Chapter 44
VIRAG: _(A diabolic rictus of black luminosity contracting his visage, cranes his scraggy neck forward. He lifts a mooncalf nozzle and howls.) Verfluchte Goim!_ He had a father, forty fathers. He never existed. Pig God! He had two left feet. He was Judas Iacchia, a Libyan eunuch, the pope’s bastard. _(He leans out on tortured forepaws, elbows bent rigid, his eye agonising in his flat skullneck and yelps over the mute world.)_ A son of a whore. Apocalypse.
KITTY: And Mary Shortall that was in the lock with the pox she got from Jimmy Pidgeon in the blue caps had a child off him that couldn’t swallow and was smothered with the convulsions in the mattress and we all subscribed for the funeral.
PHILIP DRUNK: _(Gravely.) Qui vous a mis dans cette fichue position, Philippe?_
PHILIP SOBER: _(Gaily.) C’était le sacré pigeon, Philippe._
_(Kitty unpins her hat and sets it down calmly, patting her henna hair. And a prettier, a daintier head of winsome curls was never seen on a whore’s shoulders. Lynch puts on her hat. She whips it off.)_
LYNCH: _(Laughs.)_ And to such delights has Metchnikoff inoculated anthropoid apes.
FLORRY: _(Nods.)_ Locomotor ataxy.
ZOE: _(Gaily.)_ O, my dictionary.
LYNCH: Three wise virgins.
VIRAG: _(Agueshaken, profuse yellow spawn foaming over his bony epileptic lips.)_ She sold lovephiltres, whitewax, orangeflower. Panther, the Roman centurion, polluted her with his genitories. _(He sticks out a flickering phosphorescent scorpion tongue, his hand on his fork.)_ Messiah! He burst her tympanum. _(With gibbering baboon’s cries he jerks his hips in the cynical spasm.)_ Hik! Hek! Hak! Hok! Huk! Kok! Kuk!
_(Ben Jumbo Dollard, rubicund, musclebound, hairynostrilled, hugebearded, cabbageeared, shaggychested, shockmaned, fatpapped, stands forth, his loins and genitals tightened into a pair of black bathing bagslops.)_
BEN DOLLARD: _(Nakkering castanet bones in his huge padded paws, yodels jovially in base barreltone.)_ When love absorbs my ardent soul.
_(The virgins Nurse Callan and Nurse Quigley burst through the ringkeepers and the ropes and mob him with open arms.)_
THE VIRGINS: _(Gushingly.)_ Big Ben! Ben my Chree!
A VOICE: Hold that fellow with the bad breeches.
BEN DOLLARD: _(Smites his thigh in abundant laughter.)_ Hold him now.
HENRY: _(Caressing on his breast a severed female head, murmurs.)_ Thine heart, mine love. _(He plucks his lutestrings.)_ When first I saw...
VIRAG: _(Sloughing his skins, his multitudinous plumage moulting.)_ Rats! _(He yawns, showing a coalblack throat, and closes his jaws by an upward push of his parchmentroll.)_ After having said which I took my departure. Farewell. Fare thee well. _Dreck!_
_(Henry Flower combs his moustache and beard rapidly with a pocketcomb and gives a cow’s lick to his hair. Steered by his rapier, he glides to the door, his wild harp slung behind him. Virag reaches the door in two ungainly stilthops, his tail cocked, and deftly claps sideways on the wall a pusyellow flybill, butting it with his head.)_
THE FLYBILL: K. 11. Post No Bills. Strictly confidential. Dr Hy Franks.
HENRY: All is lost now.
_(Virag unscrews his head in a trice and holds it under his arm.)_
VIRAG’S HEAD: Quack!
_(Exeunt severally.)_
STEPHEN: _(Over his shoulder to Zoe.)_ You would have preferred the fighting parson who founded the protestant error. But beware Antisthenes, the dog sage, and the last end of Arius Heresiarchus. The agony in the closet.
LYNCH: All one and the same God to her.
STEPHEN: _(Devoutly.)_ And sovereign Lord of all things.
FLORRY: _(To Stephen.)_ I’m sure you’re a spoiled priest. Or a monk.
LYNCH: He is. A cardinal’s son.
