The Mabbot street entrance of nighttown, before which stretches an uncobbled transiding set with skeleton tracks, red and green will-o'-the-wisps and danger signals. Rows of flimsy houses with gaping doors. Rare lamps with faint rainbow fans. Round Rabaiotti's halted ice gondola stunted men and women squabble. They grab wafers between which are wedged lumps of coal and copper snow. Sucking, they scatter slowly. Children. The swancomb of the gondola, highreared, forges on through the murk, white and blue under a lighthouse. Whistles call and answer.
THE CALLS Wait, my love, and I'll be with you.

THE ANSWERS Round behind the stable.

(A deaf mute idiot with goggle eyes, his shapeless mouth dribbling, jerks past, shaken in Saint Vitus' dance. A chain of children's hands imprisons him.)

THE CHILDREN Kithoguel Salute.

THE IDIOT (Lifts a palsied left arm and gurgles.) Grhahute!

THE CHILDREN Where's the great light?

THE IDIOT (Gobbing.) Ghaghahest.

(They release him. He jerks on. A pygmy woman swings on a rope slung between the railings, counting. A form sprawled against a dustbin and muffled by its arm and hat moves, groans, grinding growling teeth, and snores again. On a step a gnome totting among a rubbish tip crouches to shoulder a sack of rags and bones. A crone standing by with a smoky oil lamp rams the last bottle in the maw of his sack. He heaves his booty, tugs askew his peaked cap and hobbles off mutely. The crone makes back for her lair swaying her lamp. A bandy child, asquat on the doorstep with a papershuttlecock, crawls sidling after her in spurts, clutches her skirt, scrambles up. A drunken navvy ups with both hands the railings of an area, lurching heavily. At a corner two night watch in shoulder capes, their hands upon their staffholsters, loom tall. A plate crashes; a woman screams; a child wails. Oaths of a man roar, mutter, cease. Figures wander, lurk, peer from warrens. In a room lit by a candle stuck in a bottleneck a slut combs out the tatts from the hair of a scrofulous child. Cissy Caffrey's voice, still young, sings shrill from a lane.)

CISSY CAFFREY

I gave it to Molly
Because she was jolly,
The leg of the duck
The leg of the duck.
(Private Cart and Private Compton, swaggersticks tight in their oxters, as they march unsteadily rightaboutface and burst together from their mouths a volleyed fart. Laughter of men from the lane. A hoarse virago retorts.)
THE VIRAGO Signs on you, hairy arse. More power the Cavan girl.

CISSY CAFFREY More luck to me. Cavan, Cootehill and Belturbet.

(She sings.)

I gave it to Nelly
To stick in her belly
The leg of the duck
The leg of the duck.
(Private Cart and Private Compton turn and counterretort, their tunics bloodbright in a lampglow, black sockets of caps on their blond copper polls. Stephen Dedalus and Lynch pass through the crowd close to the redcoats.)
PRIVATE COMPTON (Jerks his finger.) Way for the parson.

PRIVATE CARR (Turns and calls.) What ho, parson!

CISSY CAFFREY (Her voice soaring higher.)

She has it, she got it,
Wherever she put it
The leg of the duck.
(Stephen, flourishing the ashplant in his left hand, chants with joy the introit for paschal time. Lynch, his jockey cap low on his brow, attends him, a sneer of discontent wrinkling his face.)
STEPHEN Vidi aquam egredientem de templo a latere dextro. Alleluia.

(The famished snaggletusks of an elderly bawd protrude from a doorway.)

THE BAWD (Her voice whispering huskily.) Sst! Come here till I tell you. Maidenhead inside. Sst.

STEPHEN (Altius aliqantulum) Et omnes ad quos pervenit acqua ista.

THE BAWD (Spits in their trail her jet of venom.) Trinity medicals. Fallopian tube. All prick and no pence.

(Edy Boardman, sniffling, crouched with Bertha Supple, draws her shawl across her nostrils.)

