Ulysses by James Joyce (good books to read for adults TXT) 📖

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 for you when you were sad among the strangers? Prayer is allpowerful. Prayer for the suffering souls in the Ursuline manual and forty days’ indulgence. Repent, Stephen.

STEPHEN: The ghoul! Hyena!

THE MOTHER: I pray for you in my other world. Get Dilly to make you that boiled rice every night after your brainwork. Years and years I loved you, O, my son, my firstborn, when you lay in my womb.

ZOE: (Fanning herself with the grate fan.) I’m melting!

FLORRY: (Points to Stephen.) Look! He’s white.

BLOOM: (Goes to the window to open it more.) Giddy.

THE MOTHER: (With smouldering eyes.) Repent! O, the fire of hell!

STEPHEN: (Panting.) His noncorrosive sublimate! The corpsechewer! Raw head and bloody bones.

THE MOTHER: (Her face drawing near and nearer, sending out an ashen breath.) Beware! (She raises her blackened withered right arm slowly towards Stephen’s breast with outstretched finger.) Beware God’s hand! (A green crab with malignant red eyes sticks deep its grinning claws in Stephen’s heart.)

STEPHEN: (Strangled with rage.) Shite! (His features grow drawn and grey and old.)

BLOOM: (At the window.) What?

STEPHEN: Ah non, par exemple! The intellectual imagination! With me all or not at all. Non serviam!

FLORRY: Give him some cold water. Wait. (She rushes out.)

THE MOTHER: (Wrings her hands slowly, moaning desperately.) O Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on him! Save him from hell, O Divine Sacred Heart!

STEPHEN: No! No! No! Break my spirit, all of you, if you can! I’ll bring you all to heel!

THE MOTHER: (In the agony of her deathrattle.) Have mercy on Stephen, Lord, for my sake! Inexpressible was my anguish when expiring with love, grief and agony on Mount Calvary.

STEPHEN: Nothung!

(He lifts his ashplant high with both hands and smashes the chandelier. Time’s livid final flame leaps and, in the following darkness, ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry.)

THE GASJET: Pwfungg!

BLOOM: Stop!

LYNCH: (Rushes forward and seizes Stephen’s hand.) Here! Hold on! Don’t run amok!

BELLA: Police!

(Stephen, abandoning his ashplant, his head and arms thrown back stark, beats the ground and flies from the room, past the whores at the door.)

BELLA: (Screams.) After him!

(The two whores rush to the halldoor. Lynch and Kitty and Zoe stampede from the room. They talk excitedly. Bloom follows, returns.)

THE WHORES: (Jammed in the doorway, pointing.) Down there.

ZOE: (Pointing.) There. There’s something up.

BELLA: Who pays for the lamp? (She seizes Bloom’s coattail.) Here, you were with him. The lamp’s broken.

BLOOM: (Rushes to the hall, rushes back.) What lamp, woman?

A WHORE: He tore his coat.

BELLA: (Her eyes hard with anger and cupidity, points.) Who’s to pay for that? Ten shillings. You’re a witness.

BLOOM: (Snatches up Stephen’s ashplant.) Me? Ten shillings? Haven’t you lifted enough off him? Didn’t he...?

BELLA: (Loudly.) Here, none of your tall talk. This isn’t a brothel. A ten shilling house.

BLOOM: (His head under the lamp, pulls the chain. Pulling, the gasjet lights up a crushed mauve purple shade. He raises the ashplant.) Only the chimney’s broken. Here is all he...

BELLA: (Shrinks back and screams.) Jesus! Don’t!

BLOOM: (Warding off a blow.) To show you how he hit the paper. There’s not sixpenceworth of damage done. Ten shillings!

FLORRY: (With a glass of water, enters.) Where is he?

BELLA: Do you want me to call the police?

BLOOM: O, I know. Bulldog on the premises. But he’s a Trinity student. Patrons of your establishment. Gentlemen that pay the rent. (He makes a masonic sign.) Know what I mean? Nephew of the vicechancellor. You don’t want a scandal.

BELLA: (Angrily.) Trinity. Coming down here ragging after the boatraces and paying nothing. Are you my commander here or? Where is he? I’ll charge him! Disgrace him, I will! (She shouts.) Zoe! Zoe!

BLOOM: (Urgently.) And if it were your own son in Oxford? (Warningly.) I know.

BELLA: (Almost speechless.) Who are. Incog!

ZOE: (In the doorway.) There’s a row on.

BLOOM: What? Where? (He throws a shilling on the table and starts.) That’s for the chimney. Where? I need mountain air.

(He hurries out through the hall. The whores point. Florry follows, spilling water from her tilted tumbler. On the doorstep all the whores clustered talk volubly, pointing to the right where the fog has cleared off. From the left arrives a jingling hackney car. It slows to in front of the house. Bloom at the halldoor perceives Corny Kelleher who is about to dismount from the car with two silent lechers. He averts his face. Bella from within the hall urges on her whores. They blow ickylickysticky yumyum kisses. Corny Kelleher replies with a ghastly lewd smile. The silent lechers turn to pay the jarvey. Zoe and Kitty still point right. Bloom, parting them swiftly, draws his caliph’s hood and poncho and hurries down the steps with sideways face. Incog Haroun al Raschid he flits behind the silent lechers and hastens on by the railings with fleet step of a pard strewing the drag behind him, torn envelopes drenched in aniseed. The ashplant marks his stride. A pack of bloodhounds, led by Hornblower of Trinity brandishing a dogwhip in tallyho cap and an old pair of grey trousers, follows from far, picking up the scent, nearer, baying, panting, at fault, breaking away, throwing their tongues, biting his heels, leaping at his tail. He walks, runs, zigzags, gallops, lugs laid back. He is pelted with gravel, cabbagestumps, biscuitboxes, eggs, potatoes, dead codfish, woman’s slipperslappers. After him freshfound the hue and cry zigzag gallops in hot pursuit of follow my leader: 65 C, 66 C, night watch, John Henry Menton, Wisdom Hely, V. B. Dillon, Councillor Nannetti, Alexander Keyes, Larry O’Rourke, Joe Cuffe, Mrs O’Dowd, Pisser Burke, The Nameless One, Mrs Riordan, The Citizen, Garryowen, Whodoyoucallhim, Strangeface, Fellowthatsolike, Sawhimbefore, Chapwithawen, Chris Callinan, sir Charles Cameron, Benjamin Dollard, Lenehan, Bartell