STEPHEN: Cardinal sin. Monks of the screw.
_(His Eminence Simon Stephen Cardinal Dedalus, Primate of all Ireland, appears in the doorway, dressed in red soutane, sandals and socks. Seven dwarf simian acolytes, also in red, cardinal sins, uphold his train, peeping under it. He wears a battered silk hat sideways on his head. His thumbs are stuck in his armpits and his palms outspread. Round his neck hangs a rosary of corks ending on his breast in a corkscrew cross. Releasing his thumbs, he invokes grace from on high with large wave gestures and proclaims with bloated pomp:)_
THE CARDINAL:
Conservio lies captured He lies in the lowest dungeon With manacles and chains around his limbs Weighing upwards of three tons.
_(He looks at all for a moment, his right eye closed tight, his left cheek puffed out. Then, unable to repress his merriment, he rocks to and fro, arms akimbo, and sings with broad rollicking humour:)_
O, the poor little fellow Hihihihihis legs they were yellow He was plump, fat and heavy and brisk as a snake But some bloody savage To graize his white cabbage He murdered Nell Flaherty’s duckloving drake.
_(A multitude of midges swarms white over his robe. He scratches himself with crossed arms at his ribs, grimacing, and exclaims:)_
I’m suffering the agony of the damned. By the hoky fiddle, thanks be to Jesus those funny little chaps are not unanimous. If they were they’d walk me off the face of the bloody globe.
_(His head aslant he blesses curtly with fore and middle fingers, imparts the Easter kiss and doubleshuffles off comically, swaying his hat from side to side, shrinking quickly to the size of his trainbearers. The dwarf acolytes, giggling, peeping, nudging, ogling, Easterkissing, zigzag behind him. His voice is heard mellow from afar, merciful male, melodious:)_
Shall carry my heart to thee, Shall carry my heart to thee, And the breath of the balmy night Shall carry my heart to thee!
_(The trick doorhandle turns.)_
THE DOORHANDLE: Theeee!
ZOE: The devil is in that door.
_(A male form passes down the creaking staircase and is heard taking the waterproof and hat from the rack. Bloom starts forward involuntarily and, half closing the door as he passes, takes the chocolate from his pocket and offers it nervously to Zoe.)_
ZOE: _(Sniffs his hair briskly.)_ Hmmm! Thank your mother for the rabbits. I’m very fond of what I like.
BLOOM: _(Hearing a male voice in talk with the whores on the doorstep, pricks his ears.)_ If it were he? After? Or because not? Or the double event?
ZOE: _(Tears open the silverfoil.)_ Fingers was made before forks. _(She breaks off and nibbles a piece, gives a piece to Kitty Ricketts and then turns kittenishly to Lynch.)_ No objection to French lozenges? _(He nods. She taunts him.)_ Have it now or wait till you get it? _(He opens his mouth, his head cocked. She whirls the prize in left circle. His head follows. She whirls it back in right circle. He eyes her.)_ Catch!
_(She tosses a piece. With an adroit snap he catches it and bites it through with a crack.)_
KITTY: _(Chewing.)_ The engineer I was with at the bazaar does have lovely ones. Full of the best liqueurs. And the viceroy was there with his lady. The gas we had on the Toft’s hobbyhorses. I’m giddy still.
BLOOM: _(In Svengali’s fur overcoat, with folded arms and Napoleonic forelock, frowns in ventriloquial exorcism with piercing eagle glance towards the door. Then rigid with left foot advanced he makes a swift pass with impelling fingers and gives the sign of past master, drawing his right arm downwards from his left shoulder.)_ Go, go, go, I conjure you, whoever you are!
_(A male cough and tread are heard passing through the mist outside. Bloom’s features relax. He places a hand in his waistcoat, posing calmly. Zoe offers him chocolate.)_
BLOOM: _(Solemnly.)_ Thanks.
ZOE: Do as you’re bid. Here!
_(A firm heelclacking tread is heard on the stairs.)_
BLOOM: _(Takes the chocolate.)_ Aphrodisiac? Tansy and pennyroyal. But I bought it. Vanilla calms or? Mnemo. Confused light confuses memory. Red influences lupus. Colours affect women’s characters, any they have. This black makes me sad. Eat and be merry for tomorrow. _(He eats.)_ Influence taste too, mauve. But it is so long since I. Seems new. Aphro. That priest. Must come. Better late than never. Try truffles at Andrews.