EDY BOARDMAN (Bickering.) And say the one: I seen you up Faithful place with your squarepusher, the greaser off the railway, in his cometobed hat. Did you, says I. That's not for you to say, says I. You never seen me in the mantrap with a married highlander, says I. The likes of her! Stag that one is. Stubborn as a mule! And her walking with two fellows the one time, Kildbride the enginedriver and lancecorporal Oliphant.

STEPHEN (Triumphaliter.) Salvi facti i sunt.

(He flourishes his ashplant shivering the lamp image, shattering light over the world. A liver and white spaniel on the prowl slinks after him, growling. Lynch scar's it with a kick.)

LYNCH So that?

STEPHEN (Looks behind.) So that gesture, not music, not odours, would be a universal language, the gift of tongues rendering visible not the lay sense but the first entelechy, the structural rhythm.

LYNCH Pornosophical philotheology. Metaphysics in Mecklenburg street!

STEPHEN We have shrewridden Shakespeare and henpecked Socrates. Even the allwisest stagyrite was bitted, bridled and mounted by a light of love.

LYNCH Ba!

STEPHEN Anyway, who wants two gestures to illustrate a loaf and a jug? This movement illustrates the loaf and jug of bread and wine in Omar. Hold my stick.

LYNCH Damn your yellow stick. Where are we going?

STEPHEN Lecherous lynx, to la belle dame sans merci, Georgina Johnson, ad deam qui laetificat juventutem meam.

(Stephen thrusts the ashplant on him and slowly holds out his hands, his head going back till both hands are a span from his breast, down turned in planes intersecting, the fingers about to part, the left being higher.)

LYNCH Which is the jug of bread? It skills not. That or the customhouse. Illustrate thou. Here take your crutch and walk.

(They pass. Tommy Caffrey scrambles to a gaslamp and, clasping, climbs in spasms. From the top spur he slides down. Jacky Caffrey clasps to climb. The navvy lurches against the lamp. The twins scuttle off in the dark. The navvy, swaying, presses a forefinger against a wing of his nose and ejects from the farther nostril a long liquid jet of snot. Shouldering the lamp he staggers away through the crowd with his flaring cresset.

Snakes of river fog creep slowly. From drains, clefts, cesspools, middens arise on all sides stagnant fumes. A glow leaps in the south beyond the seaward reaches of the river. The navvy staggering forward cleaves the crowd and lurches towards the tramsiding. On the farther side under the railway bridge Bloom appears flushed, panting, cramming bread and chocolate into a side pocket. From Gillens hairdressers window a composite portrait shows him gallant Nelson's image. A concave mirror at the side presents to him lovelorn longlost lugubru Booloohoom. Grave Gladstone sees him level Bloom for Bloom. He passes, struck by the stare of truculent Wellington but in the con vex mirror grin unstruck the bonham eyes and fatchuck cheekchops of Jollypoldy the rixdix doldy.

At Antonio Babaiotti's door Bloom halts, sweated under the bright arclamps. He disappears. In a moment he reappears and hurries on.)

BLOOM Fish and taters. N. g. Ah!

(He disappears into Olhousen's, the pork butcher's, under the downcoming rollshutter. A few moments later he emerges from under the shutter puffing Poldy, blowing Bloohoom. In each hand he holds a parcel, one containing a lukewarm pig's crubeen, the other a cold sheep's trotter sprinkled with wholepepper He gasps, standing upright. Then bending to one side he presses a parcel against his rib and groans.)

BLOOM Stitch in my side. Why did I run?

(He takes breath with care and goes forward slowly towards the lampset siding. The glow leaps again.)

BLOOM What is that? A flasher? Searchlight.

(He stands at Cormack's corner watching.)

BLOOM Aurora borealis or a steel foundry? Ah, the brigade, of course. South side anyhow. Big blaze. Might be his house. Beggar's bush. We're safe. (He hums cheerfully.) London's burning, London's burning! On fire, on fire! (He catches sight of the navvy lurching through the crowd at the farther side of Talbot street.) I'll miss him. Run. Quick. Better cross here.

