Chapter 47
_(The couples fall aside. Stephen whirls giddily. Room whirls back. Eyes closed he totters. Red rails fly spacewards. Stars all around suns turn roundabout. Bright midges dance on walls. He stops dead.)_
STEPHEN: Ho!
_(Stephen’s mother, emaciated, rises stark through the floor, in leper grey with a wreath of faded orangeblossoms and a torn bridal veil, her face worn and noseless, green with gravemould. Her hair is scant and lank. She fixes her bluecircled hollow eyesockets on Stephen and opens her toothless mouth uttering a silent word. A choir of virgins and confessors sing voicelessly.)_
THE CHOIR:
Liliata rutilantium te confessorum... Iubilantium te virginum...
_(From the top of a tower Buck Mulligan, in particoloured jester’s dress of puce and yellow and clown’s cap with curling bell, stands gaping at her, a smoking buttered split scone in his hand.)_
BUCK MULLIGAN: She’s beastly dead. The pity of it! Mulligan meets the afflicted mother. _(He upturns his eyes.)_ Mercurial Malachi!
THE MOTHER: _(With the subtle smile of death’s madness.)_ I was once the beautiful May Goulding. I am dead.
STEPHEN: _(Horrorstruck.)_ Lemur, who are you? No. What bogeyman’s trick is this?
BUCK MULLIGAN: _(Shakes his curling capbell.)_ The mockery of it! Kinch dogsbody killed her bitchbody. She kicked the bucket. _(Tears of molten butter fall from his eyes on to the scone.)_ Our great sweet mother! _Epi oinopa ponton._
THE MOTHER: _(Comes nearer, breathing upon him softly her breath of wetted ashes.)_ All must go through it, Stephen. More women than men in the world. You too. Time will come.
STEPHEN: _(Choking with fright, remorse and horror.)_ They say I killed you, mother. He offended your memory. Cancer did it, not I. Destiny.
THE MOTHER: _(A green rill of bile trickling from a side of her mouth.)_ You sang that song to me. _Love’s bitter mystery._
STEPHEN: _(Eagerly.)_ Tell me the word, mother, if you know now. The word known to all men.
THE MOTHER: Who saved you the night you jumped into the train at Dalkey with Paddy Lee? Who had pity for you when you were sad among the strangers? Prayer is allpowerful. Prayer for the suffering souls in the Ursuline manual and forty days’ indulgence. Repent, Stephen.
STEPHEN: The ghoul! Hyena!
THE MOTHER: I pray for you in my other world. Get Dilly to make you that boiled rice every night after your brainwork. Years and years I loved you, O, my son, my firstborn, when you lay in my womb.
ZOE: _(Fanning herself with the grate fan.)_ I’m melting!
FLORRY: _(Points to Stephen.)_ Look! He’s white.
BLOOM: _(Goes to the window to open it more.)_ Giddy.
THE MOTHER: _(With smouldering eyes.)_ Repent! O, the fire of hell!
STEPHEN: _(Panting.)_ His noncorrosive sublimate! The corpsechewer! Raw head and bloody bones.
THE MOTHER: _(Her face drawing near and nearer, sending out an ashen breath.)_ Beware! _(She raises her blackened withered right arm slowly towards Stephen’s breast with outstretched finger.)_ Beware God’s hand! _(A green crab with malignant red eyes sticks deep its grinning claws in Stephen’s heart.)_
STEPHEN: _(Strangled with rage.)_ Shite! _(His features grow drawn and grey and old.)_
BLOOM: _(At the window.)_ What?
STEPHEN: _Ah non, par exemple!_ The intellectual imagination! With me all or not at all. _Non serviam!_
FLORRY: Give him some cold water. Wait. _(She rushes out.)_
THE MOTHER: _(Wrings her hands slowly, moaning desperately.)_ O Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on him! Save him from hell, O Divine Sacred Heart!
STEPHEN: No! No! No! Break my spirit, all of you, if you can! I’ll bring you all to heel!
