Complete Works of James Joyce (118 page)

ZOE: It was a commercial traveller married her and took her away with him.

FLORRY:
(Nods)
Mr Lambe from London.

STEPHEN: Lamb of London, who takest away the sins of our world.

LYNCH:
(Embracing Kitty on the sofa, chants deeply) Dona nobis pacem.

(The cigarette slips from Stephen ‘s fingers. Bloom picks it up and throws it in the grate.)

BLOOM: Don’t smoke. You ought to eat. Cursed dog I met.
(To Zoe)
You have nothing?

ZOE: Is he hungry?

STEPHEN:
(Extends his hand to her smiling and chants to the air of the bloodoath in the
Dusk of the Gods)

    
Hangende Hunger,

    
Fragende Frau,

    
Macht uns alle kaputt.

ZOE:
(Tragically)
Hamlet, I am thy father’s gimlet!
(She takes his hand)
Blue eyes beauty I’ll read your hand.
(She points to his forehead)
No wit, no wrinkles.
(She counts)
Two, three, Mars, that’s courage.
(Stephen shakes his head)
No kid.

LYNCH: Sheet lightning courage. The youth who could not shiver and shake.
(To Zoe)
Who taught you palmistry?

ZOE:
(Turns)
Ask my ballocks that I haven’t got.
(To Stephen)
I see it in your face. The eye, like that.
(She frowns with lowered head)

LYNCH:
(Laughing, slaps Kitty behind twice)
Like that. Pandybat.

(Twice loudly a pandybat cracks, the coffin of the pianola flies open, the bald little round jack-in-the-box head of Father Dolan springs up.)

FATHER DOLAN: Any boy want flogging? Broke his glasses? Lazy idle little schemer. See it in your eye.

(Mild, benign, rectorial, reproving, the head of Don John Conmee rises from the pianola coffin.)

DON JOHN CONMEE: Now, Father Dolan! Now. I’m sure that Stephen is a very good little boy!

ZOE:
(Examining Stephen’s palm)
Woman’s hand.

STEPHEN:
(Murmurs)
Continue. Lie. Hold me. Caress. I never could read His handwriting except His criminal thumbprint on the haddock.

ZOE: What day were you born?

STEPHEN: Thursday. Today.

ZOE: Thursday’s child has far to go.
(She traces lines on his hand)
Line of fate. Influential friends.

FLORRY:
(Pointing)
Imagination.

ZOE: Mount of the moon. You’ll meet with a...
(She peers at his hands abruptly)
I won’t tell you what’s not good for you. Or do you want to know?

BLOOM:
(Detaches her fingers and offers his palm)
More harm than good. Here. Read mine.

BELLA: Show.
(She turns up bloom’s hand)
I thought so. Knobby knuckles for the women.

ZOE:
(Peering at bloom’s palm)
Gridiron. Travels beyond the sea and marry money.

BLOOM: Wrong.

ZOE:
(Quickly)
O, I see. Short little finger. Henpecked husband. That wrong?

(Black Liz, a huge rooster hatching in a chalked circle, rises, stretches her wings and clucks.)

BLACK LIZ: Gara. Klook. Klook. Klook.

(She sidles from her newlaid egg and waddles off)

BLOOM:
(Points to his hand)
That weal there is an accident. Fell and cut it twentytwo years ago. I was sixteen.

ZOE: I see, says the blind man. Tell us news.

STEPHEN: See? Moves to one great goal. I am twentytwo. Sixteen years ago he was twentytwo too. Sixteen years ago I twentytwo tumbled. Twentytwo years ago he sixteen fell off his hobbyhorse.
(He winces)
Hurt my hand somewhere. Must see a dentist. Money?

(Zoe whispers to Florry. They giggle. Bloom releases his hand and writes idly on the table in backhand, pencilling slow curves.)

FLORRY: What?

