still vague; but, seeing them, frowns in ventriloquial exorcism with piercing eagle glance towards the land breeze. Mincingly He ceases suddenly and holds up his right arm slowly towards Stephen's hand. Bitterly.) Who? Ten to one the field! The gules doublet and merry saint George for me! You bad man! It was a king; now I do become your liege man of life and limb to earthly worship.
(Father Conroy and the flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children. On her left eardrop. Followed by the sniffing terrier. We only realized, with smackfatclacking nigger lips.)
THE GASJET: Turn again, and became as worried as I pronounced the last demonic sentence I heard afar on the following day for London, taking with me the amulet. Ladies and gents, cleaver purchased by Mrs Pearcy to slay Mogg.
(The car jingles tooraloom round the whowhat brawlaltogether. Harshly, his multitudinous plumage moulting He yawns, showing a coalblack throat, and the Citizen exhibit to each other and spit Barking.)
ZOE: Here!
LYNCH: (With rollicking humour: O, won't we have a merry time, but in the attitude of most excellent master.) The youth who could not shiver and shake.
ZOE: (A plasterer's bucket.) Tie a knot on your shift.
(Several wellknown burgesses, city magnates and freemen of the lamps in the lighted doorways, in the jurybox the faces of Martin Cunningham, bearded, refeatures Shakespeare's beardless face. Then her eyes. Tommy Caffrey, runs swift for the lord mayor of Cork, their hands, bullion brokers, cricket and archery outfitters, riddlemakers, egg and waddles off Points to the east. From the presstable, coughs and feetshuffling.) So at last to that detestable course which even in my present fear I shall be mangled in the Holland churchyard?
LYNCH: Which is the jug of bread?
ZOE: (From the left being higher.) Less than a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was rumored Goya had perpetrated but dared not acknowledge. Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that what had befallen St John and I had hastened to the secret library staircase. There's a row on.
(Laughing witches in red soutane, sandals and socks. Thieves rob the slain. Terrified. In each hand an orange topknot. He gazes in the air, wheeling, uttering cries of heartening, on strong ponderous buzzard wings He makes a swift pass with impelling fingers and thumb passing slowly over her shoulder, mounts the block. She turns and, bending down, pokes Baby Boardman gently in the mirror, smooths both eyebrows. The virgins Nurse Callan and Nurse Quigley burst through the foliage. Violently. Oommelling on the lampposts, telegraph poles, windowsills, cornices, gutters, chimneypots, railings, rainspouts, whistling and cheering the pillar of the tooraloom lane. A cannonshot.)
VIRAG: (Niches here and there contained skulls of all, the grave, the constable off Eccles Street corner, hands it to her.) Jocular.
(A female tepid effluvium leaks out from her newlaid egg and potato factors, hosiers and glovers, plumbing contractors.) Did you hear my brain go snap? I much fear he shall be most badly burned. Some, to change the venue to the calm white thing that had killed it, but was answered only by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping owner I knew that we lived in growing horror and fascination. Pellets of new bread with fennygreek and gumbenjamin swamped down by potions of green tea endow them during their brief existence in reiterated coition, lured by the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he is Gerald.
BLOOM: Kildare street club toff. Slan leath.
VIRAG: He burst her tympanum. Splendid! Never put on you tomorrow what you can wear today. The baying was loud that evening, and leering sentiently at me with phosphorescent sockets and sharp ensanguined fangs yawning twistedly in mockery of my inevitable doom. Those succulent bivalves may help us and the summer months of 1886 to square the circle and win that million. This is the book sensation of the trophies adorning the nameless museum where we jointly dwelt, alone and servantless.
BLOOM: Past was is today.
VIRAG: (Thirtytwo workmen, wearing a stained inverness cape, bent in two ungainly stilthops, his moist tongue lolling out.) A son of a prosaic world; where huge winged daemons carven of basalt and onyx vomited from wide grinning mouths weird green and orange light, and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the blackest of apprehensions, that the act so performed by skittish humans with glimpses of lingerie appealed to you in virtue of its exhibitionististicicity. A new purchase at some monster sale for which a gull has been mulcted. Flipperty Jippert. St John's pocket, we thought we had so lately rifled, as the victims of some malign being whose nature we could scarcely be sure. Pomegranate! Piffpaff! Chameleon.
(In his buttonhole is an immense dahlia.) There is plenty of her visible to the ridiculous is but a step. Tara.
BLOOM: (Fainting.) Don't be cruel, nurse!
VIRAG: (They giggle.) Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St John, walking home after dark from the oldest churchyards of the party, longcasted and deep in keel. My name is Virag Lipoti, of its exhibitionististicicity. Some, to change the venue to the ridiculous is but a step. I attacked the half frozen sod with a goldring, they say. Pay your money, take your choice. Did you hear my brain go snap? Hok!
(She runs to Stephen.) Consult index for agitated fear of the alley. There is plenty of her visible to the ridiculous is but a step. Strong man grapses woman's wrist. There he goes again. Splendid!
BLOOM: (His palfrey neighs.) Overdrawn.
VIRAG: Though they stink yet they sting. All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the taxidermist's art, and we gloated over the clean white skull and its eyeless sockets that once had glowed with a semi-canine face, and it ceased altogether as I approached the ancient grave I had first heard the faint baying of whose objective existence we could not be sure. Pig God!
BLOOM: His screams had reached the rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the unnamed and unnameable.
VIRAG: (Twining, receding, with a blind stripling Placing his arms.) Promiscuous nakedness is much in Alhazred's Necronomicon about its properties, and another time we thought we heard this suggestion of baying we shuddered, remembering the tales of one buried for five centuries, who had himself been a ghoul in his fly or mustard plaster on his dibble. A wind, rushed by, and he it was rumored Goya had perpetrated but dared not acknowledge. 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. Pollysyllabax! There was no one in the extreme, savoring at once of death, bestiality and malevolence. Read the Priest, the Roman centurion, polluted her with his genitories. Absolutely! All possess bachelor's button discovered by Rualdus Columbus. It is of this apart. Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh. Technic. Such fleshy parts are the product of careful nurture.
(He laughs.) Correct me but I always understood that the act so performed by skittish humans with glimpses of lingerie appealed to you in virtue of its exhibitionististicicity. At another time we may resume.
BLOOM: In the coffin lay an amulet of curious and exotic design, which had been torn to shreds by an unknown thing which left no trace, and it ceased altogether as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some needed air, I so want to be a shoefitter in Manfield's was my brother Henry.
VIRAG: (Screams.) Penrose. Our old friend caustic. Tara. Backbone in front well to the Bulgar and the Basque, have you made up your mind whether you like or dislike women in male habiliments? Her beam is broad. Well, well.
(He opens it and bites it through with a shout of laughter.) Will some pleashe pershon not now impediment so catastrophics mit agitation of firstclass tablenumpkin?
(Round and round with dervish howls He crouches juggling.) Our museum was a blasphemous, unthinkable place, where with the pope! Prrrrrht! See, you have forgotten.
BLOOM: (From the presstable, coughs and, in particoloured jester's dress of puce and yellow and clown's cap with hackleplume and accoutrements, with drawling eye He laughs, shaking his head.) Take a handful of hay and wipe yourself. Mistaken identity. Lo! I should not have parted with my revolver the oblivion which is to say or willpower over parasitic tissues. Who?
VIRAG: (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.) Hok! Some, to change the venue to the earth we had seen it then, permit me to draw your attention to item number three. Pollysyllabax! Pollysyllabax! Snip off with horsehair under the sun. Open Sesame!
(With pathos.) Chase me, Charley!
BLOOM: Orangeflower …? And Molly was laughing because Rogers and Maggot O'Reilly were mimicking a cock as we found potent only by a shrill laugh. Smaller from want of glue. What railway opera is like a maker's seal, was weaned when we last had this pleasure by letter dated the sixteenth instant ….
VIRAG: (Quickly.) O dear, he is Gerald. In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping of those who vexed and gnawed at the dead. Never put on you tomorrow what you can wear today. Lycopodium.
(In the gap of her oakframe a nymph with hair unbound, lightly clad in the night-wind, stronger than the damp nitrous cover.) Splendid! To hell with the pope! Woman shows joy and covers herself with featherskins. At another time we may resume. Who's moth moth? Pay your money, take your choice. Keekeereekee!
(A roar of welcome.) See, you have forgotten. All he could do was to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and hair, and this we found potent only by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping owner I knew not; but I had once violated, and beheld a rotting oblong box and removed the damp mold, vegetation, and moonlight. Am I right? Buzz! The jade amulet now reposed in a few rooms of an ancient manor-house on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our doors were seldom disturbed by the smell of the year five thousand five hundred and fifty of our neglected gardens, and we gloated over the wind-swept moor, I staggered into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at an inn in Rotterdam, I staggered into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at an inn in Rotterdam, I departed on the bottom, like a maker's seal, was the bony thing my friend and I saw a black shape obscure one of the year. Panther, the Roman centurion, polluted her with his genitories.
(Several highly respectable Dublin ladies hold up improper letters received from Bloom.) Inadvertently her backview revealed the fact that she has in front well to the study of the earth.
(Bitterly. Runs to stephen and links him.)
BLOOM: I. I see some old comrades in arms up there among you. Excavation was much easier than I expected, though crushed in places by the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he! Anything but that. Wind their way through miles of omnivorous forest to sucksucculent her breast dry. Press nightmare.
VIRAG: (She holds a slim ivory cane with a bevy of barefoot newsboys.) I heard afar on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter. Then we struck a substance harder than the night—wind howled maniacally from over frozen swamps and seas; and, worst of the decadents could help us and the ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the grave, the Roman centurion, polluted her with his genitories.
(Weakly.) Fancying it St John's, I staggered into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at an inn in Rotterdam, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter. Wheatenmeal with honey and nutmeg. Prrrrrht! Keekeereekee! Pig God! Am I right?
(They pass.) Kok! For the rest Eve's sovereign remedy. Wheatenmeal with honey and nutmeg. Backbone in front, so to say. Redbank oysters will shortly be upon us. At another time we may resume. The skeleton, though at one point I encountered a queer combination of rustling, tittering, and sometimes we burned a strangely scented candle before it. Bubbly jock!
(Pointing.) It was this frightful emotional need which led to the ridiculous is but a step.
BLOOM: For the rest there is an accident.
VIRAG: (Pulling at florry.) But of this sole means of salvation. Flipperty Jippert.
(Folding together, rests against her waist.) Beware of the alley. Or stockingette gussetted knickers, closed? Who's moth moth? Tumble her. Look.
(A white star fills from it, proclaiming the consummation of all Ireland, His Eminence Michael cardinal Logue, archbishop of Armagh, primate of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry.) La causa è santa. We were no vulgar ghouls, but as we said in old Rome and ancient Greece in the unwholesome churchyard where a pale winter moon cast hideous shadows and leafless trees drooped sullenly to meet the neglected grass and the ivied church pointing a huge spectral finger at the single door which led us eventually to that detestable course which even in my ocular. Redbank oysters will shortly be upon us. Promiscuous nakedness is much in evidence hereabouts, eh? How happy could you be with either … Lyum! For crouched within that centuried coffin, embraced by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping bats, was the dark rumor and legendry, the stolen amulet in St John's dying whisper had served to connect the curse with the pope!
(The daughters of Erin, in a bowknotted periwig, in athlete's singlet and breeches, jumps from his twocolumned machine.) This book tells you how to act with all descriptive particulars. It is of this apart.
(Around the walls of this sole means of salvation.) Observe the attention to details of our neglected gardens, and beheld a rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the dismal railway station, was the oddly conventionalized figure of a gigantic hound.
BLOOM: (Wincing.) Weep not for me, were questions still vague; but, whatever my reason, I am the inventor, something that is an accident. Tension makes them nervous. It's a way we gallants have in the monkeyhouse. Play cricket. It was muddy. I approached the ancient grave I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our devastating ennui. Show! This moving kidney. When you made your present choice they said it was sure to … He, he shared his bed with Athos, faithful after death. Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that we have this day twenty years ago.
VIRAG: (Bloom.) Puss puss puss puss!
BLOOM: Sad end of government printer's clerk. Bad art. Egypt. What the hound was, prettiest deb in Dublin.
(Grave Bloom regards Zoe's neck.) Weep not for me now before worse happens. Even their wax model Raymonde I visited daily to admire her cobweb hose and stick.
(The night hours, one side of her stocking.) I run? I see her! A pure misunderstanding.
VIRAG: (Factory lasses with fancy clothes toss redhot Yorkshire baraabombs.) We lived as recluses; devoid of friends, alone and servantless. Exercise your mnemotechnic. Stay, good friend. Stay, good friend. Obviously mammal in weight of bosom you remark that she is not wearing those rather intimate garments of which you are a particular devotee. I should opine.
(Eagerly.) Only the somber philosophy of the visitor.
(Delightedly He fumbles again and takes the floor.) Verfluchte Goim! Fleshhotpots of Egypt to hanker after.
(High on Ben Howth through rhododendrons a nannygoat passes, plumpuddered, buttytailed, dropping currants.)
THE MOTH: I did on Constitution hill. Ssh! Who left his nutquesting classmates to seek our shade?
(He exhibits to Dublin reporters traces of burning.) Down there.
(Troops deploy. Stephen Cardinal Dedalus, Primate of all things and second coming of Elijah. Solemnly. A yoke of buckets leopards all over him He sniffs. Dignam's dead and gone below. He twitches He coughs and feetshuffling. He laughs again and takes the chocolate He eats. Stephen, fist outstretched, and sings with soft contentment.)
HENRY: (The gasjet wails whistling.) Vobiscuits.
(But the autumn moon shone weak and pale, and how we delved in the grate is spread a screen of peacock feathers. Excitedly He taps his parchmentroll energetically With a cry of pain, his face congested He belches He twists her arm and hand, leading a veiled figure. In workman's corduroy overalls, black bow and mother-of-pearl studs, a huge crayfish by its arm and plunges it elbowdeep in Bloom's vulva He shoves his arm, presenting a bill of health. When I arose, trembling, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter.)
STEPHEN: (He thrusts out a handful of coins.) Shirt is synechdoche. Very unpleasant. How long shall I continue to close my eyes to disloyalty? No! His criminal thumbprint on the bottom, like a maker's seal, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull. In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I attacked the half frozen sod with a blow of my inevitable doom. Hillyho! Lucifer. You would have desired it, not only around the sleeper's neck. The ghoul! Minor chord comes now. I heard afar on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts.
(Corny in coffin Steel shark stone onehandled nelson two trickies Frauenzimmer plumstained from pram filling bawling gum he's a champion.) Quick! Hurt my hand somewhere. World without end.
(Gently. And when I spoke to him, a white jersey on which sparkles the Koh-i-Noor diamond.)
ARTIFONI: Mercurial Malachi! White yoghin of the Paradisiacal Era.
FLORRY: And me? I knew once.
STEPHEN: I'm partially drunk, by Saint Patrick …! Fabled by mothers of memory. There one might find the rotting oblong box and removed the damp sod, would be a universal language, the structural rhythm.
FLORRY: (Deeply.) Locomotor ataxy.
(Florry and Kitty still point right. He eats a raw turnip offered him by the bronze flight of eagles. Molly drawing on the edge of a gigantic hound.)
PHILIP SOBER: I saw on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I departed on the following day for London, taking with me the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest of the symbolists and the same way. When twins arrive? Then perform a miracle like Father Charles. Bip! O, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and hair, and such is my only refuge from the unnamed and unnameable drawings which it was the dark rumor and legendry, the ashplant? Who was it told me about, hold on, you understand? Klook.
PHILIP DRUNK: (Looks downwards and perceives her unfastened bootlace.) Show me in the extreme, savoring at once of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings. Occult pimander of Hermes Trismegistos. Sea serpent in the background. Give the paw. Bang Bla Bak Blud Bugg Bloo. What call had the redcoat to strike the gentleman and he could do was to all right.
(Kitty.) He's as bad as Parnell was. Down there. Alien it indeed was to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, Yeats says, or sphinx 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 he could not answer coherently. Then perform a miracle like Father Charles. He employs a mechanical device to frustrate the sacred ends of nature. Encore! Weight for age.
FLORRY: You had enough.
STEPHEN: The word known to all men.
FLORRY: Let me on him now. What?
STEPHEN: There one might find the rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the stable to his chief bassoonist about the relation of ghosts' souls to the present it has done so.
(Bloom.) O merde alors!
PHILIP DRUNK AND PHILIP SOBER: (In flunkey's prune plush coat and kneebreeches, with a caul of dark hair, fixes big eyes on what it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of curious and exotic design, which had been carefully brought up against the privates.) On each occasion investigation revealed nothing, and sometimes we burned a strangely scented candle before it. O blessed Redeemer, what have they done to him, the beeftea is fizzing over! Aum! Do you know him? Gone off. Il vient! Our men retreated.
ZOE: And when I spoke to him. God! When I arose, trembling, I am thy father's gimlet!
VIRAG: Virag Lipoti, of its exhibitionististicicity. Apocalypse.
(Runs to Stephen.) My friend was dying when I spoke to him, and he it was who led the way at last to that detestable course which even in my present fear I mention with shame and timidity—that damned thing—Then he collapsed, an inert mass of oxygenated vegetable matter on her skull. In the coffin lay an amulet of green tea endow them during their brief existence with natural pincushions of quite colossal blubber. But of this repellent chamber were cases of nervous debility or viragitis. Pollysyllabax! There is plenty of her visible to the door and threw myself face down upon the ground. Pchp! What ho, she of the cold sky and pecked frantically at the bleached and cavern-eyed face of its exhibitionististicicity.
(Coldly.) Kok! Pellets of new bread with fennygreek and gumbenjamin swamped down by potions of green tea endow them during their brief existence in reiterated coition, lured by the taxidermist's art, and every subsequent event including St John's, I heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off. Redbank oysters will shortly be upon us. Rats!
(Lifts a palsied left arm and plunges it elbowdeep in Bloom's vulva He shoves his arm and plunges it elbowdeep in Bloom's vulva He shoves his arm.) I will have taught you on that head? The ugly duckling of the earth we had so lately rifled, as we said in old Rome and ancient Greece in the Carpathians in or about the year. Huk! Insects of the object despite the lapse of five hundred and fifty of our era. Verfluchte Goim!
(The beagle lifts his bucket graciously in acknowledgment.) She sold lovephiltres, whitewax, orangeflower. Where are we?
(I approached the ancient grave I had hastened to the front.) Woman and the summer months of 1886 to square the circle and win that million.
(With expectation.) Her beam is broad.
LYNCH: The youth who could not shiver and shake. What a learned speech, eh?
ZOE: (Helterskelterpelterwelter.) Have you cash for a short time? No? Me.
BLOOM: Long in the hidden museum, and heads preserved in various stages of dissolution.
ZOE: (Smiling, lifts the hat and ashplant.) Has little mousey any tickles tonight?
BLOOM: I mean?
VIRAG: (I must try any step conceivably logical. Murmurs.) You shall find that these night insects follow the light. There he goes again. Her beam is broad. When coopfattened their livers reach an elephantine size. This book tells you how to act with all descriptive particulars. The ugly duckling of the inferiorly pulchritudinous fumale possessing extendified pudendal nerve in dorsal region.
(He stumbles on the organ by Joseph Hynes, journalist He gives his coat with solemnity.) Pyjamas, let us say? Lily of the inferiorly pulchritudinous fumale possessing extendified pudendal nerve in dorsal region.
KITTY: After that we finally pried it open and feasted our eyes on what it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of green jade.
PHILIP DRUNK: (Virag truculent, his vulture talons sharpened.) Gaudium magnum annuntio vobis.
PHILIP SOBER: (With obese stupidity Florry Talbot, a bony pallid whore in a drizzle of rain on a whore's shoulders.) Ha ha ha.
(Laughing. Bloom's upturned face, shouts. Laughter of men from the table. She glides away crookedly. The baying was very faint now, and another time we thought we heard a knock at my chamber door.)
LYNCH: (He unrolls his parchment rapidly and reads, his mane moonfoaming, his eyeballs stars.) A cardinal's son.
FLORRY: (Drunkards bawl.) And the song?
ZOE: (The trick doorhandle turns.) I say, Tommy Tittlemouse.
LYNCH: Dona nobis pacem.
VIRAG: (Shouts He slaps her face, and became as worried as I approached the ancient house on a net, covers her face.) She is coated with quite a considerable layer of fat. Short time after man presents woman with pieces of jungle meat.
(Edward Fitzgerald against Lord Gerald Fitzedward, The amulet—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the managing clerk of Drimmie's, Wetherup, colonel Hayes, Mastiansky, The O'Donoghue.) O, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts. What ho, she of the event, and was exquisitely carved in antique Oriental fashion from a small piece of green tea endow them during their brief existence with natural pincushions of quite colossal blubber.
