THE CROWD:
Card of the races. Racing card!
Ten to one the field!
Tommy on the clay here! Tommy on the clay!
Ten to one bar one! Ten to one bar one!
Try your luck on Spinning Jenny!
Ten to one bar one!
Sell the monkey, boys! Sell the monkey!
I’ll give ten to one!
Ten to one bar one!
(A dark horse, riderless, bolts like a phantom past the winningpost, his mane moonfoaming, his eyeballs stars. The field follows, a bunch of bucking mounts. Skeleton horses, Sceptre, Maximum the Second, Zinfandel, the Duke of Westminster’s Shotover, Repulse, the Duke of Beaufort’s Ceylon, prix de Paris. Dwarfs ride them, rustyarmoured, leaping, leaping in their, in their saddles. Last in a drizzle of rain on a brokenwinded isabelle nag, Cock of the North, the favourite, honey cap, green jacket, orange sleeves, Garrett Deasy up, gripping the reins, a hockeystick at the ready. His nag on spavined whitegaitered feet jogs along the rocky road.)
THE ORANGE LODGES: (Jeering.) Get down and push, mister. Last lap! You’ll be home the night!
GARRETT DEASY: (Bolt upright, his nailscraped face plastered with postagestamps, brandishes his hockeystick, his blue eyes flashing in the prism of the chandelier as his mount lopes by at schooling gallop.)
Per vias rectas!
(A yoke of buckets leopards all over him and his rearing nag a torrent of mutton broth with dancing coins of carrots, barley, onions, turnips, potatoes.)
THE GREEN LODGES: Soft day, sir John! Soft day, your honour!
(Private Carr, Private Compton and Cissy Caffrey pass beneath the windows, singing in discord.)
STEPHEN: Hark! Our friend noise in the street.
ZOE: (Holds up her hand.) Stop!
PRIVATE CARR, PRIVATE COMPTON AND CISSY CAFFREY:
Yet I’ve a sort of a
Yorkshire relish for…
ZOE: That’s me. (She claps her hands.) Dance! Dance! (She runs to the pianola.) Who has twopence?
BLOOM: Who’ll…?
LYNCH: (Handing her coins.) Here.
STEPHEN: (Cracking his fingers impatiently.) Quick! Quick! Where’s my augur’s rod? (He runs to the piano and takes his ashplant, beating his foot in tripudium.)
ZOE: (Turns the drumhandle.) There.
(She drops two pennies in the slot. Gold, pink and violet lights start forth. The drum turns purring in low hesitation waltz. Professor Goodwin, in a bowknotted periwig, in court dress, wearing a stained inverness cape, bent in two from incredible age, totters across the room, his hands fluttering. He sits tinily on the pianostool and lifts and beats handless sticks of arms on the keyboard, nodding with damsel’s grace, his bowknot bobbing.)
ZOE: (Twirls round herself, heeltapping.) Dance. Anybody here for there? Who’ll dance? Clear the table.
(The pianola with changing lights plays in waltz time the prelude of My Girl’s a Yorkshire Girl. Stephen throws his ashplant on the table and seizes Zoe round the waist. Florry and Bella push the table towards the fireplace. Stephen, arming Zoe with exaggerated grace, begins to waltz her round the room. Bloom stands aside. Her sleeve falling from gracing arms, reveals a white fleshflower of vaccination. Between the curtains Professor Maginni inserts a leg on the toepoint of which spins a silk hat. With a deft kick he sends it spinning to his crown and jauntyhatted skates in. He wears a slate frockcoat with claret silk lapels, a gorget of cream tulle, a green lowcut waistcoat, stock collar with white kerchief, tight lavender trousers, patent pumps and canary gloves. In his buttonhole is an immense dahlia. He twirls in reversed directions a clouded cane, then wedges it tight in his oxter. He places a hand lightly on his breastbone, bows, and fondles his flower and buttons.)
