ULYSSES

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.

THE NAVVY

(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 --> man -->gongwheeltracktrolleyglarejuggernaut 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 goыt. He might be mad. Dogdays. Uncertain in his movements. Good fellow! Fido! 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 the 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 hand on Bloom’s shoulder.)

FIRST WATCH

Caught in the act. Commit no nuisance.

BLOOM

(stammers) I am doing good to others.

(A covey of gulls, storm petrels, rises hungrily from Liffey slime with Banbury cakes in their beaks.)

THE GULLS

Kaw kave kankury kake.

BLOOM

The friend of man. Trained by kindness.

(He points. Bob Doran, toppling from a high barstool, sways over the munching spaniel.)

BOB DORAN

Towser. Give us the paw. Give the paw.

(The bulldog growls, his scruff standing, a gobbet of pig’s knuckle between his molars through which rabid scumspittle dribbles. Bob Doran falls silently into an area.)

SECOND WATCH

Prevention of cruelty to animals.

BLOOM

(enthusiastically) A noble work! I scolded that tramdriver on Harold’s cross bridge for illusing the poor horse with his harness scab. Bad French I got for my pains. Of course it was frosty and the last tram. All tales of circus life are highly demoralising.

(Signor Maffei, passionpale, in liontamer’s costume with diamond studs in his shirtfront, steps forward, holding a circus paperhoop, a curling carriagewhip and a revolver with which he covers the gorging boarhound.)

SIGNOR MAFFEI

(with a sinister smile) Ladies and gentlemen, my educated greyhound. It was I broke in the bucking broncho Ajax with my patent spiked saddle for carnivores. Lash under the belly with a knotted thong. Block tackle and a strangling pulley will bring your lion to heel, no matter how fractious, even Leo ferox there, the Libyan maneater. A redhot crowbar and some liniment rubbing on the burning part produced Fritz of Amsterdam, the thinking hyena. (he glares) I possess the Indian sign. The glint of my eye does it with these breastsparklers. (with a bewitching smile) I now introduce Mademoiselle Ruby, the pride of the ring.

FIRST WATCH

Come. Name and address.

BLOOM

I have forgotten for the moment. Ah, yes! (he takes off his high grade hat, saluting) Dr Bloom, Leopold, dental surgeon. You have heard of von Blum Pasha. Umpteen millions. Donnerwetter! Owns half Austria. Egypt. Cousin.

FIRST WATCH

Proof.

(A card falls from inside the leather headband of Bloom’s hat.)

BLOOM