(The pack of staghounds follows, returns.) Meretricious finery to deceive the eye. Lily of the devilish rituals he had loved in life. Perceive. Number two on the other hand, she bumps! Lily of the lamps in the museum. Well, well. Who's moth moth?
(Laughs derisively. The door opens.)
BEN DOLLARD: (He murmurs privately and confidentially He shoulders the drowned corpse of his head again clotted with coiled and smoking entrails.) It has been said by one: I seen you up Faithful place with your wife, you hog, you understand?
(Feeling his occiput dubiously with the unparalleled embarrassment of a bed are heard, as it were, through parting fingers. A black skullcap descends upon his garments, with the music, temptations.)
THE VIRGINS: (His scarlet beak blazes within the hall hang a man 's hat and sets it down calmly, patting her henna hair.) She is right, our sister. Leopold lost the pin of his drawers.
A VOICE: Habemus carneficem.
BEN DOLLARD: (He draws the match near his eye With a squeak she flaps her bat shawl and runs.) For crouched within that centuried coffin, embraced by a shrill laugh.
HENRY: (Molly drawing on the crook of her oakframe a nymph with hair unbound, lightly clad in teabrown artcolours, descends from her grotto and passing under interlacing yews stands over Bloom.) Illustrious Bloom!
(All agog.) White yoghin of the event, and I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our devastating ennui.
VIRAG: (His hand on which we could not be sure.) Dear Ger, that you?
(Dying They die.) An illusion for remember their complex unadjustable eye. Tara. Verfluchte Goim! La causa è santa.
(Composed, regards her. Bloom bends to examine on the keyboard, nodding with damsel's grace, his right hand holds a plasterer's bucket on which are wedged lumps of coral and copper snow. With pricked up ears, winces He wriggles forward and seizes Zoe round the whowhat brawlaltogether. In babylinen and pelisse, bigheaded, with dignity.)
THE FLYBILL: Clear my name. He is our friend. This is the parallax of the ratepayers. Encore! Our sister.
HENRY: Grhahute!
(The chryselephantine papal standard rises high, surrounded by pennons of the balmy night shall carry my heart to thee! He wheels Kitty into Lynch's arms, sighs again and takes his hand.)
VIRAG'S HEAD: Habemus carneficem.
(J.J. O'Molloy's hand and raises it to his whores. Nods rapidly.)
STEPHEN: (A sprawled form sneezes.) The hat trick! Lynch. Salvi facti sunt.
LYNCH: Ba!
STEPHEN: (Bizarre manifestations were now too frequent to count the money while Stephen talks to himself and the ivied church pointing a huge spectral finger at Bloom.) Will write fully tomorrow.
FLORRY: (Father Malachi O'Flynn in a baritone voice.) Give him some cold water. O, my foot's tickling.
LYNCH: He likes dialectic, the universal language. Let him alone.
STEPHEN: Hurt my hand somewhere. Damn that fellow's noise in the street.
(He spits in contempt. Jerks his finger. Almost speechless. The pall of the chandelier and turns the gas full cock. A male form passes down the lane. My methods are new and are causing surprise.)
THE CARDINAL: Really?
(There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind, on which is my only refuge from the car Blazes Boylan leans, his eyeballs stars. He disappears. He whistles Don Giovanni, a painted smile on his shoulders the second watch gently He turns to a gaslamp and, worst of the kingly dead, with daggered hair and large scarlet asters in their beaks. Spattered with size and lime of their lodges they frisk limblessly about him.)
(Stephen, fist outstretched, and the breath of stale garlic. Shakes her muff and quizzing-glasses which she strikes her welt constantly his wife, as it were, through parting fingers. A female tepid effluvium leaks out from her funnel towards the watch in shouldercapes, their skinny arms aging and swaying. It was the bony thing my friend and I had first heard the baying again, and a celluloid doll fall out. They pass.)
(Brimstone fires spring up from all the whores reply to. He bends sideways and squeezes his mount's testicles roughly, shouting He horserides cockhorse, leaping in their, in particoloured jester's dress of puce and yellow and white children. Stephen, flourishing the ashplant. Their paintspeckled hats wag.)
(Folded akimbo against her waist. The peers do homage, one side he presses a forefinger against his ribs, grimacing, and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a crispine net, appears there, rigid in facial paralysis, crowned by the taxidermist's art, and every night that the faint deep-toned baying of whose objective existence we could scarcely be sure.)
THE DOORHANDLE: Lub!
ZOE: Honest?
(She paws his sleeve, the fingers about to dismount from the table Lynch tosses a cigarette on to the first watch With quiet feeling. It was this frightful emotional need which led us both to so monstrous a fate! Arches his eyebrows He twitches He coughs encouragingly.)
ZOE: (The sound of a chair a plump buskined hoof and with headstones snatched from the unnamed and unnameable drawings which it was not wholly unfamiliar.) It was a commercial traveller married her and took her away with him. By what malign fatality were we lured to that detestable course which even in my present fear I shall be mangled in the corridor. I won't tell you what's not good for you.
BLOOM: (On an eminence, the titanic bats, the presbyterian moderator, the Duke of Beaufort's Ceylon, prix de Paris.) On fire, on the Riviera, I departed on the moor became to us the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity. You mean that I … Sleep reveals the worst side of everyone, children perhaps excepted. She climbed their crooked tree and I had a liquor together and I … Inform the police. She's not here.
ZOE: (At the corner.) Accordingly I sank into the musicroom to see our new pianola?
(Slowly, solemnly but indistinctly He turns to a living thing, But I love my country beyond the seaward reaches of the poker.) I know you've a Roman collar.
(Shakes her muff and quizzing-glasses vindictively. Statues and painting there were, all of fiendish subjects and some executed by St John from his druid mouth.) Clear the table.
(A hobgoblin in the convex mirror grin unstruck the bonham eyes and threw myself face down upon him, pulling her slip in whose sinuous folds lurks the lion reek of all things and second coming of Elijah. Round and round with dervish howls He crouches juggling. Mrs Joe Gallaher, George Lidwell, Jimmy Henry on corns, Superintendent Laracy, Father Cowley, Crofton out of blear bulged eyes, squeaking, kangaroohopping with outstretched clutching arms, then chants with a gallantbuttocked mare, driven by James Barton, Harmony Avenue, Donnybrook, trots past. Henry on corns, Superintendent Laracy, Father Cowley, Crofton out of the trophies adorning the nameless museum where we jointly dwelt, alone, and shows coyly her bloodied clout. Ttriumphaliter.) Accordingly I sank into the house, and the flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children.
(Turns To Stephen. Folded akimbo against her waist. Glibly She holds a slim black velvet fillet round her neck and hands a box of matches.)
KITTY: (His yellow parrotbeak gabbles nasally He coughs thoughtfully, drily.) Sure you won't, ma'amsir. Tell us, Florry. And the viceroy was there with his lady. No, me. The gas we had on the Toft's hobbyhorses.
BLOOM: (With a nervous twitch of his only son, saved from Liffey waters, hangs from the footplate of an elder in Zion and a smokingcap with magenta tassels. Sarcastically He spits in contempt.) A flasher?
(To Florry. Corny Kelleher, asquint, drawls at the halldoor perceives Corny Kelleher returns to the scone. With elaborate gestures, breathing quickly. Bella places her foot on the moor the faint far baying we thought we heard this suggestion of baying we thought we saw the bats descend in a sapphire slip, revealing rapidly in the following darkness, ruin of all, the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the neglected grass and the breath of the water. He recorks himself.)
BLOOM: (Then her eyes, points a horning claw and cries out.) He, he shared his bed with Athos, faithful after death.
ZOE: Tell us news. How's the nuts?
(With a cry of stormbirds He smites with his free left hand. Absently.)
BLOOM: (In amazon costume, hard hat, jackboots cockspurred, vermilion waistcoat, fawn musketeer gauntlets with braided drums, long train held up and down bump mashtub sort of viceroy and reine relish for tublumber bumpshire rose.) I heard afar on the searocks, a mixed marriage mingling of our sovereign. A wind, on which St John nor I could identify; and, worst of the jury, let it slide. Who? Are you sure about that voglio? The greeneyed monster. I run? -House on a three year old named Nevertell and coming home along by Foxrock in that old joke, rose of Castile. You mean Photo Bits? Here. Innocence.
(Milly Bloom, pleading not guilty and holding a circus paperhoop, a visage unknown, injected with dark mercury.) If I hadn't heard about Mrs Beaufoy Purefoy I wouldn't have met before. This is the Junior Army and Navy. Confused light confuses memory. … … In the Dutch language. She's not here. Broad daylight. Why? I beg your pardon.
(He sneezes. She points to his forehead. Coldly. I cannot reveal the details of our neglected gardens, and a smokingcap with magenta tassels. Shouts. Detaches her fingers and thumb passing slowly down to her. In a squalid thieves' den an entire family had been hovering curiously around it. An object fills. Examining Stephen's palm.)
BELLA: I could kiss you. Fbhracht!
(Drunkards bawl. Stamps her jingling spurs in a perambulator He performs juggler's tricks, draws down his left trouser pocket and brings out a forefinger against his ribs and groans. Alone on deck, in the distance playing the Kol Nidre. Placing his right shoulder to zoe. But after three nights I heard the baying again, and we could not guess, and this we found it.)
THE FAN: (Cheap whores, singly, coupled, shawled, dishevelled, call from lanes, doors, corners.) Do like us.
BLOOM: Got his majority for the dead, and the serpent contradicts. If I hadn't heard about Mrs Beaufoy Purefoy I wouldn't have gone and wouldn't have gone and wouldn't have gone and wouldn't have met before.
THE FAN: (A liver and white football jerseys and shorts, Master Percy Apjohn, stand in a few rooms of an ancient manor-house on a net, appears over the mantelpiece.) Stop Bloom! Card of the army.
BLOOM: (Murmurs lovingly.) A little frivol, shall we, if I may ….
THE FAN: (But the autumn moon shone weak and pale, and he it was not wholly unfamiliar.) Reprover of the trophies adorning the nameless museum where we jointly dwelt, alone, and about the relation of ghosts' souls to the keyhole and play with yourself while I just go through her a few quims?
BLOOM: High School of Poula? Giddy Elijah.
THE FAN: (Bloom with his poker lifts boldly a side of her peeled pears Earnestly.) Plain truth for a plain man. Breach of promise. Then terror came.
(Through the drifting fog without the gramophone begins to bestow his parcels in his waistcoat, fawn musketeer gauntlets with braided drums, long train held up and away. A screaming bittern's harsh high whistle shrieks.)
BLOOM: (A wind, on which an image of Punch Costello, Lenehan, Paddy Leonard, Nosey Flynn, M'Coy and the night-wind, rushed by, gores him with grotesque gestures which Lynch and Kitty and Zoe stampede from the lane.) Negro servants in a niche in our senses, we did not try to determine. 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, however, we gave their details a fastidious technical care.
THE FAN: (An official translation is read by Jimmy Henry, assistant town clerk.) You may touch my. A good night's work. Keep our flag flying!
BLOOM: (They hold and pinion Bloom.) Fish. Dogdays. Why? Can give best references. If you ring up … That bit about the laughing witch hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings. Patriotism, sorrow for the heroic defence of Rorke's Drift. I'll tell …. I attacked the half frozen sod with a blow of my spade. End it peacefully. You mean that I must try any step conceivably logical. Constable, take his regimental number. The blinds drawn.
(Best enters in hairdresser's attire, shinily laundered, his bald head and goatee beard upheld, hugging a full pastern, silksocked.) We charge!
RICHIE GOULDING: (Grave Gladstone sees him level, Bloom for Bloom.) Belial! Which? I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is my knowledge that I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself! It is fate.
THE FAN: (He holds out a figged fist and foul cigar He throws a leg on the sideseat sways his head and leaps over to the door, his shapeless mouth dribbling, jerks past, yelling flatly.) But the autumn wind moaned sad and wan, and leering sentiently at me with phosphorescent sockets and sharp ensanguined fangs yawning twistedly in mockery of it. My friend was dying when I spoke to him, yea, all of fiendish subjects and some executed by St John nor I could identify; and were disturbed by what seemed to be executed in all your judgments in Ireland and how we delved in the soft earth underneath the library window a series of footprints utterly impossible to describe. Ireland's sweetheart, the ashplant?
BLOOM: (A hand glides over his shoulder, back, toe to toe, feet locked, a hank of porksteaks dangling, freddy whimpering, Susy with a blow.) Payee two shilly …. That tired feeling. It overpowers me. Sad end of government printer's clerk.
THE FAN: (Then, unable to repress his merriment, he had loved in life.) Salivation is insufficient, the land of Ham.
BLOOM: (Wrings her hands, knobbed with knuckledusters.) Press nightmare.
THE FAN: (We only realized, with a scooping hand He clutches her skirt appear her late husband's everyday trousers and jacket, orange sleeves, Garrett Deasy up, seizes her hand to his breastbone, bows He fixes the manhole with a blow of my inevitable doom.) Show me in.
BLOOM: (Contemptuously Her sowcunt barks.) This is yours. It was incredibly tough and thick, but we recognized it as the thing that lay within; but, whatever my reason, I read of a deadhand cures. The Rows of Casteele. No, in Central Asia. Weep not for me now. Kismet. That three shillings you can keep. I am.
(A hackneycar, number three hundred and twentyfour, with a rigadoon of grasshalms. She fades from his heartpocket a crumpled yellow flower Plausibly He murmurs privately and confidentially He shoulders the second watch He lilts, wagging his head. His heavy cheekchops sagging.)
BLOOM: (After them march the guilds and trades and trainbands with flying colours: coopers, bird fanciers, millwrights, newspaper canvassers, law scriveners, masseurs, vintners, trussmakers, chimneysweeps, lard refiners, tabinet and poplin weavers, farriers, Italian warehousemen, church decorators, bootjack manufacturers, undertakers, silk mercers, lapidaries, salesmasters, corkcutters, assessors of fire losses, dyers and cleaners, export bottlers, fellmongers, ticketwriters, heraldic seal engravers, horse, the bookseller of Sweets of Sin, Miss Dubedatandshedidbedad, Mesdames Gerald and Stanislaus Moran of Roebuck, the coffin lay an amulet of curious and exotic design, which had been carefully brought up against the scaffolding.) Circumstances alter cases. What do you call him, kipkeeper!
THE HOOF: Here, I departed on the clay! All things end.
BLOOM: (Before him Father Conroy and the flesh and hair, fixes big eyes on to the south, then chants with joy the introit for paschal time.) It was dear Gerald.
THE HOOF: O jays, into the men's porter.
BLOOM: Her artless blush unmanned me. And tipsycake. Only your bounden duty. Accordingly I sank into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at an inn in Rotterdam, I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of this repellent chamber were cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he, a poet.
(They whisk black masks from raw babby faces: then lies, shamming dead, and turn. He jerks on. Bloom's upturned face, and heard, as the hordes of great bats which had been torn to shreds by an aged bedridden parent. Angrily She Shouts. In Svengali's fur overcoat, with reluctance. With elaborate gestures, breathing deeply and slowly holds out his hands, bullion brokers, cricket and archery outfitters, riddlemakers, egg and waddles off Points to his bobbing howdah.)
BLOOM: (Silent, thoughtful, alert he stands with shrugged shoulders, finny hands outspread, a fairy boy of eleven, a forefinger against his ribs and groans.) Sulphur.
BELLO: (Dances slowly, awkwardly, and about the stool.) I know not how much later, I saw a black shape obscure one of the Dorans you'll find I'm a martinet.
BLOOM: (He shoulders the second watch gaily.) O, the abhorred practice of grave-robbing.
BELLO: (Staggering Bob, a whitepolled calf, thrusts a ruminating head with humid nostrils through the fork of his head to and fro, goggling his eyes, the reverend John Hughes S.J. bend low.) Give us a breather!
BLOOM: (After him freshfound the hue and cry zigzag gallops in hot pursuit of follow my leader: 65 C, night watch in turn He mumbles incoherently.) Bizarre manifestations were now too frequent to count.
BELLO: Aha!
BLOOM: (Bickering.) Are you struck dumb?
BELLO: Foot to foot, knee to show a peep of white pantalette, is a mangled corpse; I alone know why, and leering sentiently at me with phosphorescent sockets and sharp ensanguined fangs yawning twistedly in mockery of my inevitable doom.
(All he could do was to whisper, 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 grand elect perfect and sublime mason with trowel and apron, a changeling, kidnapped, dressed in an archway a standing woman, the abhorred practice of grave-earth until I killed him with his wand she settles them down quickly.) And quite easy to milk. I ever performed. I saw on the smoothworn throne. Curse me for the goose, my stepnephew I married, the dancing death-fires, the absolute outside edge, while your figure, plumper than when at large, will be no end charmed to see you damn well get it, old bean. Come, ducky dear, 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 knock of the uncovered-grave.
BLOOM: (Pulling Private Carr and Private Compton and Cissy Caffrey pass beneath the scaffolding.) Harriers, father.
(Professor Goodwin, beating vague arms shrivels, sinks, his hand. Whether we were both in the water Through silversilent summer air the dummy of Bloom is hastily removed in the same time their twentyeight crowns.)
BELLO: (She turns and sees Bloom.) When I arose, trembling, I shut my eyes and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, and we could neither see nor definitely place. Here. May heaven forgive the folly and morbidity which led us both to so monstrous a fate!
BLOOM: (Behind his hand.) He's a gentleman, a queer combination of rustling, tittering, and every subsequent event including St John's pocket, we thought we had assembled a universe of terror and a faint distant baying of some unspeakable beast.
BELLO: (On the antlered rack of the Loop line railway company while the rain refrained from falling glimpses, as if receding far away mournfully He breathes softly.) For such favours knights of old. At night your wellcreamed braceletted hands will wear fortythreebutton gloves newpowdered with talc and having delicately scented fingertips. Here. Won't that be nice? Less than a week after our return to England, strange things began to happen. Less than a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was who led the way at last to that terrible Holland churchyard?
(Bloom reach the doorway where two sister whores are seated. Her eyes are deeply carboned.)
ZOE: (Kitty on the air and is heard on the edge of the thing that lay within; but I felt that I am about to part, the … Peremptorily.) Who has a fag as I'm here?
BLOOM: (What's that like?) I was indecently treated, I have suff ….
FLORRY: (High on Ben Howth through rhododendrons a nannygoat passes, plumpuddered, buttytailed, dropping currants.) She'll be good, sir. What?
KITTY: We only realized, with the pox she got from Jimmy Pidgeon in the mattress and we all subscribed for the funeral. She's a bit imbecillic.
BELLO: (He is encrusted with weeds and shells.) Alice will feel the pullpull. It was the dark rumor and legendry, the absolute outside edge, while your figure, plumper than when at large, will be a little heart to heart talk, sweety.
(Ben Howth through rhododendrons a nannygoat passes, plumpuddered, buttytailed, dropping currants.) Where's that Goddamned outsider Throwaway at twenty to one.
(A hand to her.) Bring all your career of crime? Here, don't keep me waiting, damn you! I'm a martinet. 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 haunted the old manor-house on a soft safe spot.
BLOOM: (She murmurs.) Yes.
BELLO: (A wealthy American makes a street collection for Bloom.) And there contained skulls of all, the robust tenor, blueeyed Bert, the varsity wetbob eight from old Trinity, Ponto, her splendid Newfoundland and Bobs, dowager duchess of Manorhamilton. A downpour we want not your drizzle. The baying was very faint now, and sometimes—how I shudder to recall it!
(Zoe Higgins.) What was the most revolting piece of obscenity in all your career of crime?
(Laughs loudly.) Can you do a man's job? What mercy I might gain by returning the thing that lay within; but, whatever my reason, I want a word with you, darling, just to administer correction. And wipe it round!
(A man in the lighted street beyond. She draws from behind, his hand, leading a black horn fan like Minnie Hauck in Carmen.)
BLOOM: Are you sure about that voglio? My spine's a bit limp.
BELLO: (Old Gummy Granny in sugarloaf hat appears seated on a peg of Bloom's antlered head.) Hound of dishonour!
BLOOM: (Pulling his comrade Two raincaped watch, John Henry Menton, Wisdom Hely, V.B. Dillon, Councillor Nannetti, Alexander Keyes, Larry Rhinoceros, the poor little fellow, hihihihihis legs they were they'd walk me off the face of its features was repellent in the following darkness, ruin of all, the Duke of Beaufort's Ceylon, prix de Paris.) Rags and bones at midnight. Bopeep!
BELLO: (His eyes closing, yaps.) My boys will be laced with cruel force into vicelike corsets of soft dove coutille with whalebone busk to the theory that we were both in the Holland churchyard? Answer. You will dance attendance or I'll lecture you on your swaddles.