_(The door opens. Bella Cohen, a massive whoremistress, enters. She is dressed in a threequarter ivory gown, fringed round the hem with tasselled selvedge, and cools herself flirting a black horn fan like Minnie Hauck in_ Carmen. _On her left hand are wedding and keeper rings. Her eyes are deeply carboned. She has a sprouting moustache. Her olive face is heavy, slightly sweated and fullnosed with orangetainted nostrils. She has large pendant beryl eardrops.)_
BELLA: My word! I’m all of a mucksweat.
_(She glances round her at the couples. Then her eyes rest on Bloom with hard insistence. Her large fan winnows wind towards her heated faceneck and embonpoint. Her falcon eyes glitter.)_
THE FAN: _(Flirting quickly, then slowly.)_ Married, I see.
BLOOM: Yes. Partly, I have mislaid...
THE FAN: _(Half opening, then closing.)_ And the missus is master. Petticoat government.
BLOOM: _(Looks down with a sheepish grin.)_ That is so.
THE FAN: _(Folding together, rests against her left eardrop.)_ Have you forgotten me?
BLOOM: Nes. Yo.
THE FAN: _(Folded akimbo against her waist.)_ Is me her was you dreamed before? Was then she him you us since knew? Am all them and the same now we?
_(Bella approaches, gently tapping with the fan.)_
BLOOM: _(Wincing.)_ Powerful being. In my eyes read that slumber which women love.
THE FAN: _(Tapping.)_ We have met. You are mine. It is fate.
BLOOM: _(Cowed.)_ Exuberant female. Enormously I desiderate your domination. I am exhausted, abandoned, no more young. I stand, so to speak, with an unposted letter bearing the extra regulation fee before the too late box of the general postoffice of human life. The door and window open at a right angle cause a draught of thirtytwo feet per second according to the law of falling bodies. I have felt this instant a twinge of sciatica in my left glutear muscle. It runs in our family. Poor dear papa, a widower, was a regular barometer from it. He believed in animal heat. A skin of tabby lined his winter waistcoat. Near the end, remembering king David and the Sunamite, he shared his bed with Athos, faithful after death. A dog’s spittle as you probably... _(He winces.)_ Ah!
RICHIE GOULDING: _(Bagweighted, passes the door.)_ Mocking is catch. Best value in Dub. Fit for a prince’s. Liver and kidney.
THE FAN: _(Tapping.)_ All things end. Be mine. Now.
BLOOM: _(Undecided.)_ All now? I should not have parted with my talisman. Rain, exposure at dewfall on the searocks, a peccadillo at my time of life. Every phenomenon has a natural cause.
THE FAN: _(Points downwards slowly.)_ You may.
BLOOM: _(Looks downwards and perceives her unfastened bootlace.)_ We are observed.
THE FAN: _(Points downwards quickly.)_ You must.
BLOOM: _(With desire, with reluctance.)_ I can make a true black knot. Learned when I served my time and worked the mail order line for Kellett’s. Experienced hand. Every knot says a lot. Let me. In courtesy. I knelt once before today. Ah!
_(Bella raises her gown slightly and, steadying her pose, lifts to the edge of a chair a plump buskined hoof and a full pastern, silksocked. Bloom, stifflegged, aging, bends over her hoof and with gentle fingers draws out and in her laces.)_
BLOOM: _(Murmurs lovingly.)_ To be a shoefitter in Manfield’s was my love’s young dream, the darling joys of sweet buttonhooking, to lace up crisscrossed to kneelength the dressy kid footwear satinlined, so incredibly impossibly small, of Clyde Road ladies. Even their wax model Raymonde I visited daily to admire her cobweb hose and stick of rhubarb toe, as worn in Paris.
THE HOOF: Smell my hot goathide. Feel my royal weight.
BLOOM: _(Crosslacing.)_ Too tight?
THE HOOF: If you bungle, Handy Andy, I’ll kick your football for you.