(He darts to cross the road. Urchins shout.)

THE URCHINS Mind out, mister! (Two cyclists, with lighted paper lanterns aswing, swim by him, grazing him, their bells rattling.)

THE BELLS Haltyaltyaltyall.

BLOOM (Halts erect stung by a spasm.) Ow.

(He looks round, darts forward suddenly. Through rising fog a dragon sandstrewer, travelling at caution, slews heavily down upon him, its huge red headlight winking, its trolley hissing on the wire. The motorman bangs his footgong.)

THE GONG Bang Bang Bla Bak Blud Bugg Bloo.

(The brake cracks violently. Bloom, raising a policeman's whitegloved hand, blunders stifflegged, out of the track. The motorman thrown forward, pugnosed, on the guidewheel, yells as he slides past over chains and keys.)

THE MOTORMAN Hey, shitbreeches, are you doing the hattrick?

BLOOM (Bloom trickleaps to the curbstone and halts again. He brushes a mudflake from his cheek with a parcelled hand.) No thoroughfare. Close shave that but cured the stitch. Must take up Sandow's exercises again. On the hands down. Insure against street accident too. The Providential. (He feels his trouser pocket.) Poor mamma's panacea. Heel easily catch in tracks or bootlace in a cog. Day the wheel of the black Maria peeled off my shoe at Leonard's corner. Third time is the charm. Shoe trick. Insolent driver. I ought to report him. Tension makes them nervous. Might be the fellow balked me this morning with that horsey woman. Same style of beauty. Quick of him all the same. The stiff walk. True word spoken in jest. That awful cramp in Lad lane. Something poisonous I ate. Emblem of luck. Why? Probably lost cattle. Mark of the beast. (He closes his eyes an instant.) Bit light in the head. Monthly or effect of the other. Brainfogfag. That tired feeling. Too much for me now. Ow!

(A sinister figure leans on plaited legs against O'Beirnes wall, a visage unknown, injected with dark mercury. From under a wideleaved sombrero the figure regards him with evil eye.)

BLOOM Buenos noches, se?orita Blanca, que calle es esta?

THE FIGURE (Impassive, raises a signal arm.) Password. Sraid Mabbot.

BLOOM Haha. Merci. Esperanto. Slan leath. (He mutters.) Gaelic league spy, sent by that fireeater.

(He steps forward. A sackshouldered ragman bars his path. He steps left, ragsackman left.)

BLOOM I beg. (He swerves, sidles, stepsaside, slips past and on.)

BLOOM Keep to the right, right, right. If there is a fingerpost planted by the Touring Club at Stepaside who procured that public boon? I who lost my way and contributed to the columns of the Irish Cyclist the letter headed, In darkest Stepaside. Keep, keep, keep to the right. Rags and bones, at midnight. A fence more likely. First place murderer makes for. Wash off his sins of the world.

(Jacky Caffrey, hunted by Tommy Caffrey, runs full tilt against Bloom.)

BLOOM O!

(Shocked, on weak hams, he halts. Tommy and Jacky vanish there, there. Bloom pats with parcelled hands watch, fobpocket, bookpocket, pursepocket, sweets of sin, potato soap.)

BLOOM Beware of pickpockets. Old thieves' dodge. Collide. Then snatch your purse.

(The retriever approaches sniffling, nose to the ground. A sprawled form sneezes. A stooped bearded figure appears garbed in the long caftan of an elder in Zion and a smoking cap with magenta tassels. Horned spectacles hang down at the wings of the nose. Yellow poison streaks are on the drawn face.)

RUDOLPH Second halfcrown waste money today. I told you not go with drunken goy ever. So. You catch no money.

BLOOM (Hides the crubeen and trotter behind his back and, crestfallen, feels warm and cold feetmeat) Ja, ich weiss, papachi.

