Complete Works of James Joyce (120 page)
Read Complete Works of James Joyce Online
Authors: Unknown
And wears no fancy clothes.
(Closeclutched swift swifter with glareblareflare scudding they scootlootshoot lumbering by. Baraabum!)
TUTTI: Encore! Bis! Bravo! Encore!
SIMON: Think of your mother’s people!
STEPHEN: Dance of death.
(Bang fresh barang bang of lacquey’s bell, horse, nag, steer, piglings, Conmee on Christass, lame crutch and leg sailor in cockboat armfolded ropepulling hitching stamp hornpipe through and through. Baraabum! 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. Fuseblue peer from barrel rev. evensong Love on hackney jaunt Blazes blind coddoubled bicyclers Dilly with snowcake no fancy clothes. Then in last switchback lumbering up and down bump mashtub sort of viceroy and reine relish for tublumber bumpshire rose. Baraabum!)
(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 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. Puling, 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 vice-chancellor. 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, follow from fir, 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:
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.
