ULYSSES

RUMBOLD

(to the recorder with sinister familiarity) Hanging Harry, your Majesty, the Mersey terror. Five guineas a jugular. Neck or nothing.

(The bells of George’s church toll slowly, loud dark iron.)

THE BELLS

Heigho! Heigho!

BLOOM

(desperately) Wait. Stop. Gulls. Good heart. I saw. Innocence. Girl in the monkeyhouse. Zoo. Lewd chimpanzee. (breathlessly) Pelvic basin. Her artless blush unmanned me. (overcome with emotion) I left the precincts. (he turns to a figure in the crowd, appealing) Hynes, may I speak to you? You know me. That three shillings you can keep. If you want a little more …..

HYNES

(coldly) You are a perfect stranger.

SECOND WATCH

(points to the corner) The bomb is here.

FIRST WATCH

Infernal machine with a time fuse.

BLOOM

No, no. Pig’s feet. I was at a funeral.

FIRST WATCH

(draws his truncheon) Liar!

(The beagle lifts his snout, showing the grey scorbutic face of Paddy Dignam. He has gnawed all. He exhales a putrid carcasefed breath. He grows to human size and shape. His dachshund coat becomes a brown mortuary habit. His green eye flashes bloodshot. Half of one ear, all the nose and both thumbs are ghouleaten.)

PADDY DIGNAM

(in a hollow voice) It is true. It was my funeral. Doctor Finucane pronounced life extinct when I succumbed to the disease from natural causes.

(He lifts his mutilated ashen face moonwards and bays lugubriously.)

BLOOM

(in triumph) You hear?

PADDY DIGNAM

Bloom, I am Paddy Dignam’s spirit. List, list, O list!

BLOOM

The voice is the voice of Esau.

SECOND WATCH

(blesses himself) How is that possible?

FIRST WATCH

It is not in the penny catechism.

PADDY DIGNAM

By metempsychosis. Spooks.

A VOICE

O rocks.

PADDY DIGNAM

(earnestly) Once I was in the employ of Mr J. H. Menton, solicitor, commissioner for oaths and affidavits, of 27 Bachelor’s Walk. Now I am defunct, the wall of the heart hypertrophied. Hard lines. The poor wife was awfully cut up. How is she bearing it? Keep her off that bottle of sherry. (he looks round him) A lamp. I must satisfy an animal need. That buttermilk didn’t agree with me.

(The portly figure of John O’Connell, caretaker, stands forth, holding a bunch of keys tied with crape. Beside him stands Father Coffey, chaplain, toadbellied, wrynecked, in a surplice and bandanna nightcap, holding sleepily a staff twisted poppies.)

FATHER COFFEY

(yawns, then chants with a hoarse croak) Namine. Jacobs. Vobiscuits. Amen.

JOHN O’CONNELL

(foghorns stormily through his megaphone) Dignam, Patrick T, deceased.

PADDY DIGNAM

(with pricked up ears, winces) Overtones. (he wriggles forward and places an ear to the ground) My master’s voice!

JOHN O’CONNELL

Burial docket letter number U. P. eightyfive thousand. Field seventeen. House of Keys. Plot, one hundred and one.

(Paddy Dignam listens with visible effort, thinking, his tail stiffpointed, his ears cocked.)

PADDY DIGNAM

Pray for the repose of his soul.

(He worms down through a coalhole, his brown habit trailing its tether over rattling pebbles. After him toddles an obese grandfather rat on fungus turtle paws under a grey carapace. Dignam’s voice, muffled, is heard baying under ground: Dignam’s dead and gone below. Tom Rochford, robinredbreasted, in cap and breeches, jumps from his twocolumned machine.)

TOM ROCHFORD

(a hand to his breastbone, bows) Reuben J. A florin I find him. (he fixes the manhole with a resolute stare) My turn now on. Follow me up to Carlow.

(He executes a daredevil salmon leap in the air and is engulfed in the coalhole. Two discs on the columns wobble, eyes of nought. All recedes. Bloom plodges forward again through the sump. Kisses chirp amid the rifts of fog. A piano sounds. He stands before a lighted house, listening. The kisses, winging from their bowers fly about him, twittering, warbling, cooing.)

THE KISSES

(warbling) Leo! (twittering) Icky licky micky sticky for Leo! (cooing) Coo coocoo! Yummyyum, Womwom! (warbling) Big comebig! Pirouette! Leopopold! (twittering) Leeolee! (warbling) O Leo!

(They rustle, flutter upon his garments, alight, bright giddy flecks, silvery sequins.)

BLOOM

A man’s touch. Sad music. Church music. Perhaps here.

(Zoe Higgins, a young whore in a sapphire slip, closed with three bronze buckles, a slim black velvet fillet round her throat, nods, trips down the steps and accosts him.)

ZOE

Are you looking for someone? He’s inside with his friend.

BLOOM

Is this Mrs Mack’s?

ZOE

No, eightyone. Mrs Cohen’s. You might go farther and fare worse. Mother Slipperslapper. (familiarly) She’s on the job herself tonight with the vet her tipster that