BLOOM: Not to lace the wrong eyelet as I did the night of the bazaar dance. Bad luck. Hook in wrong tache of her... person you mentioned. That night she met... Now!
_(He knots the lace. Bella places her foot on the floor. Bloom raises his head. Her heavy face, her eyes strike him in midbrow. His eyes grow dull, darker and pouched, his nose thickens.)_
BLOOM: _(Mumbles.)_ Awaiting your further orders we remain, gentlemen,...
BELLO: _(With a hard basilisk stare, in a baritone voice.)_ Hound of dishonour!
BLOOM: _(Infatuated.)_ Empress!
BELLO: _(His heavy cheekchops sagging.)_ Adorer of the adulterous rump!
BLOOM: _(Plaintively.)_ Hugeness!
BELLO: Dungdevourer!
BLOOM: _(With sinews semiflexed.)_ Magmagnificence!
BELLO: Down! _(He taps her on the shoulder with his fan.)_ Incline feet forward! Slide left foot one pace back! You will fall. You are falling. On the hands down!
BLOOM: _(Her eyes upturned in the sign of admiration, closing, yaps.)_ Truffles!
_(With a piercing epileptic cry she sinks on all fours, grunting, snuffling, rooting at his feet: then lies, shamming dead, with eyes shut tight, trembling eyelids, bowed upon the ground in the attitude of most excellent master.)_
BELLO: _(With bobbed hair, purple gills, fat moustache rings round his shaven mouth, in mountaineer’s puttees, green silverbuttoned coat, sport skirt and alpine hat with moorcock’s feather, his hands stuck deep in his breeches pockets, places his heel on her neck and grinds it in.)_ Footstool! Feel my entire weight. Bow, bondslave, before the throne of your despot’s glorious heels so glistening in their proud erectness.
BLOOM: _(Enthralled, bleats.)_ I promise never to disobey.
BELLO: _(Laughs loudly.)_ Holy smoke! You little know what’s in store for you. I’m the Tartar to settle your little lot and break you in! I’ll bet Kentucky cocktails all round I shame it out of you, old son. Cheek me, I dare you. If you do tremble in anticipation of heel discipline to be inflicted in gym costume.
_(Bloom creeps under the sofa and peers out through the fringe.)_
ZOE: _(Widening her slip to screen her.)_ She’s not here.
BLOOM: _(Closing her eyes.)_ She’s not here.
FLORRY: _(Hiding her with her gown.)_ She didn’t mean it, Mr Bello. She’ll be good, sir.
KITTY: Don’t be too hard on her, Mr Bello. Sure you won’t, ma’amsir.
BELLO: _(Coaxingly.)_ Come, ducky dear, I want a word with you, darling, just to administer correction. Just a little heart to heart talk, sweety. _(Bloom puts out her timid head.)_ There’s a good girly now. _(Bello grabs her hair violently and drags her forward.)_ I only want to correct you for your own good on a soft safe spot. How’s that tender behind? O, ever so gently, pet. Begin to get ready.
BLOOM: _(Fainting.)_ Don’t tear my...
BELLO: _(Savagely.)_ The nosering, the pliers, the bastinado, the hanging hook, the knout I’ll make you kiss while the flutes play like the Nubian slave of old. You’re in for it this time! I’ll make you remember me for the balance of your natural life. _(His forehead veins swollen, his face congested.)_ 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. _(He belches.)_ And suck my thumping good Stock Exchange cigar while I read the _Licensed Victualler’s Gazette_. Very possibly I shall have you slaughtered and skewered in my stables and enjoy a slice of you with crisp crackling from the baking tin basted and baked like sucking pig with rice and lemon or currant sauce. It will hurt you. _(He twists her arm. Bloom squeals, turning turtle.)_
BLOOM: Don’t be cruel, nurse! Don’t!
BELLO: _(Twisting.)_ Another!
BLOOM: _(Screams.)_ O, it’s hell itself! Every nerve in my body aches like mad!
BELLO: _(Shouts.)_ Good, by the rumping jumping general! That’s the best bit of news I heard these six weeks. Here, don’t keep me waiting, damn you! _(He slaps her face.)_
BLOOM: _(Whimpers.)_ You’re after hitting me. I’ll tell...