THE MOTHER: _(In the agony of her deathrattle.)_ Have mercy on Stephen, Lord, for my sake! Inexpressible was my anguish when expiring with love, grief and agony on Mount Calvary.
STEPHEN: _Nothung!_
_(He lifts his ashplant high with both hands and smashes the chandelier. Time’s livid final flame leaps and, in the following darkness, ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry.)_
THE GASJET: Pwfungg!
BLOOM: Stop!
LYNCH: _(Rushes forward and seizes Stephen’s hand.)_ Here! Hold on! Don’t run amok!
BELLA: Police!
_(Stephen, abandoning his ashplant, his head and arms thrown back stark, beats the ground and flies from the room, past the whores at the door.)_
BELLA: _(Screams.)_ After him!
_(The two whores rush to the halldoor. Lynch and Kitty and Zoe stampede from the room. They talk excitedly. Bloom follows, returns.)_
THE WHORES: _(Jammed in the doorway, pointing.)_ Down there.
ZOE: _(Pointing.)_ There. There’s something up.
BELLA: Who pays for the lamp? _(She seizes Bloom’s coattail.)_ Here, you were with him. The lamp’s broken.
BLOOM: _(Rushes to the hall, rushes back.)_ What lamp, woman?
A WHORE: He tore his coat.
BELLA: _(Her eyes hard with anger and cupidity, points.)_ Who’s to pay for that? Ten shillings. You’re a witness.
BLOOM: _(Snatches up Stephen’s ashplant.)_ Me? Ten shillings? Haven’t you lifted enough off him? Didn’t he...?
BELLA: _(Loudly.)_ Here, none of your tall talk. This isn’t a brothel. A ten shilling house.
BLOOM: _(His head under the lamp, pulls the chain. Pulling, the gasjet lights up a crushed mauve purple shade. He raises the ashplant.)_ Only the chimney’s broken. Here is all he...
BELLA: _(Shrinks back and screams.)_ Jesus! Don’t!
BLOOM: _(Warding off a blow.)_ To show you how he hit the paper. There’s not sixpenceworth of damage done. Ten shillings!
FLORRY: _(With a glass of water, enters.)_ Where is he?
BELLA: Do you want me to call the police?
BLOOM: O, I know. Bulldog on the premises. But he’s a Trinity student. Patrons of your establishment. Gentlemen that pay the rent. _(He makes a masonic sign.)_ Know what I mean? Nephew of the vicechancellor. You don’t want a scandal.
BELLA: _(Angrily.)_ Trinity. Coming down here ragging after the boatraces and paying nothing. Are you my commander here or? Where is he? I’ll charge him! Disgrace him, I will! _(She shouts.)_ Zoe! Zoe!
BLOOM: _(Urgently.)_ And if it were your own son in Oxford? _(Warningly.)_ I know.
BELLA: _(Almost speechless.)_ Who are. Incog!
ZOE: _(In the doorway.)_ There’s a row on.
BLOOM: What? Where? _(He throws a shilling on the table and starts.)_ That’s for the chimney. Where? I need mountain air.