(A hackneycar, number three hundred and twentyfour, with a gallantbuttocked mare, driven by James Barton, Harmony Avenue, Donnybrook, trots past. Blazes Boylan and Lenehan sprawl swaying on the sideseats. The Ormond boots crouches behind on the axle. Sadly over the crossblind Lydia Douce and Mina Kennedy gaze.)

THE BOOTS:
(Jogging, mocks them with thumb and wriggling wormfingers)
Haw haw have you the horn?

(Bronze by gold they whisper.)

ZOE:
(To Florry)
Whisper.

(They whisper again)

(Over the well of the car Blazes Boylan leans, his boater straw set sideways, a red flower in his mouth. Lenehan in yachtsman’s cap and white shoes officiously detaches a long hair from Blazes Boylan’s coat shoulder.)

LENEHAN: Ho! What do I here behold? Were you brushing the cobwebs off a few quims?

BOYLAN:
(Seated, smiles)
Plucking a turkey.

LENEHAN: A good night’s work.

BOYLAN:
(Holding up four thick bluntungulated fingers, winks)
Blazes Kate! Up to sample or your money back.
(He holds out a forefinger)
Smell that.

LENEHAN:
(Smells gleefully)
Ah! Lobster and mayonnaise. Ah!

ZOE AND FLORRY:
(Laugh together)
Ha ha ha ha.

BOYLAN:
(Jumps surely from the car and calls loudly for all to hear)
Hello, Bloom! Mrs Bloom dressed yet?

BLOOM:
(In flunkey’s prune plush coat and kneebreeches, buff stockings and powdered wig)
I’m afraid not, sir. The last articles...

BOYLAN:
(Tosses him sixpence)
Here, to buy yourself a gin and splash.
(He hangs his hat smartly on a peg of Bloom’s antlered head)
Show me in. I have a little private business with your wife, you understand?

BLOOM: Thank you, sir. Yes, sir. Madam Tweedy is in her bath, sir.

MARION: He ought to feel himself highly honoured.
(She plops splashing out of the water)
Raoul darling, come and dry me. I’m in my pelt. Only my new hat and a carriage sponge.

BOYLAN:
(A merry twinkle in his eye)
Topping!

BELLA: What? What is it?

(Zoe whispers to her.)

MARION: Let him look, the pishogue! Pimp! And scourge himself! I’ll write to a powerful prostitute or Bartholomona, the bearded woman, to raise weals out on him an inch thick and make him bring me back a signed and stamped receipt.

BOYLAN: (clasps himself) Here, I can’t hold this little lot much longer. (he strides off on stiff cavalry legs)

BELLA:
(Laughing)
Ho ho ho ho.

BOYLAN:
(To Bloom, over his shoulder)
You can apply your eye to the keyhole and play with yourself while I just go through her a few times.

BLOOM: Thank you, sir. I will, sir. May I bring two men chums to witness the deed and take a snapshot?
(He holds out an ointment jar)
Vaseline, sir? Orangeflower...? Lukewarm water...?

KITTY:
(From the sofa)
Tell us, Florry. Tell us. What.

(Florry whispers to her. Whispering lovewords murmur, liplapping loudly, poppysmic plopslop.)

MINA KENNEDY:
(Her eyes upturned)
O, it must be like the scent of geraniums and lovely peaches! O, he simply idolises every bit of her! Stuck together! Covered with kisses!

LYDIA DOUCE:
(Her mouth opening)
Yumyum. O, he’s carrying her round the room doing it! Ride a cockhorse. You could hear them in Paris and New York. Like mouthfuls of strawberries and cream.

KITTY:
(Laughing)
Hee hee hee.

BOYLAN’S VOICE:
(Sweetly, hoarsely, in the pit of his stomach)
Ah! Gooblazqruk brukarchkrasht!

MARION’S VOICE:
(Hoarsely, sweetly, rising to her throat)
O! Weeshwashtkissinapooisthnapoohuck?

BLOOM:
(His eyes wildly dilated, clasps himself)
Show! Hide! Show! Plough her! More! Shoot!