BELLO: Hold him down, girls, till I squat on him.
ZOE: Yes. Walk on him! I will.
FLORRY: I will. Don’t be greedy.
KITTY: No, me. Lend him to me.
_(The brothel cook, Mrs Keogh, wrinkled, greybearded, in a greasy bib, men’s grey and green socks and brogues, floursmeared, a rollingpin stuck with raw pastry in her bare red arm and hand, appears at the door.)_
MRS KEOGH: _(Ferociously.)_ Can I help? _(They hold and pinion Bloom.)_
BELLO: _(Squats with a grunt on Bloom’s upturned face, puffing cigarsmoke, nursing a fat leg.)_ I see Keating Clay is elected vicechairman of the Richmond asylum and by the by Guinness’s preference shares are at sixteen three quarters. Curse me for a fool that didn’t buy that lot Craig and Gardner told me about. Just my infernal luck, curse it. And that Goddamned outsider _Throwaway_ at twenty to one. _(He quenches his cigar angrily on Bloom’s ear.)_ Where’s that Goddamned cursed ashtray?
BLOOM: _(Goaded, buttocksmothered.)_ O! O! Monsters! Cruel one!
BELLO: Ask for that every ten minutes. Beg. Pray for it as you never prayed before. _(He thrusts out a figged fist and foul cigar.)_ Here, kiss that. Both. Kiss. _(He throws a leg astride and, pressing with horseman’s knees, calls in a hard voice.)_ Gee up! A cockhorse to Banbury cross. I’ll ride him for the Eclipse stakes. _(He bends sideways and squeezes his mount’s testicles roughly, shouting.)_ Ho! Off we pop! I’ll nurse you in proper fashion. _(He horserides cockhorse, leaping in the, in the saddle.)_ The lady goes a pace a pace and the coachman goes a trot a trot and the gentleman goes a gallop a gallop a gallop a gallop.
FLORRY: _(Pulls at Bello.)_ Let me on him now. You had enough. I asked before you.
ZOE: _(Pulling at Florry.)_ Me. Me. Are you not finished with him yet, suckeress?
BLOOM: _(Stifling.)_ Can’t.
BELLO: Well, I’m not. Wait. _(He holds in his breath.)_ Curse it. Here. This bung’s about burst. _(He uncorks himself behind: then, contorting his features, farts loudly.)_ Take that! _(He recorks himself.)_ Yes, by Jingo, sixteen three quarters.
BLOOM: _(A sweat breaking out over him.)_ Not man. _(He sniffs.)_ Woman.
BELLO: _(Stands up.)_ No more blow hot and cold. What you longed for has come to pass. Henceforth you are unmanned and mine in earnest, a thing under the yoke. Now for your punishment frock. You will shed your male garments, you understand, Ruby Cohen? and don the shot silk luxuriously rustling over head and shoulders. And quickly too!
BLOOM: _(Shrinks.)_ Silk, mistress said! O crinkly! scrapy! Must I tiptouch it with my nails?
BELLO: _(Points to his whores.)_ As they are now so will you be, wigged, singed, perfumesprayed, ricepowdered, with smoothshaven armpits. Tape measurements will be taken next your skin. You will be laced with cruel force into vicelike corsets of soft dove coutille with whalebone busk to the diamondtrimmed pelvis, the absolute outside edge, while your figure, plumper than when at large, will be restrained in nettight frocks, pretty two ounce petticoats and fringes and things stamped, of course, with my houseflag, creations of lovely lingerie for Alice and nice scent for Alice. Alice will feel the pullpull. Martha and Mary will be a little chilly at first in such delicate thighcasing but the frilly flimsiness of lace round your bare knees will remind you...
BLOOM: _(A charming soubrette with dauby cheeks, mustard hair and large male hands and nose, leering mouth.)_ I tried her things on only twice, a small prank, in Holles street. When we were hard up I washed them to save the laundry bill. My own shirts I turned. It was the purest thrift.
BELLO: _(Jeers.)_ Little jobs that make mother pleased, eh? And showed off coquettishly in your domino at the mirror behind closedrawn blinds your unskirted thighs and hegoat’s udders in various poses of surrender, eh? Ho! ho! I have to laugh! That secondhand black operatop shift and short trunkleg naughties all split up the stitches at her last rape that Mrs Miriam Dandrade sold you from the Shelbourne hotel, eh?