MAGINNI: The poetry of motion, art of calisthenics. No connection with Madam Legget Byrne’s or Levenston’s. Fancy dress balls arranged. Deportment. The Katty Lanner step. So. Watch me! My terpsichorean abilities. (He minuets forward three paces on tripping bee’s feet.) Tout le monde en avant! Révérence! Tout le monde en place!
(The prelude ceases. Professor Goodwin, beating vague arms shrivels, sinks, his live cape falling about the stool. The air in firmer waltz time sounds. Stephen and Zoe circle freely. The lights change, glow, fade gold rosy violet.)
THE PIANOLA:
Two young fellows were talking about their girls, girls, girls,
Sweethearts they’d left behind…
(From a corner the morning hours run out, goldhaired, slimsandalled, in girlish blue, waspwaisted, with innocent hands. Nimbly they dance, twirling their skipping ropes. The hours of noon follow in amber gold. Laughing, linked, high haircombs flashing, they catch the sun in mocking mirrors, lifting their arms.)
MAGINNI: (Clipclaps glovesilent hands.) Carré! Avant deux! Breathe evenly! Balance!
(The morning and noon hours waltz in their places, turning, advancing to each other, shaping their curves, bowing visavis. Cavaliers behind them arch and suspend their arms, with hands descending to, touching, rising from their shoulders.)
HOURS: You may touch my.
CAVALIERS: May I touch your?
HOURS: O, but lightly!
CAVALIERS: O, so lightly!
THE PIANOLA:
My little shy little lass has a waist.
(Zoe and Stephen turn boldly with looser swing. The twilight hours advance from long landshadows, dispersed, lagging, languideyed, their cheeks delicate with cipria and false faint bloom. They are in grey gauze with dark bat sleeves that flutter in the land breeze.)
MAGINNI: Avant huit! Traversé! Salut! Cours de mains! Croisé!
(The night hours, one by one, steal to the last place. Morning, noon and twilight hours retreat before them. They are masked, with daggered hair and bracelets of dull bells. Weary they curchycurchy under veils.)
THE BRACELETS: Heigho! Heigho!
ZOE: (Twirling, her hand to her brow.) O!
MAGINNI: Les tiroirs! Chaîne de dames! La corbeille! Dos à dos!
(Arabesquing wearily they weave a pattern on the floor, weaving, unweaving, curtseying, twirling, simply swirling.)
ZOE: I’m giddy!
(She frees herself, droops on a chair. Stephen seizes Florry and turns with her.)
MAGINNI: Boulangère! Les ronds! Les ponts! Chevaux de bois! Escargots!
(Twining, receding, with interchanging hands the night hours link each each with arching arms in a mosaic of movements. Stephen and Florry turn cumbrously.)
MAGINNI: Dansez avec vos dames! Changez de dames! Donnez le petit bouquet à votre dame! Remerciez!
THE PIANOLA:
Best, best of all,
Baraabum!
KITTY: (Jumps up.) O, they played that on the hobbyhorses at the Mirus bazaar!
(She runs to Stephen. He leaves Florry brusquely and seizes Kitty. A screaming bittern’s harsh high whistle shrieks. Groangrousegurgling Toft’s cumbersome whirligig turns slowly the room right roundabout the room.)
THE PIANOLA:
My girl’s a Yorkshire girl.
ZOE:
Yorkshire through and through. Come on all!
(She seizes Florry and waltzes her.)
STEPHEN: Pas seul!
(He wheels Kitty into Lynch’s arms, snatches up his ashplant from the table and takes the floor. All wheel whirl waltz twirl. Bloombella Kittylynch Florryzoe jujuby women. Stephen with hat ashplant frogsplits in middle highkicks with skykicking mouth shut hand clasp part under thigh. With clang tinkle boomhammer tallyho hornblower blue green yellow flashes Toft’s cumbersome turns with hobbyhorse riders from gilded snakes dangled, bowels fandango leaping spurn soil foot and fall again.)
THE PIANOLA:
Though she’s a factory lass
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 falling 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