BELLA, ZOE, FLORRY, KITTY: Ho ho! Ha ha! Hee hee!

LYNCH:
(Points)
The mirror up to nature.
(He laughs)
Hu hu hu hu hu!

(Stephen and Bloom gaze in the mirror. The face of William Shakespeare, beardless, appears there, rigid in facial paralysis, crowned by the reflection of the reindeer antlered hatrack in the hall.)

SHAKESPEARE:
(In dignified ventriloquy)
’Tis the loud laugh bespeaks the vacant mind.
(To Bloom)
Thou thoughtest as how thou wastest invisible. Gaze.
(He crows with a black capon’s laugh)
Iagogo! How my Oldfellow chokit his Thursdaymornun. Iagogogo!

BLOOM:
(Smiles yellowly at the three whores)
When will I hear the joke?

ZOE: Before you’re twice married and once a widower.

BLOOM: Lapses are condoned. Even the great Napoleon when measurements were taken next the skin after his death...

(Mrs Dignam, widow woman, her snubnose and cheeks flushed with deathtalk, tears and Tunney’s tawny sherry, hurries by in her weeds, her bonnet awry, rouging and powdering her cheeks, lips and nose, a pen chivvying her brood of cygnets. Beneath her skirt appear her late husband’s everyday trousers and turnedup boots, large eights. She holds a Scottish widows’ insurance policy and a large marquee umbrella under which her brood run with her, Patsy hopping on one shod foot, his collar loose, a hank of porksteaks dangling, freddy whimpering, Susy with a crying cod’s mouth, Alice struggling with the baby. She cuffs them on, her streamers flaunting aloft.)

FREDDY: Ah, ma, you’re dragging me along!

SUSY: Mamma, the beeftea is fizzing over!

SHAKESPEARE:
(With paralytic rage)
Weda seca whokilla farst.

(The face of Martin Cunningham, bearded, refeatures Shakespeare’s beardless face. The marquee umbrella sways drunkenly, the children run aside. Under the umbrella appears Mrs Cunningham in Merry Widow hat and kimono gown. She glides sidling and bowing, twirling japanesily.)

MRS CUNNINGHAM:
(Sings)

And they call me the jewel of Asia!

MARTIN CUNNINGHAM:
(Gazes on her, impassive)
Immense! Most bloody awful demirep!

STEPHEN:
Et exaltabuntur cornua iusti.
Queens lay with prize bulls. Remember Pasiphae for whose lust my grandoldgrossfather made the first confessionbox. Forget not Madam Grissel Steevens nor the suine scions of the house of Lambert. And Noah was drunk with wine. And his ark was open.

BELLA: None of that here. Come to the wrong shop.

LYNCH: Let him alone. He’s back from Paris.

ZOE:
(Runs to stephen and links him)
O go on! Give us some parleyvoo.

(Stephen claps hat on head and leaps over to the fireplace where he stands with shrugged shoulders, finny hands outspread, a painted smile on his face.)

LYNCH:
(Oommelling on the sofa)
Rmm Rmm Rmm Rrrrrrmmmm.

STEPHEN:
(Gabbles with marionette jerks)
Thousand places of entertainment to expense your evenings with lovely ladies saling gloves and other things perhaps hers heart beerchops perfect fashionable house very eccentric where lots cocottes beautiful dressed much about princesses like are dancing cancan and walking there parisian clowneries extra foolish for bachelors foreigns the same if talking a poor english how much smart they are on things love and sensations voluptuous. Misters very selects for is pleasure must to visit heaven and hell show with mortuary candles and they tears silver which occur every night. Perfectly shocking terrific of religion’s things mockery seen in universal world. All chic womans which arrive full of modesty then disrobe and squeal loud to see vampire man debauch nun very fresh young with
dessous troublants
.
(He clacks his tongue loudly)
Ho, la la! Ce pif qu’il a!