_(He hurries out through the hall. The whores point. Florry follows, spilling water from her tilted tumbler. On the doorstep all the whores clustered talk volubly, pointing to the right where the fog has cleared off. From the left arrives a jingling hackney car. It slows to in front of the house. Bloom at the halldoor perceives Corny Kelleher who is about to dismount from the car with two silent lechers. He averts his face. Bella from within the hall urges on her whores. They blow ickylickysticky yumyum kisses. Corny Kelleher replies with a ghastly lewd smile. The silent lechers turn to pay the jarvey. Zoe and Kitty still point right. Bloom, parting them swiftly, draws his caliph’s hood and poncho and hurries down the steps with sideways face. Incog Haroun al Raschid he flits behind the silent lechers and hastens on by the railings with fleet step of a pard strewing the drag behind him, torn envelopes drenched in aniseed. The ashplant marks his stride. A pack of bloodhounds, led by Hornblower of Trinity brandishing a dogwhip in tallyho cap and an old pair of grey trousers, follows from far, picking up the scent, nearer, baying, panting, at fault, breaking away, throwing their tongues, biting his heels, leaping at his tail. He walks, runs, zigzags, gallops, lugs laid back. He is pelted with gravel, cabbagestumps, biscuitboxes, eggs, potatoes, dead codfish, woman’s slipperslappers. After him freshfound the hue and cry zigzag gallops in hot pursuit of follow my leader: 65 C, 66 C, night watch, John Henry Menton, Wisdom Hely, V. B. Dillon, Councillor Nannetti, Alexander Keyes, Larry O’Rourke, Joe Cuffe, Mrs O’Dowd, Pisser Burke, The Nameless One, Mrs Riordan, The Citizen, Garryowen, Whodoyoucallhim, Strangeface, Fellowthatsolike, Sawhimbefore, Chapwithawen, Chris Callinan, sir Charles Cameron, Benjamin Dollard, Lenehan, Bartell d’Arcy, Joe Hynes, red Murray, editor Brayden, T. M. Healy, Mr Justice Fitzgibbon, John Howard Parnell, the reverend Tinned Salmon, Professor Joly, Mrs Breen, Denis Breen, Theodore Purefoy, Mina Purefoy, the Westland Row postmistress, C. P. M’Coy, friend of Lyons, Hoppy Holohan, maninthestreet, othermaninthestreet, Footballboots, pugnosed driver, rich protestant lady, Davy Byrne, Mrs Ellen M’Guinness, Mrs Joe Gallaher, George Lidwell, Jimmy Henry on corns, Superintendent Laracy, Father Cowley, Crofton out of the Collector-general’s, Dan Dawson, dental surgeon Bloom with tweezers, Mrs Bob Doran, Mrs Kennefick, Mrs Wyse Nolan, John Wyse Nolan, handsomemarriedwomanrubbedagainstwidebehindinClonskea tram, the bookseller of_ Sweets of Sin, _Miss Dubedatandshedidbedad, Mesdames Gerald and Stanislaus Moran of Roebuck, the managing clerk of Drimmie’s, Wetherup, colonel Hayes, Mastiansky, Citron, Penrose, Aaron Figatner, Moses Herzog, Michael E Geraghty, Inspector Troy, Mrs Galbraith, the constable off Eccles street corner, old doctor Brady with stethoscope, the mystery man on the beach, a retriever, Mrs Miriam Dandrade and all her lovers.)_
THE HUE AND CRY: _(Helterskelterpelterwelter.)_ He’s Bloom! Stop Bloom! Stopabloom! Stopperrobber! Hi! Hi! Stophim on the corner!
_(At the corner of Beaver street beneath the scaffolding Bloom panting stops on the fringe of the noisy quarrelling knot, a lot not knowing a jot what hi! hi! row and wrangle round the whowhat brawlaltogether.)_
STEPHEN: _(With elaborate gestures, breathing deeply and slowly.)_ You are my guests. Uninvited. By virtue of the fifth of George and seventh of Edward. History to blame. Fabled by mothers of memory.
PRIVATE CARR: _(To Cissy Caffrey.)_ Was he insulting you?
STEPHEN: Addressed her in vocative feminine. Probably neuter. Ungenitive.
VOICES: No, he didn’t. I seen him. The girl there. He was in Mrs Cohen’s. What’s up? Soldier and civilian.
CISSY CAFFREY: I was in company with the soldiers and they left me to do—you know, and the young man run up behind me. But I’m faithful to the man that’s treating me though I’m only a shilling whore.
STEPHEN: _(Catches sight of Lynch’s and Kitty’s heads.)_ Hail, Sisyphus. _(He points to himself and the others.)_ Poetic. Uropoetic.
VOICES: Shes faithfultheman.
CISSY CAFFREY: Yes, to go with him. And me with a soldier friend.
PRIVATE COMPTON: He doesn’t half want a thick ear, the blighter. Biff him one, Harry.
PRIVATE CARR: _(To Cissy.)_ Was he insulting you while me and him was having a piss?
LORD TENNYSON: _(Gentleman poet in Union Jack blazer and cricket flannels, bareheaded, flowingbearded.)_ Theirs not to reason why.