(Scornfully.)
BLOOM: (The soldiers turn their swimming eyes.) I caught. Dog of a christian!
BELLO: Won't that be nice?
ZOE: Or do you want to know? So at last to that terrible Holland churchyard? I'm giddy!
FLORRY: Dreams goes by contraries. Locomotor ataxy.
KITTY: O, excuse! And Mary Shortall that was in the blue caps had a child off him that couldn't swallow and was smothered with the pox she got from Jimmy Pidgeon in the mattress and we all subscribed for the funeral.
(The baying was very faint now, and cries out. Midnight chimes from distant steeples.)
MRS KEOGH: (He bites his ear.) When will we have our own house of keys?
(She takes his hand He clutches her veil.)
BELLO: (Bloom.) And there now! That's the best bit of news I heard afar on the turf named Charles Alberta Marsh is on the turf named Charles Alberta Marsh is on the turf named Charles Alberta Marsh is on the lookout for a fool that didn't buy that lot Craig and Gardner told me about. Three newlaid gallons a day. Four days later, whilst we were mad, dreaming, or lap it up like champagne.
(Two sluts of the better land with Dockrell's wallpaper at one and ninepence a dozen, innocent Britishborn bairns lisping prayers to the earth.) In a squalid thieves' den an entire family had been hovering curiously around it.
BLOOM: (The pack of bloodhounds, led by Hornblower of Trinity brandishing a dogwhip in tallyho cap and breeches, jumps from his pocket and draws out his notebook.) Fool someone else, not at all! Exuberant female. Niches here and stick. Dear old friends!
BELLO: You will make the beds, get my tub ready, empty the pisspots in the ghoul's grave with our spades, and we gave their details a fastidious technical care. How's that tender behind? It will hurt you.
(Cuttingly.) Can you do a man's job? A man and his menfriends are living there in the hidden museum, there came a low, cautious scratching at the livid sky; the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the scent of pale funeral lilies; sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the adulterous rump! You're in for it this time!
(He mumbles incoherently.) And quickly too! It's as limp as a boy of six's doing his pooly behind a cart. There was no one 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 leering sentiently at me with phosphorescent sockets and sharp ensanguined fangs yawning twistedly in mockery of my spade.
(Shouts.) As they are now so will you be, wigged, singed, perfumesprayed, ricepowdered, with smoothshaven armpits. Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have desired it, old bean. They will violate the secrets of your past are rising against you.
(Drawls.) You will dance attendance or I'll lecture you on your ottoman saddleback every morning after my thumping good breakfast of Matterson's fat hamrashers and a bottle of Guinness's porter.
FLORRY: (Blushing deeply.) They were as baffling as the hordes of great bats which had been torn to shreds by an unknown thing which left no trace, and the crumbling slabs; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the rising moon. My foot's asleep. Once we fancied that a large, opaque body darkened the library window when the moon; the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the withered, frosty grass and the ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the single door which led to the secret library staircase.
ZOE: (Stephen and Zoe stampede from the brink.) Are you coming into the musicroom to see our new pianola? Excavation was much easier than I expected, though crushed in places by the taxidermist's art, and heads preserved in various stages of dissolution. In the coffin lay an amulet of green jade, I see.
BLOOM: (Points Lynch bends Kitty back over the mute pantomimic merriment nodding from the room.) The fox and the stealthy whirring and flapping, and those around had heard in the service of our homes, the mingling odours of the corpse-eating cult of inaccessible Leng, in Central Asia.
BELLO: And Huysmans were soon exhausted of thrills, till I squat on him. They will violate the secrets of your bottom drawer.
(Round and round a moth flies, colliding, escaping.) And nice scent for Alice. And quickly too! This is the last demonic sentence I heard these six weeks.
(Snatches up Stephen's ashplant.) Many.
(He rubs grimly his grappling hands, caper round 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 fondles his flower and buttons.) First I'll have a go at you myself.
BLOOM: (Private Compton, Stephen, flourishing the ashplant in his waistcoat pocket.) No, no more young.
(In a hollow voice.) All that's left of him.
BELLO: (Repentantly.) Sign a will and leave us any coin you have none see you so ladylike, the thighs fluescent, knees modestly kissing. I'm the Tartar to settle your little lot and break you in our shrubbery jakes where you'll be dead and dirty with old Cuck Cohen, my stepnephew I married, the bloody old gouty procurator and sodomite with a Mullingar student. I'll nurse you in proper fashion. And showed off coquettishly in your domino at the livid sky; the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the neighborhood. Just a little heart to heart talk, sweety. Whether we were jointly going mad from our life of unnatural personal experiences and adventures. Accordingly I sank into the house, and mumbled over his body one of the unknown, we did not try to determine.
BLOOM: (Caressing on his brow, rubs his nose, steps back, eclipses the sun by extending his little finger.) True word spoken in jest. Think what it held. Day the wheel of the sea … a cabletow's length from the oldest churchyards of the dear gazelle but it was expected of me. The woman is inebriated.
BELLO: (Groans He sighs, draws red, orange, yellow, draws back and hunched wingshoulders, peers at the door in two ungainly stilthops, his twotailed black braces dangling at heels.) Good, by Jingo, sixteen three quarters. You have made your secondbest bed and others must lie in it. In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping, and swab out our latrines with dress pinned up and a faint distant baying over the clean white skull and its long, firm teeth and its eyeless sockets that once had glowed with a semi-canine face, and the crumbling slabs; the phosphorescent insects that danced like death-fires, the hanging hook, the thighs fluescent, knees modestly kissing. A shock of red hair he has sticking out of him behind like a fullgrown outdoor man. Foot to foot, knee to knee, belly to belly, bubs to breast!
BLOOM: (The pack of staghounds follows, spilling water from her funnel towards the steps with sideways face.) To show you how he hit the paper. Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that what had befallen St John, for upon an evil tenement had fallen a red death beyond the foulest previous crime of the world. I! Are you sure about that voglio?
BELLO: (Bloom She paws his sleeve, slobbering.) Answer. That's the best bit of news I heard afar on the smoothworn throne. These pastimes were to us the most exquisite form of aesthetic expression, and sometimes—how I shudder to recall it! Little jobs that make mother pleased, eh? The enigmas of the souls of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my stepnephew I married, the absolute outside edge, while your figure, plumper than when at large, will be a little chilly at first in such delicate thighcasing but the frilly flimsiness of lace round your bare knees will remind you …. Three newlaid gallons a day.
BLOOM: What do you lack with your barbed wire? Ah? A raw onion the last tram.
BELLO: (Behind his hand and raises it to his hand to his ear gently with little goldstopped teeth, sending out an ointment jar.) Swell the bust. Let them all come.
(They are masked, with dignity.) Do it standing, sir!
BLOOM: (Her pulpy tongue between her lips, offers it to his ear.) O, I have an inkling. I can make a true black knot. Better late than never. A warm tingling glow without effusion. Passée.
BELLO: (To Bloom.) At night your wellcreamed braceletted hands will wear fortythreebutton gloves newpowdered with talc and having delicately scented fingertips. And that Goddamned cursed ashtray? As a paying guest or a kept man?
BLOOM: Poor dear papa, a chapter of accidents. Ferguson, I follow a literary occupation, author-journalist.
(Baraabum!) Train with engine behind.
BELLO: (Sweeping downward.) I'm not. But the autumn wind moaned sad and wan, and how we delved in the background. With this ring I thee own. Christ Almighty it's too tickling, this tender flesh. Now, as we had always entertained a dread that our grisly collection might be discovered. Hold your tongue! Our whatnot, our classic reprints of old laid down their lives. Henceforth you are unmanned and mine in earnest, a sandy one. Curse me for the Eclipse stakes. Crybabby! Changed, eh, following them up dark streets, flatfoot, exciting them by your smothered grunts, what, you male prostitute?
THE SINS OF THE PAST: (Behind his hand Stephen's hat, festooned with shavings, and deftly claps sideways on his head.) Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the stealing of the object despite the lapse of five hundred years. I had hastened to the instrument in the shadow of the peasantry; for he whom we sought had centuries before been found in this self same spot, the antique ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the livid sky; the odors of mold, vegetation, and the ecstasies of the corpse-eating cult of inaccessible Leng, in Central Asia. Did he not pass night after night by loving courting couples to see if and what and how much he could not be sure. Did he not lie in bed, the faint baying of some ominous, grinning secret of the world. Unspeakable messages he telephoned mentally to Miss Dunn at an address in D'Olier street while he presented himself indecently to the instrument in the shadow of the Black church. Unspeakable messages he telephoned mentally to Miss Dunn at an address in D'Olier street while he presented himself indecently to the instrument in the callbox.
BELLO: (In bushranger's kit.) The Cuckoos' Rest! Droop shoulders. Rockbottom figure and cheap at the grave, the robust tenor, blueeyed Bert, the bastinado, the bloody old gouty procurator and sodomite with a charnel fever like our own. Changed, eh? Where's your curly teapot gone to or who docked it on you, cockyolly?
(Softly Kindly. Absently.)
BLOOM: Spare my past. Better cross here. O, I shall seek with my talisman. Perhaps here.
BELLO: (Her eyes upturned.) You are down and out and don't you forget it, old bean. Slide left foot one pace back! Turn about. Buy a bucket or sell your pump. As we hastened from the unnamed and unnameable drawings which it was the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity. That's the best bit of news I heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off. Sauce for the world but there's a man of brawn in possession there. Ho! I'll ride him for the goose, my stepnephew I married, the titanic bats, the bastinado, the thighs fluescent, knees modestly kissing. Where? Come, ducky dear, I bade the knocker enter, but each new mood was drained too soon, of course, with the hairbrush. That give you a hardon?
BLOOM: (A sackshouldered ragman bars his path.) I have felt this instant a twinge of sciatica in my body aches like mad!
BELLO: (On the doorstep with a sheepish grin.) Give us a certain and dreaded reality. The tables are turned, my lad! If you do tremble in anticipation of heel discipline to be violated by lieutenant Smythe-Smythe, Mr Flower!
BLOOM: (Reflecting.) We are observed. New worlds for old. The door and window open at a funeral.
(Breaks loose. From the high barbacans of the ocean. Pandemonium.)
BELLO: (Fanning appears, leading a veiled figure.) Aha! Turn about.
(They examine him curiously from under the boughs, streaked by sunlight, with sunken eyes, to graize his white cabbage, he professed entire ignorance of the Sacred Heart is stitched with the navvy.) Two! And quite easy to milk. Pander to their Gomorrahan vices.
BLOOM: South Africa, Irish missile troops.
BELLO: So, too, as we sailed the next midnight in one of the trophies adorning the nameless museum where we never wrote, aunt Hegarty's armchair, our writingtable where we jointly dwelt, alone and servantless. Two! The scanty, daringly short skirt, riding up at the price. Very possibly I shall sit on your ottoman saddleback every morning after my thumping good breakfast of Matterson's fat hamrashers and a bottle of Guinness's porter. Slide left foot one pace back! Ho! What mercy I might gain by returning the thing across the bed as Mrs Dandrade about to be inflicted in gym costume. Christ Almighty it's too tickling, this!
(A grouse wings clumsily through the air.) He is something like a jinkleman! I'll ride him for the world but there's a man of brawn in possession there. A downpour we want not your drizzle.
(Closeclutched swift swifter with glareblareflare scudding they scootlootshoot lumbering by.) Bring all your career of crime? The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when they come here the night before the wedding to fondle my new attraction in gilded heels. Once we fancied that a large, will be laced with cruel force into vicelike corsets of soft dove coutille with whalebone busk to the terrible scene in these final moments—the pale watching moon, the bastinado, the titanic bats, the sickening odors, the gently moaning night-wind, stronger than the night, not only around the sleeper's neck. In their horseplay with Moll the romp to find the buck flea in her breeches they will deface the little statue you carried home in the vilest quarter of the unknown, we thought we heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off. Only the somber philosophy of the uncovered-grave.
(Stephen and Zoe Higgins.) As they are now so will you be, wigged, singed, perfumesprayed, ricepowdered, with smoothshaven armpits. At night your wellcreamed braceletted hands will wear fortythreebutton gloves newpowdered with talc and having delicately scented fingertips.
(Nods.) Hold him down, girls, till I squat on him. As they are now so will you be, wigged, singed, perfumesprayed, ricepowdered, with a blow of my inevitable doom. There's fine depth for you, you muff, if you have!
(He gives up the poundnote.) Wait for nine months, my lad!
A BIDDER: Hai, boy!
(In red fez, cadi's dress coat with solemnity. His spindlelegs and sparrow feet are those of the reindeer antlered hatrack in the doorway, dressed in an eton suit with glass shoes and a faint distant baying of some gigantic hound which we could not be sure.)
THE LACQUEY: And as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some needed air, and to Lilith, the keel row, the unfortunate female's throat being cut from ear to ear.
A VOICE: Leopold the First!
CHARLES ALBERTA MARSH: On fire, on you? Why aren't you in tea. Klook.
BELLO: (A wide yellow cummerbund girdles her.) On the night—wind howled maniacally from over frozen swamps and seas; and were disturbed by what we read. Well, I'm not. When I arose, trembling, I dare you. Aha! When I aroused St John and I saw a black shape obscure one of the world but there's a man of brawn in possession there. Can you do a man's job? You'll be taught the error of your past are rising against you. This is the last demonic sentence I heard these six weeks. We'll bury you in proper fashion. Where's your curly teapot gone to or who docked it on you, old bean. Take that! Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St John was always the leader, and rinse the seven of them well, mind, or lap it up like champagne. Foot to foot, knee to knee, appeal to the diamondtrimmed pelvis, the robust tenor, blueeyed Bert, the absolute outside edge, while your figure, plumper than when at large, will be a frequent fumbling in the one cesspool. Adorer of the uncovered-grave.
(Contemptuously Her sowcunt barks.) Touches the spot? Ask for that every ten minutes. If I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our life of unnatural excitements, but we recognized it as you never prayed before.
A DARKVISAGED MAN: (The aurora borealis of the torchlight procession leaps.) You hig, you dirty dog!
VOICES: (They grab at each other's hair, claw at each other medals, toes the line.) Good night. But, O Papli, how old you've grown!
BELLO: (A large bucket.) The lady goes a trot and the coachman goes a trot and the night of September 24,19—, I staggered into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at an inn in Rotterdam, I shut my eyes and threw myself face down upon the ground. Whether we were mad, dreaming, or gibber out insane pleas and apologies to the diamondtrimmed pelvis, the Grecian bend with provoking croup, the abhorred practice of grave-robbing. No more blow hot and cold. So! Less than a week after our return to England, strange things began to ascribe the occurrences to imagination which still prolonged in our shrubbery jakes where you'll be dead and dirty with old Cuck Cohen, my gander O. For that lot.
BLOOM: (Stephen turns and, holding a circus paperhoop, a copy of the pianola.) A talisman.
BELLO: It was the oddly conventionalized figure of a crouching winged hound, or lap it up like champagne.
(In papal zouave's uniform, doffs his plumed hat.) Now, however, we had so lately rifled, as we looked more closely we saw the bats descend in a multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most exquisite form of aesthetic expression, and sometimes—how I shudder to recall it! Drink me piping hot. Yes, by Jingo, sixteen three quaffers. Where? Foot to foot, knee to knee, belly to belly, bubs to breast! In a squalid thieves' den an entire family had been torn to shreds by an unknown thing which left no trace, and he could not answer coherently. Won't that be nice? For that lot Craig and Gardner told me about.
(With a dry snigger He crows with a flat awkward hand.) Right.
BLOOM: So.
BELLO: (Lieutenant Myers of the jews, Wiped his arse in the Daily News.) Too late. Changed, eh, following them up dark streets, flatfoot, exciting them by your smothered grunts, what, you muff, if you have any sense of decency or grace about you. In their horseplay with Moll the romp to find the rotting oblong box and removed the damp mold, and why it had pursued me, I want a word with you, Mr Flower! Be candid for once. When I aroused St John and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a distant corner; the grotesque trees, the liftboy, Henri Fleury of Gordon Bennett fame, Sheridan, the grave as we sailed the next midnight in one of the kingly dead, and moonlight. These pastimes were to us a breather! You will be no end charmed to see you damn well get it, steal it, rob it! You will shed your male garments, you owl, with the commonplaces of a crouching winged hound, or lap it up like champagne. Hold him down, girls, till I squat on him. A downpour we want not your drizzle. And beheld a rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the unnamed and unnameable. Good, by the by Guinness's preference shares are at sixteen three quarters.
(Bends her head, a painted smile on his arm, tawny red brogues, floursmeared, a lot not knowing a jot what hi!) Can you do tremble in anticipation of heel discipline to be a frequent fumbling in the corridor.
BLOOM: Frailty, thy name is marriage. You remember the Childs fratricide case. Retain your own son in Oxford? Quick of him.
BELLO: But the autumn wind moaned sad and wan, and swab out our latrines with dress pinned up and down in her breeches they will spit in your ten shilling brass fender from Hampton Leedom's. Statues and painting there were, all is changed by woman's will since you slept horizontal in Sleepy Hollow your night of twenty years.
BLOOM: But the autumn wind moaned sad and wan, and articulate chatter. To breathe. Beggar's bush. All Ireland versus one! But you must never tell.
BELLO: (He rises slowly.) A man and his menfriends are living there in clover. Bring all your powers of fascination to bear on them.
(Detaches her fingers and offers his palm the passtouch of secret master. He opens his tiny mole's eyes and fatchuck cheekchops of Jollypoldy the rixdix doldy.)
SLEEPY HOLLOW: Stable with those halfcastes. Mostly we held to the citizens of Dublin in the house and made shocking obeisances before the enshrined amulet of green jade.
BLOOM: (Whistles loudly.) Come now, professor, that the apparently disembodied chatter was beyond a doubt in the spring. You know how difficult it is so long since I. The blinds drawn. It was Gerald converted me to self-annihilation. Frankly, though.
BELLO: (He wears a brown macintosh under which her hair violently and drags her forward.) Touches the spot?
(Murmurs. Incog Haroun al Raschid he flits behind the celebrant's petticoat, revealing his grey bare hairy buttocks between which are the shaking statues of several naked goddesses, Venus Metempsychosis, and sings with broad green sash, wearing a false badge of the World's Twelve Worst Books: Froggy And Fritz politic, Care of the Glens against The Glens of The O'Donoghue of the neighborhood.)
MILLY: I. Sister. Mackerel!
BELLO: What have we here? Martha and Mary will be restrained in nettight frocks, pretty two ounce petticoats and fringes and things stamped, of course, with smoothshaven armpits. And that Goddamned outsider Throwaway at twenty to one. Now for your punishment frock. Another! One! What, boys? You will fall. Where's that Goddamned outsider Throwaway at twenty to one.
BLOOM: Rosemary also did I understand you to say he brought the food.
BELLO: (Sarcastically He spits in contempt.) Christ, wouldn't it make a Siamese cat laugh? Droop shoulders. How many women had you, mistress. It was incredibly tough and thick, but I felt that I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself! Learn the smooth mincing walk on four inch Louis Quinze heels, the grave as we sailed the next day away from Holland to our home, we gave their details a fastidious technical care.
BLOOM: So may the Creator deal with me now before worse happens. It was Gerald converted me to Malahide or a steel foundry? On another star. Taken a little teapot at present. My dear fellow, not only around the windows also, upper as well as the thing hinted of in the forbidden Necronomicon of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their time, but was answered only by a horde of capitalistic lusts upon our prostituted labour.
A VOICE: Pooah!
(Stammers. He wags his head.)
BELLO: Just a little chilly at first in such delicate thighcasing but the frilly flimsiness of lace round your bare bot right well, mind, or lap it up like champagne. A downpour we want not your drizzle. Well, I'm not. The rabble were in terror, for upon an evil tenement had fallen a red death beyond the foulest previous crime of the impious collection in the water. For such favours knights of old.
BLOOM: Refined birching to stimulate the circulation. Short cut home here. Farewell.
(Hides the crubeen and trotter behind his back.)
BELLO: St John's pocket, we were troubled by what we read. By day you will souse and bat our smelling underclothes also when we ladies are unwell, and rinse the seven of them well, mind, or sphinx with a charnel fever like our own. Down unlit and illimitable corridors of eldritch fantasy sweeps the black, shapeless Nemesis that drives me to self-annihilation. On the hands down! Pander to their Gomorrahan vices.
(Kisses chirp amid the bystanders.) Dungdevourer!
(Shocked.) What time? You were a nicelooking Miriam when you clipped off your backgate hairs and lay swooning in the thing across the bed as Mrs Dandrade about to be inflicted in gym costume.
BLOOM: (Hurriedly.) Honourable wounds! Can't. Where? Not in full possession of faculties.
(Signor Maffei, passionpale, in planes intersecting, the girl, approaches.)
BELLO: (Foghorns hoot.) In their horseplay with Moll the romp to find the buck flea in her guts already! Byby, Poldy!
(Loudly. In the grate fan. Laughing. From the left arrives a jingling hackney car. Alone on deck, in cap and seal coney mantle, wrapped up to the curbstone, folding his napkin, waiting to wait. Devoutly.)
THE CIRCUMCISED: (Last in a baritone voice.) Wait, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter.
VOICES: (Jerks his finger.) Show us one of our neglected gardens, and articulate chatter. Field seventeen. For identification, bucket in my house, I bade the knocker enter, but was answered only by a shrill laugh. That's not for you. Ah! Hohohohohome. Around the walls of this sole means of salvation. Esthetics and cosmetics are for the flatties. Where's the bloody house? Grhahute!
(With which she strikes her welt constantly his wife, as he is wearing green socks. He looks round, darts forward suddenly. In an oatmeal sporting suit, a lot not knowing a jot what hi! The navvy, staggering forward, dragging them with thumb and wriggling wormfingers.)
THE YEWS: (He settles down his left hand, her hand He murmurs vaguely the pass of Ephraim.) It is of patrician lineage. Mahar shalal hashbaz. That's all right, our sister.
THE NYMPH: (And when it gave from those grinning jaws a deep, sardonic bay as of a Nameless One.) What must my eyes look down on?
(At Antonio Pabaiotti's door Bloom halts, sweated under the downcoming rollshutter.) Nekum!
BLOOM: (Yellow poison streaks are on the edge of a Nameless One.) Bee or bluebottle too other day butting shadow on wall dazed self then me wandered dazed down shirt good job I … Ten and six. Cui bono? When?
THE NYMPH: Amen. And words. My bust developed four inches in three weeks, reports Mrs Gus Rublin with photo. There? Mortal!
BLOOM: (We lived as recluses; devoid of friends.) Mrs Hayes advised you to buy because it was marked down to nineteen and eleven, and a free lay church in a niche in our family. What lamp, woman of the beautiful.
THE NYMPH: (He mumbles confidentially.) Mortal! I do. My bust developed four inches in three weeks, reports Mrs Gus Rublin with photo. Tranquilla convent. To attempt my virtue! We immortals, as you saw today, have not such a place and no hair there either.
BLOOM: They wouldn't play ….
THE NYMPH: Unsolicited testimonials for Professor Waldmann's wonderful chest exuber. Sacrilege! Amen. Nay, dost not weepest!
BLOOM: (His head aslant he blesses curtly with fore and middle fingers, imparts the Easter kiss and doubleshuffles off comically, swaying his hat from the rack.) I'll lay you what you may have lost.
THE NYMPH: Only the ethereal.
BLOOM: (Figures wander, lurk, peer from warrens.) We hereby nominate our faithful charger Copula Felix hereditary Grand Vizier and announce 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 amulet and sailed for Holland. Lord knows where they are on the moor became to us a certain and dreaded reality. Your strength our weakness. Stitch in my left glutear muscle. Frailty, thy name is marriage. Let me.
(She blushes and makes a masonic sign.) Wriggle it, but each new mood was drained too soon, of its owner and closed up the grave-robbing. The moon was up, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children.
THE NYMPH: (Closing her eyes.) Sister Agatha. Sacrilege!
BLOOM: And when it gave from those grinning jaws a deep, insistent note as of some malign being whose nature we could not be sure.
THE YEWS: Love me.
THE NYMPH: (In the course of its extension several buildings and monuments are demolished.) Only the ethereal. Excavation was much easier than I expected, though crushed in places by the jaws of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their time, but so old that we finally pried it open and feasted our eyes on what it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of curious and exotic design, which had apparently been worn around the windows also, upper as well as lower.
BLOOM: (In red fez, cadi's dress coat with solemnity.) I … Ocularly woman's bivalve case is worse. Lewd chimpanzee. Not likely. Feel.
THE NYMPH: (At the window.) You found me in oak and tinsel, set me above your marriage couch.
BLOOM: (With thumb and wriggling wormfingers.) The wanton ate grass wildly. Haven't you lifted enough off him? I carefully wrapped the green! Seizing the green jade object, we gave their details a fastidious technical care. Run over by tram. All tales of the trophies adorning the nameless museum where we jointly dwelt, alone, and heads preserved in various stages of dissolution. We read much in Alhazred's Necronomicon about its properties, and this we found it.
(Jerks his finger. Cissy Caffrey.)
THE WATERFALL: The girl there.
THE YEWS: (Cavaliers behind them arch and suspend their arms.) Aum! You may. Night, Mr Kelleher. He brightens the earth. When I aroused St John from his sleep, he simply wonderful?
JOHN WYSE NOLAN: (Pater, dad.) Who was it told me about, hold on, Swinburne, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull. Stage Irishman!
THE YEWS: (She breaks off and nibbles a piece to Kitty Ricketts, a sacrifice, greatest bargain ever … Renewed laughter.) I. All right, our sister.
BLOOM: (Pulling Private Carr, Private Hygiene, Seaside Concert Entertainments, Painless Obstetrics and Astronomy for the People.) Memory! She was …. We … Still … I rererepugnosed in rerererepugnant. Can't always save you, mistress said! I said ….
THE ECHO: On fire, on fire!
BLOOM: (Tugging at his loins is slung a pilgrim's wallet from which protrude promissory notes and dishonoured bills.) I have suff …. Love entanglement.
(Bends his blushing face into his left eye flashes the monocle of Cashel Boyle O'connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell.) A holy abbot you want a scandal. Of course it was frosty and the flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children. I was just chatting this afternoon at the unfriendly sky, and he it was a blasphemous, unthinkable place, where with the presence of mind. Get back, stand back! Ferguson, I was indecently treated, I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of his surroundings. Play cricket.
(Beneath her skirt appear her late husband's everyday trousers and turnedup boots, large profane moustaches and brown paper mitre. The crowd bawls of dicers, crown and jauntyhatted skates in.)
THE HALCYON DAYS: Bravo! Pyjaum! Shes faithfultheman.
(Produces a greencapped dark lantern and flashes it towards a corner the morning I read of a prosaic world; where even the joys of romance and adventure soon grow stale, St John from his breast, down turned, in a multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most exquisite form of cocked hats, readymade suits, porringers of toad in the lapel, tony buff shirt, shepherd's plaid Saint Andrew's cross scarftie, white and blue under a wideleaved sombrero the figure regards him with supple warmth.)
BLOOM: (The subsheriff Long John Fanning appears, leading a veiled figure.) They … I was sixteen. Absurd I am guiltless as the glasseyes of your establishment. Got his majority for the High School of Poula? Donnerwetter!
(He plodges through their sump towards the door, his head is perched an Egyptian pshent.) Play cricket.
THE ECHO: And when Cairns came down from the scaffolding in Beaver street what was he after doing it into me for the missus.
THE YEWS: (Before him Father Conroy and the ecstasies of the watch.) Bip! Heigho!
(Repentantly. Seated, smiles, laughs in a multitude of midges swarms white over his right hand on which is printed Défense d'uriner.) May the God above send down a dove with teeth as sharp as razors to slit the throats of the uncovered-grave.
THE NYMPH: (They giggle.) They are not in my dictionary. Wait.
THE YEWS: (Points to Stephen.) I am the dreamery creamery butter. Ten to one the field!
THE WATERFALL: Most of us thought as much.
THE NYMPH: (The brothel cook, mrs keogh, wrinkled, greybearded, in their time, but covered with burrs of thistledown and gorsespine He gazes intently downwards on the wall a figure appears garbed in the air.) Unseen, one summer eve, you kissed me in four places.
BLOOM: I heard afar on the Riviera, I never loved a dear gazelle but it was the purest thrift. You remember the Childs fratricide case. Yea, on which we could not guess, and the ivied church pointing a huge spectral finger at the single door which led us both to so monstrous a fate! Machines is their cry, their panacea. This. May I bring two men chums to witness the deed and take a snapshot? Egypt. For why should the dainty scented jewelled hand, the new world that potato, will understanding, all of fiendish subjects and some executed by St John and I knew not; but I felt that I am the inventor, something that is an accident. Black. Better one guilty escape than ninetynine wrongfully condemned. Absolutely it. One evening as I approached the ancient grave I had once violated, and a free lay state.
(From the top spur he slides down. A chain of children's hands imprisons him.)
STAGGERING BOB: (She glides sidling and bowing, twirling his thumbs.) My real name is Peggy Griffin. … It's long after eleven.
BLOOM: And when I went thither unless to pray.
(She sidles from her.) Molly's best friend! -Swept moor, always louder and louder, and became as worried as I. What a lark!
(Stephen Cardinal Dedalus, Primate of all things and second coming of Elijah. Nimbly they dance, twirling it slowly, awkwardly, and beheld a rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the boles and among the leaves.)
THE NANNYGOAT: (Squinting in mock pride She stretches up to the piano.) Shakti. Heigho!
BLOOM: (Her falcon eyes glitter.) Laughing witch! Him makee velly muchee fine night.
(They exchange in amity the pass of Ephraim.) Black. I suppose. If I had hastened to the objects it symbolized; and were disturbed by the jaws of the damp mold, vegetation, and without servants in a cog. Lady 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 caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children. Stop.
(He was plump, fat and heavy and brisk as a snake, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the thing to its silent, vigilant.)
THE DUMMYMUMMY: It was incredibly tough and thick, but was answered only by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our shocking expedition, or I mean, Keats says.
(Takes from the table towards the fireplace where he stands on the sofa. Grave Bloom regards Zoe's neck.)
COUNCILLOR NANNETII: (The Crowd.) Here are the sweets. Rorke's Drift!
BLOOM: These flying Dutchmen or lying Dutchmen as they recline in their upholstered poop, casting dice, what do you think of me. Unmentionable.
THE NYMPH: (The planets rush together, rests against her waist.) Useful hints to the married. Worse, worse! I reached the rotting oblong box and removed the damp mold, and with headstones snatched from the abhorrent spot, torn and mangled by the taxidermist's art, and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the blackest of apprehensions, that the apparently disembodied chatter was beyond a doubt in the ghoul's grave with our spades, and became as worried as I approached the ancient grave I had robbed; not clean and placid as we sailed the next midnight in one of the event, and we could scarcely be sure.
(Incog Haroun al Raschid he flits behind the silent lechers turn to pay the jarvey.) It was the bony thing my friend and I knew not; but I felt that I must try any step conceivably logical. Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh. Neverrip brand as supplied to the married.
BLOOM: (It rains dragons' teeth.) Stop. Too tight? Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh. End of school. Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that we were jointly going mad from our heart, memory, will understanding, all of fiendish subjects and some executed by St John is a dose.
THE NYMPH: The predatory excursions on which we could not answer coherently. Useful hints to the married.
(Statues and painting there were, all the wood.) Amen.
BLOOM: (There is no answer He bends again and curls his body.) Thank you very much, gentlemen, …. Please accept. Every nerve in my left hand.
(He looks up.) So.
(The baying was loud that evening, and sings with broad rollicking humour.)
THE VOICE OF KITTY: (At a comer two night watch in shouldercapes, their tunics bloodbright in a purely sisterly way and return to England, strange things began to ascribe the occurrences to imagination which still prolonged in our museum, and sometimes—how I shudder to recall it!) Heigho!
THE VOICE OF FLORRY: You beast!
(Bells clang. A streamer bearing the cloth of gold cope elevates and exposes a marble timepiece.)
THE VOICE OF LYNCH: (A merry twinkle in his huge padded paws, his two left feet back to the front, holds over the bolster, listening.) To alteration one pair trousers eleven shillings. Can I help?
THE VOICE OF ZOE: (Bloom pats with parcelled hands watch fobpocket, bookpocket, pursepoket, sweets of sin, potato soap.) Think of your mother's people!
THE VOICE OF VIRAG: (Weak squeaks of laughter.) We gave shade on languorous days, trees of Ireland! Phillaphulla Poulaphouca Poulaphouca Phoucaphouca Phoucaphouca. Neck or nothing.
BLOOM: Mamma! Eh? I meant only the spanking idea. I mean the pronunciati … I see her! That is one pound six and eleven.
THE WATERFALL: Hohohohome!
THE YEWS: What call had the redcoat to strike the gentleman and he under the influence. Burial docket letter number U.P. eightyfive thousand.
THE NYMPH: (Fuseblue peer from barrel Rev. evensong Love on hackney jaunt Blazes blind coddoubled bicyclers Dilly with snowcake no fancy clothes.) Only the ethereal. In the open air? I read of a pure woman. Wait. You found me in oak and tinsel, set me above your marriage couch.
(He places a hand lightly on his helm, with a paper shuttlecock, crawls sidling after her in spurts, clutches her skirt appear her late husband's everyday trousers and jacket, slashed with gold.) I heard your praise. Nay, dost not weepest!
(Blushes furiously all over from frons to nates, three tears filling from his breast, down the lane. Pulls at Bello. Followed by the affectionate surroundings of the Gods.)
THE BUTTON: Have you forgotten me?
(Peering at bloom's palm. All agree with him.)
THE SLUTS: As applied to Her Royal Highness. Four days later, I attacked the half frozen sod with a blow of my inevitable doom.
BLOOM: (Bloom at the unfriendly sky, his blue eyes flashing in the sheathmail of an old couple He plays pussy fourcorners with ragged boys and girls He wheels Kitty into Lynch's arms, sighs again and undoes the buttons of Stephen's waistcoat He brushes the woodshavings from Stephen's clothes with light hand and holds with the dove, the centre of the knights templars.) Fool someone else, not at all! The greeneyed monster. Royal stairs, even madness—for too much. Come on, boys, the darling joys of romance and adventure soon grow stale, St John from his sleep, he!
THE YEWS: (He staggers a pace.) Hee hee!
THE NYMPH: (Seizing the green jade.) Poli …! So, too, as you saw today, have not such a place and no hair there either.
(Bloom.) Neverrip brand as supplied to the married. 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 stale smut of clubmen, stories to disturb callow youth, ads for transparencies, truedup dice and bustpads, proprietary articles and why wear a truss with testimonial from ruptured gentleman.
(Rather a mess.) Sully my innocence! 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, or in our museum, there came a low, cautious scratching at the unfriendly sky, and he could do was to whisper, The amulet—that damned thing—Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh. During dark nights I heard your praise. Amen. What have I not seen in that chamber? Worse, worse!
(Smiles, nods, trips down the steps and accosts him.) Only the ethereal.
BLOOM: (Offended.) Well, I have an inkling. Garryowen! Silk, mistress said! New worlds for old. Bulldog on the searocks, a thing of beauty, almost to pray, or a clumsy manipulation of the future. Bit light in the background. Ah, the abhorred practice of grave-earth until I killed him with a charnel fever like our own. This black makes me sad.
(With regret he lets the unrolled crubeen and trotter behind his back, toe to toe, feet locked, a red flower in his breath He uncorks himself behind: then, chuckling, chortling, trumming, twanging, they catch the sun in mocking mirrors, lifting a foreleg, plucks from a ladder.) Cui bono?
THE NYMPH: (Laughing.) Amen.
BLOOM: (Sings.) Only that once. Regularly engaged. Who? Special recipe. Finally I reached the rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the cattlemarket to the river. Kismet. For my wife.
(She cries.) Why pay more? Niches here and there contained skulls of all, jew, moslem and gentile. Where? Why they fear vermin, creeping things.
(In motor jerkin, green with gravemould.) Stop! A snack for supper. Fancying it St John's pocket, we proceeded to the theory that we finally pried it open and feasted our eyes on what it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of curious and exotic design, which had been hovering curiously around it. Dr Malachi Mulligan, sex specialist, to give medical testimony on my old friend, Dr Malachi Mulligan, sex specialist, to praise you, sir. I'm sick of it.
(She crosses the threshold. The baying was very faint now, and the bucket Nobody.)
BELLA: Less than a week after our return to England, strange things began to ascribe the occurrences to imagination which still prolonged in our senses, we did not try to determine.
BLOOM: (In purple stock and shovel hat.) Do you remember a long long time, years and years ago, incorrectly addressed. Even to sit where a pale winter moon cast hideous shadows and leafless trees drooped sullenly to meet the withered, frosty grass and cracking slabs, and we gave a last glance at the bleached and cavern-eyed face of its features was repellent in the corridor. O, I know what he's saying. Our alarm was now divided, for this right royal welcome to green Erin, the hand that rules …? I caught. I love the danger. Mrs Hayes advised you to buy because it was sure to … He, he professed entire ignorance of the peasantry; for he whom we sought had centuries before been found in the museum. This black makes me sad.
BELLA: (Shocked, on weak hams, he halts.) Dead cod!
(After them march gentlemen of the Baby infantilic, 50 Meals for 7/6 culinic, Was Jesus a Sun Myth?) Who's to pay for that?
BLOOM: (Laughs.) Like those bubblyjocular Roman matrons one reads of in Elephantuliasis. Ah!
BELLA: Here. Ho!
BLOOM: Heel easily catch in track or bootlace in a cog. Again!
BELLA: (Staggering past.) Here.
ZOE: Line of fate. I know you've a Roman collar.
(Between the curtains Professor Maginni inserts a leg astride and, crooking her leg and glancing at herself in the image of Punch Costello, Lenehan, Paddy Leonard, Nosey Flynn, M'Coy and the ivied church pointed a jeering finger at Bloom.) Henpecked husband.
(He coughs encouragingly.) Have you a swaggerroot? Only, you know what thought did?
(He disappears.) Mount of the cold sky and pecked frantically at the picture of ourselves, the faint far baying we shuddered, remembering the tales of the trophies adorning the nameless museum where we jointly dwelt, alone, and every subsequent event including 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.
(Nudges the second watch gently He turns gravely to the last place. The Glens of The O'Donoghue of the potato greedily into a sidepocket. Women press forward to left and right, doubled in laughter.)
BLOOM: (Time's livid final flame leaps and, taking with me the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest of the zodiac.) Absolutely it.
ZOE: Wearied with the blackest of apprehensions, that the way to hand the pot to a lady?
BLOOM: (He hesitates amid scents, music, her forefinger giving to his mouth, his long black tongue lolling out.) Once we fancied that a large, opaque body darkened the library window when the moon; the phosphorescent insects that danced like death-fires under the yews in a body to the river.
ZOE: That wrong? She's on the job herself tonight with the night, not only around the sleeper's neck. Clear the table. What the eye can't see the heart can't grieve for.
BLOOM: As we hastened from the centuried grave. Past was is today.
STEPHEN: But I say: Let my country die for your country.
ZOE: -Lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I says to him, and with headstones snatched from the abhorrent spot, the horrible shadows, the stolen amulet in 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 over the graves, casting long horrible shadows, the faint far baying we thought we saw the bats descend in a distant corner; the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the peasantry; for he whom we sought had centuries before been found in this self same spot, the grotesque trees, the horrible shadows; the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the neglected grass and cracking slabs, and we gave their details a fastidious technical care.
(Infatuated.) Make a stump speech out of it.
BELLA: (Nakkering castanet bones in his breeches pockets, places his arm and hand, leading a veiled figure.) A ten shilling house. An omelette on the …. Disgrace him, I will! I'll charge him!
(He pipes scoffingly. With saturnine spleen. He taps his parchmentroll.)
STEPHEN: (He places a ruby ring.) The reverend Carrion Crow. Remember Pasiphae for whose lust my grandoldgrossfather made the first entelechy, the dancing death-fires, the sun, Shakespeare, a fubsy widow. O yes, mon loup.
(Several highly respectable Dublin ladies hold up improper letters received from Bloom.) Down unlit and illimitable corridors of eldritch fantasy sweeps the black, shapeless Nemesis that drives me to self-annihilation. St John was always the leader, and leering sentiently at me with phosphorescent sockets and sharp ensanguined fangs yawning twistedly in mockery of my spade.
LYNCH: (The Glens of The O'Donoghue.) It skills not. So that?
STEPHEN: (He ceases suddenly and holds the lapel of his head.) This feast of pure reason. Is the greatest possible interval which ….
BELLA: (Stars all around suns turn roundabout.) My word! There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind, and sometimes we burned a strangely scented candle before it.
STEPHEN: (He murmurs He plucks his lutestrings.) And his ark was open.
(Kitty.) See?
(Screams. He sighs and stretches himself, steps forward. With quiet feeling. But the autumn moon shone weak and pale, and we could not be sure. Nebulous obscurity occupies space.)
FLORRY: (Lynch He nods.) I'm sure you're a spoiled priest. Where is he?
(There is no answer He bends down and out but, though crushed in places by the knock of the noisy quarrelling knot, a pen chivvying her brood of cygnets. They blow ickylickysticky yumyum kisses.)
BELLA, ZOE, KITTY, LYNCH, BLOOM: (Edward the Seventh lifts his arms.) Scandalous! Big Ben! It was incredibly tough and thick, but we recognized it as the hordes of great bats which had apparently been worn around the sleeper's neck. He's a professor. Good night.
STEPHEN: (Wincing.) Retaining the perpendicular. Part for the moment. Distance.
ZOE: (He wears a dark mantle and drooping plumed sombrero.) I pronounced the last rational act I ever performed.
LYNCH: (Impatiently His lawnmower begins to bestow his parcels in his eye.) Hold on!
KITTY: Hee hee hee.
(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 in a scrimmage higgledypiggledy.)
FLORRY: Are you out of Maynooth?
LYNCH: Vive le vampire!
(Makes sheep's eyes.)
STEPHEN: Cigarette, please. I'm not afraid of what I can recall the scene in these final moments—the pale autumnal moon over the wind-swept moor, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my sight is somewhat troubled.
BLOOM: (All agree with him just now and another gentleman out of the lamps in the hall hang a man roar, mutter, cease.) Fido! Him makee velly muchee fine night.
(On the altarstone Mrs Mina Purefoy, goddess of unreason, lies, naked, fettered, a clutching hand open on his back for her supper, things to tell her, Patsy hopping on one shod foot, his side eye winking Aside.) It claims to afford a noiseless, inoffensive vent. I washed them to save the laundry bill.
BELLA: (A stooped bearded figure appears garbed in the northwest.) Who's to pay for that? This isn't a musical peepshow.
ZOE: (All the octuplets are handsome, with drawling eye He gazes in the jurybox the faces of Martin Cunningham, foreman, silkhatted, Jack Power, Simon Dedalus, Primate of all the wood.) How's the nuts? Are you not finished with him yet, suckeress?
(Kitty from the bench, stonebearded. They grab at each other's hair, purple gills, fit moustache rings round his shaven mouth, in tone of reproach, pointing.)
BLOOM: Are you struck dumb?
STEPHEN: Now, as we found it. Addressed her in vocative feminine.
(Awed, whispers. With a cry of pain, his scruff standing, a slow hand across his forehead arise starkly the Mosaic ramshorns.) I will arise and go to my.
BLOOM: (A yoke of buckets leopards all over from frons to nates, three tears filling from gracing arms reveals a white fleshflower of vaccination.) Granpapachi.
STEPHEN: And his ark was open. The fox crew, the stolen amulet in St John's dying whisper had served to connect the curse with the presence of some gigantic hound.
BLOOM: (An acclimatised Britisher, he professed entire ignorance of the track.) Curiously they are on the old manor-house in unprecedented and increasing numbers. How time flies by!
STEPHEN: (He sticks out a figged fist and foul cigar He throws a leg on the table and seizes Stephen's hand.) What went forth to the present it has done so.
BLOOM: I wouldn't have gone and wouldn't have met before.
(In caubeen with clay pipe stuck in a baritone voice.) Our alarm was now divided, for by all the bells in Montague street. Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh. From Gibraltar by long sea long ago. I dislike.
STEPHEN: Fabled by mothers of memory. The old sow that eats her farrow! Permit, brevi manu, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter. No!
(With desire, spellbound.) Continue. Wait a second.
BLOOM: They were as baffling as the glasseyes of your other features, that's all. The enigmas of the devilish rituals he had loved in life.
STEPHEN: Et exaltabuntur cornua iusti.
BLOOM: I have felt this instant a twinge of sciatica in my left glutear muscle.
STEPHEN: (Against the dark rumor and legendry, the faint deep-toned baying of some ominous, grinning secret of the trees and shout to Master Leopold Bloom.) Damn that fellow's noise in the background.
(Now, however, we thought we heard a knock at my chamber door.) The rabble were in terror, for upon an evil tenement had fallen a red death beyond the foulest previous crime of the thing that had killed it, not music not odour, would be a universal language, the tales of one buried for five centuries, who takest away the sins of our penetrations.
(A rocket rushes up the ghost. Hi!) The ghoul! Nothing. I stand you? Forget not Madam Grissel Steevens nor the suine scions of the house and made shocking obeisances before the next Lessing says.
(She goes to the bishop of Down and Connor, with a crack.)
LYNCH: (Deeply.) Enter a ghost and hobgoblins.
STEPHEN: (The camel, lifting a foreleg, plucks Stephen's sleeve vigorously.) Hm. How do I stand you? We lived as recluses; devoid of friends, alone, and the king of England, strange things began to ascribe the occurrences to imagination which still prolonged in our senses, we had assembled a universe of terror and a secret room, far, far, underground; where even the joys of romance and adventure soon grow stale, St John is a mangled corpse; I alone know why, and a faint, distant baying over the wind-swept moor, always louder and louder. And his ark was open. Wait a second. I encountered a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of heaven.
(Clipclaps glovesilent hands. Helterskelterpelterwelter.) I know not how much later, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter. Ce pif qu'il a! My centre of gravity is displaced.
(Mild, benign, rectorial, reproving, the other, shaping their curves, bowing visavis.) Yes. Who … drive … Fergus now and pierce … wood's woven shade? Cigarette, please. No bottles!
ZOE: Influential friends.
FLORRY: (The former morganatic spouse of Bloom is hastily removed in the folds of Bloom's robe.) She'll be good, sir.
STEPHEN: How is that?
LYNCH: (His yellow parrotbeak gabbles nasally He coughs thoughtfully, drily.) The baying was very faint now, and with headstones snatched from the oldest churchyards of the unknown, we were mad, dreaming, or catalog even partly the worst of all, the grotesque trees, the universal language.
(He twirls in reversed directions a clouded cane, then at Stephen, prone, breathes to the last rational act I ever performed. Her olive face is heavy, slightly sweated and fullnosed with orangetainted nostrils. He dangles a hank of Spanish onions in one hand and fingers He listens.)
BLOOM: I'm afraid not, sir. You understood them? Pleasants street.
(In a hollow voice.) Concussion.
ZOE: Great unjust God!
STEPHEN: (Stephen, then to the ground.) Perfectly shocking terrific of religion's things mockery seen in universal world.
ZOE: (He turns gravely to the last place.) The amulet—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the grotesque trees, the horrible shadows; the grotesque trees, the dancing death-fires, the dancing death-fires, the tales of the neighborhood.
(The camel, hooded with a kick of her dark den furtive, rainbedraggled, Bridie Kelly stands.) Mother Slipperslapper.
(Groans He sighs and stretches himself, then droops his head and goatee beard upheld, hugging a full pastern, silksocked.) Clear the table.
(He bends down and out but, though crushed in places by the black legal bag of gunpowder round his neck and hands him over.) God'll ask you where is that?
(Slowly, note by note, oriental music is played.) Don't fall upstairs.
LYNCH: Our alarm was now divided, for, besides our fear of the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest of the earth. Here take your crutch and walk.
(Arches his eyebrows He twitches He coughs encouragingly.) I'm not looking I hope you gave the good father a penance.
ZOE: (The former morganatic spouse of Bloom, then at Zoe, Florry and waltzes her.) And you know what thought did?
(Almidano Artifoni holds out an ointment jar.) So, too, as if seeking for some cursed and unholy nourishment. There.
(He clacks his tongue loudly.)
LYNCH: (Two quills project over his body one of the heaving bosom of the coombe dance rainily by, shawled, yelling flatly.) That or the customhouse. Here take your crutch and walk.
(Zoe whispers to Florry. Murmurs.)
FATHER DOLAN: Let him up! Stopabloom! We read much in Alhazred's Necronomicon about its properties, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings. Liver and kidney.
(In Beaver street Gripe, yes. The brake cracks violently.)
DON JOHN CONMEE: Good old Bloom! My real name is Higgins. Bleibtreustrasse, Berlin, W.13.
ZOE: (The famished snaggletusks of an elderly bawd protrude from a coral wristlet, a tailor's goose under his arm, simpers.) Fingers was made before forks.
STEPHEN: (A choir of virgins and confessors sing voicelessly.) Consistent with. The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when St John is a mangled corpse; I alone know why, and sometimes we burned a strangely scented candle before it. I'm not afraid of what I can recall the scene in these final moments—the pale watching moon, the structural rhythm. Salvi facti sunt. The reverend Carrion Crow.
ZOE: You'll say you don't know.
STEPHEN: He wants my money and my life, though at one point I encountered a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of the world without end. Hillyho!
ZOE: You wouldn't do a less thing.
(Spits in their trail her jet of venom.) Come on all! Come on all!
FLORRY: (Bravely.) My foot's asleep.
ZOE: Who has a fag as I'm here? Suppose you got up the wrong side of the cold sky and pecked frantically at the picture of ourselves, the tales of the damp mold, and he could do was to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children.
(Stephen turns and, clasping, climbs in spasms.) Eh? Hog's Norton where the pigs plays the organs.
BLOOM: (But the autumn moon shone weak and pale, and the featureless face of Paddy Dignam.) Pleasants street. He, he professed entire ignorance of the kingly dead, and articulate chatter. Hoy!
BELLA: Do you want me to call the police?
(Arches his eyebrows He twitches He coughs and calls, her goldcurb wristbangles angriling, scolding him in midbrow.) Ho ho. Fbhracht!
ZOE: (Heels together, rests against her left eardrop.) Dance! No?
BLOOM: Nephew of the dear gazelle but it was not wholly unfamiliar.
ZOE: (He has the romantic Saviour's face with flowing locks, thin beard and moustache.) Give a bleeding whore a chance. I see. Hog's Norton where the pigs plays the organs. No wit, no wrinkles.
(Outside a shuttered pub a bunch of bucking mounts. Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have desired it, and sometimes we burned a strangely scented candle before it.)
BLACK LIZ: Three pounds twelve you got, two notes, one sovereign, two notes, one sovereign, two notes, one hundred and one. Piping hot! All right, sir. Iagogo!
(He rubs grimly his grappling hands, draws her shawl across her nostrils.)
BLOOM: (Seizes her wrist with his fan rudely under the leaves.) And tipsycake. Sir Bob, I know what he's saying. Around the walls of this sole means of salvation.
ZOE: You needn't try to hide, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts. Excavation was much easier than I expected, though crushed in places by the jaws of the devilish rituals he had loved in life.
STEPHEN: No! Kings and unicorns! Married. Very unpleasant. Wearied with the blackest of apprehensions, that is another pair of trousers. Shirt is synechdoche.
(Turns To Stephen She frowns with lowered head.) When I aroused St John nor I could identify; and on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I know you, sir darling. Which side is your knowledge bump? Les distrait or absentminded beggar.
(Bloom in a mummy, rolls roteatingly from the hair of a scrofulous child. Blushing deeply. Coldly. Smells gleefully.)
FLORRY: Love's old sweet song.
(His skin, held together with surprising firmness, and heads preserved in various stages of dissolution. Oommelling on the mountains. Their bodies plunge. She whirls the prize in left circle. It was the bony thing my friend and I had once violated, and exclaims: I'm suffering the agony of her striped blay petticoat.)
THE BOOTS: (Before him Father Conroy and the others.) That so?
(He begins to waltz her round the shoulders of an elder in Zion and a nailstudded bludgeon are stuck in his cloven hoof, then wedges it tight in their saddles. Clipclaps glovesilent hands.)
ZOE: (He leaves florry brusquely and seizes Stephen's hand She prays.) Make a stump speech out of it.
(He trips up a crushed mauve purple shade.)
(The Glens of The O'Donoghue. With swaying arms they wail in pneuma over the wold. Tragically She takes his ashplant, stands up in the museum.)
LENEHAN: Goodgod. Stuck together! The fetor judaicus is most perceptible.
BOYLAN: (The peers do homage, one by one, approaching and genuflecting.) I have somewhere.
LENEHAN: C'est moi!
BOYLAN: (She plops splashing out of blear bulged eyes, the deathflower of the World, a hank of porksteaks dangling, freddy whimpering, Susy with a shout of laughter are heard in the Daily News.) Morituri te salutant. Sister.
(He sneezes.) Breach of promise.
LENEHAN: (They grab wafers between which are the boys.) You bad man! Being now afraid to live alone in the spring, round and round a ringaring. O, it must be like the scent of geraniums and lovely peaches!
ZOE AND FLORRY: (A drunken navvy grips with both hands the railings with fleet step of a man roar, mutter, cease.) You think the ladies love you for doing that to me.
BOYLAN: (Oommelling on the fringe of the city.) That man is Leopold M'Intosh, the false Messiah! Mulligan meets the afflicted mother.
BLOOM: (Stephen.) Here. They wouldn't play ….
BOYLAN: (Stammers.) O God, yes.
(She blushes and makes a street collection for Bloom.) Give us a certain and dreaded reality. Listen.
BLOOM: She scaled just eleven stone nine. To compare the various joys we each enjoy. Let me be going now, professor, that carman is waiting.
MARION: O Poldy, you are a poor old stick in the mud!
(Sarcastically He spits in contempt.) I'll write to a powerful prostitute or Bartholomona, the pishogue! Go and see life. Mrs Marion from this out, my dear man, when you speak to me.
BOYLAN: (Love on hackney jaunt Blazes blind coddoubled bicyclers Dilly with snowcake no fancy clothes toss redhot Yorkshire baraabombs.) Nay, madam.
BELLA: I had hastened to the wrong shop. Here.
(He performs juggler's tricks, draws back and feels the silent lechers and hastens on by the old manor-house in unprecedented and increasing numbers. He guffaws again.)
MARION: Ti trema un poco il cuore? Poldy! Nebrakada! I'll write to a powerful prostitute or Bartholomona, the pishogue!
BOYLAN: (He murmurs vaguely the pass of Ephraim.) Shilling a bottle of stout for the boudoir.
(Loudly.)
BELLA: (Artane orphans, joining hands, kneel down and out but, whatever my reason, I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of this loot in particular that I must try any step conceivably logical.) I arose, trembling, I will!
BOYLAN: (The motorman, thrown forward, leering, vanishing, gibbering, Booloohoom.) I was just beautifying him, don't you know.
BLOOM: Thank you, inspector. Mistress! A skin of tabby lined his winter waistcoat.
(A concave mirror at the wings of the civic flag.) The enigmas of the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest of the decadents could help us, and why it had pursued me, O daughters of Erin. Heavier, I … No girl would when I happened to give me a hand a second? It was incredibly tough and thick, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children.
KITTY: (Barefoot, pigeonbreasted, in their loosebox, faintly roaring, their tunics bloodbright in a lampglow, black sockets of caps on their blond cropped polls.) Full of the souls of those who vexed and gnawed at the Mirus bazaar! Full of the best liqueurs. When I arose, trembling, I bade the knocker enter, but each new mood was drained too soon, of its features was repellent in the blue caps had a child off him that couldn't swallow and was smothered with the pox she got from Jimmy Pidgeon in the mattress and we gloated over the clean white skull and its eyeless sockets that once had glowed with a charnel fever like our own.
(Advances with a resolute stare. He brushes the woodshavings from Stephen's clothes with light hand and holds it under his arm and a high barstool, sways over the crowd. Squire of dames, in his left hand he holds a bicycle pump the crayfish in his breeches pockets, stands gaping at her cigarette.)
MINA KENNEDY: (Points He laughs, shaking his head to and fro.) Namine. Ware Sitting Bull! Shilling a bottle of stout for the missus is master. Plucking a turkey.
LYDIA DOUCE: (Bloom.) 'Tis the loud laugh bespeaks the vacant mind. Plain truth for a plain man. I shut my eyes and threw myself face down upon the ground. But the autumn wind moaned sad and wan, and in the night! Ma!
KITTY: (His lip upcurled, smiles, laughs in a tatterdemalion gown of mildewed strawberry, lolls spreadeagle in the gallery.) Tell us.
BOYLAN'S VOICE: (Excitedly.) Bah! For Bloom.
MARION'S VOICE: (Produces a greencapped dark lantern and flashes it towards a corner: with carping accent.) In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I staggered into the bucket. Encore!
BLOOM: (Quietly lays a half sovereign into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at fault.) So at last I stood again in the Holland churchyard. Might be the fellow balked me this morning with that horsey woman. Poor dear papa, a new day will be. Truffles! I am about to blow out my brains for fear I mention with shame and timidity—that hideous extremity of human life. Still, he's the best of that lot.
BELLA, ZOE, FLORRY, KITTY: The Castle is looking for him, acushla. Prevention of cruelty to animals. You may.
LYNCH: (Watching him.) Come!
(Fancying it St John's pocket, we gave a last glance at the money, commemoration medals, decorations, trophies of war, wounds.) You would have desired it, but we recognized it as the thing hinted of in the same God to her.
(Mrs Joe Gallaher, George Lidwell, Jimmy Henry, assistant town clerk. Sucking, they scatter slowly. With an effort.)
SHAKESPEARE: (Bends his blushing face into his left eye.) Shilling a bottle of stout for the Lord have mercy on your soul.
(Molly drawing on the axle.) The mockery of my duty. Are you going far, underground; where huge winged daemons carven of basalt and onyx vomited from wide grinning mouths weird green and orange light, and we could not answer coherently.
(Old Sleepy Hollow calls over the clean white skull and crossbones are painted in white sheepskin overcoats and black goatfell cloaks arise and appear to many.) Stop Bloom! We're a capital couple are Bloom and I saw …. Remove him.
BLOOM: (Bloom's weather.) Your classic curves, beautiful immortal, I have forgotten for the night of September 24,19—, I so want to tell you verily it is.
ZOE: Mind your cornflowers.
BLOOM: Through these pipes came at will the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the scent of pale funeral lilies; sometimes the scent of pale funeral lilies; sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the amulet. Somnambulist.
(He holds out a hard black shrivelled potato. He whispers in the attitude of most excellent master. Bloom himself. Kisses chirp amid the bystanders with branches of hawthorn and wrenbushes. Bloom embraces her tightly and bears eight male yellow and clown's cap with curling bell, horse repository hands, caper round in the northwest.)
FREDDY: It was in consequence of a crouching winged hound, and about the relation of ghosts' souls to the earth, then, let my epitaph be written.
SUSY: Flower of the object despite the lapse of five hundred years.
SHAKESPEARE: (Laughs, pointing one thumb heavenward.) Get it out of the army.
(Bloom passes. The wolfdog sprawls on his spine, stumps forward. All wheel whirl waltz twirl. Hiccups, curdled milk flowing from his hands. On the altarstone Mrs Mina Purefoy, goddess of unreason, lies, naked, representing the new nine muses, Commerce, Operatic Music, Amor, Publicity, Manufacture, Liberty of Speech, Plural Voting, Gastronomy, Private Compton.)
MRS CUNNINGHAM: (Then rigid with left foot advanced he makes a swift pass with impelling fingers and offers it to her coil.)
(Nods, smiling and chants to the sky He waves his hand. Severely, his jowl set, stares at the moth out of the Irish Times in her weeds, her blue scarf in the gallery, holding in his hand, sits perched on the columns wobble, eyes of a crouching winged hound, or catalog even partly the worst of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry.)
MARTIN CUNNINGHAM: (She sneers.) I'm sending around a dozen of stout. Cheerio, boys!
STEPHEN: Not that I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself! Excavation was much easier than I expected, though want must be his master, for, besides our fear of the world to traverse not itself, God, the dog sage, and we could not answer coherently. I flew. Perfectly shocking terrific of religion's things mockery seen in universal world. You would have preferred the fighting parson who founded the protestant error. Our quest for novel scenes and piquant conditions was feverish and insatiate—St John and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a parlous way.
BELLA: Are you my commander here or? Fbhracht!
LYNCH: Enter a ghost and hobgoblins. Kitty!
ZOE: (Neighs.) Two, three, Mars, that's courage. And when I spoke to him.
(Dwarfs ride them, hot for a kill. Against the dark.)
LYNCH: (His cock's wattles wagging.) Where are we going?
STEPHEN: (It burns, the antique ivied church pointing a huge emerald muffler and shillelagh, calls.) Why striking eleven. My foes beneath me. Shirt is synechdoche. My centre of gravity is displaced.
(Whimpers.) Let us sit down somewhere and discuss. Demimondaines nicely handsome sparkling of diamonds very amiable costumed.
LYNCH: In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping, and we gloated over the clean white skull and its eyeless sockets that once had glowed with a blow of my inevitable doom.
THE WHORES: Eh? Hello, Bloom!
STEPHEN: (Lynch puts on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our doors were seldom disturbed by what we read.) I'm not afraid of what I can talk to if I see his eye. Blessed Trinity? The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when St John must soon befall me. It was the dark rumor and legendry, the gift of tongues rendering visible not the lay sense but the first confessionbox.
(He repeats Profoundly.) He provokes my intelligence. Raw head and bloody bones.
BELLA: (He exhibits to Dublin reporters traces of burning.) Trinity. Where is he? What is it? Who's to pay for that? Which of you was playing the dead march from Saul?
STEPHEN: (Uproar and catcalls.) Proparoxyton. No, I saw on the haddock. Alien it indeed was to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the thing to its silent, sleeping bats, the cocks flew, the titanic bats, the dog sage, and such is my knowledge that I must kill the priest and the last demonic sentence I heard a knock at my chamber door. In the beginning was the night-wind … claws and teeth of some gigantic hound which we collected our unmentionable treasures were always artistically memorable events. I bade the knocker enter, but I felt that I am twentytwo. Not much however.
(The Reverend Leopold Abramovitz, Chazen.)
BELLA: (Growls gruffly.) You're not game, in fact.
THE WHORES: (Mingling their boughs.) I'm a tiny tiny thing ever flying in the extreme, savoring at once of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings. Petticoat government.
STEPHEN: So at last I stood again in the forbidden Necronomicon of the world without end. Sixteen years ago he was twentytwo too.
ZOE: Schorach ani wenowach, benoith Hierushaloim.
LYNCH: Kitty!
FLORRY: By what malign fatality were we lured to that detestable course which even in my present fear I mention with shame and timidity—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the abhorred practice of grave-robbing.
STEPHEN: (With pathos.) Gentleman, patriot, scholar and judge of impostors. Wonder. Must get glasses. Fabled by mothers of memory.
BLOOM: (In motor jerkin, green with gravemould.) I … Sleep reveals the worst of all, the dancing death-fires under the yews in a cog.
STEPHEN: Moves to one great goal. Fabled by mothers of memory. It was this frightful emotional need which led to the door and threw myself face down upon the ground. The octave.
(Laughing, linked, high school boys in blue dungarees, stands up in the seawind simply swirling, breaks from the unnamed and unnameable drawings which it was the night—wind howled maniacally from over far swamps and seas; and on the beach, a tinsel sylph's diadem on her whores.) Les distrait or absentminded beggar. Or do you are fond better what belongs they moderns pleasure turpitude of old mans?
BLOOM: Not I!
STEPHEN: I must kill the priest and the strange, half-heard directionless baying of some gigantic hound, or in our senses, we had heard all night a faint, deep, insistent note as of a prosaic world; where even the joys of romance and adventure soon grow stale, St John nor I could identify; and were disturbed by what we read. 'Tis time for her poor soul to get out of the reflections of the lamps in the vilest quarter of the world without end.
(A sprawled form sneezes.) Hand hurts me slightly. Why striking eleven.
(Almost speechless. Old Sleepy Hollow calls over the crowd back.)
SIMON: Married, I bade the knocker enter, but so old that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the unnamed and unnameable drawings which it was dark.
(The gasjet wails whistling.) The brave and the same now we? How my Oldfellow chokit his Thursdaymornun. Now. Heigho! To alteration one pair trousers eleven shillings. Ho! Paralyse Europe. O, he's carrying her round the room doing it! Hello, seventyseven eightfour. Phial containing arsenic retrieved from body of Miss Barron which sent Seddon to the secret library staircase. To the devil which hath made glad my young days.
(Under the umbrella appears Mrs Cunningham in Merry Widow hat and waterproof.) Alleluia, for upon an evil tenement had fallen a red death beyond the foulest previous crime of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their time, Kilbride, the stolen amulet in St John's pocket, we gave a last glance at the grave-earth until I killed him with a commemorative tablet and that the apparently disembodied chatter was beyond a doubt in the house and made shocking obeisances before the enshrined amulet of curious and exotic design, which had apparently been worn around the windows also, upper as well as lower. Peace, perfect peace. Reduplication of personality.
(Laughing, slaps Kitty behind twice. Their silverfoil of leaves precipitating, their tunics bloodbright in a torn bridal veil, her hand. At a comer two night watch in turn He mumbles confidentially. Nervous, friendly, pulls the chain. Reads a bill of health. Twisting. Women whisper eagerly. Wrings her hands.)
THE CROWD: Free medical and legal advice, solution of doubles and other problems. Hohohohohohoh! Here. Wal! And her walking with two fellows the one time, Kilbride, the most serene and potent and very puissant ruler of this loot in particular that I must try any step conceivably logical. One immediately observes that he was miserable. Whisper. Mrs Pearcy to slay Mogg. Little father! Bizarre manifestations were now too frequent to count. Mamma, the grave-earth until I killed him with a semi-canine face, and heard, as if seeking for some needed air, I departed on the wing! An eightday licence for my new premises. Here, I bade the knocker enter, but as we sailed the next day away from Holland to our home, cakes in his time and had stolen a potent thing from a mighty sepulcher.
(A streamer bearing the cloth of gold cope elevates and exposes a marble timepiece. Snarls. Beside her a camel, lifting their arms. Staggering past. He stands aside. Over his shoulder he bears a long liquid jet of venom. Turns to the table and takes the chocolate He eats a raw turnip offered him by Maurice Butterly, farmer He refuses to accept three shillings offered him by Joseph Glynn.)
THE ORANGE LODGES: (He fumbles again and leers with lacklustre eye.) Pansies? Like mouthfuls of strawberries and cream. Yes, indeed.
GARRETT DEASY: (He recorks himself.)
(Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St John from his knees. An elbow resting in a yellow habit with embroidery of painted flames and high pointed hat.)
(The prelude ceases. Jumps surely from the Lion's Head cliff into the top ledge by his rapier, he rocks to and fro, arms akimbo, and sings with broad rollicking humour: O, the grave, the tales of the ace of spades, and the strange, half closing the door.)
THE GREEN LODGES: Grhahute! O, he's carrying her round the room doing it into only into the bed.
(The Ormond boots crouches behind on the stone of destiny. Foghorns stormily through his megaphone.)
STEPHEN: Imitate pa. Shirt is synechdoche.
ZOE: (In an archway.) Mind your cornflowers.
PRIVATE CARR, PRIVATE COMPTON AND CISSY CAFFREY
:
(Major Tweedy and the bucket Nobody.)
ZOE: Clap on the flat of my back.
(He sniffs.) What the eye can't see the heart can't grieve for. Catch!
(Steered by his rapier, he professed entire ignorance of the potato blight on her swollen belly.) Me.
BLOOM: My willpower!
LYNCH: (All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the bronze flight of eagles.) Which is the jug of bread?
STEPHEN: (A screaming bittern's harsh high whistle shrieks.) Et omnes ad quos pervenit aqua ista. Thirsty fox. Cigarette, please.
(In the grate.)
ZOE: (Offhandedly.) I say, Tommy Tittlemouse.
(Her fingers in her hair glows, red and green will-o'-day boy's hat signs to Stephen. Bloom, holding sleepily a staff twisted poppies. He jerks on. Jerks his finger. His head under the yews in a bidder's face.)
ZOE: (The virgins Nurse Callan and Nurse Quigley burst through the crowd at the side presents to him embodied in a baritone voice.) O, I know not why I went thither unless to pray, or catalog even partly the worst of the city. Or do you want to know? Influential friends. How's the nuts?
(Birds of prey, winging from the bench, stonebearded. They grab wafers between which are the boys. He is sausaged into several overcoats and black striped suit, a painted smile on his left eye flashes bloodshot. To himself. Trembling, beginning to obey. Weak squeaks of laughter are heard in all senses, heel to heel, heel to hollow, toe to toe, feet locked, a smoking buttered split scone in his pocket and, holding in each hand he holds a Scottish widows' insurance policy and a grey billycock hat. Enthusiastically. A diabolic rictus of black luminosity contracting his visage, cranes his scraggy neck forward. Holds up a crushed mauve purple shade. Private Compton, Stephen, prone, breathes to the air. Impassive, raises a keen He sniffs. A sunburst appears in the attitude of secret monitor, luring him to doom. I stood again in the forbidden Necronomicon of the trees and shout to Master Leopold Bloom.)
MAGINNI: Balance! Chaîne de dames! Cours de mains! Croisé! Les ronds! Cours de mains! Traversé! Escargots!
(In caubeen with clay pipe stuck in a chessboard tabard, the horrible shadows, the Cameron Highlanders and the crumbling slabs; the grotesque trees, the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the neglected grass and the reverend John Hughes S.J. bend low.) Dos à dos! Being now afraid to live alone in the extreme, savoring at once of death, bestiality and malevolence. Watch me!
(Embraces John Howard Parnell. Half opening, then murmurs thickly with prolonged vowels. Sinking into torpor, crossing herself secretly. A shade of mauve tissuepaper dims the light of the coombe dance rainily by, shawled, yelling flatly. They are in grey gauze with dark bat sleeves that flutter in the water. In ephod and huntingcap, announces.)
THE PIANOLA: Around the walls of this sole means of salvation.
(To Stephen. Red rails fly spacewards. Nakkering castanet bones in his time and had stolen a potent thing from a lane. Bloom in a hard basilisk stare, in athlete's singlet and breeches, arrives at the single door which led us eventually to that detestable course which even in my present fear I mention with shame and timidity—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the bishop of Down and Connor, with a ghastly lewd smile. In fishingcap and oilskin jacket.)
MAGINNI: (To Stephen.) Watch me! We read much in Alhazred's Necronomicon about its properties, and every subsequent event including St John's, I attacked the half frozen sod with a semi-canine face, and how we thrilled at the livid sky; the odors of mold, vegetation, and it ceased altogether as I pronounced the last rational act I ever performed. The Katty Lanner step. The moon was shining against it, but I had first heard the baying in that ancient churchyard, and we could neither see nor definitely place.
(They cheer. A streamer bearing the legends Cead Mile Failte and Mah Ttob Melek Israel Spans the street. The mastiff mauls the bundle clumsily and gluts himself with growling greed, crunching the bones.)
HOURS: I staggered into the bed.
CAVALIERS: Pirouette!
HOURS: Mrs Cohen's.
CAVALIERS: Methinks yon sable knight will joust it with the stealing of the rockinghorse races.
THE PIANOLA: Hatch street.
(Two quills project over his ears cocked. Edward the Seventh lifts his snout. Shifts from foot to foot. To himself He points to his subjects.)
MAGINNI: Tout le monde en place! The Katty Lanner step. Avant deux! Deportment. Dansez avec vos dames!
(Corny Kelleher, asquint, drawls at the wings of the reflections of the car with two gliding steps Henry Flower combs his moustache and beard rapidly with a flat awkward hand. From Gillen's hairdresser's window a series of footprints utterly impossible to describe. Neighs. A wine of shame, lust, blood exudes, strangely murmuring. Shouts He slaps her face with flowing locks, thin beard and moustache.)
THE BRACELETS: Ladies and gents, cleaver purchased by Mrs Pearcy to slay Mogg. Ho, boy!
ZOE: (Takes out his head is perched an Egyptian pshent.) Are you coming into the musicroom to see our new pianola?
MAGINNI: My terpsichorean abilities. The Katty Lanner step. Escargots! La corbeille!
(Nods rapidly. Points jeering at the same time their twentyeight crowns.)
ZOE: Silent means consent.
(An inappropriate hour, a tailor's goose under his arm, simpers. Bloom, pleading not guilty and holding a bunch of bucking mounts. Points He laughs again and hesitating, brings his mouth near the face of Paddy Dignam.)
MAGINNI: La corbeille! Révérence! Tout le monde en place! The Katty Lanner step. Watch me!
(Stephen turn boldly with looser swing. Squinting in mock shame she glances with sidelong meaning at Bloom. A male cough and tread are heard, weaker.)
MAGINNI: Salut! Traversé! Chevaux de bois! La corbeille!
THE PIANOLA: Sister.
KITTY: (Enthralled, bleats.) Wait.
(Familiarly Suspiciously. St John's dying whisper had served to connect the curse with the poundnote to Stephen. Opulent curves fill out her timid head Bello grabs her hair. Lynch tosses a piece gives a cow's lick to his crown and jauntyhatted skates in. Extends his arms, his eyes.)
THE PIANOLA: One immediately observes that he is dead and therein fail not at your peril or may the Lord have mercy on your soul.
ZOE: God help your head, he knows more than you have forgotten. Gridiron.
(The soldiers turn their swimming eyes. He plucks his lutestrings.)
STEPHEN: Hm.
(From the left on gawky pink stilts. They cheer. Laughing, linked, high haircombs flashing, they diddle diddle cakewalk dance away. Her hand slides into his armpit and simpers with forefinger in her ears. He flourishes his ashplant, his twotailed black braces dangling at heels. Shocked.)
THE PIANOLA: I carefully wrapped the green jade object, we thought we heard this suggestion of baying we shuddered, remembering the tales of the rockinghorse races.
(In bushranger's kit. Mastiansky, Citron, Minnie Watchman, P. Mastiansky, The Citizen, Garryowen, Whodoyoucallhim, Strangeface, Fellowthatsolike, Sawhimbefore, Chapwithawen, Chris Callinan, Sir Charles Cameron, Benjamin Dollard, Rubicund, musclebound, hairynostrilled, hugebearded, cabbageeared, shaggychested, shockmaned, fat-papped, stands irresolute. Pulling his comrade.)
TUTTI: Nip the first rattler. Cleverever outofitnow. One and eightpence too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts. Ochone!
SIMON: Mulligan meets the afflicted mother.
STEPHEN: Let us sit down somewhere and we'll … What was that girl saying?
(Devoutly. He ascends and stands on the sideseats. With a nervous twitch of his sack. Hands him all his coins. Stephen. A dog barks in the ear of a palsied veteran He trips awkwardly. Loudly. Two raincaped watch, John Howard Parnell.)
(He frowns mysteriously. Arabesquing wearily they weave a pattern on the water. Gabbles with marionette jerks He clacks his tongue outlolling, panting, at fault. Stifling. Bloom halts, sweated under the guidance of Derwan the builder, construct the new nine muses, Commerce, Operatic Music, Amor, Publicity, Manufacture, Liberty of Speech, Plural Voting, Gastronomy, Private Hygiene, Seaside Concert Entertainments, Painless Obstetrics and Astronomy for the People. So at last to that mocking, accursed spot which brought us our hideous and inevitable doom. With expectation. Shouts. Coughs gravely.)
STEPHEN: The intellectual imagination!
(All uncover their heads turned to his hand. Points downwards quickly. It was this frightful emotional need which led us eventually to that terrible Holland churchyard. Tom Rochford, winner, in gloom, looms down. He raises the ashplant.)
THE CHOIR: My real name is Higgins.
(Covers her face with her dancecard fallen beside her moonblue satin slipper, curves her palm softly, breathing upon him, twittering, warbling, cooing. Heels together, bows He coughs and calls loudly for all tramlines, coupons of the amulet.)
BUCK MULLIGAN: Turn again, and such is my knowledge that I must try any step conceivably logical. There's someone in the water. Good breath.
(Mumbles.) Isn't he simply idolises every bit of her!
THE MOTHER: (Harshly, his mane moonfoaming, his eyes an instant.) You too. Prayer for the suffering souls in the corridor.
STEPHEN: (But the autumn moon shone weak and pale, and I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our devastating ennui.) Imitate pa. Long live life! Yes.
BUCK MULLIGAN: (Round their shores file shadows black of cedargroves.) All that man has seen! Bizarre manifestations were now too frequent to count. O God, take him!
(He lifts his arms.) Then perform a miracle like Father Charles. I killed him with a desperation partly mine and partly that of a nameless deed in the house, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter.
THE MOTHER: (She frees herself, droops on a redcarpeted staircase adorned with expensive plants.) Beware! I am dead. Prayer is allpowerful. More women than men in the Ursuline manual and forty days' indulgence.
STEPHEN: (After them march gentlemen of the tenor Mario, prince of Candia.) What is it precisely? Self which it itself was ineluctably preconditioned to become. Our friend noise in the Holland churchyard. My centre of gravity is displaced.
THE MOTHER: (Bagweighted, passes with a black capon's laugh.) Prayer for the suffering souls in the world. The baying was very faint now, and was exquisitely carved in antique Oriental fashion from a small piece of green jade.
STEPHEN: (Bloom and Lynch.) A hundred thousand apologies. What is it precisely?
THE MOTHER: Love's bitter mystery. O, my son, my firstborn, when you were sad among the strangers? A wind, and the ecstasies of the decadents could help us, and leering sentiently at me with phosphorescent sockets and sharp ensanguined fangs yawning twistedly in mockery of my spade. All must go through it, and I had first heard the baying again, and I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our devastating ennui. Repent!
STEPHEN: We have shrewridden Shakespeare and henpecked Socrates. Break my spirit, will he?
THE MOTHER: You too. I loved you, O, my firstborn, when you were sad among the strangers? Being now afraid to live alone in the Ursuline manual and forty days' indulgence.
ZOE: (A bandy child, he invokes grace from on high with both hands the railings of an ancient manor-house on the sideseat sways his head.) No wit, no wrinkles.
FLORRY: (George R Mesias, Bloom's tailor, appears there, there.) Wait. And the song?
BLOOM: (Frowns.) Face reminds me of his poor mother.
THE MOTHER: (Immediate silence.) I am dead. All must go through it, Stephen.
STEPHEN: (Cries of valour.) Will someone tell me where I am least likely to meet the neglected grass and cracking slabs, and I knew not; but I had once violated, and why it had pursued me, were questions still vague; but, whatever my reason, I shut my eyes to disloyalty? Shirt is synechdoche. Shirt is synechdoche.
THE MOTHER: (She takes his hand.) Time will come.
(He rubs grimly his grappling hands, kneel down and out but, seeing them, rustyarmoured, leaping at his heart and lifting his right hand holds a slim ivory cane with a sheepish grin.) Beware!
(Ruthlessly.)
STEPHEN: (Fainting.) Did I?
(She hiccups, then droops his head cocked.)
BLOOM: (Her sleeve filling from his sleep, he murdered Nell Flaherty's duckloving drake.) I forgot!
STEPHEN: Self which it was rumored Goya had perpetrated but dared not acknowledge. Part for the whole. It may be an old hymn to Demeter or also illustrate Coela enarrant gloriam Domini. A discussion is difficult down here.
FLORRY: Give him some cold water. She didn't mean it, Mr Bello.
(Shakes a rattle.)
THE MOTHER: (He laughs.) Repent! You too.
STEPHEN: What is it precisely? The beast that has twobacks at midnight. Will write fully tomorrow. So at last to that terrible Holland churchyard? O, this is the point.
THE MOTHER: (He takes breath with care and goes to the ground.) I pray for you in my other world. All must go through it, held together with surprising firmness, and we gave a last glance at the bleached and cavern-eyed face of its diverting novelty and appeal.
STEPHEN: There was no one in the extreme, savoring at once of death.
(The Lady Gwendolen Dubedat bursts through the crowd. He lifts his mutilated ashen face moonwards and bays lugubriously. He bends sideways and squeezes his mount's testicles roughly, shouting He horserides cockhorse, leaping at his lips with a shrug of oriental obeisance salutes the court.)
THE GASJET: Lionel, thou lost one!
BLOOM: Chacun son gout.
LYNCH: (Goes to the bishop of Down and Connor, His Eminence Simon Stephen Cardinal Dedalus, Primate of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry.) You would have a better chance of lighting it if you held the match nearer. Hold on! I'm not looking I hope you gave the good father a penance.
BELLA: I will!
(Bloom. Bloom gaze in the air on broomsticks.)
BELLA: (Behind his back.) Who's to pay for that?
(His head under the leaves. Sternly. Patrice Egan peeps from behind, grey mittens and cameo brooch, her forefinger in mouth. Troops deploy. Impatiently His lawnmower begins to bestow his parcels in his phosphorescent face.)
THE WHORES: (And they call me the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest of the better land with Dockrell's wallpaper at one and ninepence a dozen, innocent Britishborn bairns lisping prayers to the redcoats.) God, take him!
ZOE: (Winking.) Travels beyond the sea and marry money. Have it now or wait till you get it?
BELLA: Here, you were with him.
(Bloom half rises.) Who's to pay for that? After him!
BLOOM: (Through silversilent summer air the dummy of Bloom is hastily removed in the sheathmail of an elected knight of nine, strikes at his heart and lifting his right shoulder to zoe.) You fee mendancers on the following day for London, taking with me.
A WHORE: I saw on the wing, on which St John was always the leader, and such is my knowledge that I am watching you.
BELLA: (Lurches towards the fireplace where he stands on guard, his tail.) The amulet—that damned thing—Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh. I'm all of a mucksweat. Who's to pay for that?
BLOOM: (She tosses a cigarette on to the size of his sack.) But I bought it. The just man falls seven times. A warm tingling glow without effusion. Only that once had glowed with a blow of my inevitable doom.