RUDOLPH What you making down this place? Have you no soul? (With feeble vulture talons he feels the silent face of Bloom) Are you not my son Leopold, the grandson of Leopold? Are you not my dear son Leopold who left the house of his father and left the god of his fathers Abraham and Jacob?

BLOOM (With precaution.) I suppose so, father. Mosenthal. All that's left of him.

RUDOLPH (Severely.) One night they bring you home drunk as dog after spend your good money. What you call them running chaps?

BLOOM (In youth's smart blue Oxford suit with white vestslips, narrowshouldered, in brown Alpine hat, wearing gent's sterling silver waterbury keyless watch and double curb Albert with seal attached, one side of him coated with stiffening mud.) Harriers, father. Only that once.

RUDOLPH Once! Mud head to foot. Cut your hand open. Lockjaw. They make you kaput, Leopoldleben. You watch them chaps.

BLOOM (Weakly.) They challenged me to a sprint. It was muddy. I slipped.

RUDOLPH (With contempt) Ooim nachez. Nice spectacles for your poor mother!

BLOOM Mamma!

ELLEN BLOOM (In pantomime dame's stringed mobcap, crinoline and bustle, widow Twankey's blouse with muttonleg sleeves buttoned behind, grey mittens and cameo brooch, her hairplaited in a crisping net, appears over the staircase banisters, a slanted candlestick in her hand and cries out in shrill alarm.) O blessed Redeemer, what have they done to him! My smelling salts! (She hauls up a reef of skirt and ransacks the pouch of her striped blay petticoat. A phial, an Agnus Dei, a shrivelled potato and a celluloid doll fall out.) Sacred Heart of Mary, where were you at all, at all?

(Bloom, mumbling, his eyes downcast, begins to bestow his parcels in his filled pockets but desists, muttering.)

A VOICE (Sharply.) Poldy!

BLOOM Who? (He ducks and wards off a blow clumsily.) At your service.

(He looks up. Beside her mirage of datepalms a handsome woman in Turkish costume stands before him. Opulent curves fill out her scarlet trousers and jacket slashed with gold. A wide yells cummerbund girdles her. A white yashmak violet in the night, covers her face, leaving free only her lace dark eyes and raven hair.)

BLOOM Molly!

MARION Welly? Mrs Marion from this out, my dear man, when you speak to me. (Satirically.) Has poor little hubby cold feet waiting so long?

BLOOM (Shifts from foot to foot.) No, no. Not the least little bit.

(He breathes in deep agitation, swallowing gulps of air questions, hopes, crubeens for her supper things to tell her excuses, desire, spellbound. A coin gleams on her forehead. On her feet are jewelled toerings. Her ankles are linked by a slender fetterchain. Beside her a camel, hooded with a turreting turban, waits. A silk ladder of innumerable rungs climbs to his bobbing howdah. He ambles near with disgruntled hindquarters. Fiercely she slaps his haunch, her goldcurb wristbangles angriling, scolding him in Moorish.)

MARION Nebrakada! Feminimum.

(The camel, lifting a foreleg, plucks from a tree a lace mango fruit, offers it to his mistress, blinking, in his cloven hoof then droops his head and, grunting, with uplifted neck, fumbles to kneel. Bloom stoops his back for leapfrog.)

BLOOM I can give you... I mean as your business menagerer Mrs Marion... if you...

MARION So you notice some change? (Her hands passing slowly over her trinketed stomacher. A slow friendly mockery in her eyes.) O Poldy, Poldy, you are a poor old stick in the mud! Go and see life. See the wide world.

BLOOM I was just going back for that lotion whitewax, orangeflower water. Shop closes early on Thursday. But the first thing in the morning. (He pats divers pockets.) This moving kidney. Ah!

(He points to the south, then to the east. A cake of new clean lemon soap arises, diffusing light and perfume.)

THE SOAP

We're a capital couple are Bloom and I;
He brightens the earth, I polish the sky.
(The freckled face of Sweny, the druggist, appeals in the disc of the soapsun.)
SWENY Three and a penny, please.

