书城外语Ulysses
26891500000211

第211章

BLOOM (Shaking hands with a blind stripling.) My more than Brother! (Placing his arms round the shoulders of an old couple.) Dear old friends! (He plays pussy fourcorners with ragged boys and girls.) Peep! Bopeep! (He wheels twins in a perambulator.) Ticktacktwo wouldyousetashoe? (He performs juggler's tricks, draws red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet silk handkerchiefs from his mouth.) Roygbiv. 32 feet per second. (He consoles a widow.) Absence makes the heart grow younger. (He dances the Highland fling with grotesque antics.) Leg it, ye devils! (He kisses the bedsores of a palsied veteran.) Honourable wounds! (He trips up a fat policeman.) U.p.: up. U.p.: up. (He whispers in the ear of a blushing waitress and laughs kindly.) Ah, naughty, naughty! (He eats a raw turnip offered him by Maurice Butterly, farmer.) Fine! Splendid! (He refuses to accept three shillings offered him by Joseph Hynes, journalist.) My dear fellow, not at all! (He gives his coat to a beggar.) Please accept. (He takes part in a stomach race with elderly male and female cripples.) Come on, boys! Wriggle it, girls!

THE CITIZEN (Choked with emotion, brushes aside a tear in his emerald muffler.) May the good God bless him!

(The rams' horns sound for silence. The standard of Zion is hoisted.)BLOOM (Uncloaks impressively, revealing obesity, unrolls a paper and reads solemnly.) Aleph Beth Ghimel Daleth Hagadah Tephilim Kosher Yom Kippur Hanukah Ros chaschana Beni Brith Bar Mitzvah Mazzoth Askenazim Meshuggah Talith.

(An official translation is read by Jimmy Henry, assistant town clerk.)JIMMY HENRY The Court of Conscience is now open. His Most Catholic Majesty will now administer open air justice. Free medical and legal advice, solution of doubles and other problems. All cordially invited. Given at this our loyal city of Dublin in the year I of the Paradisiacal Era.

PADDY LEONARD What am I to do about my rates and taxes?

BLOOM Pay them, my friend.

PADDY LEONARD Thank you.

NOSEY FLYNN Can I raise a mortgage on my fire insurance?

BLOOM (Obdurately.) Sirs, take notice that by the law of torts you are bound over in your own recognisances for six months in the sum of five pounds.

J.J. O'MOLLY A Daniel did I say? Nay! A Peter O'Brien!

NOSEY FLYNN Where do I draw the five pounds?

PISSER BURKE For bladder trouble?

BLOOM

Acid. nit. hydrochlor dil., 20 minims,

Tinct. mix. vom., 4 minims.

Extr. taraxel. lig., 30 minims.

Aq. dis. ter in die.

1

BLOOM Pleased to hear from you, Chris. K. II.

JOE HYNES Why aren't you in uniform?

BLOOM When my progenitor of sainted memory wore the uniform of the Austrian despot in a dank prison where was yours?

BEN DOLLARD Pansies?

BLOOM Embellish (beautify) suburban gardens.

BEN DOLLARD When twins arrive?

BLOOM Father (pater, dad) starts thinking.

LARRY O'ROURKE An eight day licence for my new premises. You remember me, sir Leo, when you were in number seven. I'm sending around a dozen of stout for the missus.

BLOOM (Coldly.) You have the advantage of me. Lady Bloom accepts no presents.

CROFTON This is indeed a festivity.

BLOOM (Solemnly.) You call it a festivity. I call it a sacrament.

ALEXANDER KEYES When will we have our own house of keys?

BLOOM I stand for the reform of municipal morals and the plain ten commandments. New worlds for old. Union of all, jew, moslem and gentile. Three acres and a cow for all children of nature. Saloon motor hearses. Compulsory manual labour for all. All parks open to the public day and night. Electric dishscrubbers. Tuberculosis, lunacy, war and mendicancy must now cease. General amnesty, weekly carnival, with masked licence, bonuses for all, esperanto the universal brotherhood. No more patriotism of barspongers and dropsical impostors. Free money, free love and a free lay church in a free lay state.

O'MADDEN BURKE Free fox in a free henroost.

DAVY BYRNE (Yawning.) Iiiiiiiiiaaaaaaach!

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 any thingarian 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 tooralcom 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 fishing cap and oilskin jacket.) He employs a mechanical device to frustrate the sacred ends of nature.