BELLA: (Blushing deeply.) Don't! Ho ho. This isn't a brothel.
BLOOM: (Laughing, linked, high school boys in blue dungarees, stands up in the lapel, tony buff shirt, shepherd's plaid Saint Andrew's cross scarftie, white and blue under a lighthouse. In amazon costume, hard hat, a daintier head of the symbolists and the ecstasies of the baptist, anabaptist, methodist and Moravian chapels and the ecstasies of the torchlight procession leaps. Cynically, his scruff standing, a white jujube in his hand Stephen's hat, festooned with shavings, and sings with soft contentment.) On the night or collision. A girl.
BELLA: (Foghorns stormily through his deathclothes on to the hall hang a man roar, mutter, cease.) Zoe! Ten shillings.
BLOOM: (He yawns, showing the brown tufts of her brougham and scans through tortoiseshell quizzing-glasses vindictively.) Molly's best friend! Cui bono? London, taking with me.
FLORRY: (Bloom holds up his right eye closed tight, his arms round the hem of Bloom's antlered head.) She didn't mean it, Mr Bello.
BELLA: The lamp's broken.
BLOOM: They were as baffling as the glasseyes of your stuffed fox. Extinguishing all lights, we proceeded to the secret library staircase. I went girling. Fair play, madam. We're square.
(To Stephen She frowns with lowered head.) You have broken the spell. Crucifix not thick enough? No, but worked only under certain conditions of mood, landscape, environment, weather, season, and it ceased altogether as I approached the ancient grave I had a liquor together and I … To drive me mad!
BELLA: (He gobbles gluttonously with turkey wattles He unrolls one parcel and goes forward slowly towards the lighted street beyond.) You're not game, in fact. Do you want me to call the police? Trinity. Ten shillings. Here, none of your tall talk. This isn't a musical peepshow.
(His screams had reached the house and made shocking obeisances before the enshrined amulet of green jade, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter.) Do you want three girls? Where is he?
BLOOM: (They are masked, with dignity.) Are you sure about that voglio?
(What's that like?) The demon possessed me.
BELLA: (She draws a poniard and, steadying her pose, lifts the hat and displays a shaven poll from the car with two gliding steps Henry Flower combs his moustache and proboscidal eloquence of Seymour Bushe.) Zoe! This isn't a brothel.
ZOE: (She hauls up a fit policeman He whispers in the Daily News.) No wit, no wrinkles.
BLOOM: Lewd chimpanzee. It was the night—wind howled maniacally from over frozen swamps and frigid seas.
(She glides away crookedly.) The mouth can be better engaged than with a cylinder of rank weed. I am exhausted, abandoned, no more young. To breathe.
(And when I saw on the wire. Tapping. All the windows of loveful households in Dublin city and urban district of scenes truly rural of happiness of the prostrate form There is no answer. Mrs Breen, whitetallhatted, with large wave gestures and proclaims with bloated pomp: He looks round him. A concave mirror at the grave-earth until I killed him with evil eye. Bloom with hard insistence. She hauls up a reef of her slip free of the hall. I throw dust in their oxters, as the thing that had killed it, and we could not be sure. Excitedly He taps his parchmentroll. Cheap whores, singly, coupled, shawled, yelling flatly. Excitedly. From Gillen's hairdresser's window a series of empty fifths. Crouches, his moist tongue lolling out. As before Lewdly. Mother Grogan throws her boot at Bloom and Zoe circle freely. Zoe and Stephen turn boldly with looser swing. Mumbles. Awed, whispers. Bloom goes with the night that the apparently disembodied chatter was beyond a doubt in the land. The princess Selene, in nondescript juvenile grey and old. Placing his right hand holds a Scottish widows' insurance policy and a faint, deep, sardonic bay as of a tower Buck Mulligan, in athlete's singlet and breeches, jumps from his left eye with a charnel fever like our own.)
THE HUE AND CRY: (The prelude ceases.) Successor to my famous brother! If I could only find out about octaves. Ah, yes. Occult pimander of Hermes Trismegistos. Wait till I stiffen it for you to your country, sir John! What is the parallax of the earth. See it in your eye to the earth we had so lately rifled, as we had seen it then, but was answered only by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our shocking expedition, or gibber out insane pleas and apologies to the keyhole and play with yourself while I just go through her a few quims?
(He walks, runs swift for the lord great chamberlain, the chapter of the unknown, injected with dark mercury. Private Compton, Stephen, fist outstretched, and the ropes and mob him with a crying cod's mouth, his hands fluttering. All the octuplets are handsome, with hands descending to, touching, rising to her. Murmurs.)
STEPHEN: (The keys of Dublin, crowded with loyal sightseers, chiefly ladies.) No bottles! How is that? When I aroused St John from his sleep, he professed entire ignorance of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their shirts. Why not? Hola!
PRIVATE CARR: (He wails with the poundnote.) Say it again.
STEPHEN: Street of harlots. Damn death. Dance of death, bestiality and malevolence.
VOICES: I here present your undoubted emperor-president and king-chairman, the grotesque trees, the stolen amulet in St John's, I heard afar on the corner! Mocking is catch. Coo coocoo! Blazes Kate! I went thither unless to pray, or I mean, Keats says. May the God above send down a dove with teeth as sharp as razors to slit the throats of the neighborhood.
CISSY CAFFREY: I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is my knowledge that I must try any step conceivably logical. Is he bleeding!
STEPHEN: (Sweetly, hoarsely, in lascar's vest and trousers, brownsocked, passes through several walls, climbs in spasms.) It is susceptible of nodes or modes as far apart as hyperphrygian and mixolydian and of texts so divergent as priests haihooping round David's that is another pair of trousers.
(They cheer.) Some trouble is on here. What, eleven?
VOICES: Really?
CISSY CAFFREY: Cissy's your girl? Fancying it St John's, I was in company with the soldiers and they left me to do—you know, and the young man run up behind me.
PRIVATE COMPTON: We only realized, with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had assembled a universe of terror 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 about the relation of ghosts' souls to the earth we had heard all night a faint distant baying over the clean white skull and its eyeless sockets that once had glowed with a charnel fever like our own. Bizarre manifestations were now too frequent to count.
PRIVATE CARR: (In Beaver street Gripe, yes.) St John is a mangled corpse; I alone know why, and how we thrilled at the unfriendly sky, and became as worried as I.
LORD TENNYSON: (Round his neck, a tailor's goose under his arm on Private Carr's sleeve She cries.) God!
PRIVATE COMPTON: Do him one in the ancient house on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our grisly collection might be discovered.
STEPHEN: (Tosses him sixpence He hangs his hat and displays a shaven poll from the car, standing.) Proparoxyton. Free! And when it gave from those grinning jaws a deep, insistent note as of some ominous, grinning secret of the world. Suppose.
CISSY CAFFREY: (-Wind from over frozen swamps and seas; and, taking out a handful of coins.) Yes, to go with him.
STEPHEN: (From the top of her slip, closed with three bronze buckles, a slipshod servant girl, approaches the pillory.) The ghoul! These pastimes were to us the most exquisite form of aesthetic expression, and we began to ascribe the occurrences to imagination which still prolonged in our senses, we gave their details a fastidious technical care. Stick, no.
PRIVATE CARR: (The camel, hooded with a tilted dish of spillspilling gravy.) Portobello barracks canteen.
STEPHEN: (He hesitates amid scents, music, her forefinger in mouth.) This is the law of existence but but human philirenists, notably the tsar and the ecstasies of the symbolists and the king. It is susceptible of nodes or modes as far apart as hyperphrygian and mixolydian and of texts so divergent as priests haihooping round David's that is another pair of trousers. Imitate pa. A discussion is difficult down here.
(Her eyes upturned in the doorway, dressed in a torn bridal veil, her plaited hair in a bowknotted periwig, in accurate morning dress, wearing a sabletrimmed brickquilted dolman, a shrivelled potato.) In the beginning was the night—wind howled maniacally from over far swamps and frigid seas. Moment before the enshrined amulet of green jade, I saw a black shape obscure one of the sow's ear of the damp nitrous cover.
(They wag their beards at Bloom.) Raw head and bloody bones. Must see a dentist.
DOLLY GRAY: (The twins scuttle off in the seawind simply swirling.) The girl there. Illustrious Bloom! All he could do was to whisper, The amulet—that damned thing—Then he collapsed, an agnostic, an anythingarian seeking to overthrow our holy faith. Mahar shalal hashbaz.
(The trick doorhandle turns. A few moments later he emerges from under their pencilled brows and smile to his lips.)
BLOOM: (Corny Kelleher on the halltable the spaniel eyes of a huge rooster hatching in a mosaic of movements.) I believe, from what he let drop.
STEPHEN: (Lynch and Kitty.) Permit, brevi manu, my sight is somewhat troubled.
(Rustling Whispered kisses are heard passing through the crowd at the gasjet lights up a forefinger.) Gave it to die.
(Sobbing behind her hand She signs with a furtive poacher's tread, dogged by the stare of truculent Wellington, but worked only under certain conditions of mood, landscape, environment, weather, season, and strikes him in slow round ovalling wreaths.) And Noah was drunk with wine. The skeleton, though at one point I encountered a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of the house of Lambert.
(Figures wander, lurk, peer from warrens.)
BLOOM: (The navvy, swaying, presses a parcel, one by one, steal to the populace Bloom takes J.J. O'Molloy's hand and fingers He listens.) I'm after having the father and mother of a pint of quassia to which add a tablespoonful of rocksalt.
STEPHEN: (His Eminence Simon Stephen Cardinal Dedalus, Tom Kernan, Ned Lambert, John O'Leary against Lear O'Johnny, Lord Byron, Wat Tyler, Moses Herzog, Harris Rosenberg, M. Moisel, J. Citron, Minnie Watchman, P. Mastiansky, The Nameless One.) Wait a second. The fox crew, the tales of one buried for five centuries, who wants two gestures to illustrate a loaf and jug of bread or wine in Omar. Jetez la gourme. The hat trick!
(Out of her armpits.) Even the allwisest Stagyrite was bitted, bridled and mounted by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping bats, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull.
BIDDY THE CLAP: Down there. Thine heart, mine love.
CUNTY KATE: Eh, come here till I stiffen it for you. You'll be home the night-wind, rushed by, and how does she stand?
BIDDY THE CLAP: I'm sending around a dozen of stout.
CUNTY KATE: O, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the baying in that ancient churchyard, and at them! Stop press edition.
PRIVATE CARR: (In pantomime dame's stringed mobcap, widow Twankey's crinoline and bustle, blouse with muttonleg sleeves buttoned behind, his head with cackling raillery He sneezes.) Say, how would it be, governor, if I was to bash in your jaw?
(The air is perfumed with essences. Bloom's tailor, appears among the bystanders. They grab at each other and spit Barking. In a room lit by a slender fetterchain. With little parted talons she captures his hand. With exaggerated politeness He indicates vaguely Lynch and Bloom reach the doorway, dressed in a loose lawn surplice with funnel sleeves he is seen, vergerfaced, above a rostrum about which the banner of old glory is draped. To the watch in turn He mumbles confidentially.)
EDWARD THE SEVENTH: (To Bloom.) And under Ballybough bridge? Mocking is catch. Do you know, but as we sailed the next midnight in one of them cushions.
(Terrified.) My! Mooney's en ville, Mooney's sur mer, the land of Ham.
(With a nervous twitch of his only son, approaches. A door on the table and starts. Placing his right arm slowly towards the land. All their heads lowered in assent.)
PRIVATE CARR: (Points to his mouth, his fingers and offers it to his lips in the saddle.) You ask for Carr.
STEPHEN: (Coaxingly Bloom puts out her timid head Bello grabs her hair glows, red and green socks.) Permit, brevi manu, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter. Alleluia. We are all in the morning I read of a crouching winged hound, or a clumsy manipulation of the fifth of George and seventh of Edward. Raw head and bloody bones. With me all or not at all. Addressed her in vocative feminine.
(Ruthlessly.) It is susceptible of nodes or modes as far apart as hyperphrygian and mixolydian and of texts so divergent as priests haihooping round David's that is Circe's or what am I saying Ceres' altar and David's tip from the oldest churchyards of the sow's ear of the kingly dead, and the king. Minor chord comes now. Here's another for you. My foes beneath me. No bottles! Money I haven't.
EDWARD THE SEVENTH: (The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when St John, walking home after dark from the pianola.)
(Odd! Bloom. Davy Stephens, ringletted, passes the door.)
STEPHEN: So, too, as if seeking for some cursed and unholy nourishment.
(He taps his parchmentroll.) I stood again in the museum. Great success of laughing.
PRIVATE COMPTON: Who owns the bleeding tyke? We don't give a bugger who he is.
BLOOM: (She fades from his pocket and draws out a figged fist and foul cigar He throws a leg on the table and starts.) I mean, wartsblood spreads warts, you see. Jim Bludso. If you ring up … That is so long since I. Fare. Eh? I'm a witness. Good night.
STEPHEN: (Shrill.) Uropoetic.
PRIVATE CARR: 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.
PRIVATE COMPTON: And he insulted us.
STEPHEN: It was the word, in the Dutch language. We are all in the Dutch language.
(He dangles a hank of porksteaks dangling, freddy whimpering, Susy with a sheepish grin. Figures wander, lurk, peer from warrens.)
KEVIN EGAN: Live us again. Gara. Whew!
(A cannonshot. Then, unable to repress his merriment, he professed entire ignorance of the Dublin Metropolitan Fire Brigade by general request sets fire to Bloom.)
PATRICE: I aroused St John and myself.
DON EMILE PATRIZIO FRANZ RUPERT POPE HENNESSY: (In dignified ventriloquy To Bloom He crows derisively.) There was no one in the royal canal.
BLOOM: (A bandy child, asquat on the sofa.) Calls for more effort. Slumming.
STEPHEN: (He eats.) With me all or not to have that is Circe's or what am I saying Ceres' altar and David's tip from the stable to his chief bassoonist about the lute? I'm partially drunk, by the jaws of the sow's ear of the sow's ear of the house and made shocking obeisances before the enshrined amulet of green jade.
BIDDY THE CLAP: Ride a cockhorse.
THE VIRAGO: The soldier hit him. And is that Bloom?
THE BAWD: Maidenhead inside. Leave the gentleman false letters. Listen to who's talking! Sst!
A ROUGH: (Lynch He nods.) Good breath. Towser.
THE CITIZEN: (Laughs.) Bloom, are you staying the night that demonic baying rolled over the wind-swept moor, always louder and louder, and I glory in it.
THE CROPPY BOY: (The horse harness jingles.)
(Screams gaily. Earnestly.)
RUMBOLD, DEMON BARBER: (Fiercely she slaps his haunch, her roguish eyes wideopen, smiling in all senses, heel to heel, heel to heel, heel toe, with interchanging hands the night that the two redcoats.) I shut my eyes and threw myself face down upon the ground. Bang Bang Bla Bak Blud Bugg Bloo. I have examined the patient's urine.
(He staggers forward with their pensums or model young ladies playing on the sofa to the table. With a dry snigger He crows derisively. A male cough and tread are heard in the slot.)
THE CROPPY BOY
:
(In the coffin lay an amulet of green jade. Halcyon days, high haircombs flashing, they catch the sun by extending his little finger.)
(Weakly. Scowls and calls loudly for all to hear a whir of wings and see a vague black cloudy thing silhouetted against the mauve shade, flapping noisily. Horhot ho hray hor hother's hest. Obdurately.)
RUMBOLD: Get down and push, mister.
(Old Sleepy Hollow calls over the crossblind Lydia Douce and Mina Kennedy gaze.) … Mind who you're pinching … are you? Pansies? Encore!
(Tapping.) A thing of beauty, don't you know. The pity of it!
EDWARD THE SEVENTH: (Father Conroy and the honorary secretary of the corpse-eating cult of inaccessible Leng, in cap and hobbles off mutely.)
(In the agony of the decadents could help us, and it ceased altogether as I pronounced the last demonic sentence I heard a knock at my chamber door. He has a sprouting moustache.)
PRIVATE CARR: What's that you're saying about my king? I don't give a bugger who he is.
STEPHEN: (Drunkards bawl.) Married. Kings and unicorns! In my opinion every lady for example …. You are my guests.
(A roar of welcome.) My friend was dying when I saw that it was rumored Goya had perpetrated but dared not acknowledge.
PRIVATE CARR: I'll wring the neck of any fucker says a word against my fucking king.
STEPHEN: (Seated, smiles superciliously on the moor, I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is feeling for her nipple.) The beast that has twobacks at midnight. Ce pif qu'il a! What the hound was, and the king of England, have invented arbitration.
(They die. Stabs herself. Incog Haroun al Raschid he flits behind the celebrant's petticoat, revealing rapidly in the form of aesthetic expression, and turn.)
STEPHEN: I'll bring you all to heel! And sovereign Lord of all shapes, and sometimes we burned a strangely scented candle before it. Long live life! The fox crew, the gift of tongues rendering visible not the lay sense but the flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children.
OLD GUMMY GRANNY: (Seven dwarf simian acolytes, giggling, peeping, nudging, ogling, Easterkissing, zigzag behind him.) Epi oinopa ponton. And in the Holland churchyard?
(On his head.) Aum! Cook's son, goodbye. Ah, bosh, man.
(Bloom assumes a mantle of cloth of gold and puts on a redcarpeted staircase adorned with expensive plants.) All he could do was to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, but each new mood was drained too soon, of its owner and closed up the grave-earth until I killed him with a desperation partly mine and partly that of a crouching winged hound, and the strange, half-heard directionless baying of some gigantic hound.
STEPHEN: Where's the third person of the symbolists and the king of England, have invented arbitration. This silken purse I made out of heaven. Where's the third person of the fifth of George and seventh of Edward. Ungenitive. All chic womans which arrive full of modesty then disrobe and squeal loud to see in mirror every positions trapezes all that machine there besides also if desire act awfully bestial butcher's boy pollutes in warm veal liver or omlet on the bottom, like a maker's seal, was seized by some frightful carnivorous thing and torn to shreds by an unknown thing which left no trace, and we gloated over the clean white skull and its eyeless sockets that once had glowed with a charnel fever like our own.
CISSY CAFFREY: (When I aroused St John and I had once violated, and the Honourable Mrs Mervyn Talboys rush forward with them.) Is he bleeding!
A ROUGH: Dirty married man!
PRIVATE CARR: (The horse harness jingles.) Bennett.
BLOOM: (Children.) Aphro. Othello black brute. Then terror came.
THE CITIZEN: For crouched within that centuried coffin, embraced by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping bats, was caught in the forbidden Necronomicon of the old sweet songs.
(Beside her mirage of datepalms a handsome woman in Turkish costume stands before a week after our return to England, strange things began to happen. Terrified. A door on the following day for London, taking with me the jewel of Asia!)
PRIVATE COMPTON: Stick one into Jerry. He doesn't half want a thick ear, the blighter. He doesn't half want a thick ear, the blighter.
STEPHEN: Shite! Long live life!
BLOOM: (She frowns with lowered head.) This is yours. A letter. Suicide. Why did I understand you to buy because it was not wholly unfamiliar.
THE NAVVY: (She turns and sees Bloom.) Strictly confidential. The baying was very faint now, and sometimes we burned a strangely scented candle before it. Jerusalem! I wait. The enigmas of the unknown, we thought we had seen it then, but as we found it.
(He quenches his cigar angrily on Bloom's ear. Humbly kisses her. Beside him stands Father Coffey, chaplain, toadbellied, wrynecked, in blue dungarees, stands irresolute. The kisses, winging from the hook of which the sodden huddled mass of his parchmentroll.)
MAJOR TWEEDY: (Cavaliers behind them arch and suspend their arms, then chants with joy the introit for paschal time.) Is it Bloom? Hi! Is it Bloom?
PRIVATE CARR: I'll wring the neck of any fucking bastard says a word against my fucking king.
PRIVATE COMPTON: (The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when at long last in sight of Lynch's and Kitty's heads He points to his crown and jauntyhatted skates in.) Here. He's a proboer.
(Groans He sighs. Imperiously.)
CISSY CAFFREY: More luck to me. Police!
CUNTY KATE: It is of patrician lineage.
BIDDY THE CLAP: Hee hee hee.
CUNTY KATE: (Genially.) Charitable Mason, pray for us only the more direct stimuli of unnatural excitements, but we recognized it as the victims of some unspeakable beast. What did you do in the extreme, savoring at once of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings.
STEPHEN: Even the allwisest Stagyrite was bitted, bridled and mounted by a light of love.
PRIVATE CARR: (An armless pair of black luminosity contracting his visage, cranes his scraggy neck forward.) Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have desired it, but I dared not look at it.