BLOOM Yes. For my wife, Mrs Marion. Special recipe.

MARION (Softly.) Poldy!

BLOOM Yes, ma'am?

MARION Ti trema un poco il cuore?

(In disdain she saunters away, plump as a pampered pouter pigeon, humming the duet from Don Giovanni)

BLOOM Are you sure about that Voglio? I mean the pronunciati...

(He follows, followed by the sniffing terrier. The elderly bawd seizes his sleeve, the bristles of her chinmole glittering.)

THE BAWD Ten shillings a maidenhead. Fresh thing was never touched. Fifteen. There's no-one in it only her old father that's dead drunk.

(She points. In the gap of her dark den furtive, rainbedraggled Bridie Kelly stands.)

BRIDIE Hatch street. Any good in your mind?

(With a squeak she flaps her bat shawl and runs. A burly rough pursues with booted strides. He stumbles on the steps, recovers, plunges into gloom. Weak squeaks of laughter are heard, weaker.)

THE BAWD (Her wolfeyes shining.) He's getting his pleasure. You won't get a virgin in the flash houses. Ten shillings. Don't be all night before the polis in plain clothes sees us. Sixtyseven is a bitch.

(Leering Gerty MacDowell limps forward. She draws from behind ogling, and shows coyly her bloodied clout.)

GERTY With all my worldly goods I thee and thou. (She murmurs.) You did that. I hate you.

BLOOM I? When? You're dreaming. I never saw you.

THE BAWD Leave the gentleman alone, you cheat. Writing the gentleman false letters. Streetwalking and soliciting. Better for your mother take the strap to you at the bedpost, hussy like you.

GERTY (To Bloom.) When you saw all the secrets of my bottom drawer. (She paws his sleeve, slobbering.) Dirty married man! I love you for doing that to me.

(She slides away crookedly. Mrs Breen in man's frieze overcoat with loose bellows pockets, stands in the causeway, her roguish eyes wideopen, smiling in all her herbivorous buckteeth.)

MRS BREEN Mr.

BLOOM (Coughs gravely.) Madam, when we last had this pleasure by letter dated the sixteenth instant .

MRS BREEN Mr Bloom! You down here in the haunts of sin! I caught you nicely! Scamp!

BLOOM (Hurriedly.) Not so loud my name. Whatever do you think me? Don't give me away. Walls have hears. How do you do? It's ages since I. You're looking splendid. Absolutely it. Seasonable weather we are having this time of year. Black refracts heat. Short cut home here. Interesting quarter. Rescue of fallen women Magdalen asylum. I am the secretary...

MRS BREEN (Holds up a finger.) Now don't tell a big fib! I know somebody won't like that. O just wait till I see Molly! (Slily.) Account for yourself this very minute or woe betide you!

BLOOM (Looks behind.) She often said she'd like to visit. Slumming. The exotic, you see. Negro servants too in livery if she had money. Othello black brute. Eugene Stratton. Even the bones and cornerman at the Livermore christies. Bohee brothers. Sweep for that matter.

(Tom and Sam Bohee, coloured coons in white duck suits, scarlet socks, upstarched Sambo chokers and lace scarlet asters in their buttonholes leap out. Each has his banjo slung. Their paler smaller negroid hands jingle the twingtwang wires. Flashing white Kaffir eyes and tusks they rattle through a breakdown in clumsy clogs, twinging, singing, back to back, toe heel, heel toe, with smackfatclacking nigger lips.)

There's someone in the house with Dina
There's someone in the house, I know,
There's someone in the house with Dina
Playing on the old banjo.
(They whisk black masks from raw babby faces: then, chuckling, chortling, trumming, twanging they diddle diddle cakewalk dance away.)
BLOOM (With a sour tenderish smile.) A little frivol, shall we, if you are so inclined? Would you like me perhaps to embrace you just for a fraction of a second?