PRIVATE COMPTON: Biff him, Harry.
STEPHEN: _(To Private Compton.)_ I don’t know your name but you are quite right. Doctor Swift says one man in armour will beat ten men in their shirts. Shirt is synechdoche. Part for the whole.
CISSY CAFFREY: _(To the crowd.)_ No, I was with the privates.
STEPHEN: _(Amiably.)_ Why not? The bold soldier boy. In my opinion every lady for example...
PRIVATE CARR: _(His cap awry, advances to Stephen.)_ Say, how would it be, governor, if I was to bash in your jaw?
STEPHEN: _(Looks up to the sky.)_ How? Very unpleasant. Noble art of selfpretence. Personally, I detest action. _(He waves his hand.)_ Hand hurts me slightly. _Enfin ce sont vos oignons._ _(To Cissy Caffrey.)_ Some trouble is on here. What is it precisely?
DOLLY GRAY: _(From her balcony waves her handkerchief, giving the sign of the heroine of Jericho.)_ Rahab. Cook’s son, goodbye. Safe home to Dolly. Dream of the girl you left behind and she will dream of you.
_(The soldiers turn their swimming eyes.)_
BLOOM: _(Elbowing through the crowd, plucks Stephen’s sleeve vigorously.)_ Come now, professor, that carman is waiting.
STEPHEN: _(Turns.)_ Eh? _(He disengages himself.)_ Why should I not speak to him or to any human being who walks upright upon this oblate orange? _(He points his finger.)_ I’m not afraid of what I can talk to if I see his eye. Retaining the perpendicular.
_(He staggers a pace back.)_
BLOOM: _(Propping him.)_ Retain your own.
STEPHEN: _(Laughs emptily.)_ My centre of gravity is displaced. I have forgotten the trick. Let us sit down somewhere and discuss. Struggle for life is the law of existence but but human philirenists, notably the tsar and the king of England, have invented arbitration. _(He taps his brow.)_ But in here it is I must kill the priest and the king.
BIDDY THE CLAP: Did you hear what the professor said? He’s a professor out of the college.
CUNTY KATE: I did. I heard that.
BIDDY THE CLAP: He expresses himself with such marked refinement of phraseology.
CUNTY KATE: Indeed, yes. And at the same time with such apposite trenchancy.
PRIVATE CARR: _(Pulls himself free and comes forward.)_ What’s that you’re saying about my king?
_(Edward the Seventh appears in an archway. He wears a white jersey on which an image of the Sacred Heart is stitched with the insignia of Garter and Thistle, Golden Fleece, Elephant of Denmark, Skinner’s and Probyn’s horse, Lincoln’s Inn bencher and ancient and honourable artillery company of Massachusetts. He sucks a red jujube. He is robed as a grand elect perfect and sublime mason with trowel and apron, marked_ made in Germany. _In his left hand he holds a plasterer’s bucket on which is printed_ Défense d’uriner. _A roar of welcome greets him.)_
EDWARD THE SEVENTH: _(Slowly, solemnly but indistinctly.)_ Peace, perfect peace. For identification, bucket in my hand. Cheerio, boys. _(He turns to his subjects.)_ We have come here to witness a clean straight fight and we heartily wish both men the best of good luck. Mahak makar a bak.
_(He shakes hands with Private Carr, Private Compton, Stephen, Bloom and Lynch. General applause. Edward the Seventh lifts his bucket graciously in acknowledgment.)_
PRIVATE CARR: _(To Stephen.)_ Say it again.
STEPHEN: _(Nervous, friendly, pulls himself up.)_ I understand your point of view though I have no king myself for the moment. This is the age of patent medicines. A discussion is difficult down here. But this is the point. You die for your country. Suppose. _(He places his arm on Private Carr’s sleeve.)_ Not that I wish it for you. But I say: Let my country die for me. Up to the present it has done so. I didn’t want it to die. Damn death. Long live life!
