Complete Works of James Joyce (110 page)

BLOOM: Mixed races and mixed marriage.

LENEHAN: What about mixed bathing?

(bloom explains to those near him his schemes for social regeneration. All agree with him. The keeper of the Kildare Street Museum appears, dragging a lorry on which are the shaking statues of several naked goddesses, Venus Callipyge, Venus Pandemos, Venus Metempsychosis, 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 People.)

FATHER FARLEY: He is an episcopalian, an agnostic, an anythingarian seeking to overthrow our holy faith.

MRS RIORDAN:
(Tears up her will)
I’m disappointed in you! You bad man!

MOTHER GROGAN:
(Removes her boot to throw it at Bloom)
You beast! You abominable person!

NOSEY FLYNN: Give us a tune, Bloom. One of the old sweet songs.

BLOOM:
(With rollicking humour)

    
I vowed that I never would leave her,

    
She turned out a cruel deceiver.

    
With my tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom.

HOPPY HOLOHAN: Good old Bloom! There’s nobody like him after all.

PADDY LEONARD: Stage Irishman!

BLOOM: What railway opera is like a tramline in Gibraltar? The Rows of Casteele.
(Laughter.)

LENEHAN: Plagiarist! Down with Bloom!

THE VEILED SIBYL:
(Enthusiastically)
I’m a Bloomite and I glory in it. I believe in him in spite of all. I’d give my life for him, the funniest man on earth.

BLOOM:
(Winks at the bystanders)
I bet she’s a bonny lassie.

THEODORE PUREFOY:
(In fishingcap and oilskin jacket)
He employs a mechanical device to frustrate the sacred ends of nature.

THE VEILED SIBYL:
(Stabs herself)
My hero god!
(She dies)

(Many most attractive and enthusiastic women also commit suicide by stabbing, drowning, drinking prussic acid, aconite, arsenic, opening their veins, refusing food, casting themselves under steamrollers, from the top of Nelson’s Pillar, into the great vat of Guinness’s brewery, asphyxiating themselves by placing their heads in gasovens, hanging themselves in stylish garters, leaping from windows of different storeys.)

ALEXANDER J DOWIE:
(Violently)
Fellowchristians and antiBloomites, the man called Bloom is from the roots of hell, a disgrace to christian men. A fiendish libertine from his earliest years this stinking goat of Mendes gave precocious signs of infantile debauchery, recalling the cities of the plain, with a dissolute granddam. This vile hypocrite, bronzed with infamy, is the white bull mentioned in the Apocalypse. A worshipper of the Scarlet Woman, intrigue is the very breath of his nostrils. The stake faggots and the caldron of boiling oil are for him. Caliban!

THE MOB: Lynch him! Roast him! He’s as bad as Parnell was. Mr Fox!

(Mother Grogan throws her boot at Bloom. Several shopkeepers from upper and lower Dorset street throw objects of little or no commercial value, hambones, condensed milk tins, unsaleable cabbage, stale bread, sheep’s tails, odd pieces of fat.)

BLOOM:
(Excitedly)
This is midsummer madness, some ghastly joke again. By heaven, I am guiltless as the unsunned snow! It was my brother Henry. He is my double. He lives in number 2 Dolphin’s Barn. Slander, the viper, has wrongfully accused me. Fellowcountrymen,
sgenl inn ban bata coisde gan capall.
I call on my old friend, Dr Malachi Mulligan, sex specialist, to give medical testimony on my behalf.

DR MULLIGAN:
(In motor jerkin, green motorgoggles on his brow)
Dr Bloom is bisexually abnormal. He has recently escaped from Dr Eustace’s private asylum for demented gentlemen. Born out of bedlock hereditary epilepsy is present, the consequence of unbridled lust. Traces of elephantiasis have been discovered among his ascendants. There are marked symptoms of chronic exhibitionism. Ambidexterity is also latent. He is prematurely bald from selfabuse, perversely idealistic in consequence, a reformed rake, and has metal teeth. In consequence of a family complex he has temporarily lost his memory and I believe him to be more sinned against than sinning. I have made a pervaginal examination and, after application of the acid test to 5427 anal, axillary, pectoral and pubic hairs, I declare him to be
virgo intacta.

(Bloom holds his high grade hat over his genital organs.)

DR MADDEN: Hypsospadia is also marked. In the interest of coming generations I suggest that the parts affected should be preserved in spirits of wine in the national teratological museum.

DR CROTTHERS: I have examined the patient’s urine. It is albuminoid. Salivation is insufficient, the patellar reflex intermittent.

DR PUNCH COSTELLO: The
fetor judaicus
is most perceptible.

DR DIXON:
(Reads a bill of health)
Professor Bloom is a finished example of the new womanly man. His moral nature is simple and lovable. Many have found him a dear man, a dear person. He is a rather quaint fellow on the whole, coy though not feebleminded in the medical sense. He has written a really beautiful letter, a poem in itself, to the court missionary of the Reformed Priests’ Protection Society which clears up everything. He is practically a total abstainer and I can affirm that he sleeps on a straw litter and eats the most Spartan food, cold dried grocer’s peas. He wears a hairshirt of pure Irish manufacture winter and summer and scourges himself every Saturday. He was, I understand, at one time a firstclass misdemeanant in Glencree reformatory. Another report states that he was a very posthumous child. I appeal for clemency in the name of the most sacred word our vocal organs have ever been called upon to speak. He is about to have a baby.

(General commotion and compassion. Women faint. A wealthy American makes a street collection for Bloom. Gold and silver coins, blank cheques, banknotes, jewels, treasury bonds, maturing bills of exchange, I. O. U’s, wedding rings, watchchains, lockets, necklaces and bracelets are rapidly collected.)

BLOOM: O, I so want to be a mother.