MRS BREEN (Screams gaily.) O, you ruck! You ought to see yourself!

BLOOM For old sake'sake. I only meant a square party, a mixed marriage mingling of our different little conjugials. You know I had a soft corner for you. (Gloomily.) 'Twas I sent you that valentine of the dear gazelle.

MRS BREEN Glory Alice, you do look a holy show! Killing simply. (She puts out her hand inquisitively.) What are you hiding behind your back? Tell us, there's a dear.

BLOOM (Seizes her wrist with his free hand.) Josie Powell that was, prettiest deb in Dublin. How time flies by! Do you remember, harking back in a retrospective arrangement, Old Christmas night Georgina Simpson's housewarming while they were playing the Irving Bishop game, finding the pin blindfold and thoughtreading? Subject, what is in this snuff box?

MRS BREEN You were the lion of the night with your seriocomic recitation and you looked the part. You were always a favourite with the ladies.

BLOOM (Squire of dames, in dinner jacket, with watered-silk facings, blue masonic badge in his buttonhole, black bow and mother-of-pearl studs, a prismatic champagne glass tilted in his hand.) Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Ireland, home and beauty.

MRS BREEN The dear dead days beyond recall. Love's old sweet song.

BLOOM (Meaningfully dropping his voice.) I confess I'm teapot with curiosity to find out whether some person's something is a little teapot at present.

MRS BREEN (Gushingly.) Tremendously teapot! London's tea pot and I'm simply teapot all over me. (She rubs sides with him.) After the parlour mystery games and the crackers from the tree we sat on the staircase ottoman. Under the mistletoe. Two is company.

BLOOM (Wearing a purple Napoleon hat with an amber halfmoon, his fingers and thumbs passing slowly down to her soft moist meaty palm which she surrenders gently.) The witching hour of night. I took the splinter out of this hand, carefully, slowly. (Tenderly, as he slips on her finger a ruby ring.) Là ci darem la mano.

MRS BREEN (In a onepiece eveningfrock executed in moonlight blue, a tinsel sylph's diadem on her brow with her dancecard fallen beside her moonblue satin slipper curves her palm softly, breathing quickly.) Voglio e non. You're hot! You're scalding! The left hand nearest the heart.

BLOOM When you made your present choice they said it was beauty and the beast. I can never forgive you for that. (His clenched fist at his brow.) Think what it means. All you meant to me then. (Hoarsely.) Woman, it's breaking me! (Dennis Breen, whitetallhatted, with Wisdom Hely's sandwich board, shuffles past them in cadet slippers, his dull beard thrust out, muttering to right and left. Little Alf Bergan, cloaked in the pall of the ace of spaces, dogs him to left and right, doubled in laughter.)

ALF BERGAN (Points jeering at the sandwich boards.) U.p.: Up.

MRS BREEN (To Bloom.) High jinks below stairs. (She gives him the glad eye.) Why didn't you kiss the spot to make it well? You wanted to.

BLOOM (Shocked.) Molly's best friend! Could you?

MRS BREEN (Her pulpy tongue between her lips, offers a pigeon kiss.) Hnhn. The answer is a lemon. Have you a little present for me there?

BLOOM (Off handedly.) Kosher. A snack for supper. The home without potted meat is incomplete. I was at Leah. Mrs Bandman Palmer. Trenchant exponent of Shakespeare. Unfortunately threw away the programme. Rattling good place round there for pig's feet. Feel.

(Richie Goulding, three ladies' hats pinned on his head, appears weighted to one side by the black legal bag of Collis and Ward on which a skull and crossbones are painted in white limewash. He ins it and shows it full of polonies, kippered, herrings, Findon haddies and tightpacked pills.)

RICHIE Best value in Dub.

(Bald Pat, bothered beetle, stands on the curbstone, folding his napkin, waiting to wait.)

PAT (Advances with a tilted dish of spillspilling gravy.) Steak and kidney. Bottle of lager. Hee hee hee. Wait till I wait.