EDWARD THE SEVENTH: _(Levitates over heaps of slain, in the garb and with the halo of Joking Jesus, a white jujube in his phosphorescent face.)_
My methods are new and are causing surprise. To make the blind see I throw dust in their eyes.
STEPHEN: Kings and unicorns! _(He falls back a pace.)_ Come somewhere and we’ll... What was that girl saying?...
PRIVATE COMPTON: Eh, Harry, give him a kick in the knackers. Stick one into Jerry.
BLOOM: _(To the privates, softly.)_ He doesn’t know what he’s saying. Taken a little more than is good for him. Absinthe. Greeneyed monster. I know him. He’s a gentleman, a poet. It’s all right.
STEPHEN: _(Nods, smiling and laughing.)_ Gentleman, patriot, scholar and judge of impostors.
PRIVATE CARR: I don’t give a bugger who he is.
PRIVATE COMPTON: We don’t give a bugger who he is.
STEPHEN: I seem to annoy them. Green rag to a bull.
_(Kevin Egan of Paris in black Spanish tasselled shirt and peep-o’-day boy’s hat signs to Stephen.)_
KEVIN EGAN: H’lo! _Bonjour!_ The _vieille ogresse_ with the _dents jaunes_.
_(Patrice Egan peeps from behind, his rabbitface nibbling a quince leaf.)_
PATRICE: _Socialiste!_
DON EMILE PATRIZIO FRANZ RUPERT POPE HENNESSY: _(In medieval hauberk, two wild geese volant on his helm, with noble indignation points a mailed hand against the privates.)_ Werf those eykes to footboden, big grand porcos of johnyellows todos covered of gravy!
BLOOM: _(To Stephen.)_ Come home. You’ll get into trouble.
STEPHEN: _(Swaying.)_ I don’t avoid it. He provokes my intelligence.
BIDDY THE CLAP: One immediately observes that he is of patrician lineage.
THE VIRAGO: Green above the red, says he. Wolfe Tone.
THE BAWD: The red’s as good as the green. And better. Up the soldiers! Up King Edward!
A ROUGH: _(Laughs.)_ Ay! Hands up to De Wet.
THE CITIZEN: _(With a huge emerald muffler and shillelagh, calls.)_
May the God above Send down a dove With teeth as sharp as razors To slit the throats Of the English dogs That hanged our Irish leaders.
THE CROPPY BOY: _(The ropenoose round his neck, gripes in his issuing bowels with both hands.)_
I bear no hate to a living thing, But I love my country beyond the king.
RUMBOLD, DEMON BARBER: _(Accompanied by two blackmasked assistants, advances with gladstone bag which he opens.)_ Ladies and gents, cleaver purchased by Mrs Pearcy to slay Mogg. Knife with which Voisin dismembered the wife of a compatriot and hid remains in a sheet in the cellar, the unfortunate female’s throat being cut from ear to ear. Phial containing arsenic retrieved from body of Miss Barron which sent Seddon to the gallows.
_(He jerks the rope. The assistants leap at the victim’s legs and drag him downward, grunting: the croppy boy’s tongue protrudes violently.)_
THE CROPPY BOY:
Horhot ho hray hor hother’s hest.
_(He gives up the ghost. A violent erection of the hanged sends gouts of sperm spouting through his deathclothes on to the cobblestones. Mrs Bellingham, Mrs Yelverton Barry and the Honourable Mrs Mervyn Talboys rush forward with their handkerchiefs to sop it up.)_
RUMBOLD: I’m near it myself. _(He undoes the noose.)_ Rope which hanged the awful rebel. Ten shillings a time. As applied to Her Royal Highness. _(He plunges his head into the gaping belly of the hanged and draws out his head again clotted with coiled and smoking entrails.)_ My painful duty has now been done. God save the king!
EDWARD THE SEVENTH: _(Dances slowly, solemnly, rattling his bucket, and sings with soft contentment.)_
On coronation day, on coronation day, O, won’t we have a merry time, Drinking whisky, beer and wine!
PRIVATE CARR: Here. What are you saying about my king?