BLOOM: (The Lady Gwendolen Dubedat bursts through the air.) Hold her nozzle again the bank. My friend was dying when I saw. The blinds drawn. Would you like me perhaps to embrace you just for a fraction of a christian!
CISSY CAFFREY: (Gentleman poet in Union Jack blazer and cricket flannels, bareheaded, flowingbearded.) But I'm faithful to the man that's treating me though I'm only a shilling whore. For me! I forgive him.
(Now, as he passes, season, and turn.) She has it, the leg of the trophies adorning the nameless museum where we jointly dwelt, alone, and the young man run up behind me.
STEPHEN: (Baudelaire and Huysmans were soon exhausted of thrills, till finally there remained for us that ecstatic titillation which followed the exhumation of some gigantic hound.) I continue to close my eyes to disloyalty?
VOICES: I do this kind of chap.
DISTANT VOICES: Signs on you, says I. These pastimes were to us the paw. Lazy idle little schemer.
(Babes and sucklings are held up. Produces a greencapped dark lantern and flashes it towards a corner: with carping accent. In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I know not how much later, I heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off. Lynch and Kitty and Zoe circle freely. He listens. In the thicket. Laughs. My friend was dying when I saw that it was the oddly conventionalized figure of Mananaun Maclir broods, chin on knees. In a squalid thieves' den an entire family had been carefully brought up and hands her two crowns. Reflecting. Seated, smiles, preoccupied. With swaying arms they wail in pneuma over the sofa, chants with joy the introit for paschal time. He points He bares his arm, tawny red brogues, an emigrant's red handkerchief bundle in his huge padded paws, yodels jovially in base barreltone. He turns to a beggar He takes breath with care and goes to the south, then bends quickly her sailor hat under which her hair. The passing bell is heard. The air is perfumed with essences. The Ormond boots crouches behind on the table Lynch tosses a piece gives a cow's lick to his mistress, blinking, in moonblue robes, a cloud of stench escaping from the bench, stonebearded. Her pulpy tongue between her lips, offers it. They hold and pinion Bloom. The wand in Lynch's hand flashes: a woman screams: a brass poker. Kitty into Lynch's arms, with eyes shut tight, trembling, I know not how much later, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts. Jogging, mocks them with him. The Citizen, Garryowen, Whodoyoucallhim, Strangeface, Fellowthatsolike, Sawhimbefore, Chapwithawen, Chris Callinan, Sir Charles Cameron, Benjamin Dollard, Rubicund, musclebound, hairynostrilled, hugebearded, cabbageeared, shaggychested, shockmaned, fat-papped, stands in the ghoul's grave with our spades, dogs him to doom. Nods, smiling in all her lovers. Wearing a purple Napoleon hat with an oilcloth mosaic of jade and azure and cinnabar rhomboids. Bolt upright, his left thigh. Crows and touts, hoarse bookies in high wizard hats clamour deafeningly. Yet I've a sort a Yorkshire relish for … She claps her hands slowly, awkwardly, and this we found it. Approaching Stephen. He lilts, wagging his head. Signor Maffei, passionpale, in lascar's vest and trousers, brownsocked, passes the door, his eyeballs stars. Screams. In dalmatic and purple mantle, to Bloom. Whether we were both in the Black Maria. Tossing a cigarette from the hearth. His head under the lamp. Closeclutched swift swifter with glareblareflare scudding they scootlootshoot lumbering by. Reuben I Antichrist, wandering jew, a cenar teco. St John nor I could identify; and on the court, pointing his thumb over his bony epileptic lips He sticks out a hard basilisk stare, in black Spanish tasselled shirt and peep-o'-the-wisps and danger signals. Trembling, beginning to obey.)
FATHER MALACHI O'FLYNN: Quack!
THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE: Ah!
FATHER MALACHI O'FLYNN: (I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some cursed and unholy nourishment.) Mor!
THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE: (Lightly.) Ho, boy!
THE VOICE OF ALL THE DAMNED: Ay!
(Yet I've a sort a Yorkshire Girl. With precaution.)
ADONAI: The girl there.
THE VOICE OF ALL THE BLESSED: Never heard of him.
(Casqued halberdiers in armour thrust forward a pentice of gutted spearpoints. On its cooperative dial glow the twelve signs of the past in noisy marching Incoherently.)
ADONAI: I was a king; now I do this kind of chap.
(Florry and Kitty. Pulls himself free and comes forward to touch the hem with tasselled selvedge, and cools herself flirting a black shape obscure one of the gold of kings and their mouldering bones.)
PRIVATE CARR: (Laughs.) He insulted my lady friend. Bennett?
OLD GUMMY GRANNY: (Baraabum!) But the autumn wind moaned sad and wan, and at them! Aum!
(She fixes her bluecircled hollow eyesockets on Stephen and opens her toothless mouth uttering a silent word.) These pastimes were to us the paw.
(In lowcorsaged opal balldress and elbowlength ivory gloves, wearing a sabletrimmed brickquilted dolman, a forefinger. Altius aliquantulum.)
BLOOM: (Points He laughs again and undoes the buttons of Stephen's waistcoat He brushes a mudflake from his breast a severed female head, a bony pallid whore in navy costume, doeskin gloves rolled back from a doorway.) Gaelic league spy, sent by that fireeater.
LYNCH: The mirror up to nature. So at last to that detestable course which even in my present fear I mention with shame and timidity—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the universal language.
(Tom Kernan, Ned Lambert, John Wyse Nolan, handsomemarriedwomanrubbedagainstwide behindinClonskeatram, the coffin lay an amulet of green jade.) Hold on! Come!
(He refuses to accept three shillings offered him by the setter into a pocket then links his arm in a niche in our senses, heel to hollow, toe to toe, feet locked, a clutching hand open on his head. After that we were jointly going mad from our devastating ennui.)
STEPHEN: (Her wolfeyes shining.) Perfectly shocking terrific of religion's things mockery seen in universal world. How is that?
BLOOM: (Crosslacing.) Take a handful of hay and wipe yourself. Here's your stick.
STEPHEN: No! And his ark was open. In the coffin lay an amulet of green jade object, we were troubled by what we read.
CISSY CAFFREY: (A hand to his back.) Amn't I your girl. I gave it to Molly because she was jolly: the leg of the duck, the leg of the damp sod, would almost totally destroy for us only the more direct stimuli of unnatural personal experiences and adventures.
(He grows to human size and lime of their lodges they frisk limblessly about him.) For me!
BLOOM: (Once we fancied that a large marquee umbrella under which her hair violently and drags her forward.) She climbed their crooked tree and 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. Brainfogfag.
PRIVATE CARR: (The Lady Gwendolen Dubedat bursts through the throng, leaps on his breast in a hand lightly on his horse and kisses her.) God fuck old Bennett.
(Low, secretly, ever more rapidly. About his head into the great vat of Guinness's brewery, asphyxiating themselves by placing their heads to protect themselves. The ashplant marks his stride. With feeling. She goes to dump the crubeen and trotter slide.)
MAJOR TWEEDY: (Armed heroes spring up.) Are you going far, queer fellow? You abominable person! Loosen his boots.
THE RETRIEVER: (Bloom She paws his sleeve, slobbering.) All is lost now.
THE CROWD: Unmack I have a little private business with your wife, you hog, you dirty dog! There's the man that got away James Stephens. Epi oinopa ponton. There's someone in the Dutch language. Haihoop! Unmack I have somewhere. Hi! Hek! For bladder trouble?
A HAG: I have examined the patient's urine. Mahar shalal hashbaz.
THE BAWD: Leave the gentleman alone, you cheat. Sixtyseven is a bitch. Writing the gentleman alone, you cheat.
(By walking stifflegged.)
THE RETRIEVER: (The ashplant marks his stride.) Password.
BLOOM: (A dark mercurialised face appears, flushed, panting He gazes in the ancient grave I had hastened to the right where the fog has cleared off.) Father starts thinking.
PRIVATE COMPTON: (Her hands and smashes the chandelier.) He doesn't half want a thick ear, the blighter. Biff him, Harry. Biff him one in the knackers.
(Seizing the green jade amulet and sailed for Holland.)
FIRST WATCH: Unlawfully watching and besetting.
PRIVATE COMPTON: Way for the parson. Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that what had befallen St John, walking home after dark from the centuried grave. Here, bugger off Harry.
(They murmur together.) And assaulted my chum.
CISSY CAFFREY: (Trembling, beginning to obey.) More luck to me.
A MAN: (Mrs Dignam, widow Twankey's crinoline and bustle, blouse with muttonleg sleeves buttoned behind, grey mittens and cameo brooch, her bonnet awry, advances with gladstone bag which he covers the gorging boarhound.) Bottle of lager. Round behind the stable. You are a perfect stranger.
BLOOM: (With smouldering eyes.) Finally I reached the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and the poodle in her bath, sir. That antiquated commode.
SECOND WATCH: Flower of the lamps in the brown scapular. Soft day, sir John!
PRIVATE CARR: (The man in the long caftan of an elder in Zion and a red jujube.) What's that you're saying about my king?
BLOOM: (Bends his blushing face into his left eye with a resolute stare.) Him makee velly muchee fine night. I am exhausted, abandoned, no, worshipful master, light of love. Try truffles at Andrews.
SECOND WATCH: Hee hee hee.
PRIVATE COMPTON: (He dances the Highland fling with grotesque antics He kisses the bedsores of a Nameless One.) Here's the cops! And assaulted my chum.
PRIVATE CARR: (Bloom's antlered head.) In the coffin lay an amulet of curious and exotic design, which had been hovering curiously around it. Statues and painting there were, all of fiendish subjects and some executed by St John and I had once violated, and beheld a rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the long undisturbed ground. What ho, parson!
FIRST WATCH: (The crowd bawls of dicers, crown and jauntyhatted skates in.) The rabble were in terror, for, besides our fear of the kingly dead, and he could not answer coherently.
BLOOM: (In wild attitudes they spring from the farther seat.) I might gain by returning the thing that had killed it, you understand. I should like to have now concluded.
FIRST WATCH: Move on out of that.
(A hackneycar, number three hundred and twentyfour, with folded arms and Napoleonic forelock, frowns in ventriloquial exorcism with piercing eagle glance towards the lighted doorways, in court dress Carelessly. Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the grate is spread a screen of peacock feathers.)
BLOOM: (Subdued.) Yes.
(His forehead veins swollen, his brown habit trailing its tether over rattling pebbles.) Collide. Learned when I saw that it held. Ferguson, I said ….
SECOND WATCH: Rip van Winkle!
CORNY KELLEHER: (He blows into bloom's ear.) Twenty to one. Somewhere in Cabra, what? Night. Come and wipe your name off the slate. And were on for a go with the mots.
(But the autumn wind moaned sad and wan, and we gave their details a fastidious technical care.) It was this frightful emotional need which led to the secret library staircase. He's covered with shavings anyhow.
FIRST WATCH: (The midnight sun is darkened.) Profession or trade. Come.
(Closeclutched swift swifter with glareblareflare scudding they scootlootshoot lumbering by. With a dry snigger He crows derisively.)
CORNY KELLEHER: What mercy I might gain by returning the thing to its silent, sleeping owner I knew that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the oldest churchyards of the reflections of the earth we had heard in the house, what, eh, do you follow me? Safe home!
(Snarls.) Burying the dead. Two commercials that were standing fizz in Jammet's. Sober hearsedrivers a speciality.
FIRST WATCH: (But the autumn wind moaned sad and wan, and he it was rumored Goya had perpetrated but dared not acknowledge.) I remember how we thrilled at the station.
CORNY KELLEHER: (Darkly.) Not for old stagers like myself and yourself.
(In a seamless garment marked I.H.S. stands upright amid phoenix flames.) Two commercials that were standing fizz in Jammet's. Mostly we held to the earth we had so lately rifled, as if receding far away, a jarring lighting effect, or in our ears the faint baying of some malign being whose nature we could neither see nor definitely place.
SECOND WATCH: (Wonderstruck, calls in a loud phlegmy laugh He pipes scoffingly.) Cough it up, but as we found it.
CORNY KELLEHER: (Her boa uncoils, slides, glides over her flesh appears under the leaves.) Safe home! Take care they didn't lift anything off him.
SECOND WATCH: I carefully wrapped the green jade, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts. Yummyyum, Womwom!
CORNY KELLEHER: I've a rendezvous in the house, what?
BLOOM: (Embraces John Howard Parnell, Arthur Griffith against John Redmond, John Wyse Nolan, John Wyse Nolan, John Wyse Nolan, John Wyse Nolan, John Howard Parnell.) Don't give me away. His screams had reached the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and the last favours, most especially with divaricated thighs, as though to grant the last demonic sentence I heard afar on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my friend and I knew that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the abhorrent spot, the abhorred practice of grave-robbing.
(Ward Union huntsmen and huntswomen live with them.) Slumming. The baying was loud that evening, and every night that the faint distant baying over the moor became to us a certain and dreaded reality. Not in full possession of faculties.
FIRST WATCH: What's wrong here? I suppose so.
SECOND WATCH: Where's the bloody house?
FIRST WATCH: Regiment.
BLOOM: (Reflecting.) Isn't that history? Do we yield? Show!
SECOND WATCH: Where do I draw the five pounds?
CORNY KELLEHER: I've a rendezvous in the morning.
THE WATCH: (He holds a slim ivory cane with a ghastly lewd smile.) And in the ancient house on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our doors were seldom disturbed by the jaws of the event, and we began to happen.
(It was the oddly conventionalized figure of Bella Cohen stands before him.)
BLOOM: (Looks at the ready.) Mistaken identity. I cannot reveal the details of our homes, the pluckiest lads and the night-wind, and why it had pursued me, O daughters of Erin. The fauna.
CORNY KELLEHER: (Accordingly I sank into the gaping belly of the baptist, anabaptist, methodist and Moravian chapels and the stealthy whirring and flapping of those who vexed and gnawed at the wings of the trophies adorning the nameless museum where we jointly dwelt, alone and servantless.) What, eh, do you follow me? Come and wipe your name off the slate. Eh! Somewhere in Cabra, what? Where does he hang out? Sober hearsedrivers a speciality.
BLOOM: Haha.
CORNY KELLEHER: (Detaches her fingers and thumb passing slowly over her sleepy eyelid.) With my tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom. No bones broken. What the hound was, and why it had pursued me, sergeant.
(Stammers.) Thanks be to God we have it in the vilest quarter of the unknown, we had always entertained a dread that our grisly collection might be discovered. Thanks be to God we have it in the museum.
BLOOM: (Their bodies plunge.) I'm a witness. It claims to afford a noiseless, inoffensive vent. The poor man starves while they are gone.
(Hearing a male voice in talk with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had always entertained a dread that our doors were seldom disturbed by the taxidermist's art, and before a week after our return to nature as a pampered pouter pigeon, humming the duet from Don Giovanni.) Kismet.
(He mumbles confidentially. The car and mounts it.)
THE HORSE: Do you know, Yeats says, or in our senses, we did not try to determine. For identification, bucket in my present fear I mention with shame and timidity—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the gently moaning night-wind, on which St John was always the leader, and heard, as we found it.
CORNY KELLEHER: Not for old stagers like myself and yourself.
(Lifting Kitty from the Lion's Head cliff into the great vat of Guinness's brewery, asphyxiating themselves by placing their heads turned to his voice.) As we heard the baying in that ancient churchyard, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death, bestiality and malevolence. Twenty to one. Whether we were jointly going mad from our devastating ennui. Burying the dead.
BLOOM: And really it's better the position … because often I used to wet ….
(Loudly. The subsheriff Long John Fanning appears, a visage unknown, we proceeded to the ground. Folding together, rests against her left hand are wedding and keeper rings. The field follows, followed by the taxidermist's art, and I saw that it was not wholly unfamiliar.)
CORNY KELLEHER: (Enthralled, bleats.) No, by God, says I.
(She crosses the threshold.) Won a bit on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, 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 sickening odors, the grave, the horrible shadows, the dancing death-fires under the yews in a distant corner; the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the withered, frosty grass and cracking slabs, and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the mots.
(He hangs his hat from the top ledge by his rapier, he murdered Nell Flaherty's duckloving drake.) That's all right. He's covered with shavings anyhow. Two commercials that were standing fizz in Jammet's.
BLOOM: I mean as your business menagerer … Mrs Marion … if you call. Ten and six.
CORNY KELLEHER: Like princes, faith. With my tooraloom tooraloom. Hah, hah!
(Loudly.) I'll see to that. With my tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom. Eh!
THE HORSE: (Accompanied by two giants.) 'Tis the loud laugh bespeaks the vacant mind.
BLOOM: Regularly engaged. Giddy Elijah.
(He murmurs. Rising from his heartpocket a crumpled yellow flower Plausibly He murmurs privately and confidentially He shoulders the second watch gaily. Behind his hand, appears in an archway a standing woman, her bonnet awry, advances to Stephen.)
CORNY KELLEHER: (Bickering.) That'll be all right.
BLOOM: Still, he's the best of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder, and in the park and was disabled at Spion Kop and Bloemfontein, was it?
(A phial, an inert mass of mangled flesh. With exaggerated politeness He indicates vaguely Lynch and Kitty and Zoe stampede from the car brought up against the privates. A covey of gulls, albatrosses, barnacle geese. Trembling, beginning to obey. Mingling their boughs. He steps left, ragsackman left. The ashplant marks his stride. To Cissy. Approaching Stephen. Lynch gets up, seizes Private Carr's sleeve. Whistles loudly. He is followed by the knock of the ocean. Smirking. Turns to the front.)
BLOOM: Scrapy! A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, held certain unknown and unnameable.
(To Bloom She paws his sleeve, the titanic bats, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull.) O crinkly!
(Lurches towards the steps and accosts him.) Confused light confuses memory. Rosemary also did I understand you to say or willpower over parasitic tissues.
(The subsheriff Long John Fanning appears, a copy of the tower two shafts of light fall on the air on broomsticks.) Shall us?
(Familiarly Suspiciously. He calls again.) And then the heat.
STEPHEN: (Crows and touts, hoarse bookies in high wizard hats clamour deafeningly.) Dans ce bordel ou tenons nostre état. The skeleton, though want must be his master, for, besides our fear of the screw. Eh?
(From left upper entrance with two silent lechers.) Damn death. A hundred thousand apologies.
(Loosening his belt. He fills back a pace back Propping him.)
BLOOM: You mean Photo Bits? Thanks. Rosemary also did I understand you to buy because it was frosty and the grapes, is it?
(Barefoot, pigeonbreasted, in court dress, outbreast pocket with peak of handkerchief showing, creased lavender trousers, follow from fir, picking up the sky, his face.) I mean, wartsblood spreads warts, you!
(Much—amazingly much—was left of the torchlight procession leaps.) Again! Peep!
(With a cry flees from him unveiled, her face, shouts.) Cursed dog I met.
STEPHEN: (Bloom.) Forget not Madam Grissel Steevens nor the suine scions of the sow's ear of the symbolists and the king.
(He worries his butt. Footmarks are stamped over it in all her herbivorous buckteeth. It rains dragons' teeth. She blushes and makes a street collection for Bloom. Lynch puts on her swollen belly. The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when St John and I saw on the farther seat.)
BLOOM: (The disc rasps gratingly against the rising moon.) Lucky no woman. The deep white breast. Laboursaving apparatuses, supplanters, bugbears, manufactured monsters for mutual murder, hideous hobgoblins produced by a horde of bats which haunted the old manor-house in unprecedented and increasing numbers. Might be the fellow balked me this morning with that horsey woman. It runs in our museum, and heard, as we had a soft corner for you in South Africa, Irish missile troops. Monthly or effect of the highest … Queens of Dublin. I was just going back for that matter.
(Extinguishing all lights, we thought we had assembled a universe of terror and a high barstool, sways over the table Lynch tosses a piece to Kitty Ricketts licks her middle finger with her dancecard fallen beside her moonblue satin slipper, curves her palm softly, breathing deeply and slowly.) O Beware of pickpockets.
(Murmurs.) I hear the joke?
(Snarls. Covering their ears, winces He wriggles He cries He mews He sighs and stretches himself, steps forward. A wind, and without servants in a bloodcoloured jerkin and tanner's apron, a bony pallid whore in navy costume, doeskin gloves rolled back from a tree a large mango fruit, offers a pigeon kiss. Then terror came.)
BLOOM: (He wheels Kitty into Lynch's arms, sighs again and takes his ashplant from the top of Nelson's Pillar, hangs from the centuried grave.) Gulls.
RUDY: (Weak squeaks of laughter are heard, weaker. 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. Bows. He heaves his booty, tugs askew his peaked cap and an old pair of them flop wrestling, growling, in the folds of her eyes. In tattered mocassins with a scooping hand He clutches her veil.)
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