RICHIE Goodgod. Inev erate inall...

(With hanging head he marches doggedly forward. The navvy, lurching by, gores him with his flaming pronghorn.)

RICHIE (With a cry of pain, his hand to his back) Ah! Bright's! Lights!

BLOOM (Points to the navvy.) A spy. Don't attract attention. I hate stupid crowds. I am not on pleasure bent. I am in a grave predicament.

MRS BREEN Humbugging and delutbering as per usual with your cock and bull story.

BLOOM I want to tell you a little secret about how I came to be here. But you must never tell. Not even Molly. I have a most particular reason.

MRS BREEN (All agog.) O, not for worlds.

BLOOM Let's walk on. Shall us?

MRS BREEN Let's.

(The bawd makes an unheeded sign. Bloom walks on with Mrs Breen. The terrier follows, whining piteously, wagging his tail.)

THE BAWD Jewman's melt!

BLOOM (In an oatmeal sporting suit, a sprig of woodbine in the lapel, tony buff shirt, shepherd's plaid Saint Andrew's cross scarftie, white spats, fawn dustcoat on his arm, tawny red brogues, fieldglasses in bandolier and a grey billycock hat.) Do you remember a long long time, years and years ago, just after Milly, Marionette we called her, was weaned when we all went together to Fairyhouse races, was it?

MRS BREEN (In smart Saxe tailormade, white velours hat and spider veil.) Leopardstown.

BLOOM I mean, Leopardstown. And Molly won seven shillings on a three year old named Nevertell and coming home along by Foxrock in that old fiveseater shanderadan of a waggonette you were in your heyday then and you had on that new hat of white velours with a surround of molefur that Mrs Hayes advised you to buy because it was marked down to nineteen and eleven, a bit of wire and an old rag of velveteen, and I'll lay you what you like she did it on purpose...

MRS BREEN She did, of course, the cat! Don't tell me! Nice adviser!

BLOOM Because it didn't suit you one quarter as well as the other ducky little tammy toque with the bird of paradise wing in it that I admired on you and you honestly looked just too fetching in it though it was a pity to kill it, you cruel creature, little mite of a thing with a heart the size of a fullstop.

MRS BREEN (Squeezes his arm, simpers.) Naughty cruel I was.

BLOOM (Low, secretly, ever more rapidly.) And Molly was eating a sandwich of spiced beef out of Mrs Joe Gallaher's lunch basket. Frankly, though she had her advisers or admirers, I never cared much for her style. She was .

MRS BREEN Too.

BLOOM Yes. And Molly was laughing because Rogers and Maggot O'Reilly were mimicking a cock as we passed a farmhouse and Marcus Tertius Moses, the tea merchant, drove past us in a gig with his daughter, Dancer Moses was her name, and the poodle in her lap bridled up and you asked me if I ever heard or read or knew or came across .

MRS BREEN (Eagerly.) Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

(She fades from his side. Followed by the whining dog he walks on towards hellsgates. In an archway a standing woman, bent forward, her feet apart, pisses cowily. Outside a shuttered pub a bunch of loiterers listen to a tale which their broken snouted gaffer rasps out with raucous humour. An armless pair of them flop wrestling, growling, in maimed sodden playfight.)

THE GAFFER (Crouches, his voice twisted in his snout.) And when Cairns came down from the scaffolding in Beaver Street what was he after doing it into only into the bucket of porter that was there waiting on the shavings for Derwan's plasterers.

THE LOITERERS (Guffaw with cleft palates.) O jays!

(Their paintspeckled hats wag. Spattered with size and lime of their lodges they frisk limblessly about him.)

BLOOM Coincidence too. They think it funny. Anything but that. Broad daylight. Trying to walk. Lucky no woman.

THE LOITERERS Jays, that's a good one. Glauber salts. O jays, into the men's porter.

(Bloom passes. Cheap whores, singly, coupled, shawled, dishevelled, call from lanes, doors, corners.)

THE WHORES Are you going far, queer fellow? How's your middle leg? Got a match on you? Eh, come here till I stiffen it for you.

(He plodges through their sump towards the lighted street beyond. From a bulge of window curtains a gramophone rears a battered brazen trunk. In the shadow a shebeenkeeper haggles with the navvy and the two redcoats.)

THE NAVVY (Belching.) Where's the bloody house?

THE SHEBEENKEEPER Purdon street. Shilling a bottle of stout. Respectable woman.

THE NAVVY (Gripping the two redcoats, staggers forward with them.) Come on, you British army!

PRIVATE CARR (Behind his back.) He aint half balmy.

PRIVATE COMPTON (LAughs.) What ho!

PRIVATE CARR (To the navvy.) Portobello barracks canteen. You ask for Carr. Just Carr.

THE NAVVY (Shouts.)

We are the boys. Of Wexford.

PRIVATE COMPTON Say! What price the sergeantmajor?

PRIVATE CARR Bennett? He's my pal. I love old Bennett.

THENAVVY (Shouts.)

The galling chain.
And free our native land.
(He staggers forward, dragging them with him. Bloom stops, at fault. The dog approaches, his tongue outlolling, panting.)
BLOOM Wildgoose chase this. Disorderly houses. Lord knows where they are gone. Drunks cover distance double quick. Nice mixup. Scene at Westland row. Then jump in first class with third ticket. Then too far. Train with engine behind. Might have taken me to Malahide or a siding for the night or collision. Second drink does it. Once is a dose. What am I following him for? Still, he's the best of that lot. If I hadn't heard about Mrs Beaufoy Purefoy I wouldn't have gone and wouldn't have met. Kismet. He'll lose that cash. Relieving office here. Good biz for cheapjacks, organs. What do ye lack? Soon got, soon gone. Might have lost my life too with that mangongwheeltracktrolleyglarejuggernaut only for presence of mind. Can't always save you, though. If I had passed Truelock's window that day two minutes later would have been shot. Absence of body. Still if bullet only went through my coat get damages for shock, five hundred pounds. What was he? Kildare street club toff. God help his gamekeeper.

(He gazes ahead reading on the wall a scrawled chalk legend Wet Dream and a phallic design.)

Odd! Molly drawing on the frosted carriagepane at Kingstown. What's that like? (Gaudy dollwomen loll in the lighted doorways, in window embrasures, smoking birdseye cigarettes. The odour of the sicksweet weed floats towards him in slow round ovalling wreaths.)

THE WREATHS Sweet are the sweets. Sweets of sin.

BLOOM My spine's a bit limp. Go or turn? And this food? Eat it and get all pigsticky. Absurd I am. Waste of money. One and eightpence too much. (The retriever drives a cold snivelling muzzle against his hand, wagging his tail.) Strange how they take to me. Even that brute today. Better speak to him first. Like women they like rencontres. Stinks like a polecat. Chacun son go?t. He might be mad. Fido. Uncertain in his movements. Good fellow! Garryowen! (The wolfdog sprawls on his back, wriggling obscenely with begging paws, his long black tongue lolling out.) Influence of his surroundings. Give and have done with it. Provided nobody. (Calling encouraging words he shambles back with a furtive poacher's tread, dogged by the setter into a dark stalestunk corner. He unrolls one parcel and goes to dump the crubeen softly but holds back and feels the trotter.) Sizeable for threepence. But then I have it in my left hand. Calls for more effort. Why? Smaller from want of use. O, let it slide. Two and six.

(With regret he lets unrolled crubeen and trotter slide. The mastiff mauls the bundle clumsily and gluts himself with growling greed, crunching the bones. Two raincaped watch approach, silent, vigilant. They murmur together.)

THE WATCH Bloom. Of Bloom. For Bloom. Bloom.

(Each lays a hand on Blooms shoulder.)

FIRST WATCH Caught in the act. Commit no nuisance.

BLOOM (Sta............