STEPHEN: _(Throws up his hands.)_ O, this is too monotonous! Nothing. He wants my money and my life, though want must be his master, for some brutish empire of his. Money I haven’t. _(He searches his pockets vaguely.)_ Gave it to someone.
PRIVATE CARR: Who wants your bleeding money?
STEPHEN: _(Tries to move off.)_ Will someone tell me where I am least likely to meet these necessary evils? _Ça se voit aussi à Paris._ Not that I... But, by Saint Patrick...!
_(The women’s heads coalesce. Old Gummy Granny in sugarloaf hat appears seated on a toadstool, the deathflower of the potato blight on her breast.)_
STEPHEN: Aha! I know you, gammer! Hamlet, revenge! The old sow that eats her farrow!
OLD GUMMY GRANNY: _(Rocking to and fro.)_ Ireland’s sweetheart, the king of Spain’s daughter, alanna. Strangers in my house, bad manners to them! _(She keens with banshee woe.)_ Ochone! Ochone! Silk of the kine! _(She wails.)_ You met with poor old Ireland and how does she stand?
STEPHEN: How do I stand you? The hat trick! Where’s the third person of the Blessed Trinity? Soggarth Aroon? The reverend Carrion Crow.
CISSY CAFFREY: _(Shrill.)_ Stop them from fighting!
A ROUGH: Our men retreated.
PRIVATE CARR: _(Tugging at his belt.)_ I’ll wring the neck of any fucker says a word against my fucking king.
BLOOM: _(Terrified.)_ He said nothing. Not a word. A pure misunderstanding.
THE CITIZEN: _Erin go bragh!_
_(Major Tweedy and the Citizen exhibit to each other medals, decorations, trophies of war, wounds. Both salute with fierce hostility.)_
PRIVATE COMPTON: Go it, Harry. Do him one in the eye. He’s a proboer.
STEPHEN: Did I? When?
BLOOM: _(To the redcoats.)_ We fought for you in South Africa, Irish missile troops. Isn’t that history? Royal Dublin Fusiliers. Honoured by our monarch.
THE NAVVY: _(Staggering past.)_ O, yes! O God, yes! O, make the kwawr a krowawr! O! Bo!
_(Casqued halberdiers in armour thrust forward a pentice of gutted spearpoints. Major Tweedy, moustached like Turko the terrible, in bearskin cap with hackleplume and accoutrements, with epaulettes, gilt chevrons and sabretaches, his breast bright with medals, toes the line. He gives the pilgrim warrior’s sign of the knights templars.)_
MAJOR TWEEDY: _(Growls gruffly.)_ Rorke’s Drift! Up, guards, and at them! Mahar shalal hashbaz.
PRIVATE CARR: I’ll do him in.
PRIVATE COMPTON: _(Waves the crowd back.)_ Fair play, here. Make a bleeding butcher’s shop of the bugger.
_(Massed bands blare_ Garryowen _and_ God save the King.)
CISSY CAFFREY: They’re going to fight. For me!
CUNTY KATE: The brave and the fair.
BIDDY THE CLAP: Methinks yon sable knight will joust it with the best.
CUNTY KATE: _(Blushing deeply.)_ Nay, madam. The gules doublet and merry saint George for me!
STEPHEN:
The harlot’s cry from street to street Shall weave Old Ireland’s windingsheet.
PRIVATE CARR: _(Loosening his belt, shouts.)_ I’ll wring the neck of any fucking bastard says a word against my bleeding fucking king.
BLOOM: _(Shakes Cissy Caffrey’s shoulders.)_ Speak, you! Are you struck dumb? You are the link between nations and generations. Speak, woman, sacred lifegiver!
CISSY CAFFREY: _(Alarmed, seizes Private Carr’s sleeve.)_ Amn’t I with you? Amn’t I your girl? Cissy’s your girl. _(She cries.)_ Police!
STEPHEN: _(Ecstatically, to Cissy Caffrey.)_
White thy fambles, red thy gan And thy quarrons dainty is.
VOICES: Police!
DISTANT VOICES: Dublin’s burning! Dublin’s burning! On fire, on fire!