BLOOM: Miriam. Black. Demimondaine.
BELLO: _(Guffaws.)_ Christ Almighty it’s too tickling, this! You were a nicelooking Miriam when you clipped off your backgate hairs and lay swooning in the thing across the bed as Mrs Dandrade about to be violated by lieutenant Smythe-Smythe, Mr Philip Augustus Blockwell M. P., signor Laci Daremo, the robust tenor, blueeyed Bert, the liftboy, Henri Fleury of Gordon Bennett fame, Sheridan, the quadroon Croesus, the varsity wetbob eight from old Trinity, Ponto, her splendid Newfoundland and Bobs, dowager duchess of Manorhamilton. _(He guffaws again.)_ Christ, wouldn’t it make a Siamese cat laugh?
BLOOM: _(Her hands and features working.)_ It was Gerald converted me to be a true corsetlover when I was female impersonator in the High School play _Vice Versa_. It was dear Gerald. He got that kink, fascinated by sister’s stays. Now dearest Gerald uses pinky greasepaint and gilds his eyelids. Cult of the beautiful.
BELLO: _(With wicked glee.)_ Beautiful! Give us a breather! When you took your seat with womanish care, lifting your billowy flounces, on the smoothworn throne.
BLOOM: Science. To compare the various joys we each enjoy. _(Earnestly.)_ And really it’s better the position... because often I used to wet...
BELLO: _(Sternly.)_ No insubordination! The sawdust is there in the corner for you. I gave you strict instructions, didn’t I? Do it standing, sir! I’ll teach you to behave like a jinkleman! If I catch a trace on your swaddles. Aha! By the ass of the Dorans you’ll find I’m a martinet. The sins of your past are rising against you. Many. Hundreds.
THE SINS OF THE PAST: _(In a medley of voices.)_ He went through a form of clandestine marriage with at least one woman in the shadow of the Black church. Unspeakable messages he telephoned mentally to Miss Dunn at an address in D’Olier street while he presented himself indecently to the instrument in the callbox. By word and deed he frankly encouraged a nocturnal strumpet to deposit fecal and other matter in an unsanitary outhouse attached to empty premises. In five public conveniences he wrote pencilled messages offering his nuptial partner to all strongmembered males. And by the offensively smelling vitriol works did he not pass night after night by loving courting couples to see if and what and how much he could see? Did he not lie in bed, the gross boar, gloating over a nauseous fragment of wellused toilet paper presented to him by a nasty harlot, stimulated by gingerbread and a postal order?
BELLO: _(Whistles loudly.)_ Say! What was the most revolting piece of obscenity in all your career of crime? Go the whole hog. Puke it out! Be candid for once.
_(Mute inhuman faces throng forward, leering, vanishing, gibbering, Booloohoom. Poldy Kock, Bootlaces a penny, Cassidy’s hag, blind stripling, Larry Rhinoceros, the girl, the woman, the whore, the other, the...)_
BLOOM: Don’t ask me! Our mutual faith. Pleasants street. I only thought the half of the... I swear on my sacred oath...
BELLO: _(Peremptorily.)_ Answer. Repugnant wretch! I insist on knowing. Tell me something to amuse me, smut or a bloody good ghoststory or a line of poetry, quick, quick, quick! Where? How? What time? With how many? I give you just three seconds. One! Two! Thr...
BLOOM: _(Docile, gurgles.)_ I rererepugnosed in rerererepugnant...
BELLO: _(Imperiously.)_ O, get out, you skunk! Hold your tongue! Speak when you’re spoken to.
BLOOM: _(Bows.)_ Master! Mistress! Mantamer!
_(He lifts his arms. His bangle bracelets fall.)_
BELLO: _(Satirically.)_ By day you will souse and bat our smelling underclothes also when we ladies are unwell, and swab out our latrines with dress pinned up and a dishclout tied to your tail. Won’t that be nice? _(He places a ruby ring on her finger.)_ And there now! With this ring I thee own. Say, thank you, mistress.
BLOOM: Thank you, mistress.