MRS THORNTON:
(In nursetender’s gown)
Embrace me tight, dear. You’ll be soon over it. Tight, dear.

(Bloom embraces her tightly and bears eight male yellow and white children. They appear on a redcarpeted staircase adorned with expensive plants. All the octuplets are handsome, with valuable metallic faces, wellmade, respectably dressed and wellconducted, speaking five modern languages fluently and interested in various arts and sciences. Each has his name printed in legible letters on his shirtfront: Nasodoro, Goldfinger, Chrysostomos, Maindoree, Silversmile, Silberselber, Vifargent, Panargyros. They are immediately appointed to positions of high public trust in several different countries as managing directors of banks, traffic managers of railways, chairmen of limited liability companies, vicechairmen of hotel syndicates.)

A VOICE: Bloom, are you the Messiah ben Joseph or ben David?

BLOOM:
(Darkly)
You have said it.

BROTHER BUZZ: Then perform a miracle like Father Charles.

BANTAM LYONS: Prophesy who will win the Saint Leger.

(Bloom walks on a net, covers his left eye with his left ear, passes through several walls, climbs Nelson’s Pillar, hangs from the top ledge by his eyelids, eats twelve dozen oysters (shells included), heals several sufferers from king’s evil, contracts his face so as to resemble many historical personages, Lord Beaconsfield, Lord Byron, Wat Tyler, 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, eclipses the sun by extending his little finger.)

BRINI, PAPAL NUNCIO:
(In papal zouave’s uniform, steel cuirasses as breastplate, armplates, thighplates, legplates, large profane moustaches and brown paper mitre) Leopoldi autem generatio.
Moses begat Noah and Noah begat Eunuch and Eunuch begat O’Halloran and O’Halloran begat Guggenheim and Guggenheim begat Agendath and Agendath begat Netaim and Netaim begat Le Hirsch and Le Hirsch begat Jesurum and Jesurum begat MacKay and MacKay begat Ostrolopsky and Ostrolopsky begat Smerdoz and Smerdoz begat Weiss and Weiss begat Schwarz and Schwarz begat Adrianopoli and Adrianopoli begat Aranjuez and Aranjuez begat Lewy Lawson and Lewy Lawson begat Ichabudonosor and Ichabudonosor begat O’Donnell Magnus and O’Donnell Magnus begat Christbaum and Christbaum begat ben Maimun and ben Maimun begat Dusty Rhodes and Dusty Rhodes begat Benamor and Benamor begat Jones-Smith and Jones-Smith begat Savorgnanovich and Savorgnanovich begat Jasperstone and Jasperstone begat Vingtetunieme and Vingtetunieme begat Szombathely and Szombathely begat Virag and Virag begat Bloom
et vocabitur nomen eius Emmanuel.

A DEADHAND:
(Writes on the wall)
Bloom is a cod.

CRAB:
(In bushranger’s kit)
What did you do in the cattlecreep behind Kilbarrack?

A FEMALE INFANT:
(Shakes a rattle)
And under Ballybough bridge?

A HOLLYBUSH: And in the devil’s glen?

BLOOM:
(Blushes furiously all over from frons to nates, three tears filling from his left eye)
Spare my past.

THE IRISH EVICTED TENANTS:
(In bodycoats, kneebreeches, with Donnybrook fair shillelaghs)
Sjambok him!

(Bloom with asses’ ears seats himself in the pillory with crossed arms, his feet protruding. He whistles
Don Giovanni, a cenar teco.
Artane orphans, joining hands, caper round him. Girls of the Prison Gate Mission, joining hands, caper round in the opposite direction.)

THE ARTANE ORPHANS:

    
You hig, you hog, you dirty dog!

    
You think the ladies love you!

    
THE PRISON GATE GIRLS:

    
If you see Kay

    
Tell him he may

    
See you in tea

    
Tell him from me.

HORNBLOWER:
(In ephod and huntingcap, announces)
And he shall carry the sins of the people to Azazel, the spirit which is in the wilderness, and to Lilith, the nighthag. And they shall stone him and defile him, yea, all from Agendath Netaim and from Mizraim, the land of Ham.

(All the people cast soft pantomime stones at Bloom. Many bonafide travellers and ownerless dogs come near him and defile him. Mastiansky and Citron approach in gaberdines, wearing long earlocks. They wag their beards at Bloom.)

MASTIANSKY AND CITRON: Belial! Laemlein of Istria, the false Messiah! Abulafia! Recant!

(George R Mesias, Bloom’s tailor, appears, a tailor’s goose under his arm, presenting a bill)

MESIAS: To alteration one pair trousers eleven shillings.

BLOOM:
(Rubs his hands cheerfully)
Just like old times. Poor Bloom!

(Reuben J Dodd, blackbearded iscariot, bad shepherd, bearing on his shoulders the drowned corpse of his son, approaches the pillory.)

REUBEN J:
(Whispers hoarsely)
The squeak is out. A split is gone for the flatties. Nip the first rattler.

THE FIRE BRIGADE: Pflaap!

BROTHER BUZZ:
(Invests Bloom in a yellow habit with embroidery of painted flames and high pointed hat. He places a bag of gunpowder round his neck and hands him over to the civil power, saying)
Forgive him his trespasses.

(Lieutenant Myers of the Dublin Fire Brigade by general request sets fire to Bloom. Lamentations.)

THE CITIZEN: Thank heaven!

BLOOM:
(In a seamless garment marked I. H. S. stands upright amid phoenix flames)
Weep not for me, O daughters of Erin.

(He exhibits to Dublin reporters traces of burning. The daughters of Erin, in black garments, with large prayerbooks and long lighted candles in their hands, kneel down and pray.)

THE DAUGHTERS OF ERIN: